Ockham, Almain, and the Idea of Heresy

Abstract

This chapter aims to shed new light on the impact of the English Franciscan and Oxford theologian William of Ockham’s (c.1285–1347) discourse about heresy on intellectuals of later generations. More specifically, I shall focus on the early sixteenth-century Parisian theologian Jacques Almain’s discourse about heresy and examine how he applied Ockham’s theory of heresy in both academic and polemical contextsIn my monograph on Ockham’s political thought, I elaborated on his sophisticated theory of heresy and its ecclesiological implications, thereby emphasizing that the theory of heresy was paradigmatic to his polemical activities.1 However, Ockham’s theory of heresy was not only central to his political thinking but also, in the context of late medieval scholasticism, highly idiosyncratic; it challenged the tacit assumptions underpinning contemporary discourse on heresy and heretics, and stripped it of hierarchical presumptions in a radical fashion. It is, however, not the primary purpose of this chapter to illuminate the novelty of Ockham’s discussions of heresy. Rather, the aim is to ascertain the degree of its influence on later generations by taking the example of Jacques Almain, who made explicit references to Ockham repeatedly in his works.KeywordsSixteenth CenturyPolitical DiscourseTrue PropositionChristian FaithGeneral CouncilThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.