BRAMMART, JOHANNES. - Carmelite theologian, born in Aachen in the 14th century and died in Cologne on 8 Sept. 1407. He taught in Paris and Cologne, and from 1384 to 1404 was provincial of his Order in the Low Countries.
His adherence to nominalism did not prevent him from upholding the rationality of faith, denying that it was in conflict with reason, but it had a disastrous effect on other points of his theology. Thus, for B., the evidence of God’s existence is not provided by the arguments from motion and causality, but only by the intuitive vision of God; this vision is insufficient for beatitude and, in an absolute sense, can coexist with sin and eternal unhappiness. The beatific vision is the fruit of Christ’s merits, finite yet extendable to an infinite number of men, and the reward of our virtuous actions, whose supernatural object does not differ essentially from the natural one.
This teaching is preserved in a commentary on the *Liber Sententiarum*, which survives in two manuscript copies, one of which is kept in the library of San Francesco in Wittenberg.