The Birth of Territory 2

   

Only in the Middle Ages the Greek traditions (especially Aristotle) were translated into Latin.

 However, this "appropriation of ancient political thought in the Middle Ages" was used as a
reformulation of the legitimation of one's own rule and thus to distinguish it from other political rulers,
especially the church.

Aristotle was only gradually translated into Latin, very early especially the writings on logic.


The political writings, on the other hand - including politics, ethics and rhetoric - were only translated
into Latin in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

A reflection on the state thus always requires the problematization of its spatiality, i.e. its national territory.

Space in the political sense,
is defined as the interrelation between its political-strategic function and its political-economic determination.

Thus land ownership is the bundling of economic-political and legal relationships.

One of the most important legal teachers of the Middle Ages was Bartolus de Saxoferrato
Italian Bartolo da Sassoferrato

Bartolus already suggests the idea of territorial sovereignty.
Jurisdiction is directed towards a limited space and thus also towards the persons who reside in this territory.
The formulation in Bartolus is still the fundamental basis for the concept of territory today.


Dominion is something that is inherent in the person possessing it (domini),
but it extends to what is possessed. Similarly, jurisdiction is based on an office (oficio)
and in the person holding the office, but extends to a territory.

This concept of territory thus shifts "domination" to those who are in the territory.
But it also transfers jurisdiction to the besieger of a certain place.
But also a transfer of jurisdiction to the besieger of a certain place.

Thus, territory can be derived from [terrere],
the term that can be translated as 'putting into fear, terrorizing'.

But Pomponius Mela, a Roman geographer refers in his writings over
1000 years before Bartolus to the characteristic of the territory: as the description of a specific legal area:

To terrorize someone meant in the linguistic usage of that time:
to be able to quote someone in court.

 

Back to Bartolus -
Bartolus Codex also means: as long as an army spreads fear and terror in a place,
an offence committed there can be punished by its authorities in the same way as if it had been committed at home.

So what is jurisdiction? It extends over the territory.

What is territory? A place where jurisdiction is exercised.

Later Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one of the masterminds of the Enlightenment and the last universal scholar,
will write about territory and sovereignty: "The sovereign is the one who is master over a territory. (Translation: Stuart Elden)

Leibniz thus lays claim to the first real definition of sovereignty. In his understanding, sovereignty is exercised over a territory.

And what about the people there?

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The Aesthetics of Territorial Order in art