It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300-1350 (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters) ... Zur Geistesgeschichte Des Mittelalters)

IT COULD HAVE BEEN OTHERWISE

STUDIEN UND TEXTE ZUR GEISTESGESCHICHTE DES MITTELALTERS begründet von

JOSEF KOCH weitergeführt von

PAUL WILPERT, ALBERT ZIMMERMANN und JAN A. AERTSEN herausgegeben von

ANDREAS SPEER in zusammenarbeit mit TZOTCHO BOIADJIEV, KENT EMERY, JR. und WOUTER GORIS (Managing Editor) BAND LXXXI HESTER GOODENOUGH GELBER

IT COULD HAVE BEEN OTHERWISE

IT COULD HAVE BEEN OTHERWISE CONTINGENCY AND NECESSITY IN DOMINICAN THEOLOGY AT OXFORD, 1300-1350

BY

HESTER GOODENOUGH GELBER

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 0169-8028 ISBN 90 04 13907 9 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii ix

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Chapter 1. The Making of a Conversational Community . . . . . . . . . . A. The Provincial Priors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Doctors of Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Blackfriars from 1300 to 1312 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Years of Crisis—Blackfriars from 1312 to 1320 . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Blackfriars under John of Bristol—1317 to 1327 . . . . . . . . . . 4. Blackfriars under Simon of Boraston—1327 to 1336. . . . . 5. The Provincialates of Winkley, Dutton and Strelley—1337 to 1349 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Intellectual Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23 26 29 32 39 43 46 48 51

Chapter 2. A Community Census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 A. Blackfriars from 1300 to 1312. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 B. Blackfriars from 1312 to 1320 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 C. Blackfriars under John of Bristol—1317–1327 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 D. Blackfriars under Simon of Boraston—1327–1336 . . . . . . . . . . . 85 E. The Provincialates of Winkley, Dutton and Strelley—1337–1349 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Chapter 3. New Directions in Modal Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Thomas Aquinas on Modality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. The Fourteenth Century Reaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Enter the Ars obligatoria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

107 114 123 139 150

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Chapter 4. Emergence of an Obligational Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. John Duns Scotus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Arnold of Strelley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Robert Holcot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

151 156 158 171 190

Chapter 5. The Limits of Lying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Covenant and Contract among the Dominicans . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Could God Deceive Us? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

191 192 200 221

Chapter 6. Troubling Necessities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Immutability Implies Necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Necessities of Past and Consequent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

223 224 250 264

Chapter 7. Invincible Ignorance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Arnold of Strelley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Intuitive Cognition of Non-Existents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. William Crathorn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. A Case of Mistaken Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

267 273 280 289 293 306

Chapter 8. God’s Absolute and Ordained Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Revisiting the Modern Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Dominicans on God’s Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. God’s Knowledge of a Non-Existent Rose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

309 309 324 339 348

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Index of Ancient and Medieval Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are more people to thank for having contributed over the years to this project than I can properly acknowledge. The idea of the university as a ‘conversational community,’ the idea that the university is a place where faculty and students make commitments to join in ongoing intellectual conversations, which can be resurrected at least in part in terms of the participants and the written and oral substance of their exchanges, supplies the frame for my study of the medieval Dominicans. But its truth is apparent in the very way this work itself has unfolded. Because the book has taken shape over a number of years, it has evolved through drafts, circulated among colleagues, and appeared obliquely in their works referenced as ‘forthcoming.’ I have had the benefit of their comments, their publications (sometimes partly influenced by drafts of this work), and their generous acknowledgements. I hope that the text and footnotes properly convey what I owe to them. Some in particular deserve to be named. William Courtenay, Katherine Tachau, Paul Streveler, Calvin Normore, Paul Spade, Alan Code, Amos Funkenstein and Chris Schabel read drafts of the text in whole or in part and responded with their comments either in person or in print. All have shared their own work with me, to which I am much indebted, as have Christopher Martin, Rega Wood, Dallas Denery and Neil Lewis. Among our graduate students, John Ott helped research the medieval theory of contracts. Stephen Wilson served as a treasured research assistant, as did Candace West. Darko Sarenac contributed a logician’s eye at an important moment in working out the implications of the Dominicans’ adoption of a multi-valued logic. Numerous others have engaged in discussions about medieval Dominicans during individual study and office hours, but most notably Meg Worley and Karen Gross. My Department of Religious Studies helped with funding. Carla Kirschenbaum gave editorial support. A year at the Stanford Humanities Center provided important time for writing and reflection. Unfortunately, I cannot pay tribute individually to all of the colleagues with whom my thinking has developed or my ideas taken shape as we have

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talked together, but I hope they know their value. Finally, last but not least, I owe a debt to family and friends for their patience and unfailing support in listening to me go on about ‘my’ Dominicans.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Acta AFP AHDLMA BGPTM BPM BRUC BRUO CHLMP

EHR FcS FzS HPL HTR PJ RHE RNP RTAM TRHS ZKT

Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litéraire du moyen âge Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters Bulletin de philosophie médiévale A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963). A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500 (Oxford, 1957–1959). The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge, 1982). English Historical Review Franciscan Studies Franziskanische Studien History and Philosophy of Logic Harvard Theological Review Philosophisches Jahrbuch Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique Revue néoscolastique de philosophie Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie

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INTRODUCTION

The statement ‘It could have been otherwise’ presents considerable difficulty. For one, we can never have direct confirmation of its truth. Whatever we experience as happening at any given moment is just what we experience and not some alternative. We never experience two opposite possibilities as truly actual at one and the same moment. And yet the intuition that ‘it could have been otherwise’ is strong within us. Language, action, culture presume as much. In Aristotle’s catchphrase, if everything happened necessarily, there would be no reason to plan or deliberate.1 There are three dimensions to this puzzle. The first is linguistic: How does contingency figure in speech? The second is epistemic: How is it that we understand the world as contingent? And the third is metaphysical: How can we frame a coherent story about contingency as a presumed reality? The metaphysical dimension may collapse into the epistemic dimension, or each of these may in turn collapse into the linguistic dimension, or some other relationship may obtain, but nonetheless positions taken on whether and how anything ‘could have been otherwise’ matter. Much rides on them because they are key to views about social and personal accountability. Investigation into how alternative possibilities were conceived at a given time can open a window onto a group or culture. In the following book, I have taken up just such an investigation into how a group of Dominican theologians at Oxford during the first half of the fourteenth century dealt with the notion of contingency and the puzzles it raises. For them and their contemporaries, the scope of divine and human freedom and the implications of that scope for human salvation depended on the nature of contingency. It is well known, if not notorious, among intellectual historians and historians of philosophy that in contrast to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, many Scholastics of the fourteenth and fifteenth viewed the world as radically contingent, dependent upon a divine will able to will

1

Aristoteles, De Interpretatione 9.18b26–33.

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other than it does will. Belief in God’s absolute power to do anything that does not involve a contradiction meant a concomitant belief that only some of the logically possible possibilities could be actual at any one time. If no absolute and necessary standard of Good constrained God’s will, a standard that necessitated creation and the creation of the best of all possible worlds, then God could have created some other world than this one or foregone creation altogether. Moreover, since this world unfolds its events over time, it seemed possible that alternative futures still lay open to divine and human choice—that what would come to pass was not ultimately determined or perhaps even determinate. Much debate has centered on whether such views about God’s will and contingency were corrosive of theology and philosophy, on whether they produced skepticism and incoherence, or whether those who held them had a defensible position.2 The counterfactual reasoning these views invite has been termed everything from frivolous and puerile to necessary for the development of modern science.3 But I have tried to suspend such judgmental questions. My first priority has been to see how a radically contingent world made sense to the fourteenth-century scholars themselves. In trying to achieve that goal, I have found concerns about the big historical picture more limiting than illuminating. In the process of answering the question of how a contingent world made sense to a group of fourteenth-century Oxford Dominicans, however, questions about the skepticism and coherence of their views and questions about the speculation and creativity their views made possible may find some answer. Why these men? Oxford went through a period of intellectual ferment during the first half of the fourteenth century. The university 2 For a discussion of the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power along with the literature see chapter eight below. 3 For the negative judgment, see for example Philotheus Boehner’s criticisms of the author of the Centiloquium in ‘The Centiloquium Attributed to Ockham,’ Franciscan Studies 1.1 (1941): 64 and ibid. 1.2 (1941): 44. Pierre Duhem, Études sur Léonard de Vinci, ceux qu’il a lus et ceux qui l’ont lu, 3 vols. (Paris, 1916–1913; repr. 1955), 2:412 was the first to argue for the importance of this kind of reasoning to the development of modern science. Also see Edward Grant, ‘The Condemnation of 1277, God’s Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages,’ Viator 10 (1979): 211–244; and Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1986), 121–179. Leonard A. Kennedy has continued to hold the earlier view in the face of much revision. See for example his ‘Philosophical Scepticism in England in the Mid-Fourteenth Century,’ Vivarium 21 (1983): 35–57.

introduction

3

boasted not only John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Thomas Bradwardine, to name the best known of its scholars, but also Richard of Campsall, Walter Burley, Robert Holcot, William Heytesbury, and Adam Wodeham, to name some of the lesser known but impressive writers of the time. Developments in logic created a technical vocabulary and set of analytical tools the students and masters in arts and theology appropriated and applied to puzzles in theology and philosophy. The integration of English terminist logic with theology and natural philosophy constituted the source of Oxford’s intellectual vitality, giving the intellectual life of the university halls its peculiar cast and Oxonians their reputation for ‘English subtleties.’4 Certainly the subtleties of the English were a challenge to continental scholars who viewed the work of their counterparts in England variously with fear and admiration.5 4 Neal W. Gilbert, ‘Richard de Bury and the “Quires of Yesterday’s Sophisms”,’ in Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Edward P. Mahoney (New York, 1976), 229–257; John E. Murdoch, ‘From Social into Intellectual Factors: An Aspect of the Unitary Character of Late Medieval Learning,’ in The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, ed. John Emery Murdoch and Edith Dudley Sylla, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (Dordrecht, 1975), 271–348; idem, ‘The Development of a Critical Temper: New Approaches and Modes of Analysis in Fourteenth-Century Philosophy, Science and Theology,’ in Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7, ed. S. Wenzel (Chapel Hill, 1978), 51–79; idem, ‘Scientia mediantibus vocibus: Metalinguistic Analysis in Late Medieval Natural Philosophy,’ in Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, Akten des VI. Internationalen Kongreses für Mittelalterliche Philosophie der Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, ed. Jan P. Beckmann, Ludger Honnefelder, Gabriel Jüssen, Barbara Münxelhaus, Gangolf Schrimpf, Georg Wieland under the direction of Wolfgang Kluxen 1, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13/1 (Berlin, 1981), 73–106; William J. Courtenay, Schools & Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1987), 219–306. The first four articles in The History of the University of Oxford, ed. T.H. Aston, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. J.I. Catto and Ralph Evans, (Oxford, 1992), are also of note: W.J. Courtenay, ‘Theology and Theologians from Ockham to Wyclif,’ 1–34; E.J. Ashworth and P.V. Spade, ‘Logic in Late Medieval Oxford,’ 35–64; J.D. North, ‘Natural Philosophy in Late Medieval Oxford,’ 65–102, and idem, ‘Astronomy and Mathematics,’ 103–174. The last article, while useful, relies too heavily on dated secondary literature in its discussion of theology, so requires a bit of caution. Terminist logic focused on supposition, ampliation, restriction, and the functional properties of terms, and developed differently in England than at Paris where modist logic came to prominence during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. See L.M. de Rijk, ‘The Origins of the Theory of the Properties of Terms,’ in CHLMP, 161–173; Alain de Libera, ‘The Oxford and Paris Traditions in Logic,’ in CHLMP, 174–187; Paul Vincent Spade, ‘The Semantics of Terms,’ in CHLMP, 188–196; Norman Kretzmann, ‘Syncategoremata, exponibilia, sophismata,’ in CHLMP, 211–245; and William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic, rev. paperback edition (Oxford, 1984), 224–274. 5 For the reception of English thought at Paris, see Gilbert, ‘Richard de Bury,’

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While historians now discern the outlines of what happened at Oxford, much is still unknown about the evolution of its intellectual culture. The Dominicans at Blackfriars are among those as yet mostly hidden from view. As an order dedicated to scholarship, teaching, and preaching, the almost complete absence of Dominicans, so active in the thirteenth century, from the ranks of famous theologians at Oxford in the fourteenth century is well known to modern scholars, and raises questions. Is their relative obscurity a result of something that happened within the order in England? Or an artifact of the scarcity of sources that remain to us? Or a result of the motivations and interests of the researchers in the field? Discovering the part Dominicans played in the era of intellectual advance at Oxford will contribute to understanding what took place within the university and to understanding intellectual life within the Dominican order as well. Moreover, with the apostolic roles of preaching and hearing confession as their primary function, the friars inevitably took the understanding of the world they developed within the university out into society at large. The interconnection of university, friars, and lay audience put the ways the mendicant scholars construed the human condition at the center of late medieval English culture. Indeed, if practices in England were like those on the continent, bishops had come to rely on Dominican schools to help educate local clergy, and boys and even adult laymen would have come to study grammar and other subjects there.6 Clarifying how the Dominicans understood their world should also help in discerning how those whom they taught and to whom they preached understood the world as well.

229–257; William J. Courtenay and Katherine H. Tachau, ‘Ockham, Ockhamism, and the English-German Nation at Paris, 1339–1341,’ History of Universities 2 (1982): 53–96; William J. Courtenay, ‘The Reception of Ockham’s Thought at the University of Paris,’ in Preuve et raisons à l’Université de Paris: Logique, ontologie et théologie au XIVe siècle, ed. Zénon Kaluza and Paul Vignaux (Paris, 1984), 43–64; idem, ‘Force of Words and Figures of Speech: The Crisis over Virtus Sermonis in the Fourteenth Century,’ FcS 44 (1984): 107– 128; idem, ‘The Role of English thought in the Transformation of University Education in the Late Middle Ages,’ in Rebirth, Reform and Resilience: Universities in Transition 1300– 1700, ed. James M. Kittelson and Pamela J. Transue (Columbus, 1984), 103–162; Zénon Kaluza, Les querelles doctrinales à Paris: Nominalistes et realistes aux confins du XIV e et du XV e siècles, (Bergamo, 1988). 6 M. Michèle Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow is Bent in Study’: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto, 1998), xi, 50–52, 86–95. Mulchahey’s excellent study relies most fully on documents relating to the order in Italy and France and to a lessor extent on those relevant for England.

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5

What accounts for the obscurity of the Dominicans? King Henry VIII is the villain of the piece. His dissolution of monasteries and friaries with the accompanying destruction of libraries and documents swept away most of the records of Dominican activity in England during the previous centuries.7 King Henry’s suppression of the historical record has left us with severe gaps in our knowledge that can never be filled and with the necessity of gleaning, through much hard labor and downright luck, what we can gather from the sources left to us. In part because of the difficulties, there have been few harvesters at work in these fields. Moreover, those who have bent to the task have for the most part been more interested in reconstructing the institutions of Dominican life and education than in studying the friars’ participation in the intellectual culture of late medieval England.8 With the exception of Beryl Smalley’s work on the ‘classicizing friars,’9 and a few books and articles on individual Dominicans,10 the role of the Dominicans as interpreters of God and the world in fourteenth-century England remains largely unstudied. Given the methods usually employed in evaluating the contribution of authors to the creation of the intellectual life of a time, the very paucity of studies of Dominican authors has come to provide a reason for their further neglect. Historians judge the relative importance of the writers of a period on the basis of five criteria: 1) the sheer 7

Alfred B. Emden, Survey of Dominicans in England: Based on the Ordination Lists in Episcopal Registers (1268 to 1538) Dissertationes Historicae 18 (Rome, 1967), 15–20; Neil R. Ker, ‘Oxford College Libraries before 1500,’ in The Universities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Jozef Ijsewijn and Jacques Paquet (Louvain, 1978), 293; for Cambridge, some of whose library was rescued by Cardinal Cervini, see Patrick Zutshi and Robert Ombres, O.P., ‘The Dominicans in Cambridge 1238–1538’ AFP 60 (1990): 319–321; and see Alban Léotard, revised by Rupert G.M. Hardy, ‘The Benedictines at Oxford, 1283– 1539,’ in Benedictines in Oxford, ed. Henry Wansbrough and Anthony Marett-Crosby (London, 1997), p. 35, for a graphic 1535 description of the great quadrant court at New College full of the windblown leaves of ‘Dunce.’ 8 A.G. Little, ‘Educational Organisation of the Mendicant Friars in England (Dominicans and Franciscans),’ TRHS n. s. 8 (1894): 49–70; A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1957–1959), hereafter BRUO; idem, ‘Dominican Confessors and Preachers Licensed by Medieval English Bishops,’ AFP 32 (1962): 180–210; Maura O’Carroll, ‘The Educational Organisation of the Dominicans in England and Wales 1221–1348: A Multidisciplinary Approach,’ AFP 50 (1980): 23–62. 9 Beryl Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960). 10 See chapter two for an extensive review of the names of the Dominicans at Oxford and the available secondary literature.

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number of their surviving texts, 2) how often they are cited and by whom, 3) the importance of the offices and patronage they received, 4) whether their effect is discernible either on large numbers of others or on a few deemed significant, and 5) whether their writings provide ways of understanding the times in which they wrote. On all of these criteria, the Dominicans are thought to fall short of their Franciscan compatriots.11 The thought is founded on impressions gathered from the available secondary literature. The available literature is in turn a result of the happenstances of historians’ motivations and the availability of texts.12 Because the Dominicans are neglected, not much is known. Because not much is known, the secondary literature little reflects their activities. Because the secondary literature little reflects their activities, they are judged not important. Because they are thought not important, they are neglected. The circularity of current reasoning seems evident, and a systematic survey of the Dominicans in comparison with the Franciscans, Benedictines, Carmelites, Cistercians, Augustinians, and seculars would seem in order before drawing any conclusions about the relative significance of one group or another. Unfortunately, the usual methods for determining the influence and importance of the writers of an age cannot be applied to the Dominicans (or their contemporaries in other orders) in a straightforward manner. The destruction of the monastic libraries makes any statistical survey of surviving texts of small value.13 Large numbers of copies of a few works do survive, indicating texts of great popularity, but other works by the same author may be lost or scant in number, and texts that may have had significant influence on a smaller circle of readers may survive in only a few copies. Moreover, a considerable number of the texts that do survive are found in continental libraries, subject to the filter of continental tastes and interests. Their survival at Paris, Erfurt, Rome, 11 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 66, 68–69 (but cf. 153), 103, 340, and 369 (but cf. 363), summarizes the negative perception of the Dominicans. 12 In the modern era, the Franciscan order has supported extensive research into fourteenth-century Franciscan theologians, providing impetus for their study both within the order itself and among other scholars. The Dominican order has channeled its scholarly energies elsewhere, either into the study of Aquinas and Thomism, at the expense of the fourteenth-century members of the order who were generally less Thomist than earlier and later Dominicans, or into the history of Aristotelianism. 13 Neil R. Ker, ‘Oxford College Libraries before 1500,’ in The Universities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Jozef Ijsewijn and Jacques Paquet (Louvain, 1978), 294, emphasizes the point that the books that remain underwent a process of selection during the sixteenth century.

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Vienna, Munich, etc., while important for understanding the transmission of English scholarship abroad, provides only indirect evidence for the importance of particular texts in England and indicates nothing about the importance in England of those texts that failed to cross the channel. Frequency of citation would seem to offer a better indication of influence. However, here, too, the information to be gained is subject to limitations. Only some authors cited their contemporaries by name, and members of religious orders tended to cite by name the members of their own order far more than they cited seculars or the members of other orders. Dominicans do not often appear in the works of Franciscans nor vice-versa. If historians had studied Dominicans relatively heavily over against Franciscans, the Franciscans would seem less influential than they do. To find the names of Dominican authors requires looking at Dominican texts. However, the result will still not indicate which among them had much effect outside the order. Surveying the advancement of various Dominican authors to socially important positions within church and society would serve as evidence of their esteem and influence, but here again difficulties encumber efforts to know. Within the order, the positions of prestige were principal lector (teacher) at a convent, prior of a convent, preacher general, visitor (chief disciplinary officer in charge of visiting convents to ensure enforcement of legislated standards), diffinitor (one of four chief legislative officers at provincial chapters, one of whom represented the provincial chapter at the general chapter meetings), vicar general of the order for the province, and provincial prior. The Dominicans also held a monopoly on the post of king’s confessor.14 And a few among the English were elevated during the first half of the fourteenth century to the episcopate and even to the rank of cardinal. The lists of king’s

14 C.F.R. Palmer, ‘King’s Confessors,’ The Antiquary 22 (1890): 114, noted that in 1256, Henry III chose a Friar Preacher for his confessor and for 144 years that practice continued. The Dominicans generally had a monopoly on the post of confessor to princes and royalty. See R.P. Mortier, Histoire des Maitres Généraux de la ordre des Fréres Prêcheurs, vol. 2 (Paris, 1905), 476, 490–491, and 547–549, for information on the Dominicans acting as confessors to the Kings of France and to the German Emperors. There is a tradition that Thomas Bradwardine served as king’s confessor to Edward III, but he was almost certainly just chaplain instead. Gordon Leff, Bradwardine and the Pelagians: A Study of His ‘De causa Dei’ and its Opponents (Cambridge, 1957), 2, attributes both posts to the secular theologian, but Jean François Genest, ‘Le De futuris contingentibus de Thomas Bradwardine,’ Récherches Augustiniennes 14 (1979): 252, only lists him as chaplain.

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confessors and provincial priors appear fairly complete.15 Royal and episcopal records and the records of the Dominican general chapters provide information about the highest levels of advancement. However, appointment to lectureships, election of priors, promotion to preacher general, and the selection of diffinitors took place within local convents and provincial chapters for which the records no longer exist.16 Of the seventy-odd names of Dominicans connected with Oxford or otherwise known to have had prominence within the order from 1300 to 1350 who might have affected the intellectual climate at Oxford Blackfriars and who are surveyed in chapter two, only five are known for certain to have been lectors in England outside Oxford: Peter Kenington at London by 1309,17 Robert of Holme, a bachelor in theology, at the Lincoln convent in 1322,18 Nicholas Trevet at London beginning in 1324,19 John of Wynton at the Winchester convent in 1326,20 and Thomas Hopeman, again at London, in 1350.21 Since the requirements for becoming a principal lector included reading Peter Lombard’s Sentences at a provincial studium generale for two years, thus attaining at a minimum the degree of bachelor of theology,22 one of the chief employments of Oxford graduates would have been as principal lectors at the various convent schools. And yet we can only guess at who might have held those posts. Preaching was the primary goal of the order, and a numPalmer, ‘King’s Confessors,’ 114–120, 159–161, 262–266; Walter Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors and Vicars of the English Dominicans, 1221–1916,’ The English Historical Review 33 (1918): 243–251; A.G. Little, ‘Provincial Priors and Vicars of the Dominicans,’ The English Historical Review 33 (1918): 496–497; Bede Jarrett, The English Dominicans, rev. ed. (London, 1937), 177–178; and A.B. Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 208, for William Jordan. 16 Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Oxford,’ 330–331, note that a small fragment of the acta of a chapter from 1415 survives and has been studied in W. Gumbley, ‘A Fragment of the Acts of an English Dominican Chapter of the Early Fifteenth Century,’ Dominican Studies 6 (1953): 90–100. It includes reference to ‘fratres ministeriales,’ a previously unknown office within the priories, perhaps friars who oversaw liturgical and sacramental activity. The archives of the Vatican and of the order in Rome may contain as yet unexplored reports of such regional appointments. 17 Emden, BRUO 2:1036. 18 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 196. 19 Emden, BRUO 3:1902. 20 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 203. 21 A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963), 313, hereafter BRUC. 22 The general chapter of 1305 decreed that the principal lector at a convent (who served as the regent or director of studies) must have taught the Sentences and studied the first course at Paris or have taught the Sentences in his province. See Mortier, Maitres Généraux 2:439. Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 57–58, interpreted this to mean that the lectors in England must have a bachelors in theology at Oxford or Cambridge. 15

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ber of the Oxford Dominicans among the seventy-odd surveyed have left behind sermon collections and works designed to aid preachers in their art. Presumably some among them served as preachers general. But only one Dominican, Simon of Boraston, is known to have been appointed preacher general (in 1322), even though at any one time there were an estimated fifty preachers general in the province.23 The lack of records makes evaluation difficult. In order to estimate Dominican participation in the intellectual culture of Oxford from 1300 to 1350 and the contribution of the Oxford Dominicans to English intellectual culture in general, our best recourse is to identify the writings and opinions of Dominicans at the university, analyze them in relation to each other and then analyze them in relation to the works of their contemporaries. Once the reconstruction of opinions, arguments, and debates held at Blackfriars has begun, identification of the Dominicans who attended Oxford at various times and of their subsequent careers will indicate possible avenues of transmission to other parts of the country of the ideas debated at Oxford during their time in attendance there. Ultimately, analysis of the surviving sermon literature may also indicate patterns of dissemination. The evaluation of Dominican theological works will enable us to perceive their unattributed influence on theologians and writers outside the order. The tracing of patterns of influence is only one way to determine the Dominican contribution to the intellectual life of their times, however. An important condition for the health of an educational community is its tolerance for experimentation and for new or idiosyncratic ideas. Yet intellectual experiments are often less than successful. Only some new ideas find adoption, refinement, and development within the community. Some cause much controversy but are not adopted, and some are proffered but drop without finding a ready audience, even for debate. The attempts of those within the universities to experiment with new genres, to try out new ideas or new approaches to old problems, to apply new techniques, are a vital contribution, but one that may have only indirect impact. Contemporaries may gain inspiration from the failures of their fellows and see in them new directions for exploration as well as roads better left untaken. And the effort on the part of some to be creative with ideas and genres generates a climate in which other 23 On Simon of Boraston, see Emden, BRUO 1:221. G.R. Galbraith, The Constitution of the Dominican Order, 1216–1360 (Manchester, 1925), 63, provides the estimate of fifty preachers general.

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scholars may feel free to be creative as well. The intellectual vitality at Oxford during the first half of the fourteenth century, compared to a certain stodginess at Paris, owed much to the relative openness of the university to experimentation and new opinions. Determining Dominican participation in and contribution to the general climate of creativity is another way of evaluating their importance. What follows is a pioneering effort intended to open up the territory for further research into the English Dominicans as an identifiable intellectual community. The book has two parts. An initial section surveys what is currently known about the Dominicans at Oxford during the first half of the century: who they were, what sorts of careers they had, what they wrote and the secondary literature available about them. A second section, and the heart of the book, looks at four of these men for whom there exists an identifiable body of theological work produced at Oxford: Arnold of Strelley, Hugh of Lawton, William Crathorn, and Robert Holcot, to explore their views about contingency and necessity. Establishing how their modal theories about necessity and contingency interact with theology in their writings provides a basis for discerning some of their individual and collective effect on the Oxford community. The book aims to put the fourteenth-century English Dominicans on the map of intellectual history so their contributions may be assessed from greater knowledge rather than a lack of it. Some words should be said about method. How properly to delineate a unit of study has come in for discussion within recent years among historians who grapple with late medieval intellectual history. Three ways of cutting a slice out of the data have been traditional in the field. Historians of philosophy have tended to favor studies devoted to the works of single authors.24 They have been interested in uncovering the basic structure of a given author’s thought, in testing the coherence of the ideas they find, and in ascertaining the validity of the arguments the author posed. The costs of such a choice lie in the loss of context, for a system of thought is abstracted from the human circumstances that produced it. The person chosen for study may seem 24 Étienne Gilson’s volumes on individual figures, like Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1943); Le Thomisme. Introduction à la philosophie de saint Thomas d’Aquin, 5th ed. (Paris, 1948); Jean Duns Scot: Introduction à ses positions fondamentales (Paris, 1952); and La philosophie de saint Bonaventure (Paris, 1953), are classic examples of the genre. Marilyn McCord Adams has recently produced a particularly skillful work of this kind: William Ockham, 2 vols. (Notre Dame, 1987).

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isolated from contemporaries, and the processes of development that his or her thought underwent may disappear in the effort to find a maximally coherent picture of the author’s ideas. The second traditional way of approaching medieval intellectual history roughly follows Arthur Lovejoy’s History of Ideas paradigm.25 In his terminology, a ‘unit idea’ is first identified, an idea fundamental to a particular sort of stance within the historical tradition, and its appearance in the works of various authors is then documented and traced. Questions about the existence of ‘unit ideas’ have made his approach problematic,26 but substituting complexes of ideas subject to deformation over time for ‘unit ideas,’ the History of Ideas approach continues to have adherents.27 The costs are again the tendency to crystallize ideas out of context and to separate them from their use and function within the works of individual authors. A third approach has identified and traced schools of thought through the period.28 Within the thirteenth century the Augustinian school is perceived in opposition to the Aristotelian school, and within the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Augustinians, Nominalists, Scotists and Thomists are seen as identifiable protagonists. Schools begin with a founder: Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Abelard/Ockham, and persist because the founder obtains followers. Followers are judged on the faithfulness of their adherence to 25

Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: The Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Mass., 1936); and see the discussions by Jaakko Hintikka, ‘Gaps in the Great Chain of Being: An Exercise in the Methodology of the History of Ideas,’ in Reforging the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theories, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Synthese Historical Library 20 (Dordrecht, 1981), 117; and Francis Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, & Order: An Excursion in the History of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 15–40. Simo Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality in Scholasticism,’ in Reforging the Great Chain of Being, 163–257, and Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge (Princeton, 1998), supply recent examples of the genre. 26 Hintikka, ‘Gaps,’ 117, criticises the original ‘unit idea’ of the Great Chain of Being. 27 Oakley, Omnipotence, and Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ use the method in this manner to some effect, Oakley tracing the history of the idea of God’s absolute and ordained power and Knuuttila tracing the history of the statistical model of modality. Francis Oakley develops a lengthy and complexly reasoned response to critics of the approach in Politics and Eternity: Studies in the History of Medieval and Early-Modern Political Thought, (Leiden, 1999), 1–24. 28 Konstanty Michalski, ‘Les courants philosophiques à Oxford et à Paris pendant le XIVe siècle,’ in Bulletin international de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences et des Lettres, classe d’histoire et de philosophie (Cracow, 1921), 59–88, repr. in idem, La Philosophie au XIV e siècle, ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt, 1969), 3–32; and Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York, 1955), organized their discussions in terms of ‘Schools of Thought.’ Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), also used the idea.

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the founder’s ideas. Again questions have arisen about whether schools of thought in this sense existed during much of the fourteenth century.29 The price of using ‘schools of thought’ as a unit of study is its emphasis on the iteration of the same ideas within various authors’ works rather than on the creative uses individual authors made of them. Moreover, those who disagree with a founder are not easily seen as falling within his or her ambit even though the negative dialogue subsequent authors establish with a founder may be fundamental to shaping the successors’ thought.30 To avoid these difficulties, I have chosen a different model, looking at intellectual history as the history of a kind of conversation. Those who spend time talking and writing in an academic way do so as part of a conversational community. Either in person or in print, members of such a community respond to the arguments and assertions of past and present authors, while their contemporaries and those who succeed 29 William J. Courtenay has raised questiones about ‘schoolism’ as a way to talk about the fourteenth century in a number of places: ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,’ in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Charles Trinkaus with Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden, 1974), 51–56; ‘Ockhamism among the Augustinians: the Case of Adam Wodeham,’ in Scientia Augustiniana: Studien über Augustinus, den Augustinismus und den Augustinerorden, ed. Cornelius Petrus Mayer and Willigis Eckermann (Würzburg, 1975), 267–275; ‘The Role of English Thought,’ 111–115; ‘The Reception of Ockham’s Thought in Fourteenth-Century England,’ in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks (Oxford, 1987), 89–107; Schools & Scholars, 171–192. In the latter work, Courtenay accepts the idea of ‘schools of thought’ as a useful construct, but not for a good portion of the fourteenth century. And he has returned to the subject again in ‘Theology and Theologians from Ockham to Wyclif,’ 9–11, and in ‘Was there an Ockhamist School,’ in Philosophy and Learning: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H. Josef Schneider, and Georg Wieland (Leiden, 1995), 263–292. On the late medieval period, see Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, ‘Late Medieval Schools of Thought in the Mirror of University Textbooks. The Promptuarium Argumentorum (Cologne 1492),’ in Philosophy and Learning: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H. Josef Schneider, and Georg Wieland (Leiden, 1995), 329–369; idem, ‘Scotus and the Scotist School. The Traditon of Scotist Thought in the Medieval and Early Modern Period,’ in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 197–210, and Zénon Kaluza, ‘La Crise des années 1474–1482: L’Interdiction du Nominalisme par Louis XI,’ in Philosophy and Learning: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, J.H. Josef Schneider, and Georg Wieland (Leiden, 1995), 293–327. 30 Anxieties about ‘schoolism’ may even generalize to anxieties about ‘influence.’ Oakley, Politics and Eternity, 138–187, discusses worries about ‘influence’ arising among literary critics on one side and historians of ideas on another, and allows the term only under stringently controlled circumstances. While I use the term here, I have tried to specify clearly and narrowly the conditions of its use.

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them respond to them in turn. A passive audience that listens or reads without contributing to the conversation defines the perimeter of the community at its outermost. The active participants who do contribute form the central core of the community accessible to the historian through the written record left behind. The Dominicans at Oxford constituted an identifiable conversational community. They lived together in the same convent at Blackfriars where they were in frequent contact with each other. The convent library must have contained the works of many (if not all) of the Dominicans who had lectured on Peter Lombard’s Sentences there, at least in reportatio if not in ordinatio form, along with copies of disputations and quodlibetal debates. After citing obvious authorities or major figures like Scotus or Ockham, the Dominicans most frequently cited the works of their fellow Dominican friars. The friars who past and present inhabited the Oxford convent constituted the first circle of figures around any Dominican lecturing there. The conversational community within the priory was only one of a number of such communities within the university, communities like the communities of secular clergy, Benedictines, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Cistercians, that sometimes overlapped, and that were all subordinate to the larger conversational context of the university itself. From the perspective of any given student, the accessible circles of interaction were both unique and complex. Any given cohort of sententiarii, the students lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences during the same years and including both seculars and members of the various orders, constituted a circle of conversational partners, the so-called socii, who engaged in active debate together, a relationship that continued while they lectured on the Bible and engaged in disputations for several more years prior to inception as masters. If the university at large set a clearly defined perimeter within which interaction largely occurred, the socii came together at the intersection of the subordinate circles of conversational activity present within the priories, colleges and halls. Each student’s perspective encompassed not only contemporary partners in debate among fellow friars, socii, and other masters and students, but also important authors from the past. Scholars such as Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, Henry of Harclay, Peter Auriol, and William of Ockham, who had recently posed sophisticated or novel interpretations of traditional problems, constituted a further circle of conversational reference—persons of significance whose work required deliberation and response. Finally, the opinions of authorities

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like Aristotle, Augustine, Averroes, Anselm, and Aquinas functioned not so much as spurs to discussion (although their positions could be the subject of debate), but as a means of capping or framing argument. If Oxford formed one somewhat open border in space (reference to contemporaries at Cambridge sometimes occur), the circle of received authorities constituted another somewhat open border in time (new translations, commentaries, and discoveries could penetrate the boundary). At any one moment, Dominicans at Oxford occupied the center of a conversational circle that expanded outward overlapping with other contemporary circles at the university and backward in time to include past members of their order, important recent authors, and authorities from the more distant past. The conversational nature of the community both defined its membership and affected the structure of the texts it produced. Students and masters engaged in mandatory debates—formal, institutionalized conversations—and wrote in genres mimicking those debates, keeping the conversational model close to the surface in the organization of their academic work. The genres required within the academic context, those of commentary and disputational determination, each had as part of its production a primary performative stage as lecture or disputation. As texts emerged from such performances, a highly stylized and abstracted form of dialogue customarily informed them. Disputations explicitly set opponens and respondens against one another. Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences was undertaken in the form of the quaestio with its initial arguments pro and con establishing a dialogue through reference to conflicting authorities. While in modern scholarly works the conversation is most thickly constructed between text and footnotes, in the medieval quaestio questions were usually posed first in terms of hypothetical opponents like Aristotle and Scripture and subsequently in terms of a running dialogue in the text with contemporaries or near contemporaries with whom the author agreed and disagreed. The structure of the quaestio, long familiar to the field, clearly reflects its origin in debate and dialogue. Following this conversational model, part two reconstructs a segment of the late medieval discussion about whether and how the world is contingent from the perspective of the Dominican conversational community at Blackfriars in the 1320s and 1330s. Any such reconstruction is an approximation at best and necessarily incomplete because texts survive for only a few of the authors who must have participated in ongoing dialogue within the convent and the university. As is the nature

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of any conversation, the participants did not all use the same words to mean the same things, nor did they always comprehend each other or discuss the points on which they agreed. A degree of consensus about what problems mattered and how to approach them obviated the need to justify every step to the audience, much to the regret of the historian who would often like to know more about why they assumed what they did. Positions evolved in response to the criticisms and arguments of others, gaining refinement in the process. Consistency was a high value to the scholars themselves (as will become evident in later chapters), but presenting a comprehensive rather than topical treatment of theology was not. And in the nature of an evolving debate, the preliminary and still rough but creative proposal of someone at the beginning of a discussion might be as important in its way as the polished, complex formulation of a similar idea at the end. The episodic, partial, sometimes halting, sometimes brilliant contributions of each participant add up, I believe, in an ultimately more comprehensible way than do the results of investigating each figure one at a time in relative isolation. The advantages of self-consciously doing intellectual history as a reconstruction of a conversational community lie in being able to track what took place while retaining a sense of the loosely shifting shape of the debate, the entry and exit of participants, and the various filters each used in appropriating the terms of the conversation. The ghostly figures of unacknowledged sources of ideas and argument are more readily apparent. And finally, the processes of negotiation and discovery that arose as those in debate pressed objections and arguments on one another are at least sometimes in evidence. While such arguments only rarely resulted in an author changing his mind about a position, they did force reflection and refinement. Reconstruction of the conversational community, no matter how fragmentary, brings certain kinds of complexity more readily to the fore. Rules governed the flow of talk and text. The rules were often casual and implicit, but they were capable of abstraction and a high degree of formalization, as in the literature about disputations de obligatione.31 Some of these rules are evident, made explicit in texts or discernible in the structuring of academic genres. Others implicitly governed the niceties of criticism: in normal academic give-and-take courtesy required certain limits, while in debate about opinions suspected

31

See chapters three and four below for discussion of the ars obligatoria.

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of heresy different limits pertained,32 and still other limits came into play during formal disputation. Thus the rules of conversation changed from context to context, and they could evolve over time. The rules governing the conversational community did not function simply as the verbal traffic code, however. Incorporating and expanding the strictures of logic, they defined what counted as rational. Extrapolated to theology, they even came to describe a fundamental relation between God and human beings. For at least some of the Dominicans, God was not just the founder, but through revelation the first member of the conversation. He had chosen to play by its rules. In the works of Robert Holcot in particular, the technical rules of debate functioned on multiple levels: as an implicit part of rational first order language, as an explicit second order metalanguage for analyzing argument, and as the subject of a third order of theological meta-metalanguage. I have termed this an obligational theology. For Holcot, the structure of debate provided content for theology as well as its form. The idea of the conversational community as useful for doing intellectual history has arisen out of the work itself, but in recent years some have used the concept of conversation to describe what goes on in universities and scholarly disciplines, and others have suggested analogous terms like ‘textual’ or ‘interpretive’ communities. Their work has enriched my own, and requires both acknowledgment and discussion to clarify how what I am proposing stands in relation to the conversation about conversation currently taking place. In 1950, Michael Oakeshott made the suggestion that ‘conversation’ describes undergraduate education at its best and proposed conversation as integral to the idea of a university.33 The term as he used it covers much narrower ground than I intend. Oakeshott distinguished conversation from preaching, instruction, argument, and other forms of verbal interaction involving hierarchy, inequality, or adversarial relations among the participants. My view is broader, posing conversation as any form of mutually engaged oral 32 William J. Courtenay, ‘Inquiry and Inquisition: Academic Freedom in Medieval Universities,’ Church History 58 (1989): 168–181; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 46–48; J.M.M.H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris 1200–1400 (Philadelphia, 1998). Thomas Käppeli, Le procès contre Thomas Waleys O.P., Dissertationes Historicae 6 (Rome, 1936), 9–63, discusses Waleys experience with the inquisitorial process, the expectations about procedure that Waleys had and the ways he found them violated, giving insight into the way an investigation into suspect academic theses actually worked. 33 Michael Oakeshott, ‘The Idea of a University,’ in The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven, 1989), 95–104.

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or written exchange, and a conversational community as one in which commitments to such exchange in both spoken and written varieties are integral to group purposes, defining membership in the community. In the field of hermeneutics, conversation has displaced reading as the primary subject for analysis among theorists like Hans-Georg Gadamer (who traces this trend back to Schleiermacher).34 Gadamer’s analysis of reading as equivalent to a conversation between the reader and the text provides a theoretical framework for extending the conversational community to include not just oral exchange but the ‘hermeneutic conversation’ of readers with texts (to say nothing of the texts they produce as part of such interaction).35 Gadamer’s discussion of conversation and its relationship to reading supports the notion that texts and the way readers respond to them can be part of defining a conversational community. Preaching, ostensibly a one-way communication and as such excluded from Oakeshott’s definition of conversation, would fall part-way between the experience of oral exchange and the reading of a text in the hermeneutic model, and thus be legitimately included as part of what constitutes the conversational community. From this perspective, conversation is more than a metaphor. It is the paradigm for understanding the interpretive process. However, the emphasis in hermeneutics on conversation as a ‘fusion of horizons,’ as agreement or Einverständnis,36 may idealize the process of communication, setting up a standard for mutual understanding unlikely of full realization even at best. In dealing with historical cases, the ideal must yield to the real. Stanley Fish has posed a more pragmatic view of communication. He argues that communication is mutually intelligible because it occurs within ‘interpretive communities.’37 He describes a student confronting one of his colleagues at the beginning of term with the question ‘Is there a text in this class?’ and reports that his colleague replied, with perfect assurance, ‘Yes, the Norton Anthology of Literature.’ To which the student rejoined ‘No, No. I mean in this class do we believe in poems and things, or is it just us?’ Fish’s colleague now recognized that he was in a different interpretive context than the one he had presumed. He now perceived the student as ask34 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. (New York, 1989), 179–180, 188–189. 35 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 367–369, 385–389. 36 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 302–307. 37 Stanley Fish, Is there a Text in this Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 304.

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ing whether in his class texts were thought to have some determinate meaning, which they would pursue, or not, and that the student had probably taken a class with Fish. His colleague’s reported mental reaction was ‘Ah, there’s one of Fish’s victims.’38 Fish’s example, and his analysis of this transaction shows how good enough communication is achieved by processes establishing an appropriate interpretive context, but without requiring or even aiming at full Einverständnis. Certainly the ‘horizons’ of understanding here between student and Fish, student and Fish’s colleague, colleague and Fish, would be better described as working approximations than fusions. And yet the participants (at least on Fish’s description) seem to have been satisfied that a good deal of communication took place. The view of communication adopted in what follows is nearer Fish’s than Gadamer’s. But the conversational communities I have tried to discern are not the same as Fish’s interpretive communities, which emerge because of the context and content of communication. Although participants in a conversational community will undoubtedly share a variety of interpretive assumptions, membership in such communities is independent of any particular subject of conversation or any particular conversational context. What constitutes the conversational community is the commitment of its members to interaction. Interpretive communities in Fish’s sense will emerge in the interactions that ensue because of those commitments. Thus conversational communities precede interpretive communities. ‘Conversation’ has also cropped up as a possible description for the field of philosophy. In rejecting traditional foundationalist conceptions of the discipline, Richard Rorty has taken his cue from Oakeshott and Gadamer in adopting the term ‘conversation’ to describe his field. Rather than a discipline that seeks to uncover the epistemological ground of thought and knowledge, Rorty has redescribed philosophy in terms adopted from Oakeshott as an ongoing conversation, the ‘conversation of the West.’ The attempt has been to extricate philosophy from what he considers a highly problematic construal in terms of an abstracted and absolute ‘subject’ and to resituate it in the historical interactions of philosophers.39 I have used the idea of a conversational community analogously to determine the boundaries of my own Fish, Text, 305–313 in particular, and see 303–321 in general. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, 1980), 264, 357–365, 373–379, 389–394. 38 39

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research and to avoid problems raised for the historian (rather than the philosopher) by the tendency of historians of philosophy under the influence of the traditional model of philosophy to abstract ideas and systems of thought from those who have had them and the context in which they arose. That conversations take place within community and that communities are definable in as much as their members are definable, permits the outline of a conversational community to emerge beyond the conversation itself, a community with boundaries to be discerned, members to be identified and counted, as well as the conversations themselves to be reconstructed. I wish to disclose not conversation in the abstract realm of philosophy, but conversation in a particular historically situated time and place. Finally, Brian Stock in his exploration of the impact of texts, literacy and the problems of interpretation they posed for the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has coined the term ‘textual community’ as useful for his analysis. A textual community arises around an individual, who, having mastered a text, then uses it for reforming a group’s thought and action. Stock’s concept, as he states, is not methodological but descriptive.40 While his coinage has its uses, to apply such a notion to intellectual life in a fourteenth-century university would put the focus back on founders and authoritative texts, a focus that has proved unsatisfactory as a way to explore the complex exchange and evolution of ideas in the university setting. What is more, unlike Stock’s use of ‘textual community,’ my use of the notion of a ‘conversational community’ is intended to have methodological implications. My program of research has gained definition in regard to it, and since analysis of conversation has come to lie at the heart of hermeneutic analysis, the techniques of hermeneutic evaluation become available as appropriate. The two parts of the volume may have varying interest to different readers. Part one: ‘Finding Faces for Dominicans,’ comprising chapters one and two, describes the history of the Dominicans at Oxford from 1300 to 1350 and then provides a census of it members and what we know about them for that period. The bio-bibliographies of Arnold of Strelley, Hugh of Lawton, William Crathorn, and Robert Holcot, the four Dominicans whose works constitute the basis for part two, are sketched in detail in chapter two along with whatever is known of their immediate Dominican contemporaries. These pages contain my 40 Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983), 90 in particular and 88–240 in general.

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justification for ascribing particular texts to the four main authors and for situating those same texts in the life history of each. Part two: ‘Modal Theory and Theology,’ which reconstructs the Dominican discussion of contingency, begins with chapter three: ‘New Directions in Modal Theory.’ It describes a major shift in thinking about modal theory that John Duns Scotus inaugurated, developing his position in opposition to the tradition of Boethius and Thomas Aquinas. Scotus perceived God as coterminously surveying the sets of possibilities open to him and choosing from among them the particular set of circumstances he creates at the moment of creation. For Scotus, contingency entered the world directly through God’s will, rather than secondarily at the level of proximate causes as Aquinas had argued. The shift established a new metaphysical picture of modality and related modality differently to time. Chapter four: ‘Emergence of an Obligational Theology,’ describes the development out of the Scotist position of a theology among the Dominicans that used the techniques of the ars obligatoria—a means of exploring counterfactual possibilities—both to deal with theological puzzles and to structure the relationship between God and the viator. Chapter five: ‘The Limits of Lying,’ discusses the implications for the relationship between truth and the articles of faith that a belief in a radically contingent world entailed. Contingency made the truth value of revelation at least questionable, making acceptance of truth a problematic requirement for the earning of merit and God’s final acceptance. Thus the intentions of the believer took on a central importance within obligational theology at the expense of the truth of the believer’s credo. Chapter six: ‘Troubling Necessities,’ takes up the problem of God’s knowledge of future contingents as posing severe difficulties for those who wanted to uphold a view of the world as contingent. The Dominicans developed several distinctly different answers to the puzzles that divine knowledge of future contingent events posed. Chapter seven: ‘Invincible Ignorance,’ discusses skeptical dimensions of Dominican beliefs about contingency, with a look first at the problem of certainty, then at God’s power to cause intuitive cognition of nonexistents, and finally at a debate between Robert Holcot and his socius William Chitterne over the possibility of God’s revealing falsehoods within the current dispensation to those existing in a state of grace. Chapter eight: ‘God’s Absolute and Ordained Power,’ outlines the story of twentieth-century assessments of the significance of the distinction between these facets of God’s omnipotence and explicates Dominican views in relation to cur-

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rent judgments about its meaning. God’s absolute power to do whatever does not include a contradiction implies that he might have created this world in ways other than he did and makes sense of his capacity to change the ordained system within which people seek salvation. Dominican responses to the puzzle about how God might know nonexistents, necessary to safeguard his capacity for alternative action, is also surveyed. The epilogue will sum up the significance of part two and provide an afterward.

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chapter one THE MAKING OF A CONVERSATIONAL COMMUNITY

Dominic founded his order to develop a cadre of educated preachers, and the purpose of his founding shaped the lives and works of the men who became Dominicans. By the fourteenth century, a graduated system of schools prepared Dominicans for their task. Beginning with the study of logic in studia artium, the friars progressed through natural philosophy in studia naturalium, and culminated their schooling in the study of theology in studia particularia. The system required the services of a considerable number of teachers or lectors and head teachers to oversee them, the principal lectors, who monitored the curriculum and teaching techniques of the other lecturers in the studia. The principal lectors were required to obtain at a minimum a bachelor of theology degree from one of the studia generalia of the order located at the Universities of Paris, Oxford and, after c. 1314 or 1320, Cambridge.1 The first product from the pen of a Dominican scholar was apt to be a commentary on the Sentences, the theological textbook of Peter Lombard, prepared while obtaining an advanced degree in theology. Curiously, works by Dominicans on topics of logic and natural philoso-

1 For information about the system of Dominican education in general, see M. Michèle Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow is Bent in Study’: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto, 1998), a very thorough and informative text based mostly on Italian and French sources. For England, see A.G. Little, ‘Educational Organisation of the Mendicant Friars in England (Dominicans and Franciscans),’ TRHS n. s. 8 (1894): 49–70; Bede Jarrett, The English Dominicans, rev. ed. (London, 1937); Maura O’Carroll, ‘The Educational Organisation of the Dominicans in England and Wales: A Multidisciplinary Approach,’ AFP 50 (1980): 23–62; and William J. Courtenay, Schools & Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1987), 61–66. The date on which Cambridge became a studium generale is uncertain. It was called such in a letter of 1314 by the minister general Berengarius, but along with London, which never officially achieved that status. By 1320, when Cambridge was registered as a studium generale at the general chapter, scholars agree the university had achieved the same status as Oxford. See O’Carroll, ‘Educational Organization,’ 48–49; and Patrick Zutshi and Robert Ombres O.P., ‘The Dominicans in Cambridge 1238–1538,’ AFP 60 (1990): 322, n. 40.

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phy are virtually unknown from England during the century.2 Because the friars did not usually study logic and natural philosophy at the universities, they did not receive masters of arts degrees nor serve as regent masters in arts there, and a university context for the production of advanced works on logic and natural philosophy was lacking. Nor apparently did the Dominican studia provide a substitute for the university setting when it came to producing texts usually associated with the arts curriculum. Works on theology—commentaries on the Sentences and on books of the Bible, and the texts of quodlibetal questions—all prepared in the advanced stages of theological study at a university or while lecturing in the convents of the province, constituted the bulk of the friars’ scholastic writings. Preaching and administrative experience also provided an impetus for taking up the pen. Besides theological works, texts intended to help friars with their preaching and administrative duties constituted the bulk of the remaining output of the men in the order. The dearth of commentaries on Aristotle and of texts on logic among the works of the Dominicans requires further explanation, however. The Franciscans received their education within a very similar system, and yet under its constraints men like John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham produced commentaries on Aristotle’s natural philosophy; indeed Ockham wrote one of the greatest works of medieval logic. The lack of interest among the English Dominicans in writing comparable texts seems to have had causes other than their lack of degrees in Arts. The general chapter of the order that met at Saragossa in 1309 enjoined all principal lectors and sub-lectors to teach and define according to the doctrine and works of Thomas Aquinas.3 And in 1313, the general chapter of Metz instructed all lecturers and students to use Thomas Aquinas’ works as manuals for teaching and study. At least three years of study in the works of Aquinas were required before pro2 Robert Holcot’s Tractatus de stellis, a loose commentary on Aristotle’s De caelo, is the only possible such work of natural philosophy after the era of the correctoria literature ended in the first decade of the century, and because of the reference at the beginning of the tract to Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the placement of the question in some of the manuscripts of Holcot’s Sentences commentary, Katherine Tachau has quite plausibly argued that even this text should be regarded as part of Holcot’s Sentences (see her ‘Introduction,’ in Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly: Questions on Future Contingents, ed. Paul A. Streveler and Katherine H. Tachau [Toronto, 1995], 39). 3 R.P. Mortier, Histoire de Maitres Généraux de l’ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, vol. 2 (Paris, 1905), 439.

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ceeding to Paris.4 As Aquinas’ Aristotelian commentaries became the textbooks of the order, the friars seem to have lost incentive to write Aristotelian commentaries of their own. Not that fourteenth-century members of the order were uninterested or untutored in the most upto-date logic or natural philosophy.5 As will become clear in later chapters, a high degree of sophistication prevailed among them. But they dealt with logic and natural philosophy within the frame of theological works rather than in Aristotelian commentaries per se. For example, in his Sentences commentary, Arnold of Strelley devoted the twenty folio pages of an unusually long question on the sacraments almost entirely to matters of natural philosophy,6 and in the middle of his commentary on the Sentences, William Crathorn injected a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories that took up fully a third of the theological work.7 It would seem that the Dominicans primarily produced texts relevant to the needs of the order: texts on theology and biblical commentaries during their stints of teaching, and manuals for preachers while resident in the provincial convents after their training in theology. To judge by the extant manuscripts, the Dominicans put less emphasis than the Franciscans on works of logic and natural philosophy and somewhat more than their fellow mendicants on sermons and manuals for preachers.8 The primacy of preaching in the Dominicans’ vocation Mortier, Maitres Généraux, 2:481; Mulchahey, Bow is Bent, 141–142. Mulchahey, Bow is Bent, 238–252, discusses the curriculum in logic studied in studia artium. The Summulae logicales of Peter of Spain served as the primary textbook, at least on the continent, although in Provence it seemed to have been taught only up through the treatment of fallacies, avoiding the logica modernorum in the last five tracts. The Dominicans at Oxford in the fourteenth century show familiarity with at least some of the material taken up in the later tracts—see the discussion of their use of ampliation in chapter eight below. The English also used texts like William of Sherwood’s Introductiones in logicam, the Logica ‘Cum sit nostra’ or Summulae ad modum Oxoniae, and the Logica ‘Ut dicit.’ 6 Arnold of Strelley, Sent. IV, q. 19: ‘Utrum sacramenta novae legis habeant aliquam efficaciam ad transmutationem creaturae,’ in Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, ff. 70vb–90rb. 7 William Crathorn, Sent. I, qq. 11, 13–18, in Quästionen zum ersten Sentenzenbuch, ed. Fritz Hoffmann, BGPTM n. s. 29 (Münster, 1988), 365–382, 386–482. 8 See Beryl Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960). Of the seven whom she studied as particularly gifted and innovative authors of sermons, preaching manuals, etc. five were Dominicans. Mulchahey, Bow is Bent, 401– 479, also has lengthy discussion of the Dominican interest in creating preaching aids. A possible exception may have been Robert of York, known as Perscrutor, who may have been a Dominican and wrote a Correctorium alchimiae c. 1325. See J.D. North, ‘Natural Philosophy in Late Medieval Oxford,’ in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. J.I. Catto and Ralph Evans (Oxford, 1992), 75. 4 5

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and the availability of Aquinas’ works on natural philosophy apparently combined to produce the somewhat different emphases within the two preaching orders. In spite, or perhaps because of Aquinas’ appropriation of Aristotelian philosophy, the English Dominicans did not devote individual works to explications of the books of Aristotle.

A. The Provincial Priors The provincial priors held the keys to managing the Dominican order in England, for they ensured that the educational and teaching functions of the order were well carried out and identified the brightest among the friars for cultivation and advancement. The provincials set the tone and the agenda for the province during their tenure in office. To understand what manner of men progressed through the order to Oxford, it is first necessary to see what manner of men promoted them. Provincial prior was the highest office within the Dominican English province that a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge might attain.9 Within the borders of his jurisdiction, the incumbent in the office served in the place analogous to the master general of the order by presiding over the provincial chapter meetings; preparing legislation in conjunction with the diffinitores, four other friars whom the provincial chapter elected for that purpose; and governing, either directly through visits to the provincial convents or indirectly through the various ‘visitors’ appointed to scrutinize each priory. The provincial prior attended the general chapter meeting every third year and whenever the general chapter was to elect a new master general. When not traveling on the business of the order, he usually stayed at the London convent, close to the residences of other great prelates and to the court, where he had access to sources of patronage outside as well as within the church. One of the most important tasks of the provincial prior was the identification and selection of promising friars for placement in the various offices of the province. He assigned students and lecturers to the schools or studia, appointed visitors to oversee the four visitations of Oxford, 9 For information about the provincial priors, see Alfred B. Emden, Survey of Dominicans in England: Based on the Ordination Lists in Episcopal Registers (1268–1538), Dissertationes Historicae 18 (Rome, 1967), 215–216; G.R. Galbraith, The Constitution of the Dominican Order, 1216–1360 (Manchester, 1925), 68–70, 78–79, 126, 129–130; David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1948), 156–157; Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 56, 58.

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Cambridge, London, and York, selected the preachers general, transfered friars from priory to priory and, when necessary, removed the conventual priors from office. In other words, he effectively controlled the movement of every friar in the province. Through these appointments, it was within the power of the provincial prior to establish the intellectual character and quality of the order. He could stifle or support diversity of opinion, and he could sponsor friars particularly interested in the arts of teaching, writing or preaching, or alternatively, friars more interested in the administrative tasks of the organization. The power of the provincial prior was not without check. First, he served only because the conventual priors with two other delegates from each convent elected him at a provincial chapter meeting. Second, each year his performance was subject to scrutiny from those attending the provincial chapter where a secret vote was taken whether to retain him or not. The results of the ballot were conveyed to the next general chapter, which had the power to remove him from office for this or other reasons. If a provincial prior wanted to remain in office, he would try to govern the order in harmony with the general wishes of its members. While a provincial prior might steer the order in a direction that his personal vision dictated, he could not do so without the consent of his fellow friars. All but one of the provincial priors heading the English province are known for the years 1300 to 1350: Thomas of Jorz—1297–1304 Robert Bromyard—1304–1306 (elevated from vicar general) Nicholas of Stratton—1306–1312 William Castreton—1312–1315 [An unknown friar, perhaps vicar general for part of the time—1315– 1317] John of Bristol—1317–1327 Simon of Boraston—1327–1336 [William of Watisdene—governed as vicar general between the general chapter and the provincial chapter in 1336] Richard of Winkley—1336–1339 Hugh Dutton—governed as vicar general in 1339 and was elected provincial prior either in 1339 or 1340 Arnold of Strelley—by November, 1342 until c. 1349 [William Jordan—vicar general by June 1, 1350] Gregory of St. Michael—1350 until 1353/1356.10 10 For the names of the provincials, see Jarrett, English Dominicans, 177–178; Walter Gumbley ‘Provincial Priors and Vicars of the English Dominicans, 1221–1916,’ EHR

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All of these men except Gregory of St. Michael held doctorates in theology: Thomas of Jorz, Robert Bromyard, Nicholas of Stratton, Hugh Dutton, and William Jordan obtained their degrees from Oxford, and it is almost completely certain that Simon of Boraston, William of Watisdene, Richard of Winkley and Arnold of Strelley did as well. Oxford graduates predominated—not surprising since Cambridge was not elevated to the rank of studium generale until 1314 or 1320. Only John of Bristol is known to have received his degree from Cambridge.11 Gregory of St. Michael’s lack of such a degree may reflect a plaguecaused shortage of appropriate candidates with doctorates in theology, but William Jordan, serving as vicar general at the time of Gregory of St. Michael’s appointment, had such a degree, and it is unclear why Jordan was not himself promoted to the post. Robert Holcot, humane and highly regarded, might well have ascended to the position if he had survived the plague. These were the friars who fostered the talents of the members of the order during the first half of the century. Among them they held just about every kind of prestigious position possible within the province, and most of them had stellar, varied careers. Their interests ranged from international politics to cataloguing libraries, from writing works on preaching to the newest innovations in theology and to experimentation with the forms of academic writing. From what is known of their lives, the provincial priors numbered among their ranks some of the most capable men of the era.12 The most significant of the decisions concerning advancement that fell to the provincial priors was which men would go to the studia generalia, particularly to the studium at Oxford. Dominicans who received the opportunity to study at Oxford and Cambridge could hope to advance to the highest ranks of the order. Kings, popes, bishops, and members of their own order would entrust these men with prestigious and challenging administrative, diplomatic, teaching, and preaching tasks. 33 (1918): 245; A.G. Little, ‘Provincial Priors and Vicars of the English Dominicans,’ EHR 33 (1918): 496; A.B. Emden, ‘Dominican Confessors and Preachers Licensed by Medieval English Bishops,’ AFP 32 (1962), 208 (for Jordan); Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. Benedict Reichert, vol. 2 (Rome, 1898), 171, 240, 241–242, 254, hereafter Acta. 11 See Jarrett, English Dominicans, 177–178; Acta 2:241–242, for Watisdene; and see A.B. Emden, BRUO; and idem, A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1963), hereafter BRUC, under individual entries. 12 Their lives and works are detailed below and in the following chapter.

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B. Doctors of Theology During the first half of the fourteenth century, the English Dominican province had between fifty-one and fifty-four priories within its four visitations, ranging in size from an average of ten friars at Bamburgh to an average of eighty-one at London. Most had between twenty to forty men. Altogether, the convents housed around 1,500 Dominicans.13 From the primitive rule, each of the priories was to have a resident theologian to oversee the instruction of the members of the house.14 The general chapters of Genoa in 1305 and Naples in 1311 defined the course of studies for members of the order and the path to a doctorate in theology. Novices spent at least two years (three after 1311) receiving elementary theological training before ordination. At the end of that time they were assigned to a priory where there was a school for the liberal arts, a studium artium, to study logic. After a minimum of two years studying logic (three after 1311), friars moved on to another priory for two years of studying natural philosophy in a studium naturalium. At that point, if a student received permission from the principal lector and the lector in naturalia, he could begin teaching logic, but studying Peter Lombard’s Sentences for two years at still a third priory school, a studium particulare, was the next step in advancement along the educational path. A friar might then teach natural philosophy if he gained permission from the principal lector and the ordinary lector (or cursor)—a student commenting on Lombard’s Sentences. Or he might go on to become an ordinary lector or cursor himself, again with the permission of his teachers. Once having lectured on the Sentences as cursor at the studium particulare, the regional school for theology, a friar was eligible for advanced theological study in a studium generale at the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge.15 These statistics are based on O’Carroll, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 52–53. Mortier, Maitres Généraux, 3:9–10; that this rule was still in effect is shown by an injunction at the general chapter of Bordeaux in 1324 that some convents were without lectors and that provincial priors should make sure that vacancies were filled. 15 Mulchahey, Bow is Bent, is a rich source of information about the novitiate, and the training, curricula, and structure of the various priory schools. For England, see O’Carroll, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 55; Mortier, Maitres Généraux, 2:438–441; Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 53–55. While the Dominican convent at Oxford housed a school of arts for at least part of the century, most friars obtained their education in logic and natural philosophy at various schools within their own visitations (see ibid., 56). O’Carroll suggests that there was no studium of natural philosophy at Oxford and that the priory may well have lost its studium of arts after 1315 because 13 14

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Very few English friars were actually chosen to go to a university, however. Education took place first within one of the four visitations to which each friar belonged, and after completing basic studies at the various convent schools, most Dominicans remained in the visitation or even within their native dioceses, where they preached, heard confessions and taught.16 But subject to the prior provincial’s confirmation,17 the four visitations each had the right to send two students per year to the universities, one to begin study at Oxford and the other at Cambridge.18 Competition for these positions was keen.19 The visitors to the convents of each visitation looked throughout the ranks for promising candidates for advancement and reported on them at the provincial chapters.20 Recommendations from the principal lector, cursor and master of students were necessary as students contended for one of the scarce places at the universities.21 At times, students even brought pressure to bear from figures of influence outside the order–for example, in 1328 Bishop Grandisson of Exeter wrote to the provincial prior Simon of Boraston, asking him to allow Nicholas of Lee to begin study at Oxford in the following year.22 Pope John XXII had begun interfering in the preferment process at Paris. In response to such pressures, in 1324, 1325, 1329 and 1347, general chapters prohibited friars from seeking help from friends outside the order to gain advancement either to study at a university or to serve as regent masters in theology.23 of the problems of housing and feeding large numbers of friars in any one place (‘Educational Organisation,’ 46–48). As for study of subjects other than theology, there is no evidence of friars studing canon law before 1500 (Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 325). 16 O’Carroll, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 36–37, 41. 17 Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 56; Emden, Survey of Dominicans, 17, notes that the general chapters did not interfere much in England on personnel matters before 1370. 18 Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 55. 19 Evidence of such competition comes from a dispute that Henry IV had to settle at Cambridge, and it seems that by the late fourteenth century, the visitations took turns in supplying candidates for the doctorate, presumably to minimize conflicts (Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 325). 20 Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 56; Galbraith, Constitution, 78–79; William A. Hinnebusch, The Early English Friars Preachers, Dissertationes Historicae 14 (Rome, 1951), 213, has a list of the visitations and their priories. 21 Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 55. 22 Emden, BRUO 2:560. 23 Mortier, Maitres Généraux, 3:13–16, 239–242, indicates that John XXII sought the advancement of four students over the years 1324, 1326, and 1329. In 1333, he informed Philip VI that he would no longer honor the king’s requests to advance students

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Friars were usually not much older than the canonically sanctioned age of twenty-four at ordination. Thus the minimum age for those beginning to lecture on the Sentences at a university was thirty or thirtyone. Students were ordinarily somewhere between thirty-three and thirty-seven by the time they completed their two-year commentary on the Sentences and attained the degree of bachelor of theology.24 Not all students who studied at the universities were allowed to lecture on the Sentences, however. If four new students arrived at Oxford each year from the visitations, only one friar was allowed to begin his lectures on the Sentences. After 1320, the master general of the order committed the appointment of these lecturers at the convents of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge to the masters and bachelors of each studium.25 Students who were not chosen to make commentaries might leave after several years of study to teach natural philosophy or to preach and hear confessions. If a student were among the lucky few elected to continue his studies, he would advance to the degree of bachelor. Even then, not every bachelor obtained the doctorate in theology. Friars might leave to serve as principal lectors in other convents without taking the extra two years to lecture on the Bible and to engage in the debates necessary before inception as doctors in theology. Finally, even of those who incepted not all could hope to serve on the faculty as regent masters at the university. In theory, one friar should receive his doctorate each year, but most who served as regent master apparently served for two.26 at Paris, but Clement VI again directed general chapters to advance candidates to the university or to the magisterium. Christian Trottmann, ‘A propos de la querelle Avignonnaise de la vision béatifique: une réponse Dominicaine au Chancelier John Lutterell,’ AHDLMA 61 (1994): 279, connects some interference by John XXII with the beatific vision dispute. 24 Emden, Survey of Dominicans, 22. 25 Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 58; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 64–65; Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 324. 26 Mulchahey, Bow is Bent, 373, discusses the general chapter ruling in 1316 that each province could send two students to every studium generale. However, she notes (383) that most of the friars sent to such schools were only expected to study there for about three years, after which they would return to their home provinces to teach as lectors. They were not eligible to serve as a cursor at a studium generale until they had lectured for several years at one of the studia particulare. William J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (Leiden, 1978), 180, describes the Franciscan practice of allowing each new doctor of theology to serve as magister regens for a year, and then during his second year to serve only nonregens to make room for the next candidate. This allowed every Franciscan attaining the doctorate to serve as master in spite of statutes mandating a two-year regency. I have found no indication that the Dominicans followed a similar practice.

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Thus at each step on the educational road to advancement, there was a narrowing of the way, until the friars went single file along the path, and even then not all of the last few reached the destination of regent master. Small as the final number of bachelors, doctors, and regent masters were, no list of their names exists to indicate who among the Dominicans joined the ranks of those with degrees. In fact for each decade from 1300 to 1350, the names of only a few of the eighty-odd friars who lived at the Oxford Convent at any one time are known.27 At least some of their names have come down through the sources, however, and at least some are identifiable as students of theology. The next chapter will catalogue in detail what is known of these men. But for all the lack of information about particular friars, certain general features of the history of the convent in the first half of the century are discernible. The story breaks into five parts, each coincident with the inauguration of a new prior provincial. 1. Blackfriars from 1300 to 1312 During the time when Thomas of Jorz, Robert Bromyard, and Nicholas of Stratton served as provincial priors, both Oxford University and the Dominican order began a period of transition. The Franciscan John Duns Scotus inaugurated the century with a series of lectures on the Sentences that in one way or another set the context in theology for almost everyone who followed.28 Within the faculty of arts, Master Walter Burley’s Quaestiones super libros Peryarmenias in 1301 and his De suppositionibus and Tractatus de obligationibus in 1302 began both his prolific 27

William J. Courtenay very kindly gave me access to a list of Dominicans at Oxford in the fourteenth century drawn from the computerized version of Emden’s BRUO, and I have used that list as a base for what follows. 28 The story of the multiple ways in which Scotus influenced the century has yet to be sorted out. The task will be complex. For one thing, there were a number of very different kinds of Scotists (see Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in scholastic Thought, 1300–1335,’ Ph. D. Diss., The University of WisconsinMadison, 1974, 103–205), and for another, the negative impact of his thought was often as important as the positive impact. Courtenay’s contention in Schools & Scholars, 186– 190, that Scotus had little initial influence, reflects an assumption that influence should be traced through schools of thought, rather than through the dialogue of individual authors with the works of others. Courtenay himself usually advocates different ways of assessing an author’s affect. For example, see ‘The Reception of Ockham’s Thought in Fourteenth-Century England,’ in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks, The Ecclesiastical History Society 5 (Oxford, 1987), 89–107.

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career as a logician and the advances in logic that would give Oxford its distinctive intellectual character during the succeeding decades.29 By 1301, he was a member of Merton College whose residents (advanced bachelors and masters of arts studying theology) would write within the years to come some of the most sophisticated works of logic and physics of the age.30 Burley was still at Merton in 1305 when Richard of Campsall, a bachelor in arts studying at Balliol College, not quite yet himself at Merton, was finishing a set of Quaestiones super librum Priorum Analeticorum of a subtlety to match the best the university would subsequently produce.31 These works set the stage. Theologians in the following decades increasingly adapted the techniques of terminist logic to debate the theological issues Scotus had raised. If Scotus influenced the choice of topics for debate, the masters in arts provided the analytical tools for their discussion. 29 For recent bibliographies on Burley, see Rega Wood, ‘Studies on Walter Burley 1968–1988,’ BPM 30 (1988): 233–250, and Walter Burley, On the Purity of the Art of Logic: The Shorter and the Longer Treatises, trans. Paul Vincent Spade (New Haven and London, 2000), 295–303. For his life see: C. Martin, ‘Walter Burley,’ in Oxford Studies Presented to Daniel Callus, Oxford Historical Society, n. s. 16 (Oxford, 1964), 194–230; James A. Weisheipl, ‘Ockham and Some Mertonians,’ Mediaeval Studies 30 (1968): 175; Agustín Uña Juárez, La filosofía del siglo XIV: contexto cultural de Walter Burley (Madrid, 1978), and the introduction by Paul Vincent Spade to Burley, On the Purity, xix–xxi. Paul Vincent Spade and Eleonore Stump, ‘Walter Burley and the Obligationes Attributed to William of Sherwood,’ HPL 4 (1983): 9–26, have suggested that Burley may also have been the author of an earlier treatise De obligationibus, written at the turn of the century, originally attributed to William of Sherwood. For Burley’s text De suppositionibus, see Stephen F. Brown, ‘Walter Burleigh’s Treatise De suppositionibus and its Influence on William of Ockham,’ FcS 32 (1972): 15–64. 30 Martin, ‘Burley,’ 201–203, suggests that Burley spent his entire time at Merton serving as regent in arts without beginning the study of theology there. However, Mary Catherine Sommers has suggested that he may well have begun studying theology at Oxford before going to Paris. See her introduction to Walter Burley, Quaestiones super librum Posteriorum (Toronto, 2000), 1–3. See Weisheipl, ‘Mertonians,’ 163–213, for information on Thomas Bradwardine, William Heytesbury, Richard Swyneshead and John Dumbleton, other Mertonians of particular note. 31 See Edward A. Synan, ed. The Works of Richard of Campsall, vol. 1, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 17, (Toronto, 1968), 13–17, for Campsall’s life; ibid., 37–306 for the text itself, and idem, ‘Richard of Campsall’s First Question on the Prior Analytics,’ Mediaeval Studies 23 (1961): 305–323. Also see Katherine H. Tachau, ‘The Influence of Richard Campsall on Fourteenth-Century Oxford Thought,’ in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks, The Ecclesiastical History Society 5 (Oxford, 1987), 109–123, and idem, ‘Richard Campsall as a Theologian: New Evidence,’ in Historia Philosopiae Medii Aevi: Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ed. Burckhard Mojsisch and Olaf Pluta, vol. 2 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991), 979–1002.

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Besides the changes taking place within the larger context of the university, other changes took place within the order itself. Two men, Thomas of Sutton and Nicholas Trevet, exemplify the shifts in interest among the Dominicans. During the closing years of the thirteenth century, the best Dominican minds waged a defensive battle against a host of critics of Aquinas, critics who particularly objected to Aquinas’ views about matter and form and what those views implied for angels, the soul, beatitude, and the principle of individuation.32 Thomas of Sutton was the last of a line of defenders of Aquinas, a line that included William Hotham, Richard Knapwell, Robert Orford, and William Macclesfield among the English friars.33 Sutton was regent master at Oxford, probably about 1294, and he was present in the Oxford convent in 1300 when he was licensed to hear confessions in the area. He died after 1315. A large number of works in defense of Aquinas and some directed against Duns Scotus flowed from his pen, including thirty-five Quaestiones ordinariae, four Quodlibeta, several tractates (Contra pluralitatem formarum, Tractatus de productione formarum substanialium, and Tractatus de esse et essentia), a continuatio of Thomas Aquinas’ Expositionis in libros Aristotelis De generatione et corruptione, Determinatio contra aemulos et detractores fratrum praedicatorum and Contra quodlibet Iohannis Duns Scoti.34 32 F.J. Roensch, Early Thomist School (Dubuque, 1984), 28–57, 200–246. At Paris, the focus on defending Aquinas developed into an internecine conflict over the teachings of Durand de St. Pourçain. Hervaeus Natalis was the most determined of his detractors, and his elevation first to prior provincial of the French province in 1309, and then to Minister General of the order in 1318, a position he held until his death in 1323, enabled him to sustain the defensive stance among Dominicans there. The Dominicans of this period, up through Bernard Lombardi who read the Sentences in 1327, were all involved in one way or another in this fight, and then after Lombardi, no Dominicans of note are known again until the next century in the person of John Capreolus. Members of the order at Paris, unlike their confreres at Oxford, labored within intellectual constraints that may well have stifled intellectual vigor. See Chris Schabel, Russell L. Friedman, and Irene Balcoyiannopoulou, ‘Peter of Palude and the Parisian Reaction to Durand of St Pourçain on Future Contingents,’ AFP 71 (2001): 184–300. 33 Roensch, Early Thomist School, 44–51, 237–246. 34 See chapter two, n. 3 below for the general bibliography on Sutton. He has been the subject of extensive discussion, and the exact list of his works and dates for his career at Oxford are not settled. Part of the difficulty is that there was more than one Thomas Sutton, and on the continent Sutton, Thomas Wylton (master of arts and fellow of Merton College), and probably others, were all known as Thomas Anglicus, making for confusion. See Cecilia Trifogli, ‘Thomas Wylton on Motion,’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 77 (1995):135–136, n. 3, for a discussion of the attribution problems concerning Wylton’s Quaestiones libri Physicorum that have arisen because of this appellation. Alternatively, the Quaestiones ordinariae of Thomas Sutton are attributed to Thomas Anglicus in Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Amploni-

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Nicholas Trevet was also prolific, but unlike Sutton he dedicated his pen exclusively to works preachers and humanists would find rewarding. In this he harked back to the example of Richard Fishacre, whose postils on the Psalms Trevet found mixed with ‘the sweetest of moral teachings’ and whose Sentences commentary also contained an abundance of moral instruction.35 Trevet himself inaugurated a line of Dominican scholars whom Beryl Smalley regarded among the chief ‘classicizing friars’ of the age, a line that would include Thomas Waleys of Oxford, Robert Holcot and William D’Eyncourt of both Oxford and Cambridge, and Thomas Hopeman and Thomas Ringstead of Cambridge.36 Trevet began his studies at Oxford by 1297 and incepted c. 1302. He left to study at Paris between 1307 and 1314, when he was asked back to serve a second time as regent master at Oxford during the midst of a crisis between the university and the Dominicans there. Beginning in 1324, he served as lector at the London convent, and he was still alive in 1334. Trevet’s works included: commentaries on Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus; a treatise De officio missae addressed to Joseph Drokensford, bishop of Bath and Wells; an exposition of the Declamationes (Controversiae) of the elder Seneca addressed to Fr. John of Lenham, O.P., confessor to Edward II; an exposition of the Tragedies of the younger Seneca made at the request of Nicholas of Prato, the Dominican dean of the college of cardinals; a commentary on Livy commissioned by Pope John XXII; a commentary on the Psalms addressed between 1317 and 1320 to John anus F. 369. The attributions of the questions on physics to Wylton and the ordinary questions to Sutton are correct. For Sutton, see Johannes Schneider in the introduction to Thomas Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae, ed. Johannes Schneider, Akademie der Wissenschaften 3 (Munich, 1977), 19*–38*. Finally, Schneider (63*–68*) has also argued that the Liber propugnatorius super I Sententiarum Duns Scoti, attributed to Thomas Anglicus, is not by Sutton. For other Suttons and problems of attribution, see Michael Schmaus in the introduction to Thomas von Sutton, Quodlibeta, Akademie der Wissenschaften 2 (Munich, 1969), viii; Francis E. Kelley, in the introduction to Expositionis D. Thomae Aquinatis in libros Aristotelis De Generatione et corruptione, continuatio per Thomam de Sutona, Akademie der Wissenschaften 6 (Munich, 1976), n. 5; and Chris Schabel, Theology at Paris 1316–1345: Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents (Aldershot, 2000), 52–63. 35 R. James Long, ‘The Moral and Spiritual Theology of Richard Fishacre: Edition of Trinity Coll. MS O.1.30,’ AFP 60 (1990): 5–6. For a general discussion of the development of sermon styles and collections among the Dominicans, see Mulchahey, Bow is Bent, 400–447. 36 See Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, and Judson Boyce Allen, The Friar as Critic: Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Nashville, 1971).

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of Bristol, provincial prior of the order; a commentary on the Books of Chronicles; another on Augustine’s De civitate Dei; still another on Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae; and possibly some works on Cicero, Juvenal and Virgil. From 1320 on, he wrote a series of histories: Annales sex regum Angliae, covering the period from 1135 to 1307; Chronycles in French for the Lady Mary, daughter of Edward I; and the Historia ab origine mundi ad Christum natum, a Latin translation of the Chronycles for Hugh de Angoulême, archdeacon of Canterbury.37 Trevet showed no apparent interest in the debates over Thomism, but his commentaries on classical authors, his histories and his biblical commentaries gained wide support both inside and out of the Dominican order to judge from the list of his patrons. The denominator common to Trevet, to the ‘classicizing friars’ and to the other Dominicans who succeeded him at Oxford, was a shift of focus away from Aristotelian and Thomist metaphysics to a concern for ethics. This shift was not confined to England, although the English Dominicans may have had a particular influence on the order. The general chapter meeting held in London in 1314, the same meeting that recalled Nicholas Trevet from France to serve his second term as regent master at Oxford, decreed that a bachelor in theology who had finished reading the Sentences and moved on to be master of students prior to incepting as a regent master, was responsible for giving a series of lectures on moral philosophy based on Aristotle’s ethical works and Aquinas’ commentaries on them.38 At Paris, unlike Oxford, such bachelors were not required to offer a series of lectures on the Bible. The Bible lectures were one of the items of dispute between the Dominicans and the University of Oxford during the crisis that had erupted in 1310. The English friars were trying to obtain a similar exemption from Biblical commentary for their own students—an effort that would ultimately prove fruitless—but that would presumably have opened the way for lectures on moral theology in England or if they had succeeded. A strong interest in pastoral issues had characterized the friars from the beginning. Their service as preachers and confessors to all ranks of society confronted them with people’s everyday anxieties about conduct and its implications for salvation. Many of the friars at Oxford received licenses to hear confessions in the town or in the neighboring diocese of Salisbury (Sarum) even while they were students at the univer37 38

See chapter two, n. 10 below for the basic bibliography on Trevet. Mulchahey, Bow is Bent, 382.

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sity.39 The pastoral needs of the populace were inescapable, and literature and history constituted the two great repositories of ethical exempla from which the friars could draw cautionary tales for those whom they counseled.40 Trevet’s dedication of histories and literary commentaries to his royal and ecclesiastical patrons catered to the needs of the elite. For example, the Dominican cardinal Nicholas of Prato wrote to Trevet that while Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae had been his companion since youth, Trevet’s commentary had enabled the cardinal to read Boethius with much greater pleasure and understanding.41 But those same histories and works of lterature were also troves of stories and riveting analogies for preachers in search of material for sermons designed for a wider audience. Furthermore, in Dominican texts of theology, an increased emphasis on questions affecting soteriology matched the friars’ increased interest in history, literature, and the writing of works for preachers. The Dominicans set themselves the renewed task of answering questions from the laity about how to live a life pleasing to God, and they drew moral examples from history and literature to help their questioners remember the answers. With the defensive battle against Aquinas’ detractors essentially won, the attention of the friars returned to the demands of the apostolate. No evidence exists that the three priors provincial who guided the order during the years 1300 to 1312 were yet aware of the shifting intellectual sands. Two of the three were consummate diplomats, and while they promoted the fortunes of Nicholas Trevet, they appear preoccupied with administrative and political matters. Thomas of Jorz, whose provincialate spanned the inauguration of the century from 1297 to 1304, set the pattern. During his term in office, he was involved in trying to settle several disputes. One, between the Dominican convent and the cathedral canons in Exeter, concerned a violent quarrel that had broken out in 1301 over who should preside over the mass and burial of a local knight who had taken up residence in the friary as a confrater.42 A second arose in 1303 between the Dominican convent in 39 O’Carroll, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 42, indicates that for the Oxford and Cambridge visitations between 1221 and 1348, of the eighty-two Dominicans recorded as having held university degrees in theology, twenty-one appear in the (incomplete) lists of licensed confessors and preachers. 40 See Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages (Toronto, 1982). 41 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 60. 42 A.G. Little and R.C. Easterling, The Franciscans and Dominicans of Exeter (Exeter, 1927), 8–9, 40–46, 66–79.

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Cambridge and the university, when the university sought to restrict the rights of the friars there. Jorz continued his involvement with politics after he vacated the office of prior provincial, going to Rome on business for the order and eventually acting on behalf of both Edward I and Edward II at the curia. In 1305, the pope elevated him to cardinal priest of Santa Sabina, and in 1306 he served as arbiter to settle the dispute betweent the friars and Cambridge. He died some five years after becoming cardinal; on his way as papal envoy to see the emperor Henry VII.43 The selection of Jorz in 1310 to serve on a commission to examine the doctrines of Peter John Olivi is a testament to his continued recognition as a theologian of stature within the church. It is also a testament to his sense of mission as one who defined and defended orthodoxy rather than who preached to the faithful about the life of an ethical Christian.44 While Trevet’s tenure at Oxford began in the first year of Jorz’s provincialate, Jorz’s affinities would seem closer to Sutton’s than to the classicizing friar’s. For all his involvement in political affairs, however, Jorz retained ties to Oxford where he had been regent master in 1292 and prior of the Dominican convent from 1294 to 1297. His body was returned there for burial after his death in 1310.45 Of the other two priors provincial who governed during the years from 1300 to 1312, Robert Bromyard held the post for only two years before his release from office and may have been something of an interim candidate.46 His successor, Nicholas of Stratton, held the provincialate for six years, and like Jorz under whom he began his career as Oxford regent master c. 1300, Stratton seems to have been a man respected among his peers for his political and theological skills. He accompanied Edward I to Gascony in 1307 and went on from there to Avignon and then to the general chapter at Strasbourg. When he was released from office by the general chapter at Carcassone in 1312, which he also attended, it was so that he could study for a time at Paris. His name turns up in 1313 serving as bishop’s penitentiary for the Winchester diocese,47 and in 1320 the provincial chapter appointed him 43 See chapter two, n. 1 below for bibliographic information about Jorz. On the dispute with Cambridge, see Patrick Zutshi and Robert Ombres, O.P. ‘The Dominicans in Cambridge 1238–1538.’ AFP 60 (1990): 322–323. 44 Emden, BRUO 2:1023. 45 Emden, BRUO 2:1023. 46 See chapter two, n. 2. 47 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 203.

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one of the proctors submitting proposed articles of settlement of the long-standing dispute between the order and the University of Oxford to Pope John XXII.48 2. Years of Crisis—Blackfriars from 1312 to 1320 This dispute between the Dominicans and Oxford University over the granting of degrees, marked the next decade. Since the Dominicans had a well-developed system of schools outside the universities, they normally asked for dispensation from the Oxford requirement to obtain a master of arts degree prior to studying for the doctorate in theology. While the dispensation was granted as a matter of course, the Dominicans chaffed under the necessity to obtain it. Further disagreements over whether the Dominicans could conduct disputations in their own church rather than in the university church of St. Mary’s, over whether they could lecture on the Bible before lecturing on the Sentences as at Paris, and over whether a unanimous vote of all of the regent masters of all of the faculties was necessary for a dispensation from the normal course of studies, fractured the university community. From 1312 until 1320, the regular procession of Dominicans through Oxford ceased. Obtaining permission to lecture on the Sentences or to incept as a doctor of theology became very difficult if not impossible, requiring for success a papal directive or some extraordinary progress in the negotiations.49 Not until 1320 was a final settlement submitted to the papacy for approval with a subsequent return to normal.50 In the final agreement, the university retained control over the curriculum: the Dominicans continued to require a dispensation from the degree in arts, and they could not lecture on the Bible prior to lecturing 48 Emden, BRUO 3:1801; Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 59. At Paris, he would have joined Nicholas Trevet who was at the French university from 1307 until 1314. 49 Emden, BRUO 1:95 and 2:987. Thomas Waleys also testified in a letter to the difficulty the friars had in obtaining degrees at this time: ‘… aucta [f. 55v] fuit prefata discordia in tantum quod bene per tres annos non potuimus habere in dicta universitate bacalarium, qui sentencias legeret, nec qui magistraretur in theologia, uno excepto, quantum recordor, qui per extorsionem magnam precum regiarum extitit magistratus.’ Ed. Thomas Käppeli, in Le procès contre Thomas Waleys O.P., Dissertationes Historicae 6 (Rome, 1936), 244, ll. 15–19. 50 H. Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers v. the University AD 1311–1313,’ in Collectanea II, ed. Montagu Burrows, Oxford Historical Society 16 (1890): 193–273, whose work also includes editions of the documents connected with the dispute; Jarrett, English Dominicans, 100–110; Knowles, Religious Orders, 1:191; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 59.

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on the Sentences. The Dominicans did obtain recognition of the lectures and disputations in their own halls as meeting university requirements. Moreover, university officials and the community of masters stopped harrassing the friars with arbitrary denials of the necessary dispensations and with imprisonment in the university jails for objectionable behavior, two kinds of retaliation they had used against the Dominicans during the dispute.51 The Dominicans won some concessions, but the agreement basically vindicated the university. Most of the names of the friars connected with Oxford during these years are known because of their involvement in some way in the controversy. Thomas Everard, bachelor of theology, was prior of the Oxford convent in 1311 when the quarrel first erupted and still serving in that capacity in 1317.52 By 1312, Friars Roger of Baketone and Richard Hunteleye had resorted to the king to obtain permission to incept in theology. The pope finally ordered their admission to the doctorate in May of 1313.53 Henry of Croy, a bachelor of theology in 1312, was also unable to incept in that year as a doctor because of the dispute with the university.54 And in 1313, the archbishop of Canterbury wrote on behalf of Walter of Valepont or Walelepol’ asking that he be allowed to lecture on the Bible although he had not previously lectured on the Sentences. Valepont eventually received his doctorate, but perhaps from a foreign institution.55 The most colorful figure of the controversy was Friar Lawrence of Warwick who served as a proctor for the Dominican convent during the feud. In 1312, he had the assignment on two occasions of officially serving the complaints of the Dominicans, first on the Oxford chancellor Henry of Manefield and then on the whole body of masters. Waiting until the chancellor was giving a public lecture, Warwick tried to break in on him, and when servants barred his way, Warwick waylaid Manefield as he was leaving. As for the masters, Warwick tried to serve the

51 Jarrett, English Dominicans, 108–110. For comparison to the 1306 settlement of an analogous dispute between the order and Cambridge, see Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans at Cambridge,’ 322–323. 52 Emden, BRUO 1:654; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 206. 53 Emden, BRUO 1:95 and 2:987; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 194, 196; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 206. 54 Emden, BRUO 1:522. 55 Emden, BRUO 3:1940 and 3:1959, lists these names separately, one according to the Archbishop’s records, the other from information about Oxford, but it seems unlikely that more than one man was involved; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 214.

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list of complaints on them while they were gathered in St. Mary’s for a convocation. Seeing him coming, the masters hustled him to the door and barred it against him. But Warwick climbed on tombstones and aided by other friars reached a window through which he called out the grievances as fast as he could before the masters gathered inside could again unbar the door and escape from the sound of his voice.56 In 1315, Warwick became prior of the Stamford convent,57 perhaps in reward for his ingenuity. A number of other Dominicans served as representatives of the Oxford convent and the order in the negotiations with the university, king, and pope during the dispute. Most of them were already men of prominence and those who had doctorates had received them in theology at an earlier time. Such a proctor was Robert Everard appointed in 1312 in the early years of the controversy to appeal to the papacy on behalf of the Oxford priory.58 In 1314, the appeal to the pope not having resolved the problem, a series of proctors or negotiators were appointed from both sides. Following an elaborate procedure, a first set of proctors, including for the Dominicans Luke of Wodeford, king’s confessor, and Ralph of Seton, in conjunction with university representatives, nominated a second set of men to carry out the actual negotiations. The Dominicans in the final group of proctors included the Oxford prior Thomas Everard and Peter of Kenington, who had received his doctorate before 1309 when he began serving as lector at the London convent.59 In a series of chess-like moves, other prominent men in the order were diverted to cover the absence of Thomas Everard from the Oxford priory and Kenington from his lectorship at London. John of Wrotham, prior at the London convent, was moved to Oxford as stand-in for Everard. Described in 1304 as a long time member of the king’s household, Wrotham had been the companion of Friar Walter of Winterbourne, king’s confessor at the beginning of the century until he was made cardinal in 1304. Wrotham served as a royal envoy to the curia between 1304 and 1305, presumably accompanying Winterbourne, and

Jarrett, English Dominicans, 102, 105; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 207–210. See chapter two, n. 23. 58 Emden, BRUO 1:654; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 209. 59 Jarrett, English Dominicans, 106. Proctors were also a feature of the negotiations with Cambridge in the dispute of 1303–1306 (see Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans at Cambridge,’ 323). 56 57

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returned to England in 1305 when the cardinal died. By 1309, Wrotham was prior of the London convent, a post he still held in 1319, when King Edward requested his appointment as papal penitentiary, a position that he filled from 1321 until about 1334.60 Wrotham was a man of distinction, close to the king, with experience at the papal court. He would also have known the newly named negotiator Kenington from Kenington’s service as lector at London. As for Kenington, his substitute was none other than Wodeford, who as king’s confessor had the ear of Edward II.61 Unfortunately for the Dominicans, the round of negotiations did not result in a definitive settlement. Nicholas Trevet was recalled from Paris to serve a second term as regent master, a sign of the interruption in the procession of doctoral candidates and the need for the presence of a prestigious theologian to restore credibility to the mendicants’ educational program. Some reduction in hostilities is evident in 1314 because the future ‘classicizing friar’ Thomas Waleys was allowed to begin lecturing on the Sentences in that year,62 giving him access to Trevet’s influence. The general chapter of the entire Dominican order was held in London during the summer, perhaps in part or in whole to support the efforts of the Dominicans in their struggle with the university. That the master general Berengarius termed both Cambridge and London studia generalia for the English friars in a letter of the same year may have owed something to the difficulties at Oxford.63 But despite all efforts the dispute continued. These developments may have entwined the fate of the provincial priors. The master general had appointed the doctor in theology, William Castreton as provincial prior in 1312, and Castreton presided over the first period of the negotiations. His hand is undoubtedly discernible in some of the moves of personnel from priory to priory to handle the politics of the dispute. But in 1315, the general chapter of Bologna released Castreton from his post.64 The failure of the nego-

60 Emden, BRUO 3:2095. Emden suggests Wrotham had a doctorate, but see H.E. Salter, ed. Mediaeval Archives of the University of Oxford, vol. 1, Oxford Historical Society 70 (Oxford, 1920), 99, no. 55, where Wrotham is listed without a degree in contrast to a group of proctors designated as doctors. 61 Jarrett, English Dominicans, 106. 62 See chapter two, n. 28. 63 See n. 1 above. 64 Emden, BRUO 3:2160; Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245.

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tiating team to resolve the difficulties with the university in 1314 and 1315 may have contributed to his departure from office. Castreton’s unknown successor, who governed as prior provincial between 1315 and 1317, has left no evidence that he made progress either. The next prior provincial, John of Bristol, is the only one among the priors provincial known to have obtained his doctorate from Cambridge.65 It seems plausible one of the reasons a Cambridge scholar would have been chosen for the highest office was his capacity for greater neutrality in the dispute than anyone with an Oxford degree. Under Bristol’s management, there is evidence of further action in the negotiations in 1318 when the bachelor Thomas Waleys, due to incept as doctor in theology, received commendations from the king in April and November to go to the Roman curia as part of a delegation to the pope about the difficulties.66 But it was only in 1320, after Bristol had been in office for several years, that real progress resumed, and the impasse with the university reached resolution. In 1320, with the consent and authorization of the provincial prior, the new prior of the Oxford convent, Thomas of Westwell, once again put forward the names of proctors to serve as negotiators for the order with Oxford. Three of the four men named to represent the Oxford convent had been participants in the elaborate arrangements of 1314: Peter of Kenington, Luke of Wodeford and John of Wrotham. A fourth, William of Ebryton (or Ebrighten) was added as well. Of these, Wodeford and Ebrighton were named in the documents as doctors of sacred theology along with Kenington.67 Their negotiations were finally sucessful. With the end of the conflict over the granting of degrees, the steady procession of Dominican candidates at Oxford for degrees of bachelor and doctor of theology resumed. 3. Blackfriars under John of Bristol—1317 to 1327 The provincial prior John of Bristol should be credited with bringing Dominican education back after a disastrous decade and promoting and encouraging some of the most promising scholars whom the order would see during the century. Elected to his post after two priors provincial who governed for only a few years (one so obscure that his 65 66 67

Emden, BRUC 94. See chapter two, n. 28. Salter, Mediaeval Archives, 99, no. 55.

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name has not survived) and elected with the controversy between the order and the University of Oxford still unresolved, Bristol spent the next ten years putting the Dominican house back in order. His Cambridge doctorate, in ordinary circumstances of less prestige, endowed him with a relatively neutral standing in the dispute with Oxford, and Bristol presided over the final resolution of the conflict. But Bristol was not just an administrator of talent, for if the men whom he promoted and encouraged are an indication, he instated a new intellectual vision and direction for the English Dominicans. The decade of Bristol’s governance created the mold in which the leading men of the order for the next three decades were formed. For example, of those who obtained their doctorates either during his term in office or a year or two afterwards, three went on to become provincial priors themselves: Simon of Boraston, Richard of Winkley and Arnold of Strelley. Very capable men in their own right, they governed the Dominicans until mid-century. While no work from Bristol’s own pen is known to survive, he took an interest in the writers of his order and through his appointments helped establish an intellectual preoccupation with ethics and soteriology. The most direct evidence of his connection with the new intellectual interests is the dedication Nicolas Trevet made to him some time between 1317 and 1320 of a commentary on the Psalms. Bristol’s connections with Trevet were probably close. He would have approved Trevet’s appointment in 1324 to be lector at the London convent, and since the priors provincial had their principal residence at the same convent, Bristol and Trevet would have lived in close proximity. Trevet was still alive in 1334, and if he spent most of the intervening years in London, he would have been in a position to influence not only Bristol, but Bristol’s successor Simon of Boraston. The number of talented scholars: Thomas of Waleys, Simon of Boraston, Richard of Winkley, John Bromyard, Arnold of Strelley, and Hugh of Lawton, who began or established their careers during Bristol’s provincialate, testifies to his acumen. Thomas of Waleys had been frustrated in his advance through the university because of the dispute about degrees. He served his regency sometime between 1319/1320 and 1326 when he was posted to Bologna as lector. Waleys belonged among the early group of ‘classicizing friars.’ While he wrote much of his work in Italy, his lectures on the Sentences coincided with Trevet’s second regency, and it is at least plausible to believe that while still in England he began experimenting with organizing traditional Bible commentaries as exempla collections, an idea he ultimately brought to fru-

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ition.68 Simon of Boraston was present at Oxford at least by 1318 and had obtained his doctorate by 1322 when he was described as preacher general of the order. Boraston succeeded Bristol as prior provincial in 1327, and continued the policy of nurturing friars interested in preaching and teaching. His extant works stem from the period of his retirement from the provincialate in 1336, but his advance to preacher general occurred under Bristol’s governance.69 Richard of Winkley, who succeeded Boraston as prior provincial in 1336, also lectured on the Sentences before 1326, almost certainly at Oxford.70 He succeeded Waleys as lector at Bologna in 1331.71 Winkley’s contemporaries considered him an important theologian. During the decade after he received his doctorate, the Dominicans Hugh of Lawton, William Crathorn and Robert Holcot all cited his opinions by name in their theological works.72 Even after his promotion to the provincialate and in spite of numerous diplomatic and other services he performed for Edward III, Winkley found time to prepare an inventory of the Dominican library at the London convent during the first half of 1339.73 John Bromyard first appears in the records at the Hereford convent in 1326 where he seems to have remained until 1352, but he is likely to have studied at Oxford just before his posting to Hereford. Bromyard compiled handbooks for preachers, some quite influential in later years.74 Arnold of Strelley, who held the position of prior provincial during the 1340’s, commented on the Sentences between 1323 and 1330, almost certainly at Oxford.75 Several of Strelley’s works are extant, and he exerted considerable influence on the next generation of Dominican scholars. William Crathorn and Robert Holcot cited him by name, and his theology in many ways prefigured that of Holcot.76 Finally, Hugh of Lawton, whose

68 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 82 and 79–88 passim; Waleys may have owed something to Richard Fishacre in the development of this practice (see Long, ‘Moral and Spiritual Theology,’ 5–6, for Fishacre). 69 See chapter two, n. 59. 70 See chapter two, n. 62. 71 C.F.R. Palmer, ‘King’s Confessors,’ The Antiquary 22 (1890): 262–263. And see Emden, BRUO 3:2060; and Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245, for basic information on Winkley. 72 See chapter two, n. 62. 73 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 103, citing J. Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. R.L. Poole and M. Bateson (Oxford, 1902), 513. 74 Emden, BRUO 1:278. 75 See chapter two, n. 70. 76 See chapter two, n. 71.

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commentary on the Sentences fell sometime between 1326 and 1330, would have begun studying theology at Oxford during Bristol’s tenure as prior provincial. Portions of Lawton’s Sentences survive. By the time of Lawton, a tradition in fourteenth-century English Dominican theology is discernible. He cited Hugh Dutton, regent in 1311–1312, ‘Doctor’ Waleys and Richard Winkley. In turn Crathorn and Holcot both cited him.77 A line of Dominicans engaging in the new speculative theology at Oxford progressed through this list of doctors and ultimately culminated with Robert Holcot in the mid 1330s. Under Bristol, English Dominicans cultivated what would become hallmarks of their intellectual culture. They experimented with text forms (Waleys and Strelley), took an interest in libraries and classical texts (Waleys and Winkley), developed new and highly speculative positions (Strelley and Lawton), produced preaching aids (Waleys and Bromyard), integrated natural philosophy and terminist logic into theology (Strelley and Lawton), and showed a particular concern for ethics and soteriology (Waleys, Bromyard, Strelley and Lawton). In short, Bristol presided over a significent intellectual revitalization of the order after the period of turmoil that had preceded him. 4. Blackfriars under Simon of Boraston—1327 to 1336 Simon of Boraston’s influence dominated the next decade. As provincial prior from 1327 until 1336, he continued the pattern John of Bristol had set. Even after his retirement to the Oxford convent in 1336, Boraston maintained a presence for the next several years while he compiled sermon collections, created preaching aids, and wrote about the organization and practices of the church and the order.78 Boraston’s intellectual interests and gifts were substantial, and like Bristol he fostered a number of important theologians during his tenure in office. Arnold of Strelley and Hugh of Lawton probably finished their Oxford careers under Boraston. Then beginning in 1330, for a few years the procession of four Dominicans lecturing on the Sentences is known with surety: William Crathorn began his commentary in 1330;79 Robert Holcot suc77 For Lawton’s citations of those named and Holcot’s citation of Lawton, as well as more general information establishing the dates for Lawton’s Sentences commentary, see the discussion of Lawton in chapter 2, particularly nn. 90 and 91. 78 See chapter two, n. 59. 79 Heinrich Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn: I Quellenkritik und biogra-

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ceeded him in 1331;80 a Dominican most probably named ‘Grafton,’ perhaps with the first name Johannes, from whom we may have some surviving questions, followed in 1332;81 and Roger Gosford began his commentary in 1333.82 Nicholas of Lee may have begun studying at Oxford as early as 1329, if Boraston granted the request in 1328 of John Grandisson, bishop of Exeter, to advance Lee to the university.83 Lee had his doctorate at least by 1342, when he followed in the footsteps of Waleys and Winkley as lector at Bologna,84 but may well have spent the years from 1330 to 1335 listening to the lectures of Crathorn, Holcot, Grafton, and Gosford. Of these men, we have part or all of the Sentences for Strelley, Lawton, Crathorn, and Holcot. Their theology continued the speculative mode and interest in soteriology begun under Bristol. Robert Holcot was one of the most important of the ‘classicizing friars,’ and manuscripts of his Sentences commentary, Biblical commentaries and aids for preaching were widely copied and disseminated until the end of the fifteenth century, when early printed editions of some of them appeared.85 phische Auswertung der Bakkalareatsschriften zweier Oxforder Dominicaner des XIV. Jahrhunderts, Philosophisches Jahrbuch 77,’ (1970): 340. 80 See Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 6–11, for dating Holcot’s Sentences commentary in relation to Crathorn. 81 Ibid. 11, 14–16. 82 Ibid. 11–14. 83 Emden, BRUO 1:560, under ‘de la Lee’; Stephen L. Forte, ‘Simon of Boraston, His Life and Writings,’ AFP 22 (1952): 323 and n. 14, quotes from Grandisson’s letter. 84 Walter Gumbley, ‘In Theology,’ in The English Dominican Province (1221–1921) (London, 1921), 59; Acta 2:283. 85 Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 35–42, has the most complete list of manuscripts containing Holcot’s Sentences commentary and a discussion of their dissemination. See Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 331–335, for other works by Holcot in a somewhat less complete list of the same manuscripts. Holcot’s Wisdom commentary survives in at least 175 fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts as well as 12 printed editions: see Joseph Wey, ‘The Sermo Finalis of Robert Holcot,’ Mediaeval Studies 11 (1949): 219–224; Thomas Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi, vol. 3 (Rome, 1980), 313–314; and Kurt Villads Jensen, ‘Robert Holkot’s Questio on Killing Infidels: A Reevaluation and an Edition,’ AFP 63 (1993): 208–210, 215–219. There is evidence of early interest in Holcot among the Benedictines: Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Seeing the Future, 29, notes that William Bourne, DTh acquired Holcot’s texts for the abbey of St. Peter at Gloucester, and ibid. 40– 41, that Nicholas Fawkes of Glastenbury gathered a collection of Holcot’s questions in 1389. Alan Coates, ‘Benedictine Monks and their Books at Oxford,’ in Benedictines in Oxford, ed. Henry Wansbrough and Anthony Marett-Crosby (London, 1987), 82, 92, cites Fawkes as Faux, and indicates that Thomas Barton, prior of Gloucester College, was the first known owner of the 1497 printed edition of Holcot’s Sentences, probably acquired between 1514–1516.

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5. The Provincialates of Winkley, Dutton and Strelley—1337 to 1349 Unfortunately, only sketchy information exists for the last decade of the period before the Black Death. Because no Dominican Sentences commentaries are known from that time, the invaluable information such commentaries would provide is lacking for the friars at Oxford during the forties. If any should surface, the picture we have of this period might change significantly. However, something is known of several men of importance and of the continuation of some trends. Richard of Winkley’s tenure as prior provincial had the political and diplomatic character not seen since Jorz and Stratton. He had the confidence of Edward III who asked him to participate in several missions, one in 1337 to David Bruce, the Scotish king in exile in France, and another following up to King Philip VI of France in the same year.86 And Winkley appears to have served as the king’s chaplain.87 However, his association with the king and the tensions of the Hundred Years War that had begun to escalate in 1337 were his undoing as prior provincial, for in 1339 the general chapter of Clermont, under the auspices of the French master general Hugues de Vaucemain, removed him from his office. Edward III took strong exception to Winkley’s removal in a letter written the following April, but to no avail.88 On the retirement of Nicholas of Herley as king’s confessor in 1339, Winkley was named to the post (whether before or after his release from office as prior provincial is unclear), and he apparently continued as confessor until his death c. 1346 or 1347. Winkley served on a number of further missions for the king to the papal curia in 1340, 1341–1342, and again in 1343. Despite his political involvement, while still prior provincial in the first part of 1339, Winkley, nevertheless, found time to prepare his inventory of the Dominican library at the London convent.89 When the general chapter at Clermont absolved Winkley of his office, it appointed Hugh Dutton as vicar general to serve as caretaker in Winkley’s stead. Dutton, who was noted as regent master back in For discussion of Holcot’s Biblical commentaries, see Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 135, 139–143, and William J. Courtenay, ‘The Lost Matthew Commentary of Robert Holcot O.P.,’ AFP 50 (1980): 103–112. 86 See Emden, BRUO 3:2060; and Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245, for basic information on Winkley. 87 C.F.R. Palmer, ‘King’s Confessors,’ The Antiquary 22 (1890): 262–263. 88 Ibid. 89 See chapter two, n. 64.

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1311–1312, would have been an honored elder by then, and presumably someone who would not stir controversy. The aptness of choosing him as Winkley’s replacement under such politically difficult circumstances was subsequently confirmed when he was elected provincial prior by the next provincial chapter, either in 1339 or 1340.90 By November, 1342, however, Dutton was no longer in office and had in all likelihood died. Arnold of Strelley took Dutton’s place as prior provincial and served out the rest of the decade until c. 1349 when his name was replaced as king’s confessor.91 In June of 1350, William Jordan was named in episcopal records with the title vicar general indicating Strelley was no longer provincial.92 Perhaps, like his pupil Robert Holcot, Strelley, too, died in the plague. Winkley, Dutton, and Strelley would collectively have overseen the further career of Holcot. After serving his regency at Oxford (1336– 1338?) and before 1340, Holcot spent some time serving Richard of Bury, the bishop of Durham, as clerk, helping the bishop compile his Philobiblon. The most likely place for Holcot’s residence during that time was London (he does not appear among the names of those who traveled with Bury on missions to France and Flanders).93 There is a tradition that Holcot produced his most famous Biblical commentary on the book of Wisdom, the Postilla super librum Sapientiae at Cambridge.94 If so, it was most likely between 1340 and 1342. By February of 1343, he had taken residence at the Northampton convent, where he remained, continuing to give and publish lectures on the Bible until his death of the plague in 1349.95

90 Emden, BRUO 1:613–614; idem, Survey of Dominicans, 51, 329; Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245. 91 Palmer, ‘King’s Confessors,’ 263–264. 92 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 208. 93 N. Denholm-Young, ‘Richard de Bury (1287–1345),’ TRHS 4th ser., 22 (1937): 161; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 134–135. In gathering material for the edition of Holcot’s texts on future contingents, William Courtenay discovered that Holcot made reference to London in sixteen of the manuscripts of his Sentences, IV, q. 3/4: ‘Utrum in sacramento eucharistiae sub speciebus panis vere et realiter existat corpus Christi.’ In Oxford, Balliol College MS 71, f. 127vb, for example, the text in question reads: ‘Similiter tu qui es Londonii haberes dubitare …’ 94 J. Quetif and J. Échard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, vol. 1 (Paris, 1719), 630, noted that two Paris MSS of Holcot’s Postilla super librum Sapientiae designate him as of Cambridge. And see Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 141. 95 Emden, BRUO 2:946–947; idem, BRUC 310, and Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 137–138, 142, 147–148.

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Besides Holcot, the priors provincial cultivated the careers of other ‘classicizing friars’ at both Oxford and Cambridge. William d’Eyncourt, for example, studied first at Cambridge and then at Oxford during the 1330s. He is thought to have been regent master at Oxford in 1340,96 putting his commentary on the Sentences in 1335–1337 or 1336– 1338, the likely years of Holcot’s own regency. By 1344, he had returned to his home visitation of York.97 In his one extant work, an unfinished series of lectures on Ecclesiastes, d’Eyncourt shows himself familiar with Waleys commentary on the Psalter and, like Waleys, took a look at Livy’s Ab urbe condita, which he cited directly.98 The careers of Thomas Hopeman and Thomas Ringstead at Cambridge also belong to the era of Dutton and Strelley.99 Other currents were present, however, that would carry the order forward into the second half of the century. The theologian William Jordan appears to have obtained his doctorate at Oxford during the years just prior to 1348 under Strelley’s aegis.100 Jordan would later become an important spokesman for the Dominicans during the second half of the fourteenth century,101 disputing with Franciscans over the immaculate conception, siding with the critics of the Benedictine Uthred of Bolden while prior at the York convent, and defending the Dominicans at the papal curia against the attacks on mendicancy by Richard Fitzralph, archbishop of Armagh.102 If the disputes that occupied him are an indication, at least some members of the order returned to defensive battles like those of the friars at the turn of the century. The interest in ethics, soteriology, and classical texts Bristol

Emden, BRUO 1:577, and Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 204–205. Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 205. 98 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 206–208. 99 See note 36 above. 100 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 208–209. 101 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 160, indicates that John Hiltalingen of Basel in the mid-sixties at Paris knew Jordan’s commentary on the Sentences, and Courtenay made the judgment about Jordan’s stature (ibid., 359). 102 Emden, BRUO 2:1022. For the disputes see, Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 116, 338, 353 n. 69, 359; M.E. Marcett, Uthred de Bolden, Friar William Jordan, and Piers Plowman (New York, 1938); D. Knowles, ‘The Censured Opinions of Uthred of Boldon,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 37 (1951): 305–342, who also gives the texts, and David Hugh Farmer, ‘New Light on Uthred of Bolden,’ in Benedictines in Oxford, ed. Henry Wansbrough and Anthony Marett-Crosby (London, 1997), 116–132. Emden, BRUO 2:1022 notes that J. Bale credited him with the tractates Contra positiones Wiclevi, Pro mendicitate contra Utredum and Questiones de Conceptione Mariae, but these do not survive. 96 97

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and his successors Boraston, Winkley, Dutton, and Strelley had cultivated, gave way again to defending the order and to a concern for the delimitation of doctrine and orthodoxy.

C. Intellectual Life Books expanded the parameters of the intellectual community within which the Dominicans developed their theology. Of the friars who passed through Oxford on the way to their careers within the order, some of the most productive showed a particular love of books and book collecting. Nicholas Trevet, Thomas Waleys, Richard of Winkley, and Robert Holcot were each in his own way deeply involved with books: Trevet, Waleys, and Holcot discovering, explicating, and exploiting little-used classical texts;103 Winkley organizing the library at the London convent, and Holcot helping Richard of Bury compile his Philobiblon. Indeed, the interest in books among both the Franciscans and the Dominicans was so widespread that it led Richard Fitzralph to complain in 1357 that: scarcely a useful book is to be found in the market, but all are bought up by the friars, so that in every convent is a great and noble library, and every one of them who has a recognized position in the universities (and such are now innumerable) has also a noble library.104 103 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity; 58–65, 79–82, 133–202; J. de Ghellinck, ‘Un bibliophile au XIV siècle: Richard d’Aungerville,’ RHE 18 (1922): 271–312, 482–508; ibid. 19 (1923): 157–200; Judson B. Allen, ‘The Library of a Classiciser: The Sources of Robert Holkot’s Mythographic Learning,’ in Arts libéraux et philosophie au moyen âge, Actes du IVe congrès internationale de philosophie médiévale (Paris and Montreal, 1969), 721–729; Denholm-Young, ‘Richard de Bury,’ 135–168, and for more general Dominican practices, see William J. Courtenay, ‘Book Production and Libraries in 14thCentury Paris,’ in Filosofia e teologia nel trecento: Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. Luca Bianchi (Louvain-la-neuve, 1994), 367–380. 104 A.G. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxford, 1892), 61; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 85, suggests that the Franciscans were more active book hounds than the Dominicans but offers no evidence for his assertion. The witness of Richard de Bury in the Philobiblon, ed. E.C. Thomas (London, 1888), 101–103, might suggest otherwise. John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. R.L. Poole and M. Bateson (Oxford, 1902), and reissued (Bury St. Edmunds, 1990), 513 has an excerpt from Winkeley’s inventory (see chapter two, note 64 below); and Neil R. Ker, ‘Cardinal Cervini’s Manuscripts from the Cambridge Friars,’ in Xenia Medii Aevi Historiam Illustrantia oblata Thomae Kaeppelli O.P., ed. Raymundus Creytens and Pius Künzle, 1(Rome, 1978), 51–71, contains a discussion and list of the books that came to Cardinal Cervini from the Cambridge friary c. 1545. See idem, ‘Oxford College Libraries before 1500,’ in The

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Even taking into account the exaggeration Fitzralph’s hostility toward the mendicants would produce, his complaint had some basis in fact. Whenever a friar went to study at one of the studia generalia, he was given four florins by the provincial prior for theological books. The books of deceased friars were passed on to others, and a certain number also came to them through the charity of friends. When a friar went to another province as lector, he was entitled to take with him all his annotated (glossed) books, notebooks and a Bible. Of the extant manuscripts formerly in the hands of English friars, the overwhelming number are Bibles and portions of Bibles.105 However, some possessed other works as well. Holcot had a copy of Augustine’s Confessions and of a Liber problematum Arisotelis.106 His references to odd and out of the way authors attest to the book lover’s zeal. In the Philobiblon, Richard of Bury singled out the Dominicans for their particular ardor and generosity in finding books for him.107 The Dominicans were also in the forefront of those experimenting with new ways to organize texts and theological materials: Trevet made commentaries on works of classical literature; Waleys systematized Biblical commentary as collections of exempla; if Strelley wrote the Centiloquium theologicum, he was the author of the only known theological sophismata; Holcot developed a practice begun by the Franciscan John Ridevall of using word ‘pictures’ to organize allegorical images, and in writing their Sentences commentaries Strelley, Crathorn, and Holcot rejected the traditional plan of Lombard in favor of writing on just a few questions focused on themes of particular controversy and moment.108 All of these authors exemplify the spirit of innovation that swept the order. The purpose of their innovations was apparently pedagogical. Each of

Universities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Jozef Ijsewijn and Jacques Paquet (Louvain, 1978), 293–311, for a more general profile of book holdings and circulation practices. 105 Little, ‘Educational Organisation,’ 61–62; for the organization of Dominican libraries, see Hinnebusch, Early English Friars Preachers, 180–186. 106 Emden, BRUC 310, indicates the manuscript in question is now Cambridge, University Library MS Kk. 2. 5. For Holcot’s knowledge of sources in general, see Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 148–202; and Allen, ‘Library of a Classiciser,’ 721– 729. 107 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 73; Richard de Bury, Philobiblon, ed. E.C. Thomas (London, 1888), 101–103. 108 See the discussion of individual authors in chapter two below; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 250–255, 340; and idem, ‘Theologians from Ockham to Wyclif,’ in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. J.I. Catto and Ralph Evans (Oxford, 1992), 29–30.

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the friars was intent on creating techniques for vividly conveying the moral and theological lessons of literature, history and speculative theology to his chosen audience of students, preachers, or literati. Nor did originality stop at the arrangement of texts. As will become clear in part two, the four Dominicans whose teachings at Oxford survive in quantity: Strelley, Lawton, Crathorn, and Holcot, were also very independent-minded and innovative theologians, in the forefront of those extending the application of logical technique to theological puzzles. While some continuity with the thirteenth-century traditions of the order is evident in their works (particularly with the covenantal theology that had characterized pre-Thomist Dominicans in the English province),109 predictions about what positions the fourteenth-century theologians would take could not be made on the basis of thirteenthcentury or even early fourteenth-century Dominican authors. Patronage, both within and outside the order, shaped the contributions of the friars. Outside the order, although Pope John XXII and the cardinal Nicholas of Prato commissioned works from Trevet, and Cardinal Matteo Orsini supported Waleys, the greatest outside patronage of scholarship within England came from the episcopate: Richard of Bury, bishop of Durham, included Holcot in his episcopal familia; John Grandisson, bishop of Exeter, wrote on behalf of Winkley and Lee; and the Dominican Thomas of Lisle, bishop of Ely from 1354 to 1361, fostered the careers of the Cambridge Dominicans Thomas Hopeman and Thomas Ringstead in the late forties and early fifties.110 Edward II and Edward III also did much for the order. Edward II founded the convent and school at Kings Langley in 1308, and the king’s alms were a regular part of the support for the convents at Oxford and Cambridge.111 But while Edward II sided with the Dominicans in their dispute with the University of Oxford from 1311 to 1320, and while both he and Edward III had close ties with the order, particularly through 109 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 179–181, notes the non-Thomist tradition among the English Dominicans, and see Long, ‘Moral and Spiritual Theology,’ 5–6 for connections between Fishacre and Trevet. Compare the very different situation at Paris chronicled in Schabel, Friedmann and Balcoyiannopoulou, ‘Parisian Reaction to Durand,’ 183–239. 110 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 209, 213–214. 111 One of the sources of information on the friars are the documents indicating which friars received the king’s alms on behalf of the convent. See for example Robert le Moigne in Emden, BRUO 2:1130. On King’s Langley, see C.F.R. Palmer, ‘The FriarPreachers, or Blackfriars, of King’s Langley,’ The Reliquary 19 (1878): 37–43, 74–80, 209– 218.

