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To Govern Is to Serve: An Essay on Medieval Democracy

Online ISBN:
9781501767876
Print ISBN:
9781501767852
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

To Govern Is to Serve: An Essay on Medieval Democracy

Jacques Dalarun
Jacques Dalarun
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
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Published online:
18 May 2023
Published in print:
15 February 2023
Online ISBN:
9781501767876
Print ISBN:
9781501767852
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

This book explores the practices of collective governance in medieval religious orders that turned the precepts of the Gospels—most notably that “the first will be last, the last will be first”—into practices of communal deliberation and the election of superiors. The book argues that these democratic forms have profoundly influenced modern experiences of democracy, in particular the idea of government not as domination but as service. The book undertakes meticulous textual analysis and historical research into twelfth- and thirteenth-century religious movements—from Fontevraud and the Paraclete of Abelard and Heloise through St. Dominic and St. Francis—that sought their superiors from among the less exalted members of their communities to chart how these experiments prefigured certain aspects of modern democracies, those allowing individuals to find their way forward as part of a collective. Wide ranging and deeply original, the book highlights the history of the reciprocal bonds of service and humility that underpin increasingly fragile democracies in the twenty-first century.

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