page_title: 1340s
section_title: Philosophy and religion
hierarchical_section_title: 1340s / Europe / Culture, religion and philosophy / Philosophy and religion
caption_attribution_description: English: Sketch labelled 'frater Occham iste'
context_page_description: The 1340s were a Julian calendar decade in the 14th century, in the midst of a period in world history often referred to as the Late Middle Ages in the Old World and the pre-Columbian era in the New World.
  In Asia, the successors of the old Mongol Empire were in a state of gradual decline. The Ilkhanate had already fragmented into several political territories and factions struggling to place their puppet leaders over the shell of an old state; the Chagatai Khanate was undermined by religious unrest and fell to rebellion. The Black Plague swept through the Kipchak Khanate in 1346, and also affected the Genoese colonies under Mongol siege, thence spreading into Europe. The Yuan dynasty in China was struck by a series of disasters, including frequent flooding, widespread banditry, fires in urban areas, declining grain harvest, increased civil unrest and local rebellion – the seeds of resistance that would lead to its downfall. Southeast Asia remained free from Mongol power, with several small kingdoms struggling for survival.
  In Europe, the decade continued the period of gradual economic decline, often mistitled the "depression" of the 1340s.
context_section_description: In the 1340s, Catholic Church was governed under the Avignon Papacy.  Pope Benedict XII died on 25 April 1342, and was buried in a mausoleum in Avignon Cathedral.  Thirteen days later, the cardinals elected Benedictine cardinal and theologian Pierre Roger de Beaufort as Pope Clement VI. He reigned as pope until 1352.
  In 1340s, the controversial Franciscan friar and Scholastic philosopher William of Ockham was at Munich under the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, since 1330. During this time, he wrote exclusively on political matters, as an advocate of secular absolutism against papal authority, for which he had previously been excommunicated. Among the followers of Ockhamism — condensed as the omnipotence of God and Occam's Razor — were John of Mirecourt (fl. c. 1345) and Nicholas of Autrecourt (fl. c. 1347), both of whom taught at the University of Paris. Ockham, Mirecourt and Autrecourt all agreed on the principle of noncontradiction and experience as bases of certainty.
  On November 21, 1340, Autrecourt too was summoned him to Avignon to respond to allegations of false teaching. The trial, under Pope Benedict XII and his successor Clement VI, lasted until his conviction in 1346. Autrecourt was charged with 66 erroneous teachings or "articles", which he publicly recanted before the papal court. He recanted them in public again, in Paris in 1347. Although Ockham also expressed willingness to resubmit to the Church and Franciscan Order, there is no evidence of a formal reconciliation. Ockham is sometimes said to have died in 1349, but it is more likely to have been 1347, possibly of the Black Plague.
  In 1343, Clement VI issued the papal bull Unigenitus.  The bull defined the doctrine of "The Treasury of Merits" or "The Treasury of the Church" as the basis for the issuance of indulgences by the Catholic Church.
caption: A sketch of William of Ockham, from a 1341 manuscript of Ockham's earlier nominalist work, Summa Logicae
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