RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Oberlin Occam
in kind. From these were taken the elements of bread and wine required for use in the holy communion. Other gifts were distributed according to need. Justin Martyr (q.v.) in his description of the Sunday worship of Christians says, " When our prayer is ended, bread is brought and wine and water, and the president offers both prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each and a reception of what has been blessed, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons; and they who are well-to-do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succors the orphans and widows, and those who through sickness or any other cause are in want " (Apol., i. 67; Eng. transl. in ANF, i. 186). A general term for such offerings was " oblations." In process of time, and as gifts of money were gradually substituted for offerings in kind, the word came to be used in a more restricted sense: (1) for the bread and wine, before or after consecration; (2) for any gifts besides money, or perhaps for gifts of money for religious purposes (and particularly for the support of the clergy) other than alms for the poor. There is some debate as to the exact force of the word in connection with alms, in the Prayer for the Church in the existing Anglican Prayer Book and in the preceding rubric of the American Book (cf . The Journal of Theological Studies, i. 321). The formal presentation of gifts of bread and wine, though not used for the sacrament, at Milan is a survival of the old custom of offerings in kind, as is perhaps the use of pain beni, " blessed bread," in some parts of France and Switzerland. According to the rule of the first English Prayer Book (1549) the bread and wine for the communion were to be paid for by the parishioners in turn, instead of themselves providing the elements. They are now provided at the charge of the parish. The presentation of alms at the time of the eucharist had become almost extinct in the West — not entirely, as the " mass-penny " testifies — when it was revived in the first English Prayer Book. It is fitting that along with prayers, alms (in the widest sense) should go up before God. In the great central act of worship mankind offers him in the elements of bread and wine and in money representatives of the gifts which he has bestowed, as an acknowledgment that all things come of him, and in order that they may be used for the accomplishment of his purposes. Of these natural gifts the bread and wine thus offered in acknowledgment of God's sovereignty are blessed by him for higher purposes, and returned to the givers as the means whereby they receive the spiritual food of the Lord's body and blood for the strengthening and refreshing of the soul. A. C. A. Hall.
Bibliography: Bingham, OrCgines, V., iv. 1-3, VIII., vi. 22, XII., ii.-iv.; F. Berlendis, De oblationibus, Venice, 1743 (Italian ed., 1736); L. Duchesne, Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution, pp. 84, 173, 204, etc., London, 1904; J. H. Blunt, Annotated Book of Common Prayer, passim (consult Index), New York, 1908; KL, ix. 626-630.
OBLIGATION. See Duty.
O'BRYAN, WILLIAM. See Bible Chbistians; Methodists, I., 8.
OBSERVANTISTS. See Francis, Saint, o»
ASSISI, AND THE FRANCISCAN ORDER.
OCCAM (OCKHAM), WILLIAM OF.
I. Life. II. Works.
Philosophical and Theological Writings (J 1). Works on Church and State (§ 2).
III. Occam's Position. His Nominalism (§1).
Doctrine of the Church and Criticism (§ 2). Doctrine of God, Salvation and Sin (§ 3). Doctrine of Christ and the Sacraments (§ 4). Church and State (§5).
IV. Survey of Occam's Position.
I. Life: William of Occam, the Franciscan schoolman, nominalist, and " doctor invincibilis," was born at Occam (whence he took his name; 22 m. s.w. of St. Paul's, London) c. 1280; d. in Munich Apr. 10, 1349 (1347 ? 1350 ?). Of his early life little is certainly known. From the scanty data, it may be gathered that he entered the Franciscan order at an early age, took his bachelor's degree at Oxford, and his master's at Paris, where he taught from a date between 1315 and 1320. The tradition that he was a pupil of Duns Scotus is probably correct. That he returned to England and taught at Oxford is an assumption for which there is no evidence; in any case it is with Paris that his principal teaching activity is connected; his doctrines had taken such hold there by 1339 that the philosophical faculty felt obliged to issue a warning against them. By that time he himself had left Paris; the great controversy on the question of poverty which so deeply agitated his order determined the later course of his life. He threw all his strength into the defense of the ideal of absolute poverty. But it was not long before their common ground of opposition to the pope drew the extreme Franciscans together with the Emperor Louis the Bavarian, the opponent of John XXII. At the chapter of the order in Perugia, Occam and Bonagratia were the chief supporters of the general, Michael of Cesena, in his strict views, and afterward the former spent some time in the dioceses of Ferrara and Bologna, urging the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles as a necessary ideal. In December, 1323, he was summoned with some others to appear before the pope at Avignon, and was imprisoned there for over four years. On May 25, 1328, together with Michael of Cesena and Bonagratia, he made his escape and fled to Italy. Deposed and excommunicated, they made common cause with the emperor, who was then in Italy. In 1329 a general chapter held in Paris deposed Michael of Cesena from his office, and two years later he and his adherents were expelled from the order. Occam became one of the emperor's principal advisers and literary defenders. The political ideas which he had already represented in Paris were now developed and adapted to the circumstances of the time. In stepping outside the range of pure theology, he never forgot that he was a theologian; that John XXII. was a heretic and no true pope, that the poverty of Christ and the apostles was an
Occam