2012 Arthur O. Lovejoy Lecture Civil Religion—Metaphysical, Not Political: Nature, Faith, and Communal Order in European Thought, c.1150–c.1550

“Civil religion” has been a topic much on the minds recently of intellectual historians, political theorists, social scientists, and others concerned about the relationship between the “public sphere” broadly construed and forms of religious belief. I argue that certain Christian thinkers during the medieval period accepted the view that religious faith formed a useful feature of social order, but they did so from an essentially metaphysical perspective. I consider the writings of John of Salisbury, Marsilius of Padua, and Bartolomé de Las Casas in support of my thesis.