M A BflTTiTfTH
720
M A BflTTiTfTH
God, it is true, remained the ultimate source of all
power, but it sprang immediately from the people,
who had in addition the power to legislate. Law was
the expression, not of the will of the prince, as John of
Paris taught, but of the will of the people, who, by the
voice of the majority, could enact, interpret, modify,
suspend, and abrogate it at will. The elected head of
the nation was possessed only of a secondary, instru-
mental, and executive authority. We thus arrive at
the theory of the Contrat Social. In the Church,
according to the Defensor Pacis", the faithful have
these two great powers — ^the elective and the legisla-
tive. They nominate the bishops and select those
who are to be ordained. The legislative power is, in
the Church, the right to decide the meaning of the old
Scriptures; that is the work for a general council, in
which the right of discussion and voting belones to the
fai^ful or their delegates. The ecclesiastical power,
the priesthood, comes directly from God and consists
essentially in the power to consecrate the Body and
Blood of Jesus Christ and remit sins, or, rather, to de-
clare them remitted. It is equal in all priests, each of
whom can communicate it by ordination to a subject
legitimately proposed by the community. Luther
would have recognized his theories in these heretical
assertions, and the Gallicans of later times would wil-
lingly have subscribed to such revolutionary declara-
tions. The two writers are just as audacious in their
exposition of the respective roles of the Empire and
the Church in Christian society and of the relations of
the two powers.
According to the idea of the State propounded by Marsilius all ecclesiastical power proceeded from the community and from the emperor, its principal repre- sentative, there being no limit to the rights of the lay State (cf. Franck, ** Journal des savants", March, 188:3; No6l Valois, "Histoire litt^raire de la France", XXXIII). As to the Church it has no visible head. St. Peter, he goes on, received no more power or au- thority than the other Apostles, and it is uncertain that he ever came to Rome. The pope has only the power of convoking an oecumenical council which is superior to him. His decrees are not binding; he can impose on the people only what the generajT council has decided ana interpreted. The community elects the parish priest and supervises and controls the clergy in the penormance of their duties; in a word — ^the community or the state is everything, the Church playing an entirely subsidiary part. It cannot leg- islate, adjudicate, possess goods, sell, or purchase without authorization; it is a perpetual minor. As is clear, we have here the civil constitution of the clergy. Marsilius, moreover, shows himself a severe and often unjust censor of the abuses of the Roman curia. Regardinj5 the relations between the emperor and the pope, it is maintained in the " Defensor Pa- cis", that the sovereign pontiff has no power over any man, except with the permission ot the emperor; while the emperor has power over the pope and the general council. The pontiff can act only as the au- thorized agent of the Roman people; all the goods of the Church belong by right to Caesar. This is clearly the crudest concept of the pagan empire, an heretical assault on the Church's constitution, and a shame- less denial of the rights of the sovereign pontiff to the profit of Cajsar. Dante, the Ghibelline theorist, is surpassed. Arnold of Brescia is equalled. William Occam could never have proposed anj-thing more revolutionary.
The pope was stirred by these heretical doctrines. In the Bull of 3 April, 1327, John XXII reproached Louis of Bavaria with having welcomed auos per^ ditionis filios et maledictionia alumnos (Denifle, ** Chart ", II, 301). On 9 April be suspended and exoom- municiitod thi'in (/' Thesaurus novus anccdotorum ", ii, Gl)2). A conmiibhion, appointed by the pope at AvigMo.., condemned on 23 October five oi the
propositions of MaFsilius in the foUo^nng terms: I)
Th&Be reprobates do not hesitate to affirm in ytha.t is
related of Christ in the Gospel of St. Matthew, to wit
that He paid tribute . . . tnat he did so, not throu^
condescension and liberaUty, but of necessity — an
assertion that runs counter to the teaching of the Gos-
pel and the words of our Saviour. If one were to be-
lieve these men. it would follow that all the property
of the Church belongs to the emperor, and that he
may take possession of it again as his own; 2) These
sons of Belial are so audacious as to affirm that the
Blessed Apostle St. Peter received no more authority
than the other Apostles, that he was not appointed
their chief, and further that Christ gave no bead to
His Churcn, and appointed no one as His vicar here
below — all which is contrary to the Apostolic and
evangelic truth; 3) These children of Belial do not fear
to assert that the emperor has the right to appoint, to
dethrone, and even to punish the pope — ^which is un-
doubtedly repugnant to all right; 4) These frivolous
and lying men say that all priests, be they pc^>es.
