WILLIAM OF WARE. - English Franciscan, perhaps the teacher of Duns Scotus, d. c. 1300. He was probably bachelor of theology at Oxford and there commented on the *Sentences* c. 1290; then doctor at Paris (contradicted by F. Pelster, *Handschriftliches zu Skotus* etc. in *Franziskanische Studien*, 10 [1929], pp. 1-32).
Of his *Commentary on the Sentences*, which survives in several manuscripts, some questions on the Immaculate Conception have been published (Quaracchi 1904); *De unitate Dei* (ed. P. Muscat, in *Antonianum*, 2 [1927], pp. 335-50); on the motive of the Incarnation (ed. J. M. Bissen, in *Etudes Françaises*, 46 [1934], pp. 218-22). William of Ware affirms his independence from Aristotle, especially regarding the theory of spiritual realities, but abandons many theses of medieval Augustinianism (necessity of illumination for intellectual knowledge; hylemorphic composition in spiritual substances). He admits a certain distinction between essence and being.