Da virtude à política

a moral do governante no pensamento do franciscano Paulino de Veneza (c. 1314)

Abstract

This paper deals with the history of political thought in the fourteenth century. It makes an introductory study of the first part of the treatise De regimine rectoris, by the Franciscan Paulino of Venice, dated c. 1314. The problem it discusses is the correlation between morality and politics in the validation of a government considered good and legitimate. It is in line with the thesis that medieval thinkers did not attribute the success or failure of government to formal aspects such as institutions, but to the morality of social man, embodied in the person of the ruler (rector). Thus, the the paper aims to show how authors such as Paulino described, in terms of virtues and vices, the characteristics of the good and the bad ruler, making the moral concur for the legitimation of politics. The method employed in reading the work is conceptual analysis; through it the text hopes to offer the reader a perspective on how medieval thinkers postulated an inextricable relationship between morality and politics.