Bee Yun, Wege zu Machiavelli: Die Rückkehr des Politischen im Spätmitteltalter. Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 91. Vienna, Cologne and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, 2021, pp. 318.

Because Machiavelli theorized the cycle of governments, this book might seem to be about cyclical ideas in late medieval political thought. But the thrust of the tome is that Machiavelli can no longer be simply credited with bringing back classical political realism after centuries of Christian social theory. Bee Yun, a Korean scholar edging himself into medieval and early modern studies, has presented a gallery of fourteenth-century, late-medieval Latin writers who might well have been of necessity trying to do the same thing. The reality of the deep rift between the highly defensive papacy under Boniface VIII and the pretensions to ‘nationalistic-looking’ power of the French King Philip IV the Fair (ca. 1300) brought the old system of