During 1331 and 1332, Ockham and his associates took advantage of the unpopularity of the view of Pope John XXII relative to the Beatific Vision. The controversy waxed warm. The Pope’s view produced “a profound sensation in the Church, for it had been denied. Princes, clergymen, laity urged John to retract. He retracted.” Ockham declared that John was “wholly ignorant in theology.”

After the death of Pope John XXII, on December 4th, 1334, Ockham continued the controversy relative to the imperial and the papal authority with Pope Benedict XII and Pope Clement VI. Both popes confirmed the excommunication of Emperor Louis. Pope Benedict confirmed the excommunication of Ockham. Ockham, however, continued to support Louis until the death of Louis on October 11th, 1347.

For about twenty years Ockham lived in the house of his order in Munich under the protection of Louis, in whose service Ockham and Marsiglio advocated political theories which anticipated those of the present.

When the crisis in the affairs of Louis IV arose in 1338, Ockham more earnestly continued his controversial writings. In July, the electors at Rense stated that Louis did not need confirmation of his election as emperor by the Pope. On August 8th, Louis declared that the action taken by the Pope was null and he appealed “from the Pope to a general council.” Ockham wrote a defense of the claims of Louis and entered into a discussion of the nature of the authority of the emperor and the Pope.

In 1339, students were warned against the writings of Ockham, which had become popular. On December 29th, 1340, the University of Paris prohibited his teachings, and in a letter of May 10th, 1346, Clement refused to permit the masters and the scholars of the University of Paris to study the doctrines of Ockham. In 1348, the general chapter of the Augustinian order prohibited the reading of the works of Ockham under threat of excommunication.

Before Cesena died in 1342, he is said to have transferred the seal of his order and his claims to leadership to Ockham, who became the nominal head of the order, and after the death of Bonagratia in 1347 he became the undisputed chief of a powerful minority.

As early as 1343, Clement VI sought a reconciliation with Ockham and his followers; but Ockham continued his opposition to the Pope, although Emperor Charles had made peace with the Pope. It is said that not until 1349 did he send “back the seal of the order to the orthodox General Minister” and profess a desire to become reconciled to the church. Sullivan states that in letters of November 29th, 1347, and June 8th, 1349, Clement again sought a reconciliation with Ockham on several conditions. Ockham “was to promise to believe as the Holy Catholic Church believed, was to declare heretical the statements that the Emperor could select, create and depose the pope, to obey the present pope and his successors, to renounce the heretical opinions of Louis of Bavaria and Michael of Cesena and to promise not to give help to the enemies of the Church… . . Ockham rejected them at first and was cited to appear before the papal court. It is uncertain whether he ever agreed to them or not… . In 1348, he had already rejected almost the same demands.” There is no documentary evidence that Ockham ever accepted the proposal and was absolved. Some writers insist that “he remained an excommunicated heretic.” It is not generally believed that he became reconciled to the church before his death.

There are various opinions regarding the year of his death and even the place of his burial. It is reasonably safe to believe that Ockham died in the convent of his order at Munich and was buried there. Earlier writers, and in particular Volumes I and II of the Analecta Franciscana, state that Ockham died on April 10, 1347, and was buried in Munich as the inscription on the tombstone in the Franciscan chapel at Munich indicates. Leidinger, of the Department of Manuscripts, Bayerische Staats-Bibliothek, Munich, states that the St. Francis Church of Munich, in which

Num.o I.o A. DNI MCCCXLVII. IV.ID. APR. [?]. A.R.ET DOCTISS.P.F. WILHELMDICTVS OCKAM EX ANGLIA SS.THEOL. DOCT. Ockham was buried, was pulled down in 1803 and that the tombstone no longer exists. He has, however, supplied a photographic copy of the inscription cited which was on the cover of the grave. The copy of the inscription is preserved in Cod. lat. 1755 I, page 34. (Monumenta ecclesiae Fratrum Minorum Monachii.)

In view of the document of Clement VI and the tract of Ockham treating of the election of Charles IV, recent conclusions lead to the belief that Ockham died April 10th, 1349, or at least not before the year 1349. Seeberg says that “some believe that the date of his death is as late as April, 1350, but 1349 is the most probable date.”

