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
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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: Consignification in

Anselm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
The Two Realms of Consignification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Consignification and Nomen Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Chapter Four. Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century . . 39

Logic in voce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Opinio Nominalium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Toward a History of the Nominales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Nomina, Mental Language, and Universals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Abelard, Alberic, and the Nominales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Chapter Five. Nominales and Rules of Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

vi contents
part two
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
contents vii
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
viii contents
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
contents ix
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 Archivum Franciscanum Historicum

AFP Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum
AHDLMA Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du Moyen Age
AUP Auctarium Chartularii Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H. Denifle and
. Chtelain, vol. I (Paris: Delalain, 1894)
BGPM Beitrge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters
BGPTM Beitrge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des
Mittelalters
BRUO A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to
A.D. 1500, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957)
CIMAGL Cahiers de lInstitut du moyen-ge grec et latin
CUP Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. H. Denifle and . Chte-
lain, 4 vols. (Paris: Delalain, 18891897)
DTC Dictionnaire de Thologie Catholique
FS Franciscan Studies
FzS Franziskanische Studien
HLF Histoire Littraire de la France
HTR Harvard Theological Review
JHI Journal of the History of Ideas
JHP Journal of the History of Philosophy
MS Mediaeval Studies
PJ Philosophisches Jahrbuch
RTAM 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 influence 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 Decem-
ber 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 quorun-
dam 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 specific 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 pro-
mulgated in September 1339, and the other a second statute that con-
demned Ockhams scientia and armed instead the scientia of Aris-
totle and Averroes, except where they contradicted the faith. Nowhere
in the statute of 29 December 1340 is there any mention of Aristotle or
xiv preface
Averroes or their scientia. The 1340 statute, by contrast, is concerned

with supposition theory, the analysis of authoritative propositions in lec-
tures 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 doc-
trina 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 Thi-
jssen 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, consid-
erable progress has been made even if a commonly agreed upon pic-
ture 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 preser-
vation of university documents and record-keeping, and the nuances in
philosophical language and reasoning during those years. I remain con-
vinced 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
preface xv
de Massa, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Bernard of Arezzo, and Conrad

of Megenberg, more needs to be done. The debate over the ontolog-
ical reality of points, lines, and surfaces between atomists and divisi-
bilists 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 Ock-
hams 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
significance 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 arti-
cle. 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 nominal-
ism before the thirteenth century that seem relevant to the discussion.
Part One, however, is not the background to Ockhams nominalism
xvi preface
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 writ-
ten 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 specific focus and argument, there is some over-
lap 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 publi-
cation, 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 per-
mission to republish, and for helping with the proofs and indices.
Finally I am indebted to Professor Andreas Speer for making these arti-
cles 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 com-
mitments 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 his-
tory of philosophy understandable as well as explains some of the divi-
sions that still exist within philosophy as a discipline. Almost any cur-
rent 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 figures 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 filosofia medievale tra otto e novecento. Contributo a un bilancio storiografico, 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 Alexan-
ders V. (Mnster i. W., 1925), pp. 321326. Although the 1474 document is all but unus-
able as an historical account because of inaccuracies and bias, it was the first attempt
at providing an account of the meaning, origin, and development of nominalism.
2 chapter one
Abelard? And finally, 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. Nomi-
nalism was understood as a view that universal concepts had no being
or existence outside the mind but were mere names (nomina) or spo-
ken sounds (voces). Roscelin was generally seen as its earliest and prin-
cipal defender, Abelard as a close disciple of Roscelin, and Ockham
as the figure who revived nominalism and passed it down to the mod-
ern 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 Ock-
hams disciples it spread to the German universities of Vienna and
Heidelberg. That picture was adopted and elaborated in the seven-
teenth 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 infimae 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,
in search of nominalism 3
Aventinus and Du Boulay, who gave equal attention to the twelfth-

and fourteenth-century phases of nominalism, Du Cange limited his
discussion to late eleventh and early twelfth-century texts. The histo-
ries of philosophy that began to appear in the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury simply expanded on this foundation without significantly dierent
conclusions.5 By 1793 the topic merited separate historical treatment,
which Christoph Meiners accorded it before the Akademie der Wis-
senschaften at Gttingen in that year.6
French surveys of scholastic or medieval philosophy in the early nine-
teenth century inherited this standard picture, especially as mediated
through Du Boulay and Du Cange.7 Nineteenth-century views were
also influenced 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 philoso-
phy in England and France. Xavier Rousselot traced elements of the
thought of John Locke and Nicolas Malebranche back to Ockham,
confirming in his mind a nominalism dominant since the fourteenth
century.8 And just as the historical account was shaped by the perspec-
not as a historical or interpretive study, it was not cited explicitly, but the content of
subsequent accounts makes clear that its wide circulation was influential 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 Philoso-
phie, vol. 1 (Gttingen, 1800), pp. 835841, 885890; Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann,
Geschichte der Philosophie, 11 vols. (Leipzig, 17981819), VIII, pp. 160169, 840842; Ten-
nemann, 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 Male-
branche, 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 seven-
teenth 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
4 chapter one
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 four-
teenth 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 specific 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 nomi-
nalist 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 theo-
logical opposition to Ockhams thought had influenced presentations of
his views in histories of philosophy.17 Yet the shift in label from nomi-
nalist to terminist did not significantly 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 glorified 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 Hau-
raus 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 scho-
lastischen 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 influential 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 Einfluss ausbte.
6 chapter one
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 histori-
ans, such as Cousin, Haurau, and Prantl, saw the origins of moderate
nominalism or conceptualism in the ninth century, specifically in Hra-
banus Maurus, John Scotus Eriugena, and Eric of Auxerre. Following
this line of argument, K.S. Barach devoted an entire study to nominal-
ism before Roscelin.18
In his Roscelin published in 1896, Picavet portrayed Roscelin as a fig-
ure tragically maligned by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century histori-
ans of philosophy, especially Aventinus, Caramuel y Lobkowitz, and Du
Boulay, who anachronistically superimposed fourteenth-century hetero-
dox 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 descrip-
tion 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 ear-
lier nineteenth-century historians in the survey of medieval philosophy
published by Maurice De Wulf in 1900, whose popularity is reflected in
its many editions.20 In none of these accounts was nominalism consid-
ered 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 fifth 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 conflict between
Realismus und Nominalismus. By the eleventh edition, edited by Bernhard Geyer in
1927, the elements in ninth-century thought so identified 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 proto-
nominalists 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, Rein-
ers 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 define more precisely
the heritage of Ockham and nominalism in fourteenth- and fifteenth-
century Germany, especially at Heidelberg. His first work, on Mar-
silius of Inghen as representative of an Ockhamist school, revealed
Marsilius to be more independent and conservative than Ritter ini-
tially had expected.22 This work was immediately followed by a briefer
study of the meaning of the fifteenth-century Wegestreit between the
via antiqua and the via moderna.23 Ritter surveyed and rejected current
views of the fifteenth-century conflict, e.g., that it was a revival of the
twelfth-century conflict over universals (Aventinus), that it was a con-
flict between the Byzantine/Stoic logic of terminism and traditional
Aristotelian logic rather than the problem of universals (Prantl), that
it was a conflict 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. Jahrhun-
derts (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); Fried-
rich 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).
8 chapter one
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 fifth 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 Can-
dia 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 fifteenth century and its implications
for the Reformation.25 Ehrle brought to the topic of late medieval nom-
inalism a strongly negative judgmentnot the negative judgment of
many nineteenth-century French scholars who saw a nominalist ances-
try behind some of the views of John Locke, Nicolas Malebranche, and
David Hume, but the negative judgment of Thomistic Catholic the-
ologians 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 justification, 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 nominal-
ism similarly influenced by theological concerns.26 Instead of defining
nominalism strictly in terms of the theory of universals or a particu-
lar approach to language and logic, Feckes saw potentia absoluta spec-
ulation as one of its principal characteristics. For Feckes the distinc-
tion of absolute and ordained power, as applied by Ockham and his
followers to the doctrine of justification, 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 distinc-
tion 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, vari-
25 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 nominalis-
tischen 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 definition 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 assem-

bled 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.
10 chapter one
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 Accord-
ing 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 reassess-
ment 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 Hochstet-
ters Studien zur Metaphysik und Erkenntnislehre Wilhelms von Ockham in
1927.32 Without specifically addressing the meaning and appropriate-
ness of the label nominalist, Hochstetter saw Ockham as a propo-
nent of an empiricist epistemology and metaphysics far removed from
the skeptical and subjectivist interpretations of terminism and nominal-
ism. Hochstetter was also among the first to call attention to the shift
in Ockhams theory of universal concepts, from a fictum 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 nomi-
nalism, 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
Paul Vignaux in his 19301931 articles on Ockham and on nominal-

ism 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 pos-
itive 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 fill
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, justification,
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, Justification et prdestination au XIVe sicle (Paris, 1934); Vignaux, Nomi-
nalisme 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 Einfluss des Nominalismus auf die Christologie der Sptscholastik (Mn-
ster, 1940), pp. 46108.

38 Carr, Realists and Nominalists; F. Pelster, Nominales und reales in 13. Jahrhun-
dert, Sophia, 14 (1946), 154161; M. de Wulf, Histoire de philosophie mdivale, 6th ed. (Lou-
vain, 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
12 chapter one
Two scholars, who took Hochstetters and Vignauxs interpretations

of Ockhams thought more seriously, eventually did produce a reac-
tion among those committed to the traditional assessment. Philotheus
Boehner, who in 1937 had published with Gilson a history of Chris-
tian 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 pub-
lication 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 Anfn-
gen bis Nikolaus von Cues (Paderborn, 1937); Boehner, Manuscrits des oeuvres non-
polmiques dOckham, La France Franciscaine, 22 (1939), 171175; Zur Echtheit der
Summa Logicae Ockhams, FzS, 26 (1939), 190193; Ockhams Tractatus de praedes-
tinatione 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 Noti-
tia 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 Ock-
ham, 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 Signification, FS, 6 (1946), 143170; Ockhams
Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth, FS, 6 (1946), 261292; The Meta-
physics of William Ockham, The Review of Metaphysics, 1 (19471948), 5986; Ock-
hams 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
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 per-
ceived as a current of radical skepticism in late medieval thought, par-
ticularly 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 sep-
arate 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 definition of a the-
ory 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
fideistic.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 Meta-
physics in Medieval Philosophy, The Philosophical Review, 67 (1958), 145163.
45 E. Hochstetter, Ockham-Forschung in Italien, Zeitschrift fr philosophische For-
schung, 1 (1947), 559578; Ph. Boehner, Ockhams Philosophy in the Light of Recent
Research; Boehner, Der Stand der Ockham-Forschung, FzS, 34 (1952), 1231; Tim-
otheus Barth, Wilhelm Ockham im Lichte der neuesten Forschung, PJ, 60 (1950),
464467; Barth, Nuove interpretazione della filosofia di Occam, Studi francescani, 52
(1955), 187204; Helmar Junghans, Ockham im Lichte der neueren Forschung (Berlin, 1968).
46 The broad and negative definition 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 figure was the subject of their study. This pro-
cedure, 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 uni-
versals. He also accepted the view that the names traditionally cited
as belonging to this nominalist school, specifically Ockham, Robert
Holcot, Adam Wodeham, Jean Buridan, Gregory of Rimini, Marsil-
ius 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 definition 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 (Ock-
ham, 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 justification. 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: Augus-
tinian 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).
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 schol-
ars were reluctant to see these figures as part of a unified movement
or to apply the label nominalist to them, both because Obermans
definition of nominalism was too far removed from either twelfth- or
fifteenth-century usage, and because a fifteenth-century labeleven if
used correctlywas applied to fourteenth-century figures anachronisti-
cally.49 Whatever position was taken on the appropriateness of the nom-
inalist label for fourteenth-century thinkers, the period of the 1960s and
1970s was marked by intensive study on numerous figures 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 fifteenth 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 fifteenth 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 influenced
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 specific, traditional content, and runs the risk
of being redefined 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 Nom-
inalism, 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 Influence on Martin Luther, doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of Amer-
ica (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 Schep-
ers, 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 significance of the Parisian Arts
Faculty statutes of 1339 and 1340, which had been viewed as anti-
Ockhamist. He maintained that the statute of 1339 was not a condem-
nation 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 definition of intu-
itive 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 definable nominalist or a
unified Ockhamist tradition in fourteenth-century thought, but reveals
n.F. 5 (Mnster, 1972); Roy Van Neste, The Epistemology of John of Mirecourt in Rela-
tion to Fourteenth Century Thought, doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin (Madi-
son, 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 Sprachverstnd-
nis 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. Ta-
chau, 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).
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 conflict of reales and nom-
inales in the fifteenth 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 conflict, which as a topos had a
much wider range than late scholasticism.55 One critical area of discus-
sion 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
53 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. Zim-
mermann (Berlin, 1974); and the articles by Courtenay, C. Trinkaus, and H.A. Ober-
man 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 Univer-
sity 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 (Manch-
ester, 1970), pp. 4381; W. Hbener, Der theologisch-philosophische Konservatismus
des Jean Gerson, in Antiqui und Moderni, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 9, pp. 171200;
18 chapter one
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 influ-
ence 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 Middelalderfilologi in
Copenhagen have greatly extended the body of references to the opin-
iones nominalium, especially in texts relating to grammar.60 From another
quarter, Gabriel Nuchelmans reintroduced Chenus findings on theory
H.A. Oberman, Contra vanam curiositatem (Zrich, 1974); Z. Kaluza, Le chancelier Ger-
son et Jrme de Prague, AHDLMA, 51 (1984), 81126; Ch. Burger, Aedificatio, 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 Revi-
sion 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. Hon-

nefelder, 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 confins du
XIVe et du XVe sicles (Bergamo, 1988).
58 J. Jolivet, Comparaison des thories du langage chez Ablard et chez les Nom-
inalistes 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. Lus-
combe, 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 clai-

rer 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.
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
significant revision in the last century. In comparison to the new evi-
dence 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 figures 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.
61 G. Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam, 1973), esp. pp. 178189.

62 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.
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 identified 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 de-
served.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 Influence 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.
24 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 gram-
matical theory of the unity of the noun that was applied to certain
problems, particularly theological problems that concerned immutabil-
ity. 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 inflections. In any given language, a name, spelled identically,
may be assigned to several dierent objects or activities, but the men-
tal 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 signification, reflected in its stem, that
lies beneath the changing forms produced by case, number, and gen-
der. Similarly, each verb has a primary signification, again reflected 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 consignifications (voces
consignificativae) that do not alter the primary signification of a word.
And what was applied to words was also applied to statements con-
taining a subject and predicate. They also had one primary meaning
that was not aected or altered by changing grammatical inflections,
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 arti-
cles of the Christian faith are true regardless of the point in time (and
consequent tense structure) of the armation. It was on this last prob-
lem, perhaps the central one for the entire development, that our first
Augustinian text appears. In adopting a nominalist solution to the
problem of divine knowledge, namely that the content of divine knowl-
edge 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 (Grottafer-
rata, 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 Abra-
ham and Moses believed was in the future tense and what Christians
believe is in the past tense. Tempora variata sunt, non fides.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 Incarna-
tion, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, etc. Others, however, recog-
nized 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 signification, 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 superfi-
cial 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 Augus-
tines 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 fides. 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 fides utrosque
coniungit, et eos qui venturum esse, et eos qui eum venisse crediderunt. Diversis
quidem temporibus, sed utrosque per unum fide 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,
26 chapter two
the theory of terms and propositional analysis that theologians in the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries understood as the essence of Nominal-
ism?
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 Patri-
archs (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 fides 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 significatur et observatur.
grammatical form) with reference to time. What those words signify

(significata), however, remains the same. From there Augustine moves to
a eucharistic analogy. Just as the Hebrews drank the water that flowed
from the rock (Exodus 17), so we are nourished by the sacrament on
the altar. The visible species dier; the underlying meaning (significatio)
is the same.7
This discussion must be viewed against the background of Augus-
tines 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 signification of words. Aristo-
tle 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 nor-
mally 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 signification (the running
Socrates) and united all tense forms of a verb.
These views, adopted by Cicero, were important influences shaping
Augustines view of language and sign. In De magistro Augustine put
7 See above, note 3. Tract. in Ioh. (CCL 36, 392): In signis diversis eadem fides;
sic in signis diversis, quomodo in verbis diversis; quia verba sonos mutant per tem-
pora, et utique nihil aliud sunt verba quam signa. Significando enim verba sunt; tolle
significationem verbo, strepitus inanis est. Significata ergo sunt omnia. 393: Utique
credebant; sed illi ventura esse, nos autem venisse. Videte ergo, fide manente, signa
variata. Ibi petra Christus, nobis Christus quod in altari Dei ponitur. Et illi pro magno
sacramento eiusdem Christi biberunt aquam profluentem de petra; nos quid bibamus
norunt fideles. Si speciem visibilem intendas, aliud est; si intellegibilem significationem,
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 definition [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.
28 chapter two
forward his theory that every word (verbum) is a noun (nomen).9 Words
are verbal signs with specific meaning. All things which are uttered
by the articulate voice with some signification 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 signification. 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, dis-
tinguished 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 significari 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 significatu articulata voce
profertur. On signification 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.
of what we would call present tense. Although not using the language
of consignification, tense forms were secondary to the verb. Its princi-
pal 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 defined 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 signifies.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, reflected in the
dierent forms of the same word. Yet, ultimately, tense has nothing to
do with signification. 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 fides.
The context for Augustines discussion of the object of faith is both
Platonic and exegetical. True meaning and reality lie not in the exter-
nal visible and audible forms of words but in their internal, sometimes
hidden meaning. Words are signs of some other truth. And just as dif-
ferent signs can express the same identical truth, so dierent words and
sounds can express or stand for the same identical truth of faith. Dier-
ent signs signify the same thing. The concordance of the old and new
dispensations, by which the Red Sea signifies baptism, Moses signifies
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).
30 chapter two
rock signifies the eucharist, forms the model for how dierent verbal
signs (tensed expressions or enuntiables) signify the one faith and essen-
tially have one meaning. Here Augustine expresses that one meaning
by the theological term fides, not the grammatical term nomen. But the
direction of his thought is not incompatible with the unitas nominis the-
ory.
Although not utilizing as developed a theory of grammar and lan-
guage as that of the twelfth century, the passage from Augustines Hom-
ilies 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 significatio Augustine does not mean
the historic event but rather the eternal truth that the event repre-
sents 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 conclud-
ing 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 briefly intro-
duced.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 hodier-
num brings to the object or activity so named is temporal in meaning,
and therefore, like verbs, so Anselm notes, it consignifies rather than
signifies.2
To those familiar with early medieval logic, this is not a particu-
larly 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 consignification. The theory of
consignificationan indirect, secondary, or participatory type of signi-
ficationwas, 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 proposi-
tions, and a body of sophismatic literature developed. There would not
seem to be any problems, therefore, with what consignification meant,
nor how it was used by Anselm or other eleventh- and twelfth-century
writers.
But the meaning and history of consignification 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 Filosofia, 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 significat aliquid cum tempore. D. Ita esse
necesse est. M. Igitur hodiernum non nomen sed verbum, quia est vox consignificans
tempus, nec est oratio.
32 chapter three
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 consignification. It is
important, therefore, to understand consignification in its nominalist
context and to compare that development to earlier usage, including
that of Anselm. A second problem is that consignification had a dou-
ble ancestry that aected the way it was applied. This is because the
same Latin word, consignificare, 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 inter-
changeably, the two classic passages in which they occurred, and from
which the language of consignification derived, addressed, I think, two
dierent syntactical and logical problems.3 Moreover, from the stand-
point 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 Consignification
Starting with the second problem, namely the mixed or twin ances-
try of the terms consignificatio and consignificare, Priscian knew them as
Latin equivalents for the way in which syncategorematic words func-
tion. In the grammatical and logical division between interpretationes,
i.e. words such as nouns and verbs that signify or have full significa-
tion, and the other, non-signifying, parts of speech, such as prepositions,
conjunctions, copulas, etc., the latter signified only in combination (i.e.
co-signified) with categorematic words. Thus Priscian in his Institutiones
grammaticae translated syncategoremata as consignificantia, and etymological
dictionaries today will list that as the first, or original, meaning of con-
significare.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 sykategor-
ein probably lies behind consignificare 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 33
Priscians contemporary, Boethius, discussed that same issue in his

second commentary on Peri hermeneias, but did not employ consignificantia
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 consignificare and consignificatio
in a related but dierent context, namely in describing the temporal
dimension that verbs possess.5 He used consignificare to translate prosse-
mainein.6
It is understandable why consignificare 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 con-
sidered compounds of named activities and a copula. Tense is a func-
tion 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 dier-
ent. Syncategoremata is a classification of certain types of words, whether
or not they are used in sentences, but consignification becomes a prop-
erty 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, signification applies to terms by themselves
5 Boethius, In Peri herm., ed. I (PL 64, 306): verbum vim temporis in significa-
tionibus trahit hoc solo discrepante quod verbum consignificat tempus, essetque
definitio ita: Verbum est vox significativa secundum placitum, cujus nulla pars extra
significativa est; sed quoniam sunt illa nomini verboque communia, proprium autem
verbi est consignificare tempus. In Peri herm., ed. II (PL 64, 427): Verbum est vox
significativa secundum placitum, quae consignificat tempus . Omne enim verbum
consignificationem temporis retinet, non significationem. Hoc verbum, sed cum ea
ipsa agendi significatione praesens quoque tempus adducit, atque ideo non ait verbum
significare tempus, sed consignificare. De divisione (PL 64, 886): secundum positionem
vocum significativarum aliae cum tempore, aliae sine tempore, et dierentia quidem
cum tempore nomini non conjungitur, idcirco quod verborum est consignificare tem-
pora, nominum vero minime.
6 In Boethiuss translation of De interpretatione, as noted by Nuchelmans, Theories,
p. 124.
34 chapter three
as well as terms used in sentences. Consignification, 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 inter-
preted 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 syncat-
egorematic 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 consignificare that
Anselm adopted. Consignification was a property or function of tense
and as such was intimately tied to verbs, not to the classification of
syncategoremata in general. In fact, consignification described part of the
way verbs and verb-related words signified. 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 consignifi-
cationis that adjectives and substantive adjectives, such as album or
hodiernum, have two meanings or significations.7 In the case of album, the
word properly signifies (per se signification) that from which it derives
its name, i.e. whiteness, and obliquely or secondarily signifies (per aliud
signification) that which is named paronymously. In the case of hodier-
num, the word properly signifies that from which it derives its name, i.e.
hodie, and obliquely or secondarily signifies whatever object or activity
7 Anselm introduces hodiernum as a signifying word; Henry, The De Grammatico,
p. 39: Ergo hodiernum significat 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.
is named paronymously. But in the case of hodiernum, since it involves

tense and is therefore related to verbs, it consignifies in both cases,
rather than signifies.
Consignification 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 uni-
versals, 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 consignification. In the earliest appear-
ances 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
defined by a particular theory of propositional truth, namely that what
is once true is always true (semel verum semper verum), which was princi-
pally 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 signification 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 be-
lieved 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: Dein-
de 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 significationis sunt nomina, ut bene, male.
36 chapter three
which alone signified, 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 signifies 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 first 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 defined as words that co-signify time (vox consignifi-
cans tempus), to quote Anselm, and Boethius before him. It was recog-
nized, 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 sup-
plied 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
inflected 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 definition 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.
of the consignification of oblique casesperhaps the Boethian tradi-

tion wedded consignification 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 signification.
The inclusiveness of the noun in eleventh- and twelfth-century gram-
matical theory was very broad, indeed had been so from the ancient
period on. Nomen included not only what we call a noun, but pro-
nouns, adjectives, and, according to Boethius, adverbs as well.15 And
like Anselm, Garlandus Compotista seems to recognize a two-fold na-
ture of temporal adverbs: a basic meaning, which each signifies, and a
temporal meaning, which co-signifies.
Conclusions
Returning to Anselm, the thrust of De grammatico was to highlight or

expound upon the dual signification of paronymous words or, in the
case of hodiernum, a combined signification and consignification. These
two dierent significations (per se and per aliud) were not on the same
level, and oblique signification was always secondary and inferior to
proper signification. Nor did consignification ever approach the status
level of signification. 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 first level of signification and
second-level status of consignification that the original nominalist the-
ory stressed, in order to ground the sempiternal oneness of meaning of
true enuntiabilia in the sempiternal identity of the signification of nouns.
One nomen, many voces; one signification, many consignifications. In this
light Anselm stands in a direct line of descent from ancient grammati-
cal 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 constitu-
tum definitumque significant, nec interest quod flecti casibus nequeunt, non est hoc
nominum proprium ut casibus inflectantur.
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 nomi-
nalism in the Middle Ages. Vignauxs essays on nominalism and Ock-
ham 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
refined elements of the traditional picture, ultimately producing a new
interpretation, especially for Ockham.1 Chenus first 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 nom-
inalism, 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; Oc-
cam, 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.
40 chapter four
second essay, had spelled out the implications of his evidence for the
origin and meaning of nominalismor if those working in twelfth-
century 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 una-
nimity 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 nom-
inalism back to such ninth-century authors as Hrabanus Maurus, John
Scotus Eriugena, Eric of Auxerre, and others.5 Reiners rejected those
attempts at finding proto-Nominalists and asserted the origins of nomi-
3 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 hand-
schriftlichen 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 modification 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 formu-
lation 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 influence 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 Nom-
inales 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 Augus-
tine 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 Partei-
gegensatz 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 proposi-
tions. 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 proposi-
tion. G. Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition (Amsterdam, 1973), pp. 172173: Dicta,
significata, 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
42 chapter four
since only statements and propositions about events or external real-

ity can be armed or denied. If it is the articles of faith, as statements,
that are armed by believers and denied by infidels, and those articles
would be about future events for Abraham and past events for Chris-
tians, 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 signified 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
signification of a noun (nomen) that underlies the consignification of its
various forms (voces consignificativae) or modes of signifying (modi signifi-
candi), such as case, gender, and number, so there is one signification of
a verb that underlies the various consignifications 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 develop-
mental 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 the-
ory of propositional truththat was applied to the theological prob-
lems of the immutability of the object of faith and the parallel prob-
lem of the immutability of divine knowledge.11 All the references to the
Nominales or opinio Nominalium assembled by Chenu from late twelfth-
and thirteenth-century sources (the period containing the vast major-
ity of all references to Nominales before the fifteenth 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 fides.
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.

that it would be possible to bring all these nominalist Lehrstze together,

including the teaching on universals, into a unified picture of the teach-
ing 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 definitions 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 four-
teenth 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 significabile (Paris, 1937); E.A. Moody, A Quodli-
betal 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 univer-
sals 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.
44 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 defined with reference to res, it was natural to assume
that behind the vox side of the first 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 respec-
tive realist and nominalist interpretations of universalsalthough hav-
13 C. Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae 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.
ing received the most attention in discussions of realism and nominal-

ismare 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 definitions 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 five 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 invari-
ably described in terms of the contrast of res and vox, never res and
nomen. Herman, abbot of St. Martins at Tournai, reflecting 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 identifies logic in voce with new inventions, derived from the
books of Porphyry and Aristotle, that abandon the traditional exposi-
tion 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
16 Abelard, Dialectica, p. xciii. The priority of the nature of logic over the issue of
universals is also characteristic of fifteenth-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) defined 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 novi-
tatem quam Boetii ceterorumque antiquorum expositionem.

