Marsilius Of Padua Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Marsilius of Padua (1275–1343) was an Italian scholar, educated as a physician, whose intellectual outlook was typical of the secular, educated classes residing in the Italian city-states of his time. His major political work, The Defender of the Peace (Defensor Pacis, 1324), addressed such questions as the nature of the secular state, the idea of popular sovereignty, and the causes of political order and disorder. But his most important contribution was his account of the separation of secular and religious authority and his claims regarding popular sovereignty.

Marsilius was influenced by Aristotle, particularly the Politics, but also by later Averroist philosophers. The influence of Aristotle is reflected in his secular understanding of politics in the temporal world, the importance of empirical observation, and his suspicion of claims to dogmatic obedience to established belief. Like many medieval political thinkers, Marsilius accepted Aristotle’s three-fold division of regimes into those that embody rule of one, rule of the few, or rule of the many. Each type of regime may exist in either its ideal form or a corrupted version. Hence, rule of the one can be either a monarchy or despotism; rule of the few aristocracy or oligarchy; rule of the many either constitutionalism or mob rule. What distinguishes any type of regime is whether those in authority rule in the common good (the ideal form) or whether they rule in their own interests at the expense of the community (the corrupt version). This distinction became one of the defining criteria for distinguishing between tyranny and just political systems.

Marsilius also showed the influence of Aristotle when he argued for a radical separation between reason, philosophy, and knowledge on the one hand and faith and theology on the other. The latter, being nonrational, were irrelevant for temporal issues. Temporal affairs are known through human reason and governed by positive, that is, human-made law enacted by the body of citizens, its “prevailing part,” or its representatives. In contrast, divine and natural law comes from God directly and concerns punishments and rewards in the world to come. Hence, Marsilius argued for limitations on the authority of the church in temporal affairs. Indeed, Marsilius actually claimed that one of the primary threats to civil peace came from those “Roman bishops” (i.e., popes) who sought to extend their coercive jurisdiction to temporal matters.

The distinction between natural/divine law and positive law further led Marsilius to emphasize the importance of the legislator with regard to temporal, secular affairs and highlighted two functions. The first is that of the “primary” or “absolute” legislator and refers to the source of ultimate or final constitutional authority. The second lies in the making of specific laws. Marsilius argued that the former lies with the people as a whole. In the making of specific laws, the people play a role in ratifying or rejecting laws passed by their representatives. In both cases the people as a whole are likely to make better decisions than a small minority alone, and their authorship of the laws is likely to guarantee greater compliance.

In separating reason and faith, limiting spiritual power to nonworldly affairs, and emphasizing the role and consent of the people in political matters, Marsilius helped lay the foundations for the separation of religious and secular authority and representative government that would subsequently be found in the works of modern thinkers, including Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

Bibliography:

Ebenstein,William, and Alan Ebenstein. “Marsilio of Padua.” In Great Political Thinkers: Plato to the Present, 6th ed. Edited by William Ebenstein and Alan Ebenstein, 262–280. Belmont, Calif.:Thomson/Wadsworth, 2000.
Gerwith, Alan. Marsilius of Padua:The Defender of the Peace. Vol. 1, Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.
Marsilius of Padua. The Defender of the Peace. Edited and translated by Annabel Brett. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Nederman, Cary. Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor Pacis. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.

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