Ep.33: History of Dissenting Ideas: Marsilius of Padua

This episode introduces Marsilius of Padua, a 14th-century thinker and physician whose Defensor Pacis argued for separating church and state and for popular sovereignty. It explains Marsilius's three core ideas: the state serves the common good, law must be a coercive human institution, and political authority belongs to the people — not the papacy — which led to his excommunication and wide controversy. The episode also places Marsilius in historical and modern context, comparing his dissent to later thinkers and outlining why his challenge to clerical power and his model of the body politic remain relevant today.