Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/511

 1922 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA 503 date. If Giovanni Michele was twenty when he became a licentiate in 1381, his grandfather Giovanni must have been born close on 1300, leaving a generation between himself and Marsiglio. There is no evidence to support Gloria 1 in his attempt to connect the two branches of the family (except that Conradus or Franciscus may possibly have filled the gap), for there is no record to show that Marsiglio had a brother or an uncle. The heraldic device of the family was their initial letter M. 2 The first document bearing upon the career of Marsiglio is a letter to him from his friend Albertino Mussato, the Paduan poet and historian. 3 This is undated, but it is possible to deter- mine by internal evidence when it was written. The key, according to Valois, 4 is to be found in a quotation from Virgil, for Marsiglio is represented as having asked for advice, ' Paduae dum regna manebant ', that is, when Padua was politically free. Now Henry, king of the Romans, had descended upon the cities of Lombardy, and had received the iron crown at Milan on 6 January 1311. Padua, among other cities, was obliged to accept an imperial vicar and to pay tribute during this year, till the outbreak of a popular revolution in the spring of 1312. The letter, obviously composed during these months, 5 was. addressed ' ad Magistrum Marsilium Physicum Paduanum '. From this it is clear that Marsiglio had qualified in medicine 6 at the university of Padua. Further, we learn that he had written to Mussato for advice, for he had not made up his mind as to what profession he ought to choose. Mussato says : Me, bene si recoils, Paduae dum regna manebant, Consilii ignarum quanquam de pondere tanti Quaesisti, num te leges audire forenses Maluerim, medicae potius intendere physi. Mussato, while urging his friend to continue a life of scholarship, suggests a medical career with emoluments in preference to the long waiting and disappointing uncertainty of the bar. At any rate Marsiglio had youth on his side : Fertile tempus habes pulchra florente iuventa, Quo te restituas, si te regat insita virtus ; 1 Studi, i. 408. 1 Cenni stor. sidle fam. di Padova, tavola xxiv : Interne dell' Antico Castello di Eccelino III, no. 63. 5 Thomas, p. 450, bases his dating of this letter at 1316 on the fact that the Bull of 1316, granting Marsiglio a canonry, omits the ' magister ' which appears in the title of this letter : but the Virgilian quotation makes the argument of Valois convincing. that he was learned in all the liberal arts, except theology, ' ex qua una scelerate desipuit '.
 * Graevius, no. xii.
 * Histoire litteraire de la France, xxxiii. 561.
 * Papadopolus, p. 154, in claiming Marsiglio for the university of Padua, asserts