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This article examines the relationship between knowledge, political counsel, and reason of state in Giovanni Botero (1544–1617). Botero is primarily known as the champion of Catholic reason of state, mainly on account of his treatise Ragion di stato. I argue that Botero marks a watershed in the history of European political thought not because of his response to Machiavelli, but on account of his conscious and innovative integration of different field of knowledge into a new language of the state. He is the first to capture convincingly the reality of the Counter-Reformation state and European global expansion. While Botero writes with a view to serve the universal church and Catholic secular princes, his language transcends confessional boundaries. This argument is made with reference to Delle cause della grandezza delle città (1588) and Ragion di stato (1589), though it could be extended into his Le relazioni universali (1591–96).

This chapter discusses the ways in which the Six livres de la Republique fed into Castilian political discourse. It takes its cue from Francis Bacon, exploring some of the "Contract of Errour betweene the Deliuerer and the Receiuer" of this particular text. The enquiry, then, is one into Bodin as a contested and ambiguous source in Castilian political discourse, into what different readers understood or wanted him to have said, and why, and how they used the Republique to suit their understanding and purpose. They picked over the treatise, guided by the pressing issues of the day, mining it for suitable quotations, concepts, and evidence, and picked it apart. Bodin's Castilian readers rarely treated the text as a doctrinally coherent 'whole'. The authors using the Republique make "contracts of errour" in the sense of a contract that is meant to assign interpretative agency mostly or solely to the "receiuer". Keywords: Castilian political discourse; Republique

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the key themes discussed in the book Theorising the Ibero-American Atlantic . The book seeks to delineate methodological, theoretical, and temporal frameworks and pathways for engaging Ibero-American Atlantic studies. It is divided into three parts. The first part, "Defining the Ibero-American Atlantic", contains four essays offering different yet complementary theoretical perspectives on the Atlantic basin; four views of how the field might rise to the challenge and assert itself as one of many valid organising frameworks for historical inquiry for new generations in the twenty-first century. The second part, "Early Modern Exchanges: Identities and Ties (1492-1850)", offers four distinct approaches to the history of gender, race, ideas, and culture in the Ibero-American Atlantic. The third part, "Transatlantic Migrations: Culture and History Reconsidered (1850-today)", probes the meanings and validity of an Atlantic studies approach for the modern and contemporary periods. Keywords: Atlantic basin; Ibero-American Atlantic studies; transatlantic migrations

Starting from Justus Lipsius's Monita et exempla politica (1605), this book offers a collection of essays dealing with the disputed Macchiavellian, Tacitean or Neostoic character of Lipsius's political thought, and its impact on the dynamics of political discourse in Early Modern Europe.

This chapter seeks to elucidate the uses of historical narrative in Justus Lipsius's Monita et exempla politica (Antwerp, Plantin: 1605). The Politica recommends itself as the starting point for an examination of the changing dynamics of Justus Lipsiuss political writing. Prudence, Lipsius says, is the product of usus (personal experience) and historia (recorded collective experience), which in turn produce doctrinasuch as the precepts and principles so carefully selected and arranged in the Politica. Prudence in the Monita is effectively synonymous with the individuals awareness and continual rational engagement with usus and historia. There is no juridical conceptualisation of sovereignty, no explicit analysis of the constitutional and theological issues and principles driving contemporary debate about the nature and limits of monarchical power. Keywords: Justus Lipsius; Monita et exempla politica; prudence

Was the transgression of fiscal laws sinful? Since the middle ages theologians, following Aquinas’ footsteps, examined the legitimacy of taxation along four questions: its licit cause, i.e. the legitimate authority of who levied the tax; its necessity and use; the object and subject of taxation and its proportionateness. Moreover, despite Christ’s word ‘Render unto Caesar…’ (Mk 12:17), taxation continued to be understood as an extraordinary event which the monarch had to negotiate with the representatives of his realm in case of urgent necessity, e.g. in case of war. Hence, the danger of sin initially concerned the monarch who overstepped the limits of natural law, not the taxpaying Christian. This interpretation was overturned during the early modern period and in particular amongst the scholastics writing in the Spanish Empire confronted with bloating debt, caused by the ever expanding costs of war and growing state administration. The privatisation of the commons and the increase of the fiscal burden caused a vivid debate. The category of restitution (the demands on the faithful guilty of male ablata and turpe lucrum), for example, could address questions of the payment of indulgences (the cruzada) as well as state tax. The lively controversy, engaging theologians and jurists, extended into the royal councils. Some theologians and canonists like Francisco de Vitoria and Martín de Azpilcueta relied on the doctrines of Jean Gerson and Angelo of Chivasso to deny that tax evasion was necessarily sinful, in particular if such taxes were levied on poor people or if they violated customary law and ecclesiastical immunity. Others, like Gabriel Vázquez and Francisco Suárez, however, emphasized the duty to obey civil law in conscience as well as the authority of sovereigns to increase taxation, and by consequence they condemned tax fraud and downgraded the contractual power of the Cortes. The article will contextualise these controversies up to the probabilistic crisis in the middle of the seventeenth century and analyse how the semantics of scholasticism changed as theologians processed questions raised in auricular confession and in political decision-making within the Spanish imperial context. Furthermore, the article will explore the underlying conflict between secular law and moral theology defending the indirect power of the Church over the political sphere ratione peccati. Scholastic theology and casuistry indeed insisted on the role of the clergy to interpret the binding force of positive laws over the conscience, vindicating the primacy of canon law and of confession with regard to the validity of secular norms.