Late medieval philosophy, 1350–1500
Late medieval philosophy, 1350–1500
Zénon Kaluza
INTRODUCTION
No fact in philosophical or other history underlies the commonlymade
division of fourteenth-century philosophy around the year 1350, except
perhaps the Black Death of 1348–9, which overcame the Oxford
masters and destroyed an original style of thinking and doing
philosophy. Things happened differently on the Continent, at least in
1348–9, so that this division does not apply there. The great
philosophers of the Middle Ages who have a place in history were not
all dead before 1350; and some, indeed, continued to think and write
after this time. The chapter-division in this volume is, then, more than
anything a reflection of the state of knowledge of historians, who have
been more interested in the first half of the fourteenth century than in
the second, so that our knowledge of the years 1300–50 is surer than
that of the years 1350–1400. And since, as a general rule—to which
this chapter is an exception—historians prefer to speak of what they
know, they also adopt the breaks which indicate the limits of their
knowledge of the past: breaks which are ‘historical’ only by convention.
This applies also to the other limit of the period, the year 1500, the
rough textbook boundary between the Middle Ages and modern times.
Such text-book divisions exist to show that there is a moment when
every beginning comes to its end and makes way for a new beginning.
The period 1350–1500 is, then, little studied. This is true not only
of the philosophers and theologians, but also of the universities where
they taught. For speculation—what is called ‘medieval speculation’—
did not take place outside universities except to a very limited degree.
It was always the work of clerics teaching in studia. The only important
exception is Italy, where the development of humanism began by
introducing philosophical thought into chancelleries and then later
made itself a place of its own—the academies. But that is another story
which, traditionally, does not belong to ‘medieval philosophy’.
The century and a half from 1350 is precisely the period of
development of the universities. It saw the foundations of several dozen
universities everywhere in Europe, especially in Central Europe, but
also in Italy, the south of France, Scandinavia and Scotland. Although
they are not entirely indistinguishable, the history of medieval
philosophy is also, at least in its origins, the history of the university as
an institution. That is why, before discussing doctrines, we must consider
the intellectual and institutional context of late medieval philosophy.
THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT
After the tragic years of 1349–50, the University of Oxford became an
important centre for realist philosophy, where logicians (who were
already well known) worked alongside philosophers and theologians,
such as the two secular clerics, Nicholas Aston and Richard Billingham,
the Franciscan Richard Brinkley, the Carmelite Osbert Pockingham
and the Augustinian Hermit Godfrey Hardeby. The years 1360–80 are
notable for the intellectual activity of John Wyclif (c. 1328–84), the
author of various works in English and Latin, of logic, philosophy and
theology, politics, of sermons and of polemic. Pope Gregory XI
condemned a set of his political positions in 1377, but it was not until
1380 that the criticisms of his theological doctrines began in England.
In the following years, his positions and his writings would be
condemned several times at Oxford and London, at Prague and at the
Council of Constance. Among his critics we find several outstanding
and prolific philosophers and theologians, such as the two Carmelites,
Richard Lavenham (d. 1381/3) and Thomas Netter (in his Doctrinale
antiquitatum). To the same group belongs the Dominican Thomas
Claxton (d. 1430), a Thomist and member of the commission which
condemned the writings of Wyclif in 1411. With Netter and Claxton
we are already in the fifteenth century.1
John Wyclif has a decisive position in the intellectual history of
Europe for two reasons. First of all, he added weight to the attack on
nominalism, and his realism and reformism would profoundly influence
the new University of Prague. They underlie the Czech reform and all
its political and religious repercussions.2 Second, after the fairly universal
rejection of nominalism at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
criticisms of Wyclif and his condemnation stimulated and perhaps
accelerated the return to the great scholastic thinkers of the thirteenth
century. This return (which seems to us today to be the first version of
neoscholasticism) took place in England at the very time of the anti-
Wyclifite polemics. It was thus earlier than the parallel movement on
the Continent.
In Paris, the second half of the fourteenth century continued on the
path already set until the beginning of the Great Schism (1378–1414),
a period of political and doctrinal crisis for the university. After 1378
the influence of Oxford on Paris was diminished and relations between
the two universities, which had already been weakened by the Hundred
Years War, became openly hostile. Two schools engaged in explicit
polemic: the nominalists (the followers of John Buridan) and the
Scotists. A third, Thomism, was attacked brutally and publicly by Peter
d’Ailly. In the faculty of theology a number of doctrines were current,
and this led in the general direction of eclecticism. But the faculty of
arts was dominated by the nominalist school, which seemed to have
imposed its textbooks and methods. This position would change in
about 1395, the time when Pierre d’Ailly gave up the position of
Chancellor. From this date onwards, the realists—especially the
Thomists, but also the followers of Albert the Great—made up lost
ground and ended the nominalists’ monopoly. The 1339 prohibition
on teaching Ockham’s doctrines, which was considered in the fifteenth
century to be a ban on all forms of nominalism, would remain in force
until 1481, when Louis XI lifted the prohibition of books and doctrines
held to be nominalist.
Italian universities, sometimes older than those north of the Alps,
developed in a different way from other studia. This came about for
three main reasons. First, the great universities of Padua and Bologna
opened their theology faculties (the faculties in which doctrinal
speculation tended to be most developed) relatively late: Padua in 1363,
Bologna in 1364. Other theology faculties would be opened even later.
Without the natural support which theology gave it in the northern
universities, philosophy as practised in Italy did not succeed, in our
period, in producing doctrinal schools. But, for this very reason, the
most gifted philosophers, Francis of Marchia, Gregory of Rimini, John
of Ripa and many others, went to Paris and became famous there.
Second, in Italy the faculties of liberal arts prepared young people for
practical careers as physicians or lawyers and placed little emphasis on
philosophical speculation. In Italy philosophy consisted most of all in
the task of commenting on the writings of Aristotle and the set-books
of grammar, astronomy and optics. Indeed, the important Italian
philosophers of this period were often also medical doctors. All the
same, towards the end of the fourteenth century, a tradition was born,
and some people set themselves to studying English logicians and
philosophers, then to studying Averroes, Aquinas and Duns Scotus,
whilst others were drawn to the novelty which is called ‘humanism’.
Humanism is the third important factor in the development of
philosophy in late medieval Italy. Everything which is most original
and productive in the intellectual life of the late Middle Ages belongs to
the broad movement of humanism, which Petrarch and an extraordinary
series of chancellors of Florence, beginning with Coluccio Salutati (1375–
1406) and Leonardo Bruni (1410–11, 1427–44), created and continued
([18.47]). These chancellors, assisted later by many ‘humanists’ (grammar
teachers), brought into being the movement which would finally change
the course of philosophy. They were attracted to a different sort of
philosophy from that of the universities. For, whereas the university
philosophers devoted themselves especially to logic, natural philosophy
and metaphysics, the humanists were particularly interested in moral
and political philosophy, ancient philosophy, literature and philology.
