Political Writings

William’s political interests were primarily stimulated by Michael of Cesena, who, as head of the Franciscan order, was feuding in Avignon with Pope John XXII over the Franciscan view of poverty. Michael and his Franciscan followers believed that their vocation was to imitate their vision of the poverty of Christ and the apostles. They appealed to the bull Exiit qui seminat promulgated by Nicholas III in 1279. This bull set up the arrangement that the papacy held ownership of the goods that were not owned but simply used by the friars. In various bulls in the 1320s, John XXII rejected this arrangement and also declared it heretical to deny that Christ and the apostles had rights of ownership in regard to the things they used. Asked by Michael to examine the documents and to judge the legitimacy of John XXII’s claims, William wrote the Letter to the Friars Minor in 1334, where he concluded that many of John’s pronouncements were ‘‘heretical, erroneous, silly, ridiculous, fantastic, insane and defamatory’’ (Letter..., 3). In The Work of Ninety Days, written at the same time, William criticized in detail John’s errors which he listed in the previous letter, and also challenged John’s claim that Christ, both as divine and human, was universal king and lord of all things. In this work, Ockham provided the basic definitions and distinctions that he would unfurl later, in the Dialogus, as a full-blown treatise that would discuss the government of the church and lay political authority. His treatment of both types of government is extensive and shows that William in his theory concerning governments goes far beyond the immediacy of the political struggles between Pope John XXII and Ludwig of Bavaria. He basically defends the position that ecclesiastical and political societies should, except in prudently defined instances, operate independently of one another.

See also: > Anselm of Canterbury > Aristotelianism in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Traditions

>  Augustine > John Duns Scotus > Logic > Natural Philosophy > Supposition Theory > Thomas Aquinas

>  Universals > Walter Burley > Walter Chatton