Paris and Oxford between Aureoli and RiminiChris SchabelOxford ideas in logic and natural philosophy were readily received,analysed, and partially incorporated into corresponding writings of alogical or natural philosophical nature at the University of Paristhroughout the 1320s, 1330s, and 1340s. Precise dating, however, isusually not possible. There was a strong Parisian reaction to Ockham’sphysics before 1327, particularly on the part of Walter Burley, andOckham’sSumma logicaewas available to the influential Parisian artsmaster John Buridan.1Statutes of the Parisian arts faculty show thatOckham’s logic was playing a significant role there by 1339 ([16.10],[16.26]). The logical writings of the Oxford Calculators from the late1320s and 1330s were important in Parisian works of naturalphilosophy from the 1340s and afterwards ([16.19]). Buridan andNicole Oresme used the more abstract Oxford geometrical andmathematical concepts, but made their application to physical theorya fundamental aim, and this contributed to their interesting treatmentsof such topics as the motion of projectiles and the Earth’s rotation.With philosophical theology the story is different. A common viewof theology at the University of Paris in the quarter century betweenPeter Aureoli and Gregory of Rimini is that Paris ignored Oxford justwhen Oxford was experiencing its golden age. After Aureoli lecturedon theSentencesin 1316–18, Parisian scholars busied themselves instagnant isolation refuting his opinions for a few years until about1326, when Parisian thought went into what has been labelled as a‘dormition’, only to be reawakened in 1343–4 by Rimini, who broughtmuch of the new Oxford thought into Paris. Thus in this period Parisnot only lost its customary dominance to Oxford, it actually went intosharp decline in absolute terms because it failed to maintain intellectualcontacts with the main Englishstudium generale(see [16.9] 153).The aim of this chapter is to review and revise this scenario.AlthoughParisian theologywasisolated from Oxford, for the most part, between1318 and 1343, Oxford was equally ignorant of Paris. Moreover, wherescholars have looked, Paris was alive, awake, and productive at leastuntil 1330, and remained the intellectual focal point ofcontinentaleducation. The Parisian ‘products’, of course, differed from those ofOxford, as one would expect from such mutual isolation, but whenbothrigorous currents came together at Paris in the 1340s, they createda dynamic synthesis.THE BEGINNINGS OF ISOLATIONIn the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Paris was the top schoolin philosophy and theology for the secular clergy, and the internationaland hierarchical educational systems of the mendicant orders helpedensure that the leading students in Barcelona, Bologna, Cologne andOxford eventually made their way to Paris. When scholars left thisinternational market of ideas, they carried those ideas with them. Forreasons that are unclear, however, English scholars began to stay athome in the 1310s, and most of the English had left Paris by 1320.Some remained, but few new English students arrived at Paris in the1320s and 1330s. This fact alone accounts for Oxford’s rise in thesedecades: the best of Britain’s students stayed at home.In Paris it was business as usual, with two exceptions: first, it lost itsEnglish scholars; second, the end of the 1320s and the early 1330swere troubled times for the Church. Scholarly energies were sometimesturned to issues like the quarrel between John XXII and the mendicants,and John XXII’s other doctrinal ‘interests’, such as the beatific vision,matters which produced some important writings in politicalphilosophy, for example, although not always directly connected withParis. Otherwise, things went on without the English. Between 1315and 1340 we find at Paris many significant Spanish, Italian and ofcourse French scholars, although a few Germans also left a mark, suchas Thomas of Strasbourg. Only in the early 1320s were there any‘leftover’ English, such as John Baconthorpe, Thomas Wilton andWalter Burley. Moreover, this composition of Spanish, Italian andFrench scholars continued even after Rimini’s ‘recovery’, so that in the1340s we find that our remainingSentencescommentaries come fromAlphonsus Vargas of Toledo of Spain; Rimini, Hugolinus of Orvieto,Paul of Perugia, and John of Ripa from Italy; and John of Mirecourtand Pierre Ceffons from France. The English never really did return inforce to Paris, whereas the German presence increased there markedly,until the creation of the new German universities in the wake of theGreat