The right of life and death in war in De iure belli libri tres (1598) by Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)
Giuliano MARCHETTO
Original title: Il diritto di vita e di morte in guerra nel De iure belli libri tres (1598) di Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Death, Law, Life, Power, War.
In war, there are situations in which one side is given the power of life or death over the other. The medieval legal tradition tries to bring this power back into law and to limit it. The Italian jurist Alberico Gentili in his work De jure belli libri tres (1598) represents, in the modern age, the attempt to offer an interpretation of war as an instrument of justice and therefore regulated in every aspect by the law. Gentili’s theory is the opposite of a different tradition, ancient but always resurfacing in history, which instead sees war as a place from which law is absent, is silent and only violence, which includes an unlimited vitae necisque potestas, thus becomes the origin of law and of every new power and order.
The transcendence of War and Peace by the spiritual sense of Christian Theology
Eirini ARTEMI
Published in The Kingdom of the Spirit
Keywords: Demons, Passions Christian Teaching, Peace, Theosis, War.
“War” and “peace” are subject to theological, philosophical, moral, and political construction. In Christian theology, “war” and “peace” have to do with the relations of people with God, with themselves and with the other people in every place of this earth. The transcendence of the war and peace has literal and spiritual meaning. In the Christian view of peace, it is necessary to relate to justice and includes the dimensions of inner peace or a spiritual peace. This understanding is different from a more secular outlook means peace at the level of exterior dimensions –outer dimension–. As far as the word “war” can mean spiritual struggling with our passions or with the demons and with the other people in our daily life. The teachings on peace and on war, deriving from the sacred texts of Christianity, effectively guide adherents to attain inner peace, to extend it outwardly and to try to get rid of the passions which are cause of war. The latter relates to our passions and sins.
The war in the Crónica del Rey Don Pedro by the Chancellor López de Ayala
Cecilia Devia
Original title: La guerra en la Crónica del Rey Don Pedro del Canciller López de Ayala
Published in The chivalry and the art of war in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Chronicles, Middle Ages, War.
War and Disease. Between Pericles´s Funeral Oration and the plague of Athens
Antonio CORTIJO
Original title: Guerra y enfermedad. Entre el Discurso fúnebre de Pericles y la plaga de Atenas
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Athens, Funeral Oration, Plague, Thucydides, War.
Pericles’s Funeral Oration in 431 BC praises Athens’s values (dialogue, citizens’ participation, democracy) against Spartan oligarchy during the Peloponnesian War. Only a few months after the oration was delivered, a terrible plague decimated Athenian democracy and ended Pericles’s life.