46 chapter four
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 identification with dialectica in voce is attested to by Otto of Freis-
ing 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 con-
temporary heretics of dialectic who think that universal substances are
mere words (flatum vocis), and who are not able to understand color as
something dierent from a material object, or human wisdom as some-
thing dierent from the soul.21 Whether all of these positions were
specifically 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, Biblio-
theca 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;
Porfiriusque 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 flatum 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.
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 uni-
versals, as described by John of Salisbury, is between a vox theory and a
sermo theory.22 Reinerss attempt to link Nominales with Abelards the-
ory 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 identifies it with a vox theory, not a sermo theory.23 Reiners,
22 See above, note 14.

23 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 occa-
sionally 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 dialec-
ticis 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 sig-
nificatione 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 definitione 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
infinita nomina, quibus, scilicet infinitis, definitio 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 consen-
tire videtur. Quippe eas concipere per nomina quid aliud est, quam per ea significari?
Sed profecto cum eas ab intellectibus diversas facimus, iam praeter rem et intellectum
tertia exiit nominum significatio. And in his Logica Nostrorum petitioni sociorum (ed.
B. Geyer, BGPTM, 21, 4, Mnster i.W., 1933), p. 522: Est alia de universalibus senten-
tia rationi vicinior, quae nec rebus nec vocibus communitatem attribuit; sed sermones
sive singulares sive universales esse disserunt. Quod etiam Aristoteles ait: Univer-
sale 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
48 chapter four
in fact, did not cite any supporting evidence from Abelard but quoted
instead from William of Conches (ca. 1145) and Godfrey of St. Vic-
tor (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 sin-
gulars 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 uni-
versals 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 dis-
putations. 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 mdi-
vale, 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 identified 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 Frank-
furt a. M., 1967), p. 7: Quod intelligentes quidam res omnes a dialectica et sophistica
disputatione exterminaverunt, nomina tamen earum receperunt eaque sola esse uni-
versalia 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 deficit.
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,
the Robertini (presumably disciples of Robert of Melun) is the only part

of his text that suggests a parallel with Williams first 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 Abe-
lard, 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 first 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 definitions 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 fingunt 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.
50 chapter four
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 stud-
ied under Abelard and Alberic (11361138), both of whom he admired.
His move from Abelard to Alberic was not a shift in ideological al-
iation 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 assumpse-
rit, 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 Palat-
inum, qui tunc in monte sancte Genovese clarus doctor et admirabilis omnibus preside-
bat. 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 disces-
sum eius, qui michi preproperus visus est, adhesi magistro Alberico, qui inter ceteros
opinatissimus dialecticus enitebat et erat revera nominalis secte acerrimus impugna-
tor. 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 fin
du VIIIe sicle la fin du XIIe sicle (Lille, 1940), p. 212; M. Grabmann, Aristoteles
im zwlften Jahrhundert, MS, 12 (1950), 123162, reprinted in Mittelalterliches Geis-
tesleben, 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 Col-
ish]. 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.
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 oppo-
nent 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 influenced 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 briefly, 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 author-
ship 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 His-
tory 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.
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,
52 chapter four
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 fit with his preference for the Parvipontani.36
When, in the last quarter of the twelfth century we begin to encoun-
ter 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 immutabil-
ity, specifically 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 princi-
pal signification of a noun (unitas nominis) and the corresponding idea of
the identity of the principal signification 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 fluenta gratie hauriunt perfecte.
36 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, Praeposit-
inus, 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 pas-
sages 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.
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 first 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
significatae sequitur unitas enuntiabilis, quamvis etiam cum diversa consignificatione
temporis proferatur. Thomas, Quodl. IV, q. 9, a. 2; Opera Omnia III, p. 461: Sed diversa
consignificatio 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 fides
manet eadem et significatio. 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 fidei 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
54 chapter four
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 specific event fixed 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 consignification of the
past and future tenses was the signification 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 nascitu-
rum, 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 Proposi-
tion, 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 nomi-
nalist 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
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 signification,
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 signification 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 significandi, tamen, quia eandem significationem
important, sunt unum nomen. Per hunc modum dixerunt quod unitas enuntiabilis
accipienda est non ex parte vocis vel modi significandi, sed rei significatae; 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 significatione, enuntiabile semper
est verum, et non est idem nisi cum eadem significatio 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 fidei consistit in re ipsa, et in veris quae circa ipsam rem fuerunt;
unum enim et idem est fidei 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
56 chapter four
It was in the context of the problem of divine knowledge that Lom-

bard, 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 Augus-
tines 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
fierent, 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 fides. 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
fides. Quia et ipsa verba pro tempore variantur, cum varie declinantur. Alium sonum
habet venturus est; alium sonum habet venit. Eadem tamen fides 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 Influence in
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 non-
temporal significatum 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 flow 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 flow 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.
58 chapter four
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 signification
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 appropri-
ately 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 ali-
quando potuit, nec unquam aliqua potentia sua privatur. Non est ergo privatus poten-
tia 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 fieri omne quod aliquando voluit esse vel fieri, 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.
of Gods activity in the present and future was as unlimited as it pre-

sumably 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 flow 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
(consignifications) of scivit and scit, or voluit and vult, so there is one
identical principal signification 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 the-
ory of the nomen, the distinction of one signification and many consigni-
fications, 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 figuram dictionis sive secundum accidens.
60 chapter four
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 signified 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
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 distinc-
tion Lombard does employ nomen-analysis (I, 570): Peccatum ergo est perpetratio mali,
delictum desertio boni. Quod et ipsum nomen ostendit. Quid enim aliud sonat delic-
tum nisi derelictum? Et quid derelinquit, qui delinquit, nisi bonum? Vel delictum est
quod ignoranter fit, peccatum quod scienter committitur. Indierenter tamen et pecca-
tum 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 connu-
meratio corporis ad suam proprietatem. Hoc tamen non est pretermittendum quod
contemptus, reatus, actus, voluntas pro uno peccato reputantur non pro pluribus, sicut
nomen significat substantiam et qualitatem et intellectum, non tamen significat plura,
quia ista tria pro una significatione 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 significandum. 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 inconve-
nienti, 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 fulfill that intention. It is one sin by reason of intention, not by rea-
son 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 concomi-
tante dico, non de praeeunte, quae non concomitatur actum. Et omnes illae auctori-
tates, 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-
62 chapter four
T3 has sinned = Socrates peccavit. Once the second proposition is true

(or in Abelards view, once the first 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 flesh 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 con-
text, and dierent words that supposited for the same person or thing
were not necessarily interchangeable. The nomen Socrates, for exam-
ple, could stand for the substance (or essence) of Socrates or the per-
son 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 fit in vocibus, sed in utente vel in instituente.
Praepositinus, Summa (Erlangen, Universittsbibl., 353, fol. 24v; see also Chenu, Con-
tribution, 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 Medi-
aevalia Namurcensia 21 (Louvain and Lille, 1967), p. 480: quidam eorum dicunt quod
cum homo ille assumptus sit persona, Verbum scilicet incarnatum, nullo modo connu-
merabilia sunt Verbum et ille homo assumptus. Potest tamen fieri 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. Dis-
tingunt 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
when dierent words that stand for the same thing are considered inter-
changeable 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 multi-
plicity 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 justification; a negative does not fol-
low 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 crucifixion 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 nomi-
nalist 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 significatum 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 identifies 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 reflects 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 specifically 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.
64 chapter four
thing follows from an impossibility.60 The place of these theses within

the teaching of the secta Nominalium will be considered in the last sec-
tion.
The content and range of the most frequently cited opiniones Nominal-
ium 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 opin-
ionhe never identifies 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 impug-
nator 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 signification
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 first 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 definition 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.
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 nor-
mally 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 activ-
ity 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 signification (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 reflected 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 gram-
matico, written between 1080 and 1085 as a treatise on paronymy, was
already concerned with the signification of nomina.64 Although Anselm
himself describes the treatise as one in dialectic, its central question,
62 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 significat virginem incorruptam, albet eandem introeuntem thalamum aut

cubantem in thoro, album vero eandem, sed corruptam. Hoc quidem quoniam al-
bedo ex assertione eius simpliciter et sine omni participatione subiecti ipsam significat
qualitatem, videlicet coloris speciem, disgregativam visus. Albet autem eandem princi-
paliter, etsi participationem personae admittat. Si enim illud excutias, quod verbum hoc
pro substantia significat, qualitas albedinis occurret, sed in accidentibus verbi personam
reperies. Album vero eandem significat qualitatem, sed infusam commixtamque sub-
stantiae et iam quodammodo magis corruptam; siquidem nomen ipsum pro substantia
subiectum albedinis, pro qualitate significat colorem albentis subiecti.
64 D.P. Henry, The De Grammatico of St.Anselm: The Theory of Paronymy (Notre Dame,
1964).
66 chapter four
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 significativa and
a vox consignificativa, 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 consignification was at least as old
as Anselm. Allowing for equivocation, the oneness of meaning underly-
ing nouns and verbs and the secondary status of tense were fundamen-
tal 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
65 Ibid., p. 39: Igitur hodiernum non est nomen sed verbum, quia est vox con-
significans tempus, nec est oratio. Ibid., p. 41: Cum enim in definitione nominis vel
verbi dicitur quia est vox significativa, intelligendum est non alia significatione quam
ea quae per se est. Nam si illa significatio quae est per aliud, in definitione nominis
vel verbi intelligenda est, iam non erit hodiernus nomen sed verbum. Significat enim
aliquando ea significatione aliquid cum tempore, sicut supra dixi, quod non est nominis
sed verbi.
Although the phrase many voces are one nomen comes to express nominalist gram-
matical theory, it should be noted here that consignification 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 utter-
ance which, like Augustines sonus, might be either significative or consignificative. 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 significant denominativa et ea a quibus
denominantur, sed consignificatione 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.
meaning of the supra-temporal enuntiabile. Aristotle accepted the neces-

sity 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 move-
ment 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 gram-
marians 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 signification
(proper meaning) and their consignifying modes of signification, and
use that as a problem-solving analytical tool. The second step, closely
allied, was to transfer the principle of identical meaning from the
signification of terms to the signification 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, re-
ported by Anselm and apparently to be attributed to Roscelin, might
have been based on a theory of the noun parallel to the identification 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 significat quam qual-
itatem. 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.
68 chapter four
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 signification and oblique signification). The twelfth-
century 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 signification 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

72 Anselm, De incarnatione Verbi, c. 1 (II, 10): Et cuius mens obscura est ad diiudi-
candum 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 significat tibi equum. D. Significat utique. M. Nonne vides quia
alio modo quam nomen equi? D. Video. Nempe nomen equi etiam priusquam sciam
ipsum equum album esse, significat mihi equi substantiam per se, et non per aliud.
Nomen vero albi substantiam significat non per se, sed per aliud, id est per hoc quia
scio equum esse album. Cum enim nihil aliud significet 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 significativum eius quod aliquo modo significat, et quo-
modo sit appellativum eius cuius non est significativum? D. Hoc quoque video. Signi-
ficat enim equum et non significat, quia non eum significat 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.
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 specific 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 fieret, 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
fieret, quando eam fieri 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 tem-
pore quamdam habet potentiam, quam alio non haberet. Si vero ad facere utraque
coniungantur, verissimum est. Et sicut non ostenduntur diversae scientiae cum dici-
tur de ipso, quia scivit olim incarnandum esse, ita et cum dicitur, olim potuit incar-
nari, 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 dici-
tur 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 possibili-
tate. 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 consen-
sus quem solummodo peccatum esse diximus, non voluntatem eum precedentem vel
actionem operis subsequentem.
70 chapter four
It is surprising, in a sense, that Lombard derived much of his treat-

ment of divine knowledge, volition, and power from Abelard, since it
was against the latter that he shaped most of his forty-third distinc-
tion on divine omnipotence.77 Because God always acts in accordance
with his wisdom, justice, and goodness, and because God is outside the
flow 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 identification
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 reflected 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 fides, 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
77 Lombard, Libri sententiarum, I, d. 43 (I, 298303).

78 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.
had. Although Robert of Melun is normally identified 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 future-
tensed 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
81 Oeuvres de Robert de Melun, ed. R.M. Martin, vol. 1: Questiones de divina pagina
(Louvain, 1932), pp. 4647: Queritur, utrum eadem fides sit hominum temporis gratie,
et hominum qui fuerunt tempore Legis, Habrae videlicet et ceterum. Augustinus:
Tempora variata sunt, fides 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 fides 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
72 chapter four
It might be argued, however, that universals were part of the discus-

sion, even an important part. The question of what terms in a propo-
sition stand for (what would later be called supposition theory) includes
universals, and the most visible theological problem to which the uni-
tas nominis was applied, namely the object of knowledge or beliefthat
which a proposition signifiesis closely related to the problem of uni-
versals 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
signification 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 signification 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 specific 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 significari hoc nomine genus quam vocem.
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 distinc-
tion between a noun and other parts of speech, nor was it simply the
distinction between signification and consignification, or between root
meaning and grammatical inflectionsalthough these latter distinc-
tions are getting closer to their teaching. Nomen was a mental entity.
The one nomen that lay behind the many voces was a non-inflected, sig-
nifying 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 Augus-
tines 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. More-
over, if the object of knowledge is the dictum or enuntiabile as mental
proposition that is supra-temporal because of the way the unitas nomi-
nis is applied to statements, then that can include both particular state-
ments 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 uni-
versal 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 grammat-
ical 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.
74 chapter four
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 par-
ticular events, persons, and propositions. Although the theory could
easily be applied to universal terms, there is very little evidence (specif-
ically 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 grammat-
ical forms. The Realists of the second half of the twelfth century and
into the thirteenth are those who take more seriously the significance
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 understand-
ing 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 immutabil-
ity. 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.
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 nomi-
native 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 signification 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 inflec-
tions 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

86 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 nom-
ina, et omnia adverbia certae significationis 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 consignificare, nec sunt partes orationis; particip-
ium sub verbo, quia actionem vel passionem significat; 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 significant,
sed hac ratione deberent dicere verba primae et secundae personae non esse partes
orationis, quia demonstrationem habent
76 chapter four
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 signification. 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 conflict 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
87 Abelard, Dialectica, pp. xlii, lli, 111115, 121129, 141, 165166.

88 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 imposi-
tiones pensando quantum unaquaque proponatur oratione sive dictione discutiat. Phys-
icae 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 vocab-
ulis, 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,
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 artifice 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 solum-
modo posse conferri, statum vero imaginis hominum comparatione posse formari.
78 chapter four
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 Nom-
inales? Was Nominales another name for Abelard and/or his immedi-
ate disciples? Normore has argued for Abelardian ancestry because
the seemingly diverse positions attributed to the Nominales in twelfth-
and 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 posi-
tions, specifically 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 sen-
tences true.93
Since the Nominales are first 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, influ-
ential 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 Nom-
inales was first and foremost tied to a theory of the nomen that Abelard
shared with many others; that (2) it is unclear how many of these posi-
tions 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 the-
ory 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 atten-
tion. Alberic could well have included Abelard among the secta Nom-
inalium, 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 destruc-
tion 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 find Normores explication of the interrelation of these three
nominalist positions perceptive and convincing.
with Abelard or his disciples. If the first major twist in this problem
requires us to acknowledge the Platonic background of the nominal-
ist 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 Nom-
inales, then we should include Peter Lombard and his closest follow-
ers. 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 influenced by nominalist theory.
How long were the Nominales an active, identifiable group and were
they to be found primarily among dialecticians or theologians? Al-
though the most cited nominalist thesis was the application of the nom-
ina 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 sec-
ond 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 philo-
sophical 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 the-
ory 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 prob-
94 Peter Cantor, Commentary on Job, as cited by Landgraf, Studien zur Theolo-
gie, 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,
80 chapter four
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 fifteenth
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 teach-
ing 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 identified 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 first 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 thir-
teenth 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 posi-
tions 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 cred-
ited 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 justification.
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 men-
tioned 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.

82 chapter five
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 find 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 first 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 spe-
cific 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 unified system, nor that each witness is equally reliable
and well-informed. Even the commonly accepted belief that the Nom-
inales were the disciples of Abelard or at least derived all or most of
their positions from him needs further scrutiny. The Nominalist posi-
tions 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 posi-
tions 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 attri-
2C.J. Martin, Williams Machine, The Journal of Philosophy, 83 (1986), 564572.

3Normore, Tradition. Unfortunately, Normore (p. 205) continued the misidenti-
fication of Alberic of Paris with Alberic of Rheims.
4 Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century, in Lectionum varietates. Hom-
mage Paul Vignaux (19041987), ed. J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, A. de Libera (Paris), 1991,
pp. 1148 [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 4].
nominales and rules of inference 83
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 Abelar-
dian. Do the positions listed above establish this?
The first position, namely that a syllogism does not require a topi-
cal justification, 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 Nom-
inalists, 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 defines the former cat-
egory, of which the syllogism is the principal example, as the type of
inference that does not require further justification by way of external
rules. Abelards position in this regard, however, is not unique, and per-
haps 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 syllo-
gisms require additional justificatory rules, is the more unusual position
and reflects 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 ar-
mative, 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 Dieren-
tia in Commentaries from the 12th Century on Boethiuss Topics, Studia Mediewisty-
czne, 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 enthymemati-
bus 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. Ebbe-
sen and Y. Iwakuma, Instantiae and 12th Century Schools, CIMAGL, 44 (1983),
84 chapter five
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 first 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 posi-
tions on the ex impossibili rule, each supported by only one text. Nor-
more 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 nega-
tive, 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 gen-
eraliter. Contra omnes fere caute ex inmodali inferendo modalem vel econverso, 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 identified; De Rijk, Logica Modernorum, II.1, pp. 387388.
he tentatively dated to the early thirteenth century.13 It was Normores

conclusion that in this treatise the Nominales are credited with the posi-
tion that ex impossibili quidlibet non sequitur. In the Communes obiectiones et
responsiones preserved in fragmentary form in Vat. lat. 7678 and stud-
ied by Grabmann, Pelster, and Braakhuis, the position attributed to the
Nominales is ex impossibili quidlibet sequitur.14
The first 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 accord-
ing 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 pos-
sible 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.
13 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.
86 chapter five
The second text is the work of a Realist author who is writing prob-
ably in the first half of the thirteenth century. His description of the
Nominalist position on the ex impossibili rule is contrasted with the posi-
tion 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 impos-
sible. From Adam de Petit Pont that rule passed to William of Sois-
sons 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.
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 simplification 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
refinement 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 specific 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 identi-
fied 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 twelfth-
century master. Those in other schools could adopt Nominalist posi-
tions, 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 fig-
ures 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 devel-
oped. The completion of the critical edition of Ockhams philosophi-
cal and theological writings has, on one level, confirmed that picture
and revealed Scotus as the single most important figure on Ockhams
intellectual horizon. The editors, however, along with scholars work-
ing on lesser known figures 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
refine the way Ockham is viewed today are a more extensive knowl-
edge 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 activ-
ity at universities and other studia in England and on the Continent.
These allow a fresh examinationa more nuanced pictureof Ock-
hams intellectual heritage and the influence his thought had on subse-
quent generations.
* Originally published in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. P.V. Spade (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 1730.

92 chapter six
The Formative Years, 13051316
William of Ockham was born around 1288 at the rural village of Ock-
ham in Surrey, a days ride southwest of London. Nothing is known
of his family or social background and thus whether his native lan-
guage 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 writ-
ing. 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 per-
haps 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 Lon-
don custody, one of the seven administrative units into which the En-
glish 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 profited intellectually
from a flow 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 93
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 influences of Oxford and Paris that passed through it in the
first two decades of the fourteenth century.
What those influences 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 sub-
deacon 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 first 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 conjec-
tured.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.
94 chapter six
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 baccalaure-
ate, young friars probably availed themselves of whatever lectures were
being given so long as there were places in the classroom and the stu-
dent had sucient training to understand the material and analysis.
Ockham would have begun his studies in theology either at the custo-
dial 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 (approx-
imately six to eight per decade) who would be sent to Paris for the
second half (another four or five years) of the theological training nec-
essary 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 Cam-
bridge. 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 vacan-
cies 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 reflect any
first-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
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
first 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 influenced 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 pro-
vided 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 influenced by
Scotus and had participated in the editing of Scotuss work and in the
discussions that created the first 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 antic-
ipated 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 significato conceptus universalis, FS, 31 (1971),
178234.
96 chapter six
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 curricu-
lum, 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 firm
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
influenced 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 Influence in
Oxford, in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. A. Hudson and M. Wilks, Studies in Church His-
tory, 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.
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 Read-
ing in the third question of his prologue, and, when Reading revised
his lectures on the Sentences he entered into a detailed critique of Ock-
hams lectures, relying first 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 first 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 first 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 Ock-

ham, 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 firm evidence that
the requirement of reading the Sentences at a lesser studium before doing so at a uni-
versity, codified 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 Bio-
graphical 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.
98 chapter six
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 contempo-
raries, 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 Lon-
don 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
14 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 Ock-
hams 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, Ock-
ham, Chatton, and the London Studium: Observations on Recent Changes in Ockhams
Biography, in Die Gegenwart Ockhams, ed. W. Vossenkuhl and R. Schnberger (Wein-
heim, 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.
Physics, his treatise on predestination and future contingents, the first

five 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 redac-
tion 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 Ock-
ham on many points, including the status of universals (leading Ock-
ham to alter his opinion), the relation of grace to justification, 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 Aris-
totelian 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 interpreta-
tion 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 justification, 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 Ock-
ham, Summa logicae, and J. Weys introduction to Ockham, Quodlibeta septem (St. Bonaven-
ture, 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
100 chapter six
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 Ock-
ham through Paris, which was probably his first 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 sub-
sequent events shifted Ockhams attention away from philosophy and
theology, Avignon was his first exposure to an international commu-
nity 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 Decem-
ber 1327 until May 1328.
All of those appointed to serve on the commission to examine Ock-
hams 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 fled in May 1328. George Knysh has argued that Ock-
ham went to Avignon for nonjudicial reasons and only later came under suspicion
while resident there; Knysh, Biographical Rectifications concerning Ockhams Avi-
gnon Period, FS, 46 (1986), 6192; Ockham Perspectives (Winnipeg, 1994). The weight of
scholarly opinion, however, supports the traditional view; cf. J. Miethke, Ockham-
Perspektiven oder Engfhrung in eine falsche Richtung? Eine Polemik gegen eine
neuere Publikation zu Ockhams Biographie, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 29 (1994), 61
82.
Hermits and presumably had been schooled in the thought of Giles

of Rome: Gregory of Lucca, bishop of Belluno-Feltre, and John Paig-
note, a more recent doctor of Paris. The only member of the com-
mission 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 un-
Thomistic views had earlier brought him into conflict 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, specifically 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 conflict 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 identified 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 implica-
tions for theology. Most of the propositions were taken from the begin-
20 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 Theologis-
che Studien 6 (Leipzig, 1959).

