Intellectual Traditions at The Medieval University Volume One

Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University
Volume One
Studien und Texte
zur Geistesgeschichte
des Mittelalters
Begründet von
Josef Koch
Weitergeführt von
Paul Wilpert, Albert Zimmermann und
Jan A. Aertsen
Herausgegeben von
Andreas Speer
In Zusammenarbeit mit
Tzotcho Boiadjiev, Kent Emery, Jr.
und Wouter Goris
BAND 108/1
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/stgm

Intellectual Traditions
at the Medieval University
The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian
Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans,
1250–1350
Volume One
By
Russell L. Friedman
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Friedman, Russell L.
Intellectual traditions at the medieval university : the use of philosophical psychology in
Trinitarian theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans, 1250-1350 / by Russell L. Friedman.
p. cm. – (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters ; Bd. 108)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
ISBN 978-90-04-22985-3 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-23198-6 (e-book) 1.
Trinity–History of doctrines–Middle Ages, 600-1500. 2. Franciscans–Intellectual life. 3.
Dominicans–Intellectual life. 4. Intellectual life–Religious aspects–Christianity–History–Middle
Ages, 600-1500. 5. Psychology–Philosophy. I. Title.
BT109.F74 2012
231'.04409022–dc23
2012018568
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ISSN 1069-8028
ISBN 978-90-04-22985-3 (set hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-23196-2 (vol. 1 hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-23198-6 (e-book)
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To Pernille
CONTENTS
VOLUME ONE
List of Symbols, Abbreviations, and Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Introduction. Two Trinitarian Theories, and One Contested Model . . . . 1

1. The Relation Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2. The Emanation Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3. The Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
PART I
EMERGING TRINITARIAN TRADITIONS, CA. 1250–1280
Introduction to Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
I. The Makings of a Trinitarian Controversy: Aquinas and

Bonaventure on Relations, Emanations, and Personal
Distinction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
1. Aquinas and the ratio of Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2. Bonaventure and “Modes” of Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3. Bonaventure and Aquinas on the Emanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
II. Emerging Trinitarian Traditions I: Franciscans, ca. 1255–1280 . . . . . 91

1. Gerard of Abbeville. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
2. Walter of Bruges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3. William of Baglione and Eustace of Arras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4. John Pecham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5. Paris after Pecham: William de la Mare and Matthew of
Aquasparta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6. Oxford Theology: Nicholas of Ockham and Roger Marston . . . 149
viii contents
III. Emerging Trinitarian Traditions II: Dominicans and Others,

ca. 1255–1280 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
1. From the Early to the Later Aquinas: Selected
Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
2. Bombolognus of Bologna and Roman of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
3. Expanding Trinitarian Traditions: Giles of Rome and Others 202
PART II
THE STRONG USE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
MODEL AND ITS OPPONENTS, CA. 1280–1320
Introduction to Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
IV. Henry of Ghent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

1. Henry of Ghent on the Divine Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
2. Henry of Ghent and Franciscan Trinitarian Theology . . . . . . . . . 236
3. Henry of Ghent on the Word: Concepts as Declarative
Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
V. Late Thirteenth-Century Trinitarian Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

1. Some “Dominican” Views: Giles of Rome, Godfrey of
Fontaines, Bernard of Auvergne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
2. Cautious Franciscans: Richard of Mediavilla, Alexander of
Alessandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
3. The Franciscan Tradition in the Late Thirteenth Century:
Peter of Trabes and William of Ware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
4. Towards Scotus: Five Arguments on the Holy Spirit’s
Distinction from the Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
5. Conclusion: The Development of the Trinitarian Traditions . . 337
VI. John Duns Scotus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

1. Absolute Persons and the Use of Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Excursus: A Very Brief History of Absolute Persons . . . . . . . . . . 348–356
2. Scotus’ Critique of Henry of Ghent’s Trinitarian Thought . . . . . 376
3. Scotus on the Word: Concepts as Mental Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
VII. Dominicans in the Early Fourteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

1. Hervaeus Natalis against Franciscan Trinitarian Theology . . . . 423
contents ix
2. Durand of St. Pourçain and the Radical Attenuation of the

Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
3. The Liber propugnatorius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
VIII. From Scotus to Auriol: A Survey of Franciscan Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

1. Absolute Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
2. Filioque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
A. Brief Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
B. A Franciscan/Dominican Debate: Robert Cowton and
Thomas of Sutton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
C. Henry of Harclay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
IX. Peter Auriol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

1. Indistinction of Essence and Property, perseitas tertii modi,
and Unelicited Emanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
2. The Emanations, Auriol’s Marginalization Strategy, and His
Interpretation of the Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550
3. Personal Distinction, The Divine Productions, and the
4. Auriol on the Word: Concepts as esse apparens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
VOLUME TWO
PART III
THE SEARCH FOR SIMPLICITY, CA. 1320–1350
Introduction to Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
X. William Ockham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601

1. Ockham, Nominalism, and Fideism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
2. The Personal Properties and the Formal Distinction . . . . . . . . . . 608
3. Ockham, the Franciscan Trinitarian Tradition, and the
4. Sola fide: Putting Ockham’s “Fideism” in Perspective . . . . . . . . . 652
XI. The Oxford Trinitarian Debate, 1315–1350 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663

1. Walter Chatton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 664
A. Walter Chatton’s Method in Trinitarian Theology . . . . . . . . 665
Excursus: A Very Brief History of Praepositinianism . . . . . . . . . . 678
x contents
B. Chatton and the Distinction between the Persons . . . . . . . . 683

C. Chatton and the Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
2. Adam Wodeham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 715
3. Robert Holcot and William Crathorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
4. Traditional Treatments and Waning Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743
Annex: Oxford Theologians ca. 1330–1350 and Trinitarian
Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748
XII. Paris, from Auriol to Rimini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753

1. An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754
A. The Trinitarian Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755
B. Independent: John Baconthorpe, OCarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 768
C. Independent: Gerard Odo, OFM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
D. Independent: Nicholas Bonet, OFM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 785
2. Francis of Marchia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
A. Super-rationes and Eminent Containment in Marchia’s
Trinitarian Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
B. Francis of Marchia and the Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . 803
3. Michael of Massa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809
A. Michael of Massa and the Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . 811
B. Massa on Absolute Properties and Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 822
4. William of Rubio, Praepositinianism, and the Psychological
Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831
5. Gregory of Rimini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 845
A. Rimini’s Praepositinianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 847
B. Rimini and the Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 860
6. The Search for Simplicity in Retrospect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867
Conclusion. The Diversity of Later-Medieval Trinitarian Theology . . . . . 873
Appendix. Eustace of Arras’ Question on the Distinction of the Holy

Spirit from the Son: Critical Edition from the Known
Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 899
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 931
Index of Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 975
Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979
Index of Subjects and Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 992
LIST OF SYMBOLS, ABBREVIATIONS, AND CONVENTIONS
a(a). articulus(/i)
AL Aristoteles Latinus
BAV Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
BM Bibliothèque municipale
BN(C) Biblioteca nazionale (centrale)
BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
c(c). caput(/ita)
com. commentum
CUP Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. Heinrich Denifle and E. Chate-
lain
d(d). distinctio(nes)
ed. editio, editor
f(f). folio(s)
lib. liber
ms(s). manuscript(s)
n(n). paragraph number(s) in modern critical editions
n(n). footnote(s) in modern secondary literature (esp. in the present book)
Ord. Ordinatio
prin. principium
q(q). quaestio(nes)
Rep. Reportatio
resp. responsio
Sent. Sententiae
sol. solutio
un. unicus/a
§(§) section(s)/paragraph(s)
hxi (in a Latin text): I have added x to the text

[x] (in a Latin text): I have deleted x from the text
* I am in doubt about the reading in the manuscript
[x] (in an English text): I have added x to the text
hhxii I have added x to text taken from a modern critical edition
[[x]] I have deleted x from text taken from a modern critical edition
References to line numbers in modern critical editions are indicated in
superscripts to page number references.
“At and around n. x” indicates that the reader should see both the foot-
note(s) and the main text in the vicinity of footnote marker(s) x.
I do not necessarily respect the original orthography of any text I use.
PREFACE
Back in 1992, having finished comprehensive exams and with the possibil-
ity in sight of some significant time away from teaching, I began to think
seriously about a dissertation topic. I knew from the start that my major
interest was in the relationship between faith and reason, or more narrowly
defined theology and philosophy, in the later Middle Ages. I was interested
in investigating how university-trained theologians, committed generally
to the rationality and explicability of the natural and the theological order,
would in practice come to grips with a theological doctrine that at its foun-
dation is revealed, and hence whose compatibility with the then-current
philosophical and scientific doctrines was neither guaranteed nor immedi-
ately evident. How did a medieval theologian tackle such a situation? Was
there some kind of conflict between faith and reason? And if there was, how
did this manifest itself?
The time period that I chose to work on—the later thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries—was settled for me for two reasons. First, my teachers
at The University of Iowa were Katherine H. Tachau and Scott MacDonald
(now at Cornell University), and between them they gave me as good an
introduction as one could wish for into the philosophy and theology of the
period. Moreover, it was the theologians of the period after Thomas Aquinas
that were notorious for treading the long road into fideism and skepticism,
culminating in the “nominalism” of William Ockham, Adam Wodeham,
Robert Holcot, and Gregory of Rimini. We had read about this development
in the works of Etienne Gilson and of Konstanty Michalski, to name just two.
Was it correct?
So much for the time period. While many alternatives for specific topics
for my dissertation presented themselves—creation, the incarnation, the
eucharist, resurrection and the beatific vision, all issues in which revelation
was a decisive element in the formation of the doctrine—I chose trinitarian
theology. In particular I became intrigued by the following question: what
was the theological and philosophical significance of the very elaborate
discussions of concepts—mental words—found in extant treatments on
trinitarian theology composed in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth
century? In short: why was the Son a Word, and what exactly did this mean?
From this initial question sprang others. When and why did this theological
role for concepts and concept formation develop? Was the period’s concept
xiv preface
theory, and philosophical psychology more generally, influenced by its close

connection to trinitarian theology, and conversely was the trinitarian the-
ology influenced by the concept theory? Were there differences in the way
in which various medieval thinkers employed concepts and their formation
in their trinitarian theologies? These were the questions that interested me
when I first began to study medieval trinitarian thought.
The book before you is heavily revised and significantly expanded from
the 1997 dissertation in which I first approached those questions. Every
word from the dissertation has been gone over, and as many words again
have been added, taking the story from Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas
up to Gregory of Rimini and to those at Paris who had the first opportunity
to react to Rimini’s positions. Despite my reconsideration and the exten-
sive revamp, the basics remain unchanged: I argue here that Dominicans
and Franciscans of the time had rather different views of the proper use
of concept theory as a description of the Son and his generation. Specifi-
cally, I argue that the Dominicans saw this description as to a large extent
metaphorical, the Franciscans as literal. In the first instance, then, the book
deals with how and why the model of the Son as literally a Word or Con-
cept, and the generation of the Son as literally the intellectual procession of
the Word, came to be dominant among Franciscan authors during the late
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and why the Dominicans on the
whole took issue with this Franciscan view. With regard to the Franciscans,
I show how Henry of Ghent first made this literal or “strong” identification
of Son with Word an important part of what I call “Franciscan trinitarian
theology”, how Henry’s claim fits into the Franciscan trinitarian tradition
from Bonaventure to Peter Auriol (and somewhat beyond), and finally the
way that the claim was elaborated in the works of Henry himself, John Duns
Scotus, and Peter Auriol. Thus, I am interested in the theological function
of concepts and concept formation in Franciscan trinitarian thought: what
kinds of trinitarian questions concept theory answered, and how, histori-
cally speaking, it came to answer those questions. Although I cannot deal
with them in as great detail, nevertheless with respect to the Dominicans,
I sketch how they develop and modify the trinitarian theology of Thomas
Aquinas right into the middle of the fourteenth century, and why on this
basis they reject the Franciscan insistence that the Son’s emanation is an
intellectual emanation, if “intellectual emanation” is understood to mean an
emanation literally from God the Father’s intellect. Finally, I tell how Henry
of Ghent’s approach was emphatically rejected in the period 1320–1350 by
a group of truly interesting theologians—including William Ockham, Wal-
ter Chatton, Francis of Marchia, and Gregory of Rimini—who adhered to
preface xv
such a strict understanding of divine simplicity that trinitarian explanation

was to a great extent ruled out. In the process of telling this story for the
years 1250–1350 I am very concerned with showing how the two trinitarian
traditions developed together, paying attention to the way in which their
mutual criticism was the goad for many of the major trinitarian develop-
ments throughout the period. And I suggest that these trinitarian traditions
are a manifestation of much broader intellectual currents that color the
history of the period. I am also interested, of course, in what light this inves-
tigation sheds on the broad issue of the relation between philosophy and
theology in later-medieval thought.
The book has a further dimension, returning time and again to a funda-
mental problem for students of medieval thought, particularly of theology:
how did a medieval scholar come to terms with the literary heritage avail-
able to him? It is a truism that the medieval theologian was heavily reliant
on texts. When discussing a central Christian doctrine like the Trinity, he
could be expected to take into account Scripture, authoritative texts of the
Church Fathers (often explicating Scripture), and philosophical texts that
impinged on aspects of the question at hand, e.g. those dealing with the
category of relation and with concept formation. One of the central charac-
teristics of the medieval theological enterprise was to make the various texts
on any particular issue agree in some way—this was a point of Abelard’s Sic
et non, and the project of Lombard in his Sentences. It is a further truism,
however, that no text is interpreted in a vacuum: traditions of interpretation
surrounded authoritative texts and conditioned their use in the later Mid-
dle Ages. Thus, by 1250 there had developed various interpretive “molds”
into which many of these foundational trinitarian texts could be poured,
and these molds nearly predetermined how various texts could be used,
and hence how they could agree with other texts. Rejecting these tradi-
tional interpretations was risky business and required precautions. One of
my main aims in the book is to show how both Franciscans and Dominicans
made room for themselves to reject the predominant interpretive contexts,
Franciscans making room for themselves on the issue of the constitution of
the divine persons and Dominicans on the issue of the Son’s status as the
divine Word; further I show how each of these groups substituted for the
predominant interpretive context a less widely accepted one with a differ-
ent set of supportive texts. In this way, the book is in part a study of authority
and tradition in later-medieval theology: i.e., of authoritative texts and of the
traditions of interpretion in which they took meaning.
It seems right to say something here about method. The exposition in
the book takes its point of departure in two convictions that I hold about
xvi preface
medieval thought and the way we best study it. In the first place, I am
convinced that most university thinkers in the Middle Ages were system-
atic thinkers, and as such they consciously attempted to make their ideas
fit together as a whole. This is not universally true, and furthermore some
thinkers may have failed in their attempt at systematization by incorporat-
ing contradictory elements into their thought; nevertheless, I believe that
most often the attempt was there. I am convinced, then, that the best way
to read and explicate the trinitarian thought of any particular medieval the-
ologian is as a whole, or at least as close to that ideal as is possible given
limits of space and time. I think that this is how most medieval scholars
worked out their own ideas, and how they would want them to be read and
explicated. This is the reason why I have chosen a group of focal figures, to
whose trinitarian theology (and in some cases the place of concepts and
concept formation in it) I devote considerable space and detailed analy-
sis. I focus on these particular figures—Aquinas and Bonaventure, Henry
of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol, Hervaeus Natalis and Durand
of St. Pourçain, William Ockham and Walter Chatton, Francis of Marchia,
and Gregory of Rimini—, because they are central to the story I have to
tell, whether on account of their having made important contributions to
the trinitarian debate or on account of their illustrating general trends in a
particularly apposite manner. For each of these figures, at any rate, I have
attempted to give a relatively coherent exposition, limited in its own way to
be sure, but alive to the systematic and unified nature of the thought with
which we are dealing.
But if system is important to me, so is context and history. I am a firm
advocate of the view that medieval philosophy and theology is most fruit-
fully studied as a discussion or conversation. Here, I am very much inter-
ested in where a thinker fits in the trajectory of the development of medieval
trinitarian theology and concept theory. Just the fact that I have focal fig-
ures, whom I single out as “central” to the “story” that I tell, necessarily
presupposes an examination of the context in which they worked. In other
words, ‘influence’, ‘importance’, and ‘centrality’ are all relative terms, and
understanding why and how a theologian is influential or important or cen-
tral requires understanding the thought milieu in which he worked. More
than that, however, context can allow one to better understand the types of
arguments and the general contours of thought present in even the great-
est of thinkers. While I certainly do not deny that it is possible to study a
medieval thinker divorced from his context, I would definitely maintain that
a richer picture of that thinker and his ideas will emerge from a contextual
investigation. In order to facilitate the contextual dimension of this book,
preface xvii
I have examined some 50 theologians from the 100 years studied here, and
I offer short studies of them to create as full a background as possible for
the focal figures, and to enable me to show why the focal figures were either
important or illustrative. Thus, I try not to take it for granted that, e.g., John
Duns Scotus, Durand of St. Pourçain, Peter Auriol, and William Ockham are
the significant figures in the medieval trinitarian discussion, but rather I try
to show that this is the case both in terms of the extraordinary views that
they held and in terms of the reaction they elicited from contemporary and
later theologians. This “contextual approach” has one consequence that I
need to make the reader aware of: there is repetition in the book, although
I hope that it is not needless repetition. In order to explain how my focal
figures relate to their background, I often have to say a little bit about that
background—despite the fact that I have described it at an earlier juncture.
Besides making it possible for me to show where a theologian fits into the
historical development, this repetition has at least one further advantage: it
allows the reader to concentrate on those figures in whom she is most inter-
ested, skipping (much of) the rest. This is not how I would read the book, but
I think that it is possible to read it in that way. In any event, I recommend
that the reader begin with the Introduction, which gives the necessary lay
of the land.
This note on method leads me to one further point. The last hundred or
so years have seen many major works on later-medieval trinitarian thought,
some of which can only be described as heroic in scale and accomplish-
ment. The works of de Régnon, Schmaus, Stohr, Wetter, Lonergan, Decker,
Vanier, Malet, and others provide us with an immense documentation of
medieval trinitarian interests. What I believe sets off my work from many of
those listed, besides specific subject matter, is its emphasis on tracing lines
of influence and the historical development of views.1 My goal here has been
to show how traditions developed in later-medieval trinitarian theology: a
mainly Franciscan tradition that identified in a strong sense the Son with
a Word or Concept and the Son’s generation with concept formation, and
a rival Dominican tradition rejecting, to one degree or another, this strong
identification. The work is not one of systematic theology—although I hope
that the systematic theologian can profit from it—and it is not organized
as if it were. I believe that the primarily chronological organization that I
have utilized allows me to show in the cases of my focal figures both where
1 Consult the bibliography for full references to these works. One study of this period’s
trinitarian theology that is historical in nature is Hester Gelber’s veritable classic “Logic and
the Trinity” (Gelber 1974).
xviii preface
they stood in their contemporary trinitarian milieu, how their own indi-
vidual trinitarian theologies worked as a system, and what function if any
their ideas on concepts and concept formation served in their trinitarian
theology. Ultimately, what the book may show most clearly is the immense
creativity that Latin theologians in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
brought to bear on trinitarian theology, and the broad spectrum of their
positions. If this serves to awaken more widespread interest in the period’s
trinitarian thought, so much the better.
I have been working on this book—in spurts to be sure, for there were
many other things to be done—for a long time. Some might say “too long”,
and I’m not entirely sure I’d disagree. When roughly eighteen years go by
from a book’s earliest (and rather naïve) conception to its completion, one
accrues many debts, financial, institutional, and personal. Perhaps this is
one reason why completing a project of this type is such a joy: one can finally
acknowledge one’s debts and the kind persons who stood behind them. In
any event, it is a pleasure for me to be able to thank the following institutions
and persons.
Several granting agencies have supported my work on first the disserta-
tion and then this book. The 1992–1993 Lawrence Lafore Fellowship from
the Department of History of the University of Iowa supported my disserta-
tion research at its very beginning stages. Fellowships from the American-
Scandinavian Foundation (1993–1994) and the Graduate College of the
University of Iowa (Seashore Graduate Dissertation Fellowship 1995–1996)
made it possible for me to devote myself to researching and writing at the
Department of Greek and Latin (now a part of the Saxo Institute) of the
University of Copenhagen. Since then, expansion and revision of the dis-
sertation was made possible by grants from the Danish Research Council
for the Humanities (grant number SHF 55-00-0716), for work at the Depart-
ment (now Section) of Church History of the University of Copenhagen, and
the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, for work at the Thomas Institute
of the University of Cologne. Thanks go to the Danish Academy in Rome
and Dronning Ingrids Romerske Fond which provided financial assistance
(and hospitality) on several essential trips to Rome, as well as to the Bikuben
Foundation, which made possible several stays in both Paris and Rome. The
final stages of the research and writing of the book were conducted as part
of research projects granted by the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research
(FWO) and the Research Fund (BOF) of the Catholic University of Leuven.
To all of these agencies, I would like to express my deep and sincere grati-
tude.
preface xix
This book would be a much poorer affair if facilities had not been put at
my disposal by a number of institutions. Thanks go to The Department of
Greek and Latin of the University of Copenhagen, and its former adminis-
trative assistants, Hannah Krogh Hansen and Vivi Lund; to The Department
of Church History of the same University, and to Susanne Lux; to the Insti-
tute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven, in particular the
members of the De Wulf-Mansion Center; to the Thomas Institute of the
University of Cologne, and particularly Petra Abendt and Wolfram Klatt;
and finally to the administrative assistants of the Department of History at
the University of Iowa, in particular Mary Strottman. Libraries to which I
owe a particular debt of gratitude are the Central Library, the Philosophy
Library, and the Theology Library of the Catholic University of Leuven; the
Royal Library in Copenhagen, Denmark; and the Main Library of the Uni-
versity of Iowa. The staff at all these libraries have been invaluable, and a
special word of thanks should go to those working at the interlibrary loan
departments. Further libraries that I am obliged (and pleased) to thank are:
The Hill Monastic Manuscript Library of St. John’s Abbey and College in
Collegeville, Minnesota; the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna;
and Tortosa, Archivo Capitular. In addition, I have been helped by the staff
at the Vatican Library; the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bib-
liothèque du Saulchoir in Paris; the Biblioteca Comunale in Assisi and in
Todi; the Biblioteca Universitaria and the Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio in
Bologna; and the Biblioteca nazionale centrale and the Biblioteca Medicea-
Laurenziana in Florence. I thank the editors of the journals Documenti e
studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, Picenum Seraphicum, and Studia
theologica for allowing me to absorb earlier work of mine into this book. My
book from 2010, Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham, is a
survey of the medieval trinitarian developments that are explored in much
greater detail in the present book.
On a more personal level, many have influenced this work. At Iowa, as
mentioned above, I was extremely fortunate that Katherine Tachau and
Scott MacDonald took a lively interest in my education and in this study;
it would not have been the same without either of them. I was also pleased
that Connie Berman, Dwight Bozeman, and Thomas Williams were willing
to be part of my dissertation defense committee in early 1997, and to offer
me their comments and criticism. Ever since I first went to Copenhagen in
1993, it has been a boon for me that Sten Ebbesen has taken an interest in
my work; I, and this book, have benefited immensely over many years from
Sten’s generosity with his erudition and his encouragement. Lauge Nielsen
served as my doctoral co-supervisor and read in draft the entire dissertation
xx preface
upon which part of this book is based; Lauge put me on the right path at sev-
eral critical junctures in my first forays into the wilds of medieval trinitarian
theology, offering me both perceptive and helpful comments. Fritz S. Peder-
sen has served as guinea pig for several of the chapters presented below—he
claims that he is the archetypal “interested non-specialist”, and perhaps that
is precisely what I have needed, since his comments were always spot on.
From Copenhagen a connection with Helsinki is nearly inevitable: thanks in
particular to Olli Hallamaa, Simo Knuuttila, and Risto Saarinen, who have
always been enthusiastic and curious about the results of my trinitarian
investigations. Much work on the book was done while I was resident at the
Thomas Institute in Cologne (2004–2005), where I was able to take advan-
tage of the company of Jan A. Aertsen, Wouter Goris, and Andreas Speer;
thanks to them for suggestions, encouragement, and for being willing to
include the book in the Institute’s series. In the autumn term of 2005, I took
up a position at the De Wulf-Mansion Center of the Institute of Philoso-
phy at the Catholic University of Leuven. As a consequence, when I was
finishing the book, I received help and encouragement not only from my
colleagues, but also from several fine Ph.D. students, particularly Cal Led-
sham and Jenny Pelletier.
It was at the Thomas Institute in Cologne that I got to know Martin
Pickavé (now at the University of Toronto), who has an uncanny ability to
read with great speed and still be able to offer highly intelligent comments.
Chris Schabel, whom I met in 1988 on my very first day of graduate school
at Iowa and who is now at the University of Cyprus, has been relentless in
giving me help. Chris sent me a set of extremely thorough comments to the
dissertation that part of this book is based on—and he was still willing to
read the book in draft, thereby saving me from many errors. Moreover, it is
lucky for me that Chris became interested in the Latin side of the medieval
Filioque dispute, since it was only with his help that many of the previously
unedited texts upon which parts of this book are based are now available
in published form. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to Bruce D. Marshall,
who, far from grudgingly agreeing to read the book in draft, showed what
can only be described as enthusiasm. Bruce kept me to the straight and
narrow when it came to trinitarian theology; he encouraged me to write
(mostly) about what I know; and he offered me penetrating comments on
many points in the present book. William Duba, another socius from Iowa,
went above and beyond the call of duty on several occasions in getting me
information that went into the book.
At Brill, Julian Deahl, and especially Marcella Mulder and Gera van Bedaf
have made things very easy. Further, for various forms of aid and support
preface xxi
my thanks go to Paul Bakker, Magdalena Bieniak, Olivier Boulnois, Stephen

F. Brown, William J. Courtenay, Richard Cross, Stephen D. Dumont, Kent
Emery Jr., Girard J. Etzkorn, Juan Carlos Flores, Sabine Folger-Fonfara, James
Ginther, Guy Guldentops, James Halverson, Mark Henninger, Isabel Irib-
arren, Iwakuma Yukio, Steffen Kjeldgaard-Pedersen, Theo Kobusch, Hans
Kraml, Roberto Lambertini, the late Raymond Macken, the late Alfonso
Maierù, Christopher J. Martin, Brian McGuire, Stephen Menn, Timothy
Noone, Giorgio Pini, Sylvain Piron, Francesco del Punta, the late L.M. de
Rijk, John Slotemaker, Andrea Tabarroni, David Thomas, and Scott Wil-
liams. While it should go without saying, I will nonetheless make it explicit:
all errors in what follows are my responsibility.
Financial support and support of many other kinds have come from my
father, Melvyn Friedman and his companion Lynn Sinclair. Thanks still
go to Liz and Frank Schabel for the summer of ’94. Agnete Göthgen and
Otto Prösch offered gracious hospitality and encouragement during not a
few Christmas and summer “workations”. Last but certainly not least, my
wife, Pernille Harsting, has supported my work in more ways than can be
imagined, from checking my Latin (and my English) and consulting with
me on paleographical questions to “showing me the ropes” at the Vatican
library to bare encouragement when it seemed as if the book would not and
could not ever get done. To her I owe the greatest debt of thanks.
Leuven
February 26, 2012
introduction
TWO TRINITARIAN THEORIES, AND ONE CONTESTED MODEL
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God
and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God;
all things were made through him, and without him was not
anything made that was made … And the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his
glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.
John 1.1–3, 14
(Revised Standard Version)
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God”. With this phrase John opens his Gospel, but the mean-
ing of his enigmatic statement—and of the ‘Word’, the Logos or Verbum,
in particular—becomes only a little clearer in the remainder of his work.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”, John continues. For theolo-
gians coming after John and trying to interpret his text, it was clear that
the Word is in some way to be identified with Christ, the Son, the sec-
ond person in the Trinity of persons that is the Christian God. Perhaps this
much is apparent, but the precise way in which to interpret John’s words
and just how significant a role they ought to play in trinitarian theology,
occupied medieval theologians in the Latin West for well over a thousand
years. In the later thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, discussion of
just how to take John’s apparent identification of the Son with the Word
was heated. By that time, a complex of issues was packed into the phrase
“in principio erat Verbum”, the resolution of any of which would have an
impact on the others. Thus, the identification of the Son with a Word was
the nexus of at least the following: philosophical psychology, specifically
the theory of concepts, their function, and their formation; the metaphysics
of the categories, especially those of relation, and action and passion; the
constitution of and distinction between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
as persons in the Trinity; the legitimate interpretation of the authoritative
texts that formed the basis of the trinitarian doctrine; and finally the rela-
tion between philosophy, broadly construed, and theology. Such disparate
areas were tightly interwoven in the later-medieval discussion of the divine
2 introduction
Word.1 In this book I tell part of the history of that discussion as it played
out in the years 1250 to 1350, especially focusing on the contributions of
Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and Peter Auriol, and I examine how the
discussion was a locus for change in all of the areas listed above. In addition,
I show that the issue of the identification of the Son with the Word became a
major point of controversy between two camps in the later Middle Ages, one
camp primarily composed of Franciscan theologians, the other primarily of
Dominican, and I explore how this polemical aspect affected the discussion
as a whole.
While the way in which later-medieval theologians interpreted John’s
phrase and situated it in the complex of issues mentioned above is the
subject of this book, describing how the phrase came to have so many
layers of significance for those theologians and explaining the fundamental
positions and terminology used by them is the purpose of this Introduction.
The tale must begin with the doctrine of the Trinity and with trinitarian
theology itself, because the identification of the Son with a Word was
primarily used as an explanation for or clarification of the way that the
Father and the Son relate to one another in the Trinity—and not just how
they relate to one another, but more importantly how they are distinct
from one another. In what would gradually come to be recognized as
the orthodox Christian interpretation of the Trinity, God is three distinct
persons who share one essence, i.e. the divine nature; thus the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the same essentially, yet faith requires
one to believe that they are also different in some less-than-essential way.
Distinction and identity: how can three distinct persons nonetheless be
identical on account of their one shared essence? Michael Schmaus, in his
monumental work on the doctrine of the Trinity in the later Middle Ages,
calls this issue, the constitution of the divine persons, “the most difficult
question situated at the heart of trinitarian speculation.”2
1 By my use of ‘later-medieval’ or ‘later Middle Ages’, I am accepting the designation
employed in the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (= Kretzmann, Kenny, and
Pinborg 1982): basically from the reintroduction of Aristotle in the twelfth century until the
disintegration of scholasticism in the seventeenth. Thus, I am distinguishing the later Middle
Ages from the late Middle Ages, because for my purposes the division between high and
late middle ages at around 1300 misses much of the important continuity between the late
thirteenth- and the early fourteenth-century discussion dealt with below (on the continuity,
see Friedman 2010, esp. 96–98, 165–166).
2 Schmaus 1930a, 385: “Wir kommen zu der schwierigsten im Mittelpunkt der Trinitäts-
spekulation liegenden Frage, zu der Frage nach der konstitution der göttlichen Personen”.
Schmaus devotes pp. 385–569 of his study to a history of this question in the thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries.
two trinitarian theories, and one contested model 3
The problem is one that Christian religious thinkers had grappled with
since the second and third centuries. While the roots of the doctrine of the
Trinity can be found in bits and pieces in the New Testament, an official
ecclesiastical formulation of the doctrine only took shape over time, and
was forged in the fire of controversy—indeed, from the winner’s point of
view, of heresy, especially the Sabellian and the Arian.3 These two heresies,
focusing on the relationship between the Father and the Son, took diametri-
cally opposed views of the hints offered in the New Testament, and thereby
they set the outer limits between which orthodox opinion would later fit.
Sabellianism, the view that the persons are distinct nominally or in name
alone, seems to have arisen in reaction to the earliest development of the
doctrine of the Trinity. A major preoccupation in Christian theology right
up until the late second century was to emphasize the difference between
Christian monotheism and pagan polytheism; thus, in these early years
God’s unity was stressed. First attempts to deal in a more explicit man-
ner with God as Father, Son, and Spirit in the late second and early third
centuries elicited a reaction in the form of “Monarchianism”, the view that
the Christian God admits of no differentiation whatsoever. One particular
type of Monarchianism came to have the most direct impact on the cre-
ation of the orthodox view of the Trinity: Modal Monarchianism, which
is also called ‘Sabellianism’ after its apparently most rigorous proponent,
the Rome-based theologian Sabellius (fl. 215 ad).4 From extant reports of
his teachings, it seems that Sabellius maintained that the only difference
between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is a nominal one. One
undifferentiated Godhead assumes these different names, as it takes on suc-
cessive functions or activities or modes (hence “modal monarchianism”) in
the course of history—first as God appeared to the Old Testament prophets
and then as God was born and lived among men. The idea behind Modal
Monarchianism was challenged nearly immediately, and the most influen-
tial and exacting of these early responses was made by the North African
theologian Tertullian (d. after 220). In the context of his refutation of Sabel-
lianism, Tertullian laid the foundation for much of the Latin terminology
3 On the creation of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the part played in this by
Sabellianism and Arianism, see, e.g., Kelly 1977, 83–137, 223–279; Pelikan 1971, 172–225; Studer
1993. See also the literature referred to in nn. 5–8 below.
4 I am ignoring here the form of Monarchianism called “Dynamic Monarchianism” but
better known as “Adoptionism”, according to which Christ to begin with was a human being
like any other, but upon whom the Spirit had conferred a type of special grace (see also n. 6
below).
4 introduction
that would be used in western trinitarian discussions until the present day:
it seems that not only is the word ‘person’ (persona, the Latin equivalent
of the Greek word ‘prosopon’) Tertullian’s contribution, but also the term
‘Trinity’ (trinitas) itself.5 The opponents of Sabellius and of the other modal
monarchianists won out, and their judgement of the heterodoxy of the
position was confirmed in the early ecumenical councils: not only are the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one God, they are also distinct as
persons.6
With the conclusion that the Father and the Son are distinct, Arius (d.
ca. 336) and those who developed his views agreed. In fact, according to
the Arian position, the Father and the Son do not share an essence at all.7
The Father and the Son were unbegotten and begotten, but how could
unbegotten and begotten share an essence? If Father begot Son, then there
had to be some point at which the Son did not exist, and hence they must
differ essentially. Thus, the Father is God, while the Son is first among
created things, a type of demi-God or preeminent angel. To this position, the
council of bishops assembled in 325ad at Nicaea by Emperor Constantine
the Great replied with an affirmation of the divinity of the second person
of the Trinity: not only are the Father and the Son (and, by extension, the
Holy Spirit) distinct as persons, they are equally divine. This judgement was
reaffirmed and extended in the so-called Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed
(itself sometimes confusingly known as the Nicene Creed) that emerged
from the Council of Constantinople of 381, and especially through this latter
creed the orthodox view became known in both West and East.8 Essentially
5 See Kelly 1977, 112–113; for an extremely sensitive study of the terminology and philo-
sophical content of early trinitarian ideas, including Tertullian’s, see Wolfson 1970, esp. 141–
363 (Tertullian on 322–332). The Roman theologian Hippolytus (d. 235) (who, however, wrote
in Greek) is the other adversary of Sabellianism often mentioned.
6 “The Sabellians” are singled out as heretical in, e.g., the “Damnatio haereticorum” of
the Council of Constantinople of 381; see Denzinger 2005, no. 85. Their view was decisively
condemned at the council of Braga in Spain in 561, as a result of the Priscillianist controversy
there—the fourth-century layman Priscillian of Avila and his followers advocated a form of
adoptionism or dynamic monarchianism (see Chadwick 1976, esp. 86–89, 100–102, and n. 4
above); for the original documents, see Denzinger 2005, no. 231.
7 On Arius, besides the works cited above in n. 3, see esp. Williams (R.D.) 1987, which
concentrates on the relationship between Arius’ philosophical and theological views, but
also includes an historical explanation for the notoriety that Arius and Arianism elicited. On
Arianism in the fourth century, see, e.g., Kopecek 1979, Hanson 1988, and the survey in Barnes
1998.
8 On the role of Arianism in the composition of these two creeds, see Kelly 1972, chs.
VII–XI, esp. ch. VIII; more generally, Barnes 1998, Behr 2001, Behr 2004, Ayres 2004, and
see the interesting discussion in Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007), 414–475 concerning
identical, personally distinct: this is the orthodox view of the Trinity as the
doctrinal battles of the early patristic era left it.
In accordance with this, the task of the Christian theologian dealing with
trinitarian theology, was to preserve a meaningful difference between the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, thereby avoiding the Sabellian heresy
of positing that the persons differ in name only, while at the same time
ensuring their essential unity, thus avoiding Arius’ heresy. At no time in
the history of Christianity has this been an idle theological discussion, and
particularly not in the later Middle Ages. On the contrary, it was seen as
one of the most pressing and significant topics of inquiry, both in terms
of its practical value to a society permeated with the Christian faith and
in terms of what we might today call “pure research”, albeit pure research
in the particularly medieval sense of “faith seeking understanding”, i.e. the
quest for deeper knowledge of God motivated by love of God. The Trinity
was one of the central doctrines of the Catholic faith, revealed by sacred
scripture, enshrined in the creeds most commonly used in the West, the
Nicene (i.e., the Niceno-Constantinopolitan) and the (Ps.-)Athanasian, and
present to Christian believers each and every time they crossed themselves
in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. At stake in trinitarian theology
was the understanding of God’s very nature, and for that reason alone it
would be among the most important research topics to the theologian: this
at least should be gotten right. In addition, however, the doctrine of the
Trinity is closely tied to the theology of the incarnation, and through that
to the issues of redemption and salvation that are of immediate concern to
all the faithful. Thus, the theologian was constantly challenged to interpret
the Trinity for Christian society at large and to present the doctrine as
an integral part of the Christian world-view. Their interpretations reached
later-medieval society through liturgy, through art, and through preaching.
Further, the theologian was required to defend the Trinity. Arianism had
not been eradicated by the pronouncements of the Nicene Council in 325.
Far from it: under Constantine’s son, Emperor Constantius II (reigned in the
East 337–361; from 353 ruler of the entire Empire), Arianism reemerged as
a strong and officially sanctioned theological view in the Empire. Constan-
tius’ support for Arianism was of profound historical significance, since his
reign saw the beginning of the conversion to Christianity of several of the
“Nicaea and its Legacy” with contributions by Lewis Ayres, John Behr, and Khaled Anatolios.
For excerpts from the creeds, see Denzinger 2005, nos. 54–57 (Nicene), nos. 85–86 (Niceno-
Constantinopolitan).
6 introduction
Germanic tribes who were pressing the Empire’s eastern borders. Many of
these tribes were consequently converted to Arian Christianity—the best
known example is the conversion of the Goths by the Arian Christian bishop
Ulfila (d. ca. 383), who also translated the Bible into Gothic. Even after the
Council of Constantinople in 381 and its strong condemnation of Arius and
Arianism, the conversion of the Germanic tribes to Arian Christianity con-
tinued.9 As a result, Arianism had a long history in Western Europe. The
Visigoths and Ostrogoths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Sueves, and
certain of the Lombards who gained political and military mastery of the
West in the fifth and sixth centuries were Arian Christians; this was at the
very least a contributing factor to the failure of these particular tribes to put
roots down deeply into the Catholic society over which they ruled—in con-
trast to the Catholic Franks.10 The Visigoths in Spain remained unconverted
until 589. The widespread and long-term presence of a group of powerful
trinitarian heretics in the Latin West left medieval theologians with the con-
viction that the Trinity had to be defended: the Arians had been amongst
them at one time, they could be again. This was made still more pressing
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the existence of a major dualist
heresy, the Cathars, in northern Italy and southern France, since Catholic
Christians concluded that the dualism of the Cathars, particularly their
belief that matter is in some strong sense evil, entailed a denial of the incar-
nated Son’s divinity, and hence that Cathars were guilty of the Arian heresy.11
The conviction of the theologians that the doctrine of the Trinity needed to
be safeguarded could only have been confirmed by attacks on it by Muslims
and Jews. There was a large literature in Arabic by Christians defending the
doctrine of the Trinity, and this was answered by an equally voluminous
9 See on this, e.g., Fletcher 1997, esp. 72–77; Wolfram 1988, 75–85. For the effect of the
resurgence of Arianism on the creeds, see Kelley 1972, ch. IX.3: “The Triumph of Arianism”.
Specifically on Ulfila (and his Arianism), see the translations and commentary in Heather
and Matthews 1991, ch. 5 (on the Gothic bible, see ibid., chs. 6–7).
10 Some revision of this traditional view of the inimical relationship between Arian rulers
and Catholic ruled has been suggested by Peter Heather (1996), esp. for the Visigoths on
pp. 212–215 (see also 207–209, 280–283). But Heather still maintains that “Ulfila’s brand of
Christianity became, in the fifth and sixth centuries, a distinctive feature of Gothic societies
inside the Roman frontier” (ibid., 60–61, esp. 60) and that “the Goths’ particular Christianity
acted as a defining force” (245).
11 See, e.g., Pelikan 1978, 239–240. While, doctrinally speaking, dualism would seem to
entail some type of trinitarian heresy (as Pelikan maintains), whether historically speaking
the Cathars were actually Arians or whether this was simply the worst possible name that
their Catholic opponents could think to label them with is still a matter of discussion: see,
e.g., Moore 1994, esp. 244–246. On the Cathars in general, see, e.g., Lambert 1998; Barber 2000.
anti-trinitarian polemic from Muslims writing in both Arabic and Persian.12

For Latin Christian theologians, the considerable Jewish polemical litera-
ture against the Trinity (and other areas of Christian doctrine) was both
more accessible and better known; moreover, Jewish-Christian polemic did
not stay at the level of literary exchanges, but often involved personal con-
tact, through debates and attempted conversion of Jews by Christians.13 All
of this would contribute to the Christian theologian’s conviction that the
quest to understand and explain the Trinity was of extreme importance.
What is more, there were disputed trinitarian questions within the Chris-
tian fold itself, most spectacularly the controversy between the Greek (i.e.,
Eastern Orthodox)14 and Latin Churches over the Filioque clause—the Latin
Catholic Church’s insistence that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the
Father “and the Son”. That issue will play a rather important role in this
book, so it is appropriate to devote some attention to it here. In its original
form, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 mentioned only that the
Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father—there was no explicit statement to
the effect that the Spirit came from the Son as well. Thus, the creed read:
Spiritus Sanctus, qui ex Patre procedit. Throughout the Middle Ages, and
12 A very nice historical study of many of the numerous (and largely unpublished)
Christian Arabic defenses of the Trinity, as well as some of the responses they elicited, is
Haddad 1985; Haddad claims that among Arabic Christian defenses of the Trinity “les grands
noms, antérieurs à 1050, avaient déjà fixé les grandes lignes de la doctrine trinitaire. Des
nuances, il est vrai, seront ajoutées par les générations postérieures; mais on peut considérer
qu’ en 1050 l’ essentiel à ce sujet est déjà dit.” (p. 8). One of the “grands noms”—in fact the first
in the context of Haddad’s study (see p. 52)—is John Damascene, who thus appears to have
been a major figure in three Christian traditions: Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Arabic.
As far as I am aware there is no general work on medieval Muslim criticism of the
Trinity, but two specialist works can be mentioned. For an early (ca. mid 9th century)
Muslim critique of the Trinity, see Thomas 1992, with a survey of the early critiques in
the Introduction, pp. 31–50. An early fourteenth-century Muslim critique has been partially
translated and thoroughly introduced by Thomas F. Michel in Michel 1984; specifically on
trinitarian theology, see the translation pp. 255–279, and the introduction, pp. 120–127 (I am
grateful to David Thomas for making me aware of this work).
13 On medieval Jewish critiques of the Trinity, see particularly Lasker 1977, esp. 45–104;
less important for trinitarian doctrine, but indicative of the wide variety of Christian-Jewish
intellectual interactions is Rankin 1956. For a fascinating account of a direct link between a
Jewish population and Christian trinitarian speculation, in this case in late-medieval Vienna,
see Shank 1988, esp. chs. 6 and 7.
14 Throughout this book, for the most part I will follow my medieval Latin authors in using
the term ‘Greek’ as a blanket description for their Eastern Orthodox opponents, although
I recognize that the Eastern Orthodox Churches, then as now, are not exclusively Greek.
Correspondingly, I use ‘Latin’ to describe Roman Catholics of the period regardless of their
place of origin.
8 introduction
indeed to this very day, most Eastern Orthodox Christians have maintained
that the original form of the Creed excludes the view that the Holy Spirit
comes from the Son: just as the Son does, so the Holy Spirit comes from the
Father alone. In the Western Christian tradition, however, the belief that the
Holy Spirit is spirated by the Father and the Son conjointly is rather clearly
sanctioned in the theological literature from a very early date, at least as far
back as Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) and perhaps even as far back as Hilary
of Poitiers (d. 367).15 In Spain, already from the fourth and fifth centuries, in
response to heresies of both a Sabellian and an Arian stripe, an ever increas-
ing emphasis in the theological debate came to be laid on the Son spirating
the Holy Spirit together with the Father. The Filioque, in the western view,
could be used to combat both of the major types of trinitarian heresies, since
it seems to require that the Son and the Father were not only consubstan-
tial (i.e., equally divine) but also personally distinct. In Spain, as early as the
seventh century, the term Filioque was added to the very text of the Niceno-
Constantinopolitan Creed: Spiritus Sanctus, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit.
With support from Charlemagne (d. 814) and his successors, and despite
some resistance by successive popes (who did not want this issue to become
a major barrier between East and West), this reading of the Creed became
widespread in the West by the middle of the ninth century; by the eleventh
century, even the pope had accepted it. By around 1030, the Filioque was a
recognized part of the Creed throughout western Latin Christendom. But
what to the Latins was at worst a clarification added to make explicit what
was already implicit in Scripture and the earliest creeds (and at best was a
legitimate creedal form in its own right), to the vast majority of Greeks was a
15 As later-medieval theologians recognized, Augustine explicitly claimed that the Holy
Spirit came from both the Father and the Son in, e.g., De trinitate XV, 26, 47: “Filius autem de
Patre natus est, et Spiritus Sanctus de Patre principaliter, et ipso sine ullo intervallo temporis
dante, communiter de utroque procedit .... Non igitur ab utroque est genitus sed procedit
ab utroque amborum Spiritus.” CCSL 50a, p. 529113–118 (see also ibid. IV, 20, 29: “non tantum
a Patre sed et a Filio procedere Spiritum Sanctum” [CCSL 50, p. 200109–110]). For texts from
Hilary’s De trinitate that can be interpreted as supporting the Filioque, see De trinitate II, 29
(CCSL 72, pp. 64–65); VIII, 20 (CCSL 72a, pp. 331–333); and VIII, 26 (CCSL 72a, pp. 337–338).
Kelly 1972, 360–361, cites local Spanish creeds and council acts containing the Filioque, dating
from perhaps as early as 380 ad (and in response to the Priscillianist heresy, on which see n. 6
above). For a survey of early views on the relation between the Son and the Holy Spirit, see
Wolfson 1970, 232–256, although Wolfson’s use of the term ‘verbal distinction’ to describe the
Greek view of the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit (e.g., 255–256)—Wolfson
presumably meaning that there is no direct causal connection between these two persons—
is unfortunate inasmuch as Eastern Orthodox theologians did not and do not consider the
Son and the Holy Spirit to be merely verbally but rather personally distinct.
unilateral and completely unjustified addition to the Creed.16 Not only had
the Filioque not been agreed upon in an ecumenical council, most Greek
theologians thought it was indefensible theology. As time went on, even the
Greek population may have begun to view the Filioque as the point on which
the Latin West could and should be resisted: in the late thirteenth century,
“children at school, women chatting over their distaffs and spindles, farmers
and labourers, all of them now have only one subject in the forefront of
their minds and conversations—the procession of the Holy Spirit from the
Son.”17 The controversy over the Filioque—whatever it may say about the
differences between the Greek and Latin conceptualization of and approach
to the Trinity18—was and still is one of the major doctrinal impediments to
the reunion of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. It was
certainly the most intractable doctrinal sticking point in the negotiations
16 See on the history of the addition of the Filioque clause to the Creed, e.g., Kelly 1972,
ch. XI.5: “The Filioque”; Pelikan 1974a, 183–198. For an interesting modern discussion on the
scriptural defensibility of the Filioque, taking its point of departure in Reformation thought,
see Marshall 2002, and the literature referred to there, esp. Daley 2001a and 2001b, and
Oberdorfer 2001. For some perspective on Byzantine theology, and especially the Filioque’s
role in it, see, e.g., Meyendorff 1974, esp. 91–94, and ch. 14: “The Triune God”; Meyendorff 1982.
17 From a text by John Bekkos dating from the years following the failure of the first
attempts at reunification of the Latin and Greek Churches in 1274; transl. from Donald M.
Nicol, “The Byzantine Reaction to the Second Council of Lyons, 1274”, reprinted in Nicol 1972,
ch. VI, this text pp. 124–125. As Bekkos acknowledges, his words recall a passage by Gregory of
Nyssa (d. ca. 395) describing the furor in Constantinople surrounding the Arian controversy:
“Ask a tradesman how many obols he wants for some article in his shop and he replies with a
disquisition on generated and ungenerated being. Ask the price of bread today, and the baker
tells you ‘the Son is subordinate to the Father’. Ask your servant if the bath is ready and he
makes answer ‘the Son arose out of nothing’.” (transl. from Davis 1970, 17; original found in
Gregory of Nyssa, De Deitate Filii et Spiritus Sancti et in Abraham [PG 46, col. 557b = Gregorii
Nysseni Opera, vol. 10 pars 2: Gregorii Nysseni Sermones, Pars 3, edidit Ernestus Rhein et al.
(Leiden: Brill 1996)], p. 1277–12). Thanks to John Behr, Bruce Marshall, and Cyril Crawford,
OSB, for help in locating this passage of Gregory’s.
18 It is something of a commonplace in the secondary literature to emphasize that the
Filioque is indicative of deep doctrinal differences between Eastern Orthodox and Latin
trinitarian theologies, specifically that the Greeks stressed as their starting point the three
divine persons and the Father’s being the principle of unity in the Godhead, whereas the
Latins stressed as their starting point the divine essence, seeing in it the principle of divine
unity (see, e.g., Ware 1963, 219; Pelikan 1974a, 196–198). This type of historiographical scheme
is at least in part the legacy of Théodore de Régnon’s Études de théologie positive sur la sainte
Trinité (de Régnon 1892–1898), and it has come in for considerable criticism in recent years
(e.g., Barnes 1995a and 1995b; Knuuttila 1999, esp. 237–239; Marshall 2004), although it has
also had its defenders (Hennessy 2007). For my part, I can say that de Régnon’s scheme does
not do justice to the diversity of trinitarian views in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century
discussion in the Latin West, as I hope this book demonstrates—while recognizing that it
was never his intention to do that.
10 introduction
on reunion of the Churches that stretched from the Second Council of Lyon
in 1274 to the Council of Florence in 1439, and this despite the fact that at
both of those most important reunion councils a genuine attempt seems to
have been made to find ways around this loggerhead.19
Thus, throughout the Middle Ages, to the Catholic theologian there
were real, current threats to the true understanding of the Trinity, threats
that required refutation. It cannot be wondered at, then, that when the
highest members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy met in Rome in 1215 for
the Fourth Lateran Council, the correct understanding of the Trinity was
a very prominent item on their agenda. This was at the height of the
Albigensian crusade against the Cathars of southern France, and therefore
Arianism appeared to be a threat; the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to
the Latin warriors of the Fourth Crusade made the Greek issue pressing;
and controversies internal to Western Christianity also made the Trinity
an issue of deep concern, in particular the view of the Trinity put forth
by the Italian mystical abbot, Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) in opposition to
that held by Peter Lombard (d. 1160), Bishop of Paris and author of Quatuor
libri Sententiarum, Joachim apparently claiming that Lombard’s view of the
essence and three persons would lead to a quaternity.20 All of this explains
the forceful reaffirmation of trinitarian orthodoxy at the very beginning of
the Canons that emerged from the Council, a text incorporated into Canon
Law and cited in nearly every later-medieval treatment of the Trinity:
19 On these negotiations, see, e.g., Geanakoplos 1976; Nicol 1972, esp. ch. V (“The Greeks
and the Union of the Churches: The Preliminaries to the Second Council of Lyons, 1261–
1274”), ch. VI (see n. 17 above), ch. VIII (“Byzantine Requests for an Oecumenical Council
in the Fourteenth Century”). There were, of course, many other sticking points in these
negotiations—papal primacy, priestly celibacy, the date of Easter, use of leavened or unleav-
ened bread in the mass, etc.—but both sides clearly settled on the Filioque as the major
doctrinal issue. For wide-ranging historical overviews of the Filioque dispute, see Haddad
2002 and Siecienski 2010 (which I have not seen). Recently Tia Kolbaba has offered a revised
perspective on the development of the Filioque in the Middle Ages (and other doctrinal issues
standing between eastern and western Christendom), by approaching the question more
from the point of view of the political and religious context within the Byzantine Empire
than from that of a dispute between Greek and Latins; see, e.g., Kolbaba 2001. On the Coun-
cil of Florence, see Gill 1982, esp. chs. 5 (“The Addition to the Creed”), 6 (“Florence and the
Dogmatic Discussions”), and 7 (“Union: The Procession of the Holy Spirit”).
Chris Schabel and I will deal at greater length with especially the Latin side of the later-
medieval debate on the Filioque in the introductions to Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming,
which will also present editions of previously unedited texts from the period 1308–1348
originating at the University of Paris and dealing directly with the Filioque.
20 On this, see, e.g., Robb 1997.
We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God, eternal,
without measure and unchangeable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, and
ineffable, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three persons, indeed,
but one utterly simple essence, substance, or nature: the Father from none,
the Son from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit from each of the others
equally; without beginning, always, and without end; the Father generating,
the Son being born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding; consubstantial and
co-equal, and co-omnipotent and co-eternal .... There is one single highest
thing—indeed incomprehensible and ineffable—that truly is the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit, the three persons together and each of them
separately, and so in God there is a Trinity only, not a quaternity, because each
of the three persons is that thing, i.e. substance, essence, or divine nature, that
alone is the source of all things, besides which no other [source] can be found,
and that thing does not generate, nor is it generated, nor does it proceed, but
it is the Father who generates, the Son who is generated, and the Holy Spirit
who proceeds, so that there are distinctions between the persons and unity
of nature.21
This statement was the point of departure of every later-medieval theolo-

gian dealing with the Trinity; it was the basic definition of orthodoxy by
which he measured his own ideas and those of his colleagues.
Yet, although the Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (as well as
other doctrinal statements) left no doubt that the task for the Christian
theologian approaching trinitarian theology was the preservation of both
essential unity and personal distinction, just how to carry out this task in a
philosophically sophisticated and convincing manner was not defined, nor
was it by any means apparent from the start. Looking back from the vantage
point of the later-medieval theologian, three more or less discrete ways of
approaching the Trinity had been suggested by earlier authors, and as we
will see in this book, it was the interaction between these three general
21 Denzinger 2005, nos. 428, 432; Friedberg 1959, II, 5–7 (X 1.1.1–2): “Firmiter credimus
et simpliciter confitemur quod unus solus est verus Deus, aeternus, immensus et incom-
mutabilis, incomprehensibilis, omnipotens et ineffabilis, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus.
Tres quidem personae, sed una essentia, substantia, seu natura simplex omnino: Pater a
nullo, Filius a Patre solo, ac Spiritus Sanctus pariter ab utroque; absque initio, semper, ac
sine fine; Pater generans, Filius nascens, et Spiritus Sanctus procedens, consubstantiales et
coaequales, et co-omnipotentes et coaeterni .... una quaedam summa res est, incomprehen-
sibilis quidem et ineffabilis, quae veraciter est Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus; tres simul
personae, ac sigillatim quaelibet earundem, et ideo in Deo solummodo Trinitas est, non
quaternitas, quia quaelibet trium personarum est illa res, videlicet substantia, essentia, seu
natura divina, quae sola est universorum principium, praeter quod aliud inveniri non potest,
et illa res non est generans, neque genita, nec procedens, sed est Pater qui generat, et Filius
qui gignitur, et Spiritus Sanctus qui procedit, ut distinctiones sint in personis et unitas in
natura.”
12 introduction
approaches that was a major motor behind the university discussion of

trinitarian theology in the period 1250–1350. In what follows, then, I want
to describe the ancient and early-medieval roots of these three trinitarian
approaches, which are, more specifically, two trinitarian theories and one
contested model. The first of the approaches is an account of the Trinity
that focuses on relations as the factor making the divine persons distinct;
the second is an account that focuses on emanations; and finally there is
a description or a model of the Trinity in terms of human psychology. In
the later Middle Ages, the two theories were taken by their adherents to
explain something about the Trinity (i.e., how the persons are really distinct
and essentially identical), and as a result they were often seen to be, to
one extent or another, conflicting; the debate over the model, on the other
hand, was precisely about whether it really explained anything or whether
it was rather a helpful way of looking at the Trinity without much (if any)
explanatory power.22 It must be recognized at the outset, however, that
what seemed to later-medieval scholastics to be distinct and competing
approaches, were inchoate in the works of, e.g., Augustine and Anselm, and
so could and did peacefully coexist. Thus, a clash over whether it was the
relation or the emanation account that best explained personal distinction,
and over whether the psychological model was best interpreted literally or
metaphorically, was not handed down to later-medieval theologians, but
came about due to the way that those theologians developed the ideas they
inherited.
1. The Relation Account
The principal tack bequeathed to the Latin West for steering the narrow
course between identity and distinction was suggested in the early fifth cen-
tury by Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), and was elaborated further a century
later by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (d. ca. 525), who acknowledged
explicitly his own debt to Augustine.23 The central fact that Augustine and
22
See on this n. 45 below.
23
On Augustine’s life, works, and thought, see, e.g., Bonner 1986; Brown 2000; Harrison
2000; very concise: MacDonald 2003; and the articles collected in Stump and Kretzmann 2001
(for an overview of the De trinitate, the article by Mary T. Clark). On Augustinian trinitarian
theory more particularly, see e.g. Schmaus 1927, and esp. Ayres 2010 (with further literature
referred to there). For a fine general introduction to Boethius, see Marenbon 2003, as well
as Marenbon 2009; more concise: Magee 2003. On Boethius’ trinitarian theology, and with
special attention to its historical context, see Schurr 1935. Boethius acknowledges his debt
Boethius recognized and exploited was that ‘father’ and ‘son’ are relative
terms. This is just to say that a father is a father only because he is the father
of a child, in this case a son, and hence that father and son are always said
relatively to one another. A father is related to his son by the relation pater-
nity or fatherhood (paternitas); a son is related to his father by the relation
filiation or sonhood (filiatio). Now, relation is one of the ten Aristotelian
categories, and the relation of a father to his son is one of the paradig-
matic examples of relation that Aristotle gives.24 This fact did not escape
either Augustine or Boethius, and it should thus come as no surprise that
their solution to the problem of distinguishing divine persons that share
one essence is found in their respective works De trinitate in the context
of an examination of how the Aristotelian categories can apply to God. Nor
should it come as a surprise that the explanatory device that they settle on
is the Aristotelian category of relation.25
Aristotle’s categories can be divided up according to one most basic divi-
sion: there is the category of substance, and this applies to the kinds of things
that have independent existence, and there are nine categories of accident,
applying to the kinds of things that inhere in a substance and are different
from it, since accidents are able to change while the substance maintains its
identity. Both Augustine and Boethius chose substance as the most suitable
category to apply to God, because, in a sense, God is most purely substance.26
to Augustine at the very beginning of the De trinitate (ed. Moreschini, pp. 16629–16731; eds.
H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, and S.J. Tester, p. 431–33): “Vobis tamen etiam illud inspiciendum est,
an ex beati Augustini scriptis semina rationum aliquos in nos venientia fructus extulerint.”
24 See Aristotle, Metaphysics V, c. 15 (1021a15–27).
25 See Augustine, De trinitate (CCSL vols. 50–50a), book V, esp. V, 7, 8 (CCSL 50, pp. 21446–
21566); Boethius, De trinitate, cc. 4–6 (ed. Moreschini, pp. 173–181; eds. Stewart-Rand-Tester,
pp. 16–31). For a closer account of Augustine’s and Boethius’ use of relations in trinitarian
theology, see Jordan 1984, pp. 20–31; Andrews 1986; Andrews 1988, 245–255, 309–310.
26 On substance as the category most applicable to God, see, e.g., Augustine, De trinitate
V, 2, 3 (CCSL 50, pp. 207–208); Boethius, De trinitate, c. 4, where Boethius says that God’s
substance is in fact “beyond substance” or “supersubstance” (ultra substantiam), and hence
that all other predicates from any other category when used of God are said supersubstan-
tially (with the exception, of course, of the relations between the persons: see ibid., c. 5).
The idea that God is supersubstantial was reinforced by the use of this very term by Pseudo-
Dionysius in De divinis nominibus, e.g., c. 1, § 2 (PG 3, 587C; PL 122, 1113D), and c. 2, §7 (PG 3,
646, PL 122, 1123), and the term will appear in later-medieval trinitarian material, e.g. in Ger-
ard of Abbeville, see Ch. 2, below, at nn. 12 and 15.
It should be noted that in De trinitate V, 8, 9, Augustine suggests that perhaps action
is what is most truly said about God: “Quod autem ad faciendum attinet fortassis de solo
Deo verissime dicatur; solus enim Deus facit et ipse non fit, neque patitur quantum ad eius
substantiam pertinet qua Deus est.” CCSL 50, p. 21628–31. For more on action as descriptive of
God, see at and around nn. 43–44 below.
14 introduction
This judgment, as far as I know, was not a point of contention during the
Middle Ages: God is most truly described by the category of substance. Can
any other categories describe God? As mentioned above, the nine categories
of accident share that they inhere in their subject (in this case, a substance)
and are different from it, since they can come and go while the subject
remains; each genus of accident relates in a different way to its subject, e.g.,
quantity measures its subject (a two-foot long stick), while quality modifies
its subject (a brown shoe). The difficulty with attributing accidents to God
is that their inherence in but difference from their subject implies compo-
sition of subject and accident. This type of composition is impossible in an
utterly simple God. Furthermore, God’s immutability precludes any coming
and going of accidents. Thus, none of the accidental categories can be pred-
icated of God: when we say, for example, “God is great” (quantity) or “God is
just” (quality) we are speaking about God’s substance, and the predication
is “in quid”, i.e. essential.27
But if we ignore relation’s accidentality, its inherence and its mutability,
then we can see that relation is different from the other categories. Boethius
sums up this difference well: “some of the categories point to the thing
itself, others point to the circumstances of the thing.”28 Relation says noth-
ing about the thing itself, but only about a particular disposition that the
thing is in with respect to other things. For example, if someone is stand-
ing to my right, and moves to my left, it seems obvious that nothing has
truly changed about that person or about me, i.e. about our substances;
what has changed is the spatial arrangement between us. As Aristotle noted
when he named the category, the special characteristic of relation is that it
is toward something (Latin: ad aliquid, Greek: pros ti), and it indicates noth-
ing about its subject besides its extrinsic circumstances. Thus, for Augustine
and Boethius, special divine relations, stripped of all accidentality and there-
fore implying no composition or change, are not incompatible with God’s
simplicity, and these relations in fact explain why the Father and the Son are
distinct personally, but identical essentially. The relations paternity and fili-
ation are between the Father and the Son. Since the relations between them
27 See, e.g., Augustine, De trinitate V, 10, 11 (CCSL 50, 217–218); for Boethius see De trinitate,
c. 4, referred to in n. 26 above.
28 Boethius, De trinitate, c. 4: “Iamne patet quae sit differentia praedicationum? Quod
aliae quidem quasi rem monstrant, aliae vero quasi circumstantias rei quodque illa quae
ita praedicantur, ut esse aliquid rem ostendant, illa vero ut non esse, sed potius extrinse-
cus aliquid quodam modo affigant.” Ed. Moreschini, p. 177269–274; ed. Stewart-Rand-Tester,
pp. 2299–24104.
are real and not mere mental constructs, the Father and the Son must be
distinct in some way—not distinct essentially (since they share everything
else and are one God) but distinct as persons.29 In this way, later-medieval
theologians inherited from Augustine and Boethius an explanation for the
way that the Father and the Son (and, by extension, the Holy Spirit) were
distinct persons: by appealing to the very relations between them, paternity
and filiation. As Boethius encapsulated the theory in a catch phrase used
in nearly every later-medieval trinitarian discussion: “substance preserves
unity, relation multiplies the Trinity.”30
As we will see, later thinkers do indeed develop the relation account,
both terminologically and in more central ways. Yet the basic idea remains
the same as that proposed by Augustine and Boethius: the most basic
trinitarian properties are understood in a relational way. Thus, that the
Father and the Son are related to each other by the divine relations paternity
and filiation does not exhaust the relations in God. The Holy Spirit is
constituted as distinct from the Father and the Son because he is related
to them by spiration (spiratio), also called procession (processio). These
three divine relations, paternity, filiation, and procession are the relations
that are constitutive of persons. That is to say, these are the relations on
the basis of which the entire Trinity is established: three persons, distinct
on the basis of the relations between them, but nevertheless essentially
identical. There are, however, two more divine relations: common spiration
(spiratio communis) said of the Father and the Son in relation to the Holy
Spirit, because the Father and the Son together spirate the Holy Spirit; and
innascibility (innascibilitas), which is, in fact, the negation of a relation,
since it is said of the Father alone on account of the fact that the Father, the
first person in the Trinity, is neither generated nor spirated. Taken together
these five relations were called the divine notions (notiones), because they
make the persons known to us.
29 E.g. Augustine, De trinitate V, 5, 6: “Sed quia et Pater non dicitur Pater nisi ex eo quod
est ei Filius et Filius non dicitur nisi ex eo quod habet Patrem, non secundum substantiam
haec dicuntur quia non quisque eorum ad se ipsum sed ad invicem atque ad alterutrum
ista dicuntur; neque secundum accidens quia et quod dicitur Pater et quod dicitur Filius
aeternum atque incommutabile est eis. Quamobrem quamvis diversum sit Patrem esse et
Filium esse, non est tamen diversa substantia quia hoc non secundum substantiam dicuntur
sed secundum relativum, quod tamen relativum non est accidens quia non est mutabile.”
CCSL 50, pp. 21013–21122.
30 Boethius, De trinitate, c. 6: “substantia continet unitatem, relatio multiplicat trini-
tatem.” Ed. Moreschini, p. 180339–340; ed. Stewart-Rand-Tester, p. 287–9.

16 introduction
To look at Augustine’s and Boethius’ theory of the constitution of the

divine persons in another way, we can focus on the idea of the commu-
nicability (communicabilitas) or “shareability” of the divine nature. God’s
essence or nature is fully communicable, it can be shared, and it is perfectly
shared by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: they are one God. Yet,
what makes the three persons distinct from one another is one property
(proprietas) or characteristic that sets each one apart from the other, and
this property is incommunicable, it cannot be shared. Thus, the Father shares
with the Son everything of God’s essence, the divine nature, except for the
fact that the Father has a Son: this one difference sets the Father and the Son
apart, because it is an incommunicable property. Likewise, the Son with the
Father, and the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son: they share utterly
the divine nature, except for one incommunicable, relational property that
sets each apart from the other two.
2. The Emanation Account
In the Latin West, the relation account was the dominant theory for explain-
ing the distinction between the divine persons from the time that Augustine
and Boethius first set it down, and if the earlier period had left to later-
medieval theologians only this one trinitarian theory, then much of the
doctrinal discussion of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries
described in this book might not have taken place at all. The fact is, how-
ever, that to a great extent what drove the later-medieval trinitarian dis-
cussion was a jostling for precedence between the relation account and a
rival: the emanation account. Although this latter explanation for personal
distinction only crystallized in the twelfth century, nevertheless hints of it
are to be found in the works of Augustine (esp. De trinitate), the Pseudo-
Dionysius (esp. De divinis nominibus), John Damascene (De fide orthodoxa),
and Anselm of Canterbury (esp. De processione Spiritus Sancti), and texts
from all four were used in the later Middle Ages to support the emanation
account. Thus, it is worth stressing again that what later-medieval theolo-
gians perceived to be contradictory or at least competing trinitarian theo-
ries, the relation and the emanation accounts, were not necessarily thought
to be so by the ancient and early-medieval writers of the authoritative texts
used to support the later positions. It was a choice by later-medieval the-
ologians to emphasize certain aspects of the authoritative works available
to them, by choosing certain types of authoritative passages to support
their position and to reinterpret or dismiss other types of authoritative
passages. This is how in the later-medieval period the emanation account

developed into a rival to the relation account.
From the perspective of the later-medieval authors we will be dealing
with in this book, the emanation account appeared to have been made into
a viable option in the late twelfth century by Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173).31
As we will see throughout this book, Richard was of central importance to
the later-medieval trinitarian discussion, and he was continually appealed
to for support by those arguing for an emanation account of personal dis-
tinction. For Richard, the divine persons are distinguished from each other
by the way in which they originate. The foundation of his view is his defini-
tion of the divine persons, which was to become extremely influential in the
thirteenth and later centuries: Richard maintains that each divine person is
nothing other than “an incommunicable existence of the divine nature”.32
Because Richard identifies differing ways of originating with differing ways
of receiving being or existence, differing ways of originating entail differ-
ing ways of existing.33 Further, because in the divine the differing ways of
31 See Richard’s De trinitate, esp. books IV–VI (I have used Ribaillier’s edition, but the text
is also found in PL vol. 196, cols 887–992). For discussion of aspects of Richard’s trinitarian
theology, see Stohr 1925, esp. 121–126; Wipfler 1965; Bok 1996; Cacciapuoti 1998; Melone 2001.
There is a discussion as to whether Richard was indeed the source of inspiration for, in
particular, Bonaventure (see on this González 1966, 156–158, and Hayes 1979, 13–24, and see
Ch. 1, n. 66, below). There are clearly differences in stress between Richard and Bonaventure.
For my purposes, however, what is significant is that Bonaventure and the later Franciscan
tradition appealed to Richard often and sometimes in a priviliged way. Thus, my claim is
historical more than doctrinal.
32 Richard of Saint-Victor, De trinitate, lib. IV, c. 22: “… persona divina sit divinae naturae
incommunicabilis existentia.” Ed. Ribaillier, p. 1878–9 (PL 196, 945C). Ibid., c. 18: “… quantum
ad divina, nihil aliud est persona quam incommunicabilis existentia.” Ed. Ribaillier, p. 1811–2
(PL 196, 941D). Richard’s definition differs significantly from the other definition of ‘person’
that was popular in the Middle Ages, namely that of Boethius, according to whom a person
is “rationalis naturae individua substantia” (see Boethius’ De persona et duabus naturis, c. 3,
in PL 64, 1343D). Richard discusses Boethius’ definition of a person in De trinitate, lib. IV, cc.
21–24 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 186–188; PL 196, 944D–947A). During the thirteenth century, these
“rival” definitions of ‘person’ were the subject of a great deal of discussion: which better
applies to the divine persons? See on this discussion, e.g., Schmaus 1930a, 379–385. What
everyone appears to have agreed upon was that the divine persons were individuals distinct
from one another, i.e. hypostases, and able to be distinguished in some way from the divine
essence, hence subsistent.
33 Richard, De trinitate, lib. IV, c. 11: “Ad istam considerationem pertinet subtiliter indagare
hoc ipsum quod est unde habeat esse, a semetipso vel aliunde; et si aliunde quam a se ipso,
utrum modo isto vel illo, vel alio quocumque existendi modo. Illic itaque quaeritur rei ipsius
definitio vel qualiscumque descriptio proprietatisque assignatio. Hic vero naturae ordo, rei
ipsius origo et circa huiusmodi qualiscumque discretio. Illa itaque consideratio versatur circa
modum essendi, ista vero versatur circa modum obtinendi. Illa circa rationem essentiae, ista,
ut sic dicam, circa rationem obtinentiae.” Ed. Ribaillier, p. 17313–21 (PL 196, 936D–937C).
18 introduction
originating and of existing are incommunicable, i.e. they are not shared
by the persons but are specific to one person alone, Richard can claim by
appealing to his own definition of ‘person’ that different ways of originat-
ing (or modes of proceeding or of origin) entail different persons.34 Thus,
on Richard’s account, person is made distinct from person by the timeless,
divine way in which one originates or emanates from another. In this way,
Richard turned the explanatory emphasis in the issue of the distinction of
the persons away from the relations to the emanations or ways of originat-
ing.
What are these ways of originating? One is clear: there is one person who
takes existence from no other person. The first person in the Trinity exists
on his own account from eternity.35 This person, because of his perfection
and goodness, then originates two others.36 The second person is originated
immediately by the first, and the third mediately with the second person as
well, although there is only an order of nature or of causality between these
two processions.37 For Richard of St. Victor, then, it is the different ways in
Ibid., lib. IV, c. 13: “Secundum solam vero originem est illa varietas existentiae, quando
pluribus personis est unum idemque et indifferens esse, inveniuntur tamen secundum
originem mutuam ad invicem differentiam habere. Secundum originem vero differunt, si
unus originem habet, alter origine caret, vel si originem habentium origo unius differt
ab origine alterius. Huiusmodi ergo existentia variatur secundum originem solam …” Ed.
Ribaillier, p. 17512–18 (PL 196, 938B–C).
34 Richard, De trinitate, lib. IV, cc. 17–18, esp. 18: “Ut superius probatum est, omnis pro-
prietas personalis omnino est incommunicabilis. Et item eadem est in divinis differentia
personarum et differentia existentiarum.” Ed. Ribaillier, p. 1815–8 (PL 196, 941D).
35 Richard, De trinitate, lib. V, c. 3: “Ne igitur, contra conscientiam nostram, divinarum
personarum numerum in infinitum extendamus, oportet procul dubio ut concedamus quod

aliqua persona ex semetipsa existat et aliunde omnino originem non trahat, personam autem
esse non de alia aliqua persona quam de semetipsa.” Ed. Ribaillier, p. 19828–32 (PL 196, 950D).
36 Richard, De trinitate, lib. V, c. 7: “Sicut enim longe superius diximus, perfectio personae
unius exigit utique consortium alterius. Et ita fit ut una sit causa alterius. Ubi est enim
plenitudo divinitatis, ibi et plenitudo bonitatis et, quod consequens est, plenitudo caritatis.”
Ed. Ribaillier, p. 20326–29 (PL 196, 954A). For Richard’s proof that God’s highest goodness
requires a plurality of persons, see De trinitate, lib. III, c. 2 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 136–137; PL 196,
916C–917B).
37 Richard, De trinitate, lib. V, c. 7: “Illud autem constat certissime et de quo nullo modo
possumus dubitare quod ab illa principalissima existentia necesse sit unam aliquam imme-
diate procedere, alioquin oportebit eam solam remanere. Constat namque quod ceterarum
nulla omnino esse valeat, quae non ab illa immediate vel mediate procedat. Ubi autem non
est immediata, non potest esse processio mediata, sicut nec illa quae pariter est mediata et
immediata. Sed nihil prohibet ut immediata quandoque sit, etiam ubi mediatam deesse con-
tingit. Processio immediata consistit in personarum dualitate, mediata vero nunquam sine
personarum trinitate. In immediata siquidem processione oportet ut sit tam illa quae aliam
producit quam illa quae ex ipsa procedit. Mediata processio, exceptis illis personis in quibus
which the persons proceed or emanate that explains their distinction from
each other, and this is because different ways of emanating entail different
ways in which the divine nature exists, i.e. different persons. That is to say,
the Father and the Son are distinct because the Father is ungenerated and
ungenerable, i.e. innascible, whereas the Son is generated, i.e. emanates
from the Father by generation. Moreover, the Holy Spirit is distinct from the
first two persons, because he proceeds from them by the emanation called
spiration or procession.38 Distinction comes about, according to Richard, on
account of the persons’ existing in a different way because of the different
ways in which they originate: the Father from no other; the Son from the
Father alone; and the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son.39
Richard’s view is clearly indebted to and, indeed, has a great deal of over-
lap with the relation account proposed by Augustine and Boethius. To begin
with, the two accounts have in common the claim that the three divine
persons share everything—they are essentially identical—apart from one
difference, the ‘property’ (proprietas) that makes each of the persons dis-
tinct from the other two. Thus, the two trinitarian views explain the way
incipit et desinit, habet et tertiam in qua mediatio consistit. Naturaliter autem prior est duali-
tas quam trinitas. Nam illa potest esse sine ista, ista vero nunquam sine illa. Naturaliter itaque
et illa processio prior est quae potest subsistere in personarum dualitate, quam illa quae non
potest esse sine personarum trinitate. Sed in illa personarum pluralitate et vera aeternitate,
nihil ibi aliud praecedit, nihil ibi alteri succedit; et eo ipso nihil ibi tempore prius, nihil ibi
tempore posterius. Sed quod non potest esse prius temporaliter potest esse prius causaliter
et eo ipso naturaliter.” Ed. Ribaillier, pp. 2024–20326 (PL 196, 953D–954C).
Also ibid., lib. VI, c. 7: “Prius autem et posterius hoc loco intelligi volumus non temporum
successione, sed ordine naturae.” Ed. Ribaillier, pp. 2346–2358 (PL 196, 972B). And see also the
first text in n. 33 above.
38 Richard, De trinitate, lib. VI, c. 7: “Sed iam luce clarius constat quod uterque duorum de
Patre procedat. Est tamen alius procedendi modus in uno et alius procedendi modus in alio.
Oportet ergo ut alia sit germanitas quam habet ad unum et alia quam innascibilis habet ad
alium.” Ed. Ribaillier, p. 23534–38 (PL 196, 972D). For more general formulations of this view,
see the texts in n. 33 above.
39 Richard, De trinitate, lib. VI, c. 15: “Vides certe quomodo in hac rerum trinitate expresse
sunt proprietates trinitatis illius summae et aeternae. Ibi est persona ingeniti, quae non est
ab alio aliquo. Ibi est persona geniti, quae est ab ingenito solo. Ibi est persona Spiritus Sancti,
quae est tam a genito quam ab ingenito.” Ed. Ribaillier, p. 24843–47 (PL 196, 980A–B). Note
here that Richard claims the property of the Holy Spirit to be the Holy Spirit’s coming from
both Father and Son and makes no mention of the Holy Spirit’s emanating in a certain way
(e.g., by way of the will). Thus, Richard is not engaged in speculation over the emanational
or relational nature of the Holy Spirit’s personal property, and hence over whether the Holy
Spirit could be distinct from the Son, if the former did not come from the latter, a major
issue in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century trinitarian thought. This shows once again that
Richard (like, e.g., Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm) does not think about the relation and
the emanation accounts as being mutually exclusive.
20 introduction
that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are really distinct as persons but iden-
tical as God by appealing to properties distinguishing them personally but
not essentially. Further, there is clear terminological overlap between the
views, including the names of the properties distinguishing the persons.
Despite these traits in common, however, there are some striking differ-
ences of emphasis between Richard’s view and the one that we have seen
proposed by Augustine and Boethius. Thus, on Richard’s view the relational
aspect of the Trinity is deemphasized, while origin and emanation, and fur-
ther the way in which each person emanates, are accentuated. This is most
clear in the case of the Father, who on Richard’s view is constituted more on
the basis of his not being from another than by his relation of paternity to
the Son. This is the Father’s unique mode of emanating: he is unemanated.
We will see throughout the present book that the role of innascibility in
the constitution of the person of the Father was a highly controversial issue
in the later Middle Ages, a result of the different emphases of the relation
account and emanation account. This is only one of several “flashpoints”, i.e.
specific issues in the trinitarian debate on which the two accounts, as they
were developed in the second half of the thirteenth and in the fourteenth
centuries, were fundamentally at odds with each other, leading to contro-
versy between the proponents of the rival views. A second flashpoint that we
will follow throughout the book manifests itself in a protracted discussion
over whether the Son and the Holy Spirit would be distinct if the latter did
not proceed from the former. Theologians from the 1260’s on—particularly
Franciscans—were to claim that, speaking counterfactually, even if the Son
did not spirate the Holy Spirit, nevertheless these two persons would be
distinct because of their irreducibly distinct ways of emanating: the Son
emanating from the Father by way of nature, and the Holy Spirit emanat-
ing from the Father by way of the will. On this view, it is the way that each
person emanates or originates that is the ultimate ground of the constitu-
tion of each person, not the relations between the persons, and hence the
view is clearly related to Richard’s emanation account; indeed, later authors
cite Richard as an authority in support of this view. It should be noted, how-
ever, that Richard himself appears never to have claimed that the Holy Spirit
could be distinct from the Son if the former did not come from the latter:
for him the Holy Spirit was distinct from the Father and the Son on the
basis of his spiration from them both.40 Once again this shows that Richard’s
40 See Richard’s text and my remark in n. 39 above.

trinitarian thought is not as cut and dried as it appeared to later thinkers,

who saw a conflict between the emanation and the relation account that
Richard did not. Nevertheless, it was Richard’s emphasis on the different
ways the persons emanate that after around 1260 opened the door to the
position that the Holy Spirit and the Son could be distinct even if the
former did not come from the latter. This second flashpoint was particularly
sensitive on account of the Filioque controversy, and hence it is worthwhile
for me to stress that no Latin defender of the view (as far as I can tell) ever
denied that the Holy Spirit does in fact come from the Father and the Son;
when Latin theologians maintained that the Holy Spirit could be distinct
from the Son if the former did not come from the latter, they were making
a strictly counterfactual claim.
Thus, Richard’s emanation account had an immense impact on trinitar-
ian theology in the later Middle Ages, and much of the trinitarian debate
described in this book, in particular the varying uses of philosophical psy-
chology in trinitarian theology, arises because of the competitive jostling of
the relation account with Richard’s account based on ways of originating or
mode of origin. The focus on origin, as mentioned in passing above, proved
to be an especially attractive option for Franciscan theologians. In Chapter
One below, the alternatives are put into sharp relief by a detailed examina-
tion of the early trinitarian theologies of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure.
Whereas both accept—at least on the surface—a relation account of per-
sonal distinction, they disagree strongly about the way in which human
beings conceive the divine relations and emanations: for Bonaventure, in
contrast to Aquinas, origin or emanation takes precedence over relation, we
conceive origin to be prior to relation, and so Bonaventure adopts Richard’s
account on the level of human conceptualization of the Trinity.
In the period following Bonaventure and Aquinas, the jostling of these
two alternative ways of explaining the constitution of the persons, the
relation account and the emanation account, becomes a driving force in the
trinitarian discussion of the time. As suggested above, it was not random
who chose to support which trinitarian explanatory account: two rather
well defined groups emerge in this respect. In fact, we can talk sensibly of
two trinitarian traditions forming in the years after 1250 and developing
throughout the rest of the period under investigation here: a Dominican
trinitarian tradition and a Franciscan one.41 By ‘tradition’ I want to denote
41 NB: I use the terms ‘Dominican’ and ‘Franciscan’ as very broad shorthand for two
basically different approaches to trinitarian theology. Thus, it is not the case that all those
22 introduction
that a general approach to certain philosophical and theological problems

was handed down from one scholarly generation to the next, and solutions
to these problems were developed and discussed on the basis of the shared
approach. These approaches, then, were general enough to leave room for
internal development and disagreement within each of the traditions, but
they were also developed in conscious opposition to the other tradition—in
the course of this book we will see that the trinitarian traditions of the late
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries developed together inasmuch as
their mutual criticism was a motive force in the way the debate evolved.
Criticism by one tradition of the other was usually neither ignored nor
flatly denied; rather it frequently elicited a change of some kind in the
original position with the purpose of countering the critique. In this sense
we can say that the mutual criticism of the two trinitarian traditions led to
improvements in the original position, each step in this dialectical process
laying the ground for a new round of criticism.
The Dominican trinitarian tradition seems to have held firmly to one
form or another of the relation account: in particular to modifications of the
form that Thomas Aquinas gave it (see below, Chs. 1, 3, 5, 7). In comparison
to Augustine’s and Boethius’ exposition of the relation account, this later-
medieval version stressed—in agreement with Anselm of Canterbury, as
proponents of the relation account underscored—the fact that not only
are the relations that constitute the persons real, they are also opposed.42
That is to say, paternity and filiation are mutually implicative, since the
Father through his paternity is the Father of the Son and the Son through
his filiation is the Son of the Father. Thus, it is because paternity and filiation
are opposed to each other that they are the constituting properties of the
Father and the Son; mutatis mutandis the same is true concerning passive
spiration’s being the constitutive property of the Holy Spirit, although active
who hold a roughly “Franciscan” trinitarian theology belonged to the Franciscan Order, nor
do they all agree in every detail. Mutatis mutandis for “Dominican” trinitarian theology. I
could use the terms ‘relation tradition’ and ‘emanation tradition’, but I do not think that it is
coincidental that the two orders by and large disagree along these lines, and I want to stress
this by labelling the traditions as I do.
42 Anselm’s role in stressing the opposition of relations as constitutive of the persons
is acknowledged by calling “Anselm’s rule” the principle “in divinis omnia sunt unum ubi
non obviat relationis oppositio” (cf. Anselm, De processione Spiritus Sancti, c. 1, ed. Schmitt,
vol. 2, esp. p. 1812–3: “Quatenus nec unitas amittat aliquando suum consequens, ubi non obviat
aliqua relationis oppositio”); this rule was given official recognition by the Roman Catholic
Church at the Council of Florence in 1442 (cf. Denzinger 2005, no. 1330). For more on Anselm’s
rule and its role in later-medieval theology, see Hödl 2002, and below, Ch. 5, §4.
spiration does not constitute a person in its own right since it is shared by
the Father and the Son. To put it slightly simplistically, on the Dominican
version of the relation account, the persons are necessarily constituted in
relatively opposed pairs (Father in relative opposition to Son, Holy Spirit
in relative opposition to Father and Son). ‘Opposition of relations’ was the
key term for the Dominican trinitarian tradition throughout the period with
which we are concerned here.
The Franciscans coming after Bonaventure, on the other hand, in a sense
“reified” the Seraphic Doctor’s conceptual ordering between emanations
and relations: for these Franciscans, emanation was the actual source of
distinction between the divine persons. On the Franciscan version of the
emanation account, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the very
same divine essence in three irreducibly distinct ways, the way that each
one emanates or originates. Thus, the Father is the divine essence in a fun-
damentally different way than the Son is, and the Holy Spirit is the very same
divine essence in a third totally different way, these three different ways
being how each one originates. On this view, in contrast to the Domini-
can relation account, persons could be (but were in reality not) consti-
tuted singly on the basis of their unique emanational property; opposition
of relations, for the Franciscans, was not a strictly necessary factor in the
distinction of the persons. Maintaining this view, however, required from
the Franciscans a method of deemphasizing the relation account without
seeming to completely reject Augustine and Boethius. This need resulted
in several different types of what I call “marginalization strategies”: that is,
methods whereby the Franciscans could stress emanation and origin as the
basic source of distinction between the persons, while setting the relation
account safely to the margins of their explanation of personal distinction.
Although marginalization strategies vary from author to author, it is one of
the devices that crops up consistently in the Franciscan trinitarian tradi-
tion. Those who followed after Bonaventure in the later thirteenth century,
and who created a characteristically Franciscan trinitarian theology—most
importantly the Franciscans Eustace of Arras and John Pecham and the
secular Henry of Ghent—employed what I call “nested” or “layered” distinc-
tions: the persons were distinct at the most basic level on account of the
emanations, but they were distinct in a secondary, counterfactually “dis-
pensable” way on account of the opposed relations between them. Thus,
the indispensable emanational distinction was nested within the dispens-
able relational distinction, and the persons would still be distinct even if
there were no relations directly between them (below, Chs. 2, 4, 5). In sum:
emanational distinction was considered necessary and (counterfactually)
24 introduction
sufficient, while relational distinction was considered at best necessary (not

sufficient and counterfactually not even necessary) in virtue of the fact
that it was in some way dependent upon the prior emanational distinction.
As I show in Chapter Six, John Duns Scotus also made use of this type of
marginalization strategy. Scotus, however, suggested, and seems at least at
some point in his career to have accepted, an uncompromising rejection of
the relation account. For Scotus, the persons are absolutes, constituted by
absolute origin. To lessen the break with tradition that this posed, he for-
mulated a complex marginalization strategy, the foundation of which is an
insistence that a great deal of room be given in the interpretation of author-
itative texts. In particular, Scotus claimed that no conclusion can be drawn
on the basis of what authoritative texts do not say; since no authoritative
text explicitly denies absolute persons, this is a legitimate theological expla-
nation. Finally, Peter Auriol (below, Ch. 9) marginalized relations and the
relation account, while stressing origin and action and passion, by means
of his distinctive interpretation of the Aristotelian categories. For Auriol,
no relation exists actually in extramental reality. Rather, as a “conceptual”
category, relation comes about through an intellectual act, namely when
something that does not have the nature of a relation is conceived as hav-
ing that nature. In particular, the origin of one person from another in God
(e.g., the action/passion pair: the Father’s generating the Son and the Son’s
being generated by the Father) is a reality that is actually origin but that can
be conceived of as relation. Thus, for Auriol, the relations are really there as
origin—these are the same thing or reality—but they are not actually there,
because a mental act is required to arrive at relation.
My view is that the various marginalization strategies documented here
represent one of the basic tasks and goals of the medieval theological
enterprise, inasmuch as they are varying ways of coming to terms with
and smoothing over conflicting trinitarian ideals and explanations stem-
ming from authoritative texts. The legacy of authoritative texts on various
theological issues available to the later-medieval theologian was vast and
extremely diverse, and, as has been mentioned, passages and views that in
the later period were seen to be in sharp disagreement with each other were
found in the original authoritative texts in close proximity to each other and
without any hint that the author thought that there might be a contradic-
tion between them. A rigidity concerning the legitimate way to interpret
authoritative texts arose only over time, as various interpretive contexts
evolved that privileged and emphasized a particular set of texts—in this
case those useful in arguing for the relation account—at the expense of
other sets. Thus, the Franciscans who were interested in defending a com-
peting account of the constitution of the divine persons and its own set of
supporting texts, i.e. the emanation account, had to create space for them-
selves to do so without seeming to dismiss out of hand the rival account and
its supporting texts. In short, in order to defend the emanation account the
Franciscans were required to explain how the relation account both did and
did not explain personal distinction. This is the role of their marginalization
strategies. As we will see below, the Dominicans also employed marginaliza-
tion strategies when dealing with the psychological model of the Trinity. It
should be noted that I by no means want to suggest that marginalization
strategies were cynical argumentative maneuvers; rather I look at them as
a manifestation of the creativity medieval scholars had to marshal while
balancing authoritative texts (the foundational legacy bequeathed to later-
medieval theologians by late antiquity and the early Middle Ages); the tra-
ditional interpretation of those texts; and finally the impulse that character-
ized much of scholastic thought, the drive towards order, system, and (ulti-
mately) agreement. A medieval theologian, challenged by his intellectual
opponents to explain how his position squared with certain authoritative
texts, was left with no real option other than to explain just that. Marginal-
ization strategies were one way to give that explanation.
One further issue needs to be mentioned here concerning the trinitar-
ian traditions. Lurking behind the dispute between the two groups, and the
development of trinitarian theology in the period, is an awareness of a basic
theological problem: namely, how to make human language or thought
accurately describe or conceive a being that is pure act, i.e. fully actualized.
All medieval theologians believed God to be pure act with no potentiality.
Yet how to express this fact? Two basic and compelling, but also conflict-
ing, alternatives had been offered by Scripture, the early Church, and Aris-
totelian philosophy. For Aristotle, God, the unmoved mover of Physics VIII
(chs. 6 and 9) and particularly Metaphysics XII (esp. chs. 6–8), is static, as
pure act has to be, since motion implies potentiality; in a scholarly milieu
where Aristotelian metaphysics and natural philosophy were dominant,
this was a powerful reason for denying any hint of process in describing
God. On the other hand, in Scripture and in writings of the early church
there were numerous characterizations of God as an agent. For example,
from the outset, God was a creator. Furthermore, Augustine in De trinitate
claims that the category that is perhaps most applicable to God is that of
action, since only God makes and is not made.43 These characterizations
43 See n. 26 above.
26 introduction
agree well with a more Neoplatonic tradition, seeing God as dynamic and
productive, a creator whose goodness requires diffusion. Thus, this second
legacy available to the later Middle Ages clearly indicates that God’s perfect
act should be described in terms of activity, process, and production. This
issue of how to describe God, whether through static or through dynamic
language, is thoroughly enmeshed with the issue of the explanatory pri-
macy of relation or emanation in trinitarian theology. Relation is static,
and the relation account of the distinction between the persons is a fun-
damentally static way of describing God; emanation or origin is action, it
is a process, and on the emanation account the persons are in some sense
produced or put into being.44 Just for this reason, the issue of dynamism
and staticness will appear at regular intervals in this book, and when they
are pushed on the issue, Franciscans as a rule opt for the divine proper-
ties being actions and (quasi-)passions, while Dominicans maintain that
the properties are in reality relations. Moreover, and in line with this, Fran-
ciscans tend to claim that the properties constitute the persons efficiently,
while Dominicans incline to talking about properties constituting the per-
sons in a formal way. So, medieval theologians were certainly conscious
of the fact that by choosing to emphasize either emanations or relations
in the constitution of the persons, they were also choosing to emphasize
a conceptualization of God as either dynamic or static. With that said, an
extremely interesting feature of the trinitarian debate discussed here is the
good deal of evidence that shows that the period’s theologians found it a
drawback that relations are static and emanations dynamic. Relatedly, there
is evidence that they found it a disadvantage that they had to lay explana-
tory primacy on either relations or emanations, at least in part because
it committed them to a predominately static or a predominately dynamic
language about, and conceptualization of, the Trinity. This dissatisfaction
with the mutually exclusive nature of the options is visible in the frequent
attempts to bridge the gap between static relations and dynamic emana-
tions through qualifying the nature of the divine relations or emanations.
For instance, all Dominicans stressed that the relations in question were
44 It should be noted that a standard explanation for the divergence of trinitarian views
in Bonaventure and Aquinas is to contrast “Augustinian-Anselmian” (or even Peripatetic)

to “Neoplatonic” (especially Pseudo-Dionysian) motivations for stressing relations or ema-
nations respectively (e.g., de Régnon 1892–1898, vol. 2, 447–458, esp. 452–453; Stohr 1925;
Schmaus 1930a, 653–655; Vanier 1953, 15–38). I do not want to speculate here on ultimate
motivations in this sense.
“relations of origin”, i.e. of production; several Franciscans, on the other

hand, like Peter Auriol (Ch. 9, §1) and William Ockham (Ch. 10, § 3), make
the emanations as static as possible by insisting (in different ways) that
they are “unelicited”, they do not take being and they do not issue from
any source, they just are. A final example: the Franciscan theologian Francis
of Marchia (Ch. 12, §2A) claims that the divine properties are neither rela-
tions, nor actions and passions (i.e., emanations), but something else that
has all the characteristics of both of them. Examples like this will appear
throughout the book, and suggest that later-medieval theologians engag-
ing in trinitarian speculation were trying to get beyond mere staticness or
mere dynamism, and beyond mere relation or mere emanation, recogniz-
ing that neither the one nor the other could capture God’s pure actual-
ity.
Richard of St. Victor’s trinitarian theology, then, focusing as it does on the
ways the persons originate as their distinguishing characteristic, provided
the beginnings of a viable alternative to the relation account. It was also,
however, the door through which a particular interpretation of the divine
Word entered Franciscan trinitarian theology. The Franciscan tradition that
I have been describing looked at the distinction between the persons not
as a static relational distinction but as a distinction founded on process
or production. The production that most of the Franciscans who are stud-
ied here turned to was the eternal generation of the Son as the Word (i.e.,
Concept) from the Father’s intellect. Especially Part II of the present book
describes the development of this Franciscan theory in which the intel-
lectual emanation of the Son from the Father accounted precisely for the
distinction between these two persons, from the time of Henry of Ghent
(who seems to have been the central figure in this development) to that of
Peter Auriol. Part II of the book also describes some of the positions and
arguments of Dominicans who rejected this Franciscan “strong” use of the
psychological model in trinitarian theology. Moreover, Part III of the book
traces in the period after Auriol the rejection of the strong use by a number
of important thinkers, many of them Franciscans (including William Ock-
ham, Walter Chatton, Francis of Marchia, and William of Rubio), as well
as its continued existence especially among thinkers whom we are proba-
bly entitled to label in the context of this discussion “Scotists”. In order to
understand these developments, however, it is necessary to come to terms
with the way later-medieval theologians understood mental words or con-
cepts, and what role they thought philosophical psychology could play in
trinitarian theology. For that, we must turn again to Augustine’s De trini-
tate.
28 introduction
3. The Psychological Model45
When John the Evangelist, in the passages quoted at the beginning of this
Introduction, identified the Son with a “word”, he really gave those coming
after him little interpretive help. Specifically, it was unclear what exactly
a word is and how it relates to the Son. The sheer number of different
interpretations given to John’s passages by theologians writing both before
and after Augustine eloquently witness to how open-ended the Gospel text
was.46 But in the end, it was Augustine’s way of explaining John’s enigmatic
text that set both the agenda of questions and the framework for answers
for the Western Church in the matter of the divine Word. And Augustine’s
first priority was to explain the three major characteristics that John in his
Gospel attributes to the divine Word: that the Son is the ever-present Word
of God who is God; that the world was made through the Word; and that
the Word became flesh and dwelt among men as Jesus Christ. Augustine
explains these characteristics in the context of investigating the nature and
the operation of the human mind (animus, mens), which he believes to
be the closest created image of the divine Trinity. He thus constructs a
psychological model of the Trinity, in which the word is “born” the exact
likeness of knowledge stored in the memory.
Augustine starts with the memory (memoria), that part of the mind that
contains discrete units of knowledge, things that we know in all of the
many ways that we can know them. While Augustine’s term memoria is
45 I am reluctant to bow to the pressure of parallelism and call this “the psychological
account”, because the source of controversy over the application of human psychology to
the Trinity in the later Middle Ages is precisely whether the psychological model “accounts”
for the Trinity (i.e., whether it explains something) or is just a more or less loose metaphor
or instructional model. Thus, the status of the psychological model is somewhat different
from that of the relation or emanation accounts, which are postulated solely to explain the
constitution of the persons.
46 For other interpretations of John’s text, see Paissac 1951, 61–100: “L’originalité de saint
Augustin”; cp. this to Wolfson 1970, 177–286, which approaches from a somewhat different
angle much of the same material as found in Paissac. For Augustine’s theory of the mental
word, see De trinitate, IX and XV, esp. XV,10–17 and 21–22 (CCSL 50a, pp. 483–507, 517–520)
and IX.7 (CCSL 50, pp. 303–304). Augustine’s theory of the divine Word is described in Paissac
1951, 34–60; Schmaus 1927, esp. 195 ff. For the context to Augustine’s theory of the mental
word in his more general noetic theory, see O’Daly 1987; on the mental word specifically,
O’Daly 1987, 113–114, 141–144. In coming to grips with Augustine’s ideas on the topic, I have
benefitted from the work of Mary Sirridge, especially Sirridge 1999. See also Meier-Oeser
1997, 1–34 (focusing on Augustine’s theory of signs); Panaccio 1999, 108–118. In the following
I have used as a base translation, modifying occasionally, St. Augustine, The Trinity, transl.
McKenna.
conveniently translated by the English ‘memory’, this should not lead us to

confuse what Augustine means with what we mean by the English word; as
Scott MacDonald has aptly put it: “… memoria has no essential or important
connection with past experience. Memoria is both the storehouse for the
materials of cognition and thought and the ‘place’ where mind encounters
its object, making cognition and thought possible.”47 It is this storehouse
aspect of the memory that Augustine emphasizes when discussing the
formation of the word or concept. The knowledge that is contained in
the memory is characterized by Augustine as “hidden” (arcana), for we
are not conscious of it, because we have not yet focused our mind’s eye
upon the knowledge and thought it.48 The most important aspect of a
mental word is that it arises, i.e. it is begotten, from the knowledge stored
in the memory. Thus, the word is the knowledge that we are presently
thinking:
The human mind, therefore, knows all these things which it has acquired
through itself, through the senses of its body, and through the testimonies of
others, and keeps them in the treasure-house of its memory. And from them
a true word is begotten when we say what we know, but the word is anterior
to every sound and to every thought of sound. For then the word is most like
the thing that is known, from which its image is also begotten, since the sight
of thought arises from the sight of knowledge. This is the word that belongs
to no language, the true word about a true thing, having nothing from itself,
but everything from that knowledge from which it is born.49
For Augustine, all of our knowledge rests in the intellectual memory, ready
to be consciously thought about. We form a word upon thinking any partic-
ular item that we know that is stored in the memory; thus, the knowledge in
the memory is “formable”, while the word is what is formed.50 This word is an
47 MacDonald 2003, 170; for more on memoria in Augustine, see O’Daly 1987, 131–151.
48 Augustine, De trinitate XIV, 6, 6: “Sicut multarum disciplinarum peritus ea quae novit
eius memoria continentur, nec est inde aliquid in conspectu mentis eius nisi unde cogitat;
cetera in arcana quadam notitia sunt recondita quae memoria nuncupatur.” CCSL 50a,
p. 43234–37.
49 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 12, 22: “Haec igitur omnia, et quae per se ipsum et quae
per sensus sui corporis et quae testimoniis aliorum percepta scit animus humanus, thesauro
memoriae condita tenet. Ex quibus gignitur verbum verum quando quod scimus loquimur,
sed verbum ante omnem sonum, ante omnem cogitationem soni. Tunc enim est verbum
simillimum rei notae, de qua gignitur et imago eius quoniam de visione scientiae visio
cogitationis exoritur, quod est verbum linguae nullius, verbum verum de re vera, nihil de
suo habens sed totum de illa scientia de qua nascitur.” CCSL 50a, pp. 49387–49496.
50 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 15, 25: “… forte dicendum est ipsam possibilitatem cogita-
tionis, quoniam id quod scitur etiam quando non cogitatur potest tamen veraciter cogitari,
30 introduction
exact likeness of the prior knowledge, it has “nothing from itself, but every-
thing from that knowledge from which it is born”,51 and the word differs from
the knowledge from which it is born exclusively in virtue of the fact that it
is born or formed.52 Thus, in Augustine’s famous dictum, the word is scien-
tia de scientia, visio de visione:53 the word and the knowledge from which it
comes differ only insofar as the word is born from the prior knowledge; in
all other respects they are identical.
It is precisely for this reason that Augustine denies that our mental word
belongs to any particular language: the word is prelinguistic because it must
be absolutely similar to the prelinguistic knowledge in the memory.54 The
intuition that thought is to some extent linguistically constrained is a strong
one: I can read silently while having a stream of words as sounds going
through my mind; I can plan my next action in my head without uttering
a sound or moving my body. But is this one prior level of thought in which
we inwardly speak the sounds of words sufficient to explain knowledge,
thought, communication, and action? Augustine replies in the negative:
there is a more basic level to our thoughts, a purely conceptual, non-
linguistic act of thinking an inner word. If this were not the case, our mental
word would not be completely like the knowledge stored in the memory,
but more like the material representations of that knowledge. Augustine,
verbum esse tam perpetuum quam scientia ipsa perpetua est … Ac per hoc etiam si con-
cedamus, ne de controversia vocabuli laborare videamur, iam vocandum esse verbum quid-
dam illud mentis nostrae quod de nostra scientia formari potest etiam priusquam formatum
sit quia iam ut ita dicam formabile est.” CCSL 50a, p. 49951–54,70–74. Ibid., XV, 10, 17: “De his ergo
nunc disserimus quae nota cogitamus et nota sunt nobis etiam si non cogitentur a nobis. Sed
certe si ea dicere velimus, nisi cogitata non possumus. Nam etsi verba non sonent, in corde
suo dicit utique qui cogitat.” CCSL 50a, pp. 48313–48417.
51 See n. 49 above.
52 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 10, 19: “Necesse est enim cum verum loquimur, id est quod
scimus loquimur, ex ipsa scientia quam memoria tenemus nascatur verbum quod eiusmodi
sit omnino cuiusmodi est illa scientia de qua nascitur. Formata quippe cogitatio ab ea re
quam scimus verbum est quod in corde dicimus, quod nec graecum est nec latinum nec
linguae alicuius alterius, sed cum id opus est in eorum quibus loquimur perferre notitiam
aliquod signum quo significetur assumitur.” CCSL 50a, p. 48673–80.
53 See, e.g., Augustine, De trinitate XV, 15, 24 (CCSL 50a, p. 49826).
54 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 11, 20: “Perveniendum est ergo ad illud verbum hominis, ad
verbum rationalis animantis, ad verbum non de Deo natae sed a Deo factae imaginis Dei,
quod neque prolativum est in sono neque cogitativum in similitudine soni quod alicuius
linguae esse necesse sit, sed quod omnia quibus significatur signa praecedit et gignitur de
scientia quae manet in animo quando eadem scientia intus dicitur sicuti est. Simillima est
enim visio cogitationis visioni scientiae. Nam quando per sonum dicitur vel per aliquod
corporale signum, non dicitur sicuti est sed sicut potest videri audirive per corpus.” CCSL 50a,
p. 48840–49.
then, claims that there are two tiers of thought process behind any physical
action or physical speech. Closest to our material or physical expressions
is what he calls the “sight of thought” (visio cogitationis): this is speaking
linguistic words in our mind, thinking silently to ourselves in language. But
there is a deeper level of thought: concepts must exist that are unhampered
by the constraints of language, that are anterior to all tongues and hence at
least potentially common to all speakers, indeed “anterior to every sound
and to every thought of sound”.55 Thus, Augustine says that prior to “sight of
thought” there is a “sight of knowledge” (visio scientiae).56 This is the inner
word, the word of the heart (verbum cordis): our knowledge, as it is stored
in the memory, brought forth as the object of our understanding. It should
be noted that Augustine’s terminology makes perfect sense: the word of
the heart is formed by the mind’s eye focusing on—seeing or thinking—
the knowledge stored in the memory, and hence is sight of knowledge,
whereas the more material, linguistic level is seeing the knowledge that
we have thought in the word. Thus: sight of knowledge versus sight of
thought.
Now, just as the word is in all ways like the knowledge from which it
is begotten, differing only insofar as it has been begotten, so the Father
and the Son are identical essentially, differing only on account of the Son’s
generation, his receiving the divine essence from the Father. Since the
Father’s knowledge is his essence, the Word of God born from the Father’s
knowledge is the essence generated or begotten.57 The Father and the Son,
then, differ only because the Father begets and the Son or Word is begotten:
they are the same essentially, distinct personally.58 Here is the function
55 See the quotation above at n. 49.

56 For visio cogitationis and visio scientiae, see nn. 49, 54 above.
57 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 13, 22: “Longe est igitur huic scientiae scientia nostra dis-
similis. Quae autem scientia Dei est ipsa et sapientia, et quae sapientia ipsa essentia sive
substantia quia in illius naturae simplicitate mirabili non est aliud sapere, aliud esse, sed
quod est sapere hoc est et esse … Propter hoc sicut nostra scientia illi scientiae Dei, sic et
nostrum verbum quod nascitur de nostra scientia dissimile est illi Verbo Dei quod natum est
de Patris essentia. Tale est autem ac si dicerem, ‘de Patris scientia, de Patris sapientia’; vel
quod est expressius, ‘de Patre scientia, de Patre sapientia’.” CCSL 50a, p. 49538–42,46–51.
58 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 14, 23: “Verbum ergo Dei Patris unigenitus Filius per omnia
Patri similis et aequalis, Deus de Deo, lumen de lumine, sapientia de sapientia, essentia de
essentia, est hoc omnino quod Pater, non tamen Pater quia iste Filius, ille Pater. Ac per hoc
novit omnia quae novit Pater, sed ei nosse de Patre est sicut esse. Nosse enim et esse ibi unum
est. Et ideo Patri sicut esse non est a Filio ita nec nosse. Proinde tamquam se ipsum dicens
Pater genuit Verbum sibi aequale per omnia. Non enim se ipsum integre perfecteque dixisset
si aliquid minus aut amplius esset in eius Verbo quam in ipso.” CCSL 50a, p. 4961–10.
32 introduction
of Augustine’s psychological model in the context of clarifying a part of

the central trinitarian mystery, i.e. the identity and the distinction of the
persons of the Father and the Son in the Trinity. This is not to say, Augustine
is quick to point out, that we can simply apply the psychological model to
God without recognizing that there are some major dissimilarities. For one
thing, our word is transient and episodic. This is just to say that, as we move
the focus of our attention from one unit of knowledge in the memory to
another, so our word changes: one word comes to be, another passes away.
This transience, then, is a result of the fact that our mental words are formed
by thinking the formable knowledge in the memory. Not so for God’s Word,
which, as John said, is God, eternal and immutable. God thinks his essence
in one all-encompassing, never-changing Word.59
What about the two other characteristics of the word that John men-
tioned? How does Augustine’s psychological model explain the way the
world was made through the Word and the way the Word became flesh and
dwelt among men? As indicated above, the mental word is the necessary
prerequisite for linguistic thought, i.e. for sight of thought. It is in fact the
necessary, but not the sufficient, prerequisite for any spoken word or any
action. Thus, just as all the works of human beings come about only via a
verbum cordis, so all things were made through the divine Word, just as John
wrote.60 Further, the spoken word is “a sign of the word that shines within,
59 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 16, 25–26: “Non ergo ille Dei Filius cogitatio Dei sed Verbum
Dei dicitur. Cogitatio quippe nostra perveniens ad id quod scimus atque inde formata
verbum nostrum verum est. Et ideo Verbum Dei sine cogitatione Dei debet intellegi ut forma
ipsa simplex intellegatur, non aliquid habens formabile quod esse etiam possit informe …
Quamobrem cum tanta sit nunc in isto aenigmate dissimilitudo Dei et Verbi Dei in qua
tamen nonnulla similitudo comperta est … Fortassis hquando eum videbimus sicuti esti
etiam non erunt volubiles nostrae cogitationes ab aliis in alia euntes atque redeuntes, sed
omnem scientiam nostram uno simul conspectu videbimus. Tamen cum et hoc fuerit, si et
hoc fuerit, formata erit creatura quae formabilis fuit, ut nihil iam desit eius formae ad quam
pervenire deberet; sed tamen coaequanda non erit illi simplicitati ubi non formabile aliquid
formatum vel reformatum est sed forma. Neque informis neque formata ipsa ibi aeterna
est immutabilisque substantia.” CCSL 50a, pp. 500–5019–14,18–20,26–34. See also ibid., XV, 21, 40
(CCSL 50a, pp. 5171–51821).
60 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 11, 20: “Animadvertenda est in hoc aenigmate etiam ista
Verbi Dei similitudo quod sicut de illo Verbo dictum est “Omnia per ipsum facta sunt”, ubi
Deus per unigenitum Verbum suum praedicatur universa fecisse, ita hominis opera nulla
sunt quae non prius dicantur in corde … Est et haec in ista similitudine verbi nostri similitudo
Verbi Dei quia potest esse verbum nostrum quod non sequatur opus, opus autem esse non
potest nisi praecedat verbum sicut Verbum Dei potuit esse nulla existente creatura; creatura
vero nulla esse posset nisi per ipsum per quod facta sunt omnia.” CCSL 50a, p. 48957–61,68–73.
Ibid., IX, 7, 12: “Nihil itaque agimus per membra corporis in factis dictisque nostris quibus
to which the name of word more properly belongs.”61 A spoken word is, in
fact, the inner word having assumed flesh, i.e. material form, in order that it
can be shown to others, just as the Son assumed flesh through the incarna-
tion. But just as our mental word remains unchanged when it is expressed
in spoken form, so the Son was utterly unchanged when “the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us.”62
One final aspect of the psychological model that must be mentioned is
Augustine’s claim that “the word is knowledge with love”.63 Not only is it
necessary for us first to know something in order to love it, we must also
love something in order to know it. Augustine believed that in order to form
a concept or word of something, we have to desire to know about that thing:
arriving at a mental word—which at one point Augustine identifies with a
thing’s definition64—is a willed process of discovery.65 Thus, it is our love
or our will that binds our intellect to the knowledge stored in the memory,
thereby bringing about the word; in just this way the Holy Spirit joins the
Father and the Son in their mutual love for each other. On the basis of the
fact that human beings are created in some way or another in God’s “image
vel approbantur vel improbantur mores hominum quod non verbo apud nos intus edito
praevenimus. Nemo enim aliquid volens facit quod non in corde suo prius dixerit.” CCSL 50,
p. 30411–14.
61 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 11, 20: “Proinde verbum quod foris sonat signum est verbi
quod intus lucet cui magis verbi competit nomen.” CCSL 50a, p. 4861–2. See also nn. 52, 54
above.
62 Augustine, De trinitate XV, 11, 20: “Nam illud quod profertur carnis ore vox verbi est,
verbumque et ipsum dicitur propter illud a quo ut foris appareret assumptum est. Ita
enim verbum nostrum vox quodam modo corporis fit assumendo eam in qua manifestetur
sensibus hominum sicut ‘Verbum’ Dei ‘caro factum est’ assumendo eam in qua et ipsum
manifestaretur sensibus hominum. Et sicut verbum nostrum fit vox nec mutatur in vocem, ita
Verbum Dei caro quidem factum est, sed absit ut mutaretur in carnem. Assumendo quippe
illam, non in eam se consumendo, et hoc nostrum vox fit et illud caro factum est.” CCSL 50a,
pp. 4862–48712.
63 Augustine, De trinitate IX, 10, 15: “Verbum est igitur quod nunc discernere et insinuare
volumus, cum amore notitia … Et quoniam amat notitiam et novit amorem, et verbum in
amore est et amor in verbo et utrumque in amante atque dicente.” CCSL 50, p. 30729–33.
64 Augustine, De trinitate IX, 10, 15: “Nam placet mihi quod novi et definio quid sit
intemperantia, et hoc est verbum eius … Et definire intemperantiam verbumque eius dicere
pertinet ad artem morum; esse autem intemperantem ad id pertinet quod illa arte culpatur.
Sicut nosse ac definire quid sit soloecismus pertinet ad artem loquendi; facere autem vitium
est quod eadem arte reprehenditur.” CCSL 50, pp. 30619–30729.
65 Augustine, De trinitate IX, 12, 18: “… omnis qui quaerit invenire vult, et si id quaeritur
quod ad notitiam pertineat, omnis qui quaerit nosse vult … Partum ergo mentis antecedit
appetitus quidam quo id quod nosse volumus quaerendo et inveniendo nascitur proles ipsa
notitia …” CCSL 50, p. 31065–71.
34 introduction
and likeness”, on the basis of his psychological model, Augustine maintains

that the two best created images of the Trinity are: the mind, its knowledge,
and love; memory, understanding, and will.66
Although with his psychological model Augustine had certainly offered
a compelling explication of the text of John’s gospel, and although Western
thinkers would use the psychological model in one form or another through-
out the Middle Ages and into the modern period, it leaves many questions
unanswered. Perhaps the most fundamental question that can be asked
about it,67 and certainly one of the most important ones in the confines of
this book, is just how the psychological model is to be applied to the Trin-
ity: does it indicate something about God’s trinitarian reality, i.e. is the Son
literally a Word and the Spirit literally Love or a Gift, or is the psychological
model more like a helpful analogy used to clarify a particularly difficult piece
of Christian doctrine but not meant to be taken literally? Another way to put
this question (at least in the period covered by this book) is: if the Son is a
Word, does the divine intellect have anything to do with his being born, and,
if so, what? Mutatis mutandis for the Holy Spirit and the divine will. While
nearly everyone who wrote concerning trinitarian theology in the period
1250–1350 used the psychological model to one extent or another, they did
not all use it in the same way. It will be argued below that, throughout the
period under investigation here, Dominicans followed Aquinas in defend-
ing the relation account of personal distinction, and as a result looked at
the psychological model more or less as a type of analogy: the Son’s produc-
tion is in certain respects like a word’s production. This is certainly what
their Franciscan contemporaries charged them with doing. And, indeed,
at least one Dominican, Durand of St. Pourçain (d. 1334) claimed explic-
itly that ‘Word’ is not a proper name of the Son, but a merely appropriated
or metaphorical one. Durand was clearly not interested in softening his
rejection of any literal application of the psychological model to God, and,
66 E.g. Augustine, De trinitate IX, 12, 18: “Et est quaedam imago trinitatis, ipsa mens et
notitia eius, quod est proles eius ac de se ipsa verbum eius, et amor tertius.” CCSL 50,
p. 31075–77. Ibid., XV, 20, 39: “… et maxime per rationalem vel intellectualem creaturam quae
facta est ad imaginem Dei, per quod velut speculum quantum possent, si possent, cernerent
trinitatem Deum in nostra memoria, intellegentia, voluntate.” CCSL 50a, pp. 51648–51751.
67 As Paissac (1951, 8) noticed. It should be stressed here that, in my view, Augustine is
by no means clear on how he wants the psychological model to be understood, and hence I
am not accusing Dominicans of paying lip service to Augustine’s authority in their less-than-
literal interpretation of the psychological model with its attendant marginalization strategy.
As far as I can tell, the Dominican view, just as the Franciscan view, was an honest attempt
to answer trinitarian questions.
as Chapter Seven outlines, Durand was severely criticized by his Domini-

can contemporaries (e.g., Hervaeus Natalis, Peter of Palude, John of Naples,
Durandellus) for going too far. Nevertheless his position, I argue, is an exten-
sion (or radicalization) of the typical Dominican stress on opposition of
relations and concomitant relegation of the emanations and production to
a place of secondary importance in the trinitarian scheme. This is one rea-
son why in general the production of the Son as a Word did not fit smoothly
into the relation account as it was elaborated by later-medieval Dominicans.
Moreover, as we will see, when they did talk about productions in God, the
Dominicans insisted, again following Aquinas, that the power productive
of the persons in God is the divine essence, and not the intellect and the
will as such. This is yet another reason why specifically intellectual and vol-
untary production, i.e. the productions of respectively the Word and Love
that a literal understanding of the psychological model would call for, fit
rather uneasily with Dominican trinitarian theology: for what is intellectual
about a production that does not involve an intellect? Nevertheless, with
his total rejection of the psychological model, Durand was an extreme case.
Other authors in the Dominican trinitarian tradition appear to have been
more reluctant to outright reject the proper applicability of the psycholog-
ical model to the Trinity: as Franciscan authors frequently and forcefully
pointed out, the claim that the Son is a Word descends from Holy Scrip-
ture, and Augustine and other saints repeat it.68 Indeed, in especially early
fourteenth-century Dominican trinitarian theology we see marginalization
strategies appear that serve to set any literal understanding of the psycho-
logical model safely to the margins of their trinitarian explanation without
completely rejecting that the psychological model was applicable to the
persons and their productions. Thus, for example, Hervaeus Natalis simply
defines that in an intellectual nature all productions from one source alone
are “intellectual productions” (whether they have anything to do with an
intellect or not) and all productions from two sources are “voluntary pro-
ductions” (whether they have anything to do with a will or not); in this way
Hervaeus can argue that the Son, coming from the Father alone, is prop-
erly the Word whose emanation is intellectual, but not on account of any
68 Indeed, late in his career Aquinas took part in officially censuring a claim that he
himself had made in his Sent. commentary: that ‘Word’ is said about God not only personally
of the Son but also essentially (see on this, Ch. 3, § 1 below). That Aquinas in his mature
works affirmed that ‘Word’ was another proper name for the person of the Son confirmed
for Dominicans the erroneous nature of Durand’s position that ‘Word’ is an essential term
appropriated to the Son.
36 introduction
connection with the divine intellect; mutatis mutandis with the Holy Spirit,
coming from the Father and the Son, and voluntary emanation.
The Franciscans, on the other hand, who stressed emanations and pro-
duction, accepted that the Son’s emanation is literally from the divine intel-
lect and the Holy Spirit’s literally from the divine will. Thus, the Franciscans
held that the psychological model was literally true, and the Son was lit-
erally a Word; moreover, philosophical psychology, especially theories of
concept and volition formation, were used to answer trinitarian questions.
The Franciscan adoption of the emanation account, then, was the road to
this type of literal use of the psychological model. The figure who linked
the emanation account and the psychological model, and made this a typi-
cal part of Franciscan trinitarian theology was the secular theologian Henry
of Ghent. Before Henry, Franciscans claimed the Son’s mode of emanating
to be “by way of nature” (per modum naturae; Chs. 1 and 2), in contrast to
the Holy Spirit’s emanation “by way of will” (per modum voluntatis).69 Cap-
italizing on the fact that the medieval scholastics generally considered the
intellect to be a “natural” faculty, i.e. when presented with an object it invari-
ably functions and in precisely the same way, Henry linked far more closely
than had been done previously procession by way of nature with proces-
sion by way of intellect, and developed this link extensively. With this step,
Henry drew the psychological model into the very heart of his trinitarian
theology as the means of explaining personal distinction (Ch. 4). This type
of use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology I will call “strong”.
Two all-important features mark a strong use of philosophical psychology in
trinitarian theology (or a strong use of the psychological model in trinitarian
theology—I use these phrases interchangeably throughout this book). First,
it stresses a tight link between the divine attributes and the divine emana-
tions: the Son’s generation is literally an intellectual emanation, the Holy
Spirit’s emanation is literally an emanation by way of will, and this meant
that the divine intellect and will had to be involved in some way as the
sources of these respective emanations. Second, a strong use is character-
ized by the attempt to consistently answer trinitarian questions through the
use of a particular theory of, e.g., concepts and concept formation: the Son is
a Word or a concept, therefore concept theory should be directly applicable
to the study of the Son in the Trinity.
69 On the background to this use of per modum naturae and per modum voluntatis, see,
e.g., Wolfson 1970, 217–232; Mathieu 1992, 28–34, and the literature cited there. See also Ch. 1,
below, n. 80.
Henry of Ghent’s strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian

theology was the last major element in the complex of ideas that are traced
in this book under the name Franciscan trinitarian theology. The list of
authors who adopt this particular way of describing the Trinity is impres-
sive and overwhelmingly Franciscan, including William of Ware (Ch. 5);
John Duns Scotus (Ch. 6); Henry of Harclay and Robert Cowton (Ch. 8);
Peter Auriol (Ch. 9); John Baconthorpe, Landulph Caracciolo, and Michael
of Massa (Ch. 12). Moreover, it is the strong use that, as mentioned above,
appears to be unanimously rejected in the period’s Dominican trinitarian
theology. Thus, arguing against the view was ranged an equally impressive
set of theologians, overwhelmingly Dominican, including Giles of Rome,
Godfrey of Fontaines, Bernard of Auvergne (Ch. 5); Hervaeus Natalis,
Durand of St. Pourçain, and the author of the Liber propugnatorius (Ch. 7);
Thomas of Sutton (Ch. 8). The arguments used and the variety of positions
taken by those who supported the strong use, and by their opponents, are
detailed in Part II of the present book.
And thus we are back to the trinitarian traditions that are a clear his-
torical phenomenon in the period. Franciscans share a general approach
to the trinitarian issues discussed in the present book, and based on that
approach there is a discernible evolution to the solutions they offer to
these issues; mutatis mutandis the same is true for Dominicans. For the
Franciscans this approach was based on emanations; for the Dominicans
on relations. It should perhaps not be surprising that the medieval rivalry
between the two largest mendicant orders for political and economic sup-
port clearly extended itself to thought produced at the university.70 Indeed,
several instances of the university rivalry that fall out basically along the
lines of the orders are quite well known: take the plurality of forms contro-
versy or the Correctoria controversy. The conflicting trinitarian traditions
that are examined in this book are another extremely clear example of this.
70 Courtenay 1987a, 171–192, esp. 177–178, taking a slightly different approach to schools
of thought (approximately what I call traditions), also talks about “a rivalry, a means of
competing with the other orders for academic and theological superiority and preferment”.
Sheehan (1984, 204) writes about the situation of Oxford in the thirteenth century: “The
most striking phenomenon of the next fifty years is the worsening relationship between the
friars themselves. The friendship of the Preachers and Minors which had coarsened to rivalry
soon degenerated into out-and-out hostility .... Antagonism centred first on recruitment and
the rights of members of one order to transfer to another ....” Matthews 2001, an interesting
investigation of the debate between Dominicans and Franciscans over Anselm’s ontological
argument for God’s existence, sets out to show that “philosophical rivalry was in fact the
expression and embodiment of religious rivalry itself” (p. 201).
38 introduction
Although I can merely suggest it here, it seems likely that what Domini-
cans and Franciscans were doing in these high-profile conflicts is expressing
their own self-identities as religious orders by taking mutually opposed posi-
tions: self-identity through mutual opposition. It should be noted that there
was enough room in the respective general approaches that stood behind
each of the two trinitarian traditions to allow for a great deal of develop-
ment and diversity within each of the traditions; nevertheless, the very fact
that the two approaches were so fundamentally different also allowed for
Dominicans and Franciscans (as groups) to set themselves apart from each
other—here was an issue on which they were clearly diverse. Simply by
showing how different they were from each other they could help create
and maintain their own corporate identities. In this way, the trinitarian tra-
ditions fit into the larger intellectual, religious, and ecclesiastical history of
the later-medieval period.
The competing trinitarian traditions had a direct effect on the debate
over the use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology and on trini-
tarian theology more generally, and this effect will be highlighted below.
As mentioned, the two trinitarian traditions were built on mutual criticism,
and some of the most important innovations in both trinitarian traditions
were clearly made in response to criticism from the competing tradition—
in this sense the mutual criticism was an important motor in the discussion
throughout the period and contributed to a constant updating and renewal
of the trinitarian positions. We can see this type of dialectic of scholastic
discourse at work from Aquinas right up through Gregory of Rimini. Indeed,
Dominican critique of Franciscan trinitarian theology clearly played a part
in the eventual abandonment of the strong use of philosophical psychol-
ogy by several important Franciscan theologians in the period 1320–1350,
a development that is detailed in Part III of this book. But although the
Dominican criticism certainly had a role in the partial dissolution of the
Franciscan trinitarian view, nevertheless—as I will argue below—it cannot
be the entire explanation for it, since in many ways these later theologians
clearly went beyond what the Dominicans would find to be acceptable as
trinitarian solutions. Over and above the Dominican critique, then, at least
two other factors are involved in the developments examined here in the
Franciscan tradition in the later period, factors related to each other
because they reflect changes in the values governing satisfactory trinitar-
ian speculation, what we can call the aesthetics of theological explana-
tion. First, divine simplicity, and a corresponding lack of distinction in God,
became for these later thinkers the primary motivating factor in trinitarian
theology. Since they did not want to resort to positing distinctions in God,
for these theologians analysis and, concomitantly, explanation became not

merely difficult but undesirable. Thus, trinitarian theologies in which ex-
planatory completeness was highly valued gave way in the period 1320–1350
to trinitarian theologies in which the emphasis on divine simplicity led to
the elimination of trinitarian explanation to varying degrees. Important in
this development is that the elimination of explanation “tracks” in a gen-
eral way the theologian’s focus on divine simplicity: the more strictly a
theologian understood divine simplicity, the more he would tend to insist
on the impossibility of true trinitarian explanation. I call this trend in mid-
fourteenth-century trinitarian theology “the search for simplicity” and it is
a general organizing feature of Part III of the present book. Second, the-
ologians in the later period became much less sanguine than were earlier
thinkers about the capacity of human reason to penetrate divine myster-
ies such as the Trinity—even talking about the Trinity became difficult.
In this later period, then, we see the development of trinitarian theologies
of radical minimalism, which arguably reached a high-point in the work
of Gregory of Rimini (Ch. 12). Thus, the rejection of the strong use of the
psychological model by some theologians in the period 1320–1350 is at its
root an expression of changes in the aesthetic of theological explanation as
compared to the earlier period. Indeed, in a sense, these later theologians
move beyond the trinitarian traditions: they deal with the same questions
that earlier theologians did, but their search for simplicity and their new
theological aesthetic lead them to such radically different answers to those
questions that, despite the occasional familiar “Franciscan” or “Dominican”
trinitarian element in their thought, we are really in a new intellectual con-
text in which the trinitarian traditions are no longer operative. Keeping this
in mind, one can say that the present book covers the rise and decline of the
later-medieval trinitarian traditions.
If the overarching question concerning the psychological model in the
period covered by the book is its proper role as a description of the Trinity,
there were other disagreements over just what a mental word is, how it is
formed, what functions it serves, and how it fits into human psychology
more generally. Right into the thirteenth century, with few exceptions,
most writers appear to have been content merely to repeat in a watered-
down form Augustine’s psychological model.71 Only at the point when the
71 One very important exception is Anselm in his Monologion, esp. cc. 10, 29–48. For a
short overview of the reception of the Augustinian psychological model into the Carolingian
period, see Schmaus 1956.
40 introduction
psychological works of Aristotle, especially the De anima, and his Muslim

commentators became widely studied at the universities did a true, self-
sustaining discussion on the issue of words, divine and human, pick up.
Now, the Aristotelian theory of “abstractive cognition” was meant to explain
the production of original knowledge, i.e. how we come to have intellectual
knowledge on the basis of immediate acquaintance with an object of intel-
lection. According to this theory as it was understood in the middle of the
thirteenth century, in order to have intellectual cognition, it is necessary
to “abstract” an intelligible “species”—an immaterial representation—from
the sensible species that emanate from all extramental material objects. It
is the role of the agent (or active) intellect to abstract the intelligible species
from the very last material representation of the object (the phantasm). This
intelligible species is then impressed or “stamped” by the agent intellect
upon the possible (or potential) intellect. The agent intellect is thus like a
bridge or a ferry between, on the one hand, the sensory cognitive powers,
dealing with material particulars, and, on the other, the immaterial intellect,
dealing primarily with universals and necessary and immutable knowledge.
On this Aristotelian view, the possible intellect is like a blank slate, ready to
be actualized by whatever intelligible species the agent intellect impresses
upon it. And once the intelligible species has been impressed upon the pos-
sible intellect, we have intellectual cognition, i.e. a concept of whatever
object the intelligible species was ultimately abstracted from. This is the
sense in which the Aristotelian theory explains the acquisition of original
intellectual knowledge. In contrast, it should be remembered, Augustine’s
theory of the verbum cordis explained the accessing of intellectual knowl-
edge already obtained and stored away. Augustine was explaining how we
came to use knowledge already in our memory, i.e. habitual or dispositional
knowledge. Thus, the first issue that had to be faced in thirteenth-century
attempts to merge the two theories was just where the Augustinian men-
tal word could fit into the Aristotelian psychological framework. An influ-
ential synthesis on this issue came from Thomas Aquinas. In fact, some-
what paradoxically, Henry of Ghent’s strong identification of the Son with
the Word is unthinkable without the psychological work of Aquinas, who
rejected the kind of trinitarian use of the psychological model that Henry
defended.72
72 In the following discussion on concept formation, I am indebted for the big picture to
Panaccio 1992, esp. 126–129; Panaccio 1999, esp. ch. 6, 177–201: “L’acte contre l’idole”. See in
addition, Paissac 1951, esp. 117–236; Lonergan 1967; Chênevert 1961.
In his earliest work, his Sentences commentary from just after mid-
century, Aquinas, like Bonaventure and many of his other near contempo-
raries, had basically identified Augustine’s verbum mentis with the intelligi-
ble species, the immaterial representation of the cognized object that had
been abstracted by the agent intellect from the object’s sensible species.73
In works written after the Sentences, however, such as his Summae and his
disputed questions De potentia, Aquinas created a theory of human scien-
tific knowledge that melded the legacies available to him: the Aristotelian
and the Augustinian. No longer was the word equated with the intelligi-
ble species: in Aquinas’ new synthesis, the Augustinian mental word had
become an element added onto the whole Aristotelian process of abstrac-
tion. Whereas that process had ended with the information of the possible
intellect by the intelligible species, Aquinas added a step: an act of the pos-
sible intellect that was productive of a term, the subsistent endpoint of the
act itself. This term Aquinas calls the conceptio or word, “because it is what
is signified by the exterior”, i.e. linguistic, “word”, and only through the con-
cept does the spoken word signify the thing.74 The concept, according to
Aquinas, cannot be the same as the intelligible species abstracted by the
agent intellect, because the intelligible species is the source of the possi-
ble intellect’s further act.75 Moreover, the word is not identical to this act of
the possible intellect, through which the definition of the thing or its word
is formed, because the word is the term, i.e. product, of the act.76 Thus, for
Aquinas, besides the agent intellect and possible intellect themselves, there
are three distinct intellectual elements involved in our forming a word or
concept: the intelligible species, the intellectual act, and finally the term of
that act, i.e. the word or concept.
As Claude Panaccio has shown, late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-
century psychology can be seen as a “deconstruction” of—or at the very least
73 For more on this matter, see Ch. 3, § 1 below.

74 De potentia, q. 8, a. 1: “Haec autem conceptio intellectus in nobis proprie verbum
dicitur: hoc enim est quod verbo exteriori significatur: vox enim exterior neque significat
ipsum intellectum, neque speciem intelligibilem neque actum intellectus, sed intellectus
conceptionem qua mediante refertur ad rem.” Ed. Marietti 1953, p. 215a.
75 De potentia, q. 8, a. 1: “Differt hconceptioi a specie intelligibili, nam species intelligibilis,
qua fit intellectus in actu, consideratur ut principium actionis intellectus, cum omne agens
agat secundum quod est in actu; actu autem fit per aliquam formam, quam oportet esse
actionis principium.” Ed. cit., p. 215a.
76 De potentia, q. 8, a. 1: “Differt hconceptioi ab actione intellectus, quia praedicta concep-
tio consideratur ut terminus actionis, et quasi quoddam per ipsam constitutum. Intellectus
enim sua actione format rei definitionem, vel etiam propositionem affirmativam seu negati-
vam.” Ed. cit., p. 215a.
42 introduction
a critical encounter with—Aquinas’ synthesis, with various later scholars

rejecting or modifying elements that Aquinas had considered necessary for
explaining concept formation.77 This we will see in the following pages to
have been the case with three of my focal figures, Henry of Ghent, John Duns
Scotus, and Peter Auriol. Henry, after his fourth Quodlibet (1279), rejected
or at least called into question the necessity of an impressed intelligible
species: no such fully independent intellectual representation was neces-
sary for the formation of the word (Ch. 4).78 Scotus, while insisting on the
need for the intelligible species, nevertheless maintained that the word and
the intellectual act were identical: an intellectual act was the type of opera-
tion that had no term (Ch. 6). Finally, Peter Auriol to a certain extent iden-
tified the intellectual act and the intelligible species, although he insisted
that the intellectual act has a term—that term being the understood thing
itself, placed by the activity of the intellect into a different state of being,
esse apparens (Ch. 9).
Two trinitarian theories and one contested model: the relation account, the
emanation account, and the psychological model. From the vantage point of
the late thirteenth century, these were three quite distinct elements making
up the world of thought in which trinitarian theology was written, and out
of the interplay between these three elements came a tremendous variety of
trinitarian views in the hundred years surveyed below. The later-medieval
theologian, however, who wanted to hold one of these distinct elements
to the exclusion of another—in particular the emanation account to the
exclusion of the relation account, or vice-versa—had to proceed cautiously,
since texts with great authoritative weight could be adduced to support
either of the two theories as well as the psychological model. Authoritative
texts could not just be rejected out of hand. Thus, much ink was spilled in
trying to show how one of the theories could be preferred without totally
rejecting the other; how they were and were not mutually exclusive. And
much ink was spilled in trying to show how the psychological model could
be interpreted so as best to fit with one or the other of the two trinitarian
77 Panaccio 1992, esp. 129–130; Panaccio 1999, esp. 186–199. For further broad perspectives
concerning intellectual cognition in this period, see Pasnau 1997 and King 1994. Interestingly
for the notion of intellectual traditions among the two large mendicant orders, the critics of
Aquinas were mostly Franciscans, while Dominicans with few exceptions (e.g., Durand of St.
Pourçain and John of Naples) developed Aquinas’ own explanation.
78 For the reason behind the qualification “or at least called into question”, see Ch. 4,
below, at nn. 72–74.

theories. Moreover, it is worth remembering that in the original works from

which the authoritative texts were taken the two trinitarian theories (and,
by extension, the psychological model) were not presented as mutually
exclusive: both Augustine and Anselm, for instance, have in their works pas-
sages in close proximity to each other that later theologians took to support
exclusively the one or exclusively the other of the two accounts.79 Hence, it is
necessary to take up the discussion in the middle of the thirteenth century,
before hard lines had been drawn between those who stressed the ema-
national character of the personal properties and those who stressed the
relational, and before the issue of whether or not the psychological model
was a precise description of God’s trinitarian reality became divisive.
79 For examples of this from Anselm’s De processione Spiritus Sancti, see Ch. 5, below,
nn. 144–145.
PART I

INTRODUCTION TO PART I
Henry of Ghent did not work in a vacuum, and the strong use of the psycho-
logical model in trinitarian theology that he championed, the fortunes of
which are traced in Parts II and III of this book, was in fact created in an iden-
tifiable context. Specifically, the gradual emergence of the two trinitarian
traditions, the Franciscan coalescing around an emanational understand-
ing of the Trinity, the Dominican around a relational understanding, was the
historical precondition for Henry’s innovation, in both positive and negative
ways. Thus, in Part I, after exploring in Chapter One the foundation of the
two trinitarian traditions in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaven-
ture, I move on to first the emerging Franciscan trinitarian tradition (Ch. 2)
and then the emerging Dominican tradition (Ch. 3). Besides showing how
gradually these two groupings of theologians coalesced around a discernible
set of mutually exclusive views, I can show in the emerging Franciscan tra-
dition (Ch. 2) the immediate context in which Henry of Ghent’s own trini-
tarian thought was developed; I can also give a sketch (Ch. 3, § 3) of Giles of
Rome’s relation account of personal distinction, which Henry himself sin-
gled out for critique.1
1 For a short synopsis of the major issues discussed in Part I, see the Introduction to
Part II.
chapter one
THE MAKINGS OF A TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY:

