Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/259

Rh within the confined limits of their own time. The political theory of Wycliffe, noble as it is, rests upon as wilful, as preposterous, a treatment of the Bible as that of any of his hierarchical adversaries. Carried into practice by those who were not able to appreciate his refinements, it resolved itself into a species of socialism which was immediately seen to be subversive of the very existence of society. Marsiglio of Padua on the contrary is almost entirely free from the trammels of tradition. Except when he urges the necessity of a return to evangelical poverty, and when he enlarges on the points at issue between the emperor Lewis and John the Twenty-Second, we are hardly recalled to the age in which he lived. But for these reminders we should be almost disposed to think his book a production of one of the most enlightened of the publicists, or of the advocates of civil and religious liberty, of the seventeenth century.

Yet if Marsiglio learned much from Ockham in the years when they worked together at Paris, the principles which he then adopted, he elaborated with far greater independence than his friend. Ockham remains through all his writings first and foremost a scholastic theologian; Marsiglio ventures freely into the open field of political philosophy. Nor on the other hand can it be questioned that Ockham in his turn fell strongly under the influence of the Italian speculator. All his known works on ecclesiastical politics were produced at a time posterior to the publication of the Defensor Pacis. The latter was written while Marsiglio was still at Paris; it was in all probability the thoughts brought into train by its composition that decided him to throw in his lot with the Bavarian emperor. Ockham's writings on the contrary are the effect of his association in active resistance to the pope; they are the defence and justification of his action. Thus though Marsiglio ran far ahead of him, though he shews us so marked an advance upon any previous theory of the relation of church and state, Ockham's