The fifteenth century witnessed at once scholastic resistance to humanism
and a mingling of the two currents of thought.3 Their exponents did
not always have friendly relations. Sometimes the humanists attacked
university philosophy, which was heavily influenced by the English,
complaining of Suissenicae quisquiliae, subtilitates Anglicanae and
barbari Britanni.4 Perhaps they were right, since not only the fourteenth
century, which finished with Peter of Mantua (d. 1400), but also the
fifteenth, which began with the teaching of Biagio Pelacani (d. 1416)
and Paul of Venice (Paolo Nicoletti, d. 1429), and continued with
Gaetano da Thiene, was very influenced by English logic and philosophy,
that of the calculatores and Merton College in particular. In the second
half of the fifteenth century, however, and later, humanist philology
also conquered the universities and did great service for philosophy,
encouraging work on texts, new translations and paraphrases and new
commentaries. To it Aristotelianism owed its vigorous revival.5
The situation with regard to philosophy was different in the Empire
and the countries bordering on it. The University of Prague, which
was established in 1347, developed normally until about 1400. Its
theologians were allowed great freedom and were influenced by the
Church Fathers and twelfth-century writers such as St Bernard, the
Victorines and Alan of Lille. Among the philosophers, who enjoyed a
similar liberty, John Buridan’s doctrines, equated with nominalism,
were popular; but, from 1390 to the early 1400s, Wyclif often replaced
Buridan as the model. Fairly soon, to Wyclifite philosophy there was
linked Wyclifite theology and various attempts at ecclesiastical reform.
The Wyclifites became a part of the reform movement and were linked
with nationalism. The statute of Kutná-Hora (1409), abolishing the
system of voting by nation, shook the university. Those who objected
to it—the Germans especially—left to teach and study in German
universities, especially Leipzig (founded in 1409). After the
condemnation of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague at the Council of
Constance and their burning at the stake (in 1415 and 1416), the
Hussite revolution broke out, destroying the economic base of the
university, the system of colleges and benefices. By cutting off the
university from the rest of Europe, it caused philosophy to disappear
from Prague for many years.
The University of Kracow, though established in 1364, only began
functioning properly in 1400, with masters trained at Prague. Students
of the following generations sometimes went to study at Cologne,
Erfurt or Leipzig. The University of Vienna, founded in 1365, and
refounded in 1384, was able to continue despite its difficult
beginnings, thanks to the untiring work of Albert of Saxony and of
the reorganizers of the university, Henry of Langenstein and Henry of
Oyta. All three had previously studied at Paris. At Kracow, Vienna
and in the new German universities of the fourteenth century—
Cologne, Heidelberg and Erfurt—John Buridan had become the
unchallenged authority in the faculty of philosophy. This nominalist
schola communis persisted for varying lengths of time from place to
place: in Paris until about 1395, at Cologne up until 1420/1, in
Heidelberg until the 1450s, in Vienna right up until almost the end of
the fifteenth century. Each of these schools made its own decision on
whether it should continue with this or that philosophy.6
ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY
The mainstream of English philosophy after 1350 was realist. Realist
philosophers looked to two points of reference in the recent past, which
they used in order to define their own identity: the philosophy of
William of Ockham and Thomas Bradwardine’s De causa Dei (In God’s
Defence). As a general rule, the writers rejected Ockham’s teaching.
Such, for instance, was the attitude of the Franciscan Richard Brinkley.
His summa of logic continues, in this respect, the pseudo-Campsall’s
tradition of anti-Ockhamist logic.7 For Wyclif, Ockham and his
followers would always be doctores signorum, masters whose teaching
is about words which signify things, but tells us nothing about the
things themselves. By contrast, Bradwardine’s masterpiece was criticized
only on points of detail, whilst it is very often a rich source of inspiration,
particularly in the cases of Thomas of Buckingham and Nicholas Aston.
Nicholas Aston, a theologian and philosopher, is interesting in a
number of ways. He read the Sentences between 1352 and 1354, and
then in 1358 he became a doctor of theology. He was Chancellor of
the university from 1358 or 1359 to 1361, and finally Dean of
Chichester in 1362. Aston seems to have wanted to make theology
and philosophy subordinate to his logical concerns. His treatise on
insolubilia, which remains lost, is quoted in his commentary on the
Sentences (still unpublished). This commentary raises a good many
logical problems, such as the signification of affirmative and negative
propositions, the nature of contradictory, contingent and false
propositions, and the rules of inference. It is as a logician that he raised
the great question of God’s existence, since he believed that logic is the
only discipline accepted by everybody without reservation and that
the proof which it could provide would not depend on any philosophical
presuppositions. This is to say that he rejected the proofs of God which
had been devised previously. In particular, he criticized Bradwardine’s
proof, which is based on the concept of possibility (De causa Dei, I,1).
Yet Aston is also Bradwardine’s follower, especially in his critique of
Duns Scotus’s notion of impossibility and in his discussion of the view
that the propositional content Deum non esse (that God is not)
necessarily contains a contradiction (De causa Dei I, 13 and 14).8
Aston’s own demonstration of God’s existence is based on three
definitions, three suppositions and two principles, one of which is
important for us: ‘every false proposition is either contingent or includes
a contradiction’ (omnis propositio falsa est contingens vel
contradictionem includens). The main proof (called ‘Achilles’) takes
the following form:
1 If God exists, and if there is a proposition p which asserts that God
does not exist, then p contains a self-contradiction.
2 p contains a self-contradiction if it is the case that God does not
exist just as it does if it is the case that God does exist.
3 Therefore, in both cases, p is self-contradictory.
(2) is based on the principle that no change in things can prevent a selfcontradictory
proposition from being self-contradictory. Aston proves
(1) in this way. Granted that God exists, suppose that the p, which
denies his existence, is not self-contradictory. It must then be false.
Now, according to the principle mentioned above, every false
proposition is either contingent or self-contradictory. But p is not
contingent because, by virtue of the definition of contingents, the
statement ‘God exists’ would equally be contingent and so God, what
is designated by the subject term, would be a contingent being. And so
the statement ‘God does not exist’ is and will always be selfcontradictory
and so ‘impossible’.9
This proof—one which, to our eyes, shows as much, or more faith
in logic than in God—gave rise to lengthy discussion in England, France,
Bohemia and even in Italy. These discussions are interesting not for
what they prove, but because of the subjects they touch on, the main
one of which is the definition of impossible and self-contradictory
propositions. This is, for example, the problem faced by the
Augustinian, Godfrey Hardeby, and the Franciscan, Brinkley. Brinkley
did not think that a ‘simple negative’ consisting of a subject and a
verb, could be self-contradictory, but merely true or false.10 In the final
years of the fourteenth century, Biagio Pelacani, an Italian physician
and philosopher, went on with the discussion of the same problem,
and now linked it to causality. He knew very well the English debates
about the statement ‘God does not exist’ ([18.40]). As far as we can
discern today, the discussions which took place at Paris seem to have
taken another direction. The scholars there tried to show the
contradictory character of ‘God does not exist’ in a more commonplace
way, by reference to the Neoplatonic definition of God as pure being
(esse purum), or by recourse to Anselm’s concept of the most perfect
being. In each case this being cannot not exist.
