William of Ockham's Opus Nonaginta Dierum
WILLIAM OF OCKHAM ON THE RIGHT TO (AB-)USE GOODS * William of Ockham’s Opus nonaginta dierum (OND) has not always fared well in the hands of historians.1 Quintessen- tially medieval—an almost word-for-word refutation of an already prolix defense of several improbationes of earlier pa- pal decrees—its greatest claim to fame has usually been its length, not the content of Ockham’s argument. Annabel Brett, for example, concluded in a remarkable study that William of Ockham had failed to adequately answer Pope John XXII’s criticism of the Michaelist interpretation of Franciscan pov- erty. Specifically, she argued that he “failed to isolate apotes - tas licita which would be a power to perform acts which are licit in the sense of consonant with right reason, but are not * This is a revised version of a paper read for the “Power” Conference (13-16 July 2007) at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University. I wish to thank Melanie Brunner, G. E. M. Gasper, and Jennifer Hart Weed, as well as Peter King, for their comments. All translations are my own. 1 Ockham’s writings are cited according to the following abbreviations: OPol — Opera politica, 4 vols. edited by H. S. Offler, et al., vols. 1-3 (Man- chester: Manchester University Press, 1956-1974), vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). OTh — Opera theologica, edited by Gedeon Gál et al., 10 vols. (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1967-88). Me- dieval texts are cited according the divisions of the text, with the volume and page numbering of the edition given in parentheses; the abbreviations used follow those found in Paul Spade, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), xv-xvii.
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