James of Viterbo: De regimine Christiano

Book excerpt: James of Viterbo’s De regimine Christiano was produced at the height of the great conflict of 1296–1303 between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair of France. Echoing and elaborating Boniface’s Bull Unam sanctam, the treatise is a detailed and rigorous defence of the ‘hierocratic’ ideology of the thirteenth-century papacy in its most ambitious form. As such, it stands alongside the better-known De ecclesiastica potestate of Giles of Rome, by which it is to some extent influenced. De regimine Christiano is here presented in a new and complete critical edition, accompanied by an English translation and a detailed introduction. This edition will be of value to scholars and students of the history of political thought and international relations. Brill's Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, vol. 6