OCCAM, William of - Page from the *Dialogus inter militem et clericum*, part of the *Dialogus inter magistrum et discipulum*, in the English version - London, British Museum, ms. Harleian 1900, f. 16 (beginning of the 15th century).
via modernorum on which O. boldly ventured until he became its leading representative. These fourteenth-century modernists polemicized especially against those who sought in Aristotelian metaphysics the rational justification of dogma and “qui nituntur de Aristotele heretico facere catholicum” (F. Pelster, Heinrich von Harclay, in Miscell. F. Ehrle, I, Rome 1924, p. 351). John Lutterell, a follower of the via antiqua, having been removed from the chancellorship of the University, appealed to the Pope in Avignon and at the end of 1323 denounced a list of errors drawn from O.’s commentary on Book I of the *Sentences*. The accused, who went to the papal curia the following year to defend himself, countered the copy of his work with his own autograph notebooks. Nevertheless, in 1326 a special commission censured 56 propositions, without however declaring him a heretic.
The trial was not yet concluded, and O. was forbidden to leave Avignon before it was finished. But in May 1327, Cesena (v.), general of the Franciscans, and Bonagratia of Bergamo, a protagonist in the “Question of Poverty,” arrived at the curia, the Englishman was persuaded by the counterfeiters to flee and to form an alliance “with them.” With this flight a new period began in his life and literary activity. On 9 June 1328 the three fugitives reached at Pisa Louis the Bavarian, who was in conflict with Pope John XXII (v.). O. is credited with having said to the Emperor: “You defend me with the sword, I will defend you with the pen.” Three days earlier the Pope had issued on 6 June a severe condemnation against them, which was renewed on 5 April of the following year. Having interrupted his teaching of theology, O. threw himself into the struggle that Michael of Cesena had undertaken against the Pope over the question of poverty, rendering great assistance to the imperial cause, which was defended by John of Jandun (v.), Marsilius of Padua (v.), with whom the rebel Franciscans finally allied themselves.
It is believed that the proclamation was dictated by him
bearing important consequences for the renewal of physics, eliminating occult qualities, giving impetus to observation and studying natural phenomena from a quantitative and mathematical point of view.
Although O.’s political writings derive their impetus from the schism within the Franciscan Order over the question of poverty and from the conflict between Empire and Papacy at a particular historical moment, nevertheless he does not limit himself to repeating the usual arguments drawn from the political literature of the time. Rather, there emerge in them, as already in the work of Marsilius of Padua, motifs that go well beyond the contingent events that occasioned them.
Among his political writings should be noted the *Opus nonaginta dierum* (composed in three months during 1333; it discusses some bulls of John XXII and defends the doctrine of Michael of Cesena on the poverty of Christ); the other polemical writings: *De dogmatibus papae Johannis XXII* (1334); *Contra Johannem XXII* (1335); *Compendium errorum Papae* (1338); *Brevilogium de potestate papae* (ed. L. Baudry, Paris 1937); and especially the *Dialogus inter magistrum et discipulum de imperatorum et pontificum potestate* (composed between 1333–34; it justifies the deposition of John XXII by Louis the Bavarian and discusses the infallibility of the Church, the relations between Pope and Council, the authority of the Pope and of the Empire, etc.); *Allegationes de potestate imperiali* (1338); *Octo quaestiones super dignitate et potestate papali* (1340–42; both against the doctrine of papal authority over the Emperor). Ecclesiastical institutions, like political institutions, which are governed by decretals and civil laws, according to O., have in practical life the same value that in speculative life is had by universal concepts. And just as these serve to unify and order experience in its ever-new inseparability, so ecclesiastical institutions have no other function than to gather believers into a visible unity and to instruct and bring them closer to the sources of Revelation and Grace (the Sacraments). But the religious life of Christianity springs from the fervor of the believer in the effort to realize within himself the kingdom of God, that is, from the assistance promised by Christ to the community of the faithful (Dial. inter mag. et disc., I, 1, 5, chaps. 4–5; III, tr. 1, 1, 1, chap. 17, tr. 2, 1, 1, chap. 23, 1, 3, chap. 7; Brevil. de pot. papae, II, chaps. 17–19).
From this point of view, adopting the doctrines of the “Spirituals” with whom O. had met in Avignon, he combats the double thesis of the supremacy of the Papacy over the Empire and of the plenitude of power of the head of the Church, which, in his view, would have transformed the evangelical law, which is a law of freedom, into a law of servitude, such as, according to St. Paul, was the ancient law (Dial., III, tr. 1, 1, 5–7, and 12). With this latter theory his dissent from the doctrine of the Church deepened and risked becoming irreparable, a prohibition that later became more evident when the reformers of the 16th century drew from O.’s occasionalist theories the extreme consequences that he perhaps had not foreseen.