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FAITH and REASON in the THOUGHT of GREGORY of RIMINI (C

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FAITH and REASON in the THOUGHT of GREGORY of RIMINI (C FAITH AND REASON IN THE THOUGHT OF GREGORY OF RIMINI (c. 1300-1358) BY GORDON LEFF, B.A., PH.D. LECTURER IN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER F any one trait may be said to characterize fourteenth- I century thought it is the progressive withdrawal of faith from the arena of philosophy and rational knowledge. Perhaps the greatest driving force in the development of medieval thought during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had been the confidence that the truths of faith were accessible to human understanding and rational demonstration. It had nurtured a diversity of summae and systems, designed to incorporate the conclusions derived from the accumulating wealth of natural, mainly Aristotelian, knowledge into a Christian framework; it also led to some of the greatest works of Christian apologetics, including St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles, with the purpose of convincing the unbeliever and the infidel. With Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, and, even more with William of Ockham, however, the growing doubts over such a union were given full and lasting expression. Although not the first to do so, they reverted to a conception of theology as an indepen­ dent pursuit which was marked off from natural knowledge in the strict sense. Theology, they held, was a self-contained corpus with its own tenets and principles. It could not be regarded as just one more science governed by laws which were applicable to all knowledge, for, as founded on revealed truth, it was dependent on faith, not natural experience. These thinkers, moreover, were so obsessed by the contingent nature of all creation that they refused to countenance the possibility of arriving at a knowledge of God through creation. There could be no meeting between them when God in the full freedom of His will could override all natural causality and, with it, the finite order of things from which natural knowledge was drawn. This was particularly apparent in the Commentaries 88 GREGORY OF RIMINI 89 on the Sentences of Duns Scotus and Ockham; although they differed from each other in almost every respect, they both con­ curred in regarding theology as independent of natural knowledge. It did not constitute knowledge at all as understood in the sense of, say, geometry or medicine. Both Duns and Ockham devoted, as was customary, the Prologues in their respective Commentaries on the Sentences to denning the nature of theology and the means by which its truths could be known. That Ockham's Prologue was virtually a point by point reply to that of Duns has tended to divert the attention of historians from the equally significant fact that they held a common attitude towards the indemon- strability of theological propositions. Where Duns tried to construct an alternative way of reaching them, Ockham devoted himself primarily to criticism of his attempt.1 Among those in whom this revised attitude towards theology is apparent was Gregory of Rimini (c. 1300-58), General of the Augustinian friars in 1357 and one of the most neglected and important thinkers of the fourteenth century. Although different aspects of his thought have been sympathetically treated by J. Wiirsdorfer 2 and M. Schiller 3 and his influence upon the complexe significabile has been examined by H. Elie,4 it remains true, as D. Trapp has remarked in a recent article,5 that we have still no clear idea of where Gregory stood amidst the disturbed currents of his time. Both Wiirsdorfer and Schiller have given passing consideration to his attitude towards theology; but a more thoroughgoing examination is required as the starting point to a fuller assessment of Gregory's outlook. This is the purpose of the present article. Its concern is to trace, as consecutively as Gregory's text will allow,6 the main lines of the argument which Gregory pursues in elucidating the nature of knowledge in general and theology in particular. 1 For a detailed commentary on Ockham's Prologue see R. Guelluy, Philo~ sophie et Thtologie chez Guillaume d'Ockham, Louvain, 1947. 2 J. Wiirsdorfer, Erfcennen und Wissen nach Gregor von Rimini, Miinster, 1917. 3 M. Scl-tiler, Predestination, Stinde und Freiheit bei Gregor von Rimini, Stuttgart, 1934. 4 H. Elie : Le complexe significabile, Paris, 1937. 6 ' Peter Ceffons of Clairvaux', in Recherches de Thdologie Ancienne et M6di4vale, January-July 1957. 6 All references to 1522 edition, Venice..
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