Ockham

Ockham (more usually in the Latinised form OCCAM), WILLIAM OF, surnamed Doctor Singularis et Invincibilis, a famous 14th-century schoolman, was born in England, at Ockham in Surrey, but when is not known; the date usually given is 1270 or 1280. He entered the Franciscan order, and studied at Oxford and Paris, being a pupil, afterwards the rival, of Duns Scotus. It seems not to be correct that he took part in the contest between Philip the Fair of France and Boniface VIII., the famous Disputatio super Potestate Praelatis Ecclesiæ . . . commissa, usually attributed to him, having been probably written by another. But in the revolt of the Franciscans against Pope John XXII. at Perugia in 1322 he did take part, being one of the most active in the movement. After four months' imprisonment at Avignon he repaired to Munich, and found there a defender in the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, whom he in his turn defended stoutly against the temporal pretensions of the pope. In 1342 he seems to have become general of the Franciscans. Besides insisting on the independent divine right of temporal rulers, and so in some measure clearing the way for modern constitutional ideas, Ockham won greater fame as the reviver of Nominalism (q.v.), for which he won a final victory over the rival Realism, chiefly by setting forth its real meaning in plain and simple language. He seems to have died at Munich in 1349. His views on civil government are expounded in Super Potestate Summi Pontificis octo Questionum Decisiones (1339-42) and Tractatus de Jurisdictione Imperatoris in Causis Matrimonialibus, his philosophical views in Summa Logices (1488) and the commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, and his theological in this last and the Tractatus de Sacramento Altaris (1516). See T. M. Lindsay in Brit. Quart. Review (1872).