Ockham and Ockhamism

Ockham and Ockhamism
Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters

Begrndet von
Josef Koch
Weitergefhrt von
Paul Wilpert, Albert Zimmermann und Jan A. Aertsen

Herausgegeben von
Andreas Speer
In Zusammenarbeit mit
Tzotcho Boiadjiev, Kent Emery, Jr. und Wouter Goris
BAND 99
Ockham and Ockhamism

Studies in the Dissemination and Impact of His Thought
By
William J. Courtenay
LEIDEN BOSTON 2008
This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Courtenay, William J. Ockham and ockhamism : studies in the dissemination and impact of his thought / by William J. Courtenay. p. cm. -- (Studien und texte zur geistesgeschichte des mittelalters ; 99) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-16830-5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. William, of Ockham, ca. 1285-ca. 1349. 2. Philosophy, Medieval. I. Title. II. Series. B765.O34C68 2008 189.4--dc22 2008016598
ISSN 0169-8028 ISBN 978 90 04 16830 5 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Chapter One. In Search of Nominalism: Two Centuries of Historical Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Received Opinion: From Aventinus to Ehrle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Reassessment of Ockham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Toward a New Assessment of Nominalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 part one
before ockham
Chapter Two. Augustine and Nominalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Chapter Three. On the Eve of Nominalism: Consignication in Anselm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Two Realms of Consignication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Consignication and Nomen Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter Four. Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century . . Logic in voce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Opinio Nominalium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toward a History of the Nominales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nomina, Mental Language, and Universals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abelard, Alberic, and the Nominales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
31 32 35 37 39 44 50 64 71 75
Chapter Five. Nominales and Rules of Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
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ockhams thought in england and paris

Chapter Six. The Academic and Intellectual Worlds of Ockham. . . 91 The Formative Years, 13051316 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Oxford and London, 13171324 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Avignon, 13241328 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Munich, 13291347 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Ockhams Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Chapter Seven. The Reception of Ockhams Thought in Fourteenth-Century England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 The Earliest Reaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Ockhamism at Oxford in the 1330s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Robert Holcot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Adam Wodeham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Ockhamism after Wodeham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Chapter Eight. The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 The Introduction of Ockhams Thought at Paris, 13251335 . . . . . 129 The Papacy and University Reform: The Crisis of 13381341. . . . 136 The Invasion of English Logic, Physics, and Theology: The Crisis of 13401347 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Conrad of Megenberg and the Scientia Okamica. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 part three
the crisis over ockhams thought at paris

