Paris and Oxford between Aureoli and Rimini
Paris and Oxford between Aureoli and Rimini
Chris Schabel
Oxford ideas in logic and natural philosophy were readily received,
analysed, and partially incorporated into corresponding writings of a
logical or natural philosophical nature at the University of Paris
throughout the 1320s, 1330s, and 1340s. Precise dating, however, is
usually not possible. There was a strong Parisian reaction to Ockham’s
physics before 1327, particularly on the part of Walter Burley, and
Ockham’s Summa logicae was available to the influential Parisian arts
master John Buridan.1 Statutes of the Parisian arts faculty show that
Ockham’s logic was playing a significant role there by 1339 ([16.10],
[16.26]). The logical writings of the Oxford Calculators from the late
1320s and 1330s were important in Parisian works of natural
philosophy from the 1340s and afterwards ([16.19]). Buridan and
Nicole Oresme used the more abstract Oxford geometrical and
mathematical concepts, but made their application to physical theory
a fundamental aim, and this contributed to their interesting treatments
of such topics as the motion of projectiles and the Earth’s rotation.
With philosophical theology the story is different. A common view
of theology at the University of Paris in the quarter century between
Peter Aureoli and Gregory of Rimini is that Paris ignored Oxford just
when Oxford was experiencing its golden age. After Aureoli lectured
on the Sentences in 1316–18, Parisian scholars busied themselves in
stagnant isolation refuting his opinions for a few years until about
1326, when Parisian thought went into what has been labelled as a
‘dormition’, only to be reawakened in 1343–4 by Rimini, who brought
much of the new Oxford thought into Paris. Thus in this period Paris
not only lost its customary dominance to Oxford, it actually went into
sharp decline in absolute terms because it failed to maintain intellectual
contacts with the main English studium generale (see [16.9] 153).
The aim of this chapter is to review and revise this scenario. Although
Parisian theology was isolated from Oxford, for the most part, between
1318 and 1343, Oxford was equally ignorant of Paris. Moreover, where
scholars have looked, Paris was alive, awake, and productive at least
until 1330, and remained the intellectual focal point of continental
education. The Parisian ‘products’, of course, differed from those of
Oxford, as one would expect from such mutual isolation, but when
both rigorous currents came together at Paris in the 1340s, they created
a dynamic synthesis.
THE BEGINNINGS OF ISOLATION
In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Paris was the top school
in philosophy and theology for the secular clergy, and the international
and hierarchical educational systems of the mendicant orders helped
ensure that the leading students in Barcelona, Bologna, Cologne and
Oxford eventually made their way to Paris. When scholars left this
international market of ideas, they carried those ideas with them. For
reasons that are unclear, however, English scholars began to stay at
home in the 1310s, and most of the English had left Paris by 1320.
Some remained, but few new English students arrived at Paris in the
1320s and 1330s. This fact alone accounts for Oxford’s rise in these
decades: the best of Britain’s students stayed at home.
In Paris it was business as usual, with two exceptions: first, it lost its
English scholars; second, the end of the 1320s and the early 1330s
were troubled times for the Church. Scholarly energies were sometimes
turned to issues like the quarrel between John XXII and the mendicants,
and John XXII’s other doctrinal ‘interests’, such as the beatific vision,
matters which produced some important writings in political
philosophy, for example, although not always directly connected with
Paris. Otherwise, things went on without the English. Between 1315
and 1340 we find at Paris many significant Spanish, Italian and of
course French scholars, although a few Germans also left a mark, such
as Thomas of Strasbourg. Only in the early 1320s were there any
‘leftover’ English, such as John Baconthorpe, Thomas Wilton and
Walter Burley. Moreover, this composition of Spanish, Italian and
French scholars continued even after Rimini’s ‘recovery’, so that in the
1340s we find that our remaining Sentences commentaries come from
Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo of Spain; Rimini, Hugolinus of Orvieto,
Paul of Perugia, and John of Ripa from Italy; and John of Mirecourt
and Pierre Ceffons from France. The English never really did return in
force to Paris, whereas the German presence increased there markedly,
until the creation of the new German universities in the wake of the
Great Schism.
