Marsilius of Padua

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The Italian political philosopher Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275-1342) wrote "Defensor pacis", the most important political treatise written in the late Middle Ages.

Marsilio dei Mainardini, who is known as Marsilius of Padua, was born at Padua. He was the son of a notary, and he received his early education in Padua, probably completing his arts degree and, perhaps, even a degree in medicine at the university there. Marsilius soon moved north to the leading university of his day, the University of Paris, where he became rector in 1313.

The years at Paris, first as a student, then as a teacher, were formative for Marsilius. He must have come into contact with the two most important theologians at Paris during that period, Durand of Saint-Pourçain and Peter Aureol. He certainly met the two leading Averroists, Peter of Abano and John of Jandun. Marsilius's teaching career culminated with the publication in 1324 of his extensive treatise on political power, the Defensor pacis. In this work Marsilius attacked many of the arguments used to support the political and temporal authority of the papacy. Going beyond this, Marsilius further attacked the absolute authority of the papacy within the administrative structure of the Church.

The principal idea upon which Marsilius established his political theory was the idea of popular sovereignty. All power is ultimately vested in the people. The secular monarch exercises his political authority not because he receives it as a divine right but because he derives it from the citizens of the state. The Roman pontiff derives his authority not from God, as Christ's vicar, but from the members of the Church. Desiring to counter the claims of the papal propagandists, Marsilius placed greater stress on "democratic" institutions in the Church than he did for secular society.

Political authority in the state, which Marsilius treats in the first book of his treatise, is derived from the citizens. Only they, acting as a whole or through a delegated authority, have the right to prescribe laws for the state. In order to ensure peace in the state, it is necessary to have one governing agency, which may be, but does not need to be, a hereditary monarchy. Such a head of state should be elected by the entire community. If the monarch acts against the welfare of the community or its laws, he can be deposed.

Stronger limits are placed on the authority of the papacy, a subject treated in the second book of Defensor pacis. According to Marsilius, the papacy has no authority in temporal affairs. Even in the Church, authority was to be shared with the bishops. Ultimately pope and bishops were to be answerable to the members of the Church.

When the work and his authorship became widely known in 1326, Marsilius decided to move outside the area of influence of Pope John XXII, who resided at Avignon in southern France. Marsilius sought protection and patronage from the German monarch Louis IV of Bavaria, who was already in conflict with John XXII. In 1327 Marsilius took part in Louis's expedition into Italy and was with him at Rome in 1328, when he was proclaimed emperor by the people of Rome. Marsilius was appointed vicar of Rome, a position in which he persecuted those members of the Roman clergy who remained faithful to John XXII.

When Louis was forced to return to Germany, Marsilius accompanied him. He remained at the imperial court for the rest of his life. In 1342 he wrote a short work entitled Defensor minor, a restatement of his earlier and better-known work. A few months later he died.

Further Reading

The Defensor pacis was translated into English by Alan Gewirth in Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of Peace (2 vols., 1951-1956), which includes an excellent introduction. Volume 1 was first printed alone as Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy (1951). Still useful is R. W. and A. J. Carlyle, A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West (6 vols., 1903-1936). A briefer summary of Marsilius's thought is in John B. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times (1958).

(c.1275-c.1342) Philosopher involved in politics. He studied medicine and natural philosophy in Italy; and was rector of the university of Paris (1312-13). With the Aristotelian, John of Laudun, he wrote an antipapal treatise, Defensor Pacis (Defender of the Peace) (1324). It was condemned in 1327. Meanwhile he and John fled to the protection of the antipapalist, Ludwig of Bavaria. When, by popular acclaim, Ludwig was elected emperor (and likewise Nicholas V), the pair were given bishoprics.

Marsiglio maintained that all civil strife is caused by religious conflict. This is caused by the Church claiming temporal power, which it does not and should not have, since its role is spiritual. The only power is coercive power, and only the State has that. The Church is not a perfect society (as Aquinas held); the clergy are part of the State. Christ and the apostles submitted to the State. The papacy is not a divine institution and has no right to intervene in secular matters. The pope and the clergy must be elected. Evangelical law is prescriptive; canon and conciliar law have no force, since they have no coercive power in this life. Only law backed by power has the force of law.

