Marcílio de Pádua

Marsilius of Padua (1275/80–1342/3)

Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis (Defender of Peace), written in 1324, is the most revolutionary political treatise of the later Middle Ages. Discourse One of the Defensor pacis can plausibly be read as a complete theory of the secular state. In a much longer second discourse, Marsilius attacks papal and priestly political power, which, especially in the claims to ‘fullness of power’ (plenitudo potestatis) sometimes made for the papacy, he presents as a major threat to civic tranquillity. The distinctive features of Marsilian theory are (a) its emphasis on broad participation in the legislative process as a guarantee of sound law, and (b) its insistence that supreme coercive power in any community must be held by a single, secular, popularly authorized ‘ruling part’ (pars principans).

1 Life

Marsilius was born Marsilio dei Mainardini, son of a notary to the University of Padua. He lectured on natural philosophy and engaged in medical research and practice in Paris, where he was rector of the University in 1313. In 1326, when his authorship of the Defensor pacis (Defender of Peace) was discovered, he fled to the court of Ludwig of Bavaria, then at odds with the papacy over the need for papal approval of his election as emperor several years earlier. Marsilius defended Ludwig’s authority as Roman emperor in the tract De translatione imperii (On the Transfer of the Empire), presumably written in 1326–7, through advice and action during Ludwig’s Italian campaign of 1327–30, and in the Defensor minor, written by 1342. Marsilius was dead by April 1343.

2 The ‘state’ and its peace

The discussions of popular assemblies and civic affairs in Discourse One of the Defensor pacis are most easily understood in relation to the first of the two milieux in which Marsilius passed his political life, the northern Italian commune. From the beginning, however, Marsilius sought to construct a theory which could be used to resist papalist claims to power on any scale. Accordingly, the formal unit of his analysis is the regnum, which he defines, peculiarly, as ‘something common to every species of temperate regime, whether in a single city or many’ (Defensor pacis 1.2.2). The generic character of this definition, the dedication of the Defensor pacis to Ludwig of Bavaria, the Empire’s history as a particular object of papal jurisdictional claims and the context of Marsilius’ later life and writings give some support to an imperialist as well as a republican interpretation of his thought.

At any level, the aim of political association, according to Marsilius, is ‘the sufficient life’. His exegesis of this Aristotelian concept is a comparatively modest one. Although he notes that those who live a civil life have leisure for the activities of the moral and intellectual virtues, the ‘living well’ of Aristotelian politics, Marsilius is less concerned than most medieval authors (for example, Thomas Aquinas) with orienting politics toward the perfect natural or supernatural fulfilment of human nature. He is more concerned with the factors producing or impeding the peaceful resolution of disputes and the cooperative functioning of those parts of a community which are devoted to meeting basic earthly needs. Thus, while he follows Aristotle (§27) in including the priesthood as one of the parts of a regnum (along with farmers, artisans, merchants and the like), he treats it as a part established and controlled by lay authority.

3 Legislation and government

The modest aim or final cause of Marsilian politics dictates an inclusive view of the parties qualified to participate as efficient causes in achieving that aim. To be sure, Marsilius is not a pure majoritarian. When he argues that the primary and proper efficient cause of the law is ‘the people or the whole body of citizens, or the weightier part thereof’, he immediately explains that by the ‘weightier part’ (pars valentior) he means to take into consideration both ‘the quantity and the quality of the persons in that community over which the law is made’ (Defensor pacis 1.12.3). Even with this qualification, however, Marsilius’ conception of legislative authority is exceptionally populist for the period in which he wrote.

Marsilius follows Aristotle and medieval tradition in arguing that the rule of law is necessary for achieving civic justice, the common benefit and political stability. He departs from tradition (how sharply is controversial) in making coercive enforceability, rather than rational content, the essence of law. Hence, although the wisdom of experts may be called on to formulate proposed legislation, it is the people’s consent that gives these proposals the force of law. Citizen participation in the legislative process is important for Marsilius even on the score of knowledge, for he holds that the people can discern what is for their mutual benefit and are thus able to assess and improve the counsels of the wise few.

Popular authorization is also required for the establishment (and, if necessary, correction) of a government to enforce the law. Although Marsilius argued for elective monarchy as generally the best form of government, he left the choice of administration by one, few or many rulers to the people. Whatever its internal makeup, however, it is vital that the supreme government of a city or larger community operate as a numerical unity in relation to local jurisdictions (if any) and in establishing and regulating the other parts of the state mentioned above. If there were a plurality of governments, not reduced or ordered under one as supreme, ‘the judgement, command and execution of matters of benefit and justice would fail, and because men’s injuries would therefore be unavenged the result would be fighting, separation, and finally the destruction of the city or regnum’ (Defensor pacis 1.17.3). Marsilius compared the cooperative functioning of the various parts of a temperate political community to the functioning of a healthy, well-ordered animal, in which ‘the primary principle which commands it and moves it from place to place is one’ (Defensor pacis 1.17.8). It is by impeding the operation of government, the political primary moving principle, that papal and other ecclesiastical interventions in civic affairs are inimical to peace.

4 Religion

Marsilius’ insistence that all coercive power be concentrated in a popularly controlled unitary secular government was rightly seen as an attack on the characteristic legal dualism of medieval society, in which church courts had jurisdiction over clerics in all matters and over lay people in some, while civil courts had jurisdiction over the laity in the matters that remained. In Discourse Two of the Defensor pacis, Marsilius defended his own position as the authentically Christian one. He argued that, in contrast with recent popes, Christ and the apostles were not a threat to secular peace. While teaching what must be believed and done to attain blessedness in the future life, they acknowledged the authority of emperors and other secular rulers in this life. In this part of his argument, Marsilius incorporated contemporary Franciscan contentions that poverty and lack of political power were appropriate for those who wished to follow Christ most closely. However, the leading Franciscan thinker of the day, William of Ockham, sharply criticized some of Marsilius’ own theses (for example, that Peter had no authority over the other apostles and that final authority for determining Christian doctrine rests with a general council). Marsilius’ views on the relations between clerical and lay authority were influential in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. His conception of popular participation as the source of all law and of all governmental authority has been seen as an anticipation of, if not a traceable influence on, Rousseau.