Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockam II

Wikipedia: 

Marsilius of Padua (1270 – c. 1342) was an Italian scholar, trained in medicine, who practiced a variety of professions. He was also an important 14th-century political figure. His political treatise Defensor pacis (The Defender of Peace), an attempt to refute papal claims to a “plenitude of power” in affairs of both church and state, is seen by some scholars as the most revolutionary political treatise written in the later Middle Ages. It is one of the first examples of a trenchant critique of caesaropapism in Western Europe. Marsilius is sometimes seen as a forerunner of the Protestant reformation, because many of his beliefs were later adopted by Calvin and Luther.

. . .Some authorities consider Defensor pacis one of the most important political and religious works of fourteenth-century Europe. 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, penance, 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 articulates imperial supremacy over the Church.

Wikipedia:

The tract Defensor pacis (The Defender of Peace) laid the foundations of modern doctrines of popular sovereignty. It was written by Marsilius of Padua (Italian: Marsilio da Padova), an Italian medieval scholar. It appeared in 1324 and provoked a storm of controversy that lasted through the century. The context of the work lies in the political struggle between Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor and Pope John XXII. The treatise is vehemently anticlerical. Marsilius’ work was censured by Pope Benedict XII and Pope Clement VI.

Defensor pacis extends the tradition of Dante’s De Monarchia separating the secular State from religious authority. It affirmed the sovereignty of the people and civil law and sought to greatly limit the power of the Papacy, which he viewed as the “cause of the trouble which prevails among men” and which he characterized as a “fictitious” power. He proposed the seizure of church property by civil authority and the elimination of tithes. In his view, the Papacy would retain only an honorary pre-eminence without any authority to interpret the scriptures or define dogma.

. . .The pope, no longer possessing any more power than other bishops (though Marsilius recognizes that the supremacy of the See of Rome goes back to the earliest times of Christianity), is to content himself with a pre-eminence mainly of an honorary kind, without claiming to interpret the Holy Scriptures, define dogmas or distribute benefices; moreover, he is to be elected by the Christian people, or by the delegates of the people, i.e. the princes, or by the council, and these are also to have the power to punish, suspend or depose him. The theory was purely democratic, but was all ready to be transformed, by means of a series of fictions and implications, into an imperialist doctrine; and in like manner it contained a visionary plan of reformation which ended, not in the separation of the church from the state, but in the subjection of the church to the state.

In 1535, Thomas Cromwell paid William Marshall to translate Defensor into English in order to give intellectual support towards the implementation of Royal Supremacy.

An excerpt from, “Marsiglio of Padua and William of Ockam II” By James Sullivan, The American Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jul., 1897), pp. 593-610 (18 pages):

The statement of Pope Clement, that Marsiglio derived his heresies from Ockam, is still further weakened if we consider the attitude of the scholars of that time and of later days with respect to the works of the two. It was to Marsiglio, rather than to Ockam, that the enemies of the popes and the friends of reform looked for support. This has been denied by several writers of our own day, who think that it was the fate of Marsiglio to be absolutely forgotten. According to Poole,’-and Lechler, Tschakert and Kneer’ are of the same opinion,—-”Ockam may justly be claimed as a precursor of the German reformers of the sixteenth century, but Marsiglio exercised no direct influence on the movement of thought.” Riezler regards them both as nearly equal in prominence as precursors of the Reformation. Silbernagl, on the other hand, distinctly denies that Ockam is a precursor of the Reformation in the same sense as is Marsiglio, who, in his Defensor Pacis, ” takes the same grounds as Luther.” Which of these opinions is right we shall discover by studying the histories of the works of Marsiglio and Ockam, subsequent to their publication.

If we could believe Villani, John XXII. condemned Marsiglio in a bull dated July 13, 1324. From a letter of the bishop of Passaui, of September 6, 1326, we know that John had already condemned Marsiglio as a heretic.

. . .The name and work of Marsiglio remained ever fresh in the minds of the people during the Reformation. The Protestants, in their letter “super recusatione Concilii Tridentini” in 1562, referred to him as one among those who had written about the early abuses of the Church. Charles IX., in a letter to Pius IV., also makes reference to him.