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their confessors,112 they were more apt to entrust diplomatic missions to the friars than to commission works of literature. The most important patronage came from within the order itself. The power of the provincial priors to control the careers of all of the friars in England made them a potent force in shaping the intellectual and educational character of the Friars Preachers. A series of very able provincials from 1317 to 1349: John of Bristol, Simon of Boraston, Richard of Winkley, Hugh Dutton, and Arnold of Strelley, set a high value on cultivating the best Dominican minds. Participation on the part of the friars in the development of ‘English subtleties’ during the Oxford heyday was contingent on the tolerance or encouragement of the provincial priors, one of whom at least, Arnold of Strelley, was himself an important figure in the injection of logical techniques into theology. But his death c. 1349, brought the era to a close. The intellectual vitality of the university itself had apparently begun to weaken during the forties, although the paucity of texts from the Franciscans and Dominicans makes ultimate judgment difficult.113 The plague delivered the coup de grâce, interrupting the continuity of talent within the order.114 112 Palmer, ‘Confessors,’ 114–120, 159–161, 262–266, gives the names of the confessors during the period from 1300–1350 as: Walter of Winterbourne (1289–1301), John of Lenham (1301–1315), John of Warfield (1315–1316), Robert of Duffield (1316– 1317), Nicholas of Herley (1327–1339), Richard of Winkley (1339–c.1346/1347), Roger of Quernden (1339–1342), Arnold of Strelley (1348), John of Woderowe (1349–1376). There seems at times to have been more than one confessor: besides the overlap of Quernden and Winkley, Hinnebusch, Early English Friars Preachers, 471, indicates Winterbourne may have continued as confessor until 1304; and Emden, BRUO 3:2071, gives evidence that Luke of Wodeford apparently served as confessor from c. 1304 until 1324/25. 113 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 329–332, suggests a decline at Oxford prior to 1350, largely on the absence of important Franciscan or Dominican texts from the period. Given Henry VIII’s destruction of the libraries, however, and the accidental preservation of what texts remain, conclusions are difficult to draw. Paris is not an appropriate foil for understanding what went on at Oxford precisely because the French university did not undergo the destruction that Oxford suffered. We might find the landscape quite rearranged with the discovery of just a few key texts, for example the Sentences of William of Jordan. 114 The episcopal registers for the diocese of York are quite revealing of the havoc the plague brought. On February 12, 1350, William of Kent, prior of the York convent presented seventeen friars to the bishop for licenses to hear confessions, all as replacements for other friars. In June, six more were presented to replace deceased friars. And two entries without dates (c. 1354), list twenty-one more, mostly to replace other friars, a number of whom are recorded as deceased. (See Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 208–209.) Also see Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 331–332; idem, ‘The Effect of the Black Death on English Higher Education,’ Speculum 55 (1980): 696–714; and Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 349.

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It seems probable that Strelley, for one, died of it. Holcot certainly did, as did thirty to forty percent of the friars in England.115 After the deaths of Strelley and Holcot, the story of the Oxford Dominicans would take a different, more earnest, defensive, and less creative turn.116

Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 332. For a general summary of university culture between 1370 and 1400, see Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 357–374. Besides William Jordan, the names of several other Oxford Dominicans prominent in later years are known. Roger Dymmok (Emden, BRUO 1:617) wrote against the Lollards near the end of the century: Liber contra xii errores et hereses Lollardorum, ed. H.S. Cronin (London, 1922), see Courtenay, op. cit. 370. Courtenay also credits Thomas of Claxton (Emden, BRUO 1:426) with reviving a traditional Thomism at the beginning of the fifteenth century (op. cit. 43, 360, 363), and see M. Grabmann, ‘Thomas de Claxton, O.P. (c. 1400): Quaestiones de distinctione inter esse et essentiam reali atque de analogia entis,’ Acta Pontificiae Academiae Romanae 8 (1941– 1942): 92–153. But see Christopher Schabel, ‘The Quarrel with Aureol: Peter Aureol’s Role in the Late-medieval Debate over Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents, 1315–1475,’ Ph.D. Diss. University of Iowa, 1994, describes Claxton as having Scotist views about future contingents, a claim he reiterates in Theology at Paris, 1316–1345: Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents (Aldershot, 2000), 305– 306, n. 72. Cambridge did not fare much better than Oxford, but for somewhat different reasons. The Cambridge circle of Dominicans that Thomas of Lisle, the Dominican Bishop of Ely, had fostered broke up during the early fifties–Thomas Hopeman, Thomas Ringstead and Thomas of Lisle, himself, all retreating to the continent and other concerns (see Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 209, 213–214; and Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 337–339, 350–355, who edit and analyze Ringstead’s will). 115 116

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chapter two A COMMUNITY CENSUS

The Dominican contribution to intellectual life at Oxford during the first half of the fourteenth century has remained largely unexamined because the names, faces and works of most of the friars have been unavailable as a base for research. What follows is an attempt to fill the gap. In gathering together in one place what is currently known about the Dominicans, the members of their conversational community should emerge from obscurity. The lives and works of the four friars whose theology is addressed in part two, namely Arnold of Strelley, Hugh Lawton, William Crathorn, and Robert Holcot, are here set in the context of a catalogue of their fellow friars, the better to see the place the four held within the greater community of scholars. As others undertake further research, more knowledge of who was where when may disclose previously unknown webs of influence within the Dominican and university communities and even lead to the identification of authors for anonymous works. Since the intellectual interests of the friars shifted in emphasis over the decades, first centering on the defense of Aquinas, next focusing on the struggle to maintain a position at the university, then turning to ethics and soteriology, before, at mid-century, reverting to the more contentious style of the first decade, what follows is organized using the periodization of the previous chapter. The years from 1300 to 1312 are set apart from the years from 1312 to 1320, the years from 1317 to 1327 from the years 1327 to 1336, and the years 1336 to 1350. Scholars are treated within those periods approximately in chronological order. At the end of each section, a reconstruction of the lists of regent masters and/or bachelors commenting on the Sentences of Peter Lombard is given in as far as the available information allows. A. Blackfriars from 1300 to 1312 Two provincial priors, Thomas of Jorz and Robert Bromyard, inaugurated the century. They were products of an Oxford education during

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the last decades of the thirteenth century, but each helped shape the order at the beginning of the fourteenth—Bromyard likely preceding Jorz as regent master but succeeding him as prior provincial. Then the list of names of those present and writing at Oxford during the period between 1300 and 1312 proceeds with those friars who were there either as students, regent masters, or scholars in residence at the Dominican convent. The names of those connected with Blackfriars in more obscure ways are also given. THOMAS OF JORZ—Jorz was regent master in theology at Oxford in 1292, and sections of his commentary on the Sentences have been identified. He was elected prior of the Oxford convent in 1294, a post he held until his election to provincial prior in 1297. In 1295, during his term as prior at Oxford, he also served as diffinitor, representing the province at the general chapter meeting in Cologne. In 1302, in his capacity as prior provincial, Jorz was involved in trying to settle several disputes: one between the Dominican convent in Exeter and the local cathedral canons over burial rights concerning a local knight resident at the friary, and another between the Dominican convent at Cambridge and Cambridge University when the university tried to place restrictions on the friars there. During attendance at the general chapter at Toulouse in 1304, he vacated the office of provincial prior to go to Rome on a two-year, safe-conduct pass to carry on the business of the order. While in Rome, the pope created him cardinal priest of Santa Sabina on December 15, 1305. At the curia, Jorz acted for both Edward I and Edward II and served on a commission to examine the doctrines of Peter John Olivi in 1310. He died at Grenoble on December 13 of that year, on his way as papal envoy to see the emperor Henry VII. He was buried at Blackfriars, Oxford. Jorz’s influence with the pope presumably helped his brother, Walter of Jorz, OP, obtain appointment as the archbishop of Armagh in 1307.1

1 Emden, BRUO 2:1023; Walter Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors and Vicars of the English Dominicans, 1221–1916,’ EHR 33 (1918): 245; see M. Grabmann, ‘Neu aufgefundene lateinische Werke Mystiker,’ Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischer Akademie der Wissenshaften (Philosophische, philologische und historische klasse) 3 (1922), 16, for information about his commentary on the Sentences. See A.G. Little and R.C. Easterling, The Franciscans and Dominicans of Exeter (Exeter, 1927), 8–9, 40–46, 66–79, for his involvement in the dispute at Exeter, and see Patrick Zutshi and Robert Ombres, O.P. ‘The Dominicans in Cambridge 1238–1538,’ AFP 60 (1990): 322–323, for a recent account of his involvement in the dispute with Cambridge.

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ROBERT BROMYARD—Both Merton College and Bishop Swinfield of Hereford contributed to the feast for Bromyard’s inception in theology at Oxford on December 1, 1289. Having risen to vicar general in 1300, he was elected provincial prior in 1304, to succeed Thomas of Jorz. He served as provincial until 1306, when he was absolved from office. By 1307, he had attained the position of assistant penitentiary for the Winchester diocese, a post he held until his death in October 1310. Bromyard was closely associated with the Winchester convent for much of his career, probably serving there as lector before going to Oxford, and he may have become the conventual prior c. 1306, after his retirement as provincial.2 THOMAS OF SUTTON—Sutton was regent master at Oxford about 1294, and he was present in the Oxford convent in 1300, when he was licensed to hear confessions in the area. He died after 1315. Sutton wrote a large number of works in defense of Aquinas and directed some attacks against Scotus: thirty-five Quaestiones ordinariae, four Quodlibeta, several tractates (Contra pluralitatem formarum, Tractatus de productione formarum substanialium, and Tractatus de esse et essentia), a continuatio of Thomas Aquinas’ Expositionis in libros Aristotelis De generatione et corruptione, the Determinatio contra aemulos et detractores fratrum praedicatorum, and Contra quodlibet Iohannis Duns Scoti. There has been considerable debate about which works should be attributed to him and when he wrote those about which there is no doubt.3 2 Emden, BRUO 1:278–279; Emden refers to an article by M. Schmaus, RTAM 5 (1933): 207–217, as giving a list of questions from Bromyard’s commentary on the Sentences. But the article, ‘Le Commentaire des Sentences de Richard de Bromwych O.S.B.,’ appears to refer to a Benedictine contemporary of Bromyard’s. Emden also indicates that Bromyard was prior of the Winchester convent from 1304 until his death, but 1304 was the year he became provincial prior, so there is some mistake here, perhaps a misreading of the episcopal registers–cf. Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 202, 203. In a work of the monumental size of Emden’s Biographical Registers errors are inevitable. I have checked what he says there against his edition of the episcopal register entries that bear on Dominican licenses to hear confession and noted any discrepencies. 3 See Emden, BRUO 3:1824–1825, and F.J. Roensch, Early Thomist School (Dubuque, 1984), for basic information on Sutton. Also see F. Ehrle, ‘Thomas de Sutton, sein Leben, seine Quodlibet, und seine Quaestiones disputatae,’ in Festschrift für Georg von Hertling zum 70. Geburtstage 2 (Munich, 1913), 426–450; F. Pelster, ‘Thomas von Sutton, O.P., ein Oxforder Verteidiger der thomistischen Lehre,’ ZKT 46 (1922): 212–253, 361–401; idem, ‘Schriften des Thomas Sutton in der Universitätsbibliothek zu Münster,’ ZKT 47 (1923): 483–494; idem, ‘Thomas von Sutton, O.P., als Verfasser zweier Schriften über die Einheit der Wesenform,’ Scholastik 3 (1928), 411–413; idem, ‘Thomistische Streitschriften gegen Aegidius Romanus und ihre Verfasser: Thomas von Sutton und Robert von Orford, O.P.,’ Gregorianum 24 (1943): 136–152; idem, ‘Thomas von Sutton

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WILLIAM OF MACCLESFIELD –Macclesfield incepted at Oxford c. 1298. Like Thomas of Sutton, he was one of the defenders of Aquinas against his critics. An extant commentary on the Sentences is attributed to him, and he was probably the author of the Correctorium corruptorii und das Correctorium “Quare detraxisti,”’ in Mélanges Auguste Pelzer (Louvain, 1947), 441– 466; idem, ‘Die Konkordanz Veritatis et sobrietatis verba loquar, ein Werk des Benedikt von Asinago, O.P., oder des Thomas von Sutton, O.P.,’ Scholastik 29 (1954): 244–249; M. Schmaus, Der Liber propugnatorius des Thomas Anglicus und die Lehrunterschiede zwischen Thomas von Aquin und Duns Scotus, BGPTM 29 (Münster, 1930); D.E. Sharp, ‘Thomas of Sutton, O.P., his Place in Scholasticism and an Account of his Psychology,’ RNP 36 (1934): 322–354; idem, ‘Thomas of Sutton, O.P., his Metaphysics and Angelology,’ RNP 37 (1935): 88–104; D.H. Pouillon, ‘Les Questions sur la métaphysique de Thomas Sutton, O.P.,’ in Mélanges de Joseph de Ghellinck, S.J., vol. 2 (Gembloux, 1951), 937–950; Joseph J. Przezdziecki, ‘Thomas of Sutton’s Critique on the Doctrine of Univocity,’ in An Étienne Gilson Tribute, ed. C.J. O’Neil (Milwaukee, 1959), 189–208; Wladyslaw Senko, ‘Trzy studia nad spuscizna i pogladami Tomasza Suttona dotycszymi problemu istoty i istnienia,’ Studia mediewistyczne 11 (1970): 111–283; Palemon Glorieux, ‘Autour des opuscules: Thomas d’Aquin ou Thomas de Sutton,’ Mélanges de science religieuse 31 (1974): 113– 120; Sophie Wlodek, ‘Tomasza Suttona Filozoficzna interpretacja powstawania bytów materialynych,’ in Studie z dziejów mysli swietego Tomasza z Akwinu, ed. Stefan Swiezawski and Jan Czerkawski (Lublin, 1978), 31–45; idem, ‘Thomas Sutton, De productione formae substantialis,’ AHDLMA 46 (1979): 127–175; Patrick Osmund Lewry, ‘Two Continuators of Aquinas: Robertus de Vulgarbia and Thomas Sutton on the Perihermeneias of Aristotle,’ Mediaeval Studies 43 (1981): 58–130; Alessandro D. Conti, ‘Thomas Sutton’s Commentary on the Categories according to MS Oxford, Merton College 289,’ in The Rise of Bristish Logic, ed. P. Osmund Lewry, Acts of the sixth European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Toronto, 1985), 173–213; idem, ‘La composizione metafisica dell’ ente finito corporeo nell’ ontologia di Tommaso Sutton,’ Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 2/2 (1991): 317–360; Raúl Echauri, ‘La nocion de ser en Tomas de Sutton,’ Patristica et mediaevalia 10 (1989): 49–55; John F. Wippel, ‘Thomas of Sutton on Divine Knowledge of Future Contingents (Quodlibet II, qu. 5),’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoja, and Sten Ebbesen, Proceedings of the eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (Helsinki, 1990), 364–372; E. Jennifer Ashworth, ‘Analogy and Equivocation in Thomas Sutton, O.P.,’ in Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIth-XIVth Century), ed. Costantino Marmo, Acts of the eleventh European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Turnhout, 1997), 289–303. There are editions of a number of Sutton’s works. They include: Qaestiones quodlibetales I. qq. 12–16 and Quaestiones disputatae 2–4 in J.J. Przezdziecki, ‘Selected Questions from the Writings of Thomas of Sutton, O.P,’ in Nine Medieval Thinkers: A Collection of Hitherto Unedited Texts, ed. J. Reginald O’Donnell, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies: Studies and Texts no. 1 (Toronto, 1955), 309–378; Quodlibeta, ed. Michael Schmaus, Akademie der Wissenschaften 2 (Munich, 1969); Quaestiones ordinariae, ed. Johannes Schneider, Akademie der Wissenschaften 3 (Munich, 1977); Expositionis D. Thomae Aquinatis in libros Aristotelis De Generatione et corruptione, continuatio per Thomam de Sutona, ed. Francis E. Kelley, Akademie der Wissenschaften 6 (Munich, 1976); Contra quodlibet Iohannis Duns Scoti, ed. Johannes Schneider, Akademie der Wissenschaften 7 (Munich, 1978). The introductions to these texts, particularly those by Johannes Schneider, offer very important information about the authenticity and dating of Sutton’s writings. It is

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‘Quaestione,’ among other works. Macclesfield received a license to hear confessions in October 1300 in the diocese of Lincoln, putting him at Oxford during that year, but in the same month he also received permission from Edward I to travel to Rome to spend a year on business for the Dominican order. In 1302, he, like Thomas of Jorz and John of Cesterlade, was involved in arbitrating the dispute between the Exeter convent and the dean and chapter of Exeter cathedral over the burial of a local knight. Macclesfield served as diffinitor at the general chapter of Besançon in 1304, but he died at Canterbury on his return journey. Before word of his death could reach the curia, Pope Benedict XI created him cardinal priest of Santa Sabina (the post Thomas of Jorz would occupy two years later).4 Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln also licensed three other men to hear confessions in the archdeaconry of Oxford in 1300: PHILIP OF STRATTON was not only licensed to hear confessions in 1300, but also in 1301;5 JOHN OF ENGLESHAM, licensed to hear confessions in 1300 and again in 1301, applied for a license in the area still again in 1318, but was replaced in February 1322 after his death;6 and LUKE OF WODEFORD (or Woodford) had already received his doctorate in theology when he obtained the license to hear confessions in 1300. Wodeford was named as confessor to Edward I and Edward II in 1304, and the title of confessor was still applied to him in 1325, even though he had retired the year before to Kings Langley on a royal pension of £ 10. He probably died in 1329. Wodeford was one of two proctors appointed to receive the king’s confirmation of the papal decrees in regard to the dispute between Oxford University and the order in 1314, and he also served as proctor in the final settlement of the dispute in 1320.7 important to note that the Liber propugnatorius super primum Sententiarum contra Ioannem Scotum, long attributed to him, is not now considered his. Also see above, chapter one, note 34, for a discussion about the potential for confusion with other authors called ‘Thomas Anglicus.’ 4 Emden, BRUO 2:1200–1201; Roensch, Early Thomist School, 51–57, 218–223. Also see F. Pelster, ‘Theologisch und philosophisch bedeutsame Quästionem des William von Macclesfield, O.P., Henry von Harclay, und anonymer Autoren der englischen Hochscholastik in Cod. 501 Troyes,’ Scholastik 28 (1953): 222–240, and Little and Easterling, Dominicans of Exeter, 41, 68. 5 Emden, BRUO 3:1801. 6 Emden, BRUO 1:643; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 193, 194, 196. 7 Emden, BRUO 3:2071; Bede Jarrett, The English Dominicans, rev. ed. (London, 1937), 106.

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NICHOLAS OF STRATTON–Stratton was regent master at Oxford c. 1300. He represented the province as diffinitor at the general chapter of Bologna in 1302, and he was apparently serving as prior at the Winchester convent about the time he was elected provincial prior in 1306. In 1307, Stratton accompanied Edward I to Gascony, went from there to Avignon and then continued to the general chapter at Strasbourg. The general chapter at Carcassone in 1312, which he also attended, released him from his office as provincial prior in order to study at Paris, but by February 1313, he was back in England, serving as bishop’s penitentiary for the Winchester diocese.8 In 1320, the provincial chapter appointed him one of the proctors submitting proposed articles of settlement of the long-standing dispute over academic priveleges between the order and the University of Oxford to Pope John XXII. He was again resident at the Winchester convent by 1326.9 NICHOLAS TREVET—Trevet began his studies at Oxford by 1297, and incepted c. 1302. He left to study at Paris between the years 1307 and 1314, when he was asked back to serve a second time as regent master at Oxford during the midst of the crisis between the university and the Dominican order. He later served as lector at the London convent (beginning in 1324), and he was still alive in 1334. Besides a commentary on the Sentences, Trevet’s works included commentaries on Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus; a treatise De officio missae addressed to Joseph Drokensford, bishop of Bath and Wells; an exposition of the Declamationes (Controversiae) of the elder Seneca addressed to Fr. John of Lenham, O.P., confessor to Edward II; an exposition of the Tragedies of the younger Seneca made at the request of Nicholas of Prato, the Dominican dean of the college of cardinals; a commentary on Livy, which Pope John XXII commissioned; a commentary on the Psalms, addressed between 1317 and 1320, to John of Bristol, provincial prior of the order; a commentary on the Books of the Chronicles; another on Augustine’s De civitate Dei; still another on Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae; and possibly some works on Cicero, Juvenal and Virgil. From 1320 on, he wrote a series of histories: Annales sex regum Angliae, covering the period from 1135 to 1307; Chronycles in French for the Lady

Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 203. Emden, BRUO 3:1801; Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 59. At Paris, he would have joined Nicholas Trevet who was at the French university from 1307 until 1314. 8 9

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Mary, daughter of Edward I, and the Historia ab origine mundi ad Christum natum, a Latin translation of the Chronycles for Hugh de Angoulême, archdeacon of Canterbury.10

10 Emden, BRUO 3:1902–1903; Beryl Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century, (Oxford, 1950), 58–65; Fridericus Stegmüller, Repertorium commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi, vol. 1(Würzburg, 1947), 289, lists several manuscripts that contain his commentary on books I–III of Lombard. Also see K.O. Petersen, ‘Chaucer and Trivet,’ PMLA 18 (1903): 173–193; E. Franceschini, Studi e note di filologia latina medievale (Milan, 1938), and idem, Il commento di Nicola Trevet al Teste di Seneca (Milan, 1938); Ruth J. Dean, ‘MS. Bodl. 292 and the canon of Nicholas Trevet’s Works,’ Speculum 17 (1942): 243–254; R. Weiss, ‘Notes on the Popularity of the Writings of Nicholas Trevet, O.P., in Italy during the First Half of the 14th Century,’ Dominican Studies 1 (1948): 261–265; Robert A. Pratt, ‘Chaucer and Les Cronicles of Nicholas Trevet,’ in Studies in Language, Literature and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later, ed. E.B. Attwood and A.A. Hill (Austin, 1969), 303–311; Marco Palma, ‘Note sulla storia di un codice di Seneca tragico col commento di Nicola Trevet (Vat. lat. 1650),’ Italia medioevale e umanistica 16 (1973): 317–322; Ruth J. Dean, ‘Nicholas Trevet, Historian,’ in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, ed. J.J.G. Alexander and M.T. Gibson (Oxford, 1976), 328–352; Frank A.C. Mantello, ‘The Editions of Nicholas Trevet’s Annales sex regum Angliae,’ Revue d’histoire des textes 10 (1980): 257–275; Phillip Wynn, ‘The Conversion Story in Nicholas Trevet’s Tale of Constance,’ Viator 13 (1982): 259–274; Walter Goffart, ‘The Subdivisions of Trevet’s Chronicles in Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 10,’ Scriptorium 36 (1982): 96–98; J. Stephen Russell, ‘Dido, Emily, and Constance: Femininity and Subversion in the Mature Chaucer,’ Medieval Perspectives 1 (186): 65–74; Mary Louise Lord, ‘A Commentary on Aeneid 6: Ciones de Magnali, not Nicholas Trevet,’ Medievalia et humanistica, n. s.15 (1987): 147–160; idem, ‘Virgil’s Eclogues, Nicholas Trevet, and the Harmony of the Spheres,’ Mediaeval Studies 54 (1992): 186–273; Ronald G. Keightley, ‘Boethius in Spain: A Classified Checklist of Early Translations,’ in The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations of ‘De consolatione philosophiae,’ ed. A.J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1987), 169–187; I.R. Johnson, ‘Walton’s Sapient Orpheus,’ in The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations of ‘De consolatione philosophiae,’ ed. A.J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1987), 139–168; Mark J. Gleason, ‘Clearing the Fields: Towards a Reassessment of Chaucer’s Use of Trevet in the Boece,’ in The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations of ‘De consolatione philosophiae,’ ed. A.J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1987), 89–105; idem, ‘Nicholas Trevet, Boethius, Boccaccio: Contexts of Cosmic Love in Troilus, book III,’ Medievalia et humanistica, n.s. 15 (1987): 161–188; B.S. Donaghey, ‘Nicholas Trevet’s Use of King Alfred’s Translation of Boethius, and the Dating of His Commentary,’ in The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations of ‘De consolatione philosophiae,’ ed. A.J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1987), 1–31; Robert M. Correale, ‘Chaucer’s The Friar’s Tale, lines 1511–1512, and Les Chronicles of Nicholas Trevet,’ Notes and Queries, n. s. 35 (1988): 296–298; idem, ‘Gower’s Source manuscript of Nicholas Trevet’s Les Cronicles,’ in John Gower—Recent Readings, ed. R.F. Yeager (Kalamazoo, 1989), 133–157; Hermann Hauke, Die Lehre von der beseligenden Schau nach Nikolaus Trivet (Munich, 1967); Roberto Vianello, ‘Su un commento virgiliano attribuito à Nicola Trevet,’ Studi medievali, ser. 3, 32 (1991): 345–367; Peter Nicholson, ‘The Man of Law’s Tale: What Chaucer Really Owed to Gower,’ Chaucer Review 26 (1991): 153–174; Fabio Stok, ‘Nicholas Trevet e Giovanni da Firenze,’ Studi umanistici Piceni 12 (1992): 233–242; Christine M. Rose, ‘The Provenance of the Trevet Chronicle (fMS Eng 938),’ Harvard

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JOHN OF CESTERLADE—Cesterlade was at the Oxford convent by 1293, possibly as early as 1291. He is named as a Doctor of Theology and regent at Oxford in April of 1306. In the same month, while at London, he received payment for his expenses to attend the general chapter at Paris (perhaps as diffinitor). The bishop of Worcester granted him a license to hear confessions in the Worcester diocese in 1309. Cesterlade had previously participated with Thomas of Jorz and William of Macclesfield in arbitrating the dispute between the priory at Exeter and the cathedral dean and canons in 1302 over burial rights, and he was involved again when, as a result of the dispute, the Oxford friars tried to block the inception of one of the canons of Exeter in civil and canon law in the spring of 1306.11 PETER OF KENINGTON—Kenington was named as having his doctorate in 1313 when he represented the Oxford convent in the dispute between the Dominican order and the university. Since he held the post of lector at London by 1309 when he appeared as a participant in the examination of the Templars in the city, Kenington would have received his degree in theology before that date.12 WILLIAM CASTRETON—When the master general appointed Castreton as provincial prior in 1312, Castreton already had his doc-

Library Bulletin, n.s. 3 (1992–1993): 38–55; Lodi Nauta, ‘Trevet’s Use of the Boethius Commentary Tradition,’ in Chaucer’s Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius, ed. A. J Minnis (Cambridge, 1993), 192–196; Alastair Minnis, ‘Chaucer’s Commentator: Nicholas Trevet and the Boece,’ in Chaucer’s Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius, ed. A.J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1993), 83–166; Alastair J. Minnis and Lodi Nauta, ‘More Platonico loquitur. What Nicholas Trevet Really Did to William of Conches,’ in Chaucer’s Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius, ed. A.J. Minis (Cambridge, 1993), 1–33; Roland Mayer, ‘Personata stoa: stoicism and Senecan tragedy,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 57 (1994): 151–174; Cristina Speggiorin, ‘Il commento di Trevet all Tragoediae di Seneca e i suoi riflessi sulle tradizioni catalana e castigliana,’ Annali di Ca’ Foscari 36 (1997): 599–613; R. James Goldstein, ‘“To Scotland-ward his footmen for to seke,” Chaucer, the Scots, and the Man of Law’s Tale,’ Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 31–42. A.J. Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1982), 145–150, contains a translation of excerpts from Trevet’s commentary on Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae, as does Edmund T. Silk and A.B. Scott, ‘Extracts from Trevet’s Commentary on Boethius: Texts and Translations,’ in Chaucer’s Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius, ed. A.J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1993), 35–81. Other editions of his works include: Annales sex regum Angliae, English Historical Society, Publications 19 (London, 1845); Commento alle Troadesdi Seneca, ed. Marco Palma (Rome, 1977); Rebekka Junge, Nicholas Trevet und die Octavia Praetexta: Editio princeps des mittelalterlichen Kommentars und Untersuchungen zum pseudosenecanischen Drama (Paderborn, 1999). 11 Emden, BRUO 1:379; Little and Easterling, Dominicans of Exeter, 41, 68. 78, 79. 12 Emden, BRUO 2:1036.

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torate in theology. If an order of seniority was followed in such appointments, he would presumably have obtained his degree after Nicholas of Stratton (regent master c. 1300). Castreton was released from the post of provincial at the general chapter of Bologna in 1315. He had presided over the first phase of the dispute between the Dominican order and Oxford university about the granting of degrees that had erupted in 1311, and he would have been responsible for the elaborate attempts at negotiation in 1314. Little otherwise is known of him, except that he attended the general chapter at Metz in 1313 and was provincial when the general chapter meeting was held in London in 1314.13 HUGH DUTTON—Dutton entered the order in 1301 in Glaucester, Cambridgeshire and was ordained a priest in 1304. He was regent at Oxford in 1311 and 1312 when the dispute between the Dominican order and the university erupted over the granting of degrees, and the other masters ostracized him during that period.14 Given the short time between his ordination and his regency, Dutton must have received his masters in arts prior to entering the order, probably at Cambridge given his initial place of entry. When the French dominated general chapter at Clermont in 1339 absolved Richard of Winkley of his office as provincial prior because of his close ties to the English king, the chapter appointed Dutton as vicar general to serve as caretaker in Winkley’s stead. Dutton had been a theologian respected by those who commented on the Sentences during the 1320’s, for Hugh of Lawton cited his opinions extensively by name.15 In spite of the controversial circumstances of his initial elevation to head of the order in England, Dutton was subsequently elected provincial prior by the provincial chapter, either in 1339 or 1340.16 By November, 1342, however, he was no longer in office and, being at least in his sixties, had in some likelihood died.

Emden, BRUO 3:2160; Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245. H. Rashdall, ‘The Friars Preachers v. the University AD 1311–1313,’ Collectanea II, ed. Montagu Burrows, Oxford Historical Society, no. 16 (1890): 203–204. 15 Lawton’s citations of Dutton are numerous. See Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, ff. 153vb, 154rb, 155va, 157va, 157vb, 158rb, 159rb, 172va, 173ra, 204vb, 205ra, 208vb; and Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 105, ff. 114rb, 117vb. Crathorn may also cite him under the designation ‘Hugonis.’ See William Crathorn, Quaestionen zum ersten Sentenzenbuch, ed. Fritz Hoffmann, BGPTM, n. s. 29 (Münster, 1988), 195, ll. 8–13. 16 Emden, BRUO 1:613–614; Alfred B. Emden, Survey of Dominicans in England: Based on the Ordination Lists in Episcopal Registers (1268–1538), Dissertationes Historicae 18 (Rome, 1967), 51, 329; Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245. 13 14

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One foreign student is known to have been present at the convent during the decade: GUILLAUME DE POEY. The order sent de Poey to study at Oxford in 1307 from the Bordeaux convent, where he had served as sub-lector in 1306. By 1315, he was back in France, teaching as lector in arts at the convent at Rodez.17 On the basis of this information, a speculative list of the regent masters for the period between 1290 and 1312 may be constructed. Regent masters usually served for two years, and given the information available, the office apparently changed hands in the even years. The regent masters for the decade before the turn of the century and for the first dozen years afterwards would thus most likely have been: Robert Bromyard—1290–1292 (probable; incepted 1289) Thomas of Jorz—1292–1294 (regent c. 1292) Thomas of Sutton—1294–1296 (regent c. 1294) [An unknown friar]—1296–1298 William of Macclesfield—1298–1300 (probable; incepted c. 1298 and received a license to preach in the Oxford area in October, 1300) Nicholas of Stratton—1300–1302 (regent master c. 1300) Nicholas Trevet—1302–1304 (regent master, incepted c. 1302) John of Cesterlade—1304–1306 (regent master, named as such in April 1306) Peter of Kenington—1306–1308 (probable; lector at London by 1309) William of Castreton—1308–1310 (possible; incepted before 1312 when he became prior provincial) Hugh Dutton—1310–1312 (known regent master in 1311–1312)

B. Blackfriars from 1312 to 1320 Most of the names of the friars connected with Oxford during the next few years are known because of their involvement in the controversy over degrees between the university and the order that erupted in 1311. THOMAS EVERARD, bachelor of theology, was prior of the Oxford convent in 1311 when the quarrel first erupted and still serving in that capacity in 1317.18 ROGER OF BAKETONE and RICHARD HUNTELEYE resorted to the King in 1312 to obtain permission to

17 Emden, BRUO 2:1489; for general information on Dominican attendance at universities outside their home provinces, see W.A. Hinnebusch, ‘Foreign Dominican Students and Professors at the Oxford Blackfriars,’ in Oxford Studies Presented to Daniel Callus, Oxford Historical Society, n. s. 16 (Oxford, 1964): 101–134. 18 Emden, BRUO 1:654; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 206.

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incept in theology. The Pope finally ordered their admission to the doctorate in May of 1313. Hunteleye, at least, remained in the Oxford area because his name appears among those licensed to hear confessions in the Lincoln diocese in 1318 and again in 1322.19 HENRY OF CROY, a bachelor of theology in 1312, was also unable to incept as a doctor in that year because of the dispute with the university.20 WALTER OF VALEPONT or WALELPOL’ appears in a letter, which the archbishop of Canterbury wrote on his behalf in 1313, asking that Valepont be allowed to lecture on the Bible even though he had not previously lectured on the Sentences. Valepont eventually received his doctorate, but perhaps from a foreign institution.21 LAWRENCE OF WARWICK served as a proctor for the Dominican convent during the feud with Oxford. In 1312, he had the assignment on two occasions of officially serving the complaints of the Dominicans, first on the Oxford chancellor, Henry of Manefield, and then on the whole body of masters.22 In 1315, Warwick became prior of the Stamford convent.23 ROBERT EVERARD, another proctor, was appointed in 1312 to appeal to the papacy on behalf of Blackfriars. He ended his days in 1328 at the Ilchester priory as a licensed confessor in the diocese of Bath and Wells.24 Then in 1314, a series of proctors or negotiators were appointed from both sides.25 A first set included LUKE OF WODEFORD, king’s confessor, and RALPH OF SETON for the Dominicans, who, in conjunction with the university representatives, nominated a second set of men to carry out the actual negotiations. In 1320, THOMAS OF WESTWELL, acting as the new prior of the Oxford convent with the consent and authorization of the provincial prior John of Bristol, put forward the names of Peter of Kenington, Luke of Wodeford, WILLIAM OF EBRYTON (all named as Doctors of Sacred Theology), and John of Wrotham (long-time prior at the London convent) to represent the fri19 Emden, BRUO 1:95 and 2:987; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 194, 196; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 206. 20 Emden, BRUO 1:522. 21 Emden, BRUO 3:1940 and 3:1959, lists these names separately, one according to the Archbishop’s records, the other from information about Oxford, but it seems unlikely that more than one man was involved; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 214. 22 Jarrett, English Dominicans, 102, 105; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 207–210. 23 Emden, BRUO 3:1995. Emden also lists Warwick as proctor for the Oxford convent in 1321, acting in the dispute with the university, but his source, Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ does not bear him out. 24 Emden, BRUO 1:654; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 182; Rashdall, ‘Friars Preachers,’ 209. 25 Jarrett, English Dominicans, 106.

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ars once again in the dispute with the university.26 Only Ebryton’s name was new. WILLIAM OF EBRYTON or EBRIGHTON, doctor of theology by 1320, in 1321, was appointed diffinitor by the provincial chapter to attend the general chapter in Florence. By 1322, he was back in England where he received a license to hear confessions in the Salisbury (Sarum) diocese.27 Setting aside the names of those primarily involved in negotiations, the career of one friar of particular note had its formative beginning during these years of controversy: THOMAS OF WALEYS—Waleys entered the order when he was fifteen or sixteen, was ordained subdeacon in 1309 in the Cirencester church in Gloucestershire, and undertook his studies at the Oxford convent. He was frustrated in his advance through the university because of the dispute about degrees. He had to wait three years until the temporary settlement of 1314 before receiving permission to comment on the Sentences. Thus his term as baccalaurius sententiarius overlapped with Nicholas Trevet’s second regency. He was still designated a bachelor in April and November 1318, when he received commendations from the King on going to the Roman curia as part of a delegation appealing to the Pope about the continuing dispute with Oxford. He would have been due to incept in 1318, so it appears that his doctorate was delayed as well. It is plausible to suppose that his inception took place at the earliest in 1319, and probably not until after the settlement in 1320.28 In any event, he served his regency sometime between 1320 and 1326, by which date he filled the post of lector at Bologna, a position he continued to hold until 1331 when Richard of Winkley replaced him. By 1333, Waleys was in Avignon serving as chaplain to the Dominican cardinal, Matteo Orsini. 26 H.E. Salter, ed. Mediaeval Archives of the University of Oxford, vol. 1, Oxford Historical Society 70 (Oxford, 1920), 99, no. 55. 27 Emden, BRUO 1:623. 28 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 75, makes the mistake of believing that Waleys’ designation as bachelor in 1318, must have delayed his inception another two years until 1321, a mistake that Katherine Walsh, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard Fitzralph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford, 1981), 34, n. 76, perpetuates. But Waleys would have completed his reading of the Sentences and the necessary two further years of Bible lectures and disputations by 1318, and thus he could have incepted at any time from that point on. His Sentences commentary has not survived, but Hugh of Lawton cited several of his opinions: see Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, ff. 207va, 207vb; and Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 105, ff. 116vb, 117ra. For basic information on Waleys, see Emden, BRUO 3:1961–1962; and idem, Survey of Dominicans, 197, 389.

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The year 1333 was not a happy one for Waleys. In January, he preached a sermon to his fellow friars in the Dominican convent church attacking Cardinal Annibaldo Gaetani de Ceccano’s recent defense of Pope John XXII’s controversial stand on the beatific vision. Eight days later, the papal inquisitor charged him with six erroneous propositions and confined him to a cell.29 Waleys remained imprisoned, first in the jails of the Inquisition and then, at his own request, in a cell in the papal palace, until 1342 when Clement VI gained the papal throne.30 In 1333, during his confinement, Waleys composed an eschatological tract: Epistola de instantibus et momentis, which became the source of further charges against him.31 His examiners included the English Franciscan Walter of Chatton who had been one of the major critics of William of Ockham.32 Waleys accused Chatton of particular malice and of seeking a mitre (which Chatton did obtain in 1343, just before his death).33 The Franciscans had no reason to love Waleys, for he had 29 Thomas Käppeli, Le procès contre Thomas Waleys O.P., Dissertationes Historicae 6 (Rome, 1936), 7–23, and for the text, 93–108; R.P. Mortier, Histoire de Maitres Généraux de l’ordre des Fréres Precheurs, vol. 3 (Paris, 1905), 68–85. 30 Käppeli, Le procès contre Thomas Waleys, discusses the inquisitorial process against Waleys and gives the texts of the various suspect theses along with Waleys’ replies. Mortier, Maitres Généraux, 3:118–127, 162–178, describes the dispute between Benedict XII and the Dominican order that apparently kept Waleys languishing in prison until after that pope’s death. 31 Waleys position on the last judgment that formed the basis of the complaints against him was that it seemed most probable that the resurrection and the last judgment coincided in time rather than succeeding one another, even though some of the processes of resurrection were successive. See Käppeli, Le procès contre Thomas Waleys, 40–42, 157–183. 32 Ibid., 60, 62, 245–246. For Chatton’s controversies with Ockham, see Gedeon Gál, ‘Gualteri de Chatton et Guillelmi de Ockham controversia de natura conceptus universalis,’ FcS 27 (1967): 191–212; and Noel A. Fitzpatrick, ‘Walter Chatton on the Univocity of Being: A Reaction to Peter Aureoli and William Ockham,’ FcS 31 (1971): 88–177. The editors of Ockham’s Opera have also dealt in a number of the introductions with the exchanges between Ockham and Chatton. See Gedeon Gàl in Guillelmus de Ockham, Opera philosophica, vol. 1 (St. Bonaventure, New York, 1974), 53*–56*; Stephanus Brown, in OP 6 (1984), 38*, 40*–41*, 44*–47*; and Joseph C. Wey, in Opera Theologica, vol. 9 (1980), 28*–41*. 33 Käppeli, Le procès contre Thomas Waleys, 60, 62, 245–246, and David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1948), 251, indicates that Chatton was successful, obtaining the see of St. Asaph’s in 1343. Francis E. Kelley, ‘Ockham: Avignon, Before and After,’ in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks, Studies in Church History 5 (Oxford, 1987), 1–18, demonstrates that the politics of official advancement probably entered into John Lutterell’s attack on William of Ockham at Avignon as well. But see Christian Trottmann, ‘A propos de la querelle Avignonnaise de la vision béatifique: Une réponse Dominicaine au Chancelier John

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preached against the Franciscan ideal of Christ’s poverty as early as his lectureship at Bologna, and before going to Avignon he engaged in further public debate in Arezzo on the same issue.34 After his release from prison, Waleys returned to England, most probably to Oxford. He was still alive in 1349, when he described himself as ‘broken with age and gravely stricken with paralysis’ in a letter on behalf of the secular master Lambert of Poulshot, Waleys’ friend and chief source of support in his infirmity.35 Despite his ill health, it is possible that he ended his career as bishop of Lycostomium in 1353.36 Waleys literary output spanned his entire career. His lectures at Oxford and Bologna gave rise to two works: his Moralitates, consisting of excerpts from lectures on a number of Old Testament books—Exodus to Ruth, Ecclesiastes and Isaias—given either at Oxford or Bologna, and a lengthy unfinished commentary on the Psalter that stemmed from his days in Italy. Smalley has noted that the main interest of Waleys’ lectures lies in his development of a new technique. His Bible commentaries constitute exempla collections arranged in relation to the biblical text, and Waleys was one of the first systematizers of this new kind of lecture course.37 Waleys’ time in Italy also sharpened his interest in history and made available a number of classical texts. In the late 1320’s and early 1330’s, he wrote a new commentary on Augustine’s De civitate Dei, completed in 1332, which he hoped would improve on Trevet’s commentary, a hope fulfilled since his work subsequently became a classic. Waleys’ greater knowledge of classical texts, having had access to the fourth decade of Livy, several texts by Apuleius, Cicero’s De fato, and Festus Rufus’ Breviarium, all inaccessible to Trevet, gave Waleys’ work its value and shows him to have been an ardent book hound.38 Besides these writings and the treatise on the last judgment composed in prison, he completed two other works after his return Lutterell,’ AHDLMA 61 (1994) 263–301, for analysis of the arguments in terms of convictions held. 34 Knowles, Religious Orders, 1:247, 249. 35 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 78–79. Waleys’ friend and help-mate, Poulshot, had gone to Oxford to study beginning in 1342 and is further documented as present in 1352 and 1353. 36 Knowles, Religious Orders, 1:252, raises the suggestion. 37 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 82 and 79–88 passim; and see R. James Long, ‘The Moral and Spiritual Theology of Richard Fishacre: Edition of Trinity Coll. MS O.1.30,’ AFP 60 (1990): 5–6, whose description of Fishacre suggests a model for Waleys. 38 Ibid., 88–100, 102–108.

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to England, one on the art of preaching: De modo componendi sermones, and the other a florilegium of patristic opinions drawn from canon law, the Campus florum, both of which he dedicated to Teobaldo Orsini, the archbishop of Palermo.39 There is little order to be made of the period of the dispute with the university. Nicholas Trevet is the only known regent master (for the years 1314–1316). Perhaps the best way to summarize the progression of Dominicans during this time is through inception to the degree of doctor: Roger of Baketone—1313 (had appealed to the pope in 1312) Richard Hunteleye—1313 (had appealed to the pope in 1312) Henry of Croy—due to incept in 1312 but was unable to do so Thomas Waleys—due to incept in 1318 (delayed until 1319 or 1320) William of Ebryton—doctor of theology by 1320

C. Blackfriars under John of Bristol—1317–1327 The provincial prior John of Bristol, whose term of office spanned a decade, should be credited with bringing Dominican education back after a disastrous period and encouraging some of the most promising scholars whom the order would see during the century. The only known Cambridge graduate among the provincial priors, Bristol received his doctorate in theology from that university. In 1309, he was a diffinitor at the general chapter at Saragossa. Elected prior provincial in 1317, he served for ten years until released from office in 1327. Among the more important men whom Bristol cultivated and promoted must be numbered Thomas Waleys, listed in the previous section, but whose regency and appointment as lector at Bologna fell within Bristol’s term in office. Other names of note include Nicholas Trevet, whom he appointed lector at London, and the future priors provincial: Simon of Boraston, Richard of Winkley and Arnold of Strelley.

39 Ibid., 101–102. Th. -M. Charland has edited the De modo componendi sermones in Les Artes Praedicandi: Contribution à l’histoire de la rhétorique au moyen âge (Paris and Ottawa, 1936), 307–403. Thomas Kaeppeli, ‘Le “Campus florum” de Thomas Waleys,’ AFP 35 (1965): 85–92, established the authenticity of the Campus florum. Waleys was among the authors who influenced the later Oxford Dominicans. For instance, Hugh Lawton cites him twice as ‘Valeos’: in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 151ra, and again as Valeos in the margin but clearly as Doctor Waleys in the text on f. 171vb; also on ff. 207va, and 219r.

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Before proceeding to a discussion of the more illustrius men whom Bristol advanced, however, there is a document dating from 1318 to consider, which provides the names of a number of men resident at the Oxford convent at the beginnning of his provincialate. On April 27, 1318, Thomas of Eyncourt, prior of the Lincoln convent, and Walter of Dudlyngton, prior of the Boston convent, acting as proctors for the provincial prior John of Bristol, presented the names of sixty friars to receive licenses to hear confessions in the Lincoln diocese.40 The list included the names of several friars previously mentioned and known to be at Oxford about this time: John of Englesham, Richard of Huntele (Hunteleye), and Thomas Waleys. The question is how many others on the list were also at Oxford? SIMON OF BORASTON’s name appears, and on the grounds of his inclusion, is thought to have been studying at the university. Among the other names, A.B. Emden has suggested that at least ROBERT LE MOIGNE, WILLIAM OF STANLAK, RALPH OF FRISEBY and JOHN OF STANES should be added to those who were at Blackfriars.41 A little bit more is known about three of these men. ROBERT LE MOIGNE or MONACHI was ordained priest in 1296, and first evident at the Oxford convent in 1311, when he received the royal alms on behalf of the priory there, as he would again six more times before 1332, and eight times over the same years jointly for Oxford and Cambridge. He obtained a license to hear confessions not only in 1318, but again in 1345, and at that time to hear them in the University of Oxford itself.42 WILLIAM OF STANLAK was ordained deacon in the same Northamptonshire church as Le Moigne, on the same day in 1296. And not only was Stanlak licensed to hear confessions in the diocese of Lincoln in 1318, but again in 1336, specifically in the archdeaconry of Oxford.43 RALPH OF FRISEBY—Friseby received the license to hear confession first in 1318 (where the name is given as Ralph de Frisby), and then in 1335, 1342, 1344, 1345, 1346, and 1347. In 1318, his name appears Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 194–195. See Emden, BRUO 3:1758 for Stanes; Emden, BRUO 2:729, for Frisby, and note that in 3:2176, Emden describes a Ralph of Friseby who may have been at the Oxford convent, who was licensed to hear confessions at the Leicester convent in 1334, 1335, and every year between 1342 and 1347. This Friseby had his doctorate by 1342. But Ralph Frisby and Ralph Friseby were almost undoubtedly the same man. 42 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 194, 198; idem, BRUO 2:1130; idem, Survey of Dominicans, 122, 387. 43 Emden, BRUO 3:1760; idem, Survey of Dominicans, 122, 454. 40 41

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among others at Oxford, but in all of the other instances his license was in the archdeaconry of Leicester (specifically listed in 1335 as at the Leicester convent). The license granted in 1342 gives him the title of doctor in theology.44 Katherine Tachau has made the happy discovery of several of his speeches in a manuscript containing the sermons, speeches and principial collations of several English Dominicans active during the thirties and forties. Besides Friseby, they include Robert Holcot, John de Erdesle and probably Robert de Chamberleyn.45 Padua, Biblioteca Antoniana MS 515, scaff. XXI, ff. 123v-130v, 117v-118v has the principial collations or introductory speeches to books three and four of Friseby’s Sentences commentary and his collatio finalis, a festive speech given on the completion of his lectures. The second of these speeches is attributed to ‘ffrysbi,’ and all three begin with the scriptural tag: ‘Ubi spiritus domini ibi libertas,’ setting up a pun on his name and the English translation of ‘libertas.’46 Tachau has compared and analyzed the puns and jokes of Friseby’s speech with Robert Holcot’s equivalent sermo finalis, suggesting such closing collations may have constituted a festive Dominican genre.47 Tachau was unaware of Friseby’s 1318 license to hear confessions, and given the 1342 attribution of the title of doctor, placed his time at Oxford between 1335 and 1342, perhaps as a student of Holcot’s.48 Attributions of title were not used with consistency in the licensing records, however, so the title of doctor only tells us that Friseby acquired his degree at some time prior to 1342. The 1318 license places Friseby at Oxford, most likely studying theology in the late teens and early twenties, along with Waleys, Boraston and Richard of Winkley. At some time after the completion of his degree, he went to the Leicester convent, presumably spending the years between 1335 and 1347 actively preaching and hearing confession in the local deaconry. Rather than studying with Holcot, Friseby may have engaged in traditions that formed the more famous Dominican. To Emden’s suggestions of those who were most likely to have been at Oxford when granted licenses to hear confession in 1318, should be added WILLIAM OF AYLESBURY and JOHN OF OXFORD, SENIOR, who had both also been licensed to hear confessions while Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 194, 197; and see note 41 above. Katherine H. Tachau, ‘Looking Gravely at Dominican Puns: The “Sermons” of Robert Holcot and Ralph Friseby,’ Traditio 46 (1991): 342–345. 46 Ibid., 344. 47 Ibid., 337–345. 48 Ibid., 344–345, relying on Emden, BRUO 3:2176. 44 45

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present at the Oxford convent in 1300,49 and GILBERT OF GATESHEAD, who died and was replaced at the Oxford convent in December 1319.50 Moreover, the names of JOHN OF GRUDELINGTON and ROBERT OF HATECOUMBE occur within the cluster of names at the beginning of the 1318 list to which all of the other names so far mentioned also belong. The usual practice in the episcopal registers when requests for licenses to hear confession came from more than one convent was to list the men from one priory together before listing the men at another. Since Grudelington and Hatecoumbe are mentioned before the name of Thomas of Eyncourt, prior of the Lincoln convent, whose name seems to begin a section of the list for the friars at Lincoln, the former, too, should probably be counted as Oxford friars. Hatecoumbe had come from the convent at Northampton, where he was ordained a priest in 1309.51 Besides the list of 1318, a few other names of friars likely to have been at the Oxford convent during the time of Bristol’s tenure in office are also known: WILLIAM OF WISHAWE received the royal alms for the Oxford convent in 1321;52 PHILIP BANNEBURY, ordained a deacon at St. Pauls in London, received a license to hear confessions in the diocese in 1321, and also in the Salisbury diocese from June 2, 1321, until January 21, 1323, when he was replaced;53 THOMAS OF WANETYNG, who entered the order in 1306 at Winchester, may have been prior of the Oxford convent, and appears seeking a license to hear confessions in the Lincoln diocese in December 1320. Wanetyng received the license in July 1321, as did SIMON OF LONDON,54 and Wanetyng also received licenses to hear confessions in the Salisbury diocese in 1321 and 1328.55 JOHN OF COLLESHULLE received a license to hear confessions in the Oxford archdeaconry in 1321 and again in

49 There were two Johns of Oxon, but the one whose presence at Oxford is documented for the time in question is John Senior, presumably the John of Oxon with the earlier ordinations as subdeacon in 1291 and as priest in 1293. For Aylesbury and Oxon, see Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 193, 194; and idem, Survey of Dominicans, 121, 122, 418. 50 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 194, 195. 51 Emden, Survey of Dominicans, 123, 358. 52 Emden, BRUO 3:2065. 53 Emden, BRUO 1:104; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 195, 201; idem, Survey of Dominicans, 197, 272. 54 Emden, BRUO 3:1979; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 195; idem, Survey of Dominicans, 183, 475. 55 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 201.

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1332,56 JOHN OF WYDEWERE and ADAM OF ROS received the royal alms on behalf of the convent in 1324 and 1325,57 and EDMUND OF CAERMARTHEN, who became the bishop of Ardfert by papal provision in 1331, had his doctorate in theology and connections with Oxford that make it likely that he received his degree at the university.58 Bristol’s particular gift, however, was to cultivate a series of friars who would go on to have brilliant careers in the years ahead. These men included: SIMON OF BORASTON—Boraston probably entered the order at the convent at Shrewsbury. He took part in the examination of the Templars in London in 1311, perhaps while studying there or serving as ordinary lector before going to the university. By April 1318, he was at Oxford, when Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln gave him license to hear confessions in the town, and he must have received his doctorate sometime between 1318 and 1322, when he was described as a preacher general of the order. In 1327, Boraston was elected provincial prior, a post he held for nine years until 1336, when he was released from office. He may have been involved, along with John Baconthorpe, the provincial prior of the Carmelites, in the conspiracy of Edmund, the earl of Kent, leading to his banishment c. 1330, but if so, Boraston was back on good terms with the king by 1333. He was still provincial prior when the general chapter of the order was held in London in 1335. On his release from the office of provincial, he retired to the Oxford convent, where he spent the next several years writing. His works include two tractates, completed one after the other in 1337: De unitate et ordine ecclesiasticae potestatis and De mutabilitate mundi, a defense of the Dominican privilege of granting burial in their cemetaries to those who requested it, a work interesting given the bitter controversy earlier in the century at Exeter over the burial of a local knight. In the following year, 1338, he completed a major treatise: De ordine judiciario circa crimina corrigenda. He was also the author of a collection of 168 sermons and of a collection of Distinctiones intended for use by preachers.59 His works 56 Emden, BRUO 1:466; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 195, 196. In BRUO, Emden gives the date 1333, but that seems an error. 57 Emden, BRUO 3:1590 and 2106. 58 Emden, BRUO 1:338. 59 Emden, BRUO 1:221; Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245; Stephen L. Forte, ‘Simon of Boraston, His Life and Writings,’ AFP 22 (1952): 321–345, which contains an edition of Boraston’s De mutabilitate mundi. Emden adds the information that a sermon in Oxford, Merton College MS B 1.6, f. 178 (Coxe, MS 248), may be Boraston’s.

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indicate both a continuing interest in the general affairs of the order and in providing practical aids for preaching. JOHN BROMYARD—The Hereford convent was Bromyard’s place of residence from 1326 until he was replaced in 1352, presumably on his death. However, he may have studied at Oxford (although he is also connected with Cambridge) in the years shortly before going to Hereford. Bromyard compiled handbooks for preachers: the Opus trivium ex tribus legibus, divina, canonica et civili (the Distinctiones Bromyard), extant in seven manuscripts, and a revised and augmented version of the same work, the Summa praedicantium, that was quite influential in later years.60 Bromyard had a license to hear confessions at the Hereford convent, and given his written work, he may have been one of the preachers general of his time. RICHARD OF WINKLEY—Winkley came from the village of Winkleigh in northern Devon, and he most probably entered the order at the nearby Exeter convent.61 He lectured on the Sentences before 1326, and obtained his doctorate, almost certainly at Oxford.62 In 1331, the 60 Emden, BRUO 1:278; John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Reginald Lane Poole and Mary Bateson (Cambridge, 1902), reissued edition (Bury St. Edmunds, 1990), 185, connects Bromyard with Cambridge. Also see H.G. Pfander, ‘The Medieval Friars and Some Alphabetical Reference-Books for Sermons,’ Medium Aevum 3 (1934): 19–29; and John A. Alford, ‘The role of the Quotations in Piers Plowman,’ Speculum 52 (1977): 80–99, for an analysis of how Bromyard’s and Waleys’ preaching aids affected popular texts. Other works on Bromyard include: Alan J. Fletcher, ‘A Death Lyric from the Summa Predicantium, MS. Oriel College 10,’ Notes and Queries, n.s. 24 (1977): 11–12; Leonard E. Boyle, ‘The Date of the Summa praedicantium of John Bromyard,’ Speculum 48 (1973): 533–537, reprinted in idem, Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200–1400 (London, 1981); Ruth Mazo Karras, ‘Gendered Sin and Misogyny in John of Bromyard’s Summa predicantium,’ Traditio 47 (1992): 233–257; Gillian Rudd, ‘The State of the Ark: A Metaphor in Bromyard and Piers Plowman B.X.396–401,’ Notes and Queries, n. s. 37 (1990): 6–10; Peter Binkley, ‘John Bromyard and the Hereford Dominicans,’ in Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East, ed. Jan Willem Drijvers and Alasdair a MacDonald (Leiden, 1995), 255–264; idem, ‘Preachers’ Responses to Thirteenth-century Encyclopaedism,’ in Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, ed. Peter Binkley (Leiden, 1997), 75–88. 61 James B. Johnston, The Place-Names of England and Wales (London, 1915), 513; Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England, vol. 4 (London, 1845), 604. 62 That the known Oxonians, William Crathorn and Robert Holcot, also cited Winkley, strongly suggests an Oxford setting for his degree. Heinrich Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn: I. Quellenkritik und biographische Auswertung der Bakkalareatsschriften zweier Oxforder Dominikaner des XIV. Jahrhunderts,’ Philosophisches Jahrbuch 77 (1970): 354, first noted Crathorn’s citation, which occurs in his Sentences commentary, I, q. 3: ‘Utrum viator intelligat cum continuo in tempore,’ in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek MS B V 30, p. 68. There the margin attributes argument twenty-four

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general chapter at Vittoria assigned him to teach as lector at Bologna, replacing another friar of substance, Thomas Waleys. Bologna was a place of special importance to the Dominicans, given its standing as the place St. Dominic had chosen for his center of operations after 1219 and his burial there.63 On setting out for Italy, Winkley received a letter from Bishop John Grandisson of Exeter commending him to John XXII. By 1336, however, he was back in England, elected provincial prior of the order. Edward III asked Winkley, while provincial prior, to participate in several missions, one to David Bruce, October 7, 1337, and another to the King of France, October 30, 1337. By 1339, Winkley had returned to London, however, because records indicate he prepared an inventory of the Dominican library at the London convent during the first part of that year, and a partial listing of its contents has come down to us.64 to ‘Wynkele.’ Fritz Hoffmann missed the attribution in his edition of Crathorn’s Sentences (Sentenzenbuch, 243, ll. 14–18). Holcot cited Winkley in Quodlibet I, q. 1 in Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 236, f. 200vb, as ‘Wynkele.’ The numbering of Holcot’s quodlibetal questions is based on the reconstruction in Exploring the Boundaries of Reason: Three Questions on the Nature of God by Robert Holcot, OP, ed. Hester Goodenough Gelber (Toronto, 1983), 117, a numbering that will be followed unless otherwise noted. Hugh of Lawton, another almost certain Oxonian (see below), also cited Winkley in his Sentences commentary written between 1326 and 1330: Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 203rb, where the margin has ‘Wyncle,’ and Winkley’s opinion is extensively reported on ff. 203rb–204ra; and Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 105, f. 113ra–113va, which also gives ‘Wyncle’ as the author of the cited opinion. 63 M. Michèle Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow is Bent in Study …’: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto, 1998), 28–44, discusses Dominic’s presence at Bologna. 64 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 103. His source: John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, 513, provides thirteen entries from Winkley’s list: 1. William Rowell, Postille super libros Iudicum, Regum, Psalterii et Ecclesiastici. 2. Stephan Langton, Super Pentateucum et libros Salomonis, Super Hieremiam, Ezechialem, Danielem et Eccesiasticum. 3. Nicolaus Trevet, Paralipomenon atque In Psalterium. 4. Richard Fishacre, Super Psalterium et Super Sententias. 5. Robert Kilwardby, Super Sententias, De ortu scientiarum, De conscientia, De sacramento altaris, De praedicamento relationis, De causis, De differentia spiritus et animae. 6. Stephan Langton, Quaestiones. 7. Sermones Sancti Patricii. 8. Vincentius, De morali principis institutione, ac De puerorum et puellarum nobilium eruditione. 9. Eulogium Cornubiensis. 10. Brito, De sacramentis. 11. Prophecia Marlini cum expositione.

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The tensions of the Hundred Year’s War, which had begun to escalate in 1337, took their toll, and Winkley, who was so closely associated with Edward, was released from the office of provincial prior in 1339 by the general chapter of Clermont under the auspices of the French master general, Hugues de Vaucemain, an action to which Edward wrote a letter of strong objection the following April.65 On the retirement in the same year of Nicholas of Herley as king’s confessor, Winkley, who was apparently already serving as the king’s chaplain, was named as Herley’s replacement.66 Winkley continued to serve Edward as his confessor until 1346 or 1347, and during his term as confessor he also continued to act as an important envoy for the king. For instance, in April 1340, Edward sent him on a mission to the curia to discuss preserving the peace between England and France, and Winkley was again at the curia in 1341–1342 and in 1343. His mandated Dominican companion, Walter of Newport, retired to the London convent after Winkley’s death c. 1346 or 1347.67 Winkley’s contemporaries considered him an important theologian. Besides his appointment to the lectureship at Bologna, during the ten years or so after he received his doctorate, the Dominicans Hugh of Lawton, William Crathorn and Robert Holcot cited Winkley’s opinions by name in their theological works.68 Winkley’s inventory of the library at London is an indication of his continued interest in scholarship, even with the preoccupations of much travel on the king’s business and of the hostilities with France. The provincial priors (like the heads of the individual priories) had a collection of books which they lent out to students and scholars in the order. A rigorous tracking system required that each book belonging to a convent or province contain the name of the issuing convent or provincial so that they could be reclaimed on the death, disgrace or removal to another province of the borrower. One such volume that at some time passed through Winkley’s hands survives. The back flyleaf of Oxford, Digby MS 217, f. 179v contains the inscription: ‘De perquisito fratris Ricardi de Wynkele.’

12. Vitas fratrum praedicatorum. 13. Originalia Kilwardby. C.F.R. Palmer, ‘King’s Confessors,’ The Antiquary 22 (1890): 262–263. Ibid. 67 Ibid. And see Emden, BRUO 3:2060; and Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245, for basic information on Winkley. 68 See note 62 above. 65 66

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It is a miscellaneous collection of translations from Arab, Jewish and Greek sources, including works among others of Alkindi, Averroes, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Isaac Israeli, Algazali, Plato (a marginally glossed Timaeus), Avicenna, and Alfarabi, along with a copy of Aquinas’ De ente et essentia.69 ARNOLD OF STRELLEY—The village of Strelley near Nottingham was Strelley’s point of origin, and he may have been a member of the Strelley family, a family of knights and landowners that owned the village. He commented on the Sentences sometime between 1323 and 1330, most probably at Oxford. His references to Aquinas indicate a date after Aquinas’ canonization in 1323, and he adopted opinions of William of Ockham first published during the same year.70 William Crathorn cited Strelley in 1330–1331 giving the terminus ad quem.71 If the order usually observed a rule of seniority when electing provincial priors, as seems likely, then Strelley probably lectured on the Sentences after Winkley. Like both Dutton and Winkley, he was a respected theologian of the order. Besides Crathorn, Robert Holcot also cited him by name,

69 K.W. Humphreys, The Book Provisions of the Mediaeval Friars 1215–1400 (Amsterdam, 1964), 18–45 describes the system of book lending, and see p. 41 for the practice of inscribing books at loan. Guillelmus D. Macray, ed. Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Bodleianae, part 9: Codices a viro clarissimo Kenelm Digby (Oxford, 1883), 230, describes the contents of the text inscribed by Winkley. 70 Strelley’s Sentences commentary must postdate 1323, for in Sent. I, q. 4, he sided with the view of the fallacy of accident that Ockham first specified at length in his Expositio super libros Elenchorum. The commentary on Elenchi was written at London after Ockham’s commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, given as lectures during the academic year 1321–1322, and before his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, completed prior to 1324, when he left for Avignon (see the introduction to the edition in Guillelmus de Ockham, Opera philosophica, vol. 2 [St. Bonaventure, New York, 1978], 13*–16*). For a discussion of Ockham’s revolutionary views about the fallacy of accident, see Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘The Fallacy of Accident and the Dictum de omni: Late Medieval Controversy over a Reciprocal Pair,’ Vivarium 25 (1987), 110–145. Strelley’s opinion is found in Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 20va: ‘Unde sciendum est quod fallacia accidentis nec accidit ex variatione medii nec ex variatione suppositionis …’ 71 In his edition of Crathorn’s Sentences (Sentenzenbuch, 16 and 525), Hoffmann misinterpreted the passages attributed to Strelley, whom he conflated with Henry of Harcley, attributing Crathorn’s citations of both men to one non-existent figure: Arnoldus Herley or Hercley. Hoffmann also missed a marginal attribution to ‘Stranley’ in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, MS B.V. 30, p. 66 at the eighth argument (Sentenzenbuch, 244, l. 10) and overlooked his own footnotes indicating the presence of marginal notations to the effect that Strelley argued against Harclay: ‘Arnoldus contra Herley [Harcley]’ (Sentenzenbuch, 259, l. 4, and notes to lines 1/2 and 4/5).

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and his influence on Holcot was considerable, as will become evident in later chapters.72 Strelley’s own views traced back to Richard of Campsall and William of Ockham, key figures in the emergence of Oxford University as dominant during the first half of the century. At one point in his career, Strelley even wrote an abbreviated and somewhat supplemented paraphrase of Ockham’s Tractatus de praedestinatione et praescientia Dei in respectu futurorum contingentium.73 Strelley was first mentioned with the title of provincial prior in November 1342, and he must have been elected at one of the chapter meetings during the summers of 1340, 1341, or 1342. He still held the post on February 9, 1347. In 1348, he received the usual allowance of cloth allotted to the king’s confessors.74 Thus he seems to have replaced Richard of Winkley in that office, probably at some time in 1347. By the spring of 1349, however, John of Woderow had replaced Strelley as confessor,75 and by June 1, 1350, William Jordan appeared in episcopal records with the title vicar general, presenting friars for licenses to hear confessions,76 indicating Strelley was no longer provincial prior. By July 23, 1350, Gregory of St. Michael had assumed the title as the next provincial prior.77 It would seem that Strelley died during the winter or early spring of 1349, perhaps of the plague, which arrived on English shores late in the summer of 1348.78 He seems to have held the positions of king’s confessor and prior provincial simultaneously from 1347 until 1349. Besides the abbreviation of Ockham’s tract on predestination, two other works are probably identifiable as Strelley’s. As I have argued elsewhere on the basis of a distinctive Trinitarian opinion Robert Hol-

72 See Gelber, Exploring the Boundaries, 45, ll. 327–347, l. 349, for the text of Holcot’s citation. 73 Edited by Gelber in ‘Ockham’s Early Influence: A Question about Predestination and Foreknowledge by Arnold of Strelley, O.P.’ AHDLMA 55 (1988): 271–289. Cf. Girard J. Etzkorn, ‘Codex Merton 284: Evidence of Ockham’s Early Influence at Oxford,’ in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks, The Ecclesiastical History Society 5 (Oxford, 1987), 31–42, who describes a similar abbreviation of Ockham’s Sentences commentary by an anonymous author. For Campsall’s influence, see chapter six below. 74 Palmer, ‘King’s Confessors,’ 263. 75 Ibid., 263–264. 76 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 208. 77 Ibid., 182. 78 For general information on Strelley’s life, see Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence,’

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cot attributed to Strelley, an anonymous Sentences commentary in Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F. 180, ff. 1ra–101rb would seem to be his, as would the Centiloquium theologicum, a work previously and variously attributed to Ockham and to Holcot.79 Strelley wrote the Centiloquium in the style of a sophismata, borrowing the form from the logic curriculum to introduce entering theology students to various theological perplexities. The Centiloquium thus represents the only known example of a purely theological sophismata, and may be the earliest systematic application of sophistic technique to theology, a technique that would become a hallmark of fourteenth-century English theological style.80 260–262. Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 191, 197, contains the evidence for Strelley’s dates as provincial prior. Also see Jarett, English Dominicans, 178, who first added Strelley to the list of provincials, and Palmer, ‘King’s Confessors,’ 263. 79 See Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence,’ 256–259, for a lengthier argument. Philotheus Boehner and Girard I. Etzkorn provide a critical edition of the Centiloquium theologicum among the dubious and spurious works attributed to William of Ockham in Guilelmus de Ockham, Opera Philosophica, vol. 7 (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1988), 371– 505. The Centiloquium seems to be a work of the 1320’s as well, and with very high probability dates no later than 1332–1333, when Thomas Bradwardine commented on the Sentences, for Strelley took it for granted that ‘everyone’ believed that God could not make it that the past not have been (ibid., 262–263). In the chapters that follow, I assume that Strelley wrote all three works, but I have identified all references according to the text cited in case any of the attributions should prove mistaken. I have to date found no discrepencies between the Sentences and the Centiloquium that would obviate presuming the same author for each. 80 See Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence,’ 264–266, for a more extensive analysis. John E. Murdoch was the first to document the importance of sophismata as a structuring form in fourteenth-century discourse. See in particular ‘The Development of a critical Temper: New Approaches and Modes of Analysis in Fourteenth-Century Philosophy, Science, and Theology,’ in Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 7, ed. S. Wenzel (Chapel Hill, 1975), 64–65; idem, ‘From Social into Intellectual Factors: An Aspect of the Unitary Character of Late Medieval Learning,’ in The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, ed. John Emery Murdoch and Edith Dudley Sylla, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (Dordrecht, 1975), 303– 307; and idem, ‘Mathematics and Sophisms in Late Medieval Natural Philosophy,’ in Les genres littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales, ed. R. Bultot (Louvain, 1982), 85–100. Murdoch noted that he had not discovered any theological sophismata as such, only the incorporation of theological sophisms into traditional theological literature (‘From Social into Intellectual Factors,’ 306). Also see Courtenay, ‘The Role of English Thought in the Transformation of University Education in the Late Middle Ages,’ in Rebirth, Reform and Resilience: Universities in Transition 130–1700, ed. James M. Kittelson and Pamela J. Transue (Columbus, 1984), 159, n. 128; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 258–262, and Sten Ebbesen, ‘Doing Theology with Sophismata,’ in Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIth-XIVth Century), ed. Costantino Marmo, Acts of the eleventh Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics

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Strelley was also among the earliest to inaugurate another practice typical of the century. The emergence of lists of ‘conclusiones’ or ‘suppositiones’ as a major component of an author’s response to questions posed in commentaries on the Sentences and in quodlibetal debates, is first evident at the beginning of the fourteenth century.81 These conclusions served as premises on which the author based his answer. Ockham’s Tractatus de praedestinatione et praescientia, q. 1, offers a good example,82 and Strelley adopted that approach in his Sentences commentary. A movement subsequently emerged to treat such conclusions like hypotheses rather than axioms, i.e. as assumptions still to be demonstrated in the course of the argument that followed. Fully developed at Paris by the 1340’s, William Courtenay has noted the tentative use of the technique in the works of Robert Holcot and Adam Wodeham.83 However, the author of the Centiloquium, as Courtenay has also noted,84 used the technique in developed form. If Strelley was indeed the author, the Centiloquium would with high probability predate both Holcot and Wodeham. Strelley may even have been the first to use such hypothetical conclusions. Strelley’s Sentences commentary also showed other innovations. As Courtenay has again been the one to point out, within the course of the decade between 1320 and 1330, Sentences commentaries shrank in size from William of Ockham’s 171 questions to William Crathorn’s 20. Courtenay has painted a picture of reduction during the 1320’s from just under 100 questions in the commentaries of Robert Graystanes, Walter Chatton and John of Rodington, through Richard Fitzralph with 25 questions, to Crathorn (1330). Authors followed Peter Lom(Turnhout, 1997), 151–167. 81 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 262–263; John E. Murdoch, ‘Scientia mediantibus vocibus: Metalinguistic Analysis in Late Medieval Natural Philosophy,’ in Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, Akten des VI. Internationalen Kongresses für Mittelalterliche Philosophie der Société Internationale pour L’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, ed. Jan P. Beckmann, Ludger Honnefelder, Gabriel Jüssen, Barbara Münxelhaus, Gangolf Schrimpf, Georg Wieland, under the direction of Wolfgang Kluxen, vol. 1, Miscellanea Medievalia 13/1 (Berlin, 1981), 88; and see Mechthild Dreyer, ‘Wissenschaft als Satzsystem,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 87–105, for a general discussion of the larger philosophical context. 82 Guillelmus de Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei respectu futuorum contingentium, q. 1, ed. Philotheus Boehner and Stephanus Brown in Opera philosophica 2 (St. Bonaventure, New York, 1978), 514–519. 83 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 262–263. 84 Ibid., 263.

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bard with decreasing fidelity, and their commentaries virtually ceased to have a prologue.85 Strelley’s commentary (probably a reportatio) is also short, numbering only 21 questions and 100 folios. He followed the order of Lombard’s questions, but selectively, skipping over large numbers of them, and he included only two questions from the prologue. Thus Strelley was one of the earliest of the theologians on whom Lombard rested lightly. The most dramatic evidence of his freewheeling attitude is found in question 19: ‘Utrum sacramenta novae legis habeant aliquam efficaciam ad transmutationem creaturae.’ In a question of almost twenty folios (ff. 70vb–90rb), Strelley launched a lengthy disquisition on natural philosophy, covering questions about mixtures, generation, local motion, rarefaction, and so on, to the exclusion of more traditional theological matters. He left not much of Lombard. Several other men are likely candidates to have received their doctorates at some time during the twenties: WILLIAM OF WATISDENE—Watisdene was appointed vicar general by the general chapter in 1336 to govern the order in England during the interim between the release of Boraston from office and the election of a new provincial prior. He was a doctor of theology, and it is possible that he obtained his degree at Oxford.86 If the men holding offices like vicar general might be presumed to be in line for possible advancement to prior provincial, and a rule of seniority was used when selecting men for that office, it would be reasonable to assume that Watisdene obtained his degree after Boraston. Whether he was a protégé of Bristol’s or of Boraston’s is not known. Degrees are attributed to two other men in 1337, but given that the sequence of names of those commenting on the Sentences is known for the period between 1330 and 1335, there would have been no opportunity for either to have finished lecturing on the Sentences, at least at Oxford, any later than 1331. They are: 85 Ibid., 256–258. Courtenay attributes nineteen questions to Holcot. But Holcot’s works apparently circulated in unbound quires, and different manuscripts contain different numbers and different orders of the questions; thus determining the actual number of questions must await a critical edition of the work. See Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 331–335; William J. Courtenay, ‘The Lost Matthew Commentary of Robert Holcot, O.P.,’ AFP 50 (1980): 103–112; Gelber, Exploring the Boundaries, 3–10, and Katherine H. Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly: Questions on Future contingents, ed. Paul A. Streveler and Katherine H. Tachau (Toronto, 1995), 16–22, 35–46, for discussion of the history of Holcot’s texts. 86 Emden, BRUO 3:1998; Gumbley, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 245.

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ROBERT OF STANLAK—When he was given a license to hear confession in the archdeaconry of Oxford in January 1337, Robert of Stanlak already had his doctorate. He was appointed confessor to Burnham priory in Buckinghamshire that August, but had apparently returned to the Oxford priory by 1347, when he was again given license to hear confessions in the archdeaconry.87 PHILIP OF LAVENHAM—Lavenham had his doctorate by March 1337, when he was licensed to hear confessions in the archdeaconries of Bedford and Buckingham in the Lincoln Diocese. By December of 1338, he had moved to the diocese of Ely, where he also received a license to hear confessions.88 One of his sermons survives in Oxford, Merton College MS B. 1. 6, f. 172.89 A full reconstruction of the lists of friars commenting on the Sentences, receiving their doctorates and serving as regent masters is not possible for the twenties, but some things can be said. The one known regent master was Thomas Waleys, who served some time between 1320 and 1326. If he received his doctorate in 1319 or 1320, a regency between 1320–1322 could have been possible. This would seem to rule out a regency for Simon of Boraston, who presumably commented on the Sentences after Waleys between 1315 and 1320, and who was appointed preacher general in 1322. The earliest Boraston could have been regent was 1320–1322, but if Waleys had precedence, then Waleys would have held the regency in those years, that is if his regency were not pushed to later years to allow others who had preceded him in the progression toward the degree, but been kept by the dispute with the university from serving as regent masters, to take their turns before him. Given the stature of Winkley and Strelley as theologians, it is likely that they were both regent masters after Waleys. If Winkley commented on the Sentences between 1322–1324, to arrive at an inception date of 1326, then he would have been regent in the years 1326–1328. If Strelley commented on the Sentences between 1324–1326 and incepted in 1328, he could have been regent in the years 1328–1330, just in time to influence both Crathorn and Holcot. But these dates could be shifted several years earlier in the case of Winkley and several years later in the case of Strelley.

87 88 89

Emden, BRUO 3:1750; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 197, 198. Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 188, 197. Emden BRUO 2:1109.

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D. Blackfriars under Simon of Boraston—1327–1336 Simon of Boraston’s influence dominated the following decade. As provincial prior from 1327 until 1336, he continued the work of John of Bristol, but even after his retirement to the Oxford convent, he maintained a presence for the next several years by writing texts designed to aid preaching. His intellectual interests and gifts were substantial, and he fostered a number of important theologians during his tenure in office: HUGH OF LAWTON—Like Arnold of Strelley, Lawton was a transitional figure between the provincialates of Bristol and Boraston. William Crathorn cited Lawton’s opinions in 1330–1331, providing a terminus ad quem for Lawton’s commentary on the Sentences, and Lawton himself cited Hugh Dutton, William of Ockham, Thomas Waleys, Richard of Winkley and Henry of Costesey, placing his work in the 1320’s.90 His citation of Costesey, the 46th Franciscan lector at Cambridge in 1325–1326, provides a probable terminus a quo for Lawton of 1326–1327, although Costesey was associated with Oxford, as well, and Lawton may have known Costesey’s opinions from that venue.91 The familiarity Lawton showed with other known Oxford theologians and the familiarity the Oxford theologians Crathorn and Holcot showed with Lawton’s work place him at Oxford. Portions of Lawton’s Sentences commentary have survived. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, beginning on folio 149ra, contains a series of questions that are almost certainly his. Folios 149ra– 200vb, in two scribal hands, contain twenty-seven questions from the first book of the Sentences through distinction seventeen, where the text breaks off with a note from the scribe: ‘Hic deficiunt duo folia de ista quaestione et non plus in re veritate.’ On folio 201ra, in what looks 90 In his edition of Crathorn’s Sentences, Hoffmann transcribed ‘Hugo de Lawtonia’ as ‘Hugo de Lalletonia’ (Sentenzenbuch, 172, l. 1), although he gaves ‘Lawetonia’ in his introduction (p.16). Cf. Hester Gelber, ‘I Cannot Tell a Lie: Hugh of Lawton’s Critique of William of Ockham on Mental Language,’ FcS 44 (1984): 175–179. Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1345, Studien und Texte zur geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 22 (Leiden, 1988), 212–216, has attempted a preliminary look at Lawton’s epistemology based on my article. 91 For Lawton’s citation, see Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 201rb; and Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F. 105, f. 111rb. For Costesey, see Emden, BRUO 1:495; idem, BRUC 161; William J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (Leiden, 1978), 65, 85.

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to be the same English hand that began the Sentences, the text continues with the question: ‘Utrum mundus potuit fuisse ab eterno vel an haec includat repugnantiam.’ A note in the upper margin has the attribution: ‘Primo quaestio Lanton super secundum Sententiarum.’92 A question: ‘Utrum sacramenta novae legis conferant gratiam effective,’ identified in the margin as ‘Quaestio Lanton prima super quartum Sententiarum,’ begins on f. 209rb, and a further question: ‘Utrum Deus potest facere infinitum in actu,’ comes next on folios 212ra–215v. These three questions are also contained in Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F. 105, ff. 111ra–123vb, with an attribution to Lanton. Folios 215v–218v of the Vatican manuscript continue with Arnold of Strelley’s abbreviation of Ockham’s tractate on predestination, accompanied by a marginal attribution to ‘Ar. Str.’ Folio 218v begins another question attributed to ‘Lanton’: ‘Utrum solus filius Dei univit sibi naturam humanam in unitate suppositi vel personae.’ Robert Holcot referred to portions of this text in one of his quodlibetal questions, attributing the opinions cited to ‘Frater Hugo de Lanton, Praedicator,’ and ‘Frater Hugo de Lantonia,’ and indicating that he was citing the principial question of the third book of Lawton’s Sentences commentary.93 This question is followed on folio 223r in the Vatican manuscript by another question: ‘Utrum [marg. continuum] componatur ex indivisibilibus,’ that is also most likely Lawton’s. It is plausible to assume that all of these questions except the tractate on predestination are attributable to Lawton. Strelley’s Sentences commentary is known, and thus he can be eliminated as the author of the first section. The same English scribe copied a portion of Book I and all of the other questions, indicating a unity to the collection. Moreover, the questions from the first book of the Sentences cite the opinions 92 Lawton’s name is variously spelled: ‘Lawtonia,’ ‘Lanton,’ ‘Lantonia.’ Thus it is not clear whether the original form was ‘Lantonia,’ indicating an origin in Wales, in which case the scribal deformations of his name presumably took place in the sequence ‘Lantonia,’ ‘Lauton’ (inverting the ‘n’), to ‘Lawton’ (as homophone), or whether the original form was ‘Lauton,’ or ‘Laughton,’ with two different scribal changes: one from ‘Lauton,’ to ‘Lanton,’ and the other from ‘Lauton’ to ‘Lawton.’ Following Schepers, ‘Holkot contra Crathorn,’ (1970): 354, I have opted for the spelling ‘Lawton,’ but there is certainly room for debate, especially since the two manuscripts that contain Lawton’s Sentences spell his name ‘Lanton.’ Schepers was also the first to note Auguste Pelzer’s mis-identification of Lawton with the Carmelite Iohannes Langton in Codices Vaticani Latini 2.1 (Vatican, 1931), 196, a mis-identification that Wilhelm Schum, Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der Amplonianischen Handscriften-Sammlung zu Erfurt (Berlin, 1887), 73, also made. 93 Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 236, ff. 133rb, 133vb.

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of William of Ockham, Hugh Dutton, Thomas Aquinas, and ‘Doctor’ Waleys, and the principial question to the second book specifically attributed to Lawton cites the same authors. Finally, on folio 167va of the Vatican manuscript, in the otherwise unattributed portion of the Sentences commentary, the margin notes: ‘Responsio Hug[onis],’ where the text has ‘Ad praedictam, dico et suppono…’ indicating that the author of the commentary was named Hugh. Thus we seem to have Hugh of Lawton’s Sentences commentary Book I, qq. 1–27, that roughly track Lombard through distinction 17; Book II, q. 1; Book III, qq. 1 and probably 2; and Book IV, qq. 1 and 2.94 From the citations of Crathorn and Holcot, it is plain that Lawton was an influential theologian. Lawton himself wrote under the powerful impact of William of Ockham, to whom he reacted both positively and negatively. For example, even when critical of Ockham, Lawton did not respond from the perspective of a traditional Thomist but often developed his arguments in idiosyncratic and original ways. He rejected not just Ockham’s views on mental language, but the whole tradition on mental language from Augustine and Aristotle onward, denying that mental language exists.95 He also used a sophisticated argument from supposition theory—an argument that Ockham himself had developed—against Ockham’s own position on the actuality of the infinite.96 WILLIAM CRATHORN—Crathorn began lecturing on the Sentences at Oxford in 1330.97 He came from the village of Crathorn in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, ff. 226r–227v, also contains what appears to be a brief disputation de obligatione (or a sophism?), written in the same hand as the rest of Lawton’s text: ‘Posito quod Sortes teneatur velle ex voto vel ex mutatione aliquid subito ante a instans.’ It may or may not be Lawton’s. 95 See Gelber, ‘Lawton’s Critique,’ 141–174, for a discussion. Crathorn’s citation appears to be to a missing section of Lawton’s Sentences, for I have not found the cited opinion in the portions of extant text. 96 Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘Eternal Questions: the Dominican Hugh of Lawton on the Eternity of the World,’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Reijo Työrinoja, Anja Inkeri Lehtinen, and Dagfinn Føllesdal, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 3 (Helsinki, 1990), 71–78. 97 Fritz Hoffmann has recently edited Crathorn’s Sentences (Sentenzenbuch)—see Rega Wood, ‘Crathorn versus Ockham,’ FcS 49 (1989): 347–353, for a review article. Iohannes Kraus had previously edited Sent. I, q. 2, part 2 in Quaestiones de universalibus Magistrorum Crathorn O.P., Anonymi O.F.M., Joannis Canonici O.F.M., Opuscula et Textus, Series Scolastica 18 (Münster, 1936), and a portion of text from Sent. I, q. 2, in which Crathorn cited Lawton was separately edited in Gelber, ‘Lawton’s Critique,’ 175–179. Rega Wood has also edited a quodlibetal question: Utrum continuum componatur ex indivisibilibus id es ex punctis, as ‘Quaestio de continuo,’ in Adam de Wodeham, 94

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Yorkshire near the Dominican convent of Yarm, where he probably entered the order. Not much is known of his life. His commentary on the Sentences belonged very much to the emerging tradition of experimentation so evident in the works of Arnold of Strelley. Like the Sentences commentaries of Strelley, Fitzralph and Holcot, Crathorn’s is short, numbering twenty questions. It deals only with Book I, and that in a unique manner, for questions eleven to eighteen constitute a tractate on the Aristotelian categories in the guise of asking whether any of these categories are predicable of the terms suppositing for God. Crathorn, like Strelley, inserted a lengthy exposition of natural philosophy into the heart of his Sentences commentary. Crathorn shared with Lawton the distinction of idiosyncracy. In epistemology, Katherine Tachau has shown that against a prevailing current Crathorn embraced the perspectivist tradition of Roger Bacon and advocated a kind of knowledge through species that engendered the scorn of his fellow friar, Robert Holcot.98 Holcot began his own

Tractatus de indivisbilibus: A Critical Edition with Introduction, Translation, and Textual Notes (Dordrecht, Boston and London, 1988), 309–319. The secondary literature on Crathorn includes: Iohannes Kraus, ‘Die Stellung des Oxforder Dominikanerlehrers Crathorn zu Thomas von Aquin,’ ZKT 57 (1933): 66– 88; K.A. Sprengard, Systematisch-historische Untersuchungen zur Philosophie des XIV. Jahrhunderts, vol. 2: Crathorn, ein Oxforder Modernus des XIV. Jahrhunderts (Bonn, 1968); Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 320–354, and (1972): 106–136; Fritz Hoffmann, ‘Der Satz als Zeichen der theologischen Aussage bei Holcot, Crathorn und Gregor von Rimini,’ in Der Begriff der Repraesentatio im Mittelalter, Miscellanea mediaevalia 8 (Berlin, 1971),’ 296–313; idem, Die theologische Methode, 358–367; idem, ‘Der Wandel in der scholastischen Argumentation vom 13. zum 14. Jahrhundert, aufgeseigt an zwei Beispielen: Robert Holcot und William (Johannes?) Crathorn (1330–1332 in Oxford),’ in Die Bibliotheca Amploniana: Ihre Bedeutung im Spannungsfeld von Aristotelismus, Nominalismus und Humanismus, ed. Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 23 (Berlin, 1995), 301–314; idem, ed., Die ‘Conferentiae’ des Robert Holcot O.P. und die akademischen Auseinandersetzungen an der Universität Oxford 1330–1332, BGPTM, n. s. 36 (Münster, 1993), 1–64; and Katherine H. Tachau, ‘The Problem of the Species in medio at Oxford in the Generation after Ockham,’ Mediaeval Studies 44 (1982): 417–425, idem, Vision and Certitude, 255–274; idem, ‘Robert Holcot on Contingency and Divine Deception,’ in Filosofia e teologia nel Trecento: Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. Luca Bianchi (Louvain-la-neuve, 1994), 158–160; Dominik Perler, ‘Crathorn on Mental Language,’ in Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIth-XIVth Century), ed. Costantino Marmo (Brepols, 1997), 337–354. Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970), 340, was the first to establish the date of 1330 on the basis of Crathorn’s reference to an eclipse of that year. 98 Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 243–274; and cf. Gelber, ‘Lawton’s Critique,’ 167–172. Heinrich Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn: II. Das “significatum per propositionem.” Aufbau und Kritik einer nominalistischen Theorie über den Gegenstand des

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commentary on the Sentences in 1331, with a principial question on the objects of knowledge ostensibly criticizing the position of the Franciscan Walter of Chatton but implicitly rejecting the position of Crathorn as well.99 Crathorn apparently took the criticism personally and responded in his first lecture on the Bible, given either during the year 1331–1332, if he lectured for only one year on the Sentences, or what is more likely, in the summer of 1332. Holcot immediately took up the challenge. In

Wissens,’ (1972): 106–136, was the first to deal with the dispute. Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 8–9, takes up the relative dating of the relevant texts. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’ has an extensive introduction to the issues and an edition of the Sex articuli, but needs supplementing by other works. 99 Robert Holcot’s question: ‘Utrum obiectum actus credendi sit ipsum complexum an res significata per complexum,’ that occurs in fragmentary form as Sent. I, q. 2 in the 1518 Lyon edition of his commentary (In Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Quaestiones, reprinted in facsimile by Minerva G.M.B.H., Frankfurt, 1967), is missing from twentyeight of the manuscripts that Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970), 333– 335, surveyed. Only five have the fragment as found in the Lyons edition. Three of the most important manuscripts: Oxford, Balliol College MS 71; Oxford, Oriel College MS 15; and London, British Museum MS Royal 10 C VI, have the question in complete form, but at the end of the commentary (although Balliol also has the question as Book I, q. 2). Even though the question comes at the end of the commentary, Oriel College MS 15, f. 206r (198r) designates it as the prologue to Holcot’s Sentences. Konstanty Michalski, ‘La physique nouvelle et les différents courants philosophiques au XIVe siècle,’ Bulletin international de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences et des Lettres, classe d’histoire et de philosophie 1927 (Kracow, 1928): 13, repr. in idem, La Philosophie au XIV e siècle, ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt, 1969), 219, first suggested that the question was Holcot’s principium. If he was right, as I think probable, and the question was the principial question to Book I, its absence from the body of the Sentences in so many manuscripts, its association with the Sentences in the manuscripts in which it occurs, and its treatment as a separate tract in several of the manuscripts would be explained. As Father Joseph Wey first recognized, Holcot’s principial question to Book II also circulated separately (it is Determinatio 11 in the Lyon edition). And compare the similar fate of Lawton’s principial questions to Books II–IV. See Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 21–22, for a further discussion, and William J. Courtenay, ‘Book Production and Libraries in 14th-Century Paris,’ in Filosofia e teologia nel trecento: Studi in ricordi di Eugenio Randi, ed. Luca Bianchi (Louvain-la-neuve, 1994), 379–380, for information on the circulation of sections of text as unbound quires among the mendicant scholars. Earnest A. Moody first noted that Chatton was Holcot’s original target in ‘A Quodlibetal Question of Robert Holcot, O.P. on the Problem of the Objects of Knowledge and of Belief,’ Speculum 39 (1964), 53–74, reprinted in Moody, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, Science and Logic: Collected Papers, 1933–1969 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975), 321–352. Hugh Lawton must also be perceived in the background of this discussion, given his rejection of the idea that propositions exist as mental entities or activities, arguing that propositions exist only in spoken speech, and given Crathorn’s citation of his views. See Gelber, ‘Lawton’s Critique,’ 156–160.

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the summer of 1332, between his lectures on Book II and Book III of the Sentences, Holcot responded both to Crathorn and to the arguments of another socius, William Chitterne, in a little work known as the Sex articuli.100 In these exchanges, Heinrich Schepers has argued that Crathorn advocated an early form of what Adam Wodeham would term the ‘complexe significabile’ as the object of knowledge, while Holcot defended the Ockhamist view that mental propositions are the objects of the mind’s knowing.101 Moreover, Crathorn’s willingness to advocate quite original views is evident not only in his treatment of the objects of knowledge but also in his views about future contingents and necessity (see chapter six below) and in his advocacy of indivisibles. Historians have credited Crathorn with but a single year of lectures on the Sentences, because they have believed that when Holcot in his Sermo finalis described a socius ‘Gra …’ as having received a dispensation to lecture on the Sentences for only one year, he referred to Crathorn.102 However, there is reason to believe that ‘Gra …’ was not Crathorn (see below under JOHN GRAFTON), and thus Crathorn probably

The Sex articuli must date from 1332, since Holcot indicates that one of the socii whom he is debating had posed his arguments for two years already at the time of writing, and the socius in question was almost certainly Crathorn, who began his Sentences in 1330. See Sex articuli, art. 3, ‘Unde principalis conclusio, quam iste iam per biennium nisus est probare …’ in Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’ 105, ll. 7–8. And see chapter seven below for Holcot’s debate with Chitterne. Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 17, suggests that Holcot ultimately intended to append the articles to his commentary on the Sentences. 101 Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1972):106, 122–131. For discussion of the complexe significabile also see Hubert Elie, Le complexe significabile (Paris, 1936); Gedeon Gàl, ‘Adam of Wodeham’s Question on the “Complexe significabile” as the Immediate Object of Scientific Knowledge,’ FcS 37 (1977): 66–102; Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 303–310, 353–357, 364–368; and idem, ‘Wodeham, Crathorn, and Holcot: The Development of the complexe significabile,’ in Logos and Pragma: Essays on the Philosophy of Language in Honor of Professor Gabriel Nuchelmans, ed. L.M. de Rijk and H.A.G. Braakhuis (Nijmegen, 1987), 161–187. 102 See J.C. Wey, ‘The Sermo finalis of Robert Holcot,’ Mediaeval Studies 11 (1949), 221: ‘Et licet de domo Praedicatorum isto anno in lectura sententiarum cucurrerunt duo simul, ille tamen alius discipulus, qui Granton [sic] nominatur, usus favore, quia gratiam universitatis de cito terminandis lectionibus habuit, citius praecucurrit … ad quiescendi tempus et locum. Ego autem … statum tempus implevi, et multiplicem cursum feci …’ Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, 108, n. 244, gives the manuscript abbreviations for ‘Gra.’ The Sermo finalis dates from 1333, when Crathorn could not possibly have been reading the Sentences. Also see the discussion in Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 7–16. 100

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lectured over a biennium as was usual.103 Besides the Sentences commentary, some quodlibetal questions by Crathorn also survive.104

103 The length of Crathorn’s Sentences has been used as a reason to believe he read for only one year, but his commentary is not particularly short compared to other Dominican commentaries. Moreover, it covers only Book I, and Crathorn’s questions on Books II–IV may be missing. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, 98, has pointed to a text in Holcot’s quodlibetal questions as a possible reference to Crathorn’s having read only the first book of the Sentences, but the text in question does not ultimately support such a reading. Referring sarcastically to an unidentified socius who had recently disputed a question at the beginning of his Bible lectures on: ‘Utrum ex dono gratiae conferri potest beatitudo perfecta alicui creaturae,’ Holcot said: ‘Et praeterea, sicut superius adductum fuit, Magister Sententiarum ponit gratiam informantem. Igitur, si socius iste numquam in aliquo doctore antiquo legit aliquid de gratia animam informante, sequitur quod numquam legit secundum librum Sententiarum, quod absit, quia tunc esset periurus.’ Ed. Paulo Molteni in Roberto Holcot O.P.: Dottrina della grazia e della giustificazione con due questioni quodlibetali inedite (Pinerolo, 1967), 190, and see ibid. 180, for the text introducing the socius. There is no particular indication that the socius in question was Crathorn [Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 351–352, discusses the same text and notes that the socius could have been Chitterne], and Holcot’s implication seems to be either that his unnamed socius commented on the second book of the Sentences, but was such a dolt that he did not know what he was reading, or that he could not have commented on the second book of the Sentences and say what he did, in which case he committed perjury for saying that he had commented on it. Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 265, also suggests that Crathorn may have reworked the text of his Sentences because he referred to Richard Fitzralph as ‘Doctor,’ and Fitzralph’s inception was in 1331. However the texts in question (Crathorn, Sent. ed. Hoffmann, 146, l. 1 and 340, l. 1) actually refer to FitzRalph as ‘Magister.’ FitzRalph, as a secular, had earned a master of arts degree to which the title may as likely have referred, and nothing one way or another can be concluded from Crathorn’s reference. In fact, Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 330, summarizes evidence that the manuscripts of Crathorn’s Sentences commentary represent reportationes, including a remark in one of them, Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. Q , 395a, f. 5va, to that effect. 104 V. Richter, ‘Handschriftliches zu Crathorn,’ ZKT 94 (1972): 445–447, has discovered a series of questions in Vienna, Österreichesche Nationalbibliothek, MS Palat. lat. 5460, ff. 32ra–74va, that begin with the marginal designation: ‘Incipit quodlibet Fratris Iohannis dicti Crafton Anglici Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum,’ deleted and replaced by: ‘Quodlibet Iohannis Crafton Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Anglici.’ Questions 10–20 are drawn from Crathorn’s Sentences commentary, and end with an explicit: ‘Et sic patet de praedicamentis dictis et quaestiones Craton vel Crastharn lectoris.’ (f. 54rb). Richter has concluded that at least the first nine questions are most probably Crathorn’s quodlibetal questions, and perhaps the last twenty-one are as well. Rega Wood has argued that question 8, which she has edited, contains material that also appears in Crathorn’s Sentences commentary and would appear to support Richter’s conclusion (see Wodeham, Tractatus de indivisibilibus, ed. Wood, 23, n. 29), but also see the discussion of GRAFTON below and by Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 15–16.

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ROBERT HOLCOT—Holcot is the best known and most studied of all of the Dominicans of the century.105 Originally from the village 105 A significant body of secondary research now exists on Holcot. See Judson B. Allen, ‘The Library of a Classiciser: The Sources of Robert Holkot’s Mythographic Learning,’ in Arts libéraux et philosophie au moyen âge, Proceedings of the fourth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (Paris and Montreal, 1969): 721–729; idem, The Friar as Critic: Litterary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Nashville, 1971); Anne W. Brinkley, ‘Robert Holcot: Toward an Empirical Theory of Knowledge,’ Ph.D. diss. (Harvard, 1972); Courtenay, ‘Lost Matthew Commentary,’ 103–112; Mario Dal Pra, ‘Linguaggio e conoscenza assertiva nel pensiero di Roberto Holcot,’ Rivista Critica di storia della filosofia 11 (1956): 15–40; idem, ‘La proposizione come oggetto della conoscenza scientifica nel pensiero di Roberto Holcot,’ in Logica e realtà: momenti del pensiero medievale (Bari, 1974): 83–119; Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in Scholastic Thought, 1300–1335,’ Ph.D. diss. The University of Wisconsin (Madison, 1974), 265–291, 299–317; idem, ‘Lawton’s Critique,’ 167–170; idem, ‘Robert Holkot [Holcot],’ in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2001) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ holkot/; Richard E. Gillespie, ‘Robert Holcot’s Quodlibeta,’ Traditio 27 (1971): 480– 490; idem, ‘Gratia Creata and Acceptatio Divina in the Theology of Robert Holcot, O.P.: A Study of Two Unedited Quodlibetal Questions,’ Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, 1974); Onorato Grassi, ‘Le tesi di Robert Holcot sul valore non scientifico della conoscenza teologica,’ Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 71 (1979), 49–79; Douglas Gray, ‘Two Middle English Quatrains and Robert Holcot,’ Notes and Queries, n. s. 15 (1968): 125; Fritz Hoffmann, ‘Robert Holcot—Die Logik in der Theologie,’ in Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter: Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung, ed. Paul Wilpert, Miscellanea mediaevalia 2 (Berlin, 1963), 624–639; idem, ‘Der Satz als Zeichen,’ 296–313; idem, Die theologische Methode; idem, ‘Thomas-Rezeption bei Robert Holcot?’ Theologie und Philosophie 49 (1974): 236–251; idem, ‘Wandel in der scholastischen Argumentation,’ 314–322; Joseph M. Incandela, ‘Robert Holcot, O.P., on Prophecy, the Contingency of Revelation, and the Freedom of God,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 4 (1994): 165– 188; Leonard A. Kennedy, The Philosophy of Robert Holcot, Fourteenth-Century Skeptic, Studies in the History of Philosophy 27 (Lewiston, N.Y., 1993); Heikki Kirjavainen, ‘Existential Presuppositions in Semantics According to Ockham and Holcot,’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoija, and Sten Ebbesen, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (Helsinki, 1990), 196–209; Simo Knuuttila, ‘Trinitarian Sophisms in Robert Holcot’s Theology,’ in Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar, ed. Stephen Read, Acts of the ninth European Symposium for Medieval Logic and Semantics (Dordrecht, 1993), 348–356; Albert Lang, Die Wege der Glaubensbegründung den Scholastikern des 14. Jahrhunderts, BGPTM 30 (Münster, 1930), 159–165; Alois Meissner, Gotteserkenntnis und Gotteslehre: Nach dem Englischen Dominikanertheologen Robert Holcot (Limburt/Lahn, 1953); Patrick Osmund Lewry, ‘Robertus Anglicus and the Italian Kilwardby,’ in English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. Alfonso Maierù, Fifth European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Naples, 1982), 33–51; Molteni, Dottrina della grazia; Gabriel Nuchelmans, Theories of the Proposition: Ancient and Medieval Conceptions of the Bearers of Truth and Falsity, North-Holland Linguistic Series 8 (Amsterdam, 1973), 195–208; Heiko A. Oberman, ‘Facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam: Robert Holcot, OP and the Beginnings of Luther’s Theology,’ Harvard Theological Review 55 (1962): 317–342; idem, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, Mass. 1963), 235–248; Philip F. O’Mara, ‘Holcot and the Pearl-Poet,’ The Chaucer Review

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of Holcot (or cot in the rock, as he glossed it),106 he entered the order at the nearby Northampton priory. Holcot must have begun his lectures on the Sentences in 1331, for as Father Joseph Wey discovered, the principial question of the second book of his Sentences commentary mentions the date 1332, putting the start of Book I in the fall of

26 (1992): 97–106; idem, ‘Robert Holcot’s “Ecumenism” and the Green Knight,’ The Chaucer Review 26 (1992): 329–342; Robert A. Pratt, ‘Some Latin Sources of the Nonnes Preest on Dreams,’ Speculum 52 (1977): 538–570; Xavier Renedo, ‘Una imatge de la memòria entre les Moralitates de Robert Holcot i el Dotzè de Francesc Eiximenis,’ Annals de l’Institut d’Estudis Gironins 31 (1990/1991): 53–61; Manuel Santos Noia, ‘El camino en el pensamiento de Ramón Lull, Roberto Holkot y Martín Lutero,’ in Compostellanum: revista de la Archidiocesis de Santiago de Compostela 36 (1991): 363–381; Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 320–354, and (1972): 106–136; Beryl Smalley, ‘Some Latin Commentaries on the Sapiential Books in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries,’ AHDLMA 25–26 (1950–1951): 103–128; idem, ‘Robert Holcot, OP,’ AFP 26 (1956): 5–97; idem, English Friars and Antiquity, 133–202; Paul Streveler, ‘Robert Holkot on Future Contingencies: A Preliminary Account,’ in Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 8–9, ed. John R. Sommerfeldt and E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, 1976), 163–171; Katherine H. Tachau, ‘The species in medio,’ 413–419; idem, ‘Wodeham, Crathorn, and Holcot,’ 161–187; idem, Vision and Certitude, 243–255; idem, ‘Looking Gravely at Dominican Puns,’ 337–345; idem, ‘Holcot on Contingency and Divine Deception,’ 157–196; idem, ‘Logic’s God and the Natural Order in Late Medieval Oxford: the Teaching of Robert Holcot,’ Annals of Science 53 (1996): 235–267; Lynn Thorndike, ‘A New Work by Robert Holcot (Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 138),’ Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences 10 (1957), 227–235; Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 335–337, 342. For Holcot’s works, T. Kaeppeli, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi (Rome, 1970), 3: 315–319 is the place to start. A number of them have been edited. See Joseph C. Wey, ‘The Sermo Finalis,’ 219–224; J.T. Muckle, ‘Utrum Theologia sit scientia: A Quodlibet Question of Robert Holcot, O.P.,’ Mediaeval Studies 20 (1958): 127–153; Moody, ‘A Quodlibetal Question,’ 53–74, reprinted in idem, Studies in Medieval Philosophy, 321–352; revised in William J. Courtenay, ‘A Revised Text of Robert Holcot’s Quodlibetal Dispute on Whether God is Able to Know More Than He Knows,’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 53 (1971): 1–21; Molteni, Dottrina della grazia, Appendix, 166–204; Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought Illustrated by Key Documents, ed. and trans. Heiko Oberman (Philadelphia, 1981), 142–150, has Super libros Sapientiae, chap. 3, lects. 35 and 52; chap. 12, lect. 145; Gelber, Exploring the Boundaries, has three questions on the Trinity; Gillespie, ‘Gratia creata,’ contains the same questions on grace Molteni edited; Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae,’ an edition of the Sex articuli with lengthy introduction; Kurt Villad Jensen, ‘Robert Holkot’s Questio on Killing Infidels: A Reevaluation and an Edition,’ AFP 63 (1993): 207–228; Kennedy, Philosophy of Robert Holcot, 180–181, has Holcot’s quodlibetal question: ‘Utrum Caritas Beatorum in Patria possit corrumpi’; and Holcot, Seeing the Future, has three quodlibetal questions and a portion of the Sentences dealing with future contingents. 106 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 135, gives Holcot’s gloss on his name: ‘The Lord is my rock and my strength, my dove in the clefts of the rock.’ Also see Tachau, ‘Looking Gravely at Dominican Puns,’ 337–338, and cf. Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, 4th edition (Oxford, 1960), 245.

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the previous year.107 Since Holcot took time out between Books II and III to write the Sex articuli, the summer vacation presumably intervened between them, consigning the start of Book II to the spring of 1332, and the start of Book III to the following fall. Father Wey has edited Holcot’s Sermo finalis, the sermon delivered at the conclusion of his lectures on the Sentences when he passed the role of lecturer to the Dominican Roger Gosford.108 A period of illness and other temporal burdens prevented Holcot from beginning his Bible lectures until February 10, 1334, but he began a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew at that time.109 The principial sermon ‘Jerusalem evangelistam dabo,’ in which Holcot made reference to his fellow socii ‘who are lecturers on the Bible in this university’ is extant, and William Courtenay has identified some of the questions of the commentary from among Holcot’s alleged quodlibeta.110 The year 1335 would have been the earliest Holcot could have achieved his doctorate, and given his illness, his inception might well have been delayed. If the regency normally changed hands in even years, as seems to have been the case, Holcot’s regency at Oxford would have fallen between 1336 and 1338.111 During that time he lectured again on the Bible. A commentary on the Twelve Prophets survives in four manuscripts in the form of rough lecture notes, and it is likely that this work stems from Holcot’s magisterial period. Internal references to events of the late 1320’s indicate a date closer to that time than later, and two references to Oxford suggest Holcot delivered the lectures there.112 His quodlibetal questions, previously assigned to his baccalaureate, should now almost certainly be assigned to the time 107

Father Joseph Wey shared his discovery in a personal communication, December 6, 1982. The date is garbled in the Lyon edition, but as Schepers noted in ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970), 351–352, it is clear in the manuscripts. 108 Wey, ‘Sermo finalis,’ 219–224. 109 Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 325, established the date. Also see Courtenay, ‘Lost Matthew Commentary,’ 103–112, and Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 142–143. 110 ‘ … qui in hac universitate lectores Bibliae sunt.’ London, British Library MS Royal 10 C VI, f. 136v, and Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 120r. See Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 342–343. Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 142, credits Father Wey with discovering the sermon’s role. For a partial list of the questions in the commentary, see Courtenay, ‘Lost Matthew Commentary,’ 103–112. 111 To my knowledge, the turnover of regents in even numbered years has not been noted before. The presumption of even numbered years is based on the dates of regents that are known, on the usual term of office being two years for each regency, and on the apparent existence of only one Dominican regent master at a time. 112 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 138–139.

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of his regency as well. During his regency, Holcot worked on revising his Sentences commentary, preparing an ordinatio edition in which he at least once made a cross- reference to his quodlibetal questions.113 While Katherine Tachau has most recently continued the argument for a predoctoral date for at least some of his quodlibeta on the basis of Holcot’s use of the term ‘socii,’ given the catastrophic ten year struggle with the university over student requirements and progress toward the degree, the Dominicans are very unlikely to have been casual about university regulations. For Holcot to have arrogated the prerogatives of a master while still a bachelor seems extremely unlikely under the circumstances, even more so given his illness in the fall and winter of 1333–1334 that would have cut into his time for doing so.114 However, he had to wait an extra academic year after completing the usual requirements for the doctorate before taking his turn at the regency in 1336, so he may have participated in debates at a more than usually advanced level in 1335– 1336 in anticipation of his term as regent master. The question seems unlikely to be resolved, but caution is in order. Several tractates: De imputabilitate peccati and De stellis, are extant and probably also belong to Holcot’s Oxford days. Of these, the work on the stars, constituting a loose commentary on De caelo, is one of the few Aristotelian commentaries from a fourteenth-century Dominican pen.115 It may be the exception that proves the rule, however, for although it circulated as a separate piece in a number of manuscripts, it most probably belonged originally to Holcot’s Sentences commentary.116 A sermon collection in which Holcot sometimes depicted a troubled university community, reflects the tensions between Northerners and

Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 8: ‘Sed dubium est an Deus possit scire plura quam scit vel non; de hoc dixi alias contra Ockham.’ Holcot, Seeing the Future, 148, ll. 810– 811; Lyon, f. i5va. The text is a reference to Quodlibet I, q. 6: ‘Utrum Deus possit scire plura quam scit,’ edited in Moody, ‘A Quodlibetal Question,’ 53–74, reprinted in Collected Papers, 321–352; and revised by Courtenay in ‘A Revised Text,’ 1–21. 114 Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 25–27; idem, ‘Holcot on Contingency and Divine Deception,’ 158–164, who also suggests that William Crathorn and John Grafton might have participated in Quodlibetal disputations prior to regency, but there is little evidence to back up the latter conjecture. 115 For information on the manuscripts that contain the Tractatus de stellis, see Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 333–335, and Thorndike, ‘A New Work,’ 227–235. De imputabilitate peccati occurs in the Lyon, 1518, edition of Holcot’s Sentences, where the editors attribute the work to him. 116 Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 39, and idem, ‘Logic’s God,’ 255–265, for a discussion of the text. 113

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Southerners in 1333 and 1334, but the collection in its entirety represents Holcot’s lifetime of preaching and teaching.117 Between the end of his regency in 1338, and February, 1343, when he began to receive licenses to hear confessions that place him at Northampton until his death of the plague in 1349,118 Holcot’s whereabouts are less certain. Between 1338 and 1340, he spent some time in association with Richard of Bury, bishop of Durham, serving as his clerk either in his household or in close proximity to him in the Dominican convent in London.119 Holcot may have met the bishop when Bury was involved in trying to resolve the secession of Northern scholars from Oxford to Stamford Bridge in 1334.120 If Holcot accompanied him as part of the bishop’s household, it must have been a hectic experience, since Bury was in France in 1337 and 1338 (when Holcot was still presumably at Oxford), and then in Flanders in 1339. Bury did include some scholars in his entourage on these travels, for example: Walter Burley, Thomas Bradwardine and Richard Kilvington,121 but Holcot is not known to have been among them. On the side of a London sojourn immediately following Holcot’s regency, Book IV of his Sentences has a reference to London that would be most natural if he continued his revisions of the text there.122 While in association with Bury, Holcot helped him compile his Philobiblon. The work was only completed in 1344, after the end of their partnership, however, when

117 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 143–145, 148. For the tensions between regional groups see A.B. Emden, ‘Northerners and Southerners in the Organisation of the University to 1509,’ in Oxford Studies Presented to Daniel Callus, Oxford Historical Society, n. s. 16 (Oxford, 1964), 1–30; Pearl Kibre, The Nations in the Mediaeval Universities (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), 166–186; H.E. Salter, The Stamford Schism,’ The English Historical Review 37 (1922): 249–253. Holcot came from the Northampton convent on the river Nene, which, if Emden (op. cit. pp. 4–7) is correct, was the border between North and South. Smalley used Cambridge, Peterhouse MS no. 210 as her source for the sermon collection. Katherine Tachau has looked at another such collection in Padua, Biblioteca Antoniana MS 515, scaff. XXI. See her ‘Looking Gravely at Dominican Puns.’ 118 Emden, BRUO 2:946–947; idem, BRUC 310. 119 J. De Ghellinck, ‘Un Éveque bibliophile au XIVe siècle: Richard d’Aungerville de Bury (1345),’ RHE 18 (1922): 271–312, 482–509; ibid., 19 (1923): 255–269; Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 66–74, 136, 153–155; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 133–137; Michael Maclagan, ‘Introduction,’ in Richard de Bury, Philobiblon, ed. and trans. E.C. Thomas (Oxford, 1960), xi–xxxvii. 120 N. Denholm-Young, ‘Richard de Bury (1287–1345),’ TRHS 4th ser., 22 (1937): 151. Bury apparently stayed at Merton College while there. 121 Ibid., 161; Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 135. 122 See chapter one, note 90, above for Holcot’s references to London.

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Bury had departed London for the north of England in 1340,123 and Holcot had returned to the Northampton convent in 1343. Holcot also wrote two works for preachers during these years: the Moralitates, composed at some time before 1342, and the Convertimini.124 In a number of his works, but particularly in the Moralitates, Holcot adopted an innovative technique, first used by the Franciscan John Ridevall, of painting colorful verbal ‘pictures’ to organize allegorical interpretations, a technique his contemporaries imitated and admired.125 There is a tradition that Holcot’s most famous Biblical commentary on Wisdom, the Postilla super librum Sapientiae, was given at Cambridge. The lectures cover a two year span and reflect a university setting. Thus, after Holcot completed his years at Oxford in 1338, he may have spent a subsequent two year period as lector at Cambridge.126 The likeliest time for such a lectureship would have been between 1340 and 1342, after Bury’s departure for the north and prior to Holcot’s own departure for Northampton. Holcot’s references to London in the revision of his Sentences point to any Cambridge stay being after his time in London and not until the early 1340’s. The decade of the forties at Cambridge saw two Cambridge Dominicans noted for their ‘classicizing’ style: Thomas Hopeman, and Thomas Ringstead, who carried on the traditions of scholarship and concern for preaching technique that Trevet, Waleys, Boraston, Bromyard, and Holcot had developed. If Holcot had indeed spent two years lecturing at Cambridge, the sudden 123 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 143–145. William A. Hinnebusch, The Early English Friars Preachers, (Rome, 1951), 185, gives Richard de Bury’s description in the Philobiblon of the Dominicans who helped him, and it is likely he had Holcot in mind: ‘Of these men, when we were raised to the episcopate, we had several of both orders, viz., the Preachers and Minors, as personal attendants and companions at our board, men distinguished no less in letters than in morals, who devoted themselves with unwearied zeal to the correction, exposition, tabulation and compilation of various volumes. … yet we must laud the Preachers with special praise, in that we have found them above all the religious most freely communicative of their stores without jealousy, … imbued with an almost divine liberality …’ 124 Ibid., 145–147. 125 Ibid., 148–183. For a further analysis of Holcot’s style, see Allen, Friar as Critic, and also see Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990), 130–143, who has a discussion of the tradition of such memory pictures at the time of Holcot. 126 J. Quetif and J. Échard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, vol. 1 (Paris, 1719), 630, noted that two Paris MSS of Holcot’s Postilla super librum Sapientiae designate him as of Cambridge. And see Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 141; Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 335–336.

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emergence of that university as a site for Dominican talent would have more explanation.127 During the years in Northampton, Holcot received a steady stream of licenses to hear confession: in the archdeaconry of Northampton in February 1343; renewed in October; in the archdiocese of Northampton and Buckingham for a two year period beginning May 1345; in Northampton again for one year in October 1347; and renewed for one year in October 1348.128 What particular position he held at Northampton is not known for certain, but Holcot was most likely principal lector because he continued to teach. However, he might have served as prior or preacher general.129 A fragmentary set of lectures on Ecclesiastes probably belonged to these years, and when the plague struck in 1349, he was in the midst of a series of lectures on Ecclesiasticus, breaking off after chapter seven, as tradition has it, to minister to the sick but only to succumb to the disease himself.130 JOHN(?) GRAFTON—Grafton almost certainly lectured on the Sentences at Oxford during the single academic year of 1332–1333. In his Sermo finalis, Holcot referred to a mysterious ‘Gra …,’ previously assumed to be Crathorn, as having ‘run the course’ with him in the preceding year: ‘that other disciple who is called Gra …, employing a favor, proceded through more quickly, because he had permission from the university to end his lectures early.’131 If Holcot began his lectures in 1331, and handed on the baton to Roger Gosford in 1333, there is a missing Dominican to account for, the friar who should have begun lecturing on the Sentences in 1332. That Dominican must have been the object of Holcot’s comment and not Crathorn, the previously presumed referent, who had completed his Sentences at the latest in 1332.132 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 203–204, 210, and in general 203–220; Emden, BRUC 313, and Stephen L. Forte, ‘Thomas Hopeman O.P. (c. 1350) An Unknown Biblical Commentator,’ AFP 25 (1955): 310–344, for Hopeman. Walter Gumbley, The Cambridge Dominicans (Oxford, 1938), 18, has an account of Ringstead; and see L.A. Kennedy, ‘The Sentences of Thomas Ringstead, O.P.’ Vivarium 26 (1988): 39–50, and Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 337–338, 350–355. 128 Emden, BRUO 2:946–947; idem, BRUC 310. 129 Ibid. Emden suggests that Holcot served as prior, but that seems the least likely of the three alternatives. 130 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 137–138, 142, 147–148. 131 See note 100 above for the text. 132 Katherine H. Tachau has analyzed the sermo finalis and discussed the issue of Grafton at length; see her ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 11–16; idem, ‘Looking Gravely at Dominican Puns,’ 337–345, and ‘Holcot on Contingency and Divine Deception,’ 160–161. 127

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The most likely name for Holcot’s favor-currying friar is Grafton. The Franciscan Adam Wodeham had a socius named ‘Grafton,’ and if his Dominican socius and ‘Grafton’ are assumed to be the same man, many difficulties in the dating of Wodeham’s Oxford Sentences fall by the way.133 One manuscript assigns the date 1332 to Wodeham’s commentary. If he began his lectures that year, Holcot’s ‘Gra …’ would have been Wodeham’s socius, and the simplest assumption is that Holcot’s ‘Gra …’ and Grafton were one and the same.134 Grafton apparently disagreed vehemently with Wodeham on the soul’s capacity for grace, and he engaged Wodeham in a running debate on the issue.135 By the time Wodeham had reached Book II of his commentary, Grafton had already advanced on to his Bible lectures, all the while continuing his attack.136 For Grafton to have finished his lectures before Wodeham, he must either have begun his Sentences commentary in 1331—not possible if he was a Dominican, because Holcot began lecturing that year—or like Holcot’s ‘Gra …,’ he lectured for only one year. Wodeham, in the course of his responses, also indicated that Richard Fitzralph, magister

133 Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, 95–109, discusses the difficulties both in identifying Wodeham’s Dominican socius and in identifying the Grafton whom he cites. 134 Ibid., 14, quotes from Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 1110, f. 135v: ‘Et sic finitur quartus liber fratris Adae Wodeham, doctoris in theologia, qui legit Oxoniae anno Domini MCCCXXXII.’ The most sensible construal of the passage on the basis of the other evidence would be that Wodeham started his lectures on the Sentences in that year. Also see Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 22–25, 27, who argues along the same lines for 1332–1334 as the dates for Wodeham’s Oxford lectures. 135 Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, 101–106, 108–109. He gives the references to Grafton in Wodeham’s Lectura Oxoniensis as follows: Grafton first appears in Book II, q. 5 in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 110, ff. 20r, 21r, 27v, 28r, and in Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 915, ff. 145ra, 146vb, 154vb; references to him as attacking Wodeham in his Biblical lectures are in Book II, q. 5, in Paris, Maz. 915, ff. 145vb– 146ra, in Paris, Bibliothèque de la Universitè MS 193, f. 154va, and in Tarazona, Biblioteca de la Catedral MS 7, f. 113ra; further references occur in Book III, q. 1, in Paris, Univ. 193, f. 175ra, in Paris, Maz. 915, f. 169va, and in Vat. lat. 110, f. 44r; and probably in Book III, q. 10, in Paris, Univ. 193, ff. 198vb–199ra, in Paris, Maz. 915, ff. 189va–189vb, in Tar. 7, f. 158rb, and in the Paris edition of 1512, f. 133ra. References to Wodeham’s Dominican socius (from which Courtenay, op. cit. pp. 101–103, quotes extensively in his notes) occur in Wodeham, Lectura Oxoniensis, prol. q. 2, in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 955, f. 15r, in Paris, Univ. 193, f. 12ra, and in Paris, Maz. 915, f. 9va; in Lect. Oxon. II, q. 6, a. 2, in Paris, Univ. 193, f. 163rb, and in Paris, Maz. 915, f. 156va. The problematic identification of Wodeham’s Dominican socius as ‘Praedicator Cathorn’ in Paris, Maz. 915, f. 156, then makes sense as a probable scribal misreading of Crathorn for Grafton. 136 Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, 107, and see previous note for manuscript references.