Schism.To a degree English thought had always played a role in Paris, but itwas primarily English scholars who had also studied theology in Paris,such as Scotus, William of Alnwick, Wilton, Baconthorpe and Burley,who were known to their fellow Parisians. This was consistently thecase even in the thirteenth century, and continued until around 1340.One can take Henry of Harclay as an example: he was cited by namein, for example, distinction 39 of Peter Aureoli’sScriptumversion ofhis commentary on book I of theSentences([16.4] 185–6). ThroughAureoli, almost all Parisian theologians came to learn of Harclay’sposition. Furthermore, Aufredo Gonteri Brito OFM literally absorbedthe whole of Harclay’s ParisianSentencescommentary into his own,when lecturing at Paris in the 1320s. English influence at Paris in the1320s didnotdepend on their physical presence there.What about the influence of contemporary Oxford scholars in thisperiod, in Paris? Before 1326 we have practically no evidence of thenew English theology in Paris, and yet this was a highly productiveperiod. There are several possible reasons for the lack of Englishinfluence at Paris after 1326, however: Pope John XXII’s movementsafter 1326 against the suspect opinions and actions of Ockham, PeterOlivi, Meister Eckhart, Michael of Cesena and Thomas of Wales, whichmay have stifled philosophical flamboyance; the straining of cross-Channel relations at the approach of the Hundred Years War; and theextreme decrease in the numbers of English scholars at Paris after 1325(see, e.g. [16.7] 45–6). The most plausible explanation for the Parisianattitude toward Oxford in both periods is that Parisian thinkers weretoo busy dealing with Aureoli.Peter Aureoli’s stature in medieval thought has not been fullyappreciated, partly because until recently few have bothered to look atParisian thought in the decade after him, when we would expect hisimpact to be felt most intensely. Aureoli comprehensively dismantledthe systems of Aquinas and Scotus, and created a new, internallycoherent system of thought that could not be ignored. It was so large,however, that it left little room for anyone else. Thus LandulphCaracciolo, for example, sometimes seems content to attack Aureolias if there were no one else. Looked at from this perspective, it is nowonder Ockham and the English failed to make an impact.SOURCES FOR STUDYING PARISIAN THEOLOGY, 1315–40Between 1315 and 1340 many significant scholars studied at theUniversity of Paris. When we look at Parisian thought in this era weare struck with the large number of extantSentencescommentariesfrom the period 1315–30. In this period, these commentaries are themain source for current issues not only in theologyper se,but alsoscience and philosophy more generally (see [16.17] 274–80). Thereare about twenty named authors with major extant theological works,several anonymous commentaries (mostly Franciscan) that can beassigned to this period, and we find many of Wilton’s ideas viaBaconthorpe and Pierre Roger’s from Francis Meyronnes (see [16.23]).We have only two commentaries that we can assign with certainty tothe 1330s, those of Strasbourg and Peter of Aquila, both conservativethinkers. Although we do have the fascinating letters between Nicholasof Autrecourt and Bernard of Arezzo, theirSentencescommentariesdo not survive. Autrecourt’s was in fact burned. Thus we have aboutthirty theologians participating in a twenty-five-year discussion, butmost of the discussion had apparently ended by the early 1330s.There is some evidence for the lasting influence of the theologians inthese decades. Although Early Modern motives in publishing werecomplex, it is still interesting that at least ten Parisians of this period,for the most part not well known to us, had major theological worksprinted in the late fifteenth through to the early seventeenth centuries,but this could be said for only five Oxford scholars from the sameera.2Yet very few historians have tried to trace the course of any debatein the Paris of that time. Even the editors of Rimini had little success infinding the Parisian sources with whom he agreed, though this waspartly because he did not cite them himself. In truth, later theologians,especially Franciscans, looked back upon these decades as a goldenage inParisianthought, at least Franciscan thought. The fifteenthcenturyEnglish Scotist John Foxoles placed the ultimate origin of threeschools of roughly Scotist thought in the 1320s and 1330s: Meyronnists,Bonetists and pure Scotists (see [16.5] 270–1). In some areas ofphilosophy there arose a ‘Marchist’ school as