c. 1280–1481

William of Ockham, Nominalism, and the Via Moderna

The Franciscan William of Ockham taught at Oxford. In 1324 he was summoned to Avignon on heresy charges. In the dispute over absolute poverty between the Spiritual Franciscans and Pope John XXII, he sided with the Spirituals. In 1328 he fled to Emperor Louis of Bavaria and lived excommunicate in Munich until his death from the Black Death in 1349/50.

His ideas – nominalism and "Ockham's razor" – in scholars' assessment broke apart the synthesis of faith and reason built by the great scholastic systems. For Ockham, supreme authority in the church belongs to a council, not the pope. His theological line – the "via moderna" – was developed by Pierre d'Ailly, Gregory of Rimini, and especially Gabriel Biel. It took hold at the universities of Vienna (1386) and Germany, was condemned in Paris in 1474, and the ban was lifted in 1481. The via moderna formed the theological education of the young Martin Luther.