§ 8. THE PAPAL OFFICE ASSAILED. 77
If we overlook his doctrine of the supremacy of the state over the Churjih, the J*aduan's views correspond closely wi.th those held in Protestant Christendom to-day. Christ, he said, excluded his Apostles, disciples, and bishops or presbyters from all earthly dominion, both by his example and his words.^ The abiding principles of the Defensor are the final authority of the Scriptures, the parity of the priesthood and its obligation to civil law, the human origin of the papacy, the exclusively spiritual nature of priestly functions, and the body of Christian people in the state or Church as the ultimate source of authority on earth.
.^^^rsiglius hasjbeenj3a]led J)y the fore-
runner of Luther and Calvin. ^ He has also been called by one of them the "exciting genius of modern revolution."^ Both of these statements are not without truth. His programme was not a scheme of reform. It was a proclamation of complete change such as the sixteenth century witnessed. A note in a Turin manuscript represents Gerson as saying that the book is wonderfully well grounded and that the author was most expert in Aristotle and also in theology, and went to the roots of things.*
p^ The tractarian of Padua and Thomas Aquinas were only 50 years apart. But the difference between the searching epigrams of the one and the slow, orderly argument of the other is as wide as the East is from the West, the directness of mod-
1 Exdusit se ipsum et app. ac discipulos etiam siios ipsorumque sicccessores, consequenter episcopos sen presbyteros, ab omni principatu seu mundano regimine exemplo et sermone, II. 4.
^ Bollinger : Kirchengesch. II. 259, 2d ed., 1843, says, "In the Defensor the Calvinistic system was, in respect to Church power and constitution, already marked out." Pastor, 1.85, says, "If Calvin depended upon any of his predecessors for his principles of Church government, it was upon the keen writer of the fourteenth century."
3 Pastor, I. 84, shifts this notoriety from Huss to Marsiglius. Riezler, p. 232, and Haller, p. 77, compare Marsiglius' keenness of intellect with the Reformers', but deny to him their religious warmth.
* Est liber mirabiliter bene fundatus. Et fuit homo multum peritus in doctrina Aristoteleia, etc., Engl. Hist. Rev., p. 298. The Turin MS. dates from 1416, that is, contemporary with Gerson. In this MS. John of Paris' De potestate is bound up with the Defensor.
78 THE MIDDLE A(iES. A.D. 1294-1517.
ern thought from the cumbersome method of raediajval scholasticism. It never occurred to Thomas Aquinas to think out beyond the narrow enclosure of Scripture interpretation built up by other Schoolmen and mediieval popes. He buttressed up the regime he found realized before him. He used the old misinterpretations of Scripture and produced no new idea on government. Marsiglius, independent of the despotism of ecclesiastical dogma, went back to the free and ehistic principles of the Apostolic Church government. He broke the moulds in which the ecclesiastical thinking of centuries had been cast, and departed from Augustine in claiming for heretics a rational and humane treatment. The time may yet come when the Italian people will follow him as the herald of a still better order than that which they have, and set aside the sacerdotal theory of the Christian ministry as an invention of man.i
GerjaanY: furnished a strong advocate of the independent rights of the emperor, in Lupoid of Bcbenburg, who died in 1363^ He remained dean of Wiirzburg until he was made bishop of Bamberg in 13M- But he did not attack the spiritual jurisdiction of the Apostolic See. Lupold^^sj3hief_work was The Rights o_f_the Kingxlaiiynnd Empirg — dejuribus regni et imperii, — written after the declarations of Reuse. It lias been called the oldest attempt at a theory of the rights of the German state. ^ Lupoid appeals to the events of history.
In defining the rights of the empire, this author asserts that an election is consummated by the majority of the electors and that the emperor does not stand m need of confirmation by the_£ope. He holds his authority independently from God. Charlemagne exercised imperial functions before he was
1 Compared with Wyclif, a pamphleteer as keen as he, Marsiglius did not enter into the merits of distinctly theological doctrine nor see the deep connection between the dogma of transubstantiation and sacramental penance and papal tyranny as the English reformer did. But so far as questions of government are concerned, he went as far as Wyclif or farther. See the comparison, as elaborated by Poole, p. 275.
- Der dlteste Versuch einer Theorie des detitschen Staatsrechts, Riezler, p. 180. Two other works by Lupoid have come down to us. See Riezler, pp. 180-192.