Plenitude of Power: The Doctrines and Exercise of Authority in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Robert Louis Benson / Edition 1

by Robert C. Figueira

Overview

'I study power' - so Robert Louis Benson described his work as a scholar of medieval history. This volume unites papers by a number of his students dealing with matters central to Benson's historical interests - ecclesiastical institutions and administration, emperorship and papacy, canon law, political ideology, and historiography. The justification and exercise of political power is considered in two chapters that look at how the hagiography of a late Roman military saint, Maurice, was harnessed in the 11th century to the discussion of the power exercised by both emperor and pope, and how both pious purpose and political pretext animated the Hohenstaufen emperors'suppression of heresy. Three subsequent chapters focus on the Church: a study of the legal commentaries that taught that the 'authority to bind and loose' in a specific ecclesiastical matter could be determined by the opinions of 'the elders of the province'; an argument that Innocent III's administration of the Roman church represented a model for the ordering of all Christian society; and an inquiry into the doctrinal formation of the 'territorial principle' in the exercise of jurisdiction by papal legates. The late Middle Ages provides the focus for two additional studies, namely an exploration of the issues of power and authority in the charitable institutions of Cologne in the 13th-14th centuries, and the argument that the current desire for universal standards of governmental conduct in the area of basic human rights hearkens back to natural law theory as outlined in the 15th century by Nicholas of Cusa. Two historiographical studies round out the volume: an estimation of modern research regarding the political theology of late antiquity, and a reflection on Benson's own contribution to historical scholarship. Together, these papers both epitomize and further develop Benson's distinctive approach to the study of the Middle Ages, while themselves making their own important contribution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780754631736
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/28/2006
Series:	Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robert C. Figueira is Professor of History at Lander University, Greenwood, South Carolina, USA.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Congrega seniores provinciae: A Note on a Hiberno-Latin Canon Concerning the Sources of Authority in Ecclesiastical Law, Bruce C. Brasington; Chapter 2 Saints, Pagans, War and Rulership in Ottonian Germany, David A. Warner; Chapter 3 Henry VI, Heresy and the Extension of Imperial Power in Italy, Peter D. Diehl; Chapter 4 Pseudo-Dionysius, Gilbert of Limerick and Innocent III: Order, Power and Constitutional Construction, Shannon M.O. Williamson; Chapter 5 The Medieval Papal Legate and His Province: Geographical Limits of Jurisdiction, Robert C. Figueira; Chapter 6 Potens et Pauper: Charity and Authority in Jurisdictional Disputes over the Poor in Medieval Cologne, Joseph P. Huffman; Chapter 7 Auctoritas, Potestas and World Order, James Muldoon; Chapter 8 Christendom before Europe? A Historiographical Analysis of ‘Political Theology’ in Late Antiquity 1. I have already published small portions of this article in my book Liberty, Dominion, and the Two Swords: On the Origins of Western Political Theology (180–398), Publications in Medieval Studies 28, ed. John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN/London, 1998). I would therefore like to thank the University of Notre Dame Press for allowing me to publish them again without customary citation., Lester L. Field Jr; Chapter 9 ‘I Study Power’: The Scholarly Legacy of Robert Louis Benson with a Bibliography of his Published and Unpublished Works 1. Since Robert L. Benson left a large number of unpublished works, many of which will be published, I will endeavour in my text to give an indication of the main thrust of these articles without, however, providing a detailed summary or review of those works. For additional information on Benson’s bibliography, see note 38 placed with it at the end of this piece., John W. Bernhardt;

Editorial Reviews

’The nine chapters in this volume highlight the extent and breadth of Benson’s scholarly legacy. They are wide-ranging, yet highly technical, in content; all but a few comment inductively, from narrow case studies, on the broader uses of authority in the Church between late antiquity and the fifteenth century. All are characterized by scholarship of the first order... The achievement of this volume is its interdisciplinarity: it forces readers to engage with scholarship outside their disciplines, surely the true aim of 'intellectual history', or Geistegeschichte. In this way it is a truly fitting tribute to Robert Benson.’ Church History

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