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The Possibility of Toleration: Marsiglio and the City States of Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Diana M. Webb
Diana M. Webb*
Affiliation:
University of London, King’s College
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Extract

In the course of his lengthy arguments in the Defensor Pacis against the right of the priesthood to exercise coercive jurisdiction over men in this life, Marsiglio of Padua deals with the problem of the persecution of heresy, pausing in one place to remark:

By these considerations, however, we do not wish to say that it is inappropriate that heretics or those who are otherwise infidel be coerced, but that the authority for this, if it be lawful to do so, belongs only to the human legislator.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 21: Persecution and Toleration , 1984 , pp. 99 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1984

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References

1 Defensor [Pads] II. v. 7. Text: [The Defensor Pads of Marsilius of Padua ed Previté-Orton, C. W.] (Cambridge 1928 Google Scholar). Translation: Gewirth, [A.], [Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace] 2 vols (New York 1951-6) 2 Google Scholar.

2 Previté-Orton p 154; for the mss. pp xxvi-xliii.

3 de Lagarde, G., La Naissance de l’Esprit Laique au Declin du Moyen Age, 2: Marsile de Padoue. (Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux 1934) pp 279–80 Google Scholar; d’Entrèves, A. P., The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought (Oxford 1939) pp 77–9 Google Scholar.

4 Gewirth 1 pp 160–6 also 2 pp lix-lxv.

5 Defensor II. xxviii. 17.

6 Lewis, [E.], [‘The Positivism of Marsiglio of Padua’], Speculum 38 (1963) p 579 CrossRefGoogle Scholar n 147; and see generally pp 572–82 on the divine law.

7 Defensor II. x. 3.

8 Rubinstein, [N.], [‘Marsilius of Padua and Italian Political Thought in his Time’] in Europe in the Late Middle Ages eds Hale, J. R., Highfield, J. R. L. and Smalley, B. (London 1965) pp 44–75 Google Scholar; Skinner, [Q.], [The Foundations of Modem Political Thought] 2 vols (Cambridge 1978) 1 pp 53–65 Google Scholar.

9 Murray, A., ‘Piety and Impiety in Thirteenth-Century Italy’, SCH8 (1971) pp 83–106 Google Scholar; ‘Religion among the Poor in Thirteenth-Century France: the Testimony of Humbert des Romans’, Traditio 30 (1974) pp 285–324.

10 Hamilton, B., The Medieval Inquisition (London 1981) p 26 Google Scholar.

11 Boswell, J., Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago 1980) pp 270–1 Google Scholar. Ch. 10 generally contains interesting material on the vexed problem of the part played by ‘popular’ and ‘official’ pressures in fomenting persecution of minorities.

12 Cipolla, [C], [‘Il Patarenismo a Verona nel secolo XIII’], Archivio Veneto 25 (1183) pp 66–7, 287, 81 Google Scholar.

13 For Siena: Costituto del Comune di Siena volgarizzato nel MCCCIX-MCCCX, ed Lisini, A., 2 vols (Siena 1905) 1 pp 64–8 Google Scholar. This vernacular recension represents the Sienese statutes as they had been redacted through the later thirteenth century. For Parma: Statuta Comunis Parmae [digesta anno] MCCLV [ed A. Ronchini (Parma 1856)] pp 200–3. These regulations were repeated and amplified in subsequent recensions.

14 Statuta Comunis Parmae MCCLVp 203.

15 Sanjek, F., ‘Raynerius Sacchoni O.P., Summa de Catharis’, AFP 44 (1974) p 43 Google Scholar; Moore, R. I., The Birth of Popular Heresy (London 1975) p 133 Google Scholar.

16 Milano, P. Ilarino da, ‘Il “Liber supra Stella” del Piacentino Salvo Burci, contro i Catari e altre correnti ereticali’, Aevum 19 (1945) p 325 Google Scholar. For this belief, and professions of it at Bologna in the late thirteenth century, see Dupré-Theseider, [E.], ‘L’eresia [a Bologna nei tempi di Dante’ in Studi Storici in onore i Gioacchino Volpe, 2 vols (Florence 1958)] 1 pp 408, 421–2 Google Scholar.

