The beginning of the book entitled Defensor minor, edited by Master Marsiglio of Padua after the Defensor pacis major.

Chapter 1

[1] We have previously read in earlier works, according to the claims of the Master of the ‘Sentences’ [Peter Lombard], that priests have a certain power of binding and also of loosing, namely, of excommunicating sinners and cutting them off from spiritual as well as civil or temporal association [communicatio] and from fellowship with others of the faithful – powers which they call ‘jurisdiction’. It seems at least appropriate to examine what this jurisdiction is and how many types of it may be identified, and whether, according to any sense of the term, the jurisdiction of the emperor is due to bishops or priests.

[2] Just as the word indicates, therefore, ‘jurisdiction’ is the pronouncement of right [dictio iuris]; moreover, right is the same as law. Indeed, law is two-fold: it is sometimes divine, sometimes human. And taking law in its ultimate and proper meaning, as is written in Defensor pacis, Discourse 1, chapter 10, divine law is the immediate precept of God without human deliberation regarding voluntary human acts committed or omitted in the present world towards the best end or condition in the future world which human beings are suited to pursue. These are coercive precepts, I say, for transgressors in this world, under punishment or torment to be carried out in the future rather than the present world.

The reputation of Marsiglio of Padua (sometimes known by the Latinized version of his name, Marsilius) rests almost entirely on his authorship of the Defensor pacis (‘The Defender of the Peace’). Completed in 1324, the Defensor pacis has been an object of curiosity and controversy since its own century, both because it advocates a startlingly secularist concept of the origins and nature of the political community and because of its unwavering opposition to the powers and prerogatives of the church and the papacy as forces in temporal life. The fame of the Defensor pacis spread as its doctrines were borrowed by some later medieval authors, even as Marsiglio's teachings were also reviled in strident attacks by orthodox churchmen. When judged according to its innovations as well as its influence, the Defensor pacis must be counted in the first rank of contributions to the development of political theory during the Latin Middle Ages.

The Defensor pacis has consequently overshadowed Marsiglio's other writings. In addition to several works on metaphysical topics attributed to him, Marsiglio wrote two further political tracts: a recapitulation and synopsis of the main points of the Defensor pacis, entitled the Defensor [pacis] minor, and an historical survey of the origins and development of the Roman Empire, called De translatione Imperii (‘On the Transfer of the Empire’). The significance of these political writings is three-fold.

This volume presents five texts which were published in the Low Countries between 1570 and 1590, during the crucial decades of what is nowadays labelled, with understatement, the ‘Dutch Revolt’. From 1555 a series of revolutionary events led to the abjuration of Philip II by the States General of the Dutch provinces in 1581 and to the subsequent foundation of the ‘Dutch Republic of the Seven United Provinces’, one of the great powers of the seventeenth century.

Despite the general recognition that the rise of the Dutch Republic was of major political, cultural and economic importance for the course of European history, historians have tended to neglect the political thought of the Dutch Revolt. However, as more than 2,000 publications (published between 1555 and 1590) exemplify, the political debate of the Revolt was not only immense, but also comprehensive and, above all, passionate. The purpose of this volume is to make some of the most important texts of the Revolt available in a modern edition.

The first major issue which the protagonists of the Revolt had to confront was how to justify first the protest and resistance against the government of Philip II and eventually his abjuration by the States General. Closely related to the reflections on the limits of political obedience and the justice of political resistance was a fundamental debate on the true and desirable character of the Dutch political order.