AQUINAS AND BONAVENTURE ON RELATIONS,
EMANATIONS, AND PERSONAL DISTINCTION
In the twentieth-century literature on medieval thought there has been

a marked tendency to see Bonaventure (d. 1274) and especially Thomas
Aquinas (d. 1274) as giants towering over all other thirteenth-century the-
ologians. I have no wish to perpetuate this type of historiographic tradi-
tion; indeed I consider it to be unfortunate inasmuch as it has contributed
to an inclination to ignore or at least downplay the contributions made
by many other thirteenth-century theologians. Much of this book will be
devoted to showing how later thirteenth- as well as fourteenth-century
figures—many of them often considered “minor”—played important roles
in the discussion at hand; certainly we will see that neither Bonaventure
nor Aquinas escaped well thought out criticism from those coming after
them. So my choosing to start this book with Aquinas and Bonaventure
definitely should not be taken to suggest that they eclipsed thinkers from
the later thirteenth century. It is, rather, an expression of the fact that both
Aquinas and Bonaventure were extraordinarily significant thinkers, whose
names will turn up again and again in the study that follows. There is no
denying this fact. Their significance has, of course, something to do with the
coherency and elegance of their theological systems, and we will see ample
evidence of this below. The appeal of their thought, however, was reinforced
by church-political factors, which made Aquinas a key figure in the Domini-
can order and Bonaventure in the Franciscan even before their deaths. Thus,
Bonaventure was Franciscan Minister General from 1257 until 1273 (when
he was made a cardinal), and he is celebrated as the “Second Founder”
of the Franciscan Order. Aquinas spent his life as an academic, teaching
and writing nearly until his death and involving himself in several high-
profile intellectual disputes; but by 1286 the Dominican order had made it
mandatory for its teachers to uphold and defend Aquinas’ teachings, and
this injunction was reissued and expanded already in 1309 and several times
thereafter in the early fourteenth century.1 The fact that Bonaventure and
1 For an idea of Bonaventure’s enormous significance for the Franciscan Order, see
50 chapter one
Aquinas had compelling intellectual systems combined with these church-

political factors had consequences, and these consequences are particularly
clear in trinitarian theology and are everywhere to be seen throughout this
book. Specifically: Aquinas and Bonaventure—themselves building on ear-
lier thought—are recognized by those thinkers coming after them as the
fountainheads of later intellectual directions. For this reason alone, an expo-
sition of their trinitarian ideas is extremely instructive as background to the
trinitarian debates that are explored in this book. In short, the development
of “Franciscan” ideas on the Trinity—including Henry of Ghent’s—follow
roughly the lines Bonaventure laid down. Although Bonaventure will come
to play a less explicitly prominent role in the trinitarian debate after the
thorough repackaging of the typical Franciscan trinitarian view by William
of Ware (Ch. 5, §§3–4, below) and especially John Duns Scotus (Ch. 6),
nevertheless Bonaventure’s ideas are clearly the foundation upon which an
identifiable Franciscan trinitarian tradition were built. Mutatis mutandis
the same is true to an even greater degree for Aquinas and the Domini-
cans: Dominican developments followed the contours of Aquinas’ trinitar-
ian thought (esp. Chs. 3, 5, and 7). Thus, the bifurcation of trinitarian values
so conspicuous in the trinitarian thought of the later thirteenth century—
a bifurcation which, among other things, formed the background to the
strong use of the psychological model in trinitarian theology—although it
was not begun by Aquinas and Bonaventure, is nevertheless conspicuous
in their work and forms the most important proximate background to the
later thought.
Both Aquinas and Bonaventure use a modified version of Augustine’s
and Boethius’ relation account of the distinction between the divine per-
sons. After describing first Aquinas’ and then Bonaventure’s ideas on the
distinction of the persons on account of the relations between them, and
noting that these authors’ theories differ mainly in terminology, I delin-
eate a profound disagreement between the two over the conceptual priority
between the divine relations and the divine emanations. The disagreement
boils down to the following: must, as Bonaventure believes, the human mind
conceive that the divine persons are first made distinct by the emanation of
one from the other, and only then conceive that there are relations between
the persons? Or is the correct order between our concepts rather that the
Lawrence 1994, 57–59; Moorman 1968, esp. 140–154. On Aquinas and the Dominican order’s
attempts to ensure obedience, see, e.g., Burbach 1942; Glorieux 1974; further, on medieval
Thomism, see Roensch 1964; Hinnebusch 1966–1973, vol. 2, 149–190; and see Ch. 7, below,
esp. § 2.
the makings of a trinitarian controversy 51
relations make the persons distinct, and only thereafter do we conceive the
emanations, as Aquinas holds? This disagreement is one that runs through-
out later-medieval trinitarian thought and forms the basis for much of the
speculation considered in this book. Indeed, in the later thirteenth century,
as trinitarian traditions form among the Franciscans and Dominicans, the
broad agreement between Bonaventure and Aquinas will tend to be forgot-
ten, while the differences will be emphasized and made into incompatible
complexes of trinitarian views. In this way the trinitarian traditions take
shape in opposition to one another: intellectual identity through mutual
opposition.
1. Aquinas and the ratio of Relation
Lecturing on the Sentences at Paris from 1252 to 1256, Thomas Aquinas

developed an explanation for the distinction between the divine persons
that made use of a distinctively Thomist rational difference between the
divine essence and the divine relations.2 Aquinas further concluded—in a
way that would become for all intents and purposes set in the Dominican
tradition—that the constitution of the divine persons depends upon the
opposition of the relations of origin to one another.
By the time that Aquinas wrote, there was general agreement among
theologians as to the types and numbers of trinitarian characteristics that
are attributable to God. Aquinas fits nicely into this consensus view. There
are three types of characteristics that can be said of the divine persons:
notions, properties, and relations. The most basic are the ‘notions’, which
are the sources of our knowing the persons. As we saw in the Introduction
above, there are five of these: paternity, filiation, procession, innascibility,
and common spiration. Of these five, however, only four can be called ‘prop-
erties’ because these four can be said of one person alone: paternity and
2 As Gelber notes (Gelber 1974, 16, see further 15–25) Aquinas gives arguably the most
fully-defined account of his trinitarian theory in his commentary on the Sentences (although
see also De potentia, qq. 8–10; Sum. theol., I, qq. 27–41; Summa contra gentiles, IV, cc. 1–
26). For this reason and for reasons of comparison and contrast with Bonaventure (their
Sent. commentaries were roughly contemporary—Bonaventure’s lectures began perhaps
two years earlier), throughout the present chapter, I have concentrated almost exclusively
on Aquinas’ Sent. lectures as found in S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia, v. 1 (Stuttgart-Bad
Cannstatt, 1980). I will deal with aspects of Thomas’ later trinitarian thought in Ch. 3, §1.
For information on Aquinas’ life and works see, e.g.: Torrell 1993 (on the Sent. commen-
tary, 53–78); Weisheipl 1974. On Aquinas’ trinitarian theory the best starting point is Emery
(Gilles) 2007.
52 chapter one
innascibility are said only of the Father; filiation is said only of the Son; and
procession is said only of the Holy Spirit. Finally, the divine relations are
paternity, filiation, procession, and common spiration.3 In Aquinas’ trini-
tarian theology these four relations of origin, or personal properties, are
the means of explaining the distinction of the persons from each other. In
brief, a real personal distinction arises because of the opposition of these
relations of origin to one another, i.e. because paternity and filiation are
relatively opposed and procession and common spiration are relatively
opposed. For Aquinas, the divine relations, and particularly their opposi-
tion, are the crucial factors in the explanation for the persons’ constitution
as distinct individuals. In keeping with this, Aquinas argues that with the
relations removed, the hypostases or persons would no longer remain dis-
tinct.4
Aquinas arrives at relation as the means of explaining how the persons
are constituted—and more generally as the means of denoting distinction
or difference in God—by a process of elimination. Plurality, such as the plu-
rality of the persons, requires distinction.5 Yet, Aquinas thought it obvious
that there can be no essential or substantial difference between the per-
sons (i.e., the kind of difference that exists between a man and a donkey)
since positing an essential difference would land one in the Arian heresy.
The distinction of the persons, then, can only arise through one of the nine
categories of accident, and so it is through an examination of the differ-
ences between the various types of accident that Aquinas—like Augustine,
Boethius, and many others before him—will eventually conclude that only
the category of relation can be used to explain personal distinction.
3 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, solutio.: “… notiones sunt quinque, scilicet paternitas,
filiatio, processio, innascibilitas, communis spiratio. Harum autem quatuor tantum sunt
proprietates, quae uni personae tantum conveniunt, scilicet paternitas, innascibilitas, quae
conveniunt tantum Patri; filiatio, quae convenit tantum Filio; processio, quae convenit
tantum Spiritui Sancto … Harum etiam notionum quatuor sunt tantum relationes, scilicet
paternitas, filiatio, processio, et communis spiratio.” Ed. cit., p. 72c. For a similar scheme in
Bonaventure, see Breviloquium I, c. 3 (Opera Omnia V, 212), where there are five notions, four
relations (= Aquinas’ properties), and three personal properties (= Aquinas’ four relations
minus common spiration); see Hayes 1979, 39–40.
4 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod hypostasis ponitur in
definitione personae, quia persona addit aliquid supra hypostasim: non quidem relationem,
quia relatio est de intellectu hypostasis divinae, sicut de intellectu personae; sed addit
determinatam rationem relationis, scilicet pertinens ad dignitatem; et ideo remota relatione,
neque hypostasis intellectus neque personae manet in divinis …” Ed. cit., p. 71a.
5 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “… cum pluralitas semper causetur ex aliqua
distinctione … impossibile est in Deo esse aliquam distinctionem nisi quam causat relatio.”
Ed. cit., p. 71a.
Each of the categories of accident can be distinguished into two compo-

nents, according to Aquinas: the accident’s esse and its ratio. This distinction
is between what makes this particular accident an accident (its esse), and
what makes it this particular kind of accident as opposed to any other kind
of accident (its ratio). The being or esse of an accident is uniform for all the
nine categories of accident and is simply to have being in its subject. What
all accidents share is the type of being that only exists in a subject: the very
nature of an accident involves inhering in something or depending on some-
thing. In addition to the being (esse) of an accident, however, one also finds
a ratio, a ‘characteristic’ or ‘aspect’, unique to each kind of accident.6 This
ratio is what makes quantity a different accident from quality or relation,
for example. All the categories apart from substance are accidents—that
is, they all inhere in a subject—but they differ among themselves insofar
as they modify their subject in different ways. For example, quantity is the
measure of a substance, while quality is the disposition of a substance. The
ratio peculiar to the category of relation is “being toward something else”.7
6 It is regrettable, but I have been unable to find a satisfactory translation for this use
of ratio by Aquinas. As will become clear below, ‘definition’ is a close approximation to the
meaning of the word, yet Aquinas is quite specific that the genera are indefinable and yet
have a ratio; thus ratio is a broader notion than definition (see n. 18 below, and further nn. 11–
13). What is more, there is a definite ambiguity in Aquinas’ notion of the ratio arising from
its having the dual meaning of, on the one hand, a mental intention and, on the other, the
significate of that mental intention (see nn. 14–17 below). ‘Characteristic’ or ‘aspect’ seem to
me to capture the extended sense of ratio as compared to definition, but neither does justice
to the ontological ambiguity built into the term; therefore in the interest of clarity I have
decided to leave the term untranslated throughout this book when used in this particular
way. For literature on Aquinas on the ratio, see n. 13 below.
7 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 8, q. 4, a. 3, solutio: “Sed in unoquoque novem praedicamentorum
duo invenio; scilicet rationem accidentis et rationem propriam illius generis, sicut quanti-
tatis vel qualitatis. Ratio autem accidentis imperfectionem continet: quia esse accidentis est
inesse et dependere, et compositionem facere cum subiecto per consequens. Unde secun-
dum rationem accidentis nihil potest de Deo praedicari. Si autem consideremus propriam
rationem cuiuslibet generis, quodlibet aliorum generum praeter ad aliquid importat imper-
fectionem … est enim quantitas mensura substantiae, qualitas dispositio substantiae, et sic
patet in omnibus aliis.” Ed. cit., pp. 25c–26a. See id., I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, solutio: “In relatione,
sicut in omnibus accidentibus, est duo considerare: scilicet esse suum, secundum quod ponit
aliquid in ipso, prout est accidens; et rationem suam, secundum quam ad aliud refertur, ex
qua in genere determinato collocatur.” Ed. cit., p. 71c.
On Aquinas’ theory of relation see Krempel 1952; Schmidt 1966, 130–174; Henninger 1989,
13–17, and further 18–39; Schönburger 1994, 63–76; more generally on medieval theories of
relation, see Brower 2009. Of these works only Krempel 1952, 537–553, includes a discussion
of the divine relations, on which, however, see especially the excellent treatment in Gelber
1974, 15–25, to which my discussion is indebted.
54 chapter one
Now, Aquinas denies that anything can be predicated of God as an acci-

dent taken according to its being (esse): by definition this type of predication
implies inherence and dependency, in turn implying composition, and this
is incompatible with God’s perfect simplicity. He also denies that anything
can be said of God according to any of the accidental rationes that involve
dependency on a subject. Take the case of quantity: its ratio is “being the
measure of a substance”. In this instance, being in another issues not only
from the fact that quantity is an accident but also from quantity’s being the
type of accident that it is. Implicit in the ratio of quantity is a dependency on
a subject, which in turn entails composition. This is true for all of the cate-
gories of accident except for relation.8 The ratio of relation—“being toward
something else” (ad aliud)—is different from the rationes of the other acci-
dents in that it implies no dependency on a subject. Hence relation taken
according to its ratio involves no inherence and composition. Thus, Aquinas
asserts that there are “only two ways of predicating in the divine, namely
according to substance and according to relation.”9
Because of its particular ratio, its being toward something else, rela-
tion can be the basis of personal distinction in God without implying
composition. This is the foundation of Aquinas’ explanation for how the
divine essence is simple, yet the relations account for the real distinction
between the persons. The divine personal relations—paternity, filiation,
and procession—according to Aquinas, are real relations of origin based on
the actual sharing of God’s nature by the persons.10 God’s simplicity, how-
ever, requires that we acknowledge that no real difference exists between
8 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 8, q. 4, a. 3, solutio: “Si autem consideremus propriam rationem
cuiuslibet generis, quodlibet aliorum generum praeter ad aliquid importat imperfectionem;

quantitas enim habet propriam rationem in comparatione ad subiectum; est enim quan-
titas mensura substantiae, qualitas dispositio substantiae, et sic patet in omnibus aliis.
Unde eadem ratione removentur a divina praedicatione secundum rationem generis, sicut
removebantur per rationem accidentis … ad aliquid autem, etiam secundum rationem
generis, non importat aliquam dependentiam ad subiectum; immo refertur ad aliquid extra;
et ideo etiam secundum rationem generis in divinis invenitur.” Ed. cit., pp. 25c–26a.
9 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 8, q. 4, a. 3, solutio: “… tantum remanent duo modi praedicandi in
divinis, scilicet secundum substantiam et secundum relationem.” Ed. cit., p. 26a. Explicitly
on the ratio of relation, see n. 19 below.
10 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, solutio: “… relationes distinguentes personas … fundentur
super aliquid quod vere in re est, scilicet in communicatione naturae; et ideo sunt reales
relationes habentes esse fundatum in natura rei.” Ed. cit., p. 86a. See id., I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a.
1, solutio.: “Cum igitur istae relationes, paternitas et filiatio, habeant fundamentum aliquod
in re, scilicet ipsam naturam quae communicatur secundum communicationem naturae,
constat quod sunt realiter in Deo.” Ed. cit., p. 71c.
these relations and the divine essence. To save divine simplicity while
positing a real difference between the persons, Aquinas uses a tool “on
which the whole understanding of what is said in this first book [of the
Sentences] depends”: the ratio, and the concomitant Thomist notion of a
rational distinction.11 The passage in which Aquinas explains this in the
trinitarian context bears quotation:
When it is said that in the divine the ratio of paternity and of essence differ,
‘ratio’ is not taken as an act of reasoning (ratiocinante) only, but as the name
of an intention, and as it signifies the definition of a thing. For although in the
divine there cannot be a definition—nor [can there be] genus or difference
or composition—nevertheless if one understands something to be defined
there, there will be one definition of paternity and a different definition of
essence. It is generally true, however, in all intentions that these intentions
are not themselves in things, but only in the soul; yet they have something
corresponding [to them] in the thing, namely the nature to which the intellect
attributes intentions of this kind … the rationes that we say differ in the divine,
are not in the thing (in re), but there is something corresponding to them in
the thing in which they are founded, namely the truth of the thing to which
such an intention is attributed, for that is in God; thus diverse rationes can be
found (convenire) there.12
We formulate conceptual distinctions about God, and that is all that these
distinctions are: distinctions of reason. The building block of such a distinc-
tion of reason—the ratio—is “that which the intellect apprehends about
11 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, solutio: “… ex hoc pendet totus intellectus eorum quae
in 1 libro dicuntur.” Ed. cit., p. 8a. Ratio is, according to Aquinas, a term of the second
imposition, so that, like the term ‘definition’, it is a sign imposed to signify other signs (as
opposed to non-signs, i.e. things), thus a ratio is a concept under which a number of other
concepts are gathered. I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, solutio: “nec tamen hoc nomen ‘ratio’ significat
ipsam conceptionem, quia hoc significatur per nomen sapientiae vel per aliud nomen rei,
sed significat intentionem huius conceptionis, sicut et hoc nomen ‘definitio’, et alia nomina
secundae impositionis.” Ed. cit., 8a. On terms of the second imposition, see Knudsen 1982,
esp. 484–485. On the term ratio, see also n. 6 above.
12 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 3: “… Cum dicitur quod est alia ratio paternitatis et
essentiae in divinis, non accipitur ‘ratio’ secundum quod est ratiocinante tantum, sed secun-
dum quod est nomen intentionis, et significat definitionem rei. Quamvis enim in divinis
non possit esse definitio, nec genus nec differentia nec compositio, tamen si intelligatur ibi
aliquid definiri, alia erit definitio paternitatis, et alia definitio essentiae. In omnibus autem
intentionibus hoc communiter verum est quod intentiones ipsae non sunt in rebus sed in
anima tantum; sed habent aliquid in re respondens, scilicet naturam cui intellectus huius-
modi intentiones attribuit … ipsa ratio quam dicimus aliam et aliam in divinis, non est in re;
sed est in re aliquid respondens ei in quo fundatur, scilicet veritas illius rei cui talis intentio
attribuitur, est enim in Deo; unde possunt rationes diversae ibi convenire.” Ed. cit., p. 86a–
b. Aquinas had earlier written: “ratio dicitur id quod est in ratiocinante, scilicet ipse actus
rationis vel potentia quae est ratio.” Ed. cit., p. 86a.
56 chapter one
the signification of some noun.” In cases where a definition exists for a thing,
the definition is that thing’s ratio.13 Of course, God lacks composition and so
is indefinable. Nevertheless, because a ratio is more inclusive than is a def-
inition, we can have rationes about God without being able to define Him.
That is to say, the mind can discern the meaning or apprehend the signifi-
cation of some noun, even while being unable to define that noun.
For trinitarian theology the significant thing about the rationes that we
have about God, according to Aquinas, is that there is a correspondence
between our ratio and God himself. Aquinas says explicitly that the rationes
that we have about God are not solely the products of our thinking process,
but they have a foundation in God’s properties.14 In fact, there are charac-
teristics really in God that correspond to all the rationes our mind has about
Him, “just as a significate corresponds to a sign.”15 Thus, divine simplicity
demands that essence, paternity, and Father differ in a merely rational way;
nevertheless there are diverse rationes in God that correspond to the vari-
ous conceptions that our mind forms about Him. The justification for the
correspondence between thing and ratio is easy to understand on a corre-
spondence theory of truth. If we have various rationes about God, and those
rationes (or statements involving them) are true, then there must be some-
thing that corresponds to those true rationes in their extramental source.16
13 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, solutio: “… ratio, prout hic sumitur, nihil aliud est
quam id quod apprehendit intellectus de significatione alicuius nominis. Et hoc in his

quae habent definitionem est ipsa rei definitio.” Ed. cit., p. 8a. Although it does not strictly
deal with trinitarian issues (dealing rather with the divine attributes), the discussion at
I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3 is the locus classicus for Aquinas’ early thought on the ratio and it
has been studied in some detail: see Dondaine 1938, and especially Lemaigre 1966, and
the literature referred to there (p. 198). Lemaigre has demonstrated on the basis of the
manuscript tradition and of doctrine that this question in Aquinas’ Sentences commentary is
in fact an independently disputed question (disputed at Rome, 1265–1267) incorporated into
later redactions of Aquinas’ Sentences. See also Gelber 1974, 17–19; and Hödl 1978, esp. 114.
Hödl (pp. 114–120) traces the steps in Aquinas’ move away from the notion of the ratio as
discussed here. For a still more detailed treatment of the ratio in Aquinas, see Schmidt 1966,
81–93, 122–129; Pini 2002, esp. 49–59.
14 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, solutio: “… et haec ratio non est tantum ex parte ipsius
ratiocinantis, sed ex proprietate ipsius rei.” Ed. cit., p. 8a. Ibid.: “Unde patet quod pluralitas
istarum rationum non tantum est ex parte intellectus nostri, sed etiam ex parte ipsius Dei.”
Ed. cit., p. 8c.
15 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, solutio: “… dicitur esse in re in quantum in re extra animam
est aliquid quod respondet conceptioni animae, sicut significatum signo.” Ed. cit., p. 8a. See
n. 25 below, for explicit testimony that Aquinas thinks of the ratio as both an intra- and an
extramental phenomenon.
16 See n. 12 above (note that there Aquinas talks about the truth of the thing, and not
about statements concerning the thing). Aquinas (I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, solutio [ed. cit.,
Aquinas likens this process to the way that we attribute a genus to one really
existing animal. Our mind conceives of the genus ‘animal’ in, for example, a
donkey, when in fact ‘animal’ exists only as concept or ratio. What exists as
an extramental thing is a singular animal nature—one donkey—yet there
is something in that donkey that corresponds to our conception ‘animal’,
and it is upon this that our conception is founded.17 The thing correspond-
ing to our intention is the extramental ratio ‘animal’ in the donkey. Now, as
we have seen, the characteristic by which the genera of accidents are dis-
tinguished from each other is a ratio. Thus, the ratio of relation—its being
“toward something else”—corresponds to something in extramental rela-
tions, and is that which is signified by the word ‘relation’.18
Making use of both this rational distinction and the fact that relation’s
ratio is to refer to something else, Aquinas can begin to deal with the
problem of the divine persons—how the three persons are distinct from
one another, and yet all three are the divine essence:
Relation’s ratio is to refer to another. Thus, a relation can be considered in two
ways in the divine: either through comparison to the essence, and in this way
it is only a ratio; or through comparison to what it refers to, and in this way
the relation is really (realiter) distinguished from that [to which it refers] by
relation’s proper ratio. But the persons are distinguished through comparison
of a relation to its correlative opposite, and not through comparison of the
relation to the essence.19
p. 8a–b]) actually distinguishes three ways that an intention can be related to something
extramental: the intention can have an immediate extramental foundation (for example
the intention formed about a human being who is present to our cognitive faculties); the
intention can have a remote extramental foundation (see n. 17 below); or the intention can
have no extramental foundation, in which case it is a false conception.
17 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 3: “… sicut intentio generis non est in asino, sed natura
animalis, cui per intellectum haec intentio attribuitur.” Ed. cit., p. 86b. Aquinas elaborates
on this analogy at I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, solutio: “Aliquando autem hoc quod significat nomen
non est similitudo rei existentis extra animam, sed est aliquid quod consequitur ex modo
intelligendi rem quae est extra animam. Et huiusmodi sunt intentiones quas intellectus nos-
ter adinvenit, sicut significatum huius nominis, ‘genus’, non est similitudo alicuius rei extra
animam existentis; sed ex hoc quod intellectus intelligit animal ut in pluribus speciebus,
attribuit ei intentionem generis. Et huiusmodi intentionis, licet proximum fundamentum
non sit in re sed in intellectu, tamen remotum fundamentum est res ipsa.” Ed. cit., p. 8a–b.
18 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, solutio: “… sed quaedam dicuntur habere rationem sic
dictam, quae non definiuntur, sicut quantitas et qualitas et huiusmodi, quae non definiuntur,
quia sunt genera generalissima. Et tamen ratio qualitatis est id quod significatur nomine
qualitatis; et hoc est illud ex quo qualitas habet quod sit qualitas.” Ed. cit., p. 8a.
19 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 5, solutio: “Ratio autem relationis est ut referatur ad alterum.
Potest ergo dupliciter considerari relatio in divinis: vel per comparationem ad essentiam, et
sic est ratio tantum; vel per comparationem ad illud ad quod refertur, et sic per propriam
58 chapter one
For Aquinas, relation can found distinction in God without causing any
composition whatsoever because it has a type of two-fold nature, and this
dual nature is intimately bound up with Aquinas’ conception of the ratio.
When one compares the divine relations to the essence in which they
subsist, they do not differ in any sense that can be called real—there is
a mere difference of ratio. The relation considered with respect to the
essence is the essence, differing in a merely rational way, because the divine
relations do not inhere. The divine relations, however, can also be thought
of as compared to the term to which they refer—all relations are toward
something. When the relations are so compared, they are distinct from each
other in a more meaningful way: Aquinas says that the relations are really
(realiter) mutually distinct. This is how the real distinction between the
persons comes about. It should be noted that the type of ‘comparison’ that
Aquinas is talking about is not merely psychological, i.e. it is not merely a
mental comparison, but has ontological or metaphysical significance. For
Aquinas, as well as for Bonaventure and many other scholastics (including
Giles of Rome, on whom see Ch. 3, §3, below), a divine relation does
indeed have in reality the dual nature that Aquinas here attributes to it.
In sum, Aquinas uses the ratio of relation, the feature of relation that
distinguishes it from all the other categories of accident, to explain the
simultaneous identity and distinction of the divine persons: identity in the
essence, distinction from each other.
This characteristic of the divine relations that Aquinas points out—that
compared to their foundation they are merely rationally distinct, while
compared to their term they are really distinct—is, in fact, a crucial tool for
those seeking to explain how the very same divine relations both differ from
each other and are the same as the divine essence. The motivation behind
the two-fold nature of the divine relations—and this will be absolutely
clear when we examine Giles of Rome’s trinitarian ideas in Chapter Three
below—is that the relations must have some reality of their own apart
from their foundation, the divine essence, in order for a real distinction
between the persons to arise. Without there existing some sort of difference
in being between the relations and the essence, there appears to be no
way that the persons can also differ from each other. Still, it cannot be said
that the relations are different from the essence simpliciter, for if that were
the case composition with the essence would result. The dual nature of
rationem relationis relatio realiter distinguitur ab illo. Sed per comparationem relationis ad
suum correlativum oppositum distinguuntur personae, et non per comparationem relationis
ad essentiam.” Ed. cit., p. 9b.
the divine relations was posited to fill the gap: identity with the essence
when compared to it, distinction from the term when compared to it. The
use of this dual nature of relations, however, requires one to believe that
relation can have some reality apart from its foundation, a view that we will
see Henry of Ghent reject. Thus, Henry will severely criticize theories like
Aquinas’ or Giles’ on this point.
It remains for Aquinas to explain in what way the relations are different
from each other while at the same time they all are the divine essence. That
is to say, he must account for the way that the relations can have some
sort of reality of their own apart from their foundation. Aquinas maintains
that the divine relations and essence are in fact different in being (esse),
but saying this he employs ‘being’ in a specific way. The relations and the
essence are always indistinct in terms of being when ‘being’ is taken as the
essential divine act; but one can also talk about the relations and the essence
as being distinct when ‘being’ is taken as a quiddity. That is to say, the being
by which the divine essence exists is always the same as the being by which
the relations exist—they are always essentially the same—but these two
beings differ because the quiddities or natures specific to them differ.20 The
relations differ from the essence in quidditative being because the ratio
of relation, “being toward something else”, differs from the ratio of the
divine essence, which has the ratio of substance or “something absolute”.21
Thus, two different quiddities nonetheless share the same essential act, and
20 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1: “Ad primum igitur dicendum quod relationes istae
non sunt tantum secundum dici ad aliquid, sed etiam secundum esse. Sed sciendum quod
‘esse’ dicitur dupliciter: uno modo dicitur ‘esse’ ipsa quiditas vel natura rei, sicut dicitur
quod definitio est oratio significans quid est esse, definitio enim quiditatem rei significat;
alio modo dicitur ‘esse’ ipse actus essentiae, sicut vivere, quod est esse viventibus … dico
igitur quod cum dicitur: ‘ad aliquid sunt quorum esse est ad aliud se habere’, intelligitur
de esse quod est quiditas rei, quae definitione significatur, quia ipsa natura relationis per
quam constituitur in tali genere est ad aliud referri … quia illud esse in quo paternitas et
essentia uniuntur, significatur ut esse quod est actus essentiae, non autem uniuntur in esse
quod significat definitio rei, quia alia est ratio paternitatis qua ad aliud refertur et alia ratio
essentiae.” Ed. cit., p. 86a.
21 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, solutio: “Istud ergo esse paternitatis non potest esse aliud
esse quam esse essentiae; et cum esse essentiae sit ipsa essentia, et esse paternitatis sit ipsa
paternitas, relinquitur de necessitate quod ipsa paternitas secundum rem est ipsa essentia;
unde non facit compositionem cum ea. Sed quia manet ibi verus respectus pertinens ad
naturam, relationes quae non pertinent ad rationem essentiae, ex illo respectu ratio potest
distinguere, quamvis essentia non distinguatur, de cuius intellectu non est iste respectus
oppositionem habens et per consequens distinctionem causans. Et ita dicendum quod
proprietates et essentia sunt idem re, sed differunt ratione.” Ed. cit., p. 86a. Note that Aquinas
says here that the essence and the properties differ, they are not distinct, because distinction
requires some opposition, as he tells us in nn. 26, 28, 75 below.
60 chapter one
it is exclusively in the quidditative sense that the relations and essence

differ in being, i.e. since paternity has a ratio that is different from the
ratio of essence, as do filiation and procession.22 The difference between
essence and relation in terms of ‘being’ taken as quiddity follows directly
from Aquinas’ notion of ratio and the way that something extramental
corresponds to every difference in ratio understood truly by the human
mind.
More specifically still, Aquinas claims that the essence and the relations
are different in the same way that diverse genera are different. This follows
from the fact that the ratio of substance (or essence) and the ratio of relation
are the rationes of different genera. The personal properties are distinct
from the persons on the other hand, as is an abstract noun (e.g., paternity)
from its corresponding concrete noun (e.g., Father).23 On more than one
occasion Aquinas calls the latter difference one of a ‘mode of signifying’,
implying that there is a difference in terms, which is nonetheless founded
on a corresponding difference in God.24
The relations themselves are also distinguished from one another on the
basis of this same rational distinction, except that they are distinguished by
22 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2: “Sed paternitas habet aliquid in quo non unitur cum
essentia, scilicet rationem paternitatis, quae est alia a ratione essentiae.” Ed. cit., p. 86a.
23 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “… ratio proprietatis et essentiae differt sicut
ratio diversorum generum … sed ratio proprietatis et personae differt sicut ratio abstracti
et concreti in eodem genere acceptorum.” Ed. cit., p. 86c. On account of this view, Aquinas
was sometimes accused of being a “crypto-Praepositinian”; on Praepositinus’ ideas and their
legacy in the later Middle Ages, see n. 60 below, and especially the “Excursus” in Ch. 11.
24 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 5: “Ad quintum dicendum quod etiam personae
divinae se ipsis distinguuntur, in quantum personae secundum rem sunt ipsae relationes,
sed sicut persona quantum ad modum significandi, non est idem quod relatio, ita etiam se
ipsis non distinguuntur, sed relationibus; sicut Deus per se ipsum est Deus, quamvis deitas
sit Deus, quia ipse est sua deitas.” Ed. cit., p. 72a. Id., I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “… et ideo
oportet quod differant secundum modum significandi proprietates a persona. Nec modus
significandi diversus veritatem haberet, sed vanitatem, nisi esset alia ratio proprietatis et
personae, cui respondet aliquid in re … et ideo dicimus quod proprietates et personae sunt
idem re, sed differunt ratione.” Ed. cit., p. 86c. In these passages ‘proprietas’ and ‘relatio’ are
synonyms.
It is well documented that the modus significandi was an important element in the
speculative grammar of the “modistae”, but what relation this has to Aquinas’ pre-modistic
use of the modus significandi as exemplified here is obscure. See for the modistic use of
modi significandi Pinborg 1982 and esp. Rosier-Catach 1999. Aquinas’ use of this term was
not unprecedented, for modus significandi was used in this very context by Stephen Langton
and Andrew Sunesen in the late twelfth century, and earlier still by William of Conches;
see Ebbesen 1987, esp. pp. 426–427. Further, and most importantly for the mid-13th-century
theological context, Rosier 1995.
comparison between various rationes of relation, instead of a comparison

of the rationes of substance and relation:
There is also in the divine a certain relative form, e.g. paternity, which accord-
ing to its ratio (secundum rationem), which exists not only in the intellect but
also outside it, is different from filiation. It is in virtue of this that the name
‘thing’—thing is predicated in the plural (pluraliter)—is taken by that rela-
tion: so that there are several (plures) such relative forms there.25
Thus, Aquinas affirms that the relations are really different—that they
are many things—in the sense that a ratio or intention has something
corresponding to it in the extramental world and the different relations
of origin have different rationes. Yet he maintains that this is merely a
rational difference, one that involves no essential difference or accidental
composition. The relations have some reality of their own, yet they are really
the same as their one foundation, the divine essence.
Thus far, Aquinas has been explaining the differences that exist between
the relations and the essence and among the relations, but between the
persons there is true distinction. This distinction also depends upon the
different rationes of the divine relations. For Aquinas, the personal relations,
which are the same as the divine essence, nonetheless are the foundations
of the distinction between the persons. This comes about because each of
the relations is the same as both the essence and that person to whom
the relation is proper, but it is toward another person. That is to say,
the relations are between the persons; paternity, being toward the Son, is
proper to the Father and is different in ratio from filiation, being toward
the Father, that is proper to the Son. It is the opposition of these relations,
according to Aquinas, that accounts for the real distinction between the
persons.26
25 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 25, q. 1, a. 4, solutio.: “Est etiam in divinis quaedam forma relativa,
ut paternitas, quae secundum rationem non solum in intellectu existentem, sed etiam extra,
est alia a filiatione; unde secundum quod ab hac relatione sumitur nomen rei, res pluraliter
praedicatur, ut sint ibi plures tales formae relativae.” Ed. cit., p. 69c. Also id., I Sent., d. 27, q. 1,
a. 1, co: “… unde paternitas et filiatio sunt duae res et similiter Pater et Filius.” Ed. cit., p. 73b.
26 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 34, q. 1, a. 1, ad 5: “Ad quintum dicendum quod tres personae
uniuntur in essentia, quae omnino secundum rem idem est unicuique illarum; tamen differt
secundum rationem ab unaquaque, prout persona includit in se intellectum relationis; quae
relatio, quamvis comparata ad essentiam ratione tantum differat ab ea, tamen comparata ad
suum relatum cui opponitur realem distinctionem facit. Non enim relatio distinguit realiter
nisi secundum oppositionem respectus quam habet. Illa autem oppositio non est ad hoc in
quo relatio habet esse, sed ad hoc ad quod dicitur; et ideo relatio non distinguitur realiter ab
essentia et persona in qua est, sed a persona alia ad quam dicitur.” Ed. cit., p. 88c.
62 chapter one
This stress on opposition of relations as the basis for the real distinc-
tion between the persons is perhaps the single most important addition—
Dominican theologians would say: clarification—the later Middle Ages
made to the Augustinian-Boethian relation account. It is not difficult to see
how opposition of relations could be defended as the correct way to inter-
pret Augustine’s and Boethius’ trinitarian doctrine. Moreover, the adage
found in Anselm’s De processione Spiritus Sancti and known as “Anselm’s
rule”, which claimed that “in God all is unity except where there is opposi-
tion of relations”, was also of extreme importance as an authoritative text.
But in the Dominican tradition, it is Aquinas who cements opposition of
relations as the principle of trinitarian distinction. This (as we will see) sets
the Dominicans off sharply from Franciscan theologians who deempha-
sized or even discarded opposition.27
Aquinas bases his own claim for the importance of opposition in trini-
tarian theology on the intuition that “the source of every formal distinction
is some opposition.”28 Not just any kind of opposition can be predicated of
God since most opposition involves a perfection and its lack: this is entirely
unsuitable, because God lacks nothing and there is neither contrariety nor
privation in him. In fact, Aquinas, like all those who had studied Aristotle’s
Categories or the medieval commentaries on it, thinks that opposition of
relations avoids this problem. In Aquinas’ terms, since the ratio of relation is
to be “toward another”, the opposition is not in the thing itself, but in “being
toward” something else. Thus, relative opposition arises from the fact that
the different relations are toward different (opposed) terms, yet no lack is
thereby posited in the relation.29 Aquinas explains:
27 On Augustine and Boethius and their use of relation in trinitarian theology, see the
Introduction, above, § 1. For more on Anselm’s role (and esp. his De processione Spiritus
Sancti) in the later-medieval trinitarian debate, see Ch. 5, below, §4. John Lamont (2005) has
recently argued that Aquinas’ use of opposition of relations as the constitutive factor in the
distinction of the persons is, from the perspective of modern theories of relation, insufficient;
medieval theologians in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition made arguments similar to those
adduced by Lamont, although the medievals rarely denied that relation played some role in
the explanation for personal distinction.
28 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, solutio: “… omnis autem distinctionis formalis princip-
ium est aliqua oppositio …” Ed. cit., p. 72a. See also n. 75 below.
29 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, solutio: “In omnibus autem oppositionibus alterum est ut
perfectum, alterum ut imperfectum, praeter relationem; quod patet per se in affirmatione et

negatione et privatione et habitu. Patet etiam in contrarietate … et ideo nulla talis distinctio
potest esse in divinis, ubi est omnimoda perfectio. In relativis autem neutrum est sicut priva-
tio alterius, vel defectum aliquem importans, cuius ratio est quia in relativis non est oppositio
secundum id quod relativum in aliquo est, sed secundum id quod ad aliud dicitur.” Ed.
Thus, although one relation has joined [to it] the negation of another relation
in the same supposite, nevertheless this negation does not entail any defect,
because a defect only exists on account of what is supposed to be in some-
thing: thus, since that which has relative opposition to something—according
to the meaning (rationem) of opposition—does not posit something, but
[being] toward something, imperfection and defect do not follow; and so only
this kind of opposition is suitable for the distinction of the persons.30
Because of the ratio of relation—its being toward something else—the fact
that relations are opposed does not indicate any lack on God’s part. To take
an example of another type of opposition: in human beings blindness indi-
cates the lack of sight and there is a formal distinction of the one from the
other because of their opposition, with ‘opposition’ taken in its broadest
sense. The lack of sight, however, that distinguishes the sighted from the
blind, is the kind of opposition that necessarily implies a defect: something
that should be present is missing in blind persons. For a Christian, this obvi-
ously will not do for God. The “formal distinction” that arises between the
persons because of relative opposition is due not to the lack of some thing,
but to the fact that one relation is not toward the same thing as another rela-
tion. Thus, relative opposition does not imply any defect, because paternity
is solely “toward the Son” while filiation is “toward the Father”, neither of
which implies the lack of anything in the way that blindness does. Thus, the
rational difference in God—the fact that there is something in God corre-
sponding to the distinction we make between the relation of paternity, or
the Father’s being toward the Son, and filiation, or the Son’s being toward
the Father—and the fact that these relations are opposed, that they are
towards opposite things and thus have opposing rationes, explains how real
distinction arises between the Father and the Son.
To sum up Aquinas’ position: personal distinction is explained by oppo-
sition of the real divine relations. That is to say, just as the three personal
properties of paternity, filiation, and procession—the relations of origin—
cit., p. 72a–b. That opposed relatives involve no privation or possession was noted in the
Categories itself in c. 10 (12b16–25). For medieval recognition of this property of relation, see,
e.g., Peter of Spain, Tractatus 3.29 (ed. De Rijk), pp. 39–40. Thanks to Sten Ebbesen for having
brought this to my attention.
30 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, solutio: “Unde quamvis una relatio habeat annexam
negationem alterius relationis in eodem supposito, non tamen ista negatio importat aliquem
defectum, quia defectus non est nisi secundum aliquid quod in aliquo natum est esse: unde
cum id quod habet oppositionem relativam ad ipsum, secundum rationem oppositionis
non ponat aliquid, sed ad aliquid, non sequitur imperfectio vel defectus; et ideo sola talis
oppositio competit distinctioni personarum.” Ed. cit., p. 72b.
64 chapter one
differ from one another in virtue of the fact that they are toward differ-
ent things and thus (in the case of both paternity-filiation and common
spiration-procession) have opposing rationes, so also the persons are made
really distinct because of this same opposition. The relations themselves
are different from the divine essence in which they subsist when compared
to their term—i.e. when thought about with regard to their true ratio of
‘being toward something else’—but are the same as the essence when com-
pared to it. Thus, Aquinas held that opposition of the merely rationally (with
‘rational’ taken in his own special sense of ratio) distinct personal relations
explained the real distinction between the three persons.
2. Bonaventure and “Modes” of Diversity
Like Aquinas, and for similar reasons, Bonaventure uses relation as the
primary vehicle for explaining the distinction between the persons in God,
although the detailed description of diversity in God is not the same for the
two authors.31 In the written commentary that resulted from the lectures
he gave on the Sentences at the University of Paris probably from 1250 to
1252 and most probably reworked during his term as Franciscan regent
master in theology at Paris 1253–1257, Bonaventure accepts the common
medieval position, claiming that there are only two categories applicable
to God: relation and substance. Relation is singled out for Bonaventure, as
for Aquinas, because of its unique ontology. Relation is both like and unlike
the other accidents. It is like other accidents because it is a category or
genus of being that modifies some subject. But unlike the other accidents,
“it has a respect not only to its subject, but also to an object according to
31 For all citations below, I have used Bonaventure’s Opera Omnia (Grottaferrata: Col-
legium S. Bonaventurae, 1882–1902), in particular Commentaria in primum librum Sententiar-

ium in Opera Omnia, vol. 1, parts 1–2. Although I have used the lectures on the Sentences as
the source for this section on Bonaventure’s trinitarian thought, a very condensed exposition
can be found in the disputed questions De mysterio trinitatis, q. 3, a. 2: “Utrum possint simul
stare trinitas et summa simplicitas” in Opera Omnia, v. 5, pp. 73–78 (this work was proba-
bly composed during Bonaventure’s period of teaching at Paris, i.e. 1253–1257, and features
of the manuscript tradition raise the possibility that it can be dated to 1256–1257, just prior
to Bonaventure’s departure from the University of Paris to take up the generalship of the
Franciscan order; see Hayes 1979, 26). For information on Bonaventure’s life and thought see
Bougerol 1988 and Cullen 2006 (esp. pp. 117–127 on the Trinity), and the literature referred
to there. For Bonaventure’s trinitarian theory, see Stohr 1923; Mathieu 1992; Hayes 1994, 55–
61; and esp. Hayes 1979. For the epistemological and metaphysical aspects discussed in this
section see Schmaus 1930a, esp. 448–454; Gelber 1974, 12–15; Jordan 1984, 31–37.
reference (habitudo) and dependence.”32 Although Bonaventure does not

use Aquinas’ terminology of the being (esse) and the ratio of each accident,
he is thinking of a similar distinction, and this gives him the desired means
of explaining diversity in God:
… the other genera vanish without qualification, but relation in a certain way
remains there, [while] in a certain other way it vanishes. This is because the
other genera indicate only a respect to the subject, and according to that
they vanish; relation, however, further indicates a respect to an object, and
in virtue of that respect, relation indicates the plurality that truly exists in the
divine; and in this way relation remains. It is also clear in what way relation
vanishes, namely with respect to everything that indicates composition.33
Insofar as relation is like the other categories of accident it is not found in
God, because any accident existing in God would compromise his simplic-
ity: relation cannot indicate a respect toward its subject, i.e. inherence in
the divine essence. Thus, like all the other accidents, relation qua accident
“vanishes” (transit) into divine substance and is indistinct from it. Insofar
as relation differs from the other categories of accident, however, in some
way it remains in God. The respect toward an object which characterizes
32 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, a. 1, q. 2, solutio: “Sola autem relatio manet in divinis. Ad
cuius intelligentiam notandum quod relatio in aliquibus convenit cum aliis generibus, in
aliquibus differt. Convenit enim in hoc quod est praedicamentum et genus entis, et in hoc
quod est accidens; et disconvenit in hoc quod praeter alia genera habet respectum non solum
ad subiectum, sed etiam ad obiectum secundum habitudinem et dependentiam.” Ed. cit.,
p. 456a.
Bonaventure’s use of the term habitudo is puzzling: it plays an extremely important role
in his theory of relation and trinitarian theology, as will be clear below, but as far as I can
tell he never defines the term. In the passage in n. 34 below, habitudo is set apart from a
relation’s dependence on both its term and its foundation, so habitudo would seem to signify
the ‘looking toward’ (respectus) of the relation to its term, or the ‘reference’ of a relation.
Gelber 1974, 26, when dealing with Peter of Tarantaise, the future Pope Innocent V, translates
habitudo as “reference” (see further ibid., p. 501 n. 31); Peter here seems to be using habitudo
in much the same way as Bonaventure, strengthening Gelber’s case for Bonaventurean
influence on Peter. I will utilize Gelber’s translation throughout (Note: in order to avoid
confusion with the semantic use of the term ‘reference’, I will supply forms of the word
habitudo in parentheses after each use). In any event, this term is not synonomous with
‘relation’ as Albert Stohr apparently thought; see, e.g., Stohr 1923, 118 (habitudo translated
as Beziehung) and 119 (habitudo translated as Relation).
33 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, a. 1, q. 2, solutio: “Alia igitur genera simpliciter transeunt,
sed relatio quodam modo manet ibi, quodam modo transit. Quia alia genera respectum
solum ad subiectum dicunt, et secundum illum transeunt, sed relatio ultra dicit respectum
ad obiectum, et secundum illum respectum dicit pluralitatem quae vere est in divinis; et
ita relatio manet. Patet etiam quomodo transit, videlicet quantum ad omne quod dicit
compositionem.” Ed. cit., p. 456a–b.
66 chapter one
relation cannot remain in God insofar as it indicates dependence on that

object, since there is no dependence in God. When it comes to habitudo or
reference, however, the relation does remain because things do truly refer
to each other in God, and thus this indicates true distinction in him.34
Although they both use relation to explain distinction in God, Aquinas
and Bonaventure understood the ontological status of the various differ-
ences in God in somewhat dissimilar ways. Aquinas based all difference
in God on the correspondence of something in God to the intentions or
rationes that our mind has about him. Thus, Aquinas kept all difference
in God at a purely rational level—albeit with ‘rational’ taken in a special
sense—until the real distinction of the persons arose from opposition of
relations. Bonaventure also says that all distinction in God is “rational”, but
he relies on various “modes” to explain diversity: in particular, Bonaventure
calls the diversity arising between a relation and its foundation the diversity
of a mode of reference (modus se habendi).
Bonaventure describes the mode of reference in the process of describing
the ways that things can be said to differ in God more generally. Although it
cannot apply to God, things can differ by mode of being (modus essendi), as
for example the difference that arises between different accidents or differ-
ent substances.35 There is also a kind of difference—the difference accord-
ing to mode of understanding (modus intelligendi)—that is only arrived
at by knowing the same undifferentiated thing through diverse means of
knowing (ratio sive medium cognoscendi): a purely psychological differ-
ence.36 A third type of diversity is the way that relation and substance differ:
34 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, a. 1, q. 2, solutio: “Quantum ad primas conditiones hscil. quod
relatio est accidens et habet respectum ad subiectumi impossibile est relationem manere in
divinis, sicut alia genera, et hoc propter summam simplicitatem. In Deo enim relatio non est
praedicamentum nec accidens, sed substantia est. Quantum vero ad condiciones quas habet
respectu obiecti, necesse est quodam modo manere, scilicet quantum ad habitudinem, et
hoc propter veram distinctionem quae est in divinis, et veram originem et habitudinem; et
necesse est quodam modo non manere, scilicet quantum ad dependentiam et hoc propter
omnimodam absolutionem, quae est in divinis.” Ed. cit., p. 456a.
35 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 22, a. 1, q. 4, solutio: “Uno modo dici diversimode attenditur
secundum diversum modum essendi qui est per se et per accidens; et hoc quidem modo non
est dici diversimode in divinis, quia ista diversitas modi ponit diversitatem essentialem in re
dicta.” Ed. cit., p. 398a.
36 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 22, a. 1, q. 4, solutio: “Alio modo dici diversimode est secundum
diversum modum intelligendi, qui quidem attenditur secundum aliam et aliam rationem
sive medium cognoscendi.” Ed. cit., p. 398a.
Gelber 1974, 26, claims that Peter of Tarantaise sometimes used the Thomist modus
intelligendi, but inasmuch as Bonaventure also makes use of this terminology (as in this
passage), there seems to be just as good a case for another Bonaventurean influence on
a difference midway between an essential difference and a purely concep-

tual difference, implying both unity and plurality. Bonaventure labels this
“differing according to diverse modes of reference”, and he explains:
… indeed, one finds this with regard to something absolute and something
compared or related. Now, this mode of diversity is indeed less than the first
mode of diversity and greater than the second. Less than the first because,
according to the first, one finds essential diversity and composition; greater
than the second because, according to that, one finds absolutely no distinc-
tion in the thing. According to this mode, however, one finds unity and plu-
rality in it: unity according to absolute, plurality according to respect.37
Between the essential diversity of diverse modes of being and the purely psy-
chological diversity of differing modes of understanding, there is an inter-
mediate difference that indicates both plurality and unity. This difference
according to mode of reference is what arises when relation and the sub-
stance that acts as its foundation are compared. A substance can be consid-
ered in two separate ways according to Bonaventure. First, it can be thought
of as in and of itself (per se), in which case any relation for which the sub-
stance acts as a foundation is included: relation is substance in the divine.
Substance can also, however, be considered toward itself (ad se), in which
case it differs by a mode of reference from any relation for which it serves as
a foundation. Because substance considered toward itself is uncompared—
i.e., it is toward nothing—it differs in reference from relation which is
always toward something. This difference by mode of reference is the differ-
ence that arises when considering a substance as an absolute in contrast to
any relative.38 It is by this mode of reference, according to Bonaventure, that
Peter. Gelber quite rightly notes (ibid., 21–22) that the difference according to modus intelli-
gendi and the concomitant difference of apprehension (see ibid., 14; and see n. 41 below) were
not equivalent to Aquinas’ rational difference inasmuch as Bonaventure held that there was
no difference in the extramental object corresponding to the difference the knowing mind
acknowledged, whereas Aquinas did posit some difference in the extramental thing corre-
sponding to the distinction of rationes.
37 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 22, a. 1, q. 4, solutio: “Tertio modo dici diversimode est secun-
dum diversum modum se habendi, quod quidem attenditur quantum ad absolutum et ad

comparatum sive relatum; et hic quidem modus diversitatis minor est quam primus et maior
quam secundus. Minor quam primus, quia secundum primum attenditur diversitas essen-
tialis et compositio; maior quam secundus quia secundum illum nulla omnino attenditur
in re distinctio. Secundum autem istum modum attenditur in eo unitas et pluralitas: unitas
secundum absolutum, pluralitas secundum respectum.” Ed. cit., p. 398a–b.
38 In this distinction of substance considered per se and ad se, we see the Bonaventurean
analogue to Aquinas’ distinction between being as essential act and being as definition of
a quiddity (see at and around n. 20 above). When substance is taken per se, according to
Bonaventure, everything for which the essence serves as foundation is included without
68 chapter one
the Father and the Son differ from the divine essence.39 This difference is not
essential because substance and relation have the same mode of being; but
the difference between things differing by a mode of reference is neverthe-
less a true difference.40
Bonaventure applies the difference according to mode of reference in
two specific ways in his trinitarian theology. When we say that essence, per-
sons, and notions are diverse one from the other, we distinguish them by
what Bonaventure calls “the difference of attribution”. This type of ratio-
nal difference arises because “some mode is posited regarding one or is
attributed to one which is not attributed to the other.” This is a clear
example of difference arising on account of the diverse modes of reference
between, for example, the essence which is an absolute thing toward itself
(ad se) and the relation of paternity which is a relative thing toward another
(toward the Son). A still greater diversity arises according to the “plurality of
distinction”: this occurs when one can say that two things are the same by
essence or nature yet there is some difference in them that would lead one
not to speak about them as the same thing. Thus if two things, while not
diverse essentially, are nevertheless diverse enough to merit being called
two different things—that is, one is not said (dicitur) about the other—they
differ by the plurality of distinction. This is the way that person differs from
person and property from property in God, and Bonaventure is quite clear
that the fact that it is less than an essential difference does not mean that
there is no difference in the thing corresponding to our rational distinction.41
distinction, just as when Aquinas takes ‘being’ to be the essential act—for both authors
everything in God is essentially the same. When substance is taken ad se, however, the
various references are taken into account to differentiate essence and relation according to
mode of reference, much as Aquinas’ rational difference leads to an existential difference
between essence and relations based on difference of being as quiddity.
39 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 22, a. 1, q. 4, ad 4: “Ad illud quod obiicitur quarto, quod nomina
relativa respondentur ad interrogationem factam de substantia, dicendum quod substantia

dicitur dupliciter: aut ens per se aut ad se. Si ut ens per se, sic omnia et relativa et absoluta
dicunt in Deo substantiam; et quia hoc modo substantia respondetur ad quaestionem factam
per quid, ideo omnia possunt responderi. Si autem dicatur substantia ut ens absolutum, non
comparatum, sic dicitur secundum substantiam quod dicitur ad se … et sic Pater et Filius et
nomina relativa secundum substantiam non dicuntur.” Ed. cit., pp. 398b–399a.
40 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 22, a. 1. q. 4, solutio: “Et quantum ad hunc modum sunt solum
duo modi dicendi, scilicet secundum substantiam, ut illa quae dicuntur ad se, et secundum
relationem, ut illa quae dicuntur ad aliquid. Quia vero haec non dicunt alium modum
essendi, ideo haec praedicantur de illis et sunt unum; et quia dicunt alium modum se
habendi, ideo secundum illa unitas, secundum haec pluralitas.” Ed. cit., p. 398b.
41 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, a. 1, q. 1, ad 2 (note that for reason of sense I have included in
this quotation the difference of apprehension [Bonaventure’s explanation of how the divine
The source of the real distinction between the persons, the plurality of
distinction, arises from Bonaventure’s equivalent of the Thomist opposition
of relations. Bonaventure puts it so:
… by reason of comparison to its subject, relation vanishes into substance,
and so the property is the divine substance. But by reason of comparison
to its term or object it remains, and with respect to this it is distinctive
and differs from the essence—not because it indicates another essence but
another mode of reference, and in comparison to the essence or the person
this mode of reference indicates a mode that adds nothing. But in comparison
to its correlative, the relation truly indicates a thing and distinction. And thus
neither is there futility in the way that we understand things nor is there
composition in the thing (in re), but true distinction.42
Thus, Bonaventure’s theory is very similar to Aquinas’. In the first place,

Bonaventure relies upon the dual nature of relations as the cornerpiece of
his explanation of the distinction between the persons. When the properties
are compared (in a metaphysical and not a merely psychological way) to
the essence, they vanish into the essence and become one with it, differing
only by mode or a purely rational distinction. But when the relations are
compared to their terms, they differ from the essence by mode of reference.
Thus, Bonaventure’s difference of attribution arises because a mode of
reference is attributed to the relation that is not attributed to the essence.
Finally, when a relation is compared to its correlative (correlativum)—the
relation opposed to it—true distinction or plurality of distinction arises
attributes differ from each other] although I do not deal with it here; see on this, Gelber
1974, 13–14 and 21–22): “Uno modo a parte nostrae apprehensionis, sicut differunt in Deo
bonitas et magnitudo. Alio modo differre ratione est secundum differentiam attributionis,
quia aliquis modus ponitur circa unum vel attribuitur uni, qui non attribuitur alteri; et
sic differunt ratione essentia et persona et notio. Tertio modo differre ratione est differre
secundum pluralitatem distinctionis, quae non inducit diversitatem in essentia vel natura,
tamen inducit differentiam, quod unum non dicitur de altero; et sic differt ratione persona
a persona et proprietas a proprietate. Et prima quidem differentia secundum rationem
est minima, quia nihil ei respondet a parte rei; sed ultimae respondet.” Ed. cit., p. 453a.
Bonaventure does actually use term ‘thing’ (res) to describe how two objects differ by the
plurality of distinction; see n. 42 below.
42 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 33, a. 1, q. 2, solutio: “… relatio ratione comparationis ad
subiectum transit in substantiam, et ideo proprietas est divina substantia; ratione vero
comparationis ad terminum sive obiectum remanet, et quantum ad hoc est distinctiva et
differt ab essentia, non quia dicat aliam essentiam sed alium modum se habendi, qui per
comparationem ad essentiam vel personam dicit modum, nihil addens; in comparatione
vero ad correlativum vere dicit rem et distinctionem. Et ideo non est vanitas in ratione
intelligendi nec compositio in re, sed vera distinctio.” Ed. cit., p. 575b. Also id., I Sent., d. 34, a.
1, q. 1, solutio (ed. cit., p. 588a). Bonaventure does at times use the phrase “relatively opposed”;
see, e.g., I Sent., d. 28, a. 1, q. 2, ad 3 (ed. cit., p. 500b).
70 chapter one
between these relations, because they have opposing modes of reference.

The Father and the Son arise from comparison of paternity with filiation.
This difference allows us to refer to the persons as things distinct from each
other, which are nevertheless not essentially different, thereby elucidating
personal distinction.
But what is the foundation of the diversity found in an utterly simple
being? Relation and the corresponding diversity of modes of reference is
the way that Bonaventure talks about diversity in God, but the diversity
that these relations indicate are based on prior differences. Actual diver-
sity, according to Bonaventure, can arise only from addition or from origin.
Diversity of addition or of quality arises from different really existing prop-
erties existing in diverse things. Thus, whiteness in Peter and blackness in
Paul are diverse by addition. This type of diversity always involves compo-
sition and therefore is not found in God. There is, however, another kind of
diversity involving no composition, but indicating “only order and a respect
toward another.”43 This, then, is the kind of diversity that distinguishes the
persons: diversity arising from origin, as when “we understand that the
Father generates the Son and does not generate further.”44 As Bonaven-
ture explains, the relations that distinguish the persons are real relations
founded on origin, so for Bonaventure the very relations that distinguish
the divine persons from one another are “founded” on the fact that there is
real origin amongst the members of the Trinity.45 Relations of this type
43 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 8, pars 2, a. 1, q. 1, ad 2: “Ad illud quod obiicitur, quod maior
est simplicitas ubi nulla diversitas, dicendum quod diversitas dupliciter potest venire: vel ex
additione vel ex origine. Ex additione, cum est diversitas in proprietatibus absolutis, quae
diversae sunt in diversis, ut albedo in Petro et nigredo in Paulo; et haec privat simplicitatem
quia ponit compositionem. Est alia diversitas veniens ex sola origine, ut puta quia una
persona emanat ab alia, differt ab ea; et haec non repugnat simplicitati, quia nullam ponit
compositionem, sed solum ordinem et respectum ad alium; et haec non proprie dicitur
diversitas, sed distinctio et discretio.” Ed. cit., p. 166a–b (the text continues in n. 44 below).
See id., I Sent., d. 34, a. 1, q. 1, solutio (ed. cit., pp. 587b–588a), where Bonaventure substitutes
the phrase “distinction through quality” for “diversity by addition”, but is quite clear that
qualitative difference arises through addition of matter to form.
44 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 8, pars 2, a. 1, q. 1, ad 2 (continued from n. 43): “Et hoc
manifestum est, si intelligamus Patrem se ipso generare Filium et intelligamus eum generare
et iterum non generare, nulla est hic compositio quia nulla additio.” Ed. cit., p. 166b.
45 There are two other types of real relations: those founded on accidental property (e.g.,
equality between two volumes of some liquid) and those founded on essential dependence
(e.g., the respect or relation of matter to form); see Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 30, a. 1, q. 3, solutio
(ed. cit., pp. 525b–526a).
Bonaventure’s theory of relation has, as far as I am aware, never been studied for its own
sake, perhaps because it is to a great extent theologically motivated (e.g., to explain the
relations that God has to creatures and the trinitarian relations); important in any such study
do not indicate composition nor inclination to dependency … but posit dis-

tinction and order. And since one person truly is ordered and refers (habi-
tudinem habet) to another [person] and is really related to one [person] in a
different way than to the other, so this relation is in a person with respect to
[another] person …46
Thus, for Bonaventure the very relations that distinguish the divine persons
from one another are “founded” on the fact that there is real origin amongst
the persons. In this, we catch a first glimpse of a basic disagreement between
Bonaventure and Aquinas, one fundamental to the formation of rival trini-
tarian traditions in the late thirteenth century and also fundamental to
Henry of Ghent’s and the Franciscan tradition’s strong use of philosophi-
cal psychology in trinitarian theology. Whereas Thomas explicitly rejects
Richard of St. Victor’s theory that differing ways of originating are the source
of the distinction between the three divine persons,47 Bonaventure was far
more amenable to Richard’s solution, and Bonaventure developed a sophis-
ticated vocabulary and conceptual framework to accommodate his empha-
sis on emanation and origin.48
would be, in addition to the material mentioned above, I Sent., d. 30, q. 3 (“Utrum nomina
quae de Deo ex tempore dicuntur important realem in Deo relationem”; ed. cit., pp. 524–
526) and I Sent., d. 31, q. 2 (“Utrum aequalitas et similitudo in divinis dicantur secundum
substantiam an secundum relationem”; ed. cit., pp. 534–536).
46 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 30, a. 1, q. 3, solutio: “Tertia hrelatioi est in Deo, sed non respectu
creaturae, sed respectu personae; haec enim non dicit compositionem nec dependentiae
inclinationem, sicut prima et secunda, sed ponit distinctionem et ordinem. Et quoniam vere
una persona ordinatur ad aliam et habitudinem habet et alio modo secundum rem se habet
ad unam quam ad aliam, ideo haec relatio est in persona respectu personae, sed non respectu
creaturae.” Ed. cit., p. 525b.
47 In fact, Aquinas claims that the hypostases are the source of distinction between the
modes of origin; see Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, solutio: “… origo significatur per modum
operationis, et sic nullo modo habet quod distinguat hypostases, immo quod sit ab hypostasi
distincta.” Ed. cit., p. 72a. For more on this, see § 3 below.
48 This difference between Bonaventure and Aquinas, and between the ‘schools’—
Dominican and Franciscan—to which they belonged has been remarked upon many times
before. See de Régnon 1892–1898, vol. 2, esp. 448–505; Stohr 1925; Schmaus 1930a, esp. 650–
655; Vanier 1953, 33–36 (for a good historical survey of changing views of Bonaventure’s role
in the discussion, see Hayes 1979, esp. 17–24, Cullen 2006, 121–122). In what follows, however,
I set out an issue by issue comparison between the two thinkers to show how and to what
extent they differ. NB: in § 3 below, I merely want to demonstrate that on a great many trini-
tarian matters Bonaventure and Aquinas held incompatible views, and I leave to the side
the question of whether Aquinas and Bonaventure wrote consciously in opposition to one
another, although I note here that this is certainly a possibility: see as an example Bougerol
1988, 117–118, who presents evidence that Aquinas did have Bonaventure’s Sentences com-
mentary available to him, and see the detailed study of the interaction between the two
masters in Wéber 1974, who, however, does not deal at length with trinitarian theology.
72 chapter one
3. Bonaventure and Aquinas on the Emanations
Thus far, the differences between Aquinas and Bonaventure have been
shown to be mainly terminological. Both hold that the personal properties
are relations that have a type of dual existence, i.e. when compared to the
divine essence—the subject in which they subsist—they vanish into the
essence, and yet they also differ from the essence when compared to the
term of the relation, the person that the relation is toward. Aquinas calls the
latter a difference of ratio; Bonaventure one of mode. Further, both agree
that real distinction arises between the persons when one relation of origin
is compared to its opposing relation. Finally, Bonaventure is quite clear
that although the difference of attribution and the plurality of distinction
are “merely rational” differences, this only means that they are differences
less than essential, not that they are exclusively products of our minds.
Aquinas’ “rational” distinction is also less than essential, but it depends
upon his notion of the ratio, a mental intention to which there corresponds
something in the extramental thing.
There is, however, a disagreement between these two theologians that
runs throughout their trinitarian views. This disagreement manifests itself
in their discussions of the persons, the relations, and the emanations, which
are also called the ways of originating or the personal operations. There is
broad agreement between Aquinas and Bonaventure on the way the dis-
tinction between the persons is actually explained; disagreement only arises
with regard to the role played by generation and procession (the emana-
tions of the Son from the Father and of the Holy Spirit from the Father and
the Son, respectively) in the trinitarian schemes. At issue is the order of pri-
ority among our concepts of persons, relations, and emanations: are we to
think that the persons are distinct because one emanates from another, or
does distinction arise and emanation follow? This dispute is foundational
for the parting of the ways between the Dominican and Franciscan trinitar-
ian traditions that emerge in the later thirteenth century.49
49 This is not a dispute over temporal priority: i.e. this dispute does not have to do with
whether in God relation precedes emanation in time or vice-versa—God is not subject to

time. Bonaventure and Aquinas are explicit that the disagreement is over how we are to think
about God, i.e. the human mind is incapable of conceiving the emanations and the relations
without it conceiving some priority between them, should we conceive the emanations or
the relations as prior? Thus, the dispute has to do with our concepts and not with God’s reality
per se. For evidence of the conceptual nature of this dispute see the secundum intellectum or
secundum rationem intelligendi caveats in, e.g., Aquinas, I Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2, solutio and ad
3 (ed. cit., p. 74a), and n. 52 below; for Bonaventure, see below, nn. 53–55, 61, 71, 76.
The dispute is put into sharp relief by an example. An important question

for theologians lecturing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard was whether
God the Father is the Father because he generates or whether he generates
because he is the Father. Bonaventure, claiming Lombard’s authority in
this matter, holds that the Father is the Father because he generates.50
Thus, for Bonaventure, the personal operation ‘generation’ is the absolutely
fundamental reason that the Father is the Father. Aquinas, on the other
hand, also claiming Lombard’s support, argues firmly against this position.
How can there be a personal operation or an emanation from the Father,
Thomas asks, if the Father is not already established in being?51 For Aquinas,
the Father generates because he is the Father, and he is the Father because
of the opposition of the rationes of the relations paternity and filiation. An
order among the concepts attributable to God the Father thus becomes
discernible in Aquinas’ thought: paternity then Father then generation;
relation then person then emanation.52
In this disagreement between Bonaventure and Aquinas, we undoubtedly see the recog-
nition of the need that eventually led Scotus and earlier still Henry of Ghent to utilize signum
naturae or instans naturae: introducing order into a non-temporal being. The difference
between the later use and that here is that instans naturae involves a logical, non-temporal
ordering in the nature of the thing under consideration—i.e., there is something in the thing
actually corresponding to the ordering according to instans naturae; the ordering discussed
here takes place purely at the level of our concepts. On instans naturae see Dumont 1992a,
and the literature referred to there. (And see also the Introduction, above, at n. 37, for Richard
of St. Victor’s corresponding use of the term naturaliter to describe trinitarian order in God).
50 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, a. un., q. 2, solutio: “Et propterea est alia opinio,
quod ideo est Pater, quia generat. Et quod illud sit bene dictum patet per differentiam
assignatam inter generationem et esse Patrem. Nam secundum propriam rationem generatio
dicit emanationem sive originem, paternitas dicit habitudinem. Constat autem quod origo
est ratio habitudinis, non habitudo ratio originis est. Et ideo generatio est ratio paternitatis,
non e converso.” Ed. cit., p. 469b.
Lombard’s opinion at I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, cc. 1–3, is: “Ergo proprietas, qua Pater est Pater,
est quia semper genuit; et haec eadem dicitur paternitas vel generatio.” Petrus Lombardus,
Sententiae in quattuor libris distinctae (ed. Rome, 1971), p. 204. On Lombard’s trinitarian
theology, see, e.g., Schneider (Johannes) 1961; Colish 1994, vol. 2, 227–302; Rosemann 2004,
71–92.
51 This is Aquinas’ general line of argument against the priority of the emanations in,
e.g., I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, solutio: “Si autem dicatur quod ‘haec est sola origo per quam
determinate efficitur haec hypostasis’ aut per originem intelligitur ipsa relatio originis, et
hoc est quod ponimus; aut origo significatur per modum operationis, et sic nullo modo
habet quod distinguat hypostases; immo quod sit ab hypostasi distincta quia ‘omnis operatio
est individuorum distinctorum’, secundum Philosophum. Et ideo dicimus quod nihil aliud
est principium distinctionis in divinis, nisi relatio.” Ed. cit., p. 72a. See also n. 52 below for
Aquinas’ use of Lombard.
52 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2, ad 1: “Ad primum igitur dicendum quod cum dicit Mag-
ister quod ‘quia genuit est Pater’, accipit generationem non prout significatur per modum
74 chapter one
Bonaventure counters the type of argument Aquinas uses by claiming

that it might make sense as far as the ungenerated member in the Father-
Son relationship is concerned:
… nevertheless if we were to consider it in the case of the Son, it seems utterly
unintelligible that because he is the Son, he is generated. For it is generally
said, and reason concurs, that the Son has through generation both that he
is and that he is the Son. Therefore generation precedes filiation according
to the way we understand things … therefore generation is the basis of our
speaking about (ratio dicendi) paternity in God the Father. For just as passive
generation relates to filiation, so active generation relates to paternity.53
How could the Son be established as a person distinct from the Father prior
to the emanation of the Son from the Father? What role could generation
operationis, sed prout significatur per modum proprietatis constituentis personam; et sic
secundum intellectum praecedit personam constitutam et distinctam. Sic enim genera-
tionem pro paternitate ponunt.” Ed. cit., p. 74a. This passage is related to Aquinas’ position
that paternity as constitutive property precedes generation which precedes paternity as rela-
tion (cf. n. 53 below), a position that Dominican-leaning theologians influenced by him will
frequently use (see for examples, Ch. 3, below, nn. 43 [Bombolognus of Bologna], 55 [Roman
of Rome], and 71 [Giles of Rome]) and Franciscans will frequently attack (e.g., Ch. 2, nn. 75–86
[John Pecham]).
Interestingly, Bonaventure and Aquinas each claim Lombard’s support and stress differ-
ent parts of the passage quoted in n. 50 above.
53 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, a. un., q. 2, solutio: “Sed quamvis illud posset aliquo
modo capi ab intellectu ex parte Patris, tamen si illud consideremus in Filio, omnino non
videtur intelligibile, quod ideo, quia Filius generetur. Nam communiter dicitur, et ratio
concordat, quod Filius et quod sit et quod Filius sit, hoc habet per generationem. Ergo
generatio secundum rationem intelligendi praecedit filiationem … ergo generatio est ratio
dicendi paternitatem in Deo Patre. Sicut enim se habet generatio passiva ad filiationem ita
activa ad paternitatem.” Ed. cit., p. 469b. For a detailed mapping of the argument in this
passage, see Friedman 2010, 23–25.
In the later Sum. theol. (ca. 1266–1274, left unfinished at his death), Aquinas—perhaps
acknowledging the force of the type of argument Bonaventure gave—nuances his view of
the order between our concepts of the notional acts and the relations: paternity, active
origin, passive origin, filiation (see Sum. theol., I, q. 40, a. 4), although he qualifies that
paternity can be accepted as (a) constitutive property and as (b) relation, and it is only as
constitutive property that it precedes active origin (this view will be the subject of a great
deal of discussion in the later thirteenth century [see, e.g., the references in n. 52 above]) but
he still maintains—although perhaps a bit more qualifiedly than in the Sent. commentary—
that it is better to say that “the persons or hypostases are distinguished by relations than by
origin”; see Sum. theol., I, q. 40, a. 2, in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia, 4, Rome 1888,
p. 413b. See also Ch. 3, below, § 1. For a detailed study of the development of Aquinas ideas on
the notional acts and the divine relations, see Vanier 1953, although Vanier’s contention that
Aquinas’ thought underwent a crucial development from the De potentia to the Sum. theol.
has been heavily and reasonably criticized (in, e.g., Robilliard and Contenson 1955 and Luna
1988, 6 n. 10); most recently on the same topic: Perrier 2009 (which I have not seen).
possibly play in God if it were the case that it did not establish the Son
as a person distinct from the Father? The emanation, generation, must be
the conceptual foundation of the relations, paternity and filiation. Thus,
Bonaventure adheres to an order of concepts very different from that of
Aquinas: generation, Father, paternity; emanation, person, relation.
This example of the relation of the Father to the Son is illustrative of
divergent tendencies in the trinitarian theories of these two theologians.
Aquinas consistently places the constitution of the persons prior (concep-
tually) to the emanation of one person from another on the basis of his intu-
ition that an act can only proceed from a distinct individual. For Aquinas,
the relations take on an existence of their own prior—in a conceptual
sense—to the emanations of the persons. The persons are established as
really distinct in God only by the opposition of relations, the personal oper-
ations follow only after the persons have been made distinct. In this way,
the emanations are given a rather subordinate role in Thomas’ trinitarian
theology. Bonaventure, on the other hand, speaks for the conceptual prior-
ity of the emanations: the emanations or origins of the persons, upon which
are founded the relations of origin, account for the difference between the
persons, the difference between the persons is in no way prior to the ema-
nations. Indeed, Bonaventure makes this order among the concepts of ema-
nations, persons, and relations quite explicit:
One should note that although to arise and to be and to refer to another are
the same in the divine persons, nevertheless according to the way we under-
stand things they are ordered, so that to arise is first, then to be is understood
in those things which have being from another, and then to refer to another.
Because, however, they are the same in God, they are designated by the same
name. Thus, generation indicates origin and reference (habitudinem); nev-
ertheless, properly speaking, generation indicates origin, and paternity indi-
cates reference (habitudinem).54
If one were to speak strictly, and according to the account of the under-
standing, paternity and filiation are not the source of distinction between
the Father and the Son; in fact, the generation of the Son is the basis (ratio)
54 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, a. un., q. 3, solutio: “Sed notandum quod cum idem sit in
divinis personis oriri et esse et ad alterum se habere, tamen secundum rationem intelligendi
sunt ordinata, ut primum sit oriri, deinde esse intelligatur in his quae habent esse ab alio, et
deinde se ad alterum habere. Quia vero idem sunt in Deo, ideo eodem nomine designantur.
Unde generatio dicit originem et habitudinem; tamen proprie loquendo generatio dicit
originem, et paternitas habitudinem.” Ed. cit., p. 458a (the italicized ‘in’ is a variant reading
in the edition).
76 chapter one
of the corresponding relations.55 Again, for Bonaventure, the order among

our concepts is emanation or origin, person, divine relation.
This divergence of views raises a question about Bonaventure’s trinitar-
ian theology: what is the purpose of his two seemingly different accounts of
personal distinction? Bonaventure elaborates one explanation that focuses
on the way the relations account for the distinction between the persons;
he also gives another explanation that focuses on the emanations as the
source of this distinction, the relations being placed in a subordinate role. In
fact, in distinction 34 of his Sentences commentary, Bonaventure gives both
accounts in close proximity to one another, first the emanation account,
then the relation account.56 Indeed, Bonaventure has been accused of incon-
sistency in this matter, and an ambiguity—at least in his language if not in
his thought—is undeniable. The problem is one of reconciling such seem-
ingly incompatible statements as “relations give the persons existence in the
divine”57 and “distinction through true origin is true distinction.”58 How does
Bonaventure’s thought fit together on this subject?59
Bonaventure’s most explicit comments on this issue are found in a dis-
cussion of whether the relations actually constitute the persons or only
55 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, a. un., q. 2, ad 2: “Tamen secundum rationem

intelligendi, origo sive emanatio originis est ratio relationis, sicut in his inferioribus est ratio
secundum esse.” Ed. cit., p. 470a.
56 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 34, a. 1, q. 1, solutio (ed. cit., pp. 587a–588b). Keeping this passage
in mind, it seems unlikely that Bonaventure is simply being inconsistent or indecisive with
respect to these two accounts.
57 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 7, dub. 4, res: “… relationes in creaturis non dant relativis
existere; unde sine illis potest res esse et cum illis; in divinis autem dant personis existere.”
Ed. cit., p. 145a.
58 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 34, a. 1, q. 1, solutio: “Et quemadmodum distinctio per qualitatem
vera distinctio est et secundum rem, ita distinctio per veram originem vera est distinctio.” Ed.
cit., p. 587b. Also id., I Sent., d. 9, a. 1, q. 2, solutio: “Dicendum quod generatio in divinis, sicut
ostensum est, facit realem distinctionem inter generantem et generatum …” Ed. cit., p. 183a.
59 As mentioned, this apparent inconsistency on Bonaventure’s part has been noticed
before: see Stohr 1923, 115–120, and Schmaus 1930a, 448–454. Schmaus correctly notes that
Stohr’s statement of the question at hand—property or origin—is too unnuanced and should
properly be “property as reference or property as origin” (452 n. 44); he then sides with
property as origin as the source of distinction between the persons (Mathieu 1992, seems
to agree with Schmaus, and indeed appears not to mention the divine relations at all,
although it should be noted that Mathieu’s main concern is the connection in Bonaventure’s
thought between God’s effusive goodness as manifested in the trinitarian emanations and as
manifested in creation). I do not think that Schmaus’ explanation gives enough of a role to the
relations, which on my reading are still an essential part of Bonaventure’s trinitarian theory.
Hayes 1979, 38, allows for more doubt, but also leans towards origin: “Though Bonaventure’s
position is not fully clear, he seems to favor the origins or processions over the relations as
constitutive of the persons.”
make the constituted persons known.60 Bonaventure deals with this prob-
lem by drawing a semantic distinction, claiming that “we understand in
divine hypostases origin or emanation; we also understand reference (habi-
tudinem).” It is because we understand the relative properties as indicating
either of these two significates that Bonaventure can solve this puzzle: he
claims that if we take the relative property to indicate reference alone, then
it is only the basis on which we know (ratio innotescendi) the person to be
distinct; if we take the relative property to mean both origin and reference,
then it is both the basis on which we know the person to be distinct and
the basis on which the person is made distinct.61 Thus, he claims that in
terms of the way we understand things (secundum rationem intelligendi) it
is origin and not reference that makes one person distinct from another.
Bonaventure emphasizes the role human understanding plays in the dis-
tinction between the divine relations and emanations, and in the order that
we must attribute to them in the distinction of the persons. For Bonaven-
ture, human beings must understand reference (or relation) as following the
existence of the persons who relate to one another. Further, since we con-
ceive existence as following origin, we must conceptually distinguish origin
from reference and give the priority to origin.
Keeping in mind, then, that Bonaventure’s distinction and ordering
between the emanations and the relations is a conceptual one, the use of
two explanations for the distinction of the persons seems to become less
60 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, a. un., q. 3 (ed. cit., pp. 456–458), and further: d. 27, pars 1,
a. un., qq. 1–2 (ed. cit., pp. 467–472). Aquinas also deals with this issue and, as one would
expect, comes to a fundamentally different conclusion than Bonaventure: the relations both
distinguish the persons and make the distinction manifest simpliciter; see Aquinas, I Sent.,
d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, solutio (ed. cit., p. 71a). The issue was almost inevitably brought up while
discussing Praepositinus’ theory that the persons are distinguished from each other in and
of themselves (se ipsis), i.e. the notions have no significate in God, personal property and
person are absolutely the same, and thus, with the relations abstracted from the concept
that we have of each person, the persons would still be distinct. For more on Praepositinus
and the fate of his view in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see below, Chs. 11 and 12,
passim.
61 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, a. un., q. 3, solutio: “In divinis enim hypostasibus intelligimus
originem sive emanationem, intelligimus etiam habitudinem. Secundum rationem intelli-

gendi origo praecedit ipsum qui oritur; et secundum rationem intelligendi habitudo con-
sequitur ipsum qui refertur. Potest igitur proprietas relativa importare solum habitudinem;
et hoc modo consequitur rationem distinctionis et est ratio innotescendi distinctionem, non
distinguendi … Potest enim intelligi tunc distinctio, quia intelligitur qui ab alio et a quo alius.
Potest etiam utrumque proprietas importare, scilicet habitudinem et originem; et tunc non
tantum est ratio innotescendi, sed etiam distinguendi. Circumscripta enim origine sive ema-
natione, impossibile est intelligere in divinis pluralitatem …” Ed. cit., p. 458a.
78 chapter one
puzzling. Like Aquinas, Bonaventure thinks that the only thing in reality
that can be predicated of God besides substance is relation. All the other
categories vanish. When Bonaventure deals with the emanations explicitly,
he is careful to say that the emanations are in God by way (per modum) of
relation.62 Thus, Bonaventure’s actual scheme for distinguishing the persons
seems to be that the properties are relations—the only category remaining
in God besides substance—but they are special kinds of relations, relations
indicating the true origin of person from person. They indicate “who comes
from which one” and “from whom this one comes”.63 Thus when we think
about these relative properties, we draw distinctions between emanation
and reference that prioritize the emanations and subordinate reference. In
God, however, actual distinction between the persons arises because the
properties are relatively opposed. For Bonaventure, it is on account of the
limitations of human understanding that we have to order our concepts of
the emanations, the persons, and the relations in some specific way: in God
there is only essence and relation, and opposition of relations explains the
distinction of the persons. Thus, on the level of our concepts about God, a
wide gulf exists between Aquinas and Bonaventure in trinitarian theory; in
the way they maintain that actual distinction arises between the persons,
however, there is broad agreement between the two masters.
The question still remains, however, of just why Bonaventure would want
to give two different accounts of personal distinction. Is his conceptual
model stressing the emanations not merely superfluous? It can be suggested
that emphasizing the emanations on the level of human conceptualization
was a way for Bonaventure to show, on the one hand, that he thought of
the divine properties as being at one level or another emanational, while it
allowed him, on the other, to hold explicitly the relation account of personal
distinction, proposed by Augustine and by Boethius and prevalent in the
theological milieu in which Bonaventure worked. In this manner, Bonaven-
ture found a way to utilize both emanations and relations in his trinitar-
62 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 9, a. 1, q. 2, solutio: “Generatio in creaturis dicit emanationem
per modum actionis sive mutationis, in Deo emanationem per modum relationis.” Ed. cit.,
p. 183a. I Sent., d. 13, a. 1, q. 3, ad 5: “… in divinis est relationum differentia, ut dicit Augustinus
in quinto De trinitate, quae nec accidentalis nec substantialis est, sed magis dicitur originalis.”
Ed. cit., p. 237a–b. See also n. 76 below.
63 For Bonaventure, see n. 61 above. These phrases, qui ab alio and a quo alius, were used
by many theologians to describe what the relations of origin showed; see, e.g., Aquinas, I
Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 5, solutio (ed. cit., pp. 30c–31b). See for later uses, Durand of St. Pourçain
(Ch. 7, below, at and around n. 51) and Gregory of Rimini (Ch. 12, below, at and around
nn. 251–253).
ian theory, and indeed he marginalizes to a certain extent the emanation

account, giving it importance on the merely conceptual plane. Thus, we
seem to have here a type of “marginalization strategy”: a method of setting
to the side or deemphasizing a potentially conflicting view and of neutraliz-
ing the authoritative passages that would appear to support that conflicting
view. We will see that this utilization of both accounts, the emanation and
the relation, will become a characteristic of Franciscan trinitarian theology
in general, and it is the relation account that will come to be increasingly
marginalized.64
Bonaventure yet lacks one tool necessary to make his conceptual order
work, specifically an element addressing Aquinas’ criticism of a trinitar-
ian theory that emphasizes the emanations or operations. Thomas argues
that acts are only performed by distinct individuals, but, for Bonaventure,
the Father is the Father because he generates. Bonaventure’s problem,
then, is to explain what exactly it is that generates, if the Father is not the
Father “before” he generates. Aquinas’ criticism points out that if genera-
tion is what distinguishes the Father from the Son and gives them being
as persons—even on the level of our conceptualization—then one must
understand a potentiality for generation in the supposite that will be the
Father “after” the generation of the Son. That is to say, there must be a type
of “proto-Father” from which generation comes.65
Bonaventure’s notion of primity or “firstness” fills this need. The Father’s
primity is the conceptual ground upon which we conceive the Father gen-
erating, thereby establishing both himself and the Son in being. It is on
account of primity that “a person has to produce another out of himself”,
and Bonaventure identifies primity with innascibility, “by reason of which,
as the ancient position claims, there is a fontal plenitude in the Father
to each emanation.”66 Thus, primity is the potential in the Father to bring
64 Aquinas and Bonaventure’s conflicting ideas about the order between our concepts of
the emanations and the relations may also be indicative of their grappling with the problem
of theological language mentioned above in the Introduction (at and around nn. 43–44): the
problem of describing a being that is pure act. Thomas with his prioritizing of the relations
and his rather strict use of the relation account emphasizes the use of static language about
God. Bonaventure, and following him much of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition, seems
to see eternal, immutable production and process as pure act, and hence on the conceptual
plane he stresses the emanations.
65 The terms ‘proto-Father’ and ‘proto-being’ (used below) are mine.
66 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 2, a. 1, q. 2, solutio: “Ratione primitatis persona nata est ex se
aliam producere; et voco hic primitatem innascibilitatem, ratione cuius, ut dicit antiqua
opinio, est fontalis plenitudo in Patre ad omnem emanationem …” Ed. cit., p. 54a. Here
Bonaventure seems to regard primity as pertaining to the Father, and as the basis upon which
80 chapter one
about the emanations that, on Bonaventure’s view, bring about conceptual

distinction between the persons.
The intuition upon which the notion of primity is founded is easy to
pinpoint. Both Aquinas and Bonaventure recognize that the distinguishing
aspects of the relations upon which the persons are constituted are “who
comes from which one” and “from whom this one comes.”67 The answers
to these questions allow one to define the relations between the members
of the Trinity which in turn constitute those persons. The position of the
Father is quite simple in the scheme of these distinguishing characteristics:
the Father answers the “from-whom-this-one-comes” question at the most
basic level. Both the Son and the Holy Spirit come from the Father, but
the Father is both innascible and improcessible: the Father is simply first,
primus. Thus, for both Bonaventure and Aquinas, the Father is the source or
principle or author (auctor) of the Trinity,68 but for Bonaventure this means
a great deal more than it does for Aquinas.
the Father generates and spirates (see also nn. 72, 73 below), but he sometimes uses the term
to describe precisely the “proto-Father”, before its being fully distinguished as the Father
(e.g., nn. 70, 71 below).
Stohr 1925, p. 130, bases his claim that Bonaventure is the highpoint of the development
of the movement started by Richard of St. Victor on Bonaventure’s use of primity. My own
preliminary investigations of the background to the concept of primity confirms Stohr’s
contention that Bonaventure coined the term ‘primity’, although the roots of the Seraphic
Doctor’s use of innascibility as primity is evident in, e.g., Richard of St. Victor, De trinitate, lib.
V, c. 3 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 197–198), and ibid., c. 7 (pp. 202–203); William of Auxerre, Summa
Aurea, I, tractatus VIII, c. 5 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 134–140, and see Arnold 1995, 210–223, esp. 216
for the later influence of William’s thought); and William of Auvergne, De trinitate, c. 14,
41–42 (ed. Switalski, pp. 82–91, 213–221). Cf. also Mathieu 1992 (with extensive references
to Alexander of Hales), 28–56 (esp. 34–41), 111–128; Hayes 1979, 38–39, 41–43, 100–103. More
recently on Bonaventure on primity, see Durand 2006, and on the background to and context
of Bonaventure’s notion of primity, see Bieniak 2007, Durand 2007b (which shows the basic
alternatives available to Bonaventure and Aquinas, paying particular attention to Hilary
of Poitiers, Augustine, William of Auxerre, and Alexander of Hales), Durand 2007a, and
Wozniak 2006. It should be noted that, as part of a larger argument having to do with
the greater influence on Bonaventure’s trinitarian thought of the Ps.-Dionysius as opposed
to Richard of St. Victor, González 1966, 156–158 (and see further on primity, pp. 143–162),
contended that the Bonaventurean notion of primity was descended less from Richard than
from Ps.-Dionysius; Gonzalez’ overall claim seems clearly correct, but I am not entirely
certain that the two influences can be put into such sharp opposition to one another on
precisely this point of innascibility/primity.
67 See at and around n. 63 above.
68 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 29, q. 1, a. 1, solutio: “Unde Pater non est causa Filii, sed principium;
quia principium dicit ordinem originis absolute, non determinando aliquem modum qui
ab origine personarum alienus sit … sed nomen auctoris addit super rationem principii
hoc quod est non esse ab aliquo; et ideo solus Pater auctor dicitur …” Ed. cit., p. 78a. For
Bonaventure, see I Sent., d. 29, a. 1, q. 1 (ed. cit., pp. 508–510), and below passim.
Aquinas viewed the property of innascibility—the Father’s not being

from another—as being predominantly negative in significance. Innasci-
bility indicated what the Father was not, and it indicated nothing further.69
For Bonaventure, however, innascibility also has a secondary, more posi-
tive or active meaning: that of primity. Bonaventure claims that the Father’s
innascibility allows us to conceive of him as the fontal plenitude able to
multiply the Trinity, first through generation, and then through common
spiration.70 Innascibility and primity serve to establish the hypostasis of the
Father in “proto-being” conceptually, allowing Bonaventure to reply to an
objection to his conceptual order very similar to the one Aquinas raised:
In reply to what is objected to the contrary that only a distinct person gener-
ates, it is to be said that it is true that, according to the way we understand
things, it is necessary that a hypostasis be understood before generation—I
am speaking according to the order in which we understand them—but it is
not required to first understand (praeintelligere) the person as actually dis-
tinct, because through the property of generation the person is distinguished
with complete distinction … nevertheless, according to the way we under-
stand things, the basis for that distinction (ratio distinguendi) is inchoate
in innascibility, and thus [the hypostasis] generates, not as made distinct
beforehand (ut prius) by paternity, but as made distinct in some way by
innascibility.71
According to Bonaventure, speaking conceptually, the property of innasci-

bility gives a certain amount of being to the hypostasis that will be the
person of the Father: enough being to be the fontal source from which the
Son can be generated and the persons can become fully distinct. Concep-
tually speaking, “before” the first hypostasis in God generates—therefore
“before” this hypostasis is the Father—it exists on the basis of not being from
69 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 28, q. 1, aa. 1–2 (ed. cit., pp. 76–77).

70 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, a. un., q. 2, ad 3: “… ubi est ordo personarum, primitas
in prima persona est ratio producendi alias; et quia innascibilitas dicit primitatem, hinc est
quod dicit fontalem plenitudinem respectu productionis personalis.” Ed. cit., p. 471a. The
italicized ‘innascibilitas’ in the above quotation is a variant reading: the edition accepts
‘innascibilis’. For confirmation that this is still on the level of our conceptualization of the
Trinity, see also n. 71 below.
71 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, a. un., q. 2, ad 1: “Ad illud ergo quod obiicitur in
contrarium quod non generat nisi persona distincta, dicendum quod verum est quod secun-
dum rationem intelligendi necesse est ante generationem intelligi hypostasim—secundum
ordinem intelligendi loquor—sed non oportet praeintelligere eam actu distinctam, quia ipsa
distinguitur per proprietatem generationis distinctione completa, sicut melius patebit infra;
tamen secundum rationem intelligendi ratio distinguendi inchoatur in innascibilitate, et
ideo generat, non ut prius distincta paternitate, sed ut distincta quodam modo innascibil-
itate.” Ed. cit., pp. 469b–470a.
82 chapter one
another. It is in virtue of this fact that primity serves to deal with Aquinas’
objection to Bonaventure’s type of order among concepts: because of prim-
ity, it is not necessary for God the Father to be a distinct individual in order
to bring about generation and the resulting actual distinction of the persons.
Bonaventure’s use of innascibility as primity again points out a wide
gulf between him and Aquinas. Thomas allowed for none of the hypostases
to be established without the opposition of relations—even conceptually.
Aquinas explicitly rejected the type of position Bonaventure set forth on
primity, saying that “with paternity removed, ‘ungenerated’ (ingenitum)
would remain in God, not as a property or a notion of some person, but as an
attribute of the essence, like ‘immense’ and ‘uncreated’.”72 For Thomas, the
hypostasis itself has no existence without opposition of relations: innascibil-
ity contributes nothing to the constitution of the Father, even at the level of
our conceptualization. On the other hand, primity was absolutely essential
for Bonaventure’s trinitarian theology: without primity, a theory stressing
the emanations as the conceptual source of distinction between the per-
sons could not even get off the ground. This is not to say that primity was
the actual source—i.e. cause—of the persons, just that no explanation like
Bonaventure’s could proceed without such a device or concept. Bonaven-
ture seems to note this at one place, saying that no further reason why
there is a Trinity could be sought than primity: it was the ultimate answer
Bonaventure had to offer.73
72 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 28, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3: “… nihilominus tamen, etiam remota paternitate,
remaneret ingenitum in Deo, non quasi proprietas vel notio alicuius personae, sed quasi
attributum essentiae, ut immensus et increatus.” Ed. cit., p. 76c. Further, ibid., ad 4: “Sed
principium formale quasi eliciens generationem, est forma Patris, quae est paternitas, sicut
calor est principium calefactionis in calido.” Ed. cit., p. 77c. See on this aspect of Aquinas’
thought, as well as for a helpful comparison to Bonaventure, Durand 2007a. Note that
Aquinas’ insistence in the second quotation that the source eliciting generation is the
Father’s form (forma Patris) is a version of what I call his “intrinsic constitutive argument”,
which will play an important role in later Dominican trinitarian theology; on this, see Ch. 3,
below, at n. 3, and the references there to Ch. 7.
Bonaventure argues against a position like Aquinas’ at Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 27, pars
1, a. un., q. 2, ad 3: “… sic etiam possibile est intelligi hypostasim Patris, nulla alia persona
intellecta. Et tunc quidem intelligeretur, non intellecta paternitate. Et certum est quod
possibile est hoc intelligi. Possumus enim, non intellecta personarum pluralitate, intelligere
divinam naturam et habentem illam, et quod illam non habeat ab alio, et ita intelligunt
gentiles. Sic igitur intelligendo, contingit de isto dicere et intelligere quod possit generare.
Per quid ergo potest? Nihil invenio in illa hypostasi nisi commune praeter innascibilitatem.”
Ed. cit., p. 471b.
73 Bonaventure, II Sent., Praelocutio: “Magis autem adhaesi huic positioni, quod Pater
generat, quia Deus innascibilis, non quia innascibilitas magis sit ratio generandi quam pater-
nitas vel quod sit adeo propria ratio sicut paternitas, sed quia magis est ibi status, ultra
A final significant manifestation of the disagreement between Bonaven-

ture and Aquinas is found in book I, distinction 13 of their respective com-
mentaries on the Sentences.74 At issue is how the generation of the Son and
the procession of the Holy Spirit differ. Once again Aquinas rejects a posi-
tion Bonaventure mentions approvingly. Thomas claims:
There are some who say that these two processions are really (realiter)
distinguished, and that there is no need to ask by what they are made distinct,
because they are the most basic (prima) things bringing about the distinction
of the persons, just as we do not ask by what rational and irrational are
made distinct. This does not seem right, however, because generation and
procession have no opposition to one another; yet every formal distinction
exists because of some opposition.75
quem non contingit quaerere … Et ideo dixi quod Pater generat quia Deus innascibilis, non
ut assignarem generationis propriam rationem, sed magis propter inquisitionis termina-
tionem.” Ed. cit., vol. 2, p. 3a–b.
Bonventure’s explanation (indeed, apology) for his concept of primity in the Proem of
his commentary on book II of the Sentences is motivated by the desire to show that he
was not deviating from the thought of “pater et magister noster bonae memoriae frater
Alexander” of Hales (ibid., p. 2a–b) and this same explanation would seem to indicate that
the concept met with some misunderstanding and perhaps with disapproval. Here again,
however, Bonaventure seems to clearly be looking at the ordering between emanational
properties and relational properties as being a conceptual ordering only, not reflecting
anything in God’s nature, and he seems to rely upon the type of semantic distinction that
we saw him using above at and around nn. 60–61: “Verum autem esse arbitror, et quod Pater
generat quia innascibilis et quod generat quia Deus Pater. Et hoc patet sic: Planum est enim
et secundum omnem opinionem verum quod ideo potentia Patris generat quia fecunda est.
Illud ergo recte dicitur esse ratio generandi quod fecunditatem potentiae Patris importat.
Fecunditas autem importatur et nomine innascibilitatis et nomine paternitatis, sed aliter
et aliter. Nam paternitas importat fecunditatem quasi praesupponendo et praeintelligendo,
licet principaliter imponatur ab habitudine. Dicitur enim paternitas habitudo Patris ad
Filium. Innascibilitas autem importat fecunditatem ex consequenti intellectu, nam ex primo
intellectu importat privationem habitudinis ad prius; sed ex illa sola privatione non posset
esse proprietas, cum sit consequens essentiam. Et ideo innascibilis non solummodo dicitur
Pater quia ab alio non accipit esse, sed quia ab alio non accipit esse et quia habet unde
alii det esse .... Paternitas non tantummodo dicit habitudinem sed etiam fecunditatem …
Cum autem dixi quod Pater generat quia Deus innascibilis, non hoc dixi in quantum hoc
quod est innascibilis importat privationem habitudinis … sed hoc dixi in quantum in nomine
innascibilitatis clauditur potentia fecunditatis.” Ed. cit., vol. 2, p. 2b–3a.
74 On this particular aspect of Bonaventure and Aquinas’ disagreement, see Schmaus
1930a, 186–187; for Bonaventure’s part, see Stohr 1923, 52–55.

75 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “… quidam dicunt quod istae duae processiones
realiter distinguuntur, nec oportet quaerere quo distinguantur, quia sunt prima distinguen-
tia personas, sicut nec quaerimus quo distinguuntur rationale et irrationale. Sed hoc non
videtur conveniens, quia generatio et processio nullam habent oppositionem ad invicem,
omnis autem distinctio formalis est secundum aliquam oppositionem.” Ed. cit., p. 34b. Again
we see Aquinas use the phrase “every formal distinction is based on some opposition”; cf.
n. 28 above.
84 chapter one
The position Aquinas attacks here is in fact Bonaventure’s view: that the
emanations differ “as two differentiae differ from each other, for example
rational and irrational.” Bonaventure claims that the two different modes of
emanation of the persons are distinguished in and of themselves (se ipsis).
There is no more fundamental difference in God than that between gen-
eration and procession, and it is on the basis of the difference between
the two emanations—again Bonaventure reminds us: according to our way
of understanding things—that the other differences between the persons
and their relations to one another arise. One of these other differences,
Bonaventure tells us explicitly, is that generation is from one person alone
(the Father), while spiration is from two (Father and Son): the different
arrangement of the persons in generation and spiration is a consequence
of or logically posterior to the fact that generation and spiration are dis-
tinct from each other in and of themselves.76 Aquinas will take precisely
the opposite view, opting for a distinction between the processions based
on the arrangement of the persons with respect to one another: generation
is the emanation from one person only, while procession is from two per-
sons.77 For Thomas, the distinction between the two processions is logically
or definitionally dependent upon the prior distinction of the persons, who
in turn are made distinct by opposition of relations.78 In accordance with
this, Aquinas claims (foreshadowing a dispute that we will follow through-
out this book) that the Holy Spirit is really distinct from the Son exclusively
76 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 13, a. 1, q. 3, solutio: “Si autem loquamur quantum ad differre,
dicendum quod se ipsis different … quia omnis distinctio in divinis venit a modis originis et
relationis. Unde sicut duae differentiae se ipsis differunt, ut rationale et irrationale, similiter
in divinis hae duae emanationes. Et sicut differentiae differentiarum innotescunt nobis per
alias differentias quae ab illis oriuntur, sic et in divinis. Quia enim se ipsis distinguuntur
generatio et spiratio, ad eas consequitur secundum rationem intelligendi differentia duplex.
Una quia generatio est ab uno, sed spiratio a duobus. Quia enim generatio est emanatio per
modum perfectae assimilationis, ideo ad unum principium respicit; quia vero spiratio est
emanatio per modum connexionis, ideo est a duobus. Alia differentia est in comparatione
ad nos …” Ed. cit., p. 236a. For more on Bonaventure’s view on the distinction between the
emanations/personal properties, see below, n. 84, as well as Ch. 11, n. 44.
77 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “Item, est aliqua processio in divinis quae est
simul a duobus, scilicet ab eo qui procedit et ab eo a quo procedit; et haec distinguitur a prima
secundum originem; quia ista secunda processio est a procedente secundum processionem
praedictam, quae est per modum naturae. Et inde est quod ista processio dicitur per modum
voluntatis esse, quia per consensum ex duobus volentibus potest unus amor procedere.” Ed.
cit., p. 34b.
78 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “Et ideo dicendum quod in divinis non potest
esse aliqua realis distinctio et pluralitas nisi secundum relationes originis. Et ideo secundum
hoc nos oportet investigare pluralitatem procedentium et processionum.” Ed. cit., p. 34b.
because the former proceeds from the latter.79 Thus, whereas for Bonaven-
ture the mode of emanation of the persons is once again conceptually prior
to the distinction of the persons and the relations arising from that distinc-
tion, for Aquinas, mode of emanation is consequent to and determined by
the fact that the Son is generated by the Father alone while the Holy Spirit
is spirated by the Father and the Son together.
Although Aquinas and Bonaventure disagree about what actually dis-
tinguishes generation from procession, a position both explicitly reject
attributes this distinction to a difference in the sources (or fecundities) of
each emanation. Medieval theologians generally acknowledged that gener-
ation was linked in some special way to divine nature or divine intellect,
and that procession was linked to divine will or divine love. In fact, this was
commonly used as a “proof” that there were necessarily three and only three
divine persons: one who was ungenerated (the Father), one generated by
way of the intellect or nature80 (the Son), and one generated by way of the
79 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “Et secundum istos modos diversos originis,
producuntur plures personae relatione originis distinctae, scilicet Filius, qui est a Patre, et
Spiritus Sanctus, qui est ab utroque. Unde concedo quod nisi Spiritus Sanctus esset a Filio,
non esset assignare distinctionem realem inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum.” See for more
on this issue in the later Aquinas, Ch. 3, below, § 1.
As far as I can tell, Bonaventure only brings up the counterfactual question of the Son’s
distinction from the Holy Spirit (i.e. whether they would be distinct if the latter did not come
from the former) at one point in a preliminary argument to the contrary; see I Sent., d. 11, a.
un., q. 1, contrarium 4 (ed. cit., p. 210b). Here, Bonaventure gives the same opinion as Aquinas,
that the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit only arises if the latter proceeds from
the former; that is to say, Bonaventure takes opposition of relations to be the governing factor
in the distinction of the persons. Bonaventure may not, however, have meant the argument
to be taken as his own. I find no more detailed treatments of the issue in Bonaventure’s later
works (Slipyi 1927–1928, esp. 1927, 9–10, mentions this spot as showing without question that
Bonaventure supported a negative answer to the question).
80 Aquinas uses both these phrases, Bonaventure uses “way of nature” exclusively (“since
the intellect precisely as intellect is not fecund”, according to Hayes 1979, 34, at and around
n. 10). As I will show below, in Chs. 2–5, this terminological difference is important, the
Franciscans generally adopting emanation by way of intellect only after Henry of Ghent fused
Franciscan trinitarian theology with Thomist philosophical psychology, and introduced the
strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology.
Mathieu 1992, 29–33 (referring to de Régnon 1892–1898, vol. 2, 269 n. 2; Schmaus 1930a,
182–191) confirms that the set phrases per modum naturae/per modum voluntatis used in
this sense to signal the distinction between the generation of the Son and the procession
of the Holy Spirit stem from the Summa Halesiana (e.g., lib. I, n. 317, solutio [Quaracchi
ed., 465b–466a]—the Summa talks about bonitas naturae et bonitas voluntatis, with the
stress on nature and will as the sources of the two emanated persons in the Trinity, as
well as per modum naturae et per modum voluntatis [e.g., ibid., n. 319, solutio, 469b]).
Mathieu shows further that the terminology was adopted by Alexander of Hales’ immediate
86 chapter one
will or love (the Holy Spirit). These three alternatives exhausted the possi-
bilities for the divine emanations; hence there could be only three divine
persons. Bonaventure and Aquinas both make use of this type of proof of
the number of persons.81 Both Bonaventure and Aquinas, however, reject
the position that made the divine intellect and will the basis of the distinc-
tion between the emanations and between the persons.
Aquinas maintains that, because nature and will in God are merely
rationally distinct—in Aquinas’ sense of ‘rational’—they cannot be the
source of the real distinction between the persons: if that were the case
the source would be weaker than that which comes from the source. As
we will see, this will become one of the arguments most often used by
Dominicans to respond to Franciscan tendencies to make the emanations
by intellect/nature and by will the ultimate constitutive properties of the
persons. Aquinas further argues that if it were actually the case that the
procession of the Son was a procession of nature, then the divine Word and
the Son would not be the same, since the Word proceeds by intellectual
procession.82 For Aquinas, the way that procession of nature and procession
of intellect fit into the scheme of the divine emanations is by a type of
numerical resemblance. He says:
… in the divine there is a procession according to which one person proceeds
from one person, and this is the procession of generation, according to which
the Son is from the Father, and thus [the Son] is said to exist by way of nature
or of intellect, for he proceeds as the Son and as the Word, because in both of
these ways of proceding (in utroque modo istarum processionum), namely [by
way] of nature and [by way] of intellect, the procession is of one from one.83
followers like Odo Rigaldi, John of la Rochelle (co-author of the Summa Halensiana), and, of
course, Bonaventure. Thus, this use is something deeply rooted in the Franciscan trinitarian
tradition, and is used by that tradition well into the 14th century; in contrast, as we will see (in
esp. Ch. 7), the use of these terms quickly becomes watered down in the Dominican tradition.
81 See Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 2, a. un., q. 4, solutio (ed. cit., pp. 56a–58b, esp. p. 57a);
Aquinas, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 5, solutio (ed. cit., pp. 30c–31b). In his later career, Aquinas will
change his mind about the efficacy of this proof; see Ch. 3, below, at and around nn. 17–21.
82 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “Et ideo alii dicunt quod differentia sumitur
ex hoc quod generatio est processio naturae, et processio Spiritus Sancti est processio
voluntatis. Sed hoc etiam non competit: quia voluntas et natura in divinis solum ratione
distinguuntur. Unde talis distinctio realis distinctionis ratio esse non potest, quia principium
non est debilius principiato. Et praeterea secundum hoc processio intellectus, secundum
quam dicitur Verbum, esset alia a processio naturae, secundum quam dicitur Filius.” Ed. cit.,
p. 34b. On Aquinas’ use of the rational distinction between the divine attributes, see Gelber
1974, 15–17.
83 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2, solutio: “… est in divinis aliqua processio secundum quam
una persona procedit ab una; et haec est processio generationis, secundum quam Filius est
Thus, it appears that “procession by way of nature” and “procession

by way of intellect” are applicable as descriptions of the Son’s generation
because generation and intelligible procession resemble each other inso-
far as both are of one from one. At no point, however, does Aquinas claim
that the Son’s generation is an actual intelligible procession from the divine
intellect as Word. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true for the Holy Spirit’s
voluntary procession as a Gift or Love: it is because one person (the Holy
Spirit) comes from two that we call this a voluntary procession, not because
it has anything specifically to do with the divine will. As we will see, many
later Franciscans, including John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol, will call the
type of view that Aquinas defends here a “metaphorical” use of the psycho-
logical model, and will object to it precisely because in their view it con-
tradicts the statements of the saints, and most especially of John’s Gospel,
according to which the Son is a Word. Many Dominicans, on the other hand,
will take great pains in their attempt to show how this understanding in no
way contradicts John’s meaning.
Bonaventure also denies that the difference between the sources or
fecundities is the ultimate ground of the difference between the two ema-
nations, but he does maintain that the reason the two emanations exist is
their “perfect and fecund sources”, i.e. nature and will. In fact, what primity
seems to be for Bonaventure is nature and will existing in the (still undiffer-
entiated) hypostasis that, when differentiated, will be God the Father. It is
for this reason the two emanations occur, although the difference between
the sources does not allow us to distinguish between the emanations.84
a Patre; et ideo dicitur esse per modum naturae vel intellectus; procedit enim ut Filius et
ut Verbum; quia in utroque modo istarum processionum, scilicet naturae et intellectus, est
unius ab uno processio.” Ed. cit., p. 34b. Also n. 77 above.
In this same text, Aquinas goes on to distinguish generation from procession: “Item est
aliqua processio in divinis quae est simul a duobus, scilicet ab eo qui procedit et ab eo a quo
procedit; et haec distinguitur a prima secundum originem; quia ista secunda processio est
a procedente secundum processionem praedictam, quae est per modum naturae. Et inde
est quod ista processio dicitur per modum voluntatis esse, quia per consensum ex duobus
volentibus potest unus amor procedere.” Ed cit., p. 34b. Two things seem clear on the basis of
this passage: 1) the configuration of the persons (what Aquinas calls here ‘origin’) is the source
of distinction between the emanations, thus the persons are both conceptually and really
prior to the emanations; 2) the procession by way of intellect or nature and the procession
by way of will or love are, at some level or another, metaphorical, based on the resemblance
of the configuration of the persons to the mode in question.
84 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 13, a. 1, q. 3, solutio: “… hemanationesi habent rationem essendi a
suis perfectis principiis et fecundis. Quia enim in Deo est perfectissima natura et natura vera,
ideo perfecta et vera fecunditas in hypostasi quae habet rationem principii. Et quia vera et
88 chapter one
Although the formulation of it and the emphases in it will change, never-

theless this view—that the distinction between the emanations in God is
irreducible, and yet the existence of the emanations is on account of their
sources, nature and will—will become a relatively standard part of Francis-
can trinitarian theology for some sixty years after Bonaventure, as we will
see.
What is perhaps most interesting about this last manifestation of Aquinas
and Bonaventure’s dispute is that both reject the position Henry of Ghent
will take: neither accepts that the distinction between the divine intellect
and will is the source of the distinction between the emanations in any
strong sense. More generally, neither accepts that the emanations are the
actual source of the distinction between the persons, although Bonaven-
ture’s stress on the emanations in trinitarian theology clearly fits into the
background to Henry’s own view. Finally, in early Thomist trinitarian the-
ory, the Word and intelligible procession were included only as a type of
numerical resemblance between generation and intellectual procession,
and Bonaventure did not even make mention of intelligible procession as
emanation.85
4. Conclusion
The ways that Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure dealt with the problem
of the distinction of the divine persons show that a general consensus
existed in mid thirteenth-century trinitarian thought, while there existed a
potential for great diversity. Both theologians relied in one way or another
on theories that explained the distinction of the divine persons by the
opposition of the relations of origin: a relation account. Both also accounted
for divine simplicity by the dual nature of the relations: that they could be
perfecta et propria est fecunditas naturae, ideo veram et propriam habet emanationem; et
haec est generatio. Similiter intelligendum est de spiratione quantum ad voluntatem. Unde
ratio quare huiusmodi vere sunt in Deo, est vera fecunditas naturae et voluntatis.” Ed. cit.,
p. 236a.
85 It should be noted here that in their respective Sentences commentaries both Bonaven-
ture (I Sent., d. 27, pars 2, qq. 1–3; ed. cit., pp. 481–490) and Aquinas (I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, aa. 1–3;
ed. cit. pp. 74a–76a) have an explicit account of the the way the term ‘word’ is applicable to
the divine, whether notionally or essentially (for more on this in Aquinas, see Ch. 3, below, at
and around nn. 22–27), and whether the divine word indicates a respect to creatures. It suf-
fices to say that at this stage in their careers, both scholars developed theories of the divine
Word primarily to explain the use of the term in the New Testament as a synonym for the
Son.
really different from one another when compared to their correlative, but
when compared to the essence utterly the same as it.
In spite of all this agreement, however, the broad foundational disagree-
ment between Bonaventure and Aquinas about the order between our con-
cepts of emanations and relations makes clear that the “common opinion”
(common in the sense that they both seem to have adhered to it in one form
or another) was susceptible to criticism and modification. Later-medieval
theologians were coming to grips with a varied legacy of authoritative texts
and with conflicting ways of describing God as pure act. These tensions were
near the surface in the discussion between Bonaventure and Aquinas on the
conceptual emphasis to be placed on the emanations or relations. It is this
clash of values, then, and its particular manifestation in the prioritizing of
the emanations over the relations that would allow the issue of the divine
Word to attain an important place in later-medieval theology. The function
of the emanations and of the emanations’ sources was not set in stone, and
Henry of Ghent, in particular, would use this fluidity to modify trinitarian
theology and create an intellectual space in which to adopt the strong use
of the psychological model of the Trinity. But when Henry worked out his
ideas, he thought and wrote in a very different context then that in which
Aquinas and Bonaventure worked. And this context was conditioned by the
existence of and rivalry between, on the one hand, a Dominican trinitar-
ian tradition deeply indebted to Aquinas, and, on the other,—and most
importantly for the development of Henry’s own trinitarian theology—a
Franciscan trinitarian theology, heavily influenced by Bonaventure but with
characteristics all its own.
chapter two
EMERGING TRINITARIAN TRADITIONS I:

FRANCISCANS, CA. 1255–1280
Bonaventure and Aquinas, their use of the relation account and especially
their disagreement over the priority to be attributed to emanations or rela-
tions, color the entire trinitarian discussion in the 25 or so years after they
read their Sentences commentaries. One of the two main goals of the present
chapter and of the next is to sketch out the development of rival trinitarian
traditions, Franciscan and Dominican, in this period.1 The second, related
goal of these two chapters is to show how these rival traditions, and espe-
cially the Franciscan tradition with its ever increasing reliance on an ema-
nation account of personal distinction, form the background to Henry of
Ghent’s strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology. To
this end, in this chapter, I examine in detail the Franciscan thinkers of the
era who have left us trinitarian writings. We will see that, although all of
these thinkers to one extent or another opt for the primacy of emanations
over relations, several of them “reify” Bonaventure’s conceptual ordering of
emanations vis-à-vis relations. For these thinkers, then, emanation and ori-
gin is an actual and not merely a conceptual source of the distinction of the
persons, and they thereby relegate the relation account of personal distinc-
tion to the background. Moreover, these Franciscans discuss a set of issues
and develop a set of positions that are clearly related to Henry of Ghent’s
trinitarian views. In fact, I will show that Henry’s solution to the trinitar-
ian problem of the persons (and hence his strong use of philosophical psy-
chology in trinitarian theology) was created within the theological milieu
formed by this emerging, characteristically “Franciscan” trinitarian theol-
ogy. I have decided to examine the Franciscans from the period rather
systematically, each one in his turn, both because this best shows the devel-
opment of the complex of views that I call Franciscan trinitarian theology,
and because it shows that there was ample room in the Franciscan trini-
tarian tradition for a variety of positions, and even for crossover elements
from the Dominican relation account. In Chapter Three, I look in a more
1 On my use of the terms ‘Franciscan’ and ‘Dominican’ see the Introduction, above, n. 41.
92 chapter two
cursory fashion at the development of the Dominican trinitarian tradition

in the era, noting that it mirrors the Franciscan development inasmuch
as early Dominican thinkers like Bombolognus of Bologna and Roman of
Rome follow Aquinas’ lead in stressing the relations, while incorporating
some emanational elements into their thought. In the final section of Chap-
ter Three, I examine some manifestations of the two trinitarian traditions
outside of the two large mendicant orders. Here, Giles of Rome will be the
major focus, not just because Giles was an important thinker in his own
right, but also because Henry of Ghent appears to have abandoned the rela-
tion account because of the flaws that he saw in Giles’ version of it. Chapter
Three concludes, then, with a description of Giles’ development of the the-
ory of personal distinction set out by Aquinas. Inasmuch as the stabilization
of the trinitarian traditions continues into the period after Henry of Ghent
injects into the discussion the strong use of the psychological model, I will
give an overall evaluation of the development of the trinitarian traditions in
the Conclusion to Chapter Five below.
As just mentioned, what characterizes most of later thirteenth-century
Franciscan trinitarian theology—the focus of the present chapter—is a
“reification” or at the very least a deepening of Bonaventure’s emphasis on
emanation or origin. I argued above that, for Bonaventure, this stress had
been at the level of human conceptualization: human beings thought ema-
nation to be prior to relation, yet in reality in God there is only relation and
substance. It is not an uncommon occurrence in the history of thought for
the subtle, but important qualifications given to a somewhat radical theory
by its original proponent, to be minimized or even forgotten by the intellec-
tual followers who take up the theory. This is exactly what appears to hap-
pen with Franciscan trinitarian theology after Bonaventure: Bonaventure’s
relegation of his emphasis on emanations to the conceptual plane is forgot-
ten by those influenced by him, and emanations become, in some sense or
another, a genuine source of distinction between the persons. This stress on
emanation is visible in a series of “flashpoints” (those loci in the trinitarian
discussion where an emanational understanding of the trinitarian proper-
ties clashed with a relational understanding) that appear in nearly all of
our trinitarian texts. Thus, by the end of the coalescence of the Franciscan
trinitarian position traced in this chapter (and in Chs. 4 and 5), the Fran-
ciscans will indicate their conceptualization of the trinitarian properties as
emanational by claiming that the distinction between the emanations is
more basic than the distinction between the opposed relations, and that
even if, counterfactually, the opposed relations were removed, the ema-
national properties would ensure that the hypostases remained distinct.
emerging trinitarian traditions i: franciscans 93
This view I call “nested distinctions”, because, according to it, absolutely

indispensable emanational distinction is “nested” within counterfactually
dispensable relational distinction, and authors of the period in the Fran-
ciscan current will often speak of two levels of trinitarian constitution in
God, counterfactual or merely necessary (i.e., necessary and counterfactu-
ally sufficient, but de facto insufficient) hypostatic constitution on the basis
of the emanations or disparate relations, and actual (i.e., de facto) personal
constitution on the basis of opposed relations. And these authors will say
that the emanation are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis), thereby indi-
cating that this is the basic source of distinction in God. The Franciscans
will also claim that, even if the Father did not generate the Son, the Father’s
emanational property, his innascibility (i.e., his being unemanated) or prim-
ity, is counterfactually sufficient to constitute a divine supposite (although
that supposite would not be the Father, since it would not have a Son), and
they maintain that, in the actual trinitarian order, the Father only gener-
ates because he is God innascible, since primity is the readiness for the first
person to generate the Son. Finally, they will answer in the affirmative the
counterfactual question of the Son’s distinction from the Holy Spirit: the
Son and the Holy Spirit would remain distinct even if the latter did not
come from the former, since they can each be constituted by their emana-
tion from the Father alone. These are some of the issues that will be traced
here in order to see the way a complex of views was built into a recog-
nizable Franciscan trinitarian theology by thinkers working in the second
half of the thirteenth century. While a few of these thinkers hold the views
described rather gingerly (or even reject them), others place nearly all the
explanatory weight in their trinitarian theology upon the emanations. One
extremely interesting feature in the development of early Franciscan trini-
tarian theology in the period is that Henry of Ghent arguably represents
its highpoint. The theologians examined in the present chapter—Gerard
of Abbeville, Walter of Bruges, William of Baglione, Eustace of Arras, John
Pecham, William de la Mare, Matthew of Aquasparta, Nicholas of Ockham,
and Roger Marston—accept the reification of certain aspects of Bonaven-
ture’s stress on emanations and origin; in particular Pecham will be focused
on as a central figure whose influence was felt directly or indirectly through-
out the rest of the century. But Henry of Ghent offers an extremely nuanced
and well developed version of it; most significantly, for Henry, emanation is
what makes the persons distinct, and he explicitly rejects the dual nature of
the divine relations, and along with it he rejects that the relation account on
its own could explain personal distinction. Thus, when we take up Henry’s
own trinitarian theology, although no rigorous historical connections will
94 chapter two
be demonstrated, I will show that it is an extremely well articulated ver-

sion of a general type of Franciscan trinitarian theology. This may help to
explain why, when John Duns Scotus came to discuss the Trinity, it was with
Henry’s views that he was first and foremost concerned. Moreover, the intel-
lectual space needed to fit an expanded use of philosophical psychology
into trinitarian theology Henry found in this typically Franciscan empha-
sis on the divine emanations as the source of the distinction between the
persons.
1. Gerard of Abbeville
Although he was not a Franciscan, and in fact found himself in sharp conflict
particularly with Bonaventure in the struggle over mendicant privileges,
the secular master Gerard of Abbeville, like Henry, fits neatly into a pre-
dominantly Franciscan current in terms of his trinitarian thought. We have
from Gerard’s hand a series of nineteen mostly unedited Quodlibeta that
he gave as secular regent master of theology at Paris in the fifteen or twenty
years preceding his death in 1272. His trinitarian theology as it is found there
is significant both in its own right and with a view towards the emerging
Franciscan trinitarian tradition. Indeed, with respect to trinitarian theology,
Gerard’s greatest significance lies in the fact that he seems to have been the
first theologian in the thirteenth-century university context to have claimed
explicitly that, counterfactually, the Son and the Holy Spirit could be dis-
tinct without the latter proceeding from the former, and hence that oppo-
sition of relations was not the sole means of explaining the distinction of
the Son from the Holy Spirit: “disparation” sufficed.2 This positive answer
to the counterfactual Filioque question would become a standard position
in Franciscan trinitarian theology, and this in itself justifies including Ger-
ard in a chapter devoted to the emerging late-thirteenth-century Franciscan
trinitarian tradition.
2 Stohr 1925, 133, made this observation, as did Slipyi 1927–1928, esp. (1927) 13–15. Criti-
cal editions of three of Gerard’s questions concerning trinitarian theology are contained in
Friedman 2002b, 27–33, and all references to texts of Gerard’s are to there. For the fullest
treatment of Gerard’s life and works, see Grand 1964, 207–221; for more recent work on
Gerard’s role in the mendicant controversy, see Boureau 1999, esp. 141–146. A selection of
Gerard’s Quodlibeta dealing with anthropology, including his epistemology and philosophi-
cal psychology, has been edited in Pattin 1993; see ibid., p. ix, n. 1 for further bibliographical
information on Gerard.
Before Gerard, this issue had been raised mainly in the context of dis-
cussions of whether the processions were distinct in and of themselves (se
ipsis). This, as we saw in Chapter One, above, was a central point of discord
between Aquinas and Bonaventure. Peter of Tarentaise (later Pope Inno-
cent V), in his Sentences commentary from the early 1260’s pinpoints the
source of the disagreement: the reason why such theologians as Aquinas
hold against Bonaventure that the processions are not distinct se ipsis is pre-
cisely to block the possibility that, if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from
the Son, the former would still be distinct from the latter.3 This conclusion
appears to have been so repugnant to Aquinas and others that, although
neither Bonaventure nor any other university theologian before Gerard of
Abbeville seems to have accepted it explicitly, still they thought it necessary
to rule out the acceptance of the anterior position that the processions are
distinct se ipsis. What is really at issue here is clearly the question of Greek
trinitarian theology and the Filioque clause, because on the surface it seems
that, if the Son and the Holy Spirit could be distinct without one proceeding
from the other (whether that is held to be true or not), then the position of
the Greek Orthodox church could be correct. Gerard seems to have broken
with tradition on this point by claiming outright in the second question of
his Quodlibet VII (ca. 1266) that the Son and the Holy Spirit could be distinct
even if the latter did not proceed from the former, a question entitled “sup-
posito quod Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, sicut ponunt Graeci,
utrum adhuc personaliter distingueretur ab eo.”
In order to prove his position, Gerard claims that for the Latins there
are three ways of comparing the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son:
by reason of origin, of communion, and of germanity.4 By these, Gerard
3 Peter of Tarentaise, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2: “Aliis e contra videtur quod sicut actus differunt
penes principia agendi, scilicet supposita et formas suppositorum agentium, ita hae duae
processiones, quia generatio est processus ab uno solo, qui non procedit ab alio, et per
propriam formam; process[i]us est processio a duobus, quorum unus non procedit, alter
vero phriocedit ab altero … Ratio vero quae movet eos haec est: si hae duae processiones se
ipsis differunt, ergo posito quod Spiritus non procederet a Filio, adhuc ipsi essent personae
distinctae, quod negatur.” Ed. Toulouse 1652, p. 108b. For more on Peter’s trinitarian theology,
see Gelber 1974, 25–27; on his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 47–49.
4 Gerard of Abbeville, Quodl. VII, q. 2: “Responsio. Dic quod Spiritus Sanctus secundum
Latinos tripliciter comparatur ad Patrem et Filium, scilicet secundum rationem originis in

procedendo, secundum rationem communionis in diligendo, secundum rationem german-
itatis in connectendo. Secundum rationem originis, quia hSpiritus Sanctusi procedit quo
modo datus, scilicet sicut dilectio liberaliter inspirata, Filius vero quo modo natus, scilicet
sicut proles naturaliter genita .... Ratio vero communionis ostenditur VI libro De trinitate,
cap. 5: ‘commune est aliquid Patris et Filii quicquid illud est ac ipsa summa communio,
96 chapter two
means respectively the emanations of both the Son and the Holy Spirit
from the Father, the mutual love between the Father and the Son that is
the Holy Spirit, and finally direct connection or opposition of relations.
Gerard’s argument is that, even with germanity, i.e. opposition of relations,
set aside, the distinction between the emanations would still account for
the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit:
Since, then, the basis (ratio) of origin consists in emanating, the basis of com-
munion in loving, but the basis of germanity in connecting, it is perfectly
apparent that with the basis of connection, which consists in germanity,
removed, there will still remain the distinction of origin in proceeding, and
the basis of communion in loving. Thus, since, when it comes to properties
that give substance (substantificas) and character (characteristas) or are dis-
tinctive of hypostases, the distinction of origin is the principal basis of making
distinction (distinguendi), clearly personal distinction stands with the con-
nection of germanity removed.5
What are these different modes of origin that are the principal source of
personal distinction? Gerard makes it clear that the Son proceeds by being
born (quo modo natus) while the Holy Spirit proceeds by being given (quo
modo datus),6 and he even employs the Augustinian psychological model
as an illustration of these two different ways of proceeding.7 In contrast to
consubstantialis et coaeterna, quae convenienter “amicitia” dici potest, sed apertius dicitur
“charitas”.’ Ratio germanitatis in connectendo in hoc consistit: quod una persona procedit
ab altera, alioquin non essent summa germanitate connexae, ut dicit Richardus, De trinitate
V lib., cap. 12.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, pp. 2720–2836. The elided part of the passage consists of
quotations from Augustine’s De trinitate, dealing with the psychological model of the Trinity.
5 Gerard of Abbeville, Quodl. VII, q. 2: “Cum igitur ratio originis consistat in emanando,
ratio communionis in diligendo, ratio vero germanitatis in connectendo, apparet evidenter

quod, circumscripta ratione connectionis quae in germanitate consistit, adhuc remanet dis-
tinctio originis in procedendo, et ratio communionis in diligendo. Unde cum distinctio origi-
nis sit principalis ratio distinguendi quantum ad proprietates substantificas et characteristas
sive hypostasum distinctivas, plane restabit distinctio personalis sublata connectione ger-
manitatis.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 2837–43. Interesting for the later Franciscan tradition is
Gerard’s use of principalis ratio distinguendi, which implies more than one ratio distinguendi,
and is thus clearly on the way to what I will call below (e.g., at and around nn. 27–30) “nested
distinctions”.
6 Gerard of Abbeville, Quodl. VII, q. 2: “Et ostendebatur quod sic: per origines, quia
Filius procedit quo modo natus, Spiritus Sanctus quo modo datus, ut dicit Augustinus XV
lib. De trinitate frequenter.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 273–5. See also n. 4, above, for the same
affirmation.
7 See n. 4 above, where the part of the passage elided dealt with the psychological
model; it is interesting that Gerard uses the psychological model to support the emanational
distinction between the persons, since this is kernel of the strong use of the psychological
model in trinitarian theology.
Henry of Ghent, however, Gerard does not use philosophical psychology as

a precise description of God’s trinitarian reality, since according to Gerard
the emanations are founded on nature—not intellect—and will. This, as we
will see, is true in general: the Franciscans began to use the psychological
model of the Trinity as a precise description of God, and hence use the
Son’s intellectual emanation as the Word to explain the constitution of the
Son, only after Henry of Ghent took advantage of the medieval intuition
that the intellect was a natural faculty and fused the Franciscan stress on
emanations in trinitarian theology with the Thomist development of the
verbum mentis.
Gerard contests the objection that Aquinas made to a position like his,
that the merely rational distinction between nature and will in God does
not provide sufficient ground for the real distinction between the persons,
by claiming that “nature and will are identical in being (essendo), but differ
insofar as they are sources of producing” the persons.8 This reply would be
repeated in various forms in Franciscan trinitarian treatments, as we will
see. Moreover, here, in his statement of Aquinas’ objection, Gerard uses, for
what appears to be the first time in the mid-thirteenth-century trinitarian
context, the term ‘disparation’—in contrast to opposition—to describe
the distinction between the origins (see n. 8 for the term). This too will
become a standard part of Franciscan treatments of this issue: the origins,
coming in different ways from the same person, differ through disparation,
in contrast to the opposition that arises when something comes directly
from something else. Unlike opposed relations, disparate relations are not
mutually implicative, and thus the existence of one disparate relation does
not necessarily imply the existence of another, just as, e.g., one thing’s
similarity to another thing does not imply its equality with that other
thing. The relation of disparation that is sufficient to distinguish origins and
8 Gerard’s response (in Quodl. VII, q. 2, ad 2) to Aquinas: “Ad secundum, dic quod natura
et voluntas idem sunt in essendo, sed differunt in ratione principii in producendo. Et ponit
simile Anselmus, Monologion, 62 cap.: ‘Pater, licet sit intelligentia, non est tamen intelligentia
genita; Filius, licet sit memoria, non est tamen memoria gignens; uterque, licet sit amor, non
est tamen amor spiratus.’ Ita est in proposito.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 2966–70. Gerard presents
Aquinas’ objection like this: “Item: non esset inter eos relatio disparationis, relationes enim
disparationis distinguuntur penes illa disparata in quibus fundantur, sicut aequalitas et
similitudo penes qualia et quanta distinguuntur. Si ergo origo per modum naturae et origo
per modum voluntatis fundantur in natura et voluntate, sed natura et voluntas sunt idem
in divinis, ergo et dictae origines. Ergo nulla prorsus esset in Filio et Spiritu Sancto ratio
distinctionis.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 2714–19. For Aquinas’ own statement of this objection,
see Ch. 1, above, n. 82.
98 chapter two
persons is, according to Gerard, founded upon the divine nature and will,
and hence it is the distinction between these disparate things (disparata),
differing insofar as they are sources of producing the persons, that is the
source of the distinction between the emanations. Thus, Gerard’s position
is that the Son and the Holy Spirit, each proceeding from the Father alone,
would still be distinct from each other, because of the disparate relations
between them founded upon their different ways of emanating (by nature
and by will): opposition of relations is not necessary. It should be noted
that, although Gerard does not state it as explicitly as later figures would,
nevertheless the very way in which he formulates the question, with his use
of the term ‘supposito’ and of imperfect subjunctives, as well as the way that
he stresses that the Latins hold that there is opposition of relations between
the Son and the Holy Spirit (germanitas) is clear evidence that for him this
is a merely hypothetical question: the Catholic faith requires one to believe
that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. With that
said, Gerard has clearly taken a step on the road to reifying the emphasis that
Bonaventure placed on the emanations as the basic constitutive properties
of the persons. The interrelated positions that Gerard defends, that the Son
and the Holy Spirit could be distinct on account of the disparate relations,
even if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, and that the distinction
of the emanations was founded on the distinction between nature and will,
we will see are a cornerstone of, among others, John Pecham’s and Henry of
Ghent’s more developed and detailed trinitarian theologies.
Gerard was a high-profile figure at the University of Paris, both as a result
of his having been regent master in theology there for nearly two decades
and as a result of his intense involvement in the secular-mendicant con-
troversy. Thus, it seems highly likely that it was Gerard’s own solution on
this issue, fitting in well with the emphasis on emanations already to be
found in Bonaventure’s trinitarian thought, that acted as a catalyst for the
emerging Franciscan trinitarian tradition. In any event, Franciscan theolo-
gians began to incorporate Gerard’s position, terminology, and arguments
into their own work even while Bonaventure was still alive (see below). In
fact reaction to Gerard’s position may have been nearly immediate. In q. 10,
a. 5, of his disputed questions De potentia, composed between 1265 and 1268
in Italy, Aquinas gives a very close rendering of the argument that Gerard
uses to defend his position.9 In response, Aquinas defends the conclusion
9 On this, and on earlier interpretations of the relation between Aquinas and Gerard on
this issue, see Friedman 2002b, 22–23 n. 4. It should be added to the evidence presented
entailed by his usual claim that the distinction of the persons is prior con-
ceptually to the distinction of the emanations, and thus dismisses Gerard’s
argument.10
In at least two other of Gerard’s quodlibetal questions, we can find yet
another way in which he can be seen as having similar theological propensi-
ties to Bonaventure, Bonaventure’s Franciscan followers, and also to Henry
of Ghent: his reliance on Richard of St. Victor. Richard is frequently cited
in Gerard’s trinitarian work, and sometimes in an extremely sophisticated
way, e.g., by weaving into a seamless string quotations from Richard’s De
trinitate that are physically separate from one another in the original.11
Moreover, Gerard’s conceptualization of the divine properties relies heav-
ily on Richard’s. For Gerard, as for Richard, the persons are distinguished
on the basis of their different ways of obtaining (modi obtinendi) the divine
essence, which do not add a new nature or substance, but merely a ratio.12
Thus, Gerard can say, as he does in the quotation above (at n. 5), that
the way each person emanates or is originated in God is what is princi-
pally distinctive of the persons, and he gives as examples of these ways of
there that we know from Roger Marston that Gerard was officially involved in the censure
of Aquinas’ position (from the Sent. commentary) that ‘Word’ is said both essentially and
personally in God, thus there is some evidence of trinitarian disagreements between the two;
see the text quoted in Ch. 3, below, n. 24. Slipyi 1927–1928, (1927) 13, claims that it is probable
that Gerard was impelled to his position on the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit by
his part in the mendicant controversy. I see no particular evidence for this, especially since
Bonaventure had no clear position on this particular trinitarian issue (as opposed to what
Slipyi himself says, (1927) 8); see, Ch. 1, above, n. 79.
10 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 5, ad 11: “Ad 11um dicendum quod licet processio sit prius
per intellectum quam communio, sicut commune quam proprium, tamen talis processio,
scilicet Spiritus Sancti, qui procedit quasi amor et communio et nexus Patris et Filii, non est
prius secundum intellectum quam communio; unde non oportet quod remota communione
remaneat processio, sicut animal est prius secundum rationem quam homo, non autem
animal rationale.” See § 1 of Ch. 3, below, for a more detailed study of this article from De
potentia.
11 E.g., ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 31132–356, p. 31140–143, and see also the text in n. 14 below, for
an example.
12 Gerard of Abbeville, Quodl. XVI, q. 11: “Ubi ergo est modus obtinendi eandem naturam
praeter compositionem et mutationem accidentalem et essentialem, et praeter mutationem

temporalem et praeter originis mutabilitatem, ibi relatio non est accidentalis neque natu-
ralis, sicut in creaturis, sed substantifica et personalis sive supersubstantialis, quia non addit
rem, sed modum obtinendi naturam. Relatio enim paternitatis in homine addit aliam natu-
ram a substantia, quia consequitur mutationem substantiae. Unde aliud est esse hominem et
aliud est esse patrem. Sed in divinis relatio seu relativum non dicit nisi modum retinendi ean-
dem naturam et habitudinem originis differentis in obtinendo eandem naturam, propterea
non addit aliam substantiam a natura, sed aliam rationem.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 30114–122.
See also nn. 13 and 14 below.
100 chapter two
originating: generation and procession and innascibility (i.e., not emanat-

ing).13 The divine relations or properties do
not add a thing (rem), but a way of obtaining the same nature according
solely to differing types (ratio) of origin, just as persons in human nature are
differentiated (versantur) on account of differing ways of being, but in the
divine on account of different ways of obtaining [being] … whether accepting
or not accepting or in the way of giving or in the way of accepting [divine
nature] … On account of this there do not come about a number of substances
in the divine as there do in humans, because in humans [number] comes
about by emanation through diversity of substance, in the divine through
plenitude of substance.14
Despite the fact that there is no diversity of substance in God, Gerard often
refers to the divine relations or properties as ‘substantifica’, “substance giv-
ing”, an unusual term, and he contrasts the “accidental” and “natural” rela-
tions that are found in creatures with the “substance-giving” or “supersub-
stantial” personal relations in God.15 Gerard certainly believes that one can
use the term ‘thing’ (res) to describe the persons, if ‘thing’ means both
“nature and the way of obtaining the nature”;16 but “substance-giving” prop-
13 Gerard of Abbeville, Quodl. XIX, q. 14: “Dic ergo quod persona secundum rationem per-
sonae addit aliquid, non tantum secundum rationem nostrae intelligentiae, sed secundum
rem in quantum ‘res’ dicit modum obtinendi illam naturam secundum distinctionem originis
et substantificae relationis. Ex quo nec sequitur quod intellectus sit cassus et vanus vel quod
tres sint naturae, quia persona supra naturam addit modum obtinendi illam naturam secun-
dum distinctionem originis, utpote per generationem et processionem et innascibilitatem;
et ille modus non est tantum in ratione nostrae intelligentiae, sed etiam in Deo secundum
proprietatem substantificae relationis. Quod istud sit verum apparet evidenter per verba
magistri Richardi, De trinitate lib. IV, cap. 11: in natura quidem est idem modus essendi, in
persona vero alius et alius secundum originem, modus obtinendi ‘quo quisque obtinet quod
substantialiter vel naturaliter habet.’ ” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 32178–188.
14 Gerard of Abbeville, Quodl. XVI, q. 11: “… hrelatioi non addit rem, sed modum obtinendi
eandem naturam secundum solam rationem originis differentem, sicut personae in humana
natura ‘versantur circa differentem modum essendi, in divinis vero circa modum obtinendi;
ibi circa rationem substantiae, hic vero circa obtinentiam.’ ‘Siquidem modus in aliis et in
aliis est multum diversus, sive in accipiendo sive in non accipiendo sive in modo dandi sive in
modo accipiendi.’ Haec Richardus, IV lib. De trinitate, cap. 11. Et propter hoc non est numerus
in divinis substantiarum, sicut in humanis, quia in humanis est emanatione per diversitatem
substantiae, in divinis per substantiae plenitudinem.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 31138–146.
15 See nn. 5, 12, 13 above; esp. Gerard of Abbeville, Quodl. XVI, q. 11: “… triplex distinguitur
relatio: est enim relatio accidentalis, naturalis, et substantifica sive supersubstantialis ....
hin divinisi relatio non est accidentalis neque naturalis, sicut in creaturis, sed substantifica
et personalis sive supersubstantialis.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 2986–87, p. 30116–118. That the
term ‘substantifica’ appears in all three of these quodlibetal questions devoted to trinitarian
theology shows clearly that it played a central role in Gerard’s trinitarian thought. See the
Introduction, above, at n. 26, for further uses of this type of terminology.
16 Gerard of Abbeville, Quodl. XIX, q. 14: “Tertio modo potest accipi hoc nomen ‘res’ sicut
erties may reveal a strand of medieval trinitarian thought that would be

perpetuated in both John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol, who refer to the
divine persons as prime substances.17 Whether or not this is the case, Gerard
is certainly part of an emerging Franciscan trinitarian tradition, and as such
forms part of the proximate background to Henry of Ghent’s trinitarian
thought.
2. Walter of Bruges
A broader base of material on which to gauge the early development of the

Franciscan trinitarian tradition is offered by Walter of Bruges, a Francis-
can who died in 1307 after having been bishop of Poitiers. Walter lectured
on the Sentences at Paris probably sometime between 1261 and 1265, and
was probably Franciscan regent master in theology there 1267–1268.18 Wal-
ter reports on the issue of the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit in
d. 11 of the first book of his Sentences commentary, a reworking of his lec-
tures that dates from around 1270. Some great men (aliqui magni), Walter
tells us, claim that it is not possible for the Son and the Holy Spirit to be
distinct from one another unless the one proceeds from the other, because
only opposition of relations can account for the distinction between the per-
sons.19 On the other hand, Walter continues, to others (Gerard of Abbeville?)
nomen generale ad essentias et personas. Et secundum hoc, ‘res’ non tantum dicit naturam,
sed etiam commune esse ad naturam et ad modum obtinendi naturam. Et secundum hoc
potest concedi quod Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus sunt tres res quibus est fruendum,
quae nos beatos faciunt.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 32174–177.
17 For Scotus, see Ch. 6, below, at and around nn. 69–78; for Auriol, Ch. 9, at and around
nn. 23–26; also, Michael of Massa, Ch. 12, at and around nn. 174–175. Describing the divine
persons as “prime substance” appears to be something inherited from Robert Grosseteste in
his now lost work De personis divinis; see on this, Ch. 6, below, at and around nn. 17–19.
18 On Walter and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 50–51, and the literature
referred to there. Recent studies dealing substantially with aspects of Walter’s thought,
include: Kent 1995; Eardley 2006, esp. 362–364. Walter’s disputed questions have been edited
by E. Longpré as Quaestiones disputatae, but they contain no material of relevance to Walter’s
trinitarian ideas. I have had access to Walter’s Sent. commentary in BAV Chigi. B VI 94 and
Paris, BnF lat. 3085A; the text presented here follows the Vatican ms. and all remarks and
foliation refer to the Vatican ms. unless otherwise noted.
19 Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 11, pars 1, q. 2 (h“… posito* secundum Graecos quod non
procedat a Filio an Spiritus Sanctus personaliter distinguatur a Filio”i, f. 30r–v): “Ad secundam
quaestionem dicunt aliqui magni quod Spiritus Sanctus non distingueretur a Filio si non
procederet hab eoi. Quod patet primo, quia in divinis non est distinctio nisi originis nec
esse potest, quia distinctio essentialis vel accidentalis ibi esse non potest. Si ergo Spiritus
Sanctus non procederet a Filio, non esset ei origo ab illo. Et ita non distingueretur, sed penitus
102 chapter two
it seems that disparate relations, based upon different ways of emanating

from the Father could explain the distinction between the second and third
persons.20 Walter himself is essentially non-committal on the issue, defend-
ing both positions, although he does say that the first opinion is satisfactory
to many (haec opinio multis placet).21 Walter’s work shows clearly that, very
soon after Gerard of Abbeville made his case for the possibility of the dis-
tinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit on the basis of the disparate
relations between them, his position was known and making—tentative—
inroads into the emerging Franciscan trinitarian theology.
On the related issue of the way that the processions are distinct, whether
se ipsis or on the basis of the arrangement of the persons to one another,
Walter claims that the processions differ or are distinct (Walter uses both
terms) according to notional reality (re notionali), that is to say they are
two notional acts distinct formally in and of themselves (secundum se or
se ipsis). Although they differ (or are distinct) in and of themselves, it
cannot be maintained that they exist in and of themselves, rather in this
idem esset quod (mss: qui*) Filius, et sic non esset trinitas, sed dualitas tantum, quod est
haereticum.” BAV Chigi. B VI 94, f. 30r; Paris, BnF lat. 3085A, f. 131ra.
20 Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 11, pars 1, q. 2: “Aliis vero videtur penitus contrarium. Primo
quia prima distinctio et communior est illa quae est per disparationem, quae quidem esset
inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, etiam si non procederet ab eo, nam hic esset genitus et ille
spiratus, et ab alia et alia notione quae est in Patre, quae duae notiones in Patre non faciunt
duas personas, quia in eo est primitas et fecunditas respectu aliarum personarum. In Filio
tamen et Spiritu Sancto faciunt duas personas …” BAV Chigi. B VI 94, f. 30r; Paris, BnF lat.
3085A, f. 131ra. See n. 56 below for the possibility that Walter’s “others” might be Eustace of
Arras or John Pecham.
21 The Paris ms. has ‘multis’, the Vatican has ‘multos’. Walter describes the two positions,
their advantages and disadvantages in this way (Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 11, pars 1, q. 2):
“Qui hanc opinionem ultimam vult tenere hi.e. quod Spiritus Sanctus adhuc distingueretur a
Filio, si non procederet ab eoi, dicat ad primum in contrarium quod duo prohibent Spiritum
Sanctum non posse dici de Filio, scilicet oppositio relationis et modus disparationis …
hSpiritus Sanctusi a Patre tantum distinguitur uno modo, scilicet relatione originis, et a Filio
dupliciter, scilicet relatione et disparatione, et ideo altera causa cessante per positionem
stare potest alia quae est prior secunda, prior enim est distinctio disparationis et communior
quam relationis … Si vis tenere primam opinionem, dic ad primum quod Augustinus intendit
dicere quo modo datus ab utroque, scilicet Filio et Patre, et quod ly ‘datus’ dicit hic donum
mutuum ab aeterno a Patre in Filium, et e converso. Si enim tantum Pater daret ab aeterno, et
non Filius, tunc Filius non esset imago perfecta … Spiritus autem Sanctus, si non procederet a
Filio, non haberet distinctionem ab eo secundum rem, sed secundum rationem tantum, quae
non sufficit ad distinctionem personalem. Et in Patre etiam vis generativa et spirativa non
differunt re, sed ratione; quod patet quia non distinguunt personam Patris in duas personas.”
BAV Chigi. B VI 94, f. 30r–v; Paris, BnF lat. 3085A, f. 131rb (text from “hSpiritus Sanctusi a Patre”
to end of quotation is missing in the Paris ms). Again, Walter’s description here of the “opinio
ultima” may have been taken from either Eustace of Arras or John Pecham (see n. 56 below).
respect the processions resemble two specific differences that differ in and
of themselves, but “flow” existentially from the genus they contract. Thus,
Walter takes no sides in the dispute between Aquinas and Bonaventure
when he claims that the processions “are distinct in and of themselves (se
ipsis) formally, but not in terms of origin (originaliter)”; rather, according to
Walter, they are distinct in terms of origin because generation is from the
Father alone, but procession is from both the Father and the Son.22 Walter
does not claim, interestingly enough, that the distinction of the emanations
is based in some way upon the prior distinction of nature and will in God
the Father, a view that will become an important part of the Franciscan
trinitarian tradition.
Thus, Walter is basically non-committal on issues related to the Filioque,
leaving the matter open in the case of the distinction of the Son from the
Holy Spirit and attempting to reconcile Aquinas and Bonaventure in the
case of the distinction of the notional acts from one another. On a second
issue, however, Walter clearly provides evidence for the development of a
distinctly Franciscan understanding of the Trinity and concomitantly for
the background to Henry of Ghent’s views. Not only does Walter—like
Bonaventure—explicitly give more weight to origin and emanation than
to relation, saying that relation follows origin according to the way we
understand things,23 but he also claims outright that there is a twofold
22 Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (“Quaeritur an generatio sit processio”, f. 32v):
“Responsio hsecundai: non differunt hgeneratio et processioi re essentiali nec personali, sed
re notionali. Sunt enim duo actus notionales secundum se distincti formaliter non duae
personae nec duae essentiae. Ad primum dic quod sicut duae primae differentiae differunt
se ipsis, licet non sint a se ipsis, fluunt enim a genere, ita haec duo, generatio et processio,
licet quasi fluant a Patre et Filio, et ita non sunt a se ipsis, distinguuntur tamen se ipsis. Vel
dic quod distinguuntur se ipsis formaliter, sed non originaliter, immo sic distinguuntur quod
generatio est originaliter tantum a Patre, processio vero a Patre et Filio …” BAV Chigi. B VI 94,
f. 32v; Paris, BnF lat. 3085A, ff. 132vb–33ra (text from “sicut duae primae” to end of quotation is
missing in the Paris ms, which jumps to the middle of the reply to the second argument for
the position as it appears in the Vatican ms.)
Walter’s talk of formaliter vs. originaliter distinction between the emanations may well be
a modification of Peter of Tarentaise’ attempt, at his I Sent., d. 13, q. 2, to reconcile Aquinas
and Bonaventure: “Potest ergo, concordando utramque opinionem tamquam veram, dici
quod differunt formaliter se ipsis, sed non se ipsis originaliter, sed penes suppositas formas,
a quibus actus hi egrediuntur …” Ed. Toulouse 1652, p. 108b. See also Gerard of Abbeville, at
n. 8 above, who claims nature and will differ not in their being (essendo) but insofar as they
are productive sources.
23 Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 9, pars 1, q. 2 (“An generatio distinguat principalius ratione
originis vel ratione relationis”, ff. 26r–27r): “Dic quod principalius et per prius secundum
rationem intelligendi attribuitur distinctio origini quam relationi. Primo quia relatio non
104 chapter two
distinction in God: personal distinction and hypostatic distinction. What is

at stake here is made clearest when Walter deals with the distinction of the
Father. Like Bonaventure, Walter accepts that innascibility has not only the
negative meaning of not being from anything else, but also a positive one:
that the Father has primity and a fontal plenitude with respect to everything
else, Son and Holy Spirit and creatures.24 This stress on innascibility leads
Walter to postulate two levels of distinction in the person of the Father, and
two types of properties that bring that distinction about:
Paternity is the personal property of the Father, not innascibility, but never-
theless [innascibility] is a property of the hypostasis of the Father. This is clear
in the first place because paternity is the property that comes to the Father
last, according to the way we understand things, and giving [him] distinct
and determinate being; innascibility, on the other hand, is a quasi-material
property, i.e. indeterminately and indistinctly [giving being to the Father],
indicating in the Father that he is first and a source with respect to everything
… In reply to the first [argument] to the contrary, say that innascibility gives
being and distinguishes, but indeterminately not determinately, for it shows
that the Father is not the Son or the Spirit; nevertheless it does not indicate
a determinate property, and so (quo modo) it distinguishes [the Father] from
[the Son and the Spirit] and from creatures differently [than paternity does].
Thus, innascibility gives to the Father hypostatic being (esse hypostasis), not
personal being (esse personae).25
distinguit secundum se, sed prout fundatur super originem unius ab alio, in uno enim
possunt esse plures relationes quae in illo nullam faciunt distinctionem. Secundo quia
relationes quae sunt paternitas et filiatio causantur secundum rationem intelligendi ab actu
generandi quasi activae et modo quasi generandi passivae.” BAV Chigi. B VI 94, f. 26v; Paris,
BnF lat. 3085A, f. 128ra.
24 Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 2 (“An ingenitus in Patre aliquid ponat”, ff. 52v–
53r): “Responsio … tertio modo hdicitur ingenitumi convenit tantum Patri … et ita patet quod
ingenitum dictum de Patre negat omnem modum essendi ab alio, supponens tamen ipsum
esse, esse autem et non esse ab alio aliquo modo est esse primum omnium, et ideo ponit in
Patre fontalem plentitudinem et primitatem respectu omnium, scilicet tam respectu Filii
quam Spiritus Sancti quam etiam creaturarum.” BAV Chigi. B VI 94, f. 53r; Paris, BnF lat.
3085A, f. 147rb–va. See also n. 20 above, for Walter’s mentioning of the Father’s primity and
fecundity.
25 Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 4 (“An innascibilitas sit proprietas personalis”,
f. 53r–v): “Responsio: paternitas est proprietas personalis ipsius Patris, non innascibilitas, est
tamen proprietas hypostasis Patris. Quod patet primo quia paternitas est proprietas secun-
dum rationem intelligendi ultimo Patri adveniens et dans esse distinctum et determina-
tum; innascibilitas autem est quasi proprietas materialis, id est indeterminate et indistincte,
dicens in Patre primum esse et fontale respectu omnium … Ad primum in contrarium dic
quod innascibilitas dat esse et distinguit, sed indeterminate non determinate, ostendit enim
Patrem non esse Filium et Spiritum; non tamen dicit determinatam proprietatem quo modo
differenter distinguit ab eis et a creaturis; unde dat Patri esse hypostasis, non personae.” BAV
For Walter of Bruges, paternity is the personal property of the Father,

because it gives the Father personal being, i.e. distinct and determinate
being. Innascibility, however, also gives the Father a type of being: indeter-
minate hypostatic being. Walter calls innascibility a “quasi-material” prop-
erty, because like matter it is undefined and awaiting form.26 To explain
this, he draws a comparison between paternity and innascibility, on the
one hand, and rationality and the animality characterized by being able to
sense, on the other. Rationality gives “personal being” to a human, making
that human an individual, but it does not give to the human the sensory
being (esse sensibile) that any animal has in virtue of its being able to sense;
instead, rationality presupposes the sensory being that it determines, and
the sensory being is a necessary precondition for rationality. In just this
way the being that innascibility gives is both presupposed and determined
by the being that paternity gives.27 I call the two levels of distinction that
Chigi. B VI 94, f. 53r; Paris, BnF lat. 3085A, f. 147va (in the Paris ms. the question ends here, while
the Vatican ms. contains two further replies to preliminary arguments.) This text continues
in n. 27 below.
26 Walter also uses the terminology of ‘quasi-material’ property in I Sent., d. 27, pars
1, q. 3 (“An Pater generat quia Pater vel e converso”, f. 51r–v): “Responsio: aliquod nomen
dicit privationem vocaliter et realiter, ut ‘iniustus’; aliquod realiter non vocaliter, ut ‘caecus’;
aliquod vocaliter et realiter quoad quid simpliciter, tamen etiam magis dicit habitum, ut
‘indivisibile’ dictum de uno … Hoc ultimo modo innascibilitas in Patre privat principium vel
originem a quo omnimodo, ita quod nullo modo sit ab alio; quod autem tale est necessario
est primum omnium; quod autem est primum omnium habet in se fontalem plenitudinem
omnium. Unde Augustinus, IV De trinitate, hcap.i 20, dicit quod Pater est principium totius
divinitatis et causam … ergo, quia innascibilis est ipse principium totius divinitatis, id est
Filii et Spiritus Sancti … tenendo hanc ultimam rationem, dic ad primum in contrarium
quod Pater habet esse distinctum paternitate verum est de esse et distinctione personali
tali*, prius tamen secundum intellectum habet esse distinctum quoad esse hypostasis, id
est suppositi perfecti, nec tamen ex hoc sequitur quod hypostasis Patris possit manere ablata
paternitate, quia innascibilitas se habet respectu paternitatis vel Patris ut Pater, ut differentia
quasi materialis respectu formalis dantis ultimum et completum esse, et ut aptitudo ad
actum …” BAV Chigi. B VI 94, f. 51v; Paris, BnF 3085A, f. 146va. The Augustine quotation is
from De trinitate IV, 20, 29 (CCSL, vol. 50, p. 200121–122): “… totius divinitatis vel si melius
dicitur deitatis principium Pater est.” The fact that innascibility is a quasi-material property
for Walter, means that the Father’s hypostasis could never exist without paternity giving
determining form; this is Walter’s way of preserving the necessity of the actual trinitarian
framework, in which the Father is the Father precisely because he is Father of the Son.
27 Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 4 (text continued from n. 25 above): “… Ad
tertium: dic quod innascibilitas dat plenum posse, sed haec est quasi potentia, et non deter-
minate, sed respectu omnium indistincte; proprietas autem paternitatis dat distincte et
determinate, quod est proprietatis personalis. Praeterea, praesupponit posse ab innascibili-
tate datum, et hoc sufficit ad proprietatem personae, sicut rationale dans esse personale, non
dat esse sensibile et huiusmodi secundum se, sed praesupponit et ad tale esse determinat.”
BAV Chigi. B VI 94, f. 53r–v; deest Paris, BnF lat. 3085A.
106 chapter two
Walter is positing here “nested distinctions”, the Father’s hypostatic distinc-

tion, brought about by the property of innascibility, being prior in some
way to the Father’s full distinction, brought about by paternity. Walter’s
description of the nested distinctions in the constitution of the Father is
all the more striking, because it is devoid of the many secundum rationem
intelligendi waivers that Bonaventure used when he described innascibil-
ity.28 In the case of the Father, Walter has clearly reified Bonaventure’s con-
ceptual emphasis on the emanations and emanational distinction: innasci-
bility is in the Father and is doing some constitutive “work”. Moreover,
although he does not claim this for his own, Walter describes the complete
position in which the nested layers of hypostatis and personal distinction
fit: the hypostases have full being from innascibility, being generated, and
being spirated respectively, i.e. emanational distinction; the persons have
full being from paternity, filiation, and procession respectively, i.e. rela-
tional distinction.29
Although the terminology will vary from author to author—Henry of
Ghent for instance will say that the persons constituted by opposed rela-
tions are proprie distinct in contrast to if the persons are constituted by
disparate relations, i.e. emanations—Walter’s distinction between proper-
ties that give indeterminate, hypostatic being (esse hypostasis) and prop-
erties that give determinate, personal being will reappear time after time
in the Franciscan trinitarian theology of this period. In fact, one can see
continuity in Franciscan thought on this issue: from Bonaventure to Scotus,
perhaps the most characteristic element of Franciscan trinitarian thought
28 The “secundum rationem intelligendi” found in n. 25 above, clearly modifies the
“ultimo” and hence merely confirms that we are talking about logical, and not temporal
order; the same appears to be true about the “prius secundum intellectum” in n. 26 above.
For Bonaventure’s “secundum rationem intelligendi” waivers, see above, Ch. 1, nn. 53–55, 61,
71, 76.
29 Walter of Bruges, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 3: “Aliis videtur quod secundum rationem intel-
ligendi esse perfectum et completum praecedit generare et generare praecedit paternitatem.

Unumquodque enim perfectum, tunc perfectum est secundum Philosophum, quando potest
generare sibi simile, non postquam generavit, propter quod dicunt indistincte, quia generat,
ideo Pater est. Dicunt ergo quod Pater habet esse perfectum et completum hypostasis et sup-
positi* per innascibilitatem, et Filius habet esse hypostasis per generari, et Spiritus Sanctus
per spirari; sed esse personae vel personale habet Pater paternitate et Filius filiatione et Spir-
itus Sanctus processione.” BAV Chigi. B VI 94, f. 51v; Paris, BnF 3085A, f. 146rb–va. See also n. 26
above. That this position antedates Walter is clear because it was described by Odo Rigaldi,
(who read the Sentences around 1243–1244); see Schmaus 1930a, 447–448. Malet 1956, 44–45,
claims that Alexander of Hales does not hold this position. See also n. 13 above, where Gerard
of Abbeville mentions “generationem et processionem et innascibilitatem” as the three ways
of emanating distinctive of the persons.
is the attempt to introduce nested levels of distinction between the divine

hypostases and the divine persons, the distinction between the hypostases
being based on the emanations and the distinction between the persons
being based on the relations. As we will see, in this attempt Henry of Ghent’s
trinitarian thought stands out because it was so fully developed, because it
makes nuanced use of the entire system of nested distinctions, and because
it served as a focal point for later critiques.
This typically Franciscan tack in trinitarian theology is at its root a result
of the emphasis on emanation that we saw so clearly in Bonaventure, but
it has two proximate causes. First, for the Franciscans, stressing emanation
and production, the challenge was to introduce order into God, because acts
have agents and products. As we have seen, this is especially pressing in the
case of the Father, where, prior to the act of generation that brings about the
determinate or proper distinction of the person of the Father, it is necessary
for there to be some distinct thing to bring about that act. This is a need that
Bonaventure had recognized, and he postulated primity to explain how,
in terms of our concepts about God, the Father could generate “before” he
was a Father. Later theologians in the Franciscan current, including Walter
of Bruges, John Pecham, and Henry of Ghent, reify this trait of the Father:
primity was no longer a merely conceptual tool but played a significant role
in the Father’s overall personal constitution.
The second proximate cause for the Franciscan-minded theologians of
the period to posit nested distinctions is that the Franciscans need them in
order to explain the role of the relation account in their trinitarian thought,
thereby preserving a strong traditional explication of the trinitarian mys-
tery. Nested distinctions provided a way for them to marginalize the relation
account (and the authoritative passages upon which it was built) with-
out completely rejecting it. Thus, the persons are distinct because of the
opposed relations between them, but there are more basic emanational
properties guaranteeing the distinction of the persons in any case. Indis-
pensable emanational distinction is nested within (in some sense) “dispens-
able” relational distinction: this allows the Franciscans to hold onto the rela-
tions and relation account while still showing that they give priority to the
emanations. This use of a “marginalization strategy”—whether taking the
form of nested distinctions or something else—is yet another element that
is typical of Franciscan trinitarian theology. All of this is in contradistinction
to the typical Dominican trinitarian theology, which relied on static rela-
tion, lessening the pressure to introduce order and eliminating pressure to
marginalize the relation account. The Dominican account had its own chal-
lenges, however: what exactly are these relations, and how can they serve to
108 chapter two
make the persons—i.e., what refers through them—distinct. These are focal
issues in late-thirteenth-century trinitarian theology.
With this background it is easy to see why Gerard of Abbeville’s claim
that, were the Holy Spirit not to come from the Son, they would still be
distinct from one another, became a regular part of the Franciscan trini-
tarian tradition, and further why this claim elicited so much controversy
in the late-thirteenth- and early-fourteenth-century trinitarian discussion.
The Franciscans—emphasizing emanation, order, and nested distinc-
tions—generally claimed along with Gerard that the Holy Spirit would
still be distinct from the Son if the former did not proceed from the lat-
ter, because these two persons proceed in differing ways from the Father.
Indeed, the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit based on their dif-
ferent modes of emanation from the Father is simply one component in
the system of nested distinctions, that is to say, the disparate distinction
between these persons is nested within the oppositional distinction that
certainly does obtain between them. Gerard himself seems to have recog-
nized this about his view.30 Thus, it is no wonder that this position became
basically standard in Franciscan trinitarian thought. Further, given its obvi-
ous affinity to Greek Orthodox trinitarian theology, it is no wonder that the
position stirred up a great deal of debate.
These general claims about “Franciscan tendencies” can be tested on a
group of Franciscan theologians who were the main figures in the early
development of Franciscan trinitarian theology, and who cast light on the
immediate theological milieu in which Henry of Ghent was working. In the
next few sections we will look at William of Baglione and Eustace of Arras, at
John Pecham, at William de la Mare and Matthew of Aquasparta, at Nicholas
of Ockham, and finally at Roger Marston, all Franciscans from whom we
have works composed in the late 1260’s, the 1270’s, and the early 1280’s.
3. William of Baglione and Eustace of Arras
Two Franciscan authors writing in the late 1260’s have left us material
dealing with our topic. Of the two, William of Baglione is the easier to deal
with. Although William, in large part thanks to the efforts of Ignatius Brady,
has begun to receive some scholarly attention, we know very little about his
30 See above, n. 13, for evidence of Gerard’s recognition. See also Walter of Bruges, above,
n. 29.
life. In fact, all that Brady would commit himself to is that William was
Franciscan regent master in theology at Paris in the academic year 1266–
1267, and that, although he may have been French, he was more probably
Italian.31 We have one short question from William that is an investigation
of the role innascibility plays in the constitution of the Father, when he
asks “whether primity makes known that of which it is a property accord-
ing to its complete being?”32 Already the use of the terms ‘primity’ and
‘complete being’ are clues as to William’s unsurprising support of a Fran-
ciscan emphasis on primity and emanation trinitarian theology. William
claims that a personal property can be called property, relation, or notion.
Innascibility can be called a property of the Father inasmuch as it can be
attributed to the Father alone: only the Father has existence on his own
account (a se) rather than receiving it from another person. Innascibility
cannot, on the other hand, be called a relation, since even in its mean-
ing of the Father’s fontal plenitude, it carries along with it no reference of
one person to another. Finally, since innascibility conveys a mode of excel-
lence, “especially as it indicates [the Father’s] primity, and from this his
fontal plenitude,” it is certainly a notion.33 With all this said, William claims
that it is probably better to say that paternity is the property constitutive
of the person of the Father, since paternity is all three, property, relation,
and notion. Indeed, he actually ends his question by replying to preliminary
31 On William’s works, see Brady 1968–1969, esp. (1968) 437–457, and on his life, ibid.,
457–461; for Brady’s conclusions see ibid., 459–460. Brady edited two of William’s questions
in Brady 1970 and Brady 1972; on the basis of those editions, William has received attention in
Bianchi 1984a (passim, see the index) and 1984b; Dales 1990, esp. 110–115; Dales 1995, 120–126;
and Köhler 2000, 478–479, 495.
32 William of Baglione, Quaestio “Utrum primitas notificat illud cuius est proprietas secun-
dum suum esse completum”, Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. B.6.912, ff. 4vb–5rb. For the question’s
place in the manuscript, see Brady 1968–1969, esp. (1968) 439.
33 William of Baglione, Quaestio “Utrum primitas …”: “Propter primum* hi.e., dicit uni
solii proprietas personalis censetur nomine proprietas; propter secundum hi.e., dicit spe-
cialem habitudinemi nomine relationis; propter tertium hi.e., dicit excellentem modum exis-
tendii nomine notionis. Primum hattribuituri [accepit*] innascibilitati, solus enim Pater
est innascibilis ut innascibile accipitur personaliter, hoc est habetur esse a se, non ab alia
persona, sicut dicit Richardus in praedicta auctoritate. Ideo innascibilitas est proprietas
.... Secundum, id est specialem habitudinem, non exprimit innascibilitas, quia ex nomine
magis videtur accipi privative quam positive et realiter, cum attribuitur personae Patris
dici fontalem plenitudinem ad omnem productionem, ex quibus adhuc non habetur spe-
cialis habitudo personae ad personam. Ideo etsi sit proprietas, non est tamen proprie relatio
.... Tertium, hoc* est excellentehmi dignitatem, manifeste importat innascibilitas, maxime
prout dicit primitatem, et ex hoc fontalem plenitudinem, ideo proprie et vere dicitur ‘notio’.”
Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. B.6.912, f. 5ra.
110 chapter two
arguments in favor of the view that innascibility is the Father’s constitutive

property, and this fits well with his opinion that paternity is the Father’s true
constitutive property. Nevertheless, William seems clearly to have wanted
to preserve some kind of constitutive role for innascibility. For one thing,
he is adamant that innascibility does not have a merely negative meaning,
as though it meant exclusively “non-nascible”, but rather it posits being
while eliminating being-from-another. Ultimately, William maintains that
innascibility “without doubt indicates in the Father primity and through this
the fontal plenitude through which the person of the Father is distinguished
from others and is made known in an excellent way (excellenter).”34 On this
basis, although William denies that there can be any kind of “incomplete”
as opposed to “complete” being in God, nevertheless he seems to suggest
that innascibility and paternity each constitute the Father, but in different
ways, claiming that this is necessary since without innascibility giving being
to what I have called a “proto-Father”, there would be no generator from
whom the emanation generation could come. In line with this view, he
claims explicitly that the Father is the Father because he generates, as we
have seen Bonaventure also do, in this way accepting what will become a
nearly standard position in Franciscan trinitarian thought.35 Reinforcing the
emanational stress of his trinitarian theology, William mentions Richard
of St. Victor no fewer than seven times in this short text. We have here,
34 William of Baglione, Quaestio “Utrum primitas …”: “Paternitas autem et himportati
illam hi.e., dignitatemi, ut ita dicam singularitatem et specialem habitudinem et excellentem

dignitatem dicit. Ideo cum vere sit proprietas et relatio et notio, est constitutiva divinae
personae ut prima est. Et propter hoc hpaternitatii (ms.: paternitas) communiter* assignatur
personalis proprietas constitutiva personae Patris. Non sic omnino innascibilitas; et pro
tanto posset concedi ratio in contrarium. Sed quod dicit quod non sonat in dignitatem nec
notificat, quia dicit negationem—non valet, quia non videtur ex vi nominis omnimodam
negationem dicere, ut* diceres* innascibile idem quod non-nascibile, et sic de se nihil
ponit, sed cum dico innascibilem suppono esse et tollo esse ab alio .... si dicatur non
esse ab alio per generationem (quia nec sic accipit esse, nec suum existere aliquo modo
consequitur generationem), sic soli Patri hconveniti (ms.: contra), et dicit in eo absque dubio
primitatem et per hoc fontalem plenitudinem per quam persona Patris et ab aliis distinguitur
et excellenter* notificatur.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. B.6.912, f. 5ra–b.
35 William of Baglione, Quaestio “Utrum primitas …”: “… licet in divinis non sit invenire
completum et incompletum, tamen aliquis modus, vel se habendi vel distinguendi, attribui-
tur uni hscil., primae personae constitutae ab innascibilitatei qui non attribuitur alteri hscil.,
Patri constituto ab paternitatei. Vel dicendum quod innascibilitas, in eo quod secundum
realem intellectum dicit originem, complete distinguit personam Patris ut habet rationem
suppositi .... a perfecto* principio egrediatur actus vel quasi actus, ideo dicitur bene quod
Pater generat quia innascibilis .... et communiter* et bene dictum est quod quia generat est
Pater.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. B.6.912, f. 5ra–b. For Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, above, at and
around n. 50; see also Walter of Bruges’ text in n. 26 above.
then, an early example of Franciscan trinitarian theology: William clearly

retains a considerable role for the relation, paternity, in the constitution of
the Father, but a major stress of his trinitarian theory is on the emanational
property, innascibility, and the primity and fontal plenitude that come
along with it.
Until recently, Eustace of Arras had received somewhat less scholarly
attention than William, but for our purposes he is far more important. He
has left a series of mostly theological questions that Brady, after careful
study, dated to the period of Eustace’ regency at Paris between 1268 and 1270.
Eustace was thus probably the successor of Walter of Bruges in the Francis-
can chair of theology, who in turn was William of Baglione’s successor. In
the spring of 1270, we can surmise that Eustace gave up his regency in order
to accompany St. Louis on the crusade from which the king never returned.36
John Pecham presumably replaced Eustace in the Franciscan Parisian chair.
We are unsure when Eustace died.
My claim for Eustace’ importance to the formation of the early Fran-
ciscan trinitarian tradition is based on one long question of his, entitled
“whether the Holy Spirit would be distinguished personally from the Son if
he were not to proceed from the Son.”37 This treatment of the counterfactual
36 On Eustace, his life and works, see most recently Delmas 2010, an impressive work that
should set study of Eustace on a new (sure) footing (see also Delmas 2007 [with an edition
of Eustace’ I Sent., d. 9, on eternity on pp. 174–233] and Delmas 2008 [with an edition of
Eustace’ disputed question De aequalitate animarum on pp. 293–321]). Delmas 2010, 173–186,
deals with Eustace on the Filioque, and the book supplements and (in some cases) supersedes
the earlier important study on Eustace’ life and work that I used in the preparation of this
chapter: Brady 1968–1969, esp. (1969); particularly on his career, see ibid., (1969) 678–692,
and note that Brady, pp. 682–689, shows some interesting parallels between Eustace and
Gerard of Abbeville, and provides evidence that Roger Marston heard Eustace in Paris. See
also on Eustace’ thought, e.g., Dales and Argerami 1986–1987, where the following evaluation
of Eustace’ ideas on the question of eternity is offered (pp. 112–113): “The problem had been
treated before by William of Durham, … by Alexander of Hales … and it would be treated in
exhaustive fashion again by Theodoric of Freiberg … but none of these authors possessed the
intellectual power of Eustace, whose questions stand as the most able medieval treatment
of the subject of which we are aware”; see also Dales 1990, esp. 118–120. Finally, it should
be noted that, through Delmas 2010 (esp. 347–365), I became aware of the existence, in ms.
Padova, Bibl. Ant. ms. 158, of a large but fragmentary commentary on I Sent. that should
be attributed to Eustace; the commentary consists of questions on dd. 1–9 (d. 9 published
in Delmas 2007, as mentioned above), and hence should contain considerable material of
interest to the present investigation.
37 “Utrum Spiritus Sanctus personaliter distingueretur a Filio si non procederet a Filio”.
Due to the centrality of this text and the fact that it has never before been printed, I include
an edition of it in the Appendix to the present book. All references in the main text are to
line numbers in that edition.
112 chapter two
question on the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit is beauti-
fully crafted, and shows an uncommon clarity of thought and expression.
But more to the point here, in this question, Eustace turns his consid-
erable powers to developing a viable alternative to the kind of position
that Thomas Aquinas took on the distinction between the Son and the
Holy Spirit, and we see the appearance of a terminology and an arsenal
of arguments—some that could well be taken from Gerard of Abbeville or
Walter of Bruges, to be sure, but much else apparently original to Eustace—
that will appear again and again, in some cases nearly verbatim.38 All of this
in a text that likely appeared at latest at the end of the 1260’s, probably only
a few years after Gerard of Abbeville had written his question on the issue,
and while Bonaventure was still alive.
As mentioned, this is a large question—more than 9000 words—, and
Eustace organizes it rather rigorously. He begins his opening arguments for
his own position with a consideration of many authoritative texts (ll. 8–
204), in particular of Augustine, Anselm, Richard of St. Victor, and (to a
much lesser extent) John Damascene. Here, Eustace lays the foundation
for what eventually will be his own view, arguing that these authoritative
texts support all of the bearing elements of that view. Eustace continues this
opening section (ll. 205–348) with arguments that are primarily rational (as
opposed to authoritative) in nature. An enormous battery of 22 arguments
follow (ll. 349–533), all of them in support of the basic Dominican nega-
tive answer to the counterfactual question and hence arguments to which
Aquinas would undoubtedly have been sympathetic.39 After summing up
the Dominican position (ll. 537–563), and rejecting it (ll. 564–609), Eustace
develops his own affirmative answer to the question (ll. 610–712), and replies
to each of the 22 arguments for the opposite view (ll. 713–894). He ends the
question with a concise summation of his position (ll. 895–911), in which he
does not neglect to remind the reader that all of this is counterfactual and
that the Greeks “err as badly as the blind” in holding that the Holy Spirit
comes from the Father alone (ll. 905–911).
Eustace boils down support for the position he is opposing to two main
arguments. The first of these is that all personal distinction in God comes
about exclusively on account of opposed relations, and since, if the Holy
Spirit did not come from the Son, there would be no opposed relations
38 See, e.g., n. 49 below, for some evidence concerning Eustace’ possible influence on John
Pecham.
39 For Aquinas’ view on the matter, see Ch. 3, § 1, below.
between them, they would not be distinct from each other (ll. 541–547; cp.
350–372). To this argument, Eustace replies by pointing out that everyone
held that these distinguishing relations were relations of origin, and, accord-
ing to Eustace, it is origin that is the cause of personal distinction in God, just
as Augustine and Richard of St. Victor maintained; relation as such merely
shows the distinction, since relation presupposes distinction in the relata
(ll. 565–573, 661–681). Thus, modifying an idea from Bonaventure,40 Eustace
draws a distinction between relations of origin, which cause the distinction
of the persons on account of origin, and mere relations, which simply show
the distinction. Indeed, when we find the saints claiming that relation con-
stitutes the persons or that it makes them distinct, Eustace insists that they
say this “by reason of the origin upon which the relations are founded and
which [the relations] indicate” (ll. 670–672). In this way, Eustace maintains
the centrality of the emanations and of origin, without having to reject out
of hand the authoritative passages that mention relation as the property
constitutive of the persons; this is what I call a marginalization strategy.
Now, according to Eustace, given that origin is the source of personal dis-
tinction, it is not true that the distinction of the persons only comes about
through opposed relations, but “rather disparate relations suffice, founded
over disparate origins” (ll. 573–576). Eustace thus pulls into the heart of his
theory of trinitarian constitution the ‘disparation’ that Gerard of Abbeville
had merely mentioned. Clearly, then, for Eustace, it is origin and emana-
tion that is the ultimate source of personal distinction, with relation as such
relegated to a secondary position.
The second of the two main arguments that his opponents use has to
do with the mode of production, and is a very early version of what I will
call in Chapter Five (§4) the “psychological argument” that Dominicans
formulated against the Franciscan position. As Eustace presents it, the
argument runs as follows: the Holy Spirit is claimed to proceed by way of
mutual love; but mutual love can only proceed from two loving mutually;
therefore, if the Holy Spirit did not come from both the Father and the Son
mutually loving each other, the Holy Spirit would not exist (ll. 548–555). In
the 1280’s, after the strong use of the psychological model becomes a basic
element in Franciscan trinitarian theology, Dominicans will routinely use
an argument of this type to show that, since you cannot love what you do
not know, divine Love (i.e., the Holy Spirit) must come from the divine Word
40 For Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, above, at and around n. 61.

