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 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.