To a degree English thought had always played a role in Paris, but it
was primarily English scholars who had also studied theology in Paris,
such as Scotus, William of Alnwick, Wilton, Baconthorpe and Burley,
who were known to their fellow Parisians. This was consistently the
case even in the thirteenth century, and continued until around 1340.
One can take Henry of Harclay as an example: he was cited by name
in, for example, distinction 39 of Peter Aureoli’s Scriptum version of
his commentary on book I of the Sentences ([16.4] 185–6). Through
Aureoli, almost all Parisian theologians came to learn of Harclay’s
position. Furthermore, Aufredo Gonteri Brito OFM literally absorbed
the whole of Harclay’s Parisian Sentences commentary into his own,
when lecturing at Paris in the 1320s. English influence at Paris in the
1320s did not depend on their physical presence there.
What about the influence of contemporary Oxford scholars in this
period, in Paris? Before 1326 we have practically no evidence of the
new English theology in Paris, and yet this was a highly productive
period. There are several possible reasons for the lack of English
influence at Paris after 1326, however: Pope John XXII’s movements
after 1326 against the suspect opinions and actions of Ockham, Peter
Olivi, Meister Eckhart, Michael of Cesena and Thomas of Wales, which
may have stifled philosophical flamboyance; the straining of cross-
Channel relations at the approach of the Hundred Years War; and the
extreme decrease in the numbers of English scholars at Paris after 1325
(see, e.g. [16.7] 45–6). The most plausible explanation for the Parisian
attitude toward Oxford in both periods is that Parisian thinkers were
too busy dealing with Aureoli.
Peter Aureoli’s stature in medieval thought has not been fully
appreciated, partly because until recently few have bothered to look at
Parisian thought in the decade after him, when we would expect his
impact to be felt most intensely. Aureoli comprehensively dismantled
the systems of Aquinas and Scotus, and created a new, internally
coherent system of thought that could not be ignored. It was so large,
however, that it left little room for anyone else. Thus Landulph
Caracciolo, for example, sometimes seems content to attack Aureoli
as if there were no one else. Looked at from this perspective, it is no
wonder Ockham and the English failed to make an impact.
SOURCES FOR STUDYING PARISIAN THEOLOGY, 1315–40
Between 1315 and 1340 many significant scholars studied at the
University of Paris. When we look at Parisian thought in this era we
are struck with the large number of extant Sentences commentaries
from the period 1315–30. In this period, these commentaries are the
main source for current issues not only in theology per se, but also
science and philosophy more generally (see [16.17] 274–80). There
are about twenty named authors with major extant theological works,
several anonymous commentaries (mostly Franciscan) that can be
assigned to this period, and we find many of Wilton’s ideas via
Baconthorpe and Pierre Roger’s from Francis Meyronnes (see [16.23]).
We have only two commentaries that we can assign with certainty to
the 1330s, those of Strasbourg and Peter of Aquila, both conservative
thinkers. Although we do have the fascinating letters between Nicholas
of Autrecourt and Bernard of Arezzo, their Sentences commentaries
do not survive. Autrecourt’s was in fact burned. Thus we have about
thirty theologians participating in a twenty-five-year discussion, but
most of the discussion had apparently ended by the early 1330s.
There is some evidence for the lasting influence of the theologians in
these decades. Although Early Modern motives in publishing were
complex, it is still interesting that at least ten Parisians of this period,
for the most part not well known to us, had major theological works
printed in the late fifteenth through to the early seventeenth centuries,
but this could be said for only five Oxford scholars from the same
era.2 Yet very few historians have tried to trace the course of any debate
in the Paris of that time. Even the editors of Rimini had little success in
finding the Parisian sources with whom he agreed, though this was
partly because he did not cite them himself. In truth, later theologians,
especially Franciscans, looked back upon these decades as a golden
age in Parisian thought, at least Franciscan thought. The fifteenthcentury
English Scotist John Foxoles placed the ultimate origin of three
schools of roughly Scotist thought in the 1320s and 1330s: Meyronnists,
Bonetists and pure Scotists (see [16.5] 270–1). In some areas of
philosophy there arose a ‘Marchist’ school as well, arising from Francis
of Marchia, and further articulated by Michael of Massa and William
of Rubione. By Rimini’s time some of their ideas were common enough
to be used without reference.
