Not Political: Nature, Faith, and Communal Order in European Thought, c.1150-c.1550 2012 Arthur O. Lovejoy Lecture Civil Religion-Metaphysical

"Civil religion" has been a topic much on the minds recently of intellectual historians, political theorists, social scientists, and others concerned about the relationship between the "public sphere" broadly construed and forms of religious belief. I argue that certain Christian thinkers during the medieval period accepted the view that religious faith formed a useful feature of social order, but they did so from an essentially metaphysical perspective. I consider the writings of John of Salisbury, Marsilius of Padua, and Bartolom de Las Casas in support of my thesis. by Journal of the History of Ideas.

2012 Arthur O. Lovejoy Lecture Civil Religion-Metaphysical, Not Political: Nature, Faith, and Communal Order in European Thought, c.1150-c.1550 Academic Article