MARSILIUS of Padua.

Ain kurtzer Auszug des treffenlichen Wercks und Fridschirmbuchs . . . Durch M. Marxen Müller von Westendorff, vermög der Vorred, aufs getreulichst verteutscht, und zesamen gericht.

      Neuburg, (colophon: Hannsen Kilian), 1545. - Folio (295 x 190 mm), ff. [12], LXX; title within an elaborate woodcut pictorial frame; typographic decorations in margins of first few leaves (shaved); lightly browned, old damp-damage to last three leaves with partial loss of a side-note and the folio number on f. LXVIII; modern vellum. First edition in German of Defensor pacis. Condemned by the pope and its author excommunicated in 1327, the ?Defender of peace? ?is one of the most challenging works produced in the Middle Ages. According to Marsilius, the State is the great unifying power of society to which the Church must be completely subordinated. It derives its authority from the people, who retain the right to censure and depose the Ruler. The Church, on the other hand, has no inherent jurisdiction whether spiritual or temporal. All her rights in this regard are given her by the State, which may withdraw them at will. She may own no property, but only use what the State lends her; her hierarchy is not of Divine but purely human institution . . . . The principal authority in all ecclesiastical matters is the General Council, which should be composed of priests and laymen. These ideas, which ran counter to the whole medieval conception of society, have led to Marsilius of Padua?s being claimed as a forerunner of the Reformers, modern democracy, and even totalitarianism? (ODCC).Defensor pacis first appeared in print in 1522 and was put on the Index in 1559. The German translation omits the first discourse (the 1535 English translation is also shortened: indeed no complete translation into any modern language appeared until Alan Gerwith?s English edition in 1956). The second, and much longer, discourse made ?the simple but daring claim that the rulers of the Church have altogether misunderstood the nature of the Church itself in supposing it to be the sort of institution which is capable of exercising any legal, political or other form of "coercive jurisdiction" . . . . It follows that whatever coercive powers may be necessary for the regulation of Christian life must all by right be exercised exclusively by "the faithful human legislator" ? Marsilius?s term for the highest secular power . . . . With this transfer of the plenitudo potestatis from the Papacy to "the faithful human legislator", Marsilius fulfils his main ideological task in the second discourse of the Defender of peace. He claims to have demonstrated that the figure of the legislator in each independent kingdom or city republic is the sole rightful possessor of complete "coercive jurisdiction" over "every individual mortal person of whatever status" . . . . The corresponding moral of the book ? as well as the key to understanding its title ? is that anyone who aspires to be a defender of the peace . . . must above all be a sworn enemy of the alleged jurisdictional powers of the Church? (Skinner, Foundations of modern political thought I pp. 19?22). For a survey of responses to Defensor pacis see Garnett, Marsilius of Padua and the ?truth of history? pp. 1?48, who notes that while much modern scholarship has centred on the first discourse, hostile contemporaries saw the book?s danger as lying in the second discourse.VD16 M1134. OCLC locates only two copies (Yale, Ohio State University).