ABELARD, PETER (c. 1079–c. 1142.) The stormy petrel of the twelfth century, Peter was born at Le Pallet near Nantes of minor nobility. He was introduced to nominalism by its celebrated exponent Roscelin, went on to Paris where his arrogance and indocility led to his challenging his realist teacher William of Champeaux. After a distinguished career as a logician, Peter went on to study theology at Laon and again quarrelled with and challenged his professors. He was forty when the fateful affair with Heloise took place. The Story of My Calamities tells it all, but must be supplemented by the amazing letters Heloise wrote to her lover. His brief career as abbot of St Gildas in Brittany was troubled. He served briefly as master at Le Paraclet, where Heloise had become abbess. But his life was a wandering one and his theological writings earned him the enmity of the formidable Bernard of Clairvaux. Peter ended as a monk at Cluny.
ALBERT THE GREAT (c. 1200–1280) Born in Lauingen, Germany, died in Cologne, where he is buried. He was a Dominican, a bishop, patron of natural scientists, philosopher, and teacher of Thomas Aquinas. He has been canonized and named a Doctor of the Church. A dominant figure throughout the thirteenth century, he is known for his receptive attitude towards Aristotle, of whose works he wrote an extended Latin paraphrase.
ALBIGENSIANS Medieval heretics named after the town of Albi in Languedoc, a principal centre of the movement. They were also prominent in Toulouse. A species of the Cathar heresy, Albigensianism was at once an ascetic movement, for the élite, and permissive for everyone else, and this gave rise to a kind of sanctioned immorality. Dominic first encountered the heresy in the person of an innkeeper in Toulouse. After an all-night conversation, he brought the innkeeper back to orthodoxy. Countering this heresy was a spur to the Dominican Order at its outset.
AMBROSE, SAINT (c. 340–97) Born perhaps at Trier of an aristocratic and Christian Roman family. Educated at Rome, practised law, appointed governor of a northern province with headquarters at Milan around 370. Succeeded the Arian bishop of the city in 374, elected by acclamation. He was ordained and given a crash course in theology. As bishop he defended the faith against Arianism and the independence of the Church against the power of the emperor. The account that Augustine gives of Ambrose in the Confessions is the most widely known. Ambrose baptized Augustine in 387.
ANAXAGORAS (c. 500–428 BC) Pre-Socratic philosopher who first introduced mind as the chief explanation of natural occurrences. He came to Athens, was associated with Pericles and influenced Euripides. Later Aristotle described him as the one sober man in a party of drunks, because of the invocation of nous as a cause. In an apparent attempt to deny that change brought about real novelty, Anaxagoras held that there was an infinite amount of numberless kinds of things in each object. Thus any later state could be explained by the emergence of what was already there.
ANSELM OF CANTERBURY (1033–1109) Born in Aosta, Italy, Anselm died at Canterbury whose archbishop he had been since 1093. In 1060 he became a monk at Bec in Normandy, where he had gone to study with Lanfranc. He was elected prior in 1063 and abbot in 1078. His Monologion and Proslogion and a series of dialogues, On the Grammarian, On Truth, On Free Will and The Sin of the Devil, are the most impressive philosophical cum theological works of the early Middle Age. It is a shame that Anselm is known almost exclusively for the formulation of the argument for God’s existence later dubbed the ‘Ontological Argument’. Anselm succeeded Lanfranc at Canterbury.
ARISTOTLE (384–322 BC) Dante called him ‘the master of those who know’. Cardinal Newman said that he ‘has told us the meaning of our own words and ideas before we were born’. One of the two greatest philosophers of all time, Aristotle came from Macedonia to Athens, where he studied with Plato and nearly two decades later, after Plato’s death, founded the Lyceum. His direct and indirect influence on western thought is incalculable. The editing of his works by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century BC made possible the tradition of commentary in the Hellenistic period, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, down to our own time. For the medievals Aristotle was simply the Philosopher.
ATHANASIUS (c. 30073) Dominant theological figure of his time; the champion of orthodoxy during some forty-five years as bishop of Alexandria. He was the redoubtable foe of the Arian heresy, author of the Contra Arianos. His name will be linked for ever to the so-called Athanasian creed.