17 Puylaurens, G. de, Chronique ed Duvernoy, J. (Paris 1976) pp 48–51 Google Scholar.

18 Ibid p 22: ‘Dei iudicia, quibus propter peccata populi decrevit terras miseras flagellare.’

19 Tonini, L., Della Storia Civile e Sacra Riminese 6 vols (Rimini 1848-82) 2 pp 589–90 Google Scholar.

20 PL 214, cols 555–8.

21 Dupré-Theseider, ‘L’eresia’ pp 418–21 for a list of incidents; and for heresy in the social and political setting of the communes generally, idem, ‘Gli eretici nel mondo comunale italiano’, Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi 114 (1963) pp 3–23.

22 Dupré-Theseider, , ‘L’eresia’ pp 414–17 Google Scholar.

23 Ibid p 410.

24 Ibid p 395.

25 Statata Comunis Parmac MCCL V pp v-ix. For the orthodox offensive at Parma and elsewhere, see also Housley, [N.], [‘Politics and Heresy in Italy: Anti-Heretical Crusades, Orders and Confraternities, 1200–1500’ JEH 33 (1982)] pp 193–208 Google Scholar.

26 For Parma: Statuta Comunis Parmae MCCLV pp 269–72. For Bologna: Statuti [del Comune] di Bologna [dall’ anno 1245 all’ anno 1267 ed L. Frati 3 vols (Bologna 1869–77)] 1 pp 67–8, 446; 3 p 408. For Verona, Cipolla pp 71–3. For Siena: Zdekauer, L., Il Constituto del Comune di Siena dell’ anno 1262 (Milan 1897) pp 53–4 Google Scholar; also idem, ‘Il frammento degli ultimi due libri del più antico constituto senese’, Bollettino Senese di Storia Patria 2 (1895) p 318. For Padua, Statuti del Comune di Padova dal secolo XII all’ anno 1285 ed. Gloria, A. (Padua 1873) p 423 Google Scholar.

27 Rubinstein pp 47–8; Hyde, [J. K.], [Padua in the Age of Dante (Manchester 1966)] p 239 Google Scholar. For an example of a statute against criminous clerks, Statuti di Bologna 1 p 421.

28 Defensor II. ii. 5–7.

29 Villani, [G.], [Cronica] ed. Dragomanni, F. 4 vols (Florence 1845)Google Scholar.

30 Housley pp 198–9; Stephens, J. N., ‘Heresy in Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, PP 54 (1972) pp 28–9 Google Scholar, with further references.

31 Villani I pp 220: ‘pure era parte tra’ cittadini nobili, che chi amava la signoria della Chiesa, e chi quella dello ‘mperio, ma però in istato e bene del comune tutti erano in concordia.’

32 Ibid p 253: ‘Il popolo e comune di Firenze si mantenea in unitade, e bene, e onore, e stato della repubblica’.

33 On the death of Frederick II in 1250, the Florentine Ghibelline leaders refused to take part in an expedition against Pistoia, resenting the rule of the popolo, ‘e per lo passato tempo erano usi di fare le forze, e tiranneggiare per la baldanza dell ‘mperadore. ‘ On the successful completion of the expedition the leading Ghibellines were expelled from the city and ‘il popolo e gli guelfi’ remained in charge (ibid p 268).

34 Rubinstein, N., ‘Political Ideas in Sienese Art: the frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21 (1958) pp 180–9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Villani 2 pp 116–17. What worries him most about the Dolcinians is that they live ‘a comune a guise di bestie’.

36 Ibid 3 pp 41–2.

37 Ibid 2 pp 239, 247; 3 p 22.

38 E.g. Defensor II. xxvi. 8, 9.

39 Villani 4, pp 74–5.

40 Ibid pp 95–7. Becker, Cf. [M.], [‘Florentine Politics and the Diffusion of Heresy in the Trecento’ Speculum 34 (1959)] esp pp 63–5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Cipolla pp 274–5.

42 Becker pp 73–4.

43 Dupré-Theseider, , ‘L’eresia’ pp 413–419 Google Scholar.

44 Defensor II. ix. 7.

45 Ibid II. v. 6; II. ix. 2, 4.

46 Ibid II. vi. 12, 13. Cf. Lewis p 579 n 147, with further references to the Defensor Minor.

47 Defensor II. ix. 1.

48 K. Foster, The Two Dantes (London 1977) pp 238–9, and ch 10 passim; p 11.

49 Skinner 1 pt 1 passim; Hyde ch 10.