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>I am working on a paper for my graduate studies regarding Marsilius De Padua,

>essentially doing a close reading of the first discourse of the Defensor

>Pacis. My question is this: Is there any evidence that folks like Locke and

>Hobbes read this work?

Hi, Ken.
While it is some years since I studied Marsiglio et al, I'm sure that other list members will graciously correct any errors I make.
I think that while we cannot say for certain that Hobbes and Locke read 'Defensor Pacis', we can point out some of the aspects of the political milieu in which they wrote which would have made it probable that he was on their reading lists, that is the English Civil War, interregnum, and subsequent consitutional crises up until 1688, on which the two were on opposing sides, Hobbes advocating absolutism, and Locke democracy. If you take into account that Marsiglio 'does a u-turn' in the 'Defensor Minor', and argues by syllogisms why the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig IV was the rightfully elected universal ruler, as the people of Rome had voted this onerous duty on Augustus in the Lex Regia, then you will get some idea of the political solution Hobbes was trying to formulate for C17th England, and that which Locke opposed, and also an insight into how Marsiglio's seemingly contradictory arguments assisted both constitutionalists.
Secondly, during the English civil war, and afterwards, the problems of how to govern a monarchy with no king, but all the other institutions and apparatus of law making under that system of government still in place (English legal memory officially extending backwards until 1189), and how to quickly create some kind of Oligarchic or Republican system of government understanably aroused a great deal of interest in earlier political thinkers such as Dante, Marsiglio the Italian jurists, and William of Ockham, who had all been influenced in their ideas by being placed at the core of great political crises, the factional inter-city-state conflicts of Italy, and the bitter contestation over possession of Italy, and secular primacy over Europe between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy, which Dante experienced as embittered Florentine exile, and Ockham and Marsiglio as political 'asylum seekers' or refugees exiled to the court of Ludwig IV.
Another reason for suspecting that Marsiglio was on the reading list of C17th English philosophers lies in the fact that since the Henrician and Elizabethan Reformations, the anti-papal stance of thinkers such as Dante and Marsiglio, and their arguments that the Pope's authority was purely spiritual, with a temporal role limited only to affairs of the Church incidentally connected to matters of state, and that God might directly infuse either monarchs with authority and inspiration, or likewise direct the 'supreme human legislator' to wise decisions-making , had made them essential reading for an English crown, and later Commonwealth government attempting to first disserver England, church and state, from Papal authority, and consolidate and perpetuate this political and religious autonomy. Writers like Thomas More, in Utopia, and Milton in Nova Solymnis (Or the New Jerusalem), are good examples of those influenced by the Italian thinkers and Ockham, who, like Mar! siglio and Dante postulate idealised worlds where church and state know their place. By the time Locke and Hobbes were writing, after the interregnum, as a look at any post 1662, but pre-1834 (I think they were changed in the reforms of this year, subsequent to Catholic Emancipation) Book Of Common Prayer will show you, anti-Catholicism, and anti-Popery (especially the latter), were wholly incorporated into the ideology of Church and state in England, with frequent denuciations of the decadence and worldliness of the Catholic Church, couched in similar terms to Dante and Marsiglio, corruption, financial rapacity, poltical tyranny, carnality &c, all staples of the rhetoric of English Church and State preached every Sunday in Churches throughout England.
If we hadn't exported our revolution across the Atlantic a century after all this, or at least exiled its many of its chief thinkers, then who knows, we may have seen Marsiglio's near perfect democracy established over here!
Best wishes
Graham Mallaghan
University of Kent at Canterbury.
>From: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-To: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Casting the net wide enough
>Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 09:07:53 EST
>
>To the list:
>
>I am in need of some help, and while this request may not fall completely
>under the purview of this list, I am trying a number of lists to see if I can
>find someone to give me a hand.
>
>I am working on a paper for my graduate studies regarding Marsilius De Padua,
>essentially doing a close reading of the first discourse of the Defensor
>Pacis. My question is this: Is there any evidence that folks like Locke and
>Hobbes read this work? There are some fascinating similarities in some of
>the ideas presented, and I am wondering whether there might be a connection.
>If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would be appreciative.
>
>Ken A. Grant
>South Bend, IN

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