Abstract
THIS volume contains eight studies of political thought in the Middle Ages which, with two exceptions, appear substantially in the form in which they were delivered as a course of public lectures in King's College, London, during the autumn of 1922. Seven of the lectures deal with individual thinkers, beginning with “Saint Augustine and the City of God,” a composite production by the Rev. A. J. Carlyle and the editor, and one of the exceptions mentioned above, and ending with “John Wycliffe and Divine Dominion,” also by the editor. It will be noted the term “Middle Ages “is, chronologically, if not theoretically, liberally interpreted. The remaining lectures deal with John of Salisbury (E. F. Jacob), St. Thomas Aquinas (Rev. F. Aveling), Dante (E. Sharwood Smith), Pierre Du Bois (Eileen E. Power), and Marsilio of Padua (J. W. Allen). The Principal of King's College contributes the introductory lecture, in which he draws an illuminating distinction between political theory and political thought, and fully justifies the claim for the interest of the subject to the modern reader who is not specially concerned with medievalism as a whole. The lectures cover the development of the idea of a national state out of the theory of an international organisation, spiritual or temporal, and are therefore not without bearing upon political theory of the present day.
The Social and Political Ideas of some Great Mediæval Thinkers: a Series of Lectures delivered at King's College, University of London.
Prof.
F. J. C.
Hearnshaw
Edited by. Pp. 223. (London, Calcutta and Sydney: G. G. Harrap and Co., Ltd., 1923.) 12s. 6d. net.
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The Social and Political Ideas of some Great Mediæval Thinkers: a Series of Lectures delivered at King's College, University of London. Nature 112, 685 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/112685b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/112685b0