102 chapter six
ning part of the Ordinatio and from Books III and IV of the Reporta-
tio. Many of the propositions extracted were not concerned with state-
ments 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 justification, Christs human nature and
the inability to sin, are absolutely necessary or only contingently neces-
sary, and whether their counterparts are absolutely impossible or only
because God so ordained.
Munich, 13291347
On the night of 26 May 1328 Ockham fled Avignon in the company

of Michael of Cesena, Bonagratia of Bergamo, and Francis of Marchia,
going first 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 fled 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 dedi-
cated 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 doc-
trine of the beatific 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.
his Dialogus. In these writings Ockham examined the meanings of lord-

ship (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 gen-
eral 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 argumen-
tation 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 dis-

cussions of the relation of church and state alongside Marsilius of
Paduas Defensor pacis from Ockhams century until today, the most
influential parts of his thought from the fourteenth to sixteenth cen-
turies were his philosophy and theology. The traditional picture of Ock-
hams influence claimed him to be the initiator, the venerable incep-
tor, of a new school of thought in late medieval Europe: nominalism.
It supposedly dominated intellectual life at Oxford for almost a half-
century, until the advent of John Wyclif. Similarly at Paris, after an ini-
tial 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 fifteenth 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).
104 chapter six
removal of sensible and intelligible species in his explanation of the

acquisition of knowledge was rejected by most of his English con-
temporaries, as was his definition of the object of knowledge.25 Ock-
ham is better seen not as the leader or center of a movement but as
one of many contemporary authors whose opinions were widely dis-
cussed, sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected. He became less influ-
ential 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 justification 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 com-
mentary as the model for his own.27 Yet many of Ockhams presup-
positions in logic, natural philosophy, and theology were discarded or
opposed by such figures as Ralph Strode, Richard Brinkley, Nicholas
Aston, and John Wyclif.28
The situation at Paris was somewhat dierent. Ockhams philo-
sophical 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 influx 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
25 K.H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham (Leiden, 1988).
26 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, Prdter-
mination 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 Fourteenth-
Century Thought (Leiden, 1995). For a defense of Ockham against the charge of Pelagian-
ism, 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 Influence 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.
Parisian scholars, and his influence 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 specific issue, and most Scholas-
tics 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 influential on Albert of Saxony and Marsilius of Inghen.29
The situation changed in the fifteenth 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 prepa-
ration 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 author-
ity for the Nominalistae at Paris and universities in Germany. By the
end of the fifteenth century Ockhams name had become identified
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 Ock-
hams 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 confins du XIVe
et du XVe sicles (Bergamo, 1988); M. Hoenen, Albertistae, Thomistae und Nomi-

nales. Die philosophisch-historischen Hintergrnde der Intellektlehre des Wessel Gans-
fort ( 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 influenced many others. The principal
Ockhamists of the next generation, or what is sometimes called the
English school of nominalism, are identified in almost any textbook of
medieval philosophy as being Robert Holcot and Adam Wodeham. On
occasion other names are added: William Crathorn, Thomas Bucking-
ham, William Heytesbury, and John Dumbleton. The areas of disci-
pleship 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 Ock-
hamist teaching was not eectively displaced by the countervoices of
Fitzralph and Bradwardine, a situation that lasted until Wyclif s cam-
paign 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: first, 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 influence; 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.
108 chapter seven
and Wyclif presuppose a unified 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 in-
fluential, it seems he had few disciples. It is dicult, Boehner went
on to say, to find 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 me-
dieval 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 con-
nections that have not in fact been established.3 One encounters that
blanket designation less today, yet the history of the reception of Ock-
hams 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 influence? Some of Ockhams most distinctive ideas
were ones shared by some of his contemporaries and immediate pre-
decessors. There are, we have come to discover, very few ideas or for-
mulations that are unique to Ockham. When we find these positions
in authors after Ockham, therefore, can we be sure we are looking at
the direct or indirect influence 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 Stat-
utes 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 109
this cautious approach is not without problems. Most positions so iden-

tified 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 influence and that most of his contempo-
raries 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 finally those that
more neutral observers saw as significant, controversial, or innovative.
In reconstructing dependence upon or reactions to Ockhams thought,
I have adopted the following guidelines: 1) The attribution of an argu-
ment 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
identification in a single manuscript, in order to identify the controver-
sial 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 formu-
lations 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 nega-
tive, 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 qualification. There are no references among
110 chapter seven
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 the-
ology, as was the case at Paris some years latera growth in party
allegiance so disconcerting to those of another philosophical or theo-
logical 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 first encounter between Ockham and his critics (specif-
ically his Scotistic fellow Franciscan, John of Reading,6 and the chan-
cellor of the university, John Lutterell)7 must have occurred at Oxford
before 1320, the conflict only becomes visible to us as Ockham and
his critics carried the issues to other studia during the years 13201324,
specifically 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 prae-

sens 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 Theolo-
gische 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
1320 but certainly after 1321, probably at London) and the Logica con-
tra 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 anti-
Ockham 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 Mey-
ronnes, Michael of Massa, and perhaps Francis of Marchia.
What were the aspects of Ockhams thought with which his name
became identified in the minds of contemporaries? The answer to that
question depends on the intellectual milieu of the individual critic. Lut-
terell approached Ockham from the standpoint of a conservative, non-
Franciscan theologian, and sometimes attacked Ockham for maintain-
ing positions that were part of Franciscan theology, occasionally that
of Scotus. Reading and the author of the Logica, however, were firm
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 influence 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 epis-
temology and metaphysics and, correspondingly, his rejection of the
traditional definition of simple supposition in logic. Another, closely
related in Ockhams thought, was his reinterpretation of the Aris-
totelian 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 Influence on William
of Ockham, FS, 10 (1972), 1564.
112 chapter seven
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 pres-
ence, the Trinity, and Christology. A third area was epistemology in
which Ockhams rejection of sensible and intelligible species, his ar-
mation that the proposition itself was the object of knowledge, and his
definition and application of intuitive cognition all elicited a strong
response from opponents. Ockhams treatment of the intuitive cogni-
tion of a non-existent as well as the intuitive cognition of non-existence
(as Tachau has recently observed) were often noted. The last area fre-
quently mentioned was Ockhams description of justification (a position
not far removed from that of Scotus).
Whether or not Ockham was the most important or influential figure
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 reflected 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 first 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.
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 briefly 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 defined. He shows exten-
sive 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 subse-
quent authors. John Leland saw a copy in the Oxford Carmelite con-
vent 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.
114 chapter seven
autograph, perhaps part of it in the hand of the author himself. As

with other commentaries of this period, it is extensive in scope, con-
taining 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 contempo-
rary 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 first thing we notice in looking through Graystaness commen-
tary is the prominence (at least in Graystaness view) of figures 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 opin-
ions of Harclay, sometimes in close association with those of Ockham,
is a refreshing reminder that in 1317 Ockham did not represent a rad-
ically new departure in Oxford thought. From the vantage point of
Graystanes we can see Ockham as the solidification and first exten-
sive 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 Har-
clay and the election of Lutterell as chancellor in the early autumn of
1317 probably the term in which Ockham began his lectures on the Sen-
tencesperhaps 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 addi-
tion, 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 Quodli-
beta (Worcester Cath., MS F 3) would suggest the period 13051315. At the opening of
his article, Henricus de Harclay: Quaestio de significato 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).
Ockhams name is linked in Graystaness work to certain issues that

reappear at several points in his commentary: epistemology and certi-
tude, 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 first thing that strikes the reader of Graystaness com-
mentary, 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
significant than Walsingham, Alnwick, Cowton, or Harclay, and more
significant 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 defini-
tion of intuitive cognition or fully support his view of an intuitive cogni-
tion of a non-existent, he does present Ockhams position as a defense
of epistemological certitude against the doubts of Peter Auriol and, sur-
prisingly, 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.
20 London Westminster Abbey, MS 13, pp. 18, 120122, 265, 488.

21 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.
116 chapter seven
Although not particularly opposed to Ockham, Graystanes in no

sense can be termed an Ockhamist. Nor does he suggest that Ock-
ham 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 identifies contempo-
rary 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 repre-
sents a specific 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 ontol-
ogy 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 inter-
pretations 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 recep-

tion of Ockham in England. The history of Oxford thought in the early
1330s is dominated by the names of Robert Holcot and Adam Wode-
ham, almost universally acknowledged to be direct disciples and firm
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 Hal-
ifax, 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 influence of Ockham. Time does not allow the
27 M. Tweedale, John of Rodynton on Knowledge, Science, and Theology, doc-
toral 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).
development of a thorough score card on the degree and nature of

Ockhams influence on the twenty-some-odd authors of Oxfords rich-
est 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 identification 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 Hol-
cots 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 elab-
oration 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, Faci-
entibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam. Robert Holcot, O.P., and the Begin-
nings 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 Dominikaner-
lehrers Robert Holcot, BGPTM, new ser. 5 (Mnster, 1972); Moody, A Quodlibetal Ques-
tion 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.
118 chapter seven
tences commentary of Holcot.30 Holcots major opponent was identified

as his fellow Dominican, William Crathorn, an extreme nominalist in
Schepers view against whom Holcot defended positions that are com-
patible 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 tex-
tual 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 identified 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 first became uncomfortable with that solution when, in my research
on Wodeham, it became clear that a socius of Wodeham, clearly iden-
tified as Grafton, in his opening lecture on the Bible, attacked Wode-
ham 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 Fran-
ciscan, 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 Schepers, Holkot contra dicta Crathorn.

31 W.J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham (Leiden 1978), pp. 95109.
32 Schepers admits as much, Holkot contra dicta Crathorn, 340354.
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 five identifiable authors: Crathorn,
Grafton, Chatton, Wodeham, and Ockham.
It is this last relationship that concerns us: the degree to which Hol-
cot 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 cogni-
tion, although he tried to make them compatible with Ockhams scien-
tific habit.36 Holcots position on fruition diers from Ockhams. Hol-
cot was reluctant to recognize a middle act of the will between enjoy-
ment 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 first
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 finis nec etiam refertur ad aliud
actualiter, concedo et dico quod talis dilectio est usus, quando res diligitur propter aliud
habitualiter.
38 Moody, Quodlibetal Question.
120 chapter seven
reality diered.39 His use of the distinction between Gods absolute and
ordained power was less traditional than Ockhams.40 And his under-
standing 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 Hol-
cot 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 qualifies 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
five years or more causes us to question or reformulate that assessment.
In the Wodeham book I portrayed Wodeham as a disciple who exer-
cized 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
39 Ibid.
40 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.
I would suggest, use the evidence to reshape our notion of what disci-
pleship meant in the early fourteenth century.
First, let us examine the tally sheet for issues on which Wodeham
defended, modified, 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 fine points of logi-
cal argumentation and reveal no particular intellectual identity. But if
Wodeham is to be believed, it was in this period, against the indivisi-
bilist Chatton, that Wodeham developed his view of the infinite divis-
ibility of the continuum later adopted by Ockham.49 From the early
1330s, however, we have far more to go on. There we find that Ock-
ham is Wodehams most frequently cited contemporary authority. More
45 See Ockham, Summa logicae, pp. 47*56*.

46 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 indivisi-
bilibus (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.
122 chapter seven
often than not he considers Ockhams arguments perceptive, chal-

lenging, and well formulated. Against the position of Chatton, Wode-
ham 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 nom-
inalism and his redefinition of simple supposition.51 They shared the
same view of continua.52 Ockhams position on grace and justification
(specifically divine acceptation and the relative necessity of the habit of
grace), albeit one derived largely from Scotus, is supported by Wode-
ham 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 refining and adding a great deal of his own, and this applies
to Ockham as it does to Chatton, Fitzralph, and Scotus. Wodeham
modified 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 modification on the object of knowledge, creat-
ing the famous formulation known as the complexe significabile 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 indivis-
ibilibus (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 Akzep-
tations- und Verdienstlehre von Duns Scotus bis Luther, BGPTM, 40.2 (Mnster i.W., 1963),
pp. 329332.
been closely associated in the literature with the name of Gregory of

Rimini.54 In the area of epistemology Wodeham preferred Scotuss for-
mulation of intuitive cognition to that of Ockham; and he retained
species in the process of knowledge.55 In his Trinitarian theology Wode-
ham abandoned Ockhams and Scotuss formal non-identity in divi-
nis, preferring instead the position of Chatton.56 In a similar depar-
ture from traditional Franciscan psychology, including that of Ockham,
Wodeham rejected the plurality of substantial forms in man, arm-
ing instead that the sensitive and intellective souls are one.57 And while
Wodeham accepted Ockhams identification of the soul with its pow-
ers (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 Ock-
54 G. Gl, Adam of Wodehams Question on the Complexe significabile as the
Immediate Object of Scientific 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.
124 chapter seven
ham, adopted Auriols thesis that pleasure was identical with the act of
enjoyment.59 The list could be extended, and I am certain that subse-
quent 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 redefinition of simple
supposition; and his physics, i.e. the redefinition 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 find 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 beatifica est realiter delectatio.

we find 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 Fran-
ciscans. On the other hand we do find growing acceptance of some of
Ockhams positions among certain secular theologians, albeit not Buck-
ingham, 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 mas-
ters at Merton College.62 The shift was not immediate. Probably early
in the decade William Sutton attacked Ockhams treatment of sim-
ple 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 interpreta-
tion 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 Col-
lege 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).
126 chapter seven
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 identification 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 En-
glish 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 Ock-
hams 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 conflict 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 par-
ticular points is open to question. On the late fourteenth-century and early fifteenth-
century 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 Stu-
dents and Masters to the German Universities in the Fifteenth Century, pp. 439483.
128 chapter eight
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 fur-
ther clarification. 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 dif-
ferent picture of those events. The principal elements in that picture
are as follows:
1) The controversy at Paris over Ockhams thought was narrowly
confined to a few interrelated issues and began in the 1320s. The
intensified 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.
3 Among the numerous books and articles on this problem, see: F. Ehrle, Der Sen-
tenzenkommentar 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, Inter-
national 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 cri-
tiques 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 si-
cle, 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 The-
ology 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, Ock-
ham, Wyclif, and the via moderna .
The Introduction of Ockhams Thought at Paris, 13251335
We do not know precisely when Ockhams various works became avail-

able 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 firsthand 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 com-
mentary (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. Ock-
hams 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 Ock-
ham 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 influenced Ockham, identified 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 Significato 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.
130 chapter eight
understanding of simple supposition, universals, and quantity. By 1326

Burley had read at least the first part of Ockhams De sacramento altaris,
namely the De quantitate.5 By 1329 he had also read either the Ordina-
tio 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 theologi-
cal works were known at Paris in the 1320s, such as Ockhams Ordinatio,
his Reportatio, and Quodlibeta septem.8 In light of the continued discus-
sion of intuitive and abstractive cognition at Paris in the 1320s, it is
remarkable that there is almost no mention of Ockhams controversial
definition 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 Ockhamfor-
schung, 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 prae-
misit prologum in hunc modum: Post praecedentem summam editam a Fratre W[illel-
mus 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,
of Meyronness awareness that Scotuss theory of grace and justifica-

tion (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 definition 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 pontifice, 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 Ock-
hams thought are: S. Moser, Grundbegrie der Naturphilosophie bei Wilhelm von Ockham:
Kritischer Vergleich der Summulae in libros Physicorum mit der Philosophie des Aristoteles (Inns-
bruck, 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 Accord-
ing 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 Influence on William of Ockham, FS, 32 (1972), 1564; G. Le,
William of Ockham (Manchester, 1974); P.V. Spade, Ockhams Rule of Supposition: Two
Conflicts in His Theory, Vivarium, 12 (1974), 6373; F. Inciarte, Die Suppositionsthe-
orie 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.
132 chapter eight
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 contempo-
rary, Michael of Massa, who lectured on the Sentences at Paris in 1325
1326.13 Massa is the first 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 impres-
sion from Michaels commentary that Ockhams natural philosophy
had won a following at Paris, and that Michael was as much (if not
12 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. Lind-
berg, Science in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 1978), pp. 206264.
13 Damasus Trapp was the first 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 Courte-
nay, 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 philoso-
phorum quos Aristoteles frequentissime reprobatlicet per quasdam fugas grammat-
icales 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 Com-
mentatoris et aliorum philosophorum, praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovan-
tium grossitive antiquorum.
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 avail-
able 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 mas-
ters 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 contro-
versial nature of his views on the status of quantity in relation to sub-
stance and quality. Third, there is the hint that Ockhams physics had
begun to attract supporters at Paris, whether within the Arts or The-
ological 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 teach-
ing 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. Bonaven-
ture, 1944).
134 chapter eight
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 reor-
ganization of what was then the accepted teaching of the schools.19
Much of his theology, such as his teaching on grace and justifica-
tion 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 bache-
lors or masters of theology at Paris: John Duns Scotus, Robert Cow-
ton, Thomas Wilton, William of Alnwick, John Baconthorpe, Walter
Burley, and others. One finds only a modest tracenever acknowl-
edged 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 Ock-
hams 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 pacifica 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
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 evi-
dence 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 bach-
elors 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 Procura-
tors 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 polit-
ical 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.
136 chapter eight
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 Odo-
nis, 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 partic-
ularly the Faculty of Arts. The first crisis was one of financial 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 represen-
tative 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 benefice 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 reflected in the rapidity with which
reform statutes were enacted.
One of the issues addressed by almost all the faculties in the Uni-
versity was a concern over the disintegration of classroom discipline,
proper dress and behavior, and magisterial control over teaching. Lec-
tures and disputations in Arts, Medicine, and Law were being inter-
rupted 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
25 CUP II, pp. 476477, 482483; 487488; 488489, 497498, 521522.

26 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
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 statu-
tory 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 financial
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 disputa-
tionibus que fiunt in vico Straminum talis abusus inolevit quod bachellarii et alii in dis-
putationibus 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-
138 chapter eight
If this first 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 Bene-
dict suspended the privileges of the University, and in the autumn of
1340, prompted probably by interested parties at the University, Bene-
dict 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 Autre-
court 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 dis-
cipline, 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. Trea-
tises 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 pre-
sumpserint 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 dogma-
tizare 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).
dramatically.33 Treatises on supposition grew and absorbed the syn-

categoremata, predicates, relative terms, and other parts of speech. To
those were added an increasing number of treatises on sophismata, insol-
ubilia, 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 finds throughout
the Oxford theologians of the 1330s the language of obligationes accord-
ing to which theological sophismata were explored.
Sophismata had played a role in the training of Parisian Artistae in the
thirteenth century, specifically in the disputations that preceded deter-
33 C. Wilson, William Heytesbury. Medieval Logic and the Rise of Mathematical Physics
(Madison, 1960); Weisheipl, Developments in the Arts Curriculum at Oxford; J. Mur-
doch, 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 Tran-
sition, 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 filosofia,
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, Obliga-
tions: 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.
140 chapter eight
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 find at Paris before 1340 any evidence of a theology influenced
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 four-
teenth century, limited by the horizons of a declining Thomism, Sco-
tism, 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 termin-
ism 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 influences 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: Kilving-
tons 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 ten-
dency, primarily in evidence in the Faculty of Arts, was for some stu-
dents 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 figurative lan-
guage, metaphors, idiomatic expressions or any words ex usu loquendi as
35 These works make their first appearance in Riminis commentary, and it is uncer-
tain 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 first 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.
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 expres-
sions. 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 misidentification 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 fre-
quently in his Summa logicae. His fullest treatment, however, is in his chapter De supposi-
tione 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 accip-
iatur; et hoc penes aliquem modum aequivocationis. Et ideo volentes accipere sem-
per 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, quan-
documque 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,
142 chapter eight
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 quodli-
betal 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 reflected in the English commen-
taries 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 identifies 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 fifteenth-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 identified 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 fifteenth-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 filozofie 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.
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 contro-

versy 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 log-
icae 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. Ock-
hams 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 significantly from the presuppositions of many
and raised the specter of the frequently-condemned Spiritual Francis-
can Peter of John Olivi. In the atmosphere of 13391341, with the prob-
lems of papal financial pressure, student disorder, and a narrow literal-
ism among some teachers in the Faculty of Arts, a party within the Arts
Faculty moved to prohibit the dissemination of Ockhams physics.
The first step in that direction may be seen in the use of the term
doctrina in the prohibition of Ockhams works in the statute of Septem-
ber 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

144 chapter eight
directed against the opinions of certain ones who are called Ock-
hamists.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 inter-
pretation 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
41 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 con-
tra scientiam Okamicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consimiles sustinebitis

quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum com-
mentatorum antiquorum et expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra
fidem.
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.
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

45 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 abso-
lutis 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 fingit
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 fifteenth 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 pre-
1347 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,
146 chapter eight
area of Nrnberg and, after early education at Erfurt, entered the Fac-
ulty 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 suc-
cessively to two papal chaplains in the hope of obtaining a benefice.48
The first part of the poem addresses the political conflict 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 men-
dicants, whose stomachs are jars of wine. In particular he attacks and
ridicules the Franciscans, whom he links with plague. By contrast, Aris-
totle 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 Megen-
berg 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 Megen-
berg, 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 Insti-
tutional 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,
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 benefices 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 ymagina-
tivum 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 cleri-
cus deficiens in statu scholastico est hic, qui naturas plurium abnegat rerum, quemad-
modum frater Wilhelmus de Occham Anglicus atque sui sequaces, qui tam relaciones
quam situs, habitus, ubi, quando, asserunt preter animam res indistinctas a rebus abso-
lutis atque quantitatem eandem cum substantia rem armant. Motus etiam in quibus
actiones rerum et passiones firmantur 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
148 chapter eight
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 reflected in the errors Conrad
lists. In grammar he criticizes these wretches (miseri) for rejecting as
meaningless such sentences as aqua transit in fluviis or venti volant
because they attribute an action to the subject that it does not in
reality have. To say that winds fly 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 first 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,
specifically 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: Surgunt-
que miseri quidam qui se numquam dignos noverunt discipulos et quod penitus nesci-
unt docere presumunt atque, quod condolendo refero, tales nobilibus ingeniis potius
seductores quam doctores preficiuntur 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 fluviis secundum
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 figures of speech.
Conrad is quick to note that this attitude leads to heresy when applied
to Scripture, since the Bible uses figures 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 English-
German 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 figure of speech. Moreover,
eos neque venti volant, quoniam alas non habent. Nec poterit dici quod una partium
orationis regat aliam secundum modorum significandi 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 flores verbo-
rum nec colores sententiarum capiant sed flores in pratis crescere et colores varios pic-
tores 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 vir-
ginalem virgam notat et filium inde conceptum florem appellat. Et si de virtute sermo-
nis iste orationes false sunt, sequitur rethoricam in pulcherrimis speciebus transsump-
tionis 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].
150 chapter eight
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 significant 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 finds 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
justification. 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. Mendi-
cant 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 remem-
bered his diculties in financing his education. His early attempts at
securing benefices had been poorly rewarded. And he now found him-
self surrounded by mendicants whose careers seemed to prosper far
better and more rapidly than his own. The continued anger and dis-
appointment reflected 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 depar-
ture 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 per-
nicionis adherentes, fundati non supra firmam 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.
Conrad may have made one last attempt at influencing 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 labor-
ing 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 sus-
tain that scientia, and turn instead toward other various and extra-
neous sophistical doctrines (extraneas doctrinas sophisticas), which in cer-
tain other studia are said to be taught.63 The vagueness of the state-
ment is unfortunate, but behind it one can detect the echo of the anti-
Ockhamist oath of 1341. In light of that oath there is probably rea-
son 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 curio-
sis disputationibus, thus spreading pestiferous seeds.65 Here there is a
faint echo of the Arts statute of December 1340, but far more the lan-
guage of the debate over proper and improper speculation, the distinc-
62 For 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 sci-
entiis insudantes ibidem, dimissis et contemptis philosophi et aliorum magistrorum et

expositorum antiquorum textibus, quos sequi deberent in quantum fidei 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 deflendum 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 fides 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.
152 chapter eight
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 tech-
nical 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 justification, 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 conflicting 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.
If Conrad lost the battle to condemn Ockhams physics (at least until
the rise of Albertism and Thomism in the fifteenth 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 figures 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
scientific precision.
part three
THE CRISIS OVER OCKHAMS THOUGHT AT PARIS

chapter nine
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 Denifle 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 Fac-
ulty 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 opin-
ions 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
158 chapter nine
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 wor-
thy 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 Buri-
dans 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 agree-
ment on the exact relation of the thought of Ockham and Autrecourt,
nor of Ockham and Buridan. Among the aspects in need of clarifica-
de 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)].
utes 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 159
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, ever-
lasting 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 dog-
matize 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 exer-
cise 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
160 chapter nine
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 con-
voked 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 obliga-
tus. 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 ordi-
nantes 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-
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.
Insuper cum nobis liqueat manifeste quod in disputationibus que fiunt in vico
Straminum talis abusus inolevit quod bachellarii et alii in disputationibus dictis exis-
tentes propria auctoritate arguere presumunt minus reverenter se habentes ad mag-
istros, qui disputant, tumultum faciendo adeo et in tantum quod haberi non potest
conclusionis disputande veritas, nec dicte disputaciones in aliquo sunt scolaribus audi-
entibus fructuose: statuimus quod nullus magister, bachellarius aut scolaris, sine per-
missu 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 dispu-
tationibus arguere presumat, nisi requisitus a magistro disputationes tenente taceat,
ipsum privatione trium lectionum decrevimus puniendum. Acta fuerunt hec apud
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 first 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 first rearms the time-hon-
oured 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 first oense would be pun-
ished 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 in-
cluding 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 magis-
terial 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 five) 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 final 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.
162 chapter nine
to suer the penalties detailed in the first section; disobedient masters

are to be penalized financially 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 first.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 first 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 mas-
ters in Arts, who intended to reassert magisterial authority in the con-
duct of lectures and disputations. On the following Monday, Septem-
ber 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 class-
room.10 The concerns of this document were unquestionably not doc-
8 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 first 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 fifteenth-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 sin-
guli magistri quatuor nacionum, videlicet Gallicorum, Picardorum, Normanorum, et

Anglicorum, salutem in Domino sempiternam. Justum esse censetur hos qui aliis presi-
trinal. Again the two levels of sanction were imposed: one years sus-
pension for students and bachelors; deprivation of the right to lecture
for three teaching days for masters. Some, perhaps all, of this legis-
lation 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 disputation-
ibus 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 congre-
gatione nationis per procuratorem, qui rector et procurator per quemcumque mag-
istrum, 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 spe-
cialiter 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, elec-
tions 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-
164 chapter nine
This active period of legislation was not limited to the Arts Fac-
ulty. 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 Specifically, 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 art-
ibus 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 delib-
eratione 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 quo-
rum 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 fine, et sic consequenter more solito usque ad alium finem 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-
proscribes deviation from customary, straightforward argument; inter-

ruption 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 regu-
lations 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
specifies, the entire Faculty of Medicine must treat him as unqualified
to participate in disputations for an entire year. To promote enforce-
ment, masters too are obliged under oath to observe these regulations,
under pain of suspension of lectures for five teaching days.
Similarly, on October 12, 1340, the Faculty of Canon Law passed leg-
islation concerning a range of academic issues, including, for example,
prerequisite preparation for legal study, minimum attendance require-
ments, and the scheduling of lectures on the Decretales and Decretum.14
Several items, however, echo the statutes already issued by the Facul-
ties 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 sig-
illo 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 flocum aut cucullam, vel
alium habitum, secundum statum sue religionis.
Itemque ipsi, cujuscumque status sint vel condicionis, non deferent sotulares ros-
tratos 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 perturba-
tionibus quibuscumque.
Item, in disputacionibus, repeticionibus, lecturis solempnium decretalium, proposi-
tis, 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 fieri consuetum.
Itemque non audient jura canonica extra vicum Clausi Brunelli, nisi juxta disposi-
cionem facultatis.
166 chapter nine
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 first of the two statutes
enacted on September 25 should be noted. In the first place, as Boeh-
ner and Moody correctly noted, Ockhams opinions are not con-
demned in this statute. The first 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 Ock-
hams 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 out-
side 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 Septem-
ber 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.
the statute prohibiting the dogmatizing of Ockham was, as the sanc-

tions 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 firm rock, seeking to know more than is
fitting, 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
first 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 specifically 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.
168 chapter nine
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 accord-
ing to the personal supposition of its terms, that the proposition is false
absolutely or according to the literal sense of the utterance (de virtute ser-
monis), 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 scientific 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 scientific 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 first
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
what we have decreed elsewhere as to the doctrine of William called

Ockham, which we wish firmly 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 Uni-
versity of Paris, A.D. 1340, the Friday after Christmas.17
17 CUP II, pp. 505507, n. 1042: Universis presentes litteras inspecturis omnes et sin-
guli 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 per-
niciosis adherentes, fundati non supra firmam 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 pro-
phana 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 fiat 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 pro-
prietatem sermonis, disputatio namque ad proprietatem sermonis attendens nullam
recipiens propositionem, preterquam in sensu proprio, non est nisi sophistica dispu-
tatio. 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.
170 chapter nine
This statute, enacted by the Faculty of Arts on December 29, 1340,

is disciplinary in nature and is concerned with styles of argumenta-
tion 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 anal-
ysis. 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 seem-
ingly identify this document as a censure of Ockhamist errors.
The internal evidence unfortunately proves little. Everyone acknowl-
edges that Ockhams name is not connected with the practices pro-
scribed 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 pro-
posed remain unconvincing, especially since they are often taken out of
context or concern supposition theory or propositional analysis de vir-
tute 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 statu-
imus, que in omnibus et per omnia volumus roboris habere firmitatem. Datum Pari-
sius sub sigillis quatuor nationum, videlicet Gallicorum, Picardorum. Normannorum et
Anglicorum, unacum signeto rectoris Universitatis Parisiensis, anno Dommini MCC-
CXL, 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, Sci-
ence, 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, Col-
lected Articles, pp. 248253, and more recently, F. Inciarte, Die Suppositionstheorie und
die Anfnge der extensionalen Semantik, in Antiqui und Moderni, Miscellanea Mediae-
valia, 9 (Berlin, 1974), pp. 126141. On supposition theory in Ockham and his contem-
poraries, 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-
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 specifically in mind. The only important
clue is the final 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 Ock-
hams 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 filosofia, 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. Gia-
con, 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 Ock-
ham and Suppositio Personalis, FS, 30 (1970), 131140; J. Swiniarski, A New Presen-
tation of Ockhams Theory of Supposition with an Evaluation of Some Contempo-
rary Criticisms, FS, 30 (1970), 181217; A.R. Perreiah; Approaches to Supposition-
Theory, 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 Influence on William
of Ockham, FS, 32 (1972), 1564; G.B. Matthews, Suppositio and Quantification in
Ockham, Nos, 7 (1973), 1324; P.T. Sagal, Refuting and Defending Supposition The-
ory, The New Scholasticism, 47 (1973), 8487; P.V. Spade, Ockhams Rule of Supposi-
tion: Two Conflicts in His Theory, Vivarium, 12 (1974), 6373; S.F. Brown, Gerard
Odons De Suppositionibus, FS, 35 (1975), 544; C. Knudsen, Ein Ockhamkritis-
cher Text zu Signifikation 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.
172 chapter nine
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 inter-
pretation rather than a fact, although he gave the wrong reasons.
Paqu noted that the rubric was not an editorial insertion by Deni-
fle, 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 fifteenth 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 fifteenth-century copy was pre-
pared.
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
23 Paris, Arch. Univ., Reg. 2, fol. 40v; AUP I, cols. 4445.

