It lies beyond the scope of this book to attempt a comprehensive account of a con-
cept so fundamental to medieval thought in general, and to scholastic political and
ethical thinking in particular. Primarily a critical rather than a speculative study, its
intent is accordingly rather more limited--an examination of the meaning of the term
'common good' in the thought of eight influential scholastic theologians during the
second half of the thirteenth century and the early years of the fourteenth, namely
Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, Giles of
Rome, James of Viterbo, John of Paris, and Remigio dei Girolami. By concentrating
on these figures, therefore, the term 'scholastic' is understood in predominantly
theological and philosophical terms. Such a choice carries two corollaries. In the first
instance, this book does not attempt to examine the use of the common good in canon
law, nor does it attempt to reconsider the juristic conceptions of corporation and per-
sonality, nor the wider contribution of law to the 'rise of the state' or to the emergence
of natural rights. ² This does not mean that arguments drawn from canon and Roman
law were unimportant to scholastic theologians. Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of
Fontaines, for example, frequently resorted to legal concepts to support some of their
most distinctive political ideas. Nevertheless, the primary focus of this study remains
the notion of the common good as it appeared in the faculty of arts and of theology. In
the second instance, this book is concerned with the connection between theology and
philosophy during this period and, as such, it is concerned with the impact on scholas-
tic thought of Aristotle's metaphysics and Aristotle's natural and moral philosophy. ³
The primary aim of this study is therefore to investigate the effect of the reintro-
duction of the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics on the notion of the common good
in terms of two key relationships--between the Christian individual and the political
community and between the political individual and the Christian community.

When Georges de Lagarde examined the traditional assumption that the Reform-
ation witnessed the victory of individual autonomy over the hierarchical and corpor-
atist orthodoxy of the Middle Ages, he was led to conclude that the real achievement

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