Marsilius of Padua and 'the Truth of History'
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:29th Jun '06
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Marsilius of Padua is conventionally seen as a thinker ahead of his time: the first secular political theorist, and the first post-classical thinker to espouse republicanism. He is presented as a scholastic precursor of the republican humanists of the Renaissance. Starting with an examination of the neglected evidence for Marsilius's life, and the contemporary response to his best-known work, the Defensor Pacis, this new study argues that such an interpretation is quite wrong. It shows that Marsilius was not a republican, but an imperialist; and that far from being a secular political theorist, his great work Defensor Pacis is underpinned by a profound Christian understanding of history as a providentially ordained process.
[An] ambitious and thought-provoking book. * Takashi Shogimen, Journal of Ecclesiastical History *
George Garnett's book is enlightening and informative about what fourteenth-century thinkers were, in context, really discussing. It is also an often amusing retelling of an immensely complicated story ... Those readers who are already familiar with the historical and religious tensions of this period will find much to appreciate in Garnett's book. * J. Coleman, Times Literary Supplement *
As an introduction to the Defensor pacis for a beginning student of medieval history or as an eloquently argued and amply documented alternative view for a veteran in the history of political ideas, this book could hardly be bettered. * Speculum *
Garnett has performed a superb service to the understanding of the Defensor Pacis, in that he has managed to put Marsilius's historical imagination and practice under the microscope. * Jurgen Miethke, Francia-Recension *
Garnett has made a highly important contribution to the ongoing debate about how to interpret Marsilius and how to assess his significance. * English Historical Review *
ISBN: 9780199291564
Dimensions: 224mm x 144mm x 18mm
Weight: 426g
240 pages