Political Theories of the Middle Age

This re-issue of F. W. Maitland's translation of a vital section from Otto Gierke's monumental Das Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht makes available once again one of the seminal texts in the historiography of political thought. Famed, inter alia, for the elegance and lucidity of Maitland's own expository introduction, Political Theories of the Middle Age is concerned in essence with the medieval development of the doctrine of State and Corporation - a concept which, as Maitland indicates, has been prone to misunderstanding by English minds versed in the tradition of the common law. Gierke identifies the peculiar characteristic of medieval political thought as its vision of the universe as one articulated whole, and every being, whether a joint-being (community) or a single-being - as both a part and a whole: his text examines the potentially revolutionary effect upon this of certain crucial intellectual intrusions, derived in part from Roman Law, described by Gierke as 'ancient-modern'.