The idea of a separation of powers in a government was also a thought-child of the Enlightenment.
It's true that this is when it came to fruition, Janice, but actually the idea was argued forcefully four centuries earlier by one Dante Alighieri. The work in which he argued it, Monarchia, was publicly burned in Bologna a couple years after his death and was banned by the Church until the nineteenth century.
I had the same reaction as you did to the discovery of that author. He's impressive.
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