Franciscan Studies

BACKGROUND TO THE CONDEMNATION OF 1270: MASTER WILLIAM OF BAGLIONE, O. F. M. Of a Wednesday in December, 1270, that following the winter feast of St. Nicholas, the tenth of the month, the lord bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, published a list of thirteen propositions condemned and banned with all who knowingly taught or asserted them.1 The document was the first official notice of a growing rationalism in the faculty of Arts, and particularly of the movement called variously Latin Averroism, Radical Aristotelianism, or Heterodox Aristotelianism. At least four of the articles directly attacked the teachings of Master Siger of Brabant 1) that the intellect of all men is numerically one and the same; 5) that the world is eternal; 6) that there never was a first man; 8) that the soul separated from the body after death does not suffer from corporeal fire.2 The other errors condemned were, by and large, inspired by pagan philosophy and more particularly by the interpretations given Aristotle by Greek and Arabian commentators, in specie by Averroes; thus prop. 2 : Quod ista est falsa vel impropria: Homo intelligit; nn. 10—11 : that God does not know singulars, or does not know things other than Himself. Relatively little is known of the motives or moving forces which induced the bishop to publish the decree. The secular masters in the school of theology, with the exception of Gerard of Abbeville,3 have left little or no literary remains. Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was in Paris 1 Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, éd. H. Denifle-A. Châtelain, Paris, 1889, n. 432 (torn. I, 486—487) ; L. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1944), 80—81. On Bishop Tempier, cf. P. Glorieux, "Tempier (Etienne)", in Diet, de théol. cath., XV, 99—107. 2 Cf. F. Van Steenberghen, La philosophie au XIIIe siècle (Louvain, 1966), 357—412, 472—474. 3 See F. Van Steenberghen, op. cit., 456, note 83; P. Glorieux, La littérature quodlibétique, (Paris, 1925—1935) I, ni—127, and II, 92—94; and his "Pour une édition de Gérard d'Abbeville," in Rech, de Théol. ancienne et médiévale, 9 (1937) 5^—84. In his article "Gérard d'Abbeville," in Diet, de spiritualité, VI, (1965), 258—263, Ph. Grand calls for further study on the role of Master Gerard in the controversy of 1270. To some extent Grand illustrates this role in his edition of Quodlibet XIV of Master Gerard. Cf. "Le Quodlibet XIV de Gérard d'Abbeville," in Archives d'hist. doctr. et litt, du moyen âge, 31 (1964), 222, note 2. Four at least of the propositions condemned are considered in this Quodlibet, which must date from Advent 1269. 6 IGNATIUS BRADY, O. F. M. in May 1269 for the General Chapter of the Preachers, had possibly returned to the University in January of that year.4 Yet not until the following year did he directly concern himself with the growing controversy , in his De unitate inteilectus contra Averroistas.h On the other hand, Saint Bonaventure had already begun in Lent of 1267 to direct public attention, in his Cottationes de decern praeceptis, to the theological and moral implications and dangers of the movement. Here and in the Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti (1268), as well as in several sermons, he shows himself keenly aware of current errors and their causes and consequences. Indeed, most of the errors listed by Tempier two years later are already known to Bonaventure.8 Yet the latter's approach is always that of the theologian proclaiming the faith and defending Christian wisdom, and of the pastor of souls concerned with the moral implications of such errors. One could hardly expect more from him, since he was no longer a master in the faculty of theology but Minister General of the Friars Minor. Quite evidently, nonetheless, his influence looms large in the syllabus of 1270. What is lacking, however, in the history of this condemnation is a more accurate and extensive knowledge of the reaction of the Franciscan regents in the theological faculty. We do know indeed that Guibert of Tournai, regent perhaps about...