Overview

This book offers a sweeping, vivid re-examination of one of the Middle Ages' most daring and misunderstood thinkers: Marsilius of Padua. Long dismissed as a heretic, a radical, or a footnote in the imperial-papal conflicts of the fourteenth century, Marsilius emerges here as a central architect in the long history of Western political thought-a thinker whose ideas about sovereignty, community, and the limits of religious authority still resonate today. Across twenty chapters, the book traces Marsilius's world with narrative energy and scholarly depth. It explores the drama of his collaboration with Louis of Bavaria, the shockwaves caused by Defensor pacis, and the fierce reactions of popes, theologians, and universities. It follows the evolution of his ideas in Defensor minor, situates him among contemporaries like Dante, Ockham, and John of Paris, and shows how his vision of a Church grounded in the whole body of the faithful helped shape conciliarism, Renaissance humanism, Reformation polemic, and early modern theories of the state. Readers encounter Marsilius not only as a medieval polemicist but as a thinker whose insights anticipate modern constitutionalism, popular sovereignty, and the secular state. His insistence that coercive power belongs to the community, not the clergy, and that the Church is a spiritual body rather than a political empire, offers a strikingly fresh lens for understanding the perennial tensions between religion and politics. Clear, engaging, and richly contextualized, this book invites scholars, students, and general readers alike to rediscover Marsilius as a pivotal figure in the genealogy of modern political authority. It is both a historical journey and a timely reflection on the enduring question of who should rule-and why.

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