Note 46 — II DANTE AND POLITICAL LIBERTY
Reading edition
Defensor Pacis written c. 1324 (three years after Dante’s death) to support the claims of the Emperor Lewis IX (of Bavaria) against Pope John XXII, starts, as Dante does, from Aristotle and Holy Scripture, but carries the relentless exposure of papal pretensions much further, and strikes the note of appeal to a General Council which was one of the watchwords of the Reformation.