24 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 [final]
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 reflect 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 mul-
tiplicity 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.
confirms 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 iden-
tifying 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 writ-
ten 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 Decem-
ber 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
28 AUP I, cols. 4445: Item tempore procuracionis ejusdem sigillatum fuit statutum
procuratoris, et puplicatum fuit idem statutum coram Universitate apud Predicatores
in sermone.
29 Michalski seems to have been the first to assume, erroneously, that Buridan was
rector at the time of the statute, an error Moody perpetuated and which led him to
question Ockhams influence 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.
174 chapter nine
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 first 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 superficial 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

fidem.
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 first
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.
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 first paragraph of the statute of
September 25, 1339, a description of the oath of 1341 (with a significant
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 first 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 English-
German 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 first 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 assum-
ing that the December promulgation is the second of a pair and the
only statute to which Henry of Unna could be referring. More impor-
tantly, 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.
176 chapter nine
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 scien-
tia Okamica continued into the following century. The fifteenth-century
version of the University chartulary, mentioned above and written at
a time of growing animosity between the via antiqua and the via mod-
erna (with which Ockhams name was allied), attempted to include both
statutes against the Ockhamists. For reasons of topic similarity or dra-
matic 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 mag-
istrorum actu regentium in facultate artium in actibus publicis portaret bonetum sive
byrretum in capite suo. Item, quod haberentur scampna in scholis artistarum. Simi-
larly, 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 Procu-
rators Book of the English-German Nation; see AUP I, cols. 3637.
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 first 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 first 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 de-
serves. In order to eradicate the so-called Ockhamists from their midst,
the masters were instituting an oath, required of everyone before par-
ticipating in any ocial acts of the Nation. Not only are masters, bach-
elors, 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 non-
regent 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
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.
178 chapter nine
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 num-
bers of Scots to study at Paris where, until 1341, their king was resi-
dent 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 conflict over the secta Occanica within the Nation,
therefore, concerned Continental supporters and opponents, not Ock-
hams 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 Benefices 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
Benefices, 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.
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 tac-
itly accepts aspects of his theory of consequences, as well as his under-
standing of supposition. On this last issue, which draws our attention
because so much modern controversy has focused on whether the sec-
ond item prohibited in the Arts statute of December 1340 constitutes
a proscription of Ockhams theory, Nicholas sharply disputes the alter-
native proposed by Ockhams first Parisian critic, Walter Burley. More-
over, 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 Green-
Pedersen, Nicolaus Drukken de Dacias Commentary on the Prior AnalyticsWith
Special Regard to the Theory of Consequences, CIMAGL, 37 (1981), 4269. Green-
Pedersens 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,

180 chapter nine
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
specifically 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 pro-
moted. 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 find 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 benefice requests to be taken to Avignon. For Nicholass stints as procurator,
see AUP I, cols. 6061.
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 benefices. The result
had been favourable, giving us the first record of a series of benefices
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 procura-
tor, 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 benefices for three
years while pursuing his studies. It is likely that he studied theol-
ogy, 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
45 AUP I, col. 64.

46 In March, 1342, the University began to organize the list (AUP I, cols. 5556);
Nicholass and Henricus de Unna (Skne)s benefices 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 specified as scholars (pp. 223226,
n. 236241), which indicates that they are a response to a benefice 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 benefices 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 benefices 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
182 chapter nine
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 Univer-
sity. Possibly the statute or ordinatio against the secta Occanica was not
enforced; possibly his colleagues did not recognize Nicholass indebt-
edness 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 influential 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 benefices were provided to others; Dipl.
Danicum, 3. Raekke, 5. Bind, 13571360 (Kbenhavn, 1967), pp. 4146, n. 42, 46.
Given the standard nature of these benefices 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 influential member of the Nation,
Grenlaws forte seems always to have been administration and diplomacy.
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 benefices 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 first
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. Unfor-
tunately, none of Wardlaws lectures from his long teaching career has
yet been securely identified, although it seems probable that two Aris-
totle 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 identification is certain, how-
49 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 first 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
184 chapter nine
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 Ock-
ham, and it seems likely that he found some value in at least part
of Ockhams work. Although not present when the ordinatio was cre-
ated 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-
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 com-
mentary. Whatever his sympathies for the Venerable Inceptor on some
issues, Rimini was quite critical of many aspects of his thought, includ-
ing 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 (Mn-
ster i.W., 1930).
56 In the questions we discuss, for example, he quotes Ockham verbatim. His quo-
tations from Adam Wodeham are so exact that they have enabled us to identify Wode-
hams 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 Wode-
hams Question on the Complexe Significabile as the Immediate Object of Scientific
Knowledge, FS, 37 (1977), 66102.
57 The major areas in which Rimini was critical of Ockham were epistemology
and the doctrine of justification and grace. By contrast, however, Rimini accepted
most aspects of Ockhams natural philosophy, specifically 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 final
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-
186 chapter nine
The existence of species had been challenged at Paris by an influ-

ential 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 Sen-
tences commentary contains any extensive argumentation against their
hypothesis.60 Rimini, who named Ockham rather than his Parisian pre-
decessors 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 cogni-
tion, 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 Prob-
lem 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
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 Non-
Existents According to William Ockham: With A Critical Study of the Text of Ock-
hams 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).
Ockhams definition 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 defined 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
confirmed 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, conflicting with the evi-
dence 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 actu-
ally numbered Ockham among his teachers, had rejected his formula-
tion of intuitive cognition as well. At Paris, Rimini is the first to dis-
play unmistakable familiarity not only with the exposition of knowledge
63 See Alessandro Ghisalberti, LIntuizione in Ockham, Revista di filosofia neoscolas-
tica, 70 (1978), 207226; Tachau, The Response.

Ockham gives this definition several times in his Sentences commentary and Quodli-
beta. See especially, II Rep., q. 1415 (Boehner, p. 248): Intuitiva est illa cognitio medi-
ante 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 eviden-
ter 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.
188 chapter nine
in Ockhams Sentences commentary, but also with the objections pre-

sented 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 first 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 first 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 Sen-
tentiarum 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 domeni-
cani del secolo XIV: tratti dallArchivio di S. Nicol di Treviso presso lArchivio di
Stato in Venezia, Nuovo Archivio Veneto, n.s. 36 (1918), 129180.
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 influenced 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 definition of intuitive cognition was required for the elimi-
nation of species; when Rimini actually describes his opponents defini-
tion 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
68 Rimini, II Sent., d. 7, q. 3, p. 120, lin.15 p. 121, lin.4.

69 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 fine 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, influential.
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 inven-
tory, 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 influenced
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.
190 chapter nine
This definition paraphrases Ockhams,73 although Ockham further

insists that without a concomitant intellectual intuitive cognition, sen-
sitive cognition is not sucient to achieve knowledge of contingent
truths.
That Ockhams definition is at issue is made obvious by Rimini who
contends at this point that Rathes and Trevisos definition 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 judg-
ment 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
73 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 imme-
diate 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 definition. 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, identified 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 cogni-
tio absentium non immediate obiective terminatur ad speciem rei existentem in anima.
Arguit autem unus [mg.: Joannes Scotus] sic primo: Nulla cognitio terminatur immedi-
ate 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
Given Rathes and Trevisos rejection of species, and the formers

useas well as definitionof intuitive cognition according to Ock-
hams teaching, Rimini was evidently justified in treating their argu-
ments 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 influential.
In light of Riminis one-time reputation as the instigator of the con-
demnations 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 English-
German 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.
192 chapter nine
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 finished 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, divi-
sus 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 significatis 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 Amplonianis-
chen 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 Ven-
erabili 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
specified 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.
A further manuscript, tied to Paris by its handwriting, remains there

today. Of Ockhams writing, it includes most of the Summa logicae, the
first 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 Odo-
niss logical writings, presumably copied at Paris, and Burleys De puri-
tate, 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 ac-
quiring 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.
194 chapter nine
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 remark-
able that Richard Portirstona should use his copy of the Summa log-
icae 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 Ele-
ments.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 first evident use of Ockhams
logical positions by an author within the Nation that can be docu-
mented 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 first clue to the Facultys objections lies in the oath of 1341 dis-
cussed above in section I. The new masters must teach Aristotles
viewsexcept in cases where his teaching conflicts with the faith
together with the amplification 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 conflicted with theological doctrineon which
the Arts Faculty could make no rulingbut that it conflicted 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.
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 reflected 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 praedica-
menta 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 innova-
tive 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 quanti-
tate 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 pacifica 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, Per-
sonalities 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 Aris-
totle, 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. Bonaven-
ture, 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 Set-
ting of Medieval Science, in Science in the Middle Ages, pp. 91119.
196 chapter nine
is not unusual.91 Its contents illustrate not only the interest that Ock-
hams 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 opposi-
tion 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 first 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 fifteen 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 princi-
ples 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 con-
91 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 conclu-
siones ipsius conati sunt innovare errores antiquorum philosophorum quos Aristote-
les 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 isto-
rum tamquam abusio dicatur. Et accedamus ad inquisitionem magis utilem de reali-
tate ipsius motus. Nec oportet philosophum volentem proficere, confundere realitates
eorum et confugere ad proprietates grammaticales ut habeatur fuga de non explicando
realitates eorum et dicultates physicas circa ipsas. Immo quantum possumus investi-
gare [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
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 first 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 identification of the Occanistae is confirmed 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 identified, but he elaborates on this opinion in his Commentary
on the Economica:
Or certainly one can say that the cleric is deficient 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 identified 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 Courte-
nay, 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 (Gt-
tingen, 1972), pp. 839883, on p. 849, n. 55.
198 chapter nine
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 conspir-
acies 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
96 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 first 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.
brought perfectly to completion.101 If so, the statutes probably pro-

scribed 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 confines of the University, he repeatedly attacked Ockhams
political views as well as his physics. At the time Ockhams name first
appears in Parisian documents, Conrad had already been to Avignon
as nuntius for the University of Paris and had composed the first of
his polemical treatises, the Planctus ecclesiae in Germaniam (1337), which
opposed political views similar to Ockhams and which Conrad pre-
sented 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 fifteenth 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 confirmed by references in his own works; see his mention of
his first 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 fifteenth
century, see N.W. Gilbert, Ockham, Wyclif, and the Via Moderna, in Antiqui und
200 chapter nine
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 first to be condemned is said to have been
William Ockham, whom John XXII persecuted, first 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 final 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 uni-
versity 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 first 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 condem-
nation 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 condem-
natus fuit Guillelmus Okam, quem Johannes XXII persecutus est, primo quia dic-
tus 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 Pontificum et Conciliorum general-
ium et Doctorum Ecclesiae deendit auctoritatem regiam . Propter has causas idem
Johannes XXII multa privilegia dedit Universitati Parisiensi ut ipsam doctrinam Guil-
lelmi Okam condemnaret. Dicta tamen Universitas noluit eam condemnare. Sed Fac-
Certain details are confused in this account, such as the failure

to distinguish clearly events that occurred during the pontificate 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 con-
trary to the faith, or making Ockhams defense of the German emperor
appear to be a defense of the French monarchy. Yet the account is accu-
rate 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
flurry of legislative activity in the various University faculties designed
to promote order and good teaching coincide remarkably with the pon-
tificate 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 insti-
tuit 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 reper-
itur. 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, Reper-
toire 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. Lin-
den (Cologne, 1960), pp. 441452; repr. in J. Koch, Kleine Schriften, vol. II (Rome 1973),
pp. 367386; A. Maier, Zwei Prooemiem Benedikts XII, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, 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.
202 chapter nine
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 first 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 commen-
tary 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 final 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 Beatific Vision and was instrumental in its eventual revo-
cation, he never released Thomas Waleys from the papal prison dur-
ing his pontificate despite the fact that Waleyss imprisonment was a
106 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 identified 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 Mon-
taillou: 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.
direct result of his forceful objection to John XXIIs position.111 Nor did
Fournier relax the campaign against the other foes of John XXII, par-
ticularly 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 influences 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), Bene-
dictines (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 Fran-
ciscans, these ordinances were not the result of any papal suspicion
over orthodox teaching, and they probably defined in writing many
things that were already being practised. But they do reflect 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 de-
serves 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 exam-
ination and previously obtained special licence of the Master and Gen-
eral Chapter presume to publish, disseminate, or copy within or outside
the Order any new theological, legal, or philosophical work, specifically a
book, pamphlet, summa, compendium, postil; expositions, glosses, tract,
collect, compilation of questions or of sermons edited by anyone. More-
over, whoever presumes to attempt this should realize that he will be sus-
pended 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 del-
egated 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
204 chapter nine
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 sum-
mer Stephen of Langres, the University representative of the Bishop
of Senlis, the protector and distributor of papal privileges to Univer-
sity 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 inter-
nal aairs. Fourniers reform zeal was well-known to them; Conrad of
Megenberg and other nuntii sent with benefice 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 lev-
elled 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 Univer-
sitys benefice 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 fiat 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.
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 benefice 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,
specifically 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 benefice 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 follow-
ing autumn Benedict, probably prompted by interested parties at Paris,
began inquisitorial procedures against a number of bachelors and stu-
dents in the Theological Faculty at Paris, most of them seculars, includ-
ing Nicholas of Autrecourt. Among the accused were two English stu-
dents 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 Cis-
tercian Richard of Lincoln was cleared of the charges of holding fan-
tastic opinions.121 The cases against most of the Parisian students called
to Avignon were dropped. Thomas Waleys was finally freed from the
117 AUP I, col. 35; CUP II, p. 487.

118 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.
206 chapter nine
papal prison and allowed to return to England.122 In keeping with ear-

lier papal concerns, however, the trial of Autrecourt was brought to
completion, followed by Clements letter of correction to the Univer-
sity.123
The legislation in the various faculties of the University of Paris dur-
ing the years 13391341 should probably be viewed as a secular coun-
terpart to the educational legislation for the mendicant and monas-
tic 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 con-
cern 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 oth-
ers 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 Fac-
ulty responded to events, which allowed a long-simmering dispute over
Ockhams physics to flare 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 sur-
vive the death of Benedict XII. By 1343 Gregory of Rimini was openly
122 Smalley, English Friars, pp. 7879.

123 CUP II, pp. 587590.
teaching positions in physics that paralleled Ockhams. Although Rim-

ini was not subject to the statutes of the Arts Faculty and was, in fact,
sharply critical of Ockham on other issues of philosophy and theol-
ogy, the ease with which Rimini espoused Ockhams natural philosophy
without opposition suggests that Ockham had become a figure 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 identified in
the fifteenth-century manuscript of the Chartularium as being directed
against Ockhamist errorsa rubric repeated in Denifles 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 Denifles 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-
210 chapter ten
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 mis-
understandings about the meaning of the expression de virtute sermonis
and shed light on Ockhams use of it.5 The persuasiveness of his anal-
ysis 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 cor-
rect. It is only insucient in the degree of attention given to the pre-
and post-Ockhamist history of the phrase de virtute sermonis and the lim-
itation of discussing it only in the context of supposition theory, lead-
ing 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 specific 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 figures 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
the crisis over virtus sermonis 211
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 first 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 defining 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 figures 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 mean-
ing 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 seman-
tically 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.
212 chapter ten
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 figurative meanings were discussed, and if philosophers
were primarily interested in precise, proper meanings of words, rhetori-
cians recognized, alongside etymological reasoning, the persuasiveness
of arguments based on the image-power of figurative language. Discus-
sions 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, mul-
tiplices potestates, and was not limited to proper meaning.12 Varro and
Cicero used the term significatio 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 etymologi-
cally.14 Although Cicero discussed disputes that centered on the mean-
ing of words in statements of past authors and fully recognized prob-
lems of ambiguity and dierences between literal and intended mean-
ing, disputes over a vis verbi centered on the definition or root mean-
ing of a word or phrase.15 That usage was generally followed by later
authors, and the etymological context of vis placed it for several cen-
10 The 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 significatio verbi see Varro, De lingua latina 9, 40; significatio 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 finibus 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 definitiva constitutione, in
quo posita sit, quaeri.

turies on the fringe of the more general division between literal and
derived meanings.16
The contrast between literal and figurative meanings of words, the
latter known as tropoi, fascinated grammarians and rhetoricians alike.
Quintillian mentions the heated battle in his day between the gram-
marians and philosophers over the number and subcategories of tropoi
or tropi, as they were known in Latin.17 But by the fourth century thir-
teen types of figures of speech had been agreed upon, the number
adopted by Isidore and later writers.18 Scaurus and Diomedes defined
tropus as a mode of adorned discourse in which the meaning of an
expression is transferred from its proper signification to an improper
one.19 Thus the phrases modi locutionum, locutio figurata, and verbum trans-
latum became expressions for figurative meaning. And although mod-
ern Latin dictionaries will often distinguish between transferred mean-
ing and figurative meaning, that distinction is far less clear in the late
antique.20
Perhaps the most sensitive area in which the distinction between
literal and figurative meaning was discussed was in the understanding
of Scripture. It was recognized on all sides that biblical language was
highly figurative, and Augustine in particular attempted to establish
rules for determining when scriptural words or phrases should be taken
literally, when figurativelya 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 significatione ad non propriam.

See earlier Quintillian, Institutiones oratoriae 9, 1, 4: est igitur tropus sermo a naturali et
principali significatione 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 figures 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 specifically dealing
214 chapter ten
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 figurata, or in
verbis translatis.
The grammatical and exegetical distinction between literal and fig-
urative 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 signification at the opening of the
twelfth century we find the distinction between literal and figurative
meaning still expressed in the language of proper and improper locu-
tion. Master Ulger of Angers defined accidental predication as the figu-
rative 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 figures 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 figuratam 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 floreas? 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 reflected in his willingness to borrow the rules used toward the end of De doctrina
christiana from a Donatist work.
22 The literal/figurative distinction receives extensive treatment in Priscian, Cas-
siodorus, 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 figurativam 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 significatio 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.
sense, or literal meaning of a word. So we find 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 significa-
tion.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 figurativa, in qua significatur 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 significatio, scilicet
propria et allegorica; ita et in hac duplici significatione 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 significant, et aliud allegoricae.
26 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theol. I, q. 29, a. 4: ex virtute vocabuli essentiam
significet. 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., Pontifical 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,
216 chapter ten
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 first 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, Medio-

evo, 7 (1981), 195229. The role of the potentia absoluta, potentia ordinata distinction in
propositional analysis has been largely overlooked. See my The Dialectic of Omnipo-
tence 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.
Supposition and Virtuous Words
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 suppo-
sition, 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 sup-
position forms based on figures of speech. Moreover, the phrase de virtute
sermonis is not used in this context.
Most thirteenth-century treatises on supposition do not mention fig-
ures 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 veri-
tas.33 Walter Burley, in a treatise written around 1301, also relied upon
Cum sit nostra, but he restructured the discussion to place under im-
proper supposition all types of supposition based on figures of speech.34
Burley is the first to introduce the phrase de virtute sermonis into the dis-
cussion of supposition. All forms of improper supposition are based on
figures 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 Influence 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.

218 chapter ten
improper supposition Ockham adopts Burleys explanatory distinction

between de virtute sermonis and ex usu loquendi. He briefly 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 signification 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 first agreeing on
their meaning. Throughout the discussion the phrase de virtute sermonis
functions as an element of signification, 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 fig-
ures of speech, idiomatic or colloquial expressions, or intentions of an
author. Supposition concerns subjects and predicates and thus nouns or
noun-like words, while figures of speech often depend upon the trans-
ferred 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 improp-
36 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.
erly for sun or water. For sentences in which the elements have
undergone several stages of transferred meaning, or idiomatic expres-
sions, 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 trans-
lated 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 first 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.
220 chapter ten
demned in the first 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 pro-
prietatem sermonis) and more on context, subject matter, common usage,
and the intention of the author.
Although the fifth article does not concern the need to distinguish a
true meaning from a false literal meaning, it may be related. It rejects
limiting scientific 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 first four articles concern the need to distin-
guish a true intended meaning from a false literal meaning.43 Instead,
he interpreted these articles to condemn any description of a propo-
sition 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 specifically directed against Ockham
and his followers. His surprising misreading of a few short paragraphs
39 Ibid.: Item, quod nullus dicat simpliciter vel de virtute sermonis omnem propo-
sitionem esse falsam, quae esset falsa secundum suppositionem personalem termino-
rum, 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 fiat 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 atten-
dere, 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.
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,
figures of speech, and intention of an author when evaluating the truth
or falsity of propositions. Wherever he used the phrase de virtute sermo-
nis, 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 theo-
logical expressions, most scholastic authors, including Bonaventure and
Thomas, used the expression de virtute sermonis or its equivalents and rec-
ognized that authoritative statements were false if taken literally. Along-
side 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 define virtus
sermonis as commonly accepted meaning, including all forms of com-
mon 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 com-
monly 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 indi-
rectly, 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 specific per-
44 For the dating of Autrecourts career and the impossibility of his being connected
with the 1340 statute, see Courtenay and Tachau, Ockhamists, and the English-
German Nation [reprinted in this volume as Chapter 9].
222 chapter ten
son or even group at Paris in the year or years immediately preceding

December 1340, but may instead have to do with types of argumen-
tation and propositional analysis that were considered unacceptable in
lectures and disputations. Fortunately for our understanding of the pur-
pose 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 mas-
ters. The evidence suggests that alongside the controversy over the sci-
entia Occamica at Paris, there was a separate and largely unrelated crisis
over approaches to propositional analysis in academic debates, a crisis
that influenced events at Oxford as well as Paris and that lasted into the
1370s.
The first 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 Tracta-
tus 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 lan-
guage 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 Megen-
berg als Kommentator der Sphaera des Johannes von Sacrobosco, Deutsches Archiv fr
Erforschung des Mittelalters, 32 (1976), 147186; Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ock-
hamists, 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
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 fluviis 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 col-
ors of sentences, since flowers 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 preficiun-
tur. Quia tamen ignorantiam propriam ignorant elatis frontibus magistraliter ince-
dunt 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 fluviis secundum eos neque venti volant, quoniam alas non habent. Nec poterit dici
quod una partium orationis regat aliam secundum modorum significandi proportiones,
quia intellectus humanus omnes partes orationis regit et dirigit. Proprietates enim par-
tium orationis nichil sunt ut dicunt. The examples of a laughing meadow, flying 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 flores verbo-
rum nec colores sententiarum capiant sed flores in pratis crescere et colores varios pic-
tores 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 vir-
ginalem virgam notat et filium inde conceptum florem appellat. Et si de virtute sermo-
nis iste orationes false sunt, sequitur rethoricam in pulcherrimis speciebus transsumptio-
nis 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.
224 chapter ten
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 fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly?
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 con-
cede 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 first 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 conflict of realism and
terminism an earlier conflict 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 fifth article of the 1340
statute, which objected to limiting scientific 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 huius-
modi propositiones vocales, credentes eas esse veras, sive intellectus consideret de sup-
positis 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 proposi-
tionibus 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.
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 signification
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 figurative.
His concluding statement reflects 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 reflections of Conrad of Megenberg, in particular,
suggest that the statute of 1340 was directed against a specific 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 identified 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 influence
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 vir-
tus sermonis non est aliud quam usus significandi 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 vir-
tute 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 con-
sequenter 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.
226 chapter ten
The narrow approach to signification adopted by this anonymous

Parisian group, their negative attitude toward transferred meaning and
figures of speech, and their behavior in the classroom appear reason-
ably clear. The opposing voices of the theologians, protecting the truth
of the metaphoric language of Scripture, and the voices of humanisti-
cally-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, annoy-
ing, and dicult for their students and colleagues, subtly poking fun
at the seriousness of the academic exegetical enterprise? The rejoinder
that winds cant fly 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 ide-
ological position that cut across the fields 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, phi-
losophy 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 lan-
guage, spoken and written terms and propositions hold a central posi-
tion. 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 auc-
toris 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
flexibility 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 down-
grade the metaphorical and allegorical senses of Scripture.55 Only if a
literal explanation failed should one have recourse to any other inter-
pretation. But Scripture had multiple senses, and one need not exclude
55 B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952).
another. The preference for the allegorical and tropological senses of

Scripture in the fourteenth century may have sparked some counter-
armation of the literal. A more likely source, however, might perhaps
be found in the humanist reassertion of the ancient goal of pure Latin-
ity 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 one-
sided 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 confining. 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 signification 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.
228 chapter ten
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 fly, 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 mean-
ing 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 pub-
lished 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 first 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) cer-
tain similarities between the content of the December 1340 statute and
earlier critiques of Ockhams thought, particularly that of John Lut-
terell; 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.