114 chapter two
(the Son).41 Later Franciscans will simply reject the inference, and that is also
what Eustace of Arras does. Eustace claims at several junctures in his text
that, although in truth the Holy Spirit is mutual Love, proceeding from the
other two persons together, nevertheless the Holy Spirit could come from
the Father alone, in which case he would proceed, not as mutual Love, but as
Love, and, using a Bonaventurean term, according to “liberality” (ll. 577–587;
cf. 166–171, 258–262, 868–873, 897–899).42 Thus, Eustace notes that “having a
partner in conferring or in giving something is not a necessary condition for
liberality, only the kindness of giving (gratia dantis) is, and so, if someone
does not have a partner in conferring something, not on account of that do
they lack their liberality” (ll. 278–286). Eustace, then, claims that the Father,
on his own, can spirate the Holy Spirit by way of liberality, and although the
Holy Spirit would not then be mutual Love, he would indeed be Love. And
Eustace is absolutely clear as to the argument that serves as the foundation
for this claim: the Father cannot depend in any way on the Son, since it is
the Father who gives to the Son his being, and along with it the spirative
power. This argument is by no means original to Eustace: as we will see,
one can find a version of it in the trinitarian work of William of Auvergne
(d. 1249).43 But the argument plays an especially important role in Eustace’
question, for Eustace holds that the argument entails that the Father has
to have the spirative power in his own right, and hence has to be able on
his own to produce the Holy Spirit (e.g., ll. 29–33, 66–69, 183–187, 235–243,
273–277). It is the Son who receives all that he has from the Father, not vice
versa; therefore, the Father must be able to do alone all that the Father and
the Son actually do together. Thus, Eustace says:
It is as problematic as it can be to posit that the Father on his own account (a
se) could not spirate Love, and that [the Father] would be a person, since the
Father has in himself the absolutely perfect and actual spirative power, and
he does not have it from the Son, but rather the other way around. Thus, with
it given that the Son were not to spirate, there is nothing that would remove
from the Father the spirative force that would spirate Love who would be a
person, although he would not be spirated as the mutual Love of the Father
towards the Son. (ll. 582–587)
41 See for Aquinas’ version of this argument, Ch. 3, below, n. 13, and Ch. 5, n. 139.
42 On liberalitas in Bonaventure’s trinitarian theology, see, e.g., Hayes 1979, 54–62.
43 For William, see Ch. 6, below, at and around n. 15. On the other end of the spectrum,
someone like Gregory of Rimini will simply deny that the Father on his own would be
sufficient to spirate the Holy Spirit—for Gregory, the Son’s “contribution” to active spiration
is absolutely indispensable; see Ch. 12, below, at and around n. 260.
This second Dominican argument, then, like the first about opposed
relations, fails to convince Eustace that the Holy Spirit and the Son would
only be distinct if the former came from the latter. For Eustace, the Father
without the Son would spirate the Holy Spirit just as perfectly as we know
he does with the Son, and the Holy Spirit would be Love, although not, as
he is now, mutual love.
With his rejection of these two main arguments, Eustace believes that
he has shown that “according to the judgement of the balanced mind”
(secundum iudicium sanae mentis) the Dominican view has insurmountable
difficulties (ll. 607–609). What view will he put in its place?
… in the Father there would always be the generative and the spirative
powers, each completely perfect and actual, and hence he would produce
according to each of them, and he would not produce the same [supposite]
(as has been said) but distinct ones. This is because, if this were not the case,
the generative power and the spirative power would not perfectly exist in
the Father unless he were to generate one and spirate another, so that, just
as the generative and spirative powers are notionally distinct in the Father,
so he who would be generated and he who would be spirated are distinct,
and unless the Father then would generate and spirate, the generative and
spirative power would not be absolutely and completely perfectly in him;
indeed, he would seem already to depend on something else. On account of
this, therefore, it is to be said and firmly to be held that, even if the Holy Spirit
were not to proceed from the Son, but from the Father alone, nevertheless he
would be personally distinct from the Son. Thus, we posit, in accordance with
Anselm and Richard, that there is a double cause or reason for the distinction
between the divine persons. One is the origin or the emanation of person
from person, and in actual truth this is what makes the Son and the Holy
Spirit distinct personally .... But the other reason or cause of distinction is
the diversity or the distinction of origin and of emanation in the persons
emanating. This is because, since each emanation in the divine is perfect and
terminated to a supposite, it is necessarily the case that each is terminated to
a perfect and distinct supposite, otherwise, if the supposites were not distinct
in this way just as are the emanations, the emanations would not be actual
and perfect. And on account of all this, according to this view, the Son and
the Holy Spirit would still be distinct personally, because they would proceed
in dissimilar ways from the Father, and each one as a perfect hypostasis
corresponding to its own emanation. (ll. 618–643)
The foundation of Eustace’ view is the claim that there are two different
causes or reasons for the distinction between the divine persons. Eustace
maintains that many texts from both Anselm of Canterbury and Richard of
St. Victor clearly show that this is their view as well (e.g., ll. 102–114, 127–
136, 161–176, 702–712). What are these two causes or reasons? “The first is
that they arise in different ways, the second is that the Holy Spirit proceeds
116 chapter two
from and is spirated by the Son” (ll. 131–134), and Eustace ties this into the
language of disparate vs. opposed relations (e.g., ll. 296–307, 714–726, 886–
893) that we have met in Gerard of Abbeville. Thus, the Son and the Holy
Spirit are distinct because they come from the Father in different ways,
the Son by way of nature, and the Holy Spirit, as we saw above, “by way of
love and liberality” (ll. 803–805, 897–899); they are also distinct because the
former spirates the latter, and hence there are opposed relations between
them. Drawing a conclusion loosely related to a position of Gerard of
Abbeville’s (n. 5 above), Eustace claims that, since the first of these causes or
reasons for distinction (i.e., different ways of emanating) does not depend
on the second (i.e. opposed relations based on the Son’s spirating the Holy
Spirit), then with the second cause removed, the first would still bring about
distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit (e.g., ll. 134–136, 707–708,
751–755).
All of this is predicated upon a particular view of the Father, one that we
have already seen explicitly articulated by Eustace. As mentioned, accord-
ing to Eustace, the Father cannot depend on the Son in any way; hence the
Father on his own must have perfect and absolutely actualized spirative
power, and as a result, since divine emanations are always terminated to a
perfect supposite (since otherwise the emanations would be imperfect), the
Father on his own can perfectly spirate the Holy Spirit (ll. 177–217). Indeed,
as is clear at the beginning of the text quoted above (ll. 618–626; cp. 177–
184, 686–690), Eustace formalizes this line of argumentation through a type
of reductio ad absurdum: the Father has perfectly the generative and spira-
tive powers; but if we suppose that the Father could not, on the basis of the
generative and spirative powers, produce two complete persons, that would
imply that these powers were not perfectly in the Father, against hypothesis,
and would, in fact, entail that the Father was dependent upon another.44 For
Eustace, the impossibility of the Father depending on anything else is pre-
cisely the reason that the Father all on his own must perfectly possess these
productive powers. Although Eustace does not go into depth on the status
of the Father in the constitution of the Trinity, nevertheless, what he does
say shows clearly that he was using typically Franciscan ideas descended
from Bonaventure and exhibited in Walter of Bruges. Thus, according to
Eustace, the Father has the double power of production on his own account
(a se ipso; ll. 195–200); the Father is the source of all divinity and this is by
44 Henry of Ghent will develop this reductio ad absurdum; see Ch. 4, below, at and around
nn. 24–25.
reason of the fontal plenitude in him, and this in turn is by reason of

his primity (ll. 212–216, 229–232, 845–852). Given the fact that Eustace
claims, as we saw above, that the Son proceeds from the Father by way of
nature, while the Holy Spirit by way of love or liberality, it is no surprise
that at points Eustace identifies the generative and spirative powers in
the Father with nature and will, respectively (e.g., ll. 313–328). Against
this view, of course, Aquinas had argued that nature and will are merely
rationally distinct and hence cannot be the source of the real distinction
between the persons. Taking a leaf out of Gerard of Abbeville’s book (n. 8
above), Eustace responds that “nature and will are one in being, but they
are diverse or distinct in being a source” (natura et voluntas sint unum in
essendo, sunt tamen diversa sive distincta in principiando; ll. 325–326, also
792–797, 824–835). This particular formulation will appear in later thinkers
like John Pecham and Nicholas of Ockham.45 Just as importantly, Eustace
is here clearly speaking for the emanational trinitarian theology that is
most characteristic of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition. On account of
his primity, the Father is able to emanate each of the persons as distinct,
and it is the different ways in which the emanated persons originate, the
one being born by way of nature, the other proceeding by way of will or love
or liberality, that would then be constitutive of those persons. Origin and
emanation is the central concept in Eustace’ trinitarian thought.
With this said, Eustace wants to reject neither that opposed relations
play a role in the distinction of the person nor, attendantly, that the Holy
Spirit does in truth come from the Son. Indeed, Eustace gladly admits that
several of the arguments that he presented for the Dominican position prove
that the Son must spirate the Holy Spirit (ll. 735–743, 798–805, 814–818).
Thus, it is not just a truth of the faith that the Son and the Holy Spirit have
“distinction with the reference (habitudo) that is founded over the fact that
one person proceeds from another” (ll. 698–701), rather it is in some sense
amenable to proof. Nevertheless, Eustace is absolutely clear that one can
take the Greek position for the sake of argument, and ask the counterfactual
question: would the Son and the Holy Spirit still be distinct if the former
did not come from the latter? If you do that, the answer is affirmative:
they would be distinct on the basis of their different ways of emanating
from the Father. But this is entirely counterfactual. Eustace underlines the
counterfactual nature of his investigation many times, and he often does
this through his employment of the language of the art of obligations, in
45 For Pecham, see nn. 66–67 below; for Nicholas, n. 135.

118 chapter two
particular when he talks about the positio, the hypothesis under discussion
(i.e., that the Son not spirate the Holy Spirit), being given per impossibile
(ll. 43, 112, 783–784, 800, 820–821, 842–843, 905, also 874). This is the first ex-
plicit use of positio impossibilis terminology that I have found in the univer-
sity discussion of this issue, but we will see it used extensively and in highly
intricate ways in the later trinitarian discussion.46 Eustace, however, also
emphasizes the counterfactual nature of his investigation by utilizing what
I have called nested distinctions. What Gerard of Abbeville had called “ger-
manity”, Eustace, adopting Bonaventurean terminology,47 calls “reference”
(habitudo), and this reference is founded on the opposition of relations that
does in fact obtain between the Son and the Holy Spirit because the Holy
Spirit in truth proceeds from the Son (ll. 886–893, 900–905).48 Moreover, in
a formulation reminiscent of Walter of Bruges and his distinction between
hypostatic and personal being (nn. 25–29 above), Eustace claims that the
distinction of the divine persons “is, as it were, consummated and com-
pleted and perfected in this reference (habitudo)” (ll. 735–736). At another
point, Eustace says that the reference between the Son and the Holy Spirit,
which arises because the latter comes from the former, “is perfectly fitting
(congruentissima) for divine being, and perfective in the highest degree of
the personal distinction between them” (ll. 902–903). And this is for Eustace
all important: if the Son and the Holy Spirit were distinct because they each
came from the Father alone in irreducibly distinct ways, as the Greeks say
they do, the distinction between them would not be the most perfect pos-
sible, “and on account of this [the Greeks] err terribly, not noticing that in
the divine it is necessarily the case that the persons have, along with distinc-
tion, the highest germanity and reference” (ll. 909–911). The divine persons
must have the most perfect degree of personal distinction—this is abso-
lutely fitting or suitable or right for them—and that degree is only given by
opposed relations. Thus, it is truly impossible for the Holy Spirit not to come
from the Son, according to Eustace; and yet if we set that impossibility aside,
the emanational nature of the divine properties entails that they would still
be distinct persons on the basis of their different ways of emanating from
the Father. Eustace, like everyone conceding the affirmative answer to the
46 See, e.g., John Pecham, at and around nn. 58–65 below, and further throughout the
present book.
47 For Bonaventure’s use of the term habitudo, see Ch. 1, above, at, e.g., n. 32.
48 Eustace does use the term germanitas, but he uses it as a broad term that encompasses
both the relation of opposition between the Son and the Holy Spirit, given the latter comes
from the former, and the relation of disparation between them if they were both to come in
different ways from the Father; see, e.g., Appendix, ll. 874–881.
counterfactual question, was engaged in a balancing act: on the one hand,

the Filioque is strictly true, and the Son and the Holy Spirit have opposed
relations between them, but, on the other, it could counterfactually be
false, since the persons could be distinct on the basis of their emanational
properties.
Eustace’ question pulls together on this one issue a great number of the
most important elements that will characterize the Franciscan trinitarian
tradition well into the fourteenth century. Eustace makes use of the Father’s
primity and the concomitant ability for the Father on his own to emanate
the Son and the Holy Spirit perfectly. He makes use of nested distinctions in
order to explain the difference between disparate emanational distinction
and opposed relational distinction. And, at the most basic level, Eustace
repeatedly stresses the priority of emanation over relation in the trinitarian
constitution, and he does this explicitly in response to the Dominican view
on the matter. Finally, Eustace appears clearly to be reifying Bonaventure’s
conceptual stress on the emanations. For Eustace, origin and emanation is
the source of distinction between the persons: it is the source of distinction
in God’s trinitarian reality now when the Holy Spirit proceeds directly from
the Son, and it would still be the source of distinction if each of them
proceeded in his own way from the Father alone. That emanation is in God
and has constitutive force is absolutely unmistakable here, and this is why,
at least on a counterfactual plane, indispensable emanational distinction
is nested inside “dispensable” relational distinction. Indeed, it is tempting
to see in this flashpoint, discussing a situation that all agreed was strictly
counterfactual (and Eustace himself said could be proven not to obtain),
a vehicle for communicating (in this case) the priority of emanations over
relations. The answer that one gave to this question showed with great
clarity whether a theologian conceptualized the Trinity in an emanational
or a relational way, and consequently to which trinitarian tradition he
belonged. This is undoubtedly one reason why the issue becomes such an
important part of both trinitarian traditions, and why the answers become
relatively standard. We can see how the issue fits into the larger Franciscan
scheme by examining the trinitarian thought of John Pecham.
4. John Pecham
On the basis of the material that is available to us today, it seems that the
central figure in the early Franciscan trinitarian tradition was John Pecham
(d. 1292). Clearly, Pecham may have been influenced by Eustace of Arras and
120 chapter two
the cogent synthesis of a Franciscan position on the issue of the distinction

between the Son and the Holy Spirit that Eustace appears to have created.49
Nevertheless, Pecham has to be counted as the more significant figure. In
his Sentences commentary, read at Paris probably just before 1270, Pecham
shares some characteristics with Eustace: a sophisticated terminology, a ver-
itable explosion in the number of arguments used, and a decisiveness in
the defense of these positions that was nowhere to be found in Walter of
Bruges. In contrast to Eustace, however, Pecham applies these in defense of
the entire complex of positions that we have been tracing; thus, in addition
to the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, Pecham discusses
at length the Father’s constitution and innascibility. Moreover, Pecham, in
trinitarian theology as in many other areas, was obviously a determined
opponent of Thomas Aquinas, quoting the Angelic Doctor at times verba-
tim. With Pecham, the entire range of early Franciscan trinitarian theology
took form. Furthermore, even though only two copies of Pecham’s I Sen-
tences survive, his ideas certainly influenced thinkers coming after him, as
we will see was the case with William de la Mare, with Matthew of Aquas-
parta, with Nicholas of Ockham, and, more importantly still, with Roger
Marston, and through Marston he influenced others, including John Duns
Scotus.50
That Pecham played such an important role should come as no sur-
prise: he was one of the most significant Franciscan figures in the entire
period between Bonaventure and Scotus. His importance to the intellectual
debate has been confirmed in several studies in recent years, which doc-
ument the contributions he made to, e.g., the discussions on the eternity
of the world, on proofs for God’s existence, and on divine illumination.51
Moreover, Pecham came to have political clout. After his regency at Paris
(probably spring 1270 to spring 1271), during which he clashed both with sec-
49 Eustace appears to have influenced Pecham in other areas. For example, Richard Dales
(1990, 121) claims that Pecham had “apparently read and profited from the works of both
Bonaventure and Eustace of Arras” on the topic of the eternity of the world. There are some
verbal overlaps between Eustace’ question on the distinction between the Son and the Holy
Spirit and similar texts of Pecham; see examples in nn. 56, 59, 66 below.
50 For Pecham’s influence on de la Mare, see below, nn. 100, 107, 108, 152; for Nicholas of
Ockham, see below, n. 59; for verbatim or near verbatim copying of Pecham by Marston, see
below nn. 152, 154, 156, 157, 160, 168, 173, 174, 175, 177; for looser links to Aquasparta, see below,
nn. 112, 120, 125, 126.
51 See, e.g., Dales 1990, 120–128; Dales 1995, esp. 126–132; Matthews 2001, esp. 184–185;
Burr 1984, 40–46; Marrone 2001, vol. 1, part 2. Boureau 1999 is the most substantial recent
contribution to the literature on Pecham.
ular theologians over mendicant privileges and with Thomas Aquinas over
apostolic poverty and the eternity of the world, Pecham held the Francis-
can chair in theology at Oxford from 1272 until 1275, when he was elected
head of the Franciscan province of England. He retained the latter posi-
tion until appointed lecturer at the Papal school in Rome from 1277–1279;
from 1279 until his death, he was in England again as Archbishop of Can-
terbury. In Canterbury, it is well known that Pecham continued his active
resistance to generally Thomistic thought, most notably in the condemna-
tion and excommunication of Richard Knapwell OP for breaching Robert
Kilwardby’s 1277 proscription against defending the unicity of substantial
form; in letters from his time as Archbishop, Pecham also clearly expresses
the view that the Franciscans and the Dominicans had incompatible intel-
lectual outlooks.52 His trinitarian theology as found in his Sentences com-
mentary is further confirmation that this was an opinion he held for the
largest part of his career.53
The best place to start in giving an impression of Pecham’s trinitarian
thought is with the counterfactual Filioque question of whether the distinc-
tion between the Son and the Holy Spirit would remain if the latter did not
proceed from the former and the related issue of the distinction between
the emanations, generation and spiration. In this context, Pecham’s debt to
52 In 1285 Pecham wrote several letters that clearly contrast the Franciscans, who put
philosophy to work in the service of theology and keep it in step with Augustine and the
Fathers, with unnamed others (i.e., Aquinas) and their untrustworthy and very recent philo-
sophical innovations; for the texts, see Pecham’s Registrum epistolarum, ed. Martin, vol. 3
(1885), pp. 871–872, 896–902, and Ehrle 1889, 181–186. For different, but not contradictory,
takes on the ideological divide that comes to expression in Pecham’s letters, see Matthews
2001, 199–200, and Marrone 2001, 14–15; both see the philosophical divide as an expression
of deeper “theological and religious priorities” (Marrone 2001, 15). On Pecham and Knapwell,
see Roensch 1964, 34–39, and Boureau 1999, esp. pp. 209–213, 293–294; Boureau’s book is a
crucial study of Pecham’s influence on the intellectual debate in England during his primacy.
53 On Pecham (and his quodlibetal questions), see, e.g., Etzkorn 2006, 135–141. On
Pecham’s Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, pp. 51–52 (a third manuscript of Pecham’s I
Sent. [Torino, Bibl. Universitatis, I.V.43] was destroyed sometime after 1883 [see Melani 1948,
131 n. 1]; thanks to Francie Roberts for making me aware of this). All text from the Sent. com-
mentary quoted below is from a preliminary edition from the two surviving manuscripts; I
have suppressed nearly all variant readings. Prof. Timothy B. Noone of the Catholic Univer-
sity of America is currently preparing an edition of Pecham’s commentary, which will be an
extremely welcome addition to the texts available from the period. I will make occasional
use of Pecham’s quodlibetal questions, edited by Etzkorn and Delorme. Note that Girard
J. Etzkorn has recently edited Pecham’s disputed questions De verbo, but of the five questions
only the third (“Utrum Verbum in divinis sit proprium vel commune”, Pecham, Quaestiones
disputatae, pp. 19–21) is at all relevant to the present study.
122 chapter two
Eustace of Arras seems quite evident, as does Pecham’s own stress on

certain issues. Pecham, like Eustace, supports without the slightest trace of
hesitation the view that the Son and the Holy Spirit would be distinct even
if the Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit:
Although some say that in the divine there is distinction through opposition
of relations alone, and not through disparation, and thus that, with the
emanation of the Holy Spirit removed from the Son, [the Holy Spirit] would
not be distinct from him, nevertheless it seems more probable to others, just
as authoritative passages of the saints expressly say, that since all that the Son
has he accepts through being born, so that, with the Son set aside, the Father
has the fullness of the essence, so also [with the Son set aside the Father
would have] the fullness of the spirative power. Therefore, with it posited
as the Greeks say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, even
though there would remain neither their mutual germanity (germanitas)
nor everything that suitably accompanies (congruentia concomitatur) their
connection, nevertheless there would remain a sufficiency of distinction,
because the Spirit is distinct from the Son by a twofold reason, as we have
seen. For just as with it posited per impossibile that in the divine there
would be only one hypostasis, while still the essence would be fully present
(consisteret) in it, where nevertheless it would not have everything that
suitably accompanies (congruentia concomitatur) personal distinction, so it
is to be understood in the matter at hand.54
This passage contains in a nutshell most of the salient features of Pecham’s

substantial discussion on this topic. Most importantly, without any of the
hesitation that we saw in Walter of Bruges, Pecham supports the position
54 John Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (“Posito per impossibile quod hSpiritus Sanctusi non pro-
cedat a Filio, utrum distinguatur ab ipso”): “Responsio: quamvis aliqui dicant quod in divinis
sit distinctio per solam relationis oppositionem et non per disparationem, et per hoc quod
circumscripta emanatione Spiritus Sancti a Filio non habet ab eo distinctionem, probabil-
ius tamen videtur aliis, sicut auctoritates sanctorum dicunt expresse, quod, cum Filius non
habeat nisi quod nascendo accepit, sicut circumscripto Filio Pater habet plenitudinem essen-
tiae, sic et plenitudinem potentiae spirativae. Quamvis ergo, posito ut Graeci dicunt Spiritum
Sanctum a solo Patre procedere, non remaneret germanitas eorum mutua nec omnis con-
gruentia quae connexionem illam concomhiitatur (mss.: concommutatur), maneret tamen
distinctionis sufficientia, quia duplici ratione [scilicet per modum alium processionis et per
oppositionem relationis add. mg. F] distinguitur Spiritus a Filio, ut visum est. Sicut enim pos-
ito per impossibile quod in divinis esset sola una hypostasis, adhuc tamen essentia plenarie
in illa consisteret, ubi tamen deesset congruentia quae personalem distinctionem concomi-
tatur, sic in proposito intelligendum.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 41ra; Napoli, BN,
VII C 2, ff. 37vb–38ra. Pecham’s Quodl. II (De Natali), q. 5 (disputed at Paris probably at Advent
1270—see Etzkorn’s introduction to the edition, p. 24*) is a much less detailed discussion on
the same topic (“Utrum si non procederet a Filio, Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur ab ipso”)
and supporting the same position; see Pecham’s Quodlibeta quatuor (ed. Etzkorn), pp. 86–
88.
that the Son and the Holy Spirit would still be distinct from one another if
each came from the Father alone. That Pecham knew Gerard of Abbeville’s
treatment of the matter (or the treatment of a very close follower of Ger-
ard’s) seems very likely: the terminological overlap is too close to be coinci-
dental. Pecham says that, if we accept as true the Greek claim that the Holy
Spirit does not come from the Son, it is indeed the case that the mutual “ger-
manity” (germanitas—the same term Gerard used in the same way) that
binds them together would no longer remain, but nonetheless there would
be a sufficient ground for their distinction. That ground—again borrowing a
term that we saw used in a positive way in Gerard and in Eustace—is the dis-
paration (disparatio) between their ways of emanating.55 Moreover, Pecham
appeals here to two of the major points in Eustace of Arras’ treatment: that
the Son accepts all that he has from the Father, and therefore the Father
must have the spirative power perfectly on his own, and, second, that there
is a twofold reason for the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit,
namely, opposition and disparation. Just on this basis we would seem to
have good reason to believe that the thought of Gerard and of Eustace has
made an impact here.
How does Pecham explain why we should accept that disparation can
bring about distinction in God? His answer begins with his view that the
difference of disparation is prior to and more simple a difference than is the
difference of opposition; but, since it is most appropriate for what is prior
and more simple to be found in the first principle, if we admit distinction
through relative opposition, then all the more should we admit distinction
through disparation.56 So much weight does Pecham, like Eustace of Arras,
put on his view that the disparation between the emanations could be a
source of the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit that he repeats
at several junctures the claim that we saw in the quotation above (at n. 54)
55 For germanitas in Gerard, see n. 4 above; for disparatio, see n. 8.

56 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Item, prior et simplicior est differentia disparationis quam
oppositionis. Quod patet, quia disparatio est diversorum generum, oppositio est differ-
entium rerum in genere existentium; praeterea, disparatio esse potest partium eiusdem
subiecti seu existentium in eodem subiecto*, oppositio non. Ita quod, si prior et simplicior
est disparatio quam hoppositionisi differentia, ergo magis convenit primo principio. Ergo si
in divinis est distinctio per oppositionem relativam, multo fortius esse poterit per dispara-
tionem. Sed, si Spiritus Sanctus a solo Patre procederet, salva esset emanationum dispara-
tio; ergo et* posset esse emanantium distinctio.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 40vb;
Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 37vb. Compare the related argument in Walter of Bruges, n. 20 above,
and Eustace of Arras, Appendix, ll. 296–307. Given the late date of the reworking of Walter’s
I Sent. (around 1270), it is possible that the “others” Walter refers to as giving this argument
are Eustace and/or Pecham.
124 chapter two
that “the Spirit is distinct from the Son by a twofold reason (duplici ratione)”,
i.e. both by disparation and by opposition.57 Thus, Pecham endorses outright
the nested distinctions that we have met several times already: even if there
were no opposition between the Son and the Holy Spirit, i.e. even if the
Holy Spirit did not come from the Son but only from the Father alone, the
difference of disparation that arises from the different ways in which the
Son and the Holy Spirit come from the Father would suffice to maintain
their distinction from each other. Moreover, when dealing with this twofold
source of personal distinction, Pecham, like Eustace, makes very early use in
this trinitarian context of impossible positio from the ars obligatoria. We will
return to this when we deal with Henry of Ghent, who made it a cornerstone
of his discussion of the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit,58
but, in brief, positio impossibilis allowed for the positing of assumptions that
could never obtain in reality, but nonetheless were not logically impossible.
They could be used, then, to discuss physical impossibilities—Pecham
discusses positing per impossibile heaviness and coldness to be one and the
same quality that nevertheless would have the characteristics of both59—
or “doctrinal impossibilities” ruled out by the Catholic faith.60 The Son’s not
spirating the Holy Spirit is an impossibility of the latter kind, and on this
57 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Ad secundum dicendum quod ex insufficienti procedit, quia
Spiritus Sanctus distinguitur a Patre non tantum quia oritur a Patre, sed quia sic oritur per
spirationem. Et cum arguit: “ergo si non oritur ab eo non distinguitur”, argumentum tenet
tantum ratione terminorum et non simpliciter, quoniam in Filio non tenet illatio eo quod,
sicut dictum est, duplex est ratio distinguendi. Unde est ibi paralogismus consequentis.”
Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 41ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 38ra. The argument being
responded to is ibid.: “Item, Spiritus Sanctus distinguitur a Patre, quia procedit ab ipso, nec
alia ratione. Ergo circumscripta processione a Patre, non distinguitur a Patre. Ergo eadem
ratione, si non procedit a Filio, non distinguitur ab ipso.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854,
f. 40vb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 37vb.
58 See Ch. 4, below, at and around nn. 28–32.
59 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Et quod dicit quod relationes differunt sicut ea super quae
fundantur, dicendum quod hoc tenet tantum in creaturis, ubi limitatae sunt causae ad deter-
minatos effectus; unde sicut ubi voluntas et natura sunt diversa principia, possunt in opera-
tiones realiter differentes, sic etiam ubi sunt idem essentialiter idem possunt quoniam virtus
unita plus est infinita. Exemplum potest tale dari: si per impossibile eadem esset qualitas
gravitas et frigiditas, ita tamen quod vere utriusque essentia salveretur ab eadem quali-
tate sola ratione differente, fieret motus localis ad centrum et alteratio[nis] ad frigidum*.”
Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 41rb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 38ra. Compare this pas-
sage to Eustace of Arras in Appendix, ll. 329–338. This passage in Pecham is lifted verbatim
by Nicholas of Ockham in his discussion of the counterfactual question, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2
(Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 13va), and part of it is used by William de la Mare (see
n. 100 below).
60 ‘Doctrinal impossibility’ is Simo Knuuttila’s term; see Ch. 4, below, at n. 30.
basis Pecham uses positio impossibilis both to justify and to explain his view
that the Holy Spirit and the Son would still be distinct if the former did not
come from the latter. Thus, Pecham presents an objection to his view that
relies on a quotation from Anselm claiming that, if the Holy Spirit did not
come from the Son or vice versa, then either God is not one, or the Son is
not God, or the Holy Spirit is not God, and thus there would be only two
persons, which is absolutely impossible; therefore, the position is entirely
ruled out.61 To this Pecham replies:
… Anselm’s inference proceeds by presupposing what is most suitable for (ex
praesuppositione summae convenientiae) divine being, and this is impossible
not to be found in the divine. But the solution to this question is in a positio
made per impossibile, since where there are two reasons, setting aside the one,
with the other diversity still assumed, [the distinction between the Son and
the Holy Spirit] would remain … therefore the Holy Spirit is distinct from the
Son with the hypothesis assumed; but Anselm argues according to the truth.62
According to Pecham, it should be no surprise that Anselm argued that
the Holy Spirit comes from the Son: we know on the basis of the faith
that this is in fact the way things are in God, and Anselm was arguing in
accordance with this. Nevertheless, nothing prevents us from assuming per
impossibile as a counterfactual that the Holy Spirit does not come from
the Son and seeing what would follow, and in that case, the “prior and
more simple difference” of disparation would still suffice to make the Holy
Spirit distinct from the Son.63 Given, as we have seen, that there are two
reasons for the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, one more
basic than the other, then with the less basic one removed, the distinction
between the persons would remain. Thus, positio impossibilis plays a large
role in Pecham’s trinitarian discussion64—this is something that he may
61 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Item, sic arguit Anselmus: si Filius non procedit a Spiritu
Sancto nec e converso, aut non est unus solus Deus, aut Filius non est Deus, aut Spiritus
Sanctus non est Deus. Ergo posito quod Spiritus Sanctus non procedat a Filio, sequitur
aliquod dictorum inconvenientium, ex quo sequitur in Deo esse duas personas tantum. Ergo,
etc.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 41ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 37vb.
62 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… illatio Anselmi procedit ex praesuppositione summae con-
venientiae* esse divini, quam impossibile est in divinis non reperiri. Sed huius quaestionis
solutio est in positione facta per impossibile, quoniam ubi duae rationes sunt, altera circum-
scripta, adhuc altera diversitate supposita esset salva … distinguitur ergo Spiritus Sanctus
a Filio supposita hypothesi; Anselmus autem arguit ex veritate.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr.
G.4.854, f. 41rb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 38ra.
63 For “prior and more simple difference” see n. 56 above.
64 A further explicit use of positio impossibilis is found in Pecham’s I Sent., d. 27, pars
1, q. 2 (“Quaeritur de secundo utrum, scilicet, ideo sit Pater quia generat, vel e converso,
126 chapter two
have picked up from Eustace and developed further, and something that
he appears to have passed on to the later thirteenth- and early fourteenth-
century debate. We will see that the legitimate use of positio impossibilis
in this trinitarian context becomes a major point of contention between
Franciscans and Dominicans already by the end of the thirteenth cen-
tury.65
As we have seen, Thomas Aquinas, adhering strictly to the principle
known as “Anselm’s rule”—that personal distinction in God arises only
from opposition of relations—, had categorically denied that the Holy
Spirit could be distinct from the Son unless the Holy Spirit comes from
the Son. For Aquinas, if the opposition between the Son and the Holy
Spirit, itself founded upon the procession of the Holy Spirit from both
the Father and the Son, were removed, then all basis for the distinction
between the second and third persons would likewise be removed. As a
corollary of this, Aquinas had maintained that the emanations are distinct
just because generation is the emanation of one person from one person,
while spiration is the emanation of one person from two persons. Thus, for
Aquinas, the arrangement between the persons is the defining feature of
the emanations, and this is part of his conceptual ordering: relations prior
to persons prior to emanations. John Pecham’s treatment of these issues
involves a complete rejection of specifically Aquinas’ view, with Pecham
focusing on Aquinas’ claim that the emanations are distinct on the basis
of the arrangement between the persons. Thus, Pecham argues through
counterexample, pointing out that the Father comes from no one, and yet
ideo generet quia est Pater”): “Ad verbum Anselmi dicendum quod haec propositio “si Pater
haberet Patrem” etc. opposita includit, quia non est intelligibile quod in divinis sit plus quam
una paternitas. Tenet igitur consequentia, non quia genitus posset generare, sed quia per
impossibile si habens Patrem gigneret, esset tamen alius a Filio sicut ex hac etiam “tantum
Pater est” sequuntur opposita.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81rb–va; Napoli, BN, VII C
2, f. 67ra. The argument comes in reply to the following argument supporting a generally
Thomistic point of view, that the Father generates through paternity (and see below, n. 86, for
Pecham’s further response to this Thomistic view); ibid.: “Item, in omni supposito agente est
aliqua forma, quae est ratio actus eliciendi determinata. Ergo, si Pater gignit, aut per formam
quae est elicita, et hoc non, aut per innascibilitatem, et hoc non quia innascibilitas privat
generationem, ergo non est ratio generationis, quia etiam* dicit Anselmus, De processione
Spiritus Sancti: “si Pater haberet Patrem, alius* tamen* esset a Filio”, ergo et haberet Filium
et etiam si innascibilis non esset. Ergo non restat nisi ut per paternitatem gignet.” Firenze,
BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 66vb. Cf. Anselm, De processione Spiritus
Sancti (Opera Omnia, vol. 2), pp. 18627–1871.
65 See, e.g., Ch. 5, below, esp. § 4 (the “highest impossibility argument”); Ch. 7, esp. §1, at
and around nn. 37–44 (on Hervaeus Natalis); and Ch. 8, §2B (on Robert Cowton and Thomas
of Sutton).
is distinct from the other two persons. How can it be maintained, then,
that being from one and being from two are the defining factors in the
distinction between the emanations and, by extension, the second and third
persons? Pecham maintains instead that being distinct is a more primitive
property than is being from one or being from two, and he generalizes this
in the following way: although we can legitimately deduce that A and B
are distinct, given that A comes from one thing, and B comes from two
things, nevertheless this inference is non-convertible, i.e. I cannot deduce
that, given there are two distinct things, their distinction is based on one
being from one and the other being from two. For Pecham, then, as we have
seen, the Son and the Holy Spirit would be distinct even if the Holy Spirit
proceeded from the Father alone; the one being from one while the other
is from two is the basis neither of their distinction nor of the distinction
between their emanations.66
In support of his position, Aquinas had sought to rule out a possible
alternative—that the emanations were distinct on the basis of their sources
in the Father, nature and will—by arguing that the merely rationally distinct
nature and will cannot be the source of really distinct persons, since the
source cannot be less strong than the effect. Pecham flatly denies Aquinas’
claim. Appealing to a distinction that we saw Gerard of Abbeville and
Eustace of Arras use, Pecham maintains that nature and will are the same
“in terms of the way in which they exist, but not in terms of the way in
which they act as a source (in ratione essendi, sed non in ratione princip-
iandi)”. Thus, “since there is truly nature and truly will in the Father, it is
66 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Item, si non distinguitur Spiritus Sanctus a Filio, non
procederet ab ipso; ergo per hoc solum differt ab eo: quod hic est ab uno, ille a duobus.
Contra quod sic: sequitur ‘hic est ab uno, ille a duobus, ergo distinguuntur*’; et non sequitur
e converso*, quia Pater a nullo* est, et tamen distinguitur ab aliis. Ergo prius est distingui
quam esse ab uno et a duobus. Ergo, circumscripto hoc quod est esse ab uno vel a duobus,
adhuc manet inter personas divinas distinctio.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 40vb;
Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 37vb. See the related argument in Eustace of Arras, Appendix, ll. 339–
348. Aquinas could respond, of course, that Pecham is confusing here personal distinction
(i.e., the Father’s distinction) with emanational distinction, and since an emanation must
come from something, Pecham’s counterexample misses the mark.
For the generalization of the argument, see Pecham, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3 (“Utrum generatio
et spiratio realiter distinguantur”): “Responsio: sunt aliqui qui dicunt generationem et pro-
cessionem non differre realiter, sed per hoc tantum: quia generatio est ab uno, processio a
duobus, nec per modum naturae et voluntatis, quia natura et voluntas in divinis idem sunt.
Sed hoc supra est improbatum, quia prius est distingui quam esse ab uno et a duobus, cum ab
ipso non convertatur consequentia*; et hoc est contra auctoritates expresse hdicentes quodi
natura et voluntas non distinguuntur in essendo sed in principiando.” Firenze, BNC, conv.
soppr. G.4.854, f. 44va–b; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 40rb.
128 chapter two
required that each has the operation that suits it, i.e. that each is the basis
of an operation. Hence, the Father can elicit one operation from the prop-
erty of nature and another from the property of will.”67 Indeed, according to
Pecham, to deny, as Thomas Aquinas did, that nature and will play the deci-
sive role in the distinction between the emanations runs entirely counter to
the statements of the saints, who claim that the emanation of the Son is
by way of nature and the emanation of the Holy Spirit by way of love. For
Pecham, and for much of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition up to the sec-
ond decade of the fourteenth century, the statements of the saints could
only be explained by maintaining that it is intrinsic to the emanation of the
Son that it is a natural emanation, and what this meant was that its source
is the divine nature as it exists in the Father. Correspondingly, the same is
true of the emanation of the Holy Spirit: that it is voluntary is intrinsic to
it, and this is because its source is the will as it exists in the Father (and the
Son). For the Franciscans, the distinction of the emanations that Aquinas
proposed was not based on any characteristic intrinsic to the emanations
themselves, but was rather based on extrinsic resemblance. Pecham sums
up nicely the difference between the two views when he says: “the emana-
tions differ on their own account (ex se) and not only because the Son is
from one, the Holy Spirit from two.”68 Against Aquinas, then, Pecham uses
an argument that will become standard in the Franciscan trinitarian tra-
dition right through John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol: on Aquinas’ view,
being natural would not be proper to, i.e. an intrinsic feature of, the Son’s
emanation, being natural would instead be “appropriated” to it through
some kind of external resemblance or metaphor. Thus, if generation is gen-
eration simply because it is the emanation of one from one, then its sta-
tus as “natural”, according to Pecham and the Franciscans, is based on its
67 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Et quod arguit, quia idem sunt natura et voluntas, verum
est in ratione essendi, sed non in ratione principiandi, cum enim in Patre sit vere natura et
vere voluntas, oportet utraque habere operationem sibi convenientem, id est esse rationem
operandi. Unde Pater ex proprietate naturae potest unam operationem elicere et ex propri-
etate voluntatis aliam.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 41rb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 38ra.
See also the second quotation in n. 66 above. For Gerard of Abbeville’s use of the phrase
“natura et voluntas idem sunt in essendo, sed differunt in ratione principii in producendo”,
see n. 8 above, and for other uses of the phrase, see the references in n. 135 below.
68 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Item, Damascenus, lib. I, cap. 8: etsi enim* Spiritus Sanctus
ex Patre procedit, sed non generabiliter sed processibiliter, alius modus est existentia hic
incomprehensibilis sicut Filii generatio. Ergo ex se differunt emanationes, et non tantum
quia Filius ab uno, Spiritus Sanctus a duobus. Ergo etc.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854,
f. 44vb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 37va.
resemblance to the way, e.g., a child comes from a mother or a fire can be
lit from another fire. This is an appropriated or metaphorical understand-
ing of generation, according to Pecham and later Franciscans, and must
be rejected precisely for that reason. Again, they hold that, on Aquinas’
view, it would not be proper to the Holy Spirit’s emanation to be by way
of love or by way of the will, rather this would be through appropria-
tion. If the emanation of the Holy Spirit is called “voluntary” or “by way
of love” because in it one person comes from two persons, in the way
that love comes from the concordant wills of two human beings, then for
the Franciscans this was mere metaphor and had to be rejected. Pecham
goes so far as to say that this view of Aquinas’ approaches heresy.69 As
Pecham says often, the saints had assured us that the Son’s emanation is
natural, and hence it is not merely like a natural production; the saints
had also assured us that the Holy Spirit’s emanation is voluntary, and
hence it does not merely resemble a voluntary emanation. This argument,
and the use of the term ‘appropriation’ in this specific context, seem to
have first been formulated in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition by John
Pecham.
Summing all this up, Pecham argues that Aquinas, in fact, got things
backwards:
It must be said therefore that [the emanations] differ really, because they are
differing origins of differing persons; therefore the emanations differ in and of
themselves (se ipsis) formally, but they have this from the fecundity of nature
69 Pecham, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3: “Item, si per hoc differunt tantum, quod iste ab uno,
ille a duobus, ergo emanatio Filii non est per modum naturae plus quam emanatio Spir-
itus Sancti nisi per appropriationem. Similiter nec e converso emanatio Spiritus Sancti
erit per modum amoris nisi appropriative, nec Spiritus Sanctus erit amor proprie. Si ergo
hoc est haereticum dicere, praedicta positio non est ab haeresi multum remota.” Firenze,
BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 44vb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 40rb. Pecham, and later Roger
Marston (see n. 174 below), use the term appropriatio, but the more popular term, used by,
e.g., Scotus (Ch. 6, n. 135)and Auriol (Ch. 9, n. 100), will be metaphorice, i.e. the Domini-
cans have a “metaphorical” understanding of the emanations. Interesting in this regard,
is that Durand of St. Pourçain will use the term appropriatio to describe the use of the
term verbum as applied to the Son; see below, Ch. 7, esp. at and around nn. 72–76. See
also Walter Chatton’s extensive use of appropriation: Ch. 11, §1C. On appropriation, see
the studies in Mühlen 1965, Châtillon 1974, and Poirel 2002, esp. 280–282, 345–368; Poirel
(p. 280) describes appropriated names like so: “… les noms «appropriés» … visent certes
une des personnes et une seule, mais de façon oblique, par l’emploi d’un nom commun,
également applicable aux trois, mais dont le sens est comme provisoirement restreint à
cette personne en raison d’ une affinité, d’ une convenance plus grande entre ce nom com-
mun et ce qui la définit.” See also Aquinas’ explanation of appropriation, Ch. 3, below,
n. 27.
130 chapter two
and of will—I would not say causally, but by way of origin (originaliter), not
as things coming into being (orientes), but as ways of coming into being (modi
oriendi). And the reason that generation is from one alone is that it is by way
of nature, for it is on account of their imperfection that it requires several
animate beings (animantium) to bring about generation. But the reason that
spiration is from two is that it is by way of free love (amoris liberalis). Thus,
it is from the nature (ratio) of generation and of spiration that the former is
from one, the latter from two, and not the other way around.70
For Pecham, using terminology that we saw in Walter of Bruges (and even
earlier in Bonaventure), the emanations “differ really” from each other or
they “differ in and of themselves formally” (se ipsis formaliter). But Pecham
goes far beyond Walter’s rather hesitant treatment of this same issue in
two ways. First, because, as we have seen, he ties the distinction between
the emanations to the differing sources of the emanations: nature and
will. Thus, implicitly contradicting what we have seen Walter of Bruges
maintained on the same issue (and resembling rather more Bonaventure),
Pecham claims that the emanations differ formally in and of themselves,
but the emanations get this by way of origin (originaliter) or as ways of
coming into being (modi oriendi) from the fecundity of nature and will.71
And using a term that will reappear in both Roger Marston and in Scotus,
Pecham claims that although they differ formally in and of themselves,
nevertheless the “root” (radicaliter) of this difference lies in the fecundity
of the person who truly has nature and will, i.e. the Father.72 The sec-
70 Pecham, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3: “Dicendum igitur quod differunt realiter, quia sunt origines*
differentes personarum differentium; ergo emanationes se ipsis differunt formaliter, sed a

fecunditate naturae et voluntatis habent hoc—ne dicam causaliter, sed originaliter, non ut
orientes, sed ut modi oriendi. Et quia generatio est per modum naturae, hinc est quod* est ab
uno solo, quia enim generatio animantium fiat a pluribus, hoc est ex eorum imperfectione;
sed quia spiratio est per modum amoris liberalis, hinc est quod est a duobus. Unde ex ratione
generationis et spirationis est quod hic sit ab uno, ille a duobus, et non e converso.” Firenze,
BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 44vb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 40rb. The italicized animantium may
be a mistake in the mss. for animalium; cf. the quotation from Roger Marston in n. 177 below.
71 For Walter of Bruges, see above, at and around n. 22. For Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, above,
at and around nn. 76 and 84.

72 Pecham, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3: “Ad aliud dicendum quod se ipsis differunt formaliter, sed
fecunditate personae in qua vere est natura cum* voluntate radicaliter et quasi causaliter,
sicut cum genera accidentium* se ipsis differunt formaliter, sed per substantiam* a qua
principiantur causaliter …” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 44vb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2,
f. 40rb. The reply is directed at a position lifted verbatim from Aquinas’ works; ibid.: “Item,
omnis distinctio formalis est secundum aliquam oppositionem. Sed generatio et processio
non habent aliquam oppositionem” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 44va; Napoli, BN,
VII C 2, f. 40rb (cp. with Aquinas’ statements above, Ch. 1, in nn. 28, esp. 75). “Radicaliter”
ond way that Pecham goes beyond Walter is by making the distinction
between the emanations the most basic distinction in trinitarian theology,
that upon which the distinction between the persons is based, rejecting
entirely Aquinas’ claim that the emanations were distinct because gen-
eration is from one person, while spiration is from two. In fact, accord-
ing to Pecham, Aquinas could not have been more wrong: the distinction
between the emanations is ultimately based on the fact that they have dif-
fering origins and ways of arising, by way of nature and by way of will,
and it is in virtue of this most basic difference that generation is from one
while spiration is from two. In all of this, Pecham may well be developing
hints found in Eustace of Arras (see §3 above), who also tied the ema-
nations to divine nature and will, but Pecham’s view is extremely elabo-
rate and nuanced in comparison to anything we find in Eustace’ surviving
work.
If the sources of the emanations are the divine nature and will as found in
the Father, then attention is immediately focused on the Father’s status in
the inner-trinitarian life. Indeed, as we have seen, Pecham adopts one of the
major arguments that Eustace of Arras used in support of the position that
the Son and the Holy Spirit would still be distinct if each emanated from
the Father alone, an argument that will reappear in later authors: “since
all that the Son has, he accepts through being born, so that with the Son
set aside the Father has the fullness of the essence, so also [with the Son
set aside the Father will have] the fullness of the spirative power”. Pecham
repeats this argument with various colorations several times, but the thrust
is always the same: the Father would be imperfect or would be dependent
on the Son, if he could not spirate the Holy Spirit perfectly on his own.
Therefore, at some level or another the Father must be able to do this on
his own.73 As Pecham says, then, reinforcing his claim that there is a twofold
is a term used in several different contexts by Pecham, as in his description of the Father
generating by primity; see below, n. 86.
73 For the quoted text, see above at n. 54. Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Item, virtus spirativa
non plenius est in duobus quam in uno; ergo circumscripta vi spirativa ab uno, adhuc
manet in altero. Item, Pater dat Filio potentiam spirativam qua potest spirare amorem et dat
eandem potentiam quam habet. Sed circumscripto Filio, hanc potentiam non minus plene
habet Pater. Ergo in eius actum sine Filio exire valet.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854,
f. 40va–b; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 37vb.
Ibid.: “Item, Pater habet potentiam spirandi Spiritum Sanctum aut completam aut incom-
pletam. Si completam, ergo, omni circumscripto alio, poterit spirare; si incompletam, ergo
non est omnipotens, vel sic indigeat* Filio ad operandum.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr.
G.4.854, f. 40vb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 37vb.
132 chapter two
reason for their distinction: “the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Son, both
through mutual opposition and through differing origin from the Father,
because in the Father there is the full power to produce (potentia producendi
in plenitudine).”74
The key to this position is—as we have also seen less well developed
in Walter of Bruges and Eustace of Arras—the Father’s innascibility and
primity. Pecham elaborates a sophisticated account of primity and its place
in the constitution of the Father and the Trinity, which is clearly indebted
to both Bonaventure and to Walter of Bruges, but which equally clearly
was the source read by later figures like Matthew of Aquasparta and Roger
Marston. And in his attempt to show that innascibility as primity was a
notion fundamental to any successful trinitarian theology, Pecham chooses
Thomas Aquinas as his interlocutor. A key text in this regard is Pecham’s
discussion of whether the Father is the Father because he generates, or
whether he rather generates because he is the Father. Pecham introduces
his discussion with one of the most powerful arguments that Aquinas had
offered for his own view: generation is an act that must proceed from a
distinct person, thus the Father generates because he is the Father.75 Indeed,
Pecham notes that Aquinas had maintained that the term ‘paternity’ can
signify several different functions with respect to the Father. It signifies, first
of all, a type of form for the Father by which the Father is constituted in
being; it also signifies the power by which the Father brings about his act of
generation, i.e. the generative power; further, it signifies the generative act
itself; and, finally, it signifies the reference (habitudo) that distinguishes the
Father from the Son. Thus, as Pecham puts it, on Aquinas’ view “the same
relation is first the constitutive form, then the generative power, third [it
exists] as the act of generation, and finally as relation”.76
74 Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… Spiritus Sanctus distinguitur a Filio et per oppositionem
mutuam et per differentem originem a Patre, quia in Patre est potentia producendi in
plenitudine.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 41ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 38ra.
75 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Contra: generare est actus procedens a persona
distincta. Ergo cum actus non distinguat agentem, immo praesupponit in agente distinc-
tionem, sequitur ut Pater sit personaliter distinctus prius secundum rationem intelligendi
quam generet. Sed paternitate distinguitur personaliter*, quia est eius proprietas personalis.
Ergo etc.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, ff. 80vb–81ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 66vb. Cf. also
the second quotation in n. 64 above. For Aquinas, see above, Ch. 1, at and around n. 51.
76 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Quidam dicunt quod aliter est de relationibus
creaturarum, quae suppositis accident*, et relationibus divinis, quae supposita constituunt.

Dicunt ergo quod paternitas est quasi forma Patris qua personaliter subsistit, et est potentia
per quam agit, et est operatio quam elicit, et est habitudo quae gignentem a genito distinguit,
Pecham finds Aquinas’ view to be deeply problematic for several rea-

sons. One of these reasons is that it would seem to require that one and
the same relation both precede and follow the very same act of generation.
But Pecham also argues that, since Augustine says that the Father is called
the Father because he has a Son to whom he gives existence, and since it
is a manifest contradiction for the Father to take existence from his giving
existence to something else, then clearly paternity as such cannot be the
basis of the Father’s existence.77 Why would Aquinas have come up with
such an obviously untenable theory? Pecham says: “They are forced to say
this, because, according to them, with paternity set aside, innascibility says
nothing in the Father that is not proper to the divine essence”.78 It is clear
from the many times he mentions it, that Pecham believes this to be the
source of all of Aquinas’ problems: Aquinas had denied that innascibility
has any positive meaning, claiming that it only has the negative meaning of
‘ungenerated’. Hence, for Aquinas, paternity, relatively opposed to the filia-
tion of the Son, is the only constitutive property of the first person, and the
Father generates because he is the Father. Without paternity, according to
Aquinas, innascibility would be an essential property in God.79 For Aquinas,
ita quod eadem relatio est primo forma constitutiva, demum potentia generativa, tertio ut
actus generationis, ultimo ut relatio.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81ra; Napoli, BN,
VII C 2, f. 66vb.
77 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Contra: Pater est ratio suae operationis, quia omne
agens est causa suae actionis a se differentis; ergo multo magis Pater est ratio habitudinis
operationem consequentis, scilicet paternitatis. Ergo, si paternitas est ratio generandi, idem
erit quasi causa sui .... Item, quomodo est intelligibile quod una relatio secundum intellectum
diversum praecedat et sequatur generationem? Item, Augustinus dicit, V De trinitate, cap.
6: ‘Pater non dicitur Pater nisi ex eo quod est ei Filius’. Sed nihil existit ex eo quod alteri
dat existere nec potest agere quia agit, sed e converso. Ergo nec a paternitate primordialiter
existit nec ex ipsa potest agere.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81ra; Napoli, BN, VII C
2, f. 66vb.
The second argument is also presented in I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 3 (“An innascibilitas sit
Patris relatio personalis”): “Item, Augustinus, V De trinitate, cap. 6: ‘Pater non dicitur Pater
nisi ex eo quod est ei Filius’. Sed nihil existit ex eo quod dat alteri existere. Ergo Patri non est
existentia personalis* ex paternitate.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 86rb; Napoli, BN,
VII C 2, f. 70va–b. For the passage from Augustine that Pecham is referring to, see n. 29 in the
Introduction above.
78 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Et coacti sunt hoc dicere, quia circumscripta pater-
nitate, nihil dicit innascibilitas in Patre quod non sit proprium essentiae divinae secundum
eos.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 66vb.
79 Pecham puts his understanding of Aquinas’ view in the following way in I Sent., d. 28,
pars 1, q. 2 (“An hinnascibilitasi sit eadem notio cum paternitate”): “Iuxta hoc quaeritur, posito
quod sint differentes notiones, quae sit prima secundum rationem intelligendi? Et ostenditur
quod paternitas, quia circumscripta paternitate non remanet innascibilitas, ut videtur, aliter
134 chapter two
when it comes to the supposite of the Father, innascibility has no constitu-

tive force or functionality whatsoever.
Pecham could not disagree more. For him innascibility not only has the
negative meaning of “not generated”, but it also has the positive meaning
of “primity”: innascibility means that the Father is from no one, and this
implies that all other things are from him, and hence, drawing on Bonaven-
ture and other early Franciscans, Pecham claims that it means that there is a
fontal plenitude or fullness in the Father.80 This fontal plenitude or primity is
full fecundity to each of the emanations.81 Although he never says as much in
the material I have examined, one seems entitled to conclude that primity is
nature and will as they exist in the Father and hence as each is the source of
one of the emanations.82 Thus, innascibility indicates, according to Pecham
an “aptitude” to actively generate,83 since on account of innascibility a per-
son is “apt to elicit the act of generation”,84 and further he even mentions a
view according to which, if paternity itself were removed from the Father,
the Father would still be a distinct person since paternity would exist in
him according to “aptitude”, i.e. on the basis of his primity.85 Primity—not,
quam in essentia. Ergo innascibilitas praesupponit intellectum paternitatis. Item, subtracta

proprietate personali, non remanet intellectus personae. Ergo circumscripta paternitate a
Patre non remanet intellectus personae Patris, et per consequens nec alicuius proprietatis,
sed essentiae et essentialium tantum.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 85vb; Napoli, BN,
VII C 2, f. 70rb–va. See also the text in n. 91 below. For Aquinas on innascibility, see Ch. 1, above,
at n. 72.
80 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Et ideo, cum prima emanationum sit generatio, ratio
primitatis in Patre aliter notificari non potuit quam per generationis abnegationem, quod
enim non est ab alio per generationem nec generationem consequitur primum* esse. Con-
vincitur* igitur primitas Patris innascibilitate significatur*, et quia eo ipso* quo innascibilis,
est a nullo, sequitur ut omne aliud et omnis alia res quaecumque sit ab ipso, sicut docet
Richardus, De trinitate V, cap. 4. Hinc est quod dixerunt antiqui quod innascibilitas dicit
fontalem plenitudinem in Patre.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81ra–b; Napoli, BN, VII C
2, ff. 66vb–67ra. For “fontal plenitude”, see Bonaventure, above, Ch. 1, at and around n. 66.
81 Pecham, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 2: “Innascibilitas est notio differens a paternitate
… ratione eius quod habet positionis* ad principiatum, quae ponit, ut saepe dictum est,
primitas, quae ponit plenam fecunditatem respectu utriusque emanationis.” Firenze, BNC,
conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 86ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 70va.
82 For evidence, see, e.g., above, n. 67.
83 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Generat igitur ex innascibilitate quae privat gener-
ationem passivam et ideo, ut declaratum est, ponit aptitudinem ad generationem activam.”

Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81rb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 67ra. Forms of the term apti-
tudo were used by Walter of Bruges (n. 26 above), and will also be used by, e.g., Matthew of
Aquasparta (n. 126 below) and Roger Marston (n. 166 below).
84 See below, n. 87.
85 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Adhaerendum est sententiae antiquorum, dicendo
quod generatio secundum rationem intelligendi prior est paternitate, cum enim primitas
as Aquinas said, paternity—is the form through which the Father generates
at the root (radicaliter) or most basic level.86
For Pecham, then, the Father is the Father because he generates, and he
generates on the basis of innascibility as primity. Pecham accepts unapolo-
getically the consequence of this position: since acts only come from distinct
individuals, the property of primity must give some being to the paternal
supposite “before” it takes full being on the basis of its generation of the
Son. In other words, Pecham employs primity to introduce a logical order
in the constitution of the Father and the generation of the Son, since acts
require “first” agents and only “then” products. Using language that he could
have found in the Franciscan tradition from Bonaventure to Eustace of
Arras, Pecham says outright that “the distinction of the paternal hyposta-
sis is begun in innascibility and is completed in generation or paternity, for
innascibility suffices to constitute a person as it is apt to elicit the act of
generation.”87 Indeed, Pecham makes this claim with all the clarity that one
could want:
a person can be understood in two ways: [as] having divine nature either as
communicable or as communicated, in other words as having divine nature
with an aptitude to communicating or [as] having it with the reference
(habitudine) accompanying the act of communication. In the first way, the
paternal hypostasis is constituted by the property of innascibility, which
is an incommunicable property, as has been seen. In the second way, it is
constituted by paternity, which puts the hypostasis in a referring connection
(connexione habitudinali) and in a special order to the other persons in
the Trinity, and this reference (habitudo) completes the nobility and the
dignity of the person .... On account of this, paternity is correctly taken
to be the Father’s personal property, which indicates a special reference
sit ratio principiandi, oportet ut innascibilitas in Patre sit ratio primaria generandi. Dicunt
etiam quidam antiqui quod Pater, circumscripta paternitate, habeat esse personale, quia
distinguitur per paternitatem existentem in ipso secundum aptitudinem.” Firenze, BNC,
conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81rb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 67ra.
86 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Ad tertium dicendum quod forma per quam Pater
generat radicaliter est primitas ad omnem operationem, virtus enim infinita non indiget
aliqua dispositione contrahente, quia ex sua plenitudine sufficit ad omnem operationem.”
Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81rb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 67ra. This is in reply to
Pecham’s rendering of Aquinas’ position given in n. 64 above.
87 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Ad primum dicendum, sicut ita melius patebit, dis-
tinctio paternae hypostasis inchoatur innascibilitate et completur in generatione vel paterni-

tate, sufficit enim innascibilitas personam* constituere ut apta sit actum generationis elicere
… ex ingenerato igitur est ratio generalis originis, sed ex generatione est ratio determinatae
habitudinis.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81rb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 67ra. Cf. this to
the language that Bonaventure used, Ch. 1, above, in n. 71.
136 chapter two
(habitudinem); but although innascibility distinguishes a person from the

others, nevertheless it does not [do this] by a special reference (habitudine),
but rather by general primity and fontal plenitude.88
Basing himself on Richard of St. Victor’s definition of a person as an “incom-

municable existence”, Pecham claims that since innascibility is in fact
proper to the Father alone, then an innascible person could be a com-
plete person, with paternity set aside.89 In John Pecham’s trinitarian system,
innascibility as primity functions in precisely the same way as we have seen
Bonaventure first posited it, only with Pecham, as with Walter of Bruges
and Eustace of Arras, primity is not merely a conceptual tool to explain
the ordering of our concepts of emanation, person, and relation: primity
as innascibility is that property of the Father that makes him apt to com-
municate the divine essence through the emanations, and for this reason
it is both indispensable to the Father’s current constitution on the basis of
paternity and, moreover, it could actually be constitutive on its own.90 And
this fit in well with Pecham’s insistence that there is a twofold reason for
distinction in God. Thus, here, as in the issue of the distinction between
the Son and the Holy Spirit, Pecham clearly supports nested distinctions:
as we have seen, the Father’s distinction begins with innascibility but is
88 Pecham, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 3: “Ad quaestionem sic respondeo sine praeiudicio
distinguendo quod persona potest intelligi dupliciter: vel habens naturam divinam ut com-
municabilem vel ut communicatam (vel per alia verba ut habens naturam divinam cum
aptitudine ad communicandam vel habens eam cum habitudine concomitante* commu-
nicationis* actum). Primo modo constituitur hypostasis paterna proprietate innascibilitatis,
quae est proprietas incommunicabilis, ut visum est; secundo modo constituitur paternitate
quae ponit hypostasim in connexione habitudinali et ordine speciali aliarum personarum in
trinitate, et haec habitudo complet nobilitatem et dignitatem personae—et loquor de digni-
tate personali, non de essentiali, quae una est in tribus. Propter quod paternitas recte ponitur
Patris personalis proprietas quae dicit specialem habitudinem; sed innascibilitas, licet per-
sonam ab aliis distinguat, non tamen speciali habitudine sed primitate generali et fontali
plenitudine.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 86rb; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 70vb.
89 Pecham, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 3: “Quaeritur de tertia an innascibilitas sit Patris relatio
personalis. Ostenditur quod sic, quia dicit Richardus, De trinitate IV, cap. 1, si plura habeat
persona incommunicabilia, sufficit tamen unum solum ad probandum quod sit persona*. Si
igitur innascibilitas est proprietas incommunicabilis, sequitur ut, circumscripta paternitate,
innascibilis sit persona completa, quia scilicet incommunicabilis existentia.” Firenze, BNC,
conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 86ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 70va.
90 Pecham, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Item, circumscribamus* a persona Patris genera-
tionem et paternitatem, intelligimus suppositum habens divinam naturam ut communica-

bilem nec ab alio sibi communicatam. Planum est quia intelligimus suppositum distinctum
ab eo qui eandem essentiam recipit per communicationem*. Ergo innascibilitas Patrem dis-
tinguit aliquo modo, immo, ut supra habetur ex Richardo, rationem dicit communicandi,
immo etiam generandi.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 81ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 67ra.
completed with paternity, which is the special reference to another person

that gives the Father his being as Father. Nevertheless, Pecham is quick to
point out that this “beginning” and “completion” should not be understood
as anything real in God—God the Father does not go from incomplete to
complete, since there is no movement or change in God—rather these are
different ways of understanding one and the same person (modum person-
alem alium et alium secundum rationem intelligendi). Pecham compares this
to the way that animality is only ever found instantiated in one single animal
of a most specific species, for example in one human being; just so, God the
Father is only ever God the Father, while nevertheless his innascibility is a
real property in him that could constitute the Father in a more inchoate way,
and without innascibility the Father would not be what he actually is, since
without it the Father could not generate.91 Thus, here Pecham comes close
to saying what will be made explicit in Roger Marston and especially Henry
of Ghent:92 that the case of a “proto-Father” being constituted by innascibil-
ity is a positio impossibilis, a counterfactual thought experiment. With this
element of counterfactuality recognized, however, these different ways of
understanding the Father are indispensable to Pecham’s trinitarian project
as a whole: from all eternity the Father has both paternity and innascibil-
ity, but Pecham’s counterfactual treatment shows that innascibility is the
91 Pecham, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 3: “Ad sextum* dicunt aliqui quod circumscripta pater-
nitate non manet innascibilitas ut proprietas personae sed ut attributum essentiae. Sed hoc
est plane falsum, quia Augustinus loquitur de innascibilitate, quae notio est personae pater-
nae. Dicendum igitur quod circumscripta paternitate, intelligitur suppositum in existentia
personali, sed non in determinatione habitudinali, sed in generali indifferentia respectu
utriusque productionis. Sicut igitur videmus in creaturis quod aliquod suppositum formae
superioris est individuum, sed non ultima significatione significatum nisi sub forma speciei
specificae, sicut prius est animal quam homo, et tamen cum est animal est hoc animal, sic,
cum proprietates in divinis vim habeant formarum absolutarum, circumscripta paternitate
intelligitur suppositum significatum quasi sub forma communiori, completur vero person-
alitas proprietate personali. Non tamen intelligo personam [intellectualiter*] proficere de
incompleto ad completum, sed modum personalem* alium et alium secundum rationem
intelligendi.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 86va; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, ff. 70vb–71ra. Cp.
this to William of Baglione in n. 35 above. It is worthwhile remembering that Pecham was an
advocate of a plurality of substantial forms, and hence his analogy here should probably be
taken as quite exact: just as animality is in the individual human being and gives that human
being some of its essential characteristics without which it would not be human, so innasci-
bility is really in the Father and the Father could not be the Father without innascibility (and
see Walter of Bruges’ discussion, in n. 27 above, of sensory and rational in the constitution
of human beings, which also exhibits the conceptual link between the trinitarian nested dis-
tinctions and plurality of forms).
92 See for Marston, at n. 159 below; for Henry of Ghent, see Ch. 4, below, at and around
nn. 50–52. Pecham comes close to saying this explicitly in the text found in n. 54 above.
138 chapter two
foundational property inasmuch as it is the ultimate reason why the Father

emanates. Even though paternity gives the Father complete being, then,
Pecham’s treatment shows clearly that without innascibility there would
be no Father, since in that case the Father could not generate, and complete
distinction would not come about. Thus, as was also the case with the coun-
terfactual question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son if the former
did not come from the latter, it is obvious why this question of innascibil-
ity’s role in the constitution of the Father was such an important vehicle
for communicating the priority of emanations over relations (or vice-versa).
Nearly all agreed that the Father was in fact constituted by paternity, and yet
specifying the precise relationship between innascibility and paternity was
a way for a theologian to show whether he conceptualized the Trinity in an
emanational or in a relational way. This is precisely what made this issue a
flashpoint between the two trinitarian traditions: it is a point on which their
basic trinitarian ideas are at a very deep level incompatible.
One thing that is striking about Pecham’s discussion of this topic in his
Sentences commentary is that he does not seem to have been particularly
careful to make clear that what would be constituted on the basis of innasci-
bility is not the Father but rather the hypostasis that “after” generation
“would be” the Father. Walter of Bruges had made this clear through his dis-
tinction between hypostatic being and personal being.93 On the basis of the
material that I have examined, Pecham does not have a corresponding dis-
tinction. He is aware of the problem, marking a clear difference between
the way that primity and the way that paternity constitute the first person,94
but not between the different status of the being constituted on the basis of
the two properties. Later in his career, in his third Quodlibet, Pecham will
present a very lucid and succint account of his position, and will distinguish
clearly between the personal property, paternity, and the “hypostatic prop-
erty”, innascibility, with the personal property giving being to the person
of the Father and the hypostatic property giving being to the hypostasis,
respectively.95
93 See above at n. 25.

94 Pecham, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 2: “… circumscripta paternitate intelligi potest quis
habens esse determinatum*, ut communicabile ex incommunicabili proprietate, scilicet
primitate, quamvis non intelligitur ut constitutus in personali habitudine.” Firenze, BNC,
conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 86ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 70va. See also above, n. 88.
95 Pecham, Quodl. III, q. 1 (“Utrum possit intelligi hypostasis divina omni proprietate
personali circumscripta”): “Si hista quaestio intelligituri de persona Patris, tunc dico quod
proprie loquendo proprietas personalis dicit proprie quandam habitudinem personae ad
personam. Dico ergo quod circumscripta illa proprietate personali, scilicet paternitate quae
Also interesting in Pecham’s discussion of innascibility is that he seems

never to make the connection that appears implicit from his choice of
nature and will as the productive sources of the emanations: that the
Father’s primity is nature and will as they exist in the Father. As we have
seen, this is mentioned in his discussion of the distinction between the Son
and the Holy Spirit, but never in his discussion of innascibility. Henry of
Ghent will make this connection a key point in his trinitarian theory. In
general, reading through the trinitarian discussions in his Sentences com-
mentary, one gets the impression that John Pecham conceived a coherent
trinitarian theology, based on an emphasis on emanations and action, but
that the presentation of the view and some of its ramifications had not
been entirely thought through. As we will see, Pecham’s close follower Roger
Marston will be more successful on this count. With that said, it is Pecham’s
trinitarian theology, modified significantly by Henry of Ghent, that will be
the framework for Franciscans into the early fourteenth century.
5. Paris after Pecham:

William de la Mare and Matthew of Aquasparta
The English Franciscan, William de la Mare (d. after 1282), best known as the
author of the Correctorium fratris Thomae, the centerpiece of the famous
“correctorium controversy” between the Franciscans and the Dominicans,
may have been John Pecham’s student at the University of Paris in the late
1260’s and the beginning of the 1270’s, and perhaps immediately followed
Pecham as Franciscan regent master at Paris after Pecham’s departure for
Oxford in 1271.96 Hence it might be expected that William would support the
proprie sic dicitur, adhuc est intelligibilis hypostasis Patris: Deus scilicet innascibilis habens
essentiam cum incommunicabili proprietate quae est innascibilitas .... circumscripta
paterna proprietate, quae proprie est personalis proprietas, est intelligere eundem cum
proprietate innascibili, scilicet innascibilitate quae sufficit ad distinctionem hypostasis ....
dicitur persona Patris quia abstracta paternitate non intelligitur sola essentia, immo cum
innascibilitate quae est proprietas Patris, quamvis non proprie personalis sed hypostatica.
Personalis autem est illa quae significat habitudinem ad alterum secundum ultimam eius sig-
nificationem.” Quodlibeta quatuor (ed. Etzkorn), p. 134. This Quodlibet, according to Etzkorn’s
introduction to the critical edition (p. 25*), “could have been debated at Paris in 1271 or at
Oxford during Pecham’s tenure there between 1272–1275.”
96 Although there seems to be consensus among modern historians that either Pecham
was the master of de la Mare or vice-versa, there is some disagreement as to who was master
and who was student. For a brief discussion, see Anheim, Grevin, and Morard 2001, pp. 142–
145, who lean towards William being John’s teacher (thanks to Sylvain Piron for drawing my
attention to this article). At the present, on the basis of the material offered below (see, e.g.,
140 chapter two
type of Franciscan trinitarian theology that we have seen Pecham advocate.

Yet William’s Sentences commentary, a reworking of lectures that may have
taken place in 1268–1270 (and one of the few commentaries from the period
that exists in a critical edition),97 while exhibiting a Franciscan leaning,
can perhaps best be described as “less than enthusiastic” in its support for
Franciscan trinitarian theology, offering no unequivocal statements on the
issues we have been tracing and not heavily emphasizing disagreements
with Thomas Aquinas’ version of Dominican trinitarian theology, in rather
stark contrast to Pecham.
One can take as an example of his general Franciscan leaning William’s
treatment of the issue of how the emanations, generation and procession,
are distinct from one another. Here he first presents Aquinas’ view that they
are distinct because generation is from one, while procession is from two,
and promptly dismisses it, because “operations are made distinct not with
respect to agents, but with respect to sources of actions.”98 Then, William
presents what we have seen to be Pecham’s view—that generation is the
emanation from nature, procession the emanation from will—along with
the standard Thomist response to this position: nature and will are only
rationally distinct in God, therefore they cannot be the sources of a real
distinction between the emanations and the persons.99 In reply, William
nn. 107, 152 below), I am inclined to agree with the editor of William’s Sent. commentary, Hans
Kraml, that Pecham heavily influenced William and hence was probably William’s teacher
(see Introduction to ed. cit., pp. 16*–17*; Kraml has informed me in personal correspondence
that he still believes Pecham to be teacher and de la Mare student). Nonetheless, it is
immaterial to my purposes who was teacher of whom: I am merely interested in showing
the extent of Pecham’s influence on William in the context of trinitarian theology.
97 On William and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 52–53, and the literature
referred to there. The edition is Guillelmus de la Mare, Scriptum in Primum librum Sen-
tentiarum, ed. Hans Kraml. For more recent considerations of this work, see Caldera 2005
(pp. 475–476 on trinitarian theology) and esp. Bataillon 2005, who (pp. 367–374) brings
weighty arguments for the claim that we have no decisive evidence for when William held
his regency and further that only many more critical editions and comparative studies will
help us get such decisive evidence. See also Oliva 2005, esp. on William’s Correctorium.
98 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3 (“Utrum generatio et processio different realiter
vel tantum secundum modum intelligendi”): “Quidam volunt dicere quod differunt ex hoc
quod generatio est ab uno, processio vero a duobus. Et dicunt isti quod nisi Spiritus Sanctus
procederet a Filio non posset assignari realiter differentia inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum.
Sed haec positio non valet quia operationes distinguuntur non penes agentes sed penes
principia actionum.” Ed. Kraml, p. 17623–27.
99 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3: “Alii dicunt quod differunt ex hoc: quia genera-
tio est emanatio naturae, processio voluntatis. Sed hoc non videtur sufficere, quia natura et
voluntas differunt tantum secundum rationem et inter se non habent oppositionem originis,
ergo non possunt esse principia realis distinctionis. Praeterea, processio intellectus, secun-
does support Pecham’s position, but certainly not in an unqualified way,

saying that “whether this [i.e., Pecham’s] position is true or not, the argu-
ment by which it is impugned does not hold water.” Not exactly a ringing
endorsement, and William ends his treatment by referring the reader to
Bonaventure’s Sentences commentary for the truth of the matter. Neverthe-
less, William does present an interesting type of argument to prove that the
rebuttal of Pecham’s position is untenable, an argument that may originate
with William and that will certainly be developed in the Franciscan tradi-
tion. William claims that there are clear counterexamples to the general
claim that the distinction between the sources cannot be weaker than the
distinction between the effects of those sources. Thus, he maintains that,
if that claim were true, then creatures could not really (secundum rem) dif-
fer from each other, because their sources, the divine attributes, only differ
according to reason. Further, William notes, if nature and will in creatures,
differing really from each other, can be the source of really differing opera-
tions, then surely the infinite divine attributes, essentially identical, can also
be the source of really differing operations.100 Various versions of this type
of counterargument will be used in the Franciscan tradition into the four-
teenth century,101 but whether they originate with William or are adopted
from elsewhere is difficult to say.
William’s discussion of the distinction between the emanations seems to
include the only mention in his entire I Sentences of the issue of the Holy
Spirit’s distinction from the Son, given that the former does not come from
the latter, and this merely by way of touching on Aquinas’ position on the
matter.102 The topic does not seem to interest him. To be sure, William does
claim that the Holy Spirit proceeds by way of will, maintaining that we can
dum quam dicitur verbum, esset alia a processione naturae secundum quam dicitur Filius,
quod non est verum.” Ed. Kraml, pp. 17628–17733.
100 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3: “Quicquid autem sit de veritate istius positionis,
ratio qua impugnatur non valet, quia sicut natura et voluntas, ubi sunt diversa secundum
rem, possunt in operationes realiter differentes, sic etiam ubi sunt idem essentialiter, quo-
niam virtus unita plus est infinita quam multiplicata. Praeterea, aliter sequeretur quod in
creatura nulla esset diversitas secundum rem, quia in essentialibus Dei secundum quod
solum comparatur ad creaturam non est differentia nisi secundum rationem .... in divinis,
licet natura et voluntas sint id ipsum, possunt esse principium emanationum realiter dif-
ferentium. Quid ergo tenendum sit accipe de scripto.” Ed. Kraml, p. 17734–47. On William’s
references to Bonaventure’s “Scriptum”, see Kraml’s introduction to ed. cit., p. 17* (Bonaven-
ture’s position on this matter was discussed above, Ch. 1, at and around nn. 76, 84). Cf. also
the beginning of William’s passage here with Pecham in n. 59 above.
101 See, e.g., Ch. 5, § 4, below, on the “ideas” argument.
102 See above, n. 98.
142 chapter two
extrapolate from creatures that the only two sources of production in God
are nature and will, and appealing to Augustine’s psychological model of
the Trinity for support.103 But the link between the emanations and their
sources, nature and will, that Eustace of Arras and Pecham had made much
of, William is not willing to press very far inasmuch as “nature and will in
God with respect to the generation of the Son are the same source as they are
with respect to the procession of the Holy Spirit”. Thus, the two emanations
differ because in the generation of the Son nature acts more principally,
while in the procession of the Holy Spirit, the will is the more principal
source.104
More evidence of William’s lukewarm embrace of Franciscan trinitarian
theology can be found when he discusses innascibility and primity, and
here again we see testimony of Pecham’s influence. When discussing the
meaning of the term ‘unborn’ (ingenitus) William presents one position that
is quite clearly Thomas Aquinas’: ingenitus is a pure negation in the Father,
having no positive meaning.105 He also presents a generally Franciscan view:
ingenitus is a negation, but as a consequence of that negation, it posits in the
Father “primity and a fontal plenitude”. William presents an objection to
the general Franciscan position, however, an objection based on the view
that, because ‘first’ does not necessarily imply ‘source’, then even though
‘ingenitus’ implies primity, this is not the same as saying that ‘ingenitus’
103 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1 (“Utrum aliqua persona procedat per modum
voluntatis”): “Respondeo: dicendum quod in divinis est persona procedens per modum
voluntatis. Ad hoc autem possumus manuduci. Primo per exemplum creaturae, in creatura
enim est productio per naturam, per voluntatem, per casum et fortunam, et per violentiam
sive coactionem. Primi duo modi sunt perfectionis et ideo ponendi in divinis, alii autem
duo imperfectionis et ideo non possunt ibi esse. Secundo per exemplum imaginis creatae in
creatura rationali quae est memoria, intelligentia, et voluntas, ubi est emanatio per modum
naturae et voluntatis. Nisi autem ita esset in Deo, non esset expressa similitudo imaginis
creatae ad trinitatem increatam.” Ed. Kraml, p. 15521–30. In this question, William also notes
(ed. cit., p. 15535–36) “per modum naturae sive per modum intellectus quia in divinis ipsa
natura est intellectus.”
104 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 6, q. 3 (“Utrum voluntas et natura sint idem principium
aut diversum”): “Respondeo: natura et voluntas in Deo respectu generationis Filii sunt
idem principium et respectu processionis Spiritus Sancti, sed in hoc est differentia quod in
generatione Filii principalius agit natura, in processione Spiritus Sancti voluntas.” Ed. Kraml,
p. 10517–20. Cf. also ibid, d. 6, q. 4 (“Utrum voluntas sit causa principalior”; ed. cit., pp. 106–107).
105 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 28, q. 1 (“Utrum hoc nomen ‘ingenitus’ dicatur secundum
relationem”): “Quidam dicunt quod dicitur relative non quia ponat relationem, sed quia
privat .... licet negatio pura non sit nobilitatis, tamen in substantia constante bene potest
esse; sicut in rege nobilitatis est non regi et causae non produci, ita in Patre nobilitatis est
esse ingenitus licet puram dicat negationem.” Ed. Kraml, p. 32723–30.
implies being a source. On account of this objection, William concludes his

treatment very ambiguously, by saying that “it seems to some that the first
opinion [i.e. Aquinas’] is more probable.”106
After that extremely non-commital discussion of the Franciscan view
of innascibility, it comes as something of a surprise that, when William
discusses whether innascibility is the personal property of the Father, he
presents verbatim the largest part of John Pecham’s discussion of the same
question, and claims explicitly “this question is John’s” (ista quaestio est
Ioannis).107 Thus, here William appears to endorse Pecham’s idea that the
Father, on account of his having divine nature as communicable on the
basis of innascibility, is constituted in being even with paternity set aside.108
In general, it seems difficult to pin down William’s actual stance when it
comes to Franciscan trinitarian theology, apart from saying that it was not
wholehearted support. In this way, William is a good illustration of the fact
that the building of Franciscan trinitarian theology was a gradual process,
and that at no time was any Franciscan necessarily a committed “adherent”
on all issues. We will see many examples of this from the later thirteenth
and early fourteenth centuries.
106 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 28, q. 1: “Alii dicunt aliter quod ‘ingenitus’ secundum quod
convenit Patri principaliter privat relationem et ex consequenti ponit relationem .... Quia
ergo ingenitum sic acceptum privat omnibus modis esse ab alio, ideo ex consequenti impor-
tat primitatem et fontalem plenitudinem, et ita ex principali intellectu privat relationem
et ex consequenti ponit relationem principii ponendo primitatem .... Haec positio videtur
habere calumniam, quia licet primum et principium sint idem in subiecto, tamen alia ratio
primitatis, alia principii, quia primum dicitur in relatione ad antecedens sive ad anterius,
principium vero ad posterius. Unde principium de se dicit fontalem plenitudinem, non pri-
mum, et propter hoc non sequitur quod si ingenitus dicat rationem primitatis quod dicat
rationem principii .... Et propter hoc videtur quibusdam quod prima opinio sit probabilior.”
Ed. Kraml, p. 32838–55.
107 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 28, q. 2 (“Utrum innascibilitas sit personalis relatio Patris”,
ed. Kraml, pp. 330–331) which is equivalent to Pecham’s I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 3 (the parts
of which that are found in nn. 77, 88–89, above, and n. 152 below, are quoted by de la Mare).
The only part of William’s question (ed. cit., p. 33027–31) that does not come from Pecham is
a clear explanation of the difference between the Father’s “property of a person” (proprietas
personae, i.e., innascibility) and the Father’s “personal property” (proprietas personalis, i.e.,
paternity), just the sort of distinction that was missing in Pecham’s discussion of the issue
(see above, at and around n. 95)
This particular question, its verbatim quotation from Pecham, and explicit attribution
to Pecham, would seem to guarantee that at least the written version of William’s Sent. is
posterior to the written version of Pecham’s, and suggests to me that William is more likely
the student of Pecham than vice-versa. The jury is still out, however (see above, n. 96).
108 The operative paragraph that William copies verbatim from Pecham is found above, in
n. 88.
144 chapter two
Far more open to the Franciscan trinitarian theology that we have traced
in its developing phases was the Italian Franciscan Matthew of Aquasparta.
Matthew (d. 1302), who became minister general of the Franciscan order
in 1287 and was made a cardinal in 1288, read his Sentences commentary
at Paris probably in 1271–1272 (and hence probably when John Pecham was
Franciscan regent master there), and he was most likely regent master at the
same university in 1278–1279. After his time at Paris, Matthew was called to
Rome, where he succeeded Pecham as lector at the Papal school, teaching
there until his election as minister general. At Paris and at Rome, Aquas-
parta held a total of six quodlibetal disputations of which we have written
versions.109 Matthew’s work manifests clearly the influence of Bonaventure
and especially of John Pecham, and amply illustrates the characteristics of
Franciscan trinitarian theology that we have been tracing.110
Although he does not deal with it at any great length, in his second series
of quodlibetal questions, probably disputed in Rome during the academic
year 1279–1280, Matthew gives an affirmative response to the question of
whether the Holy Spirit would be distinct from the Son if the former did not
proceed from the latter.111 Matthew gives three arguments for his position.
First, he gives a modified version of an argument we have seen Eustace
of Arras and John Pecham give: we know that the Father has perfectly
fecund nature and will, and that the fecundity of the will in the Father
does not depend in any way on the Son; therefore with it supposed per
impossibile that the Son does not spirate the Holy Spirit, the Son and the
Holy Spirit would still be distinct on the basis of their fecund sources in the
109 On Matthew’s career at the University of Paris, see Friedman 2002a, 53, and the
literature referred to there; on his quodlibetal questions, see Etzkorn 2006, 141–143.
110 Two quodlibetal questions important to understanding Matthew’s trinitarian theology
are printed for the first time in Friedman 2002b, 34–40. Despite the fact that the Biblioteca
comunale in Todi was officially closed for reconstruction when I visited it, I was able to
consult the manuscripts of both Matthew’s Quodlibeta and Sent. commentary there, thanks
to the kind help from the staff, especially Ms. Renzini. Aquasparta’s Sent. commentary
discussions of the de facto and counterfactual questions concerning the distinction between
the Son and the Holy Spirit (I Sent., d. 11, qq. 1 and 4) are found in Schabel, Pedersen, and
Friedman 2011.
111 Matthew of Aquasparta, Quodl. II, q. 3: “Responsio: omissis opinionibus, dicendum
quod Spiritus Sanctus, si non procederet a Filio, adhuc ab eo personaliter distingueretur.

Cuius ratio ex tribus sumi potest.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 3422–23. Slipyi 1927–1928, esp.
(1927) 8–9, claims that Matthew answers this question in a qualifiedly negative way. Slipyi,
however, based his claim on a polemical work of Matthew written against the position of the
Greeks. Therefore it is not surprising that Matthew’s conclusion there and the one given in
his quodlibetal question (which Slipyi did not consult) are not entirely the same.
Father.112 Second, and as a type of corollary of the first argument, the Son is a
Word, whereas the Spirit is a Gift, and the Son is born, whereas the Spirit
is given: these modes of proceeding are distinct whether the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Son or not.113 Third, Matthew gives Gerard of Abbeville’s
argument, using slightly different terminology: with the origin of the Holy
Spirit from the Son (accepted on account of the Catholic faith) removed,
the Holy Spirit could still be compared to the Son by mode of connection
(i.e., communion) and by germanity or procession from the Father, and
therefore they would still be distinct.114 Interestingly, when discussing this
issue Matthew seems not to mention explicitly the twofold cause or reason
for distinction to which Eustace of Arras and John Pecham had appealed,
although of course the idea underlies Matthew’s entire response. A striking
112 Matthew of Aquasparta, Quodl. II, q. 3: “Prima ratio est [opus] ex comparatione ad
processionis principium et rationem producendi. Ratio enim productionis personalis est

fecunditas; [si] duplex autem est fecunditas in divinis, scilicet naturae et voluntatis. Si igitur
in Patre aeque est fecunda voluntas sicut natura, manifestum est quod personas procedentes
a Patre per istam duplicem fecunditatem habere ad invicem distinctionem personalem.
Certum est autem quod fecunditas voluntatis in Patre a Filio non dependet. Igitur quan-
tumcumque Filius non produceret Spiritum, nec haberet (supposito per impossibile) istam
fecunditatem, adhuc Pater produceret et esset in eo vis spirativa, sicut et generativa natu-
rae. Ergo ille genitus et ille spiratus ad invicem personaliter distinguerentur.” Ed. Friedman
2002b, pp. 3424–3532 (the italicized ‘a’ in the text was mistakenly given as ‘et’ in the edition).
Cf. with versions of the same argument in Eustace of Arras (§3 above) and John Pecham
(n. 54 above).
113 Aquasparta, Quodl. II, q. 3: “Secunda ratio est per comparationem ad procedendi
modum, et illa ratio sequitur ex prima. Filius enim procedit ut Verbum, Spiritus Sanctus
ut Donum; Filius ut natus, Spiritus Sanctus ut datus (secundum Augustinum in auctoritate
praeallegata); Filius ut genitus, Spiritus Sanctus ut spiratus. Si igitur differt ratio Verbi et Doni,
nati et dati, geniti et spirati, quantumcumque autem Spiritus, si non procederet a Filio, [nihil]
tamen nec Verbum esset Donum, nec e converso; nec natus esset datus, nec genitus spiratus,
vel e converso. Ergo necessario personaliter distinguerentur.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 3533–39.
114 Aquasparta, Quodl. II, q. 3: “Tertia ratio est per comparationem Spiritus Sancti ad Fil-
ium. Comparatur enim Spiritus Sanctus ad Filium tripliciter, scilicet per modum originis, et
per modum connexionis, et per modum germanitatis. Primo per modum originis, quia ut
suppositum per fidem Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Filio. Per modum connexionis, quia Spir-
itus Sanctus est copula et nexus Patris et Filii, ut dicit Augustinus, VI* De trinitate. hSpiritus
Sanctusi habet etiam ad Filium germanitatem, quia connectit cum eo in natura, et sunt ab
uno principio, licet secundum alium et alium modum procedendi. Sublata igitur et circum-
scripta comparatione vel relatione originis et principationis, adhuc manet comparatio nexus
et germanitatis. Ergo manifestum est quod Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur a Filio, quamvis
ab eo non procederet.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 3540–49. For comparison to Gerard, see the text
in nn. 4–5 above. What Gerard called ‘ratio originis in procedendo’, Matthew calls ‘modus
germanitatis’; what Gerard called ‘ratio communionis in diligendo’, Matthew calls ‘modus
connexionis’; and what Gerard called ‘ratio germanitatis in connectendo’, Matthew calls
‘modus originis’. So, the names have changed, but the argument remains the same.
146 chapter two
element of Matthew’s discussion is his many explicit reminders to his

readers (or listeners) that his is a purely conterfactual investigation. Thus,
Matthew claims that the precondition for the question is “assumed per
impossibile” (see above, n. 112) and that it is taken on the faith (supposi-
tum per fidem; see above, n. 114) that the Holy Spirit does in fact proceed
from the Son. Indeed, Matthew, like Eustace of Arras in his question on
this issue, goes on to prove that the Holy Spirit must proceed from the Son,
and his proof, like Eustace’, relies on what we have already encountered
as typically Franciscan nested distinctions. The Holy Spirit and the Son
would be distinct if the former did not come from the latter, nevertheless if
that situation obtained, then they would be “imperfectly” (imperfecte) dis-
tinct in contradistinction to their perfect de facto distinction. Yet, since we
know that there is nothing of imperfection in God, this imperfect distinc-
tion is not possible, and so the Holy Spirit necessarily proceeds from the
Son.115
A second and more substantial trinitarian discussion by Matthew is
found in the fourth question of his fifth Quodlibet, probably disputed in
1282–1283 in Rome. Here he discusses one of the major flashpoints between
the trinitarian traditions: the issue of whether the Father is the Father
because he generates, or whether he generates because he is the Father.116
After dismissing in relatively short order two positions—one of which
clearly belongs to Thomas Aquinas—according to which in one way or
another the Father generates because he is the Father, positions on which
relation qua relation is the constituting feature of the persons,117 Matthew
claims “so it should be maintained that the Father does not generate
because Father, but rather he is the Father because he generates”.118
Matthew’s explicit reason for holding this is quite simple: the Father would
not be a Father without having a Son; but he cannot have a Son unless he
115 Aquasparta, Quodl. II, q. 3: “Et e converso de processione Spiritus Sancti, quamvis non
esset distinctio nexus et germanitatis. Non tamen ita perfecte, immo imperfecte. Et quia
quicquid est in divinis est perfectissime natura, aliquid hnoni potest ibi esse imperfecte. Ideo
necesse est Spiritum Sanctum a Filio procedere.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 3555–60. Cp. this to
Eustace of Arras in § 3 above, and note that Alexander of Alessandria, in the early version of
his Sent. commentary, uses this same terminology of perfecte/imperfecte (see Ch. 5, below, at
and around n. 81).
116 In the edition of this question in Friedman 2002b, p. 3675, ‘autem’ should read ‘non*’
(and thanks to Bruce Marshall for pointing out the missing negative to me).
117 See Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4 (ed. Friedman 2002b, pp. 3687–37121).
118 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “Et ideo dicendum est quod Pater non generat quia Pater,
sed potius hesti Pater quia generat.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 37122–123 (cf. also ibid., p. 38134–135).
generates; therefore he is not the Father unless he generates.119 This, as we

have seen, is just what Bonaventure and John Pecham concluded on slightly
different grounds; and like them, Matthew’s conclusion leads him to pos-
tulate a ground for the first emanation: “innascibility that … posits in the
Father primity, by reason of which he has a fontal plenitude to each emana-
tion.”120 Thus, this question becomes an extended discussion of innascibility
and primity. Innascibility is the basis for God the Father’s fecundity and
hence for the productions in God;121 just as the Son can spirate but not gen-
erate because he himself is generated, so it seems clear that the Father can
both generate and spirate because he is God innascible.122 The heart of the
matter for Matthew, however, is that distinction in God only comes about
through origin,123 and origin requires order: “therefore the Father necessarily
precedes the Son, but not as the Father.”124 Matthew, like Walter of Bruges
and John Pecham, uses innascibility to allow for some type of logical order in
the production of the Son, since acts like generation require agents bringing
them about. That is to say, as we also saw him do above, Matthew defends
nested distinctions, and in terms that clearly reflect Walter of Bruges’ and
especially John Pecham’s treatment on the same topic:
119 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “Sed non habet Filium nisi quia generat. Ergo nec est Pater
nisi quia generat.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 38131–132.

120 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “Igitur necessario secundum intellectum esse Patrem sequi-
tur generare. Ac per hoc ratio generationis non est paternitas, sed innascibilitas, quae, licet
videatur dicere privationem, dicit tamen nobilem et habundantem positionem, quia ponit
in Patre primitatem, ratione cuius habet fontalem plenitudinem ad omnem emanationem,
ut dixerunt antiqui, et inde dicitur Pater totius deitatis.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 40199–203. Cf.
Bonaventure, above, Ch. 1, at n. 66, and Pecham, above, e.g., nn. 80–81.
121 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “Prima igitur ratio sumitur quantum ad originem. Si enim
quaerimus rationem originandi, non invenimus nisi fecunditatem; si rationem fecunditatis,

non invenimus nisi primitatem; si rationem primitatis, non invenimus nisi rationem innasci-
bilitatis. Ergo a primo ratio producendi est innascibilitas.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 38139–142.
122 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “Rursus apparet exemplariter, videmus enim quod Filius
producit, tamen non gignit. Hoc autem non est nisi quia genitus. Si autem Filius non generat
quia genitus, ergo Pater generat quia ingenitus. Praeterea, Pater et Filius producunt Spiritum
Sanctum, Spiritus autem Sanctus nullo modo producit. Cuius ratio est quia non spirat,
quoniam spiratus, nec generat quia est a genito. Pater autem et Filius spirant, non quia Pater
aut Filius, sed quia uterque Deus inspirabilis. Si igitur Spiritus nec generat nec spirat, quia a
genito spiratur, Pater autem et Filius spirant quia uterque idem Deus inspirabilis, ergo Pater
non generat nisi quia Deus innascibilis.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 38148–156.
123 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “In divinis autem, ut dictum est, non potest esse distinctio
nisi per origines et quantum ad modum existendi sive habendi divinam naturam, non
quantum ad esse absolutum.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 39178–180.
124 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “Igitur Pater necessario praecedit Filium, sed non ut Pater
…” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 39171–172.

148 chapter two
… before the act of generation or of production no property is understood

to be making distinction perfectly, rather the act of generation or of produc-
tion brings about distinction. Therefore at first paternity is not understood as
distinguishing or determining, nevertheless because the hypostasis is under-
stood to have an incommunicable property, it is understood as apt to be made
distinct. But the hypostasis is only understood to have innascibility. There-
fore distinction begins in innascibility, and becomes more complete (perficit)
in generation, but is completed in the determinate relation and reference
(habitudo). Thus, the primary basis both of distinguishing and of producing
is innascibility.125
Matthew has names for these two types of distinction, bridged as they are
by “the personal acts that make distinction”, and these names reflect quite
clearly John Pecham’s treatment of the same issue. When distinction comes
about through paternity, it is “complete, determinate, and actual (in actu)
distinction”; distinction through innascibility, on the other hand, Matthew
calls “aptitudinal or incomplete or indeterminate distinction”.126
Thus, in Matthew we see many features which typify the Franciscan
trinitarian tradition more generally: an emphasis on origin or notional acts;
nested distinctions, particularly with respect to the Father’s indeterminate
125 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “Rursus perfecta distinctio supponit utrumque extremum
distinctionis. Igitur ante actum generationis vel productionis nulla intelligitur proprietas
perfecte distinguens, sed ipse actus generationis vel productionis distinguit. Ergo non intel-
ligitur primo paternitas ut distinguens vel determinans, tamen quia intelligitur hypostasis
cum proprietate incommunicabili, intelligitur ut apta distingui. Sed non intelligitur nisi
cum innascibilitate. Ergo distinctio in innascibilitate incipit, in generatione perficit, sed in
ipsa determinata relatione et habitudine perficitur. Ergo prima ratio et distinguendi et pro-
ducendi est innascibilitas.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 39185–192. Cp. Pecham, above, n. 87, as well
as William of Baglione and Eustace of Arras (§ 3 above).
126 Aquasparta, Quodl. V, q. 4: “Ad secundam dicendum quod persona distincta potest
intelligi duobus modis. Vel distinctione completa, determinata, et in actu; et sic non est
verum, quia actus personales faciunt distinctionem, non sequuntur. Alio modo potest intel-
ligi persona distincta distinctione aptitudinali et incompleta sive indeterminata; et sic verum
est quod actus personales sunt a personis distinctis, et sic actus generationis est a persona
Patris distincta per innascibilitatem in qua incipit distinctio, sed determinatur et comple-
tur per actum et per habitudinem sequentem; non enim potest distingui in actu a persona
quae non est, nec est nisi per actum generationis, quoniam distinctio supponit utrumque
extremum.” Ed. Friedman 2002b, p. 40223–231 (due to a typographical error, the italicized
‘secundam’ reads ‘secunda’ in the edition in Friedman 2002b). For much the same point,
see also ed. cit., p. 40215–222. The language of beginning/completing seems to have its starting
point in Bonaventure (Ch. 1, above, n. 71); Pecham used the complete/incomplete dichotomy
(e.g., above nn. 87, 88; though interestingly, in n. 89, Pecham claims that innascibility would
constitute a complete person with paternity set aside) as well as the general notion of the
first person’s aptitude to generate (e.g., above, nn. 83, 85, 87, 88). For Walter of Bruges, see
above, nn. 26, 29.
distinction by innascibility; and finally the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the
Son even if the former were not to proceed from the latter.127 Moreover his
treatment of trinitarian theology gives clear evidence that John Pecham’s
arguments and terminology had some impact among Franciscans of this
period.
6. Oxford Theology: Nicholas of Ockham and Roger Marston
Thus far we have looked at specifically Parisian theology, with it recognized

that Pecham and William de la Mare were English and spent some of their
university careers in England. We have, however, a fairly good sampling
of English theology from the period around 1280—albeit both the theolo-
gians we will discuss here received part of their education in Paris and were
undoubtedly influenced by the Parisian climate. In fact, if Nicholas of Ock-
ham and Roger Marston are anything to judge by, in the trinitarian debate
we are tracing, Oxford and Paris are best considered one scholastic culture,
linked by books and scholars. These two English Franciscans, working at
Oxford, fit just as closely into the pattern of the emerging Franciscan trini-
tarian tradition as do their Parisian colleagues, and they clearly fit into the
same intellectual context, relying on and replying to the same arguments,
and relying on the same basic doctrinal components in their trinitarian the-
ology.128
127 In Matthew’s Sent. commentary he expresses yet another typically Franciscan trinitar-
ian position when dealing with the distinction between the emanations (I Sent., d. 13, q. 3 =
“Utrum hprocessio et generatioi different realiter”; ff. 53vb–54ra): “Concedendum est quod est
ibi distinctio realis … Quoad differant istae proprietates vel emanationes dupliciter* [est] in
Deo, cum notandum quod istae emanationes sive proprietates aliunde habent esse, aliunde
habent differre, nam esse habent a duplici [alia*] et propria fecunditate.” Todi, Biblioteca
Comunale 122, f. 53vb. Thus, it can be inferred that the emanations have their existence from
their differing sources (nature and will), but they do not differ on this ground, being distinct
in and of themselves (se ipsis); compare Matthew’s view to, e.g., Bonaventure (Ch. 1, above,
at and around n. 84), Walter of Bruges (above, n. 22), John Pecham (above, n. 70), and Roger
Marston (below, n. 175).
128 A great deal of evidence of the interest at Oxford in the types of issues dealt with in the
present book is to be found in Little and Pelster 1934, esp. 104–132 (question list for ms. Assisi
158), 139–145 (two questions by Robert of Winchelsea on trinitarian issues), and 287–343
(question list for ms. Worcester Q.99). Rega Wood (2002) has argued that Oxford theologians
from this period and earlier raised issues different from those raised in Paris and approached
them with great originality, reflecting native Oxford concerns (also on trinitarian matters
concerning the Holy Spirit); this is undoubtedly true for the material Wood deals with, but in
the aspects of trinitarian theology dealt with here, it seems that Paris and Oxford comprised
one scholastic culture.
150 chapter two
In comparison to Eustace of Arras, to Pecham, and to Aquasparta, the

English Franciscan Nicholas of Ockham (d. ca. 1320) is rather hesitant about
adopting certain elements of Franciscan trinitarian theology that we have
examined thus far. Nicholas received his education in Paris in the early
1270’s, and thus was educated in the same intellectual milieu as the other
Franciscans that we have studied here. Yet in the written commentary that
descends from lectures he held on the Sentences at Oxford probably in the
period 1280–1282, Nicholas only partially endorses the Franciscan line. For
this reason, and because Nicholas’ Sentences commentary is preserved in
some 10 copies and hence clearly had some readership, we should examine
it briefly here.129
The part of Franciscan theology that Nicholas does endorse has to do with
the distinction between the emanations. In the counterfactual question on
whether the Holy Spirit would still be distinct from the Son if the former
did not come from the latter, Nicholas answers with a resounding yes. The
major argument that Nicholas gives against his positive response is one we
have seen in Aquinas: nature and will in God are merely rationally distinct,
and a rational distinction is not sufficient to found the real distinction
between the emanations and the persons.130 Nicholas ranges against this
contention “a cogent argument, evident authority, and a suitable example”.
The “cogent” argument that Nicholas offers is rather elliptical, but seems to
run as follows: if the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone by way of
will, then he could in no way be called “the Word”, while the Son, because
of his procession by way of intellect, would be called “Word”. Hence, even if
they both came from the Father alone, the Holy Spirit would not be identical
129 On Nicholas of Ockham and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 54, and the
works referred to there, especially Saco Alarcón 1978 (including on pp. 553–554 the possibility
that Nicholas wrote a treatise De Verbo). I have examined Nicholas’ Sent. commentary in mss.
Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, and BAV Ottob. lat. 623; unless otherwise noted I follow
the Florence ms., making silent corrections from the Vatican ms. Below (nn. 138, 139, 142)
I argue that in his trinitarian thought Nicholas was influenced by Giles of Rome; see also
Bakker 1999, vol. 1, 58, for another instance in which Giles influenced Nicholas.
130 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (“An Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur a Filio, si
non procederet a Filio”): “Respondeo quod quidam dicunt quod non, et hoc propter rationem
propositam in quaestione praecedenti (quaere ibi).” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 13rb;
BAV Ottob. lat 623, f. 12va (the text of the entire question is found in Schmaus 1930a, 300–301
n. 59). The reference is to ibid., d. 11, q. 1 (“An Spiritus Sanctus procedat a Filio”): “Quidam
dicunt quod sic, quia si non procederet ab eo non distingueretur ab eo. Et ratio eorum est quia
si tantum penes hoc differrent, quod Filius procedit per modum naturae, Spiritus Sanctus per
modum voluntatis, cum natura et voluntas non differant nisi secundum rationem, sic nec isti
differrent.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, ff. 12vb–13ra; BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 12rb.
to the Son, since they would not both be the Word. Thus, on the basis of their
differing ways of proceeding from the Father, by way of will and by way of
intellect, the Holy Spirit would still be distinct from the Son, if the former did
not come from the latter. Surely—counter Nicholas’ opponents—if the sec-
ond and third persons each emanated from the Father alone, there would
not be “complete and manifest distinction” between them, in the same way
as, presumably, distinction based on opposed relations is complete and
manifest. Nicholas’ response is to deny the problem: since there is noth-
ing incomplete or diminished in God, then this emanational distinction will
be complete.131 This argument is interesting on least two grounds. First, in
this argument Nicholas brings up a real difficulty at the heart of Francis-
can trinitarian theology. The Franciscans, as we have seen, posited nested
distinctions, i.e. indispensable emanational distinction nested within “dis-
pensable” relational distinction. The question has to be asked: would there
be any consequence for the divine person in question if we were to move
from the person being distinct by relational distinction to the person being
distinct by emanational distinction? For instance, would the distinction
between the Son and the Holy Spirit be more complete when brought about
by opposed relations than when brought about by disparate emanations?
And if the answer to that question is yes, then what would be the corre-
sponding effect on the Son and the Holy Spirit when constituted by less
complete emanational distinction? We have seen above that Franciscans
like Eustace of Arras, John Pecham, and Matthew of Aquasparta suggest,
especially in the context of discussing the Father’s constitution, that there
is a difference, that, e.g., the Father’s distinction begins in innascibility and is
completed with generation, although these same thinkers are quick to deny
that there is any such change in God—they were simply trying to indicate
that there would be no Father without innascibility (since his constitution
could not get started), although the Father is in actuality fully constituted
by paternity. Indeed, Eustace and Matthew even use the fact that relational
distinction is complete and perfect distinction as an argument for the neces-
sity of the Filioque: since only perfect distinction can be in God, and since
131 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Sed contra hanc rationem est ratio cogens,
auctoritas evidens, et exemplum competens. Ratio est ista: quia si tantum procederet a Patre
hSpiritus Sanctusi per modum voluntatis, nequaquam diceretur Verbum, et Filius diceretur
Verbum, quia procedit per modum intellectus. Ergo esset distinctio. Respondent* quod
distinctio manifesta et completa non esset ibi. Sed contra: nihil incompletum vel deminutum
est in divinis; si ergo est ibi aliqua distinctio, erit completa.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr.
G.5.858, f. 13rb; BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 12va.
152 chapter two
distinction according to opposed relations is perfect distinction, therefore

the Holy Spirit must come from the Son. Nicholas takes a different tack: as
mentioned, he denies the problem, and claims that any distinction in God,
relational or emanational would be perfect. Later thinkers in the Francis-
can trinitarian tradition like Henry of Harclay, Peter Auriol, and William
Ockham, will take this issue very seriously and present nuanced views on
the matter.132 A second interesting point about Nicholas’ argument: he uses
the fact that the Son is a Word proceeding by way of intellect as a brief, but
integral part of his reasoning. In another context, Nicholas will explain how
the persons are made distinct by origin by appealing directly to the psycho-
logical model.133 While several of the thinkers in the early Franciscan trini-
tarian tradition we have examined bring up the psychological model,134 they
rarely (if ever) resort to it in order to answer trinitarian questions about how
the persons are essentially identical and personally distinct. In this respect,
Nicholas’ use is definitely out of the ordinary. Remembering that Nicholas’
Sentences commentary was written after 1280, his use of the psychological
model and of the phrase per modum intellectus may well be under the influ-
ence of either Thomas Aquinas (who uses the phrase often) or Henry of
Ghent. As we will see in Chapter Four below, it was really Henry who fused
the Franciscan emanation trinitarian theology with philosophical psychol-
ogy, making use of the psychological model of the Trinity in a strong way.
Much of the rest of Nicholas’ treatment of the distinction between the
Son and the Holy Spirit is relatively standard. He brings up that nature and
will in the Father “differ not in being, but they differ in being sources”, as we
have seen in Gerard of Abbeville, Eustace of Arras, and John Pecham, and
132 Note a similar way of dealing with the “complete/incomplete” issue in William of
Baglione, at n. 35 above. For Harclay, see Ch. 8, below, at and around nn. 91–95; for Auriol,
Ch. 9, nn. 74–94; for Ockham, Ch. 10, nn. 81–85.
133 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1 (“An Spiritus Sanctus procedat per modum volun-
tatis”): “Respondeo quod sic, sed ad hoc sciendum quod personae divinae non distinguuntur
nisi per originem .... Origo autem quandam actionem importat. Patet igitur quod ex actione
divina oportet accipere pluralitatem personarum. Sed, sicut dicitur IX Metaphysicae, actio
est duplex: quaedam scilicet quae transit in rem exteriorem, sicut calefacere est in igne,
quaedam consistit in agente ipso, ut velle et intelligere. Sed ex actu primo non potest consti-
tui divina persona, quia ibi efficiens non est eiusdem naturae cum re facta exteriori. Oportet
igitur quod ex actu secundo constituatur persona divina, cuiusmodi sunt appetitus et cogni-
tio. Sed appetitus sequitur modum cognitionis, igitur ubi non est nisi simplex cognitio, non
erit nisi simplex appetitus. Sicut ergo per simplex nosse producitur una persona Filii, ita per
simplex velle alia persona, scilicet Spiritus Sancti.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 12rb;
BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 11vb.
134 See, e.g., the texts above, in nn. 7 (Gerard of Abbeville), 99 and 103 (William de la Mare),
113 (Matthew of Aquasparta).

that the difference between generation and procession is dependent upon

these different ways of being a source. Nicholas also explicitly claims that
not only opposed relations can bring about distinction, but also disparate
ones can.135 All things considered, in this aspect of his thought, Nicholas
exhibits what was fast becoming the typical Franciscan position.
This is not the case when we turn to the other major flashpoints between
the Franciscan and Dominican trinitarian traditions: those of personal con-
stitution and the constitution of the Father. Here, Nicholas takes a rela-
tively unambiguous Dominican-leaning line, and there is some evidence
that he was influenced particularly by Giles of Rome. When it comes to
the constitution of the persons, Nicholas claims as a type of general prin-
ciple that what brings about distinction also brings about constitution. This
is a predominately Franciscan view of the matter, and Thomas Aquinas
and other Dominicans will take a different position, claiming that relation,
as the divine essence, constitutes, while relation, as relation, brings about
distinction;136 moreover, in the fourteenth century, the whole idea of per-
sonal constitution will be problematized by a number of theologians. But
although he takes his point of departure in this Franciscan-leaning view,
Nicholas surprisingly appears to lay the greatest stress on relations. This is
because, in the divine, as he tells us, there is only distinction between related
things, and since “the property, with respect to the way it signifies, means
more directly relation than hypostasis or origin does, it is clear that these
properties will be distinctive formally, and through them the hypostases and
the origins are made distinct.” This is a fairly unambiguous relegating of ori-
gin to a secondary role in the constitution of the persons. As the quotation
shows, Nicholas thinks that the properties make the hypostases and origin
distinct formally, although he concedes that through origin the persons are
135 For “non different in essendo, different tamen in principiando”, see Nicholas of Ock-
ham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 12rb; BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 12va).
Also ibid., d. 13, q. 1 (“An generatio et processio different”): “… generatio est productio per
modum naturae, processio per modum voluntatis, unde licet natura et voluntas non differ-
ant in essendo, differunt tamen in principiando, et iste diversus modus principiandi facit
differentiam inter generationem et processionem.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 14rb;
BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 13rb. On disparate relations, see ibid., d. 11, q. 2 (Firenze, BNC, conv.
soppr. G.5.858, f. 13va; BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 12va–b). For earlier use of this distinction between
the emanations’ sources in ratione essendi as opposed to in ratione principiandi, see Gerard of
Abbeville (n. 8 above), Eustace of Arras (§ 3, above, esp. around n. 45 and Appendix, ll. 264–
265), and John Pecham (n. 67 above); see also Roger Marston’s (n. 177 below) and Peter of
Trabes’ (Ch. 5, below, at n. 87) use of it.
136 For Nicholas’ view, see n. 137 below; for Aquinas, see Ch. 3, below, at and around nn. 14–
16.
154 chapter two
made distinct “quasi-causally”, thus allowing for some marginal role for ori-
gin.137 This relational understanding of the Trinity is also encountered when
Nicholas deals with the question of whether the Father is the Father because
he generates or whether he generates because he is the Father. Nicholas
basically accepts Thomas Aquinas’ solution to this question and for pre-
cisely the reason that Thomas did: it cannot be, as the Franciscans typically
said it was, that because he generates the Father is the Father, because
everything that acts must already be in existence. For Nicholas, then, the
Father is the Father because of paternity, and paternity can be taken in
either of two ways: either as the Father’s constitutive property, in which case
it precedes generation, or as the relation which follows the action of gener-
ation. All of this, as Nicholas stresses, is according to the way we understand
things.138 Thus, according to Nicholas, the Father generates because he is the
137 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1 (“Utrum hypostases in divinis constituantur in

esse per proprietates vel relationes”—italicized text translated): “… sciendum quod idem
est iudicium de constitutione et distinctione, quia per idem est constitutio et distinctio. Et
ita, viso qualiter distinguuntur, patebit qualiter constituuntur. Sed quidam dicunt quod dis-
tinguuntur per relationes et proprietates, alii per origines, scilicet qui non ab alio quoad
Patrem, qui ab alio per generationem quoad Filium, et qui ab alio per amorem quoad Spiri-
tum Sanctum .... Verumtamen melius dicitur et magis proprie quod hypostases constituuntur
et distinguuntur per proprietates, per origines vero prout loco proprietatum accipiuntur
vel prout per origines secundum modum intelligendi hypostases, consequitur alias et alias
proprietates. Et hoc est quod dicitur sub aliis verbis quod per origines distinguuntur quasi
causaliter, per proprietates formaliter, quia ex quo in divinis non est distinctio nisi per relata, et
proprietas quantum ad modum significandi magis directe importat relationem quam hyposta-
sis vel origo, patet quod ipsae proprietates erunt distinctivae formaliter et per eas hypostases et
origines distinguentur.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, ff. 27vb–28ra; BAV Ottob. lat. 623,
f. 24ra–b. Schmaus 1930a, 461–464, deals with some of the issues brought up in this passage,
and he gives text from other questions in Nicholas’ commentary dealing with related topics.
138 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 27, q. 1 (“An Pater sit Pater quia generat vel e converso”):
“In omnibus agere supponit esse. Ergo oportet quod aliquid primo sit quam agat. Sed Pater
habet esse per paternitatem. Ergo prius oportet quod sit quam quod generat. Ergo etc ....
Respondeo: hic sunt hduaei opiniones. Quidam enim, videntes in creaturis relationes con-
sequuntur actus, ut quia aliquis generat istum, ideo Pater eius dicitur, ideo concesserunt in
divinis quod, quia Pater generat, ideo est Pater. Sed hoc non potest stare, quia tunc agere
praecederet esse, cum Pater habeat esse per paternitatem. Ideo alii sine distinctione conce-
dunt aliam partem, quod … hPateri constituitur in esse per paternitatem. Videtur tamen esse
distinguendum, quia non est inconveniens quod paternitas uno modo intelligendi sit prior
eo quod est generare, et posterior alio modo intelligendi; sicut est de sanitate et potione, quia
potio est prior in ratione causae efficientis, sanitas in ratione causae finalis. Unde notandum
quod paternitas consideratur dupliciter. Uno modo secundum quod est constitutiva Patris,
et sic praecedit generare sicut esse hpraecediti agere; verumtamen, licet praecedat generare,
non tamen est ratio generandi, et ideo non debet concedi Pater generat quia Pater .... Alio
modo consideratur paternitas non in quantum est constitutiva Patris sed in quantum relatio
.... Et isto modo est generare prior quam paternitas, quia relatio ad actionem consequitur. Et
Father, and he is the Father on the basis of paternity accepted as a constitu-

tive property. No room is made in Nicholas’ view for innascibility as primity
playing a role in the constitution of the Father. Indeed, bringing home the
fact that he is rejecting a major element of Bonaventure’s (and much of the
early Franciscan tradition’s) trinitarian theology, Nicholas even replies to
the argument that Bonaventure had offered against the priority of relation
over emanation. Bonaventure had pointed out that relational distinction
might be an attractive option for the Father, but that it was impossible when
it came to the Son, who is put into being by the Father through generation;
here, argued Bonaventure, it is absolutely clear that emanation must pre-
cede relation. Nicholas grants Bonventure his point when it comes to the
Son, but claims that there is an asymmetry between the way the Father is
constituted and the way the Son is: according to the way we understand
things, the Son’s nativity must precede the relation of filiation, but it can-
not work like that for the Father, since the Father must exist in order to
generate.139 Consistent with this view, Nicholas totally marginalizes innasci-
bility in the Father’s constitution: in its primary meaning, innascibility is
purely negative. Innascibility also has two secondary meanings: paternity,
on the one hand, and “a fontal plenitude or being a universal source”, on the
other. But, of these, only paternity has the type of special reference that is
required for a personal, constitutive property.140 Thus, innascibility can only
sic patet responsio ad primam rationem.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 29rb; BAV
Ottob. lat. 623, f. 25ra–b (I have followed the more complete Vatican ms. in this passage). Cp.
this passage to Giles of Rome, Ch. 3, below, n. 71.
139 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 27, q. 1: “Notandum tamen quod, licet sit distinguendum
inter paternitatem et generare, nec sit concedendum simpliciter unum nec alterum, tamen
inter generari et filiationem non est sic distinguendum, immo concedendum est simpliciter
quod Filius est Filius quia genitus, quia filiatio nullo modo secundum rationem intelligendi
praecedit nativitatem Filii. Et ita patet ad secundam rationem quod non est simile.” Firenze,
BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 29rb–va; BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 25rb. For Bonaventure’s argument,
see Ch. 1, above, at and around n. 53, and see for the text from Giles of Rome upon which
Nicholas’ reply is based, Ch. 3, below, n. 71.
140 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 28, q. 3 (“An ingenitum sit notio personalis ita quod
sit constitutiva personae”): “… innascibilitas non dicitur proprietas Patris, quia ad hoc
quod aliquid sit proprietas requiritur quod dicat illius personae habitudinem positivam
et quod dicat illius personae habitudinem specialem sive propriam. Primum requiritur,
quia nihil habens esse positivum constituitur in esse per illud quod negationem importat.
Innascibilitas vero quantum ad primum intellectum dicit negationem, et ideo quantum
ad hoc non potest esse constitutiva. Quantum vero ad intellectum consequentem dicit vel
paternitatem vel fontalem plenitudinem seu universalem principiationem, et ratione istius
ultimi* non potest poni proprietas, quia non dicit habitudinem specialem. Ergo necessario
est dicere quod paternitas est specialis sive personalis proprietas Patris, quod verum est.”
Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 30vb; BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 26rb–va.
156 chapter two
have a constitutive function when it is taken to be equivalent to paternity.

Interestingly, a version of this view will reappear in Richard of Mediavilla.141
Nicholas even accuses those who think that innascibility is in any way con-
stitutive of the Father of confusing God and creatures, since in creatures a
father must have being before he generates a son. Nicholas replies to them
by echoing Aquinas and especially Giles of Rome: “with paternity removed,
an unborn thing remains, nevertheless not as we understand the unborn
thing, but just as the pagans and the Jews, who, paying no attention to the
Trinity, would posit God to be unborn”.142 Innascibility really has no consti-
tutive force in Nicholas’ trinitarian thought. In sum, Nicholas was favorable
to some aspects that were becoming common property in the emerging
Franciscan trinitarian tradition, but he was by no means hesitant to reject
other aspects. This shows the wide range of views that must, in one way or
another, be held to be part of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition.
In stark contrast to Nicholas of Ockham’s mixed acceptance of Francis-
can trinitarian theology is the theological position we find in the final figure
we will examine as a representative of this early Franciscan tradition: Roger
Marston OFM (d. 1303?). Marston studied at Paris probably around 1270 (cer-
tainly before 1275–1276) under, among others, John Pecham and William
de la Mare; although there are difficulties involved in establishing a precise
chronology, he was back in England in 1272–1273, where he pursued his stud-
ies until he incepted as master in the academic year 1281–1282. During the
next three years, Roger produced several collections of disputed questions
as well as four Quodlibeta. In 1292 he was elected head of the Franciscan
province of England.143
It was almost certainly during the academic year 1282–1283 that Roger
first held and then redacted his disputed questions De emanatione aeterna,
a significant testimony to the state of trinitarian theology in the late thir-
141 On Richard, see Ch. 5, below, at and around nn. 60–64.

142 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 28, q. 3: “Ad argumentum dico quod secundum eos qui
volunt iudicare de generatione in divinis sicut in creaturis, verum est quod non sequitur, licet
non generaret Filium, quod non esset ingenitus, sed non potest sic iudicari. Aliter dicitur
quod ingenitum remanet amota paternitate, non tamen sicut nos sumimus ingenitum, sed
sicut pagani et Iudei, qui ignorantes trinitatem ponerent Deum ingenitum …” Firenze, BNC,
conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 30vb; BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 26va. For the parallel text from Aquinas, see
Ch. 1, above, at n. 72, and for an even closer model, see Giles of Rome, Ch. 3, n. 72. Nicholas also
notes that the Franciscan view of the constitution of the Father arises because of a confusion
between God and creatures in the text in n. 138 above.
143 This chronology has been painstakingly assembled by the editors in the Introduction to
Fr. Rogeri Marston O.F.M. Quodlibeta quatuor, eds. Etzkorn and Brady, esp. pp. 47*–69*. For
a general introduction to Marston and especially his Quodlibeta, see Etzkorn 2006, 143–149.
teenth century.144 Just the fact that he devotes an entire treatise to “eter-
nal emanation” would seem to indicate where his trinitarian sympathies
lay, and Roger does not disappoint.145 Not only does Roger discuss all of
the important features of the emerging Franciscan trinitarian thought—
innascibility and primity, nested distinction of the persons, the Holy Spirit’s
distinction from the Son based on disparate relations—, he does this in
an outright polemical fashion. And his chosen opponent is none other
than Thomas Aquinas. De emanatione aeterna can be read as an all-out
attack on the Dominican way of thinking about the Trinity from a now
relatively well-established Franciscan way of thinking about the Trinity.146
And both the elaborate Franciscan trinitarian theology found in De ema-
natione aeterna as well as the work’s preoccupation with Aquinas, Roger
lifted in large part from John Pecham. Indeed, one of the points of the
section below is to give an impression of just how reliant Marston was
on Pecham, by documenting the many quotations and paraphrases from
Pecham’s I Sentences found in De emanatione aeterna.147 This is not with-
out significance: De emanatione aeterna survives in three copies, and thus
it could have served to roughly double the circulation of Pecham’s ideas as
found in his Sentences commentary; this may help to explain how Pecham’s
trinitarian approach was transmitted to later thinkers. Indeed, many of the
positions themselves as well as the arguments and authoritative texts that
144 The De emanatione aeterna (hereafter: De em. aet.) is edited as the first set of disputed
questions in Roger Marston, Quaestiones Disputatae. References to this work will sometimes
be in the form ‘p. x §y’, where the ‘§’ reference is to paragraph numbers when available, and
the ‘x’ and ‘y’ are variables.
145 The treatise begins: “Circa emanationem aeternam, primo quaeritur de ipsa produc-
tione, secundo, de productis”. Ed. cit., p. 1.

146 In this regard, Roger’s De emanatione aeterna has something in common with the
Correctorium fratris Thomae that was being composed around this time or slightly before
(ca. 1280) by William de la Mare, and that was officially sanctioned by the Franciscan order
as a corrective to Thomas’ “errors” in 1282, although it should be stressed that De emanatione
aeterna is considerably more acerbic than is William’s work. William never specifically deals
with trinitarian theology in his Correctorium.
147 We have known for long that Marston was indebted to Pecham (see on this, e.g., the
short summary in Burr 1984, 57–58), but the extent revealed in the references in the footnotes
below is perhaps surprising. The ultimate consequence of this fact is that, when Pecham’s I
Sentences is available in critical edition, a new edition of De emanatione aeterna with updated
apparatus fontium will be highly desirable (the same may also be true of Marston’s De anima,
found in the same volume as De emanatione aeterna—see on this Etzkorn’s Introduction to
Pecham’s Quaestiones disputatae, p. xviii). It should be noted that an edition of Pecham’s I
Sent. will amount to some 450 or 500 pages of text, and with such an extensive work, there
may be more cases of Pecham’s influence on Marston than documented here. On an edition
of Pecham’s Sent. commentary, see n. 53 above.
158 chapter two
Marston lifts from Pecham will remain standard in the works of those com-
ing after Roger, for example Peter of Trabes, William of Ware, and John
Duns Scotus (see below, Chs. 5 and 6).148 But whereas Pecham’s presenta-
tion of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition was somewhat rough around
the edges, Marston’s is finely crafted. Some of this difference has to do
with the fact that Pecham’s thought is mostly found in his Sentences com-
mentary, where different aspects of the general Franciscan theory come
to the fore at different places, whereas Marston’s De emanatione aeterna
is a separate treatise dealing with trinitarian theology issue by issue. But
part of the difference has to do with the fact that Pecham was, as far
as I can tell, to some extent assembling Franciscan trinitarian theology;
Marston was able to hone Pecham’s ideas, presenting them in an orderly
and consistent manner. If Pecham’s trinitarian thought is still on the shop
floor, Marston’s is finished and ready for the show room. In many ways,
then, Roger is an important witness to a coalesced Franciscan trinitarian
view, which forms the immediate background to Henry of Ghent’s trini-
tarian thought. Moreover, with Roger we have a proponent of Franciscan
trinitarian theology who is confident and even a bit aggressive: one feels
that battle lines have hardened, and there is absolutely no tentative “toy-
ing” with various trinitarian positions as we saw with Walter of Bruges,
Nicholas of Ockham, and will see later with Richard of Mediavilla (Ch. 5,
§2 below).
A good example of this is to be found in Roger’s critique of Aquinas’
theory of the divine properties, as it is found in the Summa theologiae.
Aquinas had argued there for the following conceptual ordering of the prop-
erties of the first two persons: paternity, active generation, passive genera-
tion, filiation. In this way, Aquinas guaranteed that the act of generation
proceeded from a distinct individual—the Father established by the rela-
tion paternity—while at the same time answering Bonaventure’s criticism
that the Son cannot have a relation to his Father before having been put
into being through generation.149 Thus, Aquinas’ conceptual ordering goes
back and forth between relations and notional acts. Marston, with typi-
cal sarcasm, claims that this “is all too subtly put for my humble powers
(simplicitas meae capacitatis)”, and he only proceeds—hesitantly and with
148 On the relationship between Pecham and Marston, see, e.g., Boureau 1999, esp. pp. 241–
244, and also passim.

149 See Sum. theol., I, q. 40, a. 4, and above, Ch. 1, at and around n. 53. Marston’s description
of Aquinas’ view can be found in De em. aet., q. 3 (ed. cit., pp. 50–51). On the later Aquinas,
see below, Ch. 3, § 1.
humility—to disprove this position because Alexander of Hales had already

laid the foundations for doing so.150
Roger’s disproof of Aquinas’ position relies on the natural simultaneity
of relations. Aquinas argues that passive generation precedes filiation; but
active generation either precedes or is simultaneous with passive gener-
ation; therefore active generation must precede filiation (which Aquinas
admitted anyway); therefore, because of the natural simultaneity of all
relations, including paternity and filiation, active generation must precede
paternity.151 What Marston’s argument points to is that Aquinas introduced
order between the notions, but the order does not seem to fit: what would
this paternity be, before the active generation of the Son? Roger himself,
then, thinks that according to our way of understanding things, origin
simply precedes the relations in the divine. But Roger also says that the
divine relations as they signify reference (habitudo) distinguish the per-
sons formally (formaliter), while as they signify origin they bring about
distinction efficiently (efficienter).152 Already here there is a hint of nested
150 Roger Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “Istud est nimis subtiliter dictum pro simplicitate
meae capacitatis. Et quia fundamentum est ex antiquis, scilicet felicis recordationis fratre
Alexandro de Hales, ad ipsius impugnationem accedo humiliter et invitus.” Ed. cit., p. 51.
Significantly, Marston often excuses his “simplicitas” in his attacks on Aquinas; see below,
nn. 155, 164, 169.
151 Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “… videtur posse sic improbari: generatio passiva, secundum
eos, ‘praecedit filiationem ut est constitutiva personae’, ut hic dicitur; sed generatio activa
est simul intellectu vel praecedit generationem passivam; ergo activa generatio praecedit
filiationem in quantum est constitutiva personae; sed paternitas et filiatio sunt simul in
quantum sunt personarum constitutivae; ergo generatio activa praecedit paternitatem in
quantum constituit personam …” Ed. cit., p. 51. Clearly this argument is related to that of
Bonaventure considered in Ch. 1 at n. 53.
152 Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “Posset dici ergo quod relatio, ut significatur per modum
originis, distinguit quodam modo efficienter … Relationes autem, ut dicunt habitudinem,

videntur distinguere formaliter …” Ed. cit., p. 58. See ibid., p. 60, and q. 7, pp. 136, 147 §12.
Also id., Quodl. II, q. 8: “… origines aliquo modo distinguantur secundum omnes; quam
distinctionem intelligo effective, ut ‘-io’ indicatur, quia nec ratio capit nec natura permittit
illum esse aliquem a quo ipse est; relationibus vero formaliter fit distinctio, sicut credo.” Ed.
Etzkorn and Brady, p. 37911–15. This is perhaps a development in terminology parallel to Henry
of Ghent’s labeling of the property as “quasi-formal”; see below, Ch. 4, n. 12. Cf. also above,
John Pecham, n. 72, and Nicholas of Ockham, n. 137, who talk about quasi causaliter instead
of effective or efficienter.
Note that the terminology that Marston uses here may well have its roots in Pecham,
e.g., I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 3: “Ad quartum dicendum quod illa propositio “nihil existit ex
eo” etc. distinguenda est, quia ly ‘ex’ (mss.: eo) potest denotare habitudinem quasi formalis
causae, et sic falsa, quia omne agens per formam existit per eandem; etiam potest denotare
circumstantiam quasi causae efficientis, sic vera est, sed in proposito non habet locum, Pater
enim paternitate est Pater, non efficienter sed formaliter, et eo quo Pater est Pater formaliter,
Filius est Filius quasi* efficienter.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 86rb–va; Napoli, BN,
160 chapter two
distinction, and we will meet this last bit of terminology again in Richard of
Mediavilla and eventually in Scotus.153
Roger has a theory about the source of Aquinas’ problem, and this theory
shows quite clearly how the Franciscan tradition differs from the Domini-
can as found in Aquinas:
They run into all these difficulties, because they claim that innascibility, with
paternity set aside, indicates nothing in the Father that is not in the essence,
and they are obliged to claim this (angariam incidunt) because they maintain
that ‘innascible’ is only said negatively in the divine.154
Why innascibility? According to Roger, Aquinas made an exception for

paternity as a property constitutive of a person—putting a relation before
the act of origin that would found the relation155—and Aquinas did this
because he did not understand that innascibility contributes to the consti-
tution of the Father. Here Roger puts his finger directly on the most charac-
teristic of Franciscan trinitarian ideas: nested distinctions. Roger, following
Pecham very closely, claims that ‘person’ can be understood in two ways:
as something that has divine nature as it is a source of sharing that divine
nature, or alternatively as something that has divine nature with the ref-
erence (habitudine) corresponding to the act of sharing. In the first sense, a
person is constituted by innascibility; in the second sense, the Father is con-
stitued by paternity.156 This is not to say that the person of the Father goes
VII C 2, f. 70vb. This passage from Pecham is repeated verbatim by William de la Mare in his
I Sent., d. 28, q. 2 (ed. Kraml, pp. 33032–33139).
153 For Richard, see below Ch. 5, at and around n. 48, and for Scotus, below Ch. 6, at and
around nn. 73–75, 84, 89.

154 Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “In omnes has difficultates incidunt, quia ponunt quod
innascibilitas, circumscripta paternitate, nihil dicit in Patre quod non sit in essentia, et in
hanc angariam incidunt, quia dicunt quod ‘innascibile’ tantum in divinis dicitur negative.”
Ed. cit., p. 54. Cp. to Pecham, above, n. 78.
155 Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “Quia igitur non capit simplicitas mea quomodo paternitas
possit intelligi ante generationem, cum semper dicat relationem—non enim potest con-
stituere ut est absolutum—ideo necesse est quod semper dicat vel includat saltem rela-
tionem ut relatio est, et ita, cum relatio fundetur vel super quantitatem et qualitatem vel
super actionem et passionem, necessarium videtur quod relatio sequatur originem. Cum
igitur illi qui sunt contrariae opinionis dicant quod omnes relationes sequuntur origines,
excepta paternitate sola, et hoc adhuc secundum unum modum considerandi, et de ipsa est
declaratum utcumque quod originem non potest praecedere, concedo quod universaliter
relationes sequuntur origines nec possum intelligere quod aliter possit esse.” Ed. cit., pp. 56–
57.
156 Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “… persona potest intelligi dupliciter: vel ut habens naturam
divinam ut est communicationis principium, quod quidem principium omnino est incom-
municabile, vel ut habens naturam divinam cum habitudine comitante communicationis
from incomplete to complete, rather these are different ‘modes’ of person-

hood.157 And Roger describes these different modes in terms that remind
of Walter of Bruges: esse hypostaticum versus esse personale.158 Moreover,
Roger makes rather more explicit than did Pecham that the Father’s being
constituted on the basis of innascibility is a positio impossibilis, a counter-
factual that nevertheless importantly shows that innascibility is in God the
Father and has its emanational (i.e., constitutive) significance.159
actum. Prout persona dicit habentem naturam divinam ut communicationis principium,

sic constituitur innascibilitate … Si vero persona intelligatur ut habens naturam divinam
cum habitudine comitante actum communicationis, sic constituitur paternitate, quae ponit
hypostasim in connexione habitudinali et ordine speciali aliarum personarum in trinitate.”
Ed. cit., p. 55 (the passage is repeated nearly verbatim in Roger’s Quodl. II, q. 6 [“Utrum
hypostasis et persona realiter different”, ed. Etzkorn and Brady, p. 32518–28]—this was most
likely disputed before Easter 1283). This passage is taken nearly verbatim from Pecham; cf.
above, n. 88.
Note that Roger claims here that a person is founded by innascibility (and cf. also below,
nn. 157, 162). Scotus, in particular, will take Roger to task for this claim; see the texts in Scotus
referred to below, n. 166. Cf., however, Peter of Trabes, Ch. 5, below, at and around n. 85, who
also holds that a person is founded by the property innascibility.
157 Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “… licet in aliquo esse constituatur hhypostasisi per innasci-
bile, non tamen in esse ultimae dignitatis et habitudinis ad personam. Circumscripta ergo
paternitate intelligitur suppositum in existentia personali, ut dictum est, sed non in deter-
minatione habitudinali, sed in generali indifferentia respectu utriusque productionis. Sicut
in creaturis videmus quod aliquod suppositum formae superioris est suppositum et indi-
viduum, licet non sit ultima significatione significatum nisi sub forma speciei specialissimae,
ut prius est animal quam homo, et tamen non est animal nisi sit hoc animal, sic, cum propri-
etates in divinis habeant vim formarum absolutarum, circumscripta paternitate, intelligitur
quasi suppositum formae communioris, completur vero personalitas proprietate person-
ali. Non tamen intelligo personam divinam sic proficere de incompleto ad completum, sed
modum personae alium et alium.” Ed. cit., p. 56 (the passage is repeated nearly verbatim in
Roger’s Quodl. II, q. 6 [ed. Etzkorn and Brady, p. 3261–13]). This was taken nearly verbatim
from Pecham; see above, n. 91.
158 At, e.g., De em. aet., q. 2, pp. 23 § 11, 35 § 6, 37 § 5; q. 3, pp. 58 and 59. Also, Marston,
Quodl. II, q. 8 (“Utrum suppositum Filii sit prius filiatione”): “… filiatione constituitur hFiliusi
in esse personali, sed origo videtur Filii aliquo modo dare distinctionem hypostaticam; sicut
hoc manifestius est, sine comparatione, in persona Patris: in esse hypostatico constituitur
innascibili proprietate …” Ed. Etzkorn and Brady, p. 37919–23. For Walter of Bruges, see at and
around nn. 25–29 above.
159 Marston, De em. aet., q. 2, ad 2: “… optime probat Augustinus, quantum ad id quod nega-
tionis est in innascibilitate, quod potest sine paternitate intelligi, quia, licet non genuisset,
posset dici ingenitus, sicut Adam, quamvis non genuisset. Similiter quantum ad id quod posi-
tionis est, innascibilitas importat potentiam qua Pater producit. Licet ergo impossibile sit in
divinis esse potentiam intrinsecam sine actu, potest tamen ibi potentia ab actu circumscribi,
licet falso et sicut impossibile, et ideo ponit illud Augustinus ut impossibile.” Ed. cit., p. 34 §2.
For Pecham’s claim that constitution by innascibility is a positio impossibilis, see the text in
n. 54 above, and see also at and around nn. 91–92.
162 chapter two
At one point Roger makes explicit the nested nature of these distinctions,
and this nature relies—as it did for John Pecham and, we will see, it also does
for Henry of Ghent—on the distinction between disparate and opposed
relations:
There is a twofold distinction in the divine: one which is of opposition, just
as paternity and filiation are distinguished; the other is of disparation, just
as innascibility and paternity differ in the Father. And this latter distinction
is prior to the former, because opposition is reduced to disparation just as
negation to affirmation.160
A result of this theory—again specifically aimed at Aquinas—is that with

the relations set aside, the hypostases would still be understood in some
way.161 What is more, Roger says that this nested distinction is true at least
in the case of the Father, but hints that it may also be true for the other
persons.162 In this respect, he was not so bold as Henry of Ghent, who will
defend his own proprie/ not proprie nested distinction for all three persons
without qualifying it at all.163
Thus, it is clear why Roger claims that the source of Aquinas’ error with
regard to trinitarian theology is his position on innascibility. Roger fits
160 Marston, De em. aet., q. 2, ad 18: “… duplex est distinctio in divinis: una quae est oppo-
sitionis, sicut paternitas et filiatio distinguuntur; alia disparationis, sicut in Patre differunt
innascibilitas et paternitas. Et haec distinctio prior est alia: nam oppositio ad disparationem
reducitur sicut negatio ad affirmationem …” Ed. cit., p. 39 §18. Cp. to Pecham, above, nn. 54,
56, and 57.
161 Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “Ad duodecimum, secundum aliquos hscil., Thomasi dicen-
dum esset quod, facta abstractione relationum a personis, non potest intelligi distinctio,
quia relationes … vere ‘constituunt et distinguunt hypostases’ … paternitas autem significet
solam relationem et Pater relationem et suppositum—continget aliquo modo intelligere
suppositum non intellecta relatione, maxime cum supra sit dictum quod universaliter orig-
ines praecedunt relationes et contingit intelligere prius sine posteriori; ergo originem sine
relatione; sed impossibile est intelligere originem sine distinctione; necessarium ergo vide-
tur quod, circumscriptis relationibus, aliquo modo contingat hypostases intelligere …” Ed.
cit., pp. 63–64 §m. For the position of Aquinas against which Roger is writing here, see Ch. 1,
above, at and around n. 4, and Ch. 3, below, § 1.
162 Marston, De em. aet., q. 3: “… posito siquidem quod differentia opposita non esset,
remaneret differentia ista, sed non remaneret relationis oppositio. Sic etiam credo ad minus
in hypostasi Patris.” Ed. cit., p. 67 §n (the “ad minus in hypostasi Patris” is echoed in Roger’s
Quodl. II, q. 6, ed. Etzkorn and Brady, p. 32411–13).
Ibid.: “… circumscripta sic proprietate a persona in persona Patris, contingit intelligere
illum qui est Pater … etsi enim Filium non genuisset, adhuc esset innascibilis; non tamen
intelligitur persona circumscripta sic paternitate. Non sic autem auderem opinari de aliis
personis, ut de Filio et Spiritu Sancto …” Ed. cit., p. 66 §m.
163 For Henry’s proprie/not proprie distinction and its application to the Trinity, see Ch. 4,
below, at and around nn. 33, 52.

snugly into the Franciscan tradition descended from Bonaventure by insist-

ing that innascibility must give some being to the hypostasis that “will be”
the Father, or else the real distinction of the persons through generation
has no foundation. Thus, innascibility gives “hypostatic being” (esse hypo-
staticum) to the supposite that “after” generation “will be” the Father; prim-
ity in the Father is that in virtue of which he generates (illud quo generat).164
This is just to say that, for Roger, innascibility has constitutive force, with-
out which the Father would not exist, since without it the Father would
not generate. Roger’s conception of innascibility—or primity—is similar
to the others that we have seen thus far: it indicates something positive in
the Father and not merely negative or privative as Aquinas believed,165 and
what it ultimately signifies in an affirmative manner is that the Father exists
on his own account (a se).166 Roger claims that “innascible signifies having
the divine essence as non-communicated through generation, and so on
that basis (eo ipso) innascibility is the source of communicating the essence
through generation.”167 This generation or communication is done by way of
164 Marston, De em. aet., q. 2: “Unde secundum simplicitatis meae capacitatem, aestimo
quod primitas in Patre est illud quo generat, quod enim non possit esse paternitas, intendo,
prout potero, in sequentibus ostendere.” Ed. cit., p. 33.
165 Marston, De em. aet., q. 2: “Impossibile est enim quod innascibilitas sit propria notio
Patris, si tantum dicat privationem … Necessarium est ergo quod innascibilitas dicat posi-
tionem veram. Quod quidem et ipsi fateri coguntur qui docuerunt contrarium. Dicunt enim
…” Ed. cit., p. 31. Needless to say, the ipsi here is Thomas Aquinas.
166 Marston, De em. aet., q. 2: “Quae est ergo affirmatio quam supponit hoc nomen ‘ingen-
itum’? Dico quod prima affirmatio, quae hic intelligitur, est quod Pater sit a se, et ad hanc
necessario sequitur quod omnis alia persona sit ab eo.” Ed. cit., p. 35 §5. See also, ibid., p. 41
§25.
Marston’s notion of innascibility is distinctive in one important way: whereas Bonaven-
ture, Walter of Bruges, and Henry of Ghent (see below, Ch. 4, at n. 52) all hold that primity
or innascibility was the Father’s aptitude or natural propensity to generate and to spirate,
for Roger the aptitude applies directly only to generation. This is because for Roger innasci-
bility indicates that the Father is improcessible “concomitantly” (per concomitantiam sive
continentiam) in the way that “a house signifies its foundation” (sicut tectum significat fun-
damentum). On this see De em. aet., q. 2, (ed. cit., p. 30; p. 36 §8; p. 38 §16; p. 40 §21; p. 41
§25). One reason Marston gives for holding this position is because the Son spirates but is
not innascible; therefore, if innascibility directly carried along with it an aptitude to spirate,
Marston believes that the Son would have to be innascible in order to spirate. See ibid., q. 2
(ed. cit., p. 25 § 21, and reply at p. 40 § 21). John Duns Scotus subjects ideas on innascibil-
ity very much like Roger’s to some critical scrutiny in his I Ord., d. 28, qq. 1–2 (Opera omnia
IV, pp. 119–120, nn. 25–26, and pp. 126–132, nn. 36–47), and in q. 3 of that distinction Scotus
appears to use Marston’s summary of Aquinas (IV, pp. 140–142, nn. 57–63).
167 Marston, De em. aet., q. 2: “ ‘Ingenitum’ autem sive ‘innascibile’ significat habentem div-
inam essentiam ut non communicatam per generationem, et ideo eo ipso est innascibilitas
principium communicandi eam per generationem.” Ed. cit., p. 29. Also ibid., p. 28, p. 36 §8,
p. 38 § 14. Cf. above, n. 156.
164 chapter two
nature (per modum naturae). And, indeed, against Aquinas—who claimed

that the source of the productions was the essence—Roger claims that the
essence is merely the remote, “root” source (principium radicale) of genera-
tion and spiration,168 the proximate sources being, respectively, innascibility
in the Father and the will shared by the Father and the Son.
From what has been said thus far, Roger would seem to have all of the
elements at his disposal to defend the claim that the Holy Spirit would still
be distinct from the Son, even if the former did not proceed from the latter.
This is exactly what he does, and it comes as no surprise that his opponent
is Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas had argued consistently throughout his career,
in his Sentences commentary, disputed questions De potentia, and in his
Summae, that the emanations or processions were distinct on the basis of
the arrangement of the persons to each other: the generation of the Son
being from one person, while the procession of the Holy Spirit being from
two persons; thus the Holy Spirit had to be spirated by the Son in order for
the emanations (and these two persons) to be distinct from each other. We
have seen that this position fits in well with the emphasis that Aquinas put
on relations: the distinction of the emanations follows (conceptually) the
constitution of the persons by opposition of relations.
Roger cannot accept this, saying: “in my simplicity, I never was able to
grasp [this position], and indeed I still do not understand it.”169 To begin
with, if the emanations were distinguished on the basis that Aquinas
proposed—because the first came from one, and the second from two
persons—how could we prove that there were only two emanations? It
168 On per modum naturae, see Marston, De em. aet., q. 2 (ed. cit., pp. 28–29). Ibid., q. 1:
“… Anselmus non intendit quod essentia sit formalis ratio productionis Spiritus Sancti, sed
tantum radicalis et remota … essentia, licet sit principium radicale productionis, tamen
specialis productionis principium esse non potest nisi in quantum alio modo habetur.
Quia ergo dupliciter potest divina essentia communicari—vel per modum naturae (et sic
communicatur essentia per generationem); vel per modum voluntatis (et sic communicatur
in spiratione Spiritus Sancti) …” Ed. cit., p. 15 § 2. Pecham, as we have seen (above, nn. 72,
86), used the term radicaliter in his trinitarian theology, and we will see below (Ch. 6, at and
around nn. 140–141) that it reappears in Scotus.
In ibid., q. 3 (ed. cit., p. 59 § 4), Roger uses Aquinas’ own position that the essence is
the source of the operations against him, thus revealing once again the polemical nature
of these disputed questions: “ ‘Operatio est a propria forma’ etc., hoc est falsum, secundum
illorum opinionem qui dicunt quod relationes praecedunt: nam ipsi dicunt quod operatio
Patris generantis est a forma communi, scilicet essentia. Concedamus tamen quod sit a forma
propria, dico quod illa forma propria est innascibilitas, non paternitas.”
169 Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “Ego in simplicitate mea ista nunquam capere potui et nec
adhuc quidem intelligo.” Ed. cit., p. 136. Roger gives his summary of Aquinas’ ideas ibid.,
pp. 135–136.
would seem that there could be an infinite number of emanations, if this

were the ground of their distinction. Roger’s point goes back to the common
medieval proof for there being only three divine persons, one unemanated,
one emanated per modum naturae, one per modum voluntatis. This proof
has no weight if the modes of emanation are made distinct and take being
only on the basis of the arrangement of the persons to each other.170 This
argument, which appears to originate with Roger, will become standard in
the Franciscan trinitarian tradition, reappearing, for instance, in John Duns
Scotus and in William of Alnwick, and in the form that Alnwick gave it,
it would eventually lead William Ockham to concede that we indeed can-
not prove the number of emanations and persons.171 Parallel with Ockham’s
view, under the weight of this kind of Franciscan criticism, Dominicans from
the late Aquinas on no longer maintain that the number of emanations can
be proved in the way that Marston says: if we did not know on the basis
of revelation that there are three persons, two of whom emanate, then we
would have no way to know the number of emanations and of persons. In
this way, the Dominicans (and Ockham) undermined this Franciscan argu-
ment by conceding the point.172 Marston argues further against the Domini-
can position, however, that everyone admits that the Father and the Son
spirate the Holy Spirit as one simple Spirator. How, then, could the ema-
nations be distinguished in the way Aquinas suggests, since the Holy Spirit
does not come from two qua two?173
170 Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “… istae processiones per hoc tantum differunt quod una a
duobus, alia vero ab uno, non credo quod possit stare. Nam, si per hoc differrent sufficienter,
possent in divinis esse infinitae processiones, quarum quaelibet ab altera differret, ita quod
ultima esset ab omnibus aliis praecedentibus, et ita distingueretur ab aliis quae non proced-
erent a tot, sed a paucioribus.” Ed. cit., p. 136. For earlier use of this type of proof, see above,
Ch. 1, at and around n. 81.
171 For Scotus, see Ch. 6, below, at n. 133; for Alnwick, and Ockham’s replies, see Ch. 10,
below, at and around nn. 18–21, 91–107 passim.