II. The New Text

The new text is based upon the Balliol College, the Merton College, and the University of Rouen manuscripts, and the text editions of c. 1490, Paris; 1491, Strassburg; 1504, Venice.

The new text is based chiefly upon the Balliol manuscript and the 1491 text of Strassburg.

The Balliol College MS. 299 contains the entire text of the De Corpore Christi.

The Merton College MS. 137 is incomplete, ending with the words: “et per concilia,” of Chapter XXXVI. It is much similar to the Balliol College MS.

The Rouen MS. 561 is quite unlike the other MSS., though the substance is much the same. It is a manuscript of the fifteenth century.

The text printed at Paris about 1490 contains the entire text of the De Sacramento Altaris. This text is found in the library of the University of Minnesota.

The text printed at Strassburg in 1491 contains the entire text of the De Sacramento Altaris. This text is found in the libraries of the following institutions: the Universities of Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Pennsylvania, and Yale; and the libraries of the Andover-Harvard and the Gettysburg Theological Seminaries.

The text printed at Venice in 1504 contains the entire text of the De Sacramento Altaris. The text is found in the library of the University of Nebraska.

Many earlier writers looked for this treatise under two different titles: De Coena Domini and De Corpore Christi; but the problem of the title is now settled by this text.

The original text was based upon the lectures of Ockham, which were delivered at the University of Oxford. It was finished after the Epiphany of our Lord, as stated in the Colophon. No date fixes the year of its composition.

In preparing the present text, the 1514 edition of the Corpus Juris Canonici of Gratian was of the utmost service. This Corpus and the glosses made it possible to indicate the passages quoted by Ockham. The 1503 and the 1513 editions of the Sextus Liber Decretalium of Boniface VIII were also of assistance.

The manuscripts and the previous texts are full of Latin abbreviations, and for this reason this work has not been easily accessible to scholars. (Brampton has just recently published a full Latin text of the De Imperatorum et Pontificum Potestate of Ockham.) How

Reprint of a Photograph of a Page of the Manuscript of the De Corpore Christi of William of Ockham Which Is Used by the Courtesy of Dr. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, Librarian of Balliol College, Oxford, England.

The reprint is a page of the Balliol College MS. 299, Oxford University, England. The Librarian of Balliol College provided the following quotation from the report of the examination of the manuscript by Dr. H. H. E. Craster of the Bodleian Literary: “Balliol MS. 299 is written in two hands which I should date on palaeographic grounds about 1340-60. A note on an end fly-leaf gives evidence that the MS. was certainly written before 1368 and was then in Oxford, where it has ever since remained. The MS. was certainly written in England, and the presumption is that it was written at Oxford. An early reader has entered a few English sentences in the margins. On my dating it is almost if not quite contemporary with the Author, who died about 1349.”

“The fly-leaves of the MS. contain four inscriptions recording the name of the former owner, William De Wilton, who was Chancellor in 1373-5. I fancy that the date of his death is not known.”

The reprint shows some of the standard forms of Latin abbreviations in current use during the middle of the fourteenth century. It also shows the Latin word-order of the period.

Reprint of a Photograph of a Page of the Text Entitled “Tractatus Venerabilis Inceptoris Guilhelmi Ockham de Sacramento Altaris,” Which Is Used by the Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania and of Professor Walton Brooks McDaniel, Ph.D., of the Latin Department of the University.

The reprint is a page of the edition which was published with the Quotlibeta Septem of Ockham at Agrigentum in 1491.

The reprint shows some of the standard forms of Latin abbreviations in current use during the late fifteenth century. It also shows the Latin word-order of the period.

This page was selected because it contains the shortest chapter of the book and therefore shows the captions of two chapters. difficult it has been to study the works of Ockham is seen from the statements which follow.

W. J. Townsend, in The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, states that “the works of Ockham have never been collected and published in an uniform edition. They are very scarce, and are carefully preserved in some of the great libraries of Europe. So difficult are they of access that Brucker, when he wrote his History of Philosophy, had not seen them, and even one so widely read as Sir James Mackintosh had not been able to consult them.”

A. E. Taylor, Edinburgh, Present Day Thinkers and the New Scholasticism, p. 67, says: “How hard it is, for example, even to have copies of Duns Scotus or Ockham at hand. I know very little about Ockham for this reason. His works are simply not accessible to me, as I am too busy to go where I could get at them.”