Chapter Nine. Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation at Paris, 13391341. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 The Statutes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 The Arts Statute of September 25, 1339 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 The Arts Statute of December 29, 1340 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 The 1341 Ordinance of the English-German Nation . . . . . . . . . . 176 The Masters of the English Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Riminis Testimony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Ockhamism and the Secta Occanica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
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The Availability of Ockhams Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 The Scientia Occanica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 The Political Context of the University Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Chapter Ten. Force of Words and Figures of Speech: The Crisis over Virtus sermonis in the Fourteenth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Meaning and Verbal Sense: the Origins of Virtus Sermonis . . . . . . . 210 Supposition and Virtuous Words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 The 1340 Statute Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Scripture and Humanism: Metaphoric Language & the Context of the Statute of 1340 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Chapter Eleven. The Registers of the University of Paris and the Statutes against the Scientia Occamica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Record-Keeping at the University of Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 The Book of the Rector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 The Books of the Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Record-Making at the University of Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 University Scribes and the Creation of Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Datum et Actum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Oaths Concerning the Statutes Contra Scientiam Occamicam . . . . . . 256 The Arts Statute of December 29, 1340 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 Chapter Twelve. The Debate over Ockhams Physical Theories at Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 The Entry of Ockhams Physics into Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 The Date of Michael de Massas Baccalaureate and Vat. lat. 1087 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 Michael de Massa, Conrad of Megenberg, and the Occamistae 274 Ockhams Physics and the Debate over Ockhamism at Paris . . . . 277 Ockhamist Scientia and the Teaching of Aristotle and His Commentators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 The Role of Buridan in the Events of 13391341 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Chapter Thirteen. The Quaestiones in Sententias of Michael de Massa, OESA. A Redating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 The Authenticity of Vat. lat. 1087 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 The Date of Michael de Massas Parisian Baccalaureate . . . . . . . . . 289 The Content of Vat. lat. 1087 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
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Chapter Fourteen. Conrad of Megenberg: The Parisian Years . . . . . 303 Lector at the Collge St. Bernard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 Master of Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 Student in Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 The Crisis over the Occamistae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 Chapter Fifteen. The Categories, Michael de Massa, and Natural Philosophy at Paris, 13351340 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Michael de Massa and the Occamistae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 Ockhams Doctrina and the Teaching of Aristotle and Averroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 The Anti-Ockhamist Statute of December 1340 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 Utrum motus sit realiter ipsummet mobile quod movetur (Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 70rb71ra) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 part four
aftermath
Chapter Sixteen. Ockhamism among the Augustinians: The Case of Adam Wodeham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Gregory of Rimini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 Hugolino of Orvieto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 John Hiltalingen of Basel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 Wodeham and the Augustinians as Viewed by Others. . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Wodeham and the Spanish Augustinians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Chapter Seventeen. Theologia Anglicana Modernorum at Cologne in the Fourteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 The Cologne Abbreviation of Wodehams Lectura . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 The Presence of English Texts at Cologne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Channels of Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368 Chapter Eighteen. Was There an Ockhamist School?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 Methodological Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Oxford, 13241400 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
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Paris, 13391346 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 The Hypothesis of a Lost Statute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 The Statutes of September 25, 1339. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 The Statute of December 29, 1340 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 The Oaths against Ockhams Scientia and the Ockhamists . . . 392 The Ockhamist Tradition at Paris after 1360. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 List of Manuscripts Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Index of Ancient and Medieval Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 Index of Modern Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
ABBREVIATIONS
AFH AFP AHDLMA AUP BGPM BGPTM BRUO CIMAGL CUP DTC FS FzS HLF HTR JHI JHP MS PJ RTAM
Archivum Franciscanum Historicum Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du Moyen Age Auctarium Chartularii Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H. Denie and . Chtelain, vol. I (Paris: Delalain, 1894) Beitrge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters Beitrge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957) Cahiers de lInstitut du moyen-ge grec et latin Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H. Denie and . Chtelain, 4 vols. (Paris: Delalain, 18891897) Dictionnaire de Thologie Catholique Franciscan Studies Franziskanische Studien Histoire Littraire de la France Harvard Theological Review Journal of the History of Ideas Journal of the History of Philosophy Mediaeval Studies Philosophisches Jahrbuch Recherches de Thologie ancienne et mdivale
PREFACE
Across the last half-century the impact of the thought of William of Ockham, and most especially the interpretation of the statutes and surrounding events at the University of Paris in the 13391347 period, has generated a large body of scholarship. Earlier participants included Philotheus Boehner, E.A. Moody, Giulio Preti, Rupert Paqu, and T.K. Scott. Both Boehner and Moody expressed considerable doubt that the statute of the Parisian Faculty of Arts in December 1340 against the errors of Ockhamists was aimed at Ockham, since in their view the positions condemned were not those of Ockham. Paqu, who assumed incorrectly that Moody was, like Boehner, a Franciscan and that both were attempting to rehabilitate the reputation of a Franciscan long viewed as a negative inuence in late medieval thought, set out to prove the previous view, namely that the statute of December 1340 was indeed a condemnation of Ockhams views on supposition and universals. In 1982 Katherine Tachau and I called attention to some previously unnoticed, or at least unremarked, discrepancies in the documents as normally interpreted. One of these was that the statute of 29 December 1340, de reprobatione quorundam errorum Ockanicorum, was sealed on that date with the seals of the four nations and of the rector, but that the statute described as the recent statute contra novas opiniones quorundam qui vocantur Occhaniste in the contemporary proctorss register of the English Nation in the Faculty of Arts at Paris was sealed in late January 1341. It seemed odd that one and the same document could be ocially sealed at two dierent times, a month apart. The second discrepancy was that the oaths that bachelors in Arts had to swear before the rector of the University at the time of their inception as masters and which incorporated the specic language of the statutes they were swearing to uphold, referred to two statutes against the scientia of Ockham, one of which was the prohibition on dogmatizing Ockhams doctrina promulgated in September 1339, and the other a second statute that condemned Ockhams scientia and armed instead the scientia of Aristotle and Averroes, except where they contradicted the faith. Nowhere in the statute of 29 December 1340 is there any mention of Aristotle or
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Averroes or their scientia. The 1340 statute, by contrast, is concerned with supposition theory, the analysis of authoritative propositions in lectures and disputations, and the need to distinguish true and false senses, authorial intent, and common usage. The solution proposed in 1982 was that the statute of December 1340 was not one of the two statutes against Ockhams scientia referred to in the oaths, and that the other statute against Ockhams scientia beyond that of September 1339 was the statute that was sealed and promulgated in January 1341 but which has not survived, possibly because both statutes against Ockhams doctrina or scientia were no longer in force by the 1360s. That reinterpretation of texts and events met with initial acceptance, but by the 1990s it evoked a series of counter-narratives by Hans Thijssen and Znon Kaluza, who reworked or massaged the evidence in an attempt to make these discrepancies in the dates of sealing and the language of the oaths and the statutes conform to the traditional narrative of the condemnation of Ockhams thought at Paris. In the course of their research several advances were made, particularly on Jean Buridans understanding of the expression de virtute sermonis. And the debate caused me to explore more deeply the testimony of Michael de Massa and Conrad of Megenberg, and the procedures of statute creation and preservation by the nations and faculties at Paris, which revealed a less orderly process of archival registration than previously imagined. Despite the tendency at times to view participants in this scholarly discussion as opponents with a hidden agenda rather than as colleagues in search of the best explanation of the evidence, considerable progress has been made even if a commonly agreed upon picture of events has not yet emerged. We know far more today about the personalities involved, the curricular and judicial functioning of groups within the university community, the production and preservation of university documents and record-keeping, and the nuances in philosophical language and reasoning during those years. I remain convinced that an important statute against Ockhams scientia is missing in the archival record, as are several other statutes that once existed. However, as I conceded in the most recent of these essays (Chapter 15, written in 2000), I am no longer so certain that the statute sealed in late January 1341 is identical with that lost statute. Two areas of further research are as deserving of intense scrutiny as that which has been devoted to the crisis of 13391341. One of these is the period of the 1330s that led up to that crisis. While there has been continued interest in the last two decades in Jean Buridan, Michael
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de Massa, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Bernard of Arezzo, and Conrad of Megenberg, more needs to be done. The debate over the ontological reality of points, lines, and surfaces between atomists and divisibilists that involved Buridan, Autrecourt, Massa, Megenberg, Michael de Montecalerio, and others needs to be moved beyond mathematics and the problem of continua, and be linked to the discussion of Ockhams physics and his reinterpretation of the categories. Equally fruitful would be the examination of commentaries on Aristotles Physics and on book II of the Sentences from the late 1320s to 1339 to see whether, and, if so, how divisions on these issues were developing in the 1330s. Similar work needs to be done on the understanding and use of the expression de virtute sermonis in the texts of that same period. The other area of research that may help clarify the meaning and signicance of the events of 13391341 lies in the 1340s, tracing the same group of issues in the works of Gregory of Rimini, Francis of Treviso, John Rathe of Scotland, Alfonsus Vargas of Toledo, John of Mirecourt, Paul of Perugia, James of pinal, Hugolino of Orvieto, Pierre Ceons, and the early writings of Nicole Oresme, who was completing his degree in Arts at the time of the crisis. Were the anti-Ockhamist statutes promulgated by the Faculty of Arts in 13391341 a result of a crisis solely within that faculty, or a result of pressure from the Faculty of Theology, or perhaps a concern of certain Arts masters who were completing degrees in theology? How the issues involved in an Ockhamist scientia as well as the practices condemned in the statute of December 1340 were discussed by masters of arts and theology in the 1340s will shed light on the meaning and ultimate fate of those statutes. The main purpose of the present book, therefore, is to bring together my essays that pertain to that debate, beginning with the 1982 article. Footnotes in my subsequent articles will provide references to the reactions and interpretations of other scholars. I have also included essays that are more generally concerned with the impact of Ockhams thought in England and on the Continent, and whether an Ockhamist school developed in the fourteenth century. Moreover, inasmuch as Ockhams nominalism and the discussion of supposition are linked to the problem of universals, which is traditionally considered to lie at the heart of nominalism, I have included in Part One a series of essays that provide a very dierent view of the meaning and origin of nominalism before the thirteenth century that seem relevant to the discussion. Part One, however, is not the background to Ockhams nominalism
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but rather illustrates the complexity of the meaning of nominalism and, correspondingly, of Ockhams place in that history. All the articles in this volume, with the exception of one, were written between 1980 and 2000 and have been arranged thematically, not by date of publication. Because each article had to include the evidence necessary to support its specic focus and argument, there is some overlap in the content of certain footnotes. Except for the standardization of the form of footnotes, the correction of typographical errors, and in a few cases the restoration of text that was removed at the time of publication, the text of the articles as originally published has been retained. Corrections and bibliographical information on articles or books cited as forthcoming at the time of publication have been inserted in the footnotes in brackets. I wish to express my appreciation to the publishers in whose volumes these essays originally appeared for permission to reprint them. The location of the original publication is acknowledged at the beginning of each chapter, along with the date and context (conference, Festschrift, or article) for which the essay was written. I also want to thank Eric Goddard for preparing digitalized copies of the articles, seeking permission to republish, and for helping with the proofs and indices. Finally I am indebted to Professor Andreas Speer for making these articles accessible as a group and arranging for their appearance in this series.
chapter one
IN SEARCH OF NOMINALISM: TWO CENTURIES OF HISTORICAL DEBATE*
Second only to the impact of the introduction of Aristotelian thought and the debate over Latin Averroism, the contrasting ontological commitments of realism and nominalism has been a topic perennially used to structure the history of medieval philosophy from the twelfth century to the Reformation. As far back as the Parisian nominalist manifesto of 1474,1 the diering approaches of realists and nominalists have been viewed as a major philosophical dividing line that helps make the history of philosophy understandable as well as explains some of the divisions that still exist within philosophy as a discipline. Almost any current textbook on medieval philosophy will, to some extent, characterize the early twelfth century in light of the introduction of nominalism, will view the thirteenth century as an age of moderate realism, and the late Middle Ages as a period dominated by the revival of nominalism. The purpose of the following paper is not to correct the textbook understanding of the stages of realism and nominalism in the history of medieval philosophy. Rather it is to look at the changes that have occurred in the historiographical understanding of that topic from the nineteenth century to the present. The questions addressed will, for the most part, be those posed by historians in the last two centuries. What did earlier generations of historians understand nominalism to be? How applicable did they think the descriptive label nominalist was for the thought of Roscelin, Peter Abelard, William of Ockham, or late medieval gures traditionally associated with Ockham? What parallels did they see between the thought of Ockham and either Roscelin or
* This paper was read at a conference in Rome in 1989 and published in Gli studi di losoa medievale tra otto e novecento. Contributo a un bilancio storiograco, ed. A. Maier and R. Imbach (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991), pp. 214233. 1 Edited in F. Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia, des Pisaner Papstes Alexanders V. (Mnster i. W., 1925), pp. 321326. Although the 1474 document is all but unusable as an historical account because of inaccuracies and bias, it was the rst attempt at providing an account of the meaning, origin, and development of nominalism.
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Abelard? And nally, what was their view of the legacy of Ockham in the late Middle Ages, and the extent to which one can speak of a nominalist movement in that period?
Received Opinion: From Aventinus to Ehrle The early nineteenth century inherited a reasonably coherent account of the meaning and history of nominalism in the Middle Ages. Nominalism was understood as a view that universal concepts had no being or existence outside the mind but were mere names (nomina) or spoken sounds (voces). Roscelin was generally seen as its earliest and principal defender, Abelard as a close disciple of Roscelin, and Ockham as the gure who revived nominalism and passed it down to the modern period. A major source for this picture, whether direct or indirect, was the summary given in Johannes (Aventinus) Turmairs history of the Duchy of Bavaria, written in the early sixteenth century.2 Aventinus saw realism and nominalism as two opposing ideologies throughout the scholastic period. He traced the origins of nominalism to Roscelin in the late eleventh century, saw Abelard as a follower of Roscelin and a fellow nominalist, and believed that Ockham reintroduced nominalism in opposition to Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Through Ockhams disciples it spread to the German universities of Vienna and Heidelberg. That picture was adopted and elaborated in the seventeenth century by Csar du Boulay in his multi-volume history of the University of Paris, which quoted extensively from Aventinus.3 Charles du Cange, writing slightly more than a decade later, augmented the body of texts considered relevant for the origin and early meaning of nominalism in his entry on nominales in his Glossarium.4 Unlike
2 J. Turmair, Annales ducum Boiariae, L. VI, c. 3, in Smmtliche Werke, vols. 23, ed. S. Riezler, vol. 3 (Munich, 1884), pp. 200202. Like the nominalist manifesto of 1474, Turmairs account is confused and inaccurate. 3 C.E. Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis a Carolo M. ad nostra tempora (Paris, 16651673), I, pp. 443444. 4 C. Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et inmae latinitatis, 3 vols. (Paris, 1678), II, p. 748; entry reprinted in the expanded Maurist edition, 6 vols. (Paris, 17331736), IV, pp. 12051206, with the addition of an incorrect reference to the 14711474 Nominalist defense printed in vol. 4 (1683) of tienne Baluze, Miscellaneorum Collectio veterum monumentorum, 7 vols. (Paris, 16781715). The original edition of Du Cange was printed in Frankfurt in 1681 and 1710, and the expanded edition went through many printings in France, Germany, and Italy. Since Du Canges work was viewed as a dictionary,
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Aventinus and Du Boulay, who gave equal attention to the twelfthand fourteenth-century phases of nominalism, Du Cange limited his discussion to late eleventh and early twelfth-century texts. The histories of philosophy that began to appear in the mid-eighteenth century simply expanded on this foundation without signicantly dierent conclusions.5 By 1793 the topic merited separate historical treatment, which Christoph Meiners accorded it before the Akademie der Wissenschaften at Gttingen in that year.6 French surveys of scholastic or medieval philosophy in the early nineteenth century inherited this standard picture, especially as mediated through Du Boulay and Du Cange.7 Nineteenth-century views were also inuenced by the lingering memory of Jansenism (which some viewed as a re-emergence of Ockhamist nominalism) and the perceived threat of empiricism and skepticism in seventeenth-century philosophy in England and France. Xavier Rousselot traced elements of the thought of John Locke and Nicolas Malebranche back to Ockham, conrming in his mind a nominalism dominant since the fourteenth century.8 And just as the historical account was shaped by the perspecnot as a historical or interpretive study, it was not cited explicitly, but the content of subsequent accounts makes clear that its wide circulation was inuential on historical interpretation. 5 Johann Jacob Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 17331763); 6 vols. (Leipzig, 17661767), III, pp. 673674, 740, 847; Johann Gottlieb Buhle, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, 8 vols. (Gttingen, 17961804); Buhle, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. 1 (Gttingen, 1800), pp. 835841, 885890; Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie, 11 vols. (Leipzig, 17981819), VIII, pp. 160169, 840842; Tennemann, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie fr den akademischen Unterricht (Leipzig, 1812). 6 C. Meiners, De realium et nominalium initiis et progressu in Commentationes societatis regiae scientiarum Gottingensis, vol. 12 (1793). Behind Meiners work lay not only Bruckers account but several earlier theoretical treatises, e.g., Jean Salabert, Philosophia nominalium vindicata or Tractatus contra aemulos nominalium (Paris, 1661); the anonymous Ars rationis ad mentem nominalium (Oxford, 1673); Jacobus Thomasius, Oratio de secta Nominalium, in Orationes (Leipzig, 1683); Johann Theodor Knneth, De vita et haeresi Roscelini, diss. under Johann Martin Chladini (Erlangen, 1756). 7 Two of the most popular surveys were Joseph de Grando, Histoire compare des systmes de philosophie, 8 vols. (Paris, 18221847); and Xavier Rousselot, tudes sur la philosophie dans le moyen ge, 3 vols. (Paris, 18401842). 8 Rousselot interpreted Ockham through the views of John Locke, Nicolas Malebranche, and the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld; see Rousselot, tudes, pt. 3 (Paris, 1842), pp. 254291. It is surprising that Rousselot did not include David Hume in his legacy of nominalism. On the dominance of nominalism from the fourteenth to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Rousselot, tudes, pt. 3, pp. 289290: Aprs le matre [i.e., Occam], vint une suite nombreuse de continuateurs, qui conduisirent la philosophie du moyen ge lentre des temps modernes, et dont quelques-uns mme
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tives and received opinions of the early modern period, so too was the pejorative judgment on the philosophical value of nominalism.9 A major shift in that picture came in 1836 with Victor Cousins introduction to his edition of previously unedited writings of Abelard.10 Cousin made a sharp distinction between Roscelins nominalism and Abelards conceptualism.11 The Historia calamitatum and other witnesses made it apparent that Abelard had been critical of both Roscelin and William of Champeaux, representatives respectively of nominalism and realism, and thus Abelards via media should not be construed as nominalistic despite the views of several twelfth-century observers to the contrary. Cousins view met with gradual acceptance across the following decade.12 French historians had another reason for disassociating Abelard from nominalism, namely their pride in Abelard as an early representative or even the founder of French philosophy.13 The English Ockham
la conduisirent au coeur du XVIIe sicle. M.H. Carr, Realists and Nominalists (Oxford, 1946), p. 123: English philosophy has been dominated by Nominalist theories. Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hamilton, and Mill express views on the nature of general ideas which are parallel to those of Ockham. An even more sweeping version of this view was expressed by Gustav Bergmann, Realism. A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (Madison, 1967), p. 135: However things might have stood earlier, there is no doubt that ever since the late Middle Ages nominalism was dominant. 9 Despite the common perception that nominalism was pervasive from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, there were very few works that praised it, an exception being Jean Salaberts Philosophia nominalium. The vast bulk of philosophical opinion was anti-nominalist. In this sense the Thomistic polemic in Thomas de Vio Cajetan, or Petrus Nigris Clypeus Thomistarum of 1475 was only enhanced by both the anti-scholastic as well as the pro-patristic treatises of the seventeenth century. See, e.g., Juan Luis Vives, De corruptis artibus (Cologne, 1532); Jean Caramuel y Lobkowitz, Bernardus Petrum Abailardum eiusque potentissimos sectarios triumphans (generally cited as Bernardus Triumphans) (Louvain, 1644); Adam Tribbechov, De doctoribus scholasticis et corrupta per eos divinarum humanarumque rerum scientia (post 1665; 2nd ed. Jena, 1719); Martin Busse, De doctoribus scholasticis latinis, diss. under Jacob Thomasius (Leipzig, 1676). 10 V. Cousin, Ouvrages indits dAblard (Paris, 1836). Cousin translated Tennemanns Grundriss into French in 1830. 11 Cousins view was anticipated by Buhle, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, I, p. 840, although Buhle had no specic label through which to categorize Abelards view. 12 The article on Scolastique, in Encyclopdie nouvelle, ed. Pierre Leroux, vol. 8 (Paris, 1841), pp. 4864, granted the distinction between Roscelins nominalism and Abelards conceptualism but saw the positions as facets of the same view (56) and considered Ockhams doctrine to be that of Abelard (63). On the other hand, Rousselot, tudes sur la philosophie, pt. 2 (Paris, 1841), pp. 1215; Charles de Rmusat, Ablard, 2 vols. (Paris, 1845); B. Haurau, De la philosophie scolastique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1850) accepted the view that Abelard was not really a nominalist. 13 Haurau, in his De la philosophie scolastique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1850), p. 268, praised
deserved no such defense. Haurau even noted that Roscelin, whose opinions were then known only indirectly through the critiques of his opponents, might appear less nominalistic if his actual writings had survived.14 Cousins assessment was as readily adopted in Germany as in France.15 Although not initially in France, Ockhams nominalism did undergo a similar relabeling in Germany. In his groundbreaking Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, the third volume of which appeared at Leipzig in 1867, Carl Prantl questioned the appropriateness of the labels nominalist and nominalism for Ockham or other late medieval logicians, substituting instead, in the case of Ockham, the labels terminist and terminism, which he felt more accurately described Ockhams logic as well as his theory of universals, and was a label derived from the late medieval period.16 Prantl was also aware of the extent to which theological opposition to Ockhams thought had inuenced presentations of his views in histories of philosophy.17 Yet the shift in label from nominalist to terminist did not signicantly alter the prevailing pejorative judgment on Ockhams philosophy or his theology.
the appearance of V. Cousins 1836 edition of Abelards unedited works with the words: Cest M. Cousin qui vient dlever ce monument la gloire de la philosophie franaise. Picavet felt that Cousin gloried Abelard at the expense of Roscelin; Roscelin (Paris, 1896), p. 21: Avec Cousin, la lgende de Roscelin se complte . Ablard, chant par les potes et rest populaire par Hlose, devenait le principal fondateur de la philosophie au moyen ge, le prcurseur de Descartes, pre de la philosophie moderne. 14 Haurau, De la philosophie scolastique, I, p. 270. Almost simultaneously with Hauraus work, J.A. Schmeller published his discovery of a letter of Roscelin to Abelard contained in Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 4643 and reproduced by Cousin in his revised edition of Abelards works. It was later reedited by Josef Reiners. 15 Wilhelm Kaulich, Geschichte der scholastischen Philosophie, vol. 1: Entwicklung der scholastischen Philosophie von Johannes Scotus Erigena bis Ablard (Prag, 1863) relied heavily on French scholarship, esp. De Rmusat and Haurau; Albert Stckl, Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, vol. 2 (Mainz, 1865); Friedrich Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie der patristischen und scholastischen Zeit, 5th ed. by Max Heinze (Berlin, 1877). 16 C. Prantl, Geschichte der Logic im Abendlande, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1867). Prantls work, for all the distortions it is now seen to have introduced into the history of logic, was for its day an extremely learned study and inuential throughout Europe. 17 Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, III, p. 344: wenn auch sptere Nachkommen, welche den thatschlichen geschichtlichen Verlauf nicht kannten oder ignorirten, sich einzig gerade diese Seite aus Occam herauslasen und denselben so als den wahren Hort eines nachmals sogenannten Nominalismus verehrten, woraus dann eine theologische Polemik gegen den Occamismus erwuchs, welche unbemerkt bis zum heutigen Tage auf die Geschichtschreibung der Philosophie einen bedingenden Einuss ausbte.
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In tracing the history of nominalism Aventinus, Du Boulay, and Du Cange, as we have seen, placed its beginning in the generation of Roscelin in the late eleventh century. Some nineteenth-century historians, such as Cousin, Haurau, and Prantl, saw the origins of moderate nominalism or conceptualism in the ninth century, specically in Hrabanus Maurus, John Scotus Eriugena, and Eric of Auxerre. Following this line of argument, K.S. Barach devoted an entire study to nominalism before Roscelin.18 In his Roscelin published in 1896, Picavet portrayed Roscelin as a gure tragically maligned by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historians of philosophy, especially Aventinus, Caramuel y Lobkowitz, and Du Boulay, who anachronistically superimposed fourteenth-century heterodox nominalism on the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and on Roscelin in particulara case of mistaken identity that Condillac, Condorcet, De Grando, and Tennemann simply furthered.19 Picavets description of Roscelins teaching did not dier radically from that of earlier scholars, but he was unwilling to associate it with the pejorative label nominalist. The work of Picavet was blended with the views of earlier nineteenth-century historians in the survey of medieval philosophy published by Maurice De Wulf in 1900, whose popularity is reected in its many editions.20 In none of these accounts was nominalism considered anything other than a theory that rejected the existential status of universals. The second monograph (after Barachs work in 1866) devoted solely to the origins and early history of nominalism was published in 1910
18 K.S. Barach, Zur Geschichte des Nominalismus vor Roscelin (Vienna, 1866). For earlier expressions of this view see Cousin, Ouvrages indits dAblard (Paris, 1836), pp. lxxxv .; Haurau, De la philosophie scolastique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1850), pp. 141143, 270; Haurau, Histoire de la philosophie scolastique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1872), pp. 193194, 196; Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1861), p. 81. In the fth edition of Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, pp. 122135, the entire history of philosophy from Scotus Eriugena to the late eleventh century was presented in terms of the conict between Realismus und Nominalismus. By the eleventh edition, edited by Bernhard Geyer in 1927, the elements in ninth-century thought so identied were reduced to (177) die an Nominalismus anklingt, and the adopted view (205) became der Gegensatz also des Realismus und Nominalismus. Dieser begegnet uns zum ersten Male im letzten Viertel des 11. Jahrhunderts. 19 F.J. Picavet, Roscelin (Paris, 1896), pp. 1723. 20 M. de Wulf, Histoire de la philosophie mdivale (Louvain, 1900; 2nd ed. Paris and Louvain, 1905).
by Josef Reiners.21 Reiners rejected the view that there were protonominalists before the late eleventh century and grounded the origins of nominalism in the controversy over universals in which Roscelin played the principal role. Against the standard interpretation that tried to distance Abelards conceptualism from Roscelins nominalism, Reiners argued that Abelard substituted sermo or nomen in place of Roscelins vox theory, and that it was Abelards position which, by the time of John of Salisbury, was labeled nominalist. Moreover, Reiners reedited the letter of Roscelin to Abelard. The opening years of the 1920s marked a period of intensive research on late medieval nominalism. The decade began with the appearance of two works by Gerhard Ritter that sought to dene more precisely the heritage of Ockham and nominalism in fourteenth- and fteenthcentury Germany, especially at Heidelberg. His rst work, on Marsilius of Inghen as representative of an Ockhamist school, revealed Marsilius to be more independent and conservative than Ritter initially had expected.22 This work was immediately followed by a briefer study of the meaning of the fteenth-century Wegestreit between the via antiqua and the via moderna.23 Ritter surveyed and rejected current views of the fteenth-century conict, e.g., that it was a revival of the twelfth-century conict over universals (Aventinus), that it was a conict between the Byzantine/Stoic logic of terminism and traditional Aristotelian logic rather than the problem of universals (Prantl), that it was a conict between late scholasticism and a humanist return to the teaching of the ancients (Hermelink), or that it was a dierence in methods of logical analysis and instruction that had little philosophic import (Benary).24 Against these interpretations Ritter maintained that the controversy was fundamentally one of dierences in the method and content of logic, but a controversy that had theological implications as well. Throughout his work Ritter took a broader view of nominalism
21 J. Reiners, Der Nominalismus in der Frhscholastik, BGPM, vol. 8/5 (Mnster i. W., 1910). 22 G. Ritter, Marsilius von Inghen und die okkamistische Schule in Deutschland (Heidelberg, 1921). 23 G. Ritter, Via Antiqua und Via Moderna auf den deutschen Universitten des XV. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1922). 24 Aventinus and Prantl are cited above in notes 2 and 16. The other works are H. Hermelink, Die theologische Fakultt in Tbingen 1477 bis 1534 (Tbingen, 1906); Friedrich Benary, Zur Geschichte der Stadt und der Universitt Erfurt am Ausgang des Mittelalters, pt. 3: Via antiqua und via moderna auf den deutschen Hochschulen des Mittelalters mit besonderer Bercksichtigung der Universitt Erfurt (Gotha, 1919).
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than simply a theory of universals, and his approach to nominalism was essentially neutral and non-pejorative. The same cannot be said of the works that immediately followed it, such as the fth edition of De Wulf s Histoire de la philosophie mdivale (1924) or the studies of Ehrle, Feckes, and Michalski. Stimulated in part by Ritters work, Franz Ehrle shaped his 1925 work on Peter of Candia into a study of late medieval nominalism, tracing its development from Ockham, through the controversies at the University of Paris in the 1340s, to the Wegestreit of the fteenth century and its implications for the Reformation.25 Ehrle brought to the topic of late medieval nominalism a strongly negative judgmentnot the negative judgment of many nineteenth-century French scholars who saw a nominalist ancestry behind some of the views of John Locke, Nicolas Malebranche, and David Hume, but the negative judgment of Thomistic Catholic theologians who since the sixteenth century had opposed a voluntaristic system based on a theory of ascribed value that they traced to Ockham and which they felt vitiated dogma on justication, sacramental theory, and ethics. In the same year as Ehrles Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia, Carl Feckes published a study that expressed a negative view of nominalism similarly inuenced by theological concerns.26 Instead of dening nominalism strictly in terms of the theory of universals or a particular approach to language and logic, Feckes saw potentia absoluta speculation as one of its principal characteristics. For Feckes the distinction of absolute and ordained power, as applied by Ockham and his followers to the doctrine of justication, was a device through which nominalists could express outrageous and unorthodox views, de potentia absoluta, while pretending, de potentia ordinata, to believe as the church believes. To him the distinction was a further instance of the skeptical tendencies of nominalism. That view was not substantially undercut by Heinrich Grzondziels detailed study of the early history of the distinction of absolute and ordained power, part of which was published in 1926, since Grzondziel also assumed that the distinction was misused by the Ockhamists as part of their corrupt theology.27 Similarly, vari25 F. Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia des Pisaner Papstes Alexanders V. (Mnster i. W., 1925). 26 C. Feckes, Die Rechtfertigungslehre des Gabriel Biel und ihre Stellung innerhalb der nominalistischen Schule (Mnster i. W., 1925). 27 H. Grzondziel, Die Entwicklung der Unterscheidung zwischen der potentia Dei absoluta und der potentia Dei ordinata von Augustin bis Alexander von Hales (Breslau, 1926).
ous studies of Konstanty Michalski, who had studied at Louvain with De Wulf, attempted to document the destructive skeptical tendencies of late medieval nominalism, beginning with his 1920 essay on philosophic currents at Paris and Oxford in the fourteenth century.28 When one compares the assessment of nominalism in 1925 with that of Aventinus, one is struck by how little the basic account had changed in four centuries. The denition of nominalism had broadened beyond the problem of universals; new texts and further detail had been added; the teaching of Abelard on universals had been relabeled conceptualism or moderate nominalism. Yet the basic history and evaluation had remained remarkably consistent.
The Reassessment of Ockham The decade of the 1920s not only saw the publication of a number of major studies that extended and reenforced the traditional picture of nominalism, especially those of Michalski, Ritter, Ehrle, and Feckes. It was also the decade in which new texts and approaches appeared that ultimately formed the basis for a reassessment of nominalism, both its twelfth-century and its late medieval history. The new texts appeared in works by Grzondziel and M.-D. Chenu. As was noted above, Grzondziel, in a Breslau doctoral dissertation in 1926, studied the early history of the distinction of potentia absoluta et ordinata from Augustine to Alexander of Hales.29 Although not his principal intention, his study made clear that the distinction originated in the opening years of the thirteenth century, not in late medieval theology nor in the generation of Roscelin and Abelard. It was not, in origin, connected with nominalism in any sense; it was an orthodox scholastic distinction used to express the teaching that what God has done and will do were chosen from a larger realm of possibility open to God, and that Gods actions do not exhaust or fully realize his power. Although Grzondziel did not examine the use of the distinction in the
28 The principal essays of Michalski on fourteenth-century philosophyas rich in their information on manuscripts as they were biased in interpretationwere assembled by Kurt Flash as La philosophie au XIVe sicle. Six tudes (Frankfurt, 1969). Michalskis essays helped shape the views of both Maurice De Wulf and tienne Gilson on late medieval nominalism. 29 Grzondziel, Die Entwicklung.
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late medieval period, his study suggested a dierent origin and early history than had been thought. A few years earlier (although not published until 1934), Chenu brought together some twelfth- and thirteenth-century statements about the teaching of the nominales that suggested it had more to do with a grammatical theory of the noun as applied to the problem of the object of belief across time than to the problem of universals.30 According to Chenu, the nominales were so called because they believed in the unitas nominis and in the theory that statements of belief expressed in dierent tenses before and after the events of the life of Christ, had identical meaning and, once true, were always true (semel verum, semper verum). Although Chenu did not directly attack the traditional picture of the origin and initial meaning of nominalism, his evidence pointed in a dierent direction. Neither Grzondziels nor Chenus studies attracted much attention, both because they were not shaped as countertheses and because they did not circulate among scholars concerned with nominalism.31 More attention was accorded to two studies that directly proposed a reassessment of Ockham and his relation to nominalism on the basis of texts that were already known. The new approach to Ockhams thought began with Erich Hochstetters Studien zur Metaphysik und Erkenntnislehre Wilhelms von Ockham in 1927.32 Without specically addressing the meaning and appropriateness of the label nominalist, Hochstetter saw Ockham as a proponent of an empiricist epistemology and metaphysics far removed from the skeptical and subjectivist interpretations of terminism and nominalism. Hochstetter was also among the rst to call attention to the shift in Ockhams theory of universal concepts, from a ctum theory to an intellectio theory.33 The revised assessment of Ockham was extended by
30 M.-D. Chenu, Contribution lhistoire du trait de la foi, in Mlanges Thomistes (Paris, 1934; written in 1923), pp. 123140; Grammaire et thologie aux XIIe et XIIIe sicles, AHDLMA, 10 (19351936), 528. The thesis and evidence was re-presented in La Thologie au douzime sicle (Paris, 1957), pp. 90107. 31 Grzondziels work was largely unread until the 1960s, and Chenus two studies on the teaching of the nominales were not applied to propositional theory or to nominalism until Gabriel Nuchelmanss Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam, 1973). 32 E. Hochstetter, Studien zur Metaphysik und Erkenntnislehre Wilhelms von Ockham (Berlin, 1927). 33 Hochstetter, Studien, pp. 112, 78117. S.G. Tornay, William of Ockhams nominalism, Philosophical Review, 45 (1936), 245268 and Studies and Selections (La Salle, 1938), attempted to combine the texts into one view, but without success. Ockhams shift
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Paul Vignaux in his 19301931 articles on Ockham and on nominalism in the Dictionnaire de Thologie catholique.34 While accepting Reinerss depiction of the origin and early development of nominalism, Vignaux displayed a more sensitive reading of Abelard as well as a more positive assessment of Ockhams philosophy and theology, particularly as regards his use of the distinction of absolute and ordained power. Despite the work of Hochstetter and Vignaux, who continued to publish studies taking a new approach to nominalism and Ockham, the negative assessment of both the school and its supposed leader continued through the next few decades.35 Vignauxs teacher, tienne Gilson, was not moved to revise his views.36 Ernst Borcherts perspective was all but untouched by the work of Hochstetter and Vignaux in his study of the distinction of absolute and ordained power in the late Middle Ages (1940), despite the evidence of most of the texts cited in his work.37 The traditional assessment was also retained by Meyrick Carr in his Realists and Nominalists (1946)although he accepted the categorization of Abelard as a conceptualist and the evidence for a shift in Ockhams views on universals, Franz Pelster in his attempt to ll in the gap between twelfth- and fourteenth-century nominalism, in the sixth edition of De Wulf s Histoire de philosophie mdivale (1947), and by Erwin Iserloh in his study of Ockhams teaching on grace, justication, and the eucharist (1956).38
in opinion was accepted by J.R. Weinberg, Ockhams Conceptualism, Philosophical Review, 50 (1941), 523528; Carr, Realists and Nominalists, pp. 112117; Ph. Boehner, The Realistic Conceptualism of William Ockham, Traditio, 4 (1946), 307335; Boehner, The Relative Date of Ockhams Commentary on the Sentences, FS, 11 (1951), 305 316. 34 P. Vignaux, Nominalisme in DTC, 11.1 (1930), cols. 717784; Occam in DTC, 11.2 (1931), cols. 876889. 35 P. Vignaux, Justication et prdestination au XIVe sicle (Paris, 1934); Vignaux, Nominalisme au XIVe sicle (Montral and Paris, 1948); E. Hochstetter, Nominalismus?, FS, 9 (1949), 370403; Hochstetter, Viator mundi. Einige Bemerkungen zur Situation des Menschen bei Wilhelm von Ockham, FzS, 32 (1950), 120. 36 . Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York, 1937), pp. 3121; Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York, 1938), esp. pp. 8689; La philosophie au moyen ge, 12th ed. (Paris, 1947), pp. 638655; History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York, 1955), pp. 487520. 37 E. Borchert, Der Einuss des Nominalismus auf die Christologie der Sptscholastik (Mnster, 1940), pp. 46108. 38 Carr, Realists and Nominalists; F. Pelster, Nominales und reales in 13. Jahrhundert, Sophia, 14 (1946), 154161; M. de Wulf, Histoire de philosophie mdivale, 6th ed. (Louvain, 1947); E. Iserloh, Gnade und Eucharistie in der philosophischen Theologie des Wilhelm von Ockham (Mainz, 1956). Within this group should be included: Albert Lang, Die Wege der
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Two scholars, who took Hochstetters and Vignauxs interpretations of Ockhams thought more seriously, eventually did produce a reaction among those committed to the traditional assessment. Philotheus Boehner, who in 1937 had published with Gilson a history of Christian philosophy in the Middle Ages, began shortly afterwards a more intensive study of Ockhams non-polemical works, which led in turn to series of revisionary studies.39 Boehners interpretation of Ockham and his rejection of the authenticity of the Centiloquium brought an almost immediate reaction from Anton Pegis and Erwin Iserloh.40 Boehners replies, if not on all points convincing, did remove the Centiloquium from the list of Ockhams authentic works.41 With the encouragement of Ph. Boehner and Eligius Buytaert, Franciscan Studies and the publication series of the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure, N.Y., became vehicles for much of the new research on Ockham.42 The new
Glaubensbegrndung bei den Scholastikern des 14. Jahrhunderts, BGPM, 30,1/2 (Mnster, 1930); Heinrich Totting von Oyta, BGPTM, 33,4/5 (Mnster, 1937); Joseph Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland (Freiburg, 1940; 1949). 39 . Gilson and Ph. Boehner, Die Geschichte der christlichen Philosophie von ihren Anfngen bis Nikolaus von Cues (Paderborn, 1937); Boehner, Manuscrits des oeuvres nonpolmiques dOckham, La France Franciscaine, 22 (1939), 171175; Zur Echtheit der Summa Logicae Ockhams, FzS, 26 (1939), 190193; Ockhams Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei et de futuris contingentibus and Its Main Problems, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 16 (1941), 177192; The Text Tradition of Ockhams Ordinatio, The New Scholasticism, 16 (1942), 203241; The Notitia Intuitiva of Non-existents according to William Ockham, Traditio, 1 (1943), 223275; The Medieval Crisis of Logic and the Author of the Centiloquium Attributed to Ockham, FS, 4 (1944), 151170; these articles were reprinted in Boehner, Collected Articles on Ockham, ed. E.M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1958). 40 A. Pegis, Concerning William of Ockham, Traditio, 2 (1944), 465480; Pegis, Some Recent Interpretations of Ockham, Speculum, 23 (1948), 452463; E. Iserloh, Um die Echtheit des Centiloquium. Ein Beitrag zur Wertung Ockhams und zur Chronologie seiner Werke, Gregorianum, 30 (1949), 78103, 309346. 41 Boehner, In Propria Causa, FS, 5 (1945), 3754; Ockhams Theory of Truth, FS, 5 (1945), 138161; The Realistic Conceptualism of William Ockham, Traditio, 4 (1946), 307335; Ockhams Theory of Signication, FS, 6 (1946), 143170; Ockhams Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth, FS, 6 (1946), 261292; The Metaphysics of William Ockham, The Review of Metaphysics, 1 (19471948), 5986; Ockhams Philosophy in the Light of Recent Research, Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy (Amsterdam, 1949), 11131116; A Recent Presentation of Ockhams Philosophy, FS, 9 (1949), 443456; On a Recent Study of Ockham, FS, 10 (1950), 191196; all reprinted in Boehner, Collected Articles. 42 O. Fuchs, The Psychology of Habit According to William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, 1952); M.C. Menges, The Concept of Univocity Regarding the Predication of God and Creature According to William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, 1952); D. Webering, Theory of Demonstration
13
approach to Ockham was also echoed at Paris in the work of Lon Baudry.43 The other scholar who helped extend the revised understanding of Ockham and its implications for the history of late medieval philosophy was E.A. Moody.44 Moody went beyond a reassessment of Ockham and attempted to separate the Venerable Inceptor from what he still perceived as a current of radical skepticism in late medieval thought, particularly as represented by Nicholas of Autrecourt. For Moody, Buridan was an Ockhamist in the revised sense of that label, while Autrecourt was not. The research on Ockham grew rapidly, and the newer literature and reassessment were surveyed frequently.45 Yet as the research of Boehner and Moody illustrates, the revisionary movement of the 1940s did not result in a new assessment of nominalism but in an attempt to separate Ockham from nominalism as it was traditionally understood, much along the same lines as the earlier historiography on Abelard. Moreover, nominalism itself had grown beyond the denition of a theory of the origin and ontological status of universals. Despite Vignauxs work, it was generally thought to be, at least in the late Middle Ages, a destructive movement based on the primacy of the individual and the dissolution of natural theology that was voluntaristic, skeptical, and deistic.46 Instead of challenging that view of nominalism, revisionary scholars were content to remove from the ranks of the nominalists and
According to William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, 1953); H. Shapiro, Motion, Time and Place According to William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, 1957). 43 L. Baudry, Guillaume dOccam. Sa vie, ses oeuvres, ses ides sociales et politiques, vol. I: Lhomme et les oeuvres (Paris, 1950). 44 E.A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (London, 1935); Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt, FS, 7 (1947), 113146; Empiricism and Metaphysics in Medieval Philosophy, The Philosophical Review, 67 (1958), 145163. 45 E. Hochstetter, Ockham-Forschung in Italien, Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung, 1 (1947), 559578; Ph. Boehner, Ockhams Philosophy in the Light of Recent Research; Boehner, Der Stand der Ockham-Forschung, FzS, 34 (1952), 1231; Timotheus Barth, Wilhelm Ockham im Lichte der neuesten Forschung, PJ, 60 (1950), 464467; Barth, Nuove interpretazione della losoa di Occam, Studi francescani, 52 (1955), 187204; Helmar Junghans, Ockham im Lichte der neueren Forschung (Berlin, 1968). 46 The broad and negative denition of nominalism can be found in Gordon Le, Bradwardine and the Pelagians (Cambridge, 1957); Le, Medieval Thought from Saint Augustine to Ockham (St. Albans, 1958); Armand A. Maurer, Medieval Philosophy (New York, 1962); David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London, 1962); Francis Oakley, The Political Thought of Pierre dAilly (New Haven, 1964). Although using a more precise and traditional understanding of nominalism, the same negative view can be found in J.A. Weisheipl, Ockham and some Mertonians, MS, 30 (1968), 163213.
14
chapter one
radical moderni whatever gure was the subject of their study. This procedure, which Ritter had applied in part to Marsilius of Inghen earlier in the century, was applied by Damasus Trapp to Gregory of Rimini.47
Toward a New Assessment of Nominalism The historiography on nominalism took an important shift in the early 1960s through the work of Heiko Oberman.48 Oberman accepted the view that a nominalist movement existed in the late Middle Ages and that its approach and doctrine were far broader than a theory of universals. He also accepted the view that the names traditionally cited as belonging to this nominalist school, specically Ockham, Robert Holcot, Adam Wodeham, Jean Buridan, Gregory of Rimini, Marsilius of Inghen, Pierre dAilly, Jean Gerson, and Gabriel Biel, were in some way linked. He was also convinced that Vignaux, Boehner, and Moody were correct in their reevaluation of Ockham. But Oberman chose to explain the discrepancy between aspects of the thought of these late medieval thinkers and the traditional view of nominalism not by rejecting that categorization of their thought, but by revising the denition of nominalism and seeing it as a diverse movement that had its conservative (Gregory of Rimini), radical (Holcot, Wodeham, Nicholas of Autrecourt, and John of Mirecourt), and mainstream (Ockham, Buridan, dAilly, Gerson, and Biel) currents. The nominalist label was enthusiastically embraced as a dynamic and largely positive force in late medieval thought, except perhaps on the issue of justication. It was also seen primarily as a theological movement whose core doctrine lay not in a theory of universals but in the dialectic of the absolute and ordained power of God.
47 In addition to the newer historiography on Ockham, Damasus Trapp attempted to sever the connection between Gregory of Rimini and nominalism in: Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century, Augustiniana, 6 (1956), 146274; Gregory of Rimini Manuscripts, Editions and Additions, Augustiniana, 8 (1958), 425443; New Approaches to Gregory of Rimini, Augustinianum, 2 (1962), 115130; Moderns and Modernists in MS Fribourg Cordeliers 26, Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 241270. 48 H.A. Oberman, Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism with Attention to its Relation to the Renaissance, HTR, 53 (1960), 4776; Facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. Robert Holcot, O.P., and the Beginning of Luthers Theology, HTR, 55 (1962), 317342; The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Cambridge, Mass., 1963).
15
Discussions of nominalism in the 1960s and 1970s were, for the most part, engaged with Obermans thesis. While accepting the importance of the covenantal theme and the use of the distinction of absolute and ordained power in Ockham, Rimini, dAilly, and Biel, some scholars were reluctant to see these gures as part of a unied movement or to apply the label nominalist to them, both because Obermans denition of nominalism was too far removed from either twelfth- or fteenth-century usage, and because a fteenth-century labeleven if used correctlywas applied to fourteenth-century gures anachronistically.49 Whatever position was taken on the appropriateness of the nominalist label for fourteenth-century thinkers, the period of the 1960s and 1970s was marked by intensive study on numerous gures traditionally associated with late medieval nominalism.50
49 These views were expressed in Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Pierre dAilly, Speculum, 46 (1971), 94119; Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion, in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. C. Trinkaus and H.A. Oberman (Leiden, 1974), pp. 2659. See also Courtenay, Nominalism and Late Medieval Thought: a Bibliographical Essay, Theological Studies, 33 (1972), 716734; Late Medieval Nominalism Revisited: 19721982, JHI, 44 (1983), 159164. The basis for this position, as of 1972, was stated in Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion, p. 52: none of Ockhams contemporaries ever called him a nominalist. Nominalist was a twelfth-century term that described a particular position on the question of universals, and when nominales or opinio nominalium were used in the thirteenth century, they described the position of twelfth-century logicians. By 1270 these labels had ceased to be used and were only reintroduced in the fteenth century (possibly associated with the revival of Albertism and Thomism) to describe a position in logic, or more accurately, a way of teaching logic. When, in the fteenth century, Ockhams name occurs in a list of nominales, the intent was to indicate that he shared with others a particular approach to logic, not that all those named in the list belonged to a school of which Ockham was the founder. Oberman, however, was inuenced by common usage in which (Courtenay, p. 34) nominalism is only a descriptive term for the thought of [those traditionally associated with nominalism]. In this approach the term nominalism loses its specic, traditional content, and runs the risk of being redened with every new study. [I have revised my view of twelfth-century nominalism; see below, n. 62; article reprinted in this volume as Chapter 4.] 50 G. Le, Gregory of Rimini (Manchester, 1961), to be used with caution; F. Oakley, Pierre dAilly and the Absolute Power of God: Another Note on the Theology of Nominalism, HTR, 56 (1963), 5973; E.A. Moody, Buridan and a Dilemma of Nominalism, in Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1965), pp. 577596; R.P. Desharnais, The History of the Distinction between Gods Absolute and Ordained Power and Its Inuence on Martin Luther, doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of America (Washington, 1966); J.F. McNamara, Responses to Ockhamist Theology in the Poetry of the Pearl-Poet, Langland, and Chaucer, doctoral dissertation, Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge, 1968); Steven Ozment, Homo Spiritualis (Leiden, 1969); Heinrich Schepers, Holkot contra dicta Crathorn, PJ, 77 (1970), 320354, 79 (1972), 106136; Fritz Homann, Die theologische Methode des Oxforder Dominikanerlehrers Robert Holcot, BGPTM,
16
chapter one
One particular avenue of exploration was sparked by E.A. Moodys suggested alterations of the traditional understanding of the relation of Ockham and Autrecourt and the signicance of the Parisian Arts Faculty statutes of 1339 and 1340, which had been viewed as antiOckhamist. He maintained that the statute of 1339 was not a condemnation of Ockham but a restriction on the use of his writings pending university approval, and that the statute of 1340, far from being an attack on Ockham or the Ockhamists at Paris, was directed against an anti-Ockhamist, Nicholas of Autrecourt. Moodys thesis was rejected by T.K. Scott and Ruprecht Paqu but found a more favorable hearing in the studies of Courtenay and Tachau.51 It is likely that this chapter in the dissemination of Ockhams thought will continue to receive study in the coming years. The presumed unity of an Ockhamist tradition in late medieval thought has undergone severe testing in the last decade. Katherine Tachau uncovered evidence that neither Ockhams denition of intuitive cognition nor his attack on sensible and intelligible species were generally adopted, even among those whose names have been most closely linked to Ockham, such as Adam Wodeham.52 The present direction of research not only casts doubt on a denable nominalist or a unied Ockhamist tradition in fourteenth-century thought, but reveals
n.F. 5 (Mnster, 1972); Roy Van Neste, The Epistemology of John of Mirecourt in Relation to Fourteenth Century Thought, doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin (Madison, 1972); Hester G. Gelber, Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in Scholastic Thought, 13001335, doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin (Madison, 1974); Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Pierre dAilly; John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini on Whether God Can Undo the Past, RTAM, 39 (1972), 224256, 40 (1973), 147174; Adam Wodeham (Leiden, 1978); W. Eckermann, Wort und Wirklichkeit. Das Sprachverstndnis in der Theologie Gregors von Rimini und sein Weiterwirken in der Augustinerschule (Wrzburg, 1978). 51 E.A. Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt, FS, 7 (1947), 113 146; R. Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut (Berlin, 1970); T.K. Scott, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan and Ockhamism, JHP, 11 (1971), 1541; Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation at Paris, 13391341, History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396; Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, in Preuve et raisons lUniversit de Paris. Logique, ontologie et thologie au XIVe sicle, ed. Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (Paris, 1984), pp. 4364; Courtenay, Force of Words and Figures of Speech: the Crisis over Virtus sermonis in the Fourteenth Century, FS, 44 (1984), 107128 [reprinted in this volume, chapters 810]. 52 K.H. Tachau, The Problem of the Species in medio at Oxford in the Generation After Ockham, Mediaeval Studies, 44 (1982), 394443; Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics, 12501345 (Leiden, 1988).
17
the heritage of Ockham to be more complex and less widely accepted than had previously been supposed. The most important contribution towards revealing the thought and interrelation of Ockham and those traditionally associated with him lies in the critical editions that have appeared in the last two decades. Among these are the edition of the non-political writings of Ockham, the edition of the Sentences commentary of Gregory of Rimini, and some of the questions of Robert Holcot and John of Mirecourt.53 Equally useful for this issue are the editions of questions from authors opposed to Ockham, such as John of Reading and Walter Chatton.54 Plans appear to be well underway for editions of the works of Jean Buridan and Marsilius of Inghen. The intellectual climate that produced the conict of reales and nominales in the fteenth century has again become an area of intensive study in recent years. Some studies have approached the problem from the standpoint of the antiqui/moderni conict, which as a topos had a much wider range than late scholasticism.55 One critical area of discussion has focused on Jean Gerson as theologian and chancellor of the University of Paris, his reform of teaching, and his opposition to aspects of English thought.56 The other critical area has been the Albertist
William of Ockham, Opera philosophica et theologica, ed. Ph. Boehner, G. Gl, et al. (St. Bonaventure, 19671984); Gregory of Rimini, Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum, ed. D. Trapp et al. (Berlin, 19791984); H.G. Gelber, Exploring the Boundaries of Reason. Three Questions on the Nature of God by Robert Holcot, OP (Toronto, 1983). An edition of questions from Mirecourts Sentences commentary is presently underway by Massimo Parodi. 54 Steven J. Livesey, Theology and Science in the Fourteenth Century. Three Questions on the Unity and Subalternation of the Sciences from John of Readings Commentary on the Sentences (Leiden, 1989); Walter Chatton, Reportatio et Lectura super Sententias: Collatio ad Librum Primum et Prologus, ed. J.C. Wey (Toronto, 1989). 55 See, for example, A. Buck, Die querelle des Anciens et des Modernes im italienischen Selbstverstndnis der Renaissance und des Barocks, Sitzungsberichte der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft Frankfurt, 11/1 (Wiesbaden, 1973); Elisabeth Gssmann, Antiqui und Moderni im Mittelalter (Munich, 1974); Antiqui und Moderni, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 9, ed. A. Zimmermann (Berlin, 1974); and the articles by Courtenay, C. Trinkaus, and H.A. Oberman in JHI, 48 (1987), 350. 56 P. Glorieux, Le chancelier Gerson et la rforme de lenseignement, in Mlanges oerts tienne Gilson (TorontoParis, 1959), pp. 285298; S. Ozment, The University and the Church, Patterns of Reform in Jean Gerson, Medievalia and Humanistica, n.s. 1 (1970), 111126; G. Ouy, Gerson et lAngleterre. A propos dun texte polmique retrouv du Chancelier de Paris contre lUniversit dOxford, 1396, in Humanism in France at the End of the Middle Ages and in the Early Renaissance, ed. A.H.T. Levi (Manchester, 1970), pp. 4381; W. Hbener, Der theologisch-philosophische Konservatismus des Jean Gerson, in Antiqui und Moderni, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 9, pp. 171200;
53
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movement, the Formalists, and the role of Jean de Maisonneuve, an area recast by the research contributions of Znon Kaluza.57 Nominalist historiography has not been exclusively preoccupied with Ockham, Ockhamism, and the via moderna in the late Middle Ages. Abelard has continued to receive attention. The work of Jean Jolivet has provided a more balanced and critical view of Abelards thought, and David Luscombe, in addition to various studies and an edition and translation of Abelards Scito te ipsum, has explored Abelards inuence in twelfth-century intellectual life.58 In conjunction with Jolivet, Vignaux revisited some of the themes that concerned him in the early 1930s, especially Abelard and nominalism.59 Twelfth-century nominalism as well as the origin and early meaning of the label nominales have been reopened in the last few years. Scholars connected with the Institut for Graesk og Latinsk Middelalderlologi in Copenhagen have greatly extended the body of references to the opiniones nominalium, especially in texts relating to grammar.60 From another quarter, Gabriel Nuchelmans reintroduced Chenus ndings on theory
H.A. Oberman, Contra vanam curiositatem (Zrich, 1974); Z. Kaluza, Le chancelier Gerson et Jrme de Prague, AHDLMA, 51 (1984), 81126; Ch. Burger, Aedicatio, fructus, utilitas; Johannes Gerson als Professor der Theologie und Kanzler der Universitt Paris (Tbingen, 1986); Mark S. Burrows, Jean Gerson after Constance: Via Media et Regia as a Revision of the Ockhamist Covenant, Church History, 59 (1990), 467481. 57 W. Hbener, Robertus Anglicus OFM und die formalistische Tradition, in Philosophie im Mittelalter. Entwicklungslinien und Paradigmen, ed. J.P. Beckmann, L. Honnefelder, G. Schrimpf and G. Wieland (Hamburg, 1987), pp. 329353; Z. Kaluza, Exode 3,14 et Matthieu 6,9: Le qui es dans quelques textes de Henri de Pomerio (13821469) et de Heimeric de Campo (13951460), in Celui qui est. Interprtations juives et chrtiennes dExode 3,14, Paris 1986, pp. 163203; Kaluza, Le De universali reali de Jean de Maisonneuve et les epicuri litterales, Freiburger Zeitschrift fr Philosophie und Theologie, 33 (1986), 469516; Kaluza, Les Querelles doctrinales Paris. Nominalistes et realistes aux conns du XIVe et du XVe sicles (Bergamo, 1988). 58 J. Jolivet, Comparaison des thories du langage chez Ablard et chez les Nominalistes du XIVe sicle, in Peter Abelard, ed. E.M. Buytaert (Louvain and the Hague, 1974), pp. 163178; Jolivet, Arts du langage et thologie chez Ablard (Paris, 1982); D.E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard (Cambridge, 1969). 59 Vignaux, Note sur le nominalisme dAblard, in Pierre AblardPierre le Vnrable (Paris, 1975), pp. 523529; La problmatique du nominalisme mdival peut-elle clairer des problmes philosophiques actuels? Revue philosophique de Louvain, 75 (1977), 293 331. 60 Most of this evidence appeared in articles in the CIMAGL by Yukio Iwakuma, Sten Ebbesen, Margarita Fredborg, N.J. Green-Pedersen, and others. Some of the relevant works of these scholars as well as L.M. de Rijk also appeared in Studia Mediewistyczne and Vivarium.
19
of the unity of the noun in relation to propositional theory.61 These sources led Calvin Normore and myself, independently, to set out two models for the origin and early meaning of nominalism.62 The state of the question on medieval nominalism has undergone signicant revision in the last century. In comparison to the new evidence and approaches that have appeared since 1930, the descriptions of nominalism passed down from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century seem like slight variations on a standard theme. Yet 1989 does not mark the conclusion or even a secure resting point from which to summarize these research achievements. Too many texts, authors, and details relating to the opiniones nominalium, Abelard, Ockham, and related gures have yet to be studied before we can have an adequate picture of nominalism in either the twelfth century or the late Middle Ages. As limiting as this is for a historiographical survey, it is precisely the exciting challenge that drives the enterprise of research.
G. Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam, 1973), esp. pp. 178189. C. Normore, The Tradition of Mediaeval Nominalism, in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. J.F. Wippel (Washington, 1987), pp. 201217; Courtenay, Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century, in Lectionum varietates. Hommage Paul Vignaux (19041987), ed. J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, A. de Libera (Paris, 1991), pp. 229250. See also the important study of Marcia Colish, Gilbert, the Early Porretans, and Peter Lombard: Semantics and Theology, in Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains aux origines de la logica modernorum (Naples, 1988), pp. 229250.
61 62
part one
BEFORE OCKHAM
chapter two
AUGUSTINE AND NOMINALISM*
The two elements in the title may well appear contradictory to many. Augustine stands as the foundation of orthodox Christian theology in the West, a thinker with roots in Neoplatonism with which nominalism has traditionally been juxtaposed, and the great opponent of Pelagian thought that has so often been identied with nominalism. Nominalism has usually been considered a radical movement in western philosophy and theology: a philosophy strongly opposed to all forms of Platonism and all entities beyond the individual; a philosophy concerned with words, not things; and one linked to a semi-Pelagian theology that makes God a debtor to those who, in this life, make an eort toward their salvation (facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam). What has this particular form of Athens or Babylon to do with Jerusalem? Although it might be enlightening to trace Augustinian elements in late medieval nominalism, that is not the goal of this paper. In fact, it will be best to rid the mind of what is normally meant by nominalism, either traditional representations or more recent revisions, either philosophical nominalism or theological nominalism. I will be dealing, instead, with the role played by Augustinian texts in the origin of the term nominalist itself. Over half a century ago the French scholar M.-D. Chenu made a revolutionary discovery that has never received the attention it deserved.1 In place of the traditional assumption that nominalists were so called because they believed that universals were only mere names nominathat had no basis in external reality, Chenu established that
* Originally presented as a paper in a conference on Augustine at the University of the South and published in Saint Augustine and His Inuence in the Middle Ages, ed. E.B. King and J.T. Schaefer (Sewanee: The Press of the University of the South, 1988), pp. 9197. 1 M.-D. Chenu, Contribution lhistoire du trait de la foi, in Mlanges Thomistes (Paris, 1934; imprimatur 1923), pp. 123140; Grammaire et thologie aux XIIe et XIIIe sicles, AHDLMA 10 (19351936), 528; La Thologie au douzime sicle (Paris, 1957), pp. 90107. Additional examples and discussion occur in A. Landgraf, Studien zur Theologie des zwlften Jahrhunderts, Traditio 1 (1943), 183222; G. Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam, 1973), pp. 165189.
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chapter two
the origin of the term nominalist did not arise in the context of the problem of universals at all. The label nominalist arose as a grammatical theory of the unity of the noun that was applied to certain problems, particularly theological problems that concerned immutability. What came to be known as the theory of the unity or oneness of the noun (unitas nominis) was the view that there are primary root meanings to words, both nouns and verbs, that underlie changing grammatical forms or inections. In any given language, a name, spelled identically, may be assigned to several dierent objects or activities, but the mental equivalents of those objects or activities are separate nomina. In the classic example, canis can mean dog, the constellation, or a river. Each noun has a primary meaning or signication, reected in its stem, that lies beneath the changing forms produced by case, number, and gender. Similarly, each verb has a primary signication, again reected in its stem, that lies beneath the changing endings of tense, mood, voice, or participial form. Like nouns, verbs have one denotation and many declinations. Grammatical forms were viewed as consignications (voces consignicativae) that do not alter the primary signication of a word. And what was applied to words was also applied to statements containing a subject and predicate. They also had one primary meaning that was not aected or altered by changing grammatical inections, particularly tense forms. Although not fully explored or developed by Chenu, this theory was used in the twelfth century to solve problems of immutability: the immutability of divine knowledge, divine volition, divine power, and of Christian belief. What God knows, wills, or is able to do at one time remains the same despite that passage of time. Similarly, the articles of the Christian faith are true regardless of the point in time (and consequent tense structure) of the armation. It was on this last problem, perhaps the central one for the entire development, that our rst Augustinian text appears. In adopting a nominalist solution to the problem of divine knowledge, namely that the content of divine knowledge remains the same across time despite the fact that we express this knowledge in dierent tense forms depending on whether the object of knowledge lies in the past, present, or future, Peter Lombard cited as authoritative support a passage from Augustines homilies on the Gospel of John.2 The patriarchs (principally Abraham) believed the
2 Lombard, Sent. I, dist. 41, c. 3 in Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae, vol. I (Grottaferrata, 1971), p. 293.
augustine and nominalism
25
same truths about Christ as Christians arm in the creed. The faith of the antiqui and the moderni is identical despite the fact that what Abraham and Moses believed was in the future tense and what Christians believe is in the past tense. Tempora variata sunt, non des.3 The object of knowledge and belief was a controversial issue in the twelfth century. Because of the Augustinian text and related passages in Scripture and Augustine, all participants in the debate wished to arm the identity of faith. Because the actual article of belief diered in tense (future for Abraham, past for us), the article as statement (enuntiabile) could not be the object of belief without committing one to the position that the object of belief changes. But if tense does not matter and thus if Christ will be born of a virgin and Christ was born of a virgin are essentially identical, then the faith of the Jew, who believes the Messiah will come, is identical with that of the Christian. Consequently, some thought the object of faith was the actual historical event: the Incarnation, Crucixion, Resurrection, Ascension, etc. Others, however, recognized that only statements (enuntiabilia), not events or things (res), could be objects of assent or denial. We do not believe this conference; what we believe is that this conference is now taking place. To say we believe in the Incarnation means that we believe the Incarnation took place. But that would seem to involve one in statements of belief that dier in tense. The nominalist solution to this impasse was to argue that similar statements of belief, which dier only in tense form, have an underlying identical meaning or signication, just as do nouns and verbs. A statement (enuntiabile), once true, is always true. Semel est verum, semper est verum. Does the Augustinian passage cited by Lombard have only a supercial similarity to this nominalist theory of nouns, verbs, and statements, or is the nominalist solution to the problem of the object of belief, as William of Auxerre later asserted, a correct interpretation of Augustines position?4 Was Augustine, in any sense, one of the fathers of
3 Augustine, Tract, in Ioh., 45, 9 (CCL 36, 392): Ante adventum Domini nostri Iesu Christi praecesserunt iusti, sic in eum credentes venturum, quomodo nos credimus in eum qui venit. Tempora variata sunt, non des. Quia et ipsa verba pro tempore variantur, cum varie declinantur; alium sonum habet: venturus est; alium sonum habet: venit; mutatus est sonus, venturus est, et venit; eadem tamen des utrosque coniungit, et eos qui venturum esse, et eos qui eum venisse crediderunt. Diversis quidem temporibus, sed utrosque per unum de ostium. 4 William of Auxerre, Summa aurea I, tr. 7, c. 1; ed. J. Ribaillier, vol. 1 (Paris, 1980), p. 181: Sed secundum Nominales qui dicunt: quod semel est verum, semper est verum,
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the theory of terms and propositional analysis that theologians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries understood as the essence of Nominalism? Augustine touched on the subject of the object of belief several times in his early works, for example in De catechizandis rudibus (c. 400) and in a letter to Deogratias written around 409.5 In the letter Augustine armed the identity of belief between Christians (nos) and the Patriarchs (antiqui). There he arms that faith and salvation do not vary with the change in time nor with the fact that belief is expressed by us in the past tense and was expressed by them in the future tense. The things (res) that are believed do not vary; only the names (nomina) and signs (signa).6 In this passage Augustine seems to associate the term nomen with the outward, changing forms of observance and belief, not the inward, constant meaning of the faith of those before and after the advent of Christ. But he was not including syntactical structure and tense form in his use of nomen; the dierent names have to do with dierent rites and ceremonies of the old law and the new gospel. Moreover, it is unclear in the passage whether by res Augustine means the events of the life of Christ or statements about those events, but the former might be the more natural construction. Augustine returned to this theme around 416 in his homilies on the Gospel of John. In glossing the passage that the sheep did not listen to the false prophets before Christ, Augustine remarked that faith remains the same for believers before and after Christ. Before Christs advent, there were righteous men, believing in the same way in him who was to come, as we believe in him who has come. The times diered, but not the faith. He went on to say that verbs vary with tense, and that he is to come is one sound and he has come is another sound. Words, which are signs, change sound (i.e.,
Deus nihil incipit vel desinit scire. Et hoc magis concordat Augustino et Magistro in sententiis. 5 De cate. rud. 3, 6 (CCL 46, 125); Epistula (102) ad Deogratium (CSEL 34, 554555). 6 Epistula ad Deogratium (CSEL 34, 554555): Sicut enim nos in eum credimus et apud patrem manentem et qui in carne iam venerit, sic in eum credebant antiqui et apud patrem manentem et in carne venturum. Nec, quia pro temporum varietate nunc factum adnuntiatur, quod tunc futurum praenuntiabatur, ideo des ipsa variata vel salus ipsa diversa est nec, quia una eademque res aliis atque aliis sacris et sacramentis vel prophetatur vel praedicatur, ideo alias et alias res vel alias et alias salutes oportet intellegi. Proinde aliis tunc nominibus et signis aliis autem nunc et prius occultius postea manifestius et prius a paucioribus post a pluribus una tamen eademque vera religio signicatur et observatur.
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grammatical form) with reference to time. What those words signify (signicata), however, remains the same. From there Augustine moves to a eucharistic analogy. Just as the Hebrews drank the water that owed from the rock (Exodus 17), so we are nourished by the sacrament on the altar. The visible species dier; the underlying meaning (signicatio) is the same.7 This discussion must be viewed against the background of Augustines theory of the noun. The primacy of the nominative case of a noun and the present tense of a verb were well established in ancient grammar. The oblique cases, gender forms, and past and future tenses were accidental qualities of the principal signication of words. Aristotle distinguished between the noun proper and the cases of a noun, just as between a verb proper (present action) and the tenses of a verb (past and future).8 The essence of the verb was action; the time of that action was a secondary, qualitative addition. The role of the nomen (naming word) was larger than what is normally understood by noun. Not only did it usually include pronouns, adjectives and other parts of speech linked to nouns, but verbs could be viewed as compounds of the copula est and the predicatea named activity as substantive. Socrates runs means Socrates is running. Once stripped of its temporal quality and the hidden copula, it was this naming function that created the principal signication (the running Socrates) and united all tense forms of a verb. These views, adopted by Cicero, were important inuences shaping Augustines view of language and sign. In De magistro Augustine put
See above, note 3. Tract. in Ioh. (CCL 36, 392): In signis diversis eadem des; sic in signis diversis, quomodo in verbis diversis; quia verba sonos mutant per tempora, et utique nihil aliud sunt verba quam signa. Signicando enim verba sunt; tolle signicationem verbo, strepitus inanis est. Signicata ergo sunt omnia. 393: Utique credebant; sed illi ventura esse, nos autem venisse. Videte ergo, de manente, signa variata. Ibi petra Christus, nobis Christus quod in altari Dei ponitur. Et illi pro magno sacramento eiusdem Christi biberunt aquam prouentem de petra; nos quid bibamus norunt deles. Si speciem visibilem intendas, aliud est; si intellegibilem signicationem, eumdem potum spiritalem biberunt. 8 Arist., On Interp. 2: The expressions of Philo, to Philo, and so on, constitute not nouns, but cases of a noun. The denition [meaning] of these cases of a noun is in other respects the same as that of the noun proper On Interp. 3: A verb is that which, in addition to its proper meaning, carries with it the notion of time. Similarly, he was healthy, he will be healthy, are not verbs, but tenses of a verb; the dierence lies in the fact that the verb indicates present time, while the tenses of the verb indicate those times which lie outside the present.
7
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forward his theory that every word (verbum) is a noun (nomen).9 Words are verbal signs with specic meaning. All things which are uttered by the articulate voice with some signication are called words.10 Nouns are audible signs of things, while the term nomen itself is a sign signifying those nouns that fall under its signication. But the term nomen can mean a noun in the strict sense (as a part of speech), all noun-related words that signify things or qualities, or simply the subject of a sentence. Augustine supported his theory that every word is a noun by the example that any word, no matter what part of speech, can be the subject of a sentence and thus be made a noun, as in the sentence if is a two-letter word.11 But Augustine understood the distinction between object language and metalanguage, and in this example he meant more than what would later be understood as material supposition. For Augustine, mental language was primary.12 The mental concept (intellectus) is the true sign of the thing in external reality, and the verbal expression is a sign of the mental sign, just as the written word is a sign of the uttered word. Although Augustines example, that any part of speech can be made to be the subject of a sentence, does not prove that every word has a name function, Augustines essential point, as Mary Sirridge noted some years ago, is that every word is a verbal sign for a thought object that is the same no matter in what language it is expressed.13 There is a common meaning or mental equivalent for every word. It can be argued that it is the oneness of this mental equivalent that Augustine has in mind when he says that every word is a noun. It should also be noted that Augustine, when considering verbs, distinguished action from tense. Like Aristotle, he maintained the primacy
9 De magistro 5 (CCL 29, 170): omne verbum nomen et omne nomen verbum est. Ibid. (CCL 29, 173): omnibus partibus orationis signicari aliquid et ex eo appellari; si autem appellari, et nominari; si nominari, nomine utique nominari. In defense of his position Augustine notes (CCL 29, 174) that Cicero called the preposition coram a nomen even though it was used as an adverb. 10 Ibid., 4 (CCL 29, 165): ut verbum sit, quod cum aliquo signicatu articulata voce profertur. On signication from Augustine to the twelfth century, see G.R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 7289. 11 Ibid., 5 (CCL 29, 169175). Augustine uses a dierent example, but his point is that any part of speech can be made the subject of a verb when a word is referring to itself. 12 De quantitate animae 32 (PL 32, 10711072); De magistro 1 (CCL 29, 157159). 13 M. Sirridge, Augustine: Every Word is a Name, New Scholasticism 50 (1976), 183 192.
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of what we would call present tense. Although not using the language of consignication, tense forms were secondary to the verb. Its principal meaning was contained in the action described as taking place in the present. This was particularly true in verbs of divine action. God lives in the eternal present. Even for man, to quote Augustine, the past is the souls present remembrance; the present is the souls present attention; and the future is the souls present expectation.14 Augustine did not always employ his terminology in the same way. In De quantitate animae, for example, Augustine dened sonus as the verbal sound that we hear, which includes the sounds made by animals as well as human speech. A nomen is a higher level of meaningful sound, one which signies.15 But in the passage from the Homilies on John, sonus is, on one level, a meaningful sound. He is to come and He has come are audibly dierent because of a dierence in tense, reected in the dierent forms of the same word. Yet, ultimately, tense has nothing to do with signication. There is an identity of meaning that lies behind these dierent grammatical sounds. Augustine might have associated that identity of meaning with nomen or intellectus, but he chose instead to label it des. The context for Augustines discussion of the object of faith is both Platonic and exegetical. True meaning and reality lie not in the external visible and audible forms of words but in their internal, sometimes hidden meaning. Words are signs of some other truth. And just as different signs can express the same identical truth, so dierent words and sounds can express or stand for the same identical truth of faith. Dierent signs signify the same thing. The concordance of the old and new dispensations, by which the Red Sea signies baptism, Moses signies Christ, the Hebrews signify the Christian faithful, and water from the
14 Confessiones 11,13: Anni tui omnes simul stant. Anni tui dies unus, et dies tuus non cotidie, sed hodie, quia hodiernus tuus non cedit crastino; neque enim succedit hesterno. Hodiernus tuus aeternitas. In Conf. 11,17 Augustine remarks that the three times learned in school do not really exist: non esse tria tempora, sicut pueri didicimus puerosque docuimus, praeteritum, praesens et futurum, sed tantum praesens, quoniam illa duo non sunt. Conf. 11,18: non sunt nisi praesentia. Conf. 11,20: Quod autem nunc liquet et claret, nec futura sunt nec praeterita, nec proprie dicitur: tempora sunt tria, praeteritum, praesens et futurum, sed fortasse proprie diceretur: tempora sunt tria, praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris. Sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam, et alibi ea non video. Praesens de praeteritis, memoria; praesens de praesentibus, contuitus; praesens de futuris, expectatio. See M. Colish, The Mirror of Language, rev. ed. (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1983), pp. 4648. 15 De quantitate animae 32 (PL 32, 10711072).
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rock signies the eucharist, forms the model for how dierent verbal signs (tensed expressions or enuntiables) signify the one faith and essentially have one meaning. Here Augustine expresses that one meaning by the theological term des, not the grammatical term nomen. But the direction of his thought is not incompatible with the unitas nominis theory. Although not utilizing as developed a theory of grammar and language as that of the twelfth century, the passage from Augustines Homilies on John comes closer to the position that the object of faith is the enuntiable (to use twelfth-century language) than to the position that the object of faith is the event. By signicatio Augustine does not mean the historic event but rather the eternal truth that the event represents and which the article of faith arms. It would be anachronistic to attribute either a res theory or an enuntiabile theory of the object of knowledge and belief to Augustine. At the same time, the language he uses could easily be interpreted in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as consistent with the nominalist approach. We may be safe in concluding that Augustine was one of the seminal and principal sources behind the development of the nominalist view of the object of knowledge and belief, as well as similar solutions to other problems of immutability.
chapter three
ON THE EVE OF NOMINALISM: CONSIGNIFICATION IN ANSELM*
Among the examples Anselm explored in his De Grammatico to illustrate paronymous words, the adjective hodiernum (todays) was briey introduced.1 Unlike his principal examples, grammaticus (literate) or album (a white thing), in which both the substance (that which is named paronymously) and the quality (that from which it derives its name) signify, although in dierent ways, the paronymous quality that hodiernum brings to the object or activity so named is temporal in meaning, and therefore, like verbs, so Anselm notes, it consignies rather than signies.2 To those familiar with early medieval logic, this is not a particularly remarkable or profound statement on Anselms part, which may be why Desmond Henry did not devote much space in his study of De Grammatico to Anselms theory of consignication. The theory of consignicationan indirect, secondary, or participatory type of signicationwas, as a Latin term, at least as old as Priscian and Boethius, and was passed down through the grammatical and logical traditions to the eleventh century and Anselms generation. It received increased attention in the twelfth century as logicians began to examine how syncategorematic words (i.e., consignifying words) operated in propositions, and a body of sophismatic literature developed. There would not seem to be any problems, therefore, with what consignication meant, nor how it was used by Anselm or other eleventh- and twelfth-century writers. But the meaning and history of consignication may not be quite so straight-forward. Two features or problems in particular are worth
* This paper was presented at a conference on Anselm held at Milan in 1989 and subsequently published in Revista di Storia della Filosoa, 3 (1993), 561567. 1 Desmond P. Henry, The De Grammatico of St. Anselm. The Theory of Paronymy (Notre Dame, 1964), pp. 3941. 2 Ibid., p. 39: M. Hodiernum igitur signicat aliquid cum tempore. D. Ita esse necesse est. M. Igitur hodiernum non nomen sed verbum, quia est vox consignicans tempus, nec est oratio.
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some examination. First, the theory of language and propositional truth associated with the original twelfth-century Nominales in the generation after Anselm depended in part on a theory of consignication. It is important, therefore, to understand consignication in its nominalist context and to compare that development to earlier usage, including that of Anselm. A second problem is that consignication had a double ancestry that aected the way it was applied. This is because the same Latin word, consignicare, and its grammatical variants, was used to translate two dierent Greek words, synkategorein and prossemainein. Whether or not those words could be used synonymously or interchangeably, the two classic passages in which they occurred, and from which the language of consignication derived, addressed, I think, two dierent syntactical and logical problems.3 Moreover, from the standpoint of grammar, some co-signifying words, such as temporal adverbs and temporal adjectives (e.g., hodiernum) also lived a grammatical life on both sides of the dividing line between nouns and verbs.
The Two Realms of Consignication Starting with the second problem, namely the mixed or twin ancestry of the terms consignicatio and consignicare, Priscian knew them as Latin equivalents for the way in which syncategorematic words function. In the grammatical and logical division between interpretationes, i.e. words such as nouns and verbs that signify or have full signication, and the other, non-signifying, parts of speech, such as prepositions, conjunctions, copulas, etc., the latter signied only in combination (i.e. co-signied) with categorematic words. Thus Priscian in his Institutiones grammaticae translated syncategoremata as consignicantia, and etymological dictionaries today will list that as the rst, or original, meaning of consignicare.4
3 The view that these two Greek terms were probably synonyms was suggested by G. Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition. Ancient and medieval conceptions of the bearers of truth and falsity (Amsterdam and London, 1973), p. 124. The classic passage in which sykategorein probably lies behind consignicare is Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae, ed. M. Hertz, in Grammatici Latini (Leipzig, 1855), I, p. 54; the other text is Boethiuss translation of and commentary on Aristotles Peri hermeneias 3. 4 Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae, I, 54; Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, vol. 4 (Leipzig, 19061909), p. 436.
on the eve of nominalism: consignification in anselm
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Priscians contemporary, Boethius, discussed that same issue in his second commentary on Peri hermeneias, but did not employ consignicantia in describing the non-signifying parts of speech that serve only to hold together and place in meaningful contexts the two principal parts of speech, nouns and verbs. Boethius did use consignicare and consignicatio in a related but dierent context, namely in describing the temporal dimension that verbs possess.5 He used consignicare to translate prossemainein.6 It is understandable why consignicare could be used in both these contexts. Prepositions and other so-called lesser parts of speech are not meaningful unless used in combination with nouns and verbs in a proposition or other type of sentence. Tense, like syncategorematic words, is also not meaningful unless attached to something else. The connection between the two contexts is even closer. Verbs can be considered compounds of named activities and a copula. Tense is a function of the hidden copula in the verb. Sedet or currit can be expanded as sedens est or currens est in which the copula est is attached to a gerund, or named activity. And that copula, in turn, as a non-signifying part of speech, is among syncategoremata. Yet from another perspective, the two contexts are markedly dierent. Syncategoremata is a classication of certain types of words, whether or not they are used in sentences, but consignication becomes a property of such words only when used in a sentence in combination with words that signify. Prepositions, for example, never signify. And when not used in a sentence, they do not co-signify either, the latter feature being something prepositions acquire in a propositional or sentential context. Put another way, signication applies to terms by themselves
5 Boethius, In Peri herm., ed. I (PL 64, 306): verbum vim temporis in signicationibus trahit hoc solo discrepante quod verbum consignicat tempus, essetque denitio ita: Verbum est vox signicativa secundum placitum, cujus nulla pars extra signicativa est; sed quoniam sunt illa nomini verboque communia, proprium autem verbi est consignicare tempus. In Peri herm., ed. II (PL 64, 427): Verbum est vox signicativa secundum placitum, quae consignicat tempus . Omne enim verbum consignicationem temporis retinet, non signicationem. Hoc verbum, sed cum ea ipsa agendi signicatione praesens quoque tempus adducit, atque ideo non ait verbum signicare tempus, sed consignicare. De divisione (PL 64, 886): secundum positionem vocum signicativarum aliae cum tempore, aliae sine tempore, et dierentia quidem cum tempore nomini non conjungitur, idcirco quod verborum est consignicare tempora, nominum vero minime. 6 In Boethiuss translation of De interpretatione, as noted by Nuchelmans, Theories, p. 124.
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as well as terms used in sentences. Consignication, properly speaking, like supposition, only applies to terms as they are used in sentences or propositions. Moreover, tense is not really a part of speech, except when interpreted as a copula. Tense is rather a non-independent feature of verbs and some participles and adverbs. Syncategorematic words, on the other hand, are secondary parts of speech, and their being syncategorematic is an independent feature they always possess. With the exception of the copula, tense is intimately and always linked to words that signify, namely verbs and verb-like words. Syncategoremata, on the other hand, can be uttered independently of signifying words. And the way in which syncategorematic words function in propositionsa topic that fascinated twelfth-century logicians and expanded the frontiers of medieval logic so muchwas generally pursued without taking tense of verbs into account. Tense had to do with verbs, and verbs were not syncategorematic terms. It was clearly the Boethian use and understanding of consignicare that Anselm adopted. Consignication was a property or function of tense and as such was intimately tied to verbs, not to the classication of syncategoremata in general. In fact, consignication described part of the way verbs and verb-related words signied. And although one could, as has been noted, break or expand a verb into two parts: the type of activity being asserted, e.g. sitting, and the copula that permits an assertion about that activity, e.g. you are sitting, those parts are usually expressed as one verb, you sit. Part of what Anselm was saying in this passage in De grammaticothe only place, as far as I am aware, where Anselm mentions consignicationis that adjectives and substantive adjectives, such as album or hodiernum, have two meanings or signications.7 In the case of album, the word properly signies (per se signication) that from which it derives its name, i.e. whiteness, and obliquely or secondarily signies (per aliud signication) that which is named paronymously. In the case of hodiernum, the word properly signies that from which it derives its name, i.e. hodie, and obliquely or secondarily signies whatever object or activity
7 Anselm introduces hodiernum as a signifying word; Henry, The De Grammatico, p. 39: Ergo hodiernum signicat id quod vocatur hodiernum et hodie. Henry touched on the dual nature of participial forms in Priscian, but did not comment directly on the dual status of hodiernum; see The De Grammatico, p. 141.
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is named paronymously. But in the case of hodiernum, since it involves tense and is therefore related to verbs, it consignies in both cases, rather than signies.
Consignication and Nomen Theory Turning next to the origins of nominalism, I have argued elsewhere8 that it seems likely that the position that gave the Nominales their name, if you will pardon the pun, was not a position on the question of universals, nor was it an outgrowth of logic in voce, nor of the teachings of Roscelinus. It had to do rather with a grammatico-logical theory of nouns, tensed propositions, and consignication. In the earliest appearances of the label Nominales in the second quarter of the twelfth century, the teaching of those so labeled is not indicated; we are only informed that master Alberic of Paris (the logician, not the theologian of Reims) was a vehement opponent of the Nominalist sect.9 By the third quarter of the twelfth century the Nominales are primarily associated with and dened by a particular theory of propositional truth, namely that what is once true is always true (semel verum semper verum), which was principally applied in the area of theology (and may even have originated there) to an explanation of the immutability of divine knowledge, will, and power.10 What God at one time knew, willed, or was able to do, he always knows, wills, and can do. That theory (found in Peter Lombard and even earlier in Peter Abelard) was based on a theory of the unity or oneness of the signication of the noun. Unlike Alberic of Paris, who believed that the oblique cases of nouns were separate nomina,11 the Nominales were good Aristotelians and believed that each noun was one noun, expressed by the nominative case,
8 W.J. Courtenay, Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century, in Lectionum varietates. Hommage Paul Vignaux (19041987), ed. J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, A. de Libera, Paris, 1991, pp. 229250 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 4]. 9 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon II, 10, ed. C.C.I. Webb (Oxford, 1929), p. 78: Deinde post discessum eius [i.e., Abelard], qui michi preproperus visus est, adhesi magistro Alberico, qui inter ceteros opinatissimus dialecticus enitebat et erat revera nominalis secte acerrimus impugnatur. 10 Nuchelmans, Theories, pp. 180189; Courtenay, Nominales, pp. 1621. 11 L.M. de Rijk, Some new Evidence on twelfth century Logic: Alberic and the School of Mont Ste Genevive (Montani), Vivarium, 4 (1966), 10: Et notandum quod secundum Albericum quidem obliqui casus sunt nomina, et pronomina non sunt nomina, et omnia adverbia certae signicationis sunt nomina, ut bene, male.
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which alone signied, and that the oblique cases were simply forms of that one noun.12 And apart from instances of ambiguity produced when the same name is used for dierent objects, qualities, activities, or concepts, a noun signies the same thing regardless of time. Similarly, for the Nominales, a true proposition is not only true across time, but it has the same meaning at any point in time, regardless of tense. To take the classic twelfth-century example discussed by Gabriel Nuchelmans in his Theories of the Proposition, what Abraham believed, namely that Christ will be born, is identical in content and meaning with the faith of the rst Christians (Christ is born) and all subsequent generations (Christ was born).13 The diering tense of the various propositions does not alter the identity of their meaning and truth. One nomen, many voces. One might well ask how it is that a theory that basically has to do with the identical meaning and truth value of tensed propositions can be characterized as a theory of the unity of the noun. The answer, I think, lies in the dual character of verbs. Verbs, like nouns, are one of the two principal parts of speech because they both signify. And yet verbs are also dened as words that co-signify time (vox consignicans tempus), to quote Anselm, and Boethius before him. It was recognized, although perhaps not adequately explored, that verbs lived in two worlds. Every verb contained a named activity, which by itself was a gerund or noun. Every verb also contained a hidden copula that supplied the time or tense of the action. This is why Aristotle maintained that a verb, in addition to its proper meaning (i.e., the noun-part), carries with it the notion of time.14 And in the same chapter of Peri hermeneias Aristotle went on say that past and future expressions are not verbs, but tenses of a verb, thus paralleling his remark about nouns and cases of nouns. Tense plays the same role in relation to a verb as cases do in relation to a noun. It is the noun and verb that signify, not inected or tensed forms. And although I know of no text that speaks
12 Aristotle, De interpretatione, 2, transl. R. McKeon (New York, 1941), p. 41: The expressions of Philo, to Philo, and so on, constitute not nouns, but cases of a noun. The denition of these cases of a noun is in other respects the same as that of the noun proper, but, when coupled with is, was, or will be, they do not, as they are, form a proposition either true or false, and this the noun proper always does, under these conditions. Take the words of Philo is or of Philo is not; these words do not, as they stand, form either a true or a false proposition. 13 Nuchelmans, Theories, pp. 177185. 14 Aristotle, De interpretatione, 3, p. 41.
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of the consignication of oblique casesperhaps the Boethian tradition wedded consignication too closely with the tense of verbsthe relationship of case to noun parallels the relationship of tense to verb. And it is the noun part of the verb that gives it its proper signication. The inclusiveness of the noun in eleventh- and twelfth-century grammatical theory was very broad, indeed had been so from the ancient period on. Nomen included not only what we call a noun, but pronouns, adjectives, and, according to Boethius, adverbs as well.15 And like Anselm, Garlandus Compotista seems to recognize a two-fold nature of temporal adverbs: a basic meaning, which each signies, and a temporal meaning, which co-signies.
Conclusions Returning to Anselm, the thrust of De grammatico was to highlight or expound upon the dual signication of paronymous words or, in the case of hodiernum, a combined signication and consignication. These two dierent signications (per se and per aliud) were not on the same level, and oblique signication was always secondary and inferior to proper signication. Nor did consignication ever approach the status level of signication. As Nuchelmans expressed it, temporality, in the form of the copula is, only adds a certain nuance to the meaning of the words to which it is joined.16 It is exactly the dierence between the rst level of signication and second-level status of consignication that the original nominalist theory stressed, in order to ground the sempiternal oneness of meaning of true enuntiabilia in the sempiternal identity of the signication of nouns. One nomen, many voces; one signication, many consignications. In this light Anselm stands in a direct line of descent from ancient grammatical theory to the linguistic theory of twelfth-century nominalism.17
15 Boethius, Introductio ad syllogismos categoricos (PL 64, 766): atque ideo adverbia quidem atque pronomina nominibus jungunt, sine tempore enim quiddam constitutum denitumque signicant, nec interest quod ecti casibus nequeunt, non est hoc nominum proprium ut casibus inectantur. 16 Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition, p. 29. 17 Even on the issue of universals, D.P. Henry long ago pointed out that it is a mistake to consider Anselm to be an extreme realist and Roscelin an extreme nominalist; see Henry, The Logic of Saint Anselm (Oxford, 1967), pp. 96107.
chapter four
NOMINALES AND NOMINALISM IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY*
Over a half century ago two young French scholars, Paul Vignaux and M.-D. Chenu, set new directions for the subsequent study of nominalism in the Middle Ages. Vignauxs essays on nominalism and Ockham in the Dictionnaire de thologie catholique followed earlier scholarship in seeing Abelard and Ockham as the focal points for twelfth- and fourteenth-century nominalism respectively, yet Vignaux revised and rened elements of the traditional picture, ultimately producing a new interpretation, especially for Ockham.1 Chenus rst essay, written for a Dominican volume in celebration of the 600th anniversary of Thomass canonization (1323) but published well after Vignauxs article appeared, contained evidence for a dierent interpretation of the origin of nominalism, evidence that was expanded and assembled into an historical sequence only in Chenus 1935 article.2 Surprisingly, the essays of these two authors, written almost at the same time and place, aected two dierent audiences in subsequent scholarship. Vignauxs articles became one of the principal interpretive guides for scholars working on late medieval nominalism. Chenus articles, whose titles hid their relevance for twelfth-century nominalism, circulated primarily among those working in twelfth-century grammar and propositional theory. If Chenu, either in 1935 or in 1957, when he included in La thologie au douzime sicle a revised version of his
* Originally published in Lectionum Varietates, ed. J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, A. de Libera (Paris: J. Vrin, 1991), pp. 1148. 1 Paul Vignaux, Nominalisme, in DTC, XI.1 (Paris, 1930), cols. 717784; Occam, cols. 876889. Vignaux returned to this theme several times: Nominalisme au XIVe sicle (Paris and Montral, 1948); Note sur le nominalisme dAblard, in Pierre AblardPierre le Vnrable (Paris, 1975), pp. 523529; La problmatique du nominalisme mdival peut-elle clairer des problmes philosophiques actuels?, Revue philosophique de Louvain, 75 (1977), 293331. 2 M.-D. Chenu, Contribution lhistoire du trait de la foi, in Mlanges thomistes (Paris, 1934; imprimatur 1923), pp. 123140; Grammaire et thologie aux XIIe et XIIIe sicles, AHDLMA, 10 (19351936), 528; La thologie au douzime sicle (Paris, 1957), pp. 90107.
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second essay, had spelled out the implications of his evidence for the origin and meaning of nominalismor if those working in twelfthcentury grammar and logic had called attention to the implications of Chenus discovery, the history of scholarship on nominalism might have been quite dierent. As it was, Chenus evidence and a larger body of citations collected independently by Artur Landgraf were never fully applied to the question of the origin and meaning of nominalism.3 Vignauxs article on nominalism was the culmination of an intensive period of research in the early years of this century conducted primarily by Reiners, Geyer, Baumgartner, and De Wulf.4 There was general unanimity among them on the meaning of nominalism. It was a particular view of the existential status of universal concepts. Nominalists were those who believed that universals were mere names (nomina) or spoken sounds (voces). Realists armed the existence of universals in things (in rebus) and, in a more extreme form, their existence as things. Several nineteenth-century scholars had attempted to trace the origins of nominalism back to such ninth-century authors as Hrabanus Maurus, John Scotus Eriugena, Eric of Auxerre, and others.5 Reiners rejected those attempts at nding proto-Nominalists and asserted the origins of nomi3 A.M. Landgraf, Studien zur Theologie des zwlften Jahrhunderts, Traditio, 1 (1943), 183222. After this study was submitted for publication, Calvin Normore made me aware of an article of his then in the process of publication: The Tradition of Mediaeval Nominalism, in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. J.F. Wippel (Washington, 1987), pp. 201217, which also uses Chenus evidence to explore the origin and meaning of twelfth-century nominalism. I am grateful to him for sending me a copy of his assessment, which is particularly perceptive on the interrelation of certain philosophical positions attributed to the Nominales. Our general conclusions are reassuringly similar; a few dierences will be discussed in the last section. 4 J. Reiners, Der Nominalismus in der Frhscholastik, BGPM, VIII, 5 (Mnster, 1910); Bernhard Geyer, Die Stellung Ablards in der Universalienfrage nach neuen handschriftlichen Texten, in Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, BGPM, Suppl. 1 (Mnster, 1913), pp. 101127; berweg-Baumgartner, Geschichte der Philosophie der patristischen und scholastischen Zeit (Berlin, 1915); M. De Wulf, Histoire de la Philosophie Mdivale, 2nd ed. (Louvain, 1925); berweg-Geyer, Die Patristische und Scholastische Philosophie (Berlin, 1928; Basel, 1958). 5 V. Cousin, Ouvrages indits dAblard (Paris, 1836), pp. lxxxv .; B. Haurau, De la Philosophie Scolastique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1850), pp. 141143; Haurau, Histoire de la Philosophie Scolastique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1872), pp. 193, 196; K. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1861), p. 81; K.S. Barach, Zur Geschichte des Nominalismus vor Roscelin (Vienna, 1866). John Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre. Logic, Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1981), apparently unaware that Reiners and Geyer had already adequately responded to Haurau, Barach, and Prantl, also rejects the idea of nominalism in the ninth century. Marenbon does, however, consider Ratramnus of Corbie to be a conceptualist. Jorge J.E. Gracia,
nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century
41
nalism to lie in a late eleventh-century controversy over universals that initially centered on the thought of Roscelin. Abelards position, which was viewed as a modication of Roscelins, was supposedly the version that came to be known as nominalist by the time of John of Salisbury, since it was Abelard who substituted sermo (to be equated with nomen, according to Reiners) for Roscelins vox.6 Within that accepted formulation of the meaning and origin of nominalism, scholars before and after Vignaux concerned themselves with other problems: dierences in the versions of Roscelin and Abelard; the exact nature and degree of Abelards nominalism; the relation of a nominalist view of universals to a nominalist logic; and the lines of continuity (or discontinuity) between twelfth-century nominalism and that of William of Ockham, which had such a dominant inuence in the late Middle Ages.7 The evidence assembled by Chenu, most of it admittedly from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, suggested that the label Nominales arose in the context of a debate over the object of belief, especially as expressed in tensed statements (enuntiabilia)8 by those living before, during, or after the time of Christ. Just as a passage from Jerome on Gods inability to restore a womans virginity became the problem text for discussions of the limits of divine power, so a passage from Augustine that armed the identity of the faith of the Patriarchs, Apostles, and later Christians became the problem text for understanding the object of faith.9 That object could not simply be the historic event,
Introduction to the Problem of Individuation in the Early Middle Ages (Munich, 1983), also rejects the notion of nominalism before the eleventh century. 6 Reiners, Nominalismus, pp. 5759; Vignaux, Nominalisme, col. 718. Reinerss move from sermo to nomen entails some sleight of hand, as will be discussed below. 7 Matthias Baumgartner and Bernhard Geyer were of the opinion that the Parteigegensatz of Nominales and Reales in the late Middle Ages was a direct descendant of that of the twelfth; berweg-Baumgartner, Geschichte der Philosophie, pp. 598599; berweg-Geyer, Die Patristische und Scholastische Philosophie, p. 575. Holding a dierent view, Maurice De Wulf, Histoire de la Philosophie, p. 168, maintained that Ockham and others in the fourteenth century did not know Roscelin or Abelard, and that the nominalisms of the two periods diered. 8 It is important in the following discussion to distinguish enuntiabilia from propositions. Both are tensed complexa and minimally have subject and predicate. An enuntiabile (or, in Abelards language, dictum) is that which is asserted or denied by a proposition. G. Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam, 1973), pp. 172173: Dicta, signicata, enuntiabilia are the bearers of truth and falsity in the primary sense, while propositiones are true or false only in so far as they are used to assert something true or false 9 On the Jerome text see W.J. Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought
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since only statements and propositions about events or external reality can be armed or denied. If it is the articles of faith, as statements, that are armed by believers and denied by indels, and those articles would be about future events for Abraham and past events for Christians, then in what way can the belief of those living before and after the Incarnation be identical? The opinio Nominalium armed that the entity or reality signied by the proposition remains the same across time, so that what is true at one time remains true for all time (semel est verum, semper est verum). Just as there is unity or identity in the principal signication of a noun (nomen) that underlies the consignication of its various forms (voces consignicativae) or modes of signifying (modi signicandi), such as case, gender, and number, so there is one signication of a verb that underlies the various consignications of tense, voice, and mood. And just as many voces are one nomen, so many enuntiabilia are one article of faith.10 Although Chenu did not stress the point, his evidence and developmental sequence suggest that the Nominales were so called because they transformed the grammatical theory of the unity of the noun, with its roots in ancient grammar and expanded upon by Bernard of Chartres and others, into a theory of the object of knowledge and beliefa theory of propositional truththat was applied to the theological problems of the immutability of the object of faith and the parallel problem of the immutability of divine knowledge.11 All the references to the Nominales or opinio Nominalium assembled by Chenu from late twelfthand thirteenth-century sources (the period containing the vast majority of all references to Nominales before the fteenth century) are of this latter type. The problem of universals does not enter into it, at least not in any direct way, before the third quarter of the thirteenth century. Landgraf, apparently unaware of Chenus articles and independently uncovering a larger body of similar evidence counter to the traditional view of the origin and meaning of nominalism, still expressed the hope
(London, 1984), chs. 4 and 8. The text of Augustine is in In Joan., tr. 45, n. 9 (PL 35, 1722; CCL 36, 392): Tempora variata sunt, non des. 10 Thus it was expressed by the anonymous author of a group of Quaestiones from the early thirteenth century, cited by Chenu, Grammaire, 13 (Paris, B.N., Nouv. acq. lat. 1470, fol. 25r): Sicut plures voces sunt unum nomen, ita plura enuntiabilia sunt articulus unus; et sicut mutatur vox, non tamen mutatur nomen, nam si dicam albus, alba, album, idem est nomen et tamen vox mutatur. 11 On Bernard of Chartres see John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, I, 24 (5556); III, 2 (124127); Chenu, Grammaire, 1417.
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that it would be possible to bring all these nominalist Lehrstze together, including the teaching on universals, into a unied picture of the teaching of a nominalist school.12 Is it the case that a broadly-based nominalist approach to logic, of which the theory of universals was the centerpiece, shifted meaning in the third quarter of the twelfth century and became associated only with one of its particular points of doctrineor is it that the true origin of nominalism, as it was understood in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, lies in the theory of the unity of the noun and that no well-informed person in that period would have applied that label either to a theory of universals or to any of the modern denitions of medieval nominalism? Is the development described by Chenu a case of restricting to one thesis a label that was created for a whole series of doctrines or an entire approach to logicor are those few passages that seem to connect nominalism with an ars sermocinalis approach to logic a case of the part for the whole, i.e., calling a grammatical approach to logic by the name of a particular sub-group? What is needed, perhaps, is not a secret formula that will blend into the traditional picture the evidence uncovered by Chenu and Landgraf, but some ingredient that will separate out the dierent elements and reveal their developmental relationship. Since the earliest references to the Nominales come from the third quarter of the twelfth century and the traditional view of nominalism was shaped by evidence from the late eleventh and early twelfth, we need to examine more closely these two termini before considering the crucial middle period.
12 To readers familiar with the literature on nominalism, especially for the fourteenth century, the dierent theories for the origin of the label Nominales proposed by Reiners and Chenu may seem like two versions of the same position. Discussions of nominalism and the referents of universal terms in Ockham, Chatton, Crathorn, Holcot, Wodeham, and Rimini are often in the context of the problem of the object of knowledge; see, e.g., H. Elie, Le complexe signicabile (Paris, 1937); E.A. Moody, A Quodlibetal Question of Robert Holkot, O.P., on the Problem of the Objects of Knowledge and Belief, Speculum, 39 (1964), 5374; H. Schepers, Holkot contra dicta Crathorn, PJ, 77 (1970), 320354; 79 (1972), 106136; G. Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam, 1973). If the meaning of nominalist were the same, then it would make less dierence whether the Nominales derived their name from the theory that universals were nomina or from the theory that the object of knowledge was a supra-temporal enuntiabile based on the unity of the nomen. As will be shown, it is not just a dierence in origin; it is a dierence in meaning.
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chapter four Logic in voce
The linked contrasts of vox/res and Nominales/Reales encountered in medieval sources were long viewed as interchangeable. Since Reales were usually dened with reference to res, it was natural to assume that behind the vox side of the rst contrast lay the Nominales. So, in the entry on Nominales in his Glossarium of 1678, Du Cange grouped together references to Nominales and proponents of logic as sermocinabile and in vocibus.13 Scholars eventually separated Abelards sermo theory from Roscelins vox theory,14 but both continued to be viewed as dierent forms or degrees of nominalism, in part because their theories fell within the accepted modern philosophical understanding of logical nominalism in contrast to logical realism. Logical Realists are those who believe that the true objects of philosophical knowledge are things (res) in external reality, not terms (verba) or enuntiabilia. They assume that concepts, terms, propositions, and logical arguments refer directly to objects and states of aairs in external reality. Logical Nominalists, on the other hand, assume that logic is an ars sermocinalis, that it is about logical entities and the way in which language operates, and only indirectly has external reality as its principal object.15 As De Rijk noted in the case of Abelard, the respective realist and nominalist interpretations of universalsalthough hav13 C. Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et inmae Latinitatis, rev. ed., vol. 4 (Paris, 1845), p. 638. The Swiss humanist and historian J. Turmair (Aventinus), Annales ducum Boiariae, ed. S. Riezler, vol. 2 (Munich, 1884), pp. 200202, and C.E. Du Boulay (Bulaeus), Historia Universitatis Parisiensis a Carolo M. ad nostra tempora, vol. 1 (Paris, 1665), pp. 443 445, had already seen nominalism as a view on universals that began with Roscelin. 14 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, II, 17, ed. C.C.I. Webb (Oxford, 1929), p. 92: Alius ergo consistit in vocibus; licet hec opinio cum Roscelino suo fere omnino iam evanuerit. Alius sermones intuetur et ad illos detorquet quicquid alicubi de universalibus meminit scriptum; in hac autem opinione deprehensus est Peripateticus Palatinus Abaelardus noster, qui multos reliquit et adhuc quidem aliquos habet professionis huius sectatores et testes. Amici mei sunt On Abelards theory of universals see Geyer, Die Stellung Ablards, pp. 101127; Geyer, Peter Abaelards philosophische Schriften, BGPTM, 12 (Mnster, 1933), pp. 623630; M.M. Tweedale, Abailard on Universals (Amsterdam, 1976). 15 On the dierence between logical nominalism and philosophical nominalism see the comments of L.M. de Rijk in his edition of Peter Abelards Dialectica (Assen, 1956), pp. xcixciv. At no point in the medieval or early modem development was there ever a question of philosophical nominalism or subjectivist conceptualism, i.e., that we cannot really know extra-mental things because they are dependent on and shaped by the human mind. This misunderstanding was applied to Abelard by Cousin, Sikes, and Carr, but was corrected by Geyer and others; for historiographic details see De Rijk, and Tweedale, pp. 310. In this sense Ockham was also a philosophical Realist.
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ing received the most attention in discussions of realism and nominalismare only particular applications of these radically dierent views on the nature of logic.16 As helpful as these descriptions of nominalism and realism are for understanding Abelard and his contemporaries, it would be circular to use these denitions to solve the problem of the origin of the term Nominales or to understand what nominalist meant in the twelfth century. The many meanings nominalist has had across the last ve hundred years is no sure guide to what it meant in the twelfth century or how the label originated. One must begin afresh with the twelfth century sources. There is sucient evidence that in the closing years of the eleventh century and well into the twelfth, there was a controversy over the nature of logic that included discussions of universal concepts. Before the middle of the twelfth century, the contrasting positions were invariably described in terms of the contrast of res and vox, never res and nomen. Herman, abbot of St. Martins at Tournai, reecting back on events in the opening years of the twelfth century, has one of the fullest discussions of these dierent approaches to logic. His contrast is between the teaching of some contemporaries (quosdam modernos), such as Raimbert of Lille, who treated dialectic in voce and those who, like his own teacher and abbot, Odo, who later became bishop of Cambrai, lectured on logic in re according to Boethius and the ancient doctors.17 Herman identies logic in voce with new inventions, derived from the books of Porphyry and Aristotle, that abandon the traditional exposition of Boethius and the ancients.18 To the list of those who taught logic in voce at the end of the eleventh century, the anonymous author of the
Abelard, Dialectica, p. xciii. The priority of the nature of logic over the issue of universals is also characteristic of fteenth-century nominalism. In the famous Parisian defense of their view in 1474 the Nominalists (in F. Ehrle, Der Sentenzkommentar Peters von Candia, Mnster i.W., 1925, p. 322) dened themselves as believing that multiple terms and linguistic expressions could be used for the same external things, and that logic comprised the ways in which terms function in propositions. Realists, by contrast, were credited in the same document with the view that each linguistic form described an extra-mental reality, and that logic was directly concerned with things (res), not linguistic terms (incomplexa, termina, or verba). 17 Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione monasterii sancti Martini Tornacensis, in MGH SS. XIV, p. 275: Sciendum tamen de eodem magistro Odo , quod eandem dialecticam non iuxta quosdam modernos in voce, sed more Boetii antiquorumque doctorum in re discipulis legebat. Unde et magister Rainbertus, qui eodem tempore in oppido Insulensi dialecticam clericis suis in voce legebat. 18 Ibid.: in Porphirii Aristotelisque libris magis volunt legi suam adinventitiam novitatem quam Boetii ceterorumque antiquorum expositionem.
16
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Historia Francica adds Robert of Paris, Roscelin of Compigne, Arnulf of Laon, and their master John.19 The most famous of these grammatical logicians was Roscelin, whose identication with dialectica in voce is attested to by Otto of Freising and the author of the Roscelin epigram.20 The new approach to logic might never have received so much negative attention had not Roscelin developed his theory of universals as voces and applied his logic of individuality to the Trinity. It was these latter issues that incited Anselm of Bec to write letters against Roscelin, the last and most extended of which was his Epistula de Incarnatione Verbi to Pope Urban II in or shortly after 1093. In this treatise he attacked the contemporary heretics of dialectic who think that universal substances are mere words (atum vocis), and who are not able to understand color as something dierent from a material object, or human wisdom as something dierent from the soul.21 Whether all of these positions were specically or exclusively taught by Roscelin we may never know. The
19 Historia Francica, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M. Bouquet, rev. ed., vol. 12 (Paris, 1877), p. 3: In dialectica quoque hi potentes exstiterunt sophistae: Joannes, qui eandem artem sophisticam vocalem esse disseruit, Rotbertus Parisiacensis, Roscelinus Compendiensis, Arnulfus Laudunensis. Hi Joannis fuerunt sectatores, qui etiam quamplures habuerunt auditores. 20 Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. imperatoris I, 47, written between 1156 and 1158; MGH SS. XX, pp. 376377: Habuit Abelard tamen primo praeceptorem Rozelinum quendam, qui primus nostris temporibus sententiam vocum instituit; Ph. Ja, Bibliotheca rerum Germanicarum, vol. 5 (Berlin, 1869), p. 187:
Quas, Ruziline, doces, non vult dialectica voces, Iamque, dolens de se, non vult in vocibus esse; Res amat, in rebus cunctis vult esse diebus. Voce retractetur: res sit, quod voce docetur. Plorat Aristotiles, rugas ducendo seniles, Res sibi subtractas, per voces intitulatas; Porriusque gemit, quia res sibi lector ademit; Qui res abrodit, Ruzeline, Boethius odit. Non argumentis nulloque sophismate sentis, Res existentes in vocibus esse manentes.
21 De Incarnatione Verbi, c. 1, in Opera omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt (Edinburgh, 1946 1961), II, p. 9: illi utique nostri temporis dialectici, immo dialecticae haeretici, qui non nisi atum vocis putant universales esse substantias, et qui colorem non aliud queunt intelligere quam corpus, nec sapientiam hominis aliud quam animam, prorsus a spiritualium quaestionum disputatione sunt exsuandi. Between 1090 and 1092 (the date of Roscelins condemnation at the council of Soissons) Anselm wrote against Roscelins teaching on the Trinity in letters to the monk John and Bishop Fulk of Beauvais.
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relevant point is that Roscelins theory of universals, just as with his approach to logic in general, is linked with the word vox. The contrast between the teaching of Roscelin and Abelard on universals, as described by John of Salisbury, is between a vox theory and a sermo theory.22 Reinerss attempt to link Nominales with Abelards theory of universals on the grounds that Abelard substituted nomen for sermo or used them interchangeably is, at best, thin. Nomen or nomina are terms rarely used by Abelard in discussing universal concepts, and Otto of Freising, who does associate Abelard with a theory of nomina, mistakenly identies it with a vox theory, not a sermo theory.23 Reiners,
See above, note 14. Otto of Freising, Gesta Frederici, I, 47 (XX, 377): Sententiam ergo vocum seu nominum in naturali tenens facultate, non caute theologiae admiscuit. In discussing universals in his gloss in Porphyry in Logica ingredientibus [Peter Abaelards philosophische Schriften, ed. B. Geyer, BGPTM, 21.1 (Mnster i.W., 1919), p. 16], Abelard does occasionally equate sermo and nomen: Nunc autem ostensis rationibus quibus neque res singillatim neque collectim acceptae universales dici possunt in eo quod de pluribus praedicantur, restat ut huiusmodi universalitatem solis vocibus adscribamus. Sicut igitur nominum quaedam appellativa a grammaticis, quaedam propria dicuntur, ita a dialecticis simplicium sermonum quidam universales, quidam particulares, scilicet singulares, appellantur. Est autem universale vocabulum quod de pluribus singillatim habile est in inventione sua praedicari, ut hoc nomen homo, quod particularibus nominibus hominum coniugibile est secundum subiectarum rerum naturam quibus est impositum. Singulare vero est quod de uno solo praedicabile est, ut Socrates, cum unius tantum nomen accipitur. Si enim aequivoce sumas, non vocabulum, sed multa vocabula in signicatione facis, quia scilicet iuxta Priscianum multa nomina in unam vocem incidunt. Ibid., pp. 1718: Videtur autem numquam prorsus universale esse quod appellativum, nec singulare quod proprium nomen, sed invicem excedentia sese et excessa. Nam appellativum et proprium non solum casus rectos continent, verum etiam obliquos qui praedicari non habent, atque ideo in denitione universalis per praedicari exclusi sunt; qui etiam obliqui, quia minus necessarii sunt ad enuntiationem Sicut autem non omnia appellativa vel propria nomina necesse est dici universalia vel singularia, sic e converso. Nam universale non solum nomina continet, verum etiam verba et innita nomina, quibus, scilicet innitis, denitio appellativi quam Priscianus ponit, non videtur aptari. Ibid., p. 24: Inductis autem auctoritatibus, quae astruere videntur per universalia nomina conceptas communes formas designari, ratio quoque consentire videtur. Quippe eas concipere per nomina quid aliud est, quam per ea signicari? Sed profecto cum eas ab intellectibus diversas facimus, iam praeter rem et intellectum tertia exiit nominum signicatio. And in his Logica Nostrorum petitioni sociorum (ed. B. Geyer, BGPTM, 21, 4, Mnster i.W., 1933), p. 522: Est alia de universalibus sententia rationi vicinior, quae nec rebus nec vocibus communitatem attribuit; sed sermones sive singulares sive universales esse disserunt. Quod etiam Aristoteles ait: Universale est, quod est natum praedicari de pluribus, idest a nativitate sua hoc contrahit, ex institutione scilicet. Quid enim aliud est nativitas sermonum sive nominum, quam hominum institutio? Hoc enim quod est nomen sive sermo, ex hominum institutione contrahit. Sic ergo sermones universales esse dicimus, cum ex nativitate, id est ex hominum institutione, praedicari de pluribus habeant; voces vero sive res nullatenus
22 23
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in fact, did not cite any supporting evidence from Abelard but quoted instead from William of Conches (ca. 1145) and Godfrey of St. Victor (ca. 1176), neither of whom refer to Abelard. In the passage from Williams Dragmaticon, the group (secta) that reduced logic to nomina had already disappeared by his day, and in any event they considered singulars as well as universals to be nomina. Certain knowledgeable ones did away with all things (res omnes) in logic and sophistical disputation; they retained, however, their names (nomina) and have predicated universals and singulars to exist only in this manner. Thereafter a more foolish age came upon us which excluded both things (res) and their names (nomina) and reduced just to four the names (nomina) of all disputations. Moreover, each sect disappeared because neither was from God.24 Godfreys reference to the Nominales gives little clue as to what they believed, certainly nothing on universals.25 Godfreys description of
universales esse, etsi omnes sermones voces esse constat. Voces are words as voiced in time and place; sermones are the assigned meanings that words have regardless of time and place of verbal expression. For further discussion on Abelards theory of nouns and his view of universals see M.T. Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli, La logica di Abelardo (Milan, 1969); J. Jolivet, Arts du langage et thologie chez Ablard, tudes de philosophie mdivale, 57 (Paris, 1969), pp. 3653, 95104; Comparaison des thories du langage chez Ablard et chez les nominalistes du XIVe sicle, in Peter Abelard, ed. E.M. Buytaert (Louvain, 1974), pp. 163178. Walter Map identied Abelard as the princeps nominalium in his De nugis curialium, I, 24, ed. C.L.N. Brooke, R.O.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1988), p. 78, written shortly before 1185, but there is no indication that this label had anything to do with the problem of universals or that the tie with Abelard is based on anything more than hearsay. The interesting aspect of Ottos remark (c. 1157) is his assertion that Abelard introduced into theology an approach or theory that was developed in the area of natural philosophy. Again, the connection with a theory of universals is not clearly indicated. 24 William of Conches, Dialogus de substantiis physicis (Strasbourg, 1567; reprint Frankfurt a. M., 1967), p. 7: Quod intelligentes quidam res omnes a dialectica et sophistica disputatione exterminaverunt, nomina tamen earum receperunt eaque sola esse universalia vel singularia praedicaverunt; deinde supervenit stultior aetas, quae et res et earum nomina exclusit atque omnium disputationum ad quattuor fere nomina reduxit; utraque tamen secta, quia non erat ex Deo, per se decit. 25 Godfrey of St. Victor, Fons philosophiae, ed. Pierre Michaud-Quantin, Analecta Mediaevalia Namurcensia 8 (Louvain and Lille, 1956), p. 43: Addunt hic se socios quidam nominales, Nomine, non numine, talium sodales. Two stanzas later, in the middle of the discussion of the Realists, the issue of universals is introduced in a way that strangely parallels the 1474 Nominalistss description of the Realists; Ibid., p. 44: Namque mens vel cogitet nomen esse genus Solus hoc crediderit mentis alienus,
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the Robertini (presumably disciples of Robert of Melun) is the only part of his text that suggests a parallel with Williams rst sect.26 The third piece of evidence for Reinerss association of Abelard and nominalism, to be discussed at greater length below, is that Alberic, with whom John of Salisbury studied after he spent a year with Abelard, was an opponent of the Nominales. But this does not establish a link between Abelard and the Nominales or prove that the label was derived from disputes over universals. If a label had been invented for defenders of Abelards theory of universals, it would probably have been based on some form of sermo, just as a label for the proponents of this new approach to logic would probably have been based on vox. The most fundamental problem in this entire discussion of vox, sermo, and nomen is that the rst two words, especially vox, implied exterior, spoken speech. In the tripartite division found in Aristotle, Augustine, and Boethius of mental or interior speech (intellectus or notio), spoken or oral speech (sonus or vox), and written speech (litterae), vox and sermo were spoken words or expressions, respectively, in a particular spoken language.27 Nomen, on the other hand, for all its various denitions or uses, was not linked to orality nor, indeed, to the word or concept as uttered in any natural language. Things are named in each language, but naming is common to all languages and, as a linguistic entity, is a mental act as well as a verbal one. Around the middle of the twelfth century we do encounter some descriptions of a grammatical logic that are connected with the word nomen. In addition to the remark by William of Conches, there is a letter of 1168 in which John of Salisbury contrasts the Nominales and
Cum sit tot generibus rerum mundus plenus Cuius genus nomen est semper sit egenus.
26
Ibid., p. 44: Qui de solo nomine ngunt mille fere: Igitur pro nihilo licet hos censere.
27 Aristotle, De interpretatione, c. 1, English transl. from W.D. Ross edition by Oxford University Press and reprinted in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon (New York, 1941), p. 40: Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images. Augustine, De dialectica, 5; De quantitate animae, 32, and De magistro, 12. Boethius, in his commentary on De interpretatione, stated that the followers of Aristotle distinguished three orationes: intellectus, vox, litterae. See G. Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition, pp. 127128, 145146, 192194.
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Reales in what appears to be two dierent approaches to logic, not two dierent positions on universals.28 Whether or not these all too brief remarks permit us to see Nominales as a mid-century label for those who taught logic in voce, nomen and Nominales are not part of the label vocabulary of the early twelfth century.
Opinio Nominalium The earliest reference to the Nominales occurs in John of Salisburys Metalogicon, completed in 1159, where he describes Master Alberic as the most vehement opponent of the secta Nominalis.29 Since John had just been discussing Abelard, and Abelards Historia calamitatum shows Alberic to have been one of his major opponents,30 it was natural to assume that Abelard was the leader of the secta Nominalis. Yet, as has been shown elsewhere, the Alberic of Reims mentioned by Abelard and the Alberic mentioned by John of Salisbury are two dierent people.31 Moreover, John was a beginning student of logic at Paris when he studied under Abelard and Alberic (11361138), both of whom he admired. His move from Abelard to Alberic was not a shift in ideological aliation but one occasioned by Abelards departure from Paris. Because
28 The Letters of John of Salisbury, vol. 2, ed. and transl. by W.J. Millor and C.L.N. Brooke (Oxford, 1979), p. 450: Nosti pridem nominalium tuorum eo michi minus placere sententiam, quod in sermonibus tota consistens utilitatem rerum non assumpserit, cum rectum sapientibus indubium sit quod res quaerit philosophia, non verba. Ut ergo compendiosius agam tecum meorum more realium, 29 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, II, 10, p. 78: contuli me ad Peripateticum Palatinum, qui tunc in monte sancte Genovese clarus doctor et admirabilis omnibus presidebat. Ibi ad pedes eius prima artis huius rudimenta accepi et pro modulo ingenioli mei quicquid excidebat ab ore eius tota mentis aviditate excipiebam. Deinde post discessum eius, qui michi preproperus visus est, adhesi magistro Alberico, qui inter ceteros opinatissimus dialecticus enitebat et erat revera nominalis secte acerrimus impugnator. Sic ferme toto biennio conversatus in monte, artis huius preceptoribus usus sum Alberico et magistro Roberto Meludensi. 30 Abelard, Historia calamitatum, c. 4 & 9. 31 E. Lesne, Histoire de la proprit ecclsiastique en France, vol. 5: Les coles de la n du VIIIe sicle la n du XIIe sicle (Lille, 1940), p. 212; M. Grabmann, Aristoteles im zwlften Jahrhundert, MS, 12 (1950), 123162, reprinted in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, III (Munich, 1956), pp. 64127 at 103; W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Schools of Thought in the Twelfth Century [to appear in 2008 in a Festschrift for Marcia Colish]. Although the fusion of the two Alberics continues in the scholarly literature, the distinction was recognized by De Rijk, Luscombe, Nuchelmans, Tweedale, Southern, and Ferruolo.
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of that, John chose the next best dialectician available on the Mont Ste Genevive where he was then studying, namely Master Alberic, who had the additional quality of being a vehement or perceptive opponent of the Nominalists. The passage, by itself, is insucient to identify Abelard with the Nominales. In fact, although students need not adopt the teachings of their masters, there is evidence to suggest that Alberic and Robert of Melun, under whom John also studied logic at this time, had studied under or been inuenced by Abelard.32 John admired Abelard and was supportive of his view of universals, but John was, like Alberic, critical of the Nominales.33 In the letter of 1168 to Master Baldwin, archdeacon of Exeter, John remarked: the opinion of your Nominalists has long been less pleasing to me because it grounds everything in words (in sermonibus) and does not regard the usefulness of things (utilitatem rerum), whereas wise men know without a doubt that philosophy seeks things, not words (res, non verba). Therefore, more briey, I treat you according to the manner of my Realists (meorum more realium).34 Since John mentions the two groups as a rhetorical way of saying he wishes to oer his friend something more substantial than mere words, we should not read too much into the passage, but he does place himself on the side of the Realists. Even less clear is the reference to the Nominales and Reales in Godfrey of St. Victors Fons philosophiae, written around 1175 or shortly after.35
32 Master Alberic was among those credited in the twelfth century with the authorship of a book written In scolis Magistri P. Abailardi; see the Promisimus gloss on Priscian (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. lat. 67, fol. 22ra), cited in R. Hunt, The History of Grammar in the Middle Ages (Amsterdam, 1980), p. 80. The same work was also attributed to masters Mainerius, Valetus, and Garnerus, all of whom were associated with Abelard at one time. In addition to Hunt, see D.E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 5557. 33 See above, notes 14, 2829. 34 See above, note 28. 35 Godfrey of St. Victor, Fons philosophiae, p. 43:
Addunt hic se socios quidam nominales, Nomine, non numine, talium sodales; Alii vicinius assunt quod reales Ipsa nuncupavit res, quod sunt vere tales. Nam si pro reatibus variis errorum Poterat realium nomen dici horum, Tamen excusabilis error est eorum; Menti contradicere mos est insanorum. Namque mens vel cogitet nomen esse genus, Solus hoc crediderit mentis alienus, Cum sit tot generibus rerum mundus plenus,
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Godfrey acknowledges the opposition of the two groups, but his puns and spurious etymologies provide no clues to the meaning those labels have for him. He appears somewhat more critical of the Reales, which would t with his preference for the Parvipontani.36 When, in the last quarter of the twelfth century we begin to encounter numerous references to the opiniones Nominalium, the relation of label and doctrine, as used by theologians at that time, becomes clear.37 The label is linked not just to a solution to the problem of the object of faith but to similar solutions for a number of theological problems. Most of the problems so addressed involve tensed propositions and immutability, specically the immutability of Gods knowledge, Gods will, Gods power, as well as the immutability of faith as it concerns the object of belief. The formula what is at one time true is always true (semel est verum, semper est verum) applied equally well to any of the problems of immutability. As Chenu suspected, the common feature underlying all these nominalist solutions is the theory of the identity of the principal signication of a noun (unitas nominis) and the corresponding idea of the identity of the principal signication of a proposition (unitas enuntia-
Cuius genus nomen est semper sit egenus. Ceterum realium sum quamplures secte, Quas reales dixeris a reatu recte, Quia veri tramitem non eunt directe Nec uenta gratie hauriunt perfecte. The oft-quoted theory in logic that from the impossible anything follows (ex impossibili sequitur quodlibet) is ascribed to the Adamites (presumably the Parvipontani) in Tractatus Emmeranus de impossibili positione; see L.M. de Rijk, Some Thirteenth Century Tracts on the Game of Obligation, Vivarium, 12 (1974), 94123 at 102. The same thesis is ascribed to (or at last defended by) the Nominales in a quaestio contained in Vatican, Bibl. Apost., Vat. lat. 7678, fol. 81rb: Solutio. Dicendum quod in veritate secundum opinionem quorundam, nominalium scilicet, ex impossibili sequitur quidlibet. Tamen secundum veritatem ex impossibili nihil sequitur. Et hoc est secundum opinionem realium. Cited from F. Pelster, Nominales und Reales im 13. Jahrhundert, Sophia, 1214 (19441946), 154161 at 157. 37 The labels Nominales, Nominalis, via Nominalium, or opinio Nominalium, which occur in the writings of Peter the Cantor, the Mazarine anonymous, Peter of Capua, Praepositinus, William of Auxerre, Godfrey of Poitiers, Roland of Cremona, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas, are more than sucient to identify a set group of related positions encountered frequently in twelfth century works. The principal passages for determining the meaning of Nominales are those in which that label is linked with a particular form of argumentation and resulting conclusions. We are also safe in assuming that where those same arguments and conclusions occur, opiniones Nominalium are under discussion. Conclusions alone are insucient, since they could have been arrived at by other arguments.
36
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bilis). Bonaventure recognized this when, in the mid-thirteenth century, he remarked that the Nominalists are so called because they establish their position on the unity of the noun.38 Although the label nominalis does not appear in these theological texts until the last decades of the twelfth century, Chenu and Landgraf were aware that Peter Lombard had adopted and, in a sense, disseminated this approach to problems of immutability. Every gloss or commentary on the text of the Master had to take a stand on the suitability of this solution. It was already controversial by 1170, as Peter of Poitiers, one of Lombards strongest supporters, noted.39 By the opening years of the thirteenth century it had joined that small group of issues on which Lombards views were not usually followed.40 Lombard rst introduced the nominalist solution in the context of Gods knowledge of events.41 It was generally recognized in the twelfth century that things and events alone could not be direct objects of epistemic verbs, such as to know (scire), to believe (credere), or to doubt (dubitare). What is known as true or false is not a thing but a statement about a thing, i.e. a state of aairs (modus se habendi), that such and such is or is not the case.42 This characteristic of epistemic verbs
38 Bonaventure, Sent. I, d. 41, a. 2, q. 2; Opera Omnia, vol. 1 (Quaracchi, 1882), p. 740: Et ista fuit opinio Nominalium, qui dicti sunt Nominales quia fundabant positionem suam super nominis unitatem. And earlier, William of Auxerre, Summa aurea I, tr. 7, c. 1; ed. J. Ribaillier (Paris, 1980), p. 115: Ista etiam forma fallit secundum Nominales qui dicunt quod unum nomen est plures voces. Cf. Thomas, Sent. I, d. 41, q. 1, a. 5; Opera Omnia, ed. R. Busa, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1980), p. 110: ad unitatem rei signicatae sequitur unitas enuntiabilis, quamvis etiam cum diversa consignicatione temporis proferatur. Thomas, Quodl. IV, q. 9, a. 2; Opera Omnia III, p. 461: Sed diversa consignicatio non tollit identitatem nominis; idem enim nomen dicitur esse per omnes casus et in singulari et in plurali numero. Thomas does not share this view. 39 Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae V, p. 14: Tempora enim variantur et verba, sed des manet eadem et signicatio. Et aliud modo dicitur hac propositione, aliud dicebatur illa prius, quia una et eadem veritas diversis verbis prolatis secundum diversitatem temporum diversis propositionibus dicitur. Nec insultet aliquis huic solutioni, donec intellexerit, ne potius ex odio et invectione, quam ex animi iudicio videatur, quod dictum est, contemnere. One of the earliest of Lombards commentators, Master Udo (ca. 11601165), seemed to feel that a res theory better accounted for the dierent times of ancient and contemporary believers; Bamberg, Staatsbibl., Patr. 126, fol. 42v: Unus et idem articulus dei est res ipsa, scilicet Christi passio, et illud verum, scilicet Christum esse passum, cited by Landgraf, Studien, 202; see the statement of Master Martinus below in note 46. 40 See discussion of this point in Chenu, Grammaire, 18. 41 Lombard, Sent. I, d. 41, c. 3. 42 Abelard, Dialectica, tr. 2, lib. 1, p. 160: Et est profecto ita in re, sicut dicit vera propositio, sed non est res aliqua quod dicit. Unde quasi quidam rerum modus habendi
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would seem to apply to divine knowledge just as much as humanat least when considering the meaning of biblical and patristic statements about what God knows or knew. In relation to a specic event xed in time, God would know it as future before it happened and as past after it happened. God once knew that the world would be created or that I would be born, and now knows that the world is created and that I was born.43 The enuntiabilia that God knows at dierent times are not the same, and the identical enuntiabile is true at one time and false at another. The seemingly inevitable corollary to arming the objects of knowledge to be dicta or enuntiabilia is the mutability of knowledge, both human and divine. To avoid that undesirable consequence, some theologians argued that the object of knowledge and belief was not a declarative statement (enuntiabile) but rather the thing (res) to which the proposition referred.44 Most, however, favored the enuntiabile theory. Although eventually found unacceptable by thirteenth-century theologians, the nominalist solution resolved this impass by creating a form of the enuntiabile theory that remained immutable over time. Beneath the consignication of the past and future tenses was the signication of a sempiternal present. The sense of the armation of belief or the content of knowledge remains the same regardless of the temporal relation of knower and known, believer and event.45 Linking the Aristotelian rule, of anything
se per propositiones exprimitur, non res aliquae designantur. William of Auxerre, Summa aurea III, tr. 2, c. 2, q. 2; Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition, p. 184: verbs such as credere and scire cannot properly be combined with a designation of a thingiste scit domum suam is simply not a well-formed expressionbut require a complexum as their complement. 43 Lombard, Sent. I, d. 41, c. 3; Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata, 1971, 1981), I, p. 293, in an opposing argument: Olim scivit hunc hominem nasciturum, qui natus est; modo non scit eum nasciturum; scivit ergo aliquid quod modo non scit. Item scivit mundum esse creandum; modo non scit eum creandum; aliquid ergo scivit quod modo non scit. 44 The best discussion of these theories is Gabriel Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition, pp. 177185. Among those favoring a res theory are the anonymous Summa (Vat.lat. 10754); anonymous gloss on the Sentences (Naples, Bibl. Naz., VII.C.14, fol. 97vb): Ergo articuli sunt res et non enuntiabilia ms.: evangelia , et ita passio Christi est articulus; Praepositinus; Albertus Magnus. Although favoring an enuntiabile approach, the nominalist solution was rejected by Philip of Grve, William of Auxerre, Bonaventure, and Thomas, largely at the expense of the oneness of belief between the Patriarchs (antiqui) and contemporary Christians (moderni); anonymous gloss on the Sentences (Paris, Bibl. Maz., 758, fol. 46v): Haec solum nominalibus videntur esse concedentia sic! . Sane quidem potest concedi, quod aliud credimus, aliud antiqui. 45 Anonymous Summa (Vat. lat. 10754, fol. 5r): Nominales sunt et fere omnes de hac
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that has taken place, it was always true to say it is or it will be , with the grammatical theory of the oneness of a words signication, the enuntiabile theory was given the timeless quality of a thing (res).46 In Lombards version, the immutability of Gods knowledge is based on the oneness of the principal signication of to know (scire) that underlies the dierent tense forms of past (scivit), present (scit), and future (sciet).47
sententia, quod non alii fuerunt articuli, quoniam Christum esse natum est verum, et quod semel est verum semper est verum. Peter of Capua, Summa (Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 14508, fol. 39r): Posset dici secundum opinionem Nominalium, quod Abraam nunquam credidit Christum esse venturum, nam Christum esse venturum est ipsum modo esse venturum, quod non credidit Abraam. Sed cum non crediderit Christum determinate in aliquo tempore venturum, non credidit Christum nunc venisse, et ideo nec Christum venisse, cum idem ponit secundum Nominalem Christum nunc venisse et Christum venisse. Praepositinus, Summa (Bruges, Bibl. de la Ville, 237, fol. 52v; Paris, B.N. lat. 14526, fol. 34v): Si dicas, sicut dicunt Nominales, quia quod semel est verum semper erit verum, secundum eos dicendum erit quod Habraham credidit Christum esse natum, et quod Habraham non credidit Christum esse nasciturum, quia Christum esse nasciturum secundum eos semper fuit falsum. Bonaventure, Sent. I, d. 41, a. 2, q. 2 (I, 740): Alii dixerunt contrarium, quia posuerunt quod enuntiabile, quod semel est verum, semper est verum, et ita semper scitur. Et ut melius pateat, videnda est eorum positio et ratio positionis. Fuerunt qui dixerunt, quod albus, alba, album, cum sint tres voces et tres habeant modos signicandi, tamen, quia eandem signicationem important, sunt unum nomen. Per hunc modum dixerunt quod unitas enuntiabilis accipienda est non ex parte vocis vel modi signicandi, sed rei signicatae; sed una res est, quae primo est futura, deinde praesens, tertio praeterita; ergo enuntiare rem hanc primo esse futuram, deinde praesentem, tertio praeteritam, non faciet diversitatem enuntiabilium, sed vocum. Quia, retenta eadem signicatione, enuntiabile semper est verum, et non est idem nisi cum eadem signicatio retinetur, ideo dixerunt quod illud quod semel est verum, semper est verum. Et hoc modo solvit Magister. Et ista fuit opinio Nominalium, qui dicti sunt Nominales, quia fundabant positionem suam super nominis unitatem. Quotations taken from Chenu, Grammaire, and Landgraf, Studien. 46 Dierent uses of the terms res and articulus have sometimes made the discussions of individual authors dicult to place. Since res was used variously to mean the historic event, the object of faith, the article of faith, or the content of the article as proposition, it could be used by either side. In the nominalist version res could be that underlying thing or unity that made the articles of faith supra-temporal. Similarly, articulus could mean the proposition or the event to which a proposition referred. Master Martinus noted in his Quaestiones (Paris, B.N. lat. 14556, fol. 327v): Ideo dicunt quidam quod articulus dei consistit in re ipsa, et in veris quae circa ipsam rem fuerunt; unum enim et idem est dei articulus, res ipsa, scilicet Christi passio, et idem verum, scilicet Christum esse passum. A res theory (perhaps better described as an event theory) removes temporality by making the object into a single thing (incomplexum) or the event itself. The nominalist form of the enuntiabile theory removes temporality by arming the unity of meaning behind the complexum. 47 Lombard, Sent. I, d. 41, c. 3 (I, 293): De scientia autem aliter dicimus. Scit enim Deus semper omnia quae aliquando scit: omnem enim scientiam quam aliquando
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It was in the context of the problem of divine knowledge that Lombard, in order to bolster his argument, introduced the parallel problem of the object of faith.48 The nominalist solution to the latter issue had persuasive force for him and others because it appeared to be Augustines position.49 While tacked on at the end of his discussion as an argument from authority, the problem of the object of belief is one that received equal attention in the late twelfth century and formed the basis for Chenus two articles.
habuit, semper habuit et habet et habebit. Ibid.: Sed ad hoc dicimus quia idem de nativitate huius hominis et mundi creatione nunc etiam scit, quod sciebat antequam erent, licet tunc et nunc hanc scientiam eius diversis exprimi verbis oporteat. Nam quod tunc futurum erat, nunc praeteritum est; ideoque verba commutenda sunt ad ipsum designandum. Sicut diversis temporibus loquentes, eandem diem modo per hoc adverbium cras designamus, dum adhuc futura est; modo per hodie, dum praesens est; modo per heri, dum praeterita est. Ita antequam crearetur mundus, sciebat Deus hunc creandum; postquam creatus est, scit eum creatum. Nec est hoc scire diversa, sed omnino idem de mundi creatione. The anonymous gloss on the Sentences (Paris, Bibl. Maz., 758, fol. 46v) notes that Lombard has adopted the position of a Nominalist: Magister in hoc capitulo nominalis est sequens illud: quod semel est verum, semper erit verum. Simon of Tournai, sometimes grouped with the Porretani, follows Lombard in adopting the nominalist view of divine knowledge and will. Peter of Capua, Summa (Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 14508, fol. 7v; Vat. lat. 4296, fol. 7vb; Vat. lat. 4304, fol. 7va), on whether God knows, something that he previously did not know, states: Realis concedit quod sicut me esse est verum et non semper fuit verum, ita ipsum scit modo Deus et non semper illud scivit, nec ideo est scientior quam fuit. Sicut iste videt aliquid, quod prius non vidit, non tamen habet maiorem visum. Nominalis dicit quod sicut me esse semper fuit verum, ita et Deus semper scivit illud. Et ideo scivit me esse. Secundum hos nihil scit quod ab aeterno non scivit. Continuing to the question of whether God begins to know something: Realis dicit quod sicut aliquid potest incipere esse verum, ita Deus potest incipire scire illud quod non est verum. Nominalis dicit quod sicut aliquid potest esse verum, quod non est verum, nec potest incipere esse verum, ita Deus potest scire aliquid, quod non scit, non tamen potest incipere scire illud, sicut iste, qui non est praedestinatus, potest esse praedestinatus, non tamen potest incipere esse praedestinatus. William of Auxerre, Summa aurea I, tr. 9, c. 2 (I, 181): Sed secundum Nominales qui dicunt: quod semel est verum, semper est verum, Deus nihil incipit vel desinit scire. Et hoc magis concordat Augustino et magistro in sententiis. 48 Lombard, Sent. I, d. 41, c. 3 (I, 293): Sicut antiqui Patres crediderunt Christum nasciturum et moriturum, nos autem credimus eum iam natum et mortuum; nec tamen diversa credimus nos et illi, sed eadem. Tempora enim, ut Augustinus, variata sunt, et ideo verba mutata, non des. For subsequent discussions of Lombards position see above, note 45. 49 Augustine, Tract. in Joan., XLV, n. 9 (PL 35, 1722): Tempora variata sunt, non des. Quia et ipsa verba pro tempore variantur, cum varie declinantur. Alium sonum habet venturus est; alium sonum habet venit. Eadem tamen des utrosque conjugit, et eos qui venturum esse, et eos qui eum venisse crediderunt. For analyses of this and other passages see my Augustine and Nominalism, in St. Augustine and His Inuence in
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All parties to the discussion wished to arm the immutability of belief across time, that what Abraham and St. Peter believed was the same object of faith believed by later Christians. The most common form of the res approach protected immutability by maintaining that the object of faith was the historic event itself. The nominalist approach protected immutability by arming that there was one identical nontemporal signicatum underlying the changing tense forms of the articles of the creed as armed by those before, during, or after the events of Christs life. Just as God knows one truth, which at one time is expressed in the future tense and at another time is expressed in the past tense, so Abraham, who believed Christ would be born, believed the same identical truth as Christians who believe Christ was born. One interesting feature of the problem of knowledge or belief is that the knower or believer is, in a certain sense, passive, and that it is the reality of fact or event that determines the content of knowledge or belief. If the ow of time is taken seriously, the content of Gods knowledge not only continually undergoes change, but can be changed (even manipulated) by human activitya particularly disconcerting notion in light of belief in Gods omnipotence.50 The mutability of divine knowledge could have been avoided by stressing that God does not know in time but as eternal present, and that God does not know by means of propositions. But just as many twelfth-century discussions of divine omnipotence, in order to assert Gods freedom of choice, hypothesized a moment of deliberation before a particular course of action was chosen, so the process of divine knowledge was humanized and considered sub specie temporis. The question of the object of faith is cleaner because the knowers or believers are always human and in time. It permits a solution to the question of the object of knowledge within the realm of temporal propositions alone. The problem of Gods will is closely related to the problem of Gods knowledge, but with some important dierences. God who wills, like God who knows, is in a static state outside the ow of time, while that which is willed (or known) is in time. Yet in volition, unlike epistemic
the Middle Ages, ed. E.B. King and J.T. Schaefer (Sewanee, 1988) pp. 9197 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 2]. 50 Robert Holcot, traditionally considered a fourteenth-century Nominalist, would have been quite compatible with those thirteenth-century res theorists who argued for the growth and diminution of Gods knowledge on the basis of human events.
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verbs, God actively wills instead of passively knows. The content of the divine will cannot be theoretically manipulated in the same way as the content of divine knowledge unless one makes the divine will as well as divine knowledge dependent on the outcome of future events within the power of man. The issue of tensed propositions, however, remains the same in the two problems. God does not simply will things or facts; he wills that things exist or that something be the case. Moreover, events and states of aairsall that happens or existslie within the will of God. As the passage of time moves facts and events from future, to present, to past, so human descriptions of what God wills change tense and, verbally, the content of what God wills. Again, a construction parallel to the unitas nominis is the key to the nominalist solution, as adopted by Lombard. Beneath the changing tenses of voluit and vult lies the same identical principal signication and, consequently, the identical enuntiabile of propositions that dier only in tense. The unity behind the root meaning of the verb expresses and safeguards the immutability of the divine will just as much as it does the immutability of divine knowledge.51 The verbal parallel to the unitas nominis also provided a solution to the problem of divine omnipotence. It was widely acknowledged that Gods power was limited by his inability to do contradictory things simultaneously and did not extend to actions that would contradict the divine nature. Yet time itself seemed to impose further limitations. God could not change the past. A course of action, once taken, not only destroyed other possibilities, but certain actions could not appropriately be repeated (such as Incarnation and Resurrection). If the range
51 Lombard, Sent. I, d. 44, c. 2 (I, 305): Ad quod dicimus quia, sicut omnia semper scit quae aliquando scivit, et semper vult quae aliquando voluit, nec unquam aliquam scientiam amittit vel voluntatem mutat quam habuit, ita omnia semper potest quae aliquando potuit, nec unquam aliqua potentia sua privatur. Non est ergo privatus potentia incarnandi vel resurgendi, licet non possit modo incarnari vel resurgere. Sicut enim potuit olim incarnari, ita et potest modo esse incarnatus; in quo eiusdem rei potentia monstratur. Ibid., 305306: Et sicut voluit olim resurgere, et modo resurrexisse; in quo unius rei voluntas exprimitur. Similiter quidquid voluit, et vult, id est omnem quam habuit voluntatem, et modo habet; et cuiuscumque rei voluntatem habuit, et modo habet; non tamen vult esse vel eri omne quod aliquando voluit esse vel eri, sed vult fuisse vel factum esse. The anonymous gloss on Sentences (Paris, Bibl. Maz., 758, fol. 48r) rejects Lombards thesis (I, 43) quod quidquid semel est verum, semper erit verum. Nos autem concedimus, quod Deus noviter, id est ex tempore, vult me esse in a, voluntas tamen eius est aeterna.
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of Gods activity in the present and future was as unlimited as it presumably was before creation and revelation, then little in the present orders of nature and grace or in the past itself were certain. On the other hand, if the ow of time increasingly puts facts and events outside the power of God and narrows the course of future divine action, then the range of divine power is diminished with every moment of time. Yet, just as there is one root verb beneath the changing tense forms (consignications) of scivit and scit, or voluit and vult, so there is one identical principal signication that lies behind potuit and potest. Gods power or capacity for action is not changed by the passage of time. What God could at one time do, he still can do; and what he can now do, he could always do.52 The technique employed in all these solutions is a grammatical theory of the nomen, the distinction of one signication and many consignications, as applied to verbs and tensed propositions. The formula that
52 Lombard, Sent. I, d. 44, c. 2 (I, 305306): Ita potuit olim nasci et resurgere, et modo potest natus fuisse et resurrexisse; et est eiusdem rei potentia. Si enim posset modo nasci et resurgere, non esset idem posse. Verba enim diversorum temporum, diversis prolata temporibus et diversis adiuncta adverbiis, eundem faciunt sensum, ut modo loquentes dicimus: Iste potest legere hodie, eras autem dicemus: Iste potest legisse, vel potuit legere heri; ubi unius rei monstratur potentia. Si autem diversis temporibus loquentes, eiusdem temporis verbis et adverbiis utamur, dicentes hodie: Iste potest hodie legere; et dicentes cras: Iste potest hodie legere, non idem, sed diversa dicimus eum posse. Fateamur igitur Deum semper posse et quidquid semel potuit, id est habere omnem illam potentiam quam semel habuit, et illius omnis rei potentiam cuius semel habuit; sed non semper posse facere omne illud quod aliquando potuit facere: potest quidem facere aut fecisse quod aliquando potuit. Anonymous Sent. gloss stemming from Stephen Langton, at I, d. 44, c. 2 (Naples, Bibl. Naz., VII.C.14, fol. 97vb): Secundum Nominales ms.: nos quicquid potuit, potest. Secundum Reales aliter, quibus haec dubia est: quicquid potuit, potest. Anonymous Sent. gloss (Paris, Bibl. Maz., 758, fol. 48v) on Lombards (I, 44) thesis that just as God always knows what he sometimes knew, and always wills what he sometimes willed, so he is always able to do what he at some time was able to do; for although he is not now able to be incarnate or to rise, he still possesses the power to do so. The gloss remarks: Hoc simpliciter falsum, since it does not suciently recognize changes in time. Magister autem non procedit hac via i.e. make Gods knowledge, will, and power correspond to changes in time ; immo procedit tamquam Nominalis dicens semel verum semper esse verum. Bonaventure, Sent. I, d. 44, a. 1, q. 1: Ad hoc est duplex modus respondendi, sicut ad sophisma de scientia. Concesso enim, quod divina potentia secundum veritatem omnino sit immutabilis, secundum positionem tamen Nominalium concedunt hanc: potest quidquid potuit. Et respondent illationi: sed potuit Christum suscitare: ergo et modo potest; respondent, quod non debet inferri sub illo tempore, sed sub alio: ergo potest Christum suscitasse, quia hoc enuntiabile adiunctum verbis diversorum temporum non est idem. Ideo dicunt, quod propositio est vera, et si aliter inferatur, assignant peccatum in processu secundum guram dictionis sive secundum accidens.
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was developed out of this theory was that whatever is at one time true (believed, known, willed, or doable) is always true (believed, known, willed, or doable). Semel est verum, semper est verum. It should be noted that this formula and theory of the constant truth value of enuntiabilia is not a theory about propositions in general. It does not apply to states of activity that may change from moment to moment (such as the sitting or running Socrates). It applies only to statements about events or situations at some designated point in time. If it is ever true that the Incarnation or a sea battle will take place (and Aristotle granted the necessity of the latter, once it had occurred), then that truth was always true. It is not the ceasing to perform some activity that makes a statement true or false, since at one point in time only one of several contradictory activities will be taking place. The issue is the changing tense structure of statements before and after an event. A Realist (in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century sense) would argue that a proposition in the future tense is true before the event and false after the event. A Nominalist considers the tense structure of the proposition to be of little importance and stressed the eternal truth which the enuntiable arms. Most of this discussion concerned two types of propositions: those in which the object of knowledge and belief is an eternal truth of faith; and those in which the one who knows, wills, or acts is himself eternal, namely God. It would be wrong, however, to understand the unitas nominis theory as simply a theory of enuntiables that centered on the nature of verbs, tensed statements, and propositional truth. The underlying unity that links Socrates ran (Socrates cucurrit) and Socrates runs (Socrates currit) is the unity of the noun Socrates just as much as the unity of the verb currereor more precisely, the truth value of the totality signied by the proposition. The theory of the unity of the noun was applied to the problem of whether evil intention and the resulting external act constitute one sin or two. According to the nominalist solution, since the same individual, for example Socrates, is the same person (nomen) behind the two stages of action (voces), they constitute one sin by reason of the unity of the noun.53 Again, this was a view adopted by Lombard,
53 Udo, Gloss on Sent. II, 42 (Bamberg, Staatsbibl., Patr. 126, fol. 33v): Concedunt enim, quod actus et voluntas sunt diversa non peccata, et tamen quolibet (!) illorum est peccatum. Et inducunt simile: Iste duo voces, quas isti proferunt, qui vocant Socratem, sunt diversa non nomina et tamen quaelibet illarum est unum et idem nomen cum alia. Quod dictum est de illo, qui solam habet voluntatem et cras perducet ad actum, talem inducunt instantiam: Ecce isti duo proferunt hoc nomen Socrates. Nullum nomen
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but the language of nomen-analysis only comes out in the glosses on his Sentences.54 The now familiar form of nominalist exposition was probably applied here. Socrates (at T1) intends to sin at a future time (T2) = Socrates peccabit. Socrates sins at T2 = Socrates peccat. Socrates at
profertur ab uno, quod non proferatur ab alio, et tamen aliqua essentia vocis profertur ab uno, quae non profertur ab alio. 54 Lombard, Sent. II, 42 (I, 567568): Quibus alii respondent haec duo diversa esse, non peccata. Non enim peccata sunt, sed peccatum unum. Later in the same distinction Lombard does employ nomen-analysis (I, 570): Peccatum ergo est perpetratio mali, delictum desertio boni. Quod et ipsum nomen ostendit. Quid enim aliud sonat delictum nisi derelictum? Et quid derelinquit, qui delinquit, nisi bonum? Vel delictum est quod ignoranter t, peccatum quod scienter committitur. Indierenter tamen et peccatum nomine delicti, et delictum nomine peccati appellatur. Peter of Poitiers, Sententiae II, p. 14: Posito quod iste protulerit hanc vocem albus et modo proferat hanc vocem alba; iste nullum nomen protulit quod modo non proferat, et nichil fuit prolaturus nisi nomen; ergo nil protulit iste quod non proferat. Quod postea dicitur contra eos qui dicunt quod voluntas et actus sunt diversa peccata et ideo alia satisfactio iniungenda est pro voluntate et alia pro actu, solvi potest dicto quod non sunt due satisfactiones iniugende pro illis duobus peccatis. Si autem queratur utrum reatus et actus, sive exterior sive interior, sint duo peccata vel non, dicendum est hoc incongrue dici, sicut si diceretur: Hoc album et albedo eius sunt vel non sunt, quoniam non est connumeratio corporis ad suam proprietatem. Hoc tamen non est pretermittendum quod contemptus, reatus, actus, voluntas pro uno peccato reputantur non pro pluribus, sicut nomen signicat substantiam et qualitatem et intellectum, non tamen signicat plura, quia ista tria pro una signicatione reputantur. Simon of Tournai, Les Disputationes, ed. J. Warichez (Louvain, 1932), p. 74: Licet sint diversi motus hodiernus et hesternus, tamen quia vertuntur circa idem, est enim idem volitum. Ideo non iudicamus diversa peccata, sed unum; sicut diversas voces unum nomen, qui una institutione institutae sunt ad signicandum. Peter of Capua, Summa (Vat. lat. 4296, fol. 27r; Vat. lat. 4304, fol. 27r): Ad hoc dicunt quidam et hoc dicebat, ut fertur, Abaialardus, quod actus et voluntas, quamvis sint diversa, sunt tamen idem peccatum, nec habent pro inconvenienti, si aliquod peccatum est duo, immo etiam tria voluntas et actus et reatus . Cum vero adiciet actum, non committet aliud peccatum, sed illud idem peccatum. Sicut una sola res sit caritas, tamen propter pluralitatem diligendorum plura dantur de ea praecepta, scilicet diliges Dominum Deum tuum etc., et diliges proximum tuum sicut te ipsum. The attribution to Abelard is somewhat misleading. For Abelard it is the intention or volition that is the sin, which is not increased in the eyes of God by the ability to fulll that intention. It is one sin by reason of intention, not by reason of the unitas nominis. An anonymous Summa, Vat. lat. 10754, fol. 68v, accepts the dual hypothesis of sin, but says: Ad hoc dicunt quidam, quod licet sint diversa, sunt tamen idem peccatum, quod voluntas, immo ex voluntate actus est peccatum, sicut albus et alba sunt diversa, tamen idem nomen dicitur. Godfrey of Poitiers, Summa, Paris, B.N. Lat. 15747, fol. 36v, as cited by Landgraf: Si sequamur viam Nominalium, dicere possumus, quod voluntas et actus sunt idem peccatum. De voluntate concomitante dico, non de praeeunte, quae non concomitatur actum. Et omnes illae auctoritates, quae videntur velle, quod sint diversa peccata, intelligendae sunt de praeeunte voluntate et actu subsequente, non de concomitante. He has used here the proviso of Simon of Tournai. Godfrey continues that some might say there are two sins: instantia est in istis vocibus albus alba, quorum utrumque nomen, non tamen diversa nom-
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T3 has sinned = Socrates peccavit. Once the second proposition is true (or in Abelards view, once the rst proposition is true), the other two are also true. The sinning Socrates, if once true, was always true. One commentator, Bandinus, used this discussion of sin to make the further analogy that in the Eucharist the esh and blood of Christ were one sacramentum, just as I love and you love are one word under two grammatical forms.55 It also appears that the label Nominales in the late twelfth century was not linked solely to the theory of an underlying (common) root meaning that lies behind the various forms of a word. The Nominales were also credited with the view that the same root word or the same grammatical form could have dierent meanings depending on context, and dierent words that supposited for the same person or thing were not necessarily interchangeable. The nomen Socrates, for example, could stand for the substance (or essence) of Socrates or the person of Socrates. The substance of Socrates might cease to exist while Socrates as person might continue to exist. Substance and person are not identical, just as the human nature of Christ is not identical with the person of Christ.56 In fact, mistakes in logical argumentation occur
ina. Sicut dicerem, quod non protulit hanc vocem, quae est hoc nomen, sed protulit hoc nomen, quod est haec vox, posito quod protulit hanc vocem albus et non protulit hanc vocem alba. Nominatio non t in vocibus, sed in utente vel in instituente. Praepositinus, Summa (Erlangen, Universittsbibl., 353, fol. 24v; see also Chenu, Contribution, 131): Ad hoc dicimus consentientes magistris nostris, quod actio et voluntas sunt duo peccata. Hugh of St. Cher mentions Prepositinus as supporting the two sin theory, which seems to have become standard in the second half of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (e.g. Stephen Langton), with a few exceptions (e.g. Godfrey of Poitiers). 55 Bandinus, Sent. II, 42: Sicut etiam unum sacramentum sunt sanguis et caro, ipsa tamen diversa sunt; et unum verbum sunt amo et amas, licet duae personae sint. 56 Peter Cantor, Summa de sacramentis III, c. 54, ed. J.-A. Dugauquier, Analecta Mediaevalia Namurcensia 21 (Louvain and Lille, 1967), p. 480: quidam eorum dicunt quod cum homo ille assumptus sit persona, Verbum scilicet incarnatum, nullo modo connumerabilia sunt Verbum et ille homo assumptus. Potest tamen eri sermo de homine illo ita quod non de Verbo, sicut in secularibus litteris secundum Nominales, qui dicunt quod substantia, quae est Socrates, desinit esse, non tamen Socrates desinit esse. Distingunt enim inter essentiam et personam. Nulla connumeratio est inter Socratem et substantiam quae ipse est, tamen possum loqui de illa essentia, licet non loquar de Socrate. Ibid., p. 493: Forte non est recte superius hoc nomen aliquid ad hoc nomen homo, sicut dicunt Nominales. Unde secundum eos, Socrates est homo qui ipse erit; non tamen est aliquid quod ipse erit. The dierentiation between substance and person may be linked to other theses attributed to the Nominales and interpreted by Normore to deny augmentation, change, and motion. In this view, substantial shifts among the parts of a whole do not aect
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when dierent words that stand for the same thing are considered interchangeable or identical, or when the same word is being used de dicto in one premise and de re in another.57 A few other theses have been attributed to the Nominalists in the texts and literature. One of these is the view, shared with other groups, that a composite entity should be considered one thing, not a multiplicity of things joined together.58 Another, far closer to the problem of universals, is the thesis that genera and species are nomina.59 Finally, there are a number of rules of inference in logic, such as: a syllogistic inference does not require further justication; a negative does not follow from an armative, nor an armative from a negative; and any-
the nature of the whole. On the theological plane, Christ continued to exist during the three days between crucixion and resurrection, although his body underwent corruption. Belief in Christ was just as valid during those three days as before or after. 57 William of Auxerre, Summa aurea III, tr. 2, c. 2, q. 2, when describing the nominalist position on the object of faith, that the same articles of faith are believed in by the antiqui and the moderni, he remarks that the Nominalists consider the following a fallacy of accident (fallacia secundum accidens): enuntiabilia sunt mutata: enuntiabilia sunt articuli: ergo articuli sunt mutati. Anonymous gloss on Sentences (Paris, Bibl. Maz., 758, fol. 51r) on I, 46 (Gods responsibility for evil being done): Opinio quorumdam Nominalium fuit: tu audis signicatum huius propositionis: angeli canunt; ergo audis angelos canere. Non sequitur; in propositione enim agitur de dicto, in conclusione de re. 58 The Compendium logicae Porretanum attributes to the Nominales, Montani, and Cappauses the position that every composite entity, both a totum disgregativum and a totum contiguum, is one thing, not many; see edition by S. Ebbesen, K.M. Fredborg, and L.O. Nielsen, CIMGL, 46 (1983), 39. Chenu discusses the problem of divine names in his second article, but it is less clear that the theory of the unity of the noun is being applied here in the same way as with the other problems. Moreover, I do not know any text of the late twelfth or thirteenth century that identies any solution to this problem as nominalist. Similarly, Landgraf includes the theory of the identity of the soul and its powers, mentioned by William of Auxerre. But William does not discuss it in terms of the unity of noun theory, and the labeling of the view as nominalist is not in the manuscripts but in the margin of the 1500 printed edition and probably reects the association of so-called late medieval Nominalists with this view. William of Auxerre, Summa aurea II, tr. 9, c. 1, q. 6: Quidam tamen dicunt, quod haec tria sunt proprie unum, et intelliguntur hoc de ipsa potentia. Dicunt enim, quod anima idem est, quod sua potentia. Sed dicuntur esse tres potentiae propter diversos actus, cum non sit nisi una anima et una potentia in essentia. Et hoc volunt habere ex verbis beati Augustini, quae dicunt, quod haec tria sunt una vita, una anima. Et per hoc, quod ipse dixit, quod haec tria non sunt in anima ut in subiecto, igitur non sunt qualitates animae, sed ipsa anima. William himself does not adopt this view. Nor is there evidence that anyone in the twelfth or thirteeenth centuries saw the theory of the identity of the soul and its faculties as specically nominalist. 59 Peter of Capua, Summa (Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 14508, fol. 26v): Haec oppositio non est contra nos Nominales, quia dicimus genera et species esse nomina.
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thing follows from an impossibility.60 The place of these theses within the teaching of the secta Nominalium will be considered in the last section. The content and range of the most frequently cited opiniones Nominalium in the second half of the twelfth century have been examined. At what stage, however, did the application of these theories of the noun receive the kind of attention that created the label Nominales? Was it among grammarians, logicians, or theologians? When and where did the phenomenon originate?
Toward a History of the Nominales Although Lombard does not cite a source for his nominalist opinionhe never identies contemporary opinion beyond the imprecise quidamLombard was in fact borrowing, not creating these views. When in 1159 John of Salisbury describes Master Alberic as the impugnator nominalis sectae, he was probably describing the situation in 1137 as he remembered it from his student days. The primacy of the noun and even the unitas nominis was not a revolutionary innovation of the early twelfth century. Ancient grammar had always given the central place to the nominative case of a noun and the present tense of a verb. The oblique cases, gender forms, and past and future tenses were accidental qualities of the principal signication of words. Aristotle distinguished between the noun proper and the cases of a noun, just as between a verb proper (present action) and the tenses of a verb (past and future).61 The essence of the verb was action;
60 The rst of these rules is cited by Normore from the treatise Haec est, edited by N.J. Green-Pedersen in Studia Mediewistyczne, 18 (1977), 125163, on 142, n. 88. The second is attributed to the Nominales in a treatise in Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 29520/2, edited by Yukio Iwakuma in CIMGL, 44 (1983), 82. The third is attributed to the Nominales in the realist quaestiones in Vat. lat. 7678, fol. 81rb. 61 Aristotle distinguishes between the noun proper and the cases of a noun, just as between a verb proper (present action) and the tenses of a verb. Arist., On Interp. 2: The expressions of Philo, to Philo, and so on, constitute not nouns, but cases of a noun. The denition meaning of these cases of a noun is in other respects the same as that of the noun proper . On Interp. 3: A verb is that which, in addition to its proper meaning, carries with it the notion of time. Similarly, he was healthy, he will be healthy, are not verbs, but tenses of a verb; the dierence lies in the fact that the verb indicates present time, while the tenses of the verb indicate those times which lie outside the present.
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the time of action was a secondary, qualitative addition. Although not implied in the idea of the primacy of the nominative case and present tense, it was a simple step to the thesis that those grammatical forms were close to the core or root meaning of words. The role of the nomen (naming word) was larger than what is normally understood by noun. Not only did it include adjectives and other parts of speech linked to nouns, but verbs could be viewed as compounds of the copula est and the predicatea named activity as substantive. Socrates runs means Socrates is running. Once stripped of its temporal quality and the hidden copula, it was this naming function that created the principal signication (the running Socrates) and united all forms of a verb. Some names are derivative (denominative) according to a hierarchy of words: grammarian is derived from grammar and a courageous person from courage.62 In this Platonic preference for the abstract noun, some grammarians, such as Bernard of Chartres, placed the verbal form (e.g. albet) as a middle stage between the pure grammatical form (albedo) and the corruption or mixture in which the quality (in this case whiteness) inheres in a subject (e.g. albus, alba, or album).63 It could well be argued that the movement beyond the traditional taxonomical approach to grammar, as reected in the works of Donatus and Priscian, toward what comes to be called speculative grammar was already underway in the late eleventh century. Anselms De grammatico, written between 1080 and 1085 as a treatise on paronymy, was already concerned with the signication of nomina.64 Although Anselm himself describes the treatise as one in dialectic, its central question,
Arist., Categ. 1: Things are said to be named derivatively, which derive their name from some other name, but dier from it in termination. Thus the grammarian derives his name from the word grammar, and the courageous man from the word courage. 63 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, pp. 124125: Aiebat Bernardus Carnotensis quia albedo signicat virginem incorruptam, albet eandem introeuntem thalamum aut cubantem in thoro, album vero eandem, sed corruptam. Hoc quidem quoniam albedo ex assertione eius simpliciter et sine omni participatione subiecti ipsam signicat qualitatem, videlicet coloris speciem, disgregativam visus. Albet autem eandem principaliter, etsi participationem personae admittat. Si enim illud excutias, quod verbum hoc pro substantia signicat, qualitas albedinis occurret, sed in accidentibus verbi personam reperies. Album vero eandem signicat qualitatem, sed infusam commixtamque substantiae et iam quodammodo magis corruptam; siquidem nomen ipsum pro substantia subiectum albedinis, pro qualitate signicat colorem albentis subiecti. 64 D.P. Henry, The De Grammatico of St.Anselm: The Theory of Paronymy (Notre Dame, 1964).
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whether grammaticus is a substantia or a qualitas, uses the language of the grammarian, and its analysis is done from the standpoint of grammar as well as logic. In ways that anticipate the problem of the object of knowledge or faith, Anselm distinguishes between a vox signicativa and a vox consignicativa, including tense and temporal words in the latter category.65 John of Salisburys description of the teaching of Bernard of Chartres in the opening years of the twelfth century simply expands on this terminology.66 It is unlikely that Bernard of Chartres was the patron des Nominales, as Chenu suggested.67 The theory of consignication was at least as old as Anselm. Allowing for equivocation, the oneness of meaning underlying nouns and verbs and the secondary status of tense were fundamental to the Aristotelian and Augustinian heritage.68 The innovative step came when the theory of nouns, particularly the theory of the unity of the noun, began to be used as a problem-solving technique in logic and theologywhen the Aristotelian view of the inferior status of case and time over against the primary meaning of the nomen was transformed into the inferior status of tensed enuntiabilia over against the primary
Ibid., p. 39: Igitur hodiernum non est nomen sed verbum, quia est vox consignicans tempus, nec est oratio. Ibid., p. 41: Cum enim in denitione nominis vel verbi dicitur quia est vox signicativa, intelligendum est non alia signicatione quam ea quae per se est. Nam si illa signicatio quae est per aliud, in denitione nominis vel verbi intelligenda est, iam non erit hodiernus nomen sed verbum. Signicat enim aliquando ea signicatione aliquid cum tempore, sicut supra dixi, quod non est nominis sed verbi. Although the phrase many voces are one nomen comes to express nominalist grammatical theory, it should be noted here that consignication is not identical with voces. Oratio is Anselms word for a complex utterance, what would later be called a dictum (Abelard) or enuntiabile (late twelfth century). Vox always meant an incomplex utterance which, like Augustines sonus, might be either signicative or consignicative. Vox includes noun and noun-related words as well as verbs and verb-related words. Words that consignify are those that signify per aliud rather than per se. For Anselm words that signify time are verbs (in present tense); words that consignify time are adverbs (and other tenses), although on these latter points Anselm is vague. 66 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, p. 124: Sic a bonitate bonus, a fortitudine fortis dicitur, ut ex ipsa verborum forma perpendatur quodammodo adiacens intellectus. Unde ex opinione plurium idem principaliter signicant denominativa et ea a quibus denominantur, sed consignicatione diversa. 67 Chenu, Grammaire, 1416. 68 For Augustines view of the secondary status of tense see Confessiones XI, 13, 17, 18, and 20; see also the discussion in M. Colish, The Mirror of Language, rev. ed. (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1983), pp. 4648. For Augustines thesis that all words are nouns see De magistro 5 and the discussion by M. Sirridge, Augustine: Every Word is a Name, New Scholasticism, 50 (1976), 183192; also see note 49 above.
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meaning of the supra-temporal enuntiabile. Aristotle accepted the necessity of an event, once it had taken place, but propositions about events are true at one time and false at another. A proposition in the past tense arming a past event is true, but the same proposition would be false before the event. The formula semel est verum, semper est verum was unAristotelian. But the controversial nature of Bernards teaching, referred to by John of Salisbury, had nothing to do with this. It had to do with Bernards Platonizing interpretation of the opening chapter of Aristotles Categories.69 Unfortunately, the evidence does not allow us to see a gradual movement from grammar, into logic, and thence into theology. Well before the appearance of the nominalist techniques described above, the worlds of grammar, dialectic, biblical exegesis, and speculative theology were blended in some of the most orthodox writers. Anselms attack on the opinions of Roscelin before 1092, as well as the works of Anselm himself, show the depth of penetration of logic into theology. Anselms complaint was not that logic should not be applied to the study of Scripture but rather that it must be done with intelligence by one who is properly trained. Even allowing for the preponderance of theological works among the sources in this period, the Nominales are not grammarians but logician-theologians who applied the theories of the noun, particularly of the unitas nominis, to logical and theological problems. It would appear that two steps were taken by the second quarter of the twelfth century. One of these was to take the descriptive analysis of nouns and verbs, which distinguished between their signication (proper meaning) and their consignifying modes of signication, and use that as a problem-solving analytical tool. The second step, closely allied, was to transfer the principle of identical meaning from the signication of terms to the signication of enuntiables. How early either of these steps was taken is conjectural. The late eleventh-century view of the identity of the soul and its powers, reported by Anselm and apparently to be attributed to Roscelin, might have been based on a theory of the noun parallel to the identication of intention and act in the one-sin theory.70 But the same thesis could have
69 John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 125: Videbatur etiam sibi tam de Aristotile quam de multorum auctoritatibus niti. Ait enim: Album nichil aliud signicat quam qualitatem. Multa quoque proferebat undique conquista, quibus persuadere nitebatur res interdum pure, interdum adiacenter praedicari, et ad hoc denominativorum scientiam perutilem asserebat. Habet haec opinio sicut impugnatores, sic defensores suos. 70 See above, note 21.
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been arrived at by other means, just as it was in the fourteenth century. The same holds true for Roscelins reputed unwillingness to distinguish between color and a material object in which, to use Platonic language, that color inheres.71 In Anselms case of the white horse (equus albus) used in De grammatico and De incarnatione Verbi, the identity of color and substance might have been argued on the basis that in certain statements albus by itself supposits for horse, much as brunellus means a brown ass.72 But it seems more likely these positions were derived from a rejection of the existence of abstract qualities (color, wisdom, humanness) apart from individual substances, and a rejection of the distinction between substance and quality (or to use Anselms language, between precise signication and oblique signication). The twelfthcentury nominalist distinction of substance and person as well as the theory of the unitas nominis work in a dierent direction. We are much closer to the application of the unitary character of the signication of nomina in the theological writings of Abelard. In fact, most of the passages in Lombards Sentences containing what come to be labelled opiniones Nominalium seem to have been directly taken from Abelard, primarily his Theologia scholarium. This includes the positions on divine knowledge, divine volition, and divine power.73 Although Abelard does not apply this approach to the problem of
See above, note 21. Anselm, De incarnatione Verbi, c. 1 (II, 10): Et cuius mens obscura est ad diiudicandum inter equum suum et colorem eius: qualiter discernet inter unum Deum et plures relationes eius? De Grammatico, pp. 4041: D. Equum intelligo per nomen albi. M. Nomen igitur albi signicat tibi equum. D. Signicat utique. M. Nonne vides quia alio modo quam nomen equi? D. Video. Nempe nomen equi etiam priusquam sciam ipsum equum album esse, signicat mihi equi substantiam per se, et non per aliud. Nomen vero albi substantiam signicat non per se, sed per aliud, id est per hoc quia scio equum esse album. Cum enim nihil aliud signicet hoc nomen, quod est albus, quam haec oratio, quae est habens albedinem: sicut haec oratio per se constituit mihi intellectum albedinis, et non eius rei quae habet albedinem; ita et nomen. Sed quoniam scio albedinem esse in equo, et hoc per aliud quam per nomen albi, velut per visum: intellecta albedine per hoc nomen, intelligo equum per hoc quod albedinem scio esse in equo, id est per aliud quam per nomen albi, quo tamen equus appellatur. M. Vides ergo quomodo albus non sit signicativum eius quod aliquo modo signicat, et quomodo sit appellativum eius cuius non est signicativum? D. Hoc quoque video. Signicat enim equum et non signicat, quia non eum signicat per se, sed per aliud, et tamen equus appellatur albus. Et quod video in albo, hoc intelligo in grammatico, et in similibus denominativis. 73 Abelard, Theologia scholarium III, c. 5 (PL 178, 1103): Qui etiam sicut omnia semper scit quae aliquando scit, vel semper vult quae aliquando vult, nee unquam aliquam scientiam amittit, vel voluntatem mutat, quam unquam habuit, ita semper omnia potest quae aliquando potest, nec unquam aliqua sua potentia privatur.
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the object of faith at this point in his work, his treatment of Gods knowledge of Abelards birth before and after the event is directly applicable to that parallel problem.74 Adverbs that express diversity of time do not alter the proper designation or the reality of scire, velle, or facere.75 Without applying that specic technique of analysis, Abelard did maintain another thesis that eventually became associated with the Nominales, namely the primacy of intention and the subordination of the act that seems to have been one of the sources for the one-sin theory.76
74 Ibid.: Etsi enim scivit olim me nasciturum esse, ne tamen sciat me nasciturum esse, non tamen ideo olim aliquid scivit quod modo non sciat; sed id de nativitate mea nunc etiam scit, quod sciebat antequam eret, licet et tunc et nunc hanc eius scientiam diversis verbis exprimi oporteret. Quippe quod tunc futurum erat modo peractum est, ideo verba commutata sint ad ipsum designandum; sicut diversis temporibus loquentes eandem diem modo per hoc adverbium cras designamus dum adhuc futura est, modo per hodie dum praesens est, modo per heri, cum praeterita est. Antequam itaque nascerer, cum sciret Deus me nasciturum esse, eo quidem tempore quo nasciturus eram, nunc quoque nihilominus id scit, scilicet eodem tempore natum esse: sic et idem de eadem nativitate mea nunc quoque vult quod tunc voluit, ut videlicet tunc eret, quando eam eri ab aetemo voluit et scivit. Et attende, quod sicuti cum dicimus, Deus scit modo id factum esse, vel vult modo id factum esse; illud modo, ad diversa coniunctum successum enuntiationis mutat, ita etiam, ut supra meminimus, cum dico, potest modo id facere, idem adverbium coniunctum diversum successum variat. 75 Ibid., 11031104: Id est cum huiusmodi adverbiis haec verba faciunt, vult et potest, similiter cum eis successum variantia. Si enim dicatur, potest Deus id modo facere, et ad verbum potest, adverbia referantur, falsissimum est, quia iam uno tempore quamdam habet potentiam, quam alio non haberet. Si vero ad facere utraque coniungantur, verissimum est. Et sicut non ostenduntur diversae scientiae cum dicitur de ipso, quia scivit olim incarnandum esse, ita et cum dicitur, olim potuit incarnari, et modo potest incarnatus esse, possibilitas ostenditur. Non enim cum dicitur per successionem temporis, Deus incarnatur, et Deus incarnatus est, diversa quae fecerit ostendimus, sed pro eodem quod semel fecerit, ista dicuntur. Sic et cum dicitur prius, quia possibile est Deum incarnari, et postmodum dicimus quia possibile est ipsum incarnatum esse, nec diversum factum nec diversa possibilitas monstratur, sed pro eodem quod prius erat futurum, et modo est praeteritum, utrumque vere dicitur. Liquet itaque Deum, sicut nec scientia vel voluntate mutari, ita nec etiam possibilitate. itaque quod semel scit, semper scit, et quod semel vult semper vult: ita et quam semel habet potentiam nunquam deponit. Denique, si more hominum dicamus eum aliud posse uno tempore quod alio non possit, propter hoc videlicet solum quod ei convenit uno tempore id facere quod non convenit alio, nulla eius in hoc impotentia vel potentiae diminutio est intelligenda, cum ad potentiam cuiuslibet minime pertineat quod ei nullatenus convenit, ut inde commendari possit imo e contrario, eius derogaret dignitati. 76 Abelard, Scito te ipsum, ed. and transl. by D.E. Luscombe as Peter Abelards Ethics (Oxford, 1971), pp. 2224: Nichil ergo ad augmentum peccati pertinet qualiscumque operum executio, et nichil animam nisi quod ipsius est coinquinat, hoc est consensus quem solummodo peccatum esse diximus, non voluntatem eum precedentem vel actionem operis subsequentem.
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It is surprising, in a sense, that Lombard derived much of his treatment of divine knowledge, volition, and power from Abelard, since it was against the latter that he shaped most of his forty-third distinction on divine omnipotence.77 Because God always acts in accordance with his wisdom, justice, and goodness, and because God is outside the ow of time, Abelard maintained that God can only do and could only have done what he did and does do.78 The realms of divine power and divine will are coterminous, which renders meaningless any discussion of Gods acting otherwise or better. Lombard, on the other hand, like most of his contemporaries, argued that Gods capacity for action (that which he is able to do) is far larger than what he wills to do. God has and had the capacity to do many things he does not do, a teaching epitomized in the statement of Augustine: potuit, sed noluit.79 The nominalist teaching semel est verum, semper est verum was, in fact, neutral or indierent to the issue of the relation of divine capacity and divine activity. Through the unity of scivit and scit, voluit and vult, potuit and potest Abelard could express his belief that God could only will what he wills and do what he does. Abelards potuitpotest identication meant that God can now do what he once could do, but it also meant that God could only do what he does. Lombard adopted the same nominalist teaching and yet adapted it to a distinction between power and will, between capacity and volition/activity. To potuit et potest Lombard added the Augustinian potuit, sed noluit. Abelard was familiar with the latter passage, but it was not a text that reected his view of the nature of divine activity.80 It should be noted that Abelard does not cite the Augustinian phrase Tempora variata sunt, non des, which Peter Lombard later blended with the passage from Abelards Theologia scholarium. But the Augustinian passage had been introduced into this discussion before Abelard. It was used in the Glossa ordinaria on II Cor. 4:13 as elaboration on Pauls statement about the Psalmist we have the same spirit of faith as he
Lombard, Libri sententiarum, I, d. 43 (I, 298303). Abelard, Theologia scholarium III, 5 (PL 178, 10931101); Theologia christiana V (PL 178, 13241330). 79 For a fuller discussion, see my Covenant and Causality (London, 1984), ch. 4. 80 In his Sic et non, q. 35 and Theologia christiana Abelard cited this passage from Augustines De natura et gratia; see Sic et non, ed. B. Boyer and R. McKeon (Chicago, 1976), p. 186; and Theologia christiana (PL 178, 1329). Abelard did not use this text in his longer and subsequent discussion of divine power in Theologia scholarium, where he adopts what comes to be known as the opinio Nominalium.
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had. Although Robert of Melun is normally identied as a supporter of a res theory with regard to the object of knowledge and faith, his brief discussions are far from clear on this point. By res Robert does not mean the event or some object, but the complex statement of belief in the articles of faith. He shows the identity of past- and futuretensed statements by saying that the future-tensed statement would be appropriate for us if we put outselves in the place of Abraham.81
Nomina, Mental Language, and Universals The weight of evidence makes it almost certain that the label Nominales came into existence as a result of the application in logic and theology of theories of the noun. Part of the teaching or technique concerned the equivocation of terms as they were used in propositions. Most of it concerned the theory of the unitas nominis. The label would not appear to have been a result of disputes over the ontological status of universals or the referent of a universal proposition.82
Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, ed. R.M. Martin, vol. 1: Questiones de divina pagina (Louvain, 1932), pp. 4647: Queritur, utrum eadem des sit hominum temporis gratie, et hominum qui fuerunt tempore Legis, Habrae videlicet et ceterum. Augustinus: Tempora variata sunt, des est eadem. Illi crediderunt Christum venturum, non venisse. Ergo aliquod crediderunt ipsi quod non credimus. Item, Abraam Messiam, qui dicitur Christus, credidit venturum. Hoc et Iudei credunt. Ergo, eadem des est Iudeorum que fuit Habrae. Solutio: Eadem credidit Habraam que et nos etsi alio modo, quia de eisdem rebus. Vel aliter, Abraam credebat a tempore suo Christum incarnaturum, et nos credimus a tempore Abrae hoc idem. 82 Except inasmuch as some words are universals. Peter of Capua, Summa (Clm 14508, fol. 26v; Vat. lat. 4296, fol. 26rb; Vat. lat. 4304, fol. 26rb): Item genera et species sunt rerum naturae; ergo sunt a Deo. Pono ergo quod nulla actio sit bona, nichilominus verum est quod hoc genus actio est, et ipsum est a Deo. Ergo, aliquod eius individuum est a Deo. Responsio: Haec oppositio non est contra nos Nominales, quia dicimus genera et species esse nomina, nomina autem omnia, et eorum impositiones a Deo sunt. When Peter of Capua, Summa, q. 47 (Vat. lat. 4296, fol. 40ra; Vat. lat. 4304, fol. 40va), discusses whether a Jew believes God to be a person, since he believes God to be a rational substance of an individual nature, he remarks: Catholicus dicit quod hoc nomen persona aliter de creatore, aliter de creatura. Et praedicta descriptio data est de hoc nomine persona prout dicitur de creaturis. Cum ergo proponitur catholico an iudaeus credit Deum esse personam, debet accipire hoc nomen persona prout accipitur apud eum. Cum ergo hoc nomen persona secundum catholicum non supponat nisi pro persona Patris vel Filii vel Spiritus Sancti, et iudaeus non credat aliquam illarum esse Deum, debet dicere quod non credit Deum esse personam, sicut Nominalis concedit Deum esse personam et Realis putat genus esse nomen, quia secundum Nominalem per hoc nomen genus non supponitur nisi vox, quam revera
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It might be argued, however, that universals were part of the discussion, even an important part. The question of what terms in a proposition stand for (what would later be called supposition theory) includes universals, and the most visible theological problem to which the unitas nominis was applied, namely the object of knowledge or beliefthat which a proposition signiesis closely related to the problem of universals inasmuch as the logical and ontological status of universals is often discussed in the context of what terms in universal propositions (e.g., man is a rational animal) stand for (supposit). Although true in itself, this is not as relevant to the origin of the term Nominales as it might appear. The propositions under discussion in the question of the object of faith or the oneness of sin are all singular propositions. The same is true for tensed propositions about Gods knowledge, will, and power. Moreover, the ontological status of universals was rarely discussed in terms of nomina, either by Abelard or anyone else. The evidence is clear that the term Nominales usually occurs in the context of the theory of the oneness of the principal signication of the nomen and only rarely and secondarily in the context of universals. Inherent to this nominalist theory is the primacy of mental language. The entity behind the grammatical forms of a word is not just the root form (lexeme, or stem) but the mental equivalent of the root meaning, which is the same no matter in what language that signication is being expressed. What Abraham believed was expressed not only in the future tense, it was in Hebrew. St.Pauls statement of belief, although sharing the same tense as that of later western Christians who arm their creed in Latin, would have been in Greek. Presumably what God knows is also not bound to a specic language. The nomen, therefore, is not only blind to tense; it is the root meaning of a word as mental incomplexum. Similarly, the dictum or enuntiabile, which forms a timeless object of knowledge and belief in the nominalist theory, is a mental complexum. To say that the universal is a vox is entirely dierent than saying that it is a nomen. Voces could range from indeclinable articulate sounds that convey some meaning (much as the barking of a dog or the call of a bird) to signifying and consignifying verbal expressions. Yet in every
Realis putat esse nomen. Sed interrogatus Realis diceret: ego non puto genus esse nomen, quia ipse dicit aliud signicari hoc nomine genus quam vocem.
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case vox puts the emphasis on words in a particular language, especially as they are voiced or spoken at some instance of time and place. Vox may be a verbal sign of a mental equivalent, just as a written word is a sign for a spoken word, but it is never mental, always verbalized. Abelards sermo (although perhaps not his dictum) may dier among spoken languages, but it has nothing to do with verbalization. Sermo is the commonly accepted meaning that a word has, imposed by human convention, that remains true and unchanged whether spoken or not. The same sermo underlies each instance of the equivalent verbalized vox. Nomen, on the other hand, is not tied to a particular language because it is that common mental equivalent. The nominalist thesis of one nomen, many voces was not a distinction between a noun and other parts of speech, nor was it simply the distinction between signication and consignication, or between root meaning and grammatical inectionsalthough these latter distinctions are getting closer to their teaching. Nomen was a mental entity. The one nomen that lay behind the many voces was a non-inected, signifying unit of thought that lay behind all its various verbal forms: all the languages in which that mental entity might be expressed as well as all its grammatical forms in those languages. This emphasis on mental language was as fundamental to Augustines outlook as it was to Anselms, and those who used the theory of the nomen as a problem-solving technique linked meaning to mental language. Unlike natural or object languages, where several dierent words can be signs for the same thing (synonymy), or where the same word can have various meanings, mental language is univocal. Moreover, if the object of knowledge is the dictum or enuntiabile as mental proposition that is supra-temporal because of the way the unitas nominis is applied to statements, then that can include both particular statements about persons, objects, and events (as it usually does) or universal statements. This is probably what William of Conches meant when he attributed to this group (intelligentes) the assertion that both universals and singulars (as objects of knowledge) are nomina. But the nominalist theory of the unitas nominis is indierent to the ontological status of universal concepts, just as it is indierent to the question of how we arrive at a universal. It never seems to have addressed the question of whether the meaning of a word or enunciable that lay behind the grammatical forms was some entity separate from words that signify the same thing or that signify in the same way, or was only an intention in the mind.
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Unlike natural languages in which the names (sermones) for things are initially arbitrary and imposed by common convention, mental nomina are established by God.83 Similarly, the expression (enuntiabile), which is the object of knowledge and belief, is for the Nominalist also a mental object (or the mental equivalent of an object) that is the same for all believers. Its commonality and objectivity are derived from the historic event, not imposed by the individual mind. In this sense, the thesis that universal concepts are nomina (i.e. that the term man has a supra-linguistic common meaning that, for all practical purposes, is innate to the human mind) is essentially realist or, at the very least, compatible with realism (in the traditional and modern sense). The application of the theory of the nomen, therefore, concerned particular events, persons, and propositions. Although the theory could easily be applied to universal terms, there is very little evidence (specifically in William of Conches and later in Peter of Capua) that this was done. The only abstract term that enters the discussion is the color white (albedo). Viewed from that perspective, the theory of the nomen is rooted in Platonism, with the primacy of the abstract term albedo and the positing of a unifying entity that underlies dierent grammatical forms. The Realists of the second half of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth are those who take more seriously the signicance of time and the particulars of tensed propositions, ultimately accepting the mutability of divine knowledge, will, and power, at least as regards statements about things in time.84 In the realist view, faith changes over time and its content increases. In a way that seems to go directly against the traditional understanding of nominalism and realism, the Nominalists were those who sought unity by hypothesizing an entity beyond the individual particulars of our temporal world. The Realists were those who took seriously the changes that time creates, and eventually abandoned strict immutability. The origins of the views of the Nominales, although dependent to
83 See quotation from Peter of Capua, Summa (Clm 14508, fol. 26v), in the previous note. Abelard, however, considered both sermones and nomina to have been established by human imposition; see above, note 23. 84 William of Auxerre, Summa aurea I, tr. 9, c. 2: sed de scientia enuntiabilium non est verum, quia secundum Reales, cum Deus incipit scire aliquod enuntiabile, desinit scire eius contradictorie oppositum. Sed secundum Nominales, qui dicunt quod semel est verum semper erit verum, Deus nichil incipit vel desinit scire.
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some degree on the grammatical observations in the logica vetus of Aristotle, owe far more to Platonism and, in particular, to the thought of Augustine.85
Abelard, Alberic, and the Nominales The earliest occurrence of the term Nominales, as we have seen, is in John of Salisburys statement that Master Alberic was a vehement opponent of the secta Nominalium. What did John mean by that remark? The preceding study suggests that the answer lies not in Alberics theory of universals but rather in his theory of nomina. The fundamental teaching of the Nominales was that only the nominative case of nouns and the present tense of verbs signify. The oblique cases of nouns, strictly speaking, are not nomina. They are simply voces that consignify. Similarly, the tenses of verbs and temporal adverbs only consignify and do not aect the principal signication of the nomen. Alberic rejected that view. According to the Introductiones montane minores, Alberic asserted that words in the oblique cases as well as adverbs, which presumably included such time-bearing words as yesterday (heri) and tomorrow (cras), are separate nomina.86 Alberic rejected the notion that there was only one nomen behind all the grammatical inections of a word. He rejected the view that adverbs only consignify. In light of what we know of nominalist opinion in the twelfth century, Alberic was certainly, indeed radically, opposed to that view of nomina. What was Abelards position on the oneness of the nomen and what was his relation of the secta Nominalium? Abelard shared with most
See above, note 68. L.M. de Rijk, Some new Evidence on twelfth century Logic: Alberic and the School of Mont Ste Genevieve (Montani), Vivarium, 4 (1966), 10: Et notandum quod secundum Albericum quidem obliqui casus sunt nomina, et pronomina non sunt nomina, et omnia adverbia certae signicationis sunt nomina, ut bene, male. Ibid., 11: Sciendum vero quod secundum Albericum demonstrative vel relative orationes non sunt propositiones, sed nec negandum omnia participia esse verba. See also Hunt, History of Grammar, p. 89: Nota quod dialectici sub nomine pronomina demonstrativa comprehendunt, relativa vero dicunt consignicare, nec sunt partes orationis; participium sub verbo, quia actionem vel passionem signicat; adverbia quae sine respectu dicuntur ponunt sub nomine, ut bene, male, et similia. Tamen Montani dicunt demonstrativa pronomina non esse partes orationis, quia ex demonstratione signicant, sed hac ratione deberent dicere verba primae et secundae personae non esse partes orationis, quia demonstrationem habent
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grammarians of the early twelfth century the view that the nominative case of nouns and the present tense of verbs are primary, and that the oblique cases and temporal adverbs are not separate nomina but only consignify.87 All forms of a word constitute one and the same nomen because there is only one imposition of signication. In this he was neither innovative nor unique. Abelard did, as we have seen, use the theory of the noun in theology as one explanation for the immutability of divine knowledge, volition, and power. He also in that context adopted the formula that what is at one time known, willed, or able to be done by God, is always and will always be known, willed, or within divine capacityquod semel est verum, semper est verum. Abelards position is the earliest known instance of the application of the theory of the nomen to theological problems of immutability, which may have been what Otto of Freising had in mind in saying that Abelard incautiously introduced into theology a theory of nomina developed for another discipline.88 The fact that Otto believed that the sententia vocum seu nominum originated in naturali facultate is perplexing. One would have expected grammar, or perhaps logic. But in Abelards division between logic (impositio vocum) and the nature of things (natura rerum), enuntiabilia are closely tied to physical reality because they concern the adequatio between discourse and the proprietas rerumnot the nature of things as they are in themselves (propter se), but as they are propter nomina.89 A second and better-known area of conict between Alberic and Abelard centered on their views of the relation of a whole to its parts and the relation of a statue to the material substance of which it is composed.90 In the view of Alberic and his disciples, a composite whole
Abelard, Dialectica, pp. xlii, lli, 111115, 121129, 141, 165166. Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I, 47 (MGH SS. XX, 377): Sententiam ergo vocum seu nominum in naturali tenens facultate, non caute theologiae admiscuit. 89 Abelard, Dialectica, p. 99: Logica autem, quae res quandoque non propter se sed propter nomina tractat, ibi in rebus recte cessat, ubi vocabulis non abundat. Ibid., p. 286: Hoc autem logicae disciplinae proprium relinquitur, ut scilicet vocum impositiones pensando quantum unaquaque proponatur oratione sive dictione discutiat. Physicae vero proprium est inquirere utrum rei natura consentiat enuntiationi, utrum ita sese, ut dicitur, rerum proprietas habeat vel non. Est autem alterius consideratio alteri necessaria. Ut enim logicae discipulis appareat quid in singulis intelligendum sit vocabulis, prius rerum proprietas est investiganda. Sed cum ab his rerum natura non pro se sed pro vocum impositione requiritur, tota eorum intentio referenda est ad logicam. For further discussion see Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli, La logica di Abelardo; La relation entre logique, physique et thologie chez Ablard, in Peter Abelard, ed. E.M. Buytaert (Louvain, 1974), pp. 153162. 90 De Rijk, Some new Evidence. See the discussion of these texts in Tweedale,
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is an entity in and of itself, beyond the sum of its parts. A house is something more than the sum of its unassembled parts and also more than the sum of its assembled parts, which have not changed by being joined. Similarly, a knife is something more than, and other than, the bone and steel joined together. It is a separate body (corpus) created by human artice out of two previously existing bodies. What applies to things created by joining also applies to things created by a process of removal. Alberic perceived the relation of a statue to the stone or precious metal of which it is composed as two dierent things. A stone statue is no longer the stone, just as a gold ring is no longer the gold. It is a separate body created by the sculptor or artisan. Abelard rejected the notion that a whole is something other than the sum of its parts, or that a statue is a thing dierent from the material of which it is composed or from which it is sculpted. The stone is not made by the sculptor, nor is what he makes a body, even if it can be said that he makes a statue, or a house. Human fabrication or construction does not cause material or substantial change that creates new entities. These changes are only changes in form or status. The artist or craftsman may be the cause or creator of a changed status, but not of its physical nature, nor is the statue or house a new corpus. Abelard used this example of stone and a statue sculpted from it to illustrate his view of the dierence between voces and sermones in treating universals.91 Both res and voces are natural in origin; both are creations of nature or part of nature, just as stone has the status of stone by divine creation (a divina substantia). Sermones are a result of human imposition, just as is the statue. And just as sermones universales are experienced as voces and are identical with them (although the latter are never universal), so the statue and stone are identical although they have dierent origins. The nominalist theory of nomina was not initially created as a solution to the problem of universals nor was that Abelards principal use, but he applied it there as well. In addition to the passage just cited and the texts provided above in note 23, Abelard applied the theory in his
Abailard on Universals, pp. 103107, 148153; and Normore, The Tradition of Mediaeval Nominalism. 91 Abelard, Logica Nostrorum petitioni sociorum (Geyer ed.), p. 522: Itaque nativitas vocis et sermonis diversitas, etsi penitus in essentia identitas. Quod diligentius exemplo declarari potest. Cum idem penitus sit hic lapis et haec imago, alterius tamen opus est iste lapis et alterius haec imago. Constat enim a divina substantia statum lapidis solummodo posse conferri, statum vero imaginis hominum comparatione posse formari.
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discussion of necessary inferences and the relation of enuntiationes to the existence in re of their subject and predicate terms.92 What implications does this hold for Abelards relation to the Nominales? Was Nominales another name for Abelard and/or his immediate disciples? Normore has argued for Abelardian ancestry because the seemingly diverse positions attributed to the Nominales in twelfthand thirteenth-century texts (and the list of such positions is longer than those mentioned by Normore) can also be found in Abelards extant writings or are attributed to him by others, because Walter Map called Abelard princeps Nominalium, and because several of these positions, specically the nominalist theory of enuntiabilia, the relation of a whole to its parts, and the rejection of augmentation, can be viewed as dierent facets of Abelards theory of statuses and dicta, all of which derive fundamentally from Abelards theory about what makes sentences true.93 Since the Nominales are rst mentioned as active in Abelards last years or shortly after his death and the application of the theory of the nomen to the problem of the object of faith does not appear before Abelard, it seems plausible that his teaching was, at the very least, inuential in the development of the positions of that group. At the same time it must be noted that (1) Abelard made use of a theory of nouns and enuntiabilia that was already in circulation and that the label Nominales was rst and foremost tied to a theory of the nomen that Abelard shared with many others; that (2) it is unclear how many of these positions were original or unique to Abelard; and that (3) several of the positions attributed to the Nominales were attributed variously to several other groups or schools as well, such as the Parvipontani, Melidunenses, Montani, and Cappauces. Abelard had considerable sympathy for a theory of nomina and a technique of problem solving that his colleague, Alberic, found objectionable. This is another illustration of the Platonic current within Abelards thought that has not received sucient attention. Alberic could well have included Abelard among the secta Nominalium, but the latter is probably a larger category and not identical
92 Abelard, Dialectica, pp. 281286. Abelards remarks need to be compared to Peter Cantors discussion of the sense in which Socrates continues to exist after the destruction of Socrates (see above, note 56); also Tweedale, Abailard, pp. 101102. 93 Normore, The Tradition of Mediaeval Nominalism. Map, De nugis curialium, p. 78: magistri Petri, principis Nominalium, qui plus peccavit in dialectica quam in divina pagina. I nd Normores explication of the interrelation of these three nominalist positions perceptive and convincing.
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with Abelard or his disciples. If the rst major twist in this problem requires us to acknowledge the Platonic background of the nominalist theory, the second major twist is that Abelard was a Nominalist or proto-Nominalist, but on a far dierent set of issues and viewpoints than previously imagined. And if we include Abelard among the Nominales, then we should include Peter Lombard and his closest followers. On the basis of our present knowledge, however, it might be more accurate simply to describe Abelard as a major source and Lombard as heavily inuenced by nominalist theory. How long were the Nominales an active, identiable group and were they to be found primarily among dialecticians or theologians? Although the most cited nominalist thesis was the application of the nomina theory of enunciables to problems of the immutability of divine knowledge, will, power, and the object of faith, and although one source alludes to realist and nominalist theologians, the Nominales were primarily viewed as a philosophical school of thought.94 Support for nominalist theological solutions was already losing ground by the second decade of the thirteenth century. Ultimately, the formula of semel est verum, semper est verum was thought to be an unsatisfactory solution to propositional theory and to problems of immutability. The philosophical school does not seem to have fared much better. They appear at least as early as the 1140s and were still active in the early decades of the thirteenth century. By the time Thomas Aquinas was writing, the Nominales were a thing of the past.95 In the early years the theory of nomina and enuntiabilia were applied to many dierent problems, including the problem of universals.96 By the early thirteenth century, in an atmosphere of growing interest in metaphysical questions, the problem of universals had become a more central and characteristic issue among the positions defended by the Nominales.97 This is prob94 Peter Cantor, Commentary on Job, as cited by Landgraf, Studien zur Theologie, 184, from Paris, Bibl. Maz., lat. 178, fol. 22vb: decernes contemplando rem ad litteram etiam et non tantum nomen Christi, sed deitatem et humanitatem, ut potius sit sic realis quam nominalis theologus. 95 Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 14, a. 15, ad 3: Antiqui Nominales dixerunt idem esse enuntiabile: Christum nasci, et esse nasciturum, et esse natum. Also Albert the Great, Sent. I, d. 41, a. 6: antiquam nominalium opinionem. 96 Abelard at times uses sermones and nomina interchangeably in his discussion of universals; see above, note 23. To say that universals are nomina is not to say they are mere names. It rather describes their function as signifying terms in propositions whose meaning does not change with changes in case or tense. 97 See the fragment of the treatise Positiones nostrae circa universalia (Vat. lat. 7678,
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ably why Albert the Great, in developing his view of universals and particulars, labelled those who argued for the primacy of particulars known through sense experience as Epicureans and Nominalists.98 And it was Alberts nomenclature, as revived and disseminated through the Albertists at Paris and elsewhere in the opening decades of the fteenth century, that established the meaning of the labels Nominalist and Realist that have come down to us.99 That development is better understood when the twelfth-century origin and meaning of the teaching of the Nominales is more fully appreciated.
fol. 88r), edited in F. Pelster, Nominales und Reales, 158159; H.A.G. Braakhuis, De 13de Eeuwse Tractaten over syncategorematische Termen, vol. I (Leiden, 1979), pp. 3435: Primo consentimus quod universalia sicut genera et species sunt nomina. Secundo ponimus, contra opinionem realium, quod nichil est praeter particulare. The text is not identied as belonging to the Nominales, but a number of the positions are attributed to that group in other texts. Pelster dated the manuscript to the last half of the thirteenth century on the basis of the style of illumination, while Grabmann suggested a mid-thirteenth-century date. On grounds of content and style, I am inclined to date the work not later than the second quarter of the thirteenth century. The rst positio has an interesting parallel in Peter of Capua, Summa (Clm 14508, fol. 26v), cited from Landgraf, Studien zur Theologie, 189: Responsio: Haec oppositio non est contra nos Nominales, quia dicimus genera et species esse nomina, nomina autem omnia et eorum impositiones a Deo sunt. Several of the positiones in the treatise on universals favor Zeno against Aristotle by rejecting augmentation and motion. 98 Albert, Metaphysica III, tr. 3, c. 18, ed. B. Geyer, vol. I (Mnster, 1960), p. 157; Metaphysica VII, tr. 5, c. 4 (Mnster, 1964), pp. 379381; Liber de praedicabilibus, tr. 2, c. 2, in Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, vol. II (Paris, 1890), p. 19. 99 On the later history of this problem, see Z. Kaluza, Le De universali reali de Jean de Maisonneuve et les epicuri litterales, Freiburger Zeitschrift fr Philosophie und Theologie, 33 (1986), 469516.
chapter five
NOMINALES AND RULES OF INFERENCE*
Among the positions attributed to the Nominales in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are several that can be categorized as rules of inference or are related to theories of entailment. A list of these along with other nominalist opinions was recently assembled by Calvin Normore in a very stimulating and perceptive article1 Although the entire list of positions attributed to the Nominales seemed initially to Normore to be quite disparate and unrelated, he concluded that the positions had two things in common. First, that they were all positions held by Peter Abelard who, on the basis of this and other long-known evidence, was credited with the establishment of the Nominalist school. And second, that the principal issue that linked most of the nominalist theses was not the issue of universals but rather the question: what makes propositions true? As listed by Normore, presumably not in any heuristic order, the nominalist positions concerned with inference were: 1. A syllogistic inference does not require a topical locus. This suggests, for Normore, that the syllogism is an inference form requiring no further justication. 2. A negative sentence does not follow from an armative nor vice versa. 3. Not everything follows from an impossibility. To that list should be added a fourth, known to but not directly mentioned or fully discussed by Normore: 4. Anything follows from an impossibility.
* This paper was read at the eighth European Symposium for Medieval Logic and Semantics in Freiburg i.B. in 1988 and published in Argumentations-theorie. Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, ed. K. Jacobi (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), pp. 153160. 1 C. Normore, The Tradition of Mediaeval Nominalism, in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. J.F. Wippel (Washington, 1987), pp. 201217.
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This fourth position is a dierent and opposing form of the third. Normore thought that it was a later variation on the third position, one that was introduced by some of Abelards disciples in the wake of a devastating counterargument by Alberic of Paris against Abelards account of the truth of conditionalsan event that Christopher Martin has called a turning point in the history of logic.2 The confusion about the position of the Nominales on this point, argued Normore, is just what one would expect if the Nominales followed Abelard into Alberics trap and then had to nd their own way out.3 But before one accepts or even entertains such a dramatic account of the origin and relation of these two versions of the ex impossibili rule, it should rst be asked whether one of the versions may not be a result of a scribal error, a misattribution, or a simple misinterpretation. Elsewhere I have dealt with the meaning and origin of the Nominales and the opinio Nominalium.4 Although the label appears to describe a specic school of thought or intellectual approach in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, it is unclear whether the Nominales were entirely separate from and competitive with other twelfth-century schools, such as the Montani, Porretani, Parvipontani, or Meludinenses, or whether some of their positions cut across or overlapped with positions maintained by the disciples of one of the principal Parisian masters of the second quarter of the twelfth century. Nor is it certain that the various theses attributed to the Nominales in the areas of grammar, logic, and theology are positions held by one and the same group and are subparts of a common and unied system, nor that each witness is equally reliable and well-informed. Even the commonly accepted belief that the Nominales were the disciples of Abelard or at least derived all or most of their positions from him needs further scrutiny. The Nominalist positions concerned with inference, and in particular the third rule and its variation, provide just such an opportunity for testing the Abelardian origin of some of the opiniones Nominalium and their relation to the positions of other twelfth-century schools. Leaving aside for the moment those texts that seem to link Abelards name with the Nominales, the Abelardian origin of the positions attriC.J. Martin, Williams Machine, The Journal of Philosophy, 83 (1986), 564572. Normore, Tradition. Unfortunately, Normore (p. 205) continued the misidentication of Alberic of Paris with Alberic of Rheims. 4 Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century, in Lectionum varietates. Hommage Paul Vignaux (19041987), ed. J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, A. de Libera (Paris), 1991, pp. 1148 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 4].
2 3
nominales and rules of inference
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buted to the Nominales requires more than showing that all or most of those positions can be found in Abelard. It requires that the earliest formulation of those positions be uniquely or characteristically Abelardian. Do the positions listed above establish this? The rst position, namely that a syllogism does not require a topical justication, is a statement about certain types of inferences. The attribution of this view to the Nominales occurs only in one text, an anonymous commentary on Boethiuss De topicis dierentiis, contained in Paris, Arsenal 910, fols. 58ra82vb, dated to the second half of the twelfth century, and cited by its opening words: Haec est.5 The author, an occasional but thoroughgoing opponent of Abelard and the Nominalists, rejects the error of the Nominalists who deny that syllogisms require loci since they say that syllogisms require loci only by way of enthymemes.6 The position described appears to be a literal quotation from Abelards commentary on the Topics.7 Abelard does distinguish between perfect and imperfect inferences and denes the former category, of which the syllogism is the principal example, as the type of inference that does not require further justication by way of external rules. Abelards position in this regard, however, is not unique, and perhaps not even distinctive. The position that a syllogism does not require a topical locus had a strong foundation in Aristotle and Boethius, and was a position maintained by many twelfth- and thirteenth-century authors who discussed the issue.8 The counter thesis, that even syllogisms require additional justicatory rules, is the more unusual position and reects a growth in rule-building at the time at which the text that attributes this position to the Nominales was written, probably the late twelfth century. The second position, that a negative does not follow from an armative, is attributed to the Nominales in a fragment of a twelfth-century logical treatise.9 The author advises his reader always to be aware of the
5 N.J. Green-Pedersen, The Doctrine of Maxima Propositio and Locus Dierentia in Commentaries from the 12th Century on Boethiuss Topics, Studia Mediewistyczne, 18.2 (1977), 125163, esp. 128, 141142. 6 Ibid., 142, n. 88 (transcribed from Paris, Arsenal 910, fol. 58va): error nominalium qui negant locos esse aptos syllogismis quoniam dicunt mediantibus enthymematibus locos esse aptos syllogismis. 7 Abelard, Glossae in libro topicorum, in Pietro Abelardo, Scritti di logica, ed. Mario Dal Pra (Firenze, 1969), p. 319; Green-Pedersen, The Doctrine, 128, 142. 8 I am grateful to Sten Ebbesen for pointing this out. 9 The reference occurs in Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 29520/2, as edited by S. Ebbesen and Y. Iwakuma, Instantiae and 12th Century Schools, CIMAGL, 44 (1983),
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school (secta) to which his respondens belongs. Against almost everyone he can use the device of inferring a modal out of a non-modal (and the converse), or the implicit out of the explicit (and the converse). Against the Nominales one can infer a negative out of an armative, and against the Melidunenses, the false out of the true or the true out of the false.10 It is unclear in this highly condensed text how these tactics are to work. Either the opponens is to prove that a positum admitted by the respondens conforms to a rule he does not accept, or to pose one or more instantiae unacceptable to the respondens that conform to a rule accepted by the respondens. Only the rst of these two procedures would depend upon the Nominales holding that a negative cannot be inferred from an armative. The second procedure would require that the Nominales held the opposite of that position. The position that a negative does not follow from an armative is a rule of inference that can be found in Abelard.11 That theory, however, may have had a wider acceptance and need not be uniquely Abelardian or, for that matter, uniquely Nominalist.12 Again, this attribution to the Nominales appears in a text authored by one who does not include himself in that group. The third and fourth positions, given our present discussion, are the most interesting of the group. They are seemingly incompatible positions on the ex impossibili rule, each supported by only one text. Normore derived the version given in the third position listed above from a text preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. misc. 281 and edited by De Rijk in 1975 under the title Obligationes Parisienses, which
8185, at 82. The companion position, that an armative cannot follow from a negative, can be found in an apparently Nominalist text discovered and edited by Iwakuma, Yukio, in Vienna, Bibl. Nat., Pal. lat. 2459, fol. 107ra114vb. I am grateful for his calling this text to my attention. 10 Ibid.: considerato ex qua secta respondens fuerit, facile poterit quis instare generaliter. Contra omnes fere caute ex inmodali inferendo modalem vel e converso, vel ex explicita inferendo inplicitam vel econverso. Contra nominales autem caute ex armativa inferendo negativam. Contra Melidunenses autem ex vero inferendo falsum vel econverso quocumque modo. The rule ex nullo falso aliquid sequitur or nil ex falso accidere was defended by the author of the Ars Meliduna; L.M. de Rijk, Logica Modernorum, II.1 (Assen, 1967), pp. 386390. 11 Abelard, Dialectica, ed. De Rijk (Assen, 1956), III.1, pp. 3953/97. 12 The rule (in the form: ex nulla armativa sequi negativam) is mentioned among various solutions to a sophism by the author of the Ars Meliduna, but the alii are not otherwise identied; De Rijk, Logica Modernorum, II.1, pp. 387388.
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he tentatively dated to the early thirteenth century.13 It was Normores conclusion that in this treatise the Nominales are credited with the position that ex impossibili quidlibet non sequitur. In the Communes obiectiones et responsiones preserved in fragmentary form in Vat. lat. 7678 and studied by Grabmann, Pelster, and Braakhuis, the position attributed to the Nominales is ex impossibili quidlibet sequitur.14 The rst of these texts, the Obligationes Parisienses, does not, to my mind, contain precisely the view Normore ascribes to it. The author was examining the rule posito falso possibili, potest concedi et probari quodque contingens, which may be rendered ex falso possibili, quodque contingens sequitur. The text goes on to say that the aforesaid rule is not held in a nominalist theory of consequences. The corresponding rule according to the Nominales would be: ex falso possibili, quodque contingens non sequitur, or impossibile sequitur.15 The antecedent in this case is not something that is impossible or contradictory, but something that is possible although false. And the consequent in the Nominalist version of this rule is not quidlibet non sequitur but quodque contingens non sequitur, or impossibile sequitur. However one is to construe the Nominalist rule that does not permit them to accept a false but possible antecedent and a contingent consequent, the antecedent has nothing to do with the ex impossibili rule. These are two dierent rules, and one is not convertible with the other.
L.M. de Rijk, Some Thirteenth Century Tracts on the Game of Obligation, II, Vivarium, 13 (1975), 2254 at 31. 14 Vat. lat. 7678, fols. 73a82a. For discussions of the text see M. Grabmann, Die Sophismataliteratur des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts mit Textausgabe eines Sophisma des Boethius von Dacien, BGPTM, 36.1 (Mnster i.W., 1940), pp. 3341, who dates the text to the middle of the thirteenth century; F. Pelster, Nominales und Reales im 13. Jahrhundert, Sophia, 1214 (19441946), 154161 at 157, who prefers a late thirteenth century date; and H.A.G. Braakhuis, De 13de eeuwse Tractaten over syncategorematische Termin, I (Leiden, 1979), pp. 3373, who dates the work to the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuries. My own examination of that section of the manuscript dates the hand to the second quarter of the thirteenth century and the text before that date. 15 De Rijk, Some Thirteenth Century Tracts, 31: Ex predictis patet veritas huius regule: posito falso possibili, potest concedi et probari quodque contingens. Verbi gratia. In veritate Sortes est niger. Ponatur Sortem esse album. Inde sic. Sortes est albus et tu non es episcopus. Preterea. Sciendum quod predicta regula non tenet secundum consequentiam Nominalium. Si enim teneret secundum ipsos, contingeret falso possibili posito probari quodque impossibile, supposito opposito falsi impossibilis in copulativa cum posito. Fieret enim illa copulativa falsum non sequens secundum Nominales. Unde est neganda secundum ipsos. Sed ex opposito illius et posito sequitur falsum impossibile.
13
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The second text is the work of a Realist author who is writing probably in the rst half of the thirteenth century. His description of the Nominalist position on the ex impossibili rule is contrasted with the position of the Reales on the same rule in such a way that for the passage to make sense, the Nominales version reported there could not be simply a scribal error.16 And given the fact that the treatise is by a Realist author, it is unlikely that he would have been grossly misinformed. Thus, the only reference to the Nominalist position on the ex impossibili rule makes it identical with the version attributed to the Parvipontani: ex impossibili, quidlibet sequitur.17 From this we can conclude that the Nominales shared with the Parvipontani the view that anything follows from the impossible. From Adam de Petit Pont that rule passed to William of Soissons and became the main element in his machine, and to Alexander Necquam, who found nothing objectionable in that argument.18 From one perspective, the position was based on the Aristotelian rules ex impossibili, impossibile sequatur and uno absurdo dato, cetera accident, with the consequent broadened to include anything.19 From another perspective, however, it undermined the Aristotelian principle. Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, both of whom rejected the nominalist theory of the unity of the noun, remained faithful to the Aristotelian formulation.20 Normore, on the basis of Martins work, has noted that Abelard was initially a strong defender of the position that everything does not follow from an impossibility. According to Martin, Abelard was aware that if the truth of conditionals was based on the principle or condition
16 Vat. lat. 7678, fol. 81rb: Solutio. Dicendum quod in veritate secundum opinionem quorundam, nominalium scilicet, ex impossibili sequitur quidlibet. Tamen secundum veritatem ex impossibili nihil sequitur, et hoc est secundum opinionem realium. 17 Among numerous references that attribute this opinion to the school of Adam Parvipontanus is the Tractatus Emmeranus de impossibili positione; see De Rijk, Some Thirteenth Century Tracts on the Game of Obligation, I, Vivarium, 12 (1974), 94123 at 102. 18 Martin, Williams Machine. 19 Aristoteles, De Caelo I, c. 12 (281 b 15); Physica I, c. 2 (185 a 1112). See also Physica VII, c. 2 (243 a 2). 20 Bonaventure, Sent. I, d. 48, dub. 1; Sent. IV, d. 21, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1. Aquinas, Sent. I, d. 40, q. 3, a. 1; see also his commentaries on Physics and De caelo et mundo. In his commentary on Metaphysics, however, Aquinas argues that a necessary consequent can be inferred from an impossible antecedent, as in: Si homo est asinus, homo est. Moreover, in the context of a discussion of the conditional with an impossible antecedent and consequent: Si Deus vult peccare, ergo potest peccare, Aquinas introduces an unusual maximal proposition: Of whatever a volition is predicated, its capacity is also predicated, with its topical dierence: from volition to capacity; see Quodlibeta 5.2.2.
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of inseparability, (it is impossible for the antecedent to be true if the consequent is false), then anything could follow from an impossibility. Abelard instead used a containment principle by which conditionals were true if and only if the sense of the antecedent contains that of the consequent. Abelard protected his position against inconsistency not by rejecting conditional simplication but by requiring that in true conditionals the antecedent and consequent could never be of mixed quality. It was apparently in that context that Alberic created a string of conditionals that met Abelards condition and yet permitted anything to follow from a contradiction or impossibility. It is not necessary to see any confusion over the Abelardian and later Nominalist versions of the ex impossibili rule as presented by Normore. They are radically dierent. The Nominalists believed that anything follows from an impossibility, while Abelard maintained that anything did not follow from an impossibility. The Nominales and the Parvipontani may have viewed their ex impossibili thesis only as an expansion or renement of the Aristotelian ex impossibili, impossibile sequatur. The above examination suggests a number of things. First, it is possible that the Nominales may not be a specic and exclusive label for the disciples of Abelard. Abelard shared a number of positions that came to be held by the Nominales, but the formative doctrine, namely the theory of the unity of the noun, was older than Abelard, although its application to the problems of omniscience, omnipotence, and the divine will, as well as human belief, may have been initiated by Abelard. Other positions, particularly the nominalist version of the ex impossibili rule, seemingly contradicted Abelards avowed position. Abelard may have been a Nominalist (although for reasons other than those normally reported), but it is still an open question whether he was the founder of that school. On the other side, it would appear that the Nominalists may not have been direct competitors with most other twelfth-century groups, save the Reales and possibly the Montani (if the latter are to be identied with the disciples of Alberic of Paris, i.e. Alberic de Monte Sanctae Genovefe). The lines of Nominales/Reales may cut across those schools that are more clearly derived from the teaching of a particular twelfthcentury master. Those in other schools could adopt Nominalist positions, just as the Nominalists may have adopted positions of other groups. There is much still to be learned about the Nominales, and theories of entailment may hold some of the keys for unlocking that mystery.
part two
OCKHAMS THOUGHT IN ENGLAND AND PARIS
chapter six
THE ACADEMIC AND INTELLECTUAL WORLDS OF OCKHAM*
William of Ockham has long been considered one of the foremost gures in the history of medieval philosophy and theology. As such his thought is often contrasted with that of the other seminal thinkers of high scholasticism: Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, and John Duns Scotus, as if those were the appropriate and sucient voices of debate within which Ockhams thought was developed. The completion of the critical edition of Ockhams philosophical and theological writings has, on one level, conrmed that picture and revealed Scotus as the single most important gure on Ockhams intellectual horizon. The editors, however, along with scholars working on lesser known gures in the early fourteenth century, have at the same time uncovered a more complex picture of intellectual exchange in which Ockhams immediate contemporariesthose active between 1305 and 1325exercised a profound impact on his thought, and he on theirs. Other contributions of recent scholarship that change or at least rene the way Ockham is viewed today are a more extensive knowledge of the lives of those with whom he interacted, the educational system of the Franciscan order that determined the physical settings in which Ockham was active, and the structure and intellectual activity at universities and other studia in England and on the Continent. These allow a fresh examinationa more nuanced pictureof Ockhams intellectual heritage and the inuence his thought had on subsequent generations.
* Originally published in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. P.V. Spade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 1730.
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chapter six The Formative Years, 13051316
William of Ockham was born around 1288 at the rural village of Ockham in Surrey, a days ride southwest of London. Nothing is known of his family or social background and thus whether his native language was French or Middle English. Having joined or, more likely, been given to the Franciscan order as a young boy before the age of fourteen, Latin quickly became his language of conversation and writing. When he later went to Avignon, visited Italy, and lived the last twenty years of his life in Germany, it was probably through Latin that he communicated with those among whom he lived. No Franciscan convent existed in the region of Ockhams birth, although the Dominicans maintained a convent at the nearby town of Guildford. Ockhams earliest education before entering the Franciscan order was more likely obtained through the local parish priest or perhaps at the house of Austin Canons at Newark.1 His grammatical and philosophical training, however, was received from the Franciscans in the opening years of the fourteenth century, probably at Greyfriars2 in London, which may also have been his home convent. The London convent was the principal teaching center for the London custody, one of the seven administrative units into which the English province of the order was divided. Alongside Oxford, London had the largest Franciscan convent in England, which was situated on the northwest edge of the old city at Newgate with around 100 friars usually in residence.3 Its size was needed to facilitate its mission to the largest city in England and to take advantage of proximity to the royal court and episcopal residences that lay along the Thames between the city and Westminster. London Greyfriars was also the principal residence of the Franciscan provincial minister for England when he was not abroad on business of the order. In addition to lectors appointed for instruction in logic, natural philosophy, and theology, the London convent proted intellectually from a ow of students, masters, and ocials moving between Oxford and Paris. Throughout the English phase of Ockhams life, that is, before he left England for Avignon in 1324 never to return, English
1 On the possibility of Ockhams contact with Newark Abbey, see C.K. Brampton, The Probable Order of Ockhams Non-polemical Works, Traditio 19 (1963), 469483. 2 Greyfriars was a common term for the Franciscans. 3 C.L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London (Manchester, 1915), p. 62.
the academic and intellectual worlds of ockham
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secular and mendicant students crossed the Channel to Paris for study in arts and theology, bringing back with them ideas and texts, just as Oxford learning through the same connections migrated across to the classrooms and libraries of Paris. Thus, in looking at the intellectual environment that Ockham experienced at the London convent, one must look not only at the personnel and resources of the convent itself but at the inuences of Oxford and Paris that passed through it in the rst two decades of the fourteenth century. What those inuences were depends very much on knowing the years in which Ockham was probably resident in London. We know that he was in London in February 1306, when he was ordained subdeacon at Southwark by Robert Winchelsey, archbishop of Canterbury.4 Because there is no indication that he received a dispensation for being younger than the minimum canonical age for that minor order, nor any reason to believe his order would have delayed his rst ordination much beyond the canonical minimum, it has been assumed he was eighteen at the time, from which the approximate date of his birth is conjectured.5 According to that reasoning, he would have been twenty-nine when he began reading the Sentences in 13171318, approximately the normal age for that academic exercise. How much earlier than the academic year 13051306 Ockham was at the London convent is unknown. He was already in the order before 1302 and probably also at London by that date, as training in logic and natural philosophy usually began around fourteen years of age, and it is the most likely convent for his reception into the order. He would have completed his training in philosophy between 1308 and 1310 and then advanced to the study of theology either at London or Oxford. No information has survived on who might have been lecturing in philosophy at London during these years. Henry de Sutton was Guardian (that is, principal administrative ocer) of the convent from 1303 to 1309.6 Adam of Lincoln, Oxford D.Th. (c. 1293) and provincial
4 Registrum Roberti Winchelsey Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, ed. Rose Graham. Cambridge and York Society, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1956), p. 981. 5 On the assumption that the minimum age for ordination to the subdiaconate was twenty-one, Ockhams approximate date of birth was traditionally given as 1285. The Clementine Constitutions from the Council of Vienne in 1311 probably codify contemporary practice; Corpus iuris canonici (Clem., lib. I, tit. vi, c. 3), ed. E. Friedberg (Leipzig, 1879), II, col. 1140: antiquis iuribus in hac parte praeferri, decernimus, ut, alio non obstante impedimento canonico, possit quis libere in decimo octavo ad subdiaconatus . 6 Kingsford, The Grey Friars, p. 55.
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minister for England from 1303 to 1310, would have been at the convent frequently. John Duns Scotus might have resided there or at Oxford during his exile from Paris between June 1303 and April 1304. In fact, at one time or another most of the leading English Franciscan theologians of this period would have visited London on business of the order. By 1310 Ockham had advanced to the study of theology. Because there was no strict sequence of courses that marked the stages of the internal Franciscan educational program before the baccalaureate, young friars probably availed themselves of whatever lectures were being given so long as there were places in the classroom and the student had sucient training to understand the material and analysis. Ockham would have begun his studies in theology either at the custodial school in London or at the provincial studium generale with which the London custody was aliated, namely Oxford. The decision regarding the studium to which Ockham was sent lay with the provincial minister and the provincial chapter. They were also the ones who chose from among the many students who had completed two or three years of theological study those few (approximately six to eight per decade) who would be sent to Paris for the second half (another four or ve years) of the theological training necessary for being appointed a lector in a convent or custodial school. The opportunity of Parisian study was reserved for those who were thought capable ultimately of advancing to the baccalaureate at one of the three universities with a faculty of theology: Paris, Oxford, or Cambridge. The order supported two students at Paris from each province, and the province could send an additional student at its own expense, which the English province usually did. Selection depended on merit, as determined by the provincial leadership and on the timing of vacancies opened by students returning to England. Roger Marston, John Crombe, William of Alnwick, and probably John Duns Scotus were among those who had been chosen for the lectorate program at Paris. A few English students of Ockhams academic generation would also have been sent. Was Ockham among those few? We have no evidence that links Ockham to Paris during the years in which he would have been eligible for consideration, approximately 13121316. Ockhams Reportatio on the Sentences does not reect any rst-hand knowledge of theologians active at Paris at that time. His familiarity with some of Peter Auriols views, presented at Paris in 13161317, was apparently acquired through reports or notes of others. Although it is unlikely that Ockham had any direct personal contact
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with Parisian classrooms, he certainly had access to texts and accounts that came back to England. The selection of Ockham for advancement to the baccalaureate at Oxford would have been at the direction of Richard of Conington, provincial minister in England from 1310 to 1316, with the agreement or consent of the provincial chapter. Conington was himself a former regent master in theology at Oxford whose opinions, as expressed in his rst Quodlibet, were discussed by Ockham in the prologue, quest. 5, of his lectures on the Sentences. Conington belonged to that generation of English Franciscans who were more inuenced by Henry of Ghent than by Scotus. Yet Conington remained one of the important contemporary theologians whose ideas were discussed into the 1340s.7 The Oxford to which Ockham was sent for the baccalaureate provided an exciting intellectual environment for the young Franciscan. Henry of Harclay, a secular theologian who had studied at Paris before returning to Oxford, was elected chancellor of the university in 1312. In the previous decade at Paris, Harclay had been deeply inuenced by Scotus and had participated in the editing of Scotuss work and in the discussions that created the rst generation of Scotists at Paris.8 With his return to Oxford, however, Harclay moved in a dierent direction and, alongside Richard Campsall, began to criticize assumptions of Scotus in metaphysics and natural philosophy. Harclay formulated positions on the question of universals and the Aristotelian categories that anticipated elements in Ockhams thought as expressed a few years later in the latters Oxford lectures on the Sentences.9 Others active at Oxford between 1310 and 1316 were the secular theologians Robert of Kykeley (Kigheley), from whom we have a series
7 On Conington see V. Doucet, LOeuvre scholastique de Richard de Conington, AFH, 29 (1937), 396442; Stephen F. Brown, Richard of Conington and the Analogy of the Concept of Being, FzS, 48 (1966), 297307; L. Cova, La polemica contro la distinzione formale tra le perfezioni divine nelle Questioni disputate di Riccardo di Conington, in Parva mediaevalia: Studi per Maria Elena Reina, ed. Barbara Faes de Mottoni (Trieste, 1993), pp. 4386. 8 C. Balic, Adnotationes ad nonnullas quaestiones circa Ordinationem I. Duns Scoti, in Opera Omnia Duns Scoti, ed. C. Balic (Vatican, 1956), vol. IV, pp. 1*39*; C. Balic, Henricus de Harcley et Ioannes Duns Scotus, in Mlanges oerts Etienne Gilson (Paris, 1959), pp. 93121. 9 F. Pelster, Heinrich von Harclay, Kanzler von Oxford und seine Qustionen, in Miscellanea Francesco Ehrle, vol. I, Studi e Testi 37 (Rome, 1924), pp. 307356; G. Gl, Henricus de Harclay: Quaestio de signicato conceptus universalis, FS, 31 (1971), 178234.
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of quodlibetal questions, Antony Bek (future chancellor of Lincoln and later bishop of Norwich), Simon of Mepham (future archbishop of Canterbury), and Richard Campsall. Of these Campsall was by far the most important. He was a fellow of Merton College and a master of arts by 1308, at which time he was probably beginning his studies in theology. He was a bachelor of theology by July 1317, probably having read the Sentences in the previous academic year. Although in many ways a more traditional mind than his near contemporary Ockham, Campsall applied terminist logic, particularly supposition theory, to the analysis of theological problemsa method that can also be found in Ockham. After a dispute with the university over the theological curriculum, the Dominicans resumed teaching at Oxford in 13141315 with Nicholas Trevet as regent master in theology. Although Trevet has been described as a Thomist, strict support of Aquinass thought was already on the wane among younger Dominicans at Oxford and Paris by 1310.10 By contrast, before 1314 Scotism had not established rm roots among the Franciscans at Oxford. Robert Cowton, who lectured on the Sentences at Oxford sometime between 1304 and 1311 and who may have remained in residence at Greyfriars favored Henry of Ghent, as did Richard of Conington. The same may be true for the less-studied William of Nottingham, who lectured on the Sentences at Oxford shortly before Cowton and who succeeded Conington as provincial minister in 1316. Thus Ockhams pre-sentential training in theology coincided with a time of weakening interest in Aquinas among English Dominicans, little evidence of supporters of Giles of Rome among English Austin Friars, and only modest support for Scotus among Franciscans. That began to change by 1314, but only in regard to Scotus. The anonymous Franciscan sententiarius at Oxford in 13141315 was not only inuenced by Scotus but carried Scotuss theory of priorities (signa) in the Godhead into a discussion of whether God the Father could have produced creatures before begetting the Sona discussion that led to the condemnation of eight of his propositions in February 1315.11 John
10 F.J. Roensch, Early Thomistic School (Dubuque, Iowa, 1964); W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1987), pp. 175182. 11 G.J. Etzkorn, Codex Merton 284: Evidence of Ockhams Early Inuence in Oxford, in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. A. Hudson and M. Wilks, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 5 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 3142; W.J. Courtenay, The Articles Condemned at Oxford Austin Friars in 1315, in Via Augustini, ed. H.A. Oberman and F.A. James (Leiden, 1991), pp. 518.
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of Reading, who was the Franciscan sententiarius at Oxford in 13151316 or 13161317, was a thorough-going Scotist and was later described by Ockhams socius, Adam Wodeham, as Scotuss disciple and most noted follower.12 Reading probably remained at Greyfriars until 1322 and was appointed lector at that convent around 1320. Ockham cited Reading in the third question of his prologue, and, when Reading revised his lectures on the Sentences he entered into a detailed critique of Ockhams lectures, relying rst on Ockhams initial version (his Reportatio) and then on the revised version (Ockhams Ordinatio). Finally, William of Alnwick, the disciple and redactor of Duns Scotus, returned from Paris to Oxford and became regent master (lector) of the convent probably in 1316. Although Alnwicks regency lasted only a year, he probably remained in England, mostly likely at Oxford, until he went as a delegate to the general chapter of the order at Assisi in June 1322 and stayed in Italy and southern France until his death in March 1333. Thus, Scotism was well established at Oxford Greyfriars on the eve of Ockhams advancement to the baccalaureate. Oxford and London, 13171324 In the autumn term of 1317, Ockham began his lectures on the Sentences at Oxford, which occupied his attention across the biennium 1317 1319.13 Only his Reportatio on books IIIV and the citations by John of Reading from the rst three distinctions of Ockhams lectures on Book I remain from what he presented there. If there is some uncertainty as to whether he only read at Oxford or read rst at London (13171318) and
12 Wodeham, Lectura Oxon. I, dist. 1, q. 12 (Vat. lat. 955, fol. 70v). On Reading see W.J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham (Leiden, 1978), pp. 6263; E. Longpr, Jean de Reading et le B. Jean Duns Scot, La France Franciscaine 7 (1924), 99109. 13 Gedeon Gl has argued that Ockham lectured on the Sentences at London (1317 1318) before lecturing a second time at Oxford (13181319); introduction to Ockham, Quaestiones in librum quartum sententiarum (Reportatio), ed. R. Wood and G. Gl (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1984), pp. 14*18*. While possible, there is no rm evidence that the requirement of reading the Sentences at a lesser studium before doing so at a university, codied by Benedict XII in 1336, was already practiced two decades earlier. In this period the mendicant orders at Oxford lectured on the Sentences across a two-year period, and we know that Ockham was in residence at the Oxford convent by June 1318 when he was licensed to hear confessions in the diocese of Lincoln; A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1957), p. 1384. Had he lectured at London in 13171318, it is unlikely that he would have gone to Oxford before September 1318.
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then at Oxford (13181319 or 13181320), there is no room for dispute regarding the dates. Ockhams Reportatio shows he knew William of Alnwicks Quodlibeta (13161317) and Peter Auriols Parisian Scriptum I (13161317) but was not yet aware that Auriol had incepted as master of theology (by October 1318).14 Ockham was principally concerned with the leading minds of the previous academic generation: Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, and John Duns Scotus. Yet Ockham also cited his immediate contemporaries, John of Reading, who read the Sentences at Oxford a year or two earlier, William of Alnwick, who may still have been lector at Oxford in the autumn of 1317, and Peter Auriol, who read the Sentences at Paris in 13161318. Knowledge of the latter would have come back to London and Oxford through English Franciscans returning from the Paris convent. Around 1321 Ockham was appointed lecturer in philosophy at one of the Franciscan schools in England, probably at the London convent.15 By this time he was a formed bachelor awaiting an opportunity to be selected to proceed to the doctorate at Oxford. At the same convent Ockham lived in the company of Walter Chatton, who was lecturer in theology, and Adam Wodeham, a student in theology who also acted as Ockhams socius or assistant. This was the most productive writing period of Ockhams career. Between 1321 and 1324 Ockham produced his commentaries on the beginning books of logic, namely his expositions of Porphyry and Aristotles Categories, On Interpretation, and Sophistical Refutations. In the same period Ockham wrote his textbook in logic (Summa logicae), his commentary and questions on Aristotles
John XXII instructed the chancellor at Paris, Thomas de Bailly, on 14 July 1318 to grant the license to Auriol, and we know Auriol was regent at Paris in 13181319; CUP II, #772, p. 225; #776, p. 227. Licensing and inception therefore took place between late July and the beginning of the autumn term. For the dating of Ockhams lectures on the Sentences see the introduction to Ockham, Scriptum in librum primum sententiarum: Ordinatio, ed. G. Gl and S.F. Brown (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1967), pp. 34*36*. 15 Although the original reason for assuming that Chatton and Ockham were not resident at Oxford at this time has been called into question, the references in Ockhams Summa logicae to London suggest, as Gedeon Gl argued, that London was the place of composition and therefore residence; see Gls introduction to Ockham, Summa logicae, ed. G. Gl (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), pp. 47*56*; W.J. Courtenay, Ockham, Chatton, and the London Studium: Observations on Recent Changes in Ockhams Biography, in Die Gegenwart Ockhams, ed. W. Vossenkuhl and R. Schnberger (Weinheim, 1990), pp. 327337. Ockham also determined quodlibetal disputations during this period, which were permitted only to regent masters at Oxford, but could be held by formed bachelors at custodial or provincial studia.
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Physics, his treatise on predestination and future contingents, the rst ve groups of his quodlibetal disputations, and probably his treatises on the Eucharist (Tractatus de quantitate and De corpore Christi). It was also in this period that some of Ockhams opinions came under attack. John of Reading, who was regent master at Oxford Greyfriars around 13201321, frequently attacked Ockham in the redaction of his own lectures on the Sentences that was revised between 1318 and 1322. Similarly, Walter Chatton, who was lecturing on the Sentences in the same convent as Ockham between 1321 and 1323 attacked Ockham on many points, including the status of universals (leading Ockham to alter his opinion), the relation of grace to justication, the status of quantity and relation, and Eucharistic doctrine. In fact, the writings of Ockham and Chatton in this period show a surprising degree of interdependence and dialogue.16 Similarly, a work on logic written in England in this period and incorrectly attributed to Richard Campsall also attacked Ockhams views on supposition, universals, and the Aristotelian categories.17 Among the numerous points of debate between Ockham and his contemporaries in this period, the principal ones that were emerging were Ockhams position on universals, his belief that only substances and qualities are real entities (and thus his interpretation of the other Aristotelian categories), his belief that one could have an intuitive cognition of a nonexistent, his adoption of Scotuss theory of divine acceptation in the doctrine of grace and justication, and his interpretation of transubstantiation. It was probably a result of this mounting criticism that Ockham was asked to explain his position on relation and the other Aristotelian categories at a provincial chapter of the order in England in 1323.18 No information regarding his response or any action taken by the chapter has survived. Within that same year, however, someone, possibly John of Reading who went to Avignon in 1322, brought charges at the papal court against Ockham for false and heretical teaching.19 Around May
16 S.F. Brown, Walter Chattons Lectura and William of Ockhams Quaestiones in Libros Physicorum Aristotelis, in Essays Honoring Allan B. Wolter, ed. W.A. Frank and G.J. Etzkorn (St. Bonaventure, 1985), pp. 81115; see also Gls introduction to Ockham, Summa logicae, and J. Weys introduction to Ockham, Quodlibeta septem (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1980). 17 Logica Campsale Anglici, valde utilis et realis contra Ocham, ed. E.A. Synan in The Works of Richard of Campsall, vol. II (Toronto, 1982), pp. 75420. 18 G.J. Etzkorn, Ockham at a Provincial Chapter: 1323. A Prelude to Avignon, AFH, 83 (1990), 557567. 19 No summons has survived, but in his letter to the Franciscans gathered at the
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1324, Ockham left England for Avignon, where he took up residence at the Franciscan convent for the next four years. Avignon, 13241328 The normal route from London to Avignon would have taken Ockham through Paris, which was probably his rst direct contact with that university city and convent. Parisian theologians were also very much in evidence at Avignon, which was the center of church life. Although subsequent events shifted Ockhams attention away from philosophy and theology, Avignon was his rst exposure to an international community of scholars, many of whom had been trained in the more diverse intellectual environment of Paris. The time that was not taken up with responding to his inquisitors, which must have occupied very little of his four years at Avignon, allowed him access to disputations, sermons, and discussions with other scholars, secular and mendicant. Among the Franciscans who visited or resided at Avignon during these years were John of Reading, Francis of Meyronnes, Francis of Marchia, Guiral Ot, Elias of Nabinali, William of Rubione, Pastor de Serrescuderio, and of course Michael of Cesena, the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, who in addition to earlier visits was in residence from December 1327 until May 1328. All of those appointed to serve on the commission to examine Ockhams orthodoxy were, save one, Parisian doctors of theology. Two of them were Dominicans whose training dated to a period in which Thomism was obligatory in that order: Raymond Bguin, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Dominique Grenier, lector at the Sacred Palace and bishop elect of Pamiers. Thomism was also the preferred doctrine of the only non-Parisian theologian on the commission: John Lutterell, former chancellor of Oxford. Two others belonged to the Augustinian
general chapter of the order at Assisi in 1334 Ockham said he remained at Avignon for almost four years until he ed in May 1328. George Knysh has argued that Ockham went to Avignon for nonjudicial reasons and only later came under suspicion while resident there; Knysh, Biographical Rectications concerning Ockhams Avignon Period, FS, 46 (1986), 6192; Ockham Perspectives (Winnipeg, 1994). The weight of scholarly opinion, however, supports the traditional view; cf. J. Miethke, OckhamPerspektiven oder Engfhrung in eine falsche Richtung? Eine Polemik gegen eine neuere Publikation zu Ockhams Biographie, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 29 (1994), 61 82.
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Hermits and presumably had been schooled in the thought of Giles of Rome: Gregory of Lucca, bishop of Belluno-Feltre, and John Paignote, a more recent doctor of Paris. The only member of the commission who was not wedded to late thirteenth-century realism and who was somewhat sympathetic to Scotistic theology was Durand of St. Pourain, a Dominican theologian and bishop of Meaux whose unThomistic views had earlier brought him into conict with theologians in his order. With the exception of Durand, the commission favored the views of Thomas and Giles of Rome. At the same time, all were doctors of theology from Paris or Oxford and were thus familiar with the types of discourse or scholastic analysis of university classrooms.20 The only works of Ockham that were under review at Avignon were his lectures on the Sentences, specically his Ordinatio on Book I and the Reportatio on Books IIIV. Even before the appointment of the commission, Lutterell was assigned the task of going through the text of Ockhams questions on the Sentences that the latter had brought with him and presented to the pope. In all probability Lutterells antagonism against Ockham began at Avignon and was not among the issues that led to his dismissal as chancellor, nor the reason for his departure from England to Avignon. Ockham was only a bachelor of theology at the beginning of Lutterells tenure as chancellor, and Ockham never came up for examination or licensing and was probably not resident at Oxford after 1321. Lutterells conict with the regent masters in arts and theology at Oxford was personal and probably had to do with the way he exercised the powers of his oce. And his move to Avignon was for career advancement, as the letter of invitation from Stephen Kettelbergh shows.21 His libellus against Ockham, written at Avignon, was both the sincere reaction of a committed Thomist and a means of proving himself useful to the papal curia.22 Although the list of propositions initially identied by Lutterell as censurable contained philosophical as well as theological statements, the commission restricted the investigation to theological propositions and a reduced number of philosophical statements that had implications for theology. Most of the propositions were taken from the begin20 C.K. Brampton, Personalities in the Process Against Ockham at Avignon, 1324 1326, FS, 26 (1966), 425. 21 Snappes Formulary and Other Records, ed. H.E. Salter (Oxford, 1924), pp. 303304. 22 F. Homann, Die Schriften des Oxforder Kanzlers Johannes Lutterell, Erfurter Theologische Studien 6 (Leipzig, 1959).
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ning part of the Ordinatio and from Books III and IV of the Reportatio. Many of the propositions extracted were not concerned with statements about the way the orders of nature and grace actually work but were taken from statements made de potentia absoluta, that is, whether a relationship or combination of qualities, such as the relationship of merit and reward, grace and justication, Christs human nature and the inability to sin, are absolutely necessary or only contingently necessary, and whether their counterparts are absolutely impossible or only because God so ordained. Munich, 13291347 On the night of 26 May 1328 Ockham ed Avignon in the company of Michael of Cesena, Bonagratia of Bergamo, and Francis of Marchia, going rst to Italy, where they joined the court of Louis of Bavaria, and then to Munich, where Ockham remained for the rest of his life. Apart from the attraction of the imperial court, which brought some scholars to Munich on diplomatic service, or the presence of the group of dissidents resident there, such as the Franciscans who had ed Avignon or the secular master Marsilius of Padua, Munich was not a center of learning for any of the mendicant orders. Without some knowledge of German, which we have no reason to believe he possessed, Ockham was more isolated than he had been at Avignon. Latin remained his language of communication both in writing and conversation, but the religious and scholarly community to which it was limited was small. Ockham probably did not spend all his time in Munich. He may well have attended provincial chapters of the southern German (Strasbourg) province of the order, such as were held at Basel in 1340, where he may have renewed contact with John of Rodington and Adam Wodeham.23 These years of exile in southern Germany (13291347) were dedicated to writing political treatises against John XXII and Benedict XII because of Ockhams conviction that they had fallen into heresy on the issue of apostolic poverty and, in the case of Pope John, on the doctrine of the beatic vision. Among the most important of the books and treatises he wrote in this period were his Opus nonaginta dierum and
23 On Wodehams and Rodingtons visits to Basel see De beato Iacobo de Porta Basileae sepulto, from Chronica fratris Nicolai Glassberger in Analecta Franciscana, vol. II (Quaracchi, 1887), 177178; Analecta Franciscana, vol. III (Quaracchi, 1897), 637.
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his Dialogus. In these writings Ockham examined the meanings of lordship (dominium), the relationship of ownership and use, and the ideas of legal and natural rights. He also addressed the question of authority within the church: the role of the pope, scripture and tradition, a general council, and the place of secular monarchs in ecclesiastical aairs. Although Ockhams political writings have often been associated with Marsilius of Paduas Defensor pacis (1324), some of Ockhams argumentation on the authority of a council and on the authority of the pope was aimed against Marsilius. Ockham remained a stronger believer in papal authority in the church and in the determination of doctrine even while acknowledging the possibility (for him a reality) of a popes falling into error.24
Ockhams Heritage Although Ockhams political writings played an important role in discussions of the relation of church and state alongside Marsilius of Paduas Defensor pacis from Ockhams century until today, the most inuential parts of his thought from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries were his philosophy and theology. The traditional picture of Ockhams inuence claimed him to be the initiator, the venerable inceptor, of a new school of thought in late medieval Europe: nominalism. It supposedly dominated intellectual life at Oxford for almost a halfcentury, until the advent of John Wyclif. Similarly at Paris, after an initial reaction against Ockhams thought in 1339 and 1340, he has been credited with carrying Paris into a nominalistic current that had no serious competitors until challenged by Thomism and Albertism in the early fteenth century. That picture has undergone considerable revision in recent decades. In England Ockham was among a group of fourteenth-century authors who continued to be cited until the end of that century, yet even his closest followers, such as Adam Wodeham, were critical of Ockham on several issues, particularly in the area of epistemology. Ockhams
24 B. Tierney, Ockham, the Conciliar Theory, and the Canonists, JHI, 15 (1954), 4070; Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 11501350 (Leiden, 1988), pp. 205238; A.S. McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham (Cambridge, 1974); Ockham, A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings, ed. A.S. McGrade and J. Kilcullen (Cambridge, 1995); Das Publikum politischer Theorie im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. J. Miethke (Munich, 1992).
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removal of sensible and intelligible species in his explanation of the acquisition of knowledge was rejected by most of his English contemporaries, as was his denition of the object of knowledge.25 Ockham is better seen not as the leader or center of a movement but as one of many contemporary authors whose opinions were widely discussed, sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected. He became less inuential at Oxford in the 1340s because of two countercurrents. One of these was Augustinianism as espoused by Thomas Bradwardine, who attacked Ockhams views on grace and justication as being Pelagian.26 The other current was realism, which reappeared at Oxford in the late 1340s. Ockham was still admired by some, such as an anonymous Oxford author writing around 1350 who took Ockhams Sentences commentary as the model for his own.27 Yet many of Ockhams presuppositions in logic, natural philosophy, and theology were discarded or opposed by such gures as Ralph Strode, Richard Brinkley, Nicholas Aston, and John Wyclif.28 The situation at Paris was somewhat dierent. Ockhams philosophical writings, principally his Summa logicae, were known at Paris in the late 1320s, and by the mid-1330s Ockhams natural philosophy had attracted a following in the arts faculty. After a relatively brief attempt to suppress Ockhams writings and thought at Paris between 1339 and 1342, opposition weakened in the face of a large inux of English philosophical and theological texts that came into Paris in the early 1340s. Ockhams natural philosophy was generally adopted by the Augustinian theologians Gregory of Rimini and Hugolino of Orvieto in the 1340s, although they were critical of Ockham in other areas. By mid-fourteenth century Ockham was an important source for
K.H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham (Leiden, 1988). G. Le, Bradwardine and the Pelagians (Cambridge, 1957); H.A. Oberman, Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine (Utrecht, 1958); J.-F. Genest, Le De futuris contingentibus de Thomas Bradwardine, Recherches Augustiniennes, 14 (1979), 249336; J.-F. Genest, Prdtermination et libert cre Oxford au XIVe sicle. Buckingham contre Bradwardine (Paris, 1992); E.W. Dolnikowski, Thomas Bradwardine: A View of Time and a Vision of Eternity in FourteenthCentury Thought (Leiden, 1995). For a defense of Ockham against the charge of Pelagianism, see R. Wood, Ockhams Repudiation of Pelagianism, in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 350373. 27 G.J. Etzkorn, Codex Merton 284. Evidence of Ockhams Early Inuence in Oxford, in From Ockham to Wyclif, pp. 3142. 28 For further discussion see W.J. Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought in Fourteenth-Century England, in From Ockham to Wyclif, pp. 89107 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 7]; Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England, pp. 193355.
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Parisian scholars, and his inuence can be seen in Henry Totting of Oyta (directly and by way of Adam Wodeham), and more especially in Pierre dAilly. Much depended on the specic issue, and most Scholastics of this period chose their positions and arguments without attention to one school of thought. Despite similarities in the thought of Ockham and Jean Buridan, the latter represents a dierent form of terminist logic that was inuential on Albert of Saxony and Marsilius of Inghen.29 The situation changed in the fteenth century with the reemergence of schools of thought and the division in faculties of arts between a philosophical preparation based on the Aristotelian commentaries of Albert, Thomas, and Giles on the one side (the via antiqua) and a preparation based on the commentaries of Ockham, Buridan, Inghen, and other fourteenth-century authors (the via moderna). Ockham became textually wedded to the modern approach and an important authority for the Nominalistae at Paris and universities in Germany. By the end of the fteenth century Ockhams name had become identied with a school of thought, and Ockhamist took its place alongside Thomist, Albertist, and Scotist.30 The Middle Ages ended with Ockhamism as one school of thought more or less on a par with others. Its reception in more recent times is the topic for another study.
29 For a more extensive discussion of the early stages of the introduction of Ockhams thought into Paris, see Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, in Preuve et raisons lUniversit de Paris. Logique, ontologie et thologie au XIVe sicle, ed. Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (Paris, 1984), pp. 4364 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 8]; Courtenay, The Debate over Ockhams Physical Theories at Paris, in La Nouvelle Physique du XIVe sicle, ed. S. Caroti and P. Sourin (Firenze, 1997), pp. 4563 [reprinted in his volume as Chapter 12]. 30 Z. Kaluza, Les querelles doctrinales Paris. Nominalistes et ralistes aux conns du XIVe et du XVe sicles (Bergamo, 1988); M. Hoenen, Albertistae, Thomistae und Nominales. Die philosophisch-historischen Hintergrnde der Intellektlehre des Wessel Gansfort ( 1489), in Wessel Gansfort (14191489) and Northern Humanism, ed. F. Akkerman, G.C. Huisman, and A.J. Vanderjagt (Leiden, 1993), pp. 7196.
chapter seven
THE RECEPTION OF OCKHAMS THOUGHT IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND* In the autumn of 1363 Wyclif returned to Oxford to take lodgings at Queens College and begin his formal training in theology. The Oxford of that day was supposedly dominated by the nominalistic philosophy and theology of Ockham and of his disciples, although not exclusively so. After a period of initial and vehement opposition to Ockham in the 1320s, it has been assumed that Ockhams thought attracted a group of fervent disciples and inuenced many others. The principal Ockhamists of the next generation, or what is sometimes called the English school of nominalism, are identied in almost any textbook of medieval philosophy as being Robert Holcot and Adam Wodeham. On occasion other names are added: William Crathorn, Thomas Buckingham, William Heytesbury, and John Dumbleton. The areas of discipleship vary, but those most frequently mentioned are: a nominalistic metaphysics, an epistemology of intuitive cognition, a terminist logic, a nominalistic physics, and a semi-Pelagian soteriology. Although an actual head-count is rarely provided, it is taken for granted that by 1335 many Oxford authors were sympathetic to Ockham and that Ockhamist teaching was not eectively displaced by the countervoices of Fitzralph and Bradwardine, a situation that lasted until Wyclif s campaign against Ockham and the doctors of signs. The view that Oxford became largely Ockhamist in the generation after Ockham, a view repeated rather than critically tested, rests on two assumptions: rst, the belief that the terminological and critical interests of late medieval thought, especially of the fourteenth century and especially in England, were products of Ockhams inuence; and second, that the philosophical and theological critiques of Bradwardine
* Originally presented at a conference at Queens College Oxford in 1985 and published in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 5 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 89107.
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and Wyclif presuppose a unied and entrenched school of nominalism rooted in Ockhams thought.1 The accuracy of this picture, whose attractiveness assured frequent repetition, has not gone unchallenged. Over a quarter century ago Philotheus Boehner pointed out that while Ockhams thought was inuential, it seems he had few disciples. It is dicult, Boehner went on to say, to nd an Ockhamist school in the same sense as we encounter a Thomist or Scotist school. Ockhams teachings had, rather, a stimulating eect.2 But how to trace that eect? A decade before Boehner made that statement, E.A. Moody deplored the pattern in histories of later medieval thought of describing the varied teachings and tendencies of the late medieval period as Ockhamist, both because it attributes ideas to Ockham that he did not hold, and because it assumes connections that have not in fact been established.3 One encounters that blanket designation less today, yet the history of the reception of Ockhams thought has been only partially studied. Much remains to be done as we discover more in reading through the texts already known. Consequently the following account of the English phase of Ockhams Wirkungsgeschichte is meant to update our picture of the reception of Ockhams thought in the period before Wyclif. But in no sense do these remarks represent a complete picture. Limitations of time and in the state of research allow me to treat only a few of the more critical points and persons. Before beginning we must consider a methodological problem: how does one identify inuence? Some of Ockhams most distinctive ideas were ones shared by some of his contemporaries and immediate predecessors. There are, we have come to discover, very few ideas or formulations that are unique to Ockham. When we nd these positions in authors after Ockham, therefore, can we be sure we are looking at the direct or indirect inuence of Ockham? We are, of course, on safer ground if Ockham is expressly acknowledged in the text and/or margin of a manuscript to be the source for an argument or position. Yet even
1 G. Le, Bradwardine and the Pelagians (Cambridge, 1957); J.A. Robson, Wyclif and the Oxford Schools (Cambridge, 1961). 2 Ph. Boehner, introduction to William of Ockham, Philosophical Writings: A Selection (Edinburgh, 1957; repr. New York, 1964), p. li. 3 E.A. Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt: The Parisian Statutes of 1339 and 1340, in FS, 7 (1947), 113146; repr. in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science, and Logic: Collected Papers, 19331969 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975), p. 160.
the reception of ockhams thought
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this cautious approach is not without problems. Most positions so identied are precisely those against which a scholastic author will shape his own view. Reliance solely on those references will make it appear that Ockham only had a negative inuence and that most of his contemporaries were opposed to his thought, when the contrary might well be the case. In order to construct an account of the reception of Ockhams thought at Oxford and in England, it is necessary to look closely at the whole range of testimony: what approaches and conclusions Ockhams opponents disliked, those that attracted others, and nally those that more neutral observers saw as signicant, controversial, or innovative. In reconstructing dependence upon or reactions to Ockhams thought, I have adopted the following guidelines: 1) The attribution of an argument or position to Ockham, either by an author or a contemporary scribe, whether or not the position is unique to Ockham. This includes all such evidence, from the lists of suspect propositions to the chance identication in a single manuscript, in order to identify the controversial issues on which contemporaries and later authors felt Ockham had made a contribution, whether positive or negative. We must remind ourselves, however, that unless we are dealing with a direct quotation or reference to one of Ockhams works, such evidence only establishes a link in the mind of the author or scribe between Ockham and the position mentioned; Ockham may not be the sole or even principal representative. 2) The presence in later writers of positions or formulations that appear to be unique to Ockham. (I stress appear to be, since the amount of textual work still to be done on contemporary and earlier fourteenth-century authors is large.) 3) (And with caution and some misgiving), the presence of a group or constellation of positions that from our viewpoint appear to be Ockhamist.
The Earliest Reaction The initial reaction to Ockhams thought was swift and largely negative, at least among Ockhams exact contemporaries or those who were older. Reactions ranged from openly hostile to moderately indierent. Perhaps surprisingly, at this early stage there is little or no indication that Ockham had any followers at Oxford. We know of no one at Oxford between 1317 and 1327 who can be so characterized, at least not without considerable qualication. There are no references among
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his critics to Ockhamistae or sequaces, as Wodeham later would ascribe to Walter Chatton.4 The reaction, therefore, was to Ockham himself and not to the growth of a following within the faculties of arts or theology, as was the case at Paris some years latera growth in party allegiance so disconcerting to those of another philosophical or theological persuasion. Some of the reaction may, as Ockham insisted, have been motivated by envy and malice.5 Yet the number and standing of his critics as well as their geographical distribution suggests more than a personally motivated conspiracy centered at Oxford. Although the rst encounter between Ockham and his critics (specifically his Scotistic fellow Franciscan, John of Reading,6 and the chancellor of the university, John Lutterell)7 must have occurred at Oxford before 1320, the conict only becomes visible to us as Ockham and his critics carried the issues to other studia during the years 13201324, specically to Avignon, London, and Paris. In addition to Reading and Lutterell, who had moved their causa to the papal court at Avignon, we have the negative reactions of Chatton8 (perhaps at Oxford before
4 Wodeham, Lect. Oxon. I, d. 1, q. 2 (Vat. lat. 955, fol. 23r): et adhuc est aliquorum modernorum, Chatton scilicet et eius sequacium; Lect. Oxon. IV, q. 5 (Vat. lat. 1110, fol. 114v): Si autem tu, Chatton, cum sequentibus tuis ponderem. 5 Ockham, De sacramento altaris, ed. T.B. Birch (Burlington, Iowa, 1930), p. 116: stimulante invidia; p. 154: maliciose proponunt; p. 210: propter calumniam praesens negotium suscepi; p. 354: maliciose calumniarie. 6 For the biographical details on Reading, see A.B. Emden, BRUO, p. 1554. On his thought and relationship to Ockham, see E. Longpr, Jean de Reading et le Bx. Jean Duns Scot, La France franciscaine, 7 (1924), 99109; Stephen F. Brown, Sources for Ockhams Prologue to the Sentences, FS, 26 (1966), 3651, Gedeon Gl, Quaestio Ioannis de Reading de necessitate specierum intelligibilium, defensio doctrinae Scoti, FS, 29 (1969), 66156; S. Brown and G. Gl, introduction to William of Ockham, Scriptum in librum primum sententiarum ordinatio, Opera Theologica, vol. I (St. Bonaventure, 1970), pp. 18*34*. 7 Fritz Homann, Die Schriften des Oxforder Kanzlers Johannes Lutterell, Erfurter Theologische Studien 6 (Leipzig 1959); Josef Koch, Neue Aktenstcke zu dem gegen Wilhelm Ockham in Avignon gefhrten Prozess, in Koch, Kleine Schriften, 2 vols (Rome, 1973), II, pp. 275365. [It is equally probably that Lutterells opposition to Ockham began after Lutterell arrived in Avignon and not earlier at Oxford.] 8 Lon Baudry, Gautier de Chatton et son commentaire des sentences, AHDLMA, 14 (19431945), 337369; C.K. Brampton, Gautier de Chatton et la provenance des mss. lat. Paris Bibl. Nat. 15886 et 15887, Etudes Franciscaines, 14 (1964), 200205; Gedeon Gl, Gaulteri de Chatton et Guillelmi de Ockham Controversia de Natura Conceptus Universalis, FS, 27 (1967), 191212; Noel Fitzpatrick, Walter Chatton on the Univocity of Being: A Reaction to Peter Aureol and William Ockham, FS, 31 (1971), 88177; G. Gl, in the introduction to William of Ockham, Summa logicae (St. Bonaventure, 1974), pp. 47*56*; Girard Etzkorn, Codex latinus Monacensis 8943: Mediaeval Potpourri, Contemporary Consternation, in Studies Honoring Ignatius Charles
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1320 but certainly after 1321, probably at London) and the Logica contra Ockham,9 written probably in England by a Scotist soon after 1324. And we should not forget Walter Burley,10 one of the most prominent English authors reacting to Ockham not long after 1324, since as much attention has been given to Burleys critique as to those of Chatton and Reading. But apart from the later dissemination of Burleys antiOckham writings among the English studia, he was not part of these early events in England, since he was in the theological faculty at Paris during these years. Although a Mertonian, Burleys reaction is part of the reception of Ockhams thought at the University of Paris in the 1320s and has to be seen alongside the comments of Francis of Meyronnes, Michael of Massa, and perhaps Francis of Marchia. What were the aspects of Ockhams thought with which his name became identied in the minds of contemporaries? The answer to that question depends on the intellectual milieu of the individual critic. Lutterell approached Ockham from the standpoint of a conservative, nonFranciscan theologian, and sometimes attacked Ockham for maintaining positions that were part of Franciscan theology, occasionally that of Scotus. Reading and the author of the Logica, however, were rm Scotists and attacked Ockham more frequently on issues where he departed from the Subtle Doctor. Chatton can generally be placed with the latter group, although the non-Scotistic inuence of Peter Auriol is noticeable in his thought. Among all these authors, however, there are some recurring issues on which Ockhams position was thought undesirable or dangerous. One of these was Ockhams rejection of inherent common natures in epistemology and metaphysics and, correspondingly, his rejection of the traditional denition of simple supposition in logic. Another, closely related in Ockhams thought, was his reinterpretation of the Aristotelian categories, according real status only to substance and quality. In contrast to Paris, where Ockhams rejection of real status for time
Brady, Friar Minor, ed. R.S. Almagno, C.L. Harkins (St. Bonaventure 1976), pp. 247268; Etzkorn, Walter Chatton and the Controversy on the Absolute Necessity of Grace, FS, 37 (1977), 3265. 9 The Logica contra Ockham has been critically edited by Edward A. Synan, The Works of Richard of Campsall, 2 vols (Toronto, 19681982), II, pp. 51444; see remarks of Gl in introduction to Ockham, Summa logicae, pp. 56*62*. 10 James A. Weisheipl, Ockham and Some Mertonians, MS, 30 (1968), 174188; S.F. Brown, Walter Burleighs Treatise De suppositionibus and Its Inuence on William of Ockham, FS, 10 (1972), 1564.
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and motion seemed to cause the most controversy, Ockhams position on quantity, place, and relation evoked the most attention in England, particularly as they concerned the understanding of Eucharistic presence, the Trinity, and Christology. A third area was epistemology in which Ockhams rejection of sensible and intelligible species, his armation that the proposition itself was the object of knowledge, and his denition and application of intuitive cognition all elicited a strong response from opponents. Ockhams treatment of the intuitive cognition of a non-existent as well as the intuitive cognition of non-existence (as Tachau has recently observed) were often noted. The last area frequently mentioned was Ockhams description of justication (a position not far removed from that of Scotus). Whether or not Ockham was the most important or inuential gure around 1320, he certainly was one of the most controversial. And it was these issues that formed the common denominator for opposition to Ockham. Yet there were degrees of opposition. Lutterell, Reading, and the author of the Logica contra Ockham expressed only negative opinions on Ockham. Burley, however, while opposed to Ockhams nominalism as reected in his position on universals, on simple supposition, and on the Aristotelian categories, was suciently impressed with the structure of Ockhams Summa logicae to adopt it in his De puritate artis logicae.11 And Chatton, who opposed Ockham on the widest range of topics, occasionally acknowledged the beauty or persuasiveness of some of Ockhams argumentation.12 It was apparently in response to Chattons critique that Ockham altered his opinion on universals.13 As has been said, our sources allow us to enter only during the second battle, with the smoke of the rst engagement still very much in the air. And they allow us to observe skirmishes that took place outside Oxford after 1320: at Avignon, London, and Paris. It would be interesting to know, however, how Ockham fared at Oxford, how his thought was received there during the next academic generation. The early years of 13201330 have been ignored for lack of sucient evidence, and the story picks up again when we come to the last years of that decade and to the writings of Rodington, Fitzralph, Holcot, and Wodeham. Fortunately, we do have the testimony of a little-known but
11 Walter Burleigh, De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Longior, ed. Ph. Boehner (St. Bonaventure, 1955); S. Brown, Walter Burleighs Treatise. 12 L. Baudry, Gautier de Chatton, pp. 355356. 13 G. Gl, Gaulteri de Chatton.
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very observant witness, the Benedictine Robert Graystanes, who was writing at Oxford around 1322 and who is our only source for Oxford attitudes toward Ockham after Lutterell and Reading left for Avignon and before Rodington and Fitzralph make their appearance later in the decade.14 Since Graystanes is not exactly a household name even among those working in the intellectual history of fourteenth-century Oxford, a brief introduction may be in order. He was a monk from Durham, and he returned there after university study to become superior. Knowles knew him as the continuator of the Durham Chronicle, bringing it from 1214 to 1336.15 With the death of Bishop Beaumont in 1333 the Durham chapter elected Graystanes bishop, and he was consecrated by William Melton, archbishop of York, and enthroned. Unfortunately, young Edward III was not about to let the richest diocese in England slip even briey from royal patronage. The election and consecration were quashed and Edward, with papal backing, appointed his tutor and secretary, Richard de Bury. Graystanes died around 1336. Graystanes was resident at Oxford in (and no doubt before) 1323 1325.16 His commentary on Lombards Sentences can be dated between 1320 and 1323. His references to the opinions of his contemporaries are so numerous that the chronological boundary between those he knows and those he does not know is clearly dened. He shows extensive knowledge of the opinions of Drayton, Reading, and Ockham, but he is unaware of Chatton, Rodington, or Fitzralph.17 Moreover, he cites Thomas Aquinas frequently, but as Brother Thomas, never as Saint Thomas, which again suggests a date before 1323. His work did not circulate widely and, as far as I know, was not cited by subsequent authors. John Leland saw a copy in the Oxford Carmelite convent around 1540.18 It survives today in only one manuscript, whose corrections and cross-references show it to be a copy of Graystaness
14 Emden, BRUO, p. 814. The only known manuscript of Graystaness Sentences commentary is London Westminster Abbey, MS 13 (paginated rather than numbered by folios). 15 David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1948 1959), II, p. 268. 16 Emden, BRUO, p. 814. 17 There is the possibility that Graystanes does cite Rodington, but the truth of the matter has not yet been resolved. On p. 514, both in text and in margin, Graystanes refers to Redyngton on the issue of hypostatic union, which may be Reading or Rodington. 18 John Leland, De rebus britannicis collectanea, 6 vols. (London, 1774), IV, p. 59.
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autograph, perhaps part of it in the hand of the author himself. As with other commentaries of this period, it is extensive in scope, containing almost one hundred questions, some of them many folios in length. Its value for the historian, beyond that of any such document from the period, is that it simply bristles with names of contemporary Oxford authors (some twenty-seven), providing a well-informed and well-focused picture of the personalities and intellectual horizons of Oxford in his day. The rst thing we notice in looking through Graystaness commentary is the prominence (at least in Graystaness view) of gures who have received only moderate attention. He knew Scotus and Alnwick, Cowton, Reading, and Ockham; and Scotus is among the names most frequently cited. But he also had considerable interest in the Carmelite theologian, Robert of Walsingham, the secular theologians Kykeley, Luke of Ely, Henry of Harclay, and Richard Campsall, and an author referred to as Surrey.19 The frequent and extensive citations to the opinions of Harclay, sometimes in close association with those of Ockham, is a refreshing reminder that in 1317 Ockham did not represent a radically new departure in Oxford thought. From the vantage point of Graystanes we can see Ockham as the solidication and rst extensive and internally consistent expression of positions that were already being espoused by Harclay and Campsall, some of which have their more distant roots in the thought of Peter Olivi. With the death of Harclay and the election of Lutterell as chancellor in the early autumn of 1317 probably the term in which Ockham began his lectures on the Sentencesperhaps more conservative opinions became prominent within the leadership of the faculty of theology, and Ockham may have been the focus of criticism for opinions that had a wider following.
19 Biographical sketches on these authors are provided in Emden BRUO. In addition, on Walsingham see B.M. Xiberta, De Scriptoribus scholasticis saec. XIV ex ordine Carmelitarum (Louvain, 1931), pp. 111136; on Kykeley and Ely see A.G. Little and F. Pelster, Oxford Theology and Theologians c. A.D. 12821302 (Oxford 1934). Graystaness citations of Kykeley, along with Kykeleys citations of Henry of Ghent and Brother Thomas, narrows the terminal dates for Kykeleys scholastic activity to 13001322. His close association with Harclay in Graystanes and in the only manuscript of his Quodlibeta (Worcester Cath., MS F 3) would suggest the period 13051315. At the opening of his article, Henricus de Harclay: Quaestio de signicato conceptus universalis (Fons Doctrinae Guillelmi de Ockham), FS, 31 (1971), 178234, G. Gl reviews the state of research on Harclay. On Campsall see E.A. Synan, The Works of Richard Campsall, 2 vols. (Toronto, 19681982).
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Ockhams name is linked in Graystaness work to certain issues that reappear at several points in his commentary: epistemology and certitude, especially the intuitive cognition of a non-existent;20 apprehension and sensible species;21 the necessity of the habit of grace;22 Trinitarian theology,23 and the categories, particularly quantity, relation, and local motion.24 The rst thing that strikes the reader of Graystaness commentary, especially inasmuch as it was written in what we would take to be the charged atmosphere of Readings and Lutterells Oxford, is that Graystanes is not particularly antagonistic to Ockham, nor does he view him as an opponent whose opinions are to be rejected. Instead, Ockham is one of many recent authors worthy of discussion, no more signicant than Walsingham, Alnwick, Cowton, or Harclay, and more signicant than Burley, Campsall, Conington, Drayton, or Reading. On a number of critical issues Graystanes gives a favorable hearing to Ockhams position. Although he does not accept Ockhams denition of intuitive cognition or fully support his view of an intuitive cognition of a non-existent, he does present Ockhams position as a defense of epistemological certitude against the doubts of Peter Auriol and, surprisingly, John of Reading. Moreover, without directly endorsing them, Graystanes considers Ockhams interpretation of quantity, relation, and motion to be defensible within the schools. In his exposition of fruition (enjoyment) he shared several positions with Ockham. Like Ockham, Graystanes argued that pleasure was a result of an act of the will, a result of love, and thus distinct from the act of enjoyment.25 He also believed that things other than God could, inordinate, be enjoyed.26 But these positions were ultimately grounded in Scotuss treatment of fruition, as was Ockhams attack on the necessity of the habit of grace and the defence of divine acceptation. They reveal Graystanes to be at times close to the Scotistic tradition, but they do not necessarily show him to have been wedded to an Ockhamist version of Franciscan theology.
London Westminster Abbey, MS 13, pp. 18, 120122, 265, 488. Ibid., pp. 218, 233. 22 Ibid., pp. 2730. 23 Ibid., pp. 265, 273. 24 Ibid., pp. 511, 568. 25 Ibid., pp. 171, to be inserted on p. 167: Opinio Petri de Aureolis est quod fruitio hominis de Deo est tantum delectatio. Ibid., p. 167: De primo ergo articulo teneo quod operatio (voluntatis sive fruitionis) et delectatio distinguuntur realiter. 26 Ibid., p. 158: Quod aliquid a Deo potest esse obiectum fruitionis inordinate.
20 21
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Although not particularly opposed to Ockham, Graystanes in no sense can be termed an Ockhamist. Nor does he suggest that Ockham had any following at Oxford in his day. The same is true for the other Oxford theologians of the decade, John of Rodington and Richard Fitzralph.27 Unfortunately, neither author identies contemporary opinion very often, which makes our task somewhat harder. But enough parallels exist to say that both authors knew Ockhams writings. Rodington incorporates elements of Ockham and Scotus but generally stands closer to the latter. The points where he allies himself with or departs from positions Ockham held, are also points that Ockham had in common with others, so that we cannot be sure whether this represents a specic adoption or rejection of Ockham. We can say that on some fundamental aspects of Ockhams approach Rodington diered. He did not adopt Ockhams notion of universals nor the reduced ontology of Ockhams physics. The same holds true for Fitzralph. Although Fitzralph has, in the last two decades, been portrayed as a non-, even an anti-Ockhamist, the evidence is too thin or open to too many interpretations to allow us to say anything more than that Fitzralph did not share the major philosophical and theological tenets of Ockham. Ockhamism at Oxford in the 1330s 1330 represents a watershed in the traditional assessment of the reception of Ockham in England. The history of Oxford thought in the early 1330s is dominated by the names of Robert Holcot and Adam Wodeham, almost universally acknowledged to be direct disciples and rm supporters of Ockham. And despite the fact that insucient textual work has been done, the assumption is made that many Oxfordians of the 1330s were to some degree sympathetic to Ockhams viewpoint and adopted some of his approaches and conclusions. Robert of Halifax, Richard Kilvington, William Heytesbury, Thomas Buckingham, and John Dumbleton are just a few of the names sometimes mentioned in this context. Only Thomas Bradwardine is regularly placed outside of and opposed to the inuence of Ockham. Time does not allow the
27 M. Tweedale, John of Rodynton on Knowledge, Science, and Theology, doctoral dissertation, UCLA (Los Angeles, 1965); G. Le, Richard Fitzralph. Commentator of the Sentences (Manchester, 1963); K. Walsh, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard Fitzralph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford, 1981).
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development of a thorough score card on the degree and nature of Ockhams inuence on the twenty-some-odd authors of Oxfords richest decade in the fourteenth century. Instead, I want to concentrate closely on those two authors who, more than any others, represent the core of an Ockhamist tradition at Oxford in the pre-Wyclif era: Holcot and Wodeham.
Robert Holcot The Ockhamism of Holcot has been a recurring theme in Holcot research, from the ground-breaking biographical and exegetical work of Beryl Smalley to the philosophical studies of Fritz Homann, E.A. Moody, and Heinrich Schepers.28 Moody recognized some dierences, although he explained away the puzzling identication in Book I, q. 2 of the printed edition of Holcots commentary on the Sentences that attacks Ockham for a position directly opposite to what Ockham held.29 Moody saw Chatton as Holcots major contemporary opponent, and that in his attack on Chatton, Holcot was defending positions he held in common with or derived from Ockham. It was in the area of Holcots enthusiasm for an extreme nominalistic position on the relation of language and reality, on the nature of propositional truth, that Holcot went beyond Ockham. But for Moody this was a more extreme elaboration of essentially Ockhamist notions, which had the two-fold eect in the historiography of rearming Holcot to be an Ockhamist and yet establishing some dierences between a more traditional or careful Ockham and his more extreme, less careful followers. Some of Moodys assumptions and conclusions were overturned by the textual work of Schepers on the Sex articuli, the Quodlibeta, and Sen-
28 B. Smalley, Robert Holcot, OP, AFP, 26 (1956), 597; Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960), pp. 133202; H.A. Oberman, Facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. Robert Holcot, O.P., and the Beginnings of Luthers Theology, HTR 55 (1962) 317342; F. Homann, Robert Holcot: Die Logik in der Theologie, in Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 2 (Berlin 1963), pp. 624639; Homann, Die theologische Methode des Oxforder Dominikanerlehrers Robert Holcot, BGPTM, new ser. 5 (Mnster, 1972); Moody, A Quodlibetal Question of Robert Holkot, O.P. on the Problem of the Objects of Knowledge and of Belief, Speculum, 39 (1964), 5374; H. Schepers, Holkot contra dicta Crathorn, PJ, 77 (1970), 320354; 79 (1972), 106136. 29 Moody, Quodlibetal Question, 5455, 6567.
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tences commentary of Holcot.30 Holcots major opponent was identied as his fellow Dominican, William Crathorn, an extreme nominalist in Schepers view against whom Holcot defended positions that are compatible with or essentially Ockhamist. The small intellectual distance between Holcot and Ockham opened up by Moody was closed in the picture presented by Schepers. Since Scheperss important articles in the early seventies much textual work has been done and some important new evidence has come to light which, although not yet published, undoes much of the picture constructed by Schepers. Crathorn had already in the earlier literature been identied as an opponent of Holcot. In clarifying the dimensions of that controversy Schepers discerned Crathorns name in a number of marginal references to names like Caton and Grafton, which he took to be scribal errors. I rst became uncomfortable with that solution when, in my research on Wodeham, it became clear that a socius of Wodeham, clearly identied as Grafton, in his opening lecture on the Bible, attacked Wodeham on the same issue as that on which Holcots socius, presumably Crathorn, again in an opening lecture on the Bible, attacked Holcot.31 The most obvious candidate for Wodehams Grafton was a fellow Franciscan, although there was an Austin Friar by that name who was also contemporary. Circumstances made clear that Holcots opponent had to be a Dominican, although the name in the Holcot manuscripts at this place could as often be read as Crafton as Crathorn.32 Since bachelor lectures on the Bible at Oxford were delivered only after the completion of the reading of the Sentences, this would mean that two dierent people at the same time with almost identical names, one a Dominican and the other presumably a Franciscan, completed their reading of the Sentences early and attacked their respective confreres in the opening lecture of their scriptural commentaries on essentially the same issue. The probability of such a coincidence struck me as highly unlikely, but I could oer no better solution at that time. A possible solution to the mystery has come about through the recent discovery by Gelber and Tachau of a Dominican theologian, contemporary with Holcot and Wodeham, whose existence had gone
30 31 32
Schepers, Holkot contra dicta Crathorn. W.J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham (Leiden 1978), pp. 95109. Schepers admits as much, Holkot contra dicta Crathorn, 340354.
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unnoticed in the earlier scholarship: John Grafton.33 In addition to knowledge of his existence, we may have quodlibetal questions or a fragment of his Sentences commentaryone of many new texts that have surfaced in the last decade.34 For purposes of my argument here, it now appears that Holcot had two Dominican colleagues against whom he shaped his own position: Crathorn and Grafton. And, lest that news seem to push Holcot more in a Franciscan direction, it should also be noted, as I documented in the Wodeham book, that Holcot opposed Wodeham on several important issues.35 Moreover, many of the marginal references that oppose Holcots views to those of Ockham or Chatton can best be taken at face value. In sum, Holcot shaped his opinions in contrast to at least ve identiable authors: Crathorn, Grafton, Chatton, Wodeham, and Ockham. It is this last relationship that concerns us: the degree to which Holcot can or should be seen as an Ockhamist. I would suggest, only in the palest or loosest way. As a Dominican who arrived at Oxford after Ockham had left, Holcot was never a student of Ockham and probably never heard him lecture. Holcot retained species in cognition, although he tried to make them compatible with Ockhams scientic habit.36 Holcots position on fruition diers from Ockhams. Holcot was reluctant to recognize a middle act of the will between enjoyment and use.37 He criticized Ockham on the object of knowledge and belief.38 His understanding of the relation of propositions to external
33 See the forthcoming paper by Hester Gelber, Finding Faces for Dominicans: Theology at Blackfriars in the Time of William of Ockham. [Gelber subsequently settled on identifying this Dominican as William Crathorn, whose questions on the rst book of the Sentences survive in manuscripts in Basel, Erfurt, Krakow, and Vienna, along with his quodlibetal questions in the Vienna manuscript. For further details, see Gelber, It Could Have Been Otherwise. Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300 1350 (Leiden, 2004).] 34 John Grafton [William Crathorn], Quaest. quodl. Vienna, sterreich. Nationalbibl., Pal. Lat. 5460, fols. 32ra40rb. 35 Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, pp. 95109. 36 K. Tachau, The Problem of the Species in medio at Oxford in the Generation after Ockham, MS, 44 (1982), 394443; Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics, 12501345 (Leiden, 1988). 37 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 3 (4 in printed ed.), a. 2: Utrum sit aliquis actus medius qui nec sit frui nec uti. Omnis amor sit fruitio vel usus. Et quando arguitur quod aliquid diligitur propter se et tamen non ut ultimus nis nec etiam refertur ad aliud actualiter, concedo et dico quod talis dilectio est usus, quando res diligitur propter aliud habitualiter. 38 Moody, Quodlibetal Question.
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reality diered.39 His use of the distinction between Gods absolute and ordained power was less traditional than Ockhams.40 And his understanding of the power of the unaided human will, ex puris naturalibus, to love God above all else, went considerably beyond Ockhams position.41 The favorable citations to Ockhams opinions and the areas in which they shared a similar approach can better be explained by seeing Holcot as an author, largely independent of but drawing upon Ockham as one of many sources, who shared positions that were part of a wider Oxford tradition that went back to Campsall, Harclay, and others.
Adam Wodeham But surely Wodeham qualies as an Ockhamist. His biography reveals him to have been a close associate of Ockham, dwelling with him in the same convent in the early 1320s, and showing Ockham his copy of Chattons lectures.42 He apparently was the caretaker and editor of some of the work that Ockham left behind in England when he went to Avignon in 1324.43 His major opponents were non-Ockhamists or anti-Ockhamists: Auriol, Reading, Fitzralph, and Chatton. And he has traditionally been seen as Ockhams major disciple and defender at Oxford in the early 1330s. The evidence that has been emerging in the scholarship of the last ve years or more causes us to question or reformulate that assessment. In the Wodeham book I portrayed Wodeham as a disciple who exercized considerable independence of mind on particular issues.44 The number of issues has now grown to the point where we either have to give up the notion of Wodeham as a disciple of Ockham or perhaps, as
Ibid. Courtenay, The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages, in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. T. Rudavsky (Dordrecht, 1984), pp. 243269. 41 Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, pp. 95109; Oberman, Facientibus quod in se est. 42 Wodeham, Lectura Oxon., I, d. 17, q. 5 (Vat. lat. 955, fol. 161v), with marginal note in parenthesis: Ad 14m respondet Ockham (manu sua in margine reportationis meae [of Chattons lectures]) quod ille [Chatton] male intellexit articulum. The reference is to Chattons Reportatio. For the relationship of Ockham and Wodeham, see Ockham, Summa logicae, ed. Ph. Boehner, G. Gl, and S. Brown (St. Bonaventure, 1974), pp. 47* 56*; W.J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, pp. 6364, 160164. 43 Ockham, Summa logicae, pp. 36*44*. 44 Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, pp. 6364.
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I would suggest, use the evidence to reshape our notion of what discipleship meant in the early fourteenth century. First, let us examine the tally sheet for issues on which Wodeham defended, modied, or rejected positions of Ockham. In doing so we must keep in mind that Wodehams positions did not necessarily remain unchanged throughout his life, as if frozen in time. As with Ockham, we are able to view Wodehams thought across a number of years and take account of possible changes. We glimpse something of him during the years 13211323, when he was in close association with Chatton and Ockham, probably in London.45 Chattons Reportatio from those years mentions objections and arguments of Wodeham.46 We also have Wodehams later observations about actions, opinions, and writings from those years.47 We next view his thought in the earliest redaction of his Oxford lectures, around 13301332. Finally, we have his second, post-1334 redaction, and his Lectura secunda, which combines new material and some questions from the post-1334 revision with questions from his earlier London lectures.48 Apart from his obvious close relation to Ockham, the issues on which the Wodeham of 1322 is visible to us are all on ne points of logical argumentation and reveal no particular intellectual identity. But if Wodeham is to be believed, it was in this period, against the indivisibilist Chatton, that Wodeham developed his view of the innite divisibility of the continuum later adopted by Ockham.49 From the early 1330s, however, we have far more to go on. There we nd that Ockham is Wodehams most frequently cited contemporary authority. More
See Ockham, Summa logicae, pp. 47*56*. Chatton, Reportatio I, d. 30, q. 2 (Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 15887, fol. 65ra). 47 Wodeham, Lectura Oxon. I, d. 17, q. 5 (Vat. lat. 955, fol. 161v); Tractatus de indivisibilibus (Florence, Bibl. Naz., MS conv. sopp. A.III.508, fol. 140ra). 48 The Lectura secunda (Cambridge, Gonville & Caius, MS 281) combines questions from the prologue to his London lectures, revised questions from his Oxford lectures, and new questions that do not appear to be derived from his Norwich, London, or Oxford lectures. The presence of the revised questions requires that the Lectura secunda be dated after the Oxford lectures, probably after 1334, which is the terminus post quem for the second redaction of the Oxford lectures. 49 In his Tractatus de indivisibilibus (Florence, Bibl. Naz., MS conv. sopp. A.III.508, fol. 140ra), written after 1324 (since he cites Ockhams Logica and Tractatus) Wodeham remarked that he had put forward the arguments contained in Ockhams treatment of indivisibles before Ockham had written on the subject (meaning the treatise Wodeham knew as Tractatus de sacramento eucharistiae): Quaere prosecutionem in illo tractatu. Et haec argumenta fere omnia fuerant tua antequam Ockham aliquid scriberet de indivisibilibus.
45 46
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often than not he considers Ockhams arguments perceptive, challenging, and well formulated. Against the position of Chatton, Wodeham was an avid defender of Ockhams view of quantity and motion, two fundamental building blocks of Ockhams physics that Wodeham attributed to Ockham, not Olivi.50 Wodeham shared Ockhams nominalism and his redenition of simple supposition.51 They shared the same view of continua.52 Ockhams position on grace and justication (specically divine acceptation and the relative necessity of the habit of grace), albeit one derived largely from Scotus, is supported by Wodeham and attributed to Ockham.53 Finally, we discover in Wodeham the same approach to logic and language that we do in Ockhams writings. At the same time Wodeham seldom accepted anyones argument without rening and adding a great deal of his own, and this applies to Ockham as it does to Chatton, Fitzralph, and Scotus. Wodeham modied or rejected positions of Ockham with alarming frequency alarming to anyone wedded to the notion that Wodeham was a faithful defender of most of Ockhams thought. Among these positions were Wodehams important modication on the object of knowledge, creating the famous formulation known as the complexe signicabile that has
50 Wodeham, Lectura Oxon. IV, q. 5 (Paris, Univ. MS lat. 193, fol. 217rb217va, as edited from other manuscripts): Nolo tamen dicere quod quantitas sit res alia a substantia et qualitate, et etiam a partibus earundem. Immo, quantitas continua est ipsae partes continuae in toto, et istae eaedem partes, si discontinuentur, sint quantitas discreta; et hanc viam de partibus et non de toto teneo tum quia reputo eam rationabiliorem tum etiam propter calumniam vitandam multorum dampnantium quantitatem esse substantiam vel qualitatem. Ibid., a. 5 (fol. 220ra): Sed istis non obstantibus, teneo idem quod prius, scilicet quod quantitas non est res distincta a partibus substantiae et qualitatis, quia nihil potest esse quantum sine quantitate. Ibid., a. 1 (fol. 217va): Ad primam rationem dico quod quantitas intrinseca motus non est res alia a motu et partibus eius. Ad probationem dicendum quod per se loquendo terminus motus augmenti est res permanens et non successiva, et ideo non est per se loquendo nec simpliciter loquendo quantitas intrinseca motus, et haec loquendo de ultimo termino motus augmenti. 51 Wodeham, Lectura Oxon., I, d. 33, q. 2 (Vat. lat. 955, fol. 186r; Paris, Bibl. Mazarine, ms lat. 915, fols. 109ra109rb). See Hester Gelber, Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in Scholastic Thought, 13001335, doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Wisconsin (Madison, 1974), pp. 252253. 52 Ockham, De corpore Christi; De sacramento eucharistiae; Wodeham, Tractatus de indivisibilibus (Florence, Bibl. Naz., MS conv. sopp. A.III.508, fols. 135r147r); J.E. Murdoch & E.A. Synan, Two Questions on the Continuum: Walter Chatton (?), O.F.M. and Adam Wodeham, O.F.M., FS, 26 (1966), 212288. 53 Wodeham, Lectura Oxon. I. d. 17, qq. 13; W. Dettlo, Die Entwicklung der Akzeptations- und Verdienstlehre von Duns Scotus bis Luther, BGPTM, 40.2 (Mnster i.W., 1963), pp. 329332.
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been closely associated in the literature with the name of Gregory of Rimini.54 In the area of epistemology Wodeham preferred Scotuss formulation of intuitive cognition to that of Ockham; and he retained species in the process of knowledge.55 In his Trinitarian theology Wodeham abandoned Ockhams and Scotuss formal non-identity in divinis, preferring instead the position of Chatton.56 In a similar departure from traditional Franciscan psychology, including that of Ockham, Wodeham rejected the plurality of substantial forms in man, arming instead that the sensitive and intellective souls are one.57 And while Wodeham accepted Ockhams identication of the soul with its powers (intellect and will) as well as Ockhams distinction between those powers and their acts (cognition, volition, love, enjoyment, etc.) and between most of those acts themselves,58 Wodeham, in contrast to Ock54 G. Gl, Adam of Wodehams Question on the Complexe signicabile as the Immediate Object of Scientic Knowledge, FS, 37 (1977), 66102. 55 Tachau, The Problem of the Species. 56 Gelber, Logic and the Trinity. pp. 235264, 629648. 57 Ockham discussed this issue in his Quodlibeta septem, quodl. II, q. 11, but his most direct statement occurs in quodl. IV, q. 14, ed. J.C. Wey (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1980), p. 369: anima intellectiva, sensitiva et forma corporeitatis distinguuntur realiter, et ideo potentiae illarum formarum distinguuntur realiter. Wodeham, Lectura secunda, Prol., q. 1 (Cambridge, Gonville & Caius, MS 281, fol. 106ra): in homine sit tantum unica anima. For the full text, see Tachau, Problem of the Species. 58 Modern commentators have sometimes confused scholastic discussions of the powers (or faculties) of the soul (i.e. intellectus and voluntas) with discussions of the acts of those powers (e.g. cognitio, volitio); thus Le, Richard Fitzralph, p. 97. Both Ockham and Wodeham (against Fitzralph) armed that intellect and will are one power or faculty, identical with the soul itself, although cognitive and volitional acts are for the most part distinct from one another and from the soul itself. Ockham, Ordinatio, d. 1, q. 2 (OTh I, p. 396): intellectus et voluntas sunt omnino idem. Et ita fruitio est in intellectu et est actus intellectus ex quo est actus voluntatis. Sed intendo dicere quod fruitio non est intelligere nec scire et sic de aliis actibus qui dicuntur actus quocumque modo cognitivi. Et isto modo, conformando me modo loquendi aliorum, intelligo quando dico fruitionem esse actum non intellectus sed voluntatis. Ockham, Reportatio II, q. 20 (Oth V, p. 435): potentiae animae , scilicet intellectus et voluntasnon loquendo de potentiis sensitivis nunc sunt idem realiter inter se et cum essentia animae. licet eadem sit substantia numero quae potest intelligere et velle, tamen intelligere et velle sunt actus distincti realiter. In his London lectures, portions of which are preserved in the prologue to his Lectura secunda, Wodeham argued against any distinction between the soul and its powers (Cambridge, Gonville & Caius, MS 281, fol. 106ra): potentiae animae, etsi non sint distinctae res nec inter se nec ab anima, tamen sunt distinctae realitates eiusdem rei simplicis, sic quod licet sint idem realiter, distinguuntur tamen aliquo modo a parte rei. Here Wodeham uses Scotus, not Ockham, as his source. In his Oxford lectures Wodeham maintained that cognition and volition are separate things (res distinctae) from the soul itself. Consequently love (both amor and dilectio) as well as enjoyment (fruitio) are res distinctae. See Wodeham, Lectura Oxon. I, d. 1, q. 2, a.
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ham, adopted Auriols thesis that pleasure was identical with the act of enjoyment.59 The list could be extended, and I am certain that subsequent research will uncover many more. On balance, do these resemblances and dierences make Wodeham an Ockhamist or not? Let me distinguish, to borrow a scholastic device. In the strict sense, no! Wodeham saw himself as free and independent, and his writings show this throughoutan independence of mind that Ockham himself possessed. In the broad or loose sense, yes! He did share two of the most fundamental views of Ockham: his nominalism, with the rejection of common natures and the redenition of simple supposition; and his physics, i.e. the redenition of the Aristotelian categories. Inasmuch as those were ultimately the issues that on the Continent came to be most closely associated with Ockhams name and with the Ockhamistae, it is still fair, I think, to associate Wodeham with Ockham.
Ockhamism after Wodeham The partial Ockhamism of Wodeham does not appear to have been a particular turning point in the direction of Ockham, at least not among the Franciscans. On the basis of the research that has been done on subsequent Franciscans, such as Halifax, Rosetus, Langeley, or Went, we do not nd Ockham becoming their principal authority, nor do
2 (Paris, Univ., MS 193, fol. 16vb): Sed istis non obstantibus, teneo partem oppositam, quod fruitio est res distincta ab anima. Lectura Oxon. I, d. 1, q. 2, a. 1 (Paris, Univ., MS 193, fol. 16rb): Non minus est amor res distincta ab anima quam ipsa cognitio. Sed cognitio est res distincta; ergo, etc. The questions on the relation of the soul to its faculties and acts were revised and expanded by Wodeham in the second redaction of his Oxford lectures, and that revised form is preserved in the second redaction as well as in the Caius manuscript (Lectura secunda). Cf. Vat. lat. 955, fol. 21r, later addition in brackets: Nec in via nec in patria est anima fruitio [sua, sed tam amor viae quam patriae est qualitas recepta in anima vel angelo cum quia in via amor libere elicitur] ab anima. Item, quia non minus est amor res distincta ab anima quam ipsa cognitio. Sed cognitio est res distincta. In changing the subsequent passage in a. 2 to read Sed non obstantibus istis teneo quod amor et cognitio sunt vere accidentia recepta in anima, licet hoc ecaciter probari sit dicile, he marked through the earlier passage, noting in the margin vacat, quamvis bene. I am grateful to Stephen McGrade for calling to my attention the confusion on this issue and the passages in Ockham. 59 Lectura Oxon., I, d. 1, q. 4, a. 2 (Vat. lat. 955, fol. 27r): Istis non obstantibus, teneo quod fruitio beatica est realiter delectatio.
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we nd any Greyfriar even as favorably disposed as was Wodeham.60 This had less to do, I think, with the controversial nature of Ockhams thought than it did with the independent nature of subsequent Franciscans. On the other hand we do nd growing acceptance of some of Ockhams positions among certain secular theologians, albeit not Buckingham, whose name is most often mentioned in this context.61 Some two decades ago Weisheipl noted that although Ockhams nominalism and natural philosophy remained controversial at Oxford in the 1330s, they did begin to attract a following among secular masters at Merton College.62 The shift was not immediate. Probably early in the decade William Sutton attacked Ockhams treatment of simple supposition in his Textus de suppositionibus, repeating the objections raised earlier by his fellow Mertonian Walter Burley.63 That began to change by 1335, at least for a number of prominent Mertonians. William Heytesbury accepted both Ockhams nominalistic interpretation of simple supposition as well as his view of quantity, motion, and time. The same holds true for John Dumbleton, writing around 1340. But there it seems to end. Admittedly, not everyone has been examined, but those who have do not appear to follow Ockham on those issues. That is true of the Calculator, Richard Swineshead, a major logician and natural philosopher who did not accept those fundamental tenets of Ockham. In that, he was apparently joined by the Queens College scholar, Nicholas Aston, shortly after mid-century. Aston, despite his radical, nominalistic reputation, was a strong realist, as were Ralph Strode and Richard Brinkley.64 What can we conclude, then, on the issue of the degree to which Ockhams philosophy and/or theology were adopted at Oxford in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, or what role Ockham played in the intellectual currents of that period? The evidence we have examined does not allow us to talk about an Ockhamist school or
60 Much remains to be done on these authors. On the relation of Halifax and Rosetus to Ockham, see: Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, pp. 118121; Tachau, Problem of the Species, 432439. 61 J.A. Robson, Wyclif and the Oxford Schools (Cambridge, 1961), p. 32. 62 J.A. Weisheipl, Ockham and Some Mertonians; Weisheipl, Ockham and the Mertonians, in The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. 1: The Early Oxford Schools, ed. J.I. Catto (Oxford, 1984), pp. 607658. 63 Weisheipl, Repertorium Mertonense, MS, 31 (1969), 219. 64 Z. Kaluza, LOeuvre theologique de Nicolas Aston, AHDLMA, 4.5 (1978), 45 82; Joel Bender, Nicholas Aston: A Study in Oxford Thought after the Black Death, doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Wisc. (Madison, 1979).
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Ockhamist movement. There is no Oxford parallel to the appearance of the label Ockhamistae, which did occur at Paris as early as the late 1320s. At the other extreme, Ockhams name and ideas did remain at the forefront of philosophical and theological discussion. He was in no sense forgotten or ignored. Many of his theological views lived on, not so much because they were Ockhams but because they belonged to a wider consensus, derived from earlier Franciscan and Scotistic thought. Many details of his epistemology, by contrast, were almost universally rejected at Oxford in the generation after his departure from England. The elements that best survivedindeed the very elements on which the continental identication of the Ockhamistae was to dependwere Ockhams approach to universals, his theory of simple supposition, and his views on quantity, time, and motion. And it was those features, in combination with Ockhams attachment to terminist logic in general, that continued to make Ockham controversial in the more conservative atmosphere of Oxford in the 1360s and 1370s. Thus when Wyclif attacked Ockham and the doctors of signs he was probably not attacking any widespread and vigorous Ockhamist school. Ockham was simply one of the more prominent representatives of an approach in logic and metaphysics that Wyclif did not share, indeed, to which he was vehemently opposed. But that was sucient grounds for Wyclif, and for what continued prominence is worth, it is probably also sucient to allow us to continue to speak of the importance of Ockham for fourteenth-century Oxford thought.
chapter eight
THE RECEPTION OF OCKHAMS THOUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS*
One of the most important series of events in the intellectual life of fourteenth-century Paris is the group of warnings, disciplinary statutes, and condemnations commonly associated with the introduction of English thought at Paris, particularly that of William of Ockham.1 The temporal boundaries of the crisis are the statute of the Faculty of Arts on September 25, 1339, which prohibited the authoritative use of Ockhams opinions, and the condemnation in 1347 of propositions taken from the Sentences commentary of John of Mirecourt. The University looked back on those years as troubled years. From Pierre Ceons, through Pierre dAilly, to the Nominalists of 1474 the period of 1339 1347 loomed as a time of crisis and conict in the life of the University that altered the intellectual atmosphere and contributed to the later division between the via antiqua and the via moderna.2 It is not surprising,
* Originally presented at a conference in Paris in 1981 and published in Preuve et Raisons lUniversit de Paris: Logique, Ontologie et Thologie au XIVe Sicle, ed. Znon Kaluza and Paul Vignaux (Paris: J. Vrin, 1984), pp. 4364. 1 CUP, II, n. 1023, pp. 485486; n. 1041, p. 505; n. 1042, pp. 505507; n. 1124, pp. 576587; n. 1125, pp. 587590. See also F. Stegmller, Die zwei Apologien des Jean de Mirecourt, RTAM, 5 (1933), 4078, 192204. 2 For Ceonss references to the controversies of the previous years, especially the condemnation of his fellow Cistercian, John of Mirecourt, see D. Trapp, Peter Ceons of Clairvaux, RTAM, 24 (1957), 101154. Pierre dAilly, Concepts and Insolubles, transl. P.V. Spade (Dordrecht, 1980), p. 58: But suppose someone should object to these conclusions that, among the articles condemned at Paris against Master Nicholas of Autrecourt, one is To say [that] the sentences God exists [and] God does not exist signify the same thing, although in dierent ways, is an error. I reply that many of his theses were condemned (multa fuerunt condemnata contra eum) out of jealousy, and yet later on were publicly conceded in the schools. The Nominalist defense of 1474, printed in C. Du Plessis dArgentr, Collectio judiciorum de novis erroribus, vol. I, pt. 2 (Paris, 1724), p. 286, contains an extensive description of events, but one whose accuracy on particular points is open to question. On the late fourteenth-century and early fteenthcentury development of the Wegestreit between the via antiqua and the via moderna see Antiqui und Moderni, ed. A. Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, Bd. 9 (Berlin, 1974), especially the articles by N.W. Gilbert, Ockham, Wyclif, and the via moderna, pp. 85125, and A. Gabriel Via antiqua and via moderna and the Migration of Paris Students and Masters to the German Universities in the Fifteenth Century, pp. 439483.
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therefore, that so many modern scholars have given it close attention.3 In fact, few documents in the Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis have received quite as much discussion as these, and few historical problems so extensively examined have resulted in less agreement. It may seem unwise to return to this problem in the hope of further clarication. And yet, a more careful reading of the documents and sensitivity to a wider academic and ecclesiastical context force us to abandon a number of earlier conjectures and reveal a somewhat different picture of those events. The principal elements in that picture are as follows: 1) The controversy at Paris over Ockhams thought was narrowly conned to a few interrelated issues and began in the 1320s. The intensied concern evident in the period 13391341 was not a result of any new or broader introduction of Ockhams writings, nor was it a battle over other aspects of his thought. 2) The prohibition of 1339 was precipitated by several other crises that occurred in the period 13371347 and which were largely unrelated to Ockham or Ockhamism. Our failure to perceive these other crisesour tendency to assume that all the relevant documents address the same issuehas been, I suggest, a major barrier preventing an adequate reconstruction of events.
Among the numerous books and articles on this problem, see: F. Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia des Pisaner Papstes Alexanders V, Franziskanische Studien, Beiheft 9 (Mnster i.W., 1925); C. Michalski, Les courants philosophiques Oxford et Paris pendant le XIVe sicle, Bulletin international de lAcadmie Polonaise des Sciences et des Lettres, classe dhistoire et de philosophie, 19191920 (Cracow, 1922), pp. 5988; Les sources du criticisme et du scepticisme dans la philosophie du XIVe sicle, International Congress of Historical Sciences (Bruxelles, 19231924), pp. 241268; Le Criticisme et le Scepticisme dans la Philosophie du XIVe sicle, Bull. internat. de lAcad. Pol. des Sciences et des Lettres, classe dhist./phil. (Cracow, 1927), pp. 41122; Les courants critiques et sceptiques dans la philosophie du XIVe sicle, Bull, internat. de lAcad. Pol., classe dhist./phil. (Cracow, 1927), pp. 192242; La physique nouvelle et les dierents courants philosophiques au XIVe sicle, Bull. internat. de lAcad. Pol., classe dhist./phil. (Cracow, 1928), pp. 93164; Le problme de la volont Oxford et Paris au XIVe sicle, Studia Philosophica: Commentarii Societatis Philosophicae Polonorum, vol. II (Lwow, 1937), pp. 233367 [repr. in Michalski, La philosophie au XIVe sicle. Six tudes, ed. K. Flash (Frankfurt, 1969)]; E.A. Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt: The Parisian Statutes of 1339 and 1340, FS, 7 (1947), 113146; D. Trapp, Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century, Augustiniana, 6 (1956), 146274; Peter Ceons; Modern and Modernists in MS Fribourg Cordeliers 26, Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 241270; Ruprecht Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut (Berlin, 1970); T.K. Scott, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan, and Ockhamism, JHP, 9 (1971), 1541; and N.W. Gilbert, Ockham, Wyclif, and the via moderna .
3
the reception of ockhams thought The Introduction of Ockhams Thought at Paris, 13251335
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We do not know precisely when Ockhams various works became available at Paris, nor whether oral reports of his teaching preceded them. Awareness was probably not as early as 13191320, as Anneliese Maier suggested. The seeming parallels between Ockhams views on quantity and Francis of Marchias attack on similar views can be explained in other ways.4 The earliest reaction of which we can be certain is that of Walter Burley, who may have acquired his knowledge rsthand through return visits to England. Both in his longer version of De puritate artis logicae and his Expositio librorum Physicorum, Burley attacked Ockhams
4 Ockhams rejection of the theory of impetus supposedly created by Francis of Marchia and Marchias rejection of a theory of quantity in a form found in Ockhams Reportatio and De sacramento altaris led Anneliese Maier to believe that each was referring to the other. In order to answer the question of how two authors, reading the Sentences almost simultaneously in dierent universities, could have known the opinions of each other, Maier divided Ockhams commentary on the Sentences into several stages. She saw the incomplete version of the Ordinatio as the product of pre-Oxford lectures on the Sentences given at a studium of the Order in 13171319. The remainder of that commentary (Books IIIV), which would have contained Ockhams earliest treatment of quantity and the eucharist, was supposedly lost or never written down for distribution. The next work in sequence was, for Maier, Ockhams two treatises on the eucharist published under the title De sacramento altaris (by 1319). It was this treatise, argued Maier, that Marchia had read when he lectured on the Sentences at Paris in 13191320. Ockhams Reportatio on Books IIIV, in which Ockham attacks the theory of impetus, she viewed as the Oxford lectura and dated to the years 13201322. Finally, the Ordinatio was revised or completed (the so-called second redaction) by 1323. Apart from the fact that De sacramento cannot have been written before the summer of 1323, since in it Aquinas is referred to as Saint Thomas, the other evidence could as easily be explained by conjecturing a pre-Paris series of lectures on the Sentences by Marchia or, as Stephen Brown suggested in the similar case of John of Reading, a subsequent revision of his Parisian lectures. There is more evidence to suggest that the practice of a pre-university reading of the Sentences developed in France before it appears in England. The examples Maier cited to prove that Ockham could have read before Oxford are all Parisian. The Ockham/Marchia problem may be an unnecessary question. Olivi and Ockham were not the only authors in that period who denied separate real existence to the category of quantity, nor are the verbal parallels close enough to Ockhams text to prove that Marchia could only have been referring to Ockham. For example, Henry of Harclay, whose theory of universals inuenced Ockham, identied quantity with extended substance in his Quaestiones ordinariae; see F. Pelster, Heinrich von Harclay, Kanzler von Oxford und seine Qustionen, in Miscellanea Francesco Ehrle, I (Rome, 1924), pp. 307356; G. Gl, Henricus de Harclay: Quaestio de Signicato Conceptus Universalis, FS, 31 (1971), 178234. Similarly, Ockham could have had in mind the incipient impetus theory found in Olivi or, more likely, someone writing in England shortly before 1317. Ockhams tu ponis suggests an Oxford contemporary more than a Parisian contemporary.
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understanding of simple supposition, universals, and quantity. By 1326 Burley had read at least the rst part of Ockhams De sacramento altaris, namely the De quantitate.5 By 1329 he had also read either the Ordinatio or the Summa logicae, probably the latter.6 A Danish student in Arts, John Nicholai, made a composite of Ockhams Summa logicae and parts of Burleys De puritate while at Paris as a student in 1329.7 Ockhams commentary on the Physics may also have been known. By contrast, there is only slight evidence that the principal theological works were known at Paris in the 1320s, such as Ockhams Ordinatio, his Reportatio, and Quodlibeta septem.8 In light of the continued discussion of intuitive and abstractive cognition at Paris in the 1320s, it is remarkable that there is almost no mention of Ockhams controversial denition of intuitive cognition contained in his Ordinatio and Quodlibeta, if these works were in fact widely known at Paris.9 Apart from Francis
5 The parallels are given in A. Maier, Zu einigen Problemen der Ockhamforschung, AFH, 46 (1953), 161194, reprinted with revisions in Ausgehendes Mittelalter, vol. I (Rome, 1964), pp. 175208, esp. 196203. Burley may have known Ockhams writings earlier. In his Tractatus de formis, dated between 1320 and 1323, Burley attacked a theory of quantity similar to Ockhams. The description of the opinion does not seem precise enough to identify it as Ockhams opinion rather than Olivis or Harclays. 6 The longer version of De puritate artis logicae, written by 1329, attacked Ockhams view of simple supposition. See edition by Ph. Boehner: Walter Burleigh, De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Longior (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1955), p. 7. 7 Erfurt, CA 8 67, fols. 123v134r, contains excerpts from Burleys De puritate artis logicae tractatus longior, with the preface: Hanc extractionem de logica Burle ordinavit frater Ioannes Nicholai, lector de custodia Lincopensi, provinciae Daciae, quando studuit Parisius, anno Domini MCCCXXIX, de cuius logicae commendatione praemisit prologum in hunc modum: Post praecedentem summam editam a Fratre W[illelmus Ockham] compilavit Burle alium tractatum de logica, in quo pauca continentur utilia, realiter nihil, vel sumpta de priori summa vel de Boethio in libro De categoricis et hypotheticis syllogismis. Quae tamen in ipso iudicavi esse utilia, posita ultra ea quae in summa praecedenti, vel quae sunt contra ea quae dicuntur in illa summa, ut opposita iuxta se posita magis elucescant et melius, breviter in sequentibus colliguntur. Quoted from P. Boehner, G. Gl, and S. Brown, eds., Summa logicae, in Opera philosophica et theologica. Opera philosophica, I (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), pp. 25*26*. 8 Katherine Tachau has recently discovered a Sentences commentary of Parisian provenance, probably to be dated before 1330, that shows familiarity with Ockhams Ordinatio and Chattons Reportatio. But of the seventeen extant manuscripts of Ockhams Ordinatio, only three can be traced to fourteenth-century France (Troyes, Bibl. mun., ms 718, probably belonging to the Cistercians at Paris; Paris, Bibl. Mazarine, ms lat. 894, probably belonging to the Augustinians at Paris; and Munich, Universittsbibl., F. 52) and none can be dated before mid-century. 9 On the distinctive character of Ockhams formulation, see K.H. Tachau, The Problem of the Species in medio at Oxford in the Generation after Ockham, MS, 44 (1982), 394443; The Response to Ockhams and Aureols Epistemology: 13201340,
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of Meyronness awareness that Scotuss theory of grace and justication (the acceptatio divina) was one of the issues under investigation in Ockhams trial at Avignon,10 Ockhams theological views were either ignored or were unknown at Paris before the early 1340s. The views of Ockham that were under discussion at Paris in the 1320s were his theory of universals and its eect on his denition of simple supposition and his reinterpretation of the Aristotelian categories.11 For Ockham abstract nouns create the linguistic misimpression that such abstractions have real being apart from substances and qualities. But abstractions, such as whiteness or humanity, do not in his view have separate being nor do they inhere in things. They are useful concepts abstracted from our experience with individual things. Men do not have humanity or share humanity; each person is a human being, more or less a rational animal. Similarly, physical abstractions, such as motion, quantity, and time have no absolute being apart from extended moving things in succession, namely the res permanentes.
in English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. A. Maier (Naples, 1982), pp. 185 217. 10 Francis of Mayronis, Quodl. I, q. 3 (Vat. lat. 901, fol. 7ra): Circa istam questionem [Utrum Deus possit acceptare hominem in puris naturalibus existentem tanquam dignum vita eterna], quia de facto versatur coram Christi vicario summo pontice, ideo reducendum est ad memoriam illud quod dicit salvator noster eius predecessori Matth. 16: quodcumque solveris super terram, erit solutum etc. et ideo ad determinandum exspectandum est eius iudicium. Cited from J. Koch, Neue Aktenstcke zu dem gegen Wilhelm Ockham in Avignon gefhrten Prozess, RTAM, 7 (1935), 350380; 8 (1936), 7993, 168197; reprinted in Kleine Schriften, vol. II (Rome, 1973), p. 312. 11 Of particular interest among the abundant literature on these aspects of Ockhams thought are: S. Moser, Grundbegrie der Naturphilosophie bei Wilhelm von Ockham: Kritischer Vergleich der Summulae in libros Physicorum mit der Philosophie des Aristoteles (Innsbruck, 1932); E.A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (New York, 1935); Ph. Boehner, Ockhams Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth, FS, 6 (1946), 261292; Ph. Boehner, Medieval Logic (Manchester, 1952); A. Maier, Metaphysische Hintergrnde der sptscholastischen Naturphilosophie (Rome, 1955); H. Shapiro, Motion, Time and Place According to William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1957); J.A. Weisheipl, Developments in the Arts Curriculum at Oxford in the Early Fourteenth Century, MS, 28 (1966), 151 175; Weisheipl, Ockham and some Mertonians, MS, 30 (1968), 163213; R. Price, William of Ockham and Suppositio Personalis, FS, 30 (1970), 131140; J. Swiniarski, A New Presentation of Ockhams Theory of Supposition with an Evaluation of some Contemporary Criticisms, FS, 30 (1970), 181217; S. Brown, Walter Burleighs Treatise de Suppositionibus and its Inuence on William of Ockham, FS, 32 (1972), 1564; G. Le, William of Ockham (Manchester, 1974); P.V. Spade, Ockhams Rule of Supposition: Two Conicts in His Theory, Vivarium, 12 (1974), 6373; F. Inciarte, Die Suppositionstheorie und die Anfnge der extensionalen Semantik, Antiqui und Moderni (Berlin, 1974), 126141; and P.V. Spade, Some Epistemological Implications of the Burley-Ockham Dispute, FS, 35 (1975), 212222.
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The only source needed for a discussion of these issues in Ockham was his Summa logicae, which we know was available at Paris before 1329, along with his De quantitate. Although Burley attacked Ockhams view of universals and simple supposition, most of the attention at Paris was focused on Ockhams reinterpretation of the categories, especially his view of quantity, time, and motion. Ultimately at Paris the implications for physics were more controversial than the implications for logic. Ockhams linguistic approach to physics not only contrasted with the quantitative, mathematical approach of many Oxford scholars in the next generation, but it posed what appeared to be an alternative view of the physical universe and its operations.12 Such a picture is suggested by the remarks of Burleys contemporary, Michael of Massa, who lectured on the Sentences at Paris in 1325 1326.13 Massa is the rst Parisian author to cite Ockham by name, and although he shared with Ockham (and with several earlier Parisian authors, such as Peter of John Olivi and Durand of St. Pourain) the rejection of species in cognition,14 he was sharply critical of Ockham on a number of issues. Massa saw Ockhams physical theory to be a revival of the ancient oneness-philosophy of the Eleatics, which had been rejected by Plato and Aristotle.15 One also receives the impression from Michaels commentary that Ockhams natural philosophy had won a following at Paris, and that Michael was as much (if not
Weisheipl, Developments in the Arts Curriculum at Oxford; Ockham and some Mertonians; J.E. Murdoch and E. Sylla, The Science of Motion, in D.C. Lindberg, Science in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 1978), pp. 206264. 13 Damasus Trapp was the rst to call attention to these passages, Notes on Some Manuscripts of the Augustinian Michael de Massa (d. 1337), Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 58133. [The dating of Massas questions on the Sentences has been revised; see Courtenay, The Quaestiones in Sententias of Michael de Massa, OESA. A Redating, Augustiniana 45 (1995), 191207, reprinted in this volume as Chapter 13.] 14 K. Tachau, Problem of the Species and W.J. Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation at Paris, 13391341 History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396 [reprinted in his volume as Chapter 9]. 15 Vatican, Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 70rb, 71ra: Et quia de realitate motus est unus error quorundam modernorum qui circa totam Physicam tam quantum ad principia quam etiam quantum ad conclusiones ipsius conati sunt innovare errores antiquorum philosophorum quos Aristoteles frequentissime reprobatlicet per quasdam fugas grammaticales huiusmodi errores sustineant, quae modicum valent, sicut alias apparebitideo statim pro nunc de errore istorum circa realitatem motus expedio me valde breviter Moveamus ergo aliquas quaestiones circa realitatem motus more Aristotelis et Commentatoris et aliorum philosophorum, praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovantium grossitive antiquorum.
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more) concerned over Parisian supporters of Ockham than he was over Ockham himself.16 Thus, by the time Ockham was in Avignon awaiting the outcome of the investigation into his orthodoxy, several of his works were available at Paris and some of his views well-known.17 His visibility at Paris had a particular character that has not been suciently stressed. First, it was Parisian theologians who were concerned about his ideas, for his opinions are cited only in works written by bachelors or masters of theology. Second, these Parisian theologians were concerned primarily about Ockhams natural philosophy and, to a lesser extent, the related issues in his logic. They appear to have been unaware of or unconcerned over his theological opinions. Ockhams views on the Eucharist may have entered the discussion only because of the controversial nature of his views on the status of quantity in relation to substance and quality. Third, there is the hint that Ockhams physics had begun to attract supporters at Paris, whether within the Arts or Theological Faculty is dicult to determine. Massas Okanistae may refer to such a group, or it could also be nothing more than the common scholastic practice of giving a plural label to one persons opinions. Eventually, however, such supporters of Ockhams physics did appear. The Tractatus de successivis, which contains the heart of Ockhams teaching on time, motion, and place, was extracted from his Expositio in libros Physicorum by such followers as a concise statement of Ockhams version of the new physics.18 Given the revolutionary quality modern historians usually attribute to Ockhams thought, it is perhaps surprising that there was not more mention of him at Paris in this period. Most areas of his thought received no attention, and many Parisian theologians ignored his logic and physics as well. By contrast, the writings of Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Durand of St. Pourain, and Peter Auriol elicited almost immediate attention and, in the case of the last two, not because a
16 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 88v: Sed secundum istos, contra quos arguo, tempus et primus motus sunt idem identice, nec dierunt nisi conceptibiliter dixerunt aliqui quod tempus est ipsummet caelum, et in sententiam istorum incidunt Okanistae. 17 On the trial of Ockham at Avignon see: J. Koch, Neue Aktenstcke zu dem gegen Wilhelm Ockham in Avignon gefhrten Prozess, RTAM, 7 (1935), 350380; 8 (1936), 7993, 168197; C.K. Brampton, Personalities at the Process against Ockham at Avignon, 13241326, FS, 26 (1966), 425. 18 The Tractatus de Successivis attributed to William Ockham, ed. Ph. Boehner (St. Bonaventure, 1944).
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religious order promoted their thought but because the ideas contained in their works evoked a quick and widespread response. Why did Paris not view Ockhams thought as equally worthy of attention? One obvious explanation, suggested by the evidence reviewed above, is that many of Ockhams works were probably not readily available at Paris at that time. Moreover, many of Ockhams views would, in any event, have been non-controversial at Paris in the 1320s. Most of his logic, as contained in his Summa logicae, represented only a reorganization of what was then the accepted teaching of the schools.19 Much of his theology, such as his teaching on grace and justication or his covenantal, pactum theology, were compatible withindeed in large measure derived fromScotus, whose disciples dominated Parisian theology in the 1320s and 1330s. It is understandable that theologians at Avignon, where Thomism was far stronger, would have been more critical of Ockham than contemporary theologians at Paris. Finally, Parisian scholars, fully cognizant of their long heritage and unchallenged leadership in philosophy and theology, concentrated their attention on Parisian authors. Fourteenth-century English scholars who were familiar names to Parisian theologians were or had been bachelors or masters of theology at Paris: John Duns Scotus, Robert Cowton, Thomas Wilton, William of Alnwick, John Baconthorpe, Walter Burley, and others. One nds only a modest tracenever acknowledged by nameof the thought of those whose highest degree was from an English studium generale: Richard of Conington, Henry Harclay, Richard Campsall, John of Reading, or Walter Chatton. The view from the Seine in 1328 noted some aspects of Ockhams thought worthy of comment, but whatever they found in Reading, Chatton, Fitzralph, or Rodingtonif they read them at allcould not in their eyes compare with the controversies generated at Paris. Two features of immediate concern to us distinguish the University of Paris in the 1330s. One of these is the continued rejection of Ockhams physics. John Buridan, who certainly had access to the Summa logicae and aspects of whose thought paralleled but were not necessarily derived from Ockhams thought,20 opposed the view of quantity, time,
19 G. Gl, Introduction to William of Ockham, Summa logicae (St. Bonaventure, 1974), p. 46*: Contentio enim circa universalia, praedicamenta et suppositiones terminorum maxime vertebatur. Sed haec non constituunt totam logicam nec magnam eius partem. Maior pars logicae erat possessio communis et pacica omnium logicorum. 20 Until the middle of this century the dependence of Buridan on Ockham was not seriously questioned. Since then scholars have become increasingly more cautious on
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and motion to which Ockham subscribed.21 Similarly Peter of Aquila, the only Parisian theologian between 1327 and 1342 to cite Ockham by name, refers to him in a similar context.22 But the discussion over Ockhams reinterpretation of the categories remained on an academic level. It did not become a matter of ocial concern. The second feature of the 1330s is that Paris seems to lose touch with English thought, a process that begins in the late 1320s. There is no evidence before 1340 to suggest that Parisian writers even knew the works of Richard Fitzralph, John of Rodington, William Crathorn, Robert Holcot, Adam Wodeham, Thomas Bradwardine, Richard Kilvington, Robert of Halifax, Thomas Buckingham, William Heytesbury, or any of the other logicians and theologians who revolutionized English thought in the period from 1328 to 1338. Admittedly, Parisian masters and bachelors never possessed the degree of interest in Oxford thought that Oxford scholars maintained for Paris up to 1328. The approved list of books available for copying in Parisian bookstores in 1304 almost totally ignores any English contributions to scholastic learning.23 What Paris received from Oxford came primarily through English scholars who studied or taught at Paris, such as Bacon, Scotus, Alnwick, Burley, and others. But even this modest drift of ideas from Oxford to Paris all but ceased in the late 1320s and early 1330s as France and England moved towards the war that eventually brought prohibitions in both countries against scholars going abroad for education. The Procurators Book of the English-German Nation at Paris, whose earliest extant record begins in 1333, reveals only a handful of English students left at Paris, and even those soon disappear.24 Much of this decline in the English presence at Paris was probably due to the disintegrating political climate, but much of it was also due to the fact that Oxford had become not only an acceptable alternative to Paris but a preferable one. By 1330 the developments in logic, mathematics, physics, and theology
this issue. In particular, see: M.E. Reina, Il Problema del linguaggio in Buridano (Vicenza, 1959); T.K. Scott, John Buridan on the Objects of Demonstrative Science, Speculum, 40 (1965), 654673; R. Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut; T.K. Scott, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan and Ockhamism, JHP, 9 (1971), 1541; and The Logic of John Buridan, Opuscula Graecolatina, 9 (Copenhagen, 1976). 21 A. Maier, Metaphysische Hintergrnde der sptscholastischen Naturphilosophie (Rome, 1955), pp. 209219. 22 Petrus de Aquila, Quaestiones in quatuor libros sententiarum (Speyer, 1480; reprint Frankfurt, 1967), Lib. I, dist. xxiii, q. 2. 23 CUP II, pp. 107112. 24 AUP, vol. I: Liber procuratorum nationis Anglicanae (Alemanniae) in Universitate Parisiensi.
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at Oxford were far more exciting than almost anything comparable at Paris in the period 13281340. Only John Buridan seems to continue the kind of interests pursued earlier by Marchia, Massa, Gerard Odonis, and others from the pre-1328 era. The Papacy and University Reform: The Crisis of 13381341 The situation at Paris changed rapidly in 13381339 through the advent of a series of crises that aected the entire University, but most particularly the Faculty of Arts. The rst crisis was one of nancial support through the papacy. A property dispute between some students in the Norman Nation and some citizens of Valence came before the papal court in Avignon in 1338 through the Valence citizens who appealed an unfavorable University judgment.25 In July of 1339 Benedict XII leveled charges of abuse against Stephen of Langres, the University representative of the Bishop of Senlis, who was the protector and distributor of papal privileges to University members. By September Benedict had refused to honor any of the requests on the Universitys benece roll and demanded to see, instead, the Universitys documentary evidence of its privileges, which he intended to reconsider.26 When the Faculty of Arts met in September of 1339, the income of a large portion of the University community was uncertain. It was in that atmosphere that the Faculties of Arts, Law, and Medicine instituted a series of reforms that built upon legislation of earlier years, but which now acquired a particular urgency reected in the rapidity with which reform statutes were enacted. One of the issues addressed by almost all the faculties in the University was a concern over the disintegration of classroom discipline, proper dress and behavior, and magisterial control over teaching. Lectures and disputations in Arts, Medicine, and Law were being interrupted by whistling and footstamping, or by contentious questions and comments from bachelors, masters, and others who had not received permission to speak.27 The second paragraph of the Arts statute of
CUP II, pp. 476477, 482483; 487488; 488489, 497498, 521522. AUP I, col. 35; CUP II, p. 487. 27 CUP II, pp. 492493, for the Faculty of Medicine: ad statuendum et ordinandum propter pacem et tranquillitatem inter magistros ac etiam bachalarios et ad evitandum clamores magistri contra magistrum ac etiam contra bachalarios et bachalariorum ad invicem nullus sit ausus plus arguere vel alio quoquomodo nisi prius habita licentia
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September 25, 133928 in which this problem is addressed and which has been interpreted by historians as referring to disruptions caused by Ockhamism, has nothing to do with Ockham but was a separate statutory item on the problem of classroom discipline, a problem that seems to have been rampant in almost all the faculties, including Law and Medicine. During this period of reform, and in light of the nancial urgency and need to appease Pope Benedict, the Faculty of Arts also rearmed its right to determine the texts appropriate for lectures and disputations, public or private. As part of that statute the votes were gathered to prohibit the use of the works and doctrine of one of the principal enemies of Benedict XII, William of Ockham, whose views were being cited by students and bachelors in the Arts Faculty.29
et obtenta a magistro disputante, sed quilibet taceat ut respondens audiatur. CUP II, p. 504, for the Faculty of Decrees: Itemque non impedient doctores vel alios legentes, seu actus scolasticos exercentes bedellos vel alios ociarios dicte facultatis, sibilacionibus, percussionibus et perturbacionibus quibuscumque. See also CUP II, p. 486, n. 1024. The fact that student disturbances were common to these three faculties makes the connection with Ockhamism highly dubious. There was, however, one issue on which Ockhams physics, particularly his views on motion, time and relation, challenged some cherished notions in medicine and law, namely astrology. Throughout the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, despite the opposition of theologians, astrology had become increasingly attractive, even in academic circles. Much of the motivation behind the development of the mechanical clock in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries was to develop an astronomical clock that would precisely record the movement of the heavens and make medical predictions and legal arguments based on astrology equally precise. If movement, relationship, and time were not realities, then a fundamental presupposition of astrology was removed. Similar motivations explain some of the interest in John of Sacroboscos De sphaera. It was not by chance that Conrad of Megenberg, one of Ockhams principal continental opponents, wrote a commentary on De sphaera in which he attacked Ockhams physics, and also translated Sacroboscos work into German. Moreover, Andal di Negro, who also wrote a treatise on De sphaera, composed his Introduction to Judicial Astrology around 13151320. On the interrelation of the astronomical clock and medical astrology, see L. White, Medical Astrologers and Late Medieval Technology, Viator, 6 (1975), 295 308, and in Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 297315. On Andal see L. Thorndike, The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators (Chicago, 1949), pp. 3536. 28 CUP II, p. 485, n. 1023: Insuper cum nobis liqueat manifeste quod in disputationibus que unt in vico Straminum talis abusus inolevit quod bachellarii et alii in disputationibus dictis existentes propria auctoritate arguere presumunt minus reverenter se habentes ad magistros, qui disputant, tumultum faciendo adeo et in tantum quod haberi non potest conclusionis disputande veritas, nec dicte disputaciones in aliquo sunt scolaribus audientibus fructuose: statuimus quod nullus magister, bachellarius aut scolaris, sine permissu et licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat, quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signative reverenter. 29 Ibid.: Cum igitur a predecessoribus nostris non irrationabiliter motis circa libros apud nos legendos publice vel occulte certa precesserit ordinatio per nos jurata obser-
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If this rst piece of legislation prohibiting the use of Ockham as an authority in lectures or disputations was designed in any way to appease Benedict, it was unsuccessful. In the following February Benedict suspended the privileges of the University, and in the autumn of 1340, prompted probably by interested parties at the University, Benedict began inquisitorial procedures against a number of bachelors and students in the Theological Faculty, most of them secular theologians who may have continued to teach in the Faculty of Arts while pursuing their theological studies. Among those accused were Nicholas of Autrecourt and an English student from Benedicts own monastic order, the Cistercians.30 The Universitys privileges were not restored until July 1341.31
The Invasion of English Logic, Physics, and Theology: The Crisis of 13401347 The papal charges against certain students in the Faculty of Theology suggest that alongside the crises over papal support and classroom discipline, the University of Paris was experiencing another, more eventful and transforming crisis in this period. During the years after 1328 in which Oxford-Parisian contact had all but disappeared, the approach to logic and theology at Oxford had undergone a transformation. Treatises in logic that supplemented the Aristotelian logica vetus and logica nova with works on the properties of terms had appeared as early as the late twelfth century.32 But in the early decades of the fourteenth century at Oxford, the number and scope of these treatises increased
vari, et quod aliquos libros per ipsos non admissos vel alias consuetos legere non debemus, et istis temporibus nonnulli doctrinam Guillermi dicti Okam (quamvis per ipsos ordinantes admissa non fuerit vel alias consueta, neque per nos seu alios ad quos pertineat examinata, propter quod non videtur suspicione carere), dogmatizare presumpserint publice et occulte super hoc in locis privatis conventicula faciendo: hinc est quod nos nostre salutis memores, considerantes juramentum quod fecimus de dicta ordinatione observanda, statuimus quod nullus decetero predictam doctrinam dogmatizare presumat audiendo vel legendo publice vel occulte, necnon conventicula super dicta doctrina disputanda faciendo vel ipsum in lectura vel disputationibus allegando. 30 CUP II, p. 505, n. 1041. 31 CUP II, pp. 521522. 32 L.M. de Rijk, Logica Modernorum, a contribution to the history of early terminist logic, 3 vols. (Assen, 19621967); L. Minio-Paluello, Twelfth Century Logic: texts and studies, 2 vols. (Rome, 19561958).
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dramatically.33 Treatises on supposition grew and absorbed the syncategoremata, predicates, relative terms, and other parts of speech. To those were added an increasing number of treatises on sophismata, insolubilia, obligationes, and consequentia. In this development Walter Burley, Richard Campsall and William of Ockham played leading roles, but the tens of others involved reveal a far broader movement. By 1335 much of the teaching of logic at Oxford was being achieved through debates centered on sophisms that were conducted according to the rules of obligations.34 Propositions were analyzed and their true and false senses distinguished through recourse to supposition theory, the operation of syncategoremata, composite and divided senses, literal and metaphoric meaning, and the other tools of terminist logic. By the time of Robert Holcot and Adam Wodeham (13301332), this approach to propositional analysis had entered theology, and one nds throughout the Oxford theologians of the 1330s the language of obligationes according to which theological sophismata were explored. Sophismata had played a role in the training of Parisian Artistae in the thirteenth century, specically in the disputations that preceded deterC. Wilson, William Heytesbury. Medieval Logic and the Rise of Mathematical Physics (Madison, 1960); Weisheipl, Developments in the Arts Curriculum at Oxford; J. Murdoch, From Social into Intellectual Factors: an Aspect of the Unitary Character of Late Medieval Learning in The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, ed. J. Murdoch and E. Sylla (Dordrecht, 1975), pp. 271348; Subtilitates Anglicanae in Fourteenth-Century Paris: John of Mirecourt and Peter Ceons, in Machauts World: Science and Art in the Fourteenth Century, ed. M.P. Cosman and B. Chandler (New York, 1978), pp. 5186; W.J. Courtenay, The Role of English Thought in the Transformation of University Education in the Late Middle Ages, in Rebirth, Reform, and Resilience: Universities in Transition, 13001700, ed. J.M. Kittelson (Columbus, Ohio, 1984), pp. 103162. 34 Weisheipl, Developments in the Arts Curriculum at Oxford; M.A. Brown, The Role of the Tractatus de obligationibus in Mediaeval Logic, FS, 26 (1966), 2635; L.M. de Rijk, Some Thirteenth Century Tracts on the Game of Obligation, Vivarium, 12 (1974), 94123; 13 (1975), 2254; 14 (1976), 2649; P.V. Spade, Roger Swynesheds Obligationes: Edition and Comments, AHDLMA, 44 (1977), 243285; Spade, Richard Lavenhams Obligationes: Edition and Comments, Rivista critica di storia della losoa, 33 (1978), 225242; A.R. Perreiah, Insolubilia in the Logica parva of Paul of Venice, Medioevo, 4 (1978), 145171; Spade, Robert Flands Obligationes: An Edition, MS, 42 (1980), 4160; E. Stump, Medieval Obligationes and Aristotelian Dialectic, unpublished paper read at the Sewanee Mediaeval Colloquium, April 12, 1980; Stump, Obligations: From the Beginnings to the Early Fourteenth Century, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, and J. Pinborg (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 315334; Spade, Obligations: Developments in the Fourteenth Century, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, pp. 335341; Spade, Three Theories of Obligationes: Burley, Kilvington, and Swyneshed on Counterfactual Reasoning, History and Philosophy of Logic, 3 (1982), 132.
33
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mination, but they did not dominate the teaching of logic at Paris nor were the students knowledge and analytical skills tested by obliging him to accept and work within the framework of propositions and cases that were implausible, contradictory, or contrary to common belief. Nor do we nd at Paris before 1340 any evidence of a theology inuenced by the techniques of solving sophisms within the rules of obligations. On the contrary, in the period from 1328 to 1340 Parisian theology remained within the categories, style, and approach of the early fourteenth century, limited by the horizons of a declining Thomism, Scotism, and Aegidianism. Some of the English terminist logic was already available in Paris in the 1320s, most notably Burleys De puritate artis logicae and Ockhams Summa logicae. Moreover, Paris had developed its own brand of terminism in the writings and teaching of John Buridan. There is no evidence to suggest, however, that the Arts curriculum or the style of teaching at Paris were changed by those inuences in the 1320s or early 1330s. That situation appears to have been altered by the introduction into Paris in the years 13381343 of additional works on logic and physics: Kilvingtons Sophismata, Bradwardines De proportione, Heytesburys Sophismata, and a number of theological works that were heavily imbued with the terminology, interests, and approach of the new logic and physics: Holcot, Wodeham, Bradwardine, Halifax, Buckingham and Monachus Niger.35 Under the impact of this new literature two tendencies developed that were viewed with alarm by many contemporaries. The earlier tendency, primarily in evidence in the Faculty of Arts, was for some students and masters to adopt a narrow, somewhat sensationalist method of propositional analysis according to which any proposition that did not meet the criteria of supposition theory (in its proper senses) was considered false. This meant that all statements that used gurative language, metaphors, idiomatic expressions or any words ex usu loquendi as
35 These works make their rst appearance in Riminis commentary, and it is uncertain where he came in contact with them. It is probable that he encountered them in the schools of northern Italy, which had close ties with Oxford in the second quarter of the fourteenth century and where the rst version of Riminis commentary was drafted and probably read. See my The Early Stages in the Introduction of Oxford Logic into Italy, in English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. A. Maier (Naples, 1982), pp. 1332. It is also possible that he gained access to them at Paris, perhaps through the library of the Cistercian College of St. Bernard, which was eventually rich in these sources, which maintained English contacts in the late 1330s and early 1340s, and with which the Augustinian Hermits had close ties after 1340.
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opposed to proper supposition (de virtute sermonis) were rejected. This approach immediately angered anyone who, along with Burley and Ockham, acknowledged the importance of improper supposition.36 It also angered anyone who delighted in poetical or rhetorical expressions. The most immediate danger from this narrow interpretation of supposition, however, was the rejection of statements from the Bible and the Fathers in which the use of metaphor plays such an important role. This was the issue at stake in the famous statute of the Faculty of Arts issued on December 29, 1340.37 This statute has nothing directly to do with Ockham or his doctrina, a confusion that developed many decades later through the misidentication of this statute with a second statute contra Okanistae that was issued a month later.38 The style of
36 Ockham uses the distinction between de virtute sermonis and ex usu loquendi frequently in his Summa logicae. His fullest treatment, however, is in his chapter De suppositione impropria (Pt. I, c. 77), p. 237: Et ideo multum est considerandum quando terminus et propositio accipitur de virtute sermonis et quando secundum usum loquentium vel secundum intentionem auctorum, et hoc quia vix invenitur aliquod vocabulum quin in diversis locis librorum philosophorum et Sanctorum et auctorum aequivoce accipiatur; et hoc penes aliquem modum aequivocationis. Et ideo volentes accipere semper vocabulum univoce et uno modo frequenter errant circa intentiones auctorum et inquisitionem veritatis, cum fere omnia vocabula aequivoce accipiantur. Similarly in Burley, De puritate artis logicae, tractatus longior, pt. I, ch. 6: De suppositione impropria, ed. Ph. Boehner (St. Bonaventure, 1955), pp. 4647: Et est suppositio impropria, quandocumque terminus supponit praecise pro aliquo, pro quo de virtute sermonis non permittitur praecise supponere. Et dividitur suppositio impropria, quia quaedam est antonomastica, quaedam synecdochica et quaedam metonymatica. Unde, quando terminus accipitur pro uno secundum usum loquendi et pro alio de virtute sermonis, tunc est suppositio impropria. 37 CUP II, pp. 505507, n. 1042: nulli magistri, baccalarii, vel scolares in artium facultate legentes Parisius audeant aliquam propositionem famosam illius actoris cujus librum legunt, dicere simpliciter esse falsam, vel esse falsam de virtute sermonis, si crediderint quod actor ponendo illam habuerit verum intellectum; sed vel concedant eam, vel sensum verum dividant a sensu falso, quia pari ratione propositiones Biblie absoluto sermone essent negande, quod est periculosum. nullus dicat simpliciter vel de virtute sermonis omnem propositionem esse falsam, que esset falsa secundum suppositionem personalem terminorum, eo quod iste error ducit ad priorem errorem, actores enim sepe utuntur aliis suppositionibus. nullus dicat propositionem nullam esse concedendam, si non sit vera in ejus sensu proprio, quia hoc dicere ducit ad predictos errores, quia Biblia et actores non semper sermonibus utuntur secundum proprios sensus eorum. Magis igitur oportet in armando vel negando sermones ad materiam subjectam attendere, quam ad proprietatem sermonis, disputatio namque ad proprietatem sermonis attendens nullam recipiens propositionem, preterquam in sensu proprio, non est nisi sophistica disputatio. Disputationes dyalectice et doctrinales, que ad inquisitionem veritatis intendunt, modicam habent de nominibus sollicitudinem. 38 No internal evidence in the statute of the Faculty of Arts issued on December 29,
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debate and teaching censured in December 1340 was not derived from Burley, Ockham, or Buridan, all of whom allowed for suppositio impropria and warned of the dangers that would result from analyzing terms and propositions de virtute sermonis without regard for usum loquendi. The second tendency, in evidence in the Faculty of Theology, was to restructure theological debate, Sentences commentaries and quodlibetal questions around theological sophismata in which the techniques of the new logic were used, the debate conducted according to rules of obligations, and problems of logic and natural philosophy addressed within a theological structure. Few Parisian Sentences commentaries ever reached the stage of development reected in the English commentaries of Alexander Langeley, Monachus Niger, or Nicholas Aston. But the commentary of John of Mirecourt resembled in structure and was heavily dependent on the English commentaries of the 1330s.39
1340 identies it as directed against Ockham or against Ockhamists. In fact, the cautionary phrase added at the end of the statute to the eect that the prohibition of Ockhams doctrine and works issued on September 25, 1339 was still binding, suggests that those who drafted the December 1340 statute recognized that it could be read as a vindication of Ockhams thought. The oft-cited external evidence, such as the rubric for the December 1340 statute or the statement in the Procurators Book of the English-German Nation (AUP I, cols. 4445) does not establish it as an anti-Ockhamist statute but proves the contrary. The rubric occurs only in the fteenth-century copy of the Chartularium, after the rivalry of the via antiqua and via moderna had begun to aect university politics and when the reales were arranging and interpreting documents in their case against the nominales. The statement in the Procurators Book establishes that there was, in fact, a second statute contra novas opiniones quorundam, qui vocantur Occhaniste beyond that of Sept. 25, 1339, but this second statute was drafted and promulgated tempore procuracionis ejusdem, that is, during the procuratorship of Henry of Unna, which occurred between January 13, 1341 and February 10, 1341. The December 1340 statute had already been promulgated under the seal of the English-German Nation one month earlier. For a fuller examination of these documents, see Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English German Nation. [It was common for individual documents in the archives of the University of Paris to be identied with a rubric on the back of the folded document, but since no original for the December 1340 survives, it is impossible to know if the rubric recorded in the fteenth-century register reproduced a rubric from an earlier document, and if so, when that rubric was added to the document.] 39 C. Michalski, Wplyw Oksfordu na lozoe Jana z Mirecourt (Cracow, 1921); G. Ouy, Un commentateur des Sentences au XIVe sicle, Jean de Mirecourt, unpublished thesis, cole des Chartes (Paris, 1946); W.J. Courtenay, John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini on Whether God Can Undo the Past, RTAM, 39 (1972), 224256; 40 (1973), 147174 [repr. in Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought (London, 1984)]; J. Murdoch, Subtilitates Anglicanae.
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These two issues or tendenciesa sensationalism born of an overly strict application of supposition theory in Arts and the restructuring of approaches in Theology through the use of sophisms and obligations respectively lie behind the summoning of Autrecourt to Avignon and the December 1340 statute of the Faculty of Arts on the one hand, and the investigation and condemnation of Mirecourt on the other. Neither issue was related to Ockham or the Ockhamists, a crisis that had its own separate development, fueled perhaps by the turmoil going on in the University at the same time.
Conrad of Megenberg and the Scientia Okamica As was suggested earlier, the views of Ockham that provoked controversy in the period 13391342, i.e., before the Sentences commentary of Gregory of Rimini, were those on universals, his reinterpretation of the categories, and their implications for physics. Ockhams Summa logicae had been available in Paris for a decade or more, and while much was said about these aspects of his logic and physics, nothing was ever said about his understanding of personal supposition or propositional analysis de virtute sermonis. The reason for that is quite simple. Ockhams views on these latter two issues in no way departed from the accepted usage at Paris, while Ockhams teaching on universals and the categories diered signicantly from the presuppositions of many and raised the specter of the frequently-condemned Spiritual Franciscan Peter of John Olivi. In the atmosphere of 13391341, with the problems of papal nancial pressure, student disorder, and a narrow literalism among some teachers in the Faculty of Arts, a party within the Arts Faculty moved to prohibit the dissemination of Ockhams physics. The rst step in that direction may be seen in the use of the term doctrina in the prohibition of Ockhams works in the statute of September 25, 1339. A second step was taken in late January or early February 1341, when a second statute contra scientiam Okamicam was promulgated by the Faculty of Arts.40 The text of this second statute is no longer extant, but part of its content can be reconstructed from references to it. In contrast to the statute of September 25, 1339, which concerned the use of the works and doctrine of Ockham, this new statute was
40
See above, note 37.
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directed against the opinions of certain ones who are called Ockhamists.41 What was now being prohibited was the scientia Okamica, and in its place the scientia Aristotelis and of his Commentator Averroes was being required, except in those cases that are against the faith.42 The issues on which Averroes and Ockham can be contrasted are not issues of propositional analysis but the understanding of universals, the interpretation of the predicaments, and the eects on the understanding of physics. The prohibition of Ockhams physics by the Arts Faculty in 1341 did not end discussion. Thus the English-German Nation, which seems to have had these divisions and tensions within its own ranks, went one step further in the autumn of 1341. They established an ordinance, which many wished to be considered a statute, requiring members of the Nation to inform on their colleagues if they know of anyone belonging to or supporting the views of the secta Okamica.43 Anyone holding such views would be suspended from all academic exercises in the Nation and University. The Ordinatio of 1341 was accompanied by an oath that had to be sworn by the candidate in Arts before the rector when he came to incept: You shall swear that you shall observe the statutes made by the Faculty of Arts against the scientia Okamica, nor sustain in any way whatsoever the said scientia and similar ones, but [sustain instead] the scientia Aristotelis and of his Commentator
AUP I, cols. 4445: Item tempore procuracionis ejusdem sigillatum fuit statutum facultatis contra novas opiniones quorundam, qui vocantur Occhaniste, in domo dicti procuratoris, et publicatum fuit idem statutum coram Universitate apud Predicatores in sermone. 42 CUP II, p. 680: Item iurabitis quod statuta facta per Facultatem Artium contra scientiam Okamicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consimiles sustinebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum commentatorum antiquorum et expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra dem. 43 AUP I, cols. 5253: Item in eadem congregatione ordinatum fuit, quod nullus decetero admitteretur ad aliquos actus legitimos in dicta nacione, nisi prius juraret quod revelaret, si sciret aliquos de secta Occanica ad invicem conspirasse de secta vel opinionibus erroneis fovendis, vel etiam conjuratos esse vel conventicula habere occulta, aliter nisi jure diceret si sciret, ex tunc penam perjurii incurreret. Et hanc ordinacionem voluerunt equivalere statuto. Facta autem est hec congregatio apud Sanctum Maturinum anno Domini supradicto, die veneris proxima post diem sancti luce ewangeliste hora none Beate Virginis, presentibus magistris Hugone de Duclas, Wernero Wolfram, Johanne Kinhard, Nicholao de Cosfeldia, Gerardo de Marten, Andrea de Swecia, Conrado de Monte Puellarum, Nicholao Drukken de Dacia, et Richardo Scoto.
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Averroes, and of the other ancient commentators and expositors of the said Aristotle, except in those cases that are against the faith.44 1341 represented the high point of the group opposing the adoption or even use of Ockhams physics at the University of Paris. Within a few years Gregory of Rimini, who would not have been bound by the statutes of the English-German Nation or the Faculty of Arts in any case, espoused a natural philosophy that paralleled Ockhams on many points, such as on motion, time, and relation.45 Moreover, between 1347 and 1365, all references to and prohibitions of the scientia Okamica were removed from the list of oaths to be sworn by those of the English-German Nation incepting at the University of Paris.46 For most, Ockhams physics had again become a matter of academic debate, not a matter of ocial, university legislation. The most intense stages in the crisis over Ockhams physics are associated with the career of a German member of the English Nation, Conrad of Megenberg (Monte Puellarum).47 Conrad came from the
See above, note 42. Gregory of Rimini, Sent. I, dist. 28, q. 2, a. l (Venice, 1522; reprint St. Bonaventure, 1955), fol. 132 H [Lectura super Primum et Secundum Sententiarum, ed. D. Trapp and V. Marcolino, vol. I (Berlin and New York, 1984), p. 116]: Ex quibus evidenter patebit quod nulla relatio est entitas ab omni absoluta entitate et ab omnibus entitatibus absolutis distincta. Rimini, Sent. II, dist. 1, q. 4; in Lectura, vol. IV (Berlin and New York, 1979), p. 128: Nullus motus est aliqua talis res a permanentibus distincta, ut ngit opinio [Burley]. Secunda, quod nec mutatum esse est aliqua res talis, qualem ponit. Tertia, quod nec mutatio est res a permanente distincta, ut dicit. Rimini, Sent. II, dist. 2, q. 1; in Lectura, vol. IV, pp. 238239: Prima est quod tempus non est aliqua res non permanens, sic divisibilis et successiva, ut dicit opinio [Burley]. Secunda tempus non est res distincta formaliter inhaerens motui, ut dicit opinio. Tertia, quod instans non est indivisibile non durans. For a fuller discussion see Courtenay, Role of English Thought. 46 There are only three witnesses to these oaths sworn at inception in the Arts Faculty. In the earliest list in the Registrum procuratoris for the English-German Nation covering the period 13471365 (Paris, Arch. Univ., Reg. 2, pt. 2) the oath in question does not appear and all references to the statutes contra scientiam Okamicam have been removed. In the Liber Rectoris from the early fteenth century (London, Brit. Lib., Add. 17304) there are also no oaths contra scientiam Okamicam. Our only source is C.E. Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis a Carolo M. ad nostra tempora, vol. IV (Paris, 1668), p. 275, who took his list from the Procurators Book of the French Nation, which is no longer extant. Either the French Nation continued the oath contra scientiam Okamicam longer than did the English-German Nation, or that manuscript dated from the pre1347 period in which the oath was in force. [Correction: the Book of the French Nation does exist, recovered after the publication of CUP: Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. lat. 2060. For a discussion of it and its relevance to these questions, see Courtenay, The Registers of the University of Paris and the Statutes against the Scientia Occamica, Vivarium 29 (1991), 1349, reprinted in this volume as Chapter 11.] 47 On Megenberg see: H. Ibach, Leben und Schriften des Konrad von Megenberg (Berlin,
44 45
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area of Nrnberg and, after early education at Erfurt, entered the Faculty of Arts as a lecturer in philosophy at the Cistercian College of St. Bernard. He became Master of Arts before 1334. In 1337, while teaching in the Faculty of Arts and studying theology, Conrad wrote his Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam, a lengthy poem which he dedicated successively to two papal chaplains in the hope of obtaining a benece.48 The rst part of the poem addresses the political conict between Louis of Bavaria and the papacy, attempting to explain the German position in a way that would be understood at Avignon. The political views of Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun are mentioned, as are those of the Franciscans, but Ockham is not mentioned directly. Of greater interest is the complaint of the Church against the corruption of the seven liberal arts that has resulted from the pride of the clerks, from this Hebream, this vanam gloriam mundi.49 The sin of grammar is that language now stumbles into vain things, coins inanities. The sin of logic is that now any man paralogizes and deals in sophisms.50 In the second part of the work Conrad continues to rant against the mendicants, whose stomachs are jars of wine. In particular he attacks and ridicules the Franciscans, whom he links with plague. By contrast, Aristotle and Averroes hold places of honor.51
1938); R. Scholz, Unbekannte kirchenpolitische Streitschriften aus der Zeit Ludwigs des Bayern (13271354). Analysen und Texte, vol. I (Rome, 1911), pp. 127140; vol. II (Rome, 1914), pp. 346391; Konrad von Megenberg, Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam, ed. R. Scholz. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, C2: Staatsschriften des spteren Mittelalters, II, 1 (Leipzig, 1941); A. Pelzer and T. Kaeppeli, LOeconomica de Conrad de Megenberg retrouve, Revue dhistoire ecclsiastique, 45 (1950), 559616; J. Miethke, Ockhams Weg zur Sozialphilosophie (Berlin, 1969), pp. 133136, 232, 431; S. Krger, Krise der Zeit als Ursache der Pest? Der Traktat de moralitate in Alamannia des Konrad von Megenberg, in Festschrift fr Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. II (Gttingen, 1972), pp. 839883; A.S. McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal and Institutional Principles (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 45; Konrad von Megenberg, Werke: konomik, ed. S. Krger, Monumenta Germ. Hist., Staatsschriften des spteren Mittelalters, III, 5/1 (Stuttgart, 1973); III, 5/2 (Stuttgart, 1977); K. Arnold, Konrad von Megenberg als Kommentator der Sphaera des Johannes von Sacrobosco, Deutschens Archiv fr Erforschung des Mittelalters, 32 (1976), 147186. 48 Planctus ecclesiae, ed. R. Scholz, M.G.H., SsM II, 1 (Leipzig, 1941). 49 Planctus I, ch. 13, p. 32: Deus hanc maledicat Hebream; cf. ch. 10, p. 30. 50 Ibid., p. 32: Cespitat in vanis iam lingua, monetat inanis; Floribus est nuda, rudis et vox, rustica cruda; Iam paralogismat homo quilibet atque sophismat; Ethyca marcescunt, magis et brutalia crescunt. 51 Ibid., p. 73: Sunt monachi, quorum stomachi sunt aufora Bachi, Qui fumant, male consumant, que viscera strumant. Pregnans invidia fratrum, regnans symonia, Atque cucullosa vestis pestis studiosa, Omnibus est vere, nolens viciosa timere. Ibid., p. 74: Cordigeri, cum nigriferis scribunt odiose Christi de propriis, Deus, et, scis,
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In 1342, having twice been a University nuntius at Avignon, having lectured on the Sentences, and having acquired both from Benedict XII and Louis of Bavaria beneces in Regensburg, Conrad left Paris for a teaching post as rector of St. Stephens School in Vienna. It was there in 1347 that he wrote his commentary on John of Sacroboscos Sphaera in which he attacked Ockhams teaching that points and lines are not res distinctae inter se et a corpore.52 Similar views were expressed later in his Economica, written between 1348 and 1352 while a canon at Regensburg. In that work Conrad attacked Ockham and his followers who assert that relations as well as place, habit, where, when outside the soul are things indistinguishable from absolute things, and arm that quantity is the same as substance. They even call motionsin which the actions and passions of things are formedthings indistinguishable from permanent things.53 Conrads campaign against Ockham culminated in 1354 with his Tractatus contra Ockham. But some common themes that run from his Planctus of 1337 to his Tractatus of 1354 enable us to detect the presence of Conrad in the events at the University of Paris between 1337 and 1342. Among the many objections to contemporary thought portrayed in the pages of Economica, Conrad in his third book singled out two that he felt were especially evil.54 One of these was Ockhams reinterpre-
non generose. Solvunt hanc pestem divina prophetica, vestem cum dixere meum sorti misere beatam. Si mea, tunc propria, testatur philosophya. Ibid., pp. 75 76 Augustine tace, loquor, optime, cum tibi pace! Omnes doctores sancti, perdistis honores! Summus Aristotelis et Averrois edocuere, Sancti subtiles quod docti non potuere. See also, pp. 76, 78, 80, 89. 52 Sed hic est advertendum, quod secundum illos, qui negant puncta habere esse reale preter animam et similiter lineas, sicut facit frater Wilhalmus et sui, illi dicerent, quod secunda descripcio spere eciam competeret sibi secundum esse suum ymaginativum et conceptibile, sed ego non sum istius opinionis, et habet de hoc videri alibi, scilicet in questionibus physicis. Munich, Bayr. Staatsbibl., Clm 14687, fol. 74ra, as quoted in Sabine Krger, Krise der Zeit, p. 849, n. 55. 53 Sevilla, Bibl. Colomb., Ms. 7-7-32, fol. 94rb: Aut certe dici potest, quod clericus deciens in statu scholastico est hic, qui naturas plurium abnegat rerum, quemadmodum frater Wilhelmus de Occham Anglicus atque sui sequaces, qui tam relaciones quam situs, habitus, ubi, quando, asserunt preter animam res indistinctas a rebus absolutis atque quantitatem eandem cum substantia rem armant. Motus etiam in quibus actiones rerum et passiones rmantur dicunt res indistinctas a permanentibus rebus. Also in Vat. Pal. lat. 1252, fol. 99r. Quoted from L. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1971), pp. 409410, and Krger, Krise der Zeit, p. 848, n. 54. The text is from Economica III, tr. 1, c. 1. 54 Conrads attack on Ockham and his followers occurs in chapters 1 and 14, while his attack on those who err in logic comes later in chapter 12. In light of his attitude
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tation of the predicaments. The otheran entirely separate issue for himwas the semi-learned students and masters who in his opinion do not know how to handle grammar, rhetoric, and logic properly. In the Economica, therefore, he gives a fuller explanation for the decline in the liberal arts to which he alluded in his Planctus, and suggests that the practitioners of this misunderstanding of grammar, rhetoric, and logic pretend to be superior to other scholars and have fared better in the world than have the noble intellects, perhaps meaning himself.55 A common approach to language is reected in the errors Conrad lists. In grammar he criticizes these wretches (miseri) for rejecting as meaningless such sentences as aqua transit in uviis or venti volant because they attribute an action to the subject that it does not in reality have. To say that winds y is to use an expression everyone understands, ex usu loquendi, but de virtute sermonis the statement would be false, since winds do not have wings.56 The same failing comes
toward Ockham, Conrad would have made that connection in chapter 12, had the two groups been the same. Although the Economica was completed between 1348 and 1352, it is possible that parts of it were drafted earlier, or that he incorporated earlier writings into the text. Statements in the rst treatise of Book III suggest that it may have been written at Paris before Conrad left in 1342. His description of the schools is a description of the University of Paris, mater nostra venerabilis universitas Parysiensis (ch. 3). The leading role he gives to theology (ch. 3: Supreme vero omnium scolarum cathedre ad legendum libros theologicos) suggests ties with that faculty at the time of writing. He praises the scole autentice (e.g. Paris) and denigrates the scole leninome, specically Erfurt and Vienna, which suggests a time before his close association with Vienna and residence at Regensburg. The fact that this portion of his work circulated separately also points to the possibility that it may have a separate origin from the rest of the Economica. If this conjecture proves correct, it would further explain the similarity in wording between chapter 12 and the December 1340 statute of the Faculty of Arts. Against the conjecture, however, is the bitter remark, ch. 12 University Records, pp. 430431: Sed huic nostris temporibus in plerisque locis Theutonie cura minima subministrat quoniam scolarum rectoribus ut deceret minime providetur nec eorum promotionibus ab episcopis intenditur ut oporteret. Quapropter ab hac sollicitudine illuminati viri apostatare coguntur et aliis statibus minorari, which could have been written on the eve of his departure from Paris (1342) or after his departure from Vienna (1348). 55 Economica III, tr. 1, ch. 12, from Thorndike, University Records, p. 431: Surguntque miseri quidam qui se numquam dignos noverunt discipulos et quod penitus nesciunt docere presumunt atque, quod condolendo refero, tales nobilibus ingeniis potius seductores quam doctores preciuntur Quia tamen ignorantiam propriam ignorant elatis frontibus magistraliter incedunt et paucissima cognoscentes de quolibet disputant plene. 56 Ibid.: Gramaticam indignis molestant derisibus armantes quod nulla partium orationis constructio est transitiva Quapropter aqua non transit in uviis secundum
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out in the area of rhetoric, where these miseri reject as meaningless expressions such as bouquet of words or colors of sentences. Again, what is being rejected are metaphors, indeed all gures of speech. Conrad is quick to note that this attitude leads to heresy when applied to Scripture, since the Bible uses gures of speech continually. And if, de virtute sermonis, these expressions are false, it would follow that rhetoric would have no power of expression in the most beautiful kinds of metaphor.57 Finally, in logic they consider themselves learned when they have mastered a dozen so-called insolubilia or a poor half-dozen obligationes. Even wise old men spend their time sweating over these worthless things (vilibus insudare).58 These two distinct problems, the trivial errors and the Ockhamist errors, were not new to Conrad in the period 13471354. The former is alluded to in the Planctus of 1337 and the latter can be surmised from Conrads association with the events of 13391341 at Paris. At the time of the December 1340 statute, Conrad was procurator of the EnglishGerman Nation.59 Many of the errors listed in that statute concern the rejection of all propositions that are not true de virtute sermonis, that is, considering any proposition false that uses a gure of speech. Moreover,
eos neque venti volant, quoniam alas non habent. Nec poterit dici quod una partium orationis regat aliam secundum modorum signicandi proportiones, quia intellectus humanus omnes partes orationis regit et dirigit. Proprietates enim partium orationis nichil sunt ut dicunt. 57 Ibid.: Rethoricam eloquentiam adeo sua cecitate postergant ut nec ores verborum nec colores sententiarum capiant sed ores in pratis crescere et colores varios pictores componere et pulchre variare ad instar nature armant. Qualiter hii dulciloquia sacrarum interpretentur scripturarum quevis ratio disposita noscit. Nec est dubium hereses ex hiis innumeras pululare. Scriptura etenim sacra non semel uterum virginalem virgam notat et lium inde conceptum orem appellat. Et si de virtute sermonis iste orationes false sunt, sequitur rethoricam in pulcherrimis speciebus transsumptionis nullam ad orationes habere virtutem et sic rethorica quasi evanuit tota. 58 Ibid.: Loycam autem se scire divulgant cum duodena vocatorum insolubilium aut obligationum senarium pauperem siliore grandibus impresserunt visibus cecitati. Negant hii quaslibet consequentias tam ratione materie congruas, quia naturas rerum penitus ignorant, quam etiam ratione forme convenientes, quoniam ad latitudinem loyce minime pervenerunt. Quid plura tantus error est in hiis auctus ut etiam senum canicies non abhorreat hiis vilibus insudare. 59 AUP I, col. 44 (Dec. 13, 1340 to Jan. 10, 1341). According to Miethke, Ockhams Weg, p. 232, Bernd Michael, in a forthcoming work on Buridan, concluded that Megenberg initiated the Arts statute of December 1340 [Michael, Johannes Buridan: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinen Werken und zur Rezeption seiner Theorien im Europa des spten Mittelalters, diss. Freie Universitt Berlin, 1985, Teil 1, pp. 191192].
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some of the wording of the prologue of the statute is reminiscent of phrases encountered in the Planctus and Economica.60 Conrads second complaint was met shortly after he left oce as procurator. In late January or early February of 1341 the Faculty of Arts passed a statute against the scientia Okamica, and in the following months, as we have seen, the English-German Nation, with Conrad taking an active part, attempted to uncover and expel all those in its midst who sympathized with the physics of Ockham.61 It is perhaps signicant that the date of Conrads departure from Paris (1342), probably without inception as a master of theology, was the same year in which Gregory of Rimini returned to Paris to lecture on the Sentences, a work in which he adopted positions that paralleled most aspects of Ockhams physics. One also nds in the 1340s at Paris an increasing number of Ockhams works in circulation and citations of his opinions, although often critically. Attention was shifted from Ockhams physics to his epistemology and teaching on grace and justication. But the real issues of 13421347 concerned the impact of English thought after Ockham and the controversies sparked by a revival of Augustinianism. The transformations at Paris after 1342 are not likely to have pleased Conrad. Ockhams physics was once again receiving a hearing. Mendicant and monastic theologians were even more prominent than before, and their eorts were being rewarded by university and church. In comparison, Conrad saw his life as a struggle. He no doubt remembered his diculties in nancing his education. His early attempts at securing beneces had been poorly rewarded. And he now found himself surrounded by mendicants whose careers seemed to prosper far better and more rapidly than his own. The continued anger and disappointment reected in the Economica and the subsequent Tractatus de moralitate in Alamania were in part a residue of his university experience and, in part, born of the realization that the decade between his departure from Paris and the writing of the Economica had brought him only a minor teaching position in Vienna and a minor place in the cathedral at Regensburg.
60 CUP II, p. 506: nonnulli in nostra artium facultate quorundam astutiis pernicionis adherentes, fundati non supra rmam petram, cupientes plus sapere quam oporteat, quedam minus sana nituntur seminare, ex quibus errores intolerabiles nedum circa philosophiam, sed et circa divinam Scripturam, huic morbo tam pestifero remediare cupientes eorum fundamenta prophana et errores. 61 AUP I, cols. 4445, 5253.
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Conrad may have made one last attempt at inuencing events at Paris. In the eventful summer of 1346 Conrad was back in Avignon and Clement VI drafted his famous letter to the University of Paris.62 Clement criticized those masters and scholars in Arts who were laboring hard on the wrong things (scientiis insudantes), who had abandoned the texts of Aristotle and of other masters and ancient expositors [Averroes?], who ought to be followed insofar as they do not depart from catholic faith, and other true expositions and writings that sustain that scientia, and turn instead toward other various and extraneous sophistical doctrines (extraneas doctrinas sophisticas), which in certain other studia are said to be taught.63 The vagueness of the statement is unfortunate, but behind it one can detect the echo of the antiOckhamist oath of 1341. In light of that oath there is probably reason to assume that Clement was referring to Ockhamist physics, which were not only being taught in aliis studiis, for example in the Oxford of William Heytesbury and John Dumbleton, but were even taught at Paris by an Augustinian Hermit who had in the previous year been made Doctor of Theology, ex gratia, by Clement himself.64 Just as interesting is Clements criticism of the theologians, who abandon the Bible and the Fathers (in whom there is no vanitatis et curiositatis noxia) in favor of philosophical questions and aliis curiosis disputationibus, thus spreading pestiferous seeds.65 Here there is a faint echo of the Arts statute of December 1340, but far more the language of the debate over proper and improper speculation, the distincFor Conrads return to Avignon in 1346, see Ibach, Leben und Schriften, p. 15, and Krger, Werke: konomik, p. 14. Clements letter is printed in CUP II, pp. 587590. 63 CUP II, p. 588: Nam nonnulli magistri et scolares artium et philosophie scientiis insudantes ibidem, dimissis et contemptis philosophi et aliorum magistrorum et expositorum antiquorum textibus, quos sequi deberent in quantum dei catholice non obviant, ac veris expositionibus et scripturis, quibus fulcitur ipsa scientia, ad alias varias et extraneas doctrinas sophisticas, que in quibusdam aliis doceri dicuntur studiis, et oppiniones apparentes non existentes et inutiles, et ex quibus fructus non capitur, se convertunt. 64 CUP II, p. 557. 65 CUP II, p. 588: Plerique quoque theologi, quod deendum est amarius, de textu Biblie, originalibus et dictis sanctorum ac doctorum expositionibus (ex quibus vera illa acquiritur theologia, cui non attribuendum est quicquid ab hominibus sciri potest, ubi plane nulla vanitatis et curiositatis noxia reperitur, sed hoc quo des saluberrima) non curantes, philosophicis questionibus et aliis curiosis disputationibus et suspectis oppinionibus doctrinisque peregrinis et variis se involvunt, et ommissis necessariis supervacua docere pestifera pululant quandoque semina, et in perniciosam segetem, de quo profecto dolendum est, coalescunt.
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tion between sapientia and vana curiositas.66 Here the campaign is not so much against idle speculation into the hidden secrets of God as it is the importation into theology of questions, approaches, and the technical vocabulary of sophismata, insolubilia, and obligationes. This had been only a minor concern of Conrad, but it was a major concern of the Dominicans, whose opinions carried considerable weight at Avignon. Already in May of 1344 the Dominican General Chapter had legislated against those reading ad hanc vaniloquii et curiositatis stultitiam, and in 1346, shortly after Clements letter, these prohibitions de scientiis vanis et curiosis were repeated.67 But on this issue, unrelated to Ockham, the tide of English logic, physics, and theology had its eect on Paris. Conservative pressure from outside and possibly within the University resulted in a double attitude: public rejection of subtilitates Anglicanae and private, enthusiastic study of those same subtleties. Richard de Bury was probably not the only Oxfordian who found that awkward position humorous.68 Of the various controversies that confronted the University of Paris during the years 13391347, the one that had the most long-range eect on the University was the introduction of the newer English thought, an event in which Ockhams writings played only a small part. With regard to Ockham, attention was shifted from his views on the predicaments and physics to his epistemology, conceptualism, and teaching on grace and justication, that is to say, shifted exactly to those elements in Ockham that had attracted the most attention in England and Avignon between 1318 and 1335. To that extent, the introduction at Paris of the wider English context of Ockhams thought was probably responsible for that shift.
66 On the development of these terms and the conicting attitudes in the high and late Middle Ages, see H.A. Oberman, Contra vanam curiositatem, Theologische Studien, 113 (Zrich, 1974). 67 CUP II, p. 550 (May, 1344): intellexerimus nonnullos in nostro Ordine legentes ad hanc vaniloquii et curiositatis stultitiam devolutos ut spreta tam salubri solidaque doctrina peregrinis doctrinis et variis abducantur, adeo ut ipsam veritatis doctrinam audeant ausu temerario frivolis lacerationibus improbare. CUP II, pp. 591592: Cum Ordo noster in soliditate [veritatis] fundatus, de scientiis vanis et curiosis non curans veritati scientie et doctrine semper studuerit virtute constantie inherere. 68 The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, ed. and transl. by E.C. Thomas (London, 1888), p. 89, 212, our English subtleties, which they denounce in public, are the subject of their furtive vigils.
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If Conrad lost the battle to condemn Ockhams physics (at least until the rise of Albertism and Thomism in the fteenth century), the fuller reception of English logic and the early stirrings of humanism at Paris apparently extinguished the narrow approach to supposition against which the December 1340 statute was directed. It is perhaps ironic that in the victory over Conrads second principal concern, the preservation of metaphoric language and the validity of gures of speech, the logical writings of Burley and Ockhamboth opposed by Conradmay have played a more important role than the attitudes of the rhetoricians and proto-humanists for whom poetic expression was as valuable as scientic precision.
part three
THE CRISIS OVER OCKHAMS THOUGHT AT PARIS
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OCKHAM, OCKHAMISTS, AND THE ENGLISH-GERMAN NATION AT PARIS, 13391341* The events in the Arts Faculty at Paris in the years 13391340 have long been a focal point for discussing the spread of Ockhams thought on the Continent. The documents edited by Heinrich Denie in the Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis1 seemed to reveal in a straightforward and dramatic manner the stages of a crisis in the Arts Faculty and in the University as a whole. On September 25, 1339, the Arts Faculty rearmed its right to determine the list of books that could be lectured on, and forbade the use of Ockhams writings. They further prohibited anyone in the Faculty from lecturing or listening to lectures on Ockham, either in public or private gatherings, and from holding disputations concerning his work, or even from referring to his opinions in lectures or disputations. A year later, on November 21, 1340, a number of Parisian students and bachelors of theology, among them Nicholas of Autrecourt, were called to Avignon to answer charges of erroneous teaching. On December 29, 1340, a series of opinions and practices, presumably associated with the supporters of Ockham, were condemned by the Arts Faculty. Autrecourt was eventually condemned at Avignon in 1346, and, in 1347, at Paris. Until 1947 these documents and events were perceived as stages in one unfolding drama. What began as a reprimand in 1339 developed into a prohibition in 1340 and eventually led to the condemnations of Nicholas of Autrecourt and John of Mirecourt, and to the formulation of a list of erroneous propositions that came to be known as the New Parisian Articles of 13471350.2 At the centre of the debate was Nicholas
* Coauthored with Katherine H. Tachau and originally published in History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396. 1 CUP II, n. 1023, pp. 485486; n. 1041, p. 505; n. 1042, pp. 505507; n. 1124, pp. 576587; n. 1125, pp. 587590. 2 The literature on this chapter of the Universitys history is vast. On the writings and events of these years see in particular: J. Lappe, Nicolaus von Autrecourt: sein Leben, seine Philosophie, seine Schriften, BGPM, VI, 2 (Mnster i. W., 1908); C. Michalski, Les courants philosophiques Oxford et Paris pendant le XIVe sicle, Bulletin international
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of Autrecourt, the supposed leader of the Ockhamist party at Paris. The majority of masters took action against him and, by implication, against Ockham. In 1947, however, E.A. Moody attempted to show that the document of 1339 preventing the use of Ockham as an authoritative source worthy of exposition in lectures or citation in disputations, was unrelated to the statute of 1340.3 The latter, in Moodys estimation, concerned the teaching of Autrecourt, whom he dissociated from Ockham. Moody also examined the role of Buridan whom he believed had played an instrumental role, as rector of the University, in the promulgation of the 1340 statutea fact which, if true, complicates any evaluation of Buridans attitude toward Ockham. Subsequently, both T.K. Scott, Jr., and Ruprecht Paqu have questioned Moodys solution and argued that the statute of 1340 was aimed at Ockham, and that some of Autrecourts teaching which was condemned was derived from Ockham.4 The matter is far from settled, despite the extensive and detailed study that has been given to the problem. There is, as yet, no agreement on the exact relation of the thought of Ockham and Autrecourt, nor of Ockham and Buridan. Among the aspects in need of claricade lAcadmie Polonaise des sciences et des lettres. Classe dhistoire et de philosophie, 19191920 (Cracow, 1922), 7779; C. Michalski, Les sources du criticisme et du scepticisme dans la philosophie du XIVe sicle, International Congress of Historical Sciences: La Pologne au Ve congrs international des sciences historiques (Bruxelles, 1924), 248, 267268; C. Michalski, Le criticisme et le scepticisme dans la philosophie du XIVe siecle, Bulletin internat. de lAcad. Polon. des sciences et des lettres. Classe dhist. et de philos. (Cracow, 1927), 6566, 106109 [reprinted in Michalski, La philosophie au XIVe sicle. Six tudes, ed. K. Flash (Frankfurt, 1969)]; J.R. ODonnell, The Philosophy of Nicholas of Autrecourt and his Appraisal of Aristotle, MS, 4 (1942), 97125; J.R. Weinberg, Nicolaus of Autrecourt: A Study in 14th Century Thought, (Princeton, 1948). On John of Mirecourt and the New Parisian Articles see G. Tessier, Jean de Mirecourt: philosophe et thologien, HLF, 40 (1966); W.J. Courtenay, John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini on Whether God Can Undo the Past, RTAM, 39 (1972), 224256; 40 (1973), 147174 [reprinted in Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought (London, 1984)]. 3 E.A. Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt: The Parisian Statutes of 1339 and 1340, FS, 7 (1947), 113146; reprinted in E.A. Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science, and Logic (Berkeley, Calif., 1975), pp. 127160. Moodys position was anticipated in some respects by Ph. Boehner, Ockhams Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth, FS, 6 (1946), 261292; reprinted in Collected Articles on Ockham, ed. E.M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1958), pp. 232267. 4 Ruprecht Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut. Zur Entstehung des Realittsbegris der neuzeitlichen Naturwissenschaft (Berlin, 1970); T.K. Scott, Jr., Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan, and Ockhamism, JHP, 9 (1971), 1541. See also L.D. Davis, The Intuitive Knowledge of Non-Existents and the Problem of Late Medieval Scholasticism, New Scholasticism, 49 (1975), 410430.
ockham, ockhamists, and the english-german nation
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tion is the place of the English-German Nation in the crisis at Paris. The extant records of the Nation and of the Faculty of Arts are part of a body of evidence suggesting that the crisis over the use of the works and opinions of Ockham at Paris may have been principally a crisis within the English-German Nation, and that the frequent references to the Ockhamists may well have referred not to Autrecourt, but to masters, bachelors, and students in the Arts Faculty, some of whom belonged to the English-German Nation.
The Statutes The Arts Statute of September 25, 1339