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regens between 1331 and 1333, had criticized Grafton’s view.137 The coincidence of these facts and dates combined with the witness of Holcot’s Sermo finalis, are best reconciled if 1332–1333 was the year of Grafton’s shortened commentary on the Sentences, and if the summer of 1333 or the year 1333–1334, was the time of his lectures on the Bible. Some of Grafton’s questions may be extant. V. Richter discovered what he took to be Crathorn’s quodlibeta in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Palat. lat. 5460. The section of text contains forty-two questions, of which numbers ten through twenty constitute an abbreviated version of Crathorn’s Sentences and are attributed to ‘Craton’ or ‘Crastharn.’138 The author of the first nine questions and the last twenty-one is not so evident, but a different scribe headed the collection with the notation: ‘Incipit quodlibet fratris Iohannis dicti Crafton Anglici Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum.’139 Crathorn’s first name was almost certainly ‘William,’140 and while the spelling of the names Crafton and Crastharn is close, so is that of Grafton and Crathorn. At least the possibility exists that the ‘Iohannis’ here cited is Grafton and that some of the collected questions are his. Dominican texts often circulated in unbound peciae to judge by the fragmentary and jumbled character of the works of Holcot, Strelley and Lawton. It would not be surprising to find Grafton and Crathorn jumbled together Ibid., 90. Richter, ‘Handschriftliches zu Crathorn,’ 445–447. 139 See note 104 above. The possible identification of this Iohannes Grafton with Holcot’s ‘Gra …’ and Wodeham’s Grafton was worked out jointly with Katherine Tachau. See Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 244, n. 3, 256, n. 41, and she has since found further support for the name Iohannes in Holcot’s citation from the book of John when referring to ‘Gra …’ (‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 14–15). 140 In one of the quodlibetal questions in Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 236, f. 139va, Holcot remarked: ‘nisi incidatur in opinionem Willelmi Crauthorn.’ Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 353, noted the reference, but cautioned that the scribe might have confused Crathorn with a William Crawthorn who received his doctorate in Canon Law in 1328, and wished to wait for further evidence before assigning the name ‘William’ definitively to Crathorn. The Pembroke manuscript is a good one, however, early and very informative about the names of contemporary authors. Moreover, unknown to Schepers, its testimony is reinforced in Krakow, Biblioteka Jagiellonska MS 748, f. 48ra, where a fragment of Crathorn’s Sentences commentary is introduced as: ‘Quaestio tertia primi libri Sententiarum de Wilhelmi Crasthorn praedicatoris.’ (See Hoffmann, Sentenzenbuch, 5–6.) On the basis of Vienna, Nationalbibliothek MS palat. 5460, Richter, ‘Handschriftliches zu Crathorn,’ 447, opted for ‘Johannes’ as Crathorn’s name. Hoffmann, Sentenzenbuch, 5, remains sympathetic to Richter’s view, but the Cambridge manuscript is surely a better witness than either of the other two, the Krakow manuscript confirms the name in the Cambridge text, and a confusion of Grafton with Crathorn may account for the ‘Iohannes’ in the Vienna manuscript. 137 138

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as well. But only a careful study of this text, comparing what is known of both Grafton and Crathorn, will determine the issue.141 ROGER GOSFORD—Gosford began to lecture on the Sentences in 1333, picking up from Robert Holcot. Nothing more is known of him, except that he was a Northerner, coming from Coupland in Northumberland.142 The Dominicans who read the Sentences at Oxford during the rest of the decade are not known with as much certainty. However, one who almost surely did was: NICHOLAS OF LEE—John Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, who had met Nicholas of Lee in Paris, wrote to the provincial prior Simon of Boraston in 1328, requesting permission for Lee to begin studying at Oxford the following year.143 If the Bishop’s request was granted, then Lee spent his next years at Blackfriars studying with Crathorn, Holcot, Grafton and Gosford. He had his doctorate by 1342, when the general chapter assigned him to follow in the distinguished tradition of Waleys and Winkley (another of Grandisson’s beneficiaries) as lector at Bologna.144 Several other men were also present in the Oxford Convent during the 1330’s. JOHN OF SWYNDON and SIMON BURTON were at Blackfriars sometime between about 1330 and 1336, when they each received licenses to hear confessions in the Salisbury diocese, Burton replacing Swyndon. Swyndon had originally come from Worcester, where he was ordained a deacon in 1321 and priest in 1322. Burton was one of the old men in the convent, having been ordained in 1292 at Northampton.145 And JOHN RIDDLINTONE and P[ETER?] 141 Rega Wood has edited question eight: ‘Utrum continuum componatur ex indivisibilibus, id est ex punctis,’ (f. 38rb), as an appendix to her edition of Adam de Wodeham, Tractatus de indivisibilibus, 309–319, but she has argued (23, n. 29) that the contents of the question are found in Crathorn’s Sentences commentary as well, supporting the suggestion that the first nine questions are Crathorn’s. 142 Emden, BRUO 2:794; Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, 95–96. Also see Tachau, ‘Introduction,’ in Holcot, Seeing the Future, 13–14, for her analysis of Holcot’s punning references in the Sermo finalis to Gosford, as well as idem, ‘Looking Gravely at Dominican Puns,’ 337–345; and idem, ‘Holcot on Contingency and Divine Deception,’ 160–161. 143 Emden, BRUO 1:560, under ‘de la Lee’; Forte, ‘Simon of Boraston,’ 323 and n. 14, quotes from Grandisson’s letter. 144 Walter Gumbley, ‘In Theology,’ in The English Dominican Province (1221–1921) (London, 1921), 59; Acta 2:283. 145 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 202. Emden, BRUO 1:321 and 3:1834–1835, is inaccurate on the basis of the episcopal registers. The licenses to hear confession for these men are undated but occur in the registers of Bishop Robert Wyville whose episcopate began in

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TANNY each preached a sermon at the convent in 1330, either as bachelors or doctors of theology.146 Looking at the end of Bristol’s provincialate and the period in which Boraston held office, a list of friars with the dates or range of dates for their Sentences and regencies can be reconstructed as follows: Richard of Winkley Arnold of Strelley Hugh of Lawton William Crathorn Robert Holcot John(?) Grafton Roger Gosford Nicholas of Lee

Sentences

Inception

Regency

1320–1324 1323–1330 1326–1330 1330–1332 1331–1333 1332–1333 1333–1335 1334–1340

by 1326 by 1332 by 1332 by 1334 by 1335–1336 by 1335 by 1337 by 1342

1324–1328 1328–1334 1330–1334 1334–1336 1336–1338 ? ? 1338–1342

E. The Provincialates of Winkley, Dutton and Strelley—1337–1449 Only sketchy information exists for the last decade of the period before the Black Death. Because no Dominican Sentences commentaries are known from that time, invaluable information is lacking about the friars at Oxford. However, something is known of several men of importance, and the names of a number of others are at least recorded. WILLIAM D’EYNCOURT—Originally from the Carlisle convent in the York visitation, D’Eyncourt was licensed to hear confessions there in May 1331 and again c. 1344, for the area of Cumberland and Westmorland.147 At some time between these two dates, he studied first at Cambridge and then at Oxford, receiving his doctorate in theology.148 His one surviving work is an unfinished series of lectures on Ecclesiastes, extant in two manuscripts, which internal evidence would date around 1340, about the time he is thought to have had his regency.149 Beryl Smalley numbered him among the ‘classicizing’

1330. The licenses must predate a listing for Robert Holcot, also undated, but one in which Holcot is designated a doctor of theology, so probably belonging to the period of his regency 1336–1338. Also see Emden, Survey of Dominicans, 197, 460, for the ordination of Swyndon, and ibid. 121, 297, for the ordination of Burton. 146 Emden, BRUO 3:1576 and 1849 respectively. 147 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 205. 148 Emden, BRUO 1:577; Zutshi and Ombres, ‘Dominicans in Cambridge,’ 336–337. 149 Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity, 204–205.

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friars of the age. He showed himself familiar with Waleys’ commentary on the Psalter, and that work may have motivated D’Eyncourt to look at Livy’s Ab urbe condita, a work he cited directly. Smalley suggests that D’Eyncourt was also familiar with Holcot’s commentary on Wisdom, which Holcot was probably delivering at the Cambridge convent in 1340–1342, about the time of D’Eyncourt’s regency, but that D’Eyncourt had a less innovative and imaginative mind than the older man, for he did not use Holcot’s ‘pictures’ technique.150 The most likely years for D’Eyncourt’s commenting on the Sentences at Oxford would have overlapped with Holcot’s regency in 1336–1338, so perhaps D’Eyncourt was familiar with Holcot’s ideas from a source other than his lectures on the Book of Wisdom. JOHN TATENHALL—A.B. Emden put Tatenhall among those who may have been at Oxford. His conjecture seems plausible. Tatenhall entered the order at the Shrewsbury convent in 1329 and probably read the Sentences in the early 1340’s. By the time of his election as provincial prior in 1356, he had obtained his doctorate in theology. He remained provincial until 1361, when he was posted to the Roman curia as the minor penitentiarius for England. He received the bishopric of Ossory the same year by papal provision, a post he held until his death in 1366.151 WILLIAM JORDAN—Jordan was also from the northern visitation of York. He first appeared among those licensed to hear confessions in the York diocese in September 1348; again in December 1351 and yet again in March 1354. In 1351, he was identified as being at the York convent, and his license in 1354 was to hear confessions in the city of York for a year. He was called a doctor of theology by 1354,152 but his degree must date from the forties because there would have been no opportunity for him to have studied at Oxford after 1348. Jordan was a primary opponent of Uthred of Bolden, O.S.B. during the late fifties and early sixties. Uthred lectured on the Sentences in 1354, received his doctorate in 1357, served as regent master, and then became the prior or warden of Durham College. A list of suspect opinions, derived from his Sentences and quodlibetal questions, was drawn up

Ibid., 206–208. Emden, BRUO 3:2221; idem, ‘Confessors,’ 192; idem, Survey of Dominicans, 462; Little, ‘Provincial Priors,’ 497. 152 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 208–209. 150 151

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for examination between 1359 and 1366, a list Jordan probably had a direct hand in compiling.153 At several points in his career, Jordan defended the positions of his order: at York in 1355 in a disputation on the immaculate conception against the Franciscan John Mardisley; in 1358 at the papal curia before Innocent VI in defense of mendicancy against the attacks of Richard Fitzralph, archbishop of Armagh;154 and part of the conflict with Uthred of Bolden apparently centered on Jordan’s defense of mendicancy as well.155 All in all, Jordan was one of the most important theologians of his order during the latter half of the century,156 but he received his education and the start of his career in the forties during the provincialate of Arnold of Strelley. Indeed, in June of 1350, he served as vicar general of the order, taking Strelley’s place as head of the province in the interim period, presumably after Strelley’s death.157 Other Dominicans who were likely to have studied at Oxford during the years of these provincial priors were:158 RICHARD OF HALTON,

153 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 116, 338, 353 n. 69, 359. Also see M.E. Marcett, Uthred de Bolden, Friar William Jordan, and Piers Plowman (New York, 1938); M.D. Knowles, ‘The Censured Opinions of Uthred of Boldon,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 37 (1951): 305–342, who gives the texts; and David Hugh Farmer, ‘New Light on Uthred of Bolden,’ in Benedictines in Oxford, ed. Henry Wansbrough and Anthony MarettCrosby (London, 1997), 116–132. Emden, BRUO 2:1022 notes that J. Bale credited him with the tractates Contra positiones Wiclevi, Pro mendicitate contra Utredum and Questiones de Conceptione Mariae, but these do not survive. Courtenay, op. cit. 370, credits Jordan with a Biblical commentary on Romans, but Marcett, op. cit. 50, notes that there were two William Jordans, one from the thirteenth and one from the fourteenth centuries and the commentary on Romans was the work of the earlier man. 154 Emden, BRUO 2:1022. 155 See note 153 above, for the title of Jordan’s work against Uthred and for secondary literature on the dispute with Boldon. 156 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 160, indicates that John Hiltalingen of Basel in the mid-sixties at Paris knew Jordan’s commentary on the Sentences, and Courtenay makes the judgment about Jordan’s stature (ibid. 359). His importance is also signaled by his parody in an illustration for the text of Piers Plowman in Bodleian Library MS. Douce 104. See John B. Friedman, ‘The Friar Portrait in Bodleian Library MS. Douce 104: Contemporary Satire?’ Yearbook of Langland Studies 8 (1994): 177–185. 157 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 208. 158 Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 134–135, identifies the John Acton who was part of Richard of Bury’s circle in the 1340’s as a Dominican, in which case he would have been a candidate for the following list, but Denholm-Young, ‘Richard de Bury,’ 161– 162, identifies Acton as a canonist and a canon of Lincoln. Courtenay gives no source for his belief that this Acton was a Dominican, and I have found no other evidence to support his contention.

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listed as doctor of theology in November 1342, when Arnold of Strelley presented him for a license to hear confessions in the archdeaconry of Lincoln, and who again received a license there in 1347;159 JOHN OF SHALYNGFORD, at the Oxford convent in October 1342, when he received a license to hear confessions in the Salisbury diocese;160 WILLIAM OF CRAWELE or CRAULE, listed as having a doctorate in theology when he received a license to hear confessions in the archdeaconry of Buckingham in Lincoln diocese in July 1345, and who received a license again in 1347 when his presence at the Dunstable convent was noted;161 JOHN OF WYKHAM, recorded as receiving a license to hear confessions in the archdeaconry of Buckingham while at the Oxford convent in February 1348;162 JOHN WORPHYN, a bachelor of theology at the Oxford convent when he was appointed papal chaplain in 1349;163 HENRY OF GLOUCESTER, who was licensed to hear confession in the archdeaconry of Oxford in January 1350 but who by 1356, at the latest, and perhaps as early as 1351, was licensed in the diocese of Hereford, and likely at the Hereford convent;164 and finally the foreign student, JAN MORAVECZ, from Bohemia, who spent some time studying at Oxford before 1343, when he became lector at the convent in Prague.165 A partial list of the friars progressing toward their degrees and the approximate dates follows: Sentences William D’Eyncourt Richard of Halton William of Crawele William Jordon John of Worphyn

Inception

Regency

1335–1340? by 1342? 1340–1344? 1338–1340? by 1342 1342–1344? 1340–1343? by 1345 1344–1346? 1341–1344 by 1346? 1346–1348? 1347–1349? [bachelor by 1349]

Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 197, 198. Ibid., 202. Emden, BRUO 3:1653, indicates that he also received a license in 1330, but the episcopal records do not bear this out. 161 Emden, ‘Confessors,’ 198. 162 Ibid., 199. 163 Emden, BRUO 3:2088. 164 Emden, BRUO 2:773. 165 Emden, BRUO 2:1300. 159 160

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chapter three NEW DIRECTIONS IN MODAL THEORY

When Dominicans undertook the study of theology at Blackfriars during the 1320’s and 1330’s, they entered a community with certain intellectual presuppositions and concerns. These differed from the presuppositions and concerns that had shaped lectures and debates at the beginning of the century and imparted a new character to Dominican teaching at Oxford. The last years of the thirteenth century and the first of the fourteenth had been a time of fierce defensive battles against the critics of Thomas Aquinas,1 but evidence of only a few such skirmishes remain in the works of Arnold of Strelley, Hugh of Lawton, William Crathorn, and Robert Holcot to mark partisan alliegence to the Dominican order during the twenties and thirties.2 They were not even Thomists in any obvious historical sense of the term. After grueling years of bitter controversy with the university and a break in the continuity of teaching, the influence of ‘classicizing friars’ like Trevet and Waleys, more interested in creating texts for ethical edification than in defending Aquinas, set the new direction. Ironically given his canonization in 1323, Aquinas figured in the texts of the period more as an honored ancestor than a commanding authority. Concern for ethics brought questions about human freedom and responsibility to the fore. Questions about human freedom and responsibility raised further questions about the nature and reach of necessity and contingency. Rather than spending time on Thomist apologetics, the Dominicans explored new theories of modality and adopted new views of the world to go

1 See Frederick J. Roensch, The Early Thomistic School (Dubuque, Iowa, 1964), 1–57, 200–246. 2 Hugh of Lawton was probably the most traditional of the four in this regard. In a number of places in his Sentences commentary he defended Thomas Aquinas against the criticisms William of Ockham had directed against the Doctor of the Dominican order. For example see Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica, MS Vat. lat. 829, ff. 167va–167vb on the question of a formal distinction or formal non-identity in God, ff. 183vb–186rb on whether the divine essence is a formal terminus of generation, and ff. 190ra–190rb on univocal terms. At one point on f. 187ra, he argued: ‘secundum praedictam patet quod Hockham irrationaliter impugnat rationes Sancti Thomae.’

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with them.3 In ways unlike Aquinas, the Oxford Dominicans came to believe the universe in all of its parts and processes to be contingent: it could all have been otherwise than it was. In exploring the ramifications of such a contingent world, the friars applied techniques of analysis new to theology, supplied new answers to old questions and discovered new problems. 3 Works useful for understanding medieval theories of modality include: Lili Alanen, ‘Descartes, Duns Scotus and Ockham on Omnipotence and Possibility,’ FcS 45 (1985): 157–185; Allen Bäck, ‘Avicenna’s Conception of the Modalities,’ Vivarium 30 (1991): 217–255; Henry Deku, ‘Possibile logicum,’ Philosophisches Jahrbuch der GörresGesellschaft 64 (1956): 1–21; A. Faust, Der Möglichkeitsgedanke: Systemgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, 2 vols. (Heidelberg, 1931–1932); Arthur Hyman, ‘Aristotle, Algazali and Avicenna on Necessity, Potentiality and Possibility,’ in Florilegium Columbianum: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Karl-Ludwig Selig and Robert Somerville (New York, 1987), 73–87; Neil Lewis, ‘Foundations for Modal Theory in Robert Grosseteste,’ Ph.D. diss. The University of Pittsburgh, 1988; Klaus Jacobi, ‘Möglichkeit,’ in Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe, ed. Hermann Kings, Hans-Michael Baumgartner and Christoph Wild (Munich, 1973), 930–947; idem, ‘Kontingente Naturgeschehnisse,’ Studie Mediewistycne 18.2 (1977): 3–70; idem, Die Modalbegriffe in den logischen Schriften des Wilhelm von Shyreswood und in anderen Compendien des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts: Funktionsbestimmung und Gebrauch in der logischen Analyse, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, ed. Albert Zimmerman, vol. 13 (Leiden-Cologne, 1980); idem, ‘Statements about Events: Modal and Tense Analysis in Medieval Logic,’ Vivarium 21 (1983): 85–107; Guy Jalbert, Nécessité et contingence chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin et chez ses prédecesseurs (Ottowa, 1961); Ilkka Kantola, ‘Some modern Aspects of Medieval Probability,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages, ed. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (New York, Ottawa, and Toronto, 1995), 520–528; Simo Knuuttila, ‘The “Statistical” Interpretation of Modality in Averroes and Thomas Aquinas,’ Ajatus 37 (1977): 79–98; idem, ‘Time and Modality in Scholasticism,’ in Reforging the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theory, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Synthese Historical Library 20 (Dordrecht, 1981), 163–257; idem, ‘Modal Logic,’ in CHLMP, 342– 357; idem, editor, Modern Modalities: Studies of the History of Modal Theories from Medieval Nominalism to Logical Positivism, Synthese Historical Library 33 (Dordrecht, 1988); idem, ‘Buridan and Aristotle’s modal Syllogistic,’ Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi: Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ed. Burkhard Mojsisch and Olaf Pluta, vol. 1 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991), 477–488; idem, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy. London, 1993; idem, ‘Early English Discusssions of Aristotle’s modal Syllogistics,’ in Aristotle in Britain During the Middle Ages, ed. John Marenbon, Rencontres de Philosophie Médiévale 5 (Turnhout, 1996), 249–259; idem, ‘Duns Scotus and the Foundations of Logical Modalities,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden/New York/Cologne, 1996), 127–143; Lilli Alanen and Simo Knuuttila, ‘The Foundations of Modality and Conceivability in Descartes and His Predecessors,’ in Modern Modalities: Studies of the History of Modal Theories from Medieval Nominalism to Logical Positivism, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Synthese Historical Library 33 (Dordrecht, 1988), 1–69; Norman Kretzmann, ‘Nos ipsi principia sumus: Boethius and the Basis of Contingency,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library 25 (Dordrecht, 1986), 25–33;

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The swing away from Aquinas hinged on changing theories about how the modes of necessity, possibility, impossibility, and contingency interact and determine what can and cannot be otherwise. To simplify a complex picture, the relations of the various modes suggest a diagram of the following sort:4

Anneliese Maier, Die Vorläufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhundert (Rome, 1949), 219–250; Charles H. Manekin, ‘Problems of “Plenitude” in Maimonides and Gersonides,’ in A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture, Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman (Washington, D.C., 1988), 183–194; Calvin G. Normore, ‘The Logic of Time and Modality in the Later Middle Ages: The Contribution of William of Ockham,’ Ph.D. diss. University of Toronto (1976); idem, ‘Future Contingents,’ in CHLMP, 358–381; Ingetrud Pape, Tradition und Transformation der Modalität, I: Möglichkeit-Unmöglichkeit (Hamburg, 1966); Nicholas Rescher, ‘The Theory of Temporal Modality in Arabic Logic and Philosophy,’ in idem, Studies in Arabic Philosophy (Pittsburgh, 1963), 81–111; idem, Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic (Dordrecht, 1967); idem, ed. Studies in Modality, A.P.Q. Monograph Series 8 (Oxford, 1984); Marco Rossini, ‘Scientia Dei conditionata: Francesco di Meyronnes e i futuri contingenti,’ Medioevo 19 (1993): 287–322; Theodore J. Runkle, Jr. ‘Mediaeval Modal Theory and the Problem of De Dicto et De Re,’ Ph.D. diss. The Florida State University (1977); Richard Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory (Ithaca, 1980); R. Steiger, ‘Zum Begriff der Kontingenz im Nominalismus,’ in Geist und Geschichte der Reformation, ed. H. Liebung and K. Scholder, Archiv für Kirchengeschichte 38 (Berlin, 1966), 35–67; Ria van der Lecq, ‘William Heytesbury on “Necessity,”’ in The Rise of British Logic, ed. P. Osmund Lewry, Acts of the Sixth European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Toronto, 1983), 249–263; A. Vos, ‘Knowledge, Certainty and Contingency,’ in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 75–88; idem, ‘Buridan on Contingency and Free Will,’ in John Buridan: A Master of Arts: Some Aspects of His Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos and H.A. Krop (Nijmegen, 1993), 141–155; Jules Vuillemin, Nécessité ou contingence: l’aporie de Diodore et les systèmes philosophiques (Paris, 1984); Hermann Weidemann, ‘Zur Semantik der Modalbegriffe bei Peter Abaelard,’ Medioevo 7 (1981): 1–40; Allan Wolter, ‘Ockham and the Textbooks: On the Origin of Possibility,’ FzS 32 (1950): 70–96, reprinted in J.F. Ross ed. Inquiries into Medieval Philosophy: A Collection in Honor of Francis P. Clarke (Westport, Conn. 1971), 243–273. 4 The model is adapted from Jaako Hintikka’s discussion in Time and Necessity: Studies in Aristotle’s Theory of Modality (Oxford, 1973), 27–30. Cf. Jacobi, ‘Möglichkeit,’ 931.

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The possible includes both the necessary and the contingent, and the contingent is differentiated from the necessary by being both possible to be and possible not to be. Strictly speaking, the possible is ‘one-sided,’ differentiated only from the impossible, while the contingent is ‘twosided,’ differentiated from both the impossible and the necessary.5 Put into a square of opposition:

the necessary and the impossible are seen as two contraries, the necessary and the possible that not P as one contradictory pair and the impossible and the possible that P as another. What is contingent comprises the juncture of the two sub-contraries: possible that P and possible that not P.6 While not every medieval Scholastic would have accepted these diagrams under all circumstances,7 they will serve as introduction to what follows.

5

The terminology of ‘one-sided’ and ‘two-sided’ is that of J.L. Ackrill, who discusses the two ways of looking at possibility in his notes to De Interpretatione, chap. 13, in Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione, (Oxford, 1963), 151. I have Alan Code to thank for alerting me to Ackrill’s terms. 6 For an example of such a square, see De propositionibus modalibus, attributed to Thomas Aquinas in Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia 43 (Rome, 1976), 422, l. 77. Also see William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic, rev. paperback edition (Oxford, 1984), 86. Simo Knuuttila, ‘Modal Logic,’ in CHLMP, 343, offers a more elaborate version. 7 For example, see the discussions of Scotus, below, p. 101 et seq. who treated logical possibility as two-sided and of Robert Holcot, in chapter four, pp. 131–135, who treated it as diachronic. The possible was also sometimes restricted to what is false but can be true, while the contingent described what is true but can be false. See Knuuttila, ‘Modal Logic,’ in CHLMP, 343. If Knuuttila’s controversial contention turns out to be correct, that a number of medieval scholars from Boethius to Aquinas accepted the ‘statistical model’ of modality, then they would not have accepted the equation of contingency with the possible to be and the possible not to be if propositions temporally indexed to the same moment in time are at issue (see Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 163– 257). For criticism of Knuuttila, see Jacobi, ‘Statements about Events,’ 85–107, Anthony Kenny, ‘Philosophy of Mind in theThirteenth Century,’ in L’homme et son univers au moyen âge, ed. Christian Wenin, Actes du septième congrès international de philosphie médiévale, vol. 1 (Louvain-La-Neuve, 1986), 53, and van der Lecq, ‘William Heytesbury on “Necessity,”’ 248–263.

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John Duns Scotus, lecturing and teaching between the years 1298 and 1308 at Oxford, Cambridge, Paris and Cologne,8 is usually credited with the initial shift of modal theory away from the Thomist model.9 While the history of medieval views about modality is complex and still 8 Charles Balic, ‘The Life and Works of John Duns Scotus,’ in John Duns Scotus, 1265–1965, ed. John K. Ryan and Bernardine M. Bonansea, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 3 (Washington, D.C., 1965), 1–27. 9 Simo Knuuttila pioneered this view. See his ‘Duns Scotus’ Criticism of the ‘Statistical’ Interpretation of Modality,’ in Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, Akten des VI. Internationalen Kongresses für Mittelalterliche Philosophie der Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, ed. Jan P. Beckmann, Ludger Honnefelder, Gabriel Jüssen, Barbara Münxelhaus, Gangolf Schrimpf, Georg Wieland under the direction of Wolfgang Kluxen, vol. 1, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13/1 (Berlin, 1981), 441–450; idem, ‘Time and Modality,’ 217–238; idem, ‘Duns Scotus and the Foundations,’ 127–143; idem, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy, 138–175; idem, ‘Interpreting Scotus’ Theory of Modality: Three Critical Remarks,’ in Via Scoti: Methodologica ad Mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale, ed. Leonardo Sileo, vol. 1 (Rome, 1995), 295–303. And Antonie Vos came up with a similar interpretation at about the same time in his article ‘On the Philosophy of the Young Duns Scotus: Some Semantical and Logical Aspects,’ in Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics: Studies Dedicated to L.M. De Rijk, Ph.D. on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, ed. E.P. Bos, Artistarium, Supplement 2 (Nijmegen, 1985): 195–220, revisited in the introduction to John Duns Scotus, Contingency and Freedom: Lectura I 39, trans. with introduction and commentary by A. Vos Jaczn, H. Veldhuis, A.H. Looman-Graaskamp, E. Dekker, and N.W. Den Bok, The New Synthese Historical Library 42 (Dordrecht, 1994), 1–40, and reprised in ‘The Theoretical Centre and Structure of Scotus’ ‘Lectura’: Philosophy in a New Key,’ in Via Scoti: Methodologica ad Mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale, ed. Leonardo Sileo, vol. 1 (Rome, 1995), 455–473. Others have generally followed their lead. Joachim Roland Söder provides a recent valuable overview in Kontingenz und Wissen: Die Lehre von den futura contingentia bei Johannes Duns Scotus, BGPTM, n. s. no. 49 (Münster, 1999). Also see Stephen D. Dumont, ‘Time, Contradiction and Freedom of theWill in the Late Thirteenth Century,’ Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 3 (1992):561–597; idem, ‘The Origin of Scotus’s Theory of Synchronic Contingency,’ The Modern Schoolman 72 (1995): 149–167; Jacobi, ‘Statements about Events,’ 96–97, 106–107; Anthony Kenny (not without criticism) in ‘Philosophy of Mind,’ 51–55; idem, ‘Scotus and the Sea Battle,’ in Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages, edited by John Marenbon, Rencontres de Philosophie Médiévale 5 (Turnhout, 1996), 145–155; Normore, ‘Future Contingents,’ in CHLMP, 367–369; idem, ‘Divine Omniscience, Omnipotence and Future Contingents: An Overview,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library 25 (Dordrecht, 1985), 3–9; idem, ‘Scotus, Modality, Instants of Nature and the Contingency of the Present,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphyscs and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dryer (Leiden, 1996), 161–174; idem, ‘Duns Scotus’s Modal Theory,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, ed. Thomas Williams (Cambridge, 2003), 129–160; Gerhard Seel, ‘Der Antike modallogische Determinismus und Ockhams Kritik an Duns Scotus,’ in L’homme et son univers au moyen âge, ed. Christian Wenin, Actes du Septième Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale, vol. 2 (Louvain-la-neuve, 1986), 510–520; Michael Sylwanowicz, Contingent Causality and the Foundations of Duns Scotus’ Metaphysics (Leiden, 1996), 19–42; Katherine H. Tachau,

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not fully understood,10 the views of Aquinas and Scotus are those most crucial for evaluating the modal theories of the Oxford Dominicans. Whether or not Aquinas, teaching and writing between 1252 and 1274,11 was representative of the period prior to Scotus, his modal theory would have commanded the attention of his Dominican successors. In ‘Logic’s God and the Natural Order in Late Medieval Oxford: the Teaching of Robert Holcot,’ Annals of Science 53 (1996): 235–267; Henri Veldhuis, ‘Duns Scous’ Theory of Synchronic Contingency in ‘Lectura’ I 39 and its Theological Implications,’ in Via Scoti: Methodologica ad Mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale, edited by Leonardo Sileo, vol. 1 (Rome, 1995), 571–576. Gilbert of Poitiers, Robert Grosseteste and Peter John Olivi first developed positions much like the one Scotus adopted, but Scotus was the one who transferred it to his age. For Grosseteste, see Alanen and Knuuttila, ‘Foundations of Modality,’ 28; Neil Lewis, ‘Power and Contingency in Robert Grossteste and Duns Scotus,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 205–225; idem, ‘Foundations for Modality’; and Calvin G. Normore, ‘A Short History of Accidental Necessity,’ unpublished paper delivered to the American Philosophical Association—East Coast Division meetings, December, 1988. For the pioneering role of Gilbert of Poitiers, see Simo Knuuttila, ‘Possibility and Necessity in Gilbert of Poitiers,’ in Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains: aux origines de la Logica modernorum, ed. Jean Jolivet and Alain De Libera, Actes du septième Symposium europeen d’histoire de la logique et de la semantique médiévales (Naples, 1987), 211– 217; a longer unpublished version of Alanen, ‘Descartes, Duns Scotus and Ockham on Omnipotence and Possibility,’ and Alanen and Knuuttila, ‘Foundations of Modality,’ 24–27. In his important article, Dumont, ‘The Origin of Scotus’s Theory,’ 149–167, makes the case for Olivi. Scott MacDonald, ‘Synchronic Contingency, Instants of Nature, and Libertarian Freedom: Comments on “The Backround to Scotus’s Theory of the Will,”’ The Modern Schoolman 72 (1995): 169–174, responding to Dumont’s article, is (like Kenny, ‘Philosophy of Mind’) skeptical of the importance of Scotus’ position. Steven P. Marrone, ‘Revisiting Duns Scotus and Henry of Ghent on Modality,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 175–189, develops a complex picture of the development of Scotus’ thinking in dialogue with Henry of Ghent. The most significant challenge to the general concensus has come from Angel D’Ors, ‘Utrum propositio de futuro sit determinate vera vel falsa (Antonio Andrés and John Duns Scotus),’ in Studies on the History of Logic, ed. Ignacio Angelelli and María Cerezo, Proceedings of the III. Symposium on the History of Logic (Berlin, 1996), 97–112, who argues on the basis of Scotus’ In librum Perihermeneias quaestiones that Scotus always upheld the traditional view of modality and that views to the contrary conflate two contexts of contingency: the contingent as arising from the divine will as cause and the contingency of things in themselves in the world. I am not convinced of the argument, particulary given Scotus’ rejection of the time rule in obligatio (see below). Chris Schabel, Theology at Paris, 1316–1345: Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents (Aldershot, 2000), 80–82, downplays the impact at Paris of Scotus’ views on contingency. 10 See below, pp. 97–101. 11 For Aquinas’ life and works, see James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino: His Life, Thought & Works, (Garden City, N.Y., 1974).

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choosing as they did to accept Scotus’ criticism of Aquinas on questions of modality, the Dominicans chose not so much to reject thirteenthcentury traditions in general as they chose not to follow Aquinas. To anticipate briefly what will receive a more detailed treatment below, Aquinas separated his treatment of the logically possible, which he defined in terms of what God might will, from his treatment of contingent being, which he argued arose within the created order as the result of secondary causes that sometimes failed in their causal efficacy. However, Aquinas did not subject either possibility or contingency to speculative analysis. In his view, the logical possibilities of God’s will ultimately lay beyond human fathoming. Moreover, while the existence of contingent beings required explanation, they were not in themselves very interesting theologically because God’s direct causal activity in creating and sustaining the world functioned perfectly, thus necessarily and not contingently. Speculation about counterfactual possibilities was not of much theological point to Aquinas. Scotus rejected Aquinas’ position. He argued that God’s will, ranging over the logically possible, acted completely contingently in creating the world, thus uniting possibility and contingency in the original act of divine creation. With the exception of God, whatever exists is both contingent and a member of some sub-set of the logically possible. God surveys the sets of logically compatible possibilities and chooses, all in a moment, to create one of them. Because in Scotus’ view God can choose otherwise than he does choose and because what God chooses is thus both logically possible and contingent, Scotus opened the door for counterfactual speculation. Such speculation could provide a new way of analyzing God’s will. God’s will did not seem as inscrutable to him as it had to Aquinas. Scotus’ new modal theory required new methods of analysis, however, and Scotus introduced the ars obligatoria from the Arts curriculum into discussions of contingency in order to assess the consistency of supposed sets of possibilities within theology. Use of the ars obligatoria, a method of counterfactual argumentation, would not have had much utility in Aquinas’ theology. After Scotus, however, as will become clear in the next chapter, the Dominicans not only found the art relevant, but developed a new obligational theology to go with its use. From the perspective of fourteenth-century Dominicans looking back, Aquinas and Scotus defined the before and after in the turn modal theory took around 1300.

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chapter three A. Thomas Aquinas on Modality

Aquinas’ conception of one-sided possibility and its differentiation from impossibility is the place to begin to explicate his modal theory.12 Aquinas took up the question of what is possible in the process of defining divine omnipotence. Because in his view divine omnipotence is the power to do all that is possible,13 establishing what God has the power to do involves discovering just what the term ‘possible’ means. Aquinas attributed two definitions of the term to Aristotle.14 First, he took up Aristotle’s definition of the possible as the power or capacity to act. However, Aquinas noted a consequent theological problem: defining God’s omnipotence as the power to do all that is possible and defining the possible as the power to act would involve a vicious circle—it would amount to saying that God is omnipotent because he can do all that he is able to do.15 In effect, if the possible is understood as a capacity for action, then it is a relative notion, relative to the being that has that capacity. Defining the possible as the power to act could not contribute to understanding the power or capacity any given being, in regard to its being, might have in fact, and it was just such an understanding Aquinas sought. Aquinas thus looked to what he considered Aristotle’s second definition of the possible. Aquinas noted that Aristotle had also defined the possible in relation to predication and the Principle of Non-contra12 What follows is a snap-shot of Aquinas’ views on modality taken mostly from the Summa theologiae. There were subtle developments in Aquinas’ thought, which it does not seem important to highlight here, but for further discussion of Aquinas’ modal theory see Jacobi, ‘Kontingente Naturgeshenisse’; Jalbert, Nécessité et contingence; Knuuttila, ‘The “Statistical” Interpretation,’ and John F. Wippel, ‘Divine Knowledge, Divine Power and Human Freedom in Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library 25 (Dordrecht, 1985), 213–241. 13 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, pars prima, q. 25, art. 3, resp.: ‘Dicendum quod communiter confitentur omnes Deum esse omnipotentem. Sed rationem omnipotentiae assignare videtur difficile. Dubium enim potest esse quid comprehendatur sub ista distributione, cum dicitur “omnia” posse Deum.’ In Summa Theologiae, ed. Thomas Gilby, O.P., vol. 5 (New York, 1967), 162. 14 Aristoteles, Metaphysica 5.12.1019b30–1020a5. 15 Aquinas, ST, pars prima, q. 25, art. 3, resp.: ‘Possibile autem dicitur dupliciter, secundum Philosophum. Uno modo per respectum ad aliquam potentiam… Alio modo absolute, propter ipsam habitudinem terminorum… Si autem dicatur quod Deus sit omnipotens quia potest omnia quae sunt possibilia suae potentiae erit circulatio in manifestatione omnipotentiae; hoc enim non erit aliud quam dicere quod Deus est omnipotens quia potest omnia quae potest.’ In ST 5:162.

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diction. If a predicate in a proposition is compatible with its subject, what that proposition stands for is absolutely possible. If the predicate is incompatible with its subject, then what the proposition stands for is absolutely impossible.16 Whatever is impossible involves a contradiction, and the possible, the opposite of the impossible, is whatever it is not contradictory to do or be. Following the second definition of the possible, Aquinas asserted that God’s omnipotence amounted to the power to do whatever does not involve a contradiction. Possibility is here one-sided. It includes the necessary and the contingent. Contingency is two-sided. To define contingency as opposed to possibility requires differentiation not only from the impossible, but from the necessary as well. Aquinas adopted a version of logical possibility as his definition for one-sided possibility, but when he turned to discussing contingency, he described it and its differentiated necessity in causal terms. Aquinas defined the necessary as what must be, and he divided what must be into what must be by an intrinsic principle and what must be by an extrinsic principle. He further divided the intrinsically necessary into the materially or naturally necessary and the formally or absolutely Aquinas, ST, pars prima, q. 25, art. 3, resp.: Relinquitur igitur quod Deus dicatur omnipotens quia potest omnia possibilia absolute, quod est alter modus dicendi possibile. Dicitur autem aliquid possibile vel impossibile absolute ex habitudine terminorum. Possibile quidem absolute, quia praedicatum non repugnat subjecto, ut Socratem sedere; impossibile vero absolute, quia praedicatum repugnat subjecto, ut hominem esse asinum.’ In ST 5:162. In fact, Aristotle did not develop his second position on possibility in relation to the principle of non-contradiction and a theory of predication, as Aquinas implies here, but in regard to the square of opposition, such that the contrary of the impossible is the necessarily true, and the second kind of possible occurs when it is not necessary that something’s contrary be false. See Metaphysica 5.12.1019b21–30. Also see Thomas Aquinas, In Metaphysicam Aristotelis commentaria, ed. M. -R. Cathala (TurinRome, 1926), 308b, where, commenting on the same passage, Aquinas interprets Aristotle’s text along similar propositional lines: ‘Idem cum dicit “alio modo,” ponit alium modum, quo dicuntur aliqua impossibilia, non propter privationem alicujus potentiae, sed propter repugnantiam terminorum in propositionibus. Cum enim posse dicatur in ordine ad esse, sicut ens dicitur non solum quod est in rerum natura, sed secundum compositionem propositionis, prout est in ea verum vel falsum; ita possibile et impossibile dicitur non solum propter potentiam vel impotentiam rei, sed propter veritatem et falsitatem compositionis vel divisionis in propositionibus.’ Aquinas’ interpretative reading of Aristotle here would be in line with James C. Doig’s contention in Aquinas on Metaphysics: A Historico-doctrinal Study of the Commentary on the Metaphysics (The Hague, 1972), 247–251, that Aquinas’ theory of metaphysics was a theory of predication. I have Alan Code to thank for first pointing out to me the discrepancy between what Aristotle said and what Aquinas’ said that Aristotle said. 16

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necessary. For example, things composed of contraries are of necessity corruptible through material necessity, and three angles of a triangle must necessarily equal two right angles by formal necessity. Aquinas seems to have had in mind here in the case of material or natural necessity that things necessarily have the consequences of what they happen in fact to be and in the case of formal or absolute necessity that things necessarily have the consequences of their definitions. He also divided the extrinsically necessary into what is necessary by reason of an end and what is necessary by reason of an agent. If an end could not be attained without some particular means, then that means was necessary for that end. If some one or thing was forced by some agent to act in some way such that he, she or it could not act otherwise, then the agent imposed necessity on that person or thing, and such necessity by reason of an agent was also called the necessity of coercion.17 A tree of distinctions of the kinds of necessity:

results in an analysis of necessity allied to Aristotle’s four kinds of causality: material, formal, final, and efficient.

17 Aquinas, ST pars prima, q. 82, art. 1, resp.: ‘Dicendum quod necessitas dicitur multipliciter. Necesse est enim quod non potest non esse. Quod quidem convenit alicui, uno modo ex principio intrinseco, sive materiali, sicut cum dicimus quod omne compositum ex contrariis necesse est corrumpi, sive formali, sicut cum dicimus quod necesse est triangulum habere tres angulos aequales duobus rectis. Et haec est necessitas naturalis et absoluta. Alio modo convenit alicui quod non potest non esse ex aliquo extrinseco, vel fine vel agente. Fine quidem, sicut cum aliquis non potest sine hoc consequi aut bene consequi finem aliquem, ut cibus dicitur necessarius ad vitam et equus ad iter. Et haec vocatur necessitas finis, quae interdum etiam utilitas dicitur. Ex agente autem hoc alicui convenit, sicut cum aliquis cogitur ab aliquo agente ita quod non possit contrarium agere. Et haec vocatur necessitas coactionis.’ In ST 11:216–218.

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Aquinas defined contingency and differentiated it from necessity in conjunction with asking whether the will of God imposes necessity on the things it wills.18 He answered that God wills some things to be done necessarily and some contingently. Things are necessary if they have unfailingly necessary causes, while things are contingent if they have fallible contingent causes.19 Causes are contingent if they are indeterminate in regard to outcome,20 but in all other ways are like necessary causes. Thus for Aquinas, contingency entered the world at the level of proximate causes. The contingent effects God willed did not just happen to have fallible proximate causes, however. God gave them such causes in order that they might be contingent.21 Contingent effects did not escape the governance of divine providence.22 In fact, in Aquinas’ view, contingent effects were necessary in order to fulfill the providential order. Because the universe obtains its perfection from the good it contains, it must contain every grade of being appropriate to it if it is to be as perfect as it should be.23 Properly speaking, according to Aquinas, the necessary and the contingent are modes of being.24 In governing the world, divine providence actuates all the appropriate grades of being by preparing necessary causes for some things, which are then necesAquinas, ST, pars prima, q. 19, art. 8. in ST 5:34–38. Aquinas, ST, pars prima, q. 19, art. 8, resp.: ‘Primo quidem, quia effectus alicujus primae causae est contingens propter causam secundam, ex eo quod impeditur effectus causae primae per defectum causae secundae…’ In ST 5:36. 20 Aquinas, ST, pars prima, q. 14, art. 13, resp.: ‘Alio modo potest considerari contingens, ut est in sua causa. Et sic consideratur ut futurum, et ut contingens nondum determinatum ad unum: quia causa contingens se habet ad opposita.’ In Summa Theologiae, ed. Thomas Gornall S.J., vol. 4 (New York, 1964), 46. 21 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 19, art. 8, resp.: ‘Non igitur propterea effectus voliti a Deo eveniunt contingenter quia causae proximae sunt contingentes, sed propterea quia Deus voluit eos contingenter evenire contingentes causas ad eos praeparavit.’ In ST 5:38 Aquinas had in mind in the background Aristotle’s analysis of contingency in Physica 2.5.196b10–197a35 and was anxious to subordinate the Aristotelian apparatus to providential design. 22 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 19, art. 6, resp.: ‘Quod si aliqua causa particularis deficiat a suo effectu, hoc est propter aliquam aliam causam particularem impedientem, quae continetur sub ordine causae universalis. Unde effectus ordinem causae universalis nullo modo potest exire.’ In ST, 5:26. 23 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 22, art. 4, resp.: ‘Post bonitatem autem divinam, quae est finis a rebus separatus, principale bonum in ipsis rebus existens est perfectio universi; quae quidem non esset si non omnes gradus essendi invenirentur in rebus.’ In ST 5:102. 24 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 22, art. 4, ad ob. 3: ‘Et considerandum est quod necessarium et contingens proprie consequuntur ens inquantum huiusmodi. Unde modus contingentiae et necessitatis cadit sub provisione Dei…’ In ST 5:102. 18 19

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sary, and by preparing contingent causes for other things, which are then contingent.25 The Principle of Plenitude thus operates relative to the particular order God has chosen, where it guarantees the presence of both necessary and contingent causes for the measure of perfection appropriate to God’s particular creation. Since providence governs all things within Aquinas’ cosmos, it extends its power even over acts of free choice. As Aquinas wrote, acts of free choice trace to God as to a cause; therefore, everything that happens as a result of the exercise of free choice must be subject to providence.26 Freedom of the will consists in his view not in freedom from the necessity of the end, for in those cases in which there is only one way to achieve an end the will must choose that way in order to achieve its desire. Nor is natural or material necessity incompatible with the will because the will must be what it is, and in being what it is, it must necessarily adhere to its final end, which is happiness. Rather, the will is free because it is free from the necessity of coercion.27 God does not coerce the will to choose the means it chooses to achieve the ends it necessarily desires.28 Even here, however, providence controls the outcome of events because God establishes the conditions under which those who are preordained choose, so that they choose what they must in order to merit their final salvation.29 As Calvin Normore has noted, Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 22, art. 4, resp.: Unde ad divinam providentiam pertinet omnes gradus entium producere. Et ideo quibusdam effectibus praeparavit causas necessarias ut necessario evenirent; quibusdam vero causas contingentes ut evenirent contingenter, secundum conditionem proximarum causarum.’ In ST 5:102. 26 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 22, art. 2, ad ob. 4: ‘Sed quia ipse actus liberi arbitrii reducitur in Deum sicut in causam, necesse est ut ea quae ex libero arbitrio fiunt divinae providentiae subdantur.’ In ST 5:96 27 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 82, art. 1, resp.: ‘Haec igitur coactionis necessitas omnino repugnat voluntati… Necessitas autem finis non repugnat voluntati, quando ad finem non potest perveniri nisi uno modo, sicut ex voluntate transeundi mare fit necessitas in voluntate ut velit navem. Similiter etiam nec necessitas naturalis repugnat voluntati. Quin immo necesse est quod sicut intellectus ex necessitate inhaeret primis principiis, ita voluntas ex necessitate inhaereat ultimo fini, qui est beatitudo.’ In ST 11:218. 28 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 82, art. 1, ad ob. 3: ‘Ad tertium dicendum quod sumus domini nostrorum actuum secundum quod possumus hoc vel illud eligere. Electio autem non est de fine sed de his quae sunt ad finem, ut dicitur in Ethic. Unde appetitus ultimi finis non est de his quorum domini sumus.’ In ST 11:218. 29 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 22, art. 2, ad ob. 4: ‘Hominum autem justorum quodam excellentiori modo Deus habet providentiam quam impiorum, inquantum non permittit contra eos evenire aliquid quod finaliter impediat salutem eorum…’ In ST 5:96. 25

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Aquinas held a compatibilist position in regard to human freedom— freedom of human choice coexists with determinism.30 Human beings are free because they are free from coercion in the choices they make. But because God determines the conditions under which people make their choices, God guarantees that those whom he has predestined will persevere without fail in the works of repentence necessary for their final redemption. To summarize Aquinas’ picture of modality, at least as his Dominican successors would have found it in the Summa theologiae, what is possible is possible because it does not violate the Principle of Noncontradiction. The necessary and the contingent, the two kinds of possible being, arise because of differences in causal efficacy. Necessary causes always produce their effects, whereas contingent causes are fallible and indeterminate in regard to their outcomes. Necessary and contingent beings constitute different kinds of being because their causes are respectively either necessary or contingent. And God’s providence ultimately governs all such causal connections, whether contingent and fallible or necessary and infallible. One result of Aquinas’ views about modality, is that the logically possible on the one hand and the contingent on the other relate variously in his theory to God’s power. If God’s power is considered as absolute, without regard to anything else, it is the power to do all that is possible. However, God’s power may be considered in relation to the choices God makes, and then rather than being understood as absolute, it is understood as ordinate or ordered toward a particular set of choices.31 The possible and God’s absolute power coincide. But God produces both contingent and necessary beings as part of the ordained

30 Calvin G. Normore, ‘Free Will, Foreknowledge, and Counterfactuals,’ unpublished paper (1980); and idem, ‘Compatibilism and Contingency in Aquinas,’ The Journal of Philosophy (1983): 650–652, in which he comments on Norman Kretzmann, ‘Goodness, Knowledge, and Indeterminacy in the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas,’ The Journal of Philosophy (1983): 631–649. Kretzmann does not call Aquinas a ‘compatibilist,’ but points out a number of the necessitarian implications of the Thomist position. See Jeffrey Hause, ‘Thomas Aquinas and the Voluntarists,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 6 (1997): 167–182, for subsequent discussion of this question. 31 For a very helpful overview of the history of the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power see William J. Courtenay, ‘The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library 25 (Dordrecht, 1985), 243– 269; and his recent lengthy treatment, Capacity and Volition: A History of the Distinction of Absolute and Ordained Power (Bergamo, 1990).

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system He chooses to create: ‘God wills some things to be done necessarily, some contingently, so that there be a right order in things for the perfection of the universe.’32 The possible coincides with God’s potentia absoluta. Contingent and necessary being arise within the sphere of God’s potentia ordinata. Aquinas’ assertion that much that happens within God’s providential order happens through necessary causes and that not even contingent causes escape God’s providence, established a world where everything is ultimately determined.33 Contingency occurs in relation to proximate effects, arising because a particular contingent cause may have more than one outcome, but the outcomes that do result are those God intends as part of his ordered design. If Aquinas had believed the possible were coterminous with the actual, then his determinist outlook would have been determinate indeed. However, in his view God is not bound by any necessity of his nature to do the things he chooses to do.34 Although no other order would be good or appropriate for the things that God has created, God could have created other things in a different world and imposed a different order on them.35 Aquinas asserted, however, that questions about why God chose to create this world rather than another are unintelligible. As he stated: When we speak of bringing into being the whole universe, we cannot find anything beyond what is created from which to take the reason why Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 19, art. 8, resp.: ‘Vult autem quaedam fieri Deus necessario, quaedam contingenter, ut sit ordo in rebus ad complementum universi.’ In ST 5:38. 33 Aquinas, ST, prima pars q. 22, art. 2, resp.: ‘Sed necesse est dicere omnia divinae providentiae subjacere, non in universali tantum sed etiam in singulari. … Causalitas autem Dei, qui est primum agens, se extendit usque ad omnia entia, non solum quantum ad principia speciei sed etiam quantum ad individualia principia, non solum incorruptibilium sed etiam corruptibilium. Unde necesse est omnia quae habent quocumque modo esse ordinata esse a Deo in finem…’ In ST 5:92. 34 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 19, art. 4, resp.: ‘Cum igitur esse divinum non sit determinatum, sed contineat in se totam perfectionem essendi, non potest esse quod agat per necessitatem naturae…’ In ST 5:18. 35 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 25, art. 5, ad ob. 3. ‘Ad tertium dicendum quod licet iste cursus rerum sit determinatus istis rebus quae nunc sunt, non tamen ad hunc cursum limitatur divina sapientia et potestas. Unde, licet istis rebus quae nunc sunt, nullus alius cursus esset bonus et conveniens, tamen Deus posset alias res facere, et alium eis imponere ordinem.’ In ST 5:174. Also see Quaestiones disputatae et quaestiones duodecim quodlibetales I, De potentia Dei, q. 1, art. 3: ‘Ad octavum dicendum, quod ars Dei non solum se extendit ad ea quae facta sunt, sed ad multa alia. Unde quando in aliquo mutat cursum naturae non propter hoc contra artem suam facit.’ Ed. Raymundi M. Spiazzi (Turin-Rome, 1942), 10a-b; and ibid. art. 5, 13a–16a. 32

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it is such and such; whence, since one cannot take the reason for the disposition of the universe, either from considering divine power, which is infinite, or from considering divine goodness, which lacks nothing, it is necessary to take the reason for it from the simple will of the producer …36

The Principle of Sufficient Reason did not at the ultimate remove apply to God’s act of creation. As Amos Funkenstein noted in regard to this passage, any world God might make would be a world created through his ordinate power. After asking about the presence of contradiction, which sets a limit even on God’s absolute power, all questions about order are asked within some ordinate frame of reference. It is impossible to achieve some ultimate point of perspective from which to ask general questions about the particular order of creation, about why this order rather than that. God’s act of creation ultimately precedes every such non-contradictory order and is thus necessarily an arbitrary act.37 The distinction between God’s absolute realm of possible choice and the more limited set of choices he has chosen to instantiate means that the modal categories of necessary and possible are divisible into absolute and relative kinds. We have seen how absolute possibility pertains to God’s omnipotence and how contingent possibility pertains to the created order. Aquinas made a similar distinction regarding what is necessary. He noted that the term ‘necessary’ may attach to something absolutely, as it is necessary that human beings be animals, because the predicate forms part of the definition of the subject. Similarly it is necessary that a number be either odd or even because the subject forms part of the notion of the predicate.38 What is true by definition is absolutely necessary and necessary in a way that would preclude even God’s power to change it. Because the Principle of Non-contradiction is at 36 Aquinas, De potentia q. 3, art. 17, resp.: ‘Cum autem de toto universo loquimur educendo in esse, non possumus ulterius aliquod creatum invenire ex quo possit sumi ratio quare sit tale vel tale; unde, cum nec etiam ex parte divinae potentiae quae est infinita, nec divinae bonitatis, quae rebus non indiget, ratio determinatae dispositionis universi sumi possit, oportet quod ejus ratio sumatur ex simplici voluntate producentis …’ Ed. Spiazzi, 103b. 37 Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Senventeenth Century (Princeton, 1986), 131–132. Also see Kretzmann, ‘Goodness, Knowledge, and Indeterminacy,’ 631–652. 38 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 19, art. 3, resp.: ‘Dicendum quod necessarium dicitur aliquid dupliciter, scilicet absolute et ex suppositione. Necessarium absolute judicatur aliquid ex habitudine terminorum, utpote quia Praedicatum est in definitione Subjecti, sicut necessarium est hominem esse animal, vel quia Subjectum est de ratione Praedicati, sicut est necessarium numerum esse parem vel imparem.’ In ST 5:12.

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stake, God’s absolute power operates within the limits of such necessity, so that absolute necessity is (to supply a term from the Anselmian tradition) antecedent to the will of both God and creature.39 But something might not be absolutely necessary and yet still necessary in a sense. For example, while it is not necessary that Socrates sit, it is necessary that given that he is sitting, Socrates must necessarily sit while he sits. Aquinas termed this second kind of necessity (recognizable as Boethius’ ‘conditional necessity’ and Anselm’s ‘consequent necessity’)40 the ‘necessity of supposition.’ Suppositional necessity starts with the supposition of a case: if it is the case that … then necessarily it is the case that … In the example, suppositional necessity coincides with the necessity of the present, but this necessity exists only under a prior condition that is itself not necessary.41 Thus suppositional necessity is (again to use an Anselmian term) consequent necessity, necessity consequent on the prior condition. In Aquinas’ view, events that are now past are also necessary, but, unlike present events, absolutely necessary since it would now involve a contradiction to make them to have been other than they were.42 39 The distinction between antecedent and consequent necessity has its origin in Anselm, who discusses it in Cur Deus Homo II, chap. 17: ‘Est namque necessitas praecedens, quae causa est ut sit re; et est necessitas sequens, quam res facit. Praecedens et efficiens necessitas est, cum dicitur caelum volvi, quia necesse est ut volvatur; sequens vero et quae nihil efficit sed fit, est cum dico te ex necessitate loqui, quia loqueris. Cum enim hoc dico, significo nihil facere posse, ut dum loqueris non loquaris, non quod aliquid te cogat ad loquendum. Nam violentia naturalis conditionis cogit caelum volvi, te vero nulla necessitas facit loqui.’ In Opera omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1968), 2:125, ll. 8–14. Also see De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae dei cum libero arbitrio, q. 1, art. 2, and q. 2, art. 2, Opera omnia, 1,2:262, ll. 1–2, and ibid. 247, ll. 6–250, l. 11. 40 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio, 5.6.27: ‘Duae sunt etenim necessitates, simplex una, veluti quod necesse est omnes homines esse mortales, altera condicionis, ut si aliquem ambulare scias eum ambulare necesse est.’ ed. Ludovicus Bieler, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 94 (Turnholt, 1957), 103, ll. 91–94. And see Aristotles, Physica 2.9.199b34–35. J.M.M.H. Thijssen, ‘Buridan and Nicholas of Autrecourt on Causality and Induction,’ Traditio 43 (1987): 237–255, has an interesting discussion of the uses of suppositional necessity in late medieval thought. 41 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 19, art. 3, resp.: ‘Sic autem non est necessarium Socratem sedere. Unde non est necessarium absolute, sed potest dici necessarium ex suppositione; supposito enim quod sedeat, necesse est eum sedere dum sedet.’ In ST 5:12. 42 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 14, art. 13, ob. 2: ‘Hujus autem conditionalis antecedens est necessarium absolute: tum quia est aeternum; tum quia significatur ut praeteritum.’ In ST 4:46, where he poses the absolute necessity of the past. In his reply to the objection, Aquinas responds without criticizing the basic premiss that past events are absolutely necessary.

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Past events, after the fact, become necessary antecedent to any of God’s subsequent enactments and are thus, from then on, binding, even upon God. Yet the necessity that comes with determinate being, whether past or present, is relative to God’s initial ordination that freely and out of no necessity decreed that being’s existence in the first place. To set up a scale, the absolute necessity that arises from definitions is not in any sense relative. The necessity that comes with some event being in the past is now absolute, but once was relative to a prior ordination. The necessity that attaches to the present is not absolute but relative to a prior condition. Thus the necessity of the present is unlike either the necessity of the past or simple necessity. It is not absolute but conditional. For Aquinas, logical possibility, the sphere of true indeterminacy, is appropriate to God considered only prior to the instantiation of His willed creation. Within creation, possibility became relative to God’s ordained system, confined within the limits of the particular necessary and contingent causes God chose to perfect the created order. Since the Principle of Sufficient Reason fails in regard to God’s creative act, even though there are many, even infinite, possibilities God did not choose to create, questions about such counterfactual possibilities are not of much point. Nor is counterfactual speculation of much moment in regard to the contingent events of the ordained system. Since all such events are part of God’s providential design, the important focus for a theologian is on what is actually the case. What is the case offers information about God’s purposes, whereas speculation about what might have happened differently does not.

B. The Fourteenth Century Reaction The origins of Dominican discontent with Aquinas’ views must remain a matter of conjecture. Their extant texts do not contain direct criticism of Aquinas’ modal theory. And yet absent from their works are the Thomist analysis of necessity and contingency according to Aristotelian causal theory, the Thomist emphasis on providence and its allied compatibilism, the Principle of Plenitude, and other hallmarks of Aquinas’ system. Instead, the Oxford Dominicans of the 1320’s and 1330’s focused on logical possibility, the possibility coterminious with God’s absolute power, as well as on its relation to the actually ordained system, as the points of reference for their theological investigations. In

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so doing, they participated in the general trend of fourteenth-century thought,43 but more importantly they were among those who shaped that trend at an early point in its development. As noted, John Duns Scotus is usually credited with setting modal theory on a new direction at the turn of the century.44 There is as yet no consensus, however, about how to characterize Scotus’ accomplishment. Simo Knuuttila, Klaus Jacobi, and Calvin Normore have contributed recent suggestions.45 Knuuttila has argued that Scotus developed a theory comparable to modern ‘possible worlds’ theories of modality in opposition to the ‘statistical model’ of modality Knuuttila believes constituted the dominant medieval modal theory from Boethius through Aquinas.46 The statistical model, originally the basis for Jaako Hintikka’s interpretation of Aristotelian modal theory,47 begins with an absolutist view of the Principle of Plenitude: that no genuine 43 Normore, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ 7–8; Courtenay, ‘Dialectic of Omnipotence,’ 254–258; John E. Murdoch, ‘Philosophy and the Enterprise of Science in the Later Middle Ages,’ in The Interaction Between Science and Philosophy, ed. Yehuda Elkana (New York, 1974), 51–74. For a useful parallel assessment of Aquinas and the reaction of Scotus from the perspective of divine knowledge, see M.J.F.M. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought (Leiden, 1993), 172–179, 182–184. 44 See note 9 above. Also see Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York, 1955), 460–451, 465–466; idem, Jean Duns Scot: Introduction à ses positions fondamentales (Paris, 1944), 306–343, who stresses the points of agreement between Scotus and Aquinas, and cf. van der Lecq, ‘William Heytesbury on “Necessity,”’ who argues against the pervasiveness of Scotus’ influence. See chapter six, note 74, for a discussion of that argument. 45 Knuutila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 217–234; Jacobi, ‘Statements about Events,’ 96– 97, 106–107; Calvin G. Normore, ‘Future Contingents,’ in CHLMP, 367–369; idem, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ 6–9; Alanen and Knuuttila, ‘Modality in Descartes,’ 32–40. Neil Lewis also has an interesting comparison of Scotus’ theory of modality with that of Grosseteste in his ‘Foundations for Modal Theory.’ 46 Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 163–217. The suggestion that Scotus’ views are comparable to modern ‘possible worlds’ theories occurs in Alanen and Knuuttila, ‘Foundations of Modality,’ 34. Douglas C. Langston, God’s Willing Knowledge: The Influence of Scotus’ Analysis of Omniscience (University Park, PA, 1986), has criticized Knuuttila’s view, but see Knuuttila, ‘Duns Scotus and the Foundations,’ 131–132, for his response. Also see Normore, ‘Duns Scotus’s Modal Theory,’ 154–155, for an evaluation. For other medieval ‘possible worlds’ theories, see Mary A. Pernoud, ‘Tradition and Innovation in Ockham’s Theory of the Possibility of Other Worlds,’ Antonianum 48 (1973): 209–233; and Armand Maurer, ‘Ockham on the Possibility of a Better World,’ Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976): 291–312. 47 Jaako Hintikka, Time and Necessity, 93–113; idem with U. Remes and Simo Knuuttila, Aristotle on Modality and Determinism, Acta Philosophica Fennica 29.1 (Amsterdam, 1977); idem, ‘Gaps in the Great Chain of Being: An Exercise in the Methodology of the History of Ideas,’ in Reforging the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theories, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Synthese Historical Library 20 (Dordrecht, 1981), 1–17.

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possibility can remain forever unrealized. To the Principle of Plenitude is then added the Principle of the Necessity of the Present: that every event when it occurs is considered necessary in the sense that what is when it is, is necessary that it is. Since all events are necessary when they occur, the possibility that any given event might not occur cannot coincide with its happening but is ascribed to some other time. Because to be contingent means to be possible to be and possible not to be (whatever always is the case is necessary and whatever never is the case is impossible), the idea of the necessity of the present means that possibilities unfold over time. Indeed, if some event is contingent, its contradictory opposite must at some other time occur in order to satisfy the Principle of Plenitude. However, such an approach renders any temporally indexed proposition a necessary proposition, raising the specter of Megarian fatalism. To avoid a fatalistic outcome, propositions in the statistical model are treated as atemporal, eternal entities that go from being true to being false and back again if they signify contingent events, but remain always true or always false if they signify what is necessary or impossible.48 Whether or not Aquinas’ accepted the statistical theory is a critical matter for the history of Dominican views about modality. Did later Dominicans reject Aquinas’ views on modality because his theory incorporated a discredited statistical model? Knuuttila ascribes the statistical model to Aquinas largely on the basis of Aquinas’ third proof for the existence of God and on his acceptance of the necessity of the present.49 In Aquinas’ third way, Aquinas noted: ‘It is impossible for all 48

Hintikka’s thesis has come in for much criticism, and alternative views about Aristotle’s modal theory currently prevail. See M.M. Mulhern, ‘Aristotle on Universality and Necessity,’ Logique et analyse, n. s. 12 (1969): 288–299; Martha Kneale’s review of Time and Necessity in Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1974): 367–370; Jonathan Barnes’ review of Time and Necessity in Journal of Hellenic Studies 97 (1977): 183–186; Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame, 128–135; G.H. von Wright, ‘Time, Truth, and Necessity,’ in Intention and Intentionality: Essays in Honour of G.E.M. Anscombe, ed. C. Diamond and J. Teichman (Brighton, 1979), 237–250; R.M. Dancy, ‘Aristotle and the Priority of Actuality,’ in Reforging the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theories, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Synthese Historical Library 20 (Dordrecht, 1981), 105–106; Gerhard Seel, Die Aristotelische Modaltheorie, Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie 16 (Berlin, 1982), 233–256; Jeroen van Rijen, Aspects of Aristotle’s Logic of Modalities, Synthese Historical Library 35 (Dordrecht, 1989), 59–129; J. Vuillemin, Nécessité au contingence, 27–49; Sara Waterlow, Passage and Possibility: A Study of Aristotle’s Modal Concepts (Oxford, 1982). 49 Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 208–217; Hintikka, ‘Gaps,’ 1–2, also cites Aquinas’ third way as evidence for his adopting the statistical model. But cf. the discussion in Manekin, ‘Problems of “Plenitude,”’ 183–194.

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things to be [generable and corruptible], for what can not exist, at some time does not exist. Therefore, if everything can not exist, at some time nothing existed.’50 Knuuttila interprets this passage to mean that if it is possible for something not to exist, by definition of what it means to be possible that thing must at some time not exist.51 But the structure of Aquinas’ argument does not necessarily sustain so much. His argument is enthymatic, containing several unexpressed premisses: 1. If there were no first cause, then the world would be eternal and there would be an infinite amount of time in which things could begin and cease to be. 2. Over an infinite amount of time, what is possible to happen, will happen.52 Thus if it were possible for a gap to occur in the chain of causes, over an infinite span of time a gap would have occurred, making it impossible to sustain a chain of corruptible beings for an infinite amount of time. Starting with the initial premiss that there is no first necessary being that causes everything else and sustains it in being, Aquinas’ proof developed in the form of a reductio ad adsurdum. But Aquinas did not in fact believe that the world was of infinite duration. Thus there was no reason for him to believe that all possibilities were in fact instantiated. Nor did he believe that God had or would create everything that he might create. Given an infinite amount of time, Aquinas’ believed that all possibilities would be realized, but, in distinction from the statistical theory, in his view the definition of possibility did not reside in such instantiation. Because not all possibilities are in fact instantiated 50 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 2, art. 3, resp.: ‘Impossibile est autem omnia quae sunt, talia esse, quia quod possibile est non esse quandoque non est. Si igitur omnia sunt possibilia non esse aliquando nihil fuit in rebus.’ In ST 2:14. 51 Hintikka, ‘Gaps,’ 1–2; Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 214–217. Knuuttila notes that Aquinas did not believe that all of God’s possibilities are realized, but he downplays the importance of this aspect of Aquinas’ thought on the grounds that Aquinas believed human beings unable to know what God might have done differently. This disclaimer does not seem sufficient, however, to attribute the statistical model of modality to Aquinas. If what Knuuttila means to say is that Aquinas thought all of the possibilities of this world are realized, but not all possible possibilities, and if possibles are understood only to pertain to kinds of beings, he would approximate Aquinas’ view, but such a position is not equivalent to the statistical model of modality in which either all possible beings are necessarily realized or in which all logical possibilities whatever are realized. 52 Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways: Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Proof of God’s Existence (Notre Dame, 1969), 46–69, provides an alternative interpretation of the Tertia via.

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and the term ‘possibility’ still retains meaning, its meaning must ultimately derive from something other than instantiation, and as is clear from Aquinas’ discussion of God’s omnipotence, he believed possibility consists in whatever does not include a contradiction.53 As for Aquinas’ acceptance of the necessity of the present, the other leg of Knuuttila’s argument, as Klaus Jacobi has contended and as will become evident below in regard to Scotus and the Oxford Dominicans, the idea of the necessity of the present is consonant with views about modality other than the statistical theory.54 While there are passages in Aquinas’ works compatible with the statistical interpretation of modality, they do not provide sufficient reason to ascribe it to him, particularly since in other passages, as Jacobi has shown, Aquinas seems expressly to warn against such an extensional definition of modal terms in relation to their a posteriori occurrence, and to favor an intensional definition that has reference to the natures of things.55 Explanations that do not imply Aquinas’ having accepted the statistical theory can account for his statements that seem consistent with the statistical theory. What is true for Aquinas, Jacobi has argued, was also true for the others whom Knuuttila has identified as proponents of the statistical model. Thus Jacobi doubts that the statistical model constituted much of a current within the tradition.56 Whatever motivated Scotus to develop his modal theory, it would not, in Jacobi’s view, have been a negative reaction to proponents of the statistical model. Instead, Jacobi suggests that Scotus developed his position on modality while reconsidering divine causality.57 While this contention seems right, identifying the context in which Scotus unfolded his new conceptions about modality and specifying exactly how his theory of modality constituted a new direction inaugurating fourteenth-century views are two different tasks. Where Jacobi concerned himself with the first, Calvin Normore See pp. 90–91 above. Jacobi, ‘Statements about Events,’ 94–97. 55 Jacobi, ‘Statements about Events,’ 91–92; idem, ‘Kontingente Naturgeschehnisse,’ 3–70. Aquinas, In Perihermenias, I.1, XIV, n. 183, p. 25. 56 Jacobi, ‘Statements about Events,’ 85–94. Unfortunately, Jacobi does not address the texts in detail but offers an all-purpose alternative reading of medieval modality to raise doubts about Hintikka’s and Knuuttila’s theory. See John Marenbon, ‘Abelard’s Concept of Possibility,’ Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi: Studien zur Geschichte des Philosophie der Mittelalters, ed. Burkhard Mojsisch and Olaf Pluta, vol. 2 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991), 595–609, for Abelard. 57 Jacobi, ‘Statements about Events,’ 107. 53 54

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has taken up the second. Normore has suggested that a rejection of the necessity of the present differentiated Scotus from his thirteenthcentury predecessors and provided the starting point for subsequent fourteenth-century investigations of modality.58 To assess the validity of these various claims one must turn to Scotus himself. In order to account for contingency, Scotus argued, since every secondary cause causes in the same way it is moved by the first cause, the first cause must itself be able to serve as a contingent cause of events. Contingency could not arise at the level of proximate causes unless contingent first causes caused them.59 Scotus’ argument forced those puzzling over questions of free will and contingency to look beyond the proximate causes of the ordained world to examine absolute possibility as the source of all contingency. Nor did Scotus believe, as Aquinas had, that such an examination would be a futile pursuit of will-o-the-wisps into divine mystery.60 He believed that the divine will must constitute the source of contingency and developed a theory of the will’s simultaneous capacity for opposites to account for contingent effects. Scotus recognized two kinds of contingency and possibility. One roughly corresponded to the contingency or possibility of the statistical model. It occurred when the will was successively borne toward opposite objectives and was a consequent of the mutability of the will and of the world. The will exhibited the contingency of its choices and the world exhibited the contingency of its events through their mutability. 58 Normore, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ 6–7. For a general overview of Scotus’ position on contingency, also see William Lane Craig, ‘John Duns Scotus on God’s Foreknowledge and Future Contingents,’ FcS 47 (1987): 98–122, and Allan B. Wolter, ‘Scotus’ Paris Lectures on God’s Knowledge of Future Events,’ in The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams (Ithaca, 1990), 285–333. 59 John Duns Scotus, De Primo Principio 4.15: ‘Item tertio sic: Aliquid causatur contingenter; ergo prima causa contingenter causat; igitur volens causat. Probatio primae consequentiae: Quaelibet causa secunda causat inquantum movetur a prima; ergo si prima necessario movet, quaelibet necessario movetur et quidlibet necessario causatur. Probatio secundae consequentiae: Nullum est principium contingenter operandi nisi voluntas vel concomitans voluntatem, quia quaelibet alia agit ex necessitate naturae, et ita non contingenter.’ In A Treatise on God as First Principle, ed. and trans. Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. (Chicago, 1966), 83. Also see Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5, no. 35 in Opera omnia, 17:489, ll. 12–24; and Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 218. 60 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 12, art. 8, resp.: ‘Dicendum quod intellectus creatus videndo divinam essentiam non videt in ipsa omnia quae facit Deus vel facere potest. … Nullus igitur intellectus creatus videndo Deum potest cognoscere omnia quae Deus facit vel potest facere; hoc enim esset comprehendere ejus virtutem.’ In ST 3:28.

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Propositions like ‘a white thing can be black’ that connote such mutability are de possibili in this way. However, this kind of contingency and possibility were not the kind Scotus regarded of greatest importance. Rather he regarded a contingency and possibility he termed logical, in which a power or possibility for opposites existed all in one moment, as key to understanding the source of contingency in the world.61 Scotus’ began his argument with a hypothetical example:62 suppose that there is some will, which exists only for a single instant, and that during that instant the will freely wills to do some x. If that will is truly contingent, then it must also be able to will not to do x, since what is contingent is open to more than one outcome.63 The difficulty is that if such a will exists for only one instant, there will be no time in which it could will some other action than the one it does will. If the present is really as closed to possibility as those supposed it to be who accepted 61 John Duns Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Dico quod duplex contingentia et duplex possibilitas consequitur istam libertatem; non enim est libertas in voluntate nostra ut simul velit opposita obiecta, quia non sunt terminus simul unius potentiae, — sed ex hoc quod habet libertatem ad actus oppositos, respectu obiectorum oppositorum consequitur duplex possibilitas et contingentia: Una contingentia et possibilitas, ut voluntas successive feratur in obiecta opposita: et haec possiblitas et contingentia consequitur eius mutabilitatem. Et secundum hanc possibilitatem distinguuntur propositiones de possibili quae fiunt de extremis contrariis et oppositis, ut “album potest esse nigrum”… Sed adhuc illam libertatem voluntatis consequitur alia potentia, quae est logica (cui etiam correspondet potentia realis). Potentia logica non est aliqua nisi quando extrema sic sunt possibilia quod non sibi invicem repugnant sed uniri possunt… Haec autem possibilitas logica non est secundum quod voluntas habet actus successive, sed in eodem instanti: nam in eodem instanti in quo voluntas habet unum actum volendi, in eodem et pro eodem potest habere oppositum actum volendi …’ In Opera omnia, ed. Charles Balic, vol. 17 (Vatican City, 1956), 494, ll. 5–495, l. 4. 62 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, a. 1–5: ‘… ut si ponitur quod voluntas tantum habeat esse per unum instans et quod in illo instanti velit aliquid, tunc successive non potest velle et nolle, et tamen pro illo instanti et in illo instanti in quo vult a, potest nolle a, nam velle pro illo instanti et in illo instanti non est de essentia ipsius voluntatis nec est eius passio naturalis; igitur consequitur ipsam per accidens. Sed oppositum “accidentis per accidens” non repugnat subiecto pro aliquo instanti; et ideo voluntas volens a in hoc instanti et pro hoc instanti, potest nolle a in eodem et pro eodem. Et est haec possibilitas logica respectu extremorum non repugnantium.’ In Opera omnia 17:495, ll. 4– 14. And see Lewis, ‘Power and Contingency,’ 212–213, who shows that Grosseteste used a very similar example. 63 Scholastics distinguished three kinds of contingency: if a contingent cause produced its effect in most cases, it was a causa ut in pluribus, if a contingent cause produced its effect only in a few cases, it was a causa ut in paucioribus or ut in raro, and if a contingent cause was indifferent to outcome, producing its effect fifty percent of the time, it was considered a causa ad utrumlibet. Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 209–210, discusses this distinction in regard to Siger of Brabant and Aquinas.

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the Aristotelian principle that everything that is, necessarily is when it is,64 then such an instantaneous will would not have the free will to will otherwise than it does. To be free, that will must be able to will to do x and will not to do x at the same time. As Normore has suggested, so much for the necessity of the present.65 The difficulty, however, is that if any will could actually will to do x and will not to do x at one and the same time, that would seem to allow contradictory predicates to be predicated of such a will in violation of the Principle of Non-contradiction. To avoid this difficulty: both to preserve the first principle and at the same time to allow for the will’s contingent causality, Scotus posed non-temporal, logical ‘moments’ or ‘instants of nature’ in God. In the first such moment consequent on God’s knowing himself, God’s intellect, produces intelligible beings (esse intelligible) that serve as objects of His understanding. In the second such moment, those beings exhibit possibility. If no necessity attaches to them per se, and if no contradiction would result from posing their existence or non-existence—eliminating any existential necessity or impossibility that would compromise their contingency, they are possible. It is just such possible beings (esse possibile) over which Scotus believed divine omnipotence has its range—the range of God’s absolute power.66 Thus for Scotus, logical possibility is coterminous both with God’s absolute power and with contingency, and like contingency, it too is two-sided. During the second instant of nature God recognizes some beings as possible. But not all possible beings are compatible one with another. Not all combinations of possible beings are possible. The various contradictions that would result from such impossible combinations place limits on God’s power as an agent to enact them.67 As Knuuttila has Aristotles, De interpretatione 1.9.19a23–24. Normore, ‘Divine omniscience,’ 7, and idem, ‘Future Contingents,’ in CHLMP, 368–369. 66 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 43, q. unica: ‘… tamen per ipsam potentiam “sub ratione qua est omnipotentia” non habet obiectum quod sit primo possibile, sed per intellectum divinum, producentem illud primo in esse intelligibili, et intellectus non est formaliter potentia activa qua Deus dicitur omnipotens; et tunc res producta in tali esse ab intellectu divino—scilicet intelligibili—in primo instanti naturae, habet se ipsa esse possibile in secundo instanti naturae, quia formaliter non repugnat sibi esse et se ipso formaliter repugnat sibi habere esse necessarium ex se (in quibus duobus stat tota ratio omnipotentiae, correspondens rationibus potentiae activae).’ In Opera omnia 6:358, ll. 7– 16. And see Lewis, ‘Power and Contingency,’ 210, for a discussion of the origins of this device in Erigena and Grosseteste. 67 Scotus, Ordinatio, I, d. 43, q. unica: ‘Est ergo ibi iste processus, quod sicut Deus suo intellectu producit possibile in esse possibili, ita producit duo entia formaliter 64 65

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put it, for Scotus ‘possibilities are classified into equivalence classes on the basis of relations of compossibility.’68 He and Lilli Alanen suggest that within the second instant of nature, these equivalence classes are similar to the ‘possible worlds’ of modern modal theory.69 The third moment occurs in God’s will when he chooses among the various possible compossibilities and enacts one of them, making some possible world the actual world.70 Finally, after the will makes its determinate choice, the divine intellect apprehends the truth or falsity of the various propositions that it had first presented to the will in a fashion neutral as to truth, and this happens because the will having acted, the divine essence immediately represents the truth of that enactment to the divine understanding.71 In this way God knows the determinate truth of all future contingents. (utrumque in esse possibili), et illa “producta” se ipsis formaliter sunt incompossibilia, ut non possint simul esse unum, neque aliquid tertium ex eis; hanc autem incompossiblitatem, quam habent, formaliter ex se habent, et principiative ab eo—aliqo modo— qui ea produxit. Et istam incompossibilitatem eorum sequitur incompossibilitas totius figmenti, includentis ea, et ex ista impossibilitate figmenti in se et ex incompossibilitate partium suarum est incompossibilitas eius respectu cuiuscumque agentis; et ex hoc habet compleri totus processus impossibilitatis rei, quasi ultimus gradus incompossibilitatis vel impossibilitatis sit negatio respectus ad quodcumque agens.’ In Opera omnia 6:359, ll. 11–360, l. 4. And see Knuuttila, ‘Duns Scotus and the Foundations,’ 134–140, for an important discussion of the implications of such limits. 68 Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 232. The impact of Scotus’ analysis in terms of incompossibilities is evident in the work of his follower Francis of Mayronnes (see Rossini, ‘Scientia Dei conditionata,’ 287–322) and in Jean Buridan (see Knuuttila, ‘Buridan and Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic,’ 484–486). 69 Alanen and Knuuttila, ‘Foundations of Modality,’ 34. 70 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Et huic possibilitati logicae correspondet potentia realis, nam omnis causa praeintelligitur suo effectui,—et ita voluntas in illo instanti in quo elicit actum volendi, praecedit natura volitionem suam…’ In Opera omnia 17:495, ll. 15–18. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 177–179, contributes an interesting analysis of how Scotus’ views on ‘instants of nature’ affected his analysis of God’s knowledge of creation. 71 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Ideo potest aliter sic dici, et forte melius, quod quando voluntas determinavit se ad unam partem, tunc illud habet rationem factibilis et producibilis,—et tunc intellectus non per hoc quod videt determinationem voluntatis, videt illam complexionem, sed essentia sua sibi est immediata ratio repraesentandi tunc illam complexionem.’ In Opera omnia 17:501, ll. 9–14. And see the discusions in Allan B. Wolter, ‘God’s Knowledge: A Study in Scotistic methodology,’ in Via Scoti: Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, ed. Leonardo sileo, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale, vol. 1 (Rome, 1995), 165–182; Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, ‘Scotus and the Scotist School. The Tradition of Scotist Thought in the Medieval and Early Modern Period,’ in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the third Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 202–204

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As Normore has noted,72 Scotus’ ‘instants of nature’ constituted a fundmentally different way of viewing God’s relationship to time than the perspectival view of Boethius and Aquinas. According to the Boethian tradition of eternity, God surveys all moments of past, present and future time as equally present. From God’s perspective, there is no ontological difference among events that arises because of the arrow of time. Time is an artifact of human, not divine, understanding.73 Scotus criticized such a view on the grounds that there was nothing past or future for God’s knowledge to be about.74 Rather, Scotus argued, God knows his creation through his producing will in a single momentous act of knowing and willing that is his present time.75 The second instant of nature in which God surveys all possibilities has the contingent possibility of the temporal future, and the third instant in which God instantiates creation is the actuality of the temporal present. No past exists for God because his will stands logically prior to his creation, whether the events of creation relative to itself are temporally past, present or future, and his creation takes place in a single instantaneous present relative to his will. Thus God knows and wills his creation in a logical order that reverses the temporal arrow of human experience. God knows from the contingent equivalent of the future, to the instantiated present, to a past that does not exist as past for him. Just as the temporal arrow does not ever actually pass over into the future for human beings, so the arrow of logical priority does not ever actually pass over into the past for God. … when it is argued that what crosses over into the past is necessary, it is conceded. And when it is argued that ‘this person was predestined’ crosses over into the past, one should say that this is false: for if our will Normore, ‘Future Contingents,’ in CHLMP, 367. Boethius, Consolatio, book 5, chap. 5: ‘Aeternitas igitur est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio… Quod igitur interminabilis vitae plenitudinem totam pariter comprehendit ac possidet, cui neque futuri quicquam absit nec praeteriti fluxerit, id aeternum esse iure perhibetur idque necesse est et sui compos praesens sibi semper assistere et infinitatem mobilis temporis habere praesentem.’ In CCL 94:101. 74 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Sic est de tempore, quod nihil eius est nisi instans; et ideo licet continue fluat, non erit totum simul respectu aeternitatis… Unde tota causa quare non est cum toto tempore, est quia deficit relatio actualis et entitas alterius extremi, scilicet temporis.’ In Opera omnia 17:507, ll. 16–17, 508, ll. 4–6. 75 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Unde quando intellectus divinus apprehendit “hoc esse faciendum” ante voluntatis actum, apprehendit ut neutram … sed quando per actum voluntatis producitur in esse, tunc est apprehensum ab intellectu divino ut obiectum verum secundum alteram partem contradictionis.’ In Opera omnia 17:493, ll. 5– 9. 72 73

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always had the same volition in the same immobile instant, its volition would not be past but always in act. And so it is in the case of the divine volition, which is always the same; whence, as was said, with the same volition by which he wills that someone be predestined, he can will that the same person be damned for the same instant of eternity. Whence when it is said in the past tense that God predestined, there ‘predestined’ is joined with the ‘now’ of eternity as that ‘now’ coexists with the past.76

The possibility for opposites may without contradiction coincide temporally in the same instant of present time, and the necessity of the past has no purchase on God’s will. In regard to the created order, Scotus indicated that things are contingent not because they are not-necessary or not-everlasting, but 76 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 40, q. unica: ‘… quando arguitur quod illud quod transiit in praeteritum, est necessarium,—concedatur. Et quando arguitur quod “istum praedestinari” transiit in prateritum, dicendum quod hoc falsum est: si enim voluntas nostra semper haberet eandem volitionem in eodem instanti immobili, non esset sua volitio praerita sed semper in actu. Et sic est de volitione divina, quae semper eadem est; unde, sicut dictum est, eadem volitione qua vult aliquem praedestinare, potest velle eundem damnari pro eodem instanti aeternitatis. Unde quod dicitur in praeterito quod Deus praedestinavit, ibi “praedestinavit” copulat “nunc” aeternitatis ut coexsistit “nunc” praeterito.’ In Opera omnia 17:512, ll. 27–513, l. 9. And see Söder, Kontingenz und Wissen, 263–264, who has edited the relevant questions from Scotus’ Paris Reportatio I A, for the comparable passage from Scotus’ Paris lectures: ‘quod actus ille divinus secundum realitatem suam non transiit in praeteritum, sed solum secundum modum suum significandi. Actus enim huius verbi “praedestinavit” est ita praesens modo sicut fuit ab aeterno, sed dicitur praesens in quantum “nunc” aeternitatis in quo Deus cuncta facit, coexistit nostro presenti, et praeteritum in quamtum coexistit nostro praeterito, et ita de futuro—quae non differunt in Deo nisi tantum secundum nostrum modum significandi… [Citing Augustine] “Actus tamen qui, secundum realitatem suam transiit in praeteritum, est necessarius, et propositio scita de eo vera est necessaria absque praeteritione reali actus vel obiecte.” … Dico ergo quod quodlibet est sibi ita novum sibi hodie sicut ab aeterno, quia numquam fuit sibi aliquid novum. Unde si voluntas nostra haberet actum suum in instanti, non magis accipit necessitatem ab illo, sic nec actus divinus nihil necessitatis accipit ex instanti aeternitatis.’ William A. Frank, ‘Duns Scotus on Autonomous Freedom and Divine CoCausality,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 2 (1992), 157, notes the same passage. Normore, ‘Future Contingents,’ 367, argues that this means Scotus views the difference between past, present and future time as an objective difference that exists for God as well as for human beings, but Scotus argues that past and future do not have any objective being at all for God for whom there is only the present instant of his unique act of will. In his, ‘Duns Scotus’s Modal Theory,’ 135–136, Normore has come to see Scotus’ much more as described here, although he finds Scotus’ position on the potential conflict between the necessity of the past from a human perspective and God’s freedom from such necessity in the divine eternal now insufficiently clear. Cf. Adams, William Ockham, 2:1137. David Hunt, ‘Augustine on Theological Fatalism,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5(1996): 24–25, uses the term ‘reverse memory’ to describe a similar interpretation of Augustine.

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because their opposites may be the case whenever those contingent things are the case. Therefore, he suggested, it is better to say that something is ‘contingently caused’ than to say that the thing itself is contingent.77 If P is contingently caused, then P and possibly not P. Since God’s will serves as contingent cause for all of creation, whatever is could also in eternity not be.78 Jacobi seems to be right when he claims that Scotus’ modal theory is grounded in a reassessment of divine (and by extension natural) causality. However, on further examination Normore’s claim that Scotus dispensed with the necessity of the present would seem to need some qualification.79 Scotus discussed the necessity of the present in his early Oxford lectures on the Sentences in Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5. There he analyzed the phrase: ‘Omne quod est, quando est, est necessarium.’ Instead of declaring the statement simply false, as one would expect if Scotus had flatly rejected the necessity of the present, he distinguished two senses of the principle according to composition and division. In the divided sense, the statement is false for it signifies what Scotus dubbed the necessity of the ‘concomitant’: that ‘everything which is, is necessary that it is, when it is’ [omne quod est, quando est, necesse est esse = omne quod est, est necessarium esse quando est]. But the contingent is not necessary when it is.80 No de re necessity of being attaches to any present Scotus, De primo principio, chap. 4.18: ‘Non dico hic contingens quodcumque non est necessarium nec sempiternum, sed cuius oppositum posset fieri quando istud fit. Ideo dixi: “Aliquid contingenter causatur,” non: “Aliquid est contingens.”’ In A Treatise on God as First Principle, 85. Söder, Kontingenz und Wissen, 39–40, 107 and 214, makes a particular point of this, noting that through his move Scotus constitutes the contingent as a real ontological category, not just a lack or a failure to be necessary. It is this ontological status of the contingent, which serves with necessity as a disjunctive ‘passio entis’ for Scotus, that Söder argues grounds the human capacity to understand contingency in a deep sense in Scotus’ metaphysics and ultimately leads to Kant. 78 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Ex hoc apparet quomodo est contingentia in effectu: nam sicut voluntas nostra potest considerari in quantum est prior volitione sua, prout est in actu primo, et habet sic libertatem in actu primo ad actum secundum, ita quod in illo instanti et pro illo instanti quo habet unam volitionem respectu alicuius, potest nolle illud et potest habere actum oppositum,—ita voluntas divina, licet non possit habere actus oppositos (quia voluntas est eadem cum sua volitione), tamen voluntas divina unica volitione vult in aeternitate lapidem esse et potest in aeternitate velle lapidem non esse vel potest nolle lapidem esse, ita quod voluntas divina in quantum est operativa ad intra, et sic prior effectu, potest producere et non producere obiectum…’ In Opera omnia 17:497, ll. 4–15. 79 In personal communication, Normore has indicated his agreement here. 80 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Ad primum dicendum quod haec “omne quod est, quando est, est necessarium,” est distinguenda secundum compositionem et divisionem,—sicut haec “animal currere, si homo currit, est necessarium.” … in sensu divisio77

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thing or event simply because of its actuality. On the other hand, in the composite sense, the statement is true for it only denotes the necessity of ‘concomitance’: ‘that it is necesary “that everything is when it is”’ [omne quod est quando est, necesse est esse = esse necessarium ‘omne esse quando est’].81 Only de dicto necessity is applicable here, but de dicto necessity is permissably granted.82 Subsequently, Scotus prepared an Ordinatio edition of the Oxford Lectura that represents a more considered version of the earlier work. The editors concluded that after Scotus’ death, his followers constructed the parallel Ordinatio question for book I, distinction 39 out of his notes and other works because in the version of the Ordinatio text that Scotus dictated a blank is left in the text where book I, d. 39 would have been. On the basis of an attribution by William of Alnwick, however, Allan Wolter has argued that the version of the question we now have (given as an Appendix in the critical edition) does in fact come directly from Scotus.83 The passages in the Ordinatio version that parallel the Lectura nis falsa, et denotatur necessitas concomitantis sic “omne quod est, quando est, necesse est esse,” et significatur quod “omne quod est, est necessarium esse quando est,”—et hoc falsum est, quia contingens non est necessarium quando est.’ In Opera omnia 17:499, ll. 3–6 and 15–19. Cf. Aristoteles, De interpretatione 1.9.19a23–29. Francis of Meyronnes adopted much the same position: see Rossini, ‘Scientia Dei conditionata,’ 298–299. 81 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Et in sensu compositionis est categorica et vera et tunc denotat necessitatem consequentiae, et est sensus “animal currere si homo currit, est necessarium,” hoc est: haec est necessaria “animal currit si homo currit.” Sensus divisionis est “animal currere, si homo currit, est necessarum”: est tunc hypothetica et falsa, et est sensus “animal currere est necessarium, si homo currit,” et tunc denotat necessitatem consequentis.—Sic in proposito: in sensu compositionis vera, et denotatur necessitas concomitantiae, et est sensus “omne quod est quando est, necesse est esse,” et denotatur esse necessarium “omne esse quando est.” …’ In Opera omnia 17:499, ll. 6– 15. Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 229, Jacobi, ‘Statements about Events,’ 96–97, and Sylwanowicz, Contingent Causality, 30–33, discuss Scotus’ application of the composition and division distinction to this phrase. 82 For the distinction between de dicto and de re applications of modal terms, see Runkle, ‘Medieval Modal Theory.’ 83 The editors of volume six of Scotus’ Opera omnia discuss the attribution of Ordinatio I, d. 38, pars 2 et d. 39, qq. 1–5 (pp. 26*–30*), where they argue that the distinctions are apparently a compilation from Scotus’ notes and the Lectura and Reportatio commentaries on the Sentences, but see Allan Wolter, ‘God’s Knowledge: A Study in Scotistic methodology,’ in Via Scoti: Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internatzionale, ed. Leonardo Sileo, vol. 1 (Rome, 1995), 166, note 5, and idem, ‘Reflections about Scotus’s Early Works,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 53–54. Söder, Kontingenz und Wissen, 4–14, has an excellent discussion of the authenticisy of all three of Scotus’ relevant works, the Lectura, the Ordinatio, and the Paris Reportatio. Because of the problematic status of the Ordinatio, I have treated the Lectura I, d. 39,

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thus at least serve to gloss the text of the Lectura and may well be the work of Scotus himself. The text says that no true sense of the principle: ‘Omne quod est, quando est, est necessarium,’ denotes that something, in the instant in which it is, is simply necessary, but only that it is necessary under a restriction [secundum quid], since such necessity is consistent with the principle that whatever is, is simply contingent, and that consequently its opposite could be the case.84 In these passages of the Lectura and Ordinatio, necessity secundum quid, de dicto, consequentiae and concomitantiae is permissably assigned to the present by the principle ‘omne quod est, quando est, est necessarium,’ but absolute necessity, necessity de re, consequentis and concomitantis is not. Thus Scotus did not deny every sense in which the present is necessary, only some senses. As we have seen, however, the tradition begun with Boethius and continuing through Aquinas did not assign absolute necessity to the present either, but posed necessity of the present only suppositionally, under some supposed set of conditions which themselves are not necessary.85 What differentiates Scotus from his predecessors still remains to be clarified. Scotus’ reassessment of the relations between causality and modality does seem centrally at issue. What Scotus emphasized was not the qq. 1–5 as primary and used the Ordinatio text as commentary. 84 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 38 pars 2 et d. 39 qq. 1–5: ‘Nullus ergo sensus verus huius propositionis denotat quod esse aliquod—in instanti in quod est—sit necessarium, sed tantum quod sit necessarium secundum quid, quando est; cum hoc stat quod in illo instanti in quo est, sit simpliciter contingens, et per consequens quod in illo instanti posset oppositum illius inesse.’ In Opera omnia 6:423, ll. 1–5. In the Paris Reportatio, Scotus developed the argument using more technical grounds for its rejection: ‘Hic dico ad primum quod haec propositio: “Omne quod est, quando est,” etc., potest esse categorica sive temporalis vel hypothetica. Si sit categorica, tunc haec reduplicatio “quando est” non determinat omne, quod est in compositione implicita, sed determinat tantum “esse” et est sensus: “omne quod est quando est,” etc., id est “omne ens quando est, est necessarium vel necessario.” Si autem sit hypothetica, tunc reduplicatio “quando est” est modus determinans compositionem sive praedicatum, et est sensus: “omne ens est necessario quando est.” Si ergo inferas ad propositum, est fallacia secundum quid et simpliciter. Non ergo sensus est secundum intentionem Philosophi: “omne quod est” comparando ad instans in quo est, necessario est, quia haec determinatio “quando est” est distrahens. Et ideo non sequitur: ‘praedicatum cum conditione distrahente praedicatur de subiecto, ergo absque conditione praedicabitur sive simpliciter,“quia,” ex se “secundum quid” non licet infere “simpliciter,” sicut non sequitur: “Si homo currit, necessario animal currit; ergo animal currere est necesse.”’ In Söder, Kontingenz und Wissen 252–253. 85 See pp. 95–96 above. Kenny, ‘Scotus and the Sea Battle,’ 150–152, also discusses Scotus’ treatment of this adage, and Lewis, ‘Power and Contingency,’ 207–208, 214–215, discusses it for Grosseteste and Scotus.

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parallelism of natural necessity and contingency at the level of proximate causes, which Aquinas had asserted, but the way necessity and contingency nest, one within another. As Scotus put it: … there is no simply necessary natural connection of cause and effect in creatures, nor does any second cause cause simply naturally or simply necessarily, but only under a condition [secundum quid]. The first statement is apparent because every effect depends on the first cause. Similarly, no second cause causes its effect unless the first cause acts causally with it, and this happens naturally before the proximate cause causes. The first cause only causes contingently, however, therefore the second cause causes simply contingently, because it depends on the causal action of the first, which is simply contingent. The second statement, concerning secundum quid necessity, is evident because many natural causes cannot in themselves not cause their effects, and therefore there is necessity secundum quid—in regard to them—and not simply: as fire, in itself, cannot not heat, yet it can absolutely not heat if God does not co-operate with it, as is evident, and as appeared in the case of the three boys in the furnace.86

No simple or absolute necessity operates within the ordained causal order because of the potential for God to abrogate the causal chain for his purposes. Thus all natural causality is at most necessary secundum quid. Secundum quid necessity is subordinate to logical possibility. And logical possibility in turn is subordinate to the simple necessity of the Principle of Non-contradiction.87 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 8, pars 2, q. unica: ‘Ad ultimum dico quod nulla est naturalis conexio causae et causati simpliciter necessaria in creaturis, nec aliqua causa secunda causat naturaliter simpliciter vel necessario simpliciter, sed tantum secundum quid. Prima pars apparet, quia quaelibet dependet ab habitudine primae causae ad causatum; similiter, nulla causa secunda causat nisi prima causa concausante causatum eius, et hoc prius naturaliter quam causa proxima causet; prima autem non causat nisi contingenter, ergo secunda simpliciter contingenter causat, quia dependet ab ipsa causatione primi, quae simpliciter contingens est. Secunda pars, scilicet de necessitate secundum quid, patet, quia multae causae naturales, quantum est ex parte earum, non possunt non causare effectus, et ideo necessitas est secundum quid—quantum scilicet est ex parte earum—et non simpliciter: sicut ignis, quantum est ex parte sui, non potest non calefacere, tamen potest absolute non calefacere, Deo non cooperante, sicut apparet, et apparuit de tribus pueris in camino.’ In Opera omnia 4:328, ll. 5–20. 87 Failure to see how secundum quid necessity nests within the contingent frame of the ordained system led Marilyn McCord Adams to question the consistency of Scotus’ and Ockham’s positions on the relation between God’s absolute and ordained power. She attributes an anachronistic theory of natural law to them that would involve God in a contradiction when He produces miracles. See Adams, William Ockham, 2:1190– 1207, and my review in Faith and Philosophy 7 (April, 1990): 246–252. The nesting of modalities could provide a context for developing a logic of iterated modalities: see Knuuttila, ‘Buridan and Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic,’ 485–486, and Peter King, Jean 86

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In Scotus’ modal universe absolute impossibility and necessity set the ultimate outer limits on what must and what cannot occur. Whatever must by definition be the case is absolutely necessary and whatever involves a contradiction is absolutely impossible. God’s omnipotent will, acting as a true power, functions within those constraints, ranging over all contingent possibilities—whatever consistently can and cannot be the case. Everything he chooses to create is simply contingent, because it could have been otherwise. If P is an effect of a contingent cause, then P—and possibly not P. The contingency of P is not compatible with absolute necessity: the necessity that P necessarily is. But the contingency of P is compatible with secundum quid necessity: the necessity that given P, then necessarily P is P. Secundum quid necessity arises subordinate to the contingent sphere. Aquinas separated the ranges of play for possibility and contingency: logical possibility described God’s absolute omnipotent power whereas contingency arose within the created order at the level of proximate causes when causes sometimes failed to produce their effects. Scotus merged possibility and contingency. For him, the first cause, rather than subsequent causes, accounted for contingency. Contingency did not arise from any defect in causal efficacy, but expressed the active possibilites open to the omnipotent first cause.88 Since the causal range of the first cause was equivalent to logical possibility (possibilitas logica), a term Scotus seems to have introduced into the philosophical lexicon,89 the causal continuity between God and creation rendered the contingency of the created order a matter of logical possibility as well. Buridan’s Logic: The Treatises on Supposition and Consequences Synthese Historical Library 27 (Dordrecht, 1985), 80–82. 88 Scotus, Lectura, I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘… dicendum quod “possibile” non est privatio entis nec peccatum, sed est vera passio entis et immediate a Deo sicut necessitas.’ In Opera omnia 17:506, ll. 17–19. Söder, Kontingenz und Wissen, 64, notes that Richard of Middleton pioneered as a critic of Aquinas and Boethius about a decade before Scotus. 89 For the text of Scotus, see note 61 above. Alanen and Knuuttila, ‘Foundations of Modality,’ 35, and Deku, ‘Possibile logicum,’ 15, note that the term is Scotus’ creation. The source for this assertion is the Lexicon scholasticum philosophico-theologicum opera et studio, ed. Mariani Fernandez Garcia (1910), 514. Söder, Kontingenz und Wissen, 94–100 has a considerable discussion, as does Normore, ‘Duns Scotus’s Modal Theory,’ 145–154, of the substance of the position. Also see Vos, ‘The Young Duns Scotus,’ 211–214; Knuuttila, ‘Interpreting Scotus’ Theory,’ 298–301; Lewis, ‘Power and Contingency,’ 205–225, and Ria van der Lecq, ‘Duns Scotus on the Reality of Possible Worlds,’ in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 89– 99. Van der Lecq shows the probable origin for Scotus’ term in Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

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C. Enter the Ars obligatoria The result of Scotus’ reformulation of modal theory was to open the realm of possibility to speculative inquiry and analysis. No longer shrouded in the mists of divine mystery, logical possibility was now subject to reason through analyses of classes of compatible possibilities. While not himself often working out such analyses, Scotus did make available the technical apparatus through which his contemporaries might carry out evaluations of the classes of compatible possibilities that emerged in his modal theory. Scotus had introduced a challange to his theory from the ars obligatoria—a technique of disputation developed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.90 In an obligatio, two disputants, an opponens and 90 A good deal of work has been done recently on the medieval ars obligatoria, but much still remains puzzling about its rules, use and purposes. The place to begin is with the E.J. Ashworth’s bibliographical survey ‘Obligationes Treatises: A Catalogue of Manuscripts, Editions and Studies,’ Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 36 (1994): 118–147. For this study, I have also consulted: Ignacio Angelelli, ‘The Techniques of Disputation in the History of Logic,’ The Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970): 800–815; E.J. Ashworth, ‘The Problems of Relevance and Order in Obligational Disputations: Some Late FourteenthCentury Views,’ Medioevo 7 (1981): 175–183; idem, ‘English Obligationes Texts after Roger Swyneshed: The Tracts beginning “Obligatio est quaedam ars,”’ in The Rise of British Logic, ed. P. Osmund Lewry, Acts of the Sixth European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Toronto, 1983), 309–333; idem, ‘Inconsistency and Paradox in Mediaeval Disputations: A Development of Some Hints in Ockham,’ Franciscan Studies 44 (1984): 129–139; idem, ‘Renaissance Man as Logician: Josse Clichtove (1472–1543) on Disputations,’ History and Philosophy of Logic 7 (1986): 15–29; idem, ed. and trans. Pauli Veneti Logica Magna, Part II. Fascicule 8: Tractatus de Obligationibus, British Academy Classical and Mediaeval Logic Texts (Oxford, 1988); idem, ‘The Obligationes of John Tarteys: Edition and Introduction,’ Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 3/2 (1992): 653–703; idem, ‘Ralph Strode on Inconsistency in Obligational Disputations,’ in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrecten Folgerns, ed. Klaus Jacobi (Leiden, 1993), 363–386; idem, ‘Autour des “Obligationes” de Roger Swyneshed: la nova responsio.’ Les Études philosphiques (1996): 341–360; E.P. Bos, John of Holland: Four Tracts on Logic (Suppositiones, Fallaciae, Obligationes, Insolubilia), Artistarium 5 (Nijmegan, 1985); H.A.G. Braakhuis, ‘Albert of Saxony’s De obligationibus: Its Place in the Development of Fourteenth Century Obligational theory,’ in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, ed. Klaus Jacobi, (Leiden, 1993), 323–341; idem, ‘Obligations in Early Thirteenth Century Paris: The Obligationes of Nicholas of Paris(?) (LMs Paris, B.N. lat., 11.412),’ Vivarium 36 (1998): 152–232; Mary Anthony Brown, ‘The Role of the Tractatus de obligationibus in Mediaeval Logic,’ Franciscan Studies 26 (1966): 26–35; L.M. De Rijk, ‘Some Thirteenth Century Tracts on the Game of Obligation,’ Vivarium 12 (1974): 94–123; ibid. 13 (1975): 22–54; ibid., 14 (1976): 26–49; idem, Die mittelalterlichen Traktate De modo opponendi et respondendi, in BGPTM n. s. 17 (Münster, 1980); Angel D’Ors, ‘Sobre el tratado anónimo “De arte Obligatoria” recogido en el MS. 306 del Merton College,’ Philosophica 11

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a respondens, engaged in a highly structured series of proposals and responses designed by the opponens to ensnare the respondens in a contradiction if he could. It began with the opponens offering a positio, that is proposing a statement (positum), which he asked the respondens either (1988): 169–185; idem, ‘Sobre las “Obligationes” de Juan de Holanda,’ Anuario Filosófico 21/2 (1988): 33–70; idem, ‘On Stump’s Interpretation of Burley’s “De Obligationibus,”’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, The Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, ed. S. Knuuttila, R. Työrinoja, and S. Ebbesen, vol. 2 (Helsinki, 1990), 468–478; idem, ‘Tu scis regem sedere (Kilvington, S47[48]),’ Anuario Filosófico 24/1 (1991): 49–74; idem, ‘Sobre las Obligationes de Richard Lavenham,’ AHDLMA 58 (1991): 253–278; idem, ‘“Sortes non currit vel Sortes movetur” (Roger Swyneshed, Obligationes, §§137–138),’ AHDLMA 60 (1993): 165–172; Angel D’Ors and Manuel García-Clavel, ‘Sobre las Obligationes de Robert Fland: Antiqua et nova responsio,’ Revista de Filosofía 7 (1994): 51–88; Romuald Green, ‘The Logical Treatise “De obligationibus”: An Introduction with Critical Texts of William of Sherwood (?) and Walter Burley,’ Ph.D. Dissertation (Louvain, 1963); L. Hamblin, Fallacies (London, 1970), 125–133; Peter King, ‘Mediaeval Thought-Experiments,’ in Thought-Experiments in Science and Philosophy, ed. Tamara Horowitz and Gerald J. Massey (Savage, MD, 1991), 43–64; C.H. Kneepkens, ‘The Mysterious Buser Again: William Buser of Heusden and the “Obligationes” Tract “Ob Rogatum,”’ in English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. Alfonso Maierú, Acts of the 5th European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Naples, 1982), 147–166; idem, ‘Willem Buser of Heusden’s ObligationesTreatise “Ob rogatum”: A Ressourcement in the Doctrine of Logical Obligation?,’ in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, ed. Klaus Jacobi (Leiden, 1993), 343–362; Simo Knuuttila, ‘Trinitarian Sophisms in Robert Holkot’s Theology,’ in Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar, ed. Stephen Read, (Dordrecht, 1993), 348–356; idem, ‘Modalities in Obligational Disputations,’ in Le teorie delle modalità, ed. Giovanna Corsi, Corrado Mangione, and Massimo Mugnai, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Storia della Logica (Bologna, 1989), 79–92; idem, ‘Positio impossibilis and Discussions of the Trinity,’ in Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIth-XIVth Century), ed. Costantino Marmo, Acts of the XIth Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Turnhout, 1997), 277–288; Simo Knuuttila and Miko Yrjönsuuri, ‘Norms and Action in Obligational Disputations,’ in Die Philosophie im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: In Memoriam Konstanty Michalski (1879– 1949), ed. O. Pluta (Amsterdam, 1988), 191–202; Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, ‘The Anonymous De arte obligatoria in Merton College MS. 306,’ in Medieval Semantics and Metaphysics: Studies Dedicated to L.M. De Rijk, Ph.D. on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, ed. E.P. Bos (Nijmegen, 1985), 239–280; Henrik Lagerlund and Erik J. Olsson, ‘Disputation and Change of Belief: Burley’s Theory of Obligationes as a theory of Belief Revision,’ in Medieval Formal Logic: Obligatoins, Insolubles and Consequences, ed. Mikko Yrjönsuuri, The New Synthese Historical Library 49 (Dordrecht, 2001), 35–62; Christopher J. Martin, ‘Bradwardine and the Use of Positio as a Test of Possibility,’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoja, and Sten Ebbesen, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2 (Helsinki, 1990), 574–585; idem, ‘The Logic of the Nominales, or, The Rise and Fall of Impossible Positio,’ Vivarium 30 (1992): 110–126; idem, ‘Obligations and Liars,’ in Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar, ed. Stephen Read (Dordrecht, 1993), 357–378, and its revised version in Medieval Formal Logic: Obligations, Insolubles and Consequences, ed. Mikko Yrjönsuuri, The New Synthese Historical Library 49 (Dordrecht,

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to uphold or to deny. If the respondens took up the challenge (se obligat) and bound himself to the initial positio, then the opponens proposed other statements (proposita) that the respondens had to concede or deny depending on whether they were consistent or inconsistent with the ini2001), 63–94; idem, ‘Impossibile Positio as the Foundation of Metaphysics or, Logic on the Scotist Plan?,’ in Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIth-XIVth Century), ed. Costantino Marmo (Turnhout, 1997), 255–276; Paola Müller, ‘Le Obligationes nella Summa Logicae di Guglielmo di Ockham,’ in Filosofia e teologia nel trecento: Studi in recordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. Luca Bianchi (Louvain-la neuve, 1994), 85–104; Alan R. Perreiah, ‘Obligationes in Paul of Venice’s Logica Parva,’ Analecta Augustiniana 45 (1982): 89–116; Fabienne Pironet, ‘The Relations between Insolubles and Obligations in Medieval Disputations,’ in Medieval Formal Logic: Obligations, Insolubles and Consequences, ed. Mikko Yrjönsuuri, The New Synthese Historical Library 49 (Dordrecht, 2001), 95– 114; Lorenzo Pozzi, La coerenza logica nella teoria medievale delle obbligazioni (con l’edizione del trattato ‘Obligationes’ di Guglielmo Buser) (Parma, 1990); idem, ‘Il Tempo e il valore di verità delle proposizioni possibili nella teoria medievale delle obbligazioni,’ Medioevo 17 (1991): 281–308; Vladimir Richter, ‘Zu “De obligationibus” in der Summa logicae,’ in Die Gegenwart Ockhams, ed. Wilhelm Vossenkuhl and Rolf Schönberger (Weinhem, 1990), 256–261; Paul Vincent Spade, ‘Roger Swynshed’s Obligationes: Edition and Comments,’ AHDLMA 44 (1977): 243–285; idem, ‘Richard Lavenham’s Obligationes,’ Rivista critica di storia della filosofia 33 (1978): 224–241; idem, ‘Robert Fland’s Obligationes: An Edition,’ Mediaeval Studies 42 (1980): 41–60; idem, ‘Obligations: B. Developments in the Fourteenth Century,’ in CHLMP, 335–341; idem, ‘Three Theories of Obligationes: Burley, Kilvington, and Swyneshed on Counter-Factual Reasoning,’ HPL 3 (1982): 1–32; idem, ‘If Obligationes Were Counterfactuals,’ Philosophical Topics 20 (1982): 171–188; idem, ‘Opposing and Responding: A New Look at Positio,’ Medioevo 19 (1993): 232–257; idem and Eleonore Stump ‘Walter Burley and the Obligationes attributed to William of Sherwood,’ HPL 4 (1983): 9–26; Eleonore Stump, ‘William of Sherwood’s Treatise on Obligations,’ Historiographia Linguistica 7 (1980): 249–261, slightly revised and repr. in idem, Dialectic and its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989), 177–193; idem, ‘Roger Swyneshed’s Theory of Obligations,’ Medioevo 7 (1981): 135–174, repr. in idem, Dialectic, 216–249; idem, ‘Obligations: A. From the Beginning to the Early Fourteenth Century,’ in CHLMP, 315–334; idem, ‘The Logic of Disputation in Walter Burley’s Treatise on Obligations,’ Synthese, 63 (1985): 335–374, repr. in idem, Dialectic, 195–213; idem, ‘Consequences in Ockham’s Summa logicae and Their Relation to Syllogisms, Topics, and Insolubles,’ in Logos and Pragma: Essays on the Philosophy of Language in Honor of Professor Gabriel Nuchelmans, ed. L.M. de Rijk and H.A.G. Braakhuis (Nijmegen, 1987), 141– 159, repr. in idem, Dialectic, 252–269; Graziella Federici Vescovini, ‘A la recherche du mystérieux Buser. A propos de trois copies manuscrits de la même oeuvre: Le De obligationibus de “Buser” au “Busel”,’ in English Logic and Semantics from the End of the Twelfth Century to the Time of Ockham and Burleigh, ed. H.A.G. Braakhuis, C.H. Kneepkens, and L.M. De Rijk, Acts of the IV European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Nijmegen, 1981), 443–457; Mikko Yrjönsuuri, ‘Aristotle’s Topics and Medieval Obligational Disputations,’ Synthese 96 (1993): 59–82; idem, ‘The Role of Casus in some Fourteenth Century Treatises on Sophismata and Obligations,’ in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, ed. Klaus Jacobi (Leiden, 1993), 301–321; idem, Obligationes: 14th Century Logic of Disputational Duties, Acta Philosophica Fennica 55 (Helsinki, 1994); idem, ‘Obligations as Thought Experiments,’ in Studies on the History of Logic, ed. Ignacio Angelelli and María Cerezo, Proceed-

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tial statement. If the opponens proposed a statement unconnected with the positum, it was termed irrelevant (impertinens), and the respondens had to answer according to the truth of the matter in the actual world. If the respondens was uncertain about the truth of the proposed irrelevant statement, he could answer that he was in a state of doubt. The opponens tried to trap the respondens into conceding a contradiction (whether of the positum or of what was conceded afterwards). The truth of the initial positum was not important—in typical cases it was a false statement or counterfactual. What was important was that the respondens maintain formal consistency.91 In order to avoid any possible change in truth value of the contingent propositions involved in the disputation, an obligatio was understood to take place in a special kind of time, the tempus obligationis. From the respondent’s initial acceptance of the opponent’s positio until the opponent released the respondent from his obligation with a ‘cedat tempus,’ the entire exchange of proposals and responses was understood to occupy a single temporal instant.92 During the thirteenth century, one of the rules governing obligatio stated that if the opponent posed a false contingent about a present instant as the positio, the respondent should deny that the posed instant was the actual present, the reason being that if something false could become true there must be motion or change to actualize it, and no motion or change transforming what is true at present to what is false at present could happen in an instant.93 ings of the III. Symposium on the History of Logic (Berlin, 1996), 79–96; idem, ‘The Compossibility of Impossibilities and Ars Obligatoria,’ History and Philosophy of Logic 19 (1998): 235–248; idem, ‘Duties, Rules and Interpretations in Obligational Disputations,’ in Medieval Formal Logic: Obligations, Insolubles and Consequences, ed. Mikko Yrjönsuuri, The New Synthese Historical Library 49 (Dordrecht, 2001), 3–34. 91 See Angelelli, ‘The Techniques of Disputation,’ 800–815; De Rijk, ‘Game of Obligation,’ (1974): 94–95; Spade, ‘Roger Swynshed’s Obligationes,’ 244–245; idem, ‘If Obligationes Were Counterfactuals,’ 171–188; Stump, ‘Obligations,’ CHLMP, 318–319; Yrjönsuuri, ‘Duties Rules and Interpretations,’ 3–34, and idem, ‘Compossibility of Impossibilities,’ 235–247, for general accounts of obligatio. 92 Angelelli, ‘Techniques of Disputation,’ 803. 93 Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ 229–230, who cites De Rijk, ‘Game of Obligation,’ (1974): 112, for the rule: ‘Quolibet falso possibili posito de instanti quod est, negandum est illud esse.’ De Rijk, ‘Game of Obligation,’ (1975): 32, also has: ‘Posito falso possibili de praesenti instanti negandum est ipsum instans esse.’ Scotus cites this tradition in Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Praeterea, “posito falso contingenti de praesenti instanti, negandum est praesens instans esse,”—ut si “te esse Romae sit falsum,” et ponitur te esse Romae, negandum est praesens instans esse, quia si te esse Romae sit falsum in a instanti, non potest verificari in a; “aut enim verificaretur per motum, aut per mutationem: non per motum, quia motus non est in instanti,—nec per mutationem, quia

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The rule enshrined the notion that no possibility should be posed the case coterminous with the actuality of its opposite, even for the sake of argument. Scotus contended, however, that nothing critical for the ars obligatoria hung on this rule, and that one should simply deny it.94 The parallel text from the Ordinatio provides a gloss on Scotus’ reasons for rejection of the rule, indicating that he set it aside because of the non-successive power for opposites in the will naturally prior (i.e. in an instant of nature) to the will’s act.95 In other words, God’s capacity to will opposites at any given moment of actual time meant that without violating the Principle of Non-contradiction, the instantaneous tempus obligationis might coincide with an actual state of affairs whose opposite was posed as counterfactually actualized during the course of the disputation. In effect, the counterfactual case along with the propositions compatible with it, would represent some other compossibility set God could actualize. The exact fate of Scotus’ change in the rules of obligatio is not quickly discernible in the texts currently available, but the indications are that Scotus’ view was not immediately accepted at Oxford. Walter Burley kept to the old way when writing his De obligationibus in 1302. Paul Spade and Eleonore Stump have conjectured that his observation that the rule in question is an application of a principle fundamental to obligatio: ‘if a contingent falsehood is posited, it is possible to “prove” quando est mutatio, tunc est terminus mutationis,” et tunc esse simul verum et falsum in a…’ In Opera omnia, 17:498, ll. 5–6. The editors, note 2, cite a parallel passage from the Obligationes attributed to William of Sherwood. The latter is the work that Spade and Stump, ‘Walter Burley,’ argue Walter Burley may have written at an early time in his career, or at least that he knew the text. And see the discussion of a number of these texts in Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes, 64–75. 94 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘… negatur illa regula. Verumtamen ars obligatoria bene traditur ab illo magistro sine hac regula; unde non dependet ex veritate huius regulae.’ In Opera omnia 17:499, ll. 23–25. For discussion see Knuuttila, ‘Modalities in Obligational Disputations,’ 79–92; idem, ‘Scotus and the Foundations,’ 132–134; idem, ‘Interpreting Scotus’ Theory,’ 297–298; Martin, ‘Bradwardine and the Use of Positio,’ 581–582; Normore, ‘Scotus, Modality, Instants of Nature,’ 171–172; and Sylwanowicz, Contingent Causality, 34–35. Braakhuis, ‘Obligations in Early Thirteenth Century,’ 164– 165, discusses a variation on the rule in an Obligationes he attributes to Nicholas of Paris. 95 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 38 pars 2 et d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Ad secundum: illa regula falsa est … sed est potentia ad oppositum huius quod inest alicui in quantum est prior naturaliter illo actu.’ In Opera omnia 6:423, ll. 6–14. Both Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality,’ pp. 229–330, and Normore, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ p. 8, cite Scotus’ rejection of this rule in support of their respective theses, and Normore credits Christopher Martin for recognizing the importance of Scotus’ references to obligatio. There is also a discussion in Spade and Stump, ‘Walter Burley,’ 20–22.

