![]() Despite the lack of a teaching chair, Ockham was extremely active during these years in developing his theological and philosophical positions, writing treatises and commentaries on logic and physics, a variety of treatises on theological questions, and an important series of quodlibetal questions that, presumably, he debated orally at Oxford or at Avignon. A commission of theologians appointed by Pope John XXII to examine Ockham's writings submitted two lists of suspect doctrines in 1326, but there is no evidence of any final action having been taken on the charges that, in any case, were relatively mild. Ockham was summoned to Avignon in 1324 to answer the charges against him, and he remained there four years, awaiting the outcome. Because Ockham's academic career was thus interrupted while he was an inceptor awaiting award of the teaching license, he came to be known as "the venerable inceptor" -a title later misconstrued as meaning "founder of nominalism" ( inceptor scholae nominalium ). ![]() The granting of his teaching license was prevented by the chancellor of the university, John Lutterell, who in 1323 went to the papal court at Avignon to present charges against Ockham of having upheld dangerous and heretical doctrines. Normally the completion of his lectures on the Sentences, which gave Ockham the status of a baccalaureus formatus or inceptor, would have been followed by award to him of a teaching chair in theology. Ockham's lectures on the Sentences made a profound impression on the students of theology at Oxford, but his new way of treating philosophical and theological questions aroused strong opposition by many members of the theological faculty. Ockham's writings show intimate familiarity with the teachings of Duns Scotus, but this is explained by the dominant position Duns Scotus had acquired at Oxford, particularly within the Franciscan order. Although an old tradition indicated that he studied under John Duns Scotus, it seems unlikely that he did so, since Duns Scotus left Oxford at the beginning of the century and died in 1308. Entering the Franciscan order at an early age, he commenced his course of theological study at Oxford in 1309 or 1310, and completed the requirements for the degree of master of theology with the delivery of his lectures on Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences in 1318 –1319, or, at the latest, 1319 –1320. William of Ockham, the most influential philosopher of the fourteenth century, apparently was born sometime between 12 at the village of Ockham, in Surrey, near London.
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