Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/513

 1922 MARSIGLIO OF PADUA 505 epistolas requirentem et supplicantem Parisiensi Universitati, tanquam famosiori et veneration, pro ipsius habendis regulis, privilegiis atque statutis. Riezler * says that he cannot find any record of Marsiglio in the annals of the university of Orleans, and Valois 2 accepts his view that the Defensor Pacis betrays an ignorance of civil law. Both Riezler and Valois admit that Marsiglio spoke from personal knowledge of the appeals from the university of Orleans, but are of opinion that Marsiglio made his observations of them in Paris, and not in Orleans. It has been further suggested 3 that John of Jandun may have been the author of the passage under discussion, but the ' Antenorides ego ' of the opening chapter, with a recurrence to the first person throughout the work, gives rise to the belief that Marsiglio himself was speaking, for the same ' ego ' reappears in the Defensor Minor, in which John of Jandun had no share at all. The lack of evidence at Orleans is not surprising at a time when a complete rotulus was a rarity at any university : and the charge that he shows ignorance of civil law is hardly substantiated by the Defensor Minor. The only definite statement 4 comes from the Emperor Lewis IV, who, in making his abject submission in 1336 to Benedict XII, excused himself for retaining in his service the excommunicated heretics Marsiglio of Padua and John of Jandun on the ground that they were valuable to him as lawyers. That Marsiglio studied at Orleans is quite possible, and the acceptance of the hypothesis removes two difficulties. The period at Orleans would have rendered him more fitted by age and experience for the rectorship at Paris, the highest university magistrature of the time. Again (a point much overlooked), there was little use in asking Mussato whether he should become a lawyer or a doctor, if he had already qualified as the one and not as the other, and every reason for being uncertain which course to choose, if he had qualified as both. A return from Orleans to Padua may have preceded the request for advice. Marsiglio probably remained in Paris for three years after the March of 1313, when he ceased to be the rector of the university, continuing his studies and practising as a doctor. It was during this period of his life that he made friends of those distinguished writers with whom he is generally associated : John of Jandun, 1 Lit. Wid. p. 33. 1 p. 566. 3 Poole, Illustrations o/ Medieval Thought, 2nd ed., p. 231. 4 Riezler, Vat. Akt. no. 1841. The absence of any reference to Marsiglio as his doctor is remarkable. In Vat. Akt. no. 1004, 1 May 1328, Lewis calls John of Jandun a ' Conciliarius ' : that Marsiglio ever enjoyed that office can only be inferred from Wharton, appendix to Cave, p. 17, and the head-lines in Goldast.