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Marsilius of Padua c.1275-c.1342
Italian political theorist and philosopher

Born in Padua, he was Rector of the University of Paris from 1313. In 1324 he completed Defensor Pacis, a political treatise much influenced by Aristotle's Politics, which argued against the power of clergy and pope and developed a secular theory of the state based on popular consultation and consent and on natural rights. When the authorship of the work became known he was forced to flee Paris (1326). Excommunicated by Pope John XXII, he took refuge at the court of Louis of Bavaria in Munich, and remained there for the rest of his life.