Sovereignty has always been an important concept in political thought, and at no time in European history was it more important than during the perplexed conditions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Universal government was a fading dream, giving way to the new conception of the national state and the whole basis of political thought was being reorientated by the influx of Aristotelian ideas. Dr Wilks's book is an attempt to clarify the more important problems in the political outlook of the period. He shows that at this time the theologians and literary writers, especially Augustinus Triumphus of Ancona, had built up a complete theory of sovereignty in favour of the papal monarchy, based on a neo-Platonic, Augustinian view of the church as a universal and totalitarian state.

In A Companion to Giles of Rome, Charles Briggs, Peter Eardley, and seven other leading specialists provide the first synoptic treatment of the thought, works, life, and legacy of Giles of Rome (c. 1243/7–1316), one of medieval Europe’s most important and influential scholastic philosophers and theologians. The Giles that emerges from this volume was a subtle and independent thinker, who more than refining and modifying the positions of his teacher Aquinas, also made strikingly original contributions to theology, physics, metaphysics, psychology, ethics, logic, rhetoric, and political thought. He was also the founding intellectual of the Augustinian friars and a key participant in controversies at the University of Paris, and between Church and State. Contributors are: Charles F. Briggs, Richard Cross, Silvia Donati, Peter S. Eardley, Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, Martin Pickavé, Giorgio Pini, and Cecilia Trifogli.

Written at the turn of the 14th century, Giles of Rome's De ecclesiastica potestate is a papal tract written at the height of Pope Boniface VIII's conflict with King Philip IV of France.