Abstract
The modern state is the new form of domestic and international political organization in the European system of relations between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its origin lies in the crisis of the medieval order and in the detachment of sovereignty from the earliest popular and territorial bases. While the formulation of the concept of sovereignty is conventionally associated with the emergence of the modern states-system culminating in its political formalization with the Westphalian settlement of 1648, it was in the late Middle Ages and definitely during the Renaissance that the word “state” acquired a meaning close to the modern sense. It was around this time that discussions about the state as a separate entity and its purpose and powers became widespread in the political language. A historic analysis of the word “stato” shows its multifarious meanings and the difficult process it went through from antiquity to Machiavelli before being accepted in its modern sense by scholars. Yet Bodin and Hobbes became the focal points for the birth and development of the modern state with the concept of sovereignty associated to it.
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Further Reading
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Provvidera, T. (2020). State in Renaissance Politics. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_630-1
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State in Renaissance Politics- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_630-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_630-1