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OCKHAM AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES
The English Franciscan William of Ockham (c. 1285-1347) was one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in late medieval Europe. Recent scholarship has shown his profound impact on logic, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of language in the late Middle Ages and beyond. Following a dispute between the papacy and his Order, Ockham abandoned his academic career and devoted himself to anti-papal polemics. Twentieth-century scholars have produced divergent and often contradictory interpretations of Ockham as a political thinker: a destructive critic of the medieval Church, a medieval Catholic traditionalist, a Franciscan ideologue and a constitutional liberal. This book offers a fresh reappraisal of Ockham’s political thought by approaching his anti-papal writings as a series of polemical responses. His aggressive and persistent attack on the papacy emerges in this study as an attempt to rescue the ethical foundations of Christian society from the political influences of heretical popes.
TAKASHI SHOGIMEN is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
PREFACE
History can only be written in the context in which a historian is situated, and it continues to be revised as we seek to understand the past as well as the present in the context of our own times. This book was born out of a conviction that William of Ockham’s polemical activities in response to the ecclesiastical and political issues of his day are germane to our times.
The main question that runs through this book is: how and why did this fourteenth-century Franciscan theologian come to the view that contemporary papal government was tyrannical, and what did he endeavour to achieve through a series of anti-papal polemical responses? The world in which Ockham lived and the problem that he tackled may appear totally alien to us, but I do not think that they are entirely dissimilar to ours. In our globalised world, the forces of states, markets and international corporations dominate our public and private lives, and some commentators have perceived a very real threat to the fabric of our social and moral life. Restoring civil society is seen as imperative by political, social and moral commentators from across the political spectrum. To this contemporary problem, Ockham’s polemical concerns form an intriguing parallel. At the root of what he perceived as the problem of papal heresy, Ockham identified a serious social and moral problem: the dissolution of Christian fellowship. For Ockham, excessive politicisation of medieval ecclesiastical government undermined the moral foundations and social solidarity of the Christian collective life. Hopefully, the voice of Ockham’s conscience that I have endeavoured to re-create here will not only interest specialist readers concerned with the modern historiography of European political thought, but also prompt general readers to reconsider our own perspectives on the moral and social dimension of our collective life.
Re-creating the past, however, is a daunting task. David Knowles wrote: ‘the historian is not a judge, still less a hanging judge’. More recently, Quentin Skinner has added that the historian should serve as ‘a recording angel’. I think this addition is redundant, since it is probably impossible to serve as ‘a recording angel’. In Ockham’s words, it is naturally impossible to obtain an intuitive (and therefore evident) knowledge of the past. Describing past events is difficult enough; recovering past ideas is even more problematic. Friedrich Schiller wrote: “as soon as a soul speaks, ah . . . the soul no longer speaks! (Spricht die Seele, ach, spricht die Seele nicht mehr!).’ An idea, as soon as it is written or spoken, becomes independent of the author, and enjoys its own fate. The estrangement of an idea’s impact on the readers, present and future, from its authorial intention is indeed a paradox in the history of ideas. William of Ockham died in 1347. Some six hundred and fifty years later, has this study successfully made his soul, which ‘no longer speaks’, speak once again?
This book has grown from my Sheffield University doctoral dissertation, for which I received a PhD in 1998. The completion of the book owes much to generous support and assistance from a number of individuals and institutions. David Luscombe supervised my doctoral dissertation and has acted as the academic editor for this book. His calm and scholarly judgements on my work have always been incisive and inspiring. Stephen Conway has kindly read and commented on the entire draft of the dissertation and of the book at various stages and helped me patiently to improve my prose. David and Megan Luscombe’s and Stephen Conway’s unfailing support in my personal life I shall never forget. Seiichi Sumi first introduced me to the study of Ockham’s political thought at the initial stage of my research career. Since the inception of my academic career, I have been greatly inspired by Michiko Arima, Constantin Fasolt and Katsumi Nakamura. And I am heavily indebted to Janet Coleman, Barrie and Narda Dobson and Cary Nederman for encouragement they have offered me in good times and bad.
I have benefited from stimulating conversations with a number of scholars in the field of medieval political and religious thought, including Antony Black, Stephen Lahey, Ian Levy and Stephen McGrade. Brian Tierney gave me generous advice by correspondence. It has always been a pleasure to exchange ideas with the members of Politicas: the Society for the Study of Medieval Political Thought, at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University and at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. I have also been encouraged and helped in a variety of ways by friends and colleagues including Shin Chiba, Conal Condren, Fred Dallmayr, Gillian Evans, Hajime Fujiwara, Paul Hayward, Thomas Izbicki, John Kilcullen, Yoshiaki Kobayashi, John Marenbon, Koichiro Matsuda, Constant Mews, Jiirgen Miethke, Francis Oakley, the late Heiko Oberman, Anthony Parel, Thomas Turley, Morimichi and Kiyomi Watanabe and Stella and the late Michael Wilks. I was fortunate to be introduced to medieval history by the medievalists of the Department of History in the University of Sheffield including R. I. Moore, Edmund King, the late Simon Walker and William Aird.
My research has been conducted in five places: the North Library of the British Museum; the Rare Books Room of Cambridge University Library; the Special Collection Department of the Brotherton Library in the University of Leeds; the Main Library of the University of Sheffield; and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in the University of Toronto. To all of these institutions I owe a huge debt of gratitude. An Overseas Research Student Award by the Committee of ViceChancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom assisted my postgraduate research financially at an important stage; and election into a Research Fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1997-2000 provided me with an ideal environment in which to conduct research beyond the PhD. I am also indebted to Ian Hunter, Peter Cryle and members of the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland for electing me a Research Associate of the Centre. At the final stages, my colleagues at the Department of History in the University of Otago have supported my work in many ways. I am also grateful to Simon Whitmore, Michael Watson and Sarah Parker for their skilful management of the publication process.
The book includes sections of the following previously published articles: ‘Ockham’s Vision of the Primitive Church’, in R. N. Swanson, ed., Studies in Church History 33: The Church Retrospective (Woodbridge, 1997); ‘William of Ockham and Guido Terreni’, in History of Political Thought 19 (1998); “The Relationship between Theology and Canon Law: Another Context of Political Thought in the Early Fourteenth Century’, in Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999); ‘From Disobedience to Toleration: William of Ockham and the Medieval Discourse on Fraternal Correction’, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52 (2001); ‘Aquinas, Ockham and the Negative Authority of Conscience’, online publication by Instituto Universitario Virtual Santo Tomas, 2003; ‘William of Ockham and Conceptions of Heresy, c.1250-c.1350’, in Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen and Cary J. Nederman, eds., Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2005); and ‘Defending Christian Fellowship: William of Ockham and the Crisis of the Medieval Church’, in History of Political Thought 26 (2005). I am grateful for permission to use them in the present work.
Finally, my parents, Tadashi and Hiroko Shogimen, have always given me unfailing support throughout the long years far away from my own country. Had it not been for my wife, Daniéle, my academic and personal life would have been less fulfilled. This book is, in a sense, the result of our collaborative work. Our twins, Anne-Sophie Miyuki and Dominic Hiroshi, despite their youth, have expressed enthusiastic interest in this book project; without them, it would have been completed in half the time, but its execution would have been less meaningful.
T.S.
INTRODUCTION
At Whitsun in May 1334, the Franciscan theologian and Oxford philosopher William of Ockham (c.1285—1347) took sheltered behind Ludwig of Bavaria, a claimant to the imperial throne, and wrote a letter to the Franciscan general chapter at Assisi. At the beginning of this letter, he explained how and why he had withdrawn obedience from Pope John XXII, fled from Avignon and joined Michael of Cesena, the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, who had been in dispute with the pope over the orthodoxy of the Franciscan doctrine of poverty. Michael of Cesena, who had himself been summoned to Avignon in December 1327, was convinced that the pope had fallen into heresy by rejecting the orthodoxy of the Franciscan doctrine, and demanded that Ockham, who was then in Avignon for an inquisition into his theological and philosophical writings, examine the papal bulls Ad conditorem canonum, Cum inter nonnullos, and Quia quorundam. Difficult as it was for Ockham to believe that the holder of the supreme ecclesiastical office could promulgate heretical doctrines, he studied the bulls. Contrary to his expectations, these papal decrees appeared, in the eyes of the Venerabilis inceptor, to be documents from the pen of a heretic: “In these [bulls] I found a great many things that were heretical, erroneous, silly, ridiculous, fantastic, insane, and defamatory, contrary and likewise plainly adverse to orthodox faith, good morals, natural reason, certain experience, and fraternal charity.’
This discovery determined the course of the rest of Ockham’s life. He abandoned his philosophical and theological speculations and devoted himself to anti-papal polemics in Munich under the protection of Ludwig until his death in 1347. The purpose of this book is to offer ahistorical account of Ockham’s polemical writings. It is intended to decipher Ockham’s motives and theoretical solutions to the ecclesiastical and political problems that he identified in contemporary Christendom.
