Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/249

Rh Born about the year 1270 of a plain burgher's family at Padua, he went no doubt through the customary course of studies in the university of his native town. He turned to medicine, perhaps to the active profession of arms; but we are ignorant of the particulars of his probably wandering, unsettled life until he emerges in 1312 as rector of the university of Paris: this office a brief term of tenure opened to most of the distinguished masters in the faculty of arts who taught there. At that time the Invincible Doctor, William of Ockham, the second founder of nominalism, held undisputed supremacy over the minds of the Parisian scholars; and it is natural to claim the English schoolman as one from whom Marsiglio derived more than the elements of his political, as of his metaphysical, ideas. With Ockham Marsiglio went beyond the limits of speculation preserved by the liberal but prudent university to which they belonged. Both subsequently abandoned it in order to devote their intellects to the defence of Lewis the Bavarian, of whose political aims they were aware, and whose infirmity of purpose and want of resource only time could shew. Of the band of Franciscans who gathered round the German king, Marsiglio was the confessed leader; unlike his