AUGUSTINE, SAINT (354–430) Born in Tagaste in what is now Algeria, he died as bishop of Hippo in the same province. Between those two events occurred the great drama of his conversion, narrated in the Confessions, and his voluminous writing on behalf of the faith and in opposition to heretical deviations such as Arianism and Pelagianism. The authority of Augustine exceeds that of any other Father, Greek or Latin, and he is claimed equally by Protestant and Catholic. The stamp of Augustine’s influence is on every medieval master.
AVEMPACE (died in 1138) A Latinization of Ibn Bajja. Born in Saragossa at the end of the eleventh century, he died in Morocco, Andalusia having been reconquered by Christians. He wrote some commentaries on Aristotle and was learned in medicine, mathematics and astronomy. His reputation was largely based on The Rule of the Solitary.
AVERROES (c. 1126–c. 1198) A Latinization of Ibn-Rushd. The foremost figure in Islamic philosophy, he was known as the Commentator. Born in Cordoba, the details of his life are obscure. He flourished in Marrakesh and then in Seville; he died in Marrakesh. Averroes’s interests were as wide as Aristotle’s had been – he was physician, scientist, philosopher. He wrote a medical encyclopedia, commented on Greek medical writers and on Avicenna, but his great influence in Latin Europe was through his commentaries on Aristotle.
AVICEBRON (IBN-GABIROL, SOLOMON BEN JUDAH; C. 1021–58) Author of gloomy songs, he was reputed the greatest Jewish poet of his time. His philosophical work The Fountain of Life exercised the most influence on Latin thinkers.
AVICENNA (IBN SINA; 980–1037) Born in Persia, into a sect influenced by Neoplatonism, which he came to find unsatisfying. He seems to have been an autodidact and wrote in both Persian and Arabic. His greatest philosophical work is The Healing, of which The Deliverance is a digest.
BERNARD OF CLAIRVAU (1090–1153) One of the most imposing churchmen of the twelfth century. He founded the monastery at Clairvaux and served as its abbot. Great champion of Pope Innocent II, foe of Abelard and Gilbert de la Porre. His influence increased when his protégé became Pope Eugene II in 1145. He wrote On Grace and Free Will, On Loving God, The Grades of Humility. His sermons on the Song of Songs exhibit his Marian devotion. His writings provide an alternative to ‘school’ theology.
BOETHIUS (480–524) A member of an aristocratic Roman family, Boethius lived when Italy was under the rule of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Perhaps educated in Alexandria, Boethius undertook the task of translating into Latin the whole of Aristotle and Plato. The few logical writings of Aristotle that were the fruit of this ambitious plan, along with Boethius’s commentaries on them, and on works of Cicero, enjoyed great authority in later medieval education. His Consolation of Philosophy, written while he awaited execution in Pavia for what he insisted was a false charge of conspiring against Theodoric, was the most copied book after the Bible in the Middle Ages. His theological treatises – among them On the Trinity. On the Hebdomads — attracted commentators well into the thirteenth century.
BONAVENTURE (1217–74) Born near Viterbo, the foremost Franciscan theologian of the Middle Ages, he studied under Alexander of Hales in Paris, completing his studies at the same time as Thomas Aquinas. The secular masters unsuccessfully sought to prevent the two men from joining the professoriate in 1256. Bonaventure was elected master general of the Franciscan Order in 1257. As a result many of his writings are collections of sermons (though we have his earlier commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard as well as some Disputed Questions). Bonaventure became wary of the use some were making of Aristotle, and this affected the Franciscan appraisal of Thomas Aquinas. His Breviloquium and Reduction of the Arts to Theology convey the flavour of his thought. He arrived at the Council of Lyons, on the way to which Thomas had died, but died himself that same year, 1274.
CASSICIACUM The retreat outside Milan to which Augustine and his entourage repaired as he readied himself for baptism. It was during this period that On the Teacher, a dialogue with his natural son Adeodatus, was composed, as well as other short works illustrative of Augustine as professor of rhetoric.
CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS (106–43 BC) Orator, politician, philosopher of an eclectic sort. He studied at Athens and came under many influences. His philosophical writings are largely moral, betraying Aristotelian, Platonic and Stoic influences. He opposed Epicureanism. He wrote a work De republica and, after the triumph of Julius Caesar, spent his last years in exile devoting himself to his philosophical writing. He wrote on law, good and evil, fate, social roles, the nature of the gods, on friendship and old age.