Had Ockham not been in Avignon in 1328, perhaps we would never have known him as a political thinker and an ecclesiastical dissenter. Until 1324, Ockham was a leading scholar at Oxford in such fields as logic, metaphysics and natural philosophy. His anti-realism, which has conventionally been described as terminism or nominalism, made his logical, metaphysical and theological enquiries innovative and idiosyncratic. Before his visit to Avignon he had not, as far as we can determine, written anything of a political nature. According to the conventional account, however, his summoning to the papal court in 1324 changed the course of his life; the orthodoxy of his theological and philosophical writings was officially questioned. John Luttrell, a Thomist who had been Chancellor of the University of Oxford until 1322, accused Ockham of heresy; and this accusation brought him to the papal court. Luttrell produced and submitted to the papacy a list of fifty-six heterodox propositions, and subsequently Ockham was summoned to the papal court and subjected to a formal inquisition. But the enquiry into Ockham’s doctrinal orthodoxy coincided with the period when John XXII was engaged in a furious battle of words with the Franciscan Order. Ockham eventually fled from Avignon with Michael of Cesena and others, including the Franciscan canonist Bonagratia of Bergamo; they went first to Pisa and then to the imperial court in Munich. Ockham was excommunicated in June 1328.”
This dramatic story, however, has been subject to revision in the past two decades and its truth remains largely uncertain. Recent biographical accounts question whether Ockham was actually ‘summoned’ to the papal court in 1324. He may have visited Avignon as a result of acommission from his order to teach there, and it has been argued that he was not ‘summoned’ to the court until 1326.’ According to another account, he knew that an enquiry awaited him at the papal court, but visited Avignon voluntarily in 1324 since he was optimistic about its outcome.* Thus, the reason why Ockham left England for Avignon is a contentious issue. But how and why he was subjected to a formal inquisition also remains puzzling. We know that John Luttrell orchestrated it; however, we are uncertain whether Ockham was the only person to be implicated. Further, Luttrell’s motives for accusing Ockham of heresy are unclear. According to the traditional account, Luttrell questioned Ockham’s doctrinal orthodoxy while he was still Chancellor of the University of Oxford; this resulted in Luttrell’s defeat and resignation from the Chancellorship. The resentful Luttrell appealed to the papal court for a ruling in the dispute; subsequently, Ockham was summoned.° This understanding has been challenged by another view: that Luttrell’s departure from Oxford had nothing to do with Ockham. According to this, Luttrell became interested in and suspicious of Ockham’s speculative writings in order to win John XXII’s favour. An undated letter from Stephen of Kettleburg advises Luttrell to visit Avignon and produce two theological treatises, since the pope desires able theologians to be based at the papal court.° Hence, there was no doctrinal dispute between Ockham and Luttrell while the latter was still Chancellor of the University of Oxford. In short, Ockham’s Avignon period remains unclear. However, one thing is certain: Ockham departed from Avignon with his Franciscan colleagues in May 1328 and withdrew obedience from the allegedly heretical pope.
Ockham’s flight to Munich, however, meant that he became embroiled in yet another conflict of a political nature. Munich was a stronghold of Ludwig of Bavaria, who was engaged in a dispute with John XXII over the imperial election. At the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the imperial throne was held by two houses: Hapsburg and Luxemburg. In 1273, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected, and he was succeeded by his son Albert I. In 1308 the imperial throne passed to Henry VII of the house of Luxemburg. But in the election of 1314, the majority of electoral princes voted for Ludwig of Bavaria, who was head of the house of Wittelsbach. Two of the electors preferred a Hapsburg candidate, and civil war broke out between the imperial claimants.
In 1317, Pope John XXII declared that the imperial throne was vacant. Meanwhile, Ludwig defeated his rival at the battle of Mthldorf and invaded Italy. Pope John excommunicated Ludwig in 1324. In 1328 Ludwig occupied Rome and had himself acclaimed emperor by the Roman people. Furthermore, the imperial camp made an official declaration that the imperial authority was derived directly from God, not from the pope. Ever since the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, the emperorship had been seen as a gift of the papacy. Now it was declared that no papal approval was necessary in the process of electing the emperor. Imperial propagandists rejected the view that the papacy was the source of legitimate imperial authority.’
Thus the dissident Franciscans’ withdrawal from papal obedience coincided with the height of the dispute between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. The circumstances in which Ockham began his polemical career are complex: the dispute between the papacy and the Franciscans, the conflict between Pope John XXII and Ludwig of Bavaria, and Ockham’s own subjection to a formal inquisition all converged on the refuge of the so-called ‘Michaelist’ Franciscans in Munich. Mapping Ockham’s polemical activities in this political and ecclesiastical matrix is a challenge that confronts every student of his political thought.
During his sojourn in Munich, Ockham’s literary output was not only massive but also covered a wide range of concerns. Indeed, Ockham’s interests changed over time and none of his anti-papal writings summarised the whole range of issues that he discussed. Ockham’s polemical career began with the so-called poverty controversy. Perhaps after collaborating on a series of appeals against John XXII, Ockham produced Opus nonaginta dierum (The Work of Ninety Days), probably in three months sometime in the period 1332-4. This extensive rejoinder to John XXII’s bull Quia vir reprobus was Ockham’s first independent contribution to the Franciscan poverty controversy. The Letter to the General Chapter of the Franciscan Order at Assisi, which was cited at the beginning of the present chapter, was an apologia for his anti-papal polemics, written in spring 1334.” Probably in the same year, he began the gigantic Part I of Dialogus (The Dialogue).'° This book is a systematic and comprehensive account of the idea of heresy and heretics, with an extensive discussion of papal heresy. Already at this stage, Ockham had shifted his focus from Franciscan poverty to more generic questions on heresy. In 1335-6, he wrote a shorter treatise known as Tractatus contra Ioannem (A Treatise Against John),'' which demonstrated that Pope John XXII was a heretic. In early 1337, he wrote Compendium errorum Ioannis Papae XXII (A Summary of Pope John XXII’s Errors) ,'~ which enumerated doctrinal errors in the papal bulls. In late 1337, Ockham produced another short treatise, Tractatus contra Benedictum (A Treatise against Benedict),'* which attacked the heresy of the new pope, Benedict XII. In this work, however, Ockham shifted his focus from Franciscan poverty to the nature of papal power.
The Contra Benedictum was a work of transition: Ockham not only attacked a particular pope but also discussed the nature of ecclesiastical and temporal government at a conceptual level. Thereafter, Ockham’s interest shifted to the latter. The major contribution at this stage was Part II of the Dialogus. Tract I tackled various issues concerning papal government; the unfinished Tract II conceptualised imperial government. Ockham also produced a number of shorter works. Octo quaestiones de potestate pape (Eight Questions on the Power of the Pope),'* written in 1340-1, was, despite its title, a systematic account of the nature of temporal government; Breviloguium de principatu tyrannico (A Short Treatise on Tyrannical Government),'> written in 1342, is a passionate attack on the papal misconception of the doctrine of plenitudo potestatis (‘plenitude of power’) and a defence of the independence of temporal rulership from the papacy. His ‘swan song’ was De imperatorum et pontificum potestate (On the Power of Emperors and Popes),"° which summarised his polemical contentions on a wide range of issue from Franciscan poverty to the relationship between papal and imperial government, without delving into more generic questions such as papal heresy and ideal constitutions.”
These works did not attract equal attention among late medieval intellectuals. This is borne out in the manuscript tradition of the works. According to H. S. Offler, for six of Ockham’s polemical works only a single manuscript is known; and three of these are incomplete. Only two of the polemical works seem to have been fairly widely circulated.'* For the Octo quaestiones de potestate pape, over a dozen manuscripts are extant.'” The Dialogus survives in some thirty manuscripts. ° Clearly, the transmission of the majority of Ockham’s political works was poor. Nonetheless, as far as the two more widely circulated works are concerned, we may discern their influence on following generations. Pierre d’Ailly drew heavily on III Dialogus If when he discussed infidel dominium, the Romans’ right to elect popes and natural law.*' D’Ailly also composed an abridged version of the Dialogus.”~” According to Brian Tierney, Book v of I Dialogus helped to shape conciliar ideas.’ It has recently been discovered that Juan de Segovia also drew heavily on Ockham’s discourse on heretical pertinacity.“* Jacques Almain wrote a commentary on the Octo quaestiones in Paris circa 1512.° Although the reception of Ockham’s polemical works by posterity has yet to be fully examined, it is sufficiently clear that he was considered by a number of leading intellectuals in the late Middle Ages as one of the most influential political thinkers to tackle such questions as papal heresy and the relationship between Church and State.
