William of Ockham. Dialogus. Part 2. Part 3, Tract 1 ed. by John Kilcullen et al. (review)

The Dialogus is William of Ockham’s magnum opus of political theory. A massive three-part work begun around 1332, only its first section reached its intended form at Ockham’s death in 1347. Sections of the Dialogus are scattered amid roughly forty manuscripts; the full work seems to have been collected together shortly before the first of its three printings (1476, 1494, and 1614). Now the Dialogus is receiving a critical edition in the final volumes of the William of Ockham Opera Politica series, which had previously published Ockham’s shorter political works in four volumes under the editorship of H. S. Offler between 1940 and 1997. The present volume edited by John Kilcullen, John Scott, Jan Ballweg, and Volker Leppin presents the middle sections of the Dialogus. Part 2 comprises twin embryonic tracts in which Ockham contends that the Avignonese pope, John XXII (1316–34), was a heretic for his statements about the incomplete Beatific Vision of God by the Blessed in Heaven before the Resurrection of the Body and the Last Judgment. This material was meant to be part of a comprehensive treatment of John XXII’s errors, including those found in his bulls on apostolic poverty. Ockham never expanded these two tracts, nor did he rework them into the conversation between master and student that gives the Dialogus its distinct appeal. About the Beatific Vision itself, Ockham is too busy showing that John XXII had misinterpreted biblical and patristic authorities to say anything original. More interesting is his definition of heresy employed to condemn the pope: a Catholic must believe any doctrine considered orthodox by the faithful, even if that teaching has never been defined by the Church (as was the case with the Beatific Vision before Pope Benedict XII’s Benedictus Deus of 1336). The power of the papacy is the subject of the first section of the third part of the Dialogus contained in this volume. Here Ockham’s sparring partner is not John XXII or a papal apologist like Dondinus of Pavia, but rather his fellow critic Marsilius of Padua. One particular Marsilian thesis to which Ockham takes exception is that a Catholic must merely believe the Bible and any interpretation of it adopted by a General Council—a position that would absolve John XXII of any heresy. Kilcullen, who provides introductions to the texts and four substantial end-notes, concludes that the third part of the Dialogus is the only unambiguous addressing of Marsilius and the Defensor Pacis in the works of Ockham. The clash between these two heavyweights of medieval political theory is really what makes this volume important historically. Surveying the critical apparatus and the supplementary material found on a website (https://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/dialogus/ockdial.html), one cannot but be impressed by the tremendous amount of thought and care that has gone into producing this readable critical edition of the Latin text. The only complaint against the volume is that the secondary literature cited is somewhat limited and not current: so, for example, the opinion of Geraldus Odonis on the Beatific Vision is mentioned (p. 5) without reference to Christian Trottmann’s 2001 edition of the text.