Political uses of Nemo militans deo se implicat negotiis secularibus (2 Tim 2:4): the Italian communes in the late Middle Ages

This paper explores political uses of the biblical maxim «Nemo militans deo se implicat negotiis secularibus» (2 Timothy 2:4), starting with its application to officeholding by Bernardino da Siena and Nicolò de’ Tudeschi (Panormitanus). It outlines something of the exegesis of «Nemo militans» on which they drew and briefly discusses how its language of detachment was adopted in the Italian communes before assessing the impact of Bernardino's words in fifteenth-century Siena and Florence. Tracing changing contexts, the paper documents some of the opportunities and limitations of reading and not reading scripture while thinking politics.