Spiritual Rationality: Papal Embargo as Cultural Practice offers the first book-length study of embargo in a pre-modern period and provides a unique exploration into the domestic implications of this tool of foreign policy. Based on a large and varied body of archival and printed, papal and secular sources, this inquiry covers Europe and the broader Mediterranean from c. 1150 to c. 1550. During this time of an increasing papal role within Christian society, the church employed restrictions on trade with Muslims, pagans, 'heretics', 'schismatics', disobedient Catholic communities and individual Jews in order to facilitate papally-endorsed warfare against external enemies and to discipline internal foes. Various trade bans were originally promulgated as individual responses to specific circumstances. These restrictions, however, were shaped by the premise that sin and the defense of the decorum of the faith and Christendom condoned, or even required, papal intervention into the lives of the laity and by the text-based approach of popes and canonists. Papal embargo, consequently, was not only the sum total of individual trade bans but also a legal and moral discourse that classified exchanges into legitimate and illegitimate ones, compelled merchants to distinguish clearly between themselves as (Roman) Christians and a multitude of others as non-Christians, and helped order symbolically both the relationships between the two groups and those between church and laity. Papal embargo's chief relevance thus lay within Christian society itself, where it functioned as an intangible pastoral staff. While sixteenth-century developments undermined it as a policy tool and a moral discourse alike, papal embargo inscribed the notion of the immorality of trade with the enemy into European thought.

About the Author
Stefan Stantchev earned his PhD in history at the University of Michigan in 2009, joining the faculty of Arizona State University's New College. His research interests focus mainly on the religious and economic factors that shaped human relations in the Mediterranean, c 1100 to c 1600. His work thus engages topics that are often treated separately, such as economic and church history, or foreign policy and religious identity. He has been offered fellowships and research grants from the Social Science Research Council, The Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, the American Historical Association, and the Medieval Academy of America, among others.

Reviews
Stefan Stantchev has produced an exhaustively researched and interestingly conceptualized study of the history of papal prohibitions of trade with the enemies of Christendom in medieval and early modern times. The book is likely to remain a useful reference point for this history, but its greatest contribution is that the author reconceptualizes and rethinks the embargoes ... This is a real achievement that earns the author great praise. * Anders Winroth, Mediterranean Historical Review *
Stefan Stantchev managed to astonish me with his book, whose topic and execution are remarkable ... it has managed to prove its originality. I strongly believe that mediaevalists of different fields will expect with interest the future studies of the author. * Ivan Biliarsky, Revue des Etudes Sud-Est Europeennes *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198704096
Author Stefan K. Stantchev
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 538g
Dimensions(mm) 239mm * 163mm * 24mm