ABSTRACT

A fundamental shift in the nature of political thought became increasingly apparent from the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. At the methodological level discourse became more sophisticated, largely because writers could draw on a developed ius commune and a received Aristotelian language. There emerged a noticeable trend towards a confrontation with political reality, and in particular with questions of power, a confrontation facilitated by these juristic and Aristotelian approaches. Reality became more and more the touchstone of political thought: acceptance of it, accommodation with it, attempts to change itto advocate what should be the case. The first three decades of the fourteenth century were also noteworthy for producing lengthy treatises, which may be classed as political thought texts, and which in depth of treatment went far beyond exemplars of the existing mirror-of-princes genre. Indeed, fourteenth-century political thought as a whole was to prove the most productive and profound of the Middle Ages.