well, arising from Francisof Marchia, and further articulated by Michael of Massa and Williamof Rubione. By Rimini’s time some of their ideas were common enoughto be used without reference.It is too early to tell the story of Paris between Aureoli and Riminiwith any degree of accuracy. Indeed, we are unsure of important basicdates for many works, e.g. the versions of Aureoli’sSentencescommentary; Peter Thomae’s and Peter of Navarre’s lectures; andRubione’s commentary (see [16.1] 199–207; [16.4] 78–82). Recentlychanges have been made to the chronology of several figures in the1330s: Peter of Aquila, Thomas of Strasbourg, Nicholas of Autrecourtand Bernard of Arezzo (see [16.13]). Book I of Marchia’sSentencescommentary, from lectures given just after Aureoli’s, survives in twomain versions in at least fifteen manuscripts and five fragments, butremains unedited. In light of the inchoate nature of the research, ageneral view of the period is simply impossible. Therefore, let us examinethe theory of Oxford superiority and Parisian isolation, stagnation,dormition and reception of Oxford thought by comparing more closelythe discussion of Parisian and Oxford scholars in two of the four areasin philosophical theology that Courtenay deems ‘worthy of specialmention’ inOxfordtheology in the very same period: epistemologyand future contingents ([16.11] 22–9).FUTURE CONTINGENTSNo fewer than ten theologians active from 1315 to 1340 have had allor much of their Oxford treatments of future contingents published inmodern critical editions.3For Paris, by contrast, this is true for twofigures only: Aureoli and Navarre. Lest this philosophical issue beconsidered an area of particular strength for Oxford and weakness forParis, it must be added that Gregory of Rimini, the Parisian theologianwho is considered most responsible for the integration of the ‘NewEnglish Theology’ into the Parisian milieu in the early 1340s, devotedmost of his energy to refuting Aureoli, building onParisiantradition.Moreover, during the celebrated quarrel over future contingents atLouvain in the later fifteenth century, a controversy that grew to includeissues of divine power and will, Aureoli, Meyronnes, Marchia andNicholas Bonet played explicit roles, but none of the Oxford theologiansdid (see [16.21] 407–8). So we must be prepared from the outset toadmit that the supposed superiority of Oxford thought in this era isperhaps more a reflection of modern scholarly interests than of medievalconsiderations.Aside from the verbatim copying (readingsecundum alium) ofDurandus by Bernard the Lombard and Dionysus de Burgo SanctiSepulchri, and of Harclay by Gonteri as mentioned, scholars activebetween 1318 and 1330 focused on Aureoli’s opinions. The mainelements of Aureoli’s position have been outlined above. Temporalthings are indistant or non-distant to God’s eternity, and future-tensedpropositions are neither true nor false determinately; nor does God’sknowledge make them so, since it does not temporally precede thefuture. In addition, Aureoli’s emphasis on absolute divine necessityleft little room for any divine action, so Aureoli developed an awkwarddivision between the intrinsic divine will of ‘complacency’ which wasimmutable and absolutely necessary, and the extrinsic will of‘operation’, by which God actually acts, as in creation.4The reaction to Aureoli’s theory in England was slight. Ockhamshowed no awareness. Chatton knew some of Aureoli, and quoted thebasics of his ideas on propositions and prophecy, so he must have knownAureoli’s distinction 38, article three. In refuting this fragment ofAureoli’s treatment, Chatton even said, ‘this would be a niceexplanation, if it were true’. Adam Wodeham demonstrated about thesame cognizance of Aureoli as had Chatton, and perhaps knew a bitmore about the Parisian debate generally. Otherwise, there was littleresponse. Some of Bradwardine’s remarks in hisDe causa Deiwhichappeared to some scholars to refer to Aureoli personally, really didnot, and Bradwardine was a bit confused if he meant that thepositionthat he heard defended in Avignon and Oxford was Aureoli’s own.Aureoli never played a big role in the Oxford debate, which insteadwent in other, interesting directions, examining in depth issuessurrounding prophecy, the ontological status of divine foreknowledge(and thecomplexe significabile), and finally the different types ofnecessity with respect to both the past and future.5These last ‘Oxford’ issues only came to prominence in Paris withRimini. In the intervening years, almost every Parisian theologian whosepertinent works can be securely dated to between 