William of Ockham

Atlantic West Europe (1312–1323): Royal Authority, Famine, and Regional Challenges

From 1312 to 1323, Atlantic West Europe, encompassing the Low Countries, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy, Aquitaine, central France, Alsace, and Franche-Comté, grappled with severe agricultural crises, growing royal ambitions, and heightened regional tensions. The devastating Great Famine (1315–1317) deeply impacted society, economy, and political stability throughout the region.

Political and Military Developments

• France: Capetian Centralization and Regional Resistance

  • King Louis X (r. 1314–1316) and subsequently his successors, Philip V (r. 1316–1322) and Charles IV (r. 1322–1328), attempted to strengthen central royal authority despite succession uncertainties.
  • Resistance to royal taxation and increasing centralization emerged from nobility and urban centers, complicating governance and highlighting regional autonomy.

• Flanders and Brabant: Continued Urban Autonomy

  • Flemish cities such as Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres asserted economic independence amid ongoing conflicts with local nobility and French royal authority.
  • In 1323, Count Louis of Nevers succeeded in Flanders, reinforcing alliances with France and thus intensifying internal Flemish tensions.

• Aquitaine and Gascony: Persistent Anglo-French Rivalry

  • The English control of Aquitaine, especially in Bordeaux, remained a major source of Anglo-French friction, prompting continued political maneuvering and small-scale military confrontations.

• Burgundy, Alsace, and Franche-Comté: Shifting Allegiances

  • The Duchy of Burgundy managed to maintain substantial autonomy under the Capetian dynasty through careful diplomatic balancing.
  • Alsace and Franche-Comté were contested territories, influenced by competing interests from French and imperial authorities.

• Brittany and Normandy: Maintaining Autonomy

  • Brittany, under Duke John III (r. 1312–1341), preserved its autonomy by navigating skillfully between English support and French influence.
  • Normandy remained mostly stable under French control, though internal tensions persisted due to economic pressures from the Great Famine.

Economic and Social Developments

• Great Famine (1315–1317): Social and Economic Devastation

  • Severe weather led to crop failures, resulting in widespread starvation, population decline, and economic hardship across Atlantic West Europe.
  • Rural and urban communities faced severe food shortages, leading to increased mortality, social unrest, and peasant revolts.

• Economic Strain and Market Instability

  • Trade and commerce suffered significantly due to declining productivity and disrupted trade networks, especially affecting Flemish cloth production and regional fairs in Champagne and Burgundy.

Cultural and Intellectual Developments

• Universities and Scholasticism

  • Despite crises, universities, notably Paris, continued their scholastic traditions, sustaining intellectual debate and theological discourse through scholars like William of Ockham.

• Artistic and Architectural Continuity

  • Gothic architectural projects continued, albeit at reduced scale and pace due to economic constraints. Notable progress occurred in Strasbourg and other urban centers.

Religious Developments

• Church Response to Crisis
  • Monasteries and religious institutions provided essential aid during the famine, though their resources were strained.
  • Mendicant orders, especially the Franciscans and Dominicans, expanded charitable activities in affected urban areas, strengthening their influence among the populace.

Legacy and Significance

The era of 1312–1323 profoundly impacted Atlantic West Europe through the devastation of the Great Famine and heightened regional tensions. Royal efforts to centralize authority faced strong opposition, shaping political dynamics in subsequent decades, while economic disruptions left lasting effects on trade and agriculture. These crises laid foundations for later socio-economic transformations and set the stage for more intense conflicts, including the impending Hundred Years’ War.

William of Occam, or Ockham, after joining the Franciscans, studies at Oxford, where he encounters the thought of the late John Duns Scotus and where, from about 1319 to 1320, he writes a commentary on the “Sentences” of Peter Lombard.

William of Ockham employs his powerful logical faculty to elaborate an influential theology in his Quodlibeta septem (“Seven Miscellaneous Questions”) and his Summa totius logicae (“Sum of All Logic”).

Adopting a nominalist solution to the problem of universals, William maintains that all existing things are individuals and that universality exists only in concepts or names.

It logically follows, therefore, that God, unhampered by any universal essences, is free to create every individual unconnected with every other, and that subsequent causal connections among such individuals are unnecessary.

Accepting the Aristotelian dictum that science is demonstration based on certain, secure premises, William rejects the Thomistic view that theology is a proper science and therefore rejects rational demonstrations of God's existence, of divine attributes, and of the immortality of the soul.

He counters the philosophical explanations of others with the logical principle of parsimony, sometimes called Occam's razor (but used by some scholastic philosophers before him): "A plurality (of reasons) should not be posited without necessity."

Ockham, whose nominalist views in law and ethics lead him to voluntarism and emphasis on the divine command, concludes that the ultimate source of value and obligation lies not in any "natures" of things but in the free will of God.

He views the rightness or wrongness of human acts as a function of their being commanded or forbidden by divine authority.

Avignonese Pope John XXII, denied the right to veto the election of German king Ludwig (Louis) IV, excommunicates him in 1324.

Louis releases his Habsburg rival Frederick the Fair in 1325 and makes him co-ruler of Germany, but limits Frederick’s authority to Austria.

In defiance of the pope, Louis declares that he does not require papal confirmation to rule, just majority approval.

