Rights language is a fundamental feature of the modern world. Virtually all significant social and political struggles are waged, and have been waged for over a century now, in terms of rights claims. In some ways, it is precisely the birth of modern rights language that ushers in modernity in terms of moral and political thought, and the struggle for a modern way of life seems for many synonymous with the fight for a universal recognition of equal, individual human rights. Where did modern rights language come from? What kinds of rights discourses is it rooted in? What is the specific nature of modern rights discourse; when and where were medieval and ancient notions of rights transformed into it? Can one in fact find any single such transformation of medieval into modern rights discourse? The present volume brings together some of the most central scholars in the history of medieval and early-modern rights discourse. Through the different angles taken by its authors, the volume brings to light the multifaceted nature of rights languages in the medieval and early modern world.

Rights language is a fundamental feature of the modern world. Virtually all significant social and political struggles are waged, and have been waged for over a century now, in terms of rights claims. In some ways, it is precisely the birth of modern rights language that ushers in modernity in terms of moral and political thought, and the struggle for a modern way of life seems for many synonymous with the fight for a universal recognition of equal, individual human rights. Where did modern rights language come from? What kinds of rights discourses is it rooted in? What is the specific nature of modern rights discourse; when and where were medieval and ancient notions of rights transformed into it? Can one in fact find any single such transformation of medieval into modern rights discourse? This book brings together some of the most central scholars in the history of medieval and early-modern rights discourse. Through the different angles taken by its authors, the volume brings to light the multifaceted nature of rights languages in the medieval and early modern world.

The Avignon papacy (1309–1377) represented the zenith of papal power in Europe. The Roman curia’s move to southern France enlarged its bureaucracy, centralized its authority, and initiated closer contact with secular institutions. The pope’s presence also attracted leading minds to Avignon, transforming a modest city into a cosmopolitan center of learning. But a crisis of legitimacy was brewing among leading thinkers of the day. The Avignon Papacy Contested considers the work of six fourteenth-century writers who waged literary war against the Catholic Church’s increasing claims of supremacy over secular rulers—a conflict that engaged contemporary critics from every corner of Europe. Unn Falkeid uncovers the dispute’s origins in Dante’s Paradiso and Monarchia, where she identifies a sophisticated argument for the separation of church and state. In Petrarch’s writings she traces growing concern about papal authority, precipitated by the curia’s exile from Rome. Marsilius of Padua’s theory of citizen agency indicates a resistance to the pope’s encroaching power, which finds richer expression in William of Ockham’s philosophy of individual liberty. Both men were branded as heretics. The mystical writings of Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, in Falkeid’s reading, contain cloaked confrontations over papal ethics and church governance even though these women were later canonized. While each of the six writers responded creatively to the implications of the Avignon papacy, they shared a concern for the breakdown of secular order implied by the expansion of papal power and a willingness to speak their minds.

In "Theologians and Contract Law," Wim Decock offers an account of the moral roots of modern contract law. He explains why theologians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries built a systematic contract law around the principles of freedom and fairness.

This book examines early modern social contract theories within European representations of the Americas in the 16th and 17th century. Despite addressing the Americas only marginally, social contract theories transformed American social imaginaries prevalent at the time into Aboriginality, allowing for the emergence of the idea of civilization and the possibility for diverse discourses of Aboriginalism leading to excluding and discriminatory forms of subjectivity, citizenship, and politics. What appears then is a form of Aboriginalism pitting the American/Aboriginal other against the nascent idea of civilization. The legacy of this political construction of difference is essential to contemporary politics in settler societies. The author shows the intellectual processes behind this assignation and its role in modern political theory, still bearing consequences today. The way one conceives of citizenship and sovereignty underlies some of the difficulties settler societies have in accommodating Indigenous claims for recognition and self-government.

In Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey, Riccardo Saccenti examines and evaluates the major lines of interpretation of the medieval concepts of natural rights and natural law within the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and explains how the major historiographical interpretations of ius naturale and lex naturalis have changed. His bibliographical survey analyzes not only the chronological evolution of various interpretations of natural law but also how they differ, in an effort to shed light on the historical debate and on the medieval roots of modern human rights theories. Saccenti critically examines the historical analyses of the major historians of medieval political and legal thought while addressing how to further research on the subject. His perspective interlaces different disciplinary points of view: history of philosophy, as well as history of canon and civil law and history of theology. By focusing on a variety of disciplines, Saccenti creates an opportunity to evaluate each interpretation of medieval lex naturalis in terms of the area it enlightens and within specific cultural contexts. His survey is a basis for future studies concerning this topic and will be of interest to scholars of the history of law and, more generally, of the history of ideas in the twentieth century.

The essays in this volume were presented at a conference honoring John V. Fleming at Princeton University on April 21-22, 2004. The aim of the conference was to revisit Fleming's 1977 book, An Introduction to the Franciscan Literature of the Middle Ages, from a number of different perspectives, including social, religious and literary history, as well as art, exegesis, political thought and the history of education. A prominent, but not exclusive, theme of the contributions is the distinction between "defenders" and "critics" of medieval Franciscanism. Recent scholarship has shown that the dividing line between medieval defenders and critics of Franciscan life was not as sharp or as clear as had once been thought. This, more nuanced approach to medieval Franciscanism is a reflection of the many scholarly developments that have occurred since - and as a result of - Fleming's volume. The present work offers a selection of current approaches to the question.

Recent years have seen a renaissance of interest in the relationship between natural law and natural rights. During this time, the concept of natural rights has served as a conceptual lightning rod, either strengthening or severing the bond between traditional natural law and contemporary human rights. Does the concept of natural rights have the natural law as its foundation or are the two ideas, as Leo Strauss argued, profoundly incompatible? With The Foundations of Natural Morality, S. Adam Seagrave addresses this controversy, offering an entirely new account of natural morality that compellingly unites the concepts of natural law and natural rights. Seagrave agrees with Strauss that the idea of natural rights is distinctly modern and does not derive from traditional natural law. Despite their historical distinctness, however, he argues that the two ideas are profoundly compatible and that the thought of John Locke and Thomas Aquinas provides the key to reconciling the two sides of this long-standing debate. In doing so, he lays out a coherent concept of natural morality that brings together thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes and Locke, revealing the insights contained within these disparate accounts as well as their incompleteness when considered in isolation. Finally, he turns to an examination of contemporary issues, including health care, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty, showing how this new account of morality can open up a more fruitful debate.

This Companion aims to give an up-to-date overview of the historical context and the conceptual framework of Spanish imperial expansion during the early modern period, mostly during the 16th century. It intends to offer a nuanced and balanced account of the complexities of this historically controversial period analyzing first its historical underpinnings, then shedding light on the normative language behind imperial theorizing and finally discussing issues that arose with the experience of the conquest of American polities, such as colonialism, slavery or utopia. The aim of this volume is to uncover the structural and normative elements of the theological, legal and philosophical arguments about Spanish imperial ambitions in the early modern period. Contributors are Manuel Herrero Sánchez, José Luis Egío, Christiane Birr, Miguel Anxo Pena González, Tamar Herzog, Merio Scattola, Virpi Mäkinen, Wim Decock, Christian Schäfer, Francisco Castilla Urbano, Daniel Schwartz, Felipe Castañeda, José Luis Ramos Gorostiza, Luis Perdices de Blas, Beatriz Fernández Herrero.