Thursday, April 09, 2009

Note to self: learn Latin

It turns out that teaching medieval political [and legal] thought is a lot of fun. This is a ride I'll be happy to ride again.

Next year: more Vitoria; more Marsilius if it can be managed. Possibly some Gentili-- that stretches the timeframe, but I have it on good authority that the next course in the sequence begins early modernity with Hobbes. Integrate the Digest and the Institutes through the whole term, instead of assigning excerpts from them at the beginning of the term along with other ancient texts, then reading Bartolus and Accursius separately later on. Maybe more generally, spread the ancient works through the course.

Longer term: do some excerpting from the Ordinary Gloss for the class, to choose topics continuous with course themes. NB: This is almost sure to require doing some translations of my own, which in turn requires learning medieval law Latin, which therefore moves several steps up my to-do list.

What to drop in order to make room for these cool things? Hmm... that annoying Florentine is taking up a lot of classes at the end...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, could you change the course number that I might take the class again?

Jacob T. Levy said...

Aw, shucks.

And: no.

Todd Seavey` said...

And your fellow libertarian-Brown-alum Christine Caldwell Ames wrote a book on the Inquisition, if that proves useful:

http://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Persecution-Inquisition-Dominicans-Christianity/dp/0812241339/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214924251&sr=8-1

Todd Seavey said...

Sorry. Here, in chunks, the rest of that long Amazon URL:

...Inquisition-

Dominicans-Christianity/dp/081224

1339/ref=pd_bbs

_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=

1239808501&sr=8-1

Unknown said...

...but we got to know "that annoying Florentine" so well!