Monday, March 05, 2012

Ockham and the London friaries

Three additions to the Logic Museum. First, a summary of Ockham's Summa of Logic. The material on part I is pretty much complete, but parts II and III, and particularly part III, need further work.  Part III has been little studied - even Boehner only got as far as chapter 2.  I wrote the Wikipedia article on the same subject some years ago, but that is a mere stub.

Next, London Greyfriars,  one of five proposed articles on London friaries.  This is an obvious continuation of the version I wrote in December 2010 for Wikipedia.  Unfortunately I was blocked by administrators, halfway through writing this section, which as you can see is still incomplete.  One of the administrators actually deleted the article, although it was soon restored.  This was all part of an ongoing feud with Wikipedia whose origins have long since been forgotten, as with most feuds.  The new article completes the section on the buildings and - very important - has a list of some of the books which John Leland found in the Greyfriars library before it was dispersed by King Henry's henchmen.  I am still fascinated by the idea that Ockham stayed at Greyfriars while he wrote Summa Logicae.  Many of his biographers think so, but I had a correspondence with William Courtenay who persuaded me that this is still not certain.  It is pretty certain that Ockham, Wodeham and Chatton were all together at some time.  What we are not certain about is where this was.  Note, however, that the Greyfriars library contained quite a few works by the venerable inceptor.

Finally, a stub on the Carmelite friary, which also had an extensive library.  The crypt of the friary is still visible under the offices of Freshfields in Whitefriars street, and there is a link to some photos.

2 comments:

William M. Connolley said...

Well, I've added your link. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Edward Ockham said...

Mischief.