Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/263

Rh but appeal is always open to the church, to the whole society, itself. The only difference in the results of the two theorists is that Marsiglio is confident, while Ockham hesitates, about the unerring sagacity of this final arbiter.

But there is, as we have said, a fundamental distinction between the way in which they approach their subject. Marsiglio proceeds from purely philosophical reasoning; theology he proves that he knew well, but he is not primarily a theologian. He is in orders, but he is neither monk nor friar. Ockham on the other hand starts from the point of view of a theologian and of a Franciscan. Now it is well known that the fact which of late years had roused the great body of the Franciscans to opposition to John the Twenty-Second, was the latter's condemnation of their newly proclaimed doctrine of the necessity of evangelical poverty. From that day John became in their eyes a heretic; and although most of them had yielded to the papal threats in 1322-1324, yet the general of their order, Michael of Cesena, and a number of others, passed over to swell the ranks which supported Lewis the Bavarian. Among these was Ockham. It was thus a purely theological dispute, almost a mere matter of partisanship, from which he advanced to combat the general assumptions of the papacy. Once grant the doctrine that the clergy are bound to hold no property, and the whole territorial fabric of the Roman church falls to the ground. From this it is but a step, if it is not essentially involved in the same principle, to refuse to the clergy any temporal jurisdiction or in fact any temporal position whatsoever. With Marsiglio on the contrary the doctrine of evangelical poverty is the consequence, lot the premise, of his argument; it flows inevitably from the larger doctrine of the spiritual character of the clergy. Which of the two speculators had the stronger influence upon posterity has been variously estimated; but both in different ways left an unbroken line of successors until the enduring elements in their aims found a partial realisation the religious revolution of the sixteenth century.