172 See, e.g., Aquinas, in Ch. 3 below, at and around nn. 19–21. Also Ch. 7, below, at and
around nn. 33–35 (Hervaeus Natalis), 71 (Durand of St. Pourçain), 94 (John of Naples).
173 Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “Si ergo Pater et Filius producunt Spiritum Sanctum in
quantum sunt unum—sunt enim unum principium Spiritus Sancti—nec potest eorum
pluralitas esse aliquo modo ratio producendi Spiritum Sanctum, videtur quod istud nullo
modo possit origines distinguere formaliter, quod una est ab uno, alia a duobus.” Ed. cit.,
pp. 136–137. This argument is related to the further Franciscan position that active spiration
is a “quasi-incidental” property of the Son, i.e. it is not essential to the Son, but accrues to
Father and Son “after” they are established in their personal being by paternity and filiation,
respectively, and they spirate the Holy Spirit as one simple spirator.
Roger gives a further argument: “Item, sequitur ‘est ab uno vel duobus, ergo distinguitur’
et non convertitur, quia Pater distinguitur, qui tamen nec est ab uno nec a duobus; ergo
166 chapter two
Roger gives one argument against Aquinas that encapsulates the dif-
ference between their opinions, and this argument is taken straight from
Pecham: according to Roger, explaining the distinction of the emanations
in the way that Aquinas does reduces emanation per modum naturae and
voluntatis to the status of metaphorical or “appropriated” (non-proper)
descriptions.174 But this runs counter to the explicit testimony of the saints
from John the Evangelist to Augustine to Anselm. As touched on above,
Roger was eager to preserve the distinction between these two modes of
emanation, which is the cornerstone of his own position on the distinction
of the Holy Spirit from the Son:
… in the matter at hand these origins can be distinct from each other either
because they have opposition to one another or because they have dispara-
tion. Now, the difference of disparation is prior to and simpler than that of
any opposition whatever … if disparation is prior to and simpler than the
difference of opposition, it is more appropriate for the first principle. Thus,
if in the divine there can be distinction through relative opposition, even
more so through disparation. These origins therefore differ really in and of
themselves (se ipsis), that is to say they are the kinds of things that differ in
and of themselves (se ipsis), although they get this from elsewhere, because
they do not have their existence on their own account (a se). Therefore they
get that they differ from the fecundity of nature and of will, I would not say
causally (causaliter), but by way of origin (originaliter), not as things coming
into being (orientes), but as ways of coming into being (modi oriendi).175
It is on the basis, then, of these really diverse origins from the Father that
Roger can set aside Aquinas’ “worthless intellectual snares” and “inane
prius est distingui quam esse ab uno vel duobus, quia prius est illud a quo non convertitur
consequentia; ergo distinctio non potest esse formaliter per hoc quod est ab uno vel duobus.”
Ed. cit., p. 137. Cp. to Pecham, above, n. 66.
174 Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “Item, si solum per hoc differunt quod una est ab uno,
alia a duobus, ergo emanatio per modum naturae non plus convenit Filio quam Spiritui
Sancto nisi per appropriationem, et similiter emanatio Spiritus Sancti per modum voluntatis
non conveniet ei nisi per appropriationem, quod omnino videtur doctrinae Sanctorum
contrarium …” Ed. cit., p. 137. Cp. to Pecham, above, n. 69.
175 Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “… in proposito possunt istae origines ab invicem distingui,
vel quia inter se habent oppositionem vel quia habent disparationem. Nam prior et simpli-
cior est differentia disparationis quam oppositionis cuiuscumque … si prior est disparatio et
simplicior quam differentia oppositionis, magis conveniet primo principio. Et ideo, si potest
in divinis esse distinctio per oppositionem relativam, multo magis per disparationem. Dif-
ferunt ergo istae origines realiter se ipsis, hoc est sunt talia quae se ipsis differunt, quamvis
hoc habeant aliunde. Nam quod sunt, a se non habent; habent ergo quod differant a fecundi-
tate naturae et voluntatis, ne dicam causaliter, sed originaliter, non ut orientes, sed ut modi
oriendi.” Ed. cit., p. 139. Cp. this to Bonaventure, Ch. 1, above, nn. 76, 84, and especially to
Pecham, nn. 56 and 70, above, from where much of Marston’s text found in this note comes.
contrivances”, and claim that the Holy Spirit would indeed be distinct
from the Son if the former did not proceed from the latter.176 And so, for
Roger, following Pecham very closely, it is because the Son takes being per
modum naturae that he comes from one person, and it is because the Holy
Spirit takes being per modum voluntatis or amoris that he is from two.177
Aquinas, by reducing these terms to metaphorical descriptions, got things
backwards. We will see that Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol argue much the
same point. The Dominicans, on the other hand, as we will see, thought
that the Franciscans were grasping at straws: one from two is per modum
voluntatis in the divine—that is simply what this means in God; mutatis
mutandis the same is true about one from one being per modum naturae
or intellectus. With all this said, Roger is perfectly happy to disagree with
the Greek Orthodox position and maintain that it can indeed be proved
that the Son does in fact emanate the Holy Spirit: Roger is a Catholic and is
asking a purely counterfactual question, claiming explicitly that it is asked
per impossibile.178
In the last quotation given above (at n. 175), Roger’s terminological reli-
ance on both Walter of Bruges and Bonaventure is clear, and Gerard of
176 Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “Omissis igitur frivolis tendiculis aliorum, contemnens istam
capitatam et inanem adinventionem, doctoribus solidis inhaerendo, dico quod Spiritus
Sanctus, si a Filio non procederet, ab ipso distingueretur per origines differentes quas
habent ab eodem.” Ed. cit., p. 144. Ibid.: “… per origines diversas quas habent a solo Patre,
quamvis Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, istae duae personae sufficienter ab invicem
distinguerentur.” Ed. cit., p. 138.
177 Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “Et quia generatio est per modum naturae, hinc est quod
est ab uno solo, quod enim generatio animalium sit a pluribus est ex imperfectione, et quia
spiratio est per modum amoris liberalis, hinc est quod est a duobus.” Ed. cit., pp. 139–140.
Cp. Pecham in n. 70 above. Marston meets with a flat denial Aquinas’ argument about the
identity of nature and will in God making it impossible that the processions are distinguished
on the basis of them, using in the process the now standard Franciscan distinction between
the emanations’ sources in ratione essendi in contrast to in ratione principiandi (see n. 135
above for references to further Franciscan use of this distinction): “Credo igitur absque
praeiudicio cuiuscumque et firmiter teneo quod, quamvis natura et voluntas sint id ipsum
in Deo in ratione essendi, differunt tamen in ratione principiandi. Sicut enim natura et
voluntas, ubi sunt diversa secundum rem, possunt in operationes realiter differentes, sic
etiam ubi sunt essentialiter idem …” Ed. cit., p. 141.
178 E.g., Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “Ad undecimum, quod illud solum probat quod Spiritus
Sanctus procedat a Filio, et secundum veritatem hoc verum est. Quaestio vero quaerit si per
impossibile ponatur quod ab ipso non procedat.” Ed. cit., p. 146 §11. (Cp. the phraseology
to Eustace of Arras in the Appendix, ll. 781–785). See also ibid., pp. 148 §19, 147 §§15 and
17; and for a defence of per impossibile argumentation relying on text from Augustine, see
p. 147 § 16 (“non omne impossibile includit incompossibilia, quamvis etiam sit impossibile
in fine impossibilitatis”), and p. 143 (and see Ch. 5, below, at and around n. 111 on this type of
argumentation).
168 chapter two
Abbeville’s opinion fits well into this overall Franciscan trinitarian position.
What Roger’s text seems to represent, especially on this issue of the Holy
Spirit’s distinction from the Son, is a source of arguments for later adher-
ents to the Franciscan trinitarian understanding. Roger took the codifica-
tion of the emerging Franciscan tradition found in John Pecham’s Sentences
commentary and strengthened it, and many of the arguments he presented
will reappear in later discussions. The importance of Roger’s work is to be
found in the fact that he defends a well-articulated version of the general
Franciscan trinitarian theology: the stress on innascibility and the emana-
tions along with the concomitant nested distinctions; the link between the
existence of the emanations and the attributes of nature and will; the dis-
tinction of the Holy Spirit from the Son given that the Son does not spirate.
Further, Roger defends this against the rival trinitarian tradition as it was
expressed by its most famous and influential exponent, Thomas Aquinas,
in an increasingly charged atmosphere of confrontation on many fronts
between the two mendicant orders. Thus, it is no wonder that later theolo-
gians in the Franciscan tradition turned to Roger for ideas and arguments.179
In this respect, Roger occupies a position somewhat parallel to Henry of
Ghent, whose work was also mined by later theologians, mainly for ideas.
And Roger presents a “pre-Henry” version of Franciscan trinitarian theology
in at least two significant ways. First, Roger, like most of the other thinkers
looked at here, does not reject the relation account of personal distinction
and the dual nature of the divine relations upon which it is predicated.
Henry will do this, and after him such Franciscan theologians as William of
Ware, John Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol, and William Ockham will leave the
relation account to the side.180 Secondly, and for my purposes more impor-
tantly, the most significant of Henry’s ideas, the one that we can say is most
characteristically Henry’s, is not to be found in the Franciscan trinitarian
milieu in which he worked: the strong identification of nature with intel-
lect in God, of generation with intellectual “saying”, and of the Son with
the Word. For Marston and the other theologians discussed here, the Son’s
emanation is per modum naturae, and only very rarely is it described as
per modum intellectus. Although these early Franciscans make use of the
psychological model, their trinitarian thought is not built up around their
179 E.g., see above, n. 166, for Scotus’ knowledge of Roger’s De em. aet.
180 For Marston’s (and Walter of Bruges’) rendition of the relation account along with the
divine relations’ dual nature, along with Henry of Ghent’s rejection of it, see the references
in Ch. 4, below, at and around nn. 21 and 37. John Pecham, William de la Mare, and Nicholas
of Ockham also present the standard relation account.
philosophical psychology, as Henry’s was, and, following him, John Duns

Scotus’ and Peter Auriol’s (and many others’) would be.181 This would be the
single most important development that later theologians in the Franciscan
tradition would take from Henry of Ghent.
181 For examples of the use of the psychological model made by theologians in the early
Franciscan tradition, see n. 134 above; Roger uses the psychological model in q. 6 of De em.
aet. dealing with the issue of whether ‘Word’ is said essentially or notionally in God.
chapter three
EMERGING TRINITARIAN TRADITIONS II:

DOMINICANS AND OTHERS, CA. 1255–1280
In Chapter Two, an emerging Franciscan trinitarian tradition was traced in

some detail. It was “emerging” inasmuch as different elements of it seem to
enter the tradition over the course of some ten or fifteen years, although by
the time we reach Eustace of Arras and certainly John Pecham, the main
positions and arguments are in place. Here I cannot trace an emerging
Dominican tradition in the same detail, and I will leave to the side com-
pletely a group of Dominicans from the period, including Albert the Great
(d. 1280), and his two students Ulrich of Strasbourg (d. 1277) and Hugh of
Strasbourg (fl. 1260’s), who, if the studies done to date are correct, take a
rather emanational line in trinitarian theology.1 Nevertheless we can see
some of the features of what will become the predominant Dominican trini-
tarian theology by looking briefly at several of the most characteristic views
of the mature Aquinas, and then moving on to Bombolognus of Bologna and
Roman of Rome. This examination will also allow us to see how the Domini-
cans approached the “flashpoints” in the trinitarian discussion, issues in
which the Franciscan emanational view and the Dominican relational view
of the Trinity were fundamentally at odds. The study of Bombolognus and
Roman will also reveal that they were not entirely closed to influences from
the rival (i.e., Franciscan) trinitarian tradition, and in this they resemble
several of their Franciscan contemporaries. There is still a fluidity in these
years, a fluidity that will be harder to find in the last quarter of the thirteenth
century and in the fourteenth century. The chapter ends with a short exam-
ination of authors outside of the two largest mendicant orders. Here Giles
of Rome is the focus of interest, not least because it was to Giles that Henry
of Ghent responded in his rejection of the relation account of personal dis-
tinction.
1 See, e.g., Schmaus 1930a passim (consult the index), and esp. Stohr 1928.
172 chapter three
1. From the Early to the Later Aquinas: Selected Developments
Just in the last few years entire books have appeared on aspects of Thomas
Aquinas’ later trinitarian thought,2 so it would be futile to attempt any
type of summary here. Moreover, for my purposes this is not necessary:
while Aquinas’ trinitarian doctrine does change over time, nevertheless its
guiding principles, the ones that are of greatest significance in the context
of this book, remain basically the same. Thus, although in his later works
Aquinas is not as explicit as he was in his Sentences commentary when he
discusses the nature of the ratio, and he seems even to have modified his
opinion on the issue, nevertheless the ratio is at the heart of his explanation
for the distinction between the persons also in his later works. Further,
opposition of relations and the dual nature of the divine relations are the
crucial vehicles in explaining personal distinction, just as they had been in
the Sentences commentary. Moreover, Aquinas continues throughout his
career to downplay the importance of the emanations while emphasizing
the relations, claiming consistently that the Father generates because he
is the Father, denying concomitantly that innascibility contributes in any
way to the constitution of the Father, and insisting that the emanations,
generation and spiration, are distinct from each other because in the former
one person comes from one person, while in the latter one person comes
from two. Finally, linked to the view that only the already constituted
Father can generate, and developing his Sentences commentary position
that paternity is the Father’s form, Aquinas relies more and more on what
can be labelled his “intrinsic constitutive argument”: that the emanations
are merely extrinsic to the persons, going out of one person or leading
to another, while the property constitutive of a divine person must be
something intrinsic to that person, like a relative form (e.g., paternity).3
2 E.g., Emery (Gilles) 2007, Min 2005.

3 Thomas Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 40, a. 2, resp: “… origo significatur per modum
actus, ut generatio; relatio vero per modum formae, ut paternitas .... ad hoc quod aliqua
duo distincta intelligantur, necesse est eorum distinctionem intelligi per aliquid intrinse-
cum utrique, sicut in rebus creatis vel per materiam vel per formam. Origo autem alicuius
rei non significatur ut aliquid intrinsecum, sed ut via quaedam a re vel ad rem, sicut gen-
eratio significatur ut via quaedam ad rem genitam et ut progrediens a generante .... Unde
melius dicitur quod personae seu hypostases distinguantur relationibus quam per originem.”
Aquinas had explained in q. 40, a. 1, that “Necesse est … ponere proprietates in divinis ....
Quae quidem significantur in abstracto, ut quaedam formae personarum.” For the early
Aquinas’ statements that paternity is the Father’s form that, as it were, elicits generation,
see Ch. 1, above, at nn. 25 and esp. 72. For echos of this argumentation in later Dominican
emerging trinitarian traditions ii: dominicans et al. 173
All of this is in perfect accord with Aquinas’ thought as we have already

investigated it in Chapter One above.
With that said, there are three trinitarian positions that underwent con-
siderable development in the course of Aquinas’ twenty-year academic
career, and these three positions will play a prominent role in the trinitar-
ian discussion of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries that this
book traces, especially in the Dominican trinitarian tradition. Moreover, the
following examination of these three positions gives us the opportunity to
see how Aquinas expresses his trinitarian thought and how he puts his guid-
ing principles to work in it.
. The first issue to be examined is one that received some attention in
Aquinas’ Sentences commentary, but would come to play a far greater role in
his later theological works, namely, Aquinas’ denial that the Holy Spirit and
the Son would still be distinct if the former did not proceed from the latter.
This, the counterfactual question concerning the Filioque (everyone admit-
ted that the Holy Spirit did indeed de facto come from Father and Son), is
one of the most important “flashpoints” between the Dominican and Fran-
ciscan trinitarian traditions in the later Middle Ages, an issue upon which
the relation and the emanation accounts were fundamentally at odds, lead-
ing to friction. In his Sentences commentary, Aquinas addressed this issue
in the course of responding to the Greek Orthodox denial of the Filioque
clause in the creed, in a question entitled, “Does the Holy Spirit proceed
from the Father and the Son”.4 There, Aquinas’ argument—absolutely con-
sistent with the rest of his trinitarian theology—is that all distinction in
God arises on account of opposed relations, therefore the Holy Spirit must
proceed from the Son, otherwise they would be one and the same person.
All other possible explanations for the distinction between the Son and the
Holy Spirit—Aquinas mentions diverse ways of proceeding from the Father,
i.e. by way of nature and by way of will—either coincide with his own expla-
nation or are untenable.5 In his later works, Aquinas certainly does not
trinitarian thought, see below, n. 36 (Bombolognus of Bologna), n. 55 (Roman of Rome), and

n. 71 (Giles of Rome); and see Ch. 7, below, at nn. 55 (Durand of St. Pourçain) and 89 (John of
Naples).
4 Thomas Aquinas, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1: “Utrum Spiritus Sanctus procedat a Patre et Filio”.
S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia, vol. 1, pp. 31b–32a.

5 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1, solutio: “Respondeo: dicendum simpliciter quod Spiritus
Sanctus procedit a Filio, hoc enim remoto inevitabiliter removetur distinctio Filii et Spiritus
Sancti. Cum enim divinae personae secundum nihil absolutum distinguantur, oportet quod
omnis ipsarum distinctio sit secundum relationes originis. Unde si Spiritus Sanctus et Filius
174 chapter three
change his point of view; rather he considerably intensifies his engagement

with the question, both inasmuch as he treats it as an issue in its own right,
separate from the de facto question of the Greek rejection of the Filioque,
and inasmuch as he gives longer treatments of the issue with many more
arguments both for and against his position.6
We can take as an example of this, Aquinas’ presentation in his De
potentia, q. 10, a. 5, composed between 1265 and 1268 while he was teaching
in Rome. The first thing to notice about this treatment, entitled “Whether
the Holy Spirit would remain distinct from the Son, if he were not to
proceed from him” (Utrum Spiritus Sanctus a Filio remaneret distinctus,
si ab eo non procederet), is that it is in fact exclusively devoted to the
counterfactual question, and it immediately follows a separate treatment
devoted by Aquinas to the de facto question about why the Greeks are
incorrect (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus procedat a Filio” = a. 4). Moreover, the De
potentia text devoted to the counterfactual question of the Son’s distinction
from the Holy Spirit is substantial, amounting to some 4,500 words. Just on
this basis, it is clear that Aquinas is engaging in the counterfactual question
in much greater depth than was the case in his Sentences commentary
from ten years before. How does Aquinas use this space? His answer to
the question is unsurprisingly a categorical “no”, and right from the start
he signals that the distinction between the emanations is in some way
logically posterior to the relational distinction between the persons: if the
Holy Spirit did not come from the Son, then not only would it be impossible
for the Holy Spirit to be distinct from the Son, it would be impossible for
the procession of the Holy Spirit to differ from the generation of the Son.
Thus, consistently with the Sentences commentary, Aquinas thinks that
the distinction between the emanations presupposes, on some conceptual
level, the distinction between the persons, which in turn is brought about by
opposition of relation. With this said, he sets out to prove that his negative
response to the question is the only possible one, no matter how you might
non distinguerentur per hoc quod unus est ab alio, oporteret quod uterque esset una persona.
Nec hoc remoto posset dici quod distinguerentur personaliter Filius et Spiritus Sanctus per
diversum modum procedendi a Patre, ut quod Filius procederet per modum naturae et
Spiritus Sanctus per modum voluntatis, ille enim modus diversus aut diceret diversitatem
per oppositionem relationis, et sic rediret idem quod prius; aut diceret diversitatem in
absolutis, et tunc vel realem diversitatem, et sic esset compositio in Deo; vel diversitatem
rationum, et sic non posset esse inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum nisi diversitas rationis, et
hoc non sufficit ad distinctionem personarum … et ideo, cum Filius non sit a Spiritu Sancto,
relinquitur quod Spiritus Sanctus sit a Filio.” Ed. cit., p. 31c.
6 On Aquinas’ discussion of the Filioque in the Sum. theol., see, e.g., Pelikan 1974b.
want to claim that the persons are distinct, whether on account of relations,
on account of modes of origin, or through a comparison to the essential
attributes. He takes each of these in turn.7
With regard to relation, Aquinas maintains that distinction can only
come about on account of, on the one hand, material or quantitative divi-
sion (these appear to be equivalent for him), and, on the other, formal
division. Clearly the first type (material or quantitative) applies only to cor-
poreal things, and therefore in God there is only distinction on account of
formal division, and division of that kind, echoing his own Sentences com-
mentary, “can only exist by reason of some opposition”, in this case rela-
tive opposition.8 On this basis, Aquinas basically has his point, for it seems
obvious that if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, there would
be no opposition between them, and hence they would not be distinct.
And Aquinas again makes very clear that distinction based upon disparate
relations—that the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct because they come
from the Father in different ways—is untenable: the distinction between
the emanations is based upon the distinction between the persons, which
in turn is based upon opposition of relations.9 Here we see the basic divide
between Franciscan and Dominican ways of conceptualizing the Trinity:
7 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 5, resp.: “… si Spiritus Sanctus non sit a Filio, nec aliquo
modo Filius sit principium processionis Spiritus Sancti, impossibile est quod Spiritus Sanctus
a Filio personaliter distinguatur, et etiam impossibile est quod processio Spiritus Sancti dif-
ferat a Filii generatione. Quod quidem manifestum est, si quis consideret ea ex quibus aliqui
divinarum personarum distinctionem manifestant. Loquuntur enim quidam de distinctione
personarum secundum relationes; alii vero secundum modos originis; quidam autem per
comparationem ad essentialia attributa.” Ed. 1953, p. 273a.
8 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 5, resp.: “Si ergo consideremus modum distinguendi per-
sonas per relationes, manifeste apparet quod Spiritus Sanctus personaliter a Filio distingui
non potest, si ab eo non procedat. Primo quidem, quia distinctio aliquorum ab invicem non
proprie potest esse nisi vel propter divisionem materialem seu quantitativam, vel propter
divisionem formalem. Distinctio autem secundum materialem et quantitativam divisionem
invenitur in corporalibus rebus .... Hunc autem modum distinctionis omnino oportet a divi-
nis removeri, cum in Deo non sit materia, nec quantitas corporalis. Distinctio autem aliquo-
rum habentium unam naturam saltem generis per divisionem formalem esse non potest nisi
ratione alicuius oppositionis … Et ideo in natura divina non potest nec esse nec intelligi ali-
qua distinctio, cum sit una non solum genere sed numero, nisi per aliquam oppositionem.
Unde, cum personae distinguantur in divinis, oportet quod hoc sit per aliquam oppositionem
relativam, quia alia oppositio in divinis esse non potest …” Ed. 1953, p. 273a. Cf. the related
view in the Aquinas text in Ch. 1, above, n. 28.
9 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 5, resp.: “… non potest esse prima distinctionis ratio inter
Filium et Spiritum Sactum ex hoc quod Filius est genitus, non spiratus, alius spiratus, non
genitus, nisi praeintelligatur distinctio inter generationem et spirationem, et inter Filium et
Spiritum Sanctum, per aliquam oppositionem duarum affirmationum.” Ed. 1953, p. 273b.
176 chapter three
for Aquinas, all real distinction in the divine comes down to opposition of
relations; for a Pecham or a Marston, disparation would (counterfactually)
suffice.
Aquinas gives another very telling argument for his response to the ques-
tion. Grant to Aquinas that relations are the distinction-making properties
in the divine. In God the Father there are two relations, namely paternity
and active spiration. Paternity is the Father’s personal property, i.e. that by
which the Father is constituted, and this entails that active spiration is “as
it were, supervening on the person already constituted” through paternity.
Since active spiration presupposes paternity, clearly passive spiration (i.e.,
the Holy Spirit’s procession), in virtue of presupposing active spiration, also
presupposes paternity. Based, then, upon the natural simultaneity between
opposed relations, in this case paternity and filiation, passive spiration also
presupposes filiation. In brief: filiation is simultaneous with paternity, but
active spiration presupposes paternity, and therefore active spiration pre-
supposes filiation, and therefore passive spiration presupposes filiation.
From this point Aquinas continues: there are only two ways in which passive
spiration can presuppose filiation. The first of these ways is as follows: the
relationship of presupposition holding between passive spiration and filia-
tion could mirror the relationship of presupposition holding between active
spiration and paternity, and in this case passive spiration would supervene
upon the person constituted by filiation, and the Son and the Holy Spirit
would be one person. The second way is that there is some kind of order of
nature between passive spiration and filiation, and the only kind of order of
nature in God is on account of one person coming from another, and in this
case the Holy Spirit, constituted by passive spiration, will come from the Son
constituted by filiation. Clearly the second alternative is the only acceptable
one inasmuch as it is the only one that preserves the Trinity, and hence for
Aquinas this proves that the Holy Spirit must come from the Son.10 Francis-
10 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 5, resp.: “… paternitas constituit personam Patris .... spira-
tio activa est relatio personae non personalis, quasi personae iam constitutae superveniens.
Ex quo patet quod generatio activa, sive paternitas, secundum ordinem intelligendi, prae-
supponitur ad spirationem. Oportet ergo quod similiter filiatio, quae paternitati per oppo-
sitionem respondet, secundum aliquem ordinem praesupponatur ad spirationem passivam,
quae est processio Spiritus Sancti. Aut ergo ita quod spiratio passiva intelligatur supervenire
filiationi in eadem persona, sicut spiratio activa paternitati, et sic erit in eadem persona spi-
rati et nati, sicut generantis et spirantis; aut oportet quod aliquem alium ordinem habeat
filiatio ad spirationem passivam. Non est autem ordo in divinis nisi naturae, secundum quod
aliquis est ab aliquo .... Unde relinquitur quod vel sit una persona Filii et Spiritus Sancti, vel
quod Spiritus Sanctus sit a Filio.” Ed. 1953, pp. 273b–274a. This same type of arguing from
cans considering Aquinas’ argument would undoubtedly have replied that

the “presupposition” that he thought entitled him to his conclusion is not a
presupposition of direct origination or of some kind of causality, but of pure
logical order: for the Franciscans, filiation must indeed be logically prior
to passive spiration, but this does not mean that the Holy Spirit must pro-
ceed from the Son, as Aquinas argues. In the context of the present book
as a whole, however, what is most interesting about this argument is that
Aquinas talks about active spiration as being a type of property superven-
ing upon or “quasi-incidental” (quasi adventitia, the equivalent term more
typically used by Franciscans) to the Father: active spiration comes to the
Father “after” he has been constituted on the basis of paternity. On that basis
Aquinas then argues to the conclusion that the Son has active spiration,
because if he did not, then the Son and the Holy Spirit would be one per-
son. Theologians with Franciscan-leaning trinitarian thought, beginning at
least with Henry of Ghent, will also use the idea of the active spiration as
a quasi-incidental property, but they will concentrate upon the Son, claim-
ing that the Son is constituted by filiation, and active spiration comes to the
Son as a quasi-incidental property “after” he is already constituted. On this
basis, many in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition will argue that the Holy
Spirit’s emanating from the Son (i.e., the Son’s active spiration) is in some
sense incidental to the constitution of the Son, and for this reason it can
be counterfactually set aside, and the Son would still be a person distinct
from the Holy Spirit (and the Holy Spirit would be distinct on the basis of
his perfect emanation from the Father alone).11 Thus, in this argument of
Aquinas’ we see a conception of active spiration that is in fact common to
the Dominicans and the Franciscans—active spiration is quasi-incidental
or supervening onto both the Father and the Son—, but this common con-
ception nevertheless leads them to entirely different conclusions.
Aquinas also wants to prove that, even if someone were to maintain
that the source of the distinction between the persons is their differing
modes of origin or some comparison to the essential attributes (as many
the “ordering” between the persons, can be seen in Bonaventure’s proof for the priority of
generation over filiation (Ch. 1, above, at n. 53).
11 See for Henry of Ghent, Ch. 4, below, nn. 31–32; John Duns Scotus, Ch. 6, at and around
nn. 128–129. See also Roger Marston in Ch. 2, above, in n. 173. A hint that the Franciscans
might go about rejecting Aquinas’ argument in the way I suggest here, i.e. by focusing on
Aquinas’ “causal” vs. their own “logical ordering” (my terms) understanding of the term
‘presupposition’, can be found in their solution to the psychological argument discussed in
Ch. 5, § 4, below.
178 chapter three
Franciscans would claim), nonetheless his negative answer to the counter-

factual question is correct. We can deal with these two proofs more quickly,
since they utilize the same elements we have already seen. Thus, if someone
were to think that origin, and not relation of origin, was the source of per-
sonal distinction in God, the only way in which the distinction between the
persons could arise on this basis is for one person to come from another,
since, according to Aquinas, in immaterial things in which there can be
no distinction on the basis of material divisions, distinction can only come
about on the basis of some order, and in God the only order is the order of
origin, that is to say because the Son comes from the Father, and the Holy
Spirit comes from the Father and the Son. Aquinas backs up his argument
by maintaining that, if the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son, but both
from the Father alone, then they would look to the Father in an equal man-
ner (ex aequo), and in that case either they would not be distinct, they would
not both be God (the Arian view), or there would be some kind of material
division between them.12 Clearly, for Aquinas, emanation and origin, on its
own, cannot bring about any distinction between the persons; only opposi-
tion, strictly speaking, can do that.
A similar stress on order is apparent when Aquinas comes to those who
consider the distinction of the persons to arise through comparison to the
essential attributes. Aquinas holds that natural procession (and its prod-
ucts) is always the necessary precondition for other types of procession (and
their products), including processions of will. For this reason, according to
Aquinas, if you were to maintain that the Son proceeds by way of nature,
the Holy Spirit by way of will, then the natural procession (i.e., the Son’s
procession) will necessarily be the source and origin of the other procession
(i.e., the Holy Spirit’s). Similarly—in an argument we will return to in Chap-
ter Five, below—if it were said that the Son proceeds through intellectual
12 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 5, resp.: “Si quis autem distinctionem divinarum person-
arum per ipsam originem consideret, non per relationes originis, idem sequitur .... si quis
proprietatem divinae naturae consideret, impossibile est in Deo esse pluralitatem person-
arum nisi per hoc quod una ab alia oriatur, nullo autem modo per hoc quod duae oriuntur
ab una. Quod patet, si quis consideret qualiter in diversis rebus distinctio invenitur .... in
rebus immaterialibus, in quibus non potest esse multiplicatio secundum divisionem mate-
riae, impossibile est quod sit pluralitas nisi cum ordine quodam .... relinquitur quod pluralitas
in divinis personis esse non potest nec intelligi nisi secundum ordinem originis solum, ut scil-
icet Filius sit a Patre, et Spiritus Sanctus a Filio. Si enim Spiritus Sanctus non esset a Filio, ex
aequo respiceret Patrem quantum ad originem. Unde vel non essent duae personae, vel esset
ordo inter eos perfectionis (secundum Arianos), vel esset inter eos materialis divisio, quod
est impossibile.” Ed. 1953, p. 274a.
procession as the Word, while the Holy Spirit through voluntary procession
as Love, Aquinas replies that something can only be loved if it is known,
i.e., with a word or concept formed about it, and therefore Love must come
from the Word. In all these cases, the third divine person can be shown, in
Aquinas’ eyes, to proceed from the second.13
Thus, Aquinas thinks that no matter what type of source is posited to
bring about the distinction between the persons—relations, emanations,
essential attributes—, the Holy Spirit must proceed from both the Father
and the Son, or else the Holy Spirit will not be distinct from the Son. This is
not to say that Aquinas thought that either mode of origin or comparison
to the essential attributes, as such, were viable sources of personal distinc-
tion, and he reminds us pointedly that relation “is the source of distinction
in the divine”. Interestingly, however, although relation qua relation is the
source of distinction, nevertheless for Aquinas the source of personal con-
stitution is the relation qua essence. This is because the sole reason that
the divine relations are not accidental is that they are the divine essence.
Thus, “paternity, insofar as it is the divine essence, constitutes the subsis-
tent hypostasis in divine nature, but insofar as it is relation it makes it
distinct.”14 This splitting apart of personal constitution from personal dis-
tinction, seems to arise from Aquinas’ understanding of the divine relations,
13 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 5, resp.: “Si vero aliquis consideret distinctionem person-
arum per ordinem ad attributa essentialia, patet etiam quod idem sequitur. Primo quidem,
quia secundum hoc dicitur quod Filius procedit per modum naturae, Spiritus autem Sanc-
tus per modum voluntatis. Nam semper processio naturae est principium et origo cuiuslibet
alterius processionis; omnia enim quae per artem et voluntatem vel intellectum fiunt, proce-
dunt ab his quae secundum naturam sunt .... Secundo manifestum est si dicatur quod Filius
procedit processione intellectuali ut Verbum, Spiritus autem Sanctus processione voluntatis
ut Amor. Non enim potest esse nec intelligi quod amor sit alicuius quod non est in intellectu
praeconceptum. Unde quilibet amor est ab aliquo verbo, loquendo de amore in intellectuali
natura.” Ed. 1953, pp. 274b–275a. On the second argument here—what I call the “psycholog-
ical” argument—see Eustace of Arras in Ch. 2, above, at and around n. 41, above, as well as
§4 of Ch. 5, below, esp. at n. 139.
14 Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a. 5, ad 12 (italicized text translated): “… relatio, quae est dis-
tinctionis principium in divinis .... Sciendum tamen est, quod neque proprietas neque relatio,
secundum quod huiusmodi, habent rationem constituendi personam. Nam cum persona sit
rationalis naturae individua substantia, id quod est extra substantiam, personam constituere
non potest; unde in rebus creatis proprietates et relationes non sunt constituentes, sed magis
advenientes constitutis personis. In divinis autem ipsa relatio, quae est etiam proprietas, est
divina essentia; et ex hoc habet quod id quod per eam constitutum est, sit persona. Nisi
enim paternitas esset divina essentia, nullatenus hoc nomen ‘Pater’ significaret personam,
sed solum accidens relativum personae, sicut patet in personis humanis. Paternitas ergo, in
quantum est divina essentia, constituit hypostasim subsistentem in divina natura; in quantum
vero est relatio, distinguit.” Ed. 1953, p. 276a–b.
180 chapter three
and especially of their dual nature, and it will be repeated in the period’s
Dominican trinitarian tradition.15 But this splitting apart also makes for an
interesting comparison to the Franciscan tradition, which took the gen-
eral line that we saw in Nicholas of Ockham (Ch. 2, above, n. 137): that
which brings about distinction also brings about constitution. This Fran-
ciscan view of constitution and distinction was summed up by Scotus: “By
whatever something is formally constituted in being, by that it is made dis-
tinct, because something is both a being and is one by the same”.16 The
Franciscans would use this “principle” in part to show that, since active
spiration is a property quasi-incidental to the Son and hence is not con-
stitutive of him, it has no role in his distinction either, and thus the Son
and the Holy Spirit would still be distinct from one another if the latter did
not come from the former (the Holy Spirit constituted in that case by his
spiration by the Father alone). Aquinas’ rejection of this Franciscan princi-
ple through his distinguishing between relation as essence being the source
of constitution, and relation as relation being the source of distinction, not
only reflects his belief in the dual nature of the divine relations (and hence
his belief in opposition of relations being the distinction-making factor in
the divine), but it is surely also a means of blocking the Franciscan pos-
itive response to the counterfactual question on the distinction between
the Son and the Holy Spirit, by insisting that personal constitution and dis-
tinction do not work in the way in which the Franciscans might claim they
work.
The De potentia treatment of the counterfactual question, then, clearly
shows just how much Aquinas had evolved in the years since his Sentences
commentary treatment. In particular, he offers a well-elaborated response
that takes into account even the rival Franciscan view that origin is the
source of personal distinction. But his basic view remains unchanged: the
distinction between the divine persons comes from opposition of relation,
and the difference between the emanations is a type of byproduct of the
distinction between the persons. The Holy Spirit would in no way be distinct
from the Son if he did not proceed from the Son.
15 E.g., John of Paris, Quodl., q. 3 (“Utrum in divinis personae constituantur per aliquid
absolutum”): “Cum ergo dicis quod relatio ut relatio non constituit sed personam constitu-
tam consequitur, dico quod relatio ut essentia constituit, sed relatio ut relatio distinguit.”
Ed. Heiman, p. 278. Interestingly, Bombolognus of Bologna (see the text in nn. 32 and esp.
36 below) appears to take a more “Franciscan” line on this issue of the relationship between
distinction and constitution.
16 See for Scotus, Ch. 6, below, n. 56.
. The second position of Aquinas to be examined here has to do with

the possibility of a proof that there are three and only three persons in
God. As was briefly mentioned in Chapter One above,17 in his Sentences
commentary, Aquinas, like Bonaventure, held that a sort of proof could be
offered to show that God could be nothing other than a Trinity of persons.
In Aquinas, this proof relies on there being only two types of agents in
the created world: those acting by nature and those acting by will. This
applies also to God, “the cause and exemplar” of creatures: God has only two
processions, the generation of the Son by way of nature, and the spiration
of the Holy Spirit by way of will. Thus, according to Aquinas in his Sentences
commentary, there can be three and only three divine persons: one person
from whom the others come, one person proceeding by way of nature, and
one by way of will. Interestingly, in his presentation of the proof, Aquinas
uses language that is rather heavily emanational. For instance, in ruling
out that generation and spiration could ever constitute the same person,
Aquinas compares the two divine processions and the persons constituted
by them, to productions “by nature and by art, through putrefaction and
through sowing of seeds”, the products of which are diverse in species. In
what is in fact a very long passage, ‘opposition’ is mentioned only once.18 In
this proof, Aquinas appears indeed to have been thinking emanationally.
17 See Ch. 1, nn. 80–81.

18 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 5, solutio: “Respondeo dicendum quod non sunt nisi tres
personae in divinis .... Unde oportet ad hoc quod constituat personam quod determinetur
per specialem modum originis. In divinis autem non potest esse nisi duplex modus originis,
secundum quod omne agens dividitur in agens a natura et agens a voluntate, et istae actiones
inventae in creaturis … reducuntur, ut in causam et exemplar, in duas processiones in divinis,
quarum una est per modum naturae et vocatur generatio, et alia per modum voluntatis et
vocatur spiratio .... Oportet igitur ita specificare a quo alius per generationem, a quo alius per
spirationem. Haec autem duo non habent repugnantiam, quia idem potest esse principium
plurium diversis modis. Unde ex hoc non constituentur duae personae, sed una tantum, quia
nihil habet virtutem distinguendi nisi quod habet aliquam rationem oppositionis. Sic igitur
habemus unam personam, a qua est aliquis per generationem et spirationem, sicut Pater. Si
autem accipiamus aliud, scilicet qui est ab alio, quamvis importet relationem originis, tamen
non sufficit ad constituendam personam .... Unde oportet ad hoc quod constituatur persona
quod determinetur per specialem modum ad dignitatem pertinentem. Et isti sunt tantum
duo in divinis, et ideo oportebit ita dicere, qui est ab alio per generationem et qui est ab
alio per spirationem. Ista autem duo non possunt uni convenire, quia una res habet tantum
unum modum quo oritur ex alio, non enim idem in specie est a natura et ab arte, nec per
putrefactionem et seminationem. Et ideo erit una persona quae est ab alia per generationem,
et hic est Filius, et alia quae est ab alia per spirationem, et hic est Spiritus Sanctus, et cum
istae relationes non possint multiplicari secundum numerum, ita quod remaneat unitas in
specie, eo quod non est ibi aliqua divisio materialis, oportet quod sint tantum tres personae.”
Ed. cit., p. 31a.
182 chapter three
Aquinas seems to have recognized that this “proof” in the context of

his own trinitarian theology was somewhat awkward, first and foremost
because Aquinas himself explicitly denies that nature and will, as such, have
anything to do with the divine emanations. As we have seen, Aquinas, as
early as his Sentences commentary, insists that the emanations are distinct
from each other not on account of their different sources, nature and will,
but rather because in generation one person comes from one person, while
in spiration one person comes from two; moreover, Aquinas claims rather
explicitly that both emanations have the undifferentiated divine essence as
their source.19 Thus, this “proof”, whatever type of cognitive status Aquinas
intended for it, rang rather hollow. Aquinas seems to have acknowledged
this, and in his later works, Summa contra Gentiles, De potentia, and Summa
theologiae, Aquinas changes drastically his approach to a proof of the num-
ber of persons. Take the Summa theologiae (I, q. 30, a. 2). Here, Aquinas
does indeed give a type of proof, but in comparison to his treatment in the
Sentences commentary, it has been completely rethought and very nearly
totally “de-emanationized”. Whereas in the Sentences, Aquinas had used the
language of an emanation trinitarian theology that fits very well with the
proof given there, all of this is dropped in the Summa, and Aquinas’ new
proof works from the fact that “real distinction between divine relations is
only by reason of relative opposition” (realis distinctio inter relationes div-
inae non est nisi ratione oppositionis relativae), a starting point much more
in line with the fundamentals of his trinitarian thought. Moreover, just a few
articles after this proof in the Summa, Aquinas has a long treatment about
the role of reason in trinitarian theology. Here the Angelic Doctor basically
rejects that we can prove things like the number of the persons without rev-
elation as a guide. Thus, Aquinas seems to have gone from being to some
19 See, e.g., I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2: “Principium autem cuiuslibet operationis divinae …
est essentia divina. Sed ab essentia egreditur aliquis actus, secundum quod essentia est
sapientia; et aliquis, secundum quod est voluntas; et sic de aliis attributis. Similiter dico
quod cum proprietas realiter sit essentia, essentia secundum quod est ipsa paternitas,
est principium huius actus qui est generare, non sicut agens, sed sicut quo agitur. Unde
principium generationis est essentiale sub ratione relationis. Unde est quasi medium inter
essentiale et personale: ex parte enim illa qua potentia, quae est media inter essentiam
et operationem, radicatur in essentia, est absolutum; ex parte autem illa qua coniungitur
operationi, est relativum.” Ed. cit. p. 20b. See also, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 41,
a. 5, solutio: “… id quo Pater generat est natura divina in qua sibi Filius assimilatur.” For
similar statements about the Holy Spirit, see De potentia, q. 10, a. 2, ad 15 (ed. 1953, p. 261b).
Interestingly, in line with this position of Aquinas, in the proof in the Sent. commentary,
Aquinas only ever talks about intellectual and voluntary acts, not about intellect and will.
degree supportive of this type of proof (and specifically of the proof in its
emanational format), to being rather skeptical about our capacity to show
anything at all having to do with the Trinity without immediate recourse to
revelation. We know that there are three and only three persons on the basis
of revelation; human reason cannot bridge the cognitive gap to the Trinity.20
Interestingly, later Dominicans will basically drop the proof for the number
of persons, conceding Franciscan arguments, like those we saw above from
Roger Marston, who claimed that the Dominican insistence on the primacy
of opposition of relations would make unworkable the proof of the number
of emanations and persons.21
. The third of Aquinas’ positions to be discussed here will take on
special significance in the treatment below of the early fourteenth-century
controversy surrounding Durand of St. Pourçain (see Ch. 7). This is Aquinas’
change of mind on the way that the term ‘word’ can legitimately be applied
to God. In his Sentences commentary, Aquinas insisted that ‘word’ could be
used of God in two ways, namely both essentially and personally, although
he admitted that when the saints used the term ‘Word’ they were referring
to the person of the Son. Now, this text in the Sentences commentary is
by no means crystal clear, and yet it is certain that Aquinas’ position built
upon his early philosophical psychology in which the term ‘word’ could
be used of either of two psychological elements: either the intelligible
species acting as the medium of cognizing (medium cognoscendi) or the
intellectual act (operatio). Aquinas does not deal at any length with the word
as intellectual act, but he does claim that a mere relation of reason holds
between the act and what brings about the act, and, since this is not the kind
20 For Aquinas’ later proof that there can be no more than three persons, see Sum. theol.,
I, q. 30, a. 2; there Aquinas starts from the fact that the persons are distinct on account of
opposed relations (see also Moonan 2002). See Sum. theol., I, q. 32, a. 1, for Aquinas’ statement
that “impossibile est per rationem naturalem ad trinitatis divinarum personarum pervenire.”
Bruce Marshall kindly pointed out to me the change in language that accompanies Aquinas’
proof for the number of persons, and suggested to me that this might indicate a change in
Aquinas’ position on the issue. Interestingly, in his Quodl. I, q. 5, the Franciscan-leaning
English Carmelite Robert Walsingham, writing ca. 1312–1313, notes that Aquinas in the
article from d. 10 of his Sent. commentary comes to different conclusions concerning the
“provability” of the Trinity than he does in his later works (for Walsingham, see ed. Schabel
and Friedman 2003, p. 49142–147). Note, however, that in Sum. theol., I, q. 27, aa. 3 and 5, Aquinas
does claim that since there are only two sources of immanent action in God, there are two
and only two divine processions.
21 For Marston, see Ch. 2, above, at and around nn. 169–172; for examples of later Domini-
cans who drop the proof, see, Ch. 7, below, nn. 33–35 (Hervaeus Natalis), 71 (Durand of St.
Pourçain), and 94 (John of Naples).
184 chapter three
of relation that can constitute a supposite, understood in this way the term
‘Word’ is exclusively essential (presumably standing for the essential act of
understanding). Aquinas concentrates on the word being the intelligible
species, by which the object of understanding is made manifest. In this
case, the intelligible species (i.e., the word) can be the likeness of what is
understood, and, taken in this way, when applied to God it is essential, since
the essence is what is understood; the species can also, however, “name
something really distinct from the one whose likeness it bears”, and taken
in this sense ‘Word’ is personal, standing for the Son who is a likeness of
the Father.22 As the metaphysical underpinnings of this position, Aquinas
appeals to the Son’s identity with the divine essence: there is in fact only
22 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2a, solutio (italicized text translated): “… si inquiratur
quid sit istud verbum quo aliquis sibi loquitur, non invenitur esse nisi conceptio intellectus.
Conceptio autem intellectus est vel operatio ipsa quae est intelligere, vel species intellecta.
Unde oportet quod verbum vel dicatur ipsa operatio intelligendi vel ipsa species quae est
similitudo rei intellectae, et sine utroque istorum non potest quis intelligere, utrumque enim
istorum est id quo quis intelligit formaliter, et ideo impossibile est quod accipiendo hoc
modo ‘verbum’, aliquis intelligat nisi verbo intellectus sui, quod sit vel operatio eius vel ratio
operationis ad eam, sicut medium cognoscendi se habens, quae est species rei intellectae …
et ideo dicendum est cum aliis quod hoc nomen ‘verbum’ ex virtute vocabuli potest person-
aliter et essentialiter accipi. Non enim significat tantum relationem, sicut hoc nomen Pater
vel Filius, sed imponitur ad significandum rem aliquam absolutam simul cum respectu .... Sed
hoc nomen ‘verbum’ importat relationem secundum quam refertur ad illud a quo est, scil-
icet ad dicentem. Huiusmodi autem relationes in divinis contingit esse dupliciter. Quaedam
enim sunt reales, quae requirunt distinctionem realem, sicut paternitas et filiatio, quia nulla
res potest esse Pater et Filius respectu eiusdem. Quaedam autem sunt relationes rationis
tantum, quae non requirunt distinctionem realem sed rationis, sicut relatio quae importatur
in hoc nomine ‘operatio’, habet enim operatio respectum implicitum ad operatorem a quo
est, nec in divinis differunt operans et operatio nisi ratione tantum. Si igitur relatio impor-
tata hoc nomine ‘Verbum’ sit relatio rationis tantum, sic nihil prohibet quin essentialiter
dicatur, et videtur sufficere ad rationem Verbi, secundum quod a nobis in Deum transum-
itur, quia in nobis … nihil aliud est verbum nisi species intellecta vel forte ipsa operatio
intelligentis, et neutrum eorum realiter distinguitur ab essentia divina. Si autem importet
relationem realem distinctionem exigentem, oportet quod personaliter dicatur, quia non
est distinctio realis in divinis nisi personarum .... cum enim Verbum sit similitudo ipsius
rei intellectae, prout est concepta in intellectu, et ordinata ad manifestationem, vel ad se
vel ad alterum, ista species in divinis potest accipi dupliciter: vel secundum quod dicit id
quo aliquid formaliter in divinis intelligitur, et sic, cum ipsa essentia per se intelligatur et
manifestetur, ipsa essentia erit Verbum, et sic Verbum et intellectus et res cuius est Ver-
bum non differunt nisi secundum rationem, sicut in divinis differunt quo intelligitur et quod
intelligitur et quod intelligit, vel secundum quod species intellecta nominat aliquid distinc-
tum realiter ab eo cuius similitudinem gerit, et sic Verbum dicitur personaliter, et convenit
Filio, in quo manifestatur Pater, sicut principium manifestatur in eo quod est a principio
per modum intellectus procedens. Sed tamen in usu sanctorum et communiter loquen-
tium est quod hoc nomen ‘Verbum’ relationem realiter distinguentem importat …” Ed. cit.,
p. 75a.
one Word, the person of the Son, who is the divine essence. For this reason,
‘word’ can be used both of person and of essence.23
We know from none other than Roger Marston that this very position
was censured at a gathering of the Masters of Theology at Paris during
Aquinas’ second stint as Dominican regent master in theology (1268–1272).
After carefully describing Aquinas’ position—at points verbatim—Marston
claims:
I was present in Paris, and heard with my own ears, when Cantor de Perona
incepted, with master Gerard of Abbeville assisting, with brother Thomas
Aquinas and brother John Pecham present, along with other doctors of sacred
theology, around 24 in all, where this opinion was solemnly excommunicated
as contrary to the assertions and doctrine of the saints, and especially of
Augustine and Anselm.24
In fact, by the time of this solemn excommunication, Aquinas had already
changed his mind on this matter. For example, in his Summa theologiae,
q. 34, a. 1—almost assuredly written before Aquinas returned to Paris in
1268—he had changed his view: ‘Word’ is only said personally in God, not
essentially. Thus, while earlier criticism from his colleagues may have con-
tributed to Aquinas’ change of view, it is more likely that it had most to do
with a tremendous development in his ideas on philosophical psychology
and the true meaning of the verbum mentis. In his later treatment, Aquinas
explicitly rules out that the word is either the intellectual act or the intelli-
gible species; as we saw in the Introduction above, for the later Aquinas,
the mental word is the product of the intellectual act, claiming it to be
“something that proceeds from another, namely from the knowledge of the
one conceiving.” The fact that the divine Word emanates from something
else, entails that it is said personally in God, and that it is in fact the only
term pertaining to the intellect that is said personally.25 In line with his new
23 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2a, ad 6: “… in divinis non est nisi tantum unum verbum;
et tamen est ibi verbum personale et essentiale, quia persona non distinguitur ab essentia.
Unde nec excluditur per dictionem exclusivam.” Ed. cit., p. 75b. See also the text in n. 22
above.
24 Roger Marston, De em. aet., q. 6: “Ego tamen praesens fui Parisius et corporeis auribus
audivi, quando incepit Cantor de Perona, assidente magistro Girardo de Abbatisvilla, prae-
sentibus fratre Thoma de Aquino et fratre Ioanne de Pecham et aliis doctoribus sacrae the-
ologiae usque ad 24 vel circiter, ubi haec opinio fuit excommunicata solemniter tamquam
contraria sanctorum assertionibus et doctrinae, et praecipue Augustini et Anselmi …” Ed.
cit., pp. 116–117. See the treatment of the censure of Aquinas’ view in Pini 2003, 316–319.
25 Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 34, a. 2, resp. et ad 2: “Ipse autem conceptus cordis de
ratione sua habet quod ab alio procedat, scilicet a notitia concipientis. Unde Verbum,
186 chapter three
ideas, when in his later works Aquinas talks about the way that the Son
proceeds, he nearly always describes this as per modum intellectus: by way
of intellect.26 In saying this, however, it should be understood that when
Aquinas deals directly in his later work with the appropriation of essen-
tial attributes to the persons, he says that those things that pertain to the
intellect are appropriated to the Son “by way of likeness”. As we saw in Chap-
ter Two, ‘appropriation’ is the term used to designate a special link being
drawn between one of the essential attributes and one of the divine per-
sons; the attribute is essential, but it is said more often of or is more tightly
connected with one of the persons than of the others.27 For Aquinas, then,
‘Word’ is a personal name for the Son, but any other use of names pertaining
to the intellect, including the term ‘intellect’ itself in the phrase ‘by way of
intellect’, are appropriated to the Son on account of the likeness that exists
between the emanation of the Son and the emanation of a concept from our
intellect. Thus, despite the fact that Aquinas would never accept the strong
use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology, i.e. he would never
agree that the Son is a Word produced by the paternal intellect, nevertheless
secundum quod proprie dicitur in divinis, significat aliquid ab alio procedens, quod pertinet
ad rationem nominum personalium in divinis, eo quod personae divinae distinguuntur
secundum originem, ut dictum est. Unde oportet quod nomen Verbi secundum quod proprie
in divinis accipitur, non sumatur essentialiter, sed personaliter tantum … nihil eorum quae
ad intellectum pertinent, personaliter dicitur in divinis, nisi solum Verbum. Solum enim
Verbum significat aliquid ab alio emanans. Id enim quod intellectus in concipiendo format,
est Verbum. Intellectus autem ipse, secundum quod est per speciem intelligibilem in actu,
consideratur absolute. Et similiter intelligere, quod ita se habet ad intellectum in actu, sicut
esse ad ens in actu, non enim intelligere significat actionem ab intelligente exeuntem, sed in
intelligente manentem. Cum ergo dicitur quod verbum est notitia, non accipitur notitia pro
actu intellectus cognoscentis, vel pro aliquo eius habitu, sed pro eo quod intellectus concipit
cognoscendo.” For Aquinas’ later views on concepts (i.e., words), see the Introduction, above,
at and around nn. 73–76.
26 See, e.g., Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 27, a. 5; q. 28, a. 4; these examples could be multi-
plied. Note that Aquinas also uses the phrase per modum intellectus procedens in the Sent.
commentary text in n. 22 above, but in his later works it becomes the primary way in which
he refers to the procession of the Son.
27 Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 39, a. 7: “Sicut igitur similitudine vestigii vel imaginis in
creaturis inventa utimur ad manifestationem divinarum personarum, ita et essentialibus

attributis, et haec manifestatio personarum per essentialia attributa ‘appropriatio’ nomi-
natur. Possunt autem manifestari personae divinae per essentialia attributa dupliciter. Uno
modo per viam similitudinis, sicut ea quae pertinent ad intellectum appropriantur Filio, qui
procedit per modum intellectus ut Verbum. Alio modo per modum dissimilitudinis, sicut
potentia appropriatur Patri, ut Augustinus dicit, quia apud nos patres solent esse propter
senectutem infirmi, ne tale aliquid suspicemur in Deo.” On appropriation, see also Ch. 2,
above, at and around nn. 68–69.
in his later works the Augustinian psychological model, and in particular

the Son’s being a Word, becomes his major resource for clarifying the Son’s
status in the Trinity.
It is interesting that, in his Sentences commentary (probably written in
the period 1259–1264), Peter of Tarentaise opens up for the original Thomist
possibility that ‘word’ can indeed be said both essentially and personally in
God, although Peter is slightly more explicit and more categorical than the
early Aquinas was about the ways in which ‘Word’ can be said essentially
and the ways it can exclusively be said personally.28 But Hannibaldus of
Hannibaldi, another early Thomist, Thomas’ first official theology student,
and his immediate successor as Dominican regent master at Paris (1260–
1262—Hannibaldus went on to become Cardinal, and until his death in 1272
seems to have kept up a correspondence with Aquinas), in his Sentences
commentary, has already rejected the early Thomist position.29 The same is
true of two other early Dominican theologians coming soon after Aquinas,
Bombolognus of Bologna and Roman of Rome,30 whose trinitarian theology
will be examined in greater depth in the next section of the present chapter.
28 Peter of Tarentaise, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2 (“An Verbum dicatur personaliter vel

essentialiter”, p. 226a–b): “Respondeo: Verbum divinum dicitur maxime ad similitudinem
verbi interioris, in verbum autem interiorem* ad completam rationem verbi tria concurrunt.
Primum est intellectus super intelligibile conversio; secundum, similitudinis eius in se
naturalis generatio; tertium, ordo ad manifestandum se in illo, vel sibi ipsi, ut quando homo
loquitur sibi soli, vel alteri, ut quando loquitur etiam alteri, non enim species rei quiescens in
memoria verbum dicitur, sed species informans aciem cogitantis, ab illa genita, illi simillima,
eius manifestativa, verbum internum vocatur. Primum essentiae convenire potest, et cuilibet
personae. Sed secundum non convenit essentiae, quia non producitur ab aliquo; nec Patri,
eadem ratione, nec Spiritui Sancto, quia non producitur per modum naturae, unde non est
imago; sed soli Filio, hnoni essentialiter ut quibusdam visum est, sed personaliter tantum
accipitur, et soli Filio convenit secundum sanctos Augustinum et Ambrosium et alios… Ad
5 Verbum internum dicit conceptionem intellectus. Resp. conceptio intellectus non est sui
ipsius intuitio, sed generatio speciei sibi similis; huiusmodi vero conceptio in Deo essentiale
esse non potest.” Ed. 1652, p. 226a–b.
29 Hannibaldus, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1, resp.: “Dicendum quod Verbum in divinis proprie
loquendo non potest nisi dici personaliter.” Ed. 1878, p. 157, col. 1.
30 Bombolognus of Bologna, I Sent., d. 27, pars 2, q. 2 (“Utrum verbum dicitur personaliter”,
ms. Bologna, Biblioteca universitaria 753 (1506), ff. 62vb–63rb): “… dicendum quod proprie
accipiendo Verbum in divinis est personale et non essentiale .... patet ergo quod Verbum
secundum quod dicitur in divinis est personale et nullo modo essentiale.” Bologna, Bibl. univ.
753 (1506), ff. 62vb, 63rb. Roman of Rome, I Sent., d. 27, pars 2, q. 2 (“Utrum in divinis Verbum
dicatur personaliter vel essentialiter”, BAV Palat. lat. 331, ff. 78vb–79ra): “… Verbum in divinis
non tenetur essentialiter sed personaliter solum.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, ff. 78vb–79ra. Also Giles
of Rome, I Sent., d. 27, prin. 1, q. 2 (ed. 1521, f. 146rb–vb), describes Aquinas’ view in some detail
and then rejects it in favor of the position that the Word is said only personally in the divine.
188 chapter three
This last issue, as mentioned, is of particular significance because Durand

of St. Pourçain will claim that in the divine ‘word’ is said exclusively in an
essential manner; the term ‘word’, for Durand, cannot be applied personally
except through appropriation, roughly speaking: metaphorically. Domini-
can theologians like Hervaeus Natalis and John of Naples will defend the
“genuine” Thomistic teaching: ‘Word’ is said personally in God and only
of the Son. But, as we will see, the exclusively metaphorical application of
‘Word’, and hence of the psychological model, is a trait in the period’s trini-
tarian theology that becomes extremely pronounced in the second quarter
of the fourteenth century (see Part III, below, esp. Chs. 11 and 12).
2. Bombolognus of Bologna and Roman of Rome
Neither Bombolognus of Bologna nor Roman of Rome could have had much
impact on the trinitarian discussion of their times, since their only writings
that deal with the subject at all, their respective commentaries on book I
of the Sentences, are found in just one copy each. Nevertheless, these two
Italian Dominicans certainly do give us an idea as to the state of Dominican
trinitarian theology in the 1260’s and 1270’s.
Bombolognus most likely never taught in Paris. A note following the
explicit of his commentary on I Sentences, which is found in ms. Bologna,
Biblioteca universitaria 753 (1506), tells us that the copy is an autograph,
and that it was written while Thomas was alive and had not yet written his
Summa theologiae. Despite this information, a recent careful study by Adri-
ano Oliva leaves no doubt that Bombolognus made use of the first part of
Aquinas’ Summa theologiae; on that basis Oliva suggests the best dates for
the commentary are 1268 (when Bombolognus could have had available to
him Aquinas’ work, finished in 1267) and ca. 1279 (the last we hear of Bom-
bolognus).31 When one examines the trinitarian theology in the commen-
31 See Oliva 2008. The explicit in Bologna, Biblioteca universitaria 753 (1506), f. 99v reads:
“Explicit primus Sententiarum secundum fratrem Bombolognum Bononiensem de ordine

Fratrum Praedicatorum. Deo gratias. Istud est originale primum huius scripti, et est de manu
dicti fratris Bombologni, qui fuit contemporaneus venerandi doctoris et admirandi fratris
Thoma de Aquino eiusdem ordinis Praedicatorum, qui nondum fecerat Summa in theolo-
gia. Anima utriusque doctoris requiescat in pace. Amen. Amen.” Bombolognus’ question
commentary is found on ff. 1–99 of the ms, and a literal commentary follows on ff. 100r–
114r. On Bombolognus and his commentary, see the brief notice in Friedman 2002a, 49, to
which it should be added that Bombolognus’ IV Sent. is extant in ms. Bologna, Biblioteca
dell’Archiginnasio, B.1420. For much more information on Bombolognus and the evidence
tary, one notices many of the emphases evident in Aquinas’ trinitarian the-
ology, along with some significant differences of both a terminological and a
more substantial nature. These differences temper Bombolognus’ Domini-
can relation account by adding emanational elements to it. For, like Aquinas
(and, for that matter, apparently like all of his Dominican contemporaries
as well), Bombolognus supports a relation account of personal distinction,
relying on the dual nature of the divine relations. The relations compared
to the essence are the essence, but compared to their correlative they are
distinct from the essence by modus se habendi; through the opposition
of the divine relations arises the distinction between the persons.32 Inter-
estingly, Bombolognus uses the Bonaventurean modus se habendi instead
of the Thomist ratio to describe the way that relation and essence differ,
and Hester Gelber (1974, 27) attributes this to the influence that Peter of
Tarentaise, himself influenced by Bonaventure, exercised on Dominican
trinitarian throught of this period.
Bombolognus has a decidedly Dominican leaning when he examines the
issues surrounding the Filioque. Here, he takes the view that Aquinas held,
and rejects the view of the emerging Franciscan tradition that we traced
above. According to Bombolognus, we know from Anselm that only oppo-
sition of relations makes the persons distinct; but if the Holy Spirit did not
come from the Son, then the filiation that would constitute the Son and the
procession that would constitute the Holy Spirit would not be opposed, and
in that case “filiation and procession would pertain to the same person, just
as their opposites pertain to the same person, namely paternity and active
spiration.”33 Bombolognus is clearly saying that, if filiation and procession
we have concerning his life (his date of death, whether he worked in Paris), as well as a study
of his use of sources in the Sent. commentary, see D’Amato 1948. Many thanks go to Roberto
Lambertini for checking for me several readings in the manuscript in Bologna.
32 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 34, q. 1 (“Utrum essentia sit persona”; f. 71rb–va): “Relatio
quae includitur in intellectu personae comparata ad essentiam realiter est ipsa essentia,
comparata autem ad suum correlativum distinguitur ab ea in modo se habendi, et sic relatio
quasi constituit et distinguit personam et nullam compositionem facit cum essentia nec in
persona .... in Deo essentia et persona re idem sunt et solum differunt in modo se habendi ....
secundum quod relationes oppositionem habent ad invicem, possunt distinguere personas,
nec tamen distinguitur essentia, quia relationes non distinguuntur ab invicem secundum
quod sunt idem realiter cum essentia.” Ed. Schmaus 1930a, 408 n. 61 = Bologna, Bibl. univ.
753 (1506), f. 71va. See also the other texts from Bombolognus’ I Sent. that Schmaus includes
on this issue at loc.cit., 407–408 n. 61.
33 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1 (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus procedat a Patre et a Filio”;
f. 34rb–va—italicized text tanslated): “Persona in divinis distinguitur sola originis relatione;

dicit enim Anselmus in libro De processione Spiritus Sancti quod tres personas per omnia
190 chapter three
are understood to be emanational properties or “disparate relations”, each

constituting singly the Son and the Holy Spirit, respectively, as the Francis-
can trinitarian tradition suggested, then they cannot suffice to make those
two persons distinct. Only opposition of relations can bring about personal
distinction. So, this is a thoroughly Dominican position. Nevertheless, it is
worthwhile noting that, although it is forcefully put, Bombolognus men-
tions the position merely in passing as part of a larger question.
If Bombolognus holds the typical Dominican view on the counterfactual
question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, what does he say
about the related issue of the distinction between the emanations? In his
discussion of the issue,34 Bombolognus in fact gives a nice presentation of
the two trinitarian views, and inclines significantly towards a Dominican
stance. First, he presents a position that falls generally into the Franciscan
trinitarian tradition. According to this position, we can speak about the
emanations in two ways: with respect to their being and with respect to
their being distinct. Speaking in the first way, the emanations take their
being from their perfect, fecund sources, the fecundity of nature in the
Father alone for the Son’s generation, the fecundity of will in the Father and
the Son for the Holy Spirit’s procession. On this position, the fecundity of
nature in the Father is the Father’s innascibility, and the fecundity of the
will in Father and Son is their improcessibility. With respect to their being
distinct, on the other hand, the emanations are distinct in and of themselves
(se ipsis), i.e. irreducibly distinct, and Bombolognus compares this, echoing
Bonaventure, to the way rational and irrational are irreducibly distinct. It
comes as no surprise when Bombolognus links this position to the typically
Franciscan view that the Father is the Father because he generates, i.e. the
emanational property generation is the fundamental reason that the Father
is the Father.35
sunt idem ubi relationis oppositio non distinguit. Filiatio enim, qua persona Filii constituitur,
et processio, qua persona Spiritus, non opponuntur, sicut nec paternitas et spiratio, quae
ad eandem personam pertinent, scilicet ad personam Patris. Unde dico quod si non esset
aliqua relatio opposita originis quae distingueret* inter personam Spiritus Sancti et Filii,
tunc filiatio et processio pertinerent ad eandem personam, sicut eorum opposita ad eandem
personam pertinent, scilicet paternitas et spiratio activa.” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 (1506), f. 34va.
For some background to this argument, see Aquinas at and around n. 10 above, and see the
related “Father argument” described in Ch. 5, below, §4.
34 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3: “Utrum processio Filii et processio Spiritus Sancti
differant realiter” (Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 [1506], f. 37ra–va).

35 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3: “Respondeo: quidam dicunt quod de his duabus ema-
nationibus est loqui dupliciter: vel quantum ad esse vel quantum ad distingui. Si quantum
We have already seen in Thomas Aquinas one of the main criticisms that
Bombolognus advances against this Franciscan position: the emanation
generation cannot be the property constitutive of the Father, since it pre-
supposes the Father already in existence. Bombolognus, following Aquinas
and his “intrinsic constitutive” argument, claims that active generation has
to go out (it is progrediens) from a person who “already” subsists and that
generation understood passively, i.e. nativity, does not constitute the Son
but is rather the way (via) to the “already” subsisting person.36 Because of the
problems with the Franciscan position, Bombolognus informs us that there
are others who argue that “paternity is just like a form that is the source
of generating in the Father”; moreover, paternity in the Father indicates
(dicit) the fecundity of divine nature. Likewise with the spirative power in
the Father and the Son: it indicates (dicit) the fecundity of the will, and is
“just like a form that is the source of spirating in Father and Son”. There are
two things to notice about this view. First, some attention is devoted in it to
the “fecundity” of the divine nature and will, and this is more “emanational”
ad esse, sic habent rationem essendi a suis principiis perfectis* et fecundis, ut generatio
Filii a fecunditate naturae, quae est in solo Patre, processio Spiritus Sancti a fecunditate
hvoluntatisi (ms.: Spiritus Sancti), quae est in Patre et Filio, quia, cum* in Deo est perfecta
et* vera* natura, ideo est* in eo perfecta et vera* naturae fecunditas in persona, quia habet
rationem principii; et quia in tali persona est perfecta et vera* naturae fecunditas, ideo ab ea
est perfecta et vera naturae emanatio. Et consimiliter intelligunt de voluntate. Unde secun-
dum hanc opinionem, fecunditas naturae in Patre est innascibilitas, fecunditas voluntatis
in Patre et Filio est improcessibilitas* .... Si autem loquamur de ipsis quantum ad distingui,
sic se ipsis distinguuntur, sicut rationale et irrationale. Innotescit autem nobis earum dis-
tinctio per relationes sive proprietates originis, sicut in creaturis proprietates manifestant
distinctionem individuorum quae fuerit per principia materialia. Unde dicunt quod Pater
distinguitur a Filio in quantum iste generat, ille vero genitus est, Pater enim non generat
quia Pater, sed quia generat ideo est Pater et non Filius quia genitus.” Bologna, Bibl. univ.
753 (1506), f. 37rb. Cp. this to Bonaventure, Ch. 1, above, at and around nn. 76, 84 (at points
verbatim). Bombolognus’ text continues in n. 36 below.
36 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3 (continued from n. 35 above): “Sed contra hoc est, quia
secundum Philosophum eadem sunt principia essendi et distinguendi. Si ergo generatio Filii
et processio Spiritus Sancti habent rationem essendi per huiusmodi fecunditates, habent et
per illas rationem [non*] ab invicem distinguendi* .... /37va/ Item, si Pater distinguitur a Filio
generatione activa, et paternitate ex consequenti, ut dicunt, et Filius a Patre generatione
quasi passiva, et ex consequenti filiatione, tunc, cum eadem sint principia distinguendi et
essendi sive* constituendi, tunc generatio active dicta constituet personam Patris et passive
dictam constituet personam Filii, quod esse non potest, quia generatio active significata
significatur ut progrediens a persona subsistente, unde praesupponit eam et non constituat;
passive autem significata, ut nativitas, significatur ut via ad personam subsistentem et non
ut eam constituens.” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 (1506), f. 37rb–va. Bombolognus’ text continues
in n. 38 below. See at and around n. 3 above for more on Aquinas’ intrinsic constitutive
argument.
192 chapter three
language than one usually finds in Aquinas.37 We will see also below that
Bombolognus thinks that paternity as constitutive property is the fecundity
of nature in the Father, and links this to a more positive understanding of
innascibility than can be found in Aquinas. But, with those emanational ele-
ments granted, we should notice, second, that this is a Dominican view in
which the spotlight is on the divine relations, which are the basis for the
emanations, generation and spiration; and the basic argumentation here is
taken directly from Aquinas (see above at n. 3). In line with this stress on
the relations, in the view that Bombolognus is describing, the distinction
between the emanations is founded upon the distinction between the per-
sons, which in turn is founded upon relational distinction. Thus, generation
and spiration are not distinct in and of themselves, as the Franciscan view
would have it, rather
they are distinguished through the fact that the Son’s generation is origin from
one alone who does not proceed from another (and the source of generation
is paternity), and the Holy Spirit’s procession is emanation from two, of whom
one does not proceed and the other proceeds from the first (and the source
of procession is the spirative power).
Here is the typical Dominican stress on relation: it is the arrangement of the

persons that defines the distinction between the emanations. On this view,
the emanations are put in a subordinate position in the trinitarian scheme.38
Although he does not explicitly claim it as his own, there is good reason
to think that this relational view of the Trinity is in fact Bombolognus’
own. After presenting the position, he lists two consequences that follow
from it. The first consequence is that the emanations differ really from each
other both inasmuch as they have “different formal sources”—emanational
37 As Schmaus (1930a, 197 n. 30) noticed, although he may overstate his case a bit: “Diese
Anschauung [i.e. that Bombolognus describes] steht zu jener in der Summa des hl. Thomas
in Widerspruch, aber nicht so entschieden zu jener im Sentenzenkommentar.” For further
texts from Bombolognus on the status of paternity in the constitution of the Father, see at
and around nn. 41–44 below.
38 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3 (continued from n. 36 above—italicized text trans-
lated): “Et ideo alii dicunt quod paternitas in Patre dicit fecunditatem naturae divinae, et
quod ipsa paternitas est sicut forma quae est principium generandi in Patre. Spirativa poten-
tia in Patre et Filio dicit fecunditatem voluntatis, et \est/ sicut forma quae est principium
spirandi in Patre et in Filio. Nec distinguuntur generatio Filii et processio Spiritus Sancti, cum
habeant quo distinguantur se ipsis, sed distinguuntur per hoc quod generatio Filii est origo ab
uno solo qui non procedit ab alio (cuius principium est paternitas), processio Spiritus Sancti est
emanatio a duobus quorum unus non procedit et alius ab altero procedit (cuius principium est
potentia spirativa).” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 (1506), f. 37va. Bombolognus’ text continues in
n. 39 below. Cp. this passage to Aquinas, above, Ch. 1, at and around nn. 75, 77–79, 83.
language again—and inasmuch as the Son’s generation is from the Father

alone, while spiration is from both the Father and the Son. The second
consequence of this position is one that we have already seen Bombolognus
actually to hold: if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, these two
persons would not be distinct from each other. The Son and the Holy Spirit
are distinct on this Dominican trinitarian position solely because the latter
proceeds from the former, in contrast to the Franciscan view, according to
which, as Bombolognus tells us here, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct
“through generation and procession, which are not opposed emanations,
but, as it were, disparate, just as also the sources from which they exist,
namely the fecundity of nature and the fecundity of will”.39 His use here of
the term “disparate” to describe the emanations, would seem to indicate
that Bombolognus is aware of the emerging Franciscan trinitarian tradition
contemporary with him, and is rejecting it. This impression is reinforced
when he dismisses one of the cornerstones of the trinitarian theology that
we saw above in Eustace of Arras, John Pecham, and Roger Marston, namely,
that generation is emanation by way of nature, spiration is emanation by
way of will. Bombolognus’ argument against this view we have seen already
in Aquinas: nature and will are merely rationally distinct in God, and since
“nothing can make something else distinct with a greater distinction” than
it itself has, this view would entail that the emanations and the persons
would only be rationally distinct. Like Bombolognus, both Bonaventure
and Aquinas had rejected this view, but, as mentioned, it had become an
important part of Franciscan trinitarian theology by the late 1260’s; the
rejection of this view would become a staple of Dominican trinitarian
theology well into the fourteenth century.40
39 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3 (continued from n. 38 above—italicized text trans-
lated): “Unde secundum hanc assignationem oportet* quod generatio et processio realiter
differunt, tum quia per aliud et aliud principium quasi formale est generatio Filii et proces-
sio Spiritus Sancti, tum etiam quia generatio Filii est a Patre tantum, processio Spiritus Sancti
est etiam a Filio, qui realiter differt a Patre. Oportet etiam quod Spiritus Sanctus non esset
persona distincta, posito quod non procederet a Filio, quia secundum hanc opinionem, ut
patet, distinguuntur per hoc quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Filio; non sic secundum aliam
opinionem, quia distinguuntur generatione et processione, quae non sunt emanationes opposi-
tae, sed quasi disparatae, sicut et eorum principia a quibus sunt, scilicet fecunditas naturae et
fecunditas voluntatis.” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 (1506), f. 37va. Bombolognus’ text continues
in n. 40 below. See at and around n. 33 above for Bombolognus’ view on the counterfactual
Filioque question.
40 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3 (continued from n. 39 above): “Quidam autem* dicere
voluerunt quod generatio est processus per modum naturae, processio Spiritus Sancti pro-
cessus per modum voluntatis. Sed hoc nihil est, quia voluntas et natura in divinis re non
194 chapter three
In the texts just examined, Bombolognus mentions several aspects of

Franciscan trinitarian theology that focus on the Father’s role in the inner
trinitarian life. Bombolognus returns to these aspects on several occasions.
Thus, above we saw that Bombolognus linked the general Franciscan view
on the emanations to the specific position that the Father is the Father
because he generates. When Bombolognus deals with that issue directly,
he goes right to the heart of the Franciscan view: the Franciscans say that
“the Father is the Father because he generates, but he generates because
he is innascible.” For the Franciscans, “innascibility in the Father indicates
a fontal plenitude” that consists in producing the other persons. On this
view, morphologically speaking (quantum ad vocem) innascibility is a pri-
vation, but in reality (quantum ad rem) it is a perfect productive power,
because the Father is from no other, and the firstness (primitas) that this
entails is a noble position.41 Bombolognus rejects this view, since he cannot
see how a positive property can be based on a negation, i.e. how the Father
can generate and spirate on the basis of his not being from another. Bom-
bolognus argues that, if positive properties can be based on negations, then
the only genuine negations will be those founded over nothing at all.42 In
short, negations are based on positive properties, not the other way around.
In answer to the question, Bombolognus himself claims that it is true to
say that the Father is the Father because he generates, but it is also true
to say that he generates because he is the Father. He bases this view on a
semantic distinction involving paternity. Paternity can be understood as
differunt, sed sola ratione, et sic sequeretur quod generatio Filii et processio Spiritus Sancti
tantum ratione different*, quia nihil potest alterum distinguere maiori distinctione quam
ipsum distinguatur.” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 (1506), f. 37va. See for Aquinas and Bonaventure,
Ch. 1, above, at and around nn. 80–84.
41 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2 (“… videtur quod operatio personalis prae-
cedat relationem personae secundum intellectum”; f. 62ra–va): “Responsio: quidam dicunt

quod Pater quia generat est Pater, generat autem quia innascibilis .... dicunt quod innasci-
bilitas est privatio quantum ad vocem, sed quantum ad rem est perfecta potentia. Pater
enim dicitur ‘innascibilis’ quia non est ab alio, non esse ab alio est esse primum, et primitas
est nobilis positio*; unde quia primum, ideo est principium. Unde dicunt quod innasci-
bilitas in Patre dicit fontalem plenitudinem. Pater enim*, ut dicit Augustinus, est prin-
cipium totius divinitatis, quia non est ab alio; fontalis autem plenitudo consistit in pro-
ducendo.” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 (1506), f. 62rb. For the Augustine quotation, see Ch. 2, above,
n. 26.
42 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Sed hoc non videtur, quia si esse ab alio negatio
est, quae tamen praesupponit aliquid super quod fundatur, sicut et omnes negationes quae
non sunt purae negationes, unde secundum hanc opinionem nulla esset negatio nisi pura
negatio super nihil fundata.” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 (1506), f. 62rb.
a relation, and taken in this way paternity presupposes according to the

way we understand things the notional act, and in that case the Father
is the Father because he generates. But paternity can also be understood
as a constitutive property, and taken in this sense the Father generates
because he is the Father. The distinction between paternity as relation and
paternity as constitutive property is familiar from Aquinas (Ch. 1 above,
in nn. 52–53), although Aquinas would probably never have granted, as
Bombolognus does, a sense in which the Father is the Father because he
generates. Thus, the question becomes: for Bombolognus, what exactly is
paternity as a constitutive property? As we saw him claim above, here too
Bombolognus maintains that, taken as a constitutive property, ‘paternity’
indicates the fecundity of nature, which is the basis for the production of
generation, and which is the positive property upon which is founded the
privation or negation of innascibility.43 Elsewhere in his Sentences com-
mentary, Bombolognus will say that in its primary meaning of “being from
no other” ‘innascibility’ is a pure negation, but in a secondary way it sig-
nifies the fontal plenitude over which it is founded, i.e. the fecundity of
nature that is paternity as a constitutive property. Thus, Bombolognus is
clearly utilizing emanational elements in his trinitarian theology, attribut-
ing to innascibility some attenuated function as “fontal plenitude”. Nev-
ertheless, and significantly, he is going out of his way to distance him-
self from the Franciscan understanding of innascibility, by claiming that
innascibility is a negation founded upon a positive property—the fecun-
dity of nature, which is paternity as constitutive property—as opposed to
43 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Et ideo est tertia positio quae dicit quod Pater
generat quia Pater et quia generat est Pater. Paternitas enim potest considerari dupliciter:
uno modo non est hnisii relatio, et sic secundum intellectum praesupponit actum notion-
aliter, quia relatio in quantum huiusmodi fundatur super actum, et tunc, quia generat,
est Pater. Alio modo secundum quod est constitutiva personae Patris, et sic Pater generat
quia Pater, sic autem paternitas dicit fecunditatem naturae, quam proculdubio secundum
rationem intelligendi consequitur ipsa productio generationis et super huiusmodi fecundi-
tatem fundatur privatio sive negatio innascibilitatis. Et ad maiorem evidentiam notandum
quod ‘paternitas’ tripliciter potest intelligi: vel quasi forma constituens et distinguens per-
sonam Patris; vel ut* origo activa Filii, secundum quod significatur per actum ut* generat,
sicut enim actus essentialis (ut intelligere) est Deus vel deitas, ita actus notionalis Patris est
Pater vel paternitas. Tertio potest intelligi ut* habitudo sive ut relatio Patris ad Filium*. Primo
modo secundum rationem intelligendi, paternitas praecedit actum generandi, tertio* modo
sequitur, et sic dicit Magister: quia semper generat, semper est Pater.” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753
(1506), f. 62rb. For Bombolognus on paternity, see at and around nn. 36–38 above. The quo-
tation from Lombard to which Bombolognus is referring here (dicit Magister) is reproduced
in Ch. 1, above, in n. 50.
196 chapter three
the Franciscans, who (he claims) make the negation innascibility, i.e. the
Father’s being from no one else, the ultimate basis for the Father’s produc-
tive power.44
Summing up: Bombolognus is more inclined to use emanational ter-
minology and concepts in his trinitarian theology than was Aquinas, and
than later Dominicans will be. Paternity is the Father’s constitutive property
because it indicates the fecundity of nature in the Father, and this in turn is
the positive foundation for innascibility and the foundation for the Father’s
generating. Mention is made of the emanations being really different, and
this difference is linked in a rather loose fashion to the difference in their
formal sources, fecundity of nature and fecundity of will. With that said, the
framework of Bombolognus’ trinitarian thought is heavily relational. The
persons are constituted on the basis of opposition of relations, so much
so that, according to Bombolognus, the Son and the Holy Spirit would not
be distinct if the latter did not come from the former, and, concomitantly,
Bombolognus rejects the view common in the early Franciscan trinitarian
tradition that disparate relations, i.e. emanations, distinct on the basis of
their sources, nature and will, could suffice to make the second and third
persons distinct.
The other Dominican we will examine here is Roman of Rome (d. 1273),
who in 1270–1272 lectured on the Sentences at Paris, and who became
Dominican regent master there (foreign chair) after Thomas Aquinas con-
cluded his second Parisian regency in 1272. Thus, in contrast to Bombolog-
nus, we know that Roman was at Paris in the thick of it, and his Sentences
commentary shows good familiarity with the positions of both trinitarian
traditions.45 Schmaus has examined Roman’s ideas on the relation account
of personal distinction and the dual nature of the divine relations, and char-
acterizes him as a generally faithful follower of Thomas on these issues,46
and hence here I will leave that material to the side.
44 Bombolognus, I Sent., d. 28, pars 1, q. 2 (“Utrum innascibilitas sit notio vel proprietas
Patris”; f. 64ra–b): “… innascibilitas, quod sit relatio et dignitatem dicat, habet ex secundo
intellectu quia ex intellectu fontalis plenitudinis super quam fundatur. Ex primo enim
intellectu habet quod sit pura negatio, quae est non esse ab alio. Pura autem negatio nullius
est constitutiva proprietas, nec personae nec personalis .... Relinquitur ergo quod proprietas
personalis Patris sit paternitas, quia generatio* in Patre solum est una proprietas personam
ipsius constituens …” Bologna, Bibl. univ. 753 (1506), f. 64ra. On this, see Schmaus 1930a, 580
n. 30, who stresses the sympathy Bombolognus seems to have for Bonaventure’s view; again
I think that Schmaus may be overstating the case a bit.
45 On Roman and his commentary on I–II Sent. (found in BAV Palat. lat. 331), see Friedman
2002a, 49–50, and the literature mentioned there.

46 See Schmaus 1930a, 408–409; also Gelber 1974, 27.
More interesting for our purposes is Roman’s presentation of the coun-

terfactual Filioque question. He devotes an entire question to this, and this
is in contrast to Bombolognus who mentioned it merely in passing; one can
surmise that Roman’s being in Paris contributed to the issue being pressing
enough to warrant its own dedicated treatment. In this question, Roman
tells us that there are two solemn opinions. To some (i.e., the Franciscans)
the Spirit and Son would be distinct, if the former did not come from the
latter, distinct on the basis of relations of origin. Moreover, according to
Roman, these same theologians specify that things can differ by relations
of origin in any of three ways: they can differ because one is originated, the
other is not; they can differ because one originates from the other (opposed
relations); or they can differ because they emanate from one and the same
in different ways, “and in this [last] way the Holy Spirit would be distinct
from the Son, because one would have divine nature by way of nature (per
modum naturae), the other by way of will (per modum voluntatis)”.47 This
is a nice summary of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition of Roman’s day.
Of course, there is the second solemn opinion: given the counterfactual,
the Son and the Holy Spirit would in no way be distinct. One reason that
this would be the case is that nature and will in God are merely rationally
distinct, and, as we have seen many times before, items merely rationally
distinct cannot cause a real distinction.48 A second reason that the Son and
the Holy Spirit would not be distinct given the counterfactual is that distinc-
tion in God arises through opposition, and there is no opposition between
these ways of emanating.49 This is not to say that the mode of nature and
47 Roman of Rome, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus, si non procederet a
Filio, distingueretur ab eo”; f. 19va–b—italicized text translated): “Respondeo: hic sunt duo
sollempnes opiniones. Quibusdam videtur quod, si Spiritus non procederet a Filio, adhuc
distingueretur ab eo, sicut expresse dicit Anselmus in auctoritate praemissa; et esset ista
distinctio per relationes originis. Sed differentia secundum relationes originis potest accipi
tripliciter: vel quia unus originatur, alius non (ut innascibilis a nascibili differt); vel quia unus
originatur ab alio (ut Pater a Filio distinguitur), vel quia originantur ab eodem diversimode,
et sic Spiritus Sanctus a Filio distingueretur, quia unus haberet naturam divinam per modum
naturae, alius per modum voluntatis.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 19va.
48 Roman, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Si Spiritus non procederet a Filio, non distingueretur ab eo nisi
quia unus per modum naturae, alius per modum voluntatis procederet. Sed hoc non sufficit
ad distinctionem personarum, quia natura et voluntas non possunt maiorem diversitatem
causare quam ipsa habeant inter se; sed ipsa inter se solum ratione differunt. Ergo non
possunt causare distinctionem realem.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 19va.
49 Roman, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Aliorum opinio est quod, si non procederet a Filio, nullo
modo distingueretur ab eo, si enim modus naturae et voluntatis distinguitur, aut ponunt*
aliquid absolutum (quod non posset esse in divinis) aut ponunt* relationes. Non ponunt*
relationes, quia relationes non causant distinctionem nisi relationes oppositae; unus autem
198 chapter three
the mode of will do not exist in God, merely that they cannot be the source
of personal distinction, since they themselves depend for their distinction
upon opposition of relations. Indeed, Roman basically accuses the Francis-
cans of confusing God and creatures:
I certainly concede that one of these modes [i.e., of nature or of will] excludes
the other, but this exclusion is unsuitable in the divine. But you ask whether
the mode of nature and of will differ—I say they do. If you ask whether these
modes would differ if they existed in the divine—I say that they would, and
I say that the persons who would proceed according to these modes would
differ, and I say that these modes can indeed be understood in the divine. But I
say that such a difference of origin cannot cause personal distinction, because
this difference, unless it were to be founded on opposition of relation, would
presuppose distinction in something absolute—but nothing like that can be
found in the divine.50
For there to be a distinction between these two modes of proceeding in
their own right, there would have to be a distinction of absolutes; since no
such absolute distinction can be found in God, Roman reverts to what will
become the typical Dominican view: the distinction between the modes of
emanations is dependent upon the distinction based upon opposition of
relations. Elsewhere, when dealing explicitly with the distinction between
the emanations, Roman tells us that they differ because in generation one
comes from one, while in procession one comes from two.51 Thus, like
istorum modorum non refertur relative ad alium nec opponitur relative alii, et ita non potest
ab eo distingui.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 19va.
50 Roman, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Quia ergo diversitas inter istos modos non est per opposi-
tionem relativam, oportet quod sit per aliquam aliam distinctionem realem, et ista distinctio
non potest esse in divinis .... bene concedo quod unus modus excludit alium, sed ista exclusio
divinis non competit. Sed quaeris utrum modum naturae et voluntatis differunt, dico quod
sic; si quaeris utrum, si essent isti modi in divinis, different, dico quod sic, et dico quod istae
personae quae istis modis procederent different, et dico quod isti modi bene possunt intelligi
in divinis. Sed dico quod talis differentia originis non potest causare distinctionem person-
alem, quia ista differentia praesupponeret distinctionem in aliquo absoluto, nisi fundaretur
super oppositionem relationis; talis autem in divinis esse non potest.” BAV Palat. lat. 331,
f. 19vb.
51 Roman, I Sent., d. 13 (“Utrum generatio et processio realiter differat”; f. 62ra–va): “…
processionis et generationis differentiam possumus advertere et* ab his principiis, quia

generatio procedit ab uno, processio a concordi voluntate duorum quorum unus est ab alio.
Non dico quod differant quia unus a natura, alius a voluntate, sed quia unus a natura* una,
alius a voluntate duorum, quorum unus est ab alio … differant penes principia, iam patet
quod sic, sed non dico quod differant solum penes naturam et voluntatem, cum, sicut dictum
est supra, argumentum non cogit: ‘quia licet natura et voluntas sola ratione differant, tamen
bene possent realem distinctionem causare, sicut relatio, licet idem sit quod essentia, tamen
realiter distinguit’ …” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 62rb.
Aquinas and Bombolognus, Roman holds that the distinction between the
emanations is founded upon the distinction between the persons, itself
founded upon opposition of relation.
After such a forceful, first person rejection of the Franciscan view, it
seems a bit puzzling that Roman offers a way in which “someone who wants
to support the other opinion” might reply to the Dominican arguments
he has been giving. We have indeed already seen Franciscans use one of
these rebuttals of the Dominican view: nature and will, distinct merely
rationally, can nevertheless be the basis for the real distinction between
the emanations and the persons, since there can be greater diversity in the
things caused than in what causes them. As examples of greater diversity
in the effect than in the cause, Roman mentions that divine nature and
will are merely rationally distinct from each other and yet bring about
real distinction (among created things); similarly, he tell us that the divine
relations are the same as the essence, and nevertheless they bring about
real distinction while the essence does not.52 Although the second analogy
does not seem particularly precise, nevertheless it is one in a long series of
arguments that we will see in this book that, in an attempt to legitimate
some out-of-the-ordinary trinitarian move, take their point of departure in
the unusual properties typically ascribed to the divine relations.53
In the second major flashpoint between the trinitarian traditions—that
concerning the Father’s constitution—Roman has a roughly similar ap-
proach. Thus, when he asks whether the Father generates because Father
or whether he is Father because he generates, Roman cuts to the chase and
accuses the Franciscans of confusing God and creatures. The Franciscans
saw that a human father is a father precisely on account of his having
52 Roman, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Qui vellet sustinere aliam opinionem posset respondere ad
argumentum ad oppositum quod, licet natura et voluntas non differant nisi ratione, tamen
potest tanta diversitas ab eis causari, sicut si re different, non enim est imperfectior voluntas
divina quam voluntas creata quae facit diversam productionem a natura creata. Et hoc
possumus per simile videre, relationes enim in divinis sunt idem quod essentia, et tamen
realiter distinguunt, quod non facit essentia.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 19vb. The same example
legitimizing the merely rational distinction of nature and will by reference to the distinction
brought about by the divine relations was offered by Roman in the text in n. 51 above.
53 E.g., Scotus (Ch. 6, at and around n. 79) argues that, if the divine relative properties can
have the strange characteristics that they have, then why is it not possible for absolute prop-
erties to have them? Walter Chatton argues that, if the properties can in and of themselves
be essentially identical and also distinct in some fashion, then the person can also be in and
of themselves distinct and essentially identical without any properties (Ch. 11, at and around
nn. 64–65). Finally, see also Michael of Massa’s interesting use of this type of argument in
Ch. 12, at and around nn. 167–168.
200 chapter three
generated a child; they then directly transferred this model of fatherhood

to God. This “disputing about God after the fashion of creatures” was what
forced them, Roman suggests, to attribute on the basis of innascibility
some being to the supposite that “after” generation will be the Father.54
Roman calls upon Aquinas’ major argument to cast doubt upon this view:
personal acts only go out from a distinct supposite, and hence the Father
must “already” have being in order to generate. Divinity itself could not
give the Father this “proto-being”, since in that case the Holy Spirit would
also generate, since the Holy Spirit is just as much divinity as the Father
is. Nor could innascibility give the Father the necessary being, since if
that were the case any innascible thing would have to generate, but we
know that that is not true, since we can conceive something innascible
not generating. Although Roman does not make his response more specific
than this, he is probably thinking here both of the Holy Spirit, who is
innascible but does not generate, and of the passage from De trinitate in
which Augustine tells us that the Father, if he did not have a Son, could
still be the ungenerated supposite (and hence something innascible that
does not generate).55 Indeed, according to Roman, since innascibility either
54 Roman, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 3 (“Utrum proprietas praecedat actum personalem vel e
converso, id est utrum in Deo hPateri (ms.: diversa persona) generet quia est Pater, vel quia
generat ideo sit Pater”; f. 78rb–va): “… quidam disputantes de divinis ad modum creaturarum
dicant quod, sicut in creaturis actus generandi praecedit intellectum paternitatis, het itai
(ms.: creatum*) est quod homo quia generat est pater, sic est in divinis quod prius intelligitur
actus generandi quam paternitas. Et si quaeritur ab eis quomodo potest intelligi actus
generandi procedere a supposito non-distincto, dicunt quod immo procedit a supposito
distincto, dicunt* enim quod Pater habet quod sit suppositum non a paternitate sed ab
innascibilitate .... quia nisi esset innascibilitas non esset suppositum distinctum, secundum
eos; et si non esset suppositum, non posset generare.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 78va.
55 Roman, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 3: “Aliis autem videtur quod, cum omnis actus egrediatur*
a propria forma, actus generandi, si progrediatur a Patre, egreditur ab aliqua forma ipsius
Patris, ergo vel a divinitate vel ab innascibilitate vel a paternitate. Non a divinitate, quia
sic concurret Spiritui Sancto talis actus in quo est deitas; non ab innascibilitate, quia sic
omnis innascibilitas generaret, quod falsum est, potest enim intelligi aliquis innascibilis
et non generare. Ergo oportet quod intelligantur egredi a paternitate. Et ideo dicunt quod
quia Pater est, ideo generat; dicunt* tamen quod paternitas potest considerari dupliciter:
vel in quantum quaedam proprietas constitutiva Patris, et sic praecedit actum generandi,
vel in quantum est relatio surgens ex habitudine generantis et generati, et sic sequitur
actum generationis, sicut habitudo sequitur illud unde causatur. Et sine dubio rationabiliter
videntur isti moveri, prius enim est intelligere intellectum divinum sub respectu quodam
ut producat quam ipsam productionem Verbi et illum respectum nominat paternitas etiam
quantum est proprietas quaedam.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 78va. Clearly Roman’s argumentation
here goes back to Aquinas’ intrinsic constitutive argument, on which see n. 3 above. For the
Augustine passage mentioned in the main text, see Ch. 5, below, at n. 111.
indicates a pure negation or a negation founded upon something else, it

could not be the property constitutive of the Father.56 Therefore, the only
property that could possibly be constitutive of the Father so that he could
“then” generate, is paternity, and Roman reproduces Aquinas’ view that
paternity can be taken both as a constitutive property preceding the act
of generation and as a relation following that act; he also invokes the idea
behind Aquinas’ intrinsic constitutive argument mentioned above.57 After
presenting this material, which has the appearance of a convinced defense
of a Dominican trinitarian view, Roman backs off a bit, claiming that both
of the opinions are solemn, each being common. Moreover, he reminds us
that this is a discussion about an ordering of concepts: in God, generation
and paternity are precisely the same property.58
The impression with which one is left after reading Roman’s treatment
of these trinitarian issues is that he definitely leaned to a version of what
I have been calling Dominican trinitarian theology, perhaps more so than
Bombolognus of Bologna. Nevertheless, his treatments have some of the
openness towards the other trinitarian tradition that also surfaced in the
Franciscan tradition in Walter of Bruges and Nicholas of Ockham. Whether
this characteristic in Roman’s writings comes from politeness or was an
expression of some hesitation as to the value or lack thereof of the Fran-
ciscan arguments, we will probably never know. But it is a characteristic
that will fade within just a few years of Roman’s time at the University of
Paris. Dominicans began quickly to group around Aquinas’ doctrine in the
1270’s and early 1280’s; by 1286 they were being officially admonished by the
56 Roman, I Sent., d. 28, q. 2 (“Utrum innascibilitas sit proprietas personalis Patris”; f. 79va):
“Et ideo dicendum quod paternitas est proprietas personalis Patris, et hoc congruum est, quia
innascibilitas vel dicit negationem puram (et sic non habet quod aliquid constituat) vel dicit
negationem fundatam in aliquo (et sic praesupponit fundamentum* aliquod (ms.: aliquid),
et ita constitutum ab aliquo vel per alium* in esse), et ita ipsa non est proprietas constitutiva.
Licet istae bonae rationes sint, tamen non congruit, unde potest teneri quaecumque istarum
opinionum, sed una videtur magis tenenda …” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 79va. Notice that, once
again, at the end of this passage (as well as in the text in n. 58 below), Roman hedges his
bets. Schmaus 1930a, 579–580, seems to me to exaggerate a bit the distance between Roman’s
view and Aquinas’, although perhaps Schmaus has in mind the non-committal way in which
Roman ends this text.
57 See the text in n. 55 above, and for the intrinsic constitutive argument, see at and
around n. 3 above.
58 Roman, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, q. 3: “Opiniones sunt sollempnes et satis communis*
utraque* .... Tamen notandum est quod tota ista quaestio est de modo intelligendi, certum
est enim quod idem sunt re paternitas et generatio in divinis, sed quaeritur quod istorum
praecedat alterum secundum modum intelligendi.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 78va.
202 chapter three
order to uphold and defend Thomas’ teachings.59 But a more uncompromis-

ing attitude than either Bombolognus or Roman exhibit can already be seen
in the Sentences commentary of the Augustinian Hermit Giles of Rome, and
this in itself shows that the trinitarian traditions were spreading outside of
the Franciscan and Dominican orders proper.
3. Expanding Trinitarian Traditions: Giles of Rome and Others
During this period, two minor and one major figure from outside of the
two large mendicant orders dealt with matters that impinge on the trini-
tarian traditions, and they (along with Gerard of Abbeville) demonstrate
that the two general approaches to the Trinity were expanding beyond
the Franciscans and Dominicans. The first of the two minor figures is the
secular theologian Ranulph of Houblonnière (d. 1288), from 1280 the suc-
cessor of Etienne Tempier as Bishop of Paris. Ranulph devoted the first
two questions of his first Quodlibet, held at Paris during Advent 1274, to
trinitarian issues, and these show that Ranulph was well acquainted with
major positions from each of the trinitarian traditions. For example, in the
question of whether the hypostases remain distinct with the properties
abstracted, Ranulph, echoing Bonaventure, draws a distinction: ‘property’
can designate reference alone, or both reference and origin. In Ranulph’s
opinion, if we take ‘property’ in the first way, then the hypostases remain
with the properties taken away; if we take it in the second way, on the
other hand, then they do not, and the reason for this is—Ranulph tac-
itly quoting Bonaventure—because “although in the divine to arise, to be,
and to refer to another are in reality (secundum rem) the same, neverthe-
less according to the way we understand things to arise comes before to
be and to be comes before referring to another”. Thus, only with origin
abstracted will the hypostases fail to remain distinct, and not with relation
alone abstracted.60 Ranulph is rather more non-committal when he tells
59 On the Dominican legislation in support of Aquinas’ doctrine, see, e.g., Burbach 1942,
Glorieux 1974, and for particular fourteenth-century manifestations, see Ch. 7, §2, below, on
Durand of St. Pourçain.
60 Ranulph of Houblonnière, Quodl. I, q. 1 (“Utrum abstractis proprietatibus in divinis
remaneant hypostases distinctae”): “Ad istam quaestionem dicunt quidam quod sic est, alii
quod non. Ad praesens tamen mihi videtur esse distinguendum, quia proprietas in divinis
aut nominat mihi habitudinem solum aut habitudinem et originem. Primo modo est adhuc
hypostases distinctas intelligere; secundo modo non; et licet in divinis secundum rem idem
sit oriri, esse, et ad alterum se habere, tamen secundum rationem intelligendi prius est
oriri quam esse et esse quam ad alterum se habere; et origo significatur* per hoc quod est
us that relation constitutes the persons “in complete and distinct being”,
but relation is constitutive principally by reason of origin, while it is dis-
tinctive by reason of reference (habitudo).61 In the second question of this
same Quodlibet, Ranulph deals with the contentious issue of whether the
Father generates because he is Father or whether he is Father because he
generates. After laying out the Franciscan and the Dominican view with
admirable clarity, Ranulph takes a rather Thomistic line: paternity as rela-
tion to the Son follows the notional act, while paternity as constitutive
property precedes the notional act (since an act requires an agent con-
stituted in being).62 Cementing the impression of a Dominican take on
this issue, Ranulph explicitly rejects a preliminary argument expressing the
standard Franciscan view that the Father is the Father because he gener-
ates. Thus, Ranulph was certainly aware of the two main trinitarian tradi-
tions, and employs the arguments and even the words of Bonaventure and
Aquinas as he supported positions from first the one and then the other tra-
dition.
esse ab alio vel non esse hab alioi, relatio per hoc quod est paternitas et filiatio. Alii tamen
simpliciter concedunt quod, abstractis proprietatibus, non remanent hypostases distinctae,
quia relationes constituunt et distinguunt hypostases.” Paris, Bibliothèque de Arsenal 379,
f. 218r. See Ch. 1, above, n. 54, for the source of Ranulph’s view in Bonaventure.
61 Ranulph of Houblonnière, Quodl. I, q. 1: “Ad aliud in oppositum dicendum quod relatio
personam constituit verum est in esse completo et distincto, verumtamen est personae
constitutiva principaliter ratione originis, sed distinctiva ratione habitudinis.” Paris, Bibl. de
Arsenal 379, f. 218r.
62 A transcription of the entire question follows. Ranulph of Houblonnière, Quodl. I,
q. 2: “Secundo quaerebatur utrum Pater eo quod Pater generat vel e converso, utrum eo
quod generat sit Pater. Et videtur quod Pater eo quod sit generans sit Pater. Omnis relatio
praesupponit illud supra quod fundatur. Exemplum est de aequalitate quae in quantitate
fundatur. Sed Pater fundatur supra actum generationis. Ergo illum actum praesupponit. Ergo
actus generandi ratio est paternitatis.
“Contra: generare est actus procedens a persona Patris. Sed persona Patris constituitur
proprietate paternitatis, quia paternitas est personalis proprietas. Ergo paternitas est ratio
generationis, et non generatio paternitatis.
“Ad istam quaestionem dicendum est breviter quod paternitas, quae est Patris personalis
proprietas potest dupliciter considerari. Uno modo prout est relatio vel forma relativa, et
sic actum notionalem praesupponit. Alio modo potest considerari prout est personae Patris
constitutiva, et sic actus notionalis, qui est generare, paternitatem praesupponit, sicut actio
personam quae agit.
“Ad argumentum in contrarium dicendum quod verum est prout est forma relativa, sed
tamen generare procedit a Patre ratione paternitatis prout est forma personae constitutiva,
idem enim secundum rem est in Patre forma qua subsistit, qua agit, ipsa actio, et actionis
relatio. Et hoc totum est paternitas secundum quod duo prima nomina[t] praecedunt*, sed*
alia duo subsequuntur*. Notandum quod in quolibet ente complete sunt quatuor ista.” Paris,
Bibl. de Arsenal 379, f. 218r.
204 chapter three
The secular theologian Adenulph of Anagni (d. 1289) was actually

selected to be Ranulph’s successor as bishop of Paris, but he declined (and
died only a few months after Ranulph, as it turned out). In the first ques-
tion of his sole Quodlibet, probably from 1285, Adenulph deals with the issue
of “whether the persons are made distinct by relation”. He quickly rejects
Praepositinus’ famous view that the persons are distinct in and of them-
selves (se ipsis), i.e., there are no divine properties or relations, and then
he moves on to the question at hand. We can understand three things in
God: emanation, distinction, and the reference that follows distinction. In
God, on account of the highest perfection of nature, on the one hand, and
the highest fecundity and liberality of will, on the other, there is emanation;
emanation is the source of distinction; and emanation along with distinc-
tion is the source of reference (habitudo). Thus, Adenulph holds that “the
first and principal source of distinction is emanation or origin” (in divinis
prima et principalis ratio distinctionis est emanatio sive origo). Nevertheless,
those relations, and only those relations, that include in themselves the ratio
of emanation and origin—Adenulph calls these “relations of origin”—do
indeed make the persons distinct.63 Clearly, as Schmaus (1930a, 482 n. 10)
63 A transcription of the entire question follows. Adenulph of Anagni, Quodl., q. 1: “Primo

ergo quaeretur utrum divinae personae relationibus distinguantur. Et arguitur quod non.
Distinctio personarum fit per id quod est simpliciter primum. Sed relatio non nominat quid
simpliciter primum, sed potius substantia. Ergo etc.
“Item, X* Damascenus: relatio sequitur substantiam, ergo non est principium distinctio-
nis. Hoc etiam dicit Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, quod oppositionis relatio hex
hoci nascitur quod Deus est de Deo.
“In contrarium est Boethius in libro suo De trinitate, dicens essentia continet unitatem,
relatio multiplicat trinitatem.
“Responsio: quidam dixerunt quod relationes in divinis non faciunt personarum dis-
tinctionem, sed eas manifestant, quia personae tamquam prima principia per se ipsis dis-
/142va/-tinguuntur. Sed istud stare non potest, quia aliquorum distinctio per se ipsa ponit
essentiarum diversitatem et est per absoluta, ut distinctio quae est in primis generibus, quae
sunt substantia, quantitas, qualitas, et sic de aliis quae se ipsis distinguunt. Essentiarum vero
diversitas non est in divinis. Propter quod dicendum est ad illud quod tu quaeris utrum per
relationes personae distinguantur in divinis, et est ut sic et est ut non. Quaedam enim sunt*
relationes in divinis quae suo nomine dicunt puram habitudinem, et non includunt in se
rationem originis, quamvis illam praesupponant secundum nostrum modum intelligendi,
sicut similitudo, aequalitas, quae sunt in personis; et de istis bene verum est quod non faci-
unt distinctionem in divinis, sed eam manifestant. Sunt autem relationes in divinis quae
includunt in se rationem originis, et istae de ratione sua faciunt distinctionem. In divinis
enim est intelligere ista tria: emanationem, distinctionem, et distinctorum habitudinem. In
divinis enim, propter summam naturae perfectionem, quae in se habet vim productivam, et
propter summam voluntatis liberalitatem et fecunditatem, est emanatio. Emanatio autem
est ratio distinctionis, unde Anselmus: “Nec intellectus capit, nec natura permittit illum qui
ab alio est esse illum de quo est.” Et secundum Augustinum, I De trinitate in principio: “nihil
noted, Adenulph uses the language of origin and of emanation that would
seem to very loosely affiliate him with the early Franciscan trinitarian tradi-
tion.64
This examination of Ranulph and Adenulph serves to show that the trini-
tarian traditions were influencing scholars outside of the Franciscan and
Dominican orders. In fact, neither Ranulph nor Adenulph could have had
any great intellectual impact. Their works survive, as far as we know, in only
one copy each, and they appear never to have been named in the later trini-
tarian debates. Moreover, they do not seem to be creating provocative new
positions, but rather to be reporting and supporting positions that were
already laid out. In contrast to them, Giles of Rome (d. 1316) has a large
part to play in later-medieval trinitarian thought, aspects of his trinitarian
theology remaining a standard part of the scholastic discussion well into
the fourteenth century.65 This is despite the fact that his scholarly career
was blighted in 1277 by a broad theological and philosophical condemna-
tion aimed at his work, that he was barred from teaching in Paris from the
time of that condemnation until he was reinstated by Pope Honorius IV in
1285, and that soon after his reinstatment he was called away from Paris,
at first to head the Augustinian Hermits, and then to become Archbishop
of Bourges.66 That his trinitarian theology was important enough to warrant
gignit se ipsum”. Emanatio vero cum distinctione ehsit causa habitudinis, et sic in divinis
prima et principalis ratio distinctionis est emanatio sive origo. Hinc est quod hrelationesi
(ms.: emanationes), quae de proximo nominant ipsam originem et in se includunt rationem
emanationis, habent personas distinguere in divinis. Et ideo non omnes relationes distingu-
unt in divinis, sed illae tantum quae sunt originis.
“Per hoc patet solutio ad obiecta. Quod tu dicis—distinctio in divinis fit per id quod
est quid simpliciter primum—/142vb/ verum est. Et quod tu dicis—relatio non est quid
simpliciter primum—dico quod falsum est si intelligatur de relatione quae dat intelligere
rationem originis, quae est prima et principalis ratio distinctionis in divinis.
“Ad illud quod Damascenus dicit—quod relatio sequitur substantiam—ipse intelligat de
relationibus adventiciis, non de relationibus originis.
“Similiter ad illud Anselmi, dicendum quod ipse vult removere dependentiam in personis,
unde vult dicere quod quaelibet persona habet esse perfectum in se et non dependens, et hoc
verum est. Et propter hhoci dicit quod oppositionis relatio ex hoc nascitur quod Deus est de
Deo.” Paris, BnF lat. 14899, f. 142rb–vb.
64 In his Quodl. I, q. 11 (“Utrum paternitas comparata ad essentiam sit res vel sola ratio”;
Paris, BnF lat. 15350, f. 271va–b), Servais of Mont-Saint-Eloi (d. 1314), discusses the relation
account and the way in which divine relation differs from essence by ratio, but he hardly
touches on the issues with which we are concerned here.
65 See n. 69 below, for examples of Giles’ late influence.
66 For summary accounts of Giles’ life, work, and thought see, e.g., Zumkeller 1964 (esp.
176–186), Donati 2003, and Lambertini 2009. The study presented here of Giles’ Sent. com-
mentary is based on the text printed in Venice in 1521; on Giles’ Sent. commentary, see
206 chapter three
extended criticism is evident on the basis both of the list of condemned the-
ological articles taken from his works and of the attacks on Giles mounted
by Dominican defenders of Thomas Aquinas.67 It is interesting that Domini-
cans attacked Giles’ thought, inasmuch as, in trinitarian theology as well as
in other areas, Giles’ intellectual propensities are strongly aligned with the
Dominicans, and especially with his own teacher, Thomas Aquinas. Indeed,
when Henry of Ghent attacked a relation-based theory of the distinction of
the divine persons, he specifically chose the one that Giles had formulated.
Thus, in what follows, after a brief survey of where Giles falls on some of
the trinitarian issues that we have been tracing, his theory of relation and
his application of it to the Trinity will receive some attention with an eye to
illuminating Henry’s attack on it.
Giles’ trinitarian ideas as found in one of his earliest theological work,
the ordinatio version of the first book of his Sentences commentary, written
probably in the period 1271–1273, follow the broad outline of what I have
been calling Dominican trinitarian theology, stressing relation and cor-
respondingly deemphasizing the emanations in trinitarian matters. Thus,
Giles holds that the Son and the Holy Spirit would not be distinct from one
another unless the latter came from the former, and he explicitly denies that
the modes of emanation are distinct on the basis of their fecund sources,
although he does admit that the Son’s way of proceeding is by way of nature,
while the Holy Spirit’s is by way of will, meaning by this, however, that in
generation, one comes from one, while in spiration, one comes from two.68
Friedman 2002a, 55–56, and the literature referred to there (to which should be added Luna
2003, Pickavé 2005, Aiello 2005). In Ch. 5, § 1, below, I deal with an aspect of Giles’ trinitarian
theology in his quodlibetal questions.
67 See, for the condemned articles and Giles’ replies, Robert Wielockx’ edition of Giles’
Apologia, which also contains an excellent study by Wielockx on the possible doctrinal and
scholastic motivations behind the condemnation of individual articles; several articles in the
Apologia deal with trinitarian theology (e.g., 6, 9, 19–20). See Gelber 1974, 28–35, for a brief
account of the Thomist Robert of Orford’s attack on Giles’ criticism of the Thomist rational
distinction and the notion of the ratio.
68 See for the first issue, Giles of Rome, I Sent., d. 11, prin. 1, q. 3 (ed. 1521, f. 65ra–va)—this
question on the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, given the counterfactual, is
directly preceded by a question on “utrum relatio in divinis distinguat secundum esse” (ibid.,
q. 2; ed. 1521, ff. 64va–65ra), thus showing the close connection Giles drew between the relation
account of personal distinction and his negative answer to the counterfactual question. For
the distinction between the emanations, see I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (ed. 1521, ff. 71va–72ra), e.g.: “…
quidam sic dicunt quod in divinis sunt plures processiones propter pluralitatem modorum
procedendi, quia est ibi reperire processionem per modum naturae et per modum voluntatis.
Sed illud stare non potest .... Ostensum fuit quod Spiritus Sanctus non distingueretur a Filio,
si ab eo non emanaret, licet competat ei procedere per modum voluntatis, Filio autem
Giles’ view on the counterfactual question of the distinction between the

Son and the Holy Spirit, will continue to be mentioned as one of the main
representatives of the (Dominican) negative answer to the question well
into the fourteenth century.69 Confirming the Dominican leanings of his
trinitarian thought, Giles says clearly that, if there is a choice between the
persons being constituted and made distinct through origins, on the one
hand, or through “property”, on the other, then the “more common” posi-
tion should be chosen, i.e., “that the source of distinction in the divine is
property”, although Giles elaborates on this by telling us that the saints
sometimes claim that origin is the source of personal distinction in God,
and they do this because both origin and property signify the very same
relation.70 On the issue of whether the Father generates because he is Father
or whether he is Father because he generates, Giles takes a nuanced posi-
tion. Those (i.e., Franciscans) who claim without further qualification that
the Father is Father because he generates, Giles accuses of having confused
God and creatures, for only in creatures is a father a father because he gen-
erates. Giles opts instead for a solution that builds upon Aquinas’ view that,
considered as a constitutive property, paternity according to the way we
understand things precedes generation, but considered as relation, pater-
nity follows the notional act. Giles likens this to the way that health and
medicine can stand in diverse relations of priority to each other, presumably
meaning by this that the health is prior as final cause of taking the medicine,
while the medicine is prior as efficient cause bringing about health. With
that said, however, Giles is careful to stress that when paternity is consid-
ered as constitutive property, although you might say that logically prior
to his generating, the Father is Father, nevertheless you could never claim
that the Father generates because he is Father. That is to say, with paternity
per modum naturae. Propter hoc isti idem aliter dixerunt: quod processiones in divinis
distinguuntur eo quod una (ed.: uno) est ab uno, alia est a pluribus …” Ibid., f. 71vbN. On these
issues in Giles, see also below, Ch. 5, § 1, below.
69 See, for two late examples, Robert Graystanes’ I Sent., d. 11, from around 1321–1322 (ed.
Schabel and Friedman 2003, p. 60267–272) and Richard FitzRalph’s I Sent., q. 4, a. 1, from around
1328–1329 (ed. Schabel and Friedman 2003, p. 7684). Of course, Giles’ trinitarian theology was
much discussed by Augustinian Hermits just in virtue of the fact that he was teaching doctor
of their order; see, e.g., Ch. 12, § 1A, below, for Augustinus Triumphus, Thomas of Strasbourg,
and Gerard of Siena.
70 Giles, I Sent., d. 26, prin. 1, qq. 2–3 (ed. 1521, ff. 139vb–141ra), e.g., q. 2: “… tenendum est
cum secunda positione quae est magis communis quod principium distinctionis in divinis
est proprietas. Advertendum tamen quod, quia unam et eandem relationem insinuant
proprietas et origo, propter hoc aliquando invenitur a sanctis quod in divinis est distinctio
per origines, aliquando quod per proprietates …” Ed. 1521, 140rbF.
208 chapter three
considered as a constitutive property, the question with which Giles is

dealing is not about causality at all, but about logical priority. With paternity
considered as relation, on the other hand, since the relation does in fact
follow from the action, you can say that the Father is the Father because
he generates; thus, understood as a relation, paternity is not only preceded
by generation but also caused or induced by it. But Giles stresses that the
Father’s being the Father because he generates can only be understood to
be true in a certain respect, i.e. with paternity understood as a relation, and
not without qualification, in contrast to the way the Franciscans understand
it.71 Giles’ view on the Father’s constitutive property, finally, is closely related
to his view on innascibility, since he denies that innascibility is in any
way the constitutive property of the Father, and says, in a passage echoed
by Nicholas of Ockham, that without paternity, ungenerated would apply,
not to a distinct person, but to the divine essence, in the way that “the
Jews and the Gentiles posit, who do not hold there to be a Trinity in the
divine”. According to Giles, the only positive meaning of ‘unborn’ in God is
its secondary meaning of paternity, which is the constitutive property of the
Father, and in this way he was, once again, following Aquinas closely.72
71 Giles, I Sent., d. 27, prin. 1, q. 2 (ed. 1521, f. 145rb–vb), e.g.: “Quidam enim videntes quod
in creaturis relationes consequuntur ad actus, ut pater carnalis, eo quod generat est pater,
concesserunt simpliciter istam: Pater quia generat est Pater. Sed ut habitum est simpliciter
non est concedenda .... Tota distinctio consideranda est secundum intellectum … paternitas
secundum unum modum intelligendi sit prior ipso generare, et generare secundum alium
modum praecedat ipsam paternitatem. Nam huiusmodi conversam prioritatem etiam in his
quae realiter differunt inveniri potest, ut potio praecedit santitatem et sanitas potionem ....
Paternitas dupliciter considerari potest: uno modo prout est constitutiva personae Patris, et
sic praecedit generare .... accipiendo paternitatem sub ratione qua relatio, non sub ratione
qua Patrem constituit, sic generare est prius quam sit paternitas, et quia relatio ad ipsam
actionem consequitur .... non sit simpliciter concedendum: Pater quia generat est Pater;
tamen inter generari et filiationem non habet locum ista distinctio, quia simpliciter est
concedendum quod Filius Filius est quia genitus, nam filiatio nullo modo praecedit secun-
dum intelligendi modum generationem Filii.” Ed. 1521, ff. 145rbH, 145vaK–L (throughout this
passage Giles elaborates the nuanced position described in the main text). Nicholas of Ock-
ham also uses the potion example and makes the same waiver about the Son’s generation;
see Ch. 2, above, nn. 138–139. The comment about the Son’s generation descends most prob-
ably from Aquinas and his intrinsic constitutive argument; see at and around n. 3 above,
and, e.g., De potentia, q. 8, a. 3 (“Utrum relationes constituant et distinguant personas sive
hypostases”), ad 7: “Ex parte vero Filii nulla remanet difficultas, nam nativitas secundum
intellectum praecedit hypostasim nati, cum intelligatur ut via ad ipsam, est enim generatio
via in substantiam.” Ed. 1953, p. 221a.
72 Giles, I Sent., d. 28, prin. 1, qq. 1–3 (ed. 1521, ff. 149rb–151ra), e.g., ibid., q. 3: “Ad primum
dicendum quod, si non intellecta paternitate potest intelligi persona Patris ingenita, et non
sequitur Patrem esse ingenitum ex eo quod generat. Haec est secundum eos qui volunt
iudicare de generatione in divinis secundum generationem in creaturis, ubi eadem persona
What lies behind all of these views is Giles’ conviction that all real dis-
tinction in God comes about on account of opposition of relation. Thus, in
order to understand his trinitarian theology, it is crucial to understand Giles’
theory of relation, and the way that he puts that theory to work explain-
ing the distinction of the persons.73 Giles’ ideas on personal distinction are
an elaboration of the basic theory that Aquinas had used.74 In d. 33 of the
first book of his Sentences commentary, Giles gives a succinct statement
of his position, and this reveals his broad agreement with Aquinas. Giles
relies, for instance, on a distinction that we saw Aquinas use (Ch. 1, § 1)
between a relation’s being (esse) and its ratio. What Aquinas called the
ratio of relation, Giles typically names relation’s “ratio of quiddity” (ratio
quiditatis) and he thinks about this as the relation’s being-toward-another.
Like all absolutes (omnia absoluta), with respect to their being, the relations
“vanish” into the divine essence. With respect to their ratio, their being-
toward-another, however, the relations remain in God. On this basis, these
divine relations are the foundation of the constitution of the persons: for
Giles, as for Thomas, opposition of the relations to one another gives rise to
the real distinction between the divine persons, while nevertheless the rela-
tions, and hence the persons, are merely rationally distinct from the divine
essence in which they subsist.75 At this point, Giles raises a question:
potest esse gignens et genita. Vel dicere possumus quod remanet ingenitum amota paterni-
tate, sed non eo modo quo nos ingenitum de Patre dicimus, nam Iudei et gentiles trinitatem
in divinis non ponentes ponunt Deum esse ingenitum, sed non eo modo ut de ingenito
loquimur. Nam prout de Patre dicitur ingenitum, licet quantum ad sui signationem directe
solam negationem importet, tamen secundum modum intelligendi in quantum omnis nega-
tiva ad affirmativam reducitur, sive ex affirmativa robur sumit, esse ingenitum paternitatem
et communem notionem in Patre dat intelligere …” Ed. 1521, f. 150vP–Q. Cp. the phrasing here
to Nicholas of Ockham, Ch. 2, above, n. 142, and to Aquinas, Ch. 1, above, at n. 72.
73 See, for Giles’ theory of relation the short description in Henninger 1989, 26–29, which,
however, does not discuss the development of Aquinas’ doctrine that Giles made in the
material treated below. Thus, Henninger’s tentative assertion that Giles adopts Aquinas’
doctrine of relation has to be slightly modified. On Giles’ trinitarian theology and the theory
of relation behind it, see Gelber 1974, 28–31; Luna 1988.
74 This is the judgement of Gelber 1974, 34–35; Gelber is correct in saying that Giles
borrows most of his theory from Aquinas and Bonaventure, but the fact that his elaborations
caused so much stir indicates that Giles was an important figure and a compelling thinker,
although perhaps much of the attention after 1287 can be explained by the Augustinian
Hermits having made Giles the teaching doctor of their order.
75 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3 (“Utrum ista duo sint compossibilia: quod relationes
distinguant personas realiter, et tamen a divina essentia differant ratione”, ed. 1521, ff. 171rbH–
172vbO), resp.: “Cum ergo habitum sit omnia absoluta, tam secundum esse quam secundum
rationem quiditatis, transire in divinam substantiam et non manere secundum suum genus;
relationem vero transire quantum ad esse, manere vero secundum rationem quiditatis; ipsa
210 chapter three
Because, therefore, the persons differ both from each other and from the
essence by relative quiddity—since they are only rationally distinct from the
essence, but are really distinct from one another—, it is required that quiddity
of this kind [i.e., of divine relations] be a thing (rem) in comparison to its
opposite, but that related to the essence to which it has no opposition it exists
only as a ratio. But how is it possible that one and the same [item] taken in
one way is a thing (res) and taken in another a ratio?76
This is indeed Giles’ primary worry: how to account for the dual nature of
the divine relations, the fact that divine relation is both thing and ratio.
Giles’ concern is not so much how relations can be said to be different from
the essence: to explain this, Giles borrows from Aquinas the distinction
between esse taken as an essential act and esse taken as quiddity.77 Thus,
because the relations have a different quiddity than does the essence (being-
toward-another, in the case of relation, as opposed to being-in-and-of-itself,
in the case of the essence) they are different, and yet they share the same
essential act. By drawing this distinction with respect to ‘being’, Giles thinks
he can explain the fact that essence and relation both are and are not the
same. The distinction, however, does not explain the dual nature of the
divine relations as both thing and ratio. In fact, it is Giles’ project to show
how a theory of relation can account for this dual nature.
ergo relationis quiditas est id per quod personae distinguuntur secundum quam opponuntur
ad invicem, et per ipsam ab essentia differunt, quia eam super essentiam addunt.” Ed. 1521,
f. 171vbP.
76 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3: “Cum ergo personae per quiditatem relativam et
ad se invicem et ab essentia differant, cum ab essentia sola ratione distinctae sint, ad

se invicem vero realiter distinguuntur, oportet huiusmodi quiditatem per comparationem
ad oppositum esse rem, relatam vero ad essentiam ad quam oppositionem non habet
solam rationem existere. Sed quomodo hoc sit possibile quod unum et idem aliter et aliter
sumptum sit res et ratio?” Ed. 1521, f. 171vbP–Q.
77 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 2 (“Utrum proprietas sit idem quod essentia realiter”; ed.
1521, ff. 170vbP–171rbH), ad 1: “Dicendum quod consuevit distingui triplex ‘esse’. Primo prout
sumitur pro esse quiditativo, secundum quod dicimus quod definitio est sermo indicans
quod est esse. Secundo modo accipitur pro actu essentiali, secundum quem modum dicimus
quod esse est actus entis. Tertio prout dicit veritatem compositionis. Quando ergo dicitur
‘quaecumque habent diversum esse realiter differunt’, non est intelligendum de esse quidita-
tivo, nam actio et passio sunt una res (ut probatur III Physicorum), et tamen habent diversam
rationem quiditatis; sed est intelligendum de esse quod est actus essentiae. Et cum dicitur
quod diversum est esse Patrem et esse Filium, et quod relationes in divinis, et inter se et
per comparationem ad substantiam, distinguuntur secundum esse, intelligendum est de esse
quiditativo vel definitio; quia si definiretur paternitas, filiatio, et essentia eorum, non esset
definitio una; sed propter talem differentiam non habetur quod relatio a substantia realiter
differat, licet ipsae relationes intra se realiter differant, ut infra patebit.” Ed. 1521, f. 171rbF–G.
This position is elaborated by Giles at I Sent., d. 34, prin. 1, q. 3 (ed. 1521, f. 176vbO–Q); for the
Thomist roots of this way of drawing a distinction in being, see Ch. 1, above, esp. n. 20.
Giles’ way of putting the question sheds a great deal of light on what he
believes he is accomplishing. He starts with the premiss that in order for
a real distinction between the persons to arise, the relations must in some
way be things (res) with some reality of their own; yet in order to avoid com-
position with the essence they must also be mere rationes. This position was
advanced by both Aquinas and Bonaventure: compared to their terms the
divine relations are things, but compared to their foundation—the divine
essence—they are distinct from that foundation in a merely rational way. It
is worthwhile once again to point out that the “comparison” under discus-
sion here is not merely psychological, but has metaphysical significance—
the relations have in reality the dual nature mentioned. Dissatisfied with
the rather sketchy accounts of Aquinas and Bonaventure, Giles sought to
elucidate the mysterious dual nature of the divine relations.78
To solve this problem, Giles makes a study of relations in order to deter-
mine why some relations are real, while others are merely relations of rea-
son. In particular, he seeks to explicate precisely what “role” is played in a
relation by the foundation, what role by the ratio of quiddity, and what role
by the term. Giles studies the difference between real relations and relations
of reason through an examination of a specific instance of this difference:
an equality relation versus an identity relation. In Giles’ day, it was com-
monly considered that a relation of equality is a real relation, whereas a
relation of identity is a relation of reason. Thus, pinpointing the source of
difference between these two types of relations could help illuminate what
makes one relation real (or a thing) and what makes another merely ratio-
nal. Giles denies that there is any difference in foundation between these
78 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3: “Respondeo: dicendum quod ut huius pateat veritas
quaestionis duo declaranda sunt. Primo utrum relatio secundum suam rationem quiditatis
habeat quod sit res, quia si nullo modo quiditas relationis est res aliqua, cum solum secun-
dum huiusmodi quiditatem distinguantur personae, non videtur via ad evadendum quo-
modo personae possint esse realiter distinctae. Secundo videndum erit quomodo relationes
divinae ab aliis rebus distinctae sunt. Nam sic debemus ponere distinctionem realem inter
personas ut non derogetur simplicitati et unitati essentiae, quia sic est fugienda Sabellii posi-
tio, qui confudit personas, quod non est adhaerendum Arrio, qui separavit substantiam.” Ed.
1521, f. 171vaL–M.
It should be noted that even this question was anticipated by Aquinas, who at times called
the relations ‘things’; see, e.g., Ch. 1, above, n. 25. Aquinas was, however, not always consistent
in this use of the term ‘thing’, and he also claimed that in God the only real distinction arose
from opposition of relations, and what was made really distinct were the persons, not the
relations (although persons and relations differ only by a mode of signifying.) Bonaventure
also used the term ‘thing’ in his explanation for the way that true plurality of distinction arises
when one relation was compared to the relation opposed to it (Ch. 1, above, n. 42). My point
is that Giles took these hints and developed them.
212 chapter three
two relations, since the foundation of each is unity: in the case of identity,
unity of substance, in the case of equality, unity of quantity. In fact, the unity
of the foundation of the identity relation, i.e. the relation of reason, is more
of a “thing” (since it is the unity of substance) than is the unity in quantity
that founds the real relation of equality.79 Thus, no appeal to their founda-
tions alone can explain why the one relation is real while the other is only of
reason. This prompts Giles to settle on another way to distinguish between
relations of reason and real relations: for a relation to be real, an “order” must
exist between the relation’s foundation and its term. Thus, Giles claims that
what is lacking in an identity relation that is present in an equality relation
are two distinct things between which some real order can hold. Giles says
that the reason that a thing can only be related to itself conceptually, as in
an identity relation, is that one and the same thing cannot have a real order
to itself. That is, since only reason can distinguish between a thing and itself,
only reason can create an order or relation between a thing and itself. Thus,
identity relations are truly relations of reason. Making his account more
general, Giles claims that the reality or non-reality of the order of which a
relation is indicative also plays some role in the reality or non-reality of the
relation itself. Giles is aware that this order cannot be the entire explanation
for why one relation is real, the other merely of reason; indeed, he claims
that in a certain sense, the reality a relation takes from its foundation is the
more significant reality. And yet, for him, the reality of the foundation is a
merely necessary, not a sufficient cause of a relation’s being real—as the
case of the identity relation shows. In order to have a real relation, both the
foundation and the order must be real. From his recognition of the role that
the order of a relation plays in its reality, Giles can begin to explain how a
relation is in some way a thing (res) from its order to a term, i.e. from its
ratio of quiddity, which is its being-toward-another.80
79 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3: “Nam quod ab huiusmodi quiditate habeat relatio
aliquo modo quod sit quid reale videre non est difficile: dicimus enim (ed.: tamen) quod
relatio eiusdem ad se ipsum etiam in creaturis est relatio rationis, relatio vero aequalitatis
in rebus creatis est realis relatio. Si igitur relationi identitatis deficit realitas, et non relationi
aequalitatis, hoc non potest esse ex ipso fundamento directe. Nam sicut unum in substantia
facit idem, sic[ut] unum in quantitate facit aequale. Non autem habet apparentiam per
se loquendo quod fundamentum in unitate substantiae secundum quod huiusmodi sit
quid rationis, fundamentum vero in quantitatis unitate sit quid reale, cum unitas sequatur
modum entitatis, et non magis ad entitatem accedat quantitas quam substantia, sed e
contra.” Ed. 1521, f. 171vaM–bN. This text continues in n. 80 below.
80 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3 (text continued from n. 79): “Tota ergo causa quare
identitas de necessitate est relatio rationis et non aequalitas, est (si per se loqui volumus)
Turning specifically to the divine relations, Giles follows Aquinas’ lead

in the attempt to explain how it can be said that a relation has being or is
a thing from its order to a term. For Giles, it is a divine relation’s quiddity
as exhibited in its ratio that gives it being, just as Aquinas had argued that
the way that a relation can be different from the divine essence in being is
on account of its being as quiddity. But Giles presses the argument a little
further, basing his analysis on the role that order plays in relations:
It is to be noted that relation’s quiddity consists in relating to another, for
relative things are defined in such a way that their being is in a respect to
something else. Now because a definition is a phrase (sermo) expressive of
quiddity and of essence, since relative things are defined through relating to
something else, it must be that relation’s quiddity is held through a respect to
something else, and because a respect to something else of this kind indicates
a certain order, relation necessarily, essentially and in virtue of its quiddity,
is a kind of order … and because order is in some way a thing, relation, which
according to its quiddity is a kind of order, according to its quiddity is [also]
a kind of thing and a relation’s quiddity is in some way a kind of thing.81
From this point, Giles only has to argue that where a real order holds, i.e.
an order to a term really distinct from the foundation, a relation is a thing
according to its ratio of quiddity; but where there is no real order, a relation
defectus ordinis qui ad rationem quiditatis reducitur, quia idem ad se ipsum realem ordinem
habere non potest. Propter quod aequalitas, secundum quam sumi potest realis ordo, est
relatio rei, identitas vero, cui deficit talis ordo, est relatio rationis (ed.: relationis). Non ergo
solum ex esse et fundamento debet attendi realitas in relatione, sed etiam ex ordine et
quiditate, quia utrumque debet ibi concurrere ad hoc quod sit relatio realis; non tamen
(ut tactum fuit supra) ab utroque istorum relatio realitatem aequaliter consequitur, quia ab
esse consequitur realitatem absolute loquendo et simpliciter, a ratione quiditatis non, ut in
prosequendo patebit. Et sicut ab utroque istorum relatio realitatem habet, sic et utrumque
istorum est aliquo modo res; sed quod esse relationis sit res difficultatem non habet, cum
relatio secundum esse sit aliquid, sicut et cetera praedicamenta; sed quomodo ipsa quiditas
relationis possit dici aliquo modo ‘res’ videre non est facile.” Ed. 1521, f. 171vbN–O. See Aquinas,
Sum. theol., I, q. 28, a. 2, resp. 2: “… relatio quae importatur per hoc nomen ‘idem’ est relatio
rationis tantum, si accipiatur simpliciter ‘idem’, quia huiusmodi relatio non potest consistere
nisi in quodam ordine quem ratio adinvenit alicuius ad se ipsum, secundum aliquas eius duas
considerationes.”
81 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3: “Notandum quod quiditas relationis consistit in ad aliud
se habere. Sic enim relativa definiuntur quod eorum esse est in respectu ad aliud, et quia
definitio est sermo expressivus quiditatis et essentiae, ex quo relativa definiuntur per ad
aliud se habere, oportet quod quiditas relationis accipiatur per respectum ad aliud, et quia
huiusmodi respectus ad aliud dicit quemdam ordinem, de necessitate relatio essentialiter et
secundum suam quiditatem est ordo quidam … et quia ordo est aliquo modo res, relatio, quae
secundum suam quiditatem est ordo quidam, secundum suam quiditatem est res quaedam,
et ipsa relationis quiditas quodam modo quaedam res est.” Ed. 1521, ff. 171vbQ–172raA. See for
comparison, Aquinas, at and around n. 19 in Ch. 1 above.
214 chapter three
is only a ratio. Thus, in the same way that an identity relation is not a thing
because it lacks a real order, so a relation compared to anything where no
real order obtains is merely a ratio. For Giles, where there is no real order,
there is no reality.82 Giles, of course, needs to justify at least one unsupported
premiss in the argument above: that order is in some way a thing. He goes
about doing this through an interesting argument explaining that order
must have some existence, since order is good. In what appears to be a twist
on the widespread ancient and medieval intuition about the convertibility
of being and goodness, Giles argues that, since every order is good and every
good must exist in some way, therefore order must have some extramental
existence, and is in some way a thing.83
On the basis of his proof concerning the convertibility of a relation’s real
order and that relation’s reality, Giles can readily explain how the divine
relations take on some reality when the relation is compared to its term, but
when compared to its foundation the relation vanishes into the essence and
becomes a mere ratio. When a divine relation is compared to its opposing
term, a real order arises, and in this way the relation is a thing; but when
the relation is compared to its foundation—the divine essence—there is no
real order, because the divine relations are identical to the divine essence. A
relation of identity exists between the divine relations and the essence, and
identity relations are relations of reason precisely because there is no real
order between the foundation and the term of the relation. On the other
hand, because there is a real order between the persons (e.g., because the
82 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3: “Nam si relatio ex hoc est res secundum suam quiditatem,
quia est ordo quidam, cum ordo accipiatur in comparatione ad aliud; cum de relatione
loquimur per comparationem ad illud respectu cuius accipit quod sit realis ordo, relatio
secundum suam quiditatem quodam modo res erit. Sed cum eam comparamus non ad illud
respectu cuius accipitur realis ordo, sic accepta non potest secundum suam quiditatem esse
res, quia cum competat ei realitas ex ordine, ex quo tollitur ordo, tollitur realitas. Et sicut
tollitur ordo realis, sic tollitur realitas, et ideo relatio eiusdem ad se ipsum simpliciter est
ratio, quia nullo modo ad se ipsum habetur realis ordo.” Ed. 1521, f. 172raC.
83 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3: “Ordo autem habet rationem boni, immo post bonum
ducis quod est bonum primi, non est aliquid adeo bonum ut bonum ordinis. Propter quod
et Philosophus, XII Metaphysicae, ostendit bonum nobile ipsius universi esse per huius
ordinem in comparatione ad Deum: ex hoc enim omnia sunt valde bona et universum est
optimum propter bonum ordinis. Si igitur ordo haberet rationem veri, cum verum et falsum
sint in anima (ut vult Philosophus, VI Metaphysicae) et quae sunt in anima possent esse
ratio tantum, credere posset aliquis quod ordo nullo modo esset res, sed tantum ratio; sed
cum habeat rationem boni, et bonum et malum sint in rebus (ut ex eodem VI Metaphysicae
haberi potest), nullus dubitare debet quod sit in rebus et sit aliquo modo res.” Ed. 1521,
ff. 171vbQ–172raA. On the convertibility of being and goodness, see, e.g., the articles collected
in MacDonald 1991, and esp. MacDonald’s Introduction to the collection (pp. 1–28).
Father is the Father of the Son), when the relations are compared to their
opposing relation or the person constituted by the opposing relation, then
they are things. Thus, Giles claims that there is a relation of reason between
the essence and the relation—they differ merely by ratio—yet because
of the real order between the persons, the relations when considered as
relations are in fact “things”: exactly what Giles claimed he needed to show
in order to safeguard the real distinction between the persons.84
Giles makes it quite clear, however, that no composition results in God
from the divine relations being in some sense “things”, as he claims them to
be; only true distinction results. Composition arises only when one thing
exists in something else (respectu eius in quo est); this is the reason why
composition results from there being whiteness in a white thing. But when a
white thing is compared to something else (respectu alterius)—for instance
a black thing—only distinction, not composition results. Thus, because
compared to their foundation the divine relations have no real order and
are not things, neither composition nor distinction arises; true distinction
without composition only comes about between the persons, because one
relation, one thing, is compared to another.85
84 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3: “Nam si dicere quod Pater vel paternitas prout com-
paratur ad essentiam ut ab ea distinguitur non sit res sed ratio, nec ab ea habet realiter esse
distinctum, sed secundum rationem solum, sed ut comparatur ad Filium vel ad filiationem
sic sit res et alia res, non est contra rationem, si bene consideramus iam dicta. Nam cum
Pater secundum quod Pater comparetur ad Filium secundum realem ordinem, eo quod Pater
est Filii Pater, ad essentiam vero realem ordinem habere non possit, eo quod non sit Pater
essentiae, paternitas in comparatione ad Filium vel ad filiationem erit realis ordo, et ita res
quaedam et alia res, comparata autem ad essentiam prout est ab ea distincta est ratio solum,
quia respectu eius realis ordo esse non potest. Sunt ergo tres personae distinctae realiter,
licet ab essentia solum differahnit ratione, quia quiditas relativa secundum quam distingu-
untur personae inter se et ab essentia est ordo realis ut persona ad personam comparatur,
est autem ratio solum ut per eam persona ab essentia est distincta. Sed sicut ostensum est,
hoc est singulare in quiditate relationum quod uno modo accepta sit quodam modo res, alio
modo sit solum ratio. Et ideo non est possibile tres personas esse unam essentiam et tres
res absolutas, non enim Pater et Filius sunt duo aliquid, sed duo ad aliquid … Cum igitur
paternitas sit ordo realis ut per eam Pater ad Filium comparatur, sic accepta erit res alia a
Filio et a filiatione; ab essentia autem solum differet (ed.: differret) ratione, cum respectu
eius non sit ordo realis. Rursum, ut dicebatur, quaelibet ratio comparata ad suum funda-
mentum ut est aliquid praeter ipsum est ratio solum, licet respectu oppositi sit res quaedam;
et quia fundamentum relationum divinarum est divina essentia, et (ed.: nam) cum omne
relativum sit aliquid, excepto eo quod relative dicitur cuiuslibet relationis velut fundamen-
tum, oportet esse quodam modo absolutum, poterit ergo relatio divina facere distinctionem
realem respectu oppositi, respectu cuius alietatem realem habet, non autem respectu essen-
tiae ad quam comparatur velut ad fundamentum.” Ed. 1521, f. 172rbE–F.
85 Giles, I Sent., d. 33, prin. 1, q. 3: “… huiusmodi quiditas est quodam modo res in quantum
est ordo quidam realis, et ideo quotienscumque comparatur ad suum fundamentum vel ad
216 chapter three
Two things emerge from Giles of Rome’s discussion of the distinction

between the divine persons. First, Giles offered a theory—based on that of
Aquinas—developed with an eye toward explaining the way that the divine
relations could be things, and more specifically their dual nature (that
they are both thing and ratio). This was necessary because Giles believed
only such an account could save the distinction of the persons. Henry of
Ghent would reject not just Aquinas’ way of distinguishing between the
persons, but Giles’ as well, seeing as fundamentally flawed their efforts to
prove that relations are things. Henry would look elsewhere for the source
of distinction between the persons, turning to the Franciscan emanation
account. Second—and in this Giles and Henry show a similar theological
disposition—Giles saw a great deal of similarity between the nature of
relations in the created realm and their nature in God. Divine relations,
for Giles, function in much the same way as relations in the created order,
lacking only the characteristic of inherence (i.e., lacking the relation’s ‘being’
[esse] as opposed to its ratio). This correspondence between categorial and
divine relations manifests itself primarily in Giles’ insistence that a relation
depends for its reality on its order to a term.86 And this was precisely the
aspect of Giles’ theory to which Henry objected, setting the stage for a more
or less clean break with the relation account of personal distinction.
aliud respectu cuius non est talis ordo, respectu eius in quantum huiusmodi non habet quod
sit res sed quod sit ratio … huiusmodi quiditas res dicitur, non quia realiter compositionem
faciat, sed quia realiter distinguit, nam facere compositionem convenit ei respectu eius in
quo est, sed facit distinctionem respectu alterius, ut albedo facit compositionem in albo,
distinguit tamen a nigro. Si igitur relatio secundum suam quiditatem est res in quantum
est ordo quidam, cum ordo huiusmodi accipiatur per comparationem ad aliud, non per
comparationem ad illud in quo est, sic considerata relatio ita faciet distinctionem quae
attenditur respectu alterius quod non faciet compositionem quae consideranda est respectu
eius in quo existet.” Ed. 1521, f. 172vaK–L.
86 Gelber 1974, 34, also notes this about Giles’ account.
PART II

INTRODUCTION TO PART II
In Part I of this book, I traced the emergence of rival trinitarian traditions

in the period ca. 1250–1280. In particular, from an early disagreement in
Aquinas and Bonaventure, two very different emphases in trinitarian the-
ory took root among a group of predominantly Dominican authors and a
group of predominantly Franciscan ones. The Dominicans stressed that the
properties constitutive of the persons were relational, while the Franciscans
stressed that those properties were emanational.
The Dominican view is the easier to describe, since it starts from and
ends with opposition of relations as the constitutive feature of the divine
persons, i.e. the fact that Father and Son are relatively opposed to one
another, and that Father and Son, together, are relatively opposed to the
Holy Spirit. On this view, the three persons can only be constituted in
opposed “pairs”. Although, as we saw, there was a degree of openness in
the early Dominican tradition for non-relational elements, on the whole,
and taking their point of departure in Thomas Aquinas, Dominicans denied
that the Father’s innascibility (his not being from another) could constitute
a person or hypostases on its own; in their view, the Father could be
constituted solely on the basis of paternity, relatively opposed to the Son’s
filiation. Concomitantly, for the Dominicans, the Father generates because
he is Father, and he is Father on the basis of paternity. This view is tied to
Aquinas’ influential “intrinsic constitutive argument”, according to which
a divine person must be constituted by a form intrinsic to that person (in
the way that a relation is intrinsic to the person), and since emanations
are “ways” from and to persons and not intrinsic to persons, they cannot
be the properties constitutive of the persons. Moreover, on the important
counterfactual Filioque question—whether the Holy Spirit could still be
distinct from the Son if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son—the
Dominican trinitarian tradition answered in the negative: the Holy Spirit
and the Son can only be distinct from one another if the Holy Spirit proceeds
from the Father and the Son, such that there are opposed relations between
the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, and both the Father and the Son, on the
other.
The Franciscan view stressed the emanational aspect of the properties
that constitute the divine persons, i.e. that the property constituting the
person is the way in which the person takes being. The Franciscans did
220 introduction to part ii
not reject that the three persons are in actuality distinct on the basis of
opposition of relations: the Son does come from the Father, and the Holy
Spirit does come from the Father and the Son. Indeed, by acknowledging the
role of opposition of relations in the constitution of the persons, the Fran-
ciscans could accommodate the many authoritative texts that spoke for a
relational view of the trinitarian properties; this is what I have been calling
a “marginalization strategy”. Nonetheless, the greatest stress in Franciscan
trinitarian theology was on the emanations. Thus, the Franciscan tradition
insisted that opposition of relations, while descriptive of God’s trinitar-
ian nature, were counterfactually “dispensable”. By this, Franciscan authors
were signalling that opposition of relations in God is itself founded upon the
more basic emanational properties of the divine persons, while the emana-
tional properties are themselves strictly necessary for personal distinction
and counterfactually sufficient (i.e. would be sufficient, if the opposition
of relations were counterfactually not to obtain). This stress on emanation
comes to light in several areas of Franciscan thought, perhaps most clearly
in their support for “nested distinctions”. Thus, when they deal with the
counterfactual Filioque question, the Franciscans often claimed that there
is a “double reason” for distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit,
namely 1) the fact that each has his perfect emanation from the Father, and
2) the fact that the Holy Spirit does proceed from the Son and hence that
there are opposed relations between them. The Franciscans maintained on
this question that, even if, counterfactually, the opposed relations between
the Son and the Holy Spirit were removed, the two persons would still be dis-
tinct from one another on the basis of each his perfect emanation from the
Father. In short, the absolutely necessary emanational distinction is nested
within the (counterfactually) dispensable relational distinction. A similar
stress on emanation is seen in the Franciscan treatment of the Father: the
Father’s property of innascibility, his being unemanated, could (counter-
factually) constitute a divine hypostasis or person. In line with this, the
Father is the Father because he generates, and he generates because he is
God innascible, or, to give the term they most often used, on account of
his “primity”, his immediate readiness to generate the Son and to spirate
the Holy Spirit. Thus, for the Franciscans the spotlight was firmly on God
the Father’s emanational properties, innascibility (primity) and generation,
although they would admit that the Father is indeed relatively opposed to
the Son (the distinction of opposed relations between the persons is only
counterfactually dispensable).
In Part II, we turn to a new phase in the debate, beginning with the sec-
ular theologian Henry of Ghent. Henry (Ch. 4) fits well into the Franciscan
introduction to part ii 221
trinitarian tradition, in some ways going beyond what his contemporaries

in the tradition would countenance. Henry rejected, for instance, the dual
nature of the divine relations (that relation compared to the essence van-
ishes into the essence, but compared to its opposed relation it has some
reality of its own), and this was the foundation of his rejection of oppo-
sition of relations as the feature distinctive of the divine persons. Henry
resorted instead to the emanations. Henry’s most significant innovation,
however, was his “strong” use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian the-
ology: his view that the Son is literally a mental Word or Concept formed
by the paternal intellect, and the Holy Spirit is Zeal or Love formed by the
will common to the Father and the Son. The remainder of Part II of this
book traces the reception of Henry’s innovation, focusing specially on who
accepted the strong use of the psychological model and who opposed it.
Unsurprisingly, the reactions fall along the lines of the trinitarian traditions,
with those defending a roughly Dominican trinitarian theology rejecting the
strong use, while those maintaining a roughly Franciscan view embracing it.
In fact, one can discern the growing circulation of Henry’s idea in both the
Dominican and the Franciscan traditions throughout the last two decades of
the thirteenth century in such figures as Godfrey of Fontaines and William
of Ware (Ch. 5). But the most prominent figure to take up Henry’s innova-
tion was, without doubt, John Duns Scotus (Ch. 6). Scotus certainly injected
unusual elements into the trinitarian discussion—most notably his sugges-
tion that the divine persons are non-relative absolutes, a suggestion that
came with an interesting marginalization strategy (Ch. 6, § 1). With that
said, Scotus fit extremely well into the Franciscan tradition, and much of
his trinitarian theology can be looked at as a reaction to and development
of Henry of Ghent’s trinitarian thought (Ch. 6, § 2). Most notably, Scotus
elaborated a strong use of the psychological model, taking as his point of
departure many of Henry’s ideas on the matter (Ch. 6, § 3). Very soon after
becoming publicly available, Scotus’ trinitarian theology sparked a tremen-
dous amount of discussion, particularly in the Franciscan trinitarian tradi-
tion. Eloquent testimony to the extent and longevity of this discussion is
the fact that aspects of Scotus’ trinitarian thought will feature on a regular
basis throughout the final chapters of the present book (Chs. 8–12). With
respect to Scotus’ reception among early-fourteenth-century Franciscan-
leaning theologians, I investigate (Ch. 8) response to his ideas on absolute
persons and on the counterfactual Filioque question, while also considering
reaction to the strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theol-
ogy. Indeed, by the late-thirteenth and early fourteenth century the strong
use appears to have become a standard part of the complex of positions that
222 introduction to part ii
made up Franciscan trinitarian theology. This is certainly how the Domini-

cans of the early fourteenth century perceived it: to them, the strong use was
just one facet of the general Franciscan trinitarian view that they opposed.
Examining the reaction to Franciscan trinitarian thought in such figures as
Hervaeus Natalis, Durand of St. Pourçain, John of Naples, and Thomas of
Sutton, in this part of the book (Ch. 7; Ch. 8, § 2B) I show that the Domini-
cans of the period, holding that exclusively opposed relations bring about
distinction between the divine persons, rejected that intellect or will are
linked in any privileged way to the production of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, respectively. Although Durand (Ch. 7, § 2) took this position to an
extreme by maintaining that the Son is a Word (and the Holy Spirit is Love)
in a merely appropriated or metaphorical sense, other thinkers like Her-
vaeus and John of Naples developed a marginalization strategy enabling
them to accommodate the authoritative evidence that seemed to speak in
favor of the strong use of the psychological model, while reducing their own
commitment to the model.
Dominican critique of Franciscan trinitarian theology clearly carried
great weight with Peter Auriol (Ch. 9). Although he was a firm supporter
of the strong use of the psychological model and of other elements of
Franciscan trinitarian thought, his trinitarian theory nonetheless involves
a nuancing and especially a streamlining of earlier Franciscan views, often
in ways that reveal that he had Dominican critique in mind. Auriol’s ideas
will in turn play a very large role in Part III of the present book, since they
elicited a great deal of reaction. Moreover, Auriol’s tendency to streamline
the trinitarian theory of his day is a manifestation of the major trend that
will be investigated in Part III: the “search for simplicity” in trinitarian
theology in the period 1320–1350.
chapter four
HENRY OF GHENT
One of the results of the fact that Henry of Ghent (1217?-1293) never belonged
to a mendicant or monastic order was that, until he was adopted as a type
of teaching doctor by the Servites in the sixteenth century, Henry had no
active, organized proponents of his thought, as did, for example, Giles of
Rome in the Augustinian Hermits, Thomas Aquinas in the Dominicans (and
later the Jesuits), and (in a less official way) Bonaventure and Duns Scotus
in the Franciscans. No one was ever institutionally required to read Henry’s
work or encouraged to uphold his conclusions. In spite of this fact, however,
Henry was read, and although no “school” formed around his name and
ideas, it has become increasingly evident over the last century that Henry
of Ghent’s thought exercised a pervasive influence into the seventeenth
century. How did a secular scholar come to have such impact?
The sheer length of Henry’s teaching career at the University of Paris—
partly a result of his not belonging to a mendicant order—played some
role in his influence: he was Regent Master in theology from 1276 until his
death in 1293. During this time, Henry had some “political” influence at the
University of Paris, having worked on the committee that drew up the list of
219 articles condemned by Etienne Tempier in 1277 and having participated
throughout most of his university career in the battle against mendicant
privileges. Just as importantly, while at Paris, Henry had the opportunity to
influence directly scores of students and colleagues through his teaching.
From this teaching descend Henry’s major lasting contributions to the
scholastic theological discussion: fifteen Quodlibets as well as a series of
ordinary lectures known as his Quaestiones Ordinariae or Summa. That
these works were eagerly read from the time they were released until
the seventeenth century is a fact indicated by numerous manuscripts and
several early printed editions of them.1
1 For general introductions to Henry of Ghent’s life, thought, and works, see, e.g., Dumont
1998a; Laarmann 1999, 18–77; Wielockx 2003; Porro 2008; and see the articles collected in
Wilson 2011 (esp. Goehring’s on the verbum mentis). Wielockx (1985, 152, 240) argues that
it is likely that Henry read the Sent. (no written remains of his Sent. lectures are known to
have survived) at Paris around 1269–1271, and was made formed bachelor in 1271; Wielockx
224 chapter four
Certainly one of the most attentive readers of Henry’s works in the gener-
ation after his death was John Duns Scotus. It is now well known that Henry
exerted considerable influence on later-medieval and early-modern philos-
ophy through Scotus’ interpretation, development, and criticism of many
of his positions. The Subtle Doctor found in Henry, perhaps, a warehouse
of philosophical and theological ideas, many of them inchoate and at the
level of suggestion only, thus both easily elaborated on and incorporated
into other contexts. Moreover, on many issues Henry’s theological sensibil-
ities lay close to the Franciscans, and hence it may have seemed natural to
Scotus to scour Henry’s works for useful ideas. Whatever the reason, on topic
after topic, and in both positive and negative ways, Scotus stands in debt to
Henry. In general it can be said that in the late thirteenth and early four-
teenth centuries, Henry’s often innovative approach to the pressing issues
and his solutions to specific problems were adopted and developed, were
rejected and criticized, but were rarely ignored. And it is for these reasons
that, in many areas of philosophy and theology, both medieval thinkers
and modern historians have recognized that Henry of Ghent had a part in
reconceptualizing earlier discussions. He played just this sort of role in the
later-medieval discussion on the divine Word and more generally on the use
of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology.2
In the work of Bonaventure and the early Aquinas, the Word was pos-
tulated primarily to explain the traditional association of the Son with the
Word of God. In the later Aquinas of De potentia and the Summae, the
1985 is also extremely important for the thorough study of Henry’s possible role in the
1277 condemnation of Giles of Rome (esp. pp. 121–178). For the dating of Henry’s works, I
have relied primarily on Gómez Caffarena 1957 (Laarmann 1999, 49–52, gives a summary
of Gómez Caffarena’s major findings, updated in a few cases); see also Raymond Macken’s
introduction to Henry of Ghent, Quodl. I (ed. R. Macken; Opera Omnia, 5; Leuven—Leiden,
1979), esp. p. xvii, and Macken’s attempt to reconstruct Henry’s biography pp. vii–xiv. On
Henry’s Quodlibeta, see most recently Porro 2006.
In what follows wherever possible I have used the ongoing critical edition of both
Henry’s Summa and his Quodlibetal questions (hereafter: Quodl.) as found in Henrici de
Gandavo Opera Omnia. These volumes are identified by the name of their modern editor and
publication date. All other references are to the early modern Badius editions of these works,
and are identified by reference to “Badius”: Summa quaestionum ordinariarum (Paris, 1520;
rpt. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute 1953), and Quodl. (Paris, 1518; rpt. Louvain, 1961).
On manuscripts of Henry’s works, see Macken’s 2 volume Bibliotheca manuscripta (Opera
Omnia, 1–2; Leuven—Leiden, 1979).
2 The secondary literature on Henry of Ghent has grown quite vast, a fact indicated by
the bibliography in Porro 2003 and the other bibliographies referred to there (p. 409). For
an interesting weaving of Henry’s academic career and the secondary literature dealing with
him and his thought, see Porro 1996.
henry of ghent 225
procession of the Word becomes the major explanatory tool for human
conceptualization of the Son’s generation; nonetheless Aquinas relied on
opposition of relations to explain the distinction of the persons. As com-
pared to his slightly more senior contemporaries, Henry of Ghent’s use of
the verbum mentis is distinctive because he brought it into the very heart
of his trinitarian theology. The Son is a person distinct from the other two
on Henry’s view, because the Son emanates as the divine Word from the
Father’s intellect. For Henry, the generation of the Son is not only like the
formation of a word, it is the formation of the Word: the intelligible proces-
sion of the Word from God the Father’s intellect precisely accounts for how
the Son is generated by the Father and hence how the Son is constituted.
Mutatis mutandis, the same is true for the Holy Spirit’s emanation as Zeal
from the divine will: this is what makes him distinct from the other two per-
sons. On this view, the words In principio erat Verbum are the starting point
for explaining the constitution of the Trinity, and Henry uses philosophical
psychology in a strong way in his trinitarian theology.
What seems to lead Henry to strongly identify the Son with the Word
is his deemphasizing of the role played by the divine relations in explain-
ing the distinction of the persons. Henry’s trinitarian thought, in fact, is
best understood against the background of the post-Bonaventurean Fran-
ciscan trinitarian tradition that was discussed above in Chapter Two, and
in the process of elaborating his theory of the divine Word, Henry adopts
and develops several characteristics of Franciscan trinitarian theology, in
particular: primity, a strong reliance on the emanations as the explanation
for distinction between the persons, and nested distinctions. One thing that
distinguishes Henry’s trinitarian theory from that of contemporary Fran-
ciscans is that Henry explicitly rejects the relation account: Henry claims
that the only way that personal distinction can in fact be explained is by
differing modes of emanation; distinction through opposition of relations
as Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Giles of Rome had taught, is for Henry sim-
ply insufficient to explain the real distinction of the persons. Further, at the
foundation of Henry’s view is a connection that we have not seen made in
any of the Franciscans we have studied thus far: since the intellect is com-
monly recognized to be a “natural” faculty in medieval theology (i.e. when
presented with an object, the intellect invariably acts and invariably acts
in the same way), intellectual emanation is emanation by way of nature in
God. Intellectual emanation thus became the property constitutive of the
Son, and further, according to Henry, since the operation of the intellect
necessarily precedes the operation of the will, the Son’s intellectual emana-
tion must be distinct from the Holy Spirit’s voluntary emanation. Thus, the
226 chapter four
generation by way of intellect of the Son as Word was for Henry the basis
of the Son’s being distinct from both the Father and the Holy Spirit. And
Henry presents a parallel account for the procession by way of will of the
Holy Spirit as Zeal: this is the basis of the Holy Spirit’s being distinct from
both the Father and the Son.
An apologetic note must be made at the outset: the study of Henry’s
trinitarian theology presented here is provisional for at least two reasons.
First, we do not have a definitive text for the principal source of Henry’s
thought on trinitarian theology (including the divine Word), articles 53–
61 of his Summa, disputed over the period 1282–1289.3 Thus, until criti-
cal editions of these texts appear, we must be content with the less-than-
perfect text found in the Badius edition printed in Paris in 1520. The sec-
ond reason that what follows is provisional is the sheer volume and the
disparate nature of the components of Henry’s theory of the divine Word.
Henry of Ghent was very much a systematic philosopher and theologian:
he seems to have consciously sought to make different elements of his
philosophy and theology interdependent. Thus, Henry’s theories of rela-
tion and of the divine attributes, his ideas on epistemology and psychol-
ogy, and his trinitarian theology proper all play a part in his discussions of
the divine Word. To complicate matters still further, without a doubt his
ideas on these issues changed over the course of his long teaching career.
A study integrating the disparate elements of Henry’s thought concern-
ing the divine Word while also taking into account any changes in his
views is undoubtedly desirable, but is not possible here. Thus, in what fol-
lows, Henry’s theory of the Word is presented more as a snap shot than
as a motion picture. Further, it is presented as a snapshot cut up into its
component parts: only in this way can one appreciate the theory’s sys-
tematic nature as well as the particular strengths and weaknesses in it to
which later theologians would draw attention.4 And the component that
3 The articles of greatest concern to us here, aa. 54–59 were probably disputed between
1284 and 1286; see Gómez Caffarena 1957.