1318 and 1330focused much of his discussion on Aureoli. Every one of Aureoli’s mainpoints was attacked, since he appeared to have denied foreknowledgeand prophecy altogether. In the 1320s, Baconthorpe, Caracciolo, andhis follower the anonymous author of Vienna ÖNB 1439 criticizedAureoli’s vulnerable concept of the twofold divine will; Caracciolowondered whether creation came from God at all under Aureoli’sscheme, if the act of creation were somehow ‘extrinsic’ to God.Meyronnes, Caracciolo, Gerard of Siena, Bonet, and in an odd wayGerard Odon rejected Aureoli’s notion of indistance, maintaining thatsuch a negative relation made little positive sense. Meyronnes, Marchia,and Michael of Massa opposed the neutrality of future contingentpropositions, making use of both logical arguments and Scripture intheir defence of bivalence.Several scholars defended Scotus’s account and appealed to thetraditional distinctions between the composite and divided senses ofsuch propositions as ‘what God foreknows will necessarily come about’,and between the necessities of the consequent and of the consequence(and parallel distinctions) in such consequences as ‘God foreknows X;X will be’. All of these Aureoli had refuted at length, so this constitutesthe major ‘conservative’ point shared by many of these thinkers.Nevertheless, interesting positive theories came out of the debate. ForWilton, whose ideas in this context we know via Baconthorpe, whatwas needed was to show that there are different levels of determinationin human activities anyway, and that we need not fear all such‘predetermination’. Thus God can know ‘contingent’ futures. Francisof Marchia developed a similar solution, although in much greaterdepth. In short, he distinguished between different types ofdeterminations and indeterminationsde inesseandde possibili. Humansin fact determine themselves beforehand with respect to what they areactually going to do; this is determinationde inesse,about what is inreality, without which no one would or could actually do anything.This does not mean that they are determinedde possibili,however, ina way that thepossibilityto do otherwise is removed. Determinationde inessewas the basis of divine foreknowledge and was required forhuman action, while indeterminationde possibilipreserved humanfreedom and left God’s foreknowledge intact. Aureoli would have foundseveral problems with this theory, but it was expressed eloquently andsystematically. Massa and Rubione accepted Marchia’s solution as theirown, and by Rimini’s time it seems to have been a commonplace.Through Rimini it was passed to later theologians, and used in the latefifteenth century by the well-read Fernand of Cordoba against Peter ofRivo’s defence of Aureoli’s doctrine.Rimini does not cite Marchia by name in hisSentencescommentaryin this context, nor do the editors trace Marchia’s influence. Like mostscholastics, Rimini was not in the habit of citing by name those withwhom he agreed. When he devoted an entire question to refutingAristotle and Aureoli’s opinion on future contingent propositions, hedid not cite his Parisian predecessors who did the same thing. HisAugustinian confrère Massa, in particular, focused much energy onthis very point, and may have been Rimini’s immediate source forMarchia’sde inessel de possibilidistinction. Nevertheless, he was notcited by name either and historians have doomed him to oblivion evenin his own order. Moreover, the Parisian Nicholas Bonet was probablyRimini’s reason for treating propositions yet again after so many othershad. During the Louvain controversy in the 1470s, Cardinal Bessarionand Francesco della Rovere (Pope Sixtus IV) would remember andapplaud their fellow Franciscan Bonet’s refutation of Aureoli’sindistance notion in the former’sNatural Theologyof around 1330,but they looked less favourably on Bonet’s apparent agreement withAureoli that future contingent propositions could not be true or falsewithout entailing fatalism. Indeed, Bonet seems to have limited thecertainty of divine foreknowledge, in a way Aureoli himself would nothave approved (see [16.20] 127–279, 714–69).Rimini’s main goal in his impressive and exhaustive treatment is todefeat Aureoli once and for all on the issue of propositions. In doingso, Rimini defended foreknowledgeper se,and only then did he go onto other sub-issues, some of which came from Oxford. Rimini showshis familiarity in this context with Wodeham, Chatton, Ockham andthe Monachus Niger. This is well known, but it does not seem possiblewith future contingents to show when exactly these Oxford ideas werein circulation in