From Baratteria to Broglio: The Perils of Public Office in Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought

Abstract

The predominance of an Augustinian account of degenerative corruption in learned Medieval discourse traced corrupt, corrupting or corrupted phenomena to the corruption of human nature after The Fall. This does not mean that contemporaries were unable to address forms of public office corruption, whether in the form of simoniacal purchase of Church offices or the use of gifts to curry judicial favour. Nonetheless, the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe ensured that the Augustinian connotation of the spiritual and physical decay of the human body powerfully shaped Medieval discourse on corruption, such that instances of public office corruption were interpreted as the inevitable consequence of the corruption of human nature.