O’Donovan, Oliver and Joan Lockward O’Donovan, Editors. From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999)

Rufinus the Canonist

Rufinus the Canonist’s major work was a response to the canonization of church law by Gratian, roughly 15 years after Gratian’s publication of his seminal text Decretum. Rufinus may have been influenced by Gratian during his tutelage at Bologna, but regardless offers a thorough commentary to the massive accumulation of the law of the church.

Gratian set out to systematize, analyze, and rationalize church legal history sourcing from all areas of the church. The resulting canonization was divided into three major topical sections arranged around one particular point. The first is a treatise on law and authority. The second, a series of case studies given about a legal situation. The third concerns worship and the sacraments. Rufinus, who responded to each of these sections in kind sought to exegete a theoretical development of law and brought extensive theological and literary training to bear upon his analysis.

Rufinus envisaged Gratian’s work as a division into divine-natural ordinances and human usages as well as a distinction between natural law, civil law, and a law of nations. Rufinus was able to situate each of these characters of thought into a well-developed framework of creation/fall/restoration which allowed him to develop an understanding of the relationships between natural and divinely-revealed law.

Nikophoros Blemmydes

Beginning his career through the political arena of Nicaean court circles, Nikophoros Blemmydes developed a respected political influence throughout his career. Even as a monk his political influence grew, ultimately leading him to reject an offerof the patriarchate from a former pupil, emperor Theodoros Laskaris II.

Although Blemmydes major work draws less on political observation and relies instead on moral narratives from Greek historical and biblical sources, it yet contains indictments for the operation and form of government. Blemmydes abstracts idealizations from moral philosophizing undernreath the rule of earthly princes and offers a glimpse as to how such societies justified their particular form of princely government and what they hoped to achieve as a result.

Bonaventure

Although Bonaventure spent only a short duration of his career as an acadmic, it did not lessen his interest in scholarly theological enterprise, especially against the advance of philosophical naturalism in the tradition of Aristotle. Bonaventure was quick perceive the looming tension between theology and naturalism and the largely unforeseen effects of naturalism on the separation of reason from faith. Recognizing what he saw as a connection between naturalism and the secular masters mendicant way of life, where reason becomes estranged from faith, self sufficient on its own ability to posit explanation and determination for life structure. The shift in his role from intellectual to pastor can be seen as emulating in part the key distinction that Bonaventure perceived in these two movements.

His pastorship and pastoral role as head of the Franciscans sought to lessen hostility from outside the order that was brought about through the relaxation of the “rule” of St. Francis, that is conditions of itinerant poverty. The practice of poverty became a distinction of use versus legal ownership which Bonaventure sought to reconcile, though maintaining strict adherence to absolute poverty.