This volume traces the theory that humanity forms a single community and that there exists a body of law governing the relations among the members of the community. These ideas appeared in medieval writings and paved the way for notions of international legal order and universal norms of behaviour.

Contents: Canon Law and Expansion: Extra ecclesiam non est imperium: the canonists and the legitimacy of secular power; A canonistic contribution to the formation of international law; The contribution of the medieval canon lawyers to the formation of international law; Papal responsibility for the infidel: another look at Alexander VI’s Inter ceatera; The Avignon papacy and the frontiers of Christendom: the evidence of Vatican register 62; John Wyclif and the rights of the infidels: the requerimiento re-examined; The development of group rights. World Order: Solórzano’s De Indiarum iure: applying a medieval theory of world order in the 17th century; The conquest of the Americas: the Spanish search for global order. Ireland and America: Spiritual conquests compared: Laudabiliter and the conquest of the Americas;The remonstrance of the Irish princes and the canon law tradition of the just war; The Indian as Irishman; Index.