Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/512

 504 MARSIGL10 OF PADUA October and worth, which combined with effort would lead to fame : Macte tua virtute, sacris splendoribus esto Clara lucerna tuae mundo notissima terrae. And this prophecy, or good wish, Marsiglio amply fulfilled. Instead of entering immediately upon one of these two courses, law or medicine, he had already solved the difficulty by becoming a soldier : for Mussato reproaches him with the rumour : Quidam aiunt tibi quod Germanus cingitur ensis, Quidam aiunt quod tu Germane accingeris ensi : a strange thing for a Paduan. Marsiglio had apparently taken service with Henry, king of the Romans ; and there is a point of humour in the suggestion that he was reading medicine in odd moments : Vadis ad egregium Doctorem temporis hums, Teque locas lateri, carptimque volumina physis Decurrens perhibes, imo quae sumpseris haustu. No doubt he fought, as Mussato insinuates, under Can Grande della Scala J in Verona, where in that home of banished intellec- tuals he may have met Dante. However, he did not remain a soldier long, for by the end of the year 1312 he had become rector 2 of the university of Paris. There is nothing strange in their acceptance of a foreigner in Paris : his predecessor had been Emeric of Denmark, and his successor was Nicholas of Vienna. As the office lasted only three months, Marsiglio was rector from the end of December 1312 to the end 3 of March 1313 : and it is on record that he signed two statutes before the masters of the four faculties duly congregated by him, on the Feast of the Blessed Gregory. 4 Whether Marsiglio learned law at Orleans is an intricate problem to solve. The so-called legend to the effect that Mar- siglio was a famous jurisconsult, supported by the assertions of Wharton 6 and Bayle, is based on a passage in the Defensor Pads, ii, ch. 18 : Sic etiam qui librum hunc in lucem deduxit, Studiosorum Univer- sitatem Aurelianis degentem vidit, audivit et scivit per suos nuncios et 1 The words are ' demulsus ab ore Canino '. Though Mussato frequently acted, in the interests of the moderate party, as Paduan ambassador to the court of Henry VII, he cordially hated Can Grande for his resemblance to the Eccelini. Can Grande was a great friend of Dante, so that the possible meeting of Dante and Marsiglio (as sug- gested by Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, add. note xiii, p. 515) is all the more likely, either then, 1311-12, or later, 1316-18, when Marsiglio returned to Padua as a canon. 2 Denifle, ii. 158. a Sullivan, ubi supra, p. 410. 4 12 March, according to Denifle, loc. cit. 6 Appendix to Cave,' Scriptorum Eccles. Historia, p. 17 ; Bayle, Dictionnaire critique, iii. 379 ; Friedberg, Die mittelalterlicken Lehren, ii. 22 ; Frank, Journal des Savants (March 1883), p. 118 ; Lorenz, DeutsMands Geschichtsquellen, ii. 348, and others.