Of Angels and Pinheads: The Contributions of the Early Oxford Masters to the Doctrine of Spiritual Matter

Surely one of the strangest doctrines to emerge from the intense theological debates of the thirteenth century was the concept of “spiritual matter.”¹ Traceable to theFons vitaeof Ibn Gabirol, spiritual matter (or “universal hylomorphism”) in tandem with the doctrine of the plurality of forms became one of the pillars of what used to be called with such confidence “the Franciscan School.”² In fact, as I shall argue, this terminologically gauche teaching exemplifies the occasional ill fit between the newly discovered natural philosophy of Aristotle and traditional Christian teaching. The metaphysical testing ground par excellence for the compatibility of