1 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.

230 chapter eleven
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 promul-
gated in a sermon at St. Jacques is explained by Thijssen by hypothe-
sizing a period of several weeks between a draft stage of the document
(associated with the word datum), supposedly reflected in the edited
document of December 29, 1340, and the ocial sealing and promul-
gation 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 significance that
Thijssen has assigned it.
Record-Keeping at the University of Paris
The published Chartularium for the University of Paris, edited by Hein-

rich Denifle 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. Denifles 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 231
did not list all manuscripts in which a document occurred, thus some-
times 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 avail-
able. At the time Denifle 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 con-
sidered lost. It must have been greeted with mixed emotions when, dur-
ing and after the publication of the Chartularium, these lost manuscripts
began to surface: first 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-de-

France, 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.

232 chapter eleven
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 first 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
confirmed 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 clear-
cut distinction of books and registers, and (2) that books were on parch-
ment and registers were on paper. A register, however, can be either a
cartulary of statutes and privileges or a sequential record of magiste-
rial 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
6 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 car-
tulaire 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 specific manuscripts for identification; they were not
describing genres of documents dierentiated by title or writing surface.
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 parch-
ment or paper, all these volumes could by the seventeenth century be
referred to interchangeably as books or registers. A more accurate dif-
ferentiation 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 specific nation); Books of the proctors (sequential reg-
isters 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 finished
volumes obscure the fact that the preservation of records by the cor-
porations 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 first 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 super-
vision 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 cus-
tomary for documents to be inscribed into a register soon after an item
of new legislation was created or a new privilege receivedand the sur-
viving evidence suggests this was ad hoc, not standard procedurethe
arrangement of such registers would have been sequential, as are docu-
10 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.
234 chapter eleven
ments in papal, episcopal, or notarial registers. But unlike popes, kings,

and bishops, the university of Paris had no bureaucracy and, in partic-
ular, no chancery at any level (nation, faculty, or university). There was
no specific 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 respon-
sibilities 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 fifteenth 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
11 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, fide corporali prestita in manu rec-
toris nostre facultatis nos omnes et singuli magistri juravimus et nos omnes ad hoc
spontanee concessimus astringendos. In cujus rei memoriam hoc idem statutum in Reg-
istro 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.
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 proce-
dure.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 accord-
ing 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 reg-
ister. Papal privileges come next, arranged by pontificate, 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 sec-
ond 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.
236 chapter eleven
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 Denifle 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 finds the articles to be sworn before the proctor
by bachelors of arts incepting in the Norman nation (fol. 72v), followed by a financial
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
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 manu-
scripts. The Vatican manuscript contains five 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.
238 chapter eleven
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 five 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 justified
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
23 CUP I, #1 in Paris, B.N., nouv. acq. 936, fol. 51r.

24 The papal letters are CUP I, #376, #385, #421, #512, and CUP II, #578. The
university statute is CUP I, #505. All but the first 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
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 at-
tempt was made to reorganize the entire body of legislation by incor-
porating subsequent privileges and statutes into the rationalized struc-
ture 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 privi-
leges interspersed among statutes of the university and various faculties.
There are, however, sub-groupings. This section begins with six uni-
versity 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), inter-
spersed with a duplicate copy of a privilege of John XXII recorded ear-
lier, and an arts faculty statute of 1355. Then follows a group of six arts
faculty statutes (13381367), one papal privilege (1366), and four univer-
sity 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 fifteenth.
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.
240 chapter eleven
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 docu-
ments 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 paral-
lel 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 More-
over, 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 circum-
stances explain this erratic collection and arrangement of documents,
this manuscript was prepared at the beginning of the fifteenth century
using Vat. Regin. 406 and an assortment of fourteenth-century origina-
lia.
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 ratio-
nalized, 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 incor-
porate 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 finds 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).
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 cen-
tury, in the system of recording important documents in an ocial reg-
ister 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 significance, 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
242 chapter eleven
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 four-
teenth century.36 More remarkable is the fact that the overall structure
and sequence, as well as the specific documents included, dier sub-
stantially from the Liber rectoris. It is unlikely that the libri nationum, in the
common redaction reflected 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 modified. Royal privileges were inserted as a sep-
arate 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 uni-
versity 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 reflect the Book of the Picard
Nation more than that of the English nation.
35 Denifle and Chtelain did use Du Boulays Historia, which included texts tran-
scribed 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.
The redaction common to these libri nationum was assembled in the

third quarter of the fourteenth century, although some of the manu-
scripts 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 ordinan-

dum et statuendum, diliberatum fuit concorditer, quod fieret Liber nacionis de pergameno,
in quo scriberentur statuta et privilegia nacionis et Universitatis, et deliberatum fuit
quod super modo faciendi fieret 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 first such record, but to create or copy a new reg-
ister 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 Denifle and Chte-
lain recognized; AUP I, col. 199n: deliberatio nationis nonnisi post decem annos, i.e.
post an. 1366, eectum habuit. 20 Decemb. mentio fit 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 antiqui-
tus 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.
244 chapter eleven
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 first 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?

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 fifteenth century despite the fact that they had long since been
modified or replaced by subsequent legislation, often preserved side
by side. Statute books should, therefore, be characterized not so much
as reflections 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 Rec-
tor. 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 dis-
carded. 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 four-
teenth 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 proc-
tor, charged with the responsibility of the safe keeping of the nations
records, may have taken it back to England. No matter how impor-
tant, if documents were not copied into multiple registers or into a reg-
246 chapter eleven
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 mid-
dle 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 nec-
essarily 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 preserva-
tion.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 origi-
nal diplomas found in the chest are probably an accurate reflection of
what the French nation possessed at that time. The selection is rather
meager yet informative. Most of the documents are papal and lega-
tine 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
41 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 identified 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
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 thirteenth-
century 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 five of those fourteen are not found in the latter
register. The number of arts faculty statutes is more balanced: each has
six, of which five 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. Miss-
ing for the first half of the century are at least eleven papal privi-
leges;45 three university statutes;46 and one arts faculty statute.47 More-
over, 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 proc-
tors 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, confining 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.
248 chapter eleven
Several conclusions emerge from this comparison of the Book of

the Rector and the books of the nations. The first is that because
these registers attempted to be formal, definitive, 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 final 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 fourteenth-
century 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 de-
gree 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 record-
49 Thijssen, 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 final 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.
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 pre-
served 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 priv-
ileges, while desirable, probably depended more on the timing and cir-
cumstances 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 rec-
torship passed among a potentially far larger group. More importantly,
the nations were the principal unit of self-identification 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).
250 chapter eleven
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 first
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 uni-
versity 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 uni-
versity expressed its concern that the frequent turnover among masters
and the brief term of oce for the rector created a situation in which
52 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 significant 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, pub-
licus apostolica et imperiali auctoritate venerabilisque matris Universitatis Parisiensis

notarius . By the second quarter of the fourteenth century (and possibly much ear-
lier) 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.
past decisions and legislation of the university body might be forgot-

ten or inaccurately remembered.57 Their remedy seems to have been to
have continuity in the oce of university scribe not only for the prepa-
ration of all university documents but presumably for recalling the con-
tent 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 final 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 fit
temporis, quod res clara presentibus redditur obscura futuris, et sic interdum recisa
repululant, suscitantur sopita, et sepulta resurgunt. Unde adversus oblivionis dispen-
dium de scripture suragio prudentium cautela non immerito providere curavit. Ut igi-
tur Universitatis nostre negotia futuris temporibus peragenda roboris saniori firmitate
vallentur, potissime quia labilis est hominum memoria, ut predicitur, nostrique magistri
fluunt et refluunt continueque mutantur, rectorque sepissime mutatur, ex quibus fre-
quentius 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 neces-
sariis 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
definitive 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.
252 chapter eleven
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 sep-
arately in designated areas of the church and then reported the results
of their deliberations through the proctors and deans. If there was una-
nimity, 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 summa-
rized into statutory form: anno ejusdem MCCC vicesimo octavo, die tercia mensis
Septembris , in mei notarii publici et testium infra scriptorum presentia constitu-
tus 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 deliber-
averunt decretiste et theologi. Super quibus omnibus prefatus rector petiit a me publico
notario sibi fieri publicum instrumentum. Acta fuerunt hec Parisius anno, indictione,
mense, die, loco, pontificatu et hora predictis, presentibus ad hec venerabilibus et dis-
cretis viris magistris Et ego Garinus de Pruvino dum hec omnia et singula fierent
et ordinarentur, presens fui, et super hoc publicum instrumentum scribi feci et in for-
mam 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 pub-
lici ac testium subscriptorum presentia in capitulo Beati Maturini Parisiensis in gen-
erali 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 decre-
torum retulit Deliberationem vero facultatis theologie Acta fuerunt hec in capit-
ulo Beati Maturini predicto parum post horam tertiam, die, indictione, mense et pontif-
icatu predictis In cujus rei testimonium sigillum dicte Universitatis una cum signo et
subscriptione publici notarii infrascripti presentibus est appensum. Datum anno, indic-
tione, die, mense et pontificatu 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-
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 sub-
sequently 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 indi-
cates 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 nul-
latenus 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. Ac-
tum 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
final notarial clause or mention of sealing.]
62 Thijssen, 165: Leafing through the chartulary one will find that most statutes end
with the standard formula: Datum et actum or the slightly variant formula Acta
fuerent (sic) .
254 chapter eleven
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, #137, 187, 246, 328, 333, 363, 441, 461, 485; CUP II, #544, 549, 554, 570,
1042.
64 CUP I, #561, CUP II, #1012, 1023, 1024, 1031, 1229.
65 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 Julia-
num in nostra congregatione facultatis nobis specialiter ad statuendum vocatis anno
Domini millesimo trecentesimo tricesimo nono, sabbato post festum beati Mathei apos-
toli. 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 tre-
cesimo 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
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 particu-
lar 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.
Confining our comparison to the originalia of fourteenth-century stat-
utes that have seals or have the marks of having had seals, we find
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, indic-
tione nona, pontificatus . 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 pontificale (Paris, 1929), pp. 295296.

69 The flexibility 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 pontificatus
. 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

256 chapter eleven
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 final 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 finds 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, fieri
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 pontificatu 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.
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)
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. Denifle 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 ratified 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 first 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.
258 chapter eleven
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 reflect changes across time.
What is the dierence between the two versions? In the earlier ver-
sion there were two oaths. The first obliged the incepting bachelor to
swear to observe the statute made by the faculty of arts against the scien-
tia 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 permis-
sion of the master in charge of the disputation.76 In the second version
the first of these two oaths was removed and the second oath was short-
ened 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 sci-
entiam 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 first of these oaths refers to the arts
faculty statute of December 1340or possibly to the first half of the
September 1339 statuteeven though there is no direct parallel be-
75 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 sub-
stinebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et alio-
rum antiquorum commentatorum et expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui
sunt contra fidem.
76 Ibid.: Item, observabitis statutum contentum in altero predictorum duorum statu-
torum 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 significative 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 significative
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.
tween the text of the oath and the text of those statutes. But this posi-
tion is based on a misunderstanding of the relation of oath to statute.
The oaths for inception in the arts faculty are based on statutory leg-
islation 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 first of the
new oaths) mandating and describing a capa nova rotunda is one of
79 For example, compare the first oath (CUP I, p. 586): Vos legetis lectiones ordi-
narias in capa rotunda, vel in pallio and the statute (CUP I, p. 79): Nullus mag-
istrorum 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-fifth 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 sin-
gulas facultatis et consuetudines facultatis honestas et totius Universitatis privilegia def-
fendetis, 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 congrega-
tiones 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 licen-
tiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo significative 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-fifth 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 fiunt 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
fiunt sermones in Universitate et recommendationes, et quem lectores in ceteris facul-
tatibus insequuntur.
80 Courtenay and Tachau, Ockham, Ockhamists, 6162.
260 chapter eleven
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 specifically 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 min-
imum of fifteen years and a maximum of twenty-six years between the
original statute in the form of a diploma and its first 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.
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 fifteen 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
84 CUP II, #1165, p. 633; CUP III, #1196, 1220, 1221, 1223, 1229, 1254.
85 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.
262 chapter eleven
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 numer-
ous cases of such omissions in every single manuscript that has sur-
vived.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 regis-
tration 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 sum-
mer 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 sur-
viving arts faculty statutes. The lack of faculty legislation during numer-
ous decades in the fourteenth and fifteenth 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, how-
ever, 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
88 See above, pp. 237240, 242, 245, 247.

89 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.
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 first oath contra scientiam occamicam.
As we have seen, both datum and actum in university and arts fac-
ulty statutes, whether together or alone, usually refer to the meeting
at which deliberation and action took place. Moreover, numerous uni-
versity 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.
264 chapter eleven
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 finds in #219 (both in the diploma and in the regis-
ters) 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 anti-
Ockhamist, would not have made some comment in the Proctors Reg-
ister 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 com-
pletion (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 noth-
ing 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 correspon-
dence 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 tena-
blethe role of the English-German nation in this aair remains cen-
tral. Whatever the content and date of the statute against Ockhamist
errors, that document was not sealed at a meeting of the faculty of arts
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 first 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
first oath refers to the first 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 first 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 sub-
stantial 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.
man 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 Uni-
versity 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 Filosofia
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 (Lei-
den, 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 Con-
demnations 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.
268 chapter twelve
documentary operations of the University of Paris as well as the inter-

nal 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 cen-
tury, and what specific positions contemporaries identified or character-
ized 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 impli-
cations 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 Ock-

hams 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 appear-
ance, presumably in the mid-to-late 1330s, of Ockhams theological
writings and, presumably, his other works in logic and natural philos-
ophy.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 forthcom-
ing 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 269
1320s we find 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 evi-
dent in several works, most especially in the revised version of his De
puritate artis logicae, written between 1324 and 1329, and in the final ver-
sion 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, first 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
270 chapter twelve
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 Con-
sequently, 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 posi-
tions, which are never identified 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 involve-
ment in the events of 13391341 will be addressed later.
To return to the question at hand, the crucial points of Ockhams
natural philosophy, specifically 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 Na-
turphilosophie 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 natuurfilosofie, 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
signification 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.
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 vari-
ous 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 fit that picture of a fifteen-
year 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
10 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.
272 chapter twelve
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 specifically 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
14 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 pri-
mum Sententiarum Michaelis de Masa .; Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, ms. Conv.
Soppr. C. VIII. 794; and the first 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 Vat-
icana, 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 Uni-
versitaria, 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
other mendicant orders in the fourteenth century.16 For those being

trained in theology, after an initial five 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 florida aetate, sepultusque fuit in nostra ecclesia, et in eius sepulchro
subsignata volumina a se edita . For the six-year waiting period between reading
274 chapter twelve
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, specifically
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 first, he introduces the opinion of the Occamistae in his
questions on duration and time. Some have said that time is the heav-
ens 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 obstan-
tibus 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.

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 argu-
ments 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 first book of
Aristotles Physics.24 Although Massas principal target is the contempo-
20 Ibid., fol. 71ra: Sic ergo error istorum tamquam abusio dicatur. Et accedamus ad
inquisitionem magis utilem de realitate ipsius motus. Nec oportet philosophum volen-
tem proficere, 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 conclu-
siones ipsius conati sunt innovare errores antiquorum philosophorum quos Aristote-
les 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 ver-
itatem 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: Con-
tra 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 distinc-
tus 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 deficientes 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
276 chapter twelve
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 praedica-
menta and the implications of Ockhams position for physics. In his com-
mentary on John of Sacroboscos Sphaera, written in 1347 in Vienna,
Megenberg attacked Ockhams view that points and lines are not res dis-
tinctae 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 followersreflects 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 per-
manens 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 ani-
mam et similiter lineas, sicut facit frater Wilhalmus et sui, illi dicerent, quod secunda
descriptio spaerae etiam competeret sibi secundum esse suum ymaginativum et con-
ceptibile, sed ego non sum istius opinionis, et habet de hoc videri alibi, scilicet in quaes-
tionibus 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.]
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 presup-
positions 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 tech-
niques against which Conrad of Megenberg railed in his Planctus of 1337
and in book III, chapter 12 of his Economica, although without attribut-
ing 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
deficiens in statu scholastico est hic, qui naturas plurium abnegat rerum, quemad-
modum 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 firmantur, 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 Wil-
helmus de Occham, qui quantitatem eandem rem cum substantia dicit esse, quia tunc
transsubstantiata substantia panis etiam quantitas eius in substantiam Christi transsub-
stantiaretur; quod tamen non est verum, cum sentiamus figuram 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 indis-
tinctas 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
278 chapter twelve
and rejected by Jean Buridan in his Summulae, but again without identi-
fying the aliqui.30 Summarized briefly, 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 propo-
sitions 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 anal-
ysis formed a unified group, and if so, whether they considered them-
selves or were considered by others to be Occamistae, are questions that
have not yet been definitively answered. Only in the disputed rubric of
the December 1340 statute are these positions characterized as Ock-
hamist 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 fluviis secundum eos, neque
venti volant, quoniam alas non habent. Nec poterit dici, quod una pars orationis
regat aliam secundum modorum significandi 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
flores verborum nec colores sententiarum capiant, sed flores 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 filium Dei inde conceptum florem 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 filosofia,
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.
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 reflects the degree of emotional commitment that many schol-
ars feel concerning the outcome of this debate. Only recently has this
detailed analysis moved beyond the attempt to prove or disprove Ock-
hams 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 con-
siderably. 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 fit that partic-
ular slipper on the foot of the Venerable Inceptor still goes on, but the
most perceptive critics have admitted that it only fits partially, or can be
made to fit only by a very superficial or distorted reading of Ockham.32
It is certainly possible that those who espoused the positions and prac-
ticed 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
significant 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 neuzeit-
lichen 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.
280 chapter twelve
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 Septem-
ber 1339 is too vague to identify any particular aspect of his teaching,
but the term doctrina does appear more descriptive of philosophical posi-
tions 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 Aristo-
tle only the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Mete-
orologica and Physiognomia (probably meaning his questions of Aris-
totles 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
find mendicant commentaries produced in the second half of the thir-
teenth century. Specifically, these were: Thomas on Metaphysics, Physics,
33 It has been established by Stephen Dumont that the marginal identification 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)identification. 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.
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, Meteorolog-
ica, 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 gen-
eration 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 commenta-
tors, 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 commen-
tators 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 reinterpre-
tation 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 Com-
mentator, and other commentatores antiqui and the rejection of the scientia
of Ockham, that oath cannot, as I have argued before, include refer-
ence 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 interpreta-
tion of the categories. The phrase Aristotle, his Commentator, and the
older commentators is code language for the debate over the praedica-
menta 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
35 CUP II, pp. 110111, #642.

36 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
282 chapter twelve
his discussion of motion, Massa characterizes the position of his oppo-

nents 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 Decem-
ber 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 valid-
ity of figures 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 con-
demned 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 firmly maintain in

every way, as a reference to the continuing prohibition of other teachings of Ockham
not specified 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 recur-
rendo ad subiectum et probatum propositionis et ad suppositum et ad appositum

propositionis grammaticaliter. Ibid.: Sed quies vere et realiter et non solum gram-
maticaliter contrariatur motui et tamen non contrariatur mobili, ergo motus et mobile
non sunt eadem realitas. Ibid.: per quascumque connotationes et per quascumque
figuras grammaticales tu conaris salvare quod una res sit quandoque motus et quan-
doque 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 Role of Buridan in the Events of 13391341
Let me finally 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, signification, 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 three-
40 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.

284 chapter twelve
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 mid-
December, 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 com-

mentary 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 phys-
ical theory and possibly to create a rather bizarre theory of proposi-
tional 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 proposi-
tional 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 cen-
tury. 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 figure.
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.

1 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 first 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.
286 chapter thirteen
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 com-
pletely 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 first 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
specifically 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 forma-
tion 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 Ital-
ian 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,
the quaestiones in sententias of michael de massa 287
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 five 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 five 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 identifies 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 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 182rb

De quarto articulo ubi restat dictum fuit in prologo
inquirendum: Utrum Deus ut libri Sententiarum in quaes
est subiectum habitus theo- tione illa: Utrum subiectum
logici contineatur sub obiecto theologiae contineatur
adaequato nostrae potentiae et sub obiecto adaequato
sub obiecto adaequato habitus metaphysicae. Tamen omnes
metaphysicae, patet ex dictis doctores nostri.
quid sit tenendum.
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.
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; Bo-
logna, 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 definitive, 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 fieri 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 .
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 definitor 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 Amalfi. 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
11 D.A. Perini, Bibliographia Augustiniana II (Firenze, 1931), pp. 191192.

12 F. Pelster, Zur ersten Polemik gegen Aureoli: seine Qustionen und sein Correc-
torium 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 ordi-
nis 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.
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
13 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 fulfilling 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 definitiones 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.
What is certain is that at the time James of Pamiers wrote his quodli-
betic 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 ordinar-
iae in the formers Super primum Sententiarum given at Paris in 13441345.17
Trapps other piece of evidence for the 13251326 date is more sub-
stantive 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 Augus-
tinian order at that time), followed by Godfrey of Fontaines. These cita-
tions, all of which mention specifically (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 Alexan-
der 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 identification
of a certain venerable doctor, namely our father general in his first
Quodlibet, q. 2 could stand for opinio Generalis, but it could also
stand for the first 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 identifies 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, possi-
bly, 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).
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
modified 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 first 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 first
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 nego-
tiativum, sicut probat praefata opinio, sed per simplicem intuitum. Talis distinctio
rationis in essentia divina est prior distinctione reali in creaturis; ergo distinctio attrib-
utorum in essentia divina non sumitur ex creaturis; et per consequens ab intra.
Ergo per simplicem intuitum illam distinctionem reducit in actum sine omni compa-
ratione 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. Augus-
tini], 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 fieri solum in ordine ad creaturas. Et addit tertio, quod
talis distinctio fiat 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 ratio-
nis 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.: opinio magistri Alexandri]
quae dicit quod attributa divina distinguuntur secundum rationem absque omni habi-
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, writ-
ing 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 first three questions from an
anonymous Quodlibet (fols. 7ra10rb) which, two years later, he identi-
fied as belonging to Alexander of S. Elpidio on the basis of the cita-
tion in Gerard of Siena mentioned above.23 Now that we have three
tudine ad extra, et hoc per divinum intellectum non quidem collationum vel negotio-
rum, 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 fiunt 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
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 first 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 sanc-
tus 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 first 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 fifteen questions. In the first 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.

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 pre-
Parisian 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 five 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 (specifically 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
fulfilled 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 four-
teenth 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.

Pre-university lectures on the Sentences have survived for Peter Auriol,

Walter Chatton, Adam Wodeham, and the Augustinian John of Bur-
gos.30
It has commonly been assumed that pre-university lectures on the
Sentences were written within two or three years of becoming a univer-
sity sententiarius. But this impression is derived from the fact that all
bachelors usually spent the year before their first 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 Augustini-
ans, and the examination and appointment of lectors within the Augus-
tinian 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-bacca-
laureate 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 five 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. Wal-
ter 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 first 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 florida aetate, sepultusque fuit in nostra ecclesia, et
in eius sepulchro subsignata volumina a se edita .
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 definitor for his province at the Venice chapter
in 1332. Gregory of Rimini, while lector at the convent of Bologna in
1338 was appointed definitor 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 under-
standable. Parisian statutes in the 1320s and 1330s required a mini-
mum 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 exemp-
tion from this rule (i.e., promotion ex gratia), as many others did during
the pontificate 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
32 Marcolino, Einleitung, p. xii.

33 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 elap-
sum, per quorum spatium de consuetudine seu statuto ejusdem studii debent, ut dici-
tur, 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 quo-
rum spatium de consuetudine seu statuto ejusdem studii debent, ut dicitur, bacalarii
expectare, priusquam ad magisterium in dicta scientia presententur .
since promotion to the magisterium by any means entailed an obliga-

tion of regency (at least for the better part of an academic year) and
residency (part of which could be fulfilled as magister non regens), every
papal insertion into the sequence of candidates established by the gen-
eral chapter of the order meant a delay in the advancement of some-
one 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 pontificate 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, begin-
ning 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 first
question in that section, is the fifth question of those designated as opus ordinarium, the
first 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-
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 ques-
tions on the Sentences, even the pre-Parisian version, as distinct text units.
Trapp viewed the term opus ordinarium as Massas title for his Lectura lec-
toris, composed before he became a bachelor at Paris. During the year
before his year or biennium as Parisian sententiarius, and probably con-
tinuing 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 expres-
sions for these additiones. The implication of this view is that all text
units would have been produced either before Massa became a bache-
lor 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 first 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 (multi-
pliciter 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.
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 Sen-
tences, it is unclear whether their fusion into one volume was Massas
plan or was an assembly that took place after his death. All cross-
references to the additiones that specify a location within the same vol-
ume, as indicated by superius, are internal to the additiones and do not
indicate whether the additiones were to be bound in with the opus ordinar-
38 Vat. 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.
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
first group of additional questions (fols. 17v34v) has many internal ref-
erences 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 Vati-
can 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 ques-
tions 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 find 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 Rim-
ini 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, reflect contro-
versies 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 evi-
dence 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 produc-

tive 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 set-
ting of true learning.1 Yet, at the same time his examples of false teach-
ing, 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 exag-
geration, 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.

