Political Theories of the Middle Age

2014 Reprint of 1959 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. One of the most important scholars of the history of political ideas, Von Gierke was professor of law at the University of Berlin, of Breslau and of Heidelberg, and produced monumental studies in the interpretations of legal history. In the present volume, Gierke gives his sharply authoritative treatment of the basic political tenets up to the Renaissance. This classic work is still considered one of the seminal texts in the historiography of political thought. Famed, inter alia, for the elegance and lucidity of Maitland's own expository introduction, "Political Theories of the Middle Age" is concerned in essence with the medieval development of the doctrine of State and Corporation - a concept which, as Maitland indicates, has been prone to misunderstanding by English minds versed in the tradition of the common law. Gierke identifies the peculiar characteristic of medieval political thought as its vision of the universe as one articulated whole, and every being, whether a joint-being (community) or a single-being - as both a part and a whole: his text examines the potentially revolutionary effect upon this of certain crucial intellectual intrusions, derived in part from Roman Law, described by Gierke as 'ancient-modern.'