COMMENTATOR, THE (see Averroes)
CONDEMNATION OF 1270 Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, condemned thirteen propositions containing errors that exhibited the distorted influence of Aristotle. Among the condemned propositions: there is only one intellect shared by all men; man cannot be said to understand; the human will is not free; the world is eternal; God knows only himself.
CONDEMNATION OF 1277 The condemnation of 1270 having proved ineffective, the bishop of Paris at the urging of Pope John XXI, appointed a commission of theologians who drew up a list of 219 propositions which the bishop condemned on 7 March. These included the thirteen condemned in 1270. The list is particularly notable because it seems to include teachings of Thomas Aquinas, who had died in 1274. For example, that matter is the principle of individuation and that each angel constitutes a species.
DAMASCENE, ST JOHN (eighth century) His dates are unknown but he became a monk in the monastery of St Saba in Jerusalem after 730, was ordained priest and probably died there. He wrote The Source of Knowledge, the third part of which was called De fide orthodoxa by the Scholastics and exercised a great influence.
DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265–1321) Native of Florence, whose love for Beatrice defined his imaginative life, lived most of his life in exile after the Florentine embassy to the Holy See of which he was a member failed and his city was taken over by a rival faction. Dante had the knack of transposing misfortune into an eternal key. La vita nuova narrates the lasting impact on him of his love for Beatrice, and she continues to play a role in what is perhaps the greatest poem ever written, The Divine Comedy. Through Hell and Purgatory to Heaven is the itinerary of the poem, each of whose one hundred cantos is a work of perfection. The poem is set in the year 1300 and conveys the intellectual and spiritual culture of the Middle Ages.
DECRETALS (DECRETUM GRATIANI) A collection of papal rulings made by Gratian around 1140 under the title Concordantia discordantium canonum. In short it was an effort to introduce order and consistency into the decretals. From the twelfth century onward, the work was much commented on. It constitutes the first part of Corpus iuris canonici.
DIONYSIUS (PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS) Perhaps a fifth-century figure Peter the Iberian, he was the author of works that were long thought to be those of Dionysius the Areopagite, a convert of St Paul who became bishop of Athens. Translated by Erigena, these writings enjoyed quasi-apostolic authority and were commented on by Hugh of St Victor, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure and greatly influenced mystical writers. The chief titles are On the Names of God, On the Celestial Hierarchy, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, On Mystical Theology.
DISPUTED QUESTIONS The master of theology conducted public disputations on posted topics which often formed a connected suite of questions. A thesis was maintained against the background of objections to it so that an intellectual drama resulted. The master, confronted by these objections, first countered with an authoritative citation favouring his thesis and then defended it with arguments, after which he responded to each of the contrary positions. The written Disputed Question arose out of the public occasion and was available from the university stationer shortly after the disputation had taken place.
DOMINIC, SAINT (DOMINGO DE GUZMAN; 1170–1221) Founder of the Order of Preachers. He was born near Burgos in Spain and studied theology at Palencia. In 1199 he became a canon of the cathedral of Osma. It was while accompanying his bishop on a trip that Dominic became aware of the Albigensian heresy. In order to preach against the Albigensians, he thought poverty a necessity and thus the order he founded was a mendicant or begging one like the Franciscans. The founding of the order took place in Toulouse in 1215.
DOMINICANS The name for the Order of Preachers founded by St Dominic. The Latin word is dominicanes, which was sometimes broken into dominicanes, dogs of the Lord.
FREDERICK 11 (1194–1250) Called stupor mundi, wonder of the world, Frederick served as Holy Roman emperor from 1212; he was king of Sicily (1197–1250) as well as of Jerusalem (1226–50). He was born in Sicily, the grandson of Frederick I, Barbarossa. Succeeding his father when he was but three, Frederick at first ruled under the guardianship of Innocent III and various counsellors. Educated at Palermo, he thought of himself as Italian despite belonging to the Hohenstaufen dynasty. He was a patron of learning. At first an ally of the Pope, he became independent and in defence of the papacy encouraged Guelph elements. The resulting political chaos obsessed Dante, who was a victim of it. Frederick was excommunicated a number of times. He is buried in the cathedral of Palermo.
GLOSSA ORDINARIA Product of the school of Anselm of Laon in the twelfth century, a compilation of the comments of the Fathers of the Church, which had been written in the margins of copies of the Bible. The concentration of masters at Paris led to standardization and a gloss on the whole Bible that became an obligatory reference work for scriptural study.
