Abstract
There are two things that everyone “knows” about Gabriel Biel (d. 1495).1 The first of these things is that Biel was heavily influenced by William of Ockham. Although other scholars appear in the most important of Biel’s scholastic works, his Collectorium circa quattuor libros Sententiarum (written from 1484 on) — we meet time and again Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Robert Holcot, Adam Wodeham, Gregory of Rimini, and Pierre d’Ailly — Biel tells us explicitly that his purpose is to capture the meaning of Ockham’s Sentences commentary in abbreviated form.2 The second of the things that everyone knows about Biel is that he was read by the young Martin Luther and that Biel acted as something of a conduit through which some later-medieval scholastic thought was channeled to the Reformation and perhaps beyond.
For comments and questions, thanks go to Maarten Hoenen, Bruce D. Marshall, Chris Schabel, and especially Lauge O. Nielsen. NB: I do not necessarily respect the orthography of any text that I use.
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Friedman, R.L. (2003). Gabriel Biel and Later-Medieval Trinitarian Theology. In: Friedman, R.L., Nielsen, L.O. (eds) The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory, 1400–1700. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 53. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0179-2_6
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