Gabriel Biel

Gabriel Biel (; 1420 to 1425 – 7 December 1495) was a German scholastic philosopher and member of the Canons Regular of the Congregation of Windesheim, who were the clerical counterpart to the Brethren of the Common Life. Because of his reliance on the scholastic tradition, as well as nominalist views, he is credited an "articulate spokesman of the via moderna and … a discerning user of the thought of via antiqua" (Oberman, 11). He has been called ultimus scholasticorum, the last of the schoolmen.

Life Biel was born in Speyer. In 1432 he was ordained to the priesthood and entered Heidelberg University to obtain a baccalaureate. He succeeded academically and became an instructor in the faculty of the arts for three years, until he pursued a higher degree at the University of Erfurt. His first stay was brief, lasting only until he transferred to the University of Cologne. He did not complete his degree there either, and would return to Erfurt in 1451 to finish. The curriculum at these two universities varied greatly, with Cologne stressing Thomas Aquinas and overall scholastic curricula heavily, and Erfurt emphasizing William of Ockham. During the early 1460s, he became a preacher in the Cathedral of Mainz, of which he was vicar.

While at Mainz, Biel wrote Defensorium obedientiae apostolicae, a treatise supporting in particular the right of Pope Pius II to decide appointments without appeal. This work involved him in the Mainz Diocesan Feud, and resulted in exile for a period at Kiedrich as a pastor.

Later, Biel became a superior of the canons at Butzbach. He lived in the House of the Brethren on the Rheingau until 1468. He was invited by Duke Eberhard I to become the first provost of the new Brethren House at St. Mark's, where he served for nine years, furthering the Brethren movement by bringing about a General Chapter of the Brethren on the upper Rhine in Mainz and integrating Brethren piety into the curricula of the school there. In 1479 he was appointed provost of the canonry in Urach.

At this period Biel cooperated with Duke Eberhard in the founding the University of Tübingen. Appointed in 1484 as the first professor of theology in the new faculty, he continued to be one of the most celebrated members of its faculty until his death, even serving as Rector in 1484 and 1489. There, he opposed the appointment of the Realist Johann Heynlin to the faculty.

Though he was almost sixty years of age when he began to teach, Biel's work, both as professor and as writer, reflected the highest honour on the young university. His work consists in the systematic development of the views of his master, William of Ockham. In later years, he was known as the "last of the Scholastics". He retired to the newly founded Brethren House of St. Peter's at the Einsiedel near Tübingen, where he died. and died in

Works

Biel's first publication, on the Canon of the Mass, is of permanent interest and value. His second and most important work is a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which would come to play a major influence on Martin Luther during the coming Reformation. In this he calls William of Ockham his master, but the last three books show him more Scotist than Nominalist. Matthias Scheeben describes him as "one of the best of the Nominalists, clear, exact, and more positive as well as more loyal to the Church than any of the others" (Dogmatik, no. 1073). The historian Johannes Janssen stated that he was a nominalist who erected a theological system without incurring the charge of unorthodoxy.

Biel, though a nominalist, was tolerant of Realism, which also flourished at Tübingen under the leadership of Konrad Summenhart. A scholastic, he was, to quote Janssen, "free from empty speculations and ingenious intellectual juggling, being concerned with questions and needs of actual life",

Works Gabriel Biel, Sacri canonis Missae expositio resolutissima literalis et mystica, Brixen, 1576. Gabriel Biel, Epitome expositionis canonis Missae, Antwerp, 1565. Gabriel Biel, Gabrielis Biel Canonis Misse Expositio, edited by Heiko Oberman and William J. Courtenay, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1965-1967. Gabriel Biel, Sermones, Brixen, 1585. Gabriel Biel, Collectorium sive epitome in magistri sententiarum libros IV, Brixen, 1574. Gabriel Biel, Tractatvs varii atqve vtilis de monetis, carvmqve mvtatione ac falsitate in gratiam studiosorum ac practicorum collecti, Cologne: Theodorus Baumius, 1574. Gabriel Biel, Treatise on the power and utility of moneys, translated by Robert Belle Burke, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, and London: Oxford University Press, 1930. Gabriel Biel, Defensorium Obedientiae Apostolicae et Alia Documenta, edited and translated by Heiko Oberman, Daniel E. Zerfoss, and William J. Courtenay, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968.