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Project

Diodorus Tuldenus (c. 1590-1645) and the Development of Natural and Public Law in the Habsburg Low Countries.

The imperial expansion to the Indies and the dissatisfaction with absolutism were major societal convulsions that marked the early modern period. In response to them, moral theologians of the School of Salamanca developed a Catholic theory of natural rights. However, as the confessional strife had become overly antagonistic, in the first half of the 17th century scholars pleaded for a secularisation of natural law doctrine, which eventually led to the establishment of the School of Natural Law.
Research on natural law in the early 17th century has largely focused on the works by Protestants. Catholic jurists have mostly been neglected. This project hopes to bridge this gap by contextualising the contributions of the Leuven law faculty, and especially of Diodorus Tuldenus (d. 1645). Given their strategical position within the Spanish Empire and close to the Dutch Republic, the Southern Netherlandish jurists were ideally placed to bridge the gap between the School of Salamanca and the School of Natural Law.
A man of humanist learning, Tuldenus was one of the founding fathers of public law and contributed to the reconstruction of the Habsburg Netherlands after the Dutch Revolt. Natural law was a key concept in his thought. This project wishes to find out what the background, the content, and the impact of Tuldenus’s writings and teachings on law and legal philosophy were, especially with a view to the transregional and cross-confessional development of natural and public law.

Date:1 Jan 2021 →  Today
Keywords:Natural law, Ius commune, Public law, Legal humanism
Disciplines:Early modern history, History of law, Roman law