Marsilius of Padua at the Intersection of Ancient and Medieval Traditions of Political Thought by Vasileios Syros (review)

In the fourteenth century, Marsilius of Padua became infamous for his revolutionary ideas. His notorious book Defensor Pacis was condemned by the Catholic Church. The usual approach to studying Marsilius is to take notice primarily of his use of Aristotle and to focus on his peculiar reception of Aristotle’s classical political ideas. But that reception is peculiar indeed, because an attentive comparison of his use of Aristotle with Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of Aristotle, for example, suffices to problematize the notion that Marsilius is somehow best grasped as an honest exemplar of “political Aristotelianism.” In harmony with the current scholarly reassessment of political Aristotelianism as a useful historical notion, therefore, Vasileios Syros in this book makes a major contribution to a more nuanced historical understanding of Marsilius by carefully discerning some astonishing intersections of other traditions with the thought of Marsilius.

Syros adopts a cross-cultural perspective that puts Marsilius in a new light. Syros not only identifies various connections between Marsilius and medieval Muslim, Jewish, and Byzantine traditions but also distinguishes hitherto unappreciated classical influences on Marsilius. Most notably, Syros is able to discern how Cicero as a mediator of Stoic ideas is employed by Marsilius in a way that contrasts with ideas of Aristotle. Other telling contrasts with Aristotelianism are drawn by Syros in discussions of Marsilius’s use of ideas from both major and minor thinkers. The former include Plato and Maimonides, who influence Marsilius’s treatment of the political use of religion.

Thanks to Syros’s meticulous approach, Marsilius is able to emerge as a figure in the history of thought of greater significance than most people realize, who has been unjustly neglected. Marsilius addresses issues of perennial interest and holds great promise for cross-cultural dialogue in the future because of the way that so many traditions and ideas intersect in his work. In an earlier study in German, Die Rezeption der aristotelischen politischen Philosophie bei Marsilius von Padua: Eine Untersuchung zur ersten Diktion des Defensor pacis, Syros had focused on the reception of Aristotle’s ideas in Marsilius. In this English-language book, which demonstrates mastery of the scholarship on Marsilius across multiple languages, Syros offers an innovatively widened perspective. Roughly one third of the book consists entirely of a bibliography, and another third entirely of endnotes, but the first third articulates Syros’s argument in five chapters. In chapter 1, Syros gives an outline of Marsilius’s life and works. In chapter 2, Syros identifies major intellectual influences on Marsilius, including Albertino Mussato, Peter of Abano, and John of Jandun, as well as Muslim and Jewish influences.

In chapter 3, Syros gives an extended treatment of Marsilius’s political theory in eleven parts, but both the table of contents and the chapter subheadings have an incorrect typesetting of the divisions with regard to parts 8 through 11. The actual organization of Syros’s presentation may be summarized here so that future readers may avoid confusion. The first six parts of chapter 3 are “Marsilius and Aristotelian Teleology,” “The Origins of Social Life,” “Rhetoric and the Genesis of Civil Life,” “The Purpose of the Political Community,” “The Peace and Tranquility of the Political Community,” and “The Unity of the Political Community.” The seventh part, “The Organization of the Political Community,” is divided into four subsections: “Marsilius’ Classification of Human Acts,” “Marsilius and Aristotle,” “Marsilius and Aquinas,” and “Marsilius and Maimonides.”

The final four parts are “Plato Transformed, Avicennian Echoes, and the Ideal Social Organization,” “The Idea of the Mean and the Parts of the Political Community,” “The Emergence of Religion and the Civic Function of the Sacerdotal Part,” and “Marsilius’ Notion of Citizenship.” Placed between parts 8 and 9, there is a section entitled “The ‘Circle of Justice’ and Functional Specialization,” which is presumably a subsection of the eighth part, “Plato Transformed,” as Syros’s discussion of chapter 3’s “eleven parts” in...