of 1324 and the autumn of 1326,1 Marsiglio of Padua, with the help of John of Jandun, published his Defensor Pacis, a work startlingly modern in its thought and reasoning. So utterly divergent is it from mediæval sentiment that it is small wonder that Pope Clement the Sixth, when he read it, exclaimed that he had never come across a worse heretic than this Marsiglio. The Italian physician, rector of the University of Paris, was forty-five years of age at this time, a man imbued with the Politics of Aristotle and with the arguments of the French apologists for Philip the Fair; he was in the Middle Age but not of it; a cold-blooded political philosopher, he was of the eighteenth, or of the twentieth, century rather than of the fourteenth. Some of his theories were realised at the Reformation, some in the political revolutions, some are still on the anvil of Time. His work is a defence of the State against the Church. The State is a community to ensure a good life in this world and in the next. The sovereign body is the community of the citizens or the majority of them; and if it be alleged that most men are fools, still a man often grasps an idea when it is put forth by another, and thus understands what he himself could neither have initiated nor discovered. One duty of the sovereign body is to make the laws necessary for the enforcement of right; a law is a rule, by whatever name known, enforced by a sanction. All are entitled to participate in the making of laws except minors, bondsmen, strangers, and women. Laws are best prepared by the old and experienced rather than by handicraftsmen; by them they should be presented to the assembly for discussion, before being passed, amended, or rejected. Another duty of the sovereign body is to appoint their ruler; he should be one who will conduct himself according to their will; he must be clever and capable, and supported by a sufficient body of troops to enforce obedience but not to usurp authority; it is for him to enforce the laws of which the sovereign body or their representatives declare the meaning; his correction and his removal rest with the sovereign body, but his slight deviations from the law should be winked at. All this was fine theory, far

1 Riezler, 196.

ahead of the times; it would have been passed in silence by the Church.

The head and front of Marsiglio's offending was when he came to deal with the relations between Church and State. It is to the interference of the Popes, of Clement the Fifth with Henry the Seventh, of Boniface the Eighth with Philip the Fair, of John the Twenty-second with Louis of Bavaria, that he attributes the trouble and unrest in the world. The Pope has assumed a primacy which Saint Peter never possessed over the other apostles; he bases his claim on the Donation of Constantine, which is vague and obsolete and restricted; on the plenitudo potestatis, which is not warranted by Scripture as pretended. The Emperors formerly regulated the election of Popes; and if they allowed themselves to be consecrated by the Pope, this gave him no more right over them than the Archbishop of Rheims has over the King of France. Christ bestowed on His apostles spiritual powers, but no coercive jurisdiction enabling them to interfere in temporal affairs; His kingdom was not of this world; He ordained His followers to teach His gospel and to administer the sacraments. The power of the keys, the power to loose and to bind, refers only to the sacrament of penance; and here the forgiveness of sins belongs to God alone; the priest cannot forgive a hypocrite nor refuse absolution to a penitent; he is merely the turnkey carrying out the orders of the Divine Judge. The Church is the community of all believers; the laity have as good a right as the priests to be styled viri ecclesiastici; all alike are subject to the temporal law, though bishops and priests ought to be punished more severely than others because they are more enlightened. Sins are to be admonished by the clergy, but their punishment belongs to God, and is reserved for the next world; even heresy can only be punished on earth so far as it is contrary to the temporal law. Excommunication, again, cannot be pronounced by any single priest or bishop; it is reserved for the community or for a general council; for Christ commanded not, when thy brother sin against thee, to tell it to the bishop or priest or the College of Cardinals, but to tell it to the Church. Moreover, all priests should follow their Master in

apostolic poverty and in contempt of this world; they should possess no real property; they should have no right to follow personal property into the hands of others; benefices belong to the patrons, not to the Church. The Catholic Faith rests on the Bible only, not on decrees or decretals of Popes or Cardinals; doubts as to the interpretation of the Scripture should be settled by a general council, on which laity and clergy alike sit; the council is convoked by the sovereign body, the Pope as Bishop of Rome presides, but has no coercive jurisdiction beyond what is conferred by the council.