Brinkley’s discussion of the ‘logical proof of God’s existence was
just one of the reasons for the popularity in Paris of his commentary,
dating from 1350 to 1360. In fact the Parisian masters were also
interested just as much in problems about the first contingent being
(prima contingentia) and how contingent beings can be produced by a
necessary cause, and those about the status of theology as a science
and about the causes and nature of assent to the articles of faith. The
two first problems are linked. They concern the reply to the question
of whether the notion of creation is conceivable and, if so, whether the
contingency of the effect presupposes a certain contingency in its cause.
Bradwardine had followed others in putting this question. He had
replied that the first and highest freedom and contingency, which causes
all other freedom and contingency, is in the divine will (II, 5; 624B).
This position was taken up by the Franciscan, John of Ripa and his
disciple, Louis of Padua, but it was condemned in 1362 by the theology
faculty of Paris. But Brinkley had already rejected it. He held that
contingency derives from created things, not God: only being which
changes is contingent. To answer the question, however, Brinkley
presents God’s productive action in an original way—by noun and by
adverb: modo necessario and necessario (‘in a necessary way’,
‘necessarily’) modo contingenti and contingenter (‘in a contingent way’
and ‘contingently’). The noun modus implies and determines the nature
of the cause which acts. It cannot, therefore, be the case that God can
act modo contingenti because, being a necessary being, he always acts
modo necessario. By contrast, the adverb describes God’s action in
terms of its result, which is sometimes necessary (as in the persons of
the Trinity), sometimes contingent (as in created things). The two
assertions, that God acts modo necessario and that he acts contingenter
are not concerned with the same thing and do not rule each other out.
Rather, they are complementary.
With regard to proving God’s existence, Richard Brinkley rejects
every sort of proof, whether a priori or a posteriori. Most frequently
he makes clear his differences from the tradition of Duns Scotus and
Ockham, in particular on whether passio can be demonstrated, rejecting
any formulation of the univocity of being and arguing against the
trinitarian theology of Scotus.11
Brinkley bases his semantics on two concepts: imposition and
subordination. To summarize it very briefly: Brinkley maintains that a
conventional sign (such as a word) signifies exactly the same thing as
the corresponding natural sign (a concept) does—that is to say, an
object outside the mind, not a concept. The only conventional signs
that signify concepts are those especially imposed to do this. Otherwise,
signification is immediate (sign natural/conventional>thing), so we can
move from language directly to the world of things. Since conventional
signs come after natural signs, their function as signifiers is based on a
temporal relationship (prius/posterius). Brinkley adds that no
conventional sign depends on any other conventional sign; and he rules
out any hierarchy of languages, since every language depends in the
same way on natural signs. The relations between mental, spoken and
written propositions are explained in the same way, and so is the concept
of truth. Brinkley’s view of imposition also affects his theory of
obligations.12
John Wyclif became a member of Merton College in 1356, a master
at Balliol in 1360 and a doctor of theology in 1372. A number of the
writings of this energetic polemicist are gathered in two collections,
the Summa de ente (Textbook on Entities) and the Summa theologiae
(Textbook of Theology). Wyclif considered himself close to the tradition
of Richard Fitzralph and Thomas Bradwardine, and he often described
himself as a ‘realist philosopher’, in this way marking his opposition
to the ‘doctors of signs’.
Wyclif’s metaphysics is founded on two principles, the one positive,
the other negative. The negative principle, ‘Nothing is and is not at the
same time’ (nihil simul esse et non esse) is one of the many variants of
the principle of non-contradiction. Wyclif considers it as a first and
pure negation. The positive principle, that being exists (ens esse), is the
first indubitable and indemonstrable truth. Being, the existence of which
is asserted by this principle, is taken in general (in communi). Being is
transcendent, and everything which exists participates in it. It exists,
then, in singular things: it is impossible to know transcendent being
without knowing a singular, and vice versa. Being is identical to entity,
one, the true and the good and it is the first object of knowledge
(primum cognitum) of our intellect. As the first object known, it is also
the first signabile, that is to say, the first that is able to be designated by
a word, to be signified by an expression. Being is eternal, not because
the singulars which contain it are eternal, but by virtue of the first,
uncreated being and also by virtue of the universals which are ideal
reasons (rationes ydeales que vocantur universalia) and other eternal
truths, such as the future and past states of things, negations, distinctions
and numbers. This transcendent being is unique and the attributes which
apply to created things cannot be predicated of it except analogously.
It is not made of parts, but the human intellect is capable of
distinguishing six transcendental attributes: being, thing, something
(aliquid), one, true and good: the last three are ‘qualities of being’
(passiones entis).
It should, all the same, be emphasized that for Wyclif the notion of
analogous being has a special sense, derived from Augustine’s theology
of creation. He holds analogous being to have been created by a sudden
and simultaneous act of creation, and he defines it—looking to the
Book about Causes (Liber de causis) IV, 37 as the ‘first created being’
(esse primum creatum) or ‘first of created things’ (prima rerum
creatarum). When he created it, God placed in this being the models
and measures of the genera and species. Afterwards, all particular things
were made according to these models. This second act of creation is
called by Wyclif ‘administration’ (administratio). Wyclif’s two-stage
scheme of creation echoes Augustine’s distinction between ‘first
creation’ (prima conditio) and ‘administration’. For this reason it is
legitimate to think of the models contained in analogous being as
Wyclif’s version of the causal reasons (rationes seminales) discussed by
Augustine.13
The ideal reasons mentioned in the paragraph before last are just
one group among universals. In fact, universals are divided in two
different ways into three groups. Following Avicenna (Logica 3) and
Eustratius, Wyclif distinguishes between universals ante rem, the divine
ideas; universals in re, the common natures in singulars; and universals
post rem, concepts. In fourteenth-century fashion, he also distinguishes
universals by causality, by communication, and by representation. The
first way of dividing follows the universals’ way of being, whereas the
second mixes their way of being and their function. For instance, the
divine ideas are universals by causation, because they cause genera,
species and singular things, but they are also ante rem, for the very
reason that they precede everything of which they are the cause.14
Universals by communication are the common natures in which
singulars participate, although they are formally distinct from them.
