Leon Petrażycki and his work are mostly associated with his psychological theory of law according to which a phenomenon of law can be reduced to mental states. However, it should be noticed that law philosophy Petrażycki proposes is conditioned by a specific historiosophical vision. The article is focused on the reconstruction of philosophy of history by Petrażycki. The determinants of the historical process, its course, and the periodization of history used by the Polish researcher were indicated. According to Petrażycki, the history of civilization aims to achieve the state of non-normative, stateless and universalistic social eudaemonia. We can therefore speak of an optimistic and linear-oriented historiosophy. The policy of law, which stimulates the historical process, plays a special role in these considerations.

In this article, the author tries to present Paul Orosius’s political doctrine, taking its connection with the tradition of imperial theology of Eusebius of Caesarea and the philosophy of Augustine of Hippo as references. The main source material is the historiographic study of Orosius from the beginning of the 5th century – Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. The considerations focus on the interpretation of four key themes: the Roman Empire, monotheism, peace, and Christianity. Orosius shares the prevalent belief of Christian writers of the late antiquity, that God gives special protection to the Roman Empire. He emphasizes the importance of the peace that prevailed in the time of Augustus, and gives theological and political interpretation of the temporal coincidence of Octavian’s reign and Christ’s birth. On the basis of proper interpretation of symbolic historical events, Orosius built a kind of political ecclesiology. This doctrine advanced the principal that the Roman state and the Church were united by a common mission to promote the Christian faith. At the same time, in Book Seven, Orosius confronts an attempt at the historiosophical interpretation of barbarian invasions that threatened the prosperity of the empire. Based on factual material, he relativizes the relationship between the Roman Empire and Christianity. The state appears as a subsidiary power to the Church’s evangelizing mission, which concept is also reflected in the ethos of the good ruler proposed by Orosius.

The article asks a question about the influence of historiosophy on how the notion of justice is understood in Greek and Roman philosophy of law. Historiosophy, named also the philosophy of history, has been defined as an effort to explain general history in categories of sense and aim by proving that there is a general rule leading the historical process. In the course of the discussion there are two such historiosophical rules presented. Chronologically, the first of them is Homeric Moirai, which throughout the development of the Greek philosophy has been replaced by a notion of providence. Moirai was the rule of destiny controlling destinies of both men and gods. In this approach, justice was understood as a certain “share” or “allocation”, seen as a role given to each person who needed to play it in history. The same content element was included in the notion of providence. In the philosophy of stoics providence was the ordering force that created nature and at the same time constituted an indirect source of justice and law.

This article focuses on the relationship between the imperial cult in pagan Rome and the heavenly hierarchy taught by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The latter’s thought played a significant role in the construction of the medieval image of the world. Medieval reflection on the state and law drew from it as well. Therefore, possible analogies between the imperial cult and the philosophy of Corpus Dionysiacum would indicate an indirect influence that the imperial cult of the emperor had on certain later ideas about state power, on the legitimacy of certain forms of social and constitutional organization, and on prophetic visions inspiring social and political movements. Against this background, the article compares the emperor’s genius (as well as the imperial virtues and the emperor’s numen) with the immaterial beings described by the Areopagite. It reveals clear parallels regarding the hierarchical construction of geniuses in the imperial cult of ancient Rome and Pseudo-Dionysius’ Angels, Names of God, and divine providences. The similarities in mediation between the human world and the divine reality regarding the granting of creative power and supernatural knowledge are also associated with this structure. In both cases, the divine element (genius and heavenly beings) has a historiosophical aspect, consisting of justification of belief about care that the deity exercises over the universal history of mankind. The conducted research constitutes an impulse for further research in the field of political aspects of medieval angelology.

The article aims to present the background of changes in the transition from medieval fief property to more individualized modern model. Conciliarism is considered to be an important factor supporting these changes. The conciliarist idea was presented on the basis of De squaloribus Curiae Romanae by Matthew from Cracow. Fiefdom ownership has been characterized as a legal construct where private legal rights are combined with the prerogatives of public authority. In turn, modern property resembles more structures known from Roman law, which are characterized by far-reaching sovereignty in disposing of property rights. In the course of the argument, it was shown that the issues determining the changes in the area of private law were the conciliarist ideas, such as the superiority of the Ecumenical council’s authority over the pope, the binding of public authority by law, and the separation of private law from the prerogatives of public authority.