Martin Grabmann, Munich, Present Day Thinkers and the New Scholasticism, p. 145, says: “It is a very welcome fact that historical research is now turning with greater briskness to the history of Nominalism and is beginning to draw a faithful picture of this powerful intellectual movement from the laborious study of manuscript’s difficult to decipher… . The philosophy of Nominalism contains much philosophic acumen and propounds difficulties which still agitate philosophic thought.”

III. The Latin Problems

The treatise presents many items of interest to the teachers of Latin: orthography, peculiarities of syntax, and the contributions of Scholastic Latin to the Latin vocabulary, especially to Latin and English philosophical and theological terminology. The Latin word-order of the first part of the text is that of the text of 1491. The Latin word-order of the second part of the text, the De Corpore Christi, is that of the Balliol MS. of 1340-1360. Differences in the word-order of the two centuries are quite apparent.

IV. The Influence of Ockham upon Luther

The influence of Ockham upon Luther was most profound. While in the University of Erfurt, Luther used Ockham’s works as textbooks in philosophy. Melanchthon, in his Vita Lutheri, states that Luther “read Occam much and long and preferred his acumen to that of Thomas and Scotus.”

In his Table Talk Luther states that “the Terminists is the name of a school in the universities to which I belong. They oppose Thomists, Scotists, and Albertinists, and are called also Occamist’s, from Occam their founder… . Occam is a wise and sensible man, who endeavored earnestly to amplify and explain the subject.”

Luther, however, criticizes Ockham “as one who had no knowledge of spiritual temptations.”

Luther refers to him as “Mein Meister Occam” and “Mein Lieber Meister Occam.”

In the Bekenntniss vom Abendmahl Luther classes Ockham among the Sophists because of his views, but states that “he was correct in this matter.”

Luther says that “they have condemned not only me, but Occam.”

But in a most significant passage in the De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae, Luther refers to a discussion of the doctrine of the Real Presence of D’Ailly, whose view was similar to that of his teacher, Ockham. Luther states that “formerly, while I was gulping down the Scholastic theology, the Cardinal of Cambry (D’Ailly), in Book IV of his Sentences, gave me occasion to reflect, by contending very acutely that it would be far more probable, and fewer superfluous miracles would be required, if it were understood that true bread and true wine, and not their accidents alone, were on the altar.”

A footnote in the present volume cites a long quotation from the original which shows what Luther read, and indicates that Ockham and his pupil, D’Ailly, were in full agreement upon many points. Erdmann, History of Philosophy, states that D’Ailly set forth “pure Occamistic teaching.”

These few external proofs of Luther’s indebtedness to Ockham do not compare in value with the internal evidence as seen in the writings of each. In Young Luther, Professor Fife has recently shown Luther’s dependence upon Ockham.

A careful comparison of the Bekenntniss vom Abendmahl, 1528, with this treatise shows that many passages are similar in each treatise and that many of the conclusions of both authors are identical in meaning. The present text makes it possible for the first time for scholars in general to make a careful estimate of the psychological, philosophical and theological indebtednes’s of Luther to Ockham.

Professor R. Seeberg, Berlin, History of Dogma, states that this tract influenced Luther very greatly, for it is the theoretical foundation of his doctrine of the Real Presence.

This new Latin text indicates very clearly that this tract had the most direct bearing and influence upon Luther’s views of the doctrine of the Real Presence and the defense of his position as supported by psychology and philosophy. No other tract more ably, simply and practically applies psychology and philosophy to the formulation of theology than this tract of Ockham, upon which Luther draws so often.

Harnack, History of Dogma, states that Luther “called in the aid of Occam’s Scholasticism … in order to establish the Christian faith in respect to the Doctrine of the Real Presence.” There are many passages of the tract that deal with the doctrines of the Communicatio Idiomatum and of the Ubiquity of the body of Christ, and with circumscriptive and definitive presence in a place, as advocated by Luther.

A study of the present text aids in showing why Luther was a Nominalist, and how profoundly the philosophy of Ockham shaped the views of the Reformers and of the later philosophers.

Ockham was called the greatest Modernist of his day. Luther studied Ockham’s writings, saw his strength and his weakness, and was thus assisted in developing his own constructive program which sufficiently blended progress and conservatism.