Universals by representation are terms predicated in propositions.
Wyclif goes against tradition by identifying real universals with the
genera and species listed in Genesis—that is, roughly speaking, with
natural kinds. In this way he combines the word of Scripture,
philosophical analysis and our everyday perception of biological
differences. Yet the point of his consideration of universals is simply to
gain fuller knowledge of the Bible and the mystery of the Trinity: ‘The
knowledge of universals is particularly useful because it enables the
literal sense of the scriptural passages which talk of universals to be
understood and it reveals the paralogisms which arise in talking about
the Trinity’.15 In fact the mystery of the Trinity is explained by using
the idea of formal distinction (that between the persons and the divine
essence) and of communication (the divine essence which communicates
itself to the persons). But Wyclif denies that there are any real
distinctions in God (so as not to make his essence plural) and that
what is common, the divine essence, is in any way prior to what is
individual (the persons)—although this priority is found in the theory
of universals. The formal nature of the distinction between God’s
essence and the divine persons is based on the epistemological idea of
the ‘first known’ or that which is ‘known principally’ (principaliter
intellectum) in God: at one moment this is essence (communicability),
at another a person (incommunicability); but the two remain unmixed
([18.6] XIV: 143, 149).
Wyclif’s doctrine of universals by causality was inspired by the
passages in St Augustine on divine ideas. These universals—also called
exemplars, ideas and archetypes—are in God. They are the very essence
of God, and so ‘essentially’ God, whilst formally they are the reason
by which God knows created things. The only distinctions between
themselves, and between themselves and God, are formal. Wyclif and
his followers used this opinion of St Augustine’s to show that, thanks
to the (universal) ideas, the action and the result of creation are
intelligible: without them God would have created something without
having knowledge of it. There is another way, too, in which universals
make the world intelligible. Granted the priority of what is common
and of the universal over the particular, we know a singular in so far as
we contemplate its intelligibility, its ‘passive intellection’, which is the
universal in God, placed in the Word, but present in the whole Trinity.16
As for the number of the ideas, Wyclif merely distinguishes between
ideas of singulars, those of universals and that of analogous being (the
ontological status of which is not easy to grasp). Every created thing is
singular in its existence, belongs to a natural kind, participates in being
and reflects in itself the ideal world of causal reasons. And, since the
causal chain is finite and infinite regress is impossible, there is no room
for talk of ideas of ideas ([18.5] I, c. X: 72).
Wyclif’s theory of universals must be clearly distinguished from the
ontology of forms devised by the Franciscan Francis of Meyronnes.
Whereas Wyclif identified the ideas in the mind of God, taken from
Augustine, with universals, Francis left ideas in the mind of God to the
theologians, whilst as a philosopher keeping Platonic ideas. His theory
is, indeed, a new interpretation of Platonism—and a more philosophical
one than Wyclifs.17 Spurred by Duns Scotus and Avicenna, Meyronnes
imagines a world of formal quiddities, which gives the lie to Aristotle’s
caricature of Platonic ideas: ‘If they exist, they are monsters.’ Francis
argues that, in Plato’s view, essential predication, definition,
demonstration and division are all based on ideas, since all these
intellectual operations imply a specific nature which is unchangeable
and unmoveable and set apart from any material conditions. These
operations cannot even take place without there being formal quiddities:
if they are to be true and necessary, the links between the terms must
be made in the first instance outside the mind and not depend in any
way on its workings. These quiddities must be pure and separated
from everything which would determine them in a concrete being. For
this reason, they must be attributed the same sort of being as Avicenna’s
essences. And so, if it is necessary to posit ideas, they must be formally
separated from everything which has put them into an individual being:
place, duration, haecceitas (this-ness). To put it in another way: their
being is abstract by their nature, not as a result of an intellectual
operation. To the final question, ‘How can the esse in pluribus (being
in many) which defines universals fit with quiddities?’, Meyronnes has
a simple reply: accidit. It so happens that a universal is in particulars
or in our concept. But, from the point of view of its nature, it is there
by accident; whereas from the point of view of the particulars, it is
there by necessity.18
To return to Wyclif himself. Older views of the ‘extreme realism’ of
his philosophy are not justified, if such extremism is taken to embrace
the existence of genera and species outside singulars, and the existence
of divine ideas outside the divine essence or really distinct from it.
Wyclif rejects such a philosophy. On the question of universals, he
places himself between Thomas Aquinas and Walter Burley, and with
regard to ideas he accuses Aristotle of having been foolish to claim
that Plato thought that ideas were separate essences. Wyclif’s realism
is not, then, extreme. Its unwonted nature reflects its unusual source
of inspiration: it is a theological realism, because it derives from a literal
reading of the word of Scripture.
Several Oxford masters adopted Wyclif’s doctrine of universals, along
with the metaphysics and logic which underpinned it. They carried on
teaching a sort of Wyclifism until the 1420s, but they are hardly known
to us.19 At the same time, in the last decade of the fourteenth century,
the University of Prague provided excellent ground for the development
of Wyclifism, first in the person of Stanislas of Znaim (later the enemy
of Wyclif and Hus; d. 1414) and his followers, John Hus (d. 1415) and
Stefan Palec (later the enemy of Wyclif and Hus; d. 1423), and later
still in Jerome of Prague (d. 1416), Jacobellus of Misa (d. after 1430)
and others.20 All of these men shared Wyclif’s teaching, especially his
doctrine of universals as being at once divine ideas, common forms
and terms or concepts. For the Wyclifites of Prague, however, universals
were of especial interest in their first function, as ideas. Znaim, Palec
and Jerome presented, as the basis of their teaching, a nourishing world
of ideas, which merited love and adoration because of their real identity
with God’s essence—a view once rejected by Duns Scotus. None the
less, only Znaim—so far as we know—set out to demonstrate at length
the existence of universals on the basis of Genesis (cf. [18.26] n. 795).
PHILOSOPHY IN PARIS
If, at Oxford, the second half of the fourteenth century and the fifteenth
century were dominated by realism, the situation was very different in
Paris, despite the ban on teaching Ockham’s doctrines. To consider
just the second half of the fourteenth century: the faculty of arts was
dominated by ‘Parisian nominalism’, or the school of Buridan, and
this went on to win over the other universities on the Continent. The
most famous masters of this school were Albert of Saxony (who went
on to become the first rector of the University of Vienna), Themo the
Jew, Dominic of Clavasio, Marsilius of Inghen (who became the first
rector of Heidelberg), Henry of Langenstein, Peter d’Ailly, Henry Totting
of Oyta and John Dorp, all of them famous in the history of science, or
the history of logic, or as theologians.21
Given the relative silence of the other schools, it was the disputes
between the ‘Ockhamists’ (hereditas filiorum Ocham) and the different
intellectual inheritors of Duns Scotus which were witnessed by the
faculty of theology. These ‘Scotists’ showed unceasing originality and
independence of mind in relation to their doctrinal master. The case of
a Spanish Dominican, Juan of Monzon, shows the sad state of Thomism
in Paris at the time. It also gave Peter d’Ailly, the future chancellor, a
better chance than he could have hoped to attack Aquinas’s teaching
publicly, at the university and at the court in Avignon. In the aftermath,
the Dominicans withdrew from the University of Paris (1388–1403).