4 These very facts may have discouraged scholars from investigating Henry’s thought
on this subject: Henry’s trinitarian theology has not received a great deal of modern atten-
tion. Pertinent studies, however, include: Decker 1967, esp. 355–381, 403–408; Gelber 1974,
40–43; Schinzer 1976; Schmaus 1930a, esp. 137–138, 479–480, 592–593; Slipyi 1927–1928, esp.
(1927) 15–19; Stohr 1925, 133–134; and Wetter 1967 passim. Flores 2003 is a detailed analysis of
aspects of Henry’s trinitarian theology, dealing at length with both the Son’s intellectual ema-
nation and the Holy Spirit’s voluntary emanation (on the latter see also Friedman 2007b).
See too Flores’ book devoted to Henry’s trinitarian thought (Flores 2006) with its critical
edition of Henry’s Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, a. 55, q. 6, which corrects the early
henry of ghent 227
any account of Henry’s theory of the divine Word must begin with is his
theory of relation, categorial and divine.
1. Henry of Ghent on the Divine Relations
As we have seen, the way that Aquinas and Bonaventure, as well as Giles
of Rome explained the distinction of the divine persons was based on the
opposition of the divine relations. The Father and the Son are constituted
in being as distinct persons because paternity and filiation are toward one
another, in relative opposition that implies no lack. In a like manner, the rel-
ative opposition of common spiration and procession constitute the Holy
Spirit. This explanation had several advantages. In the first place, relation
had an Aristotelian pedigree and the philosophically attractive characteris-
tic that it was “toward something” and hence, stripped of its accidentality,
it could be predicated of God without composition resulting. Second, this
method was sanctioned by use: Augustine and Boethius developed a ver-
sion of the relation account, and it was generally accepted that substance
and relation were the only two categories applicable to God.
This method of accounting for personal distinction in God, however,
requires the acceptance of a number of assumptions about the nature of
relation. First, and most basically, one must accept that real relations exist
independently of an intellect, and not merely through an intellectual act.
This assumption seems to have gone unchallenged until Peter Auriol wrote
in the 1310’s.5 Second, if one holds that relation is the foundation of the
distinction between the persons, then—it was widely held in the Middle
Ages—one must also hold that relation has some reality of its own, apart
from its foundation. We have seen that this was implicitly argued by both
Aquinas and Bonaventure, and explicitly argued at length by Giles of Rome.
In fact, Giles put this issue into a spotlight: that this model of personal
distinction demands a certain view of relation’s ontology is made absolutely
printed edition on several points. Currently, Scott M. Williams is engaged in research on

these topics in the trinitarian thought of Henry of Ghent; see Williams (Scott M.) 2010 and
2011.
5 Henninger 1989, 168–169, gives a good account of the differences between Henry’s
theory and Auriol’s and also notes correctly that Jean Paulus (1938, 192) thought the two
scholastic thinkers had basically the same theory concerning relation. For more on Auriol,
see below, Ch. 9 (esp. § 2 on relation). For a comparison of the way that Henry’s and Scotus’
different ideas on relation may have helped to shape their differing trinitarian views, see
Ch. 6, below, at and around n. 78, and see Cross 2005b.
228 chapter four
clear by Giles’ claim that for the distinction between the persons to be real
the divine relations must have some sort of reality in comparison to their
term.
It is precisely with regard to this second issue that Henry of Ghent
makes a mark in trinitarian theology. The originality of Henry of Ghent’s
trinitarian thought stems from his rejection of the relation account of
personal distinction, and he rejects this on the basis of his theory of relation.6
This is why study of Henry’s trinitarian doctrine must begin with his ideas on
relation, and their impact on the way that he explains personal distinction.
Several expositions of Henry’s theory of relation have appeared recently,7
so here I can limit myself to recounting only the main points of his view. For
Henry, in relation, as in each of the categories, there are two components:
its “thing” (res) and its ratio. The ratio of relation is the being toward
something else (esse ad aliud) that Aquinas used, but Henry also refers
to this ratio, using Bonaventurean terminology, as a mode of referring to
another (modus se ad aliud habendi).8 Now, this ratio in and of itself has no
reality, according to Henry, it merely indicates a way its foundation exists,
its foundation’s modus essendi. Thus, for relation to be a thing (res), i.e. a
really existing entity in the category of relation, it is necessary for one of
the three “absolute” (as opposed to “relative”) categories—either substance,
quality, or quantity—to serve as the foundation for the ratio of relation.
The key point in Henry’s position is that any reality, any “thingness”, a
relation has, it acquires from its foundation, whether that be substance,
6 By saying this, I am making a doctrinal and not a chronological claim. That is to say,
the chronological priority of relations or trinitarian theology in Henry’s thought is not yet
clear, and it may never be known. Henry’s thought as it appears in his extant writings is
extraordinarily synthetic and uniform, in part because it was so thoroughly reworked by
him throughout his career. This tends to mask (although not erase) traces of historical
development. So, Henry uses arguments from trinitarian theory to lend support to his theory
of relation (see n. 18 below), but he also uses his theory of relation to show that the relation
account of personal distinction is false. Thus, throughout this discussion, I take Henry’s
theory of relation to be the doctrinal impetus for his rejection of the relation account, which
is the general direction of his own arguments (see the material presented below).
7 For more detailed, recent treatments, see e.g. Henninger 1989, 40–58; Decorte 1993,
1995, 1996, 1997, 2003; Schönberger 1994, 87–102; Iribarren 2002a and Iribarren 2005, 59–
70. For a philosophically sensitive look at medieval theories of relation, and hence the
background to Henry, see Brower 2009.
8 Henry of Ghent, Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, a. 55, q. 6: “Relatio vero significat
per modum ad aliud se habentis, ratio enim relationis est ad aliud esse …” Badius, vol. 2,
f. 110vN = ed. Flores 2006, p. 210106–107. For Henry’s use of the term modus se habendi, see also,
e.g., Summa, a. 55, q. 6 (Badius, vol. 2, f. 112rV = ed. Flores 2006, p. 216310–314); ibid., a. 56, q. 1
(Badius, vol. 2, f. 113rB).
henry of ghent 229
quality, or quantity. If we wanted to describe this in another way, we could

say that relation for Henry is simply an intrinsic aspect or disposition of
its foundation: one white thing is by its very nature similar to another
white thing. The similarity is not anything on its own, added on top of
the whiteness; it is merely the way that its foundation exists on account
of its being the type of foundation that it is. Thus, relation has no reality
apart from its foundation. In fact, Henry changes the terminology of the
category of relation by claiming that strictly speaking, e.g., paternity is
merely a respect and not a relation; the relation, father, is what results when
paternity is made concrete in a foundation: father is the res of the category
of relation.9 Whereas traditionally the relation of a father to his son was
called “paternity”, and “father” was the name of the subject of that relation,
Henry denies that there is any relation without a subject: thus, father is the
relation. The respect, paternity, indicates pure directionality, it is toward
something else. The relation, father, has this aspect of directionality, but
the directionality is instantiated in a subject, it is a way in which the subject
exists, and all the reality of the relation is taken from its subject.10
It is remarkable how consistently Henry applies this theory of relation to
his trinitarian theology. According to Henry, the divine properties, pater-
nity, filiation, and procession, are pure respects; they are three different
modes of being of their one foundation—the divine essence. Only when
these respects are joined to the essence as a foundation do the persons arise.
Thus, Henry explains, paternity is that respect in virtue of which the Father
is the Father, i.e. it is the mode of being of the divine essence that, with the
9 For Henry’s use of ‘respect’ and ‘relation’, see Summa, a. 35, q. 8 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera
Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994; pp. 8134–8261), and n. 10 below; this aspect of Henry’s theory is
studied in Decorte 1995.
10 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 35, q. 8: “Et ideo concretum ex subiecto et respectu proprie
dicitur ad aliquid esse, non enim dicitur paternitas filiationis paternitas, sicut dicitur quod
pater est filii pater. Non tamen talis naturae est omnis respectus, scilicet quod subiectum sive
fundamentum eius per ipsum dicatur ad aliud. Sistit enim ratio respectus in aliquo quod
non dicitur ad aliud per ipsum, et ideo non est respectus ille relatio, proprie loquendo de
nomine relationis. Non est enim proprie respectus aliquis relatio, nisi per quam subiectum
suum ad aliud dicitur. E converso autem omnis relatio est respectus, quia includit respectum
in se, cum superadditione alicuius alterius relationis, licet non ipsa secundum se dicatur ad
illud ad quod est, sed subiectum eius …” Ed. G.A. Wilson (Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994),
pp. 8150–8261. According to Wilson’s Introduction (pp. xxii–xxiii), this text was probably
first composed in preliminary form and delivered orally in the academic year 1280–1281,
but may not have been generally available in an authorized form until the early 1290’s,
although as Wilson indicates (loc. cit., pp. xxv–xxvi) Henry himself undoubtedly had a nearly
complete copy of the text of the Summa shortly after its original composition (see also Gómez
Caffarena 1957, esp. 133, and the literature referred to by Wilson at loc. cit.).
230 chapter four
essence, constitutes the Father.11 Without the essence serving as foundation

for paternity, there is no Father, because—using Henry’s terms strictly—the
relation, Father, must be some thing (res). Henry likens a person constituted
from essence and respect to a composite of matter and form, calling the
essence “quasi-material” and the property “quasi-formal”.12 So, all the reality
the persons have, they take from their foundation, the divine essence; the
properties are merely the ways the foundation exists: they are modes, and
have no reality of their own.
This is of great significance for Henry’s appraisal of earlier theories on
the distinction of the persons, and in particular of the divine relations’ dual
nature. Bonaventure and Aquinas had claimed that the divine relations
took on some reality of their own when compared to their term, i.e. the
opposing relation or person. Henry’s near contemporary, Giles of Rome,
had articulated a theory of relation based on the possibility of a relation
being real in comparison to its term, but merely of reason in comparison
to its foundation.13 As we have seen, Giles had done this by stressing the role
of the “order” (ordo) of a relation to its term. For the Augustinian Hermit,
the “reality” of a real relation was a result of there being an order between
two really differing things: if a real order of this type did not obtain—as
occurs, for example, in a relation of identity—then the relation was merely
one of reason. For Giles, real order was a necessary (but not sufficient)
condition for the existence of a real relation. Thus, he was able to affirm
that each of the divine relations had a real order to its term, and hence
possessed some reality compared to it; but compared to the divine essence
to which it was identical, there was no real order, and hence there was only
a rational difference between them. Although Henry takes exception to his
predecessors’ way of speaking about the divine relations on a number of
accounts, all of his arguments are based on his claim that relations take
11 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 5: “… proprietates personarum … significant suo
nomine solum respectus, ut paternitas non essentiam significat cum respectu ad alium, hoc
enim significat persona quae est Pater, ut infra dicetur; sed significat purum respectum quo
Pater est Pater, et sic de ceteris.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 109rB.
12 See, e.g., Summa, a. 53, q. 3: “… cum duo sint de integritate personae, scilicet essentia
et personalis proprietas, ut patebit inferius circa personas divinas, ipsa essentia est quasi
materiale in eadem et proprietas quasi formale …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 63vZ. See also nn. 39,
40 below. For the later significance of this distinction especially among Oxford Franciscans
of the early fourteenth century (including its defense by William of Ware and Richard of
Conington), see Dumont 1996; for Scotus’ critique of Henry’s view see Dumont’s article as
well as below, Ch. 6, nn. 99–102.
13 See Ch. 3, § 3 above.
henry of ghent 231
all of their reality from their foundation, with the consequence that the
divine relations cannot have the dual nature his opponents propose. Henry’s
critique of earlier trinitarian thought, then, is interesting not only because
it gives insight into his trinitarian doctrine, but also because it reveals the
gap separating his theory of relation from that of his predecessors. Perhaps
because of his elaborate attempt to save the reality of the divine relations,
it is Giles whom Henry chooses as his chief opponent.
For Henry, a real relation’s order to its term or object—which Giles had
made so much of—is the respect in virtue of which the relation is a relation.
As we have seen, this respect, according to Henry, is merely a way the
foundation exists, its mode of being (modus essendi), and it has no reality
of its own.
For because [these respects] are really founded on the thing from that thing’s
nature in the way described, so that they are called ‘things’ on account of their
having (ex) an order to their foundation, so they also really look to (respiciunt)
their object, and they are called ‘things’ in (in) an order to the object, but not
on account of (ex) an order to their object. For looking to an object does not
really give to these respects that they are also things in comparison to the
object; indeed, it is the other way around: since they are things on account of
(ex) an order to their foundation, they are also things in (in) an order to their
object, and they also really look to (respiciunt) that object.14
Henry accuses Giles of getting relations backwards. Put simply: for Giles,
real order entails real relation; for Henry real relation entails real order, and
the reality of the relation is only taken from its foundation. On Henry’s view,
a relation only has an order to its term because its foundation exists in a
certain way; the order in and of itself has no reality. Again, this is just to say
that for Henry relation is an internal disposition of its foundation towards
something else. An example: one white thing has a respect—similarity—to
another white thing, but the reality of this similarity is due to the whiteness
of the foundation, it is not due to the order to the whiteness of the object
(which order arises only on account of the whiteness of the foundation).
Relation is both thing and mode, but the respect, the order, that makes
14 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 6: “Quia enim realiter et ex natura ipsius rei hrespectusi
fundantur in re secundum dictum modum ut dicantur ‘res’ ex ordine ad fundamentum, ideo

etiam realiter respiciunt obiectum et dicuntur ‘res’ in ordine ad obiectum, non autem ex
ordine ad obiectum. Non enim respicere obiectum realiter dat eis quod sunt res etiam in
comparatione ad obiectum; immo e converso, quia enim sunt res ex ordine ad fundamen-
tum, etiam sunt res in ordine ad obiectum, et etiam realiter respiciunt obiectum.” Badius,
vol. 2, f. 111vQ = ed. Flores 2006, p. 213197–202. Gómez Caffarena (1957) dates the composition
of Summa, a. 55, to ca. 1286. For another rejection of Giles’ view by Henry, see the text in the
third paragraph of n. 27 below.
232 chapter four
relation different from its foundation is only a mode: relation is a “thing”

(res) exclusively in virtue of its foundation. We could confuse the issue, says
Henry, by calling a mode of a thing a “thing”, but that does not change the
fact that, without its foundation, the mode has no independent reality.15
Henry illustrates this by investigating in what sense two relations are two
diverse things. Take the example of two sons who have the same father: the
respects of filiation have the same object, the father, yet the two filiations
are clearly diverse, and the sons are different things. Order to their object
cannot bring about this diversity, so Henry concludes that order to an object
cannot give any reality to a relation. All the reality a relation has, it takes
from its foundation. It is certainly true that diverse objects entail diverse
relations, but the differing order to object is merely a sine qua non cause
of there being differing relations.16 The order a relation has to its term
15 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 6: “ ‘In divinis ergo realitas relationis ex ordine ad
obiectum non est nisi ipse modus, et sic secundum quod sunt diversi modi ad aliud essendi
secundum quod sunt obiecta diversa, sic et diversae res.’ Sed tunc non est disputatio nisi de
nomine, appellando extenso nomine ‘rem’ quod alii appellant ‘modum rei’. Attamen si sic
respectus possint dici ‘res’, hoc non est nisi quia ex natura rei fundantur in vera re.” Badius,
vol. 2, f. 111vQ = ed. Flores 2006, pp. 212190–213197. In the beginning of this quotation Henry
assumes Giles’ position (for a very similar statement, see Summa, a. 51, q. 3 [ed. M. Führer;
Opera Omnia, 30; Leuven, 2007; pp. 239124–240139]).
Ibid.: “Relatio enim et res est et est modus. Sed ex se non est nisi circumstantia sive
quidam modus, nisi aliquis sic velit extendere ‘rem’, ut ‘rem’ appellet etiam modum rei,
maxime qui sequitur rem ex natura rei et non ex natura intellectus, qui etiam ‘res rationis’
appellatur, cum habet esse a solo intellectu, licet non appellatur ‘res’ simpliciter, quod etsi
respectus qui sequitur ex natura rei possit dici ‘res vera’ aliquo modo, hoc non convenit ei
ratione illa et comparatione qua est ad aliud, sive ex eo quod est respectus aut relatio. Aliter
enim non esset una res sed plures, neque una realitas sed plures, respectus ille qui esset ad
plures terminos. Et sic non esset una relatio secundum rem qua unus aequalis duobus, neque
una paternitas qua unus est pater duorum filiorum in creaturis, cum sint duo termini ad
quos—quod falsum est.” Badius, vol. 2, ff. 110vO–111rO = ed. Flores 2006, p. 211128–137.
Henninger 1989, 55–56, deals nicely with the issues brought out by these two passages; I
can add merely that it is indeed Giles of Rome to whom Henry is replying, as Gelber 1974,
40–41, observed.
16 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 6: “Bene tamen verum est, si respectus dicatur ‘res’,
quod sicut diversi sunt respectus ex comparatione ad diversa obiecta, sic et diversae sunt res.
Sed hoc numquam provenit ut ex causa propter quam sit, sed solum sine qua non. Aliquando
enim sunt diversi respectus ad idem obiectum, ut duorum filiorum ad eundem patrem, ut
praedictum est. Unde quod duorum filiorum sunt duae filiationes ad eundem patrem, causa
sive ratio quod sunt diversi respectus aut diversae res, non est obiectum unum, sed potius
fundamenta quae sunt diversae potentiae generandi passivae in diversis materiis, ex quibus
generantur duo filii, super quorum diversas potentias passivas fundantur diversae filiationes,
cum tamen paternitas unica secundum rem respondet eis in obiecto, quia fundatur super
unicam potentiam generandi activam quae est in forma substantiali generantis.” Badius,
vol. 2, f. 111vQ = ed. Flores 2006, p. 213203–213.
henry of ghent 233
arises because the foundation—substance, quality, or quantity—exists in

a certain way; the relation is not a thing from this order, rather the order
manifests the way in which the foundation exists.
It should be recognized that Henry is misrepresenting Giles’ thought to a
certain extent. Giles did not say that order to object was the only condition
necessary for a relation to be real; thus, Henry’s example of the two sons
of one father is not devastating criticism. Giles’ claim that the reality of a
relation is taken from the relation’s real order to its term was specifically
devised to account for the reality (or rather the dual nature) of the divine
relations. Giles certainly looked to categorial relations for clues as to how
to go about solving the trinitarian dilemma,17 but the conclusion that he
reached was that real order to its object can give a relation reality only
under certain circumstances. With that said, Henry’s misrepresentation is
nonetheless grounded in a fundamental disagreement between the two
theologians: according to Henry, no relation, whether categorial or divine,
receives any reality whatsoever from its order to an object. The order of
a relation to its term is an internal disposition or tendency of a subject
towards something else. The bottom line for Henry is that, since this order is
merely one way in which its foundation exists (a modus essendi), a relation
takes all of its reality from that foundation and none from its order to its
term. On this basis, it is clear that Henry would not allow that the divine
relations could have the sort of dual nature that was so critical to the success
of the relation account. Relation, for Henry, cannot be a thing in comparison
to its term and a mere ratio in comparison to its foundation.
Furthermore, Henry claims that the view of Bonaventure, Aquinas, and
Giles on the dual nature of the divine relations amounts to a restatement of
Gilbert of Poitiers’ censured opinion that the divine relations are “extrin-
sically attached” to the divine essence. If the relations are nothing when
As far as I am aware, Henry does not explain what the propter quam cause of diverse
objects entailing diverse respects is. The diverse objects are only a sine qua non cause, so
we are certain that the propter quam cause is in the subject. One possibility is that they are
founded on two distinct acts of the same active generative power. Thus, numerically different
acts found numerically different relations to numerically different terms. Corroborating
evidence for this view can be found below (at and around n. 61) with respect to the distinction
between the disparate relations, which are distinct because of the order between them. But
in the text in both the present note and above, in the second quotation in n. 15, Henry claims
that there is only one paternity of a father to two sons.
17 See Ch. 3, § 3, above, for a description of Giles’ study of categorial relations. It should
be noted here that on the basis of the texts quoted above in Ch. 3, Giles might well respond
that Henry’s theory is missing an obvious condition for establishing whether a relation is a
real relation or a mere relation of reason.
234 chapter four
compared to their foundation, but have reality when compared to their

terms, then in what sense do the relations remain in God? How can it be
claimed that the category of relation is transferred to the divine, if it van-
ishes when compared to its foundation? This way of speaking, in fact, makes
it seem as though the divine relations are an ad hoc addition, attached
to the essence solely in order to explain the distinction of the persons.18
Only if the divine relations take all of their reality from their foundation,
the divine essence, and hence do not vanish when compared to it, can
Gilbert’s error be avoided. What is more, if it were the case that relation
had this sort of dual nature, we could just as well say that something could
be an accident in one way and a substance in another. This makes no
sense.19
18 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 6: “Cum enim quatuor sunt relationes reales in divinis,
tunc esset praeter rem essentiae quaternitas rerum in divinis, quod non videtur admittere
usus loquendi, licet intellectus veritati non repugnaret. Propter quod si omnino dicendum
sit quod relationes sint diversae et plures res iam dicto modo, videtur mihi quod melius
sit dicere cum determinatione quod sunt plures et diversae res relationis quam quod sint
plures et diversae res, ‘re’ simpliciter accepta. Quia si absque determinatione diceretur res—
cum non sit res in se existens (quia non substantia), neque in se subsistens (quia non est
persona), neque alteri inhaerens in divinis (quia in divinis non est accidens), neque similiter
in creaturis (quia tunc non transferretur manens in divinis)—, hrelatio divinai esset ergo
necessario, secundum opinionem Porretani, res extrinsecus affixa, quemadmodum et ille
modus videtur esse quiddam affixum substantiae in quantum res est, secundum dictam
opinionem, quae non ponit quod istam realitatem habeat a subiecto, sed potius ab obiecto,
licet aliam realitatem habeat a fundamento, ut scilicet quod plures respectus habeant a
fundamento quod sint res et una res, sed a diversis obiectis quod sint diversae res.” Badius,
vol. 2, ff. 111vR–12rS = ed. Flores 2006, pp. 214242–215256. Henry uses this very argument to lend
support to his theory of relation in, e.g., Quodl. VII, qq. 1–2 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 11;
Leuven, 1991; pp. 2511–2645—disputed at Christmas 1282; cf. Wilson’s introduction to op. cit.,
pp. xxviii–xxix).
Henry tells what he believes to be the source of Gilbert’s confusion in Summa, a. 56, q. 1:
“Et erat positio Porretani, quam excepit ex verbis Boethii, ut dictum est … Unde quod dixit
Boethius huiusmodi circumstantiam considerari ex adventu alterius, non dixit hoc quia ex
solo adventu alterius, quod intelligit Gilbertus, sed quia non sine adventu alterius. Sic enim
est quod omnis natura perfecta habet ex se naturam qua habet ad aliud comparari.” Badius,
vol. 2, f. 113rB. Henry thus accuses Gilbert of making the object more than a mere sine qua
non cause of the reality of a relation (and on the object’s sine qua non causality, see the text
in n. 16 above), when properly speaking all the reality of a relation in fact comes from the
nature of the relation’s subject or foundation, according to Henry. On Gilbert’s own opinion,
see e.g. Nielsen 1982, 149–163.
19 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 6: “Praeterea, si relatio ex se eo quod est respectus
et ad aliud esset res, tunc comparata ad substantiam non esset nisi modus tantum, et sic
uno modo esset res, alio modo tantum modus, quod est inconveniens, sicut est inconveniens
quod aliquid uno modo sit accidens, alio modo substantia.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 111rO = ed. Flores
2006, p. 211138–141.
henry of ghent 235
Thus, for Henry the divine relations have no reality apart from the reality
of the divine essence on which they are founded. Given this, Henry’s denial
of the relational distinction of the persons is not surprising. Aquinas and
Bonaventure implicitly, and Giles of Rome explicitly, had maintained that,
if relation could not be called a thing apart from the essence, then the
persons could not be distinguished by relation. Henry of Ghent agrees: the
persons cannot be made distinct by relation if relation does not have some
reality of its own. Whereas his predecessors had developed explanations
that accorded some reality to the divine relations, Henry instead denies
that the relation account of personal distinction suffices. The question then
becomes for Henry how to explain the distinction of the persons, and thus
avoid Sabellius’ heresy.
As it turns out, Henry changes the terms of the debate. The key issue for
him is not how the divine relations make the persons distinct. Rather Henry
focuses on the way those respects, which together with the divine essence
form the relations Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, differ among themselves.
What is the ground of the distinction between these respects? To answer
this question Henry adopts a thoroughly emanationist approach:
… the properties of the emanations are distinguished among themselves …
because they flow in diverse ways, or rather they are, as it were, diverse
flows from the same substance. Thus, also the persons are diverse among
themselves not so much because one proceeds from another, but because
they proceed in diverse ways from the same [person] … Thus, although one
person does emanate from another, they are nevertheless diverse not because
one person is from another, but because they are constituted from diverse
properties of emanations.20
Having rejected relation, Henry must look elsewhere for a way to account
for the distinction between the divine persons; so he seems naturally to have
turned to the emanations and the Franciscans.
20 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 6: “… proprietates emanationum inter se distinguuntur
… quia diversimode fluunt, vel potius sunt quasi diversi fluxus ab eadem substantia. Unde et
personae inter se sunt diversae non tam quia una procedit ab altera quam quia diversimode
procedunt ab eadem, ut dictum est supra. Unde cum una persona ab alia emanat, non
tamen sunt diversae quia una ab altera est sed quia constituuntur diversis proprietatibus
emanationum.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 111vR = ed. Flores 2006, p. 214230–236.
236 chapter four
2. Henry of Ghent and Franciscan Trinitarian Theology
In the outline presented above of the disagreement between Bonaventure

and Aquinas (in Ch. 1, §3), it was shown that Bonaventure developed a ter-
minology and a coherent trinitarian theology designed to accommodate his
stress on the emanations. Following in Bonaventure’s footsteps and devel-
oping his ideas, we saw (in Ch. 2) that the Franciscans roughly contempo-
rary with Henry of Ghent had developed a distinctive trinitarian theology
that emphasized emanations, and the role of emanations in the actual—i.e.
ontological as opposed to Bonaventure’s merely conceptual—constitution
of the persons. Henry also uses an emanation account to explain the actual
constitution of the persons, and his trinitarian theology fits nicely into this
Franciscan trinitarian tradition. Furthermore, Henry sets his theory of the
divine Word into this emanational context.
Henry’s trinitarian theology is best seen as an attempt to fuse two differ-
ent explanations for personal distinction. On the one hand, he has rejected
the dual nature of the divine relations and on that basis denied that opposi-
tion of relations suffices to explain the distinction of the persons, and so he
turns to the emanations: the persons are distinct because they hold or they
are the divine essence in different ways according to the different ways in
which they originate. On the other hand, Henry cannot simply dismiss the
relation account Augustine and Boethius had defended: that would fly in
the face of some 900 years of theological tradition. Henry’s problem, then,
is to find a way to make these two accounts fit in neatly with each other.
Bonaventure, faced with a similar problem, appears to have resolved it by
suggesting that the emanation account was operative on a purely concep-
tual level, the relation account was the ontological source of distinction.
Unlike Henry of Ghent, the Franciscans after Bonaventure had not explic-
itly rejected the dual nature of the divine relations (and, along with it, the
relation account),21 but they did nevertheless make emanation the primary
21 Consider Walter of Bruges’ modified use of the dual nature of the divine relations,
in I Sent., d. 33, pars 1, q. 1 (“Quaeritur an proprietas sit idem quod persona?” ff. 58v–
59r): “Responsio: proprietas consideratur dupliciter, scilicet in comparatione ad personam
quam distinguit et ad personam a qua distinguit. Primo modo, scilicet cum persona quam
distinguit, idem est secundum rem, alioquin esset composita ex quod est et quo est, differt
tamen ratione, sicut distinctum et distinguens; secundo modo, scilicet in comparationem
ad personam a qua distinguit, sic (in comparationem … sic mg.V, om. P) cum persona a
qua distinguit est idem re essentiali, non personali nec modali, quia paternitas et Filius una
essentia sunt, non tamen una persona nec unum modum habentes. Nam paternitas habet
modum referendi Patrem ad Filium, Filius autem habet modum relati filiatione ad Patrem.”
henry of ghent 237
source of distinction, employing, as we have seen, “nested distinctions” in

part as a means of lessening the break with the traditional relation account.
Henry adopts this same device in order to secure himself against theologi-
cal criticism for his more radical rejection of the relation account. For Henry
the different ways the persons emanate are the ultimate source of their dis-
tinction, yet, as we saw in the last quotation above (at n. 20), person does
emanate from person, and so the persons are in fact related to one another
by opposed relations. Thus, mode of emanation brings about distinction,
whereas opposition of relations makes the persons (to use Henry’s term)
“properly” distinct.22 Henry’s use of nested distinctions in his trinitarian
theology is, then, a “marginalization strategy”. He could move the relation
account to the margins of his explanation for personal distinction—and
concomitantly stress the emanations as truly constitutive of the persons—
while still incorporating it enough to avoid a radical break with theological
tradition.
The central element in Henry’s position, then, the element from which
the rest of the position can be seen as a development, is that the distinc-
tion between the emanations is prior to and necessary for the distinction
between the persons. Henry reveals his support for the priority of the dis-
tinction between the emanations in the course of discussing the counter-
factual Filioque question, i.e. the question of whether the Son and the Holy
Spirit would be distinct from each other if the latter did not proceed from
the former.23 In line with the early Franciscan tradition that we studied in
BAV, Chigi. B VI 94, f. 59r; Paris, BnF lat. 3085A, ff. 150vb–151ra. Roger Marston also accepts the
dual nature of the divine relations at, e.g., De em. aet., q. 1 (ed. cit., p. 19 n. 13) and q. 3 (ed. cit.,
pp. 61–62). See also Richard of Mediavilla, Ch. 5, below, n. 46.
22 On persons distinct proprie, see at nn. 33 and 52 below.
23 Henry takes up this question in at least three places: Quodl. V, q. 9 (Badius, vol. 1,
ff. 167rO–168rZ); Summa, a. 54, q. 6 (Badius, vol. 2, ff. 90vA–97vH, esp. ff. 91vB–93rO); and
Summa, a. 60, q. 2 (Badius, vol. 2, ff. 162vA–163vI). Already in the early text of Quodl. V, q. 9
(dated to 1280–1281 by Gómez Caffarena 1957, 133), Henry relies on a (somewhat undevel-
oped) version of the positio impossibilis argument studied here (see Badius, vol. 1, f. 167vS–V);
this quodlibetal text is historically important, being cited later by, e.g., William of Ware (see
Friedman 2001, pp. 103171–104180). Nevertheless, I have used the discussion found at Summa, a.
54, q. 6 (dated to around 1284 by Gómez Caffarena, loc. cit), both because it is a more devel-
oped treatment and because it has considerable historical significance in particular because
it is the text that Godfrey of Fontaines uses; see on Godfrey on this issue, Ch. 5, below, at
and around nn. 14–35. Article 60, q. 2 of Henry’s Summa can be dated to around 1289 (Gómez
Caffarena, loc. cit); for some text from a. 60, q. 2, see n. 61 below.
Note that Henry—like Gerard of Abbeville and the Franciscans who also defended the
affirmative answer to the counterfactual Filioque question—is not claiming that the Son and
the Father do not spirate together, i.e. the position of the Greek Orthodox Church over the
238 chapter four
Chapter Two, he answers this question in the affirmative, and he takes as

his point of departure a reductio ad absurdum argument.24 According to
Henry, if the only reason why the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct from
one another were because the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son—i.e., on
account of opposition of the relations between them—then there could be
no distinction anterior to this one, since it is the sole reason. This would
entail that the Son and the Holy Spirit were not in any way distinct on
account of their different ways of proceeding from the Father. This in turn
would imply that the emanations of the Son from the Father and of the Holy
Spirit from the Father were not distinct, and further that the sources of these
emanations were not distinct. Henry concludes that, if the Son and the Holy
Spirit were distinct only because the latter proceeds from the former, then
the fact that they both emanate from the Father would entail their iden-
tity, for the simple reason that it would be impossible for them to emanate
in different ways from the Father.25 The conclusion being obviously false,
the original premiss must be denied. At the core of this argument is Henry’s
belief that the difference between the emanations (and further the differ-
ence between the sources of the emanations) is the indispensable factor
in bringing about the distinction of the persons: without this most basic
source of distinction, the relational distinction between the persons would
not hold.
inclusion of the Filioque clause in the Nicene creed (this is clear from, e.g., the quotation
in n. 20 above); he is only claiming that, assuming counterfactually that the Holy Spirit did
not proceed from the Son, these two persons would still be distinct. See on this point esp.
Flores 2003, 295–296, further 299–300. On the controversy between Greeks and Latins, see
the Introduction, above, at and around nn. 14–19.
24 Although Henry’s argument is much more well developed, it is distantly related to the
reductio ad absurdum argument employed by Eustace of Arras to show that the Son and the
Holy Spirit must be distinct on the basis of their differing ways of proceeding from the Father;
see Ch. 2, above, at and around n. 44. For another use of this type of argument, see William
of Ware, Ch. 5, below, at and around n. 94.
25 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 6: “Quod declaratur ducendo ad impossibile dando
oppositum, quoniam si Filius et Spiritus Sanctus non distinguerentur ab invicem nisi quia
a Filio procedit Spiritus Sanctus, ea ergo ratione qua Spiritus Sanctus procedit alio modo
a Patre quam procedat ab eodem Filius, non distinguitur Spiritus Sanctus a Filio. Et si sic,
ergo eadem ratione nec emanatio qua Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Patre ut procedit ab ipso
distinguitur ab emanatione qua Filius procedit a Patre; et ulterius nec vis spirativa qua a Patre
emanat Spiritus Sanctus a vi generativa qua a Patre emanat Filius. Et sic Filius et Spiritus
Sanctus in quantum ambo procedunt a Patre non sunt distinctae personae, sed unica …”
Badius, vol. 2, f. 92rF. Someone like Aquinas, holding the opposed view, would be able to
deny this conclusion by claiming that the Holy Spirit and the Son do proceed in different
ways from the Father: the Son from the Father alone, the Holy Spirit from both the Father
and the Son; see the text in Ch. 5, below, at and around nn. 146, 152.
henry of ghent 239
For Henry it is not required that the Holy Spirit be spirated by the Son
in order for them to be distinct, because the diverse ways in which they
emanate and the diverse powers upon which their emanations are founded
are sufficient to account for the distinction between them. Saying this,
Henry does not intend to deny the opposition of relations in God; he simply
wants to stress that such opposition is not the fundamental source of the
distinction between the persons. Just as human beings would still be distinct
from irrational beasts by rationality even if not by the ability to laugh (i.e.,
risibility), so the Holy Spirit would be distinct from the Son even if the Holy
Spirit did not proceed from the Son, because they proceed in different ways
from the Father.26 The opposition is there, the Holy Spirit does proceed
from the Son, but the ultimate ground of their distinction is the different
ways in which they emanate, which Henry labels, following good Franciscan
practice, the “disparate relations” between the Son and the Holy Spirit.27
26 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 6: “Et similiter in proposito solum ponitur impossibile,
scilicet quod Filius non differt a Spiritu Sancto spiratione activa si non procedit ab ipso
aut quod esset Filius absque eo quod spiraret Spiritum Sanctum. Non tamen sequitur quod
non differt ab eo omnino, sicut non sequitur quod homo, si non sit risibile, non differt
a bruto omnino, immo etsi non esset risibile, posito per impossibile quod tamen esset,
tamen differret a bruto rationabilitate. Sic et in proposito, Filius a Spiritu Sancto nascibilitate
differret, etsi non procederet Spiritus Sanctus ab eo, posito tamen per impossibile quod
esset.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 92vI.
27 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 6: “Distinguerentur ergo sufficienter relationibus
disparatis Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, si neuter ab altero procederet, sicut et ipsorum pro-
cessiones quae aliter non distinguuntur; similiter neque principia elicitiva earum ut sunt
sub respectibus personalibus, ut secundum hoc distinctionem inter personas Filii et Spiritus
Sancti per relationes oppositas cum procedunt ab invicem, necesse est reducere ad distinc-
tionem emanationum et ulterius ad distinctionem principiorum emanandi per relationes
disparatas, ita quod si non esset ista distinctio disparationis relationum, nec illa oppositio-
nis.
“Propter quod etiam diversae relationes disparatae bene possunt esse in eadem persona
principiante, licet non in eadem persona principiata, ut dictum est supra. Non est ergo aliter
quaerenda distinctio istarum duarum emanationum. Licet enim inter personas est distinctio
per relationes non solum disparatas et quasi differentes specie (ut infra dicetur), sed etiam
per oppositas in quantum una earum procedit ab alia, nec relative dicitur ad ipsam, sive
secunda processio emanet ab unica persona sive a duabus, sed tamen ordo naturae est inter
ipsas in quantum una quasi praesupponit aliam, etiam si secunda processio non esset a Filio,
ut dictum est, ut secundum hoc alio et alio modo sit ordo naturae inter processiones, alio vero
modo inter personas, ut non debeamus consimilem modum distinctionis omnino quaerere
inter emanationes qualem videmus inter personas.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 92rF–vH.
Henry makes the following reply (Summa, a. 54, q. 6) to those—like Aquinas and espe-
cially Giles of Rome—who speak for the priority of the relations, recognizing that it is simply
another manifestation of his disagreement with the standard relation account of personal
distinction, and maintaining that the distinction between Son and Holy Spirit would collapse
unless the fundamental source of their distinction were their diverse ways of emanating:
240 chapter four
Henry develops at length his comparison between the consequences: ‘if

the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, they would not be distinct
from one another’, and ‘if human beings were not able to laugh, they would
not be distinct from beasts’. In this discussion, as other historians have
already noted, Henry makes use of techniques and terminology adapted
from the ars obligatoria, the strictly rule-governed disputational “game”,
in which one of the disputants, the opponent, advances a series of state-
ments that the other disputant, the respondent, must either concede, deny,
or declare irrelevant, the goal being for the opponent to trap the respon-
dent into affirming contradictory statements within the time limit set for
the disputation.28 The specific context of Henry’s discussion is in reply to a
position that claimed that it was absolutely, logically impossible for the Holy
Spirit to be distinct from the Son if the former does not proceed from the lat-
ter, because this is equivalent to granting contradictories simultaneously,
i.e. that they are and are not distinct from each other.29 Henry replies by
“Sed contra hoc arguitur secundum sustinentes contrarium, sic: relatio non distinguit in divi-
nis nisi secundum quod realis est et ratione suae quiditatis. Ratio autem suae quiditatis et
realitatis secundum quam una est alia ab altera, non sumitur nisi ex eo quod per ipsam sup-
positum refertur ad suum oppositum. Si ergo Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, et ita
non distingueretur ab ipso secundum aliorum opinionem, nec in Patre generatio et spiratio
distinguerentur ut disparata nisi secundum rationem tantum, sicut nec Filius distingueretur
a Spiritu Sancto nisi secundum rationem tantum. Et est dicendum quod illud assumptum ab
eis pro principio, quod realitas relationis secundum quam una est alia ab altera non sumitur
nisi ex relatione ad oppositum, falsum est, quia relationis realitas non sumitur omnino ex
respectu ad suum oppositum, sed ex suo fundamento, ut saepius dictum est in aliis quaes-
tionibus, et inferius amplius dicetur.” Badius, vol. 2, ff. 92vL–93rM.
28 On medieval obligation theory in general, see Stump and Spade 1982; Yrjönsuuri 1994;
Keffer 2001; Gelber 2004, esp. pp. 139–190, with rich bibliography in p. 139 n. 90; Spade 2008.
My knowledge of the medieval discussion on positio impossibilis, and the role of Henry’s
text in that discussion, has been greatly enriched by the papers of and discussion with Simo
Knuuttila and Christopher J. Martin; see in particular Knuuttila 1997, Martin 1997. Note that
Gerard of Abbeville uses the term ‘incompossibiles’ once in the course of his question on
the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit given that the latter does not come from the
former: see Gerard’s Quodl. VII, q. 2 in Friedman 2002b, p. 2963–64; nevertheless Gerard’s main
argument for this position is far removed from Henry’s positio impossibilis argument. Henry’s
use is much closer to Eustace’ or Pecham’s, on whom see Ch. 2, above, §3 (Eustace), and
nn. 58–65 (Pecham).
29 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 6: “Alia vero est ratio aliorum, et (ut eis videtur) ducens
ad impossibile, talis: si Spiritus Sanctus non procedit a Filio, nulla potest esse distinctio Filii
et Spiritus Sancti, quia in divinis non est distinctio personarum nisi secundum rheliationes
originis, quae non sunt nisi quia unus est ab alio; quare si unus eorum non sit ab alio, nulla
est ipsorum distinctio, et non sunt diversae personae, ita quod ponere Filium esse personam
aliam a persona Spiritus Sancti, et neutrum eorum procedere ab alio, est ponere non solum
impossibile sed etiam incompossibile, scilicet quod una persona ab alia sit distincta et
non distincta.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 92rE. This argument, which I call the “highest impossibility
henry of ghent 241
distinguishing between two “levels” of impossibility. The first is incompos-

sibility, which is a type of strict logical impossibility, i.e an incompatibility
or repugnance of terms; this arises from denying an essential characteristic
of some thing (quod est de eius significato et essentia). The second level is a
more garden-variety impossibility that arises from denying a non-essential
property, no matter how closely connected to the thing it might be; the con-
tradiction involved at this second level is not direct or absolutely necessary,
but arises only when certain circumstances are taken into account (quando
vero non illud implicat quod est de significato et essentia positi, tunc non ponit
principaliter contrarium eius, sed solum per quendam consequentiam). Take
the consequence ‘if human beings were not able to laugh, they would not be
distinguished from beasts’. The ability to laugh is a non-essential property
of human beings, a type of inseparable accident: all human beings have the
capacity to laugh, but this is not a defining feature of humanity. According
to Henry, then, the antecedent in this consequence can indeed be posited—
to be sure, it is posited per impossibile since it cannot actually be true, but
precisely because it does not deny an essential feature of human beings it
can legitimately be posited. In other words: the state of affairs described in
the statement will never obtain in reality, but there is nothing wrong with
assuming it and seeing what follows from the assumption, as a type of coun-
terfactual reasoning—in the scholastic parlance of obligations it is a positio
impossibilis. An antecedent of the form ‘if human beings were not rational’,
on the other hand, would be posited per incompossibile: since rationality is
an essential characteristic of human beings, to deny it of human beings is
equivalent to denying that human beings are human beings (ponitur aliquid
per incompossibile, quando ponitur cum eo quod principaliter ponit contrar-
ium eius). According to Henry this is unacceptable, precisely because it is
equivalent to conceding contradictory statements at once. Thus, two levels
of impossibility and two types of assumptions: per impossibile (permissible
in counterfactual reasoning) and per incompossibile (impermissible). More-
over, Henry insists that beasts and humans do certainly differ on account
of humans being able to laugh, but the more basic difference is rationality;
differing by the ability to laugh is a consequence of differing by rationality,
which is the property by which human beings are human beings and not just
animals. Just as it is on account of rationality’s being an essential property
argument”, has a rich history in the later-medieval trinitarian discussion; see the discussion
of it in Ch. 5, § 4, below, and on Godfrey of Fontaines, who may have originally proposed the
argument, see esp. below, Ch. 5, nn. 31, 35, 108.
242 chapter four
of humans that we cannot legitimately set it aside in counterfactual reason-

ing (i.e., to do this would be per incompossibile), so it is the sole necessary
and sufficient ground upon which human beings differ from other animals.
Thus, if we ask the question whether, if human beings could not laugh they
would still be distinct from animals, Henry’s answer is yes: on account of
rationality. But this is, of course, a purely counterfactual question with no
purchase in reality.
The situation with the consequence ‘if the Holy Spirit did not proceed
from the Son, they would not be distinct from one another’ is precisely par-
allel to that with ‘if human beings were not able to laugh, they would not
be distinguished from beasts’. First, Henry maintains that it is a perfectly
legitimate positio impossibilis to assume that the Holy Spirit does not pro-
ceed from the Son. This assumption is, to use Simo Knuuttila’s helpful term,
a “doctrinal impossibility”,30 because the Catholic faith assures us that the
Holy Spirit does in fact come from the Son. But the assumption does not
involve incompossibility, and we can therefore assume it as a counterfac-
tual. The reason for this is that, as we have already noted, for Henry the
ultimate cause of the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit is
the different ways in which they emanate. Indeed, Henry claims outright
that active spiration is not “essential” (i.e., indispensable; it is extra signi-
ficatum Filii) to the constitution of the Son: the Son is constituted by fil-
iation, and only “after” having been constituted does the Son spirate the
Holy Spirit.31 That the Holy Spirit emanates from the Son, then, is a non-
essential characteristic of their distinction from each other: it is de facto
doctrinally necessary, but not logically necessary, and hence no contra-
diction arises simply by assuming its opposite. The Son’s active spiration
of the Holy Spirit is in this way parallel to the ability to laugh in human
beings: a non-essential, but inalienable, “accident”. Thus, just as human
beings are indeed able to laugh, yet this feature is not the most basic source
of distinction of human beings from other animals, so it is with the pro-
cession of the Holy Spirit from the Son: the Holy Spirit does come from the
Son, but there is a more basic source of distinction between them in their
30 See Knuuttila 1997, 283.

31 See the text in the third paragraph of n. 32 below. Henry, along with many other
thinkers from the period, will describe active spiration at times as a proprietas quasi adven-
titia, which Flores 2003, 294–295, translates as “as it were, incidental” to the constitution of
the the Son. I adopt Flores’ translation throughout this book. For active spiration as a quasi-
incidental property in Scotus, see Ch. 6, below, at and around nn. 128–129; and for Aquinas’
use of the concept, see Ch. 3, above, at and around nn. 10–11.
henry of ghent 243
different ways of emanating from the Father. Thus, assuming counterfac-

tually as a positio impossibilis that the Holy Spirit did not come from the
Son, the Son and Holy Spirit would still be distinct, according to Henry,
because the Son comes from the Father alone in a different way than the
Holy Spirit would come from the Father alone.32 In this fundamental dis-
cussion, then, Henry’s trinitarian theology exhibits features already found
in contemporary Franciscan trinitarian thought: as we have seen (Ch. 2), the
terminology and the techniques of obligations logic that Henry uses here—
especially positio impossibilis, and the distinction between impossibility and
incompossibility—also appeared in this very context in texts by Eustace of
Arras, John Pecham, and Roger Marston. But with that said, Henry’s use of
this logical material is much more systematic and well developed, and later
thinkers will look to him as their starting point when discussing this mate-
rial, although, as we will see, the actual use of the terminology will develop
over time.
32 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 6: “Quod autem praedicti ponunt in sua ratione
quod ponere Filium esse distinctum a Spiritu Sancto, si non procedat ab ipso, est ponere
incompossibilia; dicendum quod non est verum, sicut ponere hominem differre a bruto
si non esset risibilis, non est ponere incompossibile, scilicet quod differret a bruto et non
differret, sed solum est ponere illud impossibile quod non differret a bruto per risibilitatem
aut quod esset homo sine risibilitate.
“Et similiter in proposito solum ponitur impossibile, scilicet quod Filius non differt a
Spiritu Sancto spiratione activa si non procedit ab ipso aut quod esset Filius absque eo
quod spiraret Spiritum Sanctum. Non tamen sequitur quod non differt ab eo omnino, sicut
non sequitur quod homo, si non risibile, non differet a bruto omnino, immo etsi non esset
risibile, posito per impossibile quod tamen esset, tamen differret a bruto rationabilitate. Sic
et in proposito, Filius a Spiritu Sancto nascibilitate differret, etsi non procederet Spiritus
Sanctus ab eo, posito tamen per impossibile quod esset. Ad cuius intellectum sciendum quod
tunc solum ponitur aliquid per incompossibile, quando ponitur cum eo quod principaliter
ponit contrarium eius, quod non contingit nisi quando illud privat aliquid quod est de eius
significato et essentia, ut si dicatur ‘homo, si non esset rationalis, differret a bruto’, quia
remoto rationali non manet nisi id quod communicat cum bruto; quando vero non illud
implicat quod est de significato et essentia positi, tunc non ponit principaliter contrarium
eius, sed solum per quandam consequentiam.
“Et ideo tale positum solummodo ponitur per impossibile, ut si ponatur homo et quod
non sit risibilis, risibile enim, quia accidens hominis est, est extra significatum eius. Sic est in
proposito ponendo Filium et non procedere ab eo Spiritum Sanctum. Spiratio enim activa est
extra significatum Filii et quasi consecutiva personae eius ordine quodam, ut patet ex dictis.
Et ideo sicut verum esset dicere quod homo, si non esset rationalis, non differret a bruto,
quia non differt per se per rationale, quod non privatur nisi per consequentiam quandam
privatione risibilis, quae tamen consequentia neganda est, quia repugnat posito. Repugnans
autem posito quod est extra essentiam et significatum suum, semper in falsis positionibus
negandum est, secundum artem Philosophi, VIII Topicorum.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 92vI–K. The
passage in Aristotle’s Topics to which Henry is referring is Top. VIII, c. 5 (159a25–b35).
244 chapter four
Thus, even if the Son and the Holy Spirit were not distinct on the basis of
opposition of the relations between them, they would be distinct on account
of their different ways of emanating from the Father: this is a doctrinal
impossibility but not a logical one. For Henry, then, the emanational distinc-
tion between the persons is prior (logically) to their relational distinction.
Again making use of terms and tools we have seen in the early Francis-
can trinitarian tradition, Henry succinctly captures this nested fusion of the
relation and the emanation accounts of personal distinction by appealing
to a distinction between “opposed” relations and “disparate” relations. For
Henry, relations such as paternity and filiation are opposed, and the persons
are made “properly” distinct on the basis of the opposition of these relations.
By this he only means to say that person does emanate from person, the
Father does give being to the Son, and hence the relations, paternity and
filiation, are opposed; thus Father and Son are “properly” distinct. Mutatis
mutandis, the same is true for the Holy Spirit in opposition to the Father and
the Son. For Henry, however, even if person did not come from person, and
the relations were not opposed, the persons would still be distinct on the
basis of disparate relations, i.e. the unique way each person emanates; and
further on the basis of the distinction between the emanations’ sources. As
we have seen (e.g., n. 20, above), for Henry, without the anterior distinction
between the disparate relations, the distinction between the opposed rela-
tions would not exist, and the persons would not be distinct. Still the persons
are not “properly” distinct when their distinction is based on the emana-
tions alone, because the emanations are only “disparate” relations and not
“opposed”. Thus Henry, like, e.g., John Pecham and Roger Marston, uses
nested distinctions; and, as was the case with both Pecham and Marston,
the distinction between disparate and opposed relations is of the highest
importance for describing these nested distinctions: disparate relations, i.e.
the emanations, are necessary (and counterfactually sufficient) for positing
the distinction between the persons; but only opposed relations make the
persons “properly” distinct.33 There can thus be isolated two types of per-
33 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 6: “Etsi enim Spiritus Sanctus ponatur procedere a
Patre, et Filius similiter, et neuter ab altero, tamen Filius a Spiritu Sancto distingueretur,
licet aliter et non ita proprie (ut infra videbitur) quam modo. Quia sunt quaedam relationes
originis et oppositae ut quae sunt in diversis personis quarum una procedit ab alia, et
quaedam disparatae ut quae sunt in eadem persona a qua procedunt diversae diversimode
vel in diversis diversimode procedentibus ab eadem. Primo modo diversae relationes sunt
in Patre et Filio, secundo modo in Patre respectu Filii et Spiritus Sancti et in Spiritu Sancto
et Filio respectu Patris. Et sufficit ista relationum diversitas in ipsis etiam si neuter eorum
procederet ab alterutro.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 92rE. For proprie distinct, see also n. 52 below. For
henry of ghent 245
sonal distinction in God, and even if the one based on opposition failed
to obtain, the one based on emanation (i.e., disparation) would suffice to
explain how the three persons were distinct. One of the things that Henry
clearly achieves through this nested explanation is the ability to focus atten-
tion squarely on mode of emanation as the fundamental source of personal
distinction, while still being able to find room for the relation account and
opposition of relations, a fact of no small importance given the weight of
theological tradition behind the relation account.
In terms of the disagreement between Bonaventure and Aquinas on
the conceptual priority of emanations or relations, Henry clearly sides
with Bonaventure. Thus, he claims that the emanations are the concep-
tual ground for the divine relations, and that the emanation ‘generation’,
and the relation, ‘paternity’, are the same in reality, and differ only accord-
ing to the way that we understand things. The actual property in God is,
according to Henry, unnamed (innominata), although we understand the
action and quasi-passion to be prior to the relations, and in accordance
with this Henry claims that the Father is the Father because he generates.34
disparate relations in Henry, see also above, nn. 20 (where he speaks of “diversity”, e.g.
diversae proprietates), 27.
The remote source of the view on disparate relations and their role in the constitution
of the persons is probably Anselm, De processione Spiritus Sancti, c. 1, in Opera Omnia (ed.
F.S. Schmitt), vol. 2, Rome 1940, p. 1853–4, where he talks about the diverse ways (diverso modo)
in which the Son and Holy Spirit proceed, although as mentioned above it seems that Gerard
of Abbeville was the first in the scholastic university context to use the term ‘disparation’, and
was followed in this by many of the Franciscans dealt with above in Ch. 2. On the terminology
of disparate and opposed relations in late-thirteenth century trinitarian thought, see Ch. 5
below. It is likely that in the passage quoted here Henry is in discussion with Giles of Rome,
who subjected the terminology of disparate and opposed relations to scrutiny; see on this
Luna 1988, 45–49, and below, Ch. 5, at and around nn. 5–7.
34 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 56, q. 3: “Unde quia rationes istarum proprietatum paterni-
tas, filiatio quasi praecedunt actus originales generare et generari, eo quod fundantur super
ipsos, non enim est Pater nisi quia generat, nec Filius nisi quia generatur, ideo saltem ex
parte Patris paternitas non potest dici in Patre proprietas constitutiva personae generantis
ut est principium, sed proprietas innominata, quae tamen realiter idem est quod paternitas
vel generare …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 115vY. See also Summa, a. 59, q. 3 (Badius, vol. 2, f. 146rK).
In, e.g., Summa, a. 35, q. 8, where Henry accepts that the Father is the Father because
he generates: “In Deo autem hpaternitas et filiatioi sequuntur generationem activam et
passivam absque omni transmutatione. Unde proprie loquendo in divinis Pater potius
dicitur Pater quia generat quam dicatur generare quia est Pater, ut paternitas et filiatio dicant
rationes respectuum suppositorum, ut immediate ad invicem sese respiciunt, non mediante
actu generationis, ut Pater potius dicatur Pater habendo Filium genitum quam generando
ipsum, ut sic magis proprie dicatur Pater quia generat quam generare quia Pater, et adhuc
magis proprie quia habet Filium quam quia generat Filium.” Ed. G.A. Wilson (Opera Omnia,
28; Leuven, 1994), p. 8781–89.
246 chapter four
In fact, Henry gives elaborate schemes of the way the various names of
the personal properties are ordered according to our reason (secundum
rationem), and in these schemes he consistently places the emanation,
the action, prior to the static relation.35 What is more, Henry maintains
that the relative properties are productions, i.e. actions and passions, so
at the level of a static or dynamic description of God, he is also in agree-
ment with the general stress Bonaventure placed on God’s activity.36 For
Henry, however, the disagreement over the order of priority between our
concepts of the relations and the emanations does not address the cru-
cial issue. What is significant about relations like to generate and to be
generated, or (which is the same) paternity and filiation, is that they indi-
cate which person comes from which other person. This opposition does
actually exist in God—the persons are in reality “properly” distinct—and
Henry can and at times does give a type of relation account of personal dis-
tinction based on opposition of relation.37 Nonetheless, Henry has shown
Henry in fact claims (Summa, a. 56, q. 3 [Badius, vol. 2, f. 145rF]) that the Father is the
Father “solummodo quia habet Filium a se genitum secum existentem”; this is an interesting
way for Henry to guarantee the non-reality of certain relations that might seem to maintain
their reality even in the absence of one of the relata: a father ceases to be a father if his son,
e.g., dies. This view appears to be consistent with Henry’s theory of relation as outlined above,
and especially his insistence that the relative categories only point out a circumstance of a
thing.
35 See Summa, a. 58, q. 4 (Badius, vol. 2, f. 135rM–N); ibid., a. 59, q. 3 (f. 145vG); ibid.,
q. 4 (f. 146vP). For Henry’s influence on this point, see later thinkers’ use of his notion of
“generativity” as the Father’s constitutive property; see Ch. 12 below, at and around nn. 54–
65 (John Baconthorpe), 81–83 (Gerard Odo), and 183 (Michael of Massa).
36 See, e.g., Summa, a. 59, q. 2 (Badius, vol. 2, ff. 142rK–143vQ); Summa, a. 35, q. 8 (ed.
G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994; pp. 8544–8656). Henry deals with the objection
that the only categories remaining in God are substance and relation by maintaining that in
God the relations are the ratio common to all the relative categories; see Summa, a. 32, q. 5
(ed. R. Macken; Opera Omnia, 27; Leuven, 1991; pp. 92–98).
37 Despite this use of the relation account, as far as I can tell Henry never makes use of
the dual nature of the divine relations—which, as we have seen, he rejects—but rather sub-
stitutes for this his own theory of relations on which the relation, the person, is essence and
respect (towards the opposed person) together. E.g. Summa, a. 56, q. 4: “… realitas relationis
ut respicit essentiam differens est sola ratione ab illa, et ideo ambo simul stant in aequali
rei simplicitate, ut non sit simplicior essentia quam persona; nec differt persona ab essen-
tia re, sed ratione tantum. In quantum tamen relatio comparatur ad relationem oppositam,
diversitatem rei relationis ponit, ut dictum est, non tamen rei substantiae, sic enim una est
distinctiva suppositi sui a supposito alterius et e converso, et per hoc constitutiva, et sunt
in persona ut persona est, id est quid relatum ad oppositum, ambo, scilicet essentia et rela-
tio, ut duae res, essentia ut res absoluta qua non distinguitur, relatio vero ut res respectus,
qua distinguitur; et sic licet essentia et relatio ut considerantur inter se comparata non dif-
ferunt nisi ratione tantum, in quantum tamen considerantur ut comparata ad oppositum
henry of ghent 247
to his own satisfaction that opposition of relations on its own cannot explain
As we have seen, to account for both the distinction between the opposed
relations and between the persons, Henry moves to a different level of
discussion: he uses the way the persons emanate, by maintaining that the
persons originate, and hence hold (or: are) the divine essence, in diverse
ways. These diverse ways of emanating are the disparate relations, and are
the properties that, with the essence, are constitutive of the persons.38 Thus,
even if the persons were not (as they in reality are) “properly” distinct on
account of opposed relations, the different properties of their emanations
would still explain their distinction. In short, the fact that the Son emanates
by way of intellect, and the Holy Spirit by way of will, plays a decisive role
in their personal distinction from one another on Henry’s theory (and the
fact that the Father is unemanated is of decisive importance in the Father’s
constitution, as will be clear below). For Henry, the properties, the quasi-
formal respects in virtue of which each person is that person, in a certain
sense “specify” the quasi-material essence, without limiting it in any way.39
The way each person emanates determines the way that person holds the
entire divine essence; the persons are distinct from one another because
they each hold the essence in a unique way.40 Thus, in the final analysis,
differunt re, non simpliciter sed re substantiae et relationis, quasi cum determinatione ....
Nec tamen propter illam differentiam rei substantiae et relationis est ponere in Deo rerum
quaternitatem, sed quodam modo alia ratione ponimus quod non sit rerum quaternitas inter
rem quae est essentia et res quae sunt proprietates, et inter rem quae est essentia et inter res
quae sunt personae, quia in istis ratio est quia res quae sunt personae in se et in suo significato
includunt rem quae est essentia, in illis vero ratio est quia res quae sunt proprietates in essen-
tia fundantur, et ab ea realitatem suam habent …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 117rI–K. See also Summa,
a. 53, q. 3 (Badius, vol. 2, f. 63rT). Henry’s uncompromising rejection of the dual nature of the
divine relations, at the heart of his attenuated use of the relation account, stands in contrast
to the early Franciscans examined in Ch. 2 above; see on this n. 21 above.
38 See, e.g., above, nn. 11 and 33; below, nn. 40, 58.
39 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 56, q. 4: “… in omni persona et supposito singulari oportet
esse duo, quorum unum est natura quae ex se communis est qua aliquid existit, et proprietas
secundum quam subsistit, qua ipsum subsistens determinatur ut modo singulari determi-
nato et incommunicabili subsistit, quae necesse est simul includi in significato personae seu
suppositi singularis … Et sicut est in supposito creato cum limitatione atque determinatione
simul naturae et suppositi, sic est in supposito increato absque omni limitatione, et etiam
absque determinatione naturae, sed suppositi tantum.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 116rB. Henry in fact
uses an analogy to the way genus is contracted to species by specific difference (and the way
species is contracted to individuals); see ibid., f. 116rB, f. 116vF. See also n. 12 above.
40 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 1: “Proprietas vero significat non substantiam neque
differentiam substantiae, sed praecise modum existentiae, qui est quasi differentia personae
cuius est ille modus existendi, et sub quo substantia existit in persona. Qui modus, cum
248 chapter four
the Son is not most basically distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit
because of the opposed relations among these persons (as the relation
account would have it), but because he holds the essence in a way that
is disparate from the way they hold the essence, namely, by intellectual
emanation. Further, the property that makes the Son distinct, filiation, first
and foremost indicates the Son’s intellectual emanation; it also indicates
that the Son is intellectually emanated by the Father.
This explanation is, in fact, consistent with Henry’s theory of relation.
For Henry, one absolute thing can serve as a foundation for many relations,
because these different relations are just various ways the foundation exists
and thereby relates to other things. Just as Socrates can be related both
as a father to his son Plato, and as similar to another white thing on
account of his whiteness, so the divine essence can be completely contained
in three distinct modi essendi, the respects that with the essence form
the persons. This foundation exists in three different relative ways, and
hence there are three different relations: the persons, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit.41 Henry, then, while standing far closer to Bonaventure than
to Aquinas in his trinitarian theology, is really in the thought world of
the Franciscans who reified Bonaventure’s ordering of our concepts of
emanations and relations. Like the early Franciscan trinitarian tradition,
instead of discussing whether relation or emanation takes priority in our
conceptualization of personal distinction, Henry maintains that the persons
are made ontologically distinct by the different ways they emanate.
If Henry claims that the ultimate ground of the persons’ distinction from
each other is their emanating in different ways, then he must face the same
problem Bonaventure and the other Franciscans we have examined faced
with regard to the first emanation, the generation of the Son. If only discrete
individuals have operations, and if the Father is the Father because he
generates (see at n. 34 above), then how can the Father emanate “before” he
is constituted as a distinct existence as the Father. This had led Bonaventure
est proprius uni personae, substantia sub illo existit tantum in una persona, et non in
alia.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 126rD. Ibid., a. 55, q. 6: “Nomina vero personarum imponuntur ad
significandum substantiam sub ratione respectus.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 112vV = ed. Flores 2006,
p. 217324–325.
41 My example of Socrates’ paternity and color similarity, and the case at hand of the
divine essence and its three modi essendi are, of course, disanalogous insofar as Socrates’
relations are all accidental, i.e. founded on the accidents of his active generative power and
his whiteness. This is not the case with the divine properties, which are pure respects founded
directly on the divine essence.
henry of ghent 249
to postulate the Father’s primity, and his Franciscan followers had also used
the notion in their reified emanation account of personal distinction. In
order to solve just these difficulties, Henry uses Bonaventure’s notion in
his own trinitarian theology. For Henry, primity indicates that all of the
essential attributes exist in the Father and are gotten from no other person.
That is to say, the Son has the attributes from the Father, and the Holy Spirit
from the Father and the Son together, but the Father is innascible and hence
all the essential attributes exist in him on his own account (ex se).42
At one point, Henry describes innascibility using an analogy that is
revealing as to what he thinks primity involves:
‘Notion’ is said in a number of different ways … one is as something virtually
(virtute) existing in that through which a thing is constituted in being, just as
the motive force of all things universally consists in the motive force of the
first mobile, and this is a notion with respect to the mover of the first mobile;
and in this way innascible or ungenerated is a notion of the Father.43
Just as the first sphere receives the fullness of motive power from the prime
mover and then transfers it to the rest of the universe, so the innascible
person receives the fullness of the fecundity of the divine essence, and then
transfers this fecundity first to the other members of the Trinity, then to
the universe as a whole.44 Innascibility is the motive force necessary to
begin the multiplication of beings through emanation. This motive force
is needed, Henry claims explicitly, because without it there would be an
endless regress of emanations. The emanations are the source of distinction
between the persons, and one person emanates from another. Therefore
there must be some first emanation from some first person who does not
42 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 39, q. 7: “… omnia essentialia simul habent esse in tribus
personis, in Patre tamen habent esse ex se et non ab alio et ab ipso in Filio, et ab utroque
in Spiritu Sancto … Et hoc convenit Patri ratione primitatis suae quam habet simpliciter
et prima auctoritate super Filium et Spiritum Sanctum et super omnem creaturam …” Ed.
G.A. Wilson (Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994), pp. 22424–22534. For what follows, see also
Quodl. VI, q. 1 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987; pp. 7–11); Wilson (p. xxii),
citing Gómez Caffarena, dates Quodl. VI to Christmas 1281.
I have come across the use of the term ‘primity’ at the following places in the Summa
(Badius): f. 101vH, 103vT (see n. 59 below), 105rH, 105vI, 111rO (= ed. Flores 2006, p. 211152), 122rX;
Summa, a. 39, q. 6 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994; p. 2191–11), and q. 7 (ibid.,
p. 22531–48); and Quodl. VI, q. 1 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987; p. 284–5).
43 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 4: “Dicendum ad hoc quod ‘notio’ multipliciter dicitur
… ut aliquid virtute existens in eo quo res constituitur in esse, quemadmodum vis motiva
omnium universaliter consistit in vi motiva primi mobilis, et est notio respectu motoris primi
mobilis, et hoc modo innascibile sive ingenitum est notio Patris …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 108vO.
44 See n. 53 below. Cp. this to, e.g., Walter of Bruges, Ch. 2, above, at n. 24.
250 chapter four
emanate from any other.45 This is the person endowed with innascibility and
primity. Primity in turn is the foundation of the Father’s emanating, through
which the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit have being. For Henry, as
for the Franciscans writing before him, primity is the ultimate basis for the
first emanation and hence for the distinction of the persons.
In comparison to the other defenders of primity that we have studied thus
far, Henry provides us with a great deal of information about this property
of the Father. Henry, in fact, offers clarification on two important matters.
First, he explains what the relationship is between the first person and the
divine essence, if innascibility is simply having the essence from no other.
Second, he clarifies the relationship between innascibility and paternity in
the constitution of the Father.
With regard to the first issue, Henry is clear: innascibility is simply having
everything the divine essence has, without being the essence. That is to say,
the divine essence acts as a positive substrate for the negation implied by
the ‘in’ of the word ‘ingenitum’.46 It is for this reason that innascibility is
not a “pure” or a “true” negation, which would surely imply some deficiency
in God.47 It is also for this reason that the Father’s innascibility has the
positive meaning of primity, the Father’s sufficiency and plenitude on his
45 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 1: “… si ista persona esset ab illa, et illa ab alia, et
sic de ceteris, huiusmodi concatenationis productio absque dubio in infinitum procederet.
Intellige: nisi ponamus circulum in emanatione. Sed tunc sequeretur quod eadem persona
emanaret a se ipsa, quod est inconveniens … Ne igitur numerum divinarum personarum
in infinitum extendamus, oportet procul dubio ut concedamus quod aliqua persona ex
semetipsa existat et aliunde originem non trahat.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 77vB–C. This last argument
is taken nearly verbatim from Richard of St. Victor’s De trinitate, V, c. 3 (ed. Ribaillier,
p. 19828–31 = PL 96, 950D–951A). See also Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 3 (Badius, vol. 2,
f. 79r–vO). This argument is clearly related to various other attempts in the Franciscan
trinitarian tradition to prove that the number of emanations can be only two, and hence the
number of persons only three; see for more on this, n. 60 below, and William of Alnwick’s
use of this type of argument, in Ch. 10, below, at and around n. 106.
46 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 57, q. 1: “Est igitur dicendum aliter quod sicut est in
relationibus positivis quod ideo reales sunt notiones, quia fundantur ex natura rei in ipsa
divina essentia, sic est et de ista negativa. Sicut enim ex natura ipsius divinae essentiae est
quod in aliqua persona est ratio a qua est alia, sic in aliqua est ratio quod ipsa non sit ab
alia. Et sic substratum illud negationi non est nisi ipsa divina essentia, ut sit sensus: ‘Pater
est ingenitus, id est, habens in se divinam essentiam non ab alio’ … ‘Ingenitum’ ergo positive
dicit plenitudinem et sufficientiam in Patre ex se, negative autem dicit nihil habere ab alio
…” Badius, vol. 2, f. 118rP.
47 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 57, q. 1: “Et sic procul dubio dicendum est in proposito
quod ingenitum proprietas Patris est non ratione negationis aut privationis purae, sed potius
ratione alicuius positivi substrati … etiam exprimitur per notam privativam quae est ‘in’, licet
non sit vera privatio, ut iam dicetur.” Badius, vol. 2, ff. 117vN–118rN.
henry of ghent 251
own account (ex se).48 The first person, with respect to his property of
innascibility, differs from the divine essence because innascibility, and in
virtue of it the first person, is said only in an order relatively to the other
persons: in God the persons and the personal properties are relative. This
is not so for the essence, which is not relative at all. Therefore, even though
the first person has all that the essence has, he has it relatively in an order to
the other persons who take being and subsistence from him; this in contrast
to the essence, which has everything that it has absolutely.49
How, then, do innascibility and paternity relate with regard to the consti-
tution of the Father as a distinct person in the Trinity? According to Henry,
a supposite certainly could be founded solely on the respect, innascibility;
but in God, this is not the case—it is again a case of positio impossibilis.50
This, of course, makes sense: for Henry the Father is the Father because
he generates. Innascibility as primity could in fact constitute a divine per-
son, although if this were the case the person constituted would not be
the Father, because it would not have generated. In God’s trinitarian real-
ity, innascibility and paternity mutually entail one another (mutuo sese
ponunt). For Henry, the first person in the Trinity, the Father, has as true
properties, arising from God’s very nature, both innascibility and paternity.
Innascibility as primity is the foundational property insofar as it is the ulti-
mate ground for the emanations, but generation or paternity is the property
that is actually constitutive of the Father. In God there is no order between
these, but with respect to the Father’s constitution human beings must
conceive paternity as being prior (again: because the Father is the Father
48 See n. 46 above, and cp. to n. 42 above.

49 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 1: “Et cum assumitur in argumento quod se ipso solo
est et subsistit, absolute subsistit, dicendum quod non est verum, quia aliquid potest se ipso
solo formaliter ita quod a nullo principiative esse et subsistere dupliciter. Uno modo quod
sicut a nullo alio habet esse et subsistere, sic nec in ordine essentiali et naturali ad ullum
habeat esse et subsistere, et quod tale est, revera non nisi absolute habet esse et subsistere.
Sed sic in divinis nihil habet esse nisi divina essentia, et quae essentialiter pertinent ad ipsam,
nihil etiam omnino sic habet in divinis subsistere … Alio vero modo quod licet a nullo alio
habet esse et subsistere, tamen non est nec subsistit nisi in ordine ad alium, et quod tale
est, non nisi relative habet esse et subsistere, et hoc modo persona quae in divinis non habet
esse ab alia, licet a se ipsa sola, ut dictum est, habet esse personaliter et subsistere, hoc tamen
non convenit ei nisi in ordine ad alium qui ab ipso habet esse et subsistere …” Badius, vol. 2,
f. 78rE.
50 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 57, q. 1: “Propter quod ingenitus per impossibile posset esse
aliquis etiam in divinis, etsi non esset Pater nec generaret.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 119vC. Henry
repeats this claim often, e.g., ibid.: “persona Patris, si per impossibile posset esse persona
aut hypostasis absque proprietate paternitatis quae essentiam deitatis non haberet ab alio,
ingenita esset.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 119rY.
252 chapter four
on account of his having a Son).51 Thus, Henry once more returns to the
fundamental distinction between disparate and opposed relations: some
person—although not the Father—could be distinguished from the other
members of the Trinity by disparate relations on the basis of innascibility,
i.e. because that person has the essence on his own account (ex se) and is
unemanated. In actuality, however, the Father is “properly” distinguished
from the other persons by opposition of relations, i.e. by generation and by
spiration.52
For Henry, then, even if there were no opposed relations, the persons
would be distinct because of the more fundamental disparate relations or
ways of emanating, and further because of the disparate sources of the ema-
nations. Here is the key to Henry’s emanationist trinitarian theology: the
sources of the emanations. For Henry, the ultimate source of all plurality—
not only in the Trinity, but in the universe at large—is the rational distinc-
tion between the divine attributes of intellect and will.53 Following from this,
51 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 57, q. 3: “Ex iam dictis patet quod quamquam negatio quae
est non ab alio esse significata in ‘ingenito’, et affirmatio quae est ab alio esse significata in
‘paternitate’ mutuo sese ponunt; tamen illa negatio ponit istam affirmativam, ita quod eam
supponit, et non est ratio existendi ipsam in subiecto, affirmatio autem negationem ponit
et supponit, et est ratio existendi eam in subiecto. Quia autem quaecumque sic se habent
quod mutuo sese ponunt in eodem subiecto, sed unum eorum ponit alterum tantum, et
non est ratio essendi ipsum, sed e converso alterum est ratio essendi illius, quamquam sint
simul natura et duratione, secundum rationem tamen prius est id quod est ratio essendi
alterius, et non e converso. Et si non proprie dicatur ‘prius’, saltem secundum rationem
dicatur unum illorum primum et alterum secundum, ut secundum hoc paternitas in Patre
dicatur proprietas prima respectu ingeniti, et ingenitum secunda respectu paternitatis.”
Badius, vol. 2, f. 122rT.
52 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 57, q. 4: “… quia paternitate hPateri differt a Filio ut relatione
opposita illi quae est in Filio, et similiter differt a Spiritu Sancto spiratione activa; sed
ingenito sive ingenerabilitate differt ab utroque ut relatione disparata, quemadmodum Filius
quodam modo differret a Spiritu Sancto si non procederet ab ipso. Sed proprie persona
a persona dicitur distingui proprietate illa quae est relative opposita. Unde Pater proprie
loquendo distinguitur a Filio paternitate, non autem innascibilitate. Propter quod etiam si
Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, licet propter relationes disparatas, esset alia persona
a persona Filii, non tamen proprie diceretur esse distincta ab ea … per generare hPateri differt
a Filio ut relatione opposita, a Spiritu Sancto autem ut relatione disparata tantum.” Badius,
vol. 2, f. 123rC. See for proprie/not proprie, above at n. 33.
53 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 4: “Plurificatio enim creaturarum praesupponit
ordine durationis plurificationem divinarum personarum, et illa hplurificatio divinarum per-

sonarum praesupponiti ordine quodam rationis plurificationem attributorum, de quorum
numero sunt intellectus et voluntas, quae sunt duo principia operationum omnis intellec-
tualis naturae, quae cum ceteris omnibus essentialibus ad divinam essentiam pertinent.
Persona illa quae in divinis non est ab alia, ex se ipsa in se ipsa ambit et continet, et ordine
quodam ab ipsa habent inesse aliis … Per hoc enim quod ambo illa principia in se ex se non ab
henry of ghent 253
the Son emanates from the paternal intellect as a Word, and the Holy Spirit
emanates from the will of the Father and the Son together as Zeal.
Henry follows traditional scholastic theology in claiming that in God,
and in fact in any intellectual nature, there are only two sources of action
or operation: intellect and will.54 It follows from this that there can be
only two types of emanation in God: by way of intellect and by way of
will. Also like many of his contemporaries, Henry holds that there is only
a rational distinction between the divine attributes.55 For Henry, in order
for the attributes to be made distinct an intellect is required to consider
God’s perfections: the perfections are indistinctly in God as a source, but
an intellect must bring the distinction to completion.56 Henry maintains
not only that these rationally distinct attributes are the source of the two
emanations in God, but further—in contrast to both Bonaventure and
Aquinas—that this rational distinction between the attributes is the reason
that the emanations, and hence the persons, are distinct.
Henry counters Aquinas’ contention that the cause cannot be weaker
than the effect, and, consequently, that the rational distinction between
the attributes cannot be the source of the real distinction between the
emanations,57 by claiming that it is only as they exist uniquely in the Father
that the attributes are the direct sources of the emanations. The intellect
and will exist in the Father in two ways. First, they exist in the Father in
the very same way as they exist in the other two persons: these are the
essential attributes of intellect and will shared equally by the three persons.
alio hprima personai continet, habet illa in se in plena fecunditate et non exhausta ad produc-
tionem duarum personarum semetipsam, ut non solum sit possibile personam in divinis esse
ab alia, sed etiam propter duo principia emanationum in divinis quae sunt in illa, necesse est
quod ab illa emanent duae aliae, una per principium quod est intellectus, alia per principium
quod est voluntas.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 87vB.
54 See n. 53 above; Quodl. VI, q. 1 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987; pp. 1130–
1240). For Aquinas’ and Bonaventure’s use of this same claim, see Ch. 1, above, at nn. 80–81.
55 On Henry’s rational distinction between the divine attributes, and his dispute with
Godfrey of Fontaines, see Gelber 1974, 35–40; Hödl 1978, esp. 121–123.
Note that Henry’s explicit statements on the rational distinction as found in, e.g. Quodl. V,
q. 6 (Badius, vol. 1, ff. 160vH–163vV); Quodl. X, q. 7 (ed. R. Macken; Opera Omnia, 14; Leuven—
Leiden, 1981; pp. 163–166) are at odds with the view implicit in his discussions of the rational
distinction between the attributes. In the former, Henry seems to claim that the rational
distinction is purely conceptual, with no ground in re. In the latter, he seems to understand
‘rational’ in the way that Aquinas of the Sent. commentary took ratio, as an intention to which
something corresponds in re. I hope to develop this observation in a future study.
56 See Quodl. V, q. 1 (Badius, vol. 1, ff. 150v–154r); Summa, a. 51, qq. 1–3 (ed. M. Führer; Opera
Omnia, 30; Leuven, 2007; pp. 211–241).

57 For Aquinas’ objection, see Ch. 1, above, at n. 82.
254 chapter four
These essential attributes are merely rationally distinct from each other, and
are only the remote sources of the emanations. The proximate sources are
the intellect and will as found in the Father alone, as notional properties.
Existing in this way, the attributes differ really (differunt re) by the ratio of
relation—diverse from each other, then, not as opposed relations, but as
disparate relations.58 For Henry, in fact, the Father’s primity is these notional
properties; they are the ground upon which the Father emanates the Son
and (together with the Son) the Holy Spirit.59 Further, because the fecundity
of each of these two sources of action is exhausted when they each emanate
one person, we know there are and can only be three persons—neither
more nor fewer. Thus, Henry uses the common medieval proof for there
being only three persons as an integral part of his trinitarian thought.60
Still, Henry might well be asked why these disparate relations are distinct.
His answer to this question ties together the emanation account of personal
distinction as found in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition with the Augus-
tinian psychological model and particularly the notion of the verbum mentis
as Thomas Aquinas combined it with Aristotelian philosophical psychol-
58 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 4: “Ad tertium, quod ‘natura et voluntas in per-
sona quae non est ab alia differunt sola ratione, ergo non possunt esse principia plurium
emanationum differentium re’, etc. Dicendum quod natura quae est intellectus et voluntas
dupliciter possunt considerari in persona illa quae non est ab alia. Uno modo simpliciter
et absolute; sic sunt principia praecisa actionum essentialium quae sunt intelligere et velle.
Alio modo ut cum proprietatibus relativis; sic sunt principia proxima actionum notionalium,
quae sunt dicere et spirare. Primo modo verum est quod sola ratione differunt inter se, nec
sic possunt esse principia proxima diversarum emanationum personalium re relationis dif-
ferentium, licet sint principia remota. Secundo autem modo non est verum quod sola ratione
differunt, scilicet totum hoc, intellectus cum una proprietate relativa, et voluntas cum alia,
immo differunt re ratione relationum. Sunt enim diversae relationes reales disparatae, licet
non relative oppositae, secundum quod sunt in persona quae non est ab alia, ut iam dicetur.”
Badius, vol. 2, f. 88rE.
59 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 8: “Actus enim notionalis (ed.: notionales) dicendi non
funda[n]tur super actum essentialem intelligendi, nisi prout ipse habet esse in Patre. In solo
enim Patre ratione suae innascibilitatis et primitatis qua non habet esse ab alio, sed omne
aliud et omnis alius ab ipso, est fecunditas ad primum actum primi producti, et est fecunditas
sapientiae et intellectus Patris existentis in actu intelligendi essentialiter ad dicendum sive
producendum Verbum, quo perfectus est totus intellectus divinus essentialis et in se et ut est
in qualibet trium personarum … Consimiliter actus notionalis spirandi non fundatur super
actum essentialem volendi, nisi prout ipse habet esse communiter in solo Patre et Filio.”
Badius, vol. 2, f. 103vT. See also ibid., q. 10 (Badius, vol. 2, f. 105rH).
60 See Quodl. VI, q. 1 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987; p. 231–42, and pp. 2129–
2250); Summa, a. 54, q. 8 (Badius, vol. 2, f. 101rE–vF); see also n. 45 above. For other uses of this
type of proof for there being only three persons, see Ch. 1, above, at and around n. 81; for
Roger Marston, see, Ch. 2, above, at and around nn. 170–173; and on Aquinas’ later view of
this “proof”, see Ch. 3, above, at and around nn. 17–21.
henry of ghent 255
ogy. Henry maintains that the ultimate ground of the distinction between
the disparate relations, the emanations, and hence the ultimate source of
personal distinction is that the intellectual emanation of the Son must “pre-
cede” by an order of nature the voluntary emanation of the Holy Spirit. For
an act of the will, whether essential or notional, to take place, it is required
that the act of the intellect first reach completion. Because in order to will
something perfectly, we must know that thing perfectly, Henry thinks that
the perfection of the act of understanding is a precondition for the act of
the will, and hence the two acts must be distinct on account of the order
of nature existing between them. For Henry, what this means is that the
Father must say the Word—i.e., generate the Son—“before” the Holy Spirit
emanates, because a word is the perfection of the act of understanding. This
is how Augustine’s verbum mentis and psychological model come to play a
pivotal role in Henry’s trinitarian thought.61
Henry of Ghent’s trinitarian theology, with its emphasis on emanations
and innascibility, its use of nested distinctions and primity, and its specific
claim about the distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Son by disparate rela-
tions, is a typically later thirteenth-century Franciscan trinitarian position.
Like Gerard of Abbeville, whose position had great affinity to the general
Franciscan trinitarian outlook and was thus “enlisted” as a typical part of
late thirteenth-century Franciscan trinitarian theology, Henry is a secular
theologian whose trinitarian leanings fit in well with those of the Francis-
cans. Moreover, in Chapter Two above, evidence was presented that this
Franciscan tradition was already well developed when Henry wrote. Indeed,
if, as has been suggested, Henry was lecturing on the Sentences in Paris right
61 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 60, q. 2: “Secundo autem modo praedicto distinguendi
relativa et reali distinctione, secundum quam scilicet hoc habet esse ab hoc, quia hoc est
praevium ad illud, distinguitur generatio simpliciter a spiratione simpliciter, quia spiratio
simpliciter originem trahit a generatione simpliciter, in hoc scilicet quod generatio tam
activa in Patre quam passiva in Filio praevia est vel quasi ad spirationem et activam et
passivam. Quemadmodum enim actus intellectus simpliciter praevius est ad actum volun-
tatis simpliciter, ut sine quo voluntas non posset in suum actum, sic actus intellectus, quo
sic intelligit declarative, praevius est ad actum voluntatis relative, ut sine quo non posset
voluntas in actum talem, secundum quod haec omnia patent ex superius declaratis. Secun-
dum hoc enim etsi Spiritus Sanctus procederet a solo Patre, sicut et generatur Filius, isto
secundo modo secundum rationem originandi hoc ab hoc, generatio activa distingueretur a
spiratione activa, et similiter Filius a Spiritu Sancto, non solum autem secundum modum dis-
tinctionis relationum disparatarum.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 163rE. See also n. 59 above, and Summa,
a. 54, q. 6 (Badius, vol. 2, f. 93rN). Henry discusses the “order of nature” that exists between
the two emanations in some detail at, e.g., Summa, a. 60, q. 3 (f. 164rL), Summa, a. 60, q. 5
(f. 169rS–T—incorrectly labelled f. 173 in the Badius edition), and cf. Flores 2003, 293–295.
256 chapter four
around 1270, then he would without doubt have had direct contact with
such scholars as Gerard of Abbeville, Eustace of Arras, and John Pecham,
and later in his career he would have been rubbing shoulders with Matthew
of Aquasparta as well as the slightly junior Richard of Mediavilla.62 So there
can really be no question that Henry knew and exploited the fact that his
ideas were written in a specific theological milieu. And this supposition is
merely confirmed by the reaction Henry’s ideas generated in the later thir-
teenth century (see Chs. 5 and 6, below): just as they incorporated elements
of Gerard’s trinitarian theology, Franciscans tended to adopt elements of
Henry’s system; on the other hand, Dominicans tended to reject those same
elements.
But which elements? So similar is Henry’s trinitarian theology in its major
points to that of, e.g. John Pecham’s or Roger Marston’s, that it would
seem to be difficult to trace Henry’s influence on later authors unless they
mention him by name. Henry’s version of an emanation trinitarian theology
is, of course, very precisely developed and articulated in comparison to
his Franciscan contemporaries. Moreover, Henry’s basic rejection of the
relation account of personal distinction had at its foundation his theory of
relation and the impossibility of the dual nature of the divine relations. This
does not seem to be the case for the Franciscan thought that we examined
above: although the relation account is deemphasized in what we have seen,
the dual nature of the divine relations is still employed in the trinitarian
thought of Walter of Bruges, John Pecham, and Roger Marston at least, and
will continue to be used in the Franciscan tradition.63 For Henry, the relation
account was only valid because the emanation account was valid, and he
accepted the entire system of nested distinctions: something we have seen
the Franciscans rather hesitant to do. Many of Henry’s subtleties, however,
were lost on his readers, and his trinitarian thought blended easily into
a general Franciscan pattern. With the exception of one point: his use of
the Augustinian psychological model of the Trinity. The central difference
between Henry of Ghent and the other Franciscans examined above who
adopted a trinitarian theology stressing the emanations is Henry’s use of
the phrase per modum intellectus. This phrase is nearly totally absent from
Franciscan texts written prior to or contemporary with Henry describing the
62 For Wielockx’ suggestion for the dating of Henry’s Sentences lectures, see n. 1 above. On
Richard of Mediavilla (aka Middleton) and his place in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition,
see Ch. 5, below, § 2.
63 Cf. n. 21 above.
henry of ghent 257
way the Son is produced in God:64 for the Franciscans the emanation of the
Son takes place per modum naturae. Although in the Franciscan texts the
Son was described as a Word, it appears that this description was employed
primarily because John the Evangelist called the Son a Word and this
needed to be taken into account; there is no evidence that the Franciscan
theologians thought deeply about what this meant or how philosophical
psychology might be used to make an emanation account of personal
distinction richer. This Henry of Ghent did: the Son was distinct from the
other persons in the Trinity because he proceeds per modum intellectus;
likewise, the Holy Spirit because he proceeds per modum voluntatis. For
Henry, the Son is a Word in a “strong” sense, philosophical psychology is
used to answer specifically trinitarian questions, and this idea of Henry’s
will become yet another central element of Franciscan trinitarian theology
into the 1310’s and beyond.
3. Henry of Ghent on the Word: Concepts as Declarative Knowledge
Thus, the central contribution that Henry of Ghent made to medieval trini-
tarian theology (at least in the context of this book) appears quite straight-
forward: to identify emanation by way of nature with emanation by way
of the intellect, thereby identifying in a strong and systematic way the Son
with the Word; he applied a parallel analysis to the Holy Spirit’s volun-
tary emanation as “Zeal”.65 The strong connection that Henry drew between
nature and intellect, between generation and concept formation in God is
one that we might have expected to have been made long before: John’s
Gospel states that the Son is the Word and Augustine provided a way to
defend this claim in a philosophically sophisticated manner. The emana-
tion trinitarian theology that the Franciscans developed in the years after
Bonaventure would seem to have provided them with the perfect oppor-
tunity to incorporate an expanded notion of the Word and of intellectual
procession into their works. But they did not do this: the Franciscans do
64 The one exception to this is Nicholas of Ockham, as we saw above in Ch. 2, §6 (although
it should be remembered that my statements on the early Franciscan tradition are based to a
large degree on unedited material, and to this extent are provisional). It should of course be
borne in mind that Thomas Aquinas in his later works tends to use the phrase ‘per modum
intellectus’ to describe the emanation of the Son as Word (and thanks to Jeremy Wilkins for
pointing this out to me).
65 On Henry’s view of the Holy Spirit’s voluntary emanation, see esp. Flores 2003; Flores
2006, 76–117 passim; Friedman 2007b; and Williams (Scott M.) 2011.
258 chapter four
not seem to have been particularly interested in discussing concepts and

concept formation in the specifically trinitarian context at this early date.66
Thomas Aquinas did indeed work out much of his synthesis of Aristotelian
and Augustinian concept theory when writing about trinitarian theology,
and he certainly stressed that at some level or another the Son is a Word
proceeding per modum intellectus; but Aquinas’ trinitarian theory was cen-
tered on a relation account, and as a result, in his system, emanations or
productions of any kind fit only uneasily as a precise explanation for the
constitution of the persons. It was Henry of Ghent, through his identifica-
tion of emanation per modum naturae with emanation per modum intel-
lectus, who melded the Franciscan emanation theology with the Thomist
interest in concepts.
For Henry, intellectual action and natural action do not differ really (re)
but only according to ratio, and the rational difference between them is,
as Henry explains, that the ratio of an intellectual action includes within
it the ratio of a natural actio; hence, every act of saying (dicere) is an act
of generating, and every word is a begotten thing.67 The foundation of this
view is Henry’s contention that the intellect is a completely natural faculty,
that is to say there is no freedom of choice associated with the intellect per
se. In contradistinction to the way the “rational” (i.e., free) faculty, the will,
operates, when an object is present to an intellect, it invariably understands
66 This is, of course, not to say that Franciscans in this period were not interested
in philosophical psychology, witness many treatments of the topic in both theological

and more properly philosophical treatises. Nevertheless, the strong connection between
trinitarian theology and philosophical psychology that I attribute to Henry seems to be
basically alien to the early Franciscan tradition (although see Nicholas of Ockham, Ch. 2,
§ 6 above).
67 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Sic ergo ex modo divinae generationis patet
quod ipsum generare sit idem secundum rem quod dicere; et ex eodem statim liquescit
quod differrunt secundum rationem, et hoc primo ex parte principiorum emanandi. Sicut
enim ex eo quod emanatio haec est a principio naturali activo simpliciter et de principio
naturali passivo simpliciter, ipsa dicitur ‘generatio’ et emanans dicitur ‘genitum’ sic ex eo
quod est a principio activo naturali quod est notitia et de principio passivo naturali quod
est intellectus, ipsa emanatio dicitur ‘dicere’ et emanans dicitur ‘Verbum’. Ulterius etiam
ex hoc patet quod secundo differunt secundum rationem ex parte ipsarum emanationum
et emanantium. Quemadmodum enim est ratio perfectior et magis specialis cum dicitur
‘natura quae est intellectus’ quam cum dicitur ‘natura simpliciter’, et cum dicitur ‘agens
naturale quod est intellectus’ quam cum dicitur ‘agens naturale simpliciter’, sic perfectior
ratio emanationis divinae exprimitur cum dicitur ‘dicere’ quam cum dicitur ‘generare’, et
perfectior ratio emanantis cum dicitur ‘Verbum’ quam cum dicitur ‘genitum’. Ita etiam,
quod ratio eius quod est dicere in se includat rationem eius quod est generare, et non
e converso; et ratio Verbi rationem geniti, et non e converso.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 127rM–
N.
henry of ghent 259
and it understands in the same way under the same conditions.68 Thus,
Henry can argue that production in God by way of intellect and by way of
will differ really because they are sources of action in different ways: the
will freely (libere vel liberaliter), the intellect naturally. Intellect and “nature”
(here taken to mean the productive source that is wholly other from the
will), on the other hand, are sources of action in the same way: naturally,
i.e. automatically and without choice.69 Because God is a purely intellectual
nature, then, of necessity the only sort of natural production that God has
is that by way of the intellect.70 And so, the natural generation of the Son is
really the same as the intellectual emanation of the Word, and the Son is the
Word in the strong sense. In this way, Henry linked the Franciscan account
of emanation by way of nature with the psychological model in which the
Son is the Word emanating by natural, intellectual procession. This is why
Henry’s ideas on concepts and on concept formation play such a central role
in his trinitarian theology.
Henry’s theory of mental words can be seen largely as an attempt to
explain how the word is, in Augustine’s own formulation, “scientia de sci-
entia”, or in Henry’s more usual rendition “notitia de notitia”:71 what is the
68 For a fairly complete discussion of this point by Henry, see Summa, a. 36, q. 5 (ed.
G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994; pp. 122–130). This is, of course, not a view specific
to Henry, but is widespread among medieval thinkers. The distinction between the will as a
rational power with choice and the intellect as non-rational power descends from Aristotle,
Metaphysics IX, 2 (1046b1–24); for literature on the medieval fate of the distinction, see
Hoffmann (Tobias) 1999 (specifically on Henry, pp. 196–198) and in the specifically trinitarian
context see Friedman 2007b.
69 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Ad id quod arguitur primo, quod generare non
est idem quod dicere quia generare est opus naturae, dicere intellectus, dicendum quod hoc
non arguit nisi quod non idem ratione, quia natura et intellectus sunt rationes principiandi
sola ratione differentes, secundum praetactum modum. Et quod assumitur contra hoc,
quod sunt diversae rationes principiandi sicut natura et voluntas, dicendum quod non est
verum, quia non sunt nisi duo modi principiandi, scilicet libere sive liberaliter, qui est
modus voluntatis, et impetu quodam, qui est modus naturae, qui nunquam ambo coincidunt
aeque principaliter in eodem actu, quia contrarii sunt, licet in eodem actu coincidunt unus
principaliter, alter secundario, ut inferius patebit circa productionem Spiritus Sancti.
“Intellectus autem ex se non nisi impetum naturalem et necessitatem habet in suo
actu, libertatem autem non nisi ut praecedit actus voluntatis dirigens suo imperio actum
intellectus, ut iam patebit. Propter quod, quando intellectus coniungitur cum principio
quod est natura quasi contrahendo naturam simpliciter ad naturam intellectualem, sicut
contingit in productione Verbi secundum supra determinata, tunc totum non est nisi unum
principium quod est natura.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 128vT.
70 See n. 53 above; also Quodl. VI, q. 1 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987;
pp. 1130–1240).
71 For examples and discussion of Henry’s use of the phrase, see nn. 106–116 below, and
for Augustine’s scientia de scientia, see the Introduction, above, at n. 53. Discussions of
260 chapter four
knowledge that exists before, and what is the knowledge that comes after?
Henry postulates a two-tiered intellectual process in forming a word. First,
we attain confused universal knowledge of the thing intellected. Only there-
after do we process the original knowledge by division and composition,
and arrive at the essential characteristics of the thing intellected, its quod
quid est. When we reach this point, we form the word or concept, and our
investigation of the thing can cease: the will to investigate further is silenced
or rests quiet in the word.
How do we come to have original universal knowledge, i.e. how do we
first have intellectual acquaintance with something? Over the past half cen-
tury, a number of studies have implicitly argued that Henry is part of the
late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century deconstruction of the Thomist
noetic synthesis mentioned above in the Introduction (§ 3). According to
these studies, the psychological element that Thomas had claimed to be
necessary for the formation of a concept but that Henry rejected is the
intelligible species—the spiritual representation that the agent intellect
abstracts from the sensible representations that our senses receive from
extramental things.72 Thus, on this view, which dominates the literature,
philosophical psychology in Henry’s works are extensive, and I will not attempt a synthesis
here, basing myself mainly on a portion of Summa, a. 58, q. 2 (Badius, vol. 2, ff. 126vH–134rD—
a transcription of a portion of this text was published as an appendix to Friedman 1997b, and
I refer to this as well for the sake of completeness), only referring occasionally to other texts.
Besides the focal text used here, among Henry’s most important discussions of concepts and
their formation are: Quodl. IV, q. 8 (Badius, vol. 1, ff. 96vI–99rR); Quodl. V, qq. 25–26 (Badius,
vol. 1, ff. 204rI–206vS); Quodl. VI, q. 1 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987; pp. 1–
32); Summa, a. 40, qq. 6–7 (ed. G.A. Wilson; Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994; pp. 275–299);
Summa, a. 54, qq. 9–10 (Badius, vol. 2, ff. 103vA–106rL); Summa, a. 59, q. 2. (Badius, vol. 2,
ff. 137rK–144vZ). For a brief discussion of Summa, a. 40, qq. 6–7, see section 3.3 of Friedman
1996, 177–180.
The fundamental secondary work on Henry’s philosophical psychology is Nys 1949a,
which unfortunately is not easily accessible (Nys 1949b is a partial translation into Latin). See
also Marrone 1985, which traces the development of Henry’s ideas on truth and knowledge,
but deals with Henry’s philosophical psychology at some length, and in particular Henry’s
discussion in Summa, a. 58, q. 2 (Marrone 1985, 78–92). I am indebted to Marrone’s discussion
of this text, although I find it strange that Henry’s debt to Augustine on the issue of the
mental word goes completely unmentioned. As a corrective, see Nys 1949a, 99–115, esp. 103–
106, where Nys shows that in 1279 Henry changed his theory of concept formation to be
more in line with Augustine’s criteria; see also below. Marrone 2001 also touches on Henry’s
philosophical psychology, and is better on Augustinian roots of Henry’s concept theory
than was Marrone’s earlier work; see, e.g., vol. 2, 366–379. For a detailed discussion of the
framework—optical, logical, and epistemological—in which Henry’s theory of concepts
operated, and for his historical significance, see Tachau 1988, esp. 28–39. See also the
magisterial summary in Emery (Kent) 2001.
72 Examples of studies that make the claim that Henry rejects intelligible species are: Nys
henry of ghent 261
Henry denies that the intelligible species is at all necessary in the cognitive
scheme and hence he eliminates it. Robert Pasnau has recently called into
question Henry’s purported dismissal of intelligible species.73 In short, Pas-
nau’s revisionist view is that Henry’s was not a flat rejection of the claim that
intelligible representations are necessary for concept formation (like Peter
John Olivi’s, Durand of St. Pourçain’s, and William Ockham’s rejections),
but rather a technical refinement of what such an intelligible representa-
tion is and what it is not. In particular, Henry rejected that any species was
impressed in the intellect, and he did this in order to emphasize the differ-
ence between the way that a material, sensible species informs (and exists
in) the senses and the way an immaterial universal species efficiently causes
the intellect’s act (without thereby existing in the intellect). It is beyond
the scope of the present work to go into the details of this modern debate,
and, moreover, I think that the jury is still out on the issue, but at present
I am inclined to think that, if we are going to say that Henry rejected intel-
ligible species, then we need to qualify the remark in significant ways. In
fact, the psychological element that most medieval thinkers would roughly
recognize as the “intelligible species”, Henry calls the “universal phantasm”,
and this goes a long way in explaining why Henry frequently calls this uni-
versal phantasm a universal species.74 For Henry, the phantasm—the final
1949a, 61–98; Tachau 1988, 31–34; Spruit 1994, 205–212 (who is rather harsh on Henry, but
seems to claim that Henry was tweaking the system more than discarding the intelligible
species).
73 Particularly Pasnau 1997, 306–310. Dominik Perler (1996) appears to argue something
similar in his review of Spruit 1994. Pickavé Forthcoming goes furthest to date in showing
in what way one has to understand Henry’s rejection of intelligible species, arguing that
Henry does indeed reject species but for complex reasons associated with his particular
ideas on metaphysics and cognition; thanks to Prof. Pickavé for giving me access to his as
yet unpublished paper.
74 In Friedman 1997b (p. 139 n. 60), I noted that Henry in his Summa, a. 58, q. 2 (Badius,
vol. 2, f. 129vD–130rI = Friedman 1997b, pp. 59217–595143) uses the term ‘species’ 1) to refer
to sensible species, i.e. physical representations of objects that are multiplied through a
medium, and 2) to refer to the universal phantasm which is a ‘species’ of the universal (see,
e.g., below esp. n. 75 [“universalium illarum rerum particularium species sunt phantasmata
universalia”], also nn. 77–78, 82, 86–87). At the time it seemed to me to be a rather gross
terminological confusion on Henry’s part to refer to the universal phantasm as a “species”
when Henry had so clearly rejected intelligible species. One possible explanation for the
apparent looseness of Henry’s terminology is that he did not in fact reject intelligible species
in the way he is most often portrayed to have done.
It should be noted that the modern view that Henry flatly rejected intelligible species
has a good medieval pedigree. To take just two examples: Scotus portrays Henry as having
rejected them (see on this Ch. 6, § 3 below), as does Hervaeus Natalis, who in his work De
intellectu et specie (edited in Stella 1959) pulls together many texts from Henry’s quodlibetal
262 chapter four
cognitive representation of the particular extramental thing as this repre-

sentation exists in the final sense faculty, the imagination—can represent
both the particular and the universal aspects of the apprehended thing.
Indeed, Henry draws a distinction between phantasms of particulars, which
exist in the imagination, and universal phantasms: particular phantasms
represent external things as they exist in the physical world, whereas univer-
sal phantasms represent the universals of those external, particular things.75
These two phantasms do not differ really (re), as do a color in the physical
world and the sensible species of that color;76 Henry instead claims that the
particular phantasm is “potentially” the universal phantasm,77 or that the
particular becomes the universal through an act of “virtual separation”.78 As
questions on the subject of intelligible species, and responds to them sharply. For more on
Henry’s ideas on the expressed intelligible species and those who countered them, see Goris
and Pickavé 2001.
75 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Primo in hoc quod ibi colores particulares sunt
extra existentes in rebus, circa quos operatur lux materialis ab eis abstrahendo species eorum
sine materia ad immutandum visum actu visionis, quae sunt obiecta ad quae terminatur
actus visionis. Hic vero phantasmata particularia sunt existentia in phantasia, circa quae
operatur lux agentis, separando ea a condicionibus particularibus et sequestrando illas ab
eis, quod est abstrahere ab eis species quae sunt phantasmata universalia. Species et simili-
tudines dico non tam ipsorum phantasmatum particularium, quae sunt species rerum par-
ticularium extra, quam rerum universalium illarum rerum particularium. Ipsa enim phan-
tasmata particularia circa quae operatur lux agentis sic ad immutandum intellectum possi-
bilem actu intellectionis non sunt obiecta ad quae terminatur actus intellectionis, sed potius
ipsa universalia rerum particularium extra existentium, quarum species et similitudines
sunt phantasmata particularia, sicut universalium illarum rerum particularium species sunt
phantasmata universalia.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 130rG = Friedman 1997b, p. 59372–84. Cf. also loc.
cit., f. 129vE, where Henry makes roughly the same point several times (= Friedman 1997b,
pp. 59231–38, 59343–46).
76 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Secundo autem in hoc est differentia, quod ibi
aliud est re color et species coloris, et quod ipsa species coloris abstrahitur a colore per quasi
quandam separationem realem …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 130rG = Friedman 1997b, p. 59385–86.
77 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Consimiliter autem agens se habet ad phantasmata,
ipsa enim ut particularia et sub condicionibus materialibus non sunt species universalium
nisi in potentia nec possunt movere intellectum possibilem nisi in potentia.” Badius, vol. 2,
f. 129vE = Friedman 1997b, p. 59231–33.
78 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Hic vero non est aliud re phantasma particulare
et species quae est phantasma universale, sicut nec res universalis est alia a re particulari,
nec ipsa species quae est phantasma universale abstrahitur a phantasmate particulari per
modum separationis realis aut generationis aut multiplicationis in intellectu, ut quem infor-
mat ad eliciendum in intellectu actum intellectionis, sed solum per quandam separationem
virtualem condicionum materialium et particularium et illarum sequestrationem ab ipso,
qua scilicet habet virtutem immutandi intellectum, non secundum condiciones particulares
ad intelligendum primo et principaliter ipsam particularem rem (ut aliqui dicunt), quod est
impossibile, sed secundum rationem phantasmatis simpliciter, et quasi abstracti et separati a
materia et condicionibus particularibus materiae. Et hoc ad eliciendum in intellectu actum
henry of ghent 263
far as Henry is concerned, then, the particular phantasm contains poten-

tially or virtually the universal phantasm, and hence no multiplication or
generation is necessary to get from the representation of the particular to
that of the universal: it is just the phantasm representing in different ways.79
As we will see, the universal phantasm is the representation involved in the
very first intellectual acquintance, and to that extent is equivalent to what
other medieval thinkers would call the intelligible species. This claim—that
the phantasm can represent both the particular and the universal—we will
see is one of the major points of criticism that John Duns Scotus will have
of Henry’s theory of concept formation, and Scotus, like many of his con-
temporaries, takes Henry’s claim to involve a flat-out rejection of intelligible
species.80
An agent is required in order to bring about the separation of the uni-
versal from the particular phantasm; this does not take place automati-
cally. According to Henry, what brings this about is the agent intellect,81
the spiritual light which shines or radiates over the particular phantasms
stored in the imagination, and “separates them from their material and
particular conditions and presents [the phantasm] as a universal represen-
tation (species universalis) to the possible intellect”.82 The agent intellect
is able to strip away all of the merely material and particular conditions
associated with the particular phantasm; what remains is the universal
intellectionis inhaerentem ipsi intellectui et informantem ipsum absque omni alia specie
rei universalis intellectae illi inhaerente ad intelligendum rem universalem.” Badius, vol. 2,
f. 130rG–H = Friedman 1997b, p. 594101–112.
79 See the text in n. 78 above.
80 For Scotus, as we will see (Ch. 6, § 3), the phantasm cannot represent both the particular
and the universal, and hence virtual separation will not suffice to make intellectual cognition
possible. Hence, for Scotus, a new entity, the intelligible species, must be produced by the
agent intellect working on the phantasm.
81 Throughout this discussion I will use the terms ‘agent intellect’ and ‘possible intellect’,
in accordance with Henry’s own terminology (intellectus agens and intellectus possibilis). It
should be noted that when Henry, like many other late-medieval scholastic authors, uses the
term intellectus without a qualifier he invariably means the possible intellect; when he refers
to the agent intellect he uses the term agens or agens intellectus. For another perspective
on Henry’s ideas concerning the action of the agent intellect in this first stage of intellectual
cognition, see Marrone 2001, vol. 2, 366–371.
82 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Sed lumen agentis splendens spiritualiter super
illa sicut lumen materiale materialiter resplendent super colores, separat ea a condicionibus
materialibus et particularibus et sub ratione speciei universalis proponit (Ba: praeponit) ea
intellectui possibili, qui et movetur mediantibus illis a rebus universalibus et informatur
intellectione universalium secundum actum, quemadmodum colores specie sua in luce actu
movent visum ad videndum colores.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 129vE = Friedman 1997b, p. 59233–38. See
also nn. 75, 78 above; Summa, a. 58, q. 2 (Badius, vol. 2, 129vE = Friedman 1997b, p. 59346–52).
264 chapter four
phantasm that was virtually contained in the particular phantasm. This uni-
versal phantasm, then, is the first universal element in the cognitive pro-
cess, a necessary precondition for the intellect to understand, and hence
(as has been mentioned) it plays a role corresponding to the intelligible
species in other later-medieval theories of cognition. It is for this reason
that Henry insists that “the possible intellect needs the agent [intellect] in
order to understand universal things, just as sight needs light in order to
see colors.”83 The universal phantasm, abstracted by the agent intellect and
presented to the possible intellect, remains there as “something cognized
in the cognizer”, regardless of the existence of any singulars of the univer-
sal represented. After the presentation of this first universal knowledge, the
intellect has the universal data it needs to work with.84 In this process, the
possible intellect becomes informed or infused with the universal repre-
sentation of an incomplex object (sub ratione incomplexi); as we will see,
Henry identifies the possible intellect informed in this way with the Augus-
tinian intellectual memory. Further, Henry insists that up to this point in
the cognitive process it is only the agent intellect that is active: the possi-
ble intellect is completely passive during its information by the universal
phantasm.85
83 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “… indiget enim intellectus possibilis agente

ad intelligendum res universales quemadmodum visus indiget luce ad videndum colores.”
Badius, vol. 2, f. 129vD = Friedman 1997b, p. 59221–23.
84 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Unde intellectus agens in abstrahendo phan-
tasma universale a particulari, abstraheret universale quod est in intellectu ut cognitum in

cognoscente, etiam si nullum haberet singulare existens extra in re, dum tamen esset phan-
tasma alicuius particularis eius quod aliquando fuit sensatum in ipsa phantasia. Quod, si
omnino deficeret, et similiter deficeret abstractio phantasmatis universalis ab illo, et per
consequens universalis intellectus omnino, sicut deficiente sensu aliquo, omnino necesse est
deficere scientia quae est secundum illum sensum, ut vult Philosophus.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 130vI
= Friedman 1997b, p. 594130–136. Note that this aspect of Henry’s theory has repercussions for
his ideas on intellectual cognition of singulars, which as Bérubé (1964, 64–68) shows, rule out
direct cognition of singulars: it is only indirectly, through reflection, that we have knowledge
of singulars.
85 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Talis autem intellectus rei universalis sub ratione
incomplexi vocatur intellectus simplicis intelligentiae. Et patet ex iam dictis quomodo

intellectus agens activus est in tali modo intelligendi, et intellectus possibilis passivus,
quoniam, ut dicit Commentator super caput de agente, sunt duo per diversitatem actionis
eorum. Actio enim intellectus agentis est generare, istius autem informari. Et quomodo hoc,
patet ex dictis. Et est ista actio pure naturalis agenti, et ista passio pure naturalis possibili,
qua postquam informatus fuerit, ulterius est activus, et quoad simplicium intelligentiam et
quoad intelligentiam complexionum.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 130vI = Friedman 1997b, pp. 593136–
594143. For Henry’s use of the term ‘memoria’ to describe the possible intellect informed with
the universal phantasm, i.e. by simplicis intelligentia, see the text in nn. 94 and 100 below.
henry of ghent 265
This last remark must be qualified. In fact, in Summa, a. 58, q. 2, Henry

claims many times that when the agent intellect presents the universal
phantasm to the possible intellect, this “changes the [possible] intellect to
an act of intellection that is terminated to the universal thing as to some-
thing that is understood”.86 Yet Henry also insists that the possible intellect
at this stage is “passive and receptive and in no way … active”; the activity is
all on the part of the agent intellect and the universal phantasm informing
the possible intellect.87 Henry’s language here seems a little careless, and
he does not explain himself; but we can deduce what he means by refer-
ring to one of his earliest discussions of the mental word: Quodl. II, q. 6,
disputed at Christmas 1277. There, Henry had insisted that in every natu-
ral action a patient is in some sense also an agent.88 Further, applying this
observation very precisely to the possible intellect in the first question of
his sixth Quodlibet (disputed Christmas 1281 or Easter 1282), Henry claimed
that the possible intellect is passive inasmuch as it is “completed by the
motion that the thing understood brings about in it, through which … the
act of understanding, which is the [possible intellect’s] first operation, is
brought to completion.”89 We can infer from all this that, for Henry, the pos-
sible intellect, at this stage of the cognitive process, acts precisely insofar as
86 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Et sicut lux materialis facit quod colores materiales
specie sua sine materia immutant visum ad actum visionis quae terminatur ad colorem ut ad
rem visam, consimiliter lux agentis facit quod phantasmata particularia sub ratione speciei
universalis absque condicionibus materialibus immutant intellectum ad actum intellectio-
nis quae terminatur ad rem universalem ut ad ipsum quod intelligitur.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 130rF
= Friedman 1997b, p. 59368–71. Cf. also above, nn. 75, 78, 82.
87 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Intellectus autem possibilis, licet sit materia
respectu formarum universalium et intelligibilium, et passivus atque receptivus, et nullo

modo in intelligendo simplicia simplici notitia est activus. Sed solummodo activae sunt
species universalis phantasmatis, aut ipsa res universalis et ipse intellectus agens, cuius est
generare irradiando in universale phantasma, et similiter in ipsum universale confuse intel-
lectum ad explicandum distinctionem definitivae rationis secundum praedictum modum.”
Badius, vol. 2, f. 131rL = Friedman 1997b, p. 596224–229.
88 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. II, q. 6 (“Utrum per actum intelligendi necesse sit formare
verbum”): “Dicendum quod sic est in omni actione naturali quod patiens non solum patitur,
sed agit aliquo modo, et tanto magis agit et minus patitur, quanto magis est formale, et e
converso, magis patitur et minus agit, quanto magis est materiale.” Ed. R. Wielockx (Opera
Omnia, 6; Leuven, 1983), p. 3123–26.
89 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. VI, q. 1: “… Est autem hnoster intellectusi passivus per hoc
quod perficitur ex motu qui fit a re intellecta in ipsum, per quem perficitur ex intellectu
et intelligibili ipse actus intelligendi, qui est eius operatio prima, qua perficitur in simplici
notitia habita de re intellecta. Et est ista notitia accidens inhaerens in intellectu nostro, aliud
ab ipso intellectu et ipsa re intellecta, etiam cum se ipsum intelligit.” Ed. G.A. Wilson (Opera
Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987), p. 1482–87.
266 chapter four
it is “informed” by the universal phantasm, although it does not act in any

proper sense: it has an intellection because it is informed by the universal
phantasm. Moreover, this “action” of the possible intellect is not productive
of a term; its term is the very universal phantasm that had been presented
to the possible intellect. This first act of understanding, then, is what Henry
calls an “operation”, distinguishing operations like this from “productions”.90
Henry refers to the first act of understanding, using common scholastic ter-
minology, as the act of simple understanding (actus simplicis intelligentiae),
and the knowledge that we have through this act he calls simple knowledge
or understanding (notitia vel intelligentia simplicis).91
Thus, Henry has explained how we first come to have universal knowl-
edge in the intellect. What is left to him to explain is how we have “scientia
de scientia”, i.e. how the verbum mentis is formed out of the simple knowl-
edge. To elucidate this, Henry proposes that the possible intellect itself is
capable of genuine action. There is an entirely passive aspect to the possible
intellect, and Henry calls the possible intellect considered under this aspect
the “material intellect”: this is the possible intellect that becomes informed
by the universal phantasm in the act of simple understanding. After it has
been informed by the universal phantasm, however, the possible intellect
also takes on a truly active aspect. Following Averroes, Henry calls the pos-
sible intellect as it is active the “speculative intellect”, midway between the
purely passive material intellect and the purely active agent intellect.92 And
90 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 59, q. 2: “Ad cuius intellectum sic utendo nomine actionis
et passionis, sciendum est de actione (et idem intelligendum de passione) quod actionum
quaedam est operatio, ut est illa a qua non relinquitur aliquid operatum; quaedam vero
est productio, ut est illa a qua relinquitur operatum. Actionis autem quae est operatio,
quaedam est motus vel non sine motu, ut est omnis operatio naturalis in creaturis, sed
quandoque est motus corporalis (ut est citharizatio), quandoque vero spiritualis (ut est
intellectio aut volitio); quaedam vero non motus et omnino est sine motu, ut est omnis
operatio in divinis manens intra (ut est divina intellectio aut volitio). Actionis autem quae
est productio, quaedam est naturalis, quae est generatio …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 143vO. See also
Summa, a. 54, q. 10 (Badius, vol. 2, f. 105vL). Despite these explicit statements, Henry does at
times use the term ‘operatio’ to describe the intellect’s productive act; for an example of this,
see n. 100 below.
91 See, e.g., above, nn. 85, 87; below, nn. 100, 102, 103.
92 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “In se tamen ipse intellectus possibilis forma
quaedam est, propter quod post receptionem formae secundum simplicem intelligentiam,
ut intellectus materialis factus est speculativus et in habitu, aliqua actio ei competere potest.
Commentator enim Averroes, loquendo de unitate et incorruptibilitate intellectus, distinguit
triplicem intellectum: materialem quem ponit pure passivum; et agentem quem ponit pure
activum, quod ponit ingenerabiles et incorruptibiles; et speculativum medium inter illos,
quem ponit generabilem et corruptibilem, sicut et phantasiam qua formatur.” Badius, vol. 2,
henry of ghent 267
it is midway because through its information it is brought to a true act of its

own, the act of saying (dicendi) through which a mental word is formed. This
act of saying is of another type than the prior act of simple understanding.
For Henry, there are two types of intellectual acts both in God and in us. The
first type is the act of the intellect as a cognitive power; this is to understand
(intelligere) or to have an intellection, and the act of simple understanding is
an example of this type of intellectual act. The second type of intellectual act
is the act of the intellect as nature; this is to form or to say a word (formare
vel dicere verbum).93 The primary difference between these two types of
intellectual acts is that the former, as we have seen, is an operation, i.e. it
is not productive of a term, whereas the latter is a production, and the term
that it produces is a mental word.
For Henry, several psychological elements are necessary in order to
produce a mental word. First and foremost, Henry requires the possible
intellect to be informed by the simple knowledge or understanding. As
mentioned above, Henry identifies the possible intellect so informed with
the intellectual memory. Augustine, of course, had maintained that the
memory contained the knowledge from which the word was born. Thus,
in order to make his theory conform to the Augustinian framework, Henry
claims that the word is born from the simple knowledge informing the
possible intellect.94 As soon as the possible intellect is informed by the
f. 131rL = Friedman 1997b, p. 596229–236. For the Averroan roots of this distinction, see Marrone
1985, 83 n. 141, and further 82–85; Marrone 2001, vol. 2, 372–373. Note that Henry uses ‘specu-
lative intellect’ ambiguously, since he calls the possible intellect both speculative as opposed
to practical (i.e., the more usual medieval usage of the term) and speculative as opposed to
both agent and material (see also ibid.: “Et secundum quod intellectus distinguitur per spec-
ulativum et practicum; speculativus enim dicitur ut respicit verum absolute, practicus vero
ut respicit verum sub ratione boni operabilis et extensione ad operari illud. Similiter distinc-
tione famosa distinguitur speculativus in agentem et passibilem.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 129vD =
Friedman, 1997b, p. 59212–16).
93 On the two types of intellectual acts, see esp. nn. 102, 113 below.
94 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Unde in generatione talis verbi ipse intellectus
possibilis simplicis intelligentiae cum sua notitia simplici confusa generata in ipso per
speciem universalis phantasmatis et terminata in obiectum ut est confuse cognitum ab ipso;
in quo per discursum rationis et irradiationem lucis intellectus agentis secundum actum
praesentantur partes illius cogniti ut quiditativa eius ratio, tenet rationem memoriae et
parentis.” Badius, vol. 2, ff. 130vK–31rL = Friedman 1997b, p. 595184–188.
Ibid.: “Circa intellectum incomplexorum in negotiando circa incomplexa confuse intel-
lecta ad explicandum in eis distinctionem partium essentialium, et hoc in quantum habet
rationem intellectus sive intelligentiae simpliciter; in quantum vero operatur circa se ipsum
ut est intellectus sive intelligentia simpliciter, habet rationem memoriae, de notitia quae est
in memoria, generando notitiam declarativam. Ut ipsa fiat intelligentia declarativa secun-
dum iam expositum modum. In ista enim generatione non solum est agens notitia quae est
268 chapter four
simple knowledge and becomes speculative, it has its first true act. At this
point, the possible intellect “converts itself over itself and over its act of
understanding and over the object understood.”95 The possible intellect has
as its first true act a conversion, a “turning back” on itself, on the simple
knowledge that informs it, and on the act of simple understanding by which
it was informed. This conversion, then, includes a reflexive act, and one of
the most important features of a mental word for Henry is precisely this
reflexivity: part and parcel of grasping something through a word is the
intellect’s knowing that it knows what it knows.96
But the reflexivity associated with a mental word is not all that sets it
apart from the simple knowledge. As part of the formation of the word
Henry claims that there is also an investigation of the content of the sim-
ple knowledge. In the course of this investigation, the possible intellect
as speculative makes use of the light of the agent intellect to analyze the
simple knowledge.97 Henry often describes the simple knowledge as “con-
fused”, by which he means literally that it is “fused together”, i.e. indistinct
or undifferentiated. Confused simple knowledge is indeed knowledge (noti-
tia)—we have intellectual acquaintance on a universal level—but we have
not grasped distinctly the essence of the thing understood, its quod quid est.
Although the quod quid est is potentially intelligible in the simple confused
knowledge,98 in order to actually understand the quod quid est, the possi-
in memoria aut obiectum eius, sed etiam ipse intellectus ut est in se habens dictam notitiam
sub ratione memoriae, dicente Augustino, IX De trinitate …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 131rL = Friedman
1997b, p. 597246–253.
Ibid.: “Est autem advertendum quod in cognoscendo aliud a se, non dicitur cognitum cum
mente esse parens notitiae suae, scilicet declarativae in se ipsa ut est obiectum quoddam,
sed in ipsa notitia simplici qua ab ipso informata est ipsa memoria.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 131vM =
Friedman 1997b, p. 597267–269.
95 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Quoad simplicium intelligentiam, quia propter
separationem suam a materia cum est informatus simplici intelligentia, statim convertit
se ipsum super se et super actum intelligendi et super obiectum intellectum, ut ipsum
informethuri notitia declarativa quae dicitur verbum.” Badius, vol. 2, 130vI = Friedman 1997b,
p. 595144–147.
96 See the text in n. 100 below.
97 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Et est ista conversio prima actio sua, sed quia ab
eo ad quod convertitur non statim informatur notitia declarativa, ulterius agit in negotiando
circa intelligibilia intellecta simplici notitia, ut intellecta fiant notitia declarativa. Licet enim
agat in nobis intellectus agens circa intelligibilia intelligenda confuse in phantasmatibus
secundum praedictum modum, non tamen solus agit circa intelligibilia intelligenda distincte
in intellectibus confusis.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 130vI = Friedman 1997b, p. 595147–152. See also n. 105
below.
98 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Et quamquam verbum (ut dictum est) comprehen-
dat actum notitiae quae est actualis intellectio in intelligentia et ipsum obiectum, propriis-
henry of ghent 269
ble intellect must make use of the light of the agent intellect to analyze the
confused knowledge available to it through a process of discursive reason-
ing, dividing and composing the confused knowledge, in accordance with
the rules laid down by Aristotle in book II of the Posterior Analytics, until
the definition of what was understood is reached.99 Henry calls this process
of discursive reasoning “cogitation” or even, echoing Augustine, “revolving
cogitation” (volubilis cogitatio), and the natural stopping point of this rea-
soning process comes when we have thoroughly investigated the quod quid
est of what is grasped and have arrived at the specific difference, that is
to say, when we have arrived at scientific knowledge.100 As Marrone has
sime tamen ratio verbi consistit in ipsa notitia discretiva, ut comprehendit ipsum intellectum
sive cognoscentem cum sua notitia eidem inhaerente de ipso intelligente ut de potentiali
educto quod erat notitia, et verbum in potentia, et formabile, non formatum cum volubiliter
inquaerendo iactabatur. Sed tunc primo erat verbum in actu, cum ab ea notitia quae est in
memoria informabatur. ‘Informabatur’ dico non tam ex eo quod ipsa notitia memoriae noti-
tiam impressit intelligentiae quam ex eo quod ipsa notitia intelligentiae terminatur et sistit
in eodem obiecto, per quod notitia memoriae illam impressit.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 131vM = Fried-
man 1997b, p. 597279–287. Cf. n. 105 below.
99 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. VI, q. 1: “Est etiam ista notitia de re quasi quaedam confusa
et indefinita manifestatio eius, quia per ipsam cognoscitur res tamquam quiddam defini-
bile confusum et indistinctum … Ad formandum autem in se de re ipsum quod quid est,
expressum per definitionem, se habet intellectus noster active discurrendo via artis inves-
tigandi quod quid est, dividendo et componendo generi alterum dividentium, quousque
habeatur convertibile cum definito, iuxta regulas artis definitivae traditae in II Posteriorum.
Cum autem post simplicem notitiam rei iam dictam intellectus est in suo discursu iam dicto,
actus eius dicitur cogitatio et est verbum, sed adhuc informe, non iam formatum, sed forma-
bile quoddam. Cum vero, ultima differentia adiuncta, concipit definitivam rationem, illa est
verbum in intellectu de re iam perfectum et formatum per actum eius secundum, ad quem
se habet pure active, et in eo quiescit discursus intellectus, quia omnino perfectus est quoad
notitiam simplicis intelligentiae de intelligibili incomplexo, cognoscendo ipsum tamquam
quid distinctum et determinatum.” Ed. G.A. Wilson (Opera Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987), pp. 1488–
156. See also the text in n. 100 below, and, for some context, Marrone 2001, vol. 2, 368–371.
100 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 9: “… quando scilicet illud quod dixi volubili cog-
itatione iactari ad id quod scimus pervenit, atque inde formatur eius omnimodam simil-
itudinem capiens. Formatur autem de eo quod scimus intelligentia simplici, tanquam de
memoria. Cum enim noster intellectus per diversas differentias sub genere discurrit inves-
tigando de re scita simplici notitia quod quid est eius, quam investigationem appellat vol-
ubilem cogitationem, investigatione eius completa habita ultima differentia quod appellat
Augustinus pervenire ad id quod scimus, tunc primo interiora rei scitae deteguntur, ut per
hoc tunc primo dicamur oculo intuitus pertingere sive pervenire ad ipsum scibile in vere
ipsum sciendo, quod cum attingimus statim scibile ut scitum est actualiter et simplici noti-
tia existens in memoria generat de se quasi subito collectis omnibus differentiis cum genere
quod quid est, quod in ipsa intelligentia est quaedam notitia distinctiva et discretiva seu
declarativa, quam ‘verbum’ appellamus, in quo res ipsa existens ut explicata per partes,
movet ipsam intelligentiam ut intelligat cogitando, non cogitatione volubili, qualis erat ante
verbi formationem, sed stabili qua res perfecte cognoscitur et scitur. Quia notitia secunda
270 chapter four
noted, Henry has drawn discursive reasoning—in Aristotelian psychology

typically associated with complex propositional or syllogistic knowledge—
into the intellectual cognition of incomplex things.101 When a human being
was grasped by the act of simple understanding, it was grasped confusedly
as “human being”; after the entire cogitative process of discursive reasoning
and the formation of a word, the intellect has analyzed human being into
“rational animal”. Only after the intellect grasps the quod quid est of what
was understood in the act of simple understanding, does it form a word sim-
ilar to, but declarative and manifestive (declarativum et manifestativum) of
what was understood in the first act.102 What is more, this word is formed
by intellectual emanation: it is given being through the act of saying.103 In
quae est in verbo, non solum scit et intelligit rem, sed sic scit et intelligit eam ut sciat se scire
et intelligere eam intellectu intelligendi secundo reflexo super actum intelligendi sive sciendi
primum. Et sic actus qui est dicere sive generare non est idem quod intelligere sive primum
sive secundum, quia dicere est vera actio procedens a memoria, sive a notitia simplici exis-
tente in ipsa sive de re obiecta ut est in memoria, et sic est actio sive operatio quaedam
intellectus informati simplici notitia, quae in se ipso format notitiam declarativam similli-
mam illi simplici notitiae. Intelligere autem est passio in intelligentia a re intelligibili in se
ut ex se est confusum quid, vel in suo quod quid est ut est distincta per partes in notitia sim-
plici.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 104rC–vC. For one example of the use of the term volubilis in Augustine,
see the Introduction, above, at n. 59.
101 Marrone 1985, 81–82. It should be noted that this was a fairly common move by Henry’s
time, e.g. Aquinas anticipated it in his De veritate I, 1; see also, for Aquinas’ anticipation of this
move, the Introduction, above, n. 76 (Intellectus enim sua actione format rei definitionem …),
and cf. Panaccio 1992, 129, and Panaccio 1999, 185–186. As Jan A. Aertsen made me aware, it
was through their reading of the beginning of Avicenna’s Metaphysics and its description of
the intellect’s resolutio to primary concepts that medieval thinkers got the idea of subjecting
concepts to discursive reasoning.
102 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 40, q. 7: “… intellectus quilibet, sive creatus sive increatus,
dupliciter potest considerari: uno modo ut est potentia cognitiva; alio modo ut est natura
quaedam. Et multum refert. Ut enim est potentia cognitiva, est velut virtus passiva, per
se ordinata ad actum primum simplicis intelligentiae in percipiendo scilicet obiectum
intelligibile, et hoc non nisi ut mota sit, vel quasi mota, ab obiecto intelligibili. Ut vero est
natura quaedam est velut virtus activa, quae, quasi praesupposito et substrato actu simplicis
intelligentiae qui est actus eius primus, elicit eius actum secundum qui vocatur ‘dicere’,
quo format in se conceptum simillimum illi quod est intellectum in simplici intellectu,
qui est declarativus et manifestativus illius et ideo verbum illius dicitur.” Ed. G.A. Wilson
(Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994), pp. 2864–28715. For more detail on these two aspects of the
intellect’s activity, see also n. 100 above.
103 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 40, q. 7: “Est igitur sciendum quod ad rationem et natu-
ram verbi mentalis perfecti, tam in creatura quam in creatore, sex condiciones requiruntur,
quibus coniunctis et ordinatis, potest verbum describi hoc modo. Verbum est terminus actio-
nis intellectualis, emanans ab intelligente secundum actum, manens in ipso intelligente,
alterius declarativum … Dicitur autem ‘emanans’ ad differentiam rei intellectae simplici
intelligentia, quae est terminus actionis intellectualis, quae est intelligere simplicis intelli-
gentiae, sed non est emanans et procedens in esse per illam actionem, sed solummodo est
henry of ghent 271
creatures, then, a word comes to be and passes away, ceasing to exist as soon
as its intellectual emanation is discontinued.104
What incites the possible intellect to undertake this investigation is the
will, “delighted by the thing cognized, but imperfectly delighted, because it
was imperfectly cognized”. The will, then, is a final factor in the formation
of a verbum mentis.
The intellect, moved by the command of the will and by its own active
force, strengthens and sharpens its gaze on the thing cognized, and it strives
to penetrate to the interior of the thing confusedly cognized, so that it
knows clearly what it is in the parts making up its essence … Now a word
comes about at that point when, through the possible intellect’s discursive
reasoning, which has already been mentioned, along with the agent intellect’s
illumination and irradiation over what was confusedly cognized, the essential
parts … are made actually intelligible, and are proposed distinctly to the
possible intellect … that is the way we have true and perfect knowledge of
an incomplex thing, by finding as it were in the memory what was hidden in
it and then there is formed something having a complete likeness to it.105
Thus, the word for Henry is “knowledge from knowledge, declarative from
simple”.106 The confused, simple knowledge was revolving (volubile), unsta-
ble knowledge: it was unsatisfactory to the will, which can love perfectly
terminus in quem terminatur huiusmodi actio et sistit.” Ed. G.A. Wilson (Opera Omnia, 28;
Leuven, 1994), p. 28579–94. See also ibid., p. 28852–54.
This is Henry’s “definition” of a word, and it was well known in the Middle Ages. See, e.g.,
William of Ware, I Sent., d. 27, q. 3 (ed. Schmaus 1930a, p. 259*10–12); William Ockham, Ord.,
d. 27, q. 2 (OTh IV, p. 19715–17); Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent., redactio posterior, d. 27 (BAV
Borgh. 311, f. 106ra); see also Walter Chatton, Ch. 11, below, at n. 123. The list could be expanded.
104 See at and around n. 123 below.
105 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “… voluntas, delectata in cognito, sed imperfecte,
sicut imperfecte est cognitum, flagrat per intellectum nosse quod restat, ut perfecte cog-
nitum, perfecte delectet .... Propter quod suo imperio movet intellectum ut iam confuse
cognito, ut ad amplius cognoscendum intendat. Intellectus autem, motus imperio volun-
tatis et propria vi activa eius, aciem suam in rem cognitam fortius et acrius figit, et penetrare
nititur interiora ipsius cogniti confuse, ut in partibus integrantibus eius essentiam ipsum
limpide quid sit cognoscat .... Et tunc fit verbum quando, per discursum iam dictum, pos-
sibilis intellectus et cum hoc illustratione et irradiatione agentis super confuse cognitum
partes eius essentiales, quae in illo in quantum huiusmodi erant in potentia intelligibilia,
facta sunt actu intelligibilia, et distincte proponuntur intellectui possibili, ut acies cognitio-
nis ad illa directa perveniat per hoc ad illud quod scimus; hoc est quo veram et perfectam
habemus de incomplexo notitiam, quasi inveniendo in memoria quod in ea latebat atque
inde formatur eius omnimodam similitudinem capiens.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 130vI–K = Friedman
1997b, p. 595153–155,157–161,168–174.
106 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Cogitando enim quod invenimus hoc maxime
intelligere dicimus. Et per hunc modum gignitur notitia de notitia, declarativa de simplici.”
Badius, vol. 2, f. 131rK = Friedman 1997b, p. 596195–196. See also n. 116 below, for a similar turn
of phrase (declarativa notitia de notitia simplici).
272 chapter four
only what it knows perfectly. Therefore, the will, desiring to know com-
pletely the thing confusedly grasped in the act of simple understanding,
incites the intellect’s cogitative process. The word, on the other hand, is sta-
ble knowledge: the will rests in the word. And the source of this stability
is that we have both full knowledge of the thing in question and reflexive
knowledge of our full knowledge: we both know fully what we know, and
we know that we know it.107 The confused knowledge of the act of simple
understanding—the knowledge in the intellectual memory—is primitive,
then, in two separate ways for Henry. First, because it is the required pre-
condition for the saying of the word; the confused knowledge is prior to and
acts as a substrate for the act of saying.108 Second, the confused knowledge is
primitive because it is clarified by the act of saying; through the formation
of the word we come to a deeper understanding of what we have already
understood in the act of simple understanding. And when it has been clar-
ified in this way, the will can rest content with the knowledge known in
the word. It is thus in order to mark a clear endpoint of discursive reason-
ing that Henry postulates that, after the word has been formed through the
act of saying, there takes place a second act of the intellect as a cognitive
power. Remember that Henry claimed there were two types of intellectual
acts: those like the act of simple intelligence, which is not productive of a
term and which Henry labelled an act of the intellect as a cognitive power,
and those like the formation of a word, which is an act of the intellect as
nature and productive of a term.109 Like the act of simple understanding, this
“cogitative” act that follows on the production of the Word is not productive
of a term: the word presented by the possible intellect to itself is the term,
just as the universal phantasm presented by the agent intellect to the pos-
sible was the term in the act of simple understanding. Thus, the cogitative
act by which the intellect knows in the word is the operation by which the
word informs the possible intellect. If we take into account what Henry said
about the first “act” of understanding, Henry’s description of the cogitative
act makes perfect sense: when the word is produced and informs the possi-
ble intellect, a second “act” occurs by the very fact of that information. This
is precisely parallel to his ideas on the act of simple understanding sketched
above.110 The saying of a mental word, then, is sandwiched midway between
107 See nn. 99, 100 above.

108 See n. 102 above.
109 See at and around nn. 90–93 above.
henry of ghent 273
two other acts of the intellect, and it is marked off from those other two acts
precisely because it is productive of a term: it is an act of the intellect as
nature.111
If we were to sum up the steps in Henry’s theory of intellectual cognition
with an example, it would go something like this. Upon sensory perception
of a human being—let us say Socrates—the sensible representations end up
in the imagination where a particular phantasm is stored. This phantasm
includes all of the aspects of materiality that are associated with Socrates
as an individual. Once the light of the agent intellect shines upon the
particular phantasm, however, it can be stripped of all of these aspects
of materiality and particularity, resulting in the universal phantasm or
representation (species universalis). These two phantasms are not really
(re) different; rather the universal phantasm is virtually contained in the
particular phantasm. The agent intellect presents the universal phantasm
to the possible intellect, and through this information or infusion of the
universal phantasm in the possible intellect comes the first intellectual act:
the act of simple understanding, an operation not productive of a term and
by which the possible intellect becomes intellectual memory. This simple
knowledge is “confused”—I know human being but not what a human
being is essentially—and the will, dissatisfied with this confused knowledge
incites the possible intellect to a genuine act of its own. Thus, the possible
intellect both reflects over its own act and uses the light of the agent intellect
to analyze the data contained in the act of simple understanding through a
“cogitative” process of discursive reasoning. When the data is fully analyzed
111 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 9: “Ex quo animadvertendum est quod duplex est
actus intelligendi in intellectu. Unus simplicis intelligentiae de re intelligibili ut secundum

se est obiecta ante verbi formationem, sed per ipsius rei obiectae actionem formatus ex quo
manet simplex notitia in memoria; et alter cogitativus post verbi formationem formatus de
re intelligibili ut est obiecta in ipso verbo. Cuius verbi formatio media est inter utrumque
actum intelligendi, quia unus omnino praecedit ipsius verbi formationem in nobis, alter
vero sequitur. Et sic actus dicendi quo formatur ipsum verbum medius est inter utrumque
actum intelligendi.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 104rC. Pasnau 1997, 309, draws attention to a passage from
Quodl. II, q. 6 in which Henry says “in omni actu intelligendi, quantumcumque modicus sit,
necesse est formare verbum” (ed. R. Wielockx; Opera Omnia, 6; Leuven, 1983; p. 3267–68); on
the basis of the evidence examined here, however, it seems clear that Henry abandoned this
view or at least heavily qualified it in his later work (and the passage from Henry’s Summa, a.
58, q. 2, that Pasnau [1997, 309 n. 10] refers to offers no evidence to the contrary, although see
the text from Quodl. VI, q. 1, reproduced in n. 99 above, where Henry does claim that the act
of cogitation [i.e., investigation] is a word [actus eius dicitur cogitatio et est verbum], although
even there Henry seems to hedge his bets by saying that the act of cogitation is a “formable”
word, not a formed one).
274 chapter four
and the essential definition of the thing grasped has been attained—in
this case “rational animal”—the possible intellect has an act of intellect as
nature, which is productive of a term: the mental word. Because the data has
been fully analyzed and because the intellect has reflexive knowledge of its
act, the will rests content in the word. But the possible intellect, presented
with the word as with a term, has a final cogitative act (not productive of a
term), by which it marks the end of the process of coming to full, reflexive
intellectual knowledge of human being.
In his theory of concepts, Henry, following in Thomas Aquinas’ foot-
steps, melded Augustine’s understanding of concept formation with an Aris-
totelian understanding of philosophical psychology and the mechanics of
cognition. He set the formation of Augustine’s mental word at the end-
point of an Aristotelian process of abstraction. Further, again following in
Aquinas’ footsteps, he has incorporated the Aristotelian idea of composition
and division, of logical analysis, into the very process of forming a men-
tal word. The investigation that Augustine says that the will incites is, on
Henry’s view, an investigation of the quod quid est of the thing grasped in
the simple knowledge. And the analysis itself—the cogitation—is not the
formation of a word, but is a necessary prerequisite for the formation of a
word.112 For all the marked Aristotelian elements in Henry’s ideas on con-
cept formation, however, his concept theory is thoroughly Augustinian in
inspiration. His overarching goal is to explain “notitia de notitia”, or how one
knowledge comes from another; how the will plays a role, so that the word is
“knowledge with love”; and how memory fits into the psychological frame-
work. All of these characteristics of concepts and concept formation come
from Augustine.
As we will see, much of Henry’s theory of mental words will be called
into question by John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol, e.g. the special role
he attributed to reflexivity in concept formation. One particular feature of
Henry’s concept theory that will disturb both these later thinkers is that
it does not seem to allow for imperfect words. In Henry’s theory, in the
process of forming a concept our mind has only two “settings”: confused
universal knowledge, and declarative universal knowledge. For Henry, there
does not seem to be any “in between” stage: the investigation of the quod
quid est is assumed to be complete when the word is formed, and hence
112 See nn. 99, 100 above. Note that Henry at least suggests in these passages that inves-
tigation, i.e. cogitation, and saying are distinct acts, but he never, so far as I can tell, clearly
describes the relationship between these two acts. This will be the object of major criticism
by Duns Scotus; see Ch. 6, below, at and around nn. 185–187.
henry of ghent 275
“imperfect” or “incomplete” mental words seem to be ruled out. Scotus in

particular will draw a detailed account of a dynamic interplay between the
two distinct processes of discursive reasoning and word formation, with
deeper investigation leading to progressively more perfect words.
Yet if both Scotus and Auriol will be critical of many aspects of Henry’s
philosophical psychology, nevertheless they will accept one major idea
from him: what was labeled above in the Introduction as the “strong” use
of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology. It was also mentioned
there that the strong use had two most important features. First, a tight link
is held to exist between the divine attributes and the divine emanations;
this we have certainly seen to be the case in Henry’s trinitarian theory.
But second, and more importantly here, a strong use takes as its point of
departure the fact that philosophical psychology is a precise description of
God’s trinitarian reality, and hence that psychological theory can answer
trinitarian questions. Henry, as we will see, takes pains to make precisely his
own theory of concepts and concept formation explain the features of the
Son’s intellectual generation; mutatis mutandis the same is true for the Holy
Spirit’s voluntary emanation. Scotus and Auriol (as well as many others in
the Franciscan trinitarian tradition especially from the period before 1320)
adopt this “strong” use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology.
How does Henry go about the task of using philosophical psychology in
trinitarian theology in a strong way? According to Henry, there are two types
of intellectual acts in God just as there are in human beings. There is the act
of the intellect as a cognitive power and there is the act of the intellect as
nature. The “first” intellectual act in God, the essential act of understanding
shared by all three persons, is, just like our first act of simple understanding,
an act of the intellect as a cognitive power. What the persons understand in
this act is the divine essence itself. Thus, the divine essence is understood
by the three persons in simple—but not confused—knowledge through this
essential act of understanding. The fact that this is an act of the intellect as
a cognitive power means that this first act is not productive of a term, it is
simply understanding the divine essence. It is what we have seen Henry call
an operation, and not a production.113
113 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 40, q. 6: “… intellectus divinus potest considerari ut cog-
nitiva potentia vel ut natura. Et primo modo eius actio est intelligere quae non est nisi
essentialis et simplicis notitiae; secundo vero modo eius actio est dicere quod non est nisi
actio notionalis, quod alia actio est quam sit intelligere secundum modum iam determi-
natum. Quemadmodum etiam alia actio in angelo et in nobis est intelligere simplici noti-
tia essentiam rei, et formare de ea quod quid est. Formare enim quod quid est, non est
276 chapter four
There is a relation between this essential act of understanding and the

notional act of saying the Word. On account of his primity, his having the
essence from no other, “after” the Father has shared in the essential act of
understanding the divine essence, his intellect becomes fecund, just as our
possible intellect becomes active upon its information by the simple under-
standing.114 As we have seen, for Henry, the simple knowledge acquired in
the human intellect’s first act is a substrate for the saying of the word;115 in
fact, there is a necessary order of reason between the act of simple under-
standing and the act of saying the word. Likewise in God: the essential act of
understanding the divine essence as it exists in the Father is the foundation
for the notional act of saying the Word.116 Henry even calls the essential act
of understanding in God a “quasi-substrate” for the act of saying the Word.117
intelligere, quamvis sit actus intellectus, quia in actu intelligendi intellectus se habet in
patiendo et obiectum formale in agendo, in formatione vero eius quod quid est principaliter
se habet in agendo. Formare enim quod quid est, non est obiective intelligere quod quid est,
sed facere id in quo perfecte intelligitur essentia cuius est quae imperfecte intelligebatur in
simplici notitia. Et consimiliter dicere, sive Verbum concipere aut formare, non est intelligere
in Deo, quamvis sit actus intellectus, sed dicere est agere Verbum, in quo Pater se ipsum et
suam essentiam ut in perfecta similitudine et imagine eius perfectissime intelligit, licet nulla
imperfectio intelligendi se vel suam essentiam fuit in eius simplici intellectu essentiali sim-
plicis notitiae, et hoc quod Deo non convenit definitiva ratio explicandi per verbum, sicut
convenit essentiis creaturarum.” Ed. G.A. Wilson (Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994), pp. 2793–
28022. See nn. 90, 102 above.
114 See above, nn. 58, 59, and below, n. 119. In what follows, temporal terms in scare quotes
denote logical, not temporal, order.

