Now that we have separated out these understandings of law, we wish to show its necessity in terms of ends, when it is taken in its last and most proper signification. The principal necessity is civil justice and the common advantage, but a secondary necessity is a kind of security for those in the position of prince – especially by hereditary succession – and the long duration of their principate. The first necessity, then, is as follows: since it is necessary to institute within a polity that without which civil judgements cannot be made in a way that is simply speaking correct, and also that through which they are passed in due fashion and saved from defect insofar as this is possible for human acts. Law is a thing of this sort, to the extent that the prince has been limited to passing civil judgements in accordance with it. Therefore it is necessary to institute law within a polity. The first proposition of this demonstration is almost self-evident, and very close to being incapable of demonstration. The certainty of it should and can also be understood from chapter 5 of this discourse, section 7. The second proposition will become clear in the following way: since for a judgement to be completely good there is required, on the part of judges, both a righteous affection and a true cognisance of the matters to be judged, the opposites of which corrupt civil judgements. For a perverted affection on the part of the judge, like hate or love or avarice, corrupts his desire. But these things are kept out of the judgement, and it is saved from them, when the judge or prince has been limited to passing judgements in accordance with the laws, because the law lacks all perverted affection. For it has not been made with an eye to friend or foe, help or hurt, but universally with regard to the individual acting well or badly in civil terms.

We have now spoken, therefore, of the productive cause of the primary priestly authority, which we called ‘essential’. But we still have to come to a conclusion on the subject of the secondary authority, sc. that by which some of their number are placed over a certain defined number of priests or a people or both in a certain defined province or place; again, on what grounds it might be appropriate for them to distribute certain temporal goods (called ‘ecclesiastical benefices’ above); yet again, how they or some of them have acquired coercive jurisdictions; and also to whom it might more appropriately belong to determine any doubtful senses of Holy Scripture, and in what manner. Forwhen all of this has become sufficiently clear, what we proposed to make plain from the outset of this work will also become apparent.

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However, before we pursue each of our proposed questions individually, it will be helpful first to outline the way in which bishops or priests were instituted and allocated in the status and origins of the early church; for it is from here that the other practices were afterwards derived. Now the principle of all these things should be taken from Christ, who is the ‘head’ and the ‘rock’ upon which the catholic church is founded according to what the Apostle says in Ephesians 4 and 5, and I Corinthians 10. And the gloss says the same on that passage of Matthew 16: ‘upon this rock I will build my church.’ This ‘head of the church’, I say, this ‘rock’ and ‘foundation’, sc. Christ, conferred the priesthood upon all the apostles, together with episcopal authority over all nations and peoples, without allocating any of them to a certain defined place or people in such a way that it would be illicit for that apostle to preach wherever he liked; even though by their own mutual arrangement or at the ordinance of the holy spirit, some of them were sent more to the gentiles, others to the circumcision.

So said the pope, Clement VI, in a collatio of 1343 which incidentally also informs us that ‘the heresiarch’ is dead. What had Marsilius written to shock the pope into putting him on a level with the most infamous heretics of the Western church? And why, nearly seven centuries later, has his Defensor pacis come to be seen as one of the canonical texts in Western political thought?

Life and works

Marsilius was born about 1275–80 in the northern Italian city of Padua, in the region south of Venice known as the March of Treviso. He came from the Mainardini, a family of some prominence in the civic administration of Padua: his father was a notary and others of his relatives were also involved in the legal profession. Marsilius did not follow the family trend, however, choosing instead to study medicine. We know that at some point he developed a friendship with the famous Paduan poet and historian Albertino Mussato. But the details of his early life are obscure, and we first find Marsilius for certain in Paris in 1313. Here he is recorded as rector of the University of Paris, a position that was always chosen from among members of the Faculty of Arts. At Paris he formed a close association with another master of arts, John of Jandun. Initial attempts to secure ecclesiastical patronage seem to have been quite successful, as in 1316 he was promised the first vacant benefice in Padua by the newly appointed pope, John XXII. However, it appears that this prize never in fact materialised and Marsilius continued to make his living teaching in Paris.

It remains now to show that Christ's foremost apostles held and taught the same opinion, and first of all Paul in II Timothy 2, warning him (whom he had instituted as priest or bishop) not to involve himself in worldly affairs. Paul says: ‘No man that warreth for God entangleth himself in the affairs of this world.’ Here the gloss according to Ambrose has: ‘Because no man who fights for God in spiritual things enmeshes himself in any kind of secular business, since God cannot be divided between two opposing servants, just as no man can be a servant to two masters.’ And he said ‘any kind’ of secular business, with no exceptions. Since, therefore, the most secular of all business is the office of prince or coercive judgement over contentious acts (because it orders and regulates all secular affairs or human secular and civil acts, as demonstrated in chapter 15 of the first discourse), it is this that the Apostle commands is most of all to be avoided by him who ought to be a soldier for God, sc. in ministering spiritual things: such as any bishop and priest ought to be.

