In many respects Mirecourt's positions resembled those of Holkot, by whom he may have been influenced.Īnother victim of disciplinary action by the authorities of the University of Paris was Nicolas of Autrecourt, who was condemned to burn publicly, in November 1347, his letters to Bernard of Arezzo and his treatise Exigit ordo executionis. His skeptical treatment of the arguments of traditional theology led to a condemnation by the theological faculty at Paris of articles taken from his lectures. One of the first Parisian theologians to embrace Ockham's doctrines was John of Mirecourt, a Cistercian monk who lectured on Peter Lombard's Sentences in 1344 –1345. It was at Paris, more than at Oxford, that Ockham's influence led, after an initial resistance, to establishment of a relatively stable, and in some respects scientifically fruitful, philosophical school that endured and spread through central Europe in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Other Oxford teachers influenced by Ockham, and particularly by his logical methods, included Richard Swineshead ("the Calculator"), John Dumbleton, William Heytesbury, and Richard Billingham. 1290 –1349) reacted against what he regarded as a new Pelagianism embodied in the Ockhamist interpretation of revealed theology, but he used Ockham's logical techniques to draw deterministic consequences from the doctrine of divine omnipotence, invoking the authority of Augustine for his views. Christian dogma, for Holkot, was accepted by an act of will, on the authority of the church. Holkot was an outspoken nominalist who minced no words in stating that theology is not a science and that its doctrines can in no way be demonstrated or even comprehended by human reason. 1349), a Dominican theologian who lectured at Oxford around 1330 and later taught at Cambridge. 1349), a Franciscan who had studied with Ockham, and of Robert Holkot (d. The influence of Ockham's logic and of his nominalistic critique of the thirteenth-century metaphysical syntheses of philosophy and theology was exhibited at Oxford in the work of Adam Wodeham (d. The second phase, less directly associated with Ockham's own teachings, commenced around 1350 and involved what may be described as a reconstruction of philosophy, and of theology as well, on foundations compatible with Ockham's empiricism and nominalism. The first phase, occurring between 13, was marked by the rapid spread of Ockham's doctrines and method among the theologians and philosophers teaching at the universities of Oxford and Paris, where Ockham's logical techniques were used in criticism of the older scholastic tradition. One may distinguish two main phases of this movement of fourteenth-century thought. The Ockhamist or nominalist movement was known in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the "modern way" ( via moderna ), and was contrasted with the "old way" ( via antiqua ) associated with thirteenth-century Scholasticism. With these reservations one may, in a general sense, attach Ockham's name to the movement of thought that, in the fourteenth century, closed out the medieval enterprise of synthesizing Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology and initiated new lines of development that led toward the scientific empiricism of the seventeenth century. There is little historical basis for speaking of an Ockhamist school, since Ockham had scarcely any avowed disciples nor was the critical attitude toward natural theology initiated by him, although his logical criteria of demonstration and evidence undoubtedly gave it a powerful implementation. "Ockhamism" is a term used by some historians of medieval philosophy to characterize the critical and skeptical attitude toward natural theology and traditional metaphysics that became prevalent in the fourteenth century and is ascribed to the influence of William of Ockham (c.
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