Paris. Probably it was not before 1330, but certainlyby 1343. Unfortunately the paucity and conservative nature of pertinentsources from the 1330s do not allow any more specificity.EPISTEMOLOGYKatherine Tachau has looked at the Oxford discussion of epistemologyin these decades, and at Aureoli and some of his Parisian successors.With the help of other works, we are able to piece the Parisian picturetogether fairly comprehensively. In epistemology as in future contingentsAureoli played a pivotal role. Although he was emphasizing vision,Aureoli’s successors interpreted his theories as a radical departure fromprevious epistemologies, primarily Scotus’s. Scotus had differentiatedbetween intuitive and abstractive cognition basically by saying thatintuitive cognition was of objects immediately present, and abstractivecognition was the knowledge one had when the object was absent.Aureoli put forth a redefinition of intuition and abstraction, takingvarious erroneous visual ‘experiences’ (he gives eight examples) as hisstarting point to define intuition. In doing so, Aureoli maintained thatintuition occurred when onethoughtthe object was immediatelypresent, and in that case the ‘apparent being’(esse apparens)was infact present to the mind, even with veridical intuition. For example,when one is on a moving ship, one experiences the motion of objectson the shore. Since one intuits the apparent being of such motionwithout its real presence, or even existence, outside the mind, and sinceeven in Veridical’ intuition one in fact intuits only apparent being,then one cannot infer the real presence or existence of the objects of‘normal’ experiences, Aureoli argued. Moreover, if produced by God,an erroneous intuition would be indistinguishable from a veridical one.For some of Aureoli’s successors, this jeopardized all certainty, althoughAureoli apparently did not intend this (see [16.24] 85–112).By his own admission, Ockham had limited access to Aureoli’sScriptum,but Ockham learned enough about Aureoli to treat the latter’sposition in a confused way in hisOrdinatio,written while at the Londonconvent in 1320–4. The most idiosyncratic aspects of Ockham’streatment are his claims that one can have a true intuition that somethingdoesnotexist, and that God could give us a false intuition of somethingnot present, but we would still discern its falsity. These awkwardopinions were easy targets for those who followed in the Englishdiscussion. In debates with his confrère Walter Chatton, Ockhammodified some of his views ([16.24] 113–53). Chatton himself,composing hisSentencescommentary in 1321–3, knew Aureoli’sScriptumbetter, but Chatton’s readers were not able to distinguishclearly between Ockham and Aureoli in Chatton’s work, and this ledto further confusion ([16.24] 180, 185–6, 207–8). Adam Wodehamwas Chatton’srapporteurat the Franciscan Londonstudium,and whenhe in turn lectured on theSentencesat Norwich, London and Oxford,beginning perhaps in 1328 or even earlier, Wodeham came to exploreAureoli’s views directly, so that he knew him better than anyone else inEngland.6From the discussions of future contingents and epistemology wecan perhaps infer that the Franciscans’ London convent housed theonly manuscript of Aureoli’sScriptumin England, since Ockham,Chatton and Wodeham, who show the most extensive knowledge ofAureoli, seem to have examined his work there. Unfortunately we knowless about epistemology at Oxford after Wodeham, but the Londonconvent and Adam Wodeham may be the key to the passage of Englishtheology to Paris beginning in the 1330s.As in the case of future contingents, Aureoli’s thought played asignificant role in Parisian epistemological discussions in the 1320sand 1330s. Of the theologians Tachau inspected from this period, shefound that only Strasbourg appeared unfamiliar with Aureoli’sepistemology, and even Strasbourg has been added to those who treatedAureoli in that context (see [16.13] 455). The same can be said ofsome of the theologians Tachau has not studied, such as Baconthorpe(see [16.14] 57). In many cases, these theologians had difficultyunderstanding Aureoli’s position because they approached his textwearing Scotist glasses, reading into Aureoli Scotus’s definition ofintuition and abstraction. Still, the epistemological debate that followedAureoli in Paris had a continuing impact even after the full receptionof English thought. Caracciolo’s treatment, for example, was wellknown to Pierre Ceffons, lecturing in 1345 (see [16.24] 321).In epistemology, however, English thought is already present by 1332.Parallel passages in Chatton and William of