Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T06:29:42.427Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Christianity and Republicanism: From St. Cyprian to Rousseau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Antony Black*
Affiliation:
University of Dundee

Abstract

Contrary to a prevailing wisdom, the Christian ethos was at least as sympathetic to republicanism as it was to monarchy, especially to the primacy of the public welfare but also to corporate decision making. This can be seen in the early church, especially in the writings of St. Cyprian, in the medieval civic-communal movement, in conciliar constitutionalism, and in political Calvinism. Significant aspects of Rousseau's thought may be seen as a restatement of a Christian political dynamic.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Althusius, Johannes. [1610] 1932. Politica Methodice Digesta. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ashcraft, Richard. 1986. Revolutionary Government and Locke's Two Treatises. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Baron, Hans. [1955] 1966. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bartlett, J.R., ed. 1968. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Vol. 1 (16361663). New York: Peters.Google Scholar
Bettenson, Henry, ed. 1956. The Early Christian Fathers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bettenson, Henry, ed. 1963. Documents of the Christian Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Black, Antony. 1970. Monarchy and Community: Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversy, 1430–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Black, Antony. 1979. Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-Century Heritage. London: Burns & Oates.Google Scholar
Black, Antony. 1984. Guilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Black, Antony. 1992. Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blickle, Peter. 1986. “Communalism, Parliamentarism, Republicanism” [in German]. Historische Zeitschrift 242 (3):529–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blythe, James. 1992. Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bolgar, R.R. 1958. The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brunner, Otto, Conze, Werner, and Kosellek, Richard, eds. 1984. Basic Historical Concepts: A Historical Lexicon of Political and Social Language in Germany [in German]. Vol. 5. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.Google Scholar
Calvin, John. 1961. Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T.. London: SCM.Google Scholar
Campenhausen, Hans von. 1969. Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Crowder, C.M.D. 1977. Unity, Heresy and Reform, 1378–1460: The Conciliar Response to the Great Schism. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Cyprian, St.Epistolae [Letters]. 18681871. In Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, ed. Hartel, W.. Vol. 3, pt. 2. Vienna: Boehlau.Google Scholar
Cyprian, St.Epistolae [Letters]. 1865. In Patrologia Latina, vol. 3, ed. Migne, J.P.. Paris: Guernier.Google Scholar
Cyprian, St.De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate [On the Unity of the Catholic Church]. 1972. In Corpus Christianorum, series latina, ed. Bevenot, N.. Vol. 3, pt. 1. Turnholt: Brepols.Google Scholar
D'Addio, Mario. 1954. The Idea of the Social Contract from the Sophists to the Reformation and the “De Principatu” of Mario Salamonio [in Italian]. Milan: Giuffre.Google Scholar
Decretals. (Decretalium Collectiones). Vol. 2 of Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Friedberg, A.. Leipzig: 1879.Google Scholar
Decretum Gratiani. Vol. 1 of Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Friedberg, A.. Leipzig: 1879.Google Scholar
Dilcher, Gerhard. 1996. Civil Law and City Constitutions in the European Middle Ages [in German]. Cologne: Boehlau.Google Scholar
Dunn, John. 1969. The Political Thought of John Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Martin van. 1989. “Conceptions of Liberty during the Dutch Revolt, 1555–90.” Parliaments, Estates and Representation 9 (2):137–53.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Martin van. 1990. “The Machiavellian Moment and the Dutch Revolt.” In Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Bock, Gisela, Skinner, Quentin, and Viroli, Maurizio. Pp. 205–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Martin van. 1992. The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Martin van, ed. and trans. 1993. The Dutch Revolt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goguel, Maurice. 1964. The Primitive Church. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Gooch, G.P. [1927] 1967. English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grimsley, Ronald. 1973. The Philosophy of Rousseau. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grossi, Pierfrancesco. 1958. “Unanimitas.”Annali di Storia del diritto 2 (1):229331.Google Scholar
Harding, Alan. 1980. “Political Liberty in the Middle Ages.” Speculum 55 (3):423–43.Google Scholar
Jedin, Hubert, ed. 19671973. Handbook of Church History [in German]. Freiburg: Herder.Google Scholar
