ABSTRACT
Marsiglio of Padua (1275/80-1342) requires separate treatment on account of his genius, and because, more than any other medieval or Renaissance writer, he worked out a systematic philosophical basis for the city-state and for a quasi-popular mode of civic government, taking matters back to the first principles of human existence. In system and originality, in the thoroughness, depth and precision of his argument, he surpassed all his contemporaries (except, as always, Ockham); one does not find another such earth-shaking yet well-tuned civil philosophy until Hobbes, who in fact shared much of Marsiglio's outlook. He set aside the Greco-Roman and the patristic-ecclesiastical mentality, and was thus able to forge closer links between political philosophy and contemporary civic experience.
