Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 270 - Render unto Caesar - Marsilius of Padua.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Render Unto Caesar, Marsilius of Padua. Political rulers should govern in the interest of their subjects, not in their own interests. It's a common enough sentiment, even if it is a guideline more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Already Plato, in the first book of his Republic, has Socrates argue that rulers must look at after the welfare of the citizens the way that shepherds look to the welfare of their flocks. Medieval thinkers in both the Islamic and Latin Christian worlds followed a similar, broadly Aristotelian line, a state should be governed in such a way that the citizens of a state become virtuous. It's on this basis that Al-Farabi distinguished between what he called the virtuous city and other cities in which citizens seek lower ends like pleasure or honour. Aquinas likewise took the purpose of laws to be the training of citizens in virtue, and just in the last episode we saw Dante justifying the idea of universal rule in terms of the universal shared goal of humankind to achieve the contemplative virtue of intellectual perfection. All these high-minded recommendations provoke a pretty obvious response, easier said than done. It's one thing to say how rulers should govern, and with what end in view, another to ensure that they do govern in this way. Much ancient and medieval political philosophy is disappointingly sketchy when it comes to that question. Describing an ideal state where virtuous men and even philosophers are in charge is all well and good, but it smacks of utopianism. Plato already recognized this, contenting himself with showing that it is just about possible for philosopher kings to come to power, albeit very unlikely. In general, one gets the impression that political thinkers were resigned to the fact that rulers would come to power by chance through military conquest or inheritance. They optimistically hoped, in the face of a staggeringly large amount of evidence to the contrary, that God was providentially appointing the right men, and occasionally women, to sit on the thrones. And they wrote works like Giles of Rome's On the Government of Princes, works of moral exhortation for the ruler in hopes that some of the good advice would rub off. This is about what you'd expect from philosophers shaped by medieval culture. Was it really possible to envision a system for ensuring good rulership when actual rulership was always determined on the battlefield or by family connections? Well, at least one medieval thinker did just that. His name was Marsilius of Padua. Like Giles of Rome, he responded to the struggle between papacy and secular princes that raged in the early 14th century. But unlike Giles, he was very much on the secular side. Marsilius's masterpiece, The Defender of the Peace, makes direct reference to the ambitious clerics who, in Marsilius's view, were the chief cause of political unrest and conflict in his age. He condemned the popes Boniface VIII and John XXII for standing in the way of the rightful rule of kings and emperors, and explained in detail why and how secular rule is legitimate. It was a polemic he waged at considerable personal cost. After initially being educated in his hometown of Padua, Marsilius moved back and forth between there and Paris, where he wrote The Defender of the Peace in the year 1324. Perhaps because of his controversial writings, however, Marsilius left, or more dramatically fled, from Paris with a colleague named Jean of Jandun. They travelled to the court of Ludwig of Bavaria, whose seat of power was in Munich, which just happens to be where I'm recording this. Germany's welcoming attitude to refugees is evidently a long-standing one. Ludwig and Marsilius were an ideal match, since Ludwig embodied the idea that secular rulers can and should wield power independently of the papacy. He invaded Italy and had himself crowned emperor at Rome in 1328, in a ceremony involving compliant bishops who were enemies of Pope John XXII, as well as representatives of the Roman aristocracy. The pope was, it goes without saying, not best pleased. By this time he had already made it clear what he thought of Marsilius, naming both him and Jean of Jandun as heretics, and excommunicating them in 1327. Ludwig returned the favor the next year by declaring the pope deposed. As with the earlier struggle between Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface, these events meant that the debate over papal and princely sovereignty was far from abstract and theoretical. It addressed the burning political question of the day. Given that he was such a partisan of Emperor Ludwig, you might think that Marsilius would seek to establish his patron's legitimacy by appealing to God's providence. This is what Dante had done in celebrating the Roman Empire and his own imperial hope, Henry VII. But for Marsilius, God establishes legitimate rulers only through the actions of individual human communities. If divine providence takes a hand in our political affairs, it is by guiding the