To all who shall view this present writing, each and every master of the four Nations, namely of the French, Picard, Norman, and English, everlasting greeting in the Lord. He, who is not afraid of transgressing those things which the ancients decreed concerning legitimate and reasonable practice, especially since he was bound by oath to observe it, would seem to deviate from the path of truth and not have God before his eyes. Since, therefore, we have sworn to observe a certain ordinance which was issued by our predecessors, who were not unreasonably concerned as to the books to be read publicly or privately among us; and because we ought not to read certain books not admitted by them or customarily read elsewhere; and since in these times some have presumed to dogmatize the doctrine of William called Ockham, publicly and secretly by holding small meetings on this subject in private placesdespite the fact that this doctrine has not been admitted by those in authority, has not been customarily read elsewhere, and has been examined neither by us nor by others to whom this might pertain, for which reason it does not appear to be free from suspicion; hence we, mindful of our well-being, and considering the oath which we made to observe the abovementioned ordinance, decree that henceforth no one shall presume to dogmatize the said doctrine by listening to it or lecturing on it publicly or in private, or by holding small meetings for disputing said doctrine, or by citing it in lecture or in disputations. If anyone should presume, however, to act against the above or any part thereof, him we suspend for a year, during which time he may not obtain any oce or degree among us, nor exercise in any way any oce or degree already held. Moreover, if anyone should obstinately fail to observe the above statute, we will forever place him under the aforesaid penalty. Furthermore, since it is manifestly clear to us that in the disputations which take place in the rue de Fouarre, such abuse has developed, that bachelors and others present at these disputations dare to argue on
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their own authority, showing little reverence toward the masters who are disputing, and making such a tumult that the truth of the conclusion being debated cannot be arrived at, so that the said disputations are not in any way fruitful for the listening scholars; we therefore decree that no master, bachelor, or scholar argue without the permission and licence of the master holding the disputations, which licence he is not permitted to request orally but only in writing with proper reverence. If any bachelor or scholar should act against the aforesaid, we wish him to be subjected in every respect to the same penalties as in the previous statute. If any master should presume to argue in disputations, unless he becomes quiet when required to do so by the master holding the disputations, we decree that he is to be punished by being deprived of three lectures. Enacted at St. Julian in our congregation of the Faculty, specially convoked for legislating, in the year of our Lord 1339, on the Saturday after the feast of the blessed apostle Matthew. In witness of which we cause to be axed our seals with the signet of the rector.5
5 CUP II, pp. 485486, n. 1023: Universis presentes litteras inspecturis omnes et singuli magistri quatuor nationum, videlicet Gallicorum, Picardorum, Normanorum et Anglicorum, salutem in Domino sempiternam. A tramite rationis deviare videtur nec Deum habere pre oculis qui que ab antiquis sunt statuta super re licita necnon rationi consona, transgredi non veretur, maxime cum ad hec juramenti vinculo fuerit obligatus. Cum igitur a predecessoribus nostris non irrationabiliter motis circa libros apud nos legendos publice vel occulte certa precesserit ordinatio per nos jurata observari, et quod aliquos libros per ipsos non admissos vel alias consuetos legere non debemus, et istis temporibus nonnulli doctrinam Guillermi dicti Okam (quamvis per ipsos ordinantes admissa non fuerit vel alias consueta, neque per nos seu alios ad quos pertineat examinata, propter quod non videtur suspicione carere), dogmatizare presumpserint publice et occulte super hoc in locis privatis conventicula faciendo: hinc est quod nos nostre salutis memores, considerantes juramentum quod fecimus de dicta ordinatione observanda, statuimus quod nullus decetero predictam doctrinam dogmatizare presumat audiendo vel legendo publice vel occulte, necnon conventicula super dicta doctrina disputanda faciendo vel ipsum in lectura vel disputationibus allegando. Si quis tamen contra premissa vel aliquod premissorum attemptare presumpserit, ipsum per annum privamus, et quod per dictum annum obtinere honorem seu gradum inter nos non valeat nec obtenti actus aliqualiter exercere. Si qui autem contra predicta inventi pertinaces fuerint, in predictis penis volumus perpetue subjacere. Insuper cum nobis liqueat manifeste quod in disputationibus que unt in vico Straminum talis abusus inolevit quod bachellarii et alii in disputationibus dictis existentes propria auctoritate arguere presumunt minus reverenter se habentes ad magistros, qui disputant, tumultum faciendo adeo et in tantum quod haberi non potest conclusionis disputande veritas, nec dicte disputaciones in aliquo sunt scolaribus audientibus fructuose: statuimus quod nullus magister, bachellarius aut scolaris, sine permissu et licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat, quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signative reverenter. Si quis autem bachellarius aut scolaris contra premissa aliquid attemptaverit, penis in precedenti statuto positis modo et forma quibus supra omnino volumus subjacere. Si quis autem magister in disputationibus arguere presumat, nisi requisitus a magistro disputationes tenente taceat, ipsum privatione trium lectionum decrevimus puniendum. Acta fuerunt hec apud
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This statute of the Faculty of Arts, signed, sealed, and promulgated on September 25, 1339 by the four nations comprising that Faculty and by the rector of the University, has traditionally been considered the rst document testifying to the crisis precipitated by the spread of Ockhams teaching at Paris. Drafted at the beginning of the autumn term, the document presumably constituted a response to problems that had arisen in the previous academic year or years, i.e., 13381339 or somewhat earlier. The statute contains two sections. The rst rearms the time-honoured right of the regent masters in Arts to specify which books are acceptable texts for lectures, whether public or private. This statutory rearmation of corporate magisterial control over books read for the Arts degree, was intended to stop the practice, on the part of some, of using the opinions and some work or works of Ockham as a basis for lectures. The severity of the penalty indicates the seriousness with which the masters viewed the problem: a rst oense would be punished with suspension from oce or promotion for a year, while further disobedience would make those penalties permanent. The oenders were not masters but advanced students, bachelors, or those who had recently been licenced, since those same penalties are repeated in the second paragraph as applying only to bachelors and students.6 The second section concerns bachelors and othersprobably including advanced students (e.g., opponents and respondents) and regent masterswho presume to debate the opinions of the masters presiding at disputations, and with such controversy and tumult that the magisterial determination cannot be settled.7 Anyone who does not have an ocial part in a disputation must obtain permission in advance from the presiding masters. Students and bachelors who do not comply are
Sanctum Julianum in nostra congregatione facultatis nobis specialiter ad statuendum vocatis anno Domini millesimo trecentesimo tricesimo nono, sabbato post festum beati Mathei apostoli. In quorum testimonium sigilla nostra cum signeto rectoris duximus apponenda. 6 The penalty for a master in this and other statutes of the same period was deprivation of a certain number of lectures (usually three to ve) and the income these lectures provided. Suspension from lecturing and being promoted for a year applied only to those beneath the level of master. 7 Disputations were held under the direction of a master whose task it was to give the nal determination of the question. Before that stage was reached, the question was debated by an opponent, who posed objections, and a respondent, who answered those objections. The disputation formed an important part of the academic exercises of each faculty.
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to suer the penalties detailed in the rst section; disobedient masters are to be penalized nancially by being suspended from lecturing for three teaching days. It is usual to infer from this statute, as do Moody and Paqu, that the teaching of Ockham had resulted in such disruption that the Faculty of Arts felt compelled to restore order. The inference is tenuous, however, and is not supported by the text. The structure and language of the document do not imply that its authors related, as eect to cause, the disorder described in the second paragraph to the issue addressed in the rst.8 On the contrary, not only does the document comprise two sections, but two distinct statutes. That it was so conceived by those who drafted it is stated in the second section, where the penalties set forth in the rst section are described as in the preceding statute (in precedenti statuto). When, subsequently, an oath was instituted for all those incepting in Arts requiring them to swear to observe the requirements of the second section of this document, the regulation on disputations is described as the statute contained in the other of the aforesaid two statutes concerning the scientia Okamica. The meaning of the last part of this statement will be discussed below.9 For the present, it is important only to note that we are dealing with two separate decrees, the connection of which, if any, is unclear. The two decrees promulgated in the statute of September 25 were, in fact, part of a series of decrees enacted at that time by the regent masters in Arts, who intended to reassert magisterial authority in the conduct of lectures and disputations. On the following Monday, September 27, 1339, the masters of the four nations again met in congregation, this time at St. Mathurin, to specify academic dress and procedures for expelling improperly attired students and masters from the classroom.10 The concerns of this document were unquestionably not doc8 The statute is not couched as are those where cause and eect are shown, using such connections between paragraphs as praeterea. See, for contrast, CUP II, pp. 483 484, n. 1022: Cum Eapropter, generale Capitulum cupiens talibus scandalis obviare or the second paragraph of the Medical Facultys statute, CUP II, pp. 492493, n. 1029. 9 See below, pp. 173176. That the rst paragraph of the act of September 25, 1339 was viewed as a separate statute is supported also by the fact that the late-fourteenth or early fteenth-century copy of it preserved in Cracow, Bibl. Jag. 1391, fol. 49va does not contain the second paragraph. 10 CUP II, p. 486, n. 1024: Universis presentes litteras inspecturis omnes et singuli magistri quatuor nacionum, videlicet Gallicorum, Picardorum, Normanorum, et Anglicorum, salutem in Domino sempiternam. Justum esse censetur hos qui aliis presi-
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trinal. Again the two levels of sanction were imposed: one years suspension for students and bachelors; deprivation of the right to lecture for three teaching days for masters. Some, perhaps all, of this legislation was inscribed into the lost statute book of the English-German Nation, lest any member plausibly claim ignorance as an excuse for their infringement.11 Four months later, in January 1340, the Faculty of Arts approved yet another statute, this time legislating the permissable days for inception.12
dent velud deputati ad eorum eruditionis ocium, maxime eorum ocium exercendo seu quid commune pertractando, aliquali decentia habitus insigniri. Cum igitur ex rei evidentia nobis appareat, quod nonnulli magistri congregationes et disputationes in suis mantellis, collobiis, seu tabardis ingredi non abhorreant, nec non in disputationibus bachelarii aut scolares in alio habitu, quam in capa manicata, ad sedes presumant accedere, ex quibus posset grave contra nos oriri scandalum in futurum: hinc est quod nos super hiis providere cupientes statuimus quod decetero magistri ad disputationes sue congregationes accedant in habitu decenti, videlicet capa, epitogio longo vel brevi forrato. Et si in alio habitu accesserint, voces eorum in dictis congregationibus pro nullis habeantur. Et requisiti in congregationibus generalibus vel facultatis per rectorem, in congregatione nationis per procuratorem, qui rector et procurator per quemcumque magistrum, in dicta congregatione existentem requisiti per suum juramentum eos requirere teneantur, in disputationibus per magistrum disputationes tenentem exire non exeant, tribus lectionibus ordinariis noverint se privatos. De bachelariis autem et scolaribus sic duximus ordinandum: quod si moniti per magistrum disputantem disputationes non exeant, per annum sit eis omnis actus scolasticus interdictus. Acta fuerunt hec apud S. Maturinum in nostra congregatione facultatis nobis specialiter et expresse ad statuendum vocatis, anno Domini millesimo CCC tricesimo nono, die lune post festum beati Mathei apostoli. In quorum testimonium sigilla nostra cum signeto rectoris duximus apponenda. 11 Matthew of Sweden recorded in the Liber procuratorum that during his term as procurator of the English-German Nation, from September 24 to October 22, 1339, he saw to it that two statutes, enacted in the Faculty of Arts and approved under the seals of the four nations and of the rectors ring, were copied publicly into the Nations book. AUP I, col. 35: Duo statuta facta in facultate et approbata quatuor nacionum sigillis et signeto rectoris fecti copiari in libro nacionis per manum pubplicam. Solvit autem contribucionem et pro dicta copia de pecunia, in qua nacioni tenebatur, et residuum pecunie, in qua obligatus fuit, indulgebat sibi nacio, cum semel super hoc fecit congregacionem nacionis. The Procurators Book of the English-German Nation contains the procurators record of the ocial enactments, meetings, promotions, elections that fell within the terms of the elected leader of the Nation, who was chosen once a month. CUP II, p. 501, n. 1037 mentions the complaint of the Picard Nation that if statutes continue to be enacted when ordinary lectures are not being held, the masters may well be absent and therefore ignorant of the statutes that, by their inception oaths, they have sworn to uphold. 12 CUP II, pp. 493494, n. 1031: Universis presentes litteras inspecturis omnes et singuli magistri quatuor nationum, videlicet Gallicorum, Picardorum, Normanorum et Anglicorum, actu regentes Parisius in artium facultate, salutem in Domino sempiter-
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This active period of legislation was not limited to the Arts Faculty. On November 22, 1339, the Faculty of Medicine ordered signed, sealed, and perpetually observed, a statute aimed at promoting peace and tranquility among the masters and students within its purview, and at avoiding the shouts of master against master, master against bachelor, and of bachelors against each other.13 Specically, the statute
nam. Noverint universi presentes pariter et futuri, quod nobis ex mandato venerabilis et discreti viri magistri Symonis de Weuchy nationis Picardie, tunc temporis rectoris Universitatis Parisius, congregatis, ut moris est, positoque in deliberatione nostra per eundem rectorem, an placeat statuere quod nullus bachelarius seu licentiatus in artibus Parisius posset incipere per quamcunque viam in artium facultate, nisi in die qua in eadem facultate actu et ordinarie legeretur: super quibus sic positis in nostra deliberatione per eundem rectorem, ut premittitur, nos omnes et singuli magistri antedicti seu nationes prefatam facultatem constituentes habita primitus matura deliberatione, diligenti perscrutatione et consilio peritorum et expertorum in factis predicte nostre facultatis, unanimi consensu, nullo penitus discrepante, deliberavimus et per modum expedientis pro communi utilitate ac honore dicte facultatis ordinavimus, ac etiam solempniter statuimus quod nullus bachelarius vel licentiatus in artibus Parisius ullo unquam tempore futuro posset in dicta facultate per quemcumque modum incipere, nisi die tali in qua eadem facultate actu et ordinarie legetur, nisi tamen per eandem facultatem ad hoc specialiter, sucienter et expresse vocatam cum eo vel cum eis fuerit dispensatum. Quod quidem presens statutum habuimus et habemus ratum, gratum, et pro correcta reputavimus simpliciter ejus formam, promittendo ipsum quantum de jure possumus perpetuo inviolabiliter observare. Acta fuerunt hec apud S. Maturinum in congregatione nostre facultatis nobis sucienter et specialiter ad statuendum vocatis anno Domini MCCC tricesimo nono, die mercurii duodecima mensis Januarii. In quorum testimonium sigilla nostra una cum signeto rectoris hiis presentibus litteris duximus apponenda. 13 CUP II, pp. 492493, n. 1029: Noverint universi quod anno Domini millesimo trecentesimo tricesimo nono, die lune in vigilia beati Clementis, Hugone Sapientis decano facultatis medicine, vocata facultate predicta per bidellum juratum, ut moris est, ad statuendum et ordinandum propter pacem et tranquillitatem inter magistros ac etiam bachalarios et ad evitandum clamores magistri contra magistrum ac etiam contra bachalarios et bachalariorum ad invicem, et ad communem utilitatem scolarium studentium in dicta facultate, et ut veritas quesiti in disputationibus melius inquiratur, ordinavit et statuit quod quilibet bachalarius arguat unum argumentum incipiendo ab uno ne, et sic consequenter more solito usque ad alium nem ita quod nullus sit ausus plus arguere vel alio quoquomodo nisi prius habita licentia et obtenta a magistro disputante, sed quilibet taceat ut respondens audiatur. Et ut melius veritas argumentorum secundum ejus intentionem habeatur, voluit etiam quod ad hoc omnes bachalarii per suum juramentum tam presentes quam futuri astringantur. Si quis autem bachalarius inventus fuerit rebellis contra predictum statutum, voluit et statuit quod in anno jubileo sequenti primo ad licentiam non admittatur, sed potius totaliter per totam facultatem pro inhabili ad concurrendum in disputationibus cum aliis et ad dictam licentiam pro anno, ut superius est expressum, reputetur. Statuit etiam et ordinavit quod magistri exeuntes in predictis disputationibus, factis suis primis argumentis, ut moris est, incipiendo ab antiquiori nullus sit ausus arguere per suum juramentum et sub pena amissionis quinque lectionum primarum ordinar-
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proscribes deviation from customary, straightforward argument; interruption of disputants; and additional arguments interjected into the disputation without the prior permission (petita et habita licentia) of the ociating master. The signers of this statute announce that these regulations are enacted for the better investigation of the truth of the matter into which a disputation inquires; hence, they require that present and future bachelors alike shall swear to uphold the statute. Any bachelor who rebels against the statute is not to be licenced; that is, the statute species, the entire Faculty of Medicine must treat him as unqualied to participate in disputations for an entire year. To promote enforcement, masters too are obliged under oath to observe these regulations, under pain of suspension of lectures for ve teaching days. Similarly, on October 12, 1340, the Faculty of Canon Law passed legislation concerning a range of academic issues, including, for example, prerequisite preparation for legal study, minimum attendance requirements, and the scheduling of lectures on the Decretales and Decretum.14 Several items, however, echo the statutes already issued by the Faculties of Arts and Medicine. Masters, bachelors, and students are to wear proper academic garb; they are not to disrupt the lectures of doctors or bachelors by whistling, stamping, and disturbance of any sort; they are
iarum in replicationibus, nisi petita et habita licentia primitus a magistro disputante. Ordinaverunt etiam quod uno arguente, tam bachalario quam magistro, alter ipsum non impediat sub penis impositis. Presentibus ad hec reverendis doctoribus et magistris una cum dicto decano. Et concesso postea petito a dicto decano ab aliis magistris regentibus in villa Parisiensi in predicta facultate, voluit insuper ut ad perpetuam rei memoriam inviolabiliter observetur, quod istud statutum in litteris redigatur magno sigillo facultatis sigillatis, ac etiam in libro facultatis copia redigatur in scriptis, et deutero prestatuto habeatur. Acta fuerunt hec anno et die supradictis mensis Novembris. 14 CUP II, p. 504, n. 1040: Itemque portabunt vestes, presertim superiores, honestas et decentes; religiosi vero pro vestibus superioribus habebunt ocum aut cucullam, vel alium habitum, secundum statum sue religionis. Itemque ipsi, cujuscumque status sint vel condicionis, non deferent sotulares rostratos seu fenestratos, caligas rubeas seu soleatas, nec capucia nodata, seu alios habitus vel colores pannorum a jure prohibitos. Itemque non impedient doctores vel alios legentes, seu actus scolasticos exercentes bedellos vel alios ociarios dicte facultatis, sibilicionibus, percussionibus et perturbationibus quibuscumque. Item, in disputacionibus, repeticionibus, lecturis solempnium decretalium, propositis, harengis, et festis doctorum, deferre tenebuntur graduatis antiquioribus et majoribus in sedibus recipiendis, ita quod decetero primam et secundam banchas pro hujusmodi graduatis et aliis supra expressis dimittent scolares in talibus actibus vacuas, prout etiam est in theologica facultate eri consuetum. Itemque non audient jura canonica extra vicum Clausi Brunelli, nisi juxta disposicionem facultatis.
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to observe academic rank in seating themselves at lectures, disputations, or feasts; and they are not to attend lectures in canon law outside the street in which the ocial lectures in canon law are held. When viewed in the context of the disciplinary legislation of the Faculties of Arts, Medicine, and Law between September 1339 and October 1340, the disruption of disputations was a university-wide problem of disorderly conduct met with a university-wide eort to re-establish orderly teaching. Ockhams thought was not the cause of the disruptions in Medicine and Law; at most his opinions may have been used as a means of disrupting lectures and disputations in Arts. It is probably safer to conclude, however, that the two sections of the statute of September 25, 1339, are simply two items in a longer list of disciplinary decrees, otherwise unrelated. Three further observations concerning the rst of the two statutes enacted on September 25 should be noted. In the rst place, as Boehner and Moody correctly noted, Ockhams opinions are not condemned in this statute. The rst paragraph states instead that, since Ockham is not yet recognized as a legitimate authority among the masters of Arts, no one should lecture on his writings or cite him in disputations as if he were. The masters render no evaluation of Ockhams thought, nor do they address the issue of whether Ockhams books might, at some future time, be added to the list of recognized authoritative texts. Secondly, the doctrina Guillermi dicti Okam to which the document refers cannot have been Ockhams theological teaching, which lay outside the legitimate authority of the masters of Arts, but must have alluded to Ockhams philosophical oeuvre: his writings in logic or physics.15 Thirdly, Nicholas of Autrecourt cannot have been the occult target of the statute. At the time of the statutes enacted on September 25, 1339, Nicholas had all but completed his theological education; he had ceased to be a student in Arts more than a decade earlier.16 Yet
15 There were numerous University prohibitions against masters and bachelors in the Arts Faculty discussing points of theology. For example, CUP II, p. 675: nullam questionem pure theologicam disputabitis, ut de Trinitate vel Incarnatione. See also the introduction to Iohannis Buridani tractatus De consequentiis, ed. H. Hubien, Philosophes Mdivaux 16 (Louvain/Paris, 1976), pp. 89. 16 CUP II, p. 505, n. 1041, in the letter of Benedict XII to William, Bishop of Paris, November 21, 1340, citing Autrecourt to Avignon, the latter is described as licentiatum in theologia, an academic rank that required at least ten years of theological study beyond the master of Arts. On March 4, 1338, when he is made a canon of Metz, he is described as master in Arts and bachelor in Theology and in Law; Reg. Vat.
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the statute prohibiting the dogmatizing of Ockham was, as the sanctions reveal, directed against advanced students and bachelors in the Arts Faculty, not against masters (who presumably had not participated in such an innovation in the Arts curriculum). Even had Nicholas still been teaching in the Arts Faculty in 13381339 while completing his theological studies, he had long since ceased to be part of the group whose behaviour had occasioned the statute. The Arts Statute of December 29, 1340
To all who may see the present writing, from all and each of the regent masters at Paris in the Faculty of Arts, greeting in the Lord. Everyone ought to prevent errors to the best of his ability and to preclude by every means the path to those, especially since by them knowledge of the truth may be concealed. But since it has come recently to our attention that some in our Faculty of Arts, adhering to the pernicious cunning of certain men, not founded on rm rock, seeking to know more than is tting, are striving to disseminate unsound views from which intolerable errors not only about philosophy but even concerning divine scripture may arise in the future; desiring to remedy such a pestiferous disease, we have collected their profane assumptions and errors in so far as we could, decreeing concerning them in this wise: Namely, let no masters, bachelors or scholars in the Faculty of Arts lecturing at Paris venture to say that any famous proposition of the author whose text they are lecturing on is false absolutely or is false according to the literal sense of the utterance (de virtute sermonis), if they
Benedict XII, an. 4, p. 2, ep. 43, fol. 39v. That would place his reading of the Sentences in or before the academic year 13371338. While it is true that masters of Arts who went on to a higher faculty were still bound by oath to obey the statutes of the Arts Faculty and their Nation and not to reveal their secrets, legislation of 1339 designed to quiet Autrecourt would have originated in the Faculty of Theology. By contrast, the rst clause of the 1339 statute of the Faculty of Arts was aimed at bachelors of Arts then teaching in that Faculty. Paqu acknowledges that Autrecourt, as licentiate in theology, lies outside the scope of the Arts legislation of 13391340; Pariser Nominalistenstatut, pp. 176177. It should also be noted that the statutes of the Faculty of Arts are binding only on those who are or were members of that Faculty. The Oath sworn by the doctors of the higher faculties who had not reigned in Arts when attending the General Congregation diered from the oath of those who had reigned in Arts. Non-M.A.s swore only to observe the privileges, statutes, law, liberties, and customs of the University. Those who had incepted in Arts swore, in addition, to observe the privileges, statutes, etc. of the Faculty of Arts and specically of their Nation. As Rashdall expressed it, Medieval Universities, vol. I (Oxford, 1936), p. 324: the consent of all faculties would have been practically necessary to make a resolution or statute binding upon all.
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believe that the author had true understanding in positing it. Instead, let them either concede it or distinguish the true sense from the false sense, because by the same reasoning propositions from the Bible would have to be denied in their literal wording (absoluto sermone), which is perilous. And since an utterance (sermo) has no sense (virtus) except by the imposition and common usage of authors and others, therefore the sense of an utterance (virtus sermonis) is such as authors commonly employ it and as the material demands, since utterances are to be received according to the subject matter. Further, let no one state of any proposition which would be false according to the personal supposition of its terms, that the proposition is false absolutely or according to the literal sense of the utterance (de virtute sermonis), since this error leads to the prior error, and authors frequently employ other suppositions [rather than personal supposition]. Further, let no one say that no proposition is to be distinguished, since this leads to the aforesaid errors, because if the pupil receives one sense of the proposition and the doctor understands another, the pupil will be falsely informed until the proposition is distinguished. Similarly, if the opponent [in a disputation] receives one sense and the respondent understands another sense, it will be a disputation in name only, if a distinction is not made. Further, let no one say that no proposition is to be conceded if it is not true in its proper sense, because to say this leads to the aforesaid errors, since the Bible and authors do not always employ words in their proper sense. Therefore, one ought rather to attend to the subject matter in arming or denying utterances (sermones) than to the property of the utterance (ad proprietatem sermonis). For a disputation concerning the property of the utterance and receiving no proposition except in its proper sense is nothing other than a sophistical disputation. Dialectical and doctrinal disputations which aim at investigation of truth have slight regard for names. Further, let no one say that there is no scientic knowledge (scientia) of things which are not signs, that is, which are not terms or expressions, since in the sciences we use terms for things which we cannot carry to disputations. Therefore, we have scientic knowledge of things, albeit by means of terms or expressions. Further, let no one assert without distinction or explanation that Socrates and Plato, or God and creature are nothing, since those words at rst sight sound bad, and since such a proposition has a false sense, namely, if the negation implicit in this word nothing should be understood to fall not only on ens singly but on entia plurally. If, moreover, anyone should presume to violate the above articles or any of them, him we expel and reject from our society now and for the future and wish to be considered expelled and rejected, saving in all respects
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what we have decreed elsewhere as to the doctrine of William called Ockham, which we wish rmly maintained in every way. Given at Paris under the seals of the four nations, namely French, Picard, Norman and English, together with the signet of the rector of the University of Paris, A.D. 1340, the Friday after Christmas.17
17 CUP II, pp. 505507, n. 1042: Universis presentes litteras inspecturis omnes et singuli magistri actu regentes Parisius in artium facultate, salutem in Domino. Erroribus obviare, quantum potest, unusquisque tenetur, et viam omnimode ad eos precludere, maxime cum ex hiis possit agnitio veritatis occultari. Verum quia ad nostram noviter pervenerit notitiam, quod nonnulli in nostra artium facilitate quorundam astutiis perniciosis adherentes, fundati non supra rmam petram, cupientes plus sapere quam oporteat, quedam minus sana nituntur seminare, ex quibus errores intolerabiles nedum circa philosophiam, sed et circa divinam Scripturam, possent contingere in futurum: hinc est, quod huic morbo tam pestifero remediare cupientes eorum fundamenta prophana et errores, prout potuimus, collegimus, statuentes circa illa per hunc modum: Videlicet quod nulli magistri, baccalarii, vel scolares in artium facultate legentes Parisius audeant aliquam propositionem famosam illius actoris cujus librum legunt, dicere simpliciter esse falsam, vel esse falsam de virtute sermonis, si crediderint quod actor ponendo illam habuerit verum intellectum; sed vel concedant eam, vel sensum verum dividant a sensu falso, quia pari ratione propositiones Biblie absoluto sermone essent negande, quod est periculosum. Et quia sermo non habet virtutem, nisi ex impositione et usu communi actorum vel aliorum, ideo talis est virtus sermonis, qualiter eo actores communiter utuntur et qualem exigit materia, cum sermones sint recipiendi penes materiam subjectam. Item, quod nullus dicat simpliciter vel de virtute sermonis omnem propositionem esse falsam, que esset falsa secundum suppositionem personalem terminorum, eo quod iste error ducit ad priorem errorem, actores enim sepe utuntur aliis suppositionibus. Item, quod nullus dicat quod nulla propositio sit distinguenda, quoniam hoc ducit ad predictos errores, quia si discipulus unum propositionis sensum recipit, et doctor alium intellexerit, discipulus falso informabitur, donec propositio distinguetur. Similiter si opponens unum sensum recipiat, et respondens alterum sensum intelligat, disputatio erit ad nomen tantum, si non at distinctio. Item, quod nullus dicat propositionem nullam esse concedendam, si non sit vera in ejus sensu proprio, quia hoc dicere ducit ad predictos errores, quia Biblia et actores non semper sermonibus utuntur secundum proprios sensus eorum. Magis igitur oportet in armando vel negando sermones ad materiam subjectam attendere, quam ad proprietatem sermonis, disputatio namque ad proprietatem sermonis attendens nullam recipiens propositionem, preterquam in sensu proprio, non est nisi sophistica disputatio. Disputationes dyalectice et doctrinales, que ad inquisitionem veritatis intendunt, modicam habent de nominibus sollicitudinem. Item, quod nullus dicat scientiam nullam esse de rebus que non sunt signa, id est, que non sunt termini vel orationes, quoniam in scientiis utimur terminis pro rebus, quas portare non possumus ad disputationes. Ideo scientiam habemus de rebus, licet mediantibus terminis vel orationibus. Item, quod nullus asserat absque distinctione vel expositione, quod Socrates et Plato, vel Deus et creatura nichil sunt, quoniam illa verba prima facie male sonant, et quia talis propositio sensum unum habet falsum, videlicet si negatio in hac dictione nichil implicita intelligeretur cadere non solum super ens singulariter, sed et supra entia pluraliter.
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This statute, enacted by the Faculty of Arts on December 29, 1340, is disciplinary in nature and is concerned with styles of argumentation and the analysis of propositions, not with particular philosophical positions. Its focus is the loss of intellectual rigor resulting, or likely to result, from misapplications or ignorance of the rules of logical analysis. Yet some historians have argued that the practices condemned were derived from Ockhams writings and that the statute, in correcting contemporary abuses, was ultimately directed against Ockham. This assumption, proposed by Michalski, rejected by Boehner and Moody, and revived by Paqu and Scott,18 is based on two kinds of evidence: internal and external. The internal evidence consists in the supposed parallels between Ockhams views and the practices censured in the statute. The external evidence comprises several statements that seemingly identify this document as a censure of Ockhamist errors. The internal evidence unfortunately proves little. Everyone acknowledges that Ockhams name is not connected with the practices proscribed in the body of the document,19 but only appears at the end of the text as part of a reference back to the legislation of September 25, 1339. Without such a direct ascription to Ockham, the parallels proposed remain unconvincing, especially since they are often taken out of context or concern supposition theory or propositional analysis de virtute sermonis that either do not accord with Ockhams views or are not unique to Ockham.20 On the other hand, even though the articles bear
Si quis autem contra premissa, vel aliquod premissorum attemptare presumpserit, a nostro consortio ex nunc prout ex tunc resecamus et privamus, resecatum et privatum haberi volumus, salvis in omnibus que de doctrina Guillelmi dicti Ockam alias statuimus, que in omnibus et per omnia volumus roboris habere rmitatem. Datum Parisius sub sigillis quatuor nationum, videlicet Gallicorum, Picardorum. Normannorum et Anglicorum, unacum signeto rectoris Universitatis Parisiensis, anno Dommini MCCCXL, die verneris post Nativitatem Domini. 18 C. Michalski, Le problme de la volont Oxford et a Paris au XIVe sicle, Studia Philosophica: Commentarii Societatis Philosophicae Polonorum, 2 (Lwow, 1937), 255261; P. Boehner, Collected Articles, pp. 248253; E.A. Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science, and Logic, pp. 127160; R. Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut; T.K. Scott, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan, and Ockhamism. 19 The rubric, stating that the statute concerned reprobatione quorundam errorum Ockanicorum, will be discussed below, p. 171. 20 For a discussion of Ockhams understanding of de virtute sermonis see Boehner, Collected Articles, pp. 248253, and more recently, F. Inciarte, Die Suppositionstheorie und die Anfnge der extensionalen Semantik, in Antiqui und Moderni, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 9 (Berlin, 1974), pp. 126141. On supposition theory in Ockham and his contemporaries, in addition to the above, see: P. Boehner, Ockhams Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth, in Collected Articles, pp. 232267; E.A. Synan, The Univer-
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little resemblance to Ockhams actual theories and methods, those who drafted the list of articles may have thought that these practices were Ockhamist or that persons in the Arts Faculty were engaging in these practices in the name of Ockham. No matter how faint or strong the echo of Ockham in the articles of December 29, 1340 is felt to be, this type of internal evidence can never tell us whether the regent masters did or did not have Ockham specically in mind. The only important clue is the nal paragraph of the statute, which reminds the reader that the prohibition on using Ockhams works as texts for lectures and disputations is still in force. This addition suggests, as Moody rightly observed, that those who drafted the statute suspected that it could, but intended that it should not, be construed as any legitimation of Ockhams writings.21 The external evidence associating the 1340 statute with Ockhamism, however, looks suciently convincing on the surface. First, the statute, even in the manuscript, bears the rubric Statutum facultatis, de reprobatione quorundam errorum Ockanicorum.22 Second, the Procurators Book of the
sal and Supposition in a Logica attributed to Richard of Campsall in Nine Mediaeval Thinkers, ed. J.R. ODonnell (Toronto, 1955), pp. 183232; John Buridan, Tractatus de suppositionibus, ed. M.E. Reina, Rivista critica di storia della losoa, 12 (1957), 175 208, 323352; P. Boehner, A Medieval Theory of Supposition, FS, 18 (1958), 240289; P.T. Geach, Reference and Generality (Ithaca, 1962); D.P. Henry, Ockham, Suppositio, and Modern Logic, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 5 (1964), 290292; G.B. Matthews, Ockhams Supposition Theory and Modern Logic, The Philosophical Review, 73 (1964), 9199; T.K. Scott, Geach on Supposition Theory, Mind, 75 (1966), 586588; C. Giacon, La suppositio in Guglielmo di Occam e il valore reale delle scienze, in Arts libraux et philosophie au moyen ge (Montreal, 1969), pp. 939947; R. Price, William of Ockham and Suppositio Personalis, FS, 30 (1970), 131140; J. Swiniarski, A New Presentation of Ockhams Theory of Supposition with an Evaluation of Some Contemporary Criticisms, FS, 30 (1970), 181217; A.R. Perreiah; Approaches to SuppositionTheory, The New Scholasticism, 45 (1971), 381408; L.M. de Rijk, The Development of suppositio naturalis in Mediaeval Logic, Vivarium, 9 (1971), 71107, 11 (1973), 4379; S.F. Brown, Walter Burleighs Treatise De Suppositionibus and Its Inuence on William of Ockham, FS, 32 (1972), 1564; G.B. Matthews, Suppositio and Quantication in Ockham, Nos, 7 (1973), 1324; P.T. Sagal, Refuting and Defending Supposition Theory, The New Scholasticism, 47 (1973), 8487; P.V. Spade, Ockhams Rule of Supposition: Two Conicts in His Theory, Vivarium, 12 (1974), 6373; S.F. Brown, Gerard Odons De Suppositionibus, FS, 35 (1975), 544; C. Knudsen, Ein Ockhamkritischer Text zu Signikation und Supposition und zum Verhltnis von erster und zweiter Intention, CIMAGL, 14 (1975), 126; P.V. Spade, Some Epistemological Implications of the Burley-Ockham Dispute, FS, 35 (1975), 212222; M.M. Adams, What does Ockham mean by Supposition? Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 17 (1976), 375391; P.T. Geach, Distribution and Suppositio, Mind, 84 (1976), 432435. 21 Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, pp. 158159. 22 Paris, Arch. Univ., Reg. 100 (formerly 94), p. 67, n. 59.
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English-German Nation a few months later refers to a recent statute of the Faculty of Arts against certain new opinions of those called Occhanistae.23 Finally, an oath formula from 1341 listing the things to be sworn before the rector by one incepting in Arts, includes extracts from two statutes de scientia Okamica.24 One of the extracts comes from the statute of September 25, 1339. Would not the other refer to the statute of December 29, 1340? Moody was probably right in believing that the rubric was an interpretation rather than a fact, although he gave the wrong reasons. Paqu noted that the rubric was not an editorial insertion by Denie, as Moody thought, but occurs in the manuscript copy of the statute, namely the Chartulary of the University of Paris from 1200 to 1355.25 The manuscript, however, is not a contemporary record book in which statutes were successively entered as they were enacted. It is copied in one hand of the fteenth century, and the documents rearranged to suit a conceptual rather than a strict chronological arrangement.26 There is no way to know when the rubric was attached to the statute. We only know this occurred by the time the fteenth-century copy was prepared. Although the Chartulary is not a contemporary witness to the events of 1340, the second piece of external evidence comes from a source that is, namely the Procurators Book of the English-German Nation.27 This manuscript is a record book in which the elected head, or procurator of the English-German Nation, recorded the Nations acts during the month of his term. The succession of mid-fourteenth-century hands
Paris, Arch. Univ., Reg. 2, fol. 40v; AUP I, cols. 4445. C.E. Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis a Carole M. ad nostra tempora, vol. IV (Paris, 1668), p. 273; CUP II, p. 680; Paqu, p. 24. 25 Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, p. 157: It is the presence of this [nal] sentence in the statute of 1340 which caused the editors of the Chartularium to describe it as an anti-Ockhamist measure. On this point see Paqu, p. 23. The manuscript is Paris, Arch. Univ., Reg. 100 (formerly 94), p. 67, n. 59. 26 For all the discussion of the rubric, it is surprising that no one thought to date the manuscript in which it appears. The rubric would reect the intention of the authors of the statute only if it was added at the time of the statute. But there is no manuscript evidence to support that view. 27 The date of the register (Paris, Arch. Univ., Reg. 2) can be established by the multiplicity of hands changing several times a year, the mid-fourteenth-century character of the various scripts, and by the watermarks of the paper, which place it around 1340. The paper used came from northern Italy or southern France; see C.M. Briquet, Les Filigranes (Leipzig, 1923), n. 5747, 15771, 15753.
23 24
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conrms that the manuscript is a contemporary rather than a later copy; but its contents go no further than the Chartulary to establish the December 1340 statute as an attack on Ockhamists. On the contrary, if accurate, the record of the English-German Nation argues against identifying the December 1340 statute as the statute against the Ockhamists, for the procurator Henry of Unna of Denmark, whose term ran from January 13, 1341 to February 10, 1341, recorded that:
Moreover, during the term of the same procurator a statute of the Faculty [of Arts] against the opinions of certain ones who are called Ockhamists was sealed in the house of the said procurator, and the same statute was published before the University in a sermon at the Dominican convent.28
If the statute of the Faculty of Arts against the new opinions of the Occhanistae was sealed and published during the procuration of Henry of Unnaand there is no reason why such a precise account written during his term or within a few months thereafter should not be accuratethen it was sealed and published between January 13, 1341 and February 10, 1341. But the statute we have just examined was already published under the seals of the four nations and the seal of the rector of the University, Alain of Villa Colis,29 at the end of December 1340. Similarly, the oath formula of 1341 leads one to conclude that the statute of December 1340 is not a statute against the Ockhamists. The relevant sections of the oath are as follows:
Moreover, you shall swear that you shall observe the statutes made by the Faculty of Arts against the scientia Okamica, nor sustain in any way
AUP I, cols. 4445: Item tempore procuracionis ejusdem sigillatum fuit statutum facultatis contra novas opiniones quorundam, qui vocantur Occhaniste, in domo dicti procuratoris, et puplicatum fuit idem statutum coram Universitate apud Predicatores in sermone. 29 Michalski seems to have been the rst to assume, erroneously, that Buridan was rector at the time of the statute, an error Moody perpetuated and which led him to question Ockhams inuence upon Buridan; Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, p. 129. The rector was, however, chosen once every three months, at regular meetings for that purpose noted in the University calendar, CUP II, pp. 709716. The procurator Conrad of Megenberg records that he and Alain were elected the same day, i.e. December 23, 1340 (AUP I, col. 44). Paqu, Pariser Nominalistenstatut, pp. 7071, corrected Michalskis and Moodys error, but he assumes that the legislation of December 29 was probably worked out before December 23, while Buridan was still rector. There is nothing sinister in Buridans ceasing to be rector on the eve of the December 29 statute. One should also be careful not to assign too great a legislative role to the rector, Buridan or any other.
28
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whatsoever the said scientia and similar ones, but [sustain instead] the scientia Aristotelis and of his Commentator Averroes, and of the other ancient commentators and expositors of the said Aristotle, except in those cases that are against the faith. Moreover, you shall observe the statute contained in the other of the aforesaid two statutes concerning the scientia Okamica, namely that no master, bachelor or scholar should argue without the licence of the master holding the disputations, which licence he is not permitted to request orally but only in writing with proper reverence.30
The second oath is a direct quotation from the second section of the statute of September 25, 1339. It does not say that the second section of that statute concerns the scientia Okamica, but rather that this oath or statute can be found in a statute concerning the scientia Okamica, which is certainly the case. If the text of the second oath comes from this statute of 1339, the text of the rst oathor at least its subject matterwas probably derived from the other of the two statutes against the scientia Okamica. But the statute ofDecember 1340 says nothing about Aristotle or Averroes. The legislation does not concern anyones doctrina or scientia. It is an attempt to end a supercial and misleading style of argumentation and propositional analysis. Further evidence regarding the content of the second statute contra scientiam Okamicam is given in the 1474 defense of nominalism by its proponents:
The Faculty of Arts made a statute in which it enjoined that the said doctrine should not be taught because it was not yet approved and examined. And later it instituted an oath by which all swore not to teach the same doctrine in cases where it was contrary to faith. [And this can
30 CUP II, p. 680: Item jurabitis quod statute facta per facultatem artium contra scientiam Okamicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consimiles sustinebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum commentatorum antiquorum et expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra dem. Item observabitis statutum contentum in altero predictorum duorum statutorum de scientia Okamica, scilicet quod nullus magister, baccalarius aut scolaris sine licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat: quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signative reverenter. In Paris, Arch. Univ., Reg. 3, fol. 57v, the rst of the two oaths and, from the second, the phrase contentum in altero predictorum duorum statutorum de scientia Okamica, scilicet are missing, but they appear in Du Boulay, Historia IV, p. 273, where they were taken from the Procurators Book of the French Nation and where the oath is dated to the year 1341.
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be found expressly in the Book of the Rector.] And in the same book are noted four respects in which it is asserted that Ockham erred.31
Here we have a description of the rst paragraph of the statute of September 25, 1339, a description of the oath of 1341 (with a signicant distortion), and a description of another statute listing four errors of Ockham. This last reference does not resemble the statute of December 1340 either in structure or in content, for that statute prohibits six arguments without attaching Ockhams name to any. The implication of the external evidence is that there were two statutes against the Ockhamists. One is found in the rst paragraph of the statute of September 25, 1339. The second was drafted and promulgated in late January or early February 1341 and was either lost or removed when the statutes were revised, perhaps at a time when Ockhams writings were considered more acceptable, as was the case in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. In the text of the Arts-Faculty oaths copied in the Procurators Register of the EnglishGerman Nation in 1365, all prohibitions against (and even mention of) the scientia Okamica are absent. The statute of December 1340 is not the second statute against the scientia Okamica. Like the second section of the statute of September 25, 1339, it was a disciplinary measure designed to correct teaching abuses in the Arts Faculty. There are no grounds for assuming that either the disruption of disputations or the style of analyzing propositions had anything to do with a crisis over Ockham. Were the statute in question less famous, the possibility that the procurator and the oath testify to a statute now lost would occasion little surprise. In the rst place, the statute approved by the Faculty of Arts in December 1340 is not simply one of an isolated pair, the other being that of September 25, 1339. Rather, as has been shown, both occur within a series of statutes enacted over the course of the sixteen months separating them. This fact removes the grounds for assuming that the December promulgation is the second of a pair and the only statute to which Henry of Unna could be referring. More importantly, there are obvious gaps in the records of the English-German Nation, as for example, months in which no procuratorial records were
31 Translation taken from Lynn Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1944; 1971), p. 357; document appears in Du Plessis dArgentr, Collectio judiciorum de novis erroribus, vol. I, pt. 2 (Paris, 1724), pp. 286288. The bracketed sentence does not appear in Thorndikes translation. For the Latin text, see note 104.
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kept.32 Nor is the second statute against the scientia Okamica the only example of a statute of the Arts Faculty passed at that time which did not survive among the University statutes. In the summer of 1340 Conrad of Megenberg (Monte Puellarum) noted that during this period as procurator,
It was ordered by the Faculty of Arts that each of its masters actually regent in the Faculty is to wear his boneta or bereta on his head in all his public activities. Moreover, it was ordered that there be benches in the schools of the artists.33
The statute to which Conrad refers does not appear in the Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis. Knowledge that there had once been two statutes against the scientia Okamica continued into the following century. The fteenth-century version of the University chartulary, mentioned above and written at a time of growing animosity between the via antiqua and the via moderna (with which Ockhams name was allied), attempted to include both statutes against the Ockhamists. For reasons of topic similarity or dramatic eect, the organizer of that manuscript ignored chronological sequence and placed the statute of December 1340 (no. 59) immediately after that of September 25, 1339 (no. 58), perhaps adding the rubric as well. Whatever his motives, the second document he chose was not, in fact, the second statute against Ockhamist errors. The 1341 Ordinance of the English-German Nation The English-German Nations concern over the Occhanistae grew more heated in the course of 1341. At the beginning of the autumn term, almost nine months after the second statute against the scientia Okamica and when Henry of Unna was again procurator, a decision originally meant as a statute binding all members of the Nation was passed and entered in the Procurators Book:
32 For example, AUP I, cols. 3536, where no records were kept for the period of mid-November to mid-December, 1339. 33 AUP I, col. 40: ordinatum fuit per facultatem artium, ut unusquisque magistrorum actu regentium in facultate artium in actibus publicis portaret bonetum sive byrretum in capite suo. Item, quod haberentur scampna in scholis artistarum. Similarly, the statute of January 1340 of the Faculty of Arts, which was signed and sealed in the same manner as those of September, was apparently never entered into the Procurators Book of the English-German Nation; see AUP I, cols. 3637.
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Moreover, in the same congregation it was ordained that henceforth no one would be admitted to any legitimate acts of the said nation unless he rst swear to reveal if he knows any from the secta Occanica to have conspired together concerning the fostering of the sect or of erroneous opinions, or even to be sworn members or to hold small, secret meetings; otherwise, except by telling under oath if he knew, he would then incur the penalty of perjury. And those present wished to make this ordinance equivalent to a statute. This congregation took place at St. Mathurin in the above mentioned year of our Lord [1341] on the rst Friday after the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, at the ninth hour of the Blessed Virgin [Notre Dame], those masters present being Hugh of Douglas, Werner Wolfram, John Kinhard, Nicholas of Cosfeld, Gerard of Marten, Andrew of Sweden, Conrad of Megenberg, Nicholas Drukken of Denmark, and Richard the Scot.34
This interesting document has received far less attention than it deserves. In order to eradicate the so-called Ockhamists from their midst, the masters were instituting an oath, required of everyone before participating in any ocial acts of the Nation. Not only are masters, bachelors, and scholars expected to inform on their colleagues, but should anyone not take the oath, he is ipso facto suspended from participating in the academic life of the Nation. Anyone taking the oath who is later discovered to have known more than he revealed, would be guilty of perjury. This decision was adopted at a meeting of the regent and nonregent masters of the Nation. In the Liber procuratorum this statute is marked through, as though to be deleted or recopied in the Nations book of statutes. Perhaps this is the work of the commission selected by the Nation a year and a half later, charged with ordering and reforming the Liber procuratorum by adding, diminishing, and clarifying the statutes and regulations of the Nation.35 It is, therefore, not clear whether this statute was in force beyond June, 1343; but at the time of its signingpresumably with
34 AUP I, cols. 5253: Item in eadem congregatione ordinatum fuit, quod nullus decetero admitteretur ad aliquos actus legitimos in dicta nacione, nisi prius juraret quod revelaret, si sciret aliquos de secta Occanica ad invicem conspirasse de secta vel opinionibus erroneis fovendis, vel etiam conjuratos esse vel conventicula habere occulta, aliter nisi jure diceret si sciret, ex tunc penam perjurii incurreret. Et hanc ordinacionem voluerunt equivalere statuto. Facta autem est hec congregatio apud Sanctum Maturinum anno Domini supradicto, die veneris proxima post diem sancti Luce ewangeliste hora none Beate Virginis presentibus magistris Hugone de Duclas, Wernero Wolfram, Johanne Kinhard, Nicholao de Cosfeldia, Gerardo de Marten, Andrea de Swecia, Conrado de Monte Puellarum, Nicholao Drukken de Dacia, et Richardo Scoto. This ordinance was also noted by Paqu, pp. 25, 35. AUP I, col. 64. 35 AUP I, col. 64.
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the consent of the procuratornine masters were present. Those nine represented well over half the regent masters in the Nation.36 As interesting as the names of the signers of the ordinance are, the names of the masters who did not sign and, by implication, were not present at the meeting is worth attention. There were probably many reasons for absence, but among the non-signers was one master who was sympathetic to Ockham or, at the very least, knew someone who was. It is to the members of the English-German Nation that we must now turn.
The Masters of the English Nation In 13391341, the English Nation at Paris had no English masters and probably no English students. Hostilities between France and England made Parisian study too dicult for the few English students Paris had been able to attract in the previous decade. The same circumstances discouraging the attendance of Englishmen encouraged growing numbers of Scots to study at Paris where, until 1341, their king was resident as the guest of his French allies.37 The composition of the English Nation was about equally divided among Scots, Germans, Dutch, and Scandinavians. The conict over the secta Occanica within the Nation, therefore, concerned Continental supporters and opponents, not Ockhams countrymen. Among the members of the Nation present on both occasions in 1341 when opposition to the secta Occanica resulted in ocial action, was the Dane, Nicholas Drukken. Some of his teaching has been preserved, for his lectures on Aristotles Prior Analytics survive in two manuscripts, both evidently written at Paris and one dated 1342.38 At that point
36 Those who were apparently regent at the time but who did not sign were Robert de Ffyf (de Cupir), regent master since 1340; Ulrich of Augsburg, regent since 1337; Suno of Sweden, regent since 1337; Suno Karoli of Sweden, regent since 1340; Walter Wardlaw, regent since 1341; and probably Matthew of Sweden. 37 On the Scots at Paris see Donald E.R. Watt, Scottish Masters and Students at Paris in the Fourteenth Century, Aberdeen University Review, 36 (19551956), 169180; University Graduates in Scottish Beneces before 1410, Scottish Church History Society Records, 15 (1973) 7788; Scottish Student Life Abroad in the Fourteenth Century, Scottish Historical Review, 59 (1980), 321; University Clerks and Rolls of Petitions for Beneces, Speculum, 34 (1959), 213229; A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to A.D. 1410 (Oxford, 1977). 38 Nicholas Drukkens commentary is preserved in Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibl.
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Nicholas was already a master of arts, and he is designated magister by the scribe who copied the lectures which, however, he expressly states are Nicholass cursory lectures. This means that the lectures must have been delivered while he was a bachelor of arts, that is, before he was licenced, since it was the duty of bachelors rather than masters to deliver the less-detailed, cursory reading of the approved texts.39 The years in which Nicholas is most likely to have lectured are 13381340, although the records for the years in which he would have determined are missing.40 Once they resume, however, Nicholas Drukkens career at Paris is well-outlined, and the frequency with which his name appears, as the oces to which he was elected, witness his rank among the preeminent members of the Nation during the 1340s. Although Nicholas does not actually name Ockham, his lectures on the Prior Analytics show indisputable familiarity with the latters Summa logicae, parts of which Nicholas silently incorporates verbatim into his own commentary. From the Venerable Inceptor, Nicholas tacitly accepts aspects of his theory of consequences, as well as his understanding of supposition. On this last issue, which draws our attention because so much modern controversy has focused on whether the second item prohibited in the Arts statute of December 1340 constitutes a proscription of Ockhams theory, Nicholas sharply disputes the alternative proposed by Ockhams rst Parisian critic, Walter Burley. Moreover, when Nicholas criticizes Burley, he does so by name.41
der Stadt, CA 8 74, fols. 1ra34rb; and in Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 16621, fols. 249r 274r. The Erfurt manuscript is written in a single, Parisian hand, bearing the date 1342. On Nicholas Drukken, see also: Jan Pinborg, Nicolaus de Daciaen dansk logiker fra det XIV rhundrede, Catholica, 25 (1968), 238239; and Niels Jrgen GreenPedersen, Nicolaus Drukken de Dacias Commentary on the Prior AnalyticsWith Special Regard to the Theory of Consequences, CIMAGL, 37 (1981), 4269. GreenPedersens edition of the commentary along with an edition of Drukkens Tractatus de suppositionibus edited by S. Ebbesen in Corpus Philosophorum Danicorum Medii Aevi 12 (Copenhagen, 1997). 39 Erfurt, CA 8 74, fol. lra: Circa librum Priorum. Omissa recommendatione, quia lectura est cursoria, quaeritur utrum syllogismus sit possibilis. Et arguitur primo quod non, quia aliquis syllogismus fuit et corrumpebatur et numquam regenerabatur: fol. 34rb: Expliciunt quaestiones magistri Nicolai de Dacia supra librum Priorum. 40 The Liber Procuratorum is missing 13 folios, from 13331337. The date of Drukkens cursory lectures can only be approximately established by the date of his inception as regent master in 1341 (AUP I, cols. 4445). The minimum time between determination (B.A.) and inception (M.A.) was one year, but the average in the English-German Nation in this period was two or three years. 41 Green-Pedersen, Nicholaus Drukken de Dacias Commentary, analyzes the points of agreement. The relevant comparisons include Nicholas (Erfurt, CA 8 74,
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It is not clear how much we should infer from Nicholass silence when it comes to naming Ockham as his source. If the lectures were delivered before the autumn of 1339, then, as far as we know, the use of Ockham as an authority had not yet been a matter of legislation. In any event, if it is unclear whether Nicholass use of Ockham was specically proscribed by the statute of September 25, 1339, it is evident that a work in which he did so continued to circulate after that date, with no recorded penalty for its author. It is therefore worth noting that Nicholas Drukken was one of the masters of the English Nation who signed the ordinatio of September, 1341. He also changed promoters in the autumn of 1340, incepting in January 1341 under Henry of Unna of Skne (then part of Denmark). It was Henry who, in the same month, as procurator of the English Nation provided his lodgings for the signing and sealing of the second statute of the Arts faculty directed against the Occanistae. If the proscription of the secta Occanica embraced the knowledge or citation of Ockhams Summa logicae, then it is possible that the not entirely uncommon change of mentor42 signals, in Nicholass case, a changing of sides for reasons of conscience or in order to be promoted. It is more likely, however, that the change was innocuous, since John Rathe, under whom Nicholas Drukken was licenced in May 1340, had ceased to act as a regent master in Arts by the autumn term of 1340,43 and Nicholas was forced to nd another promoter. Thereafter he continues to appear in the records of the English-German nation, being elected procurator in November 1342, and again in February 1343.44 In May of that year he was commissioned with other senior mas-
fols. 28ra30ra); Ockham, Summa logicae, I, c. 64, in Opera philosophica et theologica. Opera phil. I, ed. Ph. Boehner, G. Gl, S. Brown (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), pp. 195197. 42 See, e.g.: Norman de Lesseley, who determined under Rathe in 1339, and incepted under Wardlaw in 1342; Thomas de Kinnemund, who determined under Kinhard in 1340, but incepted under Wardlaw, 1342; Johan de Misna determined under Ulrich of Augsburg, 1341, and was licenced by Werner Wolfram in 1341 (the event occurs twice in the records: AUP I, cols. 50, 5152), but incepted under Ulrich again; and within the same month in 1342: Bertold of Constance was licenced under Burchard of Constance, but incepted under Ulrich of Augsburg (AUP I, col. 57). Such examples could easily be multiplied; see also Wardlaw and Portirstona, below. 43 Rathes name ceases to appear in the Liber Procuratorum with the end of the Spring term, AUP I, col. 39. 44 AUP I, cols. 4546, Nicholas was short of the funds required to be inscribed on the roll of benece requests to be taken to Avignon. For Nicholass stints as procurator, see AUP I, cols. 6061.
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ters to reform the Liber procuratorum.45 In the meantime, his name along with Henry of Unnas and, doubtless, most of the Nation, had been included in the Universitys roll of petitions for beneces. The result had been favourable, giving us the rst record of a series of beneces with which he was provided at Aachen, Kln, Ribe, and Worms, most of them after Nicholas had ceased to appear in Paris documents. Before that occurred, however, he had served three further terms as procurator, and had been elected rector of the University.46 Although his name drops out of the Paris records after 1345, he probably continuedas others didto study there in a higher faculty, as he was later (1352) granted papal permission to be absent from his beneces for three years while pursuing his studies. It is likely that he studied theology, for in 1355 near the end of his life, he obtained appointment as treasurer at Worms at the request of the cardinal bishop of Auxerre, Petrus de Croso, who was also provisor of the Sorbonne.47 Several of
AUP I, col. 64. In March, 1342, the University began to organize the list (AUP I, cols. 5556); Nicholass and Henricus de Unna (Skne)s beneces are recorded in Diplomatarium Danicum, 3. Raekke, 1. Bind, 13401343 (Kbenhavn, 1958), pp. 216220, n. 227230, dated June 19, Avignon [also in Rotuli Parisienses. Supplications to the Pope from the University of Paris, ed. W.J. Courtenay, vol. I (Leiden, 2002), pp. 158159, 241], and are followed by other grants and dispensations from Avignon and Villeneuve (the papal summer residence) over the next month for Danes, some specied as scholars (pp. 223226, n. 236241), which indicates that they are a response to a benece roll. See Watt, University Clerks, for a list of dates when Paris, is known to have drawn up such a roll. On Nicholass terms as procurator, see AUP I, cols. 6667, 78, 8081; he was rector in March 1344 (AUP I, col. 69). Evidently he also taught for or leased space for teaching from the French Nation; AUP I, col. 78 records the subsidy from his own Nation. 47 In April, 1345, Nicholas was provided with a canonate at Kln with expectation of prebend; Dipl. Danicum, 3. Raekke, 2. Bind, 13441347 (Kbenhavn, 1959), pp. 125126, n. 143144. On the 15th20th of October 1351, a series of beneces and dispensations were granted at Villeneuve for Danish scholars. Nicholas Drukken was provided with a canonate with expectation of prebend at Worms in exchange for the beneces at Kln; Dipl. Danicum, 3. Raekke, 3. Bind 13481352 (Kbenhavn, 1963), pp. 382385, n. 494495. The permission to remain absent from Worms to pursue studies in loco ubi studium vigeat generale is addressed to Nicolao Drucken de Dacia canonico Wormaciensi magistro in Artibus, July 4, 1352; Dipl. Danicum, 3. Raekke, 3. Bind, pp. 450452, n. 570571. The timing of this permission seems to coincide with the submission of a roll from Paris, AUP I, cols. 157158, and Nicholass petition is after a series of papal grants from late June (Dipl. Danicum, ibidem, pp. 443446). On 14 Dec. 1355, Nicholas was provided as treasurer of Worms at the request of Petrus de Croso (Crozo), who claimed him as magistri in artibus familiaris et continui commensalis sui Dipl. Danicum 3. Raekke, 4. Bind 13531356 (Kbenhavn, 1966), pp. 303304, n. 368, which also lists him as canon of Worms, Ribe, and Aachen. The statement that Nicholas is a member of the Cardinals household and ate at his table
45 46
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Nicholass colleagues from the English-German Nation of 13391345 enjoyed more illustrious careers; nevertheless, this is not the career of a man ostracized from the academic life of his Nation and University. Possibly the statute or ordinatio against the secta Occanica was not enforced; possibly his colleagues did not recognize Nicholass indebtedness to Ockhams thought or perjured themselves in maintaining silence on the matter; probably, however, his adoption of aspects of Ockhams logical thought was not what he and his colleagues had in mind when they instituted their oaths. Among the Scots whom Nicholas would have known well while a master of Arts were a number who became inuential servants of their king, David II, and of the popes at Avignon. Two of the most successful were John Rathe and Walter Wardlaw.48 Already as junior members of the English Nation theylike many of the Scots who would study under themenjoyed political patronage, if not also each others. As their postgraduate careers developed, so the Scotss young boys network matured as well. For many Scots, the nexus of that network seems to have been Walter Wardlaw. Wardlaw was a slightly younger contemporary of Nicholas Drukken, and studied under the same master, John Rathe. Determining under Rathe in the spring after the famous Arts statutes of September 1339, and licenced by him in May or June 1340, Wardlaw received the M.A. under their fellow Scot, John of Kinhard, between April and June 1341, when Rathe was no longer serving as regent master. Their ties were not broken at that point, however, for by the mid-1340s Wardlaw had evidently followed Rathe into the study of theology, as he was prepared to begin lecturing in September 1349, and eventually became doctor
may indicate membership in the Sorbonne. Sorbonne documents show other college members to have been members of Petrus de Crosos household. See, for example, Georey Lemaresch in 1346, described in P. Glorieux, Aux origines de la Sorbonne, I (Paris, 1965), p. 301, and Elias de Corson, ibid., p. 308. On Petrus de Croso as provisor of the Sorbonne see AUP I, cols. 41 and 162, and Glorieux, Aux origines I, p. 322. Nicholas had died by 9 July 1357, when his beneces were provided to others; Dipl. Danicum, 3. Raekke, 5. Bind, 13571360 (Kbenhavn, 1967), pp. 4146, n. 42, 46. Given the standard nature of these beneces often used to support academic careers, there seems no reason to expect that Nicholas ever resided at Kln, Aachen, Ribe, or Worms, especially as he had concurrent canonries at the last three. 48 For their academic biographies, see Watt, Biographical Dictionary. To Rathe (or de Rate, in Watt) and Wardlaw should be added William Grenlaw (de Viridi Monte), who became Papal Collector for Scotland and who helped Rathe and Wardlaw as well as many other Scots at the papal curia. Although an inuential member of the Nation, Grenlaws forte seems always to have been administration and diplomacy.
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of Theology by 1358. In that year Rathe, who had in the meantime become the bishop of Aberdeen, seems to have assisted Wardlaw in obtaining a position as canon there. Wardlaw would not have needed Rathes help in acquiring beneces much longer, for he had already embarked on his career as secretary and envoy of the Scottish king. Eventually Wardlaw became bishop of Glasgow and, in 1383, the rst Scot ever to be named a cardinal. His career before he left Paris in 1357 was already unusual, for during the seventeen years following his inception as a master of Arts, he remained regent for at least a part of almost every academic year, serving several times as procurator and at least once as the Universitys rector, in spite of his own advanced studies and nascent diplomatic career. When he left Paris behind him, he had sponsored at least forty Scots, twenty other students from Scandinavia, Germany, and the Low Countries, and even three Englishmen, for their Arts degrees.49 There is every reason to expect, therefore, that Wardlaw played a major role in shaping the attitudes of the Nation as a whole. Unfortunately, none of Wardlaws lectures from his long teaching career has yet been securely identied, although it seems probable that two Aristotle commentaries of a Magister Gualterus Scotus deriving from Paris during the years when he was by far the most important teacher in the English Nation, are his.50 Until the identication is certain, how49 Wardlaws three Englishmen were at Paris in May, 1345. One, Robert Semere may be the Robert Seymer studying at Oxford in 1342 according to Emden, BRUO III, p. 1675. The Scot, Thomas de Wedale who was procurator, carefully noted that the three Englishmen were Anglici, AUP I, col. 82. Watt implies that Wardlaws teaching may actually have helped attract Scottish students to Paris, in Scottish Masters and Students, pp. 172173; and Watt, Biographical Dictionary, p. 570. We can assume from Wardlaws readiness to lecture in 1349 that he had begun the study of theology within the rst year of incepting, i.e. 1341, because we have some evidence of the length of prior study required. In 1366, a student of theology might be permitted to deliver cursory lectures on the Bible only after six years of theological study; two more years were necessary before he was allowed to lecture on Lombards Sentences. These statutes applied to seculars, i.e. those students not members of religious orders. The statutes of 1366 binding within the Theological Faculty are recorded in CUP II, appendix, pp. 698707, n. 11891190. If anything, the length of study required was longer two decades earlier. 50 Watt, Biographical Dictionary, p. 570, proposes Wardlaw as the author of Quaestiones Metaphysicae in Oxford, Bodleian MS Canon, misc. 226, fols. 4346; we would like to suggest also that the Quaestiones libri De anima in Sevilla, Bibl. Colombina, 7-7-13, fols. 65r86r may be his. The explicit states: Expliciunt quaestiones libri De anima disputatae Parisius secundum magistrum Gualterum Scotum. Et ego Jacobus eas scripsi anno eiusdem nativitatis 1350 die martis de sero transacta prima hora quinta decima
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ever, we can only guess his attitude towards the secta Occanica and/or Ockham from the circumstances of his career and friends. Certainly, he never suered for any sympathies he may have borne towards Ockham, and it seems likely that he found some value in at least part of Ockhams work. Although not present when the ordinatio was created in the autumn of 1341, he was presumably bound by it. Yet, there is no evidence to suggest that he hindered Nicholas Drukken; and he was present when, in May 1349, the Scot Richard of Portirstona, who had determined and licenced under two of Wardlaws own students, deposited a copy of Ockhams Logic with the Nation as a pledge for his licencing fees.51 If Wardlaw saw nothing reprehensible in the ownership of Ockhams Logic, it may be because he, like Nicholas Drukken, had been taught by someone whose interest in Ockhams opinions at the time of the ordinatio of 1341 probably already went beyond the Summa logicae. This was John Rathe who, by 1340, had been regent in Arts for many years.52 He was licenced in 1333, probably incepted in 1334, and, as noted above, remained regent until the end of the academic year 1340. While he was a regent in Arts, he was also a student in theology, giving up his regency when he began to oppose in theology.53 In 1342, he became cursor, that is, a bachelor of the Bible, and in 1343 he began his lectures on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.54 As none of John Rathes work seems to have survived, the commentaries of his fellow bachelors on the Sentences are the principal witnesses to his opinions. Two colleagues in particular, the Augustinian Hermits Gregory of Rimini and Alfonso Vargas of Toledo, recorded their disputes with John Rathe, whom they called Johannes Scotus.55 It is fortunate that, in the absence of Rathes
die mensis decembris. Among the manuscripts contents, in addition to treatises by Kilvington and Burley we know were read at Paris, are the work of Oresme and Wardlaws student Johannes de Wesalia. The manuscript is described in Charles Lohr, Aristotelica Hispalensia, Theologie und Philosophie, 14 (1975) 558561. 51 AUP I, cols. 135, 137. Portirstona determined under Thomas de Wedale and was licenced by William de Brenueth. Portirstonas fees were unusually high, XXX solidi, in a nation which graduated their fees on the ability to pay. In Portirstonas year, those who were charged at all were generally expected to pay 4 or 5 solidi to incept or be licenced. The book left with the nation was evidently considered sucient collateral. 52 Watt, Biographical Dictionary, p. 465. 53 Ibid. 54 Rathe was a socius both of Gregory of Rimini (1343) and Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo (1344). See Rimini, Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum, ed. D. Trapp and V. Marcolino (Berlin, 1978). 55 References to Riminis Lectura are to the Venice edition of 1522 (repr. St. Bonaven-
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own words, Rimini is his opponent, for when we are in a position to compare Riminis quotations with their sources, his has proven an accurate and reliable record.56 Riminis Testimony It is in the company of Ockham that Rathe appears in Riminis commentary. Whatever his sympathies for the Venerable Inceptor on some issues, Rimini was quite critical of many aspects of his thought, including his epistemological and psychological views.57 Chief among the opinions Ockham had advanced which Rimini had already attempted to refute in several questions of his commentary before encountering Rathes position were Ockhams elimination of sensible and intelligible species and his understanding of intuitive cognition.58
ture, N.Y., 1955) and to the critical edition cited in the previous note. On Vargas see his Sentences commentary, In primum sententiarum (Venice, 1490; repr. N.Y.: Cassiciacum, 1952) and J. Krzinger, Alfonsus Vargas Toletanus und seine theologische Einleitungslehre (Mnster i.W., 1930). 56 In the questions we discuss, for example, he quotes Ockham verbatim. His quotations from Adam Wodeham are so exact that they have enabled us to identify Wodehams Lectura secunda and establish some of the content of his London lectures. See Courtenay, Adam Wodeham (Leiden, 1978), pp. 3032, 123131; G. Gl, Adam of Wodehams Question on the Complexe Signicabile as the Immediate Object of Scientic Knowledge, FS, 37 (1977), 66102. 57 The major areas in which Rimini was critical of Ockham were epistemology and the doctrine of justication and grace. By contrast, however, Rimini accepted most aspects of Ockhams natural philosophy, specically his concept of time, motion, and relation. See Courtenay, The Role of English Thought in the Transformation of University Education in the Late Middle Ages, in Rebirth, Reform, and Resilience: Universities in Transition, 13001700, ed. J.M. Kittelson (Columbus, Ohio, 1983), pp. 103 162; Tachau, The Response to Ockhams and Aureols Epistemology: 13201340, in English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. A. Maier (Naples, 1982), pp. 185 217. 58 Riminis additiones are, in the opinion of the editors of the Rimini edition, for the most part earlier versions of arguments, articles, and questions that appear in the nal version of his Lectura (13431346); see Lectura, vol. IV (Berlin, 1979), pp. xxxivxxxix. This means that II Sent., d. 7, q. 3, additio 36 (Lectura, V, pp. 98117) probably predates II Sent., d. 7, q. 3 (Lectura, V, pp. 118162). In the former, Gregory discusses Ockham, with frequent cross-references back to his own I Sent., d. 3, q. 1, (e.g., p. 109, line 10). Rimini also discusses Ockhams epistemology in II Sent., d. 7, q. 2 in a manner intended to amplify remarks from the same discussion in book I, d. 3. From the thirteenth century most scholastics had explained the processes of visual perception and the various psychological activities dependent upon it as requiring the impression of object-generated images, or species, upon the sense organs. See Anneliese Maier, Das Problem der Species sensibiles in medio und die neue Natur-
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The existence of species had been challenged at Paris by an inuential minority of scholars, some of whose works Ockham evidently knew. At least one author writing in the 1320s after Ockham, Michael of Massa, had also disputed the existence of species, but he seems not to have read Ockhams arguments.59 Although Ockham alludes to his objections to species in his logical treatises, only the earlier Sentences commentary contains any extensive argumentation against their hypothesis.60 Rimini, who named Ockham rather than his Parisian predecessors as the author with whom he disagreed, knew Ockhams views from the Sentences commentary, as a comparison of their treatments demonstrates.61 Moreover, as Rimini recognized, Ockhams elimination of species was part and parcel of his understanding of intuitive cognition, elaborated only in his theological work.62
philosophie des 14. Jahrhunderts, Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie, 10 (1963), repr. in Ausgehendes Mittelalters, II (Rome, 1967), pp. 419451; Tachau, The Problem of the Species in medio at Oxford in the Generation after Ockham, MS, 44 (1982), 394443. 59 Maier, Das Problem, discusses Durand of Saint-Pourain and Peter of John Olivi, among others; Auriol describes Gerard of Bolognas elimination of species, for which see Tachau, The Response. For Massa, see Vatican, Vat lat. 1087, fols. 206va: Sequitur secunda conclusio principalis pro prima parte, videlicet quod ab obiecto visibili non causatur in medio aliquid alterius rationis in esse nature ab ipso. Et per istam conclusionem volo habere quod ab obiecto visibile nihil causatur in medio, sed immediatus eectus eius sit ipsa visio causata in potentia visiva . Pono ergo primam particulam negativam istius secundae conclusionis sic: nulla apparet necessitas ponendi speciem representativam obiecti causatam ab ipso obiecto in medio Massas arguments continue through fol. 211va. On Massa and the authenticity of this work, see D. Trapp, Notes on Some Manuscripts of the Augustinian Michael de Massa (d. 1337), Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 58133. 60 The pertinent sections of the Sentences commentary include II Reportatio, qq. 14 18, of which q. 1415 is edited in Philotheus Boehner, The Notitia Intuitiva of NonExistents According to William Ockham: With A Critical Study of the Text of Ockhams Reportatio and a Revised Edition of Rep. II, Q.1415, Traditio I (1943), 223275. Brief discussions occur in Ockhams Expositio in Librum Porphyrii de Praedicabilibus, c. 2, De specie in Opera philosophica et theologica. Opera philosophica II (St. Bonaventure, 1978); Expositio in librum Perihermenias Aristotelis, I, n. 5 (ibid., pp. 350351). 61 See e.g. Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 3, pp. 137138; Ockham, II Rep., q. 1415 T (Boehner, Notitia Intuitiva, pp. 256258). 62 Ockham, Ordinatio, prol., q. 1, in G. Gl, S. Brown, eds., Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum: Ordinatio, in Opera philosophica et theologica. Opera theologica, I (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1967), pp. 375. Ockham discusses intuitive and abstractive cognition, and the hypothesis of species again in several of his Quodlibetal questions, ed. J. Wey, Opera theologica IX (St. Bonaventure, 1980).
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Ockhams denition of intuitive cognition has usually been misread by modern scholars, regardless of their sympathies for or antipathies towards him. The consequence has been to obscure the fact that, while the great majority of fourteenth-century scholastics accepted a dichotomy of intuitive and abstractive cognition, Ockhams notion of the former was unique when he expounded it and, once his Sentences commentary began to be read or quoted, easily recognizable to any reader as Ockhams. It is therefore a useful index of the availability of the Sentences commentary. While many described intuitive cognition as a direct, non-inferential mode of knowledge of an objects existence, Ockham dened intuition as that cognition by means of which we know an object to be when it is, and not to be when it is not.63 Whatever Ockham intended by the phrase not to be when it is not, his contemporaries construed it as expanding the scope of notitia intuitiva to include direct, simple, non-discursive awareness that an object does not exist when it is not present to the percipient. Moreover, Ockham believed that direct awareness was impossible if perception occurred through the mediation of species; arguing that their existence was not conrmed by the facts of sense-experience, he held that perception could be explained without positing them.64 Rimini considered Ockhams elimination of species mistaken, for in his view it removed the ability to explain perception, memory, and abstractive thinking while, at the same time, conicting with the evidence of the senses and the authority of Augustine and Aristotle.65 In this, Rimini agreed with those who had read Ockhams Sentences commentary in England during the previous two-and-a-half decades. Those readers of the 1320s1330s, including the one scholar who actually numbered Ockham among his teachers, had rejected his formulation of intuitive cognition as well. At Paris, Rimini is the rst to display unmistakable familiarity not only with the exposition of knowledge
63 See Alessandro Ghisalberti, LIntuizione in Ockham, Revista di losoa neoscolastica, 70 (1978), 207226; Tachau, The Response. Ockham gives this denition several times in his Sentences commentary and Quodlibeta. See especially, II Rep., q. 1415 (Boehner, p. 248): Intuitiva est illa cognitio mediante qua cognoscitur res esse quando est, et non esse quando non est; Ordinatio, prol. q. 1, pp. 2627, 31: Notitia intuitiva rei est talis notitia virtute cuius potest sciri utrum res sit vel non, ita quod si res sit, statim intellectus iudicat eam esse et evidenter cognoscit eam esse pp. 7172; Ad septimum dubium dico quod per notitiam intuitivam rei potest evidenter cognosci res non esse quando non est vel si non sit 64 See Tachau, The Problem of the Species in medio. 65 Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 3 additio 36, d. 7, q. 3, pp. 138139.
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in Ockhams Sentences commentary, but also with the objections presented by such Oxford authors as Holcot, Crathorn, and Wodeham, upon whose arguments Rimini drew.66 Rimini indicates that after he had composed the lengthy answers to Ockham in the lectures on the third distinction of book I, his socii John Rathe and Francesco of Treviso, a Dominican, defended the Venerable Inceptors stance. It is therefore in response to them, Rimini says, that he returns to the matter, although he has already treated it. In fact, the rst of the two questions on book II, distinction seven aimed at Rathe and Treviso replaces a questio additionalis aimed at Ockham, and retains many of its arguments. Throughout, Rimini makes it clear that he construes Rathes and Trevisos position as but a variation upon Ockhams, and objectionable on the same grounds.67 According to Rimini, Rathe denied species in part on the grounds that they are not experienced, an argument he shared with Ockham. Gregory, however, insists that he always experiences such images when he thinks of absent objects. As further support, he reminds Rathe of a series of experiences described by Augustine and Aristotle, and that are common to all, i.e. to everyones experience. When Rathe responds
66 Tachau, The Problem of the Species in medio, discusses the reactions of Holcot, Chatton, Reading, Crathorn, Wodeham, Rosetus, and Halifax. See also Tachau, The Response, for Riminis knowledge of Crathorn; Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, pp. 123 131, and The Role of English Thought for Riminis role as the rst Parisian to be directly acquainted with Ockhams theology or with the numerous English theologians and logicians after Ockham. 67 Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 3, p. 119: Quamvis autem materia primi articuli sit aliqualiter pertractata in primo libro distinctione 3, questione 1, ad pleniorem tamen discussionem eius et propter collationem de ipsa habitam in Principiis librorum Sententiarum inter quosdam baccalaureos concurrentes mecum in Lectura et me volo iterum aliqualiter eam hic tractare, non replicando tamen quae in Primo dicta sunt nisi quatenus oportuerit propter aliqua obiecta vel dicta contraria contra illa; d. 7, q. 4, p. 162: non existentia non possunt nec a nobis nec ab angelis naturaliter cognosci in se ipsis seu intuitive, quod idem valet apud me, et hoc ipsum etiam tenui in Primo distinctione 3, questione 1, oppositum autem tenuit quidam valens baccalaureus mecum in Lectura concurrens, et de hac materia conferendo simul dicta sunt hinc et inde quam plura quae interseri huic operi utile iudicavi, idcirco nunc quaero, utrum aliquid non existens possimus naturaliter intueri seu intuitive cognoscere. The editors identify Gregorys socii following Gregorys own indications in margine. Among the arguments employed in both d. 7, q. 3 and the quaestio additionalis aimed at Ockham are the same pro and con arguments; compare also pp. 107, 124. For Francesco of Treviso, see: Thomas Kaeppeli, O.P., Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, vol. I, AF (Rome: 1970), p. 390; and C. Grimaldo, Due inventari domenicani del secolo XIV: tratti dallArchivio di S. Nicol di Treviso presso lArchivio di Stato in Venezia, Nuovo Archivio Veneto, n.s. 36 (1918), 129180.
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that these experiences are not common to him, Rimini is frankly incredulous.68 To judge from later scholasticss continued appeal to such examples of mans awareness of species, Riminis disbelief would have been widely shared.69 Although it is conceivable that Trevisos and Rathes rejection of species was inuenced by the Parisian tradition of, e.g., Durand of St. Pourain and Michael of Massa,70 there are clear indications that the alignment with Ockham was conscious and deliberate. Rimini implies that Rathes denition of intuitive cognition was required for the elimination of species; when Rimini actually describes his opponents denition of the modes of cognition, it appears that Ockham was the primary source of Rathes understanding.71 Rimini states that Rathe and Treviso agreed in their distinction of intuitive and abstractive cognition:
It was said by two bachelors that vision in the exterior sense is intuitive cognition, by virtue of which such contingent truths can be known; but thinking about an absent thing is abstractive cognition, by means of which such contingent truths cannot be known.72
Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 3, p. 120, lin.15 p. 121, lin.4. See, e.g., Peter Ceons, I Sent., q. 18, Troyes, Bibl. municipale, MS. 62, fols. 45ra-rb; Pierre dAilly, Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum cum quibusdam in ne adjunctis (Strasbourg: 1490; repr. Frankfurt: 1968), I Prol, q. 1 [p. 84] where, in response to a series of such experientiae used by Peter Auriol, dAilly insists upon species. Ceonss commentary dates from 13481349 (Paris); dAillys to just after 1375. We cite them here because their discussions were typical and, in dAillys case, inuential. 70 Within a couple of years after having returned to Italy, Francesco had donated his collection of books to his convent in Treviso. Among the items listed in the inventory, published by Grimaldo, Due inventari, are Durand of St. Pourains Sentences commentaries; an abbreviatio of Peter Auriols Sentences commentary; and Gregory of Riminis Scriptum in primum Sententiarum. Trevisos ownership of Gregorys commentary would have permitted him to discover that Gregory considered him to be in agreement with Ockhams epistemology, had Treviso been in any doubt on the matter. See also below, note 84. 71 Rathes thinking, as Rimini describes it, does not appear to have been inuenced only by Ockham; Auriol may have been a source for his claims that visio est apparentia obiecti visibilis (Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 4, p. 176), or that visio intuitiva potest esse naturaliter nonexistentis, immo aliquando de facto est (ibid., p. 177). This last claim Ockham denied (a point which Rimini obscures in introducing the question, n. 67 above). For the dierences between Auriols and Ockhams views that suggest both under the surface of Rathes statements, see Tachau, The Response. 72 Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 4, p. 122: Sed ad hanc dicebatur a duobus consociis baccalaureis quod alia ratio erat, scilicet quod visio sensus exterioris est notitia intuitiva, cuius virtute tales veritates contingentes cognosci possunt; cogitatio vero rei absentis est notitia abstractiva, per quam non possunt tales veritates cognosci.
68 69
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This denition paraphrases Ockhams,73 although Ockham further insists that without a concomitant intellectual intuitive cognition, sensitive cognition is not sucient to achieve knowledge of contingent truths. That Ockhams denition is at issue is made obvious by Rimini who contends at this point that Rathes and Trevisos denition makes sense only if they mean to call that cognition intuitive by means of which an object is known to be when it is, or not to be when it is not, and [by means of which] other contingent truths [concerning it are known].74 Rathes further arguments prove that this was indeed his own position. Ockham had held that because of the evidence that intuitive cognition provides of existence or non-existence, the intellect achieves an evident judgment by virtue of which it assents to propositions concerning the objects existence.75 This is the epistemological principle Rathe applies when responding to Riminis renewed defense of species. No one can have a cognition, Rathe claims, that terminates immediately in an object and, although unaware of his cognition, have an evident judgment by virtue of which he assents to [the proposition] this is known to me. Such a cognition is assumed, Rathe thinks, by those who believe recollection or knowledge of absent objects requires species.76
Ockham, Ordinatio, prol., q. 1, p. 24, lin.1124; p. 25, lin.1517; p. 27, lin.1015; p. 32, lin. 1011. 74 Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 3 (Lectura, vol. 5, p. 122): Hoc non valet, quia quaero, quam notitiam et qua ratione dicis intuitivam alicuius rei. Aut enim eam quae immediate terminatur obiective ad illamet ideo dicis eam intuitivam, quia sic immediate terminaturet tunc sequitur quod, si cogitatio interior immediate terminatur ad rem extra, ipsa est notitia intuitiva eius; et ulterius sequitur illatum. Vel eam dicis intuitivam ut aliqui moderni dicunt, qua potest sciri rem esse, si est, vel non esse si non est, et aliae veritates contingentes de illa. See above n. 63, for Ockhams denition. It should be noted that Riminis use of the plural aliqui moderni does not indicate more than one opponent; Auriol, Chatton, and Ockham frequently employ such a locution when quoting verbatim from one opponent, identied by name either in margine or in textu. Thus, it seems to have been a form of scholarly courtesy in most academic writing. Only rarely, when the formula is supported by further contextual evidence that plural opponents are really intended, is it safe to infer that the author used the expression literally. 75 Above, n. 63: Boehner, Notitia Intuitiva, p. 248E. 76 Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 3, p. 143: Contra conclusionem tamen istam ambo praefati socii baccalaurei arguerunt, probare volentes quod talis recordatio vel cognitio absentium non immediate obiective terminatur ad speciem rei existentem in anima. Arguit autem unus [mg.: Joannes Scotus] sic primo: Nulla cognitio terminatur immediate ad aliquod obiectum, quam habens non potest experiri se cognoscere illud sic, quod habeat evidens iudicium quo assentiat huic [complexo] hoc cognoscitur a me. Sed habens cognitionem de rosa non presente non potest experiri se cognoscere speciem rosae, igitur etc. Minor patet, quia nullus cogitans de rosa reputat se habere evidens
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Given Rathes and Trevisos rejection of species, and the formers useas well as denitionof intuitive cognition according to Ockhams teaching, Rimini was evidently justied in treating their arguments as an ensemble. These few glimpses into Rathes thinking reveal a theologian undeterred from adopting Ockhams epistemology in the face of general disagreement and his own Nations earlier legislation against the secta Occanica. If his later theological career is any indication, he may well have been inclined to lecture on the philosophical works of Ockham when a regent master in Arts. Whatever Rathes role in promoting Ockhams opinions may have been while a master of Arts, his agreement with the latter when a bachelor lecturing on the Sentences was publicized by the member of his generation whose own commentary was perhaps most inuential. In light of Riminis one-time reputation as the instigator of the condemnations of Autrecourt and Mirecourt,77 it is worth noting that no blot on Rathes career resulted from his disputes with Rimini. Instead, the very pope who oversaw the condemnation of Autrecourt in 1346 at Avignon, Clement VI, elevated Rathe to the see of Aberdeen four years later.78
Ockhamism and the Secta Occanica The Availability of Ockhams Writings By the time Portirstona left his copy of Ockhams Logic in the EnglishGerman Nations hands, copies must have been readily available at Paris. The hypothesis that Burley was at Paris when he composed his rejoinders to Ockhams logical and physical views in the mid-1320s has not been challenged and accords with the manuscript evidence.79 At any rate, it was at Paris that the Swedish Franciscan, Johannes Nicholai, prepared his abbreviatio of Burleys De puritate artis logicae to accompany the teaching of Ockhams Summa logicae, as we know from his preface to the manuscript with exactly that arrangement copied at
iudicium quo assentiat huic species rosae absentis cognoscitur a me. Brackets signal our insertions. 77 But see Courtenay, John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini. 78 Watt, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 465466. 79 See Weisheipl, Ockham and Some Mertonians, MS 30 (1968), 180187.
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Visby in Gtland in 1339, when Johannes Nicholai was lector of the convent at Linkping. He notes that he prepared the extracts from Burley that complemented Ockham, whose logic he preferred, on the few points where the latters exposition was insucient.80 Johannes Nicholais compendium is preserved at Erfurt, where there is a second manuscript containing both Ockhams Summa logicae and Burleys De puritate. This manuscript bears a date supporting a Parisian provenance, for the scribe writes that he has nished copying the Summa logicae on the twenty-third of February, in 1339 according to the more Gallicorum,81 that is, in 1340.
80 Erfurt, CA 8 67, has the following colophon: Explicit tractatus logicae fratris Willelmi Okkam de provincia Angliae [doctoris sed deletum est] sacrae theologiae, divisus in tres partes et unaquaque pars est distincta per capitula, quem scripsit [Arno Petri partim erasum] de custodia Norvegiae in Wysbi, anno Domini MCCCXXXIX cuius memoria sit in pace. Amen. The excerpta from Burleys De puritate artis logicae tractatus longior, has the following preface: Hanc extractionem de logica Burle ordinavit frater Ioannes Nicholai, lector de custodia Lincopensi, provinciae Daciae, quando studuit Parisius, anno Domini MCCCXXIX, de cuius logicae commendatione praemisit prologum in hunc modum: Post praecedentem summam editam a Fratre W[illelmus Ockham] compilavit Burle alium tractatum de logica, in quo pauca continentur utilia, realiter nihil, vel sumpta de priori summa vel de Boethio in libro De categoricis et hypotheticisi syllogismis. Quae tamen in ipso iudicavi esse utilia, posita ultra ea quae in summa praecedenti, vel quae sunt contra ea quae dicuntur in illa summa, ut opposita iuxta se posita magis elucescant et melius, breviter in sequentibus colliguntur.Explicit prologus extractoris, incipit prologus auctoris: Suppositis signicatis terminorum, etc. Quoted in P. Boehner, G. Gl, and S. Brown, eds., Summa logicae, in Opera philosophica et theologica. Opera philosophica I (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), pp. 25*26*. 81 Erfurt, CA 4 259, described in W. Schum, Beschreibendes Verzeichniss der Amplonianischen Handschriften-Sammlung zu Erfurt (Berlin, 1887), p. 508; and Summa logicae, pp. 20*21*. The explicit on fol. 157 reads: Explicit Summa supra totam logicam. Completa a Venerabili Inceptore theologiae magistro Guillermo Okam anglico, fratre ordinis minorum fratrum. Completa anno Domini M CCC XXXIX more Gallicorum, vicesima tertia die mensis februarii. At Paris at this time the members of the English-German Nation reckoned the year as beginning on March 25, according to the English practice. The University itself, however, followed the French calendar, where the year began with Easter, while others such as the Germans used the Roman practice, which began the year on January 1. The confusion this could cause led several procurators whose terms of oce included the period January to April to note carefully whether they were dating their terms more Gallicorum. See, e.g. Andreas Freouati of Smland, AUP I, col. 27: Anno Domini 1338 more Gallicano, et secundum alios 1339, undecima dies mensis Marcii Since Easter in 1339 fell on March 28, the scribe of the procurators book was contrasting his dating with that used in Germany. Similarly, the scribe of the Erfurt manuscript would have specied the French custom only if in France, where the prevailing reckoning was not his own. The most likely place for him to have been when he copied both Burley and Ockham in 1340 was Paris.
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A further manuscript, tied to Paris by its handwriting, remains there today. Of Ockhams writing, it includes most of the Summa logicae, the rst treatise of his De sacramento altaris (known to medieval readers also as De quantitate), and the extract from his Expositio physicorum concerned with motion, the De successivis. The manuscript also holds Gerard Odoniss logical writings, presumably copied at Paris, and Burleys De puritate, together with others of his treatises concerning logic and physics.82 We know that at least one of the latter was read by Parisian artistae, from the refutation it provoked from Conrad of Megenberg.83 Theologians outside the English-German Nation were clearly acquiring copies of Ockhams Summa logicae during the decade in which Portirstona appears in the Nations records. Francesco of Treviso owned a copy by 1347. It was one of 130 books acquired during his years of study away from the convent that had received and nurtured him as a Dominican, and to whom he donated the entire collection in order to enrich the convents library. This he doubtless achieved.84 Francescos opponent in the dispute over cognition, Gregory of Rimini, also obtained his own copy of the Summa logicae at some point, and one may reasonably suppose he had done so by the time he debated Francesco and John Rathe.85 There is nothing furtive about eithers possession, although, of course, the Arts statute of September 25, 1339 would never have applied to either mendicant. It would appear, then, that possession of copies of Ockhams Summa logicae was not unusual at the time of or shortly after the Arts statute of 1339. That statute, of course, applied to the use of Ockhams works in lectures and disputations, not to possession, and it was binding only
82 Paris, B.N. lat. 6441. The manuscript contains, among other items, Burleys De puritate, fols. 1ra18vb; his De consequentiis, fols. 18vb22rb; his Tractatus primus (here entitled De activitate qualitatum sensibilium), fols. 22va32va; his De intensione et remissione formarum, fols. 34rb48va. Ockhams Summa logicae, partes II et III, fols. 93ra126rb, is preceded by his De quantitate seu De corpore Christi (part of the De sacramento altaris) and the Tractatus de successivis. 83 On Conrad see below, note 95. His treatise is in Vienna, Dominikanerkloster MS 160/130, fols. 89V91V, entitled Tractatus mag. Chunradi de Monte Puellarum qui probat oppositum quarte conclusionis principalis ipsius Burley; cf. Weisheipl, Ockham and Some Mertonians, p. 184, n. 6. 84 Grimaldo, Due inventari, pp. 149154. 85 Registrum Generalatus Matthaei Asculani, Cod. Romae, Archivum Generale Augustinianum Dd 1, fol. 116r. This information was kindly provided by Dr. Venicio Marcolino.
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on those who were or had been in the Arts Faculty. But if Ockhams logic were at the centre of contention and were viewed with suspicion by the Arts Faculty and the English-German Nation, it seems remarkable that Richard Portirstona should use his copy of the Summa logicae as surety for his debt to the Nation, or that the Nation should have accepted it without comment. If the assumption is correct that the statute of September 25, 1339 was intended only to prohibit the introduction of new textbooks until such time as their suitability could be determined, the increasing appearance of copies of Ockhams Logic at Paris in the following two decades suggests that it may have been eventually accepted as a text. In 1356 the Nation accepted as security deposit another copy of that work, bound together with Euclids Elements.86 In company with Euclid, Ockhams Logic looks suspiciously like a textbook. At the very least, the number of copies in circulation at the time indicates that the work was considered important, useful, and perhaps even popular within the University community. It will be recalled, moreover, that the rst evident use of Ockhams logical positions by an author within the Nation that can be documented is Nicholas Drukkens, and that a copy of his lectures was made within two years after the Nation recorded the Arts statute against the new opinions of those who are called Occanistae, and enacted their own ordinatio. To the fomenting of what erroneous opinions did the masters object? The Scientia Occanica The rst clue to the Facultys objections lies in the oath of 1341 discussed above in section I. The new masters must teach Aristotles viewsexcept in cases where his teaching conicts with the faith together with the amplication of Averroes and other authoritative commentators. By stating that the masters must do so instead of teaching Ockhamist scientia, the oath informs us that the objection to Ockhamist scientia was not that it conicted with theological doctrineon which the Arts Faculty could make no rulingbut that it conicted with the teaching of Aristotle and his commentators, principally Averroes. Could the Faculty of Arts have had in mind Ockhams logic? In all probability, no. It is unlikely that they viewed the reorganization of logic achieved
86 The text belonged to Jacob Fortis, and the Nation evaluated it at 33 solidi; AUP I, col. 195.
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in the Summa logicae as competing with the Aristotelian arrangement of the logica antiqua, especially as they never proscribed Burleys De puritate, which was similarly structured. Moreover, it would be dicult to view the bulk of Ockhams logic as a direct challenge to the authority of Aristotle and Averroes. Most of Ockhams logic reected the common teaching of the schools.87 The only aspect of Ockhams logic that could be construed as departing from Aristotle and Averroesthe aspect that had in fact disturbed Walter Burley at Paris as early as 13261328was Ockhams reinterpretation of the categories (particularly the praedicamenta of quantity, relation, time, and motion).88 This was an issue that appeared in one form or another in most of Ockhams pre-1324 works, and although not a major part of his logic, it was a major part of his natural philosophy, namely his physics. Ockham tells us himself, in the second prologue that he wrote to his Expositio physicorum, that his innovative eorts to expound Aristotles intent might be misread as a refutation of him.89 The precise points of Ockhams reconstruction of Aristotle upon which modern attention has focused, were epitomized in his De quantitate and in the excerpt from his physics commentary, De successivis.90 The Parisian manuscript already mentioned containing these two treatises together with the Summa logicae and other physical and logical works,
87 Cf. G. Gl, introduction to Ockhams Summa logicae, p. 46*: Contentio enim circa universalia, praedicamenta et suppositiones terminorum maxime vertebatur. Sed haec non constituunt totam logicam nec magnam eius partem. Maior pars logicae erat possessio communis et pacica omnium logicorum, et de hac parte Burlaeus longe ante Ockham multa plane et perspicue scripserat. 88 Ockhams reinterpretation also concerned the related problems of universals and simple supposition; see Weisheipl, Developments in the Arts Curriculum at Oxford, MS, 28 (1966), 157161; Brown, Walter Burleighs Treatise De Suppositionibus. 89 For the prefatory remarks to Ockhams Expositio physicorum, see Brampton, Personalities at the Process against Ockham at Avignon, 13241326, FS, 26 (1966), 425, esp. 1213; G.E. Mohan The Prologue to Ockhams Exposition of the Physics of Aristotle, FS, 5 (1945), 235246; Vladimir Richter, Zum Incipit des Physikkommentars von Ockham, PJ, 81 (1974), 197201. In contrast to the oath of 1341, the decree of December 29, 1340 is concerned in part with the theological errors that might develop from certain types of argumentation. 90 See Tractatus de successivis attributed to William Ockham, ed. Ph. Boehner (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1944); E.A. Moody, Ockham and Aegidius of Rome, FS, 9 (1949), 417442; H. Shapiro, Motion, Time and Place according to William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1957); J.E. Murdoch & E.D. Sylla The Science of Motion, in Science in the Middle Ages, ed. D.C. Lindberg (Chicago, 1978), pp. 206264; W. Wallace, The Philosophical Setting of Medieval Science, in Science in the Middle Ages, pp. 91119.
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is not unusual.91 Its contents illustrate not only the interest that Ockhams teaching on quantity, substance, time, and motion drew, but also the means of becoming familiar with his doctrine without studying his entire Physics commentary. If there were many who depended on such extracts for their knowledge of Ockhams physics, they may have been more willing than he to oer theses derived from it in explicit opposition to Aristotle and Averroes. At any rate, the two Parisian authors of this period who have left a record of their opposition to Ockhamists pinpoint these doctrines as the area of controversy. The rst reference to Occanistae is in the Additiones to what is probably the Sentences commentary of Michael of Massa, O.E.S.A., read at Paris in 1326. If these Additiones are his, the appearance of Occanistae predates any other reference by about fteen years. The Additiones contain a series of questions devoted to time, duration, and motion, in which the author repeatedly disputes those who hold that time (or motion) is identical with the res permanens. In contrast to certain contemporaries who have attemptedboth with respect to physics as a whole as well as with respect to its principles and even its conclusionsto reintroduce the errors of the ancient philosophers that Aristotle frequently refuted, Michael defends the reality of motion according to the custom of Aristotle and Averroes and other philosophers.92 The error of these moderns rests upon con91 An examination of the introduction to the critical edition of the Summa logicae reveals other cases, e.g. p. 16* n. 17; pp. 27*28*, n. 53. The Vienna manuscript containing Conrad of Megenbergs refutation of Burley also contains part of the Summa logicae, as the editors note, p. 32*, n. G; see above, note 83. Paris B.N. lat. 6441 is discussed above, note 82. 92 Vatican, Vat. Lat 1087, fols. 70rb, 71ra: Duodecima quaestio erat ista: Utrum duratio successiva, quae est ipsum tempus, sit realiter idem quod motus cuius est passio . Et quia de realitate motus est unus error quorundam modernorum qui circa totam Physicam tam quantum ad principia quam etiam quantum ad conclusiones ipsius conati sunt innovare errores antiquorum philosophorum quos Aristoteles frequentissime reprobatlicet per quasdam fugas grammaticales huiusmodi errores sustineant, quae modicum valent, sicut alias apparebitideo statim pro nunc de errore istorum circa realitatem motus expedio me valde breviter . Sic ergo error istorum tamquam abusio dicatur. Et accedamus ad inquisitionem magis utilem de realitate ipsius motus. Nec oportet philosophum volentem procere, confundere realitates eorum et confugere ad proprietates grammaticales ut habeatur fuga de non explicando realitates eorum et dicultates physicas circa ipsas. Immo quantum possumus investigare [possumus] debemus explicare [ms: explicite] de quidditatibus rerum. Moveamus ergo aliquas quaestiones circa realitatem motus more Aristotelis et Commentatoris et aliorum philosophorum, praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovantium grossitive antiquorum. Cf. D. Trapp, Notes on some Manuscripts of the Augustinian Michael
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fusing grammatical analysis with an explanation of physical reality. If the contemporaries who accept the erroneous opinion are anonymous here, Michael names them elsewhere when referring back to this prior exposition:
But according to those against whom I am arguing, time and rst motion are identical, diering only conceptually. Some have said that time is the same as the heavens, and the Ockhamists concur with that opinion.93
Later, in discussing successive motion, he names Ockham and refers his audience back to these questions on the reality of motion, time, and duration.94 Michaels identication of the Occanistae is conrmed by Conrad of Megenberg in at least two treatises. In his Questions on the Sphere of Sacrobosco, Conrad states:
But here it must be pointed out, that according to those who deny that points (and similarly lines) have real being outside the soulas Frater William and his [followers] dothey would say that the second description of the sphere also follows suit according to its imaginable and conceivable being. But I am not of this opinion, and concerning this matter one has to look elsewhere, namely in [my] physical questions.95
The questions on the Physics to which Conrad here refers have not yet been identied, but he elaborates on this opinion in his Commentary on the Economica:
Or certainly one can say that the cleric is decient in scholastic status who denies the natures of many things, in the manner of Frater William of Ockham the Englishman and his followers, who assert that relations as well as place, habit, where, when outside the soul are things
de Massa (d. 1337), Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 58113. Trapp has identied the questions on the Sentences in this manuscript as Michael of Massas. But note Massas denial of species, above, note 59. [Massas lectures on the Sentences has been dated later in Courtenay, The Quaestiones in Sententias of Michael de Massa, OESA. A Redating, Augustiniana 45 (1995), 191207, reprinted in this volume as Chapter 13.] 93 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 88v: Sed secundum istos, contra quos arguo, tempus et primus motus sunt idem identice, nec dierunt nisi conceptibiliter dixerunt aliqui quod tempus est ipsummet caelum, et in sententiam istorum incidunt Okanistae. 94 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 135v. 95 Munich, Bayr. Staatsbibl., Clm 14687, fol. 74ra, as quoted in Sabine Krger, Krise der Zeit als Ursache der Pest? Der Traktat de mortalitate in Alamannia des Konrad von Megenberg, Festschrift fr Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. II (Gttingen, 1972), pp. 839883, on p. 849, n. 55.
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indistinguishable from absolute things, and arm that quantity is the same as substance.96
And once again, repeating the critique of Michael:

