Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages

Ancient Greeks and Romans often wrote that the best form of government was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. This history of political thought investigates what happened to the concept of the mixed constitution in the Middle Ages.

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Ancient Greeks and Romans often wrote that the best form of government consisted of a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Political writers in the early modern period applied this idea to government in England, Venice and Florence, and Americans used it in designing their constitution. In this history of political thought, James Blythe investigates what happened to the concept of mixed constitution during the Middle Ages, when the work of the Greek historian Polybius, the source of many of the formal elements of early modern theory, was unknown in Latin. Although it is generally argued that Renaissance and early modern theories of mixed constitution derived from the revival of classical Polybian models, Blythe demonstrates the pervasiveness of such ideas in high and late medieval thought.