Francis Of Marchia Research Articles

Projectile Motion in a Vacuum According to Francesc Marbres, Francis of Marchia, Gerald Odonis, and Nicholas Bonet

In the third decade of the fourteenth century, the first definitive steps were taken to replace Aristotle’s theory of projectile motion and to apply the new theory to explain finite motion in a vacuum. The main actors in this shift were the Franciscan theologians Francis of Marchia, Gerald Odonis, and Nicholas Bonet, as well as Francesc Marbres, the artist formerly known as ‘John the Canon,’ but there is some confusion about their respective roles. Over the past decade, critical editions and manuscript studies of the pertinent texts of Marchia, Odonis, and Marbres have provided the raw materials to straighten out what some have considered the early background to the Galilean theory of projectile motion.

Contingenza e impedibilità delle cause. Presupposti e implicazioni di un dibattito scolastico

According to Avicenna, while the action of causes is always necessary, the production of effects may be considered in different ways. With respect to its cause, each effect is necessary, but may be contingent due to the interference of prohibitive impediments. In itself, and in an absolute sense, each effect is contingent. This article deals with the transformations of this model in the Latin Scholastic debate from the end of the 13th to the early decades of the 14th century, taking into consideration Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, John Duns Scotus and Francis of Marchia. The first defends a kind of ‘providential’ determinism, admitting only a relative, or secundum quid, contingency of sublunary effects with respect to the First Cause. The second, in explicit opposition to Aquinas, upholds the absolute contingency of the world in Avicenna’s sense. Interestingly enough, Siger’s position seems to be implicated in the condemnation of March 1277, not for being too deterministic but for rejecting an absolute ‘providential’ determinism. The last two both refuse to ground true contingency in impedible causes, appealing instead to freedom of will.

Letters and Politics: Gerald Odonis vs. Francis of Marchia

Abstract Gerald Odonis and Francis of Marchia, both Franciscan masters of theology active in the early fourteenth century, played an important role in the controversies that split the Franciscan Order as a result of Pope John XXII's decisions concerning the theory of religious poverty. They fought on opposite fronts: Odonis was elected Minister General after the deposition of Michael of Cesena, whom Francis supported in the struggle against the pope. This paper reconstructs the different stages at which Francis became a target of Odonis' repressive actions against his dissident former confreres, from the first mention of Francis' name in the lists of rebels to the letter Quid niteris, where Odonis reproaches Francis for his purported violations of the Franciscan Rule. Odonis most probably intentionally avoided entering the slippery ground of the poverty controversy and preferred attacking Francis on ecclesio-political issues.

Francis of Marchia: Theologian and Philosopher. A Franciscan at the University of Paris in the Early Fourteenth Century – Edited by Russell L. Friedman and Chris Schabel

Francis of Marchia: Theologian and Philosopher. A Franciscan at the University of Paris in the Early Fourteenth Century – Edited by Russell L. Friedman and Chris Schabel

Francis of Marchia, Virtus derelicta, and Modifications of the Basic Principles of Aristotelian Physics

AbstractThis article takes as its point of departure the conviction that late medieval science should be studied in its own right, and not merely to determine whether it presaged developments in early modern science. Case in point: Francis of Marchia's theory of virtus derelicta, the theory that the motion of a projectile through the air is due to a force left behind by the original motive force. Certainly, Marchia's view is not a forerunner of inertia. Nevertheless, it is argued that virtus derelicta breaks with two important Aristotelian principles of motion: "everything that has a beginning must necessarily also have an end" and "form is always indivisible." Thus, virtus derelicta is neither an Aristotelian solution to the problem of projectile motion nor a development on the road to early modern science; it belongs to a new (but subsequently undeveloped) understanding of motion.

Francis of Marchia and William of Ockham: Fragments from a Dialogue

AbstractIt is well known that Francis of Marchia and William of Ockham joined Michael of Cesena's rebellion against the pope, together escaping from Avignon and signing documents supporting Cesena's defence of Franciscan poverty. The relationship between the works of the two thinkers, on the other hand, is the subject of ongoing investigation. After discussing Francis' rejection in his Commentary on the Sentences of Ockham's theory of quantity, this paper shows how Francis' Improbatio became a source for Ockham's Opus Nonaginta Dierum. Building on Offler's ground-breaking critical edition of the latter work, it is argued that Ockham made extensive use of Francis' Improbatio, even though on several points he felt it necessary to reformulate the arguments of his confrère or even to substantially modify his positions. The two Franciscan theologians differed deeply both in their basic philosophical commitments and in their methodological attitude. These differences emerged even when they were—so to speak—fighting on the same front.