Natural law is positive law agreed by all nations (jus gentium). The governing power (legislator) is either the whole people or their representative (pars valentior). The executive (pars principans) is appointed and removed by the legislator. An elected is better than an accepted government. The relationship between the executive and legislator is pragmatic, not contractual. The judiciary is part of the executive. This is not merely antipapal but a radical secular theory.

— Cyril Barrett

(or Marsiglio, 1275/80-1342) Probably educated at Padua, Marsilius was rector of the university of Paris in 1313. His philosophical fame rests on Defensor Pacis (‘Defender of the Peace’, 1324, trs. under the same title, 1956), a devastating indictment of Papal claims to temporal power. Marsilius defends an Aristotelian theory of the political state as subserving the good life. Law is essentially the coercive power of the state necessary to promote this end. The people therefore form the only legitimate source of political authority. The positivist and republican implications of all this were well before their time; in 1326 Marsilius was forced to flee to the court of Louis of Bavaria and was branded a heretic by Pope John XXII.

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Marsilius of Padua (Italian Marsilio or Marsiglio da Padova; c. 1275 – c. 1342) was an Italian scholar who was deeply involved in the politics of his time. In fact his political treatise Defensor pacis is seen by some as the most revolutionary political treatise written in the later Middle Ages.

Born at Padua, Marsilius began studying medicine in Italy. He practiced various professions including that of a soldier, and went to the University of Paris in 1311. The reputation which he had gained in the physical sciences soon caused him to be raised to the position of rector of the university (for the first term of the year 1313).

While still practicing medicine he composed the text Defensor pacis (1324), one of the most important political and religious works of fourteenth-century Europe. A violent struggle had just broken out between Pope John XXII and Louis of Bavaria (or Ludwig of Bavaria), the candidate for Holy Roman Emperor at that time. Louis, on being excommunicated and called upon to give up the empire, replied to the pope’s threats with fresh provocations.

Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun, though they had both reason to be grateful for the benefits of John XXII, chose this moment to depart France for the German court.

Marsilius - writing alone, not with John, as once thought - set out to demonstrate, by arguments from reason (in Dictio I of the text) and from authority (in Dictio II) the independence of the Empire from the Papacy, and the emptiness of the prerogatives alleged to have been usurped by the sovereign pontiffs. This demonstration could have been regarded as heretical.

Louis IV admitted Marsilius and John to his circle and loaded them with favours, while John XXII excommunicated Louis IV on 3 April 1327. Having become one of the chief inspirers of the imperial policy, Marsilius accompanied Louis IV to Italy, where he preached or circulated written attacks against the pope, especially at Milan, and where he came within the sight of the realization of his wildest dreams.

He got to see a "King of the Romans" crowned Emperor at Rome, not by the pope, but by those who claimed to be the delegates of the people (17 January 1328), to see John XXII deposed by the head of the Empire (18 April 18), and a mendicant friar, Pietro de Corbara, raised by an imperial decree to the papacy (as Antipope Nicholas V) after a "popular" election (12 May), all this was seemed an application of principles laid down in the Defensor pacis.

Marsilius, appointed imperial vicar, persecuted the clergy who had remained faithful to John XXII. In recompense for his services, he seems to have been appointed archbishop of Milan (although still a layman^[1]), while John of Jandun obtained from Louis IV the bishopric of Ferrara.

Marsilius also composed a treatise De translatione [Romani] imperii , which is merely a rearrangement of a work by Landolfo Colonna, De jurisdictione imperatoris in causa matrimoniali, intended to prove the exclusive jurisdiction of the emperor in matrimonial affairs, or rather, to justify the intervention of Louis of Bavaria, who, in the interests of his policy, had just annulled the marriage of the son of the King of Bohemia and the Countess of Tyrol.

But, above all in the Defensor minor, Marsilius completed and elaborated on different points in the doctrine laid down in the Defensor pacis. He dealt here with problems concerning ecclesiastical jurisdiction, penances, indulgences, crusades and pilgrimages, vows, excommunication, the general church council, marriage and divorce, and unity with the Greek Orthodox Church. In this work he even more clearly leads up to a proclamation of imperial supremacy over the Church.

References

1. ^  "Marsilius of Padua". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Marsilius_of_Padua. 

Further reading

• The defender of peace (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
• Writings on the Empire: Defensor minor and De translatione imperii (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
•  "Marsilius of Padua". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Marsilius_of_Padua. 

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