MARSILIUS, mar-sil'i-Us, OF PADUA: With William of Occam, the most important of the learned publicists who supported Louis the Bavarian in his struggle with Rome. He was born at Padua soon after 1270; d. between Oct. 28, 1336, and Apr. 10, 1343. His family name was either De Raimundinis, as his friend Albertus Mussatus calls

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him, or De Mainardinis, as official church documents and other contemporary sources have. In choice of a vocation he hesitated between law and medicine, apparently served the houses of della Scala in Verona and Visconti in Milan for a while, and by 1312 was in Paris with a master's degree and priest's orders. Here he fell in with William of Occam and John of Jandun, and all three took an active share in the controversy which raged so fiercely under John XXII., especially after 1322, in the Franciscan order with reference to the poverty of Christ and the apostles, taking the side of the strict Observantists against the pope. Though Marsilius escaped the imprisonment that befell Occam and others, he was undoubtedly in some danger, and looked to the emperor, Louis IV. the Bavarian, for protection. Louis was at that time in conflict with the pope, and welcomed Marsilius and John of Jandun to his side. They were soon busy with the preparation of the great work which was to make the name of Marsilius remembered, the Defensor pacis, and in two months had it ready to take to Germany to the emperor. This was between 1324 and 1326, so that the date of a Vienna manuscript (June 24, 1324) may be the exact one. Louis took them into his suite, declaring later that he had welcomed them simply as accomplished scholars who might be useful to him, without committing himself to their theological subtleties. The influence of Marsilius was probably important in determining Louis to march toward Rome and to set up the Franciscan Peter of Corbara as antipope under the title of Nicholas V. Marsilius himself was named papal vicar of Rome, and is reported also to have been appointed archbishop of Milan. The failure of the imperial expedition ended the preponderant influence of Marsilius. Louis humbled himself to ask for a reconciliation with the pope whom he had deposed, and promised that Marsilius also should submit or forfeit the imperial protection. Fortunately for Marsilius, neither John nor his successors, Benedict XII. and Clement VI., accepted Louis' offer.

In his oration of Apr. 10, 1343, the pope declared that he had never read a more shockingly heretical book than the Defensor pacis, while Flacius, on the other hand, in his Catalogus testium, says that among the older (i.e., pre-Reformation) works there is no more sound, scholarly, bold and pious book against the papal power. The work as a whole may be divided into two parts, the first book developing, on an Aristotelian basis, the political theory, and the second dealing with the constitution of the Church, the relations of which to the State are finally discussed. For his age, Marsilius is strikingly bold and sharp-sighted, far surpassing his forerunners Dante, Johannes Parisius, etc. In abstract politics he lays down the aphorism that the sovereignty of the people, or a majority of them; is the source of all power. In spiritual things he affirms the validity of the New Testament as law, but says that it is to be enforced only by internal means, not by temporal punishment. Speaking of dignities in the Church, he deduces from the New Testament and Jerome the assertion that bishops and presbyters were originally the same, and derives the later episcopal power from human convention, denying also that one bishop surpasses another by any divine right. He vehemently combats the claim of the hierarchy to withdraw all its property and its followers from secular jurisdiction, and asserts the right of the "human legislator" to use wholly or in part such temporal possessions as are over what the Church needs for divine worship, the support of the clergy, and the necessities of the poor. He looks for reformation of the ills of the time from councils and synods consisting of bishops, priests, and faithful laymen, and called by the secular authority. These remarkable conclusions, though proceeding rather from Aristotelian reasoning than, as in Luther's case, from pious instinct, are impor tant features of the preparation for the Reformation.

(F. Sander.)

Bibliography: Apparently the editio princeps of the Defensor was Basel, 1522. Subsequent editions were Frankfort, 1592, 1692; Heidelberg, 1599, 1612; and also in M. Goldast, Monarchia, ii. 154-312, Frankfort, 1614. An Eng. transl. is by Wyllyam Marshall, London, 1553. Consult: P. E. Meyer , Étude sur Marsile de Padoue, Paris, 1870; G. Lechler, Johann von Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation, Leipsic, 1873; S. Riezler, Die litterarischen Widersacher der Päpste, ib. 1874; C. Müller, Der Kampf Ludwigs des Baiern mit der römischen Kurie, 2 vols., Tübingen, 1879-1880; B. Labanca, Marsilio da Padova, Padua, 1882; Vatikanische Akten zur deutschen Geschichte in der Zeit Kaiser Ludwig des Bayern, Innsbruck, 1891; Pastor, Popes, i. 76-81, 86, 159, 178; Neander, Christian Church, v. 25-35, 38, 93, 147, consult index for other references; KL, viii. 908-911.