In modern scholarship on the history of European political thought, Ockham has long been considered, along with Dante, Marsilius and Wyclif, as one of the giants in the late Middle Ages, and his name has rarely failed to gain entry into textbooks on the history of political thought.°° However, there is no such thing as the ‘standard’ view of Ockham as a political thinker. General surveys of the history of medieval political thought have mirrored the changes and divisions in modern scholarship on Ockham’s political thought. In the 1930s Charles Howard MclIlwain’s The Growth of Political Thought in the West from the Greeks to the End of the Middle Ages portrayed Ockham as a radical critic of the papacy, more radical than Marsilius.°’ R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle’s A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, by contrast, described Ockham as a defender of secular power, just like Marsilius.°* The contrasting views of Mcllwain and of the Carlyle brothers were determined largely by the particular works of Ockham they read; neither of them examined all Ockham’s works. MclIlwain relied solely on the De imperatorum et pontificum potestate because he considered that it “gives in small compass the conclusions defended at such portentous length in his longer works, the Dialogus especially’.”° The Carlyles, on the other hand, represented Ockham’s view by using the Octo quaestiones de potestate papae. Clearly, these presentations of Ockham as a political thinker were no more than partial sketches and no comprehensive monograph on his political thought had yet appeared.
Examining all of Ockham’s polemical works is daunting enough; exploring their relationship to his speculative writings is still more difficult. After the Second World War historians were divided over the issue of the relationship between Ockham’s philosophical and theological thought and his political thought. Walter Ullmann avoided discussing Ockham in his A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages on the grounds that one must be familiar with Ockham’s nominalism and his theology in order to appreciate his political thought.*°
Since the publication of a few substantial monographs in the 1960s and 1970s, the interpretation of Ockham in the textbooks has undergone a transformation. Nonetheless, Ockham as a political thinker remains elusive. Antony Black’s Political Thought in Europe, 1250-1450 (1992) describes Ockham as an upholder of the dualism of spiritual and temporal government,*' but suggests that his dualism may allow for mutual intervention by the two spheres in exceptional circumstances, such as when the pope, a general council or other ecclesiastical authority errs, or when kings or princes fail to execute justice. Black asks: how is it decided when such a breakdown of ecclesiastical or secular rulership occurs? And who is to take the extraordinary course of action required when such a breakdown occurs? Black observes that, for Ockham, ‘right and wrong will be obvious to any sincere, well-intentioned person’, and comments that ‘Ockham threw the whole liability for judgement and political decision-making back on to the individual conscience.”*” Black’s Ockham is thus ‘an anti-political thinker, an anarchist individualist, a meticulous deconstructor of church and polity’.**
Joseph Canning’s A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300-1450 (1997) also describes Ockham as ‘a non-political or even anti-political writer’, but not for the same reasons as Black.** For Canning, Marsilius is ‘a political theorist concerned with issues of peace and power’, whereas Ockham is concerned far more with truth than human authority.*° According to Canning, Ockham’s polemics are primarily ecclesiological. Indeed he hardly mentions Ockham’s contribution to secular political ideas, whilst he stresses Ockham’s radical critique of the contemporary view of papal plenitudo potestatis and his rejection of conciliarism.
Black and Canning agree that Ockham was a non-political or even an anti-political thinker. This understanding is dismissed by Janet Coleman as anachronistic. Her recent work, A History of Political Thought from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, portrays him primarily as a logician engaged in a logical search for Catholic truths.*° She derives this interpretation by revisiting the issue of the relationship between Ockham’s speculative thought and his political thought. Unlike some scholars of previous generations, however, Coleman does not look into Ockham’s nominalist metaphysics or his theological doctrine of potentia Dei absoluta. Rather she identifies the epistemological foundations of his political thought in his speculative writings. Coleman shows in detail how Ockham’s appeal to experience, natural reason and infallible scriptural tradition in his polemical works was anchored in his intuitive cognition theory. Consequently, Coleman’s Ockham emerges as a ‘rational voluntarist’’, who was ‘not sceptical about human knowing but about our willing what we know’.*” Individuals according to Ockham were therefore ‘social, rational voluntary moral agents’. This epistemological outlook, Coleman argues, explains Ockham’s view that any authority that denied individual liberty would be illegitimate.*®
Black, Canning and Coleman no longer present Ockham as a sceptical critic of the papacy or a Marsilian defender of the empire. But at the turn of the twenty-first century Ockham still remains elusive. Black emphasises that Ockham’s political thought was inherently destructive of the Church and secular polities. Canning, on the other hand, merely stresses the critical nature of Ockham’s polemical discourse. Canning highlights Ockham’s non-political motivations in his involvement in political debates. Unlike these two commentators, Coleman emphasises Ockham’s methodological innovation in political theorising, and presents him rather as a philosophical defender of individual liberty.
Interestingly, both Black and Canning, like Walter Ullmann, note the difficulty of assessing Ockham as a political thinker. Black writes that Ockham is ‘probably the most difficult medieval theorist’.*” Similarly, for Canning, ‘it is particularly difficult to assess Ockham’s political ideas’.*° Both commentators attribute that difficulty to Ockham’s writing techniques. His works may be categorised into two kinds: personal and impersonal works. ‘Personal’ works are relatively short, with a narrowly defined subject-matter. They may be regarded as political pamphlets for the purposes of propaganda or agitation. In these works, Ockham’s views are clearly and explicitly expressed and therefore readily identifiable, though they are not always thoroughly argued. Such works as Contra Ioannem, Contra Benedictum, Breviloquium, and De imperatorum et pontificum potestate belong to this category. The ‘impersonal’ works, on the other hand, are massive in volume and wide-ranging in scope. In these works, Ockham deliberately refrains from expressing his own position because he aims more at promoting discussion over the issues he is addressing than at persuading his audience. Hence he details several different arguments and counter-arguments on each question, without clarifying which view is his own. To be sure, in the light of the structure of the work, and the views he expressed in the ‘personal’ works, it is not always impossible to identify Ockham’s own position. However, to read through such massive works as the Dialogus and Opus nonaginta dierum is taxing enough; it is still more so to decipher Ockham’s own view amidst the morass of different views contained therein. These ‘impersonal’ works have puzzled students of Ockham’s political thought. In the face of his encyclopaedic presentation of various views, E. F. Jacob was stunned by Ockham’s intellectual vigour.*" J. B Morrall abandoned any attempt to determine Ockham’s own position.*”
However, the assessment of Ockham’s political thought is hindered not only by his stylistic approach in his ‘impersonal’ works. All of his political works are the product of his polemical activities. Ockham never wrote anything like a summa on ecclesiology or political theory. Instead he produced an array of works, long and short, whose focuses vary greatly. As we said earlier,’ at the first stage of his polemical career Ockham was a contributor to the dispute over apostolic poverty between Pope John XXII and the Franciscans. Then he shifted his interests to ideas of heresy and heretics, with special reference to papal heresy. Later still, he explored the principles of government in both the spiritual and the temporal sphere. Why did he change his interest so often? Is there any overarching theme that runs through all his political works? These problems make the appraisal of Ockham’s political thought even more difficult and complex.
THREE CLASSIC INTERPRETATIONS
From the 1940s to the 1960s, research into Ockham’s political thought produced three broad interpretations: Ockham as an innovative destroyer of the Church and defender of the Empire; Ockham as a traditional, constitutional liberal; and Ockham as a non-political theologian. These three visions resulted from different reactions to the single question whether there is a link between Ockham’s theology and/or philosophy and his political thought. The reduction of Ockham’s political thought to his nominalist philosophy produced the image of an innovative destroyer of the Church. Conversely, reduction of Ockham’s political thought to his theology resulted in the figure of a non-political theologian. The rejection of any attempt to reduce Ockham’s political thought to either a philosophical or a theological paradigm generated the vision of Ockham as a traditional constitutional liberal.
Georges de Lagarde’s monumental study, La Naissance de l’esprit laique au déclin du Moyen Age, focused scholarly attention on the relationship between Ockham’s innovative philosophy, which arguably undermined the foundations of scholastic philosophy, and the dissolution of the ecclesiastical order in the later Middle Ages. Lagarde considered that Ockhamist nominalism was the intellectual prerequisite for the collapse of the late medieval Church. Thus, in Lagarde’s panoramic view of the intellectual transformations in late medieval Europe and the corresponding changes in the sphere of law and order in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Ockham emerges as a destroyer of the medieval Church and a forerunner of the Reformation.**
During more than three decades of research, however, Lagarde’s interpretation underwent some modifications due to a number of critical reactions. Nonetheless, his fundamental perspective remained unchanged. The new editions of La Naissance which appeared between 1956 and 1970 argued that in Ockham’s speculative and polemical writings, there was ‘a profound internal unity’. This assumption was grounded in the unity of Ockham’s personality as a cool logician and haughty university teacher of theology.*? Based on this assumption, the first edition of Lagarde’s study illuminated how Ockham applied his moral philosophy to his legal theory.
In the first edition, Lagarde considered Ockham’s moral philosophy to be contradictory. On the one hand, the Good is an irrational postulate posited by the arbitrary will of God; on the other, human reason is the adequate and infallible expression of the Good.*° This may be described, in Lagarde’s words, as ‘the coexistence . . . of a fanatical feeling for divine omnipotence and a limitless respect for free will and human reason’,*” or put more simply, a curious coexistence of voluntarism and rationalism. Ockham’s ethics thus presuppose the possible existence of a morally indifferent domain in rational actions.‘ In order to establish this morally indifferent field, Ockham assumes that human law is independent of divine and natural law.*” Consequently, Lagarde discerned an emphasis on the freedom of the human will’” — the birth of ‘esprit laique’.
