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Bernardo Bayona Aznar
Marsilius of Padua is an extraordinarily singular author. His theory is his own and cannot be explained only by the elements he uses to build it. It is true that it employs Aristotelian categories and also that he is imbued with the tradition of defending imperial power against the papacy. But the Defensor Pacis escapes any classification in any of these trends. From a paradoxical and original definition of law, he develops a theory of civil power that excludes not only the plenitudo potestatis papal, but any attempt at separation between religious power and civil power, as proposed by Juan de Paris or William of Ockham. His thesis is that of a sole and absolute power, naturally secular, because of being born of the people, without any religious mediation, and exercised by the temporal ruler exclusively. The purely secular character of the marsilian theory of power led to the most radical condemnation and it greatly influenced Hobbes.