It is too early to tell the story of Paris between Aureoli and Rimini
with any degree of accuracy. Indeed, we are unsure of important basic
dates for many works, e.g. the versions of Aureoli’s Sentences
commentary; Peter Thomae’s and Peter of Navarre’s lectures; and
Rubione’s commentary (see [16.1] 199–207; [16.4] 78–82). Recently
changes have been made to the chronology of several figures in the
1330s: Peter of Aquila, Thomas of Strasbourg, Nicholas of Autrecourt
and Bernard of Arezzo (see [16.13]). Book I of Marchia’s Sentences
commentary, from lectures given just after Aureoli’s, survives in two
main versions in at least fifteen manuscripts and five fragments, but
remains unedited. In light of the inchoate nature of the research, a
general view of the period is simply impossible. Therefore, let us examine
the theory of Oxford superiority and Parisian isolation, stagnation,
dormition and reception of Oxford thought by comparing more closely
the discussion of Parisian and Oxford scholars in two of the four areas
in philosophical theology that Courtenay deems ‘worthy of special
mention’ in Oxford theology in the very same period: epistemology
and future contingents ([16.11] 22–9).
FUTURE CONTINGENTS
No fewer than ten theologians active from 1315 to 1340 have had all
or much of their Oxford treatments of future contingents published in
modern critical editions.3 For Paris, by contrast, this is true for two
figures only: Aureoli and Navarre. Lest this philosophical issue be
considered an area of particular strength for Oxford and weakness for
Paris, it must be added that Gregory of Rimini, the Parisian theologian
who is considered most responsible for the integration of the ‘New
English Theology’ into the Parisian milieu in the early 1340s, devoted
most of his energy to refuting Aureoli, building on Parisian tradition.
Moreover, during the celebrated quarrel over future contingents at
Louvain in the later fifteenth century, a controversy that grew to include
issues of divine power and will, Aureoli, Meyronnes, Marchia and
Nicholas Bonet played explicit roles, but none of the Oxford theologians
did (see [16.21] 407–8). So we must be prepared from the outset to
admit that the supposed superiority of Oxford thought in this era is
perhaps more a reflection of modern scholarly interests than of medieval
considerations.
Aside from the verbatim copying (reading secundum alium) of
Durandus by Bernard the Lombard and Dionysus de Burgo Sancti
Sepulchri, and of Harclay by Gonteri as mentioned, scholars active
between 1318 and 1330 focused on Aureoli’s opinions. The main
elements of Aureoli’s position have been outlined above. Temporal
things are indistant or non-distant to God’s eternity, and future-tensed
propositions are neither true nor false determinately; nor does God’s
knowledge make them so, since it does not temporally precede the
future. In addition, Aureoli’s emphasis on absolute divine necessity
left little room for any divine action, so Aureoli developed an awkward
division between the intrinsic divine will of ‘complacency’ which was
immutable and absolutely necessary, and the extrinsic will of
‘operation’, by which God actually acts, as in creation.4
The reaction to Aureoli’s theory in England was slight. Ockham
showed no awareness. Chatton knew some of Aureoli, and quoted the
basics of his ideas on propositions and prophecy, so he must have known
Aureoli’s distinction 38, article three. In refuting this fragment of
Aureoli’s treatment, Chatton even said, ‘this would be a nice
explanation, if it were true’. Adam Wodeham demonstrated about the
same cognizance of Aureoli as had Chatton, and perhaps knew a bit
more about the Parisian debate generally. Otherwise, there was little
response. Some of Bradwardine’s remarks in his De causa Dei which
appeared to some scholars to refer to Aureoli personally, really did
not, and Bradwardine was a bit confused if he meant that the position
that he heard defended in Avignon and Oxford was Aureoli’s own.