Such abstraction of Ockham’s legal theory, however, has perplexed students of his political thought; was Ockham so ‘systematic’? The subtle equilibrium between voluntarism and rationalism described by Lagarde is an interpretation detached from the political and intellectual context. Lagarde’s concentration on the relationship between the political and social structure of fourteenth-century European society and Ockham’s legal thought prevented him from illuminating the circumstantial character of Ockham’s political works. For example, Lagarde’s presentation of Ockham’s philosophy of law is heavily reliant on the Opus nonaginta dierum, the work written in response to the dispute between the Avignon papacy and the Franciscan Order. Lagarde shows little awareness of the context in which the work was produced. Instead he treats it as if it were a systematic exposition of legal philosophy.
Later, Lagarde revised his approach. He argued that the most appropriate approach is to read Ockham’s political writings thematically and discover logical links between two domains of his thought: the philosophical and the political.°' Lagarde still insisted that it would be an abuse of words to suggest that Ockham’s claims were ‘conservative’,’* while he conceded that it was difficult to present Ockham’s thought as a unity.°’
In the new edition of La Naissance, Ockham wears two faces: a defender of the empire and a critic of the ecclesiastical structure. Lagarde stresses that for Ockham the empire was a universal order, a Christian order, a prolongation of the Roman Empire and indissolubly united with the German kingdom; but the empire was not an organ of the Church. ‘The empire is not dependent upon papal power. All the works of Ockham proclaim this. They were written for no other purpose.”°* Lagarde’s Ockham is primarily and essentially a defender of the independence of the empire.
However, Lagarde also noted what he considered shortcomings in Ockham’s defence of the empire. For instance, although Ockham thoroughly refuted the papal doctrine of plenitudo potestatis, his exposition of the positive and rational principles of the legitimacy of secular power was inadequate. Ockham did not develop such ideas as the common good and the social contract as foundations of the legitimacy of secular authority.’ Lagarde also shed light on the verbal confusion in Ockham’s theories of property and authority.°° These ‘deficiencies’ in Ockham’s secular political thought appeared to Lagarde to result in ‘a curious alliance of positivism and theologism’.°’ Ockham’s failure to base his secular political thought on any philosophical premise or legal principle led him to imperious appeals to the Bible.**
Turning to Ockham as a critic of ecclesiastical structures, Lagarde highlighted Ockham’s discourse on the doctrinal magisterium, and emphasised the anarchic character of his ecclesiology. Lagarde asserts that for Ockham, the sources of true faith were the Bible, reason and the unanimous decisions of the universal Church. However, the pope was also powerful and his faith should be watched over with caution; therefore, Lagarde wrote,°’ to investigate the pope’s faith was a duty that fell upon Catholics in Ockham’s ecclesiology. Catholics themselves are responsible for the maintenance of the ‘promulgated truth’: “We therefore have a certain judgement on matters which are necessary for salvation only when Scripture is clear, reason is compelling or the witness of the universal Church is obvious.’°° Lagarde thus concludes that Ockham’s ecclesiology was anarchic and destructive:
starting with the idea, if not generally at least commonly admitted in the period, of the possible heresy of the pope, Ockham proposed a rational justification developed to the most minute consequences, and which resulted in ruining not only the principle of the infallibility of the Church but the existence (or even the desirability) of a doctrinal authority in the Church . . . In the name of the faith, he justified an anarchic and disorderly activism of the whole ecclesiastical body, and the logic of the system prevented any institution from being able to control it effectively. If Ockham ever introduced a reformist ferment in the Church, it is certainly by this theory of doctrinal magisterium which, while claiming to save the principle of all the traditional institutions, irreparably undermined their basis.”!
Lagarde’s final view of Ockham is no longer systematic or coherent; it is rather ambivalent. For Lagarde, Ockham’s political theory was oriented towards the meltdown of ecclesiastical and secular polities. To Ockham, there was no distinction between Church and State; the only political and social reality was ‘the community of the faithful, which is spiritually and legally organised to safeguard the temporal common good and defend the Christian faith’.°° Lagarde clearly proposed that in Ockham’s conception of the political and social community, the existing order of Church and State was dissolved and left without any positive principles for re-structuring.
Lagarde’s interpretation found adherents.°? Among them, Michael J. Wilks devoted large parts of his work on the political thought of Augustinus Triumphus to Ockham, especially his discourse on the political community.°* His approach to Ockham was, like that of Lagarde, to stress the philosophical — more specifically, nominalist — foundations of his political thought:
Although the old view of William of Ockham as the “great destroyer’ has in recent years come under heavy attack, and his political theory proves upon examination to be disappointingly conservative, the importance of Ockham’s part in the breakdown of the hierocratic system need not be underrated.
According to Wilks,
For Ockham the cardinal principle of life is the belief that everything which exists is a single thing . . . This reduction of all existence to individual existence is the essence of nominalism, and it was this emphasis upon the individual in Ockham’s thought which completely reversed the traditional hierocratic view of the relationship existing between the whole and its parts, between the community and its members, as well as transforming the idea of society itself.°°
Thus, it is individuals alone, Wilks argues, who are the judges of truth in the light of their present experience; in other words, “every man must be his own priest and his own church: he may be right when everyone else is wrong’.°’ The logical consequence of this is the denial of all authority: ‘The whole structure of society disintegrates.’”°’ Therefore, Wilks concludes: ‘At bottom Ockham was an anarchist.””
The interpretation of Ockham as a destructive critic of the Church attracted various criticisms. The first reaction came from Philotheus Boehner.” According to Boehner, Ockham’s fundamental problem was not the defence of imperial power but ‘the actual limits of papal power’.”' Two contemporary problems, the struggle between the emperor and the pope and the conflict between the Franciscan Order and the papacy, were fundamentally one and the same in the eyes of Ockham: ‘both were one in their opposition to an unjust claim of the supreme ecclesiastical power, which was prejudicial to lawful right. Thus, the essential problem of the entire struggles became the question of the limits of papal authority.’””
Boehner also dissents from Lagarde’s approach: ‘to base Ockham’s political ideas on, or to develop them from, his so-called Metaphysics . . . appears to us more as an adventure and certainly as a construction of the writer’.”’ Boehner’s approach, which is diametrically opposed to Lagarde’s, brings to light an entirely new vision of Ockham as a political thinker: ‘Ockham’s political ideas in their great outlines could have been developed . . . from any of the classical metaphysics of the thirteenth century; . . . they coincide with a sound Catholic political theory.’”* The whole of Boehner’s article is devoted to demonstrating this proposition. Boehner, contrary to Lagarde, attempts to rescue Ockham from the notoriety of heresy and restore him as an orthodox Roman Catholic. Boehner concludes his article with the assertion that ‘the Venerabilis Inceptor . . . remained moderate in his theory’.”°
Boehner’s thematic exposition, however, shares a similar problem with Lagarde’s early view: it entirely overlooks the context in which Ockham actually wrote his political works. Boehner’s presentation is no more than, as A. S. McGrade rightly put it, a set of ‘notions’.”°
Like Boehner, J. B. Morrall rejected the view that Ockham’s political thought and his nominalist philosophy formed a unity: ‘Can so complex a system of thought as that of the English Franciscan be patient of quite so clear an explanation, however competent? How far are we justified in believing that M. de Lagarde’s synthesis was Ockham’s own?’”’ Instead, Morrall stresses that Ockham’s political works were ‘theological through and through’. He argues that ‘Ockham approaches politics by way of ecclesiology; revelation, not reason, has the last word in this sphere.’”” However, Ockham’s theologism resulted in political conservatism because he merely attempted to transmit what he regarded as traditional Catholic doctrine to the Church of his day.” For Morrall, Ockham was no more than an ‘interpreter and defender of the achievements of the past’.”°
For E. F. Jacob, the fundamental problem in Ockham’s political thought was papal heresy. Because he was first involved in the poverty controversy, the question of ‘the relation of the Pope to the law of the church’*' emerged as the key theme, especially in the Dialogus. In other words, Jacob, like Boehner, maintains that Ockham’s overriding concern in his polemical activities was to control papal power. Jacob considers that the substance of Ockham’s political discourse was not novel: ‘He represents, in fact, a sort of half-way house between conservatism and radical reform.’** ‘Ockham does not proceed by dogmatic definition as Marsilius did . . . nor by mystical analogies, like the theorists of the Investiture Controversy, but by an exhaustive balancing and comparison of rival positions.”*’ Like Boehner, Jacob makes no attempt to elucidate the philosophical foundations of Ockham’s political thought, though he detects some similarity in method between Ockham’s political and philosophical writings. Jacob, in conclusion, characterises Ockham as ‘a constitutional liberal, not an anti-papal zealot’.** Jacob’s interpretation is in essentials the same as Boehner’s.
C. C. Bayley also joined the camp of Boehner, Jacob and Morrall.** Bayley examined how Ockham used three key words — equity, utility and necessity — in his political writings. Bayley indicates that all these concepts originated in the traditions of medieval political theory: ‘equity’ was derived from Thomas Aquinas; ‘utility’ from Isidore or St Thomas; and ‘necessity’ from jurists like Baldus and Bartolus. Bayley endeavours to demonstrate that Ockham combined these ‘traditional’ political doctrines.
