died in 1342, and Occam, who had received from him the official seal of the order, was recognized as general by his party. The date of his death and the place of his burial are both uncertain. He probably died at Munich in 1349.
William of Occam was the most prominent intellectual leader in an age which witnessed the disintegration of the old scholastic realism, the rise of the theological scepticism of the later middle ages, the great contest between pope and emperor which laid the foundations of modern theories of government, and the quarrel between the Roman curia and t he Franciscans which showed the long-concealed antagonism between the theories of Hildebrand and Francis of Assisi; and he shared in all these movements.
The common account of his philosophical position, that he reintroduced nominal ism, which had been in decadence since the days of Roscellinus and Abelard, by teaching that universals were only flatus vocis, is scarcely correct. The expression is nowhere found in his writings. He revived nominal ism by collecting and uniting isolated opinions upon the meaning of universals into a. compact system, and popularized his views by associating them with the logical principles which were in his day commonly taught in the universities. He linked the doctrines of nominal ism on to the principles of the logic of Psellus, which had been introduced into the West in the S ummulae of Peter of Spain, and made them intelligible to common understandings. The fundamental principles of his system (see SCHOLASTICISM) are that “ Essentia non sunt multiplicand praeter neeessitatem ” (“ Occam's Razor ”), that nouns, like algebraical symbols, are merely denotative terms whose meaning is conventionally agreed upon (supposilio), and that the destructive effect of these principles in theological matters does not in any way destroy faith (see the Centilogium Theologicum, Lyons, 1495, and Tractatus de Sacramento Altaris). In the Opus nonaginta dierum (1330) (written in reply to John XXII.'s libellus against Michael of Cesena), and in its successors, the Tractatus de dogmalibus Johannis XXII. papae (1333-1334), the Compendium errorum Johannis XXII. papae (1335-1338) and in the Defensorium contra errores Johonnis XXII. papae (1335-1339), Occam only incidentally expounds his views as a publicist; the books are mainly, some of them entirely, theological, but they served the purpose of the emperor and of his party, because they cut at the root of the spiritual as well as of the temporal supremacy of the pope. In his writing Super pol estate summi pontificis oclo quaeslionum decision es (1339-1342) Occam attacks the temporal supremacy of the pope, insists on the independence of kingly authority, which he maintains is as much an ordinance of God as is spiritual rule, and discusses what is meant by the state. His views on the independence of civil rule were even more decidedly expressed in the Tractalus de jurisdietione imperatoris in causis matrimonialibus. in which, in spite of the medieval idea that matrimony is a sacrament, he demands that it belongs to the civil power to decide cases of affinity a nd to state the prohibited degrees. By 1343 there was in circulation his great work the Dialogus (see Goldast ii. 398-957), in which he attempted to present his views in a complete summary. It consists of three parts. The first is the De foutoribus hereticorum, and deals with the pope as arbiter in the matter of heresy. The second part is the refutation of the doctrines of ]'ohn XXII. (see above treatises). The third was to be in nine sections, of which the first and second sections alone remain to us. It is probable that the Opus nonaginta dierum and the Compendium errorum were intended to form part of the work. His last work, De Electione Caroli IV., restates his opinions upon temporal authority and adds little that is new.
In all his writings against Pope John XXII. (q.1v.), Occam inveighs against the pope's opinions and decisions on the value of the life of poverty. T e Compendium errorum selects four papal constitutions which involved a declaration against evangelical poverty, and insists that they are full of heresy. Occam was a sincere Franciscan, and be ieved with his master that salvation was won through rigid imitation of Jesus in His poverty and obedience, and up to his days it had always been possible for Franciscans to follow the rules of their founder within his order. John XXII., however, condemned the doctrine and excommunicated its supporters, some of whom were so convinced of the necessity of evangelical poverty for a truly Christian life that they denounced the pope when he refused them leave to practise it as Antichrist. After Occam's days the opinions of Francis prevailed in many quarters, but the genuine Franciscans had no place within the church. They were Fraticelli, Beghards, Lollards or other confraternities unrecognized by the church and in steady opposition to her government.