Aureoli never played a big role in the Oxford debate, which instead
went in other, interesting directions, examining in depth issues
surrounding prophecy, the ontological status of divine foreknowledge
(and the complexe significabile), and finally the different types of
necessity with respect to both the past and future.5
These last ‘Oxford’ issues only came to prominence in Paris with
Rimini. In the intervening years, almost every Parisian theologian whose
pertinent works can be securely dated to between 1318 and 1330
focused much of his discussion on Aureoli. Every one of Aureoli’s main
points was attacked, since he appeared to have denied foreknowledge
and prophecy altogether. In the 1320s, Baconthorpe, Caracciolo, and
his follower the anonymous author of Vienna ÖNB 1439 criticized
Aureoli’s vulnerable concept of the twofold divine will; Caracciolo
wondered whether creation came from God at all under Aureoli’s
scheme, if the act of creation were somehow ‘extrinsic’ to God.
Meyronnes, Caracciolo, Gerard of Siena, Bonet, and in an odd way
Gerard Odon rejected Aureoli’s notion of indistance, maintaining that
such a negative relation made little positive sense. Meyronnes, Marchia,
and Michael of Massa opposed the neutrality of future contingent
propositions, making use of both logical arguments and Scripture in
their defence of bivalence.
Several scholars defended Scotus’s account and appealed to the
traditional distinctions between the composite and divided senses of
such propositions as ‘what God foreknows will necessarily come about’,
and between the necessities of the consequent and of the consequence
(and parallel distinctions) in such consequences as ‘God foreknows X;
X will be’. All of these Aureoli had refuted at length, so this constitutes
the major ‘conservative’ point shared by many of these thinkers.
Nevertheless, interesting positive theories came out of the debate. For
Wilton, whose ideas in this context we know via Baconthorpe, what
was needed was to show that there are different levels of determination
in human activities anyway, and that we need not fear all such
‘predetermination’. Thus God can know ‘contingent’ futures. Francis
of Marchia developed a similar solution, although in much greater
depth. In short, he distinguished between different types of
determinations and indeterminations de inesse and de possibili. Humans
in fact determine themselves beforehand with respect to what they are
actually going to do; this is determination de inesse, about what is in
reality, without which no one would or could actually do anything.
This does not mean that they are determined de possibili, however, in
a way that the possibility to do otherwise is removed. Determination
de inesse was the basis of divine foreknowledge and was required for
human action, while indetermination de possibili preserved human
freedom and left God’s foreknowledge intact. Aureoli would have found
several problems with this theory, but it was expressed eloquently and
systematically. Massa and Rubione accepted Marchia’s solution as their
own, and by Rimini’s time it seems to have been a commonplace.
Through Rimini it was passed to later theologians, and used in the late
fifteenth century by the well-read Fernand of Cordoba against Peter of
Rivo’s defence of Aureoli’s doctrine.
Rimini does not cite Marchia by name in his Sentences commentary
in this context, nor do the editors trace Marchia’s influence. Like most
scholastics, Rimini was not in the habit of citing by name those with
whom he agreed. When he devoted an entire question to refuting
Aristotle and Aureoli’s opinion on future contingent propositions, he
did not cite his Parisian predecessors who did the same thing. His
Augustinian confrère Massa, in particular, focused much energy on
this very point, and may have been Rimini’s immediate source for
Marchia’s de inessel de possibili distinction. Nevertheless, he was not
cited by name either and historians have doomed him to oblivion even
in his own order. Moreover, the Parisian Nicholas Bonet was probably
Rimini’s reason for treating propositions yet again after so many others
had. During the Louvain controversy in the 1470s, Cardinal Bessarion
and Francesco della Rovere (Pope Sixtus IV) would remember and
applaud their fellow Franciscan Bonet’s refutation of Aureoli’s
indistance notion in the former’s Natural Theology of around 1330,
but they looked less favourably on Bonet’s apparent agreement with
Aureoli that future contingent propositions could not be true or false
without entailing fatalism. Indeed, Bonet seems to have limited the
certainty of divine foreknowledge, in a way Aureoli himself would not
have approved (see [16.20] 127–279, 714–69).
Rimini’s main goal in his impressive and exhaustive treatment is to
defeat Aureoli once and for all on the issue of propositions. In doing
so, Rimini defended foreknowledge per se, and only then did he go on
to other sub-issues, some of which came from Oxford. Rimini shows
his familiarity in this context with Wodeham, Chatton, Ockham and
the Monachus Niger. This is well known, but it does not seem possible
with future contingents to show when exactly these Oxford ideas were
in circulation in Paris. Probably it was not before 1330, but certainly
by 1343. Unfortunately the paucity and conservative nature of pertinent
sources from the 1330s do not allow any more specificity.