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any other compossible falsehood whatever,’ might have been aimed at refuting Scotus’ claim that nothing important was at stake.96 William of Ockham did not mention the rule in his commentary on the Sentences nor in his brief treatment of obligationes in his Summa logicae,97 but Robert Holcot stated explicitly that ‘consequences ut nunc ought to be denied in that art,’98 and the anonymous author of a small tract on obligatio written at Oxford in the 1330’s or 1340’s and found in Oxford, Merton College MS 306 argued that false possibles could only be posed for some future time.99 In the 1330’s, Roger Swineshead has been credited with introducing a different approach to obligatio, the nova responsio, which suspended the 96 Ibid. 22–24. Scotus would have had no difficulty responding to Burley, if Burley’s comment was in fact meant as a criticism, because Scotus would have had no problem with the claim that compossible falsehoods must be admitted as long as they were positively or negatively inferred from the initial positum. Any other falsehoods would be irrelevant and deniable in terms of the rules for responding to irrelevancies. Counterfactual sets of false compossibilities could coexist in his system with the set of real compossibilities in the actual world. 97 William of Ockham, Summa logicae, pars III-3, c. 39–45, in Opera philosophica ed. Philotheus Boehner, Gedeon Gál and Stephanus Brown, vol. 1 (St. Bonaventure, New York, 1974), 731–744. Richter, ‘Zu “De obligationibus,”’ 256–259, suggests that the section on obligations in Ockham’s Summa logicae may not be his, but an addendum by a later compiler who supplies what amounts to an abbreviation of Walter Burley on the subject. If so, the addition could not have post-dated the rest of the text by much, since, as Richter himself notes, there is no mention of the innovations Kilvington, Swyneshed and others made to the obligations literature soon after Ockham wrote his Summa. The reasons for doubting Ockham himself added the text are thin. See Müller, ‘Obligationes nelle Summa logicae,’ 88, n. 13, for the case for authenticity. 98 Robert Holcot, In quatuor libros Sententiarum, I, q. 2, speaking about the ars obligatoria: ‘consequentia ut nunc debet negari in illa arte.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 132rb; Oxford, Balliol College MS 71, f. 23ra; In quatuor libros Sententiarum quaestiones (Lyon, 1518; reprinted in facsimile, Minerva G.M.B.H., Frankfurt, 1967), f. d2va. 99 Anon., De arte obligatoria: ‘Alia conclusio est haec: Posito aliquo falso possibili et alio possibili falso proposito cum eodem, dubitandum est vel negandum de virtute sermonis. Haec probatur sic. Ponatur “Tu non es.” Demum proponitur “Roma est.” Quae si conceditur, contra: pro hoc instanti te non esse non est concedendum, sed pro futuro. Et quia in nullo instanti futuro scis quod Roma erit, male respondes, sine obligatione concedendo Romam esse et aliud falsum possibile [sic, possibile falsum].’ Oxford, Merton College MS 306, f. 8ra, ed. Kretzmann and Stump, ‘De arte obligatoria,’ 250. Their editing and translation of this passage (p. 260) does not recognize the distinction between a false possible and the possibly false explicit in the author’s change of word order from ‘falsum possibili’ to ‘possibili falsum’ at the beginning of his discursus and necessary for the sense of the argument. The editors note (p. 239) that the text must post-date 1321, and suggest a period between 1335 and 1349. That seems right, given the anonymous author’s apparent knowledge of both the antiqua and nova responsiones (see note 100 below), although Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes, 76, has argued for a date closer to 1321.

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rule confining the time of obligatio to a single instant. If the rule confining the time of obligatio were set aside, then an irrelevant propositum of the sort ‘It is raining outside’ might go from being true to being false during the time of disputation. In the antiqua responsio, an irrelevant propositum once posed and either conceded or denied would, if proposed again, be treated as pertinent to all subsequent answers and no longer as irrelevant. Even if the truth of the matter had changed in the interim, the respondent should answer as he had answered before because there would have been no obligational time in which the first response could have become false. All responses in the obligational debate must concatenate. But if the time of obligation were not restricted to a single instant, the respondens should no longer conjunctively concatenate all previously accepted proposita nor accept either disjunct of a previously accepted disjunction because changes in the real world would be appropriately incorporated into the obligatio. In nova responsio, all questions of whether proposita were relevant or irrelevant were decided on the basis of their relation to the original positum alone.100 The author of the

100 Roger Swineshead, Obligationes, suppositiones 6–7: ‘Sexta: Omnis propositio ad quam extra tempus obligationis propter mutationem ex parte rei est varianda responsio est ponenda vel deponenda. Haec patet. Nam omnis propositio est concedenda vel neganda qua concessa propter istam non est improbabilior concedenda deducta impositione. Sed omne propositio ad quam extra tempus obligationis propter mutationem ex parte rei est varianda responsio est hujusmodi. Igitur, etc. Septima: Nulla propositio ad quam extra tempus obligationis propter mutationem factam ex parte rei non est varianda responsio est ponenda vel deponenda. Hoc patet ex probatione sextae. Nam nulla propositio est ponenda vel deponenda qua concessa est propter illam improbabilior concedenda. Sed omnis propositio ad quam extra tempus obligationis non est varianda responsio propter mutationem ex parte rei est hujusmodi. Igitur, et caetera.’ In Spade, ‘Swyneshed,’ 253–254. Also see ibid., 271–275 for Swineshead’s discussion of particular cases, and 274, note 97, for Spade’s discussion. See Spade, ‘Lavenham,’ 224–225, for the origin of the term nova responsio. Spade, ‘Three Theories,’ has offered one very interesting explanation for the emergence of Swynshed’s view; Stump, ‘Roger Swynshed,’ 167–174, repr. in Dialectic, 244– 249, has proposed an alternative, and Yrjönsurri, ‘Duties, Rules and Interpretations,’ 20–23, details its possible advantages, but only Ashworth, ‘Autour des “Obligationes,”’ 351–360, has noted the connection of the nova responsio with the time of obligation. However, her explanation for the nova responsio concerns the question of whether concatenating propositions are true conjunctions or not, a question that arises whether there is a single instant of obligational time or not. Angel D’Ors, ‘“Sortes non currit,”’ 165–172, and D’Ors and García-Clavel, “Obligationes de Robert Fland,” 51–88, have argued that the attribution of the nova responsio to Swineshead by both medieval and modern commentators occurred because key manuscripts of his work on obligationes were flawed and misleading. E. Jennifer Ashworth, ‘Autour des Obligationes,’ 341–360, has decisively responded to this challenge.

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tract on obligationes in Merton MS 306 gave explicit recognition to both forms of obligational debate, making a distinction between obligations restricted to a single moment of real time, and obligations unrestricted as to time. On my reading of this text, which differs substantially from the interpretation of its editors (see the extensive note below), in cases of temporally restricted disputation the author applied the rules of the antiqua responsio, understood with an addendum that once a true irrelevant proposition was admitted, even if the conditions in the world were to change, that proposition should continue to be conceded as true. In cases of temporally unrestricted disputation, the author applied the rules of the nova responsio.101 Whether the emergence of the nova responsio 101 Anon., De arte obligatoria: ‘Pro quantitate temporis obligationis est notandum quod casus non admittitur nisi gratis a respondente. Si tamen admittatur casus aliquis, ut [sic, the editors (p. 253) indicate that ut should be dropped] aliquis potest semel concedere aliquid et post negare aliquid quia non limitatur tempus obligationis. Si tamen limitetur tempus obligationis et admittatur pro toto tempore ac si pro unico instanti, sustinendus est casus obligationis qualiscumque tempore durante; ad unum instans responsiones, nulla variatione facta ex parte rei, singulae reducuntur [my italics].’ Oxford, Merton College MS 306, f. 7rb, ed. Kretzmann and Stump, ‘De arte obligatoria,’ 244. My interpretation of this text differs from that of the editors. As they note, the order of suppositions is difficult to discern. Unfortunately they themselves seem to have missed the first part of the first supposition (their TO) that distinguished between obligations undertaken without a temporal restriction and obligations undertaken with them (p. 262, 263). Thus they treat the author throughout as though he accepted the rules for temporally restricted obligations as the only rules pertinent to obligatio and conflate the two positions the author in fact treated separately. This leads Kretzmann and Stump to believe that the author exempted irrelevant propositions from the reduction-to-aninstant thesis (p. 264). But I would argue that the author treated irrelevant propositions differently within the two kinds of obligation. Thus first, in place of the editors’ translation of the above passage (p. 253), I would suggest the following, giving the text a different shading: As to the amount of time of the obligation, one should note that a case is admitted only voluntarily by a respondent. If some case is admitted, [the respondent] can at one time concede something and afterwards deny [that same] thing, because the time of obligation is not limited. But if the time of obligation is limited, and the case of the obligation in question is admitted for the whole time as if for one instant, one should sustain it for the whole time; particular responses are reduced to one instant with no variation made on the part of reality. And where the editors believe the author exempted irrelevant propositions from the instantaneous time of obligatio, I would suggest that instead he has turned from discussing temporally restricted and instantaneous obligation to discussing temporally unrestricted obligation. The discussion of temporally restricted obligation would thus be confined to the second half of section (x) and sections (xi)-(xii) of the text. It would amount basically to an aside. The return to a discussion of the first part of the first supposition (admittedly not well marked by the author) occurs in section (xiii): ‘Ex illa suppositione patet quod si aliquod verum impertinens concedatur infra tempus obligationis, non obstante quod respondens sciat istud fieri falsum, sequens ex eodem

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had any direct or indirect connection with Scotus, the questions about time and contingency Scotus had asked continued to have importance in the development of the ars obligatoria.102

impertinenti concesso et proposito est negandum [my italics] in casu.’ Oxford, Merton College MS 306, f. 7rb, ed. Kretzmann and Stump, ‘De arte obligatoria,’ 245. The editors’ translation of this passage (p. 254) suffers from a dropped line. I would in any event translate it differently: From that supposition [i.e. from the first part of supposition one], it is evident that if some true irrelevant [propositum] should be conceded within the time of obligation, and nothing bars the respondent from knowing that it becomes false, what follows in the case from that conceded irrelevant [propositum] and the positum, ought to be denied. This passage follows only ‘evidently’ from the first part of the first supposition that specifies obligations of unlimited time during which the respondent may change his responses to iterated proposita. Thus it seems best understood not as an obscure exemption from the previous discussion of restricted obligation, but as a return to discussing the first kind of temporally unlimited obligation with which the author began and with which he occupied himself throughout the rest of the text. The misunderstanding of the editors on this point means that their discussions in the notes should be read with great caution. That the author accepted the nova responsio for temporally unrestricted obligation is evident from the following passage: ‘… cum ponitur quod omnis homo currit, et demum proponitur haec “Tu es homo,” qua concessa, neganda est haec copulativa “Omnis homo currit et tu es homo,” quia est falsa et impertinens—negetur: quia una pars est pertinens posito, et alia pars est pertinens rei quia vera pro tunc. Hoc tamen non est universaliter verum, quod propter concessionem partium copulativae est illa copulativa concedenda. Ut concessa hac primo “Socrates est homo” et ipse moreretur, neganda esset copulativa pro secunda parte. Sed durante re, pertinens est illa.’ Oxford, Merton College MS 306, f. 8ra, ed. Kretzmann and Stump, ‘De arte obligatoria,’ 249–250. The argument goes: Positum: Every man runs.(conceded) Propositum: Socrates is a man.(conceded) [Irelevant and true.] [Socrates dies.] Propositum: Every man runs and Socrates is a man.(not conceded) [The second half of the copulative is still irrelevant and now false.] So the respondens may respond according to the facts of the matter, even denying a copulative that concatenates a previously admitted positum and propositum, because contingent matters may change, just as Swineshead had proposed in the nova responsio. Subsequent discussions of this text, for example D’Ors, ‘Sobre el tratado anónimo “De arte Obligatoria,”’ 169–185; Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes, 76–89, 170–172; idem, ‘Role of Casus,’ 314–315; and Ashworth, ‘Ralph Strode on Inconsistency,’ 375–379, have suffered from the original editors’ confusion. 102 See Pozzi, ‘Il Tempo e il valore,’ 281–308, and Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes, 64–101, 145–158. Ashworth, ‘Autour des “Obligationes,”’ 353, has found two other texts that reject the obligational instant of time: the anonymous Obiectiones obligationum secundum usum Oxonie, Oxford New College E 289, ff.21r, and the similarly anonymous Obiectiones casuum, Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, 182/215, sign. F IIv.

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What Scotus accomplished when he raised the question about the obligational rules in his discussion of God’s will, was to merge a technique for exploring the consistency of counterfactual possibilities with theology. The history of the ars obligatoria is still not fully understood.103 Paul Spade has suggested that obligationes, particularly in the form of possible positio, the primary kind of obligation posing that the respondens accept some contrary-to-fact possible statement as the initial proposal, provided a forum for counterfactual reasoning. He has proposed its similarity to modern analysis of conterfactual conditionals of the sort ‘What would have happened if Caesar had not crossed the Rubicon, but the world were in other respects as much as possible the same?’104 Spade’s suggestion has met with criticism on several grounds. There is no evidence obligational argument attempted to capture the possible world next closest to this world when some counterfactual was posed, as is the case in the modern model. No such determinacy attaches to medieval argument in which the same positum may give rise to contradictory concessions depending on the order of the proposita and in which the discovery of truth in a particular possible world does not seem at issue.105 As Mikko Yrjönsuuri has noted, in the standard model of obligational debate in which proposita concatenate, the particular subset of possible worlds in which the conceded proposita would be true is only discoverable at the point at which the opponent says ‘time’s up.’106 The argument is a voyage of discovery in which the positum serves as Greenwich mean time, and the navigator determines the new position Stump, ‘Obligations,’ 81; Perreiah, ‘Obligationes,’ 91. Spade, ‘Swyneshed,’ 245–246; idem, ‘If Obligationes,’ 171–188; idem, ‘Three Theories,’ 1–32. In the latter work (p. 3, n. 6), Spade credits Norman Kretzmann with first making the suggestion that medieval logicians intended to work out a theory of counterfactuals in the tracts de obligationibus. And cf. Martin, ‘Bradwardine and the Use of Positio,’ 574–585, for an extended discussion in terms of possible worlds. 105 Eleonore Stump, ‘Roger Swyneshed’s Theory,’ 135–174; idem, ‘Walter Burley,’ 335–374 (both repr. in Dialectic, 216–249 and 196–213), contests Spade, arguing that obligations constituted a logic of disputation, not of counterfactuals. Christopher Martin, ‘Obligations and Liars,’ 363–367, (pp. 68–73 in the revised version of the article); Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes, 12–16, 158–174; idem, ‘Obligations as Thought Experiments,’ 79–96; idem, ‘Role of Casus,’ 301–321, and idem, ‘Compossibility of Impossibilities,’ 235–248, summarize the difficulties and provide penetrating analysis. But also see Lagerlund and Olsson, ‘Disputation and Change of Belief,’ 35–62, who see their analysis as supporting Spade’s counterfactual interpretation, and Spade himself, ‘If Obligationes Were Counterfactuals,’ 171–188, where he gives a thoughtful rebuttal to a number of the criticisms. 106 Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes, 58, 174–176, using Walter Burley as his example. The use to which obligatio is put in fourteenth-century theological texts supports just such a view that, at least after-the-fact, obligations were used to assess counterfactuals. 103 104

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of the ship in accord with the rules for obtaining a positional fix using sextant and ship’s clock. Each leg of the journey and what new world is discovered at the end remain contingent over the course of the voyage. This provides support for recent suggestions that obligationes in practice served the purpose of thought experiments,107 and for Spade’s current view that they test proffered theoretical positions and exhibit a form of counter-factual reasoning rather than an exploration of counter-factual conditionals.108 Certainly obligationes played a significent role in substantive argument, as will become clear in later chapters, and were not simply school exercises as has sometimes been argued.109

107 King, ‘Mediaeval Thought-Experiments,’ 43–64; Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes, 174–176, idem, ‘Obligations as Thought Experiments,’ 84–94; idem, ‘Compossibilities as Impossibilities,’ 235–248, and Martin, ‘Obligations and Liars,’ 360. 108 Spade, in ‘Opposing and Responding,’ 233–257, and ‘If Obligationes Were Counterfactuals,’ 171–188, basing his analysis in part on an earlier draft of the present book. 109 Perreiah, ‘Obligationes,’ 94, contests Spade’s assessment, in favor of the position that disputations de obligatione were used to test students. He has been the most forceful proponent of the view that tracts de obligatione were intended as school exercises. Others: Stump, ‘Consequences in Ockham’s Summa logicae,’ 141–159, repr. in idem, Dialectic, 252–269; idem, ‘Obligations: A.,’ 315–334, and Ashworth, ‘English Obligationes Texts,’ 309–333; idem, ‘Inconsistency and Paradox,’ 129–139, and idem, ‘Ralph Strode on Inconsistency,’ 383–384, have emphasized the pedagogic side, but also perceive obligationes as significant contexts for exploring insolubilia. Martin, ‘Obligations and Liars,’ 357–378, goes so far as to argue that obligationes were the context in which medieval discussions of the liar paradox originated. That obligationes were used substantively in a much wider range of contexts, however, is clear from the text of the anon. De arte obligatoria: ‘Pro primo notandum quod casus causa triplici supponuntur. Prima, ut temptetur respondens numquid artem habeat. Secunda, ut dispensatio habeatur, ut accidit inter conferentes ob exercitii causam. Tertia causa est ut falsum possibile admittamus inquirendo quid sequitur, ut cum res ita de facto se habeant ut falsus casus denotat, sciamus per prius suppositum et rationem quid sumus acturi et responsuri. Iuristae enim et morales philosophi per possibiliter casus antequam in re accidat de observandis inquirentes veritatem in exercitiis statuendam explorant.’ Oxford, Merton College MS 306, f. 7ra, ed. Kretzmann and Stump, ‘De arte obligatoria,’ 243–244. Spade, ‘Opposing and Responding,’ 239–240, Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes, 15, and idem, ‘Role of Casus,’ 319–320, have both cited this text as evidence for interpreting obligationes more broadly. King, ‘Mediaeval Thought-Experiments,’ 43–64, has discussed their use in science, and Martin, ‘Obligations and Liars,’ 373–378, and Fabienne Pironet, ‘Logique et droit au XIVe siècle,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle ages, ed. Carlos Bázan, E. Andújar and L. Sbrocchi, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (NewYork, Ottawa and Toronto, 1995), 548–554, connect obligationes with the law.

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John Duns Scotus changed thinking about modal theory. The emphasis on Aristotelian notions of causality that had dominated the analysis of modal terms gave way to an emphasis on logical possibility and impossibility. Scotus’ analysis of the conditional necessity of the present moment took up where Boethius and Aquinas had left off. They had posed conditional or suppositional necessity as characteristic of the present. A conditional (and non-necessary) antecedent thus preceded the necessary consequent that signified any present event. Scotus developed a theory about just how such a conditional might be thought to arise in the first place. His investigation led to a deep analysis of contingency and the recognition that contingency and logical possibility must both characterize God’s will. The nature of God’s will gave warrant to the contingency of the logically prior conditional that rendered the necessity of the present only a secundum quid or relative necessity. Moreover, because God’s will surveyed sets of compatible possibilities, evaluations of both actual and counterfactual possibility should center on questions of consistency rather than on questions of causal efficacy. To test for the consistency of such counterfactual and factual possibilities, Scotus introduced the ars obligatoria into discussions of modality, in a way still rudimentary and minimal, but suggestive, for use as a technique of analysis. The fourteenth-century history of modal theory begins with Scotus. His views gave direction and impetus to the development of modal theory during the years that followed, and he pioneered in the application of obligational counterfactual analysis to theology. Armed with the ars obligatoria later theologians might assess the realm of possibilities for consistency and establish which sets of possibilities were truly compatible and thus subject to God’s will.110 The Dominicans at Oxford, like their other secular and regular colleagues, would go where Scotus had pointed.

110 Yrjönsuuri, ‘Compossibility of Impossibilities,’ 235–248, has an important discussion of obligationes as logically consistent compossibility sets, and notes: ‘discussions of ars obligatoria may have made explicit important logical motivations for the new approach to modal concepts in the fourteenth century,’ (236).

chapter four EMERGENCE OF AN OBLIGATIONAL THEOLOGY

Scotus’ concept of the relation between God’s will and the world as grounded in a logical priority of ‘instants of nature’ did not meet with universal approval among subsequent scholars at Oxford.1 William of Ockham rejected both ‘instants of nature’ and their corollary that God’s will could be open to opposite possibilities in one and the same eternal now. Ockham argued that any power for opposites, even God’s, 1 There is a considerable literature discussing the validity of Scotus’ position and of various critiques of it, Ockham’s in particular. For some of the relevant texts see: Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham, vol. 2 (Notre Dame, IN, 1987), 1044–1050; idem, ‘Duns Scotus on the Will as Rational Power,’ in Via Scoti: Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, ed. Leonardo Sileo, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale, vol. 1 (Rome, 1995), 839–854; Nico Den Bok, ‘Scotus’ Theory of Contingency from a (Post) Modern Perspective: Some Important Developments of the Notion of Contingency after Duns Scotus,’ in Via Scoti: Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, ed. Leonardo Sileo, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale, vol. 1 (Rome, 1995), 431– 444; John Boler, ‘The Ontological Commitment of Scotus’s Account of Potency in his Questions on the Metaphysics, Book IX,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 145–160; Eef Dekker, ‘Does Duns Scotus Need Molina? On Divine Foreknowledge and Co-causality,’ and idem, ‘Scotus’s Freedom of the Will Revisited,’ both in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third Symposium organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 101–121; Stephen D. Dumont, ‘Time, Contradiction and Freedom of the Will in the Late Thirteenth century,’ Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 3 (1992): 561–597; idem, ‘The Origin of Scotus’s Theory of Synchronic Contingency,’ The Modern Schoolman 72 (1995): 149–167; Anthony Kenny, ‘Philosophy of Mind in the Thirteenth Century,’ in L’homme et son univers au moyen âge, ed. Christian Wenin, Actes du septième congrès international de philosophie médiévale, vol. 1 (Louvain-la-neuve, 1986), 42–55; idem, ‘Scotus and the Sea Battle,’ in Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages, ed. John Marenbon, Rencontres de Philosophie Médiévale 5 (Turnhout, 1996), 145–155; Douglas C. Langston, ‘Scotus’ Conception of Human Freedom,’ in L’homme et son univers au moyen âge, ed. Christian Wenin, Actes du septième congrès international de philosophie médiévale, vol. 2 (Louvain-la-neuve, 1986), 815–821; Scott MacDonald, ‘Synchronic Contingency, Instants of Nature, and Libertarian Freedom: Comments on “The Background to Scotus’s Theory of Will,”’ The Modern Schoolman 72 (1995): 169–174; Calvin Normore, ‘Scotus, Modality, Instants of Nature, and the Contingency of the Present,’ in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third Symposium organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 161– 174; idem, ‘Duns Scotus’s Modal Theory,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus,

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must play out as a succession of changes in the actual world or contradictories could be true simultaneously.2 But even without the underpinning of such logical ‘moments,’ the general outlines of Scotus’ modal theory came to prevail among those who succeeded him. Scotus’ view that contingency arises directly in the divine will and consists in the logical possibility of something being the case and not being the case at some particular indexed moment of time (whether a determinate present moment if his ‘instants of nature’ were accepted, or some determinate future moment if they were not), largely dominated Oxford intellectual circles thereafter, the Dominican intellectual circle included and even in particular.3 The Aristotelian idea that contingency arises at the level of secondary proximate causes through a failure in causal efficacy was not a tenet of Dominican scholarship during the twenties and thirties. Unfortunately, the texts are silent about how and why the Dominicans came to adopt the new theory of modality. They neither criticized Aquinas nor referred to Scotus as the architect of the

ed. Thomas Williams (Cambridge, 2003), 157, n. 3; Chris Schabel, Theology at Paris, 1316–1345: Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents (aldershot, 2000), 48–63, 76–90; Gerhard Seel, ‘Der Antike modallogische Determinismus und Ockhams Kritik an Duns Scotus,’ in L’homme et son univers au moyen âge, ed. Christian Wenin, Actes du septième congrès international de philosophie médiévale, vol. 2 (Louvain-la-neuve, 1986), 510–520; Michael Sylwanowicz, Contingent Causality and the Foundations of Duns Scotus’ Metaphysics (Leiden, 1996), 39–42; Allan B. Wolter, ‘Duns Scotus on theWill as Rational Potency,’ in The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams (Ithaca, 1990), 163–180. 2 William of Ockham, Ordinatio I, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Ex isto patet quod non convenienter dictum quod voluntas divina, ut prior naturaliter, ita ponit suum effectum in esse in a quod potest eum non ponere in esse in eodem instanti. Quia non sunt talia instantia naturae sicut iste imaginatur, nec est in primo instanti naturae talis indifferentia ad ponendum et non ponendum. Sed si in aliquo instanti ponit effectum suum in esse, impossibile est quod per quamcumque potentiam sit illlud instans et quod in illo non sit, sicut est impossibile quod per quamcumque potentiam contradictoria sint simul vera. Ideo dico quod universaliter numquam est potentia ita quod opposita verificentur sine successione. Immo impossible est quod Deus respiceret obiectum et non respiceret illud, nisi esset aliqua successio saltem in actu vel coexsisteret, et tunc foret in alio quocumque mutatio.’ In Opera theologica, ed. Girardus I. Etzkorn and Franciscus E. Kelley, vol. 4 (St. Bonaventure, New York, 1979), 581, ll. 9–22. 3 Calvin G. Normore, ‘Future Contingents,’ in CHLMP, 367–369, and idem, ‘Divine Omniscience, Omnipotence and Future Contingents: An Overview,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library 25 (Dordrecht, 1985), 8; and also see Lorenzo Pozzi, ‘Il Tempo e il valore di verità delle proposizioni possibili nella teoria medievale delle obbligazioni,’ Medioevo 17 (1991): 290–295, for a relevant discussion of Jean Buridan and William Buser.

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new order.4 Nor in this context did they mention the Condemnations of 1277, an often suggested motive for rejecting the Aristotelian model. Yet, as will become evident, the Oxford Dominicans, like Scotus, perceived the world as a completely contingent place whose contingency arose from God’s willed acts of creation and sustenance. The Dominicans shared this general Scotist inheritance with their Franciscan and secular counterparts at Oxford. However, some Dominicans took as their special legacy Scotus’ interest in the obligatory art and its implications for theology. Out of that interest, there emerged a new obligational theology, developed in the course of exploring the paradoxes and puzzles the notion of contingency raised when joined with traditional religious doctrine. Difficulties confront those posing the contingency of events, and some of those difficulties had become classic puzzles by the late Middle Ages. One such puzzle entered the Christian tradition through Cicero and Augustine in the form of a conditional: if it is possible that something happen other than it happens, then it is possible that God be deceived.5 If contingency is understood to mean possible to be and possible not to be, then God’s capacity to rely on his foreknowledge of future contingent events would seem greatly impaired. Peter Lombard posed the difficulty in his Sentences in the form of an example:

4 Chris Schabel, Russell L. Friedman, and Irene Balcoyiannopoulou in ‘Peter of Palude and the Parisian Reaction to Durand of St Pourçain on future Contingents,’ AFP 71 (2001): 190–196, discuss the censure Durand suffered for having contested various positions of Aquinas directly. In his emended commentaries on the Sentences, Durand omitted mention of Aquinas where he advocated positions at odds with the doctor of the order. Many of the positions Durand took have a Scotist flavor. The reasons for silence about the origins of the Oxford scholars’ positions may lie in the injunctions by the order in 1286, 1309 and 1329 to follow and defend the doctrine of Aquinas. Compare with Thomas of Sutton, who adopted the perspectivist position in his second Quodlibet; see John F. Wippel, ‘Thomas of Sutton on Divine Knowledge of Future Contingents (Quodlibet II, qu. 5),’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoja, and Sten Ebbesen, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2 (Helsinki, 1990), 364–372. 5 Simo Knuuttila, ‘Time and Modality in Scholasticism,’ in Reforging the Great Chain of Being: Studies of the History of Modal Theory, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Synthese Historical Library 20 (Dordrecht, 1981), 186. He cites Augustine, De civitate Dei, 5.9, (in CCL 47, 136–138), where, however, the verb ‘fallere’ is not used. See John Marenbon, ‘Abelard’s Concept of Possibility,’ in Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi: Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ed. Burkhard Mojsisch and Olaf Pluta, 2 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991), 606–609 for Abelard’s discussion.

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chapter four God foreknew that a particular person would give a lecture, but it can be that that person does not give a lecture, therefore it can be otherwise than God foreknew, therefore God’s foreknowledge can be deceived.6

Lombard resolved the difficulty by distinguishing the conjoined (or composite) and divided senses of the consequent: ‘it can be otherwise than God foreknew.’ In the composite sense that events might turn out differently from the way in which God does foreknow them, the sentence is false, but in the divided sense that events might turn out differently and that God foreknows whatever it is that will happen, the sentence is true, because God’s foreknowledge is of whatever in fact does happen, even though what happens is contingent and might be otherwise.7 God’s knowledge tracks reality. The structure of this puzzle lends itself to treatment as an obligatio debate. An opponens might pose the following: 1. The initial positio: Let a be a future contingent, and let God know that a will be. 2. From the definition of what it means to be contingent: If a, then a is possible to be and possible not to be. 3. Descending from a conjunction to one of the conjuncts: If a, then a is possible not to be. 4. Applying modus ponens to 3 and the positum: A is possible not to be. 5. From the rule that the impossible does not follow from the possible and that any possible can therefore be posed in being: Let it be the case that a will not be. 6. From the positum and 5: God knows that a will be, and a will not be. 6 Peter Lombard, Sententiae I, d. 38, c. 2: ‘Ad hoc autem quod supra dictum est, scilicet praescientiam Dei falli non posse, solet a quibusdam sic opponi: Deus praescivit hunc lecturum, vel aliquid huiusmodi; sed potest esse ut iste non legat; ergo potest aliter esse quam Deus praescivit; ergo potest falli Dei praescientia.’ in Sententiae in IV libris distinctae 1.2, Spicilegium Bonaventurianum 4 (Rome, 1971), 278, l. 26–279, l. 2. 7 Lombard, Sent. I, d. 38, c. 2, resp.: ‘Ad quod dicimus illam locutionem multiplicem facere intelligentiam, scilicet “aliter potest fieri quam Deus praescivit” et huiusmodi… Possunt enim haec coniunctim intelligi, ut conditio sit implicita, et disiunctim. Si enim ita intelligas: “Non potest aliter fieri quam Deus praescivit,” id est non potest utrumque simul esse, scilicet quod Deus praesciverit ita fieri et aliter fiat, verum intelligis. Si autem per disiunctionem intelligas, ut dicas hoc aliter non posse evenire quam evenit, quo modo futurum Deus praescivit, falsum est. Hoc enim aliter potest evenire quam evenit, et tamen Deus hoc modo futurum praescivit.’ In Sent. 1.2:279, ll. 11–12, 15–21.

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7. From the definition of what it means to be deceived: God is deceived. It would seem that the respondens would have to concede each of these proposita. The application of the rule that nothing impossible follows from the possible was fundamental to disputation de obligatione and is fundamental to the argument here.8 The rule derived from Aristotle. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle indicated that if something is possible in the sense that there is a capacity to act or exist in a given way, there will be nothing impossible in the actualization of that capacity.9 And in the Prior analytics, he applied the same principle to propositions and logical possibility, stating that if a proposition about something possible is posed in an argument, nothing impossible will result from adding that proposition to the argument as a premiss.10 As used within obligatio, the rule had the force of each of these statements, for by positing some possible proposition the case, either as the initial positum or in subsequent proposita, from that fact alone an impossible conclusion was not assumed to follow. But more, the rule also warranted the assumption that any possible state of affairs could be actualized. Thus the rule justified the performative force of ponatur, of ‘let it be posed the case,’ whenever that increasingly common device appeared in late medieval argument. Translated into the terms of a possible-worlds theory of modality, late medieval theoreticians assumed that any possible world could be the actual world. Besides the warrant of the Aristotelian rule, their belief in God’s absolute power to actualize any consistent set of possibilities made that assumption an imperative.

8 See Eleonore Stump, ‘Obligations: A. From the Beginning to the Early Fourteenth Century,’ in CHLMP, 318; idem, ‘William of Sherwood’s Treatise on Obligations,’ Historiographia Linguistica 7 (1980): 250–251, slightly rev. and repr. in idem, Dialectic and its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989), 178–179. Paul Spade, ‘Three Theories of Obligationes: Burley, Kilvington and Swyneshed on Counterfactual Reasoning,’ HPL 3 (1982): 10, has expressed skepticism about whether obligatio developed historically out of this Aristotelian rule, or whether it came to be attached to obligatio afterthe-fact, since early texts do not mention it. For the text of a fifteenth-century Thomist who does cite it, see E.J. Ashworth, ‘Renaissance Man as Logician: Josse Clichtove (1472–1543) on Disputations,’ HPL 7 (1986): 24. 9 Aristoteles, Metaphysica 9.3.1047a24–26. Christopher Martin in ‘Bradwardine and the Use of Positio as a Test of Possibility,’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoja, and Sten Ebbesen, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2 (Helsinki, 1990), 576, terms this ‘Aristotle’s Principle of Actualization.’ 10 Aristoteles, Prior analytica 1.13.32a18–20.

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Thus in a disputation, an opponens might offer as proposita each of the propositions listed above, and following through an apparently wellgoverned argument from the initial positum that God knows future contingents, the respondens would have to concede each of them. The respondent would then arrive at the impossible conclusion that God, by definition omniscient, is deceived. Since the conclusion is impossible, either the positum or one of the proposita would also seem to be impossible, but the only statement not warranted by commonly accepted procedural rules is the initial positum that God knows future contingent events. Since God is omniscient, events must not be contingent.

A. John Duns Scotus Scotus was apparently the first to introduce the terminology and a bit of the structure of obligatio into the formulation of this puzzle: If God knows that a will be, and a can not be,—let it be posed [ponatur] that ‘a will not be,’ therefore God will know that a (which will not be) will be, therefore God is deceived.11

Scotus responded to the difficulty from the heart of his new modal theory: When it is argued that if God knows a will be, and it is posed the case that ‘a can not be,’ I say that the impossible does not follow from the positio that ‘a can not be’ taken only by itself, but the impossible follows from having kept the other proposition that ‘God knows a will be’ and then posing [a can not be] in being—not because of that posing [positionem] in being, but because of its incompossibility with the other [proposition].12

Since according to the rules, the impossible cannot follow from the possible, and in the puzzle at hand an impossible conclusion results, it 11 John Duns Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Si Deus scit a fore et a potest non fore,— ponatur in esse “a non erit,” igitur Deus scit a fore quod non erit; igitur fallitur.’ In Opera omnia, ed. Carolus Balic, 17 (Vatican City, 1966), 482, ll. 9–11. 12 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Quando arguitur quod si Deus scit a fore, et “potest non fore” ponitur in esse, dico quod ex sola positione istius “a potest non fore” non sequitur impossibile; sed retenta alia propositione quod “Deus sciat a fore,” et tunc ponitur in esse, sequitur impossibile non propter positionem in esse, sed propter incompossibilitatem quantum ad aliam.’ In Opera omnia 17:503, ll. 28–504, l. 5. And cf. Scotus, Reportatio I A, d. 38, qq. 1–2, edited in Joachim Roland Söder, Kontingenz und Wissen: Die Lehre von den futura contingentia bei Johannes Duns Scotus (Münster, 1999), 239, for his treatment of the obligational challenge at Paris.

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would seem that the original positum is not possible as posed, and a must not be contingent. But Scotus argued that the impossibility does not arise directly from posing that a can not be because of the contingency of a, but more indirectly from the incompossibility of the major and minor premisses. Therefore, Scotus suggested an addition to the rule that the impossible does not follow from the possible. He believed that it should read: ‘Having posed some possible thing the case, the impossible does not follow except when some incompossibility results.’13 He reasoned that if a non-modal proposition, like ‘a will be,’ is antecedent to a de possibili consequent, like ‘a can not be,’ the antecedent may be incompatible with some propositions, like ‘a will not be,’ with which the consequent is not incompatibile. Thus it is acceptable to say that ‘if something is possible, it is posable,’ and from posing it the case, the impossible does not follow, but it is not acceptable to say that ‘if something is possible in respect to something else, it is posable in respect to that.’14 In other words, the absolute possibility that attaches to contingent things and events does not imply the possibility of their actualization in relation to just any other set of possibilities. The original rule was ambiguous because it did not make clear whether it referred to absolute impossibility or impossiblity relative to other possibilities. The obligational puzzle arises in part because of the ambiguity in the rule, and Scotus reformulated the rule Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Et hoc est quod solet dici quod “posito aliquo possibili in esse, non sequitur impossibile nisi quando resultat aliqua incompossibilitas.”’ In Opera omnia 17:504, ll. 5–7. See Simo Knuuttila, ‘Buridan and Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic,’ in Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi: Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ed. Burkhard Mojsisch and Olaf Pluta, 1 (Amsterdam, 1991), 484–486, for John Buridan who adopted Scotus’ position, and Marco Rossini, ‘Scientia Dei conditionata Francesco di Meyronnes e i futuri contingenti,’ Medioevo 19 (1993): 294–297, for Francis of Meyronnes, who developed some of its complexities. Also see Mikko Yrjönsuuri, ‘The Compossibility of Impossibilities and Ars Obligatoria,’ HPL 19 (1998):244–246, for a discussion of Boethius of Dacia, who, prior to Scotus, apparently allowed irrelevant impossible sentences into a disputation when they were compossible with the other granted sentences. 14 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Unde non sequitur si propositio de possibili sit vera cum alia de inesse, quod sua de inesse stabit cum illa, quia illa de inesse est antecedens ad illam de possibili,—et non oportet quod illud quod stat cum consequente stet cum antecedente, sed antecedens potest repugnare alicui, licet non consequens; et ideo non sequitur quod licet ista “a potest non fore” stet cum ista “Deus scit a fore,” quod propter hoc “a non fore” stet cum eadem. Et ideo sequitur “si aliquid est possibile, est ponibile,” nec ex positione eius sola sequitur impossibile, sed ex positione eius cum alia sequitur impossibile; et ideo haec falsa est quod “si aliquid est possibile respectu alicuius,” quod “respectu eius sit ponibile in esse.”’ In Opera omnia 17:504, ll. 7–18. 13

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to resolve the ambiguity. In the process, he translated Peter Lombard’s solution in terms of the composite and divided senses into a solution in terms of compatible and incompatible sets of propositions.

B. Arnold of Strelley Arnold of Strelley was the first of the Dominicans to enlarge on Scotus’ beginning. At some point in his career as a student or master of theology, Strelley wrote a work on the problem of foreknowledge entitled Circa praedestinationem et praescientiam. His text consists of a digest of Ockham’s Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia divina supplemented with material from Ockham’s and Scotus’ commentaries on the Sentences and perhaps from Ockham’s Quodlibeta, as well.15 In his tract on predestination, Ockham had paraphrased Scotus’ obligational argument that God could be deceived and had adopted Scotus’ response.16 In the parallel passages in Strelley’s work, Strelley followed Ockham closely, and he may have had Scotus’ text open in front of him along with Ockham’s.17 In any event, he showed himself thoroughly familiar with the exact arguments. 15 Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence: A Question about Predestination and Foreknowledge by Arnold of Strelley, OP,’ AHDLMA 55 (1988): 267– 268. 16 William of Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia divina q. 2, a. 2, in Opera philosophica, ed. Philotheus Boehner and Stephanus Brown, 2 (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1978), 522, ll. 52–55; 523, l.82–524, l. 104. Richard of Campsall also used terminology suggestive of obligatio in his Notabilia pro materia de contingencia et presciencia dei, I.3 and II.5. See The Works of Richard of Campsall, ed. Edward A. Synan 2 (Toronto, 1982), 38–39. 17 Arnold of Strelley, Circa praedestinationem et praescientiam: ‘Quarto sic: Si Deus scit me sessurum cras et possum non sedere cras, ponatur inesse non sedebo cras, ergo Deus decipitur. Sed ex positione possibile inesse, non sequitur impossibile, ergo non esset impossibile Deum decipi… Ad quartum, dico quod ex sola positione in esse non accidit impossibile, et ideo si ista possibile est: “me sedere cras,” ex ista de inesse, id est ex ista; “non sedebo cras,” non accidit impossibile, cum ista de inesse potest repugnari alteri de inesse cui non repugnat illa de possibili quae ponitur inesse, quia antecedens potest repugnari alicui cui non repugnat consequens. Patet de albedo et colorato. Illa autem de inesse antecedit ad istam de possibili, et non econverso, et tunc de ista de inesse quae antecedit ad istam de possibili et alia propositione de inesse sibi repugnante, potest sequi impossibile aliquod, quod non sequitur ad illam de possibili quae est consequens et alia de inesse, nec est mirabile si ex praemissis incompossibilibus sequatur conclusio impossibilis, sicut patet in sillogismo “ex oppositis.” Ad propositum, dico quod si haec possibile est: me sedere cras, ponatur in esse. Ex ista sola de inesse, non sequitur impossibile, sed ex ista de inesse: “non sedebo cras,”

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In his commentary on the Sentences, however, Strelley expanded the application of the obligational style of analysis beyond the Scotist example of God’s possible deception. Strelley extended the obligational challenge to contingency to a puzzle about the necessity of divine revelation: I pose that God reveals to someone a future [contingent a that he knows] … Whence I say, that having posed such a revelation: ‘a will be,’ yet it will happen contingently and not necessarily because it is the nature of a itself that it denotes ‘contingently.’ But you say, if it happens contingently, then it is possible not to happen. I concede. You say, let it therefore be posed in being.18

Strelley’s argument is more clearly an obligatio than that of either Scotus or Ockham. Moreover, because his version of the puzzle introduces the problem of the necessity of the past in the form of God’s revelation about a future event, it both increases the difficulty of the obligational challenge to contingency and indicates a fundamental difference between his and Scotus’ views on God’s knowledge and will. When Scotus rejected the obligational rule that did not allow counterfactual possibility to co-exist with the present moment, he subordiet: “Deus scit me sessurum cras,” sequitur impossibile, scilicet quod “Deus fallatur,” et haec quia istae duae [sunt] repugnatae. Exemplum de istis: “Sortis sedet,” et sic potest stare; ex istis non sequitur impossibile, sed ex illa de inesse in qua habet poni illa de possibile cum prima de inesse, sequitur impossibile, scilicet quod “sedens sit stans.”’ In Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence,’ 274–275, 281–282. The difference in the manuscripts between ‘inesse’ and ‘in esse’ is often not clear, and they occur in the texts of Strelley’s works interchangeably. In meaning, ‘inesse’ taken as an assertion of non-modal, assertoric fact (as in ‘de inesse’) and ‘in esse’ taken as ‘in being’ are equivalent in the given context, translated as ‘posed in being.’ Where Stelley’s Circa praedestinationem is ambiguous, I have used the edition of Ockham’s Tractatus as a potential guide. Resort to Ockham was made only after ascertaining that Strelley was abbreviating Ockham. 18 Arnold of Strelley, In libros Sententiarum I, q. 7: ‘Sed contra pono quod Deus revelet alicui eiusdem futurum… Unde dico quod posita tali revelatione a erit, sed tamen contingenter erit et non necessario, quia hoc est de natura ipsius a, scilicet quod contingenter denotat. Sed dicis si contingenter evenit, igitur potest non evenire. Concedo. Dicis ponatur igitur in esse.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F. 180, f. 29va.

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nated proposita exhibiting the necessity of the present to the counterfactual possibility of the initial positio. Secundum quid necessity was permissible within a contingent frame of reference. Strelley’s choice to cast the obligatio in terms of a revelation about some future event, a revelation that would occur prior to that event and become part of the necessary past, raised the equivalent question about past necessity that Scotus had raised about present necessity: could the necessity of the past also be subordinated to a contingent frame of reference? Or must it compromise the contingency of God’s foreknowledge and the contingency of future events? Such a question did not and could not have arisen within Scotus’ discussion of the nature of God’s will and its implications for the ars obligatoria. Scotus’ believed the divine will acts within an instantaneous present (in instanti uno aeternitatis)19 to which nothing is past. The sets of compossibile possibilities that God’s will surveys must all be construed in regard to the present tense act of his will. In as much as other possible worlds are simply non-actualized sets of compossibilities present to God in the second instant of nature simultaneous with his act of willing the actual set in the third instant of nature, the necessity of the past could not affect real counterfactual possibility. Thus the necessity of the past posed no difficulty for Scotus as a bar to contingency and did not appear as a real problem in his discussions about God’s foreknowledge or the obligational challenge. William of Ockham had emphatically disagreed with Scotus’ views about instants of nature, God’s knowledge of future contingents, and time, however, and his criticism created the context for Strelley’s question. Where Scotus had argued that god knows everything by knowing the enactments of his will as represented to the divine intellect in the divine essence, Ockham, objected, arguing that God knows everything directly in intuitive cognition: I say, therefore, that it is impossible to express clearly how God knows future contingents. Yet one should hold that he does know them only contingently… the divine essence is an intuitive cognition which is so perfect, so clear, that it itself is evident cognition of all past and future things, so that it knows which part of a contradiction will be true and which part false.20 19 John Duns Scotus, Reportatio I A d. 39–40, edited in Söder, Kontingenz und Wissen: 231, l. 21. 20 William of Ockham, Tractatus de praedestionatione, q. 1: ‘Ideo dico quod impossibile est clare exprimere modum quo Deus scit futura contingentia. Tamen tenendum est

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Thus God knows things directly in their temporality. However, Ockham’s analysis of time is complex. ‘Time’ is not an ‘absolute’ term in his lexicon, indicating a particular, objective, thing, but a connotative term that serves as short-hand for a series of other propositions. Most strictly time signifies the successive motion of the heavens taken as a measure of other motions and change.21 Terms like ‘past,’ ‘present’ and ‘future’ are objectively and ontologically based in that they connote things in successive motion. Although the term ‘time’ also connotes a measuring mind, time is not just a question of perspective. Thus, understood properly, it would be acceptable to speak of the arrow of time. An arrow of time arises in Ockham’s system because propositions about the past, present and future are modally distinctive for God as well as for human beings. Propositions about future events could be contingent whereas propositions simply about the past or present, if they are true, are necessary.22 Rather than adopting the Scotist arrow of instantaneous logical priority distributed over quod scit contingenter tantum… essentia divina est notitia intuitiva quae est tam perfecta, tam clara quod ipsa est notitia evidens omnium praeteritorum et futurorum, ita quod ipsa scit quae pars contradictionis erit vera et quae pars falsa.’ In OP 2:517, ll. 277–518, l. 287. Paul A. Streveler, ‘The Problem of Future Contingents: A Medieval Discussion,’ The New Scholasticism 47 (1973): 233–247, reviews Ockham’s position within its historical context from a philosophical perspective. 21 William of Ockham, Reportatio II, q. 10: ‘Tunc dico quod tempus potest accipi tribus modis … Primo modo accipitur propriissime et strictissime pro motu velocissmo maxime noto, sive sit motus octavae sphaerae sive nonae, sive solis sive lunae, qui sit nobis maxime notus. Et hoc quia tali motu mensuramus alios motus inferiores, sicut per motum solis mensuramus motus inferiores, et per motum lunae similiter, quia sic mensurari non est aliud quam certificari per unum motum de alio motu.’ in Opera Theologica 5, ed. Gedeon Gál and Rega Wood (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1981), 191, ll. 12– 21. And see the excellent discussion in Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham, 2 (Notre Dame, IN., 1987), 855–899. For his views on connotative terms, see Paul Vincent Spade, ‘Ockham’s Distinctions between Absolute and Connotative Terms,’ Vivarium 13 (1975):55–75. 22 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1: ‘… si aliqua propositio mere de inesse et de praesenti et non aequivalens uni de futuro sit vera modo, ita quod sit vera de praesenti, semper erit vera de praeterito; quia si haec propositio sit modo vera “haec res est,” quacumque re demonstrata, semper postea erit haec vera “haec res fuit”; nec potest Deus de potentia sua absoluta facere quod haec propositio sit falsa. … illa propositio quae est sic de praesenti quod tamen aequivalet uni de futuro, et cuius veritas dependet ex veritate unius de futuro, non habet aliquam de praeterito necessariam; immo ita contingens est illa de praeterito sicut sua de praesenti… Et ideo ita contingens est illa “Petrus fuit praedestinatus” sicut ista “Petrus est praedestinatus.”’ in OP 2:507, ll. 18–508, l. 23, 509, ll. 59–67. And see the discussions in Adams, William Ockham, 2:1137–1143, and 1224; Normore, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ 14. M.J.F.M. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought (Leiden, 1993), 228, notes that

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the instants of nature, Ockham posed that God’s knowledge and will track a modally differentiated temporal arrow in which propositions about the contingent future become propositions about the hypothetically necessary present that in turn become propostions about the per accidens necessary past, which not even God can change. Questions about the per accidens necessity of the past might again arise as troublesome for contingency. Puzzles about the necessity of the past that challenged future contingency were as hoary as puzzles about the possibility of God’s being deceived.23 Aquinas exhibited a classic formulation in his Summa theologiae: When the antecedent of a true conditional is absolutely necessary, the consequent must also be absolutely necessary. But the conditional: ‘If God knew that a thing will be, it will be,’ is true and the antecedent is absolutely necessary because it signifies a past event, therefore the consequent is also absolutely necessary.24 Aquinas had countered the argument from the necessity of the consequent and from the absolute necessity of the past with the ‘perspectivist’ contention that God’s knowledge of time is of an omnitemporal present. Thus God’s knowledge is not ‘past’ since God knows all things: past, present and future, as eternally present.25 But Strelley, presumably sensitive to the criticisms at the time Marsilius of Inghen was writing his Sentences commentary in the mid-1390’s, such a modal view of time was common. 23 The Master Argument of Diodorus Cronus is a case in point. See the discussion in William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic, revised paperback edition (Oxford, 1984), 117–128. For medieval views about the necessity of the past see Calvin G. Normore, ‘The Logic of Time and Modality in the Later Middle Ages,’ Ph.D. dissertation (The University of Toronto, 1976); idem, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ 3–22; idem, ‘Scotus, Modality, Instants of Nature and the Contingency of the Present,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnenfelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 172–174; William J. Courtenay, ‘John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini on Whether God Can Undo the Past,’ RTAM 39 (1972): 224–256; 40 (1973): 147–174; reprinted with corrigenda in Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought: Studies in Philosophy, Theology and Economic Practice (London, 1984). 24 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, prima pars, q. 14, art. 13, ob. 2: ‘Praeterea, omnis conditionalis cujus antecedens est necessarium absolute, consequens est necessarium absolute … Sed haec est quaedam conditionalis vera: Si Deus scivit hoc futurum esse, hoc erit: quia scientia non est nisi verorum. Hujus autem conditionali antecedens est necessarium absolute: tum quia est aeternum; tum quia significatur ut praeteritum. Ergo et consequens est necessarium absolute. Ergo quidquid scitur a Deo est necessarium; et sic scientia Dei non est contingentium.’ In Summa theologiae, ed. Thomas Gilby, 4 (New York, 1964), 46. 25 Aquinas, ST prima pars, q. 14, art. 13, ad ob. 2: ‘Et similiter, si dicam, “si Deus scivit aliquid, illud erit,” consequens intelligendum est prout subest divinae scientiae, scilicet prout est in sua praesentialitate.’ In ST 4:50. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 169–

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that Scotus and Ockham had directed against Boethian perspectivism, did not embrace such a solution. Rather than consider the problem as a puzzle about the necessity of the consequent as Aquinas had done, Strelley regarded the problem of the necessity of the past as a puzzle about the relationship between necessity and contingency in the same way Scotus had regarded the puzzle about the necessity of the present in describing the necessity of the present as secundum quid or subordinately related to the contingent causality of God’s will. And Strelley worked out his solution in the context of an obligational disputation. In answer to the last propositum of his fictive opponens: to let it be posed the case that some contingent event revealed by God not happen, effectively invoking the problem of per accidens necessity, Strelley responded with the words: I say that that is not posed in being (even though I concede that it could be posed the case from its nature), for that proposition [that it could be posed the case] stands simultaneously with another: that an impossible event not be posed to happen.26

The reason that it is not posed the case, he argued, is that the impossible is of two kinds: per se—as that a man be an ass—and per accidens—as that Socrates not have lived (something rendered necessary by the passage of time). Nothing impossible per se ever follows from posing something that is possible. But sometimes the impossible per accidens does so follow, at least in those special cases in which the past tense antecedent concerns a future contingent event.27 172, describes the dispute at Paris among Aquinas’ critics and followers about whether to attribute the view to him that God knew past, present and future things in their real presence or ‘as if ’ present. Scotus attributed the former view to him, and the discussion about ‘as if ’ presence does not seem to have entered into the Dominican rejection of the perspectival view at Oxford. 26 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Dico quod non ponetur in esse, sed concedo quod de natura sui posset poni inesse, ista enim stant simul quod non ponetur inesse actum impossibile.’ In Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F. 180, ff. 29va–29vb. 27 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Dico quod duplex est impossibile—per se sicut hominem esse asinum, quoddam per accidens ut Sortem non vixisse, et tales quae ex transitu temporis redduntur impossibiles. Tunc dico quod numquam ex possibili posito sequitur aliquod impossibile per se, sed aliquando sequitur impossibile per accidens ex aliquo possibili posito, sed tamen istud est speciale in hiis quorum veritas dependet ab aliqua de futuro. In aliis enim non erit invenire exemplum.’ In Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F. 180, f. 29vb. Yrjönsuuri, ‘Compossibility of Impossibilities,’ 242, notes that Walter Burley had also allowed propositions impossible per accidens to be granted in de possibili obligational disputes. Yrjönsuuri rightly claims that Burley’s view of compossibility is a syntatic

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Strelley’s argument hinges on the same analysis according to the compatibility and incompatibility of propositions that Scotus had employed. And just as Scotus had subordinated the necessity of the present to God’s contingent will, Strelley’s argument subordinates per accidens necessity, the necessity of the past, to a contingent frame. In Strelley’s view, the necessity of the past loses its absolute character if the thing which is past is a proposition or speech act signifying some future event, as for example: ‘Jane said yesterday that she would be going to the beach in two days.’ In this, Strelley followed a tradition reaching back through Ockham to Bonaventure and beyond.28 Because divine revelations are just such propositions, encompassing statements about what will happen in the future, they do not compromise the contingency of the future event of which they speak any more than God’s foreknowledge does. Strelley’s argument is intricate, however. The move within his obligational disputation to pose that some true future contingent, posed as true in the positum, will not in fact happen had its normal warrant in concept: sentences are compossible if their conjunction does not introduce logical incompatibility, not a semantic concept based on what is possible in the actual world. 28 Bonaventure, In libros Sententiarum I, d. 38, q. 2, art. 2: ‘Sed quoniam, ut significatur per modum praescientiae, connotat futurum contingens, et omne dictum, quod claudit in se contingens, iudicandum est contingens; ideo totale contingens iudicatur.—et haec solutio est vera et generalis.’ In Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi 1 (Claras Aquas, 1882), 679. Thus Bonaventure suggested nullification of the necessity of the past in the case of past tense propositions that treat of future contingent matters. Alexander of Hales seems to have taken a similar view; see Léon Baudry, ed., La Querelle des futurs contingents (Louvain 1465–1475), (Paris, 1950), 194–195. Albert the Great, In libros Sententiarum I, d. 38, a. 4, upheld an analogous, although not propositionally stated, position about God’s knowledge: ‘… haec quidem ab aeterno est vera, Deus praescivit hunc peccaturum si peccabit: tamen scitum dependet ad futurum et ideo non simpliciter: sed secundum quid accipit necessitatem, scilicet secundum quod cadit sub scientia: haec autem non est nisi necessitas conditionis, et non absoluta …’ In Opera omnia, ed. Stephanus Caesarus Augustinus Borgnet (Paris, 1893), 290a. However, Thomas Aquinas rejected their position in ST, prima pars, q. 14, art. 13, ad ob. 2 (ST 4:48). Ockham sided with Bonaventure, Alexander and Albert, and the position is now known in the literature as the Ockhamist position. For Ockham, see Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1 in OP 2:515 and Ordinatio I, d. 38, q. 1, in Opera theologica, ed. Girardus I. Etzkorn and Franciscus E. Kelley, 4 (St. Bonaventure, New York, 1979), 588. For the contemporary attribution of this position to Ockham, see John Martin Fischer, ed., Moral Responsibility (Ithaca, 1986), 24–26, and Alvin Plantinga, ‘On Ockham’s Way Out,’ Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986): 235–269. Discussion about whether such a view constituted an innovation in the 14th century or whether it had a long history occurred in the 14th century as well: Alfonsus Vargas associated it with the doctores moderni, but also attributed it to Peter Lombard and Peter of Tarantasia, perhaps to give the position an air of tradition. See Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 207.

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the rule that the impossible does not follow from the possible and that, therefore, any possible state of affairs can be posed the case. Strelley argued that the reference to impossibility in the rule only referred to absolute impossibility. Under certain circumstances a per accidens impossible propositum might be compatible with a contingent positio. If per accidens necessity attached to some past statement or proposition that had reference to a future event, the per accidens necessity attaching to the statement after it recedes into the past would not compromise the contingency of the future event it foretold and would not render contradictory the initial positio specifying the revelation of a future contingent. Proposita that admitted per accidens necessity into the disputation consequent on the positum were thus sometimes admissible and should be conceded. Per accidens necessity, as a necessity at least sometimes secundum quid, might be subordinated to the larger frame of contingent possibility. But then the respondens would be justified, according to Strelley, in denying the move from accepting the possibility that a will not happen to posing it the case that a will not happen. The per accidens necessity that a will happen once a has been revealed is compatible with the contingency of a and so may be admitted into the disputation. But once admitted, Strelley argues, it stands as a counter to the rule that any possible may be posed the case. The propositum about a revelation made in the past, once conceded, still retains sufficient force from its per accidens necessity to counter the need for the respondent to concede the contingent alternatives to a when they are posed. To recapitulate, with the addition of suppressed assumptions, the structure of Strelley’s argument could be clarified as follows: Positum: Let it be the case that God revealed to someone [say Socrates] at t1 that future contingent a will happen at t2. [Assume the time of obligation to be neither t1 nor t2.] Proposita: 1. God having revealed a at t1, a remains contingent prior to t2. Conceded. [From the rule that under certain circumstances propositions exhibiting per accidens necessity may be admitted into a possible positio if they contain an embedded reference to a future contingent.] 2. A will be. Conceded. [From the positum.]

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3. A possibly will not be. Conceded. [From the nature of a’s contingency.] 4. Let it be posed the case that a will not be. [Apparently admissible from Aristotle’s rule allowing the instantiation of any possibility and the admissibility of propositions to that effect into an argument.] Denied. [Blocked from being posed the case by the per accidens neccessity of the past still attaching to the proposition about God’s past revelation.] Strelley’s position here seems compatibilist. He posed that in those instances in which God reveals true propositions about future contingent events, the per accidens necessity that what he reveals will come true is compatible with the contingency of the events he chooses to reveal. Strelley’s position does not seem coherent, however, for if what it means for some event to be contingent is that it is possible for that event to happen or not to happen, then to say that there is sufficient per accidens necessity accruing to a revelation that that event will happen, which prevents posing that the event not happen, and to say that all the while the event remains contingent, is to say that even though that event cannot not happen, it is still possible that it not happen. The presumption that the contingency of the event precedes its revelation and would thus subordinate the per accidens impossibility activated with its revelation does not obviate the contradiction. Strelley seems to have tried to have it both ways. Unlike Strelley, when Ockham et al. indicated the compatibility of past tense propositions referring to events about the future with the contingency of those events, they did so by nullifying the per accidens necessity normally attaching to propositions about the past. Strelley kept the per accidens necessity, but argued it would not nullify contingency because subordinated to a prior contingent frame. Strelley’s attempt to deal with per accidens necessity is not compelling, however. His successors did not adopt his strategy. Yet he pioneered in a number of ways: by raising the question of how per accidens necessity would affect the obligational argument about future contingents, by using the rule about past tense propositions that refer to future events not nullifying contingency to deal with the obligational challenge, and by suggesting a solution incorporating the idea of successively subordinated or nested kinds of contingency and necessity. Besides the puzzle about the necessity of revelation, Strelley also addressed the original obligational challenge to contingency from the

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possibility of God’s being deceived. Here, too, Strelley expanded the analysis. After running through the basic argument, Strelley examined the structure of the incompossibilities it contained in detail. The fictive ‘opponent’ whom he engaged had argued that because the final conclusion of the obligatio: ‘that God is deceived,’ is an impossibility, one of the previous premisses must also be impossible (and badly conceded in the course of the disputation). In syllogistic form, substituting ‘I will sit tomorrow’ for a in the Scotist original, Strelley’s argument condenses to: God knows that I will sit tomorrow, And I will not sit tomorrow, Therefore, God is deceived.

For either premiss to be impossible would entail disagreeable consequences, obviating either contingency and human freedom, on the one hand, or divine foreknowledge, on the other. As before, Strelley countered like Scotus that to argue from an impossible conclusion to the impossibility of one of the premisses was not necessary in this case— because an impossible conclusion might also arise if the two premisses were simply incompatible.29 Strelley clearly accepted Scotus’ emendation to the rule that the impossible does not follow from the possible, to read that the impossible does not follow except when some incompossibility in the contingent premisses has brought it about. However, if the premisses are incompatible, if one is true, the other must be false, and vice-versa. Strelley admitted that to be the case: I say that always from the fact one of these [premisses] is posited as the case, the other is rendered de possibili, and ought so to be taken, and conversely. Whence if from the proposition ‘I can not sit tomorrow,’ the non-modal proposition that I do not sit tomorrow is posited as the case, then the major taken from the positio [that God knows I will sit tomorrow] is rendered de possibili in mode, in the form: ‘God could have known that I would sit tomorrow.’ And the corresponding non-modal proposition [‘I do sit tomorrow’] would never have been true, but always its contradictory.30 29 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Dico hic quod iste motus [sic, modus] arguendi non valet: conclusio est impossibilis, igitur altera praemissorum, sed sufficit quod sint incompossibiles; sic est in proposito.’ In Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F. 180, f. 30rb. 30 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Unde dico quod semper ex hoc quod una de istis ponitur inesse, alia efficitur de possibili, et sic accipienda est, et econverso. Unde si ista ponatur de inesse: possum non sedere cras, sic dicendo non sedeo cras, tunc maior ex ista positione redditur de possibili sic dicendo Deus potuit nosse me sessurum cras, et

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Strelley thus argued, as Peter Lombard and Ockham before him, that God’s knowledge tracks future reality. Whatever will be the case is what God will know, even though it always remains true that God could have known otherwise. In the actual obligational disputation, the initial positum stating that God knows that I will sit tomorrow, goes from being true to being false in the course of the argument.31 However, if it is posed within the argument that I do not sit tomorrow, then more properly, Strelley urged, one should concede that the initial positum: ‘God knows that I will sit tomorrow,’ was never true, but only could have been true.32 Strelley’s contention that in the case of contingent incompossibles, if one possibility is simply true, the other must be rendered de possibili, discerns the basic structure of the difficulty, but since there is a valid inference given the rules in play from God’s foreknowledge of a future contingent event to its not happening, the contention that the original positum is rendered de possibili by such an inference seems at best ad hoc. In the Centiloquium theologicum, however, Strelley added a refinement to his argument that exposed its warrant. In conclusion 12, he considered the Scotist question of whether God could be of diverse wills, say to damn Socrates in instant a and not to damn Socrates in instant a. Strelley denied that God could have diverse wills, but conceded that God could be of diverse will in the sense that God can will diverse and opposite things to happen.33 The by now usual obligational counterargument immediately surfaced:

infertur illam de inesse correspondentem non fuisse unquam veram, sed semper suam contradictoriam.’ In Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F. 180, f. 30rb. 31 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Sed dicis si sint incompossibiles et minor est vera, ergo maior est falsa, concedo consequentia illa: maior primo fuit vera et modo est falsa, igitur est mutata a veritate in falsitatem.’ In Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F. 180, f. 30rb. 32 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Dico quod numquam fuit vera maior illa quia ista semper fuit vera: [non] sedebo cras, concedo tamen quod semper potuit fuisse vera.’ In Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F. 180, f. 30rb. Cf. Lombard, Sent. I, d. 38, cap. 2: ‘Si autem per disiunctionem intelligas, ut dicas hoc aliter non posse evenire quam evenit, quo modo futurum Deus praescivit, falsum est. Hoc enim aliter poest evenire quam evenit, et tamen Deus hoc modo futurum praescivit.’ In Sent. 1.2:279, ll. 18–21. 33 Strelley, Centiloquium theologicum, concl. 12: ‘Ad quartum dicitur istam negando proprie loquendo “Deus potest esse diversarum voluntatum” quia sua de inesse est impossibilis, ista scilicet “Deus est diversarum voluntatum,” et hoc ad istum intellectum secundum quod loquimur in proposito “Deus habet diversas voluntates intrinsece secundum naturam divinam.” Et ulterius conceditur quod utraque istarum est contingens “iste Deus damnabit Sortem in a instanti,” “iste Deus non damnabit Sortem in a instanti.” Et conceditur quod utraque potest esse vera in a instanti. Et conceditur ista copulativa

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For if it is posed the case that God is of a will to damn Socrates in instant a, then it can be asked whether God can be of a will not to damn Socrates in instant a. And this is conceded. Then it is argued that God can be changed from one will to another will. And this is denied.34

Strelley explained: Although the proposition: ‘Socrates will be damned in instant a,’ is true and could be false, yet it could not be changed from being true to being false, for prior to instant a, it can not be false once it was true, nor can it begin to be false before instant a. Because if it is posited as the case: that God will not damn Socrates in instant a, then one should not say that God is of another will than he was before… But because a new case is posed, incompatible with the preceding case, one should deny everything incompatible with the new case, even if it would follow from the preceding case… whence in this matter, one should concede that of this will, of which God is now and of which he was before, he can never have been.35

The effect of moving the argument from ‘God is of a will to damn Socrates in instant a but could be of a will not to damn Socrates in instant a,’ to positing it as the case that God is of a will not to damn “Deus potest habere voluntatem damnandi Sortem in a instanti et Deus potest habere voluntatem non damnandi Sortem in a instanti.” Et ulterius negatur consequentia “ergo Deus potest habere diversas voluntates.” Sed bene conceditur quod diversarum voluntatum Deus potest esse, ad istum intellectum, quod diversa et opposita Deus potest velle.’ In Guillelmus de Ockham, Dubia et spuria, ed. Philotheus Boehner and Girardus I. Etzkorn, Opera Philosophica 7 (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1988), 407, ll. 155–167. 34 Strelley, Cent. concl. 12: ‘Et si dicatur: ponatur igitur in esse quod Deus sit in voluntate damnandi Sortem in a instanti, tunc quaeritur una cum hoc utrum Deus potest esse in voluntate non damnandi Sortem in a instanti: Ad istud breviter dicitur concedendo quod sic… Et si dicatur: ergo Deus potest mutari ab una voluntate ad aliam voluntatem, negatur consequentia…’ In Ockham, OP 7:404, ll. 180–188. 35 Strelley, Cent. concl. 12: ‘Quia quamvis ista propositio “Sortes damnabitur in a instanti” sit vera et poterit esse falsa, non tamen poterit mutari de veritate in falsitatem, nec potest esse falsa postquam fuit vera, ante a instans, nec potest incipere esse falsa ante a instans. Quia si ponatur in esse, scilicet quod Deus non damnabit Sortem in a instanti, tunc non est dicendum quod Deus est alterius voluntatis quam prius fuit … Sed propter novum casum positum, incompossibilem casui praecedenti, negandum est omne repugnans isti novo casui, quamvis sequatur ex casu praecedenti… Unde in ista materia concedendum est quod istius voluntatis, cuius est nunc Deus et cuius Deus prius fuit, potest numquam fuisse. Sicut concedendum est quod istam propositionem quam Deus nunc scit et quam Deus prius scivit potest numquam scivisse.’ In Ockham, OP 7:408, ll. 188–203.

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Socrates in instant a, is to pose a new case or positio that supercedes the old one. The respondent should then respond in line with the new case without worrying whether his responses may contradict the original positio. By posing a new case, the opponent in effect begins a new obligatio. The structure of an obligational argument must thus procede: If P then Q , where P is the positio and Q is some set of sentences consistently inferred from P, or: If not-P then not-Q. If, because of a procedural rule grounded in the very nature of what it means to be contingent, not-P enters the chain of inferences from P, then not-P becomes the point of reference for further inference and the result should be notQ rather than Q.36 Scotus gave implicit recognition to the possibility that after posing contingent P, contingent not-P may sometimes enter the argument in his rule that the impossible does not follow from the possible except when some incompossibility is present. The implications of this rule then needed addressing. Strelley brought the problem into the open. His addition to the obligational rules ensures that noncompossible opposite possibilities cannot be posed the case at the same time in the same obligational debate. Each obligational debate represents one and only one possible world. Perhaps Strelley’s most intriguing innovation, however, lies in the way he used the art of obligatio to analyze God’s knowledge, revelations and will. The enactments of God’s will described in the example as ‘let it be the case [ponatur] that God is of a will to damn Socrates in instant a,’ and ‘let it be the case [ponatur] that God is of a will not to damn Socrates in instant a,’ take on the character of posed cases. Rather than the ‘and God said let there be …’ of Genesis, the formula might read ‘and God said let it be posed the case that…’ Following directly from Scotus’ position that God’s will surveys sets of mutually exclusive compossibilities in the process of determining what will be, Strelley’s application of the technique of obligatio to analyze such compossibilities forms the beginning of a theology, a theology based in obligatio in which God’s enactments serve as the posita. 36 Martin, ‘Bradwardine and the Use of Positio,’ compares this structure to ‘the construction of sets of propositions maximally consistent with respect to a given system of axioms and rules of inference’ in modern logic. Yrjönsuuri, ‘Compossibility of Impossiblities,’ 242, in a discussion of the if-P-then-Q structure of obligational debates, notes its importance in enabling obligatio challenges to criticize inferences. Posing the antecedent of an inference, could refute the inference if the respondent must concede the opposite of the consequent in the course of the argument. The obligational challenge to God’s foreknowledge takes just such a form.

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C. Robert Holcot Not all of the Dominicans at Oxford during these years subscribed to an obligational theology. As will be seen in the chapter on future contingents, William Crathorn was as committed to the view that the world is a completely contingent place as was his predecessor Strelley, but he developed a very different response to the paradoxes of contingency, a response that did not formally address the obligational challenge. However, as Fritz Hoffmann first pointed out, the ars obligatoria is key to Robert Holcot’s theological method.37 Holcot followed in Strelley’s footsteps, not only adopting an obligational theology, but refining it, further extending its application, and creating new and more complex obligational puzzles. In his commentary on the Sentences, Holcot put forward an elaborate casus and argument: If a is a sin that Socrates will freely commit tomorrow. Then it is argued: God knows that a will be, therefore from eternity he knew that a will be or he began to know that a will be. It cannot be said that he began to know that a will be, because then he could know or foreknow something anew and as a result of time… If he knew a from eternity, I pose that ‘a will be’ was written on a wall yesterday. Therefore, the proposition ‘that written on the wall was true’ is true, and … consequently necessary because it is a true proposition about the past. Therefore, it is necessary that it be the case as the proposition denotes, i. e. it is necessary that Socrates sin.38 37

Fritz Hoffmann, Die theologische Methode des Oxforder Dominikanerlehrers Robert Holcot, BGPTM n. s. 5 (Münster, 1972), 18–19, 62–63, 276–277, 280–281, 346–348, 351–355. And idem, ‘Der Wandel in der scholastischen Argumentation vom 13. zum 14. Jahrhundert, aufgezeigt an zwei Beispielen: Robert Holcot und William (Johannes?) Crathorn (1330–1332 in Oxford),’ in Die Bibliotheca Amploniana: Ihre Bedeutung im Spannungsfeld von Aristotelismus, Nominalismus und Humanismus, ed. Andreas Speer (Berlin, 1995), 315–317. 38 Robert Holcot, In quatuor libros Sententiarum II, q. 2: ‘(Si [sic: sit] a peccatum quod Sortes libere committet cras.) Tunc arguitur sic: Deus scit a fore, ergo ab aeterno scivit a fore vel incepit scire a fore. Non potest dici quod incepit scire a fore, quia tunc posset aliquid scire vel praescire noviter et ex tempore… Si ab aeterno scivit a fore, pono quod “a fore” fuit heri scriptum in pariete; ergo haec est modo vera: “scriptum in pariete fuit verum” … quia haec est una vera de praeterito et per consequens necessaria. Ergo necesse est evenire sicut per eam denotatur; ergo necesse est Sortem peccare.’ In Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly: Questions on Future Contingents, ed. Paul A. Streveler and Katherine H. Tachau (Toronto,

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Holcot contended that the common response of almost everyone to such an argument, the response recognizable as Strelley’s (with roots in Peter Lombard, and espoused by Richard of Campsall and William of Ockham among others before him), was to pose the possibility of a counterfactual past: to say that the proposition ‘a will be’ is true, yet contingently, and therefore, although it is true, it can never have been true.39 Thus Holcot maintained that the possibility of a counterfactual past differentiated propositions about the future on contingent matters and their equivalents—whether set in the past or present—from propositions about the past and present that are not about such contingent matters.40 If a is a future contingent, the propositions ‘a was known by God,’ and ‘a is known by God,’ set in the past and present, are true and yet can never have been true, because a as a future contingent can still not happen.41 1995), 126, ll. 307–317. Much of the text of Holcot’s Sentences commentary, Book II, q. 2 is edited in this volume, and I have used it where possible, but for the convenience of the reader, I also give citations to the Lyon edition, published in facsimile by Minerva G.M.B.H. (Frankfurt, 1967)—here f. h2vb. 39 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Ad istud argumentum dicunt aliqui, et est quasi communis responsio omnium, quod haec propositio “a erit” est vera, tamen contingenter. Et ideo, licet sit vera, potest tamen numquam fuisse vera.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 126, ll. 318–320; Lyon, f. h2vb. Besides Arnold of Strelley, Richard Campsall, Notabilia I.2-II.5, in Works, ed. Synan, 2:38–39, and William of Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1, in OP 2:511, l. 115–512, l. 135, also apply a past counterfactual analysis to future contingency. Bartholomew R. De la Torre, Thomas Buckingham and the Contingency of Futures: The Possibility of Human Freedom (Notre Dame, 1987), 130, calls this a ‘doctrine of retroactive difference,’ and traces it back through Ockham, Scotus, Grosseteste, and William of Auxerre to Peter Lombard. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 209–212, 229, discusses Gregory of Rimini’s use of the formula (and Rimini’s citation of Augustine, Boethius, Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard in its support), Bradwardine’s objections to it, and the general controversy about whether it implied creatures could bring about a change in God. In the current literature, Peter Van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford, 1983), 42, raises such a past counterfactual response to fatalism. 40 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Et haec est differentia inter propositiones de futuro in materia contingenti et eis aequivalentes, sive sint de praesenti sive de praeterito, et propositiones de praesenti et de praeterito quae non aequivalent talibus nec tales virtualiter includunt; quia si aliqua sit propositio vera de praesenti vel de praeterito, necessario postea erit semper verum dicere quod illa fuit vera… Sed in propositionibus de praesenti et de praeterito quae aequivalent propsitionibus de futuro vel exponi habent per aliquam de futuro, secus est.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 127, ll. 323–338; Lyon ff. h2vb–h3va. 41 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Nam ista propositio: “a fuit scitum a Deo,” quae est de praeterito, vel ista: “a est scitum a Deo,” quae est de praesenti, sic est vera modo, quod tamen potest numquam fuisse vera; et ideo “a est scitum a Deo” potest tamen numquam fuisse scitum a Deo.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 127, ll. 338–341; Lyon f. h3va.

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However, Holcot suggested a number of further arguments that might stand against such a resolution of the difficulty, among them the following: [Letting a stand for some future contingent.] Let it be that yesterday you conceded (without it being posed an obligatio to you): a will be. Today, I propose this to you: ‘a can not happen.’ If you deny it, then a will necessarily happen. If you concede it, Let it be posited as the case that a will not happen. Then, I argue thus: ‘a will not happen,’ Therefore, this was always true before: ‘a will not happen.’ If it was always true before, then it was never true before that a will happen. And further, it was not true yesterday, and yesterday you conceded it under no obligational constraint, therefore, you responded badly yesterday.42

Deftly sidestepping the protective effect of the rule that all of the responses in a debate de obligatione were indexed to the same hypothetical moment of time, Holcot’s argument again raises the problem of the necessity of the past. If events are indeed contingent, it seems that some statement, made in all innocence yesterday, and in fact true yesterday, would have to be denied as false today, and the respondent would have to concede that he responded badly the day before, even though the fact of yesterday’s concession and its truth then is irrelevant to the present positio and stands outside any disputation de obligatione and so outside the subordinating contingency of any other counterfactual positio.

42 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Praeterea, sit ita quod heri concessisti nulla obligatione tibi facta: “a erit.” Hodie propono tibi istam: “a potest non evenire.” Si neges, igitur a necessario eveniet. Si concedas, ponatur in esse: “a non eveniet.” Tunc arguo sic: a non eveniet, igitur haec semper ante fuit vera: “a non eveniet.” Si fuit semper ante vera, igitur haec numquam fuit vera: “a eveniet.” Et ultra: igitur non fuit vera heri, et heri fuit concessa a te nulla obligatione tibi facta, igitur heri concessisti falsum nulla obligatione tibi facta, igitur heri male respondisti.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 128, ll. 356–363; Lyon f. h3ra. And see Martin, ‘Brawardine and the Use of Positio,’ 580– 582, for another discussion of this passage.

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In order to resolve such puzzles, Holcot proposed four rules concerning the ars obligatoria:43 1. When an opponent poses a case and the respondent admits it, the respondent is obligated to respond according to the case. Therefore, whenever it is said by the opponent: ‘Let it be posited that it is so’ (or the equivalent), he makes a positio to the respondent that is a kind of obligatio if the respondent admits it.44 2. That everything following formally from what is posed ought to be conceded, and that everything repugnant to what is posed ought to be denied, and for what is irrelevant, the respondent should respond as it is evident to him from how things are.45 3. Every positio is equivalent to a depositio, because [positio and depositio] are equivalent for the respondent… And therefore, someone who poses one of two contradictories, deposes the other.46 43 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 9: ‘In nono articulo principali recolligendae sunt quaedam regulae logicales et hic supponendae propter quasdam formas argumentorum, quae regulae quidem in arte obligatoria diffusius pertractantur.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 158, ll. 1000–1002; Lyon f. i6vb. 44 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 9: ‘Et est primo notandum quod quando opponens ponit casum et respondens admittit, respondens est obligatus ad respondendum secundum casum. Et ideo quandocumque dicitur ab opponente: “ponatur quod ita sit” vel aliquid aequivalens, fit respondenti una positio quae est species obligationis, si admittat.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 1588–159, ll. 1002–1006; Lyon f. i6vb. Cf. William of Ockham, Summa logicae, pars III-3, cap. 41, in Opera philosophica, ed. Philotheus Boehner, Gedeon Gál and Stephanus Brown 1 (St. Bonaventure, New York, 1974), 735–738, particularly 736, ll. 27–34. 45 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 9: ‘Secundo suppono istud: quod omne sequens ex posito formaliter est concedendum; et quod omne repugnans posito est negandum; et ad impertinens, respondendum est secundum quod constat respondenti de eius qualitate.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 159, ll. 1007–1010; Lyon f. i6vb. Cf. Ockham, SL pars III-3, cap. 41, in OP 1:737, ll. 63–738, l. 78. 46 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 9: ‘Tertio suppono ex eadem arte quod omnis positio aequivalet uni depositioni, quia ista aequivalent respondenti. … Et ideo qui ponit unum contradictoriorum deponit reliquum, et e contrario.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 159, ll. 1011–1017; Lyon f. i6vb. For relevant discussion, see Christopher Martin, ‘Obligations and Liars,’ 371–372, who gives a 13th century version of the rule, and pp. 367–373 generally; and Simo Knuuttila, ‘Trinitarian Sophisms in Robert Holcot’s Theology,’ 353–355 [both articles in Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar, ed. Stephen Read (Dordrecht, 1993)]; C.H. Kneepkens, ‘William Buser of Heusden’s Obligationes-Treatise “Ob rogatum”: A Ressourcement in the Doctrine of Logical Obligation?’ 343–362, and E.J. Ashworth, ‘Ralph Strode on Inconsistency in Obligational Disputations,’ 364–369, both in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, ed. Klaus Jacobi (Leiden, 1993). William Buser, licensed in Arts at Paris in 1357, refers to this rule as one of three definitions of obligatio that he found inadequate: ‘obligacio est oracio composita ex signis obligacionis et posito vel deposito mediante

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4. Having posed a false contingent, it is not inconvenient to concede the impossible per accidens.47

The puzzles about contingency are then resolvable because when the opponent posed the case that God knew that a will happen, and a can not happen, and then argued ‘let it be posed the case that a will not happen,’ he in effect proffered a new positio, and consequently ‘deposed’ its contradictory: ‘a will happen,’ as is clear from the first and third rules. The deposed contradictory of the new positio is the same as the original positio. Thus the respondent should then respond according to the new positio and deny the old one that God knew that a will happen.48 And when it was posed that under no obligation qua cum admissione tenetur obligatus infra tempus obligacionis concedere positum et negare depositum.’ See C.H. Kneepkens, ‘The Mysterious Buser Again: William Buser of Heusden and the “Obligationes” tract “Ob rogatum,”’ in English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, ed. Alfonso Maierù, (Naples, 1982), 154, (see pp. 147–152 for Buser’s life). John Tarteys, whose Obligationes bear a date of 1427, rejected the obligational form of depositio because putting forth a positum is equivalent to putting forward a suppressed depositum, so there was no reason to have separate rules for each form. See E. Jennifer Ashworth, ‘The Obligationes of John Tarteys,’ Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 3 (1992): 662, who identifies an anonymous Oxford text (n. 34) as espousing a similar position. And Angel D’Ors has a discussion in ‘Sobre las Obligationesde Richard Lavenham,’ AHDLMA 58 (1991):261–263. 47 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 9: ‘Quarto suppono hanc regulam: posito falso contingenti, non est inconveniens concedere impossibile per accidens ex eadem arte.’ Holcot, Seeing the Future, 159, ll. 1018–1019; Lyon f. i6vb. E.J. Ashworth, ‘English Obligationes Texts after Roger Swyneshed: The Tracts beginning “Obligatio est quaedam ars,”’ in The Rise of British Logic, ed. P. Osmund Lewry, (Toronto, 1983), 322, notes that Wyclif accepted a rule that the impossible per accidens could be granted and the necessary per accidens denied in obligatio. H.A.G. Braakhuis, ‘Albert of Saxony’s De obligationibus: Its Place in the Development of Fourteenth Century Obligational Theory,’ in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, ed. Klaus Jacobi (Leiden, 1993), 338, indicates Albert had a similar rule: ‘obligato possibili admisso licet falso non est inconveniens concedere impossibile per accidens nec negare necessarium per accidens.’ And see note 26 above. 48 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 10: ‘… quando arguitur contra istam responsionem sic: sit a unum futurum contingens quod Deus scit fore, tunc istae sunt simul verae: “a erit” et “a potest non evenire,” concedo quod a erit et tamen potest non evenire, et bene stant simul istae duae. Contra: ponatur ista in esse: “a potest non evenire.” Dico quod hic fit nova positio sicut superius patuit, et admittenda est positio. Et ponatur tunc ista: “a non erit,” et per consequens deponitur sua contradictoria: “a erit,” sicut patuit in tertia regula articuli praecedentis, et per consequens haec est neganda: “Deus scivit a fore,” quia haec est neganda si proponatur “a erit,” quia est oppositum positi.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 160–161, ll. 1033–1042; Lyon f. i6vb–i7ra. Holcot is here dealing with an example of what E.J. Ashworth has termed a ‘pragmatic inconsistency,’ or an inconsistency that arises from following the rules of argu-

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the respondent conceded the opposite of the new positio yesterday, the respondent ought to admit it, because the propositum is irrelvant and true.49 And when it was further posed: you conceded ‘a will be’ yesterday, and yesterday a will be was continuously false, therefore under no obligation yesterday you conceded a false proposition, the respondent ought to concede the proposita, because they follow from the positum and what had previously been conceded. And even though these proposita are false and impossible per accidens, the respondent can concede them because of the fourth rule that having posed a false possible, it is not inconvenient to concede the impossible per accidens.50 Holcot’s responses are recognizable as formalized versions of Strelley’s. The structure of obligatio: if P, then Q , if not-P, then not-Q , is made explicit in the first and third rules. Whenever a positio P is posed, a new obligatio begins and excludes its contradictory positio from admission because every positio implies the depositio of its contradictory opposite. Then if not-P is posed and accepted, it in turn becomes a new positio, now excluding P in its depositio. The obligational argument may procede but the respondent only responds according to the positio currently in play. Furthermore, the ultimate dependence of propositions necessary per accidens on some contingent frame is also elevated to the status of a rule in Holcot’s text, and one both more acceptable and encompass-

ment or debate. When such inconsistencies arise, the rules require reformulation. For discussion, see Ashworth, ‘English Obligationes Texts,’ 309–333; idem, ‘Ralph Strode on Inconsistency,’ 363–386; C.H. Kneepkens, ‘Willem Buser of Heusden’s Obligationes,’ 343–362; H.A.G. Braakhuis,’ Albert of Saxony’s De obligationibus,’ 323–336. There are interesting parallels between this kind of pragmatic problem in debate and medieval contract theory. My research assistant John Ott discovered that Henry of Bracton cites four reasons through which a legal obligation could be removed, one of which included ‘an oath to the contrary.’ See Bracton, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae, ed. Travers Twiss, vol. 2 (Buffalo, NY, 1990), 123. Two conflicting oaths would put the contracting party into a contradictory position, nullifying one of them. An example can be found in Chrétien de Troyes’ Ywain when Lunete tricks her mistress into a new oath, superceding her previous one and making the lady take Ywain back (Vv. 6527–6658). 49 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 10: ‘Et quando arguitur proponendo istam: “oppositum istius fuit concessum a te heri nulla obligatione tibi facta,” haec est vera et impertinens, et ideo concedenda.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 161, ll. 1043–1045; Lyon f. i7ra. 50 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 10: ‘Et quando arguitur: “haec ‘a erit’ fuit heri concessa a te, et haec heri continue fuit falsa; ergo falsum fuit heri concessum a te nulla obligatione tibi facta,” et ultra, “ergo male respondisti heri,” potest concedi, quia est sequens ex posito et bene concesso. Est tamen conclusio falsa et impossibilis per accidens secundum quartam regulam praecedentis articuli, quae dicit quod posito falso possibili, non est inconveniens concedere impossibile per accidens.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 161, ll. 1046–1052; Lyon f. i7ra.

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ing than Strelley’s. Strelley had subordinated propositions necessary per accidens to a contingent frame when those propositions included some reference to a future contingent event. Holcot provided for the respondent to respond to such propositions according to the contingent frame whenever they followed from or were antithetical to the positum. Any false possible offered in positio might oblige the respondent to accept propositions impossible per accidens in order for him to supply a counterfactual past consistent with the posed counterfactual present. Thus for Holcot, per accidens necessity was fully secundum quid or subordinate to the contingent status of the positum. Armed with his fourth rule, Holcot was able to counter the objections to accepting the past counterfactual analysis of obligational puzzles, that while ‘a will be’ is true, it could also never have been true. The analysis of contingency in terms of a possible counterfactual past also led Holcot to pose a different description of contingency than the one Scotus and Strelley had adopted: for Scotus and Strelley, if contingent P, then P and possibly not P. Holcot, like Ockham before him, preferred to say: if contingent P, then P and possible never to have been P.51 The modal diagram heading up the previous chapter would thus require revision because from Holcot’s perspective it would not account for the temporal distribution of compossibility sets. If possible beings and events are treated as having definite times assigned to them, then the diagram should look as follows:

in which contingency occupies the intersection of the possible always to have been and the possible never to have been. Holcot’s position is far removed from the statistial model in which necessity coincides with what is always the case, impossibility with what is never the case, 51 Robert Holcot, Quodlibet III, q. 8: ‘… et hoc est esse contingenter verum, videlicet, esse verum et posse numquam fuisse verum.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 97, ll. 408–409. Cf. Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 2: ‘… quia est mere contingens, quia potest esse vera et potest esse falsa et numquam fuisse vera.’ In OP 2:523, ll. 79–80.

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and possibility with what is sometimes the case and sometimes not. For Holcot, propositions about possibilities indexed in time are as eternally true or false in their way as necessities or impossibilities relative to whatever possible world in which they obtain. Strelley’s analysis of possibility in terms of past counterfactual compossibility sets was in fact diachronic, and not synchronic as his definition of contingency would seem to imply. In Strelley’s view, events have histories, and not all histories are compatible with all events. While there was no presumption in his analysis of a necessary causal connection between future events and God’s knowledge of them, there was a presumption that God’s knowledge would track what is the case. Holcot’s formulation of contingency gave full recognition to the past counterfactual analysis that Strelley (and others) had proposed. The Scotist formula regarded sets of compossibilities at a single objective moment, the moment of God’s willing. What is contingent is replacable during that moment by some other set of compatible possibilities. Because he perceived the patterns of cause and effect as ultimately contingent on a single instantaneous act of God’s will, Scotus did not analyze compossibilites as temporally extended sets, and he did not regard God’s knowledge, which results from knowing the enactment of his will, as tracking events. If one did not accept Scotus’ view of the relationship between God’s will and present time, however, as Ockham, Strelley and Holcot did not, but did accept his view that a contingent possibility for opposites can occur temporally indexed for some same instant of time, as Ockham, Strelley and Holcot did about indexed future moments, then various questions might arise: for example, whether some future contingent possibility that is not true and can be true, could begin to be true;52 or whether God can undo the past.53 52 There is a tangential discussion that indicates the pitfalls of the Scotist position in Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 10: ‘Contra: capio illud quod non est futurum et potest esse futurum, et sit a. Et arguo sic: a non est futurum et potest esse futurum, ergo potest incipere esse futurum. Respondeo quod totum argumentum fit in locutionibus impropriis quia nihil est tale quod nec est nec est futurum, et tamen potest esse futurum. Sed intelligo per istam: “aliquid nec est nec est futurum et potest esse futurum,” quod huiusmodi propositiones in aliqua materia sunt concedendae: “a non est nec erit et tamen a potest fore;” et tunc non valet consequentia, “ergo a potest incipere esse futurum.”’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 175–176, ll. 1338–1346; Lyon f. i8va–i8vb. 53 Normore, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ 8–11, indicates the difficulties for the necessity of the past. Neither Thomas Bradwardine nor Gregory of Rimini accepted Scotus’ rejection of the Boethian/Thomist view that God’s knowledge encompasses all times in

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Holcot’s formula precluded these questions from the start. While Holcot believed in the per accidens necessity of the past, if some contingent event were to be otherwise than it is, then the past would have been different from all eternity than it was, because only some other past would be compatible with that alternative occurrence. No true proposition about the future can begin to be false prior to the event it signifies. Nor can any past event cease to be what it was. But all contingent events could always have been other than they are, and so there are many alternative possible histories paralleling the actual history of the world. The modal character of the argument avoids attributing mutability to God while retaining divine freedom and contingency. Holcot’s position as so far described amounts to an elegant refinement and formalization of Strelley’s. But Holcot also enlarged the scope of obligational theology, applying the ars obligatoria to a number of new and more complicated theological cases, particularly cases involving the contingency of divine revelation. Holcot held the view (discussed in detail below and in the next chapter) that ‘revelation’ is a connotative term connoting the truth of the revealed future event as determined only at the point at which that event actually occurs, and that therefore revelations prior to their occurrence remain contingent even after God makes them. However, as Holcot notes, someone might argue: I pose that God instructs Socrates, who exists in charity, that he will only what seems reasonable to him. And let it be posed also that God reveals to him a future contingent effect through a clear revelation in the Word—let it be a. And Socrates does not believe that a is a future effect through his own reason. After the revelation, let it be posed that [Socrates] wills a to be, as he sees from his revelation, and let his volition endure for an hour. If ‘a will be’ were still contingent, then it would be contingent that Socrates be at once in a state of grace and in a state of mortal sin, because according to the case Socrates existed in charity throughout the hour, and it is contingent that Socrates have sinned mortally in that hour

an eternal present. Their contention that God could undo the past arose because they believed, unlike Scotus, that the past was thus present to God’s will. See Normore’s discussion in ‘Future Contingents,’ CHLMP, 374–377. In Gregory’s words, Sent. I, d. 38, q. 2: ‘In deo autem futurorum est perfecta cognitio non futura, sed praesens, sicut nec praeteritorum cognitio praeteriit, sed est praesens.’ In Lectura super primum et secundum Sententiarum, ed. A. Damasus Trapp and Venicio Marcolino 8 (Berlin, 1984), 302, ll. 1–3.

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Holcot responded that Socrates ought not to will that a will be absolutely but only conditionally: Whence it is said that having posed this case about the revelation in the Word that a will be and that Socrates has no other indication that a will be except in the Word; similarly with the precept standing that he believe nothing unless it seem reasonable to him, he is not obligated from this case especially to will that a will be.55 54 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 3: ‘… pono quod Deus praecipiat Sorti existenti in caritate quod nihil velit nisi quod apparet sibi rationale; et ponatur etiam quod Deus revelet sibi revelatione clara in Verbo unum effectum futurum contingenter, qui sit a; et credat Sortes per rationem propriam quod a non est effectus futurus. Revelatione facta, ponatur quod velit a fore, sicut videt ex sua revelatione, et duret sua volitio per horam. Isto posito, si “a fore” sit adhuc contingens, ergo haec est contingens: “Sortes simul fuit in gratia et in peccato mortali,” quia Sortes per totam horam fuit in caritate per casum; ergo haec est modo necessaria: “Sortes per hanc horam fuit in caritate,” et haec est contingens: “Sortes in hac hora peccavit mortaliter,” quia in fine horae haec est contingens: “a non erit”; ergo Sortes numquam vidit in Verbo a fore; et necessarium est quod Sortes voluit a fore; igitur voluit a fore contra rationem, quia per casum Sortes aestimatione propria credidit a numquam fore; ergo fecit contra praeceptum; ergo fuit in [peccato] mortali, et tamen per totam illam horam fuit in caritate; ergo simul fuit in caritate et in peccato mortali.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 75, ll. 7–24. 55 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 3: ‘Unde dicitur quod posito isto casu de revelatione in Verbo quod a erit et quod Sortes nullam aliam aestimationem habeat de a fore nisi in Verbo, stante similiter isto praecepto quod nihil velit nisi quod apparet sibi rationale, non obligatur ex isto casu, scilicet, ad volendum a fore.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 79, ll. 100–104. Katherine Tachau, ‘Robert Holcot on Contingency and Divine deception,’ in Filosofia e teologia nel trecento: Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. Luca Bianchi (Louvainla-neuve, 1994), 176, n.73, suggests that Holcot’s response here reflects the position of his socius William of Chitterne, that the viator should approach the world under a condition. I believe she may well be right in this. I would argue that Holcot accepts such a conditional approach for future contingents, but not for all religious experiences as Chitterne seems to have proposed (see chapter 6, pp. 222–223 below). That Holcot accepts the conditional in this instance is supported by his clear statement in proprio persona about the blessed in the same question, article 1: ‘Sed causat in eis talem certitudinem quod semper erunt beati, et illi adhaerent ita fortiter et tanto assensu, ac si aliter esse non posset. Sciunt tamen quod aliter esse potest, quia aliter lateret eos condicio creaturae semper dependentis a Deo.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 78, ll. 77–80.

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And the reason is that the revelation that a will be is revealed under the condition that it could never have been revealed.56 Thus Socrates ought to will that a will be on the condition that it not never have been revealed. Only such a condition would allow Socrates to comply with God’s commands in the event that a turns out never to have been. Here Holcot also confronted the difficulty that might arise from the necessity of the past when some past event is posed part of a casus. In the casus, Socrates’ belief that a will be becomes part of the necessary counterfactual past consistent with the counterfactual present. In such cases, Holcot, like Strelley, believed the past should be accorded the force of necessity, even within the contingent frame of a counterfactual casus. Because the future might fork, however, making Socrates’ consent to a inconsistent with God’s precept to believe only what seemed reasonable to him, Holcot argued that Socrates was not obliged from the casus to accept a unconditionally (and indeed should not do so). Unlike Strelley, however, Holcot did not believe that the necessity of a counterfactual past would prevent Socrates’ dilemma from arising in the first place, that it could constrain the contingent future and prevent the posing of not-a within the casus. Thus Holcot proposed a different solution to Socrates’ dilemma than the one Strelley’s position would suggest. The examples examined up until now of arguments set out in accordance with the ars obligatoria have involved a disputation between a (presumably) fictive opponens and the author: Scotus, Strelley or Holcot, who served as the respondens. In the above example, however, Holcot is not one of the primary interlocutors in the obligatio. Rather Holcot describes an exchange between God and Socrates in which God serves as the opponens and Socrates as the respondens. Holcot’s treatment of the relationship between God and the viator Socrates as an obligational exchange, in which divine revelation serves as the positio to which Socrates obligates himself, specifically casts soteriology in the form of the ars obligatoria. Whereas Strelley’s obligational theology remained implicit in his analysis of God’s acts of will as positiones, Holcot devel56 Holcot, Quod, III, q. 3: ‘Si vero sponte velit a fore stante isto praecepto, ingerit se discrimini peccati mortalis, quia scit quod “a fore” est sic sibi revelatum quod potest numquam fuisse revelatum.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 79, ll. 104–107. Christopher Schabel, ‘The Quarrel with Aureol: Peter Aureol’s Role in the Late-medieval Debate over Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents, 1315–1475,’ Ph.D. Diss. (University of Iowa, 1994), 329, cites Angelus de Dobelin, an Augustinian hermit who commented on the Sentences at Paris in 1374–1375 as espousing a position very similar to this (which Schabel suggests is in argreement with Ockham, but sounds much more like Holcot).

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oped the theology and made it explicit. Responding in his Sentences to a casus raised against the possibility of free will: that God reveals to Socrates, who is in a state of grace, that only those who commit a mortal sin tomorrow will be saved,57 Holcot wrote: It seems to me for now that one should speak to this according to the obligatory art. For that God reveals proposition a [i. e. ‘Only those who are numbered among tomorrow’s mortal sinners will be saved.’] to Socrates and that Socrates believes this proposition, God teaching it to him, and that so it will be as [that revelation] denotes, is the same as if [God] were to say to him: ‘I pose a to you, such that afterwards you should concede and deny [as in an obligatio].’ And having made such a revelation, that revealed proposition ought to be conceded as often as it is proposed, and every formal consequence following simply [from that] ought to be conceded. To everything, however, that does not follow from that, one should respond as to an irrelevant proposition, unless it is a consequence ut nunc because a consequence ut nunc should be denied in that art.58

Holcot thus explicitly asserted the structural equivalence between divine revelations and the initial positiones of obligatio. 57 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 2 [3 Lyon]: ‘… pono quod Deus revelet Sorti existenti in charitate istam propositionem certificando ipsum de ea: tantum iste de numero istorum salvabitur demonstratis Sorte et Platone qui cras peccabit mortaliter.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 126ra; Lyon, b6vb. Where I have not had an edition from which to work, I have used the Oriel College manuscript as the basis for the text because it is very closely related to London, British Library MS Royal 10 C VI, one of the best and earliest manuscripts, but the scribe of Oriel has improved on their common original by checking his text and adding corrections in the margin where necessary. 58 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 2 [3 Lyon]: ‘Videtur mihi pro nunc ad istam formam respondendo est secundum artem obligatoriam. Nam idem est dicere revelet Deus Sorti a propositionem et credat Sortes a propositionem, Deo docente, et sic erit sicut per eam denotatur, et simile est si dicat sibi: “Pono tibi a, quantum ad concedendum et negandum postea,” et ideo facta tali revelatione, ipsa propositio revelata quotiescumque proponatur est concedenda, et omne sequens ex ea simpliciter per formalem consequentiam est concedendum. Ad omne autem quod non sequitur ex ea nisi consequentia ut nunc, respondendum est sicut ad impertinens, quia consequentia ut nunc debet negari in illa arte.’ In Oxford, Oriel College, MS 15, f. 132rb. Lyon, d2rb–va. John Tarteys, writing his Obligationes in the fifteenth century, has an aside to similar effect; ‘Ideo totum tempus vitae hominis est tempus obligationis quo ad deum, cave ergo ne sibi ponas repugantiam.’ See E. Jennifer Ashworth, ‘Obligationes of John Tarteys,’ 698, ll. 775–777, for the text, and her comment (688): ‘Unlike other authors, however, he [Tarteys] places strong emphasis on the role of obligational disputations in life. The respondent has to be trained to avoid not only the kind of lying involved in the utterance of incompatible propositions, but also the kind of unsteadiness involved in uttering irrelevancies, especially false ones. Indeed, life as a whole is viewed as an obligational disputation in the eyes of God, and we are warned lest we posit any inconsistency to him.’

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The theology also comes to the surface in his explication of God’s absolute power as the power to do whatever does not include a contradiction. Holcot explained that that is true if it is understood to mean: If all the propositions that can exist, were to exist, God can not do what would entail contradictory [propositions] being true at the same time, and He can do all those things that, having posed their perfection in being [quo posito perfectionem in esse], entail no contradictory [propositions] being true at the same time.59

God enacts a set of compossibilities by ‘posing’ them in being or ‘posing’ them the case, and the theoretical consistency of the propositions descriptive of such a set could be tested by realizing them completely in being and checking to make sure none of them contradicted any other—just the sort of test the ars obligatoria was designed to provide for fragmentary subsets of such a propositional set. In obligational theology, by accepting God’s positiones the viator commits himself to the actuality of the world. God also reveals to the viator precepts and otherwise hidden information about the particular set of compossibilities he has chosen to enact, for example that there will be a general resurrection of the dead and that the Antichrist will come. These revelations serve as further positiones to which the viator obligates himself through acts of faith. The viator is then obliged to accept all propositions consequent on such revelations (or at least what they signify), just as the respondens concedes all propositions that follow from the positio to which he has obligated himself.60 To believe is to ‘obligate’ oneself. Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 6: ‘Deus non potest facere aliquid quo facto et existentibus omnibus propositionibus quae possunt esse, sequuntur duo contradictoria esse simul vera, et omne illud potest facere quo posito perfectionem in esse et existentibus omnibus propositionibus quae possunt esse non sequuntur aliquae contradictoria esse simul vera.’ In Oxford, Oriel College, MS 15, f. 152vb; Lyon f. i4va. 60 Taken ‘broadly,’ the logic of obligatio translates into the world of action: Holcot, Quodlibet III, q. 6: ‘Utrum sapientia increata obligando viatorem ad aliquod antecedens, obliget eum eoipso ad quodlibet suum consequens… Dicitur quod non, distinguendo tamen istum terminum “antecedens” quia potest accipi et stricte et large: stricte pro una propositione quae sit intellecta et vera, e qua sequitur formaliter unam aliam esse veram, quae dicitur consequens, si sit intellecta. Ratio positionis est haec: Sit a unum peccatum mortale poena alterius peccati mortalis, tunc sequitur Sortes committit a, ergo Sortes non erit beatus, et Deus obligat eum ad antecedens et non ad consequens, large accipitur pro significato talis propositionis… Contra rationem positionis: quando dicit Deus obligat Sortem ad a, quia si sic Sortem tenetur facere a, ergo Sortes faciendo a non peccat, ergo non est peccatum… Principaliter arguitur sic: sit a tale antecedens et b tale consequens, tunc Sortes 59

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Thus as Hoffmann has pointed out, the ars obligatoria provided the analogy for Holcot’s famous logica fidei.61 Holcot noted: there is a certain logic universal to all sciences and a certain logic proper to each science, and if this is true, a fortiori it is necessary to pose a logic of faith. Similarly the logician obligated by a certain kind of obligatio uses one logic, and the one responding freely according to the quality of a proposition uses another.62

Certain prior conditions constrain the theologian or any Catholic developing arguments for his or her beliefs, just as in a disputation de obligatione the initial acceptance of a positio indicates the respondens’ willingness to bind himself to the constraints of the rules of the art. In Quodlibet I, q. 2, Holcot indicated the general constraints under which such a theological logic should operate—for example that the Pope as head of the Church serves as the final arbiter in matters of the faith, that Catholics should concede every proposition determined true by the Church or Scripture, and that in arguments made against the faith, Catholics should respond using ‘Catholic rules’: the spiritual rules for spiritual matters that the saints have previously determined should apply in theology.63 tenetur ad a, non ad b, ergo potest licite omittere b. Sequitur: omittere b, ergo omittere a, ergo potest licite [omittere] a, consequens contra casum. Consequentia probatur quia sequitur non est ita ut per consequens denotatur, ergo non est ita ut per antecedens denotatur … ergo si omitto facere sicut per consequens denotatur, omitto facere sicut per antecedens denotatur.’ In Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 236, ff. 152ra–152rb; Oxford, Balliol College MS 246, ff. 206ra–206va; London, British Library MS Royal 10 C VI. 61 Hoffmann, Die theologische Methode, 281, 348, n. 161. In the Lyon (1518) edition, the folio is f2ra, not e5ra as Hoffmann cites it, and he reads ‘locus’ for ‘logicus.’ Also see, idem, ‘Der Wandel in der scholastischen Argumentation,’ 315–317. 62 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 4 [5, Lyon]: ‘… quaedam logica est universalis omnibus scientiis, et quaedam propria unicuique scientiae, et si hoc est verum, a fortiori oportet ponere unam logicam fidei. Similiter alia logica utitur logicus certa specie obligationis obligatus et alia libere respondens secundum qualitatem propositionum.’ Ed. in Gelber, Exploring the Boundaries, 26–27, n. 72. 63 Holcot actually gives nine such rules for Catholics in Quod. I, q. 2: ‘Circa primum articulum, dico primo quod Catholicus debet concedere illa quae sunt contra rationem, hoc est, aliquas propositiones de quibus non potest sibi constare utrum sint verae vel falsae… Secundo, dico quod Catholicus uno tempore debet concedere unam propositionem quam alio tempore non oportuit eum concessisse… Tertio, dico quod determinare quid est concedendum et quid non, pertinet ad solam auctoritatem summi ponitificis qui praeest toti ecclesiae et nulli inferiori, … non quod papa possit de iure pro libito voluntatis suo constituere novum articulum et determinare illum esse credendum, sed si fieret sibi vel alteri revelatio alicuius credibilis

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But Holcot did not just see the logica fidei as analogous to obligatio. He used the techniques of the ars obligatoria extensively as part of his theological method,64 and used obligational terminology to describe the substance of his theology. The ars obligatoria provided model, method and descriptive vocabulary for obligational theology. When applied to theology, however, the contingent structure of possibile positio leads to an unanticipated outcome—the beliefs required for salvation and belief in the truth are not necessarily the same thing. For instance when Holcot engaged in a lengthy discussion of the contingency of God’s (and Christ’s) revelation that there will be a resurrection of the dead, he raised an objection against his contention that such revelations remain contingent after they are made: If that were so, someone who was justly damned for a thousand years and who had undergone the greatest punishment, can still have been unjustly damned. Proof: I take someone who belonged to the sect of the Sadducees, and I want that he have been damned for no other reason except that he believed the falsehood ‘there will be no resurrection of the dead.’ Which having posed, I argue as follows: He was only damned because he believed the falshood ‘there will be no resurrection,’ and it is possible that he never have believed this falsehood, because it follows: this [proposition] was never false, therefore he did not believe this falsehood. And thus it is possible that he never believed this falsehood, and consequently that he was damned without cause.65

vel si sit nova discussio per sanctos et Catholicos quod aliquid sit explicite credendum quod prius implicite credebatur, dico quod in tali casu exspectatur auctoritas summi pontificis… Quarto, dico quod Catholicus non debet niti ad probandum vel ostendendum quod sic est sicut articulus dicit per rationem innitentem lumini naturali, sed tantummodo per auctoritates et revelationes vel miracula… Quinto, dico quod nec Catholicus debet niti ad respondendum scientifice ad argumenta haereticorum et philosophorum nisi sint argumenta peccantia in forma… Sexto, dico quod argumentis factis contra fidem responderi debet per regulas Catholicas quae sunt spirituales in spiritualibus materiis secundum determinationem sanctorum, sicut in materia de Trinitate dantur regulae quod omnia sunt unum in divinis ubi non obviat relationis oppositio… Septimo, dico quod aliquid est concedendum ab uno Catholico quod non oportet concedi ab alio… Octo, dico quod omnis propositio determinata tanquam vera a scriptura sacra vel ecclesia est a Catholico concedenda. Nono, dico quod nulla auctoritas cuiuscumque doctrinae alterius est necessario recipienda a Catholico.’ Ed. in Gelber, Exploring the Boundaries, 31, ll. 10–34, l. 81. 64 Hoffmann, Die theologische Methode, 351, 354. 65 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Praeterea, si sit aliquis qui fuit iuste damnatus ad mille annos et passus est maximum poenam, potest adhuc fuisse iniuste damnatus. Probatur:

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Holcot replied: When it is posed that someone belonging to the sect of the Sadducees was damned because he believed this falsehood: ‘there will be no resurrection of the dead,’ I respond by conceding that it is possible that he was never damned for having believed a falsehood, having posed that he never believed any falsehood other than that one. And I deny the consequence: therefore it is possible that he is unjustly damned. He is justly damned because he believed a truth he ought not to have believed and did not believe a falsehood he was yet held under precept to believe, having posed the falsity of the [proposition]: ‘there will be a resurrection.’66

The merit of faith accrues not because people believe what is true, but because they voluntarily conform their wills to believe what God wants them to believe.67 The uncertainty that obtains because of the contingency of the created order makes such a position necessary. Contingent events may be other than they are, even if God makes revelations about them, so it remains possible that what God has revealed might never happen and might technically never have been ‘revealed’ in that the term ‘reveal’ connotes that what it signifies is true.68 If the security of Accipio aliquem qui fuit de secta Sadduceorum et volo quod pro nullo alio damnatus sit nisi quia credidit hoc falsum, quod resurrectio mortuorum non erit. Quo posito, arguo sic: iste non est damnatus nisi quia credidit hoc falsum: “ressurrectio non erit.” Et possibile est eum numquam credidisse hoc falsum, quia sequitur: hoc numquam fuit falsum, ergo ipse non credidit hoc falsum. Et sic possibile est quod numquam credidit falsum, et per consequens quod sine causa fuit damnatus.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 131, ll. 422–431; Lyon f. h3va. 66 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 10: ‘Ad probationem, quando ponitur quod aliquis de secta Sadduceorum fuit damnatus quia credidit hoc falsum: “resurrectio mortuorum non erit,” respondeo concedendo quod possibile est istum damnatum numquam credidisse falsum, posito quod numquam credidit aliquod falsum nisi illud tantum. Et nego consequentiam—ergo possibile est quod sit iniuste damnatus—quia est iuste damnatus quia credidit verum quod non debuit credidisse et noluit credere falsum quod tamen sub praecepto habuit credere, posita falsitate istius: “resurrectio erit.”’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 172, ll. 1269–1277; Lyon f. i8rb. 67 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Ad quintum principale quando infertur pro inconvenienti quod homo posset mereri per fidem falsam … pensando propositionem quo infertur, concedo eam, hoc est volendo credere certam propositionem quae praecipitur esse credenda, et est falsa, potest homo mereri, nec pertinet ad meritum fidei utrum sit vera vel falsa, sed hoc tantum pertinet ad rationem meriti fidei, quod voluntarie credatur sicut Deus vult credi.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 123vb; Lyon, 1518, f. b1rb. 68 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Si dicatur ad primum argumentum quod illa “revelatio,” sive “assertio,” sive “ordinatio,” supponit pro notitia vel volitione divina, et connotat aliquem effectum in creatura, quia iste terminus “revelatio” active accepta supponit pro Deo et connotat quod in aliqua creatura sit causata notitia assertiva alicuius quod vocatur “revelatum”; et ideo, si haec est revelata a Deo: “resurrectio corporum erit,” denotatur quod aliqua creatura assentit isti propter revelationem divinam, et verum est

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salvation were to depend on what God tells people being true such that what he says could not be false, the past counterfactual contingency the world displays in the obligational cases would put that security completely at risk. Thus within obligational theology, obedience to God’s precepts necessarily replaces adherence to the truth as the sine qua non for joining God’s kingdom. Simo Knuuttila, following up on the observation of Fritz Hoffmann about the importance of obligatio to Holcot’s logica fidei, has recently suggested that Ockham’s use of positio impossibilis to analyze the doctrine of the Trinity served as the model for Holcot’s application of obligatio to theology. As Ockham lays it out, in impossible positio the initial positum is a statement exhibiting secundum quid impossibility. Absolute impossibilities, impossibilities that involve a contradiction, are barred, because anything follows from that sort of contraditory proposition. Any argument developed from an absolutely impossible positum would be random and unintelligible. However, natural impossibilities, those impossible given the natural order but still capable of occuring miraculously or in some differently ordered world, could be admitted as impossible posita. Ockham claims that impossible positio is also appropriate to use in exploring matters of doctrine like the Trinity that are completely inaccessible to human reason without the aid of revelation. Here again impossibility is not understood as absolute but relative to the capacity for human reason to fathom the doctrine on its own. Knuuttila argues, however, that just as in the modern view impossibility is perceived as unintelligibility, equivalently medieval versions of impossibility create black boxes impenetrable to the understanding. Thus Ockham’s application of impossible positio to the Trinity and Holcot’s alleged application of impossible positio to all of theology through the rules given in Quodlibet I, q. 2, would make theology, whole or in part, unintelligible as well.69

quod ita erit, quod falsum non potest revelari; et ideo non stant simul quod revelatum sit quod resurrectio corporum erit et tamen quod resurrectio non erit vel quod possit impediri.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 94, ll. 324–333. 69 Knuuttila, ‘Trinitarian Sophisms,’ 348–356. Also see idem, ‘Duns Scotus and the Foundations of Logical Modality,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dryer (Leiden, 1996), 140–141. For further information on impossible positio and impossibilia in general, see Martin, ‘Logic of the Nominales,’ 124–126; idem, ‘Obligations and Liars,’ 361–363; idem, ‘Impossible Positio,’ 255–276; Rossini, ‘Scientia Dei conditionata,’ 291–299; and Angel D’Ors, ‘Ex impossibili quolibet sequitur (Walter Burley),’ AHDLMA 57 (1990): 121–154.

