Francis Oakley.Empty Bottles of Gentilism: Kingship and the Divine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (to 1050).Francis Oakley.The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1050–1300).Francis Oakley.The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300–1650).
Thomas N. Bisson
A new history of medieval political thought by a master the subject is welcome event. Francis Oakley, distinguished educator, has himself plowed big furrows in huge field that he proposes here to survey as whole. His previous books have dealt with conciliar thought, kingship, law, consent, and much else. Oakley well qualified question prevailing sense continuity “political” behavior from Greeks French Revolution. From start, then sounding repeatedly leitmotif, insists on deep persistence archaic sacral kingship Middle East if something hardly less determinative orders power than Greco-Roman experience. The result recast our perspectives, see West not only worldwide synchronic aspect but also scene diverse currents self-renewing deed. pivot unproblematically dates 1050 1300, marking off, first, long antiquity which was remolded rather denatured Christianity; then, late Ages extending through Reformation disruptive failures divine right kingship.
The American Historical Review