Rubione reveal a closeconnection in the context of epistemology, and other evidence reinforcessuch an early cross-Channel link (see [16.15] 39–40; [16.13] 447–8).Rubione’s commentary could have been written any time between 1323and 1332, however, so Chatton’s commentary may have even beenavailable in Paris immediately following his ownSentenceslectures.There is another difficulty: we cannot be certain about Rubione’stestimony until we examine Marchia’s works exhaustively. In othercontexts, Marchia influenced both Chatton and Rubione, and althoughan inspection of the two main versions of Marchia’sSentencescommentary did not reveal the relevant discussion of abstractive andintuitive cognition, perhaps there was another source. It would be oddfor such an original thinker as Marchia to have been perhaps uniquein ignoring Aureoli on this issue.Chatton’s impact is certainly present, however, in the most famousepistemological debate of the time, perhaps of the entire Middle Ages,the exchanges of letters between Nicholas of Autrecourt and Bernardof Arezzo in 1336–7. Taking the lead from Aureoli and the Parisiandiscussion following his lectures, Autrecourt took the next step anddenied the possibility of certainty based on sensory perception. Noapparent perception of an extramental object could provide certaintyof the existence of that object. Moreover, even assuming the existenceof those objects, one could never be certain of cause and effect relations,the bases of natural philosophy. If it is possible for us to be mistakenabout the external world and efficient causation because of God’saction, Autrecourt maintained that it is possible without qualificationto be so mistaken. There have been many treatments, even monographlengthaccounts, of the radically sceptical aspects of Autrecourt’sthought. Until recently this debate was seen as evidence of the influenceof that ubiquitous ‘Ockhamism’, but Tachau shows convincingly thatthis historiographical interpretation is based on a long series of errorsand false suppositions. In fact, there is no evidence for Ockham’sinfluence on Autrecourt in the debate (see [16.24] 335–52; [16.13]453–9; [16.25] 248–50).Still, there are strong indications that Autrecourt knew Chatton’swork, if not Ockham’s. In 1340 the arts faculty restricted a propositionthat Autrecourt, while being reviewed in 1346, admitted he had held,presumably in the 1330s: ‘God and a creature are nothing.’ Althoughin 1346 Autrecourt used the termcomplexe significabileto describewhat he had held, and Tachau therefore links the proposition toWodeham, it could just as easily be the case that Autrecourt came tohold the proposition via Chatton’s influence, and only later learnedWodeham’s terminology. Indeed, Tachau says that Autrecourt conflatedthe views of the two English Franciscans ([16.24] 353–6).The first strong evidence for Wodeham’s presence, and for Ockham’s,comes again with Rimini. As in the case of future contingents, Riminicombined a concern with Aureoli and Parisian currents with a closeknowledge of the English debate, although he was less negative towardAureoli in this context. Rimini opposed Ockham’s position, as hadmost Oxford scholars, but Wodeham played a positive part in thedevelopment of the Italian Augustinian’s opinion. Here as well we seethe introduction of thecomplexe significabileto yet anotherphilosophical problem, and in the decade following Rimini the Englishand Parisian trends merged ([16.24] 357–83).THE IMPACT OF ENGLISH THOUGHT IN PARIS AFTER 1340The impact of English thought in Parisian philosophical theology inthe 1330s appears to be mostly limited to Oxford writers active inLondon before 1323, e.g. Ockham in his non-theological works,Chatton in hisSentencescommentary, and perhaps Wodeham. By 1343,however, Rimini was using a very wide range of English philosophicaland theological works. There is reason to believe that there was animportant Italian connection here. William of Alnwick was named lectorat the Franciscanstudiumin Bologna in 1323, and Thomas Waleyswas lector at the Dominican convent there in 1326–7. Walter Burley,who by 1327 knew so much of the intellectual currents of both Oxfordand Paris, was in Bologna in 1341. Ockham himself was in Italy for awhile after 1328, although it is doubtful that he had much of an impactthere just then. These English scholars brought their minds and theirbooks, and by about 1340 parts of Burley’s, Ockham’s, Rodington’sand Chatton’sSentencescommentaries and no doubt many otherEnglish works were available in Bologna. Finally, before returning toParis in 1342, Gregory of Rimini lectured in