Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/366

 sists of three parts, whereof the first (‘de fautoribus hæreticorum,’ as it is entitled in manuscripts;, p. 229) discusses in seven books the seat of authority in matters of faith, with special reference to the determination of heresy; and the second, in two treatises, is the work on the heresies of John XXII, already mentioned. Part iii., ‘de gestis circa fidem altercantium,’ was planned on a more extensive scale. It was to consist of nine treatises, whereof the first, on the authority of the pope and clergy, in four books, and the second, on the authority of the Roman empire, in three books, are all that remain, and the latter is imperfect. Cardinal Peter d'Ailly knew the titles of two further books of the second treatise, but not their contents; and all the manuscripts that have been examined break off at one point or another in the third book (ib. pp. 230 f.). But Ockham himself has given us the titles of the remaining seven treatises (, ii. 771); and a note prefixed to the ‘Opus nonaginta dierum’ suggests that this work was destined to find its place among them as treatise vi. It may be conjectured that the ‘Compendium errorum’ and the work against Benedict XII were intended to be incorporated as treatises iii. and v., so that only the end of treatise ii. and the whole of iv., vii., viii., and ix. would be unrecovered (cf., pp. 262 ff.; , p. 278, n. 24; , pp. 229–32); but the loss of treatise viii., which dealt with Ockham's own doings, is specially to be regretted. After the death of Lewis IV in 1347, and the election of Charles of Luxemburg, Ockham wrote, either in 1348 or early in 1349 (see, p. 272, n. 1), a ‘Tractatus de electione Caroli IV,’ of which only a fragment has been printed by Constantin von Höfler (Aus Avignon, pp. 14 f.)

Some years earlier, in 1342, Michael da Cesena, who still claimed to be general of the Franciscan order, had died; and from him the seal of office passed into the hands of Ockham, who retained it and styled himself vicar of the order (, ap., l.c., p. 20). But in time he wearied of his situation of increasing isolation, and he sent the ring to the acknowledged general, William Farinerius, with a view to his reconciliation to the church. Clement VI, who had declared in 1343 his earnest desire to effect this, now supplied, 8 June 1349, the required instrument for the purpose, conditional upon the recantation of his more obnoxious doctrines (printed by, viii. 12 f., and vi. 491 f.). That Ockham performed the conditions and obtained absolution is asserted by Tritheim (Opp. Hist. i. 313) and maintained by Wadding; it is, on the other hand, disputed by Raynaldus.

Clement's document, as well as Ockham's tract, on the election of Charles IV disprove the statement that the friar died so early as 10 April 1347 which is made by Glassberger (p. 184) on the authority, no doubt, of a gravestone placed with others bearing equally incorrect inscriptions at a later date (see, p. 127). His death cannot have occurred before 1349, but it is unlikely that he long survived that year. He died in the convent of his order at Munich, and was buried there (, l.c.) Wadding (vol. viii. 10 ff.) notes and corrects several other erroneous statements with respect to the time and place of his death.

Ockham's eminence lies in his work in logic, in philosophy, and in political theory. In the first two he powerfully influenced the schools of his day; in the last he profoundly agitated the church. Carl von Prantl considers (iii. 328) the peculiar characteristic of Ockham's logic to lie in the fact, not that he was the second founder of nominalism, but that he made the method of logic known as the ‘Byzantine logic’ his fundamental basis. Prantl assumes that the so-called ‘Byzantine logic’ was made known to the west in the ‘Synopsis’ bearing the name of Psellus, a writer of the eleventh century. Powerful arguments have, however, been adduced to prove that the ‘Synopsis’ of Psellus is in fact only a fifteenth-century translation into Greek of the ‘Summulæ’ of Petrus Hispanus, who lived in the thirteenth century. It therefore follows that Prantl's theory that Ockham derived his method from the ‘Byzantine logic’ in the ‘Synopsis’ of Psellus must be considered at least doubtful (see C. Thurot in the Revue Archéologique, new ser. x. 267–281, [1864], and Revue Critique, 1867, i. 199–202, ii. 4–11; and compare Valentin Rose in Hermes, ii. 146 f, 1867, and, i. 404 n.) But if it was not Byzantine logic by which Ockham was permeated, it was not the less a new method of logical treatment which came into currency in the middle of the thirteenth century through the works of William Shyreswood or Sherwood, and of Petrus Hispanus, and which left its impression upon Duns Scotus and others of his contemporaries. This method, in the form in which it was expounded by Ockham, may be said to have proceeded on the supposition that logic deals not with things nor with thoughts, but with terms arbitrarily imposed by ourselves. When we use certain terms in logic for the sake of convenience in drawing out a syllogism, we neither assert