Acceso usuarios
Joaquim Cerqueira Gonçalves
The political questions of the Middle Ages are studied. The text The City of God of Saint Augustine, still of antiquity, but of great repercussion in the immediate and distant future besides condensing also something of the past of the humanity is remarked. Everything is referred to the Christian religion but what moves all humanity, including the Christian community, is the ontological dynamics of love, bifurcated, but not necessarily, in selfishness that leads to the need for power in society whose object is its well-being. The Christian religion has not a political design but its influence in society has earned the attention of politicians who brought it closer to power, which will also be disputed by the religious authority of the church. This metamorphosis of religious authority into political power was exalted but also rejected by Christian thinkers. The medieval scholasticism already enabled by the texts of Aristotle, especially the one of the Politics, continued to clarify the nature of the city and of the power, in the middle of a diversity of positions, some of them still close to the potestas universalis of the Pope. Perfiled frequently in contrast, the orientations of Aristotle and those of Augustine personified in scholasticism in St. Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Thus the secularization of power and the secularization of society had a decisive contribution in the Middle Ages.