Bayley argues that Ockham exerted influence upon conciliar theorists. This suggests, as McGrade wrote,’ that Bayley, like Boehner, finds some constitutionalist component in Ockham’s political thought. He also argues that the three key concepts of Ockham’s political philosophy form a prototype of ragione di stato. In Bayley’s view, each thread of Ockham’s political doctrine is traditional, but he intertwined them in a revolutionary manner. Bayley’s Ockham rehabilitated traditional political theories in an innovative manner.
‘Constitutionalism’ in Ockham’s political thought was explored by Brian Tierney. Tierney examines Ockham’s technique in handling the canonist sources which were quoted frequently in his political works, and illuminates the doctrines of ecclesiastical government that Ockham deduced from these sources.*” This novel approach shows that Ockham’s doctrine of ecclesiastical government was by no means a ‘radical departure from the accepted canonical tradition’;** Tierney discerns similarity in arguments on ecclesiastical government between Ockham and canonists such as Huguccio and Johannes Teutonicus. But Tierney also illuminates differences between Ockham and the conciliarists: Ockham’s denial of the infallibility of any ecclesiastical office was the most radical, and thereby original, part of his ecclesiology, though this teaching was not at variance with the canonist tradition. Tierney’s conclusion is paradoxical: ‘Ockham was most influential [to the conciliarists] precisely when he was least original’,”’ for ‘Ockham’s more radical and anarchic ideas held no attraction for the great publicists in the age of the Schism — their task was to restore authority in the Church, not to hasten the process of disintegration.””°
Although those historians who emphasised the constitutionalist dimension in Ockham’s political thought intended to criticise Lagarde’s early view, they also had something in common with Lagarde: they, like him, concentrated on Ockham’s legal theory. The only difference was that Boehner and others treated it on its own, whereas Lagarde attempted to deduce it from Ockham’s moral philosophy. Perhaps the most striking example of this is a study by Y. D. (George) Knysh, who criticised Lagarde most severely in order to establish Ockham as a constitutionalist, but also endeavoured, like Lagarde, to reconstruct a systematic theory of law from Ockham’s political thought.”'
The third classic interpretation of Ockham differs from the other two on this point. It does not discern any legal character in Ockham’s political thought. Rather it stresses its theological nature. Richard Scholz’s interpretation serves as a case in point.’ Scholz believed that 1337 was the turning-point in Ockham’s career as a political polemicist. The works written between the escape from Avignon and 1337 were, according to Scholz, essentially theological; on the other hand, after 1337, Ockham’s political stance was more clearly expressed in his works. Scholz maintains that in the Breviloquium de potestate tyrannico Ockham summarised all his political opinions explicitly, ‘without the mask of philosopher and theologian’. Thus, Ockham’s polemical position moved closer to more political and more radical ideas. Nonetheless, Scholz argues that Ockham was still far from being a secularist like Marsilius. He denies that the defence of Ludwig of Bavaria was Ockham’s primary intention, and that Ockham was influenced by Marsilius of Padua in his political arguments. Ockham was neither an anti-papal zealot nor a mere sceptic:
Ockham was a theologian and not a political man like Marsilius of Padua. Nothing is, therefore, more instructive than a comparison of the writings of these two men, who, as has recently been recognised, really fought each other on political questions. We are dealing with differing viewpoints that are deeply rooted in a difference of world-views: Marsilius’ enlightened Aristotelianism, and Ockham’s religious-ecclesiastical thought, critical radicalism and practical conservatism or faithful criticism — perhaps a typical English feature, which 1s reflected in Ockham’s whole philosophical-theological system.”*
In opposition to Lagarde, Scholz argues that Ockham was not a precursor of Martin Luther in his religious mentality, though some seminal ideas of the Reformation might be attributable to his thought. In Ockham’s concept of the ecclesiastical order, the historical form of the Church is not as important as the divine will in the communio sanctorum, and Ockham’; initial intention was only to correct human mistakes in matters of faith in the existing Church, not to reform the structure of the Church.”* Ockham as a philosopher and theologian was revolutionary, whereas Ockham as a political thinker was conservative:
In spite of all, Ockham is not an innovator. In no way does he, like Marsilius, wish to reverse the relationship between the spiritual and temporal power, between the Church and the State, or to elevate the empire over the papacy. His fundamental thought on the relationship of the two powers is wholly the conservative, traditional one of coexistence and concordance.”°
At this point, Scholz’s view comes closer to the interpretations of Boehner and Jacob.
Scholz’s emphasis on a theological paradigm was not without precedent. Alois Dempf, for example, endeavoured to show that Ockham’s doctrine of potentia Dei absoluta et ordinata determined the paradigm of his political thought.”° The keystone for understanding Ockham’s political philosophy is, according to Dempf, the metamorphosis of the medieval concept of order, which is distinctively recognisable in his natural philosophy;?” the natural order was contingent under the theological framework of potentia Dei absoluta et ordinata.?’ Dempf observes that in Ockham anti-rationalistic religion was juxtaposed with rational logic within the framework of potentia Dei absoluta et ordinata.”’ The idea of universal human nature is critically dissolved, and the ethical norm is wholly attributed to God’s will by fideism. Thus, Dempf concludes that Ockham’s theology, philosophy and ethics totally lacked a rational foundation. What are the repercussions of such an anti-rationalist philosophy on political thought?
For the nominalists, it is the exception that is more important. The universal monarchy represents potentia Dei ordinata; popular sovereignty, potestas Dei absoluta. Certainly the emperor is above the positive law, but not above aequitas naturalis, the natural law of the Ten Commandments and the commonweal.'°°
Dempf goes further by arguing that, due to its lack ofa rational foundation, Ockham’s ecclesiology was deeply coloured by ‘a positive biblicism . . . which is supplemented by the traditionalism of his concept of the Church’.'°' Dempf concludes his chapter on Ockham with an assertion that his biblicism, his hatred of the contemporary papacy and his tenacity for ecclesiastical tradition prevented his political thought from providing a fruitful outcome to the conciliar movement.
Wilhem Kélmel also considered that if any internal, if not systematic, unity of thought could be discerned in Ockham’s speculative and political thought, that unity should be based upon a theological paradigm rather than a philosophical one. Contrary to Lagarde, Kélmel clearly denies the relation between political thought and nominalism.'°* Kélmel considers that Ockham’s career as a polemicist started with a theological dispute over Franciscan poverty, and developed into a theological response to the question of the relationship between Christ and the world. In this shift of interest, Kolmel perceives a shift from Christology to ecclesiology, and his analysis concentrates on this. According to Kélmel, Ockham’s Christology emphasises Christ’s spiritual government and his character as ‘the rulership of Love (Liebesprinzipat)’.'°* This vision of Christ was, in Ockham, tightly associated with radical withdrawal from the world by having no possessions.'”* Kélmel argues, however, that Ockham’s attack on the doctrine of papal plenitudo potestatis from this viewpoint did not lead him to a deeper understanding of the Church. In his ecclesiology, Ockham’s subjective concept of order is predominant, whilst his idea of Christ’s spiritual government in the Church is unclear.'°? For Kélmel, Ockham’s shift from Christology to ecclesiology was awkward and incoherent:
He [= Ockham] forgot how closely imperial dignity was interwoven with the spiritual unity of the Church. He overlooked the theological meaning of solipsistic-ecclesiastical theory. He only realised its concrete effect; he did not endeavour to understand the underlying truth of Christ’s royal government over the redeemed cosmos.'”°
Nevertheless, Kd6lmel notes that Ockham’s conception of the social order did not imply any destructive intent; it was simply subjective and concrete. Hence, Kélmel’s Ockham is more moderate than Lagarde’s: ‘Ockham is not a revolutionary of the same stamp as Jandun or Marsilius. He did not transform the structure of spiritual-temporal tension into the simplified secularism of the Defensor pacis.’'”’
The three views that have been described are all revealing but not sufficient. Lagarde clearly showed the innovative character of Ockham’s political ideas by presupposing an internal unity in all Ockham’s thought, philosophical, theological and political. As a consequence of this, however, the outcome of his analysis was far more speculative and systematic than Ockham’s own polemical writings actually were, and he neglected the context in which they were written. The constitutionalist interpretation of Ockham, in contrast, restored his place in the medieval orthodoxies of political discourse. However, as A. S. McGrade would later comment, such an attempt made Ockham ‘too tranquil’.'°° Ockham was an agitator who took part in contemporary political controversies. Separating his political thought from his speculative thought and reducing the former to traditional doctrines failed to capture Ockham’s political thought in the context of his polemical activities. Alan Gewirth once wrote that Lagarde’s destructive Ockham and Boehner’s conservative Ockham are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they are two different aspects of the same thinker: the former is his theoretical side, the latter his practical side.'°’ In these terms, the theological interpretation of Ockham seems somewhat synthetic: it highlights not only Ockham’s revolutionary philosophy and theology but also his practical conservatism in political thought. However, this approach is also one-sided. For example, Ockham’s use of Aristotelian or legal sources escapes scrutiny in Scholz’s reduction of Ockham’s political thought to his theological positivistic perspective. Dempf’s reduction of his political thought to the framework of potentia Dei absoluta et ordinata is also problematic in that Ockham scarcely referred to the latter in his polemical writings.