EPISTEMOLOGY
Katherine Tachau has looked at the Oxford discussion of epistemology
in these decades, and at Aureoli and some of his Parisian successors.
With the help of other works, we are able to piece the Parisian picture
together fairly comprehensively. In epistemology as in future contingents
Aureoli played a pivotal role. Although he was emphasizing vision,
Aureoli’s successors interpreted his theories as a radical departure from
previous epistemologies, primarily Scotus’s. Scotus had differentiated
between intuitive and abstractive cognition basically by saying that
intuitive cognition was of objects immediately present, and abstractive
cognition was the knowledge one had when the object was absent.
Aureoli put forth a redefinition of intuition and abstraction, taking
various erroneous visual ‘experiences’ (he gives eight examples) as his
starting point to define intuition. In doing so, Aureoli maintained that
intuition occurred when one thought the object was immediately
present, and in that case the ‘apparent being’ (esse apparens) was in
fact present to the mind, even with veridical intuition. For example,
when one is on a moving ship, one experiences the motion of objects
on the shore. Since one intuits the apparent being of such motion
without its real presence, or even existence, outside the mind, and since
even in Veridical’ intuition one in fact intuits only apparent being,
then one cannot infer the real presence or existence of the objects of
‘normal’ experiences, Aureoli argued. Moreover, if produced by God,
an erroneous intuition would be indistinguishable from a veridical one.
For some of Aureoli’s successors, this jeopardized all certainty, although
Aureoli apparently did not intend this (see [16.24] 85–112).
By his own admission, Ockham had limited access to Aureoli’s
Scriptum, but Ockham learned enough about Aureoli to treat the latter’s
position in a confused way in his Ordinatio, written while at the London
convent in 1320–4. The most idiosyncratic aspects of Ockham’s
treatment are his claims that one can have a true intuition that something
does not exist, and that God could give us a false intuition of something
not present, but we would still discern its falsity. These awkward
opinions were easy targets for those who followed in the English
discussion. In debates with his confrère Walter Chatton, Ockham
modified some of his views ([16.24] 113–53). Chatton himself,
composing his Sentences commentary in 1321–3, knew Aureoli’s
Scriptum better, but Chatton’s readers were not able to distinguish
clearly between Ockham and Aureoli in Chatton’s work, and this led
to further confusion ([16.24] 180, 185–6, 207–8). Adam Wodeham
was Chatton’s rapporteur at the Franciscan London studium, and when
he in turn lectured on the Sentences at Norwich, London and Oxford,
beginning perhaps in 1328 or even earlier, Wodeham came to explore
Aureoli’s views directly, so that he knew him better than anyone else in
England.6
From the discussions of future contingents and epistemology we
can perhaps infer that the Franciscans’ London convent housed the
only manuscript of Aureoli’s Scriptum in England, since Ockham,
Chatton and Wodeham, who show the most extensive knowledge of
Aureoli, seem to have examined his work there. Unfortunately we know
less about epistemology at Oxford after Wodeham, but the London
convent and Adam Wodeham may be the key to the passage of English
theology to Paris beginning in the 1330s.
As in the case of future contingents, Aureoli’s thought played a
significant role in Parisian epistemological discussions in the 1320s
and 1330s. Of the theologians Tachau inspected from this period, she
found that only Strasbourg appeared unfamiliar with Aureoli’s
epistemology, and even Strasbourg has been added to those who treated
Aureoli in that context (see [16.13] 455). The same can be said of
some of the theologians Tachau has not studied, such as Baconthorpe
(see [16.14] 57). In many cases, these theologians had difficulty
understanding Aureoli’s position because they approached his text
wearing Scotist glasses, reading into Aureoli Scotus’s definition of
intuition and abstraction. Still, the epistemological debate that followed
Aureoli in Paris had a continuing impact even after the full reception
of English thought. Caracciolo’s treatment, for example, was well
known to Pierre Ceffons, lecturing in 1345 (see [16.24] 321).
In epistemology, however, English thought is already present by 1332.
