Charitas regni est salus. Semantic Transformations of Charity in Early Modern Representations of State and Society

The concept of charity was widely used in early modern European political theory, taking on a variety of meanings and functions in describing social and institutional reality. The article begins with a genealogical reconstruction of the early history of the concept, outlining its classical and Christian roots and disentangling its three main meanings: charity as love of God, charity as love of one’s neighbor, and charity as a principle of social integration. It then turns to some of the peculiar modifications that these meanings underwent in the political literature of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Finally, it focuses on the «crisis» that the political use of charity experienced at the turn of the eighteenth century.