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This chapter begins by showing how the standard modern English translation of Defensor Pacis has encouraged an already existing Anglophone tendency to impose on the Defensor Pacis modern liberal, democratic assumptions. Nothing in the Latin original justifies this unhistorical misrepresentation of Marsilius. The chapter then considers the evidence for Marsilius's life in Paris, where he wrote Defensor Pacis, later in Ludwig of Bavaria's entourage, and the contemporary response to his book. That response was generally outrage, and it was led by Pope John XXII, who prepared a detailed critique of what he found most objectionable, and instigated a condemnation of the book — Licet iuxta doctrinam — in every diocese in Christendom. There was also much criticism by others, including some from William of Ockham, who, like Marsilius, had found political asylum at Ludwig of Bavaria's court. All criticism, whether pro- or anti-papal, agreed with John XXII about the book's most important message: a demolition of papal claims to plenitudo potestatis. No contemporary read it as so many modern commentators have done.

This chapter presents the theological context in which Melanchthon operated. The soteriologies of nine major figures in the western Christian tradition are given, with an emphasis on their understandings of the will's role in justification. Included are Augustine, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Gregory of Rimini, Gabriel Biel, Johann von Staupitz, and Desiderius Erasmus.

At Luke 22:38, the disciples are presented as saying to Jesus, “Lord, behold, there are two swords”. The significance of the “two swords” (one drawn and the other undrawn) doctrine was debated from time to time in the early Middle Ages. In patristic exegesis, the undrawn and drawn swords are often interpreted as signifying, respectively, spiritual and temporal, or ecclesiastical and lay, power. During the Middle Ages, Luke's remarks about them became a battleground on which many issues relating to regnum and sacerdotium were fought out. This chapter examines certain aspects of William of Ockham's contribution to the debate which raise general hermeneutic issues, centering on the extent to which sound doctrine can rest on spiritual interpretation as opposed to literal declaration. Here, exegesis and politics intersect crucially, with potentially very serious consequences. The focus is on the status of allegory in William of Ockham's Breviloquium on the power of the pope. The argument of the Breviloquium depends heavily on the Bible as a source of authority for what should be believed about the nature of papal power.

This chapter discusses how William of Ockham answers some questions that John Duns Scotus appears to leave unsettled. Ockham has become notorious for holding views that, from a later philosophical perspective, have appeared to undermine the Aristotelian outlook that is expounded by Thomas Aquinas. This is true in ethics as in other areas of philosophy. Ockham believes he rejects the insufficiently Aristotelian elements in Aquinas and others. He believes, for instance, that Aristotle's rejection of Platonic Forms supports the metaphysical priority of the particular, and that the views of Aquinas and Scotus on universals concede too much to an un-Aristotelian Platonic realism. In moral philosophy, Ockham agrees with Scotus' view that Aquinas' intellectualism and eudaemonism conflict with the freedom and contingency of human action. Since Aristotle insists on these features of human action, a plausible defence of Aristotle should, in Ockham's view, reject Aquinas' position. Similarly, Ockham gives Aristotelian reasons for rejecting Aquinas' claims about virtue, practical reason, and prudence.

The goal of this paper is to explain how the fourteenth-century philosopher William of Ockham conceived of the relations between the intellect and the will within the framework of his nominalist ontology. It is shown first how, in Ockham's view, the terms ‘intellect’ and ‘will’ refer to the very same thing, without being synonymous: while coreferential, the two terms connote different mental acts. The paper then spells out in detail the various connections that hold according to Ockham between intellectual acts and volitional acts, including intellectual emotions.

This chapter looks at challenges to the power of the Papacy in the late Middle Ages. It begins with a discussion of the dispute between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip the Fair of France. This was concerned with whether the King could tax clergy within his kingdom, and who had jurisdiction if they committed a crime. The dispute was also directly productive of some extremely important political theory, notably the writings of Giles of Rome and John of Paris. These took opposing views over the respective competencies of the spiritual and temporal rulers. The chapter then moves to detailed readings of three theorists of temporal power: Dante, Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham. Dante, better known as the poet of the Commedia, was author of the important Monarchia which argued for a resurgent empire free from papal control. Marsilius offered a defence of the smaller political unit of the city. Ockham, who became a political theorist late in life, was an advocate of the Franciscan vow of poverty, and believed that the church should be poor. Yet this was not simply a view about property, but a view that the church should absent itself from all worldly concerns.

The fresco of the crucifixion by Giotto in the Arena chapel represents the beginning of naturalism in Western painting. The theology of the cross during this period shows the increasing influence of the philosophy of the nominalism of William of Ockham and his followers. The separation of faith from reason, combined with incipient artistic naturalism and the religious pessimism that followed the great Plague, contributed to a new emphasis on the sufferings and wounds of Christ, which dramatically expressed the consequences of human sin. This was expressed artistically in expanded and emotional treatments of the crucifixion in drama (the passion plays), as well as new images like the pietà, that stressed compunction with Mary.

