Gierke, Otto, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, trans. Maitland (Cambridge, 1900).
Excerpt from Translator’s Introduction:
“As to the text, the last charge which could be made against it would be that of insufficient courage in generalization, unless it were that of aimless medievalism. The outlines are large, the strokes are firm, and medieval appears as an introduction to modern thought. The ideas that are to possess and divide mankind from the 16th to the 19th centrury – Sovereignty, the Sovereign Ruler, the Sovereign People, the Representation of the People, the Social Contract, the Natural Rights of Man, the Divine Rights of Kinds, the Positive Law that stands below the State, the Natural Law that stands above the State – these are the ideas whose early history is to be detected, and they are set before us as thoughts which, under the influence of Classical Antiquity, necessarily shaped themselves in the course of medieval debate. And if the thoughts are interesting, so too are the thinkers.”
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