Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of the Peace

In the foregoing, then, we have identified what has already been the singular cause of civil discord or intranquillity in certain realms and communities, and will go on to be so in all the others if it is not prevented; and this is the thinking, desire and effort with which the Roman bishop and his company of clergy set their sights singularly upon secular principates and on the superfluous possession of temporal goods. The bishop just recalled is trying to claim for himself even the supreme one of all such principates on the basis of the plenitude of power granted him in particular (as he asserts) by Christ in the person of Saint Peter, as we said in the last chapter of the first discourse and as was not inappropriately reiterated in many chapters of the second; when in fact no principate or coercive judgement over anyone in this world – let alone the supreme one of all – belongs to him or to any other priest or cleric, as such, either in common or individually. We demonstrated this by sure human means in chapters 12, 13 and 15 of the first discourse, and confirmed it by the testimonies of eternal truth in chapters 4 and 5 of the second, as well as the expositions of the saints its interpreters and of many approved doctors of the same. After that, in chapters 6 and 7 of the second discourse, we identified through Scripture and sure reasoning the nature, magnitude and extent of the power of priests or bishops. We further showed in chapter 23 of the same discourse that the plenitude of power which they – and especially the Roman bishop – had assumed does not belong either to all of them or to any one of them, either in common or individually. In this way, then, the roots of that singular malignity referred to many times in the words of the proem seem to have been sufficiently cut out from under it.