Kidd, B.J., ed. 1911. Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kingdon, Robert. 19631964. “Calvinism and Democracy: Some Political Implications of Debates on French Reformed Government, 1562–72.” American Historical Review 69 (2):393401.Google Scholar
Koenigsberger, Helmut, ed. 1988. Republics and Republicanism in Early Modem Europe [in German]. Munich: Oldenbourg.Google Scholar
Kopocek, Thomas. 1974. “The Cappadocian Fathers and Civic Patriotism.” Church History 43 (2):293303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Bras, Gabriel. 1959. Ecclesiastical Institutions in Medieval Christendom [in French]. Paris: Bloud & Gay.Google Scholar
Locke, John. 1967. Two Treatise of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mansi, J.D., ed. 17591798. Sacrorum Conciliorum Collectio. 50 vols. Florence-Lucca: Ricci.Google Scholar
Marongiu, Antonio. [1949] 1968. Medieval Parliaments: a Comparative Study. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.Google Scholar
McNeill, John T. 1954. The History and Character of Calvinism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Meinecke, Friedrich. 1957. Machiavellism: the Doctrine of Raison d'état and Its Place in Modern History. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Michaud-Quantin, Pierre. 1970. Universitas: Expressions of the Community Movements of the Latin Middle Ages [in French]. Paris: Vrin.Google Scholar
Migne, J.P., ed. 1862. Patrologia Graeca, vols. 51–52. Paris: Guernier.Google Scholar
Migne, J.P., ed. 1865. Patrologia Latina, vol. 3. Paris: Guernier.Google Scholar
Miller, David, ed. 1987. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Miller, Perry. 1939. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Moeller, Berndt. 1972. Imperial Cities and the Reformation. Philadelphia: Labyriath.Google Scholar
Moulin, L. 1953. “The Religious Origins of Modern Electoral and Deliberative Techniques” [in French]. Revue Internationale d'Histoire Politique et Constitutionelle, n.s.3 (1):106–48.Google Scholar
Munier, C., ed. 1974. Concilia Africae, A345–A.525. Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 149. Turnholt: Brepols.Google Scholar
Najemy, John. 1982. Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Nederman, Cary. 1996. “Political Theory and Subjective Rights in Fourteenth-Century England.” Review of Politics 58 (2):323–44.Google Scholar
Oakley, Francis. 1962. “On the Road from Constance to 1688.” Journal of British Studies 1 (1):132.Google Scholar
Ozment, Steven. 1975. The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius. 1967. Commentaries on the Acts of the Council of Basel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Planitz, Hans. 1954. The German City in the Middle Ages [in German]. Graz-Cologne: Boehlau.Google Scholar
Pocock, John. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Prodi, Paolo. 1992. The Sacrament of Power: The Political Oath in the Constitutional History of the West [in Italian]. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Susan. 1984. Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Riley, Patrick. 1986. The General Will before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1966. Du contract social. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion.Google Scholar
Schapiro, J.H.S., ed. 1909. “The Reformation of the Emperor Frederick III.” In Social Reform and the Reformation. New York: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Schilling, Heinz. 1991. Civic Calvinism in Northwestern Germany and the Netherlands: Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Kirksville, MD: Sixteenth Century Press.Google Scholar
Schilling, Heinz. 1992. “Civic Republicanism in Late Medieval and Early Modern German Cities.” In Schilling, Heinz, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Seigel, Jerry. 1966. “‘Civic Humanism’ or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni.” Past and Present 34, (1):348.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin. 1978. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Vol. 1, The Renaissance. Vol. 2, The Age of Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stevenson, J. ed. 1957. A New Eusebius. London: SPCK.Google Scholar
Tellenbach, Gerd. [1940] 1979. Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Tierney, Brian. [1955] 1968. Foundations of Conciliar Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tierney, Brian. 1982. Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tierney, Brian. 1989. “Origins of Natural Rights Language: Texts and Contexts, 1150–1250.” History of Political Thought 10 (3):615–46.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 1993. An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ullmann, Walter. [1961] 1966. Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Venturi, Franco. 1971. Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. [1968] 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wilda, W. [1831] 1964. Gild Culture in the Middle Ages [in German]. Aalen: Scientia.Google Scholar
Wilks, Michael. 1963. The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.