Bishop Of Paris Research Articles

William of Auvergne on the Various States of Our Nature

Although William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris from 1228 to his death in 1249, criticized Avicenna severely, he also adopted many philosophical positions of Avicenna. In a recently published article, I emphasized William's considerable debt to the philosophy of Avicenna, and in a still-to-be-published article I pointed out how William was indebted to Avicenna for his view of what it is to be a human being, and especially for his view of the spirituality of the human soul. For much of his lengthy work, De anima, William follows Avicenna's philosophy as he found it in the great Islamic thinker's Liber de anima, seu sextus de naturalibus; not, of course, without serious criticism on many points. In chapter 5, however, of his De anima, William rather abruptly introduces a historical concept of human nature, which is closer to that of Augustine than of Avicenna or Aristotle, in place of the philosophical concept of human nature, which he derived largely from Avicenna, whom he often confused with the real Aristotle. In introducing such a historical concept of human nature or of the nature of the human soul, William raises several rather intriguing problems, which I want to discuss in this paper. First, he raises a question about how the various historical states of human nature are to be conceived and how they are to be combined with the philosophical concept of nature that he derives from Avicenna. Second, he raises a question about how he can, while claiming to proceed exclusively by means of philosophical proofs, introduce such topics as the original state in which Adam and Eve were created, the original sin by which they fell and which they passed on to the rest of the human race, and Christian baptism by which the harm stemming from their sin can be undone. Finally, William speaks about the soul's state of natural happiness as opposed to the state of glory, and though his treatment of these states is rather brief, it raises a further question about how William envisaged these states and their relationship to each other. Hence, the paper will have three parts: the first on the present and past states of human nature of which William speaks and on their relationship to the philosophical concept of human nature, the second on how William introduces into what he claimed was strictly philosophical such apparently theological topics, and the third on how William understands the relation between the soul's state of natural happiness and the state of glory.

1277 and all That — Students and Disputations

On 7 March 1277, étienne Tempier, bishop of Paris, issued a decree condemning 219 ”errors“ that were henceforth not to be taught in the university under threat of excommunication. So much has been written about this episode, from the thirteenth century onwards, that it scarcely needs introducing. Indeed, a leading scholar in the field has implied that nothing remains to be said about the events themselves since the standard problems either have been solved or are insoluble owing to the absence of documents. Yet the continuing speculation is a clear sign that the episode is poorly understood. Major studies of the last twenty-five years have offered markedly different interpretations of the intentions of those involved and the effects of their actions. Much effort has gone into condemning or excusing Tempier, but we still have little idea of where, and in what context, the condemned articles originated, rendering such judgments at best premature. The present study will attempt to address this problem by reexamining the text of the condemnation and other related sources to argue that they contain important evidence that has so far been overlooked.

Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Social Portrait (review)

Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Social Portrait. By William J. Courtenay. [Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series, 41.1 (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1999. Pp. xix, 284. $64.95.) This is William J. Courtenay's third book on medieval universities, students, and masters. It is definitely his most unusual; in its mix of urban topography, prosopography, university financial records, and a criminal law case, it is even a path-breaking book. The genesis of the book came about with Courtenay's recovery or re-discovery of a document from the University of Paris, a computus (financial record) from 1329-30. Written on the last quire of the oldest surviving register of the proctors of the English-German nation at Paris, it is a list of university faculty and students who contributed money for a special legal fund for the defense of a student accused of rape. Part I consists of three chapters describing the computes (its text is contained in App. 1), how such collections were made, and the precipitating event: the rape of a woman named Symonette. The quire containing the computes had been folded incorrectly when it was inserted into its codex; by rearranging it Courtenay could, for the first time, ascertain its meaning and significance. It is a document that lists students, faculty, and university associates residing near the university who contributed between December 29, 1329, and March, 1330, to a legal defense fund for the appeal of the case of Jean le Fourbeur. It begins with a street-by-street survey of the Latin quarter. As an individual contributed to the fund, his name and the amount of the donation were noted. Later sections of the document simply record names and amounts donated, with no location. Courtenay surmises these might be individuals missed during the house-tohouse collection. Symonette, a jongleuse (singer/entertainer), accused Jean le Fourbeur (John the Rascal) of raping her in the summer of 1329 somewhere in the diocese of Meaux, to the east of Paris. A student at Paris, Jean had since returned to Paris, where he was arrested and imprisoned by the Bishop of Paris, Hugh of Besanqon, who released him into the custody of his master. Although Jean denied the charges, he was re-imprisoned until he could pay a substantial fine of 400 pounds. After Jean paid the fine and was released, he pointed out that the fine was actually illegal because the university and its members enjoyed papal immunity from monetary fees. …