GREGORY THE GREAT, SAINT (540–604) The fourth and last Doctor of the Latin Church. Born to wealth and power in Rome, he forsook it all for the monastic life. By 570 he had founded monasteries in Sicily and Rome. At papal command, he left the monastery in 577 to become one of the seven deacons of Rome. He served as papal envoy to Constantinople. He was elected pope in 590 and founded a papal state the better to deal with the poverty and anarchy of the time. While recognizing civil authority, he insisted on the independence of the Church in spiritual matters as well as on the primacy of the Roman See. This insistence brought about a separation between Orthodox and Catholic bishops. He wrote on pastoral care, on the miracles and lives of the saints; his famous Moralsis a commentary on the Book of Job. The Gregorian calendar, the Gregorian sacramentary and the Gregorian chant are among his legacies.
HEXAMERON The Work of the Six Days of Creation. Augustine’s various commentaries on Genesis and his interpretation of the meaning of ‘day’ in the Scriptural account of creation had a great influence on medieval exegesis.
HILARY, SAINT (c. 315–66) Like Athanasius, an implacable foe of the Arian heresy. Bishop of Poitiers, where he was born and where he died. Friend of St Martin of Tours. Author of On the Faith against the Arians, also known as On the Trinity.
HUGH OF ST VICTOR (1096–1141) Born in Flanders, educated in Germany. In 1118 he joined the monastery of St Victor in Paris. Under his leadership, the School of St Victor flourished and exercised great influence. He classified knowledge in his Didascalicon and was a notable commentator on Scripture.
ISADORE OF SEVILLE (c. 560–636) Of noble family, he became a monk and acquired encyclopedic learning in order to defend the faith against the Arians. He became bishop of Seville in 600 and sought to convert the Jews of Spain. The most important and influential of his works is the so-called Etymologies, actually an encyclopedia.
JAEGER, WERNER Author of two seminal works, one on the evolution of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (1912) and another applying a developmental interpretation to the whole of Aristotle (1921). This approach dissolved the treatises into fragments and called into question their literary wholeness. If true, this would make the history of Aristotelian interpretation by Hellenistic, Medieval and Renaissance commentators exercises in delusion.
JOACHIM OF FIORE (c. 1132–1202) Little is known of his origins. He became a Cistercian in 1177 and abbot of the monastery at Corazzo, a post from which he resigned to devote himself to writings of an apocalypticbent. He divided history into three periods, the age of the Father (the Old Testament); the age of the Son (the New Testament), and the age of the Holy Spirit which would synthesize the first two. He thought the third would begin in 1260 and a new spiritual order would convert the whole world.
LATIN AVERROISM Also called Heterodox Aristotelianism. An enthusiastic acceptance of the Aristotle of Averroes and of tenets incompatible with Christianity. Siger of Brabant was its most notable exponent. It was opposed by Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure and was subject to condemnation in 1270 and again in 1277. The best defence against it, Thomas Aquinas thought, was a more accurate reading of Aristotle and a saner conception of the relationship between faith and reason.
LEUCIPPUS Along with Democritus, a Greek atomist of the fifth century BC. The theory held that atoms – literally, indivisibles – of different shapes came together to make the macrocosmic bodies of our experience. The arrangements were by chance and all things thereby were the same so far as their elements went.
MAIMONIDES, MOSES (1135–1204) Jewish philosopher and physician. He was born in Cordoba and fled to Morocco when Jews were persecuted by the Almohades, a Muslim dynasty. He went on to Palestine and then Cairo. He first engaged in biblical exegesis and then wrote the Guide for the Perplexed, his major work. It was composed in Arabic and only later translated into Hebrew and Latin. The work made him the leading Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages. He sought to achieve a synthesis of faith and reason; his efforts were condemned in the Jewish world and young men were forbidden to read his Guide.
MANICHEANS Followers of the third-century heretic Manes, who introduced into Christian belief the Persian notion that good and evil are coequal principles. His teaching was condemned but spread and was the target of refutations of Augustine.
