In 1326, an Italian physician and diplomat named Marsilius of Padua hastily packed his bags and stole away to the south German city of Nuremberg. Things were getting too hot for him in Paris, and he needed to seek protection with the Holy Roman Emperor, Ludwig of Bavaria. Before long, a papal bull arrived in Paris from the court of Pope John XXII excommunicating him for heresy. Indeed, a few years later, another Pope was to write, "We are bold to say that we have almost never read a worse heretic than that Marsilius. For we have extracted from the mandate of Benedict our predecessor on a certain book of his more than 240 heretical articles."
The book in question was the Defensor Pacis, or Defender of the Peace, perhaps the most remarkable work of political theory to appear in the entire Middle Ages. Dedicated to the theme of peace, and to investigating the causes of tranquility and intranquility in politics, the work takes a suddenly controversial turn at the end of its first main section, "Discourse I."
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