V. The Psychology and Philosophy of Ockham

Ockham was an important contributor to the Reformation and a forerunner of later philosophies of England and of Protestant Germany. This treatise provides abundant evidence of his theories.

1. Here is applied his theory of the sign, sense cognition, intuitive intellectual cognition, and abstract intellectual cognition, and his dualistic psychology of sense and of intellect.

2. Here is also seen applied his terministic philosophy, which influenced Luther and other Reformers in their conceptions of individuality, democracy, and the functions of faith and reason. They were thus led to contend against Aristotelian realism, and the ideas of solidarity and absolutism.

This text makes clear Ockham’s use of vox, nomen, terminus, intentio, suppositio, substance, subject, quantity, quality, accidents, continuum, time, space, etc.

3. In this treatise Ockham applies the law of Parcimony—“Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.” Ockham did not believe in multiplying entities needlessly. This text supports the conclusion of Thorburn, as found in The Myth of Occam’s Razor.

4. This treatise sets forth Ockham’s view of the failure of reason, and the need and function of faith. He shows the relation between reason and faith, but insists that “God can act according to His arbitrary pleasure and can do that for good against reason and experience.”

Sorley, A History of English Philosophy, p. 7, states that at the hands of Ockham “the separation between theology and philosophy, faith and reason, was made complete.” He admitted that there are probably arguments for the existence of God but maintained the final thesis that whatever transcends experience belongs to faith. In this way he broke with Scotism as well as with Thomism on a fundamental question.”

5. Here is shown Ockham’s exaltation of the Scriptures over the authority of the church. Taylor, The Medieval Mind, Vol. II, states that “Occam asserted the verity of the Scriptures unqualifiedly.”

6. Ockham here advocates absolute voluntarism, “for the will intervenes in the discursive operation of the understanding.” He “also teaches the most entire self-determinism of volition.” He “makes the Free Will of God the sovereign arbiter of moral good and evil. But if nothing is of itself morally good or evil, the study of nature can teach us nothing about morality; intelligence is powerless to instruct us on the requirements of the Divine Law.”

Human reason of itself can not establish the spirituality or immortality of the soul.

7. Here he sets forth his philosophical views concerning point, line, surface, substance, subject, quantity, continuum, quality, accident, etc., as he uses these conceptions to justify the various doctrines brought out in the discussion of the Lord’s Supper.

VI. The Influence of Ockham upon English and German Philosophy

1. The repeated uses of Ockham’s Law of Parcimony, or of Ockham’s Razor.

2. He influenced the subsequent political theories, as seen in the development of the social contract theory of government, popular sovereignty, and the inalienable and indestructible right of freedom.

3. He influenced the development of all subsequent philosophical and theological thought and is profoundly influencing present-day thought.

Townsend, The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, quotes John Selden (born 1584) as stating “that his works were the best that had been written in former ages on the Ecclesiastical Power.”

Kuno Fischer, History of Modern Philosophy, states that Ockham’s philosophy was a “fore-runner of that empiricism and sensualism with which modern philosophy began its course in the native country of Occam.”

Townsend affirms that “Occam and Locke join hands in the adoption of a principle which must lead to a philosophy of pure sensationalism… . He anticipated the teaching of Hobbes, Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, and Condillac.” He opened “the way for the extreme idealism of Berkeley on the one hand and for the scepticism of Hume on the other… . He taught a doctrine similar to Locke’s, which defined sense and reflection as the sources of all knowledge.”

Townsend also states that Ockham “was either the originator of the celebrated maxim, or enforced it more than any other Schoolman:—‘There is nothing in the understanding that was not previously in the senses.’ … Occam’s view combined elements which were mediæval, and elements which were adopted by the Reformation and modern philosophy… . All metaphysicians are agreed that William of Occam, by denying the existence of the species which had been taught by Aristotle as the direct object of perception, and which he said interposed between the object and subject, took the same ground which has conferred immortality upon Reid and the Scotch school of Philosophy. There is also remarkable similarity, if not identity of view, between the theory of William of Occam—that substances can be known only through their attributes and that therefore substans can never be known by the understanding, but only by faith, and the celebrated doctrine of Locke upon the same subject.”