MARITAIN, JACQUES (1882–1973) French philosopher, major interpreter of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He converted to Catholicism in his twenties and became associated with L’Action française, a monarchist anti-democratic movement. When it was condemned by the Church, he accepted the verdict and then moved in a liberal direction, condemning the tendency of Catholics to champion the cause of Franco in Spain. He spent the years of the Second World War in the United States, where he had always enjoyed great popularity. He served as French ambassador to the Holy See in the post-war years and then took a post at Princeton. After the death of his beloved Raissa, he returned to France. He and his wife are buried at Kolbsheim in Alsace. His voluminous writings are appearing in a collected edition of twenty volumes from the University of Notre Dame Press.
MICHAEL SCOT (died 1235) Born in Scotland, educated in England, he went to Spain to study Arabic and became acquainted with Aristotelian treatises. He was one of the translators who made Greek learning available in Latin. He studied mathematics in Pisa, and became the court astrologer of Frederick II.
MONTE CASSINO Benedictine monastery south of Rome founded in 529 by St Benedict and built on the ruins of a Roman temple. It became the flagship of Benedictine monasticism. It was there that the Rule was composed. Its library contained classical manuscripts cared for and copied by the monks in an effort that provided a bridge between antiquity and later times. The monastery was rebuilt after World War II when the Allies demolished it in order to dislodge the German forces that were impeding their drive to Rome.
NEOPLATONISM In the third century, at Alexandria, Plato as interpreted by Hellenistic scholars was studied by such Fathers of the Church as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. The Enneads of Plotinus, which had been put together by his anti-Christian disciple Porphyry, exercised indirect influence on Augustine. The original aim of Neoplatonism was to show the underlying agreement between Plato and Aristotle, an aim that led to commentaries on writings of Aristotle. Pseudo-Dionysius, Boethius and the Book of Causes were the chief ways in which Neoplatonism entered the intellectual world of Thomas Aquinas.
NESTORIUS (d. 451) Heretic. He held that there were two separate persons in Christ. He was Patriarch of Constantinople, a post from which he was deposed by the Council of Ephesus in 431. The Nestorians persisted and enjoyed religious freedom under Muslim rule. The invasion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century dealt the sect a serious blow.
ORIGEN (185–253) Religious enthusiast who, in his youth, castrated himself when he read of those who have become ‘eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake’. He later recognized his exegetical error. He was a prolific writer, always controversial and died a martyr’s death.
PARMENIDES Parmenides flourished in the second half of the fifth century BC. One of the great enigmatic figures of Greek philosophy, whose teaching proved to be a great obstacle to the natural science that had been engaged in up to his time. His work is contained in a poem, with a prologue and then two parts, one, the way of truth, and the other, the way of seeming. The truth is that being is one, unique, changeless, homogenous throughout. Plurality is as impossible as change. On the other hand, the world seems otherwise to us and the second part of the poem contains a cosmology like those that had preceded it. Parmenides introduces into philosophy the split between being and appearance and exercised a mesmerizing influence over Plato who devoted a dialogue to him. Aristotle in the Physics pointed out the fallaciousness of the central Parmenidian denial of plurality and change.
PETER OF IRELAND (floruit 1230–65) One of Thomas Aquinas’s teachers at Naples when he went there from Monte Cassino in his late teens. We are told that Thomas studied grammar and logic with Master Martin and natural science with Master Peter of Ireland. But elsewhere Thomas is said to have studied logic and natural science with Peter.
PHILOSOPHER, THE (see ARISTOTLE)
PHOTINUS (810–95) Patriarch of Constantinople. Of noble birth, he entered the imperial service and was named patriarch by Emperor Michael III. He sought papal recognition of his appointment, which was not forthcoming. Instead, the Pope excommunicated Photinus and reinstated his predecessor Ignatius. Photinus protested the filioque clause in the Latin creed which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son. A new emperor agreed that Ignatius was patriarch and sent Photinus to a monastery, but the filioque dispute led to the excommunication of Ignatius and Photinus was once more appointed patriarch by the emperor. This led to schism with Rome. Deposed by the emperor, Photinus ended his life in a monastery, but the schism persisted.
PLATO (427–347 BC) The most accessible of the great philosophers, whose version of Socrates in the dialogues has swamped any historical or rival literary presentation of the witty genius, who, with Plato and Aristotle, forms the most remarkable succession of philosophers in history. While some of Plato’s dialogues represent very difficult philosophical literature, others still function as the best introduction to philosophy. In the Middle Ages, Plato was little more than a name and direct accessibility was limited to a partial translation of the Timaeus. Indirectly and via Neo-platonism, his influence was great.