The nominalist school in theology is not well known: we cannot
even be sure that it existed between the time of Gregory of Rimini and
Peter d’Ailly. True, a statute of Louis XI, dated 1474, forbidding
nominalism names as nominalist theologians Ockham, Wodeham, John
of Mirecourt, Gregory of Rimini and Peter d’Ailly. Yet, of the three
Parisians, Gregory and Peter are considered followers of Ockham, whilst
John was rather a realist, who followed English writings closely and
plagiarized them energetically. All the same, since Peter d’Ailly also
seems to have been as much of a plagiarist, it is hard to speak of his
original ideas with confidence until there is a critical edition of his
writings and their sources have been established. None the less, for
our present purposes it is tempting to reconstruct the main decisions
taken by the university and the main disagreements between the schools,
since the first as much as the second affected the doctrinal teaching
and the institutional life of the University of Paris. We have arranged
them around three events which made apparent the situation of the
various doctrinal schools: the statutes of 1339 and 1340; Peter d’Ailly’s
fight against Thomism; and Gerson’s fight against the Scotists.
On 25 September 1339, the faculty of arts of Paris instituted a ban
on commenting in public or private on the writings of Ockham, and
on citing his opinions in disputations. This statute should not be taken,
as some scholars have exaggeratedly read it, as a decision made against
nominalism, but as a measure directed personally against Ockham, his
writings and his teachings. And, since the faculty did not take the statute
to go beyond these limits, nominalism was able to develop in Paris
better than elsewhere. It was during the doctrinal struggles of the
beginning of the fifteenth century, when Ockham was identified as the
father of nominalism, that the broader interpretation of the statute
was probably first entertained. Louis XI’s law of 1 March 1474, which
forbade all nominalist teaching and books, refers to the decision of
1339 as a prohibition of nominalism. Between 1339 and 1474 the
meanings of terms had slipped and coalesced, and Ockham, Ockhamism
and nominalism were considered one and the same. We should note,
all the same, finally that the same Louis XI, in 1481, gave permission
for nominalist doctrines to be taught, and, at the same time, removed
all the earlier prohibitions.
The statute of 29 December 1340 was not a condemnation of
Ockham and his own doctrine, nor a decision taken by the realists
against the interest of the nominalists. Rather, it was a faculty measure
taken against certain Parisian masters who said they were Ockhamists.
No other reading is possible, since the text of the statute follows the
letter and spirit of Ockham’s and Buridan’s doctrine.
The central problem in the statute, which occurs in four out of six
articles, is that of the distinction between two senses of a proposition:
the proper or literal sense (virtus sermonis, sensus proprius) and the
improper sense, which however is considered as proper when it fits the
imposition and use of the words, and when it is determined by a materia
subiecta, that is to say, according to Aristotle and his commentators, a
subject belonging to and treated in a determinate discipline.22 We can
call them ‘proper sense’ and ‘improper sense’ (which is ‘proper’ in a
given language). With these two possibilities in mind, the authors of
the statute set out to consider every proposition in the light of two
rules:
1 If a proposition p is false in the proper sense but true in the improper
sense, it is accepted.
2 If a proposition p is true in the proper sense, but false in the improper
sense, it is rejected.
These rules were known to Buridan, but they were used especially in
theology by Peter d’Ailly and Gerson. They determine whether
propositions are accepted or rejected, since, by the statute, only those
propositions which accord with the first rule can be admitted, and all
those which fall under the second rule must be rejected and left to
‘sophists’.
The statute of 1340 can be judged as favouring nominalism. It derives
from fresh thought about the idea of ‘the force of speech’ (virtus
sermonis) and about the division of knowledge into disciplines, each
of which has its own language with its special characteristics. Altogether,
logic apart, the virtus sermonis exists only within a language determined
either by the subject being treated, or by the discipline to which the
language and the subject belong. By stressing, like Aristotle, the
importance of subject matter, the statute introduces another meaning
of the term ‘certainty’ besides the certainty of our act of knowing
(already the subject of epistemological discussion): the certainty of a
demonstration within a given discipline. In this way, the statute takes
the problem of certainty from the domain of epistemology and places
it within the context of questions about how we build up a scheme of
knowledge and about probability and evidence.
With these remarks in mind, we can see the position of the Parisian
Ockhamists. The statute criticizes them for having too rigid a view of
the proper meaning of terms, a meaning which can be verified always
and everywhere, especially using personal supposition, to which they
gave absolute priority. They limited themselves to this universal, logical
analysis probably because their interests did not go beyond signs, for
the simple reason that they thought that terms and propositions are
the only object of human knowledge. The School of Buridan answered
this ‘Ockhamist’ position by showing the flexibility of language and
adopting rules of analysis for the technical languages of the different
branches of knowledge.
What has come to be known as ‘the Monzon affair’ (1387–9) was
a dramatic series of events with important institutional repercussions.
The events are well known, but more often than not the institutional
repercussions are presented solely as the abandonment of the
University by the Dominicans. The subject of the dispute was the
Immaculate Conception, in which Peter d’Ailly, his brilliant pupil
Gerson and the faculty of theology believed, but which Monzon and
the Dominicans rejected. The dispute acted as a pretext for a battle
between the theology faculty and the powerful Dominican Order, and
between nominalists and realists. Quickly, the Monzon affair came to
centre on Thomas Aquinas and his doctrine, and it was exactly this
development which made the Dominicans leave the university. The
decisive episode in the struggle took place at Avignon, before the
Pope, his court, some Dominican doctors and a delegation of Paris
theologians ([18.49] 197–8).
Peter d’Ailly’s long and skilful sermon raised a number of
fundamental problems for the Church and the Paris theology faculty:
in particular the question of the order of the jurisdiction of the various
different ecclesiastical authorities which are empowered to define
doctrine, and the hierarchical order of those who are allowed to teach
the Word. Here d’Ailly holds that Aquinas is at the bottom of the
hierarchy, placed after Peter the Lombard, among his commentators.