This chapter traces the breakdown of the medieval vocabulary of justification that was characterized by certain knowledge on one hand (scientia) and probable belief on the other (opinio). Terms associated with scientia such as “certainty” and “demonstration” came under intense attack by nominalists such as William of Ockham in the fourteenth century, and these nominalist suspicions were reinforced by the discovery and dissemination of ancient skeptical writings a century later. Whereas terms associated with opinio such as “probability” and “authority” were battered by the forces of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. In the place of a shared language of cognitive appraisal, Europeans encountered multiple and contending methods of justification.

This chapter is dedicated to William of Ockham’s full-fledged theory of mental language. It shows how it was first developed on the basis of a reflection on what the objects of knowledge are, Ockham’s answer being that they are mental propositions composed of concepts. The ontological status of concepts is then examined—a question over which Ockham importantly changed his mind over the years. It is then shown how the technical apparatus of grammar and semantics was systematically transposed by Ockham to the fine-grained analysis of thought, with the result that thought itself could now be seen as a compositional semantic system. And finally the Ockhamistic idea that concepts are natural signs is discussed.

Especially written for the English version, this Postscript discusses a number of recently published contributions on the history of mental language in connection with the claims made in the present book. Those are divided into five groups according to whether they have to do with (1) Ancient and Patristic sources, (2) Augustine and Boethius, (3) Abelard and the twelfth century, (4) Aquinas and the thirteenth century, and (5) Ockham and the late medieval period. It is shown that quite an amount of new material is now to be added to the picture, but that nothing of importance needs to be withdrawn.

The idea that emotions are cognitive mental states is at the heart of many modern accounts of the emotions. This paper examines how medieval philosophers of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries thought of the relationship between emotions, usually referred to as passions of the soul, and cognitions. Although medieval authors see a close relationship between emotions and those cognitions triggering them, they usually deny that emotions are simply kinds of cognition; strictly speaking, emotions are thought to be movements of the human appetites. However, one philosopher from the first half of the fourteenth century, Adam Wodeham, explicitly defends the view that emotions are cognitions. After examining Wodeham's arguments and the philosophical motivation behind his view, the paper turns to critical reactions to Wodeham's unique account.

The paper examines Walter Chatton’s rejection of final causality. At the core of Chatton’s theory lies the claim that there are four kinds of cause (material, formal, efficient, and final), but only three kinds of causality, because final causality should in a sense be reduced to efficient causality. The author begins by situating Chatton’s theory in the context of the fourteenth-century discussions concerning the problematic status of ends as causes. After that, the paper reconstructs Chatton’s rejection of the opinio communis of his time, according to which both final causes and final causality must be posited. The author claims that Chatton’s objections employ three main arguments, based on (1) ontological parsimony, (2) possible non-existence of ends, and (3) the efficient character of love and desire. Then, Chatton’s own theory is presented. The author’s exposition is focused on Chatton’s thesis that final causes are said to be causes only in a metaphorical sense. The final part of the article examines William of Ockham’s reaction to Chatton’s theory. Arguing against Chatton’s teleology, Ockham wants to prove that we have good reasons to retain both final causes (as real causes) and final causality.

This chapter addresses the highly distinctive ecclesiologies hammered by Marsiglio of Padua and William of Ockham to examine the degree to which they contributed to the understanding of the nature and history of conciliarism. This notion derives from a reform movement in the fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and sixteenth-century Catholic Church, which held that supreme authority in the Church resided with an Ecumenical council, apart from, or even against, the Pope. Both men were considered leading adherents to the conciliarist viewpoint and other conciliarist thinking at large. The chapter also elucidates interpretative confusions caused by the traditional inclusion of Marsiglio and Ockham among the ranks of the conciliarists.

This chapter focuses on the distinguishing feature of Thomas Aquinas's moral thought, its ontological foundation. Ontology is defined as the science of being. Thomas considered “being” the first and most fundamental object known by reason. Aquinas's ontology was based, to a large extent, on an Aristotelian model. For Aquinas, existence is the most fundamental principle of all reality. Years after Aquinas's death, William of Ockham's doctrine of nominalism, dominated European thinking for more than 150 years. William rejects the fundamental Thomistic distinction between essence and existence. The Thomistic spirit was revived early in the sixteenth century with Cajetan and Vitoria. Cardinal Cajetan is probably the most celebrated Thomistic commentator in history. Francisco de Vitoria is the father of Spanish Thomism. Through his great personal influence, the Summa theologiae replaced the Sentences of Peter Lombard as the principal text for theological study at the University of Salamanca.