PORPHYRY (233/4–305) Porphyry was born in Tyre, studied in Athens and came to Rome in 263 where he entered the school of Plotinus. He edited the works of the master, producing the elegantly arranged Enneads, as well as a life of Plotinus. He wrote against the Christians. A little work of his, Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle, or Isagoge, had a vast influence on the Middle Ages, thanks to Boethius’s translation of it and his two commentaries on it in which the so-called Problem of Universals was stated and became a set problem for the logician.
PROCLUS (410–85) Born in Constantinople, Proclus began his studies in Alexandria but then went to Athens where he studied with Plutarch and Syrianus. He is credited with the scholastic systematization of Neo-platonism. He commented on dialogues of Plato and wrote the Elements of Theology, from which, as Aquinas discerned, the Book of Causes had been excerpted.
PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS See DIONYSIUS
PYTHAGORAS (570—490 BC) It is difficult to distinguish between what Pythagoras himself taught and the tenets of his highly influential school. The medievals knew him largely through Aristotle’s presentation of him. His characteristic insight was that number provides a lens through which to read the world. Perhaps things in the world are just numbers.
QUODLIBETAL QUESTIONS A more free-wheeling event than the Disputed Questions, the Quodlibetal (what-you-will) Questions were held at Christmas and Easter and began early in the morning since they were likely to go on and on. Anything could be proposed to the master and he was expected to respond impromptu. The assistants of the master were involved in the response as well. At Paris, after only a few decades, the Quodlibetal Questions became an activity of neophytes rather than masters. While such occasions might hone dialectical skills and perhaps turn up a truth or two, they tended to become capricious and there was the temptation of winning an argument rather than finding out the truth.
REGINALD OF PIPERNO, O.P. One of the ‘secretaries’ assigned to Thomas Aquinas during his second Parisian regency. Thomas’s own hand gave new meaning to the term ‘cursive’. It has been dubbed the litera inintelligi-bilis, the unreadable hand. Thomas dictated a significant number of his later works, keeping two to three secretaries busy. Weisheipl says that Reginald was slightly younger than Thomas and served him from 1259 until Thomas’s death.
RICHARD OF ST VICTOR (d. 1173) A member of the school of St Victor at Paris, he was a notable biblical exegete and author of a work on the Trinity.
SENTENCES The masterpiece of Peter Lombard (1100–1160), eventual bishop of Paris. A summary of Christian doctrine, the four books of the work treat of the Trinity, the Creation, Original Sin, Incarnation, the Virtues and the Sacraments. The Sentences beat several rivals to become the standard textbook of Catholic theology during the Middle Ages.
ST JACQUES, CONVENT OF In 1218, the first Dominicans in Paris were given a hospice with a chapel that had served as a staging point for pilgrims setting off for St James of Compostella. It came into the possession of the university, and was situated on the Left Bank, just above the present Sorbonne. It soon became the centre of Dominican intellectual history in Paris. It was here that Albert and Thomas lived and taught, and a host of great Dominican masters before and after them.
THEMISTIUS (c. 315–88) He wrote many paraphrases of, as well as commentaries on, Aristotle. He also commented on Plato. He was doubtful about Neoplatonism, which he considered to deviate from both Plato and Aristotle.
THEOPHRASTUS (c. 373-c. 287 BC) Studied at the Platonic Academy, and after the death of Plato followed Aristotle to the Lyceum, succeeding him as head of the school. His work on different characters is of great interest; he wrote a Metaphysics in which he appears to have rejected the Prime Mover as well as the universal teleology taught by Aristotle.
TRANSCENDENTALS Characteristics which are said to be ‘convertible’ with being, such as unity, goodness, truth. This means that whatever is is true, is one, is good. The categories – substance and the accidents – are only disjunctively convertible with being. That is, whatever is is either substance or accident. Thomas suggested beauty as another transcendental property of being.
WILLIAM OF ST AMOUR A secular master at the University of Paris who was adamantly opposed to mendicants holding chairs in the faculties. Roger Bacon thought the mendicants were a reproach to the seculars, and that this explained their animosity. Whatever the cause, it was not a fleeting thing. Thomas Aquinas wrote several polemical pieces during his first Parisian regency to counter the accusations of the foes of the Franciscans and Dominicans.