Gabriel Biel, the Ockhamist philosopher and theologian, was born at Speyer, Germany, and died at Einsiedel (Schönbuch). He studied philosophy and theology at Heidelberg and Erfurt, joined the Brethren of the Common Life, and became a professor of theology (1484) at the newly founded University of Tübingen, where he taught the "modern way," that is, according to the nominalist position of William of Ockham. Biel's "Commentary on the Sentences" (Epithoma Pariter et Collectorium Circa IV Sententiarum Libros, Tübingen, 1495) is a skillful summary of Ockham and a collection of the views of other medieval thinkers from Anselm to John Duns Scotus. Widely read in the German universities, Biel exerted a strong influence on Martin Luther (see P. Vignaux, Luther, Commentateur des Sentences, Paris, 1935).

As a philosopher, Biel was quite ready to criticize and to offer his own developments of Ockham's nominalism...