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The following passage from the Apostle in I Corinthians 6 reveals that this was indeed his view, when he said: ‘If then ye have judgements of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.’ For there the Apostle was talking to all the faithful and to the church most properly so-called, viz. in its final signification. The gloss according to Ambrose and Augustine explains the passage as follows: ‘“If then ye have judgements of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed” i.e. certain men who are wise, but nonetheless of less worth’ (supply: than priests or teachers of the gospel). And as to why not the ministers of the gospel, it gives the reason: ‘For the apostles, who travelled around, had no leisure for such things. Therefore it was wise, faithful and holy men who stayed in their areas that he wanted to examine such matters, not those who journeyed hither and thither in the cause of the gospel.’

What remains for this discussion is to say something of the final cause for the sake of which the true priesthood was instituted in communities of the faithful. For this cause is the tempering of those human acts that result from an imperative of cognition or desire, both immanent and transitive, inasmuch as it is on the basis of them that the human race is ordered towards the best life of the world to come. And on this account one should note that although the first man, viz. Adam, was principally created for the glory of God just like other creatures, his creation was nevertheless singled out from the other species of corruptible creatures: for he was created in the image and likeness of God, so that he would be capable of and a participant in eternal happiness after the life of this present world. He was, furthermore, created in a state of innocence or original justice and even of grace, as some of the saints and certain notable doctors of holy Scripture say with apparent likelihood. And had he remained in this state, the institution or differentiation of civil functions would not have been necessary either to him or to his posterity, in that nature would have brought forth for him in the earthly paradise or pleasure-garden things needful and pleasurable for the sufficiency of this life, without any penalty or demand upon him.

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But because he destroyed his own innocence or original justice and grace by eating of the tree that had been forbidden him, transgressing in this act the divine command, he fell in an instant into guilt and misery or penalty, the penalty I mean of being deprived of the eternal happiness to which he had ultimately been ordained by the blessing of the God of glory, along with any posterity of his. From the transgression of the command just mentioned he deserved furthermore that all his descendants should be generated in lust, in which and from which every man subsequently is conceived and born, contracting from this the sin that in the Christian religion is called ‘original’.

In chapters 6, 7, 9 and 11 of this discourse we determined the range and nature of the powers that priests have; again, in chapters 15 and 16 we discussed their mutual equality or inequality in power and dignity; and again in the previous chapter we said something of the priority or principality that it is expedient and appropriate for one bishop, church or college of priests and clergy to have over all the others, and its origin and development. But we also said something of its hidden and creeping transfer into a form and species of priority that is inappropriate for it, going as far as the most onerous and insufferable excess of taking over secular powers, as well as a boundless and intolerable desire for principate to which they have already and explicitly given voice.

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And seeing that not a small element in their past and future occupation of secular powers and principates (for which the Roman bishops strive with all their might, however little it is due to them, as is plain for all to see) was, is and will go on being that sophistic commonplace, viz. by which they ascribe to themselves the title of ‘plenitude of power’ – which is furthermore the source of that piece of misreasoning whereby they try to conclude that kings, princes and individuals are subject to them in coercive jurisdiction – it will be as well to examine thoroughly this plenitude of power. Firstly we need to separate or distinguish its modes; secondly, to inquire whether plenitude of power belongs to the Roman pontiff or any other bishop in one or more of its modes; thirdly, in what signification of the term the Roman bishop first assumed it for himself; and finally how he has slipped from there into assuming other conceptions (or deceptions, unfortunately), prejudicial to all princes and subjects who live a civil life; and how and upon whom this same pontiff has used, does use, and very likely will go on using them if he is not stopped.

There is a familiar doubt about what has been said, viz. whether it is better for those who live a civil life, and who are instituting a monarch over themselves by election, to set this man up as prince together with all his posterity (which is usually called hereditary succession), or to adopt him as prince solely for his own lifetime; and when he dies or is in any other way justly deprived of his principate, always to hold a new election every time round with respect to the future prince. For some have thought that the first manner of institution is preferable, and this for certain apparent reasons. Firstly, because a monarch by hereditary succession will take more care of the commonwealth, as it is in some sense his own and his inheritance; but not so a monarch whose own heir is not agreed upon as the future prince. Hence Aristotle says, Politics II chapter 1, about half-way through: ‘That which is common to many receives little care; for men take greatest care of what is their own, and less of what is common than as much as concerns each.’ Again in the same chapter, towards the end: ‘For there are two things that most of all arouse in men tender care and affection: that which is their own, and that which they love.’ Still further in the second chapter of the same book he says: ‘Yet again in respect of pleasure as well, it is impossible to express how much difference it makes to think that something is one's own.’