In the course of giving his answers to these questions, d’Ailly also
examines the value of the teaching of Aquinas itself. And it is here that
we can see the young theologian attacking the authority of the ‘holy
doctor’. He gives his views in two sets of three conclusions. The first
series gives a general estimation of the doctrine, and the second consists
of a wide-ranging demonstration of Aquinas’s errors. Conclusions 1–
3 state the following: although Aquinas’s doctrine might be accepted
as being useful and probable, we must not believe that it is true in
every part, nor that it is entirely without error or heresy. And
Conclusions 4–6: in the Summa contra Gentiles (II, 29–30), Aquinas’s
doctrine on the absolute necessity of created things is literally false (de
virtute sermonis), blemished with errors and in part suspect. Even if,
when understood correctly in accord with its author’s intention, it is
to a certain extent correct (aliqualiter vera), it should not be taught
without its correct meaning first being established.23 The final
conclusion has the air of a gratuitous concession, although it fits
perfectly with the first of the 1340 rules, which d’Ailly quotes and uses
in this very sermon. D’Ailly admits that he has been using the style of
the polemic, where one must show up an enemy’s weaknesses (de virtute
sermonis) and disguise his strong points: in the end, Aquinas’s thesis
can be taught when the distinction of the two senses of virtus sermonis
is made.
Peter d’Ailly was able to show at Avignon the errors and
contradictions of Thomism, and to make himself noticed. In the
aftermath of this victory, the faculty of theology succeeded in making
the Dominicans leave the university and the office of almoner, whilst
d’Ailly was given two appointments: first, to be the royal almoner, and
second (on his nomination from Avignon) the chancellorship of the
university (1389). The Monzon affair took place, then, when the
university was dominated by the nominalists, and this would continue
until d’Ailly left the chancellorship in 1395. We know very little about
this period and we cannot talk about it with confidence. It seems very
likely, however, that the ban on commenting Aristotle following a realist
author, which is mentioned by John of Nova Domus (Maisonneuve) at
the beginning of the fifteenth century, could well have come between
1388 and 1395.
We know of several conflicts between theological schools, thanks
to the work of Ehrle on Peter of Candia. They are of interest to
historians of philosophy in so far as they concerned speculative
matters, and also because they afford a precious opportunity to trace
the divisions of schools as they were perceived and described by the
very participants in these disputes One of the rivalries, in the 1370s
and perhaps later, was between the nominalists and the formalizantes
mentioned above. Although there was some slowing down in the
production of Scotist books towards the end of the fourteenth century
and at the beginning of the next century, Gerson sustained this conflict
up to his death in 1429. He accused the Scotists and formalizantes
(formalists) of three errors. First, they introduced into theology a
principle of causality—‘from the same in so far as it is the same
nothing but the same can come’ (ab eodem in quantum idem non
provenit nisi idem)—which turns free creation into a necessary act.
Second, in order to safeguard the reality of our knowledge, they
asserted that a thing in the extramental world corresponds to each of
our concepts. Third, by distinguishing between the divine essence and
its attributes, they introduced a formal distinction within God.24 To
Gerson, the thinker principally responsible for these errors was John
of Ripa.
At this time, the Scotist school was not particularly important at
Paris. During the first half of the fourteenth century the school had
developed quickly (we need merely mention Francis of Meyronnes,
Nicholas Bonet and Peter Thomae); and at the end of the fifteenth it
would flourish again (in the treatises de formalitatibus by Stephen
Brulefer and Antonius Sirect, on which several commentaries were
written at Padua). But, during Gerson’s working life, Scotism was going
through a period of torpor. None the less, there were good reasons for
Gerson to criticize the Scotists. Their ontology of forms—especially
the priority of formalitates to the act of knowing them—contradicted
the bases of Gerson’s own thought, which owed much to the tradition
of Buridan and d’Ailly. Moreover, when eighteen articles of Louis of
Padua were condemned in 1362, this was also a condemnation of John
of Ripa. When they introduced formal distinction into the absolutely
simple being of God, Louis and John had asserted, among other things,
that ‘something in God is his real being which is not his formal being’
and that ‘something intrinsic in God is contingent’.25 Finally, there was
the question of theological language, linked to Buridan’s idea that the
proper meaning of words is limited to a determinate discipline.
Throughout his work, Gerson held that the theological vocabulary of
Scotus and the Scotists (and that too of Raymond Lull) was improper
and had departed from the tradition of an Aristotelian way of speaking
([18.55] 39–40, 51).
CONCLUSION: FIFTEENTH-CENTURY STAGNATION
In a letter which he wrote in 1400 to the young theologians of the
College of Navarre, Gerson advised his readers to study the great
scholastics of the thirteenth century. As for more recent theologians,
Gerson said that they were excellent in many ways, but beneath the
covering of theological language they had busied themselves with
problems of physics, metaphysics and logic ([18.1] II, n. 5). This call
for a return to classical scholasticism was in harmony both with
Gerson’s own underlying ideas and with the new intellectual tendencies
of his time. Faithful to the school of Buridan, to the 1340 statute and
to the programme which Pope Clement VI had given the university in
a letter of 1346, Gerson always fought against the mixing of disciplines
and their languages.
The revival of realism in Paris began in 1395–1400 (see [18.54] and
[18.76] 279–394). Here, as at Cologne, it took the form of a minor
intellectual rebellion against the obligation to study only nominalist
treatises, in particular those about the properties of terms. Among the
rebels there were also a good number of Thomists and Albertists. As
the conflict developed, three different ideas of university freedom came
into play. There was that of the conservative establishment, who upheld
the exclusive position of nominalism although they allowed the chance
for realist philosophers to be mentioned (Cologne, 1414). There was
that of the Albertist John of Nova Domus, who proposed confining
himself to the Christian—that is to say, Aristotelian—tradition, from
which he excluded the nominalists (Paris, before 1418). Finally, there
was that of the Cologne realists who allowed all the university traditions.
By contrast with the tradition of the school of Buridan, which
separated the disciplines and their principles, the realists put forward
the old model in which knowledge is unified: its basis is metaphysics,
from which all the particular disciplines derive. They also insisted on
the unity of the principles governing all philosophical and theological
speculation. Clearest about this was the University of Cologne which,
in 1425, declared that the links binding philosophy and theology were
indissoluble, and took St Thomas for its model, because ‘in his two
Summae he uses the same principles as he does in expounding the
works of Aristotle’ (in omnibus Summis suis utitur eisdem principiis,
quibus usus est libros Philosophi exponendo).
The nominalists responded to this exaltation of the great thirteenthcentury
scholastics by looking to the founders of their own school,
John Buridan and Marsilius of Inghen. Indeed, strange to say, round
about the year 1400 philosophers decided that they would no longer
do philosophy on their own account and no longer take any personal
responsibility for their philosophical positions. Rather, they spent the
whole of the fifteenth century fighting among themselves, with
prescriptions and prohibitions as their weapons, not in order to impose
on everybody their own thought, but that of their distant models:
Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Duns Scotus, Giles of Rome and
Buridan. Universities passed statutes to remove undesirables and to
close themselves to new ideas. None of these decisions rose above the
level of factional in-fighting.
