constituting it; their motto, _Universalia sunt realia_, was
readily capable of extension far beyond the Church, and William of
Champeaux himself carried it to the extent of arguing that nothing
is real but the universal. The nominalists, on the other hand,
argued that "universals" are mere notions of the mind, and that
individuals alone are real; their motto was _Universalia sunt
nomina_. Thus the central question in the long controversy
concerned the reality of abstract or incorporate ideas, and it is
to be observed that the realists held views diametrically opposite
to those which the word "realism" today implies. In upholding the
reality of the idea, they were what would now be called idealists,
whereas their opponents, denying the reality of abstractions and
insisting on that of the concrete individual or object, were
realists in the modern sense.

The peculiar importance of this controversy lay in its effect on
the status of the Church. If nominalism should prevail, then the
Church would be shorn of much of its authority, for its greatest
power lay in the conception of it as an enduring reality outside of
and above all the individuals who shared in its work. It is not
strange, then, that the ardent realism of William of Champeaux
should have been outraged by the nominalistic logic of Abélard.
Abélard, indeed, never went to such extreme lengths as the
arch-nominalist, Roscellinus, who was duly condemned for heresy by
the Council of Soissons in 1092, but he went quite far enough to
win for himself the undying enmity of the leading realists, who
were followed by the great majority of the clergy.


PORPHYRY