CURRENT INTERPRETATIONS
From the 1970s onwards, studies of Ockham’s political thought underwent considerable change. This was due mainly to three scholars: Jiirgen Miethke, Brian Tierney and Arthur Stephen McGrade. In contrast to scholars of the previous generation, they were not obsessed by the alleged relationship between Ockham’s speculative thought and his political thought. Rather, they attempted to treat the latter on its own, neither rejecting the links between the two domains of thought nor reducing his political ideas to his philosophical or theological paradigm.
However, their approaches vary greatly. Miethke endeavours to show how the Oxford philosopher and theologian was led to search for a social philosophy. Tierney tries to demonstrate how Ockham shaped his doctrine of ‘anti-papal infallibility’ in the earlier stages of his polemical career. McGrade attempts to illuminate the process whereby Ockham’s ‘personal’ involvement in the anti-papal campaign eventually ended in the formulation of a theory of governing institutions, ecclesiastical and secular. Clearly, these three scholars shed light upon three different aspects of Ockham’s polemical activities. But although we can put their contributions together, no single coherent vision of Ockham as a polemicist emerges. To understand this requires further scrutiny of their scholarly contributions.
Since Jiirgen Miethke was concerned with the change in Ockham’s career before and after his summons to Avignon, he devoted much of his attention to Ockham’s first polemical work, the Opus nonaginta dierum, and attempted to establish how Ockham’s later ecclesiology stemmed from the ideas articulated in that work. Hence, Miethke’s analysis of the Opus nonaginta dierum was intended to discover the seminal ideas of Ockham’s later ecclesiology.
Miethke points out that the main issue in the controversy between John XXII and the so-called Michaelists shifted from administrative matters, such as the legal status of the Franciscan Order, to doctrinal concerns, such as the idea of Christian perfection. In the earliest stage of his polemical career, therefore, Ockham was engaged in a doctrinal, not a disciplinary or administrative, dispute over the Franciscan Order. Miethke’s analysis of the Opus nonaginta dierum is essentially doctrinal; he emphasises the Franciscan character of the work in terms of doctrine.
According to Miethke, Ockham maintained that Christ and the Apostles did not own possessions either as individuals or as a group, and that the Franciscans abandoned the possession of property as a positive right.''° Ockham drew a sharp distinction between Christ and the Apostles, who were perfect in poverty, and the Church, the sum of the faithful, which owns property; and drawing on traditional canonist doctrine, he dissented from the view that unfettered possession of temporal goods was inherent in the ecclesiastical office. Yet Miethke considers that Ockham did not intend to criticise the material affluence of the Church; he only emphasised the human origin of the ecclesiastical institution. To Miethke, Ockham’s primary concern was to revive the spiritual function of the Church, modelled on Christ’s spiritual pastorship. The organisation was, therefore, of secondary importance.’ '' This is the permeating theme of Ockham’s later polemical works, which, according to Miethke, stemmed from Ockham’s Franciscan rejection of positive rights to temporal goods. The outlook that determined Ockham’s social philosophy was Franciscan: ‘Ockham answers inadequate theology as a theologian and at the same time indicates how he defends his theological existence not only practically — as a Franciscan in the poverty controversy — but also theoretically.’”’'~ Miethke’s Ockham as a social philosopher was essentially a Franciscan theologian.
Brian Tierney offers a different picture of Ockham’s early polemics. Tierney’s analysis of Ockham’s doctrine of ‘anti-papal infallibility’ forms only a part (but a very important one) of his narrative of the history of ideas of papal infallibility and sovereignty from circa 1150 to 1350.''* Two dominant features in Tierney’s exposition are the evolution of a canonist ecclesiology and the ecclesiological implications of the poverty controversy. In this context, Tierney endeavours to show that Ockham’s ecclesiology is best understood as ‘a novel synthesis’ of the ‘two major traditions of Catholic thought’:
the classical canonist tradition which emphasized the indefectibility of the universal church while acknowledging that any individual Catholic, even the pope, could fall into heresy (a tradition continued by the episcopalist theologians); and the Franciscan theological tradition which emphasized the infallibility of the Church, the progressive revelation of Christian truth through the course of the ages, and the necessary role of the pope as the authenticator of newly revealed truth.''*
Tierney considers that the Franciscan dimension of Ockham’s ecclesiology has not been sufficiently appreciated by historians and consequently Ockham has been regarded as a tireless attacker of the doctrine of papal infallibility. However, Tierney asserts that ‘The truth is just the opposite. We should say rather that, when Ockham insisted on the irreformability of a true pope’s doctrinal decrees, he was implicitly affirming a new doctrine of papal infallibility.’’'>
Tierney explains that in Ockham’s ecclesiology what a Roman pontiff has once defined in faith is immutable, so a successor cannot call it into question; it is the principal duty of a Catholic to analyse papal pronouncements and to judge, in the light of Scripture and the doctrine of the unerring Church, whether the irreformability of the doctrinal decrees of true popes is respected in later pronouncements. Tierney considers that Ockham ‘was able to attack the contemporary papal publicists quite effectively on many detailed points of doctrine . . . but he did not succeed in building up a coherent counter-ecclesiology of his own’.''° He points out that Ockham’s ‘paradoxes always arise from [his] conviction that the true church had to be infallible while the existing, institutional church was in error’.''’ In Tierney’s view, Ockham was dealing with two questions. The first was a conventional question in medieval ecclesiology: was it possible for a given institution of Church government to err? The second was a question that modern theologians would raise: how can it be determined which particular pronouncements of the institutional Church are infallible? Ockham did not neglect the first question, but he also attempted to answer the second one. Tierney maintains that Ockham failed to answer the second question, because his identification of the true Catholic faith ultimately dissolved in the light of the subjectivity of individual Catholics. Tierney concludes, somewhat provocatively, that the assumption that the idea of individual rights in the modern sense can be found in Ockham’s teaching of ‘evangelical liberty’ is ‘fantasy indeed’.''* ‘In the end Ockham’s conclusions were simply perverse . . . He offers us only dogma without order, anarchy without freedom, subjection without tolerance.”''”
This conclusion is essentially very similar to the position held earlier by Tierney himself and to that of Lagarde and Wilks. Tierney’s emphasis on the Franciscan theological tradition and the canonist legal tradition does not lead to the derogation of the ecclesiastical organisation and the restoration of spiritual government which Miethke observed in Ockham’s ecclesiology: on the contrary, it leads to anarchical sectarianism. Tierney’s interpretation attracted controversy, and a brief survey of the debate between Tierney and his critics will help to elucidate the debatable issues.
Tierney’s critics attacked his attempt to locate Ockham in the history of the concept of papal infallibility. John J. Ryan, for example, claimed that Tierney had confused infallibility with irreformability:
Pronouncements and documents containing them may very well be without error and thus irreformable, but their warrant in that case is the immutability of the faith which happens to be accurately reflected, not an infallibility on the part of the pronouncing pontiff. To make a claim for the irreformability of any papal pronouncement is of itself not to say decisively more than that the document is good doctrine, i.e., a correct and true witness of the Faith. It is not of itself to make a claim for the infallibility of the pontiff. . . Tierney persistently forgets that infallibility is (in however delimited a sense) a prerogative (or it is nothing at all) while irreformability is, of itself} only a fact.'~°
Against Ryan’s criticism, Tierney clarified that his study was intended to show that ‘infallibility is a quirky, paradoxical doctrine that can take many forms, including the one propounded by Ockham [my emphasis]’ and that the association between the two concepts of infallibility and irreformability was defended by many modern theologians at the First Vatican Council.'*' Ryan’s criticism was theological, whereas Tierney’s study was historical. The core of the debate concerned the two concepts of infallibility and irreformability rather than Ockham’s ecclesiology. Perhaps the most important criticism came from John Kilcullen.’ Kilcullen’s rejection of Tierney’s view was more powerful than Ryan’s, because Kilcullen’s study involved a historical reconstruction of Ockham’s discourse on Catholic truth and heresy. Kilcullen’s goal was to show that Ockham’s ecclesiology was ‘coherent, sensible and not at all perverse’.’~* He argued that Ockham’s ecclesiology did not result in total subjectivity because ‘Ockham himself did not see any great problem for a Christian in finding out what he must believe explicitly and did not think that papal decrees were the appropriate starting point.’'** From Ockham’s perspective, Kilcullen maintained, it was not necessary to question how a Christian can know Catholic truths with certitude, because he already knows that they are contained in the Bible or the teachings of the Church, or has already been taught them. Further, Catholic truths are, according to Ockham, to be found primarily in the Bible and the patristic writings rather than in papal pronouncements. Kilcullen’s study suggested that the problem with Tierney’s understanding lay in his interpretation of Ockham’s idea of Catholic truth (and its reverse, heresy) rather than his conception of infallibility. Kilcullen concluded that the purpose of Ockham’s ecclesiology was ‘to make room for free speech and theological exploration within the Church’.'~
Miethke and Tierney concentrated on Ockham’s earlier polemical discourse, whereas McGrade attempted to grasp the main threads of his political thought which permeated his early and later polemical activities.'~° However, McGrade’s study carefully excluded the aspects that Miethke and Tierney had already explored. McGrade examined Ockham’s contribution to the poverty controversy very briefly. He stated explicitly that the two topics that Tierney had handled — Ockham’s use of canon law and his ideas of theological truth and of the universal Church as the ‘rule of faith’ — would not be dealt with in his book. Though he said this, however, McGrade’s study was not intended to be merely complementary to Miethke and Tierney. McGrade speculated, in much greater depth, on the appropriate approach to Ockham as a political thinker. His attitude towards Ockham was based on his critical reaction towards two contrasting approaches: one represented by Boehner, and the other by Lagarde and Scholz. McGrade attempted to interpret Ockham’s political writings not by ignoring his philosophical and theological works or by starting from them, but ‘by examining the polemical works in their own terms’, hoping ‘to discover exactly what in Ockham’s political thought needs speculative explanation or justification’.'”’ McGrade also explicitly emphasised the importance of tracing chronologically Ockham’s changes of interest. McGrade’s study produced a historical vision of Ockham as a political thinker.