Francis of Marchia on the Heavens

AbstractFrancis of Marchia (c. 1290-1344) is said to have challenged Aristotelian orthodoxy by uniting the celestial and terrestrial realms in a way that has important implications for the practice of natural philosophy. But this over-looks Marchia's vital distinction between bare potentiality, which is actualizable only by God, and natural potency, which is the concern of the natural philosopher. If due attention is paid to this distinction and to its implications, Marchia's position no longer seems to be revolutionary.

How Is Strength of the Will Possible? Concerning Francis of Marchia and the Act of the Will

AbstractFrancis of Marchia dealt at length in several different contexts with the nature of the will and willing. Here I examine just one of those discussions: the possibility for the will to go against reason's final judgment, a topic related to weakness of will and the source of sin. Marchia is clearly of a voluntaristic bent, holding that the will can indeed act against the determination of reason. After examining Marchia's argumentation for his position, I explore some of the background to Marchia's view in a distinctively later medieval understanding of the human mind as a system of internal acts and dispositions, with the possibility that several of them belong to the same faculty simultaneously. This increasingly complex conceptualisation of the mind mirrors a new, more complex conceptualization of the "Self".

Utrum inhaerentia sit de essentia accidentis. Francis of Marchia and the Debate on the Nature of Accidents

AbstractThis paper attempts to provide a general reconstruction of Francis of Marchia's doctrine of accidental being. The paper is divided into two parts. (1) In the first part, I begin by reconstructing the debate on the nature of accidents held before Marchia, showing that such a debate is characterised by a progressive shift concerning the way to understand accidents. While the first Aristotelian interpreters regard accidents especially as inhering modes of being of substances, the majority of theologians and philosophers in the second half of the thirteenth century regard accidents as absolute beings. For them, the problem is no longer to explain if and, if so, how accidents can be distinct from substances, but how accidents and substances can make some one thing. Metaphysically, their primary focus is on explaining what the ontological status of inherence is. Although it is especially the consideration of the Eucharistic case that induces this change, I point out that many philosophers and theologians find in Aristotle's texts the philosophical support for taking this step. (2) In the second part, I focus more closely on Marchia's doctrine, arguing that Marchia's position is a slightly revised version of Scotus's. Unlike Aquinas and Bonaventure, Marchia explains Aristotle's metaphysics of accidents by way of the metaphysics of the Eucharist and not vice versa. So, in order to explain the philosophical consistency of this miraculous case, Marchia maintains that one does not need to modify the notion of inherence by distinguishing actual from potential inherence and including the latter in the accident's essence; rather it is necessary to take the case of the Eucharist seriously and, on this basis, to remove inherence totally from an accident's essence. In conclusion, the Eucharist shows that accidents are absolute beings to which actual inherence pertains contingently, potential inherence necessarily. But like Scotus's, Marchia's doctrine faces some difficulties that remain unresolved.

Francis of Marchia's Commentary on the Sentences: Question List and State of Research

Francis of Marchia's Commentary on the Sentences: Question List and State of Research

The Doctrine of Place in a Commentary On the Physics Attributed To Antonius Andreae

AbstractThe Quaestiones in libros Physicorum contained in the Cambridge Ms Gonville & Caius 368 (590) is an interesting piece of early Scotist philosophy of nature. The doctrine of place, contained in three questions on the fourth book of Aristotle's Physics, is based mostly on the solutions given by Duns Scotus. The question on bilocation offers a combined summary of the opinions given in Scotus' Ordinatio and Reportata parisiensia or of a text that combines the two, for example the Abbreviatio Operis oxoniensis Scoti attributed to Antonius Andreae. In his question about the nature of place, our anonymous author presents a more original assemblage of Scotist views, adding arguments from Scotus' Quodlibel XI and from Francis of Marchia. The latter thinker appears to be the most important source for the question concerning the place of the ultimate sphere. In all questions, the author argues against the views of Peter Auriol, his main opponent throughout the commentary.