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While Ockham did not generally show much interest in obligatio, Knuuttila’s observations about Ockham’s use of positio impossibilis in the case of the Trinity do suggest another possible source for theological interest in obligationes among the Dominicans. However, there are several difficulties with Knuuttila’s argument. First Knuuttila’s reading of Ockham and Holcot through the lens of modern interpretations of impossibility reduces all impossibilities to absolute impossibilities. For Ockham, however, the sort of impossiblia admitted within impossible positio are not equivalent to such absolutes. Secundum quid impossibilities are only relatively, not completely, unintelligible or beyond the exercise of reason, or no chain of reasoning could be constructed about them. Similarly for Holcot, revelation defines the limits and supplements the rules by which reason proceeds in theological matters, but subject to such constraints, reason continues to have an important role to play.70 If a modern model is appropriate for Holcot, it would seem that he attributes its own ‘language game’ to theology rather than unintelligibility. Second, beyond a caution against reading Ockham and Holcot through too anachronistic a lens, Knuuttila’s attempt to attribute Holcot’s interest in obligatio to Ockham’s use of impossible positio will not bear scrutiny. Knuuttila cites no text in which Holcot explicitly refers to impossible positio, and indeed possible positio rather than impossible positio is the form of obligatio found ubiquitously in Holcot’s theological works. In Holcot’s discussion of the Trinity, the place where one might expect him to adopt impossible positio, he attributes such per impossibile arguments to Henry of Ghent, Aquinas, Scotus and others only to dismiss them as improper.71 The line of influence traced in this chapter 70 Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in Scholastic Thought 1300–1335,’ Ph.D. diss. University of Wisconsin (Madison, 1974), 265–291, 299–317, discusses Holcot’s Trinitarian position at length in the context of a number of chapters on other early 14th century figures to establish as precisely as possible how reason was perceived to have a role to play and how it was not. The quote on p. 141 above supports the view that Holcot laid out his idea of a logica fidei to supplement the logica universalis rather than to supplant it. 71 Robert Holcot, Determinatio 10, art. 3: ‘Ad secundum, quando arguitur aliquid constituit Patrem in esse Patris, sed non essentia, ergo aliud ab essentia, dicendum quod si maior accipiatur proprie, falsa est, quia Pater non constituitur in esse Patris. Nec est iste modus loquendi extendendus, sed potius exponendus quia est improprius, licet doctores aliqui sic locuti sint, sicut Henricus, Thomas, Scotus et alii, sed ideo sic dicunt quia si per impossibile paternitas differret ab essentia in Deo, tunc in persona Patris forent duo quorum uno, puta essentia, conveniret cum aliis personis, et alio differret. Ideo secundum modum loquendi quem hic habemus, dicunt quod paternitas constituit Patrem in esse Patris, hoc est, ideo est Pater quia genuit Filium, non ideo est Pater

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from Scotus to Strelley to Holcot in which possible positio predominated remains the primary source for Holcot’s interest in obligatio. That Ockham’s use of impossible positio was not the model for the Dominican obligational theology should not be surprising given the connection, which Christopher Martin has pointed out in both Ockham’s and Scotus’ texts, between impossible positio and the Scotist formal distinction.72 Even if, as Martin has argued, obligational debate may have sprung from an interest in per impossibile argument, impossible positio was never particularly stressed within the tradition of obligational literature, and it virtually disappeared from the genre after Ockham.73 From the perspective of nested modalities, impossible positio was subordinate to some greater frame of possibility. Rather than impossible positio swallowing up theology in Holcot, I would suggest that possible positio swallowed up the impossible.

quia Deus, quia sic quilibet eorum qui est Deus foret Pater.’ In Exploring the Boundaries of Reason: Three Questions on the Nature of God by Robert Holcot, OP, ed. Hester Goodenough Gelber (Toronto, 1983), 106, ll. 1089–1100. For a discussion of the history of the issues involved, see Martin, ‘Impossible Positio,’ 255–276, in particular, and Charles Balic, ‘A propos de quelques ouvrages faussement attribués à J. Duns Scot,’ Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 2 (1930): 185–187. 72 Martin, ‘Impossible Positio,’ 255–276, indicates that use of impossible positio and its connection with Scotus’ formal distinction was the subject of much debate among the Franciscans subsequent to Scotus, including Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham, along with Ockham. The Oxford Dominican, Thomas of Sutton, was an early and vehement critic of the formal distinction: see Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, ‘Scotus and the Scotist School. The Tradition of Scotist Thought in the Medieval and Early Modern Period,’ in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 199–200, and idem, Marsilius of Inghen, 175–182. Simo Knuuttila, ‘Positio impossibilis and Discussions of the Trinity,’ in Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIth-XIVth Century), ed. Costantino Marmo, Acts of the XIth Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Turnhout, 1997), 285–286, notes, however, that among the Franciscans, Adam Wodeham used positio impossibilis frequently in his criticisms of Walter Chatton, and that Ockham’s Trinitarian example turns up again in the works of Luther’s teacher Jodocus Trutvetter 73 See Martin, ‘Logic of the Nominales,’ 110–126; and see idem, ‘Obligations and Liars,’ 363, for the relatively less weight given to impossible positio; Paul Vincent Spade, ‘Opposing and Responding: A New Look at Positio,’ Medioevo 19 (1993): 254, and Ashworth, ‘Obligationes of John Tarteys,’ 665–667, for its disappearance from Obligationes texts after Ockham.

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chapter four D. Conclusion

If a theology is distinguished from other theologies by its assumptions, methods of analysis, vocabulary and imagery, obligational theology is so distinguishable. It begins with the assumption that the world is radically contingent. God’s will entertains all of the logically possible configurations of events and chooses one among them for enactment, but his enactment does not nullify the contingency of what he wills to happen. The events of the world are thus amenable to analysis using the techniques developed within the ars obligatoria for exploring the coherence of counterfactual possibilities. A defensible theology is presumed not to produce paradoxes de obligatione when its tenets are subjected to such analysis. Finally, the vocabulary of obligatio itself, the vocabulary of ponatur, positio, positum, se obligat, etc. is extended to characterize the relationship between God and creation. The salvific ties that bind human beings to God become ties of voluntary self-obligation. God becomes the opponens and the viator becomes the respondens in the new soteriology, and salvation comes to depend on adhering to God’s proposals and precepts and to whatever is logically consequent on them as the truth for the time of obligation, the time of one’s journey through the world.74 Whether or not what is precepted, revealed or proposed is in fact true, it remains subject to the ultimate possibility of never having been true. In matters of salvation, given contingency, a consistency theory prevails over a correspondence theory. Yet faith adheres to what God says, regardless.

74 Hoffmann, Die theologische Methode, 351–355, uses the concept of the special ‘time of obligatio’ to analyze Holcot’s discussion of Christ’s contingent capacity to tell a falsehood during his Incarnation.

chapter five THE LIMITS OF LYING

During the fourteenth century, Thomist theology, turning on the Aristotelian theory of causality, ceded pride of place within the Dominican studium to other theologies, of which the new obligatonal theology was but one. Covenantal theology also achieved a place of rank.1 In covenantal theology, God and human creatures are bound together through the pacts or covenants that God has made with those who desire him. On this view, nothing that human beings do is of sufficient intrinsic worth to merit grace or salvation from God, but God has promised ex pacto that he will not deny increments of grace to those who do their best (facit quod in se est) with whatever natural or supernatural gifts they may have. In theory at least, even someone beginning in a pure state of nature could achieve salvation by persevering in doing his or her best throughout life. Because in the economy of salvation human acts have no intrinsic worth, God is free to choose any set of compatible injunctions towards which people should direct their efforts. The sacraments are not efficacious because of any intrinsic causal connection between their enactment and the grace that they bring. Rather they serve as a medium of exchange, purely at the behest of God, who

1 A concise description of covenantal theology may be found in William J. Courtenay, ‘Covenant and Causality in Pierre d’Ailly,’ Speculum 46 (1971): 116–119, reprinted in idem, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought (London, 1984), along with his other most significant articles on the subject to that date. For his most recent discussion, see Schools & Scholars in Fourteenth-century England (Princeton, 1987), 210–216, dealing with Ockham. Also see Heiko A. Oberman, ‘Facientibus quod in se est deus non denegat gratiam: Robert Holcot, O.P. and the Beginnings of Luther’s Theology,’ The Harvard Theological Review 55 (1962): 317–342; idem, Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1963); idem, ‘Wir sein pettler. Hoc est verum. Bund und Gnade in der Theologie des Mittelalters und der Reformation,’ Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 78 (1967): 232–252; J.G. Møller, ‘The Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology,’ The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 14 (1963): 46–67; J.S. Preus, From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Cambridge, Mass., 1969); and Berndt Hamm, Promissio, Pactum, Ordinatio: Freiheit und Selbstbindung Gottes in der scholastischen Gnadenlehre, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 54 (Tübingen, 1977).

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has decided to accept human participation in them as a sine qua non for merit. The notion of pact or covenant preserves God’s complete freedom from any governing necessity but the necessity of maintaining consistency. As Holcot put it: No necessity of compulsion falls on God in any way. The necessity of infallibility does indeed fall on God from his promise and pact or enacted law, [but here] there is no absolute necessity, [only] consequent necessity.2

Actions are good because God commands them, God does not command them because he is compelled by some external standard of goodness. In covenantal theology a divine command theory of ethics combines with the notion of pact to ensure divine freedom while at the same time God’s freely given promise ensures the security of human salvation.

A. Covenant and Contract among the Dominicans Heiko Oberman has documented Robert Holcot’s adherence to covenantal theology.3 Both Hugh of Lawton and Arnold of Strelley also adopted some of the vocabulary associated with covenantal theology, the terminology of pactum, sine qua non causality, or at least facere quod in se est. In the principial question of the fourth book of his commentary on the Sentences, Lawton defended a conclusion that no proofs are possible for the propositions either that the sacraments of the new law have an effective power for grace or that they do not, and in the course of the argument he assumed that the covenantal theory of efficacy was the only theory to be so proved. Thus: … although there are many authorities [who] say that the sacraments are the cause of grace, that they have a causative power for grace, and … that they are therefore said to have the power to be the cause of grace because having applied them according to the ordination of the Church, God effects grace in the soul, and having not applied them according to

2 Robert Holcot, Super libros Sapientiae, Lect. 145 B: ‘Necessitas coactionis nullo modo cadit in deo, necessitas vero infallibilitatis cadit in deo ex promisso suo et pacto sive lege statuta et hec non est necessitas absoluta sed necessitas consequentie…’ (Hagenau, 1494; reprinted by Minerva G.M.B.H., Frankfurt am Main, 1974), cited by Oberman, Harvest, 246, note 189. 3 Oberman, ‘Facientibus quod in se est,’ 317–342; idem, Harvest, 235–243.

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the common law, he does not effect grace (whence they are causes sine quibus non, and not ex natura rei but ex pacto, from the pact by which God thus makes agreement with the Church) …,4

and thus while many authorities assert the efficacy of the sacraments as causes sine quibus non, they do not assert that such efficacy can be proved nor, in fact, is there a way according to Lawton to demonstrate the power of the sacraments to effect grace in the souls of those who participate in them.5 While there is no way to prove causal efficacy, the kind of causality Lawton assumes does operate in the enactment of the sacraments is the sine qua non causality of covenantal theology. In describing sacramental causality, moreover, Lawton made reference to an example classic in covenantal theology, the example of the king and the leaden coin: a coin that has value only on the decree of the king saying its bearers may redeem it for real pounds of silver.6 The Dominican Richard Fishacre probably devised the prototype for this analogy around 1240, and his fellow Oxford Dominican Robert Kilwardby also employed it.7 Despite Aquinas’ specific rejection of the lead 4 Hugh of Lawton, Sent. IV, q. 1: ‘… licet sint multae auctoritates quae dicant sacramenta esse causas gratiae et quod habent virtutem causativam gratiae, et … quod ideo dicuntur habere virtutem et esse causae gratiae quia illis adhibitis secundum ordinationem ecclesiae, Deus gratiam in anima operatur, et illis non adhibitis secundum communem legem, gratiam non operatur (unde sunt causae sine quibus non et hoc non ex natura rei sed ex pacto quo Deus sic pepigit cum ecclesia)…’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 105, f. 120va; Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS. Vat. lat. 829, f. 211va. 5 Lawton, Sent. IV, q. 1: ‘Tertia conclusio principalis quod non potest evidenter probari quod sacramenta novae legis habeant virtutem effectivam gratiae nec eius oppositum.’ In Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F, 105, f. 120va; Vatican, MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 211va. 6 Lawton, Sent. IV, q. 1: ‘Ad ista ponitur exemplum de illo, quae afferens secum denarium vel signum plumbeum, accipit elemosinam vel centum libras ex ordinatione regis, non quod denarius aliquid operetur ad receptionem tantae pecuniae, sed quod hic operetur sola voluntas regis, sic tamen quod portans tale signum reciperet et non portans non reciperet. Unde Bernardus in quodam sermone De coena Domini, sicut, inquid, “investitur canonicus per librum, abbas per baculum, episcopus per annulum, sic divisiones gratiarum diversimodae sunt traditae sacramentis.” Sed certum est quod baculus et annulus sint tantum signa, ergo et sacramenta.’ In Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F, 105, f. 120va; Vatican, Ms. Vat. lat. 829, f. 211va–211vb. For the history of this example see Courtenay, ‘The King and the Leaden Coin: The Economic Background of “Sine qua non” Causality,’ Traditio 28 (1972): 185–209; idem, ‘Token Coinage and the Administration of Poor Relief during the Late Middle Ages,’ The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 3 (1972): 275–295, both reprinted in idem, Covenant and Causality. 7 Courtenay, ‘The King and the Leaden Coin,’ 191–193; idem, ‘Token Coinage,’ 279–281.

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coin comparison with sacramental causality, a precedent for accepting it existed among the Dominicans at Oxford.8 By his use of the analogy, Lawton continued the English tradition that Fishacre and Kilwardby had begun. Arnold of Strelley’s commitment to covenantal theology is less explicit, but he argued for the possibility that God might grant grace and salvation to those who strive to do their best even if they otherwise had no access to the teachings and sacraments of the Church. He posed the case of a boy raised in desert wastes, where he never heard anyone say what he ought to believe or disbelieve, but raised so that he lived according to the dictates of right reason derived with his natural powers. Because such a boy would live as best he could on the basis of natural reason, he would neither have faith nor sin. Should he be damned or saved?9 Strelley responded that if such a person were 8 For a discussion of Aquinas’ views, see Courtenay, ‘The King and the Leaden Coin,’ 185–188, 202–209. It is worth noting that Lawton included a reference to Bernard’s sermon De coena Domini in his example. This example was characteristic of early works advocating covenantal causality, but Courtenay interprets the rarity of the quotation among thirteenth-century authors as an indication of changes in theories about semiotics, causality and investiture. Lawton’s citation of Bernard in the third decade of the fourteenth century indicates the persistence of a text tradition. The wording of his citation (‘Unde Bernardus in quodam sermone De coena Domini, sicut, inquid, “investitur canonicus per librum, abbas per baculum, episcopus per anulum, sic divisiones gratiarum diversimodae sunt traditae sacramentis.” Sed certum est quod baculus et anulus sint tantum signa, ergo et sacramenta.’) is closer to the wording of Aquinas’ citation [Summa theologiae III, q. 62, art. 1: ‘Unde et Bernardus dicit, in quodam sermone: Sicut “investitur canonicus per librum, abbas per baculum, episcopus per anulum, sic divisiones gratiarum diversae sunt traditae sacramentis.”’ Ed. David Bourke, Blackfriars, Summa theologiae 56 (New York, 1975), 52] than to Bernard’s own (‘Sicut … investitur canonicus per librum, abbas per baculum, episcopus per baculum et anulum simul: sicut, inquam, in huiusmodi rebus est, sic et divisiones gratiarum diversis traditae sunt sacramentis.’ Ed. J. Leclercq and H. Rochais, in Opera omnia 5 [Rome, 1968], 68, ll. 21–69, l. 5.). That suggests that Aquinas and Lawton used a common source other than Bernard as the basis of their references. 9 Arnold of Strelley, Centiloquium theologicum, concl. 60: ‘Item si sic, sequeretur quod possibile esset aliquem hominem esse qui secundum nullam legem datam damneretur vel salveretur. Posito quod aliquis puer nutriretur in deserto ubi numquam aliquem audiret loqui quid esset credendum vel discredendum, sed tantummodo ex suis puris naturalibus secundum rectam rationis viam quantum posset vivere nutriretur. Tunc talis non salvabitur, quia non habet fidem, quia non potest ipsam habere ex puris naturalibus. Nec damnabitur quia numquam peccavit ex quo semper fecit secundum veram viam rationis melius quod potuit. Ergo videtur pro istis inconvenientiis et quam pluribus aliis consimilibus vitandis, quod aliquis ex puris naturalibus potest cuilibet articulo fidei assentire.’ In Guillelmus de Ockham, Dubia et spuria, ed. Philotheus Boehner and Girardus I. Etzkorn, Opera Philosophica 7 (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1988), 474, ll. 61–475, l. 74.

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unable to obtain instruction in what he ought to do and omit, believe and disbelieve, and if he were always to do as best he could on the basis of his natural powers, God from his goodness would baptize him with the baptism of a priest and sufficiently safeguard him with the theological virtues necessary for his salvation that finally, through the grace of God, he would be saved.10 While the term pact is not in evidence in Strelley’s text, an emphasis on facere quod in se est was usually a concommitant of covenantal theology. It seems probable that Strelley adhered to a covenantal theology as did Lawton and Holcot. Indeed, Holcot’s suggestion in the midst of setting out his own covenantal views that philosophers like Hermes and Aristotle might have obtained the knowledge that they had through a revelation from God in reward for doing their best,11 may have owed something to Strelley’s child of the desert. Covenantal theology, if separable from obligational theology, is not incompatible with it. Certainly Holcot (and probably Strelley) adopted them both. Holcot revealingly displays the overlap of terminology that would make the association of both theologies seem natural. In the first book of his commentary on the Sentences, q. 2, Holcot argued: If the created will in using and enjoying is free, then man can freely obligate (obligare) himself to someone under a condition, and with the

Walter Burley espoused a similar view, arguing that ‘whoever lives according to natural law, without benefit of revealed faith (fides articulorum) has inherent righteousness, and certainly whoever is righteous does not deserve final misery… “Whence it is evident that the gentiles, living according to natural law, have done naturally what the law demanded, and so are justified.”’ See S. Harrison Thomson, ‘An Unnoticed Questio theologica of Walter Burley,’ Medievalia et Humanistica 6 (1950):86. Pope John XXII condemned the proposition that anyone could be saved without baptism in sermons delivered in 1330 and 1333; see Chris Schabel, Theology at Paris, 1316–1345: Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents (Aldershot, 2000), 251. 10 Strelley, Cent. concl. 60: ‘Ad ultimum dicitur quod—tali casu posito—si talis homo non posset venire ad aliquem locum, ubi posset instrui quid esset faciendum vel dimittendum, credendum vel discredendum, et faceret quantum posset ex puris naturalibus ad bene vivendum, Deus ex sua bonitate baptismo flaminis ipsum baptizaret et virtutibus theologicis saluti necessariis ipsum sufficienter muniret. Et sic finaliter per Dei gratiam salvaretur.’ In Ockham, OP 7:476, ll. 123–477, l. 129. 11 Oberman, Harvest, 241. The theme of the virtuous pagan was central to the purposes of the classicizers—to find texts of moral importance within the Classical corpus of literature. Prior to Holcot, the theme was prominent in the works of two Franciscans: John of Wales, whom Beryl Smalley termed a forerunner of the classicizing movement, and John Ridevall, who incepted at Oxford c. 1331, and influenced Holcot. Ridevall also promulgated stories of revelations (even about Christ) to pagans like Plato and Hermes Trismegistus. See Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960), 51–55, 109, 118–120.

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chapter five condition implemented, he is held to it according to the form of obligation present under the condition. The consequence is evident through the folk-saying: ‘Every promise from the mouth of the faithful is a debt.’ And the civil law can be cited in support of this…12

As his reference to the civil law makes clear, Holcot here understands an obligation not specifically as the obligation of disputation de obligatione, but as a duty that any promise or contract (including both the pact of covenant and the obligation of disputation) might put into effect.13 Against his own position that the human will is free to enter into such contracts, Holcot raised an objection that contractual obligations could result in paradoxical and impossible situations.14 For example, let a man, say Martin, and a woman, say Bertha, verbally contract for marriage but under a condition: let Martin say: ‘I take you to wife if immediately after a you will tell me the truth,’ and let a be a certain time tomorrow, and let Bertha say in the same way to Martin: ‘I take you as husband if tomorrow immediately after a you will tell me the truth.’ Then on the morrow, let the man say to the woman: ‘You are not my wife,’ and she conversely: ‘Nor are you my husband.’15 Holcot responded that if someone is obligated or obligates himself under an

12 Robert Holcot, Sent. I, q. 2 [3 Lyon]: ‘Si [voluntas creata utendo et fruendo sit libera], tunc homo potest libere se obligare alicui sub conditione, et conditione adimpleta, tenetur sibi adhuc secundum forma obligationis praestitae sub conditione. Consequentia patet per illud dictum vulgare: “Omne promissum ab ore fidelis est debitum,” et posse ad hoc allegari iura civilia…’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 124vb; Robertus Holkot, In Quatuor libros Sententiarum quaestiones (Lyon, 1518), reprinted by Minerva G.M.B.H. (Frankfurt, 1967), b3va–b3vb. 13 For general information about the concept of obligation, see P. Bellini, L’obligazione da promessa con oggetto temporale nel sistema canonistico classico (Milan, 1964). Berndt Hamm, Promissio, Pactum, Ordinatio, 43–64, indicates that the conjunction of civil law and covenantal theology dated back at least to Cardinal Laborans writing in the twelfth century. 14 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 2, Lyon, b3vb–b4rb. 15 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘[marg. Quinto] Praeterea: contrahant matrimonium [Martinus] et [Bertha] per verba de praesenti et sub tali conditione dicat Martinus, “Accipio te in uxorem si immediate post a dixeris mihi verum.” Et sit a unum instans crastine diei. Dicat eodem modo [Bertha Martino], “Accipio te in virum si cras immediate post a dixeris mihi verum.” Quo facto, pono quod obvient in crastino [Martinus] et [Bertha], et dicat vir mulieri, “Non es uxor mea,” et illa econverso, “Non es vir meus.” Isto posito, aut contractus pristinus valeat aut non.’ In Oxford, Balliol College MS 15, f. 124vb; Lyon, b4ra. The manuscripts do not attribute names to Martin and Bertha, designating them ‘A’ and ‘B,’ and the continental sound of ‘Martin’ and ‘Bertha’ suggests the names were added by the editors of the Lyon edition, but I have used the more personal form to avoid confusion with the time a, and for readability.

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impossible condition, such a condition nullifies the obligation. Obligation is only possible under a condition that can be implemented. Moreover, if the condition becomes impossible from some event occurring after the obligation is incurred and before it is implemented, again, no obligation obtains.16 The situation Holcot sets up between Martin and Bertha mimics a special form of obligatio: positio dependens. In positio dependens, the obligation is undertaken with a condition, for example, on the condition that the first propositum is not to be denied. Liar-like puzzles may readily ensue from such obligations, however, and to avoid them Walter Burley cited a rule that positio dependens dependent upon some future act should be admitted only with the restriction that that future act establishes no incompatibility with the positum.17 It is precisely this rule that the case of Martin and Bertha disregards. They should not have undertaken the contract without stipulating that whatever truths they speak at the specified time should not be inconsistent with the initial ‘posita’: ‘I take you to wife’ and ‘I take you as husband.’ The case of Martin and Bertha is put forward as a legal contract, not as an obligational debate, but the parallels with obligatio make it clear that the structure of legal obligation is the same as the structure of the disputational obligation. In both cases, consistency is a requisite for proceding, and consistency is retained either through the ‘deposition’ of the original obligation if something contradictory to that obligation enters the inferential or

Holcot, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Ad cuius evidentiam considerandum est quod si aliquis obliget se sub conditione impossibili et non aliter, non tenetur, quia conditio nullo modo potest adimpleri, nec ipse se obligat, nisi conditio illa impleatur, et ideo omnis qui se obligat obligat se sub conditione quae potest adimpleri. Si autem conditio deveniat impossibilis ex aliquo eventu post obligationem ante tempus quo deberet impleri, vel in ipso tempore, ita quod non potest impleri, in nullo obligatur promittens sub tali conditione.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, ff. 130va–130vb; Lyon, c7rb. My research assistant John Ott, looked into the legal tradition of contract for me, and found that Henry of Bracton in the De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae, ed. Travers Twiss, vol. 2 (Buffalo, NY, 1990), 115, during his discussion of legal obligation posed two corrollaries: 1) that a preposterous condition does not negate an obligation, but 2) that an impossible condition to which nature is an impediment does serve to nullify one. Also see chapter 4, note 48 above and Fabienne Pironet, ‘Logique et droit au XIVe siècle,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Carolos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (New York, Ottawa, and Toronto, 1995), 548–554. 17 Mikko Yrjönsuuri, Obligationes: 14th Century Logic of Disputational Duties (Helsinki, 1994), 59–61. 16

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procedural chain or by refusing to enter into the contract or debate in the first place if its formulation opens the way to inconsistency.18 The connection between contractual obligation and covenant becomes clear in the title of Holcot’s Quodlibet III, q. 11: ‘Whether the law of the uncreated wisdom obliges the viator to the impossible.’19 Here the language of obligation from the civil law merges with the covenantal language of divine prescription. Holcot’s assertion that no one can be obliged to do the impossible from the law alone, whether civil or divine,20 applied notions of contractual obligation taken from civil law to the covenantal relations God establishes with the viator through the new law. Moreover, the requirement that nothing impossible follow from God’s prescriptions applied a standard of consistency to the legal arena elsewhere tested through the structure of obligation established in disputations de obligatione. Holcot’s views emerge as a complex set of interconnected theologies. The association between covenantal theology and obligational theology through the contractual language of civil law gave coherence to his position. The overlay of theologies is particularly apparent in Holcot’s Sentences I, q. 2, where he responded to the casus in which God reveals to Socrates that only those who commit a mortal sin tomorrow will be saved. After asserting the equivalent structure between God’s revelations and obligatio, Holcot answered:

18 E.J. Ashworth, ‘Inconsistency and Paradox in Medieval Disputations: A Development of some Hints in Ockham,’ FcS 44 (1984): 129–139, has pointed out that there was much discussion in the literature on obligatio about comparable paradoxes, like what should happen if an opponens proposed as initial positiones: ‘Nothing is posited to you,’ ‘You (the respondent) do not exist,’ ‘You are in Rome and no conjunction is posited to you,’ etc. Various answers were given: the respondent should reject the challenge, the respondent should accept the posita and then deny them, or the respondent should admit the posita, grant them and accept the consequences. The theological equivalent would occur if God were to tell Socrates that he, Socrates, did not exist. Holcot would seem to be of the view that in such cases the respondens should reject the challenge. Also see E. Jennifer Ashworth, ‘The Obligationes of John Tarteys,’ Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 3 (1992): 666, who indicates John Tarteys, writing in the fifteenth century, concluded that if someone were so stupid as to admit an impossibility in an obligational argument (the example begins with the positum ‘You concede that a man is an ass’), he would not be held to grant everything that followed from it, just as someone who makes an incorrect vow is not held to fulfill the vow. 19 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 11: ‘Utrum lex sapientiae increatae obliget viatorem ad impossibile.’ Cambridge, Pembroke Coll. MS 236, f. 192va. 20 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 11: ‘Dicitur quod nullus obligatur ex lege tantum ad impossi-

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Having supposed this, I make a distinction concerning the case: that by revealing to Socrates that only those will be saved who are numbered among tomorrow’s mortal sinners, either God deposed for him the propositions previously posed to each Christian from the common law, or God willed that that [proposition] be posed with the others, just like all those previously posed to each Christian… If the second, that case ought to be understood as if the copulative were posed to Socrates: only he will be saved who will sin mortally tomorrow, and Socrates does not want to sin mortally, but he wants to be saved, and he wants to believe all that which is necessary for his salvation, and he ought to believe that to sin mortally is necessary for salvation. It seems that to pose this is impossible, and consequently it ought not reasonably be posed to Socrates under the law, and thus the case ought not to be admitted. If however the case is understood in the first way, i.e. that God by revealing that only those will be saved who mortally sin tomorrow, deposes whatever is antithetical to it and abrogates enacted law concerning what is antithetical to it, or at least grants a dispensation to Socrates …, the case is possible… Now it ought to be conceded that Socrates wills to sin mortally tomorrow, and yet he does not now sin mortally because the proposition is deposed and set up so that I should hold as false: ‘One willing to sin mortally, sins mortally.’21

Holcot’s commitment to the principle of non-contradiction and to inferential consistency undergirds each theological language: that of covenant, that of legal contract, and that of obligatio, and permits their overlay and the transfer of analytic method from one to another. In

bile, sed ex lege et peccato suo, sicut non possum dicere quod lex Dei obligat hominem ad poeniendum, sed obligat eum ad poeniendum si peccet.’ Pembroke, f. 193ra. 21 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Istis suppositis, distinguo de casu, quia vel Deus revelando istam Sorti: tantum iste salvabitur de numero istorum qui cras peccabit mortaliter, deponit sibi propositiones prius positas cuilibet Christiano ex lege communi, vel vult quod una cum illa ponatur, sicut omnes prius positae cuilibet Christiano… Si dicatur quod casus debet intelligi quod una copulativa … si copulativa sit talis: ille tantum salvabitur de numero istorum qui cras peccabit mortaliter, et Sortes vult salvari et Sortes non vult peccare mortaliter et vult omne quod credit esse medium ad salutem suam necessarium, et tale credit esse peccare mortaliter. Videtur quod positum est impossibile, et per consequens non potest illud ponere sub lege illi Sorti rationaliter, et sic casus non est admittendus. Si casus intelligatur primo modo, scilicet quod Deus revelando illam: tantum iste de numero illorum salvabitur qui cras peccabit mortaliter, deponat quamcumque isti repugnantem et abroget legem statutam de repugnantibus ad illam, vel saltem dispenset cum Sorte, … casus est possibilis … Vel concedendum est quod Sortes vult cras peccare mortaliter, et tamen non nunc peccat mortaliter quia illa propositio est deposita, et praefixa ut sustineam tanquam falsum: “Volens peccare mortaliter peccat mortaliter.”’ In Oxford, Oriel College 15, f. 132rb; Lyon, d2va.

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no context is anyone obliged to do the impossible, and methods for determining impossibility through analysis de obligatio are applicable, at least in theory, wherever necessary.

B. Could God Deceive Us? Each of these theologies is subject to a similar difficulty, however. They are vulnerable to questions about the reliability of their originating agreements. If contingency is seen to characterize the world and human affairs, the possibility that things could be other than they are introduces a potential source of error, deception, even manipulation and lying, into the relations between God and humankind. Thus fourteenth-century Dominican theologians confronted a dilemma. On the one hand, they were committed to the theologies of obligation and covenant that accepted the world as contingent. Each of these theologies grounded contingency in the distinction between God’s absolute power to do whatever does not involve a contradiction and God’s ordained system in which God freely instantiates only some of the possibilities open to him. The world is contingent because God has the absolute power to make it otherwise. On the other hand, the covenant or set of revealed positiones that guaranteed consistency of experience within the ordained system depended upon the reliability of God’s word. What if God could mislead, deceive or even lie? If God’s pronouncements in revelation and prophecy might be false, what surety could there be of his covenant? The very contingency of the ordained system that requires a covenant to guarantee God’s consistent relationship with the viator, might undermine the possibility of covenant by casting doubt on the reliability of promises. The structure of God’s potentia ordinata calls itself into question. Holcot set out the difficulty quite neatly in the form of an argument in opposition to his own position that God has knowledge of future contingents. If God’s knowledge of the future retained its contingency, then an opponent might suggest: God could not make any man certain about any future contingent, nor could any man believe with certainty or have hope for what God promises without being deceived—because howsoever much God might assert that something would happen in the future, even after his assertion or promise, God could still make the opposite happen since, notwith-

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standing God’s revelation or promise, what he promised would remain as contingent after his revelation or promise as before.22

Fourteenth-century attempts to deal with this dilemma divide at the point in 1332–1333 when Thomas Bradwardine argued seriously for the view that God can undo the past.23 If God can undo the past, then he can bring it about that an untrue prophecy or promise was never made. But prior to Bradwardine’s arguments making such an idea possible, theologians had rejected Bradwardine’s sort of ploy as outright contradictory, and the horns of the dilemma tossed them high. Discussions of deception and the reliability of prophecy characterized debate about the nature of contingency during the twenty years from Ockham and Peter Auriol to Holcot. In the background was Ockham. In his Tractatus de predestinatione et de praescientia Dei respectu futurorum contingentium, Ockham declared quite firmly that God knows future contingents and knows them as contingent, and that God also knows which of a contradictory pair of propositions about any such contingent future event will be true and which false.24 Ockham was thus committed to saying that propositions about 22 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Deus non posset certificare hominem de aliquo futuro, nec posset homo certitudinaliter credere vel sperare illud quod Deus promittit nisi deciperetur, quia quantumcumque asseruerit se aliquid esse facturum, potest post assertionem vel promissionem facere oppositum, quia tale dictum, non obstante, revelatione vel promissione Dei, manet contingens post dictum vel promissionem sicut ante.’ In Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly: Questions on Future contingents, ed. Paul A. Streveler and Katherine H. Tachau (Toronto, 1995), 133, ll. 471–476; Lyon, h3vb. 23 See Jean-François Genest, ‘Le De futuris contingentibus de Thomas Bradwardine,’ Recherches Augustiniennes 14 (1979): 252, for the indication that Bradwardine commented on the Sentences in 1332–1333. For the implications of Bradwardine’s views and the controversies that ensued, see idem, Prédétermination et liberté créée à Oxford au XIVe siècle: Buckingham contre Bradwardine (Paris, 1992); William J. Courtenay, ‘John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini on Whether God Can Undo the Past,’ RTAM 39 (1972): 224– 256; ibid. 40 (1973), 147–174; Chrisopher John Martin, ‘Bradwardine and the Use of Positio as a Test of Possibility,’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoja, and Sten Ebbesen, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2 (Helsinki, 1990), 582–584; Aron Edidin and Calvin G. Normore, ‘Oackham [sic] on Prophecy,’ International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion, 13 (1982):182–183; Calvin G. Normore, ‘Future Contingents,’ in CHLMP, 374–377; idem, ‘Divine Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Future Contingents: An Overview,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives, ed. Tamar Rudavsky (Dordrecht, 1985), 16–19; idem, ‘Scotus, Modality, Instants of Nature and the Contingency of the Present,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood, and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 172–174. 24 William of Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione et praescientia Dei respectu futurorum

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future events can both be true and still stand for what is contingent. A future contingent proposition like: ‘The Antichrist will come,’ can be true. Call it P. Along with P, it will be true to say that P could possibly happen and possibly not happen or might happen otherwise. The contingency of P resides in that fact. If contingent P, then both possible P and possible not P (and never to have been P).25 And even though God knows P, P remains contingent, because although God knows P and knows P is true, God also knows that it is possible that P be false.26 Against his own position, Ockham raised the awkward question of prophecy. Prophecy is supposed to be a revelation of the truth about a future event. Once revealed as true, the argument goes, it must necessarily be true. If the revealed event might not happen as revealed, if it remained contingent, falsity could be implicit in the revelation, but true prophets do not speak falsely.27 Are prophecies an indication that God does not know the future as contingent but only as necessary? If God were to know the truth of prophetic statements as contingent, it would raise the problem that true prophets could prophesy what might not happen. Either the existence of prophecy casts doubt on contingency, or contingency casts doubt on the existence of prophecy. Ockham’s response in the tract on predestination was to concede that what was revealed in prophecy was not revealed as false, but contingentium, q. 1: ‘Sexta suppositio: quod indubitanter est tenendum quod Deus certitudinaliter scit omnia futura contingentia, ita quod certitudinaliter scit quae pars contradictionis erit vera et quae falsa, ita tamen quod tales propositions “Deus scit hanc partem contradictionis esse veram” vel “illam” sunt contingentes et non necessariae…’ Ed. Philotheus Boehner and Stephanus Brown, in Opera philosophica 2 (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1978), 516, ll. 239–243. 25 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 2: ‘… quia est mere contingens, quia potest esse vera et potest esse falsa et numquam fuisse vera.’ In OP 2:523, ll. 79–80. 26 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 2: ‘Et sic non est necessaria, nec debet concedi quod Deus habeat scientiam necessariam de futuris contingentibus sed potius contingentem, quia sicut hoc futurum contingens contingenter erit, ita Deus scit ipsum contingenter fore, quia potest non scire ipsum fore, si ipsum scit.’ In OP 2:530, ll. 267– 271. For a helpful formalization of Ockham’s position, see Tetsuro Shimizu, ‘Time and Eternity: Ockham’s Logical Point of View,’ FcS 50 (1990): 283–307. 27 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1: ‘Octavo sic: quaero de revelatis a Prophetis, utrum necessario eveniant ut revelata sunt, aut non. Si sic, cum talia sint futura, sequitur quod eorum oppositum non possit evenire. Si non, contra: haec fuit aliquando vera “hoc est revelatum,” demonstrato aliquo tali, igitur semper postea fuit necessaria; et non fuit revelatum tamquam falsum, quia Prophetae non dixerunt falsum, igitur fuit revelatum tamquam verum; igitur necesse est tale revelatum evenire, quia aliter prophetiae posset subesse falsum.’ In OP 2:513, ll. 163–170. And see Genest, Prédétermination et liberté, 34–52, for the debate over prophecy from Ockham to Bradwardine.

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as a true contingent. And because the prophecy was not revealed as a necessary truth, but as a contingent truth, it could have been and can be false. And yet he asserted that prophets do not speak falsely. The reason is that all prophecies about future contingent events are conditional statements—even though the condition is sometimes only implicit and not expressed. In the case of the heirs to David’s throne, God expressed the conditional: ‘If your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies, which I shall teach them, their sons also forever shall sit upon your throne.’28 In the case of Jonah’s prophecy to the Ninevites, however: ‘Yet forty days, and the people of Nineveh shall be overthrown!’29 the condition: ‘unless you repent,’ was left unspoken. But Ockham asserted it must have been an implicit part of the prophecy because the people of the city did repent and were spared.30 If all prophecies are conditionals, however, then the general contingency that gives rise to their underlying conditional status is ultimately more encompassing than the narrower contingency of the voluntary response to admonition taken up in Ockham’s examples. The paradigm conditional arises from the basic contingency of the world and reads: ‘If the case does not turn out to be otherwise, then the revealed future contingent will be true,’ not just: ‘If you do not do as I ask, then I will punish you for it.’ As Aron Edidin and Calvin Normore have pointed out, some difficulties then arise from Ockham’s proposal. If all prophecies are conditionals, then they are not properly prophecies of future contingents at all. Conditionals, as conditional consequences, are necessary statements. When God reveals them, they are necessarily and not contingently true. However, while necessary in themselves, conditionals grounded in a more general contingency are also just trivial.31

Psalm 131:12. Jonah 3:4. 30 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1: ‘Dico quod nullum revelatum contingens futurum evenit necessario sed contingenter. Et concedo quod fuit aliquando vera “hoc est revelatum,” et sua de praeterito fuit postea semper necessaria. Et concedo quod non fuit revelatum tamquam falsum, sed tamquam verum contingens et non tamquam verum necessarium, et per consequens tale potuit et potest esse falsum. Et tamen Prophetae non dixerunt falsum, quia omnes prophetiae de quibuscumque futuris contingentibus fuerunt condicionales, quamvis non semper exprimebatur condicio. Sed aliquando fuit expressa, sicut patet de David et throno suo; aliquando subintellecta, sicut patet de Ninive destructione a Iona prophetata: Adhuc post quadraginta dies et Ninive subvertetur, nisi scilicet poeniterent; et quia poenituerunt, ideo non fuit destructa.’ In OP 2:513, ll. 170–182. 31 Normore, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ 18; Edidin and Normore, ‘Prophecy,’ 183–184. 28 29

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When Christ tells Peter that he will deny him thrice before the cock crows, the implied condition is: ‘If you do not choose not to deny me three times before the cock crows, you will deny me three times before the cock crows.’ Ockham’s ploy leaves the basic problem about God’s knowledge of future contingents unresolved. The conditional will not produce evident knowledge of the truth of the future contingent consequent, for example, in the case of Peter that he will deny Christ three times. God’s knowledge of the future is presumably just such evident knowledge, however, and he should be able to impart it to human beings if his promises are to have any meaning as promises. As Edidin and Normore have also discovered,32 Ockham seems to have shifted his ground by the time he wrote his Quodlibeta. There Ockham advocated the view that God can reveal future contingent events to people such that they will have evident knowledge (notitia) about them as contingents and not just as necessary conditionals. As Ockham says, ‘God himself knows such future events evidently. Therefore, in the nature of things, there can be such evident knowledge, and God can cause and reveal it.’33 In the course of letting future contingent propositions back into the range of what God reveals, Ockham also let back in the question of whether what God tells human beings might be false. If God ‘reveals’ something, what he reveals, by definition, will be true. False propositions can only be caused, not revealed. But if God causes someone to know a proposition or to have a concept about a future contingent, there is no necessity because of the contingency of that knowledge that that proposition or concept be true on the one hand, or false on the other.34 Thus the possibility arises that God could cause someone to understand something false. In granting to God the power to reveal future contingents as both true and contingent, Ockham also granted him at least the absolute power to cause people to understand false propositions, although such propositions would by definition not Edidin and Normore, ‘Prophecy,’ 184–186. William of Ockham, Quodlibet 4, q. 4: ‘… ipsemet Deus talia futura evidenter cognoscit; igitur talis notitia evidens potest esse in rerum natura; igitur potest causari et revelari a Deo.’ In Quodlibeta septem, ed. Joseph C. Wey, Opera theologica 9 (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1980), 314, ll. 11–13. 34 Ockham, Quod. 4, q. 4: ‘Nam ista propositio “Deus causat hoc revelatum sive notitiam evidentem” importat quod hoc revelatum erit, quia falsum potest causari, non revelari. Sed ista “Deus causat hanc propositionem vel qualitatem” non importat quod illa propositio erit vera neque falsa.’ In OT 9:317, ll. 70–74. 32 33

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be revelations nor known as evident. The workings of God’s absolute power aside, however, prophecy by its very nature, if it is contingent, is contingent relative to the ordinances of God’s covenant and, therefore, contingent within God’s ordained system. With prophecy, Ockham has moved from the realm of absolute possibility relative to divine will, to the realm of ordinate possibility, relative to human experience. Questions about the security of covenant again arise.35 The particular character of Ockham’s struggle with the problem of prophecy occurred because he did not wish to accept either one of two possible alternative views. If the contingency of events were denied, the problem of uncertainty about propositions about the future would be resolved. However, free will, both divine and human, would be forfeit, and Ockham wished to retain it. Ockham also wished to retain a two-valued logic. If propositions about future contingents were considered neither true nor false, as Peter Auriol, following Aristotle, argued, answers to the questions about contingency and false prophecy would look very different. For Auriol, all true propositions are immutable propositions and so necessary and not contingent. He explicitly denied that true propositions can imply equivalent propositions in the mode of possibility, that true P ever implies possible P and possible not P. For example, in the case of the consequence: ‘The Antichrist will be, therefore the Antichrist is possible,’ Auriol denied that the consequent follows from the antecedent. If the antecedent is true, it is immutably true and necessary. If the Antichrist is contingently possible, then it follows that the Antichrist will be or will not be, but such a state of affairs cannot follow from what is true. Since that the Antichrist will be is contingent, the Antichrist will either be or not be, and the proposition: ‘The Antichrist will be,’ cannot be determinately true or false. It must as yet be neither true nor false.36 35 Edidin and Normore, ‘Prophecy,’ 186–187; Normore, ‘Divine Omniscience,’ 22, n. 24. 36 Petrus Auriol, Sent. I, d. 38, art. 3: ‘Ex primo autem apparet quod antecedens est immutabile et inevitabile, scilicet veritas istius propositionis: “Antichristus erit,” si aliquo modo sit vera; ergo consequens erit inevitabile. Unde immutabiliter ita eveniet, et idem potest concludi de omni futuro, igitur omnia futura immutabilia sunt et evitari non possunt. Hoc autem dicere dementissimum est, ergo et illud unde sequitur, scilicet quod aliqua propositio de futuro sit vera. Unde ista non est vera: “Antichristus erit,” nec etiam ista: “Antichristus non erit,” sed bene disiunctiva: “Antichristus erit vel non erit.”’ Edited in Chris Schabel, ‘Peter Aureol on Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents: Scriptum in Primum Librum Sententiarum, distinctions 38–39,’ Cahiers de l’institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 65 (1995): 130, l. 923–131, l. 930. And ibid., ‘…

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The grounds for judging a proposition about future contingent events a true prophecy could not be for Auriol whether the proposition spoken is either true or false. No future contingent proposition is true or false, and so prophets do not speak either truly or falsely. As Auriol put it, Christ would not have spoken falsely even if Peter had not denied him three times (as Peter could indeed have done).37 What distinguishes a true prophet from a false prophet is not whether the prophet speaks the truth or whether what he says even eventually comes to pass (and here Auriol cited the case of Jonah and Nineveh), but whether the prophet intends to express a certain divine understanding about what is prophesied. The conventions of speech and the prophet’s intention to convey God’s will give prophecies their value. If God and not vanity are the inspiration for a prophecy, then a prophet will be a true prophet.38 determinatio autem contingentis oritur ex actualitate, ut dictum est; ergo non potest determinatio illa poni pro instantibus precedentibus actualitatem, sed pro sequentibus. Sic igitur, cum natura contingentis omnino indeterminata sit pro quolibet instanti precedente suam existentiam actualem, necessario utraque pars contradictionis absque ulla determinatione sibi debetur pro tunc. Et ideo nulla propositio est vera, nisi que claudit utramque partem contradictionis sub indifferentia et disiunctim. Que vero determinate alteram partem exprimit non est vera nec etiam falsa…’ In Schabel, ‘Scriptum in Primum,’ 133, ll. 982–998. And ibid., ‘Non valet etiam tertia, quia hec propositio: “Antichristum esse est possibile,” loquendo de possibilitate ad utrumlibet, non sequitur ex ista: “Antichristus erit”; immo veritas istius tollit illam. Si enim verum sit quod Antichristus erit, immutabiliter eveniet, ita quod ipsum esse pro illo tunc non est possibile ad utrumlibet; immo penitus necessarium, sicut Sortem esse, dum est, necessarium est; et hec patent ex predictis. Unde “Antichristum esse possibilem contingenter,” equipollet isti: “Antichristus erit vel non erit.” Hec autem: “Antichristus erit vel non erit,” non sequitur ad istam: “Antichristus erit”; et per consequens nec ista: “Antichristum esse est possibile ad utrumlibet,” sequitur ex illa.’ In Schabel, ‘Scriptum in Primum,’ 134, ll. 1004–135, l. 1013. See Schabel, Theology at Paris, 67–132, for an extensive treatment of Auriol’s position. Schabel, ibid, 62–63, has determined that Thomas Wylton espoused views somewhat like Auriol’s and influenced him. 37 Auriol, Sent. I, d. 38, art. 3: ‘Unde Christus non dixisset falsum, dato quod Petrus non abnegasset ter ipsum, immo potuit non negare.’ In Schabel, ‘Scriptum in Primum,’ 143, ll. 1186–1188. For a discussion of the implications of taking the position that Auriol advocates, see Tamar Rudavsky, ‘Divine Omniscience, Contingency and Prophecy in Gersonides,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library 25 (Dordrecht, 1985), 161–181. 38 Auriol, Sent. I, d. 38, art. 3: ‘Propositiones ergo prophetice aliud significant ex institutione et ex natura propositionum, aliud vero dant intelligere ex intentione prophete; secundum enim naturam propriam et significationem quam exhibent, nec sunt vere nec sunt false; secundum autem intentionem prophete, vere sunt, quia dant intelligere quod in divina notitia est quedam veritas ineffabilis et quedam determinatio illius materie de qua formantur, que quidem determinatio non plus dat propositioni

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In substituting intention for truth as the criterion for credibility among prophets and prophecies, Auriol did provide some guide, even if minimal, for those trying to figure out which prophecies to follow. However, in his system whether beliefs are true or not is quite beside the point from the human perspective, and thus a guide to true prophecy is not ultimately necessary. Auriol concedes the precariousness of covenant, but then dismisses it as irrelevant because intention is everything. Ockham’s desire to provide an anchor for beliefs about future hopes in at least the possibility that human beings have the truth of the matter, finds no answer in Auriol’s position. Auriol’s rejection of the idea that there could be true or false contingents had no exact counterpart at Oxford that I have found.39 For example, in his Notabilia on future contingents, Richard of Campsall paralleled Ockham in saying: ‘“The Antichrist will be” is true and can be false, but if it is posed as false, it was false from eternity.’40 As we have seen, the Dominicans Arnold of Strelley, and Robert Holcot also accepted such formulations. As Strelley put it, it would be possible for God to reveal something through prophecy or revelation that he never revealed, and never to reveal something that he did reveal, because the nature of contingency required that that be possible. No deception future quod sit vera quam illi de preterito, cum abstrahat simpliciter ab omni tali; et hoc est quod nititur gestiendo ut cumque exprimere propheta. Non valet etiam secunda, quia propheta verax et mendax non differunt penes veritatem propositionum, alioquin mendax fuisset Ysaias dicendo: “Parvulus natus est nobis,” quia non erat tunc natus, et Ionas cum dixit: “Adhuc XL dies et Ninive subvertetur,” hoc enim non evenit, quia “misertus est Dominus super malitia, quam locutus est, ut faceret et non fecit,” ut dicitur Ione tertio. Est ergo differentia prophete veri a mendace ex hoc quod intendunt exprimere, scilicet determinationem quamdam in divina notitia respectu illius materiae de qua loquuntur. Unus enim movetur a Deo, alius vero a vanitate cordis sui, sicut Exechielis dicit. Propter quod unus est sompniator et alius verax.’ In Schabel, ‘Scriptum in Primum,’ 142, l. 1166–143, l. 1183. 39 Courtenay, ‘Whether God Can Undo the Past,’ (1979): 151, attributes the position that propositions about the future are neither true nor false to Thomas Buckingham, but the text which he cites, Quaestiones, concl. 13: ‘Voluntas divina respectu futurorum contingentium quamdieu sunt futura, est libera libertate contradictionis … .’ (Oxford, New College 134, f. 347r), is subject to alternative interpretations. Thomas Bradwardine indicated in his De causa Dei, however, that he had heard an opinion like Auriol’s expressed both at Oxford and Avignon–see the discussion below in chapter six. 40 Richard of Campsall, Notabilia pro materia de contingencia et presciencia Dei, I.2–3: ‘Aliqua proposicio est contingenter vera et, tamen, non potest mutari a veritate in falsitatem quamvis possit esse falsa. racio est quia ista: “antichristus erit” est vera, et potest esse falsa, sed si falsa ponatur, ab eterno falsa fuit, ita quod ibi non esset mutacio, et illud respondendum est de proposicionibus de futuro.’ In The Works of Richard of Campsall, ed. Edward A. Synan, 2 (Toronto, 1982), 38.

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can occur through a revelation, however, because if God reveals something, then by the definition of the term ‘revelation,’ it denotes what will be true and what is going to happen. Revelation sets up a casus and positio, and belief should follow according to what should be conceded and denied consistent with the positio that revelation establishes.41 Their fellow Dominican William Crathorn rejected the past counterfactual analysis of contingency, but he still argued in favor of the idea that propositions about future contingent events could be both true and yet possibly true and possibly false.42 However, according to Strelley, God is not bound in every communication he makes to people, to tell exactly what will happen. Citing the usual cases of Jonah and Nineveh and adding the case of Isaiah’s prophecy of death to King Hezekiah, Strelley noted that God can communicate to people things that are not precisely true by communicating formulaicly (recitative) or with some implicit condition, so that what God says does not have to come true just because God says it. Such communications would not mean that God lies to us, however, because, as Strelley put it, lies are statements the mind both knows to be false and judges ought not to be said. As some doctors say, he noted, it may be licit to assert something false which one knows to be false, for example, to save the life of an innocent person. In such a case, there would be no lie, because one would judge that the false statement ought to be said.43 See chapter four, pp, 123–128 above. William Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Secundo videndum est quid est futurum contingens et [sic, om.] ad utrumlibet. Et videtur mihi quod isti termini imponuntur ad supponendum pro omni eo, quod non est sed erit, et possibile est ipsum esse et possibile est ipsum non esse.’ In Quästionen zum ersten Sentenzenbuch, ed. Fritz Hoffmann, BGPTM n. s. 29 (Münster, 1988), 484, ll. 2–5. See chapter six below for a full discussion of these texts. 43 Arnold of Strelley, Cent., concl. 87: ‘Octogesima septima conclusio est ista quod Deus aliquid quod revelavit potest numquam revelasse… Et si dicatur contra: “ergo Deus aliquid quod fecit potest numquam fecisse, et aliquid quod dixit numquam dixisse,” huic dicitur negando consequentiam propter causas dictas. Quia factio et dictio habent se indifferenter ad verum et ad falsum, sed non revelatio. Quia si Deus revelet aliquid fore futurum, verum est illud fore futurum. Sed quamvis Deus dixerit aliquid fore futurum, non sequitur quod verum est illud fore futurum. Quia potest hoc dicere recitative vel condicionaliter implicite et non assertive. Sicut patet per illud Ionae quo Ionas dixit ab ore Dei: Adhuc tres dies sunt et Ninive subvertetur; et per illud dictum quo propheta dixit regi Ezechiae: Dispone domui tuae quia morieris. Non tamen sic accidit sicut prophetae dixerunt. Et si dicatur “ergo Deus potest mentiri,” ad hoc dicitur negando consequentiam. Quia mentiri est aliquod falsum dicere contra mentem—vel quod quis credit esse falsum—quod mens non iudicat esse dicendum. Unde, secundum aliquos doctores 41 42

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On this view, God would not lie, but he could, for people’s own good, tell them things that are not true, and because he would intend them for good, God would not be lying. To summarize the positions outlined so far, when God communicates with people, there are a number of ways to characterize what he may be about. For instance: 1. God can intend his hearers to believe what he says, say the proposition p, because p is true. This would be a very strong claim, stronger than anyone could easily make in the face of Scripture and experience, because it would imply that disclosure of the truth is a good in itself. God would then, if God is God and God is good, make full disclosure to human beings of everything he knows to be true. But God does not seem to do that. 2. God can intend his hearers to believe p, and p is true. In this case, all of God’s communications to people would be true. There would be no such thing as an untrue prophecy or the possibility of deception on God’s part. This would be Augustine’s position.44 In a trivial sense, Ockham’s position in the tract on predestination that all licitum est aliquando falsum asserere quod quis scit esse falsum sine mendacio faciendo, utpote ad salvandum vitam innocentis. Quia mens iudicat in tali casu illud falsum esse dicendum et dicens ideo non mentitur.’ In Ockham, OP 7:498, l. 2–499, l. 3. Reference to Hezekiah also appears as an addition in Strelley’s abbreviation of Ockham’s Tractatus de praedestination et de praescientia in respectu futuorum contingentium, and seems to have been his addition to the debate (see Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence: A Queston about Predestination and Foreknowledge by Arnold of Strelley, OP,’ AHDLMA, 270), but it should be noted that his contemporary, Richard Fitzralph, in his Sent. I, q. 16, Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 59rb, also refers to the example of Hezekiah in his discussion of whether God tells falsehoods. Gregory of Rimini, Lectura super primum et secundum Sententiarum I, d. 42–44, q. 2, art. 2, ed. A. Damasus Trapp and Venicio Marcolino, 3 (Berlin, 1984), 402, 405, cites the example of Hezekiah, as well, but in the context of critizing Fitzralph, from whom he probably obtained it. Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), 114–115, aligns the use of the example in the 13th century with the astrological tradition, and J.D. North in his chapter ‘Astronomy and Mathematics,’ in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. J.I. Catto and Ralph Evans (Oxford, 1992), 111, n. 28, has noticed that John of Salisbury mentions the example of Hezekiah as an example of God altering his prophecies in Policraticus, book 2, chap. 24. 44 Augustine, Sermo de symbolo ad catechumenos, (PL 40, 627): ‘Deus omnipotens est; et cum sit omnipotens, mori non potest, falli non potest, mentiri non potest, et, quod ait apostolus, negare se ipsum non potest.’ Ed. R. Vander Plaetse, CCL 46 (Turnholt, 1969), 185, ll. 18–20. And also see idem, De civitate Dei, 22.25, in CCL 48 (Turnholt, 1955), 852, l. 1–853, l. 45.

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prophecies are conditionals would also produce such an effect. In the strong Augustinian sense, such a position is hard to defend given the examples of Jonah, et al. 3. God can intend that his hearers believe p, and p is true but could be false and never have been true. This is the position of Campsall, Ockham and Strelley, and arises because of the formula: if contingent p, then possible p and possible not p and never have been p. 4. God can intend that his hearers believe p, and p is true if an implied condition is supplied. Ockham accepted this as the paradigm for prophecy in his tract on predestination. Strelley used a similar idea to explain cases like that of Jonah, but did not treat all prophecies as conditionals, only those that did not constitute revelations in the technical sense of the word. 5. God can intend that his hearers believe p, and p is neither true nor false. This is Auriol’s position. 6. God can intend that his hearers believe p, and p is false, but he will not do this in the ordained system. Ockham seems to have taken this position in his quodlibetal questions, citing God’s power to cause directly whatever can otherwise be caused indirectly, a reference to God’s absolute power. Richard FitzRalph, when writing the Opus correctum edition of his commentary on the Sentences in 1331–1332 (based on his lectures from the year 1327–1328 or 1328–1329), also espoused this,45 as did Adam Wodeham.46 FitzRalph, following Augustine, proffered a seventh alternative: 45 On these dates, see Kathering H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1345, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 22 (Leiden, 1988), 236–237, and Katherine Walsh, Richard Fitzralph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh: A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate (Oxford, 1981), 44–45. Fitzraph, Sent. 1, q. 16: ‘non enim videtur mihi impossibile Deum aliquem decipere; sed tamen numquam decepit aliquem sicut nos propie credimus. Unde Augustinus vult concludere tanquam unum inconveniens secundum legem ordinatam quod Deus aliquem decepit, non tanquam aliquod impossibile.’ Cited in Genest, Le De futuris, 260, and discussed in Tachau, ‘Holcot on Contingency,’ 180. 46 Adam Wodeham, Sent. III, q. 5: ‘Ex illo processu potest argui illa conclusio de potentia dei absoluta; omnem enim rem, quam potest deus causare mediantibus

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7. God can intend that someone believe p, and p is false, but God only conveys falsehoods through intermediaries, never in propria persona.47 And Strelley posed a still further possibility: 8. God can intend that his hearers believe p, and p is false, but since he speaks for the good of those who hear him, God does not tell a lie. The direction of development seems to have been that the possibility of God’s deceiving people arose initially in discussions about contingency. Texts from Scripture then came to mind that might support the idea that God did at least in the past give people false information. Responses to the uncertainties that contingency introduces were at first presumed to deal with the problem of deceptive prophecy as well. But then general responses to the uncertainties of contingency were judged not to rule out the possibility that God might still, because he has the power and it would not involve him in a contradiction or the commission of a sin, cause people to believe that a false proposition is true. Although the question of God’s capacity to deceive was still treated in conjunction with discussions about future contingents, it became an issue separate from discussions of contingency in general and one relative to questions about the ordained order. The difficulties with admitting that divine revelations remain contingent after God makes them, led at least one contemporary of Robert Holcot’s to deny that they do. In Quodlibet III, q. 8, Holcot described efficientibus creatis posset deus de potentia sua absoluta per se ipsum, sed error est res talis, igitur etc.’ Cited in Rimini, Sent. ed. Trapp and Marcolino, 3:393, n. 19. 47 Fitzralph, Sent. I, q. 16: ‘Dico ergo quod Deus in sua persona propria neminem unquam decepit, sicut dicit Augustinus ubi supra. Nec dico decipere potest per se mendaciter, quia necessario non potest, sed per alium, Deus decepit de facto, sicut ibi dicit Augustinus, quia rex Achab, sicut dicitur tertio Regis, ultimo [3 Kings, 22:20–23], deceptus fuit per sperendo prophetas.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 59ra. For the text of Augustine, see 83 Quaestionum, quaes. 53, 2, ed. Almut Mutzenbecher, CCL 83 (Turnholt, 1975), 87, l. 47–89, l. 91. Augustine had argued that only those already enmeshed in sin could serve such a divine purpose since lying under any circumstances would be sinful, even to carry out God’s commands. But Wodeham argued that someone lying on such divine authority would not necessarily sin: ‘Et ad dictum Augustini concedendum est quod omne mendacium factum propria auctoritate vel etiam sine divine auctoritate peccatum est. Si autem praecise fiat divina auctoritate, quod utique non repugnaret divinae potentiae absolutae, non video quin esset peccatum plus quam occidere dei auctoritate unum innocentem.’ cited in Rimini, Sent. ed. Trapp and Marcolino, 3:393, n. 19.

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the position of a ‘certain worthy,’ whom William Courtenay has identified as a Master Walter writing just prior to 1330,48 who argued that if God makes an absolute revelation about the future concerning some article of the faith, like the revelation that there will be a general resurrection of the dead, such a revelation will not remain contingent after God has made it. What the revelation denotes must necessarily come to pass, nor could God impede it or fail in any way to implement it, because such a possibility (posse) would be against the will of God and truth and would not therefore be a real possibility.49 If someone were to argue that God can make the opposite of such a revelation happen from his absolute power, rendering the revelation contingent, Holcot’s opponent responded that such an argument misunderstood the nature of God’s absolute power. God’s absolute power is not rightly viewed as the power to abandon his produced ordination such that simply and absolutely God can produce the opposite of what he ordains. Rather, one should say that unless God has ordained otherwise, he can produce the opposite of such a revelation such that, considering God’s power absolutely without regard to his actual ordinations, it is not incompatible with His power to produce the opposite

48 William J. Courtenay, ‘Augustinianism at Oxford in the Fourteenth Century,’ Augustiniana 30 (1980): 67, and idem, Schools & Scholars, 281, 322–323, 324. His attribution is based on a text of Adam Wodeham, Lect. Oxon. 3, q. 4 (Paris, Univ., MS 193, f. 186rb): ‘Opinio Galteri quod facta revelatione absoluta oppositum non potest evenire.’ Strelley seems not to know of this view, but FitzRalph, in the introductory lecture to his Biblical commentary, given in the first half of 1329, is familiar with it. FitzRalph took up arguments concerning prophecy, God’s capacity to deceive, and the conterfactual past interpretation of contingency in this significent text. See Jean-François Genest, ‘Contingence et révélation des futurs: La Quaestio Biblica de Richard Fitzralph,’ in Lectionum varietates: Hommage à Paul Vignaux (1904–1987), ed. J. Jolivet, Z. Kaluza, A. De Libera (Paris, 1991), 199–214. Also see Katherine H. Tachau, ‘Logic’s God and the Natural Order in Late Medieval Oxford: the Teaching of Robert Holcot,’ Annals of Science 53 (1996): 244–251, and idem ‘Robert Holcot on Contingency and Divine Deception,’ in Filosofia e teologia nel trecento: Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. Luca Bianchi (Louvain-la-neuve, 1994):157–196, for important and extensive discussions of Holcot’s critique of Master Walter, based in part on an earlier draft of this work, along with discussion of Fitzralph and Wodeham. 49 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Circa primum est notandum quod est opinio cuiusdem valentis quod facta revelatione absoluta de quocumque articulo de futuro, cuiusmodi est ista: “resurrectio mortuorum erit,” non manet ille articulus postea contingens, sed necesse est sic esse sicut per illud revelatum denotatur fore. Nec potest Deus impedire vel omittere ne illud impleat, quia tale posse foret contra Dei voluntatem et veritatem, et ideo non foret posse, sicut posse facere contradictoria esse simul vera non est “posse,” immo contra potentiam Dei.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 91, ll. 253–260.

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of what he in fact produces.50 God’s absolute power is thus not understood in terms of actual action, but only in terms of possibility.51 Once God has acted, the effects of his will become necessary. God’s promises are not subject to any contingency that might undermine confidence in his covenant. Robert Holcot, in his commentary on the Sentences, treated the possibility that God’s revelations might not remain contingent as contrary to the faith: One should note that one should speak with fear and reverence about those things that are true about God… And although I were to have no response in accord with the contingency of things, divine foreknowledge and revelations, I would, therefore, believe no less that these [propositions] are true and compatible: ‘God can reveal propositions [like there will be a general resurrection of the dead].’ ‘They remain contingent after revelation.’ And all the arguments that can be made to the contrary, I would repute sophistic, even if there were no one in the world who knew how to solve them.52

It is no wonder that Holcot did not accept his ‘worthy’ opponent’s way out of the difficulties.

Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Quando tamen dicitur quod “Deus de potentia sua absoluta potest facere oppositum,” dicit quod haec propositio dupliciter potest intelligi. Unus [sensus] est secundum communiter intelligentes quod Deus potest dimittere ordinationem factam et facere oppositum, ita quod haec sit vera simpliciter et absolute: Deus potest facere oppositum. Secundus sensus est iste: nisi Deus sic ordinasset, Deus posset facere oppositum, ita quod absolute considerando potentiam Dei ut potentia est sine eius ordinatione, non repugnat potentiae eius oppositum facere, nec in ea est defectus ad hoc.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 91, ll. 260–268. 51 See William J. Courtenay, ‘The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library 25 (Dordrecht, 1985), 257–258, who discusses the distinction between God’s absolute power considered as ‘posse’ and as ‘actio.’ 52 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 8: ‘Circa primum est notandum quod cum timore et reverentia oportet hominem exprimere etiam ea quae vera sunt quando loquitur de Deo … Et licet nullam responsionem haberem ad concordandum cum rerum contingentia divinam praescientiam et revelationes, non minus ideo crederem quin verae simul stent: Deum tales porpositiones posse revelare, et illas post revelationem esse contingentes. Et argumenta omnia quae possunt fieri in contrarium sophistica reputarem, licet non foret homo in mundo qui ea sciret solvere.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 149–150, ll. 821–834; Lyon, f. i5vb. 50

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Holcot declared that he did not see any contradiction in conceding that God knowingly asserts something false: not that God can lie or perjure himself, for to tell a lie is to say something with a disordinate intention of deceiving, and God cannot by definition have a disordinate intentio, yet God can knowingly assert something false with the intention of deceiving his creatures.53 Holcot argued that nothing pertaining to God’s essential goodness depends on any creature because God would be good even if all creatures were destroyed. That God is just, merciful, truthful in his promises, or observant of his ordained law, are all dependent on the existence of creation and are, therefore, not essential to God. If God were to abrogate all of his statutes and to bring it about that they had never been enacted and to make nothing of his promises, he would be no less good than before the constitution of the world when there was nothing but God.54 Therefore, God is no better for promising something and keeping his promise than he would be if 53 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 8: ‘Ego autem contradictionem non video sequi si concedatur Deum asserere falsum scienter; sed Deum mentiri vel peierare, vel Deum esse falsum eo modo quo mendax dicitur esse falsus, non conceditur, quia secundum Augustinum, libro De mendacio, capitulo iii, “Mendacium est falsa vocis significatio cum intentione fallendi.” Et hoc debet sic exponi: cum intentione deordinata fallendi. Sed Deus non potest habere intentionem deordinatam in aliquo facto suo, et ideo Deus non potest mentiri nec peierare, tamen Deus potest asserere falsum scienter et cum intentione fallendi creaturam, quia non includit contradictionem in Deo…’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 155–156, ll. 945–954; Lyon i6rb–i6va. The work for this chapter was initially presented as ‘The Limits of Lying: Fourteenth-Century Dominican Theories of Lying’ at the Medieval Academy, Toronto (April, 1987). Subsequently, Joseph M. Incandela, working independently with many of the same texts, published a very insightful article ‘Robert Holcot, O.P., on Prophecy, the Contingency of Revelation, and the Freedom of God,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 4 (1994): 165–188. Incandela does not deal with Holcot’s use of obligational arguments, but adds an interesting discussion of Holcot’s Wisdom commentary and its connection to preaching. Also see Tachau, ‘Holcot on Contingency,’ 166–196, and for discussion of a more generalized fourteenth-century anxiety about the possibility of divine deception, see Dallas G. Denery II, ‘From Mystery to Deception: John Wyclif and the Transformation of Fourteenth-Century Eucharistic Discourse,’ forthcoming. 54 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Praeterea, nihil pertinens ad essentialem Dei bonitatem dependet a creatura. Sed quod Deus sit iustus, vel misericors, vel verax in promissis, vel servans legem statutam, dependet a creatura… Igitur, nihil de numero istorum pertinet ad Dei bonitatem, sed sine quacumque bonitate creata esset bonitas essentialis… Et ideo, si Deus omnia statuta sua abrogaret et faceret quod numquam fuissent statuta et nihil faceret de promissis, non minus bonus foret quam fuit ante mundi constitutionem, quando nihil fuit nisi ipse.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 93, ll. 295–311. And see the similar treatment that Fritz Hoffmann accords these passages in Die theologische Methode des Oxforder Dominikanerlehrers Robert Holcot, BGPTM n. s. 5 (Münster, 1972), 355–358.

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he were not to promise or not to keep his word. No goodness accrues to him from fulfilling a promise.55 Not only did Holcot assert that God could instruct someone to believe something false, however, he noted many instances from Scripture when God did so. For example, God ordered the Israelites to deceive the Egyptians and an evil angel to deceive King Ahab.56 And there was the case of Abraham, who believed on God’s instruction that he should kill his son and that his son would be killed, and the case of King David whom the prophet told: ‘Go, do all that is in your heart; for the Lord is with you,’ leading David to believe that he would build the temple.57 In fact, Holcot contended, that God would be imperfect if he could not deceive anyone, for someone might by his or her actions deserve God’s deception, and God would be insufficiently powerful to exact such justice.58 Holcot adduced Scripture against the position of FitzRalph and Augustine to argue that God could cause people to err not just through the words and actions of those who are evil, but even through those who are good, and even sometimes directly, as in the case of Abraham.59 55 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Deus non est melior promittendo aliquid et servando promissam quam esset non promittendo et non servando; igitur nihil sibi accrescit de bonitate adimplendo promissum.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 93, ll. 312–314. 56 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 8: ‘Nec video causam quare Deus non potest velle decipere creaturam immediate per seipsum, cum manifeste dicat Augustinus, De 83 quaestionibus, quaestione iii, quod Deus decipit per malos angelos et per malos homines, et quod Deus iussit filios Israel decipere Aegyptios, ubi alludit Augustinus historiae de rege Achab, III Regum, capitulo xxii… Similiter, Christus voluit nasci de virgine ut deciperet diabolum, eius nativitatem celando secundum sanctos. Similiter, Rebecca et Iacob de familiari consilio Spiritus Sancti deceperunt Isaac, Genesis xxvii. Similiter, Iudith decepit Holofernem.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 156–157, ll. 957–970; Lyon, f. i6va. 57 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Posset Deus aliquod falsum praecipere credi, non est dubium. Similiter de facto videtur quod Abraham crediderit filium suum interficiendum et se filium interfecturum. Similiter David volendo edificare templum credidit quod hoc esset facturus, quia propheta dixerat sibi: “Omne quod est in corde tuo, vade et fac, quia Deus tecum est,” II Reg. vii [2Samuel 7:3].’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 123vb; Lyon, f. b1rb. 58 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 8: ‘… immo Deus imperfectus esset si non posset hoc intendere, nam aliqua creatura potest mereri ut decipiatur a Deo. Et credo quod demones meruerunt decipi a Deo in multis, et quod Deus multa facit cum intentione fallendi eos, et fecit.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 156, ll. 954–957; Lyon, i6va. 59 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 8: ‘Unde videtur quod Deus possit decipere etiam per bonos…’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 157, ll. 970–971; Lyon, f. i6va. And idem, Sent. III, q. 1: ‘Tertio adduco sacram scripturam quae hoc satis innuit: videlicet quod de facto Deus decepit, hoc est, causavit errorem, non solum per malos sed etiam per bonos, et immediate aliquando per seipsum, et non solum bonos sed etiam malos. Lucae ii

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Holcot represents the culmination of the developing discussion about God’s capacity to deceive. In his view, not only can God deceive, and has deceived: 9. God can intend his hearers to believe p, and p is false, but there is no evil connotation to God’s action. God’s deception would not even have to be for any particular person’s good, as Strelley had stressed. Holcot’s analysis of the difficulties of contingency and deception falls within the frame that Campsall, Ockham, and Strelley established— although he did not rely on Ockham’s dubious suggestion that prophecies are conditional statements. Holcot stands at the developed end of the debate, for his treatment of the issues is often quite refined when compared to that of earlier authors. For example, Holcot argued that it was in his, Holcot’s, power to bring it about that someone dead over one hundred years was a prophet, in as much as the term ‘prophet’ is a connotative term signifying someone foretelling the truth. Therefore, if someone foretold something about Holcot that Holcot could freely choose to do or not to do, Holcot could make that person a prophet by choosing to do what was predicted about him. Holcot could make what the person had said true or false, and thus one could concede that someone prophesied and could never have prophesied, and that someone told the truth throughout his whole life and could still have never said one true proposition.60 habetur quia beata virgo errorem estimavit filium suum fuisse in comitatu virorum cum Josepho, sed certum est quod errorum causa partialis fuit ipsemet Christus qui clanculo et occulte tenuit se in Hierusalem matre recedente.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 177rb; Lyon, f. n3vb. 60 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 10 ‘Ad quartum, concedo quod modo est in potestate mea facere aliquem mortuum a centum annis fuisse prophetam, quia iste terminus “propheta” est terminus connotativus, cuius significatum est aliquis praedicens verum. Et planum est quod si de me aliquid praedixerit me facturum quod possum facere et non facere libere, consequens est quod possum facere eum fuisse prophetam et non fuisse prophetam, quia possum facere quod ipse dixit verum vel falsum; id est, possum facere quod haec propositio sit vera vel falsa, sicut mihi placet: “talis homo fuit propheta” stricte accipiendo “prophetam” iuxta definitionem prophetae.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 172–173, ll. 1282–1290; Lyon, f. i8rb. Campsall, Notabilia VII–X, poses examples that suggest the same sort of ‘bringing about’ of the past that Holcot proposes. See Campsall, Works 2:40–41. M.J.F.M. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought (Leiden, 1993), 208–212, has a helpful discussion of the general 14th century debate about whether such ‘bringing about’ ways of thinking would imply that human beings influence or change God

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The possible alternative truth values of propositions uttered in the past would not effect any real change in the past because truth and falsity are not, Holcot argued, accidents or properties of propositions somehow inhering in them.61 Just as the term ‘predestinate’ did not in Ockham’s view imply a respectus or property in the person, like Peter, to whom it might apply,62 so the term ‘prophet’ seemed to work for Holcot, as a term that implies in the one making a prediction no property that made him or her a prophet, but rather connotes some future event. Despite his provocative assertions about present or future events ‘bringing about’ the past, Holcot’s position did not entail backward causality in the sense of changing the past in any material way. Terms and propositions that range through connotation or extension over past and future events are not determinately decided in terms of their truth value without respect to the actual occurrence of the future events they connote. Holcot, like his predecessors, treated contingency as introducing an element of uncertainty. That uncertainty is mitigated to a certain extent because future contingent propositions can be true, even if as contingents, they imply the possibility that what they stand for can be false. If the possibility is realized that such a true proposition be false, then it always was false, and never was true.63 However, the precariousness

(although Hoenen imputes an implication of change in this world to what I have interpreted as shifts among possible worlds). 61 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Hic dico tria: Primo quod veritas et falsitas non sunt accidentia absoluta inherentia propositionibus, sicut antequam dixerunt, distincta realiter ab ipsis propositionibus.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 150ra; Lyon, f. h6vb. And see Paola Müller, ‘Necessity of the Past and Potentia Dei in Wiliam of Ockham,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (New York, Ottawa, and Toronto, 1995), 892–902, for a pertinent discussion of Ockham’s similar position. 62 William of Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1: ‘Prima suppositio est quod praedestinatio activa non est aliqua res distincta quocumque modo a Deo vel divinis personis, nec reprobatio activa, nec praedestinatio passiva est aliquod abolutum vel respectivum distinctum aliquo modo a praedestinato. Sed hoc nomen “praedestinatio” vel conceptus, sive accipiatur active sive passive, et significat ipsum Deum qui daturus est vitam aeternam alicui et illum cui datur, ita quod tria significat, scilicet Deum, vitam aeternam, et illum cui datur.’ In OP 2:514, ll. 186–193. 63 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Ad illud potest dici quod haec propositio: “a erit,” est vera, tamen contingenter, et licet sit vera, potest tamen nunquam fuisse vera, et eodem modo ista: “Deus scivit a fore,” vera est per casum, contingenter vera tamen, quia sic est vera quod potest nunquam fuisse vera.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 147vb; Lyon, h2vb.

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of covenant, if anything, was even more a part of Holcot’s theology than that of his predecessors, because he admitted not only the possibility that God could deceive people, but pointed out cases in Scripture in which God actually did so. God’s promises could give no ultimate security because they remained contingent even after they were made, and God could bring it about that what he had promised, was never promised, just as Holcot could bring it about that someone who lived before him was a prophet or was not a prophet. Moreover, God’s goodness and his covenant that he would not abrogate his promises or fail to fulfill them could provide no final security. God’s goodness in no way depended on his fulfilling promises to his creatures. The precariousness of certitude in a contingent world had led Holcot’s opponent, Master Walter, to reject the contingency of divine revelations. As Holcot described more arguments of this modernus in Quodlibet III, q. 3, Master Walter worried that if God’s revelations remained contingent, God would be unable to give anyone certainty about future events because such events would remain as possible-not-to-be after revelation as before. And he contended that if such revelations remained contingent, God could just as easily reveal their opposites, so that God might reveal a contradiction about the future. And if it should be said (as Campsall, Ockham and Strelley would have said), that God can never have asserted what he asserted, then people could give more certitude to others than to God, and there would be more certainty from faith than from revelation because a hesitation about opposites would be consistent with revelation but not with faith.64 The capacity for human beings to have certitude about God’s purposes would be severely compromised. Holcot, Quod. III, q. 3: ‘Est una via modernorum quae ponit quod omne revelatum, assertum fore, promissum et iuratum a Deo necessario eveniet. Probatur multipliciter. Primo, quia aliter Deus nullum posset certificare de aliquo futuro, quia quantumcumque assereret vel revelaret aliquid fore futurum, semper esset contingenter futurum, sicut prius; quod cum constaret illi cui fit revelatio, nulla fieret in eo certitudo. Item, si facta revelatione de isto: “Antichristus erit,” oppositum posset evenire; ergo Deus posset revelare alteri quod oppositum eveniet, et sic posset certificare duos de duobus contradictoriis, quod est impossibile. Item, si dicatur quod Deus potest numquam asseruisse quod asseruit, ergo homo potest magis certificare quam Deus. Item, tunc maior foret certitudo fidei quam revelationis, quia cum certitudine revelationis stat haesitatio de opposito, non autem cum certitudine fidei.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 77, ll. 52–66. It is worth noting that Holcot’s treatment of the obligational situation in which the opposite of the positum is posed the case would have a bearing on Master Walter’s worry. 64

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Holcot’s response to the uncertainty derived from his view that merit comes from believing what God tells people to believe, whether it is true or not,65 and from authority, which denies that God does deceive in matters of salvation,66 and from a belief that God implements his promises so certainly that it is as if (ac si) he could not not implement them, even though the contingency of his will requires that he be able not to do what he promised. So for example, when the resurrected Christ told his disciples that he returned to them in order to ensure that everything written about him would be fulfilled as it must be (Luke 24:44), Holcot glossed the passage to say that Christ fulfilled the prophecies about him in such a way that it was ‘as if ’ (ac si) they could not be impeded.67 It is a mistake, in Holcot’s view, to believe that God gives certitude to people about future events in an absolute way, as Master Walter had suggested. Take, he argued, the case of Linus to whom God gives the assurance that he will be among the blessed. That Linus will be among the blessed does not mean that it is impossible for Linus not to be among the blessed. That sort of certitude is beyond even God to grant because it is impossible for God to deprive himself of his power to destroy any creature. Rather God causes in Linus the certainty that he will always be blessed in such a way that Linus will adhere to God’s word so strongly and with as much assent ‘as if ’ (ac si) it could not be otherwise. And yet Linus and anyone else to whom God has revealed If God were to reveal p t1 and the opposite of p at t2, the second revelation would become the one everyone should believe, setting aside the first. Also see the discussion in Tachau, ‘Holcot on Contingency,’ 174–175. 65 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Hoc est volendo credere certam propositionem quae praecipitur esse credenda, et est falsa, potest mereri, nec pertinet ad meritum fidei utrum sit vera vel falsa, sed hoc tantum pertinet ad rationem meriti fidei quod voluntarie credatur sicut Deus vult credi. Posset Deus aliquod falsum praecipere credi, non est dubium.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 123vb; Lyon, b1rb. Incandela, ‘Robert Holcot, O.P., On Prophecy,’ 183–184, has a parallel discussion of Holcot’s position. 66 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Ad secundum inconveniens quod infertur, dico quod non, habendo respectum ad auctoritatem, sed respiciendo ad virtutem voluntatis, concedo quod Deus potest fallere et decipere, id est voluntarie causare errorem in mentem hominis et facere eum credere aliter quam res se habet.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 124ra; Lyon, b1rb. 67 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 10: ‘… vult dicere quod Deus implet promissiones suas ita certitudinaliter ac si non posset non implere, licet possit non implere. Eodem modo dico ad auctoritatem Lucae xxiiii: “Necesse est impleri omnia quae scripta sunt” etc., hoc est, illa implebuntur ac si non possent impediri.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 177, ll. 1365–1369; Lyon, i8vb. Incandela, ‘Robert Holcot, O.P., On Prophecy,’ 176–178, also discusses the ac si aspects of Holcot’s theology.

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something must know that what God reveals could be otherwise, or they would not understand the complete dependence of everything on God.68 When in the traditional definition of prophecy, prophecy was defined as a divine inspiration announcing immutable truth, Holcot interpreted the implied necessity in terms of Anselm’s distinction between antecedent and consequent necessity, a necessity that Holcot in turn equated with Boethius’ distinction between simple and conditional necessity and with the distinction between the necessity of consequent and the necessity of consequence. In the case of prophecy, only subsequent or conditional necessity or the necessity of consequence were involved.69 His 68 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 3: ‘… quando arguitur quod aliter Deus nullum potest certificare de aliquo futuro, nego consequentiam, quia dico quod certitudo quam Deus facit in beatis non est talis quod sic erit et impossibile est quin sic erit. Puta, quod Linus sciat istam: “Linus semper erit beatus et impossibile est quin semper erit beatus,” quia talem certitudinem Deus non potest causare, quia impossibile est quod Deus sit talis vel in tali statu in quo non posset destruere omnem creaturam, quia omnem creaturam aeque libere conservat, sicut libere a principio produxit. Sed causat in eis talem certitudinem quod semper erunt beati, et illi adhaerent ita fortiter et tanto assensu, ac si aliter esse non posset. Sciunt tamen quod aliter esse potest, quia aliter lateret eos conditio creaturae semper dependentis a Deo.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 77–78, ll. 69–80. Also see Sent. II, q. 2, Lyon, i6ra, where Holcot discusses the meaning of the term ‘certificare.’ 69 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 10: ‘Ad definitionem prophetiae, quando dicitur quod prophetia est divina inspiratio rerum immobili veritatem veritate denuntians, intelligo hanc definitionem de immobili veritate futurorum, sicut loquitur Anselmus de immobili necessitate futuorum. Dicit enim, libro II Cur Deus homo, capitulo xvii, quod “illud quod Deus proponit antequam fuerit non potuit non esse futurum.” Et alibi dicit, “Rem futuram necesse est esse futuram.” Qualiter autem haec necessitas sit intelligenda, declarat De concordia, capitulo ii, et similiter in loco praeallegato, dicens quod est necessitas duplex: praecedens et subsequens. Necessitas praecedens est causa ut sit res; sed necessitas subsequens est necessitas quam res facit. Vult dicere quod tales condicionales sunt necessariae: “si aliquid est futurum, illud erit”; “si Deus scivit aliquid esse futurum, illud erit”; “si Job prophetavit resurrectionem, resurrectio erit.” Et hanc eandem distinctionem ponit Boethius sub verbis magis convenientibus, V De consolatione, prosa ultima, quod est necessitas duplex: una simplex, ut “necesse est omnes homines esse mortales”; alia condicionalis, ut “si aliquem ambulare scias, eum ambulare necesse est.” Haec distinctio ponitur ab aliis in materia ista sub hiis verbis: quod quaedam est necessitas consequentiae et quaedam necessitas consequentis. Modo quando dicitur “prophetia habet immobilem veritatem” hoc est necessitatem, verum est quod habet necessitatem sequentem vel conditionalem vel consequentiae; non autem absolutam.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 173–175, ll. 1300–1321; and Lyon, i8va, where the text diverges signficently from the edition. For the texts of Anselm, see Cur Deus Homo II, chap. 17, in Opera omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt 1 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1968), 2:125, l. 8–126, l. 2; idem, De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae dei cum libero arbitrio I, chap. 2, in Opera 1.2:247, l. 6–250, l. 11. For Boethius, see Philosophiae consolatio V, 6, ed. Ludovicus Bieler in CCL 94:103, ll. 91–105.

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position is reminiscent of the suppositional necessity of Aquinas or the secundum quid necessity of Scotus. Holcot did not eliminate all necessity from prophecy, but the sort of necessity at issue nested within a framing contingency and that contingency in turn opened the possibility that God might deceive. Despite the possibility of deception, however, once God revealed something, it was incumbent on the viator to accept what God said as true with all of its consequences, regardless. For Holcot, trust in the covenant came down to faith, and despite the cheerful confidence of his temper, faith for Holcot was no easy thing but a full and knowing commitment in the face of incorrigible uncertainty. What was required for salvation could not be a matter of true or false belief because certitude was not obtainable. It was instead a matter of the commitment and intention of the believer. Contingency required that that be so.

C. Conclusion The theologies of covenant, contract and obligation are each vulnerable to questions about the validity and security of their originating agreements. The radical contingency of God’s created order, axiomatic in each system, calls into question the contracts and covenants on which they depend. The possibility that God might have told a falsehood when he indicated that future rewards would come to those who complied with his commands haunts these theologies. The Dominicans Arnold of Strelley and Robert Holcot, unlike their contemporaries, acknowledged both that God could tell falsehoods and that God had in fact told falsehoods within the ordained order. If truth were understood in terms of the correspondence model, belief in what was true would thus not necessarily lead to salvation. Rather merit accrued to the viator for believing what God had told him to believe even though all the while the viator would know that what God had said could be otherwise. Faith meant that the believer must nevertheless adhere to God’s word as true and ‘as if ’ it could not be otherwise.70 70 Simo Knuuttila has described the shift away from the teleological ethics of the earlier Middle Ages to the divine command ethics of Ockham and Holcot as the beginnings of the deontological ethics that culminate in Kant. See Knuuttilla, ‘Ethics and the Emergence of Deontic Logic in the Fourteenth Century,’ in L’homme et son univers au moyen âge, ed. Christian Wenin, Actes du septième congrès international de philosphie médiévale, vol. 2 (Louvain-La-Neuve, 1986), 530–543.

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The independence of beliefs necessary for salvation from belief in the truth did not nullify the ties between faith and reason, however. Far from it. The requirement that each person believe and act in all ways consistent with God’s directives burdened everyone with a responsibility with which only quite technical knowledge could ensure full compliance. Aristotelian rules of inference subordinated to the disputational techniques of the ars obligatoria measured consistency. Unless God were to grant someone an extraordinary grace, only those specially trained in both theology and logic would be in a position to say with any surety what to believe and how to act in difficult cases. Doing one’s best would include obtaining and following their advice, if at all possible, where there was doubt about what to do. The new theologies emerging at Blackfriars provided an incidental justification for those like the Dominicans who served as theological interpreters to the community. Given such theological views it was incumbent upon them to take strategic positions within the social and ecclesiastical hierarchies of their time.

chapter six TROUBLING NECESSITIES

Within the theologies of obligatio, covenant and contract, merit accrued to those who willed well, to those who obligated themselves to follow God’s precepts, who did their best to adhere to his commands and to whatever was consistent with them. Moreover, the Dominicans believed that the act of obligating oneself must be a completely free act.1 Merit only followed on the will willing what it might have chosen not to will.2 The contingency of acts of will, that they could have been otherwise, was the necessary precondition for obtaining merit and salvation. Several kinds of necessity stood as obstacles to those who adopted covenantal and obligational theologies, however, and disagreement and controversy, even within their own order, met Strelley’s and Holcot’s attempts to resolve the puzzles these modes of necessity posed. Robert Holcot, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Ad hoc est dicendum quod iste terminus “mereri” est equivocus, nam uno modo est simpliciter facere vel ommittere aliquem actum cui debetur praemium ex lege statuta. Alio modo mereri est facere libere et sponte actum pro quo debetur praemium non ex aliqua lege statuta. Tunc ponitur ista conclusio: Deus potest acceptare ad vitam aeternam omnes actus naturales alicuius hominis et facere omnes liberos actus indifferentes… Ergo non est contradictio dicendo quod actus naturalis sit meritorius si Deo placeret, et hoc quia eque libere posset illum actum acceptare ad vitam eternam, sicut modo sub ista lege acceptat de facto usum liberi arbitrii.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 121vb; Robertus Holkot, In Quatuor libros Sententiarum quaestiones (Lyon, 1518), reprinted by Minerva G.M.B.H. (Frankfurt, 1967), a4rb. Arnold of Strelley adhered to the view that those who freely do their best, who ‘facit quod in se est,’ are not denied grace and ultimate salvation. See chapter five, pp. 149– 150 above. William Crathorn did not explore the connection of free will to merit per se, but he stressed the complete contingency of the world, making a place for free will, and he indicated through the objections he posed to divine foreknowledge that he believed no one committed sin under any sort of necessity, for example in Sent. I, q. 19, in an objection to his own position he raised the possibility: ‘Praeterea deus scivit ab aeterno quod iste peccabit cras; igitur peccabit cras. Antecedens est necessarium; igitur consequens; igitur iste necessario peccabit cras. Et eadem ratione quicumque peccat, necessario peccat, et quicumque peccavit, necessario peccavit.’ Ed. Fritz Hoffmann, Quästionen zum ersten Sentenzenbuch, BGPTM n. s. 29 (Münster, 1988), 491, ll. 8–12. 2 Aristoteles, Ethica Nichomachea II.6.1106b36–1107a2, includes choice in the definition of excellence, providing authority from the philosophical tradition for such a view. 1

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Aristotle’s treatment of necessity in the De Interpretatione raised serious difficulties for those seeking to preserve both God’s knowledge of future contingent events and the human freedom to choose otherwise. Aristotle had viewed contingency and necessity against the background of a supposed infinite span of time and had identified what is necessary with what is always the case and what is always the case with what is necessary.3 Aristotle’s equation of immutability with necessity posed a problem for scholastic theologians because in the medieval tradition God’s omniscience was characterized by immutability. If God knows future contingents immutably and eternally, the truths he knows must also be immutable and necessary. And if those truths are immutable, the things for which they stand must be immutable or God would not know them as they are and would fall into error. If everything that God knows is immutable, then if Aristotle were correct that immutability implied necessity, the criterion Aristotle had proposed for the necessity of events would be fulfilled through God’s knowing them. Because God must know all events, no event could be contingent. But such fatalism seemed absurd. If all future events were to happen of necessity, then there would be no reason, in the Aristotelian catch-phrase that summed up the scholastic objection, for ‘negotiari nec consiliari,’4 for taking pains or for deliberating. Scotus clearly understood the difficulties,5 and he argued that immutability and necessity were not mutually convertible terms. Immutability only implied that opposites would not succeed each other in time, not that a given event could have happened only as it did, that no possibility existed of its happening otherwise than it had. Simple necessity Aristoteles, De Caelo I.12.281b25–34, and De Interpretatione 13,23a21–22. Aristoteles, De Interpretatione 18b31–32. For a modern exchange on the same issue, see Norman Kretzmann, ‘Omniscience and Immutability,’ The Journal of Philosophy 43 (1966): 409–421; Hector-Neri Castañeda, ‘Omniscience and Indexical Reference,’ The Journal of Philosophy 44 (1967): 203–210; and Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford, 1979), 38–48. And also see Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, ‘Recent Work on Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (Oxford, 2002), 45–64, for a review of the recent philosophical literature in general. 5 John Duns Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, 1–5: ‘… si aliquid non est necessarium ex se, potest non esse; sed quod potest non esse, est mutabile; igitur—a primo—quod non est necessarium, est mutabile. Igitur ex opposito si est immutabile, est necessarium. Igitur si Deus immutabiliter scit a, necessario scit a.’ In Opera omnia, ed. Charles Balic, et al., 17 (Vatican City, 1966), 483, ll. 18–22. 3 4

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did indeed imply immutability, but unlike immutability, necessity also implied that a given event could not have happened in any other way. Necessity implied the impossibility that anything other than what happened might have happened, whereas immutability did not. Immutability and necessity were not convertible concepts because immutability was compatible with both necessity and contingency.6 The whole issue had taken on a new cast, however, just prior to the years 1325–1335, when the Dominicans Lawton, Strelley, Crathorn and Holcot were actively teaching and writing. As mentioned in the last chapter, in the years 1312–1320,7 Peter Auriol, vigorously defended an interpretation of Aristotle’s views on contingency and necessity at odds with the theological tradition, and in so doing defended an alternative view of the problem of future contingents that, as Chris Schabel has discovered, turned up for the next two centuries in debates about God’s knowledge.8 Auriol’s starting point was Aristotle’s equation of necessity

6 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘… quando arguitur “Deus immutabiliter scit a fore, igitur necessario, quia in Deo non est nisi necessitas immutabilitatis,” dicendum quod sicut patet ex V Metaphysicae, quod unus modus necessitatis est “quod non contingit aliter se habere”; sed immutabilitas non est causa necessitatis, quia immutabilitas non privat nisi successionem. Unde non est alia necessitas—quam immutabilitas—in Deo ab illis modis qui ponuntur in V Metaphysicae.’ In Opera omnia 17:505, ll. 10–17. William of Ockham took the same view. See Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia dei respectu futuorum contingentium, q. 2, art. 4: ‘Et quando probatur consequentia, quod ibi non est necessitas nisi immutabilitatis, concedo, quia alii modi necessitatis, scilicet coactionis etc., non ponuntur in Deo propter imperfectionem. Et ideo bene sequitur “ibi est necessarium, igitur est immutabile,” et non e converso, quia omne necessarium est immutabile, et non e converso, nisi loquendo de illis immutabilibus quae sunt ipse Deus. Multa enim complexa sciuntur a Deo immutabilia, quae tamen non sunt necessaria sed simpliciter contingentia.’ Ed. Philotheus Boehner and Stephanus Brown, in Opera philosophica 2 (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1978), 530, ll. 284–291. 7 See Peter Auriol, Scriptum super primum sententiarum, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert, Text Series 3 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1956), xi–xv; Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1345 (Leiden, 1988), 88, n. 11; and Chris Schabel, Theology at Paris, 1316–1345: Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents (Aldershot, 2000), 67–76, for information on Auriol’s life and works. 8 Christopher Schabel, ‘The Quarrel with Aureol: Peter Aureol’s Role in the Latemedieval Debate over Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents, 1315–1475,’ Ph.D. Diss. University of Iowa, 1994; idem, ‘Peter de Rivo and the Quarrel over Future Contingents at Louvain: New Evidence and New Perspectives,’ Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 6 (1995): 363–473, and 7 (1996): 371–435; and idem, Theology at Paris. Also see Jean-François Genest, Prédétermination et liberté créée à Oxford au XIVe siècle: Buckingham contre Bradwardine (Paris, 1992); and Léon Baudry, La Querelle des futurs contingents (Louvain, 1465–1475), Études de philosophie médiévale 38 (Paris, 1950), 14–18.

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with immutability.9 As Scotus had pointed out, if God’s omniscience includes a knowledge of all truths, and if his knowledge is immutable, and if it includes knowledge about future events, an equation of necessity with immutability like that Auriol defended would seem to impose necessity on everything that will happen in the future. The events to which God’s true knowledge applies could not be other than they are, at least if he were not to be deceived, and then future events, like God’s knowledge about them, must be immutable and necessary. Contingency would vanish with God’s knowledge. Auriol got around this difficulty by adopting a solution to fatalism he believed Aristotle had proposed in De Interpretatione, chapter 9: If singular propositions about future events must be either true or false, then prior to the occurrence of the events to which they refer, they must always have been true, immutable and by implication necessary. Given such an identification of truth with necessity, true propositions about future events would seem to be governed by the mode of necessity, and there would be little room for contingency of any sort. That was quite unacceptable and counter to experience as far as Aristotle was concerned (and for that matter counter to the faith for Auriol). On Auriol’s reading, Aristotle concluded that singular propositions about future contingent events were neither true nor false.10 For Auriol, singular propositions about future contingent events are not true nor are they false. They are indeterminate as to truth and falsity. Thus their classification is three-valued: true, false and indeAuriol, Scriptum, d. 8, sec. 22, a. 1: ‘Sed hic modus dicendi deficit et in generali et in speciali, in Deo. In generali quidem, quia definitio necessitatis et immutabilitatis est eadem. Illa namque sunt unum et idem, quae communicant in definitiva ratione. Nam definitio indicat quid est esse rei. Sed definitio necessarii est quod est impossibile aliter se habere; immutabilis autem quod impossibile est mutari: mutari autem est aliter nunc se habere quam prius. Ergo immutabile et necessarium est idem.’ Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, 934, l. 19–935, l. 25. 10 Aristoteles, De Interpretatione 9.18b9–16. Auriol, Sent. I, d. 38, a. 3: ‘Fuit vero mens Aristotelis opposita, sicut patet I Peryarmenias. Et arguit ad hoc quia si singularis de futuro contingenti erit vera determinate iam, nunc determinatum est quid fiet, et ita impossibile est non fieri; et per consequens tollitur omnis sollicitudo, quia sive sollicitemur, sive consiliemur, sive negotiemur, vel non, id quod determinatum est fiet. Quid dicendum secundum veritatem. Et primo quod nulla propositio singularis de futuro contingenti est determinate vera, nec affirmativa nec negativa, sed penitus indeterminata. Unde nulla potest formari de qua possit concedi quod sit vera vel falsa, contra opinionem communem.’ Edited by Chris Schabel, in ‘Peter Aureol on Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents: Scriptum in Primum Librum Sententiarum, distinctions 38–39,’ Cahiers de l’institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 65 (1995): 125, l. 816–126, l. 828. Cf. Aristoteles, De Interpretatione 9.19a32–39. 9

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terminate. Auriol did believe that God knows all future contingent events, but that he knows them in a way abstracted from or indifferent to all considerations of time and their present existence. Thus Auriol objected to the opinion of those like Aquinas who argued in favor of God’s having an intuitive cognition of future contingents for that would mean God knows future events as though they were present and coexistent with him, in the way in which one would know a determinately true event, when in fact such events have not as yet occurred.11 Because in Auriol’s view God does not know future events as determinately present, God’s knowledge does not introduce any determinacy into propositions about the future. They remain indeterminate as to truth and falsity.12 Auriol’s interpretation of Aristotle and his treatment of the question of future contingents differed in significant ways from that of his predecessors. Aristotle’s text is susceptible of more than one interpretation. As Nicholas Rescher laid out the possibilities in an important study in

11 Auriol, Sent. I, d. 38, a. 2: ‘Secunda vero propositio est quod Deus non cognoscit futura ut presentia aut coexistentia Sue eternitati ita quod Eius intuitus ad futuorum existentias terminetur. Visum est enim supra quod nulla creatura est in divino prospectu terminative; sed existentie futurorum contingentium sunt et creature; ergo Suus intuitus non fertur in eas, nec terminatur ad earum presentialitatem… Nec valent motiva prime opinionis [Thomas Aquinas]. Primum siquidem non, quia licet non sit determinate cognoscibile futurum contingens nisi prout est actu exhibitum in natura, nichilominus non fertur divinus intuitus immediate in ipsum sic positum in actu, sed fertur in ipsam essentiam Deitatis, que quidem non exemplat huiusmodi existentiam per modum coexistentis Sibi aut simultanei—immo nullatenus coexistit— sed exemplat eam per modum non distantis in preteritum vel futurum; nec tamen per modum simul existentis, sed penitus non distantis, et hoc appellatur presentia negativa, quia negatio praesentie.’ In Schabel, ‘Scriptum in Primum,’ 118, l. 666–120, l. 696. 12 Auriol, Sent, I, d. 38, a. 3: ‘Nulla enim notitia dat alicui propositioni quod sit vera nisi quatenus significatum illius est in ipsa notitia obiective; sed significatum istius propositionis: “Antichristus erit,” non cadit in divina notitia, qui enim dicit in mente sua, quod Antichristus erit, necessario respicit ipsum ut futurum, hoc enim habet copula de futuro importata per li “erit” quod esse copuletur cum subiecto ut in futurum; declaratum est autem sepe quod divina notitia non tendit in rem ut in post distantem vel in futurum; ergo ex divina notitia nullo modo potest propositio ista verificari. Unde nec Deus istam propositionem apprehendit ex Suo modo intelligendi, sed quatinus apprehendit omnes propositiones quas nos formamus; et ideo hec propositio: “Antichristus erit,” cum non cadat immediate in divina notitia, quasi Deus eam formet, sed mediate, scilicet quia nos formamus—omnis enim notitia ipsam immediate formans est expectativa—utique cum sit ita, non recipiat a divina notitia quod sit vera vel falsa, sed relinquitur indeterminata, quia nec vera nec falsa.’ In Schabel, ‘Scriptum in Primum,’ 139, l. 1112–140, l. 1126.

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1963, on one reading Aristotle was prepared to give up both the Principle of Bivalence, that holds that all propositions must be either true or false: (1a) N[T(p) ∨ F(p)],13 and the Law of Excluded Middle that given a proposition and its contradictory, one must be true: (1b) N[T(p) ∨ T(∼p)]. Among those whom the scholastics might have known directly or indirectly, Rescher attributes this interpretation to the Stoics, Epicureans, Ammonius and, most importantly, Boethius.14 Auriol revived this interpretation of Aristotle, which had ceased to be the common view. On Rescher’s reckoning, most interpreters, whether of this classical school or not, would accept Auriol’s contention that Aristotle restricted the applicability to propositions about the past or present of the following formalizations that propositions must, if true, be true necessarily, or if false, be false necessarily: (2a) T(p) → N(p) or perhaps T(p) → N[T(p)] (2b) F(p) → N(∼p) or perhaps F(p) → N[F(∼p)], And most would accept that Arisotle similarly restricted the applicability to propositions about the past or present of the following formalizations that every proposition is either necessarily true or necessarily false: (3a) N[T(p)] ∨ N[F(p)] (3b) N(p) ∨ N(∼p) (3c) N[T(p)] ∨ N[T(∼p)].

13 Nicholas Rescher, ‘An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Doctrine of Future Contingency and Excluded Middle,’ in idem, Studies in the History of Arabic Logic (Pittsburgh, 1963), 43–54. I will use his symbolization of Aristotle’s position in what follows and adapt it to analyze the medieval interpretations. In his usage (ibid., p. 43) ‘p is a propositional variable, ∼p is the contradictory of p, ∨ stands for disjunction, and T(p), F(p) and N(p) abbreviate “p is true” ‘p is false,’ and ‘necessarily p (is true),’ respectively. The symbol → … represents entailment.’ 14 Rescher, ‘Aristotle’s Doctrine,’ 43–51, and for further analysis see Jeroen van Rijen, Aspects of Aristotle’s Logic of Modalities (Dordrecht, 1989), 103–129, and M.J.F.M. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought (Leiden, 1993), 160. Rescher also lists a number of modern interpreters of Aristotle who split in their interpretations along the same lines he finds between the classical and medieval authors.

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As Rescher also points out, whatever the case about Aristotle’s acceptance of (1), he was committed [as was Auriol] to the following disjunctive for all propositions whether about past, present or future: (4) T(p ∨ ∼p) or even N[T(p ∨ ∼p)]. Given two contradictories, it is true and perhaps even necessarily true that only one or the other of them (without specifying which) is the case.15 This disjunctive preserves the Principle of Non-contradiction, and it is compatible with the view that future events remain open to various possibilities, to either p or not p, but not to both at once. Rescher then raised the question of whether Aristotle’s restriction of (2) and (3) to propositions about the past and present also implied a restriction of (1), the Principle of Bivalence and the Law of Excluded Middle, to propositions about the past and present as well (as Auriol and the classical tradition of interpretation supposed), or whether Aristotle could have accepted the restricted application of (2) and (3) while holding the universal applicability of (1), just as he accepted the universal applicability of (4)? Rescher then argued that a substantial number of interpreters, al-Farabi, Averroes, Abelard, Aquinas, and Scotus among others, had interpreted Aristotle as upholding the Principle of Bivalence and the Law of Excluded Middle even given the restricted scope of (2) and (3). Propositions about the future are true or false, but the ‘determination’ of which is true and which is false has not yet occurred, so no necessity attaches to the designations of truth or falsity.16 Propositions about future contingents are ‘not-yet’ true or false, Rescher, ‘Aristotle’s Doctrine,’ 44–45. Ibid., 45. Resher also lists Ockham among such interpreters, but Ockham appears to have adopted the Classical interpretation of Aristotle and that of Auriol in both his Expositio in librum Perihermenias Aristotelis, and in his Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei respectu futurum contingentium. For Ockham’s commentary on the Perihermenias, edited by Angelus Gambatese and Stephen Brown, see Guillelmus de Ockham, Opera philosophica 2, 421, l. 7–422, l. 17: ‘Ad evidentiam totius istius capituli est primo sciendum quod intentio Philosophi est quod in talibus contingentibus futuris neutra pars contradictionis est vera vel falsa, sicut res non magis determinatur ad fore quam ad non fore. Et ideo diceret Philosophus quod etiam Deus non plus scit unam partem contradictionis quam aliam; immo neutra scitur a Deo, quia ex quo neutra pars est vera, sicut hic determinat, et secundum eum, I Posteriorum, nihil scitur nisi verum, sequitur quod neutra pars est scita. Tamen secundum veritatem et theologos aliter est dicendum, quia dicendum est quod Deus determinate scit alteram partem.’ Also see Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1: ‘Quinta suppositio: quod secundum intentionem Philosophi non solum in futuris contingentibus, immo etiam in illis de praesenti et de praeterito quae aequivalent illis de futuro, Deus non plus scit unam partem contradictionis quam aliam, immo 15 16

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but do not occupy a third truth value. Under this construal, while we might not know the truth of such propositions, God undoubtedly could know the truth about what they signify. Both Islamic and Christian interpreters, given their belief in divine omniscience and foreknowledge and their respect for Aristotle, opted for this more conservative interpretation that brought theology and Aristotelian philosophy into greater conjunction. Auriol rejected the medieval consensus when he revived the older, more radical interpretive tradition common in the classical world, and then adopted Aristotle’s reinterpreted position as his own. Auriol understood Aristotle to reject the Principle of Bivalence: for every proposition, it is necessary that that proposition be true or false: N[T(p) ∨ F(p)]. Propositions of the sort: ‘The Antichrist will come,’ because about the future, were not true or false in themselves and neither were their contradictories. Auriol also interpreted Aristotle as rejecting the Law of Excluded Middle in the form Rescher supplies: N[T(p) ∨ T(∼p)]. If the Principle of Bivalence and the Law of Excluded Middle are formulated in this way, the rejection of one would entail the rejection of the other, and it is a common-place in the literature to treat a rejection of bivalence as a rejection of the Law of Excluded Middle. Calvin Normore has recently questioned such entailment, however. He has argued, in effect, that defining the Law of Excluded Middle with a truth function attached to the individual propositions of the formula unnecessarily ties it to the Principle of Bivalence. What is required for the Law of Excluded Middle is adherence to the principle that where p is a statement, p or ∼p. His version of the Law of Excluded Middle is equivalent to Rescher’s formula (4): T(p ∨ ∼p), not to Resher’s formula (1): N[T(p) ∨ T(∼p)]. It is clearly possible to accept (4) without accepting either formula in (1), so Normore has suggested that Auriol rejected the Principle of Bivalence but retained the Law of Excluded Middle.17

neutra secundum eum est scita a Deo, quia secundum eum, I Posteriorum, nihil scitur nisi verum. Sed in illis non est veritas determinata, quia secundum eum nulla ratio potest assignari quare magis una pars sit vera quam alia, et ita vel utraque pars erit vera vel neutra; sed non est possibile quod utraque pars sit vera, ergo neutra, et igitur neutra scitur.’ In OP 2:516, ll. 229–238. Perhaps Rescher mistook Ockham’s own position for his interpretation of Aristotle. 17 Calvin G. Normore, ‘Petrus Aureoli and his Contemporaries on Future Contingents and Excluded Middle,’ Synthese 96 (1993): 83–92. Schabel, Theology at Paris, 112– 113, has followed Normore in his assessment of Auriol. Angel d’Ors, ‘Utrum propositio de

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Whichever formulation of the Law of Excluded Middle is accepted, however, Auriol’s rejection of the Principle of Bivalence marked a clear departure from the common view. A text of Auriol’s Sentences commentary made its way quite quickly to the Franciscan friary in London, where Ockham gained access to it in the early 1320s. He was unable to peruse it with care, however, and was not apparently aware of Auriol’s views on divine foreknowledge in any detail.18 This manuscript seems to have been the primary source of knowledge about Auriol’s views in England for some time. Only Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham, who had both been in London with Ockham, showed themselves directly familiar with Auriol during the 1320’s and early 1330’s.19 Unlike their Parisian counterparts, Oxford futuro sit determinate vera vel falsa (Antonio Andrés and John Duns Scotus),’ in Studies on the History of Logic, ed. Ignacio Angelelli and María Cerezo, Proceedings of the III. Symposium on the History of Logic (Berlin, 1996), 103, formulates the Law of Excluded Middle much as Normore does. And see the analysis of Susan Haack, Philosophy of Logics (Cambridge, 1978), 204–207, who calls many-valued logics (or propositional classifications) deviant: i.e. sharing the vocabulary of classical logic but having a different set of theorems/valid inferences, and says many-valued logics ‘characteristically lack certain theorems of classical logic, such as the “law of excluded middle,” “p ∨ –p.”’ In her analysis of multi-valued classification systems, it makes a difference how those values are defined. On the basis of his interpretation of Aristotle, for instance, Lesniewski developed a three-valued classification with true, false and indeterminate as the values. In his system, however, if p and ∼p are indeterminate, so are their conjunction (p ∧ ∼p) and disjunction (p ∨ ∼p), nullifying both the Principle of Non-contradiction and the Law of Excluded Middle. Kleene, in his model, in which the values are true, false and undecided, seems closer to those interpreting Aristotle as posing true, false and not-yet true or false, who comply with the basic logical principles. For a modern version of the sorts of puzzles dealt with here, see Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (New York, 1991), 182–184. It should be noted that Normore, op. cit. 90, has pointed out that Walter Burley in his Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Perihermenias [probably written at Paris after 1310— see Jennifer Ottman and Rega Wood, ‘Walter of Burley: His Life and Works,’ Vivarium 37 (1999): 4] also interpreted Aristotle’s De Interpretatione to mean that ‘neither of contradictories in those propositions about the future in contingent matter is determinately true, yet the disjunction formed from contradictory opposite propositions about the future in contingent matter is determinately true.’ Such a reading on Burley’s part indicates the emergence at this time of a break not only on Auriol’s part, but on others as well, with the medieval interpretive tradition. 18 Schabel, ‘Quarrel with Aureol,’ 177; idem, Theology at Paris, 225–230. Although see note 16 above for Ockham’s interpretation of Aristotle, which may have owed something to Auriol. 19 Schabel, ‘Quarrel with Aureol,’ 175–176, 184–185, 206–208; idem, Theology at Paris, 231–240, 250–251; idem, ‘Oxford Franciscans after Ockham: Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham,’ in Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: Current Research, ed. G.R. Evans, vol. 1 (Leiden, 2002), 359–377. Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 210–

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theologians did not evidence much concern about Auriol’s position. But this raises a question. Thomas Bradwardine testified in his De causa Dei that he had heard opinions similar to Auriol’s, rejecting the position that simple propositions about future contingent matters were either true or false, defended both at Oxford and at the Roman curia.20 So it would seem that Bradwardine believed that at least some Oxford theologians were of similar mind with Auriol, whether directly under his influence or having arrived at conclusions similar to his from some independent chain of reasoning. Who might these men have been? Chris Schabel has proposed the Franciscan Walter Chatton as a potential suspect.21 Chatton most probably first lectured on the Sentences at the Franciscan studium in London, and a reportatio edition exists of his lectures given there during the year 1323–1324. He went on to serve as the fifty-third Franciscan regent master at Oxford from 1330 to 1332.22 In his Reportatio, Chatton contends that the difficulties concerning contingency do not lie in things. Before some future time a, whether, say, to sit or not to sit is contingently and indifferently in the power of Socrates. The difficulty arises because it is not clear how to talk about such future contingent matters.23 So Chatton asked an alleged opponent: 211, 225–226, suggests that Robert Graystanes and John of Rodington were acquainted with Auriol’s epistemological views, but their use of arguments similar to Auriol’s may imply only indirect knowledge of the text. 20 Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum ad suos Mertonenses, Bk. 3, c. 17: ‘Opinio sexta fingit quod aliquid est futurum ad utrumlibet, vel non futurum in sensu composito, non autem in sensu diviso, quam sic astruere moliuntur. Nulla propositio simplex de futuro in materia contingente aequaliter est vera vel falsa, Philosopho I. peri hermenias ultimo attestante; quare nec aliquid est futurum ad utrumlibet, vel non futurum divisim. Hanc autem opinionem audivi in Curia Romana a quodam famoso Philosopho Tolosano in quadam disputatione solemni de contingentia futurorum, secundum eam totaliter publice respondente, quam et Oxoniae similiter audiebam.’ (London, 1618; reprinted by Minerva, Frankfurt, 1964), 692A-B, and see the discussion by Calvin Normore in ‘Future Contingents,’ CHLMP, 370. 21 Schabel, Theology at Paris, 231–240. Schabel was working with an as yet unpublished version of Chatton’s Reportatio, and there are some differences between what he cites and the published text, so it is important to check the critical edition: Walter Chatton, Reportatio super Sententias: Liber I, distinctiones 10–48, ed. Joseph C. Wey and Girard J. Etzkorn (Toronto, 2002). 22 For the most recent biographical information on Chatton, see the introduction to Chatton, Reportatio, ed. Wey and Etzkorn, ix; Schabel, ‘Oxford Franciscans,’ 360. 23 Chatton, Reportatio, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Dico igitur aliter in parte, quia quod contingentia sit in rebus, quilibet experitur in actibus suis. Et tunc dico quod semper ante a potest indifferenter utrumque, ita sedere sicut non sedere et e contra, est in potestate

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What does he understand by this proposition: ‘Socrates will sit in a,’ being determinately true? Either that something may or will be, whether as a spoken, or written or cognized proposition, which having posed, this proposition is in mode true, and it is in mode as the proposition signifies. And this is not true, but [to be determinately true] is only a condition of a proposition about the present or the past; and no proposition about the future is determinately true speaking in this way. Or he understands it in a different way: whether some thing will be in a, which having posed in a, then it will be true to say ‘it is in mode as the proposition about the future previously signified,’ and thus the proposition about the future is true.’24

Chatton thus distinguished between the propositions: ‘this is true “Socrates will sit,”’ and ‘this will be true “Socrates sits.”’ He believed if the first were accepted that determinism would result, but he conceded the second as compatible with contingency.25 Chatton argued that contingency lies not in the ability to pose opposites at time a as Scotus would have it, but in the ability prior to a indifferently to enact either of two contradictories at time a.26 Chatton knew and referred to Auriol’s position, and would seem to be influenced by it up to a point. He raises the question of how Aristotle’s text should be understood. He suggests a position that he identifies with Auriol:

Sortis. Unde de re non est hic difficultas magna. Sed quis sit modus aptus loquendi, in hoc consistit difficultas.’ Ed. Wey and Etzkorn, 351, ll. 14–19. 24 Chatton, Reportatio, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Et unus modus loquendi potest esse quod tetigi arguendo, nec credo quod possit esse clarior quam quaerere ab opponente quid intelligit per istam esse veram determinate “Sortes sedebit in a.” Aut quod aliqua res sit vel fuerit, vel dictum vel scriptum vel cognitio, quo posito haec propositio sit modo vera, et ita sit modo sicut propositio significat, et hoc non est verum, sed ista solum est condicio propositionis de praesenti vel de praeterito; et nulla propositio de futuro est, sic loquendo, determinate vera. Vel aliter: utrum aliqua res erit in a, tunc erit verum dicere “modo est sicut ante significavit propositio de futuro,” et sic est propositio de futuro vera.’ Ed. Wey and Etzkorn, 351, l.19–29. 25 Chatton, Reportatio, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Et qui vellet sic dicere, posset dicere iuxta tertiam opinionem quod istae sunt distinctae propositiones “haec est vera ‘Sortes sedebit,’” et “haec erit vera ‘Sortes sedet.’” Et de prima dicerem quod non, quia tunc, ex quo iam vera est, non esset necessarium consiliari nec negotiari circa hoc quod foret. Secundam concedo, ubi demonstratur propositio de praesenti “haec erit vera ‘Sortes sedet.’” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn, 351, l. 30–352, l. 3. 26 Chatton, Reportatio, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Quando igitur quaeris “pro quo instanti est contingentia?”… Non est igitur potentia ad ponendum opposita in a, sed semper ante a est potentia ad ponendum a vel non ponendum indifferenter.’ Ed. Wey and Etzkorn, 359, ll. 17–27.