The pretensions of the Popes against the Empire are then discussed. The shortsightedness of the Emperors in allowing themselves to be crowned and anointed had engendered in the Popes the pretension that their confirmation of the choice of the Electors is necessary, thereby making the seven Electors of as little account as if they were seven barbers or seven blind men; the authority of the King is derived from the sovereign body or their proctors. As a matter of fact, such papal confirmation is entirely unnecessary; the right conferred by election is complete and needs no recognition or confirmation by the Pope to supplement it.

"This remarkable work of Marsiglio,' says Creighton,1 'stands on the very threshold of modern history as a clear forecast of the ideas which were to regulate the future progress of Europe.' With this work in their hands the two students appeared at the Court at Nuernberg. By God!' said King Louis, who can have induced you to leave that land of peace and quiet for this warlike kingdom of uproar and trouble?' They explained. There was a consultation. Finally the King received them with open arms, appointed Marsiglio his physician, and soon installed him as his counsellor. I am a man of war,' said Louis, and understand nothing of sciences and learned subtleties.' In 1327 the King entered Italy, and Marsiglio, who was allowed to preach against the Pope, was soon in a position to carry his theories into practice.

6

Sciarra Colonna, who twenty-five years earlier had stood in the burning palace of Agnani, his sword pointed at the Pope's breast,' placed the crown of Empire on his head. It was the realisation of the theory of Marsiglio; it was also the first time a German King had ever received the sacred diadem from the people of Rome.1 A public parliament was held on the 18th April, and the Pope was deposed; Peter of Corbara, a Franciscan friar, was elected Pope by the people of Rome on the 12th May, and the Emperor set the crown on his head. Louis, however, was but a pinchbeck Emperor, a mere parody of Frederic the Second; and the proceedings at Rome must have appeared ridiculous in the eyes of all sober Christians. Frederic the Second was a man of moderation when compared with the rash revolutionary Louis of Bavaria.2 The revulsion soon came. The King was unable to make any headway against Robert of Naples. The fickle Romans turned against him. Louis, the anti-Pope, the anti-cardinals left Rome amid showers of stones, and the dominion of the rightful Pope was at once restored. Disaster dogged the Emperor's footsteps: his troops mutinied; his adversaries in Germany threatened to set up a new king; he was compelled to leave Italy; his journey to Rome had been utterly unsuccessful; its actual result was the extinction of the last shadow of respect enjoyed by the Empire, and the entire destruction of the dream of Dante and the Ghibelines, who had expected the salvation of Italy at the hands of the Roman Emperor.'

3

Louis had failed disastrously in his Italian expedition, but to his court at Munich there flocked all the most influential thinkers and writers of the day. Michael of Cesena, the General of the Franciscan Order, who counted Pope John a heretic because he exposed the absurdity of their theory of apostolic poverty, composed a 'Tractate against the errors of the Pope.' Like Marsiglio, he upheld a general council as superior in authority; a Pope may err, as many have erred, in faith and morals, but a council representing the Universal Church is free from error. Bonagratia of Bergamo, Ubertino of Casale, Francesco of Ascoli, and his namesake of Marca, 1 Gregorovius, vi. 147. 2 Ibid. vi. 159. 3 Ibid. vi. 173.

Heinrich of Thalheim, Parisian and Italian professors, English and German Franciscans—all were found at the Bavarian court. The most famous of all was the Englishman, William of Ockham, the nominalist leader who had finally settled the controversy of the schools. 'Defend me with your sword, and I will defend you with my pen,' was his greeting to the monarch-a greeting which was repeated three hundred years later by a much smaller divine to our own King James the First. Ockham took part in the active resistance to the Pope, and his writings are his defence and justification. He wrote as a mediæval philosopher, and hence his works, though they lack the modern thought and brilliance of Marsiglio, had much more influence with his contemporaries. He handed down a light which was never suffered to be extinguished, and which served as a beacon to pioneers of reform like Wyclif and Hus."1 He also holds that the Pope is fallible, but even a general council, to which women as well as men should be admitted, may also err; in which case, 'errante tota multitudine Christianorum possunt salvari promissiones Christi per parvulos baptizatos.'" Like Marsiglio, William of Ockham was not really in love with the imperial idea; all that is of importance to them is to erect the estate into an organic, consolidated force independent of, and in its own province superior to, that of the spirituality; and this done, they circumscribe even the spiritual part of the papal authority by making it in all respects subject to the general voice of Christendom.'3