Does the history of medieval political thought need a spatial turn? The murals of Longthorpe, the Secretum secretorum and the intercultural transfer of political ideas in the High Middle Ages

The article starts from a concern about problems of traditional spatial imagination. It takes the example of a fresco cycle in southern England and its literary background, a text of Arab origin, to critically interrogate the conceptual framework of space that underlies the modern historiography of the development of political ideas in the Middle Ages. The point here is that more attention should be given to the intercultural transfer of knowledge and ideas, for the sake of a balanced description and explanation of the development of political ideas in Western Europe. Traditionally, most histories of medieval political thought have been written on the basis of a spatial framework that focuses almost exclusively on Latin Christianity. This limitation of scope hinders an adequate understanding and description of the transformations of political ideas in the West, especially since the twelfth century, foremost by omitting the influences and impetus medieval Western European intellectuals received from outside for the formation of their political views.