William of Ockham was Doctor invincibilis et singularis[1]. These epithets are, I believe, coin of European rather than of purely British currency.
The names all belong to Oxford, and to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The great men of the Franciscan Order, whom I first enumerated, are matched, I believe, only by a few beyond it: by Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, whom Gower calls the 'great clerk'; by Archbishop Bradwardine, and Wiclif. Bradwardine is commemorated in a couplet of Dryden, founded upon Chaucer, which runs:
I cannot bolt this matter to the bran,
As Bradwardine and holy Austin can[2].
To Wiclif I shall again refer. But I think enough has now been said to afford some colour of justification for the attempt to match Oxford in this one respect with Paris: where William of Champeaux, with his rebellious but transcendent pupil Abelard, rather ushered in the University proper, than belonged to it. I do not know whether a list of those whom in the strict sense she reared, and who attained to high excellence, is accessible. One very great name was contributed to it by England, for Stephen Langton was her alumnus. I have spoken of matching Oxford with Paris: but in the present state of the evidence, and within the limit I
- ↑ These particulars are given in the British Section of the work of Dr. Budzinsky under the respective names: or in Mr. Lyte's History of the University of Oxford, p. 156.
- ↑ Dryden's Fables, Tale of the Nun's Priest.
