Abstract

Silete theologi in munere alieno! As Schmitt observes in Der Nomos der Erde, this was Alberico Gentili's battle cry to remove theologians from discussion of politics and to rescue a non-discriminatory concept of war. According to Schmitt, it became the slogan of an epoch — the epoch of the ius publicum Europaeum. The turn to the modern age in the history of international law was accomplished by a dual division of two lines of thought inseparable in the Middle Ages — moral-theological from juridical-political arguments and the question of iusta causa, grounded in moral arguments and natural law, from the typically juridical-formal question of iustus hostis.