Again in respect of the principal question: because the successors of a monarch will apparently tyrannise over their subjects less than those who have just been elected, since they have become accustomed to the position of prince and do not think anything new has come to them, on account of which they should be more exalted and despise their subjects. Whereas those who are always newly elected are, like the newly rich, often prone to arrogance.

We have so far put forward, by way of preliminaries, a global account of the parts of the city; and we have said that it is in their action and perfect mutual intercommunication (not subject to any impediment from outside either) that the tranquillity of the city consists. We now take up the subject of these parts again, so that through a richer elucidation of them (from their activities or ends as well as from the other causes appropriate to them) the causes of tranquillity and its opposite might be further clarified. We shall say, then, that the parts or offices of the city are of six kinds, as Aristotle said in Politics VII, chapter 7: agriculture, manufacture, the military, the financial, the priesthood and the judicial or councillor. Three of these, viz. the priesthood, the military and the judicial, are parts of the city in an unqualified sense, and in civil communities they are usually called the notables. The others are called parts in a broad sense, in that they are functions necessary to the city according to the opinion of Aristotle in Politics VII, chapter 7. And the multitude of these is usually called plebeian. These, then, are the more familiar parts of the city or realm, to which all the others can appropriately be reduced.

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Even though the necessity of these parts was stated in the previous chapter, we nevertheless wish to affirm it again in a more definitive fashion: taking it as demonstrated earlier, from what is self-evident, that the city is a community established in order that the human beings within it may live and live well. Now we earlier demarcated two modes of this ‘living’: one, the life or living of this world, viz. the earthly; two, the living or life of another or future world. On the basis of these two modes of living, which man desires as ends, we shall identify the necessity of the distinction between the parts of the civil community.

But one might well raise a doubt about what we have said. For if (as shown earlier) jurisdiction over all those who must be constrained in this present life by coercive judgement, and the imposition and exaction of penalties in goods or in person, belongs to the prince alone by the authority of the human legislator, then the coercive judgement of heretics or those who are otherwise infidel or schismatic, as well as the imposition, exaction and allocation of penalties in goods and in person, will belong to this prince. But this seemingly presents itself as a difficulty. For since it apparently belongs to the same authority to recognise, to judge and to correct a misdeed, and it belongs to a priest (i.e. a priest or bishop) to discern the crime of heresy, and no one else: it will certainly seem, then, that the coercive judgement or restraint of this crime and others like it belongs to a priest or bishop alone. Moreover, the judgement and exaction of penalty upon a delinquent apparently belongs to him against whom, or against whose law, the delinquent has sinned. But this is a priest or bishop: for he is the minister and judge of divine law, against which any heretic, schismatic or other infidel inherently sins, whether the sinner be a collective body or an individual person. It remains, therefore, that this judgement will belong to the priest and not to the prince. And this seems to be the explicit opinion of Saint Ambrose in his first Letter to the Emperor Valentinian; but because he is apparently of this opinion throughout almost the entire sequence of that letter, we have omitted to quote it for the sake of brevity.

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For our part, let us say in accordance with what we decided earlier that anyone who sins against divine law should be judged, corrected and constrained according to that law.

We have just shown in a figurative way, then, that Christ and his apostles on their way through this world taught and observed the status of poverty and humility. Moreover all the faithful should hold as certain that every teaching or counsel of Christ and the apostles was in some way meritorious in respect of eternal life. So it seems in every way appropriate to inquire into their poverty, what it was, of what nature, and how great, so that it should not be concealed from those on the same journey who wish to imitate them in it.

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Attempting an investigation of this subject, therefore, we shall first say what is this thing called poverty or being poor, and how many variations it has; likewise with being rich. For these seem sometimes to be opposed to each other in the sense of a disposition and its privation, and sometimes as contraries. We shall then distinguish each of these terms into its various modes and give descriptions of them, so that if there is any such thing as meritorious poverty, and any scale of perfection within its various modes, we may be able to see which is the highest or first of them. Now everyone calls a man ‘rich’ if he has licit or rightful power or dominion or possession of temporal things, which are called ‘riches’, either in common or privately or both, while in contrast they call a man ‘poor’ if he lacks such goods. Therefore, to avoid the opinion we want to develop turning out ambiguous because of the variety of usage of some of the terms we have just mentioned (and which we shall need to use for our purpose), let us first distinguish between their significations or modes. These terms are: ‘right’, ‘dominion’, ‘possession’, ‘proper’ and ‘common’, ‘rich’ and ‘poor’.

