Marsilio of Padua
Background: The papacy reached its peak in world affairs after it destroyed the imperial authority of the German monarchs (the Hohenstaufen line). However, this supremacy was to be short-lived under the succession of Pope Boniface VIII, author of the papal bull Unom Sanctum (which stated in its last line, “life is altogether a necessity of salvation for every human creature to be subject of the Roman Pontiff”).
The church’s decline in power stems from the conflict over money. The church needed more money from England and France and decided by papal bull (Clericos Laicos) that laymen do not have the authority to tax the clergy.
Philip IV of France accepted the challenge thrust at him by papal diplomacy and decree by actually kidnapping the Pope at his residence. Boniface died before he could be tried by the French clergy.
In fighting with the German emperors for supremacy, the popes were colliding with the past; in the struggle with the French monarchy, they were up against the strongest single political institution of the next six centuries: the sovereign national state.
The principal revolutionary changes in the late Middle Ages were:
- The growing vehemence of anti-clerical teaching;
- The decisive defeat of the papacy;
- The secularization of life;
- The rise of the bourgeoisie;
- The formation of national states.
The developments are most systematically reflected in Marsilio of Padua’s Defender of the Peace (1324) or Defensor Pacis.
In the discussion of forms of the state, Marsilio follows the Aristotelian models that there are good types and its perversions. But he differs radically from Aristotle by stating that in the good forms of government, the ruler governs in accordance with the will of the people. Conversely, the diseased forms of government are for the benefit of the rulers without the consent of the people. His break with Aristotle and the Middle Ages becomes expressly clear in his conception of law as the manifestation of proletariat authority.
The medieval tendency was expressed in St. Thomas Aquinas = “the law is an ordinance of reason for the common good.” For Marsilio:
“The law is the command of the legislator enforceable in the courts.”
See Holmes: “The laws are prophecies of the what the courts will do in fact and nothing more pretentious.” (Positivist conception of law.)
Marsilio believes that the “weightier part” of the citizenry should compose the office of legislation. In effect, therefore, the political impact of the individual citizen depends on whether he belongs to the “weightier part” of society, or whether he is merely a quantitative unit whose political influence is confined to the periodic act of voting.
He is aware of the argument, made then as now, that the majority of men are vicious, undiscerning and stupid, and that the few who are wise, learned, and virtuous should therefore rule. He agrees that the vicious and undiscerning should not make the law, but he denies that most citizens are vicious and undiscerning most of the time:
“All of most of them are of sound reason and have a right desire for the polity and for the things necessary for it to endure.”
“A minimum of optimism about human nature is a basic condition for any faith in democracy, modest and limited as it may be.”
He concedes that only a few have the ability to make wise laws, yet every citizen can be a proper judge of the law. Aristotle:
“The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook.”
Since the active citizens who form the political sovereign cannot themselves carry on the work of legislation, government and administration, there must be a group of citizens who act in the name of the citizenry. Marsilio distinguishes clearly the state as the source of sovereignty from the personnel and processes of government as the instrumentality of the sovereignty.
“Governments established by force or fraud are diseased.”
“The authority of the ruler derives its validity and existence from the discoverable fact of election, and a person becomes a ruler because he is elected, and ‘not by his knowledge of the laws, his prudence, or his moral virtue, although these are qualities of a perfect ruler.’
Marsilio also mentions that many men may possess these qualities yet lacking the formal and empirical authority by election, they are not rulers.
Marsilio’s most revolutionary doctrine is in his analysis of the church. It left a mark on Protestantism by its idea of a congressional authority in the church. The church is a community of believers (universitas fidelium) and as in the political community (universitas civium), the only source of authority is the body of its members.
He calls his treatise the Defender of the Peace because he sees the task of civil government primarily one of peace.
When the conception of the secular national state as the largest sovereign unit displaced the idea of universal papal and imperial authority, the Middle Ages came to a close.
