Spring Break
The Road to Freedom
An Essay
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University
Issue date: 6/1/08 Section: Spring 2008
Freedom is a value characteristic of contemporary life, and it so dominates the thinking of the modern age that we tend to forget its roots in the medieval tradition. One figure completely neglected in the complex and often murky history of freedom is Petrarch. He played a central role, as this chapter will show, in a new conceptualization of freedom, and, in so doing, he absorbed the speculations of the tradition-the views of St. Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, and Dante, whose thinking, in turn, moved within the perimeter of the classical philosophical theories of Aristotle, Cicero, Lucretius, etc., and who essentially developed the notion of freedom as an issue central to ethics. Their questions on problems such as moral choice, randomness, predestination, and necessity both shape and hinge on the way they understood freedom and vice versa.
But in the fourteenth century, freedom was not circumscribed only within a moral, individual compass. Ever since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at the University of Bologna (which Petrarch would eventually attend), in the tradition of the decretists, such as Huguccio of Ferrara, Irnerius, and Gratian, the moral principles of canon law and natural law, as inherent to human nature, were understood as the power to choose between good and evil. The unwritten law of the heart, which brought together the two major strains of thought-Roman law and Scripture-was explained by the Scholastics (Aquinas) as the power of reason, and nature itself was identified as reason. Even the hastiest account of the development of the idea of freedom must mention its metamorphoses into a political issue. Within the orbit of middle thirteenth century and early fourteenth century political thought, there were many discussions on liberty in reference to the communal polity and republican, anti-imperial and anti-despotic governments. Theories brought forth by Brunetto Latini, Tolomeo of Lucca, and Remigio de' Girolami reestablished the centrality of Aristotelian-Thomistic principles of freedom within political communities. A further quick reflection on the problem shows the debates and challenges prominent in what for a time became the cultural hub of Europe: the city of Avignon. Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis-a text written against the doctrine of the papal plenitude of power and ecclesiastic politics in Avignon-bears witness and responds to these debates. Marsilius' formulations of political sovereignty, coercive power, and the will of the subjects as the source of political authority find their counterpart in Ockham's altogether Franciscan concerns. Leaving aside his ethical-political views (opposition to the Church's plenary powers, his views of poverty, etc.), Ockham's work put forth a voluntarist and radical sense of freedom. In his view, the exercise of free will and choices shows that freedom-not the laws of nature-is the foundation of man's transcendence (IV Sententiarum, d. 16, q. 1).
But in the fourteenth century, freedom was not circumscribed only within a moral, individual compass. Ever since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at the University of Bologna (which Petrarch would eventually attend), in the tradition of the decretists, such as Huguccio of Ferrara, Irnerius, and Gratian, the moral principles of canon law and natural law, as inherent to human nature, were understood as the power to choose between good and evil. The unwritten law of the heart, which brought together the two major strains of thought-Roman law and Scripture-was explained by the Scholastics (Aquinas) as the power of reason, and nature itself was identified as reason. Even the hastiest account of the development of the idea of freedom must mention its metamorphoses into a political issue. Within the orbit of middle thirteenth century and early fourteenth century political thought, there were many discussions on liberty in reference to the communal polity and republican, anti-imperial and anti-despotic governments. Theories brought forth by Brunetto Latini, Tolomeo of Lucca, and Remigio de' Girolami reestablished the centrality of Aristotelian-Thomistic principles of freedom within political communities. A further quick reflection on the problem shows the debates and challenges prominent in what for a time became the cultural hub of Europe: the city of Avignon. Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis-a text written against the doctrine of the papal plenitude of power and ecclesiastic politics in Avignon-bears witness and responds to these debates. Marsilius' formulations of political sovereignty, coercive power, and the will of the subjects as the source of political authority find their counterpart in Ockham's altogether Franciscan concerns. Leaving aside his ethical-political views (opposition to the Church's plenary powers, his views of poverty, etc.), Ockham's work put forth a voluntarist and radical sense of freedom. In his view, the exercise of free will and choices shows that freedom-not the laws of nature-is the foundation of man's transcendence (IV Sententiarum, d. 16, q. 1).
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