This upholding of traditions and the related and unceasing conflicts
(especially in the German universities) were institutional rather than
doctrinal in their basis. Historians describe them by the German word
Wegestreit. Sometimes by their violence and length these conflicts turned
universities into a battleground where scholars fought to re-establish
one of the old schools, whether realist or nominalist. The courses in
these universities were limited to the revival of the thought of one or
another great master of the past. Likewise, the practice of teaching
centred on the great names of the past. In England, Wyclif was attacked
in the name of St Thomas. In Paris, a predominantly Thomist realism
became the established doctrine by the last quarter of the century. In
Germany, the choice of doctrine was regulated by the statutes of the
different universities. Since this return to old scholasticism was the
first of a series of such deliberate returns, it is certainly right to call it
the first neoscholasticism. In Italy alone this type of institutional conflict
had no place: there philosophers at once followed the English tradition
of 1300–50 and the Parisian traditions of Averroism and Buridanism,
as well as the traditions of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
(translated by John Marenbon)
NOTES
1 For a general picture, see Catto and Evans [18.37], Hoenan et al. [18.52], Robson
[18.72] and Courtenay [18.39] 327–80; 384–413, with bibliography. Richard
Billingham’s theological writing has not yet been recovered; that of Nicolas Aston
is unpublished; that of Richard Brinkley is known only in abbreviated form; that of
Godfrey Hardeby, preserved in two manuscripts, has recently been identified by
A.Tabarroni [18.75] 341, 348–53. Thomas Netter’s Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei
ecclesiae catholicae (completed in 1437) has been printed several times: see Stegmüller
[18.27], n. 9055. Thomas Claxton was critical of Wyclif as well as of Ockham and
Duns Scotus. He wrote a commentary on the Sentences and a Quodlibet consisting
of seven questions (which is why it is—wrongly—called Quodlibeta); qq. V and VI
were edited by M. Grabmann in 1943: see Riva [18.71].
2 H.Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
Calif, 1967; F.Smahel, La révolution hussite, une anomalie historique, Paris, 1985.
3 See, on the whole of the period 1350–1500, B.Nardi, Saggi sull’aristotelismo; A
Poppi, Introduzione, Padua, 1970; and the studies by Kristeller listed in the
bibliography. C.B.Schmitt has given especial attention to problems of methodology
in [18.73] and [18.74] ch. 1.
4 See Garin [18.45] 141–77; Vasoli [18.77] 9–27; Murdoch [18.69]. We should
remember, as Kristeller has pointed out, that these mocking comments were not
always taken in earnest.
5 For details, see notes 3 and 4; Maierù [18.67]; Garin [18.44]; Schmitt [18.73] ch.
3; Federici Vescovini [18.41].
6 Gabriel [18.42] 457–83. It seems that it was only in the faculties of arts that a via
(‘method’, later: ‘school’) had to be followed.
7 Fitzgerald [18.10] 18 n. 44, suggests ‘the possible identification of Richard Brinkley
with the author of the Logica contra Ockham’. But I have shown in my study of
Brinkley ([18.11] 266 n. 38, 269 n. 60) that this identification must be rejected.
8 Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei I, 13, 207C: ‘aliter et forte melius potest
dici, quod Deum non esse necessarissime contradictionem includit’; and I, 14,
209E–210A. The ground for this idea is prepared through a long discussion of
esse (being) and necesse esse (necessary being). But the doctrine as a whole and its
consequences rely on a type of metaphysics called by Etienne Gilson a ‘metaphysics
of Exodus’ (in reference to Exodus 3:14), where the primacy of esse is emphasized.
In accord with this metaphysics, Bradwardine defines the first necessary, affirmative
principle (ibid., I, 11–12). Thus it is the necessary divine being which makes its
negation a contradiction. Aston’s thought would leave metaphysics and examine
the question from the logical point of view. But the Parisian thinkers would return
to Bradwardine’s more congenial way of thinking.
9 Ms. Worcester, Cathedral Library, F 65, f. 46va; Oxford, Oriel College, 15, f. 221rb:
‘Aliter arguo quod Deum non esse contradictionem includit, et hoc argumentum
est mihi Achilles. Et arguo sic. Si Deus est, et aliqua propositio est significans praecise
Deum non esse, propositio sic praecise significans contradictionem includit; igitur,
sive Deus sit sive non sit, si aliqua propositio est significans praecise Deum non
esse, ipsa propositio praecise sic significans contradictionem includit. Primo probo
consequentiam. Propositio aliqualiter significans et contradictionem includens,
quacumque mutatione facta ex parte rei, dummodo ipsa sit semper eodem modo
significans praecise, ipsa semper erit contradictionem includens. Verbi gratia, ista
propositio “Rex sedet et nullus rex sedet” contradictionem includit rege existente;
consimiliter…rege non existente… Item probo antecendens…et arguo sic. Antecedens
est una consequentia, quae si non valeat, pono oppositum consequentis stare cum
antecedente, utpote quod Deus est et quod propositio aliqua est significans praecise
Deum non esse, et tamen propositio sic praecise significans contradictionem non
includit…’ See Bender [18.32]; Courtenay [18.39] 343–6; Kaluza [18.54].
10 Godfrey Hardeby has been known for some time as the Augustinensis subtilis of
Oxford. A copy of his commentary of the Sentences is found in Paris, Bibl., nat.,
lat 16535, f. 75–110. Q. III: Utrum Deum non esse contradictionem inferat
manifestam, has been edited by L.A.Kennedy, ‘A fourteenth-century Oxford
Augustinian on the existence of God’, Augustiniana, 36 (1986):28–47. A.
Tabarroni has found a new manuscript of the commentary which has allowed
him to make the identification between Godfrey and Augustinensis subtilis (see
n. 1). On Richard Brinkley, cf. Kaluza [18.11] 230–2, 262–5, nn. 29–33.
11 For a general account, see Kaluza [18.11].
12 Gál and Wood [18.43]; Fitzgerald [18.10] 18–28; Ashworth [18.30] 15fF. We
summarize briefly here the Summa logicae, Treatise I and part of Treatise V, which
is still unpublished.
13 Wyclif [18.4] I, tr. I, c. 1–3. These three chapters are dependent on the On the
Nature of Genus c. 1, attributed to Thomas Aquinas; cf. S.Thomae Aquinatis
Opuscula philosophica, I, ed. J.Perrier, Paris, 1949, pp. 495–9. See also Catto
[18.37]. On double creation, see Augustine, Literal Commentary on Genesis, IV,
iii–xii and V, xx–xxiii; Wyclif [18.5] II, ch. 3 and [18.14] ch. 12, and Kaluza
[18.56], which also discusses univocity and analogy of being.
