Abstract

All’origine della sovranità is a critical reflection on the complex and articolated sequence of events which, in the first half of the fourteenth century, brought to the crisis of Dyonisian hierarchical system and to the modern conception of sovereignty. In fact, the principle superiorem non recognoscere appears for the first time in juridical experience during the dispute about the two powers, when opponents of papal claims perceived the need to create new models of order, by which to replace the hierocratic representation of the hierarchical system. After having considered the different conceptions of Dyonisian order in the late Middle Ages, the Author dwells on the two main contrasting paradigms: Marsilio’s organicism and Dante’s humanism. The first was coupled with clearly conventionalist theses, and led to the supremacy of the sovereignty principle and to a total submission of citizens to the public will; on the contrary, the second heightened persons’ capacity for self-regulation in accordance with a law that is given them with their being, and that directs them both to the beatitudo huius vite and, above all, to the beatitudo vite ecterne. Because of this contrast, through the philosophical arguments of the disputants, the problem of the relation between the two powers emerges in all its dramatic complexity. It wasn’t only a question to recognize preeminences or supremacies, autonomies or subjections, but to pronounce upon the conception itself of political community, of its ordering principle, and of its juridical shape. For this reason the alternative between Dante and Marsilio will mark out the whole subsequent juridical and political experience, up to our days.