116 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 10: “Cognitum enim primo simplicem notitiam suam
imprimit nostro intellectui, repraesentando se illi ut pure passivo, et sub ratione qua est
intellectus. Intellectus autem sic perfectus simplici notitia per obiectum cognitum quod in
se continet expressive factus est fecundus et principium activum ut natura, in se ipsum ut
est intellectus tantum, et principium passivum ad formandum in se declarativam notitiam
de notitia simplici. Ut secundum hoc quando dicitur verbum formari per intellectum, et
quod intellectus sit in formatione verbi alicuius, hoc intelligitur de intellectu actu informato
simplici notitia. Per hoc enim est principium et natura, et necessario prior est ratio eius qua
est intellectus et passivus quam qua sic est natura et activus. Et ideo ordine rationis prius
habet esse ut est intellectus quam ut est natura, et fundatur actus notionalis quem agit ut est
natura, super actum essentialem quem patitur ut intellectus”. Badius, vol. 2, f. 105vL.
117 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 40, q. 6: “Intellectus autem ut natura in Deo est ipsa potentia
intellectiva sive divina intelligentia existens in actu intelligendi simplici notitia per obiectum
formale, ipsam scilicet divinam essentiam in quantum ulterius vi sua activa naturaliter
format in se conceptum simillimum ipsi divinae essentiae intellectae in simplici intelligentia.
Qui quidem conceptus Verbum est, declarativum et manifestativum eius quod intellectum
est in simplici intelligentia, et actus quo concipitur dicere est, cuius principium elicitivum
principale ipsa intellectiva potentia est, et obiectum per hoc quod quasi informat ipsam
potentiam ad actum intelligendi simplici notitiae qui necessario quasi substratus est actui
henry of ghent 277
This claim that the essential act of understanding is a necessary precondi-

tion for the Father’s saying of the word is a point on which Scotus will speak
against Henry.
This second divine intellectual act, the Father’s act of saying the Word, is,
as it is in creatures, an act of the intellect as nature.118 By claiming that this
productive act of saying is made by the intellect as a natural power, Henry
has strengthened his explicit identification of intellect and nature, which
opened the door to a strong identification of the Word with the Son. For just
as, for Henry, the act of the intellect as nature in human beings is character-
ized by being productive of a term, so the act of the intellect as nature in
the Father is characterized by being productive of a supposite. The paternal
intellect, then, “after” the essential act of understanding, takes on the pro-
ductive characteristic of nature and says the Word. This Word is a likeness
of what is contained in the simple knowledge, i.e. the divine essence itself.
Thus, the intellect in the Father generates the Word, and the Word is the
essence generated.119 The Word is for Henry, as it was for Augustine, identi-
cal to the simple knowledge, except that it has been intellectually emanated.
This explains how the Son is identical to the Father in every way except that
the Son is generated: they are both the essence, but one generates, whereas
the other is generated. They are, in other words, essentially identical, but
personally distinct on the basis of different emanational properties.
Moreover, the Word is not only the term of a notional act of saying,
declarative of the simple essential knowledge, but in being this, it is also
the perfection of the essential act of understanding.120 This is because,
dicendi. Pater enim intelligendo suam essentiam actu dicendi concipit Verbum simillimum
ei …” Ed. G.A. Wilson (Opera Omnia, 28; Leuven, 1994), pp. 27758–27869. Cf. in the main text
at n. 108 and in n. 102, above, for Henry’s use of the term ‘substrate’ to describe the confused
simple knowledge in human cognition. Williams (Scott M.) 2010 deals with this particular
aspect of Henry’s theory.
118 See above, nn. 102, 113, 116, and 117.
119 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 10: “Intellectus autem divinus ut specialiter est in
Patre perfectus per talem actum intelligendi suam essentiam, quem ipsa esse operatur in
ipso intellectu suo ut est quasi in potentia ad notitiam essentialem, secundum rationem
intelligendi, fecundus est naturali fecunditate ad producendum de se ipso sibi similem ad
quem est quasi in potentia, per hoc quod est in actu sub illa notitia essentiali. Intellectus
enim ut est quaedam notitia essentialis secundum actum est natura et principium activum
quo Pater de intellectu eodem ut est intellectus purus, et tantum intellectus, et de principio
passivo format notitiam quae est Verbum, quod secundum rem est eadem notitia cum illa
de qua formatur, differens solum ab illa in quantum processerit ab ea ut manifestativa et
declarativa illius …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 105vL. See nn. 116, 117 above.
120 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 59, q. 6: “Verbum divinum dupliciter potest considerari.
Uno modo ut est aliquid in se subsistens, et sic ut est Verbum solius Patris, et terminum
278 chapter four
“after” the emanation of the Word, all three persons understand in the
Word, in a second (and final) essential intellectual act that corresponds to
the human cogitative act of understanding in a mental word. The Word,
then, is that through which the essence is understood completely by all
three persons.121 We have already seen that this is the means by which
Henry extends his “strong” use of the psychological model to the distinction
between the Son and the Holy Spirit. The disparate relations that would
make Son and Holy Spirit distinct, even if the latter did not proceed from
the former, are founded on the fact that the Father must say the Word,
thereby perfecting the act of the intellect, “before” any act of the will can
take place and the Holy Spirit can proceed as Zeal.122 Thus, in Henry of
Ghent’s trinitarian theology, the Son is distinct from both the Father and
the Holy Spirit on account of his intellectual emanation. The psychological
model has been joined to an emanation account of personal distinction: the
persons are distinct because one person (who is unemanated) emanates
the other two, a second person is emanated by intellectual procession,
and a third by voluntary procession. The distinction between the persons,
then, is explained precisely by the application of the psychological model
to the Trinity. Henry is using philosophical psychology in a “strong” way,
dealing with trinitarian challenges by employing psychological theory. And
it should be noted that it is not a diffuse and generic form of philosophical
psychology that Henry uses in his trinitarian theology: it is recognizably
his own. He has gone out of his way to incorporate his own version of
philosophical psychology into his trinitarian theology.
Of course, human philosophical psychology does not carry over directly
to the divine. There are, according to Henry, at least two specific ways
in which there is no similarity between the human mental word and the
ipsius actus dicendi notionalis. Alio modo ut est perfectio intellectus essentialis Dei, et sic
ut est perfectio essentialis intellectus totius trinitatis …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 151rB. See also n. 59
above.
121 Giorgio Pini in a recent article (Pini 2003) has shown that Henry’s strict separation
of “saying” from “understanding” should be understood as a response to theories of the

divine Word like Aquinas’ (or the newly reinstated Giles of Rome’s). As we saw in Ch. 3, §1,
above, Aquinas in his later theory of the divine Word rejects any essential Word, maintaining
that ‘Word’ is a name applying only to the person of the Son; nevertheless the precise
relationship between essential understanding and generation of the person of the Word was
left somewhat ambiguous, and indeed no real reason was offered as to why the Father in
understanding the essence produces the Word, while the Son and the Holy Spirit do not.
The motivation for Henry’s theory of the Word is in part precisely to correct these perceived
failings in Aquinas’ doctrine. See on all this, Pini’s fine article.
henry of ghent 279
divine. First, says Henry, as Augustine himself had noted, there is no discur-
sive reasoning in God, nor is there any temporality in the formation of the
Word. The divine Word, unlike the human, does not come to be and pass
away: it is eternal and immutable. Second, God’s simple knowledge is not at
all confused, and thus the Word is not declarative in the same way in God
and in human beings. In God, there can be no clarification of the original
knowledge.123 The necessity for Henry to posit this last dissimilarity is, as we
will see, the basis for particularly strong criticism by Scotus of Henry’s use
of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology.124
But while it is true that aspects of Henry’s use of philosophical psychology
in his trinitarian system were criticized, the most significant fact about it
is that in its essentials it was widely adopted. Augustine’s theory of the
divine Word serves a dual role in Henry’s trinitarian theology. First it serves
the role that Augustine designed it for: to clarify the relation between
the Father and the Son. The Father and the Son are identical essentially,
differing only on account of the Son’s generation, his receiving the divine
essence from the Father. Henry also, however, has used the Son’s intellectual
emanation as a Word to explain the distinction of the Son from both the
Father and the Holy Spirit. It is through intellectual emanation that the Son
holds the essence, this is his particular modus essendi, and what determines
that he is a person distinct from the other two. It is thus the distinction
between intellectual and voluntary emanation, and (more remotely) the
distinction between the divine intellect and will, that is the basis for the
distinction between the second and the third persons. This second use of
the psychological model, Augustine almost undoubtedly did not foresee,
123 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 2: “Solus autem Deus perfectam notitiam habet sui et
aliorum absque omni cognitione confusa praecedente natura vel duratione. Propter quod in
solo Deo est verbum perfectum non formabile prius natura vel duratione quam formatum.
Unde Augustinus, XV De trinitate, cap. 16, exponens illud I Ioannis, 4, similes ei erimus quia
videbimus eum sicuti est, dicit sic: ‘Tunc quidem verbum nostrum non erit falsum, quia non
mentiemur neque fallemur, tamen cum hoc fuerit formata erit creatura quae formabilis fuit,
ut nihil iam desit eius formae ad quam pervenire deberet, sed tamen coaequanda non erit illi
simplicitati, ubi non formabile aliquid vel reformatum est, sed forma neque informis neque
formata.’ De qua dicit cap. 15: ‘Quis non videat quanta sic sit dissimilitudo ab illo Dei Verbo
quod in forma Dei sic est, ut non antea fuerit formabile quam formatum, nec informe esse
potest.’ Unde in Deo non dicitur Verbum notitia declarativa, quia clarior et perfectior est
illa quae est memoriae de qua formatur, sicut contingit de verbo creaturae intellectualis,
sed quia tamen dicendo et modo declarativo sive manifestativo ex hoc procedit …” Badius,
vol. 2, f. 131vM = Friedman 1997b, p. 598307–319. See also n. 113 above. For one of Augustine’s
statements concerning the non-transient nature of the divine Word, see the Introduction,
above, at and around n. 59.
124 See Ch. 6, below, at and around n. 187.
280 chapter four
and it seems to constitute an interesting and innovative elucidation of the

trinitarian mystery. With it, Henry combines, on the one hand, the stress on
emanations that we have seen was typical of Franciscan trinitarian theology
with, on the other, the new developments on the issue of concepts and
concept formation so apparent in the works of Aquinas. This strong use of
philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology proved to be an attractive
option for Franciscans in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.
chapter five
LATE THIRTEENTH-CENTURY TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
By Christmas of 1281 or Easter of 1282 when he disputed his sixth series

of quodlibetal questions, Henry of Ghent had set out the main points of
his trinitarian theology. In particular, these points are that, on account
of the Father’s innascibility or primity, the essential attributes of intellect
and will exist in the Father as fecund sources of the emanations. The
distinction of the persons is founded on the essential attributes existing in
this way in the Father, and the persons are made distinct on account of the
“disparate relations”, their being emanations of the very same substance in
different ways, although the persons are only “properly” distinct because of
opposition of relations. The personal property or relation is “quasi-formal”
in each person, while the shared divine essence is “quasi-material”. Finally,
the Son is literally the Word generated by the paternal intellect, and the
Holy Spirit is Zeal spirated by the will common to the Father and the Son. In
addition to these tenets of his trinitarian thought, by 1282 Henry had settled
on a particular way of describing how a mind—human, angelic, or divine—
comes to form a concept or verbum mentis.
Between 1282 and the time that John Duns Scotus began to deliver his
lectures on the Sentences at Oxford (a little before 1300), Henry not only
developed his trinitarian theory in his Quodlibeta and Summa, but his views,
or views very like his, came in for both sharp criticism and relatively straight-
forward endorsement. This criticism and endorsement are significant for a
number of reasons, not only as testimony to Henry’s influence and to the fur-
ther development of rival traditions in trinitarian theology, Dominican and
Franciscan, but also because, when Scotus came to formulate his own trini-
tarian theology, he was in large measure preoccupied with Henry’s ideas
and with criticism of Henry’s ideas. In fact, as we will see, Scotus’ trinitarian
theology is deeply rooted in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition of the later
thirteenth century. Thus, in the present chapter, I have three general goals.
The first is to present evidence for the reception of Henry of Ghent’s ideas in
trinitarian theology. The second is to indicate some of the proximate roots of
John Duns Scotus’ trinitarian theology: concepts or terminology that would
turn up later in Scotus’ works. Finally, I want to show some of the general
tendencies of both the Franciscan trinitarian tradition (including Henry
282 chapter five
of Ghent), and the Dominican, in the period roughly 1280–1300. It should

be noted, however, that I do not attempt to give anything approaching an
exhaustive account of the period’s trinitarian thought, which would require
considerable editing of currently unpublished texts and dedicated volumes
of exposition.
1. Some “Dominican” Views:1

Giles of Rome, Godfrey of Fontaines, Bernard of Auvergne
In the last two decades of the thirteenth century, Dominican trinitarian

theology was well represented by a string of thinkers both inside and outside
the Dominican order. What these thinkers had in common was the appeal
to opposition of relations as the sole basis for the real distinction between
the persons. This strict reliance on the relation account concomitantly
entailed for these thinkers that the distinction between the emanations was
definitionally posterior to the arrangement of the persons to one another:
for them, generation is the emanation in which one person comes from
one person, and spiration is the emanation in which one comes from two.
On the basis of this view of the emanations, the Dominicans from the
period rejected or severely attenuated the literal Franciscan understanding
that generation is the emanation by way of divine nature (or intellect)
and spiration the emanation by way of divine will. They also assailed the
Franciscan positive reply to the counterfactual Filioque question, as well
as Henry of Ghent’s strong use of philosophical psychology. A deep and
thorough study of the Dominican material that survives from this period
would undoubtedly reveal many creative additions to and modifications
of the basic view that underlay the Dominican tradition as a whole: that
of Thomas Aquinas. For a study like that, a wide range of writings from
theologians like Bernard of Trilia (d. 1292), John of Paris (d. 1306), and
Thomas of Sutton (d. after 1315), would have to be taken into account. Here
my goal is much more modest: I merely want to give a flavor of Dominican
reaction to certain aspects of the Franciscan trinitarian theory as it had been
formulated by Henry of Ghent, thereby providing a point of comparison
with the development of the period’s Franciscan trinitarian tradition. To
this end, I have chosen to focus on three theologians who responded directly
to Henry and whose writings were used well into the fourteenth century:
1 See the Introduction, above, n. 41, for my use of ‘Dominican’ here.

late thirteenth-century trinitarian theology 283
the Augustinian Hermit Giles of Rome, the secular theologian Godfrey of

Fontaines, and the Dominican Bernard of Auvergne.
Giles of Rome. It should come as no surprise that an early reaction to
Henry’s ideas issued from the hand of his own chosen opponent, Giles of
Rome. In the very first quodlibetal disputation he held after his reinstate-
ment at the University of Paris in 1285, Giles took the opportunity to address
the question of whether the Holy Spirit would be distinct from the Son, if
the former did not proceed from the latter.2 Although Giles’ description of
his opponent’s position is not unmistakably Henry’s—it could just as well
be Gerard of Abbeville’s or one of the Franciscan authors discussed above
in Chapter Two3—, there is good reason to believe that it is in fact Henry
to whom he is replying, since Giles stresses that his opponent maintained
that emanation by way of intellect and emanation by way of nature are the
same.4 This view, as we have seen, played an important role in Henry of
Ghent’s trinitarian thought: Henry maintained that there was a merely ratio-
nal distinction between generation and “saying”, and thereby he brought
intellectual emanation and the verbum mentis into the very heart of his trini-
tarian theology. Moreover, this view was not nearly as prominent in the
trinitarian theology of Franciscan-leaning contemporaries of Henry, and it
is a view that allows us to distinguish his trinitarian theology from the early
Franciscan trinitarian tradition more generally. Thus, Giles seems to have
Henry in mind when he attacks the more general Franciscan position on
the issue.
2 Giles of Rome, Quodl. I, q. 6 (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur a Filio, si non
procederet ab eo?”; ed. 1646, pp. 13a–15a and ed. 1502, f. 5ra–b—I have followed the text found
in the 1646 edition). This Quodlibet was most probably debated at Paris in the first year after
Giles’ return, i.e. at either Advent 1285 or Easter 1286; on the dating, and for more on Giles
and his Quodlibeta more generally, see Pini 2006, esp. 240–244. On Giles’ discussion of this
issue in his Sent. commentary, see Ch. 3, above, at and around nn. 68–69.
3 Giles, Quodl. I, q. 6: “Respondeo: dicendum quod de hoc inter doctores sint diversae
sententiae. Volunt enim quidam quod, si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, adhuc
distingueretur ab eo. Dicunt enim isti quod non solum sit distinctio per relationes oppositas,
sed etiam per disparatas. Concedunt quidem quod, si non procederet ab eo, non haberet ad
eum relationem oppositam, haberet tamen disparatam, eo enim ipso quod Filius procedat
per modum naturae, Spiritus Sanctus per modum voluntatis, est alius modus procedendi
huius et illius. Et consequenter habent ibi esse relationes disparatae et poterit conservari
inter eos distinctio.” Ed. 1646, p. 13b; ed. 1502, f. 5rb.
4 Giles, Quodl. I, q. 6: “Quod vero obiciebatur in contrarium quod, si Spiritus Sanctus non
procederet a Filio, adhuc tamen Filius a Patre procederet ut natus, Spiritus Sanctus a Patre
ut datus; vel aliter unus procederet per modum voluntatis, alius vero per modum naturae vel
per modum intellectus (quod est idem) …” Ed. 1646, p. 14b; ed. 1502, f. 5rb. For Giles’ response
to this argument, see n. 8 below.
284 chapter five
Giles produces a response to the Franciscan tradition consistent with

the ideas on the Trinity to be found in his Sentences commentary. Relation
can bring about distinction in two ways: either according to its being (esse)
or according to its proper ratio or ratio quiditatis.5 Disparate relations,
e.g., likeness and equality or spiration and filiation, are not distinct by
the proper quiddity of relation, but by the being (esse) of relation. That
is to say, disparate relations are not distinct because they are towards
one another through opposition (which, according to Giles, is necessary
in order for there to be distinction according to relation’s ratio quiditatis),
but instead because their foundations differ: the disparate relations likeness
and equality differ because of their differing foundations, some particular
quality, on the one hand, and some particular quantity, on the other. The
difference between disparate relations is a consequence of the different
beings (esse) the disparate relations have, and “the being of the relation
is the being of its foundation”.6 On Giles’ view, then, if the divine persons
differed according to disparate relations, and not opposed ones, either the
persons would differ with respect to their foundations (i.e., with respect to
something absolute)—and that would be an essential distinction—or there
would be no real distinction (distinctio realis) between them at all. In other
words, unless the Son and the Holy Spirit are related to one another by
opposed relations, and therefore unless the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Son, we must choose between Arius or Sabellius. Only distinction according
to the ratio of relation, i.e. direct opposition, could possibly explain how
the persons are really distinct from one another while being essentially
identical.7 Although Giles does not bring it up explicitly, nevertheless we see
5 Giles, Quodl. I, q. 6: “Sciendum ergo relationem dupliciter facere distinctionem, scilicet
secundum esse et secundum rationem quiditatis, aliter tamen et aliter. Quia secundum
rationem quiditatis distinguit solum ab opposito, nam cum ratio quiditatis ipsius relationis
sit ad aliud se habere, secundum hunc modum non distinguitur relatio nisi ab eo ad quod
refertur, ut paternitas secundum rationem quiditatis distinguit Patrem solum a Filio ad quem
refertur. Sed secundum esse hpaternitasi distinguit Patrem non solum a Filio, sed ab omni
non-Patre, eo enim quod paternitas sit in hoc supposito et non in alio distinguitur Pater ab
omni eo in quo paternitas non habet esse.” Ed. 1646, p. 14a; ed. 1502, f. 5ra.
6 Giles, Quodl. I, q. 6: “… cum esse relationis sit esse fundamenti, non distinguatur relatio
ratione esse nisi sit ibi distinctum fundamentum ut distinguere simile a non-simili per hoc
quod in eo sit similitudo quae non est in non-simili, huti si illa similitudo fundetur in albedine
nihil sit aliud quam distinguere album a non-albo, per hoc quod in albo habeat esse albedo
quae non est in non-albo.” Ed. 1646, p. 14a; ed. 1502, f. 5rb. The text continues in n. 7 below.
7 Giles, Quodl. I, q. 6 (continued from n. 6 above): “Ergo numquam relatio distinguit
secundum esse nisi fiat distinctio secundum fundamentum vel secundum aliquid absolu-
tum, immo tametsi hoc dubium esset in creaturis, in divinis tamen dubium esse nullo modo
here (as we saw [Ch. 3, §3, above] in his Sentences commentary treatment),
the stress he places upon the real “order” between distinct things being a
necessary condition for the reality of a divine relation. For him, the reality
of a personal relation in God cannot come from the fact that the relations
have different foundations or beings (esse), since that would land us in the
Arian heresy; rather, the reality of a divine relation arises from the quiddity
of that relation, its having an order to another through opposition. In short:
for Giles only true opposition of relations can account in a theologically
satisfactory way for the distinction between the persons, and hence the Holy
Spirit must come from the Son for them to be distinct from each other.
The Franciscan tradition, and Henry of Ghent in particular, tried to get
around this type of criticism of their position by positing the anterior real
distinction between the emanations as the ultimate basis for the real dis-
tinction between the persons, the real distinction between the emanations
itself founded upon the distinction between divine nature and will. The
argument that Giles’ uses in reply has its roots in Aquinas: since nature
(or intellect) and will differ from each other only rationally (secundum
rationem), the emanations or disparate relations founded upon them would
differ only rationally, and for that reason would not suffice for grounding
the real distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit.8 This argument is
a mainstay of the Dominican refutation of one of the key elements of Fran-
ciscan trinitarian theology, repeated over and over again in numerous texts
by many different authors, as will be seen throughout the present book.
With this in mind, Giles’ reliance on the argument seems typical of his entire
treatment in this quodlibetal question: he is not really challenging himself
to reply in innovative ways to the Franciscan arguments, but rather appears
to be on the whole content merely to repeat what he had already said before.
debet. Nam cum in divinis, ut communiter ponitur, relatio maneat quantum ad suum genus
solum secundum rationem quiditatis, secundum vero esse transeat in divinam substantiam,
non possumus in divinis relationem distinguere secundum esse, nisi sit ibi distinctio secun-
dum substantiam vel secundum aliquid absolutum … In divinis non erit distinctio per rela-
tiones secundum esse, sed solum secundum rationem quiditatis; sed cum relatio secundum
quiditatem non distinguat nisi ab opposito … Inter divinas ergo personas non est distinc-
tio secundum esse, sed solum secundum referri vel secundum respectum. Numquam ergo
distinguitur una persona ab alia nisi habeat respectum ad ipsam, vel nisi referatur ad illam,
et quia si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, non referetur ad ipsum, tolleretur quoque
realis distinctio inter ipsos.” Ed. 1646, p. 14a–b; ed. 1502, f. 5rb.
8 Giles, Quodl. I, q. 6: “Igitur cum natura et voluntas sive intellectus et voluntas, in
quibus tales relationes hdisparataei fundantur, non plus differant in divinis quam secundum
rationem, Filius et Spiritus Sanctus solum secundum rationem differrent.” Ed. 1646, pp. 14b–
15a; ed. 1502, f. 5rb.
286 chapter five
Godfrey of Fontaines. A more robust set of criticisms of Henry of

Ghent’s ideas issued from the hand of the Parisian secular theologian God-
frey of Fontaines, and here we see those who inherited Aquinas’ general
view of the Trinity unmistakably offering a direct refutation of Henry. Two
questions of Godfrey’s seventh Quodlibet, probably disputed during either
the academic year 1290–1291 or 1291–1292, give us a good idea of his views
on the Trinity, and his reaction to Henry’s views on the Trinity.9 When it
comes to a discussion of what is constitutive of the divine persons, Godfrey
gives a fairly standard relation account of personal distinction, including a
description of the dual nature of the divine relations.10 Godfrey does stress
the role of the communication of the divine essence in diverse ways being
the ground for the distinction between the persons, yet seems to under-
stand this in a relational rather than an emanational way, especially when
he claims that the difference in the modes of having the essence are in no
way “preceding, according to the way we understand things, the relations
by which the supposites, distinct according to the modes of having [the
essence], refer to each other”.11 Emanational language aside, it appears that,
9 On Godfrey’s trinitarian thought, see Stohr 1926; more generally on Godfrey’s life and
work, see Wippel 1981 and Wippel 2001. I take the date for Godfrey’s Quodl. VII from Wippel
2006, 288 n. 1.
10 Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl. VII, q. 2: “Oportet ergo ponere personas realiter distinc-
tas per relativa, quae distinctionem realem important inter se propter oppositionem quam
habent et tamen distinctionem in essentia non faciunt, quia sunt realiter idem cum ipsa.
Oppositae autem sunt inter se secundum rationem et relationem originis, quia important
hoc quod est esse ab alio vel a quo alius; idem autem sunt cum essentia et nullam faciunt
compositionem cum ea; et per consequens nec plures res vel personae eis constitutae, quia
in ipsa substantia immediate fundantur ipsae relationes et non mediante aliquo accidente.
Unde et substantiales relationes, non accidentales dicuntur, et sic, sicut essentia secundum
se non dividitur, ita etiam nec per huiusmodi relationes ipsa dividitur. Tamen ut compara-
ntur ad ipsam sunt id ipsum quod ipsa, propter quod cum illarum pluralitate stat unitas
essentiae, propter oppositionem tamen quam habent ut ad invicem comparantur realiter
distinguuntur, nec una potest de alia praedicari, nec simul possunt esse in eodem quod per
ipsas referatur, quia idem reali relatione ad se ipsum referri non potest.” Les philosophes
Belges, vol. 3, p. 282. Godfrey gives an even more explicit description of the dual nature of
the divine properties as a part of an argument he recites in favor of the persons being consti-
tuted by absolutes, a position that Godfrey will reject (ed. cit., p. 281).
11 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 2 (italicized text translated): “Ad distinctionem personarum ergo
in unitate essentiae indistinctae oportet supponere essentiam omnino indivisibilem in plura

supposita, communicabilem per diversos modos habendi illam, ut personae intelligantur dis-
tinctae ex hoc quod unam et eandem essentiam habent secundum alium et alium modum
habendi. Unde alietas personarum consistit in alietate modi habendi essentiam, ita tamen
quod illa alietas modi habendi non est nisi alietas secundum relationes originis et non est
aliquid pertinens ad essentiam vel essentialia, vel praecedens secundum rationem intelligendi
ipsas relationes quibus supposita secundum hos modos habendi distincta ad invicem referan-
for Godfrey, the fact that the persons are distinct is attributable to their
being directly related to one another, and, as we will see, this opposition
of relations is in fact the centerpiece of Godfrey’s explanation for personal
distinction. Finally, when Godfrey discusses the way in which the divine
essence and the personal property relate in the constitution of the person,
he maintains—interestingly enough, in agreement with Henry of Ghent—
that “in the constitution of a person the common essence must be included
as quasi-material and the relative property as quasi-formal, just as genus and
difference concur in the constitution of a species.”12 According to Godfrey,
in its quasi-formal role, the property performs two functions ordered by the
intellect as follows: first, to constitute the person in being and make that
person distinct; next, to relate the constituted person to the other persons
in the Trinity.13
In the fourth question of the same Quodlibet, Godfrey addresses at length
“whether the Holy Spirit could be said to proceed by way of the will, if
he did not proceed from the Son but from the Father alone?” This treat-
ment of the counterfactual Filioque question is in effect a critique of Henry
of Ghent’s Summa, a. 54, q. 6.14 Godfrey’s position, simply put, is in every
tur; sed iste alius et alius modus habendi essentiam divinam in alia vel ab alia et alia persona
non est nisi ipsa proprietas relativa per quam et constituitur persona in esse personali et ab
alia distinguitur et ad aliam refertur relatione originis. Isti enim modi habendi essentiam div-
inam distincti non sunt nisi hi: habere eam, scilicet non ab alio, sed sicut a quo alius, cum non
habeat eam sibi communicatam, hoc autem est eam habere sub vi vel cum vi activa, quae est
vis generandi et spirandi active; et habere eam ab alio vel ut ab alio sibi communicatam, hoc
est eam habere sub vi vel cum vi quasi passiva quae est vis generandi vel spirandi quasi pas-
sive; sicut etiam esse talem, ut a quo alius, non est nisi esse generative vel spirative; et esse
talem, ut qui ab alio, non est nisi esse generatum vel spiratum. Constat ergo quod diversi
modi habendi, quos includunt personae cum essentia, non sunt nisi ipsae proprietates rela-
tivae personarum constitutivae et distinctivae.” Ed. cit., p. 283.
12 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 2: “Unde in constitutione personae oportet includi essentiam
communem quasi materiale et proprietatem relativam quasi formale, sicut in constitutione

speciei concurrit genus et differentia.” Ed. cit., p. 284. Cf. Henry of Ghent, Ch. 4, above, at and
around n. 12.
13 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 2: “Verumtamen sciendum est quod ipsa relatio vel proprietas
relativa secundum rationem intelligendi prius habet sub ratione proprietatis sive formae
ipsam personam constituere ut suppositum quoddam distinctum quam ad aliud suppositum
distinctum secundum formam et rationem relationis referre.” Ed. cit., p. 284.
14 “Utrum Spiritus Sanctus possit dici procedere per modum voluntatis, si non procederet
a Filio sed a solo Patre” (ed. cit., pp. 287–299). In the apparatus fontium to the edition of
Godfrey’s question (ed. cit., pp. 288, 294), De Wulf and Hoffmans refer to Henry’s Quodl. V,
q. 9 (written around 1280), as the text that Godfrey is attacking. Although Henry deals with
the topic there, Godfrey is in fact giving nearly verbatim quotations from Summa, a. 54, q. 6
(written around 1284, see ed. Badius, vol. 2, f. 92r–v). See the notes below for specific examples
of the verbatim quoting.
288 chapter five
way the opposite of Henry’s, and later thinkers recognized this: Godfrey’s
view as expressed in this Quodlibet was frequently cited as a text repre-
sentative of the Dominican trinitarian view on the issue.15 Godfrey gives a
fair summary of Henry’s position, recognizing in it what I have been calling
“nested distinctions”—that there are two reasons for the Holy Spirit’s dis-
tinction from the Son, disparate relations (ways of emanating) and opposed
relations—,16 and noting that the root of the whole position is that the dis-
tinction of the emanations precedes and accounts for the distinction of the
persons, because of the disparate relations between them.17 He also gives a
slightly altered version of Henry’s reductio ad absurdum argument for this
position: that if the generative force and spirative force in the Father were
not distinct, then the fact that both the Son and the Holy Spirit emanate
from the Father would entail that they were the same person.18 Godfrey’s
reply is a flat denial of the foundations of Henry’s position: for Godfrey the
distinction between the persons is the only real distinction in God:
15 This was especially true in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Some
examples in which Godfrey’s name is mentioned or his texts are quoted nearly verbatim
are as follows: William of Ware, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 108315–320); John
Duns Scotus (see Ch. 6, below, at and around n. 132); Henry of Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (ed.
Friedman 2001, p. 117149–160); Robert Graystanes, I Sent., d. 11, a. 3 (ed. Schabel and Friedman
2003, p. 60250–258); Richard FitzRalph, I Sent., q. 4, a. 1 (ed. Schabel and Friedman 2003, p. 7684).
16 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Ut sic ponendo, sicut veritas fidei ponit, quod Spiritus Sanctus
procedat a Filio et a Patre, quasi dupliciter distinguitur a Filio: et relatione opposita in

quantum spiratus ab eo, et relatione disparata in quantum spiratus a Patre, ipse vero Filius
genitus ab eodem.” Ed. cit., p. 289.
17 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Quod autem possit esse distinctio realis in divinis per dis-
paratas relationes et non solum per oppositas hoc videtur, quia ex distinctione reali per-
sonarum quae emanant non est sumenda distinctio emanationum, sed potius e converso;
ergo processiones per modum intellectus et voluntatis sive generatio et spiratio inter se dis-
tinctionem habent secundum se et non ex distinctione personarum. Immo ad distinctionem
emanationum etiam videtur reducenda distinctio personarum emanantium. Inter emana-
tiones tamen non est quaerenda distinctio secundum relationes originis oppositas, quia una
ab alia non procedit, nec una dicitur ad aliam relative. Oportet ergo ponere differentiam inter
emanationes secundum relationes disparatas.” Ed. cit., p. 289 (text continues in n. 18 below).
Cf. this to Henry’s views, Ch. 4, above, n. 27.
18 Godfrey’s summary, continuing the text from n. 17 above: “Et ista hi.e., distinctio
secundum relationes disparatasi etiam reducitur ad distinctionem principiorum emanandi,

quae sunt vis spirativa et generativa; si enim vis spirativa, ut Patris est, non differret a vi
generativa eius, tunc nec generatio a spiratione differret; quare, cum Filius vim spirativam
non habeat nisi a Patre et non magis distinctam vi generativa Patris quam secundum
quod eam habet Pater, similiter emanatio spirationis ut est a Filio non distingueretur
ab emanatione generationis, nec per consequens ipse Filius a Spiritu Sancto, quod est
inconveniens.” Ed. cit., pp. 289–290. For Henry’s use of the argument, see Ch. 4, above, at
n. 25, and for Godfrey’s reply, see at n. 28 below.
The principal real distinction in the divine is the distinction between the
persons or between the related supposites, in whom there is distinction
because one person is from whom another [person comes] and the other
person is the one [who comes] from the first. The emanations and relative
properties, however, that are understood and are included in these: ‘who
[comes] from another’ and ‘from whom one [comes]’, are the same really as
the distinct persons. So it should not be thought that there are many really
distinct things ordered in such a way that the first real distinction is between
the sources of the emanations, and from this distinction of the sources is
another further real distinction of the emanations, and from this distinction
of the emanations there is a third real distinction of the persons emanating;
rather all these indicate only one principal real distinction, namely that of the
persons.19
Godfrey’s remarks point clearly to a potentially problematic point in Henry’s

trinitarian theology, and more generally in the Franciscan trinitarian tradi-
tion: for Henry and the Franciscans, the emanations differ “really”, thereby
forming the ground for the “real” distinction between the persons.20 For
Godfrey, the only real distinction is that between the persons. This claim
should not draw our attention away from the main issue, however, since
in any case both Godfrey and Henry think that the persons are constituted
from essence and property as quasi-matter and quasi-form, respectively.
It is only Godfrey’s near identification of person and relative property—
reminiscent of Thomas Aquinas, who claimed that person and relation dif-
fered secundum modum significandi—that allows him to claim that the dis-
tinction of the persons is the ultimate distinction in God, and this claim
is echoed also in Henry’s own trinitarian theology, where the emanations
“are”, in a sense, the persons they (together with the essence) constitute.21
19 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Principalis enim distinctio realis in divinis est distinctio
personarum sive suppositorum relatorum in quibus est distinctio, quia una persona est a qua
alia et altera est quae est ab alia; emanationes vero et proprietates relativae quae intelliguntur
et includuntur in hoc quod dicitur qui ab alio et a quo alius, sunt id ipsum realiter quod
ipsae personae distinctae; unde non est intelligendum quod ista sint quaedam plura realiter
distincta et sic ordinata quod distinctio prima realis sit inter principia emanationum, et ex
huiusmodi distinctione principiorum sit ulterius distinctio alia realis emanationum, et ex
huiusmodi distinctione emanationum sit tertia distinctio realis personarum emanantium;
sed haec omnia non dicunt nisi unam realem distinctionem principalem, scilicet ipsarum
personarum.” Ed. cit., p. 296.
20 In his Quodl. VII, q. 4, Godfrey points out this potential problem when describing
Henry’s view: “… processiones et procedentes secundum illos (ed.: illas) hscil., Henricumi ab
invicem differre realiter.” Ed. cit., p. 288. See for Franciscan suggestion of the reality of the
difference (they are usually careful to use the term ‘difference’ and not ‘distinction’) between
the emanations, e.g., John Pecham, Ch. 2, above, at n. 70, and Henry of Ghent, Ch. 4, at n. 58.
21 For Henry, see Ch. 4, above, at n. 58.
290 chapter five
The real difference between the two secular masters is the way that they
think about the relative properties: Henry regards them as emanational,
bringing about distinction on account of the different ways of emanating;
Godfrey regards them as relational, bringing about distinction on account
of opposition.
This is not to say that the disagreement between Godfrey and Henry is
reduced to bare assertion. Godfrey has arguments for his position. Henry, as
well as Eustace of Arras, John Pecham, and Roger Marston, had claimed that
disparate relations sufficed for the distinction between the emanations and
hence between the persons, and in fact the distinction of the opposed rela-
tions was reduced to—i.e., depended on—that of the disparate relations.22
Godfrey could not disagree more: for him without opposition there would
be no disparation. To show this, Godfrey relies on an argument that bears
great resemblance to one we have just seen from Giles of Rome: disparate
relations only differ because of their differing foundations, therefore in God
opposed relations bring about all distinction. And Godfrey specifies that, in
God, this means that the disparate relations differ only on account of the
existence there of differing supposites, the supposites differing on account
of opposition of relations.23 Thus, if the Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit,
either these two persons would be only one person, or they would be distinct
as two really distinct things differing by their foundations. Clearly, neither
option is acceptable, and therefore the counterfactual hypothesis must be
incorrect.24 Godfrey’s fleshes out this position by making use of a distinction
22 For Eustace, see Ch. 2, § 3, above; for Pecham, Ch. 2, at and around nn. 54–57; for
Marston, Ch. 2, nn. 160, 175; for Henry, Ch. 4, n. 27.

23 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Cum in divinis … possit esse oppositio secundum originem
et distinctionem suppositorum, in ea possunt fundari plures relationes secundum opposi-

tionem ad invicem distinctae. Non oportet enim quod distinctio talium per se sumatur ex dis-
tinctione fundamenti, quia ratione suae oppositionis secundum se distinctionem important
sive ab invicem distinguuntur. Sed, cum relationes disparatae secundum se oppositionem
non habeant ad invicem, oportet quod distinctionem habeant vel ex diversitate fundamen-
torum, ut patet de simili et aequali in creaturis, vel ex distinctione suppositorum, ut patet de
duabus filiationibus in duobus filiis respectu unius paternitatis patris, ut etiam videbitur de
generatione et spiratione. Uno ergo existente fundamento, per se non possunt multiplicari
relationes disparatae; si autem cum hoc sit unum suppositum, nullo modo multiplicabun-
tur.” Ed. cit., pp. 290–291. For Giles, see nn. 6–7 above.
24 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Sed non obstantibus istis, videtur potius dicendum quod, si
Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, ipse non procederet a Patre per modum voluntatis
qui posset importare modum procedendi realiter distinctum a modo procedendi quo Filius
procedit per modum intellectus a Patre; sed processio per modum intellectus et processio per
modum voluntatis non differrent nisi secundum rationem; et secundum hoc etiam Filius et
Spiritus Sanctus non distinguerentur ab invicem realiter ut duae personae, sed essent una
between two ways in which relations can be really (realiter) distinct in

God: opposed relations are really distinct per se, while disparate relations
are really distinct ex consequenti. Thus, in Godfrey’s view there is per se
distinction of the Father from the Son, and of both the Father and the Son
from the Holy Spirit because of opposed relations; all the disparate relations
in God—e.g., active generation and active spiration in the Father—are
really distinct ex consequenti, that is to say, only on the basis of the prior real
distinction between the opposed relations and the persons.25 Thus, Godfrey
quite simply reverses Henry: whereas in Henry’s trinitarian theology, there
would be no opposed relations without disparate ones, for Godfrey there
could be no disparate ones without prior opposition. Godfrey sums this up
in an interesting, if somewhat unclear, passage:
The Father’s spirating, which is per se distinct from the Holy Spirit’s being
spirated, is compatible [i.e., coexists in a single supposite] with the Son’s
being generated; and also the Son’s spirating, which per se is distinct from
the Holy Spirit’s being spirated, is compatible [i.e., coexists in a single sup-
posite] with the Father’s generating; and generating and being generated are
per se opposed and distinct. This is the reason why spirating is distinct ex
consequenti according to disparation from generating and being generated,
nevertheless presupposing the real per se distinction according to the oppo-
sition of the Father’s and Son’s spirating to the Holy Spirit’s being spirated.26
persona distincta realiter a Patre; inter se autem non essent plures vel distinctae nisi tantum
secundum rationem; et sic tolleretur trinitas personarum, quia non essent nisi duae personae
realiter ab invicem distinctae.” Ed. cit., p. 290. See also n. 23 above, for the possibility that the
Son and the Holy Spirit would differ by their foundations.
25 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Per se ergo est distinctio personarum—et Filii a Patre a
quo procedit, et Spiritus Sancti a Filio et Patre a quibus procedit; et per se differt generatio
activa sive relatio Patris ad Filium a generatione passiva sive a relatione Filii ad Patrem, et
etiam spiratio activa Patris et Filii a spiratione passiva Spiritus Sancti; et ex consequenti
est realis distinctio secundum disparationem spirationis activae a generatione activa in
Patre et a generatione passiva in Filio, in quantum scilicet propter oppositionem relationum
praedictarum et distinctionem dictorum suppositorum per dictas relationes ipsa communis
spiratio activa Patris et Filii quae per se opponitur spirationi passivae Spiritus Sancti et sic
per se ab illa distinguitur, nec cum ea stare potest, est in personis per oppositas relationes
distinctas ut in Patre et Filio; et sic, quia stat cum generare et cum generari, quae non stant
simul, quia per se distinguuntur et opponuntur, ideo ipsa spiratio activa non est generatio
activa nec generatio passiva, sed realiter secundum disparationem distinguitur ab utraque.”
Ed. cit., p. 291. Note that the fact that two really ex consequenti distinct disparate relations can
exist in one and the same divine supposite (in this case the Father) indicates how “weak” real
ex consequenti distinction actually is (cf. also n. 118 below).
26 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Unde quia spirare Patris, quod per se distinguitur a spirari
Spiritus Sancti, stat cum generari Filii, et etiam quia spirare Filii, quod per se distinguitur a
spirari Spiritus Sancti, stat cum generare Patris, et generare et generari per se opponuntur et
distinguuntur, ideo spirare a generare et generari ex consequenti secundum disparationem
292 chapter five
For Godfrey, the Franciscan trinitarian tradition was correct to say that
the disparate relations, being spirated and being generated, are really (reali-
ter) distinct. Where the Franciscans went wrong, according to Godfrey, was
in making this real distinction the most basic one in God’s trinitarian real-
ity. In fact, says Godfrey, the real distinction between the disparate relations
is a consequence of the more basic real distinction between the opposed
relations. The opposed relations are per se (or basically) really distinct, the
real distinction of the disparate relations is a result or a consequence of the
real distinction between the opposed relations (it is ex consequenti). In the
passage above (at n. 26), Godfrey gives a type of rule to determine when and
why disparate relations are really ex consequenti distinct in God, and the rule
can be generalized as follows: a relation x is really distinct ex consequenti
(i.e., by disparate relations) from relation y, if and only if y coexists in one
and the same divine person with the relation opposed to x (where x and the
relation opposed to x are really per se distinct from one another). Thus, the
Father’s active generation and active spiration, for instance, are disparate
relations really distinct ex consequenti, and this is because active spiration
coexists in the person of the Son with passive generation, i.e. the relation
opposed to active generation. Further, passive generation and passive spira-
tion are really distinct from one another ex consequenti only because passive
generation coexists in the person of the Son with active spiration, the rela-
tion opposed to passive spiration. Godfrey’s method of determining how the
disparate relations are distinct from one another had a good deal of histor-
ical significance, being attacked by authors in the Franciscan tradition and
being developed by authors in the Dominican.27 But within the confines of
Godfrey’s trinitarian thought, the significance of this particular view is that
it clearly shows that the disparate relations are only really distinct because
the opposed relations are really distinct, and further that personal distinc-
tion is only brought about by opposed and never by disparate relations.
In fact, Godfrey gives his reply to Henry’s reductio ad absurdum argument
on the basis of this distinction between per se real distinction according to
distinguitur, praesupposita tamen distinctione reali per se et secundum oppositionem eius

quod est spirare Patris et Filii ad spirari Spiritus Sancti.” Ed. cit., p. 291.
27 For responses from the Franciscan tradition, see the passages from William of Ware,
John Duns Scotus, Henry of Harclay, and Robert Graystanes referred to in n. 15 above.
James of Metz and Durand of St. Pourçain are examples of Dominicans with views that are
reminiscent of Godfrey’s; see, e.g., Ch. 7, below, at n. 49 (for Durand); Decker 1967, 362–363
(on Godfrey’s view and James of Metz), 366 (Godfrey’s influence on William Peter of Godino),
and 378–379 (Durand, although Decker is not convinced that either Godfrey or James was an
influence on Durand); Iribarren 2005, 127–128.
opposition of relations and ex consequenti real distinction according to dis-

paration. According to Godfrey, Henry’s argument fails because it assumes
that the most basic trinitarian distinction in God is the distinction between
the disparate relations, when in fact the distinction of disparation is con-
tingent upon the distinction of opposition. Thus, in Godfrey’s eyes, Henry’s
argument shows merely that the spirative power and generative power in
the Father are not per se really distinct, and this for Godfrey is true; what
Henry did not realize, however, is that the spirative and generative powers
in the Father are really distinct ex consequenti and according to disparation
on account of the per se distinction of the supposites, this per se distinction
itself underwritten by opposition of relations of origin.28
Thus, Godfrey has elaborated a trinitarian theology in which the Holy
Spirit is only distinct from the Son if the former proceeds from the latter, and
further in which the disparate relations, i.e. the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s
respective ways of emanating—per modum intellectus or naturae, and per
modum voluntatis—are also only distinct on account of the anterior per se
real distinction according to opposition.29 In fact, if the Holy Spirit did not
proceed from the Son, both their emanations and they themselves would
be distinct only rationally (secundum rationem), which, Godfrey tells us,
means that the Son would still exist as the Son, but he would be distinct
solely from the Father, presumably because the Holy Spirit would not exist.
Opposition of relations, then, makes the persons distinct, and from this real
distinction arises the distinction of the emanations. Hence Godfrey holds
what John Pecham or Roger Marston would call an “appropriational” or
metaphorical conception of the emanations: nature (or intellect) and will as
such have nothing to do with the emanations except as a sort of numerical
28 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Cum arguitur postea quod si vis spirativa, ut Patris est, non
differret a vi generativa eius, spiratio non differret a generatione et cetera, dicendum quod,
licet vis spirativa per se et secundum oppositionem non differat a vi generativa Patris nec
etiam a vi generativa Filii, tamen quasi ex consequenti et secundum disparationem differt
ab utraque, ut dictum est, propter oppositionem relationum et suppositorum in quibus vel
cum quibus sunt.” Ed. cit. p. 297. For Godfrey’s presentation of Henry’s argument, see n. 18
above.
29 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Ex praedictis patet quod, considerando illud a quo sumi-
tur formalis ratio distinctionis personarum divinarum secundum rationem relationum dis-
tinguentium et habitudinem earum ad invicem, non potest poni quod Spiritus Sanctus pro-
cedat processione realiter distincta a processione Filii, quae dicitur per modum naturae, si
non procedat a Filio. Et, quia modus secundum quem dicitur Spiritus Sanctus procedere
dicitur per modum voluntatis, patet quod Spiritus Sanctus non procederet per modum vol-
untatis, qui realiter a modo procedendi Filii distingueretur, si non procederet a Filio.” Ed. cit.,
p. 293.
294 chapter five
resemblance, emanation by way of nature being when one person comes

from one person, emanation by way of will being when one comes from
two.30 Godfrey’s conclusion to his treatment of the counterfactual Filioque
question, then, is that:
… whoever posits that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, and
nevertheless that he proceeds by way of the will, so that the mode of pro-
ceeding by way of the will is really distinct from the way the Son proceeds
from the Father by way of the intellect, and that on this basis the Holy Spirit
really (realiter) and as a supposite is made distinct from the Son—[whoever
so posits,] implies a double contradiction: namely that the Son is and is not
distinct from the Holy Spirit and that the said processions do and do not really
(realiter) differ.31
30 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Sed si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, licet Filius
nihilominus haberet in se suam proprietatem personalem per quam habet distinctionem
personalem ab omni alia persona, tamen non distingueretur personaliter nisi a Patre nec
referretur etiam nisi ad Patrem … si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio non posset
poni diversitas realis inter ipsum et Filium, nec etiam diversitas realis inter processiones
per modum naturae et voluntatis inveniretur, sed esset diversitas hic et ibi solum secun-
dum rationem. Nam, ut dictum est, secundum hoc deberet poni quod eo modo, scilicet
secundum rationem intelligendi, quo esset distinguere per modum procedendi secundum
voluntatem et secundum intellectum et ipsum Spiritum Sanctum a Filio, esset ponendum
Spiritum Sanctum procedere a Filio ut procedentem a procedente et processionem aliquo
modo ex processione, modo etiam non distinguuntur istae processiones realiter quia una sit
per modum immunitatis a coactione vel per modum liberi arbitrii vel terminata ad extra
et alia non, sed quia una est per modum simplicis emanationis nulla alia praesupposita
et nullo alio producto supposito ex quo vel ex qua aliquo modo habeat esse. Talis enim
est modum procedendi naturaliter; et talis modus etiam procedendi est secundum intel-
lectum. Processio enim quae est a naturali agente non supponit aliam processionem nec
alium habentem esse secundum praecedentem productionem nisi per accidens in quantum
unum naturale agens ab alio dependet. Sed hoc non pertinet ad rationem naturae in quan-
tum natura est. Alia vero est per modum cuiusdam consequentis emanationis ad aliquam
praecedentem quam et praesupponit et per quam aliquo modo habet esse. Talis est enim
modus procedendi secundum voluntatem; non enim voluntas in aliquid tendit nisi praeex-
istente productione intellectus aliquid concipientis. Unde illa processio per modum naturae
intelligitur in divinis quae nullam aliam praesupponit; illa vero per modum voluntatis quae
ex praesupposita processione principium sumit; et sic oportet processionem aliquo modo
ex processione esse et procedentem ex procedente; hoc autem facit realem distinctionem
in divinis, ut dictum est.” Ed. cit., p. 298. See also ed. cit., pp. 288 and 290, for much the
same point. For “appropriational”, see Ch. 2, above, at and around nn. 69 (Pecham) and 174
(Marston).
31 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Ergo, qui ponit quod Spiritus Sanctus non procedat a Filio et
tamen procedat per modum voluntatis, sic quod modus procedendi per modum voluntatis
realiter distinguatur a modo procedendi Filii a Patre per modum intellectus, et quod ex
hoc Spiritus Sanctus a Filio realiter et secundum suppositum distinguatur, implicat duplicia
contradictoria: scilicet quod Filius distinguatur et non distinguatur a Spiritu Sancto, et quod
dictae processiones realiter differant et non differant.” Ed. cit., p. 294.
For Godfrey, the fact that the two persons would not be distinct is con-
tained in the very antecedent of the conditional: ‘if the Holy Spirit did not
proceed from the Son’. And if these two persons are not distinct, then their
processions are also not distinct, because the processions are only distinct
on the basis of the arrangement of the “already” constituted persons to one
another. The real distinction of the disparate relations follows ex conse-
quenti from the real distinction of the opposed relations. For Godfrey, as
for Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome, opposed relations are constitutive
of the persons in pairs; emanation or mode of origin is at least definitionally
or logically posterior to this more fundamental distinction. This is precisely
what the Franciscans will call a metaphorical understanding of the emana-
tions.32
This conclusion is related to Godfrey’s reply to Henry’s positio impossibilis
argument, of which Godfrey gives a lengthy paraphrase.33 Godfrey rejects
Henry’s argument that the Son’s not spirating the Holy Spirit involves mere
impossibility and not incompossibility. Henry had argued that, since the
Son’s active spiration is a property quasi-incidental to the Son, i.e. a property
that comes to the Son “after” he has already been constituted as a person
through generation, it is not an “essential” property, and hence can with no
contradiction be set aside in order to investigate certain “doctrinal limits”;
in this way, according to Henry, active spiration resembled less human
beings’ essential property of rationality and more the human ability to
laugh, which is an inseparable accident. Henry went on to argue that, given
the counterfactual, the Son and the Holy Spirit would be distinct from
one another on the basis of each their own perfect emanation from the
Father. Godfrey’s rejection of Henry’s reasoning is based on a significant
nuancing of what we have seen to be the typical later-medieval claim,
used also by Henry, that active spiration is a property quasi-incidental to
32 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Nam, qui ponit Spiritum Sanctum non procedere a Filio, ponit
eum non distingui ab ipso realiter, et ex consequenti etiam ponit processiones Filii et Spiritus
Sancti a Patre non differre ab invicem realiter propter praedicta. Cum ex hoc distinguantur
quod unus procedat per modum voluntatis et alter per modum intellectus, quod est unum
procedere ab alio, ut declaratum est, in quantum autem ponit dictas processiones realiter
differre, ponit quod termini etiam realiter differant, et sic quod Filius et Spiritus Sanctus ab
invicem realiter distinguuntur.” Ed. cit., p. 294.
33 For discussion of Henry’s position, see Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 26–32. For
Godfrey’s paraphrase of Henry’s discussion, see Quodl. VII, q. 4 (ed. cit., pp. 294–295) and cp.
this with the text from Henry quoted in Ch. 4, above, n. 32. Godfrey at points gives Henry’s
words verbatim, e.g.: “Repugnans autem posito quod est extra essentiam et significatum
suum semper in falsis positionibus est negandum, secundum artem obligatoriam habitam
in VIII Topicorum.” Ed. cit., p. 295 (compare this to the end of Henry’s text).
296 chapter five
the Son. Godfrey concedes that “active spiration does not belong to the
nature and essence of the person of the Son without qualification” (spirare
active non sit de ratione et essentia personae Filii simpliciter), that is to
say, he concedes that active spiration is in some sense quasi-incidental to
the Son, and outside of his truly “essential” characteristics, characteristics
indispensable to the Son’s personal constitution. Godfrey’s reason for this
concession is that active spiration does not distinguish the Son per se from
the Father (generation does that). This is, of course, the basis for Godfrey’s
claiming that, even if the Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit, the Son
would be distinct from the Father: on the basis of filiation alone the Son
would still have enough of his personality to be the Son. Nevertheless,
Godfrey goes on to claim that with respect to per se distinction from the
Holy Spirit, active spiration does indeed belong to the Son’s essence, since
it is relatively opposed to the Holy Spirit’s passive spiration, and passive
spiration must belong to the “essence” of the Holy Spirit inasmuch as
it makes the Holy Spirit per se distinct from the Son (and the Father).34
Thus, to preserve the symmetry of per se distinction-making properties
in the Son and the Holy Spirit, since passive spiration is “essential” to
Holy Spirit, the active spiration opposite to (and per se distinct from) it is
“essential” to the Son. With this, Godfrey is making the strongest thirteenth-
century statement I have seen that active spiration is a genuinely “essential”
characteristic of the Son, a characteristic without which the Son would
not be the Son, much as a human being would not be a human being
without the essential characteristic of rationality. Godfrey does not quite
go this far, since he still tempers his claim for active spiration being a
property “essential” to the Son, and the weight of his discussion of the
counterfactual question appears to be on whether the Holy Spirit would still
exist if he did not proceed from the Son, with the Son’s continued existence
going unchallenged. Nevertheless in answer to Henry’s positio impossibilis
34 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Sed hoc non valet; quia, licet spirare active non sit de ratione
et essentia personae Filii simpliciter, quia scilicet ipsam non constituit nec per se distinguit
a Patre, tamen ad hoc quod per se distinguatur a Spiritu Sancto et ad hoc quod per se etiam
ad ipsum referatur, est de eius essentia, sicut spirari passive a Filio est de ratione et essentia
Spiritus Sancti in quantum est persona distincta a Filio et ad ipsum relata; prout etiam spirare
active in Patre, licet non sit de ratione personae Patris simpliciter, ut scilicet eius in esse
personali constitutiva et distinctiva, tamen ad hoc quod per se a Spiritu Sancto distinguatur
et referatur per se ad ipsum est de eius essentia. Proprietas enim constitutiva Patris est prima
realis relatio, qua scilicet per se et primo respicit primam personam; et ideo etiam illa est per
se distinctiva eius a prima persona procedente. Ita etiam est de persona secunda respectu
primae.” Ed. cit., p. 295.
argument, Godfrey claims explicitly that positing the Son not to spirate the
Holy Spirit while nevertheless maintaining that they are distinct from one
another is not, as Henry maintained, an impossible positio but rather a type
of incompossible positio. Although it does not directly—per se—involve
contradictories at once, nevertheless it does involve incompossibles on
account of what follows from the original counterfactual assumption, and
hence it indirectly involves contradictories.35 In other words, Godfrey would
say to Henry that even quasi-incidental properties are so indispensable to a
person’s constitution that counterfactually assuming the person not to have
the quasi-incidental property and simultaneously assuming the person to
remain that person is tantamount, as we also saw in the quotation above
(at n. 31), to assuming contradictories to be true at once—not in a per se
way, he hastens to tell us, but as a type of consequence (n. 35 above). This is
just to say that, although this is not incompossibility in the strongest sense,
it is nevertheless a form of incompossibility. In this way, Godfrey attempts
to undermine Henry of Ghent’s positio impossibilis argument.
In this last aspect of his theory, we see that Godfrey is approaching
an explicit recognition that a fundamental element of the counterfactual
Filioque question is the status of filiation as constitutive of the Son: is
filiation sufficient on its own account to constitute the Son as the Son?
For Henry, filiation (or generation) is both necessary and (counterfactually)
sufficient to constitute the Son as a person distinct from the other two; for
Godfrey, filiation is necessary but, in at least a certain sense, not sufficient,
since the Son must spirate the Holy Spirit in order to be distinct from him.
This facet of the matter will become the central issue for John Duns Scotus,
and will be a point of contention between John Duns Scotus, on the one
hand, and Peter Auriol and William Ockham, on the other. More generally
we can say about Godfrey that he gives both terminological and conceptual
refinements to the basic Thomist/Dominican trinitarian positions, and that
his view would receive attention from medieval theologians coming after
him for exactly this reason.
35 Godfrey, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “… licet spirare vel producere Spiritum non sit de ratione Filii
simpliciter et secundum se, sed etiam nec est de ratione Patris, immo est quid consequens ad
perfectionem utriusque et sic ponendo quod Pater vel Filius non spirent Spiritum Sanctum
et tamen ab invicem distinguantur ut duae personae divinae, non ponuntur incompossibilia
per se … tamen ponere quod Pater et Filius non producunt Spiritum Sanctum et tamen
ab eo realiter distinguuntur est ponere incompossibilia. Qui ergo ponit Spiritum Sanctum
non procedere vel non spirari a Filio ponit aliquid repugnans per se ei quod est distingui
a Filio. Igitur qui ponit cum hoc expresse quod Spiritus Sanctus distinguatur a Filio, ponit
contradictoria.” Ed. cit., pp. 295–296.
298 chapter five
Bernard of Auvergne. We should look at one scholar who actually

belonged to the Dominican order: Bernard of Auvergne. We know basically
nothing about Bernard’s life, but sometime roughly in the first fifteen years
of the fourteenth century he wrote from a Thomistic point of view a series of
rebuttals (or reprobationes) to quodlibetal questions from important non-
Dominican scholars. What makes Bernard an obvious choice for consider-
ation in the present chapter is the fact that one of his rebuttals was aimed
at Henry of Ghent’s Quodlibeta, and included in this rebuttal are critiques
of Henry’s Quodlibet V, q. 9 and Quodlibet VI, q. 1, which deal, respectively,
with the counterfactual question of the distinction of the Holy Spirit from
the Son and with the strong use of the psychological model.36 These issues
are related to one another, and Bernard’s replies to Henry show with great
clarity the gap between Franciscan trinitarian theology, as represented by
Henry, and Dominican trinitarian theology, as represented by Bernard.
Would the Holy Spirit still be distinct from the Son, if the former did
not come from the latter? Bernard’s reply is uncompromising: “if the Holy
Spirit were not to proceed from the Son, between them there would be
no relation properly opposed but rather only disparate, and this does not
bring about personal distinction. Hence, if he were not to proceed from the
Son, such that between them there would be a relation properly opposed,
then he would not be distinct from him.”37 Disparate relations do not suffice
for bringing about the real distinction between the persons, only opposed
relations can do this. Thus, for Bernard, the Father and Son are constituted
in personal being as an opposed pair by paternity and filiation, and the Holy
Spirit is constituted “afterwards” in opposition to the two of them.38
Henry, of course, had proposed that the persons are distinct on account
of the emanations, but Bernard will have none of that. In fact, Bernard states
particularly clearly that the distinction between the emanations is posterior
36 On Bernard, his life and works, see Friedman 2007a, 411–418, and the literature cited
there. Editions of Bernard’s reprobationes of these two quodlibetal questions of Henry’s can
be found in Friedman 2007a, pp. 481–488.
37 Bernard, Reprobatio (Quodl. V, q. 9): “… si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, non
esset inter eos relatio proprie opposita, sed solum disparata, quae non facit distinctionem
personalem. Ergo si non procederet a Filio, ita quod inter eos esset relatio opposita proprie,
non distingueretur ab eo.” Ed. Friedman 2007a, p. 482 §13.
38 Bernard, Reprobatio (Quodl. V, q. 9): “… paternitate constituitur Pater in esse personali
et distinguitur directe a Filio et ex consequenti a Spiritu Sancto, in quantum processio Spir-

itus Sancti necessario praesupponit generationem Filii .... Spiritus Sanctus per spirationem
passivam et non per aliquid aliud distinguitur a Patre et Filio, et Pater et Filius per spira-
tionem activam a Spiritu Sancto …” Ed. Friedman 2007a, pp. 483–484 §§18–19.
to the distinction between the persons, claiming that “the emanations do

not make the persons distinct, but vice versa”, and, even more remarkably,
“the distinction of the Son and the Holy Spirit is the cause of the distinction
of the emanations, and not vice versa.”39 This type of scheme marginalizes
about as much as possible the emanations as a factor in trinitarian theology.
Of course, Bernard has an argument as to why the emanations cannot bring
about distinction in the divine. The emanations can be considered in three
different ways, according to Bernard. First, they can be thought about in
terms of their relation to their sources, intellect and will; but, reverting to the
argument found in Thomas’ own work, Bernard maintains that in that case
the emanations, like the divine intellect and will themselves, differ merely
rationally. They can also be thought about with reference to their terms, i.e.
the emanating persons, “and in this way the emanations are made distinct
more through the emanating persons than the persons [are made distinct]
through the emanations.” Finally, the emanations can be thought about in
their own right, and in this way, according to Bernard, it is not possible
that they differ really (realiter), “because nothing differs really (realiter)
in the divine except through opposition of relations.”40 This is the point
of departure of Bernard’s view: real distinction in God comes about only
due to opposition of relations of origin. Call them emanations or call them
disparate relations: they cannot bring about the real distinction between
the persons because in God only opposed relations can do that. There really
is no middle ground, then, between Bernard’s view and Henry’s view.
One interesting aspect of Bernard’s discussion is found in his reply to the
very foundation of Henry of Ghent’s strong use of philosophical psychology
in trinitarian theology, i.e. that the distinction between the divine attributes
39 Bernard, Reprobatio (Quodl. V, q. 9): “… per emanationes non distinguuntur personae
sed e converso .... distinctio Filii et Spiritus Sancti est causa distinctionis (ut dictum est) ema-
nationum, et non e converso.” Ed. Friedman 2007a, p. 483 §§14–15. Same point in Reprobatio
(Quodl. VI, q. 1): “emanationes magis distinguuntur per personas quam e converso.” Ed. Fried-
man 2007a, p. 487 § 16.
40 Bernard, Reprobatio (Quodl. V, q. 9): “Ad ea quae dicit quod personae non distinguuntur
nisi per emanationes, dicendum quod non, quia emanationes vel hai considerantur quantum
ad principia sua, quae sunt intellectus et voluntas, et sic non differrent nisi secundum
rationem, vel hbi secundum terminos, quae sunt personae emanantes, et sic emanationes
distinguuntur magis per personas emanantes [[et prius]]quam personae per emanationes.
Vel hci considerantur emanationes secundum se, et sic non possunt realiter differre, quia
nihil realiter differt in divinis nisi per oppositionem relationis.” Ed. Friedman 2007a, p. 483
§14 (I have here emended the text of the edition, removing the et prius). Compare this to the
somewhat different Dominican analysis of the emanations given by esp. Hervaeus Natalis,
Ch. 7, below, at and around nn. 23–27.
300 chapter five
is the basis for the distinction between the emanations and the persons.
As we just saw, Bernard takes a typically Dominican tack when rejecting
this view, by claiming that the merely rational distinction between the
divine attributes could not serve as the basis for the real distinction between
the persons. Bernard offers this argument in several spots in the reproba-
tiones to Henry’s Quodlibet V, q. 9, and Quodlibet VI, q. 1.41 But Bernard was
clearly concerned about the repercussions this would have for the use of
the psychological model. Thus, he affirms that there are two persons in the
divine who proceed on account of two acts, and specifically an intellectual
and a voluntary act, since these two acts are the only ones that are ter-
minated internally to the understanding and willing subject. And on this
basis Bernard even concludes, echoing Henry of Ghent and the Franciscan
tradition, that “there can only be two modes of proceeding in the divine,
only two persons who proceed and one who does not proceed, and in this
way only three [persons].”42 In this way, Bernard makes use of the psycho-
logical model and even of the “proof” that there are three and only three
persons—a proof that was rejected outright by several prominent Domini-
can theologians of the period, among them Hervaeus Natalis and Durand of
St. Pourçain (see Ch. 7, below). Nevertheless, Bernard makes very clear that
the intellectual act through which the Son proceeds and the voluntary act
through which the Holy Spirit proceeds are not the act of a distinct intel-
lect or will. “The diversity according to reason (secundum rationem) that
is posited in the attributes is not in God but in us, although the attributes
are in God, not as diverse but as one.” In good Thomist fashion, Bernard
affirms that God has all these perfections but without any distinction at
all (God has them unitissime). God is a knower and God is a willer, but
there is no distinction in him between intellect and will; we human beings
41 See, e.g., the text in n. 40 above, as well as Bernard, Reprobatio (Quodl. VI, q. 1) (ed.
Friedman 2007a, p. 487 § 16).

42 Bernard, Reprobatio (Quodl. VI, q. 1) (italicized text translated): “Si autem intelligat
quod in divinis sunt duae personae procedentes quia ibi sunt duo actus, scilicet intellectus et
voluntatis, secundum quos procedunt, verum est. Oportet enim quod personae divinae, ex
quo per fidem ponuntur plures, quod aliquae sint procedentes. Nec potest esse nisi una non-
procedens, quia si essent duae, non haberent quo distinguerentur: quia non per absoluta
(quia in illis omnino convenirent), nec per relationes originis (quia una non procederet
ab alia). Sunt ergo plures procedentes. Non autem possunt procedere nisi per actus qui
terminantur ad intra, quia personas divinas necesse est habere essentiam divinam. Non sunt
autem nisi duo actus qui terminentur ad intra, scilicet intellectus et voluntatis. Et ideo non
potest esse nisi duplex modus procedendi in divinis, nec nisi duae personae procedentes et una
non procedens, \et/ sic tantum tres.” Ed. Friedman 2007a, p. 487 §17.
are unable to grasp such perfect undivided perfection, and hence we draw
distinctions between “intellect” and “will” through comparison with crea-
tures.43
Thus, Bernard of Auvergne, in answer to Henry of Ghent, insists that
neither disparate relations nor emanations can bring about distinction
in God, and further that all distinction in God actually comes about due
to opposition of relations. With that said, Bernard makes room for the
psychological model through his claim that the Son proceeds through an
intellectual act and the Holy Spirit through a voluntary act, albeit there
are no distinct intellect and will in God. In this sense, Bernard provides
an interesting example of how the Dominican tradition could allow for a
greater emphasis on the psychological model, while still maintaining the
overall Dominican rejection of its strong use.
2. Cautious Franciscans:
Richard of Mediavilla, Alexander of Alessandria
Richard of Mediavilla and Alexander of Alessandria offer us a glimpse of one

of the ways in which Franciscans of the period between Henry of Ghent and
John Duns Scotus received the heritage of Bonaventure and those following
him. The reaction was not to wholeheartedly embrace what I have been
calling “Franciscan” trinitarian theology, but to take a more cautious line
that steered a course between the two major trinitarian positions.
Richard of Mediavilla probably read the Sentences at Paris just before
1280, although his commentary on all four books of the Sentences is a result
of later revisions, perhaps from the period 1284–1287, when Richard was
Franciscan regent master in theology at Paris.44 Richard’s view of the Trinity
43 Bernard, Reprobatio (Quodl. VI, q. 1) (italicized text translated): “… in essentia nulla
pluralitas est secundum actum, licet in ea sint infinitae perfectiones, non per aliquem
modum distinctum sed unitissime quia modo divino. Unde fundamentum est diversarum
perfectionum quas nos intelligimus diversas per comparationem ad creaturas. In Deo autem
eas intelligimus penitus non differre nisi secundum diversum conceptum nostrum quo
non capimus perfectionem divinam nisi dividendo per partes, quod tamen scimus in se in
diversum esse. Unde diversitas secundum rationem quae ponitur in attributis non est in Deo
sed in nobis, licit ipsa attributa sunt in Deo, non ut diversa sed ut unum …” Ed. Friedman 2007a,
p. 488 § 21. For this aspect of Thomas Aquinas’ view of the divine perfections, see, e.g., Gelber
1974, 16–20.
44 On Richard and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 53–54. Richard’s place
of birth is disputed, with some evidence pointing to the fact that he hailed from a certain
“Menevyl” (Menneville) in France and not from Middleton in England (see the literature
302 chapter five
is quite conservative, harking back in many respects to Bonaventure and

to Walter of Bruges. Richard is also strikingly non-committal, especially
when it comes to a choice between Aquinas and Bonaventure. Thus, in
his discussion of several trinitarian issues, Richard gives both Aquinas’ and
Bonaventure’s views on the matter at hand, and then takes no sides (for
examples, see below). With this conservative streak acknowledged, Richard
is nevertheless of interest to us not only because he provides evidence
for the reception of Henry of Ghent’s thought, but also because especially
English theologians (working both in England and on the continent) coming
after him seem to have read his Sentences commentary, as was the case
with William of Nottingham, Robert Cowton, and perhaps with John Duns
Scotus.45
Richard makes use of the dual nature of the divine relations and relies
on Bonaventure’s way of explaining it, i.e. when the relation is compared
to the essence it is the same as it, but when compared to its term the rela-
tion differs from the essence by a mode of reference (modus se habendi) and
the true ratio of relation.46 Richard takes no sides in the dispute over the
order between our concepts of emanation, person, and relation, attempt-
ing instead to make Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’ views roughly agree on
the subject of whether the Father generates because he is the Father or
whether he is the Father because he generates. In order to do this, Richard
posits a semantic distinction between, on the one hand, ‘paternity’ under-
stood as relation, in which case the Father is Father because he generates
(the relation paternity “follows” the action of generating), and, on the other,
referred to in Friedman 2002a, 53 n. 28); due to this uncertainty, I keep to the Latin form
“Mediavilla”.
45 For Nottingham, see his I Sent., d. 11, q. 1 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 130139) and ibid., q. 2 (loc.
cit., p. 134268–274); for Cowton, see his I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 147249–251); for
Scotus, see Ch. 6, below, at n. 89.
46 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 2, a. 2, q. 1, ad 2: “… quamvis autem essentia et persona
sint idem re, tamen essentia habet modum essendi absolutum, persona vero habet modum
se habendi in relatione ad alium.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 34b.
Ibid., d. 34, a. 1, q. 1, solutio: “Quaelibet persona comparata ad divinam essentiam realiter
idem est cum ea, aliter enim esset in divinis realis compositio, quod impossibile est; differt
tamen persona ab essentia secundum rationem, non sicut dicimus attributa secundum
rationem differre, sed propter differentem modum se habendi, quia in modo se habendi ad
alterum differunt secundum affirmationem et negationem, quia persona se habet ad alium,
essentia vero non.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 294a. The affinity between this view and Bonaventure’s
is quite clear, even down to Bonaventure’s particular way of using “rational” as a catch-all
term conveying any distinction short of essential; for Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, above, nn. 31–
41. On the relations and their difference from the essence, see Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 33, a. 2,
q. 1 (ed. Brescia 1591, p. 288a–b) and ibid., d. 26, a. 4, q. 1 (ed. Brescia 1591, p. 241a–b).
‘paternity’ understood as the Father’s constitutive property, in which case

he generates because he is the Father (the action of generating comes from
the Father constituted by the constitutive property of paternity).47 Never-
theless, he also employs a tool that he shares with Roger Marston, distin-
guishing an “efficient” source of distinction between the persons (i.e., the
notional acts) from a “formal” source of distinction (i.e., the relations).48 The
difference between these two sources of distinction is only one of differ-
ing modi significandi, a purely psychological distinction, and thus Richard’s
distinguishing between efficient and formal sources of personal distinction
serves in effect to introduce nested distinctions with no ontological com-
mitment.49 With all that said, Richard clearly places the greatest stress on
the formal sources of distinction that are truly constitutive of the person:
… about the relations that are between the divine persons, it is not true
[that they require what is related through them to be distinct before them],
because [the divine relations] are subsistent and constitutive of the persons.
Thus, it is necessarily the case that they are quasi-formal sources of the
distinction of the persons. It is nevertheless true that the personal property,
47 For Richard’s treatment of this issue see I Sent., d. 27, a. 1, q. 3, esp.: “Unde si aliquis bene
inspiciat, potest dici quod ideo est Pater, quia generat accipiendo paternitatem tantummodo
in quantum est habitudo ad Filium. Potest etiam bene dici quod ideo generat quia Pater
accipiendo paternitatem in quantum est res subsistens hypostasis Patris constitutiva. Et per
hunc modum forte possent concordari opiniones.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 247a. The semantic
distinction Richard draws here concerning ‘paternity’ is reminiscent of Aquinas’ similar
distinction; see at and around n. 51 below.
48 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 26, a. 3, q. 2, solutio: “… inter personas est considerare
principium distinctionis quasi-effectivum et principium distinctionis quasi-formale. Vide-

tur ergo dicendum quod per ipsas emanationes personae distinguuntur quasi per principia
effectiva distinctionis … Actio enim ad causam efficientem reducitur. Per istas autem rel-
ativas proprietates distinguuntur tanquam per principia formalia distinctionis. Una enim
persona distinguitur ab alia per suam formam constituentem; personalis autem proprietas
est personae constitutiva; ergo personae distinguuntur ab invicem per suas proprietates per-
sonales, tamquam per principia formalia distinctionis.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 240b. Note that no
mention is made here of a conceptual order. For Roger Marston, see Ch. 2, above, nn. 152–
153. Cp. Richard’s view also to Aquinas’ “intrinsic constitutive argument” described in Ch. 3,
49 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 27, a. 1, q. 2, solutio: “Si autem loquamur de hgeneratione
activa et paternitatei secundum quod sunt in divinis tantum, sic dico quod non differunt
quantum ad rem significatam … Differunt tamen secundum rationem etiam cum signifi-
cantur in abstracto, et secundum quod significantur in concreto, differunt etiam secundum
rationem et secundum modum significandi, quia esse Patrem significat proprietatem in
hypostasi. Generare autem significat proprietatem quasi per modum egredientis ab hypo-
stasi. Generare etiam significat emanationem, et esse Patrem significat habitudinem, et
quamvis illa emanatio et habitudo differant secundum rationem, sunt tamen eadem propri-
etas secundum rem, quia generare in Deo nullam penitus importat mutationem.” Ed. Brescia
1591, p. 246a.
304 chapter five
insofar as it is subsistent and constitutive of the person and making the

person distinct, is prior, according to the way we understand things, to itself
insofar as it indicates a reference (habitudo) to another.50
Richard’s solution here is clearly related to Thomas Aquinas’ view, dis-
cussed above, that paternity considered as constitutive property precedes
the Father, while considered as relation it follows him. And Aquinas had
also described paternity as the “form” of the Father.51 Thus, Richard seems to
be drawing on Aquinas here, dealing with Bonaventure’s arguments on the
conceptual order between relations and what is related through them, and
Richard does not stress origin or emanation as conceptually prior to relation
in the way that Bonaventure had. Despite his reliance on Aquinas, Richard
seems in fact to have marginalized opposition of relations as the ground
of personal distinction, instead claiming that the formal sources of distinc-
tion, i.e. the properties, are distinguished in and of themselves (se ipsis),52
which would seem to indicate that for him opposition is not a necessary
factor in their distinction. At one point, Richard even claims that “distinc-
tion in God is only on account of opposed relations, or at least of disparate
ones.”53 It should be noted that the terminology of efficient/formal source of
50 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 26, a. 3, q. 2, ad 2: “… cum dicitur ‘relationes praesup-
ponunt distinctionem inter relata’, etc., dico quod verum est de relationibus inter creaturas,
quia non sunt subsistentes, nec ipsa relata constituentes; sed de relationibus quae sunt inter
personas divinas, non est verum, quia sunt subsistentes, et ipsas personas constituentes.
Unde necesse est quod sint quasi principia formalia distinctionis personarum. Verum est
tamen quod ipsa personalis proprietas, in quantum est subsistens, et personam constituens
et eam distinguens, prius est secundum rationem intelligendi se ipsa in quantum dicit habi-
tudinem ad alium.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 240b. See also the text in n. 47 above.
51 This position is in fact nearly identical to Aquinas’ view on the matter in Sum. theol., I,
q. 40, a. 2, ad 4 (“si relatio sit subsistens, non praesupponit, sed secumfert distinctionem”),
and a. 4, solutio; see also Ch. 1, above, nn. 52–53. For Aquinas on paternity as the Father’s
form, see Ch. 1, above, n. 72 and the description of what I call Aquinas’ “intrinsic constitutive
argument” in Ch. 3, above, at n. 3.
52 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 27, a. 1, q. 1, solutio: “… proprietates personales
realiter ab invicem distinctae sunt, personae enim distinguuntur per proprietates personales
tamquam per principia formalia distinctionis, et proprietates personales distinguuntur se
ipsis, sicut vides quod ea quae habent differentias, per suas differentias differunt, et ipsae
differentiae se ipsis.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 245b. For two of the very few mentions of “opposed
relations” I have found in Richard’s I Sent., see n. 53 below.
53 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 2, a. 2, q. 2, ad 2: “… non est distinctio in divinis nisi
secundum oppositas relationes, vel saltem disparatas.” ed. Brescia 1591, pp. 35b–36a.
When dealing with the topic of the necessity for opposition of relations, Richard also
claims that disparate relations could be said to suffice for the distinction of the Holy Spirit
from the Son (I Sent., d. 11, q. 2): “Ad primum cum dicitur quod in divinis est unitas ubi non
obviat aliqua relationis oppositio, etc. Dico quod verum est, sed non propter hoc est intentio
distinction that we have been examining appears in Richard’s discussion of

whether the persons are constituted by relation or by something absolute.54
This issue preoccupies him, perhaps on account of his near contemporary
Peter Olivi, who said that the persons were part relative, part absolute.55 In
another discussion of this same issue, Richard describes a position accord-
ing to which the absolute properties that are first constitutive of the per-
sons are identified with the quasi-efficient sources of personal distinction:
to generate, to be generated, and to be spirated.56 As we will see, the view
that Richard describes here is quite similar—especially with regard to the
terminology of “efficient source of distinction”—to the model of personal
distinction that John Duns Scotus will propose.
Thus, even though Richard seems to have placed little stress on opposi-
tion of relations in his trinitarian thought, he nonetheless appears to have
been unwilling to entirely abandon the relation account, as is also made evi-
dent by his use of the dual nature of the divine relations to explain the way
that relation and essence relate to each other. In short, Richard seems to
have marginalized, without abandoning, the relation account, and in this
he is cautiously following the general path that the Franciscan order was
taking in his day.
On one of the central points of Franciscan trinitarian theology—spira-
tion’s real distinction from generation—Richard, interestingly enough, uti-
lizes some of Walter of Bruges’ terminology, and like Walter he takes no
sides in the foundational disagreement between Bonaventure and Aquinas
Anselmi quin sufficeret ad distinctionem personalem relationum disparatio quae esset inter
Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, etiam si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio. Et hic satis
expresse videtur sentire Anselmus in libro De processione Spiritus Sancti.” Ed. Brescia 1591,
p. 113a. Note that here Richard is not claiming this to be his own position.
54 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 26, a. 3, q. 2: “Secundo quaeritur utrum personae
distinguantur per illas proprietates relativas. Et videtur quod non, quia prima distinctio realis
est illa quae est inter divinas personas, sed absolutum prius est relatione. Ergo distinctio
divinarum personarum, cum sit prima, est per aliquid absolutum, non per relationes.” Ed.
Brescia 1591, p. 240a.
55 On this aspect of Olivi’s trinitarian theory, see Ch. 6, below, nn. 20–24. See also Burr
1984, 60, who reports that in 1282 Richard took part in a judgement of some of Olivi’s writings.
56 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 26, a. 1, q. 1: “… dixerunt quidam quod in divinis
est hypostasis constituta per proprietatem absolutam, non una communis tribus personis,
sed tres secundum quod tres sunt personae, dicentes quod in persona Patris est aliqua
res constituta per proprietatem absolutam, quae generat, et quam secundum rationem
intelligendi consequatur habitudo paternitatis. Similiter in Filio aliqua res absoluta quae
generatur, et quam secundum rationem intelligendi consequitur habitudo filiationis. Et in
Spiritu Sancto aliqua res absoluta quae spiratur, et quam secundum rationem intelligendi
consequitur habitudo passivae spirationis.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 234b.
306 chapter five
on this issue. According to Richard, spiration and generation are really dis-
tinct from each other according to notional reality, and this distinction is
made known to us by the real distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit.
They are distinguished in and of themselves (se ipsis) formally, he claims,
“by extending the noun ‘form’ to the notions.”57 They are also distinguished
by way of origin (originaliter) on account of the distinction between the
generative power and the spirative power, which are the Father’s primity
with respect to generation and spiration, respectively.58 Richard neverthe-
less does not fully endorse this latter view, instead claiming that the distinc-
tion between the emanations “is more clearly assigned” on account of the
Son’s spirating (along with the Father) the Holy Spirit, i.e. Aquinas’ view.59
Thus, for Richard, the emanations are in some sense distinct in and of them-
selves (se ipsis), in some sense distinct in terms of their origin from the
generative and spirative powers, but most properly they are distinct because
the Son spirates the Holy Spirit.
As appears from the above discussion, Richard makes use of the concept
of primity, but he uses primity in a way that has more resonance with
the early Dominican tradition’s understanding of innascibility, as we have
seen it in Bombolognus of Bologna, than with most of the early Franciscan
tradition’s ideas on primity. Thus, Richard attenuates the importance of
57 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3: “… realiter distincta hgeneratioi ab ea hi.e., spira-
tioi non re essentiali, sed notionali, et haec realis distinctio nobis innotescit per terminos, qui
realiter distincti sunt, qui termini sunt Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Distinguuntur autem illae
duae emanationes se ipsis formaliter extendendo nomen formae ad notionem.” Ed. Brescia
1591, p. 124a–b. Also ibid., d. 9, a. 1, q. 2: “Necessarium est ergo quod inter generantem et geni-
tum sit realis distinctio non in re essentiali, quia una est essentia in divinis in tribus personis,
sed in re personali et notionali.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 98a. For Walter of Bruges, see Ch. 2, above,
n. 22.
58 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3, solutio: “Distinguuntur etiam inter se illae duae
emanationes per aliquid originaliter, scilicet per potentiam generativam et per potentiam
spirativam. Potentia enim generativa non tantummodo dicit naturam divinam, sed cum
hoc dicit proprietatem innascibilitatis quae includit primitatem ad actum generandi; nec
potentia spirativa dicit tantum voluntatem divinam, sed cum hoc dicit spirabilitatem quae
includit primitatem respectu actus spirandi. Et talis differentia in potentiis sufficit secundum
aliquod ad causandum distinctionem in emanationibus.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 124b.
59 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3, solutio: “Clarius tamen assignatur earum dis-
tinction per hoc quod spiratio est a Filio qui est generatus, et ita spiratio est per generationem
mediante Filio.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 124b. This last claim is repeated throughout the question,
e.g.: “Ad tertium dico quod quamvis non sint se ipsis originaliter, quia a se ipsis non sunt,
tamen quasi formaliter distinguuntur. Et quia non sunt a se ipsis, sic intelligendo quod spi-
ratio non est a se ipsa, ideo non distinguuntur a se ipsis nisi in quantum spiratio est per
generationem mediante genito, et sic est inter eas realis distinctio per hoc quod spiratio est
a generatione mediante genito.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 125a.
primity through his claim that innascibility has two significates. The first
of these significates is entirely negative, and only indicates that the Father
is from no other.60 In this sense innascibility is a different notion from
paternity. The second significate of innascibility is the Father’s primity. For
Richard, however, in contrast to earlier views, primity
is really the same as paternity and active spiration, because primity towards
each emanation belongs in a secondary way (secundario) to the significate of
innascibility. Therefore, it connotes in a secondary way (importat secundario)
primity to the act of generating and primity to the act of spirating. It is
necessary, however, for primity towards the act of generating to be really the
same as paternity, because there is nothing by which they are made distinct.61
In this way, Richard rather ingeniously makes Aquinas and Bonaventure

agree: by using primity, as Bonaventure did, but by equating it with pater-
nity, Richard equates the source of the first emanation with the property
constitutive of the first person, and this coincides well with what Aquinas
held paternity as constitutive property to be.62 Of course, Richard will claim
that primity differs from paternity according to the way we understand
things,63 and Richard—sharing Matthew of Aquasparta’s use of the term
‘aptitudinal’—suggests as the connection between the two notions that
primity “signifies a real relation to the other persons aptitudinally (in apti-
tudine), not actually (in actu), but this aptitude is always joined together
with the act through paternity and active spiration.”64 All in all, the thinker
whose views come closest to Richard’s on this matter, and who may in fact
60 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 28, a. 2, q. 2: “… innascibilitas quantum ad illud quod
primo est de eius significato, non est eadem notio cum paternitate, quia sic dicit negationem
principii, hoc est negat nascibilitatem esse ab alio, paternitas vero dicit positivam relationem
ad principiatum.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 256b. For Bombolognus of Bologna, see Ch. 3, above, at
and around nn. 41–44.
61 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 28, a. 2, q. 2: “… realiter hinnascibilitas quantum ad illud
quod secundario est de suo significatoi est idem cum paternitate et activa spiratione, quia
primitas ad omnem emanationem est secundario de significato innascibilitatis. Importat
ergo secundario primitatem ad actum generandi et primitatem ad actum spirandi. Oportet
autem quod primitas ad actum generandi sit realiter idem cum paternitate, quia non est quo
distinguantur …” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 256b.
62 See Ch. 1, above, around n. 72, for a comparison of Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’ views.
63 See Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 28, a. 2, q. 2, solutio (ed. Brescia 1591, pp. 256b–257a).
64 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 28, a. 2, q. 1: “… primitas secondario est de significato
innascibilitatis, importet aliquam realem relationem ad alias personas in aptitudine, non in

actu, sed haec aptitudo semper est coniuncta actui per paternitatem et activam spirationem
…” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 256a. Also ibid., q. 2 (ed. Brescia 1591, p. 257a). For Aquasparta’s use of
the terminology, see Ch. 2, above, at n. 126 (and relatedly, see John Pecham, Ch. 2, at nn. 83–
85, 88).
308 chapter five
have influenced him, is Nicholas of Ockham (see Ch. 2, above, at and around
nn. 139–141) who also on this issue had resonance with the Dominican view.
Richard’s investigation of whether the Holy Spirit would be distinct from
the Son if the former did not proceed from the latter shows how cautious
he was in trinitarian theology, inasmuch as he does not accept the position
that we have seen became characteristically Franciscan, instead taking
no sides in the debate. The first of “the diverse opinions about this” that
Richard gives is that the emanations are distinct on account of the rational
distinction between the emanations’ sources in the Father, that is to say,
between nature and will.65 Although this could possibly be a very general
statement of the Franciscan position, one argument that Richard presents
here gives us good reason to believe that he had Henry of Ghent in mind.66
The argument, offered by Richard as a reply to the common Franciscan
view runs as follows: nature and intellect are only rationally distinct, and
the Son and the Word (the terms of natural and intellectual emanation) are
only rationally distinct; therefore, in a like manner the Holy Spirit and the
Son would only be rationally distinct if their distinction were based upon
emanation by way of will and by way of intellect, since will and intellect are
only rationally distinct (as the position itself maintains).67 In his reply to this
argument, Richard claims:
In response to what was said in confirmation of the other opinion, that the
Word really is not distinct from the Son, etc. I say this is true. Nevertheless,
perhaps your point does not follow from this, because intellect and nature
cannot create as great a distinction in their actions as can intellect and will,
65 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2, solutio: “Respondeo de hoc: diversae sunt
opiniones. Quidam enim dicunt quod realiter distingueretur, sicut videtur sentire Anselmus
in libro De processione Spiritus Sancti, quia differentia secundum rationem in principio bene
est sufficiens ratio producendi producta realiter distincta .... Dicunt ergo quod diversitas
secundum rationem inter naturam et voluntatem in Patre est sufficiens ratio distinctionis
inter Spiritum Sanctum et Filium, etiam si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio.” Ed.
Brescia 1591, p. 112a.
66 Besides the evidence to be offered immediately below, I can add that most Franciscans
say that the emanations differ from each other se ipsis, but that the emanations get that they
differ in this way from nature and will; see, e.g., John Pecham, Ch. 2, above, at and around
n. 70; Roger Marston, Ch. 2, n. 175.
67 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2, solutio: “Praeterea, quamvis Verbum procedat
per modum intellectus et Filius per modum naturae, tamen quia intellectus et natura in Deo
non differunt nisi secundum rationem, et Filius non procedit a Verbo nec e converso, ideo
Filius et Verbum non differunt nisi secundum rationem. Ergo similiter cum in Patre idem
sit re natura et voluntas, si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, procederet per modum
naturae et per modum voluntatis, non esset sufficiens ratio existendi inter Filium et Spiritum
Sanctum realem distinctionem.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 112b.
especially when speaking about the action of the intellect that naturally
comes about from it. This is the kind of action by which the Word proceeds
from the Father. Indeed, speaking in this way the ratio of natural action is
included in the ratio of intellectual action. It does not work like this, however,
[when speaking] about the action that is by way of the will and the action
that is by way of the intellect, although one [of these actions] presupposes
the other according to the way we understand things.68
This position is very close to Henry of Ghent’s justification of the identifica-

tion of nature and intellect, and hence the identification of generation and
the saying of the Word. As I argued above (Ch. 4, at and around nn. 63–70),
Henry seems to have been the first in the university trinitarian discussion
to have made this identification a central element in his trinitarian the-
ology, and accordingly to have used the psychological model in a “strong”
way. Therefore, it would seem likely that, if Richard was aware of this posi-
tion from a number of Franciscan sources, he nevertheless knew it, whether
directly or indirectly, in the specific form that Henry of Ghent gave it.
In response to the general Franciscan line of argument on this issue,
Richard goes on to rehearse two further positions. The first of these posi-
tions is an often repeated one that we will examine in some detail below:
that the question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, if the for-
mer does not proceed from the latter, involves not only impossibility, but
also incompossibility, and hence the very question involves a contradic-
tion.69 The second further position given by Richard is that the logical status
68 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Ad illud quod dicebatur pro confirmatione
alterius opinionis, quod Verbum non distinguitur a Filio, etc. Dico quod verum est, tamen
forte ex hoc non sequitur tuum propositum, quia intellectus et natura non possunt creare
tantam distinctionem in actionibus suis sicut intellectus et voluntas, maxime loquendo
de actione intellectus, quae naturaliter est per ipsum: cuiusmodi est illa actio qua a Patre
procedit Verbum. Immo sic loquendo intra rationem actionis intellectualis comprehenditur
ratio actionis naturalis, non autem sic de actione quae est per modum voluntatis, et de
illa quae est per modum intellectus, quamvis una aliam praesupponat secundum rationem
intelligendi.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 113a–b. For more on this by Richard, see his I Sent., d. 3, a. 2,
q. 2 (ed. Brescia 1591, p. 35b).
69 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Alii dicunt quod quaestio non tantummodo
supponit impossibile, sed etiam incompossibile, scilicet esse Filium et non esse Filium, et
esse Patrem et non esse Patrem, quia in divinis non potest esse Filius nisi perfectus. Nec
esset Filius summe perfectus nisi assimilaretur Patri in omnibus, quae non repugnant suae
distinctioni a Patre, sed quod Filius spiret, hoc illi distinctioni non repugnat; ergo cum
non esset perfectus Filius nisi spiraret, et ex consequenti nec esse Filius, cum non possit
ibi esse Filius nisi perfectus. Et si non esset ibi Filius, non esset ibi Pater. Quaerendo ergo
utrum Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur a Filio si non procederet ab eo, in tua quaestione
contradictionem includis.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 112a–b. For more on this type of argumentation,
see at and around nn. 101–116 below.
310 chapter five
of the question is irrelevant: if the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the
Son, then the two would not be really distinct. Given as support for this is
Aquinas’ argument—which, as we have seen, becomes the favored argu-
ment of the Dominican trinitarian tradition—that the rational distinction
between the divine nature and will is not a sufficient ground for the real dis-
tinction between the persons.70 As elsewhere, on this issue Richard basically
bows out, giving possible responses to each position to “whoever wants to
sustain” the position in question, although he says that the third and last
position given—that of Aquinas and the Dominican trinitarian tradition
more generally—“seems to some more rational and more in line with the
faith.”71 Here, as usual, Richard was taking no chances.
Alexander of Alessandria. Another cautious, indeed conservative,
Franciscan is Alexander of Alessandria. Although he probably wrote the first
redaction of his Sentences commentary around the turn of the fourteenth
century, and hence when John Duns Scotus was already active, many sec-
tions of this work are nothing more than a summary and confirmation of
Bonaventure’s ideas. In fact, as an historical document the work can be seen
as a clear statement of the strong influence that Bonaventure continued to
exert on the Franciscan intellectual tradition.72
For example, when Alexander comes to deal with the topic of whether
the divine properties make the hypostases distinct or merely show distinc-
tion, he gives us a near verbatim rendering of Bonaventure’s opinion on the
70 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Alii, sive ista quaestio implicet impossibilia
sive non, dicunt quod posito hoc, sive hperi impossibile sive per incompossibile, quod, si
Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, non distingueretur realiter ab eo … ab eo in quo non
est realis pluralitas, non sunt simul plures actiones realiter distinctae nisi terminus unius seu
productus per unam sit principium alterius. Cum ergo inter naturam et voluntatem in Patre
nulla sit realis pluralitas, sequitur quod si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet[ur] a Filio quod
spiratio realiter non distingueretur a generatione, et ex consequenti, nec spiratus a genito.”
Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 112b.
71 Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… aliquibus videtur rationabilior, et fidei
favorabilior …” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 112b. Robert Cowton in presenting Richard’s position,
mentions that the Dominican position “est probabilis, et illi magis favet Richardus in I Scripti,
d. 11, tamquam fidei magis consona”, but Cowton goes on to hold the general Franciscan view;
on Cowton, see Ch. 8, § 2B, below; for the quotation see I Sent., d. 11, a. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001,
p. 147249–250).
72 I have had access to the early redaction of Alexander’s commentary in BAV Ross.
252; on this work see Friedman 2002a, 74, and the literature referred to there; for a short
recap of Alexander’s life, see Duba 2007a, 579–580. Although this work of Alexander’s is not
particularly interesting, it should be noted that the Sentences commentary that Alexander
redacted later in his career is a significant piece of systematic theology and philosophy that
deserves further study. For more on the later commentary, see Ch. 8, below, nn. 9–12, 45–48.
same subject: property considered as relation merely shows the hypostases

to be distinct, property considered as origin both shows and brings about
distinction. But because “in the divine to arise and to be and to relate to
another are the same” this distinction is a purely conceptual one.73 Again,
in the question of whether the Father is the Father because he generates
or vice-versa, Alexander relies in large measure almost word for word on
Bonaventure, first giving the Seraphic Doctor’s basic argument that the Son
must be originated before a relation arises between him and the Father,74
and then giving Bonaventure’s appeal to innascibility/primity as the ground
for the Father’s generating.75 Finally, Alexander’s description of the relation
account—including the dual nature of the divine relations—is a rehash
of Bonaventure’s own, down to the use of Bonaventure’s term modus se
habendi.76
73 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 26, q. 3 (“Quaeritur utrum pro-
prietates habeant hypostases distinguere aut distinctas ostendere?”, f. 37ra): “Opinio autem
tertia est conflatuhmi ex his duabus, scilicet quod in divinis hypostasibus nos intelligimus
originem et intelligimus habitudinem, et secundum rationem intelligendi origo praecedit
illum qui oritur, habitudo vero consequitur ipsum qui refertur. Secundo modo proprietas rel-
ativa consequitur rationem distinctionis, nec est ratio distinguendi, sed solum innotescendi.
Primo autem modo secundum quod importat originem est ratio distinguendi, circumscripta
enim origine impossibile est in divinis intelligere pluralitatem. Et sic dicendum est secun-
dum rationem intelligendi; tamen secundum rem, cum in divinis idem sit oriri et esse et
ad alterum se habere, quamvis secundum rationem prius sit oriri, deinde intelligatur esse,
deinde ad alterum se habere; quia vero idem sunt in Deo, eodem nomine designatur origo
et habitudo ut generatio et paternitas, quia ergo proprietas divina importat habitudinem et
originem, ideo proprietates in divinis non solum sunt ratio innotescendi distinctionem, sed
etiam distinguendi.” BAV Ross. 252, f. 37ra. Cf. Bonaventure’s texts, Ch. 1, above, nn. 61 and 54.
74 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 27, pars 1, q. 2 (“Quaeritur quae
istarum sit ratio intelligendi alteram, id est, utrum Pater generet quia Pater, ita quod pater-
nitas praecedit actum generationis, vel utrum e converso ideo sit Pater quia generat, ita quod
actus generationis praecedat?”, ff. 37vb–38ra): “… communiter tenetur quod Filius et quod
sit et quod sit Filius habet per generationem, ergo generatio secundum rationem intelli-
gendi praecedit filiationem; cum igitur relativa sint simul natura intelligendo, non tamen
in essendo, ergo generatio est ratio dicendi paternitatem in Deo Patre, sicut et dicendi filia-
tionem in Deo Filio, quia sicut se habet generatio passiva ad filiationem sic se habet generatio
activa ad paternitatem.” BAV Ross. 252, f. 38ra. Cf. Bonaventure, Ch. 1, above, n. 53.
75 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 27, pars 1, q. 2: “Ad rationem eorum
dicendum est quod persona Patris antequam generet intelligitur distincta proprietate quae
est innascibilitas, quia ibi inchoatur ratio distinguendi; et ideo generat quia distincta, non
dico paternitate[m], sed ut distincta quodam modo innascibilitate.” BAV Ross. 252, f. 38ra.
Cf. Bonaventure, Ch. 1, above, n. 71. A little further on in d. 28, q. 2, Alexander uses both the
term ‘primity’ and ‘fontal plenitude’: “… sed innascibilis universalem dicit primitatem sive
fontalem plenitudinem in producendo, non tantum (ms.: tm) quantum ad generationem,
sed etiam quantum ad spirationem.” BAV Ross. 252, f. 40ra.
76 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 33, q. 2 (“Secundo quaeritur de com-
paratione proprietatis ad essentiam utrum proprietas sit essentia?”, f. 44va–b): “Responsio:

312 chapter five
In the question of the distinction between the processions, Alexander

gives the general Franciscan response that the two processions differ
really—relying on Walter of Bruges’ term—according to notional reality
(re notionali). They differ formally in and of themselves (se ipsis), like two
specific differences differ, and these ultimate differences are made known
to us by other differences. Alexander offers a type of reductio ad absurdum
argument to prove that the two emanations differ really (realiter): if they
did not differ like this, then the Son would produce by the same produc-
tion by which he is produced and hence he would produce himself, which is
absurd. But if for Alexander the two emanations differ in and of themselves
formally, nevertheless in terms of origin (originaliter) they differ because
they have diverse sources: nature and will.77 Thus, on this issue Alexander is
thoroughly in the Franciscan current: the distinction between the emana-
tions is the ultimate distinction in God, i.e. they are distinct se ipsis, and yet
the emanations take their origin from their differing sources, divine nature
and divine will. This fits well with Alexander’s presentation of the issue of
the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, where he is more up-to-date than
we have seen him to be thus far. His opening arguments are the obvious
sicut praenotatum est, relatio ratione comparationis ad subiectum transit in substantiam,

nam proprietas est divina substantia; ratione vero comparationis ad obiectum remanet et
quantum ad hoc est distincta et differt ab essentia, non quia dicat aliam essentiam, sed alium
modum se habendi, qui per comparationem ad essentiam vel personam dicit modum nihil
addens. In comparatione vero ad correlativum vere dicit rem et distinctionem, et ideo non
est vanitas in ratione intelligendi nec compositio in re, sed vera distinctio …” BAV Ross. 252,
f. 44va. Cf. Bonaventure, Ch. 1, above, n. 42.
77 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 13, q. 3 (“Quaeritur utrum processio
Spiritus Sancti et generatio realiter differant, an secundum rationem tantum intelligendi?”

f. 22rb–va): “Responsio: dicendum quod realiter differunt /22va/ non re essentiali nec re per-
sonali, sed re notionali. Quod patet sic: supposito scilicet quod emanatio Spiritus Sancti sit a
Filio, si non differrentur realiter generatio et emanatio Spiritus Sancti, sequitur quod Filius
produceret eadem productione qua producitur. Et cum eiusdem productionis sit idem ter-
minus, sequeretur quod Filius produceret se, quod nec intellectus capit nec natura permittit.
Si autem quaeratur per quid differant, dicendum quod differunt (ms.: differtur*) quasi for-
maliter se ipsis sicut duae differentiae specificae (dico ‘quasi’ quia proprie non est ibi forma
vel causa). Et sicut differentiae differentiarum innotescunt nobis per alias differentias quae
ab eis oriuntur (sicut per rationari in actu innotescit nobis haec differentia rationalis), sic
in divinis, quia se ipsis distinguuntur generatio et spiratio, ad eas consequitur differentia
multiplex … Si autem quaeras utrum differant originaliter generatio et spiratio, dico quod
differant[ur] originaliter per sua principia fecunda, scilicet naturam et voluntatem, genera-
tio enim est emanatio per modum naturae, spiratio per modum voluntatis.” BAV Ross. 252,
f. 22rb–va. For various versions of this type of view, see Bonaventure (Ch. 1, nn. 76, 84); John
Pecham (Ch. 2, nn. 56 and 70), Matthew of Aquasparta (Ch. 2, in n. 127), and Roger Marston
(Ch. 2, n. 175); cf. also Walter of Bruges (Ch. 2, n. 22); Scotus (Ch. 6, nn. 139–147, esp. 142).
ones we are familiar with. For the Dominican position, he points out that
nature and will are only distinct rationally, and therefore there is no basis for
a real distinction of persons there. For the Franciscan position, on the other
hand, Alexander claims that the processions by way of nature and will dif-
fer really (realiter); therefore, these processions from the Father alone are
the basis for real personal distinction, regardless of whether the Son spi-
rates the Holy Spirit.78 Turning to his main presentation of the two positions,
Alexander first gives a fair summary of the major arguments of the Domini-
can position on this issue, the position being attributed to Giles of Rome
and Thomas Aquinas in a marginal note in the manuscript I examined.79 To
others, however, continues Alexander, it appears that the Son and the Holy
78 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 11, q. 2 (f. 20va–b): “Secundo quaeritur
utrum Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur a Filio, si non procederet a Filio. Et videtur quod non,
quia quae non differunt inter se realiter non possunt dare aliis differentiam realem. Sed
natura et voluntas in Deo differunt tantum secundum rationem. Ergo non possunt causa
realis esse differentiae personalis. Ergo ad hoc quod unus distinguatur ab alio oportet quod
unus procedat ab alio.
“Contra: realiter differunt processio per modum naturae et processio per modum volun-
tatis, sive sint ab uno sive a pluribus. Sed licet non procederet Spiritus Sanctus a Filio, essent
tamen in Patre natura et voluntas. Ergo et ratio distinctiva personarum.” BAV Ross. 252, f. 20va.
In the next three notes I present the remainder of Alexander’s quaestio.
79 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 11, q. 2: “Responsio: dicendum quod
opinio aliquorum (mg.: Ehgidius?i, libro 1, d. 11, … hic arguit … quod non distingueretur ab eo
nisi … et Thomas, Parte prima, q. 36, a. 2) est quod non distinguerentur Filius et Spiritus
Sanctus nisi unus procederet ab alio. Ratio eorum est quia omnis distinctio personarum in
divinis attenditur secundum relationem et originem. Unde dicit Boethius, De trinitate, quod
sola relatio in divinis multiplicat trinitatem.
“Item, Richardus dicit quod in divinis est distinctio personalis per originem, in angelis per
qualitatem, in hominibus utroque modo. Ergo si nulla esset ibi origo nec mutua relatio, ergo
nec distinctio.
“Et pro ista opinione est exemplum valde violentum, quia non magis differunt in Patre
natura et voluntas quam natura et intelligentia, sed nos videmus quod ille qui procedit per
modum naturae et intelligere est unus et idem, et nullo modo distinctus secundum rem,
scilicet Filius, qui prout procedit per modum naturae dicitur Filius, prout autem procedit per
modum /20vb/ intelligentiae dicitur Verbum. Ergo ille qui procederet per modum naturae et
per modum voluntatis, si procederet tantum a Patre, esset unus et idem secundum rem. Ergo
si secundum fidem Filius et Spiritus Sanctus distincti hsunti realiter, oportet quod Spiritus
Sanctus procedat a Filio de necessitate.
“Quod si obiciatur eis quod ecclesia numquam dampnavit Graecos tamquam negantes
trinitatem, sed bene dampnavit eos qui dicebant quod Spiritus Sanctus non procedebat a
Filio. Respondent ad hoc, quia dampnavit eos implicite, vel dicunt quod non oportet quod,
si dampnatur unum, dampnentur omnia quae sequuntur ad illud, quia ad unum falsum
in principia* sequuntur fere infinita falsa et impossibilia.” BAV Ross. 252, f. 20va–b. Cp. the
third argument given here, concerning the real identity of Son and Word, with Richard of
Mediavilla, n. 67 above.
314 chapter five
Spirit would be distinct even if the latter did not proceed from the former.
In the margin of the manuscript that I have examined, Henry of Ghent
is identified as an adherent of this position.80 Although Alexander bows
out of the discussion, claiming to take no sides, his way of reconciling
these two contradictory opinions certainly leans toward his own Franciscan
tradition—as we would expect from what he maintains concerning the
distinction of the emanations—and offers interesting evidence of the way
he uses that tradition:
I affirm nothing here. For a reconciliation [of these two positions] it could
nevertheless be said, without prejudging [the issue], that, if the Holy Spirit
were not to proceed from the Son, he would not be made perfectly distinct
from him … And one can deal with the arguments of each position by
means of a distinction between perfect and imperfect [distinctions], because,
when they show that [the Holy Spirit] would not be made distinct, it is true
[speaking] perfectly; when [they show] that indeed nevertheless he would
be made distinct if he were not to proceed from the Son, it is true [speaking]
imperfectly.81
Thus Alexander falls back on a typical Franciscan nested distinction, akin,
in fact, to Matthew of Aquasparta’s own perfecte/imperfecte distinction con-
cerning this same issue (Ch. 2, at n. 115) or to Henry of Ghent’s proprie/not
proprie distinction (Ch. 4, at nn. 33, 52). If the Holy Spirit did not come from
the Son, would these two persons still be distinct from each other? Yes and
no, according to Alexander: not distinct perfectly, but indeed distinct imper-
fectly.
80 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 11, q. 2: “Alii quidem (mg.: Henricus
de Gandavo et etiam Petrum Sing [Fino?] dicunt hoc) dicunt quod si non procederet a
Filio adhuc distingueretur, quod Augustinus, assignans differentiam originis Filii et Spiritus
Sancti, V De trinitate, c. 17, dicit quod Filius procedit quo modo natus, Spiritus Sanctus quo
modo datus, et ideo, sive Spiritus Sanctus procedat ab uno sive a duobus, possunt esse a
solo Patre, alter quo modo natus, alter quo modo datus. Et Anselmus, De processione Spiritus
Sancti, dicit, c. 8, quod si per alium non essent plures Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, per hoc
solum essent diversi, et ideo dicitur differentia generationis et spirationis.” BAV Ross. 252,
f. 20vb.
81 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio prior), d. 11, q. 2: “Nihil affirmo hic. Posset
tamen dici sine praeiudicio ad concordiam quod si non procederet a Filio Spiritus Sanctus,
non distingueretur ab eo perfecte, et sic audivi quod respondit bonum quando fuit quae-
situm* ab eo. Et posset homo evadere* argumenta utriusque opinionis per distinctionem
perfecti et imperfecti, quia quando probant quod non distingueretur, verum est perfecte;
quando quod nichilominus quidem distingueretur verum est imperfecte si non procederet a
Filio.” BAV Ross. 252, f. 20vb.
3. The Franciscan Tradition in the Late Thirteenth Century:82

Peter of Trabes and William of Ware
A relatively cautious appropriation of the general Franciscan views in trini-

tarian theology is one way in which the Franciscan trinitarian tradition
manifested itself in the late thirteenth century. But in the same period we
can also find a branch of the Franciscan tradition harking back not so much
to Bonaventure (and certainly not to Aquinas), but far more to John Pecham,
Roger Marston, and Henry of Ghent. This other manifestation of the Fran-
ciscan trinitarian tradition can give us a solid idea of the theological milieu
in which John Duns Scotus thought and wrote.
Peter of Trabes. Take, for instance, Peter of Trabes, best known for
being a follower of Peter of John Olivi.83 In Trabes, whose Ordinatio on I
Sentences was written sometime between 1296 and 1304, we find everything
that we have come to expect from Franciscan trinitarian theology. Thus,
according to Peter, there are two types of properties: one type indicating
only a mode of being (modum essendi), for example innascibility, the other
type indicating a mode of reference (modum se habendi) to another person.
With either of these kinds of properties understood, a person is understood,
and Peter tells us explicitly that with the type of property indicating mode
of reference abstracted from a person, that person could still be understood
on the basis of the property indicating mode of being. Peter’s examples are
that, with paternity abstracted from the Father, his hypostasis could still
be understood, and that, with active spiration abstracted from Father and
Son, they could still be understood as persons.84 Here, Peter seems to clearly
82 One important testimony to late thirteenth-century Franciscan trinitarian theology is
to be found in a text written by an anonymous Master of the Val des Écoliers and dealing
with the counterfactual question concerning the distinction between the Son and the Holy
Spirit. This text has been published by Chris Schabel (2006b) and is highly interesting, not
least for its detailed treatment of the positio impossibilis; see Schabel’s article.
83 For Trabes’ trinitarian theology, see Schmaus 1930a, esp. 301–304, 467–469; Gelber 1974,
68–71. On Peter’s Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 61, which should be read with
the following two modifications. First, Trabes’ IV Sent., is found in 2 mss (not 1) and his II
Sent. (ordinatio), is found in 3 mss (not 2). Second, an excellent resource on Trabes is to be
found in di Noto 1963, with information on works and mss on pp. 15–17 (from which I get
my information), with a question list for book I on pp. 47–61, and with editions of selected
questions from Trabes’ I Sent.; see, however, Alois Huning’s Besprechung of di Noto’s book
(Huning 1963). My quotations from Peter’s I Sent. come from the only known ms: Assisi,
Biblioteca comunale 154.
84 Peter of Trabes, I Sent., d. 26, pars 2, q. 2 (“Utrum abstractis proprietatibus contingit
intelligere personas?”, ff. 79vb–80ra): “… persona non potest intelligi absque personalitate,
cum hoc implicet contradictionem, et rationem personalitatis habet ab aliqua proprietate;
316 chapter five
assert the real (if counterfactual) sufficiency of emanational properties

to constitute the persons in the absence of relational properties. When
Peter comes to talk directly about innascibility, he lays what is perhaps the
heaviest stress on it that we have seen so far. For Peter, innascibility is the
personal property constituting the Father “in being (esse) as a supposite
and a person.” Paternity, on the other hand, is the property indicating that
the Father is the source of the Son “for if he did not have a Son, he would
not be the Father, yet he would still be God innascible having personal
being.”85 In line with these positions, Peter holds that the Holy Spirit would
be distinct from the Son if the former did not proceed from the latter, and
in the course of his discussion of this issue he gives a crystal clear statement
of the Franciscan tool of nested distinctions:
There is a twofold basis (ratio) for the distinction of person from person: one is
the relation (habitudo) between producer and produced, the other is diverse
mode of emanating. Diverse modes of emanating are the principal and per
se basis of distinguishing between the persons who emanate. The relation
between producer and produced is the basis of multiplying (plurificandi) and
of making the persons distinct. This is because, if one were not distinct from
another, there would not be a number of them (plures) there. By the first basis,
however, the persons emanating and producing are made distinct, and it is
not necessary for the second basis to obtain (concurrere) among them.86
cum de essentia et ratione personae non sit nisi essentia et proprietas, impossibile est quod,
abstracta omni proprietate, intelligatur persona. Est enim accipere in divinis proprietatem
quae dicit modum essendi proprie, non modum se habendi ad personam aliam nisi privative,
ut innascibilitas; et est accipere proprietatem quae dicit modum existendi et modum se
habendi, ut filiatio, quae dicit modum quo Filius esse habet et modum quo se habet ad
Patrem … abstractis aliquibus proprietatibus ex praedictis a personis, potest adhuc intelligi
persona, ut abstractis illis quae dicunt modum se habendi tantum. Si enim abstrahatur
paternitas a Patre, adhuc poterit intelligi hypostasis eius, et similiter abstracta spiratione
activa a Patre et Filio, adhuc poterunt intelligi eorum personae. Sed omni proprietate
abstracta impossibile est intelligere personas.” Assisi, Bibl. com. 154, f. 79vb. In Trabes’ Quodl.,
q. 1 (“Utrum abstractis proprietatibus per intellectum possint remanere hypostases sive
personae”, Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. D.6.359, f. 107ra–b), Peter presents as part of his response
this same text very nearly verbatim.
85 Trabes, I Sent., d. 28, q. 3 (“Utrum innascibilitas sit Patris personalis proprietas?”,
f. 84ra–b—italicized text translated): “Dicendum ergo quod innascibilitas est proprietas Patris
personalis constituens ipsum in esse suppositi et personae, non in ratione principii. Paternitas
enim dicit relationem super actum generationis fundatam; unde dicit proprietatem secun-
dum quam persona Patris est alterius principium, ut (ms.: non) Filii, si enim non haberet
Filium, non esset Pater, et tamen adhuc esset Deus innascibilis habens esse personale. Unde
sicut dictum est prius innascibilitas dicit rationem et modum existendi personae quae est
Pater, sed paternitas dicit rationem et modum /84rb/ se habendi ad aliam personam secun-
dum quod est alterius personae, ut Filii, principium.” Assisi, Bibl. com. 154, f. 84ra–b.
86 Trabes, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (“Quaeritur utrum posito quod Spiritus Sanctus non procederet
From this position, emphasizing the role that the emanations play in the
distinction of the persons, follows Peter’s view on the distinction between
the emanations. They are distinct from one another in and of themselves
(se ipsis); they are also distinct by way of origin or, as it were, causally (orig-
inaliter vel quasi causaliter) by their fecund sources, nature and will. And
to the standard Dominican argument against the distinction of the emana-
tions being grounded in the distinction of their sources—i.e., the argument
that the rational distinction between nature and will in God is insufficient
to ground the real distinction between emanations and persons—Peter
responds by asserting in typical Franciscan fashion, that when they act as
sources (in ratione principiandi) the merely rationally distinct divine nature
and will do ground the distinction between the emanations.87 In short: Peter
seems in every way to fit into the Franciscan trinitarian tradition as we
(in Chapter Two, above) saw it develop in such thinkers as John Pecham
and Roger Marston; moreover, Peter appears to make no apologies for his
uncompromising use of the Franciscan position. It should be noted that in
my reading of Peter, nowhere did I find mention of the intellect as a source
of the Son’s emanation from the Father. This would indicate that Peter is
a Filio distingueretur ab ipso?”, ff. 51va–52ra): “Unde intelligendum /52ra/ quod duplex est
ratio distinguendi personam a persona, una est habitudo producentis et producti, alia
est diversus modus emanandi. Diversus autem modus emanandi est ratio principalis et
per se distinguendi inter personas emanantes (et per … emanantes mg.); habitudo autem
producentis et producti est ratio [persona] plurificandi et distinguendi personas. Nam si
non esset unus ab alio distinctus, non essent ibi plures. Sed prima ratione distinguuntur
personae emanantes et producentes (ms.: producente), nec est necesse secundam rationem
concurrere inter eas.” Assisi, Bibl. com. 154, ff. 51vb–52ra.
87 Trabes, I Sent., d. 13, q. 4 (“Utrum generatio et spiratio realiter distinguantur?”, ff. 54va–
55ra): “… generatio et spiratio hdifferunti se ipsis formaliter, significant enim ipsos terminos
per modum formae mobilis; sed per sua principia prout* per fecunditatem naturae et
voluntatis. Differunt etiam quasi causaliter sive originaliter, ex hoc enim distinguitur Filius a
Spiritu Sancto et e converso: quia ille procedit per modum et rationem naturae, ille vero per
modum et rationem voluntatis, et sic per hoc ipsum distinguuntur emanationes ipsorum. Ex
quibus patet falsitas quarumdam positionum quae ponuntur circa huiusmodi distinctionem,
quidam enim dicunt quod huiusmodi emanationes distinguuntur quia generatio est ab una
persona, spiratio autem a duabus …
“Sed opponitur contra primum modum ab his qui ponunt modum secundum, quia natura
et voluntas non different nisi secundum rationem, nec habent inter se oppositionem originis.
Sed generatio et processio ponuntur differe realiter. Ergo eorum differentia non potest accipi
a differentia voluntatis et naturae … Ad primum dicendum quod, licet natura et voluntas
non differant in Deo nisi secundum rationem in ratione essendi, differunt tamen in ratione
principiandi, quia ad hanc rationem non requiritur differentia realiter …” Assisi, Bibl. com.
154, f. 54vb. For the distinction between the emanations’ sources in ratione essendi in contrast
to in ratione principiandi, see esp. Ch. 2, above, e.g., n. 135 (Nicholas of Ockham) and the
further references there.
318 chapter five
“pre-Henry of Ghent” in this regard; but given that he was working outside
of Paris for most of his career, this is perhaps not particularly surprising.88
William of Ware. There are a number of reasons why it is appropriate
to end an investigation of late-thirteenth century trinitarian thought—and
Henry of Ghent’s place in it—with the English Franciscan William of Ware.
First and foremost, he has traditionally been called the teacher of John
Duns Scotus, and whether or not that is true, he was undoubtedly a slightly
older contemporary of the Subtle Doctor teaching at the same universities,
Oxford and Paris.89 Second, especially on the issue of the counterfactual
question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, William can be seen
as a type of summation of the late thirteenth-century Franciscan tradition:
confronting many of the arguments for the rival Dominican position in a
polemical fashion, on the one hand, and giving in response most of the
traditional arguments and authoritative passages for the Franciscan view,
on the other. Thus, it is to this issue, and the related one of the distinction
of the emanations, that we turn.90
William’s ideas on both the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit and
the distinction between the emanations are what we would expect from a
theologian in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition:
Since the Son differs from the Holy Spirit by two differences, namely by active
spiration and by filiation, and the Holy Spirit differs from the Son by one
difference, namely by passive spiration, setting aside from the Son active
spiration, which is to him a quasi-incidental property, while filiation—which
is constitutive of the Son—remains, then by filiation alone the Son would
still differ from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, opposed relations are not required
for distinction, but disparate [relations] suffice, and any opposition at all,
whether direct or indirect, opposed or disparate … Thus, the entire personal
and proper difference, both on the Son’s part and on the Holy Spirit’s part,
would stand, even if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son.91
88 A further Franciscan Sent. commentary from around the turn of the 14th century is that
of John of Erfurt; on John and his work, see Friedman 2002a, 61–62, and the literature cited
there. I examined John’s Sent. commentary in ms. Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. A.8.815, and
found it to be extremely dependent on Bonaventure, to the point that it might almost have
been an abbreviation. For this reason I pass over a discussion of it here.
89 On Ware and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 63–65, and the literature
referred to there (to the editions listed there should be added those found in Friedman
and Schabel 2004). Thanks especially to the efforts of Michael Schmaus, a great deal of
William’s trinitarian writing is available in published form; see Schmaus 1930a, 228*–285*,
and Schmaus 1930b, 336–352.
90 All references are to the editions of Ware’s texts found in Friedman 2001, 99–125, and
Friedman and Schabel 2004, 127–146.

91 William of Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5 (italicized text translated): “Cum ergo Filius differat a
Thus, for William, there exist nested distinctions between the Son and
the Holy Spirit: opposed distinction of active and passive spiration, and dis-
parate distinction between filiation and active spiration. And William says
explicitly that disparate relations suffice to account for the real distinction
between the Son and the Holy Spirit; indeed he even seems in the passage
above to be trying to redefine ‘opposition’ to mean any kind of relative differ-
ence whatsoever “direct or indirect, opposed or disparate”. William is quite
clear that the Son is primarily constituted by filiation,92 and correspondingly
he holds that active spiration is a “quasi-incidental” property, meaning by
this that it is not an “essential” (i.e., completely indispensable) aspect of the
Son’s constitution, “because through the fact that the Holy Spirit proceeds
from him, nothing is added to the Son’s personality”.93 He also gives the
reductio ad absurdum that we saw was Henry of Ghent’s main argument for
this position: that if the Son and the Holy Spirit differed strictly because the
latter came from the former, this would entail that the emanations would
not differ, and this in turn would entail that the Son and the Holy Spirit, both
proceeding from the Father, would not differ.94
Spiritu Sancto duabus differentiis, scilicet spiratione activa et filiatione, et Spiritus Sanctus dif-
ferat ab eo una differentia, scilicet spiratione passiva, dempta a Filio spiratione activa, quae est
sibi quasi proprietas adventitia, dummodo maneat filiatio, quae est constitutiva ipsius, adhuc
sola filiatione differret a Spiritu Sancto. Unde non requiritur relatio opposita ad distinctionem,
sed disparata sufficit, et quaecumque oppositio, directa vel indirecta, opposita vel disparata.
Unde Filius non minus quantum est ex differentia personalitatis differret a Spiritu Sancto,
si Spiritus Sanctus non ab eo procederet, licet quantum ad accidentalem quasi differentiam
plus modo differat, quae differentia est per ipsam spirationem quasi adventitiam ipsi fili-
ationi. Et hoc patet sic: quia per hoc quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit ab eo nihil crescit ad
personalitatem Filii, nec diminuitur aliquid ex personalitate Spiritus Sancti. Stat ergo dif-
ferentia tota personalis et propria tam a parte Filii quam a parte Spiritus Sancti, licet Spiritus
Sanctus non procedat a Filio.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 104194–206.
92 See Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5, e.g.: “Item, per illud idem per quod aliquid est formaliter ens,
est formaliter unum et in se indivisum et ab aliis divisum. Sed Pater est Pater formaliter et
personaliter paternitate vel aliqua alia proprietate sibi propria. Ergo eadem proprietate est
unus personaliter, et in se indivisus et ab aliis divisus. Ergo Filius eodem modo filiatione,
et Spiritus Sanctus spiratione passiva est in se unus et indivisus et ab aliis divisus. Ergo
circumscripto omni alio, Filius sola filiatione differt a Spiritu Sancto personaliter.” Ed.
Friedman 2001, p. 104181–186 (and see further pp. 103171–104194).
93 See the text in roman type in n. 91 above.
94 Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5: “Item, si Spiritus Sanctus non distingueretur a Filio, nec
generatio et spiratio per consequens distinguerentur ab invicem; nec vis generativa et

spirativa in Patre distinguerentur, sed essent una vis. Sed si vis generativa et spirativa non
distinguerentur in Patre, sequitur quod Filius et Spiritus Sanctus per comparationem ad
Patrem non distinguerentur. Consequens falsum; ergo, etc.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 103154–158
(and see further p. 103159–170). Cf. to Henry of Ghent’s use of the same argument, Ch. 4, above,
nn. 24–25.
320 chapter five
As the last point indicates, William is certainly conscious that the issue
of the Son’s distinction from the Holy Spirit is related to the distinction
between the emanations, and he even gives references from the latter
discussion to the former.95 His understanding of the emanations is again
very much within the Franciscan trinitarian tradition: the emanations are
formally distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis), but they differ really in
terms of their cause (causative); their formal distinction is shown (ostensive
potest accipi) by the distinction of their originative sources, nature and will,
here called by William the generative and spirative powers, respectively.96
In line with the Franciscan tradition, then, William seems to think that the
distinction between the emanations is based in some way on their differing
elicitive sources, but they are distinct formally on their own account in any
event. To prove that Dominicans were wrong to insist that the emanations
are distinct because in generation one person comes from one person, while
in spiration one comes from two, he relies on an argument that we have
seen Roger Marston use: there could be an infinite number of persons if the
emanations were distinct on the basis of the arrangement of the persons
to one another as the Dominicans suggest. In this way, William appears
to subscribe to a version of the “proof” that there are three and only three
divine persons: since nature and will are the only two productive sources in
God, there can only be two emanations, and thus only three persons (one
unproduced and two produced).97 William shows his adherence to a strong
use of the psychological model by claiming that the emanational powers
in the Father correspond subjectively to the divine essence insofar as it is
“passive intellectuality” (i.e., as it is the Son) and insofar as it is “passive will”
(i.e., as it is the Holy Spirit).98 When pushed to say on what basis the sources
95 Cf. Ware, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 108322–323; p. 110388–389).

96 Ware, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2: “Si tamen quaeritur unde earum distinctio formaliter accipitur,
dicitur quod se ipsis formaliter differunt, et non per aliquid aliud, sicut auditio et visio se
ipsis differunt formaliter, et non per obiecta nisi ostensive .... vis generativa et vis spirativa
sunt principia proxima earum, quae, quia differunt realiter re relativa, emanationes differunt
realiter causative, licet formaliter se ipsis …” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 109368–370, p. 110413–415. See
also n. 98 below.
97 Ware, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2: “… si emanationes, et per consequens personae, non aliter
differant quam per esse ab uno et a duobus, possent tunc esse infinitae personae in divinis,
quia tertia differret a secunda per hoc quod esset a duobus, quarta a tertia per hoc quod
esset a tribus, et sic in infinitum.” Ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 108348–109351. For Marston, see Ch. 2,
98 Ware, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2: “Unde sicut aequalitas formaliter se ipsa differt a similitudine,
sic filiatio a spiratione. Verumtamen, licet sic differant formaliter se ipsis, tamen osten-
sive earum distinctio potest accipi a parte rationum elicitivarum diversarum quae sunt vis
of the emanations differ by relative reality (re relativa), William claims, in a

passage that is reminiscent of Bonaventure’s defense of primity, that there
we have reached a status in the question, a point beyond which we can give
no deeper answer:
If it is asked what is the distinctive source of the generative power and the
spirative power, which differ by relative reality, it is replied that the question
can be taken no further (ibi est status), because just as the Father is the first
person, so that he is not reduced in terms of cause or antecedent to another
person, so all the properties that exist in him are not reduced to anything
else in terms of cause or antecedent, and consequently their distinction is
not taken in comparison to anything prior in terms of cause, rather I say that
they differ completely in and of themselves (se ipsis totis).99
Thus, according to William, the Father on his own account has powers
of differing formal rationes that elicit the different emanations that are
sufficient to account for the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit:100
no further explanation can be given, and none should be sought.
generativa et vis spirativa, et a parte subiecti, quia essentia divina sub ratione intellectuali-
tatis passivae est subiectum generationis et illud de quo generatur Filius; et essentia divina
sub ratione voluntatis passivae est subiectum spirationis et illud de quo producitur Spiritus
Sanctus.” Ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 109382–110388. See also the text in n. 100 below, for the divine
essence’s “subjective” characteristics.
99 Ware, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2: “Et si quaeritur quid est principium distinctivum vis generativae
et vis spirativae, quae differunt re relativa, dicitur quod ibi est status, quia sicut Pater
est prima persona, ita quod causative et antecedenter non reducitur ad aliam personam,
sic omnes proprietates quae sunt in ipso non reducuntur ad aliquid aliud causative et
antecedenter, et per consequens distinctio earum non accipitur per comparationem ad
aliquid prius causative, dico immo se ipsis totis differunt.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 110415–421. For
Bonaventure’s defense of primity, see Ch. 1, above, n. 73. Henry of Ghent claims that these
sources differ really by the ratio of relation (differunt re ratione relationum); see Ch. 4, above,
n. 58. One finds this line of argument also in, e.g., Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2: “Hoc
autem absurdum est dicere quod sunt tres personae realiter propriis realitatibus relativis, et
tamen quod non distinguuntur realiter et personaliter inter se, et pondera ly ‘personaliter’.”
Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 148290–293.
100 Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5: “Et cum dicitur quod origines eorum terminantur ad eandem
naturam, dicitur quod natura non est terminus per se, sed est terminus accidentaliter per
accidens, a quo non debet accipi distinctio productionis. Immo supposita ad quae istae pro-
ductiones per se terminantur differunt specie formaliter loquendo, sicut proprietates ea
constituentes sunt formaliter diversae specie, et ideo productiones differunt specie sicut
generatio bovis differt specie a generatione leonis, sicut ipsi termini differunt etiam per
comparationem ad terminum a quo, scilicet Patrem in quantum Pater habet aliam et aliam
vim per quam elicit actum generationis et spirationis; licet enim idem sit Pater supposi-
tive, tamen habet aliam et aliam rationem formalem. Modo autem est ita quod diversitas
actionum non attenditur per comparationem ad suppositum, sed per comparationem ad for-
malem rationem agendi diversam in eodem supposito. Differunt etiam per comparationem
ad subiectum, sicut enim in essentia Patris est alia fecunditas activa respectu productionis
Filii et alia fecunditas activa respectu productionis Spiritus Sancti, sic est ibi alia fecunditas
322 chapter five
4. Towards Scotus:
Five Arguments on the Holy Spirit’s Distinction from the Son
To round off this survey of late thirteenth-century trinitarian thought I

will present five arguments concerning the distinction of the Son from the
Holy Spirit and the distinction between the emanations—all of which are
found in William of Ware’s discussion of this issue. I will present these
arguments historically, tracing them as far back as Aquinas and up into
the early fourteenth century, and I will try to show what each tradition,
the Franciscan and the Dominican, made of the argument. This can give
an impression of the situation that John Duns Scotus encountered when he
came to write on trinitarian theology towards the turn of the century.
The “highest impossibility” argument. This argument was an attempt
to block the entire question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son,
given that the former does not proceed from the latter, by claiming that
the question itself assumes the incompossible, and hence is nonsensical.
Several different versions of this argument appear to have been in circula-
tion in the 1270’s, 1280’s, and 1290’s. We have already seen (at n. 69 above)
that Richard of Mediavilla presented a version of the argument, and other
versions were presented by Roger Marston,101 by William of Ware,102 and by
Scotus,103 while Henry of Ghent was certainly responding to one of them
when he gave his positio impossibilis argument.104 In the period after Scotus,
the argument was regularly rehearsed in treatments of the counterfactual
question, in such Franciscan thinkers as Robert Cowton, William of Not-
tingham, and Peter Auriol,105 as well as in Dominicans like Hervaeus Nata-
passiva ad Filium, puta essentia divina sub ratione intellectualitatis passivae et alia fecundi-
tas passiva ad Spiritum Sanctum, puta essentia divina sub ratione voluntatis passivae.” Ed.
Friedman 2001, p. 105230–245.
101 Roger Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “Item, omne quod in divinis est in fine necessitatis;
ergo suum oppositum est impossibile in fine impossibilitatis; sed quod est sic impossibile,
includit in se incompossibilia; ergo quod Spiritus Sanctus non procedat a Filio includit
incompossibilia.” Ed. cit., p. 134 § 16. See Roger’s response, ed. cit., p. 147 §16.
102 William of Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 9911–27).
103 Scotus, I Ord., d. 11, q. 2 (V, pp. 10–14—roman numeral reference is to volume number
in the Vatican edition of Scotus).

104 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 54, q. 6: “Quod autem praedicti ponunt in sua ratione,
quod ponere Filium esse distinctum a Spiritu Sancto, si non procedat ab ipso, est ponere
incompossibilia …” Badius, vol. 2, f. 92vI. See Ch. 4, above, around nn. 26–32.
105 For William of Nottingham, see I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 134286–135309),
and see n. 109 below. Cowton’s treatment is found in his I Sent., d. 11, a. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001,
pp. 142102–143120), although much of this is taken verbatim from Scotus’ Lectura, d. 11, q. 2,
lis.106 The basic argument is as follows: it is as impossible as it can be that

the Holy Spirit not proceed from the Son, and what is of the highest impos-
sibility includes within itself the highest incompossibility, otherwise there
could be something more impossible; therefore the very question involves
an outright contradiction and is nonsense. The foundational premiss of the
argument is clearly that internal to God there is only strict logical neces-
sity, and therefore, if we know that something in fact does obtain in God,
then it must obtain with absolute necessity and with no questions asked;
thus, since we know that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, it is abso-
lutely necessary that he does so and, conversely, it is strictly impossible—it
is incompossible—that he not do so.
We do not know who came up with this argument, nor even who de-
fended it as their own view. The editors of the Scotus critical edition have
identified an argument of this kind in an anonymous Quaestiones super
I Sententiarum found in Assisi, Biblioteca comunale 196, and indeed the
argument as found there bears some resemblance to the versions found in
Scotus and in William of Ware.107 Probably the theologian from this era who
nn. 23–24 (XVII, pp. 135–136). Auriol’s presentation is very watered down, saying merely that
the question assumes the impossible: Peter Auriol, Scriptum, d. 11, a. 2: “… illa enim quaestio
dubitabilis est et disputabilis quae formatur de propositione hypothetica, cuius categorica
aequipollens est dubitabilis, et sub inquisitione cadens. Haec enim quaestio rationabilis
est: an asinus volaret, si haberet alas, quia categorica dubitabilis est, utrum omne habens
alas possit volare … sed huic hypotheticae quaerenti: an Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur
personaliter a Filio, si non procederet ab eo, haec categorica aequipollet quae quaerit utrum
de facto nunc distinguatur Filius a Spiritu Sancto per spirare aut distinguatur per filiationem;
si enim per solum spirare, si non procederet non distinguetur; si vero per solam filiationem,
si non procederet, adhuc distingueretur. Haec autem est rationabilis inquisitio, an Filius
personaliter distinguatur per filiationem aut per spirationem activam a Spiritu Sancto. Ergo
et ista hypothetica inquisitio rationabilis est et bona.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 412–415, 423–
429 (on the Electronic Scriptum, see Ch. 9, below, n. 1); ed. 1596, p. 354aE–bB. For more on
Auriol’s position on the counterfactual Filioque question, see below, Ch. 9, §3, and esp. n. 87
there.
106 See Ch. 7, below, at and around nn. 37–44, for Hervaeus’ treatment of the counterfactual
Filioque question, and particularly n. 42 for Hervaeus’ description of the highest impossibility
argument.
107 See Scotus, Ord., d. 11, q. 2 (V, p. 10) which quotes from the anonymous Quaestiones super
I Sent., in Assisi, Biblioteca comunale 196, f. 146v (cited as f. 137va in the Scotus edition). I offer
the text here with silent corrections of the editio princeps as found in the Scotus edition (loc.
cit.): “Quaeritur utrum posito quod Spiritus Sanctus procedat a Patre et non a Filio utrum
implicet contradictionem. Quod sic patet, quia quaero: aut Deus potest facere quod tantum
procederet a Patre, aut non. Si sic, igitur processit: omne enim possibile in divinis quantum
hadi actus intrinsecos est necessarium, quia si potentia ante actum, possibilis esset mutatio.
Si non poterit, sequitur impossibile tale quod includit contradictionem: omne enim aliud
impossibile potest Deus, sicut dicunt sancti et philosophi.” While close to Scotus and to Ware,
324 chapter five
expressed a view most closely related to the highest impossibility argument

was Godfrey of Fontaines, who, as we saw above (esp. nn. 31, 35), held
that a sort of weak incompossibility was involved in positing that the Holy
Spirit did not come from the Son while the two persons were nevertheless
assumed to be distinct from one another.108 Finally, in the margin to the only
surviving manuscript of William of Nottingham’s Sentences commentary
(composed ca. 1306–1309), the highest impossibility argument is attributed
to “Berwik minor” and “Malwsfeld praedicator”, i.e. John of Berewick, OFM,
and William Macclesfield, OP.109 Thus, it seems that the argument may have
had several defenders. It certainly had many opponents.
The standard reply to the highest impossibility argument was to say—as
did Henry—that in a genuine counterfactual investigation we can assume
what is impossible, i.e. assume a state of affairs that does not obtain in actu-
ality, in order to determine whether the impossibility involved is strict log-
ical impossibility or a less strict (physical, doctrinal) impossibility. In short:
positio impossibilis permits the investigation of the nature of the impossibil-
ity involved in a counterfactual state of affairs. In the case of the counterfac-
tual Filioque question, under investigation is the nature of the impossibility
associated with the purely counterfactual situation in which the Holy Spirit
does not proceed from the Son, and in particular it asks whether the Son
and the Holy Spirit would still exist as persons distinct from one another
given that state of affairs. This, in turn, could be broken down into two
further counterfactual inquiries: whether filiation, all on its own, could be
the property solely constitutive of the Son, even distinguishing him from
the Holy Spirit; and whether active spiration from the Father alone could
be the property solely constitutive of the Holy Spirit, even distinguishing
I have my doubts as to whether the opinion given in the Assisi manuscript and that which is
found in Richard of Mediavilla (see n. 69 above) are the same.
108 Especially Richard of Mediavilla’s rendition of the argument (n. 69 above) has some
affinity to Godfrey’s position on this issue. Slipyi 1927–1928 (1928, 1) attributed to Godfrey
the argument as Richard presented it, and the editors of Roger Marston’s De em. aet. also
attribute an argument of this nature to Godfrey (ed. cit., p. 142 §1). Godfrey might have
offered a version of this argument in his Sent. commentary, which has never been found.
If Godfrey followed the normal course of study, then, given his first (presumably magisterial)
quodlibetal disputation took place at Christmas 1285, he would have been reading the Sent.
some three or four years earlier, i.e., ca. 1281–1283. It is noteworthy in this respect that Godfrey
offers no refutation of the “highest impossibility” argument in his Quodl. VII, q. 4.
109 See Nottingham’s I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 135 n. 76). For William
Macclesfield’s own view of the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, if the latter
did not come from the former, see the disputed question edited in Schabel and Friedman
2005, 33–37, along with the introduction, loc. cit., 31–32.
him from the Son. Clearly the entire situation is a doctrinal impossibility
(because doctrinally it is certain that the Son spirates the Holy Spirit),
but is it a logical impossibility? According to this standard reply to the
“highest impossibility” argument, then, since in theological investigation
we can indeed assume what is impossible, the argument is a mere fuga
quaestionis, a ducking of the question.110 In connection with the standard
reply, there is often an appeal to Augustine’s statement in De trinitate that
“even if the Father had not generated the Son, nothing would prevent
him from being called unbegotten”, an obvious example of counterfactual
reasoning about God’s trinitarian nature.111 Passages from Anselm and from
Richard of St. Victor were also typically adduced in order to show that
there was nothing unusual about assuming something that is impossible
in God and then reasoning on that basis.112 Even Aristotle was called upon
to defend the legitimacy of counterfactual reasoning in this trinitarian
context!113 One interesting point about the highest impossibility argument
is that representatives of both the Dominican and the Franciscan trinitarian
traditions rejected the argument, and hence accepted the legitimacy of
the question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, granted the
counterfactual, although they disagreed strongly on the correct answer
to be given to this question. Thus, in his response to Robert Cowton’s
Sentences commentary, Thomas of Sutton pointedly agrees with Cowton
that the counterfactual question “does not include contradictories” and that
110 E.g., William of Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5: “Sed illud est fuga ut evadant difficultatem an
relatio disparata distinguere possit personas in divinis.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 10046–47. Also
Scotus, I Ord., d. 11, n. 28 (V, p. 112) and Thomas of Sutton in n. 114 below. These are merely
examples, and further could be provided.
111 See Augustine, De trinitate V, 6, 7: “… non enim hoc est dicere ingenitum quod est
Patrem dicere, quia et si Filium non genuisset nihil prohiberet dicere eum ingenitum, et si
gignat quisque Filium non ex eo ipse est ingenitus …” CCSL 50, p. 2114–7. E.g., Roger Marston
uses this at De em. aet., q. 7 (ed. cit., p. 147 § 16; see also Ch. 2, above, at n. 178); Ware, I Sent.,
d. 9, q. 5 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 10033–34); Scotus, I Ord., d. 11, n. 32 (V, p. 136–9); William of
Nottingham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2, a. 1 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 136343–345); Robert Cowton, I Sent.,
d. 11, a. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 145184–187).
112 Anselm, De processione Spiritus Sancti 2: “… si enim Pater haberet Patrem, alius tamen
esset a Filio” (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, pp. 18627–1871). Richard of St. Victor, De trinitate III, 16:
“Etiam si sola una persona in divinitate esset, nihilominus plenitudinem sapientiae habere
potuisset” (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 15112–15214). Appeals to these authoritative passages can be
found in, e.g., William of Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 10035–40); William of
Nottingham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2, a. 1 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 136346–351).
113 Aristotle, Physics IV, c. 7 (214a9–12). Robert Cowton uses the text in I Sent., d. 11, a.
2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 145188–193), Cowton claiming that Aristotle “habet etiam pro tanto
impossibili quod sit sonus sive color sine obiecto sicut habet Catholicus quod Spiritus
Sanctus non procedat a Filio.”
326 chapter five
someone asking it is not ducking “the difficulty of the question.”114 Moreover,

we will see below that by the early fourteenth century at least two members
of the Dominican order, Hervaeus Natalis and Thomas of Sutton, were
utilizing a logical strategy designed to substantiate the legitimacy of the
counterfactual question about the Son’s distinction from the Holy Spirit,
while still allowing them to answer the question in the negative.115 Finally,
it is worthwhile pointing out that the line of thought behind the highest
impossibility argument—that in God there is only strict logical necessity—
will have an important role to play in the development of the unusual way
in which Henry of Harclay, Peter Auriol, and William Ockham modify the
standard Franciscan reply to the counterfactual question.116
The “Father” argument. This is one of the stronger Dominican argu-
ments against the Franciscan trinitarian tradition. A generic presentation of
the argument would run as follows. The Franciscan tradition insists that the
disparate relations, passive generation (or filiation) and passive spiration,
are sufficient on their own account to make the Son and the Holy Spirit dis-
tinct from one another. But if disparate relations are sufficient to ground the
distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, then the disparate relations
in the Father corresponding to those in the Son and the Holy Spirit—that is
to say, the Father’s active generation and active spiration—should be suffi-
cient to distinguish the Father into two persons. Conversely, the argument
could be formulated as follows: the Father is one person with two disparate
relations; therefore, if there were not opposed relations between the Son
and the Holy Spirit, the disparate relations between them would not pro-
vide for their personal constitution, and the Son and the Holy Spirit would
be, like the Father, just one person. Since the conclusions to both of these
formulations of the argument are clearly absurd, one can conclude that the
persons are distinct exclusively on the basis of opposed relations and never
114 See Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13, ad 7–8, e.g.: “… non tamen est dicendum
quod ista hypothesis huius quaestionis includit contradictoria, scilicet Spiritum Sanctum
non procedere a Filio, quamvis sit impossibilis; nec fugimus difficultatem quaestionis .... bene
hargumentum Robertii probat quod ista hypothesis—Spiritum Sanctum non procedere a
Filio—non includit contradictoria.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 165297–299,304–305. For more on the
counterfactual Filioque question in both Cowton’s Sent. commentary and Sutton’s “Cowton
Critique”, see Ch. 8, § 2B, below.
115 For Hervaeus, see Ch. 7, below, at and around nn. 37–44; for Sutton, see Ch. 8, at and
around nn. 72–75.

116 For Harclay, see Ch. 8, below, at and around nn. 91–95; for Ockham, Ch. 10, at and
around nn. 81–85; for Auriol, Ch. 9, at and around nn. 74–94, and esp. n. 87 for a widespread
Franciscan use of a variation on the highest impossibility argument in the context of the de
facto question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son.
on the basis of disparate ones. As is often the case with Dominican argu-
ments, this one has its roots in the work of Thomas Aquinas, who presents
a fairly clear statement of it in, e.g., his Summa theologiae.117 In the later
thirteenth century, Godfrey of Fontaines advances a variation on the argu-
ment,118 and Thomas of Sutton uses it in his critique of Robert Cowton.119 In
the Franciscan trinitarian tradition, Walter of Bruges gives an early state-
ment of the argument, without, however, a response to it; for an early state-
ment with response we can look instead to Eustace of Arras’ long trinitarian
question discussed in Chapter 2 (§3) above. Eustace responds that since
an active emanation or production does not give being to the person pro-
ducing, the diversity of active emanations is not constitutive of a personal
difference but makes a mere difference in notion or in property; thus, active
generation and active spiration, precisely because they are active emana-
tions, can co-exist in one and the same Father as two different properties.
Not so with passive emanations, which give being to the persons produced
and hence are constitutive of distinct persons. Clearly Eustace’ argument
about the Father takes its point of departure in the view that the Father
must have his being “before” he actively emanates (since he cannot act
unless he exists), and this is fully in line with what we saw of Eustace’s
views in Chapter Two above.120 Variations on the argument were presented
117 E.g., Sum. theol., I, q. 36, a. 2, solutio: “Relationes autem personas distinguere non pos-
sunt nisi secundum quod sunt oppositae. Quod ex hoc patet, quia Pater habet duas rela-
tiones, quarum una refertur ad Filium, et alia ad Spiritum Sanctum; quae tamen, quia non
sunt oppositae, non constituunt duas personas, sed ad unam personam Patris tantum per-
tinent. Si ergo in Filio et in Spiritu Sancto non esset invenire nisi duas relationes quibus
uterque refertur ad Patrem, illae relationes non essent ad invicem oppositae, sicut neque
duae relationes quibus Pater refertur ad illos. Unde, sicut persona Patris est una, ita sequere-
tur quod persona Filii et Spiritus Sancti esset una, habens duas relationes oppositas duabus
relationibus Patris. Hoc autem est haereticum, cum tollat fidem trinitatis.” A form of the
Father argument is also mentioned by Bombolognus of Bologna in the text quoted in Ch. 3,
above, n. 33.
118 Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Si enim Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio non poneretur maior
oppositio inter Filium generatum et Spiritum Sanctum spiratum quam inter Patrem generan-
tem et spirantem; sed, quia spiratio et generatio in Patre non habent oppositionem originis,
non possunt facere vel constituere distinctionem personarum. Ergo, cum non plus different
generari et spirari in Filio et Spiritu Sancto, per hoc non constituerentur duae personae.” Ed.
cit., p. 292. It should be remembered that, for Godfrey, the disparate relations in the Father
are really distinct ex consequenti; see n. 25 above.
119 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 162191–196).
120 For Walter of Bruges’ use of the argument, see Ch. 2, above, n. 21 towards the end
of the Latin text. For Eustace’ statement of the Father argument, see his Quaestio “utrum
Spiritus Sanctus personaliter distingueretur …”, argument 17, and his response (Appendix,
below, ll. 483–490, 853–862).
328 chapter five
and refuted by several major thinkers in the Franciscan stream in the late
thirteenth century, including Roger Marston and Henry of Ghent.121 By the
time of William of Ware,122 Eustace’ reply has been reduced to a very sim-
ple formula: diversity in a source need not be as great as diversity in what
the source produces.123 Ware contends further that, if the Father argument
held, then God would certainly be four persons, since a supposite would
be formed by active spiration.124 In John Duns Scotus, the type of response
Ware gave is summed up in the claim that only incompossible disparate
relations can constitute a supposite, and further that the incompossibility
involved is based upon fundamentally diverse ways of proceeding.125 Thus,
because active productions are disparate relations that are compossible in
the same source, the Father is numerically one producer; because, on the
other hand, the Son and the Holy Spirit take being in diverse ways from
their passive productions, these productions are incompossible in the same
subject. The notion of the incompossibility of the passive productions in
a single supposite, will be taken up by many authors in the Franciscan
current, including Henry of Harclay, Alexander of Alessandria, and Robert
Cowton, as we will see in Chapter Eight below. As late as William Ock-
ham, writing around 1320, the Father argument is presented and refuted,
Ockham claiming in response simply that only really distinct relations
121 See Roger Marston, De em. aet., q. 7 (ed. cit., pp. 131–132 §6 [presentation of the
argument], pp. 145–146 § 6 [Marston’s reply]); Henry of Ghent, Quodl. VI, q. 1 (ed. G.A. Wilson;
Opera Omnia, 10; Leuven, 1987; p. 3287–95).
122 Ware’s shortest presentation of the argument (I Sent., d. 9, q. 5): “Item, relatio disparata
solum non potest distinguere personas personaliter, quia si sic, cum in Patre sint duae
relationes disparatae, scilicet paternitas et spiratio actio, sequeretur quod Pater esset duae
personae. Consequens est falsum; ergo antecedens.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 10058–60. For
variations on the argument, see ibid. (ed. cit., p. 10180–84; p. 102114–118).
123 Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5: “Item, quatuor relationes in se sunt quatuor res, ideo respondetur
quod non est tanta diversitas in principiis quanta est in principiatis, cum principiata vadant
ad multitudinem, principia ad unitatem .... Et ideo non oportet quod, si illae proprietates
ex parte Patris non distinguunt Patrem personaliter ita quod sint duae personae, quod sic
sit ex parte Filii et Spiritus Sancti qui sunt quaedam principiata respectu Patris principii.”
Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 105217–224. See also n. 129 below, for Nicholas of Ockham’s similar
formulation.
124 Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5: “Ad secundum, dicitur quod argumentum est magis contra eos,
quia per idem argumentum posset probari quod essent quatuor personae in divinis ex quo
sunt ibi quatuor relationes oppositae—scilicet generatio actio et generatio passio, et spiratio
actio et spiratio passio—et hoc secundum eos qui ponunt quod personae distinguuntur per
relationes oppositas, quia quatuor relationes habent quatuor terminos.” Ed. Friedman 2001,
p. 105212–216.
125 For Scotus, see Ch. 6, below, at and around nn. 127, 130.
suffice for constituting supposites and the disparate relations in the Father
are not really distinct.126
The “ideas” argument. This is a Franciscan attempt to refute through
counterexample Aquinas’ claim that the rational distinction between the
divine attributes is not a sufficient ground for the real distinction between
the persons. The counterexample was that the rational distinction between
the divine ideas is sufficient ground for the real distinction between their
exemplata. This is also one type of reply that the Franciscan tradition could
give to the “Father” argument, inasmuch as its overall goal was to show that
one indistinct source can on its own bring about a number of really diverse
effects.127 Who first made this contribution to the debate is not really clear.
As we saw in Chapter Two above, William de la Mare uses an argument
of this type in just this way: creatures are really distinct even though their
sources, the divine attributes, are only rationally distinct; Richard of Medi-
avilla gives a similar variation on it.128 Neither Roger Marston nor Nicholas
of Ockham appear to employ the ideas argument, but Nicholas offers an
extremely succinct statement of the thought behind the ideas argument and
it coincides precisely with the reply that we saw William of Ware give to the
Father argument: diversity between the sources does not have to be as great
as the diversity between the things brought about by the sources.129 Peter of
Trabes does use the ideas argument.130 Henry of Ghent never seems to have
126 See Ch. 10, below, at and around n. 74.

127 Another related type of refutation of the “Father” argument is the one we saw Henry
of Ghent use in Ch. 4, above, n. 58: that the attributes of intellect and will as they exist
exclusively in the Father do not differ merely rationally, but differ really by the ratio of
relation. William of Ware also uses this type of argument in his I Sent., d. 13, q. 2: “Secundo
deficit in hoc quod assumit quod natura et voluntas sunt principia istarum emanationum,
non enim sunt principia proxima, quia utraque, tam natura quam voluntas, est communis
tribus, sed vis generativa et vis spirativa sunt principia proxima earum, quae, quia differunt
realiter re relativa, emanationes differunt realiter causative, licet formaliter se ipsis …” Ed.
Friedman 2001, p. 110411–415; for Ware, see also nn. 99–100 above.
128 For William de la Mare, see Ch. 2, above, at n. 100. Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 13, q. 3:
“Item, quamvis natura et voluntas in Deo sint idem re, tamen differunt ratione, sed differentia
secundum rationem in principio bene facit realem distinctionem in principiatis, sicut patet
in hoc quod plures creaturae immediate sunt a Deo. Ergo videtur quod a Patre per naturam
et voluntatem possint esse emanationes realiter distinctae.” Ed. Brescia 1591, p. 124a. See the
similar type of argument in Roman of Rome, Ch. 3, above, at n. 52.
129 Nicholas of Ockham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… non requiritur tanta diversitas in principiis
sicut in principiatis.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.5.858, f. 13rb; BAV Ottob. lat. 623, f. 12va. For
William of Ware, see n. 123 above.
130 Trabes, I Sent., d. 13, q. 4: (“Utrum generatio et spiratio realiter distinguantur?”, ff.
54va–55ra): “Secundo quia tunc oporteret ideas in Deo realiter differe, cum secundum illas
330 chapter five
used it explicitly in his treatments of the distinction between the Son and
the Holy Spirit, yet some of his remarks may have led others to make the
final connection.131 In fact, the ideas argument seems to appear first in
Godfrey of Fontaines’ Quodlibet VII, q. 4, written, as noted above, pointedly
in response to Henry’s trinitarian thought.132 Godfrey brings up what we
have seen to be the major Franciscan point: that there can be greater
diversity in the things brought about by a source than in the source itself,
an obvious example of which is the “ideas” argument (although it should be
noted that there were further variations in the examples used by Franciscan
thinkers, e.g. the way one and the same artisan produces a painting vs.
the way he produces a child, or the way that one and the same spider
produces both a web and other spiders).133 Godfrey counters this argument
by asserting that this is only true in cases where what is produced is really
(i.e., essentially) distinct both from the producer and from anything else
that is produced.134 This response becomes relatively standard, later thinkers
with a roughly Dominican trinitarian view emphasizing, as we see in the
early fourteenth-century English Benedictine Richard of Bromwich, that
in creatures, where supposites are absolute subjects that are diverse on
account of matter, it is true that really distinct products can arise from one
and the same source; in God, where one nature is shared by three supposites,
this is strictly impossible.135 The bottom line for the Dominican tradition,
producantur diversa et contraria in creaturis, quod pariter constat esse falsum.” Assisi, Bibl.
com. 154, f. 54vb.
131 The Scotus editors (at I Ord., d. 13 [V, pp. 78–80]) point to Henry’s discussions in his
Quodl. VIII, qq. 1 and 8, concerning the divine ideas, as one of the sources in Henry that
Godfrey of Fontaines assembled to put the ideas argument into its final form (loc. cit., p. 80,
apparatus fontium: “Ex allegatis patet textum n. 32 conflatum esse secundum dicta Henrici,
a Godefrido compilata”). This is a distinct possibility.
132 Godfrey’s presentation of the argument: “Similiter etiam patet de ideis divinis, quae
sunt ratio et principium producendi diversas res subsistentes et tamen sola ratione differunt
in uno simplici secundum essentiam et naturam; et est multo minor distinctio inter vim
spirandi et generandi Patris quam inter plures ideas; ergo etiam in proposito, licet relationes
disparatae in Patre non faciant diversitatem personarum, tamen oppositae eis in terminis
productis facient diversitatem personarum.” Ed. cit., p. 289. On this quodlibetal question and
its relation to Henry of Ghent, see above at n. 14.
133 For the artisan example, see, e.g., n. 137 below; for the spider example, see Henry of
Harclay, Ch. 8, below, at n. 90.