For McGrade, Ockham’s initial involvement in politics was a ‘personal’ one; his reaction to the problem of papal heresy was to enable the individual Christian to correct and bring down an erring ecclesiastical superior, above all a heretical (pseudo-)pope. Therefore the key to the problem was, for Ockham, to find a justification for such an action against institutional authority. McGrade argued that in Ockham’s view, ‘the traditional distinction between authoritative and fraternal correction has been effectively collapsed’. ‘The concept of a cognitively legitimate correction’, he continued, “— a process in which the errans is clearly shown his error — has superseded it.’’** This ‘cognitive’ metamorphosis is the foundation of what McGrade called Ockham’s ‘radical action’ against heretical popes. The consequence of this metamorphosis was, McGrade argued, the decline of institutional authority and its replacement by emphasis on the understanding of each individual.
But, according to McGrade, Ockham became aware of the need to resolve contemporary disagreements over the origins and functions of both ecclesiastical and secular institutions. McGrade characterised Ockham’s thought on ‘institutional’ (as opposed to ‘personal’) principles as traditional dualism. McGrade argued that Ockham’s dualist institutional theory was intended to be practically viable. In order to promote a stable institutional structure, Ockham attempted to ‘widen the distance between secular and spiritual government’ by desacralising secular power on the one hand, and by undercutting the juridical aspect of spiritual authority on the other.'~”
McGrade also discerned novelty in Ockham’s political thought. He maintained that Ockham’s emphasis on personal freedom re-defined the relationship between society and government by regarding law and government as ‘merely instrumental’.'*° However, McGrade stressed that the emphasis on personal liberty was not rooted in atomistic individualism. On the contrary, Ockham, like Aristotelians such as St Thomas and Dante, regarded active participation in the community as an important fulfilment of human potentialities.'*' Overall, McGrade’s interpretation is a critical synthesis of the divergent visions of Ockham in previous scholarship. McGrade’s Ockham is neither an irrational destroyer of the Church, nor a conservative Catholic political theorist, nor a non-political theologian, but a ‘constructive political thinker’ who attempted ‘to strengthen institutions while undercutting the spirit of institutionalism’.'*~
As far as Ockham’s ideological stance is concerned, McGrade’s study made a unique contribution. Hitherto, Ockham’s political thought had often been considered as a reaction within the conflict between ecclesiastical and secular powers. Georges de Lagarde’s Ockham as a defender of the empire is a typical example. Philotheus Boehner considered that Ockham’s concern with the limits of papal power associated him with Ludwig of Bavaria. The ideological position of Boehner’s Ockham is (somewhat negatively) anti-papal, not necessarily pro-imperial. By contrast, McGrade argued that “Ockham’s political thought must be assessed as a response to the potentialities and ideological chaos of the world in which it was produced’.'*’ It was a response not within but to the ideological conflict between Church and State. In this way, McGrade avoided making Ockham either a secularist or an anti-papal ideologue or an armchair theorist, apathetic towards real politics.
One may question, however, how Miethke’s distinctively Franciscan Ockham fits into this ideological framework. McGrade’s distinction between Ockham’s ‘personal’ and ‘institutional’ principles emphasised the chronological discontinuity in Ockham’s polemical activities. By contrast, Miethke’s focus on the Franciscan aspect of Ockham’s legal theory emphasised continuity. McGrade’s stress on discontinuity concerns the shift of Ockham’s polemical concern. Miethke’s emphasis on continuity concerns doctrinal developments in Ockham’s legal theory and ecclesiology. These two views, however, did not simply shed light on different aspects of Ockham’s polemics because, contrary to Miethke, McGrade rejected the view that Ockham’s political thought stemmed from Franciscan ideals.'** This difference of opinion highlights a problem on each side. In the light of McGrade’s view, Miethke’s emphasis on the Franciscan element in Ockham’s legal theory and his later ecclesiology does not explain why Ockham, alone among the Michaelist Franciscans in Munich, did not remain merely a contributor to the poverty dispute but deepened his interest in the problems of papal heresy and ecclesiastical and temporal government. In the light of Miethke’s view, on the other hand, it seems worth reconsidering whether Ockham’s later thought on governing institutions has any root in his earlier polemics. More specifically, it is questionable whether Ockham’s early polemical concern was, as McGrade has suggested, so narrowly focused on the correction and deposition of heretical popes that it did not provide a paradigm for his later polemics.
The difference of opinions between McGrade and Tierney is perhaps more obvious. How can Ockham’s ‘perverse ecclesiology’, which falls into the pitfall of ‘total subjectivity’, serve as a ‘constructive’ solution to the contemporary problem of ecclesiastical government? Tierney argued that Ockham’s ecclesiology pointed in the direction of ‘the most radical sectarianism’, and his doctrine of ‘anti-papal infallibility’ was ‘utterly destructive of ecclesiastical authority’.'°> McGrade, by contrast, maintained that Ockham ‘at no point recommended atomic individualism — on the contrary, he had a strong sense of human solidarity’.'*° McGrade highlighted Ockham’s novel emphasis on individual freedom, whereas Tierney maintained that Ockham’s predisposition of himself as ‘a champion of individual liberty’ was ‘fantasy indeed’. This polarisation seems to be partly due to the texts that the two historians used. Tierney examined Ockham’s early works, including Opus nonaginta dierum, 1 Dialogus, Contra Ioannem and Contra Benedictum, whereas McGrade used Ockham’s later works such as III Dialogus 1, Breviloguium and De imperatorum et pontificum potestate. The question then arises: how and why could the early ‘perverse’, ‘subjective’ and ‘sectarian’ ecclesiology end in the later ‘constructive’ proposal of a ‘pastoral’ theory of ecclesiastical government?
Tierney, however, has produced a more positive assessment of Ockham’s contribution to political thought in his most recent work, The Idea of Natural Rights.'*’ In this engaging work, Ockham looms large: a third of the historical narrative is devoted to him. The book, on the one hand, bridges the gap between Miethke and McGrade: it demonstrates how Ockham’s Franciscan discourse on natural rights permeates his entire political work. Tierney reads Ockham’s early polemics not as an ideological defence of the Franciscan doctrine of poverty, but rather as a theoretical response to the question of natural rights.
Tierney’s perspective is not unprecedented. Michel Villey had previously argued that Ockham was responsible for the ‘semantic revolution’ in the language of rights.'** The ‘classical’ notion of right was objective: right in classical Roman law tradition referred to a ‘thing’ (res). Things were in classical law both corporeal and incorporeal, and right (ius) was conceptualised as an incorporeal thing. Villey maintained that this ‘objective’ notion, which can be discerned, for instance, in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, was abandoned by Ockham. Ockham proposed a ‘subjective’ concept: right was the power of an individual, the ‘licit power’ inherent in an individual person. Villey considered that this was a major departure from the classical language of right and attributed the ‘revolution’ to Ockham’s metaphysical metamorphosis, that is his nominalism. Villey insisted that Ockham’s novel definition of right was derived from his nominalist philosophy, thereby remaining in the historiographical framework before the 1970s.
Tierney traces back the origins of the ‘subjective’ notion of right to twelfth-century canonist discourse, thus rejecting both Ockham’s ‘revolution’ and its nominalist origins simultaneously. However, this is not to downplay the historical significance of Ockham’s discourse on rights. On the contrary, in Tierney’s narrative, Ockham emerges as an influential disseminator of the canonist language of natural rights. Ockham was responsible for placing the language of rights in the mainstream of European political discourse.