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chapter six One mode poses thus: that would hold Aristotle to say that neither of a pair of contingent contradictories is true, for example ‘Socrates will sit,’ ‘Socrates will not sit,’ because each is equally in the free power of Socrates, and therefore one is no more true than the other. Or thus: neither of these is more true than the other; therefore, either each is true or neither.27

Chatton objects, however, asserting first that Aristotle should not be used as an authority unless his argument is evident. Then Chatton asks what Aristotle could have meant and interprets him in line with his own position: Either [he means] that nothing exists in the nature of things, by which, having posed this proposition about the future, it is determinately true, and this is true; or that some proposition signifies something will be, which having posed it in being, it would then be true to say that it is thus in mode in actuality just as the proposition signified that it would be, and thus he cannot deny that a proposition about the future is determinately true because when Socrates sits in fact, he cannot deny that then it is in actuality just as the proposition ‘Socrates will sit,’ previously signified.28

Chatton’s interpretation of Aristotle does not follow Auriol in adhering to the Classical view that had Aristotle denying bivalence, but agrees instead with the medieval tradition of Aristotelian interpretation that understood Aristotle to mean propositions about the future are ‘not yet’ true or false. Chatton’s position does flirt with Auriol’s. He did not espouse the ploys of his contemporaries like the resort to a counterfactual past or to the distinction between the divided and composite sense, which Auriol had rejected as viable responses to the problem of divine Chatton, Reportatio, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Unus modus ponit sic: quod ARISTOTELES haberet dicere quod neutra pars contradictoriorum contingentium est vera, puta “Sortes sedebit,” ‘Sortes non sedebit,’ quia utrumque est aequaliter in libera potestate Sortis, igitur non plus est aequaliter in libera potestate Sortis, igitur non plus est unum verum quam reliquum Vel sic: neutrum est altero verius, igitur vel utrumque est verum vel neutrum.’ Ed. Etzkorn, 347, l. 30–348, l. 4. For the identification with Auriol, see ibid, 349, ll. 9–17. 28 Chatton, Reportatio, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Contra primum: dictum ARISTOTELIS non est nec debet esse auctoritatum nisi quia evidens. Quid igitur vocat ARISTOTELES propositionem non esse determinate verum? Vel quod nihil sit in rerum natura, quo posito haec propositio de futuro est determinate vera, et hoc [est] verum; vel quod aliqua propositio significat aliquid fore, quo posito in esse, verum esset tunc dicere quod sic est modo in re sicut propositio significavit fore, et sic non potest negare propositionem de futuro esse veram determinate, quia quando Sortes actu sedet, non potest negari quin tunc ita sit in re sicut significavit ista prius “Sortes sedebit.”’ Ed. Etzkorn, 348, ll. 10–19. In interpreting Aristotle as he does, Chatton not only disagreed with Auriol, but Ockham and Burley as well (see notes 16 and 17 above). 27

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foreknowledge. However, Chatton disagreed with Auriol on important points as well: not only on the interpretation of Aristotle, but also on prophecy, arguing that God can and does cause an assent and a true assent in the mind of a prophet about things that will be. Prophecy is not just a matter of the intentions of the prophet but about a true matter of fact.29 There are no known manuscripts containing Chatton’s Oxford lectures on Lombard’s Sentences, although he presumably must have delivered them there around 1326–1328, two years prior to his serving as regent master in 1330–1332. Those lectures would have coincided with the years when Arnold of Strelley was himself likely lecturing, and Bradwardine was beginning to study theology as a member of Merton College.30 On the basis of the Reportatio, Chatton argued for a position sufficiently different from Auriol’s that he is unlikely to have been the direct target of Bradwardine’s criticism. However, if Chatton continued to display an interest in Auriol, Schabel has suggested, ‘Auriol’s indirect influence via Chatton may have stimulated the Oxford discussion.’31 With this in mind, it is worth comparing Chatton with his contemporary Dominican and potential socius, Arnold of Strelley. In the Centiloquium theologicum, Strelley seems to side with those who, like Chatton, say that a determinate truth value cannot be assigned to propositions about future contingent events.32 As Strelley set out the Chatton, Reportatio, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Confirmo, quia [quando] Deus causat assensum in mente prophetae de re quae erit, ille assensus est verus, aliter Deus non posset certificare prophetam de re futura. Et ille assensus significat idem cum propositione tali “haec res erit”; igitur si assensus est verus, propositio erit vera.’ Etzkorn, 350, ll. 18–22. 30 See chapter two, p. 68 for a discussion of Strelley’s dates and chapter five, p. 154, for Bradwardine. 31 Schabel, Theology at Paris, 240. 32 Arnold of Strelley, Centiloquium theologicum, concl. 12: ‘Et totum istud dico secundum opinionem illorum qui ponunt quod in futuris contingentibus non est aliqua veritas determinata, nec in aliqua propositione de praesenti vel de praeterito, cuius veritas dependet a veritate propositionis de futuro contingenti.’ Ed. Philotheus Boehner and Girardus I. Etzkorn in Ockham, Dubia et spuria, in Guillelmus de Ockham, Opera Philosophica 7:408, ll. 204–409, l. 207; Cent. concl. 84: ‘… ad istud dicitur negando consequentiam. Quia propositio de futuro, et etiam de praeterito, cuius veritas dependet a futuro contingenti, est ita contingens et ita indeterminate vera sicut ipsa de futuro contingenti a quo dependet.’ In Ockham, OP 7:495, l. 17–496, l. 20; Cent. concl. 85: ‘Ista consequentia est plana. Et antecedens declaratur. Quia a est futurum contingens et indeterminate [verum vel] falsum, ergo a potest esse verum in isto instanti praesenti et per consequens prius fuisse verum.’ In Ockham, OP 7:496, ll. 13–15. Schabel, Theology at Paris, 243–244,249, suggests Chatton may have been an important influence on Strelley. However, Chatton’s treatment of the problems is quite thin compared to 29

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case, when a future contingent event actually takes place, determinately true statements can then be made about it, and not before. Strelley’s wording then takes a turn away from Chatton’s: even prior to the moment of actualization, God will know what is going to happen, and if he knows, he must always have known, for his knowledge does not undergo change such that some proposition true at t1, is ever not true at t1 or even t2, prior to the occurrence of the future event at t3, and whatever is true, God knows.33 So take the proposition: ‘Thomas Aquinas was canonized in 1323.’ It is now true, but in the past was contingent on future events. Since it is now true, God knows it, but if he knows it, he must always have known it. What was the status of his knowledge prior to 1323? God knew the truth prior to 1323, just as he does now. What has changed is that before 1323, he knew the truth as indeterminate, whereas now He knows it as determinate. God’s knowledge of those future contingents dependent on the created will is not just ‘indeterminate’ as Auriol would have put it, but ‘indeterminately true’ and ‘indeterminately false’ in Strelley’s terminology. What God knows, prior to the fact, is the indeterminate truth that an event contingent on an act of human will is going to take place at a certain time. What he knows after the fact is the determinate truth that an event has taken place at a certain time. Thus in Strelley’s case, it is better not to speak of a three-valued propositional classification, but of a four-valued classification in which truth value assignments include determinately true, determinately false, indeteminately true and indeterminately false.34 Adapting Rescher’s symobolization, and letting D stand for ‘determinately’ and I stand for ‘indeterminately,’ the principle that replaces the Principle of Bivalence in (1a) is: (5) N{[DT(p) ∨ DF(p)] ∨ [IT(p) ∨ IF(p)]}, where determinately true and determinately false are restricted to propositions about the past and present, and indeterminately true and indeterminately false are restricted to propositions about the future. Strelley’s, and there would not have been much inspiration to be had from it. 33 Strelley, Cent. 12: ‘Et si dicatur: ergo Deus potest mutari ab una voluntate ad aliam voluntatem, negatur consequentia. Quia quamvis ista propositio “Sortes damnabitur in a instanti” sit vera et poterit esse falsa, non tamen poterit mutari de veritate in falsitatem, nec potest esse falsa postquam fuit vera ante a instans, nec potest incipere esse falsa ante a instans.’ In Ockham, OP 7:408, ll. 187–192. 34 See note 32 above for texts in which Strelley uses the terms ‘indeterminate vera’ and ‘indeterminate falsa’ to indicate future contingents.

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As for the Law of Excluded Middle, Strelley seems to have accepted some form of p (p ∧ ∼p) for propositions about past, present and future, where p and ∼p are taken as contradictories. However, if he had worked out the logic of his position in detail, the Law of Excluded Middle would have required some elaboration. Negation, as it enters into the law, would seem to mean something different when speaking about the actual events of the present or past than when speaking about the hypothetical events of the future.35 But however the basic logical laws might be formulated in Strelley’s system, the modal differences that consideration of time introduces provide the frame within which any understanding of the Principle of Bivalence or the Law of Excluded Middle must operate. What does all this mean? Strelley was not the first to propose such a formulation. The first hint that such terminology was beginning to emerge may come from opposition to it. Thomas Wylton, writing in his Quaeastiones libri Physicorum during the years from 1288 until about 1304, when he served as master of arts at Oxford, criticised the notion of ‘indeterminate truth’ as applicable to God, on the interesting grounds that it does not follow: ‘it is now true by indeterminate truth, therefore it is now true.’ Wylton argued that indeterminate truth does not descend to truth taken without any qualifier, and rejected it as a concept because it would not be right to say that God has indeterminate truth of future contingents when God is supposed to know the unqualified truth about everyting.36 As Calvin Normore has shown, both Richard Campsall in his 1305 Quaestiones super librum Priorum Analeticorum, q. 3, and the author of the Octo quaestiones in duos libros Perihermenios, Opus secundum (a work traditionally attributed to Scotus, but possibly the

35 I have Darko Sarenac to thank for running his logician’s eye over this material and pointing out the need to define at least two forms of negation when formulating a Law of Excluded Middle appropriate to the four-valued classification system coming into use at Oxford. It is also worth noting that Strelley and his Oxford contemporaries were not creating a purely epistemic model like the one that Haack, Philosophy of Logics, 213, attributes to Prior, who distinguishes 1) true and known to be true, 2) true but not known to be true, 3) false but not known to be false, and 4) false and known to be false. The Oxonians’ distinctions of propositional value reflect contingency and necessity as they play out in the world. 36 Shabel, Theology at Paris, 60. See Cecilia Trifogli, ‘Thomas Wylton on the Instant of Time,’ in Mensch und Natur im Mittelalter, ed. Albert Zimermann and Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 21/1 (Berlin, 1991), 310, n. 8 and 9 for information on the dating.

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work of his disciple Antonius Andreas) used the terminology of determinately and indeterminately true and false to distinguish propositions about future contingents from other kinds of propositions.37 Their fourvalued classification system undoubtedly evolved from the medieval tradition of commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione. For instance, in his commentary on Aristotle, Aquinas throughout interpreted Aristotle as denying that propositions about future contingent events were ‘determinately true or false.’ As he summarized Aristotle’s position: … it is not necessary in every kind of affirmation and negation of opposites, that one be determinately true and the other false, because truth and falsity are not related in the same way to those which are about the present and to those which are not, but can be or not be.38 37 Calvin Normore, ‘Petrus Aureoli and his Contemporaries,’ 84–89. See Philothus Boehner’s introduction to his first edition of William of Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione et praescientia, The Tractatus de praedestinatione et praescientia Dei et de futuris contingentibus: Edited with a study on the Medieval Problem of Three-valued Logic (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1945), for a discussion of the Octo quaestiones and its authorship. Normore again raises the question of whether Scotus could be the author of the Octo quaestiones in ‘Duns Scotus’s Modal Theory,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, ed. Thomas Williams (Cambridge, 2003), 130, and qualifies the strength of his earlier contention that the work is not by Scotus. D’Ors, ‘Urum propositio de futuro,’ 97, argues that Andreas follows Scotus so closely, however, that their works are almost indistinguishable. Either Andreas wrote the Octo quaestiones and then reiterated his position in his Scriptum super librum Perihermeneias, or Scotus wrote the Octo quaestiones and Andreas repeated sections of his teacher’s work in his own. That the position in the Octo questiones and the one Andreas subscribes to is quite different (as Normore himself points out) than the one Scotus developed in all of his other works would point either to a dramatic change in Scotus’ views or to Andreas being the author. For Campsall’s life, see Edward A. Synan, ed. The Works of Richard of Campsall, vol. 1, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 17, (Toronto, 1968), 13– 17. Also see Richard Campsall, Quaestiones date a Ricardo de Camsale super librum priorum analeticorum, q. 3: ‘3.11 Preterea, sic hec esset vera, hoc non esset nisi quia subiectum solum supponeret pro hiis que sunt determinate futura et, per consequens, iste essent necessarie: “omne futurum est determinate futurum,” et: “omne determinate futurum est futurum” et ita ista essent convertiblia: “futurum” et “determinate futurum.” consequens falsum, quia tunc non esset aliquod futurum contingens. 3.12 Similiter, “futurum” non divideretur in “futurum determinatum et indeterminatum.” 3.13 Similiter, hec esset vera: “omne quod erit est determinate futurum” et tamen, ex ista et alia indeterminate vera sequitur unum indeterminate falsum…’ Ed. Edward A. Synan, Works of Richard Campsall 1 (Toronto, 1968), 70–71. 23. 38 Thomas Aquinas, In libros Peri Hermeneias I, lectio 15: "… quod non est necesse in omni genere affirmationum et negationum oppositarum, alteram determinate esse veram et alteram esse falsam: quia non eodem modo se habet veritas et falsitas in his quae sunt iam de praesenti et in his quae non sunt, sed possunt esse vel non esse.’ Ed. Raymundo M. Spiazzi, 2nd ed. (Turin, 1964), 77.

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Although Strelley, like Auriol and perhaps reflecting Auriol’s influence, understood Aristotle to mean that propositions about future contingent events were neither true nor false,39 one might draw the implication from texts like Aquinas’ that it was possible to assign a truth value to propositions of the sort: ‘a will exist at t1,’ where a is a future contingent, as long as some qualifying condition like ‘indeterminately’ were added. At Paris, Antonius Andreas (d. 1320) and the Augustinian Hermit Thomas of Strasbourg (writing c. 1334–1335) used a formula like Aquinas’ to interpret Aristotle, using the term ‘indeterminately true’ to characterize the status of propositions about future contingents but without ascribing such indeterminacy to God’s knowledge of future events.40 In later years, Albert of Saxony also used similar language in his interpretation of Aristotle, but only Marsilius of Inghen adopted it to describe God’s mode of understanding future contingent events. Inghen had a copy of Holcot’s Sentences in his possession, and Holcot, who adopted Strelley’s terminology, may have inspired Marsilius’ more Campsellian position.41 But the development of a full four-fold matrix for the truth table and its adoption for both human and divine knowledge took place at Oxford, not Paris and did not find a following on the continent. 39 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Ad septimum, dico futura contingentia sunt vera secundum rei veritatem, non tamen secundum Aristotelem, qui non posuit aliquam esse causam futurorum contingentium nisi solam voluntatem humanam… Estimavit autem Aristoteles quod nec Deus intellexit futura talia nec eorum causa fuit propter mutabilitatem in eis, sed voluntas humana tantum fuit causa secundum eum, et quia illa non plus est determinata ad unam partem quam ad aliam antequam actu velit, ideo posuit non maiorem esse rationem quare una pars esset vera quam alia, et ita posuit neutram esse veram.’ Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 29vb. Whether Strelley was influenced in his reading of Aristotle by Auriol, Ockham, or even Burley, it is difficult to say. See note 16 above for the text of Ockham and note 17 for that of Burley that interpret Aristotle along these lines. 40 Schabel, Theology at Paris, 61, 261–262 for Andreas and Strasbourg. He suggests that Thomas of Strasbourg might have known Strelley’s work (which Schabel knows from an earlier draft of the present chapter) but that seems quite unlikely. Strasbourg’s position seems much more like that of Andreas than Strelley. For Andreas, also see d’Ors, ‘Utrum propositio de futuro,’ 97–116, and Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 179. 41 Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 223–224, gives information about Albert of Saxony and Inghen, but does not draw the connection with Holcot. He also claims that Buridan used the terminology of ‘indeterminately true’ and ‘false’ in his Questiones longe super librum Perihermeneias, but Shabel, Theology at Paris, 262, correctly notes that Buridan used only the term “determinately true,” although in a way that seems to imply the existence of its indeterminate alternative. Albert of Saxony does say “indeterminate vera vel falsa” at least once. However, he seems to prefer “nec est determinate vera nec determinate falsa,” a formulation like Buridan’s and compatible with a three-valued

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Strelley himself seems to have arrived at the conclusion that propositions about future contingents were only indeterminately true or indeterminately false because he believed the interpretation of contingency in terms of a possible counterfactual past incompatible with the view that future contingents were determinately true or false.42 If one says that such a proposition about a future event is indeterminately true, unlike propositions about past or present events, the statement is understood to imply a further statement: ‘the proposition can be false.’ Equivalently, if one says such a proposition is indeterminately false, the statement about its falsity implies the further statement: ‘the proposition can be true.’ Thus what is determinately true or false implies the impossibility of its opposite, whereas what is indeterminately true or false implies the possibility of its opposite. That propositions about the future entail the possibility of an alternative outcome arises because of what it means to be contingent. Since God’s knowledge about temporal events is modally equivalent to human knowledge, God’s knowledge about future contingents is also subject to the distinction between determinate and indeterminate kinds of truth and falsity. Unlike Strelley, Ockham had tried to unite the view that propositions about the contingent future imply the possibility of a counterfactual past with the view that God knows the determinate truth about future contingent events.43 Ockham believed that if any proposition were true, propositional classification as well as the four-valued classification of Strelley. See his Quaestio de futuris contingentibus, in William of Ockham, Expositio aurea (Bologna1496; repr. Ridgewood, NJ, 1964), t1va–t 2ra, 42 Strelley, Cent. concl. 12: ‘Et ulterius dicitur concedendo, quod si aliqua propositio nunc sit vera et nulla res sit mutata sed omnis res se habet totaliter sicut prius, nulla ratio est quare nunc potius est falsa quam prius. Quia si nunc est falsa, prius fuit falsa. Quia, sicut prius dictum est, in tali casu talis propositio non potest mutari de veritate in falsitatem. Et radix istius est quia propositio vera nunc, et quae prius fuit vera, potest numquam fuisse vera et potest esse falsa. Et si fiet falsa, numquam fuit vera, et ideo potest esse falsa sine aliqua mutatione. Et ulterius concedendum est quod contradictoria possunt esse vera sine aliqua mutatione ad istum intellectum quod utrumque contradictoriorum potest esse verum sine aliqua mutatione. Nec est hoc inconveniens in ista materia taliter opinanti. Sed secus est secundum opinionem illorum qui ponunt determinatam veritatem et necessitatem, saltem aliqualem, in futuro contingenti.’ In Ockham, OP 7:409, ll. 210–224. 43 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1: ‘Item, secundo sic: omnis propositio de praesenti semel vera habet aliquam de praeterito necessariam, sicut haec “Sortes sedet,” si est vera, haec semper postea erit necessaria “Sortes sedit.”… quia illa propositio quae est sic de praesenti quod tamen aequivalet uni de futuro, et cuius veritas dependet ex veritate unius de futuro, non habet aliquam de praeterito necessariam, immo ita contingens est illa de praeterito sicut sua de praesenti.’ In OP 2:509, ll. 50–52,

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it was determinately true, whether it described a contingent state of affairs or not. For him, the important contrast was between determinately true propositions and propositions not yet either true or false, not between determinately true and indeterminately true propositions, and for Ockham, propositions about the future, just like propositions about the present and the past, were either determinately true or determinately false. However, Strelley believed that the different implications of variously tensed propositions gave rise to another possibility, that propositions could be indeterminately true or false. In Strelley’s system, truth tables set up for contingent propositions are bi-valent, but restricted to what is indeterminate because the possibility of their opposites remains. Such tables will parallel truth tables for propositions about determinate matters, but the two are not reducible one to the other because there is no such thing as ‘just truth’—there is only determinate truth and indeterminate truth. Descent from the proposition ‘a is indeterminately true’ to the proposition ‘a is true,’ as would occur if there were ‘just truth,’ is only possible on this view if ‘indeterminately’ were somehow implicit in the proposition ‘a is true.’ But if ‘indeterminately’ were implicit, then ‘determinately’ could not be, because descent from ‘a is indeterminately true’ to ‘a is determinately true’ is impossible. The indeterminately true and the determinately true must remain separate and irreducible catagories. Strelley also differed from Auriol on the relationship of God’s knowledge to time. Strelley asserted that God’s knowledge of contingent events is specific to particular times. Auriol’s argument that God does not know what he knows through an intuitive cognition, but that he knows in a way that is abstracted from all considerations of time or present existence, was not how Strelley saw it. In his commentary on the Sentences, book I, q. 2, Strelley remarked that ‘God intuitively knows all beings, whether past etc.’44 As Katherine Tachau has noted, the opinion on abstractive and intuitive cognition in the manuscript 59–63; and ibid. q. 2, art. 1: ‘Ad istam particulam dico, sicut dictum est in suppositione sexta, quod Deus habet notitiam determinatam respectu futurorum contingentium, quia determinate scit quae pars contradictionis erit vera et quae falsa.’ In OP 2:520, l. 20–521, l. 2. And see note 16 above. 44 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Octavo dico quod Deus intuitive cognoscit omnia entia sive praeterita, etc. Probatur, nam ideo intellectus creatus non cognoscit intuitive rem absentem, quia res praesens concurrit ut causa aliquo modo, sed res non est causa cognitionis divinae, igitur etc.’ Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 5vb.

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of Strelley’s Sentences parallels that of Richard of Campsall, who had argued that intuitive and abstractive cognition are not in themselves distinct, but the same cognition, called intuitive when the object is present and abstractive when it is absent.45 Strelley’s further denial that God knows anything abstractively is thus small wonder given that God knows everything through knowing himself.46 Since Strelley assigned truth values to propositions about contingent events relative to the time at which those events would take place, much as Ockham had,47 it would be difficult to see how in Strelley’s view God could know the truth about contingents through some kind of knowledge abstracted from all considerations of time. Strelley’s basic position, again much like Ockham’s, was that at a specific time, a given event, let it be a, will take place, and it will be true to say ‘a is.’ It will also be true at the same time to say that ‘a could have not happened or have happened otherwise than it did.’ The contingency of a resides in this fact. Prior to a, however, it will also and always be true to say that ‘a will be’ and that ‘God knows that a will be.’ And God’s knowledge prior to a is immutably true. At the time of a, however, it will no longer be true that ‘a will be,’ but that ‘a is and was,’ and this will be what God knows. The things about which God knows will change at a from being future to being present and then past, and God’s knowledge tracks such change. But because God Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 165–166. Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Quod Deus nihil cognoscit abstractive probatur ex praecedenti; igitur etc.’ Erfurt, Bibl. MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 5vb. 47 Ockham, Tractatus de praedesintatione, q. 1: ‘… sicut ex eadem notitia intuitiva aliquorum incomplexorum potest intellectus evidenter cognoscere propositiones contingentes contradictorias, puta quod a est, a non est, eodem modo potest concedi quod essentia divina est notitia intuitiva quae est tam perfecta, tam clara quod ipsa est notitia evidens omnium praeteritorum et futurorum, ita quod ipsa scit quae pars contradictionis erit vera et quae pars falsa.’ Ed. Philotheus Boehner and Stephanus Brown, in Opera philosophica 2 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1978), 518, ll. 281–287. Strelley preferred a different way of saying this, Cent. concl. 83: ‘Sed contra istam conclusionem instatur. Deus scit omnia praeterita et omnia futura, antequam sint, fuerint vel fiant. Ergo Deus nunc scit a… Ad primum istorum dicitur negando antecedens quantum est de virtute sermonis. Sed ob reverentiam sanctorum doctorum illud antecedens asserentium distinguitur penes amphiboliam, eo quod potest accipi in sensu proprio vel transsumptivo. In sensu proprio negatur, sicut patet per iam dicta. In sensu transsumptivo conceditur. Ut sit sensus: Deus scit praeterita et futura, id est Deus est scientia quae fuit scientia praeteritorum et quae erit scientia futurorum. Vel Deus est ille actus qui fuit cognitio praeteritorum et qui erit cognitio futurorum, vel—propter cavilatores—qui futurorum erit cognitio.’ In Ockham, OP 7:494, l. 15–495, l. 35. 45 46

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knows all through knowing himself, or rather because he is the single act of cognition that intuitively cognizes the successive events of past, present and future, God himself remains unchanged. Strelley’s belief that propositions about future events, prior to the occurrence of those events, are immutably true or false, would seem to pose difficulties if immutability implied necessity. But like Scotus (and Ockham), he did not believe that that equation held. The assignment of indeterminate truth value to all such propositions encoded the compatibility of contingency with immutability because although such propositions are true, their indeterminacy implies that they could be false. The possibility of their falsity, to be true possibility, need never be realized prior to the event, and the possibility of falsity might coexist without compromising the immutability of their truth.48 In Strelley’s system, the inconvertibility of necessity and immutability is expressed through the four-valued classification of indeterminate and determinate truth and falsity. The relation of time to modality required a more complex view of truth. Strelley’s views on future contingents followed those of William of Ockham closely in many regards—not surprising considering that his tract Circa praedestinationem et praescientiam amounted to an abbreviation of Ockham’s own Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia dei respectu futurorum contingentium.49 Thus Strelley agreed with Ockham’s use of a possible counterfactual past and with his view that propositions stated in the past or present about future contingent events are contingent and not necessary.50 However, Strelley’s opinions in propria persona as set forth in his Sentences commentary and in the Centiloquium theologicum even 48 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Dico quod non arguitur sicut Philosophus unde ratio Philosophi tenet gratia materiae, propter hoc quod Philosophus ponit quodlibet sempiternum necesse est absolute vel quod per nullam potentiam sive positionem possit non esse, et ideo nulla est potentia in eo aliud non esse, et si aliqua ponatur, ad eam sequitur contradictio expressa. Sed illud quod est contingens, licet una pars sit semper vera et erit semper vera, tamen intrinsice potest non esse vera, et tunc si ponatur non esse vera, non est concedendum quod sit simul vera et non vera, quia per illam positionem tollitur eius veritas.’ Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 30ra. 49 For the text and commentary see Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence: A Question about Predestination and Foreknowledge by Arnold of Strelley, OP,’ AHDLMA 55 (1988): 255–289. It is worth noting that in regard to the sections of Ockham’s Tractatus de praedestinatione where he asserts that God knows future contingents determinately, Strelley reproduces Ockham’s position without significant change or comment—see ibid., 278 and 281. 50 See chapter four, pp. 120–131.

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more closely paralleled those of Richard Campsall, sharing the language of Campsall’s Quaestiones super librum priorum analeticorum on the indeterminately true and false, of his Notabilia pro materia de contingencia et presciencia dei on the counterfactual past, and of his Sentences commentary on intuitive and abstractive cognition. In Strelley’s tract on predestination, one of his few additions to Ockham’s views constituted a section on whether truth inheres in propositions as a real respectus, a question ultimately derived from a debate between Richard Campsall and Walter Chatton.51 Thus, even though Strelley did not cite him by name, Campsall, even more than Ockham, emerges as a figure of close intellectual affinity with the Dominican. In his Notabilia, unlike his questions on the Prior analytica, Campsall had not used the terms ‘indeterminate vera’ and ‘indeterminate falsa,’ but rather ‘contingenter vera’ to describe propositions that cannot, if true, be changed from truth to falsity and yet could be false.52 William of Ockham used the same terminology in his Tractatus de praedestinatione et praescientia Dei and in his Sentences commentary. For example, in countering an objection that God could not have determinate knowledge of future contingents because what is not in itself determinately true, cannot be determinately known, and future contingents are not determinately true,53 Ockham responded: 51

For the text see Arnold of Strelley, Circa praedestinationem et praescientiam, ad sextum dubium, in Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence,’ 276–277, 289, and for a discussion of Strelley’s sources, ibid. 271. 52 Richard of Campsall, Notabilia pro materia de contingencia et presciencia dei, I: ‘2 primum. Aliqua proposicio est contingenter vera et, tamen, non potest mutari a veritate in falsitatem quamuis possit esse falsa. 3 racio est quia ista: “antichristus erit” est vera, et potest esse falsa, sed si falsa ponatur, ab eterno falsa fuit, ita quod ibi non esset mutacio, et illud respondendum est de proposicionibus de futuro.’ In The Works of Richard of Campsall, ed. Edward A. Synan, 2 (Toronto, 1982), 38; ibid. XVI: ‘25 Ex istis patet quod certa et infallibilis cognicio potest haberi de futuris contingentibus, sine mutacione a veritate in falsitatem, sine desicione veritatis, vel successione falsitatis post veritatem, vel decepcione in sciencia, quia proposicio potest esse contingenter vera, et tamen, non mutari de veritate in falsitatem, nec desinere esse vera…’ Ed. Synan, 2:43. 53 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 2: ‘Quarto: quod non est in se verum, non scitur a Deo notitia determinata; sed futurum contingens est huiusmodi; igitur etc.’ In OP 2:520, ll. 16–17; idem, Scriptum in Librum primum sententiarum: Ordinatio, I, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Quia illud quod non est in se determinate verum, nulli est determinate verum; sed futurum contingens non est in se determinate verum, igitur etc.; et per consequens non est determinate verum Deo. Tunc arguo: illud quod non est determinate verum, non scitur a Deo scientia determinata; sed futurum contingens est huiusmodi, ut ostensum est; igitur etc.’ Ed. Girardus I. Etzkorn and Franciscus E. Kelley, Opera theologica 4 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1979), 572, ll. 9–14.

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… it can be said that one of two [altera] parts of a contradiction is determinately true such that it is not false. Yet it is contingently true, and therefore it is true such that it can be false and can never have been true.54

For Ockham, that a proposition is contingently true seems to have meant that God contingently wills what that proposition represents such that it could have been otherwise, not that the proposition is indeterminately true or false. Thus Ockham combined the notion of God’s determinate knowledge of future contingents with propositions about the future being contingently true because they could have been false. The shift in Campsall’s terminology has led Calvin Normore to suggest that Campsall may have changed his views, perhaps under Ockham’s influence.55 However, the history of the term ‘contingenter verum’ is complicated. On the one hand, Walter Chatton used it to describe God’s determinate knowledge of propositions about future contingents, just as Ockham had, but he did not adopt the conterfactual past formula ‘could be false and never have been true’ to describe what is contingently true. Rather, events on Chatton’s view remained contingent prior to their occurence because it still remained in the Ockham, Sent. I, d. 38, q. unica: ‘Ad primum principale potest dici quod altera pars contradictionis est determinate vera ita quod non est falsa. Est tamen contingenter vera, et ideo ita est vera quod potest esse falsa, et potest numquam fuisse vera.’ In OT 4:587, ll. 21–24. And see idem, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 2: ‘Ad quartum patet quod minor est falsa. Sic tamen est vera quod est contingenter vera, quia potest esse falsa, et potuit numquam fuisse vera.’ In OP 2:521, ll. 39–41. Ockham also used the same terminology in a dialectical exchange in Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1: ‘Si dicatur quod illud quod non est in se verum non potest sciri ab aliquo; sed me sedere cras est huiusmodi; dico quod est vera, ita quod non falsa, tamen est contingenter vera, quia potest esse falsa. Contra: utraque pars istius “ego sedebo cras—ego non sedebo cras” indifferenter potest esse vera; igitur non plus est una pars vera quam alia. Et sic neutra est nunc vera vel utraque; non utraque, igitur neutra. Dico quod una pars nunc determinate est vera, ita quod non falsa, quia Deus vult unam partem esse veram et aliam esse falsam. Tamen contingenter vult, et ideo potest non velle illam partem, et partem aliam potest velle, sicut pars alia potest evenire.’ In OP 2:518, ll. 288–298. 55 Calvin Normore, ‘Petrus Aureoli and his Contemporaries’; and Synan, Works 2:34–37, also stress the idea that Ockham influenced Campsall in the Notabilia. But see Katherine H. Tachau, ‘The Influence of Richard Campsall on 14th-Century Oxford Thought,’ in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. A. Hudson and M. Wilks, Studies in Church History 5 (Oxford, 1987), 109–123, and idem, Vision and Certitude, 158–166, who reassesses the relationship between Campsall and Ockham, arguing that Campsall probably influenced Ockham much more than the reverse. 54

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power of God’s will to make them otherwise.56 On the other hand, William Crathorn associated the term ‘contingenter verum’ with the notion of indeterminate truth. Unlike his fellow Dominicans, Crathorn did not subscribe to the view that future tense propositions about future contingents ad utrumlibet were indeterminately true or false. As far as he was concerned the truth value of propositions about future contingents was determinate. In asserting this view, however, he noted that any such proposition is: ‘not contingently true ad utrumlibet, but is determinately true and impossible that it be false with regard to its significate,’57 in effect contrasting ‘contingently true,’ understood as true but possibly false, with ‘determinately true.’ Thus Crathorn rejected Campsall’s position as Campsall had set it forth in his questions on the Prior analytica, but Crathorn used the terminology of Campsall’s Notabilia to do so. Crathorn’s text suggests at least the possibility that rather than Campsall having changed his position, perhaps Ockham, in trying to reconcile the contingently true with the determinately true, was the one effecting a compromise between the tradition of determinate truth and the emerging idea of contingency as captured in the formula of the counterfactual past.58 Crathorn’s off-hand reference to the ‘contingently Walter Chatton, Sent. I, d. 38: ‘Responsio. Non video quin, ubi veritas propositionis dependet a futuro et ipsam esse veram est rem esse ponendam in tali futuro, quin semper antequam in illo futuro res huiusmodi ponatur, possit propositio illa esse falsa. Nec ipsi etiam possunt hoc vitare, quin scilicet pro eadem mensura pro qua propositio contingenter est vera, posset esse falsa; quia dicunt quod Deus aeternaliter scivit a fore, et quod aeternaliter fuit haec vera et contingenter vera, igitur simul est vera et contingenter vera Item, sustinent quod Deus potuit produxisse mundum ab aeterno, et tamen tunc Deus non necessario produxisset mundum ab aeterno, igitur stat quod propositio in illa mensura in qua est vera, sit contingenter vera et possit esse falsa. Unde haec est aeternaliter vera “Deus voluit a fore,” et tamen omnes habent respondere hic quod voluit contingenter a fore.’ Ed. Etzkorn, 358, l. 27–359, l. 11. 57 William Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Ad primum istorum dicendum quod haec propositio formata: “A est in b,” non est futurm [sic: futurum] contingens ad utrumlibet, licet formetur de futuro contingenti ad utrumlibet, nec est vera contingenter ad utrumlibet, sed est determinate vera, et impossibile est quod sit falsa respectu illius signficati stante significatione terminorum citra instans vel tempus, in quo a est; et tamen ex hoc non sequitur quod a necessario est.’ In Quästionen zum ersten Sentenzenbuch: Einfürung und Text, ed. Fritz Hoffmann, BGPTM n. s. 29 (Münster, 1988), 496, ll. 15–20. 58 Indeed it seems difficult to interpret just what Ockham meant by determinate truth when he argued that one of each part of a contradictory pair is determinately true, even though contingently, because it can be false and never have been true. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 223–224, contrasts Ockham with Inghen, with the suggestion that for Ockham, a proposition is ‘determinately true iff it is true such that it is not false. Unlike the definition Marsilius used, Ockham’s did not carry with it the conno56

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true’ to refer to what is true but could be false indicates that the term had become something of a common-place by the 1330s. In his commentary on the Sentences, Robert Holcot confirms the suspicion that the vocabulary was now widely used: To this argument, some say (and it is almost [quasi] the common response of all) that this proposition ‘a will be’ is true, yet contingently, and, therefore, although it be true, yet it can never have been true.59

For as he went on to explain: This is the difference between propositions on contingent matters about the future and their equivalents, whether they are about the present or about the past, and propositions about the present and about the past that are not equivalent to such [propositions about the future] and do not virtually contain them, that if some proposition about the present or past is true, necessarily afterwards it will always be true to say that that was true… But in propositions about the present and about the past that are equivalent to propositions about the future or have to be expounded through some proposition about the future, it is otherwise. For this proposition: ‘a was known by God,’ … can never have been true.60 tation of “necessary truth.” He was thus able to claim that all contingent propositions about the future are determinately true. This was not possible for Marsilius…’ Ockham may have feared that adopting the terminology of indeterminacy would jeopardize the Law of Excluded Middle. Schabel, ‘Quarrel with Aureol,’ 175–205, and Theology at Paris, 241–258, has a discussion of Ockham’s view and the Oxford scene, based in part on an earlier draft of this work. I do not agree with all of his conclusions, but I am grateful to him for adding new dimension to the picture and helping me to clarify my own position. 59 Robert Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Ad istud argumentum dicunt aliqui, et est quasi communis responsio omnium, quod haec propositio “a erit” est vera, tamen contingenter. Et ideo, licet sit vera, potest tamen numquam fuisse vera.’ In Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly: Questions on Future Contingents, ed. Paul A. Streveler, and Katherine H. Tachau (Toronto, 1995), 126, ll. 318–320; idem, Lyon, f. h2vb. Paul A. Streveler, ‘Robert Holkot on Future Contingencies: A Preliminary Account,’ in Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 8–9, edited by John R. Sommerfeldt and E. Rozanne Elder, (Kalamazoo, 1976), 163–171, has some interesting observations, but as a preliminary account, it is now subject to revision in light of the texts he has edited. 60 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2: ‘Et haec est differentia inter propositiones de futuro in materia contingenti et eis aequivalentes, sive sint de praesenti sive de praeterito, et propositiones de praesenti et de praeterito quae non aequivalent talibus nec tales virtualiter includunt; quia si aliqua sit propositio vera de praesenti vel de praeterito, necessario postea erit semper verum dicere quod illa fuit vera… Sed in propositionibus de praesenti et de praeterito quae aequivalent propositionibus de futuro vel exponi habent per aliquam de futuro, secus est. Nam ista propositio: “a fuit scitum a Deo,” … potest numquam fuisse vera…’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 127, ll. 324–341; Lyon ff. h2vb–h3ra.

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It is highly unlikely, however, that the language of Holcot’s Sentences commentary indicates he followed Ockham in attributing a determinate knowledge of future contingents to God because at the same time he was preparing the Ordinatio version of his Sentences, he also engaged in a series of Quodlibetal debates, and in Quodlibet III, q. 1 he exchanged the terminology of ‘contingenter verum’ for ‘indeterminate verum et falsum’: … future contingents are said to be propositions about the future of which there is no determinate truth or falsity, because although they are true or false, yet those which are true can never have been true and those which are false can never have been false.61

Propositions about the future are now called ‘indeterminately true or false.’62 It is more likely that Holcot followed Strelley in his terminology, rather than Ockham, and indeed, in one place in his Sentences commentary, Strelley also used the terms ‘indeterminately true’ and ‘contingently true’ interchangeably.63 By the time of Holcot, the analysis of future contingency in terms of a possible counterfactual past, shared with Campsall, Ockham and Strelley, and the identification of such an analysis with a multi-valued system of propositionional classification, in the manner of Campsall and Strelley, had attained the status of an identifiable tradition. Campsall would seem to have originated the position and Ockham to have been an early but only partial adherent.64 StrelRobert Holcot, Quodlibet III, q. 1: ‘Secundo, distinguo de isto termino “futura contingentia,” quia uno modo futura contingentia dicuntur propositiones de futuro quarum non est veritas determinata vel falsitas, quia, licet sint verae vel falsae, illae tamen quae sunt verae possunt numquam fuisse verae, et illae quae sunt falsae possunt numquam fuisse falsae.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 60, ll. 29–33. 62 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 1: ‘Quarta conclusio est quod non omnis videns clare Deum videt omnia futura contingentia accipiendo “futura contingentia” primo modo, videlicet, pro propositiones de futuro quae sunt verae vel falsae indeterminate…’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 63, ll. 93–96. 63 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Dici igitur potest quod talis peccat in primo instanti emissionis voti, ista tamen: “iste peccat,” in primo instanti est indeterminate vera et contingenter vera quia dependet a veritate unius de futuro, scilicet huius: “iste non implebit ante a.” Sic igitur dicendum est de ista sicut de aliis quarum veritas dependet ex aliqua de futuro.’ Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 2vb. 64 Even though Campsall used a terminology in the Notabilia consonant with Ockham’s, I am skeptical about the idea that he changed his position between his writing the questions on the Prior analytica and the Notabilia under Ockham’s influence because 1) Campsall’s definitions of indeterminately true and contingently true are the same and 2) Strelley and Crathorn (see notes 56 and 62 above) interpret ‘contingently true’ as interchangeable with ‘indeterminately true’ so there is reason to believe a tradition existed of such an association, although Crathorn also contrasted ‘contingently true’ 61

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ley and Holcot clearly believed Campsall’s views on future contingents the more coherent. Neither they, in adopting them, nor Crathorn, in opposing them, paid any heed to Ockham’s compromise. Campsall’s commentary on the Prior Analytics was written at Oxford while he was still a bachelor in arts at Balliol College, prior to his becoming a master in 1306, and well before Peter Auriol began his first commentary on the Sentences, most probably in 1312 at Bologna.65 Thus Oxford had a separate tradition advocating a multi-valued system of propositional classification pre-dating by some years the one on the continent associated with Auriol. The Oxford proponents of the distinction between the indeterminately and determinately true and false developed their views independent of Peter Auriol and along different lines. Experimentation with multi-valued classification systems characterized both sides of the channel during the first decades of the century. Indeed, in his commentary on the Prior analytics, Campsall had even begun the task of developing rules of inference for syllogisms with mixed indeterminately and determinately true propositions.66 While neither Strelley nor Holcot concerned himself with such technicalities in his theological works, each employed a multi-valued system to deal with problems of contingency. Whether or not Bradwardine read their works as equivalent to Auriol’s or had Chatton or other experimentors with multi-valued classifications in mind when he made his comment about having heard proponents of Auriol’s three-valued system at Avi-

with ‘necessarily true’ (see note 71 below). Schabel, Theology at Paris, 241, while following Tachau’s position that the direction of influence probably went from Campsall to Ockham rather than the reverse, accepts Normore’s idea that Campsall’s views underwent change. 65 See Edward A. Synan, ‘Richard of Campsall, An English Theologian of the Fourteenth Century,’ Mediaeval Studies 14 (1952), 1–8; idem, ed., The Works of Richard of Campsall, 1 (Toronto, 1968), 19, and Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 158–166, for Campsall’s dates. 66 Campsall, Questiones super librum Priorum Analeticorum, q. 3, I and Ad I, ed. Synan, Works, 69–71, 81–82. For a discussion, see Normore, ‘Petrus Aureoli and his Contemporaries,’ 86–89. Adoption of a four valued logic would have had a number of implications for modal and semantic theory—for instance it was traditionally believed [see for example Thomas Aquinas, De propositionibus modalibus, in Opera Omnia 43 (Rome, 1976), 421:17–28] that the modes of truth and falsity, unlike necessity, possibility, impossibility and contingency, did not change the relations of subject and predicate in propositions, but the relation between subject and predicate in indeterminately true propositions would be fundamentally different from the relation in determinately true propositions. Suppositional descent from universals to particulars in personal supposition would have required somewhat different treatment as well.

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gnon and Oxford,67 the traditional two-valued classification of propositions was no longer taken for granted at the English university.

B. Necessities of Past and Consequent Almost at the end of his commentary on the Sentences, when William Crathorn took up the question of future contingents, he found himself cutting a new trail into the thicket of problems surrounding the question of God’s foreknowledge of future contingent events. Crathorn was as committed to the idea of the radical contingency of the world as were his fellow Dominicans, Strelley and Holcot. As he asserted: With the exception of God, everything that exists, exists contingently. This is evident because everything that could have not existed [in the past] and that could not exist in the future, is contingent, but everything that is other than God either could have not existed [in the past] or could not exist in the future, therefore everything other than God exists contingently.68

And yet he did not embrace the devices his predecessors had used to resolve the problems necessity posed for contingency: analysis in terms of a possible counter-factual past, use of the distinction between propositions simply in the past or present tense and propositions in the past or present tense containing some reference to a future contingent, and reliance on a four-valued system of propositional classification. Crathorn developed new and different strategies for preserving contingency and divine foreknowledge. 67 William J. Courtenay, ‘John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini on Whether God Can Undo the Past,’ RTAM 40 (1973), 151, has suggested that Thomas Buckingham, Bradwardine’s major opponent at Oxford, held the view that propositions about the future are neither true nor false, but the text cited: ‘Voluntas divina respectu futurorum contingentium quamdiu sunt futura, est libera libertate contradictionis…’ Oxford, New College MS 134, f. 347r, will bear other interpretations. Schabel, ‘Quarrel with Aureol,’ 211–213, first suggested that the opinion Bradwardine cites sounds more like that of Pope John XXII, who adopted some of Auriol’s positions to somewhat different ends. Bradwardine may have been targeting defenders of the controversial papal position. Schabel, Theology at Paris, 254–256, has an important further discussion. 68 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘… omne, quod est, excepto deo, est contingenter. Patet quia omne id est contingenter, quod potuit non fuisse et poterit non esse. Sed omne quod est aliud a deo, aliquando [sic: MSS have an] potuit non fuisse et poterit aliquando [sic: MSS have an] non esse. Igitur omne quod est aliud a deo, est contingenter.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 484, ll. 16–19.

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Crathorn started with a classic puzzle: It seems that God does not know future contingents necessarily, because—let a be some future contingent; then it follows: (1) God necessarily knows that a will be. (2) It is necessary that God knows that a will be. (3) God knows that a will be, therefore a will be. The antecedent: ‘God knows that a will be,’ is necessary, and the whole consequence is necessary, and on those grounds, the consequent: ‘a will be,’ must be necessary as well.69 The argument proceeds from the de re necessity of God’s knowing, to the de dicto necessity that God knows, to the necessity of consequence, to the necessity of the consequent. But if this argument is sound, then a will not be a future contingent, so it seems as though either there are no future contingents, or that, if there are, God cannot necessarily know them. The usual strategy for dealing with this sort of puzzle involved proving that the de dicto necessity of the proposition: ‘God knows that a will be,’ does not imply the de re necessity of a. Both Aquinas and Scotus employed versions of this ploy.70 If the initial shift from the de re necessity of God’s knowledge to the de dicto necessity of the antecedent could be prevented, the puzzle would also be solved, and Crathorn proposed an argument to that effect. While invoking the intransitivity from de re

69 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Utrum deus cognoscat necessario futura contingentia. Quod non videtur, quia sit a aliquod futurum contingens; si deus necessario cognoscat a esse futurum, haec est necessaria: Deus cognoscit a esse futurum. Tunc sic: Deus cognoscit a esse futurum, igitur a est futurum. Consequentia est necessaria et antecedens est necessarium, igitur et consequens. Igitur a esse futurum est necessarium et non contingens; igitur a non est futurum contingens. Istud consequens est falsum et contra positum; igitur id, ex quo sequitur. Igitur deus non necessario cognoscit futurum contingens.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 483, ll. 2–9. 70 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, pars prima, q. 14, art. 13, ad 3: ‘Unde et haec propositio, “omne scitum a Deo necessarium est esse,” consuevit distingui: quia potest esse de re vel de dicto. Si intelligatur de re, est divisa et falsa; et est sensus, “omnis res quam Deus scit, est necessaria.” Vel potest intelligi de dicto: et sic est composita et vera; et est sensus, “hoc dictum, scitum a Deo esse, est necessarium.” Ed. Thomas P. Gilby, 4 (New York, 1964), 50; Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Quod non, videtur: Sequitur “Deus scit a fore, igitur a erit.” Antecedens verum necessarium, igitur consequens. Consequentia patet, quia oppositum consequentis non stat cum antecedente.’ In Opera omnia 17:484, ll. 9–12; and ibid.: ‘Ad rationem alterius quaestionis dicendum quod Deus non scit necessario a fore, quia denotatur necessitas actus sciendi ut transit in obiectum non-necessarium; unde licet sit necessarium Deum scire, non tamen respectu nonnecessarii…’ In Opera omnia 17:505, l. 23–506, l. 1.

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to de dicto applications of modality constituted a traditional strategem, Crathorn chose to block the inference in a most unusual way. Crathorn started by asserting that propositions are true because they are true signs. In order for a proposition to function as a true sign three conditions must be met. First, the proposition must exist as a mental, spoken or written entity or token. Second, it must be activated as a sign, and so it must be understood by some intellectual being. And third, it must be, be going to be, or be possible to be as the proposition signifies.71 Given this definition of a true proposition, he argued that because future contingents are contingent beings that do not yet exist, therefore, no proposition is a future contingent because all propositions must actually exist if they are to function as true signs. Moreover, all things except God exist contingently, because God alone has necessary being. Since all propositions are propositional tokens and actually existing things, all propositions must be contingent beings. And that, in his view, further entails that propositions understood de dicto can be only contingently true. There is no necessity that any proposition exist, just as there is no necessity that anything else other than God exist, and so in the case of any given proposition, it is always possible that it might not have existed and might not have been true.72 Since any proposition might not have existed and might not have Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Quantum ad primum, dico sicut alias: Veritas propositionis est ipsa propositio vera et non aliqua qualitas superaddita propositioni verae, sive dicitur propositio vera, quia est vera res, sive dicitur vera, quia est verum signum. Tamen propositionem esse veram per modum signi veri vel sicut signum verum plura requiruntur. Primo requiritur quod ipsa propositio sit scripta vel prolata vel formata mentaliter, quia id, quod non est propositio, non est propositio vera. Secundo requiritur quod propositio sit ab aliquo concepta vel intellecta, quia si propositio est verum signum, alicui intelligenti est verum signum, et omne id, quod est signum, alicui intelligenti est signum, et quod nulli intelligenti est signum, non est actu signum. Tertio requiritur quod sit vel fuerit vel est, sicut propositio significat.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 483, ll. 26–36. 72 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Ex istis sequuntur aliquae conclusiones. Prima est quod omne, quod est, excepto deo, est contingenter… Quarta conclusio est quod nullum futurum contingens ad utrumlibet est aliquid reale, quia isti termini imponuntur ad supponendum praecise pro illis, quae non sunt sed erunt, possent tamen non esse… Quinta conclusio est quod nulla propositio est futurum contingens ad utrumlibet, quia omne id, quod est propositio, est actualiter et non solum in potentia. Sed nullum futurum contingens ad utrumlibet est actualiter, sed potentia solum, igitur nulla propositio est futurum contingens ad utrumlibet… Septima conclusio quod omnis propositio vera contingenter est vera, quia omnis propositio potuit non fuisse vera et poterit non esse vera; igitur omnis propositio vera contingenter est vera. Antecedens probo, quia omnis propositio potuit non fuisse 71

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been true, no proposition can be said to be necessarily true. In effect, Crathorn treated the de dicto necessity of propositions as a sub-class of de re necessity, the equivalent of an attribution of de re necessity to propositional tokens. His assertion that all beings other than God are contingent, however, eliminated de re necessity for anything but God and in the process eliminated de dicto necessity for propositions as well. To infer from the de re necessity of God’s knowing that a will be, to the de dicto necessity of the proposition: ‘God knows that a will be’ is impossible. The puzzle from the necessity of the consequent can be resolved and fatalism averted. In trying to solve this puzzle by saying no proposition is necessarily true, Crathorn ran counter to tradition and raised a number of further questions. For instance, to say that no proposition is de dicto necessary because no proposition has to exist, only confronted a definition of de dicto necessity couched in terms of a token theory of the proposition. Those who defined propositions in terms of types asserted that a proposition would be true whether any propositional tokens existed or not just so long as it was the case as the proposition would denote if its token were to exist. Necessary propositions were propositions that were always or eternally true in this way.73 Among the Dominicans, Arnold of Strelley had argued in favor of the fictum theory that concepts have only objective, not real, subjective being, precisely on the grounds that if they were real things, they might not exist, and therefore there could be no necessary propositions.74 However, the concept

propositio et poterit non esse propositio et per consequens potuit non fuisse vera et poterit non esse vera.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 484, ll. 14–16, 33–35; 485, ll. 5–8, 16–20. 73 Holcot mentions ‘some’ who held this position in Quodlibet I, q. 6: ‘Sunt tamen aliqui dicentes quod propositio potest esse vera, sive sit sive non sit, quia tunc est propositio vera quando sic est, sicut per eam denotatur vel sicut per eam denotaretur si fore; unde dicunt quod propositio necessaria semper est vera.’ Ed. William J. Courtenay, in ‘A Revised Text of Robert Holcot’s Quodlibetal Dispute on Whether God is Able to Know More Than He Knows,’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 53 (1971): 15–16. 74 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Aliter circa istum articulum videndum de conceptibus mentis sive intentionibus correspondentibus vocibus significativis: an sint res distinctae ab actu intelligendi. Probatur hic primo quod conceptus huius non sunt res aliquae sed solum habent esse fictum [sic, fictivum] sive conceptivum, quod est tale in esse obiectivo qualis est res significata in esse subiectivo, quia intellectus fingit aliquid consimile in esse obiectivo quod esset solo numero distinctum si intellectus haberet veri productivam sicut habet fictivam… Probatur … quarto si sic: nulla propositio esset necessaria, quia quaelibet potest non esse tamen.’ Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 2ra.

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of uncreated eternal truths posed severe difficulties for theology,75 and Crathorn’s insistence that created propositional tokens were the only bearers of truth and falsity side-stepped these difficulties by rejecting any theory of propositional types. Ockham had developed a definition of de dicto necessity that seemed to take into account the nature of propositions as contingent existents. Ockham had said that propositions did not have to be true eternally in order to be necessary. It was enough to say that if the propositional tokens were to exist, they would be true and could not be false.76 What made a proposition de dicto necessary, was not the necessity of its truth but the impossibility of its falsity. Ockham’s definition of de dicto necessity in terms of the token proposition would seem to pose a challenge to Crathorn’s assertion that because token propositions are the only kinds of propositions there are, propositions cannot be necessary. Without naming Ockham, Crathorn argued against the Ockhamist definition of de dicto necessity in the following manner: (1). Let a be a proposition about some future event to take place at the designated time b, let the proposition a be formed, so that it exists, and let it be understood by some intellect, and let a be formed and understood prior to b, the time of the events it signifies. (2). If a is a true proposition, it is impossible that it be false at any time prior to b, as long as it continues to exist. (3). But just because it is impossible that a be false prior to the designated time b, it is not proper to conclude that a necessarily will be the case.77 75 See Lili Alanen, ‘Descartes, Duns Scotus and Ockham on Omnipotence and Possibility,’ FcS 45 (1985), 157–188, for an excellent discussion of the late medieval and early modern debates about these difficulties. Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, also goes into considerable detail. 76 William of Ockham, Summa logicae II, cap. 9: ‘Tamen de propositione necessaria est sciendum quod propositio non propter hoc dicitur necessaria quia semper sit vera, sed quia est vera si sit et non potest esse falsa.’ Ed. Philotheus Boehner, Gedeon Gál and Stephanus Brown, in Opera philosophica 1 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), 275, ll. 72–74. 77 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Decima tertia conclusio est quod si a est futurum contingens ad utrumlibet in b, ad hoc quod haec sit vera in aliquo instanti citra b: “A erit,” requiritur quod illa propositio sit formata et intellecta in illo instanti et quod in illo instanti a sit futurum in b et quod in illo instanti a possit non esse in b; quia tres primae condiciones requirantur, patet ex dictis, quod ultima requiratur scilicet quod a

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Crathorn supported his contention that such an inference from the impossibility of falsity to necessity was invalid using a number of other examples, as well. For instance, let a be a future contingent event to take place at some future designated time b. If God caused the true proposition ‘a will happen at designated time b’ to be written down and preserved from all eternity, then as long as the proposition continued to exist prior to b, God could not at any time prior to b falsify that proposition, even employing his absolute power. And yet such a proposition would not be a necessary one because the subject of that proposition, ‘a,’ names a future contingent event, and it is part of the definition of any future contingent event that it is possible that it happen and also possible that it not happen.78 Thus, although it is true that what ‘A’ (the proposition about future contingent event a) signifies, will happen, yet because what ‘A’ signifies is a future contingent event, the possibility remains that a might not happen, and the impossibility of the falsity of the proposition ‘A,’ in no way implies that what ‘a’ signifies must necessarily happen. If ‘A’ did imply that a must happen, then it

possit non esse in b in eodem instanti citra b, in quo erit haec vera: “A erit,” quia per positum a est futurum contingens ad utrumlibet. Igitur ad hoc quod haec sit vera in aliquo instanti citra b: “A erit,” requiritur quod pro eodem instanti a possit non esse… Decima quinta conclusio est quod ista consequentia non valet: Ista propositio: “A erit,” si formetur in aliquo instanti citra instans vel tempus, in quo erit a, est vera, et impossibile est quod sit falsa pro aliquo instanti citra b stante formatione; igitur a necessario erit. Illa consequentia non valet nec aliqua consimilis facta in materia consimili, et hoc patet a simili: Sit a aliquid a deo contingenter et libere productum sicut anima beati Petri vel aliquid tale, quod aliquando fuit futurum contingens ad utrumlibet; tunc sic: Ista propositio: “A fuit,” vel ista: “A fuit productum,” si formetur, est vera et deus non posset facere quod praedicta propositio formate et intellecta modo supradicto sit falsa respectu illius significati in aliquo instanti futuro vel quod ipsa formata fuisset falsa in aliquo instanti creationis vel productionis ipsius a. Et tamen ex hoc non sequitur quod necessario a fuit productum, quia cum hoc stat quod a contingenter et libere fuit a deo productum. Ita est in proposito’ Ed. Hoffmann, 486, ll. 15–23; 487, ll. 7–19. 78 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Supponatur quod a sit futurum contingens ad utrumlibet producendum in b instanti futuro et sit instans futurum ad mille annos. Si ista propositio: “A erit in b,” fuisset scripta et conservata a deo ab aeterno, ab aeterno fuisset vera, nec deus de tota potentia sua potuit ipsam falsificare in aliquo instanti praeterito vel aliquo modo fecisse quod non fuisset vera in aliquo instanti praeterito ipsa propositione non corrupta sed conservata in eodem instanti. Et si ponatur quod illa propositio: “A erit in b,” conservetur usque ad b instans, in quo creabitur a, huic positioni non est compossibile quod praedicta propositio sit falsa in aliquo instanti citra b, et tamen hoc non infert quod a necessario erit in b vel quod a necessario producetur in b. Cum hoc enim stat quod a erit contingenter et quod a est futurum contingens ad utrumlibet producendum in b instanti futuro contingenter.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 487, ll. 20–31.

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would not be true to say that ‘a will happen at time b’ (where a is a future contingent), because a would not then be a contingent future event, but a necessary one. The effect of Crathorn’s argument was to show that some propositions could be unfalsifiable and still denote contingent states of affairs. Prior to b, any time a true proposition about a future contingent event due to occur at future time b of the sort: ‘a will happen at time b’ is formed, that proposition would be true and could not be false even through God’s absolute power. And so prior to b it is not falsifiable. Ockham’s definition of de dicto necessity seems to have some problems, at least if the restriction of propositions to propositional tokens is taken seriously. Ockham might have replied that Crathorn’s proposition was only unfalsifiable for a certain period of time, the time before b, whereas he meant to designate as necessary only those propositions not falsifiable at any time. Crathorn would have been able to respond, however, that the proposition ‘a will be or is or was at time b,’ where a stands for a determinately true contingent event, would seem to satisfy Ockham’s requirement for a necessary proposition. If true, the proposition would be unfalsifiable at any time, even by God’s absolute power. If the traditional position were accepted that propositions about future events are determinately true and determinately false, as Ockham in fact argued,79 then before the fact the proposition would not be falsifiable at b, and it would not be falsifiable at or after b, because at b it would have the necessity of the present, and after b it would be necessarily true from the necessity of the past. Thus if the designation of any event as contingent connoted that that event both can happen and can also possibly not happen, then there could be true propositions about future contingent events that could not be false at any time, and yet, although they are not falsifiable, they must not be propositions that are de dicto necessary because what they signify is contingent. If Ockham’s definition of de dicto necessity were accepted, fatalism would seem to result, because necessarily true propositions about future contingent events could be formed about any such event. Crathorn’s argument depends, however, on being able to say that prior to time b when a will take place, it is not even proper to say that the proposition: ‘a will happen at time b,’ could be false. Campsall, Ockham, Strelley and Holcot would all have disagreed with Crathorn,

79

See note 43 above.

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for they would have argued, citing the possiblity of a counterfactual past, that while prior to b the proposition: ‘a will happen at time b,’ is true it could be false and never have been true. The possibility of its being false could coexist with the impossibility that it change from being true to being false, because if it were false, it would always have been false and never have been true. Unlike Strelley and Holcot, Crathorn did not believe one could subordinate the necessity of the past to any contingent frame. He argued that although it is true that a can not happen at b, because a is a future contingent, yet what is true does not imply what is impossible, and it is impossible that God could not have known that a will happen at b. The reason God could not not have known that a would happen is that if God knows that a will happen, that becomes a truth about the past and the necessity of the past would preclude God’s not knowing or even being able not to know that a will happen at b.80 Thus the necessity of the past and the necessity of God’s knowledge of future contingents are absolute necessities for Crathorn, not subordinate to an encompassing contingent frame of possible alternative histories. Ockham had in effect argued that God’s knowledge does not constitute states of belief, that to know something or not to know something is exactly the same for God,81 so that there would have been no past fact of the matter subject to per accidens necessity. But Crathorn’s argument shows him to have disagreed. God’s knowledge about the future becomes a fact about the past, and as such necessary. If one were to argue, like Bonaventure, Ockham and Strelley, that past tense propositions signifying something about the future are not subject to the necessity of the past, so although God knew that a would happen in the future, he could still not have known it, Crathorn rejected the argument. He asserted that if the divine essence at some past moment were the knowledge (scientia) of the true proposition: ‘a 80 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Decima octava conclusio est: Si a est futurum in b, deus scivit ab aeterno quod a erit in b, et tamen a posse non fore in b non arguit deum posse nescivisse a futurum in b. Et probatur ista sicut praecedens, quia a posse non fore in b est consequens ad istam: Deus scivit ab aeterno a fore in b. Secundo probatur sic, quia verum non infert impossibile. Sed haec est vera: “A potest non fore in b,” haec autem impossibilis: Deus potest nescivisse a fore in b, igitur etc. Quod autem sit impossibile hanc esse veram: Deus potest nescivisse vel non scivisse a futurum in b in aliquo instanti citra b, si deus scivit a futurum in b, probo primo, quia haec est de praeterito: Deus scivit quod a erit in b; igitur postquam a est futurum in b, deus non potest non scivisse a futurum in b.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 490, ll. 1–11. 81 Calvin Normore notes this about Ockham in ‘Future Contingents,’ CHLMP, 372.

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will happen,’ it would be impossible that there not have been knowledge of that proposition at that moment.82 This seemed self-evident to Crathorn, for as he said: The well disposed intellect of anyone or the intellect of anyone well disposed would know this as false: ‘God knew that a is future and God can [present tense] not have known that a is future,’ as anyone can experience in himself.83

And then raising the possibility that seems to follow from a past counterfactual analysis of contingency that some person loyal to the faith who believed that there would be a resurrection of the dead, could possibly not have believed that that would be future, Crathorn asserted such an idea ‘is not intelligible.’84 He argued: If a is future in b, God from eternity knew that a is future in b, nor can he in mode [i.e. possibly] not have known that a will be future in b, nor in any moment prior to b can God not know or not have known that a is future in b…85 82 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Dicitur quod licet ista sit de praeterito, tamen dependet a futuro, et ideo licet deus scivit a esse futurum, tamen potest non scivisse. Contra: Licet ista: “Deus scivit quod a est futurum in b,” formetur de futuro, tamen si divina essentia in aliquo instanti praeterito fuit scientia istius complexi veri: “A est futurum,” non potest non fuisse scientia istius complexi in illo instanti.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 490, ll. 11–16. Both Strelley and Holcot used the argument to which Crathorn objected: Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Sed contra, pono quod Deus revelet alicui aliquod futurum, tunc scientia quae est nova res posita in isto, et tamen illud futurum est contingens. Ideo dico eodem modo de scientia hominis respectu futurorum quando est, et de scientia Dei, quia enim haec est propositio, iste est actus scientia demonstrando talem notitiam, dependet ab una de futuro quae est contingens, sicut experimur…’ Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 29va. Holcot, in Quod. III, q. 2, asking: ‘Utrum ista consequentia sic necessaria: “Deus scit a fore ergo a erit.” Significet a unum futurum contingens?’ responded: ‘Unde, quandocumque aliqua propositio habet multas exponentes, si una earum sit contingens, illa tota propositio est contingens. Modo, ista propositio: “Deus scit a fore” aequivalet isti copulative: “Deus assentit huic complexo: ‘a erit,’ et ita erit quod a erit,” cuius secunda pars est contingens per positum.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 74, ll. 23–26. 83 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Immo intellectus cuiuscumque bene dispositus vel bene dispositi horreret istam sicut falsam: “Deus scivit quod a est futurum” et “Deus potest non scivisse quod a est futurum,” sicut quilibet potest experiri in seipso.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 490, ll. 16–19. 84 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Praeterea secundum ista aliquis fidelis, qui credidit resurrectionem mortuorum esse futuram, posset modo non credidisse ipsam esse futuram, quod non est intelligibile.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 490, ll. 19–21. 85 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Ideo dico, si a est futurum in b, deus ab aeterno scivit quod a est futurum in b, nec potest modo non scivisse quod a est futurum in b, nec in aliquo instanti citra b potest deus non scire vel non scivisse quod a est futurum in b…’ Ed. Hoffmann, 490, ll. 22–24.

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Crathorn’s position echos that of Aquinas, for Aquinas had conceded the absolute necessity that God’s knowledge about some future contingent event, as eternal and, therefore, a fact about the past, means that the antecedent in the consequence: ‘If God knew that this would happen in the future, this will happen,’ is absolutely necessary, and the consequent, too, is necessary by the necessity of the consequent.86 Aquinas had also rejected Bonaventure’s idea that true past tense propositions about future events, because they refer to the future, are contingent rather than necessary. As he argued, that would not obviate the necessity of such an antecedent, because anything with some relation to the future, necessarily had that relation (because past), even though the future does not always happen as predicted.87 Aquinas tried to solve the difficulties God’s knowledge posed for the contingency of the future by arguing that God knows all events in an eternal present, so that it would not be correct to say that he knows them prior to their existence, and, therefore, the necessity that both the antecedent and consequent have are only the less problematic suppositional necessity of the present.88 Between Aquinas and Crathorn, however, lay Scotus’ criticism of the Boethian/Thomist conception of eternity and Ockham’s argument that God knows past, present and future as past, present and future. Crathorn seems to have accepted a view like Ockham’s about God’s knowledge of temporal events, but Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 14, art. 13, ob. 2: ‘Praeterea, omnis conditionalis cujus antecedens est necessarium absolute, consequens est necessarium absolute; sic enim se habet antecedens ad consequens sicut principia ad conclusionem… Sed haec est quaedam conditionalis vera: Si deus scivit hoc futurum esse, hoc erit: quia scientia non est nisi verorum. Hujus autem conditionalis antecedens est necessarium absolute: tum quia est aeternum; tum quia significatur ut praeteritum. Ergo et consequens est necessarium absolute. Ergo quidquid scitur a Deo est necessarium: et sic scientia Dei non est contingentium.’ In ST 4:46. To which Aquinas conceded: ‘Unde dicendum est quod hoc antecedens est necessarium absolute.’ In ST 4:48. 87 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 14, art. 13: ‘Ad secundum dicendum quod quidam dicunt quod hoc antecedens, “Deus scivit hoc contingens futurum,” non est necessarium sed contingens: quia licet sit praeteritum, tamen importat respectum ad futurum.—Sed hoc non tollit ei necessitatem; quia id quod habuit respectum ad futurum, necesse est habuisse, licet etiam futurum non sequatur quandoque.’ In ST 4:48. 88 Aquinas, ST, prima pars, q. 14, art. 13: ‘Et ideo aliter dicendum est quod quando in antecedente ponitur aliquid pertinens ad actum animae, consequens est accipiendum non secundum quod in se est, sed secundum quod est in anima: aliud enim est esse rei in seipsa, et esse rei in anima… Et similiter, si dicam, “si Deus scivit aliquid, illud erit,” consequens intelligendum est prout subest divinae scientiae, scilicet prout est in sua praesentialitate. Et sic necessarium est, sicut et antecedens, quia omne quod est, quando est, necesse est esse, ut dicitur in Periherm.’ In ST 4:48, 50. 86

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his acceptance of the necessity of the past as an absolute necessity prevented him from adopting two of the strategies of his contemporaries for reconciling divine foreknowledge and future contingency: 1) the analysis of contingency in terms of a possible counterfactual past, and 2) the idea that true propositions in the past tense referring to events in the future, like the proposition: ‘God knew from all eternity that the Antichrist will come,’ retained the contingency of propositions simply about future events.89 Therefore, Crathorn chose to respond differently than had Aquinas.90 He argued instead that neither the antecedent nor the consequent in the consequence ‘God knew that a will be, therefore, a will be,’ could be de dicto necessary, because the contingent status of all propositions, existing as contingent creatures, means that no proposition is necessary. Any proposition could never have existed, and so no necessity attaches to it. Without de dicto necessity of the antecedent, there could be no necessity of the consequent. Strelley and Holcot relativized the necessity of the past to some over-arching contingency, rendering it a secundum quid necessity, while analyzing puzzles through the techniques of disputation de obligatione. Crathorn did not avail himself of these techniques. When, for example, he approached the question of whether or not the contingency of future events raised the possibility that God might be deceived, there is no evidence of the ars obligatoria in his reply. He argued: 1). if a will happen at some future time b, 2). that God then knew from all eternity that a will happen at b, 3). and that a, as a future contingent event, could possibly not happen at time b, that the truth of those three propositions did not raise the possibility that: 4). God could not have known that a will happen at time b.91 89

Note Chatton’s rejection of the same maneuvers. Ria van der Lecq, ‘William Heytebury on “Necessity,” in The Rise of British Logic, ed. Osmund Lewry, Acts of the Sixth European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Toronto, 1983), 249–263, argues that continued adherence to the concept of a per accidens necessity of the past during the fourteenth century indicates a continuity between thirteenth-century statistical models of modality and fourteenth-century conceptions. But William Crathorn’s position, for one, should be proof against such an automatic inference. At least among the Dominicans, fourteenth-century modal theory was a complex and subtle affair, and Heytesbury was in a position to have known about the views of Strelley, Crathorn and Holcot. 91 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 13: ‘Ad primum dicendum quod si a est futurum in b, deus ab aeterno scivit quod a erit in b, et ista: “Deus scivit quod a erit in b,” bene infert istam: “A erit in b” ita quod consequentia ista est bona et necessaria, si fiat. Et quando 90

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The reason Crathorn believed the contingency of a raised no such possibility, lay in a rule of inference: the truth of the consequent does not imply that the antecedent can be false.92 In a valid consequence with a true antecedent, the truth of the consequent gives one no grounds, from that fact alone, for inferences about the modal status of the antecedent. Crathorn cited the example of the consequence: ‘a man runs, therefore a man is moved.’ From the truth of the consequent: ‘a man is moved,’ one cannot infer that the antecedent: ‘a man runs,’ could be false. Of course, the antecedent might be false in fact, because it is a proposition about a contingent state of affairs, but the possibility of its falsity does not follow from the truth of its consequent. Thus in the consequence: ‘future contingent a will be, therefore a can not be,’ the truth of the consequent: ‘a can not be,’ does not imply that the antecedent: ‘future contingent a will be,’ can be false.93 Crathorn concluded that because of this rule: … men argue badly and are deceived in arguing when they make consequences of the sort: a will happen at time b, and a can not happen at time b, therefore, the [proposition]: ‘a will happen at time b,’ can be false.

dicitur quod antecedens est necessarium, igitur consequens, dico quod antecedens est ista propositio: “Deus scivit ab aeterno quod a erit in b,” et consequens est haec propositio: “A erit in b,” et sicut patet ex supradictis, nulla propositio est necessario vera, quia nulla propositio est necessario. Ideo istud antecedens non est necessario verum sed contingenter est verum, sicut contingenter est, et potest non esse verum, sicut potest non esse et potest esse falsum, quia si a est futurum in b instanti, adveniente b et producto a in b instanti haec erit falsa: “Deus scivit quod a erit in b.” Concedo tamen, si a est futurum in b, quod haec: ‘Deus scivit ab aeterno quod a erit in b,’ erit vera in quolibet instanti, si formetur in quolibet instanti citra b, et impossibile est hanc esse falsam in aliquo instanti citra b: “Deus scivit ab aeterno quod a erit in b.”’ Ed. Hoffmann, 491, ll. 16–29. 92 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Decima quarta conclusio est quod posse a esse vel hanc esse veram: “A potest non esse,” non infert hanc posse esse falsam: “A erit.” Probo quia consequens esse verum non infert antecedens posse esse falsum. Quando enim consequentia aliqua est bona, ex hoc quod consequens est verum non potest concludi quod antecedens potest esse falsum…’ Ed. Hoffmann, 486, ll. 33–37. 93 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘… sicut patet in ista: “Homo currit; igitur homo movetur.” Ex hoc enim quod haec est vera: “Homo movetur,” non sequitur quod haec posset esse falsa: “Homo currit.” Ista enim consequentia nihil valet: Haec est vera: “Homo movetur; igitur haec potest esse falsa: Homo currit.” Licet enim haec possit esse falsa: “Homo currit,” non tamen sequitur ipsam posse esse falsam, et hoc quia ista, quae est suum consequens, est vera: “Homo movetur.” sed ista: “A erit,” si est vera, infert istam esse veram: “A non potest esse”; tenet enim consequentia erga me. Igitur ex hoc quod haec est vera: “A potest non esse,” non potest concludi quod haec potest esse falsa: “A erit,” si a erit et haec propositio: “A erit” formetur et intelligatur modo praedicto.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 486, l. 37–487, l. 6.

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and: a will happen at time b, [and] God knew that a will happen at time b, and a could not happen at time b, therefore, God can not have known that a will happen at time b.94

All such consequences ought to be denied because they infer that the antecedent can be false from nothing more than the truth of the consequent.95 It is not clear whether Crathorn believed his prohibitions against such consequences would nullify the sort of challenge Scotus, Strelley and Holcot perceived obligatio might pose: ‘a will happen, and a can not happen, therefore, since the impossible does not follow from the possible, let it be the case that a will not happen.’ In the obligational argument, what warrants the move to ‘let it be posed the case that a will not happen,’ is the consequent itself: ‘a can not happen,’ along with the instantiation rule that the impossible does not follow from the possible. While the truth of the consequent is necessary for the obligational argument to proceed, some supposed possibility that the antecedent may be false because of the truth of the consequent is not what produces the inference: ‘Let it be the case that a will not happen,’ which constitutes the key move in the obligational sequence. Rather the material content of the consequent: ‘a can not happen,’ not just its truth, along with the rule that the impossible does not follow from the possible, validates the inference. Crathorn’s rule did not directly address the basic obligational challenge, nor is it clear that he even intended for his rule to counter that challenge. But whether he perceived the obligational challenge or not, Crathorn’s rule of inference would not have countered that challenge effectively. Crathorn departed from the strategies for dealing with future contingency and foreknowledge of his predecessor Arnold of Strelley, and Crathorn’s position amounted to a severe critique of the tradition to which Strelley belonged. When Robert Holcot lectured on God’s fore94 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Ex istis concludo quod homines male arguunt et sunt decepti in arguendo, quando faciunt tales consequentias: “A erit in b et a potest non esse in b; igitur haec potest esse falsa: A erit in b.” “Deus scivit quod a erit in b et a potest non esse in b; igitur deus potest non scire quod a erit in b.” “Deus scivit quod a erit in b et a poterit non esse in b; igitur deus potest non scivisse quod a erit in b.”’ Ed. Hoffmann, 493, ll. 2–7. 95 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 19: ‘Omnes tales consequentiae negandae sunt, quia arguitur antecedens posse esse falsum ex hoc quod consequens est verum, qui modus arguendi nihil valet …’ Ed. Hoffmann, 493, ll. 9–11.

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knowledge during 1331–1332, his first year of commenting on the Sentences, he launched a vigorous defense of the positions Campsall, Ockham and Strelley had previously advanced. Relativization of the necessity of the past to a contingent frame; the rule of Bonaventure, Ockham, et al. that past tense propositions about future contingents remain contingent; assertion of the possibility of a counterfactual past; the fourvalued system of Campsall and Strelley; and analysis using the ars obligatoria, were all included in the repertoire of his doctrine of future contingents. Holcot’s Sentences commentary and Quodlibeta contain a number of complex arguments against what he had termed the common position: that propositions about future contingents can be true, yet contingently true because they can never have been true. By the time of Holcot, analysis of future contingency in terms of a possible counterfactual past was sufficiently developed to have produced sophisticated counterarguments. Several of the arguments Holcot alleged against his position posed complex challenges de obligatione. Others concerned the worry that the possibility of a counterfactual past would allow for the undoing of particular past events or for propositions about the past to go from being true to being false. But nowhere did he address Crathorn’s concerns explicitly. Crathorn only took up the issue of future contingents in the next to last question of his Sentences commentary. If he lectured over a biennium, it is possible that he lectured on this issue at the same time that Holcot did, or even after Holcot, later in the academic year, since Holcot continued lecturing on two more questions in Book II of his commentary after the question on future contingents. Fritz Hoffmann has suggested that several of Crathorn’s arguments seem to refer to Holcot’s text,96 but the arguments Hoffmann alleges may have already arisen within what seems to have been a complex context of debate. While Crathorn’s criticisms may have figured in the development of Holcot’s position (or vice versa), Holcot did not seem to have considered them a challenge worthy of particular response. The sophistication of his own position would seem to bear him out.

96 See Fritz Hoffmann, Die theologische Methode des Oxforder Dominikanerlehrers Robert Holcot, BGPTM n. s. 5 (Münster, 1972), 358–367, who was the first to recognize the opposition between Crathorn and Holcot on future contingents.

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Crathorn accepted the Ockhamist criticism of the traditional Boethian picture of God’s knowledge of time that had had such importance for Aquinas. Like Ockham, Crathorn considered God’s knowledge of past, present and future to be temporally objective, not abstracted from the world’s temporal arrow in some transcendant eternal present. However, he retained the Thomist view of the necessity of the past as an absolute necessity that, once in play, could not be subordinated to any contingent frame. God’s antecedent knowledge of future contingents constituted a necessary fact. Analysis of the necessity of the past in terms of a possible counterfactual past was simply unintelligible to him. Thomas Bradwardine also rejected the position Campsall, Ockham, Strelley and Holcot had developed, but from arguments the inverse of Crathorn’s.97 Bradwardine returned to the tradition of Anselm, Grosseteste and Scotus that stressed God’s antecedent will. Because God’s will is antecedent to all of history, all of history is determined. Bradwardine also agreed with Scotus that God knows everything, past, present and future, in one moment of understanding, and he argued that God sees everything along an arrow reversing the temporal order: God first sees the future, then the present, then the past. Unlike Scotus, however, Bradwardine resurrected the Boethian image of God’s knowledge of time as perspectival, analogous to the relation of the center of a circle to its circumference. Thus unlike Scotus, Bradwardine believed God’s knowledge did cross over into the past. The past, like the future and present, was open to God’s knowledge and will. In combining the Boethian perspectival view of time with a Scotist picture of the contingency of divine will, Bradwardine concluded that nothing was absolutely necessary in itself, not even the past. However, because God’s contingent will could not be denied, the created order was governed by a consequent necessity predestining everything that happens. Just as the past and future were in the same way contingent, so they were also in the same way necessary. Propositions about past, present and future were not modally differentiated.98 97 Hoffmann, Die theologische Methode, 362–363, and 365, links Crathorn to Bradwardine as an opposition group, but there seem to me to be far too many differences between them to pose such an alliance. 98 The summary of Bradwardine’s position relies largely on Normore, ‘Future Con-

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How various theologians understood the relation of God’s intellect and will to temporal succession emerges as a key factor in differentiating their views about necessity and contingency. For those like Ockham, Strelley, and Holcot, who believed that God’s knowledge and will track the temporal arrow, a differentiation of propositions about past and present from propositions about the future represented an objective difference for God as well as for human beings. They regarded the past, once past, as necessary with a consequent necessity, subordinate to God’s initial contingent will. God could have brought about some other world or have ordered this world differently, so that the world always could have been different than it is. But once past, the past is not afterwards open to any will. However, they did not believe that necessity governs the future. The future remains open both to divine and human choice. Thus propositions about the future are modally differentiated from those about the past. Within an order so construed, the freedom to choose well or ill might serve as the pivot for merit or grace throughout human history. For those like Scotus and Bradwardine who argued that God knows events in an order reversing the temporal arrow, contingency and necessity are immediately relative to God’s will. God’s will is completely free to have chosen other than it does, but having willed all in one instant of creation, future contingency is purely a matter of God’s freedom to have chosen otherwise and not the indeterminacy of events that have not yet happened. Consequent necessity governs all events, whether temporally future, present or past. Because Scotus rejected the perspectival view of God’s relation to time, questions about the necessity of the past became irrelevant to God who knows through an order of logical priority from contingent possibility to the single temporally present moment of his creative act. Differentiation of propositions about past, present and future could have meaning only within human experience. In resurrecting the perspectival view, Bradwardine again confronted the question of whether propositions about past, present and future were modally differentiated for God. Holding a position

tingents,’ CHLMP, 374–375; also see idem, ‘Scotus, Modality, Instants of Nature and the Contingency of the Present,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood, and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 172–174; Genest, Prédétermination et liberté, 76–86; and with caution, Edith Wilks Dolnikowski, Thomas Bradwardine: A View of Time and a Vision of Eternity in Fourteenth-Century Thought (Leiden, 1995), 165–207.

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otherwise much like that of Scotus, Bradwardine concluded that propositions were not modally distinct because of their different temporal references. Past, present and future were all contingent in the sense that God’s will was not bound, but all were equally necessary with a consequent or ‘respective’ necessity, a necessity occasioned by God’s actual choice. Past and future were open and equally so to God’s will, but the future was not open to human choice any more than the past. On free will and contingency, the Dominicans stood in complex relationship to Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. All argued that propositions about past and present were modally distinct from propositions about the future. All rejected any form of predestinarian determinism, with only Strelley showing a hint of compatibilism. While Strelley and Holcot on the one hand and Crathorn on the other treated the troubling necessities arising from the immutability of the past and from God’s knowledge of future contingents quite differently, each found a way to preserve a wide latitude for contingency. Strelley and Holcot followed the basic Ockhamist position with the exception of Ockham’s view that God has determinately true knowledge of future contingents, for which they substituted the view that God has indeterminately true knowledge, advocating a multi-valued propositional classification. Crathorn agreed with Ockham’s views about the determinate nature of God’s foreknowledge, but rejected his definition of necessity along with the de dicto necessity traditionally and commonly ascribed to propositions. Thus Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham, all three influenced the Dominican theologians in constructing their theories of future contingency, Ockham perhaps the most in both positive and negative ways, but no single school of thought characterized Dominican theology at the time. Instead the Dominicans engaged in intricate dialogue with the arguments of their predecessors and each other, implicitly as well as explicitly, by omission as well as commission, giving evidence of a lively and varied intellectual life within the order at Oxford.

chapter seven INVINCIBLE IGNORANCE

Robert Holcot’s view of the world as a potentially deceptive place and his concommitant emphasis on the intention of the believer as the key to merit and salvation, developed within the context of a general fourteenth-century debate about the possibility for the viator to have evident knowledge.1 Scotus inaugurated the discussion on two fronts, one concerning complex propositional knowledge and the other concerning incomplex knowledge of things. Aristotle had contended in the Posterior Analytics that scientific knowledge was knowledge of what was necessary, eternal and could not be otherwise.2 But Scotus’ contention that God’s will acted completely contingently in creating the world eliminated all simple causal necessity and restricted necessity in Aristotle’s sense to the divine being alone. Aristotelian demonstrative science, the evident knowledge resulting from properly formed syllogisms with necessary premisses, became impossible in the terms traditionally understood.3 In response to the difficulty, as Eilene Serene has pointed out, Scotus reinterpreted the purpose of demonstrative science so that its object was no longer to discover what was necessary in nature but what was possible or compossible. Present tense propositions, true about the world, were for Scotus in no sense necessary in the requisite way, either de dicto or de re, but necessary truths of the sort required for Aristotelian demonstration could still be formulated in the order of possibility. While there is no necessity that God create the world, the possibility that God create 1 The two most important discussions are Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham (Notre Dame, 1988), 1:551–629; and Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1345 (Leiden, 1988), who provides a particularly extensive treatment of the debate and a comprehensive bibliography. 2 Aristoteles, Analytica Posteriora 1.33.88b30–35. 3 Eilene Serene, ‘Demonstrative Science,’ in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzman, Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge, 1982), 509–510. Also see A. Vos, ‘Knowledge, Certainty and Contingency,’ in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosphy Medium Aevum, 75–88, for a general discussion of the relationship between Scotus’ views on certainty and contingency.

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the world is necessary; while it is not necessary that any of the things in the world exist, the possibility that they exist is necessary.4 For Scotus, then, science primarily concerned propositions about what can occur, and the propositions of science were necessary de dicto, not de re.5 Second, Scotus raised the issue of whether the senses and intellect could obtain evident incomplex knowledge about the external world or interior states of mind. Henry of Ghent had questioned the degree of evident certainty the mind could have from sense experience given that the mind was mutable and unstable and that the mutable mind must know the world through still more mutable representations, the sensible species. Henry, as the last of the great Augustinian Neo-Platonists, had argued a special divine illumination granted only to theologians enabled them to see the correspondence between the things of the actual world and their ultimate immutable divine exemplars, thus providing at least theologians with an immutable source of evident certainty.6 But Scotus argued that if Henry were right, no one would have certainty about anything. The mutable mind would be unable to distinguish divine exemplars from worldly ones,7 and everyone would be 4 John Duns Scotus, Quodlibeta, q. 7: ‘Tamen de contingentibus sunt quaedam veritates necessariae, non quidem de actu eorum sed de possibilitate, et illae etiam modo praedicto sciri possunt: utpote, “Deus est potens creare,” “potens resuscitare,” “potens beatificare” et sic de aliis articulis fidei respicientibus contingentiam …’ In Cuestiones cuodlibetales: Obras del Doctor Sutil Juan Duns Escoto, ed. with a Spanish trans. Felix Alluntis (Madrid, 1968), 263. 5 Serene, ‘Demonstrative Science,’ 510. 6 For an exposition of Henry’s views from the Summa, Art. I, qq. 1 et 2, see Peter C. Vier, Evidence and its Function According to John Duns Scotus (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1951), 11–15. Also see Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 28–39; Jerome V. Brown, ‘Divine Illumination in Henry of Ghent,’ RTAM 41 (1974): 177–199; idem, ‘John Duns Scotus on Henry of Ghent’s Arguments for Divine Illumination: the Statement of the Case,’ Vivarium 14 (1976): 94–113; idem, ‘Duns Scotus on the Possibility of Knowing Genuine Truth: The Reply to Henry of Ghent in the “Lectura Prima” and in the “Ordinatio,”’ RTAM 51 (1984): 136–182; Stephen D. Dumont, ‘Theology as a Science and Duns Scotus’s Distinction between Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition,’ Speculum 64 (1989): 579–599. 7 John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4: ‘Istae rationes videntur concludere impossiblitatem certae cognitionis naturalis. Prima, quia si objectum continue mutatur, nec potest haberi aliqua certitudo de ipso sub ratione immutabilis, immo nec in quocumque lumine posset certitudo haberi, quia non est certitudo quando objectum alio modo cognoscitur quam se habet. Igitur nec est certitudo cognoscendo mutabile ut immutabile… Similiter, si propter mutabilitatem exemplaris quod est in anima nostra non posset esse certitudo, cum quidquid ponitur in anima subjective sit mutabile, etiam ipse actus intelligendi, sequitur quod per nihil in anima rectificatur anima ne erret.’ In Opera omnia, ed. Charles Balic, vol. 3 (Vatican City, 1954), 133, l. 5–134, l.6.

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subject to invincible ignorance. In the process of rebutting the skepticism he believed Henry’s position entailed, Scotus revived the arguments Augustine had used to refute the skepticism of the Academicians, injecting the late-antique debate about human certainty into medieval arguments about epistemology.8 Scotus countered the problem of skepticism on four fronts. First, he noted that there are self-evident principles and conclusions whose terms are so identical that when the mind unites them in a proposition, the propositional identity statement conforms so completely with the identity of the terms themselves that the proposition is self-evident to any mind that forms it. Conversely, some terms are so antagonistic to each other that a negative proposition denying the identity of the terms will also be self-evident. The principle of non-contradiction, the principle of excluded middle, and propositions like: ‘the whole is greater than any of its parts,’ would be examples of such self-evident principles. Scotus contended that by using such self-evident principles, the mind can have evident knowledge even if sense experience is faulty. Even if we perceive that what is black is white and what is white is black, we will not fail to recognize that black is not white.9 Second, In particular see Augustine, Contra Academicos 3, c. 10–13, in CCL 29 (Turnholt, 1970), 47–52, for his discussion of perception and deceptive experience. 9 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4: ‘… termini principiorum per se notorum talem habent identitatem ut alter evidenter necessario alterum includat, et ideo intellectus, componens illos terminos, ex quo apprehendit eos—habet apud se necessariam causam conformitatis illius actus componendi ad ipsos terminos quorum est compositio, {et etiam causam evidentem talis conformitatis; et ideo necessario patet sibi illa conformitas cuius causam evidentem apprehendit in terminis.} … Confirmatur ratio ista per simile, per Philosophum IV Metaphysicae, ubi vult quod oppositum primi principii non potest in intellectu alicuius venire, scilicet huius “‘impossibile idem esse et non esse,’ quia tunc essent opinones contrariae simul in mente”; … Ita arguam in proposito repugnantiam aliquam intellectionum in mente, licet non formalem. Si enim stat in intellectu notitia “totius” et “partis” et compositio eorum, cum ista includant sicut causa necessaria conformitatem compositionis ad terminos, si stet in intellectu haec opinio quod ipsa compositio sit falsa—stabunt notitiae repugnantes, non formaliter, sed notitia una stabit cum alia et tamen erit causa necessaria oppositae notitiae ad illam, quod est impossibile. Sicut enim impossibile est album et nigrum simul stare, quia sunt contraria formaliter, ita impossibile est simul stare album et illud quod est praecise causa nigri—ita necessario quod non potest esse sine eo absque contradictione… Sed numquid in ista notitia principiorum et conclusionum non errabit intellectus, si sensus omnes decipiantur circa terminos? Respondeo—quantum ad istam notitiam—quod intellectus non habet sensus pro causa, sed tantum pro occasione, quia intellectus non potest habere notitiam simpli8

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evident knowledge can also derive directly from experience through a Principle of Induction: ‘Whatever occurs in a great many instances through a cause that is not free, is the natural effect of that cause.’10 Natural causes cannot produce effects aside from what it is their nature to produce. The interference of chance events with such causal action will be the exception, not the rule. Therefore, frequent observations of apparent causal connections provide evidence that a causal connection in fact exists.11 If from such observations the observer using induction may work back to a self-evident principle, then what was surmised will be known with the greatest certainty through a demonstration propter quid because the reason will be known why the predicate inheres in the subject of the conclusion of the demonstration that a cause has produced a certain effect. If the observer is not able to work back to a self-evident principle, then at least he or she will know that what

cium nisi acceptam a sensibus; illa tamen accepta, virtute sua potest simul componere simplicia,—et si ex ratione talium simplicium sit complexio evidenter vera, intellectus virtute propria et terminorum assentiet illi complexioni, non virtute sensus a quo accipit terminos exterius.’ In Opera omnia 3:138, l. 9–141, l. 2. The brackets {} indicate an addition Scotus himself made to the text. 10 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4: ‘De secundis cognoscibilibus, scilicet de cognitis per experientiam, dico quod licet experientia non habeatur de omnibus singularibus sed de pluribus, neque quod semper sed quod pluries, tamen expertus infallibiliter novit quia ita est et semper et in omnibus—et hoc per istam propositionem quiescentem in anima: “quidquid evenit ut in pluribus ab aliqua causa non libera, est effectus naturalis illius causae”; quae propositio nota est intellectui licet accepisset terminos eius a sensu errante…’ In Opera omnia 3:141, l. 18–142, l. 4. Scotus’ treatment of induction has been the subject of discussion. Some have considered it close to the modern model, and he has been credited with being its founder before Francis Bacon. See Vier, Evidence, 136–152; and P. Raymond, ‘La Théorie de l’Induction—Duns Scot précurseur de Bacon,’ Études Franciscaines 21 (1919): 113–126; 270–279. But others have taken him as less innovative: see Julius R. Weinberg, Abstraction, Relation, and Induction: Three Essays in the History of Thought (Madison, 1965), 121–153; Eilene F. Serene, ‘Robert Grosseteste on Induction and Demonstrative Science,’ Synthese 40 (1979): 97–115; Steven P. Marrone, ‘Robert Grosseteste on the Certitude of Induction,’ in L’homme et son univers au Moyen Age, ed. Christian Wenin, vol. 2, Actes du septième congrès international de philosophie médiévale (Louvain-la-neuve, 1986), 481–499; E.P. Bos, ‘A Contribution to the History of Theories of Induction in the Middle Ages,’ in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, ed. Klaus Jacobi (Leiden, 1993), 553–576. 11 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4: ‘… causa non libera non potest producere “ut in pluribus” effectum non libere ad cuius oppositum ordinatur, vel ad quem ex sua forma non ordinatur. Sed causa casualis ordinatur ad producendum oppositum effectus casualis, vel non ad illum producendum,—ergo nihil est causa casualis effectus respectu frequenter producti ab eo, et ita, si non sit libera, erit causa naturalis.’ In Opera omnia 3:142, l.4–9.

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was observed is most probably the case.12 Third, people have evident knowledge of their own acts because such acts are known immediately in themselves. Therefore, even if a sense is deluded by some illusion, still one is certain that one sees, hears, or otherwise senses and that the sense is activated, even if what is seen, heard, or otherwise sensed is an illusion. The same ability for people to know their own inner states and acts also ensures that they know when they are awake and not asleep, dreaming.13 Finally, human beings can have certitude about their sense experience if the information from all of their senses is in agreement about the object sensed, for the principle of induction allows the conclusion that what is sensed in a certain way in the 12 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4: ‘Sed ulterius notandum, quod quandoque accipitur experientia de conclusione, puta quod luna frequenter eclipsatur, et tunc, supposita conclusione quia ita est, inquiritur causa talis conclusionis per viam divisionis: et quandoque devenitur ex conclusione experta ad principia nota ex terminis, et tunc ex tali principio noto ex terminis potest conclusio, prius tantum secundum experientiam nota, certius cognosci, scilicet primo genere cognitionis, quia ut deducta ex principio per se noto,—sicut istud est per se notum quod “opacum, interpositum inter perspicuum et lumen, impedit multiplicationem luminis ad tale perspicuum.” Et si inventum fuerit per divisionem quod terra tale est corpus, interpositum inter solem et lunam, scietur certissime demonstratione propter quid (quia per causam), et non tantum per experientiam, sicut sciebatur ista conclusio ante inventionem principii. Quandoque autem est experientia de principio, ita quod non contingit per viam divisionis invenire ulterius principium notum ex terminis, sed statur in aliquo “vero” “ut in pluribus,” cuius extrema per experimentum scitum est frequenter uniri, puta quod haec herba talis speciei est calida,—nec invenitur medium aliud prius, per quod demonstretur passio de subiecto propter quid, sed statur in isto sicut primo noto, propter experientias: licet tunc incertitudo et fallibilitas removeantur per istam propositionem “effectus ut in pluribus alicuius causae non liberae est naturalis effectus eius,” tamen iste est ultimus gradus cognitionis scientificae. Et forte ibi non habetur cognitio actualis unionis extremorum, sed aptitudinalis. Si enim passio est alia res, absoluta, a subiecto, posset sine contradictione separari a subiecto, et expertus non haberet cognitionem quia ita est, sed quia ita aptum natum est esse.’ In Opera omnia 3:143, l. 3–144, l. 10. For the role of deduction in Scotus’ philosophy and theology, see Mechthild Dreyer, ‘Wissenschaft als Satzsystem: Die Theoremata des Johannes Duns Scotus und die Entwicklung des kategorisch-deduktiven Wissenschaftsbegriffs,’ in John Duns Scotus: Metaphysics and Ethics, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Rega Wood and Mechthild Dreyer (Leiden, 1996), 87–105. 13 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4: ‘De tertiis cognoscibilibus, scilicet de actibus nostris, dico quod est certitudo de multis eorum sicut de primis et per se notis … Et sicut est certitudo de “vigilare” sicut de per se noto, ita etiam de multis aliis actibus qui sunt in poteste nostra (ut “me intelligere,” “me audire”), et de aliis qui sunt actus perfecti. Licet enim non sit certitudo quod videam album extra positum vel in tali subiecto vel in tali distantia, quia potest fieri illusio in medio vel organo, et multis aliis viis, tamen certitudo est quod video etiam si illusio fiat in organo…’ In Opera omnia 3:144, l. 11–145, l. 13.

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majority of cases is correctly sensed in that way. Thus sense knowledge in conjunction with self-evident principles and self awareness gives rise to certainty about what is known.14 Among his arguments, Scotus did not take up the question of whether God’s power to intervene in the world might constitute a source of human uncertainty. But the principles that God can do whatever does not involve a contradiction and that as first cause, God can cause any effect immediately that he normally effects mediately through secondary causes, suggested almost simultaneously to Peter Auriol at Paris and William of Ockham at Oxford that God could by his absolute power conserve an intuitive cognition, the cognitive apprehension of some object as present and existing in external reality, after having destroyed the object that caused it.15 These principles added a theological dimension to the question of whether human beings might have evident, incomplex knowledge, and the successors of Auriol and Ockham, as a matter of course, incorporated into the discussion of human certainty concerns about God’s power to cause the cognition that an object is present when the object is not. The dependence of the world on God’s contingent will meant not only that things could have been otherwise, but that they might in fact be otherwise than people perceive them. The contingency of causality made it so. By the time the Dominicans Arnold of Strelley, Hugh of Lawton, William Crathorn and Robert Holcot commented on Peter Lombard’s Sentences in the 1320’s and 1330’s, discussion of whether people could have evident certainty about anything was a necessary prolegomenon to developing a theology, and the terms of the debate were those Scotus, Auriol and Ockham had set.

Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 3, pars 1, q. 4: ‘Respondeo. Aut circa tale cognitum eadem opposita apparent diversis sensibus, aut non, sed omnes sensus cognoscentes illud, habent idem iudicium de eo. Si secundo modo, tunc certitudo habetur de veritate talis cogniti per sensus, et per istam propositionem praecedentem “quod evenit in pluribus ab aliquo, illud est causa naturalis eius, si non sit causa libera.” Ergo cum ab ipso, praesente, “ut in pluribus” evenit talis immutatio sensus, sequitur quod immutatio, vel species genita, sit effectus naturalis talis causae, et ita tale extra erit album vel calidum, vel tale aliquid quale natum est praesentari per speciem, genitam ab ipso “ut in pluribus.”’ In Opera omnia 3:146, l. 14–147, l. 4. 15 See Rega Wood, ‘Intuitive Cognition and Divine Omnipotence: Ockham in Fourteenth-Century Perspective,’ in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks (Oxford, 1987), 52–53, 51–61; and Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 111, 126. 14

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A. Arnold of Strelley Arnold of Strelley may have been the first of the four Dominicans to address the issue of evident knowledge. He opened his commentary on the Sentences with the question of whether by studying Scripture the human soul gains some previously unheld degree of perfection through a determinate gift of grace,16 and used the occasion to explore questions about certitude and science. Over time the term ‘scire’ had developed a multitude of meanings.17 William of Ockham distinguished three of them in his Summa logicae: In one way ‘to know’ (scire) is evident comprehension of the truth. And thus not only necessaries but also contingents are said to be known, such as ‘I know that you sit,’ and ‘I know that I understand and live.’ In a second way, scientific knowledge is evident comprehension of a truth that cannot be false. And thus only necessaries and not contingents are said to be known. In a third way, scientific knowledge is evident comprehension of one necessary truth through the evident comprehension of two necessary truths, disposed in mode and figure, such that those two truths make the third truth, which otherwise would remain unknown, known evidently.18

The last mode of scientific knowledge coincided with Aristotle’s demonstrative knowledge, and Ockham had previously defined such scientific understanding in the Prologue to his Sentences commentary as ‘evident knowledge of a necessary truth, naturally caused by the premisses attached to it through a syllogistic discursus.’19 In his Tractatus de praedes16 Arnold of Strelley, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Utrum anima humana dono gratiae determinatae informata ad aliquam perfectionem non habitam transmutetur per studium scripturarum.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 1ra. Unfortunately, the only known manuscript of Strelley’s Sentences commentary seems to be a rather sketchy reportatio. 17 In William of Ockham, Summa logicae, ed. Philotheus Boehner, Gedeon Gál and Stephanus Brown, Opera philosophica 1 (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1974), 506, note 3, the editors indicate that Robert Grosseteste had identified four such meanings in his commentary on Aristotle’s Analytica Posteriora. 18 Ockham, SL, pars III-2, c. 1: ‘Uno modo “scire” est evidens comprehensio veritatis. Et sic dicuntur sciri non tantum necessaria sed etiam contingentia, sicut “scio te sedere” et “scio me intelligere et vivere.” Secundo modo dicitur scientia evidens comprehensio veritatis quae non potest esse falsa. Et sic dicuntur sciri tantum necessaria et non contingentia. Tertio modo dicitur scientia evidens comprehensio unius veritatis necessariae per evidentem comprehensionem duarum veritatum necessarium, in modo et figura dispositarum, ut illae duae veritates faciant tertiam veritatem evidenter sciri, quae aliter esset ignota.’ In OP 1:506, ll. 25–33. 19 William of Ockham, Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum Ordinatio I, Prol. q. 2,

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tinatione, however, Ockham had written more generally, distinguishing between scientific knowledge considered strictly, as knowledge of the truth, and broadly as any sort of understanding.20 In the broadest sense, ‘scientific’ knowledge could be any understanding, even one that was false. More strictly, scientific knowledge was knowledge of what was true, but could include knowledge of contingent truth, what Aristotle would have termed opinion,21 as well as necessary truth, whether selfevident in itself or derived from necessary premisses in a demonstration. Strelley, too, distinguished between scientific knowledge taken strictly and taken broadly. But otherwise he regarded the term ‘science’ (scientia) differently than had Ockham. For Strelley, scientific understanding taken strictly was the effect of a demonstration,22 and taken broadly it was any true knowledge.23 Unlike Ockham, Strelley argued that the term ‘science’ signifies more than the term ‘knowledge’ (notitia), because while the term ‘science’ stands or ‘supposits’ for knowledge, it also connotes that the complex or proposition which is the object of that knowledge signifies what is or will be the case.24 Thus, whether strictly or broadly considered, science is always about what is true. However, it is not about what is necessary. Because the term ‘science’ connotes that what is known is the case, and because what is the case, at least in the world, can undergo change, scientific knowledge is contingent knowledge.

a. 2: ‘Circa secundum: quid est scientia? Dico quod scientia … est notitia evidens veri necessarii, nata causari per praemissas applicatas ad ipsum per discursum syllogisticum.’ In Opera theologica 1, ed. Gedeon Gál, with Stephanus Brown assisting (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.,1967), 87, l. 20–88, l. 2. 20 William of Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei respectu futurorum contingentium, q. 1: ‘Septima suppositio est quod “scire” in ista materia accipitur large, scilicet pro cognitione cuiuscumque, et sic Deus cognoscit omnia tam incomplexa quam complexa, necessaria, contingentia, falsa et impossibilia; vel stricte, et sic idem est quod cognoscere verum, sicut loquitur Philosophus, I Posteriorum, quod nihil scitur nisi verum.’ In Opera philosophica 2, ed. Philotheus Boehner and Stephanus Brown (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1978), 518, ll. 299–304. 21 Aristoteles, Analytica Posteriora, 1.33.88b3–35. 22 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Prima conclusio: quod scientia proprie dicta non est in Deo. Probatur: quia sic est effectus demonstrationis.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 29rb. 23 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Scientia capitur large pro omni vera notitia.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 29rb. 24 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 7: ‘Item scientia dicit plus quam notitia; supponit enim pro notitia et connotat sic esse vel fore sicut illud complexum quod est obiectum notitiae significat.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 29rb.

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Strelley’s argument about the contingency of science is intricate. He asserted that every term precisely connoting some actual and presently existing creature without any reference to the past is contingently probable in regard to a pronoun picking out the thing for which the term stands or ‘supposits.’25 It would seem such a connotative term would have as part of its nominal definition the phrase: ‘that presently existing,’ and any such phrase about the created order stands for what is contingent, making any term with such a referent only contingently probable. But Strelley argued that the term ‘science’ is exactly such a contingently probable and connotative term, whether used in regard to God’s knowledge or in regard to human understanding. God knows everything, whether true or false, in a single cognitive act, but while he always understands (cognoscit) the propositions that express all possible states of affairs, he does not always scientifically know (scit) them, for any given proposition may go from being true and thus scientifically known, to being false and thus only cognized. And the same in the case of human understanding, because, as Strelley said, one might take a case in which Socrates sees that you sit, and scientifically knows that you sit. God might destroy you but conserve Socrates’ knowledge. The same knowledge would remain, but as false knowledge it would no longer be science.26 Necessary propositions can never change from being true to being false, but it is always possible that contingent propositions might. Thus while the propositions of scientific understanding are true, they are not necessarily always true, nor even usually so. As for science strictly construed as knowledge of the conclusion of a demonstration, Strelley does not seem to have followed Scotus’ lead 25 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Conclusio prima praeambula: omnis terminus connotans praecise creaturam per modum actus non transeuntis in praeteritum est contingenter probabilis de pronomine demonstrante illud pro quo ille terminus supponit.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 1rb. 26 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Secunda conclusio: omnis terminus contingenter probabilis etc. est connotativus. Probatur: nullus terminus est contingenter probabilis nisi quia importat aliquid extrinsecum quod potest non inesse, sed talis est connotativus, igitur. Tertia conclusio quod hoc nomen “scientia” est contingenter probabile et per consequens terminus connotativus, probatur tam de Deo quam de nobis. Terminus enim iste supponit pro quodam actu cognitivo eterno, quo dicimus quod Deus omnia cognoscit sive vera sive falsa, et ita hoc complexum quocumque demonstrato cognoscit Deus, et licet Deus semper cognoscat hoc complexum, non tamen semper scit illud, sed successive scit hoc, et eius oppositum. Igitur notitia sua aliquando est scientia huius, aliquando non. Item probatur de nobis: si Sortes videt te sedere, scit te sedere. Adnihilet Deus te et conservet notitiam Sortis, tunc illa manet et tamen non est scientia.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 1rb.

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in restricting demonstrations to syllogisms with de possibili premisses. Scotus had met the Aristotelian requirement that demonstrative syllogisms have necessary premisses by posing second order modalities: any given existent is contingent and not necessary, but the possibility of its existence is necessary, and so a necessary proposition about the possibility of a contingent could serve as the premiss of a demonstration. Ockham elaborated considerably on Scotus’ suggestion, noting that not only propositions de possibili, but hypothetical propositions and at least some negations are also necessary propositions about contingents that can serve as premisses in demonstrations.27 Unlike either Scotus or Ockham, however, Strelley dropped the requirement of necessary premisses in favor of a requirement of premisses sufficiently evident that no command of the will is necessary for their acceptance. As he said, having supposed that ‘to know’ (scire) is the effect of a [demonstration], we say that we know those truths for which we do not need a command of will in order to adhere to them, of which sort those merely believed probable are excluded: some are probable simply and are always true, others are frequently true, such as ‘every Mother loves.’28

Strelley went on to explain that he meant by ‘simply probable’ all those propositions that are so true that no single instance of them is found to be evidently false. And while the will might concur in the assent to such a proposition, its action is not necessary for assent. As an 27

See Damascene Webering, Theory of Demonstration According to William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1953), 32–41. 28 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Dico prima, supposito quod scire sit effectus determinationis [pro: demonstrationis], et scire dicamur illa vera quibus ad hoc quod eis adhaereamus, non indigemus imperio voluntatis, qualia non sunt mere credita probabile: aliud simpliciter probabile sive semper verum, aliud frequenter verum velut ista: “Omnis mater diligit,” …’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 6rb. That ‘determinationis’ is a scribal error for ‘demonstrationis’ here is evident from sense and the context in which Strelley goes on immediately to differentiate ‘demonstratio simpliciter’ from ‘demonstratio ad hominem,’ as follows: ‘Secundo dico quod demonstratio duplex est: alia demonstratio simpliciter, alia ad hominem. Demonstratio simpliciter est sillogismus procedens ex per se notis cuicumque intellectum intelligenti terminos sine omni hesitatione vel voluntatis imperio, etc. Demonstratio ad hominem potest vocari vel quia unum facit scire et alium non vel quia non est ex talibus propositionibus quae sunt evidentes sufficienter ex notitia terminorum. Exemplum primi: illi qui videt eclipsum, sillogismus de eclipsi non est demonstratio, licet sit alteriis demonstratio. Exemplum secundi: sillogismus procedens ex simpliciter probabilibus, quod enim ille sit demonstratio probatur ex hoc quod ille non est topicus, quia ille procedit ex talibus quae in aliquo casu deficiunt sicut dictum est, nec est litigiosus nec sophisticus, igitur etc.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 6rb.

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example of such a proposition, Strelley revealingly chose: ‘everything that is moved, is moved by another, nor is there an infinite regress in movers and things moved.’29 The first of these conjuncts, that everything that is moved is moved by another, had been a common-place of medieval Aristotelianism, and the whole consequence constitutes the main assumption in Aristotle’s proof for the Prime Mover and in Aquinas’ first of his famous five ways for proving the existence of God. But both Scotus and Ockham had subjected the principle to serious criticism, so it would not have been a common-place for everyone at Oxford.30 What rendered such propositions probable simpliciter for Strelley was precisely his belief, however, that de facto there were no exceptions to such propositions. He did not believe them in any sense necessary, for God certainly could have arranged things differently— for instance, God could have created an eternal world in which many propositions necessary about this world would be false. Thus while Strelley at one point indicated that a most strict construction of demonstration would involve necessary premisses,31 he seems to have resolved the difficulties the Aristotelian requirement of necessity posed for scientific knowledge in a contingent world by substituting evidence for necessity as the criterian for science, whether broadly or even narrowly construed. Degrees of evidence resulted from degrees of probability, and premisses with the degree of simple or even only ‘frequent’ probability were admissible in demonstration. Scientific knowledge was for the most part a knowledge of probabilities, not of necessities. What ultimately distinguished evident propositions from inevident ones was the necessity of an act of will for their acceptance. Science involved evident adherence to whatever was scientifically knowable,32 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Simpliciter probabile voco illud quod est tale quod sic est verum quod nullum singulare eius inventum est evidenter esse falsum, nec ad hoc quod intellectus sibi assentiat, necessario requiritur imperium voluntatis, licet aliquando imperium voluntatis conferat ad causandum assentum. Talis est ista propositio: “Omne corpus quod movetur, ab alio movetur, nec est processus in infinitum in moventibus et motis.”’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 6rb. 30 See Roy Effler, John Duns Scotus and the Principle ‘Omne Quod Movetur ab Alio Movetur’ (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1962); Adams, William Ockham, 2:827–828. 31 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Dico quod demonstratio non accipitur hic strictissime, sed accipitur pro sillogismo faciente aliquam conclusionem ignotam sciri sine ulteriori experientia sive illa conclusio sit necessaria sive contingens, et sic potest haec demonstrari: “Sortes non est.”’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 5vb. 32 Strelley, Sent, I, q. 1: ‘Quarta de scientia quae large accipitur pro evidenti adhesione cuiuslibet scibilis, stricte aliter.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 1ra–1rb. 29

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and evidence in turn was an assent sufficiently caused by the apprehension of either a thing or some terms, so that it involved no doubt nor did it require any dictate of the will in order to occur.33 Yet, although Strelley asserted that scientific knowledge is evident knowledge, he did not go so far as to say that it was necessarily evident to the one who had such knowledge that that knowledge was scientifically known.34 For, as he put it, even though something evidently known is scientifically known, it does not follow that those having that knowledge know that their knowledge is scientific, any more than it follows that something known to the Philosopher (i.e. Aristotle) is the Trinity, therefore the Philosopher knows that to be the Trinity.35 In Strelley’s view then, scientific knowledge about many things is possible for the wayfarer, but it is only sometimes possible to know for certain that the knowledge one has is scientific. As an example, people can have scientific knowledge of their own intellective acts (supposing such acts to be reflexive), and they can know that they have scientific knowledge of them because interior acts are known immediately and not through species. People can also have scientific knowledge about any proposition necessary either immediately or mediately through its terms, and in this case, too, they can know that they have scientific knowledge about it. People can also have scientific knowledge about any true proposition whose terms are knowable (scibilis), but unlike the previous cases, in this case they cannot know for certain that what they know is science, because they cannot know whether they are assenting to a real state of affairs or whether God is supplying the cause of assent in the absence of that state of affairs. Although the senses provide true information when they are in good working order and God is not interferring to conserve sense experience in the absence of what is sensed, the intellect does not always have scientific knowledge that such

33 Strelley, Sent, I, q. 1: ‘Evidentia est quando sufficienter causatur assensus a re vel a terminis sine dubitatione, absque imperio voluntatis.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 1rb. 34 Strelley, Sent, I, q. 1: ‘Quinta quod aliquis potest esse certus de ista: haec notitia est, sed non sit certus de ista: haec scientia est, non obstante quod haec notitia sit scientia.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 1rb. 35 Strelley, Sent I, q. 1: ‘Sed dicis sequitur: igitur aliquid evidenter tibi notum est scientia et per consequens tu scis illud esse scientiam. Dico quod ista secunda consequentia non valet, sicut non sequitur aliquid notum a Philosopho est Trinitas, igitur Philosophus scivit illud esse Trinitatem.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 3ra.

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sense data are true,36 and people cannot know if they have scientific knowledge about anything they have learned by depending accidentally rather than essentially on the senses.37 Strelley believed that self-evident principles and the soul’s own acts are known scientifically and that people can know that they have scientific knowledge about them. But knowledge of contingent external reality is much less certain. Although scientific knowledge is possible about that reality, it is not possible in any given case to know that one has it, because, as he said, there might be a ‘miracle,’ with God conserving the sensation in the absence of what is sensed.38 Like Scotus, he believed that through induction one could arrive at true generalizations about multiple sense experiences, and that scientific knowledge about such universal truths is possible without having to experience every particular case.39 But in no individual instance of sensation could there be certainty that what is sensed is in fact true. 36 Strelley, Sent, I, q. 1: ‘Ad aliud, dico quod sensus semper est verus si sit bene dispositus et Deus non impediat quin vere cognoscat de tali… Et adhuc non oportet quod intellectus semper sciat sensum esse verum.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 3ra. 37 Strelley, Sent, I, q. 1: ‘Conclusiones principales sunt decem. Prima est ista: quod cuiuslibet actus interiorum intellectivae, vero scientiam habere possumus… Secunda conclusio: quod de quolibet actu interiori scire possumus nos habere scientiam. Suppono quod actus nostros non cognoscimus per species, sed se ipsis, quia species ponuntur propter absentiam obiecti, quod non potest esse in natura sua praesens intellectus… Tertia conclusio: quod cuiuslibet scibilis cuius termini incomplexi sunt a nobis evidenter cognoscibiles, scientia est a nobis possibilis… Quarta conclusio: quod non cuiuslibet talis scibilis scire possumus nos habere scientiam. Probatur quia nescimus si assensus ille sit ex evidentia obiecti vel a Deo, igitur… Sexta conclusio: quod nullius scibilis cuius scientia innititur accidenter veritati iudicii sensitivae scire possumus nos habere scientiam. Probatur quia non possumus scire si sensus sit verus. Septima conclusio: quod cuiuslibet scibilis necessarii nati innotescente mediate vel immediate ex notitia terminorum a nobis cognoscibilium, scire possumus nos habere scientia.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 1rb– 1va. 38 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Ad tertium principale, dico quod non plus potest iudicari evidenter de absentia vel praesentia rei per speciem rei quam per cognitionem eius, sed ex hoc quod tu habes cognitionem alicuius, non scis evidenter sic esse sicut significatur, igitur sic hic, sicut enim ibi fit miraculum, ita hic.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 3va. 39 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Secundo dico quod per inventionem est scientia nobis possibilis: primo per inductionem sive capiat omnes singulares sive tantum aliquas, quia si experiatur tantum aliquas, adhuc ipse potest adhaerere universali…’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 3va.

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The substance of Strelley’s position on incomplex knowledge is much like that of Scotus: each believed that first principles and interior acts are known with surety and serve as correctives for uncertain sense experience. However, Strelley’s emphasis on the distinction between having scientific knowledge and knowing that one has it, underscored the uncertainty people might experience even when they in fact know the truth. Every wayfarer is invincibly ignorant about whether any particular sense experience provides true knowledge or not. Therefore, in Strelley’s view, people can act only on the contingent probability that what they know through sense experience is most likely the case.

B. Intuitive Cognition of Non-Existents Strelley’s position suggests that a re-evaluation of the modern discussion of fourteenth-century skepticism would be in order. An important focus of modern debate about late medieval skepticism has been the question of whether Ockham’s position that God has the absolute power to cause intuitive cognition of a non-existent, hopelessly undermined certitude.40 There have been a variety of responses. Philotheus Boehner 40 The key text is William of Ockham, Sent. I, Prol. q. 1: Ex istis sequitur quod notitia intuitiva, tam sensitiva quam intellectiva, potest esse de re non exsistente. Et hanc conclusionem probo, aliter quam prius, sic: omnis res absoluta, distincta loco et subiecto ab alia re absoluta, potest per divinam potentiam absolutam exsistere sine illa … Sed visio intuitiva tam sensitiva quam intellectiva, est res absoluta, distincta loco et subiecto ab obiecto. Sicut si videam intuitive stellam exsistentem in caelo, illa visio intuitiva, sive sit sensitiva sive intellectiva, distinguitur loco et subiecto ab obiecto viso; igitur ista visio potest manere stella destructa; igitur etc.’ In OT 1:38, l. 15–39, l. 6. Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 188–196, and Rega Wood, ‘Intuitive Cognition,’ 56–57, 60, note that Ockham’s contemporary Walter Chatton was the first to argue that intuitive cognition of non-existents would imperil human certainty about contingent facts. The initial discussion of intuitive and abstractive cognition had its genesis in concerns about angelic cognition and how theology was a science, not about the possibility of evident human knowledge. See Dumont, ‘Theology as a Science,’ 579–594. The secondary literature basic to this question includes: Konstanty Michalski, ‘Les courants philosophiques à Oxford et à Paris pendant le XIVe siècle,’ in Bulletin International de l’Academie Polonaise des Sciences et des Lettres, classe d’histoire et de philosophie 1919–1920 (Cracow, 1921), 59–88; repr. in idem, La Philosophie au XIV e siècle, ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt, 1969), 3–32; Philotheus Boehner, ‘The Notitia Intuitiva of NonExistents According to William Ockham,’ Traditio 1 (1943): 223–275, reprinted without the appended text addition in idem, Collected Articles on Ockham, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1958), 268–300; Anton C. Pegis, ‘Concerning William of Ockham,’ Traditio 2 (1944): 465–480; Sebastian J. Day, Intuitive Cognition: A Key to the Significance of the Later Scholastics (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1947), 159–188; R.C. Richards,

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noted that for Ockham, while God might conserve an intuitive cognition after having destroyed the object of that cognition, he could not conserve the evident judgment that ordinarily follows on such a cognition, a judgment that the object in fact exists. ‘Evident assent’ by Ockham’s definition connotes that what is known is true, and thus it would involve a contradiction for God to cause such an assent when the object of that assent has been destroyed. Instead, if God were to cause the intuitive cognition of a non-existent, the evident judgment that would naturally ensue would be the judgment that the object did not exist. No deception would follow.41 Others have pointed out that when Ockham referred to God’s absolute power, he referred to the order of absolute possibility, not to what God would do within the ordained system, and references to God’s absolute power in Ockham’s texts are an indication that he is speaking about counterfactual possibility, not the actual world.42 Therefore, when he said that God could cause an intuitive cognition of a non-existent by his absolute power, Ockham meant that while God could cause intuitive cognition of a non-existent, he would not do so within the ordained order. Most recently, Katherine Tachau has argued that even if Ockham’s position produced difficulty, practically none of his contemporaries agreed with him.43 In looking at the ‘Ockham and Skepticism,’ New Scholasticism 42 (1968): 345–363; T.K. Scott, ‘Ockham on Evidence, Necessity, and Intuition,’ The Journal of the History of Philosophy 7 (1969): 27–47; Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘Intuitive Cognition, Certainty and Scepticism in William Ockham,’ Traditio 26 (1970): 5–48; idem, William Ockham, 1:501–506; John F. Boler, ‘Ockham on Intuitive Cognition,’ The Journal of the History of Philosophy 11 (1973): 95– 106; idem, ‘Ockham on Evident Cognition,’ FcS 36 (1976): 85–98; idem, ‘Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition,’ in CHLMP, 460–478; Leo D. Davis, ‘The Intuitive Knowledge of Non-Existents and the Problem of Late Medieval Skepticism,’ New Scholasticism 49 (1975): 410–430; Paul A. Streveler, ‘Ockham and his Critics on: Intuitive Cognition,’ FcS 35 (1975): 224–236; Alessandro Ghisalberti, ‘L’Intuizione in Ockham,’ Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 70 (1978): 207–226; Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, ‘Ockham and the Cognition of Non-existents,’ FcS 45 (1985): 33–45; Wood, ‘Intuitive Cognition,’ 51–61; Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 113–135. 41 Boehner, ‘Intuitive Cognition,’ in CAO, 268–292. Ockham may not have been the earliest proponent of such a view at Oxford: see Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 166– 174, where she discusses John of Reading, who c. 1322 indicates ‘others’ putting forward arguments that were not Ockham’s. 42 William J. Courtenay, ‘The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky (Dordrecht, 1985), 254–256. 43 Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 180–312, 353–383. She notes (ibid., 368–371) only two supporters of Ockham: John Rathe Scotus, a member of the English-German nation at Paris, where he was regent in Arts c. 1333–1341 and began his lectures on the Sentences in 1343; and his Dominican colleague Francesco of Treviso.

