Marsilius of Padua and the Henrician Reformation

Abstract

Judged by any standard, Marsilius (Marsiglio, 1270–1343) of Padua represented one of the most strikingly innovative thinkers in the history of Christian thought. Because he was one of the pioneers in the struggle for an uncontested erastianism and because of his forthright condemnation of the papacy, it was inevitable that his epitaph would be shrouded in controversy. A movement that clearly evidenced a positive dependence on Marsilius' thought was the Henrician Reformation. Although many students of the Henrician Reformation (notably A.G. Dickens) have recognized the figure of Marsilius looming in the background, none have delineated the precise relationship of his thought to the English Reformation. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, Marsilius, not Machiavelli, Wycliff, Erasmus or Tyndale furnished the prevailing ideological framework within which the Henrician Reformation was justified.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 56 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.