Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/31

 who despised theological studies while they cherished the legists who were, through their knowledge of canonic law, able to support the unjustified claims of the priesthood, Marsiglio proceeds to discuss the conflict then raging between papacy and his patron, King Louis. It is difficult to overrate the historical importance of the Defensor Pacis. Many subsequent church-reformers have, perhaps unknowingly, borrowed from him; for the ideas contained in the Defensor seem to have been so generally shared by the thinkers of the time that they had almost become common property. As regards Hus, Dr. Lenz has, writing on the treatise De Ecclesia of Hus, declared—rightly from his standpoint as a Roman Catholic priest—that many statements contained in the treatise  had already been declared heretical when Pope John XXII., in 1327, decreed that the Defensor Pacis was a work “false, heretical, and contrary to Scripture.”

The writings of William of Occam also express views on the government of the church and the power of the pope which anticipate those of Wycliffe and Hus. Occam’s work was written during the pontificate of John XXII., who, mainly from political motives, and through the influence of France, waged a bitter and prolonged war against Germany. Though himself accused, not entirely without foundation, of professing heretical views, John XXII. expanded the pretensions of the papal see in a manner that none of his predecessors had attempted. Occam writes as a strong defender of the authority of temporal rulers. The pope, he declares, has no right to secular authority. Christ neither exercised nor claimed such a power.