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Dominicans, however, at least some of this modern discussion seems beside the point. For example, Strelley’s definition of evidence in terms not of truth, but of a lack of doubt, would not have precluded divine interference. On Strelley’s definition of evidence, God would not be involved in a contradition in preserving an evident judgment about a non-existent object, and, as we shall see, the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power was not a barrier to divine intervention either. None of the Dominicans, not Arnold of Strelley, nor Hugh of Lawton, nor William Crathorn nor Robert Holcot, went along with Ockham’s belief that God could cause an intuitive cognition of a nonexistent. Lawton took the strongest position. Unlike Ockham, who had posed intuitive and abstractive cognitions in both the senses and the intellect, Lawton restricted intuitive cognition to the senses alone, reserving abstractive cognition for the intellect. Intuitive cognition constituted incomplex knowledge in the senses about the presence and existence of things through their direct apprehension. Abstractive cognition constituted incomplex knowledge in the intellect; it is the intellect itself, with a mediating form, representing its object abstractively, rather than apprehending its object directly.44

44 Hugh of Lawton, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Arguo aliter ad conclusionem principalem dupliciter: Primo sic: quaelibet notitia intuitiva requirit praesentiam et exsistentiam, sed nulla simplex notitia intellectiva multae requirit praesentiam, ergo etc… Secundo sic: et suppono quod ideo dicitur aliqua cognitio abstractiva, non quia sit abstractiva nec per formam seu speciem abstractam, sed quia est per formam vel quia ipsamet est forma abstractive, id est ipsa est universaliter repraesentans. Tunc sic: quaelibet notitia intellectiva simplex seu incomplexa est mediate forma abstractive repraesentans, ergo nulla intuitiva simplex, consequentia patet.’ In Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 153ra. Tachau, Vision and Certitude, p. 176, cites John of Reading as saying ‘it suffices that one see by sensitive vision alone; therefore [intellectual] intuitive [cognition] is not necessary for the sake of certainty concerning contingent propositions. But just as he [Ockham] uses the principle of Aristotle and the Subtle doctor, “plurality is not to be posited without necessity,” therefore, one ought not to posit such intellectual intuitive cognition. Rather sensitive [i.e. intuitive] cognition suffices.’ and she notes (ibid., p. 280) that Reading perceived himself as defending Scotus in rejecting intellectual intuitive cognition as superfluous. Thus Lawton’s view might be read as in line with Reading’s and as having a Scotist flavor. Cf. Tachau’s discussion of Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham, ibid., pp. 196 and 278–283, respectively. And also see idem, ‘What Senses and Intellect Do: Argument and Judgment in Late Medieval Theories of Knowledge,’ in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns,’ ed. Klaus Jacobi (Leiden, 1993), 653–667.

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Given this, it would seem that God might serve in the place of an object to cause at least the intuitive cognition of a non-existent in the senses, and indeed Lawton did agree with Ockham that God has the power to substitute for every motive, effective and final cause of cognition.45 However, Lawton asserted that if God were to stand in for the object, an awkward consequence would result: there could be a cognition through which nothing would be known.46 As he argued, if God conserved the sensible intuitive cognition of a star after the star had ceased to exist, then either God or something else would be the terminus of that cognition. It could not be God, because God cannot be seen by the corporeal eye, nor something else, because God has the power to supplant any object. It would seem to follow that intuitive cognition could occur when nothing is known,47 an absurdity that led Lawton to conclude there could be no intuitive cognition of a nonexistent. In Lawton’s view, human sense experience is infallible. Error enters only at the level of fallible judgment.48 45 Lawton, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Contra istam conclusionem est oppositio [sic: opinio] Willelmi, contra quam intendo sic procedere: primo ponam eius suppositiones: … Quartum est quod Deus potest supplere omnem causam motivam, effectivam et finalem hiis… Quartam suppositionem admitto cum eo.’ In Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 152rb. 46 Lawton, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Contra secundam conclusionem quae ponit quod intuitiva notitia non plus requirit exsistentia rei quam non exsistentia, quia si esset verum, tunc posset esse cognitio per quam nihil cognosceretur…’ In Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 152va. Lawton here seems to believe that the object of cognition is essentially related to cognition in a way that Ockham denies. See Vossenkühl, ‘Cognition of Non-existants,’ 33–45. Godfrey of Fontaines apparently held a view like Lawton’s—see Wood, ‘Intuitive Cognition,’ 53, as did Robert Graystanes and John of Rodington—see Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 210 and 233. 47 Lawton, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Quaero quando dicit quod Deus potest supplere vicem termini in cognitione intuitiva alteri rei a se etc., puta quando conservat visionem intuitivam stellae quando stella non est, aut Deus sit terminus vel aliquid aliud. Non Deus, quia non potest videri oculo corporali, nec aliquid aliud quia Deus supplet vicem cuiuscumque alterius, ergo sequitur quod non repugnet notitiae intuitivae esse sine quocumque et in ratione terminantis et sic sequitur rationale propositum [i.e. posset esse cognitio per quam nihil cognosceretur], quod videtur falsum, ergo illud ex quo sequitur.’ In Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 152va. 48 Lawton, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Supponendo quod evidentia notitiae non distinguitur a notitia eoipsa(?) tam in sensu quam in intellectu, est possibilis aliqua notitia naturalis quae est de se evidens et essentialiter, et per consequens erit evidens sine admixtione alicuius dubitationis.’ In Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 149rb–149va. Ibid.: ‘Tertia suppositio est quod in notitia quae est simplex appraehensio, non potest esse error…

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Strelley, Crathorn and Holcot, as Tachau has shown, took a different tack. They also disagreed with Ockham about the nature of intuitive and abstractive cognition, but unlike Lawton they objected to Ockham’s view that intuitive and abstractive cognition were distinct cognitive acts. Following the lead of Richard of Campsall, they argued instead that there is only one cognition giving rise to simple, incomplex knowledge. When an object is present and existing, that cognition is termed ‘intuitive,’ and when the object is absent and known only through a representative of some kind, such as a species, the same simple cognition is termed ‘abstractive.’49 The term ‘intuitive cognition’ is a Quarta est quod omnis error in notitiis consistit in secundo actu intellectus quo intelligente componit et dividit etc., et non in primo.’ In Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 149vb. 49 Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 158–166; 244–247; 264–266. Tachau knows Strelley (ibid. 165) only as an anonymous author. Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Secunda: dico quod notitia intuitiva et abstractiva respectu eiusdem obiecti non sunt diversi actus, sed idem actus aliquando dicitur “notitia intuitiva,” videlicet quando res cognita est sufficienter praesens cognoscenti; aliquando vocatur “abstractiva,” quando scilicet non est praesens.’ In Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 5va. William Crathorn, In primum librum Sententiarum, q. 1: ‘Sed videtur mihi quod notitia intuitiva et abstractiva non sunt duae notitiae specie distinctae nec etiam numero, sed eadem res omnino, quia notitia intuitiva est ipsa potentia cognitiva et similiter ipsa notitia abstractiva ita quod eadem res numero vocatur intuitiva et abstractiva respectu eiusdem obiecti diversimode cogniti. Dicitur enim ipsa potentia cognitiva intuitiva vel intuens respectu obiecti realiter exsistentis et praesentis ipsi potentiae cognoscentis, quando scilicet aliqua res secundum seipsam praesentatur et obicitur ipsi potentiae et non solum secundem imaginem et similitudinem suam. Et illa eadem potentia cognitiva vocatur notitia abstractiva vel abstrahens respectu eiusdem rei, quando secundum seipsam non est praesens nec obiecta ipsi potentiae cognoscenti, sed ipsi potentiae cognitivae praesentatur et obicitur ipsius similitudo vel imago vel aliquid quod est ipsius signum ad placitum, respectu cuius similitudinis vel imaginis vel signi ad placitum ipsa potentia dicitur intuitiva vel intuens, sed respectu illius, cuius est imago, dicitur cognitio abstrahens vel abstractiva. Unde eadem res numero est simul intuitiva et abstractiva respectu diversorum obiectorum.’ In Quästionen zum ersten Sentenzenbuch, ed. Fritz Hoffmann, BGPTM n. s. 29 (Münster, 1988), 132, ll. 12–27. Robert Holcot, Quodlibet I, q. 1: ‘Contra hoc quod ponit Guillelmus quod per notitiam intuitivam rei non existentis possum evidenter scire rem illam non esse, ita quod notitia intuitiva est causa totalis illius iudicii, et notitia cum re est causa iudicii oppositi quando res est. … Unde videtur quod notitia intuitiva non possit esse [de] non-existentis quia iste terminus est unus terminus connotativus qui supponit pro quadam qualitate quae est notitia et connotat objectum cognitum esse existens et praesens in se, propter quam connotationem illa notitia vocatur “intuitiva.” Et ideo eadem [notitia], si [conservaretur] miraculose, re destructa, iam non erit notitia intuitiva. Et sic eadem notitia potest esse modo intuitiva, modo abstractiva, quia illud quod connotatur aliter et aliter se habet.’ In J.T. Muckle, ‘Utrum Theologia Sit Scientia, A Quodlibet Question of Robert

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connotative term, connoting the existence of its object, and, as Strelley noted, if God were to conserve such a cognition after the destruction of its object, that cognition would either be termed ‘abstractive’ or there would be no simple cognition at all.50 Several things are worth noting, however. While all four of the Dominicans rejected the idea that there could be an intuitive cognition of a non-existent, at least three of them explicitly accepted the idea that God could directly cause any cognition. Lawton believed that if God were to cause the intuitive cognition of a non-existent, the absurd consequence would follow that there would be a cognition through which nothing is known, and thus God’s power to stand in for any cause is not a threat to cognitive certainty. However, for Strelley and Crathorn, the principle that God as first cause could do immediately whatever he does mediately through secondary causes, still had a role to play in subverting certitude. While Strelley did not believe that strictly speaking God could cause an intuitive cognition of a non-existent, he did believe that God could cause some simple intuitive cognition by which it would appear that a non-existing thing existed.51 Perhaps reflecting the influence of Auriol who had discussed the problem of appearances at length,52 Strelley seems to have believed that the object Holcot O.P.’ Mediaeval Studies 20 (1958): 130, with changes suggested by Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 246, n. 9. 50 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Ad ista simul concedo quod notitia intuitiva potest fieri a Deo sine praesentia rei, sed non sequitur igitur ista tunc erit intuitiva sine praesentia rei, sicut patet, sed vel erit abstractiva tantum, vel non erit aliqua notitia…’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 5vb. 51 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Tertio sic: Deus potest causare aliquam notitiam simplicem in nobis qua apparebit rem non-entem esse, sed illa non est abstractiva, igitur intuitiva, igitur per intuitiva non scitur non-exsistens non esse.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 5va. Walter Chatton seems to have held a similar view. See Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 194–195. But cf. William of Ockham, Quodlibet 5, q. 5: ‘Ad primum istorum dico quod Deus non potest causare in nobis cognitionem talem per quam evidenter apparet nobis rem esse praesentem quando est absens, quia hoc includit contradictionem… Tamen Deus potest causare actum creditivum per quem credo rem esse praesentem quae est absens. Et dico quod illa cognitio creditiva erit abstractiva, non intuitiva; et per talem actum fidei potest apparere res esse praesens quando est absens, non tamen per actum evidentem.’ In Quodlibeta Septem, ed. Joseph C. Wey, in Opera theologica (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1980), 9:498, ll. 62–64, 72–76. 52 As Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 85–112; 135–153; 180–198; 288–302; 315–352, has shown, Peter Auriol’s analysis of appearances had much more importance in the history of epistemology than has been recognized. While Strelley rejected Auriol’s notion of apparent being (see chapter six), he may have adopted the argument about appearances here under Auriol’s influence.

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of such a cognition would not be the thing itself nor a non-existent but some apparent similitude of the thing, and through such an intuitive cognition there could arise the judgment that the thing exists even when it does not.53 As we have seen, the possibility that God might substitute as the cause of any given sense experience had led Strelley to deny that people could have certainty about whether they did have scientific knowledge through sense experience or whether they did not. Crathorn, too, cited God’s power to preserve appearances: in sense experience, for example, to preserve the image of a circle of fire produced when a stick lit at one end is twirled in the air. Crathorn believed that such an image could give rise to a judgment that what in fact only seems to be seen, is seen.54 And like Strelley, he cited such a possibility as the reason why no one could have certain and infallible knowledge that in any particular case things are as they appear to be.55

53 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 2: ‘Quarto sic: iste actus potest esse intuitivus et cum per eum nec apparet rem esse nec non esse, probatur consequentia, quia quando multa conveniunt alicui contingenter et non sunt contradictoria, Deus potest facere illud sine omnibus illis simul per te, sed sic est in proposito, quia iudicare rem esse et iudicare rem non esse sunt positiva.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 5va. 54 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Tertia conclusio est quod praedicta similitudo exsistens in cognoscente, quae est verbum et naturalis similitudo qualitatis sensibilis et exsistentis extra cognoscentem, aliquando cognoscitur et sentitur non cognita intuitive nec sensata aliqua re, cuius est similitudo, quod probo sic: Ad motionem circularem virgae ignitae in extremitate videtur unus circulus vel color circularis nullo tali circulo exsistente extra videntem. Igitur ille circulus visus est in anima vel in capite videntis. … Unde se deus toto illo anno conservaret in capite tuo illum colorem circularem vel alium consimilem nullo colore exsistente extrinseco, apparereret tibi videnti illum circularem quod videres toto illo anno circulum igneum et colorem figurae circularis exsistentem extra te videntem, cum tamen nullus talis esset.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 98, ll. 4– 10, 36–99, l. 3. ‘Quarto sic: Deus posset speciem genitam a colore conservare et ignorante vidente speciem prius visam et exsistentem extra adnihilare. Sed hoc facto videns iudicaret se videre albedinem prius visam et ipsam exsistere, et tamen falleretur in iudicando. Igitur videns non potest virtute suae visionis infallibiliter iudicare aliquem colorem videri, qui sit extra videntem.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 124, ll. 10–14. The example of the twirling stick, like a number of other examples Crathorn cites, is from Auriol, and Crathorn’s position on the possibility of true and false vision is also much like Auriol’s. See Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 91, 98–102, 110–112, and ibid., 174–175, 232, 234–235, for information on John of Reading and John of Rodington, two contemporaries of Crathorn’s who took a somewhat similar position. 55 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Teneo igitur quod viator non potest ex hoc quod videt aliquem colorem extra se exsistentem habere iudicium certum et infallibile quod talis color exsistat vel ab eo videatur.’ Ed. Hoffman, 125, ll. 1–3.

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However, when the Dominican authors accepted the possibility of God’s acting directly in the world as a substitute for any secondary cause, there is no indication that any of them were speaking about God’s absolute power. On the contrary, they use terms like ‘miracle’ and treated the uncertainty that might ensue from God’s possible intervention as a real uncertainty, not a counterfactual one. Assumptions by modern historians that references to such divine action in the world represent an acceptance of the intrusion of God’s absolute power into the ordained order seem to be a result of reading Ockham’s contemporaries through the lens of Ockham’s formulation of the question of intuitive cognition of non-existents. Whereas Ockham restricted such divine action to absolute, not ordinate, possibility,56 Scotus provides a clear instance of the alternative tradition within which the Dominicans operated. To illustrate God’s capacity as first cause to supercede the actions of secondary causes, Scotus referred to the miracle of the three boys in the fiery furnace, which on the witness of Scripture was an actual ordinate event.57 Ockham’s contemporaries did not consider God’s suspension of the causal order and his direct action in lieu of secondary causes as an intrusion of God’s absolute power into the world, but as one of the primary ways God produces miracles within the ordained system. Thus God’s ordinate interactions with human beings have the potential to undermine human certainty. As we have seen, divine revelations to and through prophets were one source of difficulty, and the possi-

56 Even in the case of Ockham, of the various places in which he speaks specifically about God’s causing intuitive cognition of a non-existent (Sent. I, Prol. q. 1, in OT 1:35, ll. 8–17; ibid., 1:38, ll. 5–9, 15–39. l. 6; Quodlibet 5, q. 5, in OT 9:498, ll. 61–64, 72–76, 78–84; ibid., 9:499, ll. 86–90), I have found only one in which he refers to God’s absolute power as such and does not just speak in general of God’s power to act supernaturally in the world (see note 40 and 51 above). 57 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 8, pars. 2, q. unica: ‘Ad ultimum dico quod nulla est naturalis conexio causae et causati simpliciter necessaria in creaturis, nec aliqua causa secunda causat naturaliter simpliciter vel necessario simpliciter, sed tantum secundum quid … Secunda pars, scilicet de necessitate secundum quid, patet, quia multae causae naturales, quantum est ex parte earum, non possunt non causare effectus, et ideo necessitas est secundum quid—quantum scilicet est ex parte earum—et non simpliciter: sicut ignis, quantum est ex parte sui, non potest non calefacere, tamen potest absolute non calefacere, Deo non cooperante, sicut apparet, et apparuit de tribus pueris in camino.’ In Opera omnia, ed. Charles Balic (Vatican City, 1956), 4:328, ll. 5–8, 14–20. Close as he was to Ockham, Adam Wodeham also treated the possibility of divine interference in cognition as an actual, not counterfactual, possibility. See Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 285–287.

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bility of divine interference with cognition was another. Even the everyday miracle of transubstantiation during Mass raised questions. Strelley, Lawton and Crathorn each cite the Eucharist as another occasion for uncertainty. Since people were unable to sense any species deriving from substances, proved by the transubstantiation of the bread on the altar in which the bread appears to remain unchanged even after the substance of Christ’s body has been exchanged for the original substance of the bread, no one can be sure that God has not changed the underlying substances of other things in the world as well.58 Because the nature of God’s ordained system itself raised questions about human certitude, theologians were required to develop theologies that took actual uncertainty, not counterfactual uncertainty, into account.

58 Strelley, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Tertio, cognitio substantiae non est possibilis quia sic haberemus speciem et per eam possemus iudicare de absentia et praesentia panis, etc.’ In Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, MS Ampl. F, 180, f. 1ra. Lawton, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Dicitur etiam pro dicta conclusione etiam theologice, primo sic: nullis fidelis habet evidentia quod sit panis sub speciebus panis, sicut patet in sacramento altaris, quia falsum non potest evidenter sciri, ergo eodem ratione nec evidentia magis in aequale: miraculum posset fieri ipso hoc ignorante.’ In Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica MS Vat. lat. 829, f. 149rb. Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Alio conclusio probanda est ista quod pro statu isto non poterimus habere cognitionem naturalem evidentem et omnino infallibilem de huiusmodi complexis: Lapis est; panis est; aqua est; ignis est et sic de aliis ex cognitione quacumque sensibili. Probatio: … Secundo sic: Consecret aliquis hostiam occulte nullo vidente, quo facto proponat eam alicui Christiano optimo philosopho, manifestum est quod Christianus ille nullo modo posset cognoscere naturaliter sub accidentibus illis vel in accidentibus illis esse panem. Igitur eadem ratione nec poterit scire vel cognoscere naturaliter quod sub aliquibus accidentibus consimilibus sit substantia panis, quia de quolibet pane habet dubitare, utrum sit consecratus vel non consecratus, nisi aliunde haberet quam ex cognitione accidentium. Tertio sic: Deus posset naturam cuiuscumque substantiae corporalis adnihilare et ipsius accidentia conservare in eadem forma et figura, quam prius habuerunt. Igitur viator per exsistentiam accidentium non potest infallibiliter cognoscere aliquam substantiam corporalem esse; sed cognitionem naturalem de exsistentia substantiae corporalis non habet viator nisi per cognitionem accidentium; substantia enim per propriam speciem non cognoscitur pro statu isto.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 122, ll. 19–22, 30–123, l. 9. Also see Dallas G. Denery II, ‘From Mystery to Deception: John Wyclif and the Transformation of Fourteenth-Century Eucharistic Discourse,’ forthcoming.

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C. William Crathorn When William Crathorn took up the problem of future contingents in question nineteen of his commentary on the Sentences, he confined de re necessity to God alone and rejected de dicto necessity altogether.59 One would, therefore, expect that Crathorn, like Strelley, would have regarded demonstrative science as founded on contingent premisses. However, his views about necessity were either inconsistent or underwent development over the course of his lectures, for when he discussed the nature of demonstrative science in question four: ‘Whether the wayfarer can have knowledge (scientia) properly so called that there is only one god,’60 he considered the necessity of the premisses requisite for a proper demonstration. Crathorn set forth his own views about scientific knowledge in opposition to Ockham. Ockham had described scientifically knowable propositions as dubitable, necessary propositions capable of becoming evident through other evident necessary propositions applied as premisses in a syllogism.61 Taking issue with Ockham’s inclusion of an initial dubitability as essential to the scientifically knowable, Crathorn argued that what distinguished scientific knowledge from other knowledge was not its evidence or lack of evidence but that scientific knowledge involved a knowledge of why the cognized significate of a knowable proposition is true. For example, he cited the case of an eclipse of the sun. Someone observing an eclipse, if of sound mind, will not doubt that the sun is eclipsed and so will have evident knowledge of the significate of the proposition: ‘The sun is eclipsed.’ The eclipse will be known evidently, but it will not yet be an object of scientific understanding. The eclipse may become the object of scientific knowledge, however, if the one observing it comes to know the causes of the eclipse. Then the proposition: ‘The sun is eclipsed,’ will be known by a scientific knowledge properly so called. In this case, what was originally dubitable is not the knowable conclusion, as Ockham

See chapter six, pp. 190–191 above. Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 4: ‘Utrum viator possit scire scientia proprie dicta quod sit tantum unus deus.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 269, l. 2. 61 For Ockham, see note 19 above. Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 4: ‘Dico igitur quod de ratione scilibilis non est quod sit dubitabile, cuius oppositum docet frater Wilhelm Ockham quaestione secunda prohemiali super primum, ubi respondet ad argumenta facta; sed ex sequentibus apparebit quod doctrina sua non est bona et quod rationes suae non valent.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 272, ll. 11–15. 59 60

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contended, but the causes of that conclusion.62 Thus Crathorn revised Ockham’s definition of the knowable proposition, dropping the word ‘dubitable’ to assert that ‘every necessary proposition by nature able to become evident through other necessary propositions is demonstrable.’63 However, while he retained the modal language of necessity, Crathorn’s position was not dependent on attributing necessity to demonstrative premisses. As he noted: … no more is required to demonstrate a proposition than that the one cognizing evidently cognizes that the premisses are true and more evidently cognizes the conclusion, and that he evidently cognizes that that conclusion follows from the premisses.64

Evident knowledge of the premisses and the conclusion and evident knowledge about why the conclusion follows from the premisses, so that the premisses are seen to be the causes of the truth of the conclusion, are all that are needed for demonstration. Thus while Crathorn did not revise his early discussion of scientific knowledge to conform with his later rejection of both de dicto and most de re necessity, he could have done so without difficulty. If he had, his position would have approximated Strelley’s in stressing evident knowledge at the expense

62 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 4: ‘Ad primum istorum dicendum quod videns eclipsim solis, si sit sani capitis, non dubitat, utrum sol eclipsetur, licet dubitet, propter quam causam eclipsetur. Unde obiectum dubitationis in tali casu non est significatum istius propositionis: “Sol eclipsatur,” sed istius: “Propter quam causam sol eclipsatur.” Quando autem cognoscitur causa eclipsis solis, tunc significatum istius propositionis: “Sol eclipsatur,” scitur scientia proprie dicta, et id idem significatum prius fuit evidenter cognitum, antequam [sic, add. causa] cognosceretur. Id vero quod fuit obiectum dubitationis, cognita causa eclipsis solis non est obiectum dubitationis, nec obiectum scientiae proprie dictae, licet sit obiectum cognitionis evidentis. Sciens enim scientia proprie dicta solem eclipsari non scit scientia proprie dicta, propter quam causam sol eclipsetur, licet evidenter cognoscat, propter quam causam sol eclipsetur. Licet igitur videns eclipsim solis dubitet, propter quam causam sol eclipsetur, et postea cognita causa sciat proprie vel scientia proprie dicta quod sol eclipsetur, ex hoc non sequitur quod scibile scientia proprie dicta prius fuit dubium quam scitum, quia illud quod scitur scientia proprie dicta scilicet significatum istius: “Sol eclipsatur,” non fuit obiectum dubitationis, ut patet ex praedictis.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 272, l. 31–273, l. 14. 63 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 4: ‘… omnis propositio necessaria nata fieri evidens per aliquas propositiones necessarias est demonstrabilis…’ Ed. Hoffmann, 280, ll. 14–16. 64 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 4: ‘… non plus requiritur ad hoc quod propositio demonstretur nisi quod cognoscens evidenter cognoscat praemissas esse veras et evidentiores conclusione et quod evidenter cognoscat talem conclusionem sequi ex praemissis.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 280, ll. 18–21.

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of necessity, but whereas Strelley emphasized the lack of any command of the will as a hall-mark of scientific knowledge, Crathorn stressed the knowledge of causes. If Crathorn’s views about scientific knowledge coincided, at least in part, with those of his contemporaries, his views about the grounds for evident knowledge did not. Katherine Tachau has treated Crathorn’s epistemology in detail, and she has called attention to several aspects of his thought bearing on the general question of certitude.65 Crathorn had followed the position of the perspectivists that objects produced replicas of themselves in the form of images or species propagated through a medium, usually air. Anyone sensing an external object did so by encountering such species, which then generated images or replicas in the medium of the senses themselves. Crathorn argued that in this life, the wayfarer sees objects and their species at the same time and without distinguishing them, so that one vision in number sees both the species and the object originally propagating it. The very likeness of a species to its object means that the cognitive faculties cannot distinguish between them.66 After-images and other apparent phenomena that might result from such a cognitive failure normally persist for only a brief time, minimizing error, but God might intervene to preserve a species after the annihilation of its propagating object, and there would be no way from the cognition of the species alone for the observer to know.67 65 Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 255–274. And also see Dominik Perler, ‘Crathorn on Mental Language,’ in Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XIIth-XIVth Century), ed. Costantino Marmo, Acts of the XIth Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics (Turnhout, 1997), 337–354. 66 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Probatio: Quando res extrinseca, quae est extra videntem, videtur mediante sua specie a vidente, eadem res numero est visio speciei et illius, cuius est species, sicut quando aliquis videt albedinem mediante specie, eadem visione videt speciem immediate et albedinem mediate, quia mediate specie.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 102, ll. 28–31. Ibid.: ‘Et probo istam conclusionem sic: Videns albedinem simul et indistincte videt albedinem et speciem albedinis, nec potest ex hoc solo quod videt distinguere inter albedinem et speciem albedinis. Igitur etsi videatur albedo, quae est extra, videns eam non potest virtute visionis, id est ex hoc solo quod videt eam, non potest certificari utrum sit extra.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 123, ll. 15–20. 67 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘… pono quod aliquis videat albedinem exsistentem extra videntem sicut albedinem panis vel lapidis. Videns talem albedinem non potest infallibiliter et omnino evidenter cognoscere illam albedinem esse ex sola visione, quia si species albedinis conservaretur per potentiam dei vel aliam in vidente albedine prius visa adnihilata, crederet videns solam speciem albedinis albedinem prius exsistentem et prius visam se videre et ipsam adhuc esse et tamen deciperetur. Sed videns albedinem non potest ex sola visione certificari, utrum talis conservatio speciei fieret a deo

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As we have seen, Crathorn also contended that intuitive cognition and abstractive cognition are not distinct cognitions, but the same cognition, respectively cognizing some thing immediately in itself or mediately through its representative species. Crathorn concluded that when that cognitive faculty cognizes the representative similitude itself, qua similitude, it is called ‘intuitive’ cognition and when it cognizes the object by means of its similitude, it is called ‘abstractive’ cognition.68 The objects directly and immediately cognized through intuitive cognition in this life are the species generated by external objects, not external objects themselves. Thus Crathorn regarded intuitive cognition, in itself, as no more able than vision or species to provide conclusive evidence for the existence of external reality. In Crathorn’s view, the only thing that salvages evidence is a theological guarantee: ‘God or the first cause does nothing in vain and supernaturally to lead people into error.’ Crathorn believed the proposition that God would not do anything miraculous or frivolous to produce a multitude of errors, was self-evident to anyone of sound mind, because for God to act in such a manner would be antithetical to His goodness.69 Thus the Principle of Induction that what seems to happen in the majority of cases is what in fact happens, has a theological foundation in divine goodness. The apparent threat to certainty from God’s ability to suspend the causal order is nullified because one could be assured God would only rarely, if at all, intervene in that way, and then only if something of significent moment were at stake. However, as Tachau has noted, even this certainty might have its limitations. Crathorn did not believe that everyone necessarily admitts self-evident propositions. He cited the case of those who tried to solve the paradox of the liar by saying that the same proposition is both true and false as an example of the ability to deny even the Principle of Nonvel non. Igitur sola visione albedinis non potest videns evidenter et omnino infallibiliter cognoscere talem rem esse, si sit.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 139, l. 31–140, l. 5. 68 See note 48 above. 69 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Duodecima conclusio est ista quod licet viator ex sola cognitione sensitiva non possit habere cognitionem evidentem et omnino infallibilem quod tales qualitates sensatae sint extra videntem, tamen ex cognitione sensitiva et isto complexo per se noto: Deus vel prima causa nihil agit frustra et supernaturaliter ad inducendum homines in errorem, potest evidenter concludere tales res sensatas esse, quia conservatio specierum ita generalis scilicet quod homo per totam vitam suam nihil videret nisi tales qualitates exsistentes in vidente, foret miraculosa et vana et effectiva errorum multorum, qualem actionem quilibet sanae mentis iudicat divinae bonitati repugnare.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 126, l. 31–127, l. 4.

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contradiction.70 What was self-evident to him might not be self-evident to everyone, and as we have seen, Robert Holcot, for one, would not have agreed that Crathorn’s theological guarantee was self-evident. For him it was a matter of faith.

D. A Case of Mistaken Identity Robert Holcot, as heir to the conflicting opinions about evidence and certitude, recognized the need to address the consequence of that controversy: if human beings at any time might find themselves subject to invincible ignorance, how could they hope to know what they were supposed to do to obey God and achieve salvation? Holcot, himself, in response to the debate about evidence that Scotus had inaugurated, chose to follow Scotus and Ockham on the question of the nature of scientific knowledge, resorting to conditional propositions as the premisses in demonstration, and to follow Strelley, Lawton and Crathorn in denying the possibility of intuitive cognition of non-existents.71 He 70 Tachau, Vision and Certitude, 273; Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Quarta decima conclusio est ista quod non est aliquod complexum, quin homo posset disponi sic quod illi assentiret. Unde possibile est quod homo credet quod nullum totum esset maius sua parte et quod contradictoria sint simul vera et quod ipse nihil sit vel quod mortuus sit et sic de aliis. Hoc probo sic: Multi volentes solvere insolubilia dicunt quod eadem propositio est vera et falsa et per consequens sua contradictoria est vera et falsa. Igitur secundum tales contradictoria erunt simul vera.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 128, ll. 19–25. 71 Holcot, Quod. I, q. 1: ‘Secundo igitur pono distinctiones de hoc nomine scientia. Et dico quod ad praesens potest accipi tripliciter: uno modo pro firma adhaesione alicui vero et sic accipitur valde improprie quia sic fides posset dici scientia… Secundo modo dicitur scientia notitia evidens alicuius veritatis sive contingentis sive necessarii, sicut scimus istam: sol lucet; ignis calet; et istas: de quolibet dicitur alterum contradictoriorum et de nullo eorum ambo; impossibile est idem esse et non esse. Et sic scientia includit notitiam intuitivam complexam de contingentibus et intellectum principiorum et scientiam improprie dictam. Tertio accipitur scientia pro notitia evidenti alicuius necessarii nati fieri evidens per propositiones necessarias ad ipsum demonstrative applicatas. Et sic accipit philosophus scientiam primo Posteriorum capitulo 9. Et sic non est nisi conclusionis in demonstratione, et sic forte secundum quosdam est una qualitas causata vel nata causari ex duabus qualitatibus, viz. de duabus noticiis duarum premissarum.’ Ed. Muckle, 129. Ibid.: ‘Ad secundum concedendum est quod omnes propositiones quas Aristoteles ponit 8 Physicorum vel sunt contingentes vel probantur per contingentes, et per consequens non demonstrat.’ Ed. Muckle, 146. Ibid.: ‘Ad tertium concedo quod omnis propositio est contingens ubi genus praedicatur de specie sicut haec: omnis homo est animal; omne totum sua parte est majus; omnis triangulus habet tres, etc. Philosophus tamen qui ponit aeternitatem mundi vult

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thus responded conservatively to the contemporary challenges to certitude. Yet the difficulties a potentially deceptive God and world might still pose for human certainty led Holcot to assume that salvation must be possible even for those in a state of ignorance about the fundamental articles of faith, at least if their ignorance arose through no fault of their own. Holcot’s contention that God might deceive people and that invincible ignorance constituted a defense against the consequences of uncertainty about what God expects of the wayfarer did not go unchallenged by his contemporaries, however. As primary opponent, Heinrich Schepers has identified Holcot’s Franciscan socius, William of Chitterne, licensed to hear confessions in the Diocese of Sarum (Salisbury) between 1330 and 1345, and mentioned by name in four of the manuscripts of Holcot’s commentary on the Sentences as objecting to Holcot’s contention that God could mislead or deceive, just not in an unjust, vicious or disordinate way.72 The disagreement began over some quod omnes tales sint necessariae. Posuit enim quod haec est impossibilis: homo non est, rosa non est, et sic de singulis. Aliter dicunt Christiani qui ponunt inceptionem mundi et desinitionem et cuiuscumque speciei saltem possibile. Ideo potest dici quod quando dicit quod tales sunt necessariae: homo est homo; homo est animal, vult per istas cathegoricas intelligere has conditionales: si homo est, homo est; si homo est, homo est animal; et sic de aliis. Unde concedo quod nulla categorica est necessaria si alterum terminorum supponit pro corruptibili.’ Ed. Muckle, 150. And see note 48 above for the text of Holcot’s views about the intuitive cognition of non-existents. 72 Heinrich Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ Philosophisches Jahrbuch 77 (1970): 342. On Chitterne, also see A.B. Emden, BRUO 3:2161; and idem, BRUC 135. Fritz Hoffmann, Die ‘Conferentiae’ des Robert Holcot O.P. und die akademischen Auseinandersetzungen an der Universität Oxford 1330–1332, BGPTM, n. s. 36 (Münster, 1993), 43, overlooked this attribution when editing the Sex articuli and suggests Walter Chatton as Holcot’s opponent. Hoffmann (ibid., pp. 43–52) recognized the parameters of the debate, however, and provides a description that parallels what follows here. Joseph M. Incandela, ‘Robert Holcot, O.P., on Prophecy, the Contingency of Revelation, and the Freedom of God,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 4 (1994), 181–188, touches on the issues Holcot discussed, although his treatment of Holcot’s use of God’s absolute and ordained power requires revision (see chapter 8 below). Katherine Tachau has written the most important analysis of the controversy to date in her article: ‘Robert Holcot on Contingency and Divine Deception,’ in Filosofia e teologia nel Trecento: Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. Luca Bianchi (Louvain-la-neuve, 1994), 157–196. She has identified nine questions in Oxford, Merton College, Cod. 113, ff. 218v–233r, as being either by Chitterne or a report on his debates. At least two of the questions, which Tachau has kindly supplied me: ‘Utrum solus Deus sit a quacumque rationali creatura super omnia summe diligendus,’ (ff. 281va–220ra) and ‘Utrum omni alio a Deo licite sic utendum’ (ff. 225ra–227ra) contain arguments Holcot indicates his ‘socius’ Chitterne raised against him, as well as arguments that Holcot made himself.

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examples Holcot proposed early in his commentary on the Sentences, in book I, q. 3. He had raised the possibility someone might meritoriously delight in (frui) some created being without violating the present divine law, and so would not be held to the article of faith requiring everyone to love God above all. As proof, Holcot had argued: Let it be that Peter sees Christ and Jacob who look just alike, and Peter does not know how to tell them apart, but it appears to Peter that Jacob is Christ. Let Peter then love Jacob above all and delight in him with the delight of fruition. Holcot argued that in spite of the article of faith, Peter would give such supreme love to Jacob meritoriously, because he would do so from invincible ignorance, mistaking Jacob for Christ to whom he would owe such love, and having no means to tell them apart. Indeed, if even the devil were to transform himself into an image identical to Christ, Holcot contended that Peter might adore the devil without sin and meritoriously.73 The questions at issue are inserted in a volume that also contains Holcot’s Sentences commentary, closely tying them to the Dominican. The positions cited tend to be brief, and what one might expect from a reportatio of some kind. For example, on folio 226ra, the Merton MS text takes up a dubium about whether God could lie that might represent an exchange with Holcot: ‘Sed hic dubium est: si Deus posset mentiri. Probatur quod sic, quia potest dicere falsam sententiam esse talem, ergo contra mentem ire. Dico quod non potest hoc asserere. Contra: Potest dicere et intendere inducere in aliquo talem credulitatem et talis inductio videtur esse asssertio, ergo etc.’ 73 Holcot, Sent. I, q. 3: ‘Decimo tertio principaliter sic: aliquis meritorie posito casu qui non repugnat legi datae, creatura fruitur, ergo modo non tenetur hoc: diligere Deum super omnia. Consequentia patet, et antecedens probo: Pono quod Petrus videns Christum et Jacobum nesciat inter eos distinguere, et estimet Jacobum esse Christum. Quo posito, diligat Petrus Jacobum super omnia. Tunc arguo sic: Petrus diligit Deum super omnia, ergo fruitur eo. Consequentia patet, et antecedens patet ex casu, et tamen meritorie, ergo contingit frui creatura meritorie. Quod meritorie hoc facit, patet, quia est ignorantia invincibilis, ergo nullo modo impedit virtutem, ergo possibile est quod homo fruatur creatura vel diabolo transfigurato meritorie.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 134ra–134rb; and In quatuor libros Sententiarum quaestiones (Lyon, 1518), repr. Minerva G.M.B.H. (Frankfurt, 1967), d6ra. Ibid.: ‘Ad xiii, concedo conclusionem.’ Ed. Lyon, f. e8va; omitted from Oxford, Balliol College MS 15, f. 139rb. See O. Lottin, ‘Le problème de l’Ignorantia iuris’ de Gratien à saint Thomas d’Aquin,’ RTAM 5 (1933): 345–368, and Ilkka Kantola, ‘Some Modern Aspects of Medieval Probability,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, Léonard G. Sbrocchi, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (New York, Ottawa, and Toronto, 1995), 520–528, for the views of canonists and theologians on invincible ignorance prior to the fourteenth century.

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William of Chitterne found Holcot’s position untenable. He argued that it would constitute a contradiction for someone, Peter, John, whomever, to meritoriously delight in Jacob or the devil with the delight of fruition, because to delight in some creature would violate the commandment to love God above all else, necessarily entailing sin, not merit. Holcot cited Chitterne as saying: He [Peter or John] enjoys the devil, therefore he loves the devil on account of himself, therefore he cleaves to the devil with love on account of himself, therefore one who ought to be used, not enjoyed, is enjoyed. But this is a sin, because according to Augustine, every perversity that is called sin is to enjoy (frui) what ought to be used and to use (uti) what ought to be enjoyed.74

Moreover, while error might be an excuse in some cases, Chitterne argued that error is no excuse when it comes to articles of the faith.75 Therefore, he contended that given the possibility of such cases of mistaken identity, no wayfarer ought to delight in anything absolutely, but only conditionally—with the provision that Christ or an image of Christ really appears before him or her and not some Christ look-alike or the devil in disguise.76 Holcot had incurred a barrage of criticism during his first year of commenting on the Sentences—from Chitterne on his views about deception and meritorious action, and from Crathorn on epistemology—and during the summer of 1332, he took the unusual step of responding to them outside the context of the Sentences commentary, 74 Robert Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Primo sic. Sequitur: Fruitur diabolo, igitur diligit diabolum propter se, igitur amore inhaeret diabolo propter se, igitur non fruendo fruitur. Sed hoc est peccatum, quia secundum AUGUSTINUM omnis perversitas, quae peccatum nominatur, est uti fruendis et frui utendis.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 110, ll. 4–7. 75 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Tertio sic: Si aliquid in casu articuli excusaret Johannem a peccato, hoc foret error suus. Sed error in articulis fidei nullum excusat …’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 110, ll. 11–12. 76 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Propter ista tenet iste socius quod nec errore nec aliqua ignorantia existente in eo potest homo meritorie frui creatura. Et ad casum respondet quod Johannes in tali casu non debet diligere Jacobum super omnia absolute, sed sub conditione, puta si ipse sit deus.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 111, ll. 6–9. Tachau, ‘Holcot on Contingency,’ 184, n. 72, has transcribed a portion of Chitterne’s argument from Oxford, Merton College MS 113, ff. 218vb–219ra, describing a case in which the Devil transforms himself into an angel of light or impersonates Christ. Chitterne’s solution for such situations, for which he cites the authority of Alexander of Hales, was that: ‘Tamen etiam fatale posset vitare periculum adorando sub conditione, “si tu es Deus.”’

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in a work known after its incipit as the Sex articuli.77 In the fifth article, Holcot reviewed Chitterne’s criticisms and gave his answer. First, Holcot indicated that some of Chitterne’s criticisms arose from a basic misunderstanding about terms. The verb ‘to delight in’ (frui) could have two meanings: 1) the nominal definition: to love something for itself, and 2) the common understanding about what the term conveys: to will someone or thing as much good as one should will to God. In regard to the particular cases at issue, Peter or John do not delight in any creature in the first meaning of the term frui, because they believe they adore Christ, not Jacob or the devil, and thus do not delight in Jacob or the devil for themselves. They do delight in Jacob and the devil in the second sense of the term, but taking ‘delight in’ in the second sense, invincibile ignorance protects them from sin.78 77 For the dating, see Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ (1970): 343. The articles raised: ‘Primus articulus fuit quod obiectum fidei et opinionis et universaliter omnis notitiae assentivae est complexum et non est res signata per complexum. Secundus articulus fuit quod liberum arbitrium non sufficit ad determinandum intellectum hominis ad actum credendi, ut ideo aliquis praeter credat aliquam propositionem esse veram quia vult eam credere esse veram. Tertius articulus fuit quod omnis cognitio creaturae est aliqua res distincta a creatura cognoscente. Quartus articulus quod omnis cognitio creaturae causatur effective a creatura cognoscente, saltem sicut a causa partiali, et recipitur in eadem sicut accidens in subiecto. Quintus articulus fuit dictus in materia de fruitione viae, q. 3, super primum, et fuit talis, casu possibili posito: homo potest licite et meritorie frui creatura. Sextus fuit quod in casu posito possibili idem actus numero est meritum et demeritum successive.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 207rb; ed. Lyon, f. q5ra. In his edition, Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 65, is apparently unaware of this list (although he cites Oxford, Oriel College MS 15 as one on which his edition is based, it does not figure anywhere in the apparatus). He gives a somewhat different description of the articles, omitting article six. Because Holcot says the fourth article was answered in the third, and he jumps straight to article five, Hoffmann calls article five, article four in his edition. 78 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Ista impugnatio satis bene procedit contra verba mea, sed tamen non contra intellectum, quem habui, quando ea dixi. Unde laboramus in una aequivocatione de isto termino “frui,” qui quidem terminus potest dupliciter exponi. Uno modo sic quod diffinitio exprimens quid nominis istius termini “frui” sit ista: “Amare aliquid propter se.” Alio modo potest exponi secundum usum communem loquendi ut diffinitio exprimens quid importatur per nomen sit ista: “Velle alicui summum bonum vel velle alicui tantum bonum quantum tenetur velle deo.” Primo modo accipiendo istum terminum “frui” dico quod errans circa creaturam putans eam esse deum, non potest frui creatura stante casu argumenti, quia Johannes in casu illo non diligit Jacobum propter se, sed quia putat eum esse deum. Nec adorans diabolum adorat eum propter se, certum est. Sed accipiendo istum terminum “frui” secundo modo pro eo, quod est velle alicui summum bonum vel tantum bonum, quantum tenetur velle deo, dico quod per errorem vel ignorantiam invincibilem homo potest meritorie frui creatura quacumque.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 111, l. 10–112, l. 10.

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Second, Holcot responded that invincible ignorance can excuse error even where articles of faith are concerned, at least in some cases. For example, if an old woman hears her bishop preach an error about some subtle article of faith and believes from simplicity that what she hears is true, such a simple woman ought to believe her bishop, and invincible ignorance protects her from sin.79 In the particular case at issue, however, no article of faith is violated because acts of belief may be variously construed. According to a traditional distinction, the act of believing may target either the dictum or the rem dicti. In the sentence: ‘John believes that the devil is God,’ if the object of John’s belief is the dictum: ‘the devil is God,’ then the sentence means: ‘This is believed by John: “the devil is God,”’ in which the demonstrative pronoun picks out the proposition: ‘the devil is God.’ However, if John’s belief targets the rem dicti, then the sentence: ‘John believes that the devil is God,’ is equivalent to another: ‘John believes that this is God,’ in which the demonstrative pronoun picks out Jacob or the devil. Then the object of John’s belief is best expressed through a different sentence: ‘This is believed by John: “this is God.”’ While it would be impossible for anyone to believe that the devil is God in the first way and adhere to the article of faith to love God above all, in the second way someone could consistently adhere to every article of faith and yet mistakenly believe that this (representing the devil) is God. Then there would be no sin.80

79 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Ad tertium quando arguitur quod talis error non excusaret eum in casu posito, quia error in articulis fidei nullum excusat, potest dici: Immo in articulis quibusdam errans ex simplicitate non peccat mortaliter, sicut si vetula ex simplicitate crederet suo episcopo praedicanti errorem circa aliquem subtilem articulum, talis non incurreret haeresim, sicut patet 24, q. 3: “Qui in ecclesia.”’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 113, ll. 8–13. Incandela, ‘Robert Holcot, O.P., on Prophecy,’ 184, also notes this case. 80 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Similiter error, quo talis errat, non est contra articulum fidei, immo stat talis error cum fide cuiuscumque articuli. Et quando probatur quod sic, quia iste credit diabolum esse deum, haec est distinguenda secundum antiquum modum loquendi quod actus credendi potest denotari transire in dictum vel in rem dicti… Si per istam: “Johannes credit diabolum esse deum,” denotatur quod actus credendi transeat in dictum, sensus est: Haec est credita a Johanne, “Diabolus est deus.” Si vero denotetur quod actus credendi transeat in rem dicti, sensus est quod actus credendi transit in propositionem, cuius subiectum supponit pro re, quae est diabolus, cuiusmodi est ista: “Iste est deus,” demonstrato diabolo. Sic transfigurato modo bene stant simul quod aliquis credat istam: “Iste est deus,” et tamen quod credat omnem articulum fidei.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 113, l. 13–114, l. 11.

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Moreover, Chitterne’s suggestion that because such cases of mistaken identity might arise, John or Peter should love God under the condition that what appears to them is Christ or God, so that the command to love God should be: ‘Adore if you are Christ,’ seemed to Holcot to compromise faith. In the case of the devil in Christ’s form, John adored him without doubting the proof of his eyes. Nor should he have doubted. There were no grounds for doubt that he could discern. If John were to inject a doubt into his worship: I adore you if you are Christ, he would put himself into a false position. He would signify either that he doubted or the possibility of doubt, when in fact, in the case described, he had no doubts.81 The added condition would also not provide protection against sin. Either the conditional clause diminished the strength of John’s adoration or not. If the conditional did not diminish the strength of John’s adoration, it would not prevent him from worshiping the devil, and would not prevent him from sin. If the conditional did diminish the strength of John’s love, then it also diminished the adoration he paid to God. But that is not how John is required to worship God, from whom he is not supposed to hold back. He is not commanded to love God as he would love some noble creature, but to love God above all. Thus the added conditional would either not prevent John from worshiping the devil, or it would prevent him from worshiping God as he ought.82 Holcot believed that faith, even within a contingent world, should not be conditional. The wayfarer must accept God’s commands and revelations without reservation ‘as if ’ they could not be otherwise, although he or she knows that contingency injects the possibility that they could be false or misleading. Even though the world may be a deceptive place, God may tell falsehoods and cases of mistaken identity may arise, nevertheless, those in via must hold to their belief that salva81 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Dicitur hic quod neuter eorum peccat nec debet adorare nisi sub conditione posito tali casu. Unde deberet dicere: “Adoro te, si tu es Christus.” Sed contra hoc arguitur sic: Qui simulat se dubitare, ubi non dubitat, false simulat illud ad quod nullus tenetur. Sed ille Johannes non dubitat; igitur non debet simulare se dubitare.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 118, l. 9–119, l. 3. 82 Holcot, Sex articuli, art 4 [5]: ‘Praeterea aut illa conditio adiecta diminuit de adoratione aut non. Si non, non prodest illam apponere. Si diminuit, igitur si iste in tali casu debet apponere conditionem, debet intendere diminuationem de cultu deo debito, et ultra: tenetur intendere eum adorare minori cultu quam latria. Igitur teneretur eum velle adorare sicut creaturam nobilem. Consequens omnino est irrationale, quia qua ratione debet eum adorare sicut creaturam nobilem, deberet eum adorare sicut deum. Et si error non excuset in uno, nec in alio.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 119, ll. 4–11.

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tion follows from obedience to God and that the world, if a snare and a delusion, is benign for those who do their best. Thus Holcot contended against Chitterne that the dictates of conscience obligate all men and women irrespective of whether they stand in error or know the truth of a given situation. In the case of the devil in Christ’s image, John’s conscience dictates that he adore and worship what he sees in front of him. His conscience is in error, but ironically that does not matter— indeed if John were not to follow the dictates of his conscience, then he would fall into mortal sin even though his conscience tells him through invincible error to act in a way that if he knew that he erred, would be a mortal sin.83 As long as John’s error arises through no fault of his own and doing his best provides him with no indication that his perceptions are mistaken, the invincible nature of his error not only preserves him from sin, but obligates him to worship the devil in such a case.84 Holcot then confronted a further objection to his position. Someone might say that the casus in which John meritoriously adores the devil is impossible, because if John were of sound mind, he would not have such an invincible error if he himself were not somehow to blame. If in fact John is doing his best, presenting no obstacle to his understanding the truth, God would then inform him that he confronted an illusion, as for example God did in the case of St. Martin.85 Holcot replied that then the whole idea of invincible error as a defense against sin would come to nothing. In any case of error about matters of the faith, one could assume sin on the part of the one who is mistaken. God frequently did inform the saints when they were in error, yet such a revelation is a gift of the Holy Spirit, discretionary and not necessary. It 83 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Praeterea sic: Dictamen conscientiae tantum obligat, quando est erroneum, sicut quando est veridicum. Sed conscientia sua erronea in casu errore invincibili dictat sibi quod hoc est adorandum sicut deum, quod ipse ibi videt. Igitur si non adorat, peccat mortaliter.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 119, l. 12-l20, l. 2. 84 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Praeterea odiens deum errore invincibili vel interficiens deum putans eum maleficum non peccat, nisi ipsemet fuerit in causa, quare errat. Igitur nec adorans vel summe diligens creaturam per errorem invincibilem peccat. Consequentia patet, quia maius malum vel aequale iudicatur odire deum quam adorare creaturam.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 120, l. 9–121, l. 2. 85 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Potest dici quod casus est impossibilis quod homo patiatur sic errorem invincibilem existens compos mentis suae, si ipsemet non fuerit in causa, quia si ipse non praestet obstaculum, deus informabit eum de delusione tali, sicut de sancto Martino legimus.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 121, ll. 3–6. In the life of St. Martin, the Devil appears to Martin having enveloped himself in light and claims to be Christ, but the Holy Spirit reveals the truth to the saint. See, Medieval Saints: A Reader, ed. Mary-Ann Stouck (Peterborough, Ontario, 1999), 157.

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includes no contradiction that God permit people to err, even saints or people doing their best, without informing them of their mistake.86 But still, Chitterne argued against Holcot’s position that if Holcot were right, the idea of idolatry would become meaningless. For take the case of John adoring the devil in the form of Christ, does he commit idolatry or not? If he does, he sins, and does not act meritoriously. If it is said that he does not commit idolatry, one can argue that speaking broadly about idolatry, since he adores a creature with the adoration of worship (latria), he in fact does commit idolatry (idololatria). And if he does not commit idolatry, then no one adoring an idol would commit idolatry, because if such a person did not believe the idol to be God, then he or she would not show it the adoration due God alone and would not commit idolatry, or if such a person did believe the idol to be God, then there would be no sin because he or she would be following the dictates of an erring conscience. People could, throughout their whole lives, adore some idol without mortal sin if such an invincible error were to excuse them.87 Holcot responded by speaking generally about all infidelity, whether heretical or of whatever kind, that people are never allowed to fall into an error contrary to the faith and essential for salvation and eternal life unless they have shown some evil will, neglecting to study 86 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Contra: Pari ratione debet dici quod deus numquam patitur hominem esse in errore invincibili de quocumque faciendo nisi propter peccatum suum. Et sic nullus error foret homini invincibilis, quia posset conteri de peccato suo et vitare errorem. Et licet verum sit de facto quod deus frequenter informavit sanctos in tali casu de veritate per illud donum Spiritus Sancti, quod vocatur discretio spirituum, non tamen includit contradictionem quod deus permittat hominem sic errare, cum libere faciat quidquid facit ad extra.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 121, ll. 7–14. 87 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Sed adhuc arguo contra conclusionem principalem de adoratione illius, qui sic decipitur: Quaero an committit idolatriam an non. Si sic, ergo peccat. Si non, igitur adorat creaturam adoratione latriae. Igitur committit idolatriam large loquendo de idolatria. Confirmatur ista ratio, quia gentilis adorans idolum aut credit illud esse deum aut non. Si non credit illud esse deum, igitur non exhibet ei cultum soli deo debitum, quia iste cultus magis consistit in devotione cordis quam in obsequio corporis. Igitur si non credit idolum suum esse deum, non exhibet ei cultum soli deo debitum. Igitur non est idolatria, quia non est grave periculum exhibere creaturae reverentiam, nisi cedat in dei praeiudicium. Et similiter sequitur: Non credit illud esse deum; igitur non adorat illud sicut deum adoratione latrie; et ultra: igitur non est idolatria. Si dicatur quod talis credit illud idolum esse deum, sicut ipse asserit— Contra: Igitur per te non peccat, quia sequitur dictamen conscientiae erroneae et ignorantiam invincibilem. Et sic aliquis homo per totam vitam suam posset adorare idolum sine peccato mortali, si tamen talis error eum excusaret.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 124, l. 10–125, l. 8.

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or investigate what they are supposed by nature to investigate in order to avoid error. Those who present no such obstacle of will to divine grace will obtain the knowledge sufficient for salvation and will have visions and concepts sufficient to cause their assent to what is necessary. Thus, faith and salvation presuppose good use of the will.88 The true idolator does believe that what he or she adores is God and errs in so believing, but the idolator, if truly an idolator, is in some way the cause of his or her own error. Otherwise, he or she would not sin. An evil will and negligence in living according to the principles of natural law are the partial causes of idolatrous deception. Idolatry is both possible and a sin.89 Whether someone sins or not, however, all comes down to intention and will. In summary, Holcot argued that it is incumbent on each person to use reason to check perception and to apply every effort of good will to live according to natural and divine law. But if reason offers no way to find out about some vision or revelation, then the wayfarer should 1) assume that God is not permitting any deception, and 2) be confident that having done his or her best to ascertain the facts of the matter, no sin is entailed by following the dictates of conscience. Indeed, not to follow conscience would be to fall into sin. And Holcot opposed his views about faith to those like Chitterne who argued for faith under a condition. Because Chitterne, by Holcot’s account, believed that such cases of mistaken identity would involve the one in error in idolatry and a sin against a fundamental article of faith, he believed that God would violate his covenant if he were to allow people doing their best to suffer such errors without some corrective revelation. Of course, from Holcot’s perspective, such a revelation would not be proof against error Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Ad istud dico generaliter loquendo de omni infidelitate sive sit heresis sive quaecumque infidelitas, numquam aliquis permittitur induci in contrarium fidei errorem, quae fides est necessaria ad salutem aeternum consequendam, nisi propter aliquam malitiam voluntatis, qua vel neglegit studere vel indulgere circa ea, ad quae naturaliter ordinatur. Et quicumque non praebet tale obstaculum gratiae divinae, ubicumque fuerit et qualitercumque se habuerit, infundetur sibi notitia sufficiens ad salutem. Et videbit verissimas similitudines et rationes sufficienter in eo causantes assensum; et sic dependet fides a voluntate, praesupponendo videlicet bonum usum voluntatis.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 125, ll. 9–18. 89 Holcot, Sex articuli, art. 4 [5]: ‘Et tunc ad argumentum concedo quod unus idolatria credit, illud quod adorat esse deum, et errat. Sed dico quod illius erroris ipse est causa aliquo modo, et alias non peccaret. Unde propter malam usum voluntatis et negligentiam vivendi secundum principia iuris naturalis incidit in talem errorem. Et non sequitur: Facit secundum dictamen conscientiae, igitur non errat, sicut notum est.’ Ed. Hoffmann, ‘Conferentiae’, 126, ll. 1–6. 88

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because there would be no more certainty that God’s revelation about the error is true than there is certainty about the original error.90 Thus Holcot took a different approach. He avoided any question of having to obtain certainty in matters necessary for salvation. Salvation depended in his view on commitment, rather than on truth. While the wayfarer must commit him or herself to the dictates of the church and of conscience as if they are true, their truth is not what matters so much as the commitment to them as true. The alternative would be to rely on an infinitely regressing series of revelations, each confirming the truth of the previous one. Absolute certainty, such that there could be no possibility that what is true not be true, is unattainable about the propositions necessary for salvation. Obtaining such certainty could then not be necessary for salvation. Chitterne’s suggestion that the necessity of the conditional: ‘If you are Christ, then I should adore you with the worship due Christ,’ be substituted for the uncertainty of unconditional propositions like: ‘I should adore you who are Christ with the worship due Christ,’ seemed to Holcot to detract from faith and, far from safeguarding salvation, to put it in jeopardy. The debate between Chitterne and Holcot did not end with the Sex articuli. Chitterne continued to object to Holcot’s views, and during the fall of 1332, in his Sentences commentary, book III, q. 1, Holcot again addressed the objections of his socius. After recapitulating the arguments of the summer with some elaborations and additional examples, Holcot refined his treatment of error and conscience. He contended that one may err in two ways: dangerously and not. A dangerous error occurs when one errs against the articles of faith or divine precepts. An error that is not dangerous occurs when someone through invincible ignorance treats something false as true.91 Corresponding to these two kinds of error are two kinds of erring conscience. An erring conscience obliges one to act in accordance with its dictates just as much as a conscience without error, so that whenever any one acts against conscience, whether his or her conscience errs or not, sin results. If a conscience 90 See Katherine H. Tachau, ‘Logic’s God and the Natural Order in Late Medieval Oxford: the Teaching of Robert Holcot,’ Annals of Science53 (1996): 251–255, for a helpful discussion partly based on an earlier draft of this work. 91 Holcot, Sent. III, q. 1: ‘Ad solutionem istorum argumentorum, est sciendum quod contingit errare dupliciter: vel in errore periculoso vel in errore non periculoso. Error periculosus est quotienscumque errat contra articulos fidei vel praecepta divina. Error non periculosus est in aliis, quando homo deceptus ignorantia invincibili approbat falsa pro veris.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 175vb; ed. Lyon, f. m8vb.

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erring in the first way indicates that someone should commit an act against the faith, that person will fall into a state of perplexity, unsure what to do. But if a conscience erring in the second way commands someone to do what would be a sin if he or she but discerned the error, invincible ignorance excuses the sin and preserves the necessity of following conscience.92 Having an erring conscience in dangerous matters leads to perplexity unless that conscience is set aside. Such perplexity arises when it seems to someone that whatever he or she does or omits doing, sin will result. Unfortunately, Holcot asserted, such perplexity is not only possible but even common, and he cited Gregory’s Moralia in Job in support.93 But such perplexity does not occur in cases in which invincible ignorance protects from sin. William of Chitterne and Robert Holcot confronted each other within a certain frame of agreement. Each, at least on Holcot’s account, accepted a covenantal theology and the complete contingency of the world. Each also accepted the world as a sometimes deceptive place. Following Augustine and FitzFalph, Chitterne seems to have believed that God allowed people to be deceived about matters essential for salvation only if they were already in some way sinful. Thus, any sins they incurred because of the deception under which they labored were at least partially caused by their own previous acts of evil willing. God would deceive no one who was doing his or her best. Holcot, on the other hand, placed no such restriction on God. For example, he raised the case of the Virgin Mary. If Christ were to leave the human body in which he had been incarnate, and that man, now empty of Christ, were to present himself before the Virgin, she would adore him with

Holcot, Sent. III, q. 1: ‘Secundum istum duplicem errorem est duplex conscientia erronea, quia aliquando conscientia erronea hominis est erronea errore periculoso, et aliquando est erronea errore non periculoso. Primo [modo] conscientia erronea obligat hominem ad faciendum secundum eam, ita quod si fecerit contra eam, peccat; iterum si fecerit secundum eum non excusatur a peccato; ita quod stante tali conscientia homo est perplexus donec eam deposuerit. Sed conscientia secundo modo erronea sic obligat quod si non fecerit secundum eam, peccat, et si fecerit secundum eam, non peccat, sed excusatur a peccato propter ignorantiam invincibilem ex qua causatur talis conscientia.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 176ra; ed. Lyon, f. n1ra. 93 Holcot, Sent. III, q. 1: ‘Unde habens conscientiam erroneam in errore periculoso est perplexus si non deposuerit eam, et quando est ita quod videtur homini quod sive faciat hoc factum sive omittat, ipse peccat, tunc dicitur perplexus perplexitate facti. Et haec perplexitas non solum est possibilis, immo frequens apud homines secundum Gregorianum super illud Job, 40.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 176ra; ed. Lyon, f. n1ra–n1rb 92

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the same adoration she had given Christ before, and she would err in so doing and yet in no way sin. When Chitterne suggested that God would then enlighten Mary about the true status of the man before her, Holcot objected that there seemed no necessity that Christ on leaving his incarnate body should have to inform Mary about it. God would not involve himself in a contradiction if he were to leave her in ignorance about Christ’s action.94 Indeed, Chitterne’s restrictions seemed most inconvenient. Returning to the case of the simple old woman and the prelate, if one were only supposed to believe a bishop when one already knew that what he said ought to be believed and never when there could be some doubt, then whenever a bishop promulgated a new article of faith recently established by the Church or something not previously known to his audience, no one in the audience should believe the bishop any more than a shepherd of sheep.95 The faithful would have no way of confirming what they ought to believe and what not.

94 Holcot, Sent. III, q. 1: ‘Quinta ratio mea fuit … quod Christus dimisisset humanitatem assumptam iam adultam, et hoc latuisset Beatam Virginem, ipsa nihilominus adorasset illum hominem adoratione qua prius, igitur errasset, et tamen in nullo peccasset quia error facti est simpliciter invincibilis. Ad istud dicitur quod tunc illuminasset Deus mentem Beatae Virginis et custodisset eam ab adoratione, sed si simpliciter adorasset, peccasset. Sed planum est quod haec responsio non soluit instantiam, tum quia negat casum argumenti quia impossibile esset quod Christus naturam assumptam dimisisset nisi de illa dimissione informasset Beatam Virginem, quod divinae potentiae contradicit, non enim tunc posset facere quid fieri non includit contradictione, sicut notum est. Tum quia secundo dicit quod stante tali ignorantia invincibili in mente Beatae Virginis ipsa peccasset absolute adorando quod est superius multipliciter improbatum, quia talis ignorantia causat involuntarium et per consequens excusat omnino.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 176rb–176va; ed. Lyon, f. n1vb. 95 Holcot, Sent. III, q. 1: ‘Sextus articulus est an aliquis possit mereri per fidem falsam… Et est unus communis casus et vulgaris: ponatur quod una vetula audiat praelatum suum praedicantem aliquem articulum hereticalem de quo ipsa non tenetur habere fidem explicitam, … isto casu posito, dico quod ipsa per istam fidem erroneam meretur… Sed oppositum istius dicitur a respondente… Dicit enim quod ipsa non debet credere praelato praedicanti contrarium fidei, quia tunc non crederet quicquid sancta mater ecclesia credit et peccaret mortaliter. Sed est omnino irrationabiliter dictum, quia vel teneor summum simplex credere praelato meo praedicanti aliquid esse credendum de quo dubito an sit credendum si non esset dictum ab eo, vel nihil tale teneor credere ad praedicationem suam. Si nihil tale teneor credere ad praedicationem suam, igitur nihil dictum ab eo teneor credere nisi quod scio aliunde esse credendum, et sic numquam teneor sibi credere quando ipse promulgat articulos novos conciliorum vel aliquid quod ante non credebam, et sic non plus teneor credere praelato meo quam uni pastori ovium, quod non est rationabiliter dictum.’ In Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 176va; ed. Lyon, f. n1vb–n2ra.

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The faith would fall into confusion. Holcot’s strategy, tying merit to faith and good will rather than to acceptance of the correct doctrines, circumvented the difficulties which uncertainty and deception raised.96

E. Conclusion Two principles created the shape of the debate about certitude at Oxford, at least at Blackfriars: Scotus’ Principle of Induction and the principle, mandated by the Condemnations of 1277,97 that God can cause any effect directly that he ordinarily effects through secondary causes. The nature of natural causality was believed such that the world operated for the most part in a reliable, predictable way, permitting an observer to draw highly probable conclusions inductively from the observation of a reasonable sample of examples. However, while natural causality was predictable, since God could intervene supernaturally to interrupt any causal operation at any time, unless such divine action were at least unusual, the grounds for relying on induction would vanish. Behind assertion of the Principle of Induction lay an assumption: God would not act to disrupt natural causality except rarely, if at all, or if God were to do so, he would let people know, so they would not be deceived. The guarantee that God would not intervene to nullify the Principle of Induction was perceived variously. Some, like Crathorn, took a deductive approach to ethics and argued that God’s goodness precluded God from deceiving people or from capriciously disrupt96

For discussion of a tangential issue among Holcot’s contemporaries, see Marilyn McCord Adams and Rega Wood, ‘Is to Will It as Bad as to Do It?’ FcS 41 (1981): 5–60. Katherine H. Tachau, ‘Richard Campsall as a Theologian: New Evidence,’ in Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi: Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ed. Burckhard Mojsisch and Olaf Pluta (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991) 2:988–993, shows Richard Campsall subscribing to a position similar to Holcot’s: someone in a state of invincible ignorance and acting accordingly could err and still act meritoriously and with a rectitude of will. 97 The list of condemned theses was originally published in H. Denifle and A. Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 1889–1897), 1:543–558, but Pierre Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l’averroïsm latin au XIII me siècle, II: Textes inèdites, 2nd ed. (Louvain, 1908), 175–181, reordered the theses according to thematic criteria, and it is customary to cite the theses according to his text. Theses of particular note are nos. 67, 68 and 69. Also see Roland Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamné à Paris le 7 Mars 1277, Philosophes médiévaux 22 (Louvain, 1977), 319–321, for a table collating Mandonnet with the Chartularium and with a third version of the list in the Collectio articulorum in Anglia et Parisiis condemnatorum, ed. Du Plessis d’Argentré.

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ing the natural order. Others, like Chitterne, took a divine command approach and argued that while God could deceive human beings, God would not do so within the covenanted ordained system he had established, or at least not without revealing the truth to those who were doing their best to follow the dictates of the covenant. It was only within the deductive system that Crathorn’s position would seem self-evident. Those who subscribed to the divine command system would not be convinced. Moreover, as Strelley and Holcot had noted, the Old Testament included examples of God communicating falsehoods to people even within the ordained system. Even the covenant provided no absolute guarantee. Holcot believed that God did not arbitrarily intervene and that the Principle of Induction was a reasonable principle to follow, but he did so ultimately on faith, not demonstrable evidence. Adherence to doctrine or the failure to adhere to doctrine had defined the boundaries of the medieval Christian community. Those who accepted the articles of faith constituted the community of believers. But such a requirement could seem incongruous in a potentially deceptive world where invincible ignorance about an article of faith might occur. Thus Holcot shifted the boundaries of the community from those who accepted the actual articles of faith to those who with diligent will intended to do so, even if some misunderstanding might prevent them. For Holcot, the divine command ethic required following God’s commands as best one could, but no more than that.

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chapter eight GOD’S ABSOLUTE AND ORDAINED POWER

The distinction between God’s absolute power to do whatever does not include a contradiction and the ordained expression of his power in the natural and providential order is inextricably entwined with medieval discussions of necessity and possibility, contingency and certainty. Much controversy has marked twentieth-century scholarship over the manner in which medieval theologians developed and applied this distinction, and a review of the modern discussion is necessary before an assessment of the Oxford Dominican’s use of it is possible. The insights into the history of the distinction scholars have recently gained will illuminate the positions taken at Blackfriars. However, the review that follows of how the Dominicans and their contemporaries used the distinction will result in a revision of the interpretations now current in the literature. The story is even more complex than its modern interpreters have perceived.

A. Revisiting the Modern Controversy Debate about God’s absolute and ordained power has gone through three phases since the 1920s when Carl Feckes first associated the distinction with nominalism and criticised Ockham and his followers for using God’s absolute power as a cover for promoting unorthodox ideas.1 During the first phase, scholars who investigated the history of the distinction believed fourteenth-century schoolmen corroded certitude and traditional theology through the uses to which they put the idea of God’s absolute power. Inasmuch as late medieval scholas1 Carl Feckes, Die Rechtfertigungslehre des Gabriel Biel und ihre Stellung innerhalb der nominalistischen Schule (Münster, 1925); and see William J. Courtenay, Capacity and Volition: A History of the Distinction of Absolute and Ordained Power (Bergamo, 1990), pp. 11–21 for a full historiographic and bibliographic survey. Courtenay’s book defines the current status of the question, but see Francis Oakley’s review in Speculum 68 (1993): 739–742, and idem, Politics and Eternity: Studies in the History of Medieval and Early-Modern Political Thought (Leiden, 1999), 216–332, for important further reflection.

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tics speculated about God’s absolute power to do whatever does not include a contradiction, twentieth-century scholars believed the threat of God’s acting arbitrarily to interfere in the divine plan and world order undermined certitude in all arenas of human reasoning. God would be ‘capricious.’ While objections to such an assessment by Paul Vignaux and others were important in beginning a process of revision,2 only in the 1960’s did Heiko Oberman effectively inaugurate the second phase of the debate with his recognition of the dialectical nature of the distinction and his extensive elaboration of how that dialectic functioned within late medieval covenantal theology.3 The Ockhamist tradition as Oberman described it did not view the distinction as between different forms of divine action since God’s power is undivided and in all ways identical with God himself. God does not act sometimes with and sometimes without order. Rather God has chosen by his ordained power [de potentia ordinata] to do certain things according to the laws he freely establishes, but by his absolute power [de potentia absoluta] God can do everything that does not imply a contradiction, so that whether God has decided by his ordained power to do something or not, there will still remain many things that he can do but chooses not to do. At any given time, such unactualized possibilities constitute the range of God’s absolute power while his enacted choices constitute the range of his ordained power.4 The revisionists concluded that the idea of God’s arbitrarily and inordinately intervening in his ordained system cannot arise because God always acts in an ordinate way. However, while eventually accepting that such a view of the distinction may have been traditional among theologians, first Francis Oakley and then others, particularly Eugenio Randi, working from the perspective of canon law, have noted the emergence of another important tradition among the lawyers and chronicled its effect on theology, philosophy and political theory.5 2 Paul Vignaux, ‘Nominalisme,’ in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. 11 (Paris, 1930), col. 769–775; idem, Justification et prédestination au XIVe siècle. Duns Scot, Pierre d’Auriole, Guillaume d’Occam, Grégoire de Rimini (Paris, 1934); idem, ‘Sur Luther et Ockham,’ FzS 32 (1950): 21–30. 3 Heiko Augustinus Oberman, ‘Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism with attention to its Relation to the Renaissance,’ HTR 53 (1960): 47–76; idem, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Cambridge, Mass., 1963). 4 Oberman, Harvest, 37. Leonard A. Kennedy, ‘The Fifteenth Century and Divine Absolute Power,’ Vivarium 17 (1989): 125–152, and idem, The Philosophy of Robert Holcot, Fourteenth-Century Skeptic (Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter, 1993), has continued the older tradtion. 5 Courtenay, Capacity, 20 gives credit to Oakley for first raising the question of

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Increasing appreciation for the complexity of late medieval positions on God’s absolute and ordained power as well as research into the effects of canon law on theology now mark a third phase of discussion.6 The new research has most significantly reopened the question of whether at least some fourteenth-century scholastics viewed God’s absolute power as a form of divine action capable of intervening in the ordained order. William Courtenay has argued that no one prior to the mid-thirteenth century regarded God’s absolute power as a form of direct action. During the thirteenth century, however, canonists sought ways to explain how the pope was both subject to ecclesiastical law and yet through his plenitude of power able to suspend that law through dispensations of various kinds. Hostiensis, writing c. 1270 in his Lectura in quinque decretalium on the question of whether the pope could release a monk from his vow of poverty, was one of the first of the lawyers known to have applied the theological distinction to the question of papal capacity. Against the views of Innocent III, who had argued the canon law tradition at a conference in 1972, when he pointed out that Ockham’s analogy between divine and canon law on the question of power in Quodlibet VI, q. 1 left room for interpreting or misinterpreting God’s absolute power as a type of action. Oakley elaborated the implications of the canonist tradition in Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order: An Excursion in the History of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz (Ithaca, 1984), and again in Politics and Eternity. Others making important contributions to understanding the canon law tradition and its influence on theology: John Marrone, ‘The Absolute and the Ordained Powers of the Pope: An Unedited Text of Henry of Ghent,’ Mediaeval Studies 36 (1974): 7–22; Eugenio Randi, ‘La vergine e il papa. Potentia Dei absoluta e plenitudo potestatis papale nel XIV secolo,’ History of Political Thought 5 (1984): 425–445; idem, ‘Il rasoio contro Ockham? Un sermone inedito di Giovanni XXII,’ Medioevo 9 (1983): 179–198; idem, ‘Potentia Dei conditionata. Una questione di Ugo di San Chér sull’ onnipotenza divina (Sent. I, d. 42, q. 1),’ Rivista di storia della filosofia, n.s. 1 (1984): 521– 536; idem, Il sovrano e l’orologiaio: Due immagini di Dio nel dibattito sul ‘potentia absoluta’ fra XIII e XIV secolo (Florence, 1986); idem, ‘A Scotist Way of Distinguishing Between God’s Absolute and Ordained Powers,’ in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. A. Hudson and M. Wilks (Oxford, 1987), 43–50; idem, ‘Ockham, John XXII and the Absolute Power of God,’ FcS 46 (1986): 205–216; idem, ‘Lex est in potestate agentis. Note per una storia dell’ idea scotista di potentia absoluta,’ in Sopra la volta del mondo: Omnipotenza e potenza assoluta di Dio tra medioevo e eta moderna, ed. M. Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli (Bergamo, 1986), 129–138; idem, ‘Onnipotenza divina e futuri contingenti nel XIV secolo,’ Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 1 (1990): 605–630. And see Courtenay, Capacity, chapters 4–6. 6 Courtenay, Capacity, 20. Also see Katherine H. Tachau, ‘Logic’s God and the Natural Order in Late Medieval Oxford: the Teaching of Robert Holcot,’ Annals of Science 53 (1996): 235–267; Luca Bianchi, ‘Onnipotenza divina e ordine del mondo fra XIII e XIV secolo,’ Medioevo 10 (1984): 105–153; Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1986), 117–201; and Jean-François Genest, Prédétermination et liberté créée à Oxford au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1992), 76–86.

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that the pope could not release a monk from his vows, Hostiensis responded that through his plenitudo potestatis the pope could change the nature of the monk’s monastic state by his absolute power, although not by his ordained power. The pope had the right to exercise such absolute power in extraordinary circumstances for the greater good of the church.7 Two different interpretations of the distinction between absolute and ordained power were now possible: 1) an interpretation in which God’s absolute power described an overall capacity to will many possibilities while his ordained system reflected his actual choices of will, and 2) another in which the ordained system reflected God’s choice of an ordinary or regular order, but his absolute power reflected his ability to suspend any such order if he should will to act outside the ordained system. The first view would situate God’s absolute power in his omnipotent being and situate his ordinate power in his will, whereas the second would situate both sorts of power in God’s will and distinguish them in terms of different kinds of divine willing. Until the time of Scotus, the theological and legal interpretations apparently retained their separation, one applicable to God and the other to the human sphere, or where overlap threatened, the distinction was denied to be applicable either to God on the one hand or to the law cases on the other.8 But Scotus injected the canonist definition of the distinction into theology. While his use of the distinction conformed to the traditional picture in which God’s absolute power refers to the realm of possibility out of which God chooses to institute a particular system, both in his Lectura and in his Ordinatio Scotus used the language of the canonists when defining God’s power: In every agent acting through intellect and will, with the power to act in conformity with a governing [recta] law and yet with the power not necessarily to act in conformity with that law, one distinguishes ordained power from absolute power; and the reason is that [the agent] can act in conformity with that governing law, and then it is acting according to its ordained power (for [power] is ordained in as much as it is the

7 Courtenay, Capacity, 92–93. John Marrone, ‘Absolute and Ordained,’ 19–20, was the first to call attention to the text of Hostiensis. Tachau, ‘Logic’s God,’ 242, has suggested that the use of the distinction by Hugh of St. Cher, who held degreses in both laws, may indicate a canonist tradition of legal application prior to Hostiensis. See Randi, ‘Potentia Dei conditionata,’ for a discussion of Hugh of St. Cher’s contributions. 8 Courtenay, Capacity, 96–100.

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basis for carrying out some [act] in conformity with governing law), and [the agent] can act outside that law or against it, and in this there is absolute power, exceeding ordained power. And therefore not only in God, but in every free agent—who can act according to the dictate of a governing law and outside or against such a law—one distinguishes between absolute and ordained power; therefore, the jurists say that someone can act de facto, that is, from absolute power,— or de jure, that is from ordained power according to law.9

Courtenay notes that ‘in this passage Scotus comes close to defining the distinction as two powers, or at least as two ways of acting with regard to established law.’10 Courtenay, therefore, distinguishes between those for whom God’s absolute power covers what God could have done otherwise or what he could have chosen to do differently prior to creating the ordained order, and those for whom God’s absolute power covers what he can still do otherwise.11 On this view, at the threshold of the fourteenth century, theologians could choose to follow either the theological tradition of William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, and Aquinas, who treated God’s absolute power as what he could have done otherwise, or those like Scotus, using the definition of the canonists, who treated God’s absolute power as what he can still do otherwise.

9 John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 44, q. unica: ‘In omni agente per intellectum et voluntatem, potente conformiter agere legi rectae et tamen non necessario conformiter agere legi rectae, est distinguere potentiam ordinatam a potentia absoluta; et ratio huius est, quia potest agere conformiter illi legi rectae, et tunc secundum potentiam ordinatam (ordinata enim est in quantum est principium exsequendi aliqua conformiter legi rectae), et potest agere praeter illam legem vel contra eam, et in hoc est potentia absoluta, excedens potentiam ordinatam. Et ideo non tantum in Deo, sed in omni agente libere—qui potest agere secundum dictamen legis rectae et praeter talem legem vel contra eam—est distinguere inter potentiam ordinatam et absolutam; ideo dicunt iuristae quod aliquis hoc potest facere de facto, hoc est de potentia sua absoluta,—vel de iure, hoc est de potentia ordinata secundum iura.’ In Opera omnia, ed. Charles Balic (Vatican City, 1963), 6: 363, l. 17–364, l. 10. Cf. Lectura I, d. 4, Vatican edition, 14: 535–536. Mary A. Pernoud, ‘The Theory of the Potentia Dei according to Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham,’ Antonianum 45 (1970): 84–88, was among the first to call attention to Scotus’ juridical definition of divine power. See Courtenay, Capacity, 100–102. This passage is frequently cited and translated. I have chosen to use the word ‘governing’ in translating ‘recta’ as a more neutral term than ‘just,’ often used in its place. ‘Just’ suggests the implication that any divine act outside a given ordained system would be ‘unjust,’ an implication not warranted by the texts or Scotus’ position. 10 Courtenay, Capacity, 102. 11 Ibid. 18.

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However, as valuable as all this work has been, it does not yet make full sense of the intellectual context in which Dominicans like Lawton, Strelley, Crathorn and Holcot developed their views about the relation between God’s power and the world. Scotus is credited with introducing the language of the canonists into the debate, and his discussion of the distinction establishes the point at which the medieval tradition becomes complicated. The text quoted above inaugurates his response to the question of whether God could do something other than what he ordains. And while the cited text would seem to indicate Scotus believed God could do something through his absolute power that he had not ordained, the immediately succeeding paragraphs negate such an assumption: When a law and the governance of the law is in the power of the agent, such that it is not governing except as enacted by the agent, then from his freedom the agent can ordain other than what that governing law dictates; and in doing this he can yet act in an ordained way, because he can enact another governing law according to which he would act ordinately. And then his absolute power does not simply [my italics] exceed the ordained power, because it would be ordained according to another law, just as according to the prior law; yet [the absolute power] exceeds the ordained power precisely according to the prior law, against which or outside of which it acts. And so it could be exemplified concerning a prince and [his] subjects, and the positive law.12

Thus Scotus did not, as his initial words might suggest (and as recent scholars writing about his use of the distinction have interpreted his position),13 define God’s absolute power as a direct operation in the Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 44, q. unica: ‘Sed quando in potestate agentis est lex et rectitudo legis, ita quod non est recta nisi quia statuta, tunc potest aliter agens ex libertate sua ordinare quam lex illa recta dictet; et tamen cum hoc potest ordinate agere, quia potest statuere aliam legem rectam secundum quam agat ordinate. Nec tunc potentia sua absoluta simpliciter excedit potentiam ordinatam, quia esset ordinata secundum aliam legem sicut secundum priorem; tamen excedit potentiam ordinatam praecise secundum priorem legem, contra quam vel praeter quam facit. Ita posset exemplificari de principe et subditis, et lege positiva.’ In Opera Omnia, 6:364–365, ll. 20– 28. 13 Randi, ‘Ockham, John XXII,’ 208–209 and see note 5 of his text; idem, ‘A Scotist Way,’ 44–45. Among Scotists, Johannes Bassolis adopted the position of Scotus as I have described it, although Bassolis disagreed with Scotus that dispensations in particular cases could occur without suspending the ordained system. Petrus de Atarrabia argued in favor of this aspect of Scotus’ position along with the rest of his position. See Randi, ‘Lex est in potestate,’ 131–132. See note 15 below for Scotus’ text on dispensations. Scotus’ discussion of the sacrifice of Isaac makes for an interesting development of these ideas: see Klaus Hedwig, ‘Das Isaak-Opfer: Über den Status des Naturgesetzes 12

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world, but rather God’s absolute power enables him to suspend one ordained order and substitute another ordained order for the first one. God’s absolute and ordained powers work in tandem, one enabling suspension of an enacted statute and the other ensuring that God never acts inordinately but only in a way that accords with his legislated will. Because God has the power to endow a created statute with governing power, his absolute power transcends any particular order of created law. He can establish a new legal order if he so desires.14 But such a use of his absolute power is not a form of direct action in the world, only a form of action mediated through successive ordained systems. God’s ability to change the ordained order is only one way in which his power may operate in the world contrary to a given ordained system, however. Besides his ability to exchange one system for another, God can also accord dispensations from the ordained system in particular cases. To deal with such cases, Scotus distinguished two ways in which something can be done in an ordained way. In one way, the action accords with universal order and universal prescriptions of the sort ‘every murderer should die.’ In the second, the action accords with particular order, a kind of order that does not pertain to universal law but to particular judgments about the application of the law in particular cases, judgments of the sort ‘this murderer should die.’ And just as God can set aside one universal order with a new universal order through his absolute power, so through his ordained power he can make a judgment in a particular case that runs contrary to the universal prescription. Because God’s ordained power is only expressed in the universal ordained law, judgments about particular cases that set aside the universal prescriptions of that law do not subvert it, but constitute a particularized application of the universal order. Here Scotus cites the bei Thomas von Aquin, Duns Scotus und Ockham,’ in Mensch und Natur im Mittelalter, vol. 2, ed. Albert Zimmermann and Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 21(Berlin, 1992), 645–661, particularly 651–655. 14 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 44, q. unica: ‘Unde dico quod multa alia potest agere ordinate; et multa alia posse fieri ordinate, ab illis quae fiunt conformiter illis legibus, non includit contradictionem quando rectitudo huiusmodi legis—secundum quam dicitur quis recte et ordinate agere—est in potestate ipsius agentis. Ideo sicut potest aliter agere, ita potest aliam legem rectam statuere,—quae si statueretur a Deo, recta esset, quia nulla lex est recta nisi quatenus a voluntate divina acceptante est statuta; et tunc potentia eius absoluta ad aliquid, non se extendit ad aliud quam ad illud quod ordinate fieret, si fieret: non quidem fieret ordinate secundum istum ordinem, sed fieret ordinate secundum alium ordinem, quem ordinem ita posset voluntas divina statuere sicut potest agere.’ In Opera omnia 6:366, ll. 8–19.

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case of someone who dies in a state of sin and will be damned, whom God could yet save because he could prevent such a sinner’s damnation with a gift of grace. God’s mercy may supercede his justice in particular cases without undermining the universal relevance of the law for all believers. Such particular exceptions to universal law do not result from the action of God’s absolute power in the world, but rather from God’s orderly judgment in particular cases about how the universal law will apply. To clarify his position, Scotus distinguished the case just cited of the Christian sinner whom God saves with a gift of grace, from the case of a Jew, who cannot be saved within the current dispensation through an ordained judgment, but whose salvation would require God’s setting aside the universal ordained system of the New Law through his absolute power and putting a different universal ordained system in its place.15 15 Scotus, Ordinatio I, d. 44, q. unica: ‘Advertendum etiam est quod aliquid esse ordinatum et ordinate fieri, hoc contingit dupliciter: Uno modo, ordine universali,—quod pertinet ad legem communem, sicut ordinatum est secundum legem communem “omnem finaliter peccatorem esse damnandum” (ut si rex statuat quod omnis homicida moriatur). Secundo modo, ordine particulari,— secundum hoc iudicium, ad quod non pertinet lex in universali, quia lex est de universalibus causis; de causa autem particulari non est lex, sed iudicium secundum legem, eius quod est contra legem (ut quod iste homicida moriatur). Dico ergo quod Deus non solum potest agere aliter quam ordinatum est ordine particulari, sed aliter quam ordinatum est ordine universali… Potentia tamen ordinata non dicitur nisi secundum ordinem legis universalis, non autem secundum ordinem legis rectae de aliquo particulari. Quod apparet ex hoc quod possibile est Deum salvare quem non salvat, qui tamen morietur in peccato finaliter et damnabitur,—non autem conceditur ipsum posse salvare Iudam iam damnatum (nec tamen hoc est impossibile potentia absoluta Dei, quia non includit contradictionem); ergo istud, scilicet “salvare Iudam,” eo modo est impossibile quo modo possibile est salvare istum: ergo istum potest salvare de potentia ordinata (quod verum est), et illum non… Staret enim cum illa “quod finaliter malus damnabitur” (quae est lex praefixa de damnandis), quia iste adhuc non est finaliter peccator, sed potest esse non peccator (maxime dum est in via), quia potest Deus eum gratia sua praevenire… Non autem staret, cum illa particulari lege, quod Iudam salvaret; Iudam enim potest praescire salvandum de potentia ordinata, sed non isto modo ordinata sed absoluta ab isto modo, et alio modo ordinata secundum aliquem alium ordinem, quia secundum alium ordinem tunc possibilem institui.’ In Opera omnia 6:366, l. 20–368, l. 14. For a relevant discussion of the universal and particular in law cases, see Fabienne Pironet, ‘Logique et droit au XIVe siècle,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (New York, Ottawa and Toronto, 1995), 548–554; and for some interesting discussions of the problem of dispensation, see Hedwig, ‘Das Isaak-Opfer,’ 645–661, H. Paul F. Mercken ‘Necessity and the Moral Order: Scotus’s Interpretation of the Lex Naturae in the Perspective of Western Philosophical Ethics,’ in John Duns Scotus:

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One motivation for Scotus’ taking the position he did may have been the condemnations of 1277. The Parisian masters had rejected restrictions on God’s absolute power to do what is impossible according to the natural order, had rejected the idea that God acts out of necessity or could not do otherwise than he does, and had rejected restrictions on God’s power to do anything new.16 Without referring to the 1277 decrees, Scotus’ description of God’s power to act in the world satisfies the Parisian requirements. God’s absolute power can set aside the natural order and implement another in its stead, and God does not act out of necessity because he is not subject to his ordinances. Although God’s acts in the world are always ordained, he transcends any given ordained system and can suspend one in favor of another. Scotus’ focus is on God’s power to do something new. If the strictures of the condemnation of 1277 were to have meaning, then God’s ordination of a system could not restrict his freedom to set aside that ordination and put another in its place. To deal with the idea that God can do something new, Scotus incorporated the canonist language. However, he did not adopt the canonist position. For Scotus, God’s absolute power is a form of active willing, but it never functions directly in the world apart from his ordaining will. Scotus’ position thus poses a definition of God’s power intermediate between the two alternatives Courtenay describes,

Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 171–182, and Robert W. Hall, ‘Ockham and Natural Law,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (New York, Ottowa, Toronto, 1995), 1041–1048. 16 The Condemnation of 1277, nos. 17, 20, 22 in P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l’averroïsme latin au XIIIme siècle, 2me partie, Textes inédites, 2nd ed. (Louvain, 1908), 175–191. See Bianchi, ‘Onnipotenza divina,’ for an important review and revision of the relation between use of the distinction and the condemnations. Among other things, the condemnations gave rise to speculation about whether God could have created other possible worlds. See Pierre Duhem, Études sur Léonard de Vinci, ceux qu’il a lus et ceux qui l’ont lu. (Paris 1906–1913; reprinted 1955), 2:57–96; 408–423; idem, Le système du monde: histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, vol. 9 (Paris, 1913–1959), 363–440; Armand Maurer, ‘Ockham on the Possibility of a Better World,’ Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976): 291–1312; Edward Grant, ‘The Condemnation of 1277, God’s Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages,’ Viator 10 (1979): 211–244, and Eugenio Randi, ‘Plurality of Worlds: Fourteenth-Century Theological Debates,’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoja, and Sten Ebbesen, Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2 (Helsinki, 1990), 322–330.

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between the view that God’s absolute power describes only what could have been done otherwise and the view that God’s absolute power is a form of direct action in the world. To account for God’s being able to do what is new, Scotus posed God’s absolute power working indirectly and in conjunction with his ordained power to set aside one ordained system in favor of another. To better understand Scotus, his definition of God’s absolute and ordained power should be placed within the context of his belief that God’s will functions in terms of simultaneous ‘instants of nature’ or logical moments. In one such moment, the will ranges over and is open to all possibilities and sets of compossibilities, and in another such moment the will chooses from among all those possibilities and compossibilities in order to will the whole of creation in a single act. God’s absolute power to do whatever does not involve a contradiction arises because of the instant of nature in which his will surveys all possibilities and sets of compossibilities. God’s enacting will chooses to create a sub-set of compossibilities from among all the compossibility sets at his disposal. The chosen set could contain within it several further subsets of compossibilities, incompatible in themselves but capable of incorporation within the larger set because they are separated in created time, as for example in the case of the Old Law and the New Law. Nor would anything absolutely rule out an as yet unrevealed ordained system that lies in the future as reckoned by human beings. In this sense, God is capable of ‘doing something new,’ although God’s will does not undergo change because God enacts everything in a single instant of eternity. Since possibility and actuality are co-terminous for Scotus, it would not be proper to say that God’s absolute power is what God could have done otherwise. Rather God can, in the present tense, do otherwise than he does. Because God’s will actualizes creation simultaneously with its survey of all possibilities, God’s will is able to act contingently and not out of necessity. That contingency is not founded on God’s absolute power to operate directly in the actualized ordained order, however. God’s absolute power simply ensures that a variety of otherwise incompatible compossibility sub-sets can be joined in one larger actualized set if they successively replace one another in created time. From God’s perspective, no extension of time exists in which his creation, taken as a whole, could become other than it is. It can (present tense) be other than it is because possibility and actuality are indexed to the same moment of divine present time, but creation does not become other than it is.

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Within the modern debate about God’s absolute and ordained power, controversy has been most intense over how to interpret Ockham’s views. Against the criticism of Ockham that characterized the first phase of research into the distinction, Courtenay has consistently argued that Ockham adhered to the traditional picture, much like the position of Aquinas, in which God’s absolute power is the power to have acted otherwise, not the power to make a ‘radical and sudden substitution of some other order in place of the present one.’17 Courtenay has based his assessment primarily on Ockham’s actual application of the term ‘absolute power.’ However, Ockham’s non-traditional views about time and possibility suggest more needs to be said. The twelfth and thirteenth century formulation in which God’s absolute power constitutes what he could have done otherwise is closely associated with the Boethian perspectival view of time in which God knows all the events of time as present and existing, rather than as past and future. In the Boethian view, since God knows all events as present, they are subject to the hypothetical necessity appropriate to present events. While present events could have been other than they are, if they are, they cannot in that present moment be other than they are.18 Such necessity had a long history in terms like Anselm’s ‘consequent necessity’ and Aquinas’ ‘suppositional necessity.’19 God’s absolute power to do whatever does not involve a contradiction, would be his power to have done otherwise than he does, not the power to make what is, other than it is. Scotus subjected the perspectival view of time to a severe critique, Courtenay, Capacity, 120, and see 119–123 in general. Also see idem, ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,’ in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Heiko Oberman and Charles Trinkaus (Leiden, 1973), 26–59; and idem, ‘The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. T. Rudavsky (Dordrecht, 19985), 254–256. Francis Oakley’s review of Courtenay’s Capacity and Volition in Speculum 68 (1973): 741, expresses some reservations about this position. And also see Robert W. Hall, ‘Ockham and Natural Law,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, (New York, Ottawa and Toronto, 1995): 1041–1048, for another attempt to struggle with these distinctions. 18 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio, 5.6.27: ‘Duae sunt etenim necessitates, simplex una, veluti quod necesse est omnes homines esse mortales, altera condicionis, ut si aliquem ambulare scias eum ambulare necesse est.’ ed. Ludovicus Bieler, in Corpus Christianorum, series Latina 94 (Turnholt, 1957), 103, ll. 91–94. 19 See Anselm, Cur Deus Homo II, chap. 17, in Opera omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1968), 2:125, ll. 8–14, and Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, prima pars, q. 19, art. 3, resp. in Summa Theologiae, ed. Thomas Gilby, vol. 5 (New York, 1967), 12. 17

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in part on the grounds that if all time were present to God in the perspectival sense, God would not be able to do anything new.20 Ockham did not accept Scotus’ view about God’s relation to time, but neither did he return to the perspectival view of Boethius and Aquinas. As noted in chapter three, Ockham argued that God’s knowledge tracks an arrow of time in the sense that propositions about the past, present and future have different modal statuses for God, just as tensed propositions about past, present and future have different modal statuses for human beings.21 It seems unlikely that Ockham should be counted a traditional figure in the way Courtenay counts him. Indeed, in a significent article, David Clark has objected to Courtenay’s reading of Ockham through a Thomist lens,22 resting his argument on Ockham’s ‘temporal analysis of freedom.’ With reference to the text of Ockham’s Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia dei et de futuris contingentibus where Ockham set out his views on the relation of God’s will and knowledge to time,23 Clark rightly observes that Ockham divides: 20 Scotus, Lectura I, d. 39, qq. 1–5: ‘Praeterea, si omnia futura essent praesentia Deo secundum eorum actualem exsistentiam, impossibile esset Deo causare aliquid de novo …’ In Opera omnia 17:487, ll. 28–30. 21 For Ockham’s denial that God knows future contingents as ‘presences,’ see Sent. I, d. 38, q. unica, in OT 4:585, ll. 15–20. 22 David W. Clark, ‘Ockham on Human and Divine Freedom,’ FcS 38 (1978), 122–160, and see n. 65 in particular. Courtenay, Capacity, 201, cites this article in his bibliography but does not address it’s objections directly in the text or footnotes. Alessandro Ghisalberti, ‘Onnipotenza divina e contingenza del mondo in Guglielmo di Ockham,’ in Sopra la volta del mondo: Onnipotenza e potenza assoluta di Dio tra medioevo e età moderna, ed. Mariateresa Beonio-Brocchieri Fumagalli (Bergamo, 1986), 33–55, takes up the challenge of reconciling these two positions. Using an analysis that places Ockham’s use of the absolute and ordained power distinction into context, Ghisalberti concludes (p. 48) that in every case God’s absolute power is the power to do what does not include a contradiction, and not a way of talking about a new determination of the divine will. And see Paola Müller, ‘Necessity of the Past and Potentia Dei in William of Ockham,’ in Les philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen Age/Moral and Political Philosophies in the Middle Ages, ed. B. Carlos Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and Léonard G. Sbrocchi, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy, vol. 2 (New York, Ottawa and Toronto, 1995): 892–902, for still further discussion. 23 Ockham, Tractatus, q. 3: ‘Respondeo quod voluntas Dei ad extra et voluntas creata in illo instanti in quo agit contingenter agit. Sed hoc potest intelligi tripliciter: uno modo quod ipsa prius duratione existens ante a instans in quo causat, potest libere et contingenter causare vel non causare in a; et iste intellectus est verus si voluntas sic praeexistat. Secundo modo potest intelligi quod in eodem instanti in quo causat sit verum dicere quod non causat; et iste intellectus non est possibilis propter contradictoria quae sequuntur, scilicet quod causat in a et non causat in a. Tertio modo potest intelligi “contingenter causare in a”, quia libere sine omni variatione et

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… the process of causing freely into three moments—before, during and after—and claims this division is germaine to both divine and human liberty. Before a definite volition is elicited, the will’s posture is undetermined to either produce or not produce that volition. At the moment of choice, the will is self-determined and incapable of producing the contrary act simultaneously. Then, after eliciting its act, the will regains its indifference to continue or terminate its decision. … actions freely produced but then conserved through necessity would not be free acts by Ockham’s standards… And it follows from Ockham’s three-part test that God’s ordained laws might change. Creation would not be a free exercise of divine will if the world’s conservation were necessary.24

It is true, as Courtenay says, that Ockham believed God could have done otherwise than he does, and it is true that Ockham believed what God is doing in the present cannot be other than it is, but the future is open to God’s absolute power to do whatever does not involve a contradiction, such that God can choose in the future to cease doing what he is now doing and do something new. As Clark points out, Ockham thought that any free agent, divine or human, can, if it is free, cease by its absolute power from its present actions and choose to act differently in the future than it does in the present.25 ‘Absolute power’ is simply the power that comes with an open, contingent future: in the case of human willing, the power to do the multiplicity of things that are within the range of human action and in the case of God, the power to do whatever does not include a contradiction. Because Ockham believed the power to do otherwise is dependent on the contingency of the future, playing out over the succession of events (and does not arise from a contingent present as Scotus had argued), if God’s absolute power had nothing to do with the actual future, it would not be a contingent power. God’s power to have done otherwise than he does

mutatione adveniente sibi vel alteri causae, et sine cessatione alterius causae potest cessare in alio instanti post a ab actu suo, ita quod in a instanti sit haec vera “voluntas causat,” et in alio instanti post a sit haec vera “voluntas non causat”; et sic voluntas contingenter causat in a, non sic autem naturalis causa contingenter causat.’ In OP 2, (St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1978), 536, ll. 84–98. And see the parallel text in Sent. I, d. 38, q. I, in OT 4: 579, ll. 10–21, and 586, ll. 1–11. 24 Clark, ‘Divine Freedom,’ 147. 25 Ockham, Sent. I, d. I, q. 2: ‘… omnis potentia libere agens et contingenter, potest de potentia sua absoluta cessare ab actu suo… Sed voluntas respectu cuiuscumque obiecti libere et contingenter agit, igitur simpliciter de potentia sua absoluta potest cessare ab actu suo.’ In OT 1:399, ll. 6–8, 10–12. And see Clark, ‘Divine Freedom,’ 147.

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only occurs because at one time what he is now doing lay in the future, open to the contingency of the future. Ockham did not provide a definition of God’s absolute and ordained power until his quodlibetal questions, and then in the context of Avignon and the papal commission charged with reviewing the orthodoxy of his works.26 In answering the question of whether a man could be saved without created charity (the step beyond Scotus’ assertion that God could save a sinner with created charity), Ockham replied: … some things God can do from his ordained power and some from his absolute power. One should not interpret this distinction as saying that in God there are really two powers of which one is ordained and the other absolute, because the power in God as it is directed outward is unique and is in every way God himself. Nor should one interpret [the distinction] as saying that God can do some things in an ordained way, and some things absolutely and not in an ordained way, because God can do nothing inordinately. But one should so interpret ‘to be able to do something’ such that sometimes it is taken according to the laws ordained and instituted by God, and these God is said to be able to do from ordained power. ‘To be able’ is taken differently [when it is taken] for the ability to do everything that does not include a contradiction to carry out, whether God were to ordain that this should be done or not, because God can do many things that he does not will to do; … and these God is said to be able to do from absolute power. Just as the Pope can not do some things according to the laws he enacts, which he can yet do absolutely.27 26 The editor of Ockham’s quodlibetal questions, Father Joseph C. Wey, ties Ockham’s definition to the process of the investigation against him, showing that Quodlibeta VI and VII were perhaps held at Avignon, and do not reflect earlier debates at London because they make references to the words of the commission, and Quodlibet VI, q. 1, in which Ockham’s definition occurs, likely fell between the two versions of the commission’s report since the second version seems to refer to Ockham’s distinction. (See OT 9:28*–29*, 38*). The dating and place of composition of Ockham’s works is still somewhat unsettled: see George Knysh,‘Ockham’s Avignon Period: Biographical Rectifications,’ FcS 46 (1986): 62–91, and William J. Courtenay, ‘Ockham, Chatton, and the London Studium: Observations on Recent Changes in Ockham’s Biography,’ in Die Gegenwart Ockhams, ed. W. Vossenkuhl and R. Schönberger (Weinheim, 1990), 327–337, as well as editorial discussions in the introductions to the volumes in Ockham’s OTand OP. 27 Ockham, Quod. VI, q. 1: ‘Circa primum dico quod quaedam potest Deus facere de potentia ordinata et aliqua de potentia absoluta. Haec distinctio non est sic intelligenda quod in Deo sint realiter duae potentiae quarum una sit ordinata et alia absoluta, quia unica potentia est in Deo ad extra, quae omni modo est ipse Deus. Nec sic est intelligenda quod aliqua potest Deus ordinate facere, et aliqua potest absolute et non ordinate, quia Deus nihil potest facere inordinate. Sed est sic intelligenda quod “posse aliquid” quandoque accipitur secundum leges

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Ockham went on to illustrate the necessity of posing the distinction by referring to the Old Law under which boys dying before they gained the use of reason would enter the kingdom of heaven if they were circumcised and comparing that situation to the New Law with its alternative requirement for baptism. What was possible for circumcised boys according to the statutes of the Old Law is not possible under the statutes of the New Law, although ‘it would be possible absolutely.’28 God’s absolute power and ordained power are inseparable in Ockham’s system, always working together, just as in Scotus’ system, for God’s ordained power is a subset of his absolute power, the subset that at any given time happens to be enacted. God’s absolute power to do more than at any given time he wills to do, means for Ockham that God has the power at any time in the future to set aside the ordained system of laws governing the present and to replace that system with some other ordained system of laws, just as he did when he replaced the Old Law with the New Law at the time of the Incarnation. It is precisely the existence of more than one set of incompatible laws governing human history that provides proof of the existence of God’s absolute power, the power that enables him to set aside one system of governance in favor of another. However, God’s absolute power is not a power separate from his ordained power, capable of acting directly in the world. At any given moment of time, the ordained system in place is the system in place. Only the contingent future brings the possibility that in another subsequent moment of time God’s absolute power would make it possible for some other ordained system to be enacted. Courtenay and others, like Alessandro Ghisalberti, who defend Ockham’s conservatism and traditionalism on the issue of God’s power, are right to point to the way Ockham used the distinction as evidence ordinatas et institutas a Deo, et illa dicitur Deus posse facere de potentia ordinata. Aliter accipitur “posse” pro posse facere omne illud quod non includit contradictionem fieri, sive Deus ordinaverit se hoc facturum sive non, quia multa potest Deus facere quae non vult facere; … et illa dicitur Deus posse de potentia absoluta. Sicut Papa aliqua non potest secundum iura statuta ab eo, quae tamen absolute potest.’ In OT 9:585–586, ll. 14–30. 28 Ockham, Quod. VI, q. 1: ‘Ista distinctio probatur per dictum Salvatoris, Ioannis 3°5: Nisi quis inquit renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu Sancto, non potest introire in regnum Dei. Cum enim Deus sit aequalis potentiae nunc sicut prius, et aliquando aliqui introierunt regnum Dei sine omni baptismo, sicut patet de pueris circumcisis tempore Legis defunctis antequam haberent usum rationis, et nunc est hoc possibile. Sed tamen illud quod tunc erat possibile secundum leges tunc institutas, nunc non est possibile secundum legem iam institutam, licet absolute sit possibile.’ In OT 9:586, ll. 31–39.

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that he was not much interested in whether God might put some new ordained system in place in the future.29 And they are right to downplay Ockham’s use of the legal analogy, which Scotus had developed at some length and to which Ockham only briefly alludes. But Ockham’s views are closer to Scotus’ than has been acknowledged. True, Ockham rejected Scotus’ idea of instants of nature and, contrary to Scotus, stressed the simple identity of God’s being, intellect, and will, so that the distinction of God’s absolute and ordained power pertains to the same act of divine willing,30 not to two different logical moments within that will. Moreover, Ockham believed that the freedom and contingency of both the divine and human wills are dependent on the future and play out over the succession of temporal events, rather than occurring all in an instant as Scotus had argued. However, for both Scotus and Ockham, God’s absolute power only works in conjunction with his ordained power, never separately as an independent mode of action in the world. For both, God’s absolute power is understood in relation to the shift from the Old to the New Law. For both, God’s absolute power enables God to substitute one ordained system for another. For both, the analogy with human legislative power works because human legislators have the absolute power to legislate more than they actually enact and contrary to what they have enacted. In sum, Scotus and Ockham would both seem to occupy somewhat different parts of the ground between the two interpretations of God’s absolute power that have become commonplaces in the literature: either the power to have done otherwise or a direct power to act in the world. For both Franciscans, God’s absolute power is a power to act, but not a power to act independent of one of the possible systems of divine ordination.

B. Dominicans on God’s Power In line with the current perception that late medieval thinking about God’s power was complex, no consensus on the nature of God’s power is apparent among Strelley, Lawton, Crathorn and Holcot. For example, Hugh Lawton discussed the distinction in the last, incomplete (in Courtenay, Capacity, 120; Ghisalberti, ‘Onnipotenza,’ 48. See Ockham, Sent. I, d. 2, q. 2, in OT 2:61, l. 14–62, l. 22, for his view that God’s being, intellect and will are one, and Sent. I, d. 9, q. 3, in OT 3:311 l. 10–312, l. 11, for his rejection of instants of nature. 29 30

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the form we have it) question of book one of his Sentences commentary: ‘Whether someone could be dear to God without created charity having formally informed his soul.’ His description of the distinction is unlike those so far surveyed, but, in keeping with the intellectual attitudes of his fellow Dominicans, propositional analysis and the rules of obligatio frame his treatment: … I suppose that the distinction commonly asserted about the power of God, that is that something can be done or that God can do something from his absolute power, which yet he can not do from his ordained power, is not interpreted such that there is one and another power, but that in God there is a power sufficient to do many things he never will do, because he will not ordain that they be done. The ordained power is applied to what will be done and to what has been done. And it seems to me that the said distinction can be reduced to the distinction according to the composite and divided sense of a proposition in the mode of possibility, so that absolute power should be reduced to the divided sense of the proposition in which this term is posed, and this power or capacity [posse] does not fall under an impossible positio without an implicit and thus absolute contradiction; on account of which [that posed] is posed only for its truth and the truth of the thing signified, although [if it were posed] with some other positum, the incompossible would follow… For something to be said to be unable to be done from the ordained power reduces to the composite sense, according to which a repugnant contradiction is implied. For it will not stand at the same time that God ordained something to be done and that yet it should not happen (or the converse).31

31 Hugh of Lawton, Sent. I, q. 27: ‘Tertio suppono quod distinctio quae communiter dicitur de potentia dei, scilicet quod aliquid potest fieri vel quod Deus potest aliquid facere de potentia sua absoluta quod tamen non potest facere de potentia ordinata, non sic intelligitur quod sit alia et alia potentia, sed pro tanto hic dicitur quia in Deo est potentia sufficiens ad multa facienda quae tamen numquam fierit, quia non ordinarit ea fieri. Potentia autem ordinata distinguitur respectu fierendorum et factorum. Et potest dicta distinctio sicut mihi videtur reduci ad distinctionem propositionis de possibili secundum sensum compositum et divisum, ut potentia absoluta reducatur ad sensum divisum propositionis in quam ponitur iste terminus, et positionem non accidit impossibile[m] potentia vel posse sine contradictione implicita et sic absolute, ad cuius veritatem et rei significatae propter illud solum positum, licet cum quodam alio positum sequeretur incompossibile… Hoc autem quod dicitur aliquid non posse fieri de potentia ordinata reducitur ad sensum compositum secundum quem implicatur contradictio repugnans, quia non stant simul quod Deus aliquid ordinavit fieri et tamen non fiat vel econverso.’ Vat. lat 829, f. 199rb–199va. And see Christopher John Martin, ‘Bradwardine and the Use of Positio as a Test of Possibility,’ in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoja, and Sten Ebbesen, vol. 2, Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress

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God’s absolute power regards absolute possibility and impossibility, the internal consistency and coherence of a thing or event that makes it possible in itself to exist. God’s ordained power regards the possibility or impossibility that one such absolutely possible thing or event might co-exist with some other such possible thing or event within an instantiated order of affairs. In a proposition, what the term ‘absolute power’ discloses is possibility in the divided sense in as much as the proposition can stand alone, and what the term ‘ordained power’ discloses is possibility in the composite sense in as much as that proposition is combined with the set of propositions describing God’s enacted will. God cannot enact something ordinately whose propositional descriptor would contradict the propositions describing what is already in place. Any proposition put forward as the positum in an obligatio debate about the ordained order, incompatible with that order, would be understood as an impossible positio within the ordained system. But God is not bound in an absolute sense to such coherence. The same proposition put forward as the positum in an obligatio debate about God’s absolute power would not be posed as an impossible positio but as a possible one. Lawton’s definition would accord well with Scotus’ view of God, and in the principial question to book I of the Sentences, Lawton indeed posed a description of contingency with a distinctly Scotist flavor. He subscribed to three conclusions: 1) that the prime root [of contingency] or first contingency is the first liberty, which is God or divine willing; 2) that true contingency is compatible with the actual determination to one of two opposites, indeed with the actual determination and positing of one of them, and 3) that it is not necessary that a contingent or free cause actually precede its effect.32 The location of contingency in God’s will (as opposed to creatures or to God’s nature) and the assertion that actuality and contingent openness to two outcomes can co-exist in the same moment are both characteristic of Scotus’ position. Lawton did not cite Scotus here, however, and discussed opposition to his own of Medieval Philosophy (Helsinki, 1990), 574–585, for a discussion of the conjunction between obligatonal argument and God’s absolute and ordained power in the period just after Lawton. 32 Lawton, Sent. II, Principium: ‘Circa secundum pono tres conclusiones: Prima est quod prima radix seu prima contingentia est prima libertas, quae est Deus vel velle divinum. Secunda, quod vera contingentia stat cum actuali determinatione ad unum oppositorum, immo cum actuali determinatione et positione unius oppositorum. Tertia, quod non oportet quod causa actualiter contingens seu libera praecedat suum effectum.’ Vat. lat. 829, f. 204vb.

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position in terms of Henry of Ghent (posing contingency as originating in creatures) and his fellow Dominican Hugh Dutton (posing first contingency as the nature or actuality of God and not the divine liberty or willing).33 Dutton, as Lawton cited his position, distinguished three forms of real contingency. One, equivalent to logical contingency in which there is no contradiction in terms, lies in the nature or actuality of God: the possibility of acting or of not acting in regard to anything external. A second real contingency lies in willing or in the freedom to choose one or another species or individual as opposed to some other species or individual. A third real contingency is the future contingency that a thing be or not be.34 From the description, Dutton seems to have retained the Thomist idea that God’s omnipotent nature includes the absolute or logical possibility to do whatever does not include a contradiction (by God’s absolute power) and to have combined that with a somewhat more Scotist view that a second contingency lies in the divine will as it chooses to instantiate one or another possible reality (by God’s ordained power). Lawton objected that all three of Dutton’s contingencies are in reality one and the same contingency in God, and, since the first contingency is whatever can cause any possible effect, and since the divine liberty or will is such a cause, God’s will is the location of the first contingency.35 From Lawton’s witness, it appears that Scotus’ move to place contingency in the divine will influenced Dutton enough for him to try 33 Lawton, Sent. II, Principium: ‘Contra istas opiniones sunt Gandavensis et Ductonia. Opinio primi est quod contingentia non est libertas [et non nisi Deus ipse, ergo etc. dele] voluntatis divinae, sed est commixtio essentiarum rerum creatarum in sua appetibilitate ad ipsum Deum.’ Vat. lat. 204vb. ‘Ideo declarat aliter et probat aliquis Doctor, scilicet Ducton [marg. Ductonia], quod prima contingentia non est libertas nec velle divinum.’ Vat. lat 205ra. 34 Lawton, Sent. II, Principium: ‘Dicit ergo iste Doctor quod prima realis contingentia est in natura seu actualitate Dei, ipsa possibilitas agendi vel non agendi quaelibet extra, et libertas cui possibilitas correspondet denominativa seu logicalis contingentia agibilium, scilicet possiblitas quae est non repugnantia terminorum, cuius sunt haec: lapis potest agi et lapis potest non agi. Secunda autem realis contingentia est in velle sive in libertate, scilicet possibilitas determinandi se ad non aliam speciem vel secundum [sic: add. istud] individuum et non illud individuum. Tertia contingentia realis est rem fore vel non fore.’ Vat. lat. 205ra. 35 Lawton, Sent. II, Principium: ‘Secundo, quod divisio quam dat inter contingentiam primam et secundam et tertiam nulla est … sed ista tria sunt una res in Deo… Et confirmatur: dicendum de contingentia effectus tunc sic: illa est prima contingentia quae est causa cuiuslibet effectus possibilis fieri, sed huius est libertas vel voluntas sive velle divinum secundum sanctos, quia omnia quaecumque voluit, fecit, ergo etc.’ Vat. lat. 205rb–205va.

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to blend the views of both Scotus and Aquinas. However, Lawton took a more purely Scotist stance. Indeed, there is some indication he accepted even that most Scotist of ideas: instants of nature.36 The fundamental structure of Scotus’ views about contingency undergirds the position Lawton took. Ironically, given the criticism often launched at Scotus for introducing uncertainty into the created order because of his position on God’s power, Lawton’s embrace of the Scotist position served him as anchor for the determinacy of divine ordination. It would involve a contradiction for God to ordain something and for that not to be the case. Lawton suggested that Dutton’s separation of God’s power into two parts: one in his nature able to enact every absolute possibility and the other in his will able to act determinately, implied that God’s power is in fact unlimited and not determinate. Lawton objected that God’s power and willing cannot be separated, and thus the will of God from eternity is determinate to one act, yet contingently rather than necessarily.37 A Scotist view of the relationship between God’s will and time provided Lawton with the rationale for his position on contingency and the grounds for understanding how both determinacy and contingency come to be. Lawton’s treatment of God’s power as located in the will, which considers things in terms of absolute possibility through absolute power or relative possibility through ordained power, and which has, apparently, only a priority of nature between its capacity for opposites and its determinate willing, has important Scotist elements. But he stopped short of embracing Scotus completely. Some distance is suggested in that he did 36

Lawton, Sent. II, Principium: [Responding to an objection that for God to contingently create the world he must have first known that he would create it and then have created it, so that it could have not existed.] ‘Ad istud, quod assumptum est falsum, quia non oportet quod dans alicui esse, praeintelligat illud non esse, quia hoc repugnat aeternitati, sed sufficit quod intelligat illud non habere esse de se vel a se et quod possit non esse. Et istud stat cum aeternitate, immo simul stant, sicut dictum in praemissa conclusione principali, nec oportet concedere praeintelligere secundum determinationem sed solum secundum naturam [my italics].’ Vat. lat. f. 206ra. 37 Lawton, Sent. II, Principium: ‘Ad quartum dico quod duo falsa assumuntur: unum est quod voluntas Dei est indeterminata ad volendum hoc vel eius oppositum vel quod hoc producatur vel non producatur, immo dico quod ab eterno fuit determinata ad unum, tamen vere et mere contingenter, sicut patebit in sequenti conclusione. Aliud falsum assumitur, scilicet quod velle Dei est determinativum potentiae suae, quia nihil determinat se nec applicat se, sed velle Dei et eius potentia sunt una res per praedicta patet. Ad quintam quod falsum implicat, scilicet quod potentia Dei sit illimita sic quod non sit determinata. Certum est, licet contingenter.’ Vat. lat. f. 205vb.