Parallel passages in Chatton and William of Rubione reveal a close
connection in the context of epistemology, and other evidence reinforces
such an early cross-Channel link (see [16.15] 39–40; [16.13] 447–8).
Rubione’s commentary could have been written any time between 1323
and 1332, however, so Chatton’s commentary may have even been
available in Paris immediately following his own Sentences lectures.
There is another difficulty: we cannot be certain about Rubione’s
testimony until we examine Marchia’s works exhaustively. In other
contexts, Marchia influenced both Chatton and Rubione, and although
an inspection of the two main versions of Marchia’s Sentences
commentary did not reveal the relevant discussion of abstractive and
intuitive cognition, perhaps there was another source. It would be odd
for such an original thinker as Marchia to have been perhaps unique
in ignoring Aureoli on this issue.
Chatton’s impact is certainly present, however, in the most famous
epistemological debate of the time, perhaps of the entire Middle Ages,
the exchanges of letters between Nicholas of Autrecourt and Bernard
of Arezzo in 1336–7. Taking the lead from Aureoli and the Parisian
discussion following his lectures, Autrecourt took the next step and
denied the possibility of certainty based on sensory perception. No
apparent perception of an extramental object could provide certainty
of the existence of that object. Moreover, even assuming the existence
of those objects, one could never be certain of cause and effect relations,
the bases of natural philosophy. If it is possible for us to be mistaken
about the external world and efficient causation because of God’s
action, Autrecourt maintained that it is possible without qualification
to be so mistaken. There have been many treatments, even monographlength
accounts, of the radically sceptical aspects of Autrecourt’s
thought. Until recently this debate was seen as evidence of the influence
of that ubiquitous ‘Ockhamism’, but Tachau shows convincingly that
this historiographical interpretation is based on a long series of errors
and false suppositions. In fact, there is no evidence for Ockham’s
influence on Autrecourt in the debate (see [16.24] 335–52; [16.13]
453–9; [16.25] 248–50).
Still, there are strong indications that Autrecourt knew Chatton’s
work, if not Ockham’s. In 1340 the arts faculty restricted a proposition
that Autrecourt, while being reviewed in 1346, admitted he had held,
presumably in the 1330s: ‘God and a creature are nothing.’ Although
in 1346 Autrecourt used the term complexe significabile to describe
what he had held, and Tachau therefore links the proposition to
Wodeham, it could just as easily be the case that Autrecourt came to
hold the proposition via Chatton’s influence, and only later learned
Wodeham’s terminology. Indeed, Tachau says that Autrecourt conflated
the views of the two English Franciscans ([16.24] 353–6).
The first strong evidence for Wodeham’s presence, and for Ockham’s,
comes again with Rimini. As in the case of future contingents, Rimini
combined a concern with Aureoli and Parisian currents with a close
knowledge of the English debate, although he was less negative toward
Aureoli in this context. Rimini opposed Ockham’s position, as had
most Oxford scholars, but Wodeham played a positive part in the
development of the Italian Augustinian’s opinion. Here as well we see
the introduction of the complexe significabile to yet another
philosophical problem, and in the decade following Rimini the English
and Parisian trends merged ([16.24] 357–83).
THE IMPACT OF ENGLISH THOUGHT IN PARIS AFTER 1340
The impact of English thought in Parisian philosophical theology in
the 1330s appears to be mostly limited to Oxford writers active in
London before 1323, e.g. Ockham in his non-theological works,
Chatton in his Sentences commentary, and perhaps Wodeham. By 1343,
however, Rimini was using a very wide range of English philosophical
and theological works. There is reason to believe that there was an
important Italian connection here. William of Alnwick was named lector
at the Franciscan studium in Bologna in 1323, and Thomas Waleys
was lector at the Dominican convent there in 1326–7. Walter Burley,
who by 1327 knew so much of the intellectual currents of both Oxford
and Paris, was in Bologna in 1341. Ockham himself was in Italy for a
while after 1328, although it is doubtful that he had much of an impact
there just then. These English scholars brought their minds and their
books, and by about 1340 parts of Burley’s, Ockham’s, Rodington’s
and Chatton’s Sentences commentaries and no doubt many other
English works were available in Bologna. Finally, before returning to
Paris in 1342, Gregory of Rimini lectured in Bologna, Padua and Perugia
(see [16.6] 13–32; [16.13] 449–50). This may help explain how Rimini
brought so much with him, and why the full introduction of English
thought into Paris seems so abrupt.