William of Auvergne on Time and Eternity

In the early thirteenth century Christian thinkers in the Latin West encountered for the first time the Aristotelian philosophy that was pouring into Europe through translations from Arabic into Latin. William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris from 1228 until his death in 1249, was one of the principal figures in the first reception of the Aristotelian writings in the West. William, in fact, displayed a remarkable openness to Aristotelian thought, embracing much of it as his own, while firmly rejecting other teachings as opposed to the faith. Despite the various ecclesiastical prohibitions against the teaching of Aristotelian philosophy during the first half of the century, William said, “Although in many matters we have to speak against Aristotle, as is truly right and proper — and this holds for all the statements by which he contradicts the truth — he should still be accepted, that is, upheld, in all those statements in which he is found to have held the correct position.”

Celebrating Ibn Rushd’s Eight-Hundredth Anniversary

In the context of the world-wide celebrations of the eight-hundrthanniversary of Abu al-Walid Ibn Rushd, known to Western scholars asAverroes (1126-1198), the Tunisian Cultural Foundation (Bayt al-Hikmah) held an International Averroes Symposium, sponsored jointlywith UNESCO, in Carthage, Tunis, on February 16 to February 22,1998. The symposium was hosted by Abd al-Wahab Buhdiba, Directorof Bayt al-Hikmah, and was inaugurated by the President of Tunisia,Zayn al-Abidin Ali, who declared 1998 Ibn Rushd’s year. This symposiumwas attended by a large number of scholars from France, England,Spain, the United States, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Libya, andTunisia.It was my good fortune to open the symposium with a lecture titled“Averroes, Aquinas and the Rise of Latin Scholasticism in WesternEurope,” in which I tried to highlight the decisive role Ibn Rushd‘sCommentaries on Aristotle played in the rediscovery of Aristotle inWestern Europe, the resurgence of interest in Greek-Arabic philosophy,and the consequent rise of Latin Scholasticism. Through translations bysuch eminent scholars as Michael the Scot and Heman the German duringthe first decades of the thirteenth century, Ibn Rushd’s work triggereda genuine intellectual revolution in leamed circles. Before long, Latinphilosophers and theologians had split into two rival groups, the pro-Averroists, with Siger of Bradbant (d. 1281) at their head, and the anti-Averroists, with St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) at their head. ”he principalissues around which the controversy tumed were the unity of theintellect, the eternity of the world, the immortality of the soul and thedenial of divine providence. The confrontaton between the two rivalgroups became so acute that in 1270, the Bishop of Paris, Etienne ...

Philosophie et théologie en conflit : saint Thomas a-t-il été condamné par les maîtres parisiens en 1277 ?

On the 7th of March, 1277 the bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, condemned 219 propositions most of which were of a philosophical nature. Shortly afterwards he again attacked 51 theses taken from the writings of the theologian Giles of Rome. In both cases some theses of Thomas Aquinas were also effectively attacked. Does this mean that Aquinas was more than indirectly aimed at ? It is difficult to reply affirmatively since, among other reasons, a third attack this time aimed directly against him seems to hâve been supported by Tempier. This attack had however lead to nothing and finally the Holy See cleared Aquinas of any suspicion of heresy.

