I have been reading— almost devouring— Andrew Willard Jones’s new book new book, Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX. Having been thinking about the relation of temporal and spiritual power for a long time now, I have found it highly illuminating, and therefore also highly exhilarating and exciting. Jones describes is own exhilaration on discovering John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory, and Before Church and State has had a similar effect on me. Wanting to go through it again more slowly, I have decided to start an online reading group, with some friends from The Josias, and anyone else who would like to join us. We will go through the book slowly, one chapter a week. The discussion of the introduction will start on Thursday, June 1st. To sign up, fill out the following form:
This is actually good timing, since my supervisor (Peter Adamson) just gave a paper on Giles of Rome’s treatise, De Ecclesiastica Potestate, and Giles’ use of universal/particular causality in nature to justify his notions of papal power in relation to secular power. (He already did a podcast episode covering Giles and Dante on church/state back in Jan.: https://www.historyofphilosophy.net/church-state.) I didn’t know about Giles and his position till now, and of course didn’t know that he was the conceptual background behind Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctam.
This might be a tangent from the current post, but I’d be curious to ask if you’ve dealt with Giles’ argument on this topic.
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Actually now that I’m re-listening to PA’s podcast (again, sorry for the tangent!), I’d be curious how you balance Dante and Giles—at least the way PA thinks the two oppose each other (maybe/maybe not).
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