14 See especially [18.4], I, tr. 1, c. 4–5, and Tractatus de universalibus, passim. For
an account of the doctrine, cf. P.V.Spade, in the Introduction to the translation of
Wyclif’s On Universals [18.14] and A.D.Conti, in the doctrinal study following
his edition [18.2] 298–309. The second distinction is found here and there in the
fourteenth century. Most frequently, it is used to explain the word universale
(taken either as a noun or an adjective). For example, John Buridan recognizes a
causal universal, which he distinguished from the universal as a term: ‘Uno modo
aliquid dicitur universale secundum causalitatem, quia causa est multorum. Et sic
universalissimum in causando esset Deus, et consequenter intelligentiae, et corpora
caelestia… Alio modo docitur universale secundum praedicationem vel
significationem’ (In Metaphysics, I, q. 15, Paris 1518, f. 50va). Making the
distinction between universale and particulare, Ockham (Summa logicae, I, 14;
Opera philosophica, I, p. 49, 47–52) asserts: ‘Indeed, we call the sun a universal
cause, because it is the cause of several things.’ The origin of the distinction is
unknown. The shift in its meaning is also found in Wyclif: ‘From all this it is
clear—I think—that all envy or actual sin is caused by the lack of an ordered love
of universals,…because every such sin consists in a will preferring a lesser good to
a greater good, whereas in general the more universal goods are better’; [18.14]
3, p. 22, 145–50.
15 [18.4] I, tr. I, c. 5, p. 57, 17–20; cf. Conti [18.2] 298. For the whole discussion,
see the texts and studies cited in n. 14. A sign is called ‘universal’ by metaphor:
‘magis remote dicitur universale quam urina dicitur sana’; [18.4], p. 55, 3–6.
Wyclif recognizes three distinctions: essential, real and formal. Formal distinction
is not ‘by reason’ or ‘notional’ but by ‘formal reason’. Conti [18.2] 301–3, indicates
various difficulties raised by the relations between the three types of distinction.
Wyclif s English followers would abandon this part of his teaching.
16 Wyclif [18.5] I, c. VIII–IX, p. 66, defines ‘idea’ thus: ‘ydea est essentialiter natura
divina, et formaliter ratio, secundum quam Deus intelligit creaturas’. The treatise
De ideis (part of the Summa philosophica) is still unpublished. It is probably with
the ‘ontological place’ of the ideas in the Word that Wyclif s partisans put into his
mouth the adage, Qui negat ideas, negat Filium Dei. The adage is almost always
attributed to Augustine and it was certainly coined before the time of Wyclif: it was
known by John of Paris, In I Sent., q. 119; by Master Eckhart, Expos. Gen., I, 5;
Thomas Aquinas, De ver., q. 3, a. 1, sed contra; Albert the Great, In II Sent., d. 35,
a. 7, n. 4; and William of Auxere, S. aur., II, tr. I, c. 1. The formalist ontology of
Francis Meyronnes presents an analogous case. Here the being of essence (the
quiddity, the idea) has a separate formal being, which can become concrete ‘by
chance’. Francis asserts that whoever denies the existence of quiddities must deny
the existence of everything (qui negat quidditates habet omnia negare), Quodl.,
q. 8.
17 Nicholas of Autrecourt provides a third example, but sadly only a sketch of it,
preserved on the last page of his unfinished Exigit ordo, is known.
18 For a general account, see Vignaux [18.78] 265–78, cited here.
19 Cf. Conti [18.2] 226–7, 309–17. The main figures are John Sharp (Rector in
1403), Robert Alyngton (d. 1398), William Milverley, John Tarteys, Roger
Whelpdale (d. 1423), several of whose works have been edited by Conti, and
William Penbygull (d. 1420). See also Hudson and Wilks, From Ockham to
Wyclif.
20 See Spunar [18.26], s.v., and Bartos and Spunar [18.16]. On Znaim, see also
Nuchelmans [18.70].
21 On the history of the school of Buridan, see Michael [18.68] 321–89.
22 Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, II, n. 1042. Art. 1: ‘nulli magistri, baccalari
vel scolares…audeant aliquam propositionem famosam illius actoris cuius librum
legunt dicere simpliciter esse falsam, vel falsam de virtute sermonis…; sed vel
concedant eam, vel sensum verum dividant a sensu falso…; cum sermones sint
recipiendi secundum materiam subiectam; art; 3: ‘nullus dicat quod nulla
propositio sit distinguenda’; art. 4: ‘nullus dicat propositionem nullam esse
concedendam, si non sit vera in eius sensu proprio’; ‘Magis igitur oportet in
affirmando vel negando sermones ad materiam subiectam attendere, quam ad
proprietatem sermonis’; art. 6: ‘nullus asserat absque distinctione vel expositione,
quod Socrates et Plato, vel Deus et creatura nihil sunt’. The distinction between
suppositions had been known and followed for a long time. What was new in the
1340 statute was the distinction in the sense of propositions according to their
‘matter’. Article 1 refers to the Nicomachean Ethics, II, 2, 1104a 3, but the problem
is in fact considered in Book I, c. 3. For the detailed interpretation of this text, see
Kaluza [18.57] 223–55.
23 Full edition in C.Du Plessis D’Argentré, Collectio judiciorum, I–2, Paris, 1728, p.
116a, concl. 1; 116b, concl. 2; 117a, concl. 3; 124a, concl. 4; 125a, concl. 5;
128b, concl. 6.
24 A.Combes, Gerson commentateur dionysien, pp. 305–11; 568–687; Kaluza
[18.55] 50–60; de Libera [18.65]. Gerson’s criticisms of John of Ripa sometimes
follow those of Peter d’Ailly. The formal distinction is also called a distinction ex
natura rei sed non realis, so as to differentiate it from a distinction ex natura rei,
which is not formal. Scotists made either three distinctions (rationis, formalis,
realis), or five (adding a distinctio modalis and a distinctio essentialis), or eight
(adding distinctions: ex natura rei, se totis subiectiva and se totis obiectiva). A
formal distinction pertains between two formalities, that is to say two quiddities
or formal reasons, one of which does not belong to the essence of the other and
each of which is known by a distinct act of the thought—for instance, all the
quiddities, definable or indefinable, which are most specific (humanity),
subalternate (animality), most general (quantity) and transcendent (entity). These
formalities exist before they are known by the human intellect: ante omnem
operationem intellectus. It is for precisely this realism that Gerson criticizes the
Scotists.
25 A.Combes, p. 644ff.
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