The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1050-1300)

by Francis Oakley

Overview

Francis Oakley continues his magisterial three-part history of the emergence of Western political thought during the Middle Ages with this second volume in the series. Here, Oakley explores kingship from the tenth century to the beginning of the fourteenth, showing how, under the stresses of religious and cultural development, kingship became an inceasingly secular institution.

“A masterpiece and the central part of a trilogy that will be a true masterwork.”—Jeffrey Burton Russell, University of California, Santa Barbara

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300176339
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	04/24/2012
Series:	The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages , #2
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Francis Oakley is President Emeritus and Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of Ideas at Williams College.

Table of Contents

General Introduction ix

Acknowledgments xiv

Prologue: Kingship and Its Changing Profile in the Central Middle Ages 1

1 Historical Orientation: The Flowering of Medieval Europe 6

2 The Christian Commonwealth (i): Regnum vs. Sacerdotium-the Struggle for Control 15

3 Recuperating the Past (i): Nature and Chronology of the Process 42

4 Recuperating the Past (ii): The Encounter with. Christian and Roman Anticruity 6 6

5 Recuperating the Past (iii): Fruits of the Encounter with Greek Antiquity 100

6 Proto-Constitutionalist Innovation: The Roots of Consent Theory and the Emergence of Representative Institutions 138

7 Priestly Kings and Royal Popes: The Resilience of Regal Sacrality 160

8 The Christian Commonwealth (ii): Disintegration 185

Epilogue 220

Notes 225

Bibliography 282

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

Won the 2016 Haskins Medal from the Medieval Academy of America.

Medieval Academy of America - Haskins Medal