A Prelude to a Preface to Walter Ullmann

January 4, 2017January 11, 2017 / gregorystackpole / 11 Comments

In the middle of the summer of 2016, I was plowing through books on Marsilius of Padua (ca. A.D. 1275–ca. 1342) and the figures and the history leading up to him. One professor I spoke with suggested that I look into the history of Roman law –rather than to principles found in Benedictine monasticism— to explain some of the cultural features that would make sense out of some of the positions characteristic of Marsilius.

So I started to tear through books on Roman law. I read through Stein, and acquired many of the primary sources found in the end-of-chapter bibliographies; I bought Harries, and picked up Jolowicz. I began carefully to read my way through several sections of Justinian’s Institutes. Stein I was reading together with Canning, King, and Black, among others; in Canning’s and King’s works, in some of the choicest footnoted section, I kept running across references to a work titled Law and Politics in the Middle Ages by Walter Ullmann. Ullmann taught several of the members of Monty Python, Nederman wrote, and several ideas of his (again, so I was told) are expressed in their movies, and in their radio and TV shows — so he must be fascinating and entertaining! Ergo, I picked up a copy of Ullmann’s Law and Politics, and started reading through it. Continue reading →

Excerpt #10 — Augustine on (What We Would Call) The State

December 25, 2016December 28, 2016 / gregorystackpole / 6 Comments

We have earlier summarized what is perhaps the best book in English on Augustine’s politics (may this excerpt illuminate what is found there, and vice versa), began a summary of Book 19 of his City of God (part one here; pingbacks at the bottom for all other current and future parts), and offered an excerpt of Peter Brown writing about Augustine’s understanding of the Libido Dominandi; here I offer one excellent quote to summarize Augustine’s political vision. Continue reading →

Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, Book I

October 1, 2016October 1, 2016 / gregorystackpole / 13 Comments

Here is a parallel of all of the English translations I’ve found of Book One (or “Chapter One”, if the reader prefers) of Pseudo-Dionysius’ On the Divine Names.

The formatting here is eccentric — there are several hymns throughout Book One, and I have homogenized the formatting across translations, in part to make all translations somewhat sensitive to their hymnic character. Although the formatting here began by being authentic to the original formatting of each English text, it has entirely strayed from that in the interests of facilitating easier comparison.

I may add Suchla’s Greek text for Book One in footnotes, eventually. (I’ve tried to add a column for Suchla, but it throws the formatting off completely in WordPress.)
Continue reading →