Born in the village of Ockham in Surrey, near London, England, William of Ockham (1280-1349) studied first the arts and then theology at Oxford University. While working on his doctorate he lectured on the Bible and the Books of Sentences by Peter Lombard (1100-1160), the official textbook of theology at nearly all universities well into the 16th century. Hundreds of philosophers and theologians wrote commentaries on the Sentences and so did Ockham, but although his contained fairly standard sorts of siputations (formal questions with replies and rebuttals) according to the style of the time, the chancellor of Oxford - an ardent follower of Aquinas - brought Ockham before the Holy See at Avignon on charges of heresy. Instead of retracting his opinion, Ockham took the opportunity to present explicit criticisms of current orthodoxy (such as whether Jesus and his followers possessed property, one of the "major" issues of the day) and to raise questions about the nature of the relation of the papacy to secular authority. Reprimanded for his publicist views but not officially condemned, Ockham went on to write half a dozen politically charged works, such as Dialogus de potestate Papae et Imperatoris (Dialogue on the Power of the Emperor and the Pope, 1339-1342) in which he argued against the temporal supremacy of the pope in favor of the idea of a secular state, laying the foundations for modern theories of government. Ockham continued his criticism of Pope John XXII in favor of the Franciscan General Michael of Cesena, with whom in 1328 he joined a branch of the Franciscans called the Spirituals and fled from Avignon to Pisa. But the Franciscans also found him too independent of mind, expelling Ockham from their order, and he took refuge in Munich with Ludwig of Bavaria.

bio by Daniel Kolak in Lovers of Wisdom
(Wadsworth, 1997)