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William Ockham's Political Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Stephen Chak Tornay
Stephen Chak Tornay
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Extract

William Ockham's interests were turned to political philosophy by the circumstances of his life. As early as 1323, he became entangled in the controversy of his order on evangelical poverty with the pope, John XXII, who by his bull, Ad conditorem canonum, issued on December 8, 1322, withdrew from the Franciscans the right of holding property in the name of the Holy See, granted to them by Innocent IV in 1245, and by Nicholas III in 1279. The case seems trifling, yet it involved the interpretation of the life of Christ himself, whom the sons of St. Francis tried to imitate by substituting the use of property for its ownership. The “Spirituals” stood for the original views of the order and considered the papal bull as dragging them down to worldliness and abasement. Ockham in a sermon delivered at Bologna attacked the pope's conception of apostolical poverty. John XXII, in a bull dated December 1, 1323, and addressed to the bishops of Ferrara and Bologna, ordered his arrest and held him in Avignon for four years for trial. In August, 1325, a commission of six theologians, one of whom was Durandus de St. Porciano, at that time bishop of Meaux, was appointed to investigate his theological and philosophical doctrines. In 1326 the commission declared fifty-one articles taken from his Commentary to the Sentences as heretical. On April 13, 1328, Ockham signed the protest of the general of the Franciscan order, Michael Cesena, also under arrest, against the papal bull of 1322, which condemned the tenet of evangelical poverty. The night of May 24, 1328, brought a dramatic turn in his life. He succeeded in escaping from the papal prison in the company of Cesena and Bonagratia of Bergamo, the famous civil and canon lawyer, and fled to Pisa to seek the protection of Louis of Bavaria, emperor of Germany and archenemy of the pope.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , September 1935 , pp. 214 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1935

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References

1 Because of his moderate and impartial attitude in the conflict between emperor and pope he was called later by Thomasius, in his Historia contentionis inter Imperium et Sacerdotium (1722), p. 107Google Scholar, “adulator, homo ambidexter, neutralista, timidus … pessimum genus hominum ad maximas turbas in Republica excitandas,” etc. Of. Sullivan, James, “Marsiglio of Padua and William of Okham,” American Historical Review, II (1897), p. 606.Google Scholar

2 Dialogus, in Goldast, M.'s Monarchia (Frankfurt, 1614), II, 893Google Scholar, 1.3: “Omnes homines natura sunt pares: puta in his, quae pertinent ad corporis sustentationem et prolis generationem, sicut de matrimonio contrahendo, vel virginitate servanda, vel aliquo huiusmodi.”

All quotations in this article are original translations of the author.

3 Ibid..: “Homo homini obedire non tenetur, sed soli Deo.”

4 Ibid.., p. 924m, 1.60: “Generale pactum societatis humanae.”

5 Ibid.., p. 934, 1.15: “Quod omnes tangit debet tractari per omnes.”

6 Dunning, W. A., A History of Political Theories (New York, 1902) I, 249Google Scholar: “… ut omnia possit quae non mint expresse contra legem Dei neque ius naturae.”

7 Defensor Pacis, I, 12Google Scholar, in Goldast, 's Monarchia, II, 169Google Scholar: “… civium universalitatem aut eius valentiorem partem per suam electionem seu voluntatem in. generali civium congregations per sermonem expressam.…”

8 Speech of July 11, 1343: “Hoe dicimus propter illum Guillelmum Occam qui diversos errores contra potestatem et auetoritatem sancte sedis docuit et docet, et ab illo Guillelmo didicit et necepit errores ille Marsilius et multi alli” (Ibid.. p. 416).

9 Brampton, K. C., The De Imperatorum and Pontificum potestate of William of Ockham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), p. xxvii.Google Scholar

10 Dialogus, p. 923, 11. 25ff.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.., p. 924, 1.60 and Octo Quaest., p. 386, 11.5ff.

12 Ibid.., I, liber II, c. 22.

13 Ibid.., p. 932, 1.64.

14 Ibid.., pp. 604, 605. Marsiglio excluded women.

15 Dunning, , op. cit., I, 252.Google Scholar

16 Brampton, , op. cit., chap. xii, 1.Google Scholar

17 Brampton, , op. cit., II, 1, 3.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.., chap, xx, 1.

19 Ibid.., chap, xix, 1.

20 Ibid.., chap, xv, 1.

21 Ibid.., chap, ix, 1.

22 Ibid.., ix, 1.

23 Ibid.., xxvi, 1.

24 Brampton, op. cit., xii, 1.Google Scholar

25 Ibid.., xi, 1.

26 Ibid.., iv, 5.

27 Ibid.., vi, 1.

28 Brampton, op. cit., viii, 1.Google Scholar

29 Ibid.., xxvi, 1.

30 Ibid.., Prooem. 6.