people to choose the best rulers, not by bestowing victory in war or a favorable birth. The rightful ruler is determined by an election, on the part of either the universal body of the citizens or the prevailing part, as Marsilius famously puts it. Of course, he is not envisioning here something like a modern-day representative democracy. For one thing, he excludes slaves and women, along with foreigners and children from the ranks of citizens. For another thing, Marsilius is imagining an assembly of citizens along the lines of the noble electors whose support was in fact needed by German rulers like Ludwig. This was an ancient practice that goes back to Carolingian times and even to the traditions of Germanic tribes. So why have I described Marsilius as such a pioneering political theorist? Because he actually has a political theory to explain why kings or emperors must be chosen through election. He appeals to a principle of Roman law taken over by the medieval canonists which states that what affects all, likewise, should be approved by all. On this basis, Marsilius reasons that the citizens must express their consent if the ruler is justly to rule over them. This is achieved through the process of election. The assembly of citizens is actually a legislative body and retains its standing even after having chosen a ruler. In fact, the ruler doesn't even need to be a single person, though Marsilius does insist, following a traditional analogy we've seen in earlier medieval authors like John of Salisbury, that political rule should flow from a single person or group, as an animal is ruled from a single organ, namely the heart. Nor is this just going to be a rubber stamping procedure where the strongest strongmen or bluest blue-bloods can assume that the nobles will acclaim them as kings or counselors. Marsilius explicitly names, as an advantage of the elective process, that it has the best chance of putting virtuous men in charge. This is to be a genuinely representative government with the representing to be done by those whom the citizens choose. The chosen virtuous ruler cannot even pass his authority onto his children. Instead, a new election must be held to appoint the successor. This is to safeguard against the possibility of a vicious son taking the throne from a virtuous father. Even aficionados of Roman history will appreciate it when I say, comitus, I'm looking at you. However, Marsilius does allow that the son of a virtuous monarch is likely to be virtuous too, having been raised by such an outstanding father, and one gets the sense that in his ideal scenario, inherited rule would still be frequent. Still, the point stands that inheritance in no way legitimates the ruler. of government comes only from the consent of the governed. Marsilius thus provides exactly what we found missing in earlier political theorists. He reasons that if the common good of the citizens is really the purpose of governance, then the citizens should have a say in deciding how their common good is best achieved. Power does not flow downwards from God through a divinely anointed king or pope, it flows upward from the people. Marsilius is not quite expressing a thought that might seem natural for us, namely that consent of the governed is required because it is an intrinsic requirement of justice. Rather, consent is a useful device, it is the mechanism by which the governed secure whatever is in their best interests. On the other hand, the reason why we need rulers in the first place is that the people may not all agree on what is most beneficial. Hence the title of Marsilius's book. The elected ruler is the defender of the peace because the citizens consent to be governed by that ruler rather than coming into conflict with each other. The whole citizenry, or its prevailing part, is in the best position to judge the best person or persons who should be nominated to secure the best overall results. Marsilius is strikingly optimistic about this. In sharp contrast to the elitism of a Plato or Al-Farabi, he argues that the people as a whole will make better choices than a select group of wise men. We can see how seriously Marsilius takes this from his answer to an argument in favor of hereditary rule. One might suppose that under that system the people will be more docile and will just accept that each ruler as anointed thanks to their family ties. To this, Marsilius responds that on the contrary, the people would be more likely to rebel against automatically inherited rule, and rightly so, since they would realize that they are being governed by men who are inferior to themselves. Perhaps understandably, Marsilius does not belabor the notion that hereditary rulers around Latin Christendom could rightfully be deposed if they did not come to their position through a new, valid election. In any case, his chief target is not rule by inheritance, despite his opposition to it. Instead, it is the Church that he accuses of disrupting the peace. This, Marsilius wryly remarks, is a source of dissension that was unknown to Aristotle, who never had the dubious privilege of experiencing the grasping greed and temporal ambitions of the