St Thomas of Hereford, Pope John XXII and William of Ockham

Stephanie A. Mann had an interesting post yesterday on her blog Supremacy and Survivai in which inter alia she generously commends a piece of mine about St Thomas of Hereford. She then progresses to write about Pope John XXII, of whom I wrote recently in my post citing Fr Hunwicke in Pope John XXII, and his dispute with the Spiritual Franciscans and, most notably, William of Ockham. Ockham, a distinguished product of the Oxford Schools ended up, as she says, in Munich at the court of the Emperor Lewis IV. A visiting German academic one told me Ockham is probably buried under a Munich supermarket - I imagine if he is ever disturbed that he is less identifiable than King Richard III was in his car park.

This then leads to her showing, thanks to a discovery by the emininent historian of libraries Professor James Carley in the library at Lanhydrock in Cornwall, how Ockham’s defence of the Emperor Lewis against Pope John was being used by King Henry VIII in his dispute with Pope Clement VII over the “King’s Great Matter”

Stephanie’s article can be read at 

Saint Thomas de Cantilupe and the Pope Who Canonized Him

In England St Thomas of Hereford is normally commemorated on October 2nd rather than August 25th, his date of death, as that is the feast of St Louis.