Bologna, Padua and Perugia(see [16.6] 13–32; [16.13] 449–50). This may help explain how Riminibrought so much with him, and why the full introduction of Englishthought into Paris seems so abrupt.After 1343 there was definitely an English influence in Paris, buthow much of an impact? In theology, Courtenay points to four Englishtrends. First,Sentencescommentaries shrunk in size. Second,Sentencescommentaries were restructured, so that they departed from Lombard’sorganization and focused on sophismata. Third, schools of thoughtdisappeared, and more emphasis was placed on individual thinkingthan on system building. Finally, new logical, physical and mathematicalideas were applied to theological issues ([16.8] 111–14).The size ofSentencescommentaries at Paris does not seem to haveshrunk appreciably after 1343, although we must remember that thesize of commentaries depended on whether they were revised by theauthor into longer forms(ordinationes). The structuring ofcommentaries is a different matter. Here we find that after 1343theologians such as Mirecourt, Henry Totting of Oyta, Peter d’Aillyand Peter of Candia do depart from Lombard’s distinction organization,the last three, writing in the 1370s, asking a mere handful of very largequestions. Still, many stuck close to Lombard’s system, such as Johnof Ripa and John Hiltalingen of Basel. And even Mirecourt and Candiafollowed Lombard’s basic order, usually finishing off their commentarieson the first book with questions on divine knowledge, foreknowledge,power and will. Moreover, some of this was already present in, forexample, Francis of Marchia. Although Marchia superficially keeps toLombard’s distinctions, the contents of the questions do not correspondto Lombard’s. Thus in one version Marchia devoted all of distinctions35, 36, 38 and 39 to future contingents.It is a difficult question as to whether school traditions existed inan important way in Paris before 1343, or whether there was a bigchange afterwards. Both before and after 1343, mendicants for themost part kept their discussion within their own orders, at least. Thetraditional view, however, has been that Paris was pretty much aScotist university in these early decades, or that Parisians were lessindividualistic than their Oxford counterparts. We have seen that thereare a few examples of readingsecundum alium,hardly an originalactivity. It is also true that Marchia and Caracciolo, for example, hadtheir own groups of close followers on certain issues, and that manytheologians were content to modify a Scotist account in reply toAureoli. The trend of paraphrasing and even copying otherscontinued, however, long after the Oxford currents had been absorbedinto the Paris environment. But how do we assess this situation? Theiraim continued to be system building: Aureoli had a new system;Marchia tried to develop a new system, leaving much of Scotusbehind; his followers tried to hammer it out; Rimini himself wanteda system. The Parisian scholars may have looked at the big picturemore than did those at Oxford, who focused on individual problems.This does not mean that Parisians did not criticize. They had nochoice but to be fundamentally negative in their works in response toPeter Aureoli’s complete revision of most aspects of philosophicaltheology. It is simply that after their attacks on Aureoli, they tendedto either develop new systems or seek refuge in old ones. It did nogood if one’s ideas did not hold together, after all. Especially telling inthis regard was a tendency, already in Wilton and later in Bonet (atleast in future contingents), to throw up one’s hands where nosystematic solution could be found. This is exactly what Hiltalingenand Candia did later on (see [16.20] 713, 804).Finally, there is the new logic, mathematics and physics in theology.This was a trend already evident in Paris in the late 1310s and 1320sin the writings of Aureoli, Marchia, Massa and Odon. Scholars of the1340s make increasing use of Oxford geometrical, mathematical andlogical ‘measure’ language to discuss such topics in philosophicaltheology as the infinite, already one of Rimini’s favourite subjects. Evenif the newlanguageof Oxford was not developed in Paris, certainlythe problems associated with and presupposed in that language wereexplored before 1343, however. In this way, Oxford thought reinforceda Parisian trend already in motion, and the writings of Rimini,Mirecourt and Ceffons abound with the fruits of the new merger, bothin terms of new tools and in terms of new topics. Ceffons even developsthe tools and techniques further (see [16.16], [16.18]).Ultimately, the