R. L. Poole, Illustrations of the History of Mediæval Thought and Learning, states that “Ockham, in virtue of his greater conformity to the spirit of his day, not to speak of his eminence as a philosopher, unequalled among contemporaries and hardly surpassed by Thomas Aquinas or John Duns Scotus, handed down a light which was never suffered to be extinguished, and which served as a beacon to pioneers of reform like Wycliffe and Huss. In politics, as well as in some points of doctrine, Ockham may be greatly claimed as a precursor of the German reformers of the sixteenth century.” He “left an unbroken line of successors until the enduring elements of his aim found a partial realism in the religious revolution of the sixteenth century.”

Bishop Turner, the Catholic philosopher, says that Ockham “has been described as the first Protestant. And, indeed, he defended in his controversial writings the principles subsequently invoked by the first reformers to justify the encroachments of the secular power. In philosophy, too, his whole attitude is one of protest against the prevailing realism, and against the belief that the study of philosophy can be of material aid to theological sciences. In an age when theism and spiritualism were universally taught as philosophical tenets, he protested, in the name of human reason, that belief in God and in the spirituality of the human soul has no foundation except in revelation.”

Numerous references show that Ockham influenced the philosophy of Locke, Reid, Hamilton, and the Scotch philosophers.

Michalski, Cracow, asserts that Ockham wrote the De Sacramento Altaris in order to set forth and defend his new philosophy. Ockham realized that the then much discussed Lord’s Supper provided the best opportunity for a pragmatic application of his Nominalistic philosophy in opposition to the Realism of the day. This treatise clearly states Ockham’s reason for writing this text.

The pragmatism of C. S. Pierce and the Nominalistic pragmatism of William James are based upon Ockham’s philosophy. The latter states that the discussion of the Lord’s Supper afforded “the only pragmatic application of the substance-idea with which I am acquainted,” and that in this discussion “the substance-notion breaks into life, then, with tremendous effect.”

C. Delisle Burns, Aristotelian Society, Vol. XIV, and Mind, Oct. 1916, states that Ockham “seems to have had in his philosophy all the prestige of tradition and all the promise of a new beginning”; “for the difficulties which were once faced by William of Ockham still need discussion.” He sees “obvious likeness between Ockham and Hume.” He also says that “there are interesting parallels to be found between the ideas of Ockham and Mr. Bertrand Russell; sometimes there is even a close likeness between the actual sentences of the ninth question in the first book of Ockham’s Quotlibeta and those in Mr. Russell’s Our Knowledge of the Eternal World. … This question … has a close connection with his treatment of ‘magnitude’ in the De Sacramento Altaris.”

James Lindsay, The Monist, states that “Occam had the merit to anticipate Kant” and “Descartes,” and the “tendencies of modern empiricism,” as well as “modern idealism.”

W. M. Thorburn, Mind, July, 1918, states that Ockham “denies the reality of an Instant of Time, showing some anticipation of the doctrines associated with the names of Bergson and William James… . Few or no competent critics will question Mansel’s judgment of Ockham, on page 4 of his Introduction to the Rudiments of Aldrich: ‘The ablest writer on Logic whom the Schools have produced… . The Summa Totius Logicae of Occam is the most valuable contribution of the Middle Ages to the Logica Docens. His editor, Mark of Beneventum, said that if the gods used Logic, it would be the Logic of Occam.’ “

M. Grabmann says: “Indeed, the basic researches of P. Duhem confront us with the fact that the Nominalist school of Ockham … is most intimately connected with the amazing anticipation of the scientific world-picture of a Copernicus and a Galileo… . The Medieval period has given us no scientific discussion and appraisal of William of Ockham, one of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages… . Great schools were formed: … that of Ockham, which is a prelude to modern Empiricism.”

Pres. J. H. Ryan says: “The student of the history of mediæval philosophy, too, is well aware of the analysis of the inductive method made by Ockham and the disciples of his school. Without such preparatory studies the advance of science would certainly have been delayed for a long period.”

J. S. Zybura says: “The precursors of modern natural science were philosophers of the School of Ockham.”

Dr. Maréchal says: “The modern philosophers who preceded Kant and followed Duns Scotus and Ockham.” (Quoted by Zybura.)

Ockham’s discussion of “quantum” and “quanta” is well worth reading by the advocates of the modern “quanta theory.” Equally interesting to the Neo-Realists is Ockham’s discussion of realities and qualities.

