Fear God, honour the king'. Sixteenth-century people were supposed to do both. But what was the king entitled to command? And what if he ordered one thing and God's law said another? In this fascinating and original study, James Burns examines these questions by focusing on a neglected area of study: the Scottish experience. The Scottish response to monarchical government not only provides a microcosmic view of European thinking on the subject, it also contributes substantially to our understanding of the Scottish element in the new British' polity which was emerging at the end of the...

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislations, Jeremy Bentham's best-known work, is a classic text in modern philosophy and jurisprudence. First published in 1789, it contains the important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy and a pioneering study of crime and punishment, both of which remain at the heart of contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy, economics, and legal theory. A new introduction by the leading Bentham scholar F. Rosen, specially written for this edition, provides students with a helpful survey of Bentham's main ideas and an...

This volume offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of the history of a complex and varied body of ideas over a period of more than one thousand years. A work of both synthesis and assessment, The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought presents the results of several decades of critical scholarship in the field, and reflects in its breadth of enquiry precisely that diversity of focus that characterized the medieval sense of the "political," preoccupied with universality at some levels, and with almost minute particularity at others. Among the vital questions explored by the...

Almost on the eve of the sixteenth-century Reformation, the long-running debate over the respective authority of popes and councils in the Catholic Church was vigorously resumed. This book offers the first English translation of four major contributions to that debate. These complex arguments are fundamental for any society under government, whether church or state, and even on the threshold of the twenty-first century the concerns that underlie and animate these scholastic disputations continue to retain their force.

The companion volume to the highly successful Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, this book presents a comprehensive account of the development of European political thinking through the Renaissance and the Reformation to the "scientific revolution" and political upheavals of the seventeenth century. Recent decades have seen intensive historical investigation and reappraisal in this field. Many established perspectives have changed; and while it would still be generally accepted that something distinctly "modern" took shape in the political thought of the sixteenth and...