They even call motionsin which the actions and passions of things are formedthings indistinguishable from permanent things.97
The Quaestiones in Ioannis de Sacrobosco sphaeram were written, according to the colophon, in 1347. At that time Conrad was already teaching at Vienna, in a post possibly secured partly as a result of the letters of commendation to the Duke of Austria and community of Vienna he sought and obtained from the English-German Nation in 1340, two years before he left Paris permanently.98 During the period 1339 1341, Conrad was an active and prominent regent master within the Nation. He happened to be procurator when Wardlaw determined, and Nicholas Drukken was licenced under John Rathe.99 More importantly, Conrad was among the masters present when the ordinatio of September 1341, binding the Nation to prevent the conspiracies of the secta Occanica and their fomenting of erroneous opinions, was approved.100 He was also procurator in the month before Henry of Unna oversaw the signing and sealing of the statute against the new opinions of certain persons called Ockhamists the previous January. Perhaps that statute resulted from initiatives during Conrads term, for he recorded only that in his term, nothing was done which was
Yconomica III, tr. 1, c. 1, in Sevilla, Bibl. Colomb., Ms. 7-7-32, fol. 94rb, quoted in Krger, Krise, p. 848, n. 54. A portion of this commentary on the pseudo-Aristotelian Economica is edited in Thorndike, University Records, as De commendatione cleri from Vatican, Pal. lat. 1252. This quotation occurs on pp. 409410. The rst two volumes of Conrads treatise have been edited by Krger, Konrad von Megenberg, Werke: konomik. Monumenta Germ. Hist., Staatsschriften des spteren Mittelalters, III, 5/1 (Stuttgart, 1973); III, 5/2 (1977). 97 Ibid., p. 848, n. 55. 98 AUP I, col. 43 for Conrads request to the English-German Nation; Krger, Krise, p. 842, states that Conrad was rector of St. Stephens school in Vienna from 13421348; afterwards he taught in Regensburg. Conrads Quaestiones in sphaeram Iohanni de Sacrobosco bears the date anno 1347 in the title (Munich, Bayer. Staatsbibl., Clm 14687, fol. 71ra); cf. Klaus Arnold, Konrad von Megenberg als Kommentator der Sphaera des Johannes von Sacrobosco, Deutsches Archiv fr Erforschung des Mittelalters, 32 (1976), 147186; and Mieczysaw Markowski, Komentarze do traktatu o sferze Jana z Holywood zachowane w sredniowiecznych rekopisach panstwowej biblioteki Bawarskiej i biblioteki uniwersyteckiej w Monachium, Studia Mediewistyczne, 20 (1980), 127144, esp. 130131. 99 AUP I, cols. 3738. 100 Above, note 34.
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brought perfectly to completion.101 If so, the statutes probably proscribed the physical doctrine to which Conrad continued to object throughout his later teaching career. That is all the more reason not to view the statute of December 27, 1340 as aimed at Ockham, since none of its concerns relates to physics or the categories (praedicamenta). Certainly we can only draw inferences concerning how instrumental a role Conrads was in condemning the secta Occanica; but if we seek the instigators of those statutes and of the ordinatio, Conrad would appear to be the logical place to start. Carrying his polemic against Ockham beyond the connes of the University, he repeatedly attacked Ockhams political views as well as his physics. At the time Ockhams name rst appears in Parisian documents, Conrad had already been to Avignon as nuntius for the University of Paris and had composed the rst of his polemical treatises, the Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam (1337), which opposed political views similar to Ockhams and which Conrad presented to the papal chaplain. In light of Conrads ties to the Avignon papacy, the wider world of church politics outside the University may already have been a factor in its internal aairs in the late 1330s.102 The Political Context of the University Crisis The Parisian Nominalists, when pleading their cause with the King of France in 1474, suggested that the legislation of 1339 to 1341 was in part politically motivated. The biased nature of that source along with some obvious distortions and factual errors has led historians to dismiss its usefulness as testimony to events almost a century and a half earlier, however useful it might be as an insight into the crisis of the via antiqua and the via moderna at Paris in the fteenth century.103 And yet
101 AUP I, col. 44: Procuracio magistri Conradi de Monte Puellarum . In cujus tempore nichil est factum, quod perfecte ad actum duceretur. 102 A copy of Conrads Planctus, in Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 3197A, contains the colophon: Explicit Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam, editus a Conrado de Maegenberg, qui Parysyus dicitur de Montepuellarum, anno Domini MCCC37, in die circumcisionis domini, anno vero nativitatis sue 28vo. Conrads selection as nuntius is recorded in AUP I, cols. 2223, and conrmed by references in his own works; see his mention of his rst of several trips, quoted in Krger, konomik, I, p. xiv. For his ties to Avignon and political polemics, see Krgers introduction to the konomik, I; A.S. McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham: Personal and Institutional Principles (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 45; and J. Miethke, Ockhams Weg zur Sozialphilosophie (Berlin, 1969), pp. 133136, 431. 103 On the origins of the struggle between the reales and nominales in the fteenth century, see N.W. Gilbert, Ockham, Wyclif, and the Via Moderna, in Antiqui und
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the surprising number of instances where the account parallels what we know from other sources suggests that we give it more serious attention:
Among the nominalists the rst to be condemned is said to have been William Ockham, whom John XXII persecuted, rst because the said William Ockham took opposite sides from the pope on the heresy of the souls of the blest, which the same pope said would not see God face to face before the day of nal judgment, and similarly he said that the souls of the damned would not suer in hell before that day . A second reason why John XXII persecuted Ockham was because in his Dialogue he defended the royal authority by holy scripture and the utterances of popes and general councils and doctors of the church . For these reasons John XXII bestowed many privileges upon the university of Paris that it might condemn this doctrine of Ockhams. Yet the said university was unwilling to condemn it. But the faculty of arts, overcome by importunity, made a statute in which it enjoined that the said doctrine should not be taught because it was not yet approved and examined. And later it instituted an oath by which all swore not to teach the said doctrine in cases where it was contrary to the faith. [And this can be found expressly in the Book of the Rector.] And in the same book are noted four respects in which it is asserted that Ockham erred, none of which, as is evident to one reading them, is contrary to the faith. And the rst article is found in none of his writings. Nay, he frequently held the contrary both in his logic and his theology. And so there is an error of fact, which is intolerable. Also, the same pope ordered one of the cardinals to examine Ockhams doctrine. But although he raised many objections against Ockham, yet they found nothing that they dared to condemn. Nor did any condemnation result from the articles examined by that cardinal.104
Moderni, ed. A Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 9 (Berlin, 1974), pp. 85125, esp. 9297 on the document of 1474. In the same volume see also A. Gabriel, Via antiqua and via moderna and the Migration of Paris Students and Masters to the German Universities in the Fifteenth Century, Antiqui und Moderni, pp. 439483, and the discussion of this document on pp. 446453. 104 C. Du Plessis dArgentr, Collectio judiciorum de novis erroribus, vol. I, pt.2 (Paris, 1724), pp. 286288, p. 286: Item inter Nominales primus qui legitur fuisse condemnatus fuit Guillelmus Okam, quem Johannes XXII persecutus est, primo quia dictus Guillelmus Okam fuerat eidem Papae contrarius in haeresi de animabus beatis, quas idem Papa dicebat non videre Deum facie ad faciem ante diem ultimi judicii, et similiter dicebat animas damnatorum ante diem illum non cruciari in inferno. Secundo Papa Johannes XXII eundem Okam persecutus est quod in Dialogo suo per Scripturam sacram et per dicta summorum Ponticum et Conciliorum generalium et Doctorum Ecclesiae deendit auctoritatem regiam . Propter has causas idem Johannes XXII multa privilegia dedit Universitati Parisiensi ut ipsam doctrinam Guillelmi Okam condemnaret. Dicta tamen Universitas noluit eam condemnare. Sed Fac-
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Certain details are confused in this account, such as the failure to distinguish clearly events that occurred during the ponticate of John XXII from those that transpired under Benedict XII. We can also understand the nominalistss desire to make the documents conform with their attitudes, such as pretending that the oath of the Arts Faculty proscribed the thought of Ockham only in those things that were contrary to the faith, or making Ockhams defense of the German emperor appear to be a defense of the French monarchy. Yet the account is accurate on a surprising number of points: the dispute between Ockham and John XXII, the Arts statute of 1339, most of the oath of 1341, the existence of a second statute against Ockham, and the failure of the Avignon commission to conclude its investigation of Ockham with an actual condemnation. The most interesting suggestion in the account is the belief that the pope, through the power of patronage, pressured the University into taking a stand against Ockham, and that it was only the Arts Faculty that succumbed. Is there any truth to their suspicion? The events in the crisis at Paris over Ockhams teaching and the urry of legislative activity in the various University faculties designed to promote order and good teaching coincide remarkably with the ponticate of Jacques Fournier, Benedict XII (13341342).105 Fournier was a
ultas Artium importunitate victa fecit Statutum in quo cavetur dictam doctrinam non esse dogmatizandum, quia nondum erat approbata et examinata. Et postmodum instituit juramentum quo juraverunt omnes dictam doctrinam non dogmatizare in casibus in quibus est contra Fidem. Et expresse habetur in libro Rectoris. Et in eodem libro notantur quatuor Articuli in quibus asserebat dictum Okam errasse; quorum nullus, ut clare patet intuenti, est contrarius Fidei. Et primus Articulus in nullo librorum reperitur. Immo contrarium ejus habetur frequentissime et in Logica et in Theologia ejus. Et ita est ibi error facti, qui non est tolerabilis. The translation of the text is from Thorndike, University Records, pp. 356357, with the addition of the bracketed sentence, which does not appear there. 105 On the career of Benedict XII see J.M. Vidal, Notes sur les oeuvres du pape Benoit XII, Revue dHistoire ecclesiastique, 6 (1905), 557565, 785819; P. Glorieux, Repertoire des Maitres en Thologie de Paris au XIIIe sicle (Paris, 1933), II, pp. 265266; P. Fournier, Jacques Fournier (Benoit XII), HLF, 37 (1938), 174 .; J. Koch, Der Kardinal Jacques Fournier (Benedikt XII) als Gutachter in theologischen Prozessen, in Die Kirche und ihre mter und Stande. Festgabe fr Joseph Kardinal Frings, ed. W. Corsten, A. Frotz and P. Linden (Cologne, 1960), pp. 441452; repr. in J. Koch, Kleine Schriften, vol. II (Rome 1973), pp. 367386; A. Maier, Zwei Prooemiem Benedikts XII, Archivum Historiae Ponticiae, 7 (1969), 131161, repr. in A. Maier, Ausgehendes Mittelalter, vol. III (Rome, 1977), pp. 447 479; see also A. Maier, Eine Verfgung Johannis XXII. ber die Zustandigkeit der Inquisition fr Zaubereiprozesse, AFP, 22 (1952), 226246, and in Ausgehendes Mittelalter, II, pp. 5980.
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Cistercian monk and a conservative theologian who had been educated at Paris early in the century. The last stages of his formal education and University teaching gave him his rst contact with popular and academic heresy at Paris. While regent master of Theology from 1310 to 1317 he took part in the trial of Marguerite Porete, declaring the articles taken from her book to be heretical [see correction in note].106 He witnessed the crisis over the orthodoxy of the Sentences commentary of Durand of St. Pourain.107 Moreover, he attended the Council of Vienne, which condemned the Beguines as well as certain teachings of Peter of John Olivi.108 The same council restored episcopal power in the inquisitorial procedure of rooting out heresy and set the stage for Fourniers post-University career. His election as abbot of Fontfroide in 1311, succeeding his uncle, had not interrupted his Paris career, but his election as bishop of Pamiers in 1317 led him to give up his regency and enter upon a decade of heresy hunting in his diocese in the Pyrenees.109 From 1325 until his election as pope Benedict XII in 1334 he resided at Avignon as a principal inquisitor for cases of heresy among university theologians. As one of the nal stages in such trials he evaluated the work of the commissions that investigated Olivi (1325), Ockham (1327), Michael of Cesena, Meister Eckhart (1328), Thomas Waleys (13331334), and a host of others.110 He almost invariably found the accused to be heretical. Although Fournier opposed John XXIIs view of the Beatic Vision and was instrumental in its eventual revocation, he never released Thomas Waleys from the papal prison during his ponticate despite the fact that Waleyss imprisonment was a
R. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 7172, 80. [The Cistercian master of theology who was among those condemning Marguerite Porete has been identied by Lerner as Jacques de Dijon, later abbot of Preuilly; see Lerner, A Note on the University Career of Jacques Fournier, O. Cist., later Pope Benedict XII, Analecta Cisterciensia, 30 (1974), 6669. Fournier did not become master of theology until 1313.] 107 Fournier took no part in these proceedings, but he was present in Paris when the debate over Durands views took place. Later, on other issues, Fournier had occasion to defend Durand. 108 Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit, p. 80. 109 This period of Fourniers career provided material for E. Le Roy Laduries Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error (New York, 1979). 110 Glorieux, Rpertoire des Maitres, II, p. 265; Koch, Der Kardinal Jacques Fournier; Th. Kaeppeli, Le procs contre Thomas Waleys O.P. (Rome, 1936); B. Smalley, Thomas Waleys O.P., AFP, 24 (1954), 5057; B. Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity (Oxford, 1960), pp. 7579.
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direct result of his forceful objection to John XXIIs position.111 Nor did Fournier relax the campaign against the other foes of John XXII, particularly Ockham, whom he viewed as heretical on issues of the Trinity and apostolic poverty. Fourniers campaign against antinomianism and heresy may have been one of the inuences behind his reforms of the religious orders soon after his elevation to the papacy, accompanied by a thorough restructuring of higher education throughout Europe. The reforms spanned the years 1335 to 1339. Some reforms were achieved through direct papal ordinances; such as those for the Cistercians (1335), Benedictines (1336), Franciscans (1336), and Austin Canons (1339).112 Others were undertaken by the orders themselves with the encouragement of the papacy, such as those for the Augustinian Hermits (1338).113 The educational system of the Dominicans, with whom Benedict had close ties, was not reorganized. With the possible exception of the Franciscans, these ordinances were not the result of any papal suspicion over orthodox teaching, and they probably dened in writing many things that were already being practised. But they do reect the papal desire for tighter organization and procedures with regard to education among the religious orders. One aspect of the papal ordinance of 1336 for the Franciscans deserves our attention.
Lest new works of any doctrine whatsoever happen to be communicated or published incautiously or dangerously through the brothers of this Order, we strictly admonish that no brother without the approved examination and previously obtained special licence of the Master and General Chapter presume to publish, disseminate, or copy within or outside the Order any new theological, legal, or philosophical work, specically a book, pamphlet, summa, compendium, postil; expositions, glosses, tract, collect, compilation of questions or of sermons edited by anyone. Moreover, whoever presumes to attempt this should realize that he will be suspended from all scholarly and legal activities and from the use of books. Moreover, the aforesaid examination of a book should be done by four brothers of that Order, masters in the theological faculty, specially so delegated by the General Chapter.114
111 Kaeppeli, Le Procs; Smalley, English Friars, pp. 7678; Koch, Der Kardinal Jacques Fournier. 112 Ordinationes Benedicti XII, AFH, 30 (1937), 332386; M. Briek, De Evolutione Iuridica Studiorum in Ordine Minorum (Dubrovnik, 1942); CUP II, pp. 448451, 463465, 469471, and 480481. 113 CUP II, pp. 477479; for further reforms of the Cistercians, see CUP II, pp. 479, 483485. 114 CUP II, p. 470: Ne autem nova cujusvis doctrine opera per fratres ipsius Ordinis
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The legislation of 13351339 for the religious orders is paralleled by concurrent reforms that the Nations instituted at Paris. The University legislation of 13391341, therefore, continued an eort, discernable in Parisian documents from 1335,115 to eradicate abuses. Nevertheless, the increased frequency of legislation beginning in the autumn of 1339 had a more immediate cause. The records of the English-German Nation from the winter of 1338/39 indicate that University members eyed with growing concern a property dispute between two Arts scholars of the Norman Nation and some citizens of Valence.116 In the previous summer Stephen of Langres, the University representative of the Bishop of Senlis, the protector and distributor of papal privileges to University members, had involved himself in the dispute on the side of the scholars, and the citizens, in turn, had taken their case to the papal court in Avignon. The Faculty of Arts was not slow to recognize the opportunity oered the pope to involve himself in the Universitys internal aairs. Fourniers reform zeal was well-known to them; Conrad of Megenberg and other nuntii sent with benece rolls in the previous few years presumably reported on the attitude of the papal curia to Parisian developments. Expecting the worst, the University manoeuvered in the spring of 1339 to avoid papal ire. In July 1339, however, Benedict levelled charges of abuse against Stephen of Langres and the University, and threatened to revoke the Universitys privileges. The news reached Paris in September, as the procurator of the English-German Nation who oversaw the inscription of two statutes of that month also recorded the empty-handed return of the nuntii sent to Avignon with the Universitys benece roll. Not only unsuccessful in their mission, they brought
incaute, vel periculose communicari aut publicari contingat, districte precipimus quod novum opus theologicum, juridicum, vel philosophicum, scilicet librum seu libellum, summam, compendium, postillam, expositiones, glossas, tractatum, vel collectionem, seu compilationem questionum, vel sermonum, a quocumque fuerit editus, vel edita, seu editum, nullus frater sine subscripto examine, ac ministri et Capituli generalis prius obtenta licentia speciali, intra vel extra Ordinem publicare, communicare, vel copiare presumat. Si quis autem hoc attemptare presumpserit, omnibus scolasticis et legitimis actibus ac usu librorum se noverit ipso facto fore privatum. Predicti autem operis examen at per quatuor fratres ejusdem Ordinis in theologica facultate magistros ad hoc per generale Capitulum specialiter deputatos . 115 CUP II, pp. 443447. 116 AUP I, cols. 26, 2832. The major documents in the case can be found in CUP II, pp. 476477, 482483, 487488, 488489, 497498, 498499, 521522. Stephen of Langres had ties with the University beyond his administration of privileges. He had been procurator of the French Nation, rector of the University, and in 1338 was a licentiate in law.
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the popes demand to see the Universitys documentary evidence for its privileges, which he intended to reconsider.117 When Benedict refused the requests in the Universitys benece roll, the income of a large part of the University community was at stake. Hence, although the reforms decreed in the autumn of 1339 built upon earlier legislation, the papal threat doubtless added urgency. It was in that atmosphere that the Arts Faculty in September 1339 undertook to reform itself and, among various items of legislation, rearmed its right to determine the texts appropriate for lectures and disputations, specically prohibiting the works of one of the principal enemies of Benedict XII: William of Ockham. Is it not, therefore, possible that Conrad of Megenberg, or others similarly ill-disposed toward Ockham, used the papal rejection of the Universitys benece roll as leverage in persuading their colleagues to pass legislation prohibiting the use of Ockhams works as authoritative texts? If their action was in any way designed to appease Benedict, it was unsuccessful. In February 1340 Benedict suspended the privileges of the University. In the following autumn Benedict, probably prompted by interested parties at Paris, began inquisitorial procedures against a number of bachelors and students in the Theological Faculty at Paris, most of them seculars, including Nicholas of Autrecourt. Among the accused were two English students from his own Order, the Cistercians.118 The Universitys privileges were not restored until July 1341.119 The atmosphere changed in 1342 with the death of Benedict XII and the election of Pierre Roger as Clement VI. Roger was also a Paris doctor of Theology but one of more liberal temperament.120 The Cistercian Richard of Lincoln was cleared of the charges of holding fantastic opinions.121 The cases against most of the Parisian students called to Avignon were dropped. Thomas Waleys was nally freed from the
AUP I, col. 35; CUP II, p. 487. The white monk Henry of England was called to Avignon in November 1340 along with Autrecourt; CUP II, p. 505. Before 1342 a second Cistercian, Richard of Lincoln, was accused by Benedict XII of holding opiniones phantasticae; CUP II, pp. 541 542. For additional discussion see Courtenay, John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini, RTAM, 39 (1972) 226230. 119 CUP II, pp. 521522. 120 On Pierre Roger as theologian see A. Maier, Der literarische Nachlass des Petrus Rogerii (Clemens VI.) in der Borghesiana, RTAM, 15 (1948), 332356, 16 (1949), 72 98, and in Ausgehendes Mittealter II, pp. 255315; Franois de MeyronnesPierre Roger, Disputatio (13201321), ed. J. Barbet (Paris, 1961). 121 CUP II, pp. 541542.
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papal prison and allowed to return to England.122 In keeping with earlier papal concerns, however, the trial of Autrecourt was brought to completion, followed by Clements letter of correction to the University.123 The legislation in the various faculties of the University of Paris during the years 13391341 should probably be viewed as a secular counterpart to the educational legislation for the mendicant and monastic orders in the previous few years. These reforms were directly or indirectly encouraged by Benedict XII, who gave some of them the added prestige and universality of papal legislation. Although little in the reforms directly concerned philosophical or theological opinions, Benedict certainly felt that an orderly classroom and sound doctrine went together. The crisis over Ockhams works and the secta Occanica at Paris thus has two faces. To the degree that it was a real problem of internal concern at Paris, it was a concern limited to the Arts Faculty and primarily a crisis within the English-German Nation, probably over the physics of Ockham, his reinterpretation of the categories (praedicamenta). There is no evidence that the Faculty of Theology was involved, nor that the theology or logic of Ockham ever came into question. To the degree that it was a problem of external pressure, the pressure was to reassert magisterial control over academic exercises and to correct abuses in the method of arguing, lecturing, and debating. It was a pressure applied more to the non-mendicants in the University than to other groups, and it was probably applied to all faculties alike. To that degree, the Arts statute of December 1340 concerned with misleading analysis of propositions is perhaps related to the calling of Autrecourt and others to Avignon for similar abuses in theological teaching. But neither event had any particular relation to Ockhams works or Ockhamism. That dimension of the crisis was simply the way in which the Arts Faculty responded to events, which allowed a long-simmering dispute over Ockhams physics to are into the open. The opponents of Ockhams thought could use the crisis and the fact of the anti-Ockham pope to purge their faculty of the Ockham-sympathizers in their midst. How long the Arts prohibitions on Ockhams philosophical teaching remained in eect is unknown, but they probably did not long survive the death of Benedict XII. By 1343 Gregory of Rimini was openly
122 123
Smalley, English Friars, pp. 7879. CUP II, pp. 587590.
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teaching positions in physics that paralleled Ockhams. Although Rimini was not subject to the statutes of the Arts Faculty and was, in fact, sharply critical of Ockham on other issues of philosophy and theology, the ease with which Rimini espoused Ockhams natural philosophy without opposition suggests that Ockham had become a gure whose works and ideas could be discussed openly and adopted or rejected on their own terms, not on the basis of party lines within the Arts Faculty or between the University and Papacy.
chapter ten
FORCE OF WORDS AND FIGURES OF SPEECH: THE CRISIS OVER VIRTUS SERMONIS IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY* On the Friday after Christmas in 1340 the Arts Faculty at the University of Paris, during the rectorship of Alain de Villa Colis, enacted a statute listing propositions and types of argumentation that should not be used in the schools by any master, bachelor, or scholar under pain of expulsion from the faculty forever.1 Most of the articles in that statute concerned arguments employing the phrase de virtute sermonis, to the eect that propositions taken from authoritative sources should not simply be called false, de virtute sermonis. This statute was identied in the fteenth-century manuscript of the Chartularium as being directed against Ockhamist errorsa rubric repeated in Denies edition of the Chartulary and expanded upon by Michalski, who attempted to link the expression de virtute sermonis to Ockhams theory of language and personal supposition.2 That interpretation was subsequently rejected as highly unlikely by Boehner and Moody, but has been resurrected and defended by Ruprecht Paqu in his book-length study of this statute, and by T.K. Scott.3 As has been established elsewhere,4 this statute was mislabeled and was not one of the two anti-Ockhamist statutes promulgated in the
* Presented at a conference on Ockham at St. Bonaventure, N.Y, in 1985 and published in 1988 in Franciscan Studies, 44 (1984), 107128. 1 CUP II, 505507, n. 1042. 2 The relevant section of the manuscript of the Chartularium, whose somewhat topical structure was rearranged and added to in Denies edition, is Paris, Arch. Univ., Reg. 100 (formerly 94), p. 67, n. 59. C. Michalski, Le probleme de la volont Oxford et Paris au XIVe siecle, Studia Philosophica 2 (1937), 255261. 3 Ph. Boehner, Ockhams Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth, FS, 6 (1946), 261292, reprinted in Collected Articles (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1958), pp. 232267; E.A. Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt: The Parisian Statutes of 1339 and 1340, FS, 7 (1947), 113146, reprinted in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science, and Logic (Berkeley, 1975), pp. 127160; Ruprecht Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut (Berlin, 1970); T.K. Scott, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan, and Ockhamism, JHP, 9 (1971), 1541. 4 W.J. Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-Ger-
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same period at Parisone in September of 1339 that is still extant, and one early in 1341 that no longer exists, but which can be partially reconstructed from references to it in the 1341 oaths of the arts faculty and in the Nominalist defense of 1474. Even so, the 1340 statute with which we are here concerned did appear in the midst of a crisis over the degree to which Ockhams writings and views should be used in the schools, and a study of the meaning and function of the phrase de virtute sermonis, particularly in the fourteenth century, may hold some answers for its original context and purpose. As far back as 1946 Boehner attempted to erase many of the misunderstandings about the meaning of the expression de virtute sermonis and shed light on Ockhams use of it.5 The persuasiveness of his analysis was handicapped by his need for brevity (it was given as an aside in the context of another article), by a few unfortunate mistakes, and probably by the ad hominem assumption by many that Boehner had a vested interest in freeing Ockham from the taint of heresy. Yet when Boehners analysis is considered on its own merits, it is essentially correct. It is only insucient in the degree of attention given to the preand post-Ockhamist history of the phrase de virtute sermonis and the limitation of discussing it only in the context of supposition theory, leading to the mistaken inference that the expression de virtute sermonis was equivalent to and interchangeable with proper supposition, as opposed to improper supposition, or ex usu loquendi.
Meaning and Verbal Sense: the Origins of Virtus Sermonis Although the specic phrase de virtute sermonis is not found, so far as I am aware, before the thirteenth century, the distinction of which it is a part, namely between the literal and derived meanings of a word, goes back to Greek grammar, just as do many of the names used today for the various gures of speech, e.g. synecdoche, metonymy, or metaphor. Aristotle distinguished between proper and metaphoric language, and gave some attention to the dierent types of metaphor.6 The subsequent
man Nation at Paris, 13391341, History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 9]. 5 Boehner, Collected Articles, pp. 248253. 6 Aristotle, Rhetorica III, 24. In his discussion of style Aristotle uses the word arete, which was rendered into Latin as virtus. Because of Aristotles distinction of proper
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contributions of the Stoics and Alexandrians to the study of rhetoric and earlier Greek poetry led eventually to a more formal study of grammar, especially as embodied in the popular Techne grammatike once attributed to Dionysios Thrax.7 By the rst century B.C. the Roman world was making comparable strides in linguistics, especially through such works on grammar and rhetoric as the Ad Herennium, Varros De lingua latina and Ciceros De inventione rhetorica, and Topica. For the next few centuries grammatical study entailed two research frontiers of use to philosophers and rhetoricians alike. One of these was to identify the precise meaning of similar words.8 The goal among Roman rhetoricians was precision in language and the attainment of pure Latinity. In order to arrive at the proper meaning of each word, whether that meaning was natural or assigned, considerable eort went into dening precise meaning among synonyms on the assumption that each word had its own character or special meaning. Treatises de proprietate sermonum or Dierentiae formed a favored type of grammatical work in the ancient, medieval, and renaissance periods and would have been familiar to any Parisian scholastic in the fourteenth century.9
terms and metaphorical terms, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century commentaries on his Rhetorica continue to use the language of locutio propria and locutio impropria, e.g. in Giles of Rome. 7 Dionysios Thrax, Ars grammatica or Techne, ed. G. Uhlig in Grammatici graeci, Pt. I, Vol. I (Leipzig, 1883). Dionysios Thrax, in his analysis of nouns, had distinguished between primitive words and derived words, but for the latter he was mostly concerned with the categories of root meanings of proper names, not gures of speech. On the development of Greek grammatical theory see Jan Pinborg, Classical Antiquity: Greece, in Current Trends in Linguistics, ed. T.A. Sebeok, 13 (1975), pp. 69126, and his citations of the earlier contributions of Detlev Fehling. Pinborg also accepts Di Benedettos arguments on the authenticity and redating of the Techne. I am grateful to Sten Ebbesen for his helpful remarks on this and related issues. 8 The ancient semantic division between those who asserted that words had meaning by nature and those who asserted that language was man-made, ad placitum, had long since resulted in a compromise that favored what was assumed to be the original meaning of words, based on a natural relationship between the thing and the word that expressed or symbolized it. Present linguistic usage, particularly the anomalies that had arisen as derived meanings moved further away from primitive words and those semantically related to them, was the key to uncovering the archeological layers of derived meaning, the history of each word, and etymologically arriving back at its original, natural meaning. 9 For example in Cicero, Isidore, Bede, Alcuin, and later writers. For the history of the tradition see Myra Uhlfelder, De Proprietate Sermonum vel Rerum. A Study and Critical Edition of a Set of Verbal Distinctions, Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 15 (Rome, 1954). I would like to thank Fannie LeMoine for directing me to this study and to the Ad Herennium.
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The second research frontier was to identify the dierent meanings of the same word. The research goal remained the same: to isolate the proper or root meaning of a word by separating out or peeling o the accretions of acquired meanings. It was in this context that transferred or gurative meanings were discussed, and if philosophers were primarily interested in precise, proper meanings of words, rhetoricians recognized, alongside etymological reasoning, the persuasiveness of arguments based on the image-power of gurative language. Discussions of the dierence between literal and transferred meanings were equally prevalent in the ancient period, received frequent treatment in the Middle Ages, and were familiar to any fourteenth-century Parisian scholastic.10 In talking about the meaning or sense of a word, the Ad Herennium employed the term potestas verbi.11 Potestas covered any meaning, multiplices potestates, and was not limited to proper meaning.12 Varro and Cicero used the term signicatio in a similar unrestricted sense, and Cicero used an additional term, vis: the force or meaning of a word.13 The image behind vis is the same as that behind potestas: power or force, but for Cicero the vis verbi was usually its root meaning and was useful to the orator as a way of developing an argument, namely etymologically.14 Although Cicero discussed disputes that centered on the meaning of words in statements of past authors and fully recognized problems of ambiguity and dierences between literal and intended meaning, disputes over a vis verbi centered on the denition or root meaning of a word or phrase.15 That usage was generally followed by later authors, and the etymological context of vis placed it for several cenThe importance in this regard of the treatments by Cicero, Augustine, Isidore, and others will be discussed below. 11 Ad Herennium IV, 31: Restant etiam decem exornationes verborum. Nam earum omnium hoc proprium est, ut ab usitata verborum potestate recedatur atque in aliam rationem cum quadam venustate oratio conferatur. 12 Ad Herennium IV, 53: Ea reperientur facile si noverimus et animum adverterimus verborum ancipites aut multiplices potestates. 13 For signicatio verbi see Varro, De lingua latina 9, 40; signicatio scripti in Cicero, De partitione oratoria 31, 108; 38, 132. Cicero, Ad Brutum Orator 32, 115: Noverit primum vim, naturam, genera verborum et simplicium et copulatorum; Oratio pro Balbo 8, 21; Epist. ad familiares 6, 2, 3; De nibus 2, 2, 6. 14 Cicero, Topica 8, 35: Multa etiam ex notatione sumuntur. Ea est autem, cum ex vi nominis argumentum elicitur; quam Graeci etymologia appellant, id est verbum ex verbo veriloquium. 15 Cicero, De inventione I, 1213: tum vis verbi quasi in denitiva constitutione, in quo posita sit, quaeri.
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turies on the fringe of the more general division between literal and derived meanings.16 The contrast between literal and gurative meanings of words, the latter known as tropoi, fascinated grammarians and rhetoricians alike. Quintillian mentions the heated battle in his day between the grammarians and philosophers over the number and subcategories of tropoi or tropi, as they were known in Latin.17 But by the fourth century thirteen types of gures of speech had been agreed upon, the number adopted by Isidore and later writers.18 Scaurus and Diomedes dened tropus as a mode of adorned discourse in which the meaning of an expression is transferred from its proper signication to an improper one.19 Thus the phrases modi locutionum, locutio gurata, and verbum translatum became expressions for gurative meaning. And although modern Latin dictionaries will often distinguish between transferred meaning and gurative meaning, that distinction is far less clear in the late antique.20 Perhaps the most sensitive area in which the distinction between literal and gurative meaning was discussed was in the understanding of Scripture. It was recognized on all sides that biblical language was highly gurative, and Augustine in particular attempted to establish rules for determining when scriptural words or phrases should be taken literally, when gurativelya distinction of great importance to him.21
16 Quintillian refers to the root meaning of metonymy, Institutiones oratoriae 8, 6, 23: Metonomia, cuius vis est, pro eo, quod dicitur, causam, propter quam dicitur, ponere. That would also seem to be the way in which Augustine uses it De doctrina christiana III, ch. 1. 17 Quintillian, Inst. 8, 6, 1: Tropus , circa quem inexplicabilis et grammaticis inter ipsos et philosophis pugna est, quae sint genera, quae species, qui numerus, qui cuique subiciatur. 18 Ad Herennium IV, 31 knew ten tropes. Donatus mentions the thirteen types that become standard. See Isidore, Orig. I, 37, 1: ex omnibus Donatus tredecim usui tradenda conscripsit. An excellent discussion is provided in J. Fontaine, Isidore de Seville et la culture classique dans lespagne wisigothique, vol. I (Paris, 1959), pp. 125156. 19 Diomedes, Gramm., cited from Fontaine, Isidore, p. 143: Tropus est, ut ait Scaurus, modus ornatae orationis et dictio translata a propria signicatione ad non propriam. See earlier Quintillian, Institutiones oratoriae 9, 1, 4: est igitur tropus sermo a naturali et principali signicatione translatus ad aliam. 20 Transferred meaning describes the application of a word outside its original or main meaning, such as the application of an action of a living being transferred to inanimate objects or abstractions. Figurative meanings depend on gures of speech. 21 Augustine discussed the problem at many points in his writing, including De Trinitate, De dialectica, and the entire third book of De doctrina christiana. Cassiodorus referred to a work of Augustine under the title De modis locutionum specically dealing
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He described literal meaning through such phrases as ad litteram, locutio propia, in verbis propriis, ad proprietatem verborum. Figurative meaning was described as tropos, modus locutionum, locutio translata, locutio gurata, or in verbis translatis. The grammatical and exegetical distinction between literal and gurative meanings of words, especially as discussed in the writings of Donatus (the grammarian) and Augustine was passed down through the centuries.22 In discussions of signication at the opening of the twelfth century we nd the distinction between literal and gurative meaning still expressed in the language of proper and improper locution. Master Ulger of Angers dened accidental predication as the gurative meaning or improper locution in which a word is used in another sense from the one it normally or properly has.23 Abelards preface to Sic et non makes the dierence between the usus and proprietas of words a major reason for the seemingly divergent opinions among the fathers.24 By the thirteenth century, however, virtus was beginning to replace vis and proprietas as the word most frequently used to express the force,
with gures of speech in Scripture, which may refer to Locutionum in Heptateuchum. Augustine, De doctrina christiana III, ch. 1, Corpus Christianorum, 32 (Turnhout, 1962), p. 77: ne vim naturamve earum, quae propter similitudinem adhibentur. Ibid.: sciat ambiguitatem scripturae aut in verbis propriis esse aut in translatis. Ibid., ch. 5 (CCh 32, 82): Sed verborum translatorum ambiguitates. Nam in principio cavendum est, ne guratam locutionem ad litteram accipias. Ibid., ch. 29 (CCh 32, 100): Sciant autem litterati modis omnibus locutionis, quos grammatici graeco nomine tropos vocant, auctores nostros usus fuisse multiplicius atque copiosius, quam possunt existimare vel credere. Ibid. (CCh 32,101): qui nullos grammaticos audierunt et eo, quo vulgus utitur, sermone contenti sunt. Quis enim non dicit sic oreas? qui tropus metaphora vocatur. Ibid. (CCh 32, 102): quia cum sensus, ad proprietatem verborum si accipiatur, absurdus est. The degree of importance Augustine attached to this issue is reected in his willingness to borrow the rules used toward the end of De doctrina christiana from a Donatist work. 22 The literal/gurative distinction receives extensive treatment in Priscian, Cassiodorus, Isidore, and throughout the tradition of medieval textual exegesis, principally biblical. 23 Abelard, Dialectica, ed. L.M. de Rijk (Assen, 1956), p. 168: Magister autem noster U. accidentalem praedicationem secundum gurativam atque impropriam locutionem totius enuntiationis accipiebat; impropriam autem locutionem eam dicebat cuius verba aliud sententia proponunt quam in voce videantur habere; veluti cum Homero iam mortuo dicitur: Homerus est poeta, ac si diceretur: Homeri opus existit quod ex ocio poetae composuit. 24 Abelard, Sic et Non, ed. B. Boyer and R. McKeon (Chicago, 19761977), pp. 88 90: cum frequenter eveniat ut verborum propria signicatio nonnullis sit incognita aut minus usitata. Quibus quidem si ad doctrinam, ut oportet, loqui volumus, magis eorum usus quam proprietas sermonis aemulandus est, sicut et ipse grammaticae princeps et locutionum instructor Priscianus edocet.
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sense, or literal meaning of a word. So we nd Bonaventure using the expression de virtute sermonis in discussing the meaning of alius in the proposition Deus genuit alium Deum.25 Similarly, Aquinas used equivalent expressions, such as ex virtute vocabuli, ad virtutem vocabulorum, in virtute dictionum, and once ex vi verborumalways in the context of signication.26 Modist commentaries on Aristotles Sophistici elenchi also used the expressions de vi vocis and de virtute sermonis in dealing with problems of equivocation.27 It is in the fourteenth century that the distinction between virtus sermonis and usus loquendi becomes commonly used. And more often than not, it is the English authors who employ it most frequently. Father Synan, in his edition of Richard Campsalls Questions on Prior Analytics, noted Campsalls use of the distinction.28 As Synan observed, Devices
25 Bonaventure, Sent. I, d. 4, q. 2 (Quaracchi, 1882) I, p. 100: Sed licet ista distinctio in locutionibus theologicis propter quendam proprium modum loquendi locum habeat, tamen quantum esset de virtute sermonis, non esset distinguenda. Sent. I, d. 5, a. 1, q. 1 (I, pp. 142113): Sancti enim quandoque ad confundendas haereses expressius loquuntur, quam proprietas sermonis sustineat. Sent. III, d. 5, a. 1, q. 5 (III, p. 129): Et propterea locutio gurativa, in qua signicatur per synecdochen caro sumi pro toto homine, simpliciter respuitur, pro eo quod magis recedit a sermonis proprietate et ab expressione veritatis, et approximat intellectui erroris.Qua de causa multae negantur locutiones a doctoribus theologiae, ne paralogizentur et decipiantur simplices, qui nesciunt vocabulorum virtutes. Sent. III, d. 8, a. 1, q. 1. Sent. III, d. 11, a. 2, q. 1, ad 1 (III, p. 250): Sancti aliquando multum expresse loquuntur, amplius quam admittat communis usus, ob aliquid exprimendum; et tales sermones non oportet extendi, sed magis sunt exponendi. Et sic est in praedicto sermone, cum dicunt, Christum esse creaturam; hoc autem dicunt secundum humanam naturam, et vere loquuntur; non tamen oportet, sermonem istum trahi ad communem usum. Sent. IV, d. 11, p. 2, dub. 2 (IV, p. 265): sicut in signis vocalibus duplex attenditur signicatio, scilicet propria et allegorica; ita et in hac duplici signicatione simul accipitur in theologia. Et sicut fallit regula sophistarum in primis signis, quia in theologia dictio simul accipitur moraliter et litteraliter et allegorice; sic fallit in his signis, quia unum principaliter et proprie signicant, et aliud allegoricae. 26 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theol. I, q. 29, a. 4: ex virtute vocabuli essentiam signicet. Thomass phrase ex virtute vocabuli is an exact equivalent to de virtute sermonis, and by it Thomas means the obvious, direct verbal meaning which, if left by itself, would lead to a heretical interpretation or the rejection of the doctrine as false. Summa theol. I, q. 36, a. 1, ad 1: prout sumitur in virtute duarum dictionum. Summa theol. I, q. 36, a. 2, ad 3: ex vi illorum verborum. Cf. Sent. I, d. 10, q. 1, a. 4, ad 1. 27 Incertorum Auctorum Quaestiones super Sophisticos Elenchos, ed. S. Ebbesen, Corpus Philosophorum Danicorum Medii Aevi, VII (Copenhagen, 1977), pp. 46, 107, 111, 127 130, 147, 151, 159, 182, 284, 290, 292, 295296, 300, 336339, 346, 365, 370; Simon of Faversham, Quaestiones super Libro Elenchorum, ed. S. Ebbesen et al., Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Text, 60 (Toronto, 1984), pp. 74, 9596, 137, 192195, 228229. I am grateful to Sten Ebbesen for calling these passages to my attention. 28 The Works of Richard of Campsall, Vol. I: Questiones super librum priorum analecticorum,
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such as supposition do not always solve the ambiguities that arise from ordinary language and Campsall is often to be seen distinguishing between what might be gathered plausibly from the strict force of an expression and what a man, competent in the idiomatic use of the language at issue, would judge spontaneously to be the intention of a speaker who conformed in this expression to that usage.29 As the analysis of propositions increasingly became a central part of the training in logic in the fourteenth century, training in the various ways of responding and distinguishing took a more prominent place, both in the classroom and in the written products of scholastic debate. Some distinctions were applied to the proposition as a whole, such as the distinction between the composite and divided senses; or the distinction between viewing a proposition from the standpoint of Gods power as ordained, in which case the proposition homo potest salvari sine gratia is false, or viewing the same proposition from the standpoint of Gods power taken simply or absolutely, in which case it is true.30 Other distinctions were applied to terms in a proposition, such as strict sense vs broad or large sense, literal vs transferred meaning, or the application of the various forms of supposition.31 Thus, just as the frequency of the distinction of absolute and ordained power increased in the rst quarter of the fourteenth century, so too the distinction between virtus sermonis and usus loquendi. And we need to keep in mind that they functioned as distinctions or pairs, not as isolated expressions. They were used to show in what sense a proposition was true and in what sense false.
ed. E.A. Synan (Toronto, 1968), p. 45: et ideo, quelibet talis est neganda de virtute sermonis, admisimus, tamen, tales ex usu loquendi ; dicendum est quod secunda proposicio, accepta de virtute sermonis, est falsa. Ibid., 141: et istud potest concedi de virtute sermonis; alio tamen modo accipiendo hoc adverbium, magis est ex usu loquendi. 29 Ibid., p. 27. 30 For the importance of distinguo and the composite and divided senses, see N. Kretzmann, Sensus compositus, sensus divisus, and Propositional Attitudes, Medioevo, 7 (1981), 195229. The role of the potentia absoluta, potentia ordinata distinction in propositional analysis has been largely overlooked. See my The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages, in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. T. Rudavsky (Dordrecht, 1984), pp. 243269. 31 Some of these distinctions were used in legal argumentation, such as between strict construction and wider interpretation, or between the letter of the law and the intention of the law.
the crisis over virtus sermonis Supposition and Virtuous Words
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The fullest discussion of virtus sermonis in Ockham occurs in his Summa logicae in the chapter dealing with improper supposition. We should, therefore, examine for a moment the development of the concept of improper supposition and its connection with our distinction. The earliest mention of improper supposition appears to be in the logical treatise known as Cum sit nostra, written in England toward the end of the twelfth century and revised in the course of the thirteenth.32 In the section on supposition, the author listed various types of supposition, including toward the end suppositio geminata (supposition of joined subjects, predicates, or adverbial phrases), suppositio antonomatica (title in place of a personal name, or a personal name for a type), suppositio metonomatica (substitution of cause for eect, or eect for cause, or an association name for the true name), suppositio sinodochica (part for the whole or whole for the part), and suppositio impropria (substitution of the name of a nation for its people). The interesting feature here is that improper supposition is considered to be one type of a variety of supposition forms based on gures of speech. Moreover, the phrase de virtute sermonis is not used in this context. Most thirteenth-century treatises on supposition do not mention gures of speech or improper supposition. Roger Bacon, however, does so in his Sumulae dialectices, drawing heavily upon Cum sit nostra but leaving out synecdoche and distinguishing between modus loquendi and veritas.33 Walter Burley, in a treatise written around 1301, also relied upon Cum sit nostra, but he restructured the discussion to place under improper supposition all types of supposition based on gures of speech.34 Burley is the rst to introduce the phrase de virtute sermonis into the discussion of supposition. All forms of improper supposition are based on gures of speech and use words ex usu loquendi, not de virtute sermonis. Ockhams treatment of supposition in his Summa logicae is based on Burleys treatise, with some important dierences.35 In his discussion of
32 Logica Cum sit nostra, ed. in L.M. de Rijk, Logica modernorum, II.2 (Assen, 1967), pp. 447448. 33 Roger Bacon, Sumulae dialectices in Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, fasc. 15, ed. R. Steele (Oxford, 1940), pp. 287288. 34 Stephen Brown, Walter Burleighs Treatise De suppositionibus and Its Inuence on William of Ockham, FS, 32 (1972), 1564. 35 Ockham, Summa logicae, ed. Ph. Boehner, G. Gl, and S. Brown (St. Bonaventure, 1974), pp. 236238.
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improper supposition Ockham adopts Burleys explanatory distinction between de virtute sermonis and ex usu loquendi. He briey summarizes, however, the types of improper supposition and quickly moves into a plea for the central importance of improper supposition, since many authoritative statements, indeed most, entail ambiguities of this kind. Thus, it is important to determine when a term and a proposition are being taken de virtute sermonis and when secundum usum loquentium or according to the intention of the author. The reason is because there is hardly a word which is not in some way employed equivocally in various places in the books of the philosophers, saints, and authors. And therefore those always wishing to take a word univocally and in just one sense frequently err about the intentions of authors and in the inquiry after truth, since almost all words are employed equivocally.36 Neither Burley nor Ockham intended to equate proper supposition and de virtute sermonis, or improper supposition and ex usu loquendi. They were only saying that forms of improper supposition depended on words whose signication was not proper or literal. Thus the expression de virtute sermonis came into supposition theory only inasmuch as one cannot talk about the supposition of terms without rst agreeing on their meaning. Throughout the discussion the phrase de virtute sermonis functions as an element of signication, although Ockham did, in a move akin to synecdoche, apply the phrase to propositions as well as to terms within them. In a sense, supposition theory was poorly equipped to deal with gures of speech, idiomatic or colloquial expressions, or intentions of an author. Supposition concerns subjects and predicates and thus nouns or noun-like words, while gures of speech often depend upon the transferred meaning of verbs, and idiomatic expressions often depend upon some unusual use of an adverb. In order to apply supposition theory to a sentence like Sol currit or Aqua currit, one has to rephrase them as Sol est currens or Aqua est currens in which the word running supposits improp36 Ibid., p. 237: Et ideo multum est considerandum quando terminus et propositio accipitur de virtute sermonis et quando secundum usum loquentium vel secundum intentionem auctorum, et hoc quia vix invenitur aliquod vocabulum quin in diversis locis librorum philosophorum et Sanctorum et auctorum aequivoce accipiatur; et hoc penes aliquem modum aequivocationis. Et ideo volentes accipere semper vocabulum univoce et uno modo frequenter errant circa intentiones auctorum et inquisitionem veritatis, cum fere omnia vocabula aequivoce accipiantur. Ockham does not mean to imply that authors use words equivocally, but that readers often understand words in dierent senses.
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erly for sun or water. For sentences in which the elements have undergone several stages of transferred meaning, or idiomatic expressions, such as Horaces asellum currere doceas (you teach an ass to run) or litus arare (to plow the beach)37 which mean to labor in vain, similar to our coals to Newcastle, the colloquialisms have to be translated back into proper terminology before supposition theory can even be applied. Supposition theory cannot decipher the language of those who, like Alice, mean what they say even if they dont say what they mean. The 1340 Statute Revisited We are now equipped to turn out attention to the controversial Parisian statute of 1340. Four of the six articles reassert the importance of distinguishing between the various senses of words used in propositions taken from past authorities in order to clarify the true meaning of the author. The rst article requires that those lecturing should not characterize statements in authoritative texts as simply false de virtute sermonis if they know the author intended something true, but should also distinguish the true from the false sense.38 The article remarks on the dangers failure to distinguish holds for biblical exegesis, and argues that the true meaning of words (virtus sermonis) is determined by common usage and is not restricted to literal meaning. The second article attacks those who limit true propositions to those in which the subject and predicate supposit personally and literally, since that leads to the same unfortunate results as the practice con-
37 Horace, Satire 1, 1. 91. On litus arare as a common medieval example of amphiboly see Sten Ebbesen, Commentators and Commentaries on Aristotles Sophistici Elenchi, vol. I (Leiden, 1981), p. 183: Klemens Kopp, Fallaciae ad modum Oxoniae. Ein Fehlschlusstraktat aus dem 13. Jahrhundert, unpublished dissertation, Cologne, 1985. 38 CUP II, n. 1042: Videlicet quod nulli magistri, baccalarii, vel scolares in artium facultate legentes Parisius audeant aliquem propositionem famosam illius auctoris cuius librum legunt, dicere simpliciter esse falsam, vel esse falsam de virtute sermonis, si crediderint quod auctor ponendo illam habuerit verum intellectum; sed vel concedant eam, vel sensum verum dividant a sensu falso, quia pari ratione propositiones Bibliae absoluto sermone essent negandae, quod est periculosum. Et quia sermo non habet virtutem, nisi ex impositione et usu communi auctorum vel aliorum, ideo talis est virtus sermonis, qualiter eo auctores communiter utunter et qualem exigit materia, cum sermones sint recipiendi penes materiam subiectam.
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demned in the rst article.39 The third article directly attacks those who refuse to distinguish true and false senses of a proposition.40 And the fourth article prohibits saying that only propositions that are literally true should be conceded.41 Again the authors of the statute arm that one should concentrate less on the proper or literal meaning (ad proprietatem sermonis) and more on context, subject matter, common usage, and the intention of the author. Although the fth article does not concern the need to distinguish a true meaning from a false literal meaning, it may be related. It rejects limiting scientic knowledge to terms (single words) and expressions (phrases), presumably written or spoken, and instead arms knowledge to be of things by means of such signs.42 Ruprecht Paqu, in his lengthy analysis of the articles of the statute, ignored the fact that the rst four articles concern the need to distinguish a true intended meaning from a false literal meaning.43 Instead, he interpreted these articles to condemn any description of a proposition taken from an authoritative text as being literally false, and to condemn limiting supposition to personal suppositiontwo practices that he attributed to Ockham, attempting to prove against Boehner and Moody that the statute was specically directed against Ockham and his followers. His surprising misreading of a few short paragraphs
Ibid.: Item, quod nullus dicat simpliciter vel de virtute sermonis omnem propositionem esse falsam, quae esset falsa secundum suppositionem personalem terminorum, eo quod iste error ducit ad priorem errorem, auctores enim saepe utuntur aliis suppositionibus. 40 Ibid.: Item, quod nullus dicat quod nulla propositio sit distinguenda, quoniam hoc ducit ad praedictos errores, quia si discipulus unum propositionis sensum recipit, et doctor alium intellexerit, discipulus falso informabitur, donec propositio distinguetur. Similiter si opponens unum sensum recipiat, et respondens alterum sensum intelligat, disputatio erit ad nomen tantum, si non at distinctio. 41 Ibid.: Item, quod nullus dicat propositionem nullam esse concedendam, si non sit vera in eius sensu proprio, quia hoc dicere ducit ad praedictos errores, quia Biblia et auctores non semper sermonibus utuntur secundum proprios sensus eorum. Magis igitur oportet in armando vel negando sermones ad materiam subiectam attendere, quam ad proprietatem sermonis, disputatio namque ad proprietatem sermonis attendens nullam recipiens propositionem, praeterquam in sensu proprio, non est nisi sophistica disputatio. Disputationes dialecticae et doctrinales, quae ad inquisitionem veritatis intendunt, modicam habent de nominibus sollicitudinem. 42 Ibid.: Item, quod nullus dicat scientiam nullam esse de rebus quae non sunt signa, id est, quae non sunt termini vel orationes, quoniam in scientiis utimur terminis pro rebus, quas portare non possumus ad disputationes. Ideo scientiam habemus de rebus, licet mediantibus terminis vel orationibus. 43 Ruprecht Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut.
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of this fourteenth-century document is matched only by his appalling misinterpretation of Ockhams teaching on supposition. Ockham was acutely sensitive to the ambiguities and complexities of language and frequently called his readers attention to the need to consider context, gures of speech, and intention of an author when evaluating the truth or falsity of propositions. Wherever he used the phrase de virtute sermonis, as he did frequently, it was in the context of distinguishing the true from the false sense of words, and the other side of the distinction, ex usu loquendi, was either expressed or implied. In order to separate the true and false senses of biblical or theological expressions, most scholastic authors, including Bonaventure and Thomas, used the expression de virtute sermonis or its equivalents and recognized that authoritative statements were false if taken literally. Alongside the authors of the 1340 statute, Ockham and every other good Aristotelian recognized that spoken language is a matter of imposition and human convention, as Boehner already noted. The only point on which Ockham might have departed from the letter if not the spirit of the articles of 1340 is the attempt within the statute to dene virtus sermonis as commonly accepted meaning, including all forms of common usage, rather than simply literal meaningan approach similar to that found in the earlier Modist commentaries. The statute requires disputants to look equally at (1) the principal meaning of words, and (2) their context (materia subiecta). Interpreting the virtus sermonis as commonly accepted meaning, however, undercuts the original purpose of the distinction, namely between literal meaning on the one hand and common usage and intention on the other.
Scripture and Humanism: Metaphoric Language & the Context of the Statute of 1340 If the 1340 statute was not aimed at Ockham, either directly or indirectly, against whom was it drafted and what was the controversy really about? It was not directed against Autrecourt, who had long since ceased to teach in the arts faculty at Paris.44 There is, in fact, no reason to assume that all the articles were directed against one specic per44 For the dating of Autrecourts career and the impossibility of his being connected with the 1340 statute, see Courtenay and Tachau, Ockhamists, and the EnglishGerman Nation [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 9].
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son or even group at Paris in the year or years immediately preceding December 1340, but may instead have to do with types of argumentation and propositional analysis that were considered unacceptable in lectures and disputations. Fortunately for our understanding of the purpose of the statute and the extent of the crisis that lay behind it, we do have some contemporary and slightly later witnesses to what appears to have been more than a passing disagreement among Parisian arts masters. The evidence suggests that alongside the controversy over the scientia Occamica at Paris, there was a separate and largely unrelated crisis over approaches to propositional analysis in academic debates, a crisis that inuenced events at Oxford as well as Paris and that lasted into the 1370s. The rst evidence comes from Conrad of Megenberg, regent master in arts at Paris in the late 1330s and early 1340s and later rector and teacher in the schools of Vienna and Regensburg.45 From his lengthy poem Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam written at Paris in 1337 to his Tractatus contra Ockham written at Regensburg in 1354, Conrad was disturbed by what he felt to be the intellectual corruptions of his day. One of these was Ockhams physics, which he attempted to drive out of Paris, or at least the English-German nation, during the years 13391341, and which he continued to oppose in his works written between 1347 and 1354. The second, and for him a separate issue, was the abuse of language or the corruption of the liberal arts. In his Planctus the second problem is portrayed as a result of insucient learning.46 However, in
45 On Megenberg see: H. Ibach, Leben und Schriften des Konrad von Megenberg (Berlin, 1938); R. Scholz, Unbekannte kirchenpolitishe Streitschriften aus der Zeit Ludwigs des Bayern (13271354) Analysen und Texte, vol. I (Rome, 1911), pp. 127140; vol. II (Rome, 1914), pp. 346391; Konrad von Megenberg, Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam, ed. R. Scholz, Mon. Germ. Hist., C 2: Staatsschr. des spteren Mittelalters, II, 1 (Leipzig, 1941); A. Pelzer and T. Kaeppeli, LOeconomica de Conrad de Megenberg retrouve, Revue dhistoire ecclsiastique, 45 (1950), 559616; J. Miethke, Ockhams Weg zur Sozialphilosophie (Berlin, 1969), pp. 133136, 232, 431; A.S. McGrade, The Political Thought of William of Ockham (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 45; Konrad von Megenberg, Werke: konomik, ed. S. Krger, Mon. Germ. Hist., Staatsschr. des sptern Mittelalters, 111, 5/1 (Stuttgart, 1973), III, 5/2 (Stuttgart, 1977); Krise der Zeit als Ursache der Pest? Der Traktat de mortalitate in Alamannia des Konrad von Megenberg, Festschrift fr Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag, II (Gttingen, 1972), pp. 839883; K. Arnold, Konrad von Megenberg als Kommentator der Sphaera des Johannes von Sacrobosco, Deutsches Archiv fr Erforschung des Mittelalters, 32 (1976), 147186; Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English German Nation; Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, in Preuve et raisons lUnversit de Paris, ed. Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (Paris, 1984), 4364 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 8]. 46 Planctus I, ch. 13, p. 32: Cespitat in vanis iam lingua, monetat inanis; Floribus
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his Economica, written in a bitter personal mood between 1348 and 1352, he provides more detail on these semi-learned students and masters who in his opinion do not know how to handle grammar, rhetoric, and logic. These wretches (miseri), who by 1350 appeared to him to have been better rewarded than he by the world, reject as meaningless any proposition that attributes to the subject an action that it does not, in reality, have. Thus they reject as false such propositions as aqua transit in uviis or venti volant, since de virtute sermonis water does not have feet and winds do not have wings.47 Similarly in rhetoric they reject as meaningless such technical metaphors as bouquet of words or colors of sentences, since owers only grow in meadows, and painters use colors to compose and vary in a beautiful way a likeness of nature.48 The views that Conrad attributes to some younger German scholars, probably some of his former colleagues and associates at Paris, closely resemble the approaches condemned in the 1340 statute. But were these masters and students simply unlearned, as Conrad implies, were they attempting to undermine or ridicule the university system by taking
est nuda, rudis et vox, rustica cruda; Iam paralogismat homo quilibet atque sophismat; Ethyca marcescunt, magis et brutalia crescunt. 47 Economica III, tr. 1, ch. 12, from L. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1971), p. 431: Surguntque miseri quidam qui se numquam dignos noverunt discipulos et quod penitus nesciunt docere presumunt atque, quod condolendo refero, tales nobilibus ingeniis potius seductores quam doctores preciuntur. Quia tamen ignorantiam propriam ignorant elatis frontibus magistraliter incedunt et paucissima cognoscentes de quolibet disputant plene. Gramaticam indignis molestant derisibus armantes quod nulla partium orationis constructio est transitiva. Asserunt enim quod nihil transeat nisi pedes habeat. Quapropter aqua non transit in uviis secundum eos neque venti volant, quoniam alas non habent. Nec poterit dici quod una partium orationis regat aliam secundum modorum signicandi proportiones, quia intellectus humanus omnes partes orationis regit et dirigit. Proprietates enim partium orationis nichil sunt ut dicunt. The examples of a laughing meadow, ying arrow, or running water were standard in the sophismata tradition at Oxford (see Kopp, Fallaciae ad modum Oxoniae, pp. 4243) and by this period at Paris as well. 48 Ibid.: Rethoricam eloquentiam adeo sua cecitate postergant ut nec ores verborum nec colores sententiarum capiant sed ores in pratis crescere et colores varios pictores componere et pulchre variare ad instar nature armant. Qualiter hii dulciloquia sacrarum interpretentur scripturarum quevis ratio disposita noscit. Nec est dubium hereses ex hiis innumeras pululare. Scriptura etenim sacra non semel uterum virginalem virgam notat et lium inde conceptum orem appellat. Et si de virtute sermonis iste orationes false sunt, sequitur rethoricam in pulcherrimis speciebus transsumptionis nullam ad orationes habere virtutem et sic rethorica quasi evanuit tota. The phrase colores sententiarum probably refers here to excessive coloring of words in a proposition, but it could also be a positive expression in logic, referring to the persuasiveness of the argument (argumentum non habet colorem), not its style.
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absurdly narrow positions on propositional truth and attacking their opponents with smug replies, or was there a more serious purpose behind those who insisted that only sh gotta swim, birds gotta y? A second piece of evidence comes from the Summa logicae of Richard Brinkley, composed at Oxford around 1360 or a few years earlier.49 He refers to the practice in contemporary logic of emphasizing spoken and written terms rather than concepts in the mind, even to subordinate mental concepts to vocal expression. Thus those contemporaries concede or deny propositions according to the proper meaning of vocal expressions (secundum proprietatem vocis), and the meaning of spoken or written terms, ad virtutem sermonis, functions as a type of rst cause for the truth or falsity of the proposition.50 Others, such as Brinkley himself, determine the truth or falsity of propositions according to the concepts in the mind, not the proper meaning of the words. Much of this discussion in Brinkley, who was a realist like Wyclif a few years later, is blended with his juxtaposition of realism and terminism. And with Brinkleys phraseology we stand at the beginning of the eventual division between reales and nominales. Yet enough of the controversy over the primacy of literal meaning in logical discourse and disputation remains for us to see behind this conict of realism and terminism an earlier conict between the primacy of literal meanings and the primacy of mental intentions on the part of authors. Brinkley also echoes the spirit if not the letter of the fth article of the 1340 statute, which objected to limiting scientic truth to vocal terms and expressions and gave primacy instead to the things for which signs stand. Our last witness is Angelus Dobelin, an Austin Friar who lectured on the Sentences at Paris in 13741375.51 Dobelin would appear to have taken
49 G. Gl and R. Wood, Richard Brinkley and his Summa logicae, FS, 40 (1980), 59101. 50 Gl and Wood, Richard Brinkley, 67: Admittit tamen usus modernorum huiusmodi propositiones vocales, credentes eas esse veras, sive intellectus consideret de suppositis subiecti in talibus propositionibus sive non; credentes logicam esse in vocibus, non subordinatam conceptibus in anima. Sed nitentes subordinare conceptus in anima ipsis vocibus, omnem propositionem concedunt vel negant secundum proprietatem vocis. Ideo ad virtutem sermonis respiciunt tanquam ad causam primam in propositionibus admittendis vel negandis a logico. 51 On Angelus Dobelin see A. Zumkeller, Die Augustinerschule des Mittelalters. Vertreter und Philosophisch-theologische Lehre, Analecta Augustiniana, 27 (1964), 236; D. Trapp, Angelus de Dobelin, Doctor Parisiensis, and His Lectura, Augustinianum, 3 (1963), 389413; W. Eckermann, Wort und Wirklichkeit (Wrzburg, 1978), pp. 272276.
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to heart the view expressed in the last part of article one in the 1340 statute. For him every positive statement in holy Scripture is de virtute sermonis true. The virtus sermonis is nothing other than the signication applied to words by theological doctors and grammarians, and there is no proposition in sacred Scripture that is not true according to some usus loquendi.52 Dobelins use of the terminology obliterates the accepted language for the distinction between literal and transferred meanings, although in light of 1340 one can be sympathetic. In opposition to what was felt to be a one-sided use of the expression de virtute sermonis, Dobelin and the authors of the 1340 statute were reclaiming virtus sermonis for the intended meaning of words, whether literal or gurative. His concluding statement reects the atmosphere a generation earlier: Those who say less well, that in Scripture there are many statements that are de virtute sermonis false, ignore the modi loquendi according to which such statements are true, and know only one idioma and consider all other idiomata false.53 The embittered reections of Conrad of Megenberg, in particular, suggest that the statute of 1340 was directed against a specic group of masters and bachelors at Paris who were engaged in a certain type of explication and defense in conceding or rejecting propositions. Whether they or their opponents identied them with the secta occamica at Paris is not known. Their approach to sense, reference, and mental language were radically opposed to that of Ockham, but restricting logic to written and spoken propositions does suggest the inuence of at least one English author, Robert Holcot, even if limiting true propositions only to those literally true does not.54
52 Angelus Dobelin, Sent. I, prol., as cited from Eckermann, p. 273: omnia dicta sacrae scripturae assertive posita de virtute sermonis sunt vera. Probatur. Nam virtus sermonis non est aliud quam usus signicandi sermonem proferentis et audientis institutus per doctores et grammaticos. Sed nulla propositio sacrae scripturae est, quin secundum usum aliquem loquendi sit vera, quem usum non solum in theologia, sed in saecularibus litteris et scientiis habemus institutum. 53 Ibid.: quod illi minus bene dicunt, quod in sacra scriptura multa dicta de virtute sermonis sint falsa, licet a sic dicentibus ignorentur modi loquendi, quibus talia dicta vera sunt et tales assimilantur illis, qui nescirent nisi unum ideoma dicentes consequenter omnia dicta per aliorum ideomata esse falsa. 54 See E.A. Moody, A Quodlibetal Question of Robert Holcot, O.P. on the Problem of the Objects of Knowledge and of Belief, Speculum, 39 (1964), 5374. A similar position can also be found in a slightly earlier English Dominican, Hugh Lawton; see Hester Gelber, I Cannot Tell a Lie: Hugh of Lawtons Critique of Ockham on Mental Language FS, 44 (1984), 141179.
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The narrow approach to signication adopted by this anonymous Parisian group, their negative attitude toward transferred meaning and gures of speech, and their behavior in the classroom appear reasonably clear. The opposing voices of the theologians, protecting the truth of the metaphoric language of Scripture, and the voices of humanistically-minded scholars, such as Megenberg, protecting the truth of the poetic language of literature, formed a united front. What is not clear is the motivation of our anonymous arts masters, the proponents of truth solely de virtute sermonis. Were they simply trying to be shocking, annoying, and dicult for their students and colleagues, subtly poking fun at the seriousness of the academic exegetical enterprise? The rejoinder that winds cant y because they dont have wings certainly annoyed Megenberg and no doubt brought ripples of laughter throughout the disputation hall. Or were they serious in their enterprise, with an ideological position that cut across the elds of grammar, rhetoric, and logic? There are aspects of the problem that would suggest that the issues were ideological. As was already recognized in the ancient period, philosophy works bestat least from one point of viewif every word has its own meaning and only one meaning. The fact that common speech is not so precise is no license for logicians not to use words strictly or properly. In the encounter between external reality and mental language, spoken and written terms and propositions hold a central position. Only they are communicated from one person to another. Only they can be the bearers of truth or falsity. Only they are the form in which authoritative statements come down to us. To talk ad mentem auctoris is to hypothesize. Logic as well as exegesis is about the meaning and use of terms in propositions, not about things or mental intentions. It may well be that toward the middle of the fourteenth century on the Continent, particularly at such a major center as Paris, the primacy of literal, proper meaning was being reasserted at the expense of the exibility of language, both from the side of biblical exegesis and the humanist love of antiquity. For a time in the twelfth century there had been an attempt in biblical exegesis to emphasize the literal and downgrade the metaphorical and allegorical senses of Scripture.55 Only if a literal explanation failed should one have recourse to any other interpretation. But Scripture had multiple senses, and one need not exclude
55
B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952).
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another. The preference for the allegorical and tropological senses of Scripture in the fourteenth century may have sparked some counterarmation of the literal. A more likely source, however, might perhaps be found in the humanist reassertion of the ancient goal of pure Latinity and proprietas verborum. It may well be, however, that our Parisian defenders of virtus sermonis were not so ideological, that the context of the dispute may have been more practical or pedagogical. As the 1340 statute makes clear, the physical setting of the problem was the classroom and primarily the academic disputation, which formed the central part of scholastic training and examination. Beneath the level of the formal, magisterial disputations, which at least in their subsequent written form are onesided and limit the role of the opponent, the normal type of debate more evenly matched the skills and opportunities of both opponent and respondent. All disputations had rules that limited the ways in which a respondent could reply, and disputes conducted under the restrictions of obligation were even more conning. The respondent could concede, reject, or distinguish propositions thrown at him, and his ability to work his way successfully through the attempted traps revealed his knowledge of grammar, of signication and supposition, of syllogistic logic and the various types of fallacy, as well as his quickness of reasoning and his verbal skills. Academic success for both opponent and respondent depended on scoring points if not actually winning the debate. Yet cornering an opponent was dicult if he could always work his way out of a tight spot by distinguishing, particularly if one could use the escape route of claiming that the dicult proposition at hand was really using metaphoric language or that the author of the proposition had something entirely dierent in mind than the actual words would suggest. If one had to accept or reject propositions on the basis of their literal meaning, one could more swiftly defeat a respondent and conclude the debate.56 Whatever the motivation behind the party in the Parisian arts faculty that refused to distinguish true and false meanings and insisted on taking words, phrases, and propositions only in their literal sense, they
56 Curiously enough, a number of later fourteenth-century logicians do not mention distinguo among the possible responses in an obligational disputation. In England these were: Roger Swyneshead, Martinus Anglicus, Richard Billingham, and John Wyclif; on the continent: Albert of Saxony, William Buser, Marsilius of Inghen, John of Holland, Peter of Candia, and the Logica magna attibuted to Paul of Venice. I am grateful to Jenny Ashworth for this information.
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were not expressing views that were in any sense ad mentem Ockham. Ockham was a thorough defender of the primacy of mental language and intended meaning, and saw the art of distinguishing as the key to successful scholastic analysis. In a world where meanings matter, the sun does run its daily course and time does y, even if not de virtute sermonis.
chapter eleven
THE REGISTERS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE STATUTES AGAINST THE SCIENTIA OCCAMICA*
Two of the controversial points in the on-going debate over the meaning and context of the so-called anti-nominalist arts faculty statute of December 29, 1340 are (1) the degree of authoritative weight to be assigned to the rubric that accompanies the statute in its published version in the Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis as well as the manuscript from which it was edited; and (2), whether the statute or statutes referred to respectively in the Proctors Register for the English nation and in the rst of the two arts faculty oaths concerned with the scientia occamica is or is not identical with the statute of December 29, 1340.1 In the previous issue of Vivarium Hans Thijssen argued for the accuracy of the rubric and the correspondence between the December 1340 statute and the statute referred to in the Proctors Register and in the arts faculty oaths.2 His analysis rests primarily on two points: (1) certain similarities between the content of the December 1340 statute and earlier critiques of Ockhams thought, particularly that of John Lutterell; and (2) Thijssens belief that all the evidence can be accounted for on the basis of the documentation edited in the Chartularium. The discrepancy between the date of the edited statute (Dec. 29, 1340) and
Originally published in Vivarium, 29 (1991), 1349. The statute of December 29, 1340 appears as document #1042 in CUP II, pp. 505507, edited from Paris, Archives de lUniversit, Reg. 100 (formerly 94), p. 67. The rubric reads: Statutum facultatis de reprobatione quorundam errorum Okanicorum. For the Liber procuratorum of the English nation, see AUP I, cols. 4445. The two oaths that mention statutes against the scientia occamica were edited in CUP II, p. 680. Previous discussions of the statute can be found in E.A. Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt: The Parisian Statutes of 1339 and 1340, FS, 7 (1947), 113146; R. Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut (Berlin, 1970); T.K. Scott, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan and Ockamism, JHP, 9 (1971), 1541; W.J. Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists and the English-German Nation at Paris, 1339 1341, History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 9]. 2 J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Once Again the Ockhamist Statutes of 1339 and 1340: Some new perspectives, Vivarium, 28 (1990), 136167.
* 1
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the period (Jan. 13-Febr. 10, 1341) during which the Proctors Register states that a statute against the new opinions of certain ones called Ockhamists was sealed in the lodgings of the proctor and promulgated in a sermon at St. Jacques is explained by Thijssen by hypothesizing a period of several weeks between a draft stage of the document (associated with the word datum), supposedly reected in the edited document of December 29, 1340, and the ocial sealing and promulgation of the statute (to which the word actum would supposedly have been applied). Since the issue of the rubric as well as the interrelation of the entry in the Proctors Register, the oaths, and the Dec. 1340 statute depend on the methods and reliability of university record-keepinga subject all but invisible when using the published editionsit might be useful for this and similar questions about other documents to go behind the published Chartularium and examine these issues in more detail in light of the university manuscript cartularies themselves and what they reveal concerning the process of document production and preservation, the origin and dependability of rubrics, and whether the absence of the term actum in the statute of Dec. 29, 1340 bears the signicance that Thijssen has assigned it.
Record-Keeping at the University of Paris The published Chartularium for the University of Paris, edited by Heinrich Denie and mile Chtelain in the 1890s, is a work of the highest scholarship which for the most part obviates the need to consult the manuscripts that lie behind it. Yet its chronological structure and the fact that it was compiled from many dierent types of sources hides the original structures of university cartularies as well as the history of the manuscript records and methods of document preservation in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Denies and Chtelains interests were two-fold: to collect as full a documentation as possible for the medieval university of Paris, and to ensure the accuracy of the text of each document. In doing so, they had to abandon the structural form of the manuscript cartularies, and apart from occasional comments, they did not provide much discussion of the history of various forms of university record-keeping in their introductions and footnotes to the volumes of the Chartularium. Moreover, while they mentioned after each document the manuscript source or sources on which they drew, they
the registers of the university of paris
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did not list all manuscripts in which a document occurred, thus sometimes inadvertently giving the misleading impression (as in the case of the statute of Dec. 29, 1340) that a document was extant in only one manuscript. It should also be noted that the editors of the Chartularium did not initially have access to the full range of university records now available. At the time Denie and Chtelain began the Chartularium, the only known books of a nation still extant were those of the Norman nation (Chartres 595, formerly 662) and a copy of the Book of the Picard Nation (Paris, Univ. Arch. [Sorbonne], Reg. 100, formerly Reg. 94), which was made for or came into the possession of the English nation.3 This meant that the ocial parchment books of privileges and statutes for the French, Picard, and English nations were all missing and considered lost. It must have been greeted with mixed emotions when, during and after the publication of the Chartularium, these lost manuscripts began to surface: rst the Book of the English Nation (Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. lat. 535), described by Chtelain in 1891;4 then the Book of the French Nation (Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. lat. 2060), described by Henri Omont in 1914.5 Apart from a fragment (Paris, Bibl. Ste.Genevieve 1655), the Book of the Picard Nation remains lost, and
3 A table of contents appears on p. 57 of Univ. Reg. 100 within a composite quire that runs from p. 49 through p. 58h. The document does not describe the contents of this manuscript but is a partial copy of what appeared on the last quire of its exemplar: Iste liber confectus est ad opus nationis Picardorum in quo primo continentur evangelia quedam et calendarii universitatis; secundo privilegia papalia; tertio privilegia regalia; quarto statuta universitatis; quinto facultatis artium statuta; sexto statuta dicte nationis; ultimo scilicet tabula premissorum que sequitur. The word: Picardorum was struck through and Anglicane added above in a later but fourteenth-century English hand. This suggests that the scribe was copying from a Picard exemplar (either on behalf of the Picard nation or the English nation) and that the correction was made when the manuscript came into the possession of the English nation. It should be noted, however, that Reg. 100, p. 61, contains the same scribal error as the Book of the English Nation, fol. 102r, namely the recopying of CUP I, #328 under the rubric that belongs with CUP II, #549a mistake not found in the books of the French and Norman nations. This means either that the Picard exemplar contained the same error and that the Book of the English Nation and Reg. 100 derive from that version, which seems the most plausible explanation, or that Reg. 100 was copied from the ocial Book of the English Nation for the Picard nation but was retained by the English nation. 4 . Chtelain, Le Livre ou cartulaire de la nation dAngleterre et dAllemagne dans lancienne universit de Paris, Memoires de la socit de lhistoire de Paris et de lIle-deFrance, 18 (1891), 73100. 5 Le Livre ou cartulaire de la nation de France de luniversit de Paris, Mmoires de la socit de lhistoire de Paris et de lIle-de-France, 41 (1914), 1130.
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the Chartres manuscript was almost entirely destroyed during World War II.6 Fortunately its contents had been meticulously described by Omont in 1917.7 The discussions of sources in the rst two volumes of the Chartularium concerned the contents and value of various manuscripts, but did not go into the process of university record-keeping in any detail. The latter issue had been discussed earlier by Charles Thurot, to the satisfaction of Chtelain. Thurot was of the opinion that the faculties and arts nations of the University of Paris maintained from earliest times books and registers of the privileges, statutes, and activities of the university and its constituent units.8 Each corporation within the university supposedly possessed a book (livre, liber) and several registers (registre, papirus). It was Thurots view that the book contained the statutes and privileges of the university and was on parchment. The registers contained the accounts of the meetings of the faculty or nation and were on paper.9 Thurot and Chtelain also believed that the surviving manuscripts conrmed these distinctions and, in some cases, were the very books and registers sometimes referred to in university documents. The problem with Thurots description is that it suggests (1) a clearcut distinction of books and registers, and (2) that books were on parchment and registers were on paper. A register, however, can be either a cartulary of statutes and privileges or a sequential record of magisterial deliberations. Paris, Univ. Archiv., Reg. 2 is of the latter type and is on paper, while Paris, Univ. Archiv., Reg. 100 (94) is of the former type and is also on paper. Neither the distinction of book vs. register
According to Mme. M.-H. de Pommerol at the Institut de Recherche et dHistoire des Textes in Paris, some fragments still remain. 7 H. Omont, Le Livre ou cartulaire de la nation de Normandie de luniversit de Paris, Socit de lhistoire de Normandie, Mlanges et documents, ser. viii (Rouen/Paris, 1917). 8 C. Thurot, De lorganisation de lenseignement dans lUniversit de Paris au moyen-ge (Paris/Besanon, 1850), pp. 1837, esp. p. 36, n.l; . Chtelain, Le Livre ou cartulaire de la nation dAngleterre, 7378. 9 Under books Thurot listed the Book of the Rector (London, Brit. Libr., Add. 17304); a fragment of the Book of the Picard Nation (Paris, Bibl. Ste. Genevive 9092 presumably 1655 ); and the Book of the Norman Nation (Chartres 662). Under registers Thurot listed that for the arts faculty (after 1478); that of the French nation (14441456); that of the Picard nation (14771484); that of the English nation (1320! to 1492) = Univ. Arch., Reg. 2 . The manuscript inventories from which Thurot derived his information were describing specic manuscripts for identication; they were not describing genres of documents dierentiated by title or writing surface.
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nor that of parchment vs. paper were maintained in any uniform way.10 The only rule with regard to writing surface is: the more important the volume, the more likely to be on parchment. But whether on parchment or paper, all these volumes could by the seventeenth century be referred to interchangeably as books or registers. A more accurate differentiation would be: Book of the Rector (privileges and statutes of the university and arts faculty); Books of a faculty (privileges and statutes of the university and one of the other faculties: theology, canon law, or medicine); Books of a nation (privileges and statutes of the university, arts faculty, and a specic nation); Books of the proctors (sequential registers of each nation); and Books of the receptors (account books of the nations). Even restricting our attention to the cartularies (i.e., the registers or books of the rector, faculties, and nations respectively), these nished volumes obscure the fact that the preservation of records by the corporations that made up the university of Paris (e.g., faculties, nations, colleges, convents) was a more varied and less organized process than is generally recognized. The rst stage consisted in the accumulation of original documents or diplomas, which would have been preserved in the treasure chests of the faculty, nation, or college under the supervision of their respective ocers (rector, dean, proctor, etc.). Many of these originalia have survived, often with their seals intact, and are found in the archives of the university (Sorbonne) and the Archives nationales. It should also be noted that originalia do not have rubrics, although occasionally one might be written in a later hand on the reverse side of the document. A second stage consisted in the copying or inscription of documents into a register which, in the case of the university or the faculty of arts, would have been maintained by the rector, and in the case of the nations of the arts faculty, by the proctor of each nation. If it was customary for documents to be inscribed into a register soon after an item of new legislation was created or a new privilege receivedand the surviving evidence suggests this was ad hoc, not standard procedurethe arrangement of such registers would have been sequential, as are docu10 Chtelain in 1891, while directing his readers to Thurots account, mentioned that the 1624 account of the documents of the English nation listed: (1) ung ancient livre de parchemin containing the statutes, rights, and privileges of the university; (2) livre des statuts de lUniversit; (3) onze livres couverts en parchemin; etc. All these manuscripts, including the sequential registers, were called livres, which were either of parchment or covered in parchment.
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ments in papal, episcopal, or notarial registers. But unlike popes, kings, and bishops, the university of Paris had no bureaucracy and, in particular, no chancery at any level (nation, faculty, or university). There was no specic group of scribes steadily and exclusively employed for the preparation and preservation of university documents. Various units within the university did employ scribes, but it was apparently not until the fourteenth century that the same individual was consistently employed for such tasks, and even then it is unclear whether his responsibilities extended beyond the preparation of original documents and possibly recording them in his own notarial register. Whatever registers existed were the responsibility of the proctors and rectors, whose term of oce changed monthly or quarterly, respectively. Some type of register or registers did exist by 1260. In that year an arts faculty statute mentions the inregistration of previous legislation; in 1272 a register of the arts faculty is mentioned; and in 1288 the rector is directed to record the name of the elected proctors in his register.11 The last, and possibly the inregistration noted in 1260,12 refer to sequential registers similar to those of the nations that have survived from the fourteenth and fteenth centuries, in which the actions of the nation during a proctorship were recorded sequentially several times a year. The earliest extant registers of this type are those of the English-German nation from 1333, written, as one would expect, in dierent hands. In those, as the editors of CUP noted, the name of the proctor and often the elected rector are recorded, and statutes of
CUP I, #363 in 1260: Nos magistri artium quatuor nationum regentes Parisius ordinationi sive statuto per nos sive per antecessores nostros anno Domini MCCLIX facto et inregistrato [referring to CUP I, #333 in 1259] hos tres articulos sequentes de communi consensu dignum duximus adjungendos ; CUP I, #441 in 1272: Ut autem hec omnia inviolabiliter valeant observari, de corporali prestita in manu rectoris nostre facultatis nos omnes et singuli magistri juravimus et nos omnes ad hoc spontanee concessimus astringendos. In cujus rei memoriam hoc idem statutum in Registro nostre facultatis sub eisdem verbis scribi fecimus ac etiam ordinari; and CUP II, #549 in 1288: Volumus insuper rectorem ad hoc adstringi, ut procuratores singularum nationum, aut vices ipsorum gerentes necnon diem electionis eorundem suo registro inscribat, ne ex hoc defectus aliquis, ut alias visum est, in compoto generali rectoris legatur. The CUP text has been revised according to London, Brit. Libr., MS Addit. 17304, fol. 112r, and Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 535, fol. 102v. 12 While the statute of 1272 (#441) referring to a register of the arts faculty appears in the Book of the Rector, the earlier documents concerned with inregistration (#333 and 363) are not found there but are found in the books of the nations, suggesting that they were preserved at the level of the nations. This would have been either the Liber procuratorum or an early version of the Libri nationum.
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the nation, arts faculty, and university are occasionally included, but without rubrics. If the surviving sequential proctors registers are any indication, the inclusion of statutes was the exception, not standard working procedure.13 And since neither the Register of the arts faculty in its 1272 form nor the pre-1355 form of a Liber nationis survive, we have no way of knowing what type of documents were included, how ecient or thorough the recording practice was, or even if these were sequential registers. In fact, no sequential register of privileges and statutes has survived, perhaps because that was never its form; or because it was eventually replaced by a dierent type of register, to be discussed in a moment; or because it was not rigorously maintained, since separate documentsthe originals themselveswere preserved by the faculty and nations. It is revealing in this regard that when the French nation inventoried the contents of its chest (archa nationis) in October 1339, no mention was made of a Book of the Nation (i.e., a register of statutes and privileges), although the originalia stacked in a basket in the chest were itemized.14 The registers that have survived are arranged systematically according to type of document and issuing agency, regardless of date of issue. In the case of the Book of the Rector, statutes concerning oaths for the rector and examiners appear at the front of the register along with a gospel page ensuring the solemnity and binding quality of the oath sworn by the candidate or ocer whose hand was placed on the register. Papal privileges come next, arranged by ponticate, followed by the statutes of the university and its various faculties, without much regard to date of issue or enactment. The books of the nations are even more rationally organized. All extant registers, with the exception of the records of the proctors and receptors of the nations, are of this second typefar easier to consult in locating privileges and legislation on
13 For example, the Liber procuratorum for the English nation included the text of statutes of the nation in 1333 (AUP I, col. 15) and 1341 (AUP I, cols. 5253) as well as a university statute from 1343 (AUP I, col. 62) and an arts faculty statute from 1355. It also mentioned the registration in their Liber nationis of the two arts faculty statutes of 1339 (AUP I, col. 35; CUP II, #1023 and #1024). But it failed to include or mention the arts faculty statute of Jan. 1340 (CUP II, #1031), the nations statute of June 1342 (CUP II, #1061), or any other university statutes from this period. 14 CUP II, pp. 491492, #1028, copied from Du Boulays Historia, where it was copied from the proctors book for the French nation. A copy of a statute of 1424 in the Book of the English Nation (Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. lat. 535, fol, 146r) noted: et habetur originale in archa nationis cum aliis libris et statutis.
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particular topics. The fact that the sequential registers of the proctors and receptors have survived in their original form is because these were the original and only copies, and there was never a subsequent rational rearrangement, nor any need for such. But the survival of early versions of a rationalized register of the Book of the Rector and the absence of any similar sequential register does cast some doubt on whether there ever was a sequential version of the Book of the Rector or, for that matter, the books of the nations. The Book of the Rector The oldest form of the rationalized register for the university and arts faculty is preserved in Vatican, Regin. 406 and Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. lat. 936 (formerly Cheltenham, Phillips 876), both dating to the opening years of the fourteenth century. Each manuscript is a copy of an early redaction of the Book of the Rector containing the privileges and statutes of the university and arts faculty. The Vatican manuscript gives no clues regarding its early possessors, but the fact that it was the exemplar for the latter redaction of the Liber rectoris suggests that it was probably in the possession of the rector.15 The Phillipps manuscript, although not a copy of Vat. Regin. 406 nor the latter of it, derived from the same source and belonged to the Norman nation.16 Neither register is complete or free of error, as Denie and Chtelain recognized. The most recent document in the Phillipps manuscript is the 1302 statute containing the oaths for the librarii and stationarii,17 while the Vatican manuscript includes the pecia lists for c. 1275 and 1304.18 This suggests that these manuscripts were copied early in the fourteenth century, probably before 1312.19
15 See below for the discussion of the later redaction, London, Brit. Libr., Ms. Addit. 17304. 16 At the end of the manuscript one nds the articles to be sworn before the proctor by bachelors of arts incepting in the Norman nation (fol. 72v), followed by a nancial record for the Norman nation in 1292. 17 Vat., Regin. 406, fol. 73v; Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 936, fol. 69v; CUP II, pp. 97 98, #628. 18 Vat., Regin. 406, fols. 64r68v; CUP I, pp. 644650, #530, and CUP II, pp. 107 112, #642. 19 The next series of documents preserved in the later redaction of the Liber rectoris (London, Brit. Libr., Addit. ms. 17304, fols. 113r114v) are several university statutes dating to 1312. A reform of university record keeping, to be discussed below, was
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For the vast majority of items in these two cartularies the content and sequence of documents is identical, witnessing to a common source that dates to the last years of the thirteenth century or to the opening years of the fourteenth. The structure of this version is: (1) Oaths for electing the rector and for the examiners at Ste. Genevive; (2) Papal privileges; and (3) Statutes of the university and arts faculty. Royal privileges were placed among the statutes of the university. The date of issue or enactment has been almost entirely ignored. The statute of 1289 for the election of the rector is the second document (f. 1) in both manuscripts, indicating that the present structure was created after that date. There are, however, important dierences between the two manuscripts. The Vatican manuscript contains ve letters of Gregory IX not found in the Phillipps manuscript, while the latter contains three letters of Innocent IV, two letters of Alexander IV, and a letter of 1256 from four archbishops not found in the Vatican manuscript.20 Further, the Vatican manuscript contains eight statutes for the faculty of medicine that are not included in the Phillipps manuscript.21 The same is true for the 1254 and 1255 letters of the university complaining about the Dominican possession of two chairs in theology and, as was stated above, for the famous pecia lists.22 How thorough was either of these manuscripts in preserving all the important privileges and statutes of the university and arts faculty? Were there any important documents that were included in one and not the other, or that were missed entirely? While one might argue that the pecia lists and the statutes for a faculty other than arts (in this case medicine) should not have been included in the Book of the Rector (and might therefore have been intentionally excluded in the Phillipps manuscript), the absence of important papal privileges in both manuscripts and the absence in the Phillipps manuscript of the letter
attempted in 1316 (CUP II, pp. 193194, #734). If the updating and reorganization of the Book of the Rector to 1302 was a result of that reform, it is puzzling why the statutes of 1312 would not have been included. 20 Those found in Vat. Regin. 406 and not in the Phillipps manuscript, Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. 936, are: CUP I, #89, #90, #91, #112, and #116. Those found in the Phillipps manuscript and not in Vat. Regin. 406 are: CUP I, #164, #204, #239, #268, #350, and #351. 21 CUP I, #434, #444, #451, #452, #453, #454, #455, #456. 22 Dominican documents: CUP I, #230 in Vat. Regin. 406, fol. 49v, and CUP I, #256 in Vat. Regin. 406, fol. 44v; pecia documents: CUP I, #530 in Vat. Regin. 406, fol. 64r, and CUP II, #642 in Vat. Regin. 406, fol. 66v.
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over the dispute with the Dominicans cannot be so explained. The most remarkable omission, however, goes to the Vatican manuscript: the 1200 privilege of Philip Augustus recognizing the community of masters and scholars, which was included in the Phillipps manuscript but which was not picked up by the scribe of the Vatican manuscript and consequently was not included in the London manuscript, which was copied from Vatican, Regin. 406.23 Among the documents that should have been included in the pre-1304 register but which do not appear in either manuscript are ve papal privileges, one university statute, and two arts faculty statutes.24 Two of these documents, the arts faculty statute that resolved a dispute between the chancellor and the university and the privilege of Nicholas IV granting the ius ubique docendi date to 1292no more than ten years before the compilation of these two cartularies and thus well within recent university memory! How accurate were the scribes of these two manuscripts with regard to the documents they did include? Generally reliable, but not error free. Ignoring those instances where scribal changes might be justied and therefore might not be errors, there are several instances that are in the latter category. At fol. 22r the Vatican manuscript repeats a letter of Innocent IV, while the Phillipps manuscript does not. At fol. 24v the scribe of the Vatican manuscript copied the wrong rubric for the 1249 statute on the oaths for the election of the rector, namely the rubric for the following document (fol. 25r), where it is repeated. The Phillipps manuscript has the correct rubric for each document. On fol. 30r the Vatican manuscript dropped a rubric, and did so again on fol. 44v. On fol. 53v the Vatican manuscript again gives the wrong rubric, namely the same rubric that it gave correctly for an earlier document on fol. 49r. Again, the Phillipps manuscript has the correct rubrics. The later redaction of the Book of the Rector, London, Brit. Libr., Ms. Addit. 17304, generally referred to as the ocial Liber rectoris, incorporates the earlier text along with later privileges and statutes.25
CUP I, #1 in Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. 936, fol. 51r. The papal letters are CUP I, #376, #385, #421, #512, and CUP II, #578. The university statute is CUP I, #505. All but the rst two papal letters were eventually included in the books of the nations. One of the arts faculty statutes (CUP II, #579) was picked up by the scribe of the later Liber rectoris (London, Brit. Libr., Ms Addit. 17304, fol. 143v) and placed towards the end of the earlier portion between documents of 1366 and 1384. The other, CUP I, #231, does not appear in any register. 25 The beginning and ending quires of the manuscript date from the sixteenth century, but the central portion (fols. 25r148r) includes the earliest documents up to the end of the fourteenth century. Additional documents (fols. 148v174v), almost all dating
23 24
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For the earlier documents the London manuscript follows the same sequence as Vat. Regin. 406 and was, for that portion, undoubtedly copied from it.26 Wherever the Vatican manuscript failed to include a privilege or statute, the London manuscript continued that omission, with one exception.27 Wherever the Vatican manuscript attached the wrong rubric to a document, so too the London manuscript continued that error. It is unfortunate that the scribe of the later version of the Book of the Rector relied solely on the Vatican manuscript, uncorrected by the witness of other copies, such as the Phillipps manuscript, which for all its omissions did at least have the rubrics correct. In the later redaction contained in the London manuscript, no attempt was made to reorganize the entire body of legislation by incorporating subsequent privileges and statutes into the rationalized structure that had been created by the early fourteenth century, nor even to structure subsequent documents in any similar way. The sequence of post-1304 documents is without a consistent order, with papal privileges interspersed among statutes of the university and various faculties. There are, however, sub-groupings. This section begins with six university statutes (13121318) in chronological order but interspersed with two privileges of Innocent VI (1358 and 1359). Those documents are followed by eight privileges of John XXII, roughly contemporary with the last two university statutes in the previous group. Next the register swings back to university statutes (one of them dating to 1395), interspersed with a duplicate copy of a privilege of John XXII recorded earlier, and an arts faculty statute of 1355. Then follows a group of six arts faculty statutes (13381367), one papal privilege (1366), and four university statutes dating between 1292 and 1385. The early appearance of the statute of 1395 in this section (fol. 127r) in the hand of the original scribe establishes that the oldest portion (i.e., the majority) of the manuscript was copied at the very end of the fourteenth century or in the opening years of the fteenth. The arrangement of post-1304 documents in the London manuscript does not, then, follow a straight chronological order that one would
to the fourteenth century, follow in a similar hand. Most of the remaining statutes concern the reforms of Estouteville. 26 In the places where the sequence of documents in Vat. Regin. 406 and the Phillipps manuscript dier, the London manuscript follows Vat. Regin. 406, including its scribal errors. As far as I am aware, this fact has not been remarked on. 27 See above, note 24.
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expect in a sequential register. There is also no attempt to merge the fourteenth-century documents into the plan retained for those of the thirteenth century, nor to create any parallel or new order according to subject, type of document, or issuing agency. The sequence of documents is what one would expect if diplomas were entered in whatever order or grouping they were removed from safe keeping in the chest of the rector and copied directly into a formal register. In a parallel way, records relating to the oce of the rector ranging from 1314 to 1382again with almost no chronological sequenceappear later in the manuscript in the cursive hand of a dierent scribe.28 Moreover, a substantial number of university documents, most dating to the fourteenth century, failed to be included in the London manuscript. In contrast to the ten papal privileges included, at least eighteen were missed.29 Over against the eleven university statutes, agreements, and letters included, at least twenty were missed.30 Arts faculty statutes were better represented but similarly incomplete.31 Whatever circumstances explain this erratic collection and arrangement of documents, this manuscript was prepared at the beginning of the fteenth century using Vat. Regin. 406 and an assortment of fourteenth-century originalia. What might explain this situation? The evidence suggests either that the Book of the Rector was not properly maintained in the fourteenth century, or that a better-organized register, whether sequential or rationalized, once existed but was lost or destroyed, forcing later university ocials to restore the record as best they could. In either case, it is remarkable that the scribe of the London manuscript did not incorporate the rationalized structure and more extensive documentation
28 London, Brit. Libr., Ms. Addit. 17304, fols. 165r174v. The sequence of dates runs 1326, 1355, 1314, 1317, 1380, 1361, 1367, etc. The records could not have been copied from an earlier sequential register, but were probably transcribed from small pieces of parchment or paper, such as one nds in the cartons of the university archives for teaching appointments. 29 A partial count reveals the following privileges missing in the Liber rectoris: CUP I, #421, #512; CUP II, #578, #726, #727, #729, #738, #739, #741, #754, #836, #908, #908a, (conservation of #908), #1021, #1055, #1068, #1120, #1120a (conservation of #1120). 30 Again, a partial count reveals the following to be missing: CUP II, #724, #728, #728a, #731, #733, #734, #736, #737, #810, #825, #845, #861, #955, #988, #1032, #1046, #1064, #1095, #1109, #1137. 31 The London manuscript of the Liber rectoris does not include the arts faculty statute of Febr. 1254 (CUP I, #231) or that of Dec. 29, 1340 (CUP II, #1042).
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found in any of the books of the nations that existed at Paris at the end of the fourteenth century, just as he did borrow the content and structure of the thirteenth-century Book of the Rector. There appears to have been little or no sharing of resources between the oce of the rector and the ocers of the nations. By itself, the London manuscript witnesses to a collapse, at least toward the end of the fourteenth century, in the system of recording important documents in an ocial register of the arts faculty and university, whether sequentially or rationally reordered. Before leaving the Book of the Rector, two points relevant to the present inquiry should be noted. First, the arts faculty statute of 1339 contra scientiam occamicam appears in this later version of the principal register of the university and arts faculty (fol. 135r), but the statute of Dec. 29, 1340 does not.32 Second, the oaths for bachelors incepting in the arts faculty are included (fols. 129v130v), but only three of the oaths added in the fourteenth century (CUP II, 680, #1185, n. 16) appear there; most, including the oaths concerning the scientia occamica, are missing. What signicance, if any, should be assigned to these omissions will be discussed later. The Books of the Nations A third group of registers are the libri nationum. These are cartularies that belonged to each nation and contained the privileges and statutes of the university, faculty, and a particular nation (a category absent in the Liber rectoris).33 Of these, the Liber nationis for the French nation (Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. 2060), the English nation (Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. 535), and a copy of the non-nation part of the Book of the Picard Nation (Paris, Univ. Reg. 100, formerly Reg. 94) in the possession of the English nation are extant, and we have a good description of the now destroyed Book of the Norman Nation (Chartres 595).34 Only the
32 Thijssens statement, 162: the 1340 statute does occur in the Liber Rectoris is untrue. 33 These need to be distinguished from the sequential registers of the proctor that go back at least as far as the early fourteenth century. Those of the English nation survive from 1333 on, and were obviously earlier; see AUP I. The Picard nation refers to such a book in 1329 (CUP II, 324, #890): in papyro nationis registrare; and in 1355 (CUP III, 38, #1228): inscribere in papyro nationis statim et in presentia nationis. 34 Caesar E. Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis, 6 vols. (Paris, 16651673), relied heavily on the Book of the French Nation. Fortunately Henri Omont published a folio-by-folio description of the Book of the Norman Nation, which allows a close
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last two, however, were available for use in 1890 by the editors of the Chartularium.35 The structure and sequence of documents in these libri nationum are essentially identical, which proves they stem from the same reordering of documents that apparently occurred in the third quarter of the fourteenth century.36 More remarkable is the fact that the overall structure and sequence, as well as the specic documents included, dier substantially from the Liber rectoris. It is unlikely that the libri nationum, in the common redaction reected in these manuscripts, were derived from any known version of the Liber rectoris. Not only has the sequence of thirteenth-century documents been totally rearranged, but a third of the papal privileges and both royal privileges found in the Liber rectoris are missing in the libri nationum, along with several university and arts faculty statutes. This is strange, since these documents were retained in the later redaction of the Liber rectoris. The structure of the books of the nations, based upon the system adopted in the early redaction of the Liber rectoris, was also modied. Royal privileges were inserted as a separate category and placed immediately after papal privileges; statutes of the arts faculty were similarly separated from those of the university and placed after them; and statutes of the nation were separated from both university and faculty statutes and placed at the end. Within those groupings, the sequence of documents for the thirteenth century bears almost no relation to their ordering in any manuscript of the Book of the Rector. Either the libri nationum represent a new beginning in university document organization in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, which is the most likely explanation, or they have a line of descent dierent from all other extant cartularies.
comparison with the books of the other nations that have survived. In the case of the French and Picard nations we also have fragments of copies of both those registers, some of which contain additional documents; for the French nation: Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 9950, fols. 33r39v; for the Picard nation: Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 9950, fols. 1r32v; Paris, Bibl. Ste. Genevive 1655. And Reg. 100 may reect the Book of the Picard Nation more than that of the English nation. 35 Denie and Chtelain did use Du Boulays Historia, which included texts transcribed from the cartularies of the French and Picard nations. In the case of the French nation, those transcriptions can now be checked against the original for accuracy. 36 As will be discussed below, these extant manuscripts were not copied at the same time, and thus the date of the last document included in each is one of several dierences among them. There are more dierences in the sequence of papal privileges than any other section.
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The redaction common to these libri nationum was assembled in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, although some of the manuscripts or parts of them were copied later. The steps in this process for the English nation are recorded in the Proctors Register. The decision to prepare a Book of the Nation on parchment was made in 1356, but the task of reassembly and copying was not done until the 1360s and not complete until around 1368.37 In light of the content of these books, a similar date for the common portion should probably be assigned to those of the other nations as well. Unfortunately, only the copy that belonged to or derived from the Picard nation (Univ. Reg. 100) can be dated on the basis of watermarks. It was apparently copied in the 1380s.38 The other extant libri nationum are on parchment and can be dated only approximately by handwriting and by the date of the most recent documents that are in the hand of the main scribe.39 All these manuscripts include an arts faculty statute of Dec. 1355 (CUP III, #1229), which in the books of the French and Norman nations
37 AUP I, cols. 199200: Item 22 die Julii, videlicet die sancte Marie Magdalene, post sermonem apud Sanctum Maturinum facta congregatione nacionis ad ordinandum et statuendum, diliberatum fuit concorditer, quod eret Liber nacionis de pergameno, in quo scriberentur statuta et privilegia nacionis et Universitatis, et deliberatum fuit quod super modo faciendi eret una alia congregacio. As will be shown, the Oxford Corpus Christi College fragment (Ms 283, fols. 155r159v) proves that the English nation already had a register, probably unbound, by the end of the thirteenth century. This decision of 1356 was not to create the rst such record, but to create or copy a new register on parchment. Assuming Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 535 is the result of this eort, the realization of this project probably took more than a decade, as Denie and Chtelain recognized; AUP I, col. 199n: deliberatio nationis nonnisi post decem annos, i.e. post an. 1366, eectum habuit. 20 Decemb. mentio t libri rubei nationis, qui circa an. 1368 scriptus fuisse videtur. In the calendar in the manuscript, Febr. 22 is non-legible because of the mass for Pope Urban V (13621370). Since the latest document in the manuscript, fol. 31v, is for June 5, 1366, this cartulary was done on or after that date; AUP I, col. 3. Moreover, the entry on Dec. 20, 1368 in the proctors records of the nation (AUP I, col. 322) mentions that the oaths for the inrotulatores were recently written in libro rubeo nacionis, which itself was noviter conscripta ante articulos antiquitus jurari consuetos. This is what is found in B.N. nouv. acq. lat. 535, fol. 132r. 38 Four watermarks appear on the paper used in this register: Ox head [without precise parallel in C.M. Briquet, Les Filigranes, 4 vols. (Paris, 1907; rev. ed. Amsterdam, 1968), V. Moshin and S. Traljich, Filigranes des XIIIe et XIVe sicle (Zagreb, 1957), or G. Piccard, Die Ochsenkopf-Wasserzeichen, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966), but close to Briquet, #14118]; tongs [Briquet #14083]; double transverse cross [no precise parallel, but close to Briquet #5768 and #5769]; and a letter M surmounted by a cross, similar to ones in Briquet from the region of Paris, 13801383. 39 Both the Book of the French Nation and the Book of the English Nation include the statutory reforms of Cardinal Estouteville in 1452 and have notes and documents from the sixteenth century on what were once blank folios.
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was placed after the oaths but in the Book of the English Nation (and possibly the Picard nation) was placed at the end of the arts faculty statutes, before the oaths. The dierent locations of its inclusion may indicate that it was promulgated shortly before the time of the initial ordering of documents. On the basis of date-of-last-document-included and its placement, most of the Book of the French Nation was copied at some point between 1355 and 1366, since it does not include a papal privilege of 1366 (CUP III, #1318/1319) and contains a version of the inception oaths that predates 1365. The Book of the English Nation was completed c. 1368.40 The Book of the Norman Nation was copied after 1366, since it includes the papal privilege mentioned above. Was there no older form of a privilege and statute book for any of the nations, or did the register form of statutory record-keeping at the level of the nations only begin in the 1350s and 1360s? Two fragments of document records relating to the English nation survive from the late thirteenth century. One of these is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 103, pp. 107112. The documents all relate to the 12451255 crisis between the university and the Dominicans. While the subject matter would be appropriate for inclusion in a Book of the English Nation, other contexts might also explain the collection of these documents. The second fragment, however, undoubtedly came from an early type of a Book of the English Nation: Oxford, Corpus Christi College, Ms. 283, fols. 155r159v. All documents contained in this fragment relate to the period 12511277, and all concern the English nation either directly or indirectly. The fragment begins with the statutes of the English nation regarding inception and determination, followed by statutes, papal letters, and legal records in chronological order. Not only is the order of the documents random and chronologically sequential (which recalls the rst type of register, although here the scribal hand is the same); most of the documents found in this fragment were not included either in later versions of the Book of the English Nation or in either redaction of the Book of the Rector. This applies not only to statutes of the English nation, which would never have been part of the Book of the Rector, but applies as well to documents relating to the university and its arts faculty. Were these documents replaced by later legislation and therefore dropped from later collections, or is it the case that the process of transmission failed to preserve important records?
40
See above, note 37.
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It is evident from any examination of redactions of the Book of the Rector and the books of the nations that there does not seem to have been any concerted eort to discard older legislation when it was replaced or superseded by newer statutes. The statutes of the early thirteenth century were retained in the collections of the fourteenth and fteenth century despite the fact that they had long since been modied or replaced by subsequent legislation, often preserved side by side. Statute books should, therefore, be characterized not so much as reections of current practice or legislation in force at the time they were copied, but as memorial books for the records of present and past generations, the revered heritage of university, faculty, and nation. This does not mean, however, that all relevant documentseven some of the most important privileges and statuteswere always preserved in these collections, since inclusion depended on scribal access to the original diploma or an earlier register, which might be overlooked or absent from the chest of the rector or nation. The general rule, with a few exceptions, was: once included, always included; once overlooked, always overlooked. This process of transmission and its occasional failures has been seen in the relation of the early and later redactions of the Book of the Rector. The same can be illustrated through a closer look at the Oxford manuscript. The statutes of the English nation that begin the Oxford fragment do not appear in the Book of the English Nation. Moreover, the papal privilege and the letters of the university, which occur only in the Oxford fragment, would also not have been intentionally discarded. In fact, one of the documents in the Oxford fragment, namely the 1256 agreement between the university and Dominicans, which also appears in the Cambridge fragment, in the Book of the English Nation, in the Phillipps copy of the Book of the Rector, but not in the Vatican copy (and therefore not in the later redaction of the Book of the Rector)no more important than several other documents in the Oxford fragmentis the only document in that fragment that is extant in other manuscripts. The obvious conclusion is that the scribe who prepared the Book of the English Nation in the second half of the fourteenth century did not have access to this earlier collection. The decline of English students at Paris in the 1320s and their exodus in the 1330s may explain the break in documentation, especially if an English proctor, charged with the responsibility of the safe keeping of the nations records, may have taken it back to England. No matter how important, if documents were not copied into multiple registers or into a reg-
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ister that served as an exemplar for others, their chances of survival apart from the original diploma was greatly reduced. The scribe of the revised Liber nationis, however, probably did have access to an earlier version of a statute book for the nation. The English nation possessed a Liber nationis in 1339 separate from its Liber procuratorum, since the latter mentions the copying of arts faculty statutes into such a register.41 But were all four nations keeping statutory registers before the middle of the fourteenth century? The 1339 inventory of the possessions of the French nation suggests that that nation was not, and there may have been no uniform practice in this matter.42 Although it is not necessarily the case that a Book of the French Nation, if one then existed, would have been kept in the chest of the nation, that was the normal place for the safe keeping of all possessions, and once such registers are known to exist, the chest is the only location mentioned for preservation.43 But whether or not a Book of the French Nation should have been mentioned, if one existed, it is certainly likely that all originalia would have been kept together in the chest. Consequently, the original diplomas found in the chest are probably an accurate reection of what the French nation possessed at that time. The selection is rather meager yet informative. Most of the documents are papal and legatine privileges from the thirteenth century, several of them duplicates. There are no statutes for the university, only one for the arts faculty not the contra Ockham statute of the previous monthand four statutes for the French nation, all probably from the early fourteenth century.44
AUP I, col. 35: Duo statuta facta in facultate et approbata quatuor nacionum sigillis et signeto rectoris fecit copiari in libro nacionis per manum pubplicam. See above, note 12. 42 CUP II, pp. 491492, #1028 for the inventory of the chest of the French nation. It is interesting in this regard that episcopal registers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries seem to have been an almost uniquely English phenomenon. 43 The inventory of the chest of the Picard nation in 1382 (CUP III, #1470) contained unus magnus liber papyreus, ubi continentur facta et deliberationes nationis, i.e. the sequential register of the nation. Along the lines of what was found in the chest of the French nation, ibid.: due parve arce lignee continentes diversa instrumenta unacum diversis aliis literis sigillatis sigillis diversis, in quarum una sunt magne litere sigillate magno sigillo nationis Picardie. Item sex alii libri papyrei antiqui cum pluribus aliis literis seu instrumentis existentibus in parvula arca existente in magna prenominata. From a 1424 statute in the Book of the English Nation (Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. lat. 535, fol. 146r): et habetur originale in archa nationis cum aliis libris et statutis. 44 Two of these nation statutes can be identied and are dated to 1328 and 1336. One cannot assume the documents not found in the chest had been discarded after being copied in a register, since the papal and legatine privileges found there, some of
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It is remarkable how few documents from the fourteenth century were among the collection. Returning to the books of the nations, how eective were they in preserving the privileges and statutes of the university, faculty, and nations? In general, far better than the Liber rectoris. For thirteenthcentury papal privileges, as we have seen, they were less complete than either early manuscript of the Book of the Rector, but they contained more university and arts faculty statutes from the thirteenth century as well as royal privileges from that period. And if those responsible for producing the books of the nations had access to any copy of the earlier Book of the Rector, it was the version contained in the Phillipps manuscript. For the fourteenth century the coverage of the libri nationum is even better. They have a far greater number of documents than the London manuscript of the Book of the Rector. For papal privileges the libri nationum have twenty as opposed to the ten found in the Liber rectoris, and fourteen of that twenty are not in the latter register. For university statutes the libri nationum have fourteen as opposed to the eleven found in the Liber rectoris, and ve of those fourteen are not found in the latter register. The number of arts faculty statutes is more balanced: each has six, of which ve are the same in both registers. While the compilers of the libri nationum were more thorough, they did not preserve all the relevant fourteenth-century documents. Missing for the rst half of the century are at least eleven papal privileges;45 three university statutes;46 and one arts faculty statute.47 Moreover, the manuscripts show the same type of scribal errors found in the manuscripts of the Book of the Rector.48
them in duplicate, are also in one or more registers, except for a temporal privilege whose eectiveness had expired. 45 CUP II, #767, #768, #769, and #770, all found in the London manuscript. Also missing are: CUP II, #726, #729, #739, #741, #754, #836, #1021. This information is based on a partial scan of CUP II. 46 CUP II, #881, #884, and #1051. [The university statute mentioned in the proctors register of the English nation (AUP I, col. 62) does not appear in any register.] 47 CUP III, #1258. Since the books of the Norman and English nations were copied after 1366, there is no reason why this statute of 1363 should have been missing other than through oversight. 48 For example, conning our attention just to the section containing the arts faculty statutes, the scribe of Univ. Reg. 100, p. 61, recopied CUP I, #328 under the rubric for the following document, CUP II, #549. The Book of the English Nation (Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. 535, fol. 102r) makes the same mistake.
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Several conclusions emerge from this comparison of the Book of the Rector and the books of the nations. The rst is that because these registers attempted to be formal, denitive, rationally structured books of statutes and privileges, and because they were copied long after the ocial diplomas were signed and sealed, the text of the documents they contain along with their dates were based on the ocial diplomas or on copies of ocial diplomas in an earlier liber nationis. It would have run counter to the intent and function of the book for a draft form of any document, including the arts faculty statute of December 1340, to have been used instead of the nal version.49 The second, and somewhat surprising conclusion is the evident lack of coordination between the rectorate and the nations with regard to record preservation and registering. In compiling a book of privileges and statutes c. 1360, the nations made little or no use of the Book of the Rector and, consequently, omitted important legislation. Similarly, when the Book of the Rector was updated around 1400, the scribe made no use of the statute registers then in the possession of each of the four nations, and thus overlooked a large body of fourteenthcentury documents. The third conclusion is that the registration of documents (as distinct from the retention of originalia) may not have been a continuous procedure either among rectors or the nations, but was undertaken only when the need was felt. This situation resulted from several factors. One factor was the degree of importance the two types of document preservation had for the rector and proctor, whose terms in oce were extremely brief by modern standards. Among the responsibilities of either oce recordThijssen, 164, believes that the reference to the axing of seals, mentioned in the colophon of the December 1340 statute, was included in anticipation of the actual sealing: this saved the preparation of yet another diploma. The clause may not be read as a proof that the statute was really sealed on December 29, 1340, because our source for the statute is the chartulary and not the actual diploma with the seals attached to it. The time-interval that passed between the drafting and validating of the statute is explained by the nature of the assembly that took place on December 29, 1340. The assembly was an assembly of regent masters of the Faculty of Arts and their decisions were recorded in a statute, which, like all statutes, was copied down in the universitys chartulary. Apart from the fact that there is no such thing as the universitys chartulary, unless he means the Liber rectoris, which does not contain this statute, that is not how the registration of documents occurs even in sequential registers. If a meeting only produced a draft, it would never be copied into any register. And if, following Thijssens assumptions, the nal document should contain an actum clause and the date associated with it, it is puzzling how a draft would save the preparation of another diploma.
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keeping was important, although perhaps not the highest priority. It usually took the form of ensuring that internally-generated documents, such as statutes and letters were completed and sent, and copies preserved in their original form, i.e., as diplomas, which would be placed in the chest of the rector and/or nation. The preservation of incoming documents, such as papal, legatine, royal, or episcopal letters and privileges, while desirable, probably depended more on the timing and circumstances of arrival. In either case, the inscribing of documents into a register was an additional process, and one not immediately necessary. With such short terms in oce and no chancery, this task might well be neglected.50 In this process it appears that the ocers of the nations were more conscientious than were the rectors. Even though the turnover among proctors was more frequent than for the rectoralmost monthly as opposed to four rectors per yearmost masters could expect to be proctor at least once every two years and might therefore be more concerned about the aairs of the nation and faculty, while the rectorship passed among a potentially far larger group. More importantly, the nations were the principal unit of self-identication for masters and students in the arts faculty.51 The faculty and its rector could do little beyond what the nations, speaking through their proctors, authorized. This applies not only to the creation and issuing of documents; it also applies to their preservation.
Record-Making at the University of Paris University Scribes and the Creation of Documents We know nothing directly about the scribes who produced either the early or later versions of the Liber rectoris or those who produced the libri nationum. Presumably they were drawn from the pool of public notaries active in Paris who operated under imperial and apostolic authority and who had some connection with the university. We at least know something about the scribes who prepared the original diplomas, since
50 The only personnel in the rectorate or nations with multi-year tenure were the bedels and, eventually, an employed scribe. In the higher faculties a dean would often hold oce for a number of years, based on seniority or election. 51 Pearl Kibre, The Nations in the Mediaeval Universities (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).
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these documents, unlike the copies in the registers, with one exception, carry the names of the scribe and witnesses.52 The university tended to employ one or more scribes on a frequent basis, and their activity on behalf of the university might extend for a considerable period of time. One notary by the name of Bonamicus (of Bologna), who was drafting documents for the university in 1267, was still employed in such tasks in 1289.53 On the other hand, university diplomas from the late thirteenth century reveal the names of several scribes employed by the university to draft its documents.54 By 1316 the university licensed and appointed an ocial university scribe. The holder of that oce at the time was Radulphus Benedicti, who was still active in that oce in September 1321.55 He is the rst scribe known to identify himself as acting not only by imperial and apostolic authority, but by university authority as well.56 Whatever the situation had been before, the employment of a university-appointed scribe by December 1316 should have improved the preservation of university documentation. In addition to the reappointment of Radulphus Benedicti for the following year (13161317) and the promulgation of a statute containing the oath of oce for the university scribe, the university expressed its concern that the frequent turnover among masters and the brief term of oce for the rector created a situation in which
The arts faculty statute of 1355, the last to be copied into the common text of the books of the nations, did include a full diplomatic colophon. This may be because the scribe of that statute, Simon Quinimo, may have had some hand in the selection and arrangement of documents for the books of the nations. 53 CUP I, #416; CUP II, #560. 54 E.g., Gaufridus de Plesseio (CUP II, #587), Aubertus de Maconvilla (CUP II, #602), Gaufridus dictus Ligator (CUP II, #616), Anthonius Sicti de Vercellis (CUP II, #703). 55 CUP II, #724; CUP II, #733; CUP II, #734; CUP II, #736. On Sept. 9, 1321 (CUP II, pp. 246247, #800) Radulphus recorded a public apology given by Nicholas de Anesiaco, OP, to the rector and proctors of the arts faculty. It is signicant that Ralph is acting as notary for the arts faculty, not just the university. In a university document of August 1325 (CUP II, pp. 286287, #845) the scribe was Herveus de Insula. Herveus was still drafting documents for the university in April 1341 (CUP II, pp. 515518, #1051). 56 CUP II, #733; Et ego Radulphus Benedicti clericus Rothomagensis diocesis, publicus apostolica et imperiali auctoritate venerabilisque matris Universitatis Parisiensis notarius . By the second quarter of the fourteenth century (and possibly much earlier) the nations had their own ocial scribes. The scribe of the Norman nation in 1337 was paid twenty solidi per year for his services; CUP II, #1008. The scribe who copied two statutes into the Liber nationis of the English nation in 1339 was paid for that task, perhaps in addition to an annual salary; AUP I, col. 35.
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past decisions and legislation of the university body might be forgotten or inaccurately remembered.57 Their remedy seems to have been to have continuity in the oce of university scribe not only for the preparation of all university documents but presumably for recalling the content of university transactions and possibly overseeing the preservation of the originalia. No mention is made of a register! The principal task of the university notary was the preparation and authentication of ocial documents. He was expected to attend all faculty meetings that might result in legislation. Documents embodying faculty decisions were to be prepared by him, often at the meeting where nal action was being taken. And he oversaw the signatures of the witnesses and the attachment of seals. Legislative procedures in the university are clear, even if the number of meetings needed to produce any particular statute are unknown.58 Neither the university nor the arts faculty discussed issues as a body of the whole, but deliberations were held at the same place and time. Once the rector had presented the issue or an item of proposed legisla-
57 CUP II, #734: Injuriatur memorie frequenter oblivio, et longinquitate sepe t temporis, quod res clara presentibus redditur obscura futuris, et sic interdum recisa repululant, suscitantur sopita, et sepulta resurgunt. Unde adversus oblivionis dispendium de scripture suragio prudentium cautela non immerito providere curavit. Ut igitur Universitatis nostre negotia futuris temporibus peragenda roboris saniori rmitate vallentur, potissime quia labilis est hominum memoria, ut predicitur, nostrique magistri uunt et reuunt continueque mutantur, rectorque sepissime mutatur, ex quibus frequentius evenire contingit quamplurima nostra negotia tam deliberata quam alia sub oblivionis velamine in grave nostri prejudicium et gravamen pertransire, de notario nobis tam utili quam honesto, qui in nostris congregationibus et aliis locis nobis necessariis intersit, scribenda conscribat et si opus fuerit in publicam formam modo debito reducat, ex unanimi consensu, provido et deliberato consilio duximus providendum, per cujus manus omnes littere seu scripture a nostra Universitate emanentes. 58 Thijssens description of the sequence of legislative action in the arts faculty, 163 166, needs correction at numerous points. It is not the case that meetings of the nations were often held immediately following those of the faculty. Nor is it the case that denitive legislation in the faculty of arts required the presence of non-regent masters. Nor was the sealing of statutes done by each nation at a separate time and place. The nations met independently of or in conjunction with the arts faculty. The meeting that resulted in the December 1340 statute was a meeting of regent masters of the four nations and had full legislative authority. And for the sealing of a document to be legal, it was necessary for all signatories and witnesses to be present at the same time and place. Diplomas did not make the rounds throughout the Nations to be actually approved by seal. They were sealed at one ceremony, either at the legislative meeting itself or at some designated place later. It was not just the signature and seal of the English nation that was axed in the lodgings of Henry de Unna; it was the one and only sealing ceremony.
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tion at the meeting, the constituent units (nations in the case of the arts faculty; nations and faculties in the case of the university) caucused separately in designated areas of the church and then reported the results of their deliberations through the proctors and deans. If there was unanimity, the notary prepared the document, which was then read for accuracy, signed and sealed. If there was a division of opinion, separate views were reported in the document before it was made ocial.59 It was expected that the university notary would, in the company of designated masters, bring the great seal of the university from the chest in which it was kept to university meetings that were expected to result in legislation.60 Wherever possible, this would be done at the meeting in
59 CUP II, #1051, p. 517: facultas artium remansit in dicto capitulo, et ipsa in dicto capitulo per nationes more solito divisa ad deliberandum super premissis, et postea invicem redeunte et unita. The dierence in results is illustrated by documents that survive as originalia and in registers. CUP II, #881 illustrates a swift decision in which the rectors draft (cedula), which was never copied in any register, was summarized into statutory form: anno ejusdem MCCC vicesimo octavo, die tercia mensis Septembris , in mei notarii publici et testium infra scriptorum presentia constitutus circa horam tercie in congregatione generali apud S. Maturinum Parisiensem, tenens in manu sua quandam cedulam, legit ibidem quedam statuta in eadem cedula contenta coram omnibus ibidem existentibus, cujus quidem cedule tenor dicta statuta continentis sequitur in hec verba. Qua quidem cedula sic ibidem publice lecta et in deliberatione posita, deliberavit decanus in medicina Et eodem modo deliberaverunt decretiste et theologi. Super quibus omnibus prefatus rector petiit a me publico notario sibi eri publicum instrumentum. Acta fuerunt hec Parisius anno, indictione, mense, die, loco, ponticatu et hora predictis, presentibus ad hec venerabilibus et discretis viris magistris Et ego Garinus de Pruvino dum hec omnia et singula erent et ordinarentur, presens fui, et super hoc publicum instrumentum scribi feci et in formam publicam redegi . CUP II, #845, by contrast, records the division of opinion: anno ejusdem millesimo trecentesimo vicesimo quinto, indictione octava, xxvj die mensis Augusti , in mei magistri Stephani de Lingonis rectoris , notariique publici ac testium subscriptorum presentia in capitulo Beati Maturini Parisiensis in generali congregatione dicte Universitatis, quibusdam factis et negotiis per nos rectorem predictum ibidem propositis et in deliberatione positis Primo, nos rector predictus deliberationem facultatis artium retulimus et referimus in hunc modum secundum deliberationem duarum nationum. Alie autem due nationes deliberaverunt quod Deliberationem vero facultatis medicine retulit Deliberationem vero facultatis decretorum retulit Deliberationem vero facultatis theologie Acta fuerunt hec in capitulo Beati Maturini predicto parum post horam tertiam, die, indictione, mense et pontificatu predictis In cujus rei testimonium sigillum dicte Universitatis una cum signo et subscriptione publici notarii infrascripti presentibus est appensum. Datum anno, indictione, die, mense et ponticatu predictis. Both are cases of a meeting in which the decision, document preparation, witnessing, and sealing occurs on the same day. See Kibre, The Nations, pp. 102104; H. Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (Oxford, 1946) I, pp. 410411. 60 CUP II, #698: nulla littera cujuscunque modi magno sigillo Universitatis decetero sigilletur, nisi prius per Universitatem visa et perquisita fuerit examine dili-
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the presence of the masters. For university statutes the process of sealing was relatively simple, since only the seal of the university was required. The sealing of an arts faculty statute was a more complex matter, since it required the seal of each of the four nations along with the seal of the rector. There were instances in which the sealing of a statute did not take place at the meeting that enacted it, but this unusual procedure was noted in the colophon of the document.61 Datum et Actum Since Thijssen has called attention to the wording of the diplomatic colophons of university statutes and used his understanding to argue that the date of the arts faculty statute of December 1340 is the date of a draft (indicated by the word datum without actum), which was subsequently sealed and promulgated (i.e., made ocial as actum) between mid-January and early February, some consideration of that issue must be addressed here. Even though the nature of surviving registers indicates that they do not contain draft copies, a correct understanding of the relation of datum and actum clauses in university statutes leads to the same conclusion. First, in contrast to Thijssens assertion,62 it is not the case that the majority of university statutes bear a colophon that includes a clause with both datum and actum or actum and date. Of the twenty arts faculty statutes recorded in the books of the nations for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, fourteen have only a datum clause or date (eight
genti. Huic adicientes, ut deinceps clavis arche et cophini, in quo sigillum supradictum reponitur, portata per servientem aliquem sine aliquo magistro ad sigillandum nullatenus admittatur, sed cujuslibet facultatis teneatur unus magister cum clavi in loco sigillationis personaliter interesse. 61 CUP I, #219: Anno Domini MCCL tertio Hanc autem ordinationem seu statutum a nobis approbatum et editum sigilli nostri munimine fecimus roborari. Actum est hoc statutum anno predicto mense April. Sed propter additionem clausule de emenda facta per memoratum comitem posterius, que nondum exhibita erat quando editum est hoc statutum, sigillata est carta ista iiii non. Septembris, anno predicto. This text, taken from the original diploma, was reproduced almost verbatim in the registers: London, Brit. Libr., Addit. 17304, fol. 90v; Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 535, fol. 75r; Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 2060, fol. 70r70v. [A statute of the French nation approved on February 26, 1328 (Paris, Bibl. Nat., nouv. acq. lat. 2060, fol. 110r; CUP II, #872) but which was not sealed until later (CUP II, #897), was registered without any nal notarial clause or mention of sealing.] 62 Thijssen, 165: Leang through the chartulary one will nd that most statutes end with the standard formula: Datum et actum or the slightly variant formula Acta fuerent (sic) .
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of which also refer to the attachment of seals),63 and only six either carry actum and a date or an actum and datum clause.64 An actum clause is also missing in twenty of the thirty-four university statutes that have colophons and in most of the statutes of the four nations.65 Nor it is the case that where only one of these terms occurs, datum is attached to the draft of a document and actum to its ocial release or promulgation. They refer to two dierent types of information. Datum refers to the date of the document, which is often identical with the date of the meeting at which deliberation and legislative action took place.66 Actum refers to the place of the meeting where action was taken, often identical with the issuing of the document.67 In practice, as both
63
CUP I, #561, CUP II, #1012, 1023, 1024, 1031, 1229. The university statutes bearing only datum or date are CUP I, #230, 256, 413, 478, 505; CUP II, #575, 685, 697, 698, 699, 722, 724, 733, 734, 737, 776, 810, 825, 1057, 1064. Noting some of these datum only statutes, Thijssen, 165, speculated this might be because the person who convoked the meeting is mentioned in the document. But all meetings of the arts faculty and university were called by the rector. 66 Among arts faculty statutes: CUP I, #441, 485; CUP II, #554. A statute of 1272 (CUP I, #441) best illustrates this form. In the opening section of the statute the date and place of the meeting is given: de communi consensu nullo ex nobis contradicente die veneris precedente diem dominicam qua cantatur Letare Jerusalem [i.e. April 1], convocatis propter hoc magistris omnibus et singulis in ecclesia sancte Genovese Parisiensis [i.e. Ste. Genevive], statuimus et ordinamus And at the end: Datum Parisius anno Domini M.CC. septuagesimo primo, prima die Aprilis [i.e., April 1, 1272]. Acta or actum could also be used to indicate that the document was prepared and issued on the same day as the deliberations: CUP I, #462 (acta ex deliberatione); CUP II, #845, #1051. 67 CUP II, #561: sigilla quatuor nationum presenti cedule sunt appensa. Actum anno Domini M.CC. octuagesimo nono apud Sanctum Julianum Pauperem die veneris post festum beati Dyonisii. CUP II, #1023: Actum fuerunt hec apud Sanctum Julianum in nostra congregatione facultatis nobis specialiter ad statuendum vocatis anno Domini millesimo trecentesimo tricesimo nono, sabbato post festum beati Mathei apostoli. In quorum testimonium sigilla nostra cum signeto rectoris duximus apponenda. CUP II, #1024: acta fuerunt hec apud S. Maturinum in nostra congregatione facultatis nobis specialiter et expresse ad statuendum vocatis, anno Domini millesimo CCC trecesimo nono, die lune post festum beati Mathei apostoli. In quorum testimonium sigilla nostra cum signeto rectoris duximus apponenda. CUP II, #1031: Acta fuerunt hec apud S. Maturinum in congregatione nostre facultatis nobis sucienter et specialiter ad statuendum vocatis anno Domini MCCC tricesimo nono, die mercurii duodecima mensis Januarii. In quorum testimonium sigilla nostra una cum signeto rectoris hiis presentibus litteris duximus apponenda. The last three probably have identical form because they would have been drafted by the same university scribe. CUP II, #1229: In cujus rei testimonium presenti statuto sigillum rectoris una cum sigillis quatuor nationum, videlicet Gallicane, Picardie, Normanie et Anglicane et earum consensu unaque cum signo et subscriptione subscripti notarii duximus apponenda. Datum et
64 65
1042.
CUP I, #137, 187, 246, 328, 333, 363, 441, 461, 485; CUP II, #544, 549, 554, 570,
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De Board and Giry noted, the terms were often used interchangeably to mean the place and date of ocial action.68 The choice of language seems to have depended as much on the model employed by a particular notary as on anything else.69 In assessing the meaning to be assigned to the presence or absence of either of these terms in a statutory colophon, it is important to distinguish between the form of a statute as it appears in the Liber rectoris or the libri nationum and the form of the original diploma. With a few exceptions, the text recorded in the registers is a slightly truncated text in which the invocatio, the list of witnesses, and the subscriptio and notarial conclusion (the Et ego paragraph) have been removed. To establish whether all ocial sealed diplomas of statutes have an actum clause, we have to compare originalia. Only two diplomas of arts faculty statutes have survived, one from 1254, which was not included in any register, and the statute of 1355, which was included in the books of the nations but in its full diplomatic form. Since the university scribe usually prepared documents for the arts faculty, originalia of university statutes, of which we have many, allow us to compare the diplomatic and register forms of statutes. Conning our comparison to the originalia of fourteenth-century statutes that have seals or have the marks of having had seals, we nd that the date of the ocial document is identical with the date of the meeting at which action was taken.70 It should also be noted that
actum in congregatione nostre facultatis tam regentium quam non regentium ad hoc specialiter convocatorum et apud Sanctum Julianum Pauperem Parisius congregatorum anno Domini M.CCC. quinquagesimo quinto, decima die mensis Decembris, indictione nona, ponticatus . This last is more detailed because its text was edited from the original diploma. 68 A. Giry, Manuel de diplomatique (Paris, 1894), pp. 578, 581582, 585589; A. de Board, Manuel de diplomatique franaise et ponticale (Paris, 1929), pp. 295296. 69 The exibility of notarial language is illustrated in the arts faculty statute of March 1338 (CUP II, #1012) in which actum applies to a scribal copy, not the original document. As edited in CUP this is not immediately apparent, but the relevant text in the manuscript registers reads at the beginning: In nomine Domini, amen. Datum per copiam. Universis praesentes; and at the end: Datum apud S. Maturinum Parisius in nostra congregatione facultatis nobis ad statuendum vocatis anno Domini M.CCC. tricesimo septimo, sexta decima die mensis Martii. In quorum testimonium sigilla nostrarum quatuor nationum praesentibus duximus apponenda. Acta fuit haec copia anno superius expresso indictione sexta vicesimosecundi die mensis Martii ponticatus . Acta in this case means the date of this copy, not the date of the meeting at which action was taken, and the statute sealed, six days earlier. 70 CUP II, #733: anno Domini MCCC sexto decimo, die sabbati ante festum beati Nicolai Hyemale Parisius apud Sanctum Maturinum in nostra congregatione
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often no reference is made to the attendance of non-regents, whose presence was not required for legislative action. Whether the place and date apply to a nal meeting or to the only meeting, the scribe was present and the document sealed on that day. Where this is not the case, scribes are careful to note the dierence in dates.71 When actum is used, it applies to the meeting at which the deliberationes and decision occurred, before sealing, not to a promulgatio after sealing, as the statute cited above in note 61 illustrates. More to the point, in diplomas of statutes with evidence of the seals still present one nds datum by itself more often than actum or actum et datum.72
Oaths Concerning the Statutes Contra Scientiam Occamicam The oaths concerned with the scientia occamica were part of a series of oaths added to those to be sworn by bachelors in arts when they came before the rector to incept.73 The original twenty-seven oaths
generali tunc inibi facta In cujus rei testimonium presentes litteras per Radulphum Benedicti, auctoritate apostolica et imperiali nostrique collegii memorati notarium, eri mandavimus nostreque Universitatis sigillo una cum signo et subscriptione ejusdem communiri. Datum Parisius in capitulo beati Maturini, anno et die supradictis. Et ego . #734: Parisius in capitulo Sancti Maturini in nostra congregatione generali die sabbati ante festum beati Nicholai hyemale anno Domini millesimo CCCXVI In quorum testimonium presentes litteras per eundem notarium nostrum confectas nostre Universitatis sigilii munimine duximus roborandus. Datum anno et die sabbati predictis Parisius in nostra congregatione generali et capitulo Sancti Maturini . #736: Datum et actum Parisius in nostra congregatione predicta, anno Domini . #825: Datum ut supra. #845: Acta fuerunt hec in capitulo Beati Maturini predicto parum post horam tertiam, die, indictione, mense et ponticatu predictis . #870: In cujus rei testimonium sigillum nostrum presentibus litteris duximus apponendum, anno, die et loco supradictis. Other statutes in diploma form in which the datum or actum clause refers to the time and place of the meeting: CUP II, #722, #724, #737, #774, #776, #810, #881, #1051, #1057, #1064, #1229. 71 See above, note 61. 72 CUP I, #413 (Paris, Arch. univ., carton 6, C.5.a); #478 (Arch. univ., carton 4, A.19.i); #505 (Arch. univ., carton 7, D.13.a); CUP II, #722 (Arch. univ., carton 3, A.7.b, A.7.c, and carton 7, D.12.b); #724 (Paris, Arch. nat., M 68, n. 2); #733 (Arch. univ., D.18.ss); #734 (Arch. univ., carton 7, D.15.a); #737 (Arch. univ., carton 1, A.1.h); #776 (Arch. univ., carton 6, B.1.c); #810 (Arch. univ., carton 5, B.1.g); #825 (Arch. nat., M. 68, n. 6); #1057 (Arch. univ., carton 7, D.12.d); #1064 (Arch. nat. M 68, n. 26 & 27). 73 The oaths have been variously dated in the secondary literature. The date of 1341 was conjectured by Du Boulay on the basis of other oaths created in July 1341 and the date of the two known statutes. The date of 1356, which was given in Chtelains account of the Book of the English Nation (Le livre de la nation dAngleterre, 93)
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were created in the thirteenth century, and subsequently a list of eleven were joined to them.74 As with individual statutes and privileges in the Book of the Rector and the books of the nations, the precise manuscript evidence for these additional inception oaths is not clear from the critical apparatus in the published edition. Denie and Chtelain gave their sources as Univ. Reg. 3 and the British Library manuscript of the Book of the Rector, but the latter, although composed at the end of the fourteenth century, includes only four of the additional oaths, and Univ. Reg. 3 has a dierent reading for both of the Ockham-related oaths with which we are concerned. The text printed in the edited Chartularium was taken from Du Boulays Historia, which in turn was copied from the records of the French and Picard nations. At the end of June 1341 the French nation ratied the statutes that concerned the oaths to be sworn by those being examined for licencing at Notre Dame or Ste. Genevive. It was Du Boulays conjecture, which seems reasonable, that the statutes against the scientia occamica were added to the oaths of inception at about the same time and would have applied to the entire arts faculty, not just to the French nation. The only extant manuscript that witnesses to the original version of these oaths occurs in the Book of the French nation, which as we have seen was prepared between 1355 and 1366. The Book of the English Nation, prepared between 1366 and 1368, has a dierent version of the text, just as does the Proctors Register for the English nation in the section between 1365 and 1368. The Picard copy of the Book of the Nation (Univ. Reg. 100), whose form if not execution dates between 1355 and 1366, contains only a few oaths copied from the last section of its exemplar and inserted in the midst of the papal privileges. The text of the Book of the Norman Nation can no longer be checked for information on this issue. If date of composition is any guide, the model behind the Picard copy probably corresponded to the version that appears in the Book of the French Nation, while the Book of the Norman Nation may well have shared the version of the Book of the
is not given in the manuscript and is based on the book being planned and legislated in 1356. 74 CUP I, #501; CUP II, #1185, n. 16. The rst document (#501) as edited does not present the oaths as separate items. The fourth oath: Non habebitis sotulares rostratos nec laqueatos nec fenestratos, nec induetis supertunicale scissum in lateribus nec habebitis mitram in capite quamdiu legetis sub capa rotunda, vel disputabitis is actually three separate oaths in the fourteenth-century list.
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English Nation. It seems unlikely that versions of an oath that applied to all incepting bachelors in arts would dier by nation. The two extant versions therefore probably reect changes across time. What is the dierence between the two versions? In the earlier version there were two oaths. The rst obliged the incepting bachelor to swear to observe the statute made by the faculty of arts against the scientia occamica and not to sustain in any way that or any similar scientia but uphold the scientia of Aristotle, his Commentator Averroes, and of other ancient commentators and expositors of Aristotle except in matters that are against the faith.75 The second oath was to observe the statute in the other of the aforesaid two statutes de scientia occamica, namely that no master, bachelor, or scholar is permitted to argue without the permission of the master in charge of the disputation.76 In the second version the rst of these two oaths was removed and the second oath was shortened to remove any mention of the statutes against the scientia occamica.77 This change was intentional, and it occurred sometime between 1355 and 1365. Although the truncated version of the inception oaths in the Book of the Rector c. 1400 also omits any mention of statutes contra scientiam occamicam as well as the statute of Dec. 29, 1340, the large number of unintentional omissions in that manuscript makes its witness on this issue essentially meaningless.78 Thijssen has argued that the rst of these oaths refers to the arts faculty statute of December 1340or possibly to the rst half of the September 1339 statuteeven though there is no direct parallel be75 The Book of the French Nation (Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 2060, fol. 100v); cf. CUP II, #1185, n. 16: Item, jurabitis quod statuta facta per facultatem artium contra scientiam Okanicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consimiles substinebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum antiquorum commentatorum et expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra dem. 76 Ibid.: Item, observabitis statutum contentum in altero predictorum duorum statutorum de scientia Okanica, scilicet quod nullus magister, baccalarius aut scolaris sine licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat: quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signicative reverenter. 77 Proctors Book of the English Nation (Univ. Reg. 3, fol. 58r); Book of the English Nation (Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 535, fol. 136v): Item, observabitis statutum quod nullus magister, bachelarius ac scolaris sine licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat: quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signicative reverenter. 78 The London manuscript of the Book of the Rector does contain the 1339 statute with its reference not to dogmatize Ockham. If the absence of the Dec. 1340 statute was part of a plan to remove all references to statutes contra scientiam occamicam, that section of the 1339 statute would have been removed as well.
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tween the text of the oath and the text of those statutes. But this position is based on a misunderstanding of the relation of oath to statute. The oaths for inception in the arts faculty are based on statutory legislation and almost invariably take their wording from the actual text of the statute.79 In this case, the text of the statute must have included some reference to the scientia Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois, etc. As was pointed out in the 1982 article, that language does not appear in the statute of Dec. 29, 1340.80 The list of new oaths also reveals two others for which there is not a corresponding statute extant. The twenty-eighth oath (the rst of the new oaths) mandating and describing a capa nova rotunda is one of
79 For example, compare the rst oath (CUP I, p. 586): Vos legetis lectiones ordinarias in capa rotunda, vel in pallio and the statute (CUP I, p. 79): Nullus magistrorum legentium in artibus habeat capam nisi rotundam, nigram et talarem, saltem dum nova est. Pallio autem bene potest uti. The twenty-fourth oath (CUP I, p. 587): vos non estis citra vicesimum primum annum vestre etatis and the statute (CUP I, p. 78): Nullus legat Parisius de artibus citra vicesimum primum etatis sue annum. The twenty-fth oath (CUP I, p. 587): audivistis per sex annos de artibus and the statute (CUP I, p. 78): sex annis audierit de artibus ad minus. The twenty-sixth oath (CUP I, p. 587): legetis per duos annos continue nisi rationabilis causa intervenerit and the statute (CUP I, p. 78): protestetur se lecturum duobus annis ad minus, nisi rationabilis causa intervenerit. The twenty-seventh oath (CUP I, 587): libertates singulas facultatis et consuetudines facultatis honestas et totius Universitatis privilegia deffendetis, ad quemcumque statum deveneritis and the statute (CUP I, p. 614): cum ipse incepit in artibus, juravit servare libertates Universitatis, ad quemcumque statum deveniret. And turning to the oaths added in the fourteenth century, the thirty-second oath (CUP II, p. 680): jurabitis quod statutum de habitibus portandis ad congregationes et disputationes observabitis and the statute (CUP II, p. 486): statuimus quod decetero magistri ad disputationes seu congregationes accedant in habitu decenti. The thirty-fourth oath (CUP II, p. 680): observabitis statutum quod nullus magister, bachelarius ac scolaris sine licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat: quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signicative reverenter and the statute (CUP II, p. 485): nullus magister, bachellarius aut scolaris, sine permissu et licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat, quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signative reverenter. The thirty-fth oath (CUP II, p. 680): non dabitis testimonium de aliquo scolari, nisi vobis juraverit quod intendit esse verus vester scolaris and the statute (CUP II, p. 36): nomina propriorum scolarium scribere teneantur, ut bonorum cognitionem habeant de ipsis legitimum testimonium deferre valeant. The thirty-seventh oath (CUP II, p. 680): vos jurabitis quod observabitis statutum de modo legendi sine penna, videlicet sic ac nullus scriberet coram vobis, sicut unt sermones in Universitate, et sicut legunt in aliis facultatibus legentes and the statute (CUP II, p. 39): ac si nullus scriberet coram eis, secundum quem modum unt sermones in Universitate et recommendationes, et quem lectores in ceteris facultatibus insequuntur. 80 Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 6162.
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these. The other is the thirty-sixth oath, which refers to the arts faculty statute de prepositione rectoris, which was probably passed in the summer of 1347 and led to a confrontation with the faculty of theology and a summons to Avignon. The statute is specically mentioned in May 1354 but does not appear in any register.81 The Arts Statute of December 29, 1340 We are now in a position to turn our attention to the controversial Arts statute of 1340, the history of its reception, and the meaning of its rubric and date. Two corrections to earlier assumptions, my own included, need to be made. First, the statute survives in three manuscripts, not one, as had earlier been thought.82 Moreover, the dating of Univ. Reg. 100, cited as the source of the document in the published Chartularium, while a decade or two earlier than I initially thought, is no longer relevant, since the critical portion of one of the manuscripts in which it appears can now be dated between 1355 and 1366. This does not by itself authenticate the rubric, since all the books of the nations derive from the same model produced by the reorganization of documents in the late 1350s or early 1360s and therefore are not independent witnesses to the form and content of the documents recorded. As we have seen, the arts faculty statute of Dec. 29, 1340 was copied into a register sometime between 1355 and 1366.83 There is thus a minimum of fteen years and a maximum of twenty-six years between the original statute in the form of a diploma and its rst known recording
81 Reg. Supplic. Innocent. VI, an. 2, fol. 100, cited in CUP II, #1143, and CUP III, #1217: in facultate artium certa tunc statuta facultatis ejusdem . See also AUP I, cols. 110111. The oath was included among the oaths recorded in the proctors register of the English nation between 1365 and 1368 (Arch. univ., Reg. 3, fol. 58r) but was subsequently struck through. 82 In addition to its inclusion in Univ. Reg. 100, pp. 6768, Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 535 (Book of the English Nation), fol. 107r, and Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 2060 (Book of the French Nation), fol. 94v, it was in Chartres 595 (Book of the Norman Nation), fol. 122rv, and probably in the Book of the Picard Nation (still lost). 83 It may, of course, have been copied into an earlier Liber nationis, such as that maintained by the English nation, but no mention of the statute occurs in the proctors register for late December 1340 to early January 1341, and the statement in late January 1341 about the sealing of a statute against Ockhamist errors does not mention any inregistration.
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within a register. That interval was not a quiet period for the University of Paris. The years between 1340 and 1360 witnessed the increase of papal pressure for university reform, the defeat of the French at Crcy, Calais, and Poitiers and the subsequent political disruptions, the Black Death, and civil strife in Paris with the revolt of tienne Marcel. The decision by the English nation (and probably the other nations as well) in and around 1356 to create what became the present books of the nations probably responded to what was perceived as an unsatisfactory situation in university document preservation. It is important to note, in contrast to these potential disruptions, that there was continuity during these years in the oce of university scribe. In the 1350s Simon Quinimo from the diocese of Tulle, master of arts in the French nation by 1349, was university scribe, and it is highly likely that he played some role in the creation of the books of the nations.84 When he assumed that oce is unclear, but he was already acting as notary for individual masters and for the English nation in the spring of 1342.85 Thus he was active as a notary only a few years after the events and documents of 13391341. If he participated in the arrangement of documents and the adding of rubrics, one would assume he could identify them correctly. After fteen or twenty years, however, that may not have been an easy task, since Simon was not the scribe who would have handled the documentation of the arts faculty or university in 13391341.86 Since the statute of Dec. 29, 1340 does not survive as a diploma, we have no way of knowing whether a rubric might have been inscribed on its obverse side. In any event, such contemporary rubrics are rare. The rubric was most likely added at the time the document was prepared for inclusion in a register. But when was that? If it was included in any of the pre-1355 libri nationum, such as that of the English nation, it would probably have received a rubric at that time. But we have no way of knowing that. All we are certain of is that a rubric was added by the time of its appearance in the post-1355 libri nationum. Both the Book of the Rector and the books of the nations contain examples where the wrong rubric was attached to a document.87 That does not mean
CUP II, #1165, p. 633; CUP III, #1196, 1220, 1221, 1223, 1229, 1254. CUP II, p. 522n; CUP II, #1061. 86 Herveus de Insula was still the principal university scribe in April 1341; CUP II, #1051. 87 See above, pp. 238 and 247.
84 85
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the statute of Dec. 29, 1340 falls into that category but only that such mistakes were not uncommon. Turning next to the question of whether all documents (privileges, statutes, university letters) were preserved in the extant cartularies, or whether important documents might be overlooked, there are numerous cases of such omissions in every single manuscript that has survived.88 Some of these omissions include the most important legislation of the university promulgated less than ten years before the creation of a register that should have contained them.89 But since the registration of documents was an occasional matter that depended on the initiative of university ocials and on the originalia preserved in the chests of the nations and the rectorand the 1339 inventory of the contents of the chest of the French nation reveals the gaps in that form of preservationthe possibility of missing documentation was almost inevitable. Fortunately, the editors of the Chartularium could, as far as possible, supplement the contents of the registers from originalia that were not included. Such a procedure, however, could not and did not recover all university legislation. One arts faculty statute from the summer of 1340, described by Conrad of Megenberg, is no longer extant, nor are at least two statutes mentioned in the inception oaths and discussed above.90 Moreover, when the pattern of extant arts faculty statutes is scrutinized, it becomes apparent that there are brief periods from which we have many statutes (especially 12881290, 13381340) and other periods (12911337, 13411354) from which we have no surviving arts faculty statutes. The lack of faculty legislation during numerous decades in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries is most likely a result of poor preservation, not inactivity. And as the 1340 statute mentioned by Conrad of Megenberg indicates, even the periods that are well represented have omissions. It should be acknowledged, however, that the common eort that produced the books of the nations undoubtedly drew upon the documents preserved in various chests of the nations, and that the inclusion rate for arts faculty statutes is higher than for papal privileges or university statutes. It did not, however, even for the arts faculty statutes achieve complete preservation.91
See above, pp. 237240, 242, 245, 247. See above, p. 238. 90 For the 1340 statute see AUP I, col. 40, discussed in Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 63. For the lost statutes that correspond to the oaths, see above, pp. 259260. 91 See above, pp. 245249.
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All that evidence together only establishes the possibility that the text of a statute might be lost or an incorrect rubric might be assigned to a statute. It does not establish that such things occurred in this instance. The question of whether the arts faculty statute of Dec. 29, 1340 is or is not identical with the statute against Ockhamist errors sealed several weeks later rests on the discrepancy in dates, which Thijssen attempted to resolve through his dierentiation of datum and actum, and on the language of the rst oath contra scientiam occamicam. As we have seen, both datum and actum in university and arts faculty statutes, whether together or alone, usually refer to the meeting at which deliberation and action took place. Moreover, numerous university statutes whose colophons have only a datum clause survive in diploma form, signed and sealed. Thus the solution put forward by Thijssen is not really workable. The meeting that resulted in this statute took place on or before December 29, 1340. Why possibly before? Thijssen was correct in pointing out that the text of the statute does not mention a place of meeting, which was usual with most university and arts faculty statutes. The December 1340 statute belongs to a group of statutes, more numerous in the thirteenth century, that do not mention a place or date of meeting in the text but only give a date or date and city in the colophon, as is customary for papal or royal letters.92 Several statutes in this form survive as sealed diplomas. It is quite likely that in such cases the meeting had already taken place and that the date in the colophon is the date of the issue of the document, which would have come at or after the meeting. In that case the sealing of the diploma would also have occurred on or before December 29, 1340. And unless we believe there were two statutes against Ockhamist errors passed in the winter of 13401341, we would have to assume, as Tachau and I did earlier, that a rubric that belonged to a statute of Jan./Febr. 1341 was mistakenly attached at a later time to this statute of December 1340. But another possibility must be considered, namely that the sequence of events in December and January 13401341 may have paralleled those for the university statute of 1253 (CUP I, #219) in which the sealing of a diploma was delayed. In this instance the date in the
92 Those in this category using actum are CUP I, #42 (sealed diploma), #200; those using datum are CUP I, #187, #246, #256, #328, #333, #363, #413 (sealed diploma), #461, #478 (sealed diploma), and #575.
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colophon of the document would be the date of the meeting that approved the statute, whose actual sealing may have been delayed several weeks for reasons unknown. The document itself would then have been prepared at the time of sealing and backdated to the meeting at which action was taken. The main obstacle to this second hypothesis is the absence in the document of any statement about a delay or a dierence in dates, such as one nds in #219 (both in the diploma and in the registers) or in #1012 (in the registers). If this was the sequence of events, it is also surprising that Conrad of Megenberg, who was proctor of the English nation in late December and who was an ardent antiOckhamist, would not have made some comment in the Proctors Register about the passage of such a statute, just as he did about another arts faculty statute approved in the summer of 1340, but now lost. Despite these diculties I am now inclined to accept the second hypothesis as a possibility because the dierence in dates, viewed in light of the CUP document #219, is no longer the insurmountable problem it seemed in 1982. Moreover, this hypothesis better accords with the two statements that appear in the Proctors Register, namely Conrads statement that nothing that was done was brought to completion (a point that Thijssen makes, even if ad actum does not have the meaning he assigns it), and the reference during the proctorship of Henry de Unna which mentions the sealing of a statute but says nothing about a meeting of the arts faculty or the passage of a statute. The reading of the statute at St. Jacques in sermone was informational and for the entire university; it was not a meeting of the faculty of arts. Finally, the statute that was sealed in Jan./Febr. 1341 was described as a statute against Ockhamist errors, not a statute against the scientia occamica. The distinction in wording may seem trivial, but there is a close correspondence between the rubric attached to the statute of December 1340 and the description in the Proctors Register. That can be explained by the false attribution of a rubric, such as occurred on occasion. But if statutes in this period were occasionally copied into a pre-1355 Liber nationis soon after their enactment, as occurred with the two statutes of September 1339, then the possible attachment of a rubric would be closer to the date or dates of the statute itself. Whichever hypothesis one wishes to entertainand both are tenablethe role of the English-German nation in this aair remains central. Whatever the content and date of the statute against Ockhamist errors, that document was not sealed at a meeting of the faculty of arts
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nor at any of its normal places of assembly. The ceremony of sealing, which would have been attended by the rector, Alain de Villa Collis, a notary (probably the university scribe, Herveus de Insula?), the proctors of the four nations, and several representative witnesses, took place in the lodgings of Henry de Unna, proctor of the English-German nation. All that being said, there is no reason to assume the rst oath contra scientiam occamicam refers to the arts faculty statute of December 1340. As was noted, the necessary correspondence in wording between oath and statute is lacking. It is within the range of possibility that the rst oath refers to the rst paragraph of the September 1339 statute, as Thijssen speculated for the sake of completeness, but that would require that the terms doctrina in the statute and scientia in the oath are interchangeable, that the insistence on the scientia of Aristotle and his Commentator was taken for granted in the statute because of the Paris arts curriculum, and that the term statutum in the oaths was used in multiple senses to cover the entire statute, both paragraphs of the statute, and for the excerpted sentence from the second paragraph that became the text of the second of these oaths. But if the statement in the Proctors Register of Jan./Febr. 1341 is rejoined to the statute of December 1340, the need to seek a lost statute for the rst of the two anti-Ockhamist oaths had been reduced, but not eliminated. Although the sequence of events in the autumn and winter of 1340 1341 constructed by Thijssen will not work, his article did provide the stimulus for a reexamination of university statutes that does create a sucient explanation of the evidence. Further, his examination of the content of the December 1340 statute in light of John Lutterells Libellus against Ockham does deserve serious consideration. And what of the lost statute? There is no question that the accuracy of document preservation at the University of Paris was not perfect and that several arts faculty statutes from this period were not preserved because of loss or removal. There is less reason today, however, to think that the statute against Ockhamist errors was among them.
chapter twelve
THE DEBATE OVER OCKHAMS PHYSICAL THEORIES AT PARIS*
Over a decade ago I co-authored an article with Katherine Tachau on the controversy over Ockham and Ockhamism at Paris that has provoked attention and debate, particularly in the last few years.1 The debate has centered on whether the famous or infamous Parisian arts faculty statute of December 1340, the so-called Nominalist statute, is or is not identical with the statute described in the proctors book of the English nation as a statute against Ockhamist errors.2 That debate, sometimes referred to as the lost statute debate, has generated a substantial body of new information about the administrative, legal, and
* Originally presented at a conference at Nice in 1993 and published in La Nouvelle Physique du XIVe sicle, ed. S. Caroti and P. Sourin (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1997), pp. 4563. 1 W.J. Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation at Paris, 13391341, 1982, 5396 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 9]; Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, 1984(1), 4364 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 8]; Courtenay, Force of Words and Figures of Speech: The Crisis over Virtus sermonis in the Fourteenth Century, 1984(2), 107 128 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 10]; Z. Kaluza, Le Statut du 25 septembre 1339 et lOrdonnance du 2 septembre 1276, in Die Philosophie im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: In memoriam Konstanty Michalski (18791947), ed. O. Pluta (Amsterdam, 1988), pp. 343 351; J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Once Again the Ockhamist Statutes of 1339 and 1340: Some New Perspectives, Vivarium, 27 (1990), 136167; Courtenay, The Registers of the University of Paris and the Statutes against the Scientia Occamica, 1991, 1349 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 11]; Kaluza, Les sciences et leurs langages. Note sur le Statut du 29 Decembre 1340 et le prtendu statut perdu contre Ockham, in Filosoa e teologia nel Trecento. Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. L. Bianchi (LouvainLa Neuve, 1994), pp. 197258; Kaluza, La crise des annes 14741482, in Philosophy and Learning. Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. M.J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H.J. Schneider, G. Wieland (Leiden, 1995), pp. 293327; Courtenay, Was There an Ockhamist School, in Philosophy and Learning, pp. 263292 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 18]. Also of relevance to these issues: Courtenay, The Preservation and Dissemination of Academic Condemnations at the University of Paris in the Middle Ages, in Les Philosophies morales et politiques aux Moyen Age, ed. C. Bazn, E. Andjar, L. Sbrocchi (New YorkOttawa Toronto, 1995), pp. 16591667. 2 The December 1340 statute is published as document #1042 in CUP II, pp. 505 507. For the entry in the Liber procuratorum of the English nation, see AUP I, cols. 4445.
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documentary operations of the University of Paris as well as the internal mechanisms and procedures for judging the orthodoxy of scholastic opinion. To the extent that attention has been given to the doctrinal, not just the documentary side of this question, recent discussion has been concerned almost exclusively with the meaning and context of the arts faculty statute of December 1340.3 What has not been part of recent debate is the question of what aspect or aspects of Ockhams thought, apart from the ambiguous evidence of the 1340 statute, were under discussion at Paris in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, and what specic positions contemporaries identied or characterized as belonging to the Occamistae. It was one of the major assertions of that 1982 article that all references to the thought of the Occamistae, apart from the contested witness of the 1340 statute, concern the implications of Ockhams physical theories derived from or closely linked with his reinterpretation of the Aristotelian categories. It is that issue which the following paper reexamines. There are several facets to this problem worth review. One, the stages in the entry of Ockhams physics into Paris, and the reaction to or assimilation of those theories. Second, the place of Ockhams physical theories in the battle over Ockhamism at Paris in the 1339 1341 period. Third, the respective roles of Conrad of Megenberg and Jean Buridan in this process and in the crises of 13391341.
The Entry of Ockhams Physics into Paris Most of the surviving evidence relevant to the introduction of Ockhams writings and thought into Paris suggests that this occurred in two stages: the almost immediate circulation of Ockhams treatise on quantity and his Summa logicae in the 1320s; and the subsequent appearance, presumably in the mid-to-late 1330s, of Ockhams theological writings and, presumably, his other works in logic and natural philosophy.4 These two decades reveal somewhat dierent reactions. In the
3 E.g., J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Once Again,; his chapter on the statute in a forthcoming book on academic condemnations [Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200 1400 (Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 5772]; and Z. Kaluza, Les sciences et leurs langages. 4 A fuller account can be found in Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 7172; Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, pp. 4447; K.H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics, 12501345 (Leiden, 1988), pp. 1519, 336340. A dierent pic-
the debate over ockhams physical theories at paris
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1320s we nd Walter Burley, while regent master of theology at Paris, attacking Ockhams views on simple supposition, universal concepts, quantity, and motion, but doing so in the style of normal scholastic debate.5 It is dicult to determine which works of Ockham Burley had at hand in Paris beyond the Summa logicae, but Burleys reaction is evident in several works, most especially in the revised version of his De puritate artis logicae, written between 1324 and 1329, and in the nal version of his Expositio librorum Physicorum, begun after 1324 and dedicated to the masters and scholars at Paris.6 It was also at Paris in 1329 that John Nicholai, a Franciscan? from Denmark, made an extract from Burleys De puritate of those sections that complemented or contrasted with Ockhams Summa logicae.7 It is less easy to establish the role Jean
ture was constructed earlier by Anneliese Maier, who believed that Ockhams opinions were already in circulation at Paris in 1319, and that Francis of Marchias defense of the real status of quantity was directed against Ockham. She also saw a fully-developed opposition to Ockhams natural philosophy in the 1320s, rst with Marchia, followed by Walter Burley (1324) and Jean Buridan (1328) and had little interest in stages or levels of intensity in that opposition. The reception-history of Ockhamism at Paris looks dierent if approached through reaction to the Occamistae and through the writings of Massa and Megenberg, of which Maier was unaware. 5 A. Maier, Ausgehendes Mittelalter. Gesammelte Aufstze zur Geschichte des 14. Jahrhunders, vol. I (Rome, 1964), pp. 175208, esp. 196203; Maier, Zwischen Philosophie und Mechanik [Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Sptscholastik, vol. V] (Rome, 1958), p. 46, which cites Burleys critique of the Ockhamist view of motion without mentioning Ockham. For Burleys critique of Ockham in his expanded version of De puritate artis logicae, see Ph. Boehners introduction to his edition of De puritate (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1955), p. 7. 6 The termini for dating the expanded version of De puritate are set by its use of Ockhams Summa logicae, which was completed by 1324, and the earliest dated manuscript containing extracts of this version of Burleys treatise: Erfurt, Wiss. Bibl., CA 8 67. Burley left Paris in 1327, but in light of his travels and other obligations between 1327 and 1329, a Parisian setting for the revision of his De puritate is more likely. By contrast, the revision of his Expositio librorum Physicorum, also placed after 1324 on the grounds of its familiarity with Ockhams Summa logicae, was probably completed after he left Paris, since its dedication to carissimis amicis suis et dominis, magistris et scolaribus Parisius in philosophia studentibus (Oxford, All Souls College, Ms 86, fol. 1) suggests absence, just as does Thomas Bradwardines dedication of his Summa de causa Dei to the masters and scholars at Merton College Oxforda work probably conceptualized at Oxford but completed at London in 1344. On the manuscripts of Burleys works, see J.A. Weisheipl, Repertorium Mertonense, MS, 31 (1969), 185208; BRUO I, pp. 312314. 7 Erfurt, Wiss. Bibl., CA 8 67, fols. 123v134r; fol. 123v: Hanc extractionem de logica Burle ordinavit frater Ioannes Nicholai, lector de custodia Lincopensi, provinciae Daciae, quando studuit Parisius anno Domini M.CCC.XXIX . If John Nicholai was already a friar when he studied at Paris, he would have been a student in the theological faculty. When, a decade later, he was lector at the Linkping convent, his
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Buridan played in the critique of Ockham at Paris in the 1320s. Very few works of Buridan can with any certainty be placed before 1340, at least in the redactions that have survived, and his Quaestiones in libros Physicorum on which Maier relied so heavily is not among them.8 Consequently, while the many dierences between Ockham and Buridan in matters of supposition, the object of knowledge, and the meaning of the expression de virtute sermonis can be dated before 1340, the dierences in natural philosophy cannot.9 More relevant for the present inquiry is the tone in which Buridan introduces and critiques Ockhamist positions, which are never identied as such in his writings. The positions are taken seriously and treated with scholastic dignity. They are not viewed as destructive of the intellectual enterprise or the doctrine of the Church. To that extent, Buridans reactions to Ockhamist positions at any point in his career are no stronger in tone than Burleys critique of the 1320s, although Buridan arrived at his position from far dierent philosophical presuppositions. The issue of Buridans personal involvement in the events of 13391341 will be addressed later. To return to the question at hand, the crucial points of Ockhams natural philosophy, specically his reinterpretation of the Aristotelian categories and his refusal to grant existential status to quantity, relation, motion, and time apart from res permanentes, were all contained in his
extract was bound in with Ockhams Summa logicae as an appendix. For the full prefatory text see the introduction in Guillelmus de Ockham, Summa logicae, ed. P. Boehner, G. Gl, S. Brown, Opera Philosophica, vol. I (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), p. 26*. 8 Maier, Metaphysische Hintergrnde der sptscholastischen Naturphilosophie [Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Sptscholastik, vol. IV] (Rome, 1955), p. 210, dated Buridans Quaestiones in libros Physicorum shortly after 1328 (nicht vor 1328, aber wahrscheinlich auch nicht lange danach entstanden ist); B. Michael, Johannes Buridan: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinen Werken und zur Rezeption seiner Theorien im Europa des spten Mittelalters, diss. Freie Universitt Berlin, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1985), pp. 567571, did not address the date of composition; J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Johannes Buridanus over het Oneindige. Een onderzoek naar zijn theorie over het oneindige in het kader van zijn wetenschaps- en natuurlosoe, diss. Univ. Nijmegen, 2 vols. (Nijmegen, 1988), II, p. 379, placed it after 1350, perhaps even after 1355. The Expositio in libros Physicorum, which may precede it, was written in 1350. Buridans Quaestiones longae super librum Perihermeneias, which contains views on signication and supposition of terms that dier from those of Ockham, has been dated around 1325 by R. van der Lecq in her edition of the work (Nijmegen, 1983). The Quaestio de puncto, which was apparently written against Michael de Montecalerio and sheds no light on reactions to Ockham, is dated by Michael, pp. 446452, around 1335. 9 In all probability Buridan commented on the Physics before 1340, but we have no texts or citations that establish his views in that period. They may well have been identical with those expressed later, but they may have shifted as they developed.
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Summa logicae and were known at Paris in the 1320s.10 More importantly, while controversial, Ockhams views were not considered scandalous, except for the witness of Michael de Massa, which I shall address directly. By contrast, Parisian reaction in 13391346 appears far more heated. In addition to the statute of 1339 prohibiting the use and dissemination of Ockhams doctrina, Conrad of Megenberg, in various writings between 1337 and 1354, considered Ockhams physical theories to be a pestilence that needed thorough eradication.11 Most of the manuscript evidence thus suggests a change from civilized debate to violent controversy, either because the full implications of Ockhams physics were not suciently apparent in the 1320s, or because attitudes and circumstances, both within and without the University of Paris, changed in the 1330s. It may seem surprising, but for the early dissemination of Ockhams physical theories at Paris we must look to the Summa logicae, not his various commentaries on Aristotles Physics. Comparatively few manuscript copies of the latter works have survived, and none is of proven Parisian provenance until the last quarter of the fourteenth century.12 Yet it is likely that both Ockhams Expositio in libros Physicorum and his Summula philosophiae naturalis were in fact known at Paris before 1350. Sections from those works were extracted and combined to form the treatise known as De successivis, the earliest appearance of which is at Paris.13 One piece of evidence, however, does not t that picture of a fteenyear delay in the onset of an aggressive Parisian reaction to Ockhams physics. The commentary on book II of the Sentences contained in Vat. lat. 1087 and attributed by Damasus Trapp to Michael de Massa, who
Ockhams views on quantity, motion, and time appear repeatedly in the sections of his Summa logicae. See, in particular, in the critical edition (St. Bonaventure, 1984), I, c. 6 (2022); c. 8 (3033); c. 44 (132149); c. 50 (159171); c. 54 (177179); c. 59 (188190). 11 See Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 7475; Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris,, pp. 5054; and the discussion below. 12 Exceptions are the fragment of Ockhams Expositio in libros Physicorum in Paris, B.N. lat. 6441, fols. 90ra92vb, and the copy of Ockhams Summula in Paris, B.N. lat. 15880, bequeathed to the Sorbonne in 1399 from the estate of tienne de Chaumont, master of theology (to be distinguished from the regent master of medicine by the same name who was active in the 1320s and 1330s). On tienne de Chaumont the theologian see Kaluza, Le problme du Deum non esse chez tienne de Chaumont, Nicolas Aston et Thomas Bradwardine, Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum, 24 (1979), 319. 13 See Boehners introduction to Guillelmus de Ockham, The Tractatus de successivis attributed to William Ockham, ed. with study by Ph. Boehner (St. Bonaventure, 1944), esp. pp. 2730.
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purportedly read the Sentences at Paris in 13251326, contains a sharp critique of Ockhamist physics. The author of that work not only attacks Ockhams theories of time and motion but does so with a level of anger and intensity that matches that of Megenberg. Moreover, in this text the author specically attributes those views on motion to a group he calls the Occamistaea label otherwise known only through the documents of the Parisian arts faculty in the 13391341 period. The major question posed by this text is this: if a group known as the Occamistae were active at Paris by 1326, and if their views in physics were already controversial at that time, why is there no other mention of these issues between 1326 and 1339, and why did members of the university community wait until 1339 or 1340 to take any action against those views?14 The Date of Michael de Massas Baccalaureate and Vat. lat. 1087 Some of the cross-references in Vat. lat. 1087 to the same authors commentary on book I of the Sentences are suciently precise to make it all but certain that the author of the commentary in Vat. lat. 1087 is the same as the author of the commentary on book I found in several manuscripts and attributed there to Michael de Massa.15 It is not the case, however, that the content of Massas questions on books I and II of the Sentences, in the forms in which they have survived, date to his year or years as sententiarius at Paris. The educational program of the Augustinian Hermits, the religious order to which Michael de Massa belonged, diered from those of the
It is unlikely that university politics, under pressure from Benedict XII, could alone be sucient reason why there is no mention of either the Occamistae or of the controversial nature of Ockhams thought at Paris between 1326 and 1339. 15 Massas commentary on book I survives in several manuscripts: Bologna, Collegio di Spagna 40; Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, fol. 234vb: Hic liber est scriptum in primum Sententiarum Michaelis de Masa .; Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, ms. Conv. Soppr. C. VIII. 794; and the rst eight distinctions in Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, ms. VII. C. 1. It was also abbreviated twice in the early 15th century, once by Andrea [de Biglia?] OESA of Milan (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici misc. 276, and the prologue in Citt del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ms. Vat. lat. 1084, fols. 144152), and by Johannes de Marliano OESA of Milan between 1410 and 1430 (Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, ms. A. 3. 21; Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms. 226). For a full discussion of the evidence for the authorship of Vat. lat. 1087 and for the dating of its content, see Courtenay, The Quaestiones in Sententias of Michael de Massa, OESA. A Redating, Augustiniana, 45 (1995), 191207 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 13].
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other mendicant orders in the fourteenth century.16 For those being trained in theology, after an initial ve or six years of study at a studium generale, such as Paris, the best candidates were designated lectores and entered upon a long period of teaching in the studia of the order in their home province. After a decade or more of teaching theology, including lecturing on the Sentences, candidates were chosen from this group to return to Paris and lecture on the Sentences as a bachelor of theology and eventually proceed to licensing and inception as a master (doctor) of theology. Consequently, the drafting of questions that would eventually comprise a Sentences commentary took place over a long period of time, which would include the pre-baccalaureate stage as lector, the baccalaureate stage as sententiarius, and the post-sentential stage as baccalaurius formatus during which the bachelor engaged in disputations and other academic exercises, including sometimes lectures on the Aristotelian corpus.17 Massas Quaestiones in primum sententiarum, as it survives in Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, may be a lectura lectoris (i.e., a pre-baccalaureate version) and may date as early as 1323. On the other hand, Massas Quaestiones in secundum sententiarum, surviving only in one manuscript (Vat. lat. 1087), is a fusion of questions that derive from the edited version of Massas Parisian lectures on book II (which he refers to as his opus ordinarium) and from subsequent questions written as additiones or as disputed questions. At what point between 1323 and his death in 1337 Massa actually lectured on the Sentences at Paris cannot be determined with any precision. Inasmuch as he died at Paris in May 1337 while still a bachelor of theology, that he was considered relatively young in years at that time, and that without papal intervention Parisian statutes required candidates to wait a minimum of six years between the beginning of their lectures on the Sentences and being licensed in theology, it is likely his term as sententiarius should be placed around 1330 or 1332.18
16 E. Ypma, La Formation des professeurs chez les Ermites de Saint Augustin de 1256 1354 (Paris, 1956). 17 Ockhams commentaries and questions on Aristotelian logic and physics were composed after he lectured on the Sentences, while he was awaiting promotion to the doctorate. Similarly, Hugolino of Orvietos commentary on Aristotles Physics was composed at the same stage of career; see W. Eckermann, Der Physikkommentar Hugolins von Orvieto OESA (BerlinNew York, 1972). 18 For Massas status at the time of his death: D.A. Perini, Bibliographia Augustiniana, vol. II (Florence, 1931), p. 191: decessit Parisiis die 10 mai anno 1337, cum adhuc esset Baccalaureus et in orida aetate, sepultusque fuit in nostra ecclesia, et in eius sepulchro subsignata volumina a se edita . For the six-year waiting period between reading
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Whatever the year or years in which Massa lectured on the Sentences at Paris, the passages in Vat. lat. 1087 that attack Ockhamist physics and refer to a group known as the Occamistae belong to questions written after Massas opus ordinarium super secundum sententiarum that were added to that work. We may assume, therefore, that they reveal an academic and intellectual landscape at Paris that probably dates to the mid-1330s, not a decade earlier. Michael de Massa may still be the earliest evidence of a concern over Ockhamist physics and the Occamistae at Paris, but that evidence is probably much closer to the events of 13391341 than was previously thought. Let me turn now to the witness of Massa and Megenberg on the teaching of the Occamistae and the place of physics in the controversy over Ockhams thought at Paris.
Michael de Massa, Conrad of Megenberg, and the Occamistae Apart from the rubric of the December 1340 statute, occurrences of the label Occamistae or Parisian references to the teaching of Ockham and his disciples are tied to positions in natural philosophy, specically the limiting of real categories to substances and qualities, and the implications of this for the understanding of the other categories as well as time and motion. That is the context in which Michael de Massa mentions and attacks the Occamistae. That is also the context for Conrad of Megenbergs critique of Ockham in his Economica. Taking Massa rst, he introduces the opinion of the Occamistae in his questions on duration and time. Some have said that time is the heavens themselves, and this is the opinion of the Occamistae.19 This is one version of an error (abusio he calls it) to which he alludes many times in this section of his work, and this modern position on time, just as
the Sentences and promotion to the doctorate, see CUP II, p. 272, #822: Non obstantibus quod a tempore lecture sue libri Sententiarum sex annorum spatium minime sit elapsum, per quorum spatium de consuetudine seu statuto ejusdem studii debent, ut dicitur, bacalarii expectare, priusquam ad magisterium in dicta scientia presententur ; and CUP II, pp. 551552, #1093: necnon libros Sententiarum laudabiliter, cum jam sit in secundo anno inclusive post eandem lecturam . Non obstantibus quod a tempore lecture sue libri Sententiarum sex annorum spacium minime sit elapsum, per quorum spatium de consuetudine seu statuto ejusdem studii debent, ut dicitur, bacalarii expectare, priusquam ad magisterium in dicta scientia presententur . 19 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 88va: dixerunt aliqui quod tempus est ipsummet caelum, et in sententiam istorum incidunt Okanistae.
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its counterpart on motion, is contrasted to the views of Aristotle and the ancient commentators on this issue.20 Concerning the reality of motion there is one error of certain contemporaries that concerns the whole of physics, both its principles and its conclusions, by which they wish to restore the errors of the ancient philosophers whom Aristotle reproved.21 Massas opponents attempt to sow the seeds of falsehood among the truths of physics, and in his graphic language, their arguments are more deserving of vomit than of reasoned response.22 The error being attacked is the denial of the reality of motion as a res extra animam, and more broadly, the reduction of real entities to substance and quality.23 Massa equates the errors of this contemporary group with those of Parmenides and Melissus dismissed in the rst book of Aristotles Physics.24 Although Massas principal target is the contempo20 Ibid., fol. 71ra: Sic ergo error istorum tamquam abusio dicatur. Et accedamus ad inquisitionem magis utilem de realitate ipsius motus. Nec oportet philosophum volentem procere, confundere realitates eorum et confugere ad proprietates grammaticales ut habeatur fuga de non explicando realitates eorum et dicultates physicas circa ipsas. Immo quantum possumus investigare, tantum debemus explicare de quidditatibus rerum. Moveamus ergo aliquas quaestiones circa realitatem motus more Aristotelis et Commentatoris et aliorum philosophorum, praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovantium grossitive antiquorum. 21 Ibid., fol. 70rb: Et quia de realitate motus est unus error quorundam modernorum qui circa totam Physicam tam quantum ad principia quam etiam quantum ad conclusiones ipsius conati sunt innovare errores antiquorum philosophorum quos Aristoteles frequentissime reprobat, licet per quasdam fugas grammaticales huiusmodi errores sustineant, quae modicum valent, sicut alias apparebit. Sed iste error est contra Aristotelem et Commentatorem. 22 Ibid.: Hic est unus errorum quorundam modernorum qui secundum rei veritatem conantur diundere inter vera dicta physicae multa semina falsitatum, et in omnibus tamquam verbosi habent recursum ad verba gramaticalia sophisticae utendo eis. Nec forte melior modus esset nisi nauseare super dictis eorum et dicere: Contra verbosos noli contendere verbis II Tim. 2:14 , quia secundum veritatem errores ipsorum non sunt cum magna diligentia pertractandi. Et ideo expediamus nos de illo errore quem asserunt circa realitatem motus, dicunt enim quod motus non est distinctus a mobili sed est realiter ipsummet mobile. The image of nausea was also used by Conrad of Megenberg, Werke: konomik III, ed. S. Krger [MGH Staatsschriften des spteren Mittelalters III, 5] (Stuttgart, 1984), tr. 1, c. 1, p. 7: Et decientes quidem clerici nausigraphi dici poterint eo quod nauseam praetendant in scripturis rerum aut naturae distinctae ascriptarum. Dicitur enim nausigraphus a nausea et graphos quod est scriptura. 23 Ibid., fol. 71ra: Sed constat quod movens non causat mobile nec locum; ergo aliquam realitatem ponam ab utroque distinctam. Alias plus dicetur contra errorem istorum quando tractabo generalem abusionem quam ponunt, videlicet quod in eodem supposito numquam concurrunt nisi duae distinctae realitates, scilicet substantia et qualitas. 24 Ibid., fol. 70va: Qua ratione mobile est idem realiter cum motu quo movetur, per
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rary group he labels Occamistae, he also sees their positions in natural philosophy to be grounded in the writings of Ockham.25 Unlike the critique of the Occamistae by Massa, whose death in 1337 conveniently dates that critique a few years before the events of 1339 1341, Conrad of Megenberg attacked Ockham and his followers by name only in writings that were completed and circulated between 1347 and 1354. But that is the only dierence. The tone of Megenbergs critique is as agressive and sarcastic as that of Massa. Moreover, his explicit attack is exclusively on Ockhams interpretation of the praedicamenta and the implications of Ockhams position for physics. In his commentary on John of Sacroboscos Sphaera, written in 1347 in Vienna, Megenberg attacked Ockhams view that points and lines are not res distinctae inter se et a corpore.26 The same opposition to Ockham in the area of physics can be found in Megenbergs Economica, whose third bookthe one containing his attack on Ockham and his followersreects back on his Parisian environment and may contain portions drafted before his departure from Paris in 1342.27 There Megenberg attacked Ockham and his followers for asserting that relations as well as the praedicamenta of place, habit, where, and when are indistinguishable from abso-
te pari ratione inest idem realiter est quiete qua quiescit cessante motu. Sed hoc posito sequitur ., et ita redibit error Parmenidis et Mellissi, quem reprobat Aristotelis primo Physicorum. 25 Ibid., fol. 135va: Sed arguitur ulterius pro opinione Okam primo sic: quantitas successiva quae est motus vel tempus non est res distincta a mobili cuius est subiective. Patet consequentia quia magis videtur diere successivum et permanens quam permanens et permanens, ceteris aliis habentibus se uniformiter. Praeterea, arguo sic: relatio realiter non est res addita fundamento; igitur nec accidens quod est quantitas est res addita fundamento. Praeterea, actio et passio et quaecumque entia respectiva non dicunt res additas entibus absolutis; ergo nec quantitas est res addita substantiae corporali, quamvis tamen constituat diversum praedicamentum. Ad ista tria simul respondeo . 26 Megenberg, Quaestiones in Ioannis de Sacrobosco sphaeram (Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 14687, fol. 74ra), as quoted in Krger, Krise der Zeit als Ursache der Pest? Traktat der mortalitate in Alamannia des Konrad von Megenberg in Festschrift fr Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. II (Gttingen, 1972), pp. 839883, at 849, n. 55: Sed hic est advertendum, quod secundum illos, qui negant puncta habere esse reale praeter animam et similiter lineas, sicut facit frater Wilhalmus et sui, illi dicerent, quod secunda descriptio spaerae etiam competeret sibi secundum esse suum ymaginativum et conceptibile, sed ego non sum istius opinionis, et habet de hoc videri alibi, scilicet in quaestionibus physicis. 27 For the arguments on which a pre-1342 provenance are based, see Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, p. 63, n. 54. [See above, pp. 147148.]
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lute things, or for asserting that quantity is the same as substance, or that motion is indistinguishable from permanent things.28
Ockhams Physics and the Debate over Ockhamism at Paris Was Ockhams natural philosophy the primary issue of Ockhamism at Paris in the late 1330s, as the witness of Massa and Megenberg would suggest, and as the 1982 article maintained, or was it only one of several issues, perhaps not even the major one? More pointedly, if one believes the rubric of the arts faculty statute of December 1340 to be authentic and appropriate, identifying it as a statute against Ockhamist errors, why is there no mention of any teaching in the area of natural philosophy or physical theorythe most irritating aspect of Ockhams thought for Conrad of Megenberg, who was proctor of the English nation at the time the 1340 statute was drafted and approved? There is no question that hermeneutical theory, or more precisely, the techniques of propositional analysis and the philosophical presuppositions that lay behind them, were important concerns in the faculties of arts and theology in the late 1330s. These are the principal issues at stake in the arts faculty statute of December 1340. These are also techniques against which Conrad of Megenberg railed in his Planctus of 1337 and in book III, chapter 12 of his Economica, although without attributing them to Ockham or to his followers.29 Similar views are mentioned
28 Megenberg, Werke: konomik III, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 7: Aut certe dici potest, quod clerus deciens in statu scholastico est hic, qui naturas plurium abnegat rerum, quemadmodum frater Wilhelmus de Occham Anglicus atque sui sequaces, qui tam relationes quam situs, habitus, ubi, quando asserrunt praeter animam res indistinctas a rebus absolutis atque quantitatem eandem cum substantia rem armant; motus etiam in quibus actiones rerum et passiones rmantur, dicunt res indistinctas a permanentibus rebus. Also cited in edition from Vatican, Pal. lat. 1252 by L. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1944), pp. 409433, at 409410, and Krger, Krise de Zeit,, p. 848, n. 54. Megenberg, konomik III, c. 14, pt. 1, a. 43, pp. 7576, in discussing article 141 of those condemned at Paris in 1277: Unde claudicat frater Wilhelmus de Occham, qui quantitatem eandem rem cum substantia dicit esse, quia tunc transsubstantiata substantia panis etiam quantitas eius in substantiam Christi transsubstantiaretur; quod tamen non est verum, cum sentiamus guram et quantitatem panis in sacramento eukaristiae remanere. Ibid., pt. 6, a. 19, p. 146, in discussing art. 200 of the same condemnation: Ille articulus est contra Wilhelmum de Occham et suos sequaces, qui ponunt motum temporis et omnes successiones praeter animam res indistinctas a permanentibus rebus. 29 Conrad of Megenberg, Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam, ed. R. Scholz [MGH, SsM II, 1] (Leipzig, 1941), whose poetic structure does not lend itself to a precise delineation
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and rejected by Jean Buridan in his Summulae, but again without identifying the aliqui.30 Summarized briey, the position under attack in these documents limited supposition to personal supposition and limited the meaning of terms to their literal meaning, de virtute sermonis. According to the proponents of the view under attack, the truth or falsity of propositions could and should be judged by these restrictive principles. These positions were not literary creations of Megenberg, Buridan, and others against which they could place their own views. They were positions and techniques being employed in the schools of Paris in the late 1330s and were matters of grave concern. Whether those who employed these techniques of propositional analysis formed a unied group, and if so, whether they considered themselves or were considered by others to be Occamistae, are questions that have not yet been denitively answered. Only in the disputed rubric of the December 1340 statute are these positions characterized as Ockhamist errors. Megenberg, who rarely missed an opportunity to attack Ockham, and as proctor of the English nation in December 1340 would have participated in drafting the arts faculty statute, does not mention either Ockham or the Occamistae in connection with these errors in grammar, rhetoric, and logic, which he attacked at length.
of the linguistic literalists; cf. pp. 32, 73. Megenbergs Economica III, c. 12 (konomik III, p. 47), however, is more explicit: Gramaticam indignis molestant derisibus armantes quod nulla partium orationis constructio est transitiva . Asserunt enim, quod nichil transeat, nisi pedes habeat. Quapropter aqua non transit in uviis secundum eos, neque venti volant, quoniam alas non habent. Nec poterit dici, quod una pars orationis regat aliam secundum modorum signicandi proportiones, quia intellectus humanus omnes partes orationis regit et dirigit. Proprietates enim partium orationis nichil sunt, ut dicunt. Ibid., p. 48: Rethoricam eloquentiam adeo sua caecitate postergant, ut nec ores verborum nec colores sententiarum capiant, sed ores in pratis crescere et colores varios pictores componere et pulchre variare ad instar naturae armant. Qualiter hii dulciloquia sacrarum interpretentur scripturarum, quaevis ratio disposita noscit, nec est dubium haereses ex hiis innumeras pullulare. Scriptura etenim sacra non semel uterum virginalem virgam vocat et lium Dei inde conceptum orem appellat. Et si de virtute sermonis istae orationes falsae sunt, sequitur rhethoricam in pulcherrimis speciebus transsumptionis nullam ad orationes habere virtutem, et sic rethorica quasi evanuit tota. 30 Jean Buridan, Summulae dialecticae, tractatus IV: De suppositionibus, c. 3, M.E. Reina (ed.), Giovanni Buridano, Tractatus de suppositionibus, Rivista critica di storia della losoa, 12 (1957), 175208, at 203: Quidam enim dixerunt illam esse falsam homo est species de virtute sermonis, quia principalis suppositio est personalis ; dicunt isti quod de virtute sermonis veritas vel falsitas debet attendi secundum certam et principalem suppositionem, ideo secundum suppositionem personalem. Cited and discussed in J. Biard, Logique et thorie du signe au XIVe sicle (Paris, 1989), p. 176.
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Each sentence in the 1340 statute has across the years undergone a degree of analysis applied only to major political documents, such as Magna carta or Unam sanctam.31 That is not purely a result of curiosity or the importance of the issues to which the document supposedly speaks. It also reects the degree of emotional commitment that many scholars feel concerning the outcome of this debate. Only recently has this detailed analysis moved beyond the attempt to prove or disprove Ockhams presence (or footprints) behind the condemned articles of the statute. The subtle reading of the language of the statute by Jol Biard and Hans Thijssen, using the viewpoints and discussions in the writings of Jean Buridan and John Lutterell, has advanced our knowledge considerably. Ockhams direct teaching has receded from center stage to be replaced by perceptions of an Ockhamist source, albeit distant and often distorted, behind the positions being condemned in 1340. Although it still holds the primary attention of some scholars, it is of only minor concerna way of defending the appropriateness of the 1340 rubricwhether the condemned positions parallel or might have had their origin in Ockhams teaching. The struggle to t that particular slipper on the foot of the Venerable Inceptor still goes on, but the most perceptive critics have admitted that it only ts partially, or can be made to t only by a very supercial or distorted reading of Ockham.32 It is certainly possible that those who espoused the positions and practiced the techniques under attack in 1340 could have claimed (or could have been viewed as having) Ockhamist paternity, whether legitimate or not. But the relation of Ockham to the Parisian Occamistae is not the signicant question. It is more important to understand the place of these positions at Paris in the late 1330s, to identify their adherents if possible, and to determine whether the positions condemned in 1340 were the principal positions that characterized the Occamistae.
31 E.g., Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut. Zur Entstehung des Realittsbegris der neuzeitlichen Naturwissenschaft (Occam, Buridan und Petrus Hispanus, Nikolaus von Autrecourt und Gregor von Rimini) (Berlin, 1970); Biard, Logique et thorie, esp. pp. 162202; Thijssen, Once Again the Ockhamist Statutes, and Censure and Heresy, pp. 5772. 32 The best treatment to date is J. Biard, Logique et thorie, pp. 162202.
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Ockhamist Scientia and the Teaching of Aristotle and His Commentators As has been noted, all references to the teaching of the Ockhamists in Parisian writings apart from the rubric of the 1340 statute concern issues in natural philosophy, particularly those of motion and time.33 The reference to Ockhams doctrina in the arts faculty statute of September 1339 is too vague to identify any particular aspect of his teaching, but the term doctrina does appear more descriptive of philosophical positions than of the techniques of propositional analysis condemned in the December 1340 statute. More informative is the phrase Aristotle, his Commentator (namely Averroes), and the ancient commentators that occurs in Michael de Massa, the arts faculty oath of 1341 against Ockhamist scientia, and in the letter of pope Clement VI in 1346. First, the commentatores antiqui referred to here are not those of the Hellenistic or Roman periods but the pre-fourteenth century scholastic commentators, most of them mendicant authors. The list of exemplars for rent c. 1275 from the booksellers shop (stationarii) belonging to the Sens familya list that reveals but does not exhaust the list of texts in demand for study and teaching at Parisincludes as guides to the interpretation of Aristotle only the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Meteorologica and Physiognomia (probably meaning his questions of Aristotles Physics), Simplicius on the Praedicamenta and Perihermenias, and Themistius on De anima.34 By contrast, the list of 1304, probably from the same stationarius, no longer oers these texts. In their place we nd mendicant commentaries produced in the second half of the thirteenth century. Specically, these were: Thomas on Metaphysics, Physics,
33 It has been established by Stephen Dumont that the marginal identication of these issues as Ockhamist in the printed edition of Peter of Aquilas Quaestiones in quatuor libros sententiarum (Speyer, 1480; reprint Frankfurt, 1967), Lib. I, dist. 23, q. 2, does not occur in the manuscripts but is a late medieval (mis)identication. This corrects information given in Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, p. 46. Nevertheless, it remains the case that Aquila, around 1334, was concerned with these issues. 34 CUP I, pp. 644645, #530. On the booksellers lists and the Sens family, see R. and M. Rouse, The Book Trade at the University of Paris, ca. 1250 ca. 1350, in La Production du livre universitaire au moyen age: exemplar et pecia, ed. L. Bataillon, B. Guyot, R. Rouse (Paris, 1988), pp. 41114. Themistius was still an important source for the interpretation of De anima in the second decade of the fourteenth century, as revealed by the opening section of Burleys Expositio; cf. J.A. Weisheipl, Repertoriun Mertonense, 201.
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De caelo, De anima, De sensu, Ethics, Politics, and summae on the Perihermenias and the Posterior Analytics; Albert on the old logic, the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Elenchi and Topics, Physics, De generatione, De caelo, Meteorologica, De anima, De sensu, and many others; and Giles of Rome on Physics, De generatione, De anima, the Elenchi, and Posterior Analytics.35 When in the 1320s and 1330s newer commentaries arrived on the scene by Walter Burley, William of Ockham, and John Buridan, their validity and value was naturally compared with those that had been for more than a generation the accepted and approved commentators within the university curriculum, namely those of Thomas, Albert, and Giles. Consequently, in any contrast between the views of one of these recent commentators, such as Ockham, and the older commentators, the latter category linked Aristotle and Averroes with Albert, Thomas, and Giles. Secondly, the contrast between these traditional, accepted commentators on the one side, and Ockham and his followers on the other was not a particularly meaningful contrast in the context of the debate over the techniques of propositional analysis or the applications of personal supposition and literal meaning, de virtute sermonis. Ockhams reinterpretation of the categories and its implications for physics is, however, a very appropriate contrast with these older commentators. Thus when the oath of 1341 requires adherence to the two statutes against the Ockhamists, namely adherence to the scientia of Aristotle, his Commentator, and other commentatores antiqui and the rejection of the scientia of Ockham, that oath cannot, as I have argued before, include reference to the statute of December 1340, which has nothing to do with the scientia of Aristotle. It has to refer to statutes for which that contrast is meaningful, namely a statute or statutes aimed at Ockhams interpretation of the categories. The phrase Aristotle, his Commentator, and the older commentators is code language for the debate over the praedicamenta and Ockhamist physics. But is it not still possible that the Occamistae, in the eyes of their opponents, were known for two dierent sets of errors: errors in their interpretation of the categories and its implications for physics, and errors in their analysis of propositional truth?36 And is it not possible that at some level these issues were seen as related? Two possible connections suggest themselves. At several points in
CUP II, pp. 110111, #642. Thijssen, Once Again the Ockhamist Statutes, 145, has interpreted the closing line of the December 1340 statute, saving in all respects what we have decreed
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his discussion of motion, Massa characterizes the position of his opponents in natural philosophy as grammatical; at least in the way they illustrated or argued their position.37 The characterization of errors in physical theory as grammatical errors may provide a link by which the techniques of propositional analysis rejected in the statute of December 1340 and the Ockhamist views on time, motion, place, and relation might be viewed by contemporary opponents as related. Jol Biard is certainly correct in noting that the relationship of grammar and logic in the fourteenth century is very dierent from what it was in the early twelfth.38 Yet Megenbergs characterization of the rejection of the validity of gures of speech in determining propositional truth as trivial errors relating to grammar and rhetoric, and Massas characterization of Ockhamist physics as grounded in sophistical grammar does suggest that some contemporaries traced these errors back to grammar and language. Secondly, behind the techniques of propositional analysis condemned in the 1340 statute lie issues of the relationship of language and reality, the object of knowledge, and the certitude of knowledge, all of which ultimately do concern the understanding of physical nature.39 But our ability to see the connection between natural philosophy and language analysis, which was certainly there in the fourteenth century, does not and cannot prove by itself that the 1340 statute was aimed at the errors of the Ockhamists.
elsewhere as to the doctrine of William called Ockham, which we rmly maintain in every way, as a reference to the continuing prohibition of other teachings of Ockham not specied in this statute. It may, however, be a simple reminder that the September 1339 statute was still in force. 37 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70va: Nunc autem loquendo physice et ad rem et non recurrendo ad subiectum et probatum propositionis et ad suppositum et ad appositum propositionis grammaticaliter. Ibid.: Sed quies vere et realiter et non solum grammaticaliter contrariatur motui et tamen non contrariatur mobili, ergo motus et mobile non sunt eadem realitas. Ibid.: per quascumque connotationes et per quascumque guras grammaticales tu conaris salvare quod una res sit quandoque motus et quandoque quies, et ego per easdem salvabo tibi quod eadem res sit quandoque albedo et quandoque nigredo . Ibid.: Praeterea, quia tu fugis ad propositiones grammaticales . 38 Biard, Logique et thorie, pp. 1420, 201202. 39 This is why Paqu employed the term Naturwissenschaft in a book that discussed precisely those issues.
the debate over ockhams physical theories at paris The Role of Buridan in the Events of 13391341
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Let me nally turn to the crisis and legislation of 13391341 and the role of Jean Buridan in those events. It has now been established, at least to my satisfaction, that the positions being armed in the December 1340 statute (i.e., the positions supported by the arts masters who approved the statute) coincide with the views of Buridan, even if the positions under attack bear only a pale resemblance to Ockhams views. But the fact that Buridan would have been sympathetic to the wording of that statute does not, by itself, make him its author or moving spirit. Buridan cannot have been the only arts master at Paris whose views on supposition, signication, and the virtus sermonis were in accord with the positions defended in the statute. Nor can he have been the only one whose views in physics were indebted to Giles of Rome.40 Buridan had a substantial reputation in the arts faculty by 1330, and it is dicult to believe that his views would not be given attention and respect in 1340. But to see him as the author of the 1340 statute attributes to him a power he did not have, and is based on a misperception of the administrative structure of the university. In matters of doctrine, power in the university lay with the chancellor and the regent masters in theology, not with the arts faculty.41 In that regard, the legislation of 1340 represents a unique usurpation of internal judicial authority, motivated both by philosophical concerns in the arts faculty and by continuing political pressures from Avignon through Benedict XIIs suspension of university privileges.42 Power within the arts faculty lay with the nations and with the senior masters in each nation, among whom the oce of proctor and collectively the oce of rector rotated. The rector served at the pleasure of the nations, and while his power to represent the university and arts faculty ad extra was considerable, his power within the arts faculty was limited. He kept the seal and registers of the faculty; he called and presided at meetings; he could block action if proper procedure was not followed; he could put a question before the assembled body. Most importantly, he was elected only for a three40 On the dependence of Buridans Physics commentaries on that of Giles, see Maier, Zwischen Philosophie und Mechanik, p. 53: Aegidius ist ja berhaupt fr Buridan und seine Schule der eigentliche Vorlufer, der expositor schlechthin, dessen Ansichten oft, und fast immer mit voller Zustimmung, zitiert werden. 41 Courtenay, Preservation and Dissemination of Academic Condemnations. 42 For the political context of these events, see Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 7579; Kaluza, Le Statut du 25 septembre 1339.
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month term and was rarely re-elected until several years had passed. Thus while it is true that the initiation of action that led to the statute of December 1340 might well have begun between October and midDecember, when Buridan was rector, he would only have been one of several arts mastersConrad of Megenberg includedwho would have had a hand in the statute of December 1340 and any other legislation against the opinions of the Occamistae that may have been undertaken at that time. In light of the likelihood that Michael de Massas additiones to his commentary on book II of the Sentences, with their bitter condemnation of Ockhamist physics, was a product of Paris in the 1330s, not the 1320s, the following picture emerges. Ockhams Summa logicae and his views in natural philosophy were known at Paris in the 1320s but do not appear to have posed a serious problem in the minds of contemporaries. Only when a group arose that used Ockham to undermine traditional physical theory and possibly to create a rather bizarre theory of propositional analysis, was there a crisis that resulted in the prohibition on the use of Ockhams works in the arts faculty. Put another way, it was not the introduction of Ockhams writings or views that brought a reaction at Paris but rather the appearance of the Occamistae as a group and the applications they made of Ockham in the areas of physics and propositional analysis.
chapter thirteen
THE QUAESTIONES IN SENTENTIAS OF MICHAEL DE MASSA, OESA. A REDATING*
Michael de Massas Quaestiones in Sententias remain one of the richest unedited and, for the most part, unstudied texts of the fourteenth century. The preliminary ground work was laid by Damasus Trapp almost a half century ago, but very little use has been made of Massas work since then.1 This is due in part to the fact that Massa was rarely cited in medieval texts and therefore is thought to be a relatively minor gure. A more important inhibiting factor, however, comes from the fact that Trapps attribution to Massa of the anonymous Quaestiones on book II of the Sentences contained only in one manuscript, Vat. lat. 1087, has not been universally accepted, thus calling into question what texts actually belong to Michael de Massa.2 This doubt has been generated not by stylistic dierences but by the fact that several medieval authors cited Michael de Massas questions on book I of the Sentences, but no one ever cited his questions on book II.3 Moreover, the content of some of the questions in Vat. lat. 1087, especially the physical theories of the
Originally published in Augustiniana, 45 (1995), 191207. A.D. Trapp, Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century, Augustiniana, 6 (1956), 146274, at 163175; Notes on some Manuscripts of the Augustinian Michael de Massa ( 1337), Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 58133. 2 For questions on the authenticity of Vat. lat. 1087, see W.J. Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation at Paris. 13391341, History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396, at 73 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 9, p. 196]; Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham (Leiden, 1988), p. 318. 3 E.g., Gregory of Rimini, Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum, ed. D. Trapp and V. Marcolino, vol. I (Berlin and New York, 1981), p. 85; Alfonsus Vargas of Toledo, In primum sententiarum (Venice, 1490; rpr. 1952), cols. 18, 75, 111, 152, 160, 188, 251, 288, 335, 445, 535, 572, 576, 579, 585. Massas commentary on Book I survives in several manuscripts: Bologna, Collegio di Spagna 40; Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214; Florence, Bibl. Naz., conv. soppr. C.VIII.794; and the rst eight distinctions in Naples, Bibl. Naz., VII.C.1. It was also abbreviated twice in the early 15th century, once by Andrea [de Biglia?] OESA of Milan (Oxford, Bodl. Libr., Canonici misc. 276, and the prologue in Vatican, Vat. lat. 1084, fols. 144152), and by Johannes de Marliano OESA of Milan between 1410 and 1430 (Bergamo, Bibl. civ. A.3.21; Pavia, Bibl. Univ. 226). On Biglia see J.C. Schnaubelt, Andrea Biglia (c. 13941435). His Life and Writings, Augustiniana, 43 (1993), 103160.
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Occamistae, would appear to belong chronologically closer to the debates that erupted over Ockhams thought at Paris at the end of the 1330s, while Massas commentary on the Sentences has been dated by Trapp to 13251326, a decade and a half earlier. Apart from the fact that it completely escaped contemporary notice, the major problem with Massas authorship of the text in Vat. lat. 1087 is this: if a group known as the Occamistae were active at Paris by 1325, and if their views on physics were already controversial at that time, why is there no other mention of that group or those issues at Paris between 1326 and 1339? The following re-examination of the evidence will concentrate on three points: the authenticity of Vat. lat. 1087 as a work of Michael de Massa; the dating of Massas time as sententiarius; and the origin and assembling of the questions included in Vat. lat. 1087. The Authenticity of Vat. lat. 1087 The rst task is, of course, to establish whether the commentary on book II of the Sentences, found only in Vat. lat. 1087, is unquestionably by Michael de Massa. Much of the evidence on which Trapp based his conclusion that Michael de Massa was the author of this text is, upon examination, suggestive but ultimately inconclusive. The fact that Vat. lat. 1087 was copied by the same scribe and belonged to the same owner as Bologna Univ. 2214, a manuscript of Massas commentary on book I, does not prove that the same person authored both works.4 Moreover, the cross-references in book II to that authors commentary on book I are too general or too standard to establish that they refer specically to Massas commentary on book I and to no one elses.5
4 Both manuscripts are copied in a fourteenth-century textualis hand common to university book production. Neither hand could be characterized as Littera Parisiensis. That the hand of the two manuscripts is identical is established by the common formation of letters and by the frequent use of elongated, archaic (Uncial and Caroline) initial letters, especially the N, A, and E. These paleographical characteristics suggest Italian provenance. Both manuscripts were in the possession of Thomas Parentucelli de Sarzana (later Pope Nicholas V), who gave Bologna, Univ. 2214 to the Bologna convent of the Augustinian Hermits on behalf of Nicholas Albergati, Cardinal protector of the Augustinians. Vat. lat. 1087 remained in the papal library. 5 For example, Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 58r refers to the authors earlier treatment on the subject of theology, a standard topic of many prologues on the Sentences (Trapp, Notes, 105). The same is true for references to discussions in his Prologue of Auriols theory of experientiae and notitia abstractiva (Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 183r183v, 191v, 214v; Trapp, Notes,
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At two points, however, the parallels seem closer. The author of the commentary on book II, as Trapp already noted, refers several times to his discussions of creatio actio in distinctions ve and nine of book I, and although there are no verbatim parallel passages that would establish positive proof, Massa does discuss that issue in distinctions ve and nine of book I more than would be true for most authors.6 More telling, however, is a reference in Vat. lat 1087, fol. 182r, that identies its author as a member of a religious order (omnes doctores nostri) and which appears to be a reference back to the question contained in Bologna, Univ. 2214, fol. 50v.7
Univ. 2214, fol. 50v De quarto articulo ubi restat inquirendum: Utrum Deus ut est subiectum habitus theologici contineatur sub obiecto adaequato nostrae potentiae et sub obiecto adaequato habitus metaphysicae, patet ex dictis quid sit tenendum. Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 182rb dictum fuit in prologo libri Sententiarum in quaes tione illa: Utrum subiectum theologiae contineatur sub obiecto adaequato metaphysicae. Tamen omnes doctores nostri.
A subsequent user of Univ. 2214, believing the text in Vat. lat. 1087 to be by the same author as Univ. 2214, noted in the margin of Univ. 2214, f. 134va: De tota materia istius quaestionis quaere in additionibus secundi proprii [sic], referring to the question Utrum creatio actio sit realiter idem quod actus aliquis absolutus intrinsecus ipsi Deo in the Vatican ms, fol. 17v. All references, however, in the text (as opposed to the margin) of Univ. 2214 to matters treated in book II
127, 130), whether the existence of God is per se nota in dist. 2 (Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 179v; Trapp, Notes, 69, 127), of the augmentation and diminution of qualities in dist. 17 (Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 72v, 91vb; Trapp, Notes, 109, 112), on numerical form in dist. 24 (Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 69v, 88v; Trapp, Notes, 109, 110), of cause and eect in dist. 36 (Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 48r; Trapp, Notes, 101). In some cases, an earlier treatment of a topic appears in Bologna, Univ. 2214 in a dierent distinction from the one referred to in Vat. lat. 1087; cf. Trapp, Notes, 106, 109. 6 See, for example, Vat lat 1087, fols. 11v, 18r, 19v, 20r, 21r, 21v, 22r, 23r. 7 If this particular wording is more common than I think it to be, then the evidence for attributing Vat. lat. 1087 to Michael de Massa would be weakened. Similar language does occur in other authors in the body of a question, but not as a question title; see, e.g., Scotus, Ordinatio, Prol., pt. 3, q. 3 in Opera omnia, vol. I (Rome, 1950), pp. 98, 114; Ockham, Ordinatio, Prol., q. 9, in Opera theologica, vol. 1 (St. Bonaventure, 1967), pp. 230 231; Thomas of Strasbourg, In primum Sententiarum, Prol., q. 3 (Venice, 1564), fol. 13v.
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as well as to books III and IV are in the future tense, describing an as-yet unrealized plan, and are not cross-references to the text of Vat. lat. 1087.8 Similarly, the references in Univ. 2214 to sexterni extraordinarii are not references to the additiones found in book II, but are references to missing sections that were to have been inserted into or attached to book I.9 Thus, despite the fact that some of the evidence and argumentation of Trapp does not prove his case, the evidence isolated here makes it almost certain that Vat. lat. 1087 was indeed written and edited by the same author as that of the commentary found in Bologna, Univ. 2214. Moreover, Michael de Massas authorship of the commentary found in Bologna, Univ. 2214 is beyond question. He is mentioned in the colophon of that manuscript as the author.10
8 E.g., Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, fol. 220vb: sicut patebit in secundo libro; Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, fol. 223va: sicut videbitur in secundo libro de gravi movente se; Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, fol. 226ra: pertranseo tum quia pro parte tetigi superius aliquas de gravioribus dicultatibus circa istam materiam, d. 31, tum etiam quia istam quaestionem et alias duas sequentes intendo diuse a proposito resumere in secundo libro ; Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, fol. 226rb: Respondeo quia materiam istam intendo magis a proposito determinare in secundo libro ; Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, fol. 225va: licet in hoc falsum dicant sicut videbitur, Deo duce, in tertio libro. The same holds true for most of the text in the Vatican manuscript. Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 15ra: Et quia non intendo hic deducere quaestionem sub isto sensu: Utrum de potentia Dei absoluta possit alicui creaturae communicari a deo potentia creandi, nam ista quaestio locum habebit circa principium quarti libri sententiarum; Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 17va: quaere in quaestione illa: Utrum Deus possit quodcumque ens corruptum reparare, libro quarto f. (the f probably a scribal misreading of s[ententiarum]); Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 17vb: de quibus videbitur circa principium quarti libri sententiarum; Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 66rb: probam in prima quaestione quarti libri . Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 69vb: Hoc locum habet tractari in quarto libro et de hoc ibi videbitur; Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 73vb: Sed de hoc videbitur in quarto libro; Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 77va: Sed de ista materia nihil dico ad praesens denitive, dicam de hoc in quarto libro sententiarum; Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 94ra: Sic implicaretur dicultas Utrum Deus posset facere motum in instanti. Et de ista dicultate videbitur in quarto loco, et ideo pertranseo (again, loco probably a scribal misreading of libro); Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 94va: quia dicunt aliqui quod entitas aevi, de facto contingenter intrinsece successio, potest eri a Deo tota simul. Sed de hoc videbitur in quarto libro; Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 175va: Et de istis quattuor quaestionibus agetur in tertio libro in tractatu de partibus imaginis. Ibid.: Et de istis quattuor quaestionibus agetur in quarto libro in tractatu de beatitudine. 9 Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, fol. 198ra: De aliis vero tribus quaestionibus motis circa istam distinctionem require in sexternis extraordinariis in quibus tetigi succincte puncta dicultatum.; Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, fol. 210vb: De ultima quaestione, scilicet Utrum verbum in divinis dicatur notionaliter, dicetur in sexterno extraordinario ubi patet quod dicitur notionaliter. It should be noted, however, that some questions in the additiones to book II are also called quaestiones extraordinariae. 10 Bologna, Univ. 2214, fol. 234vb: Hic liber est scriptum in primum Sententiarum Michaelis de Masa .
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And the numerous citations of the opinions of Michael in the Sentences commentaries of Gregory of Rimini and Alfonsus Vargas of Toledo mentioned aboveall references to book Ican be found in this work.
The Date of Michael de Massas Parisian Baccalaureate But did Michael de Massa lecture on the Sentences at Paris in 13251326? We have very few biographical details for Michael de Massa. We know that he came from Massa in the region of Siena and belonged to the Beccucci family. We also know that he was denitor for his province at the General Chapter of the Augustinian order at Venice in June 1332, and that he died at Paris in May 1337 while still a bachelor of theology and was buried with copies of his writings at the Augustinian convent in Paris.11 The dating of his Sentences commentary to 13251326 was proposed by Trapp on two pieces of evidence. Michaels opinions are cited in a quodlibetal question of the Augustinian, James of Pamiers (de Appamiis),12 thought to have been given early in 1326 on the basis that some of the authors cited were active in 13251326 and that Durand of St. Pourain is cited in the Quodlibet as bishop of Le Puy, a position he ceased to hold in 1326. Secondly, Trapp introduced supporting information that Massa in his commentary on book I (Univ. 2214, fol. 130r130v) referred to Alexander of S. Elpidio as prior general of the Augustinian orderan oce Alexander ceased to hold in February 1326 when he became bishop of Amal. Since Massa frequently cites his fellow Augustinian, Gerard of Siena, who read the Sentences at Paris c. 13221323, Massas commentary on book I of the Sentences would seem to have been written between 1323 and 1326. The evidence for a terminus ante quem of 1326 based on James of Pamiers and Alexander of S. Elpidio is not as certain as has been assumed. First, the Quodlibetal question of James of Pamiers, contrary to what has been said of it, was probably not composed in 1325
D.A. Perini, Bibliographia Augustiniana II (Firenze, 1931), pp. 191192. F. Pelster, Zur ersten Polemik gegen Aureoli: seine Qustionen und sein Correctorium Petri Aureoli, das Quodlibet des Jacobus de Apamiis O.E.S.A., FS, 15 (1955), 3047, at 44: Quantum ad primum respondet frater Michael de Massa nostri ordinis quod sine aliqua repugnancia essencia et relatio vel quecunque alia, nisi aliud repugnet, possunt esse vere duo positiva et habere per consequens veram dualitatem sine omni distinccione et non-ydemptitate et negacione unius ab alio, servatis propriis positivis.
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1326, nor was it necessarily held at Paris. The terminus post quem for the quodlibet is 1324, since in one of the questions James refers to a quaestio that master Francis of Marchia determined at Avignon, and Francis was lector at the Franciscan convent in Avignon from 1324 to 1328.13 The fact that James also cites the views of Guiral Ot (Gerard Odonis) on the distinction of essence and relation, and the latter completed his lectures on the Sentences in 1326, suggests a terminus post quem of 1325 or 1326.14 But 1326 is not the terminus ante quem. The reference to Durand as bishop of Le Puy is found only on the margin of the Leipzig manuscript of the quodlibet in a later hand that also describes James of Viterbo as doctor inventivus.15 If a later owner of the Leipzig manuscript remembered Durand for his eight years as bishop of Le Puy rather than his last years as bishop of Meaux, it has no bearing on the terminus ante quem of Jamess Quodlibet. Nor is it the case that those whose opinions are cited in the Quodlibet need have been present at the disputation. If the Quodlibet was determined at Paris, it must date to around 1332. Only regent masters could determine such disputations at a studium generale, and James was still a bachelor at the general chapter at Paris in 1329 but was a doctor of theology by the time of the general chapter at Venice in 1332.16
Ibid., at 44: Contra istas raciones arguit magister Franciscus de Ma[rchia] in quadam questione, quam determinavit in curia 14 Ibid., at 42: Ad idem arguunt quidam alii. Rand: Geroldus Odonis. The date for Odoniss Sentences commentary, his earliest known work, is given in the colophon to Madrid, Bibl. Nac., Ms. lat. 65, fol. 203v. James of Pamiers apparently also refers to Thomas de Fabiano as quidam doctor nostri ordinis (Trapp, Augustinian Theology, 174), and Fabiano was fullling his one- or two-year term as regent when, in May 1328, he is so addressed by John XXII (CUP II, pp. 310312, #875). [According to C. Schabel, The Sentences Commentary of Gerardus Odonis, OFM, Bulletin de Philosophie Mdivale, 46 (2004), 115168, Odonis previously lectured on the Sentences at Toulouse, and his Parisian lectures should be dated 13261328 or 13271328.] 15 Ibid., at 42: L Rand in Hand des 14/15 Jahrh. Dominus Durandus episcopus Aniciensis de ordine predicatorum et Iacobus de Viterbio doctor inventivus. See Leipzig, Univ. Bibl., ms 529, fol. 102. There were at least two Augustinian theologians by the name of James of Viterbo. The reference is undoubtedly to the famous successor of Giles of Rome at the end of the thirteenth century, not the bachelor of theology who read the Sentences in 13281329 (CUP II, pp. 310312, #875). 16 D. Trapp, J. von Pamiers, Lexikon fr Theologie and Kirche, V (1960), col. 835; see also: Antiquiores quae extant denitiones capitulorum generalium Ordinis, Analecta Augustiniana, 4 (19111912), 81 and 108. Formed bachelors could determine Quodlibetic disputations at a lesser studium of the order, but if that is the context of Pamierss Quodlibet, it would still be dated closer to 1330.
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What is certain is that at the time James of Pamiers wrote his quodlibetic question, Michael de Massas views had come to his attention. And apart from the approximate date of Pamierss regency, the only secure terminus ante quem for his Quodlibet is that provided by Alfonsus Vargas of Toledos citation of Pamierss Quaestiones quodlibetales et ordinariae in the formers Super primum Sententiarum given at Paris in 13441345.17 Trapps other piece of evidence for the 13251326 date is more substantive but also more complicated. Toward the beginning of question three of distinction eight on the problem of divine attributes, Michael introduces in succession the opinions of Henry of Ghent, Thomas Aquinas, our father general (meaning the prior general of the Augustinian order at that time), followed by Godfrey of Fontaines. These citations, all of which mention specically (although not always correctly) the title and question of each authors work being cited, are indicated in the margin of Bologna, Univ. 2214, fol. 130ra, in the same scribal hand as O.H., O.T., O.G., and O.Goth, respectively. Three columns later Michael refers to magister Alexander, meaning Alexander of S. Elpidio, who is frequently cited in Michaels commentary on book I as magister Alexander or occasionally frater Alexander. The marginal reference to O.G. opposite the textual identication of a certain venerable doctor, namely our father general in his rst Quodlibet, q. 2 could stand for opinio Generalis, but it could also stand for the rst name of the authority cited, as in every other case in the margins of this manuscript, except for Scotus, who is cited by last name or as Johannes Scotus.18 If Alexander was the prior general in question, it is surprising that the marginal abbreviation, which Massa himself created, was not O.A. or O.Alex, just as was done later when op. mgri. Alex. in the margin identies op. alterius doctor in the text. Consequently, the question needs to be explored whether the general referred to by Massa was Alexander of S. Elpidio or, possibly, William of Cremona (i.e., O[pinio] G[uillelmi]), who became the Augustinian general immediately after Alexander in 1326 and remained so until his death in 1342.
17 J. Krzinger, Alfonsus Vargas Toletanus und seine theologische Einleitungslehre, BGPTM, XXII, 56 (Mnster i.W., 1930), pp. 8487. 18 It should be noted that the scribe was not simply transferring to the margin what he read in the text. As with many fourteenth-century Sentences commentaries, these marginal notes in Michael de Massas commentary often identify authors (usually more contemporary authors) who are not referred to in the text by name (e.g., quidam, alii, quidam alius doctor).
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The position of Alexander (de Marchia) of S. Elpidio on the divine attributes was cited and discussed by at least two authors apart from Michael de Massa. As described by Gerard of Siena and Thomas of Strasbourg, Alexander agreed with Henry of Ghent that the distinction of attributes in God was a distinction of reason ad intra that did not entail any comparison in the created order, ad extra. Alexander modied Henrys position by insisting that the distinction of attributes ad intra was not based on any internal comparison or negotiative act but by a simple awareness or intuition.19 Gerard of Siena added the further information that Alexanders position was put forward in the second question of his rst Quodlibet.20 In addition to Michael de Massas reference to the position of the Augustinian general on the divine attributes, Michael also refers three columns later to the position of Alexander of S. Elpidio on the same issue as if the position of Alexander is being introduced for the rst time. His description of Alexanders position at this point coincides with the position attributed to Alexander by Gerard of Siena and Thomas of Strasbourg.21 When that position is compared to the position of the Augustinian general described earlier by Massa, the positions are
19 Gerard of Siena, In primum Sententiarum, dist. 2, q. 2, a. 3 (Chicago, Univ. Libr. ms 22, fol. 38rb): Ideo sit alius modus dicendi quem ponit magister Alexander [marg.: Opinio magistri Alexandri de Marchia] 1 suo quodlibet, q. 2, dicens quod distinctio attributorum sumitur per intellectum divinum ad intra, non quod per actum negotiativum, sicut probat praefata opinio, sed per simplicem intuitum. Talis distinctio rationis in essentia divina est prior distinctione reali in creaturis; ergo distinctio attributorum in essentia divina non sumitur ex creaturis; et per consequens ab intra. Ergo per simplicem intuitum illam distinctionem reducit in actum sine omni comparatione ad extra. Thomas de Strasbourg, Commentaria in IV Libros Sententiarum, I, d. 6, a. 3 (Venice, 1564), p. 45: Dicit ergo ille doctor [marg.: Alexander ordinis S. Augustini], quod rationes attributales sunt potentia distinguibiles in essentia divina, et per hoc diert ab aliis de formalitatibus, qui dicunt, quod sint actu formaliter distinctae. Per hoc autem, quod dicit intellectum divinum ea distinguere ab intra, diert ab illis, qui ponunt talem distinctionem eri solum in ordine ad creaturas. Et addit tertio, quod talis distinctio at per simplicem intuitum, et non per intellectum comparante divinam essentiam sub ratione unius attributi ad seipsam sub ratione alterius attributi: quia eo ipso, quod potentialiter sunt in divina essentia quantum ad istam distinctionem rationis per simplicem intuitum intellectus perfecte essentiam cognoscentis, talis distinctio reducitur in actum, et per hoc diert ab illis, quorum rationes adduxi proxime ante istum. 20 This information is contained in the Chicago manuscript (see previous note), in Padua, Bibl. Univ., ms 2229, and probably in other manuscripts of Gerard as well. 21 Michael de Massa, In primum Sententiarum, d. 8, q. 3 (Bologna, Univ. 2214, fol. 130vb): Est autem alia opinio alterius doctoris [marg.: op inio mag ist ri Alex andri ] quae dicit quod attributa divina distinguuntur secundum rationem absque omni habi-
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similar but not identical. The generals position, as described by Massa, does reject any internal comparative ratiocination and does employ the distinctive Alexandrine? phrase per simplicem intuitum, but in place of a distinction secundum rationem, Massa attributes to the Augustinian general a distinction actualiter et completivelanguage that does not appear in any of the three descriptions of Alexanders position, but which Massa did apply in his descriptions of the positions of Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines.22 On the basis of these passages, it is dicult to determine whether these citations in Michael to the opinion of the Augustinian general and to Alexander represent one and the same person or two dierent authors. The presence of the phrase per simplicem intuitum in both passages does not solve the problem, since William of Cremona, writing after Alexander, might well have adopted that part of Alexanders argument. Yet the matter can be brought nearer to a solution. In 1932 Victorin Doucet described a Naples manuscript (Bibl. Naz. VII.C.6) that contained, among other works, the rst three questions from an anonymous Quodlibet (fols. 7ra10rb) which, two years later, he identied as belonging to Alexander of S. Elpidio on the basis of the citation in Gerard of Siena mentioned above.23 Now that we have three
tudine ad extra, et hoc per divinum intellectum non quidem collationum vel negotiorum, sed attingentem simplici intuitu essentiam divinam. 22 Ibid., fol. 130ra: opinio cuiusdam venerabilis doctoris, scilicet patris nostri generalis, quam ipse ponit primo suo quodlibeto, q. 2, ubi ipsi dicit quod attributa divina distinguuntur actualiter et completive, et unt completive plura per actum intelligendi divinum absque omni collatione in composita ad intra vel ad extra, sed per simplicem intuitum intellectus divini. Compare this with Massas description of Henry of Ghents position, fol. 130ra: quod attributa divina distinguantur non quidem actualiter et completive ante omnem actum cuiuscumque intellectus, sed actualiter et completive distinguantur per actum intellectus divini, non quidem actum simplicem intuitive transeuntem prius quidem super realem distinctionem divinarum personarum ad intra . and Massas description of Godfrey of Fontainess position, fol. 130ra: quod attributa divina distinguuntur actualiter et completive . How this is achieved diers between Henry and Godfrey. For a discussion of the last two authorss positions on the divine attributes, see J.F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines (Washington, 1981), pp. 115123. 23 V. Doucet, in his review of Glorieuxs Repertoire des Maitres en Thologie de Paris, in AFH, 27 (1934), 587: Le Quodlibet est cit par Grard de Sienne, I Sent.: Est alius modus dicendi quem ponit magister Alexander [en marge: opinio mag. Alexandri de Marchia] 1 suo quodlibet, q. 2, dicens quod distinctio attributorum sumitur per intellectum divinum ad intra, non quod per actum negotiativum sed per simplicem intuitum (Padoue, Bibl. Univ. 2229, f. 44a). Or cette citation correspond exactement et pour tous les points, au Quodlibet anonyme de MS. de Naples, Nat. VII. C. 6 (f. 7a10b), que nous avons decrit dans lAFH XXV, 1932, 520. II ny a pas de doute, nous avons l un des quodlibets
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descriptions of Alexanders position and supporting argumentation as well as Massas description of the position of the Augustinian general, the Naples manuscript needs to be rechecked. William of Cremona also authored several quodlibets. Two questions from his third quodlibet appear in that same Naples manuscript, and the rst question of the quodlibets attributed to Alexander by Doucet refers to a question in its authors third quodlibet.24 In the form in which we have it, the latter text was edited and probably reorganized after later quodlibets were completed. In light of that, it is not impossible that two authors, closely related in time, place, and religious order, might arrange their questions in a similar topical sequence. There is one other piece of evidence, however, noted but not utilized by Trapp, that does support an early date for the version of Massas commentary on book I contained in Bologna, Univ. 2214. Throughout that manuscript Aquinas is referred to as frater Thomas, never sanctus Thomas, suggesting a date of composition before (or at least not long after) Thomass canonization in July 1323.25 The other Bolognese manuscript of Massas In primum sententiarum, Collegio di Spagna Ms 40, changes almost all these references to sanctus Thomas. Such a change might seem natural for any scribe copying a text after 1324, but as was noted above, Univ. 2214 itself was copied by the same scribe as Vat. lat. 1087, which refers to Aquinas as sanctus Thomas. Assuming that these last two manuscripts were copied after 1324, probably after
dAlexandre de SantElpidio. P. Glorieux, La littrature quodlibtique, vol. II (Paris, 1935), p. 302. Question 2: Utrum distinctio attributorum in essentia divina sumatur per comparationem ad extra vel ad intra. Only the rst three-and-a-half questions of this anonymous Quodlibet appear in the manuscript (fols. 7ra10rb), but there is a list in the prologue of all fteen questions. In the rst question the author refers to his third quodlibet, which means that his regency lasted at least two years (i.e., two quodlibets per year). Glorieux refers to the numbering of the questions as a particularit which, added to some other formules de style, initially suggested to him the authorship of Henry of Friemar, OESA or some other Austin Friar. The contents of the full manuscript are described in V. Doucet, De Cod. Neapolitano. VII.C.6, AFH, 25 (1932), 518524. 24 Naples, Bibl. Naz., VII.C.6, fols. 72vb73va; cf. Glorieux, La littrature quodlibtique II, p. 116. The questions are listed as six and seven in sequence in this Quodlibet, but in reverse order in the manuscript, which indicates they were known by numbers. It may also be that the two questions from magister Guillelmus in the Naples manuscript, fols. 10va14rb, that follows immediately upon the anonymous quodlibetic questions, are also by William of Cremona. 25 The fact that in Bologna, Univ. 2214 Scotus is cited as Johannes Scotus also suggests an early date.
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the death of Massa, it is surprising that the scribe remained faithful to his exemplar of book I in this regard and did not correct Thomass title. Indeed, the change from frater Thomas to sanctus Thomas in the two Bolognese manuscripts may not be a result of scribal correction but the result of a later redaction. The text of the Collegio di Spagna manuscript diers at a number of points from that found in Univ. 2214 and also has passages not found in the latter manuscript.26 But were those changes introduced when Massa revised his text after reading the Sentences at Paris, or does the text found in Univ. 2214 represent a preParisian version? Trapp was ultimately convinced that 13251326 was the date for Massas Parisian baccalaureate, but at various points in his 1956 article he also referred to Massas commentary on the Sentences as a lectura lectoris, a series of lectures or questions written during the period of the lectorate, that is the period between the ve years initial study in theology and the point at which, if one were fortunate, one was chosen to return to Paris as sententiarius.27 During these years as lector, which could last well over a decade, one taught in the various studia of the province. Gregory of Rimini, for example, after his years of initial study at Paris, lectured for twelve years in various studia in northern Italy (specically Bologna, Padua, and Perugia) before being appointed to read the Sentences at Paris.28 Similarly, the period of lectorate and baccalaureate for Dionysius de Mutina was fourteen years inclusive.29 The Sentences of Peter Lombard was one of the major texts on which lectures would be needed in the provincial studia, and lectors no doubt fullled that task out of curricular need as well as preparation for their time as sententiarius in a studium generale. This was not a peculiarity of the Augustinian educational system. It became common in the fourteenth century for prospective bachelors to read the Sentences at a lesser studium of the order before advancing to the level of bachelor at Paris.
26 Compare, for example, Bologna, Univ. 2214, fol. 47r and Bologna, Collegio di Spagna 40, fol. 38v; Univ., fol. 50r50v, and Spagna, fols. 43v44r; Univ., fol. 55v, and Spagna, fol. 52r52v. 27 E. Ypma, La formation des professeurs chez les ermites de Saint Augustin de 1256 1354 (Paris, 1956), pp. 4245. 28 CUP II, p. 557, #1097. For a re-examination of these biographical details, see V. Marcolino, Einleitung, in Gregorius Ariminensis OESA Lectura Super Primum et Secundum Sententiarum, ed. A.D. Trapp and V. Marcolino, Bd. 1 (Berlin, 1981), pp. xi xvii. 29 CUP II, p. 404, #952: qui tam in Parisiensi quam in aliis studiis generalibus quatuordecim annis legerat et Sententias in dicto studio Parisiensi compleverat.
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Pre-university lectures on the Sentences have survived for Peter Auriol, Walter Chatton, Adam Wodeham, and the Augustinian John of Burgos.30 It has commonly been assumed that pre-university lectures on the Sentences were written within two or three years of becoming a university sententiarius. But this impression is derived from the fact that all bachelors usually spent the year before their rst sentential lecture in preparation for that task, and some of the pre-university lectures cited above, most of them Franciscan, can be placed in the years immediately preceding the ocial university lectures. But no other mendicant order had as long a period of pre-baccalaureate teaching as the Augustinians, and the examination and appointment of lectors within the Augustinian order credentialed them to lecture on any of the required texts of the theological program. Thus, if the text of Bologna, Univ. 2214 is a lectura lectoris, as Trapp suspected, then the reference to the opinion of the prior general on divine attributes is just as much a part of the pre-university lectures as referring to Aquinas as frater Thomas. And in light of the fact that the lectorate credentialed one to lecture on any of the required texts, there is no way of determining at what point in the lectorate one might begin to compose lectures on the Sentences. There is no easy way to determine whether the version of Massas In primum sententiarum belongs to his baccalaureate or to his pre-baccalaureate years as lector, and if the latter, when during his lectorate they might have been written. Yet the fact that Michael de Massa died at Paris while relatively young and still a bachelor of theology31at least twelve years after the text of his commentary on Book I in Univ. 2214 I am inclined to view that text as a pre-Parisian, pre-baccalaureate
30 K.H. Tachau, French Theology in the mid-fourteenth century, AHDLMA, 51 (1984), 4180, at 5559. John of Burgos read the Sentences at Amiens ve years before he revised them for presentation at Paris as sententiarius. James of Pamierss citation of Massas opinions does not change this picture, since Pamiers Quodlibet, as we have seen, could date to the mid-to-late 1330s, after Massas baccalaureate. Moreover, citing another scholar before the latters baccalaureate, while unusual, is not unheard of. Walter Chatton cited and discussed the opinions of one of his own precocious theological students, namely Adam Wodeham, some eight or ten years before Wodeham became sententiarius at Oxford; see G. Gl, introduction to Ockham, Summa logicae, pp. 53*54*. [Gerard Odonis lectured on the Sentences at Toulouse before lecturing at Paris, and it is possible that Durand of St. Pourain also gave his rst lectures at a provincial studium.] 31 Perini, Bibliographia Augustiniana II, p. 191: decessit Parisiis die 10 mai anno 1337, cum adhuc esset Baccalaureus et in orida aetate, sepultusque fuit in nostra ecclesia, et in eius sepulchro subsignata volumina a se edita .
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version of the commentary he later gave as sententiarius at the Grands Augustins convent in Paris. That latter event need not have occurred before he was appointed denitor for his province at the Venice chapter in 1332. Gregory of Rimini, while lector at the convent of Bologna in 1338 was appointed denitor for that province at the General Chapter in Siena, four years before he became sententiarius at Paris.32 In short, Massas reading of the Sentences at Paris must have occurred after that of Gerard of Siena, c. 1323, and before Massas death in 1337, but none of the evidence described above requires us to date his Parisian lectura at any particular point within that range. Trapp was inclined to date Massas baccalaureate early, in 1325 1326, and to explain his failure to advance to the doctorate on grounds of his being blocked or delayed for ideological reasons, namely that his supposed adherence to the ultra-Aegidians placed him out of favor during the generalship of William of Cremona.33 But if one dates his baccalaureate later, in the late 1320s or early 1330s, then what appears to be a delay in promotion to the magisterium becomes more understandable. Parisian statutes in the 1320s and 1330s required a minimum six-year period between reading the Sentences and promotion to the magisterium, during which time the formed bachelor was expected to be in residence at Paris and to participate in disputations.34 Since there is no evidence that Massa sought or obtained a papal exemption from this rule (i.e., promotion ex gratia), as many others did during the ponticate of John XXII, we may assume that the rule applied to him. The normal waiting period may have been delayed even more by papal intervention in the process of appointments to read the Sentences and promotion to the magisterium at Paris. Since only one bachelor in a religious order could read the Sentences in any one academic year, and
Marcolino, Einleitung, p. xii. Trapp, Augustinian Theology, 170173. 34 In a letter of 1323 requesting promotion ex gratia of Pierre Roger (later Clement VI), John XXII referred to the six-year rule, CUP II, p. 272, #822: Non obstantibus quod a tempore lecture sue libri Sententiarum sex annorum spatium minime sit elapsum, per quorum spatium de consuetudine seu statuto ejusdem studii debent, ut dicitur, bacalarii expectare, priusquam ad magisterium in dicta scientia presententur . And in a similar letter in 1344 from Clement VI on behalf of Bertaud of St. Denis, CUP II, pp. 551552, #1093: necnon libros Sententiarum laudabiliter, cum jam sit in secundo anno inclusive post eandem lecturam . Non obstantibus quod a tempore lecture sue libri Sententiarum sex annorum spacium minime sit elapsum, per quorum spatium de consuetudine seu statuto ejusdem studii debent, ut dicitur, bacalarii expectare, priusquam ad magisterium in dicta scientia presententur .
33 32
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since promotion to the magisterium by any means entailed an obligation of regency (at least for the better part of an academic year) and residency (part of which could be fullled as magister non regens), every papal insertion into the sequence of candidates established by the general chapter of the order meant a delay in the advancement of someone else. Despite the attempts of the Augustinian order to ensure that promotions per litteram or per bullam did not disadvantage those seeking promotion rigorose, these interventions probably did cause delays. The records of the Augustinian general chapters during the later years of Johns ponticate attest to the tensions caused by papal intervention. And it was probably to accommodate the needs of candidates in the religious orders that during the 13321334 period John attempted to bend Parisian practice by pressuring the chancellor to allow designated mendicants to read the Sentences during the summer vacation, beginning as soon as the one reading during the academic year could be persuaded to complete his lectures. Neither the six-year rule nor the interposing of other candidates can explain a delay of more than twelve years between the baccalaureate and Massas status as bachelor at the time of his death. We are probably looking, therefore, at a textual legacy that includes a pre-Parisian Lectura lectoris (c. 1324 sqq.), a Parisian Lectura baccalaurii (c. 1332 in light of his academic rank and place of residence at the time of his death in 1337), and possibly questions that derive from a later source or revision (c. 13331337). It is to this last problem that I now turn. The Content of Vat. lat. 1087 Unlike Massas In primum sententiarum, his commentary on book II of the Sentences in Vat. lat. 1087 contains questions derived from dierent academic occasions or periods in the editorial process. Portions of that manuscript are referred to as his Lectura ordinaria or Opus ordinarium,35
35 The term lectura ordinaria appears only once in Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 25va (quia de tali entitate fuit quaestio a proposito in lectura ordinaria super secundum sententiarum quaestione quinta in universo) and refers to q. 5 on fol. 34ra, which, although the rst question in that section, is the fth question of those designated as opus ordinarium, the rst four appearing on fols. 1ra17vb. The term opus ordinarium appears on fol. 52rb (Sed antecedens fuit probatum in opere ordinario circa principium secundi sententiarum quaestione illa: Utrum Deus possit aliquid de novo creare); fol. 53va (quaere eas in tertia dicultate principalis quaestionis super secundum sententiarum in opere ordi-
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while other sections are designated as additiones and, for two questions, quaestiones extraordinariae.36 Trapp discussed these dierent text units at some length, believing that Massa intentionally constructed his questions on the Sentences, even the pre-Parisian version, as distinct text units. Trapp viewed the term opus ordinarium as Massas title for his Lectura lectoris, composed before he became a bachelor at Paris. During the year before his year or biennium as Parisian sententiarius, and probably continuing while he read at Paris, Massa supposedly wrote a series of new questions that became his additiones. According to Trapp, the phrases sexterni extraordinarii and quaestiones extraordinariae are simply other expressions for these additiones. The implication of this view is that all text units would have been produced either before Massa became a bachelor of theology or during his year or years as sententiarius. At one point, however, Trapp suggested that some of the additional questions might derive from quaestiones disputatae.37 Another view is, however, possible. Nowhere does Massa use the phrase Lectura lectoris. He does use the expressions Lectura ordinaria and opus ordinarium. In light of the fact that in university usage ordinatio was the term applied to the version of a work revised and edited for publication, it is unlikely that Massa would use such an expression to refer to pre-baccalaureate questions on the Sentences. It is more likely that Massa meant by that title either his rst revised version of his sentential questions from his Parisian baccalaureate, or at least the
nario); fol. 61rb (expositum fuit circa principium primae quaestionis super secundum sententiarum in opere ordinario); fol. 68va (et istam dicultatem tractabo in opere ordinario in materia de angelisa section that never got added); fol. 91vb (multipliciter probavi quaestione prima dicultate secunda in opere ordinario super secundo libro sententiarum); fol. 94vb (nec tamen dicultatem istam intendo pertractare nunc ad praesens, sed pertractabo in materia de angelis in opere ordinario super secundum librum sententiarumagain, in the future tense). All these cross-references, including the reference to the lectura ordinaria, are found in the additiones, not in the opus ordinarium itself. 36 The term additiones appears in Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 51vb as a cross-reference from a section of the opus ordinarium to a question in the additiones: in additionibus, quaestione prima: Utrum creatio actio sit actus aliquis absolutus intrinsecus ipsi Deo. But that title also occurs internally within the additiones; e.g. fol. 91rb: quia tamen de ista materia tractavi a materia [sic] et diuse superius in quaestione 9 in additionibus: Utrum videlicet Deus possit facere creaturam quae duret per unicum instans tantum; fol. 131vb: Item superius in principio additionum in materia de creatione in quaestione illa: Utrum .. Within the sequence of additional questions, the two on duration are called quaestiones extraordinariae. 37 Trapp, Notes, 111.
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ocial version presented as sententiarius. It is important to note in this regard that Massa never refers to his commentary on book I as his opus ordinarium. Only a substantial portion of his questions on book II are referred to in that manner. And that portion dates after 1326, since Alexander of S. Elpidio is referred to as reverendus magister bonae memoriae.38 At the same time, both Massas commentaries on books I and II refer to text units separate from the main body of those works. In the case of book I, these additional text units are referred to as sexterni extraordinarii, presumably meaning quires containing one or more questions that were not part of the original text.39 One of these references is to an additional question on the Trinity that was probably to have been part of book I. The other is a reference to questions on motion that may be referring to material eventually included in book II. The quaestiones extraordinariae that survive are found only in book II, belong together with the additiones, and may well be chronologically the last questions written, as the name suggests. Whether or not these later questions derive from a dierent academic context, such as questions on Aristotles Physics, they were written after the initial questions on book II of the Sentences.40 Although in the form in which they survive they were designed or redesigned as additional questions on the Sentences, it is unclear whether their fusion into one volume was Massas plan or was an assembly that took place after his death. All crossreferences to the additiones that specify a location within the same volume, as indicated by superius, are internal to the additiones and do not indicate whether the additiones were to be bound in with the opus ordinarVat. lat. 1087, fol. 97vb (at the beginning of questions that belong to the opus ordinarium). Alexander died in 1326. 39 Bologna, Univ. 2214, fol. 198ra: De aliis vero tribus quaestionibus motis circa istam distinctionem require in sexternis extraordinariis in quibus succincte tetigi puncta dicultatum. Ibid., fol. 210vb and Bologna, Collegio di Spagna 40, fol. 73vb: De ultima quaestione, scilicet: Utrum verbum in divinis dicatur notionaliter, dicetur in sexterno extraordinario, ubi patet quod dicitur notionaliter. 40 It was not unusual for mendicants in the period between the lectures on the Sentences and promotion to the doctorate to lecture on Aristotle. Ockhams questions on Aristotles Physics belong to this period in his career, as do those of Hugolino of Orvieto; cf. W. Eckermann, Der Physikkommentar Hugolins von Orvieto OESA (Berlin, 1972). There are other instances of fourteenth-century authors, for example Walter Chatton, incorporating into their Sentences commentaries questions derived from disputations; cf. S.F. Brown, Walter Chattons Lectura and William of Ockhams Quaestiones In Libros Physicorum Aristotelis, in Essays Honoring Allan B. Wolter, ed. W.A. Frank and G.J. Etzkorn (St. Bonaventure, 1985), 81115, at 93.
38
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ium. In fact, at one point in the additiones (Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 54vb), those questions are described as a separate work: sicut dictum fuit superius, quaestione 1 et quaestione 3 istius operis in principio, presumably to distinguish it from his opus ordinarium. It should also be noted that the rst group of additional questions (fols. 17v34v) has many internal references to itself as being in dierent parts of one sextern. But at the time the additional questions were being edited, the opus ordinarium was also undergoing revision, not all of which found its way into the Vatican manuscript. Twice Massa referred to his questions on angels (in the future tense!) that were to have been part of the opus ordinarium. The questions that concentrate on issues in physics, primarily questions on motion and time, all belong to the additiones and were written after the sentential questions on book II. It is in these questions that we nd the references to the Occamistae and to Ockhamist physics. The inclusion or fusion of these questions within the body of Massas In secundum sententiarum, which seems to have been an incomplete process at the time of his death and was left, as Trapp suggested, to a later scribe or editor, makes it likely that these later questions belong to the last years of Massas life. Dating both the editorial process as well as Massas questions in additionibus to the 1330s helps explain why, apart from the undatable reference to Massa by James of Pamiers, Massas In primum sententiarum is not cited by other authors until Gregory of Rimini did so in 1342, and why Massas In secundum sententiarum, in a state of revision at the time of his death, was never cited by anyone. It also explains why the content of Massas In secundum sententiarum, especially the sections entitled by Massa himself as the additiones, reect controversies that, according to all other evidence, became a concern at Paris in the mid-to-late 1330s. Michael de Massa may still be the earliest evidence of those concerns, but that evidence appears to be much closer to the events of 13391341 than previously thought.
chapter fourteen
CONRAD OF MEGENBERG: THE PARISIAN YEARS*
Conrad of Megenberg was one of the most important and productive German scholars in the generation before Henry of Langenstein, Henry Totting of Oyta, and Marsilius of Inghen, and like the latter three secular masters, he received much of his higher education at Paris. Yet since almost all of Conrads writings postdate his departure from Paris in 1342, much that has been written about him concerns his post-Parisian career at Vienna and Regensburg. The following study attempts to present a more detailed picture of the Parisian phase of Conrads career. When, in his konomica, Conrad described the ideal course of study, he looked back to Paris as the model university, the setting of true learning.1 Yet, at the same time his examples of false teaching, particularly in the area of the seven liberal arts, were also derived in large measure from his experiences in Paris.2 It would not be an exaggeration, therefore, to say that Paris had a fundamental shaping eect not only on Conrads educational formation but on his philosophical views as well. The details of Conrads academic career are largely derived from an autobiographical passage in his konomica in which he refers to his early studies and teaching at Erfurt, followed by his years at Paris.3 As traditionally interpreted, Conrad went to Erfurt at the age of seven in
Originally published in Vivarium, 35 (1997), 102124. Conrad of Megenberg, konomica, III, tr. 1, c. 20, ed. Sabina Krger, MGH, Staatsschriften des spteren Mittelalters, III, 5 (Stuttgart, 1984), III, pp. 196199. 2 Megenberg, Planctus ecclesiae, ed. R. Scholz, MGH, Staatsschriften des spteren Mittelalters, II, 1 (Leipzig, 1941), p. 32; konomica III, tr. 1, ch. 12. 3 Megenberg, konomica, III, tr. 1, c. 21; III, pp. 200201: Cumque minoris etatis extra limina paterna me exulare fecerat teneritas, in Erfordiam me transtuleram et subito me ad se sociaverat pietas sociorum. Quibus prope septennis cellariis prefui repeticionibus, quousque fama clarescente ad cathedram publice lecture me sustulit eiusdem studii magistratus, quam, ut noscit fama lativola, scolasticis actibus quasi annuus venerabiliter excolui. Et mox Parisius me receperam, ubi divini atque sanctissimi viri beati Bernhardi ordinis fratres felicissimi providerant michi de necessariis atque in lectorem philosophie me susceperant, quousque supradicto receperam processu lauream doctoratus et octennuus sedis gubernator dilectus universitatis lius honorabar.
* 1
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1316, moved to Paris in or before 1334, and left Paris for Vienna in 1342.4 By the time she edited the third book of the konomica, Krger suspected that septennis, like annuus and octenuus used later in the passage cited above in note 3, might refer to a period of time, in this case to Conrads years as repetitor at Erfurt rather than his age when he arrived there.5 Similarly, octenuus refers to his years as regent master in the arts faculty at Paris, not the entire period of residency. A closer reading of that passage suggests two distinct phases in his Paris residency: several years at the beginning in which he was lector at the Cistercian convent while studying in the arts faculty, followed by eight years as regent master. Since we know he left Paris in 1342, we can place his regency from 1334 to 1342, his determination, licensing, and inception in arts probably in 1334, and his years as a student in the arts faculty c. 13301334, or slightly longer.
Lector at the Collge St. Bernard Conrads Parisian period began with his appointment as lector in philosophy at the Cistercian house of studies, the Collge St. Bernard.6 How he came by this appointment, mentioned only autobiographically in his konomica, is unclear. It may have been arranged through contacts in Germany before leaving Erfurt, or he may have approached the Cistercians in Paris after he arrived there to help nance his studies in the arts faculty. According to his own description, it entailed room and board (and perhaps some additional remuneration) in return for
4 J. Trithemius, De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis in Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica, ed. J.A. Fabricius (Hamburg, 1718), p. 157; Helmut Ibach, Leben und Schriften des Konrad von Megenberg (Wrzburg, 1938), pp. 12; S. Krger, introduction to Megenberg, konomica, I (Stuttgart, 1973), pp. 1, 1314. The year of his birth (and thus his age when he went to Erfurt) is based on the explicit to his Planctus, p. 94, and Ibach, Leben, p. 1: anno Domini 1337 anno vero nativitatis sue 28. Ibach, following Trithemius, placed Conrads move to Paris in 1334, but Kaeppeli and Krger realized Conrads reference to a eight-year period (octenuus) refers to his time as regent master of arts, not to his entire residence in Paris. 5 Megenberg, konomica III, p. 200, n. 995. In fact, seven years is young to have the degree of maturity and freedom suggested by his description of his move to Erfurt: me transtuleram. 6 Conrad of Megenberg, konomica, III, tr. 1, c. 21, p. 201. Cited also in T. Kaeppeli, LOeconomica de Conrad de Megenberg retrouve, II: Le texte entier du ms. 7-7-32 de la Bibliothque Colombine de Sville, Revue dhistoire ecclsiastique, 45 (1950), 569616, at 591, n. 2.
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instruction.7 It also located him at the foot of Mont-Ste-Genevive, not far from the Rue du Fouarre. But an appointment of this kind at this late a date in the development of university instructional programs for religious orders was unusual and needs to be put in context. It is well known that religious orders, both mendicant and monastic, sought university training only in the higher disciplines and refused to allow their students to take degrees in university arts faculties. On the other hand, training equivalent to the arts degree was necessary for successful study in theology, and in place of requiring all theological candidates to have previously reigned in arts, universities did require that the content and methods of that education be acquired before proceeding in theology, and that a certain number of years of study in arts outside an arts faculty at a university be completed. If religious orders rejected university arts training and degrees, they had to develop their own internal system of philosophical instruction, which in turn required resources and personnel within the religious orders.8 When a religious community sought to improve the quality, breadth, or academic standing of their instructional program by relying on teachers from outside their order, it was usually because they did not yet have among their members those with adequate qualications to do such teaching. This was the reason why the Franciscans at Oxford, not long after their foundation, invited Robert Grosseteste to be lector for Greyfriars.9 This was also the reason why the Benedictines at Christ Church, Canterbury, employed Franciscan lecturers to provide adequate pre-university instruction.10 But at the time Megenberg was appointed, the Cistercian house of studies at Paris had been in existence for almost a century, and its principal lector occupied a chair as
7 konomica III, 1, 21, p. 201: ubi divini atque sanctissimi viri beati Bernhardi ordinis fratres felicissimi providerant michi de necessariis atque in lectorem philosophie me susceperant. 8 As these requirements in grammar, logic, and natural philosophy applied to the Cistercians, see Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, ed. J.M. Canivez, vol. III (Louvain, 1935), pp. 430434 (for 1335) and 467 (for 1341). 9 R.W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste (Oxford, 1986), pp. 7475; M.W. Sheehan, The Religious Orders 12201370, in J.I. Catto (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, vol. I: The Early Oxford Schools (Oxford, 1984), p. 197. 10 W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1987), pp. 67, 90. At one time the Cistercians also sought such help from the Franciscans, which the order blocked; see Krgers note in konomica III, p. 201, n. 997, who cites the article of G. Mller in Cistercienser-Chronik, 19 (1907), 54.
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regent master in the faculty of theology. It seems strange, therefore, that they would employ an outsider, especially a secular scholar, to provide training in logic and natural philosophy. Part of the answer lies in the dierence between the educational systems of the monastic orders in the fourteenth century and those of the mendicant orders. By the middle of the thirteenth century the mendicant orders had a primary commitment to education which, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, developed into a diversied and tiered structure in which philosophical training and some of the theological training was provided in convents and studia at the provincial level before students were sent to university convents.11 It does not appear that the monastic orders, which became interested in the benets of university training and established houses of studies at Paris by the middle of the thirteenth century, ever created a formal system of pre-university instruction in local monasteries. The kind of instruction that led to university degrees in theology and canon law was of a technical, scholastic nature that diered in content, form, and purpose from the lectio divina that lay at the heart of monastic letters and learning. And while mendicant convents were sub-units within an order that could move members around according to the needs of the order, individual monasteries remained independent units in which monastic obedience and stabilitas were to ones own monastery and abbot, not to a higher level of aliated organization. In order to preserve the mission and tranquility of the monastic life, it may well have proved more advisable to send those selected for university degrees to a university house of studies for their philosophical training as well as their studies in the higher faculties. As a result, one would have in monastic houses of study a proportionately larger group of younger students pursuing their training in arts than one would ever nd in a university mendicant convent. It is understandable, therefore, that substantial numbers of Cistercian students at the Collge St. Bernard, needing to remain cloistered and yet needing to acquire a high level of philosophical training, may have led to hiring the occasional outsider to provide such training in the lecture halls of the convent. The need in the period after 1321 may have been particularly acute inasmuch as the order took over ownership of the house of studies from Clairvaux and pressured Cistercian
11
Courtenay, Schools and Scholars, ch. 2.
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monasteries, under threat of visitation and nancial penalties, to send more students to Paris.12 The internal resources in teaching personnel that existed before 1321 may not have been able to accommodate the inux of young pupils in the following decade. In any event, knowledge of Conrads appointment in this capacity at St. Bernard is as important for what it tells us about the Cistercian educational system at this time as for what it tells us about Conrad himself. What did Conrad bring to the Collge St. Bernard and what inuence might it have had on him? Conrad had already taught while studying in Erfurt, and presumably brought those skills and subject areas to his lectorship at St. Bernard. The core of his teaching would have been logic and natural philosophy, probably with some training in grammar, if necessary. Had Conrad not had this appointment at St. Bernard, the normal source of nancial support at his level, if needed, would have been as a grammar teacher to secular students. And in addition to what he knew when he rst came to Paris, he could introduce into St. Bernard whatever he thought useful that he picked up in his own training in the arts faculty. In the other direction, namely the colleges inuence on Conrad, it may have encouraged a conservative theological outlook. Conrad would undoubtedly have come into contact with Jean de Bruxelles, a longtime Cistercian student in Paris, who attained his doctorate in theology in 1333.13 Moreover, Conrad would probably have had access to the convent library, which was substantial by the early fourteenth centuryan advantage for a student in the arts faculty that was usually available only to those who were connected with a college, and no secular college apart from the Sorbonne or Navarre had a library to rival that of St. Bernard or the mendicant convents.14 Assuming that Conrads teaching at St. Bernard coincided with his studies in the arts faculty before determination and licensing, when would this have been? Conrad does not appear in the university computus of 1329, but since that document is incomplete, its silence in this matter cannot be used to place Conrads arrival after the academic year 13291330.15 In fact, one section of the Latin Quarter that
This suggestion was put forward by Krger, konomica III, 1, 21, p. 201, n. 997. E. Kwanten, Le Collge Saint-Bernard Paris, Revue dhistoire ecclsiastique, 43 (1948), 469. 14 A. Vernet and J.-F. Genest (eds.), La bibliothque de labbaye de Clairvaux du XIIe au XVIIIe sicle (Paris, 1979). 15 This document, printed in CUP II, pp. 661671, and dated by its editors to
12 13
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is not well covered in the computus is the area around the Collge St. Bernard, which itself was exempt from university taxation, although Conrad would not have qualied for that exemption.16 Nor does Conrads name appear in the records of the English-German nation that survive for 1333, but again, that only means he had not yet become a master of arts, which we know from his own remarks, and did not determine or receive the license in that year. Students in arts below the level of determination were never mentioned in the proctors register. In light of Conrads position when, in 1337, he does begin to appear in the records of that nation, we would not be far wrong in placing his early studies in arts at Paris (and thus the period in which he was also for a time lector in philosophy at St. Bernard) in the 13281334 period (or 13301334 if his Erfurt preparation was taken into account), at an age somewhat older than many of his fellow students. If Conrad moved out of the Collge St. Bernard when he became regent master in arts, his departure ironically would coincide approximately with the completion of philosophical studies and the beginning of theological studies of a young and later controversial Cistercian monk, Jean de Mirecourt.
Master of Arts If Conrad accurately reported the length of time he reigned in arts at Paris, he incepted in the arts faculty early in the academic year 1334 1335.17 Unfortunately, the quires of the proctors register for the EnglishGerman nation from June 1333 to August 1337 are lost, and when that record resumes at the end of August, during the proctorship of Ulrich of Augsburg, Conrad ranks among the senior regents in the nation.18 He had been the promoting master of Suno of Sweden when the latter was licensed, probably in the spring of 1337.19 He was apparently at that
between 13291336, can now be dated to the academic year 13291330 and has been reedited in Courtenay, Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 218246. 16 It should be noted in addition that almost no one below the level of bachelor of arts is mentioned by name in this computus. 17 Financial resources and academic progress permitting, the normal pattern at this time was to determine during Lent, be licensed between April and June, and incept in September at the beginning of the academic year. 18 AUP I, col. 18. 19 AUP I, col. 19, for late September. 1337: Item dominus Suno de Swecia incepit
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time the receptor for the funds allocated for the candles at Notre Dame.20 We also know of two other activities in which he had been engaged in the preceding months. One of these was the writing of his Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam, which he completed some four months later on Jan. 1, 1338.21 The other was his deep involvement in a dispute with the French nation and with a master Christianus. Conrads behavior in that dispute had already resulted in the suspension of his university privileges, and he had petitioned the nation to help nance a letter of appeal to Avignon.22 The initial cause of dissension between the French nation and the other three nations is not known, but it is evident that Conrads vigor in defending the position of the English nation against the French led the rector, Johannes de Vimarcio, to suspend his privileges and powers as master, probably sometime during the summer of 1337 or in the previous academic year. Conrads writings reveal him as a person of strong opinions, and the records of his nation reect an aggressive personality not inclined toward compromise. His actions at times created problems for himself and his nation, which probably made some of his colleagues uncomfortable.23 But his willingness to defend aggressively his own convictions had its uses, and with the backing of master Ulrich, Conrad
sub magistro Philippo Scoto; [sub] magistro Chunrado de Monte Puellarum, sub quo fuit licenciatus, incipere non potuit, quia privatus fuerat. 20 AUP I, col. 18: utrum placeret per modum expedientis quod quedam pecunia, qua tenebatur magister Chunradus nacioni, daretur ex parte nacionis que quidem pecunia erat deputata pro luminaribus Beate Virginis. But in mid October 1337, it appears that John Rathe was handling accounts on behalf of the nation; AUP I, col. 21: ad audiendum compotum magistri Johannis Scoti de Rathey de expensis factis ad curiam. 21 Planctus, p. 94: Explicit planctus ecclesie in Germaniam editus a Conrado de Megenberg, quod Parysius dicitur de Monte puellarum, anno Domini M.CCC.37 in die circumcisionis Domini, anno vero nativitatis sue 28. In dating this reference to Jan. 1, 1338, it is assumed that Conrad was following Parisian practice (in more Gallicano), which began the calendar year with the following Easter, rather than the German and papal practice, which began the year on Jan. 1. In the proctors register for the EnglishGerman nation, the entry for Mar. 11, 1339 reads (AUP I, col. 27): Anno Domini 1338 more Gallicano, et secundum alios 1339. Nota quod plures Alemanii incipiunt annum in Circumcisione Domini, licet Galici in festo Pascatis. In the same text the entry for Jan. 14, 1340 in AUP I, col. 36 reads: Item pertransito illo mense in anno Domini 1340 secundum curiam Romanam, die scilicet 19 kalendas Februarii. 22 AUP I, cols. 1820. 23 Conrads illegal presence at the election of the rector in October 1337 (AUP I, cols. 1921) found support among some colleagues while others preferred to remain neutral. No one in the nation appears ready to have challenged Conrad directly.
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was often chosen to represent the position of the nation in external negotiations. The particular episode that led to Conrads suspension involved a conict with a master Christianus. In the context of the dispute, one would assume he belonged to the French nation and may even have been the proctor of that nation at the time of the dispute.24 The Christianus in question is certainly not Christianus de Elst, since Elst, who belonged to the English-German nation, was not active in the aairs of the nation at this time, and the Christianus in question who attended the meeting to elect a new rector on Oct. 10, 1337, was not listed among the masters of the English-German nation attending that meeting. Nor would it make sense for the three nations, including the English nation, in a dispute with the French nation, to have aligned themselves against a master from the English nation. For similar reasons we can also exclude Christianus Guys or Ghis of St. Omer, who was undoubtedly a regent master in arts in 1337, but who would have belonged to the Picard nation.25 Conrad made his presence felt at the October meeting of the faculty of arts at St. Julian-le-Pauvre, called to elect a new rector, which master Christianus also attended. The outgoing rector, Johannes de Vimarcio, under whose authority Conrad had been suspended, would not begin the meeting, i.e., place in deliberation the matter of choosing electors, because Conrad was present, despite the fact that he was totally deprived of university privileges.26 After some delay, Conrad left the meeting long enough for deliberations to begin and for electors to be chosen by the French, Norman, and Picard nations. But before the English nation chose its elector, Conrad returned and sat with his
24 The critical apparatus in the edition of the proctors register for the EnglishGerman nation is not helpful on this point. He is identied in a footnote (AUP I, col. 20, n. 11) as Christianus Bonifacii, but that is almost certainly a duplication of the footnote for master Grimerius Bonifacii (AUP I, col. 20, n. 8), who was at the time proctor or receptor for the Norman nation. The compiler of the index, on the other hand, assumed him to be Christianus de Elst, a German master who incepted in the English nation probably in the second half of 1333 and appears active in the aairs of that nation from 1344 on, but not in the period from 1337 to 1344 (AUP I, cols. 14, 18, 70). 25 Christian Guys had completed reading the Sentences when his name was placed on a rotulus in 1349 (CUP II, p. 654). He was regent master of theology in 1353, but when granted a canonry in his home diocese of Throuanne in 1342, he was described as magister in artibus, qui multo tempore Parisius regens in artibus fuit (CUP II, p. 655, n. 16). 26 AUP I, col. 20: ab Unversitate fuit totaliter privatus.
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nation, which produced considerable confusion and delayed the choosing of an elector for the English nation which, when done, was rejected by the rector because of the participation of Conrad. Conrads lack of academic status in the arts faculty and university (a tota Universitate fuit perpetuo privatus propter malecium suum) did not prevent his participation in the business of his nation. At its meeting on October 21 Conrad, because of his reputation for hard dealing on behalf of the nation (quia rigorosum erat, cum factum fuerit nacionis), was chosen to represent the nation in the appeal to Avignon by the Picard, Norman, and English nations against the French nation. Conrads mission to Avignon on behalf of his nation (and himself) began in late October and apparently continued into January. While he was there, matters in Paris came to a head. In late November the French nation denounced the other three nations and separated from them, carrying the dispute to a higher level but also precipitating the application of resolution procedures laid down in the agreement worked out by the papal legate, Simon de Brie, in 1266.27 The English nation consulted its own copy of the agreement on the resolution of disputes, which called for the appointment of seven judges: three senior regents in the faculty of theology and four regents in the faculty of canon law. Initially a settlement was proposed that all actions taken since the election of the rector be revoked, including the privation of Johannes de Vimarcio that the three nations had imposed. The English nation, at least, refused to accept this solution and preferred to let matters take their course. In late December or early January matters were worked out by the judges, peace was restored, and the suspensions of Conrad and Johannes de Vimarcio were lifted propter bonum pacis et ex communi sensu ambarum partium. While in Avignon, Conrad was active on his own behalf as well as the aairs of his nation. In addition to presenting the appellatio, he sought a patron within the curia and dedicated his Planctus to the papal chaplain, Johannes de Piscibus, in the hopes of obtaining a benece. The attempt was unsuccessful, and Conrad eventually returned to Paris disappointed and bitter.28
AUP I, col. 23; CUP I, pp. 449458, #409. Planctus, p. 69: tibi nil datur Avignonis; p. 92: Cap. 30, in quo scriptor ostendit benecium sibi collatum inutile esse propter plures precedentes ipsum. Ibid.: Parysius redeam, numquam plus talia queram. Whether he returned directly to Paris or only after his sojourn in Germany in 1338 and 1339 is unclear, since his name does not
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The resolution of the dispute restored Conrads standing in the university and his ability to earn income through teaching and the promotion of candidates, but it did not satisfy his nancial need or his career ambitions. Probably in the summer of 1338 he returned to Germany to raise money by selling family land.29 He also continued his quest for a powerful patron by dedicating a revised edition of his Planctus to Arnold de Verdala, another papal chaplain who at the time was papal legate to the court of Louis of Bavaria.30 How long Conrad remained away from Paris is unclear. His name does not reappear in the proctors register of the English-German nation at Paris until December 1339,31 but inasmuch as few names of regent masters appear in that record in the previous three months, there is no reason to assume he did not resume teaching in October 1339 and may thus have been present at the September meeting of the arts faculty that proscribed the use of Ockhams writings.32 Conrads absence had not diminished his standing among his colleagues. He was elected proctor of the nation for three successive terms in 1340, from February into May.33 After a one-month term in which Ulrich served, Conrad was re-elected at the end of June and served until Ulrich was elected at the end of August.34 Conrad again served a one-month term from December 1340 into January 1341.35 He also served as receptor for the nation in 1340, completing his term of oce in October of that year,36 and as one of the examiners for the Lenten examinations that year at Ste. Genevive.37
reappear among the records of the nation until December 1339, but the section of the proctors register from December 1337 until December 1338 is lost. 29 Ibach, Leben, p. 118; Krger, konomica I, p. xv. [Conrad was spared from selling property through receiving a loan or gift from a friend. For details see Courtenay, Conrad of Megenberg as Nuntius and his Quest for Beneces, in Konrad von Megenberg (13091374) und sein Werk. Das Wissen der Zeit, ed. C. Mrtl, G. Drossbach, and M. Kintzinger, Zeitschrift fr Bayerische Landesgeschichte, Beiheft 31, Reihe B (Munich, 2006), pp. 723.] 30 See second dedication in Planctus, pp. 1718. Arnold de Verdala was then dean of Fenoillet and in March 1339 was made bishop of Maguelonne, near Montpellier. 31 AUP I, col. 36. 32 CUP II, pp. 485486, #1023; AUP I, col. 35. 33 AUP I, cols. 3738. 34 AUP I, cols. 3941. 35 AUP I, col. 44. 36 AUP I, cols. 3940, 42. 37 AUP I, cols. 3637.
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When Conrad returned to Paris for the 13391340 academic year, he found a university preoccupied with a crisis with the papacy that had begun in the winter of 1339 as a property dispute between some citizens of Valence and two arts students in the Norman nation.38 By the summer of 1339 the aair had grown into a dispute between the papacy and the university in which Benedict threatened to suspend the universitys privileges and rejected the rotuli of benece requests that the university nuncii had brought to Avignon. None of the actions taken by the arts faculty in the fall of 1339 appeased Benedict XII, who suspended university privileges in February 1340. Privileges were not restored until July 1341. Since Conrad did not yet have a benece in 1339, those events may only have had an indirect eect on him. But they may have provided an opportunity for the arts faculty to take a harder line against the teaching of an important papal opponent, William of Ockham. And assuming the anti-Ockhamist attitudes of Conrad were already present in 1339, he may have played a central role in urging his nation and the arts faculty to take action against Ockhams teaching and that of the Ockhamists. What we do see of Conrads actions in the proctors register for 13391340 is more academic than political, which is to be expected. Several students determined under him in the spring of 1340, specically Suno Karoli of Sweden (to be distinguished from the Suno of Sweden who incepted in 1337), Nicholas Gossek of Poland, and Thomas de Caliga Rubea of Trier. Suno was licensed under Conrad in May or June of that year, and incepted under Conrad in early September. But Conrad was equally concerned about obtaining a position with better remuneration. In November of 1340 the nation supported his appeal to the Duke of Austria and the city of Vienna.39 He was appointed nuntius to convey the arts facultys rotulus of petitions to Avignon in February 1341.40 When he left on that mission is unclear. In March
38 CUP II, pp. 476477, 482483, 487488, 488489, 497498, 498499, 521522; AUP I, cols. 26, 2832. See the discussion of the aair in W.J. Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation at Paris, 13391341, History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396, at 7779 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 9, pp. 204206]. 39 AUP I, col. 43. He also purchased a royal privilege for the sizable sum of 35 solidi; AUP I, col. 45. 40 AUP I, cols. 45, 46.
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1341 two students determined under him: Johannes Arneri of Sweden and Burchard of Constance,41 and another student, John of Wittenberg, was licensed under Conrad in the same month.42 The AprilMay period would appear to be the most likely time for a diplomatic trip to Avignon. In June 1341, when Burchard of Constance was licensed under him, Conrad must have been back in Paris.43 He was certainly in Paris for the September 1341 meeting concerning the Ockhamist sect.44 In February 1342 he made preparations to leave Paris. The classroom allocated to him, namely the scola ad septem artes super terram, was accorded to his former pupil, master Suno Karoli of Sweden.45 Conrad remained until the end of the month in order to oversee the determinations of several students: Eghno, John Swavus, Bertold Swavus, Henry of Constance, John of Trier, and Ulrich of Saxony.46 By March 16, 1342 Conrad was already in Germany.47 The sources for Conrads years at Paris thus provide considerable information on his political and administrative activities as regent master in arts. But what of his teaching? No commentaries attributable to Conrad on the texts of the arts curriculum have been identied, except for his Quaestiones on John of Sacroboscos De sphaera, which was written at Vienna and completed there in 1347.48 A short but important treatise critiquing Walter Burleys views on contrary forms has survived and dates to the end of his regency at Paris, or shortly thereafter.49 But
AUP I, col. 46. AUP I, col. 47. 43 AUP I, cols. 50, 52. 44 AUP I, cols. 5253. 45 AUP I, col. 54. 46 AUP I, cols. 5455. 47 Ibach, Leben, p. 4. 48 Mnchen, Bayr. Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14687, fols. 71ra95vb. The work is dated by its explicit as well as the fact that Conrad, on fol. 90va, cites Heinrich von Nrnbergs commentary on the De Sphaera. See Ibach, Leben, pp. 6566; Krger, konomica I, pp. xixxx. De Sphaera was a text in the Paris arts curriculum, and it is conceivable that Conrads work was begun in that setting. It should also be noted that the same manuscript, fols. 1r57v, contains a commentary on De Sphaera that may be by Megenberg. 49 Vienna, Dominikanerkloster, ms 401/130, fols. 83rb91va. The date and probable location of the treatise is suggested by his already having lectured on the Sentences (fol. 83rb: In prima questione quarti sententiarum dixi. ) and by the explicit (fol. 91va): Explicit tractatus magistri Chonradi de monte puellarum, rectoris universitatis parisiensis, quo probat oppositum contra Wurley in illa conclusione quod forme contrarie sint eiusdem speciei specialissime. Citation taken from Kaeppeli, LOeconomica de Conrad de Megenberg retrouve, 595.
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occasional references in that treatise and later works suggest that he wrote questions or groups of questions in natural philosophy while at Paris, specically on problems in physics. In his treatise against Burley he cited his treatise on rarifaction and condensation, while in his Quaestiones de sphaera he referred his readers to his quaestiones in physics, and in his konomica to his Disputationes in naturalibus speculationibus.50 These may, in fact, all refer to the same work or sections of it, which probably originated as disputed questions. Whether any of this material has survived or is recoverable will be considered toward the end of the next section.
Student in Theology Before turning to Conrads role in the crisis over Ockhamism at Paris, it is important to determine whether there was a third stage in his academic career, namely, as a student and bachelor of theology, that coincided with all or part of his regency in arts, and if so, how far he progressed in that faculty. In the standard biographical account of Conrads academic career, it is reported that he read the Sentences before leaving Paris in 1342.51 According to that information, Conrad did not attain the doctorate in theology, but he would have been baccalarius formatus in sacra pagina and would in the period from 1334 to 1342, given the length of the theological program, have been a student in the theological faculty as well as regent master in arts. The implications of this are considerable. He would have been attending lectures in the theological faculty when Pastor de Serrescuderio, Peter
Tractatus contra Burley, Vienna, Dominikanerkloster, Ms. 401/130, fol. 91va, cited from Krger, konomica I, pp. xviiixix: Quapropter dico, quod motus est per se ad quantitatem in augmentacione in quantum mutacio, sicut credo me demonstrasse in tractatu meo de raricatione et condensacione, ubi multum clare et diuse locutus sum de motu ad quantitatem. Quaestiones in Ioannis de Sacrobosco sphaeram, Clm 14687, fol. 74ra, cited from Krger, Krise der Zeit als Ursache der Pest? Der Traktat der mortalitate in Alamannia des Konrad von Megenberg, in Festschrift fr Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. II (Gottingen, 1972), p. 849, n. 55: sed ego non sum istius opinionis, et habet de hoc videri alibi, scilicet in questionibus physicis. konomica I, tr. 2, c. 6, p. 76: Unde quedam colerice iuvencule minutos musculos habentes et torride corpore non concipiunt, quousque pungens calor sopitur in ipsis et cum incipiunt aliqualiter incarnari. Quorum omnium disputaciones in naturalibus speculacionibus reliqui. 51 Ibach, Leben, pp. 4243, esp. n. 148; T. Kaeppeli, LOeconomica de Conrad de Megenberg retrouve, 593594; S. Krger, Einleitung, in Konrad von Megenberg, konomica I, p. xvi.
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of Aquila, Bernard of Arezzo, Nicholas of Autrecourt, and Thomas of Strasbourg read the Sentences. More importantly, his viewpoint in the crisis over Ockhamism would have been shaped by theological as well as philosophical considerations. And his having come close to attaining the Parisian doctorate and having to abandon his studies for nancial reasons might well have had an embittering eect on his psychology. The evidence behind the theological career of Conrad is not extensive, but it is persuasive. For many years it rested solely on the remark of Trithemius that Conrad while at Paris wrote on the four books of the Sentences, the three books of his konomica, and drafted his Monasticon.52 Ibach rejected the placement of the last two items, since they were written in Vienna and Regensburg, not Paris, but he accepted the accuracy of the information on the Sentences commentary.53 A better witness, however, came to light several decades ago. In Conrads Tractatus contra Burley, identied and discussed by Kaeppeli in 1950, Conrad specically refers to his rst question on the fourth book of the Sentences. This means that Conrads questions on the Sentences predate his treatise against Burley and were written before he left Paris in the spring of 1342. When did Conrad write his commentary on the Sentences? In view of the length of the Paris theological program, Conrad must have begun his studies in theology at least a year before his regency in arts in order to have been eligible to lecture on the Bible in 1340, and on the Sentences in 1342.54 This would place Conrads lectures on the Sentences and, along
52 J. Trithemius, Annales Hirsaugienses (S. Gallen, 1690), II, p. 187: Conradus qui scripsit apud Parisios docens super sententias, libb. IV, opus Oeconomicon libb. III, Ad Ducem Austriae aliud, quod praenotavit Monasticon lib. I et alia quae non vidi. 53 Similarly inaccurate is Trithemius, De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, p. 157: se deinde ad universitatem Parisiensem contulit, ubi philosophiam et sacras literas publice per octennium scholaribus lectitans, doctoratus infulam consequutus est. There is no evidence that Conrad attained the doctorate, and to pursue degrees in arts and theology up to the level of master in the rst and a formed bachelor in the second in an eight-year period is impossible. Perhaps Trithemius inferred studies in sacra littera from Conrads reference in konomica III, 1, 21, to the doctorate. But Conrad considered doctoratus an appropriate label for the arts magisterium. He used it to describe what he attained when he incepted in arts (receperam processu lauream doctoratus et octennuus sedis gubernator dilectus universitatis lius honorabar), and it is the way he describes the obligation of the arts bachelor to dispute in the schools of various arts masters; konomica III, 1, 4, p. 27: qui arguendo et respondendo scolas doctorum perambulat; nondum tamen lauream accepit milicie doctoralis, sed nichilominus vicinus est ad magisterii gradum. 54 CUP II, p. 692, #1188. This legislation dates to the second quarter of the fourteenth century and species seven years of theological study for seculars before pro-
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with it, his Tractatus contra Burley, at the very end of his time in Paris. The peculiar thing is that Conrad never refers to himself as a bachelor in theology, and that title is never accorded to him when he is mentioned in papal documents, as was customary.55 The answer to this puzzle may lie in the procedures that governed the composition of Sentences commentaries by the second quarter of the fourteenth century. It had become customary for bachelors to compose a draft or working copy of their sentential questions during the year before the candidate orally delivered them as a bachelor of theology. This year, known as annus expectationis, followed his year as biblical cursor and preceded his year as sententiarius.56 Thus the oral lectures (lectura lecta) as sententiarius was the second stage in the writing process, which was followed by one or more stages of editing (lectura annotata) before a denitive text (lectura recollecta, lectura edita, or ordinatio) for publication was achieved. If nancial need or other circumstances interrupted the normal sequence, it would be possible for a draft text to have been realized without ones actually having completed or even having begun the ocial, pro forma, lectures on the Sentences. Whether this happened in Conrads case we do not know. We do know that he wrote questions on the Sentences but was never accorded the title of bachelor of theology. We also know that his preparation for biblical and sentential lectures would have coincided with his last two years in Paris and with the crisis over Ockhams thought. If, as will be argued below, Conrad played a central part in the campaign against
ceeding to lectures on the Bible and the Sentences. Those in religious orders by the 1330s were only required to have studied six years initiallya reduction ocially granted to the seculars in 1366 but which may already have been practiced by 1340. 55 For example, in May 1341 he was referred to as magister artium (Benoit XII, Lettres communes, ed. J.M. Vidal, vol. II (Paris, 1905), 304), and had he read the Sentences in or before the academic year 13401341, his title would have been baccalaurius theologiae or some equivalent. When, in a letter of 19 April 1363, Urban V mentioned Conrad in connection with a disputed appointment to the position of cathedral prior in Regensburg, Conrad was described only as a canon of Regensburg, a master in arts, and a priest; cf. Urban V, Lettres communes, ed. M.-H. Laurent, M. and A.-M. Hayez, et al., vol.II (Paris, 19641972), p. 247, #6680. See also Urban V, Lettres communes, IX (Rome, 1983), p. 444, #27363. 56 For a description of the annus expectationis, see Z. Kaluza, Nicolas dAutrecourt. Ami de la vrit, in HLF, 42 (1995), pp. 5456. During the year of expectation disputations could be held in arts as well as in theology. [The hypothesis of a year of expectation between cursor and sententiarius has been questioned; see Courtenay, The Course of Studies in the Faculty of Theology at Paris in the Fourteenth Century, in Ad Ingenii Acuitionem Studies in Honour of Alfonso Maier, ed. S. Caroti, R. Imbach, Z. Kaluza, G. Stabile, and L. Sturlese (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2006), 6792.]
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Ockhamism, the references in the 1340 statute concerning the implications of those errors for the interpretation of scripture or propositions about God may reect the theological sensitivity of someone engaged in precisely those tasks. We also know that Conrad remained actively teaching in the arts faculty until he left Paris for good in March 1342.57 His retention of his classroom in the Rue du Fouarre and his Tractatus contra Burley witness to his continuing commitment to philosophy.58 While no Sentences commentary has yet been identied for Conrad, it should be noted that the style and content of questions added to Michael de Massas commentary on book II of the Sentences found in Vat. lat. 1087 anticipate in a remarkable way the viewpoint and language of Conrad.59 The manuscript was in the possession of Thomas Parentucelli de Sarzana (later Pope Nicholas V) in the early fteenth century, through whom it came into the Vatican library. The work was copied from an exemplar that blended, according to the plan of the author or editor, a text on the early distinctions of Book II, identied as his opus ordinarium, with questions on topics in physics identied as additiones or as quaestiones extraordinariae.60 The numerous crossreferences among the additional questions, and between those and the
Ibach, Leben, p. 4. AUP I, col. 54. Nicholas of Autrecourt is another example of a secular master who continued to teach in the arts faculty while completing his degree in theology. 59 For a discussion of that text, see D. Trapp, Notes on some Manuscripts of the Augustinian Michael de Massa (d. 1337), Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 58133; W.J. Courtenay, The Quaestiones in Sententias of Michael de Massa, OESA: A Redating, Augustiniana, 45 (1995), 191207 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 13]. 60 Some questions relating to cosmology are raised in the sections that belong to the authors opus ordinarium; e.g. Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 124rb: Utrum caelum sit compositum ex anima et corpore tamquam ex principiis essentialiter intrinsecis ita quod vere sit animatum formaliter et vivum; ibid., fol. 128ra: Utrum ultima sphaera sit aliquo modo in loco. Some of the questions added later (additiones), which may have derived from another academic context, are directly and almost exclusively concerned with physics; e.g. Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 68va (quaestio extraordinaria): Utrum duratio rei permanentis sit realiter idem quod ipsa res permanens; ibid., fol. 70rb (quaestio extraordinaria): Utrum duratio successiva, quae est ipsum tempus, sit realiter idem quod motus cuius est passio; ibid., fol. 71ra: Utrum motus sit res per se unius tantum praedicamenti; ibid., fol. 74ra: Utrum generaliter loquendo tempus sit realiter idem quod motus, vel sit realitas addita ipsi motui; ibid.: Utrum tempus quod est passio primi motus sit aliqua realitas addita primo motui; ibid. fol. 82ra: Utrum tempus acceptum formaliter sit passio inexistens alicui motui; ibid., fol. 83va: Utrum forma temporis sive ipsummet tempus quantum ad suum formale sit passio inexistens formaliter cuilibet motui; ibid., fol. 85ra: Utrum tempus habeat suum esse completum circumscripto omni opere intellectus nostri; ibid., fol. 89ra: Utrum aliquod instans maneat idem realiter in toto tempore; ten questions de continuo, ibid., fols. 130v169v; sixteen questions de veritate
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questions in the opus ordinarium make it certain that the text, as edited in its present form, is the work of one and the same person. And although the cross-references from the Vatican manuscript to the text of Michael de Massas commentary on Book I of the Sentences are not as numerous nor as convincing, they suggest that both works belong to the same author.61 Moreover, some of the additional questions were not written initially for a Sentences commentary but originated in a dierent academic setting, probably from disputations. They dier in style from the other questions; they are sometimes prefaced by wording used to describe groupings of disputed questions;62 the topics are more narrowly focused; and there are frequent references to an opponent (tu/tibi) instead of the more general aliqui.63 The issues debated in these questions concern problems in physics, especially the ontological status of motion and time. And the opponent or opponents in these questions were adherents of an Ockhamist physics. In some questions the sources of the debate are limited to Aristotle and the Commentator (Averroes) without citing any Patristic or scholastic author, and without any application to a theological issue. In others, such as the questions on quantity, theological issues and scholastic sources are introduced. Assuming these questions were authored by Michael de Massa, the fact that they were incorporated into his Sentences commentary by an editor after Michaels death suggests that they would have been written not long before his death in May 1337. In any event, the additional questions show that a student contemporary with Conrad in the theological faculty was deeply concerned over issues that coincide remarkably with the issues Megenberg claimed to have treated in his questions or disputations on problems in physics. For example, the antiprimi principii et motione voluntatis, ibid., fols, 175205r; and four questions de specie, ibid., fols. 205r221v. 61 One manuscript of the commentary on Book I (Bologna, Bibl. Univ., Ms. 2214) is in the hand of the scribe of Vat. lat. 1087 and was also in the possession of Sarzana. 62 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 68va: Duodecima Undecima quaestio extraordinaria circa materiam creationis fuit ista: Utrum duratio rei permanentis sit realiter idem quod ipsa res permanens. 63 For example, ibid., fol. 70va: per quascumque connotationes et per quascumque guras gramaticales tu conaris salvare quod una res sit quandoque motus et quandoque quies, et ego per easdem salvabo tibi quod eadem res sit quandoque albedo et quandoque nigredo. Si autem dicas quod sic . Preterea, quia tu fugis ad propositiones gramaticales. Ibid., fol. 70vb: Qua ratione tu dicis quod motus localis est idem realiter cum ipso mobili. Et si dicas quod .
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Ockhamist arguments on the ontological status of points and lines to which Conrad refers his readers in his Quaestiones on De sphaera can be found in question 3 (de puncto et linea) of the additional questions on the continuum, Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 136vb140vb. Similarly, the issues and views to which he refers his readers in his Tractatus contra Burley can be found in the question on the generation and corruption of matter in Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 169va175rb. And nally, a more extended discussion of Ockhamist theories on motion discussed briey in konomica III, tr. 1, c. 1 can be found in Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 70rb74ra. While one cannot dismiss categorically the possibility that the scribe who assembled Massas additional questions on book II of the Sentences did not inadvertently include questions from another author found in quires in the possession of Michael, or that Michael himself borrowed sections from questions on natural philosophy by a prominent secular contemporary, or that Vat. lat. 1087 is not itself a reworked Sentences commentary, a lectura secundum alium, in which a later author (Conrad?) redelivered an earlier commentary and added some questions of his own, the weight of evidence points in the direction of Massas authorship. Still, the occasional similarities in style and attitude between Vat. lat. 1087 and Conrads works is remarkable, as can be seen in the last section cited above, where the language and vehemence with which Ockhams position is attacked are evocative of Conrads critique:
Duodecima quaestio extraordinaria circa materiam creationis erat ista: Utrum duratio successiva, quae est ipsum tempus, sit realiter idem quod motus cuius est passio. Et quia de realitate motus est unus error quorundam modernorum qui circa totam Physicam tam quantum ad principia quam etiam quantum ad conclusiones ipsius conati sunt innovare errores antiquorum philosophorum quos Aristoteles frequentissime reprobat, licet per quasdam fugas grammaticales huiusmodi errores sustineant, quae modicum valent, sicut alias apparebit. Ideo statim pro nunc de errore istorum circa realitatem motus expedio me valde breviter, gratia cuius moveo istam quaestionem: Utrum motus sit realiter ipsummet mobile quod movetur. Et videtur quod sic, quid frustra ponitur pluralitas realitatum sine necessitate. Respondeo, sicut dixi, hic est unus errorum quorundam modernorum qui secundum rei veritatem conantur diundere inter vera dicta physicae multa semina falsitatum, et in omnibus tamquam verbosi habent recursum ad verba gramaticalia sophistice utendo eis. Nec forte melior modus esset nisi nauseare super dictis eorum et dicere: Contra verbosos noli contendere verbis, quia secundum veritatem errores ipsorum non sunt cum magna diligentia pertractandi. Et ideo expediamus nos de illo errore quem asserunt circa realitatem motus; dicunt enim quod motus
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non est distinctus a mobili sed est realiter ipsummet mobile. Et quod ita sit probant quia corpus celeste est quoddam mobile a quo non distinguitur realiter suus motus; ergo, pari ratione, dicendum est de omni mobili et de motu quo quandoque movetur. Sed iste error est contra Aristotelem et Commentatorem. Nunc autem loquendo physice et ad rem, et non recurrendo ad subiectum et praedicatum propositionis et ad suppositum et ad appositum propositionis gramaticaliter; sed dico loquendo ad rem: constat quod si motus esset realiter idem quod mobile, ergo realiter motus moveatur, quia realitas quae est motus movetur per te, sed hoc est contra sententiam Aristotelis. Constat quod Commentator accipit ibi subiectum reale, cui vicissim possunt inesse contraria, puta motus et quies, et non accipit ibi subiectum propositionis gramaticaliter; ergo secundum eum motus est quaedam res inexistens mobili sicut suo per se subiecto ex natura rei. Qua ratione mobile est idem realiter cum motu quo movetur per te, pari ratione inest idem realiter cum quiete qua quiescit cessante motu. Sed hoc posito sequitur , et ita redibit error Parmenidis et Mellissi, quem reprobat Aristoteles primo Physicorum.64 Sed constat quod movens non causat mobile nec locum; ergo aliquam realitatem ponam ab utroque distinctam. Alias plus dicetur contra errorem istorum quando tractabo generalem abusionem quam ponunt, videlicet quod in eodem supposito numquam concurrunt nisi duae distinctae realitates, scilicet substantia et qualitas . Sic ergo error istorum tamquam abusio dicatur. Et accedamus ad inquisitionem magis utilem de realitate ipsius motus. Nec oportet philosophum volentem procere, confundere realitates eorum et confugere ad proprietates grammaticales ut habeatur fuga de non explicando realitates eorum et dicultates physicas circa ipsas. Immo quantum possumus investigare, tantum debemus explicare de quidditatibus rerum. Moveamus ergo aliquas quaestiones circa realitatem motus more Aristotelis et Commentatoris et aliorum philosophorum, praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovantium grossitive antiquorum.65
And from a later question:

64 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70rb70va. For an extensive discussion of the views of Parmenides and Mellissus, see Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 131ra. The image of nausea was later applied to the Ockhamist interpretation of point, line, and gure (Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 140rb): disputare cum ipsis est quaedam nausea. Conrad of Megenberg used the same expression in discussing Ockhams understanding of relation, quantity, and motion; konomica III, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 7: Et decientes quidem clerici nausigraphi dici poterint, eo quod nauseam praetendant in scripturis rerum aut naturae distinctae ascriptarum. Dicitur enim nausigraphus a nausea et graphos, quod est scriptura. 65 Ibid., fol. 71ra. Ibid., fol. 84v: Respondeo sine argumentis quod sustineri potest tam secundum intentionem Aristotelis quam etiam Commentatoris quam etiam secundum apparentiam rationis quod sic. Ibid., fol. 143r: magis volo praeponderare in hac parte sententiam Aristotelis et Commentatoris quam suam.
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Sed secundum istos contra quos arguo, tempus et primus motus sunt idem identice, nec dierunt nisi conceptibiliter dixerunt aliqui quod tempus est ipsummet caelum, et in sententiam istorum incidunt Okanistae.66
Massas questions reveal an overriding concern, shared by Conrad, with the scientic and philosophical implications of Ockhams physics on the eve of the statute of 1339 and the arts faculty oath based on it. The statements in the above passage, ad mentem, although not ad linguam Conradi, thus lead us back to a central concern of Conrad in his last three years in Paris: the crisis over the Occamistae and Ockhams physics.
The Crisis over the Occamistae The later years of Conrads tenure as regent master in arts at Paris coincided with a controversy in that faculty over the content and methods of analysis found in the writings of William of Ockham. Conrads opposition to Ockham in his post-Parisian writings is well known, including passages in his konomica (c. 1354) and in his commentary on John of Sacroboscos Sphaera (1347), as well as his Tractatus contra Ockham (1354). In light of the intensive scholarly attention that has been devoted to the statutes of the arts faculty over the Ockhamist crisis of 13391341 and the shifting interpretations of that evidence, a fresh look at Conrads role in those events is in order.67
66 Ibid., fol. 88va. Ibid., fol. 135va: Sed arguitur ulterius pro opinione Okam primo sic: quantitas successiva quae est motus vel tempus non est res distincta a mobili cuius est subiective. Patet consequentia quia magis videtur dierre successivum et permanens quam permanens et permanens, ceteris aliis habentibus se uniformiter, Praeterea, arguo sic: relatio realiter non est res addita fundamento; igitur nec accidens quod est quantitas est res addita fundamento. Praeterea, actio et passio et quaecumque entia respectiva non dicunt res additas entibus absolutis; ergo nec quantitas est res addita substantiae corporali, quamvis tamen constituat diversum praedicamentum. Ad ista tria simul respondeo. 67 Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 5396; Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, in Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (eds.), Preuve et raisons lUniversit de Paris: Logique, ontologie et thologie au XIVe sicle (Paris, 1984), pp. 4364; Courtenay, Force of Words and Figures of Speech: The Crisis over Virtus sermonis in the Fourteenth Century, Franciscan Studies, 44 (1984), 107128; Z. Kaluza, Le Statut du 25 septembre 1339 et lOrdonnance du 2 septembre 1276, in O. Pluta (ed.), Die Philosophie im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: In memoriam Konstanty Michalski (18791947) (Amsterdam, 1988), pp. 343351; J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Once Again the Ockhamist Statutes of 1339 and 1340: Some new perspectives, Vivarium, 28 (1990), 136167; Courtenay, The Registers of the University of Paris and the Statutes against
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First, although the post-Parisian writings of Conrad show a rm opposition to Ockhams natural philosophy, that topic is not touched on in his Planctus, nor is there any mention of Ockham or the Occamistae in that work. What does come out strongly in the Planctus is a hatred of the mendicants and a diatribe against those in the arts faculty who misused grammar and logic, perhaps a veiled reference to those he later criticizes in his konomica for rejecting, as literally false, propositions containing gures of speech.68 This latter issue was undoubtedly related to the propositions that were condemned by the arts faculty in late December 1340 in a statute that bears the rubric: de reprobatione quorumdam errorum Ockanicorum,69 but in Conrads Planctus these views are not discussed directly. In any event, the content of the Planctus, which was written and revised between the fall of 1337 and September 1338, may all date before the crisis over Ockhams teaching surfaced at Paris. Secondly, while Conrad apparently returned from Avignon to Paris early in 1338, he went to Germany in the summer of 1338 and does not appear at all in the records of the nation for the 13381339 academic year. While the records between January and December 1338 are lost, the failure of Conrads name to appear in the extant records for the rst half of 1339the season of examinations and promotions in which the names of sponsoring regents are most likely to be includedmakes it likely that he was not in Paris during that year. In fact, the rst rm evidence for his resumption of his regency is in December 1339, from which we may infer his presence during the rst term of the 13391340 academic year. Thus, if the crisis over the use of Ockhams teachings
the Scientia Occamica, Vivarium, 29 (1991), 1349; Kaluza, Les sciences et leurs langages. Note sur le statut du 29 Dcembre 1340 et le prtendu statut perdu contre Ockham, in L. Bianchi (ed.), Filosoa e teologia nel Trecento: Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1994), pp. 197258; Kaluza, La crise des annes 14741482, in M.J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H.J. Schneider, and G. Wieland (eds.), Philosophy and Learning. Universities in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1994), pp. 293327; Courtenay, Was There an Ockhamist School? in Philosophy and Learning, pp. 263292. Also relevant to these issues: Courtenay, The Preservation and Dissemination of Academic Condemnations at the University of Paris in the Middle Ages, in Philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age. Acts of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, Ottawa 1992 (Ottawa, 1995), vol. III, pp. 16591667. 68 Planctus ecclesiae, ed. R. Scholz, MGH, SsM II, 1 (Leipzig, 1941), p. 32: Cespitat in vanis iam lingua, monetat inanis; Floribus est nuda, rudis et vox, rustica cruda; Iam paralogismat homo quilibet atque sophismat; Ethyca marcescunt, magis et brutalia crescunt. Compare konomica III, tr. 1, ch. 12. 69 CUP II, pp. 505507, #1042.
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and writings began in the summer of 1339 or during the previous academic year, it is unlikely Conrad was involved at that stage. It is likely, however, that Conrad had returned to teaching by the end of September 1339 when the arts faculty statute against the dogmatizing of Ockham was promulgated and inscribed into the Book of the Nation.70 Whether Conrad played any role in the drafting and promulgation of that statute cannot be ascertained. But if his later views are any guide, he would have strongly supported the action taken. His absence from Paris in the months before September 1339, however, probably means he was not among the initiators of that legislation. We can assume that Conrads role in the campaign against the Occamistae in 1340 and 1341 was more direct.71 He was proctor of the English-German nation when the statute of December 29, 1340 was passed, and as proctor during the preceding week he may have had a hand in drafting the nal wording. If, as now seems likely, the actual sealing of the statute occurred several weeks later, possibly due to debate over inclusion of the nal article, the promulgation and enforcement of that statute would not have occurred during Conrads term as proctor.72 That may explain his statement in the proctors book that during his term in oce nothing that was done was brought to completion.73 If the later writings of Conrad are any guide, the teachings of the Occamistae that he considered the most pernicious were not the procedures for determining the truth or falsity of propositions, but Ockhams reinterpretation of the Aristotelian categories and its implications for natural philosophy. Propositional analysis and the eect on gures of
The fact that Conrads name does not appear in the proctors register until December proves little, since hardly any names of regent masters are listed in that register between August and December 1339. 71 This was also the conclusion of Bernd Michael, Johannes Buridan: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinen Werken und zur Rezeption seiner Theorien im Europa des spten Mittelalters, Teil 1 (Berlin, 1985), pp. 191192. Also suggested in Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 7275. 72 For scholarly discussion of the two-statute theory vs. a delay in promulgation, see above, note 67. If a delay took place, it was probably because of the inclusion of the last article or clause, which unlike the other articles, was perhaps taken from the teaching of Nicholas of Autrecourt. Inasmuch as that was one of the articles whose orthodoxy was being judged at Avignon, some arts masters may have felt it presumptive and possibly oensive to Benedict XII to condemn it at Paris before the Avignon commission had completed its deliberations. 73 AUP I, col. 44: In cujus tempore nichil est factum, quod perfecte ad actum duceretur.
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speech when one allowed only the strictest literal meaning (de virtute sermonis) was certainly one of Conrads later concerns. In his konomica he criticized the wretches (miseri) who rejected as meaningless such sentences as aqua transit in uviis or venti volant because they attribute an action to a subject that it does not in reality have, since water does not have feet, nor do winds have wings.74 Conrad, echoing the language of the statute of December 1340, noted the implications of this fallacy for scriptural exegesis.75 But nowhere in Conrads discussion did he attribute those views to the Occamistae. That label he employed only when criticizing Ockhams natural philosophy. The rst text in which Conrad attacked Ockhamist physicsunless certain questions in Vat. lat. 1087 were authored or inuenced by Conradwas in his commentary on John of Sacroboscos Sphaera, which Conrad completed in 1347 while teaching at St. Stephans school in Vienna. He rejected Ockhams teaching that points and lines were not res distinctae inter se et a corpore.76 The critique was expanded in his konomica, written at Regensburg between 1348 and 1352. There Conrad rejected the opinion of Ockham and his followers that the categories of relation (relatio), place (situs), habit (habitus), where (ubi), and when (quando) were indistinguish74 konomica III, tr. 1, ch. 12, p. 47: surguntque miseri quidam, qui se numquam dignos noverunt discipulos et quod penitus nesciunt docere presumunt atque, quod condolendo refero, tales nobilibus ingeniis pocius seductores quam doctores preciunt. Gramaticam indignis molestant derisibus armantes quod nulla partium oracionis constructio est transitiva. Quapropter aqua non transit in uviis secundum eos, neque venti volant, quoniam alas non habent. Nec poterit dici quod una pars oracionis regat aliam secundum modorum signicandi proporciones, quia intellectus humanus omnes partes orationis regit et dirigit. Proprietates enim partium oracionis nichil sunt, ut dicunt. 75 Ibid.: Rethoricam eloquenciam adeo sua cecitate postergant, ut nec ores verborum nec colores sentenciarum capiant, sed ores in pratis crescere et colores varios pictores componere et pulchre variare ad instar nature armant. Qualiter hii dulciloquia sacrarum interpretentur scripturarum quevis racio disposita noscit, nec est dubium hereses ex hiis innumeras pullulare. Scriptura etenim sacra non semel uterum virginalem virgam vocat et lium dei inde conceptum orem appellat. Et si de virtute sermonis iste oraciones false sunt, sequitur rethoricam in pulcherrimis speciebus transumpcionis nullam ad oraciones habere virtutem, et sic rethorica quasi evanuit tota. 76 Mnchen, Bayr. Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14687, fol. 74ra, as quoted by Sabine Krger, Krise der Zeit als Ursache der Pest? Der Traktat de mortalitate in Alamannia des Konrad von Megenberg, in Festschrift fr Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag, vol. II (Gttingen, 1972), pp. 839883, at 849, n. 55: Sed hic est advertendum, quod secundum illos, qui negant puncta habere esse reale preter animam et similiter lineas, sicut facit frater Wilhalmus et sui, illi dicerent, quod secunda descripcio spere eciam competeret sibi secundum esse suum ymaginativum et conceptibile, sed ego non sum istius opinionis, et habet de hoc videri alibi, scilicet in questionibus physis.
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able from absolute, permanent things, who identied quantity as simply a description of substance as extended, and who armed that motion (motus) was indistinguishable from permanent things.77 The arts faculty statute of September 1339 was vague about what subject matter they proscribed when they forbade Ockhams doctrina.78 But the writings of Conrad and, even more explicitly, the sentential and physical questions in Vat. lat. 1087 make clear that the principal doctrine proscribed was Ockhams interpretation of the categories and its implications for science. This is spelled out in the inception oaths for the arts faculty, revised in the summer or fall of 1341, in which, parallel to numerous passages in Vat. lat. 1087, the contrast is made between Ockhamist scientia and the teaching of Aristotle, Averroes, and the ancient commentators.79 Whether this language simply expands on the implicit meaning of the 1339 statute or derives from an additional piece of anti-Ockhamist legislation, the battle over Ockhams physics was central to the events of 13391341. When, in September 1341, the English-German nation required an anti-Ockhamist loyalty oath of all members of the nation, students and masters alike, that they did not belong to and would inform on anyone who belonged to the secta occamica, Conrads name appears among the masters signing that legislation, and he was probably among its principal sponsors.80 It is ironic that Conrads departure from Paris coincided with the return of Gregory of Rimini to Paris (1342) as the Augustinian sententiarius for the following academic year, 13431344.81 Rimini was the
77 konomica III, tr. 1, c. 1, p. 7: Aut certe dici potest, quod clerus deciens in statu scolastico est hic, qui naturas plurium abnegat rerum, quemadmodum frater Wilhelmus de Occham Anglicus atque sui sequaces, qui tam relaciones quam situs, habitus, ubi, quando, asserunt preter animam res indistinctas a rebus absolutis atque quantitatem eandem cum substancia rem armant. Motus eciam in quibus actiones rerum et passiones rmantur dicunt res indistinctas a permanentibus rebus. 78 CUP II, pp. 485486, #1023. 79 CUP II, p. 680: Item jurabitis quod statuta facta per facultatem artium contra scientiam Okamicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consimiles sustinebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum commentatorum antiquorum et expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra dem. 80 AUP I, cols. 5253: nullus decetero admitteretur ad aliquos actus legitimos in dicta nacione, nisi prius juraret quod revelaret, si sciret aliquos de secta Occanica ad invicem conspirasse de secta vel opinionibus erroneis fovendis, vel etiam conjuratos esse vel conventicula habere occulta, aliter nisi jure diceret si sciret, ex tunc penam perjurii incurreret. 81 V. Marcolino, Einleitung, in Gregory of Rimini, Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum, ed. D. Trapp and V. Marcolino, vol. I (Berlin, 1981), pp. xixiii.
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rst theologian at Paris to defend publicly Ockhams natural philosophy, as did Hugolino of Orvieto at the end of the decade.82 Whatever eect Conrad had at Paris in subsequent years came from a distance, either through his writings or, since he was in Avignon in 1346 when Clement VI drafted his letter to the University of Paris, as an encouraging voice on the wording of that papal admonition.83 But eventually the anti-Ockhamist legislation in the arts facultyat least as regards Ockhams natural philosophyfailed. Sometime between 1355 and 1365 the prohibition of Ockhams scientia was removed from the oaths in the arts faculty and all mention of those statutes, as they applied to Ockham, was likewise removed from the oaths.84 How Conrad would have reacted to the collapse of an eort to which he had devoted so much political energy can only be imagined. It would probably have been further evidence, in his eyes, of a world gone wrong.
82 W.J. Courtenay, The Role of English Thought in the Transformation of University Education in the Late Middle Ages, in J.M. Kittelson and P.J. Transue (eds.), Rebirth, Reform and Resilience: Universities in Transition, 13001700 (Columbus, 1984), pp. 103162, at 126131. 83 CUP II, pp. 587590, #1125. 84 Courtenay, The Registers of the University of Paris, at 4042.
chapter fifteen
THE CATEGORIES, MICHAEL DE MASSA, AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AT PARIS, 13351340*
Much of the recent debate over the introduction of Ockhams thought into Paris and the crises of the years 1339 and 1340 that led to the so-called anti-Nominalist statute of December 1340 has centered on hermeneutics, semantics, and the logic of propositions.1 Much of the evidence, however, suggests that a major issue separating the two sides in the debate over Ockham was Ockhams understanding of the categories and its implications for his natural philosophy.2 These may seem, on the surface, two very dierent spheres of conict: hermeneutical principles of language and logic on the one hand, and ontology and natural philosophy on the other. And yet in the eyes of some participants the issues raised in those two spheres were intimately related. After briey sketching the stages in the conict over the categories at Paris in the 1330s and 1340s, I will analyze the arguments of Michael
* Originally presented at the thirteenth European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Avignon, 610 June 2000) and published in La tradition mdivale des catgories (XIIeXVe sicles), ed. J. Biard and I. Rosier-Catach (Louvain-la-Neuve and Paris, 2003), pp. 243260. 1 Z. Kaluza, Les sciences et leurs langages. Note sur le Statut du 29 Decembre 1340 et le pretndu statut perdu contre Ockham, in L. Bianchi (ed.) Filosoa e teologia nel Trecento. Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, Textes et tudes du Moyen Age 1 (Louvain-laNeuve, 1994), pp. 197258; H. Thijssen, Once Again the Ockhamist Statutes of 1339 and 1340: Some New Perspectives, Vivarium, 27 (1990), 136167; Idem, The Semantic Articles of Autrecourts Condemnation. New Proposals for an Interpretation of Articles 1, 30, 35, 57, and 58, AHDLMA, 57 (1990), 155175; Idem, The Crisis over Ockhamist Hermeneutic and its Semantic Background: the methodological signicance of the censure of December 29, 1340, in C. Marmo (ed.), Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIthXIVth Century) (Bologna, 1997), pp. 371392. This discussion has centered on supposition theory and whether true propositions are limited to those that are true only according to the strict, literal meaning of their terms, de virtute sermonis, or whether one should consider common usage, authorial intention, and gures of speech. 2 W.J. Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation at Paris, 13391341, History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396; Courtenay, The Debate over Ockhams Physical Theories at Paris, in S. Caroti and P. Sourin (eds.), La Nouvelle Physique du XIVe sicle (Firenze, 1997), pp. 4563 [both reprinted in this volume as chapters 9 and 12].
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de Massa, who is the earliest witness to that debate, and then reexplore the connections on this issue between natural philosophy and the logic of propositions. The text of Massas question on motion is provided at the end of the article. As is well known, there were a number of attempts in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries to distinguish within the Aristotelian categories those that had real existence and those that were simply descriptive of existing things (res permanentes) in various states. In formulating those views, the issue was not to reject the teaching of Aristotle on the categories but rather to interpret Aristotle along the lines of a reduced ontology. Those who proceeded in this manner not only felt they were bringing the interpretation of the Aristotelian texts in line with the true nature of things, of external reality, but were thus correctly interpreting Aristotles true meaning. Others, probably the majority of those treating these matters in that period, preferred a broader ontology that, for them, better explained the physical world and correctly interpreted Aristotles meaning and that of his Commentator, Averroes. The controversial nature of a reduced ontology can be seen in the opposition to Peter Olivis reduction of real categories to three: substance, quality, and action.3 Olivis principal aim was to undermine subservient acceptance of Aristotles opinions rather than to identify Aristotles true meaning through a reinterpretation of the categories. With William of Ockham, who is known to have maintained that only the categories of substance and quality or, more precisely, individual substances and qualities are real, the case is dierent. Rather than trying to maintain, as did Olivi, that Aristotle was not the nal word on such matters, Ockham preferred to bring the interpretation of Aristotle into line with what he (Ockham) believed. Within the context of the freer atmosphere of classroom debates, as distinct from the hostile context of his trial at Avignon, Ockham was willing to defend his position as a possible, even probable, interpretation of Aristotles true meaning. Discussions of to what the categories refer, whether res or mental concepts, or better, how and in what ways the categories relate to real things, can be and usually are conducted within the context of logic.
3 Epistola ad R., in Olivi, Quodlibeta (Venice, 1509), fol. 52(64)v: Quod quando nihil aliud est quam tempus, et universaliter quod predicamenta non dierent re, sed ratione, preter substantiam, qualitatem et actionem, cited from D. Burr, The Persecution of Peter Olivi, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new ser. 66/5 (Philadelphia, 1976), p. 55. See also Olivis Tractatus de quantitate (Venice, 1509), and Book II of his commentary of the Sentences, ed. B. Jansen, 3 vols. (Quaracchi, 19211926).
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But it is also the case that other issues outside or peripheral to logic inuenced discussions of the categories in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and probably in the twelfth century as well. One of these, theology, is strikingly important. To take one example, the issue of the real status of quantity was ercely debated in the context of Eucharistic transubstantiation. Aquinas had argued that the quantum of bread and wine must remain without the substance of bread and wine, for otherwise there would be nothing in which the remaining accidents of bread and wine could inhere since they could not inhere in the substance of the body of Christ. For Olivi and Ockham the miracle of transubstantiation did not need a remaining quantum, and consequently the mechanics of transubstantiation did not require that quantity be anything other than a description that a substance was extended in space, or having part separate from part. Discussions of relation in the context of the Trinity are another example. The other sphere of knowledge or discourse that shaped interpretations of the categories was natural philosophy, one facet of which I will be treating here. Depending on ones view of the principles of nature, or how the universe operates, the real status of quantity, relation, action, passion, place, position, time, and motion came under discussion, and it was often the way in which the categories were understood with regard to nature that drove the intensity of debate. The reinterpretation of Aristotles categories and its implications for the understanding of the principles of nature (and not simply categories as objects of thought) gathered new force at Paris in the 1330s with the introduction rst of Ockhams Summa logicae, and then gradually with the circulation of some of his other writings.4 There is a strong possibility that the Ockhamist work known as the Tractatus de successivis was assembled at Paris in this period.5 In any event, it was at Paris that a controversy over the opinions of the Occamistae developed, and it is to the natural-philosophy side of that issue and the rst witness to that debate that I now turn, namely the Questions on the Sentences of Michael de Massa.
4 W.J. Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, in Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (eds), Preuve et raisons lUniversit de Paris: Logique, ontologie et thologie au XIVe sicle (Paris, 1984), pp. 4364 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 8]. 5 The Tractatus de Successivis attributed to William Ockham, ed. Ph. Boehner (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1944).
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Michael de Massa belonged to the mendicant order of the Augustinian Hermits, and his baccalaureate in theology at Paris, which began with his Parisian lectures on the Sentences, has recently been redated to the early 1330s.6 Massa died at Paris in 1337, still a formed bachelor in theology and awaiting his opportunity to be licensed and incept as a doctor of theology. He was buried in the Augustinian convent at Paris with the dubious honor of having his writings buried with him. This may explain why, apart from his questions on Book One of the Sentences, so few manuscripts of the rest of his writings have survived. There is only one manuscript with questions on Book Two of the Sentences, anonymous but attributed to Massa by Damasus Trapp.7 It is this manuscript Vat. lat. 1087 that concerns us. Imbedded in that work were questions on time and motion that are identied as quaestiones extraordinariae or additiones. That description suggests that they were questions added to the text after Massas sentential year at Paris, questions that were generated from debates during his time as a formed bachelor, or questions that derived from a dierent academic exercise, such as questions on Aristotles Categories or Physics. Their form and tone, however, suggest a debate context: quaestiones disputatae. In his twelfth quaestio extraordinaria, after having dealt with duration and the aevum in the previous question, Massa raised the issue of whether motion was identical with the moved thing, or whether motion, and correspondingly time, have any reality apart from things. It is here that he introduces what he calls the error of certain contemporaries (moderni) who undermine both the principles and conclusions of physics by reviving the opinions of ancient philosophers whose views were rejected by Aristotle.8 From the standpoint of physics, the revived theory, according to Massa, is that of the Eleatics, specically Parmenides and Melissus, who are reputed to have held a static view of the universe in which change, motion, and time are misperceptions
6 W.J. Courtenay, The Quaestiones in Sententias of Michael de Massa, OESA: A Redating, Augustiniana, 45 (1995), 191207 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 13]. 7 Vat. lat. 1087. On the manuscripts see D. Trapp, Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century, Augustiniana, 6 (1956), 146274, at 163175; Trapp, Notes on some Manuscripts of the Augustinian Michael de Massa (d. 1337), Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 58133. 8 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70rb (below, p. 339).
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of reality.9 The heavens do not move, and what appears to be motion is only a static reality viewed at dierent moments. Put another way, motion is not something separate from the heavens but is identical with it; motus is the caelum, and motus, or motion, is identical with the mobile, or moved thing. Whether those who were arguing for a reduced ontology in the realm of nature, an ontology described here by Massa as one that accorded reality only to substances and qualities, were actually reverting to the position of the Eleatics and arguing for a static universe or not, Massas opponents supported their position in natural philosophy through grammatical arguments, through what Massa called a ight to grammar. By this Massa meant that his opponents approached questions of time and motion not as factors in physical nature but as those words and related terms were used in propositions. What do words like moving, moved or motion stand for when used in a proposition? Is there a reality to which motion, as a term in a proposition, corresponds, or is it, like one interpretation of abstract concepts or universals, such as man, simply a short-hand way of describing many existing individuals, in this case, an individual substance at successive moments and in successive individual places? To approach questions about time and motion from the standpoint of grammar and propositional logic is not, in itself, anti-Aristotelian, as Massa seems to suggest. Aristotles Praedicamenta is a work in logic, and the categories were discussed there as categories of thought into which certain words that diered grammatically were placed. Voces, or expressions, which are spoken incomplexa, or terms, belong to dierent categories inasmuch as they are nouns (man, horse), or adjectives of quantity, quality, or relation (two cubits long, white, greater, less), or adverbs of time and place (yesterday, in the agora).10 Expressions concerned with motion and change are intimately linked to several categories: time, place, relation, position, action, and passion or aection. And it is not surprising that chapters four and following of Aristotles Praedicamenta naturally lend themselves to a grammatical and terminist approach. Only when used in propositions do terms become subject to truth or falsehood, and the nature of the real status of abstract
Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70va (below, p. 342). Aristoteles latinus: Categoriae vel Praedicamenta, ed. L. Minio-Paluello (BrugesParis, 1961), pp. 8687.
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terms and universals depends inevitably on the theory of supposition being applied. To return to Massas description of the position he is opposing, it approaches questions of motion from the standpoint of propositional logic. Thus, according to them, when Aristotle says that the mobile is the subject of motion, that statement ought not to be understood to mean that motion is a reality added to the mobile as its subject, but that the mobile is the subject of a proposition in which motus is predicated of it. Thus the proposition mobile movetur is true in the sense that a mobile existing in one place and occurring in another place is said to be moved locally. The same is true when something white becomes black. In neither case is motion or change something that is added to the moved or changed object.11 Massa holds the opposite view. His beginning point for any discussion of motion and the related issues of time and place is the physical operation of nature. As such his determinative text is Aristotles Physica, not his Praedicamenta. His opponents approach motion from the standpoint of the Praedicamenta and propositional logic, and interpret the discussion of motion in Aristotles Physica as well as Averroess commentary on it from the standpoint of logic and language. For Massa, they are intentionally avoiding discussing the matter physice or ad rem and are eeing to grammar, where they can employ, as he puts it, sophistical argumentation.12 But even in the context of propositions and the Praedicamenta, their position is absurd in Massas view. Contradictory propositions cannot be true at the same time. If motion were identical with that which is moved, then the true proposition, mobile movetur, and the false proposition, motus movetur, would be simultaneously true, which is absurd.13 Throughout his question Massa seems to have a particular group of opponents in mind, sometimes referring to their position in the plural, sometimes in the singular as if it were one opponent. If reducing real categories to substance and quality, and identifying motion with the thing moved, were not sucient clues, Massa directly attributes these views in another question to the Occamistae.14
Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70rb (below, pp. 340341). Ibid., fol. 70va (below, p. 341); and earlier, fol. 70rb (below, p. 340). 13 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70va70vb (below, pp. 342343). 14 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 88va: Sed secundum istos contra quos arguo, tempus et primus motus sunt idem idemptitate, nec dierent nisi conceptibiliter Ibid.: Avicenna nume11 12
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Apart from the strong disagreement regarding time and motion between Massa and the Occamistae, there are some other factors worth noting. First, Massa is writing as a bachelor of theology who, by reason of his religious order, never studied in or took a degree in the faculty of arts. He is approaching these issues as a theologian. This is reected in an example he gives toward the end of his question on motion. The exception to the rule that motion is a reality added to that which is moved is the body of Christ, which acquires a new ubi in the sacrament of the altar without losing or moving from the ubi it has in heaven, and without motion as a separate reality being added to it.15 While opposition to the teachings of the Occamistae at Paris as far as statutes are concerned erupts in the faculty of arts in 1339 and 1340, these issues were already under debate in the faculty of theology in the mid-1330s. Second, as one moves through the language of Massas questions, one has the sense that he is debating a particular adversary or adversaries, presumably fellow bachelors of theology in the early to mid 1330s. Some of these may have been secular theologians who, as did Nicholas of Autrecourt, continued to teach in the arts faculty while completing the degree in theology. By saying this I am not placing Autrecourt among the Occamistae but only pointing out a context that could and frequently did bring mendicant theologians, with no direct connection to the arts faculty, into debate with theologians who simultaneously taught in the arts faculty and may have incorporated into their theological debates issues that might appear primarily philosophical.16 Thus, both at the level of classroom teaching and debates, the concerns of the faculties of arts and theology mixed. Third, by the early to mid 1330s, given the testimony of this manuscript and Massas death in 1337, there were those at Paris who adopted a reduced, Ockhamist ontology and apparently adopted as well its implications for natural philosophy. It was clearly the latterthe implications for natural philosophythat most troubled Michael de Massa.
rat secundo Physicae suae quod fuerunt sex opiniones antiquorum de tempore [] set sexto dixerunt aliqui quod tempus est ipsummet caelum, et in sententiam istorum incidunt Okanistae. 15 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 71ra (below, pp. 345346). 16 Although the issues dier, one should recall that in the years immediately before Autrecourts summons to Avignon in 1340, Autrecourt himself was a bachelor and then licentiate in theology, and that one of his main opponents was a fellow bachelor of theology, Bernard of Arezzo, O.F.M. On Bernard, see Z. Kaluza, Nicolas dAutrcourt, HLF, 42.1 (Paris, 1995), pp. 5664.
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But if that is the case, why does the so-called anti-Ockhamist statute of the arts faculty in December 1340 appear to restrict itself to errors in hermeneutics and the understanding of propositions? Is there any common ground between the issues that concerned Massa and the issues that concerned those who drafted the statute against the Occamistae?
Ockhams Doctrina and the Teaching of Aristotle and Averroes If one sets aside for a moment the arts faculty statute of December 1340 and compares the language of the earlier statute of September 1339 with the text of these quaestiones extraordinariae of Michael de Massa, it appears that the fundamental issue of debate in the mid-to-late 1330s at Paris was Ockhams reductionist ontology and its implications for natural philosophy. The statute of September 1339, the one that prohibits the use of Ockham in public or private teaching, refers not to methods of argumentation or to hermeneutics but to Ockhams doctrina, which better describes a body of teaching. Similarly, when antiOckhamist statutes are mentioned in the oaths introduced in the 1340s for incepting bachelors in the arts faculty, it is still Ockhams doctrina or scientia that is to be avoided. While I am willing to concede that the famous statute of December 1340 may have been directed against the argumentational practices of Occamistae at Paris, I remain convinced that the two anti-Ockhamist statutes to which the oaths refer do not include that of December 1340 and may even have been drafted and implemented in the 13391340 academic year rather than later. Those oaths refer specically to two statutes, one of which is undoubtedly that of September 1339 because of verbatim parallels. The other refers to a statute against Ockhams scientia, so described but not further dened, which is contrasted in the oath and presumably in the statute itself to the teaching, the scientia, of Aristotle and the Commentator. That contrast resonates throughout these later questions of Michael de Massa, where they invariably refer to the debate over the status of quantity, relation, place, time, and motion. The same is true in the later writings of Conrad of Megenberg, one of the leading masters in the arts faculty at this time who stood in opposition to Ockhams ontology. Despite the fact that no statute survives that specically forbids the teaching of Ockhams natural philosophy and requires instead the adoption of that of Aristotle, his Commentator, and other ancient commentators and expositors, the language of that oath points to the former existence of
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such a statute, one of several known to have once existed but which are not included in the surviving versions of the books of the nations or the Book of the Rector. Sometime between 1355 and 1365 the oath against Ockhams scientia was deleted from the list of items to which bachelors had to swear before proceeding to the licence and inception in the arts faculty.17 The removal from the list of oaths of any mention of Ockham may have made the text of a statute against Ockhams scientia also less in need of preservation, since it was no longer applicable. The Anti-Ockhamist Statute of December 1340 Michael of Massa, like his secular counterpart, Conrad of Megenberg, was convinced that questions regarding motion and time should be approached from the standpoint of physics and ad rem. Aristotles Physics, Averroess commentary on that text, and the commentaries of Albert, Thomas, Giles of Rome, and other late thirteenth-century interpreters were the foundation for that discussion. Those to whom Massa and Megenberg were opposed were equally convinced that motion and time, and the other categories, save substance and quality, should be approached by way of propositions. For them Aristotles Praedicamenta was the fundamental text, as interpreted by more recent commentators, especially perhaps Ockham. Consequently, Aristotles discussion of motion and time in his Physics should be read in light of their discussion in Praedicamenta, which should in turn be read in light of theories of supposition and connotation. What to Massa appeared as a failure to answer the dicult questions in physics by recourse to grammatical ights of fancy was, from the other side, a serious attempt to come to terms with the ontological status of abstract terms and the relation of existing individuals to universals and categories through which they were dened. There is no question that the arts faculty statute of December 1340 was concerned with the hermeneutics of propositions as applied to authoritative texts. While the only text referred to in the statute was
17 W.J. Courtenay, The Registers of the University of Paris and the Statutes against the Scientia Occamica, Vivarium, 29 (1991), 1349 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 11]. For examples of arts faculty statutes that are not preserved in the books of the nations or the Book of the Rector, see Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation, 63 and 86, n. 33.
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the Bible, whose authority would be undermined by a strictly literal approach to the meaning of statements in Scripture, it is likely that the interpretation of Aristotelian texts was also a matter of concern, since those were the principal authoritative texts in the arts curriculum. The rst article of the 1340 statute makes clear that the arts masters were concerned with the interpretation of famous propositions that occurred in the texts on which arts masters lectured. What happens, for example, if the proposition omnis quod movetur ab alio movetur is subjected to an analysis that allows as true only a literal interpretation of the proposition, de virtute sermonis? If the famous proposition just cited is understood to mean that motion is something added to the moved object, and if one believes motion is connotative rather than denoting something real, then the proposition would, for them, be false on grammatical grounds regardless of what Aristotle intended in the realm of physics. Many of the articles in the 1340 statute concern debate techniques about what is allowable or inadmissible in interpreting texts and responding to opponents. Limiting the meaning of words in a proposition to their literal meaning without regard to authorial intent or common usage distorts the meaning of the author. Although the examples of authoritative propositions to which Massa refers do not immediately appear subject to this, Conrad of Megenberg attributes to his opponents some traditional examples of true propositions whose literal meaning is false. Rivers run and winds y are true propositions in the way they are normally understood, yet they are false if one assumes the verb run implies legs, which rivers lack, and if one assumes the verb y implies wings, which winds do not have.18 These are rather puerile tricks of debate that permit one person to escape conceding an opponents argument by denying the truth of the others statement because of its absurdity, de virtute sermonis. One could avoid the intended meaning of most statements by restricting propositional truth to strict literal meaning, a technique that could well be described as a ight from reality to grammar. And if statements, such as everything that moves is moved by another, could be construed as false depending on what words like moves and is moved actually mean, or to what they refer, then there may be a sense in which the hermeneutical rules under discussion in the statute of December 1340 have relevance to the
18 Megenberg, Economica III, tr. 1, ch. 12, in L. Thorndike (ed.), University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1971), p. 431.
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grammatical arguments in the realm of physical nature that Massa and Megenberg attributed to the Occamistae. While the arts faculty statute of December 1340 is not concerned with questions of natural philosophy or the ontological status of motion, time, relation, place, or quantity, both the statute and Massas discussion of the Ockhamist view of motion do relate to one another on the level of supposition of terms in propositions. This grammatical dimension to both branches of the Ockhamist crisis at Parisbranches that in dierent ways concern the categoriesis a topic still in need of further examination. In the following edition of Michael de Massas question on motion, which occurs in a unique and at times corrupt manuscript, the words in [ ] brackets appear in the manuscript but should probably be elimbrackets are editorial insertions. Words in inated, while words in parentheses provide the manuscript reading of the immediately preceding word or words.19
Utrum motus sit realiter ipsummet mobile quod movetur (Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 70rb71ra) Duodecima quaestio extraordinaria circa materiam creationis erat ista: Utrum duratio successiva quae est ipsum tempus sit realiter idem quod motus cuius est passio. Et quia quaestio ista est dicillima tam ratione realitatis temporis quam etiam ratione realitatis motus, ideo quaestionem istam multum articulare oportet et primo quantum ad realitatem motus, secundo quo ad realitatem temporis. Et quia de realitate motus est unus error quorundam modernorum, qui circa totam physicam tam quantum ad principia quam etiam quantum ad conclusiones ipsius conati sunt innovare errores antiquorum philosophorum, quos Aristoteles frequentissime reprobat, licet per quasdam fugas grammaticales huius[modi] errores sustineant, quae modicum valent, sicut alias apparebit, ideo statim pro nunc de errore istorum circa realitatem motus expedio me valde breviter, gratia cuius moveo istam quaestionem. Utrum motus sit realiter ipsummet mobile quod movetur. Et videtur quod sic, quia frustra ponitur pluralitas realitatum sine necessitate;
19 I am grateful to Prof. Stefano Caroti for giving the text a second reading and helping with several dicult sections.
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patet primo Physicorum. Sed ponendo quod motus sit realiter idem quod mobile salvantur omnia quae dicuntur de mobili et de motu; frustra ergo poneretur quod essent plures realitates. Probo minorem, nam dicendo quod motus non sit aliud nisi ipsummet mobile ut in diversis locis, ita quod nunc mobile dicatur moveri vel esse motum quando prius est in uno loco, quem connotat in tali situ, et postmodum sit in alio loco, quem connotat in alio situ, absque hoc quod motus sit quaedam realitas addita ipsi mobili, quare etc. In contrarium est quia quidditates diversorum praedicamentorum realium sunt diverse realiter, et per consequens sunt diverse realitates. Patet, quia praedicamenta realia sunt ex natura rei primo per se diversa, sicut Aristoteles dicit, secundo Posteriorum. Et accipio hic praedicamenta pro rebus quae quidditative sunt in praedicamentis; sed motus et mobile sunt quidditates diversorum praedicamentorum realium, patet per Aristotelem tertio Physicorum, quare etc. Respondeo sicut dixi: hic est unus errorum quorundam modernorum qui secundum rei veritatem conantur diundere inter vera dicta physicae multa semina falsitatum, et in omnibus tamquam verbosi habent recursum ad verba grammaticalia sophistice utendo eis. Nec forte melior modus esset nisi nauseare super dictis eorum et dicere contra verbosos noli contendere verbis (II Tim. 2:14), quia secundum veritatem errores ipsorum non sunt cum magna diligentia pertractandi. Et ideo expediamus nos de illo errore quem asserunt circa realitatem motus; dicunt enim quod motus non est distinctus a mobili, sed est realiter ipsummet mobile. Et quod ita sit probant, quia corpus caeleste est quoddam mobile a quo non distinguitur realiter suus motus; ergo pari ratione dicendum est de omni mobili et de motu quo quandoque movetur. Patet consequentia, sed antecedens proba[n]t, quoniam alias cotidie in caelo generaretur et corrumperetur aliqua nova res et cotidie eret deperditio et acquisitio alicuius realitatis in caelo formaliter entis, quod videtur absurdum. Et si quandoque inveniatur, quod Aristoteles dicat mobile esse subiectum motus, hoc debet intelligi non quidem quasi motus sit quaedam realitas addita cuius mobile est subiectum, sed debet intelligi quod videlicet mobile est subiectum propositionis verae in qua mobile subicitur et motus praedicatur. Nam ista propositio est vera: mobile movetur. Et veritas eius stat in hoc, quia idem mobile existens in uno loco, puta hic, si at in alio loco, puta ibi, tunc ex hoc ipso dicitur moveri localiter. Et pari ratione dum est sub una forma, puta sub albedine, et at sub nigredine, dicitur ex hoc ipso moveri, non quod motus
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sit quaedam res addita mobili praeter ipsummet terminum sub quo t mobile, et ita de aliis. Sed iste error est contra Aristotelem et Commentatorem. Patet, dicunt enim, tertio Physicorum, quod mobile et motus eius habent se sicut subiectum et actus eius. Nam motus est actus mobilis secundum quod mobile. Nunc autem constat quod illud quod subicitur motui, tamquam et entelechiae, subicitur sibi tamquam realitati distinctae, et non solum est subiectum propositionis, sed ex natura rei est id quod subicitur et id cui subicitur. Praeterea, Aristoteles, quinto Physicorum, dicit quod motus non est motus neque per modum subiecti neque per modum termini. Et hoc probat multipliciter ibi, et una de suis probationibus ad probandum partem, videlicet quod non per modum subiecti, /70va/ est quia subiectum motus movetur; ergo si motus esset subiectum motus sequeretur quod motus moveretur, quod est impossibile, ut ipse dicit. Nunc autem loquendo physice et ad rem, et non recurrendo ad subiectum et praedicatum propositionis et ad suppositum et ad appositum propositionis grammaticaliter. Sed dico, loquendo ad rem, constat quod si motus esset realiter idem quod mobile, ergo realiter motus moveretur, quia realitas quae est motus movetur parte; set hoc est contra sententiam Aristotelis. Praeterea, Commentator in commento XI declarat quia quod est subiectum motus natum est quiescere; ergo et si motus esset subiectum motus, ergo motus posset subesse quieti, quod est impossibile, quia motus est contrarius quieti, et unum contrariorum non suscipit reliquum. Constat quod Commentator accipit ibi subiectum reale cui vicissim possunt inesse contraria, puta motus et quies, et non accipit ibi subiectum propositionis grammaticaliter; ergo secundum eum motus est quaedam res inexistens mobili, sicut suo per se subiecto ex natura rei. Potest ex dicto Commentatoris formari ratio, quia illa non sunt idem realiter sive eadem realitas quorum unum contrariatur alicui (ms: aliquid) realiter et ex natura rei, et tamen alteri non contrariatur. Patet ex considerationibus Aristotelis, tertio Thopicorum. Sed quies vere et realiter et non solum grammaticaliter contrariatur motui, et tamen non contrariatur mobili, ergo motus et mobile non sunt eadem realitas. Praeterea, qua ratione mobile est idem realiter cum motu quo movetur parte, pari ratione inest idem realiter cum quiete qua quiescit cessante motu. Set hoc posito sequitur primo, quod idem ens limitatum erit idem realiter cum duobus contrariis, et pari ratione posset poni idem realiter quibuscumque entibus disparatis inexistentibus sibi for-
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maliter, et ita redibit error Parmenidis et Mellissi, quem reprobat Aristoteles primo Physicorum, quia secundum hoc omnia quae sunt in eodem supposito, scilicet substantia, quantitas, et qualescumque qualitates contrariae vel disparatae et universaliter omnia quae sunt in eodem supposito erunt eaedem (ms: eadem) res, et per quascumque connotationes et per quascumque guras grammaticales tu conaris salvare quod una res sit quandoque motus et quandoque quies, et ego per easdem salvabo tibi quod eadem res sit quandoque albedo et quandoque nigredo, sit quandoque qualitas sit quandoque substantia, et sic de aliis, quod est absurdum. Tamen verum est quod isti tantum exorbitant quod nullum absurdissimum habent pro inconvenienti. Item, sequitur secundo quod motor movens mobile [nihil realiter] quantum potest movere nihil causaret in ipso mobili, quia ex quo motus est eadem res cum ipso mobili constat quod motor non causat realiter ipsum mobile, immo praesupponit ipsum, ergo pari ratione motor movendo realiter mobile non causabit realitatem motus, et ita per hoc quod movet realiter nihil penitus causabit, et ita in vanum moveret et frustra fatigaretur frequenter motor conando movere mobile, cum per talem conatum nihil realiter causaret, quod est absurdum. Sequeretur tertio vel quod mobile dum movetur realiter nichil acquireret in re, et per consequens frustra movebitur, quod est absurdum. Praeterea, capio virtutem primi principii, et ita oportet quod isti negant quasi omnia illa quae statim de proximo eliciuntur ex primo principio, quod est: idem simul esse et non esse impossibile est. Immo, si quis bene attenderet, negant quandoque ipsam veritatem primi principii evidenter. Et ideo oportet nos sustinere primum principium sicut faciebat Aristoteles, quarto Metaphysice. Et arguo sic: impossibile est quod idem simul sit et non sit, et accipio esse et non esse de secundo adiacente, ut omnis fuga connotationum tollatur. Patet per primum principium. Sed quando mobile quiescit, tunc ista est vera: mobile est, prout ly est praedicatur secundo adiacens. Patet, quia, dato quod tunc motus sit vel est, tunc est motus alicuius mobilis vel non; patet per extrema contradictionis. Si non, ergo est motus sine mobile (ms: mobili), quod est impossible, et cum hoc haberetur propositum, quia secundum hoc motus non esset realiter ipsum mobile. Si autem dicas quod sic, ergo [erit mobile] erit motus alicuius mobilis et mobile non movebitur, quod est contradictio. Praeterea, quia tu fugis ad propositiones grammaticales, conrmo rationem sic: impossibile est quod propositiones contradictoriae vel contrariae vericentur pro eodem tempore de una realitate uniformiter
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se habente. Patet, quia ab eo quod res est vel non est, dicitur oratio (ms: omnino) vera vel falsa; patet in Praedicamentis. Sed ista propositio vera est: mobile, puta caelum, movetur, et pro illo eodem tempore ista est falsa (ms: fallacia): motus caeli movetur. Item ista est vera: caelum movetur, et ista est falsa: caelum quiescit; ergo [res importata per caelum et] res importata /70vb/ per motum caeli et (ms: sit) res importata per quietem caeli non est eadem realitas nec est eadem res uniformiter habens se penes realitates intrinsecas. Praeterea, quatuor sunt regulae Aristotelis ad convincendum pluralitatem et distinctionem in rebus, quarum prima est: si de aliquibus pluribus nominaliter nullo modo altero ipsorum variato in re, set uniformiter stante, vericantur contradictoria praedicata pro eodem instanti, quia veritas propositionum dependet ex veritate rerum. Secunda regula est: separabilitas eorum in re sive ambobus manentibus, sicut est de sillabis unius nominis vel dictionis, septimo Metaphysice, sive altero corumpto ipsorum et altero manente, sicut est de materia et privatione, ac etiam de materia et de forma, primo Physicorum. Tertia est, quam ponit septimo Metaphysice, capitulo de partibus difnitionis contra parabolam Socratis junioris, videlicet quando sunt aliqua inseparabilia tamen sunt vere proportionalia duobus aliis, quorum unum est ab alio separabile, quomodo convinci potest circulus distinguatur a quantitate et a substantia caeli, licet non sint in re separabilia. Quarta regula est quando contradictoria insint simul quia non possunt eidem simul inesse; patet tertio Thopicorum et 10 Metaphysice. Et si quis negaret regulas istas licitum est sibi dicere quod Deus et lapis, et Deus et chimera, idem sint realiter, et omnia quaecumque absurda velis. Nunc autem per primam regulam patet propositum nostrum, quia nullo modo variato intrinsice corpore caelesti posset motus eius non esse, et esset verum dicere motus caeli non est sicut erit post generale iudicium, ergo realitas motus non est realitas mobilis. Item, nunc de facto manifeste cetera uniformiter moveri non est verum dicere quod caelum quiescat, ergo quies non est eadem res cum realitate caeli, alias sicut est caelum, ita esset in rerum natura quies eius, sed qua ratione quies caeli non est realiter caelum, ergo nec motus eius est realiter caelum mobile. Item, per secundam regulam patet propositum, quia manet mobile non manens (ms: manet) motus realiter, ergo non sunt idem realiter. Item, per tertiam regulam patet quod adhuc magis habetur propositum.
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Patet etiam per quartam regulam, ut arguatur sic: illa non sunt idem realiter quorum unum quandoque intenditur et pro tunc alterum vel minuitur vel saltem indivisibiliter sine intensione; patet per primum principium. Et eodem modo patet si esset econtra. Sed motus quandoque intenditur [pro] quando mobile non intenditur, posset enim caelum moveri velocius, sicut patet sexto Physicorum, et tamen caelum in sua realitate non intenderetur per intensionem motus. Item, potest quandoque contingere quod intendatur motus cuiuscumque generis sit ille motus, et tamen pro tunc potest per aliam motum minui mobile subiectum motui. Et quandoque econtra, quia potest minui motus quando pro tunc non minuitur mobile et quandoque pro tunc per quemdam alium motum potest intendi mobile, et ideo neuter illorum motuum potest esse idem realiter cum ipso mobili. Praeterea, qua ratione tu dicis quod motus localis est idem realiter cum ipso mobili, habeas dicere quod motus alterationis sit realiter quod ipsum alterabile. Et si dicas quod alteratio sit idem realiter quod ipsammet forma acquisita per alterationem, licet hoc sit contra Aristotelem, quinto Physicorum, ubi probat expresse contrarium; tamen hoc concesso, haberes dicere uniformiter quod motus localis sit realiter non quidem mobile set sit ipsum ubi quod per motum acquiritur, et Aristotelesmet de omnibus motibus in ordine ad suos terminos loquitur uniformiter, tertio Physicorum. Sed dicendo quod alteratio sit realiter res alterabilis cum alteratio secundum Aristotelem et Commentatorem, tertio Physicorum, commento quarto, uno modo secundum veriorem opinionem, sit ipsamet forma imperfecta intendens ad complementum et ex hoc ipso sit in genere in quo est forma, puta dealbatio, in genere in quo est albedo ac etiam in eadem specie, ergo subiectum alterabile quod dealbatur est ipsamet forma albedinis sub esse incompleto, et ita forma quae per motum acquirit erit subiectum motus, quod est inconveniens. Item subiectum alterabile idem realiter est in specie albedinis et idem realiter cum [albedine] nigredine [albedine] quando dealbatur, similiter erit in specie nigredinis et idem realiter cum albedine (ms: nigredine) quando denigratur, quae omnia sunt absurda. Sic enim dicam tibi quod eadem res quae est albedo est ipsa dulcedo in lacte quando dulcedo est, et est etiam ipsamet amaritudo quando sublata dulcedine a lacte est ibi amaritudo, et ita de omnibus absurdissimis mundi. Praeterea, agens reale applicatum applicatione reali circa passum dispositum reale causat aliquando eectum realem in ipso; sed movens mobile motu locali, puta movens caelum, est huiusmodi; ergo causat in
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ipso aliquem eectum et hoc /71ra/ positivum realem. Sed talis eectus nec est ipsum mobile nec locus, sed est ipsum ubi; ergo ubi est aliqua realitas positiva praeter mobile et praeter locum, et per consequens motus localis est aliqua realitas inherens mobili praeter locum. Conrmatur, quia videmus quod agentia intentionalia sicut sol et color et lumen causant aliquem eectum positivum in passo etiam a magna distantia. Dicere ergo quod movens non causet aliquem eectum positivum in mobili est valde irrationabile. Sed constat quod movens non causat mobile nec locum, ergo aliquam realitatem positivam ab utroque distinctam. Alias plus dicetur contra errorem istorum quando tractabo generalem abusionem quam ponunt, videlicet quod in eodem supposito nunquam concurrunt nisi duae distinctae realitates, scilicet substantia et qualitas; omnia autem entia, quaecumque sint illa, coincidunt in idem realiter cum altera istarum. Sed ad praesens ista suciant. Respondeo ad motivum ipsorum, quando dicunt: mobile quod est caelum est idem realiter cum suo motu, etc. Nego antecedens. Ad probationem dico quod illud quod habent ipsi pro inconvenienti non est inconveniens, sed neccessarium. Patet quod caelum cotidie recipiat et deperdat novam realitatem uxibilem, videlicet novum ubi uens acquisitum semper per novum motum localem, alias motor movendo caelum nihil reale causaret in ipso. Insuper nos videmus, nisi velimus negare sensum et totam scientiam astronomiae, quod luna cotidie recipit novum lumen a sole ex aliqua sui parte, et cotidie deperdit lumen receptum ex alia parte. Nec est inconveniens quod caelum subiciatur cotidie talibus novis realitatibus, dummodo non sint peregrinae impressiones abicientes per modum contrarii aliquid de dispositionibus, cum quaelibet substantia corporis caelestis habet neccesariam colligantiam. Et ideo motuum ipsorum in ista materia, sicut et in omnibus aliis consimilibus, frivolum est et penitus puerile. Ad argumentum principale quod est de motivis ipsorum, concedo maiorem, sed nego minorem. Et ad probationem dico quod non sucit solum mobile, immo est necessaria realitas motus per quem acquiritur mobili alius terminus, nec acquirit mobile aliud ubi distans a primo ubi nisi per prius superveniat mobili quaedam realitas sibi addita, quae est ipsamet translatio acquisitiva termini ad quem vadit, naturaliter dico loquendo. Et dato quod per divinam virtutem corpus mobile existens in uno ubi acquireret aliud ubi non dimittendo primum, ita quod non superveniret mobili realitas motus per quem dimitteret primum ubi et acquireret aliud, sed stante primo ubi acquireret aliud
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ubi, sicut est de corpore Christi in caelo et in sacramento altaris, vel sicut esset de quocumque alio corpore dummodo existens in plus acquireret aliud ubi, tunc tale mobile ita acquireret aliud novum ubi, quod tamen non moveretur, sicut non movetur corpus Christi existens in caelo quando acquirit aliud ubi in sacramento. Et ex hoc patet quod motus est alia realitas a mobili et a termino quod acquiritur mobili per ipsum motum. Sic ergo error istorum tamquam abusio dicatur. Et accedamus ad inquisitionem magis utilem de realitate ipsius motus. Nec oportet Philosophum volentem procere confundere realitates eorum et confugere ad proprietates grammaticales, ut habeatur fuga de non explicando realitates eorum et dicultates physicas circa ipsas. Immo quantum possumus investigare, tantum (ms: possumus) debemus explicite de quiditatibus rerum. Moveamus ergo aliquas quaestiones circa realitatem motus more Aristotelis et Commentatoris et aliorum philosophorum praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovantium grossitive antiquorum.
part four
AFTERMATH
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OCKHAMISM AMONG THE AUGUSTINIANS: THE CASE OF ADAM WODEHAM*
We have come a long way from the days when most Moderni were automatically assumed to be disciples of Ockham and when Gregory of Rimini could without hesitation be termed the standard-bearer of the Nominalists. As a result of the pioneering eorts of the last generation we are now becoming aware of the complexity of fourteenthcentury thought and the inappropriateness of our traditional labels. In fact, one of the few lines of intellectual continuity that has remained in fourteenth-century studies has been among the Augustinian Hermits, whose major representatives shared certain theological presuppositions and whose high regard for historical sources was one of the positive contributions of late medieval scholasticism. Despite dierences among Augustinians on individual points of philosophy and theology, John Hiltalingen of Basel felt the theologians of his order represented a school.1 Exactly in what sense that was true, what common characteristics distinguish the Augustinian Hermits from other late medieval groups, has been a question addressed by a number of scholars, chief among them Adolar Zumkeller and Damasus Trapp. Both these scholars have recognized the necessity of understanding the thought of individual members of the Augustinian order before we are in a position to search for the common tenets of an Augustinian School. The second, broader question, however, has remained in discussion, and the exact, critical research of Zumkeller and Trapp has begun to reveal common assumptions and approaches among some Austin Friars. One common approach has been a certain degree of anti-Ockhamism among the Augustinians. Certainly the strong commitment in Gregory of Rimini and Hugolino of Orvieto to Augustines
* Originally published in Scientia Augustiniana. Studien ber Augustinus, den Augustinismus und den Augustinerorden. Festschrift fr P. Dr. theol. Dr. phil. Adolar Zumkeller OSA zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Cornelius Petrus Mayer and Willigis Eckermann (Wrzburg: AugustinusVerlag, 1975), pp. 267275. 1 See D. Trapp, Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century, Augustiniana, 7 (1956), 248.
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view of grace and justication contrasts sharply with the semi-Pelagian soteriology of Ockham, Holcot, or Wodeham. Trapp has gone further to dierentiate in fourteenth-century thought between the logicocritical approach, dependent in large measure on Ockham, and the historico-critical approach evident among the Augustinian theologians. Trapp realized that these two approaches were positive contributions and could at times be closely related, but in general, particularly after 1340, there did seem to be a dierence in attitude, in approach, perhaps even in the degree of orthodoxy between the normally conservative, constructive Augustinians and the sometimes radical modernists. Both groups were moderni, but the radical modernists owed more to Ockham, Holcot, and Wodeham than they did to Giles of Rome, Thomas of Strasbourg, or Gregory of Rimini. The question of Augustinianism vs. Ockhamism has to some degree been derived from Reformation historiography, in particular what Martin Luther owed, either positively or negatively, to the theological traditions of his own order, the Augustinian Hermits, or to the theological traditions of his university training, dependent on the thought of Gabriel Biel who, in turn, was heavily dependent on Ockham. Inasmuch as Luthers teacher and friend, John Staupitz, was both an Austin Friar and a pupil of Biels immediate followers, these two traditions are hard to separate satisfactorily. There has, however, been a tendency to place most theologians of the Augustinian order at the opposite extreme from the supposed radical minds of the fourteenth century. The question I would like to pose is whether we are accurate in viewing fourteenth-century Augustinians as the committed opponents of radical nominalism or radical Ockhamism. Was there indeed a major split in the fourteenth century between the disciples of Ockham, particularly the so-called radical wings of Oxford and Paris, and the disciples of Giles of Rome, between the Nominalists and the Augustinians? We are far from being able to answer these questions, especially since the evaluation of Ockham and those inuenced by him has been undergoing rapid modication in recent decades. Although the connection between Ockham and such thinkers as Holcot and Wodeham seems secure, we do not know all the details of that connection, nor do we know the exact relationship between the Ockhamists at Oxford and the development of Parisian philosophy and theology in the decade 1340 1350. In light of the more favorable evaluation of Ockham in recent years, he may not be the best gure to choose in assessing the attitude of the Augustinian Hermits to radical nominalism. Although it has yet
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to be established that Adam Wodeham deserves that description, he may provide us with a better test case. He has generally been placed among the major representatives of radical nominalism at Oxford, his theology is supposed to be semi-Pelagian, and he was perhaps the major voice of Ockhams thought at Oxford in the fourth decade of the fourteenth century. In theory, the Augustinians should have had little use for Wodeham; in fact, they should have considered him a major enemy. If they did not, we are led either to view Wodeham as less of a radical mind or to view the polarization of Ockhamism vs. Augustinianism as a less than satisfactory description of the currents of fourteenth-century thought.
Gregory of Rimini The Oxford lectures of Wodeham on the Sentences as well as his earlier lectures at Norwich and London were available in some form in England by 1334.2 While there is no evidence that the Norwich lectures were known on the Continent, manuscripts of the London lectures as well as the Oxford lectures in one or more redactions crossed the Channel before 1342. From then on Wodeham became a familiar gure in the texts and margins of Sentences commentaries, not the least in those of the Austin Friars. Rimini seems to have been the rst author on the Continent to refer to the writings of Adam Wodeham. He was familiar with Wodehams bachelor lectures at Oxford, his London lectures, and even his magisterial lectures at Oxford. He also seems to have been familiar with Wodehams treatise on the continuum. The only work of Wodeham with which Rimini shows no familiarity is the Norwich lectures. While Rimini was aware of the close association of the thought of Wodeham and Ockham, he considered Wodeham an important voice in his own right and dealt with him accordingly. Thus we usually nd the name of Wodeham appearing on the margins of Rimini independent of Ockham citations.3
2 The dating and arrangement of the redactions of the Sentences commentary of Adam Wodeham are provided in Courtenay, Adam Wodeham. An Introduction to his Life and Writings, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 21 (Leiden, 1978). 3 Wodeham appears in association with Ockham ve times and independent of Ockham thirteen times. Surprisingly, Wodeham is linked occasionally with those to whom he was generally opposed, for example, Walter Chatton and Richard Fitzralph. For a list of Riminis citations of Wodeham see Trapp, Augustinian Theology, 205.
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One major question is whether Rimini ever favored Wodehams opinions or whether he was consistently opposed to them. The leading issue on which Rimini strongly rejected Wodehams view (and also the issue on which Wodeham and Ockham were closely linked) was the issue of grace and justication. There Rimini was convinced that Ockhams and Wodehams position amounted to Pelagianism.4 On a number of other issues Rimini seems only to have been moderately opposed to Wodehams positions.5 Indeed, Rimini sometimes borrowed arguments from Wodeham to esh out one side of a debate without attacking or approving Wodehams arguments.6 Less frequently Rimini acknowledged the value of Wodehams arguments. Sometimes he felt Wodehams position, although subtle, was insucient to solve the questionor, although good, was not totally persuasive.7 There are also several occasions in which Rimini felt Wodehams arguments were good and used them to support his own position.8 In general Riminis attitude toward Wodeham is slightly on the negative side, although not as much as one might expect. The number of times Wodeham is credited with a valid, convincing argument is almost equal to the number of times Rimini strongly rejected his opinions. It should also be kept in mind that Rimini did not usually cite in the margins or text those with whom he agreed, so that most of the marginalia tend to be of a negative variety. In sum, although Rimini felt certain
Cf. Gregory of Rimini, Super primum et secundum sententiarum (Venice, 1522; reprint, St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1955), II 92 GH; II 97 EF; II 97 OP; I 36 GH; II 55 P. [Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum, Sptmittelalter und Reformation, Texte und Untersuchungen 6, ed. D. Trapp and V. Marcolino, 6 vols. (BerlinNew York, 1979 1984), VI, pp. 1819, 6063, 6566; I, pp. 305306; V, pp. 8688.] 5 Cf. Ibid., I 3 M; I 13 JK; II 36 PQ; II 66 D. [Lectura I, pp. 25, 107; IV, pp. 306 307; V, p. 175.] 6 Cf. Ibid., I 29 OQ; I 31 C; I 102 G; I 102 O [Lectura I, pp. 247248, 258; VII, pp. 346347, 349. 7 Ibid., I 25 L [Lectura I, p. 212]: Ista opinio, quamvis [satis] subtiles imaginationes habeat nec forte bene possit contra protervum impugnari, non tamen apparet mihi vera, nec propter eius motiva videtur mihi discedendum esse a via communi. Cf. I 29 OQ and I 30 GL [Lectura I, pp. 247248, 251255], where Rimini feels Wodehams critique of Durand of St. Pourain insucient; II 56 J [Lectura V, p. 92]: Et quamvis uterque horum modorum sit possibilis de potentia Dei, ut utrumque ponit quidam solemnis doctor, neutrum alteri praeeligens, mihi tamen plus placet modus secundus. 8 Cf. Ibid., II 34 B [Lectura IV, pp. 284285]; II 66 B [Lectura V, p. 175]; II 80 C D [Lectura V, p. 294]; II 88 BC [Lectura V, p. 362]: Quamvis autem prima istarum duarum opinionum mihi valde probabilis videatur, haec tamen secunda [i.e. opinio Adae] plus placet.
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positions of Wodeham were detrimental to the faithprincipally those on justicationWodeham remained a theologian of stature whose support was sometimes sought by Rimini.
Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo Vargas was far less concerned with Wodeham than Rimini had been. In his commentary on the rst book of the Sentences Vargas refers to Wodeham only four times.9 If we are to judge by his quotations, he was familiar only with Wodehams bachelor lectures at Oxford, and possibly only the rst book. Since Vargas does not quote the same passages from Wodeham that appeared in Rimini or, when he does, does not follow Riminis text, it would appear that Vargas was directly familiar with Wodehams work. As with Rimini, so Vargas considers Wodeham separate from Ockham. Out of the four references only once does Wodehams name appear in close association with Ockham.10 Although Vargas does not appear to have been strongly antagonistic to Wodehams thought, he is usually critical of Wodehams conclusions. Only once does he name Wodeham in support of his argument.11
Hugolino of Orvieto Of all the Austin Friars in the fourteenth century, one of the most conservative, anti-Pelagian was Hugolino. In light of Hugolinos position on the question of universals and his dependence on Gregory of Rimini, Zumkeller conceded that Hugolino was inuenced by nominalism but that he was not an extreme nominalist, i. e., not an Ockhamist.12 If Trapps attempt to sever the connection between Rimini and Ockham, or between Rimini and nominalism, proves successful, then the only signicant tie between Hugolino and Ockhamism will also have been severed.
9 Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo, In primum sententiarum (Venice, 1490; reprint New York, 1952), cols. 183, 236, 301, and 481. 10 Ibid., cols. 236237. 11 Ibid., col. 481. 12 A. Zumkeller, Hugolin von Orvieto und seine theologische Erkenntnislehre (Wrzburg, 1941), pp. 257261.
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In light of recent research, therefore, one would expect to nd that the generally negative evaluation of Wodeham, evidenced in the pages of Rimini and Vargas, increased in the Sentences commentary of Hugolino. Such, however, seems not to be the case. It is true that he quotes Ockham only once in the rst book13 and refers to Wodeham some four times,14 treating both authors in a negative way. But in the section where he gives the greatest attention to Wodeham he is equally critical of Gregory of Rimini, his teacher.15 One has the feeling that to Hugolino Wodeham is an authority whose opinions may be rejected, not an enemy against whom his work is directed.
John Hiltalingen of Basel Until now we have been relying on those places where Wodeham is mentioned by name, either in the text or in the margins of Augustinian authors. This presents an overly negative view of the Augustinian attitude toward Wodeham, since as was stated above, earlier authors are usually cited only when their thought is being criticized. What of those times when there is unacknowledged agreement? With John of Basel we are shown not only his own attitude toward Wodeham but gain some insight into the relationship between Wodeham and previous Augustinians. Although Hiltalingen borrowed some of his references to Wodeham from others, he also appears to have read Wodeham rsthand, inasmuch as he cites sections in Wodehams works not quoted by earlier authors. Moreover, Hiltalingen was aware of Wodehams association with Ockham, but like Rimini Hiltalingen considered Wodeham a voice of authority in his own right. Hiltalingen made abundant use of Wodeham, often favoring his opinions.16 He quoted Wodeham some 27 times on a wide variety of
13 Hugolino of Orvieto, In primum sententiarum, dist. 1, q. 1, a. 3 (Rome, Angelica 4, fols. 35rb, 35va; Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 15840, fol. 23ra) [Commentarius in quattuor libros sententiarum, ed. W. Eckermann, 4 vols (Wrzburg, 1980), I, pp. 167171]. 14 Ibid., dist. 1, q. 1, a. 4 (Angelica 4, fols. 36rb, 37ra; Bibl. Nat. lat. 15840, fols. 23vb, 24va) [Commentarius, I, pp. 171182]; Ibid., dist. 1, q. 2, a. 2 (Angelica 4, fol. 40va; Bibl. Nat. lat. 15840, fol. 27va) [Commentarius, I, pp. 200208]; Ibid., dist. 1, q. 5. a. 4 (Angelica 4, fol. 51va; Bibl. Nat. lat. 15840, fol. 37va) [Commentarius, I, pp. 294296]. 15 Ibid., dist. 1, q. 1, a. 4 (Bibl. Nat. lat. 15840, fols. 23vb24va) [Commentarius, I, pp. 171 182]. 16 John Hiltalingen of Basel, Lectura; Mnchen, Staatsbibl. Clm 26711, fols. 42va42vb, 44va, 45ra (twice), 45rb, 46va46vb, 59rb.
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topics.17 He pointed to places where Hugolino and Vargas sided with Wodeham against Rimini.18 At other times Hiltalingen noted points on which Wodeham and Rimini were in agreement.19 If we are to judge by Hiltalingens commentary, a fellow Augustinian, Bonsemblans, whose Sentences commentary, if extant, has yet to be identied, made even greater use of Wodeham. Hiltalingen, who was frequently critical of Bonsemblans, noted at times the latters dependence on or agreement with Wodeham.20
Wodeham and the Augustinians as Viewed by Others Hiltalingen was not alone in noting that some of his fellow Augustinians were in agreement with Wodeham on certain issues. An academic contemporary of Hugolino, Peter Ceons, pointed out at least one issue on which Rimini sided with Wodeham.21 Moreover, toward the end of the century the Carmelite, John Brammart, noted further correspondence. While he frequently linked the names of Ockham and Wodeham,22 he also on occasion linked Hugolino or Rimini with Wodeham.23 If there was a school animosity between the Augustinians and the disciples of Ockham in the fourteenth century, one does not have the impression that those writing in the second half of that century were aware of it. Instead, it would seem that Wodeham was treated as one of several fourteenth-century authorities whose opinions were considered alongside and occasionally grouped with those of writers from the Augustinian order. This failure on the part of late fourteenthcentury theologians to recognize some fundamental division between
17 Cf. Trapp, Augustinian Theology, 245. Many of these quotations are examined in my Adam Wodeham. 18 Clm 26711, fol. 44va: De isto dubio Adam, libro primo, dist. 1, q. 2, tenet quod non, et concordat cum eo Hugolinus, libro primo, dist. 1, art. primo secundae quaestionis. Et hoc loquendo de nota experimentali oppositum tenet Gregorius, libro primo, dist. prima, q. 2, art. primo. Et tenet [Alphonsus Vargas] cum Hugonem et Adam, et solvit rationes oppositae positionis pulchre et diuse 19 Clm 26711, fols. 98rb, 135ra. 20 Clm 26711, fols. 98ra, 135va. [Principial questions from Bonsemblantes time as sententiarius have survived: Munich, Staatsbibl., Clm 26711, fols. 397r406v; Vatican, Vat. lat. 981, fols. 91r105v]. 21 Peter Ceons, In primum sententiarum, q. 21; Troyes 62, fol. 48ra. 22 John Brammart, Lectura; Wilhering 87, fols. 34ra, 36va, 38rb, 49va, 52vb. 23 Ibid., Wilhering 87, fol. 126va; Florence, Bibl. Naz. II. II. 281, fol. 72r.
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the Augustinians and the Ockhamists can be seen in the Sentences commentary of Marsilius of Inghen, a noted Ockhamist, at least in logic. Marsilius frequently acknowledged his intellectual debt to the Augustinian Thomas of Strasbourg and the Cistercian James of Eltville, and Trapp has already demonstrated the symbiotic relationship between Augustinian and Cistercian theologians.24 Marsilius noted that his knowledge of Wodeham, for whom he had great respect, was passed on to him through Eltville.25 Once more, therefore, the name of Wodeham appears linked with authors considered to represent the conservative tradition among the moderni.
Wodeham and the Spanish Augustinians The Augustinian interest in Wodeham was not restricted to the texts and margins of Augustinian Sentences commentaries. The history of the transmission of the Wodeham text points to a strong interest in the work of Wodeham on the part of the Augustinians. The subject index to Wodeham found frequently in manuscripts of Henry Totting of Oytas abbreviation of Wodehams Oxford lectures was compiled by a Spanish Augustinian, Master Peter Garini, on behalf of his confrere, Apparicius of Burgos.26 In all probability this index was done at Paris, since Garini felt obliged to identify Burgos as of the Spains, probably to distinguish it from Bourges. Both Spanish manuscripts of Oytas abbreviation contain Garinis index, and it was probably through Spanish Augustinians studying at Paris in the fteenth century that Wodeham was carried southward into Spain. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the publication of Oytas abbreviation in Paris was indebted to this Spanish interest in Wodeham. When John Major acquired a text of Oytas abbreviation to pubTrapp, Augustinian Theology, 251253. Marsilius of Inghen, Quaestiones super quattuor libros sententiarum (Strassburg, 1501; reprint, Frankfurt, 1966), fol. 475v. 26 Barcelona, Cathedral 38, fol. 183r: Tabula super opus Adae composita per rev. magistrum Petrum Garini ordinis Eremitarum Sancti Augustini. Cf. V. Doucet, Commentaires sur les sentences. Supplment au rpertoire de M. Frdric Stegmueller (Firenze, 1954), p. 8. In his introduction to his tabula Garini gives the circumstances behind its composition (Pamplona, Cathedral 1, fol. 180r): Quamquam obligatus rogationibus praedilecti in Christo et religione sacra heremitarum sancti Augustini confratris et socii Apparicii de Burgis Hyspaniarum abbreviatum opus Adae super Sententias per alphabetum tabulare praesumpsi
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lish, he did not use a copy from Paris (assuming one was accessible to him) but rather borrowed a copy from Peter Menenes, a student from Portugal.27 Thus the printed edition of Oytas abbreviation was based on the Spanish tradition and followed the form that that work had taken through the labors of those from south of the Pyrennees. It is of course true that the Augustinians of the fteenth and sixteenth centuries took a strong interest in the editing and dissemination of scholastic texts, both of their own order and of others. The fact that the Augustinians took an interest in Wodeham may have been due to this general interest in editing rather than a particular fondness for the thought of Wodeham. It should be noted, however, that the disciples of Ockham were not excluded in this editing process. Indeed, they seem to have been considered of major signicance. In addition to the improvement of the form of Oytas abbreviation of Wodeham, one might also note in this regard that the revision of the early printed edition of Robert Holcot, Ockhams other major English disciple, was undertaken by the Augustinian Hermit, Augustinus von Regensburg.
Concluding Remarks In light of the extensive familiarity with Wodeham that one nds among the Augustinians, their respect for him as an authority, and the respect on the part of some for his thought, it may be well not to overstress the dichotomy between the Ockhamist and Augustinian traditions in the fourteenth century. The Augustinians were certainly aware of the ties, indeed the close relationship, between Wodeham and Ockham, and yet they did not hesitate to incorporate Wodeham into the structure of their scholastic arguments. Beyond cautioning us not to polarize the Augustinians and Ockhamists in the fourteenth century, the case of Wodeham among the Augustinians suggests that Wodeham may not have been as radical or the Augustinian theologians as opposed to the thought of Ockham and his disciples as we generally have concluded.
27 From John Majors introduction to the 1512 edition of Oytas abbreviation of Wodehams Sentences commentary: sed illustris viri et eruditi Petri Menenes Lusitani in theosophia (!) bacchalarii exemplar procuravimus mediocriter castigatum quod imitari pro maiori parte elaboravimus curantes ut tabula alphabetica ad folia et columnas adderetur.
chapter seventeen
THEOLOGIA ANGLICANA MODERNORUM AT COLOGNE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY*
The intellectual history of Cologne in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries has largely been studied from the standpoint of Thomism, Albertism, and the dominance of the via antiqua. Two of the leading historians of fourteenth-century Cologne, Gabriel Lhr and Martin Grabmann, concentrated their attention on the Dominicans and the strength of Thomism at Cologne in the post-Eckhart period.1 And although the earliest statutes for the University of Cologne (1398) permitted the use of terminist textbooks, such as the commentaries of John Buridan, the via antiqua supposedly gained the upper hand by 1415 and opposed attempts by the Electors in 1425 to impose the writings of the leading authors of the via moderna: William of Ockham, John Buridan, and Marsilius of Inghen.2 Cologne therefore, like the university of Louvain, was thought to have been dominated by the via antiqua almost from its
* Originally published in Die Klner Universitt im Mittelalter (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 20), ed. Albert Zimmermann (BerlinNew York: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), pp. 245254. 1 G.M. Lhr, Beitrge zur Geschichte des Klner Dominikanerklosters im Mittelalter (Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerordens in Deutschland, 1517), vol. I: Darstellung (Leipzig, 1920); vol. II: Quellen (Leipzig, 1922); Lhr, Die theologischen Disputationen und Promotionen an der Universitt Kln im ausgehenden 15. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1926); M. Grabmann, Einzelgestalten aus der mittelalterlichen Dominikaner- und Thomistenschule, in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, vol. II (Munich, 1936), pp. 512613; Lhr, Die Klner Dominikanerschule vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (Freiburg i. B., 1946; Kln, 1948); Grabmann, Der Sentenzenkommentar des Magister Henricus de Cervo und die Klner Dominikanertheologie des 14. Jahrhunderts, in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, vol. III (Munich, 1956), pp. 352369. See also F. Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia des Pisaner Papstes Alexanders V, (Mnster i. W., 1925), pp. 146157, 281290. 2 For the Latin text of the universitys response of 1425 see Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar, pp. 282285. See also F. Benary, Via antiqua und via moderna auf den deutschen Hochschulen des Mittelalters mit besonderer Bercksichtigung der Universitt Erfurt, in Zur Geschichte der Stadt und der Universitt Erfurt am Ausgang des Mittelalters (Gotha, 1919); G. Ritter, Studien zur Sptscholastik, vol. II: Via antiqua und via moderna auf den deutschen Universitten des XV. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1922); N.W. Gilbert, Ockham, Wyclif, and the via moderna, in: Antiqui und Moderni (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 9), ed. A. Zimmermann (Berlin, 1974), pp. 85125; A.L. Gabriel, Via antiqua and via moderna and the Migration of Paris Students and Masters to the German Universities in the Fifteenth Century, in Antiqui und Moderni, pp. 439483.
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very founding in contrast to Erfurt and Heidelberg, where the via moderna presumably reigned supreme. Several decades ago when working on Gabriel Biel I came upon some information that ran counter to conventional wisdom. Biel, who had taken his arts education at Heidelberg and had probably begun the study of theology at Erfurt, acquired his copy of the Sentences commentary of Ockham not at those universitiesthe supposed centers of the via moderna in Germanybut at Cologne, where he matriculated in 1453 in order to complete his theological degree.3 Moreover, Eggeling Becker von Braunschweig, whose nominalistic commentary on the canon of the mass was later redelivered and made famous by his friend and associate Biel, also received the most important part of his theological education at Cologne in the 1450s.4 Are these biographical details simply isolated exceptions to the hegemony of the via antiqua or were the textbooks and approaches of the via moderna a more important undercurrent at Cologne than has generally been recognized? And to the degree that texts of authors associated with the via moderna were available at Cologne in the middle of the fteenth century, was this simply a continuation of interests introduced by German students from Paris and Heidelberg in the late fourteenth century, a subsequent eect of the interchange of texts and learning produced through student migrations in the fteenth century, or is there a longer and more direct history to the presence of these texts at Cologne before the founding of the university? Before approaching these questions, several observations need to be made on the relation of the two viae and the curricular concerns of the various faculties at Cologne. Statements relating to curriculum in the early statutes of Cologne as well as the Wegestreit documents of 1415 and 1425 all concern the study of logic and natural philosophy within the arts faculty. The use within the theological faculty of works by Ockham, Buridan, Marsilius, or other modern authors may not have
3 On Biels education see H.A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 1012; W.J. Courtenay, The Eucharistic Theology of Gabriel Biel, doc. diss., Harvard University, 1967. For Biels entrance into Cologne see H. Keussen, Die Matrikel der Universitt Kln, vol. I: 1389 bis 1559 (Bonn, 1892), p. 561. Biels copy of Ockhams Ordinatio is Giessen, Univ. Bibl. 773, discussed in Ockham, Opera Theologica II, ed. S. Brown and G. Gl (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1970), pp. 8*13*. See also my Adam Wodeham (Leiden, 1978), p. 134. 4 A. Franz, Die Messe im deutschen Mittelalter (Freiburg i. B., 1902); Courtenay, Eucharistic Theology.
theologia anglicana modernorum at cologne
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been such a major issue. It was in the theological faculty that Biel and Becker were enrolled. Moreover, students from the mendicant orders did not take the arts degree and were not under the jurisdiction of the arts faculty, although lectures on logic and natural philosophy were presumably held in mendicant convents. Thus the conict between the via moderna and the via antiqua, to the degree it was limited to the arts faculty, concerned mendicants and those in the higher faculties only indirectly if at all. Finally, even though the texts of the via moderna included both English and Parisian authors, it is important for an understanding of the fourteenth-century background to dierentiate between realist versions of terminism (as found in Peter of Spain and Walter Burley) and so-called nominalist versions, and among the latter between English authors, such as Ockham, and Parisian authors such as Buridan and Marsilius. It will be the contention of the following remarks that the newer English works in theology, which incorporated problems and approaches of English logic and mathematical physics into theology, came into Cologne in the second and third quarters of the fourteenth century, and that these works probably entered through the mendicant orders, including the Dominicans, and through German students who attended Oxford or other studia in England. The extent of the eect of these texts upon the intellectual life of Cologne before the founding of the university is harder to assess but needs to be examined as well.
The Cologne Abbreviation of Wodehams Lectura The rst item in our list of texts representing the other side of Colognes intellectual life is an abbreviation or Extractio of the Lectura Oxoniensis of Adam Wodeham, Ockhams closest but often independent disciple and fellow Franciscan. Several abbreviations were made of Wodehams Oxford Sentences commentary in the course of the fourteenth century. The earliest such abbreviation is one that was compiled at Cologne and survives in two manuscripts.5 The Cologne provenance is based on a passage in book III, q. 3 in which Wodeham mentioned the name of the then reigning pope, John XXII (d. 1334). Later redactions and abbreviations of Wodehams Lectura updated that passage to correspond
5 Hannover, Stadtbibl., Hs. 1, fols. 1r47v, 69v75r, 76v; Naples, Bibl. Naz., Cod.VII.C.53, fols. 1r109v. See Adam Wodeham, pp. 215222.
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to the pope at the time of the later version: in the case of Wodehams own post-1334 redaction, Benedict XII, and in the case of Henry Totting of Oytas abbreviation, Gregory XI. In both manuscripts of the abbreviation under discussion here, one of which was copied in southern Italy later in the fourteenth century, the name of the then reigning pope was replaced with the name of the then reigning count from the region in which the redaction was made: Comes Adolphus de Monte. The county of Mons (or Berg), on whose western edge Cologne was situated, was absorbed into a larger territorial duchy in 1380, and the only Count Adolf von Berg in the period was Adolf IX, count of Berg from 1308 to 1348. As I argued in my Adam Wodeham, that evidence places this particular redaction at Cologne between 1334 (the date for the completion of Wodehams Oxford lectures) and 1348 (the date of Adolf s death).6 The Cologne abbreviation is not simply a scribal redaction prepared at Cologne for use elsewhere, although that in itself would be of considerable interest. The structure and additions to the text suggest that it was composed as a separate series of lectures, presumably given at Cologne, which were based onin fact were primarily a rereading ofWodehams lectura. The practice of reading lectures on the Sentences secundum alium was frequently employed in the second half of the fourteenth century and invariably meant that the second author held the original author in very high esteem. In this case we have an early instance of the practice. The Cologne redactor was probably lecturing in one of the schools or convents of that city to an audience of theological students. A Franciscan seems the most likely candidate, but the later case of Oyta proves that secular theologians were also attracted to Wodehams work. We also do not know the means by which Wodehams Lectura reached Cologne. Wodeham may have passed through Cologne on his way to Basel in 1339.7 There were also German students at Oxford who might have brought such newer texts back to Germany with them. The respect in which continental authors held English texts on logic, natural philosophy, and theology, particularly in the decades after 1340, is probably sucient reason for this text appearing at Cologne at such an early date.
Adam Wodeham, pp. 133135. Analecta Franciscana, 2 (1887), 177; A.G. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford, 1892), p. 173.
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The Presence of English Texts at Cologne
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In addition to the Cologne redaction of Wodehams Sentences commentary a number of other works by fourteenth-century English authors found their way into the scholarly community at Cologne. One piece of evidence is found in a manuscript from the Historisches Stadtarchiv in Cologne, GB 2 175. The manuscript is a collection of various philosophical and theological works and groups of questions, many of them from fourteenth-century Sentences commentaries. Much of the manuscript has the appearance of a student notebook. It was acquired by a religious community in Cologne, and portions of it may have been copied there. On fols. 146v147v, in a script dating from the third quarter of the fourteenth century, occurs a question on distinction 40 of book I of the Sentences: Utrum aeternaliter praedestinatus possit dampnari. On fol. 146vb (and in a copy of the identical text on fol. 147ra) the otherwise unidentied author responds according to one doctor, Ockham, whom he claims to have seen, perhaps in Munich or, if he was a Franciscan, at one of the provincial chapters.8 The contact would have had to have occurred before Ockhams death in 1347, although this commentary could have been written somewhat later but certainly before 1360. The argument our author adopts concerned propositions de possibili in sensu diviso sive in sensu composito. Since we only have one short and incomplete question from this author, it is impossible to know how frequently he followed or adopted the arguments and conclusions of Ockham. But his assumption that his personal acquaintance with Ockham would be of importance to his readers and help substantiate his argument is a remarkable witness to the celebrity status of Ockham in Germany and the inuence of his ideas at mid-century. Another manuscript in the same collection, GB 4 186, contains on fols. 1r130r the Sentences commentary, Sex articuli, and De stellis of Robert Holcot, O.P. The manuscript was copied around 1375 by Henricus de Dalen and belonged to the Carmelite convent at Cologne. Although the intellectual or ideological relationship of Holcot and Ockham has incorrectly been seen as very close, there is little question that Holcot
8 Kln, Historisches Stadtarchiv, GB 2 175, fols. 146vb and 147ra: Respondeo secundum unum doctorem quem ego vidi, scilicet Ockham, qui dicit quod propositio de possibili in sensu diviso non habet generaliter poni(?) in esse, licet nisi tantum in sensu compositionis. See Ockham, Summa logicae III, 1, c. 2325 (Opera philosophica, I), ed. G. Gl et al. (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), pp. 419427. The manuscript also contains on fols. 79r94r the opening section of the Sentences commentary of James of Spinalo.
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was among the more critically speculative English theologians in the fourteenth century, and the questions in his Sentences commentary make full use of the terminist logic of his day. Our third item is the rst half of a manuscript from the Vatican Palatine collection, Vatican Pal. lat. 329, which was originally part of the Electors library at Heidelberg. In a partially erased colophon, the words anno 77 appear, on the basis of which, along with the fact that the manuscript contained works of authors thought to be fteenth century, the Vatican cataloguer dated the manuscript to 1477.9 All the works contained in the manuscript are now known to have been composed in the 13351365 period, and the handwriting of this manuscript copy, which has some English characteristics, is almost certainly late fourteenth century.10 Thus a date of 1377 can be assigned to the manuscript, and the remaining part of the colophon indicates that it was copied by a friar in Cologne.11 The rst half of this manuscript contains several works of interest. One of these (fols. 94r140v) is the Sentences commentary of Thomas Buckingham, an important modern English author who composed that work around 1335.12 Buckingham was, alongside Ockham, Fitzralph, Wodeham, and Bradwardine, one of the recent English scholastics most frequently cited by continental authors in the period after 1340. As was true of Fitzralph and Bradwardine, his name was particularly linked to problems of divine volition, human freedom, and future contingents. The importance of the Buckingham section to the early possessors of the manuscript is reected in the fact that the entire manuscript is erroneously labeled as Buckinghams work. The manuscript also contains the only copy of the Sentences commentary of Hermann Hetzstede, a Dominican who probably read at Magdeburg or Erfurt (or even possibly Cologne) sometime in the 1360s, and one of the few extant copies of the Sentences commentary of Heinrich Hager, another Dominican who read at Cologne in the 1360s.13 Neither
9 Vatican, Pal. lat. 329, fol. 145v: Expliciunt tituli istius libri. Iste liber fuit scriptus in Colonia per me fratrem anno 77. 10 The scribal hand in the manuscript has strong English characteristics, e. g. the forked re combination, the 6-form of the s used at the beginning and end of words, and the angular suspension mark for an er contraction. 11 See above, note 9, and Vatican, Pal. lat 329, fol. 146v: In Colonia anno 12 On Buckingham see J.A. Robson, Wyclif and the Oxford Schools (Cambridge, 1961); Courtenay, Adam Wodeham; B.R. De la Torre, Thomas Buckingham and the Contingency of Futures (Notre Dame, 1987). 13 On Hermann Hetzstede (Hettstede or Hettstedt) see T. Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis
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Hetzstedes nor Hagers commentary shows any particular inuence of fourteenth-century authors, English or continental, whose names eventually become linked to the via moderna.14 Thus their inclusion here in the company of Buckingham only shows the range of interests of the scribe or of those for whom the volume was being prepared. There is nothing unusual about Buckinghams Sentences commentary appearing in a continental manuscript in 1377. His name and commentary were known at Paris as early as 1343.15 What is remarkable here is that this text was copied at Cologne in all probability by and for the Dominicans. The manuscripts bias in the direction of recent DominiPraedicatorum Medii Aevi, vol. II (Rome, 1975), p. 224. Hetzstede was lector at the Erfurt convent, M.Th., prior of the Saxon Province from 1374 to 1376, and Inquisitor haereticae pravitatis in 13741375. He died at Avignon in 1376 and was buried in the choir of the Dominican convent. Heinrich Hager is discussed in Kaeppeli, Scriptores, II, p. 196. Hager was closely associated with the Dominican convent at Wrzburg. He was lector there in 1359 and prior in 1372 and 1374. His Cologne lectures should probably be placed in the early 1360s. For further discussion see J. Koch, Durand de S. Porciano O. P. (Munich, 1927), p. 251; Lhr, Die Klner Dominikanerschule vom 14. his zum 16. Jahrhundert, p. 47. Manuscript copies of all four books of his commentary were once extant, but since the loss of the Mnster collection in World War II, only copies of books IIIIV remain. 14 Although the commentaries of both Hetzstede and Hager have had only cursory examination, it would appear that Thomas was the favored and most frequently cited authority for Hetzstede. The role of Thomas for Hager is less certain. At various times he referred his readers to the arguments and conclusions of an otherwise unidentied Gerardus. The Carmelite theologian Gerard of Bologna comes most readily to mind, but the question titles cited by Hager do not correspond with those of the Sentences commentary or Quodlibets of that Gerard. The same is true for the Dominican Gerard of Bren. 15 Buckingham was cited in Gregory of Riminis commentary on the rst two books of the Sentences, read at Paris in 13421344. See the introduction and notes in Rimini, Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum, ed. D. Trapp, V. Marcolino, et al. (Berlin, 19791984). Buckingham was also a major source for John of Mirecourt, who read the Sentences at Paris in 1345. On Mirecourts use of Buckingham and other English sources see Courtenay, John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini on Whether God can Undo the Past, RTAM, 39 (1972) 224256; 40 (1973) 147174; J.-F. Genest, La bibliothque anglaise de Jean de Mirecourt: subtilitas ou plagiat? in Die Philosophie im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert. In memoriam Konstanty Michalski (18791947), ed. O. Pluta (Amsterdam, 1988). For the transmission of the newer English logic, natural philosophy, and theology to continental studia see Courtenay, The Role of English Thought in the Transformation of University Education in the Late Middle Ages, in Rebirth, Reform and Resilience: Universities in Transition, 13001700, ed. J.A. Kittelson and P.J. Transue (Columbus, 1984), pp. 103162; The Early Stages in the Introduction of Oxford Logic into Italy, in English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. A. Maier (Naples, 1982), pp. 1332; The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, in Preuve et raisons lUniversit de Paris: Logique, ontologie et thologie au XlVe sicle, ed. Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (Paris, 1984), pp. 4364 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 8].
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can authors certainly points in that direction. And since the manuscript was copied at Cologne, the exemplars from which it was copied were also extant there by 1377. A nal piece of evidence comes from an Eichsttt manuscript, copied by the Dominican theologian Heinrich Trglein while he was resident at a number of Dominican studia in the 1380s and early 1390s, including Regensburg and Cologne.16 The manuscript is a notebook of questions, per modum notabilium, drawn from various authors including four Dominicans (Durand of St. Pourain, Gerard de Bren, Rycholf de Via Lapidea, and Heinrich Hager), two Augustinians (Angelus de Ancona and Facinus de Ast), and others. Among the texts Trglein copied at Cologne and preserved in this manuscript are two questions taken from the Sentences commentary of Robert of Halifax, an English Franciscan author active in the late 1330s and one of the more popular English moderni.17 The questions Trglein assembled were not ones he thought suspect and useful as counterarguments to be answered, but rather were ones he felt important and helpful, bonae et utiles as he expressed it at one point.18 Again, the presence in Germany in the second half of the fourteenth century of a copy of all or some of Halifaxs commentary is not particularly remarkable. What is of interest is that it was copied at Cologne by a Dominican theologian with extensive experience in the Dominican studia of central and southern Germany.
Channels of Transmission We will never be able to chart precisely the means by which these modern English theological texts reached Cologne. The presence of Ockham in Germany made some impact on the author of our second text, but the position he cites was almost certainly derived from Ockhams written works, most notably his Summa logicae. But Ockhams presence in Germany was for political, not academic reasons. Cologne was rarely a chosen place of study or teaching for students or masters from the British Isles. Duns Scotus had been sent there to teach by
Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben III, pp. 366368. Eichsttt, Universittsbibl. 471, fol. 195v: Explicit dicta diversorum doctorum supra libros sententiarum 1590 Colonie. Also fol. 35v. On Halifax see Courtenay, Some Notes on Robert of Halifax, O.F.M., FS, 33 (1973), 135142. 18 Eichstatt 471, fol. 121vb.
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his order, but sent from Paris as a Parisian master, not as a theologian from England or Scotland. We cannot, however, discount the role of other English scholastics who may have passed through Cologne while on business in German-speaking lands, such as Wodehams presence in Basel in 1339 and John of Rodingtons visit to Basel in 1340.19 An equal if not more important avenue for the transmission of the newer English texts were the German students who chose or were sent to England for study. Many prominent German Carmelites were for a time connected with their studium generale at London.20 There was also a growing number of German students at Oxford beginning in the 1340s. One arts student by the name of Sifridus wrote a series of determinationes on Metaphysics at Oxford in 1343, and in that same year a Franciscan from Cologne by the name of Hermann was resident at the Oxford convent and associated with John Lathbury.21 The Augustinian friar John Klenkok read the Sentences at Oxford in 1354 before returning to Germany; in 1370 the Oxford sententiarius for the Augustinians was Gyso of Cologne, while that of the Oxford Dominicans was Heinrich Alberti.22 Heinrich von Sachsen was in that same year also resident at Blackfriars Oxford.23 The list could be extended and in any case would never reect the full extent of German participation in English studia. Presumably the views and texts acquired in England would be brought home to German studia by these scholars upon their return.
Analecta Franciscana, 2 (1887), 177; 3 (1897), 638. F. Lickteig, The German Carmelites at the Medieval Universities, doc. diss., Catholic University of America, 1977, pp. 430436. 21 BRUO I, p. 470; A.G. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford, pp. 235236. The relationship of Hermann of Cologne and John Lathbury O.F.M. may be a clue to another mystery. One portion of Vatican, Vat. lat. 829 that seems concerned with Franciscan authors and some Dominicans, namely fols. 56v148v, begins (fol. 57r) with some questions under the title De distinctione et respectibus lat and on the opposite page (fol. 56v) above some miscellaneous notes occurs: pro I lat and Hermannus doctor. Is it possible to read the former as pro I oanne Lat hbiri ? On Lathbury, see B. Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity (Oxford, 1960), pp. 221239. The latter section of Vat. lat. 829, fols. 149r227v was originally a separate manuscript and contains some lesser known English Dominican authors from the second quarter of the fourteenth century. It is presently under study by Hester Gelber. 22 BRUO, pp. 17, 469470. On Klenkok see D. Trapp, Notes on John Klenkok, OSA, (d. 1374), Augustinianum, 4 (1964) 358404. 23 BRUO, p. 1621.
19 20
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How extensive an inuence these and other English texts had at Cologne is a quite dierent question and dicult to answer. Most of the prominent English moderni were Franciscans or secular theologians, and few works produced at the Franciscan studium at Cologne or by secular theologians studying at Cologne in the fourteenth century have survived. The Dominican and Augustinian authors are far better represented, but those whose works have been studied do not show any extensive use of the newer linguistic and logical methods, nor do they adopt the solutions proposed by the English moderni. This is certainly true for the Thomistic mid-century Dominican Heinrich de Cervo,24 and may well be true for Gerard de Bren and Rycholf de Via Lapidea, who have received almost no study to date. Rycholf was active at Cologne in the 1360s and Gerard, who probably commented on the Sentences between 1350 and 1389 (when Trglein copied his commentary), may have lectured at Cologne as well. The same is true for our two other German Dominicans of the 1360s, Hetzstede and Hager, both of whom essentially escaped the notice of Grabmann and Lhr.25 Dominican interest in modern English theologians was not unusual. Almost all German manuscripts of the English Franciscan, Robert of Halifax, belonged to Dominican convents.26 The interaction between German Dominicans and these English texts stimulated opposition more often perhaps than emulation.27 Yet the positive collecting inGrabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, III, pp. 352369. The commentaries of Hetzstede and Hager have not received the attention they deserve, although there are grounds for believing that Hager was almost as inuential as Heinrich Cervo on whom Grabmann lavished so much attention. Judgment must be reserved until a thorough study has been made, but it is likely that Hetzstedes commentary leans in a Thomistic direction. Thomas is the only scholastic author of the previous century mentioned by name, and he is referred to as the holy doctor. A similar impression is derived from the folia of Hagers commentary, which appears very traditional and frequently uses Thomas in support of his position. The only modern author cited by Hager is the otherwise unidentied Gerard, and his dependence on this author is so extensive that at many points he directs his readers to the text of Gerard as containing what he would himself say on particular questions. 26 Eichsttt, Universittsbibl. ms 471 comes from the Eichsttt Dominican convent; Frankfurt a. M., Univ. Bibl., Barth. 75 from the Frankfurt Dominican convent; and similarly Vienna, Dominikaner Konvent ms 108. I have not as yet determined the provenance of Magdeburg, Stadtbibl. Fol. 140. 27 John de Hurwin of Constance, for example, was familiar with William Heytesburys Insolubilia and in 1360 at Cologne, in the second year of his lectorate, wrote a refutation on one of Heytesburys questions.
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stincts of Trglein were no doubt shared by other Dominicans, and one can assume that the Franciscans were even more open to the newer English theology. Cologne in the fourteenth century was much more of a market place for the academic exchange of ideas than has been realized. An assessment of the extent of that inuence must await a more extensive study of the surviving philosophical and theological texts of that period of Colognes intellectual history.
chapter eighteen
WAS THERE AN OCKHAMIST SCHOOL?* In the autumn of 1921 Gerhard Ritter published the rst volume of his trilogy on late scholasticism: Marsilius von Inghen und die okkamistische Schule in Deutschland.1 At the time Ritter conceived his project and for many years thereafter, there was no doubt about the existence and importance of the reality expressed in the second half of his title. Since Louis XIs prohibition of the doctrina of the doctores renovatores at Paris in 1474, a group of names in late scholasticismnames no doubt supplied by the Realist opponents of the Nominalistshave been linked in a tradition that was traced back to Ockham.2 Within this tradition, variously understood in later historiography by the supposedly interchangeable labels of Nominalistae, Terministae, Occamistae, or via moderna, were placed Ockham, Adam Wodeham, John Buridan, Gregory of Rimini, John of Mirecourt, Marsilius of Inghen, Albert of Saxony, John Dorp, and Pierre dAilly.3 To that list the subsequent apologia by the Nominalists added the name of Jean Gerson.4
* Presented at a symposium in Tbingen in 1991 and published in Philosophy and Learning. Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. M.J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H.J. Schneider, and G. Wieland (LeidenNew YorkKln: E.J. Brill, 1995), pp. 263292. 1 G. Ritter, Marsilius von Inghen und die okkamistische Schule in Deutschland (Heidelberg, 1921). The other volumes in his Studien zur Sptscholastik were Via Antiqua und Via Moderna auf den deutschen Universitten des XV. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1922) and Neue Quellenstcke zur Theologie des Johann von Wesel (Heidelberg, 19261927). 2 Printed many times, the standard edition of the text is found in F. Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia des Pisaner Papstes Alexanders V, FzS, Beiheft 9 (Mnster i.W., 1925), pp. 313314. 3 Ibid.: () quam sit quorundam aliorum Doctorum Renovatorum doctrina, ut puta Guillelmi Okam, Monachi Cisterciensis [= John of Mirecourt], de Arimino [= Gregory of Rimini], Buridani, Petri de Alliaco, Marsilii, Adam, Dorp, Alberti de Saxonia, suorumque similium, quam nonnulli, ut dictum est, eiusdem Universitatis Studentes, quos Nominales, seu Terministas vocant, imitari non verentur. 4 Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, p. 322: Reales autem haec omnia negligunt et contemnunt dicentes: Nos imus ad res, de terminis non curamus. Contra quos magister Johannes de Guersonno: Dum vos ad res itis, terminis neglectis, in totam rei caditis ignorantiam. Ibid., p. 324: suscitavit Deus Doctores catholicos: Petrum de Allyaco, Johannem de Gersonno, et alios quamplures doctissimos viros Nominales . The inclusion of Gerson by the 1474 Nominalistae was probably based on their desire
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It should be noted, as Neal Ward Gilbert already pointed out, that the names in this list in Louiss 1474 Edict were not labeled Nominalists but renovating doctors whose doctrine had inspired late fteenth-century Nominalistae or Terministae at Paris.5 Those listed were not described as members of a school but as authoritative sources for a school. Moreover, some of those named, such as Ockham, Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, Albert of Saxony, and John Dorp, were known for their works in logic and their Aristotelian commentaries, although Ockham and Marsilius had also written important theological works. Others, such as Wodeham, Mirecourt, Rimini, and dAilly were theologians who applied principles of Terminist logic to theological problems. Finally, while only two of those named were English authors, the othersall Parisian scholars, three of whom belonged to the EnglishGerman Nationcould be viewed as English-inuenced.6
to claim the mantle of one of the most respected and inuential Parisian guresa ploy made plausible by Gersons personal association with dAilly and by Gersons opposition to the realist Formalizantes. That association led most historians until recently to view Gerson as one of the most important late medieval Nominalists and to attempt to document that throughout his work. Only in the last two decades has there emerged a more balanced picture of Gerson, who after his chancellorship reformed university teaching by opposing English inuence and the techniques of analysis and argumentation found in Ockham, Buridan, Rimini, Mirecourt, Marsilius and others. See especially S. Ozment, The University and the Church. Patterns of Reform in Jean Gerson, Medievalia and Humanistica, n.s., 1 (1970), 111126; Mysticism, Nominalism, and Dissent, in Pursuit of Holiness, ed. C. Trinkaus and H.A. Oberman (Leiden, 1974), pp. 6792; W. Hbener, Der theologisch-philosophische Konservatismus des Jean Gerson, in Antiqui und Moderni, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 9 (Berlin, 1974), pp. 171200; Z. Kaluza, Le chancelier Gerson et Jrome de Prague, AHDLMA, 51 (1984), 81 126; Les Querelles doctrinales Paris. Nominalistes et realistes aux conns du XIVe et du XVe sicles (Bergamo, 1988); M.S. Burrows, Jean Gerson after Constance: Via Media et Regia as a Revision of the Ockhamist Covenant, Church History, 59 (1990), 467481. 5 N.W. Gilbert, Ockham, Wyclif, and the Via Moderna, in Antiqui und Moderni, pp. 85125, at 94. For the text, see above, note 3. 6 N.W. Gilbert, Richard de Bury and the Quires of Yesterdays Sophisms, in Philosophy and Humanism. Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. E.P. Mahony (New York, 1976), pp. 229257; J. Murdoch, Subtilitates Anglicanae in FourteenthCentury Paris: John of Mirecourt and Peter Ceons, in Machauts World: Science and Art in the Fourteenth Century, ed. M.P. Cosman and B. Chandler (New York, 1978), pp. 5186; W.J. Courtenay, The Role of English Thought in the Transformation of University Education in the Late Middle Ages, in Rebirth, Reform, and Resilience: Universities in Transition, 13001700, ed. J.M. Kittelson and P. Transue (Columbus, Ohio, 1984), pp. 103162; G. Ouy, Un commentateur des Sentences au XIVe sicle, Jean de Mirecourt, Thse, cole des Chartes, 1946; summarized in cole Nationale des Chartes. Positions des Thses soutenues par les lves de la promotion de 1946 pour obtenir le diplme darchiviste palographe (Paris, 1946), 117122.
was there an ockhamist school?
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The list was essentially an expansion on a basic grouping that had originated earlier in the century. Jean de Maisonneuve, in his treatise on universals written between 1406 and 1418, had criticized the approach to logic and metaphysics found in Ockham, Buridan, and Marsilius.7 That association was echoed in the 1427 statute at Louvain, under the inuence of the Realists, which prohibited the doctrine of Buridan, Marsilius, Ockham, and their followers.8 The opposing group accepted much of that pedigree, as is reected in the decree of the Electors at Cologne in 1425 that the university/arts faculty should adopt as a mode of teaching and lecturing the works and approach of Buridan, Marsilius, and their followers.9 And in the Nominalist response of 1474 they traced their origins back to Ockham, whom they included within the Nominalist group.10 When, where, and why the list of modern authors was expanded to include theologians are interesting questions. The proscribed list of renovating doctors in the 1474 Edict applies just as much to the faculty of theology as it does to arts. This goes well beyond the language used earlier in the century and may have resulted from the fact that the Louvain controversy on future contingents between Peter de Rivo and Henry de Zomeren, which led to the Parisian realist manifesto of 1471 and from there to the Edict of 1474, was as much a theological controversy as a philosophical one.11 But the cross-disciplinary implications of Gersons attack on the corrupting inuence of English sophistical
7 sed sunt Epicuri litterales sequentes condemnatam Parisius Occanicum discoliam cum collegiis, scilicet, Buridani et Marsilii, qui Occam Anglicus fuit emulator paternarum traditionum et non insecutor Aristotelis et aliorum antiquorum (). A.G. Weiler, Un trait de Jean de Nova Domo sur les Universaux, Vivarium, 6 (1968), 108154, at 137; Gilbert, Ockham, Wyclif, pp. 9697; Znon Kaluza, Le De universali reali de Jean de Maisonneuve et les epicuri litterales, Freiburger Zeitschrift fr Philosophie und Theologie, 33 (1986), 469516; Kaluza, Querelles. For the dating of Maisonneuves De universali reali see Kaluza, Querelles, p. 91. 8 Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, p. 159: Nullus magister debeat recipi aut admitti ad regentiam, nisi iuret, se nunquam doctrinare Buridanum, Marsilium, Ockam, aut eorum sequaces. 9 Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, p. 282: Magistri moderniores, ut Buridanus, Marcilius, et eorum College sive sequaces (). 10 More precisely, Ockham was not described as the rst Nominalist or as founder of a school, but as the rst Nominalist to be attacked. Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, p. 323: Item inter Nominales primus, qui legitur fuisse condemnatus fuit Guillelmus Okam, quem Johannes XXII persecutus est . 11 La Querelle des futurs contingents (Louvain 14651475), ed. L. Baudry (Paris, 1950); Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, pp. 116140, 157162, 297321.
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techniques of analysis and disputation at the beginning of the fteenth century certainly played a part.12 The distinction between these fourteenth-century sources and their late fteenth-century proponents, i.e., between the doctores renovatores and the Nominalistae, was eventually lost, and the list became an incomplete membership list of the Nominalist or Ockhamist school.13 The groundwork for that shift was laid in the Nominalist defense of 1474. In order to portray themselves as the true defenders of the faith against the heretical realists, they constructed a history of previous confrontations and persecutions leading up to the one in which they were presently engaged. Apart from Ockham, dAilly, and Gerson, no adherents of their sect were claimed by name, but their account did attribute to the Nominalists at least a century and a half of existence as a group. After that it was a simple step to use the list of Nominalist sources and the lingering memory of Roscelinus and Abelard to create a more detailed history of the Nominalist sect. From Johannes Turmair (Aventinus) in the early sixteenth century well into the later part of this century, Ockham and Nominalists were linked as restoring-founder and followers in a school that spanned the fourteenth and fteenth centuries.14 Few modern historians have taken the history of the Nominalists, as developed in the late fteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as accurate. Yet some such school was thought to have existed in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries, and it was conceded that Ockham played a central role, either as founder or as principal and identifying gure. The problem was how to proceed to uncover a more accurate understanding of the development of the Ockhamist or Nominalist tradition.
12 Kaluza, Querelles; see also Kaluza, La crise des annes 14741482: linterdiction du Nominalisme par Louis XI, in Philosophy and Learning, pp. 293327. 13 It would be interesting to trace when, in the historiography, Robert Holcot, Nicolaus of Autrecourt, and others became attached to the school of Nominalism in late scholasticism. 14 For Turmairs account see his Annales ducum Boiariae, VI, c. 3, in Smtliche Werke, ed. S. Riezler, vol. 3 (Munich, 1884), pp. 200202. For the historiography on Nominalism see my In Search of Nominalism: Two Centuries of Historical Debate, in Gli studi di losoa medievale fra otto e novecento, ed. A. Maier (Rome, 1991), pp. 233251 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 1].
was there an ockhamist school? Methodological Considerations
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Four dierent approaches to this problem are possible, and most have been tried, either singly or in combination with others. The rst is to take the list of authoritative sources for the late medieval Nominalistae as a membership list of the Nominalist or Ockhamist tradition, and then proceed to nd out what the named individuals have in common with each other and with Ockham. That was primarily the path chosen by Ritter in his work on Marsilius, by Ehrle in his work on Peter of Candia and the late medieval school traditions, by Albert Lang in his work on the Parisian abbreviator of Wodeham, Heinrich Totting of Oyta, and by many other scholars in this century.15 Despite the long history of doing business that way, this approach was based, as has already been suggested, on the confusion between Nominalism or Ockhamism and a list of authoritative sources used by late fteenth-century Nominalists. The list was not a description of a school. Moreover, this historiographical approach assumed at the outset one of the things to be proven, namely that these gures were in fact Nominalists or Ockhamists. Thus it should not be surprising that everyone on the list who has been studied in detail, obviously with the exception of Ockham, has proved to have departed from Ockham and from each other, often on several major issues. A second approach is similar but starts at the other end. It rst seeks to identify the principal and distinctive elements in Ockhams thought, and then to assess subsequent late medieval authors as to whether and to what degree they defended or incorporated those elements. Those who accepted all or most of those elements became the Ockhamist school, whether or not they saw themselves as such. Correspondingly, those who do not accept what are considered to be major elements of Ockhams system were placed outside the Ockhamist tradition, no matter how close the historical association. If pursued carefully and systematically, this second approach is excellent for determining the degree and type of inuence Ockhams writings or particular features of his thought exercised in late medieval Europe.16 As a method of identifying an Ockhamist school in late
15 A. Lang, Heinrich Totting von Oyta (Mnster i.W., 1937). For Ritter and Ehrle, see above, notes 1 & 2. 16 A good example of this second approach is K.H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 12501345 (Leiden, 1988).
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medieval universities, it is far less satisfactory. This is so for several reasons. First, we cannot assume that the elements we identify as central to Ockhams thought are the ones late medieval authors would have thought of as distinctly Ockhamist. Second, being inuenced by Ockham does not make one a conscious member of an Ockhamist school. Third, those who thought of themselves as Ockhamists or who were so designated by others need not have been true Ockhamists in our sense of that term. What is ultimately important is not so much what we think Ockham stood for or what we think was the core of his thought, but what they thought of as Ockhamist, which could be a very dierent and narrower group of views. A good example of the problem is the scholarly literature on the arts faculty statute of Dec. 29, 1340, which until recently has almost universally tested the accuracy of its antiOckhamist rubric by comparing its articles to Ockhams thought.17 But the Ockhamist (quorundam errorum Ockanicorum) of the rubric applies, if correct, to opinions of contemporary Ockhamists, which may or may not have much to do with Ockham. The question of whether later Ockhamists were faithful to Ockham is a separate question from whether they saw themselves as followers of Ockham, just as the faithfulness of Thomists or Scotists to their respective doctors should not be the criterion for whether they are appropriately labeled. Subsequent followers must be studied on their own terms apart from the question of whether they are true to the thought of their doctor.18
Anyone using this method, which to be thorough must trace a small group of issues and positions through many post-Ockham authors, has to be careful not to confuse the part with the whole and make the conclusions too sweeping. Only when numerous issues have been thoroughly searched will we be in a position to broaden our conclusions. Another way to get at the question of inuence is through the provenance and history of extant manuscripts as well as book lists from late medieval libraries. Both types of sources can give us useful information on the dissemination of Ockhams writings and their reception. But again, this procedure speaks only to knowledge of Ockham, not to the existence and meaning of an Ockhamist school. 17 E.A. Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt: The Parisian Statutes of 1339 and 1340, FS, 7 (1947), 113146; R. Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut. Zur Entstehung des Realittsbegris der neuzeitlichen Naturwissenschaft (Berlin, 1970); T.K. Scott, Jr., Nicholas of Autrecourt, Buridan, and Ockhamism, JHP, 9 (1971), 1541; J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Once again the Ockhamist Statutes of 1339 and 1340: Some new perspectives, Vivarium, 28 (1990), 136167. 18 In fact, later representatives of a school tradition are not only important for tracing the eect of an authors thought (Wirkungsgeschichte), the changing balance of issues, and changing interpretation; they are often the clues by which we can determine when and how positions and labels take on new character and meaning. The truth of this is demonstrated in M.J.F.M. Hoenen, Albertistae, thomistae und
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These rst two approaches have often gone together. Membership in the Nominalist or Ockhamist school in the late Middle Ages consisted in those named in the core list that emerged in the fteenth century, expanded to include like-minded authors. The teaching content of the school was derived from Ockham himself, but usually in combination with those followers already so identied. Yet every socalled Ockhamist who has been studied has proved to be somewhat independent, rejecting Ockhams arguments and conclusions on issues considered of major importance to his thought. In this regard, the conclusions reached by Ritter in his study of Marsilius of Inghen have been conrmed by studies of other Ockhamists, even including Ockhams closest associate, Adam Wodeham.19 And whatever core presuppositions are identied, whether they are epistemology, or the distinction of absolute and ordained power, or covenantal causality, or Ockhams theory of supposition and universals, or linguistic reductionism, these seem to have also been the property of late medieval authors that one would have great diculty in placing within an Ockhamist tradition. Thus it has recently seemed advisable to set aside the traditional picture, with its clearly identied names and ideas, and to look rst and for a time exclusively at those who identify themselves as belonging to the school or party of Ockham, or at the meaning attached to mention of the Occamistae and doctrina Occamica in the texts of the period. The rst part of this approach, i.e., the way of self-identication, is based on the testimony of insiders. It examines the thoughtat least on the issues where they declare their Ockhamismof those who view themselves to be members of an Ockham school or who view themselves as within that tradition. What they thought on those issues reveals the late medieval Ockhamist tradition, whether or not those points can be found in Ockham or were central to his thought. One of the best gures to use in this regard, as Heiko Oberman realized, is Gabriel Biel.20 The second part of this approach, i.e., deciphering the meaning of Occamistae and scientia Occamica, while based on the negative testimony
nominales: Die philosophisch-historischen Hintergrnde der Intellektlehre des Wessel Gansfort ( 1489), Wessel Gansfort (14191489) and Northern Humanism, ed. F. Akkerman, G.C. Huisman, and A.J. Vanderjagt, Brill Studies in Intellectual History, 40 (Leiden 1993), pp. 7196; and The Thomistic Principle of Individuation in 15th Century Thomistic and Albertistic Sources, Medioevo, 18 (1992), 327357. 19 Tachau, Vision and Certitude, pp. 275312. 20 H.A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1963).
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of opponents, does reveal what contemporary outsiders understood Ockhamism to be. If that contemporary, negative information can be supported or conrmed by the testimony of those so identied, then we may be closer to knowing what Ockhamism meant in that period. These last two approaches, linked as they are here, may not produce the same results. As can be seen in the dierences between the accounts of the Reales and Nominalistae of 1474, the tenets of a school do not appear the same way to insiders and outsiders. More importantly, we must take seriously the possibility that being an Ockhamist at Paris in 1339 meant something very dierent than being an Ockhamist at Tbingen in 1485. To be an Ockhamist might and probably did mean dierent things at dierent times. It is highly unlikely that there was a continuous stream that we can call Ockhamism from 1330 to 1530. Each chapter must be studied on its own terms. For reasons of space, the following remarks are limited to two universities. Oxford, 13241400 Belief in the existence of an Ockhamist school at Oxford in the fourteenth century rested largely on three pieces of evidence: the close association of Ockham and his student, Adam Wodeham, who edited some of Ockhams writings and who was active at Oxford a decade later; the supposed Ockhamism of Robert Holcot; and John Wyclif s opposition to contemporary sign doctors, who were presumed to be the Ockhamists at Oxford during his student days. The rst author to be removed from the list of English Ockhamists was Holcot. Holcot never described himself as an Ockhamist, nor did any contemporary so describe him. Moreover, Holcot was openly critical of Ockham in the areas of epistemology, where he retained sensible and intelligible species, in his understanding of the object of knowledge, and in his view of sin and grace.21 Despite E.A. Moodys attempt to show that Chatton, not Ockham, was the target of Holcots quodlibet on the object of knowledge, and despite Heinrich Scheperss
21 H.G. Gelber, Exploring the Boundaries of Reason. Three Questions on the Nature of God by Robert Holcot, OP (Toronto, 1983); Tachau, Vision and Certitude, pp. 244255; E.A. Moody, A Quodlibetal Question of Robert Holkot, O.P. on the Problem of the Objects of Knowledge and of Belief, Speculum, 39 (1964), 5374; W.J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham (Leiden, 1978), pp. 95106.
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attempt to show that Holcot defended Ockhamist positions against Crathorn, the weight of evidence provides little ground for viewing Holcot as an Ockhamist.22 More surprisingly, Adam Wodeham has recently been shown to have been more independent of Ockham than previously supposed, perhaps enough to place him outside an Ockhamist camp. This is the case with his denition of intuitive cognition, his view of species, his understanding of the object of knowledge, and Wodehams own claim that he developed his view of quantity and divisibility before Ockham adopted similar positions.23 Although independent and highly creative in his own right, and not one to defend positions simply because they were taught by Ockham, Wodeham is as close as we can come to an Ockhamist at Oxford in this period. That he fails to conform to traditional denitions is evidence that we have been asking the wrong questions about Wodeham and about Ockhamism. On the basis of what we now know about Oxford in the generation after Ockham, there is no evidence that anything like an Ockhamist school ever developed there.24 What then is one to make of Wyclif s sign doctors, long considered a code word for Ockhamists. Masters in the arts and theological program at Oxford during Wyclif s student years seem to have been realists, not nominalists. One thinks, for example, of Nicholas Aston, Ralph Strode, and Richard Brinkley.25 Unless or until some new texts and names appear, we would have to conclude that Wyclif s sign doctors were little more than a rhetorical device, a backdrop against which he highlighted his own positions.
22 Moody, Quodlibetal Question; H. Schepers, Holkot contra dicta Crathorn, PJ, 77 (1970), 320354; 79 (1972), 106136; see also H.A. Oberman, Facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. Robert Holcot, O.P., and the Beginning of Luthers Theology, HTR, 55 (1962), 317342. 23 Tachau, Vision and Certitude, pp. 275312; G. Gl, Adam Wodehams Question on the Complexe Signicabile as the Immediate Object of Scientic Knowledge, FS, 37 (1977), 66102; Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, p. 64. 24 W.J. Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought in Fourteenth-Century England, in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. A. Hudson and M. Wilks (Oxford, 1987), pp. 89 107 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 7]. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in FourteenthCentury England (Princeton, 1987), pp. 171218. 25 Z. Kaluza, Loeuvre thologique de Nicolas Aston, AHDLMA, 45 (1978), 4582; G. Gl and R. Wood, Richard Brinkley and his Summa logicae, FS, 40 (1980), 59 101; Kaluza, Loeuvre thologique de Richard Brinkley, O.F.M., AHDLMA, 56 (1989), 169264; M.J. Fitzgerald, Richard Brinkleys Theory of Sentential Reference (Leiden, 1987).
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At Paris the situation appears quite dierent. In fact, the only fourteenth-century references to the Occamistae occur in Parisian or Parisianrelated documents. Therefore the events of 1339 to 1346 are of crucial importance to the history of Ockhamism in late medieval universities. Despite almost a century of research and entire books devoted to this small group of documents, there is still much to be learned.26 Since the account presented below brings together evidence and arguments only introduced in the last decade, a brief look at the tidal currents of recent research is necessary. The Hypothesis of a Lost Statute In an article jointly authored with Katherine Tachau in 1982 we put forward the hypothesis that the rubric attached to the arts faculty statute of December 29, 1340, de reprobatione quorundam errorum Ockanicorum, was mistakenly attached to that document when it was later inscribed into a university register, and that the statute for which that was the appropriate rubric was lost between the date of its supposed approval (early 1341) and the compilation of the register.27 The hypothesis was an attempt at a solution to a discrepancy in the dates assigned to what had previously been thought to be one and the same statute. The colophon of the statute in question was dated at Paris on December 29, 1340 under the seals of the rector of the university and the proctors of the four nations.28 Yet there was also a reference in the proctors
Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, pp. 114116; Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt; Paqu, Das Pariser Nominalistenstatut; Scott, Nicholas of Autrecourt; Gilbert, Ockham, Wyclif, and the via moderna ; W.J. Courtenay and K.H. Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, and the English-German Nation at Paris, 13391341, History of Universities, 2 (1982), 5396 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 9]; Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, in Preuve et raisons lUniversit de Paris. Logique, ontologie et thologie au XIVe sicle, ed. Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (Paris, 1984), 4364 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 8]; Thijssen, Once Again the Ockhamist Statutes; Courtenay, The Registers of the University of Paris and the Statutes against the Scientia Occamica, Vivarium, 29 (1991), 1349 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 11]; and Kaluza, Les sciences et leurs langages. Note sur le statut du 29 dcembre 1340 et le prtendu statut perdu contre Ockham, Filosoa e teologia nel Trecento. Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi (Turnhout, 1994), pp. 197258. 27 Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists. The statute is printed in CUP II, pp. 505507, #1042. 28 Ibid., 507: Datum Parisius sub sigillis quatuor nationum, videlicet Gallicorum,
26
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book of the English-German nation stating that an arts faculty statute contra novas opiniones quorundam, qui vocantur Occhanistae was sealed in the house of the proctor and published in sermone at the Dominican convent between Jan. 13 and Febr. 10, 1341.29 The editors of the Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis and the Liber procuratorum, Heinrich Denie and mile Chtelain assumed that the proctor, Henry de Unna, was referring to the statute of December 29, 1340, and they did not oer any explanation as to why a statute dated and sealed in December 1340 could also be sealed a month later. Moreover, the inception oaths in the arts faculty mention that there were two statutes contra scientiam Occamicam.30 If one of those was the statute passed on Sept. 25, 1339, whose rst clause or statute proscribed dogmatizing Ockham and whose second clause was an unrelated disciplinary statute, then the other statute contra scientiam Occamicam was probably the one to which the rubric de reprobatione errorum Ockanicorum belonged. But the oath, which usually followed the language of the statute, proscribed the scientia Occamica and prescribed the scientia Aristotelis and of the Commentator Averroes and other ancient commentators, none of which seemed to describe the content of the December statute.31 Finally, the Nominalist defense of 1474, which referred to two statutes against Ockham, the rst of which was the prohibition on using his works, described the second as having four articles, not six as has the statute of December 1340.32 The discrepancy in date of sealing in the 1340 statute and the 1341 reference,
Picardorum, Normannorum et Anglicorum, unacum signeto rectoris Universitatis Parisiensis, anno Domini MCCCXL, die veneris post Nativitatem Domini. 29 Liber procuratorum nationis Anglicanae in AUP I, cols. 4445: Item tempore procuracionis ejusdem [Henricus de Unna, Jan. 13 Febr. 10, 1341] sigillatum fuit statutum facultatis contra novas opiniones quorundam, qui vocantur Occhaniste, in domo dicti procuratoris, et puplicatum fuit idem statutum coram Universitate apud Predicatores in sermone. 30 CUP II, p. 680: Item jurabitis quod statuta facta per facultatem artium contra scientiam Okamicam observabitis (). Item observabitis statutum contentum in altero predictorum duorum statutorum de scientia Okamica, scilicet (). 31 Ibid.: neque dictam scientiam [Occamicam] et consimilis sustenebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum commentatorum antiquorum et expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra dem. 32 C. Du Plessis dArgentr, Collectio judiciorum de novis erroribus, vol. I, pt. 2 (Paris, 1724), p. 286; also in Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, pp. 323324: Sed Facultas Artium importunitate victa fecit statutum in quo cavetur dictam doctrinam non esse dogmatizandum, quia nondum erat approbata et examinata. Et postmodum instituit juramentum quo juraverunt omnes dictam doctrinam non dogmatizare in casibus in quibus est contra dem. Et expresse habetur in libro Rectoris. Et in eodem libro notantur quatuor
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compounded by the dierences in language and structure between the 1340 statute and the descriptions given in the oaths and the Nominalist defense, called for some explanation. The hypothesis proposed in 1982 seemed the more plausible solution at that time. Others shared that view.33 In 1990 Hans Thijssen proposed a dierent solution based on his understanding of notarial practice.34 According to Thijssen, the creation of ocial documents went through three stages separated in time: general approval, according to which the document was dated; sealing, which was done sequentially and separately by each nation; and promulgation, indicated by the word actum. He hypothesized that since the text of the statute of December 1340, with its colophon of date, place, and reference to the seals of the proctors and rector, lacked the word actum, it was a draft copy kept by the rector until the ocial copy was prepared and sealed a month later. He concluded that there was no lost statute and that the rubric attached to the 1340 document is correct. The possibility introduced by Thijssen, attractive in its simplicity, was plausible if his understanding of university notarial practice was correct. The problem, however, was that the preparation and preservation of university documents had received no separate study. When explored, the situation looked very dierent than anticipated.35 The university had no chancery in the fourteenth century beyond the university notary, who attended meetings of the university and arts faculty and prepared their documents. Each nation had its own scribe for such purposes. Moreover, documents were kept as original diplomas in the chests of the nation and faculty (usually without rubric) and were not regularly copied into a register. The extant registers of the nations (the Libri nationum)in contrast to the registers of the proctors (Libri procuratorum, which were regularly maintained but which rarely included ocial documents)were products of a standardized revision that took place during the 1355 to 1368 period. There is no evidence that the register of the rector (the Liber rectoris) was revised or updated between
articuli in quibus asserebat dictum Okam errasse (). On the accuracy of this description, see note 38 below. 33 For example, see J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Buridan on the Unity of a Science. Another chapter in Ockhamism?, in Ockham and Ockhamists (Nijmegen, 1987), pp. 93105, at 102; J. Biard, Logique et thorie du signe au XIVe sicle (Paris, 1989), pp. 163165. 34 Thijssen, Once again the Ockhamist Statutes. 35 Courtenay, Registers of the University of Paris.
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c. 1310 and c. 1400, at which point the statute of 1339 was included but not that of 1340. All these registers at one time or another omitted documents, including statutes; on occasion an incorrect rubric was attached to a document and copied again without correction; and we know of statutes passed that were never copied into any register. But the crucial nding was that most statutes of the arts faculty in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as well as those of the university carry only the date or a datum clause in their colophon, and less frequently actum or actum et datum. This applies not only to their form when eventually inscribed into the books of the nations and of the rector, a procedure that surely would have used the nal, ocial language of the statute, but also to their form as original diplomas, some of which have survived with seals attached and only have datum in the colophon. The nonstandardization of this part of a notarial colophon, which could use actum, datum, or both to indicate the place and date of ocial action, has long been noted by French diplomatics specialists.36 The wording of the colophon of the 1340 statute, then, is the wording used in its nal ocial form as eventually recorded in the books of the nations. While the sealing of documents usually took place at or soon after the meeting at which action was taken, the above study of university diplomatics did nd one document, to be discussed below, that reveals that there could, on occasion, be a delay between the approval of a statute and its sealing and promulgation.37 If one hypothesizes that similar circumstances could have occurred in the case of the 1340/41 statute, then the scenario proposed by Thijssen is possible, although arrived at through dierent evidence. Because of that, I suggested that there is no longer sucient reason for categorically denying that the statute of December 1340 is identical with the statute sealed and promulgated a month later. The statements made in the Nominalist defense are too unreliable to contradict that conclusion.38 The only matter I found unresolved was the discrepancy
36 A. Giry, Manuel de diplomatique (Paris, 1894), pp. 578, 581582, 585589; A. de Board, Manuel de diplomatique franaise et ponticale (Paris, 1929), pp. 295296. 37 Statute of 1253, CUP I, 242244 (#219). More detail on the stages and timing of document preparation and publication is given in Courtenay, Registers of the University of Paris, 3337 [above, pp. 249253]. 38 The best treatment of the context of the Nominalist defense or manifesto of 1474 can be found in Kaluza, La crise des annes. When treating that document in his Les sciences et leurs langages, however, Kaluza attributes far more intentional distortion and fabrication to the Nominalist account than I think is warranted considering the period in which it was written. Kaluza has done an excellent job in revealing the
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between the description of the main statute contra scientiam Ockhamicam in the arts faculty inception oaths and the content of the 1340 statute. Because of that I concluded in 1991 that until this last problem was resolved, we could not entirely eliminate the possibility of a lost statute. The consequence was to continue to entertain the possibility that there were three statutes involved: one against Parisian Ockhamists, i.e. the statute of December 1340, and two directed in some sense against Ockham, one in Sept. 1339 and a later one now lost. Znon Kaluza, turning to this problem after many years of study on the texts related to the disputes between the realists and nominalists in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries, and on the eve of publishing his long-awaited study of Nicholas of Autrecourt, has gone further in resolving some of the puzzles with the documents of this Parisian crisis over Ockham and Ockhamism.39 Although I do not accept his understanding of university procedures and eciency in the preparation and preservation of documents and still believe that neither his picture nor mine fully and adequately explains all the evidence, I do accept most of his conclusions regarding the identity and signicance
well-crafted, rhetorical structure of the Nominalist use of evidence aimed at their audience: the king and his advisers. But words like perdie, fourberies, mensonges and others show the same insensitivity to medieval perspectives as does our modern notion of plagiarism when applied to the medieval understanding of authorship. Any document that pleads a case shapes evidence to support the argument. Some distortions in the Nominalist treatise are probably no more than the inaccurate understanding, in an age that lacked historical accounts or instruction about the past, of events that occurred a century and a half earlier. This is probably the basis for the fusion of events that occurred during the ponticates of John XXII and Benedict XII. On the other hand, they were aware that the statute against dogmatizing Ockham was in the Liber rectoris, which they may or may not have had direct access to. In any case, their statement that the same register contained a second statute against Ockham, which is false, is either an intentional misrepretation or, more likely, a confused belief that they could not or did not verify. Since they were wrong about the register in which the second statute is recorded, they are no doubt wrong about the number of articles in that statute, which they did not have before their eyes in any form. The important point is that we cannot take any otherwise unsupported statements in the Nominalist defense as historically credible. 39 Kaluza, Les sciences et leurs langages. His earlier contributions include Querelles; Le chancelier Gerson; Le De Universali reali ; Le Statut du 25 septembre 1339 et lordonnance du 2 septembre 1276, in Die Philosophie im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert. In memoriam Konstanty Michalski (18791947) (Amsterdam, 1988), pp. 343351; and La crise des annes 14741482. His study of Nicholas of Autrecourt subsequently appeared in HLF, 42.1 (Paris, 1995).
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of the documents under discussion. The following picture reects my present understanding, aided considerably by his most recent expositions to which the reader is directed. The Statutes of September 25, 1339 A crisis over the implications of some aspects of Ockhams philosophical teaching at Paris apparently came to a head sometime during the academic year 13381339. The arts faculty took action at the beginning of the next fall term. On September 25, 1339, they passed two statutes, the rst of which mandated that no works of Ockham be used in teaching or disputations, privately or publicly, since they had not yet been properly examined and approved.
Since, therefore, we have sworn to observe a certain ordinance which was issued by our predecessors, who were not unreasonably concerned as to the books to be read publicly or privately among us; and because we ought not to read certain books not admitted by them or customarily read elsewhere; and since in these times some have presumed to dogmatize the doctrine of William called Ockham, publicly and secretly by holding small meetings on this subject in private placesdespite the fact that this doctrine has not been admitted by those in authority, has not been customarily read elsewhere, and has been examined neither by us nor by others to whom this might pertain, for which reason it does not appear to be free from suspicion; hence we, mindful of our wellbeing, and considering the oath which we made to observe the abovementioned ordinance, decree that henceforth no one shall presume to dogmatize the said doctrine by listening to it or lecturing on it publicly or in private, or by holding small meetings for disputing said doctrine, or by citing it in lecture or in disputations. If anyone should presume, however, to act against the above or any part thereof, him we suspend for a year, during which time he may not obtain any oce or degree among us, nor exercise in any way any oce or degree already held. Moreover, if anyone should obstinately fail to observe the above statute, we will forever place him under the aforesaid penalty.40
40 CUP II, pp. 485486 (#1023). The translated section corresponds to the following text: Cum igitur a predecessoribus nostris non irrationabiliter motis circa libros apud nos legendos publice vel occulte certa precesserit ordinatio per nos jurata observari, et quod aliquos libros per ipsos non admissos vel alias consuetos legere non debemus, et istis temporibus nonnulli doctrinam Guillermi dicti Okam (quamvis per ipsos ordinantes admissa non fuerit vel alias consueta, neque per nos seu alios ad quos pertineat examinata, propter quod non videtur suspicione carere), dogmatizare presumpserint publice et occulte super hoc in locis privatis conventicula faciendo: hinc est quod nos nostre salutis memores, considerantes juramentum quod fecimus de dicta ordi-
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As Znon Kaluza has pointed out, one of the precedents used for this legislation was a 1276 university ordinance that prohibited private teaching on texts, except those in grammar and logic. The latter were exempted, since they could not endanger the faith.41 But the arts masters of 1339 went beyond the provisions of the earlier legislation, indicating in Kaluzas view a stronger level of concern and anti-Ockhamist pressure than a simple delay on a decision to allow use of Ockhams works. The 1339 statute excluded Ockhams works from disputations as well as lectures, public as well as private, presumably those in logic as well as on other subjects, made citing and even listening as egregious as teaching, and reasserted the right of the masters or ecclesiastical authority to judge what works were appropriate. Kaluza accepted the hypothesis, suggested in the Nominalist defense of 1474 (albeit on erroneous grounds) and explored further by Courtenay and Tachau, that the arts masters were responding in part to papal pressure.42 Kaluzas article advanced our knowledge of the legislative context and meaning of this statute. Yet the ordinance of 1276 is not the only piece of university legislation that lies behind the text of the 1339 statute. The right of the faculty and university to determine which books were permissible texts for lectures and study was grounded in the 1215 letter of Robert Curson, preserved in university registers as the rst statute of the university, as well as the oaths sworn by those being
natione observanda, statuimus quod nullus decetero predictam doctrinam dogmatizare presumat audiendo vel legendo publice vel occulte, necnon conventicula super dicta doctrina disputanda faciendo vel ipsum in lectura vel disputationibus allegando. Si quis tamen contra premissa vel aliquod premissorum attemptare presumpserit, ipsum per annum privamus, et quod per dictum annum obtinere honorem seu gradum inter nos non valeat nec obtenti actus aliqualiter exercere. Si qui autem contra predicta inventi pertinaces fuerint, in predictis penis volumus perpetue subjacere. 41 CUP I, pp. 538539, #468, Engl. transl. in L. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1971), pp. 102103; Kaluza, Le Statut du 25 septembre 1339. It should be noted that the 1276 statute was a statute of the university, not the arts faculty. But it was recorded in both the book of the Rector and the books of the nations, and bachelors in the arts faculty swore to uphold the statutes of the university along with those of the faculty and nation. Conrad of Megenberg would probably not have agreed that lectures in grammar and logic could not be dangerous to the faith. Private lectures in other areas of philosophy required special permission, such as the arts faculty granted to Suno Karoli in November 1340 for lectures on John of Sacroboscos De sphaera; AUP I, col. 44. 42 See Kaluza, Le Statut, 343344, 349351; Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 7579; Courtenay, Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, pp. 4750.
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examined for determination and eventual licensing.43 More importantly, the language used in the 1339 statute evokes the more famous sequel to the ordinance of 1276, namely tienne Tempiers preface to the condemnation of 219 articles in 1277.44
1277: qui dictos errores vel aliquem ex illis dogmatizaverint, aut deffendere seu sustinere presumpserint .45 1339: et istis temporibus nonnulli doctrinam Guillermi dicti Okam () dogmatizare presumpserint publice et occulte super hoc in locis privatis conventicula faciendo .46
It is Tempiers preface that rearms the right of ecclesiastical authority to judge which books or texts should or should not be readan authority and procedure described in the 1339 statute as shared with university masters (examined neither by us nor by others to whom this might pertain).47 The appeal to the language of 1276 and 1277, one of the dening moments in the history of the university, reveals that the arts masters in the autumn of 1339 believed (or at least wished to be perceived as believing) that more was at stake than a simple suspension of judgment until Ockhams works could be studied. E.A. Moody was right that Ockham was not directly condemned, but wrong in his belief that the statute was innocuous as far as it concerned Ockham.48 Suspicion of
CUP I, pp. 7880, #20; CUP II, p. 678. It should be noted, however, that Tempiers condemnation of 219 articles in 1277 was never recorded in any register of the university, faculties, or nations. Its contents were known within the university community probably through oral communication and through theological texts. The text of the articles was copied into various theological works that were available in several Parisian libraries, most notably the Sorbonne. See Courtenay, The Preservation and Dissemination of Academic Condemnations at the University of Paris in the Middle Ages, Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, Ottawa, 1992, ed. C. Bazn, E. Andjar, L. Sbrocchi (New YorkOttawaToronto, 1995), vol. III, pp. 16591667. 45 CUP I, p. 543, #473. 46 CUP II, p. 485, #1023. 47 CUP I, p. 543. The role of ecclesiastical authority in approving the use of Aristotles works in natural philosophy can be seen in Gregory IXs letter in CUP I, p. 143, #87. In Tempiers preface (CUP I, p. 543) the universitys role in judging works and opinions is reected in the words tam doctorum sacre scripture quam aliorum prudentium virorum communicato consilio, and later specic titles are forbidden along with unspecied works in necromancy and divination, per eandem sententiam nostram condempnamus, in omnes, qui dictos rotulos, libros, quaternos dogmatizaverint, aut audierint . 48 Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt.
43 44
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Ockhams doctrina was specically stated, and the language used evoked a parallel between Ockhams works and those condemned in 1277. Moreover, the arts faculty considered this piece of legislation to be a statute specically concerned with Ockhamist scientia. This is clear from the oath instituted within a few years of the statute, which describes it as one of two statutes de scientia Okamica.49 No matter how one interprets or where one places the arts faculty statute of December 29, 1340 (the so-called Nominalistenstatut), the arts faculty in the early autumn of 1339 was concerned about one particular aspect of Ockhams thought designated by the term doctrina in the statute and by scientia in the oath. In light of the evidence presented in the 1982 article, the crucial issue appears to have been Ockhams interpretation of the categories and its implications for logic and physics.50 As was noted a decade ago, the statute against dogmatizing Ockham was promulgated in the midst of a controversy between Benedict XII and the university in which the pope threatened and eventually suspended all privileges granted to Paris.51 It was politically in the universitys best interest to take action against Ockham, who had long opposed and written against Benedict and his predecessor, John XXII. Yet this statute was not simply a response to outside pressure. It was primarily a reaction to an internal crisis over the inuence of Ockhams thought on young scholars at Paris. Against whom was the 1339 statute directed? It has long been viewed as a prohibition applicable to the university at large, but such is not the case. As was pointed out a decade ago, it applied only to the arts faculty.52 No comparable statute for the theological faculty or the entire university was ever undertaken. Moreover, while the statute undoubtedly obliged all members of the arts faculty, the type of sanction imposed for disobedience makes clear that those who drafted the document did not think the problem lay with the masters in the faculty. The oenders were bachelors and other students in arts, those who
CUP II, p. 680. This text will be examined in detail below. Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 7175. It has now been proven possible that Michael de Massas reference to the Okanistae on these same issues dates to the 1330s, not 1326 as previously believed. See Courtenay, The Debate over Ockhams Physical Theories at Paris, in La Nouvelle Physique du XIVe sicle, ed. S. Caroti and P. Sourin (Firenze, 1997), pp. 4563 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 12]. 51 Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 7579. 52 Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 5558.
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were at the level of determination, licensing, or about to incept.53 The only person at that stage of career known to have used Ockham in his bachelor lectures is Nicholas Drukken of Denmark, who must have determined in the spring of 1338 or 1339 but who was not licensed until April 1340.54 But there may well have been other reasons for Drukkens delayed promotion, and the number of those interested in using Ockhams writings and particularly his physical theories was greater. In any case, Nicholas of Autrecourt, who was then an advanced student in the theological faculty, was not among them, or at least did not belong to those at the academic level at which the statute was targeted. The Statute of December 29, 1340 As was stated above in the section on recent research, there are no longer sucient grounds for maintaining the view that the statute of December 29, 1340, could not be identical with the statute sealed in the lodgings of the proctor of the English-German nation a month later. That is so not because of rm proof that they are identical but because there is no longer rm proof that they are not. The text of the colophon of the Dec. 1340 statute, with its reference to the seals of the nations and the rector, is the ocial, nal text, and the absence of the word actum, as noted above and established in the 1991 article, is irrelevant.55 What is relevant is that despite extensive evidence that the sealing of documents took place at or soon after the meeting where nal action was taken, there is one known instance in which a period of
The sanction for the rst section of the statute, i.e., the portion related to dogmatizing Ockham, is a years suspension during which time [the oender] may not obtain any oce or degree among us, nor exercise in any way any oce or degree already held. This level of sanction, as the second paragraph of the statute indicates, is one applied to bachelors and scholars. CUP II, p. 485: Si quis autem bachellarius aut scolaris contra premissa aliquid attemptaverit, penis in precedenti statuto positis modo et forma quibus supra omnino volumus subjacere. Si quis autem magister (). 54 AUP I, col. 38. Normally a bachelor would receive the license late in the spring in which he determined, or in the following autumn. The delay in Nicholass case was not nancial, since his burse was nihil. We will probably never know whether his licensing, which occurred two-thirds of an academic year after the September statute, was delayed because of his previous use of Ockham. In any event, he went on to a distinguished career in the faculty. On Nicholass Ockhamism see Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 6566. 55 For the evidence on this point see Courtenay, Registers of the University of Paris, 3740 [above, pp. 253256].
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time elapsed between ocial approval (marked in that case by the term actum!) and ocial sealing.56 That earlier instance, oering a possible parallel situation, occurred in 1253.57 The purpose of the statute of 1253 was to enforce the oath of allegiance to the university by all masters and bachelors in all faculties because of the failure of the Dominican and Franciscan regents to support the university in its case against three watchmen who killed a student and severely injured and tortured two others and a servant in violation of university privileges. The main text of the statute was approved in April 1253 and was presumably promulgated at that time, but its sealing was delayed until justice had been achieved. The university was eventually able to get the brother of the king, Alfonse, who was regent while Louis IX was in the Holy Land, to arrest and try the three watchmen, sentencing two of them to be dragged by horses through the streets of Paris and hanged, and the third exiled. Presumably the rector and others wanted that object lesson to be part of the ocial document, which was sealed ve months later on Sept. 2.58 The circumstances surrounding the two statutes are not, of course, parallel. In 1253 sealing was delayed until royal action took place. No comparable situation existed in 13401341. Secondly, the 1253 document was ocially dated according to its sealing, while the 1340 document, if one believes it to be identical with the document sealed a month later, was dated according to its approval (Dec. 29, 1340), not its sealing (late January 1341). Thirdly, the colophon of the 1253 document mentions and explains the discrepancy between the dates of approval and sealing, while the colophon of the 1340 documentif similar circumstances occurredis completely silent on that subject. Perhaps the
56 For procedures on sealing see Courtenay, Registers of the University of Paris, 3337 [above, pp. 249253]. 57 CUP I, pp. 242244, #219, which has survived as an original diploma (Paris, Univ. Archiv., carton 4, A.22.b), was included in both copies of the thirteenth-century Liber rectoris (Vat. Regin. lat. 406, fol. 55v; Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 936, fol. 58v), was included in the Libri nationum (Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 535, fol. 75r; Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. lat. 2060, fol. 70r), and was retained in the later Liber rectoris (London, Brit. Lib., Addit. 17304, fol. 90v). 58 Ibid., p. 243: Hanc autem ordinationem seu statutum a nobis approbatum et editum sigilli nostri munimine fecimus roborari. Actum est hoc statutum anno predicto [1253] mense April. Sed propter additionem clausule de emenda facta per memoratum comitem posterius, que nondum exhibita erat quando editum est hoc statutum, sigillata est carta ista iiii non. Septembris, anno predicto.
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time span between approval and sealing was too brief to be mentioned or to warrant changing the date of the document to accord with the date of sealing. If we assume the sealing of the document was delayed, what circumstances might explain this? Kaluza, who believes there was nothing unusual in a month between approval and sealing, has hypothesized that the arts faculty had to wait for an open Sunday in the calendar of the Dominicans before the statute could be promulgated.59 Even if one accepted this conjecture, there is no reason why sealing would have to wait until just days before promulgation. If a delay occurred, it is more likely to have been a result of additions or changes in the text that prolonged the process. One possibility might be the wording of the fth article, which concerns the objects of knowledge, while the other articles concern distinguishing terms in propositionsa dierence already noted by Kaluza. John Buridan, who may have had a role in the drafting of this statute, as Kaluza has argued, shared with Ockham the view that the immediate object of scientic knowledge is a proposition, not the thing itself. Buridan, however, articulated more than did Ockham the view that, as Thijssen has expressed it, the ultimate purpose of knowing propositions is knowing the referents of these propositions, the res.60 Considering the delicate nature of an article on which realist and nominalist sensitivities ran high, the precise wording may not have been worked out by the time of the late December meeting. A second possibility might be the inclusion of the sixth article, which gave a specic example of the problems created by a failure to adequately distinguish terms in propositions. Whether or not this example was taken from a disputation of Nicholas of Autrecourt, it parallels a statement censured in Autrecourts condemnation in 1346.61 Autrecourt had been summoned to Avignon in November 1340, and a similarlyworded article would have been part of the dossier under review.62
Kaluza, Le Statut du 29 Decembre 1340. Thijssen, Buridan on the Unity of Science, 9495. 61 CUP II, pp. 578, 583, #1042. For arguments on the meaning of the sixth article, and whether or not it was taken from Autrecourts writings, see Tachau, Vision and Certitude, pp. 354357; J.M.M.H. Thijssen, The Semantic Articles of Autrecourts Condemnation. New Proposals for an Interpretation of the Articles 1, 30, 31, 35, 57, and 58, AHDLMA, 57 (1990), 155175, at 170171; Kaluza, Le Statut du 29 Decembre 1340, n. 63. 62 CUP II, p. 505, #1041.
59 60
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There may have been some additional discussion as to whether the Parisian arts faculty should prejudge the case by passing judgment on a statement closely worded to one under review at Avignon before the papal court had come to a decision. Whatever explanation might be proposed for a time dierence between approval and promulgation of one and the same statute, I am inclined to believe that revisions or additions in the wording of part of the textas happened in 1253 for far dierent reasonsis a more likely cause of the delay in sealing.63 If the statute approved in December 1340 is the same statute sealed and promulgated a month later, then the rubric and the subsequent description, de reprobatione quorundam errorum Ockanicorum in the rst case and contra novas opiniones quorundam, qui vocantur Occhanistae in the second, can and probably should be taken as equivalent. While Ockhamist errors (errores Ockhanici) can be read as referring either to Ockham or Ockhamists, or both, the 1341 description identies the target of the statute as Parisian Ockhamists. Moreover, as the research on the articles of 1277 has shown, an initial list of suspect articles can receive last-minute additions from other sources. We are safe in assuming that a majority of articles in the 1340 statute, most probably the rst four, were considered Ockhamist. The pedigree of the last two may be somewhat less certain. The important point is that the target of the statute is the Ockhamists at Paris and only indirectly Ockham. The Oaths against Ockhams Scientia and the Ockhamists At some point during or toward the end of this crisis the arts faculty and the English-German nation instituted oaths as a way of ensuring compliance or policing the problem. But when were these oaths drafted, on what statutes were they based, and was their aim identical or at least similar?
63 Kaluza, Le Statut du 29 Decembre 1340, explained the description in the Nominalist defense of 1474 of the second statute against Ockhams scientia as containing four articles, not six as in the 1340 statute, to be a result of their having before their eyes an early draft of that statute. But before one further multiplies draft copies of the 1340 statute (Kaluzas view of the text as entered in the registers or as known to the Nominalists of 1474), by using this hypothesis of a period of ne-tuning after approval, no such explanations are needed. The published text of the 1340 statute is its nal form, and as will be shown below, this is one of the clearest cases in which the fteenthcentury Nominalists could not or did not bother to check their facts.
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The only oath that can be precisely dated is that imposed on the members of the English-German nation on October 19, 1341, which required its members to reveal any knowledge they might have of persons belonging to or in any way supporting the secta Ockamica.64 In light of its date and the stated purpose, one may conclude that the statute sealed at the beginning of 1341 had not fully achieved its aim and that the problem of eradicating the Ockhamist sect still occupied the arts faculty, or at least the English-German nation. At some point during this period the arts faculty also instituted an anti-Ockhamist oath drawn from one of the two statutes against Ockhamist scientia.
Moreover, you shall swear that you shall observe the statutes made by the faculty of arts against the scientia Okamica, nor sustain in any way whatsoever the said scientia and similar ones, but [sustain instead] the scientia Aristotelis and of his Commentator Averroes, and of the other ancient commentators and expositors of the said Aristotle, except in those cases that are against the faith. Moreover, you shall observe the statute contained in the other of the aforesaid two statutes concerning the scientia Okamica, namely that no master, bachelor or scholar should argue without the license of the master holding the disputations, which license he is not permitted to request orally but only in writing with proper reverence.65
When these arts faculty oaths were introduced is dicult to determine. They obviously were imposed after two anti-Ockhamist statutes were promulgated. The initial terminus post quem, therefore, is Sept. 25, 1339, since the second item refers to the second clause or statute in the legislation of that day.
64 AUP I, cols. 5253: Item in eadem congregatione ordinatum fuit, quod nullus de cetero admitteretur ad aliquos actus legitimos in dicta nacione, nisi prius juraret quod revelaret, si sciret aliquos de secta Occanica ad invicem conspirasse de secta vel opinionibus erroneis fovendis, vel etiam conjuratos esse vel conventicula habere occulta, aliter nisi jure diceret si sciret, ex tunc penam perjurii incurreret. Et hanc ordinacionem voluerunt equivalere statuto. 65 CUP II, p. 680: Item jurabitis quod statuta facta per facultatem artium contra scientiam Okamicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consimiles sustinebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum commentatorum antiquorum in expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra dem. Item observabitis statutum contentum in altero predictorum duorum statutorum de scientia Okamica, scilicet quod nullus magister, baccalarius aut scolaris sine licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat: quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signative reverenter.
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Furthermore, since it is manifestly clear to us that in the disputations which take place in the rue de Fouarre, such abuse has developed, that bachelors and others present at these disputations dare to argue on their own authority, showing little reverence toward the masters who are disputing, and making such a tumult that the truth of the conclusion being debated cannot be arrived at, so that the said disputations are not in any way fruitful for the listening scholars; we therefore decree that no master, bachelor, or scholar argue without the permission and license of the master holding the disputations, which license he is not permitted to request orally but only in writing with proper reverence. If any bachelor or scholar should act against the aforesaid, we wish him to be subjected in every respect to the same penalties as in the previous statute [i.e., the rst clause or statute of Sept. 25, 1339]. If any master should presume to argue in disputations, unless he becomes quiet when required to do so by the master holding the disputations, we decree that he is to be punished by being deprived of three lectures.66
Whether there needs to be a later terminus post quem depends on which statute one thinks the rst item (contra scientiam Ockamicam) refers to. A solid terminus ante quem is harder to arrive at. Both oaths appear in this form in the Book of the French Nation, which was compiled sometime between 1355 and 1366.67 Du Boulay conjectured that they were introduced around July 1341, since on June 30 the French nation revised the oaths sworn by bachelors being licensed at Notre Dame or Ste. Genevive.68 Dating the revision of licensing oaths, however, does not help us date the revision of inception oaths, whose new form includes an oath based on a statute of 1355.69 But a post-1355 list of
66 CUP II, p. 485, #1023: Insuper cum nobis liqueat manifeste quod in disputationibus que unt in vico Straminum talis abusus inolevit quod bachellarii et alii in disputationibus dictis existentes propria auctoritate arguere presumunt minus reverenter se habentes ad magistros, qui disputant, tumultum faciendo adeo et in tantum quod haberi non potest conclusionis disputande veritas, nec dicte disputaciones in aliquo sunt scholaribus audientibus fructuose: statuimus quod nullus magister, bachellarius aut scolaris, sine permissu et licentia magistri disputationes tenentis arguat, quam licentiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signative reverenter. Si quis autem bachellarius aut scolaris contra premissa aliquid attemptaverit, penis in precedenti statuto positis modo et forma quibus supra omnino volumus subjacere. Si quis autem magister in disputationibus arguere presumat, nisi requisitus a magistro disputationes tenente taceat, ipsum privatione trium lectionum decrevimus puniendum. 67 Courtenay, Registers of the University of Paris, 28 [above, p. 244]. 68 C.E. Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 16651673), IV, p. 273. 69 CUP II, p. 680: vos jurabitis statutum de modo legendi sine penna, which quotes directly from the corresponding statute in CUP III, pp. 3940, #1229, approved in December 1355.
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inception oaths does not preclude an earlier introduction of particular oaths, so we are still left with a range from late 1339 to c. 1360. Kaluza dated the anti-Ockhamist oaths to late autumn 1341 on the assumption that the October 1341 oath for the English-German nation was a draft version of the second of the arts faculty oaths contra scientiam Ockamicam (rst in their documentary order among the inception oaths).70 According to Kaluza, what began as an oath to reveal the identity of Ockhamists turned into an oath against Ockhamist scientia after negotiations with the other nations. That hypothesis is unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, both the statute of 1340/41 and the oath of the English-German nation almost a year later are directed against the Ockhamists, their errors and the need to identify and control them. By late 1340, then, the area of concern became increasingly focused on the activities and teachings of the Parisian Ockhamists and no longer directly on their use of Ockhams writings and views. The arts faculty oaths, however, were directed against Ockhams scientia and say nothing directly about Ockhamists. Secondly, oaths result from and were based on statutes. The oath of the English-German nation was the result of an ordination or statute. One of the oaths against Ockhamist scientia was taken from the statutory legislation of Sept. 25, 1339. If the principal arts faculty oath, the one that proscribes Ockhams scientia and prescribes Aristotles scientia, resulted from a multi-stage legislative process in the autumn of 1341, where is the eventual statute of late 1341 that created that oath? A better but still unsatisfactory solution is to divide the crisis into two stages. The rst stage during the academic years 13381339 and 13391340 concerned the use or acceptance by some Parisian scholars of Ockhams doctrina or scientia, probably referring to Ockhams treatment of the categories and its implications for other areas of philosophy, which was not to be taught in any form. The second stage during the academic year 13401341 and into 13411342 concerned the Ockhamists and their teaching. Admittedly, on some level and on several issues Ockham and the Parisian Ockhamists are related, and the concern with the conventicula occulta is mentioned in the statute of Sept.
70 It is curious that in rejecting the hypothesis of one lost statute, Kaluza has replaced that with the hypothesis of one lost nal version of the December 1340 statute, and three draft documents: the draft version of the arts faculty statute of December 1340; an even earlier draft of the December 1340 statute with four articles available to the Nominalists in 1474; and the English-German nations oath of October 1341, which was supposedly an early version of the oath against Ockhamist scientia.
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1339 and the English-German ordinance of October 1341. But the documents in chronological sequence do reect a shift in the targeted concern, from textual source (Ockham) to contemporary practitioners (Ockhamists). If that analysis is correct, the arts faculty oaths would better t in the period between the autumn of 1339 and the autumn of 1340, when the focus was still on Ockhams doctrina, before the famous statute of 1340/41. Viewed from that perspective, the oath to teach Aristotles scientia as interpreted by Averroes and the older commentators instead of Ockhams scientia may simply have been an elaboration of the rst clause or statute of Sept. 25, 1339 not to dogmatize Ockham or teach his doctrina. This interpretationin fact any interpretationmust be shown to be compatible with the phrase statutum contentum in altero predictorum duorum statutorum de scientia Okamica. It has always been recognized that the statute contained in referred to the second clause or statute of Sept. 25, 1339, which was disciplinary in nature. More recently, the other of the two statutes was understood to refer to the entire statute of 1339 (both clauses or statutes taken together), identied or labeled by its rst clause or statute on not dogmatizing Ockham.71 The companion statute de scientia Okamica in that interpretation was thought to be the statute of 1340 or 1341, which may be identical, as argued above. But if the two statutes referred to in the oaths are simply the rst and second statutes of Sept. 25, 1339, it means that the second, disciplinary statute of Sept. 25, 1339, was also understood as contra scientiam Okamicam. This conclusionso simple in many waysdoes not adequately explain all the evidence. It requires us to believe that the disciplinary crisis of the arts faculty in 1339 that resulted in the second statute of Sept. 25 and other legislationa crisis paralleled in the law and medical facultiesstemmed in some way from Ockhams scientia, at least as regards the arts faculty. Secondly, it does not explain why the oath reads: statutum contentum in altero predictorum duorum statutorum de scientia Okamica instead of the more direct statutum alterum de scientia Okamica If for those reasons one rejects the view that the oaths simply refer to the two statutes of Sept. 25, 1339, and if, as I still believe, the content of the December 1340 statute could not or would not have been described as a statute to teach Aristotles scientia as interpreted
71 Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 5557; Kaluza, Les sciences et leurs langages.
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by Averroes and the older commentators, then we are still missing one statute on which the oath concerning Ockhams scientia was based.72 The contrast of Aristotles scientia and Ockhams scientia needs further examination. No such language appears in the statute of Sept. 25, 1339 or in that of Dec. 29, 1340. And both the rubric that was eventually attached to the 1340 statute (de reprobatione quorundam errorum Ockanicorum) and the words used to describe the statute sealed early in 1341 (contra novas opiniones quorundam, qui vocantur Occhaniste) talk about Ockhamist errors or opinions of those called Ockhamists, not about the scientia Okamica. But the contrast between the scientia of Ockham and the scientia of Aristotle, Averroes, and other commentators does appear in other texts of the period.73
Inception oath (CUP II, p. 680): statuta facta per facultatem artium contra scientiam Okamicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consimiles sustinebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum commentatorum antiquorum in expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra dem. Sentences commentary in Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 71ra (Michael of Massa?): Moveamus ergo aliquas quaestiones circa realitatem motus more Aristotelis et Commentatoris et aliorum philosophorum, praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovantium grossitive antiquorum. Conrad of Megenberg, Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam, (written at Paris in 1337), ed. R. Scholz, M.G.H., SsM II, 1 (Leipzig, 1941), p. 76: Summus Aristotelis et Averrois edocuere . Clement VIs letter to the University in 1346 (CUP II, p. 588): Nam nonnulli magistri et scolares artium et philosophie scientiis insudantes ibidem, dimissis et contemptis Philosophi et aliorum magistrorum et expositorum antiquorum textibus, quos sequi deberent in quantum dei catholice non obviant, ac veris expositionibus et scripturis, quibus fulcitur ipsa scientia ().
72 This is why my 1991 article concluded that the possibility of a lost statute has not been entirely eliminated, which still seems true despite Kaluzas two recent articles. One question that has not been asked is why these oaths were placed among the inception oaths as distinct from those for determination or licensing. The inception oaths were the ones in which adherence to the content of individual statutes was articulated. Oaths sworn at determination and licensing concerned preparatory requirements and future obligations. But inasmuch as the secta Occamica was perceived primarily as a problem among bachelors in 1339, the inception oaths would bind them or make them liable for perjury. 73 Further instances of this language should be sought.
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The 1474 Edict of Louix XI identies the other commentators or ancient expositors as Albert, Thomas, Giles, and others.74 The Aristotelian commentaries of these authors came into use at Paris in the late thirteenth century. None of them appear in the list of exemplars in the taxatio of c. 1275, but the taxatio of 1304, even allowing for its probable Dominican bias, has an extensive list of Aristotelian exemplars of all three of these authors.75 It is highly probable that these were the vehicles through which Aristotle was understood up to the time Buridans and eventually Marsilius of Inghens commentaries began to compete. There is not room here to discuss Kaluzas thesis that Buridan was behind the statute of December 1340 or that Parisian nominalism (= Buridan) was or at least was perceived as being markedly dierent from English nominalism (= Ockham). Whatever ndings that important issue eventually reveals, the transition from the late thirteenth-century commentators to Buridans commentaries cannot have been smooth. The text listed above immediately after the oath comes from a commentary on Book II of the Sentences that Damasus Trapp attributed to Michael de Massa, OESA, who was thought by Trapp to have read at Paris in 13261327.76 Whoevers work it is, it shows signs of subsequent revision as the bachelors text was made into an ordinatio text. If the work is indeed by Michael, the text in its present form would date after 1327, possibly sometime in the 1330s but before 1337, when Michael died. In light of the fact that a few folios later in the manuscript, in the questions on time, the Occamistae are mentioned, I am inclined to date the work closer to the events that precipitated the legislation against the Ockhamists at Paris. Two things about this text are important. First, the statement of adherence to Aristotle, the Commentator, and other philosophers as well as the reference to the Occamistae occur in the context of a dis74 Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, p. 313: Visum est eis rursum doctrinam Aristotelis et Commentatoris Averrois, Alberti Magni, Sancti Thome de Aquino, Egidii de Roma, Alexandri de Halis, Scoti, Bonaventure aliorumque Doctorum Realium . 75 Compare CUP I, pp. 644650, #530 at 644645, and CUP II, pp. 107112, #642 at 110111. On these lists see R. and M. Rouse, The Book Trade at the University of Paris, ca. 1250 ca. 1350, in L.J. Bataillon, B.G. Guyot, and R. Rouse (eds.), La production du livre universitaire au Moyen Age: exemplar et pecia (Paris, 1988), pp. 41114. 76 D. Trapp, Augustinian Theology of the 14th century, Augustiniana, 6 (1956), 163 175; Notes on some Manuscripts of the Augustinian Michael de Massa ( 1337), Augustinianum, 5 (1965), 58133; A. Zumkeller, Die Augustinerschule des Mittelalters: Vertreter und philosophisch-theologische Lehre, Analecta Augustiniana, 27 (1964), 209 210; Courtenay, The Debate Over Ockhams Physical Theories.
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cussion over the nature of motion and time, issues on which Ockhams interpretation of the categories and its implications for physics impinged. Second, the discussion occurs in a Sentences commentary and reveals that these aspects of Ockhams teaching were of concern to theologians, who may have encouraged the arts masters to take action. The letter of Clement VI also reects theological concerns. But the intriguing feature of this text is its close parallel with the text of the oath. In light of the wide time span in which we initially place the oath, 1339 c. 1360, it is theoretically possible that the oath was instituted after the university received Clements letter and used the popes language as an apt statement of the principal aim of that portion of the statute. It is more likely, however, that Clement was paraphrasing the oath, possibly as provided by Conrad of Megenberg, who was in Avignon in the summer of 1346 when the papal letter was prepared.77 How long did the oath to oppose Ockhams scientia remain in eect? As described elsewhere, the anti-Ockhamist wording appears among the inception oaths in the Book of the French Nation, which was copied in or after 1355 but before 1368.78 However, in the list of oaths as recorded in the Liber procuratorum of the English-German nation between 1365 and 1368 as well as the Book of the English Nation copied at the same time, the oath referring to the scientia Occamica does not appear. This was not a scribal error, since the following oath, which derives from a disciplinary statute that was appended to the statute against dogmatizing Ockham, was edited to remove any mention of statutes against Ockhamist scientia.
Earlier form: Item, observabitis statutum contentum in altero predictorum duorum statuorum de scientia Okanica, scilicet quod nullus magister, baccalarius aut scolaris (). Later form: Item, observabitis statutum quod nullus magister, baccalarius aut scolaris ().
The implication of these changes is that at some point between 1355 and 1368 the ban on Ockham and his scientia was lifted and Ockhams writings and views could be openly discussed and used in the arts
77 Clement, as Pierre Roger, had been resident in Paris until 1339, when his elevation to cardinal (December, 1338) transferred his principal residence to Avignon. But as provisor of the Sorbonne and frequent correspondent with John XXII and Benedict XII on university matters, he would have been fully informed about developments before September 1339. 78 Courtenay, The Registers of the University of Paris, 4044 [above, pp. 256 260].
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faculty. Precisely when this occurred cannot yet be determined, but it seems likely to have been done by the time Marsilius of Inghen became master of arts in 1362. Despite the fact that some theologians, such as Pierre Roger (Clement VI) and Michael de Massa, opposed the Occamistae, collective concern over Ockhams writings and thoughtat least to the point of attempting their prohibition and suppressioncontinued to be limited to the arts faculty. Theologians at Paris in the early 1340s studied some of Ockhams philosophical and theological writings and cited his opinions, rejecting some and adopting others.79 Even in the arts faculty the principal concern appears not to have been with Ockhams thought in general but Ockhams interpretation of the Aristotelian categories and its implication for physics and logic. Specic references to the views of the Occamistae as well as the oath that requires the use of Aristotle and the traditional commentaries in place of Ockhams scientia, make this clear.80 The Ockhamist Tradition at Paris after 1360 Space and the present incomplete state of research does not allow any extensive examination of the history of Ockhamism at Paris between 1360 and the events of 1474. It is evident that the term Ockhamist had already acquired a dierent meaning by the time Peter of Candia began reading the Sentences at Paris in 1378. Several times Candia refers to Ockham and his followers, also called Ockamistae or lii Ockham.81 Occasionally Candia names some of those he so labels: Adam, referring to Adam Wodeham; Monachus or Monachus Albus, referring to John of Mirecourt; and Gregory, referring to Gregory of Rimini. Candias
79 Gregory of Rimini, who read the Sentences at Paris in 13421344 and who accepted and defended most of Ockhams natural philosophy, although he opposed Ockham in the areas of epistemology and grace, had no diculty in completing his degree and proceeding with a distinguished career in his order. The same applies to Hugolino Malebranche of Orvieto in 1349. 80 For the views of the Occamistae see, for example, the comments of Michael of Massa and Conrad of Megenberg cited in Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 7275 [above, pp. 196199]; Courtenay, The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the University of Paris, 5055 [above, pp. 132136]. For the text of the oath: CUP II, p. 680. 81 Ehrle, Sentenzenkommentar, pp. 6062.
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Ockhamist tradition is as much theological as philosophical, perhaps more so. And on the theological side Candia is identifying precisely the authors who are listed among the renovating doctors in the royal edict of 1474. The broadening of the meaning of Ockhamist had already begun at Paris by Candias generation, and thus some of the groundwork for the way in which this tradition was understood in the fteenth century was already laid. Considerable progress has been made in recent years in understanding the development of schools in the fteenth century, including the Nominalist tradition and with it, the Ockhamist tradition.82 Much remains to be done on the basis of the discoveries of recent research, particularly in three areas that have not received sucient attention of late. First, the late fourteenth century from Candia to Gerson; second, a new look at the events of 1474, which Kaluza has addressed in this volume, especially the need to identify the Nominalist group; and third, a new examination of the meaning the label Ockhamist had for gures like Gabriel Biel and Martin Luther.
82
Kaluza, Querelles; Hoenen, Albertistae, thomistae und nominales.
LIST OF MANUSCRIPTS CITED