William of Auvergne on the Individuation of Human Souls

William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris from 1228 to his death in 1249, was one of the first theologians of the thirteenth century to take into serious account the philosophical works that poured into the Latin West during the last half of the twelfth and the early decades of the thirteenth century. William showed a great deal of openness toward the works of those to whom he referred as “Aristotle and his followers,” and obviously drew upon them, even going so far as to adopt the Avicennian arguments for the existence of God as the being that is necessary through itself, and to claim that the Avicennian expression, “necesse esse per se,” is the proper name of the first principle. On the other hand, he also firmly rejected many Aristotelian doctrines when he found them to be in opposition to the faith.

William of Auvergne and the Manichees

William of Auvergne became a master of theology in the University of Paris in 1223 and was appointed bishop of Paris by Gregory IX in 1228. William governed the church of Paris until his death in 1249, while continuing to write the works which constitute his immense Magisterium divinale et sapientiale. Despite the fact that he was the first of the thirteenth-century theologians to appreciate the value of the Aristotelian philosophy that poured into the Latin West during the last half of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, his writings have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Étienne Gilson has sketched well the impact of the influx of Greek and Arabian philosophical works into the Christian West: Up to the last years of the twelfth century, when the Christian world unexpectedly discovered the existence of non-Christian interpretations of the universe, Christian theology never had to concern itself with the fact that a non-Christian interpretation of the world as a whole, including man and his destiny, was still an open possibility.

William of Auvergne and the Jews

[He] is in the line of the great souls of the Middle Ages who spanned the whole compass of current knowledge. Bishop and doctor, William of Auvergne is one of the noble figures of the thirteenth century (F. Vernet).William was chaplain to Queen Blanche, King Louis’ mother, and in an age of great bigotry he excelled in excessive bigotry (Ch. Merchavia).In 1240 William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, was present at a form of hearing, trial, disputation, or inquisition between Christians and Jews to determine whether or not the Parisian Jews should have their copies of the Talmud destroyed. The Talmud was condemned. Some two years later the large quantity—probably twenty-four cartloads—of Jewish books which had been confiscated in 1240, and locked since then in the Dominican convent, was publicly burned. The consigning of the books to the flames is reminiscent of the burning of heretics and is one of the circumstances of the whole event which has led some commentators to see the trial as a form of Inquisition.

The Trinity, or the First Principle (De Trinitate, seu de primo principio) (review)

