Paulus Vladimiri Research Articles

In search of Paulus Vladimiri: Canon, reception, and the (in)conceivability of an Eastern European ‘founding father’ of international law

AbstractWhile many international lawyers are familiar with Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546), very few have even heard of Paulus Vladimiri (1370–1435) – a Polish priest and jurist who made striking similar arguments to Vitoria on legal universality and the rights of non-Christians a full century before Vitoria. This divergence of consciousness, I argue, provides a unique opportunity to explore questions of canon, reception, and the role of ‘founding fathers’ within international legal thought. Centring Vladimiri as an ‘Eastern European’ figure, I argue that his non-reception is largely the result of how Eastern Europe implicitly functions as a distinctly liminal space within international legal thought that makes any possible ‘founding father’ from this region immensely difficult to imagine. I examine this dynamic through the differing postwar efforts of the Polish jurists Kazimierz Grzybowski and C. H. Alexandrowicz to include Vladimiri within the international legal canon. In examining the background structures of twentieth-century international law, I conclude that, in a manner directly connected to the liminality of Eastern Europe, neither Soviet nor Third World nor Western imaginations could easily receive Vladimiri within their fundamentally political narratives of normative order that shaped their international legal approaches. However, despite this historic non-reception, I argue that Vladimiri, and the question of Eastern Europe more generally, holds great promise in our current global moment. Particularly, engaging Eastern Europe’s liminal character offers a more sociologically grounded alternative to the reductionist Schmittian view of international law as a product of inescapable conflict in a world of exclusionary ‘greater spaces’.

PERMISSIVE NATURAL LAW AND ITS SCOPE IN PAUL VLADIMIRI’S PHILOSOPHY

The purpose of this article is to a%empt to provide a more precise answer to the question of Paul Vladimiri’s (Latin: Paulus Vladimiri; Polish: Paweł Włodkowic) account of the concept of permissive natural law. This purpose is realized in two steps. First, a brief history of permissive natural laws in the tradition of medieval philosophy is discussed, and the historical context, in which Paul Vladimiri developed his theory of natural law, is outlined. Next, some excerpts from Vladimir’s writings are analysed, in which he uses phrases indicating the presence of the concept of permissive law in his philosophy.

Paulus Vladimiri and Stanislaus de Scarbimiria – medieval Krakow law school and the Polish contribution to the formation of the rights of nations

The formation of medieval national communities constitutes the basis of political and cultural European history. However, it is almost forgotten nowadays that a significant contribution to reflections on sovereignty was made by Polish scholars. Stanisław of Skarbimierz (Stanislaus de Scarbimiria – 1365-1431) and Paweł Włodkowic (Paulus Vladimiri – 1370-1435), medieval Cracovian jurists and philosophers, are rather unknown in the Western milieu. Both of them added their voices to one of the most important disputes for European political culture. The 15th-century debate between Jagiellonian Poland and the Teutonic Order that conquered the Prussian lands became the basis for Polish lawyers to develop an ingenuous theory concerning human rights and the rights of nations. Stanisław of Skarbimierz and Paweł Włodkowic, the founders of the Polish school of law at the Cracow Academy, in their writings and letters, firmly demonstrated injustice, the breaking of basic human rights, injuries, and other crimes perpetrated by the Teutonic knights against the Prussians, Lithuanians, Yotvingians and Poles. The scholars elaborated on the most important problems of law and international relationships, concerning the issues of human rights, the right to self-determination, just war, respect for personal property and human dignity. The doctrine of the Polish School of international law elaborated by Paul Wladimiri and Stanislaw of Skarbimierz have had and still make a considerable impact on the understanding of human rights and rights of nations. Their works and sermons espouse the craving for international justice, while securing national interests, and for a model of Europe as a “family of independent and sovereign nations” whose coexistence is founded on the Christian anthropology according to which a man as endowed by God with dignity and freedom. The works of the Cracovian masters should impress us and make proud of our legacy, while in Europe they should awaken interest and creative thought.

Paulus Vladimiri and His Forgotten Concept of the Just War

The theoretical reflection formulated in the neo-scholastic School of Salamanca has been regarded as the source of the contemporary concept of international relations: going beyond the paradigm of the time – determined, on the one hand, by the idea of the holy war and, on the other, by the doctrine of the just war – the Salamanca scholars laid down foundations for the edifice of modern international law. In this article the author argues that similar ideas preceding the reflection of the school of Salamanca, and often going even further, had appeared a hundred years earlier in the Cracow Academia in the context of a dispute between the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Order. The culmination of this dispute was the Council of Constance. The Polish argument after the battle of Grunwald was based on law, and its unique feature was the return to the universalistic (Augustinian) nature of the just war. What is the most important element in Augustinian theology of war is Christianity’s universalism and recognition of moral equality of those engaged in military operations.