Numbers following the shelf marks are page numbers in this volume. Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Patr. 126 53n, 60n Barcelona, Biblioteca del Cabildo de la Catedral, ms 38 356n Bergamo, Biblioteca Civica, ms A.3.21 272n, 285n Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms lat. 2214 272n, 273, 285n, 286, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292n, 294, 295, 296, 300n, 319n Bologna, Collegio di Spagna, ms lat. 40 272n, 285n, 294, 295, 300n Bruges, Bibliothque de la Ville, ms lat. 237 55n Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College, ms lat. 281 121n, 123n, 124n Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, ms lat. 103 244, 245 Chartres, Bibliothque de la Ville, ms lat. 595 (formerly 662) 231, 232, 241, 260n Chicago, University Library (Regenstein), ms 22 292n Cologne (Kln), Historisches Stadtarchiv, GB 2 175 363 GB 4 186 363 Cracow, see Krkow Eichsttt, Universittsbibliothek, ms 471 366, 368n Erfurt, Universitts- und Forschungsbibliothek (formerly Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt) CA 4 259 192n CA 8 67 130n, 192n, 269n, CA 8 74 178n179n, 179n180n Erlangen, Universittsbibliothek, ms lat. 353 62n Florence (Firenze), Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, ms conv. sopp. A.III.508 121n, 122n ms conv. sopp. C.VIII.794 272n, 285n ms II.II.281 355n Frankfurt, Universittsbibliothek, Barth. 75 368n Gieen, Universittsbibliothek, ms 773 360n
404
list of manuscripts cited
Hannover, Stadtbibliothek, Hs. 1 361n Krakw, Biblioteka Jagiellonska, ms lat. 1391 162n Leipzig, Universittsbibliotek, ms lat. 529 290n London, British Library, ms Addit. 17304 145n, 232n, 234n, 236n, 238, 239, 240, 241, 247, 253n, 257, 258n, 390n London, Westminster Abbey, ms 13 113n, 115n Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, ms lat. 65 290n Magdeburg, Stadtbibliothek, ms Fol. 140 368n Munich (Mnchen), Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4643 5n Clm 14508 55n, 56n, 63n, 71n, 74n, 80n Clm 14687 147n, 197n, 198n, 276n, 314n, 315n, 325n Clm 26711 354n, 355n Clm 29520/2 64n, 83n Munich (Mnchen), Universittsbibliothek, F. 52 130n Naples (Napoli), Biblioteca Nazionale, ms lat. VII.C.1 272n, 285n ms lat. VII.C.6 293, 294n ms lat. VII.C.14 54n, 59n ms lat. VII.C.53 361n Oxford, All Souls College, ms 86 269n Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon. misc. 226 183n Canon. misc. 276 272n, 285n Laud lat. 67 51n Oxford, Corpus Christi College, ms 283 243n, 244, 245 Padua (Padova), Biblioteca Universitaria, ms 2229 292n, 293n Pamplona, Biblioteca del Cabildo de la Catedral, ms 1 356n Paris, Archives Nationales, M 68, n. 2 256n M 68, n. 6 256n M 68, n. 26 256n M 68, n. 27 256n Paris, Archives de lUniversit (Sorbonne), carton 1, A.1.h 256n carton 3, A.7.b 256n carton 3, A.7.c 256n carton 4, A.19.i 256n carton 4, A.22.b 390n