safest basis for claiming that English scholarshipplayed a big new role in Paris after 1343 is citations. One need lookno further than the master of citations himself, the Augustinian JohnHiltalingen of Basel, who lectured on theSentencesat Paris in 1365–6. He cited some twenty Oxford scholars from the previous fiftyyears, and in his discussion of foreknowledge and predestinationalone, Hiltalingen cited Bradwardine, Heytesbury, Richard ofKilvington, Wodeham, Fitzralph and Nicholas Aston (see [16.27]242–50; [16.20] 789–807). English thought had permanentlypenetrated the ‘mainstream’ of European philosophy by 1365. Onefinds impressive numbers of English citations in the 1340s withRimini and Hugolino of Orvieto. In many places John of Mirecourt’scommentary appears to be a simple matter of cutting and pastingfrom Wodeham, Halifax, Bradwardine, Kilvington, Langeley andBuckingham, which suggests that Parisians may have used Oxfordmaterial, without attribution, to show off and gain a reputation asinnovators (see [16.12]).This may even be the case with Rimini himself. It is telling that inthe period after Scotus, Rimini’s editors found that he cited Aureoliand Ockham about 200 times each. Only three other scholars between1320 and 1343 have more than ten references in Rimini: Wodeham(66), Fitzralph (34) and Burley (58), although the editors have found afew references to several other theologians from the period on bothsides of the Channel. It is hard to believe that Rimini would treat Aureoliso often while ignoring the intervening Parisian debates whichundoubtedly provided ammunition. As we have seen, Rimini was lesslikely to cite Parisians explicitly (although he used their material), butit is also the case that English citations and ideas would have beenmore interesting to an audience who had heard all of the anti-Aureoliarguments before.CONCLUSIONThere is no doubt that Oxford thought between 1315 and 1340 wastruly exciting. The main reason for this was that more English scholarssimply stayed at home. There is also little doubt that Rimini to a largeextent was responsible for first explicitly introducing many of thestimulating English developments into the Parisian discussion, and thatEnglish thought outside of natural philosophy and logic was largelyignored in Paris in the meantime, at least until around 1330, whenWalter Chatton’sSentencescommentary was probably available inParis. But Rimini’s Aureoli citations and much present research showthat there is also considerable evidence that Parisian theology, at leastuntil the 1330s, continued to be illuminated by brilliant minds as ithad before 1318 and as it would after 1343. What happened after1343 was that newer English techniques and even English theologicalproblems further enriched what was already a lively affair at thecontinental university. After 1343, in future contingents for example,there are more issues to discuss. But from the period 1318 to 1343,Oxford, although to a lesser extent than Paris, was not conversantwith trends in the other city, and in many cases awareness of, say, theParisian debate on future contingents, would have stimulated theEnglish treatment of the same issue.Whether Oxford thought was ‘better’ than Parisian thought in thisperiod, or vice versa, is in the final analysis a matter of taste. Moderntaste thus far has leaned heavily toward Oxford. Late medieval andEarly Modern tastes, perhaps more conservatively, went in the directionof Paris. It really does not matter. Surely, however, the continuedflourishing of Paris and the unique developments at Oxford between1315 and 1350 can only mean a high point inEuropeanphilosophygenerally, both universities contributing and deserving further study.NOTES1. On Burley’s reaction to Ockham, see above, Chapter 15, pp. 369–77; on Buridanand theSumma logicae,see John Buridan [16.2] xxx–xxxv.2. For Paris there are all or part of theSentencescommentaries of Durandus, Aureoli,Meyronnes, Baconthorpe, Landulph Caracciolo, Gerard of Siena, William ofRubione, Strasbourg and Aquila, and Nicholas Bonet’sNatural Theology;forOxford, those of Ockham, Holcot, Wodeham and Buckingham, and Bradwardine’sDe causa Dei.3. For some Oxford theologians, see above, Chapter 14, pp. 354–5; for Paris,Aureoli’s contribution to the dispute is edited by Schabel [16.4] and Peter ofNavarre’s in Petrus de Navarra [16.3].4. See above, Chapter 15, pp. 380–1 and cf. Schabel [16.4] 75–8, 175–80.5. Some of these issues are discussed in Chapter 17, below: see especially pp. 410–11 (complexly significables).6. 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