All of the philosophical views stated above are developed in the De Sacramento Altaris. Many other views are likewise discussed in practical fashion; for all of his subtle skill and wealth of psychological, philosophical, and theological knowledge is shown in this work as he defends himself from widespread criticism and the charge of heresy. In this work he sets forth and defends philosophical views which were to influence the thinking of the entire world and to change theological, philosophical, political, social, and other views of life.

VII. Ockham’s Irony

This treatise has much light to throw upon this mooted question.

Rettberg, Baur, Lindsay, et al., have expressed their opinion that Ockham meant to be ironical when he refers to his belief in the Dogmas of the church. Rashdall, Erdmann, and Harnack agree with Geisler when he states “that Occam was really sincere in all his professions of respect for the Doctrines of the church.”

R. Seeberg says that “the reader can not escape a painful impression when the talented author apologizes for his bold conclusions as harmless intellectual exercises.”

Erdmann states that “this may seem strange to the Protestant, but to assert that no one could be in earnest in making such statements is to brand as rascals the most honest men of the various ages, who have made like declarations.”

Rashdall asserts that Ockham was “unimpeachably orthodox on all questions except the authority of the Papacy and its relation to the Civil Power.”

This treatise, more than any other work of Ockham, dispells the charge of irony, for there is at the time he writes this treatise a ring of sincerity in all of his declarations of belief in the fundamental doctrines of the church.

VIII. Ockham and Marsiglio of Padua

It is apparent that a close relationship existed between Ockham and Marsiglio and that they mutually influenced the writings of each other. Pope Clement VI asserts that Ockham profoundly influenced Marsiglio in formulating many of his theories relative to the power and authority of the Pope. If they were not fellow teachers at the University of Paris, they were both at the court of Louis IV in Bavaria and were united in their efforts to defend the emperor during his controversy with Pope John XXII. Each in common aided in developing the political ideas which in dominant fashion shaped the political theories for the next two hundred years and are still vital in current political theories. Emerton states that “the distinction between them is that Ockham was primarily a philosopher trying to apply his general principles to human institutions, while Marsiglio was a trained physician and theologian without, so far as we can see, a definite philosophical system.”

Previté-Orton, The Defensor Pacis of Marsilius, page xxiii, 1929, states: “Whereas supporters of the Papacy, and even opponents like Ockham, made principal use of the Canon Law, i.e. chiefly, though not wholly, papal decretals, in proving their case, Marsilius, far more explicitly than Dante before him, expressly declines to consider the Canon Law as of any weight or as providing any evidence whatever, and indeed he denounces it as a chief abuse contrary to the nature of the State.”

(Note: Quotations from various sources have been used rather than subjectively derived conclusions.)

IX. Works of Ockham in This Country

(Known to the author of this text)

1. Centiloquium theologicum M. Guilhelmi de Ockam; Lugduni, 1495: Univ. of Penna., Harvard, Andover-Harvard Theol. Seminary, Boston Public Library, Peabody Institute Library, Baltimore.

2. Compendium errorum Iohannis Papae XXII; Lugduni, 1494: Harvard, Andover-Harvard, Boston Public Library, Univ. of Penna., Yale, Nebraska, N. Y. Public Library, Episcopal Divinity School, Phila.

3. Dialogus inter clericum et militem super dignitate papali et regia, etc.; Lugduni, 1491: Univ. of Penna., Harvard, Columbia. 1494: Univ. of Penna., Yale, Harvard, Andover-Harvard, Boston Public Library; c. 1500: Nebraska.

4. A Dialogue betwene a knyght and a clerke concernynge the power spiritual and temporall; Thomas Berthelet, London, 1559: Harvard.

5. Defensorium (a paupertate Christi) contra Iohannem XXII; Venice, 1513: Boston Public Library, N. Y. Public Library.

6. Disputatio inter clericum et militem super potestate praelatis ecclesiae atque principibus terrarum commissa sub forma Dialogi; London, Thomas Berthelet, 15??: Johns Hopkins, Harvard.

7. Expositio aurea et admodum utilis super totam artem veterem edita per venerabilem inceptorem fratrem Guilhelmum de Occham cum quaestionibus Alberti parmi de Saxonia. Impressis prudentisimi uiri Benedicti Hectoris bononiensis artis impressoriae solertissimi Bononiaeque Impressa anno domini, 1496: Widener Branch of the Phila. Public Library.