carton 5, B.1.g 256n carton 6, B.1.c 256n carton 6, C.5.a 256n carton 7, D.12.b 256n carton 7, D.12.d 256n carton 7, D.13.a 256n carton 7, D.15.a 256n carton 7, D.18.ss 256n Reg. 2 145n, 172n, 232 Reg. 3 174n, 257, 258n, 260n Reg. 100 171n, 172n, 209n, 229n, 231, 232, 241, 242n, 243, 247n, 257, 260 Paris, Bibliothque de lArsenal, ms lat. 910 83n Paris, Bibliothque Mazarine, ms lat. 178 79n ms lat. 758 54n, 56n, 58n, 59n, 63n ms lat. 894 130n ms lat. 915 122n
405
Paris, Bibliothque Nationale, ms lat. 3197A 199n ms lat. 6441 193n, 196n, 271n ms lat. 9950 242n ms lat. 14526 55n ms lat. 14556 55n ms lat. 15747 61n ms lat. 15840 354n ms lat. 15880 271n ms lat. 15887 121n ms lat. 16621 179n ms nouv. acq. lat. 535 231, 234n, 235n, 241, 243n, 246n, 247n, 253n, 258n, 260n, 390n ms nouv. acq. lat. 936 (formerly Cheltenham, Phillips 876) 236, 237, 238, 239, 245, 247, 390n ms nouv. acq. lat. 1470 42n ms nouv. acq. lat. 2060 145n, 231, 241, 253n, 258n, 260n, 390n Paris, Bibliothque Sainte-Genevive, ms lat. 1655 231, 232n, 242n Paris, Bibliothque de lUniversit (Sorbonne), ms lat. 193 122n, 124n Pavia, Biblioteca Universitaria, ms 226 272n, 285n Rome, Archivum Generale Augustinianum, Dd 1: Registrum Generalatus Matthaei Asculani 193n Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, ms 4 354n
406
Seville (Sevilla), Biblioteca Colombina, ms lat. 7-7-13 183n ms lat. 7-7-32 147n, 198n Troyes, Bibliothque municipale, ms lat. 62 189n, 355n ms lat. 718 130n Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Regist. Supplic. Innocent. VI, an. 2 260n Regist. Vat. Benedict. XII, an. 4 166n167n Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 329 364 Pal. lat. 1252 147n, 198n, 277n Regin. lat. 406 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 245, 390n Vat. lat. 829 367n Vat. lat. 901 131n Vat. lat. 955 97n, 110n, 120n, 121n, 122n, 124n Vat. lat. 981 355n Vat. lat. 1084 272n, 285n Vat. lat. 1087 132n, 133n, 186n, 196n, 197n, 271, 272274, 282n, 286289, 294, 298301, 318, 319n, 320322, 325, 326, 332, 333n, 334n, 335n, 339 346, 397 Vat. lat. 1110 110n Vat. lat. 4296 56n, 61n, 71n Vat. lat. 4304 56n, 61n, 71n Vat. lat. 7678 52n, 64n, 79n, 85, 86n Vat. lat. 10754 54n, 61n Vienna (Wien), Dominikanerkonvent, ms 108 368n ms 160/130 193n ms 401/130 314n, 315n Vienna (Wien), sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Pal. lat. 2459 84n Pal. lat. 5460 119n Wilhering, Cistercienserstift, ms 87 355n Worcester, Cathedral, ms F 3 114n
INDEX OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL NAMES

