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The Pope’s Two Bodies: A Note on Medieval Juridical Theology

Publication date: 13.12.2024

Exceptions, 2024, 1/2024, pp. 49 - 86

Authors

Riccardo Baldissone
University of Westminster
, United Kingdom
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Titles

The Pope’s Two Bodies: A Note on Medieval Juridical Theology

Abstract

In the preface to his 1957 book The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Ernst Kantorowicz gives us an excusatio non petita for the absence of a chapter on the duplication of bodies in ecclesiastical offices. He claims that in his book ‘in an indirect fashion, the ecclesiastical side of the problem has not been neglected.’ By highlighting the need to address the ‘ecclesiastical side’ of medieval bodily duplications Kantorowicz both admits the latter’s importance and risks obscuring its genealogical priority over its ‘secular’ counterpart. The task of this note is to underline the priority of ‘ecclesiastical’ over ‘secular’ medieval duplications, to rescue both of them from the retrospective projection of the Schmittian notion of political theology, and to recontextualize their historical cultural milieu as juridical theology. Such a recontextualization may allow us to throw some light on a vastly unappreciated theoretical watershed in European culture.

Information

Information: Exceptions, 2024, 1/2024, pp. 49 - 86

Article type: Original article

Authors

University of Westminster
United Kingdom

Published at: 13.12.2024

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY  licence icon

Percentage share of authors:

Riccardo Baldissone (Author) - 100%

Information about author:

Riccardo Baldissone is a Fellow and Guest Professor at the University of Westminster, School of Law.

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

English

View count: 36

Number of downloads: 11