8. Scriptum in primum librum sententiarum; Argenti, 1483: Univ. of Penna., Johns Hopkins, Yale.

9. Letterae F. Michaelis de Cezenae; 1331: Univ. of Penna., Harvard, Andover-Harvard, Boston Public Library.

10. Opus XC dierum; Lugduni, 1495: Univ. of Penna., Yale, Harvard, Andover-Harvard, Boston Public Library.

11. Philosophia naturalis Guilhelmi Occham; Romae, 1637: Univ. of Penna.

12. Quaestiones et decisiones in IV libros sententiarum; Lugduni, 1495: Univ. of Penna, Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Andover-Harvard, Boston Public Library, Peabody Institute Library, Baltimore.

13. Quotlibeta septem; Argenti, 1491: Univ. of Penna., Gettysburg Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Andover-Harvard; c. 1487: Nebraska.

14. Summaria seu epitomata CXXXIII Capitulorum operis; Lugduni, 1495: Harvard, Nebraska, Andover-Harvard.

15. Summulae in lib. physicorum adsunt; Svardis, Venice, 1506: Univ. of Penna., Nebraska.

16. Tabulae ad diversas huius operis magistri Guilhelmi de Ockam super quattuor libros sententiarum; Lugduni, 1495: Univ. of Penna., Harvard, Nebraska, Boston Public Library.

17. Tractatus logicae: Dudum me frater et amicae … Omnes loycae tractatores … Explicit loici Magistri Guilhelmi Ocham. MS. at the Univ. of Penna. Text; Paris, 1488: Harvard Atheneum Library.

Summa totius logicae nuper correcta; Venetizis, per Lazarum de Svardis, 1508: Harvard Atheneum Library.

The very renowned tract of the Venerable Inceptor, William of Ockham, of England, a very famous teacher of sacred theology, a most discriminating investigator of realities, of the order of Friars Minor, concerning the sacrament of the altar and with special reference to the distinction of point, line, surface, body, quantity, quality, and substance. It begins auspiciously.

Concerning the conversion of the bread into the body of Christ, as says a certain gloss on the De Consecratione, Distinction II., Chapter, ‘In sacramentorum.’ “There are various opinions. One opinion asserts that that substance, which was bread at first, afterwards is the flesh and the blood of Christ. It is argued later in the Chapter, ‘Panis est in altari,’ and in the Chapter, ‘Quia corpus.’ The second opinion holds that the substance of the bread and of the wine ceases to be there, and only the accidents remain; namely, taste, color, and weight, and similar accidents; and under those accidents the body of Christ begins to be there. The third opinion holds that the substance of the bread and of the wine remains there, and that the body of Christ is in the same place and under the same species. It is argued later in the Chapter, ‘Ego.’ Each opinion, however, acknowledges that the body of Christ is there. The second opinion is more true, as in the margin of the De Summa Trinitate, Chapter, ‘Firmiter,’ Una.” These are the words of the gloss.

From this it appears that the substance of the bread is converted into the body of Christ, so that the substance of the bread does not remain but only the accidents remain which were before in the substance of the bread. And in confirmation of this truth it is said in the margin of the De Summa Trinitate, ‘Firmiter,’ as the previous gloss asserts: “There is one universal church of all the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved; in which the priest and the sacrifice are the very same, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and of wine, since the bread is transubstantiated into body and the wine into blood by divine power.”

With a view to the exposition of this truth, some questions must be asked about two points principally, as is obvious; first, about the entity and the distinction of those accidents; secondly, concerning the separation of them from a subject.

Moreover, since it is commonly conceded by all that color, taste, and sensible qualities of such a kind, are really distinguished from each other and also from substance; therefore, since this is conceded, some questions must be raised about the distinction of these qualities from quantity, figure, rectitude, and the like; concerning which there is great doubt as to how they may be distinguished.

And because this consideration pertains not only to theology but also to philosophy, since it may be the province of philosophy to come to know the natures of things and their distinctions; therefore, it is necessary to investigate what the philosophers have thought of this matter; and especially the prince of philosophers, Aristotle, and also what the theologians may say. But that I may proceed with more regard for logical order, I shall inquire first concerning the distinction of point, line, surface, and body; and afterwards of other matters.

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