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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
In this paper I want to present some background material about the interplay of religious concepts and rights theories during the Christian middle ages. We may note at the outset that there always were elements in the Judeo-Christian tradition that could be conducive to the growth of a doctrine of rights, especially the fundamental command to respect the person and property of our neighbor. Ronald Dworkin pointed out that the necessary basis of all other rights is an “abstract right to concern and respect taken to be fundamental and axiomatic.” The axiom entered the mainstream of medieval jurisprudence in the first words of Gratian's Decretum, the foundation of the whole subsequent structure of Western canon law. “The human race is ruled by two means, namely by natural law and usages. The law of nature is what is contained in the Law and the Gospel, by which each is ordered to do to another what he wants done to himself and is forbidden to do to another what he does not want done to himself.” Or in modern language, one might say, “Show concern and respect.”
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