After 1343 there was definitely an English influence in Paris, but
how much of an impact? In theology, Courtenay points to four English
trends. First, Sentences commentaries shrunk in size. Second, Sentences
commentaries were restructured, so that they departed from Lombard’s
organization and focused on sophismata. Third, schools of thought
disappeared, and more emphasis was placed on individual thinking
than on system building. Finally, new logical, physical and mathematical
ideas were applied to theological issues ([16.8] 111–14).
The size of Sentences commentaries at Paris does not seem to have
shrunk appreciably after 1343, although we must remember that the
size of commentaries depended on whether they were revised by the
author into longer forms (ordinationes). The structuring of
commentaries is a different matter. Here we find that after 1343
theologians such as Mirecourt, Henry Totting of Oyta, Peter d’Ailly
and Peter of Candia do depart from Lombard’s distinction organization,
the last three, writing in the 1370s, asking a mere handful of very large
questions. Still, many stuck close to Lombard’s system, such as John
of Ripa and John Hiltalingen of Basel. And even Mirecourt and Candia
followed Lombard’s basic order, usually finishing off their commentaries
on the first book with questions on divine knowledge, foreknowledge,
power and will. Moreover, some of this was already present in, for
example, Francis of Marchia. Although Marchia superficially keeps to
Lombard’s distinctions, the contents of the questions do not correspond
to Lombard’s. Thus in one version Marchia devoted all of distinctions
35, 36, 38 and 39 to future contingents.
It is a difficult question as to whether school traditions existed in
an important way in Paris before 1343, or whether there was a big
change afterwards. Both before and after 1343, mendicants for the
most part kept their discussion within their own orders, at least. The
traditional view, however, has been that Paris was pretty much a
Scotist university in these early decades, or that Parisians were less
individualistic than their Oxford counterparts. We have seen that there
are a few examples of reading secundum alium, hardly an original
activity. It is also true that Marchia and Caracciolo, for example, had
their own groups of close followers on certain issues, and that many
theologians were content to modify a Scotist account in reply to
Aureoli. The trend of paraphrasing and even copying others
continued, however, long after the Oxford currents had been absorbed
into the Paris environment. But how do we assess this situation? Their
aim continued to be system building: Aureoli had a new system;
Marchia tried to develop a new system, leaving much of Scotus
behind; his followers tried to hammer it out; Rimini himself wanted
a system. The Parisian scholars may have looked at the big picture
more than did those at Oxford, who focused on individual problems.
This does not mean that Parisians did not criticize. They had no
choice but to be fundamentally negative in their works in response to
Peter Aureoli’s complete revision of most aspects of philosophical
theology. It is simply that after their attacks on Aureoli, they tended
to either develop new systems or seek refuge in old ones. It did no
good if one’s ideas did not hold together, after all. Especially telling in
this regard was a tendency, already in Wilton and later in Bonet (at
least in future contingents), to throw up one’s hands where no
systematic solution could be found. This is exactly what Hiltalingen
and Candia did later on (see [16.20] 713, 804).
Finally, there is the new logic, mathematics and physics in theology.
This was a trend already evident in Paris in the late 1310s and 1320s
in the writings of Aureoli, Marchia, Massa and Odon. Scholars of the
1340s make increasing use of Oxford geometrical, mathematical and
logical ‘measure’ language to discuss such topics in philosophical
theology as the infinite, already one of Rimini’s favourite subjects. Even
if the new language of Oxford was not developed in Paris, certainly
the problems associated with and presupposed in that language were
explored before 1343, however. In this way, Oxford thought reinforced
a Parisian trend already in motion, and the writings of Rimini,
Mirecourt and Ceffons abound with the fruits of the new merger, both
in terms of new tools and in terms of new topics. Ceffons even develops
the tools and techniques further (see [16.16], [16.18]).
