Robert Holcot

c.1290-1349. Biblical expositor. As a Dominican theologian he commented on a wide range of theological topics, though he asserted free will contrary to his contemporary Thomas Bradwardine.* There is no clear evidence that Holcot studied or taught at Cambridge. His commentary on the Sentences (Oriel MS 15) uses the term potentia absoluta of God's complete freedom to will all things. God's grace bears no necessary relation to His love, for God's will can dispense with anything. This philosophical Pelagianism is precisely what Bradwardine and Wycliffe attacked in fourteenth- century Oxford. By loving God less than another man loves Him, one can gain the greater reward. The sixteenth century knew Holcot for his questions on Lombard's Sentences, published in 1497, 1510, and 1518. The Commentary on Wisdom passed through several editions after 1480. The 1586 Basle edition amended his extreme views on the Immaculate Conception. Holcot died in the black plague of 1349.