Neagoe Basarab ¿ Princeps Christianus

Mihai-D. Grigore is a historian and scholar of religion. He is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Religious History at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz, Germany. Mihai-D. Grigore studied Orthodox Theology at the University of Bucharest, specialising in historical theology and Byzantine history. He obtained his PhD in Church History from the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen and Nuremberg, Germany, with a dissertation on historical anthropology about honour in medieval West-Frankish society, based on a case study of the Peace of God in the tenth and eleventh centuries. He was then postdoctoral researcher at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies and in the research group 'World Regions and Interactions: Area Studies, Transregionally', both in Erfurt. In 2012, he was Stanley S. Seeger Research Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University.

The field of political theology in the Orthodox traditions of Europe in post-Byzantine times is an almost unknown area. The book offers a comparison of four mirrors for princes from the beginning of the sixteenth century: The Teachings of Neagoe Basarab to His Son Theodosius (1520), Institutio Principis Christiani of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1516), On Secular Authority of Martin Luther (1523) and The Prince of Niccolò Machiavelli (1513). The author thus provides a cross-section of the history of Christian discourse concerning the concept of 'Princeps Christianus' in Europe. These works are representative because they show relevant confessional interpretations in Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Lutheranism. The main focus is on Neagoe Basarab, Lord of Wallachia between 1512 and 1521. This important author from Orthodox Europe is here brought into conversation with his three famous contemporaries on such topics as humanity, religion, politics, state, subjects, rulers and freedom.

CONTENTS: Introduction: Beyond Concepts - Neagoe Basarab: A Christian Prince in the Early Sixteenth Century - Erasmus of Rotterdam and His Education of a Christian Prince: On the Ethical Theomimesis of the Christian Prince - On Secular Authority: Martin Luther and the Prince as Servant - Rule and Method: Machiavelli's Prince and the Dispensable Semantics of Christianitas - Conclusion: Beyond Concepts, in the Thick of Semantics.