THE SCHOOLMEN the world Later, partly as a result of criticism by his Franciscan colleague Walter Chatton, Ockham gave up belief in Wctions Names in mental language, he came to think, were simply acts of thinking, items in an individual person’s mental history Ockham accepted Scotus’ distinction between intuitive and abstractive knowledge; it is only by intuitive knowledge that we can know whether a contingent fact obtains or not However, Ockham makes explicit a consequence of the theory that is only implicit in Scotus By his almighty power, Ockham maintains, God can directly whatever he currently does by means of secondary causes In the ordinary way, God makes me know that a wall is white by making the white wall meet my eye; but if he normally acts thus via normal sensory causation, he can make me have the same belief in the whiteness of the wall without there being any white wall there at all This thesis obviously opens wider the breach in epistemology that had been opened by Scotus, and broadens the road to scepticism.16 These and other views of Ockham quickly gave rise to concern among his Franciscan brethren, and in 1323 he was asked to explain to a provincial chapter of the order his teaching about the Aristotelian categories A year later, in response to a denunciation from Oxford, Ockham had to face a commission at the papal court in Avignon set up to examine his Sentences for heresy The commission, which consisted mainly of Thomists, and included the former Oxford chancellor Lutterell, failed, after many months of work, to produce a convincing case against him However, Ockham’s stay in Avignon did give his philosophical career a wholly new turn The pope of the time, John XXII, was in conXict with the Franciscan order on two issues concerning poverty: the historical question whether Christ and his Apostles had lived in absolute poverty, and the practical question whether the Franciscan order could legitimately own any property St Francis had held up an extreme ideal of poverty: the friars were to own nothing, never touch money, and depend on alms for food, clothing, and shelter St Bonaventure, the reforming general of the order, made a distinction between ownership (dominium, or lordship) and use (usus) Franciscans could use property, but they could not own it, whether as individuals or collectively as a religious order In 1279 Pope Nicholas III 16 Ockham’s epistemology is discussed in Ch below 92