It has already been mentioned how strenuously he resisted the presumptuous demands of Boniface VIII, and maintained the responsibility of sovereigns to God
alone. The papal bull, Clericis Laicos, fulminated against Philip the Fair, was publicly burned at Paris. Boniface, after a council held at Home, issued his more celebrated bull, Uncim Sanctam, claiming for the Church an absolute and unshared supremacj'. Occam, then rector of the University of Paris, responded, at the per- sonal retpiest of the king, it is said, in the Dispututlo su- per potestate prceluds ecclesiie ulque principihus terra- rum commissa, and absolutely rejnuliated the papal pre- tensions. The advocacy of the strict rule of the Men- dicants and of apostolical poverty produced Contra Johannerii XXII de Paupertate CItristi et Aposlolorum Apolof/ia, and his Defensorium. The latter has been styled a mediteval A reopar/itico, and declared to be " one of the noblest defences of the liberty of writing." It brought the author, however, before the ecclesiastical tribunals, with what result is unknown. In defence of Louis of Bavaria, he wrote his I)ialof/us contra Johan- nem XXII pro Imperatore Ludovico I V — one of his most characteristic works; and in favor of his spiritual su- perior, Michele di Cesena, Opus nonaginta dlerurn de civili dominio clericorum atque monuchorum. These tracts, however neglected, can scarcely be deemed anti- quated, when the like questions have been revived re- cently by Le Pere Ilyacinthe, Prof. Dijllinger, prince Bismarck, and Mr, Gladstone,
More immediately germane to the scope of the present work, though intimately associated with the whole body of Occam's doctrine, is his treatise De Sacramento A l- taris, wherein he impugns transubstantiation without positively denying it, and arrives at conclusions kindred with Luther's view of the sacrament. Nominalism will scarcely accord with transubstantiation; and Occam's thesis, Entia non sunt multiplicanda prater 7iecessita- tem, like Newton's Hypotheses non fingo, was fatal to fictitious quiddities and imaginary essences. The scep- tical attitude, without express negative of so cardinal a tenet, was peculiarly illustrative of the relations of Oc- cam's theology to his philosophy, and reveals the peril- ous tendency of his specidations. He maintained the irreconcilability of reason and faith, and advocated their divorce, alleging that knowledge and science were fal- lacious, and that the intuitions of faith were alone true. It has been intimated that this view sprung from his acceptance and application of the Byzantine Logic. The view itself is in entire consonance with the critical sys- tem of Kant, and is an evident prelude to the justifica- tion by faith alone of Luther and the Protestant Reform- ers. In addition to these works of a controversial char- acter, Occam wrote copiously on various departments of the Aristotelian philosophy, and also commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. How few of the schoolmen refrained from the latter task !
Influence. — In the case of many men, who have oc- cupied a large space in the eyes of the world, " the good they do is buried with their bones;" but in the case of others, and pre-eminently of Occam, all they achieved with their contemporaries constitutes but a small part of their actual service to mankind. This notice would accordingly be incomplete if it neglected to call atten- tion to the relation of its subject to his own and the preceding age, and to illustrate his action on the ages which ensued.
Neglected and misunderstood as the long mediajval period has too often been, it cherished the accomplish- ment of the most stupendous labor ever imposed upon humanity — the transmutation of the ancient into the modern world; the transfiguration of paganism into Christianity; the change from the worship of nature and of the manifestations of nature to the worsliip of nature's God. Each century, in its order, seemed to have its own appointed task in the elaboration of this grand palinr/enesia. The thirteenth had been the pe- riod of premature renovation. It had witnessed the cidmiiiating splendors of the Holy Roman Empire, the arrogance and triumph of the papacy, the glory of the schoolmen— Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, Thomas
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Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Roger Bacon ; it had seen the creation of the modern tongues, and had rock- ed the cradle of modern literature; it had reanimated society, and reorganized jurisprudence and legislation; but its activity was precocious and premature. The spirit of the past was still too powerful, and the shadow of the past lay too darkly on the nations. The great redintegration demanded other aus()ices and a fresher inspiration. What the 13th century attempted so bril- liantly to reconstruct, the 14th remoulded, undermined, or destroyed. It was the transition by which we swept into the later daj'. Church and empire had been strug- gling for predominance: Church and empire were to feel each its own sceptre sliding from its weakened grasp under ecclesiastical discords and imperial an- archies— under secessions, schisms, and domestic feuds. The towering pride of scholasticism was to be shackled and degraded by the issue of her own travail, and the intricate but symmetrical scheme of the scholastic the- ology was to crumble away under the assaults of eman- cipated reason and unfettered belief. The toil was long and arduous; the fulness of the portent was not reveal- ed till the IGth century had fairly opened. Occam oc- cupies the central position in this mighty process of four writhing centuries ; not merely chronologically, but intellectually and dynamically. lie was prominent in all the chief lines of antagonism to the ancient spirit and the ancient forms. In the genius of his philosophy, and in his ecclesiastical and theological views, he was a true creator of a school, a veritable inceptor, and en- titled in no slight degree to be regarded as '■'■anticipa- tor imindi quern facturus erat." The freedom of Fran- ciscan speculation was almost proverbial. Occam was the front and boldest of Franciscan speculators. He merited in many ways the distiirction of being cherish- ed by Luther, notwithstanding Luther's aversion to the schoolmen ; and of being affectionately designated by him " Mein Meister Occam," " 3Ieiii lieber Meister Oc- camT He is said to liave been the only schoolman whom the great Reformer habitually read.