The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650) | National Humanities Center

Work of the Fellows: Monographs

The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650)

By Francis Oakley (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1990–91)

Divine Right; Kingship; Middle Ages; Early Modern Period; Political Philosophy

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015

From the publisher’s description:

The concluding volume of Francis Oakley's authoritative trilogy moves on to engage the political thinkers of the later Middle Ages, Renaissance, Age of Reformation and religious wars, and the era that produced the Divine Right Theory of Kingship. Oakley's ground-breaking study probes the continuities and discontinuities between medieval and early modern modes of political thinking and dwells at length on the roots and nature of those contract theories that sought to legitimate political authority by grounding it in the consent of the governed.

Awards and Prizes
Haskins Medal (2016)
Subjects
History / Political Science / Divine Right / Kingship / Middle Ages / Early Modern Period / Political Philosophy /

Oakley, Francis (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1990–91). The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650). The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.