archbishops, or simple priests are possessed of equal
authority and equal jurisdiction, by the institution of
Christ; that whatever one possesses beyond another is
a concession of the Emperor, who can moreover re-
voke what he has granted, — ^which assertions are cer-
tainly contrary to sacred teaching and savour of
heresy; 5) these blasphemers say that the universal
Church may not inflict a coactive penalty on any per-
son unless with the emperor's permission. All the
pontifical propositions opposed to the declarations of
Marsilius of Padua and Jean de Jandun are proved at
length from the Scriptures, traditions, and history.
These declarations are condemned as being contra^
to the Holy Scriptures, dangerous to the Cathohc
faith, heretical, and erroneous, and their authors Mar-
silius and Jean as being undouotedly heretics and even
heresiarchs (Denzingcr, ** Enchiridion ", 423, ed. Bann-
wart, 495; Noel Valois, "Histoire litt^raire de'la
France"^ XXXIII, 592).
As this condemnation was falling on the bead of Marsilius, the culprit was coming to Italy in the em- peror's train and ne saw his revolutionary ideas being put into practice. Louis of Bavaria had himseu crowned by Colonna, syndic of the Roman people; he dethroned John XXlI, replacing him by the Friar Minor, Peter of Corbara, whom he invested with tem- poral power. At the same time he bestowed the title of imperial vicar on Marsilius and permitted him to persecute the Roman clergy. The pope of Avignon
Erotested twice against the sacrilegious conduct of oth. The triumph of Marsilius was, however, of short duration. Abandoned by the emperor in Octo- ber, 1336, he died towards the end of 1342. Among his principal works, the "Defensor Pads", which we possess in twenty manuscripts, has been printed fre- quently and translated into various langua^. The
- ' Defensor Minor "^ a r6sum6 of the precedmg work,
compiled by Marsihus himself, has just been recoverea in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Canon. Misoell., 188). It throws light on certain points in the larger work; but has not yet been published. "De translations Imperii Romani " has been printed four tim^i in Ger- many and once in England. "De jurisdictione Im- peratoris in causa matrimoniali " has been edited by Preher and by Goldast (Monarchia sancti Rom. Im- perii, II, c. 1283). The influence of the "Defensor pacis " was disastrous, and Marsilius may well be reck- oned one of the fathers of the Reformation.
Baudrillart. Revue d'hist. et de Ktt. reliaimue, 1808. p. 320; Batle, Diet. crU.. Ill (1741), 379-80; Bbsold in Hittor. ZeU- M-Ar. XXXVI (1876), 343-7; Birck. Maraiglio von Pocfua und Alvaro Pelayo m>er Papst und Kaiaer, Kirche und Stoat in Jahrtber. kith. BuraerBchule, Mulheim a Rh. (18S8); BT7x<jnm, ffUl. Univ. Paris, IV (1669). 974-5; CAflTBLumi, La doitrima ddlo 9tato in Marsiglio da Padova (Asti. 1898); Dbniflb, Chart, univert., II (Paris, 1891). 158, 303; DdLLXNOXR, PapMfabein MiUel. (1863). 92-<J; DtiFW. B. a. •.. XFV (1701). 226-30: FABRiaus, B. M. oe. V (1786), 102-3; Fl»rr, Food. tMoL, III
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