In 1592 Francis Gomar, the Calvinist and anti-Arminian, brought out a new edition of the Defensor Pacis, praising its author and recommending it to Henry IV., of France, as especially useful for showing the liberty and power of his kingdom against the popes.’ In 1599 a new edition was published, but, excepting the addition of “Testimonia auctorum de Marsilio Patavino,” it seems to be a reprint of the edition of Gomar.

In 1612 Daniel Patterson, of Danzig, published another edition of the Defensor, calling it a work very useful and necessary for politicians and all students of letters, and prefacing it with a history of the struggles between the popes and the emperors, and the share of Marsiglio therein. In 1613 Patterson had the same reprinted, not, however, under the title of the Defensor Pacis, but under that of Legislator Rounanus de Jutrisdictione et Potestate, tarn seculari, quam ecclesiastica, as a general treatise on the priestly, military, agricultural and other orders of the state. From these two editions by Patterson we see that the Defensor had ceased to be a mere weapon against the papacy, and had been taken up as a work on the state. Goldast, the great editor, in almost the same spirit incorporated it into his collection of texts on the ecclesiastical and imperial powers in 1614.

. . .From the two historical narratives thus presented, though necessarily incomplete, we may derive some estimate of the influence of the works of Ockam and of Marsiglio on their contemporaries and the men who came after them. We have seen that the popes and their supporters were in far greater fear of Marsiglio than of Ockam. It was Marsiglio whom they turned to refute. It was he who, as a certain cardinal thought, was the stumbling-block in the way of peace between the Emperor Louis and the popes. Ockam was also feared, but in far less degree. His theories attracted far less attention from the popes and their literary supporters. The errors of which he was accused were shared by a large number of men. They are never referred to as the errors of Ockam alone, but are always spoken of as those of ” Cesena, Ockam, Bonagratia, Thalheim and others.” Even as such they do not seem to have been strikingly original; one of them, at least, is exactly the same as an error of Marsiglio, which had been condemned before these men came into prominence.

Of Marsiglio’s strong influence on the Emperor Louis there is no doubt. It was he who formed the chief support of Louis’s expedition to Rome, and it was only after the failure of that expedition that the more moderate counsels of Ockam and others prevailed. Not less strong than his influence on his contemporaries was Marsiglio’s influence on the men who followed him. This is evidenced by the inquisitions held on his book, and by the several translations, numerous editions and frequent use of it.’ Of Ockam’s works we have found no translations, fewer editions and fewer cases of borrowing. If, then, Ockam was and has been better known than Marsiglio it has been because of his philosophical rather than his political works. In this respect he may be compared with Dante, whose De lVlonarchtia became well known more because it was written by the great poet than from any great value it had as a work on political theory.

Both the works of Ockam and those of Marsiglio failed to do that which Wiclif’s works did-they failed to reach the masses. It is exceedingly doubtful whether the democratic movements under Van Artevelde, Rienzi and Etienne Marcel had any such connection with the theories of Ockam and Marsiglio as had the Peasant’s Revolt with those of Wiclif. It is just as doubtful whether the anti-clerical movement in the German cities in the second half of the fourteenth century had any inspiration from controversial writers like Marsiglio and Ockam, who wrote in the first half. It was in the learned world that the influence of these two men was felt. It was here that Ockam’s philosophical doctrines took hold, and it was here that Marsiglio’s ” system of the ecclesiastical power and its relations to the temporal . . . . served as a starting point for all subsequent treatises on the ecclesiastical hierarchy.”

Marsiglio may have borrowed his theories of the state from Aristotle, but his theories of the relations between Church and state are original with himself. He did not borrow them from Ockam; the evidence against this is too strong and the only statement for it too weak. It is Marsiglio’s originality and the history of his famous work which have served in our own day to make him an international celebrity possessing an interest not only “for the Germans, the Italians and the French,” as Riezler says, but also for the English.

Video Title: The secularist theorists of the Empire: Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham. Source: Schwerpunkt. Date Published: December 11, 2021.