Beside the theological and political works above quoted, Occam wrote Summa Logices (Paris, 1488, Oxford, 1675) commentaries on Porphyryis Isagoge, on the Categoriae, De Interpretatione and Elenchi of Aristotle. These latter were printed in 1496 at Bologna, and entitled Expositio Aurea super totam artem veterem; Quoestiones in quattuor libros sententiarum (Lyons, 1495). V There is no good monograph on Occam. For an account of his logic, see Prantl, Geschichte der Logik (1855-1870); for his philosophy, see Stockl, Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (1864-1866), vol. ii., for his publicist writings, see Riezler, Die lilerarischen Widersocher der Pdpste zur Zeit Ludwig des Baiers (1874). See also T. M Lindsay's article on “ Occam and his connexion with the Reformation, ” in the Brit. Quart. Review (July, 1872). Among ancient documents consult Deniile and Chatelain's Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. ii. pt. i. (Paris, 1887); Wadding's Annales Minorum (ed. Fonseca, vols. 7 and 8, Rome, 1733). For a list of Occam's works, see Little's Grey Friars, pp. 22?-2311./i L)
OCCASIONALISM (Lat. occasio, an event), in philosophy, a term applied to that theory of the relation between matter
and mind which postulates the intervention of God to bring about
in the one a change which corresponds to a similar change in
the other. The theory thus denies any direct interaction between
matter and mind. It was expounded by Geulincx and Malebranche
to avoid the difficulty of Descartes's dualism of thought
and extension, and to explain causation. Thus mind and
matter are to Geulincx only the “ occasional” causes of each
other's changes, while Malebranche, facing further the epistemological
problem, maintains that mind cannot even know matter,
which is merely the “ occasion ” of knowledge.
OCCLEVE (or Hoccleve), THOMAS (1368-1450?), English poet, was born probably in 1368/9, for, writing in 1421/2 he says he was fifty-three years old (Dialog, i. 246). He ranks, like his more voluminous and better known contemporary Lydgate, among those poets who have a historical rather than intrinsic importance in English literature. Their work rarely if ever rises above mediocrity; in neither is there even any clear evidence of a poetic temperament. Yet they represented for the 15th century the literature of their time, and kept alive, however faintly, the torch handed on to them by their “ maister ” Chaucer, to whom Occleve pays an affectionate tribute in three passages in the De Regimine Principum. What is known of Occleve's life has to be gathered mainly from his works. At eighteen or nineteen he obtained a clerkship in the Privy Seal Office, which he retained on and off, in spite of much grumbling, for about thirty-five years. He had hoped for a benefice, but none came; and in 1399 he received instead a small annuity, which was not always paid as regularly as he would have wished. “The Letter to Cupid, ” his first poem to which we can afiix a date, was translated from L'Epistre au Dieu d'Amou;'s of Christine de Pisan in 1402, evidently as a sort of antidote to the moral of Troilus and Cressida, to some MSS. of which we find it attached. “La Male Regle," one of his most readable poems, written about 1406, gives some interesting glimpses of his “misruly” youth. But about 1410 he settled down to married life, and the composition of moral and religious poems. His longest work, The Regement of Princes or De Regimine Principum, written for Prince Hal shortly before his accession, is a tedious homily on the virtues and vices, imitated from Aegidius de Colonna's work of the same name, from the supposititious epistle of Aristotle, known as the Secreta secretorum, and the work of Jacques de Cessoles (fl. 1300) Englished later by Caxton as The Game and Ploye of Chesse. It is relieved by a proem, about a third of the whole, containing some further reminiscences of London tavern and club life, in the form of dialogue between the poet and a beggar. 'On the accession of Henry V. Occleve turned his muse to the service of orthodoxy and the Church, and one of his poems is a remonstrance addressed to Oldcastle, calling upon him to “ rise up, a manly knight, out of the slough of heresy.” Then a long illness was followed for a time, as he tells us, by insanity. His “ Dialog with a Friend, ” written after his recovery, gives a naive and pathetic picture of the poor poet, now fifty-three, with sight and mind impaired, but with hopes still left of writinga tale he owes his good patron, Humphrey of Gloucester, and of translating a small Latin treatise, Suite Mori, before he dies. His hopes were fulfilled in