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Let us begin, then, by distinguishing the significations of ‘right’, since we shall need them in distinguishing and identifying the other terms, but not the other way round.

The remaining and final matter for this discourse is to resolve the reasons that we introduced, also in chapter 3 of this discourse, in support of the error of those who say that priests or bishops, as such, have coercive jurisdictions, and that the highest of all coercive jurisdictions in this world belongs to the Roman bishop, again as such.

To the first objection, then, when it was said: Just as is the body in relation to the soul, so is the prince of the body to the prince of the soul; this proposition is false taken as having universal application. For although the soul is distinct from the body because the soul is not the body, there is however no prince of the body who is not also in some way a prince of the soul, and vice versa, if we take prince strictly; as is apparent in chapters 8 and 9 of this discourse.

If indeed by ‘the prince of the body’ we are to understand, by way of metaphor, a physician who undertakes the care of it as a doctor in an operative sense and in respect of the acts of its irrational and nutritive part; and if by ‘the prince of the soul’ we are to understand one who is a physician and a learned doctor or instructor in a practical sense with regard to the acts of the rational and appetitive part, both in and for the status of this present world (such as are the doctors of the human sciences or disciplines) and for the status of the future world (such as are pastors and priests); then the proposition just-stated, taken as having nonspecific application, can be conceded – since taken as having universal application it would always be open to many objections. For the soul in relation to the body, and again the rational in relation to the irrational, have many differences which the doctor or carer in respect of the one does not have in relation to the doctor or carer in respect of the other.

I want now to show that it belongs solely to the authority of the faithful human legislator who lacks a superior (or to that of him or them to whom the said legislator has granted this power) to call a general council, to determine the persons suitable to it, and to assemble, hold, and cause it to be completed according to due form; as also to constrain, licitly in accordance with divine and human law, those who resist gathering and performing the said necessary and useful tasks, and those too who transgress the measures that have been determined and ordered in the said council: priests as much as non-priests, clergy as much as non-clergy. These points have already been decided in chapter 15 of the first discourse and chapters 4, 5, 9 and 17 of this, in which it was shown by demonstration and thenmade certain by the authority of Scripture that coercive jurisdiction over all indifferently (priests and non-priests), the determination and approval of persons, and all institution in offices, are a matter for the authority of the human faithful legislator alone, and not that of any priest or college of priests by itself, as such. Nonetheless, we want now to urge these same points with reference to the already-mentioned Codex of Isidore in many places, and especially those in which it narrates things that were done in harmony with divine law and right reason.

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Firstly, therefore, in the chapter entitled: ‘Here begins the preface to the Nicene Council,’ where it says: ‘He’ (viz. Constantine) ‘orders Arius to come before 318 bishops seated and them’ sc. the bishops ‘to judge of his propositions.’ See here that the bishops and priests gathered together in the above-mentioned council at the order of the legislator. The same, again, in the chapter entitled: ‘Here begins the council of 630 bishops,’ where it says: ‘The holy and great and venerable synod, which by the grace of God was gathered together as a result of a decree of the most pious emperors Valentinian and Marcian.’

Making a start, then, from what was said earlier, we shall in this chapter first show that no one of the apostles had any pre-eminence with regard to the others in essential dignity, sc. the priestly dignity given him by Christ. Next, that this was not the case in respect of any other form of institution either, which we called secondary, and by the same token still less in any coercive jurisdiction given him directly by Christ; although something close to this has already been adequately demonstrated in chapters 4 and 5 of this discourse. Furthermore, we shall deduce of necessity from these points that no one of the bishops their successors has, individually, any of the authority or power just-mentioned over his other fellow-bishops or fellow-priests; and that the opposite of this cannot be convincingly established on the strength of the words of Scripture, but rather our own proposition. Finally – and this is what we are ultimately working towards in this and the previous chapter – we shall deduce that these forms of institution, which we have frequently called secondary, are necessarily a matter for the faithful human legislator as being in itself the productive cause of them, just as it is of the other parts of the city.