134 Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl. VII, q. 4: “Cum enim dicitur quod in principiatis est maior
diversitas vel differentia quam in principiis, hoc intelligitur de principiatis quae secundum
se et secundum suam naturam diversitatem realem et essentialem secundum absoluta
important, sicut patet in Deo et in creaturis.” Ed. cit., p. 292.
135 On Bromwich, see the Introduction to Friedman and Schabel 2004, 124–126, along
with an edition of his I Sent., d. 11, loc. cit., 147–160. The position Bromwich is replying to
then, is that opposition of relations is necessary for the distinction between

the Son and the Holy Spirit. As can be imagined, some thinkers in the
Franciscan trinitarian tradition were not in the least impressed by this type
of counterargument. Thus, William of Ware presents the ideas argument as
part of his own defense of the Franciscan view,136 as does Robert Cowton.137
John Duns Scotus, on the other hand, may have thought more of Godfrey’s
response to the argument, since in his I Ordinatio Scotus explicitly rejects
the ideas argument as part of his own proof that the attributes are distinct
in God the Father not rationally, but formally.138
The “Psychological” argument is highly significant, not only because
it was used often but also because the divergent ways the Franciscan and
Dominican traditions resolved the issues this argument raised became
something of standards for the entire counterfactual question concern-
ing the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son. The psychological argument
seems to originate with Aquinas, and it is also presented by Godfrey of
Fontaines, Bernard of Auvergne, and Thomas of Sutton, all of whom fol-
lowed Aquinas closely on this matter.139 The argument goes basically like
is that the merely rational distinction between the attributes in the Father is sufficient to
ground the real distinction between the persons (ed. cit., §2, p. 1475–9); Bromwich replies:
“… quando principium et illud quod est ex principio differunt secundum naturam, tunc
sufficit in principio ponere differentiam secundum rationem ut ipsa quae sunt ex principio
differant realiter. Sed omnes tres personae sunt eiusdem naturae, ideo non possunt distingui
per differentiam absolutorum secundum rationem nisi una procedat ab alia et realiter
referatur ad ipsam. Unde in creaturis, quod aliqua differant realiter ex parte terminorum
et secundum rationem ex parte principii, hoc est propter diversa subiecta, quia propter
diversitatem ex parte materiae, quae causa non est in divinis.” Ed. Friedman and Schabel
2004, § 69, pp. 159473–160479. For slightly different versions of these arguments, see also
Bernard of Auvergne, Reprobatio (Quodl. V, q. 9) (ed. Friedman 2007a, pp. 482–483 §§13–
15), and Thomas of Sutton, Quodl. IV, q. 2 (ed. Schmaus and Haba, p. 50368–80). This line of
argument, distinguishing between diversity in material and in immaterial things, can be seen
already in Aquinas; see the text in Ch. 3, above, n. 8, where Aquinas claims that matter is
required for non-opposed relations to bring about distinction.
136 Ware, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 110408–411).
137 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 154515–522); note that this is taken
basically verbatim from Scotus, I Lectura, d. 11, q. 2, n. 54 (XVII, pp. 14823–1492), and involves
not only the ideas argument but one and the same artisan generating a Son naturally and
painting a picture.
138 See I Ord., d. 13 (V, pp. 86–87, nn. 41–42), and, see Ch. 6, below, at and around n. 137, for
the way in which this rebuttal fits into Scotus’ thought on the issue of the distinction between
the emanations. Compare this to Henry of Harclay’s rejection of Godfrey’s argument, I Sent.,
d. 11, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 119197–208). Scotus also rejects the ideas argument in his Lectura,
d. 13, q. un., esp. nn. 14, 19 (XVII, pp. 169–171).
139 Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 36, a. 3, solutio: “Et huic quidem consonat ratio processionis
utriusque. Dictum enim est supra quod Filius procedit per modum intellectus ut Verbum;
332 chapter five
this: the Son is a Word and the Holy Spirit is Love; but we know from the
created image that love can only come about from a word, that is to say, we
cannot love something that we do not first know; therefore, Love only pro-
ceeds from the Word, and for the Holy Spirit to proceed by way of the will
or love, he must proceed from the Son, who is the Word.
This is a significant and clever argument, not least because it takes
seriously Franciscan tendencies to accept the psychological model in a
strong way, and the more strongly a theologian identified the Son with
the Word and the Holy Spirit with Love, the more strongly this argument
would seem to count against him. As we will see in Chapter Seven, in the
early fourteenth century a number of Dominican theologians (Hervaeus
Natalis, Durand of St. Pourçain, John of Naples, the author of the Liber
Propugnatorius) in effect reverse the argument as I have presented it here.
They do this by claiming that the Son’s emanating by way of intellect or
nature means nothing other than that his emanation is not preceded by
another emanation, while the Holy Spirit’s emanation being by way of will
means only that it is always preceded by another emanation (the emanation
of the Son); for these theologians, the divine emanations resemble the way
that word and love are formed in creatures. This argument, then, has a long
and important history in the Dominican trinitarian tradition.
This it also had in the Franciscan tradition. And what is so remarkable is
that the Franciscans used the argument to support their own position. We
have seen this already in Henry of Ghent, who claimed that the most basic
source of the distinction of the emanations is that the emanation by way of
intellect must precede by an order of nature the emanation by way of will.140
Thus, Henry does not deny that love or will is posterior to knowledge, rather
he denies that knowledge plays a causative role in the production of love:
although the formation of the word is necessarily prior to the formation of
love, it is not necessary for love to emanate from the word. To put this in
Spiritus Sanctus autem per modum voluntatis, ut Amor. Necesse est autem quod amor
a verbo procedat, non enim aliquid amamus nisi secundum quod conceptione mentis
apprehendimus. Unde et secundum hoc manifestum est quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit a
Filio.” For further texts from Aquinas, see, e.g., Ch. 3, n. 13 above, and Summa contra gentiles,
lib. 4, c. 24; Godfrey of Fontaines, Quodl. VII, q. 4 (ed. cit., pp. 293–294) and see the text in
n. 30 above; Bernard of Auvergne, Reprobatio (Quodl. V, q. 9) (ed. Friedman 2007a, pp. 482–
483 § 13); Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 162197–201). See
also: Robert of Orford’s Reprobatio of Henry of Ghent’s Quodl. V, q. 9 (ed. Friedman 2007a,
p. 490 § 8); Augustinus Triumphus, Ch. 12, below, at n. 9.
140 See, Ch. 4, above, at and around n. 61. See also Ch. 2, above, in §3 on Eustace of Arras,
who replies to an early version of this argument that focuses on the Holy Spirit proceeding
as mutual love.
another way, for Henry, the Father, “after” having emanated the Word, could
“then” emanate Love without the direct activity of the Word. This same basic
tack is taken by Roger Marston, William of Ware, and Henry of Harclay.141
Thus, the Franciscan tradition, like the Dominican, made Aquinas’ original
“psychological” argument an essential element of their own explanation for
the Trinity.
What is perhaps most interesting about the disagreement over the use
of this argument is that it makes clear a further gap in the tendencies of the
Franciscan and Dominican traditions. Although there is some disagreement
about this, nevertheless Aquinas is often interpreted in modern scholarship
as being something of an “intellectualist” or “soft-determinist”, i.e. holding
that the intellect dictates to the will without compromising the will’s power
of free choice. And some evidence for this intellectualist interpretation of
Aquinas can be seen in his position on the relationship between word and
love: the concept is necessarily an active (causative) factor in the formation
of love or the act of the will. The Franciscan tradition, on the other hand, has
been recognized in the modern literature as having voluntarist tendencies:
the intellect plays the role of presenting options to the will, without in any
way dictating which option to choose. For the Franciscans, the will is not
“caused” by the intellect, except in a vague sine-qua-non way. This tendency
is also clear in their trinitarian position.142
Arguments from Anselm’s De processione Spiritus Sancti. We
should finally look at the way in which authoritative texts were handled in
the discussion of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son. While in this
141 Marston, De eman. aet., q. 7: “Item, quamvis amor non sit sine cognitione, non tamen
sequitur ex hoc quod amor procedat a cognitione … similiter, quamvis productio amoris
necessario praesupponat cognitionem originatam, ex hoc tamen non sequitur quod amor
sit ab ea.” Ed. cit., p. 137. Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 10190–95 [presentation
of the argument], p. 106253–257 [response]—see also the discussion in William of Ware, I
Sent., d. 11, q. 2 [ed. Friedman and Schabel 2004, pp. 141–146], which deals at some length
with these issues). Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 117141–147 [presentation
of the argument], p. 122307–324 [response]). Scotus rejects this way of arguing in I Ord., d. 11,
q. 1 (V, pp. 5–7), because, for Scotus, in order to understand (intelligere) it is not necessary
to first say a word (i.e., understanding is not dependent upon saying a word). At I Ord.,
d. 13 (V, pp. 75–76), Scotus also rejects Henry of Ghent’s view that relation of priority and
posteriority between generation and spiration is the foundation of the distinction between
these emanations, Scotus objecting that there must be a more basic reason why the one
is prior and the other posterior (Scotus will claim that the most basic reason why the
emanations are distinct is because of their incompossible ways of proceeding, i.e. freely and
naturally).
142 On the voluntarist and intellectualist tendencies of the Franciscan stream and the
Dominican stream in general, see, e.g., Kent 1995, Eardley 2006, Hoffmann (Tobias) 2010.
334 chapter five
connection I could have chosen several authors and works as my exam-

ple of an authoritative text and its reception—Augustine’s De trinitate or
Richard of St. Victor’s De trinitate are obvious candidates—Anselm’s work
De processione Spiritus Sancti is perhaps the most apt for a survey.143 This is
because in this work, in the space of a few pages, Anselm provides clear sup-
port for both trinitarian positions. On the one hand, Anselm states what is
often called “Anselm’s rule”: there is unity in God except where we find oppo-
sition of relations. This is an obvious source of support for the Dominican
tradition.144 On the other hand, Anselm also speaks for the fact that the Son
and the Holy Spirit proceed in different ways from the Father, and on the
basis of these different ways of proceeding they differ among themselves,
as the Franciscan tradition maintained.145 What occurs in the interpretation
of this work is a “dragging” of Anselm’s explicit statements to the intention
of the author doing the interpreting. Thus, Aquinas, confronting Anselm’s
authoritative texts about the different ways the Son and the Holy Spirit pro-
ceed, agrees that the Son and the Holy Spirit do proceed in different ways:
because the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, while
the Son proceeds from the Father alone.146 This same position is taken by
Thomas of Sutton, although he remarks that Anselm only made claims like
these in order to assume what the Greeks assume, and show that their posi-
tion is self-contradictory.147
143 On Anselm’s view on this issue, and its historical context, see, e.g., Berthold 1986. For
more general treatments of Anselm’s trinitarian theology, see Hopkins 1972, 90–121; Mann
2004, Visser and Williams 2009, 133–146.
144 E.g., De processione Spiritus Sancti, 1: “Quatenus nec unitas amittat aliquando suum
consequens, ubi non obviat aliqua relationis oppositio.” Ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 1812–3. Ibid.,
1: “Supradicta vero relationis oppositio, quae ex hoc nascitur, quia supradictis duobus modis
Deus est de Deo, prohibet Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum de invicem dici ....” Ed.
Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 18027–29. “Anselm’s rule” was probably so called not because of its stress
on relations—something that could be found in both Augustine and Boethius—but rather
because of its stress on opposition. See also the Introduction, above, at and around n. 42.
145 E.g., De processione Spiritus Sancti, 1: “Habent utique a Patre esse Filius et Spiritus
Sanctus, sed diverso modo; quia alter nascendo, alter procedendo, ut alii sint per hoc ab
invicem.” Ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 1853–6 (and further 1856–11). Ibid., 1: “Spiritus vero Sanctus
qui existit de Patre procedendo, non est ille qui est de Patre nascendo.” Ed. Schmitt, vol. 2,
p. 1828–10. Ibid., 1: “Filius nascendo habet esse de Patre, Spiritus Sanctus vero non nascendo
sed procedendo.” Ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 18015–17. These quotations could easily be multiplied.
146 Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 36, a. 2, ad 7: “… dicendum quod Spiritus Sanctus distinguitur
personaliter a Filio in hoc quod origo unius distinguitur ab origine alterius. Sed ipsa differ-
entia originis est per hoc quod Filius est solum a Patre, Spiritus Sanctus vero a Patre et Filio.
Non enim aliter processiones distinguerentur …”
147 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 15843–46 [presentation
of Franciscan interpretation], p. 164286–294 [Sutton’s response]; see also ibid., p. 161175–179

The Franciscans deny this interpretation forcefully. John Pecham, and

after him Roger Marston, show the path that the Franciscans will take when
interpreting “Anselm’s rule”: Anselm did not mean to exclude disparate rela-
tions when he mentioned ‘opposition’.148 We have already seen that William
of Ware attempted to redefine ‘opposition’ to mean any relative difference
at all.149 In line with this, when he comes to deal with the Dominicans’ use
of Anselm’s rule, Ware claims:
In response to all such authoritative passages—even if there were a thousand
of them—it is said that they speak about relations not only directly opposed
to each other, but indirectly and disparate .... But in support of the view that
we at present hold, there is a passage of Anselm’s, where he says most explic-
itly and in accordance with what he himself thought (secundum mentem eius)
as follows: “the Son and the Holy Spirit certainly have being from the Father,
but in diverse ways, because the one by being born, the other by proceeding
.... For even if the Son and the Holy Spirit were not different (plures) through
anything else, through this alone they would be diverse.” These are Anselm’s
words. Nevertheless [those holding the opposite view] do not bring up this
authoritative passage.150
The rival ways of interpreting authoritative texts taken from Anselm were so
very different that Ware can really only say that the Dominican tradition’s
interpretation is wrong, no matter how many passages can be adduced for it,
and that the Dominicans should try looking at the passages where Anselm
[Sutton’s own use of Anselm]). Most importantly: “Anselmus autem assumit hoc tamquam
nobis commune et Graecis, ut ex his quae ipsi concedunt nobis, tamen ostendat eis quod
Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Filio quod ipsi negant.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 164289–291. This way
of interpreting Anselm can be found used by theologians earlier than Sutton, e.g. in Roman
of Rome, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Anselmus loquitur non declarando, sed quasi inquirendo et
suppondendo illa [ergo] quae Graecae supponunt.” BAV Palat. lat. 331, f. 19vb.
148 John Pecham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… dicendum quod Anselmus non loquitur tantum
de relationis oppositione mutua, sed de relatione disparata, dicit enim quod duobus modis
est Deus de Deo, unde non sola oppositio, sed differens origo actio est in divinis ratio
distinguendi.” Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. G.4.854, f. 41ra; Napoli, BN, VII C 2, f. 38ra.
Roger Marston, De em. aet., q. 7: “… dicendum quod Anselmus non loquitur tantum de
relationis oppositione mutua, sed de relatione disparata.” Ed. cit., p. 144 §1. For the statement
of Anselm’s views, see ed. cit., p. 130.
149 See at nn. 91–92 above.
150 William of Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5: “Ad omnes auctoritates tales, si essent mille, dicitur
quod loquuntur de relationibus non tantum sibi directe oppositis, sed indirecte et disparatis
.... Sed pro ista opinione quam tenemus ad presens est auctoritas Anselmi … expressissime et
secundum mentem eius, ubi dicit sic: ‘Habent a Patre utique esse Filius et Spiritus Sanctus,
sed diversimode, quia alter nascendo, alter procedendo .... Nam, etsi per aliud non essent
plures Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, per hoc solum essent diversi.’ Haec ille. Tamen isti illam
auctoritatem non allegant.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 107279–280,288–294.
336 chapter five
says what he really meant. In a similar vein, a group of Franciscans, includ-

ing Ware, accuse the Dominicans of distorting Anselm’s meaning by quoting
his words out of context.151 Significantly, Aquinas had in fact brought up just
the passage from Anselm that Ware calls attention to in the quotation trans-
lated above (at n. 150), and not surprisingly Thomas had interpreted it in
accordance with his own view on the matter: the processions are distinct
on the basis of the arrangement of the persons. Thus, as mentioned above,
according to Aquinas, the origin of the Son is diverse from the origin of the
Holy Spirit, just as Anselm says it is; but this diversity arises because the
Son is from the Father alone, the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the
Son.152 The incommensurability that we see here between the two trinitar-
ian traditions is without question the background to John Duns Scotus, who,
in his treatment of the counterfactual question of the Holy Spirit’s distinc-
tion from the Son, declines to deal with Anselm’s De processione Spiritus
Sancti, claiming that there was no agreement as to what Anselm meant
there.153 As late as the early 1330’s, Adam Wodeham echoed Scotus’ senti-
ment and left those who bickered about Anselm’s meaning to their “alter-
cations”.154 Interestingly, in their discussions of the distinction of the Son
from the Holy Spirit, two Oxford theologians writing in the early fourteenth
century, Richard of Bromwich and Robert Graystanes, both Benedictines,
each include a detailed analysis of Anselm’s treatise, Richard opting for a
Dominican interpretation, Robert for a Franciscan one.155 There really was
no agreement on how best to understand Anselm.
151 The first to make the accusation appears to be Ware, I Sent., d. 9, q. 5: “Ad auctori-
tatem Anselmi, De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 18, “Per hoc solum distinguitur,” etc.,
dicitur quod truncatim accipiunt auctoritatem illam, istam enim dictionem ‘solum’, quam
debent accipere cum littera consequente, accipiunt cum antecedente.” Ed. Friedman 2001,
p. 107281–284. Same accusation, but more elaborately put, in Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2
(ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 153494–154507). The Benedictine Robert Graystanes, from around 1321–
1322, also makes the same move: I Sent., d. 11 (ed. Schabel and Friedman 2003, p. 71637–645); on
Graystanes’ treatment of this issue, see also below, at n. 155, and Ch. 11, at and around n. 209.
152 See n. 146 above, which is Aquinas’ treatment of this passage in Anselm. For another
Dominican treatment of the Anselm passage and its Franciscan interpretation, see Hervaeus
Natalis, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1 (ed. 1647, p. 74aD–bA [presentation of Franciscan interpretation],
p. 76aD–bA [Hervaeus’ response]).
153 See on this, Ch. 6, below, in the final paragraph of n. 7.
154 Adam Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 11, q. un., §1: “Processum autem Anselmi in
libello De processione Spiritus Sancti, quem quidam adducunt ad oppositum, et quidam

ad propositum, relinquo altercationibus eorundem.” Ed. Gál and Wood, vol. 2, p. 16521–23.
Wodeham incorporated this text into his Ordinatio Oxoniensis from the 1330’s.
155 Bromwich wrote in the second half of the century’s first decade; see n. 135 above, for
references to his text, and, on his use of Anselm, the Introduction to the article in which
This last remark can be generalized to include all of the five arguments
that we have seen, and indeed trinitarian theology in general from roughly
1283 until the end of the thirteenth century: there was very little agreement.
Two definite “styles” or “tones” had been settled on in trinitarian theology,
a Dominican and a Franciscan. These trinitarian traditions had each their
own “master” arguments and authoritative passages in order to prove each
their own position and undercut the rival position. The ultimate disagree-
ment, however, had to do with the nature of the properties constitutive of
the divine persons, and specifically with whether the properties were rela-
tional or emanational. Even in a theologian with a rather ambiguous trini-
tarian theory, like Alexander of Alessandria, the tension between these two
ways of looking at the Trinity is easy to observe, as is the fact that Alexan-
der attempts to steer a middle course between them in a Franciscan-leaning
fashion.
Another fact about the trinitarian theology of this period that deserves
emphasizing is that arguably every one of the theologians that we have
examined, with the exception of Peter of Trabes, was influenced by, or at
the very least knew, Henry of Ghent’s trinitarian theology. From 1280–1300
Henry’s strong identification of emanation per modum naturae with emana-
tion per modum intellectus was incorporated into the trinitarian discussion,
both in the work of the opponents of the Franciscan tradition (e.g., Giles
of Rome, Godfrey of Fontaines, Thomas of Sutton, Bernard of Auvergne),
and in the work of those who accepted the basic premisses of that tradi-
tion (Richard of Mediavilla, Alexander of Alessandria, and William of Ware).
Thus, the strong identification of the Son and the Word, and of generation
with saying, and the strong use of the psychological model more generally,
were being tried out and tested, along with the broader Franciscan type of
trinitarian theology.
5. Conclusion: The Development of the Trinitarian Traditions
The first Dominican master of theology at Paris was Roland of Cremona,

the first Franciscan Alexander of Hales. These men composed their works
mainly in the 1230’s, some twenty years before Thomas Aquinas and
the edition is found. On Graystanes (writing around 1321–1322) and his text, see n. 151 above,
and for his use of Anselm, see ed. Schabel and Friedman 2003, pp. 65417–66470, p. 71625–645.
A further Oxford theologian from the early fourteenth century who deals extensively with
Anselm’s text is the Carmelite Robert of Walsingham in his Quodl. I, q. 5 (ca. 1312–1313); see
Schabel and Friedman 2003 for the text (esp. pp. 49147–51218 for Anselm).
338 chapter five
Bonaventure read the Sentences, with which the story told in this book
began. A great deal of work remains to be done before we understand the
dynamics behind the formation and development in the later thirteenth
century of the intellectual identities of the two largest mendicant orders,156
but limiting ourselves just to the trinitarian thought studied here we can
make some provisional observations. It is worthy of remark that, at the
time Aquinas and Bonaventure wrote there was still a good deal of com-
mon ground between the Dominican and the Franciscan ways of dealing
with the Trinity, although the separate paths that the two traditions were
to take were becoming clear. In the work of the Dominicans Bombolognus
of Bologna and Roman of Rome and of the Franciscan Walter of Bruges, the
common ground was still there, but more and more the differences were
stressed. As early as with the Franciscans Eustace of Arras and John Pecham,
not to mention Roger Marston, Peter of Trabes, and William of Ware, and
with the Dominicans Bernard of Auvergne and Thomas of Sutton, the dif-
ferences become overwhelming, and common ground is a rare commodity.
And it is easy to place those outside of the two largest orders into their
broad currents: Gerard of Abbeville and Henry of Ghent with the Francis-
cans, Giles of Rome and Godfrey of Fontaines with the Dominicans. What is
more, we have clear evidence that these were traditions in the truest sense
of a ‘handing down’: later members building on the arguments and ideas of
earlier members of the tradition, and at all times members of one tradition
in active discussion with the rival way of thinking. With all that said, it is
interesting just how much room there was for individual scholars to vary the
constellation of trinitarian positions that they held, adopting elements from
the rival tradition or leaving the matter basically unresolved. The reasons for
the “crossover” character of some of the period’s trinitarian theologies are
multiple. With William de la Mare, for example, copying from John Pecham
appears to sharpen his Franciscan leanings, while with Nicholas of Ockham,
copying from Giles of Rome may have made his theology more Dominican
looking. With Bernard of Auvergne, the attempt to work the psychological
model into his trinitarian theology gives it a slightly more Franciscan feel
than it might otherwise have had; and despite his uncompromising rejec-
tion of much of Henry of Ghent’s trinitarian theology, Godfrey of Fontaines
clearly had some emanational elements in his own theory. Of course, this
partly reflects, as mentioned in the Introduction to this book (after n. 44),
156 For some further suggestions, however, see Friedman 2002a, esp. §§III and IV, and the
literature referred to there.

the fact that some medieval theologians were dissatisfied with the mutual
exclusivity of relations and emanations, and were looking for a way to tran-
scend that exclusivity. Thus, some thinkers in the Dominican trinitarian
tradition emphasized to one degree or another that the relations in God
were relations of origin, with origin taken in an emanational sense, and
some thinkers in the Franciscan stream wanted to stress relational aspects
of the emanational properties. In short: there was a search going on for prop-
erties that were both emanational and relational. The rather large spectrum
of views that each trinitarian tradition could nurture is certainly a sign that
there was a great deal of room for disagreement and growth internal to each
of the traditions, and this is the reason why the traditions continued to
change and develop throughout the second half of the thirteenth century
and into the fourteenth. The trinitarian traditions were clear trends, and
just on the basis of training and intellectual predispositions, Franciscans
probably tended to support what I have labeled Franciscan views, while
Dominicans tended to support Dominican views—but these were tenden-
cies and never chains or yokes compelling the acceptance of any particular
view.
Briefly summing up these competing ways of explaining trinitarian the-
ology we could say that the Franciscans emphasized origin and emanation,
and concomitantly they stressed some form of constitutive role for innasci-
bility in the Father as well as a real distinction between the modes of pro-
ceeding, per modum naturae and voluntatis, through which the Son and
the Holy Spirit were constituted; opposed relations, for the Franciscans,
became a second and marginalized tier in the pair of nested distinctions.
The Dominicans, on the other hand, stressed opposed relation, and con-
comitant with this emphasis, they reduced the processions per modum nat-
urae (or intellectus) and per modum voluntatis to something approaching a
metaphorical status that had nothing particularly to do with nature or intel-
lect, on the one hand, or will, on the other: the divine essence was the direct
source of both emanations. Interestingly enough given the last point, it was
the Dominicans—particularly Aquinas—who really pioneered the devel-
opment of the psychological dimension of Augustine’s psychological model
of the Trinity. But, as we have seen, it was Henry of Ghent who merged
these two developments—the Franciscan trinitarian and the Dominican
psychological—into an original system in which the origin of the Son as
a Word from the paternal intellect accounted precisely for his distinction
from the Father and the Holy Spirit. The strong use of philosophical psy-
chology in trinitarian theology was Henry’s major achievement, and this can
be confirmed by the reception it had in the last quarter of the thirteenth
340 chapter five
century: we have seen evidence that Henry’s strong use was the object of
criticism from the Dominicans and of acceptance from the Franciscans. It
was as a part of the Franciscan tradition that John Duns Scotus, in fashion-
ing his own trinitarian thought, read and responded to Henry of Ghent.
chapter six
JOHN DUNS SCOTUS1
1. Absolute Persons and the Use of Authority
One of the most controversial terms in the historiography of medieval

scholasticism is auctoritas. Translated by the English word ‘authority’, it has
represented for some modern scholars—often those studying the thought
of earlier and especially later periods—the fundamental subservience to the
past that plagued medieval philosophy and theology. On this view “author-
ities” like Aristotle and Averroes in philosophy, Augustine and Anselm in
theology were authoritarian: there was little or no room for questioning
what they had written. Thus, medieval philosophy and theology is reduced
to an endless mimicry of accepted authorities.2
1 Please note that I do not intend to give in this chapter an exhaustive account of Scotus’
trinitarian theology, as does Wetter 1967, or even the kind of systematic account found in
Wölfel 1965 (esp. 168–245). My exposition concentrates on what I consider to be elements
essential to the understanding of both Scotus’ adoption of the strong use of philosophical
psychology in trinitarian theology and the specific type of concept theory he uses. Thus, I
concentrate on Scotus’ ideas on the constitution of the divine persons. In addition, I try to
be more thorough than earlier secondary literature was about viewing Scotus against his
roots, and in this way, my analysis is more historical in nature. Further discussions of Scotus’
trinitarian thought are found in Iammarrone 1999, 509–537. The largest part of Cross 2005a
is devoted to Scotus’ trinitarian theology, and this study will undoubtedly be the new status
quaestionis on Scotus on the Trinity (Cross’ book reached me too late in the writing of this
chapter to incorporate any substantial discussion of it). NB: throughout this chapter and the
rest of this book, I use the term ‘absolute persons’ as shorthand for ‘persons constituted by
absolute (as opposed to relative) properties’, and Scotus himself at times uses the term in
just this way (see, e.g., nn. 87, 94 below).
In what follows, unless otherwise noted all references in roman numerals are to volume
numbers in Scotus’ Opera Omnia (Vatican, 1950 and thereafter). I have concentrated almost
exclusively on Scotus’ trinitarian thought as he presents it in his Ordinatio. Several of the
most important texts used here (d. 3, d. 26) have been reedited according to principles
derived from Vladimir Richter’s interpretation of the genesis of Scotus’ works; see Johannes
Duns Scotus, Über die Erkennbarkeit Gottes, eds. Kraml, Leibold, Richter (and cf. Richter 1993,
Leibold and Richter 2002).
2 Allow me just one recent example to make my meaning clear. “With so much physical
evidence [e.g. the Pantheon and the Colosseum in Rome] of the seemingly god-like prowess
of the Ancients around, and the newly discovered texts demonstrating the intellectual
prowess of the Ancients emerging from Byzantium, it would have been natural to accept
342 chapter six
Before one would commit oneself to this view of the relation between
medieval scholasticism and the philosophical and theological tradition that
was its basis, one should be clear about what the Latin term auctoritas
meant to a scholastic author. In fact, ‘authority’ as a translation for the word
auctoritas simply does not suffice, because auctoritas often does not refer
to a person or to a person’s authority at all (i.e., “Anselm is my authority” or
“on Anselm’s authority”). More often than not, an auctoritas is a passage or
text from a work, which contains a view of the author in question. Thus, in
a question dealing with the Trinity there might be several auctoritates from,
e.g., Augustine. A better rendering of the term auctoritas into English, then,
is in almost all cases ‘authoritative passage’ or ‘authoritative text’, or even
just ‘passage’ or ‘text’.
Even more significant for our understanding of the term is that a medi-
eval scholar can describe as an auctoritas a passage endorsing a view that
he will eventually reject. For example, when discussing the problems asso-
ciated with the Filioque clause, John Duns Scotus gives three auctoritates
(Scotus’ term) from the Greek John Damascene, who denied that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.3 In response to one of
these authoritative passages, Scotus suggests how one could explain away
or neutralize the error that seems to be contained there, but admits that
ultimately the sentiment expressed in the passage seems simply to be in
error.4
The picture that emerges from this example is that the authority of an
authoritative passage has little to do with the necessity of holding the view
espoused in the passage (even assuming that it is a trivial matter determin-
ing just what that view is). What seems to be essential to an authoritative
passage is that it bears consideration or carries weight in a particular con-
text. The “authority” of an auctoritas arises from applicability (often dictated
that they were intellectually far superior to the ordinary people who had followed them, and
to accept the teaching of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Euclid as a kind of Holy
Writ, which could not be questioned. This was, indeed, the way things were at the start of
the Renaissance.” (Gribben 2002, p. 3; again pp. 19–20). I should emphasize that I choose my
example from specifically this book, because I think it to be quite excellent, and yet it still
carries this misrepresentation of (later-)medieval thought.
3 See Scotus, I Ord., d. 11, q. 1, nn. 1–3, 9 (V, pp. 1–2).
4 I Ord., d. 11, q. 1, n. 19: “Prima tamen auctoritas eius posset exponi, si loquatur de
voluntate et non de Spiritu Sancto .... Sed littera Damasceni ibidem videtur loqui de persona
Spiritus Sancti, et non de voluntate qua spiratur.” V, p. 77–14. The authoritative passage in
question is from De fide orth., c. 7: “A Patre procedentem et in Filio quiescentem, Spiritum
Sanctum dicimus”.
john duns scotus 343
by traditional usage) to the matter at hand, not from the necessity of agree-
ing with the opinion suggested in the text. To be sure, authoritative passages
were nearly always taken from the works of important early figures, like
Augustine, Damascene, and Aristotle, figures who had a pivotal role in the
founding of the tradition with which thirteenth- and fourteenth-century
scholastics were confronted, and therefore who certainly had “authority”.
But the fact that a passage was taken from the works of these seminal fig-
ures meant merely that it ought to be confronted—it carried weight in
the context—not that it had to be accepted at face value. Experimental
data points do not dictate to a modern scientist how they are to be inter-
preted or in what way they ought to be molded into an explanatory theory,
although they do create certain limits of interpretation because they must
be confronted by the theory in question; and at the boundary of interpre-
tation a data point can simply be rejected as invalid. Similarly, authori-
tative texts did not dictate to medieval scholars, but they usually had to
be confronted. For the medieval scholastic an authoritative text begged to
be dealt with, especially if the words of the text appeared to deviate from
the position taken by the scholastic in question. In this case our scholas-
tic had to neutralize the authoritative passage by explaining or interpreting
it away, by denying its applicability to the matter at hand, or by deny-
ing the truth of the words contained in the passage. In many instances,
then, what gave authority to an authoritative passage was tradition: the
fact that the passage had been used in a relatively consistent way in a par-
ticular context.5 Further, the traditional reading of a certain passage in a
certain way could lead to a type of rigidity of interpretation around that
passage—fixing or at least predisposing the way that the passage could legit-
imately be read, and hence what types of views it could be used to support.
In this sense at least, interpretational traditions surrounding authoritative
5 The way that I am using ‘tradition’ here bears similarities to what Heiko A. Oberman
(1986; also 1983, 365–393) has labelled ‘Tradition 1’, and which has helpfully been summarized
by Alister E. McGrath (1993, 135–136) in the following way: “[there was] an authorized way of
interpreting certain texts of Scripture .... Scripture could not be interpreted in a random way;
it must be interpreted within the context of the historical continuity of the Christian church.
The parameters of its interpretation were historically fixed and ‘given’ .... ‘Tradition’ here
means simply ‘a traditional way of interpreting Scripture within the community of faith’”
(This is contrasted to Tradition II, in which there is a source of revelation independent of the
revelation as found in Scripture). The two major differences between Oberman’s concept
and the one I am alluding to are 1) that the authoritative passages I am talking about are not
limited to the Bible, since they include also Creeds, Church Fathers, and council acts (and
even pagan and Arabic philosophers); and 2) that the community of faith is narrowed to the
community of (university-trained) theologians.
344 chapter six
passages could have a significant effect on the limits and the content of
theological discussions in the later Middle Ages.
This—the weight of tradition and the proper interpretation of authorita-
tive text—was one of the major concerns of John Duns Scotus in his trini-
tarian theology. Scotus’ voluminous theological works were written over
about a decade on both sides of the English Channel. He studied theology
at Oxford at the turn of the thirteenth to the fourteenth century, and from
this teaching stint comes his early Lectura on the Sentences, presumed to be
his own lecture notes. Scotus himself tells us that by 1300 he was engaged
in revising these early lectures, and he was probably still working on this
revised text, what we know today as the Ordinatio, when he was sent to Paris
by the Franciscan order in 1301 or 1302 to read for the doctorate, which he
had received by early 1305. In Paris, Scotus’ lectures on the Sentences served
as the basis for several student reports, one of which on the first book, the
Reportatio examinata or Reportatio 1-A (printed recently for the first time,
in two volumes, published in 2004 and 2008, respectively), may have been
reworked to some degree by Scotus himself. From 1305 until 1307, Scotus was
Franciscan regent master in theology at Paris, and we have a written version
of one Quodlibetal disputation from this period, but in 1307 the order moved
Scotus to the Franciscan convent in Cologne, where he died one year later.6
In all of these theological works Scotus’ intense concern with trinitarian
theology comes to the fore, and in the process of elaborating his trinitar-
ian ideas, Scotus presents a number of explicit statements on the relation
between his thought and the medieval trinitarian tradition as a whole in
which he worked, tradition that surfaces in the use of authoritative passages.
For example, in distinction 28 of his I Ordinatio, Scotus gives the following
statement of the way that he views authorities and authoritative passages,
one that is revealing of how he saw his trinitarian theology, and how he
thought others would see it:
6 For general introductions to Scotus, his life, thought, and works, see, e.g., Dumont
1998a; Dumont 1998b; Dumont 2003; the articles collected in Williams (Thomas) 2003;
Williams (Thomas) 2010. A thorough consideration of what we know and can deduce about
Scotus’ life is Sheppard 2002; see also Vos 2004. On Scotus’ theology in particular, see,
e.g., Cross 1999 (for trinitarian theology, see 61–71). For a brief description of Scotus’ Sent.
commentaries and the modern disagreements concerning dating and authenticity (whether,
e.g., authored by Scotus himself or by students of his basing themselves on Scotus’ material),
see Friedman 2002a, 65–68, and the literature cited there, to which should be added: Richter
1993, Richter 1999–2000; Wolter 2000; Dumont 2001, Leibold and Richter 2002. The edition
of the Reportatio 1-A is found in Wolter and Bychkov (eds.), Ioannes Duns Scotus, Reportatio
Examinata (2 vols.), but see also Rodler 2005.
… one could say that the topic (locus) “from authority” does not hold in the
negative: ‘this is not said, therefore this does not exist’ .... Even if from the
beginning only three properties were known, namely paternity and filiation
and spiration (and these from the words of the Savior in the Gospel and
of John in his canon), still, later on, through investigation, other notions
and properties became known, and these had really (in re) existed before,
although they had not been known before. Thus, just as those coming later
allowed for more notions than those who came before (not that those who
came before denied them, they just did not speak about them), so it does not
seem problematic (inconveniens) for those coming after these doctors [to do
so], when they can deduce those notions from what was said by those who
came before.7
For Scotus, unless Scripture or a Church Father expressly claim that a
theological statement is false, the truth of that statement cannot be ruled
out. Scotus’ example here is about a sixth notion or property in God: in
7 Scotus, I Ord., d. 28, qq. 1–2, n. 34: “… posset dici quod locus ab auctoritate non
tenet negative: ‘hoc non dicitur, ergo hoc non est’ … Etsi a principio non fuerunt notae
nisi tres proprietates, scilicet paternitas et filiatio et spiratio (et hoc ex verbo Salvatoris in
Evangelio et Ioannis in canonica sua), tamen postea per investigationem innotuerunt aliae
notiones et proprietates, quae prius erant in re, licet non prius notae; et ita, sicut posteriores
concesserunt plures notiones quam priores (non tamen priores eas negaverunt, licet non
eas dixerunt), ita non videtur inconveniens de posterioribus ad illos doctores, dum tamen
possint illas concludere ex dictis priorum.” VI, p. 1251–15. See also n. 81 below for a parallel
text. For “locus ab auctoritate” in the Middle Ages, see, e.g., Peter of Spain’s Tractatus 5.36 (ed.
de Rijk, pp. 75–76). This is clearly a more developed version of the similar view that Scotus
put forward in his I Lectura, d. 26, q. un, n. 55: “Nec hoc hscil. opinio de personis absolutisi
praeiudicat fidei in aliquo. Unde non invenitur traditum ab Ecclesia quod constituuntur
tantum relationibus, nec hoc invenitur in Decretis, nec fuit declaratum in concilio aliquo;
et magis attestatur perfectioni suppositorum in divinis quod sint absoluta quam relativa …”
XVII, p. 33217–21; no statement of this kind is found in I Lectura, d. 28.
Scotus presents a similar developmental notion of theology, this time in response to
heresy, in I Ord., d. 11, q. 1, n. 21: “Similiter, diversa Symbola diversis temporibus sunt
edita contra diversas haereses de novo orientes, quia quando insurgebat nova haeresis
necessarium erat declarare veritatem contra quam erat illa haeresis; quae veritas etsi prius
erat de fide, non tamen erat prius tantum declarata sicut tunc, contra errorem eorum qui
eam negabant.” V, p. 85–10. Cf. for a similar view, e.g. Henry of Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1 (ed.
Friedman 2001, p. 11571–75).
Jeremy Catto (1984a, 508–509, 517) presents evidence that Scotus’ standards of scholarship
with regard to authoritative texts were lax. This may well be true, but in Scotus’ trinitarian
thought one also senses some exasperation with the use of authoritative passages and the
“nose of wax” that all authorities had. Thus, Scotus (I Ord., d. 26, q. 1, n. 77) confronts a
quotation of John Damascene that speaks against his position with another quotation from
the same author saying “una auctoritas eius solvit aliam” VI, p. 363–4; and he explicitly throws
up his hands over Anselm’s view of the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit (I Ord.,
d. 11, q. 2, n. 38): “Auctoritas adducitur Anselmi, libro suo De processione Spiritus Sancti, sed
quia ipsum adducunt utrique pro se et fit magna altercatio de intentione eius, quae fuerit,
ideo hic nolo multum circa intentionem eius immorari.” V, p. 157–10.
346 chapter six
the beginning of Christianity only three notions were recognized, yet in

Scotus’ own day five notions were accepted; why therefore should a sixth
be ruled out?8 Not only do the authorities upon whom later theologians
base their authoritative arguments not affirm that there are six properties
in God, they also do not deny that there are six properties in God. If it seems
to later theologians that six properties can be inferred from the evidence
that they have at their disposal, this is part of the progress of theological
knowledge, and should not be ruled out on the basis of the fact that it was
never explicitly said to be the case before. Coming to theological knowledge,
for Scotus, is a process of unfolding by those who come later the truth
contained in the words of those who came before. A novel position cannot
be falsified on the basis of the silence of authorities; in fact no conclusion
can be drawn on that basis. That kind of argumentation is simply not valid
according to Scotus: one can always make explicit what was only implicit
before.
What Scotus is doing in this passage and in others like it in his I Ordina-
tio is creating space for what he himself recognizes to be a highly unusual
trinitarian theology, one that might well meet with disapproval and censure.
Scotus himself brings up in a number of places in his works the possibil-
ity that his ideas on the Trinity might be labeled heretical.9 In brief, Scotus
was worried that portions of his systematic and well-developed trinitar-
ian thought might have gone too far. One way to defuse the possibility of
attacks against his orthodoxy was to employ a very broad notion of the way
that authoritative texts should and could be used. If the silence of author-
itative texts did not ipso facto compromise a theological position, then the
traditional way of interpreting authoritative texts—often the limiting fac-
tor in such situations—was not set in stone. What made Scotus’ trinitarian
thought so very radical and what made necessary all of his attention to the
proper role that authority should play in theology was that he explicitly sug-
gests the rejection of the relation account of personal distinction. And he
8 For the broader context of the quoted passage, see I Ord., d. 28, qq. 1–2, nn. 32–34 (VI,
pp. 12414–12515).
9 See, e.g., Scotus, I Ord., d. 26, q. unica, nn. 67–72 (VI, pp. 2712–2933); ibid., d. 28, q. 3,
n. 92 (VI, p. 15419–21). Part of this general uneasiness is to be seen in Scotus’ I Lectura, d. 26,
q. unica, n. 42 (XVII, p. 3279–10), where he barely mentions Peter of John Olivi’s position on
the Trinity: “Tertia opinio est Petri Ioannis, quam dimisi scribere, propter causam certam.”
The “certain cause” is the threat of excommunication for those using Olivi’s works; see the
notes provided by Scotus’ editors at loc. cit. Interestingly, in the Ordinatio, Scotus dropped
his reference to Olivi. Scotus’ opinion obviously does have some resonance with Olivi’s as
will be shown below, at and around nn. 20–24.
does not simply reject that opposed relations (in contrast to disparate ones)
constitute the persons; he advances the claim that relations have no part in
the constitution of the persons at all. Scotus makes the suggestion that the
persons are absolutes, and absolutes are only constituted by other absolutes,
i.e. by origin.
That relations play a role in the constitution of the divine persons, and
further that the persons themselves are relative, had an immense weight
of tradition behind them. Scotus himself admits (e.g., n. 80 below) that
the New Testament refers to the persons by their relative names: Father,
Son, and their Spirit. The Nicean creed confirmed these relative names, and
Augustine and Boethius developed a sophisticated account for explaining
philosophically how the persons might be constituted by relation. Some 900
years of traditional use of these authoritative texts must have loomed large
in Scotus’ mind when he suggested that the persons were not constituted by
relation. Simply put, it was risky business rejecting the relation account of
personal distinction, and Scotus knew that he needed a way to counterbal-
ance the weight of tradition behind the relation account: this is the source
of his sometimes intensive reflection on the relationship between tradition,
authority, and his own theological position.
Scotus was certainly not the first to recognize this difficulty in the trini-
tarian context. We have seen that Bonaventure began to move away from
the relation account and its emphasis on opposition of relation, but Henry
of Ghent explicitly rejected it and especially the dual nature of the divine
relations upon which it was predicated. Still, Henry made use of nested
distinctions—a device widely employed in the Franciscan trinitarian tradi-
tion—, and with this he could at one and the same time reject relation as the
most basic source of distinction between the divine persons, while incor-
porating into his trinitarian theology an attenuated form of the relation
account, the explanation explicitly proposed by Augustine and Boethius,
and the most common opinion when Henry wrote. Thus, relations, dis-
parate and opposed, play a role in Henry’s account of the distinction of the
persons, although he identifies the disparate relations with the way that the
persons emanate. This was Henry’s “marginalization strategy”. Scotus also
employs a marginalization strategy, and he needs it even more than Henry
did. Scotus suggests the complete rejection of the relation account, not even
finding it useful in the attenuated form that Henry used. Scotus does not
distinguish between disparate and opposed relations when he rejects rela-
tion as an explanation for personal distinction: the persons, for Scotus, are
absolutes. He tones down the threat of this obviously radical step in the
first place by his rule for the broad construal of authoritative passages: no
348 chapter six
authoritative passages can be found claiming that the persons are not abso-
lutes, therefore authoritative passages cannot be used to counter or falsify
the claim that the persons are absolutes. Second, after rejecting the rela-
tion account and suggesting his positive solution to the problem of personal
distinction in God—that the persons are absolutes—Scotus gives a blan-
ket “waiver of responsibility”: if he is wrong on this score, then the relation
account is correct.
Excursus: A Very Brief History of Absolute Persons

Although the claim that the divine persons are absolutes was unusual in Scotus’ day,
nevertheless it was not unprecedented. In fact, Scotus may well have considered
himself in good company in making this claim. Two influential scholars of the early
thirteenth century defended the thesis that the persons were absolutes: William
of Auvergne (d. 1249), Bishop of Paris and advisor to St. Louis, and Robert Gros-
seteste (d. 1253), Bishop of Lincoln.10 We know most about William of Auvergne’s
discussion, since his work De trinitate, written around 1223, survives, and is even
critically edited and nicely translated into English.11 According to William, the per-
sons cannot be relative, and therefore relations “supervene” on them after they are
constituted by absolutes. Although William discusses the inadequacy of relation to
account for personal distinction throughout his De trinitate, nevertheless the crux
of his position is given in chapter 28 of the work, in which he inquires about the
nature of a difference that is completely compatible with essential unity.12 If some-
one were to claim that the persons differ by the relations between them, William
acknowledges that they would be correct, and yet “a relation alone does not suffice
to exclude mutual predication of each other, nor do any of the other accidents.”13
10 Many texts dealing with the history of absolute persons prior to Scotus are gathered
together in the “Adnotationes” to vol. VI of Scotus’ Vatican Opera Omnia, esp. pp. 10*–26*.
See also Schmaus 1930a, 551–569; Wetter 1967, 295–296.
11 The edition is in William of Auvergne, De trinitate (ed. Switalski); the translation is in
William of Auvergne, The Trinity (trans. Teske/Wade). For the date of the text, see Teske’s
Introduction to the translation, p. 4 n. 14. Teske’s Introduction to William’s text (pp. 1–57 of
the translation) is thorough and extremely helpful, although I suspect that Scotus (for one)
would find inadequate Teske’s dismissal of William’s ideas on the absolute persons (p. 56
n. 103), the dismissal being based as it appears to be on a Thomistic understanding of the
Trinity: “William’s doctrine that the Trinitarian relations are ‘supervenient,’ that is, that they
come to the persons as already distinct, ultimately—though without his explicitly realizing
it—spells the failure of his theology to come to that minimal understanding of the dogma
that consists in grasping that there is no contradiction in affirming three persons in one
essence.”
12 William of Auvergne, De trinitate, c. 28: “Merito igitur quaeritur cuiusmodi sit differen-
tia haec, cum qua est essentialis per modum omnem unitas.” Ed. Switalski, p. 15860–61.
13 William of Auvergne, De trinitate, c. 28: “Quod si quis dixerit, quia relatione differunt,
recte utique dicit, sed relatio sola mutuam de invicem praedicationem prohibere non sufficit,
nec aliquod aliorum accidentium.” Ed. Switalski, p. 15966–69.
Why not? For one thing, relation is just not the kind of thing that comes about
first—it always follows upon something absolute, which in creatures is either a
substance, a quality, or a quantity. Two terms must exist prior to relations arising
between those two terms—the relations are, in William’s terminology, ‘superve-
nient’, and hence cannot constitute the divine persons.14 Moreover, William argues,
the Father does not exist because he has a Son; indeed, the Father gives being to the
Son through generation. But on account of the simultaneity of relations (i.e., the fact
that paternity cannot exist without filiation, and that a father as such first exists only
when his son exists), if relation constituted the persons, then the Son could be said
to give the Father being just as much as the Father could be said to give the Son
being. This is clearly unacceptable, because the Son cannot be said in any way to
give being to the Father; hence relation cannot be what is constitutive of the per-
sons.15 This argument, giving pride of place in personal constitution to emanations
(i.e., the giving of being by one person to another), is clearly related to those which
Bonaventure and other Franciscans will later use when they postulate that primity
gives “proto-being” to a supposite that then can generate the Son, both Father and
Son taking on complete being through generation; all this on the basis of the intu-
ition that an action requires an agent who precedes it. On the basis of these and
other arguments, William arrives at the following conclusion: “… we have to assign
something else as the first subject of a relation. When we have considered the sub-
ject as stripped of the relation, we shall necessarily find a difference—other than
the relation—between the subject of paternity and the subject of filiation”.16 So,
William clearly rejects relation as the ultimate constitutive of the persons. William
is not as clear as one would wish on what precisely this other difference “between
the subject of paternity and the subject of filiation” is; it appears, however, both
from his stress on the emanations (in which he uses a form of the psychological
model) and from his view that the father has a fontal plenitude to both emanations
(although he does not use the term ‘primity’), that for William the persons are dis-
tinct on the basis of emanational properties.
14 William of Auvergne, De trinitate, c. 28: “Non enim dici potest aliquid ad aliquid nisi
postquam fuerit ad se ipsum, nec potest esse ullo modo ad aliquid prima praedicatio, sed
necessario consequitur absolutum. Quare Patrem primum necesse est prius esse aliquid
suae proprietatis in se et ad se, deinde esse vel referri ad alium. Et de Filio idem oportet ....
hpraedicamentum relationisi non potest esse primum inter duo vel in duobus, sed necesse
habet ut praecedat ipsum quid aut quantum aut quale.” Ed. Switalski, p. 1647–11,19–21.
15 William of Auvergne, De trinitate, c. 28: “Revertamur autem et dicamus, quoniam
Pater revera est Pater ex eo quod habet Filium. Sed etsi Filium non haberet, esset tamen
nihilominus. Non enim est ex hoc quod habet Filium, quia tunc aeque esset a Filio, ut Filius
ab ipso; esset igitur etsi non haberet Filium …” Ed. Switalski, p. 16422–25. See also Ed. Switalski,
p. 15979–85.
16 William of Auvergne, De trinitate, c. 28: “Necesse igitur habemus aliud assignare subiec-
tum primum eius, quod est ad aliquid. Cum igitur illud nudum ab ipso aliquid consider-
averimus, necessario inter ipsum subiectum, quod subest paternitati, et subiectum, quod
subest filiationi, differentiam inveniemus aliam, quam eius, quod est ad aliquid.” Ed. Swital-
ski, p. 16118–22. The translation is modified from Teske and Wade’s translation of the work,
p. 182.
350 chapter six
Robert Grosseteste was no less influential in scholastic circles than was William
of Auvergne, and, during his tenure as bishop of Lincoln, Grosseteste stood to the
Franciscans at Oxford as something of a patron. In any case, in the later-medieval
trinitarian discussion, Grosseteste’s views crop up regularly both in the discussion
on absolute persons and in the discussion on the de facto issue of the Filioque.17
Despite its fame, however, we know less about Robert Grosseteste’s position on the
absolute persons than we do about William’s, since the work in which Grossteste’s
view was contained, De personis divinis et imagine creata, appears now to be lost.
Nevertheless we can get an idea about it from fragments of the work preserved in
later-medieval treatments of the Trinity. On the basis of these fragments it is clear
that two major ideas underlie Grosseteste’s arguments in favor of the properties
constitutive of the persons being absolute and not relative: first, that the divine
persons are substantial in the sense of Aristotelian first substances, and second that
relation has a diminished and imperfect type of being. Thus, Grosseteste appears to
have argued that since the divine supposites are most perfect, they must have most
perfect sources of their distinction; but absolutes are more perfect than relation is;
therefore the properties constitutive of the persons are absolute. Further, the divine
persons are substantial (substantialia) and substantial persons are constituted by
substantial properties, which means not by relations but by absolutes; as if to
explain this, Grosseteste tells us that something belonging to a particular genus
can only be constituted by something of that same genus, and hence relation
cannot constitute substantial persons, rather only substance, i.e. an absolute, can.
In general, then, according to Grosseteste, the persons are substantial, and relation
is insufficient for constituting substance. And so, according to the reports that we
have of his view, Grosseteste held that the persons were distinct primarily (primo)
by absolute properties, but they were distinct as a consequence and secondarily (ex
consequenti et secundario) by relation, since the mutual distinction of the persons
could be inferred through the relations holding between them.18 Grosseteste’s char-
17 I hope in the future to study more closely the influence of Grosseteste’s trinitarian
ideas in the later-medieval debate, but suffice it here to say that there is quite a bit of
unstudied material exhibiting that influence. In the context of the de facto (as opposed
to the counterfactual) Filioque discussion, i.e. the discussion aimed against the Greeks
in which Latin authors argued that the Greeks were wrong not to admit that both the
Father and the Son spirate the Holy Spirit, Grosseteste’s little Notula super epistolam Ioannis
Damasceni ‘De trisagion’ (found in ms. Oxford, Magdalene College 192, f. 215rb and edited in its
entirety in Scotus, Vatican Opera Omnia V, p. 2) was often cited; see on Grosseteste, McEvoy
2000, specifically on the Notula, pp. 134–135 (with translation), and the fuller treatment
in McEvoy 1975; the lost treatise De personis divinis has received less attention, but see
for some general reflections on Grosseteste’s trinitarian theory, Ginther 2004, esp. pp. 98–
106.
18 Portions of Grosseteste’s lost work De personis divinis et imagine creata were preserved
by Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo, I Sent., dd. 25–27, q. un., aa. 3–4: “Opinio Lincolniensis in
tractatu De personis divinis et imagine creata … ponit personas divinas distingui primo per
proprietates absolutas tamquam per ea quae sunt rationes sive principia distinctionis earum,
per relationes vero ex consequenti et secundario velut per ea ex quibus potest cognosci vel
inferri mutua eorum distinctio. .... arguo primo sic. Perfectissimorum suppositorum et dig-
acterization of the persons as substantial was particularly influential on Scotus—as

we will see, this was the foundation of Scotus’ most important argument in support
of absolute persons, as well as one of the guiding principles in all of his trinitarian
theology—as well as on several other later-medieval theologians, including Peter
Auriol.19
Not only venerable scholars from the first half of the thirteenth century had
ventured to postulate that the divine persons were absolute: theologians more
nearly contemporary with Scotus held similar views. The opinion had been aired,
for instance, in the later thirteenth century by Scotus’ confrère Peter of John Olivi
(d. 1298). In his very large question concerning the distinction of the divine persons,
edited by Michael Schmaus, Olivi had claimed in reaction to the trinitarian position
of Thomas Aquinas that the persons are not strictly speaking relations, but more of
a mixture of relative and absolute: the extremes (i.e., the persons themselves) being
absolute, and relations arising between them.20 For Olivi, the productions that are
nissimorum sunt principia distincthivia dignissima. Sed supposita divina sunt perfectissima
et dignissima, et proprietas absoluta perfectior et dignior relativa. Igitur, etc.
“Praeterea, supposita substantialia proprietatibus substantialibus constituuntur et distin-
guuntur primo. Sed supposita divina sunt substantialia. Igitur proprietatibus substantialibus,
et sic absolutis, constituuntur et distinguuntur primo.
“Praeterea (et est quasi confirmatio praecedentis rationis), nullum suppositum est sub-
stantiale nisi eius formale principium constituthivium—et per consequens distincthivium—
pertineat ad genus substantiae: nullum enim suppositum ponitur in aliquo genere, cuius non
est eius formale constituthivium. Sed supposita divina sunt substantialia. Igitur, etc.
“Praeterea, suppositum perfectissimum debet suppositari, et per consequens ab aliis
primo distingui per principium sui generis. Hoc patet quia imperfectionis est supposi-
tari per principia alterius generis (sicut patet de accidentibus, quae suppositantur per
substantiam,—et per naturam humanam, quae suppositatur a Verbo). Supposita divina sunt
perfectissima. Igitur suppositantur, et per consequens ab invicem primo distinguuntur (inc.:
distinguitur) per principia sui generis, scilicet per principia substantialia, et sic absoluta, cum
sint supposita substantialia.” Ed. Venice 1490 (unfoliated—rpt. 1952, cols. 538–539). Cf. also
“Adnotationes” to vol. VI of Scotus’ Vatican Opera Omnia, p. 21*, which brings this entire
passage.
19 For Scotus’ on the substantiality of the persons as an argument for their being absolutes,
see nn. 76–77 below. On Auriol, who will also defend his own definition of the persons by
referring to Grosseteste, see Ch. 9, below, at and around n. 25.
20 Peter John Olivi, “Quaestio de trinitate” (edited in its entirety in Schmaus 1930a, pp.
143*–228*): “… dicere quod eadem relatio secundum unam rationem sit prior suo extremo,
secundum aliam vero sit posterior, non video quomodo possit intelligi. Et ideo dico quod,
si relativum non solum dicat relationem, sed etiam extremum quod per eam refertur, sic
per relativa potest in divinis esse distinctio non solum ratione relationum, sed etiam ratione
extremorum, quae extrema sunt ipsae personae in quantum istae vel illae personae, et
ideo non oportebit quod in essentia fundentur relationes, sed in persona. Erit enim dare
praeter mere absoluta et meros respectus medium, quod partim potest dici absolutum,
partim respectivum. Absolutum enim erit quantum est de ratione sua, respectivum vero
ratione relationis sibi inseparabiliter et per realem indifferentiam adiunctae … persona
Patris per personalitatem suam est hoc suppositum aut, ut ita dicam, haec substantia, per
paternitatem vero huic personalitati seu personae adiunctam est ad Filium relatus …” Ed.
Schmaus, pp. 198*25–199*2. On Olivi’s theory of the constitution of the persons, see Schmaus
352 chapter six
the necessary distinguishing factors between the persons include in themselves the
relations,21 but the extremes are necessarily prior in some sense to the relations
between them, and thus those extremes are in some sense absolute. Moreover, we
are certain that Scotus knew Olivi’s position because he mentions it in passing in his
Lectura.22 Olivi, it should be mentioned, was a possible source of at least two other
ideas that figure prominently in Scotus’ trinitarian theology. First, as indicated by
his view that production is the necessary source of distinction between the persons,
Olivi lays great stress upon the active production of person by person as their
distinguishing characteristic. This point runs throughout his large quaestio on the
Trinity, and it is a feature that Olivi shares with the Franciscan trinitarian tradition
in general and with Scotus in particular.23 Relatedly, Olivi was also a possible source
for Scotus’ ideas on the relationship between person, property, and essence. Olivi
thought of the essence as universal or common nature, and the person as particular
or singular, and further, in line with what we have just seen, he thought that the
particulars were made distinct from one another efficiently through production.
This is precisely the model of personal constitution that Scotus will adopt. This is a
very significant likeness, because the view the two thinkers share does not appear
to have been widespread at least before Scotus.24 All of this adds up to the fact that
it is at least plausible that Olivi had a notable impact on Scotus’ conception of the
Trinity.
Even more nearly contemporary with Scotus, the Parisian theologian, James of
Viterbo O.E.S.A. (master of theology 1293; d. 1308), had suggested in several works
that the properties constitutive of the persons were absolute.25 Early in his mag-
1930a, 466–467; more generally on his trinitarian theory, see Davenport 1999, 165–239 passim.
Finally, see David Burr’s presentation of Olivi’s troubles with the authorities in Burr 1976,
50–53; note that, according to Burr (1976, 52), Olivi, like Scotus, paid careful attention to
authoritative passages and the limits of their interpretation.
21 Olivi, “Quaestio de trinitate”: “Impossibile est igitur distinctionem praedictam esse in
divinis sine productione … Productio autem nec relatio, quam in se includit, nihil addunt
realiter differens a prima et immediata producta …” Ed. Schmaus 1930a, pp. 184*39–185*26.
22 See n. 9 above.
23 For an example from Olivi, see n. 24 below; for Scotus, see below, at and around n. 73
as well as n. 148.
24 Olivi, “Quaestio de trinitate”: “Essentia autem producta se habet ad essentiam absolute
acceptam sicut singulare ad commune, quia per ly ‘producta’ significatur eius alia singularis
positio, in qua et per quam alio singulari modo existens est. Unde sicut in creatis humanitas
individuata continet in se rationem humanitatis absolutam et communem et ultra hoc addit
individuationem, ita suo modo singulare vel persona in divinis non est aliud quam divina
essentia producta seu iterum per productionem posita … Inest enim eis haec singularitas
effective per ipsum producentem, in quantum est producens, nec convenit essentiae nec
suae actualitati per se solam, ut est absolute accepta, sed solum prout est per virtutem
producentis iterum posita seu producta …” Ed. Schmaus 1930a, pp. 185*41–186*23. See further
for essence as common nature and persons as individuals, e.g. ibid., p. 207*20–31. For Scotus on
this issue, see below, at and around nn. 110–116, and compare all this with the view of Henry
of Ghent found in Ch. 4, above, at n. 39.
25 On James’ life, thought, and work, see Gutiérrez 1939; Ypma 1974, 1975, 1980; specifically
on his quodlibeta, see Schabel and Courtenay 2007, 547–550. On James’ trinitarian theory in
istracy at Paris, perhaps in 1294, James devoted to the issue two questions of his
large work De praedicamentis divinis, which has been edited almost in its entirety
by Ypma.26 James’ view was almost bound to raise some eyebrows. And indeed in
his Quodlibet III, q. 7, disputed probably in 1295–1296 and entitled “is the plurality
or distinction of real absolute modes in God incompatible with divine simplicity”
(Utrum pluralitas vel distinctio modorum realium absolutorum in Deo repugnet div-
inae simplicitati), James tells us explicitly that this quodlibetal question was raised
on account of the position he advanced in the De praedicamentis divinis.27 As he
describes it in this quodlibetal question, the three divine persons are constituted by
three irreducibly distinct ways of holding the totality of divine perfection (diversi
modi habendi perfectionem): esse naturaliter, esse intellectualiter, esse amabiliter.28
Indeed, according to James, these are the three irreducibly distinct ways that any-
thing whatsoever can exist: it can exist in its own nature or in its own right (i.e., in
esse naturale), it can exist as understood (in esse intellectualem), and it can exist as
willed or desired (in esse amabilem).29 Whereas in creatures only esse naturalem has
real extramental existence as a supposite, while esse intellectualem and esse ama-
bilem have merely intentional existence, in God all three of these ways in which
all of the divine perfections are held are real and they are the basis for the real
particular, see Gutiérrez 1939, 109–118; and on the relation between his theory of absolute
persons and Scotus’, see Scotus’ Vatican Opera Omnia VI, pp. 21*–22*.
26 Although in the Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis James touches on this issue
at other junctures in passing, he deals most directly with it in qq. 13 (“Utrum in Deo
sint relationes reales solum secundum originem”) and 14 (“Utrum relationes reales in Deo
faciant distinctionem personarum”); see Jacobus de Viterbio, O.E.S.A., Quaestiones de divinis
praedicamentis XI–XVII, ed. Ypma, pp. 121–205. On this work of James, see Ypma 1975, 256–
273; as Ypma shows there, (265–273) it is difficult to give an exact date of composition for
the work, but the part of it of interest to us here must have been written after Quodlibet I
(Christmas 1293 or Easter 1294) but before Quodlibet II (1294/1295). The first 10 questions of
this work of James were published by Ypma in 1983 (Corpus Scriptorum Augustinianorum,
V,1), this was followed by the second volume referred to above, and from 1988 until his recent
death Ypma was publishing the remaining questions of the work one at a time in successive
issues of the journal Augustiniana (1988 = vol. 38).
27 James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7: “Respondeo dicendum quod ista quaestio mota est
propter illud quod alias in quibusdam quaestionibus de relationibus divinarum personarum

dictum fuit, videlicet quod in Deo est distinctio realis quorumdam modorum realium absolu-
torum, in quibus fundantur relationes personarum divinarum distinctivae, hoc enim videtur
tollere simplicitatem divinae essentiae.” Ed. Ypma, p. 9432–37. For the dating of James’ Quodl.
III, see Ypma 1975, 273–274.
28 James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7: “… in divinis oportet esse quosdam modos essendi
proprios personis .... hhi modii sunt esse naturaliter, esse intellectualiter, et esse amabiliter.
Quae tria dicunt diversos modos essendi, non quia dicant aliam et aliam rationem perfectio-
nis, sicut attributa, sed quia dicunt alium et alium modum habendi perfectionem. Quicquid
enim perfectionis est in Deo, continetur in quolibet horum trium modorum, quia quicquid
est naturaliter, totum illud intelligit et totum illud amat.” Ed. Ypma, pp. 114648–115656.
29 James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7: “… res quaelibet habet triplicem modum essendi,
scilicet vel in sua natura, vel in intellectu vel in voluntate. Omne enim quod quoquo modo
est, potest intellectu apprehendi et voluntate appeti.” Ed. Ypma, p. 123895–898.
354 chapter six
distinction between the three persons.30 Quite clearly, then, James, like many late
thirteenth-century theologians, adopted Henry of Ghent’s strong use of the psycho-
logical model in trinitarian theology, and James confirms this by telling us explicitly
that “the distinction of the attributes is the necessary antecedent of the distinc-
tion of the persons.”31 More significantly for us here, James is adamant that these
modes of holding perfection are absolute modes32—it seems impossible, according
to James, for relation in and of itself to ground the distinction between two things,
since relation always depends upon the prior existence of two terms. The reference
(habitudo) that is the fundamental characteristic of relation also requires the prior
existence of two distinct things that then refer to each other in some way.33 Thus,
according to James, that the Father has the relational property of not being from
another is a consequence of the fact that the Father’s way of existing, his way of
holding all the divine perfections, is naturaliter. Likewise with the Son: because he
is the divine essence and all its perfections intellectualiter, it follows that he is from
someone else, i.e. the Father.34 In other words, person does come from person, but
30 James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7: “… homo in sua natura substantia est, intelligere
autem et amare ipsius non sunt eius substantiae, ideo homo secundum quod in natura sua
consideratur, res quaedam subsistens est; secundum autem quod est in suo intellectu non
est res subsistens, sed intentio quaedam rei subsistentis; et similiter secundum quod est in
se ipso ut amatum in amante .... In Deo autem est idem esse, intelligere, et amare. Deus ergo
in esse suo naturali existens, et Deus existens in intellectu suo et Deus existens in amore suo,
unum sunt; et tamen unusquisque eorum est subsistens.” Ed. Ypma, pp. 115672–116685.
31 James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7: “… distinctio personarum praeexigit distinctionem
attributorum.” Ed. Ympa, p. 124941. In Quodl. III, q. 8 (“Utrum duae processiones quae in Deo
ponuntur sint ad invicem distinctae realiter”; ed. Ypma, pp. 128–137), dealing with the way
the emanations are distinct from each other, James rejects various forms of the Dominican
arguments that make the distinction of the emanations dependent upon the distinction
of the persons (e.g., one from one, one from two). James deals at some length with the
psychological model and its application to the Trinity in both qq. 13 and 14 of De divinis
praedicamentis.
It should be mentioned that ms. Bologna, Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio A.971, ff. 62r–
79v contains James’ seven Quaestiones de verbo (disputed probably sometime in the period
running from just after James’ promotion to master until after his first Quodlibet, i.e. 1293–
1294; cf. Ypma 1975, 251–256). On ff. 67ra–70ra, q. 3 of this work concerns the important
counterfactual Filioque question. This question will be edited and studied in Friedman and
Schabel Forthcoming.
33 James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7: “… Quod enim aliqua distincta, secundum quam-
cumque oppositionem, sint in aliquo sine ulla diversificatione non videtur possibile .... oppo-
sitio relativa semper sumit diversitatem sive distinctionem ex alio; quod non contingit in aliis
oppositionibus. Et huius ratio est quia relatio dicit habitudinem. Habitudo autem semper est
distinctorum, ita quod distinctio praeintelligitur habitudini. Quare distinctio relativae oppo-
sitionis aliam distinctionem praeexigit in fundamento, ex quo habet relatio distinctionem
sicut et esse.” Ed. Ypma, pp. 110524–111533. See further ibid., pp. 110–114.
34 James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7: “… quidam modi absoluti sunt in divinis qui important
perfectionem, et isti sunt communes tribus personis. Nam quicquid perfectionis convenit
uni personae, convenit et alii. Quidam vero sunt modi absoluti qui dicunt modum habendi
perfectionem, et isti non sunt communes sed proprii personis quibus convenit habere
these relational characteristic follow from the non-relative way that each person
holds the divine perfections, and that absolute way is the most basic distinguishing
characteristic. For James, then, the properties are principally (principaliter) abso-
lute, consequently (consecutive) relation.35
Scotus undoubtedly knew to one extent or another all four of these positions
defending absolute persons—William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste were
widely known for their views, Scotus himself refers to Olivi’s ideas, and, as Sco-
tus’ modern editors argue, it seems highly unlikely that Scotus would not have
been familiar with a remarkable theory from such an important and recent scholar
as James of Viterbo.36 Yet, if Scotus’ view was not entirely unprecedented, it was
nevertheless very unusual, and the general tack in later-medieval trinitarian the-
ology, among both Dominicans and Franciscans, was to reject that the properties
constitutive of the persons were absolute. Actually, mid thirteenth-century theolo-
gians like Bonaventure and Aquinas appear to have thought it so obvious that the
properties that constitute the persons are relational that they did not even really
address the issue directly, rejecting absolute properties almost as an aside. The rela-
tion account of personal distinction was something that they had inherited from
Augustine and Boethius, and it seemed simply to fit. Take Aquinas, for instance,
perfectionem tali modo vel tali. Hi autem modi hi.e. habendi perfectionemi non sunt esse ab
alio vel non esse ab alio, sed ab eo aliud, hi enim dicunt relationem. Prius vero intelligitur
aliquorum distinctio quam relatio consequens ea. Sed isti modi sunt esse naturaliter et
intellectualiter et amabiliter. Ad hoc tamen modos consequuntur illi qui dicti sunt, scilicet
esse ab alio et non esse ab alio, quia esse naturaliter est non esse ab alio, esse autem
intelligibiliter est ab alio.” Ed. Ypma, pp. 117734–118746.
35 James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7: “Potest siquidem rationabiliter dici quod principaliter
sunt absoluti; consecutive autem respectivi, quia relationes consequuntur eos in quantum
unus horum modorum habet originem ex alio .... Sic igitur dicendum quod Deus, in sua
natura existens, modus quidem absolutus est; et similiter Deus existens in intellectu suo et
in amore suo modi sunt absoluti. Sed quia isti modi sic se habent ad invicem quod unus
habet ortum ab alio, ideo sequuntur ad eos relationes quaedam; et secundum hoc possunt
dici modi respectivi.” Ed. Ypma, pp. 116706–708, 117723–727.
36 On these thinkers and their influence, see the adnotationes to Scotus’ Vatican Opera
Omnia VI, pp. 10–24. With regard to James and his sources, Gutiérrez (1939, 116–118) has
pointed out that James could well have been influenced by Grosseteste in his view on the
absolute modes constituting the persons—and as support for his doctrine James himself
points to the words of “certain learned men of not little authority” (Quodl. III, q. 7; ed. Ypma,
p. 115658–659), although, again in agreement with Gutiérrez (loc. cit.), I think that Schmaus
(1930a, 567) was overdoing it when he lumped James’ and Grosseteste’s views together
as though they were indistinguishable. See on this Gutiérrez (loc. cit.), who observes that
Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo in his Sent. commentary (rpt. col. 539) had already noted that
James and Grosseteste do not have the same doctrine, since Grosseteste insists that the
absolute modes are utterly perfect (perfectissimae) while James says not that they themselves
are perfect but rather that they are modes of holding perfection (cp. Grosseteste in n. 18
above, with James in n. 34—in point of fact, in the text in n. 18 above, it is only argued
that absolute properties are of greater dignity [dignior] than relative ones and therefore are
more suitable to constitute utterly perfect [perfectissimae] persons, nevertheless James’ view
clearly differs, at least through elaboration, from Grosseteste’s on this point).
356 chapter six
who in his Summa theologiae, asks whether the persons are distinguished through
relations. Here, Aquinas merely notes that the persons are subsistent relations
and they are not made distinct by anything absolute; in reply to an objection
reminiscent of Grosseteste’s view—that the distinction between the persons is
the first distinction, and therefore the persons should be distinguished by abso-
lutes, since absolutes are prior to relatives—Aquinas says that the more prior
a distinction is, the closer to unity it is and hence the more minimal it is, and
therefore relation, which brings about minimal distinction, brings about the dis-
tinction of the persons.37 Aquinas was not alone in his apparent lack of interest
in showing that the personal properties were relational in nature: there appear
to be few pointed and forceful rejections of the possibility of the divine per-
sons being constituted by absolutes.38 As we have seen, discussion was intense
over whether opposed relations were necessary, or whether merely disparate ones
could suffice, but, before Scotus, for the vast majority of university theologians, the
only absolute in God was the essence, and the persons were constituted by rela-
tions of origin (with ‘relations of origin’ understood in various ways, as we have
seen). This was so obvious to them that the issue itself was rarely disputed at
length.
Scotus himself, undoubtedly aware that the view that the divine persons are
absolutes was a minority opinion and likely to be controversial, took care in
his early theological works to treat it as a suggestion put forward tentatively,
and in his later career he renounced the position entirely. With that said,
however—and this will be returned to throughout the present chapter—
37 Sum. theol., I, q. 40, a. 2, esp. ad 1, ad 2, and ad 3 (cf. Richard of Mediavilla, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2
[“Utrum personae distinguantur per illas proprietates relativas” = ed. 1591, p. 240a–b], who
uses precisely this argument nearly verbatim in the reply to the first preliminary argument
to the contrary); see also Aquinas’ De potentia, q. 8, a. 3. Bonaventure also takes it for granted
that the persons are not absolutes in I Sent., d. 26, a. un., q. 2 (“Quid sint in divinis proprietates
personarum”; Opera omnia, vol. 1, pp. 455–456), esp. the fourth preliminary argument pro.
Finally, see also the text of Giles of Rome in Ch. 3, above, at n. 84, in which he rejects that
the persons are “tres res absolutas” since “Pater et Filius hnoni sunt duo aliquid, sed duo ad
aliquid”.
38 One such discussion, however, is Henry of Ghent’s, Quodl. V, q. 8 (Badius, vol. 1, ff. 164r–
167r), disputed probably in 1280–1281 (for the date, see Gómez Caffarena 1957, esp. p. 133).
This question has been studied in Wilson 1996; and, especially for the trinitarian thought,
Cross 2005b. Two other clear exceptions to this trend are Godfrey of Fontaines and William
of Ware. Godfrey devotes his Quodl. IV, q. 2 (ed. in Les philosophes Belges, vol. 3, pp. 279–
285), from 1290–1291 or 1291–1292, to showing that the persons are distinct on account
of relations and not on account of absolutes. William of Ware presents a very detailed
rejection of absolute persons in the context of his response to Peter Olivi’s views on absolute
persons; see the question “utrum relationes in divinis constituant personas” (William of
Ware, I Sent., d. 26, q. 3; ed. Schmaus 1930a, pp. 237*–247*; William’s own view, supporting
relationes quasi substantiales is found on pp. 245*24–246*1); on Ware’s discussion, see also
n. 71 below.
the view that the persons are absolutes fits neatly into Scotus’ broader ideas
on the Trinity, including his trinitarian use of philosophical psychology. For
Scotus, like Henry of Ghent and William of Ware, made strong use of philo-
sophical psychology in trinitarian theology. What motivated Scotus’ rejec-
tion of the relation account? How did he argue for the rejection and what
specifically did he propose to replace it? The answers to these questions are
found mostly in d. 26 of his I Ordinatio, in a question entitled “are the per-
sons constituted in personal being by relations of origin?”39 Here, after sum-
marily dismissing Praepositinus’ view that the persons are distinguished in
and of themselves (se ipsis),40 Scotus explains the “common” opinion that
the persons are constituted by relations.41 In support of this opinion, Scotus
gives a number of standard authoritative passages from Boethius (“relatio
multiplicat trinitatem”), Augustine, and Anselm (Anselm’s rule).42 Then, he
turns to rational arguments for the position. If the persons were constituted
by absolutes, then composition would necessarily result because an abso-
lute property would be added to the absolute essence; this is not the case
with relation.43 Further, the unique dual nature of the relations in God safe-
guard divine simplicity: relation vanishes into (transire in) substance when
compared to it, but is really distinguished from its term. Absolutes do not
have this dual nature, therefore either an absolute entirely vanishes, and
hence does not distinguish, or entirely remains, and composition results.44
Again, everyone admits that there are relations between the persons; if these
39 Scotus, I Ord., d. 26 (VI, pp. 1–61): “Utrum personae constituantur in esse personali per
relationes originis”.
40 I Ord., d. 26 (VI, pp. 2–4). For more on Praepositinus’ view and its legacy in the later-
medieval university discussion, see the Excursus in Ch. 11, below, as well as Chs. 11 and 12
passim.
41 I Ord., d. 26: “Alia est opinio communis quae dicit personas constitui per relationes.”
VI, p. 410–11.
42 I Ord., d. 26 (VI, pp. 4–6).
43 I Ord., d. 26, n. 24: “Quia si per absolutum constituitur persona in divinis, absolutum
additum absoluto necessario faciet compositionem; sed si in absoluto conveniunt personae

divinae, constat quod non eodem absoluto quo conveniunt distinguuntur personaliter;
igitur absoluto alio. Ergo est ibi absolutum additum absoluto,—igitur compositio. Hoc non
sequitur de relatione, quia relatio nihil addit super fundamentum, nec facit compositionem
cum eo.” VI, p. 64–10.
44 I Ord., d. 26, n. 25: “Aliter confirmatur illa positio et ista ratio, quia relatio uno modo
potest transire in substantiam et per hoc non facere compositionem cum absoluto, alio
modo potest manere per comparationem ad oppositum et ita distinguitur realiter. Istae duae
rationes non videntur competere absoluto, quia absolutum vel omni modo transit, vel omni
modo manet: si omni modo transit, non distinguit (sicut nec essentia in quam transit),—si
omni modo manet, ergo est compositio.” VI, p. 611–18.
358 chapter six
relations do not constitute the persons, then they would seem accidental or
incidental to the persons, or even relations of reason; therefore the relations
must constitute the persons.45
Thus far, Scotus’ presentation has been relatively standard. He presents
the typical authoritative passages for this problem, and the characteristic
arguments in favor of relation explaining the constitution of the persons.
But after having argued for the role of relation in the constitution of the
divine persons, Scotus proceeds to argue against this view, by giving three
relatively distinct “ways” (viae) in which it can be argued that relation
does not constitute the persons. Scotus himself categorizes these “ways”
as follows: through the comparison of relation to what is related; through
the comparison of relation to origin; and on the basis of the proper nature
(propria ratione) of things that constitute.46 For an understanding of the
motivation for Scotus’ own view—that the persons are and are constituted
by absolutes—these three ways of arguing against the relation account are
extremely significant.
Scotus’ first explicit line of argument against the relation account is
perhaps the most obvious one: one thing refers to another through relation,
and therefore without two preexisting things there is no relation. This is
just to say that what refers through relation is naturally prior to the relation
itself; therefore relation cannot constitute the things related.47 Relation itself
does not refer, but two (or more) already existing things refer through
relation. Indeed Scotus thinks about one of a pair of related things as a
45 I Ord., d. 26, n. 27: “Item, secundum omnes, relationes sunt in personis divinis. Ergo
si non constituant personas, erunt ibi quasi accidentales et adventiciae personis constitutis
(quod videtur esse contra simplicitatem personarum divinarum), et etiam tales relationes—
quae sunt propriae personis—erunt relationes rationis … si prima persona sit absoluta, non
dependebit ad secundam, quia praeintelligitur perfecta in habitudine sua personali ante
secundam personam, et per consequens non necessario coexigit secundam personam ad
suum esse personale; ergo habitudo eius ad secundam personam erit tantum relatio vel
habitudo rationis.” VI, pp. 628–711.
46 I Ord., d. 26, n. 32: “Contra istam conclusionem arguitur quadruplici via: primo com-
parando relationem ad relatum, secundo comparando relationem ad originem, et tertio ex

propria ratione ipsius constitutivi, et quarto per auctoritates.” VI, p. 1016–19. I will not deal
with Scotus’ arguments from authority here, although for some indication of his approach,
see around nn. 84–85 below.
47 I Ord., d. 26 n. 33: “Relatione aliquid refertur formaliter (sicut albedine aliquis deal-
batur), non ipsamet relatio refertur … relatio enim non refertur, quia illud quod refertur
relatione, non est aliquid postea nec simul natura,—ergo prius naturaliter; sed essentia non
refertur realiter, ergo suppositum tantum refertur; ergo prius est ibi realiter suppositum et
naturaliter quam relatio. Non ergo primo constituitur vel distinguitur suppositum divinum
relatione.” VI, pp. 1021–114.
composite of subject and relation informing it, and like any composite all
the parts are necessary in order for the composite to exist; thus, what refers
through relation must exist prior to the composite of that thing and the
relation through which it refers.48 Real relations, in particular, need really
distinct extremes, and therefore the extremes cannot be constituted by
relation.49 According to Scotus, then, relation cannot constitute the divine
persons.
Scotus’ second means of attacking the relation account is through a com-
parison of relation with origin. Here Scotus begins to reveal the foundation
upon which his own position will rest, and it is typically Franciscan: that
the persons are produced one from the other. Scotus takes it as axiomatic in
this discussion that there is origin or production in God.50 Starting from this
basis, Scotus relies upon the main argument Bonaventure used for the con-
ceptual priority of the emanations over the relations: we know that the Son
and the Holy Spirit take being through origination, they come from or are
produced by the Father and by the Father and the Son respectively; there-
fore this origination must precede the term originated and, further, must
precede the relation between term and originator. This is also just another
way of arguing for the “proto-Father” that is constituted conceptually by
primity in Bonaventure’s trinitarian system: for Scotus, there has to be a
supposite that produces the Son, and this supposite has to have existence
“prior” to the relation between Father and Son.51 It is not merely the case
48 I Ord., d. 26, n. 34: “… omne compositum de necessitate praeexigit partes et partium
unionem, et hoc non tantum in composito per se uno, sed in composito per accidens uno …
Ergo esse alicuius relati, quod dicitur ‘referri primo’ sicut quasi totum, praeexigit relationem
ut formam, et illud quod refertur relatione quasi subiectum, et unionem istorum. Prius ergo
aliquid informatur relatione quam sit aliquid relativum quasi compositum, quod dicatur
‘referri primo’: illud prius, informatum relatione, potest dici referri, quia omne informatum
aliqua forma potest dici tale.” VI, p. 115–16.
49 I Ord., d. 26, n. 36: “Item, relatio realis praeexigit distinctionem realem extremorum,
ergo nulla relatio causat primo distinctionem realem extremorum; ergo nec hic.—Probatio
antecedentis: Philosophus, V Metaphysicae, cap. ‘De eodem’ probat identitatem non esse
relationem realem, quia non praeexigit distinctionem realem extremorum.” VI, p. 121–6.
50 Scotus does, however, attempt to prove the necessity of production in I Ord., d. 2, pars
2, qq. 2–4 (II, pp. 259–344); see also below, at and around nn. 148–151.
51 I Ord., d. 26, nn. 43–44: “Item, suppositum aliquo modo praeintelligitur actioni, quia
prius intelligitur unumquodque per se esse quam quod per se agat: in illo priore si est
suppositum ad se, habetur propositum; si non est suppositum ad se sed ad aliud—ut
ad Filium—ergo simul intelligitur Filius, et ita Filius praeintelligitur generationi, et ita
Filius non erit terminus generationis. Et confirmatur, quia quacumque prioritate unum
correlativum praeintelligitur alicui, eadem prioritate reliquum correlativum praeintelligitur
eidem, propter simultatem relativorum.” VI, p. 151–9. For Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, above, at
n. 53.
360 chapter six
that the Father has the Son as a correlative, rather the Father originates or
produces the Son; thus, if relation were that which constitutes the persons,
then there would be no origin of the Son from the Father.52 Correspondingly,
the person who is originated must be originated as an absolute “prior” to its
being related to the originator.53 Origination comes “first”, relation “follows”.
Further, dealing directly with the modes of origin in God, and again
assuming that there is production of person from person, Scotus argues
that the two productions by way of nature and by way of will would not
be distinct if the persons were constituted by relation. It is the nature of
two relata to look (respicere) naturally toward each other, and no relatum
looks more naturally toward its correlative than any other relatum. Thus,
the Father and the Son look toward one another just as naturally as the
Holy Spirit looks toward its spirators. Therefore, the Holy Spirit would be
constituted just as naturally as the Son if the persons were constituted by
relation. Yet the production of the Holy Spirit is by way of will, and is not
by way of nature as is the production of the Son. Hence, if the persons were
constituted by relation, the productions would not be distinct as we know
they are. Therefore, the persons are not constituted by relation.54
Finally, there would be no generation in God, if relation constituted the
divine persons. This is because generation ends solely in the production of
a first substance; but if the persons were relatives then they would not be
See on this also I Ord., d. 28, q. 3 (VI, pp. 138–163), where Scotus explicitly defends the
position that the first person is an absolute (esp. VI, pp. 152–154); see also nn. 91–92 below.
For Bonaventure’s ideas on the “proto-Father”, see Ch. 1, above, around nn. 65, 71; see also
Chs. 2 and 5 above for theologians who claimed that primity or innascibility constituted a
“proto-Father” (although, NB, Scotus does not think that innascibility is the property that
constitutes the Father, since innasciblility is a relative property; see n. 92 below).
52 I Ord., d. 26, n. 40: “… tunc non erit aliud Patrem originare Filium quam Patrem habere
Filium correlativum; sed Pater ex se—eo quod Pater—habet Filium correlativum, quia in
nullo instanti, nec originis nec naturae, potest intelligi Pater sine Filio vel nisi intelligitur
habere Filium; ergo Pater ex se, sine originatione, habet Filium, ergo non originat eum si nihil
originatur nisi correlativum.” VI, p. 144–9. See the related line of argument found in William
of Auvergne, at and around n. 15 above.
53 I Ord., d. 26, n. 38: “Relatio non potest originari nisi aliquo absoluto prius originato, aut
in relato aut in termino; ergo persona divina quae primo originatur, non potest tantum esse
relatio subsistens, sed oportet ponere aliquid absolutum quod primo originatur.” VI, p. 132–5.
54 I Ord., d. 26, n. 41: “… omne relativum aeque naturaliter respicit suum correlativum, ergo
aeque naturaliter spirans respicit spiratum sicut generans generatum. Ergo si productum
utraque productione sit tantum relativum, utrumque aeque naturaliter producitur, et ita non
erit in divinis duplex productio (per modum naturae et voluntatis), et tunc aeque vere potest
dici quod Filius producitur per modum voluntatis et Spiritus Sanctus per modum naturae,
sicut e contra,—quod est contra omnes.” VI, p. 1410–17. For the same argument in another
context see I Ord., d. 7, q. 1, n. 36 (IV, p. 122).
first substance, but something belonging to the genus of relation; hence,

claiming the persons to be relative is tantamount to claiming that there is
no generation in God.55
This second way of proving that the persons are not relatives reveals a
great deal about how Scotus thinks about the Trinity. First, productions are
of the utmost importance—and not just any productions, but production
by way of nature in the case of the Son, and production by way of will in
the case of the Holy Spirit. Second, Scotus uses two terms to describe the
persons that will form the backbone of his own trinitarian theory: ‘absolute’
and ‘first substance’. Generation terminates at first substance, which is an
absolute.
Scotus’ third “way”, from the nature of something that constitutes, is one
that he will use in a number of trinitarian connections, including his dis-
cussion of whether the Son and the Holy Spirit would still be distinct if the
latter did not proceed from the former. In that discussion Scotus expresses
very clearly what it means when we say that filiation is constitutive of the
Son:
By whatever something is formally constituted in being, by that it is made dis-
tinct, because something is both a being and is one by the same (on account of
the unity that convenes to such an entity); further, if it is one, then it is in itself
indistinct while distinct from others. But the Son is constituted in personal
being by filiation; therefore also by filiation is he made formally distinct from
the other persons. Therefore, assuming the impossible or incompossible, with
all other things set aside, and especially anything posterior to filiation, the Son
will remain personally distinct from the other persons by filiation.56
55 I Ord., d. 26, n. 42: “Item, tunc nulla productio in divinis erit generatio, quia generatio est
ad primam substantiam ut ad terminum productum; hic autem ponitur relatio vel relativum
primum productum; ergo erit productio in genere relationis et non generatio.” VI, p. 1418–21.
For similar arguments, see n. 106 below. It is interesting that in his later Reportatio I-A, Scotus
uses an argument the conclusion of which contradicts this one: there, in arguing for the
relation account, he maintains that the properties constitutive of the persons must be of a
different genus than the divine essence, and that this genus is relation; cf. Wetter 1967, 334,
for the text (= Rep. I-A, d. 26, q. 2, nn. 70, 72 [ed. Wolter and Bychkov, vol. 2, pp. 87, 88]), Cross
1999, 66–67, for discussion.
56 I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, n. 40: “… quocumque formaliter aliquid constituitur in esse, eodem
distinguitur, quia eodem est aliquid ens et unum (unitate conveniente tali entitati), et si
unum, igitur in se indistinctum et ab aliis distinctum; sed Filius constituitur in esse personali
filiatione, ergo et ea formaliter distinguitur ab omni alia persona; ergo per impossibile vel per
incompossibile circumscripto quocumque alio, et maxime posteriore filiatione, remanebit
Filius filiatione distinctus personaliter a quacumque persona.” V, pp. 166–174. I have used this
passage, because in I Ord., d. 11, Scotus discusses the same material more clearly than he does
in d. 26. See below, at and around nn. 122–130, esp. 128–129 for analysis of Scotus’ position
362 chapter six
No matter what it is and what it is constituting, what a “constitutive” does

is make that which it constitutes a unity indistinct in itself and distinct from
other things. For Scotus—as for Henry of Ghent and William of Ware—
filiation is what constitutes the Son in being, that is to say, makes the Son a
unity distinct from both of the other persons. For this reason nothing other
than filiation is required to constitute the Son, or else filiation would not be
genuinely constitutive of him. More specifically for Scotus, a constitutive is
“on its own totally and primarily (se toto primo) repugnant to distinction
opposed to the unity [that whatever is constituted through it has]”.57 This is
clear by the following argument: assuming that a distinction opposed to the
unity of the thing constituted is logically inconsistent with the thing consti-
tuted, then there is a ground or reason for this logical inconsistency; call this
ground A. Now, either A is completely logically inconsistent all on its own
with any distinction compromising the unity of the thing constituted—and
in that case A is the constitutive that Scotus has alluded to and he has proven
his point—or the logical inconsistency arises through something else. If
through something else, then either that will be logically inconsistent totally
on its own or a regress will begin. The conclusion is that either an infinite
regress ensues—not an option—or some constitutive will be reached that
is completely logically inconsistent with any division or distinction.58 Take,
for example, rational as the constitutive of human being. If rational is what
constitutes human being as a specific unity, then it is totally and primar-
ily logically inconsistent with any specific distinction whatsoever. That is to
say, with no other constitutive to set the specific unity human being off from
every other unity, rationality is still sufficient to maintain the distinction.59
on the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit. It should be noted that making personal
constitution equivalent to personal distinction, as Scotus does here, will be criticized by
several fourteenth-century theologians, not least by Gregory of Rimini; see Ch. 12, below, §5A,
nn. 237–243, perhaps most explicitly at n. 242.
57 I Ord., d. 26, n. 45: “Quidquid constituit in aliquo esse et in unitate correspondente tali
esse, se toto primo repugnat distinctioni oppositae illi unitati.” VI, p. 1511–12.
58 I Ord., d. 26, n. 45: “Et probatur ista propositio, quia si toti constituto repugnat talis
distinctio, ergo per aliquid sibi repugnat; sit illud A: si ipsi A se toto repugnat, habetur
propositum,—si non, sed repugnat ipsi A per B, erit processus in infinitum, vel ubicumque
stabitur, illud erit ultimum constituens in tali unitate et illi se toto repugnabit distinctio
opposita tali unitati.” VI, pp. 1518–161.
59 I Ord., d. 26, n. 45: “Exemplum: si rationale primo constituat hominem in entitate et
unitate specifica, se toto primo repugnat distinctioni specificae, ita quod circumscribendo
per possibile vel impossibile quodcumque aliud a rationali, quod non est de intellectu eius,
stante solo intellectu rationalis, repugnabit sibi divisio in diversas naturas specificas.” VI,
p. 1513–18.
When we apply it to the Trinity, Scotus maintains that this characteri-

zation of a constitutive rules out the possibility that relation is constitutive
of the divine persons. Thus, according to Scotus, “if paternity constitutes
the first supposite in personal being as (sub ratione) incommunicable, it is
required that communicability is logically inconsistent with paternity from
its nature primarily (ex ratione sua primo).”60 In other words, the Father
is a person and incommunicable existence; from the nature of a consti-
tutive, then, if paternity is what constitutes the Father and gives him his
incommunicable unity, then paternity by its very nature must be totally
and primarily incompatible with communicability. Paternity, and by exten-
sion the other constitutive properties are incommunicable, they cannot
be shared, and indeed must be on their own account logically incompati-
ble with being shared in any way. But Scotus thinks he can show through
examples that relation involves the kind of communicability that would
seem to be logically inconsistent with the constitutives of the divine per-
sons. Take active spiration: since it is equally identical to the divine essence
as the other relations of origin are, it should have from the essence just as
much incommunicability as the others do; yet it is shared by two persons,
i.e. it is communicable; thus (we can conclude Scotus’ argument), all the
relations would seem to be communicable. Further, two opposed relatives
would seem necessarily to have the same amount of incommunicability;
since active spiration is shared and hence not incommunicable, it would
seem that the relation opposed to it, passive spiration, would also not be
incommunicable, and hence unable to constitute the Holy Spirit.61 Thus,
if the divine personal properties were relations, we would not be able to
explain how those properties were incommunicable, and hence how they
constitute the persons.
Moreover, one can abstract from the relations something common to
them in their “thingness” (quid)—for example, one can abstract from pater-
nity and filiation the common thingness relation, “since the intellect can be
60 I Ord., d. 26, n. 45: “Ergo si paternitas constituat primum suppositum in esse personali
sub ratione incommunicabilis, oportet quod paternitati ex ratione sua primo repugnet
communicabilitas.” VI, p. 161–4.
61 I Ord., d. 26, nn. 48–49: “… quaelibet relatio divina originis est aeque eadem essentiae
divinae; ergo si ex illa contrahit aliquam incommunicabilitatem, quaelibet aequaliter eam

contraheret. Sed hoc est falsum, quia spiratio activa, licet sit ‘haec’, non tamen incommunica-
bilis, quia est in duobus, Patre scilicet et Filio. Et ex hoc quarto probatur quod, cum opposita
relativa videantur uniformiter se habere ad incommunicabilitatem et spiratio activa non sit
de se sic incommunicabilis, ergo nec spiratio passiva sibi opposita. Ergo nec sic constituet
Spiritum Sanctum in esse personali, quod est falsum.” VI, pp. 1616–173.
364 chapter six
certain about relation and in doubt about this relation or that one.” This
does not seem to be possible in the case of that which is ultimately con-
stitutive and distinctive of some thing: in order for the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit to be made distinct by paternity, filiation, and pro-
cession respectively these distinctive feature or properties should have no
thingness in common with each other that could be abstracted from them,
in just the same way as the specific difference rational is fundamentally
different from the differentia of all other species of animals.62 Finally, a
constitutive and what it constitutes should be one thing per se, and there
should be no inconsistency of quiddities between them from which com-
position would result. But relation and essence, an absolute, are two differ-
ent things with two different quiddities, and thus, if each person included
both essence and relation, then each of the persons would seem to be
a sort of accidental unity composed of these two quiddities, rather than
being a per se unity. We will see that Scotus makes a great deal of this
last point, and it leads him to conclude that what is constitutive of the
persons has no quiddity of its own that could cause composition in the per-
sons.63
Given this battery of arguments against relation being the ground for
personal distinction, Scotus offers an alternative: that the divine persons are
absolutes. The position Scotus sums up as follows:
… it could be posited that the divine persons were constituted in personal
being—and made distinct—by absolute realities and that the persons pro-
duced were made distinct as though from a source (quasi principiative) by
62 I Ord., d. 26, n. 51: “Item, arguitur secundo sic principaliter, quantum ad istam viam: ab
ultimis constitutivis et distinctivis aliquorum non potest abstrahi aliquid commune dictum
in quid de eis; probatio: quia si est aliquid commune eis, illo communi non distinguuntur
primo, sed aliquo contrahente distinguuntur, et ita non sunt prima distinctiva; si ergo sunt
prima distinctiva, nihil est commune eis dictum in quid. A paternitate autem et filiatione
abstrahitur hoc quod est relatio, quae videtur esse commune eis et univoce: potest enim
intellectus certus esse de relatione et dubius de hac relatione et illa. Ergo ista a quibus
abstrahitur, non sunt primo distinctiva.” VI, p. 281–10.
63 I Ord., d. 26, n. 52: “… primum constitutivum suppositi in aliqua natura videtur facere
per se unum cum illa natura, quia non videtur quod per accidens possit esse primum
simpliciter in aliquo genere … sed sicut in creaturis relatio est alterius generis ab absoluto,
et ideo non facit unum per se cum eo, ita in divinis non videtur esse unus conceptus per
se absoluti et relationis; ergo si persona ista duo includat essentialiter, scilicet essentiam
et relationem, non videtur esse per se suppositum et primum talis naturae, sed quasi
suppositum per accidens, et ita videtur quod possit dari aliquid prius constitutivum per se
suppositi in illa natura.” VI, p. 191–11. For a similar use of this type of argument, see also below
at nn. 77–78.
origin, not formally … even if the things constituting the persons were not
formally relations, nevertheless what is constituted by them would be referi-
ble.64
Scotus’ argument for this position is something of a reductio ad absurdum

based upon the many arguments that he has already given against the
relation account. The thrust of Scotus’ argumentation, then, is that there are
insurmountable problems with the persons being constituted by relation,
therefore in order to avoid the absurdity we must conclude that they are
constituted by something absolute. But throughout his presentation of the
position that the persons are absolutes, Scotus’ main concern is to guard
against the charge that this position is new or foreign (extraneum) to the
trinitarian discussion.65 He knows that the burden on him is to minimize
the break with tradition that the postulation of absolute persons appears to
represent. Moreover, it is through two positions of Bonaventure—whom he
significantly describes as an “antiquus doctor”—that Scotus both elaborates
his position and defends its orthodoxy.66
In the first place, Scotus brings up a passage from Bonaventure that the
Subtle Doctor apparently believes suggests that the persons are absolute.
Some two centuries later, the theologian, Dominican Master-General, and
Cardinal, Thomas de Vio (1468–1534), better known as Cajetan, will take Sco-
tus to task for claiming that Bonaventure can be read as having held that the
persons were not relative, Cajetan writing that “it would be clear even to the
blind” that Bonaventure did not hold this view.67 From what we have already
64 I Ord., d. 26, n. 59: “Secundum hoc ergo poneretur quod personae divinae constituer-
entur in esse personali—et distinguerentur—per aliquas realitates absolutas, et quasi prin-

cipiative, non formaliter, distinguerentur personae productae per origines; non tamen illa
constituentia personas essent absoluta primo modo sed secundo modo, quia etsi non essent
formaliter relationes, constituta tamen per ipsas essent referibilia. Iste posset esse modus
ponendi.” VI, p. 2415–21. Note here that Scotus only deals with “the persons produced through
origin” (personae productae per origines), thus excluding the Father; on the Father’s absolute
property, see n. 92 below.
66 James of Viterbo will, like Scotus, also take pains to show that his view that the
properties are absolutes is not novum dictum aut inventum, although James appeals to
(presumably) Grosseteste (James of Viterbo, Quodl. III, q. 7; ed. Ypma, p. 115658–660).
67 Cajetan’s diatribe against Scotus is presented in Pars Prima Summae Theologiae, Aqui-
nas Opera Omnia, vol. 4 (Rome, 1888), q. 40, a. 2 (“Utrum personae distinguantur per rela-
tiones”), pp. 413–416, esp. pp. 414–416: “Circa limites quaesiti, adverte primo quod Scotus,
in 26 d. Primi, nisi timeret Ecclesiae contradicere, ostendit se velle libenter tenere quod
in persona divina, praeter essentiam communem tribus, et relationem ac originem cuique
personae proprium, sit quaedam entitas absoluta incommunicabilis, quae est constitu-
tiva divinae personae. Inchoatque positionem hanc a dicto quodam Bonaventurae, in 25
366 chapter six
seen of Bonaventure’s trinitarian thought, it seems difficult not to agree

with Cajetan.68 In d. 25 of the first book of his Sentences, Bonaventure dis-
cusses whether the term ‘person’ is said in the divine according to substance
or according to relation.69 In this discussion, Bonaventure draws a distinc-
tion between two ways of accepting ‘substance’, a distinction familiar from
Aristotle: ‘substance’ can mean quiddity or common nature (i.e., second
substance); substance can also mean a particular supposite (i.e., first sub-
stance). Further, Bonaventure claims that if we call the persons ‘substance’,
then we mean it in the second way: the persons are particular and distinct
supposites. From Bonaventure’s treatment, Scotus will build up a model of
the relationship between essence and person as that between second and
first substance. This is the kernel of his ideas on the absolute persons.70
Scotus also thinks that Bonaventure revealed how these first sub-
stances—i.e., the persons—were put into being and made distinct from
each other. The hint was given, according to Scotus, in a discussion that was
fundamental to Bonaventure’s conceptual ordering: whether the properties
make the persons distinct or only show that they are distinct.71 As we have
distinctione Primi … S. Bonaventura in primis non est talis opinionis, quod personae divinae
sint absolutae … Ex hoc autem dicto liquet etiam caecis quod non ponitur a Bonaventura
duplex res absoluta, altera essentialis et altera hypostatica, ut Scotus fingere vellet …” Caje-
tan’s commentary on the first part of the Summa theologiae was first published in 1508.
68 Apparently Scotus also recognized the liberties he was taking, since he never directly
claimed that Bonaventure said the persons were absolute, rather he merely ‘brought up’
(adducitur) Bonaventure’s passage. See the text below, in n. 70. The Scotus editors point
out this fact, and further that in his earlier Lectura Scotus had claimed that the position
of absolute persons could be accepted (accipi) from Bonaventure: a significant change.
Moreover, in I Ord., d. 28, q. 3, nn. 61–63 (VI, pp. 14122–14211), Scotus brings up Bonaventure’s
view that relation as origin accounts for the constitution of the first person, and once again
Scotus (tentatively) links Bonaventure’s view to his own view of absolute origin. See on the
Bonaventure reference in I Ord., d. 28, “Adnotationes” (VI, pp. 22*–24*). See above, Ch. 1,
§ 2–3, for these trinitarian views of Bonaventure’s.
69 See Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 25, a. 1, q. 1 in corp. (Opera Omnia, vol. 1, p. 437a); Bonaven-
ture further refers—as Scotus notes—to Richard of St. Victor, De trinitate IV, cc. 6–7.
70 Scotus, I Ord., d. 26, n. 57: “Et ne videatur novum et extraneum, adducitur dictum cuius-
dam antiqui doctoris, distinguentis ‘aliquid dici dupliciter secundum substantiam’ … uno
modo indicando substantiam secundum naturam communem, et sic dicitur ‘homo’ secun-
dum substantiam; aut indicando substantiam ut suppositum certum, ut ‘quidam homo’.
Primo modo dicere substantiam (scilicet pro quiditate) est dicere ‘quid’, secundo modo est
dicere ‘aliquem’ … persona dicitur secundum substantiam, quia indicat suppositum certum
et distinctum.” VI, p. 231–13. The largest part of this passage is a direct quotation from Bonaven-
ture’s text (loc. cit. in n. 69 above). See also at and around n. 24 above, for the suggestion that
Olivi may be a source for Scotus on this point.
71 See Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, a. un., q. 3 (Opera Omnia, vol. 1, p. 456); and Ch. 1, above,
nn. 54 and esp. 61. Interestingly, William of Ware brings up as part of his rejection of the
seen, in that discussion Bonaventure draws a distinction: if the properties

are thought of as solely relation (or respect), then they merely make known
the distinction between the persons, but if they are thought of as both rela-
tion and origin, then they also bring about the distinction between the per-
sons. Now, it was argued above (Ch. 1, §3) that Bonaventure thought that the
difference between properties as origin, on the one hand, and properties
as relation, on the other, was purely conceptual: this difference indicated
nothing about God, but instead something about human mental apparatus.
Scotus interprets Bonaventure quite differently, as we will see. Neverthe-
less, Scotus seems to recognize the gap between the way that Bonaventure
understood the role played by origin and relation in the constitution of the
persons, and the way that Scotus himself did, Scotus writing that “perhaps
[Bonaventure] did not understand [this claim] in this way.”72
Despite this display of doubt as to whether Bonaventure’s view and his
own truly agree, Scotus maintains that Bonaventure’s words can be inter-
preted to make sense of the hypothesis of the absolute persons. What
Bonaventure meant, according to Scotus, was that origin does not distin-
guish the persons formally, but “quasi-principiatively”, i.e. as though from a
source. Take the example of biological generation in human beings.
… If human nature were to be posited in one human being, and it could only
be multiplied through generation, it could be said that generation multiplies
human beings, certainly not formally (as if human beings were distinct for-
mally by the generations, as the generations are distinct [from each other]),
but as it were efficiently (quasi effective), because generation is contained
within the genus of efficient cause.73
If human nature—i.e., the second substance ‘human being’—were found in
only one distinct supposite or first substance, and other distinct supposites
could only come into being insofar as they were generated, then generation
would be called the cause of the multiplication of human beings. The
generation would not be a formal principal of the human being who is
generated—the generation does not distinguish the human beings in terms
theory of absolute persons this view of Bonaventure’s (William of Ware, I Sent., d. 26, q. 3; ed.
Schmaus 1930a, p. 244*9–17); see on Ware’s question, n. 38 above.
72 Scotus, I Ord., d. 26, n. 58: “… licet ipse forte non sic intelligat …” VI, p. 2321–24.
73 I Ord., d. 26, n. 58: “… si natura humana poneretur in uno homine et ipsa non posset mul-
tiplicari nisi per generationem, posset dici quod generatio multiplicat homines, non quidem
formaliter (quasi homines distinguerentur formaliter generationibus ut sunt generationes),
sed quasi effective, quia generatio reducitur ad genus causae efficientis.” VI, p. 245–10. For the
use of this terminology in earlier theologians, see the references in n. 89 below.
368 chapter six
of form at all, and it is in fact itself devoid of quiddity, Scotus calling it

‘non-quidditative’—but it would rather be the efficient cause of that human
being. This is an exact likeness to the divine nature, which is only communi-
cated to the supposites by origin. These supposites, being of the very same
nature, are distinguished from one another in a way that corresponds to an
efficient cause in creatures: quasi-principiatively (quasi principiative), i.e.
as though from a source, by origin.74 For Scotus, then, the divine essence
is the formal term of the divine productions,75 and all of the persons share
the same form and are not made distinct by a formal cause, since there is
just the one divine essence. Rather the persons are made distinct quasi-
principiatively by origin as a type of efficient cause, and this origin is not
relative but absolute.
Throughout his trinitarian theology, Scotus will rely heavily on this dis-
tinction between first and second substance: the essence is nature or sec-
ond substance or quiddity, the persons are first substance and are distinct
on account of non-quidditative origin. Indeed, his positive proofs for the
persons being absolute hinge on this distinction. We know that first sub-
stance is most properly (maxime) substance, and since it does not involve
any imperfection it should be posited in God. But the persons would espe-
cially be first substance, since they exist per se, i.e. they subsist. Relation,
however, could not formally constitute a subsistent thing or first substance.
Therefore the persons are constituted by absolutes.76 Further, second sub-
stance indicates the entire quiddity (quod quid est) of first substance; but if
the quiddity of relation—different from the quiddity of the essence—took
part in the constitution of the persons, then the persons would not solely
have the quiddity of essence.77
74 I Ord., d. 26, n. 58: “Ita posset dici in proposito, quod natura divina non communicatur
suppositis nisi per originem, et ita origine distinguuntur personae in natura quasi principia-
tive, reducendo ad ipsum principians, quod distinguit non formaliter sed correspondenter
distinguenti effective in creatura.” VI, p. 2410–14.
75 See below, at and around nn. 103–104.
76 I Ord., d. 26, n. 60: “… prima substantia est maxime substantia secundum Philosophum
in Praedicamentis,—et hoc non est imperfectionis; ergo videtur quod hoc modo posset poni
prima substantia in divinis, videlicet persona, cui maxime competat subsistere, hoc est ‘per
se esse’. Relatio autem non videtur formaliter posse constituere aliquid subsistens, nec per
consequens primam substantiam.” VI, pp. 2425–254.
77 I Ord., d. 26, n. 61: “Et confirmatur ista ratio, quia secunda substantia dicit totum
quod quid est primae substantiae,—igitur in prima substantia non concurrit aliqua distincta
quiditas a quiditate secundae substantiae; ergo nec quiditas relationis, quae est distincta a
quiditate essentiae, pertinet ad rationem primae substantiae.” VI, p. 255–9. Cf. also above at
n. 63, where Scotus uses this same type of argument against the relation account.
In this last argument, we see the reason that Scotus stresses that origin
is non-quidditative: the only quiddity the persons have must be from the
divine essence. Further, although Scotus himself appears not to have said it
so clearly, the last argument may give us a hint as to the ultimate motivation
for his rejection of the relation account, a motivation that lies in his own
theory of relation.78 For Scotus, relation is a thing—a special kind of thing, a
res relativa; nevertheless relation has a quiddity of its own. Thus, on Scotus’
theory of relation, divine relations constitutive of relative persons would
necessarily compromise divine simplicity: it would be a quiddity added
to a quiddity. It is thus interesting to note the difference between Scotus
and Henry of Ghent on this score. Henry rejected the relation account
because relation could not make the persons distinct enough—relation for
Henry is just a mode of existence of its foundation and has no reality of its
own. In contrast, the ultimate reason for Scotus’ rejection of the relation
account may have been because it would cause too much distinction, and
composition would result. What brings about personal distinction in Scotus’
trinitarian system must be devoid of quiddity, and for Scotus this is exactly
what origin, bringing about distinction quasi-principiatively, is.
Not even the arguments in support of the relation account—those stress-
ing relation’s special status amongst the categories—really speak against
absolute persons. Basically Scotus’ replies to those arguments take the form:
“why is relation so special?” Why should we believe that a non-quidditative
absolute would cause composition any more than a relation would, when
all created relations involve composition with their foundations? If we can
postulate a dual nature for relation, why can we not do the same for abso-
lute, non-quidditative origin?79 The conclusion Scotus must have reached is
apparent: the “relations” that medieval theologians used to explain the dis-
tinction between the persons had characteristics that no other relation had,
e.g. they preceded and constituted their terms, they were non-accidental,
78 On Scotus’ theory of relation, see, e.g., Henninger 1989, 68–97; Schönberger 1994, 151–
173. Brower 2009 places Scotus’ theory in a broader theoretical context. For a wide-ranging
consideration of Scotus on the categories, with detailed historical background, see Pini 2002.
79 I Ord., d. 26, nn. 80–81: “Ad primam dici potest quod si realitas aliqua absoluta con-
stituat personas, non tamen faciet compositionem cum essentia divina, sicut nec relatio
constituens faceret … relatio autem in creaturis facit compositionem cum fundamento, ut
alias declarabitur; ergo si hic hi.e., in Deoi relatio potest non facere compositionem cum
essentia, multo magis nec realitas suppositi faciet compositionem cum realitate naturae …
dici potest quod realitas absoluta—si constituat personam—transit quidem propter perfec-
tam identitatem ad essentiam, manet tamen quia non est formaliter realitas essentiae.” VI,
pp. 3627–3712.
370 chapter six
they had a dual nature. Given the difficulties associated with these highly
unusual “relations”, why should we not instead explain personal distinction
by appealing to something more reasonable: origin, i.e. an absolute corre-
sponding to an efficient cause in creatures?
The reason, of course, was authority and tradition. Scotus must still face
the most difficult question of all: is the postulation of absolute persons
consistent with the faith? Scotus admits that “the Savior expressing the
whole truth of the faith named the three persons (in the last chapter of
Matthew) Father and Son and Holy Spirit … and the saints dealing with this
matter … seem always expressly to say that the persons are made distinct
formally by nothing other than relations.”80 Given so much explicit support
in Scripture and tradition for the persons being relative, how can Scotus
justify postulating their being absolute? Here we see Scotus’ marginalization
strategy at work:
One could say here that the Savior truly taught that there are three persons,
and that they are relative by these relations, and that person accepts the
essence from person, and the opinion [about absolute persons] does not deny
any of this. Nevertheless, this does not follow: ‘The Savior did not say that the
divine persons are constituted through something absolute, therefore they
are not constituted like that’, because the topic (locus) “from authority” does
not hold in the negative …81
As long as it is never expressly denied in Scripture or in the writings of
the early Church that the persons are absolutes, it does not speak against
the position that every reference to the divine persons used their relative
names: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No conclusions can be drawn from the
silence of authoritative texts, this is part of Scotus’ marginalization strategy:
the authoritative passages that made the relation account so compelling
can be set aside as long as good arguments can be made for abandoning
it, and as long as there is no authoritative text explicitly denying that the
persons are absolutes. In fact, Scotus warns of the perils of interpreting
80 I Ord., d. 26, n. 67: “Et si obiciatur contra istam viam quod ipsa non possit stare cum
fide, quia Salvator exprimens totam veritatem fidei nominavit tres personas (Matth. ultimo)
Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum … et sancti tractantes de ista materia … videntur
semper expresse dicere quod personae non distinguuntur formaliter nisi per relationes …”
VI, p. 2712–19.
81 I Ord., d. 26, n. 68: “Hic posset dici quod Salvator vere docuit tres personas, et eas
esse relativas istis relationibus, et personam accipere essentiam a persona,—et hoc quidem
non negat ista opinio; non sequitur tamen ‘Salvator non dixit personas divinas constitui
per aliquid absolutum, ergo non constituuntur sic’ (locus enim ab auctoritate non tenet
negative) …” VI, p. 2721–26. See also at and around n. 7 above.
articles of faith too rigidly: if adherence is required to exclusively one

interpretation of unclear passages from Scripture, the end result will only
be to sow doubt as to the truth of the articles of faith!82 It is easy to see what
he means. He has presented reasoned arguments that lead him to conclude
that the relation account of personal distinction simply does not suffice.
If in the face of this we stick to our interpretation of authoritative texts
that have traditionally been used to support the relation account, then we
would seem to have a genuine clash between “faith” and “reason”. Instead,
our interpretation should be modified on the basis of the new evidence
at our disposal. This modification is admissible because the foundational
documents of the Catholic trinitarian tradition never deny that the persons
are absolutes. No conclusions can be drawn from the silence of authoritative
texts.
Scotus, in fact, maintains that one can find a hint in the Old Testament
that the persons might be absolute. We read in Proverbs (30,4): “What is
his name, and what is his son’s name?” For what possible reason, Scotus
asks, would one seek the Son’s name unless there were another name for
the Son, an absolute name, different from the relative name?83 But over and
above this, Scotus’ presentation of positive evidence for his ideas generally
takes the form of showing how the authoritative texts traditionally used in
support of the relation account in no way speak against his view, and may
even provide evidence for it. For example, what else could Boethius mean
by “relation multiplies the Trinity” than that the persons are made many
efficiently. Thus, Scotus claims that by ‘relation’ Boethius means ‘origin’,
82 I Ord., d. 26, n. 71: “Nec oportet restringere articulum fidei traditum in generali, ad unum
intellectum specialem, quasi non possit ille intellectus generalis esse verus nisi in isto spe-
ciali: et sicut istum articulum, quod ‘Verbum Dei factum est homo’, non oportet restringere
ad unum modum determinatum (qui non est expressus in canone nec ab Ecclesia), ita quod
non possit esse verus nisi ille modus esset verus; hoc enim est reducere articulum fidei ad
incertitudinem, si aliquid sit incertum quod non est traditum sicut articulus fidei (videtur
enim incertum quod non potest sine aliquo incerto teneri).” VI, p. 2919–28.
83 I Ord., d. 26, n. 69: “Quod autem possint divinae personae aliquibus nominibus absolutis
nominari et exprimi, videtur posse monstrari per Scripturam,—sicut Prov. 30, ubi (post
multas quaestiones motas de Deo) quaerit Salomon: “Quod nomen eius, et quod nomen
Filii eius, si nosti?” Si primum nomen Filii eius est ‘Filius’ (quod oportet, si constituatur in
esse per filiationem), illa quaestio videtur nulla esse .... quia idem supponeret et quaereret,
supponit enim ipsum esse Filium et quaerit quod est nomen eius …” VI, p. 2811–23. See also
Scotus, I Lectura, d. 26, n. 56 (XVII, p. 33315–18). Later Franciscan authors, like John of Bassol
(Ch. 8, below, at n. 19), William of Nottingham (Ch. 8, below, at nn. 28 and 31), Robert Cowton
(Ch. 8, below, at n. 35), and Landulph Caracciolo (Ch. 12, below, at n. 32) reject Scotus’ use of
the Proverb’s passage as evidence for absolute persons.
372 chapter six
an efficient cause of distinction.84 And when Anselm claims that “all things
are one and the same where opposition of relation does not hold” Scotus
takes him to be alluding to the way that the supposites in fact do refer
through opposed relations, because they do in fact originate one from the
other.85 As for Christ’s use of the relative names, according to Scotus, it could
well have been that the Savior—knowing that our limited intellects would
have difficulty grasping the truth of the absolute realities that constitute the
persons—used relative names that would be easier for us to understand.86
Moreover, giving the persons relative names shows more about the truth
of the faith than giving them absolute names would, because absolute
names (e.g., A, B, C) would only show that the persons are distinct but not
that they are distinct on account of the origin of one from another, while
relative names show both. For Scotus, then, it is true that the persons are
related.87 But even though he concedes the persons to be related, Scotus
still maintains that nowhere in Scripture or in tradition was it ever declared
that the persons are first distinguished by relation; thus, we can always say
that there is a real distinction in some sense prior to the distinction by
relation.88
84 I Ord., d. 26, n. 76: “Ad Boethium, quando dicit quod ‘relatio multiplicat trinitatem’ etc.,
dico quod doctor ille accipit relationem pro origine, et sic intelligendo accipitur ‘multiplicare’
non pro formaliter distinguere, sed quasi principiative, correspondenter principio effectivo;
et hoc quidem non est extorquere verba: ‘multiplicare’ enim est multa facere …” VI, p. 3522–27.
Scotus’ replies to authoritative passages in support of the relation account are extensive; see
ibid., pp. 30–36. For another of Scotus’ replies to this authoritative text of Boethius, see I Ord.,
d. 11, q. 2, n. 49 (V, pp. 215–224, and n. 122 below).
85 I Ord., d. 26, n. 79: “Ad Anselmum similiter dico quod ‘omnia sunt unum et eadem ubi
non obviat relationis oppositio’ vel formaliter (sicut relatio obviat relationi) vel sicut natum
referri relatione opposita: isto modo personae—si essent absolutae—distinguerentur, quia
in eis sunt relationes principiantes.” VI, p. 3621–25. Scotus is insistent on the fact that the
persons are absolutes, but also “referibilia (quia non repugnat eis referri)” at, e.g., ibid., p. 3513,
and n. 64 above.
86 I Ord., d. 26, n. 68: “Et forte Salvator videns nos non posse concipere realitates proprias
absolutas quibus constituuntur formaliter personae divinae in esse personali, si quae sint,
voluit eas nobis exprimere nominibus nobis intelligibilioribus; possumus enim aliquo modo
istas relationes originis concipere ex relationibus originis in creaturis.” VI, pp. 2728–283.
87 I Ord., d. 26, n. 68: “Et forte posset assignari alia ratio, quia hic plus de veritate
fidei simul exprimitur quam alio modo: si enim sint personae absolutae et proprietatibus
absolutis constitutae (a, b, c) et possent nominari nominibus,—si illa expressisset Salvator,
praecise in hoc expressisset distinctionem personarum et non originem personae a persona;
exprimendo autem personas istas nominibus relativis, istis utrumque expressit, scilicet
distinctionem et originem.” VI, p. 283–10.
88 I Ord., d. 26, n. 71: “… ergo hoc Christus non docuit nec Ecclesia declaravit, scilicet
personas relationibus primo distingui … Et licet verum sit personas distingui relationibus
In this we see Scotus making use of the familiar Franciscan nested dis-
tinctions. And this is an important aspect of his trinitarian theology: if in
one way Scotus “bucks” tradition with the complete rejection of the relation
account, in another way he is clearly in his own order’s trinitarian tradition.
The Franciscan emphasis on origin, and the concomitant lack of emphasis
on relation was a trend that Scotus’ brought to a sort of completion with
his use of non-quidditative absolute realities as constitutive of the persons.
John Pecham, Roger Marston, Henry of Ghent, and William of Ware had
called them “disparate relations”, but by this they had meant that emana-
tion or origin was the efficient source of the persons, and (among others)
Roger Marston and Richard of Mediavilla had made this point explicit.89 Sco-
tus surely noted this, and used the same terminology in his attempt to show
just how well his own theology fit into the Franciscan current. This is also
why Scotus stressed how alike his own trinitarian system and Bonaventure’s
were. What is more, the Franciscan trinitarian tradition had postulated that
the persons—especially the person of the Father—existed in some sense
prior to any relation. With Scotus in mind, it is easy to see that the Fran-
ciscan trinitarian tradition from Bonaventure and Walter of Bruges to Peter
of Trabes and William of Ware was a prolegomena to absolute persons, in
which the actual use of the term ‘absolute’ had been marginalized away in
order to avoid undesirable consequences.
With all this having been said by Scotus, he is still acutely aware that
his position is radical. Scotus has protected himself not only by his careful
argumentation, but also by his broad construal of authoritative passages
that seem to speak for the relation account, as well as by his marginalization
strategy according to which authoritative silence is no basis for a theological
conclusion. Yet despite all of the evidence that he adduces for absolute
persons, Scotus nonetheless employs a blanket waiver about the position:
“for anyone who is not satisfied with this position (although it does not
seem to contradict the faith, as was mentioned while elaborating it), if the
second position (which is the common one) seems more satisfactory, one
(et stando in hoc generali, sancti laboraverunt qualiter possit stare distinctio personarum
cum unitate essentiae), tamen non oportet negare quin aliqua distinctio quasi prior possit
poni, quae etiam concedet istam distinctionem,—ita quod omnis via tenet istam affirmati-
vam veram, quod scilicet personae divinae relationibus distinguuntur, licet aliqua via diceret
quod istam distinctionem quasi praecederet aliqua distinctio realis.” VI, p. 296–19. The argu-
ment presented in this passage builds upon Scotus’ comparison of relation with origin, on
which see above, at and around nn. 50–53.
89 For Marston, see Ch. 2, above, nn. 152–153; for Mediavilla, Ch. 5, n. 48.
374 chapter six
can reply to the arguments against the second position [as so].”90 Scotus
then proceeds with a point-by-point defense of the relation account against
his original criticism of it. An exact parallel treatment occurs in the third
question of d. 28 of his first book, where Scotus discusses the constitution
of the Father.91 There, after discussing the relation account in three forms,
Scotus argues for the position that “the first person is not constituted by
a relation to the second person … but by an absolute, non-quidditative
reality, as was mentioned in the third position of distinction 26.”92 After his
short presentation of this position, and referring his reader—if in doubt
as to the orthodoxy of the view—to d. 26,93 Scotus again gives his waiver:
“It can be responded to this question—for anyone who is not satisfied
with the last opinion about absolute persons—by holding the common
way, namely by supposing the persons to be relative.”94 This is Scotus’
ultimate marginalization strategy: he dismisses the relation account in its
entirety, but insulates himself from criticism at having overturned a 900-
year convention of theological interpretation, by also defending the relation
account.
In the end, then, Scotus leaves the impression that he offered the position
of absolute persons merely as a suggestion. He may, of course, have really
90 I Ord., d. 26, n. 84: “Cui non placet ista opinio (quae tamen non videtur contradicere
fidei, sicut tactum est declarando eam), si placet opinio secunda magis (quae communis est),
potest responderi ad rationes contra secundam opinionem.” VI, pp. 392–402.
91 I Ord., d. 28, q. 3: “Utrum persona prima divina constituatur in esse personali aliqua
relatione positiva ad secundam personam.” VI, pp. 138–163, esp. p. 1382–3. Botte 1968 deals
with this aspect of Scotus theory, but Botte’s reading of Scotus, e.g., that “in distinctione
26 Ordinationis sermo non est proprie de constitutivo, sed potius de entitate metaphysica
personae divinae” (pp. 102–103), no matter how ‘entitate metaphysica’ is interpreted, has
more to do with apology than with serious interpretation of Scotus’ text.
92 I Ord., d. 28, n. 89: “Quia prima persona non constituitur relatione aliqua ad secundam
personam (et hoc, loquendo de primo constitutivo illius personae in esse personali), sed
aliqua realitate absoluta non-quiditativa, sicut tactum est in opinione tertia distinctionis
26.” VI, pp. 15216–15421, esp. 15218–1532. The Father’s constitutive absolute property, it should
be noted, is under no circumstances innascibility, since the absolute property constitutive
of him would be presupposed to the property of innascibility, Scotus arguing this on the
grounds that no negation is in its own right incommunicable (I Ord., d. 28, n. 90 [VI, p. 1537–19],
and ibid., nn. 44–46 [VI, pp. 130–131]; cf. Cross 1999, 67). What this means is that only the
produced persons, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are distinct by emanational property, as
indeed Scotus says explicitly (see, e.g., n. 64 above).
93 I Ord., d. 28, n. 92: “Contra istam opinionem arguitur quasi esset haeretica, sed tacta
sunt argumenta et responsiones distinctione 26,—modo transeo.” VI, p. 15419–21.

94 I Ord., d. 28, n. 93: “Ad quaestionem istam—cui non placet ultima opinio de personis
absolutis—potest dici tenendo communem viam (supponendo scilicet personas esse relati-
vas), quod prima persona constituitur relatione positiva ad secundam …” VI, p. 1552–5.
meant it as such. Yet the fact of the matter is that the position of absolute
persons became associated with Scotus’ name, and evoked sharp criticism
from Dominicans, and everything from rejection to apology from Francis-
cans. If the testimony of the Liber propugnatorius is to be believed, Scotus
was also censured at Oxford for holding the opinion: his elaborate marginal-
ization strategy may not have worked after all.95 Moreover, the works both
of Scotus’ himself and of other theologians roughly contemporary with him,
like William of Nottingham, witness to the fact that, in his last years at Paris,
Scotus discontinued defending the claim that the persons were absolute,
maintaining instead that, although reason cannot disprove the claim, nev-
ertheless we hold on faith that the constitutive properties are relational;
interestingly, important later thinkers like William Ockham and Francis of
Meyronnes will argue in just this way as well.96 Indeed, evidence that the
doctrine of absolute persons was too hot to handle can be found in the fact
that during the first fifty years of the fourteenth century only one theolo-
gian, the Augustinian Hermit Michael of Massa, appears to have adopted it,
referring explicitly to Scotus.97 Thus, in trinitarian theology, Scotus became
notorious for maintaining that the persons were absolutes, first substances
constituted quasi-efficiently by origin. Clearly this explanation for the dis-
tinction of the persons puts origin or emanation in the spotlight. Indeed,
Scotus, like Henry of Ghent before him, will make use of a strong version of
the Augustinian psychological model of the Trinity.
95 For a great deal of Franciscan response (in, e.g., Hugh of Novo Castro, Alexander of
Alessandria, and Peter Auriol), see Ch. 8, below; for some Dominican response (including
Durand of St. Pourçain and the Liber propugnatorius), see Ch. 7 below. Also see vol. VI,
“Adnotationes”, for more evidence on the reception of Scotus’ view.
96 On William of Nottingham, see Ch. 8, below, at and around n. 29. See also the Scotus
Vatican Opera Omnia, vol. VI, “Adnotationes”, pp. 24*–26* for Nottingham. As the Scotus
editors note there, in his later work, in III Ord., d. 1 and in the Rep. I-A, Scotus claims that
it is to be believed that the persons are relative: thus, even in the later work he seems to
be unconvinced that the persons could be proven to be relative. Interestingly, disciples of
Scotus’ appear to have made a longer version of I Ord., d. 26 in which elements from III
Ord., d. 1, and its rejection of the theory of absolute persons, were included; see vol. VI,
“Adnotationes”, pp. 2*–10*. See also n. 55 above. On the development of Scotus’ own thought
regarding absolute divine persons, see Wetter 1967, esp. 283–342. For Ockham, see Ch. 10, at
and around nn. 48–50; for Meyronnes, see Ch. 12, at n. 34.
97 For Massa, see below, Ch. 12, § 3B. Later in the fourteenth century, the Franciscan
theologian John of Ripa (fl. ca. 1358) would also defend the thesis of absolute persons; see
Schmaus 1930a, 551, and esp. Borchert 1974, 475–494.
376 chapter six
2. Scotus’ Critique of Henry of Ghent’s Trinitarian Thought
Scotus does not make mention of absolute persons often in his work—
indeed he rarely brings the idea up explicitly except in dd. 26 and 28 in
the first book of his Ordinatio.98 It is understandable, however, why Scotus
declines to discuss his most radical idea except in the two places that he
could deal with it in detail, and could give his marginalization strategy
the space it needed to be an effective tool. Even so, when Scotus comes
to deal with many of the traditional problems of trinitarian theology, it
is clear how absolute persons and absolute origin would fit neatly into
his system, even though he does not expressly mention these ideas. It is
one of the goals of the section that follows to illustrate this last point by
examining Scotus’ treatment of some further issues in the constitution of
the person: especially his elaboration of the analogy of the persons and
essence to first and second substance (or supposites and quiddity), and
his ideas on the emanations. Scotus’ own presentation in these contexts
reveals that his views were formed primarily through an encounter with
Henry of Ghent’s trinitarian theology. While it is a simplification to claim
that these elements of Scotus’ trinitarian thought were composed entirely in
response to Henry’s, nonetheless for the purposes of this study it is a useful
simplification. While the ideas of other scholastic theologians influenced
Scotus in both positive and negative ways, only in comparison to Henry
of Ghent’s trinitarian theory does the outline of Scotus’ own become clear.
Thus, other familiar names will appear in this section—Thomas Aquinas,
Thomas of Sutton, Giles of Rome, Godfrey of Fontaines—and yet here
Scotus’ trinitarian theology will be delineated for the most part against the
background of Henry of Ghent, first by examining Scotus’ model of personal
constitution, then turning to the emanations.
For Henry of Ghent, each divine person is like a composite of essence
and property: the property being quasi-formal and the essence being quasi-
material. Further, Henry claimed that the property contracts or specifies
the essence, without imposing upon it any imperfection or limitation what-
soever. Thus, property contracts essence to person like specific difference
contracts genus to species.99 Scotus will have none of this, claiming that
98 Although see I Ord., d. 2, pars 2, n. 252 (II, p. 2714–16); d. 5, pars 2, n. 136 (IV, p. 7714–15).
As we have seen (nn. 7, 9, 68, 83), Scotus also mentions the theory positively in his earlier
Lectura.
99 See Ch. 4, above, at and around n. 12, nn. 38–40. Note that Godfrey of Fontaines also
“nobody dared to suggest matter or quasi-matter in the divine from Augus-

tine’s day until [Henry himself wrote].”100 His principal reason for rejecting
Henry’s terminology is that materiality and the mutability attendant upon
materiality should be categorically denied in God.101 Scotus insists that in
God generation is production without mutation; there must be no hint of
materiality to suggest any potentiality for change in the divine.102
While Scotus thus rejects Henry’s dichotomy in the constitution of the
divine persons, he certainly takes something from Henry’s position: he
will himself also suggest a dichotomy. Not only is the essence not quasi-
matter, claims Scotus, but it is in fact the formal component in the persons:
Henry got that half of the dichotomy backwards. At the heart of this claim
is an important distinction made by Scotus between the formal term of
production and the first, or adequate, term of production. The first term of
production is the entire term that takes its being through the production,
while the formal term is the nature or quiddity that determines how the first
term takes being.103 The first term of a divine production, then, is the person
adopted this model; see Ch. 5, above, n. 12. On the fate of these ideas of Henry’s at Oxford in
the early fourteenth century, see Dumont 1996.
100 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 93: “Ideo tenendo cum doctoribus antiquis—quia omnes
a tempore Augustini usque ad istud non sunt ausi in divinis nominare materiam nec quasi-
materiam, cum tamen omnes concorditer dicerent cum Augustino quod Filius generatur de
substantia Patris—dico quod Filius non generatur de substantia Patris sicut de materia nec
quasi-materia.” IV, p. 609–14. For Scotus’ presentation of Henry’s views, see ibid., pp. 41–47.
101 See, e.g., I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 70: “… illud quod est materia in generatione, est in
potentia ad terminum formalem,—et quod est quasi-materia est quasi in potentia; essentia
nec vere nec quasi est in potentia ad se ipsam …” IV, pp. 4915–502.
102 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., nn. 94–97: “Generatio in creatura duo dicit, mutationem et
productionem, et istorum formales rationes aliae sunt et sine contradictione separabiles

ab invicem. Productio enim est formaliter ipsius producti, et accidit sibi quod fiat cum
mutatione alicuius partis compositi, ut patet in creatione; mutatio formaliter est actus
mutabilis qui de privatione transit. Concomitatur autem mutatio productionem in creaturis
propter imperfectionem potentiae productivae, quae non potest dare totale esse termino
productionis … Ad propositum. Cum in divinis nihil ponendum sit imperfectionis, sed totum
perfectionis, et mutatio de ratione sui dicit imperfectionem, quia potentialitatem, et hoc
in mutabili,—et concomitanter etiam dicit imperfectionem potentiae activae in mutante,
quia talis requirit necessario causam concausantem ad hoc ut producat (non autem fit ibi
aliqua imperfectio, nec qualis est potentiae passivae, nec etiam aliqua imperfectio potentiae
activae, sed summa perfectio)—nullo modo ponetur ibi generatio sub ratione mutationis
nec quasi-mutationis, sed tantum generatio ut est productio, in quantum scilicet aliquid per
eam capit esse, ponetur in divinis. Et ideo generatio, ut est in divinis, est sine materia.” IV,
pp. 6016–625.
103 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 97: “Et ideo generatio ut est in divinis est sine materia,—
et ideo generationis ut est in divinis non assignabitur materia nec quasi-materia, sed tantum
terminus: et hoc vel totalis sicut primus, id est adaequatus,—qui scilicet primo producitur in
378 chapter six
who is produced; the essence is the formal term of production in God. The
essence is that which is communicated through the productions and that
which determines the way that the person holds being, i.e. each person
is God formally.104 According to Scotus, we can be sure that Henry was
incorrect to claim that relation is the formal component of the persons—
in Scotus’ terminology the formal term of production—because if this were
the case several absurdities would result. First, the persons would not have
the essence through production, since the infinite essence is more perfect
than the non-infinite relation, and the formal term of production must be
the most perfect entity that is had (i.e., produced) through production.105
Further, reverting to an argument he used in support of absolute persons,
the production of the term would be in the genus relation, and hence
would not be generation at all, but more a change (mutatio) of essence into
relation.106 Generation, as we saw above, is generation of first substance, and
the formal component of first substance is second substance or quiddity, not
relation: the divine essence, then, must be the formal term of production.
All this agrees well with Scotus’ ideas on the absolute persons as they were
presented above: for Scotus the essence is second substance or quiddity, i.e.
form.
But if the essence is the formal component in the constitution of the
persons, what is relation? Scotus’ main problem with Henry’s account of
the way essence and relation go together to form a person is that it implies
some sort of act/potency dichotomy—the material, passive essence being
esse—vel terminus formalis, secundum quem terminus primus formaliter accipit esse.” IV,
p. 625–10. As far as I can tell this terminology was introduced into the trinitarian discussion
by Scotus, and after him the formal term/first term dichotomy was used most often in
association with his ideas.
104 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., nn. 64–66: “… essentia est terminus formalis productionis
et generationis Filii, ergo non quasi-materia … Non conceditur autem formam aliquam dari
productione sive communicari, sive praestari per generationem, nisi illa forma communicata
sit formalis terminus productionis.” IV, pp. 4712–488.
105 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 67: “… nulla entitas formaliter univoca, simpliciter perfectior
formali termino, habetur per productionem; essentia est formaliter infinita, relatio non;
igitur si relatio esset formalis terminus productionis, persona non haberet essentiam per
productionem.” IV, pp. 4810–492. On infinite essence and non-infinite relation, see also below
nn. 107, 116, 118 and for a related use of infinity see at and around n. 140.
106 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 69: “… hsi essentia non esset terminus formalisi non esset
ista productio generatio, sed magis esset mutatio ad relationem, quia productio ponitur in
genere vel specie ex suo termino formali, sicut patet per Philosophum, V Physicorum,—
sicut alteratio ponitur in genere qualitatis, quia ibi est forma quae est formalis terminus
alterationis; ergo si formalis terminus huiusmodi productionis esset relatio, ista productio
poneretur in genere relationis et non esset generatio.” IV, p. 497–13. For a similar argument,
see n. 55 above.
actuated by the formal relation. To avoid this difficulty, Scotus’ suggests

that the dichotomy is not between an act and what it actuates, but instead
between two acts: the quidditative act of the essence and the personal
act of the supposite, together making a single divine person. What this
entails, of course, is that the divine “relations” are not relations at all, but
acts, and Scotus says this explicitly.107 This is significant not just because
it is yet another example of the emphasis on act and action over relation
that was evident in Bonaventure and Henry of Ghent and characterizes
the Franciscan trinitarian tradition as a whole, but also because it fits
extraordinarily well with the ideas Scotus gave on the absolute persons.
In that discussion, Scotus argued that the persons are first substance, the
essence is second substance, and the persons are made distinct from one
another by non-quidditative origin. Now, the origin that makes the persons
distinct is, according to Scotus, the efficient cause of the persons: this implies
act and action. Further, in the present context Scotus lays stress on the fact
that one of these two acts is quidditative—this is the act of the essence that
sets God apart from every other being—, while the other is an individuating
personal act that makes each of the supposites distinct from the other
supposites.108 The inference that can be drawn is that these individuating
acts are non-quidditative, and this is exactly what we have seen Scotus
maintained the absolute origins to be. Thus, we seem to have a theory on
which the quidditative act of the essence, which makes God distinct from
all other beings, is individuated in each of the three divine persons by the
non-quidditative personal act of origin (or, in the case of the Father, the
absolute property constitutive of him).109 In fact, the model that Scotus uses
to explain the relationship between persons, relation, and essence in both of
these discussions is that of individuation in created things, that is to say, how
one first substance differs from another, and further how one first substance
differs from second substance.110
107 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., nn. 126–127: “Secunda difficultas est, quomodo relatio pos-
sit esse distinguens personam, et essentiam non distinguens, quin relatio habeat rationem
actus,—quia actus est distinguere; VII Metaphysicae. Respondeo. Concedo relationem esse
actum personalem, non actum quiditativum,—quia personaliter distinguit et non quidita-
tive. Essentia autem est actus quiditativus et quiditative distinguens: actus autem quidi-
tativus est simpliciter perfectus, quia infinitus,—non sic autem est actus personalis de se
formaliter infinitus.” IV, pp. 7212–732.
108 See n. 107 above.
109 For the proviso about the Father, see n. 92 above.
110 There is a great deal of specialist literature on Scotus’ theory of individuation, and the
theory itself is complex and discussed in many of Scotus’ works. See, e.g., King 1992; Wolter
380 chapter six
To explain his model Scotus observes that created quiddity is “that by

which something is a being quidditatively”. This belongs to perfection,
because it is quiddity’s very nature (ratio) to do this.111 In created things, how-
ever, because a quiddity (for example humanity) is not perfectly actuated,
it can be contracted to an individual through an “individual property” (pro-
prietatem individualem), i.e. a perfectly unique property that, together with
the quiddity it contracts or determines, serves to bring the individual about.
Thus, the quiddity receives some actuality through the individuating prop-
erty, and in this sense the individual property is formal with respect to the
quiddity.112 For Scotus, then, created quiddity is both formal and “material”
with respect to individual property, and the same is true for the individ-
ual property with respect to the quiddity: there is mutual actuation. Finally,
Scotus holds that in creatures, although both quiddity and individuating
property are acts, the more perfect act is that of quiddity.113
As with created nature, Deity or the divine essence, according to Scotus,
is that by which God is God, and also that by which each of the persons is
God. This is just to say, as we have seen Scotus maintain time and again, that
the divine essence is nature, form, second substance, quiddity.114 In contrast
to the quiddity in individual creatures, however, the divine essence is in no
way contracted or determined. In this way Scotus distances himself from
Henry of Ghent’s conception of the relations and the way they determine
the entire divine essence: for Scotus the relations in no way actuate the
1994; Noone 1995a and 1995b; Dumont 1995; Hoffmann (Tobias) 1998, esp. 33–62; Noone 2003;
Cross 2003b, 2003c, 2010.
111 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 108: “… quiditas creata est quo aliquid est ens quiditative, et
hoc non est imperfectionis: competit enim quiditati ex ratione quiditatis.” IV, p. 667–9.
112 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 109: “Ipsa hquiditas creatai tamen, puta humanitas, quia
est imperfectae actualitatis, ideo est divisibilis per illud quod contrahit ad individuum,
puta per proprietatem individualem—quaecumque sit, dicatur A—et recipit ab A aliquam
actualitatem (sive etiam unitatem, sive etiam indivisibilitatem), quam habet in individuo et
non habet ex se, ita quod illud contrahens (ut A) non tantum est in Socrate quo Socrates
est formaliter Socrates, sed est aliquo modo formale respectu naturae, et natura est aliquo
modo potentia respectu illius. Unde secundo, natura contrahitur et determinatur per ipsum
A.” IV, p. 6610–18. Scotus appears to be using the terms “contrahere” and “determinare” here as
synonyms; see also n. 115 below.
113 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 110: “Et tertio: tamen humanitas in Socrate est aliquis actus,
et praecise accipiendo humanitatem et A distinguendo contra se, humanitas est perfectior

actus quam sit ipsum A, licet A sit magis proprius actus et aliquo modo actus naturae in
quantum determinat naturam.” IV, pp. 6619–673.
114 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 112: “… Deitas de se est qua Deus est Deus, et etiam
qua subsistens cuius proprium est A est formaliter Deus, quia esse ‘quo’ hoc modo non est
imperfectionis in creatura, sed competit quiditati unde quiditas.” IV, p. 676–9.
already fully actuated divine essence.115 Finally, in a certain respect, in God

the quidditative act is more perfect than the personal acts: because the
essence is formally infinite, while the relation is not formally an infinite
act.116 The way that these personal acts can be distinct from each other
and from the essence and yet be identical with the essence—the age-old
trinitarian problem of the persons—Scotus explains by recourse to his most
famous trinitarian device: the formal distinction.
Scotus’ formal distinction or formal non-identity (I use the terms inter-
changeably), has been discussed in such detail that I need only describe
it briefly here, and show how Scotus thinks that it solves the problem of
the relationship between essence, properties, and persons.117 In fact, two
115 Thus, Stohr (1925, 134) misrepresents Scotus when he says: “Wesenheit plus Relation
bildet die Person; die Relation hat die Funktion der individuelen Form, die er hi.e. Henryi wie
Skotus als eine Art contractio denkt.” See I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 113: “Quoad secundum est
dissimile, quia deitas ipsa per proprietatem personalem non determinatur nec contrahitur,
nec aliquo modo actuatur, quia hoc erat imperfectionis et potentialitas in natura creata;
similiter, deitas de se est ‘haec’, et ita sicut habet ultimam unitatem de se, ita et actualitatem.
Est ergo proprietas personalis ita proprius actus personae, quod tamen non est actus ipsius
naturae divinae aliquo modo perficiens vel informans eam.” IV, pp. 6710–684. Ibid., n. 131:
“… nullo autem modo … relatio est essentiae ut quo formaliter essentia est determinata vel
contracta, vel aliquo modo actuata per ipsam, quia haec omnia repugnant infinitati essentiae
ut primo occurrit sub ratione actus infiniti.” IV, p. 7512–15. Ibid., n. 128: “Et si dicis quod ‘actus
distinguens est actus eius quod non distinguit’, falsum est, nisi illud quod non distinguit
distinguatur per actum distinguentem, sicut in creaturis: humanitas distinguitur in Socrate
et Platone per A et B, et ideo ibi actus distinguens—etiam individualiter—est actus eius quod
non distinguit, quia actus ille distinguens distinguit ipsam naturam, quae non distinguit. Non
ita hic, quia proprietas personalis non distinguit essentiam, nec contrahit nec determinat.”
IV, p. 733–10.
116 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 114: “… relatio etsi sit proprius actus personae, et essentia non
sit proprius actus personae, sed aliquis actus, tamen essentia est formaliter actus infinitus;
relatio autem non est ex ratione sua formali actus infinitus.” IV, p. 685–8. See ibid., p. 809, and
above, nn. 105, 107. Scotus, as far as I can tell, never claims the relations to be finite acts, only
that they are not infinite. For more from Scotus on this topic, see, e.g., Quodl., q. 5, a. 2 (ed.
Wadding, vol. 25, pp. 210b–214a; ed. Alluntis, pp. 174–190), as well as Wetter 1967, 349–352.
117 See, e.g., I Ord., d. 2, pars 2, q. 1 (II, esp. pp. 355–358) for one treatment by Scotus of
the formal distinction in trinitarian theology. The literature on Scotus’ formal distinction is
huge; among more recent central works are: Gelber 1974, 71–102; Adams 1976, 25–43; Jordan
1984; Adams 1987, esp. vol. 1, 22–29; Tweedale 1999. Two quite recent studies, Cross 2004 and
Dumont 2005, have examined Scotus’ view of the formal distinction in a very thorough way,
Dumont by concentrating on a late Parisian question on the formal distinction (Quaestiones
miscellaneae de formalitatibus), Cross by looking at a range of works over the course of Scotus’
career. There is broad agreement in the conclusions reached in the two studies: the standard
picture (descended from the works of Gelber and Adams) of a rather radical change of mind
by Scotus (concerning the proximity of the formal distinction to a real distinction) after
he went to Paris cannot be upheld, although Cross argues that there is a development in
language as Scotus came gradually to recognize the implications and limitations of his formal
382 chapter six
interrelated dimensions of the formal distinction will command attention

in this book: one logical and the other metaphysical. The logical dimen-
sion we will return to when examining William Ockham’s attitude towards
the formal distinction and how that affects his trinitarian theology (Ch. 10,
§2). Here, the metaphysical dimension is in focus. Metaphysically speak-
ing, a formal distinction is a distinction between several elements (realities,
entities, formalities) in one and the same thing. The formal distinction is
a distinction intermediate between a real distinction and a purely psycho-
logical distinction; in his later works Scotus talks about the formal distinc-
tion being a diminished or a qualified distinction (distinctio deminuta vel
secundum quid). This is only to say that the formal distinction is not purely
conceptual—i.e. these formally distinct elements are formally distinct in
the thing itself prior to any mental activity—, and yet it is not so great a dis-
tinction as between two really differing things like two stones or a stone and
a human being. Scotus’ criterion for the existence of a formal distinction has
been summed up by with admirable clarity Marilyn McCord Adams (1976,
35):
x and y are formally non-identical or distinct, if and only if (a) x and y are or
are in what is really one thing (res); and (b) if x and y are capable of definition,
the definition of x does not include y and the definition of y does not include
x; and (c) if x and y are not capable of definition, then if they were capable
of definition, the definition of x would not include y and the definition of y
would not include x.
For Scotus, if we can form about one and the same thing several differing
definition-like concepts, and yet whatever it is that corresponds to those
concepts cannot exist apart from each other, then there are formally dis-
tinct elements in one and the same thing corresponding to each of those
concepts. Conceptual separability combined with real inseparability, this is
distinction. See also the interesting historical work that Timothy B. Noone has embarked on
to determine how Scotus’ near contemporaries thought about the formal distinction (e.g.,
Noone 1993; Nielsen, Noone, and Trifogli 2003: Noone 2009). For more on the fate of the
formal distinction, see Ch. 10, below, esp. §§ 2–3, and Friedman 2010, esp. Ch. 3.
Note that Gelber’s conclusion to her section on Scotus (Gelber 1974, 102), that “Scotus’
primary contributionhsi to the scholastic debate over the Trinity” (emphasis mine) were
the formal non-identity and a shift to logical concerns, is, in my opinion, overstated. The
logical and metalogical problems that were increasingly discussed in the trinitarian context
in the early fourteenth century—which Gelber details so well—are just one of several hot-
spots in the scholastic debate over the Trinity, as the pages of the present book clearly show.
These other areas were just as important and interesting to medieval theologians—including
Scotus—as were the areas that have been emphasized by modern research, in particular the
area of logic.
the requirement for formally distinct entities. That extramental realities do

indeed correspond to the various concepts that we have of the one thing,
reveals the realist moorings of Scotus’ formal distinction.
Now, Scotus uses the formal distinction widely in his philosophy and
theology. As we will see, he uses it to describe the distinction between
the divine attributes and the divine essence, as well as among the divine
attributes. He also employs it to answer philosophical questions about the
created world, e.g. the way that the soul relates to its powers, and the way
that the common nature relates to individuating property and to individual.
But probably the central and paradigmatic use to which Scotus put the
formal distinction, was to explain the way that personal properties and
divine essence relate to one another in God. For Scotus, there is in God
prior to any act of the intellect a distinction or difference between the
divine properties and the divine essence: these are two formally differing
entities, the former incommunicable, the latter communicable. This was,
for Scotus, the only way to get the distinction of the persons off the ground
in an ontologically tenable manner (and he thought that it simultaneously
dealt with the problems that the trinitarian mystery seemed to pose for
Aristotelian syllogistic logic; see Ch. 10, §2, below). When Scotus talks about
the formal non-identity between the relations and the essence in practice,
he makes statements that could best be described using a Venn diagram:
Scotus thinks of the distinctions in God in quasi-mathematical terms. And
the key term is ‘infinity’:118 at the heart of Scotus’ explication for his claim that
there is a formal distinction between essence and property is the infinity
of the divine essence and the way that this relates to non-infinite divine
properties (and further to less encompassing infinites like the attributes).
As we have seen, Scotus holds that the essence is an infinite quidditative
act, while the relations are not infinite acts. Thus,
the ratio [of relation] is perfectly the same as [the ratio of essence], for
on account of the infinity of the essence’s ratio, whatever can be with it
is perfectly the same as it. Therefore the perfection of identity excludes all
composition and quasi-composition, and this identity results from infinity.
Nevertheless the infinity does not destroy the formal rationes, and so this ratio
is not formally that one.119
118 ‘Infinity’ is a key term throughout Scotus’ theology, of course, being central to, e.g.,
his proofs of God’s existence; so, his trinitarian theology is merely one more example of the
centrality of infinity to his thought. See on other uses of infinity in Scotus, e.g., Boulnois 1999,
327–404; Davenport 1999, esp. 256–306; Williams (Thomas) 2010, §2.3. See also n. 116 above.
119 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 117: “… illa ratio est perfecte eadem illi: propter infinitatem
enim unius rationis, quicquid potest esse cum ea, est perfecte idem sibi. Perfectio ergo
384 chapter six
Just as three different sets completely contained in one infinitely larger

set are all identical with the larger set, and yet are in a certain sense distinct
from it on account of their not being co-extensive with it, so also the non-
infinite divine relations are formally distinct from and yet perfectly identical
with the infinite divine essence. This seems to be the intuition behind
Scotus’ account of the formal distinction between property and essence.
Thus, Scotus can say that the ratio of one of the properties is perfectly the
same as the ratio of the essence, and yet not formally the same: and in this
way the person constituted by essence and relation is entirely the same
as the essence and yet formally distinct.120 This interesting mathematical
model of distinction in God, we will see below, Scotus extends also to his
ideas on the divine attributes.121
Scotus, then, in rejecting Henry of Ghent’s model of the relationship
between person, property, and essence, also made use of the general idea
behind it in his own trinitarian thought, substituting for Henry’s quasi-
formal/quasi-material composition of the divine persons his own version,
in which essence is form or quiddity, relation is personal act, and person
is first substance or individual supposite. Further, the theory that Scotus
thereby created was in harmony with his suggestion of absolute persons.
A similar process is at work when Scotus comes to deal with the emana-
tions in God. In both of the related issues that had been hotly debated by
earlier theologians—that of the distinction between generation and spira-
tion and that of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son given that the
former does not come from the latter—Scotus is consciously building his
position on a confrontation with Henry of Ghent’s ideas on the issue at
hand, and his position fits well with a theory on which the divine persons
are absolutes, constituted quasi-efficiently by non-quidditative absolute ori-
gin.
The more clear-cut issue for Scotus is the Holy Spirit’s distinction from
the Son, and here Scotus’ does not so much criticize Henry’s view as organize
and clarify it. Scotus’ position is in fact typical of the Franciscan trinitarian
tradition we have seen so far: disparate relations suffice for the distinction
identitatis excludit omnem compositionem et quasi-compositionem, quae identitas est

propter infinitatem,—et tamen infinitas non tollit formales rationes quin haec formaliter
non sit illa.” IV, p. 698–13.
120 I Ord., d. 5, pars 2, q. un., n. 118: “Et ideo nihil est ex eis tamquam compositum ex
actu et potentia, sed est unum simplicissimum ex istis, quia una ratio est perfecte—immo
perfectissime—eadem alteri, et tamen non formaliter eadem.” IV, p. 6914–17.
121 See below, at and around nn. 140–141.
of these two persons.122 Scotus gives a rather blanket presentation of the

Dominican position, relying on two of the stronger arguments in favor of
it. First, relation only remains in terms of its quiddity and not in terms of
its being (esse); distinction only comes about between relations in terms of
their quiddity when the relations are opposed; therefore if there were no
opposed relations between the Son and the Holy Spirit, they would not be
distinct. This is fairly clearly Giles of Rome’s formulation of an argument
that we have seen many times.123 A second argument is that, if disparate
relations sufficed to constitute a person, then the Father would be two
persons, because active generation and active spiration are two disparate
relations; above, I labelled this the “Father” argument.124
Scotus will reply to each of these arguments in turn. Against Giles he
claims—much as Henry of Ghent before him—that relation simply remains
in God; Giles’ uncompromising distinction between relation’s being and
its quiddity was a false distinction.125 Property, as we saw above, is really
identical with the essence, but formally distinct from it, and this counts
as much for its “being” as for its quiddity.126 As for the disparate relations
in the Father, Scotus draws a clear distinction between active productions
and passive productions. Whereas one source can surely have more than
one means of active production, because these are not incompossible in
the same supposite, passive productions are incompossible in the same
122 I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, n. 49: “Ad auctoritatem Boethii concedo quod ‘relatio multiplicat
trinitatem’, et tamen non tantum distinguit a relatione opposita sed a qualibet relatione
disparata cui formaliter non est idem …” V, p. 215–7. Cf. also n. 84 above, where Scotus claims
that by ‘relation’ Boethius meant ‘origin’.
123 I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, n. 36: “… relatio in divinis aut distinguit secundum suam quiditatem,
aut secundum esse; non secundum esse, quia sic transit in essentiam; ergo secundum
quiditatem. Sed secundum quiditatem tantum respicit oppositum, ergo tantum distinguit ab
opposito; sed posita illa hypothesi, non essent in Filio et Spiritu Sancto relationes oppositae;
ergo etc.” V, p. 1410–15. For Giles, see above, Ch. 3, § 3, and Ch. 5, at nn. 5–7.
124 I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, n. 37: “… si relationes disparatae possent sufficienter distinguere
personas, cum tales duae sint in Patre—ut generatio activa et spiratio activa—Pater esset
duae personae.” V, p. 151–3. On the “Father argument”, see Ch. 5, §4 above.
125 I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, nn. 51–52: “… tam secundum quiditatem quam secundum esse manet
relatio ibi. Quocumque enim modo manet secundum quiditatem, manet secundum esse eius
quod est esse ad aliud, quia quiditas relationis non potest esse sine esse ad aliud … Cum
ergo dicis ‘aut distinguitur secundum esse, aut secundum quiditatem’, dico quod secundum
quiditatem et secundum esse ad aliud … transit hrelatioi secundum identitatem, et manet
secundum formalitatem, quia non oportet veram identitatem esse formalem, quia formalis
ratio huius transeuntis non est formaliter ratio illius essentiae in quam transit …” V, pp. 2218–
2319. Note that “et manet secundum formalitatem” is ‘textus interpolatus’ in the edition. For
Henry of Ghent, see Ch. 4, above, around n. 18.
386 chapter six
subject, since a subject takes its being from the passive production. For
Scotus, it is the compossibility or incompossibility of the disparate relations
that determines whether two supposites are constituted or not.127 Thus, the
Father is one supposite producing in two fundamentally different ways. In
addition to those more focused replies, however, Scotus also offers more
extensive arguments for his position, and he classifies these arguments into
two kinds, each with roots in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition (and Henry
of Ghent and William of Ware in particular), but categorized and expressed
more clearly than before: 1) on the basis of the nature of something that
formally constitutes, and 2) on the basis of the distinction of the emanations.
The first way of arguing we have seen Scotus use before: filiation is the
necessary and sufficient ground of the distinction of the Son from both the
Father and the Holy Spirit—filiation is what is constitutive of the Son—, and
thus the active spiration of the Holy Spirit from the Son is not necessary
to make these two persons distinct.128 Scotus relies on the argument that
the Father and the Son spirate together, and therefore active spiration is a
property “quasi-incidental” (quasi adventitia) to the Son—i.e., not essential
or indispensable to him—and contributes nothing to his constitution, but
comes about “after” the Son is already constituted in being.129 Like Henry
of Ghent, then, Scotus thinks that filiation is a property able all on its own
to establish the person of the Son as a distinct individual. The distance
between this view and that of absolute persons and properties is clearly
short.
A second type of argument that Scotus identifies and uses is based on
the distinction of the emanations: the emanations are distinct modes of
producing the persons, and so what is produced by them will be distinct
under all circumstances. One can certainly imagine two productions acting
together to give being to one term as that term’s partial causes. But it
127 I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, n. 53: “Non enim oportet tantam esse distinctionem vel incompossibili-
tatem productionum activarum, quanta est productionum passivarum, quia incompossibile

est idem duabus oppositis productionibus produci et accipere esse; non est autem incompos-
sibile idem duabus productionibus activis communicare esse distinctis personis.” V, p. 248–13.
See further for this type of argumentation, below at n. 130.
128 See the text and discussion above, at and around n. 56.
129 I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, nn. 40, 42: “… Filius non constituitur in esse personali spiratione activa,
quia illa est communis Patri et Filio; et non sunt in eo proprietates positivae aliae quam
generatio-passio et spiratio-actio … quidlibet habens aliquod esse distinguitur distinctione
conveniente illi esse, a quocumque alio, per aliquid quod est de ratione eius in quantum
habet tale esse. Filius ergo personaliter distinguitur per aliquid quod est de ratione eius in
quantum est persona, spiratio autem activa non est de ratione eius, sed Filio iam posito, est
quasi proprietas adventicia.” V, p. 174–6, p. 181–6.
cannot be this way in God: the divine productions are perfect, therefore they
each give complete being to their term, and the same term cannot accept
complete being more than once. Thus, in God, each passive production or
emanation produces one distinct person—they are incompossible in the
same term. Therefore, because “the distinction of the sources of generating
and spirating” would remain even if the Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit,
so the emanations would be distinct, and so too would the terms of the
emanations.130
This is, of course, not all that Scotus has to say about the distinction
between the emanations, and he refers his reader to the more lengthy dis-
cussion at the appropriate place: I Ordinatio, d. 13. Upon reading that text,
one is struck by Scotus’ careful dramatic structuring: he was obviously con-
cerned to engage his readers, giving his text what amounts to a dialogue
structure, with himself as a narrator steering carefully between various posi-
tions current in the contemporary theological debate, narrowly avoiding
their pitfalls as he points them out, his own view emerging in contradis-
tinction to the others he adjudicates between. The text is an excellent
example of what I have called the “position-centered” question, in which
various positions play a role in the process of revealing the author’s own
opinion. “Position-centered” theological questions became more or less the
norm from the time of Scotus on, and stand in rather stark contrast to
the “argument-centered” questions of Bonaventure and Aquinas and most
other theologians from the later thirteenth century.131
The dialogue in Scotus’ I Ordinatio, d. 13 is between the Dominican
trinitarian tradition’s view of the emanations, on the one hand, and the
130 I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, nn. 46–47: “Ex secundo medio, scilicet ex distinctione emanationum,
arguitur sic: generatio distinguitur a spiratione, et hoc circumscripto per impossibile omni
alio a ratione generationis et spirationis, aut saltem circumscripto hoc quod spiratio-actio
esset a Filio, dum tamen staret distinctio principiorum generandi et spirandi; igitur et
quolibet tali circumscripto staret distinctio Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Probatio consequentiae,
quia impossibile est unam personam duabus productionibus totalibus accipere esse: nulla
enim productione vel distinctione accipit esse, qua per impossibile circumscripta non minus
acciperet esse; sed si productione hac et illa acciperet esse—et utraque complete, quia
utraque esset perfecta—ergo utraque circumscripta haberet esse per alteram complete, et
ita neutra et utraque acciperet esse.” V, pp. 1922–2011. See also above, n. 127, as well as the
text in n. 202 below (where Scotus claims that the Father does not gain anything from
the production of the Son, and therefore must have the power to spirate already “before”
[logically speaking] the Son’s generation). On Scotus’ use of positio impossibilis in this
context, see n. 147 below.
131 On argument-centered vs. position-centered questions, see Friedman 2002a, 84–97,
esp. 92–95.
388 chapter six
Franciscan tradition’s, as represented by Henry of Ghent, on the other.