1 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 sanc-
tissimi viri beati Bernhardi ordinis fratres felicissimi providerant michi de necessariis
atque in lectorem philosophie me susceperant, quousque supradicto receperam pro-
cessu lauream doctoratus et octennuus sedis gubernator dilectus universitatis filius
honorabar.
304 chapter fourteen
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 phi-

losophy 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 con-
tacts in Germany before leaving Erfurt, or he may have approached
the Cistercians in Paris after he arrived there to help finance 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. Fabri-
cius (Hamburg, 1718), p. 157; Helmut Ibach, Leben und Schriften des Konrad von Megen-
berg (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 Con-
rads 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.
conrad of megenberg: the parisian years 305
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 qualifications to
do such teaching. This was the reason why the Franciscans at Oxford,
not long after their foundation, invited Robert Grosseteste to be lec-
tor 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 exis-
tence 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.
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 diversified 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 benefits 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 find in a university mendicant
convent.
It is understandable, therefore, that substantial numbers of Cister-
cian 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 owner-
ship of the house of studies from Clairvaux and pressured Cistercian
11 Courtenay, Schools and Scholars, ch. 2.

monasteries, under threat of visitation and financial 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
influx 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 influ-
ence 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 financial 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 first came to Paris, he could intro-
duce 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 influence on Conrad, it may have encouraged a conser-
vative 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 sub-
stantial by the early fourteenth centuryan advantage for a student in
the arts faculty that was usually available only to those who were con-
nected 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 com-
putus of 1329, but since that document is incomplete, its silence in
this matter cannot be used to place Conrads arrival after the aca-
demic year 13291330.15 In fact, one section of the Latin Quarter that
12 This suggestion was put forward by Krger, konomica III, 1, 21, p. 201, n. 997.
13 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
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 qualified for that exemption.16 Nor does Con-
rads 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 comple-
tion 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 English-
German 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
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 finance 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 pre-
vious academic year. Conrads writings reveal him as a person of strong
opinions, and the records of his nation reflect 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 con-
victions 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 English-
German 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.
was often chosen to represent the position of the nation in external

negotiations.
The particular episode that led to Conrads suspension involved a
conflict 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 Chris-
tianus 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 fac-
ulty 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 choos-
ing 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 English-
German nation is not helpful on this point. He is identified 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.
nation, which produced considerable confusion and delayed the choos-

ing 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 maleficium suum) did
not prevent his participation in the business of his nation. At its meet-
ing on October 21 Conrad, because of his reputation for hard dealing
on behalf of the nation (quia rigorosum erat, cum factum fuerit nacio-
nis), 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 benefice.
The attempt was unsuccessful, and Conrad eventually returned to Paris
disappointed and bitter.28
27 AUP I, col. 23; CUP I, pp. 449458, #409.

28 Planctus, p. 69: tibi nil datur Avignonis; p. 92: Cap. 30, in quo scriptor ostendit
beneficium 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
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 financial 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 sell-
ing property through receiving a loan or gift from a friend. For details see Courte-
nay, Conrad of Megenberg as Nuntius and his Quest for Benefices, 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.
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 benefice 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 benefice 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, specifi-
cally Suno Karoli of Sweden (to be distinguished from the Suno of Swe-
den 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 Septem-
ber.
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 ap-
pointed 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.
1341 two students determined under him: Johannes Arneri of Sweden

and Burchard of Constance,41 and another student, John of Witten-
berg, 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 class-
room 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 determina-
tions 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 mas-
ter in arts. But what of his teaching? No commentaries attributable to
Conrad on the texts of the arts curriculum have been identified, except
for his Quaestiones on John of Sacroboscos De sphaera, which was writ-
ten 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
41 AUP I, col. 46.

42 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 Nrn-
bergs 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 conceiv-
able 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 proba-
ble location of the treatise is suggested by his already having lectured on the Sen-
tences (fol. 83rb: In prima questione quarti sententiarum dixi. ) and by the explicit
(fol. 91va): Explicit tractatus magistri Chonradi de monte puellarum, rectoris uni-
versitatis 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.
occasional references in that treatise and later works suggest that he

wrote questions or groups of questions in natural philosophy while at
Paris, specifically on problems in physics. In his treatise against Burley
he cited his treatise on rarifaction and condensation, while in his Quaes-
tiones 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 orig-
inated 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
50 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 rarificatione 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.
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 financial
reasons might well have had an embittering eect on his psychology.
The evidence behind the theological career of Conrad is not exten-
sive, 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 Monas-
ticon.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 Trac-
tatus contra Burley, identified and discussed by Kaeppeli in 1950, Conrad
specifically refers to his first 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 octen-
nium 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 first 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 filius honorabar), and it is the way he describes the
obligation of the arts bachelor to dispute in the schools of various arts masters; konom-
ica 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 four-
teenth century and specifies seven years of theological study for seculars before pro-
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 cur-
sor 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 definitive text (lectura recollecta, lectura edita, or ordinatio) for publication
was achieved. If financial need or other circumstances interrupted the
normal sequence, it would be possible for a draft text to have been real-
ized 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.]
Ockhamism, the references in the 1340 statute concerning the implica-

tions of those errors for the interpretation of scripture or propositions
about God may reflect 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 identified 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 fifteenth
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, identified
as his opus ordinarium, with questions on topics in physics identified
as additiones or as quaestiones extraordinariae.60 The numerous cross-
references among the additional questions, and between those and the
57 Ibach, Leben, p. 4.
58 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. Courte-
nay, 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
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 ini-
tially 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 the-
ological 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 writ-
ten not long before his death in May 1337. In any event, the additional
questions show that a student contemporary with Conrad in the theo-
logical faculty was deeply concerned over issues that coincide remark-
ably with the issues Megenberg claimed to have treated in his ques-
tions or disputations on problems in physics. For example, the anti-
primi 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
figuras gramaticales tu conaris salvare quod una res sit quandoque motus et quan-
doque 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 propo-
sitiones gramaticales. Ibid., fol. 70vb: Qua ratione tu dicis quod motus localis est
idem realiter cum ipso mobili. Et si dicas quod .
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 finally, a more extended discussion
of Ockhamist theories on motion discussed briefly in konomica III, tr. 1,
c. 1 can be found in Vat. lat. 1087, fols. 70rb74ra. While one cannot dis-
miss 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 ques-
tions 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 occa-
sional similarities in style and attitude between Vat. lat. 1087 and Con-
rads 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 inno-
vare errores antiquorum philosophorum quos Aristoteles frequentissime
reprobat, licet per quasdam fugas grammaticales huiusmodi errores sus-
tineant, quae modicum valent, sicut alias apparebit. Ideo statim pro nunc
de errore istorum circa realitatem motus expedio me valde breviter, gra-
tia 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 phys-
icae 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
non est distinctus a mobili sed est realiter ipsummet mobile. Et quod
ita sit probant quia corpus celeste est quoddam mobile a quo non dis-
tinguitur realiter suus motus; ergo, pari ratione, dicendum est de omni
mobili et de motu quo quandoque movetur. Sed iste error est con-
tra 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 Commen-
tator accipit ibi subiectum reale, cui vicissim possunt inesse contraria,
puta motus et quies, et non accipit ibi subiectum propositionis gramat-
icaliter; 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 erro-
rem istorum quando tractabo generalem abusionem quam ponunt, vide-
licet quod in eodem supposito numquam concurrunt nisi duae distinc-
tae 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 proficere,
confundere realitates eorum et confugere ad proprietates grammaticales
ut habeatur fuga de non explicando realitates eorum et dicultates phys-
icas circa ipsas. Immo quantum possumus investigare, tantum debe-
mus explicare de quidditatibus rerum. Moveamus ergo aliquas quaes-
tiones circa realitatem motus more Aristotelis et Commentatoris et alio-
rum philosophorum, praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovan-
tium 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 figure (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 deficientes 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.
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 Okanis-
tae.66
Massas questions reveal an overriding concern, shared by Conrad,

with the scientific 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 meth-
ods of analysis found in the writings of William of Ockham. Con-
rads 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 Ock-
ham (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 Recep-
tion 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 Michal-
ski (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
First, although the post-Parisian writings of Conrad show a firm

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 figures 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
first 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 first firm
evidence for his resumption of his regency is in December 1339, from
which we may infer his presence during the first 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 lan-
gages. Note sur le statut du 29 Dcembre 1340 et le prtendu statut perdu contre Ock-
ham, in L. Bianchi (ed.), Filosofia 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. Uni-
versities in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1994), pp. 293327; Courtenay, Was There an Ock-
hamist 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.
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 final wording. If, as now seems likely,
the actual sealing of the statute occurred several weeks later, possibly
due to debate over inclusion of the final 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 proce-
dures 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 figures of
70 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, Ock-
hamists, 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.
speech when one allowed only the strictest literal meaning (de virtute
sermonis) was certainly one of Conrads later concerns. In his konom-
ica he criticized the wretches (miseri) who rejected as meaningless such
sentences as aqua transit in fluviis 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 first text in
which Conrad attacked Ockhamist physicsunless certain questions
in Vat. lat. 1087 were authored or influenced 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 Regens-
burg 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 indistinguish-
74 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 preficiunt.
Gramaticam indignis molestant derisibus armantes quod nulla partium oracionis
constructio est transitiva. Quapropter aqua non transit in fluviis secundum eos,
neque venti volant, quoniam alas non habent. Nec poterit dici quod una pars oracionis
regat aliam secundum modorum significandi 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 flores ver-
borum nec colores sentenciarum capiant, sed flores in pratis crescere et colores varios
pictores componere et pulchre variare ad instar nature armant. Qualiter hii dul-
ciloquia 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 filium dei inde conceptum florem appellat. Et si de virtute
sermonis iste oraciones false sunt, sequitur rethoricam in pulcherrimis speciebus tran-
sumpcionis nullam ad oraciones habere virtutem, et sic rethorica quasi evanuit tota.
76 Mnchen, Bayr. Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14687, fol. 74ra, as quoted by Sabine Kr-
ger, 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 secun-
dum 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 com-
peteret sibi secundum esse suum ymaginativum et conceptibile, sed ego non sum istius
opinionis, et habet de hoc videri alibi, scilicet in questionibus physis.
able from absolute, permanent things, who identified 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 sen-
tentiarius 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 deficiens 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 firmantur 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 con-
tra scientiam Okamicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consimiles sustinebitis

fidem.
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.
first theologian at Paris to defend publicly Ockhams natural philoso-

phy, 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 encourag-
ing voice on the wording of that papal admonition.83 But eventually the
anti-Ockhamist legislation in the arts facultyat least as regards Ock-
hams 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 Ock-
ham, 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 Uni-
versity 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 cate-
gories and its implications for his natural philosophy.2 These may seem,
on the surface, two very dierent spheres of conflict: 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 partic-
ipants the issues raised in those two spheres were intimately related.
After briefly sketching the stages in the conflict 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.) Filosofia e teologia
nel Trecento. Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, Textes et tudes du Moyen Age 1 (Louvain-la-
Neuve, 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 significance 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 figures of speech.
man 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].
330 chapter fifteen
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 thir-
teenth and early fourteenth centuries to distinguish within the Aris-
totelian 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 Aris-
totle 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 ontol-
ogy 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: sub-
stance, quality, and action.3 Olivis principal aim was to undermine sub-
servient acceptance of Aristotles opinions rather than to identify Aris-
totles 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 sub-
stances and qualities are real, the case is dierent. Rather than trying
to maintain, as did Olivi, that Aristotle was not the final 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).
the categories 331
But it is also the case that other issues outside or peripheral to logic
influenced 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 fiercely 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 interpre-
tations 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, rela-
tion, action, passion, place, position, time, and motion came under dis-
cussion, and it was often the way in which the categories were under-
stood 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 first 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 first 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. Bonaven-
ture, N.Y., 1944).

332 chapter fifteen
Michael de Massa and the Occamistae
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 identified 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 dura-
tion 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 con-
temporaries (moderni) who undermine both the principles and conclu-
sions 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, specifically
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

58133.
8 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70rb (below, p. 339).
the categories 333
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 revert-
ing 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 flight
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 proposi-
tion, 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 cat-
egories: 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 termin-
ist approach. Only when used in propositions do terms become sub-
ject to truth or falsehood, and the nature of the real status of abstract
9 Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70va (below, p. 342).

10 Aristoteles latinus: Categoriae vel Praedicamenta, ed. L. Minio-Paluello (BrugesParis,
1961), pp. 8687.
334 chapter fifteen
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 discus-
sion 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 stand-
point of the Praedicamenta and propositional logic, and interpret the dis-
cussion of motion in Aristotles Physica as well as Averroess commen-
tary on it from the standpoint of logic and language. For Massa, they
are intentionally avoiding discussing the matter physice or ad rem and are
fleeing 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 propo-
sition, 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
11Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 70rb (below, pp. 340341).

12Ibid., 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 nume-
the categories 335
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 reflected
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 adver-
saries, 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 simul-
taneously taught in the arts faculty and may have incorporated into
their theological debates issues that might appear primarily philosoph-
ical.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 manu-
script 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 impli-
cations 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 the-
ology, Bernard of Arezzo, O.F.M. On Bernard, see Z. Kaluza, Nicolas dAutrcourt,
HLF, 42.1 (Paris, 1995), pp. 5664.
336 chapter fifteen
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 com-
mon 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 pro-
hibits the use of Ockham in public or private teaching, refers not to
methods of argumentation or to hermeneutics but to Ockhams doct-
rina, which better describes a body of teaching. Similarly, when anti-
Ockhamist 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 specifically 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 defined,
which is contrasted in the oath and presumably in the statute itself to
the teaching, the scientia, of Aristotle and the Commentator. That con-
trast 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 fac-
ulty at this time who stood in opposition to Ockhams ontology. Despite
the fact that no statute survives that specifically 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
the categories 337
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 Megen-

berg, 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 inter-
preters 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 commenta-
tors, especially perhaps Ockham. Consequently, Aristotles discussion
of motion and time in his Physics should be read in light of their discus-
sion 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 grammati-
cal flights 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 defined.
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 Chap-
ter 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.
338 chapter fifteen
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 first 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 re-
sponding to opponents. Limiting the meaning of words in a propo-
sition to their literal meaning without regard to authorial intent or
common usage distorts the meaning of the author. Although the exam-
ples of authoritative propositions to which Massa refers do not imme-
diately 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 fly 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 fly 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 flight
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.

the categories 339
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 discus-
sion of the Ockhamist view of motion do relate to one another on the
level of supposition of terms in propositions. This grammatical dimen-
sion 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 elim-
inated, while words in brackets are editorial insertions. Words in
parentheses provide the manuscript reading of the immediately preced-
ing 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 quaestio-
nem 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 Aristo-
teles frequentissime reprobat, licet per quasdam fugas grammaticales
huius[modi] errores sustineant, quae modicum valent, sicut alias appa-
rebit, 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.

340 chapter fifteen
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 realita-
tes. 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 rea-
lium, patet per Aristotelem tertio Physicorum, quare etc.
Respondeo sicut dixi: hic est unus errorum quorundam moderno-
rum 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 rea-
liter ipsummet mobile.
Et quod ita sit probant, quia corpus caeleste est quoddam mobile
a quo non distinguitur realiter suus motus; ergo pari ratione dicen-
dum 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 fieret deperdi-
tio 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 fiat in alio loco, puta ibi, tunc ex hoc ipso dicitur
moveri localiter. Et pari ratione dum est sub una forma, puta sub albe-
dine, et fiat sub nigredine, dicitur ex hoc ipso moveri, non quod motus
the categories 341
sit quaedam res addita mobili praeter ipsummet terminum sub quo fit
mobile, et ita de aliis.
Sed iste error est contra Aristotelem et Commentatorem. Patet, di-
cunt 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 seque-
retur 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 pro-
positionis 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 senten-
tiam Aristotelis.
Praeterea, Commentator in commento XI declarat quia quod est
subiectum motus natum est quiescere; ergo et si motus esset subiec-
tum 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 move-
tur parte, pari ratione inest idem realiter cum quiete qua quiescit ces-
sante 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-
342 chapter fifteen
maliter, et ita redibit error Parmenidis et Mellissi, quem reprobat Ari-

stoteles primo Physicorum, quia secundum hoc omnia quae sunt in
eodem supposito, scilicet substantia, quantitas, et qualescumque qua-
litates contrariae vel disparatae et universaliter omnia quae sunt in
eodem supposito erunt eaedem (ms: eadem) res, et per quascumque
connotationes et per quascumque figuras grammaticales tu conaris sal-
vare quod una res sit quandoque motus et quandoque quies, et ego per
easdem salvabo tibi quod eadem res sit quandoque albedo et quando-
que 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 reali-
ter 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 prin-
cipii 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, confirmo
rationem sic: impossibile est quod propositiones contradictoriae vel
contrariae verificentur pro eodem tempore de una realitate uniformiter
the categories 343
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 plurali-
tatem et distinctionem in rebus, quarum prima est: si de aliquibus plu-
ribus nominaliter nullo modo altero ipsorum variato in re, set unifor-
miter stante, verificantur contradictoria praedicata pro eodem instanti,
quia veritas propositionum dependet ex veritate rerum.
Secunda regula est: separabilitas eorum in re sive ambobus manen-
tibus, sicut est de sillabis unius nominis vel dictionis, septimo Metaphy-
sice, sive altero corumpto ipsorum et altero manente, sicut est de mate-
ria et privatione, ac etiam de materia et de forma, primo Physicorum.
Tertia est, quam ponit septimo Metaphysice, capitulo de partibus dif-
finitionis contra parabolam Socratis junioris, videlicet quando sunt ali-
qua inseparabilia tamen sunt vere proportionalia duobus aliis, quorum
unum est ab alio separabile, quomodo convinci potest circulus distin-
guatur a quantitate et a substantia caeli, licet non sint in re separabilia.
Quarta regula est quando contradictoria insint simul quia non pos-
sunt 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 proposi-
tum.
344 chapter fifteen
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 quando-
que 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 cuiu-
scumque 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 quando-
que 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 reali-
ter 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 Aristo-
telem, 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 Ari-
stotelesmet 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 incon-
veniens.
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
the categories 345
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.
Confirmatur, 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 eec-
tum positivum in mobili est valde irrationabile. Sed constat quod mo-
vens non causat mobile nec locum, ergo aliquam realitatem positi-
vam 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 fluxibilem, videlicet novum ubi fluens
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 reci-
pit 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 impres-
siones 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 con-
similibus, 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, natura-
liter 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 pri-
mum ubi et acquireret aliud, sed stante primo ubi acquireret aliud
346 chapter fifteen
ubi, sicut est de corpore Christi in caelo et in sacramento altaris, vel

sicut esset de quocumque alio corpore dummodo existens in plus acqui-
reret 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 mo-
tus. Nec oportet Philosophum volentem proficere 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) debe-
mus explicite de quiditatibus rerum. Moveamus ergo aliquas quaestio-
nes circa realitatem motus more Aristotelis et Commentatoris et alio-
rum philosophorum praetermittendo insanias modernorum innovan-
tium grossitive antiquorum.
part four
AFTERMATH
chapter sixteen
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 gen-
eration we are now becoming aware of the complexity of fourteenth-
century 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 Her-
mits, whose major representatives shared certain theological presuppo-
sitions and whose high regard for historical sources was one of the pos-
itive 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 charac-
teristics 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 dis-
cussion, 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 com-
mitment 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: Augustinus-
Verlag, 1975), pp. 267275.
1 See D. Trapp, Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century, Augustiniana, 7 (1956),
248.
350 chapter sixteen
view of grace and justification contrasts sharply with the semi-Pelagian

soteriology of Ockham, Holcot, or Wodeham. Trapp has gone fur-
ther to dierentiate in fourteenth-century thought between the logico-
critical 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, per-
haps even in the degree of orthodoxy between the normally conserva-
tive, 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 Mar-
tin Luther owed, either positively or negatively, to the theological tra-
ditions of his own order, the Augustinian Hermits, or to the theolog-
ical traditions of his university training, dependent on the thought of
Gabriel Biel who, in turn, was heavily dependent on Ockham. Inas-
much 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 view-
ing 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, partic-
ularly 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 influenced by him has been under-
going rapid modification 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 figure to choose in assessing the attitude
of the Augustinian Hermits to radical nominalism. Although it has yet
ockhamism among the augustinians 351
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 ear-

lier 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 Chan-
nel before 1342. From then on Wodeham became a familiar figure in
the texts and margins of Sentences commentaries, not the least in those
of the Austin Friars.
Rimini seems to have been the first 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 mag-
isterial 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 find
the name of Wodeham appearing on the margins of Rimini indepen-
dent 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 five 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.
352 chapter sixteen
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 justification. 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 flesh out one side of a debate without
attacking or approving Wodehams arguments.6
Less frequently Rimini acknowledged the value of Wodehams argu-
ments. 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 neg-
ative 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 mar-
gins 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
4 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.
positions of Wodeham were detrimental to the faithprincipally those

on justificationWodeham 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 first 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 first 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 Ock-
ham. 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 con-
servative, anti-Pelagian was Hugolino. In light of Hugolinos position
on the question of universals and his dependence on Gregory of Rim-
ini, Zumkeller conceded that Hugolino was influenced 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
significant 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.
354 chapter sixteen
In light of recent research, therefore, one would expect to find that

the generally negative evaluation of Wodeham, evidenced in the pages
of Rimini and Vargas, increased in the Sentences commentary of Hugo-
lino. Such, however, seems not to be the case. It is true that he quotes
Ockham only once in the first book13 and refers to Wodeham some
four times,14 treating both authors in a negative way. But in the sec-
tion 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 atti-
tude 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 Wode-
ham and previous Augustinians. Although Hiltalingen borrowed some
of his references to Wodeham from others, he also appears to have
read Wodeham firsthand, 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.

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 identified, 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 con-
temporary 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 consid-
ered alongside and occasionally grouped with those of writers from
the Augustinian order. This failure on the part of late fourteenth-
century 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.
356 chapter sixteen
the Augustinians and the Ockhamists can be seen in the Sentences com-
mentary of Marsilius of Inghen, a noted Ockhamist, at least in logic.
Marsilius frequently acknowledged his intellectual debt to the Augus-
tinian 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, Appari-
cius 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 abbre-
viation contain Garinis index, and it was probably through Spanish
Augustinians studying at Paris in the fifteenth 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 Wode-
ham. When John Major acquired a text of Oytas abbreviation to pub-
24 Trapp, Augustinian Theology, 251253.

25 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, Com-
mentaires 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 com-
position (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
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 fifteenth 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 significance. 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 finds

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 Wode-
ham 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 Lusi-
tani in theosophia (!) bacchalarii exemplar procuravimus mediocriter castigatum quod
imitari pro maiori parte elaboravimus curantes ut tabula alphabetica ad folia et colum-
nas adderetur.
chapter seventeen
THEOLOGIA ANGLICANA MODERNORUM

AT COLOGNE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY*
The intellectual history of Cologne in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-

turies has largely been studied from the standpoint of Thomism, Alber-
tism, 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 lead-
ing 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 Disputa-
tionen und Promotionen an der Universitt Kln im ausgehenden 15. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1926);
M. Grabmann, Einzelgestalten aus der mittelalterlichen Dominikaner- und Thomis-
tenschule, 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 Kl-
ner 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 Senten-
zenkommentar, pp. 282285. See also F. Benary, Via antiqua und via moderna auf den
deutschen Hochschulen des Mittelalters mit besonderer Bercksichtigung der Univer-
sitt 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.
360 chapter seventeen
very founding in contrast to Erfurt and Heidelberg, where the via mod-
erna 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 com-
mentary 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 theolog-
ical education at Cologne in the 1450s.4
Are these biographical details simply isolated exceptions to the hege-
mony of the via antiqua or were the textbooks and approaches of the
via moderna a more important undercurrent at Cologne than has gener-
ally been recognized? And to the degree that texts of authors associated
with the via moderna were available at Cologne in the middle of the fif-
teenth century, was this simply a continuation of interests introduced by
German students from Paris and Heidelberg in the late fourteenth cen-
tury, a subsequent eect of the interchange of texts and learning pro-
duced through student migrations in the fifteenth 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 (Cam-
bridge, 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 The-
ologica 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, Eucha-
ristic Theology.
theologia anglicana modernorum at cologne 361
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 conflict 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 first 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.

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 con-
siderable 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 Sen-
tences 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 theo-
logical 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.
6 Adam Wodeham, pp. 133135.

7 Analecta Franciscana, 2 (1887), 177; A.G. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford,
1892), p. 173.
The Presence of English Texts at Cologne
In addition to the Cologne redaction of Wodehams Sentences commen-

tary 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 quar-
ter 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 oth-
erwise unidentified author responds according to one doctor, Ockham,
whom he claims to have seen, perhaps in Munich or, if he was a Fran-
ciscan, at one of the provincial chapters.8 The contact would have had
to have occurred before Ockhams death in 1347, although this com-
mentary could have been written somewhat later but certainly before
1360. The argument our author adopts concerned propositions de pos-
sibili 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 Ock-
ham 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 influence 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 se-
cundum 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.
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 first 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
fifteenth 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 first 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, Fitz-
ralph, Wodeham, and Bradwardine, one of the recent English scholas-
tics most frequently cited by continental authors in the period after
1340. As was true of Fitzralph and Bradwardine, his name was par-
ticularly 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 reflected 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 Magde-
burg 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
Hetzstedes nor Hagers commentary shows any particular influence of

fourteenth-century authors, English or continental, whose names even-
tually 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 commen-
tary 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 Domini-
Praedicatorum 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 unidentified
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 first 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].
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 final 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, includ-
ing Regensburg and Cologne.16 The manuscript is a notebook of ques-
tions, 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
16 Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben III, pp. 366368.

17 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.
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 reflect 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.
19 Analecta Franciscana, 2 (1887), 177; 3 (1897), 638.

20 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 Ioanne Lathbiri? 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.
Conclusions
How extensive an influence these and other English texts had at Co-
logne 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 sec-
ular theologians studying at Cologne in the fourteenth century have
survived. The Dominican and Augustinian authors are far better rep-
resented, 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 Lapi-
dea, 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 com-
mentary), 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 unusu-
al. 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 in-
24 Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, III, pp. 352369.

25 The commentaries of Hetzstede and Hager have not received the attention they
deserve, although there are grounds for believing that Hager was almost as influential
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 unidentified 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 Heytes-
burys Insolubilia and in 1360 at Cologne, in the second year of his lectorate, wrote a
refutation on one of Heytesburys questions.
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 influence 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 first volume of

his trilogy on late scholasticism: Marsilius von Inghen und die okkamistis-
che 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 tra-
dition 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 contem-
nunt 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
372 chapter eighteen
It should be noted, as Neal Ward Gilbert already pointed out, that

the names in this list in Louiss 1474 Edict were not labeled Nom-
inalists but renovating doctors whose doctrine had inspired late
fifteenth-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 the-
ologians who applied principles of Terminist logic to theological prob-
lems. Finally, while only two of those named were English authors, the
othersall Parisian scholars, three of whom belonged to the English-
German Nationcould be viewed as English-influenced.6
to claim the mantle of one of the most respected and influential Parisian figuresa ploy
made plausible by Gersons personal association with dAilly and by Gersons opposi-
tion 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 univer-
sity teaching by opposing English influence and the techniques of analysis and argu-
mentation 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 Ger-
son, 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 confins 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. Ma-
hony (New York, 1976), pp. 229257; J. Murdoch, 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 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? 373
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
influence 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 reflected 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 fac-
ulty 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 con-
troversy as a philosophical one.11 But the cross-disciplinary implications
of Gersons attack on the corrupting influence of English sophistical
7 sed sunt Epicuri litterales sequentes condemnatam Parisius Occanicum dis-
coliam cum collegiis, scilicet, Buridani et Marsilii, qui Occam Anglicus fuit emula-
tor 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 uni-
versali reali de Jean de Maisonneuve et les epicuri litterales, Freiburger Zeitschrift fr
Philosophie und Theologie, 33 (1986), 469516; Kaluza, Querelles. For the dating of Maison-
neuves 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, Marcil-
ius, et eorum College sive sequaces ().

