Progressive Geographies

I’m still chipping away at Chapter Four. It requires some new reading so is taking a while. But Chapter Six is now done.

It begins with a discussion of the struggle between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip the Fair of France in the late 13th and early 14th century. Although there is some detail on the politics, I’m more interested in the political theory that was produced for one or other party, or in response to the arguments. This includes works by the likes of James of Viterbo, John of Paris, Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus), and Henry of Cremona.

The bulk of the chapter is devoted to detailed readings of Dante Aligheri (the Commedia and the Monarchia); Marsilius of Padua’s defence of the independent city states; and William of Ockham’s arguments on behalf of the Franciscan vow of poverty. Each of these, in different ways, offers a powerful challenge to the papacy. But each is pretty vague about what the object of the kind of rule they do advocate is: in other words, what is temporal power actually over? This sets up a problem that I think the theorists discussed in the subsequent chapters deal with.

Relatively little work on this revision, though even more checking of references and I’d not previously tracked down a few sources. This included a proper reference to the Franciscan Regula Bullata; and various papal bulls, etc.  But I knew what I was trying to do when I wrote this chapter, so it was in pretty good shape. If I’m back in the British Library again there is probably one last thing I will check.

This is one of the best chapters in the book, in my view. There is even some humour. It’s also the last of the second part of the book, and in re-reading it I was struck not just by the readings of the authors noted above, but also how much secondary literature I’d dealt with. Scholars like Otto Gierke, the Carlyle brothers, Walter Ullmann, Brian Tierney, Joseph Canning, RW Dyson, Cary Nederman and others – who used to be utterly unknown to me – were indispensible guides through the debates in these chapters. As with most of the medieval work, this was undertaken largely while at the University of Tasmania, National University of Singapore, and Queen Mary, University of London between 2006 and 2009.

I’ve not yet finished work on Chapter Four, but I have completed the redraft of Chapter Five.

Chapter Five begins with a reading of John of Salisbury, particularly his Policraticus, but also some discussion of his Metalogicon and other writings. John is interesting because of how he reinvigorates the idea of the body politic. There is a discussion of his use of a work he claims is by Plutarch, though probably this is a fiction, and his reading of Plato’s Timaeus, mediated through the commentary of Calcidius. It then moves to a discussion of the theory of the two swords, which by this time were taken to signify temporal and spiritual power. Various scriptural, papal (i.e. Gregory VII’s Dictatus Papae, Innocent III’s Per Venerabilem) and theological sources (i.e. Francis de Meyronnes, Bernard of Clairvaux) are analysed. In the work for this revision I found what may be the most explicit formulation in a 1159 constitution:

When in the passion Christ says he is content with two swords, this meant the Roman church and the Roman Empire for it is by these two heads and leaders that the whole world is ordered in divine and human things. For there is one God, one pope, and one emperor ought to be enough, for one Church of God.

The chapter then moves to a discussion of the rediscovery of Aristotle’s political texts, and their translation into Latin. Initially this was through Arabic translations, so I take a brief detour there into Arabic scholarship, before discussing the translations themselves, which were in time made direct from the Greek. The availability of these texts changed both the language and the substance of political thought.

I then move to an account of Aquinas. This is quite extensive and took a lot of work. I end the chapter with a reading of the text that is probably partly by Aquinas and completed by Ptolemy of Lucca – De Regimine Principum.

It took me relatively little work to get this into shape this time round. A few details to check and a couple of references that were incomplete. All but one resolved relatively easily. It did take me a while to locate a quote from Remigio Dei Girolami, where he says that “if you are not a citizen [civis] you are not a man, because man is naturally a civil animal [animal civile]”. I’d found this cited in two places without a reference, but eventually found the original place.

I did some early work on this chapter in Tasmania in 2006, and returned to it in Singapore in 2008, and then again while in London in 2009.