Review
A new crop of Ockhamists has begun to show. On the political works we have recently had the notably acute London dissertation {1968} of the Canadian scholar, Dr. G.D. Knysh. -- Hilary Seton Offler, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 22, 1971. p.71
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In Ockham therefore we may observe the birth-pangs of the "modern mind" in its formal rather than substantive aspects. This, we think, is where his originality lies. His intellectual independence was one of the things which made Ockham's contemporaries consider him a formidable figure. As is well-known, Conrad of Megenberg compared him to the Dragon of the Apocalypse. The tremendous persuasiveness of his mode of argumentation, its bulk also, the fact that this doctor invincibilis attacked the orthodoxy of John XXII, Benedict XII, and Clement VI, his weaving together all manners of true events so as to make them seem part of a diabolical plan to "enslave the world", these and other characteristics made him an impressive opponent of the Papacy which, O summum of ironies, he was only too willing to exalt.