Furthermore, Tierney stresses that Ockham derived natural rights and natural laws from ‘right reason’. Tierney rejects the conventional view that Ockham argued for an ‘exaltation of human will’.'*’ In the light of Ockham’s rationalist idea of rights, Tierney is no longer dismissive of Ockham’s frequent appeal to ‘rights and liberties’, but suggests that Ockham’s idea of liberty relates to areas of free moral choice. Accordingly, Ockham’s rights-talk was not a manifestation of atomistic individualism but was balanced by his concern for the common good. Tierney concludes: ‘The new feature of Ockham’s work was that all these conventional assertions were set in a framework of discourse about natural rights, the rights granted to humankind “by God and nature”.’’*°
Tierney’s book set a new benchmark. Ockham the political thinker, as depicted by more recent commentators such as Annabel S. Brett and Holly Hamilton Bleakley, is unmistakeably rationalist.'*' The focus on Ockham’s idea of natural rights seems to shed a new light on how Ockham’s contribution to the poverty controversy developed into a political theory that underlined the limits of papal power: a question highlighted by Miethke. However, the discrepancies between Ockham as a somewhat fanatical proponent of the doctrine of ‘anti-papal infallibility’ and Ockham as a disseminator of the rationalist theory of natural right remain unresolved by Tierney himself and have not been addressed by any scholar. It is a curious oversight. Meanwhile, Ockham’s ‘institutional principles’ as McGrade identified them — that is, his separation of the spiritual and temporal spheres — have been endorsed by Matthew Kempshall and Holly Hamilton Bleakley.'*” Since the turn of the century, Ockham has emerged increasingly as a classic ‘liberal’ thinker.
He was a proponent of the separation of Church and State and a defender of natural rights from political power.
APPROACHING OCKHAM AS A POLEMICIST
While recent views of Ockham’s political thought appear to converge on its ‘liberal’ characteristics, existing accounts have not paid serious attention to the plain fact that Ockham was primarily a polemicist in his involvement in political disputes. No previous study has fully contextualised Ockham’s anti-papal literary output as a series of polemical responses. Tierney’s accounts covered parts of the history of the ideas of infallibility and natural rights and his treatment of Ockham’s polemical writings is accordingly selective. In his historical account of the idea of infallibility, Tierney focused on Ockham’s early polemical works, while in his work on natural rights he hardly discussed I Dialogus, a comprehensive and gigantic treatise on heresy. Miethke’s classic work highlighted how a social philosophy was derived from the Franciscan legal discourse; hence, Miethke was primarily interested in the seminal ideas of Ockham’s political and social views in his first polemical work, Opus nonanginta dierum; therefore, as in Tierney’s account of infallibility, Miethke’s book laid partial emphasis on Ockham’s theoretical contribution to the poverty controversy. Perhaps McGrade’s celebrated study differentiates itself from others in this regard. McGrade rightly traced the shift of Ockham’s polemical focus from papal heresy to questions of spiritual and temporal government. However, McGrade was interested in what we today call ‘political thought’, as the title of the book clearly indicates. The subtitle of the book — ‘Personal and Institutional Principles’ — also suggests that it traces Ockham’s migration from ‘personal’ dissent from papal authority to an ‘institutional’ theory of government. From the general standpoint of political thought, McGrade saw Ockham (presumably in response to Tierney’s account of Ockham’s idea of anti-papal infallibility) as a ‘constructive political thinker’ who rehabilitated traditional institutional principles, while he also offered a seminal account of Ockham’s theory of natural rights. Ockham’s polemical works came under McGrade’s scrutiny in so far as they were related to the general framework of political thought.
But what did Ockham do in producing a number of controversial treatises, which displayed a wide range of public concerns? In this book I shall analyse Ockham’s literary concerns more seriously than other scholars have done. This study will re-read Ockham’s post-1328 works primarily as a series of responses to the issues that he identified in contemporary intellectual exchanges. I shall not presuppose anything like a ‘unity’ or a ‘system’ in Ockham’s polemical activities. I do not presume the existence of any philosophical, theological or legal paradigm to which Ockham’s entire polemics may be reducible. Similarly, I shall not prejudge any ideological perspective. Ockham has conventionally been seen as belonging to the ‘nominalist’, ‘Franciscan’, ‘Michaelist’, ‘anti-papal’ or ‘imperial’ camp. To be sure, these expressions precisely describe the situation in which Ockham found himself, and I shall also use them where appropriate. Nonetheless it would be incorrect to think that these descriptions also mirror Ockham’s ideological position. Reduction of Ockham’s ideas to such contexts as the conflict between the papacy and the empire, or the dispute between the papacy and the Franciscans, would not do justice to his personal and innovative perspectives. Rather, I shall attempt to discover Ockham’s polemical stance in his own words.
My approach is twofold. Firstly, I shall compare Ockham’s approach to a specific issue with the approaches that his contemporaries employed when dealing with the same issue. This will highlight not only Ockham’s original contribution but also his own perspective. Secondly, I shall compare Ockham’s reactions to a variety of issues that faced him and see whether there is any constant perspective permeating his polemical responses. This will determine whether Ockham’s polemical activities were essentially opportunistic, predominantly influenced by circumstantial factors, or whether they represent consistent responses from a constant perspective to a variety of changing issues.
These considerations dictate the sequence of the following exposition. The first chapter contains an account of Ockham’s polemical responses to the poverty controversy. A comparison between Ockham and his predecessors, as well as his contemporaries in the Franciscan Order, will show not only his unique contribution to the poverty dispute but also his own polemical stance. I conclude that Ockham was not a Franciscan ideologue, but rather a theologian ideologically opposed to the canonists, a body including the father of canon law, Gratian, and popes since Innocent III. From this polemical perspective, Ockham offered a moral defence of the Franciscan way of life. The second chapter offers an analysis of the first five books of Part I of the Dialogus. Previous scholarship has rarely paid due attention to this part of the work. Chapter Two, in contrast, will show not only that it was a generic study of the concepts of heresy and heretics, but also that Ockham radically reduced the conventional authoritative concept of heresy to a purely interpretative category. Ockham destroyed the hierarchical assumptions of the traditional discourse on heresy and re-defined the concept of ‘heretic’ by presenting various modes of pertinacity, this being the characteristic feature of a heretic. The result was the de-juridicisation of the medieval discourse on heresy and heretics. Chapter Three scrutinises Ockham’s response to the problem of papal heresy. An examination of the rest of I Dialogus and such works as Contra Ioannem and Contra Benedictum shows that Ockham’s demonstration of papal heresy, and his vindication of dissent from papal authority, in fact re-defined the moral duty of Christians, thereby proposing an alternative vision of the Christian community. More specifically, Ockham re-conceptualised the conventional idea of fraternal correction in order to justify ecclesiastical dissent, and explored further the moral obligations that dissenters, popes and all other Christians bear in their communal, Christian life. Consequently, he discovered that the problem of papal heresy could not be attributed to the erring pope alone. It epitomised the breakdown of Christian fellowship.
Chapter Four begins with an enquiry into Ockham’s shift of polemical concern from papal heresy to the principle of papal power. The chapter shows that his ideological outlook as a theologian in opposition to canonists explains his change of interest occasioned by the accession of Benedict XII. This will be followed by an examination of his distinctively biblical argument in search for the true definition of papal plenitudo potestatis. 1 shall show that Ockham’s generic discourse on heresy determined the paradigm of his account of papal power; his exclusive focus on the textual sources of Christian doctrine forced him to define the true concept of papal power in the light of the Bible. This theme will be explored further in Chapter Five, where Ockham’s discourse on the primacy of St Peter will be discussed. In analysing the primatial texts of the Holy Scripture, Ockham established the historical irreversibility of the fact that Christ conferred special authority on Peter and on Peter alone. However, this argument did not lead to the defence of papal primacy; indeed, the Bible does not indicate anywhere that special authority was conferred on Peter and his successors. Ockham’s position on papal primacy was thus more nuanced than Marsilius’ outright rejection of it.
Drawing together all the main threads of the previous arguments, the final chapter discusses Ockham’s discourse on temporal government with some focus on its relationship to spiritual power; more specifically, it will show that Ockham’s position on the relationship between spiritual and temporal power is not characterised so much by ‘separatism’ as by ‘a theory of crisis management’, which allowed mutual intervention in case of need. The chapter also includes the general conclusion of the book: Ockham will emerge primarily as a theorist of political and social ethics who attempted to restore the moral domain in the public — ecclesiastical and secular — spheres of human activities. He was a theologian who tackled the tension between ethics and politics. In his eyes, ecclesiastical institutions had broken down and fellowship among believers had crumbled. Ockham’s polemical activities were a call for action to restore the foundations of Christian solidarity in opposition to corrupt government. Viewed from a general standpoint of ‘political thought’, Ockham was not merely a ‘liberal’ or ‘constitutional’ thinker. Both characterisations fail to capture Ockham’s passionate concern with the common good — the preservation of Catholic truths and ‘rights and liberties’ granted by God and nature — which alone can explain his unfailing involvement over two decades in polemical disputes. Ockham may be described more aptly as a proponent of what I call ‘ecclesiastical republicanism’: republicanism in the medieval Christian tradition.
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