Marsilius, taking refuge at Ludwig’s Munich court in 1326, is in 1327 also excommunicated by the pope for his pro-imperial political philosophy.

Along with fellow philosopher John of Jandun and several disaffected Franciscan friars, Marsilius accompanies Ludwig on his march to Rome in 1327-28.

Following Ludwig’s imperial coronation by lay officials and his installation of Nicholas V as antipope, Marsilius returns with Ludwig to Germany the following year and lives at Ludwig's court.

In this year, Louis also welcomes William of Occam and Michael of Cesena, the Franciscan minister-general, despite their also being under a ban of excommunication.

William, in flight from a protracted heresy trial in Avignon, reportedly says to Louis: "Defend me with your sword and I will defend you with my pen."

Most of the German princes come to back Ludwig’s political camp against increasingly fierce papal denunciation.

William of Occam had been called to the papal court at Avignon in 1324 to answer a charge of heresy in a trial that drags on without a formal conclusion.

In 1328, Occam and Michael of Cesena, the Franciscan minister-general, flee Avignon for the Munich court of the pope’s enemy, Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV.

Meister Eckhart teaches so-called (by modern scholars) speculative or essential mysticism.

In essence, his doctrine holds that only God actually exists and that any creature exists only insofar as its soul is in contact with God; this vital contact is accomplished only when the individual is released from sin.

By 1326, these doctrines have gotten him into trouble with church authorities, and the Inquisition examines his sermons.

Summoned by Avignonese Pope John XXII to defend himself against charges of heresy, he appeals his case in 1327 but dies before the case can be terminated.

Finally, the pope, in 1329, will condemn only a few propositions of Eckhart’s doctrine.

Emperor Louis had assured his position in the ongoing struggle between the rival Habsburg, Wittelsbach and Luxembourg dynasties by defeating his Habsburg rival Frederick the Fair at the 1322 Battle of Mühldorf—a fact that had prompted his former Luxembourg ally King John of Bohemia to explore possibilities to increase his own power base.

He had approached Duke Henry of Carinthia, whom he had driven from the Prague throne in 1310, and in 1327 arranged the engagement of his younger son John Henry, brother of the future Emperor Charles IV, with Henry's heiress Margaret.

Margaret is the only surviving daughter of Duke Henry, also Count of Tyrol and former King of Bohemia, with his second wife Adelaide, a daughter of the Welf duke Henry I of Brunswick.

As her father's three marriages had produced no male heirs, he had reached an agreement with Louis IV in 1330 that had enabled Margaret to succeed him in his Carinthian and Tyrolean estates.

John Henry had been sent to Tyrol and in 1330, upon approval by Emperor Louis, he and Margaret had celebrated their wedding in Innsbruck at the age of eight and twelve.

According to contemporary sources, the children disliked each other from the beginning.

By the marriage, King John had secured access to the Alpine mountain passes to Italy, which in turn had driven the emperor to break the arrangements with Margaret's father.

When Henry of Carinthia died in 1335, Louis had given Carinthia to the Habsburg duke Albert II of Austria, who had raised inheritance claims as the eldest son of King Albert I of Germany and Elisabeth of Gorizia-Tyrol, Margaret's paternal aunt.

Nevertheless, when the Tyrolean lands were claimed by the Wittelsbach dynasty, she cleverly played on her affiliation with the rival Luxembourgs.

They had sent John Henry's capable brother Charles in her support, who, backed by local nobles, at least enforced Margaret's succession as Countess of Tyrol.

The situation had again worsened, when young John Henry turned out to be a haughty, incompetent co-ruler and philanderer disrespected by the Tyrolean aristocracy.

His brother Charles had temporarily acted as a regent; however, his mediation efforts had been rejected and in 1336/37 he left Tyrol to join his father on a Prussian Crusade.

When on the evening of November 1, 1341, John Henry came home from hunting, Margaret had refused her husband admittance to their Tirol Castle residence.

Furious, John Henry had moved around the country, but found no shelter in any noble residence.

He had finally been forced to leave the Tyrolean lands and had been received as a refugee by the Aquileia patriarch Bertram of St. Genesius.

Margaret again plays the dynasties off against each other and escapes the revenge of the deprived Luxembourgs by turning to the House of Wittelsbach: in the presence of Emperor Louis IV, she marries his eldest son, Margrave Louis I of Brandenburg, on February 10, 1342, in Meran.

The fact that she has entered the marriage without being granted a divorce from John Henry, thus contravening canon law, causes a veritable scandal on the European stage and earns the couple excommunication by the new Pope Clement VI.

Margrave Louis succeeds in gaining the support of the Tyrolean nobles and takes it upon himself to declare Margaret's marriage to John Henry null and void.

The scholars William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua defend this "first civil marriage" of the Middle Ages, claiming that John Henry had never consummated his matrimony.

William of Ockham, whose nominalist views in law and ethics lead him to voluntarism and emphasis on the divine command, concludes that the ultimate source of value and obligation lies not in any "natures" of things but in the free will of God.

He views the rightness or wrongness of human acts as a function of their being commanded or forbidden by divine authority.

Ockham probably dies in Munich in 1347, a victim of the Black Death.