Gordon Leff – författare

The intellectual history of the fourteenth century is still little known. Apart from the great figures like Ockham and Wyclif we have no detailed knowledge of the leading thinkers or the movements which may be deduced from their work. Dr Leff explains Bradwardnie's system of thought and relates it to the ideas of his contemporaries; these contemporaries are shown to have had their own differences of outlook, and the fourteenth century as a whole is also shown to have differed greatly from the thirteenth.

The papers in this volume fall into four sections. The first part deals more generally with heresy, religious movements and the Church, while the second focuses on Wyclif, covering his path to dissent, his religious doctrines, and a doctrinal comparison with Hus. Philosophical themes come to the fore in the third section, which has papers on the decline of scholasticism in the 14th century and on the trivium, and also includes hitherto unpublished essays on the theology of Augustine''s two cities and on Ockham and nominalism. The final part, with another two papers published here for the first time, discusses Christian, Augustinian and Franciscan concepts of man, and the concepts of natural rights according to Ockham and the Franciscans.