The Defensor Pacis of Marsilius of Padua and its Relation to the Reformation

Any event in history that is linked in either a small or large way to the Reformation demands investigation. In examining the causes and the background of the Protestant uprising in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; historians usually make mention of the Defensor Pacis written by Marsilius of Padua in 1624. Some make much of it. Others ignore it. Yet the Defensor Pacis, directed as it is against Pope John XXII, remains the most daring and the most independent ecclesiastic-politica1 work of the entire medieval period. Whether this document in any way influences the Reformation this thesis will endeavor to show