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The first proposition, therefore, is persuaded from Luke 22. For in giving the apostles the power to enact the sacrament of the eucharist, Christ says to them: ‘This is my body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me,’ i.e., have the power of doing this, but nevertheless pronouncing similar words whenever you have the duty to perform this act, viz.: ‘This is my body.’ And he did not address these words more to Saint Peter than to the others. For Christ did not say: Do this (you personally) and give the other apostles the power of doing it; rather, he said: ‘this do,’ in the plural and to all of them without differentiation.

We now wish to continue by bringing in from the opposite side the truths of Holy Scripture that, in both the literal and the mystical sense of Scripture and according to the interpretation of the saints and the exposition of other approved doctors of the Christian faith, explicitly command or counsel that neither the bishop of Rome who is called the pope, nor any other bishop or priest, or deacon, has and should have any principate or judgement or coercive jurisdiction over any priest or non-priest, prince, community, collective body or individual person of whatever condition; understanding by ‘coercive judgement’ that which we said (in chapter 2 of this discourse) was implied in the third signification of judge or judgement.

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Now in order to develop this stance more clearly, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are not asking from this inquiry what power or authority Christ (who was true God and true man) may have or have had in this world, nor what or how much of these he might have been able to confer upon Saint Peter and the other apostles and the bishops or priests who are their successors, since Christian faithful do not raise doubts about these matters in the questions before us. Rather, what we want and what we ought to be asking is what power and authority, to be exercised in this world, Christ wished to confer and did in fact confer; and from what he excluded and prohibited them by counsel or command. For we are bound to believe that they had from Christ just such power and authority as we can convincingly establish, from the words of Scripture, was granted to them, and no other. For all Christian faithful are certain that Christ, who was true God and true man, was able to confer, not just upon the apostles but upon anyone else, coercive authority or jurisdiction in this world over all princes or principates of this world and over all other individual persons; and perhaps even a greater authority than this, for example of creating beings, of destroying and restoring heaven and earth and all that are therein, and even of commanding, simply speaking, the angels; which however Christ did not confer upon them, nor did he decree that it should be conferred.

Following on from what has been said, it remains to show the productive cause of that which exercises the function of prince, viz. the cause through which the authority of principate, which is instituted by election, is given to a person or persons. For it is by this authority that a prince is made such in actuality, and not by his knowledge of the laws, prudence, or moral virtue, even if these are the qualities of the perfect prince. For it is a fact that many may have these qualities, who nonetheless, because they lack this authority, are yet not princes (unless perhaps in proximate potential).

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Returning to the question, then, let us say (in accordance with the truth and with the opinion of Aristotle, Politics III chapter 6) that the efficient power to institute or to elect a principate belongs to the legislator or the universal body of the citizens, just as we said in chapter 12 of this discourse that the passing of laws belongs to this same body; and any correction of the principate – or even its deposition if that is necessary for the common advantage – likewise belongs to it. For this is one of those greater matters in the polity that in chapter 13 of this discourse, section 4, we concluded belong to the universal multitude of the citizens (from what Aristotle says in Politics III chapter 6). For ‘the multitude is dominant in greater things’, as was said in that place. The manner of assembling for the said institution or election may vary perhaps according to the various regions. But the truth is that whatever the ways in which they may differ, this can be seen in every case: that an election or institution of this kind always comes about by the authority of the legislator, which (as we have said over and over again) is the universal body of the citizens or its prevailing part.

This treatise will be called The Defender of the Peace, because it discusses and explains the particular causes by which civil peace or tranquillity is preserved and exists, and also those through which its opposite, strife, arises, is prevented and is removed. For by it the authority, cause and harmony of divine and human laws and of coercive principate of any kind – which are the rules of human actions – can be known: and it is in the appropriate and unhindered measurement of these actions that the peace or tranquillity of the city consists.

Furthermore, both prince and subject, the primary elements of any civil order, can understand by this treatise what they must do in order to preserve the peace and their own liberty. For the first citizen or part of a civil regime, sc. the princely – be it one man or several – will understand from the human and divine truths written down in this book that they alone have the authority to command the subject multitude, collectively or individually, and to constrain any individual, if it is expedient to do so, according to the laws that have been laid down. They will also understand that they can do nothing more than this, particularly anything involving difficulty, without the consent of the subject multitude or the legislator; and that the multitude or legislator should not be provoked by injustice, because the force and authority of principate consists in the express will of this same multitude. The subject multitude and each of its individuals can, for its part, learn from this book what kind of man or men it should institute to exercise the function of prince. It will also learn that it is obliged to obey only the commands of the princely part as being coercive for and in the status of this present world, although these commands must nonetheless be in accordance with the laws that have been laid down, in the case of those matters that the laws determine; and in the case of those they do not, these commands should be in accordance with what was said in chapters 14 and 17 of the first discourse.