Born about the year 1270 of a plain burgher's family at Padua, he went no doubt through the customary course of studies in the university of his native town. He turned to medicine, perhaps to the active profession of arms; but we are ignorant of the particulars of his probably wandering, unsettled life[1] until he emerges in 1312 as rector of the university of Paris: this office a brief term of tenure opened to most of the distinguished masters in the faculty of arts who taught there. At that time the Invincible Doctor, William of Ockham, the second founder of nominalism, held undisputed supremacy over the minds of the Parisian scholars; and it is natural to claim the English schoolman[2] as one from whom Marsiglio derived more than the elements of his political, as of his metaphysical, ideas.[3] With Ockham Marsiglio went beyond the limits of speculation preserved by the liberal but prudent university to which they belonged. Both subsequently abandoned it in order to devote their intellects to the defence of Lewis the Bavarian, of whose political aims they were aware, and whose infirmity of purpose and want of resource only time could shew. Of the band of Franciscans who gathered round the German king, Marsiglio was the confessed leader; unlike his
- ↑ Dr. Riezler, p. 33, is probably right in rejecting the story that Marsiglio studied in the interval at Orleans. But if exception be taken to his interpretation of the passage in the Defensor pacis ii. 18, Goldast 2. 252 sq., which has given rise to this supposition, it may be suggested that the passage is due to John of Jandun, who is expressly named as joint-author of the work. A few insertions of this kind would better satisfy the description than either Dr. Riezler's view, p. 195 n. 2, that John made a French version of the book, or Dr. Friedberg's suggestion, pt. 2. 25 n. 2, that he undertook merely its transcription.
- ↑ [See however Mr. James Sullivan's arguments to the contrary, in the American Historical Review, 2. 413 sqq., 1897.]
- ↑ Marsiglio may also have learned from John of Paris, whose death however is presumed to have taken place as early as 1306, Riezler 149. Dr. Friedberg, pt. 1. 18, in dating it in 1304 has apparently confounded John's deprivation with his death, which occurred later while he was at Rome prosecuting an appeal against that sentence. See the continuators of William of Nangy and Gerard de Frachet, Bouquet 20. 592 C, 21. 25 H. On the other hand, according to the Memoriale historiarum of John of Saint Victor, ibid., vol. 21. 645 E, F, John's deprivation seems to have been decreed in 1305.