10 More precisely, Ockham was not described as the first Nominalist or as founder
of a school, but as the first 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.

techniques of analysis and disputation at the beginning of the fifteenth

century certainly played a part.12
The distinction between these fourteenth-century sources and their
late fifteenth-century proponents, i.e., between the doctores renovatores and
the Nominalistae, was eventually lost, and the list became an incom-
plete 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 con-
frontations and persecutions leading up to the one in which they were
presently engaged. Apart from Ockham, dAilly, and Gerson, no adher-
ents 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 (Aventi-
nus) in the early sixteenth century well into the later part of this century,
Ockham and Nominalists were linked as restoring-founder and follow-
ers in a school that spanned the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.14
Few modern historians have taken the history of the Nominalists,
as developed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as
accurate. Yet some such school was thought to have existed in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it was conceded that Ockham
played a central role, either as founder or as principal and identifying
figure. 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
filosofia medievale fra otto e novecento, ed. A. Maier (Rome, 1991), pp. 233251 [reprinted in
Methodological Considerations
Four dierent approaches to this problem are possible, and most have
been tried, either singly or in combination with others. The first 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 find 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 fifteenth-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 figures 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 first 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 excel-
lent for determining the degree and type of influence Ockhams writ-
ings 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).
medieval universities, it is far less satisfactory. This is so for several rea-

sons. 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 influenced by Ock-
ham 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 anti-
Ockhamist 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 Ock-
hamists 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 crite-
rion 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 influence 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.
utes 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 perspec-
tives, 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
These first two approaches have often gone together. Membership

in the Nominalist or Ockhamist school in the late Middle Ages con-
sisted in those named in the core list that emerged in the fifteenth
century, expanded to include like-minded authors. The teaching con-
tent of the school was derived from Ockham himself, but usually in
combination with those followers already so identified. Yet every so-
called 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 con-
clusions reached by Ritter in his study of Marsilius of Inghen have been
confirmed by studies of other Ockhamists, even including Ockhams
closest associate, Adam Wodeham.19 And whatever core presupposi-
tions are identified, 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 pic-
ture, with its clearly identified names and ideas, and to look first 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
first part of this approach, i.e., the way of self-identification, is based
on the testimony of insiders. It examines the thoughtat least on the
issues where they declare their Ockhamismof those who view them-
selves 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
figures 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).

of opponents, does reveal what contemporary outsiders understood

Ockhamism to be. If that contemporary, negative information can be
supported or confirmed by the testimony of those so identified, 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 four-

teenth century rested largely on three pieces of evidence: the close asso-
ciation 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 oppo-
sition to contemporary sign doctors, who were presumed to be the
Ockhamists at Oxford during his student days.
The first 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.
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 definition 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 definitions 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 consid-
ered 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 doc-
tors 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 Significabile as the Immediate Object of Scientific 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 Fourteenth-
Century 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).
Paris, 13391346
At Paris the situation appears quite dierent. In fact, the only four-
teenth-century references to the Occamistae occur in Parisian or Parisian-
related 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 Ockan-
icorum, 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 hypoth-
esis 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 Decem-
ber 29, 1340 under the seals of the rector of the university and the proc-
tors of the four nations.28 Yet there was also a reference in the proctors
26 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, Filosofia 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,
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 Uni-
versitatis Parisiensis and the Liber procuratorum, Heinrich Denifle 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 expla-
nation 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 first
clause or statute proscribed dogmatizing Ockham and whose sec-
ond 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 first 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 dis-
crepancy in date of sealing in the 1340 statute and the 1341 reference,
Picardorum, Normannorum et Anglicorum, unacum signeto rectoris Universitatis Pari-

siensis, anno Domini MCCCXL, die veneris post Nativitatem Domini.
29 Liber procuratorum nationis Anglicanae in AUP I, cols. 4445: Item tempore procu-
racionis ejusdem [Henricus de Unna, Jan. 13 Febr. 10, 1341] sigillatum fuit statutum
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 quoquo-
modo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commentatoris Averrois et aliorum commentato-

rum antiquorum et expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra fidem.
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 dogmati-
zandum, quia nondum erat approbata et examinata. Et postmodum instituit juramen-
tum 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
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 cre-
ation 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 pro-
mulgation, 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 preser-
vation 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 uni-
versity 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 procura-
torum, which were regularly maintained but which rarely included o-
cial 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 descrip-
tion, 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.
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 finding 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 final, 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 non-
standardization 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 final 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 uni-
versity diplomatics did find 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 pontificale (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 distor-
tion 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
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 fifteenth centuries, and on the eve of publish-
ing 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 prepara-
tion 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 significance
well-crafted, rhetorical structure of the Nominalist use of evidence aimed at their

audience: the king and his advisers. But words like perfidie, fourberies, men-
songes and others show the same insensitivity to medieval perspectives as does our
modern notion of plagiarism when applied to the medieval understanding of author-
ship.
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 pontificates 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 Querel-
les; 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).
of the documents under discussion. The following picture reflects my

present understanding, aided considerably by his most recent exposi-
tions to which the reader is directed.
The Statutes of September 25, 1339

A crisis over the implications of some aspects of Ockhams philosoph-
ical 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 first of which mandated that no works of Ockham be used in teach-
ing 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 custom-
arily 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 above-
mentioned 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 ordi-
nantes 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-
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 mas-
ters of 1339 went beyond the provisions of the earlier legislation, indi-
cating 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 egre-
gious as teaching, and reasserted the right of the masters or ecclesias-
tical 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
first 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.
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 def-
fendere 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 author-
ity 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 defining
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
43 CUP I, pp. 7880, #20; CUP II, p. 678.

44 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 theolog-
ical 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 Mid-
dle 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 Aristo-
tles 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 reflected in the words tam doctorum sacre scripture quam aliorum pru-
dentium virorum communicato consilio, and later specific titles are forbidden along
with unspecified works in necromancy and divination, per eandem sententiam nos-
tram condempnamus, in omnes, qui dictos rotulos, libros, quaternos dogmatizaverint,
aut audierint .
48 Moody, Ockham, Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt.
Ockhams doctrina was specifically 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 specifically 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 sus-
pended all privileges granted to Paris.51 It was politically in the uni-
versitys 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 influence 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 undoubt-
edly obliged all members of the arts faculty, the type of sanction im-
posed for disobedience makes clear that those who drafted the doc-
ument did not think the problem lay with the masters in the faculty.
The oenders were bachelors and other students in arts, those who
49 CUP II, p. 680. This text will be examined in detail below.

50 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].
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 Ock-
hams 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 firm proof that they are identical but
because there is no longer firm 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, final 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
final action was taken, there is one known instance in which a period of
53 The sanction for the first section of the statute, i.e., the portion related to dog-
matizing 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 financial, 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].

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 alle-
giance 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 univer-
sity 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 five 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 docu-
ment was ocially dated according to its sealing, while the 1340 doc-
ument, 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 cir-
cumstances 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.
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 cir-
cumstances 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 fifth 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 scientific 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 specific example of the problems created by a failure to ade-
quately 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 similarly-
worded article would have been part of the dossier under review.62
59 Kaluza, Le Statut du 29 Decembre 1340.

60 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.
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 be-
tween 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 first
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 identifies 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 first 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 ensur-
ing 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 fine-tuning after approval,
no such explanations are needed. The published text of the 1340 statute is its final
form, and as will be shown below, this is one of the clearest cases in which the fifteenth-
century Nominalists could not or did not bother to check their facts.
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.
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

mentatorum antiquorum in expositorum dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra
fidem.
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.
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 first 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 first 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 disputation-
ibus que fiunt in vico Straminum talis abusus inolevit quod bachellarii et alii in dis-
putationibus 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 licen-
tiam sibi non liceat petere verbaliter, sed tantummodo signative reverenter. Si quis
autem bachellarius aut scolaris contra premissa aliquid attemptaverit, penis in prece-
denti statuto positis modo et forma quibus supra omnino volumus subjacere. Si quis
autem magister in disputationibus arguere presumat, nisi requisitus a magistro disputa-
tiones 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.
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 scien-
tiam Ockamicam (first 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 con-
cern 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 leg-
islation 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 first 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 treat-
ment of the categories and its implications for other areas of philoso-
phy, which was not to be taught in any form. The second stage dur-
ing the academic year 13401341 and into 13411342 concerned the
Ockhamists and their teaching. Admittedly, on some level and on sev-
eral 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 final 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.
1339 and the English-German ordinance of October 1341. But the doc-
uments in chronological sequence do reflect 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 fit 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 Aris-
totles scientia as interpreted by Averroes and the older commentators
instead of Ockhams scientia may simply have been an elaboration of
the first 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), identified or labeled by
its first 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 first 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.
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 con-
tra scientiam Okamicam observabitis, neque dictam scientiam et consi-
miles sustinebitis quoquomodo, sed scientiam Aristotelis et sui Commen-
tatoris Averrois et aliorum commentatorum antiquorum in expositorum
dicti Aristotelis, nisi in casibus qui sunt contra fidem.
Sentences commentary in Vat. lat. 1087, fol. 71ra (Michael of Massa?):
Moveamus ergo aliquas quaestiones circa realitatem motus more Aris-
totelis 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 fidei
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 arti-
cles. 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 articu-
lated. 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.
The 1474 Edict of Louix XI identifies the other commentators or

ancient expositors as Albert, Thomas, Giles, and others.74 The Aris-
totelian 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 proba-
ble Dominican bias, has an extensive list of Aristotelian exemplars of all
three of these authors.75 It is highly probable that these were the vehi-
cles 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 findings 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 dis-
74 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.
cussion over the nature of motion and time, issues on which Ock-
hams 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 the-
ologians, who may have encouraged the arts masters to take action.
The letter of Clement VI also reflects 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 predicto-
rum duorum statuorum de scientia Okanica, scilicet quod nullus magis-
ter, baccalarius aut scolaris ().
Later form: Item, observabitis statutum quod nullus magister, baccalar-
ius 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 eleva-
tion to cardinal (December, 1338) transferred his principal residence to Avignon. But
as provisor of the Sorbonne and frequent correspondent with John XXII and Bene-
dict 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].
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 attempt-
ing 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 opin-
ions, 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. Specific 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 filii 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, Ock-
hamists, 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.
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
fifteenth century was already laid.
Considerable progress has been made in recent years in under-
standing the development of schools in the fifteenth 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 fig-
ures 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
list of manuscripts cited 405
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
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 list of manuscripts cited
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 Anselm of Bec, St., 3137, 46, 65,

Adam of Petit Pont [Parvipontanus], 66, 67, 68, 73
86 Anthonius Sicti de Vercellis, 250n
Adam Wodeham, O.F.M., 14, 16, Antony Bek, later chancellor of Lin-
43n, 97, 98, 102, 103, 105, 107, coln and bishop of Norwich, 96
110, 112, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120 Apparicius of Burgos, O.E.S.A., 356
124, 125, 135, 139, 140, 185n, 188, Aristotle, xiii, xv, 27, 28, 32n, 36, 45,
296, 349357, 361364, 367, 371, 46n, 47n, 49, 60, 64, 65n, 67, 75,
372, 375, 377, 378, 379, 400 80n, 83, 86n, 98, 132, 144, 145,
Adolphus de Monte, count of Berg, 146, 147n, 151, 174, 178, 187, 188,
362 194, 195, 196, 210, 215, 258, 259,
Alain of Villa Colis, 173, 209, 265 265, 271, 273n, 275, 276n, 280,
Alberic of Paris, 35, 49, 50, 51, 64, 281, 300, 319, 320, 321, 326, 330,
75, 76, 77, 78, 82, 87 331, 332, 333, 334, 336, 337, 338,
Alberic of Reims, 50, 82n 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346,
Albert II, Duke of Austria, 198, 313 381, 387n, 393, 395, 396, 397,
Albert the Great, O.P., 52n, 54n, 398, 400
79n, 80, 281, 337, 398 Arnold de Verdala, papal chaplain
Albert of Saxony, 105, 227n, 371, 372 and legate, 312
Alcuin, 211n Arnulf of Laon, 46
Alexander IV, pope, 237 Aubertus de Maconvilla, 250n
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 280 Augustine, St., 9, 2330, 41, 42n, 49,
Alexander of Hales, O.F.M., 9, 398n 56, 66n, 70, 71n, 73, 75, 147n, 187,
Alexander Langeley, O.F.M., 124, 188, 212n, 213, 214, 349
142 Augustinus von Regensburg,
Alexander Necquam, 86 O.E.S.A., 357
Alexander of S. Elpidio, O.E.S.A., Averroes, xiii, xiv, 144, 145, 146,
289, 291, 292, 293, 294n, 300 147n, 151, 174, 194, 195, 196, 258,
Alfonse, brother of King Louis XI of 259, 265, 280, 281, 319, 321, 326,
France, 390 330, 334, 336, 337, 341, 344, 346,
Alfonsus Vargas of Toledo, 381, 393, 396, 397, 398n
O.E.S.A., xv, 184, 185n, 285n, Avicenna, 334n
289, 291, 353, 354, 355
Andlo di Negro, 137n Baldwin, archdeacon of Exeter, 51
Andrea de Biglia, O.E.S.A., 272n, Bandinus, 62
285n Bede, 211n
Andreas Freouati of Smland, 192n Benedict XII, pope, 97n, 102, 136,
Andrew of Sweden, 144n, 177 137, 138, 147, 166n, 201, 202, 203,
Angelus de Ancona, O.E.S.A., 366 204, 205, 206, 272n, 283, 313,
Angelus Dobelin, O.E.S.A., 224, 225 324n, 362, 384n, 388, 399n
408 index of ancient and medieval names
Bernard of Arezzo, O.F.M., xv, 316, Edward III, king of England, 113
335n Eggeling Becker von Braunschweig,
Bernard of Chartres, 42, 65, 66, 67 360, 361
Bertaud of St. Denis, 297n Eghno, 314
Berthold of Constance, 180n Elias de Corson, 182n
Berthold Swavus, 314 Elias of Nabinali, O.F.M., 100
Boethius, 31, 32n, 33, 36, 37, 45, Eric of Auxerre, 6, 40
46n, 49, 83, 130n, 192n tienne Chaumont, 271n
Bonagratia of Bergamo, O.F.M., 102 tienne Marcel, 261
Bonamicus (of Bologna), 250 tienne Tempier, bishop of Paris,
Bonaventure, O.F.M., St., 52n, 53, 387
54n, 55n, 59n, 86, 215, 221, 398n Euclid, 194
Bonsemblans Baduarius, O.E.S.A., 355
Burchard of Constance, 180n, 314 Facinus de Ast, O.E.S.A., 366
Francis of Marchia, O.F.M., 100,
Cassiodorus, 213n, 214n 102, 111, 129, 136, 269n, 290
Christianus, master from French Francis of Meyronnes, O.F.M., 100,
nation, 309, 310 111, 130131
Christianus de Elst, 310 Francis of Treviso, O.P., xv, 188, 189,
Christianus Ghys [Ghis] of St. 190, 191, 193
Omer, 310 Fulk of Beauvais, bishop, 46n
Cicero, 27, 28n, 211, 212
Clement VI, pope (Pierre Roger), Gabriel Biel, 14, 15, 350, 360, 361,
151, 152, 191, 205, 206, 280, 297n, 377, 401
327, 397, 399 Garinus de Pruvino, 252n
Conrad of Megenberg [Monte Garlandus Compotista, 37
Puellarum], xiv, xv, 137n, 143 Garnerus, 51n
153, 173n, 176, 177, 193, 196n, 197, Gaufridus dictus Ligator, 250n
198, 199, 204, 205, 222, 223, 225, Gaufridus de Plesseio, 250n
226, 262, 264, 268, 269n, 271, Georey Lemaresch, 182n
272, 274, 275n, 276, 277, 278, 282, Gerard of Bologna, O.Carm., 186n,
284, 303327, 336, 337, 338, 339, 365n
386n, 397, 399, 400n Gerard de Bren, O.P., 365n, 366,
368
David II, king of Scotland, 182 Gerard of Marten, 144n, 177
Diomedes, 213 Gerard Odonis (Guiral Ot), O.F.M.,
Dominique Grenier, O.P., lector at 100, 136, 193, 290, 296n
the Sacred Palace and bishop Gerard of Siena, O.E.S.A., 289, 292,
elect of Pamiers, 100 293, 297
Donatus, 65, 213n, 214 Gerardus [Last Name Unknown],
Duns Scotus; see John Duns Scotus referred to in commentary of
Durand of St. Pourain, O.P., 101, Thomas Hager, 365n, 368n
132, 133, 186n, 189, 202, 289, 290, Giles of Rome, O.E.S.A., 91, 96, 98,
296n, 352n, 366 101, 105, 211n, 281, 283, 290n,
Dyonisius de Mutina [Modena], 337, 350, 398
O.E.S.A., 295 Godfrey of Fontaines, 291, 293
Dyonisius Thrax, 211 Godfrey of Poitiers, 52n, 61n, 62n
index of ancient and medieval names 409
Godfrey of St. Victor, 48, 51, 52 Cologne resident at Oxford

Gregory IX, pope, 237, 387n convent, 367
Gregory XI, pope, 362 Hermann Hetzstede, O.P., 364, 365,
Gregory of Lucca, O.E.S.A., bishop 368
of Belluno-Feltre, 101 Herveus de Insula, 250n, 261n, 265
Gregory of Rimini, O.E.S.A., xv, 14, Horace, 219
15, 17, 43n, 104, 123, 140n, 142n, Hrabanus Maurus, 6, 40
143, 145, 150, 184, 185, 186, 187, Hugh of Douglas, 144n, 177
188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 206, 207, Hugh Lawton, 225n
285n, 289, 295, 297, 301, 326, Hugh of St. Cher, O.P., 62n
349, 350, 351353, 354, 355, 365n, Hugo Sapientis, 164n
371, 372, 400 Hugolino (Malbranche) of Orvieto,
Grimerius Bonifacii, 310n O.E.S.A., xv, 104, 273n, 300n,
Guillaume dEstouteville, cardinal, 327, 349, 353354, 355, 400n
239n, 243n
Guillaume de Chanac, bishop of Innocent IV, pope, 237, 238
Paris, 166n Innocent VI, pope, 239
Guiral Ot; see Gerard Odonis Isidore, 211n, 212n, 213, 214n
Gyso of Cologne, O.E.S.A., 367
Jacob Fortis, 194n
Heinrich Alberti, O.P., 367 Jacques de Dijon, O.Cist., 202n
Heinrich de Cervo, O.P., 368 Jacques Fournier, O.Cist. (see also
Heinrich Hager, O.P., 364, 365, 366, Benedict XII), 201204
368 James of Eltville, O.Cist., 356
Heinrich von Nrnberg, 314n James of pinal (de Spinallo),
Heinrich von Sachsen, O.P., 367 O.F.M., xv, 363n
Heinrich Trglein, O.P., 366, 368, James of Pamiers (de Appamiis),
369 O.E.S.A., 289, 290, 291, 296n,
Henry of Constance, 314 301
Henry of Dalen, 363 James of Viterbo, O.E.S.A., 290n
Henry of England, O.Cist., 205n Jean Gerson, 14, 17, 371, 372n, 373,
Henry of Friemar, O.E.S.A., 294n 374, 401
Henry of Ghent, 91, 95, 96, 98, Jean de Maisonneuve, 18, 373
114n, 291, 292, 293 Jerome, 41
Henry of Harclay, 95, 114, 115, 120, Johannes Arneri of Sweden, 314
129n, 130n, 134 Johannes de Marliano, O.E.S.A.,
Henry of Langenstein, 303 272n, 285n
Henry of Sutton, O.F.M., guardian Johannes de Piscibus, papal chap-
of Franciscan convent in London, lain, 311
93 John; see also Johannes, Jean
Henry Totting of Oyta, 105, 303, John, master of Robert of Paris,
356, 357, 362, 375 Roscelin of Compigne, and
Henry of Unna, 142n, 173, 175, 176, Arnulf of Laon, 46
180, 181, 198, 251n, 264, 265, 381 John, monk, 46n
Henry of Zomeren, 373 John XXII, pope, 98n, 102, 200,
Herman of Tournai, 45 201, 202, 203, 239, 290n, 297n,
Hermann, O.F.M., Franciscan from 298, 361, 373n, 384n, 388, 399n
John Baconthorpe, O.Carm., 134 John of Salisbury, 7, 35n, 41, 42n,

John Brammart, O.Carm., 355 44n, 47, 49, 50, 51, 64, 65n, 66,
John of Bruxelles, 307 67, 75
John of Burgos, O.E.S.A., 296 John Scotus Eriugena, 6, 40
John Buridan, xiv, xv, 13, 14, 17, John Staupitz, O.E.S.A., 350
105, 134, 136, 140, 142, 149n, 158, John Swavus, 314
173n, 268, 269270, 278, 279, 281, John of Trier, 314
283284, 359, 360, 361, 371, 372, John of Vimarcio [Vmars], 309,
373, 391, 398 310, 311
John Crombe, O.F.M., 94 John Went, O.F.M., 124
John Dorp, 371, 372 John of Wessel [Wesalia], 184n
John Dumbleton, 107, 116, 125, 151 John of Wittenberg, 314
John Duns Scotus, O.F.M., 2, 91, 94, John Wyclif, 103, 104, 107, 108, 126,
95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 111, 112, 114, 224, 227n, 378, 379
115, 116, 122, 123, 131, 133, 134,
135, 190n, 287n, 291, 294n, 366, Louis IX, king of France, 390
398n Louis XI, king of France, 199, 371,
John Grafton, 118, 119 372, 374n, 398
John Hiltalingen of Basel, O.E.S.A., Louis of Bavaria, emperor of Ger-
349, 354355 many, 102, 146, 147, 312
John of Holland, 227n Louis of Beaumont, bishop of
John de Hurwin of Constance, Durham, 113
368n Luke of Ely, 114
John of Jandun, 146
John Kinhard, 144n, 177, 180n, 182 Mainerius, 51n
John Klenkok, O.E.S.A., 367 Marguerite Porete, 202
John Lathbury, O.F.M., 367 Marsilius of Inghen, 7, 14, 17, 105,
John Lutterell, 100, 101, 110, 111, 112, 227n, 303, 356, 359, 360, 361,
113, 114, 115, 229, 265, 279 371, 372, 373, 375, 377, 398,
John Major, 356, 357n 400
John of Mirecourt, O.Cist., xv, 14, Marsilius of Padua, 102, 103, 146
17, 127, 142, 143, 157, 158n, 191, Martin Luther, 350, 401
308, 365n, 371, 372, 400 Martinus, master, 53n, 55n
John de Misna, 180n Martinus Anglicus, 227n
John Nicholai, 130, 191, 192, 269 Matthew of Sweden, 163n, 178n
John Paignote, O.E.S.A., 101 Meister Eckhart, O.P., 202
John Rathe of Scotland, xv, 180, 182, Melissus, 275, 276n, 321, 332, 342
183, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190, 191, Michael of Cesena, O.F.M., minister
193, 198, 309n general, 100, 102, 202
John of Reading, O.F.M., 17, 9697, Michael of Massa, O.E.S.A., xiv, xv,
98, 99, 100, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 111, 132, 133, 136, 186, 189, 196,
115, 120, 129n, 134, 188n 197, 198, 269n, 271, 272274, 275,
John of Rodington, O.F.M., 102, 112, 276, 277, 280, 282, 284, 285301,
113, 116, 134, 135, 367 318, 319, 320, 322, 329346, 388n,
John of Sacrobosco, 137n, 147, 397, 398, 400
197, 198, 276, 314, 322, 325, Michael de Montecalerio, xv, 270n
386n Monachus Niger, O.S.B., 140, 142
Nicholas IV, pope, 238 Peter Lombard, 24, 25, 35, 53, 54n,
Nicholas Albergati, cardinal protec- 55, 56, 58, 59n, 60, 61n, 64, 68,
tor of Augustinians, 286n 70, 79
Nicholas de Anesiaco, O.P., 250n Peter of John Olivi, 114, 122, 129n,
Nicholas Aston, 104, 125, 142, 379 130n, 132, 143, 186n, 202, 330, 331
Nicholas of Autrecourt, xv, 13, 14, Peter of Poitiers, 53, 61n
16, 127n, 138, 143, 157, 158, 159, Peter de Rivo, 373
166, 167, 191, 205, 206, 221, 316, Peter of Spain (Hispanus), 361
318n, 324n, 335, 374n, 384, 389, Petrus de Croso, 181, 182n
391 Petrus Garini, O.E.S.A., 356
Nicholas of Cosfeld, 144n, 177 Petrus Menenes, 357
Nicholas Drukken de Dacia, 144n, Petrus Nigri, 4n
177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 184, Philip Augustus, king of France, 238
194, 198, 389 Philip of Grve, 54n
Nicholas Gossek of Poland, 313 Philip the Scot, 309n
Nicholas Trevet, O.P., 96 Pierre dAilly, 14, 15, 105, 127, 189n,
Nicole Oresme, xv, 184n 371, 372, 374
Norman de Lesseley, 180n Pierre Ceons, O.Cist., xv, 127,
189n, 355
Odo, future bishop of Cambrai, 45 Pierre Roger (see also Clement VI),
Otto of Freising, 46, 47, 48n, 76 205, 297n, 400
Plato, 132
Parmenides, 275, 276n, 321, 332, 342 Porphyry, 45, 47n, 98
Parvipontanus; see Adam of Petit Praepositinus, 52n, 54n, 55n, 62n
Pont Priscian, 31, 32, 34n, 47n, 51n, 65,
Pastor de Serrescuderio, O.F.M., 214n
100, 315
Paul of Perugia, O.Carm., xv Quintillian, 213
Paul of Venice, 227n
Peter; see also Petrus, Pierre Radulphus Benedicti, 250, 256n
Peter Abelard, 1, 2, 4, 5n, 7, 9, 11, Raimbert of Lille, 45
13, 18, 19, 35, 39, 41, 44, 45, 46n, Ralph Strode, 104, 125, 379
47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53n, 61n, 62, Ratramnus of Corbie, 40n
66n, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74n, 75 Raymund Bguin, O.P., patriarch of
79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 214, Jerusalem, 100
374 Richard Billingham, 227n
Peter of Aquila, O.F.M., 135, 280n, Richard Brinkley, O.F.M., 104, 125,
315316 224, 379
Peter Auriol [Aureoli], O.F.M., 94, Richard de Bury, 113, 152
98, 111, 115, 120, 124, 133, 186n, Richard Campsall, 95, 96, 99, 114,
189n, 190n, 286n, 296 115, 120, 134, 139, 215, 216
Peter of Candia, 8, 227n, 375, 400, Richard of Conington, O.F.M., 95,
401 96, 115, 134
Peter the Cantor, 52n, 62n, 78n, Richard Drayton, 113, 115
79n Richard Fitzralph, 107, 112, 113, 116,
Peter of Capua, 52n, 55n, 56n, 61n, 120, 122, 123n, 134, 135, 351n,
63n, 71n, 74, 80n 364
Richard Kilvington, 116, 135, 140, Simon of Tournai, 56n, 61n

