Durandus of St Pourcain

Abstract

Abstract The controversy between the Dominican Durandus of St Pourcain and his order plays a central role in explaining how Thomas Aquinas became one of the most influential medieval theologians. Covering a period of almost twenty years in the early fourteenth century, this controversy saw the confrontation of two first-rate Dominican theologians, at a time when the order was fully engaged in promoting the doctrine of Aquinas. Hervaeus Natalis was a hard-line follower of Aquinas, who saw in Durandus an independent spirit and a threat to the order’s sense of doctrinal identity. Through a close examination of the central issues from unpublished manuscript sources, this book reveals a picture of the debate which challenges the standard accounts of a clear-cut clash between ‘Thomists’ and ‘anti-Thomists’. Aquinas did not rise to canonical status on a Dominican platform alone. Franciscan intellectual achievements had much to contribute, an aspect which recasts the role played by the rival mendicant order in the development of a Dominican intellectual tradition. A ‘maverick’ within his order, yet actively supported by the papacy, Durandus lived a career which illustrates the currents at work in the fourteenth-century church. Unconcerned about Dominican internal quarrels, the Avignonese papacy was more preoccupied with forming its own theological entourage away from the subverting forces of the new Franciscan spirituality.

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