William of Ockham has long been considered one of the foremost figures in the history of medieval philosophy and theology. As such his thought is often contrasted with that of the other seminal thinkers of High Scholasticism: Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, and John Duns Scotus, as if those were the appropriate and sufficient voices of debate within which Ockham's thought was developed. The completion of the critical edition of Ockham's philosophical and theological writings has, on one level, confirmed that picture and revealed Scotus as the single most important figure on Ockham's intellectual horizon. The editors, however, along with scholars working on lesser-known figures in the early fourteenth century, have at the same time uncovered a more complex picture of intellectual exchange in which Ockham's immediate contemporaries - those active between 1305 and 1325 - exercised a profound impact on his thought, and he on theirs.

Other contributions of recent scholarship that change or at least refine the way Ockham is viewed today are a more extensive knowledge of the lives of those with whom he interacted, the educational system of the Franciscan order that determined the physical settings in which Ockham was active, and the structure and intellectual activity at universities and other studia in England and on the Continent. These allow a fresh examination – a more nuanced picture – of Ockham’s intellectual heritage and the influence his thought had on subsequent generations.