184n Simon de Weuchy, 164n
Richard of Lincoln, O.Cist., 205 Simplicius, 280
Richard of Portirstona, 180n, 184, Stephen; see also tienne
191, 193, 194 Stephen Kettelbergh, 101
Richard the Scot, 144n, 177 Stephen of Langres, 136, 204, 252n
Richard Swineshead, 125 Stephen Langton, 59n, 62n
Robert Cowton, O.F.M., 96, 114, Suno of Sweden, 178n, 308, 313
115, 134 Suno Karoli of Sweden, 178n, 313,
Robert Curson, 386 314, 386n
Robert de Ffyf (de Cupir), 178n Surrey, 114
Robert Graystanes, O.S.B., 113116
Robert Grosseteste, 305 Themistius, 280
Robert of Halifax, O.F.M., 116, 124, Thomas Aquinas, O.P., St., 2, 39,
125n, 135, 140, 188n, 366, 368 52n, 54n, 79, 86, 91, 96, 101, 105,
Robert Holcot, O.P., 14, 17, 43n, 113, 129n, 133, 215, 221, 280, 281,
57n, 107, 112, 116, 117120, 135, 291, 294, 295, 331, 337, 365n,
139, 140, 188, 225, 350, 357, 363, 368n, 398
374n, 378, 379 Thomas de Bailly, chancellor at
Robert of Kykeley [Kigheley], 95, Paris, 98n
114 Thomas Bradwardine, 104, 107, 116,
Robert of Melun, 49, 51, 71 135, 140, 269n, 364
Robert of Paris, 46 Thomas Buckingham, 107, 116, 125,
Robert Semere, 183n 135, 140, 364, 365
Robert of Walsingham, O.Carm., Thomas de Caliga Rubea of Trier,
114, 115 313
Robert Winchelsey, archbishop of Thomas de Fabiano, O.E.S.A., 290n
Canterbury, 93 Thomas de Kinnemund, 180n
Roger Bacon, 135, 217 Thomas Parentucelli de Sarzana,
Roger Marston, O.F.M., 94 future Pope Nicholas V, 286n, 318
Roger Rosetus, O.F.M., 124, 125n, Thomas of Strasbourg, O.E.S.A.,
188n 287n, 292, 316, 350, 356
Roger Swyneshead, 227n Thomas de Vio Cajetan, O.P., 4n
Roland of Cremona, O.P., 52n Thomas Waleys, O.P., 202, 205
Roscelin [Roscelinus], 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, Thomas de Wedale, 183n, 184n
9, 35, 37n, 41, 44, 46, 47, 67, 68, Thomas Wilton, 134
374
Rosetus; see Roger Udo, master, 53n, 60n
Rycholf de Via Lapidea, 366, 368 Ulger of Angers, 214
Ulrich of Augsburg, 178n, 180n, 308,
Scaurus, 213 309, 312
Sifridus, 367 Ulrich of Saxony, 314
Simon de Brie, 311 Urban II, pope, 46
Simon of Faversham, 215n Urban V, pope, 243n, 317n
Simon of Mepham, future arch-
bishop of Canterbury, 96 Valetus, 51n
Simon Quinimo, 250n, 261 Varro, 211, 212
Walter Burley, 111, 112, 115, 125, 129, William Buser, 227n
130, 132, 134, 135, 139, 140, 141, William of Champeaux, 4
142, 145n, 153, 179, 184n, 191, 192, William of Conches, 48, 49, 73, 74
193, 195, 196n, 217, 218, 269, 270, William Crathorn, O.P., 43n, 107,
280n, 281, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 118, 119, 135, 188, 379
320, 361 William of Cremona, O.E.S.A., 291,
Walter Chatton, O.F.M., 17, 43n, 293, 294, 297
98, 99, 110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 119, William Grenlaw (de Viridi Monte),
120, 121, 122, 123, 130n, 134, 188n, 182n
190n, 296, 300n, 351n, 378 William Heytesbury, 107, 116, 125,
Walter Map, 48n, 78 135, 140, 151, 368n
Walter Wardlaw, 178n, 180n, 182, William Melton, archbishop of York,
183, 184, 198 113
Werner Wolfram, 144n, 177, 180n William of Nottingham, O.F.M., 96
William; see also Guillaume William of Ockham, O.F.M., passim
William of Alnwick, O.F.M., 94, 97, William of Rubione, O.F.M., 100
98, 114, 115, 134, 135 William of Soissons, 86
William of Auxerre, 25, 52n, 53n, William Sutton, 125
54n, 56n, 63n, 74n
William of Brenueth, 184n Zeno, 80n
INDEX OF MODERN NAMES
Adams, M.M., 171n Brooke, C.L.N., 48n, 50n

Akkerman, F., 105n, 377n Brown, M.A., 139n
Almagno, R.S., 111n Brown, S.F., 95n, 98n, 99n, 110n,
Andjar, E., 267n, 387n 111n, 112n, 120n, 129n, 130n, 131n,
Arnauld, A., 3n 171n, 180n, 186n, 192n, 195n,
Arnold, K., 146n, 198n, 222n 217n, 270n, 300n, 360n
Ashworth, J., 227n Brucker, J.J., 3n
Aventinus, see Turmair Buck, A., 17n
Buhle, J.G., 3n, 4n
Balic, C., 95n Burger, C., 18n
Baluze, ., 2n Burr, D., 330n
Barach, K.S., 6, 40n Burrows, M.S., 18n, 372n
Barbet, J., 205n Busa, R., 53n
Barth, T., 13n Busse, M., 4n
Bataillon, L., 280n, 398n Buytaert, E.M., 12, 18n, 48n, 76n,
Baudry, L., 13, 110n, 112n, 373n 158n
Baumgartner, M., 40, 41n
Bazn, C., 267n, 387n Canivez, J.M., 305n
Beckmann, J.P., 18n Caramuel y Lobkowitz, J., 4n, 6
Benary, F., 7, 359n Caroti, S., 105n, 267n, 317n, 329n,
Bender, J., 125n 339n, 388n
Bergmann, G., 4n Carr, M.H., 4n, 11, 44n
Bianchi, L., 267n, 323n, 329n Catto, J.I., 125n, 305n
Biard, J., 278n, 279, 282, 329n, 382n Chandler, B., 139n, 372n
Birch, T.B., 110n Chtelain, ., 230, 231, 232, 233n,
Boehner, P., xiii, 11n, 12, 13, 14, 17n, 236, 242n, 243n, 256n, 257, 381
108, 112n, 120n, 130n, 131n, 133n, Chenu, M.-D., 9, 10, 18, 23, 24, 39,
141n, 158n, 166, 170, 171n, 180n, 40, 41, 42, 43, 52, 53, 55n, 56,
186n, 187n, 190n, 192n, 195n, 62n, 63n, 66
209, 210, 217n, 220, 221, 269n, Colish, M., 19n, 29n, 50n, 66n
270n, 271n, 331n Condillac, E.B. de, 6
Borchert, E., 11 Condorcet, M. de, 6
Borgnet, A., 80n Corsten, W., 201n
Bouquet, M., 46n Cosman, M.P., 139n, 372n
Boyer, B., 70n, 214n Cousin, V., 4, 5, 6, 40n, 44n
Braakhuis, H.A.G., 80n, 85 Cova, L., 95n
Brampton, C.K., 92n, 101n, 110n,
133n, 195n Dal Pra, M., 83n
Briek, M., 203n Davis, L.D., 158n
Briquet, C.M., 172n, 243n De Board, A., 255, 383n
416 index of modern names
De Grando, J., 3n, 6 Fontaine, J., 213n

De la Torre, B.R., 364n Fournier, P., 201n
De Libera, A., 19n, 35n, 39n, 82n Frank, W.A., 99n, 300n
De Pommerol, M.-H., 232n Franz, A., 360n
De Rmusat, Charles, 4n, 5n Fredborg, K.M. (Margarita), 18n,
De Rijk, L.M., 18n, 35n, 44, 50n, 63n
52n, 75n, 76n, 84, 85n, 86n, 138n, Friedberg, E., 93n
139n, 171n, 214n, 217n Frotz, A., 201n
De Wulf, M., 6, 8, 9, 11, 40, 41n Fuchs, O., 12n
Denifle, H., 157, 172, 209, 230, 231, Fumagalli, M.T. Beonio-Brocchieri,
236, 242n, 243n, 257, 381 48n, 76n
Desharnais, R.P., 15n
Di Benedetto, V., 211n Gabriel, A.L., 127n, 200n, 359n
Dolnikowski, E.W., 104n Gl, G., 17n, 95n, 97n, 98n, 99n,
Doucet, V., 95n, 293, 294, 356n 110n, 111n, 112n, 114n, 120n,
Drossbach, G., 312n 123n, 129n, 130n, 134n, 180n,
Du Boulay, C.E., 2, 3, 6, 44n, 145n, 185n, 186n, 192n, 195n, 217n,
172n, 174n, 235n, 241n, 242n, 224n, 270n, 296n, 360n, 363n,
256n, 257, 394 379n
Du Cange, C., 2, 3, 6, 44 Geach, P.T., 171n
Dugauquier, J.-A., 62n Gelber, H.G., 16n, 17n, 118, 119n,
Dumont, S., 280n 122n, 123n, 225n, 367n, 378n
Du Plessis dArgentr, C., 127n, Genest, J.-F., 104n, 307n, 365n
175n, 200n, 381n Geyer, B., 6n, 40, 41n, 44n, 47n, 77n,
80n
Ebbesen, S., 18n, 63n, 83n, 179n, Ghisalberti, A., 187n
211n, 215n, 219n Giacon, C., 171n
Eckermann, W., 16n, 224n, 225n, Gilbert, N.W., 127n, 128n, 199n,
273n, 300n, 349n, 354n 359n, 372, 373n, 380n
Ehrle, F., 1n, 8, 9, 45n, 128n, 359n, Gilson, ., 9n, 11, 12
371n, 373n, 375, 380n, 381n, 398n, Giry, A., 255, 383n
400n Glorieux, P., 17n, 182n, 201n, 202n,
Elie, H., 43n 293n, 294n
Emden, A.B., 97n, 110n, 113n, 114n, Gssmann, E., 17n
183n Grabmann, M., 50n, 80n, 85, 359,
Etzkorn, G.J., 96n, 99n, 104n, 110n, 366n, 368
111n, 300n Gracia, J.J.E., 40n
Evans, G.R., 28n Graham, R., 93n
Green-Pedersen, N.J., 18n, 64n, 83n,
Fabricius, J.A., 304n 179n
Faes de Mottoni, B., 95n Grimaldo, C., 188n, 189n, 193n
Feckes, C., 8, 9 Grzondziel, H., 8, 9, 10
Fehling, Detlev, 211n Guyot, B.G., 280n, 398n
Ferruolo, S., 50n
Fitzgerald, M.J., 379n Harkins, C.L., 111n
Fitzpatrick, N., 110n Haurau, B., 4n, 5, 6, 40n
Flash, K., 9n, 128n, 158n Heinze, M., 5n
index of modern names 417
Henry, D.P., 31, 34n, 37n, 65n, King, E.B., 23n, 57n
171n Kingsford, C.L., 92n, 93n
Hermelink, H., 7 Kintzinger, M., 312n
Hertz, M., 32n Kittelson, J.M., 139n, 185n, 327n,
Hochstetter, E., 10, 11, 12, 13n 365n, 372n
Hoenen, M.J.F.M., 105n, 267n, Knowles, D., 13n, 113
323n, 371n, 376n, 401n Knudsen, C., 171n
Homann, F., 15n, 101n, 110n, 117 Knysh, G., 100n
Honnefelder, L., 18n Koch, J., 110n, 131n, 133n, 201n,
Hbener, W., 17n, 18n, 372n 202n, 203n, 365n
Hubien, H., 166n Kopp, K., 219n, 223n
Hudson, A., 96n, 107n, 379n Kretzmann, N., 139n, 216n
Huisman, G.C., 105n, 377n Krger, S., 146n, 147n, 151n, 197n,
Hume, D., 3n, 8 198n, 199n, 222n, 275n, 276n,
Hunt, R., 51n, 75n 277n, 303n, 304, 305n, 307n,
312n, 314n, 315n, 325n
Ibach, H., 145n, 151n, 222n, 304n, Knneth, J.T., 3n
312n, 314n, 315n, 316, 318n Krzinger, J., 185n, 291n
Imbach, R., 1n, 317n Kwanten, E., 307n
Inciarte, F., 131n, 170n
Iserloh, E., 11, 12 Landgraf, A.M., 23n, 40, 42, 43, 53,
Iwakuma, Y., 18n, 64n, 83n, 84n 55n, 61n, 63n, 79n, 80n
Lang, A., 11n, 375
Jacobi, K., 81n Lappe, J., 157n
Ja, P., 46n Le Roy Ladurie, E., 202n
James, F.A., 96n Le, G., 13n, 15n, 104n, 108n, 116n,
Jansen, B., 330n 123n, 131n
Jolivet, J., 18, 19n, 35n, 39n, 48n, Leland, J., 113
82n LeMoine, F., 211n
Junghans, H., 13n Lerner, R., 202n
Leroux, P., 4n
Kaeppeli, T., 146n, 188n, 202n, Lesne, E., 50n
203n, 222n, 304n, 314n, 315n, Levi, A.H.T., 17n
316, 364n, 365n Lickteig, F., 367n
Kaluza, Z., xiv, 16n, 18, 19n, 35n, Lindberg, D.C., 132n, 195n
39n, 80n, 82n, 105n, 125n, 127n, Linden, P., 201n
222n, 267n, 268n, 271n, 283n, Little, A.G., 114n, 362n, 367n
317n, 322n, 323n, 329n, 331n, Livesey, S.J., 17n
335n, 365n, 372n, 373n, 374n, Locke, J., 3, 8
379n, 380n, 383n, 384, 386, Lhr, G.M., 184n, 359, 365n, 368
391, 392n, 395, 396n, 397n, 398, Longpr, E., 97n, 110n
401 Lortz, J., 12n
Kaulich, W., 5n Luscombe, D.E., 18, 50n, 51n, 69n
Kenny, A., 139n
Keussen, H., 360n Maier, A., 129, 130n, 131n, 135n,
Kibre, P., 249n, 252n 185n, 186n, 201n, 205n, 269n,
Kilcullen, J., 103n 270, 283n
Maier, A., 1n, 131n, 140n, 185n, Nuchelmans, G., 10n, 18, 19n, 23n,
365n, 374n 32n, 33n, 35n, 36, 37, 41n, 43n,
Malebranche, N., 3, 8 49n, 50n, 54n
Marcolino, V., 145n, 184n, 193n,
285n, 295n, 297n, 326n, 352n, Oakley, F., 13n, 15n
365n Oberman, H.A., 14, 15, 17n, 18n,
Marenbon, J., 40n 96n, 104n, 117n, 120n, 152n, 360n,
Markowski, M., 198n 372n, 377, 379n
Marmo, C., 329n, ODonnell, J.R., 158n, 171n
Martin, C.J., 82, 86 Omont, H., 231, 232, 241n
Martin, R.M., 71n Ouy, G., 17n, 142n, 372n
Mrtl, C., 312n Ozment, S., 15n, 17n, 372n
Matthews, G.B., 171n
Maurer, A.A., 13n Paqu, R., xiii, 16, 128n, 135n, 158,
Mayer, C.P., 349n 162, 167n, 170, 172, 173n, 177n,
McGrade, A.S., 103n, 124n, 146n, 209, 220, 229n, 279n, 282n, 376n,
199n, 222n 380n
McKeon, R., 36n, 49n, 70n, 214n Parodi, M., 17n,
McNamara, J.F., 15n Pegis, A., 12
Meiners, C., 3 Pelster, F., 11, 52n, 80n, 85, 95n,
Menges, M.C., 12n 114n, 129n, 289n
Michael, B., 149n, 270n, 324n Pelzer, A., 146n, 222n
Michalski, C. [or K.], 8, 9, 128n, Perini, D.A., 273n, 289n, 296n
142n, 157n, 158n, 170, 173n, Perreiah, A.R., 139n, 171n
209 Picavet, F.J., 5n, 6
Michaud-Quantin, P., 48n Piccard, G., 243n
Miethke, J., 100n, 103n, 146n, 149n, Pinborg, J., 139n, 179n, 211n
199n, 222n Pluta, O., 267n, 322n, 365n
Millor, W.J., 50n Pommerol, M.-H. de; see De Pom-
Minio-Paluello, L., 138n, 333n merol
Mohan, G.E., 195n Prantl, C. [or K.], 5, 6, 7, 40n
Moody, E.A., xiii, 13, 14, 15n, 16, Preti, G., xiii
43n, 108, 117, 118, 119n, 128n, Price, R., 131n, 171n
131n, 158, 162, 166, 170, 171,
172, 173n, 195n, 209, 220, 225n, Rashdall, H., 167n, 252n
229n, 376n, 378, 379n, 380n, Reina, M.E., 135n, 171n, 278n
387 Reiners, J., 5n, 7, 11, 40, 41, 43n, 47,
Moser, S., 131n 49
Moshin, V., 243n Ribaillier, J., 25n, 53n
Mller, G., 305n Richter, V., 195n
Murdoch, J.E., 122n, 132n, 139n, Riezler, S., 2n, 44n, 374n
142n, 195n, 372n Rijk, L.M. de; see De Rijk
Mynors, R.O.B., 48n Ritter, G., 7, 8, 9, 14, 359n, 371, 375,
377
Nielsen, L.O., 63n Robson, J.A., 108n, 125n, 364n
Normore, C., 19, 40n, 62n, 64n, 77n, Roensch, F.J., 96n
78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87 Rosier-Catach, I., 329n
index of modern names 419
Ross, W.D., 49n Tachau, K.H., xiii, 16, 104n, 112,

Rouse, M., 280n, 398n 118, 119n, 123n, 125n, 130n,
Rouse, R., 280n, 398n 132n, 142n, 157n, 185n, 186n,
Rousselot, X., 3, 4n 187n, 188n, 189n, 209n, 221n,
Rudavsky, T., 120n, 216n 222n, 229n, 259n, 262n, 263,
267, 268n, 271n, 283n, 285n,
Sagal, P.T., 171n 296n, 313n, 322n, 324n, 329n,
Salabert, J., 3n, 4n 337n, 375n, 377n, 378n, 379n,
Salter, H.E., 101n 380, 386, 388n, 389n, 391n, 396n,
Sbrocchi, L., 267n, 387n 400n
Schabel, C., 290n Tennemann, W.G., 3n, 4n, 6
Schaefer, J.T., 23n, 57n Tessier, G., 158n
Schepers, H., 15n, 43n, 117, 118, 378, Thijssen, J.M.M.H., xiv, 229, 230,
379n 241n, 248n, 251n, 253, 254n, 258,
Schmeller, J.A., 5n 263, 264, 265, 267n, 268n, 270n,
Schmitt, F.S., 46n 279, 281n, 322n, 329n, 376n,
Schnaubelt, J.C., 285n 380n, 382, 383, 391
Schneider, J.H.J., 267n, 323n, 371n Thomas, E.C., 152n
Scholz, R., 146n, 222n, 277n, 303n, Thomasius, J., 3n
323n, 397 Thorndike, L., 137n, 147n, 148n,
Schnberger, R., 98n 175n, 198n, 201n, 223n, 277n,
Schrimpf, G., 18n 338n, 386n
Schum, W., 192n Thurot, C., 232, 233n
Scott, T.K., xiii, 16, 128n, 135n, Tierney, B., 103n
158, 170, 171n, 209, 229n, 376n, Tornay, S.G., 10n
380n Traljich, S., 243n
Sebeok, T.A., 211n Transue, P.J., 327n, 365n, 372n
Shapiro, H., 13n, 131n, 195n Trapp, [A.]D., 14, 17n, 127n,
Sheehan, M.W., 305n 128n, 132n, 145n, 184n, 186n,
Sikes, T.G., 44n 196n, 197n, 224n, 271, 285, 286,
Sirridge, M., 28, 66n 287, 288, 289, 290n, 291, 294,
Smalley, B., 117, 202n, 203n, 206n, 295, 296, 297, 299, 301, 318n,
226n, 367n 326n, 332, 349, 350, 351n, 352n,
Sourin, P., 105n, 267n, 329n, 388n 353, 355n, 356, 365n, 367n,
Southern, R.W., 50n, 305n 398
Spade, P.V., 91n, 127n, 131n, 139n, Tribbechov, A., 4n
171n Trinkaus, C., 15n, 17n, 372n
Stabile, G., 317n Trithemius, J., 304n, 316
Steele, R., 217n Turmair, J. [Aventinus], 2, 3, 6, 7, 9,
Stegmller, F., 127n 44n, 374
Stckl, A., 5n Tweedale, M.M., 44n, 50n, 76n,
Stump, E., 139n 78n, 116n
Sturlese, L., 317n
Swiniarski, J., 131n, 171n berweg [Ueberweg], F., 5n, 6n,
Sylla, E., 132n, 139n, 195n 40n, 41n
Synan, E.A., 99n, 111n, 114n, 122n, Uhlfelder, M., 211n
170n, 215, 216n Uhlig, G., 211n
Van Neste, R., 16n Weisheipl, J.A., 13n, 111n, 125, 131n,
Vanderjagt, A.J., 105n, 377n 132n, 139n, 191n, 193n, 195n,
Van der Lecq, R., 270n 269n, 280n
Vernet, A., 307n Wey, J.C., 17n, 99n, 123n, 186n
Vidal, J.M., 201n, 317n White, L., 137n
Vignaux, P., 11, 12, 13, 14, 16n, 18, Wieland, G., 18n, 267n, 323n, 371n
39, 40, 41, 105n, 127n, 222n, 322n, Wilks, M., 96n, 107n, 379n
331n, 365n, 380n Wilson, C., 139n
Vives, J.L., 4n Wippel, J.F., 19n, 40n, 81n, 293n
Vossenkuhl, W., 98n Wood, R., 97n, 104n, 224n, 379n
Wallace, W., 195n Xiberta, B.M., 114n

Walsh, K., 116n
Warichez, J., 61n Ypma, E., 273n, 295n
Watt, D.E.R., 178n, 181n, 182n,
183n, 184n, 191n Zimmermann, A., 17n, 127n, 200n,
Webb, C.C.I., 35n, 44n 359n
Webering, D., 12n Zumkeller, A., 224n, 349, 353,
Weiler, A.G., 373n 398n
Weinberg, J.R., 11n, 158n

Ockham and Ockhamism

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Ockham and Ockhamism

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Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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Chapter One. In Search of Nominalism: Two Centuries of

Chapter Three. On the Eve of Nominalism: Consignification in

Chapter Four. Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century . . 39

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

Chapter Seven. The Reception of Ockhams Thought in

Chapter Eight. The Reception of Ockhams Thought at the

The Availability of Ockhams Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Chapter Ten. Force of Words and Figures of Speech: The Crisis

Chapter Eleven. The Registers of the University of Paris and the

Chapter Twelve. The Debate over Ockhams Physical Theories at

Chapter Thirteen. The Quaestiones in Sententias of Michael de

Chapter Fourteen. Conrad of Megenberg: The Parisian Years . . . . . 303

Chapter Fifteen. The Categories, Michael de Massa, and Natural

Chapter Seventeen. Theologia Anglicana Modernorum at Cologne in

Chapter Eighteen. Was There an Ockhamist School?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

Paris, 13391346 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

List of Manuscripts Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

AFH Archivum Franciscanum Historicum

Across the last half-century the impact of the thought of William of

Averroes or their scientia. The 1340 statute, by contrast, is concerned

de Massa, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Bernard of Arezzo, and Conrad

The main purpose of the present book, therefore, is to bring together

but rather illustrates the complexity of the meaning of nominalism and,

I wish to express my appreciation to the publishers in whose volumes

Second only to the impact of the introduction of Aristotelian thought

Received Opinion: From Aventinus to Ehrle

The early nineteenth century inherited a reasonably coherent account

16651673), I, pp. 443444.

Aventinus and Du Boulay, who gave equal attention to the twelfth-

Grundriss into French in 1830.

deserved no such defense. Haurau even noted that Roscelin, whose

In tracing the history of nominalism Aventinus, Du Boulay, and Du

derts (Heidelberg, 1922).

than simply a theory of universals, and his approach to nominalism was

(Mnster i. W., 1925).

tischen Schule (Mnster i. W., 1925).

ous studies of Konstanty Michalski, who had studied at Louvain with

The Reassessment of Ockham

28 The principal essays of Michalski on fourteenth-century philosophyas rich in

their information on manuscripts as they were biased in interpretationwere assem-

30 M.-D. Chenu, Contribution lhistoire du trait de la foi, in Mlanges Thomistes

Paul Vignaux in his 19301931 articles on Ockham and on nominal-

in opinion was accepted by J.R. Weinberg, Ockhams Conceptualism, Philosophical

11.2 (1931), cols. 876889.

ster, 1940), pp. 46108.

Two scholars, who took Hochstetters and Vignauxs interpretations

Some Recent Interpretations of Ockham, Speculum, 23 (1948), 452463; E. Iserloh,

FS, 5 (1945), 138161; The Realistic Conceptualism of William Ockham, Traditio, 4

approach to Ockham was also echoed at Paris in the work of Lon

Lhomme et les oeuvres (Paris, 1950).

Toward a New Assessment of Nominalism

The historiography on nominalism took an important shift in the early

47 In addition to the newer historiography on Ockham, Damasus Trapp attempted

to its Relation to the Renaissance, HTR, 53 (1960), 4776; Facientibus quod in se

49 These views were expressed in Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Pierre

dAilly, Speculum, 46 (1971), 94119; Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion, in

One particular avenue of exploration was sparked by E.A. Moodys

the heritage of Ockham to be more complex and less widely accepted