Synopses & Reviews
In this book—the first volume in his groundbreaking trilogy on the emergence of western political thought—Francis Oakley explores the roots of secular political thinking by examining the political ideology and institutions of Hellenistic and late Roman antiquity and of the early European middle ages. By challenging the popular belief that the ancient Greek and Roman worlds provided the origins of our inherently secular politics, Oakley revises our understanding of the history of political theory in a fundamental and far-reaching manner that will reverberate for decades. This book lays the foundations for Oakley's next two volumes, which will develop his argument that it is in the Latin middle ages that we must seek the ideological roots of modern political secularism.
Review
“Oakley confronts all the major historiographical currents relevant to his subject and reveals that none of them can withstand the force of his critique. There is indeed nothing comparable in the literature to this single effort on Oakleys part. ”—Steven Marrone, Tufts University
Review
“Francis Oakley has a long and distinguished record illuminating the interplay between politics, religion, and education in the history of Western Civilization. This new book, with its depth of learning, clarity of writing, and wisdom, is the best explication available of the inseparability of the religious and the secular in the ancient and medieval worlds.”—Jeffrey Burton Russell, author of A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence
Review
"A masterful and challenging study, proposing no less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of ancient and medieval political theory in the global context of sacral kingship."—Marcia L. Colish, Yale University
Review
"Oakley's central argument is simple and elegant. Its demonstration is sophisticated and challenging."—Thomas F. X. Noble, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture
Synopsis
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
Synopsis
The concluding volume of Francis Oakley's authoritative trilogy moves on to engage the political thinkers of the later Middle Ages, Renaissance, Age of Reformation and religious wars, and the era that produced the Divine Right Theory of Kingship. Oakley's ground-breaking study probes the continuities and discontinuities between medieval and early modern modes of political thinking and dwells at length on the roots and nature of those contract theories that sought to legitimate political authority by grounding it in the consent of the governed.
About the Author
Francis Oakley is the Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of Ideas, Emeritus, at Williams College. He is also President Emeritus of the College and of the American Council of Learned Societies.