Ultimately, the safest basis for claiming that English scholarship
played a big new role in Paris after 1343 is citations. One need look
no further than the master of citations himself, the Augustinian John
Hiltalingen of Basel, who lectured on the Sentences at Paris in 1365–
6. He cited some twenty Oxford scholars from the previous fifty
years, and in his discussion of foreknowledge and predestination
alone, Hiltalingen cited Bradwardine, Heytesbury, Richard of
Kilvington, Wodeham, Fitzralph and Nicholas Aston (see [16.27]
242–50; [16.20] 789–807). English thought had permanently
penetrated the ‘mainstream’ of European philosophy by 1365. One
finds impressive numbers of English citations in the 1340s with
Rimini and Hugolino of Orvieto. In many places John of Mirecourt’s
commentary appears to be a simple matter of cutting and pasting
from Wodeham, Halifax, Bradwardine, Kilvington, Langeley and
Buckingham, which suggests that Parisians may have used Oxford
material, without attribution, to show off and gain a reputation as
innovators (see [16.12]).
This may even be the case with Rimini himself. It is telling that in
the period after Scotus, Rimini’s editors found that he cited Aureoli
and Ockham about 200 times each. Only three other scholars between
1320 and 1343 have more than ten references in Rimini: Wodeham
(66), Fitzralph (34) and Burley (58), although the editors have found a
few references to several other theologians from the period on both
sides of the Channel. It is hard to believe that Rimini would treat Aureoli
so often while ignoring the intervening Parisian debates which
undoubtedly provided ammunition. As we have seen, Rimini was less
likely to cite Parisians explicitly (although he used their material), but
it is also the case that English citations and ideas would have been
more interesting to an audience who had heard all of the anti-Aureoli
arguments before.
CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that Oxford thought between 1315 and 1340 was
truly exciting. The main reason for this was that more English scholars
simply stayed at home. There is also little doubt that Rimini to a large
extent was responsible for first explicitly introducing many of the
stimulating English developments into the Parisian discussion, and that
English thought outside of natural philosophy and logic was largely
ignored in Paris in the meantime, at least until around 1330, when
Walter Chatton’s Sentences commentary was probably available in
Paris. But Rimini’s Aureoli citations and much present research show
that there is also considerable evidence that Parisian theology, at least
until the 1330s, continued to be illuminated by brilliant minds as it
had before 1318 and as it would after 1343. What happened after
1343 was that newer English techniques and even English theological
problems further enriched what was already a lively affair at the
continental university. After 1343, in future contingents for example,
there are more issues to discuss. But from the period 1318 to 1343,
Oxford, although to a lesser extent than Paris, was not conversant
with trends in the other city, and in many cases awareness of, say, the
Parisian debate on future contingents, would have stimulated the
English treatment of the same issue.
Whether Oxford thought was ‘better’ than Parisian thought in this
period, or vice versa, is in the final analysis a matter of taste. Modern
taste thus far has leaned heavily toward Oxford. Late medieval and
Early Modern tastes, perhaps more conservatively, went in the direction
of Paris. It really does not matter. Surely, however, the continued
flourishing of Paris and the unique developments at Oxford between
1315 and 1350 can only mean a high point in European philosophy
generally, both universities contributing and deserving further study.
NOTES
1. On Burley’s reaction to Ockham, see above, Chapter 15, pp. 369–77; on Buridan
and the Summa logicae, see John Buridan [16.2] xxx–xxxv.
2. For Paris there are all or part of the Sentences commentaries of Durandus, Aureoli,
Meyronnes, Baconthorpe, Landulph Caracciolo, Gerard of Siena, William of
Rubione, Strasbourg and Aquila, and Nicholas Bonet’s Natural Theology; for
Oxford, those of Ockham, Holcot, Wodeham and Buckingham, and Bradwardine’s
De causa Dei.
3. For some Oxford theologians, see above, Chapter 14, pp. 354–5; for Paris,
Aureoli’s contribution to the dispute is edited by Schabel [16.4] and Peter of
Navarre’s in Petrus de Navarra [16.3].
4. See above, Chapter 15, pp. 380–1 and cf. Schabel [16.4] 75–8, 175–80.
5. Some of these issues are discussed in Chapter 17, below: see especially pp. 410–
11 (complexly significables).
6. [16.24] 276, 290; and see above, Chapter 14, pp. 330, 333, 346 and
348–9 on Chatton and Wodeham.
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