In his The Defender of the Peace, Marsilius of Padua offers a detailed analysis and explanation of human political communities, before going on to attack what he sees as the obstacles to peaceful human coexistence - principally the contemporary papacy. Annabel Brett's authoritative rendition of the Defensor Pacis is the first new translation in English for fifty years. Aimed at the student reader encountering this classic of medieval thought for the first time, this new edition is a scholarly and a pedagogic event of great importance to historians, political theorists, theologians and philosophers at all levels from second-year undergraduate upwards. 'The lucid an readable translation, along with the informative and often insightful annotations and a comprehensive bibliography, promises to produce a new generation of students who are fascinated by this remarkably idiosyncratic political text.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History 'Brett's version of the Defensor sufficiently improves on Gewirth's that it promises to become the standard English translation for the foreseeable future.' Political Studies Review This book was the first new translation in English for fifty years of this classic of western political thought. The editor and translator Annabel Brett is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. Her previous publications include Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought (Cambridge, 1997). Used Book in Good Condition