Reviews for The Early Ecclesiastical History Of Dewsbury

The average rating for The Early Ecclesiastical History Of Dewsbury based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-23 00:00:00 Sandra Howard The was my favorite book in William Dunning's three volume series on the history of political thought, and on reading this, it seems that the series should have actually taken up more books to properly accommodate the proliferation of material in modern times. This first volume felt more focused even though the topics varied greatly. He starts with the Greeks and they had better political material than the Romans. He tries to be comprehensive, but inevitably the chapters will orbit around the two poles of Plato and Aristotle, and I have to say this is the best summary and explanation of their political theories I have ever read anywhere. Both the Republic and the Laws were well written about. The coverage of Aristotle's Politics was reminding me of why I liked that book so much. He was the pragmatist, focusing on human realities rather on imaginary utopias. He did not believe any form of government was ideal. He nonetheless believed that the state ought to promote the good life, the virtuous life. Dunning explains how the medieval era was one of conflict between church and state, each seeking to define and defend its rights and jurisdiction, going to every possible extreme. When it was right for a pope to depose a monarch or even for a monarch to depose a pope were both considered. The power of a general church council instead of the pope was also emphasized by enemies of the papacy. There were many incidents in which kings clashed with the Church. Pope Nicholas I forced King Lothaire to take back his divorced wife, an incident in which the Holy Roman Emperor even took up arms against the pope. When Emperor Henry sought forgiveness from the pope at Canossa is also a famous episode. The height of papal power was arguably during the reign of Innocent III in which he was practically the ruler of Europe, but the tides turned as the papacy was captured by the powerful French monarchy and taken to Avignon, and the pope's reputation reached a new low with the Great Schism in which two then even three men claimed to be the true pope. All the world knows how the centuries long conflict culminated in the 16th century. Major medieval writers get their due going all the way back to apostolic times. St. Thomas Aquinas gets his well deserved chapter. Even lesser known writers get good coverage. You will learn about the political theories of Pope Gelasius, St. Bernard, John of Salisbury, Marsiglio of Padua, and others. The pope was not just in conflict with various monarchs, but the various monarchs were also in conflict with the Holy Roman Emperor, whom ideally was meant to be the head of a one world government, in the same way the pope was meant to be the head of a universal church. One of the most blatant defenders of the former idea was Dante, arguing that "the indispensable prerequisite of man's perfect existence is general peace...attainable only by a unified governmental system under a single head...only in the world-monarch can be found a final court of appeal for the decision of princely controversies..." He imagines a type of world federation in which “the particular characteristics of different peoples must be regulated by different systems of law, while the monarch coordinates all the various communities to the ultimate end of peace." Consider however an example of opposition to this idea led by the champions of Philip the Fair, enemy of not just the pope, but of the Emperor. The French monarchy at that time was certainly much more powerful in reality than the Holy Roman Empire, and supporters sought to defend and vindicate this state of affairs. Temporal government cannot be compared to the universal papacy, argued John of Paris. “The faith necessary to salvation...is one and the same everywhere and hence requires unity their ecclesiastical control. But in their non-spiritual aspects...Christians are most diverse and require leadership corresponding to this diversity. “[spiritual] government works through mere words, but [temporal government] works through force; and it is easy enough to send words everywhere, but impossible to exercise force effectively at long range." The book goes up until the end of the 15th century and as Dunning writes “the closing century of the Middle Age embodied in its philosophical ideas...sovereignty, the popular basis of government, natural law and rights, and the social contract which, under the impulse of changed conditions in objective life, were to characterize the modern age.” The book closes with a chapter on Machiavelli of which “it is quite as accurate to say that he ends the medieval era as that he begins the modern”

Review # 2 was written on 2015-08-31 00:00:00 Jennifer-anne Toth Old text but still valuable introduction to major political philosophers from Plato to Machiavelli, well-situated in their historical contexts. More attention to some texts (Machiavelli's Discourses, for one) than I'm used to in introductory texts.