Marsilius of Padua

Political theorist and philosopher, born in Padua, NE Italy. He was rector of the University of Paris from 1313, where he lectured on natural philosophy, engaged in medical research, and involved himself in Italian politics. In 1324 he completed Defensor pacis, a political treatise which argued against the temporal power of clergy and pope. When the authorship of the work became known, he was forced to flee Paris (1326). Excommunicated by Pope John XXII, he took refuge at the court of Louis of Bavaria in Munich.

While still practicing medicine he entered into relations with another master of Paris, the philosopher John of Jandun, who collaborated with him in the composition of the famous Defensor pacis (1324), one of the most extraordinary political and religious works which appeared during the Fourteenth century. A violent struggle had just broken out between Pope John XXII and Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and the latter, on being excommunicated and called upon to give up the empire, only 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 demonstrate, by plausible arguments, the supremacy of the Empire, its independence of the Holy See, and the emptiness of the prerogatives “usurped” by the sovereign pontiffs—a demonstration naturally calculated to give them a claim on the gratitude of the German sovereign. John XXII, for his part, excommunicated him on April 3, 1327. Having become one of the chief inspirers of the imperial policy, Marsilius accompanied Louis 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 utopias. 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 (January 17, 1328), to see John XXII. Marsilius, appointed imperial vicar, abused his power to persecute the clergy who had remained faithful to John XXII. In recompense for his services, he seems to have been appointed archbishop of Milan, while his collaborator, John of Jandun, obtained from Louis the bishopric of Ferrara.

Marsilius of Padua also composed a treatise De translatione imperii romani, which is merely a rearrangement of a work of 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 Tirol. But, above all, in an unpublished work preserved at Oxford, the Defensor minor, Marsilius completed and elaborated in a curious manner certain points in the doctrine laid down in the Defensor pacis.