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not name Scotus as his authority. Nor did he use the legal analogy from canon law Scotus had introduced into the discussion. And Lawton did not focus on the issue of whether God can do something new. Since the primary thrust of his argument is to protect the immutability and unity of the determinate act of divine willing without undermining its contingency, a focus on God’s doing something ‘new’ would have seemed out of place. Arnold of Strelley addressed the distinction of God’s power in the discussion of the fifth, sixth and seventh conclusions of his Centiloquium theologicum. As a theological sophismata, the Centiloquium deals with philosophical puzzles that arise from adopting various theological propositions. From the fifth conclusion that God can do everything that does not include a contradiction, a number of uncomfortable conclusions seem to follow: If God could do everything that it does not include a contradiction to do, then God can damn the innocent and save the sinner, damn the Blessed Virgin Mary and the whole multitude of the blessed, save a Jew or beatify the whole multitude of the damned, which does not seem to sound well, because from this it follows, as it seems, that God would not be just and that he would judge unjustly…38

Strelley surveyed a variety of responses. The first was that God can damn the innocent and beatify sinners by his absolute power but not by his ordained power. A second response noted that since the ordained and absolute powers are one and the same power, it is better to say that God can do this absolutely but not ordinately, changing the nominal to the adverbial construction. Others responded to the argument by saying that human beings can damn the innocent and free the worst sinners and, therefore, that God does or can do this, too, but that God can only do such a thing from his common cooperative influence in human affairs and not ‘beneplacite’ or by God’s own good pleasure. Still others, following the authority of Anselm, replied that God cannot do such a thing because it would include a contradiction for God

38 Walter Strelley, Centiloquium, concl. 7: ‘Primo: si Deus posset facere omne quod fieri non includit contradictionem, igitur Deus potest damnare innocentem et salvare peccatem, damnare beatam virginem Mariam et omnem multitudinem beatorum, salvare Iudam sive beatificare et omnem multitudinem damnatorum, quod non videtur bene sonare. Quia ex hoc sequitur, ut videtur, quod Deus non esset iustus, et quod ipse iniuste iudicaret.’ Ed. Philotheus Boehner and Girardus I. Etzkorn in Ockham, Dubia et spuria, OP 7:387, ll. 40–46.

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to damn the good and beatify evil doers, for it would follow that God would not be good and that God would not be God.39 Strelley himself seems to sympathize with the Anselmian solution that depends upon divine goodness as a constraint on God’s actions toward the created order.40 But Strelley’s apparent belief that the principle of noncontradiction blocks inferences of the sort that God could damn the innocent and save the sinful, did not mean that he did not rely on the distinction of God’s power, at least expressed adverbially, to resolve

39 Strelley, Cent., concl. 7: ‘Ad primum istorum dicitur ab aliquibus concedendo quod Deus de sua potentia absoluta posset damnare innocentem et beatificare nocentem, non tamen hoc posset de potentia sua ordinata. Sed contra: potentia absoluta Dei est potentia ordinata Dei; ergo quidquid posset per potentiam absolutam, posset per potentiam ordinatam. Propter quod alii volentes corrigere modum loquendi mutant modum loquendi nominalem in adverbialem. Et dicunt quod Deus potest praedicta facere absolute sed non potest illa facere ordinate, id est tenendo suam ordinationem qua ab aeterno ordinavit bonos esse praemiandos et malos puniendos. Sed contra: creatura—utpote malus iudex temporalis—damnat innocentem et liberat pessimum peccatorem, ergo hoc Deus facit vel saltem potest facere… Ad istud dicitur quod Deus hoc facit ex communi influentia cooperative, non tamen facit hoc beneplacite. Alii vero dicunt similiter negando Deum posse taliter facere praecipue beneplacite. Et ulterius dicunt negando quod nullum illorum includit contradictionem. Immo dicunt quod satis expresse includit contradictionem Deum damnare bonos et beatificare malos. Quia ex hoc sequitur quod Deus non esset bonus et quod Deus non esset Deus, secundum quod tangebatur per auctoritatem Anselmi.’ In Ockham, OP 7:391–392, ll. 159–182. For a discussion of the use of God’s will understood ‘beneplacite’ in such cases, also see Hedwig, ‘Das Isaak-Opfer,’ 657. It is worth noting that Gabriel Biel, Collectorium in IV libros sententiarum Guillelmi Occam (Tübingen, 1501; reprinted by Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, 1977), in book I, d. 17, q. 1, dub. 2, cites Ockham as the author of the Centiloquium and takes his understanding of God’s absolute and ordained power from Strelley’s text. 40 The two manuscripts of the text designate Anselm’s opinion as ‘multis probabilius satis.’ The 1495 printed edition just says ‘multis satis sic pro istis responsionibus dixisse.’ See Centiloquium, Ad rationes contra 5am conclusionem, in Philotheus Boehner, ‘The Centiloquium Attributed to Ockham,’ Franciscan Studies 2 (1941): 49, note 6. The new edition in Ockham, OP 7:392, ll. 182–183 gives ‘Et istud videtur multis satis probabilius dici.’ Holcot explicitly rejected Anselm by name on the question of such restraints from divine goodness in Quodlibet III, q. 8: ‘Et quando Anselmus dicit quod cum “promittis hodie te cras daturum aliquid, necesse est te illud implere, si possis, vel mentiri, maxime si licitum sit dare promissum” concedo quod sic est de homine subiecto legi alterius, sed non est sic de Deo, qui nulli legi manet obnoxius. Et ideo ad primam formam, quando sic arguitur: “Deus promisit quod resurrectio futura erit, igitur necesse est eum facere resurrectionem vel mentiri,” nego consequentiam, quia potest omittere facere quod promisit, et tamen sine deordinatione vel malitia, quam “mentiri” consignificat…’ In Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly: Questions on Future Contingents, ed. Paul A. Streveler and Katherine H. Tachau (Toronto, 1995), 108, ll. 670–678.

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some theological difficulties. Indeed he seems to equate God’s ability to do something ‘absolutely’ with its being what he calls ‘theologically possible.’41 William Crathorn generally avoided the terminology of absolute and ordained power. He referred to the terms in describing the opinions of others who used them, particularly Ockham,42 but when he spoke in his own voice, Crathorn just used the words ‘through the power of God’ to make room for counterfactual possibilities where others would more likely have said ‘by God’s absolute power.’43 The premise underlying his general disregard for the distinction was that: ‘God can destroy every caused and produced thing without destroying any other thing that is not essential to it.’44 Crathorn did not think it important to distinguish 41 Strelley, Cent., concl. 7: ‘Ad quintum dicitur concedendo quod beata Virgo potest absolute habere novum filium sine nova generatione et aliquem filium quem nunc habet desinere habere in filium sine alicuius corruptione… Nec hoc est inconveniens respectu potentiae divinae, scilicet quod Deus potest hoc facere absolute, quamvis hoc esset impossibile respectu alicuius causae secundae. [Responsio ad argumenta contra septimam conclusionem] Ad primum contra tertiam conclusionem dicitur concedendo hanc “homo est asinus,” esse possibilem theologice. Et ulterius negatur quod ista “homo est asinus” in omni sensu significat sic esse sicut impossibile est esse. Quia secundum theologos— vel saltem theologice loquendo—non praecise significat talem naturam rationalem esse naturam irrationalem, sed significat hoc animal, quod est habens naturam asinam sibi suppositaliter unitam, est habens naturam humanam sibi suppositaliter unitam, quod non est impossibile; immo satis possibile absolute, quamvis non ordinate.’ In Ockham, OP 7:395–396, ll. 254–271. 42 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Circa primum dicit Ockham quaestione prima quod intellectus viatorum est ille, qui non habet notitiam intuitivam deitatis sibi possibilem de potentia dei ordinata.’ In Crathorn, Quästionem zum ersten Sentenzenbuch, ed. Fritz Hoffmann, BGPTM, n. s. 29 (Münster, 1988), 67, ll. 23–25; ibid., ‘Secunda conclusio, quam tenet Ockham, est quod deus de potentia sua absoluta potest cognosci tali duplici notitia, scilicet intuitiva et abstractiva…’ Ed. Hoffmann, 135, ll. 28–29. 43 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1, ‘Aliter posset dici quod istae rationes supponunt unum falsum quod scilicet per potentiam dei intellectio posset conservari sine potentia intellectiva.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 76, ll. 23–24; ibid., ‘… et concedo quod aliquis posset per potentiam dei cognoscere intuitive fidem alterius et evidenter cognoscere illam fidem esse et ipsum credentem…’ Ed. Hoffmann, 135, ll. 14–16; ibid., Sent. I, q. 3: ‘Per potentiam dei totum lignum potest non esse exsistente omni eo, quod fuit pars ligni et de essentia ligni. Ergo per eandem potentiam totum lignum potest esse non exsistente aliquo, quod fuit de essentia ligni.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 206, l. 26–207, l. 1. And see Laurence Eldredge, ‘The Concept of God’s Absolute Power at Oxford in the Later Fourteenth Century,’ in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David L. Jeffrey (Ottawa, 1979), 211–226, for a discussion of other fourteenth-century scholastics who also played down references to God’s absolute and ordained power. 44 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 3: ‘Deus potest destruere omnem rem causatam et productam

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whether God would carry out such an act of destruction absolutely on the one hand or ordinately on the other, but God’s capacity to change any one piece of his creation without changing any of the others not essentially affected by the change became the context for analyzing the relationship between the actual and the possible. What was important to Crathorn was that God is free to change things or to destroy any aspect of the created order, not whether he might do so absolutely or ordinately. However, as was seen in chapter seven in Crathorn’s treatment of the principle of induction, he agreed with Strelley that an ethical order of divine goodness placed constraint on God in his relation to creation.45 That constraint appears to have been sufficient for him not to worry about the extraordinary freedom his version of divine omnipotence provides. The variety of views about God’s absolute and ordained power among the Dominicans is striking. Lawton shows the influence of Scotus, but uses the Scotist position to affirm the dependability of the ordained order. Strelley perceived the radical consequences that seem to result from adopting the traditional distinction but like Anselm believed that God’s goodness serves as a constraint on his actions relative to the created order. Crathorn treated the distinction of God’s power with apparent indifference. God’s omnipotent ability to exercise an absolute freedom in regard to his creation was not offset by the ordained system but by ethical constraints on God’s very nature. Of all of the Dominicans, however, Robert Holcot provides the most developed and interesting treatment of the distinction among his fellow friars. Holcot set out his position in opposition to Master Walter, the otherwise unidentified theologian of the late 1320s discussed in chapter five. As both Adam Wodeham and Holcot cite him, Master Walter rejected what he regarded as the ‘common interpretation’: the view non destruendo aliquam rem aliam, quae non est de essentia illius.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 207, ll. 22–23. 45 Crathorn, Sent. I, q. 1: ‘Duodecima conclusio est ista quod licet viator ex sola cognitione sensitiva non possit habere cognitionem evidentem et omnino infallibilem quod tales qualitates sensatae sint extra videntem, tamen ex cognitione sensitiva et isto complexo per se noto: Deus vel prima causa nihil agit frustra et supernaturaliter ad inducendum homines in errorem, potest evidenter concludere tales res sensatas esse, quia conservatio specierum ita generalis scilicet quod homo per totam vitam suam nihil videret nisi tales qualitates exsistentes in vidente, foret miraculosa et vana et effectiva errorum multorum, qualem actionem quilibet sanae mentis iudicat divinae bonitati repugnare.’ Ed. Hoffmann, 126, l. 31–127, l. 4.

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that God’s absolute power enables him to ‘set aside his enacted ordination and to bring about its opposite, so that it is simply and absolutely true that God can do the opposite.’46 (Katherine Tachau has noted the importance of these citations as witness to the general acceptance of the Scotist view.)47 Master Walter rejected the emerging consensus in favor of the more deterministic formulation that ‘unless God has so ordained, God can bring about the opposite, such that in considering God’s power absolutely, as it is a power, without his ordination, it is not repugnant to his power to bring about the opposite…’48 Once God has ordained something, however, it would, in Master Walter’s view, be against ‘God’s will and truth’ and even contradictory, for God to set such an ordination aside.49 Master Walter’s position is similar to the one Courtenay has called traditional: God’s absolute power is only the 46 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Quando tamen dicitur quod “Deus de potentia sua absoluta potest facere oppositum,” dicit quod haec propositio potest dupliciter intelligi. Unus [sensus] est secundum communiter intelligentes, quod Deus potest dimittere ordinationem factam et facere oppositum, ita quod haec sit vera simpliciter et absolute: “Deus potest facere oppositum.”’ In Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly: Questions on Future Contingents, eds. Paul A. Streveler and Katherine H. Tachau (Toronto, 1995), 91, ll. 260–265. Adam Wodeham, Sent. III, d. 14, q. 4, dub. 2: ‘“Dico,” inquit [Gualterus], “quod hec propositio absoluta potest habere duplicem intellectum: unus est secundum communiter intelligentes, quod Deus potest dimittere ordinationem factam et facere oppositum, ita quod hec est simpliciter vera et absolute: ‘Deus potest facere oppositum’.”’ In Rep. Oxon. V. fol. 57r/Ord. Oxon. M, f. 180va as cited in Katherine Tachau, ‘Robert Holcot on Contingency and Divine Deception,’ in Luca Bianchi, ed. Filosofia e teologia nel Trecento: Studi in ricardo di Eugenio Randi (Louvain-la-neuve, 1994), 170, n. 31. And see Tachau’s article in general (pp. 157–196) for an important exploration of Holcot’s position, as well as Joseph M. Incandela, ‘Robert Holcot, O.P., on Prophecy, the Contingency of Revelation and the Freedom of God,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 4 (1994): 165–188. 47 Tachau, ‘Holcot on Contingency,’ 170–171. 48 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Secundus sensus est iste: nisi Deus sic ordinasset, Deus posset facere oppositum, ita quod absolute considerando potentiam Dei ut potentia est sine eius ordinatione, non repugnat potentiae eius oppositum facere…’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 91, ll. 265–268. Wodeham, Sent. III, d. 14, q. 4, dub 2: ‘Alius sensus est iste: nisi Deus sic ordinasset, posset facere oppositum, ita quod absolute considerando potentiam Dei ut potentia eius est sine alia eius ordinatione, non repugnat potentie eius oppositum facere…’ In Rep. Oxon. V, f. 57r/ M f. 180va cited in Tachau, ‘Holcot on Contingency,’ 170, n. 31 49 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘… sed necesse est sic esse sicut per illud revelatum denotatur fore. Nec potest Deus impedire vel omittere ne illud impleat, quia tale posse foret contra Dei voluntatem et veritatem, et ideo non foret posse, sicut posse facere contradictoria esse simul vera non est posse, immo contra potentiam Dei.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 91, ll. 256–260. Wodeham, Sent. III, d. 14, q. 4, dub. 2: ‘… quod non potest evenire oppositum, nec impediri, quia posse contra veritatem non esset possibile.’ In Rep. Oxon. V, f. 57r/M f. 180va cited in Tachau, ‘Holcot on Contingency,’ 170, n.31.

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power to have done otherwise in the past, not the power to do otherwise than he has now ordained. Master Walter rejected the divine ability to ‘do something new,’ even in the future, once God has ordained something to be the case. Holcot took an alternative view. In Quodlibet I, q. 8, on whether the charity of the blessed in heaven could be destroyed, Holcot gave his full definition of God’s absolute and ordained power: I understand this distinction thus: not that in God there is a twofold power or that God has a twofold power, but that these two modifiers: ‘de potentia absoluta’ and ‘de potentia ordinata,’ are two modifiers qualifying the proposition: ‘God can produce a,’ or the like. Whence if it is said that God can produce a from his ordained power, it is denoted that God has the power by which he can constitute a in being so that this [proposition] can be true: ‘a is produced in being,’ and it does not contradict any law ordained by God; indeed, that God produced a while preserving every law ordained or enacted by him. If, however, it is said that God can produce a from his absolute power and not from his ordained power, then it is denoted that God is a certain power that sufficies to constitute a in being without any other cause being added to it, but he cannot constitute a in being while preserving every enacted law because he cannot make contradictories to be true at the same time, and he can make [only] what does not include a contradiction to be true. And therefore, because that a be constituted in being by God and some other proposition included in some law ordained by God [taken together] imply that contradictories are true at the same time, God cannot constitute a in being and preserve that ordained law. Yet he has the power through which he can constitue a in being if he wishes to change the ordained law. From which it seems to follow that God cannot do something from his ordained power at one time that he can do at another time, and conversely; just as at one time he could not save a Jew without circumcision and in mode he can; and at one time he could have saved a man having the wherewithal and the opportunity for baptism, without baptism, and in mode from his ordained power now he cannot. Yet he can absolutely, because he can change and dispense with the enacted law.50 50 Holcot, Quod. I, q. 8: ‘Secunda distinctio est quae serviet ad propositum, quod Deus dicitur posse aliquid facere dupliciter: vel de potentia ordinata vel de potentia absoluta. Hanc distinctionem intelligo sic: non quod in Deo sit duplex potentia vel quod Deus habeat duplicem potentiam, sed istae duae determinationes, de potentia absoluta et de potentia ordinata, sunt duae determinationes determinantes hanc propositionem vel consimilem: “Deus potest producere a.” Unde si dicatur quod Deus potest producere a de potentia ordinata, denotatur quod Deus habet potentiam qua potest constituere a in esse ita quod haec potest esse vera: “A est productum in esse,” et non contradicit alicui legi ordinate a Deo; immo, Deus, servando omnem legem ordinatam

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In outline, this lengthy quote parallels Scotus’ position fairly closely, including the comparison between Jews under the Old Law and Christians under the New (a parallel also evident in Ockham’s quodlibetal questions, whose particular example is even closer to Holcot’s). Scotus’ influence on both Lawton and Holcot (whose definition is analogous to Lawton’s in its use of propositional analysis), along with the evidence from Master Walter, makes it plausible to assume that the Scotist position on God’s power had become so well known by the 1330s it was a staple in the theology of the time. Like Scotus, Ockham, Strelley, Lawton and Crathorn, Holcot did not argue that God has two powers that operate independently and with separate kinds of action in the world.51 However, in the tradition of Ockham rather than Scotus, Holcot identified God’s power with God himself and disregarded the Scotist device of instants of nature to separate possibility from actuality and the divine nature from the divine will. God has only one power, which is God himself, and which can be understood by human beings in two different ways. God has the power

ab eo vel statutam, producit a. Si autem dicatur quod Deus potest producere a de potentia absoluta et non de potentia ordinata, tunc denotatur quod Deus est quaedam potentia quae sufficit ad constituendum a in esse sine aliqua alia causa sibi addita. Sed non potest constituere a in esse servando omnem legem quam modo statuit, quia non potest facere contradictoria esse simul vera et potest illud facere quod fieri non includit contradictionem esse veram. Et ideo quia a constitui in esse per Deum et aliqua alia propositio inclusa in aliqua lege ordinata a Deo inferunt contradictoria esse simul vera, ideo Deus non potest constituere a in esse et servare legem illam ordinatam. Habet tamen potentiam per quam potest constitutere a in esse, si velit mutare legem ordinatam. Ex quo videtur sequi quod Deus non potest aliquid de potentia ordinata uno tempore quod tamen potest alio tempore, et econverso; sicut aliquando non potuit salvare Iudeum absque circumcisione et modo potest; et aliquando potuit salvasse hominem habentem copiam et opportunitatem baptismi sine baptismo, et modo autem non potest de potentia ordinata. Absolute tamen potest, quia potest mutare legem statutam et potest cum ea dispensare.’ In Oxford, Balliol College, MS 246, ff. 200ra– 200rb and Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 236, ff. 220vb–221ra. I have looked at two other editions of this passage: Paul Streveler sent me a copy of a draft of this text in ‘Robert Holcot: God’s Absolute and Ordained Power—With an Edition of the Quodlibetal Question: Utrum Caritas Beatorum in Patria Possit Corrumpi,’ a working paper; and Leonard Kennedy has produced a version in Philosophy of Robert Holcot, 180–181. My rendering of the passage differs in small ways from theirs, but it was helpful to have their texts as a basis for my own. 51 Incandela, ‘Robert Holcot, O.P.,’ 181–188, mistakenly argues, in his otherwise excellent article, that Holcot treated God’s absolute power as a distinct power able to act directly in the world.

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to do many things taken in themselves that would, if actualized, contradict some law he has already enacted. If God were to actualize such a state of affairs, he would concurrently have to set aside whatever part of his ordained system stood in contradiction to his new enactment. Like the two Franciscans, Holcot believed that God’s absolute power acts at one remove from creation in that it can set aside one set of ordained laws and implement another. But Holcot seems not to have followed Scotus in posing a special ordained judgment in particular cases where dispensation from the universal ordination is allowed. Rather, he appears to accept the view, similar to the view of the canon lawyers, that it is also God’s absolute power that enables him to set aside the application of his ordinances in particular cases just as in universal ones, that ‘he can change and dispense with the enacted law.’ Holcot’s position seems more logically defensible. Scotus’ position produces syllogisms in which the major premise: every ordained x is y, is compatible with a minor premise: some ordained x is not y through God’s particular action. Holcot’s position has greater logical consistency. If every ordained1 x is y, then no ordained1 x is not y, but since every ordained1 x being y is contingent, if God changes the situation such that not every ordained2 x is y, then some ordained2 x may not be y. This raises the question whether Holcot believed that God could act from his absolute power directly in the world.52 Holcot made it clear he did not believe God ever acts ‘disordinately.’53 It would seem he believed that God’s absolute power is never exercised without his ordained power, such that an absolute and inordinate action is not possible on God’s part, even in cases of particular dispensation. Perhaps more than any other late medieval theologian, however, Holcot underscored God’s freedom to set aside ordained laws without incurring any fault or hindrence. As he argued:

52

Streveler, ‘Holcot: God’s Absolute and Ordained Power,’ working paper. Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Praeterea, si resurrectio potest non fuisse futura, Christus potest non implere quod promisit, et per consequens potest fieri non-fidelis sive infidelis. Consequens falsum, quia sic posset peccare et peierare, contra Apostolum, Ad Thimotheum [sic] ii: “ille fidelis permanet; seipsum negare non potest”; Glossa: ‘Qui est veritas, “non potest negare seipsum,” quod faceret si dicta sua non impleret.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 82, ll. 42–47. Holcot answers this objection to his own position: ‘Et ad Apostolum, Ad Timotheum ii, “ille fidelis est,” etc., verum est deordinate vel vitiose [et] hoc faceret si dicta sua non impleret vitiose omittendo.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 104, ll. 562–564. 53

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God can be obliged to no law but that without its observance he can be morally good, because otherwise the divine goodness would depend on creatures, and God would be less good than he is if he were to destroy every creature; and similarly God would begin to be better than he was before the observance of the law. Whence, just as a prince who is above the law can perform some act without sin or evil, which those existing under the law in no way can do without sin, so God in not fulfilling what he promised acts without the evil of falsity or perjury, which someone existing under the law could in no way do.54

God is not subject in any way to the laws he ordains. He can change them at his pleasure. Nor are any divine attributes arising from God’s relations with creatures (like justice, mercy, truthfulness in keeping promises, or preservation of his enacted law) necessary to God’s essential goodness, and so creatures cannot depend on such virtues to ensure that God will preserve the ordained system.55 (Holcot’s position is implicit in Aquinas’ assertion, cited earlier, that the rationale for what exists in creation cannot be found in divine goodness, which lacks nothing, but stems from the simple will of the producer.)56 As Holcot put it: ‘If God were to abrogate all of his laws and were to bring it about that they had never been enacted and were to make nothing of his promises, he would be no less good than he was before the creation of the world when there was nothing but himself.’57 Divine goodness cannot be a bulwark against human uncertainty. What remains to Holcot, very importantly, is the Principle of NonHolcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Deus autem nulli lege potest esse obnoxius, quin sine eius observatione potest esse bonus moraliter, quia sic divina bonitas dependeret a creatura, et Deus foret minus bonus quam est, si destrueret omnem creaturam; et similiter, secundum hoc Deus inciperet esse melior quam fuit ante legis observationem. Unde, sicut princeps qui est supra legem potest aliquem actum facere sine peccato vel malitia quem existens sub lege nullo modo potest facere sine peccato, ita Deus non perficiendo quod promisit, facit sine malitia falsitatis vel periurii, quod tamen existens sub lege nullo modo posset facere.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 103, ll. 537–546. 55 See above, chapter 5, note 54 for the text, and see Kennedy, ‘The Fifteenth Century,’ 125–152, for an interesting discussion of later developments along this line, although his work requires caution. 56 See above, chapter 3, note 36 for the text of Aquinas. Holcot makes a similar point in his Wisdom Commentary. See the discussion in Oberman, Harvest, 236. 57 Holcot, Quod. III, q. 8: ‘Et ideo, si Deus omnia statuta sua abrogaret et faceret quod numquam fuissent statuta et nihil faceret de promissis, non minus bonus foret quam fuit ante mundi constitutionem, quando nihil fuit nisi ipse.’ In Holcot, Seeing the Future, 93, ll. 308–311. For a discussion of the issues involved in this way of thinking, see Oberman, Harvest, 90–93; Tachau, ‘Holcot on Contingency,’ 157–196; and Incandela, ‘Robert Holcot, O.P.’ 165–188. 54

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contradiction. What would happen if God were to set aside the current law and enact some incompatible alternative, as it is clearly in his power to do? If God did not inform human beings about such a change, invincible ignorance would protect them from being held accountable for not following the new laws. God can not ask people to obey laws of which they are ignorant because that would be to ask them to do what is impossible and contradictory. Although Holcot had argued that it is not incumbent on God to tell human beings about his enactments, yet if we are ignorant of what we should do to obey God, we cannot be held accountable for not obeying, only for our intentions to obey. If God does inform people of the new laws, then these will supercede the incompatible old set, and the faithful can obey God without being held to contradictory commands. In his Sentences commentary, Holcot described God’s absolute power such that if all the propositions that can exist, were to exist, God would have the power to do whatever having posed in being would not entail contradictory propositions being true at the same time. A limit on God’s power arises in that God cannot do whatever having posed in being would entail a contradictory set of propositions.58 So God would have to set aside or depose any laws contrary to any new ones he enacts. The counterfactual past appropriate to the newly enacted laws would always have been the real past. Analogy with obligatio would require that wayfarers adhere only to what is most recently posed to them, and to whatever consistently follows from that revealed ‘positum.’ Nor could any of the newly revealed laws result in any impossibilities for those trying to obey them, for as in the case of Martin and Bertha, the contractual arrangement in which God asks human beings to obey him and his human creatures agree to do so, is subject to the logic of contract. A contract impossible of fulfillment by its very terms is not a valid contract. Thus, either human beings will know if God changes the rules or the changes will not have any ultimate consequences for them. And if the rules are changed, they will be both consistent and rational. The analogous logics appropriate to contract, obligatio and covenant, all three subject to the principle of non-contradiction, constitute the ultimate foundation for whatever certainty human creatures can have about what God may have in store for them. Faith supplies what reason and experience cannot.

58

See above, chapter 4, note 59, for the text.

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Holcot made some subtle additions to the evolving tradition about God’s power. Developing the treatment evident already in Lawton, Holcot’s analysis is overtly propositional. The terms ‘de potentia ordinata’ and ‘de potentia absoluta’ are understood as modifiers of propositions. God’s absolute power to do whatever does not include a contradiction is also understood propositionally, such that God can only enact laws that would prove consistent if all possible propositions were to exist. The proposition: ‘God can produce a from his ordained power,’ means that it is possible for God to produce a, and a will be compatible with his existing statutes. The proposition: ‘God can produce a from his absolute power,’ means that it is possible for God to produce a, and if a is not compatible with his existing statutes, simultaneous with producing a, God would then have to set aside or depose any laws inconsistent with a. Holcot’s integration of the vocabularies and logics of contract, of obligatio and of covenant create a sophisticated new context for understanding the deployment of divine power. The Scotist interest in the question of how to allow for God to do something new, combined with an Ockhamist view of time and Lawton’s propositional analysis emerges in a coherent new synthesis within Holcot’s obligational theology.

C. God’s Knowledge of a Non-Existent Rose Scotus’ criticism of the tradition from Boethius to Aquinas that espoused a perspectival view of time in which God knows all past, present and future events as present and existing like the points on the circumference of a circle, brought the question of how God knows nonexistent future contingents to the fore. Scotus, himself, had argued that God knows such non-existents as future contingent realities by knowing the choices of his enacting will. The idea of the contingent thing in itself could not be sufficient in his view to provide knowledge of its contingent existence at some future time because the existential predicate in a proposition like ‘The Antichrist will be at time t2’ is not contained in the idea of the contingent subject ‘Antichrist.’ And before the thing exists, it cannot be the foundation of any co-existing eternal knowledge because there can be no real relation with what is not real. Thus Scotus had argued that God knows future contingents through the act of his creating will, which provides grounds for the existential predi-

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cate.59 Followers of Scotus at Paris like Alexander of Alexandria, Peter of Atarrabia, and Francis of Meyronnes adopted versions of his position.60 At Oxford, Henry of Harclay took Scotus’ criticism very much to heart as well, but as Mark Henninger has noted, did so without adopting Scotus’ metaphysical apparatus.61 Harclay instead argued through an analogy with our knowledge of the past. Just as we do not require the existence of some past object as the terminus of our present cognition of it, so the existence of a future object is not necessary for cognition of it. Moreover, because God can do immediately without any secondary efficient cause whatever he can do mediately through other causes, God’s cognition extends to all future contingents, even though they do not yet exist.62 For those like Strelley and Holcot who followed Scotus in rejecting the traditional perspectival view of time, but who also followed Ockham in rejecting Scotus’ metaphysics, how God could know nonexistents, particularly non-existent future contingents, posed a serious 59 See Marco Rossini, ‘“Quod coexsistit exsistit”: Allessandro di Allessandria e i futuri contingenti,’ in Via Scoti: Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, ed. Leonardo Sileo, vol. 1, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale (Rome, 1995), 1054–1060. 60 Ibid., 1049–1063. 61 Mark C. Henninger, ‘Henry of Harclay’s Questions on Divine Prescience and Predestination,’ FS 40 (1980): 182. Also see Ria van der Lecq, ‘Duns Scotus on the Reality of Possible Worlds,’ in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos, Acts of the Third symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (Amsterdam, 1998), 96–99, for a discussion of Scotus on the ontological status of possibles. 62 Henninger, ‘Harclay’s Questions,’ 182, who gives the text on 213–214: ‘Praeterea, modo de contingenti praeterito notum est quod contingens fuit per rationem contingentis, ergo et ita potest sciri de futuro quod erit et contingenter et contingentissime. Probatio consequentiae: ad hoc quod modo intellectus cognoscat hoc fuisse contingens non requritur existentia rei, manifestum est. Esto enim quod Socrates modo stet, tamen intellectus modo cognoscit quod ipse sedebat contingenter. Ergo existentia rei non requiritur pro cognoscenda re, id est, pro terminanda cognitione, quia postquam non est, res potest cognosci. Sed si existentia rei requiratur, hoc tantum erit pro causanda cognitione rei effective; etsi enim res potest terminare cognitionem cum non est, tamen non potest efficere eius cognitionem cum non est. Ergo res adhuc futura, non obstante quod non sit, nihilominus posset terminare cognitionem eius, sed non posset efficere. Sed pro efficienda cognitione non oportet usquam ponere rem nec in praesenti nec in praeterito nec in futuro. Probatio: nam quidquid agere potest Deus mediante causa secunda effectiva, illud potest etiam agere sine ea, ipsa non existent. Ergo omnem efficientiam quam posset causare res si esset, Deus, re non existente, causare posset. Ergo simpliciter non requiritur rei existentia ad cognitionem nec praesens nec praeterita. Ergo sicut modo cognoscitur cum est vel cum fuit, ita potuit cognosci antequam fieret salva omni contingentia et omni libertate agentis.’

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difficulty. If God were free to choose among many possible worlds and options, then his knowledge would have to range over all possibilities, whether he might choose to actualize them or not. For Holcot, what limits God is only any contradiction that would arise if all of the possible propositions were actually to exist (since he believed that only what we would call propositional tokens can be the bearers of truth and falsity).63 For God to understand the parameters of his freedom, then, he must know what those propositions would be if they were to exist. Not just future contingents, but all non-existent possibilities must somehow be part of God’s understanding. Ockham did not believe it possible to express clearly how God knows future contingents,64 but like Harclay he drew an analogy with human understanding: … just as from the intuitive cognition of some incomplexes, the intellect can know contradictory contingent propositions evidently (for example: that a is, a is not), in the same manner one can concede that the divine essence is the intuitive cognition, which is so perfect and clear, it is itself the evident cognition of all the past and future, so that it knows which part of a contradiction will be true and which part false.65

Strelley and Holcot each went a step farther in drawing the analogy, borrowing the concept of ‘ampliation’ devised in the thirteenth century to make sense of human talk about non-existents,66 and applying it to 63

What might be termed a ‘tokenist’ theory of propositions, i.e. that propositions exist only in their token written, spoken or mental forms, is evident in Ockham. In varying ways all of the Dominicans seem to have subscribed to a similar view. See the discussion of Crathorn above in chapter 6, and Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘I Cannot Tell a Lie: Hugh of Lawton’s Critique of William of Ockham on Mental Language,’ FcS 44 (1984): 141–174, for discussion of some of the complex repercussions of such a position. 64 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia divina, q. 1: ‘Ideo dico quod impossibile est clare exprimere modum quo Deus scit futura contingentia.’ In OP 2:517, ll. 277–278. Cp. Sent. I, d. 38, q. unica, in OT 4:584 l. 20–585, l. 5. 65 Ockham, Tractatus, q. 1: ‘… nam sicut ex eadem notitia intuitiva aliquorum incomplexorum potest intellectus evidenter cognoscere propositiones contingentes contradictorias, puta quod a est, a non est, eodem modo potest concedi quod essentia divina est notitia intuitiva quae est tam perfecta, tam clara quod ipsa est notitia evidens omnium praeteritorum et futurorum, ita quod ipsa scit quae pars contradictionis erit vera et quae pars falsa.’ In OP 2:518, ll. 281–287. 66 On ampliation, see: I.M. Bochenski, A History of Formal Logic, trans. and ed. Ivo Thomas, 2nd ed. (New York, 1970), 173–175; Earnest A. Moody, Truth and Consequence in Mediaeval Logic (Amsterdam, 1953), 54–63; John Buridan, Sophisms on Meaning and Truth, trans. and intro. Theodore Kermit Scott (New York, 1966), 32–34, 144–157. For a useful discussion of the general issues involved, see Joke Spruyt, ‘John Buridan on Negation

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God to make sense of divine knowledge of equivalent non-existents. Neither Harclay nor Ockham had used the term ‘ampliation’ in their own discussions of either human or divine knowledge, but, at a more general level, an analogy between divine and human modes of knowing had precedent in their works, and in Scotus, as well. Strelley introduced the idea of ampliation in his Sentences commentary to describe how God can know something without that thing existing. For as he said, ‘the cognition of a thing existing [cognitionem rei esse] and the thing known existing [rem cognitam esse] are not the same,’ since the latter infers existence and the former does not.67 Referring to Aristotle, Strelley distinguished sense [sensus] and understanding [intellectus]. Sense only knows the present, but understanding has the cognitive power to know not only the present, but past and future.68 And that is why: the term ‘cognitum,’ which supposits for the object of the understanding, has the power to stand for present, past and future, and even for every possible or impossible; all of which God knows. Whence it is necessary to say that this term ‘cognitum’ and others like it either are ampliative terms or participles or they are equivocal terms, equivocally signifying present, past and future.69

and the Understanding of Non-Being,’ in John Buridan: A Master of Arts, ed. E.P. Bos and H.A. Krop, Artistarium supplementa 8 (Nijmegen, 1993), 23–39, and Gino Roncaglia, ‘Utrum impossibile sit significabile: Buridano, Marsilio di Inghen e la Chimera,’ in Filosofia e teologia nel trecento: Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. Luca Bianchi (Louvain-laneuve, 1994), 367–380. Also see E.J. Ashworth and P.V. Spade, ‘Logic in Late Medieval Oxford,’ in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. J.I. Catto and Ralph Evans (Oxford, 1992), 50–54, for a discussion of Henry Hopton, writing c. 1357. 67 Strelley, Sent. II, q. 1: ‘Et hic praemitto unum, scilicet quod non est idem cognitionem rei esse et rem cognitam esse. Nam rem cognitam esse infert rem esse, sequitur enim res cognita est, ergo res est. Cognitionem rei esse non infert rem esse, nam non sequitur ego intelligo Antichristum, ergo Antichristum est…’ Erfurt 2, 180, f. 33ra. 68 Strelley, Sent. II, q. 1: ‘Secundo praemitto quod secundum Philosophum, differentia est inter sensum et intellectum quod sensus non cognoscit nisi praesens, sed intellectus habet virtutem cognitivam, non solum praesentis, sed etiam praeteriti et futuri.’ Erfurt, 2, 180, f. 33va 69 Strelley, Sent. II, q. 1: ‘Et ex isto sequitur quod iste terminus “cognitum,” qui supponit pro obiecto intellectus, potest de virtute sua stare pro praesenti, praeterito et futuro, et etiam pro quocumque possibili sive impossibili, quod omne tale Deus cognoscit. Unde oportet dicere quod quod [sic] iste terminus “cognitum” et alii consimiles vel sunt termini sive participia ampliativa vel equivoca et equivoce significantes praesens, praeteritum et futurum.’ Erfurt 2, 180, f. 33va.

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The focus of Strelley’s concern was a challenge raised against God’s ability to know his creation from all eternity if that creation were not to exist from all eternity. The usual convertiblity of terms should mean the consequence: ‘man from eternity was known, therefore that known from eternity was man’ [‘homo ab eterno fuit cognitus, ergo cognitum ab eterno fuit homo’] is a good consequence. But if it is good, it would seem to imply that man existed from all eternity because God knew him. Strelley argued in response: The consequence: ‘the Antichrist is future, therefore something future is the Antichrist,’ does not follow. The subject of the antecedent supposits for what will be, and, therefore, the consequent should be: ‘something future will be the Antichrist,’ instead. In the same way, the consequence: ‘man from eternity was known [cognitus] by God, therefore something known [cognitum] from eternity was man,’ is not valid, because the participle ‘cognitum’ in the consequent can stand for what was or is or will be or can be a man.70 In the case of God’s knowledge of man, taking the subject as standing for what will be, the consequence should proceed: ‘man from eternity was known [cognitus] by God, thus [there is] something known [cognitum] by God, therefore something known [cognitum] from eternity will be a man,’ or alternatively the consequent could be: ‘therefore about something known [cognito] by God from eternity, it was future: “it is man.”’71 Strelley concluded that in such propositions the subject supposits for man, but man in the future, not in the present, so a future

Strelley, Sent. II, q. 1: ‘Ad probationem eius dico quod ista consequentia non valet: “homo ab eterno fuit cognitus, ergo cognitum ab eterno fuit homo.” Ratio est quia, secundum in antecedente ratione probari, quod est: participium ampliativum vel tali equivales [pro: equivalens] potest supponere vel pro eo quod est homo vel erit vel fuit vel esse potest, propter quod sic dicendum est de ista consequentia sicut est de ista: “Antichristus est futurus, ergo aliquod futurum est Antichristus,” nam sicut ista non valet quia subiectum antecedentis supponit pro eo quod erit, sed ideo ista consequentia est bona: “Antichristus est futurus, ergo aliquod futurum erit Antichristus,” eodem modo ista consequentia non valet: “homo ab eterno fuit cognitus a Deo, ergo aliquod cognitum ab eterno fuit homo,” et hoc, secundum antecendentis ratione probari, potest accipi pro eo quod fuit vel est vel erit vel esse potest homo.’ Erfurt 2, 180, f. 33va. For some relevant discussion of presence as a necessity for truth, see Paola Müller, ‘Esistenza e verità in Guglielmo di Ockham,’ Medioevo 17 (1991): 249–280, and Dominik Perler, ‘Duns Scotus on Signification,’ Medieval Philosophy & Theology 3 (1993): 97–120 71 Strelley, Sent. II, q. 1: ‘Unde ista consequentia [patet dele] est bona, supposito quod subiectum stet pro eo quod erit: “homo ab eterno fuit cognitus a Deo, sic cognitum a Deo, ergo aliquod cognitum a Deo ab eterno erit homo,” vel sic: “ergo de aliquo cognito a Deo ab eterno, futurum erat: ipsum esse hominem.” etc.’ Erfurt 2, 180, ff. 33va–33vb. 70

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tense verb or a reference to the future is necessary in the consequent to avoid a fallacy of consequent that would arise from disregarding the ampliative force of the participle ‘cognitum.’72 Aquinas had distinguished between God’s ‘scientia visionis,’ the knowledge of vision through which God directs his gaze over all of time as present before him, and his ‘simplex intelligentia,’ the simple understanding through which he knows those things that he can produce but that do not, have not and never will exist.73 Strelley instead speaks of ampliation, the extension of the supposition of a term referring on its face to something existing and known as present, to refer to something non-existent but known as past, future, possible or impossible. God’s knowledge of his creation from eternity is not equivalent to knowledge of a present object, but to knowledge ampliated to the future. Prior to creation, for example, God’s knowledge is of unactualized possibilities, not of actualized beings, so before creation, it is not right to speak of creatable beings, but only of what can be. The sentence ‘some being was creatable,’ is true only if the subject stands for ‘possibles’ and not for ‘entities.’74 72 Strelley, Sent. II, q. 1: ‘Et quando quaeritur tunc utrum in tali propositione subiectum supponat pro homine vel non, dico quod supponit pro homine, sed non praesente, sed futuro, ideo supponit mediate verbo de futuro, sicut est in ista: Antichristus erit. Et est tunc sensus de aliquo cognito a Deo quod erit homo: “futurum erat: ipsum esse hominem.” Ad secundum patet ex prima suppositione quod in argumento est fallacia consequentis quia “cognitum” est participium ampliativum vel terminus equivocus, ergo etc.’ Erfurt 2, 180, f. 33vb. 73 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia14, 9: ‘Sed horum quae actu non sunt, est attendenda quaedam diversitas. Quaedam enim, licet non sint nunc in actu, tamen vel fuerunt vel erunt: et omnia ista dicitur Deus scire scientia visionis. Quia, cum intelligere Dei, quod est ejus esse, aeternitate mensuretur, quae sine successione existens totum tempus comprehendit, praesens intuitus Dei fertur in totum tempus, et in omnia quae sunt in quocunque tempore, sicut in subjecta sibi praesentialiter. Quaedam vero sunt in potentia Dei vel creaturae, quae tamen nec sunt nec erunt neque fuerunt. Et respectu horum non dicitur habere scientiam visionis, sed simplicis intelligentiae.’ (New York: Blackfriars, 1964), 4:32. 74 Strelley, Sent. II, q. 1: ‘Sed dicis: “si nullum ens fuit lapis ante sui creationem, ergo nullum ens fuit creabile,” dico quod hic est fallacia consequentis, sicut hic: “nullum ens est homo, ergo nullum ens est animal.” Dico tamen quod consequens est verum si subiectum eius stet pro entibus, non enim erat tunc aliquod ens quod erat creabile. Sed si stet pro possibilibus, sic enim stare potest ratione praedicti quod est de possibili, sic haec universalis: “nullum ens fuit creabile,” est falsa et sua contradictoria vera, scilicet ista: “aliquid fuit creabile,” vel “aliquid potuit creari,” semper capiendo subiectum non pro eo quod fuit, sed pro eo quod esse potuit.’ Erfurt 2, 180, f. 34rb. See Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham (Notre Dame, 1987), 2:1060–1061, for a discussion of Ockham on ‘unactualized possibles,’ where she provides two speculative

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Holcot took up the question of knowledge of non-existents in several places: at the beginning of his Sentences commentary in what is likely to have been the principial question to the first book,75 and again in the second book, question two, article three. He described two opinions about such knowledge. The first (for which Holcot cites Anselm’s support) holds that it can be true to say that a rose is understood or conceived even when no rose exists, because what does not exist can be intelligible and understood through the imagination. The intellect can form propositions about non-existents and have both complex and simple concepts about them ‘as if ’ they existed.76 The other, opposing opinion, objects that if Socrates were to obtain knowledge of an existing rose, and the rose should cease to exist while Socrates’ knowledge remains conserved, and he understands nothing else, it would not be true to say that Socrates understands something or that the rose is understood by Socrates. And by analogy it is also not true to say before creation of the world that God understands the world or that some creature is understood by God.77 And if it were further argued (as Strelinterpretations of their ontological status: either as ‘possibles’ independent of real and intellectual beings or as ‘soft-actualism,’ reducing unactualized possibles to the really existent divine act of thinking of them. 75 The question ‘De obiecto actus credendi, utrum sit ipsum complexum vel res significata per complexum,’ occurs variously in relationship to Holcot’s Sentences commentary in different texts (see Heinrich Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn: I. Quellenkritik und biographische Auswertung der Bakkalareatsschriften zweier Oxforder Dominikaner des XIV. Jahrhunderts,’ Philosophisches Jahrbuch 77 [1970]: 333–335), but evidence of its principial status is clear in Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 207rb, where it is called ‘Prologus in opus Holkoth’ in the margin, and ends with ‘Explicit prologus in opus Holkoth qui immediate post sermone in principio poneretur,’ even though it is in fact placed at the end of the Sentences commentary in the manuscript. 76 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 3: ‘Circa tertium articulum restat videre an nulla rosa existente, haec sit concedenda: rosa concipitur vel rosa intelligitur. Et hic est unus modus dicendi, quod sic, quia tales termini: “concipi,” ‘intelligi,’ ‘cognosci,’ et eis equivalentes possunt verificari tam de terminis supponentibus pro nihilo sicut pro re. Potest etiam homo intelligere illud quod nihil est, secundum istos, concedunt enim illud quod nihil est, est intelligibile et cognoscibile, immo cui repugnat esse potest intelligi et a nobis imaginando cognosci. Unde intellectus format propositiones de non-entibus et habet conceptus de eis tam complexos quam incomplexos. Et dicitur praedicatum inesse subiecto nec per se nec pro alio existente, sed pro illo quod nihil est, ac si esset aliquod. Istud confirmatur per Anselmum, De casu Diaboli, c. 2 …’ Oriel 149 ra; In quatuor libros sententiarum quaestiones (Lyon, 1518), repr. Minerva G.M.B.H. (Frankfurt, 1967), h5va. 77 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 3: ‘Econtra est opinio aliorum talis quod posita intellectione rosae in mente Sortis et conservata post adnihilationem et corruptionem rosae, ita quod Sortes nihil aliud intelligat, dicunt quod haec propositio est neganda: aliquid intelligitur a Sorte, et haec similiter: rosa intelligitur a Sorte. Et eadem ratione, … quod

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ley had) that terms like ‘be conceived,’ ‘be congnized,’ ‘be understood,’ can refer to non-existents because they are ampliative, this opposing opinion argues that the absurd consequence would follow: a) ‘this thing known [cognitum] is a thing known [cognitum] by you, having demonstrated something about which there is no cognition,’ and then further that b) ‘what is not known is known by you.’78 In proposing his own response, Holcot stated that the opposition between these two views seemed to him more verbal than real. Propositions like ‘Antichristus intelligitur,’ ‘Caesar cognoscitur,’ and ‘Rosa intelligitur,’ must be distinguished according to ampliation, for if they are taken at face value, by virtue of the words they are false. The proposition: ‘Antichristus intelligitur,’ is convertible with the proposition: ‘Anticristus est intellectus.’ But the second proposition is false, because the subject supposits in conjunction with a present tense verb ‘est’ that is not ampliated in any way. Thus the first proposition, with which it is convertible, is false as well. However, in accord with the intention of the speaker, such propositions can also be taken for other propositions that are true. The proposition: ‘Antichristus intelligitur’ may be equivalent in the speaker’s intention to: ‘Intellectio quaedam est quae Antichristus, si foret, foret intellectus,’ i.e. ‘There is a certain understanding that would be the Antichrist understood, if the Antichrist were to exist.’ In Holcot’s view, propositions like ‘Antichristus intelligitur’ may be ampliated at the pleasure of the speaker [ad placitum], although such ampliation is not philosophically or logically strictly implied. Thus in the case of God’s knowledge, it should not properly be said: ‘The Antichrist is understood by God,’ but rather: ‘In God there is a certain understanding that would be the Antichrist understood if the Antichrist were to exist.’79 ante creationem mundi, haec fuisset falsa si fuisset: Deus intelligit mundum, et haec simliter: aliquae creatura intelligitur a Deo.’ In Oriel, f. 149va, and Lyon, f. h6ra. 78 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 3: ‘Praeterea si isti termini “concipi,” ‘cognosci’ et ‘intelligi’ forent ampliativi, ut quando ponuntur in praedicato facerent subiectum stare pro non-entibus et pro hiis quae possunt esse et pro hiis quae esse non possunt, sicut dicit haec opinio, tales propositiones forent concedendae: “hoc cognitum est cognitum a te” demonstrata aliqua re de qua nullam habes cognitionem, quia subiectum potest supponere respectu talis praedicati pro eo quod non est cognitum, et sic foret haec concedenda: illud quod non est cognitum est cognitum a te.’ Oriel 149va; Lyon, h6va. 79 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 3: ‘Quantum ad istos varios modos loquendi, magis est difficultas verbalis quam realis, unde tales propositiones: “Antichristus intelligitur,” “Caesar cognoscitur,” “Rosa concipitur,” propter variae loquentes sunt distinguendae penes ampliationem eo quod possunt accipi proprie et pro seipisis ad virtutem vocabu-

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For Holcot, the whole difficulty arises because we do not expound sentences about non-existents into their proper exponibles, but use short-cuts to express improperly what would take many more words or sentences to express exactly. So the proposition: ‘I remember Caesar,’ is taken colloquially for three exponents: a) there is a certain cognition in me that would be Caesar if he were, b) Caesar was known by me, and c) Caesar is not.80 And comparably about the future, we use many terms as if they stood for things when they do not, requiring for clarification that our propositions be expounded into their proper exponents. In the case of God’s foreknowlege, because God freely produces whatever he creates, he must foreknow what he creates. But what it means for God to foreknow something is that ‘God is a certain precognition by which this is true: “The Antichrist having been produced, the Antichrist was foreknown by God,”’ or the sentence ‘God foreknows what he produces’ can be expounded to mean a) ‘What is produced is not but will be,’ and b) ‘God has a precognition by which this would be true in mode: “If the Antichrist were to be, the Antichrist has been known lorum, et sic sunt falsae. Nam proprie ista: “Antichristus intelligitur” convertitur cum ista: “Antichristus est intellectus,” quae propositio est falsa cum subiectum supponit respectu verbi de praesenti quod nullo modo ampliat. Alio modo possunt tales propositiones intelligi pro aliis secundum voluntatem utentium eis et volentium sic loqui, ut ista propositio: “Antichristus intelligitur,” accipitur pro ista: “Intellectio quaedam est quae Antichristus, si foret, foret intellectus” vel “Conceptio quaedam est quae foret conceptio Antichristi si esset,” … dicendum est nec philosophicum nec logice dictum, sed solum ad placitum, quod tales termini ampliantur: “intellectum,” “cognitum,” “conceptum,” et huius. Et ideo proprie loquendo videtur quod tales sunt negandae: “Rosa intelligitur,” nulla rosa existente; “Antichristus intelligitur a Deo;” “Anima patris mei intelligitur a me.” Nam ista est manifeste falsa propter aliquam causam quae implicatur, quod pater meus haberet animam. Conceduntur tamen improprie pro aliis propositionibus, sicut ista: “Antichristus intelligitur a Deo” conceditur pro ista: “In Deo est quaedam intentio quae Antichristus foret intellectus si Antichristus esset,” et sic de consimilibus.’ Oriel 149va; Lyon, h6va. 80 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 3: ‘Ad primam rationem quando dicitur quod quilibet experitur quod potest recordari hominis mortui, dico quod haec propositio: “Recordor hominis mortui” est falsa, quia ponitur oppositum in adiecto in praedicato. Haec tamen “Recordor Caesaris” conceditur vulgariter pro istis: “Habeo notitiam quae fuit Caesaris, et Caesar fuit et non est.” Et certe secundum mentem Anselmi, cognitum a me est imago Caesaris, et ideo habeo imaginem quae est causata a Caesare quando Caesar fuit, et ita utor Caesare non existente, et ideo conceditur quod recordor Caesaris. Et iste est modus loquendi introductus propter commoditatem brevitatis, ut utamur una cathegoremata quandocumque pro tribus vel pro una copulativa composita ex tribus, sicut ista: “Recordor Caesaris” exponitur pro has tres: “Cognitio quaedam est in me quae foret Caesaris si esset,” et “Caesar fuit cognitus a me,” et “Caesar non est,” et sic vere loquimur ad intentionem loquentium, licet improprie secundum vocem.’ Oriel, 149va; Lyon, h6va–h6vb.

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[est cognitus] by God.”’81 So Holcot argued that both God and human beings can understand what is nothing, and one should concede that a non-existent rose can be understood and that when it is understood, it is true to say that something is understood, as long as ‘something’ does not supposit only for those things that are something, but for all intelligibles, because verbs that express processes of understanding are ampliative verbs.82

D. Conclusion The worry that fourteenth-century theologians subscribed to a ‘capricious’ God who might throw thunderbolts from his absolute power into the orderly works of his ordained system has been a concern of twentieth-century scholars and has focused modern debate about late medieval views of God’s power. But this focus has kept attention on only one half of the dialectic of God’s absolute and ordained power. Fourteenth-century theologians generally perceived the question of divine power less as a problem of too much divine freedom, although they did address that issue, but much more as a problem of potentially not enough divine freedom. The order of God’s creation and the unity of the divine will challenged the idea that God can act other than he does. In the twelfth century, Peter Abelard’s contention that what God does and has done fully expresses what God is able to do, first raised the question for the schoolmen of limits on divine freedom. Abelard met his rebuttal in Peter Lombard’s Sententiae.83 In the thirteenth century, the issue of limits on divine freedom re-emerged with the various ver81

Holcot, Sent. I, principium: ‘Ad primum argumentum concedo quod Deus libere producit quicquid producit ad extra, et quando arguitur ergo praecognoscit, et caetera, concedo ad istum intellectum: Deus est quaedam praecognitio, id est Deus est quaedam praecognitio qua haec est vera: “Antichristo producto, Antichristus fuit praecognitus a Deo,” vel sic debet exponi “Deus praecognovit quod producit,” hoc est: “Quod producetur non est sed erit,” et “Deus habet praecognitionem qua haec foret modo vera: Si Antichristus esset, Antichristus est cognitus a Deo.”’ Oxford, Balliol College, MS 246, f. 8rb; London, British Library, Royal MS 10.C.VI, f. 139vb; Oriel 206vb. 82 Holcot, Sent. I, principium: ‘Dicitur quod illud quod nihil est potest intelligi non tantum a deo, immo a nobis… Unde conceditur quod: “rosa non-existente, rosa intelligitur,” et haec similiter: “Aliquid intelligitur,” [si] “aliquid” non supponit tantum pro illis quae sunt aliquid, sed pro omni intelligibili. Unde dicitur quod talia verba: “intelligitur,” “cogitatur,” “imaginatur,” et huius, sunt verba ampliativa.’ Balliol, 8ra; Royal, 130va; Oriel, 206va. 83 Courtenay, Capacity, 44–55.

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sions of Aristotelianism, but was again set aside with the Condemnation of 1277. In the 1320’s and early 1330s, the question of whether God’s actions are limited to what he does or by what he does returned for still a third time: first in the arguments of Master Walter, who asserted that God’s revelation and ordination, after the fact, express what is necessary, and then in the sermons of Pope John XXII, who preached that because God’s absolute power is identical with his ordained power, there is no sense to the distinction, and who by so saying, at least in the eyes of the pope’s critics, conflated God’s ability to act with God’s actual acts.84 While there is no direct evidence the Dominicans knew of John XXII’s position, Crathorn’s retreat from the distinction might reflect such knowledge, and the opposition FitzRalph, Holcot and Wodeham displayed toward Master Walter’s arguments may have served as surrogate for a critique of the pope. The Dominicans had to chart a course between the Scylla of determinism and the Charybdis of chaotic indeterminacy. In so doing, they did not adopt either the thirteenth-century tradition of keeping God’s freedom innocuously prior to the present, nor did they argue that God’s absolute power operates independently of his ordained power. However, each in different ways made space for God to suspend his current ordination and to put some new command or ordained state of affairs into effect. Indeed, the changes to be hoped for in the second coming of Christ and the last judgment would require God’s ability to bring about a yet-to-come third order of things unlike that of either the Old or New Laws. Not just the past but the future was given coherent shape by the successive ordering of God’s ordinations within the broader scope of his absolute power.

84 Courtenay, Capacity, 147–151. The pope’s sermons have been tentatively dated between 1330 and 1333. Laurence Eldredge, ‘The Concept of God’s Absolute Power at Oxford in the Later Fourteenth Century,’ in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, ed. David L. Jeffrey (Ottowa, 1979), 211–226, argues that the distinction fell increasingly out of use in the period after 1350, but his conclusions must be taken with a certain caution.

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EPILOGUE

Telling the story of how the Oxford Dominicans from the first half of the fourteenth century influenced the scholastic theologians who succeeded them in later years will require extensive archival digging. There are not enough texts by identified Dominican authors at Oxford after Holcot to say much about the effect of Lawton, Stelley, Crathorn, and Holcot, himself, on the next generation at Blackfriars. In England, four copies of Holcot’s Sentences commentary are at Oxford (one, Oriel College MS 15, from Glastonbury Abbey and, therefore, of Benedictine origin), one at Cambridge and another in London (also from Glastonbury).1 In the early sixteenth century, the Franciscan friary library in London had copies of Holcot’s commentaries on the Sentences and on the book of Wisdom.2 No texts of works by the other three friars are known to survive in Great Britain, but dissemination of manuscript copies of theological works on the continent gives a rough indication of areas where the four authors may have found interested readers. For example, manuscripts containing part or all of Holcot’s, Crathorn’s, Lawton’s and Strelley’s Sentences commentaries found their way to Erfurt, as did a partial copy of Strelley’s Centiloquium theologicum.3 Germany and other parts of eastern Europe boast a disproportionate number of texts: Crathorn and Holcot are each represented by Sentences com1

Heinrich Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn: I. Quellenkritik und biographische Auswertung der Bakkalareatsschriften zweier Oxforder Dominikaner des XIV. Jahrhunderts,’ PJ 77 (1970), 331–337. And see William J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeman: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978), 120, n. 9, for the provenance of two of Holcot’s Sentences commentaries: Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, copied for a monk of Glastonbury Abbey in 1389, and the very closely related London British Library Royal MS 10 C VI, also copied at Glastonbury. The Oriel College manuscript is corrected, and is, therefore, generally a better text than Royal. 2 William J. Courtenay, Schools & Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, 1987), 104. 3 [Strelley] Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, C.A. 20 180, ff. 1ra– 101rb; [Crathorn] Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt, C.A. 40 395a, ff. 1v–53r; [Holcot] Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt C.A. 40 112, ff. 1–126, and [Holcot] Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt C.A. 20 105, ff. 1–108r. [Strelley’s Centiloquium] Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt C.A. 40 104, ff. 2r–27r [incomplete].

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mentaries in Munich (of Holcot’s, one was originally from Augsburg and another fragment is dated 1387); Holcot by commentaries or fragments of commentaries in Düsseldorf (from the Kreuzbrüder cloister), in Eichstatt (dated Florence, 1387), in Engelberg (from the Benedictine library), in Heiligenkreuz (from the Cistercian library), in Augsburg, Breslau, Krakau, and Prague (one dated Magdeburg, 1393/94 and another dated 1360), and in Cologne (from the Carmelite convent); Crathorn by commentaries in Vienna and Basel as well as Erfurt. In Italy, Lawton and Holcot each have Sentences commentaries and/or fragments of commentaries at the Vatican library (Holcot’s originally from Oxford), and there are copies of Strelley’s Centiloquium and his Tractatus de praedestinatione at the Vatican as well. Moreover, Holcot’s Sentences turn up in Florence, Assisi and Padua. In France, Paris boasts seven copies of Holcot’s Sentences (one dated 1374, another 1389), and there is also a copy at Troyes (from Clairvaux). Spain received two copies, now in Tortosa and Valencia, and has a 15th century copy of the Centiloquium (attributed to Ockham) from the cathedral church library of Burgo de Osma.4 Holcot’s texts were sufficiently valued to warrant early printed editions of both his Sentences commentary and his Biblical commentary on Wisdom. Without knowing how each manuscript came to reside in its current library, not too much should be drawn from this information, but it suggests that there may have been readers of these authors in some number in German and eastern European schools and monasteries, at Paris and in Italy. There are some other, more direct indications of Holcot’s reputation. He figured as an exemplar of scholastic excess in a bit of verse the Humanist Jacob Locher fashioned in 1503 at Ingolstadt to defend poettheologians against the logicians:

4 Information about the manuscripts is drawn from the following sources: Schepers, ‘Holkot contra dicta Crathorn,’ 77 (1970), 326–337, lists the manuscripts of Crathorn and Holcot. For Lawton see chapter 2, pp. 73–75, above. For Strelley, see Hester Goodenough Gelber, ‘Ockham’s Early Influence: A Question about Predestination and Foreknowledge by Arnold of Strelley, O.P.’ AHDLMA 55 (1988): 255–270. For manuscripts of the Centiloquium see the introduction to Guillelmus de Ockham, Opera philosophica, vol. 7: Dubia et spuria, ed. Philotheus Boehner and G.I. Etzkorn (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1988), 17–19. For Crathorn’s manuscripts, also see Fritz Hoffmann’s introduction to his edition of Crathorn’s Sentences: Quästionen zum ersten Sentenzenbuch, BGPTM n. s. no. 29 (Münster, 1988), 5–9. See William J. Courtenay, ‘Theologia Anglicana Modernorum at Cologne in the Fourteenth Century,’ Miscellanea Mediaevalia 20 (1989), 249, for information on the manuscript of Holcot’s works at Cologne.

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No theologian he, who’s born of strife, a son of Buridan and Ockham or of Scotus’ blood, Marsilius’ scion, or Maufelt’s, or else Burleus’ or Brulifer’s or Holcot’s son.5

Luther may have known something about Holcot’s views, as well, for in the 1517 Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, he rejected the proposition Holcot had advocated in his Sentences commentary that there might be a ‘logica fidei.’6 And on the positive side, in the 1521 edition of his Historia maioris Britanniae, tam Angliae quam Scotiae, John Major listed Holcot with Alexander of Hales, Richard of Middleton, John Duns Scotus, William Ockham, Adam Wodeham, Richard Fitzralph, Thomas Buckingham, Robert Halifax, Richard Kilvington, Alexander Langeley, John Rodington, Monachus Anglicanus (Niger?), Richard Swineshead, William Heytesbury, Ralph Strode and Thomas Bradwardine, as the most famous among medieval Oxford theologians and philosophers.7 Evidence of more specific influence is scattered and so far more difficult to discern.8 For purposes of this text, the puzzle basic to obligational theology reappears in relatively undeveloped form in the works of Adam Wodeham, Marsilius of Inghen, and, even, oddly enough, in the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla’s De libero arbitrio. 5

From his Comparison between the Mule and the Muse, cited in Erika Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and the Reformation (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 79. 6 Martin Luther, Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, no. 46: ‘Frustrua fingitur logica fidei, Suppositio mediata extra terminum et numerum. Contra recen. Dialect.’ in Werke, I, pt. 1 (Weimar, 1883), 226. 7 As cited in William J. Coutenay, ‘Alexander Langeley, O.F.M.’ Manuscripta 18 (1974): 96, n. 2. 8 Disputes over grace and beatitude were part of the immediate context that involved the Dominicans: Adam Wodeham and his socii Grafton and Holcot squared off on these issues, and Bradwardine surely had scholars like Holcot and Strelley in mind when he attacked the ‘Pelagians’ among his contemporaries. See William J. Courtenay, Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (Leiden, 1978), 103–107, 116–123 for the debate with Wodeham. Such disputes occupied the attention of many of their contemporaries: Richard Fitzralph, Roger Rosetus, Richard Kilvington, Alexander Langeley, Thomas Buckingham, John Stuckley, Osbert Pickingham, Monachus Niger, and Robert Halifax, who might well have known of the Dominicans’ positions. Courtenay, Schools & Scholars, 293–294, discusses the influence Holcot may have had on Kilvington, Rosetus, Halifax, Monachus Niger and Langeley on the question of conscience. At Paris, Pierre d’Ailly devoted most of a question on God’s will to puzzles about whether God could oblige the viator to do the impossible, in the course of which he cited Holcot twice (once in agreement). See Petrus de Ailliaco, Quaestiones super libros sententiarum cum quibusdam in fine adjunctis (Strassburg, 1490), reprinted by Minerva G.M.B.H. (Frankfurt, 1968), ff. v6rb and x6va.

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Wodeham’s formulaton of the puzzle is truncated: … how from the fact that God foreknowing that a will be [where a is the name of some proposition about the future], he can [also] not foreknow that a will be. This [i.e. that he not foreknow that a will be] is possible to be posed in being, for everything that is possible, can be posed in being.9

His response was: … if the thing which is future, for example the soul of Antichrist, is posed not to happen, implicitly it is posed that it never was future and so that it never was foreknown to be.10

Wodeham also cited a criticism of this contention in terms that if someone knows one of two convertible terms, then that person knows the other. ‘A’ is convertible with ‘a is true,’ therefore to know a is to know that a is true, but if God knows a, then God knows that a is true, and presumably the necessity of a would follow. Rather than offering an analysis of his own, Wodeham simply referred to the response of Henry of Costesey, that that which IS a infers that a is true, but in the case of future tense propositions, if a stands for: ‘the soul of Antichrist will be,’ one could also say ‘the soul of Antichrist will not be,’ [presumably because of the contingent implication of a future tense verb], and, therefore, it is impossible to know about a whether it refers to the soul of Antichrist or to its opposite. ‘A’ would then not seem to be convertible with ‘a is true,’ because more is posed through the consequent than through the antecedent.11 In turning to Costesey for Wodeham, Sent. III, q. 3, dubium 7: ‘Septimum dubium principale est … quomodo ex quo Deus praesciens a fore, potest non praescire a fore, hoc possibile poneretur in esse; omne enim quod est possibile potest poni in esse.’ In In libros Sententiarum. Lectura Oxoniensis. In Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 915, ff. f. 179vb; Vatican Library, Cod. Vat. lat. 1110, f. 56r. 10 Wodeham, Sent. III, q. 3, dubium 7: ‘Respondendum igitur quod si illa res quae est futura, verbi gratia anima Antichristi, ponatur non eventura, implicite poneretur quod numquam fuit futura, et ita quod numquam fuit praescita fore.’ In Paris, Maz. MS 915, f. 179vb; Vat. lat. 1110, f. 56r. 11 Wodeham, Sent. III, q. 3, dubium 7: ‘Sed contra me potest argui: quicumque scit a esse verum, ipse scit a. Sed tu scis a esse verum, ergo tu scis a. Consequens est falsum. quia neutrum istorum “scis a.” est alterum istorum, ergo a non scis, et per consequens non scis a. Dicendum quod haec: tu scis a esse verum, est falsa in sensu diviso, et vera in sensu composito, sed in hoc sensu, scilicet composito, est maior falsa enim quiqumque scit istam: a est verum, scit ista: a est, et ita in omni sensu procedendo vel maior est falsa vel minor. Contra: quicumque scit unum convertibilium, scit et reliquum, si sciat ista esse convertibilia. Sed “a esse verum” convertitur cum “a,” et haec scis, et scis quod a est 9

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the basis of his discussion, Wodeham chose to turn to a member of his own order whose Sentences commentary at Cambridge in 1325–1326 predated the period of Dominican speculation.12 Wodeham’s relegation of his answer to the voice of another may have signaled his relative lack of interest in the question or his failure to grasp its full implications. Unfortunately, since Wodeham’s works were one of the main avenues for transmitting developments in English theology to Paris, his failure to address the key puzzle in obligational theology as it had emerged in the works of Strelley and Holcot undoubtedly obscured the significence of the Dominican position for Parisian theologians, at least for a time. The Parisian master of arts and Heidelberg theologian, Marsilius of Inghen, cited Wodeham several times by name [Adam] in the discussion of divine foreknowledge in his Sentences commentary.13 But when it came to discussing the basic obligational puzzle, Inghen’s response was shorter than Wodeham’s and the by now conventional one: God’s knowledge simply tracks what is future, but in a manner that respects its contingency, so that what God knows might not happen, but if it were not to happen, then God would never have known it.14 Many of the verum, igitur scis a. Et minor probatur quia tu scis quod quaelibet propositio infert se ipsam esse veram, et econtra, … igitur ad “a” sequitur quod “a est verum” et econtra ad “a esse verum,” sequitur “a.” Respondendum est: inquid Costesey quod “a est verum” nescio converti cum “a,” quia de illa quae est a, nescio utrum sit a vel non. Nescio enim, inquid, utrum ista: “anima Antichristi erit” sit a,’ vel ista: ‘anima Antichristi non erit’ sit a, et nescio utrum ista: ‘a est verum,’ convertitur cum ista: ‘anima Antichristi erit,’ vel cum aliqua. Concedo tamen, inquid, quod illa quae est a infert ‘a esse verum,’ unde si a sit, ista anima Antichristi erit, igitur haec est vera: ‘anima Antichristi erit,’ et similiter dicendum est de ista: ‘anima Antichristi non erit,’ tamen nescio utrum sequatur: ‘anima Antichristi erit, igitur a est verum,’ quia nescio utrum a sit ista: ‘anima Antichristi erit,’ vel eius opposita. …’ Paris, Maz. 915, f. 179vb; Vat. lat. 1110, f. 56r. Courtenay, Wodeham, 65, was the first to point out Wodeham’s source. The name is clear in Vat. lat. MS 1110, f. 56r. In Paris, Maz. 915, it looks like ‘Goffri’ or ‘Costri.’ 12 Courtenay, Wodeham, 65. 13 Marsilius of Inghen, Sent. I, q. 40, art. 2, in Quaestiones Marsilii super quattuor libros sententiarum (1501), reprinted by Minerva G.M.B.H. (Frankfurt, 1966), ff. 167va and 167vb. 14 Marsilius of Inghen, Sent. I, q. 40, art. 2: ‘Ad sextam dicitur quod cum aeterna praescientia Dei qua praescit Socratem peccaturum cras, stat libertas arbitrii Socratis, et eum posse non peccare. Et cum dicis: ponatur in esse, placet Socrates non peccat, et stante praescientia illa est possibilis, sed falsa, quia ex quo ponitur Deus praescius alia pars vera est, Socrates peccat. Si dicas pone quod non peccet, placet mihi, sed tunc non praescivit Deus, quia istae, ut dictum est prius, non sunt compossibiles: Deus praescivit Socratem peccaturum cras, et Socrates non peccabit cras. Et ergo ad rationem ultra conceditur quod simul non stet quod Deus praesciat et non eveniat, et cum infers

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most intriguing aspects of the Dominican discussion: the relevance of the obligational rules to the problem, the question of whether a debate starts fresh with a new positum when the dispositum is posed the case, the relation of such questions to God’s ability to establish a new law or order, and the question of whether God’s revelations to the faithful correspond to the relations between opponent and respondent in an obligational debate, are not in evidence in the texts of authors known to have had sympathy for English subtleties. That the obligational challenge remained an active concern, however, gains strange support from Lorenzo Valla’s De libero arbitrio. As a Humanist and papal secretary to Pope Martin V, Valla’s education was in the ars dictaminis rather than scholastic theology. In his dialogue on freedom of the will, however, he had his fellow Humanist at the papal court, the canon lawyer Antonio Loschi, raise the basic problem for God’s Providence that contingency poses: Ant. Here I have you. Are you unaware of the philosophical rule that whatever is possible ought to be conceded as if it were? It is possible for something to happen otherwise than it is foreknown; it may be granted it will happen that way, through which it is now manifest that foreknowledge is deceived since it happens otherwise than foreknowledge had believed.15

In his response, Valla turned rhetorical: Lor. Are you using formulas of philosophers on me? Indeed, as if I would not dare to contradict them! Certainly I think that precept you mention, whose ever it is, most absurd, for I can concede it to be possible to move the right foot first, and we may concede it will be so, and I can also concede it possible for me to move the left foot first, and we may concede this will be as well; I will move therefore both the left before the right ergo posito praescire in esse, non stat non evenire. Si intelligis quod non stet quod praesciat et non eveniat, seu quod consequentia est necessaria: praescit, ergo eveniet, conceditur quod dicis, et tamen contingenter eveniet, sicut contingenter Deus praescit. Sed si intelligas quod stante praescientia ipsius A, ipsum A non possit non evenire, tunc negetur tibi consequentia. Stant enim simul: Deus praescit A, et A potest non evenire, ut dictum est.’ In 1966 reprinted edition, f. 170rb–170va. 15 Lorenzo Valla, De libero arbitrio: ‘An. Hic te teneo. An ignoras praeceptum esse philosophorum quicquid possibile est, id tanquam esset debere concedi? possibile est aliter evenire quam praescitum est, concedatur ita esse eventurum: per quod falli iam praescientiam manifestum est, cum aliter eveniat quam illa crediderat.’ Ed. Maria Anfossi, Opuscoli filosofici testi e documenti inediti o rari, 6 (Florence, 1934), 29, ll. 414–419; trans. Charles Edward Trinkaus, Jr. in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr. (Chicago, 1948), 168.

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and the right before the left, and through your concession of the possible I arrive at the impossible. Therefore, know that it is not to be conceded that whatever is possible will likewise happen. It is possible for you to do otherwise than God foreknows, nevertheless you will not do otherwise, nor will you therefore deceive him.16

Valla resolved the difficulty through the very unscholastic move of denying the validity of the Aristotelian principle, rather than through showing how the impossiblity he believed arises from that principle is not in fact a consequence of applying the rule. And Loschi had garbled the rule in the first place: whatever can be the case, can be posed the case, but does not HAVE to be posed the case as he suggests, thereby leaving Valla with a straw man to oppose. The composite and divided senses of the left foot/right foot dilemma would have been obvious to any scholastic. But Valla’s knowledge of the obligational puzzle is indication that the questions it raised remained important in discussions about contingency. Finally, Holcot’s voice is at least indirectly discernible at Louvain in the quarrel over future contingents that erupted there in the midfifteenth century. One of the anonymous texts connected with the dispute cited ‘aliqui moderni’ who concede that: … it is in my power to make someone dead one hundred years not to have been a prophet because the term ‘prophet’ is a connotative term, whose significate is someone predicting the truth, and it is clear that if he predicted something about me that I would do, which I can freely do or not do, the consequent is that I can make him to have been a prophet, because I can make what he said true and not true. And therefore after the time in which someone predicted the future, continually until it will be fulfilled, this is contingent: ‘he prophesied,’ indicating that person.17 16

Valla, De libero arbitrio: ‘Lau. Philosophorum mecum formulis agis? Quasi vero eis contradicere non audeam. Istud profecto quod ais praeceptum, cuiuscumque sit, quam absurdissimum puto: possum enim dextrum pedem priorem movere, concedamus ita fore: possum item movere priorem sinistrum, hoc quoque concedamus futurum: movebo igitur et dextrum priorem sinistro, et dextro sinistrum et per tuam possibilium concessionem deveniam ad impossibile, ut intelligas non esse concedendum, quicquid possibile est evenire, id utique eventurum. Quod cum ita sit, possibile est te aliter agere quam Deus praescivit, veruntamen non aliter ages, ergo nec falles.’ Ed. Anfossi, 29–30, ll. 420–431; trans. Trinkaus, 168–169. 17 Anonymus, Tractatus de veritatibus futurorum contingentium adversus Petrum de Rivo, chap. 4: ‘Propter quod concedunt aliqui moderni quod modo est in potestate mea facere aliquem mortuum a centum annis non fuisse prophetam quia ille terminus propheta est terminus connotativus, cujus significatum est aliquid predicens verum, et planum est quod si de me predixit aliquid me facturum quod libere possum facere vel non facere, consequens est quod possum facere ipsum fuisse prophetam quia possum facere

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The text harks back to Holcot’s discussion of being able to make someone a prophet because of the contingency inherent in a term like ‘prophet’ that connotes a future event.18 The later author goes on to adopt the standard English response that ‘some true proposition about the future can never have been true,’ and that ‘the foreknowledge of God or predestination can never have been foreknowledge or predestination.’19 But whatever influence the Oxford Dominicans had on their contemporaries and successors, the questions they raised and the issues they addressed have fundamental importance. Our ability to think about what is not now the case, and the allied belief that things could and can be other than they are, connect with some of our most profound experiences as human beings and ground the late medieval religious world view. Robert Holcot, in a remarkable passage, set out the case: If we could not understand anything that did not here and now exist, how could we think about and remember the dead? In a question that seems personal, he asked, how, without this ability (and tangentially the belief that things can be otherwise), could we mourn a dead father or pray for his soul? Or how could we be contrite about our sins? and confess them? And we could not provide for the future because we could not even think about it. Nor would our natural fear of death make sense, because we could not think about that, either. And since hope and desire concern the future that does not yet exist, we could not hope for or desire anything. Art would become impossible. All creative work requires forethought. The architect first imagines a house before it is built; the sculptor first imagines a statue. We could not work toward any purposeful end, nor could we understand or pursue it, and consequently we could not entertain an intention toward it. We could not bear witness in a murder case without being able to recall the now non-existent victim. Indeed, in order for the world to exist at all, God quod ipse dixit verum, et non dixit verum.’ Ed. Leon Baudry, La Querelle des futurs contingents (Louvain 1465–1475), (Paris, 1950), 198. The translation is mine, but I have compared it with the translation by Rita Guerlac, The Quarrel over Future Contingents (Louvain 1465–1475): Unpublished Texts Collected by Leon Baudry, Synthese Historical Library, 36 (Dordrecht, 1989), 160–161. 18 See chapter five, p. 165 above. 19 Anon., Tractatus de veritatibus futurorum contingentium adversus Petrum de Rivo: ‘Ex quibus patet quod veritas propositionis de futuro potest numquam fuisse veritas, sicut potest non esse id quod propositio de futuro dicit fore. Similiter presciencia [sic] dei vel predestinatio potest nunquam fuisse prescientia vel predestinatio.’ Ed. Baudry, 199. And compare Guerlac, Quarrel, 161.

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first must think it. God does not know the whole universe of spiritual and corporeal creatures because they exist, but they exist because he knows and creates them. Many beliefs about Christ, about his nativity, death and resurrection, and beliefs about the Antichrist’s leading people astray, and about the day of judgment are proof, for Holcot, that we understand what does not now exist and can be otherwise. The very structure of our understanding seems to depend on the distinction between thinking about a thing and thinking that that thing exists. For we do not conclude that because we have a thought about Caesar, that Caesar, therefore, exists. And we are able to understand sentences like: b is contingent on a, and we understand them to mean: for b to exist, is contingent on a existing, and: it is contingent that b exists for b is contingent on a existing. The last thought would not be intelligible if we could not understand that when something does not exist, it could contingently be. Even the impossible falls under this heading, for Aristotle was able to make determinations about the infinite and the vacuum, and so he understood them, and thus it was possible for him to understand even what is impossible to be.20 20 Holcot, Sent. II, q. 2, art. 3: ‘Istud confirmatur per rationes multipliciter. Primo: quilibet experitur quod potest cogitare et recordari homines mortui, aliter non posset homo dolere de morte patris sui nec orare pro animi patris. Item sic non posset homo conteri nec confiteri de peccatis suis. Item non possemus providere de futuris quia nec cognitare de eis. Item homo timet mortem naturaliter, ergo cogitat de morte. Similiter spes et desiderium sunt tantum futurorum, ergo futura sperantur et intelliguntur. Item omne libere operans primo praemeditatur opus suum et edificator praeimaginatur domum et pictor statuam, alioquin numquam producere posset. Item omne operans per intellectum et propter finem intelligit finem quem intendit consequi per operationem, ergo finis, quando non est, intelligitur et per consequens intenditur. Et non potest dici quod finis est in anima quia sic est agens motum, 12 Metaphysicae, ergo finis intelligitur secundum esse extra animam et secundum illud pro tunc non est, ergo etc. Item Augustinus, 11 De civitate [Dei], c. 10: Deus non aliquid nesciens fecit nec de quolibet homine artifice recte dici potest, porro se sciens fecit omnia ea utique fecit quae noverat, ex quo inquit Augustinus, occurrit animo quiddam mirum, sed tamen verum, quod ille mundus notus nobis esse, non posset nisi esset. Deus autem nisi notus esset esse non posset. Item 15 De trinitate, c. 33 (O), 13 (L): Universas creaturas spirituales et corporales non quia sunt, ideo novit, sed ideo sunt quia novit. Non enim scivit quae fuerat creaturus quia ergo scivit creavit, non quia creavit scivit, nec aliter scivit creata quam creanda. Item dato quod vidisses Sortem interficere Platonem et Deus postea utrumque adnihilasset, certum est quod posses recordari et testificari de facto unde dicere oppositum est negare sensum. Praeterea multa credimus de Christo sicut eius nativitatem, mortem et resurrex-

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Holcot perceived himself and his fellow humans as rational and emotional beings with free will existing in a contingently created world, dependent upon God’s promises about Christ’s significance and about the future last judgment. Not to make sense of such a contingent order was not to have a theology at all.

ionem, diem iudicii, Antichristum seducturi (O)/seducere (L) genus humanum. Praeterea sic credis Iudeos interfecissi Christum, ergo concipis quid significatur per terminos, ergo intelligis Iudeos et mortem. Praeterea dato quod nihil posset intelligi nisi ens, sequuntur (O)/sequerentur (L) duae conclusiones contra principia Aristotelis. Prima quod haec consequentia est bona: Caesar est in opinione, ergo Caesar est. Consequentia patet quia sequetur: Caesar est in opinione, ergo Caesar est intellectus. Falsitas consequentis patet per Aristotelem, 2 Peri hermenias, c. 2. at vero unum de pluribus, ubi etiam negat hanc consequentiam: Homerus est aliquid ut poeta, ergo Homerus est. Secunda conclusio contra principia Aristotelis quod haec non esset acceptibilis: b contingit esse a, secundum has duas acceptations, quod est b contingit esse a, et quod contingit esse b, contingit esse a. Nam haec secunda acceptio non foret intelligibilis nisi aliquid posset intelligi quando non est, sed contingit esse. Praeterea Aristoteles determinat de infinito et vacuo, ergo infinitum fuit intellectum ab Aristotele et vacuum, ergo contingit intelligere quod impossibile est esse.’ In In quatuor libros sententiarum quaestiones, in Oxford, Oriel College MS 15, f. 149rb; and the 1518 Lyon edition, reprinted by Minerva G.M.B.H. (Frankfurt, 1967), ff. h5vb–h6ra.

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INDEX OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL NAMES Adam of Ros, 75 Adam Wodeham, 3, 12n, 31n, 82, 85n, 87n, 90n, 91n, 93n, 99, 101n, 189n, 210, 211n, 212n, 231, 282n, 287n, 333n, 349, 351n, 353, 354–355 Albert of Saxony, 139n, 175n, 176n, 239 Albert the Great, 164n Alexander Langeley, 353 Alexander of Alexandria, 340 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 79 Alexander of Hales, 164n, 296n, 313, 353 Alfarabi, 79, 229 Alfonsus Vargas, 164n Alfred the Great, 63n Algazali, 79 Alkindi, 79 Antonio Loschi, 356–357 Ammonius Saccas, 248 Angelus de Dobelin, 181n Annibaldo Gaetani de Ceccano, 69 Anselm of Canterbury, 14, 122, 220, 264, 319, 330, 332, 345 Antonius Andreas, 238, 239 Apuleius, 70 Aristotle, 1, 11, 14, 24, 25, 26, 35n, 36, 52, 59, 79n, 87, 88, 95, 108n, 109n, 110n, 111n, 114, 115n, 117n, 122n, 124, 125n, 130, 135n, 137n, 138n, 141n, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157n, 166, 191, 195, 222, 223n, 224, 225, 226, 227–231, 233, 234, 235, 238, 239, 267, 273, 274n, 276, 277, 278, 282n, 342, 349, 357, 359, 360n Arnold of Strelley, 10, 19, 25, 27, 28, 44, 45–46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 71, 79–83, 84, 85, 86,

88, 100, 102, 104, 105, 107, 158– 170, 171, 172, 177, 178, 179, 181, 189, 191, 194–195, 207, 208–209, 210, 211, 216, 218, 221, 223, 225, 235–237, 239, 240–244, 248, 249, 250, 253, 256, 257, 258n, 260, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 272, 273–280, 282, 284, 285, 286, 288, 289, 290–291, 293, 307, 314, 324, 329– 331, 332, 335, 340, 341, 342–344, 351, 352, 353n Augustine of Hippo, 10n, 11, 14, 36, 52, 62, 70, 87, 133n, 153, 172n, 191n, 209–210, 211n, 212n, 215, 268, 269, 296, 304, 359n Averroes, 14, 79, 108n, 229 Avicenna, 79, 108n Bacon, Francis, 270n Benedict XI, 61 Benedict of Asinago, 60n Berengarius, master general, 23n, 42 Bernard Lombardi, 34n Bernard of Clairvaux, 193n, 194n Boethius, 20, 36, 37, 62, 63n, 64n, 108n, 110n, 124, 132, 136, 138n, 150, 163, 172n, 179n, 220, 228, 259, 264, 319, 320, 339 Boethius of Dacia, 157n Boccaccio, see Giovanni Boccaccio Bonaventure, saint, 164, 257, 259, 263, 313 Brito, 77n Cicero, 36, 62, 70, 153 Ciones de Magnali, 63n Clement VI, 31n, 69 Chrétien de Troyes, 176n David Bruce, 48, 77

402

index of ancient and medieval names

Diodorus Cronus, 109n, 162n Dominic de Guzman, saint, 23 Durand de St. Pourçain, 34n, 153n Edmund, earl of Kent, 75 Edmund of Caermarthen, 75 Edward I, 38, 58, 61, 62 Edward II, 35, 38, 42, 53, 58, 61, 62 Edward III, 7n, 48, 53, 77, 78 Festus Rufus, 70 Francesco of Treviso, 281n Francis of Meyronnes, 109n, 131n, 135n, 157n, 340 Gabriel Biel, 11n, 92n, 191n, 330n Galileo Galilei, 109n Geoffrey Chaucer, 63n, 64n, 92n, 93n Gersonides, 109n, 206n Gilbert of Gateshead, 74 Gilbert of Poitiers, 112n Giles of Rome, 59n Giovanni Boccaccio, 63n Giovanni da Firenze, 63n Godfrey of Fontaines, 283n Gratian, 295n Gregory of Rimini, 88n, 162n, 172n, 178–179n, 201n, 209n, 211n, 250n, 310n Gregory of St. Michael, 27, 28, 80 Gregory the Great, 304 Guillaume de Poey, 66 Henricus Hostiensis, 311–312 Henry IV, 30n Henry VII, emperor, 38, 58 Henry VIII, 5, 7n, 54n Henry Hopton, 342n Henry of Bracton, 176n, 197n Henry of Croy, 40, 67, 71 Henry of Ghent, 13, 112n, 114n, 188, 268, 269, 311n, 327 Henry of Gloucester, 105 Henry of Harclay, 13, 61n, 79n, 340, 341, 342 Henry of Manefield, 40, 67

Hermes Trismegistus, 195 Hervaeus Natalis, 34n Hostiensis, see Henricus Hostiensis Hugues de Vaucemain, 48, 78 Hugh de Angoulême, 36, 63 Hugh Dutton, 27, 28, 46, 48–49, 50, 51, 54, 65, 66, 79, 85, 87, 102, 327, 328 Hugh of Lawton, 10, 19, 44, 45, 46, 47, 53, 57, 65, 68n, 71n, 77n, 78, 85–87, 88, 89n, 92n, 100, 102, 107, 191–194, 195, 225, 272, 282–283, 284, 288, 293, 314, 324–329, 332, 335, 339, 341n, 351, 352 Hugh of St. Cher, 311n, 312n Hugh of St. Victor, 172n Innocent III, 311 Innocent VI, 104 Isaac Israeli, 79 Jacob Locher, 352 Jan Moravecz, 105 Joannis Canonici, 87n Jodocus Trutvetter, 189n Johannes Bassolis, 314n John XXII, 30, 31n, 35, 39, 53, 62, 69, 77, 195n, 250n, 311n, 314n, 349 John Acton, 104n John Baconthorpe, 75 John Bromyard, 44, 45, 46, 76 John Buridan, 108n, 109n, 122n, 131n, 137–138n, 152n, 157n, 239n, 341n, 342n John Capreolus, 34n John Dalderby, bishop of Lincoln, 61, 75 John Dumbleton, 33n John Duns Scotus, 3, 10n, 11, 12n, 13, 20, 24, 32, 33, 34, 55n, 59, 60n, 61n, 82n, 108n, 109n, 110n, 111, 112, 113, 124, 127, 128–138, 139, 141n, 143, 144, 147, 148, 150, 151–152, 153, 156–158, 159–160, 162n, 163, 164, 167, 168, 170,

index of ancient and medieval names 172n, 177, 178, 179n, 181, 187n, 188, 189, 221, 224, 225n, 226, 229, 237, 238n, 243, 251, 254n, 259, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267–272, 276, 277, 279, 280, 282n, 287, 293, 306, 310n, 311n, 312–318, 320n, 322, 323, 324, 326, 327, 328, 329, 332, 335, 336, 339, 340, 342, 343n, 353 John Gower, 63n John(?) Grafton, 47, 90, 91n, 95n, 98–101, 102, 353n John Grandisson, 30, 47, 53, 77, 101 John Hiltalingen, 50n, 104n John Langton, 86n John Lutterell, 31n, 69n, 70n John Major, 353 John Mardisley, 104 John of Bristol, 27, 28, 35–36, 43–46, 47, 50, 54, 62, 67, 71, 72, 75, 83, 85, 102 John of Cesterlade, 61, 64, 66 John of Colleshulle, 74 John of Englesham, 61, 72 John de Erdesle, 73 John of Grudelington, 74 John of Holland, 139n, 140n John of Lenham, 35, 54n, 62 John of Mirecourt, 162n, 201n, 250n John of Oxford, senior, 73 John of Reading, 281n, 282n, 286n John of Rodington, 82, 232n, 283n, 286n, 353 John of Salisbury, 209n John of Shalyngford, 105 John of Stanes, 72 John Stukley, 353n John of Swyndon, 101, 102n John of Wales, 195n John of Warfield, 54n John of Woderowe, 54n, 80 John of Wrotham, 41–42, 43, 67 John of Wydewere, 75 John of Wykham, 105 John of Wynton, 8 John Rathe Scotus, 281n John Riddlintone, 101

403

John Ridevall, 52, 97, 195n John Scotus Erigena, 130n John Tarteys, 139n, 175n, 182n, 198n John Tatenhall, 103 John Worphyn, 105 John Wyclif, 12n, 32n, 33n, 52n, 80n, 104n, 175n, 214n, 245n, 272n, 311n Joseph Drokensford, 35, 62 Josse Clichtove, 139n, 155n Juvenal, 36, 62 Laborans, cardinal, 196n Lambert of Poulshot, 70 Lawrence of Warwick, 40–41, 67 Leonardo da Vinci, 317n Levi ben Gershom, see Gersonides Livy, 35, 50, 62, 70, 103 Lorenzo Valla, 353, 356–357 Luke of Wodeford, 41, 42, 43, 54n, 61, 67 Marcello Cervini, cardinal, 51n Marsilius of Inghen, 124n, 131n, 161–162n, 164n, 172n, 216n, 228n, 239, 246–247n, 254n, 342n, 353, 355 Martin, saint, 300 Martin V, 356 Martin Luther, 92n, 93n, 189n, 191n, 353 Mary, daughter of Edward I, 36, 63 Matteo Orsini, 53, 68 Molina, Luis, 151n Monachus Anglicanus, 353 Monachus Niger, 353n Moses Maimonides, 109n Nicholas Fawkes, 47n Nicholas of Autrecourt, 122n Nicholas of Herley, 48, 54n, 78 Nicholas of Lee, 30, 47, 53, 101, 102 Nicholas of Paris, 139n, 143n Nicholas of Prato, 35, 37, 53, 62 Nicholas of Stratton, 27, 28, 32, 38–39, 48, 62, 65, 66 Nicholas Trevet, 8, 34, 35–37, 38, 39n, 42, 44, 51, 52, 53n, 62–63, 64n, 66, 68, 70, 71, 77n, 97, 107

404

index of ancient and medieval names

Osbert Pickingham, 353n Paul of Venice, 139n, 141n Patrick, saint, 77n Peter Abelard, 11, 109n, 127n, 153n, 229, 311n, 348 Peter Auriol, 13, 35n, 55n, 69n, 112n, 152n, 181n, 195n, 201, 205–207, 210, 225–227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 238n, 239, 241, 245n, 247n, 249, 250n, 272, 285, 286n, 310n Peter de Rivo, 225n Peter John Olivi, 38, 58, 112n Peter of Atarrabia, 314n, 340 Peter of Kenington, 8, 41, 42, 43, 64, 66, 67 Peter Lombard, 8, 13, 14, 23, 24n, 29, 52, 57, 63n, 82–83, 91n, 153– 154, 158, 164n, 168, 172, 272, 348 Peter of Palude, 34n, 153n Peter of Spain, 25n Peter(?) Tanny, 101–102 Peter of Tarantasia, 164n Philip VI, 30n, 48 Philip Bannebury, 74 Philip of Lavenham, 84 Philip of Stratton, 61 Pierre d’Ailly, 191n, 353n Plato, 79, 195n Ralph of Friseby, 72–73 Ralph of Seton, 41, 67 Ralph Strode, 139n, 149n, 174n, 176n, 353 Ramón Lull, 93n Richard d’Aungerville (of Bury), bishop of Durham, 49, 51, 52, 53, 96–97, 104n Richard Fishacre, 35, 53n, 70n, 77n, 193, 194 Richard FitzRalph, 50, 51, 52, 68n, 82, 88, 91n, 99, 104, 209n, 210–211, 212n, 215, 304, 349, 353 Richard Hunteleye, 40, 66, 67, 71, 72

Richard Kilvington, 96, 141n, 144n, 155n, 353 Richard Knapwell, 34 Richard of Bromwych, 59n Richard of Bury, see Richard d’Aungerville Richard of Campsall, 3, 33, 80, 158n, 172, 207, 210, 216, 218, 237, 239, 242, 244, 246, 248–249, 256, 263, 264, 284, 306n Richard of Halton, 104–105 Richard of Lavenham, 140n, 141n, 145n, 175n Richard of Middleton, 138n, 353 Richard of Winkley, 27, 28, 44, 45, 46, 48–49, 51, 53, 54, 65, 68, 71, 73, 76–79, 80, 84, 85, 101, 102 Richard Swinfield, bishop of Hereford, 59 Richard Swyneshead, 33n, 353 Robert Bromyard, 27, 28, 32, 38, 57–58, 59, 66, 97 Robert de Chamberleyn, 73 Robert Everard, 41, 67 Robert Fland, 140n, 141n, 145n Robert Graystanes, 82, 232n, 283n Robert Grosseteste, 108n, 112n, 124n, 129n, 130n, 136n, 172n, 264, 270n, 273n Robert Halifax, 353 Robert Holcot, 3, 10, 16, 19, 20, 24n, 28, 35, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 73, 76n,77n, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82 , 83n, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91n, 92–98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 107, 110n, 112n, 140n, 144, 171–189, 190n, 191n, 192, 195–200, 201, 207, 211, 212, 213–221, 223, 225, 239, 247–249, 250, 253n, 256, 257, 258n, 260, 262–263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 272, 282, 284, 285n, 293–306, 307, 310n, 311n, 314, 324, 330n, 332– 339, 340, 341, 345–348, 349, 351, 352, 353, 357, 358–360 Robert Kilwardby, 77n, 78n, 92n, 193, 194

index of ancient and medieval names Robert le Moigne, 53n, 72 Robert of Duffield, 54n Robert of Hatecoumbe, 74 Robert of Holme, 8 Robert of Stanlak, 84 Robert of Vulgarbia, 60n Robert of York, 25n Robert Orford, 34, 59n Robert Wyville, 101n Robertus Anglicus, 92n Roger Bacon, 88 Roger Dymmok, 55n Roger Gosford, 47, 94, 98, 101, 102 Roger of Baketone, 40, 66, 71 Roger of Quernden, 54n Roger Rosetus, 353n Roger Swineshead, 139n, 140n, 141n, 142n, 144, 145n, 148n, 155n, 175n Seneca the elder, 35, 62 Seneca the younger, 35, 62, 63n, 64n Siger of Brabant, 129n, 306n Simon Burton, 101 Simon of Boraston, 9, 27, 28, 30, 44, 45, 46–47, 51, 54, 71, 72, 73, 75–76, 83, 84, 85, 97, 101, 102 Simon of London, 74 Stephen Langton, 77n Teobaldo Orsini, 71 Thomas Anglicus, 34n, 35n, 60n, 61n Thomas Aquinas, saint, 6n, 10n, 14, 20, 24–26, 34, 35n, 36, 57, 59, 60, 79, 87, 88n, 107, 108, 109, 110n, 111, 112, 113, 114–123, 124, 125– 127, 128, 129n, 132, 136, 137, 138, 150, 152, 153n, 162, 163, 164n, 179n, 188, 191, 193–194, 221, 227, 229, 236, 238, 239, 249n, 251, 259, 260, 264, 266, 295n, 313, 315n, 319, 320, 327, 328, 337, 339, 344 Thomas Barton, 47n Thomas Bradwardine, 3, 7n, 33n, 81n, 96, 140n, 143n, 148n, 155n, 170n, 172n, 173n, 178n, 201, 202n,

405

207n, 232, 235, 249, 250n, 264, 265–266, 325n, 353 Thomas Buckingham, 172n, 207n, 250n, 353 Thomas Everard, 40, 41, 66 Thomas Hopeman, 8, 35, 50, 53, 55n, 97, 98n Thomas of Claxton, 55n Thomas of Eyncourt, 72, 74 Thomas of Jorz, 27, 28, 32, 37–38, 48, 57–58, 59, 61, 64, 66 Thomas of Lisle, 53, 55n Thomas of Strasbourg, 239 Thomas of Sutton, 34, 35n, 38, 59, 60, 66, 153n, 189n Thomas of Wanetyng, 74 Thomas of Westwell, 43, 67 Thomas Ringstead, 35, 50, 53, 55n, 97, 98n Thomas Waleys, 16n, 35, 39n, 42, 43, 44–45, 46, 50, 51, 52, 68–71, 72, 73, 76n, 77, 84, 85, 87, 97, 101, 103, 107 Thomas Wylton, 34n, 35n, 206n, 237 Uthred of Bolden, 50, 103, 104 Vincent of Beauvais, 77n Virgil, 36, 62, 63n Walter, master, 212–213, 218, 219, 332–334, 335, 349 Walter Burley, 3, 32, 33n, 96, 140n, 141n, 143, 144n, 148n, 155n, 163n, 187n, 195n, 197, 231n, 234n, 239n Walter of Chatton, 69, 82, 89, 189n, 231, 232–235, 236, 244, 245–246, 249, 260n, 280n, 282n, 285n, 294n, 321n Walter of Dudlyngton, 72 Walter of Jorz, 58 Walter of Newport, 78 Walter of Valepont or Walelepol’, 40, 67 Walter of Winterbourne, 41, 54n William Bourne, 47n

406

index of ancient and medieval names

William Buser of Heusden, 140n, 141n, 152n, 174–175n, 176n William Castreton, 27, 42–43, 64– 65, 66 William Chitterne, 20, 90, 91n, 180n, 294–306, 307 William Crathorn, 10, 19, 25, 45, 46, 47, 52, 53, 57, 65n, 76n, 78, 79, 82, 83n, 84, 85, 87–91, 93n, 95n, 98, 99n, 100, 101, 102, 107, 171, 208, 223n, 225, 246–247, 250–263, 264, 266, 272, 282, 284, 285, 286, 288, 289–293, 294n, 306, 307, 314, 324, 331–332, 335, 341n, 345n, 349, 351, 352 William Crawthorn, 100n William D’Eyncourt, 35, 50, 102– 103, 105 William Heytesbury, 3, 33n, 109n, 110n, 124n, 260n, 353 William Hotham, 34 William Jordan, 27, 28, 49, 50–51, 54n, 55n, 80, 103–104, 105 William of Alnwick, 135 William of Auxerre, 172n, 313 William of Aylesbury, 73 William of Conches, 64n William of Crawele or Craule, 105 William of Ebryton or Ebrighten, 43, 67, 68, 71

William of Kent, 54n William of Macclesfield, 34, 60–61, 64, 66 William of Ockham, 2n, 3, 10n, 11, 12n, 13, 24, 32n, 33n, 52n, 69, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88n, 90, 92n, 107n, 109n, 111n, 112n, 124n, 139n, 141n, 144, 149n, 151, 152n, 158, 159, 160–162, 163, 166, 168, 169n, 172, 177, 178, 181n, 187–188, 189, 191n, 194n, 195n, 198n, 201–205, 207, 209, 210, 216, 217, 218, 221n, 225n, 229n, 231, 234n, 238n, 239n, 240–241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247n, 248, 254, 256, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267n, 272, 273–274, 276, 277, 280–281, 282, 283, 284, 285n, 287, 289, 290, 293, 309, 310, 311n, 313n, 314n, 315n, 317n, 319–324, 330n, 331, 335, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343n, 344n, 352, 353 William of Sherwood, 25n, 33n, 108n, 140n, 141n, 143n, 155n William of Stanlak, 72 William of Watisdene, 27, 28, 83 William of Wishawe, 74 William Rowell, 77n

INDEX OF MODERN AUTHORS Ackrill, J.L., 110n Adams, Marilyn McCord, 10n, 133n, 137n, 151n, 161n, 267n, 277n, 281n, 306n, 344n Alanen, Lili, 108n, 112n, 124n, 131, 138n, 254n Alford, John, 76n Allen, Judson Boyce, 35n, 37n, 51n, 52n, 92n, 97n Angelelli, Ignacio, 139n, 142n Ashworth, E. Jennifer, 3n, 60n, 139n, 145n, 147n, 149n, 155n, 174n, 175–176n, 182n, 189n, 198n, 342n Bäck, Allen, 108n Balcoyiannopoulou, Irene, 34n, 53n, 153n Bale, John, 50n, 51n, 76n, 77n, 104n Balic, Charles, 111n, 189n Barnes, Jonathan, 125n Baudry, Léon, 164n, 225n Bellini, P., 196n Bianchi, Luca, 311n, 317n Binkley, Peter, 76 Bochenski, I.M., 341n Boehner, Philotheus, 2n, 81n, 238n, 273n, 280–281, 330n, 352n Bok, Nico Den, 151n Boler, John, 151n, 281n Bos, E.P., 139n, 270n Boyle, Leonard E., 76n Braakhuis, H.A.G., 139n, 143n, 175n, 176n Brinkley, Anne W., 92n Brown, Jerome V., 268n Brown, Mary Anthony, 139n Brown, Stephen F., 33n, 69n, 273n Carruthers, Mary, 97n Castañeda, Hector-Neri, 224n

Charland, Th. –M., 71n Chatelain, A., 306n Clark, David, 320–321 Coates, Alan, 47n Code, Alan, 110n, 115n Conti, Alessandro D., 60n Correale, Robert M., 63n Courtenay, William J., 3n, 4n, 6n, 12n, 16n, 23n, 31n, 32n, 39n, 48n, 49n, 50n, 51n, 52n, 53n, 54n, 55n, 77n, 81n, 82, 83n, 85n, 89n, 90n, 91n, 92n, 93n, 94, 96n, 99n, 101n, 104n, 119n, 124n, 162n, 191n, 193n, 194n, 201n, 207n, 212, 213n, 250n, 253n, 281n, 309n, 310n, 311, 312n, 313, 319n, 320, 321, 323, 324n, 333, 348n, 349n, 351n, 352n, 353n Craig, William Lane, 128n Dal Pra, Mario, 92n Dancy, R.M., 125n Davis, Leo D., 281n Day, Sebastian J., 280n Dean, Ruth J., 63n De Ghellinck, J., 51n, 96n Dekker, Eef, 151n Deku, Henry, 108n, 138n De la Torre, Bartholomew R., 172n De Libera, Alain, 3n Denery II, Dallas G., 214n, 288n Denholm-Young, N., 49n, 51n, 96n, 104n Denifle, H., 306n De Rijk, L.M., 3n, 139n, 142n Descartes, Rene, 108n, 112n, 124n, 254n Doig, James C., 115n Donaghey, B.S., 63n

408

index of modern authors

D’Ors, Angel, 112n, 139n, 145n, 147n, 175n, 187n, 230–231n, 238n, 239n Dreyer, Mechthild, 82n, 271n Duhem, Pierre, 2n, 317n Dumont, Stephen D., 111n, 112n, 151n, 268n, 280n Easterling, R.C., 37n, 58n, 61n, 64n Ebbesen, Sten, 81n Échard, J., 49n, 97n Echauri, Raúl, 60n Edidin, Aron, 201n, 203–204, 205n Effler, Roy, 277n Ehrle, F., 59n Ekwall, Eilert, 93n Eldredge, Laurence, 331n, 349n Elie, Hubert, 90n Emden, Alfred B., 5n, 8n, 9n, 26n, 28n, 30n, 32n, 38n, 39n, 40n, 41n, 42n, 43n, 47n, 48n, 49n, 50n, 52n, 53n, 54n, 55n, 58n, 59n, 61n, 62n, 63n, 65n, 66n, 67n, 68n, 72, 73, 74n, 75n, 76n, 78n, 80n, 83n, 84n, 96n, 98n, 101n, 102n, 102n, 103, 104n, 105n, 294n Etzkorn, Girard I., 80n, 81n, 232n, 352n Farmer, David Hugh, 50n, 104n Faust, A., 108n Feckes, Carl, 309 Fisher, John Martin, 164n Fitzpatrick, Noel A., 69n Frank, William A., 133n Friedman, John B., 104n Friedman, Russell L., 34n, 53n, 153n Fish, Stanley, 17–18 Fletcher, Alan J., 76n Forte, Stephen L., 47n, 75n, 98n, 101n Franceschini, E., 63n Funkenstein, Amos, 2n, 121, 311n Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 17–18 Gál, Gedeon, 69n, 90n, 273n Galbraith, G.R., 9n, 26n, 30n

García-Clavel, Manuel, 140n, 145n Gelber, Hester Goodenough, 32n, 77n, 79n, 80n, 81n, 83n, 85n, 87n, 88n, 89n, 92n, 93n, 137n, 158n, 188n, 209n, 243n, 244n, 341n, 352n Genest, Jean François, 7n, 201n, 202n, 210n, 212n, 225n, 265n, 311n Ghisalberti, Alessandro, 281n, 320n, 323, 324n Gilbert, Neal W., 3n Gillespie, Richard E., 92n, 93n Gilson, Étienne, 10n, 11n, 124n Gleason, Mark J., 63n Glorieux, Palemon, 60n Goffart, Walter, 63n Goldstein, R. James, 64n Grabmann, M., 55n, 58n Grant, Edward, 2n, 317n Grassi, Onorato, 92n Gray, Douglas, 92n Green, Romuald, 140n Guerlac, Rita, 358n Gumbley, Walter, 8n, 27n, 39n, 42n, 47n, 48n, 58n, 62n, 65n, 75n, 78n, 83n, 98n, 101n Haack, Susan, 231n, 237n Hall, Robert W., 317n, 319n Hamblin, L., 140n Hamm, Berndt, 191n. 196n Hauke, Hermann, 63n Hause, Jeffrey, 119n Hedwig, Klaus, 314n, 316n, 330n Henninger, Mark, 340 Hinnebusch, William A., 30n, 52n, 54n, 66n, 97n Hintikka, Jaakko, 11n, 109n, 124–125, 126n, 127n Hissette, Roland, 306n Hoenen, Maarten J.F.M., 12n, 124n, 131n, 161n, 162–163n, 164n, 172n, 189n, 216n, 217n, 228n, 239n, 246n, 254n Hoffmann, Fritz, 77n, 79n, 85n, 87n, 88n, 89n, 92n, 93n, 100n, 171,

index of modern authors 184, 185n, 187, 190n, 214n, 263, 264n, 294n, 297n, 352n Horowitz, Maryanne Cline, 11n Humphreys, K.W., 79n Hunt, David, 133n Hyman, Arthur, 108n Incandela, Joseph M., 92n, 214n, 219n, 294n, 298n, 333n, 335n, 337n Jacobi, Klaus, 108n, 109n, 110n, 111n, 114n, 124, 127, 134, 135n Jalbert, Guy, 108n, 114n Jarrett, Bede, 8n, 23n, 27n, 28n, 39n, 40n, 41n, 42n, 61n, 67n Jensen, Kurt Villads, 47n, 93n Johnson, I.R., 63n Johnston, James B., 76n Juárez, Agustín Uña, 33n Junge, Rebekka, 64n Kaluza, Zénon, 4n, 12n Kant, Immanuel, 134n, 221n Kantola, Ilkka, 108n, 295n Käppeli, Thomas, 16n, 47n, 69n, 71n, 93n Karras, Ruth Mazo, 76n Keightley, Ronald G., 63n Kelly, Francis E., 35n, 60n, 69n Ker, Neil R., 5n, 6n, 51n Kennedy, Leonard A., 2n, 92n, 93n, 98n, 310n, 335n, 337n Kenny, Anthony, 110n, 111n, 112n, 126n, 136n, 151n, 224n Kibre, Pearl, 96n King, Peter, 137–138n, 140n, 149n Kirjavainen, Heikki, 92n Kittelson, James M., 81n Kleene, Paul, 231n Kneale, Martha, 3n, 110n, 125n, 162n Kneale, William, 3n, 110n, 162n Kneepkens, C.H., 140n, 174n, 175n, 176n Knowles, [M.] David, 26n, 39n, 50n, 69n, 70n, 104n

409

Knuuttila, Simo, 11n, 92n, 108n, 110n, 111n, 112n, 114n, 124–127, 128n, 129n, 130–131, 135n, 137n, 138n, 140n, 142n, 143n, 153n, 157n, 174n, 187–189, 221n Knysh, George, 321n Kraus, Iohannes, 87n, 88n Kretzmann, Norman, 3n, 108n, 119n, 121n, 140n, 144n, 146–147n, 148n, 224n Lagerlund, Henrik, 140n, 148n Lang, Albert, 92n Langston, Douglas, 124n, 151n Leff, Gordon, 7n Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 311n Léotard, Alban, 5n Lesniewski, Stanislaw, 231n Lewis, Neil, 108n, 112n, 124n, 129n, 130n, 136n, 138n Lewis, Samuel, 76n Lewry, Patrick Osmund, 60n, 92n Little, A.G., 5n, 8n, 23n, 26n, 28n, 29n, 30n, 31n, 37n, 51n, 52n, 58n, 61n, 64n, 103n Long, R. James, 35n, 53n, 70n Lord, Mary Louise, 63n Lottin, O., 295n Lovejoy, Arthur, 11 MacDonald, Scott, 112n, 151n Maclagan, Michael, 96 Macray, Guillelmus D., 79n Maier, Anneliese, 109n Mandonnet, Pierre, 306n, 317n Manekin, Charles H., 109n, 125n Mantello, Frank A.C., 63n Marcett, M.E., 50n, 104n Marenbon, John, 127n, 153n Marrone, John, 311n, 312n Marrone, Steven P., 112n, 270n Martin, C., 33n Martin, Christopher John, 140n, 143n, 148n, 149n, 155n, 170n, 173n, 174n, 187n, 189, 201n, 325n Maurer, Armand, 124n, 317n Mayer, Roland, 64n

410

index of modern authors

Meissner, Alois, 92n Mercken, H. Paul F., 316n Michalski, Konstanty, 11n, 89n, 280n Minnis, Alastair J., 64n Møller, J.G., 191n Molteni, Paolo, 91n, 92n, 93n Moody, Earnest A., 89n, 93n, 95n, 341n Mortier, R.P., 7n, 8n, 24n, 25n, 29n, 69n Muckle, J.T., 93n, 284n Mulchahey, m. Michèle, 4n, 23n, 25n, 29n, 31n, 35n, 36n, 77n Mulhern, M.M., 125n Müller, Paola, 141n, 144n, 217n, 320n, 343n Murdoch, John E., 3n, 81n, 82n, 124n Murray, Alexander, 209n Nauta, Lodi, 64n Nicholson, Peter, 63n Normore, Calvin G., 109n, 111n, 112n, 118–119, 124, 127–128, 130, 132, 133n, 134, 138n, 143n, 151n, 152n, 161n, 162n, 178n, 179n, 201n, 203–204, 205n, 230–231, 232n, 237–238, 245, 249n, 257n, 264–265n North, J.D., 3n, 25n, 209n Nuchelmans, Gabriel, 92n Oakley, Francis, 11n, 12n, 309n, 310, 311n, 319n Oakeshott, Michael, 16–18 Oberman, Heiko Augustinus, 11n, 92n, 93n,191n, 192, 195n, 310, 337n O’Carroll, Maura, 5n, 23n, 29n, 30n, 37n Olsson, Erik J., 140n, 148n O’Mara, Philip F., 92n Ombres, Robert, 5n, 8n, 23n, 30n, 31n, 38n, 40n, 41n, 54n, 55n, 58n, 93n, 97n, 98n, 102n Ott, John, 176n, 197n

Ottman, Jennifer, 231n Palma, Marco, 63n Palmer, C.F.R., 7n, 8n, 48n, 49n, 53n, 54n, 78n, 80n Pape, Ingetrud, 109n Pelster, F., 59n, 61n Pelzer, Auguste, 86n Pegis, Anton C., 280n Perler, Dominik, 88n, 291n, 343n Pernoud, Mary A., 124n, 313n Perreiah, Alan R., 141n, 148n, 149n Petersen, K.O., 63n Pfander, H.G., 76n Pironet, Fabienne, 141n, 149n, 197n, 316n Plantinga, Alvin, 164n Pouillon, D.H., 60n Pozzi, Lorenzo, 141n, 147n, 152n Pratt, Robert A., 63n, 93n Preus, J.S., 191n Prior, A.N., 237n Przezdziecki, Joseph J., 60n Quetif, J., 49n, 97n Randi, Eugenio, 310, 311n, 312n, 314n, 317n Rashdall, H., 39n, 40n, 41n, 65n, 66n, 67n Raymond, P., 270n Renedo, Xavier, 93n Rescher, Nicholas, 109n, 227–230, 236 Richards, R.C., 280–281n Richter, V., 91n, 100, 141n, 144n Roensch, f.J., 34n, 59n, 61n, 107n Roncaglia, Gino, 342 Rudd, Gillian, 76n Rorty, Richard, 18–19 Rose, Christine M., 63n Rossini, Marco, 109n, 131n, 135n, 157n, 187n, 340n Rudavsky, Tamar, 206n Rummel, Erika, 353n Runkle, Theodore J., 109n, 135n Russell, J. Stephen, 63n

index of modern authors Salter, H.E., 42n, 43n, 68n, 96n Santos Noia, Manuel, 93n Sarenac, Darko, 237n Schabel, Chris, 34n, 35n, 53n, 55n, 112n, 152n, 153n, 181n, 195n, 205n, 206n, 225, 230n, 231n, 232, 235,237n, 239n, 247n, 250n Schepers, Heinrich, 47n, 76n, 83n, 86n, 88n, 89n, 90, 91n, 93n, 94n, 95n, 100n, 294, 297n, 345n, 351n, 352n Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 17 Schmaus, Michael, 35n, 59n, 60n Schneider, Johannes, 35n, 60n Schum, Wilhelm, 86n Scott, A.B., 64n Scott, T.K., 281n Seel, Gerhard, 111n, 125n, 152n Senko, Wladyslaw, 60n Serene, Eilene, 267, 268n, 270n Sharp, D.E., 60n Shimizu, Tetsuro, 202n Silk, Edmund T., 64n Smalley, Beryl, 5, 25n, 35, 37n, 48n, 49n, 50n, 51n, 52n, 53n, 63n, 68n, 70, 93n, 94n, 96n, 97n, 98n, 102, 103 Söder, Joachim Roland, 111n, 133n, 134n, 135n, 138n Sommers, Mary Katherine, 33n Sorabji, Richard, 109n, 125n Spade, Paul V., 3n, 33n, 141n, 142n, 143, 145n, 148–149, 155n, 161n, 189n, 342n Speggiorin, Christina, 64n Sprengard, K.A., 88n Spruyt, Joke, 341–342n Steiger, R., 109n Stock, Brian, 19 Stegmüller, Fridericus, 63n Stok, Fabio, 63n Streveler, Paul, 93n, 161n, 247n, 281n, 335n, 336n Stump, Eleanor, 33n, 140n, 141n, 142n, 143, 144n, 145n, 146–147n, 148n, 149n, 155n

411

Sylwanowicz, Michael, 111n, 135n, 143n, 152n Synan, Edward A., 33n, 238, 245n, 249n Tachau, Katherine H., 4n, 24n, 33n, 47n, 73, 83n, 85n, 88, 89n, 90n, 93n, 95, 96n, 98n, 99n, 100n, 101n, 111–112n, 180n, 210n, 212n, 214n, 219n, 225n, 231–232n, 241–242, 245n, 267n, 268n, 280n, 281, 282n, 283n, 284, 285n, 286n, 287n, 291, 292, 293n, 294–295n, 296n, 303n, 306n, 311n, 312n, 333, 337n Thijssen, J.M.M.H., 16n, 122n Thomson, S. Harrison, 195n Thorndike, Lynn, 93n, 95n Transue, Pamela J., 81n Trifogli, Cecilia, 34n, 237n Trottmann, Christian, 31n, 69n Van der Lecq, Ria, 109n, 110n, 124n, 138n, 260n, 340n Van Inwagen, Peter, 172n Van Rijen, Jeroen, 125n, 228n Veldhuis, Henri, 112n Vescovini, Graziella Federici, 141n Vianello, Roberto, 63n Vier, Peter C., 268n, 270n Vignaux, Paul, 310 Von Wright, G.H., 125n Vos [Jaczn], Antonie, 109n, 111n, 138n, 267n Vossenkuhl, Wilhelm, 281n Vuillemin, Jules, 109n, 125n Walsh, Katherine, 68n, 210n Waterlow, Sara,, 125n Webering, Damascene, 276n Weidemann, Hermann, 109n Weinberg, Julius R., 270n Weiss, R., 63n Weisheipl, James A., 33n, 112n Wey, Joseph, 47n, 69n, 89n, 90n, 93, 94, 232n, 321n Wippel, John F., 60n, 114n

412

index of modern authors

Wlodek, Sophie, 60n Wolter, Allan, 109n, 128n, 131n, 135, 152n Wood, Rega, 33n, 87n, 91n, 101n, 231n, 272n, 280n, 281n, 283n, 306n Wynn, Phillip, 63n Yrönsuuri, Miko, 140n, 141n, 142n,

143n, 144n, 145n, 147n, 148, 149n, 150n, 157n, 163n, 170n, 197n Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus, 224n, 231n Zutshi, Patrick, 5n, 8n, 23n, 30n, 31n, 38n, 40n, 41n, 54n, 55n, 58n, 93n, 97n, 98n, 102n