  With the progress of the critical edition of Marchia’s Sentences commentary, we are beginning to appreciate more fully his thought in philosophical theology and natural philosophy. Investigating where Marchia stands in political theory has been much easier due to Mariani’s publication of the Improbatio some fourteen years ago (Marchia 1993), probably written in the beginning of 1330. While the nature of the relationship between societal factors, on the one hand, and science and philosophical theology, on the other, has long been a subject of controversy, it is clear that political thought is closely tied to the circumstances of the thinker. As in the case of Ockham, circumstances drove Marchia into opposition to Pope John XXII. Unlike Ockham, however, Marchia had dealt with some issues of social and political philosophy in the early 1320s in book IV of his Sentences commentary. In the tense climate of the struggle against Pope John at the end of the decade, when Marchia’s writings focused on more worldly affairs, he made some subtle modifications to serve his new aims (Lambertini 2006b). The group of scholars supporting the ex-minister general of the Franciscans Michael of Cesena gathered at Louis of Bavaria’s court in Munich and collaborated on their anti-John XXII tracts. It has been shown that Marchia’s Improbatio influenced Ockham’s Opus nonaginta dierum (Miethke 1969; Lambertini 2000, 2003, 2006a, 2006b) and most probably the Cesena group’s Appellatio magna monacensis (Lambertini 2001). Thus, as in philosophical theology and natural philosophy, Marchia had an historical impact.