Abstract

This dissertation examines discussions of Mary's motherhood in the Oxford Franciscan school at the beginning of the fourteenth century and includes a study and edition of William of Ware's and Robert Cowton's commentaries on Book III, distinction four of Peter Lombard's Sentences and William of Nottingham's commentary on Book III, distinction three, question two of the Sentences. In a seminal article, written 42 years ago, Aquila Emmen proposed that the Oxford Franciscans expanded Mariology by supporting the Immaculate Conception and an activist account of Mary's role in the Incarnation. William of Ware and Duns Scotus altered the direction of academic discourse with innovative arguments about Mary's conception and Mary's active motherhood. This study assesses the impact of Ware's and Scotus' account of Mary's active participation with the Holy Spirit in the generation of Christ on the Mariology of the Oxford Franciscan school. ;In this thesis I analyze the background issues involved in discussions of Mary's motherhood including physiology of generation, the powers of the soul, and terminological problems. I propose that Ware's and Scotus' activist account of motherhood and the polemics of scholastic disputation forced their contemporaries to choose between Aristotle and Galen. In an edition and study of Ware's work and a study of Duns Scotus' position, I examine their challenge to the Aristotelian view of female passivity and arguments in favor of Galen's "double seed" theory. I conclude that Ware and Scotus were promoters of an activist account of Mary's motherhood which ran counter to the "common" opinion accepting an Aristotelian passivist account of motherhood. ;In order to gauge Ware's and Scotus' influence upon their Oxford contemporaries, I present Cowton's and Nottingham's positions on Mary's motherhood. I include a brief historiographical study, analysis of the manuscript tradition, a proposal for an alternative stemma for Cowton's manuscripts, and an edition of their discussion of Mary's motherhood. I conclude that Cowton and Nottingham rejected Ware's and Scotus' Galenic activist account of motherhood and accepted Aristotle's passivist account. This rejection calls into question the view that the Oxford Franciscans were developing uniformity of opinion concerning Mary's role in the Incarnation