Durand of St. Pourçain

Abstract

Durand of St. Pourçain (c. 1275–1334) was a Dominican theologian best known for his deviation from Thomas Aquinas’ teaching at a time when his order was involved in the promotion of Thomism. The first recension of his commentary on the Sentences (1307) was badly received by the order’s authorities who, despite the appearance of a second, more compliant version (1311), censured Durand’s work in 1314 and again in 1317. In 1313, Durand was nevertheless appointed as lector at the papal curia in Avignon. In 1325, he was promoted as bishop of Meaux, an office which he held until his death in 1334. Between 1318 and 1325, Durand produced a final revision of his commentary. His work also includes five Quodlibets (1312–1316) and a treatise on the origin of political power (1329). He intervened in the major controversies of his time regarding apostolic poverty and the beatific vision. Durand’s thought reflects the intellectual climate following the 1277 Paris condemnation, especially in its open departure from Aristotle, a stance which best explains his critical attitude toward Thomism. Durand draws a clear distinction between reason and authority that leads him to reject the notion of theology as a science. Theology rests on faith alone and its object is not to produce knowledge about God but to direct us toward salvation. Pivotal to Durand’s thought is the notion of relation, which acts as an explicative principle notably in epistemology and in divine causality. Guided by a nominalist understanding of universals, Durand rejects the notion of intelligible species and explains cognition as a direct relation between the intellect and a singular object present to it. Likewise, he denies all causal power to divine ideas in order to underline the relation of dependence of creatures on God’s free action. A forerunner to Ockham’s nominalism, Durand seeks to eliminate unnecessary instances in favor of an affirmation of God’s absolute power and infinity.