Nicholas insisted to the commission of inquiry that all his assertions were made disputatively rather than definitively and that he always meant that one should adhere strictly to the faith. The commission called this a “foxy excuse” and sentenced him to burn his own writings in Paris. He did so in 1347 and is last heard of a few years later as dean of Metz. A few contemporary references show he was known and understood; one of his readers was Nicole Oresme, certainly a man capable of appreciating Nicholas’s achievement, though Oresme’s own genius was more mathematical than philosophical.82
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