12o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:1 JANUARY 1991 William of Auvergne. The Trinity, or the First Principle (De Trinitate, seu de primo principio). Translated by Roland J. Teske, S.J., and Francis C. Wade, S.J. Medieval Philosophical Texts in Translation, No. 98. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1989. Pp. v + 286. Paper, NP. William of Auvergne (c.119o--1249) was professor of theology at the University of Paris and bishop of Paris. His major work, the massive seven-part Magisterium divinale et sapientiale, was composed between c. 1223 and a236. The work under review contains an introduction to and translation of its first part, De Trinitate, in which William sets out his metaphysics of being and an investigation of the Trinity based on it. This review focuses on the metaphysics, perhaps the first systematic Latin metaphysics in the thirteenth century and a work heavily influenced by Avicenna's metaphysics, one of those works of Greek and Arabic philosophy then coming into circulation in the Latin West for the first time. William's metaphysics rests on two distinctions, one between two concepts of "a being," the other between two concepts of "being." Something may be a being either through its essence or by participation. The former's essence includes its being, the latter's does not; such a being partakes of another's being. There must be a being through its essence, for the alternatives, a circle of participators of being or an infinite regress, are impossible, the latter because it would render impossible a concept of being. As for "being," in its first sense it refers to the essence left when we strip away a thing's accidents. So understood "being" signifies what is signified by a defining expression or name of a species. Teske suggests William also includes under this head a notion of being as a bare entitas left when things are stripped of all forms, including substantial forms. But William mentions no stripping away of substantial forms. Elsewhere in his corpus he does talk ofentitos, but this refers, I think, to the second sense of "being." In this sense, being is what "it is" says of everything and is something besides the essence of a thing, except in the case of something that is a being through its essence. William intends this second concept of "being" when he talks of beings as participating in being. This suggests Aquinas's later distinction between being and essence. There is a unique being through its essence, God, in which being and essence are not distinct. It is numerically one and particular, but does not fall under a genus. Other beings derive their being from it. Though possible in themselves, their existence and its continuation are due to the overflow of first being into them. William is critical of those views of the philosophers he cannot assimilate to a Christian world view. Unlike Avicenna, he argues that a free, omnipotent, wise, and good first being is the creator of all else. He rejects the doctrine of a world infinite in past time, arguing that the world has a starting point. Against the idea that all possibility is rooted in matter (and hence that the creation of things requires a pre-existent uncreated matter) he defends a doctrine of creation ex nihilo by grounding all possibility in God's power. The philosophers also attribute too much causal autonomy to creatures' natures. William rather stresses God's providence and continual sustenance of natures in their being. Indeed, he may view creatures as mere conduits for the divine causality, not genuine causes--a reading Teske, however, disputes. BOOK REVIEWS 121 Teske's introduction is clear and well done. The translation is generally accurate, though one might quibble at the translators' common practice of altering the tense or mood of verbs and at the fact that they have made the text less metaphorical in tone than it actually is They also often omit inferential particles and the like to shorten long sentences and ratify William's dense prose. Consequently the English reader bears a somewhat heavier burden in determining the argumentative structure of the text than did his or her medieval...

XX Thomas Overton v. Sir John Fastolf

It is not surprising that the longest suit on record involving Englishmen in France in these years should have had as its protagonist Sir John Fastolf who, in this suit, was at the centre of a lengthy legal process against one of his chief servants, Thomas Overton.Stripped of its inessentials, the suit was concerned with the charge that Overton had been cheating Fastolf of moneys due to him and, above all, that he had constantly refused to produce the accounts by which, it was implied, the charge might have been disproved. At the root of the trouble were the characters of the two opponents, each intent upon outdoing the other, neither, as a consequence, being shown up in a good light. If Overton, who said he was a well-born clerk educated at Winchester (and it was as an unmarried clerk that the bishop of Paris sought him for his own jurisdiction) was, in fact, a rogue and a deceiver, Fastolf appears as high-handed in his dealings with his servant. It was as denigrators of character that both men excelled, Fastolf depicting his servant as a man of mean birth, bigamous, a player of dice whom he had helped to promote from his lowly origins, while Overton was alleged to have stated that his master was a ‘chevalier fuitif’, a reference to Fastolf's flight from the field at Patay. The suit is also notable for Overton's full-scale attack on the ‘establishment’, and for the accusations brought against him of having denounced the ‘chappeles fourréz’ (or members of the Parlement), and of being the author of seditious pamphlets. The duke of Bedford had supported Fastolf before, in his suit against Denis Sauvage; now Overton's ridicule of the administration both in England and France, where Overton was accused of distributing his pamphlets, forced the regent to join suit again with his ‘grand maître d'holel’.

The cult of Saint Denis and Capetian kingship

Throughout its history, the monastery of Saint-Denis sought to establish a tie with the ruling house, to make the abbey indispensable to the crown as the chief and privileged guardian of the royal presence. Beyond that, as the home of the principal Apostle of Gaul and the first bishop of Paris, it had a symbolic importance for the whole of France, independent of the monarchy itself. The representation of Saint Denis as a national saint, guiding, protecting, and promoting the well-being of the monarchy, was a monastic theme from the ninth century forward. The cult assumed its chief importance, however, in relation to the Capetians when, it is argued, it performed a critical function in the definition of French national identity under the aegis of the monarchy. In its importance for both France and the monarchy, the cult of Saint Denis helped make possible the fusion of two streams of national consciousness that might otherwise have remained distinct. Further, Capetian kings, by identifying themselves with the cult of Saint Denis, were able to tap a significant element of national devotion which contributed to the creation of a royal personality of national scope in France.