Adam of Lincoln, 93 Adam of Petit Pont [Parvipontanus], 86 Adam Wodeham, O.F.M., 14, 16, 43n, 97, 98, 102, 103, 105, 107, 110, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120 124, 125, 135, 139, 140, 185n, 188, 296, 349357, 361364, 367, 371, 372, 375, 377, 378, 379, 400 Adolphus de Monte, count of Berg, 362 Alain of Villa Colis, 173, 209, 265 Alberic of Paris, 35, 49, 50, 51, 64, 75, 76, 77, 78, 82, 87 Alberic of Reims, 50, 82n Albert II, Duke of Austria, 198, 313 Albert the Great, O.P., 52n, 54n, 79n, 80, 281, 337, 398 Albert of Saxony, 105, 227n, 371, 372 Alcuin, 211n Alexander IV, pope, 237 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 280 Alexander of Hales, O.F.M., 9, 398n Alexander Langeley, O.F.M., 124, 142 Alexander Necquam, 86 Alexander of S. Elpidio, O.E.S.A., 289, 291, 292, 293, 294n, 300 Alfonse, brother of King Louis XI of France, 390 Alfonsus Vargas of Toledo, O.E.S.A., xv, 184, 185n, 285n, 289, 291, 353, 354, 355 Andlo di Negro, 137n Andrea de Biglia, O.E.S.A., 272n, 285n Andreas Freouati of Smland, 192n Andrew of Sweden, 144n, 177 Angelus de Ancona, O.E.S.A., 366 Angelus Dobelin, O.E.S.A., 224, 225 Anselm of Bec, St., 3137, 46, 65, 66, 67, 68, 73 Anthonius Sicti de Vercellis, 250n Antony Bek, later chancellor of Lincoln and bishop of Norwich, 96 Apparicius of Burgos, O.E.S.A., 356 Aristotle, xiii, xv, 27, 28, 32n, 36, 45, 46n, 47n, 49, 60, 64, 65n, 67, 75, 80n, 83, 86n, 98, 132, 144, 145, 146, 147n, 151, 174, 178, 187, 188, 194, 195, 196, 210, 215, 258, 259, 265, 271, 273n, 275, 276n, 280, 281, 300, 319, 320, 321, 326, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346, 381, 387n, 393, 395, 396, 397, 398, 400 Arnold de Verdala, papal chaplain and legate, 312 Arnulf of Laon, 46 Aubertus de Maconvilla, 250n Augustine, St., 9, 2330, 41, 42n, 49, 56, 66n, 70, 71n, 73, 75, 147n, 187, 188, 212n, 213, 214, 349 Augustinus von Regensburg, O.E.S.A., 357 Averroes, xiii, xiv, 144, 145, 146, 147n, 151, 174, 194, 195, 196, 258, 259, 265, 280, 281, 319, 321, 326, 330, 334, 336, 337, 341, 344, 346, 381, 393, 396, 397, 398n Avicenna, 334n Baldwin, archdeacon of Exeter, 51 Bandinus, 62 Bede, 211n Benedict XII, pope, 97n, 102, 136, 137, 138, 147, 166n, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 272n, 283, 313, 324n, 362, 384n, 388, 399n
408
index of ancient and medieval names

Edward III, king of England, 113 Eggeling Becker von Braunschweig, 360, 361 Eghno, 314 Elias de Corson, 182n Elias of Nabinali, O.F.M., 100 Eric of Auxerre, 6, 40 tienne Chaumont, 271n tienne Marcel, 261 tienne Tempier, bishop of Paris, 387 Euclid, 194 Facinus de Ast, O.E.S.A., 366 Francis of Marchia, O.F.M., 100, 102, 111, 129, 136, 269n, 290 Francis of Meyronnes, O.F.M., 100, 111, 130131 Francis of Treviso, O.P., xv, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193 Fulk of Beauvais, bishop, 46n Gabriel Biel, 14, 15, 350, 360, 361, 377, 401 Garinus de Pruvino, 252n Garlandus Compotista, 37 Garnerus, 51n Gaufridus dictus Ligator, 250n Gaufridus de Plesseio, 250n Georey Lemaresch, 182n Gerard of Bologna, O.Carm., 186n, 365n Gerard de Bren, O.P., 365n, 366, 368 Gerard of Marten, 144n, 177 Gerard Odonis (Guiral Ot), O.F.M., 100, 136, 193, 290, 296n Gerard of Siena, O.E.S.A., 289, 292, 293, 297 Gerardus [Last Name Unknown], referred to in commentary of Thomas Hager, 365n, 368n Giles of Rome, O.E.S.A., 91, 96, 98, 101, 105, 211n, 281, 283, 290n, 337, 350, 398 Godfrey of Fontaines, 291, 293 Godfrey of Poitiers, 52n, 61n, 62n
Bernard of Arezzo, O.F.M., xv, 316, 335n Bernard of Chartres, 42, 65, 66, 67 Bertaud of St. Denis, 297n Berthold of Constance, 180n Berthold Swavus, 314 Boethius, 31, 32n, 33, 36, 37, 45, 46n, 49, 83, 130n, 192n Bonagratia of Bergamo, O.F.M., 102 Bonamicus (of Bologna), 250 Bonaventure, O.F.M., St., 52n, 53, 54n, 55n, 59n, 86, 215, 221, 398n Bonsemblans Baduarius, O.E.S.A., 355 Burchard of Constance, 180n, 314 Cassiodorus, 213n, 214n Christianus, master from French nation, 309, 310 Christianus de Elst, 310 Christianus Ghys [Ghis] of St. Omer, 310 Cicero, 27, 28n, 211, 212 Clement VI, pope (Pierre Roger), 151, 152, 191, 205, 206, 280, 297n, 327, 397, 399 Conrad of Megenberg [Monte Puellarum], xiv, xv, 137n, 143 153, 173n, 176, 177, 193, 196n, 197, 198, 199, 204, 205, 222, 223, 225, 226, 262, 264, 268, 269n, 271, 272, 274, 275n, 276, 277, 278, 282, 284, 303327, 336, 337, 338, 339, 386n, 397, 399, 400n David II, king of Scotland, 182 Diomedes, 213 Dominique Grenier, O.P., lector at the Sacred Palace and bishop elect of Pamiers, 100 Donatus, 65, 213n, 214 Duns Scotus; see John Duns Scotus Durand of St. Pourain, O.P., 101, 132, 133, 186n, 189, 202, 289, 290, 296n, 352n, 366 Dyonisius de Mutina [Modena], O.E.S.A., 295 Dyonisius Thrax, 211

Godfrey of St. Victor, 48, 51, 52 Gregory IX, pope, 237, 387n Gregory XI, pope, 362 Gregory of Lucca, O.E.S.A., bishop of Belluno-Feltre, 101 Gregory of Rimini, O.E.S.A., xv, 14, 15, 17, 43n, 104, 123, 140n, 142n, 143, 145, 150, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 206, 207, 285n, 289, 295, 297, 301, 326, 349, 350, 351353, 354, 355, 365n, 371, 372, 400 Grimerius Bonifacii, 310n Guillaume dEstouteville, cardinal, 239n, 243n Guillaume de Chanac, bishop of Paris, 166n Guiral Ot; see Gerard Odonis Gyso of Cologne, O.E.S.A., 367 Heinrich Alberti, O.P., 367 Heinrich de Cervo, O.P., 368 Heinrich Hager, O.P., 364, 365, 366, 368 Heinrich von Nrnberg, 314n Heinrich von Sachsen, O.P., 367 Heinrich Trglein, O.P., 366, 368, 369 Henry of Constance, 314 Henry of Dalen, 363 Henry of England, O.Cist., 205n Henry of Friemar, O.E.S.A., 294n Henry of Ghent, 91, 95, 96, 98, 114n, 291, 292, 293 Henry of Harclay, 95, 114, 115, 120, 129n, 130n, 134 Henry of Langenstein, 303 Henry of Sutton, O.F.M., guardian of Franciscan convent in London, 93 Henry Totting of Oyta, 105, 303, 356, 357, 362, 375 Henry of Unna, 142n, 173, 175, 176, 180, 181, 198, 251n, 264, 265, 381 Henry of Zomeren, 373 Herman of Tournai, 45 Hermann, O.F.M., Franciscan from
409
Cologne resident at Oxford convent, 367 Hermann Hetzstede, O.P., 364, 365, 368 Herveus de Insula, 250n, 261n, 265 Horace, 219 Hrabanus Maurus, 6, 40 Hugh of Douglas, 144n, 177 Hugh Lawton, 225n Hugh of St. Cher, O.P., 62n Hugo Sapientis, 164n Hugolino (Malbranche) of Orvieto, O.E.S.A., xv, 104, 273n, 300n, 327, 349, 353354, 355, 400n Innocent IV, pope, 237, 238 Innocent VI, pope, 239 Isidore, 211n, 212n, 213, 214n Jacob Fortis, 194n Jacques de Dijon, O.Cist., 202n Jacques Fournier, O.Cist. (see also Benedict XII), 201204 James of Eltville, O.Cist., 356 James of pinal (de Spinallo), O.F.M., xv, 363n James of Pamiers (de Appamiis), O.E.S.A., 289, 290, 291, 296n, 301 James of Viterbo, O.E.S.A., 290n Jean Gerson, 14, 17, 371, 372n, 373, 374, 401 Jean de Maisonneuve, 18, 373 Jerome, 41 Johannes Arneri of Sweden, 314 Johannes de Marliano, O.E.S.A., 272n, 285n Johannes de Piscibus, papal chaplain, 311 John; see also Johannes, Jean John, master of Robert of Paris, Roscelin of Compigne, and Arnulf of Laon, 46 John, monk, 46n John XXII, pope, 98n, 102, 200, 201, 202, 203, 239, 290n, 297n, 298, 361, 373n, 384n, 388, 399n
410

John of Salisbury, 7, 35n, 41, 42n, 44n, 47, 49, 50, 51, 64, 65n, 66, 67, 75 John Scotus Eriugena, 6, 40 John Staupitz, O.E.S.A., 350 John Swavus, 314 John of Trier, 314 John of Vimarcio [Vmars], 309, 310, 311 John Went, O.F.M., 124 John of Wessel [Wesalia], 184n John of Wittenberg, 314 John Wyclif, 103, 104, 107, 108, 126, 224, 227n, 378, 379 Louis IX, king of France, 390 Louis XI, king of France, 199, 371, 372, 374n, 398 Louis of Bavaria, emperor of Germany, 102, 146, 147, 312 Louis of Beaumont, bishop of Durham, 113 Luke of Ely, 114 Mainerius, 51n Marguerite Porete, 202 Marsilius of Inghen, 7, 14, 17, 105, 227n, 303, 356, 359, 360, 361, 371, 372, 373, 375, 377, 398, 400 Marsilius of Padua, 102, 103, 146 Martin Luther, 350, 401 Martinus, master, 53n, 55n Martinus Anglicus, 227n Matthew of Sweden, 163n, 178n Meister Eckhart, O.P., 202 Melissus, 275, 276n, 321, 332, 342 Michael of Cesena, O.F.M., minister general, 100, 102, 202 Michael of Massa, O.E.S.A., xiv, xv, 111, 132, 133, 136, 186, 189, 196, 197, 198, 269n, 271, 272274, 275, 276, 277, 280, 282, 284, 285301, 318, 319, 320, 322, 329346, 388n, 397, 398, 400 Michael de Montecalerio, xv, 270n Monachus Niger, O.S.B., 140, 142
John Baconthorpe, O.Carm., 134 John Brammart, O.Carm., 355 John of Bruxelles, 307 John of Burgos, O.E.S.A., 296 John Buridan, xiv, xv, 13, 14, 17, 105, 134, 136, 140, 142, 149n, 158, 173n, 268, 269270, 278, 279, 281, 283284, 359, 360, 361, 371, 372, 373, 391, 398 John Crombe, O.F.M., 94 John Dorp, 371, 372 John Dumbleton, 107, 116, 125, 151 John Duns Scotus, O.F.M., 2, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 122, 123, 131, 133, 134, 135, 190n, 287n, 291, 294n, 366, 398n John Grafton, 118, 119 John Hiltalingen of Basel, O.E.S.A., 349, 354355 John of Holland, 227n John de Hurwin of Constance, 368n John of Jandun, 146 John Kinhard, 144n, 177, 180n, 182 John Klenkok, O.E.S.A., 367 John Lathbury, O.F.M., 367 John Lutterell, 100, 101, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 229, 265, 279 John Major, 356, 357n John of Mirecourt, O.Cist., xv, 14, 17, 127, 142, 143, 157, 158n, 191, 308, 365n, 371, 372, 400 John de Misna, 180n John Nicholai, 130, 191, 192, 269 John Paignote, O.E.S.A., 101 John Rathe of Scotland, xv, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 198, 309n John of Reading, O.F.M., 17, 9697, 98, 99, 100, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 120, 129n, 134, 188n John of Rodington, O.F.M., 102, 112, 113, 116, 134, 135, 367 John of Sacrobosco, 137n, 147, 197, 198, 276, 314, 322, 325, 386n

Nicholas IV, pope, 238 Nicholas Albergati, cardinal protector of Augustinians, 286n Nicholas de Anesiaco, O.P., 250n Nicholas Aston, 104, 125, 142, 379 Nicholas of Autrecourt, xv, 13, 14, 16, 127n, 138, 143, 157, 158, 159, 166, 167, 191, 205, 206, 221, 316, 318n, 324n, 335, 374n, 384, 389, 391 Nicholas of Cosfeld, 144n, 177 Nicholas Drukken de Dacia, 144n, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, 194, 198, 389 Nicholas Gossek of Poland, 313 Nicholas Trevet, O.P., 96 Nicole Oresme, xv, 184n Norman de Lesseley, 180n Odo, future bishop of Cambrai, 45 Otto of Freising, 46, 47, 48n, 76 Parmenides, 275, 276n, 321, 332, 342 Parvipontanus; see Adam of Petit Pont Pastor de Serrescuderio, O.F.M., 100, 315 Paul of Perugia, O.Carm., xv Paul of Venice, 227n Peter; see also Petrus, Pierre Peter Abelard, 1, 2, 4, 5n, 7, 9, 11, 13, 18, 19, 35, 39, 41, 44, 45, 46n, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53n, 61n, 62, 66n, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74n, 75 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 214, 374 Peter of Aquila, O.F.M., 135, 280n, 315316 Peter Auriol [Aureoli], O.F.M., 94, 98, 111, 115, 120, 124, 133, 186n, 189n, 190n, 286n, 296 Peter of Candia, 8, 227n, 375, 400, 401 Peter the Cantor, 52n, 62n, 78n, 79n Peter of Capua, 52n, 55n, 56n, 61n, 63n, 71n, 74, 80n
411
Peter Lombard, 24, 25, 35, 53, 54n, 55, 56, 58, 59n, 60, 61n, 64, 68, 70, 79 Peter of John Olivi, 114, 122, 129n, 130n, 132, 143, 186n, 202, 330, 331 Peter of Poitiers, 53, 61n Peter de Rivo, 373 Peter of Spain (Hispanus), 361 Petrus de Croso, 181, 182n Petrus Garini, O.E.S.A., 356 Petrus Menenes, 357 Petrus Nigri, 4n Philip Augustus, king of France, 238 Philip of Grve, 54n Philip the Scot, 309n Pierre dAilly, 14, 15, 105, 127, 189n, 371, 372, 374 Pierre Ceons, O.Cist., xv, 127, 189n, 355 Pierre Roger (see also Clement VI), 205, 297n, 400 Plato, 132 Porphyry, 45, 47n, 98 Praepositinus, 52n, 54n, 55n, 62n Priscian, 31, 32, 34n, 47n, 51n, 65, 214n Quintillian, 213 Radulphus Benedicti, 250, 256n Raimbert of Lille, 45 Ralph Strode, 104, 125, 379 Ratramnus of Corbie, 40n Raymund Bguin, O.P., patriarch of Jerusalem, 100 Richard Billingham, 227n Richard Brinkley, O.F.M., 104, 125, 224, 379 Richard de Bury, 113, 152 Richard Campsall, 95, 96, 99, 114, 115, 120, 134, 139, 215, 216 Richard of Conington, O.F.M., 95, 96, 115, 134 Richard Drayton, 113, 115 Richard Fitzralph, 107, 112, 113, 116, 120, 122, 123n, 134, 135, 351n, 364
412

Simon of Tournai, 56n, 61n Simon de Weuchy, 164n Simplicius, 280 Stephen; see also tienne Stephen Kettelbergh, 101 Stephen of Langres, 136, 204, 252n Stephen Langton, 59n, 62n Suno of Sweden, 178n, 308, 313 Suno Karoli of Sweden, 178n, 313, 314, 386n Surrey, 114 Themistius, 280 Thomas Aquinas, O.P., St., 2, 39, 52n, 54n, 79, 86, 91, 96, 101, 105, 113, 129n, 133, 215, 221, 280, 281, 291, 294, 295, 331, 337, 365n, 368n, 398 Thomas de Bailly, chancellor at Paris, 98n Thomas Bradwardine, 104, 107, 116, 135, 140, 269n, 364 Thomas Buckingham, 107, 116, 125, 135, 140, 364, 365 Thomas de Caliga Rubea of Trier, 313 Thomas de Fabiano, O.E.S.A., 290n Thomas de Kinnemund, 180n Thomas Parentucelli de Sarzana, future Pope Nicholas V, 286n, 318 Thomas of Strasbourg, O.E.S.A., 287n, 292, 316, 350, 356 Thomas de Vio Cajetan, O.P., 4n Thomas Waleys, O.P., 202, 205 Thomas de Wedale, 183n, 184n Thomas Wilton, 134 Udo, master, 53n, 60n Ulger of Angers, 214 Ulrich of Augsburg, 178n, 180n, 308, 309, 312 Ulrich of Saxony, 314 Urban II, pope, 46 Urban V, pope, 243n, 317n Valetus, 51n Varro, 211, 212
Richard Kilvington, 116, 135, 140, 184n Richard of Lincoln, O.Cist., 205 Richard of Portirstona, 180n, 184, 191, 193, 194 Richard the Scot, 144n, 177 Richard Swineshead, 125 Robert Cowton, O.F.M., 96, 114, 115, 134 Robert Curson, 386 Robert de Ffyf (de Cupir), 178n Robert Graystanes, O.S.B., 113116 Robert Grosseteste, 305 Robert of Halifax, O.F.M., 116, 124, 125n, 135, 140, 188n, 366, 368 Robert Holcot, O.P., 14, 17, 43n, 57n, 107, 112, 116, 117120, 135, 139, 140, 188, 225, 350, 357, 363, 374n, 378, 379 Robert of Kykeley [Kigheley], 95, 114 Robert of Melun, 49, 51, 71 Robert of Paris, 46 Robert Semere, 183n Robert of Walsingham, O.Carm., 114, 115 Robert Winchelsey, archbishop of Canterbury, 93 Roger Bacon, 135, 217 Roger Marston, O.F.M., 94 Roger Rosetus, O.F.M., 124, 125n, 188n Roger Swyneshead, 227n Roland of Cremona, O.P., 52n Roscelin [Roscelinus], 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 35, 37n, 41, 44, 46, 47, 67, 68, 374 Rosetus; see Roger Rycholf de Via Lapidea, 366, 368 Scaurus, 213 Sifridus, 367 Simon de Brie, 311 Simon of Faversham, 215n Simon of Mepham, future archbishop of Canterbury, 96 Simon Quinimo, 250n, 261

Walter Burley, 111, 112, 115, 125, 129, 130, 132, 134, 135, 139, 140, 141, 142, 145n, 153, 179, 184n, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196n, 217, 218, 269, 270, 280n, 281, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 361 Walter Chatton, O.F.M., 17, 43n, 98, 99, 110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 130n, 134, 188n, 190n, 296, 300n, 351n, 378 Walter Map, 48n, 78 Walter Wardlaw, 178n, 180n, 182, 183, 184, 198 Werner Wolfram, 144n, 177, 180n William; see also Guillaume William of Alnwick, O.F.M., 94, 97, 98, 114, 115, 134, 135 William of Auxerre, 25, 52n, 53n, 54n, 56n, 63n, 74n William of Brenueth, 184n
413
William Buser, 227n William of Champeaux, 4 William of Conches, 48, 49, 73, 74 William Crathorn, O.P., 43n, 107, 118, 119, 135, 188, 379 William of Cremona, O.E.S.A., 291, 293, 294, 297 William Grenlaw (de Viridi Monte), 182n William Heytesbury, 107, 116, 125, 135, 140, 151, 368n William Melton, archbishop of York, 113 William of Nottingham, O.F.M., 96 William of Ockham, O.F.M., passim William of Rubione, O.F.M., 100 William of Soissons, 86 William Sutton, 125 Zeno, 80n
INDEX OF MODERN NAMES

Adams, M.M., 171n Akkerman, F., 105n, 377n Almagno, R.S., 111n Andjar, E., 267n, 387n Arnauld, A., 3n Arnold, K., 146n, 198n, 222n Ashworth, J., 227n Aventinus, see Turmair Balic, C., 95n Baluze, ., 2n Barach, K.S., 6, 40n Barbet, J., 205n Barth, T., 13n Bataillon, L., 280n, 398n Baudry, L., 13, 110n, 112n, 373n Baumgartner, M., 40, 41n Bazn, C., 267n, 387n Beckmann, J.P., 18n Benary, F., 7, 359n Bender, J., 125n Bergmann, G., 4n Bianchi, L., 267n, 323n, 329n Biard, J., 278n, 279, 282, 329n, 382n Birch, T.B., 110n Boehner, P., xiii, 11n, 12, 13, 14, 17n, 108, 112n, 120n, 130n, 131n, 133n, 141n, 158n, 166, 170, 171n, 180n, 186n, 187n, 190n, 192n, 195n, 209, 210, 217n, 220, 221, 269n, 270n, 271n, 331n Borchert, E., 11 Borgnet, A., 80n Bouquet, M., 46n Boyer, B., 70n, 214n Braakhuis, H.A.G., 80n, 85 Brampton, C.K., 92n, 101n, 110n, 133n, 195n Briek, M., 203n Briquet, C.M., 172n, 243n Brooke, C.L.N., 48n, 50n Brown, M.A., 139n Brown, S.F., 95n, 98n, 99n, 110n, 111n, 112n, 120n, 129n, 130n, 131n, 171n, 180n, 186n, 192n, 195n, 217n, 270n, 300n, 360n Brucker, J.J., 3n Buck, A., 17n Buhle, J.G., 3n, 4n Burger, C., 18n Burr, D., 330n Burrows, M.S., 18n, 372n Busa, R., 53n Busse, M., 4n Buytaert, E.M., 12, 18n, 48n, 76n, 158n Canivez, J.M., 305n Caramuel y Lobkowitz, J., 4n, 6 Caroti, S., 105n, 267n, 317n, 329n, 339n, 388n Carr, M.H., 4n, 11, 44n Catto, J.I., 125n, 305n Chandler, B., 139n, 372n Chtelain, ., 230, 231, 232, 233n, 236, 242n, 243n, 256n, 257, 381 Chenu, M.-D., 9, 10, 18, 23, 24, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 52, 53, 55n, 56, 62n, 63n, 66 Colish, M., 19n, 29n, 50n, 66n Condillac, E.B. de, 6 Condorcet, M. de, 6 Corsten, W., 201n Cosman, M.P., 139n, 372n Cousin, V., 4, 5, 6, 40n, 44n Cova, L., 95n Dal Pra, M., 83n Davis, L.D., 158n De Board, A., 255, 383n
416
index of modern names

Fontaine, J., 213n Fournier, P., 201n Frank, W.A., 99n, 300n Franz, A., 360n Fredborg, K.M. (Margarita), 18n, 63n Friedberg, E., 93n Frotz, A., 201n Fuchs, O., 12n Fumagalli, M.T. Beonio-Brocchieri, 48n, 76n Gabriel, A.L., 127n, 200n, 359n Gl, G., 17n, 95n, 97n, 98n, 99n, 110n, 111n, 112n, 114n, 120n, 123n, 129n, 130n, 134n, 180n, 185n, 186n, 192n, 195n, 217n, 224n, 270n, 296n, 360n, 363n, 379n Geach, P.T., 171n Gelber, H.G., 16n, 17n, 118, 119n, 122n, 123n, 225n, 367n, 378n Genest, J.-F., 104n, 307n, 365n Geyer, B., 6n, 40, 41n, 44n, 47n, 77n, 80n Ghisalberti, A., 187n Giacon, C., 171n Gilbert, N.W., 127n, 128n, 199n, 359n, 372, 373n, 380n Gilson, ., 9n, 11, 12 Giry, A., 255, 383n Glorieux, P., 17n, 182n, 201n, 202n, 293n, 294n Gssmann, E., 17n Grabmann, M., 50n, 80n, 85, 359, 366n, 368 Gracia, J.J.E., 40n Graham, R., 93n Green-Pedersen, N.J., 18n, 64n, 83n, 179n Grimaldo, C., 188n, 189n, 193n Grzondziel, H., 8, 9, 10 Guyot, B.G., 280n, 398n Harkins, C.L., 111n Haurau, B., 4n, 5, 6, 40n Heinze, M., 5n
De Grando, J., 3n, 6 De la Torre, B.R., 364n De Libera, A., 19n, 35n, 39n, 82n De Pommerol, M.-H., 232n De Rmusat, Charles, 4n, 5n De Rijk, L.M., 18n, 35n, 44, 50n, 52n, 75n, 76n, 84, 85n, 86n, 138n, 139n, 171n, 214n, 217n De Wulf, M., 6, 8, 9, 11, 40, 41n Denie, H., 157, 172, 209, 230, 231, 236, 242n, 243n, 257, 381 Desharnais, R.P., 15n Di Benedetto, V., 211n Dolnikowski, E.W., 104n Doucet, V., 95n, 293, 294, 356n Drossbach, G., 312n Du Boulay, C.E., 2, 3, 6, 44n, 145n, 172n, 174n, 235n, 241n, 242n, 256n, 257, 394 Du Cange, C., 2, 3, 6, 44 Dugauquier, J.-A., 62n Dumont, S., 280n Du Plessis dArgentr, C., 127n, 175n, 200n, 381n Ebbesen, S., 18n, 63n, 83n, 179n, 211n, 215n, 219n Eckermann, W., 16n, 224n, 225n, 273n, 300n, 349n, 354n Ehrle, F., 1n, 8, 9, 45n, 128n, 359n, 371n, 373n, 375, 380n, 381n, 398n, 400n Elie, H., 43n Emden, A.B., 97n, 110n, 113n, 114n, 183n Etzkorn, G.J., 96n, 99n, 104n, 110n, 111n, 300n Evans, G.R., 28n Fabricius, J.A., 304n Faes de Mottoni, B., 95n Feckes, C., 8, 9 Fehling, Detlev, 211n Ferruolo, S., 50n Fitzgerald, M.J., 379n Fitzpatrick, N., 110n Flash, K., 9n, 128n, 158n

Henry, D.P., 31, 34n, 37n, 65n, 171n Hermelink, H., 7 Hertz, M., 32n Hochstetter, E., 10, 11, 12, 13n Hoenen, M.J.F.M., 105n, 267n, 323n, 371n, 376n, 401n Homann, F., 15n, 101n, 110n, 117 Honnefelder, L., 18n Hbener, W., 17n, 18n, 372n Hubien, H., 166n Hudson, A., 96n, 107n, 379n Huisman, G.C., 105n, 377n Hume, D., 3n, 8 Hunt, R., 51n, 75n Ibach, H., 145n, 151n, 222n, 304n, 312n, 314n, 315n, 316, 318n Imbach, R., 1n, 317n Inciarte, F., 131n, 170n Iserloh, E., 11, 12 Iwakuma, Y., 18n, 64n, 83n, 84n Jacobi, K., 81n Ja, P., 46n James, F.A., 96n Jansen, B., 330n Jolivet, J., 18, 19n, 35n, 39n, 48n, 82n Junghans, H., 13n Kaeppeli, T., 146n, 188n, 202n, 203n, 222n, 304n, 314n, 315n, 316, 364n, 365n Kaluza, Z., xiv, 16n, 18, 19n, 35n, 39n, 80n, 82n, 105n, 125n, 127n, 222n, 267n, 268n, 271n, 283n, 317n, 322n, 323n, 329n, 331n, 335n, 365n, 372n, 373n, 374n, 379n, 380n, 383n, 384, 386, 391, 392n, 395, 396n, 397n, 398, 401 Kaulich, W., 5n Kenny, A., 139n Keussen, H., 360n Kibre, P., 249n, 252n Kilcullen, J., 103n
417
King, E.B., 23n, 57n Kingsford, C.L., 92n, 93n Kintzinger, M., 312n Kittelson, J.M., 139n, 185n, 327n, 365n, 372n Knowles, D., 13n, 113 Knudsen, C., 171n Knysh, G., 100n Koch, J., 110n, 131n, 133n, 201n, 202n, 203n, 365n Kopp, K., 219n, 223n Kretzmann, N., 139n, 216n Krger, S., 146n, 147n, 151n, 197n, 198n, 199n, 222n, 275n, 276n, 277n, 303n, 304, 305n, 307n, 312n, 314n, 315n, 325n Knneth, J.T., 3n Krzinger, J., 185n, 291n Kwanten, E., 307n Landgraf, A.M., 23n, 40, 42, 43, 53, 55n, 61n, 63n, 79n, 80n Lang, A., 11n, 375 Lappe, J., 157n Le Roy Ladurie, E., 202n Le, G., 13n, 15n, 104n, 108n, 116n, 123n, 131n Leland, J., 113 LeMoine, F., 211n Lerner, R., 202n Leroux, P., 4n Lesne, E., 50n Levi, A.H.T., 17n Lickteig, F., 367n Lindberg, D.C., 132n, 195n Linden, P., 201n Little, A.G., 114n, 362n, 367n Livesey, S.J., 17n Locke, J., 3, 8 Lhr, G.M., 184n, 359, 365n, 368 Longpr, E., 97n, 110n Lortz, J., 12n Luscombe, D.E., 18, 50n, 51n, 69n Maier, A., 129, 130n, 131n, 135n, 185n, 186n, 201n, 205n, 269n, 270, 283n
418

Nuchelmans, G., 10n, 18, 19n, 23n, 32n, 33n, 35n, 36, 37, 41n, 43n, 49n, 50n, 54n Oakley, F., 13n, 15n Oberman, H.A., 14, 15, 17n, 18n, 96n, 104n, 117n, 120n, 152n, 360n, 372n, 377, 379n ODonnell, J.R., 158n, 171n Omont, H., 231, 232, 241n Ouy, G., 17n, 142n, 372n Ozment, S., 15n, 17n, 372n Paqu, R., xiii, 16, 128n, 135n, 158, 162, 167n, 170, 172, 173n, 177n, 209, 220, 229n, 279n, 282n, 376n, 380n Parodi, M., 17n, Pegis, A., 12 Pelster, F., 11, 52n, 80n, 85, 95n, 114n, 129n, 289n Pelzer, A., 146n, 222n Perini, D.A., 273n, 289n, 296n Perreiah, A.R., 139n, 171n Picavet, F.J., 5n, 6 Piccard, G., 243n Pinborg, J., 139n, 179n, 211n Pluta, O., 267n, 322n, 365n Pommerol, M.-H. de; see De Pommerol Prantl, C. [or K.], 5, 6, 7, 40n Preti, G., xiii Price, R., 131n, 171n Rashdall, H., 167n, 252n Reina, M.E., 135n, 171n, 278n Reiners, J., 5n, 7, 11, 40, 41, 43n, 47, 49 Ribaillier, J., 25n, 53n Richter, V., 195n Riezler, S., 2n, 44n, 374n Rijk, L.M. de; see De Rijk Ritter, G., 7, 8, 9, 14, 359n, 371, 375, 377 Robson, J.A., 108n, 125n, 364n Roensch, F.J., 96n Rosier-Catach, I., 329n
Maier, A., 1n, 131n, 140n, 185n, 365n, 374n Malebranche, N., 3, 8 Marcolino, V., 145n, 184n, 193n, 285n, 295n, 297n, 326n, 352n, 365n Marenbon, J., 40n Markowski, M., 198n Marmo, C., 329n, Martin, C.J., 82, 86 Martin, R.M., 71n Mrtl, C., 312n Matthews, G.B., 171n Maurer, A.A., 13n Mayer, C.P., 349n McGrade, A.S., 103n, 124n, 146n, 199n, 222n McKeon, R., 36n, 49n, 70n, 214n McNamara, J.F., 15n Meiners, C., 3 Menges, M.C., 12n Michael, B., 149n, 270n, 324n Michalski, C. [or K.], 8, 9, 128n, 142n, 157n, 158n, 170, 173n, 209 Michaud-Quantin, P., 48n Miethke, J., 100n, 103n, 146n, 149n, 199n, 222n Millor, W.J., 50n Minio-Paluello, L., 138n, 333n Mohan, G.E., 195n Moody, E.A., xiii, 13, 14, 15n, 16, 43n, 108, 117, 118, 119n, 128n, 131n, 158, 162, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173n, 195n, 209, 220, 225n, 229n, 376n, 378, 379n, 380n, 387 Moser, S., 131n Moshin, V., 243n Mller, G., 305n Murdoch, J.E., 122n, 132n, 139n, 142n, 195n, 372n Mynors, R.O.B., 48n Nielsen, L.O., 63n Normore, C., 19, 40n, 62n, 64n, 77n, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87

Ross, W.D., 49n Rouse, M., 280n, 398n Rouse, R., 280n, 398n Rousselot, X., 3, 4n Rudavsky, T., 120n, 216n Sagal, P.T., 171n Salabert, J., 3n, 4n Salter, H.E., 101n Sbrocchi, L., 267n, 387n Schabel, C., 290n Schaefer, J.T., 23n, 57n Schepers, H., 15n, 43n, 117, 118, 378, 379n Schmeller, J.A., 5n Schmitt, F.S., 46n Schnaubelt, J.C., 285n Schneider, J.H.J., 267n, 323n, 371n Scholz, R., 146n, 222n, 277n, 303n, 323n, 397 Schnberger, R., 98n Schrimpf, G., 18n Schum, W., 192n Scott, T.K., xiii, 16, 128n, 135n, 158, 170, 171n, 209, 229n, 376n, 380n Sebeok, T.A., 211n Shapiro, H., 13n, 131n, 195n Sheehan, M.W., 305n Sikes, T.G., 44n Sirridge, M., 28, 66n Smalley, B., 117, 202n, 203n, 206n, 226n, 367n Sourin, P., 105n, 267n, 329n, 388n Southern, R.W., 50n, 305n Spade, P.V., 91n, 127n, 131n, 139n, 171n Stabile, G., 317n Steele, R., 217n Stegmller, F., 127n Stckl, A., 5n Stump, E., 139n Sturlese, L., 317n Swiniarski, J., 131n, 171n Sylla, E., 132n, 139n, 195n Synan, E.A., 99n, 111n, 114n, 122n, 170n, 215, 216n
419
Tachau, K.H., xiii, 16, 104n, 112, 118, 119n, 123n, 125n, 130n, 132n, 142n, 157n, 185n, 186n, 187n, 188n, 189n, 209n, 221n, 222n, 229n, 259n, 262n, 263, 267, 268n, 271n, 283n, 285n, 296n, 313n, 322n, 324n, 329n, 337n, 375n, 377n, 378n, 379n, 380, 386, 388n, 389n, 391n, 396n, 400n Tennemann, W.G., 3n, 4n, 6 Tessier, G., 158n Thijssen, J.M.M.H., xiv, 229, 230, 241n, 248n, 251n, 253, 254n, 258, 263, 264, 265, 267n, 268n, 270n, 279, 281n, 322n, 329n, 376n, 380n, 382, 383, 391 Thomas, E.C., 152n Thomasius, J., 3n Thorndike, L., 137n, 147n, 148n, 175n, 198n, 201n, 223n, 277n, 338n, 386n Thurot, C., 232, 233n Tierney, B., 103n Tornay, S.G., 10n Traljich, S., 243n Transue, P.J., 327n, 365n, 372n Trapp, [A.]D., 14, 17n, 127n, 128n, 132n, 145n, 184n, 186n, 196n, 197n, 224n, 271, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290n, 291, 294, 295, 296, 297, 299, 301, 318n, 326n, 332, 349, 350, 351n, 352n, 353, 355n, 356, 365n, 367n, 398 Tribbechov, A., 4n Trinkaus, C., 15n, 17n, 372n Trithemius, J., 304n, 316 Turmair, J. [Aventinus], 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 44n, 374 Tweedale, M.M., 44n, 50n, 76n, 78n, 116n berweg [Ueberweg], F., 5n, 6n, 40n, 41n Uhlfelder, M., 211n Uhlig, G., 211n
420

Weisheipl, J.A., 13n, 111n, 125, 131n, 132n, 139n, 191n, 193n, 195n, 269n, 280n Wey, J.C., 17n, 99n, 123n, 186n White, L., 137n Wieland, G., 18n, 267n, 323n, 371n Wilks, M., 96n, 107n, 379n Wilson, C., 139n Wippel, J.F., 19n, 40n, 81n, 293n Wood, R., 97n, 104n, 224n, 379n Xiberta, B.M., 114n Ypma, E., 273n, 295n Zimmermann, A., 17n, 127n, 200n, 359n Zumkeller, A., 224n, 349, 353, 398n
Van Neste, R., 16n Vanderjagt, A.J., 105n, 377n Van der Lecq, R., 270n Vernet, A., 307n Vidal, J.M., 201n, 317n Vignaux, P., 11, 12, 13, 14, 16n, 18, 39, 40, 41, 105n, 127n, 222n, 322n, 331n, 365n, 380n Vives, J.L., 4n Vossenkuhl, W., 98n Wallace, W., 195n Walsh, K., 116n Warichez, J., 61n Watt, D.E.R., 178n, 181n, 182n, 183n, 184n, 191n Webb, C.C.I., 35n, 44n Webering, D., 12n Weiler, A.G., 373n Weinberg, J.R., 11n, 158n

Ockham and Ockhamism

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Ockham and Ockhamism

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Ockham and Ockhamism

Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters

Paul Wilpert, Albert Zimmermann und Jan A. Aertsen

Tzotcho Boiadjiev, Kent Emery, Jr. und Wouter Goris

Ockham and Ockhamism

LEIDEN BOSTON 2008

Chapter Five. Nominales and Rules of Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

contents part two

ockhams thought in england and paris

the crisis over ockhams thought at paris

augustine and nominalism

augustine and nominalism

augustine and nominalism

on the eve of nominalism: consignification in anselm

on the eve of nominalism: consignification in anselm

on the eve of nominalism: consignification in anselm

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

chapter four Logic in voce

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and nominalism in the twelfth century

nominales and rules of inference

nominales and rules of inference

nominales and rules of inference

chapter six The Formative Years, 13051316

the academic and intellectual worlds of ockham

the academic and intellectual worlds of ockham

the academic and intellectual worlds of ockham

the academic and intellectual worlds of ockham

the academic and intellectual worlds of ockham

the academic and intellectual worlds of ockham

the academic and intellectual worlds of ockham

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought

the reception of ockhams thought