Crusade or Christianization? The polemic against the Teutonic Knights in light of French travelers’ accounts of the late Middle Ages

Crusade or Christianization? The polemic against the Teutonic Knights in light of French travelers’ accounts of the late Middle Ages As a continuation of the political unrest opposing the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand-Duchy of Lithuania to the Order of the Teutonic Knights, the conversion of the last Baltic pagans was among the cases debated by the council of Constance (1414–1418). While the Teutonic Knights used to storm Lithuania twice a year, with the help of knights coming from all over Europe, Polish spokesmen intended to prove that no baptism could be achieved this way. The aim of this paper is to use narratives relating the experiences of some French travelers (crusaders or diplomats) who had the opportunity to encounter the Baltic reality. A comparative study of the texts read during the council of Constance with the writings of Guillaume de Machaut, Philippe de Mezieres or Guillebert de Lannoy enable the researcher to see this quarrel in a new light. Looking at these foreign sources leads us to understand that some of the facts used by the Polish and Lithuanian spokesmen in Constance to darken the Teutonic Order’s image were already known by a few people in Western Europe. In particular, Cracovian rector Paulus Vladimiri (Pawel Wlodkowic)’s characterization of the Teutonic raids as worldly and disconnected from Christian ideals match the critics formulated by Philippe de Mezieres on the noblemen’s crusades. Vladimiri’s questioning of the effectiveness of the Order’s methods to bring baptism to Baltic pagans was also raised in at least two French travelers’ testimonies. However, if the remnant of paganism within the territory held by the Teutonic brothers was noted by some visitors, it was not explicitly disapproved of; for these Frenchmen mostly interested in chivalric activities and honorable deeds, the conversion of unbelievers was far less important than it was for the Polish and Lithuanian diplomats at Constance. Whilst the same facts were observed by both, their interpretation differed heavily.

Der katholische Glaubensbegriff und Toleranz. Inspirationen von Paweł Włodkowic

Paweł Włodkowic – Latin Paulus Vladimiri (1370-1435): Catholic priest, scholar, jurist, religious and political writer, rector of the Jagiellonian University, defender of Polish interests in disputes with Knights of the Teutonic Order. Paweł Włodkowic was an early teacher of the idea of tolerance, who during the Council of Constance stated that pagan nations have the right to maintain their religious beliefs. Based on the major theological authority of that time, i.e. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Włodkowic could, in the very concept of faith in the Catholic Church, see the most important elements requiring tolerance. The point is, above all, that faith must be an act of human freedom, that it is God’s grace and that it is closely related to reason. These elements have been commented on by authorities such as Edith Stein and Joseph Ratzinger.

Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann on His Seventieth Birthday

Foreword List of abbreviations 1. The alleged territoriality of Visigothic law P. D. King 2. Some Carolingian law-books and their function Rosamond McKitterick 3. The earliest surviving royal Ordo: some liturgical and historical aspects Janet L. Nelson 4. The Epistola Widonis, ecclesiastical reform and canonistic enterprise 1049-1141 John Gilchrist 5. Ralph de Diceto, Henry II and Beckett (with an appendix on decretal letters) Charles Duggan and Anne Duggan 6. Fides et culpa: the use of Roman law in ecclesiastical ideology E. F. Vodola 7. Hostiensis on Per venerabilem: the role of the College of Cardinals J. A. Watt 8. Centre and locality: aspects of papal administration in England in the later thirteenth century Jane Sayers 9. The Spanish Church revisited: the episcopal gravamina of 1279 Peter Linehan 10. Ockham and the birth of individual rights Arthur Stephen McGrade 11. Public expediency and natural law: a fourteenth-century discussion on the origins of government and property Brian Tierney 12. The King's Hall, Cambridge and English medieval collegiate history Alan B. Cobban 13. A fourteenth-century contribution to the theory of citizenship: political man and the problem of created citizenship in the thought of Baldus de Ubaldis Joseph P. Canning 14. What was conciliarism? Conciliar theory in historical perspective A. J. Black 15. The problem of the cardinalate in the Great Schism R. N. Swanson 16. Paulus Vladimiri's attack on the just war: a case study in legal polemics Frederick H. Russell Bibliography of the writings of Walter Ullmann Peter Linehan.

Review of Book: Paulus Vladimiri and His Doctrine concerning International Law and Politics

Review of Book: Paulus Vladimiri and His Doctrine concerning International Law and Politics

Paulus Vladimiri and His Doctrine concerning International Law and Politics

Paulus Vladimiri and His Doctrine concerning International Law and Politics

Paulus Vladimiri and His Doctrine Concerning International Law and Politics. Stanislaus F. Belch

<i>Paulus Vladimiri and His Doctrine Concerning International Law and Politics</i>. Stanislaus F. Belch

Stanislaus F. Belch, Paulus Vladimiri and His Doctrine Concerning International Law and Politics. Vols. I and II. The Hague: Mouton, 1965. Pages 1292. 225 Dutch guilders.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.