Episcopal Control in the Mediaeval Universities of Northern Europe

Episcopal control proved to be a very mixed blessing for the mediaeval universities of northern Europe. When tempered with understanding and restraint, episcopal power was a most benevolent force which could serve to promote the best interests of nascent university structures. In so many instances, episcopal aid was a veritable sine qua non of university survival. For example, it is hard to imagine that the fifteenth-century Scottish universities could have survived at all without the sustained, enlightened treatment that they received at the hands of their episcopal sponsors. In this sense, the term ‘episcopal control’ bears misleading connotations. For the Scottish bishops had no thought of effecting a permanent episcopal stranglehold over the universities they had brought into being. On the contrary, they freely gave of their wealth and energies in the realization that adequate endowments and organizational maturity would inevitably bring full independent status to these university guilds. To this extent, the bishops who founded the universities of St Andrews (1413), Glasgow (1451), and Aberdeen (1494–5) are truly representative of the magnanimous and liberal episcopal outlook which pervaded the university scene in northern Europe towards the close of the mediaeval period. This contrasts strikingly with earlier episcopal attitudes. For in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries episcopal authority had all too often been channelled in a direction aggressively antithetical to the growth of the corporate independence of the university guilds. The notorious efforts of the bishop of Paris and the chancellor of Notre Dame to stifle the independence of the Parisian masters is but an extreme example of the kind of complete divorce that could arise between the academic guild and the ecclesiastical authorities.

Greek and Latin Names in Russian Dress

The treatment of Greek and Latin names in modern languages differs with the language; it may be worth while to seek reasons for the difference, it may bring out something of the history of classical learning in each nation.In Italian and French the names, being really part of the language, have behaved much like other words and fall like them into the two classes, those which have changed their form in the mouths of the people in obedience to unconscious phonetic processes, and those which have been given convenient shape by the conscious action of the learned. Actually the distinction coincides almost exactly with the distinction between names made familiar by their Christian associations, and names occurring in profane history and literature. The literary names merely suffer simple changes, especially of termination, to bring them into line with the modern language. The Greek names are first Latinised and then if necessary assimilated. But if a historical person anticipates the name, e.g., of a saint, he may be treated familiarly. It is rather a shock to recognise in a Denys the tyrant of Syracuse, on the analogy perhaps of the Areopagite; St. Denis the first bishop of Paris has even lost, his y, but we keep it at St. Denys near Southampton.

Men and Morals

It is very gratifying to me to have the opportunity to express the good things I think of Father Gerald Vann’s recent book, Morals Makyth Man. A work such as this delights the mind with a “rejoicing in the truth” which is indeed characteristically thomist: a joy in fresh Air and Light. In this book we find, combined with constant care for doctrinal accuracy and for fidelity to the established principles received from tradition, that reverence for experience and for the humble truths of ordinary human existence, that quality of compassionate concern for the needs and the sorrows of the time, which we recognise as part of the heritage of the great Dominicans of history. For it has been written that we “must redeem the time”; and if it be that the distinctive mission of St. Thomas and his disciples is the evangelisation of the intelligence, who would feel more acutely than they the pressing urgency of this work of redemption?It is certain that such work cannot be achieved without toil and hardship. Not without sufferings and opposition was St. Thomas able to assimilate to Christian thought a pagan Aristotle who appeared suddenly in his time surrounded by a cortège of Moslems and Jews. Towards the end of his life he was called to maintain, against the Bishop of Paris and the great majority of contemporary divines, the doctrine of the oneness of the substantial form of the human being, that doctrine which after his death was to be censured by Etienne Tempier and the Doctors of Oxford, but which now has become classical and established.