Christian Church. In fact, one can describe the defender of the peace as an update of Aristotle's politics, which takes account of the new dangers posed by clerical authority. Aristotle could not have foreseen the depredations of the popes, or as Marsilius likes to call them, the Roman bishops. But no one who reads Marsilius will be in any doubt as to the dangers they pose. He systematically deprives the popes, and the Church more generally, of any right to interfere in the temporal order. The priesthood has the sole purpose of seeing to our spiritual needs, which means looking to the eternal life and not the affairs of this world. The priests do play an important role in administering the sacraments, and thus helping us free ourselves of sin, but apart from that they should mind their business. In this, they would be following the example of Christ, who disavowed temporal rule, saying "...my kingdom is not of this world, and, of course, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." But surely the medieval Church at least has the responsibility of enforcing orthodox Christian belief? Marsilius responds, "...not so fast, and don't call me Shirley." The priesthood may have the role of identifying heretics, but it cannot assert the right to punish them. Consider the analogous case of a doctor who diagnoses leprosy. The doctor advises the secular authorities, and it is they who undertake appropriate measures like a quarantine. Priests, whether popes or not, who think that they have an authority over any aspect of the temporal order, should again look to the example of Christ, who, after all, allowed himself to be judged by a secular official, Pontius Pilate. Having taken away their political influence, Marsilius now really hits the priests where it hurts, in their pocketbooks. Again referring to the example of Christ and the apostles, he argues that poverty is inextricably bound up with the Christian moral ideal. Predictably, he quotes Jesus' advice from the Bible, "...sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven." Here we come again to the bitter controversy over the mendicant orders and the ideal of poverty. We saw before how Peter Olivey, Bonaventure, and others had defended that ideal in the 13th century. In the early 1320s, the dispute reached a new intensity thanks to Pope John XXII, who declared the vow of poverty irrational and therefore even heretical, insofar as the Franciscans and other mendicants were ascribing the supposed perfection of absolute poverty to Christ and the apostles. The Pope's rejection of the mendicant vow ran along lines familiar to us. Even if the Franciscans could reasonably decline to own things like houses, they must at least use things like the food they eat, otherwise they would starve themselves to death which would constitute the sin of suicide. After all, it makes no sense to say you use but do not own the bread, or more optimistically haume-quassant, that you eat, given that you destroy the thing in the process of using it. In the 13th century, the mendicants had been able to rely on papal support, and could take refuge in the argument that the things they used in fact belonged to the Pope. Now the sitting pope was refusing to acknowledge this, and in fact condemning the whole notion of voluntary absolute poverty. Marsilius's response is a furious one, accusing the pope himself of being a heretic for his stance. This by the way is a constant refrain of his strictures against papal overreach, that popes might be, and indeed have recently been, heretical, so one cannot entrust them with a power such as excommunication or with a special right to determine the meaning of scripture. As a basis for his response to Pope John's arguments, Marsilius develops an innovative conception of ownership and, especially, of legal rights. So innovative is this section of the defender of the peace, in fact, that many scholars have credited Marsilius with helping to invent the concept of individual legal rights. An important step in Marsilius's argument is in fact the definition of the Latin term ius, which is often translated into English as right. In one sense, though, ius just means whatever is determined by laws or by legal commands and prohibitions. One could perhaps still speak here of what is legally right. Some scholars have found Marsilius's remarks here intriguing because he seems to be saying that there is a significant sense in which whatever a legal authority decides should be right becomes right. This position is sometimes called legal positivism. It would contrast sharply with a theory of law like the one we found in Aquinas, where human laws must be grounded in the natural law and are in a sense just a more precise application of that law. By contrast, Marsilius really has no use for the concept of natural law because for him the realm of the legal is subject to human decision. On the other hand, the positivist tendencies in Marsilius should perhaps be qualified, insofar as laws do need to look to the common advantage of the citizens, as we saw earlier. This would constrain the range of choices open to the legislator. An unfair or unjust law might