GABRIEL BIEL. - German theologian and philosopher, known as “the last of the Scholastics.” B. was born at Speyer between 1410 and 1425 and died at Schönbuch in 1495. He studied at Heidelberg and Erfurt. Around 1460 he was in Mainz as cathedral preacher. There he vigorously opposed Archbishop Dietrich of Isenburg, who had been deposed and excommunicated by Pius II. On this occasion Biel wrote a Defensorium obedientiae ad Pium papam II. In 1468 he entered the Brethren of the Common Life of the Windesheim congregation, later becoming its prior. Count Eberhard of Württemberg, a supporter of Archbishop Adolph of Nassau against Dietrich, appointed Biel as capitular provost of Urach. At the count’s request, Biel began theological lectures at the University of Tübingen in 1484; the university had been founded by Eberhard in 1477. In 1492 he retired as provost to St Peter’s in Einsiedel near Schönbuch.
Biel’s major work is the Epitome et collectorium circa quatuor Sententiarum libros (published posthumously in 1499 but left incomplete, lacking the treatises on the sacraments of Orders and Matrimony). In it the author explicitly declares that he takes Ockham as his guide, and his doctrines were never more clearly expounded. The book became one of the most widely used theological manuals in Germany. Alongside the nominalist ideas already advocated in the preceding century by renowned theologians, it contains assertions that would later, in a certain sense, inspire the Protestant Reformation—especially on justification and the efficacy of the sacrament of Penance. The doctrine of predestination, reduced almost to pure divine foreknowledge, shows how little this author, emerging in a period of scholastic decline, reflects the sound teaching of the Church’s leading theologians. Nevertheless, he was never condemned by Catholic authorities, although Protestants have improperly treated him almost as a precursor of Luther.
Biel also composed a Lectura super canone Missae, also published under the title Sacri canonis Missae expositio resolutissima, litteralis et mystica (Reutlingen, 1488), a lengthy and diffuse but not uninteresting work. His sermons, aimed at an educated audience, were printed several times (Tübingen 1500, Hagenau 1510, Basel 1519).