William of Auxerre[1] (1140/50–1231) was a French scholastic theologian and official in the Roman Catholic Church.
The teacher by whom William was most influenced was Praepositinus, or Prevostin, of Cremona, Chancellor of the University of Paris from 1206 to 1209. The names of teacher and pupil are mentioned in the same sentence by Thomas Aquinas.[2]
He was an Archdeacon of Beauvais before becoming a professor of theology at the university in Paris. In 1231, he was made a member of the commission appointed by Gregory IX to examine Aristotle's writings on the natural sciences and to offer amendments where religiously necessary. Consequently, William was one of the first theologians to be influenced by Aristotle. His Summa Aurea shows a debt still to Peter Lombard, and it advances the ontological argument, but it also shows novelty and an intellectual awareness and insistence on the physical that had not been seen earlier. Summa Aurea influenced John of Treviso.
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External links edit
- Magistri Guillelmi Autissiodorensis Summa de officiis ecclesiasticis, ed. Franz Fischer, Cologne 2007–2013, online:guillelmus.uni-koeln.de, ISBN 978-3-00-065835-8.
- The pluralistic approach – The first scholarly edition of William of Auxerre's treatise on liturgy
- Works by William of Auxerre at Open Library
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "William of Auxerre". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.