§ 20. Ockam and the Decay of Scholasticism.
Scholasticism had its last great representative in Dunp Septus^ d. 13Q8. After him the scholastic method graduallypassed into disrepute. New problems were thrust upon the mind of Western Europe, and new interests were engaging its attention. The theologian of the school and the convent gave way to the practical theological disputant setting forth his views in tracts and on the floor of the councils. Free discussion broke up the hegemony of dogmatic assertion. The authority of the Fathers and of the papacy lost its exclusive hold, and tliinkers sought another basis of authority in the general judgment of contemporary Christendom, in the Scriptures alone or in reason. The new interest in letters and the natural world drew attention away from labored theological systems which were more adapted to display the ingenuity of the theologian than to be of practical value to society. The use of the spoken languages of Europe in literature was fitted to force thought into the mould of current exigencies. The discussions of Roger Bacon show that at the beginning of the fourteenth century men's minds, sated with abstruse metaphysical solutions of theological questions, great and trivial, were turning to a world more real and capable of proof.
The chief survivors of the dialectical Schoolmen were Djiranidus^nd VViUiam Ocka^ Gabriel Biel of Tiibingen, who "cTied just before the close of the fifteenth century, is usually called the last of the Schoolmen.^ Such men as D'Ailly, Ger-
^ Seeberg gives a good deal of attention to Biol in his Dngmengcschichte. Stockl carries the history of scholasticism down to Cardinal Cajetan, who wrote
§ 20. OCKAM AND THE DECAY OF SCHOLASTICISM. 189
son and Wyclif, sometimes included under the head of mediaeval scholastics, evidently belong to another class.
A characteristic feature of the scholasticism of Durandus and Ockam is the sharper distinction they made between reason and revelation. Following Duns Scotus, they declared that doctrines peculiar to revealed theology are not susceptible of proof by pure reason. The body of dogmatic truth, as accepted by the Church, they did not question.
A second characteristic is the absence of originality. They elaborated what they received. The Schoolmen of former periods had exhausted the list of theological questions and discussed them from every standpoint.
The third characteristic is the revival and ascendency of nominalism, the principle Roscellinus advocated more than two hundred years before. The Nominalists were also called Terminists, because they represent words as terms which do not necessarily have ideas and realities to correspond to them. A universal is simply a symbol or term for a number of things or for that which is common to a number of things. i Universality is nothing more than a mode of mental conception. The University of Paris resisted the spread of nominalism, and in 1339 the four nations forbade the promulgation of Ockam's doctrine or listening to its being expounded in private or public.2 In 1473, Louis XI. issued a mandate forbidding the doctors at Paris teaching it, and prohibiting the use of the writings of Ockam, Marsiglius and other writers. In 1481 the law was rescinded.
Durandus, known as doctor resolufissimus, the resolute doctor, d. 1334, was born at Pour^ain, in the diocese of Clermont, entered the Dominican prdgr, was appointed by John XXII. bishop of Limoux^ 1317, and was later elevated to the sees of Puy and Meaux. He attacked some of the rules of the Fran-
acommentary on Thomas Aquinas' Swnmatheologica, and includes the German mystics, Eck, Luther, etc., who clearly belong in another category. Professor Seth, in art. Scholasticism in the Enc. Brit., and Werner, close the history with Francis Suarez, 1617. The new age had begun a hundred years before that time.
1 Terminus prolatus vel scriptus nihil significat nisi secundum voluntariam institutionem. Ockam, as quoted by Stockl, II. 962.
2 Chartul. U. 485. Also p. 507, etc.