count as no true law at all, as might a law that contravenes divinely ordained commands. In addition to this first sense of the word ius, Marsilius recognizes a second meaning. A ius, or right, is whatever is allowed to us within the scope of the law. To see what he has in mind here, let's take as an example your right to say that Buster Keaton's silent films aren't funny. For you to say this would certainly be erroneous, but you have the right to do it. There is no law requiring people to appreciate Keaton's films, despite the letters I keep sending to my congressman. Your right to insult Buster Keaton is just one of many such rights. In general, you are permitted to do anything not forbidden by the law. Besides which, we have certain positive rights, such as my right to bring you to court if you steal the Buster Keaton poster hanging over the desk where I'm sitting right now. This shows that ownership is closely connected to the content of a right. Indeed, ownership is really a kind of right, the right to decide whether others can use the things we own. Now, Marsilius is just about ready to clarify what is happening with voluntary poverty. He observes that rights in general, and the right of ownership in particular, are voluntarily exercised. The fact that you have the right to lament the supposed unfunniness of Keaton, or even of silent comedy in general, doesn't mean that you have to be obnoxious enough to go and do it. Similarly, you can have ownership rights over something without exercising those rights. Suppose a noblewoman donates bread to a Franciscan house. She can allow the friars to use the bread by eating it without transferring ownership to them. The fact that you can voluntarily let someone else use your possessions shows that the right of use is distinct from the right of ownership. The noblewoman might also renounce her ownership of the bread, so that if someone stole it from the Franciscan's pantry, she couldn't take the thief to court, but that doesn't mean that the mendicant friars are forced to assume ownership of the bread. The bread has come into their possession and they intend to use it, but they do not own it and have no legal claim to the bread. So, if the noblewoman renounces ownership and the friars don't accept ownership, then who does own the bread? Nobody, says Marsilius. He invokes the Roman concept of a res nullius, or something owned by no one. He gives the nice example that a mendicant could go fishing, catch and eat a fish, without the fish ever passing into his ownership. One implication of Marsilius's analysis is that, legally speaking, you can steal from mendicants. If you are standing on a river bank feeling hungry, see a Franciscan grilling a fish he just caught, and just walk over and take it from him and eat it, then the Franciscan has no legal recourse against you. The fish didn't belong to him after all, he was just using it. The bad news is that you've committed a grave sin, and broken divine law, rather than human law. For us, the reason all this is important is not so much the legitimization of poverty, as the theory of rights Marsilius has developed along the way. As the scholar Brian Tierney has written, In True Without Any Gap Spirit, let's look quickly at how this sort of idea was developed by another, far more obscure, 14th century author named William of Pagula. In the early 1330s, he wrote another one of those Mirrors for Princes, or Works of Moral and Practical Advice, in this case dedicated to the English king William III. Its theme is the practice of purveyance, a custom in which the crown could requisition goods from the king's subjects and just stipulate the price to be paid. In other words, if you were a peasant, and the king came along and demanded you sell him your pig for one copper coin, you would have to do it. William of Pagula decries this practice and says that it is unjust to pay less than what he calls the true price, meaning the price reached through negotiation and agreed by both parties. It's unjust not simply because paying less is hard on the already poor peasant, but because even peasants have rights of ownership over their possessions. These include the right to sell, or refuse to sell, depending on whether the owner is happy with the price on offer. You should by now be convinced that the first half of the 14th century was something of a high point in the history of political philosophy. Yet we still haven't even looked at the most famous political thinker of the period. Like Marsilius, our next author took refuge with Ludwig of Bavaria after getting in trouble with the church, and like Marsilius, he was a devout, in every sense of the term, defender of the ethic of poverty, and a major figure in the development of ideas about rights and the state. Join me next time as we begin to look at a man most would recognize as the most significant scholastic philosopher of the 14th century, and with all due respect to William of Pagula, definitely the most significant medieval philosopher named William, is the life and political thought of William of Ockham, next time here on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.