ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the question by focusing on late medieval political ideas, which have often been associated with modern democratic thinking, in particular the ideas of representation and consent. Recent scholarship suggests that medieval ideas of representation and consent are qualitatively different from modern ones. An important implication of representation by personification is that such representation does not necessarily entail any democratic connotations. Jacob’s observation provides another perspective on the historical understanding of the idea of representation: was the medieval notion of representation political? What the twentieth-century political philosopher Hannah Pitkin calls “political” representation is predicated on the idea that representatives need to act at the behest of the body. Political” representatives, therefore, who act at the behest of the constituents, have discretionary power in order to act for the interest of the constituents, which may be against their wishes.