Scotus presents the Dominican viewpoint in three relatively distinct forms:
that the productions are made distinct because of their terms, i.e. the
persons; that the productions are made distinct because one is from one,
and the other from two persons; and finally Godfrey of Fontaines’ view that
the distinction of the disparate relations is on account of the distinction of
the opposed relations.132 Scotus replies to each of these three positions in
turn, using some of the arguments that we have already seen—including
the argument that, if this view were correct, then there could be an infinite
number of divine persons, since there would be no limit to the number of
possible productions.133 Nevertheless, it is his reply to the position as a whole
that is most significant for us. He encapsulates the Dominican position as he
sees it by saying that “one production is similar to natural production and
the other is similar to voluntary production” because production by way of
will presupposes another production, while production by way of nature
does not.134 To this Scotus replies:
This explanation [i.e. the Dominican] does not seem tenable when we con-
sider what the saints say, for they attribute these productions properly to the
intellect and the will. This is because, if the [productions] ought to be under-
stood to be distinct only because one production does presuppose another
production, while the other production does not presuppose one, then there
seems to be no reason why on the basis of their productions the Son on
account of the way he is produced (vi suae productionis) is more the Son or
the Word than the Holy Spirit is, nor why the Holy Spirit on account of the
132 I Ord., d. 13, nn. 8–17: “Uno modo ponitur istas productiones distingui per terminos for-
males qui sunt personae productae … Alio modo ponitur istas productiones distingui per hoc
quod una productio est ab una persona, et alia a duabus personis … Aliter ponitur istas pro-
ductiones distingui quia una est cum alia et cum opposito eius, ita quod ratio distinctionis
relationum disparatarum est distinctio relationum oppositarum, quatenus scilicet una rela-
tio disparata secum compatitur duas alias relationes oppositas—sicut vis spirativa stat cum
generatione activa et passiva, et ideo distinguitur ab utraque illarum.” V, p. 682–3, p. 6913–14,
p. 7111–16. See there also for Scotus’ replies to the specific arguments. For Godfrey’s view, see
133 I Ord., d. 13, nn. 14, 17 (V, pp. 70, 72). For earlier uses of this type of argumentation, see,
e.g., Roger Marston, above, Ch. 2, at and around n. 170; and for its fate in Ockham, see Ch. 10,
below, at and around nn. 106–107.
134 I Ord., d. 13, n. 20: “… productio una est similis productioni naturali et alia est similis
productioni voluntariae. Naturale enim agens producit non praesupponens aliam produc-
tionem … ita enim productio Filii est per modum naturae, quia non praesupponit aliam
productionem. Productio enim voluntatis praesupponit aliam productionem, illam videlicet
quae est per modum naturae et intellectus; et ita productio Spiritus Sancti est per modum
voluntatis …” V, p. 742–11. This is merely a restatement of Aquinas’ “psychological argument”,
on which see Ch. 5, above, at and around n. 139.
way he is produced (vi suae productionis) is more Love than the Son is, and
that seems absurd … a person is truly produced by the act of the intellect as a
productive source, and another person by the act of the will as a productive
source, and not just metaphorically on account of some type of extraneous
likeness, for example to be produced with another presupposed or not pre-
supposed.135
This reply is significant on several counts. First, Scotus explicitly tells us
that it is in answer to the all the forms of the Dominican point of view,
as he presents them here. Thus, Scotus claims that the defining feature in
all of the positions that he elaborated was that they reduced the emana-
tions and the modes of emanating to a type of analogy or metaphor based
on resemblance—indeed Scotus even uses the term ‘metaphorical’ to char-
acterize the status of the emanations in the Dominican position. Like the
Franciscan trinitarian tradition more generally, Scotus rejects this Domini-
can way of interpreting the emanations, descended as it was from Aquinas:
as we have seen, the emanations or origins in Scotus’ trinitarian thought are
the factors that bring about personal distinction. A second significant thing
to note about the above passage, however, is that the non-metaphorical
modes of emanation are by way of intellect and by way of will. Scotus has
clearly adopted the basic feature of Henry of Ghent’s trinitarian theology:
his strong use of the Augustinian psychological model of the Trinity.
Yet, Scotus does not merely accept Henry’s ideas on the emanations: he
also criticizes them. Scotus recognizes that the crux of Henry’s position is
that the rational distinction of the attributes is the source of the real distinc-
tion between the persons.136 It is upon this point that Scotus concentrates,
adopting from the Dominicans the criticism that we have seen on a num-
ber of occasions: a rational distinction does not suffice as a ground for a
135 I Ord., d. 13, nn. 21, 23: “Ista expositio non videtur valere secundum intentionem sanc-
torum, attribuentium istas productiones proprie intellectui et voluntati; quia si tantum

debeant intelligi distingui per hoc quod una praesupponit aliam productionem et alia pro-
ductio nullam praesupponit, non videtur ratio quare ex productionibus Filius sit magis Filius
vel Verbum ex vi suae productionis quam Spiritus Sanctus, nec quod Spiritus Sanctus ex vi
productionis suae magis sit amor quam Filius, quod videtur absurdum … vere producetur
persona per actum intellectus ut principii productivi, et alia persona per actum voluntatis ut
principii productivi,—et non tantum metaphorice, propter talem similitudinem extraneam,
scilicet produci, alia praesupposita vel non praesupposita.” V, p. 7414–21, p. 759–13.
136 I Ord., d. 13, n. 30: “Aliter ponitur quod distinguuntur penes principia distincta secun-
dum rationem, puta penes naturam et voluntatem, quae habent principiare distinctas ema-
nationes,—et tamen ipsa in essentia non distinguuntur nisi sola ratione.” V, p. 783–6. Note
that Scotus actually presents Henry as having three distinct positions, V, pp. 75–78, but his
main concern is with this last position.
390 chapter six
real distinction. Scotus phrases this critique, however, in a different way,

arguing as follows. No real distinction necessarily requires for its existence a
prior rational distinction (thus far Scotus agrees with the Dominicans); but
Henry maintains that the distinction between the emanations necessarily
requires for its existence the distinction between the sources of the emana-
tions; therefore, since the distinction between the emanations is real, the
distinction that is necessarily required between the sources of the emana-
tions cannot be a merely rational distinction.137
It should be noted that, although Scotus here rejects that a rational dis-
tinction can be the source of a real distinction, he does not reject (as the
Dominicans did) that the distinction of the emanations indeed requires a
prior distinction. If rationally distinct attributes, then, are not necessary
for the existence of the two productions and for their distinction, is any
prior distinction required? His rejection of Henry of Ghent’s position allows
Scotus to bring in a final position on the matter—one that Scotus’ editors
identify as Thomas of Sutton’s, but which could just as well be Aquinas’:
the totally indistinct divine essence is the immediate source of both pro-
ductions.138 Scotus denies, however, that this suffices, because, as he has
already demonstrated to his own satisfaction against the Dominican posi-
tion, the emanations by way of intellect and will are not metaphorical. There
must be a reason why the Son proceeds in one way, and the Holy Spirit in
another, and there would seem to be no such reason, if the utterly undif-
ferentiated essence were the immediate source of both productions. The
most basic difference, as Scotus sees it, between the generation of the Son
and the procession of the Holy Spirit, is that the former is natural, i.e. not
involving choice, while the latter is free, having an “inclination to opposites”.
137 I Ord., d. 13, n. 31: “Distinctio realis non necessario praeexigit distinctionem rationis; sed
distinctio istarum emanationum per te necessario praeexigit distinctionem principiorum

elicitivorum; ergo ista, si est realis, non est tantum per illam quae est tantum rationis.” V,
p. 789–12 (for a parallel text, see I Ord., d. 8, pars 1, q. 4, n. 177 [IV, p. 2461–14]). At V, pp. 79–
87, Scotus presents a long rebuttal to “the ideas argument”, on which see above, Ch. 5,
§ 4.
138 I Ord., d. 13, n. 43: “Alia est opinio ad quaestionem, quae ponit quod essentia sub ratione
una, omnino indistincta, est principium istarum productionum: quia sicut duo limitata pos-
sunt esse principia duorum actuum, ita idem illimitatum, continens in se virtualiter illa plura,
potest esse principium proprium eorundum actuum, et sub nulla ratione distinctionis in eo,
sed ex sola illimitatione sui ipsius, ut indistinctum est,—sicut patet de sole respectu multo-
rum generabilium in istis inferioribus.” V, pp. 8715–884. See for Aquinas and his followers on
this position, Lonergan 1967, 208–210; for Aquinas himself, see Ch. 3, above, at n. 19; and see
further Ch. 7, below, at and around n. 20 and nn. 91 and 95, for Hervaeus Natalis’ and John of
Naples’ respective use of this position.
Scotus concludes that a distinction between the sources—one natural, like

an intellect, and one free, like a will—is necessary for the emanations to be
distinct.139
In this way, Scotus has painted himself into a corner. Or, rather, he has
strictly delimited what is required for his solution. Because the emanations
are not metaphorical, the one is an intellectual emanation while the other
is by way of will, and hence the divine intellect and the divine will are
involved, and moreover they are involved as distinct in some way from
each other and from the divine essence. But in Scotus’ opinion Henry’s
rational distinction between the attributes is insufficient: why would we
need that at all? What Scotus has led us to is the conclusion that there is
a formal distinction, prior to any act of the intellect, between the divine
attributes of intellect and will, and it is this formal distinction that serves as
the ground for the distinction between the productions. As is well known,
Scotus holds that there is a formal distinction not only between the divine
persons, properties, and essence but also between the divine attributes;
one of the major reasons that Scotus saw a need to postulate such an
ex natura rei distinction between the attributes was precisely to correct
Henry of Ghent’s contention that a rational distinction could serve as the
139 I Ord., d. 13, n. 45: “… in divinis, ipsa productio Spiritus Sancti—ut iam posita in
esse—non videtur formaliter esse libera, sed praecise libertas videtur esse in principio huius
productionis, in quantum est huiusmodi. Sed si nulla distinctio praecedat productionem Filii
et Spiritus Sancti, prima distinctio quae est huius productionis et illius, est ut sunt positae
in esse ab illo principio; ergo non est una productio in divinis per modum intellectus et alia
per modum libertatis, quia nullum principium praecedit quod ex se aliter se habeat ad hanc
productionem quam ad illam,—et istae productiones, in quibus prima est distinctio, omnino
in se sunt uniformes in naturalitate ut iam positae sunt in esse.” V, pp. 8815–897.
Ibid., n. 74: “Cum dicitur ‘infinitum ex se, omnino indistinctum, potest esse principium
distinctorum’, verum est ubi illa distincta non requirunt ex ratione sui distinctionem priorem
in principiis: talem autem requirunt productio libera et naturalis, quia ad ista non potest esse
prima distinctio, sed praeexigitur aliqua distinctio in principiis, quae aliquo modo habent
principiare naturaliter et libere personas divinas.” V, p. 10410–16.
Ibid., n. 19: “… istae productiones distinguuntur quia altera est per modum naturae et
altera per modum voluntatis; haec autem distinctio productionum … sumitur ex distinc-
tione principiorum productivorum, quae habent oppositos modos principiandi; ergo etc.”
V, p. 738–13.
Scotus employs the necessity of the Son and Holy Spirit proceeding in different ways—
naturally and freely, respectively—also as one proof of the insufficiency of relation to
account for the distinction between the persons; see at and around n. 54 above. For more
on the Son’s natural emanation and the Holy Spirit’s free emanation in Scotus, as well as
its background, see Friedman 2007b. On the distinction between nature and will in general
in Scotus, see Hoffmann (Tobias) 1999 (esp. on the Trinity, pp. 219–222), and the literature
referred to there.
392 chapter six
source of a real one. Since it would be useless for a rational distinction

to be the basis of a formal distinction, there must be a formal distinction
between the attributes to ground the formal distinction that we know must
obtain between the emanations. Just as he described the formal distinction
between the properties, Scotus describes this formal distinction between
the attributes in terms of infinity: in contrast to the personal properties, the
attributes are like the essence in being infinite without qualification, but
the attributes are as it were “rooted” (quasi-radicata) in the infinite divine
essence.140 Scotus thinks about the attributes as different infinite portions
of a more all-encompassing and more fundamental infinite, the essence.
Thus, each attribute is formally distinct from the essence, while the essence
remains undifferentiated despite the fact that it serves as the foundation
for the distinction of the attributes before any act of the intellect.141 As has
already been noted, Scotus thinks about distinction and unity in God in
quasi-mathematical terms, and his theory is perhaps best described using
a Venn diagram.
Thus, Scotus accepts Henry’s requirement that the emanations are dis-
tinct on the basis of their fecund sources, intellect and will. Still, taking
note of the Dominican criticism of Henry’s rational distinction between the
140 I Ord., d. 13, n. 72: “… aliqua res est infinita a se et in se (sicut persona prima in divi-
nis), aliqua res est in se infinita sed non a se (sicut Filius et Spiritus Sanctus) … ita con-
siderando aliqua quae non sunt formaliter eadem, potest aliquid accipi tamquam infinitum
in se et omnino a se, sicut essentia divina, quae est radix et fundamentum, quae infini-
tatem suam a nullo habet … aliquid autem est infinitum per se et in se, sed non omnino
a se tamquam prima radix et fundamentum omnis infinitatis, sicut attributa divina … et
bene possunt talia esse formaliter infinita et in se et per se, sed radicaliter in essentia
sicut in fundamento, cui sunt eadem; ulterius, aliquid est quod nec in se formaliter est
infinitum, nec idem formaliter infinito, sicut proprietates personales.” V, pp. 10311–1046. For
‘quasi-radicata’, see ibid., p. 1144. See for Scotus’ explicit discussion of the formal distinc-
tion between the attributes, I Ord., d. 8, pars 1, q. 4 (IV, pp. 230–277), where in n. 177 (IV,
p. 246), against Henry’s ideas on the distinction of the attributes, Scotus argues by appeal-
ing to the distinction between the attributes being the necessary foundation for the dis-
tinction between the emanations, in an argument reminiscent of the one found in n. 137
above.
141 I Ord., d. 13, n. 76: “Quod essentia habet sapientiam et bonitatem et omnes alias per-
fectiones attributales ante omnem considerationem intellectus, et hoc absque omni distinc-
tione praesupposita in essentia, verum est, quia illae perfectiones attributales non requirunt
oppositum modum principiandi, nec distinctionem in principiis: ita enim essentia natu-
raliter est voluntas, sicut est intellectus; similiter, ista attributa non sunt proprie principiata
ab essentia divina, licet essentia concedatur aliquo modo habere rationem perfectionis radi-
calis et fundamentalis respectu eorum.” V, p. 1056–14. See also ibid., n. 80: “Sed intellectus non
est formaliter voluntas ex natura rei, et cum infinitas addita alicui non destruat formalem
rationem eius, intellectus infinitus non est formaliter voluntas infinita.” V, p. 1087–10.
attributes, Scotus insists that the attributes are distinct formally, before any
consideration of an intellect. Criticism, then, emerging from the Dominican
tradition has led Scotus in his defense of the general Franciscan trinitarian
line to modify Henry’s specific ideas. This does not yet complete, however,
the Subtle Doctor’s ideas on the distinction of the emanations. We have seen
in preceding chapters that the Franciscan tradition was unwilling to admit
without qualification that the distinction of the emanations was founded
on the distinction of the attributes. Perhaps this reluctance stems from
Bonaventure, who explicitly rejected ideas like Henry’s, claiming instead
that the emanations were distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis).142 In any
case, many of those who defended a roughly Franciscan trinitarian theology
had come to claim that the emanations differed in and of themselves
(se ipsis), but in terms of origin (originaliter) they differed on account of
their differing sources, nature (or intellect) and will. Scotus also adopts
this attitude and explains it by resorting to a positio impossibilis argument.
The productions—which Scotus reminds us on several occasions are the
divine relations143—are distinct formally in and of themselves (se ipsis).
This is only to say that generation is formally generation and spiration
is formally spiration, and on the basis of this difference in their formal
rationes alone these two productions would be distinct.144 This must be
the case, because the distinction of the persons is dependent upon the
distinction of their productions; thus, the productions must be distinct in
and of themselves.145 But we also know that the emanations do not exist
on their own account, but arise from the formally distinct attributes of
intellect and will: the Son is a Word produced by an intellectual act, and
the Holy Spirit is Love. Thus, Scotus claims that both of these statements
are true: the emanations are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis) and they
exist on the basis of their efficient sources. What this means for Scotus is
that
142 For Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, above, nn. 76, 84; for Henry, see Ch. 4, above, at and around
nn. 53–60.
143 See I Ord., d. 13 (V, p. 1127, p. 11311).
144 I Ord., d. 13, n. 77: “Ad quaestionem respondeo quod productiones distinguuntur se ipsis
formaliter. Generatio enim se ipsa formaliter est generatio, et spiratio se ipsa formaliter est
spiratio, et ex rationibus formalibus eorum impossibile est generationem esse spirationem
(circumscripto per impossibile quocumque alio), ita quod non oportet quaerere quibus
distinguuntur, quia tota ratio formalis unius est non eadem toti formali rationi alterius.” V,
pp. 10516–1062.
145 See I Ord., d. 13, nn. 78–79 (V, pp. 1063–1072) where Scotus uses Augustine to prove this
point.
394 chapter six
… if, assuming the impossible (per impossibile), the distinct productions

could exist without having a source (principiatae), they would be in and of
themselves (se totis) distinct formally, so that nothing formally included in
one would be formally included in the other. Nevertheless since they do have
a source (principiata sunt), so in terms of source (principiative) or of origin
they are made distinct on the basis of their sources (namely intellect and
will), which are not distinct only rationally [but also formally] … so, although
it is not necessary to reduce the formal distinction [of the productions] to
another distinction insofar as it is formal, nevertheless … it is reduced to that
distinction of the sources.146
For Scotus, the distinction of the productions is based de facto on the prior
formal distinction of the attributes, yet because generation and spiration
are formally distinct in and of themselves, these productions would be
(given a counterfactual positio impossibilis) distinct even setting aside the
prior distinction of the attributes.147 Going back to his phrasing of the
Dominican objection to Henry’s insistence that the distinction between
the emanations is based on the distinction of the attributes—why would
it be necessary for a real distinction to be based on a rational one?—Scotus
maintains that it is not necessary for one formal distinction to be based on
146 I Ord., d. 13, n. 80: “… si per impossibile istae distinctae productiones (ed.: personae)
possent esse non principiatae, se totis essent formaliter distinctae, ita quod nihil formaliter
inclusum in una esset formaliter inclusum in altera; et tamen sicut principiata sunt, ita
principiative sive originative distinguuntur a suis principiis (intellectu scilicet et voluntate),
quae non tantum distinguuntur ratione, hsed etiam formaliteri … et ita licet non necesse esset
distinctionem istam formalem reducere ad aliam in quantum est formalis, tamen … reducitur
ad istam distinctionem principiorum.” V, p. 1081–13. Note that I have used the variant reading
‘productiones’ in place of ‘personae’. I have translated se totis as a synonym for se ipsis with ‘in
and of themselves’: Scotus is clearly using the terms as rough synonyms, and similar usage
is also found in later authors like Walter Chatton, Adam Wodeham (Ch. 11, below, in, e.g.,
nn. 56, 155, respectively), and Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo (Conclusion, at nn. 31–38).
147 On positio impossibilis, see esp. Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 28–32. Note that Scotus
uses this logical technique often, including in his discussion of the distinction between the
Son and the Holy Spirit, given that the latter did not come from the former. See on this Scotus,
I Ord., d. 11, q. 2, nn. 27–34 (V, pp. 10–14); I Lectura, d. 11, q. 2, nn. 23–31 (XVII, pp. 135–139);
secondary literature: Knuuttila 1997, 284–285; Martin (Christopher J.) 1997, 259–260; Martin
2004; Martin Forthcoming (thanks to Prof. Martin for sharing this as yet unpublished paper
with me). As Martin (1997, 260–261) points out, Scotus in his texts on the distinction between
Son and Holy Spirit sanctions not merely positio impossibilis but positio incompossibilis (see,
e.g., n. 56 above), i.e. positing for the sake of argument the existence of some thing without
one of its essential aspects, e.g. a human being that is not an animal, Scotus claiming that this
technique can aid us in seeing just what makes a human being distinct from a non-animal
like a stone. This is an interesting development also from a theological perspective, because
it is implicit recognition that active spiration cannot be a property merely incidental to the
Son, but is an “essential” (i.e., absolutely necessary) feature of the Son, and we have to resort
to a positio incompossibilis in order to posit its removal.
another formal distinction. That is simply how it is in God. Scotus, then,

has adopted Henry of Ghent’s theory, yet he has changed it in accordance
with the Franciscan tradition’s view that the emanations were distinct in
and of themselves (se ipsis). This is significant not only because it indicates
yet another way that Scotus has adopted but modified Henry of Ghent’s
trinitarian theory, but also because we will see that, among others, Peter
Auriol, Francis of Marchia, and William of Rubio at Paris, William Ockham
and Walter Chatton at Oxford, take Scotus’ move a step further by claiming
that the distinction between the emanations is not at all based on any prior
distinction between the attributes.
Quite as significantly, however, Scotus has adopted Henry of Ghent’s
strong identification of the Son with the Word, and his trinitarian theology
is yet another instance of the attempt to use philosophical psychology to
answer trinitarian questions.
3. Scotus on the Word: Concepts as Mental Acts
It has been argued above that, regardless of whether he actually accepted

that the divine persons are absolute, such a theory fits well into Scotus’
general trinitarian framework. The central feature of Scotus’ trinitarian the-
ology as it has been laid out here—the element that is consistent through-
out all of the positions that we have examined, and hence serves as a link
between absolute persons and his other, less radical theses—is that the
constitutive or distinguishing feature of each person is the origin or the pro-
duction of that person. This is by no means a position unique to him, since
it can be seen as common to the Franciscan trinitarian tradition as a whole,
although Scotus’ suggestion that the productions that constitute the per-
sons are absolutes is rather radical in the trinitarian context of his time.
When Scotus actually comes to deal with the divine productions directly
in distinction 2 of his I Ordinatio, he turns first to what is for him the central
issue: whether in God there can be production. This is the central issue pre-
cisely because “plurality is only explained (declaratur) by production.”148 His
immediate answer to the question sets the tone for his entire use of philo-
sophical psychology in trinitarian theology:
148 I Ord., d. 2, pars 2, q. 3, n. 220: “Quia, sicut dixi, pluralitas declaratur ex productione, ideo
primo respondeo ad quaestionem de productione, quae est tertia in ordine, et dico quod in
divinis est et potest esse productio.” II, p. 2592–4.
396 chapter six
Take anything whatsoever that from its formal ratio is a productive source:
wherever it exists without imperfection, there it is a productive source. But
perfected memory—i.e., all of this ‘the intellect having an intelligible object
present to it’—from its formal ratio is the productive source of generated
knowledge (notitiae generatae). Now, it is clear that memory of this type is in
one of the divine persons on his own account (a se), because one [of the divine
persons] is not produced. Therefore that person could perfectly produce by
means of such a perfect source.149
Here is the framework of Scotus’ ideas on philosophical psychology in their

trinitarian context: the perfected memory in God the Father, that is to say
his intellect with the divine essence present to it as its intelligible object,
is an integral, productive source of generated or begotten knowledge, i.e.
the Word.150 He applies a parallel analysis to the production of the Holy
Spirit: the infinite divine essence, present as the loved object to the infinite
divine will as it is in the Father and Son, is an integral, productive source of
infinite and subsistent Love (Amor), i.e. the Holy Spirit.151 Here I focus on the
149 I Ord., d. 2, pars 2, q. 3, n. 221: “Quicquid de ratione sua formali est principium
productivum, in quocumque est sine imperfectione, in eo est principium productivum; sed

memoria perfecta, sive, quod idem est, istud totum ‘intellectus habens obiectum intelligibile
sibi praesens’, ex ratione sua formali est principium productivum notitiae generatae, et patet
quod memoria talis est in aliqua persona divina et a se, quia aliqua est improducta; ergo illa
poterit per tale perfectum principium perfecte producere.” II, pp. 2597–2602.
150 I Ord., d. 2, pars 2, q. 3, n. 310: “Ad primum respondeo quod hoc totum ‘intellectus
habens obiectum actu intelligibile sibi praesens’ habet rationem memoriae perfectae in actu
primo, quae scilicet est immediatum principium actus secundi et notitiae genitae; in hoc
autem principio quod est memoria concurrunt duo, quae constituunt unum principium
totale, videlicet essentia in ratione obiecti et intellectus, quorum utrumque per se est quasi
partiale principium respectu productionis adaequatae huic totali principio. Cum ergo argui-
tur quod ratio naturae non tantum competit intellectui, sed essentiae, respondeo quod totale
principium, includens essentiam ut obiectum et intellectum ut potentiam habentem obiec-
tum sibi praesens, est principium productivum quod est natura et principium completum
producendi per modum naturae. Si enim essentia ut obiectum non haberet rationem prin-
cipii in productione Verbi, quare magis diceretur Verbum essentiae quam lapidis si ex sola
infinitate intellectus ut principii productivi posset produci Verbum infinitum quocumque
alio obiecto praesente?” II, pp. 3131–3144.
151 I Ord., d. 10, q. un., n. 9: “In quocumque est principium aliquod quod ex ratione
sua est principium productivum, illud erit in eo principium producendi si est in eo sine
imperfectione et non intelligatur praehabere aliquod productum simpliciter adaequatum;
in Deo, ut probatum est, est formaliter voluntas ex natura rei et hoc sub ratione principii
productivi liberi respectu amoris, et patet quod est ibi sine imperfectione; ergo erit in Deo
principium producendi amorem, et hoc secundum proportionem perfectionis suae, ita quod
… ista voluntas est principium producendi amorem tantum quanto ipsa nata est amare
obiectum infinitum; nata est autem amare obiectum infinitum infinito amore, ergo nata
est esse principium producendi amorem infinitum,—nihil autem est infinitum nisi sit ipsa
essentia divina, igitur ille amor est essentia divina. Ille autem amor productus non est
incorporation of concept theory into Scotus’ trinitarian theology, i.e. how he

uses his theory of the mental word to deal with trinitarian difficulties. But
in order to examine this, first we must see how Scotus believes concepts are
formed in human beings.
As it was for Henry of Ghent, so for Scotus, the formation of a concept
is tightly bound up with the function of various psychological elements. In
particular, the perfected memory, from which the word or begotten knowl-
edge arises, is for Scotus the intellect infused with an intelligible species.
Thus, the intelligible species and its role in causing the intellect to form
a concept is of extreme importance for Scotus, all the more so because
in the late thirteenth century there had been numerous attempts to elim-
inate or strictly limit the role of the intelligible species in philosophical
psychology. We have already seen a possible example of this with Henry of
Ghent—Scotus certainly presents Henry as having flatly rejected intelligible
species—, but this attack on the intelligible species was part of a larger dis-
cussion of Aquinas’ synthesis of Aristotelian and Augustinian philosophical
psychology: what elements were truly necessary in the process of forming a
verbum mentis? Scotus takes this debate seriously; in fact, a large section of
distinction three of his I Ordinatio is devoted to defining the proper role of
the intelligible species. Scotus himself divides this text into two interrelated
investigations, the first concerning the existence of the intelligible species,
the second concerning the relation between the intelligible species and the
intellect in the production of begotten knowledge, i.e. the concept.
With regard to the first concern, Scotus defends the existence of the
intelligible species against Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines, each
of whom sought to eliminate it, as Scotus tells it.152 For Scotus, the intelligible
natus esse forma inhaerens, quia nihil est tale in divinis; ergo est per se subsistens … ergo
est personaliter distinctum. Hanc personam dico ‘Spiritum Sanctum’, quia Filius non sic
producitur … sed per actum naturae sive intellectus.” IV, pp. 34121–34218. On this aspect of
Scotus’ trinitarian theology, see esp. Kosla 1995, pp. 65–163, which contains a great deal of
material on the divine productions and the psychological model of the Trinity in Scotus,
and see Vos et al. 2003, 194–221, with a translation of parts of I Lectura, d. 10, along with
commentary. On the Holy Spirit’s procession, see also n. 203 below.
152 See I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1 (“Utrum in parte intellectiva proprie sumpta sit memoria
habens speciem intelligibilem priorem naturaliter actu intelligendi”; III, pp. 201–244). For
doubts about whether Henry actually rejected intelligible species, see Ch. 4, above, at and
around nn. 73–74. On Godfrey of Fontaines’ rejection of intelligible species, see, e.g., Wippel
1986; Wippel 1981, 197–198 (brief); Spruit 1994, 212–215. Studies of Scotus on the intelligible
species include: Dumont (Richard) 1965; Tachau 1988, 56–61; Spruit 1994, 256–266; Boulnois
1999, 55–105, esp. 79–105. Among other studies dealing with Scotus’ philosophical psychology
more generally can be mentioned: Richter 1993; Marrone 2001, 444–458, which is especially
398 chapter six
species is an indispensable element in human understanding, because,

before it acts, the intellect, a universal power, must have an object present
to it in its universality.153 Scotus in fact defines the intelligible species as just
this impressed representation of the object present to the intellective power
prior to its act.154 In contrast to Henry of Ghent, then, Scotus claims that the
phantasm stripped of its material conditions by the agent intellect does not
suffice to represent the object in its universality, and his reason for this is
simply that the phantasm represents the singular in its singularity and it can
good for showing the relationship between Scotus and William of Ware (and 391–400 for a
nice introduction to these two thinkers); Cross 2003a; Pasnau 2003; as well as the literature
referred to in those places. It is interesting that, while Scotus’ ideas on intelligible species
have received a good deal of attention, his ideas on concepts and their formation have not;
the only works that I know of that deal at any length (and quite well) with this aspect of
Scotus’ theory are Boulnois 1999 (Ch. 3, esp. pp. 107–133, also 189–203 [on the image]); Pini
2002 (esp. Ch. 4, pp. 99–137, focusing on second intentions and Scotus’ philosophical works);
King 2004 (although I find King’s theses concerning a “crisis” in Aristotelian psychology
[see also King 1994] and Scotus’ “invention” of mental content to be overstated); Pini
Forthcoming. A study of Scotus’ concept theory dealing with its development from his early
logical works up to his last theological works, the Quodlibet and Reportatio examinata, is
highly desirable.
Sorting out the relation between the phantasm, the intelligible species, and the concept
in Scotus is complicated by the fact that he appears to have changed his mind on the issue.
Looking at Scotus’ (early?) first commentary on De interpretatione, he seems to identify the
intelligible species and the concept: Quaestiones in libros Perihermenias Aristotelis, lib. 1, q. 2
(“Utrum nomen significet rem vel speciem in anima”), Opera philosophica, vol. 2, pp. 47–59
(I was led to this text by Stephen Brown Forthcoming). Yet Scotus himself expressly denies
this very identification several times in his I Ord. (see, e.g., n. 169 below). This change of
opinion may have led Richard E. Dumont, in his excellent Dumont 1965, to identify the
intelligible species with the concept. Likewise (more cautiously) Katherine Tachau in her
fine presentation of Scotus’ psychology and epistemology: Tachau 1988, 55–81.
153 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, nn. 348–350: “… certum est enim quod universale potest intelligi
ab intellectu et magis a philosophis intellectus ponitur potentia distincta a potentiis sensi-

tivis propter intellectionem universalis .... Ex hoc ergo manifesto, scilicet quod intellectus
potest intelligere universale, accipio hanc propositionem: ‘intellectus potest habere obiec-
tum actu universale, per se sibi praesens in ratione obiecti, prius naturaliter quam intelligat’.
Ex hoc sequitur propositum, quod in illo priore habet obiectum praesens in specie intelligi-
bili, et ita habet speciem intelligibilem priorem actu. Antecedens assumptum videtur satis
manifestum, quia obiectum est prius naturaliter actu, ergo universalitas, quae est propria
condicio obiecti in quantum obiectum, praecedit actum intellectus vel intelligendi; ergo sub
illa ratione etiam oportet obiectum esse praesens, quia praesentia obiecti praecedit actum.”
III, pp. 2096–2112.
154 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 388: “Cum ergo intellectui nihil perfectionis auferatur in quan-
tum potentia cognitiva est, per hoc quod non est organicus, immo magis additur perfectio,—
sequitur quod sibi potest esse obiectum praesens ante actum, sicut aliis potentiis cognitivis;
sed illa praesentia non erit per aliquid impressum organo, quia non habet organum; igitur erit
per aliquid impressum ipsi potentiae. Tale impressum repraesentans, praecedens in potentia
intellectiva actum intelligendi, voco ‘speciem intelligibilem’.” III, pp. 23613–2377.
only represent the singular in this way. Thus, for Scotus, a separate intelligi-
ble species is necessary in order for the intellect to have its proper act.155 For
Henry, no universal phantasm was really, i.e. subjectively, different from the
particular phantasms it represented universally, since the universal was vir-
tually contained in the particular; that is to say, to arrive at the correspond-
ing universal phantasm the particular phantasm need only be refined by
the light of the agent intellect. For Scotus, on the other hand, the phantasm
and the intelligible species are really different entities.156 Scotus’ suggestion,
then, is that the agent intellect and the object as represented by the phan-
tasm together cause the intelligible species as two partial causes (and it is
from the action of the agent intellect that the intelligible species receives its
universality), and the intelligible species so brought about in the possible
intellect is the reason that the object is present to the intellect as intelligible
or cognizable.157 This intelligible species is a form that inheres in the possi-
ble intellect; it is an accident.158 Thus, the object is present in its universality
155 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 352: “Sed intelligere obiectum sub ratione universalis et
singularis requirit duplicem rationem repraesentativam vel repraesentandi, et est respectu
duplicis rationis repraesentabilis formaliter; ergo idem manens idem, non repraesentat sic
et sic: ergo phantasma, quod de se repraesentat obiectum sub ratione singularis, non potest
repraesentare ipsum sub ratione universalis.” III, p. 2122–7.
156 See, e.g., the first quotation in n. 158 below.
157 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, nn. 381–382: “… quando species gignitur ab aliquo sicut a totali
causa, repraesentat ipsum sub illa ratione sub qua gignitur, loquendo de ‘ratione gignendi’,—
et etiam repraesentat ipsum concomitanter sub ratione gignentis, aut saltem non sub ratione
opposita rationi gignentis; ideo species in sensu non repraesentat obiectum sub ratione
universalis, quae est condicio opposita rationi singularis gignentis, sed obiectum non est
causa totalis gignens respectu intelligibilis speciei, quia cum ipso agit intellectus agens,
sicut alia partialis causa, et ideo genitum ab istis duobus potest repraesentare obiectum sub
opposita ratione singularitatis, quae est ratio gignentis … Et intelligo sic quod in primo signo
naturae est obiectum in se vel in phantasmate praesens intellectui agenti, in secundo signo
naturae—in quo ista sunt praesentia intellectui possibili, ut agentia passo—gignitur species
in intellectu possibili, et tunc per speciem est obiectum praesens sub ratione cognoscibilis.”
III, p. 2321–11, p. 2336–11.
158 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 360: “… intellectus agens facit aliquid repraesentativum
universalis de eo quod fuit repraesentativum singularis, quantumcumque illud ‘de’ intelli-

gatur materialiter vel virtualiter; actio realis non terminatur nisi ad repraesentativum obiecti
sub ratione universalis; ergo realis actio intellectus agentis terminatur ad formam aliquam
realem, in existentia, quae formaliter repraesentat universale ut universale, quia aliter non
posset terminari actio eius ad universale sub ratione universalis.” III, p. 2188–16.
Ibid., q. 2, n. 541: “… potentia ad accidens numquam fundatur nisi in substantia; intel-
lectio autem sive species intelligibilis non est forma substantialis, sed accidens; ergo quod
est immediate receptivum illius est aliquid in actu substantiali, aut saltem quod est mediate
receptivum,—et tunc quod immediate recipit erit aliquis actus accidentalis, sicut se habet
superficies ad albedinem. Intellectus ergo possibilis, secundum quod est illud in quo recip-
itur forma intelligibilis vel intellectio, vel illud secundum quod species recipitur in anima,
400 chapter six
to the intellect through the intelligible species, and an intellect in which

such a species inheres has the character (ratio) of intellectual memory.159
The intelligible species, according to Scotus, reduces the intellect from an
essential potency to an accidental one, because the species contains “virtu-
ally” (virtualiter) all of the knowledge (scientia) about the intellect’s object.
The species, then, is a cognitive habit: it disposes the intellect to its act by
being a type of pathway from essential potency to accidental potency and
further to act.160 And, as Scotus says, there are many such habitually cog-
nized species in the memory: the formation of a species is an entirely natural
process, but the will must call a particular species (i.e., a cognitive habit) to
mind before a concept is formed.161 With a phantasm presented to the agent
intellect, then, an intelligible species is automatically produced; this is not
under our control. Calling one of the many intelligible species stored in the
intellectual memory to mind, on the other hand, requires our actively will-
ing it. In sum: a concept, for Scotus, is actual, willed cognition of what was
only habitually cognized in the species.162
non erit purum potentiale, sed erit aliquid in actu primo, licet ipse respectus potentiae non
sit aliquid in actu.” III, pp. 32220–3237.
159 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 370: “Ad quaestionem ergo dico quod necesse est ponere in
intellectu ut habet rationem memoriae, speciem intelligibilem repraesentantem universale

ut universale, priorem naturaliter actu intelligendi,—propter istas rationes iam positas
ex parte obiecti, in quantum universale et in quantum praesens intellectui, quae duae
condiciones, scilicet universalitas et praesentia, praecedunt naturaliter intellectionem.” III,
p. 22510–16.
160 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 396: “Haec species est illa scientia quae reducit de potentia
essentiali ad accidentalem … non autem illa quae proprie dicitur scientia, quae scilicet est
habilitas derelicta ex actibus, nam ante illam ad primum actum considerandi requiritur
quod sit iam reductus intellectus de potentia essentiali ad accidentalem, alioquin tunc non
operaretur. Nec incongrue species in qua relucet quiditas dicitur ‘scientia’, non tantum
virtualiter quia totam continet, sed formaliter potest dici ‘habitus cognitivus’, quia qualitas
mansiva in intellectu, disponens quantum ad actum.” III, pp. 2419–2422. Scotus repeats
several times that the species contains all the knowledge about an object, e.g. ibid., n. 395
(III, p. 2414–8).
161 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, nn. 383–384: “… Augustinus, De trinitate XIV, cap. 6, ponit
memoriam esse multorum simul cognitorum habitualiter … ergo oportet secundum omnem
opinionem ponere multa cognita in memoria habitualiter, et illa ut sunt ibi, sunt aliquo
modo causa respectu notitiae genitae secundum Augustinum, et non nisi causa naturalis,
quatenus praecedunt actum voluntatis .... Ideo respondeo … quod cuiuscumque speciei
singulare fortius primo movet sensum, eius phantasma efficacius imprimitur et primo movet
intellectum; et quoad primum illum actum non est in potestate nostra quid intelligamus …
sed illo actu posito, in potestate nostra est cognitio actualis cuiuslibet habitualiter noti …”
III, pp. 23312–23410. Scotus at one point hints that we do have some control over how well we
attend to the intelligible species present to us; see n. 194 below.
162 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 387: “… intellectio etiam sequens impressam speciem, est
Not only is the will necessary for the formation of a concept: the activity
of the intellect is as well. This Scotus determines in reply to the second
topic he deals with: the relation between the intelligible species and the
intellect in the formation of generated knowledge, i.e. the concept. Here
Scotus runs a line between Peter of John Olivi, who claimed that the intellect
is entirely active and the object a merely sine qua non cause of actual
intellection, and Godfrey of Fontaines who claimed that the intellect is
passive (the efficient cause of intellection for Godfrey is the phantasm).163
Scotus rejects these positions: the soul and the object are one integral cause
of the concept.164 Among the many arguments that Scotus gives for this
position, noteworthy are those in which he lays stress upon the voluntary
nature of concept formation. Since the coming into being and passing away
of a concept is under our control, our faculties must be actively involved
in concept formation in some way (pace Godfrey).165 On the other hand,
since the intellect is able to conceive any conceivable thing, there must
be a cause determining why the intellect conceives this thing rather than
that; this cause is the intelligible species (pace Olivi).166 In short, concepts
have an objective content causally determined by the intelligible species,
while exactly which objective content we consider is largely a voluntary
affair, dependent upon our faculties. Intellect and intelligible species, then,
are two partial causes of one effect (analogously to the way that phantasm
and agent intellect are partial causes of the intelligible species). The way
that Scotus explains this is through the more easily imagined example of
biological generation: the conception of a child requires the causality of
both the (superior) father and the (inferior) mother, and neither causality
motus rei ad animam, quatenus per intellectionem obiectum habet esse in anima actualiter
cognitum, quod prius tantum habuit esse habitualiter.” III, p. 23512–15.
163 See I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 2 (III, pp. 247–271). See on Scotus’ discussion of this issue,
e.g., Tachau 1988, 67; Boulnois 1999, esp. 79–105 passim; Pasnau 1997, 146–150; Pasnau 2003,
290–293.
164 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 2, n. 494: “… si ergo nec anima sola nec obiectum solum sit causa
totalis intellectionis actualis—et illa sola videntur requiri ad intellectionem—sequitur quod

ista duo sunt una causa integra respectu notitae genitae.” III, p. 2921–4. See also ibid., n. 523
(III, pp. 31115–3123).
165 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 2, n. 486: “… intellectio actualis est aliquid in nobis non perpetuum
sed habens esse post non-esse, sicut experimur. Istius oportet ponere aliquam causam
activam, et aliquo modo in nobis, alioquin non esset in potestate nostra intelligere cum
vellemus …” III, p. 2892–6.
166 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 2, n. 459: “… intellectus de se est indeterminatus ad omne
intelligibile et ad omnem intellectionem; ergo ad hoc quod intelligat, requiritur determinatio

aliqua: illa non est nisi per speciem aliquam,—ergo species intelligibilis est principium
determinativum.” III, p. 27710–13.
402 chapter six
can be reduced to the other.167 In just this way the superior intellect relates
to the inferior intelligible species in causing the concept: both have partial
causality, neither reducible to the other.168
But what is a concept for Scotus, and how is one formed? Distinction 27
of his I Ordinatio deals explicitly with words, created and divine, and here
Scotus describes the mental word on the basis of Augustine’s specifications:
… a word is an act of the understanding (intelligentiae) produced from the
perfected memory, having being only in connection with an actual act of the
intellect (non sine actuali intellectione), representing the divine word … On
this basis it appears that the word is nothing having to do with the will or
with the memory (because it is the second part of the image, not the first or
third part), and consequently it is neither an intelligible species nor a habit,
nor anything having to do with the memory. It is, therefore, something having
to do with the understanding.169
It is clear from this passage that Scotus’ ideas on the image are of critical
importance for understanding his concept theory. In turn, fundamental to
his ideas on the image is his use of a first/second act distinction. When
he deals with the image directly, in the third part of distinction 3 of his I
Ordinatio, Scotus begins by claiming that “we experience in ourselves that
there are acts of intellection and acts of volition, and that these acts are in
some way under our control when their object is present; therefore we have
167 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 2, n. 496: “… si mater ponatur habere virtutem activam in gen-
eratione prolis, illa et potentia activa patris concurrunt ut duae causae partiales, ordinatae
quidem, quia altera perfectior reliqua; non tamen imperfectior recipit suam causalitatem
a causa perfectiore, nec tota illa causalitas est eminenter in causa perfectiore, sed aliquid
addit causa imperfectior, in tantum quod effectus potest esse perfectior a causa perfectiore
et imperfectiore quam a sola perfectiore.” III, p. 2941–8.
168 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 2, n. 498: “Concurrunt ergo ista duo hscil., obiectum intelligibile—
praesens in se vel in specie intelligibili—et pars intellectivai ut habentia ordinem essen-

tialem .... Sunt ergo causae essentialiter ordinatae, et ultimo modo hi.e., quemadmodum
mater et pater in generatione prolisi, videlicet quod una est simpliciter perfectior altera,
ita tamen quod utraque in sua propria causalitate est perfecta, non dependens ab alia.” III,
pp. 29419, 2955–8. At times in his career, Scotus gives a parallel analysis for the way in which
concept and will act as two unequal partial causes of volition; see on this, e.g., Kent 1995, 143–
149, and consult Dumont 2001 on the subject of a possible change over the course of Scotus’
career in his doctrine of the will.
169 I Ord., d. 27, nn. 46–47: “Posset ergo describi verbum, quod verbum est actus intelligen-
tiae productus a memoria perfecta, non habens esse sine actuali intellectione, repraesentans
verbum divinum (propter illud enim Augustinus inquisivit de verbo nostro). Ex his apparet
quod verbum nihil est pertinens ad voluntatem, neque ad memoriam (quia est secunda pars
imaginis, non prima nec tertia), et per consequens non est species intelligibilis nec habi-
tus, nec aliquid pertinens ad memoriam; est ergo aliquid pertinens ad intelligentiam.” VI,
p. 8311–19.
to posit in some way active sources of these second acts.”170 Because we know
that these “second acts” do not automatically or necessarily take place when
their object is present, i.e. we will them to happen, Scotus posits that there
are first acts, potentialities or dispositions that precede the second acts of
intellection and of volition. Scotus repeatedly refers, on the one hand, to
the perfected memory as first act and, on the other, begotten knowledge or
intellection as second act: the intellect with an intelligible object present to
it is disposed to an act of understanding.171 As we saw above, the intelligible
species is for Scotus “habitual knowledge”, and the intellect infused with
the intelligible species—perfected memory—is the first act with respect to
the actual intellection: the intellect is reduced from essential to accidental
potency when it is infused with the intelligible species. It is the command
of the will, then, that brings the intellect from this accidental potency, i.e
first act, to actual intellection, i.e. second act. Thus, intellectual memory is
an intellection awaiting the mediation of the will to bring it from habituality
to actuality. Further, Scotus calls the soul, insofar as it receives the begotten
knowledge (i.e., actual intellection), the understanding (intelligentia).172
For Scotus, then, a word is actual intellection or begotten knowledge. To
see what this means for him, we can determine what he expressly claims
that the word is not. First, a word cannot be a species in the understanding
prior to the understanding’s own act. From all that we have seen thus far of
Scotus’ philosophical psychology we know that he makes a clear distinction
between, on the one hand, the intelligible species, caused by the work of the
agent intellect on the phantasm, and, on the other, the concept or begotten
knowledge. Scotus maintains further, however, that, even if there were,
prior to the act of understanding, some second species in the understanding
170 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 4, n. 578: “… experimur in nobis esse actum intellectionis et
actum volitionis, et istos actus esse aliquo modo in potestate nostra quando obiectum est
praesens; ergo oportet in nobis ponere aliquo modo principia activa ad istos secundos actus.”
III, pp. 34118–3421.
171 I Ord. d. 3, pars 3, q. 4, n. 580: “Anima habet in se aliquam perfectionem secundum
quam est actus primus respectu notitiae genitae, et habet in se perfectionem aliquam
secundum quam formaliter recipit notitiam genitam, et habet in se aliquam perfectionem
secundum quam formaliter recipit volitionem. Istae tres perfectiones dicuntur ‘memoria’,
‘intelligentia’, et ‘voluntas’—vel ‘anima’ in quantum habet ipsas. Anima ergo in quantum
habens actum primum totalem respectu intellectionis—aliquid scilicet animae et obiectum
sibi praesens in ratione intelligibilis—dicitur memoria, et hoc memoria perfecta, includendo
tam intellectum quam illud quo obiectum est sibi praesens; ipsa eadem anima in quantum
recipit notitiam genitam, dicitur ‘intelligentia’,—et intelligentia perfecta ut est sub illa
notitia genita …” III, p. 3433–15.
172 See n. 171 above. For essential and accidental potency, see n. 160 above.
404 chapter six
(not in the memory), this could not be the word. This is because this second
species would be a mere duplicate of the species in the perfected memory
from which the word is generated, and such a duplicate would be entirely
superfluous in the process of concept formation.173 Along the same lines,
according to Scotus, if there were a “species begotten in the understanding
from the species in the memory, such that the species in the understanding
precedes the act of understanding”,174 as this position holds, then in the
same power, i.e. the intellect, there would be two species of the same nature
(ratio), since memory and understanding are the same power, differing only
because the former is the intellect in first act, the latter the intellect in
second act. What, then, would be the point of the duplicate species in the
same power?175
A second, and perhaps the most important, opinion on the ontology of
the word that Scotus must confront is that of Aquinas: the word is what
is formed by the act of understanding (actum intelligendi); it is a term of
that act. Scotus cannot see how this can be maintained, however, since we
would be contradicting Augustine if the word were a product of the act of
understanding and not of the memory. Augustine had explicitly stated that
the word was begotten from the knowledge in the memory, but on Aquinas’
theory, according to Scotus, it would be the understanding (intelligentia)
and not the memory that brought about the word.176 What Scotus seems to
have in mind here is that, on Aquinas’ theory, a mental act falls between
173 I Ord., d. 27, n. 49: “Non est autem species in intelligentia prior actu intelligendi, quia
talem speciem superfluum est ponere. Ipsa enim non perfectius repraesentaret obiectum
quam species in memoria, et sufficit habere unum perfecte repraesentans obiectum ante
actum intelligendi.” VI, pp. 8410–852. At loc. cit. this position is attributed by the Scotus editors
to Roger Marston (De em.aet., q. 6, corp., BFS VII, p. 118).
174 This is Scotus’ description of the position he is attacking; I Ord., d. 27, n. 48: “… species
genita in intelligentia de specie in memoria, quae ‘species in intelligentia’ praecedit actum

intelligendi …” VI, p. 844–5.
175 I Ord., d. 27, n. 51: “Tunc etiam duae species eiusdem rationis essent in eadem potentia,
quia istae duae species sunt eiusdem rationis; et ipse intellectus ut memoria et intelligentia
est una potentia, quia idem est actus primus, et quo habens operatur et quo habens actum
primum est in actu secundo.” VI, p. 855–9.
176 I Ord., d. 27, n. 57: “Improbatur etiam haec via … quia tunc intelligentia gigneret verbum
et non memoria, quod est contra Augustinum; intelligentia enim produceret illum terminum
actionis intelligendi …” VI, p. 871–5. For a description of the position Scotus is here attacking,
see n. 177 below. The Scotus editors (ibid., p. 84, app. font.) claim the opinion Scotus is
responding to here is that of Giles of Rome, I Sent., prin. 2, q. 2, but it could just as well be
that of Aquinas in his later works. On Aquinas’ later theory, see the Introduction, above, at
and around nn. 72–76. On the differences between Aquinas and Scotus on concepts, I have
benefitted from the analysis in Pini Forthcoming.
the intellectual memory (the possible intellect infused with an intelligible

species), on the one hand, and the word, the product of the act, on the
other. Scotus appears to think that the act mediating between memory and
word is itself enough to violate Augustine’s dictates on the mental word,
and in particular Augustine’s view that the word comes directly from the
intellectual memory, i.e. that the word and the knowledge in the memory
are the same, the word simply being the prior knowledge thought. Aquinas’
insistence on the word being a term of the mental act, for Scotus, rules out
the immediacy that he sees in Augustine’s theory.
Scotus has other objections to Aquinas’ view. For instance, we are able to
understand an act of the intellect on its own, without our also understand-
ing the act producing a term; but it does not seem right to Scotus that we
be able to make this mental separation, unless it were possible in reality for
the act of understanding not to be productive of a term. And indeed, Scotus
denies that the act of the understanding is the type of action productive of a
term, drawing a contrast between the way that heating (calefactio) relates to
heat (calor) and the way that intellection (intellectio) relates to its supposed
term: heating cannot be conceived to exist without its product, i.e. heat; in
contrast, an intellection can be so conceived.177
To understand Scotus’ point here, it is important to recognize that there
are two types of acts for him. One type is the act that belongs properly to the
genus of action; this results in a product according to Scotus, it is a produc-
tion or a ‘faction’ (factio). There are also acts that more properly belong to
the genus of quality; acts of this second type are absolute forms produced
or caused, that nevertheless are entirely dependent on their cause, existing
only while the cause actually does cause, and ceasing to exist as soon as the
cause ceases.178 The intellectual act is not an act of the first type, i.e. an action
177 I Ord., d. 27, n. 55: “Nec etiam est aliquis terminus productus per intellectionem,
quia intellectio non est actio productiva alicuius termini: tunc enim incompossibile esset
intelligere eam esse et non esse termini, sicut incompossibile est intelligere calefactionem
esse et non esse calorem ad quem sit calefactio. Non est autem impossibile intelligere
intellectionem in se, non intelligendo quod sit alicuius termini ut producti per ipsam.” VI,
p. 8611–17.
178 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 4, nn. 600–603: “… actio non sit terminus actionis, et ista vere
terminant actionem … ergo non sunt actiones de genere actionis, sed sunt formae absolu-
tae de genere qualitatis … quaedam formae habent esse fixum, non dependens continue a
sua causa—quasi in fieri—sicut calor in ligno; quaedam habent quasi continuam depen-
dentiam ad suam causam, sicut lumen in medio ad solem .... Primae formae, propter suam
independentiam in esse, non habent rationem actionis nec motus; secundae, propter suam
continuam dependentiam, videntur magis habere esse in fieri quam in facto esse, et ita
habent, quia semper dum sunt, aeque causantur sicut in primo instanti quando incipiunt
406 chapter six
with a term; rather it is a term in itself, the result of a first production or

begetting (gignitio), that belongs to the genus action. What Scotus is point-
ing to is that the word or concept inheres in the intellect as a quality of the
understanding, yet it is the actual intellection or the act of understanding:
We formally understand by means of the intellect insofar as it receives an
intellection, because if [the intellect] were to cause an intellection actively, I
am still not said to understand by means of the intellect insofar as it causes,
but insofar as it has an intellection as a form, for to have a quality is to be
this kind of thing (quale), and so for the intellect to have or to receive an
intellection (these are the same) is for it to be understanding.179
Even if the intellect did cause an intellection, this causality is not the reason
that we understand; rather, our receiving a form or having a form inhering
in the intellect is the reason we understand. On this basis, Scotus postu-
lates that the intellect has two acts: first, the act of saying or begetting a
word, which is a production from the genus of action, and, second, the act of
understanding or actual intellection, a quality inhering in the understand-
ing.180 Thus, the act of saying the word has as its term the act of understand-
ing (i.e., the word itself) and there is no further term (as Aquinas would have
it). The word or concept ceases to be as soon as the willed act of begetting
ceases, because the concept, the actual intellection, takes its existence for
only so long as we attend to the object of the intellection.
If the ontology of concepts for Scotus emerges most clearly in contrast
to the position of Aquinas, the major position that Scotus distances himself
from on the issue of the word is Henry of Ghent’s. We have seen (above,
Ch. 4, §3) that for Henry the word was the term of a second act of the intel-
lect, an act of the intellect as nature, the first act being the intellect’s acqui-
sition of confused knowledge—a stage in which the intellect was entirely
esse, et ideo cessante causa causare, istae formae cessant esse; non tamen ex hoc sequitur
quod sunt actiones de genere actionis, sed oppositum, quia sunt termini talium actionum.
Hoc secundo modo se habet intellectio, quia ipsa est in continua dependentia ad praesen-
tiam suae causae, quia aliter non haberet esse …” III, pp. 3543–3558. For the term ‘factio’, see
I Ord., d. 6, q. un., n. 12 (IV, p. 923–9).
179 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 4, n. 537: “Formaliter autem intelligimus intellectu in quantum
recipit intellectionem, quia si causet eam active, non tamen dicor intelligere intellectu in
quantum causat, sed in quantum habet intellectionem ut formam; habere enim qualitatem,
est esse quale, et ita intellectum habere intellectionem sive recipere—quod idem est—est
ipsum esse intelligentem.” III, p. 3214–9.
180 I Ord., d. 6, q. un., n. 14: “… intellectus noster hhabet duplex actusi, cuiusmodi est actio
de genere actionis gignere verbum, habet tamen alium actum de genere qualitatis, scilicet
illam notitiam genitam.” IV, p. 943–5.
passive. The second act, an act of saying a word, took place after the intellect
had composed and divided the confused knowledge and produced a term
declarative and manifestive of the quod quid est of the object. Interestingly,
Scotus—and later Peter Auriol—claim that Henry held that the word is the
intellectual act, and not its term at all. In essence, Scotus and Auriol do
not recognize Henry’s distinction between the word (the term of the act of
saying) and the cogitative act of understanding the word (the second act of
the intellect as a cognitive power, for Henry, in which the intellect knows in
the word). In whatever way this particular miscomprehension got started,
the result of it is that Scotus portrays himself and Henry as being in far more
agreement than they actually were, and this allows Scotus to give his own
position very precisely as a reaction to Henry’s.
Scotus summarizes Henry’s position as claiming that not every actual
intellection is a word, rather a word is a special type of actual intellection,
i.e. either an actual intellection “that is declarative” or an actual intellection
“that is the endpoint of inquisition” (these appear to be equivalent for Sco-
tus).181 What is Scotus driving at here? As we have seen, according to Henry, a
word was a perfect word, i.e. it was formed, only after a full inquisition (what
Henry called “investigation”) into the object and we had attained knowledge
declarative and manifestive of the quod quid est of what had been confus-
edly understood in the knowledge of simple understanding. This was part
of the intellect’s conversion “over itself and over its act of understanding
and over the object understood.”182 A critical element in this “conversion”
was also, therefore, the reflexive nature of the intellect’s act in forming a
word. For Henry, then, there was confused knowledge that was not a word,
and then after investigation, there was a word, and the intellect rested in
this word because the investigation had been completed and the intellect
had full knowledge both of the object of intellection and of its own act.
Henry’s theory fixed knowledge exclusively on two “settings”: simple con-
fused knowledge, followed by an inquisition or investigation stage, followed
by declarative knowledge, i.e. the mental word. This is the genesis of Sco-
tus’ (accurate) characterization of Henry’s theory as the word being exclu-
sively that actual intellection that is declarative or fully investigated. Scotus
rejects this: for him any knowledge or actual intellection begotten from the
181 I Ord., d. 27, nn. 62, 66: “Sed restat dubitatio ulterior, utrum quaecumque intellec-
tio actualis sit verbum. Ad hoc dicitur quod non, sed oportet addere—quasi differentiam
specificam—‘quae est declarativa’ .... Aliter dicitur quantum ad istum articulum quod ver-
bum est notitia actualis ‘quae est terminus inquisitionis’.” VI, p. 8813–17, p. 899–10.
182 See Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 95–96.
408 chapter six
memory is a word, and neither declarative nor fully investigated are neces-
sary to make an actual intellection a word.183
One problem that Scotus—and later Peter Auriol—has with Henry’s con-
cept theory is his contention that the reflexive “conversion” of the intellect
is essential to the intellect’s forming a word: according to Scotus, this reflex-
ive act produces nothing and serves no purpose. We can surmise that for
Scotus reflexive acts are responsible for forming certain types of words, but
concepts can certainly be formed without reflexivity.184 Yet the major part
of Scotus’ rejection of Henry’s ideas on the word has its foundation in two
interrelated problems that Scotus sees with Henry’s account. First, although
he is not quite explicit about this,185 Scotus seems to think that Henry has
deviated far too much from Augustine’s own criteria for a word: Augustine
had claimed that the word was “scientia de scientia, visio de visione”, Henry
had changed this in a significant way to “notitia de notitia, declarativa de
simplici”.186 To put this in another way, Scotus appears to have thought that
Henry had made the word too different from the knowledge contained in
the memory because he had too closely tied together the investigation of or
inquisition into the knowledge contained in the memory with the intellec-
tual act of forming a word. For Henry, investigation of the object of intellec-
tion was very tightly linked to the formation of a word, and this suggested
183 I Ord., d. 27, nn. 72–73: “Quaelibet autem notitia genita—quam Augustinus vocat
prolem—est verbum, non tamen eo modo quo Augustinus ponit verbum perfectum, quod
scilicet repraesentet verbum divinum. Primum istorum declaro, quia quaelibet intellectio
actualis gignitur de memoria, imperfecta de imperfecta sicut perfecta de perfecta, ergo
quaelibet notitia est proles et expressiva parentis, et genita ad exprimendum parentem.” VI,
p. 9110–17.
184 I Ord., d. 2, pars 2, qq. 1–4, nn. 287–289: “… intellectus Patris habens obiectum sibi
praesens est naturale principium, non solum operativum respectu intellectionis Patris,
sed etiam productivum respectu notitiae genitae; adhuc ergo circumscripta illa reflexione
esset principium productivum .... si per conversionem nihil intelligitur esse in intellectu
quod non intelligeretur ibi esse non intellecta conversione, ergo conversio nihil est ibi;
si aliquid intelligitur esse in intellectu quod sine ipsa non intelligeretur, quaero, quid?
Non praesentia obiecti, non perfectio potentiae, non tandem determinatio potentiae ad
actum vel exercitium actus .... Item, conversio ista non est actio quae est operatio, quia non
intellectio nec volitio, nec est actio productiva cuius.” II, pp. 2981–2999. Auriol’s criticism
of Henry’s use of a reflexive act in concept formation is found in his Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2,
a. 1: “Tertio quoque in eo quod dicit verbum gigni per conversionem intellectus negotiantis
atque venantis, haec enim non habent locum in Deo, sed nec etiam in nobis, quia talis
conversio actus reflexus est, et per consequens non habet gignere verbum magis quam
aliae intellectiones directae quae sunt perfectiores.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 349–352 (on the
Electronic Scriptum, see Ch. 9, below, n. 1); ed. 1596, p. 622aA–B.
185 See, however, n. 183 above.
186 See for the phrase, Ch. 4, above, at n. 106, and further at and around nn. 105–108.
to Scotus that Henry thought that the word was not merely the knowledge
generated, but the knowledge investigated. But according to Augustine, the
only difference between a word and the knowledge from which it is begot-
ten is precisely that the word is begotten; certainly inquisition is involved
in some way in arriving at a perfect word, but the inquisition and the word
formation are two separate processes, because the word must perfectly mir-
ror the knowledge contained in the memory. In short: Scotus thought that
Henry had not sufficiently divorced inquisition from concept formation per
se.
Henry’s tight link between word formation and investigation is also at the
heart of the second problem that Scotus has with Henry’s theory of concept
formation, and this problem Scotus is quite explicit about. By making inqui-
sition into such an important part of word formation, and thereby making
‘declarative’ part of the definition of a word, Henry had made the divine
Word something very different from a created word.187 In fact, as we have
seen, Henry had to make an exception for God in his philosophical psychol-
ogy: the first knowledge of simple, essential understanding in God was not
confused, and the divine Word was not declarative. All knowledge in God
must be perfect, and this entails that the Word can be no more declarative
than the simple knowledge from which it comes; relatedly, the mental com-
position and division necessarily involved in the investigation of knowledge
is not to be found in God. Scotus’ question for Henry, then, is: in what way
is the divine Word a word at all, since essential features of words are impos-
sible to accommodate to the divine? Making ‘after inquisition’ and ‘declar-
ative’ a part of the definition of a word has the effect of setting the divine
Word outside of the class of things that are words. Thus, Scotus thought that
Henry’s own definition and description of a word undermined his strong use
of the psychological model in trinitarian theology; further it did not meet
Augustine’s own description of a word.
In response to Henry’s theory, Scotus insists that ‘declarative’ and ‘after
inquisition’ are not essential characteristics of a word at all. It is only on
account of our imperfect intellects that inquisition is necessary; God’s intel-
lect has no need for it. As a corollary, Scotus draws a sharp distinction
187 Scotus, I Ord., d. 27, n. 70: “Contra istud arguo sic: si de ratione verbi sit ‘gigni inquisitive’,
ergo Deus non habet Verbum.” VI, p. 9012–13. For Henry, see Ch. 4, above, at and around
nn. 123–124. William of Ware offers a similar, although not nearly as well developed, critique
of a view like Henry’s in Ware’s I Sent., d. 27, q. 3, e.g. “… verbum, quod est simillimum Verbo
divino, non est ut producitur per inquisitionem, sed debet esse ex perfecta scientia quae est
in memoria.” Ed. Schmaus 1930a, p. 255*26–29 (see also ibid., p. 257*17–30).
410 chapter six
between the process of inquisition and the process of forming or begetting

a word: inquisition is no more than a type of prerequisite (quasi praevia)
to concept formation.188 Thus, Scotus takes inquisition “out of the loop” of
concept formation proper, maintaining instead that not all words are per-
fect expressions of the quod quid est of the objects grasped by them: our
intellect must move gradually from confused knowledge of the object to
more and more distinct knowledge.189 For Scotus, then, in the process of
going from an imperfect, uninvestigated word to a perfectly investigated
word, a series of words are formed, each accurately reflecting the habit-
ual knowledge in the memory from which that particular word came. Sco-
tus even gives us a relatively detailed picture of how this works: there is
a dynamic interplay between habitual knowledge in the memory (i.e., the
intelligible species), inquisition by the method of division, and the genera-
tion of actual intellection.190 Thus, starting from confused habitual knowl-
edge, we have confused actual intellection; after inquisition, less confused
knowledge is impressed into the memory as habitual knowledge (i.e., a
new intelligible species is formed), from which an equally less confused
actual intellection can be begotten. This process continues until distinct
habitual knowledge is deposited in the memory, which is at this point
called ‘perfect memory’, and then a perfect word—most resembling the
divine Word—can be begotten. Inquisition is no longer necessary at this
point.191
188 I Ord., d. 27, n. 77: “Non ergo est de ratione verbi gigni post inquisitionem, sed nec-
essarium est intellectui imperfecto—qui non statim potest habere notitiam definitivam
obiecti—habere notitiam talem post inquisitionem; et ideo verbum perfectum non est in
nobis sine inquisitione. Et tamen quando verbum perfectum sequitur talem inquisitionem,
illa inquisitio non est generatio ipsius verbi formaliter, sed quasi praevia ad hoc ut generetur
verbum .... ista iactatio (id est inquisitio) non est gignitio verbi formaliter, sed eam sequitur
gignitio verbi de eo quod scimus, id est de obiecto in memoria habitualiter cognito.” VI,
p. 937–19.
189 I Ord., d. 27, n. 74: “… intellectus noster non statim habet notitiam perfectam obiecti
… et ideo primo, ordine originis, imprimitur nobis notitia obiecti confusa, prius quam
distincta,—et ideo est inquisitio necessaria ad hoc ut intellectus noster veniat ad distinctam
notitiam; et ideo est necessaria inquisitio praevia verbo perfecto, quia non est verbum
perfectum nisi sit notitia actualis perfecta.” VI, p. 927–14.
190 I Ord., d. 27, n. 75: “Sic ergo intelligendum est quod cognito aliquo obiecto confuse,
sequitur inquisitio—per viam divisionis—differentiarum convenientium illi; et inventis

omnibus illis differentiis, cognitio definitiva illius obiecti est actualis notitia perfecta et
perfecte declarativa illius habitualis notitiae quae primo erat in memoria; et ista definitiva
notitia, perfecte declarativa, est perfectum verbum.” VI, p. 9215–20.
191 I Ord., d. 27, n. 78: “… primo est habitualis notitia confusa, secundo actualis intellectio
confusa, tertio inquisitio (et in inquisitione multa verba de multis notitiis habitualibus virtu
In this process of generating the perfect word the will is involved in two
ways, according to Scotus. First, as we have already seen, the will is involved
in the bringing to second act the disposition to actual intellection contained
in the perfected memory. The will commands this act to occur, and relatedly
(Scotus lumps these together) it commands the inquisition that is the means
of arriving at incrementally more perfect words.192 The will, then, according
to Scotus is the reason why we are able to have different concepts of the
same object; if concept formation were not under our control this would
never be able to happen.193 Thus, Scotus claims on a number of occasions
that what is of the essence in forming different concepts of the same object
is attention: we understand (or see) more when we concentrate more on
something.194 This “concentrating more”—which we can take to be part of
the inquisition process in forming successively more perfect concepts—
is under the control of the will. There is a second way in which the will
is involved in the formation of a concept: it induces the intellect to “rest”
in the perfect word. As with Henry, for Scotus, the perfect word, formed
when we have entirely investigated the object cognized, is knowledge in
which the will can rest and be satisfied. But with that said, Scotus maintains
that the will is not essential to the word, although in human beings the
will necessarily cooperates in the formation of a word in the two ways just
aliter contentis in memoria), quam inquisitionem sequitur distincta et actualis notitia primi
obiecti cuius cognitio inquiritur,—quae notitia actualis distincta imprimit habitualem per-
fectam in memoriam, et tunc primo est perfecta memoria, et assimilatur memoriae in Patre;
ultimo, ex memoria perfecta gignitur verbum perfectum, sine inquisitione mediante inter
ipsam et verbum,—et ista gignitio assimilatur gignitioni Verbi divini perfecti, ex memoria
paterna perfecta. Nullum ergo verbum est perfectum, repraesentans Verbum divinum (quod
potissime investigat Augustinus), nisi istud quod gignitur de memoria perfecta sine inquisi-
tione media inter talem memoriam et tale verbum, licet nec illa memoria possit haberi in
nobis—propter imperfectionem intellectus nostri—nisi praecedat inquisitio.” VI, p. 945–20.
Scotus’ use of “perfect memory” (memoria perfecta, i.e. memory ready to form a perfect word)
here and “perfected memoria” (memoria perfecta) to describe the memory infused with the
intelligible species and hence in first act with respect to the formation of a word (see, e.g.,
nn. 149–150 above) are apparently different, and, to the extent that he uses the same termi-
nology for each, unfortunate. I translate the term differently to try to make somewhat clearer
the different uses Scotus is putting it to.
192 See n. 195 below.
193 I Ord. d. 6, q. un., n. 19: “… si gignitio nostra esset mere naturalis, nullo modo esset
in potestate voluntatis, et ita semper haberemus idem verbum de eodem obiecto, fortius
movente intellectum.” IV, p. 977–10.
194 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 1, n. 467: “… tam in sensu quam in intellectu, posito eodem reprae-
sentante, maior attentio facit actum perfectiorem. Idem enim habens eandem speciem intel-
ligibilem vel phantasma, perfectius intelligit illud ad cuius intellectionem magis conatur, et
minus, quando minus.” III, p. 2813–7.
412 chapter six
mentioned. Scotus believes that passages from Augustine indicate that the
action of the will cannot be essential to the formation of a concept, no
matter how tightly linked the two are.195
Scotus’ main concern in all this appears to be safeguarding that the word
is perfectly identical with the knowledge in the memory from which the
word comes: there is knowledge in the memory, and when a word is formed
on the basis of that knowledge, this word is then in every way the same as the
knowledge in the memory except insofar as it has been formed. The process
of inquisition and of coming to progressively more perfect words is not
directly a part of this formation, as it had appeared to be in Henry of Ghent’s
theory. Thus, Henry’s one-step process in coming to a perfect word, and with
it his inclusion of ‘after inquisition’ and ‘declarative’ as essential elements of
all words, has been replaced by Scotus with a multi-step process in which
the word always resembles the knowledge from which it comes. For Scotus,
knowledge is not, as it was for Henry, only at two settings, confused and
declarative; rather, knowledge is multiplex: from confused knowledge in the
memory comes a confused word and from perfect knowledge in the memory
comes a perfect word, i.e. one most resembling the absolutely perfect divine
Word generated by the paternal intellect.
Thus, on this point we see the strong interaction between philosophical
psychology and trinitarian theology in Scotus’ thought: he accommodates
each to the exigencies of the other, using Henry of Ghent’s (in his opinion)
deficient ideas as a springboard. This accommodation of philosophical ele-
ments to theological demands, and vice-versa, is visible in Scotus’ dismissal
of another idea that Henry had maintained: Scotus denies that the Father’s
notional act of saying the divine Word is founded on the essential act of
understanding that is common to all three persons.196
Scotus’ denial of this important part of Henry’s own incorporation of
philosophical psychology into trinitarian theology takes its starting point
195 I Ord., d. 27, n. 81: “Tamen concomitatur perfectum verbum duplex actus voluntatis:
unus praevius, quo imperatur actus ille et inquisitio praevia, sine quo non perveniretur ad
verbum perfectum … et alius quo intellectus quiescit in intelligibilia notitia iam habita, sine
quo non permaneret intellectus in illa notitia. Non ergo actus voluntatis est de essentia
verbi, nec formaliter nec ut causa, sed concomitatur necessario ad generationem eius in
nobis propter inquisitionem eius praeviam et ad continuationem eius; similiter propter hoc
quod intellectus—si voluntas non complaceret in ista notitia—non permaneret in ea, et ita
ista notitia non haberet rationem verbi permanentis.” VI, pp. 9515–968. For Scotus’ appeal
to Augustine on the will’s non-essential role in concept formation, see ibid., nn. 79–81 (VI,
pp. 94–96).
196 For Henry’s view, see Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 114–117.
in Scotus’ claim that the memory in the Father is to him both the source of
his understanding and, as we have already seen, the source of his saying the
Word.197 As we saw above,198 just as our intellects are potentially productive
of an actual intellection when they are infused with an intelligible species
as object, so the Father’s perfected memory—his intellect with the divine
essence present to it as the intelligible object—is an integral source in first
act, i.e. disposed to forming or begetting the divine Word. Begetting the
divine Word is one of two acts that the Father’s intellect has, the other
being the act by which the Father himself understands, i.e. the Father’s
act of understanding the divine essence. Now, Scotus insists that neither
of these two acts is the cause or source of the other. Both the Father’s
act of understanding the divine essence and the notional act of saying
the Word are produced from the Father’s memory as a source, the former
act more immediately than the latter. That is to say, although there is no
causal dependency between these two acts (the memory is the source of
both), nevertheless they are essentially ordered because the intellection
takes place “before” the act of saying.199 The reason for this is that the
production of the divine Word—as is true for our word as well—takes place
with will, and any act of the will requires as a precondition intellection:
intellection is precondition for willing, which in turn is precondition for
saying the Word. Thus, Scotus gives an account of the generation of the
Word that relies on “signs of nature”, his logical, non-temporal measure
of priority: in the first sign the Father understands and hence can will; in
the second sign the Father generates the Son.200 The Father’s will must be
197 I Ord., d. 2, pars 2, q. 1–4, n. 311: “… memoria in Patre est principium operativum Patris,
quo scilicet ut actu primo Pater formaliter intelligit ut in actu secundo; est etiam eadem
memoria Patri principium productivum, quo Pater existens in actu primo producit ut in actu
secundo notitiam genitam. Non fundatur igitur actus productivus super actum essentialem
…” II, p. 3145–10.
198 See nn. 149–150 above.
199 I Ord., d. 2, pars 2, q. 1–4, n. 312: “Ad eundem actum primum, qui est memoria Patris,
ordinem quemdam intelliguntur habere intelligere (quod est operatio Patris) et dicere (quod
est producere Patris respectu notitiae genitae); non talem ordinem quod intelligere Patris
sit causa vel principium elicitivum dicere Verbi, sed quod immediatius intelligere sit quasi
productum a memoria Patris quam dicere vel Verbum sit productum ab eadem.” II, p. 3157–14.
200 I Ord., d. 6, q. 1, n. 15: “… hoc modo Pater gignit volens: quia in primo signo originis
Pater intelligit formaliter, et tunc etiam potest habere actum volendi formaliter; in secundo
signo originis gignit Filium, nec tamen vult illam gignitionem volitione sequente illam gig-
nitionem, sed volitione habita in primo signo originis, qua Pater formaliter vult, praesuppo-
nendo iam aliquo modo intellectionem qua Pater intelligit, non autem gignitionem Verbi.”
IV, p. 953–9. On signs or instants of nature (signum vel instans naturae), see Ch. 1, above, n. 49.
414 chapter six
“complacent” (complacens)—satisfied or well-pleased with—the saying of

the Word, although the will has no genuine causality in the divine act of
saying.201
One point that should also be brought out about the position just de-
scribed is that it is the Father’s memory that is the source of his understand-
ing. Although Scotus does not, as far as I am aware, explicitly say that the
other two persons do not share this first act, nevertheless it would make
sense: the other two persons are posterior in terms of “signs of origin” to the
Father’s intellection, and the Word cannot share in his own generation. In
fact, Scotus does make quite clear that the Father receives nothing from nor
depends in any way on any of the other persons. The Father has a double
fecundity on his own account (a se, ex se): he suffices both to say the Word
and to spirate the Holy Spirit.202 Thus, the perfected memory in the Father
(the Father’s intellect with the divine essence present to it) is a sufficient
source of saying the Word, while the Father’s will is a sufficient source of
spirating the Holy Spirit (again with the essence present to it as the loved
object).203 What is more, we have seen Scotus claim many times that the
relations are productions, that is acts, and he suggests that the features con-
stitutive of the persons are absolute origins. What we can infer from this,
then, is that the act of saying of the Father is the origin or production consti-
tutive of the Son, and the Son himself is the supposite, the essence begotten
by the unbegotten member of the Trinity.
John Duns Scotus left many aspects of his trinitarian use of philosophical
psychology unclear. To mention just two points brought up by Peter Auriol:
201 I Ord., d. 6, q. 1, n. 21: “… actus igitur dicendi praecedit omnem principiationem volun-
tatis. Potest tamen voluntas ut complacens—non ut principians—habere actum respectu

illius gignitionis, ex hoc quod voluntas, ut operans in Patre, non praesupponit gignitionem
sed tantum intellectionem illam qua Pater formaliter intelligit.” IV, p. 998–13.
202 I Ord., d. 3, pars 3, q. 4, n. 584: “… in Patre non solum est fecunditas ad generandum, sed
ad spirandum, et hoc a se; quia si Pater non haberet ex se fecunditatem ad spirandum, sed
haberet eam derelictive, ex productione Filii (sicut quidam dicunt), sequitur—ut videtur—
hoc impossibile: quod Pater numquam haberet illam fecunditatem. Nullam enim realitatem,
sive absolutam sive relativam, habet Pater aliquo modo per productionem, et ideo quam-
cumque realitatem non habet in primo signo originis—in quantum scilicet praeintelligitur
ordine originis Filio—illam numquam habet; ergo si fecunditatem illam duplicem non habet
in se in isto signo primo originis, numquam habebit illam.” III, pp. 34513–3469. See also I Ord.,
d. 2, pars 2, q. 1–4, n. 302 (II, pp. 30613–30713). This is, of course, parallel to Scotus’ view on the
will’s second role in human intellectual cognition, by which the will “complac[er]et in ista
notitia” and therefore remains or rests in it (permaneret in ea); on this, see above at n. 195.
203 See n. 151 above. Of course, although the Father’s will is a sufficient source for producing
the Holy Spirit, nevertheless de facto, as Scotus takes pains to make clear, Father and Son as
one simple spirator spirate the Holy Spirit; on this, see I Ord., d. 11, q. 1 (V, pp. 1–8).
if the Son is God’s actual intellection, then why does the Son not understand
more directly than the Father does? Further, how does God’s actual intellec-
tion resemble our own mental words, which, according to Scotus, are really
inhering accidents of the soul?204 With that said, however, Scotus’ has given
a highly personal interpretation of the incorporation of the psychological
model into the Trinity. I will note three things about it. First, it is in line with
the Franciscan trinitarian tradition, in which primity is the Father’s aptitude
for generating and spirating. In Scotus’ system, ‘primity’—a term, so far as
I can tell, never used by Scotus in this way—is represented by the Father’s
intellect and will, made fecund by the presence of the divine essence as their
object and disposed to the production of the Son and the Holy Spirit, respec-
tively. Second, Scotus makes philosophical psychology fit smoothly into his
own trinitarian theology, with its emphasis on production and origin, and
this is true regardless of whether Scotus in fact held the persons to be abso-
lute, constituted by absolute origin. Finally, the philosophical psychology
used is recognizably Scotus’ own. Like Henry of Ghent, Scotus did not use
a general or vague theory of concept formation to answer trinitarian ques-
tions, but gave recognizably his own philosophical psychology a large role
to play in his trinitarian theory.
4. Conclusion
In the preface to his Eucharistic Presence and Conversion in Late Thirteenth-

Century Franciscan Thought, David Burr bemoans studies in which “Aquinas
and Scotus are made to face one another across the decades like gunfight-
ers on a long, deserted western street, with no hint that the intervening
years were filled with continuous debate and development …” For the par-
ticular topic of the Eucharist, Burr says of the Subtle Doctor that “far from
reshaping the whole sorry scheme of things entire on the basis of a com-
pletely original appraisal of eucharistic theology, [Scotus] actually moved
within a definable tradition shaped by previous Franciscan scholars.”205
Mutatis mutandis, the same can be said for Scotus’ trinitarian theology
with respect to the Franciscan trinitarian tradition that included Henry of
Ghent. As we have seen, even Scotus’ most radical departure from the main-
stream medieval trinitarian tradition, his claim that the persons are abso-
lutes, was rooted deeply in his own Franciscan tradition. Many of his other
204 For Auriol’s criticism, see Ch. 9, below, at and around nn. 143–144.
205 See Burr 1984, v–vi, passim; for similar thoughts, see Kent 1995, 1–5.
416 chapter six
characteristic trinitarian positions—e.g., his characterization of essence as

form or quiddity, relation as personal act, and person as first substance or
individual supposite—were made in reaction to specific elements of Henry
of Ghent’s trinitarian thought, but clearly fit into the broad current of Fran-
ciscan trinitarian thought. Moreover, it would be difficult to understand, for
example, Scotus’ view that the emanations are based on the formally dis-
tinct intellect and will, unless one knew the Dominican critique of Henry of
Ghent’s view that the attributes are merely rationally distinct. In this way,
also the Dominican trinitarian tradition had a role to play in the creation
of Scotus’ trinitarian theology, if only through prompting him to reevalu-
ate the Franciscan heritage available to him. Scotus is, therefore, very much
a part of the later-medieval trinitarian discussion, and he has to be under-
stood in that way in order to do his thought justice. Nevertheless, with that
debt acknowledged, Scotus’ immense creativity and razor sharp intellect is
everywhere in evidence in his trinitarian theology, not least in the appar-
ently inexhaustible cascade of arguments and ideas he offers, in the unified
system that he shapes, and in the incisive critique of earlier views that he
presents.
Scotus, then, was profoundly influenced in a general way by the Francis-
can trinitarian tradition, and more specifically by Henry of Ghent. Although
Scotus criticizes nearly every aspect of both Henry’s psychological and
trinitarian theory, still Scotus’ trinitarian theology and concept theory can
hardly be understood without reference to Henry. Scotus thinks about the
properties as emanations, as productions. Not just any productions: produc-
tion by way of the intellect and production by way of the will. For Scotus, the
Son really is a Word generated from the paternal memory; the Holy Spirit is
Love emanated by way of the will. This strong use of the psychological model
is the major idea that Scotus took in a positive way from Henry of Ghent. In
turn many aspects of Scotus’ own trinitarian thought were the object of dis-
cussion in the years before Peter Auriol lectured on the Sentences at Paris.
chapter seven
DOMINICANS IN THE EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY
John Duns Scotus’ reformulation of the traditional Franciscan trinitarian

theology became a dominant factor in the period’s trinitarian debate nearly
as soon as Scotus committed it to writing. Although a group of primarily
Franciscan theologians also looked back to Henry of Ghent and to William
of Ware, Scotus’ ideas and formulations were often the point of departure
for their own contributions to the trinitarian debate at the beginning of the
fourteenth century. In the next chapter, I will sketch how a number of those
early-fourteenth-century theologians adopted Scotus’ views, and how they
modified them. In the present chapter, I look at the much more critical
reception of Franciscan trinitarian theology—including Scotus—among
members of the Dominican order working at Paris, as well as at debates
internal to the Dominican trinitarian tradition itself. The Dominicans of this
period, developing the views of Aquinas, were united in their acceptance of
the relation account as the sole explanation for the distinction of the per-
sons, and they all relegated the emanations to a secondary role. Thus, in the
first section of this chapter, by taking primarily Hervaeus Natalis (d. 1323)
as my guide, we will see how a Dominican could argue his case against
Franciscan emanation trinitarian theology, including the logical strategy
that he could employ when it came to positio impossibilis in the counterfac-
tual question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son if the former did
not come from the latter. But not only were there large areas of agreement
in the Dominican understanding of the Trinity, this era also saw fissures
appear within the Dominican intellectual tradition—specifically the rather
spectacular controversy between Durand of St. Pourçain (d. 1334) and the
Dominican order to which he belonged. In the second section of the chap-
ter, then, after a brief presentation of some important aspects of Durand’s
trinitarian theology, I will focus on one major trinitarian issue in this con-
troversy: Durand’s explicit claim that the Son is a Word only in an “appro-
priated” sense, along with some of the Dominican statements going against
Durand’s claim. This discussion of the status of the psychological model
is one example of Durand’s taking tendencies inherent in the Dominican
trinitarian view farther than his Dominican contemporaries were willing
to go. Thus, an examination of this episode is instructive for showing what
418 chapter seven
Dominicans in the first three decades of the fourteenth century took to be

the limits of trinitarian debate as well as for showing how various interpre-
tations of Aquinas could coexist simultaneously within the Dominican tra-
dition. In the final section of the chapter, I look briefly at an extremely inter-
esting document for isolating differences between Dominican and Fran-
ciscan trinitarian theologies: the Liber propugnatorius, which is a reply to
book I of Scotus’ Sentences commentary written from a Dominican per-
spective by an otherwise anonymous “Thomas of England”. Determining
the author and the doctrine of the Liber propugnatorius was, of course, an
explicit motivation behind Michael Schmaus’ mammoth examination of
later-medieval trinitarian theology (Schmaus 1930a), and consequently the
Liber propugnatorius has been at the center of the study of medieval trini-
tarian thought for the better part of a century.
I will be focusing primarily on Hervaeus Natalis, Durand of St. Pourçain,
and the Liber propugnatorius, with short remarks on John of Naples, in
order to give an idea of some of the issues that occupied Dominicans in
this period. It is not, therefore, my aim to offer an exhaustive account
of Dominican trinitarian theology in the early fourteenth century: many
aspects of the Dominican discussion are ignored here and, moreover, I
am highly selective as to the evidence that I present for my assertions
about the Dominican tradition in the period. Thus, right at the outset,
the limitations of the material presented here should be acknowledged,
along with an explanation of those limitations. Although the focus of the
present book dictates in large part my selectivity with respect to the issues
that I investigate, nevertheless the major constraint on any study of early
fourteenth-century Dominican thought is the overwhelming amount of
material that is at our disposal for such a study, and the fact that the largest
part of this material remains in manuscript or, at best, early printed editions.
Let me make this clearer through the following list of works written by
Dominicans in this period and touching in one way or another on trinitarian
issues, first mentioning works that exist today in critical edition, then works
that are available only in early printed editions, and finally those remaining
exclusively in manuscript.1
1 The editions (both critical and early printed) mentioned here are listed in the bibliog-
raphy. Unless otherwise noted, on Dominican works from this period see Schabel, Friedman,
and Balcoyiannopoulou 2001; on the Sent. commentaries (and Sent. commentary-like works)
in particular, see Friedman 2002a; on Quodlibeta and Quodlibeta-related works, see Friedman
2007a; and see the literature referred to in those three articles. For Dominicans in England
in the 1320’s and 1330’s, see Ch. 11, below (esp. §§ 3–4 and the Annex).
dominicans in the early fourteenth century 419
Works in Critical Editions (not including editions of scattered questions in academic

articles):
Remigio dei Girolami (d. 1319), I–II Quodlibeta. Remigio disputed these two Quodli-
beta in Italy sometime in the years 1303–1307. He discusses the counterfactual
question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son in Quodl. I, q. 2.
John Quidort of Paris (d. 1306), Quodlibet. Quidort was the French Dominican
master of theology in 1304 until his death early in 1306, and in this period he
produced his single Quodlibet; this is not a large work, but does contain a small
amount of material on the Trinity.
Durand of St. Pourçain (d. 1334), Quolibeta Avenionensia. I look more closely at
Durand’s career and troubles with his order below (§2), but during the period
1313–1317, he was in Avignon teaching at the Papal School. Here he held three
quodlibetal disputations, which Prospero Stella edited in 1965 along with Her-
vaeus Natalis’ critical response to Durand’s Quodlibet I. The Quodlibeta and Her-
vaeus’ response contain trinitarian material, especially on the trinitarian rela-
tions.2
John of Sterngassen, I–IV Sentences. We know next to nothing about John of
Sterngassen, but W. Senner, the recent editor of John’s Sentences commentary,
believes that John read the Sentences outside of Paris no earlier than 1307 and no
later than 1323.
Meister Eckhart (d. 1328), Expositio sancti Evangelii secundum Iohannem, especially
the beginning of Eckhart’s commentary on John contains a great deal of trinitar-
ian speculation.
Thomas of Sutton (d. after 1315), Contra Quodlibetum Scoti, Quaestiones Ordinar-
iae. Sutton took it upon himself to respond to John Duns Scotus’ Quodlibet in
an extensive rebuttal from a Thomistic standpoint; since Scotus deals with trini-
tarian theology in his Quodlibet, Sutton does so as well. In his Quaestiones Ordi-
nariae, Sutton also responded to Scotus’ work; q. 8 deals with the counterfactual
question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son.3
Durandellus (Nicholas Medensis), Evidentiae contra Durandum. An extensive reply
to the Sentences commentary of Durand (first and second versions) written by
a Dominican Thomist around 1325–1326, this work has recently been edited and
includes a wealth of material for the study of Dominican reception of Durand’s
trinitarian theology and more generally the state of Dominican theology and
philosophy in the early fourteenth century. See Emery (Gilles) 1997 for a pre-
sentation of the trinitarian theory found in the Evidentiae.
Works Exclusively in Early Printed Editions

Hervaeus Natalis (d. 1323), I–IV Sentences, Quodlibeta, Separate Treatises. Hervaeus
read the Sentences at Paris probably in 1302–1303, and was Regent Master in the
French Dominican chair 1307–1309 and perhaps again 1316–1318. He has left us a
2 Durand also held two Parisian quodlibetal disputations prior to his Avignon period; see
on this, Friedman 2007a, 449–451.

3 In addition to these works, Sutton authored four Quodlibeta (ed. Schmaus and Haba)
from the 1290’s.

420 chapter seven
Sentences commentary printed several times in the early modern period, and
the Paris 1647 edition was reprinted in 1966 (see most recently on the Sentences
commentary and its manuscript transmission, Olszewski 2010);4 in 1513 in Venice
a volume appeared containing 11 series of quodlibetal questions attributed to
Hervaeus (one falsely attributed) as well as eight separate treatises—this volume
was likewise reprinted in 1966. Trinitarian material is found in I Sentences, in the
Quodlibeta, and in several of the separate treatises.
Durand of St. Pourçain, I–IV Sentences (C). This, the third version of Durand’s
Sentences commentary, written between roughly 1317 and 1327, was enormously
popular in the later Middle Ages and early modern period (ca. 40 manuscripts,
ca. 15 early printings). The Venice 1571 edition was reprinted in 1966 and the first
book contains much on trinitarian theology.
John of Naples (d. 1336), Quaestiones Disputatae. John was an important participant
in the early Dominican reply to Durand of St. Pourçain’s theology and philos-
ophy, having sat on the Dominican committees examining Durand’s work for
errors of various kinds. John’s disputed questions were published in Naples in
1618 and reprinted in 1966, and they contain quite a bit of material directly rel-
evant to the study of early fourteenth-century trinitarian theology, including a
question on the Filioque, reprinted by Schmaus (1930a, pp. 128*–142*). Schneider
(1972) studies the trinitarian theology found in the Quaestiones disputatae (and
Quodlibeta, on which see below).
“Thomas Anglicus”, Liber Propugnatorius. Written by a certain “Thomas of Eng-
land”, the Liber propugnatorius, printed in Venice in 1523 (reprint 1966), is a
frontal assault from a roughly Dominican standpoint (we cannot be absolutely
certain that the author actually was a Dominican) on John Duns Scotus’ I Sen-
tences, and hence sets in sharp relief the differences between Dominican and
Franciscan trinitarian theology. The Liber propugnatorius will be examined for
its trinitarian theology in §3 below.
Unedited Works
William Peter of Godino (d. 1336), Lectura Thomasina. Probably released at the turn
of the thirteenth century when William was in Paris as bachelor of the Sentences
(1299–1300) and then regent master (1304–1306). This work presents, on the
issues on which it has been examined to date, a short and easily digested version
of Thomas Aquinas’ theology and philosophy; William sometimes reflects later
developments or offers his own ideas on issues.
James of Metz, I–IV Sentences. There are two main versions of a large Sentences
commentary with twelve manuscripts and a very complex transmission (see,
most recently, Olszewski 2010). The two main versions probably can be traced
back to two different lecture series on the Sentences, both of which took place
shortly after the year 1300 and probably in quick succession. On several issues
James clearly influenced Durand of St. Pourçain, and James’ work was directly
4 The 1647 edition is riddled with minor typos, which I silently correct in the text
reproduced throughout this chapter, noting only when I make genuine emendations to the
1647 text.
criticized by Hervaeus Natalis, whose Correctorium of James’ commentary con-

tains trinitarian material. James’ trinitarian theology and its relation to that of
Dominicans contemporary with James is a major focus of Decker 1967.
Nicholas Trivet (d. after 1334), Quodlibeta I–V, XI. Born sometime around 1260,
Nicholas had two stints as Dominican regent master in theology at Oxford: once
around 1300 and again in and around 1314, when he participated in the con-
demnation of eight articles taught at Oxford and pertaining in large measure
to trinitarian theology (see on the condemnation, Ch. 10, below, at and around
nn. 4–5). Nicholas was a versatile author whose writing skills were in high repute.
Schmaus (1930a, pp. 117*–127*) edited three questions from the Quodlibeta per-
taining to trinitarian theology.
Hervaeus Natalis, De divinis personis et De processione Spiritus Sancti. This is, in fact,
one work of seven questions found in five manuscripts (with various combi-
nations of questions in each ms). The questions stem from Hervaeus’ years as
formed bachelor (ca. 1305–1308) and were written as a reply to Henry of Ghent’s
trinitarian theology; they are thus parallel to Hervaeus’ work De quatuor materiis
contra Henricum de Gandavo. They contain some extremely clear statements of
the difference between Hervaeus’ generally Thomistic views and views of Henry
of Ghent that lay at the heart of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition. An edition
is underway by Isabel Iribarren and myself (see also n. 41 below).
Bernard of Auvergne (d. after 1307), Reprobationes Quodlibeta I–XV Henrici de Gan-
davo, Reprobationes Quodlibeta III–XIII Godofridi de Fontibus, and Reprobationes
Quodlibeta I–II Jacobi de Viterbio. It is most likely that these works were written
sometime between 1298 and 1315, although because their purpose is to answer
Henry’s, Godfrey’s, and James’ quodlibetal production (sometimes question by
question), they are more a statement on thirteenth-century theology than on
fourteenth. For an analysis of two of Bernard’s questions in response to Henry of
Ghent’s trinitarian theology, see Ch. 5, §1, above.
Durand of St. Pourçain, I, II, IV Sentences (A). This is the first version of Durand’s
Sentences commentary. It was composed between 1304 and 1308, and the first
evidence of reaction to it is in Hervaeus Natalis’ Quodlibet II (1308). Durand
sets down here what would remain the guiding principles of his theological and
philosophical system (including trinitarian theology), although in his later works
they would be adjusted to a greater or lesser degree on the basis of contemporary
critique. A project to critically edit the entire work is underway at the Thomas
Institute of the University of Cologne. (Of Durand’s Sentences (B) we only know
of manuscripts of books II–IV).
Peter of Palude (d. 1342), I–IV Sentences. Palude’s Sentences commentary is a gigan-
tic work, and is important not least because in many places it has large verba-
tim quotations from Durand’s early Sentences commentary, as well as thorough
attempts at refutation of Durand’s views. Palude composed his Sentences com-
mentary in the period 1310–1315. Books III and IV were published several times
in the early modern period, but books I and II, and hence much of what pertains
to trinitarian theology, remain in manuscript only (four manuscripts for I Sent.).
James of Lausanne (d. 1322), Sentences. James read the Sentences at Paris, probably
in 1314–1315. His commentary exists in a literal version (I–IV Sentences) and in a
quaestio format (I–II, IV). The latter, although allowing James more freedom to
422 chapter seven
develop his own views, nevertheless, on the points on which it has been studied,
appears derivative of Durand and of Peter of Palude.
Francis Caracciolo, Quodlibeta V–VI. Derived from disputations held in Paris ca.
1315–1316 by Francis, the chancellor of the University, who seems to have become
a Dominican just prior to his death.
John of Naples, Quodlibeta I–XIII. An enormous set of Quodlibeta, nearly all of
which remain unedited (in two main manuscripts). Quodlibeta VI and VII almost
undoubtedly stem from John’s Parisian regency in 1315–1317, which means that
Quodlibeta I–V were pre-magisterial and likely held at Dominican provincial
studia, and that Quodlibeta VIII–XIII were also held outside of Paris (probably
in Naples); several of the questions in the later Quodlibeta were actually written
upon request from political and ecclesiastical leaders and incorporated into
the Quodlibeta. The work contains a good deal of trinitarian material (see esp.
Schneider 1972).
Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”. A prominent Thomist throughout a thirty-year
period at Oxford, Sutton wrote this critique of Robert Cowton’s I–III Sentences
(along with a critique of John Duns Scotus’ IV Sentences) probably just after
1310. Sutton here works his way through Cowton’s text and takes up issues that
often reflect the divergent views of the Dominican and Franciscan intellectual
traditions (and hence Sutton’s critique is valuable in the same general way as are
Hervaeus Natalis’ responses to Henry of Ghent or as is the Liber propugnatorius).
Along with Cowton’s own Sentences commentary, Sutton’s “Cowton Critique” is
examined in more detail below, in Ch. 8, §2B.
Raymond Bequini (d. 1328), Quodlibet I (11 qq.), Quodlibet II (1 q.), Correctorium
Scripti Aureoli (14 qq.). Bequini read the Sentences at Paris probably in 1317–1319,
and he was regent there shortly thereafter. This undoubtedly explains his major
preoccupation with the ideas of Peter Auriol, who read the Sentences at Paris in
1316–1318 and was regent there for several years thereafter. See on Bequini also
Ch. 12, n. 141, below.
Henry of Lübeck (d. after 1336), Quodlibeta I–III. Descended from disputations that
took place in Cologne probably around 1320. Three manuscripts (one of which
now exists only on microfilm) contain the Quodlibeta. Quite a bit of material
on trinitarian theology is found here. A critical edition is underway under the
direction of Loris Sturlese at the University of Lecce (see Henricus de Lübeck,
Quodlibet primum [ed. Perrone]).
Bernard Lombardi, I–IV Sentences,5 Quodlibet. Bernard read the Sentences at Paris
in 1327–1328, and both his Sentences commentary and his Quodlibet must have
been committed to writing shortly thereafter. Both show the influence of Durand
(and, interestingly enough, of Peter Auriol).
Anonymous, Mazarine 880, I, II, IV Sentences.6
5 On Bernard’s Sent. commentary, see Schabel 2002a, 254–255. A question list (for books
I–III) is found in Porebski 1973 (but cf. Schabel, loc. cit., for remarks on Porebski’s article).
See Ch. 12, below, at and around nn. 5–6, for some of Bernard’s positions.
6 On this ms. and the Sent. commentary contained there, see Glorieux 1980. For a
question list of books I and II, see Noyon 1914–1919, 470–476. As Glorieux notes, part of the
Anonymous, BAV lat. 1114, I–II Sentences.7

Anonymous, Brugge 491, I–IV Sentences (ff. 259–315, I Sent. = ff. 259–299).8
Gaining an overview of this material, especially when a large proportion
of it remains in manuscript, is an insurmountable task. In fact, one major
reason that I venture to discuss the Dominicans of this period at all is that
there exist four wide-ranging and thorough studies that focus on trinitarian
themes: Michael Schmaus’ Der “Liber Propugnatorius” (Schmaus 1930a),
Bruno Decker’s Die Gotteslehre des Jakob von Metz (Decker 1967), Richard
Schneider’s Die Trinitätslehre … des Johannes von Neapel (Schneider 1972),
and, most recently, Isabel Iribarren’s Durandus of St Pourçain (Iribarren
2005).9 Schmaus deals with many of the Dominican works mentioned above
on a variety of issues in his monumental book on thirteenth- and four-
teenth-century trinitarian theory; Decker’s book is dedicated to Dominican
theology in the decades to either side of the year 1300, and roughly half
of his book (pp. 285–581) is devoted to trinitarian theology; Schneider’s
study is focused on a single figure, and looks in detail at the extent and
nature of John of Naples’ Thomism; finally, Iribarren’s book traces through
many of their works the debate between Durand and Hervaeus Natalis on
the issues of relation, the processions, and the divine persons, shedding
light on the Dominican censure of aspects of Durand’s trinitarian thought.
As well as offering historical and theological analysis, all four of these
studies present—often in footnotes—a great deal of otherwise unedited
supporting text, which I cite at times in the chapter below.
1. Hervaeus Natalis against Franciscan Trinitarian Theology
Dominican trinitarian theology in the first thirty years of the fourteenth cen-
tury is in large measure a story of the development of Aquinas’ trinitarian
work is also found in two other manuscripts: Paris, BnF lat. 15370 (contains I, II, IV, but with
lacunae) and Cracow, Bibl. Jagell. 1276, ff. 111–113 (I, q. 1). Glorieux believes the anonymous
Dominican author of the commentary to be John of Parma, who read the Sent. at Paris
ca. 1308–1309 and was Dominican regent master (foreign chair) in ca. 1313–1315.
7 See Decker 1967, 46–49, who discusses the possibility that this commentary should
be attributed to John of Lichtenberg (d. after 1313); Decker describes the commentary as
“nur ein sehr bescheidenes Exzerpt aus Thomas”, but does say that it sometimes reveals the
divergence between Thomas’ position in his Sent. commentary and in the Sum. theol.
8 On this Sent. commentary, see Decker 1967, 49–72 as well as Pickavé 2005 and the
literature referred to there.

9 To these works should be added the following more focused studies: Philippe 1947,
Gelber 1974, Emery (Gilles) 1997.

424 chapter seven
theology and of the confrontation with the Franciscan trinitarian tradition

(and especially the thought of Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus). On
many issues, these two tendencies reinforced each other to such an extent
that there really is a genuine Dominican trinitarian theology that agrees on
broad outlines if not always on the details. In this section, I will take Her-
vaeus Natalis as a case study of the way in which early fourteenth-century
Dominican theologians developed Thomas Aquinas’ views in response to
the Franciscan view of the Trinity. Hervaeus, of course, is no random choice:
head of the Dominican French province (1309–1318), Master-General of the
Dominican order (1318–1323), and a major force behind Aquinas’ 1323 can-
onization, Hervaeus was the central figure in the early fourteenth-century
Thomistic movement. From the time of his theological education at Paris in
the first decade of the fourteenth century and of his first theological regency
there (ca. 1307–1309), Hervaeus took his mission to be the defense and pro-
motion of the views of Thomas Aquinas. This is not to say that on all issues
Hervaeus maintained a perfectly “pure” Thomism (if there is such a thing),
merely to say that Hervaeus quite clearly thought that he was defending and
propagating Aquinas’ views. Thus, although some aspects of Scotus’ thought
are incorporated into Hervaeus’ trinitarian theology, as Hester Gelber (1974,
106–129) and Isabel Iribarren (2005, passim) have shown there were, never-
theless the contours of his trinitarian thought as a whole were descended
from Aquinas. To demonstrate this I will examine Hervaeus’ treatment of
two of the traditional flashpoints between the trinitarian traditions, both of
which are related to the psychological model and its proper understanding.
In these flashpoints, Hervaeus exhibits his differences with the Franciscan
trinitarian view on the topic in an especially clear way. The flashpoints have
to do with, on the one hand, the sources of and the distinction between
the emanations, and, on the other, the counterfactual question of the Holy
Spirit’s distinction from the Son if the former did not come from the latter.
In connection with my discussion of the second of these two flashpoints, I
will investigate Hervaeus’ logical strategy for dealing with the positio impos-
sibilis involved in it, i.e. the way that Hervaeus claims we can legitimately
ask this purely counterfactual question and respond to it in the negative (in
contrast to the Franciscan positive response).10
10 Hervaeus’ view of innascibility deserves mention here, since it is more open to ema-
national nuances than was Thomas Aquinas’ rather uncompromising view, while still being
deliberately distanced from the notion of primity and the possibility it raises of the Father’s
priority over the other two persons. For Hervaeus, see I Sent., d. 28, q. 1 (ed. 1647, esp. pp. 123–
124); and see Schmaus 1930a, 581–582 and Decker 1967, 515–517.
In Hervaeus’ trinitarian thought, the foundational view is the same as that

which lay behind Aquinas’ trinitarian theology, namely that opposition of
relations of origin are the sole explanation for the distinction between the
divine persons. Indeed, all the Dominican theologians from the period say
this outright—examples will be given below—and their other trinitarian
positions, for all the differences there might be between them, are manifes-
tations of this guiding principle in dealing with specific issues. In particular,
Hervaeus insists on numerous occasions that in God there is no distinction
without opposition of relations.11
The first issue to be examined here, and the one most relevant for coming
to grips with the general Dominican understanding of the psychological
model, is found in d. 10, q. 1, of Hervaeus’ Sentences commentary. Here
Hervaeus asks explicitly “whether the Holy Spirit proceeds by way of will”
(per modum voluntatis), and he deals at length with the sources of and
distinction between the emanations.12 He gives two initial arguments, both
working off of a distinction he will himself utilize in his own solution, the
distinction between what is natural and pertaining to nature, on the one
hand, and what is voluntary and pertaining to the will, on the other. Both
initial arguments give an uncompromising negative answer to the question
posed. Thus: does the Holy Spirit proceed by way of will? No, because if
that were the case, then there would be some choice and contingency
involved in the procession of the Holy Spirit, such that the Holy Spirit
might proceed, but might not. This argument is predicated upon the view
that “will is distinct from nature precisely because the former relates to
alternatives (ad opposita) while the latter relates to one alone.”13 Since the
11 For some of Hervaeus’ statements of this view, see I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (“… in divinis non
potest esse distinctio realis nisi per relationes oppositas”; ed. 1647, p. 81aC with proof offered
on p. 81bA–B); ibid., d. 27, q. 1 (“… sola oppositio relativa facit differre realiter in divinis”; ed.
1647, p. 121bA); ibid., d. 32, q. 1 (“… in divinis non habent inter se distinctionem realem nisi
illa quae habent oppositionem relativam …”; ed. 1647, p. 134bB). This view of Hervaeus’ is
treated in all of the secondary literature touching Dominican (and especially Hervaeus’ own)
trinitarian theology in the early fourteenth century. In his separate treatise De relationibus,
Hervaeus deals at length with many issues concerning the divine relations; at least some of
this treatise is written in response to Peter Auriol, as Nielsen (2007a) shows.
12 “Utrum Spiritus Sanctus procedat per modum voluntatis” (ed. 1647, pp. 67b–71a). On
aspects of the discussion touched on in this text, see also Decker 1967, 320–324, and Friedman
2007b. Iribarren 2005 traces the development of Hervaeus’ understanding of the processions
throughout his career, although Iribarren’s focus is different than mine.
13 Hervaeus Natalis, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… voluntas in hoc distinguitur a natura, quia est ad
opposita, natura vero ad unum solum. Tunc sequeretur quod producens Spiritum Sanctum
sit indifferens ad opposita et possit producere et non producere, et per consequens erit
contingens, quod est absurdum.” Ed. 1647, p. 67bC.
426 chapter seven
Holy Spirit’s procession is an expression of the absolutely necessary divine

nature, procession itself is absolutely necessary, and will and choice can
have nothing to do with it; hence, the Holy Spirit cannot be said to proceed
per modum voluntatis. What is interesting about these initial arguments,
besides the fact that Hervaeus will employ their line of reasoning in the
development of his own view, is that he rejects their categorically negative
conclusion. For Hervaeus, the Holy Spirit does indeed proceed by way of
will. But with that said, Hervaeus recognizes that “the entire difficulty of this
question lies in seeing how a person proceeds by way of will in the divine”.14
That is Hervaeus’ task: defining per modum voluntatis precisely enough so
that it is legitimate to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds in that manner.
Hervaeus goes about getting the precision he needs to adequately define
per modum voluntatis by confronting three positions that he will reject; two
of these positions I need to examine here.15 Both positions are broadly Fran-
ciscan in inspiration, reflecting an emanation-style trinitarian theology. The
first of the two, in its formulation by Hervaeus, appears to be a straw man,
but it allows him to deploy some noteworthy arguments that aim at the
heart of the Franciscan conception of the Trinity. The position is that “the
source of the Holy Spirit is the divine essence precisely as it is the will, such
that what the will, as (unde) will, communicates by its nature, the Holy Spirit
communicates, and nothing else.”16 In short: the will communicates to the
Holy Spirit what pertains to the divine will only, and it does not communi-
cate the entire divine essence. Henry of Ghent and those holding the Fran-
ciscan view of the Holy Spirit’s voluntary emanation would claim that the
divine will, as it exists in the Father and the Son, is the notional source of the
procession of the Holy Spirit, communicating to the third person the entire
divine essence. As far as I know, then, no medieval thinker would claim as
their own the position Hervaeus here describes. But with that said, the argu-
ments that Hervaeus offers against the position raise questions even about
14 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… tota difficultas istius quaestionis est in videndo quomodo
aliqua persona procedit per modum voluntatis in divinis.” Ed. 1647, p. 67bD.
15 The third position (Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1; ed. 1647, pp. 68aC–69aC), which is, in
fact, that of Henry of Ghent (in, among other places, his Summa, a. 60, q. 1 and a. 75, q. 3), is
less important for my purposes here, since it involves a lengthy metaphysical discussion of
Henry’s view of God’s essence being a type of “quasi-matter” (on which, see Ch. 4, above, at
and around nn. 12, 39). This position is also attacked by Hervaeus in his De divinis personis,
q. 5 (on this treatise, see also n. 41 below).
16 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… essentia divina est principium Spiritus Sancti ut est
praecise voluntas, ita quod illud quod voluntas unde voluntas nata est communicare, com-
municat Spiritus Sanctus et non aliud.” Ed. 1647, pp. 67bD–68aA.
the more standard Franciscan view, and this is one reason why versions
of the arguments Hervaeus gives are to be found in Dominican treatments
of the issue from Thomas Aquinas and well into the fourteenth century.17
Hervaeus presents one of his arguments like this:
… either the Holy Spirit has per se from his procession the other absolute
perfections or he does not. If he does, then it is just a fiction to posit that
the power productive of the Holy Spirit produces him more as it is commu-
nicative of that which pertains to the will than [as it is communicative] of
that which pertains to nature or intellect. If he does not [have per se from
his production the other absolute perfections], it follows that the Holy Spirit
does not have per se from his procession that he is wise or intelligent, or
it would follow that these come to him only per accidens and not without
qualification—and that is absurd.18
A second argument follows up on this one: the Holy Spirit shares the very
same divine nature as do the Father and the Son, and this means that the
Holy Spirit is produced by univocal production and that the source of that
production is the divine nature in the Father and the Son (that is why the
Holy Spirit is of the very same nature as the Father and the Son); but the
divine nature is the divine essence with all of its absolute perfections, and
not merely one or the other of those absolute perfections; therefore it is the
divine essence that must be the source of the Holy Spirit and not the divine
will alone.19 Hervaeus’ point is that the divine essence, in its entirety and
including all of the attributes, is in each of the divine persons (and, indeed,
17 For a likely source for this type of argument, see Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 10, a.
2, solutio §II (ed. 1953, pp. 259b–260a). Other Dominican thinkers who use it include John
of Paris, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (= q. 58) (ed. Müller, pp. 17324–17434), and John of Naples (see n. 93
below). See also the explanation (in connection with Michael of Massa’s use of the argument)
in Ch. 12, below, at and around n. 148, as well as in Friedman 2010, 66–67.
18 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… aut ex sua processione habet per se Spiritus Sanctus
alias perfectiones absolutas aut non. Si sic, non est nisi fictio ponere quod virtus productiva
Spiritus Sancti magis producat ipsum ut est communicativa eius quod est voluntatis, quam
eius quod est naturae vel intellectus. Si non, sequitur quod Spiritus Sanctus non habet per
se ex processione quod sit sapiens vel intelligens; vel sequeretur quod ista sibi vel non
convenirent simpliciter vel non nisi per accidens: quod est absurdum.” Ed. 1647, p. 68aA–
B.
19 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “Item, actio qua spiratur Spiritus Sanctus aut est univoca
aut aequivoca. Si aequivoca, ergo Spiritus Sanctus differt a Patre et Filio specie. Si univoca,
sequitur quod natura in qua communicant Pater et Filius cum Spiritu Sancto sit principium
in Patre et Filio; sed illud in quo communicant est ipsa natura divina non secundum
quod voluntas determinata vel intellectus vel aliquid simile, sed secundum quod omnem
perfectionem absolutam comprehendens; ergo etiam sic erit principium agendi in Patre et
Filio.” Ed. 1647, p. 68aB.
428 chapter seven
is each of the divine persons), and surely only the essence as a whole, and not
one of its perfections like will or intellect, could give to one of the persons
or produce in one of the persons the essence as a whole. For Hervaeus it
seemed clear that a mere aspect of some thing cannot give that very thing
in its entirety; but it looked to Hervaeus (and the Dominican trinitarian
tradition) as though this was precisely what the Franciscan tradition was
claiming: that the will, a mere aspect of the essence, was communicating
the entire essence. In line with this criticism, Hervaeus supports the position
that the source of the emanations is the undifferentiated divine essence.20
It should be noted that what looked to Dominican eyes as a fatal flaw of the
Franciscan emanation account and strong use of the psychological model,
undoubtedly was the true strength of the strong use in Franciscan eyes. It
was precisely the fact that the Holy Spirit is the divine essence “colored”
by a voluntary production, a production by way of will, that made the Holy
Spirit distinct from the Father and the Son, who are each the divine essence
“colored” by a different type of production (intellectual production, in the
case of the Son). What for the Franciscans was a crucial component in
explaining the distinction between the persons, was for Hervaeus and the
remainder of the Dominican trinitarian tradition a non-starter.
The second position that Hervaeus examines on his way to defining per
modum voluntatis, is yet another view that looks Franciscan in inspiration.
This position claims that the Son is produced through an act of understand-
ing and the Holy Spirit through an act of loving (actus amandi).21 To this
Hervaeus responds that if this position were correct, then, since each of the
persons loves and understands, it would follow that each person through his
understanding would produce one other person and each person through
his loving would produce yet another person; yet we know that the Holy
Spirit does not produce any other person at all. Following up on that, Her-
vaeus argues that each of the divine persons loves and understands through
precisely the same loving and understanding, and hence no distinction can
be made concerning the persons on the basis of their loving and under-
standing; for Hervaeus, loving and understanding are essential acts, and the
20 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 7, q. 1: “… potentia hgenerandii intrinsece … significat essentiam
ita quod non relationem, et hic voco essentiam quodcumque attributum absolutum, sicut
intellectus vel voluntas vel natura fecunda vel aliquid tale.” Ed. 1647, p. 55bC. Durand of St.
Pourçain disagrees with this position; see at and around n. 50 below.
21 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “Alia opinio dicit quod Filius producitur per actum intelli-
gendi et Spiritus Sanctus per actum amandi.” Ed. 1647, p. 68aB. The text continues in n. 22
below.
persons cannot be distinguished on the basis of essential acts.22 Hervaeus’

conclusion was clearly that it cannot be on the basis of his intellectual act
that the Father produces the Son, or on the basis of their voluntary act that
the Father and the Son produce the Holy Spirit.
Then just how is the Holy Spirit produced per modum voluntatis? As we
have seen from his response to the quaestio’s initial arguments, Hervaeus is
committed to maintaining in some way that the Holy Spirit’s procession has
a claim to being characterized as per modum voluntatis. To explain how this
is so, Hervaeus isolates three different aspects involved in the production
of any divine person: (1) the way the active power relates to the act to
be elicited; (2) the supposite(s) bringing about the act; and (3) the order
between the emanations.23
With regard to (1), the way the active power relates to the act to be
elicited, Hervaeus understands that describing the Holy Spirit’s procession
as per modum voluntatis is equivalent to holding that the power productive
of the Holy Spirit is the divine will and that the Holy Spirit’s production is
“voluntary” in the sense that we normally employ that term. As we might
guess from his rejection of the Franciscan-like positions, Hervaeus will deny
that this is a viable understanding of per modum voluntatis. In rejecting this,
Hervaeus employs the intuition that lay behind the quaestio’s two initial
arguments against the Holy Spirit proceeding by way of will, arguing that
the Holy Spirit proceeds just as naturally as the Son does, i.e. per modum
naturae. Hervaeus writes:
… in eliciting an act, the mode of the will differs from the mode of nature
in the following way: because the mode of nature is when a natural active
principle does not have its act under its control, nor is it open to alternatives
(indifferens ad opposita), but necessarily from a property of the agent’s nature
it is determined to [just] one of two alternatives. Thus, it is not under the sun’s
control whether it illuminates or does not illuminate, rather it is necessarily
determined to illuminating as long as something that can be illuminated is
present and there is nothing getting in the way. But the one acting through
22 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1 (text continued from n. 21 above): “Nec istud potest stare.
Primo, quia intelligere et amare non est idem quod producere personam aliquam, alioquin
quaecumque persona amans aut intelligens produceret aliam personam, quod est falsum
sicut patet de Spiritu Sancto. Secundo, quia amare et intelligere nullo modo differunt, et
consequuntur indifferenter quamcumque personam divinam, unde penes amare vel amari,
intelligere vel intelligi, non potest esse aliqua differentia in divinis.” Ed. 1647, p. 68aB–C.
23 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “Nunc restat secundo ponere positionem quam credo veram.
Sciendum est igitur quod in productione personarum divinarum tria sunt consideranda,
scilicet habitudinem virtutis activae ad actum eliciendum, et suppositum agentis, et ordinem
emanationum.” Ed. 1647, p. 69aC.
430 chapter seven
will, as [will] is contradistinct from nature, has under its control whether it
acts or does not act, and it is open to alternatives, namely to acting and not
acting. But the one acting through the spirative power does not have under
its control whether it spirates or does not spirate, and hence it is not open
to alternatives, but is necessarily determined from a property of its nature to
spirating. Therefore in the production of the Holy Spirit through comparison
of the active principle to the act to be elicited, there is not a mode of will but
a mode of nature only. Thus, to spirate the Holy Spirit is just as natural in the
divine as is to generate the Son.24
Hervaeus argues, following the line of reasoning we saw in the quaestio’s
initial arguments, that the type of contingency and lack of determination
that characterizes a true understanding of an act done by way of will is
simply incompatible with the internal divine necessity that is found in the
trinitarian processions. The medieval understanding of natural action that
we have been tracing since Henry of Ghent linked it to intellectual action—
a natural action occurs invariably and in precisely the same way whenever
a certain set of conditions are met—is to Hervaeus so irreconcilable with
the will and the voluntary as they are normally understood (i.e. as involving
some control over acting and not acting) that describing the procession of
the Holy Spirit in this way is unacceptable. The procession of the Holy Spirit
is just as natural, taking ‘natural’ in the way Hervaeus explains, as is the
procession of the Son.25 Clearly, Hervaeus is here rejecting the foundation
of Henry of Ghent’s and John Duns Scotus’ strong use of the psychological
model of the Trinity: for Hervaeus it is nonsense to maintain that the Holy
Spirit proceeds per modum voluntatis, if this were to mean that he proceeds
as the product of the divine will in an emanation characterized by freedom
24 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… modus voluntatis in hoc differt a modo naturae in
eliciendo actum, quia modus naturae est quando principium activum naturale non habet in
potestate suum actum, nec est indifferens ad opposita, sed necessario ex proprietate naturae
agentis determinatum ad alterum oppositorum. Unde non est in potestate solis illuminare
et non illuminare, immo est necessario determinatus ad illuminandum dummodo adsit
illuminabile et nisi sit aliquid impediens. Agens autem per voluntatem prout distinguitur
contra naturam habet in potestate sua agere vel non agere, et est indifferens ad opposita,
scilicet ad agendum et non agendum. Sed agens per virtutem spirativam non habet in
potestate sua spirare et non spirare; unde non est indifferens ad opposita, sed necessario
est determinatum ex suae naturae proprietate ad spirandum. Ergo in productione Spiritus
Sancti per comparationem principii activi ad actum eliciendum, non est modus voluntatis
sed modus naturae tantum. Unde ita naturale est in divinis spirare Spiritum Sanctum sicut
generare Filium.” Ed. 1647, p. 69aD–bA.
25 For Henry of Ghent, see Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 67–70; see also Friedman 2010,
58–60, 67–68 (the latter of which dealing with Hervaeus’ discussion of this argument in his
De divinis personis, q. 5).
and in contradistinction to the Son’s proceeding from the natural act of the
divine intellect in the Father. The strong use of philosophical psychology in
trinitarian theology simply cannot work, according to Hervaeus.
Hervaeus next considers the second aspect that can be isolated in the
procession of a divine person, i.e. (2) the role of the supposites in the Holy
Spirit’s procession. Considered from this point of view, Hervaeus thinks that
the Holy Spirit can indeed be said to proceed by way of will, in contrast to
the Son who proceeds by way of nature. This is because in spiration “two
in agreement (concorditer) spirate one love”. In the created world, the only
time that two agents concur in producing an effect in such a way that both
participate in equal measure in the production is when the agents are acting
together voluntarily, out of a community based on friendship (ex amicabili
societate). In this case, the two voluntary agents act together as though they
are one, working equally and equally perfectly towards their common goal.
This is a reflection of the way the Father and the Son produce the Holy Spirit,
where, as Hervaeus says, “one produces just as perfectly as both do, and both
together do not act any more perfectly than the one or the other.”26 Thus,
because in the production of the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son produce
together in their community based on friendship, there is a mode of will in
that procession in a way that there is not in the Son’s generation, in which
the Father produces alone. Here, according to Hervaeus, is one way in which
it is proper to describe the Holy Spirit’s procession as per modum voluntatis.
Hervaeus tells us that there is another way in which the Holy Spirit’s
procession can be called per modum voluntatis: by considering (3) the order
of the productions. Hervaeus makes clear that we are not talking here
26 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “Si autem consideremus supposita agentia per compara-
tionem ad ea invenitur in productione Spiritus Sancti modus voluntatis et non in produc-

tione Filii, ita quod vis spirativa habet modum voluntatis et Spiritus Sanctus habet modum
amoris spirati a voluntate. Cuius ratio est quia quod aliqua duo agentia concurrant ad idem
producendum et sint agentia eiusdem ordinis et aeque perfecte produceret unum sicut ambo
ita quod nec citius nec perfectius ambo quam unum non videtur accidere in rebus creatis
nisi in agentibus ex voluntate. Duo enim ex amicabili societate possunt convenire ad idem
faciendum, ita quod unus tantum faceret et ita perfecte sicut ambo, quia per voluntatem
moderantur virtutem suam ita quod non tota virtute agant. Sed Pater et Filius spirant sive
producunt Spiritum Sanctum ita quod aeque perfecte producit unus sicut ambo nec perfec-
tius agunt ambo quam alter. Ergo virtus productiva per quam sic producunt habet modum
voluntatis, quia duo concorditer spirant unum amorem.” Ed. 1647, p. 69bA–B. For a parallel
treatment of the distinction between mode of intellect and mode of will in the processions,
see ibid., d. 13, q. 1 (esp. p. 82a–b). Of course, Franciscans, at least since the time of Eustace
of Arras, had been trying to counter this type of position by insisting that emanation by way
of will or the emanation of love is not necessarily linked with there being two emanators; for
Eustace, see Ch. 2, § 3, above.
432 chapter seven
about an order of temporal priority and posteriority, and nevertheless there

is an order there in which “one is from one and the third from two …
and in this way at least according to the way we understand things the
one produced through spiration presupposes the other production whose
term is the person from which the spirated [person] himself is produced.”
Moreover, if we consider human intellectual nature, we cannot will or
love what we do not know, and hence our own voluntary emanation must
follow an intellectual emanation. In this way, then, because the Holy Spirit’s
procession is (logically) posterior to the Son’s generation, just as love is
posterior to knowledge, the Holy Spirit can be said to have “the mode of
love proceeding from the Word in which the desirable good shines.” This is,
of course, merely a variation on Aquinas’ “psychological argument”, which
we met in Chapter Five, above, where Aquinas had argued that, because
something cannot be loved without its being known, clearly divine Love
must proceed from the divine Word.27
Thus, for Hervaeus Natalis, there are two ways in which it is proper to
say that the Holy Spirit’s procession is by way of will: because procession
is the emanation in which one comes from two (just like voluntary agents
working in a community based on friendship) and because procession is
the emanation that (logically) follows upon the prior emanation of the Son
(like willing follows upon knowing). In the course of defending this position,
Hervaeus emphasizes that he is following in Thomas Aquinas’ footsteps and
that through his position he is able to explain the way the term per modum
voluntatis is used by traditional theological authorities:
27 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “Si autem attenditur ad ordinem productionum, licet ibi
non sit ordo prioris et posterioris, ibi tamen unus est ex alio et est ordo quo unus est ab
uno et tertius a duobus, ita quod de ratione tertii est quod sit productus ab aliquo producto;
et sic, saltem secundum nostrum modum intelligendi, productus per spirationem praesup-
ponit aliam productionem terminatam ad aliquam personam a qua producitur ipse spiratus.
Et ulterius sequitur quod spiratus est ille ad quem emanatio manens intra naturam intel-
lectualem ultimo terminatur. In natura autem intellectuali, ubi realiter intellectus differt
a voluntate, prima emanatio est emanatio intellectus. Sequens autem emanatio et in qua
ultimo terminatur emanatio manens intra naturam intellectualem, est emanatio pertinens
ad voluntatem, nam primo est cognitio boni, deinde est amor sequens ad cognitionem boni,
et ibi sistit emanatio naturae intellectualis nec intendit ultra intra naturam intellectualem,
licet possit ultra tendere in extra sicut in aliquid exterius operatum. Et ideo quantum ad
hoc Spiritus Sanctus habet modum amoris procedentis a verbo in quo relucet bonum diligi-
bile.” Ed. 1647, p. 69bC–D. For Aquinas’ “psychological” argument, see Ch. 5, §4, above, at and
around nn. 139–142. See also below, nn. 70 (Durand of St. Pourçain), 95–98 (John of Naples),
and 111–112 (Liber propugnatorius), for further Dominican uses of this argument in the nam-
ing of the emanations.
This seems to me to be the way of the reverend doctor Thomas. Because

sometimes he says that that emanation is said to be by way of will (per modum
voluntatis) which presupposes another emanation, and this with regard to the
order of emanations; but sometimes he says that he who proceeds from two
proceeds by way of will, and he say this by accepting the mode in comparison
to the supposites bringing it about. On this basis the reason behind the things
said about the emanation of the Holy Spirit can also be made plain. For
sometimes it is said that the productive source of the Holy Spirit is divine
nature as it has the mode of will, and this is true through comparison [of
the Holy Spirit’s procession] to the supposites bringing it about. It is also said
that the will is the source of the Holy Spirit not as will but as nature, because
the Holy Spirit is produced by the mode of nature if we consider the respect
(habitudo) of the active source to the act to be elicited, [since the source] is
necessarily determined to the eliciting of [the act to be elicited] from [divine]
nature.28
In short: not only is Hervaeus convinced that his interpretation rules out
the (Franciscan) misunderstanding that the phrase per modum voluntatis
means quite literally that the Holy Spirit is produced in some way by the
divine will (in contradistinction to the divine intellect or nature), but he
is also convinced that same interpretation allows him to explain both how
the phrase can nevertheless be used rightly about the Holy Spirit and how
Thomas Aquinas himself understood the matter. The procession of the
Holy Spirit is natural, since it is determined to come about by the abso-
lute necessity of the divine nature itself: will, voluntariness, contingency,
and choice are completely incompatible with this. Nevertheless, inasmuch
as the Holy Spirit’s procession is the procession of one from two acting
together, and inasmuch as the Holy Spirit’s procession presupposes logi-
cally (not temporally) the Son’s generation, the label per modum voluntatis
is accurately applied to it. Indeed, Hervaeus seems to be correct to say
that he is merely developing Thomas Aquinas’ approach to the processions.
Aquinas had denied that intellect and will, as such, have anything to do with
28 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “Et haec mihi videtur via reverendi doctoris Thomae, quia
aliquando dicit quod illa emanatio dicitur per modum voluntatis quae vel praesupponit
aliam, et hoc quoad ordinem emanationum; aliquando vero dicit quod ille qui procedit
a duobus procedit per modum voluntatis, et hoc accipiendo istum modum per compara-
tionem ad supposita agentia. Ex his etiam potest patere ratio eorum quae dicuntur de emana-
tione Spiritus Sancti, nam quandoque dicitur quod principium productivum Spiritus Sancti
est natura divina ut habet modum voluntatis, et hoc verum est per comparationem ad sup-
posita agentia. Dicitur etiam quod voluntas est principium Spiritus Sancti non ut voluntas
sed ut natura, quia Spiritus Sanctus modo naturae producitur considerando habitudinem
principii activi ad actum eliciendum ad quem eliciendum ex natura sua est necessario deter-
minatum.” Ed. 1647, pp. 69bD–70aA.
434 chapter seven
the procession of the Son and the Holy Spirit, respectively, instead con-
tending that the processions were distinct from one another based on the
arrangement of the persons, e.g. because in generation one comes from
one, while in spiration one comes from two. For Aquinas, the processions
are definitionally or logically posterior to the persons, who are constituted
solely on the basis of opposition of relations. Hervaeus is elaborating on the
view, but not genuinely changing it. He even employs a version of Aquinas’
favorite argument against the divine attributes being the source of distinc-
tion between the divine processions and, in turn, between the second and
third persons: the attributes are merely rationally distinct and a rational
distinction could not serve to bring about the real distinction between the
persons.29 Moreover, Hervaeus’ claim to be able to explain “the things said
about the emanation of the Holy Spirit” is also interesting inasmuch as it
shows a direct link between, on the one hand, Hervaeus’ reflection on his
own view and, on the other, the authoritative passages that lay at the basis
of the trinitarian dogma. Although I will deal with this at greater length
below, when discussing Dominican views in connection with Durand of St.
Pourçain’s radical theory that Word and Love are not proper names of the
Son and Holy Spirit, respectively,30 it should be said here that, with this the-
ory of how the Holy Spirit’s procession can properly be labelled voluntary
or by way of will, Hervaeus is making for himself what throughout this book
I have been calling a “marginalization strategy”. Specifically, Hervaeus is
coming to grips with the fact that there were authoritative texts that claimed
that the Son is a Word and that the Spirit is Love, and these texts explic-
itly or implicitly linked the Son with the intellect and the Holy Spirit with
the will. Authors in the Franciscan tradition routinely employed these very
authoritative texts in order to undergird the strong use of the psychologi-
cal model of the Trinity that they supported. Hervaeus needed to explain
how these authoritative passages could be understood in such a way that
he could reject the strong use without at the same time outright rejecting its
authoritative foundation. Hervaeus thus argues that the “will” being referred
to in these passages is not literally the divine will, since that is impossible
on theoretical grounds, but there is nonetheless a way to understand ‘will’
such that sense can be made of the authoritative tradition.
29 See for a version of this argument in Hervaeus, e.g., I Sent., d. 2, q. 4 (“Utrum in divinis sit
pluralitas personarum”): “… cum in divinis intelligere et velle sit una operatio secundum rem
et sint idem re, si secundum operationes deberent realiter plurificari operata vel producta,
tunc realiter non erit nisi unum productum in divinis.” Ed. 1647, p. 31aB.
30 See below, at and around nn. 83–101, and see also §3 on the Liber propugnatorius.
Several dubia to his quaestio allow us to confirm this interpretation of

Hervaeus’ thoughts on the relationship between the authoritative tradition
and his rejection of the strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian
theology. The first dubium claims precisely that, on Hervaeus’ theory, “it
seems that the Son is not truly or properly the Word or at least it does
not more properly pertain to him that he is the Word than it does to
the Holy Spirit.” And the reason that this would be the case, according to
the dubium, is that on Hervaeus’ view “the production of the Son pertains
no more properly to the intellect than does the production of the Holy
Spirit except through a certain likeness to what is found in the created
intellect”, and a metaphorical or analogical likeness cannot be said to be
proper.31 This is indeed the central issue for Dominican interpretations of
the psychological model: is it not merely metaphorical? Hervaeus’ answer
is a resounding no: “the divine Word does not have the mode of intellect
according to a certain likeness, but in truth his emanation is intellectual”.
The reason, according to Hervaeus, that the Son’s emanation is truly and
properly an intellectual emanation while the Holy Spirit’s emanation is truly
and properly a voluntary emanation is, in line with what we have already
seen from Hervaeus, because the Son proceeds with no other procession
presupposed, while the Holy Spirit proceeds with the procession of the
Son presupposed, i.e. the distinction between the processions, and the
labelling of them, is defined according to the arrangement of the persons.
For Hervaeus, this simply is what it means in the divine to proceed by way
of intellect or by way of will: it is not that there is an intellect or will involved,
since he thinks that that is strictly impossible. Indeed, the divine Word has
several other features of words, like existing within an intellectual nature,
but these features the Word shares completely with the Holy Spirit. And
Hervaeus insists, as we have already seen him do, that the divine Word
shares just as much in God’s willing and loving as does the Holy Spirit—this
31 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… secundum ista videtur quod Filius non sit vere vel proprie
Verbum, vel saltem non magis proprie conveniat ei quod sit Verbum quam Spiritui Sancto,
quia scilicet ista productio Filii non magis pertinet ad intellectum proprie quam productio
Spiritus Sancti nisi per quandam similitudinem ad ea quae sunt in intellectu creato. Sed
ea quae dicuntur de aliquo secundum quandam similitudinem non dicuntur de eo proprie.
Ergo esse Verbum non convenit proprie Filio vel saltem non plus ei convenit quam Spiritui
Sancto.” Ed. 1647, p. 70aA. For a parallel treatment of this issue (with different emphases),
see Hervaeus’ De verbo, q. 4, pars 2, a. 4 (“Utrum verbum soli Filio conveniat”; ed. Zimara,
f. 23rb–vb) as well as the other articles in this part of that question; see on De verbo, Trottmann
1997, who focuses on the theory of cognition presented there, claiming (p. 49) that the treatise
dates from around 1307 and giving (p. 62) an outline of its structure.
436 chapter seven
in contradistinction to our human words which, due to their limitations,

have no trace of willing.32 This, then, is Hervaeus’ marginalization strategy:
he proposes a way to understand per modum intellectus that allows the
term to be applied exclusively to the Son, while nevertheless denying that
the Son’s generation as Word has any privileged relation to the divine
intellect. Mutatis mutandis with per modum voluntatis and the Holy Spirit:
the term is properly and truly applied exclusively to him on the basis of the
properties of his emanation, but that emanation has no special relation to
the divine will. In Hervaeus’ view, the authorities who made a connection
between intellect and the Son and between the will and the Holy Spirit,
were being completely accurate, so long as the terms ‘intellect’ and ‘will’ are
correctly understood. Of course, Franciscan writers would be unimpressed
by Hervaeus’ marginalization strategy, and they would insist that on his
view the Son is not a Word in any proper sense and the Holy Spirit is not Love
or a Gift, precisely because there is no connection between their respective
emanations and the divine intellect and will. For the Franciscans, Hervaeus’
theory would be metaphorical or appropriated, and would for that reason
be contradicting the authoritative passages that they believed spoke for the
strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology.
There is a second manifestation of Hervaeus’ rejection of the strong
use of the psychological model: he dismisses, or at the very least strongly
downgrades, the usefulness of the common medieval proof for there being
three and only three persons in God. We have already seen that this proof
was used by Henry of Ghent, among others, and was based on there being
only two productive powers in an intellectual nature, intellect and will,
32 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… Verbum divinum non habet modum intellectus secun-
dum quandam similitudinem, sed secundum veritatem eius emanatio est intellectualis, et
secundum veritatem eius emanatio non praesupponit aliam, sicut emanatio Spiritus Sancti
praesupponit emanationem Filii. Non ergo dicitur Filius habere modum intellectus secun-
dum similitudinem tantum, et non secundum rei proprietatem, immo illud quod secundum
veritatem convenit emanationi intellectus ubi intellectus realiter differt a voluntate con-
venit ita Filio quod non Spiritui Sancto, videlicet procedere nulla processione alia supposita,
et in hoc habet secundum veritatem modum intellectus quem non habet Spiritus Sanctus.
Habet etiam alias proprietates Verbi—quod est repraesentativum productum et intra natu-
ram intellectualem—in quo non differt a Spiritu Sancto, sed hbene differti in hoc quod modo
intellectus est productum. Sed in hoc differt a verbo nostro: quod quantum ad absolutum
quod communicatur Verbo divino non minus communicatur ei illud quod est Amoris quam
illud quod est cognitionis vel repraesentationis, quod non convenit verbo nostro propter eius
limitationem, nec propter hoc habet minus rationem verbi quam si tantum haberet illud
quod cognitionis est, sicut etiam scientia Dei est vere iustitia et substantia, nec propter hoc
minus proprie et vere dicitur scientia.” Ed. 1647, p. 70aC–bA.
and hence each of these powers in the one unproduced person produces
one and only one person each, for a total of three persons.33 But Hervaeus
has severed the connection between intellect and will and the emanations,
and hence the question arises: what about this proof? Hervaeus raises the
issue by means of another dubium: “according to the said position it would
follow that it could not be shown that in the divine there are three persons,
neither more nor fewer.”34 Hervaeus in fact concedes the point: “I believe
that if Scripture were to have posited indeterminately in God a plurality of
persons, without determining a certain number, and it were to have posited
an indeterminate number of emanations without positing a certain number
[of them], no one would have effectively proven a ternary of persons.” The
best one could do is argue “persuasively” (persuasive). And this is precisely
because intellect and will, as such, are not the sources of the Son and the
Holy Spirit, and hence there can be no demonstration for there being three
persons on the basis of there being one person unemanated, one emanated
by way of intellect and another by way of will.35
Taking stock of this examination of Hervaeus’ discussion, we can say
that he follows in Aquinas’ footsteps by denying that there is any strong
connection between the divine intellect and the Son’s generation, on the
one hand, and the divine will and the Holy Spirit’s procession, on the other.
Nevertheless, he insists that the Son is a Word properly speaking emanated
per modum naturae and intellectus, and the Holy Spirit is Love properly
33 See for Henry, Ch. 4, above, at and around n. 60; see also Scotus (Ch. 6, above, at and
around n. 133) and Auriol (Ch. 9, at and around n. 101), who also accepted the proof, as well
as William Ockham’s dissenting opinion (Ch. 10, below, at and around n. 107). For Aquinas
and his attitude towards this proof, see Ch. 3, above, at and around nn. 17–21.
34 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… secundum dictam positionem sequeretur quod non
posset ostendi quod in divinis sunt tres personae, nec plures nec pauciores.” Ed. 1647, p. 70aB.
35 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1 (italicized text translated): “… dicendum quod illa ratio
quae communiter adducitur de velle et intelligere sicut non probat efficaciter et demon-
strative absolute plures personas esse in Deo, ita etiam nec probat efficaciter ternarium
personarum numerum, credo enim quod si scriptura posuisset in Deo pluralitatem personarum
indeterminate non determinando numerum certum et indeterminatum posuisset numerum
emanationum non ponendo certum numerum, nullus efficaciter probasset ternarium person-
arum. Unde credo quod si scriptura nullum numerum determinasset in personis vel ema-
nationibus, fuissent multae opiniones de pluralitate earum. Et ideo supposito binario ema-
nationum quae sunt proprie non intelligere et amare sed dicere et spirare, potest efficaciter
probari ternarius personarum, supposito enim ternario personarum potest satis efficaciter
probari dualitas emanationum, sed neutro istorum supposito numquam per velle et intel-
ligere probaretur efficaciter ternarius numerus earum sed tantum persuasive.” Ed. 1647,
p. 70bC–D. Similar rejections are found at ibid., d. 2, q. 4 (pp. 30bD–31bC) and in Hervaeus’
Quodl. I, q. 5 (ed. Zimara, ff. 10va–11vb).
438 chapter seven
speaking emanated per modum voluntatis, and these labels properly apply
to the Son and the Holy Spirit respectively on the basis of their modes of
procession being defined by the mutual arrangement of the persons: specif-
ically, generation is the emanation of one from one, spiration is the emana-
tion of one from two (or the functional equivalent for Hervaeus: generation
is the procession not presupposing another procession, while spiration is
the procession presupposing another procession, i.e. presupposing gener-
ation). Hervaeus offers robust arguments against the type of strong use of
philosophical psychology that we have seen in Henry of Ghent and John
Duns Scotus (among others), and many of these arguments can be traced
back to Aquinas. What is perhaps most striking about Hervaeus’ view is
that it involves a fundamentally non-psychological utilization of the psy-
chological model, in the sense that no psychological faculties as such are
linked to the emanations of the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the next sec-
tion of this chapter, we will see how this same sort of view manifests itself
in other Dominican authors, but it cannot be doubted that thinkers in the
Franciscan trinitarian tradition would say that Hervaeus uses the psycho-
logical model merely metaphorically. To this, Hervaeus would undoubtedly
have responded by saying, as he does explicitly on several occasions, that
the Franciscan way of explaining how these terms apply to God is pure fic-
tion, and further by appealing to the analogical nature of terms we use about
God, that is to say, that these psychological terms are applied in this way just
as properly as any human terms can be applied to God.36
The second main issue to be dealt with here as regards Hervaeus’ en-
counter with Franciscan trinitarian theology in general, and the psycholog-
ical model more particularly, is that of the counterfactual question of the
Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, given that the former does not come
from the latter. The position that Hervaeus holds follows from his views,
mentioned above, that personal distinction in God comes from opposition
of relations, and, on that basis, that the distinction between the produc-
tion of the Holy Spirit and the production of the Son comes about precisely
on account of the fact that the Holy Spirit comes from the Son. Thus, in
response to Franciscan arguments that the Holy Spirit would be distinct
from the Son, even if the former did not come from the latter, Hervaeus gives
the following argument:
36 For fictio see above at n. 18 and below at n. 37. On the way in which Aquinas appeals to
analogy on the point of the Son’s being a Word, see Emery (Gilles) 2007, 180–185; I suspect
that Hervaeus would deal with the issue in a way similar to Aquinas.
The second argument is accepted from the mode of proceeding, and it is

as follows: that which in its nature (ratio) includes proceeding from the
Son does not remain—even in the intellect—when its proceeding from the
Son is taken away [from it]. But to proceed in different ways in the divine
includes necessarily the Holy Spirit’s proceeding from the Son. Therefore,
if the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, their being distinguished
through their proceeding in different ways no longer obtains there. The major
is clear; also the minor can easily be made clear on the basis of what was
said above. For, just as has been said above, there cannot easily be assigned
a diverse mode of proceeding between the Son and the Holy Spirit except
insofar as one proceeds from one and the other from two, or insofar as one
proceeds alone from the unproduced [person], with no other production
presupposed, but the other [proceeds] from the produced [person] through
another production that his [own] production presupposes, because every
other way of positing these diverse modes, as was made clear above, seems to
be fiction. But each of these two modes includes the Holy Spirit proceeding
from the Son, because otherwise it cannot be. Therefore, etc.37
Strict adherence to the general Dominican view that all personal distinction
in God arises on account of opposition of relations leads Hervaeus—as it
led Aquinas and many others—to claim that the Holy Spirit’s production is
only distinct from the Son’s production (and hence the Holy Spirit is only
distinct from the Son) because the Son (with the Father) produces the Holy
Spirit. This is equivalent to Hervaeus’ claiming that the property of being-
spirated, or being-produced-per-modum-voluntatis (these are the same), is
so bound up with being from two that it is impossible for the Holy Spirit to
exist unless he proceeds from both the Father and the Son. It is literally of
the essence of the Holy Spirit’s procession that he come from two persons.38
37 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1: “Secunda hratioi accipitur ex modo procedendi, et est talis:
illud quod in sua ratione includit procedere a Filio non manet—etiam in intellectu—remoto
hoc quod est procedere a Filio. Sed diversimode procedere in divinis includit necessario
Spiritum Sanctum procedere a Filio. Ergo si Spiritus Sanctus non procedit a Filio, non manet
ibi distingui per diversimode procedere. Maior patet; minor etiam ex supradictis potest
faciliter patere. Nam sicut supradictum est, non potest faciliter assignari diversus modus
procedendi inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum nisi per hoc quod unus procedit ab uno et
alius a duobus, vel per hoc quod unus procedit solum a non producto, nulla alia productione
supposita, alius vero a producto per aliam productionem quam sua productio supponit, quia
omnis alius modus ponendi istos diversos modos, ut supra patuit, videtur fictio. Sed quilibet
istorum modorum duorum includit Spiritum Sanctum procedere a Filio quia aliter esse non
potest. Ergo, etc.” Ed. 1647, p. 74bB–C.
38 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1: “… sicut declaratum fuit supra, spirari sive produci per
modum voluntatis in sua ratione includit produci a duobus, accipiendo modum voluntatis
per comparationem ad supposita agentia; per comparationem autem ad ordinem produc-
tionum includit in sua ratione produci ab alio producto per aliam productionem quam spi-
ratio supponit.” Ed. 1647, p. 75bA.
440 chapter seven
But what about some of the popular Franciscan arguments that we have
seen being used from Eustace of Arras right up to John Duns Scotus? To
take one example: what about the argument that we saw most recently in
Scotus that the formal constitutive of the Son is filiation, and that as the
Son’s formal constitutive, filiation must constitute the Son in being with
all other differences (including the Son’s active spiration) set aside.39 To
this Hervaeus responds that filiation is in fact more of the Son’s personal
property than is active spiration because “it constitutes him and makes
distinct what is proper to him”, and nevertheless it does not make him
distinct from every divine person, since only together with active spiration
does filiation make the Son distinct from the Holy Spirit.40 Although he does
not say so explicitly, it seems permissible to conclude that, for Hervaeus,
filiation could make the Son distinct from everything except the Holy Spirit,
because the Holy Spirit would not exist if it were not for the Son’s active
spiration. On this interpretation of Hervaeus’ view, the Son, distinct from
all existing things by filiation, might continue to exist if he did not spirate
the Holy Spirit; but even so the Son would not be distinct from the Holy
Spirit, since, given the counterfactual, it is impossible that the Holy Spirit
exist.
This interpretation is strengthened by a reading of Hervaeus’ treatment
of the positio impossibilis involved in the counterfactual question. This is
an important issue, since Hervaeus claims that it is impossible for the Son
and the Holy Spirit to be distinct unless the latter comes from the former,
this claim predicated on Hervaeus’ view that it is basically definitional that
the Holy Spirit, proceeding by way of will, comes from two, the Father and
the Son. But this leaves untouched the question as to the nature of the
impossibility involved in the positio impossibilis, and specifically whether
the counterfactual question is even intelligible. As we have seen, this is an
issue with a substantial history by the time Hervaeus wrote, and Hervaeus
39 For Scotus, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 128–129.

40 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1: “… filiatio dicitur magis proprietas personalis Filii quam
spiratio activa, quia sic eum constituit et distinguit quod est ei propria, non autem quod
ipsa sola, circumscripta omni alia, distinguat eum ab omni persona divina. Immo ipsa
cum spiratione activa habet ipsum ab omni persona distinguere.” Ed. 1647, p. 76aA–B. This
passage is in answer to the first of six arguments given in support of a roughly Franciscan
position on the counterfactual question (ed. 1647, p. 74aC), and in that same discussion
Hervaeus replies both to an argument making use of Anselm’s De processione Spiritus Sancti
(the argument that there are two causes of the distinction of the persons: emanations and
opposed relations) and to the argument that the distinction between the sources need not
be as great as the distinction between what comes from the sources.
does in fact have a treatment of positio impossibilis and the procession of the
Holy Spirit that is significant in its own right on several levels.
Above we saw that, from an early date, the Franciscan trinitarian tradi-
tion relied on the logical device of the positio impossibilis to deal with the
counterfactual question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, given
that the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son. This device, borrowed from
the theory of obligationes, allowed the Franciscan theologian to succinctly
distinguish between, on the one hand, incompossibility, i.e. a strict logical
impossibility that could not be brought into question, and, on the other, an
impossibility amenable to questioning, whether this impossibility was dic-
tated by the ultimately contingent physical makeup of the world or by doc-
trinal constraints. Thus, two types of impossibility: one of which could not
be tested counterfactually, the other of which could. Reflecting their view
in nested distinctions (indispensable emanational distinction nested inside
hypothetically dispensable distinction based on opposed relations), which
in turn was based on their view that the ultimate basis for the distinction
between the divine persons was the distinction between the emanations,
the Franciscans argued that the Holy Spirit would indeed still be distinct
from the Son even if the former did not come from the latter, since, given
the counterfactual, the more basic source of their being distinct, the Son’s
and the Holy Spirit’s diverse emanations from one and the same Father,
would still obtain. That the Son does not spirate the Holy Spirit is a doctri-
nal impossibility, for the Franciscans, but not an incompossibility or strict
impossibility, and it could therefore be set aside, with their distinction still
obtaining (much as a human being would still be distinct from an ass by
rationality, even if the human being were not able to laugh). Thus, through
the use of positio impossibilis the Franciscans not only argued the legitimacy
of the question “would the Holy Spirit still be distinct from the Son, if the
Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son”, they also argued for the affirma-
tive answer to the question: it is impossible but not strictly impossible.
What kinds of answers, then, could be made to the Franciscan use of posi-
tio impossibilis? We have already seen above (Ch. 5, § 4) that one possible
answer was indeed to claim that the question was simply illegitimate. This
was the upshot of the “highest impossibility” argument that became a stan-
dard part of the discussion on this issue from sometime in the last quarter of
the thirteenth century. Because in God there is nothing but strict necessity
and impossibility, talking about positio impossibilis in this context was non-
sense, since by the very fact of asking the question a contradiction followed,
namely that the Son and the Holy Spirit both are and are not distinct. Now,
as we saw above, theologians supporting a generally Franciscan trinitarian
442 chapter seven
theology replied to this that positio impossibilis allowed them to entertain

the counterfactual in order to test certain logical and doctrinal limits. Thus,
the Franciscans called the highest impossibility argument a fuga quaestio-
nis: ducking the question. The point for the Franciscans was to figure out
what the ultimate constitutive properties of the Son and the Holy Spirit are:
e.g., is filiation (i.e., passive generation) on its own a necessary and suffi-
cient source of distinguishing the Son from the other two persons, or is it
absolutely necessary for the Son to actively spirate in order for the Son and
Holy Spirit to be distinct? This question, according to the Franciscans, can
be asked irrespective of the fact that we know that de facto the Son actively
spirates the Holy Spirit. This is a counterfactual question, leading to strictly
counterfactual conclusions.
On this point, interestingly enough, the Dominicans and the Franciscans
basically agreed. The Dominicans as a group held that the “highest impossi-
bility” argument is misguided as an attempt to block the entire counterfac-
tual question of whether the Holy Spirit and the Son would still be distinct
if the former did not proceed from the latter. But then the question imme-
diately arises: how did the Dominicans rebuff the Franciscan affirmative
answer to the question? As we have seen time and again, and now also in
Hervaeus Natalis, the Dominicans, adhering strictly to opposition of rela-
tions as the source of personal distinction, held that the Holy Spirit must
come from the Son or else the Holy Spirit would be only rationally distinct
from the Son, not really distinct. But once the Dominicans admitted that
the question was a legitimate one, and that the device of positio impossi-
bilis was the source of this legitimacy, how could they avoid playing into the
Franciscans’ hands and admit that indeed active spiration is not absolutely
necessary for the Holy Spirit to be distinct from the Son? Important for the
theme of divergent trinitarian traditions, the Dominicans developed a logi-
cal strategy for dealing with the positio impossibilis, one that reflected their
values and positions.
Hervaeus offers an example of such a logical strategy in his question De
processione Spiritus Sancti, which is a part of his treatise De divinis personis
written to counter Henry of Ghent’s trinitarian theology.41 This is by far
41 The treatise as a whole (seven questions) will be edited from all manuscripts in
Friedman and Iribarren Forthcoming (and see also above in the present chapter, in the
“Unedited Works” section of the list of Dominican works from this time, s.v. ‘Hervaeus
Natalis’). The text below is provisional. The question De processione Spiritus Sancti (for
convenience, here labelled q. 6 of the treatise) is contained in four manuscripts (see the
Bibliography). For a short presentation of Hervaeus’ highly negative response to Peter
the most explicit treatment of the issue that I have seen by a Dominican.
Hervaeus first presents two forms of the highest impossibility argument.42
According to the first form, merely supposing that the Holy Spirit does
not come from the Son involves a contradiction. This is because, on the
one hand, the Holy Spirit’s being distinct from the Son is assumed in the
supposition itself, and yet, on the other, everyone agrees that only opposed
relations bring about distinction in God, and hence it is impossible for
the Holy Spirit to be distinct from the Son if the former does not come
from the latter. According to this first form of the highest impossibility
argument, then, the positio itself immediately involves the contradiction
that the Holy Spirit is and is not distinct from the Son. The second form
Auriol’s use of positio impossibilis in trinitarian theology, see Nielsen 2007a, 169–172. Note
that, in his Quodl. VI, q. 7 (“… Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur a Filio dato quod non procederet
ab eo”, ed. Zimara, ff. 132va–133rb, esp. for the treatment of positio impossibilis, f. 132va–b),
Hervaeus presents a treatment of the positio impossibilis problem that is nearly identical
to the one found in his De divinis personis, q. 6; for a far less developed treatment, see
his I Sent., d. 13, q. 1 (ed. 1647, p. 75b). The fact that Quodl. VI, q. 7, offers a fully parallel
treatment, including the same examples and the same argumentative strategy as found in the
De processione Spiritus Sancti, is yet another argument for the (nearly certain) authenticity
of Quodl. VI, one of Hervaeus’ so-called Quodlibeta minora. On the authenticity of Quodl.
VI (and the other Quodlibeta minora), see Friedman 2007a, 438–445 passim. Joseph Koch’s
evidence (in Koch 1927, 241 n. 13) for the authenticity of Quodl. VI, seems to me questionable,
since although the explicit reference found in Hervaeus’ De articulis pertinentibus ad IV
libros sententiarum Durandi to another treatment by Hervaeus of the question of the Holy
Spirit’s mode of proceeding (whether it is natural or voluntary) could be, as Koch claims, to
Hervaeus’ Quodl. VI, q. 6 (“… Spiritus Sanctus non plus procedat per modum voluntatis quam
Filius”, ed. Zimara, ff. 131vb–132va), it could just as well be to Hervaeus’ De divinis personis, q. 5
(ed. in Schmaus 1930a, pp. 212–214, and see the treatment in Friedman 2007b, 139–143) or
to Hervaeus’ I Sent., d. 10, q. 1 (ed. 1647, pp. 69a–70a); Koch apparently did not know about
these other two spots in Hervaeus’ corpus, but given their existence, his argument should
have been that the parallel forms of detailed argumentation make it nearly unthinkable that
the three works not come from the same hand.
42 Hervaeus Natalis, De divinis personis, q. 6 (= De processione Spiritus Sancti): “Dicunt
aliqui quod ex hypothesi qua ponitur Spiritum Sanctum non procedere a Filio, sequitur
ipsum distingui et non distingui a Filio, ita quod utraque pars contradictionis sequitur. Et hoc
ostendunt sic: quia ponendo Spiritum Sanctum, ponitur persona distincta a Filio; ponendo
vero ipsum non procedere, ponitur non distingui, quia in divinis, ut omnes ponunt—et
bene—, non est distinctio nisi per relationes originis oppositas. Et sic secundum istos
sequitur Spiritum Sanctum distingui a Filio et non distingui ex dicta hypothesi. Adducunt
etiam aliam rationem talem, quia in omni hypothesi impossibili includuntur incompossi-
bilia et opposita, quia in omni propositione impossibili praedicatum repugnat subiecto, et
ideo praedicatum et subiectum propositionis impossibilis sunt incompossibilia et opposita
inducunt vel ibi fecunt ea, et ideo ex omni hypothesi impossibili inferuntur opposita sive
infertur utraque pars contradictionis. Et sic etiam in proposito ex ista hypothesi impossibili
qua ponitur Spiritum Sanctum non procedere a Filio sequuntur opposita, scilicet distingui
et non distingui.” Paris, BnF lat. 14572, f. 222ra; Troyes, BM 717, f. 144rb.
444 chapter seven
of the argument appears to block any appeal whatsoever to impossible

positio: any impossible hypothesis includes within itself incompossibles,
because the predicate will be logically inconsistent with the subject. Thus,
the second form of the argument reduces all impossibility to strict logical
impossibility, and hence claims all instances of positio impossibilis to be
illegitimate.
Hervaeus replies that these forms of the highest impossibility argument
can be understood either correctly or incorrectly. The distinction that Her-
vaeus wants to draw turns on thinking about the positio in two different
ways. On the one hand, the “positio” can be just the positio proper, i.e. the
counterfactual hypothesis itself; on the other, it can be the positio proper
plus an (impossible) conclusion arrived at on the basis of the positio proper.
According to Hervaeus, if the positio impossibilis were taken in the second
of these two ways, such that it included not only the positio or hypothesis
itself (i.e., that the Holy Spirit not come from the Son) but also a conclusion
that arises from the positio, then the views he had just rehearsed in support
of the highest possibility argument (i.e., the views denying the legitimacy of
the positio impossibilis) would be correct: the positio impossibilis would in
that case involve an immediate logical contradiction, and hence the posi-
tio impossibilis would be inadmissable. For Hervaeus, this type of correct
understanding, based on the second way of understanding positio, is equiv-
alent to holding that the positio impossibilis as a whole reads as follows: the
Holy Spirit is posited to be a third person in God and, in addition, this person
is posited not to proceed from the Son, and yet from those initial conditions
it is posited that the Holy Spirit and the Son are still distinct persons. If the
positio impossibilis is understood in this way, then it could be correctly main-
tained that it involves a logical contradiction, because it would indeed be
positing that the Holy Spirit is a third person distinct from the Son and, in
the same breath, positing that the Holy Spirit is not distinct from the Son,
on account of its denial of opposed relations between the Son and the Holy
Spirit, when opposition of relations is required to bring about personal dis-
tinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit. You cannot, according to Hervaeus,
assume that the Son does not spirate the Holy Spirit and assume in the same
positio that the Holy Spirit exists; this is a strictly self-contradictory state-of-
affairs, and thus understood the highest impossibility arguments against the
positio impossibilis are sound. With this, Hervaeus has, of course, rejected
the Franciscan view on the matter, since his position is that under no cir-
cumstances, counterfactual or otherwise, could the Holy Spirit be distinct
from the Son without the Son spirating the Spirit (in opposition to the Fran-
ciscan view that this could counterfactually obtain).
On the other hand, Hervaeus claims that if we understand the term posi-
tio in the first way indicated above, i.e. as referring exclusively to the coun-
terfactual hypothesis, then the highest impossibility arguments that he had
recounted arise from a misunderstanding of positio impossibilis, and hence
only serve to block a perfectly legitimate question. If you merely posit that
the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, then it would not be cor-
rect to say that the positum involves an immediate contradiction, and this
is because “the precise and necessary cause of something does not entail
its opposite”, in other words, from the mere postulation of the Holy Spirit
not proceeding from the Son, it would be impossible to infer (at least to
a right thinking person) that the Holy Spirit existed as distinct from the
Son, since the Holy Spirit’s not proceeding from the Son is the cause of
the Holy Spirit and the Son not being distinct. Hervaeus gives the follow-
ing example to illustrate: not having lungs is the (negative) cause of the
fact that a creature without lungs does not breathe. The mere postula-
tion of a creature without lungs, according to Hervaeus, is perfectly legit-
imate, as long as you do not thereafter also infer that that very creature
breathes—that inference in fact should not be made, since lacking lungs
is the precise and necessary cause of something’s not breathing. The pos-
tulation of a creature without lungs is not in itself a problem, and it is not
on this basis that positio impossibilis should be rejected, rather it is infer-
ring from the hypothesis an absolute impossibility: that, in addition to not
having lungs, the creature breathes. The same is true of the counterfactual
question concerning the distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Son:
since the Holy Spirit’s not proceeding from the Son is the direct cause of
the Holy Spirit’s not being distinct from the Son, postulating that the Holy
Spirit not proceed from the Son disallows inferring from the postulate that
the Holy Spirit and the Son are distinct, since that is a complete impossibil-
ity. The positio itself, the counterfactual hypothesis, is not a problem; it is
drawing an impossible inference and conclusion on the basis of that postu-
late.43
43 Hervaeus Natalis, De divinis personis, q. 6 (= De processione Spiritus Sancti): “Ista
autem quae posita sunt ab istis possunt bene et male intelligi. Possunt enim positores istius
positionis intelligere distinctionem suam uno modo sic, scilicet quod ponatur Spiritum
Sanctum esse quaedam tertia persona et ponatur illa persona non procedere a Filio et quod
ex tali positione sequatur distingui. Et sic intelligendo bene dicunt, quia, ut deducunt, ex
una parte positionis sequitur distingui, scilicet ponendo Spiritum Sanctum esse tertiam
personam, et ex alia sequitur non distingui, scilicet ex non procedere a Filio prout ratio
eorum deducit. Sed si intelligant sic, scilicet quod ex ipso non procedere posito sequitur
446 chapter seven
Clearly, lying behind this position is the typical Dominican view that
opposition of relations, and only opposition of relations, can bring about
the distinction between the persons: you can ask the counterfactual ques-
tion concerning the Holy Spirit’s not proceeding from the Son, but you can-
not draw the absolutely false inference that, given the counterfactual, they
are also distinct from one another. But, we might ask, if this is the case, in
what sense is Hervaeus actually addressing the counterfactual question? It
seems that, since Hervaeus already knows the “right answer” on the basis of
opposition of relations being the precise cause of the distinction between
the divine persons, that the positio impossibilis is useless. Hervaeus has an
reply to this, and what lies behind Hervaeus’ affirmation of the validity of
the positio impossibilis is the following principle: the mere entertaining of
a pure counterfactual bears with it no ontological commitment or exis-
tential import. In deploying this principle, Hervaeus takes himself to be
engaging with the view that motivates the highest impossibility arguments:
namely, that every impossible proposition involves opposites or incompos-
sibles, since the predicate is logically incompossible with the subject. Thus,
he takes himself to be arguing against the form of the argument that lev-
els all types of impossibility to strict logical impossibility: if a proposition is
impossible, then it is strictly impossible. To deal with this, Hervaeus draws a
distinction that parallels his earlier distinction between ways of taking the
positio, i.e. as the positio proper or as the positio proper plus some impos-
sible conclusion. According to Hervaeus’ new distinction, an impossible
proposition can be considered as it would be in reality (secundum rem et
rei veritatem); an impossible proposition can also be considered as such
(ut sic posita), i.e. as impossible. In the case at hand, the proposition “the
Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son” can be considered in these two
ways. Considered as it would be in reality, this amounts to the Holy Spirit
existing and yet not proceeding from the Son; in line with what we have
already seen him say, Hervaeus maintains that this involves incompossi-
distingui et non distingui, sic non dicunt verum, quia praecisa et necessaria causa alicuius
non infert eius oppositum—sicut non habere pulmonem, quod est causa non respirandi, eo
modo quo in negativis est causa, non infert respirare; cum ergo secundum istos et secundum
veritatem non procedere a Filio sit causa, eo modo quo potest esse causa in divinis, non
distingui a Filio, impossibile est quod non procedere inferat distinctionem Spiritus Sancti a
Filio. De hoc autem est quaestio utrum ex ipso non procedere sequitur distingui aut non, et
ideo, secundum istum modum intelligendi positionem quae nunc posita est, isti non dicunt
bene dicendo utrumque oppositorum sequi.” Paris, BnF lat. 14572, f. 222ra–b; Troyes, BM 717,
f. 144rb–va.
bles, and specifically that the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct from each
other (because the Holy Spirit is postulated to exist) and are not distinct
from each other (because the Holy Spirit’s not proceeding from the Son is
the precise and necessary cause of the Holy Spirit’s not existing). But if one
were to consider the impossible proposition as divorced from any reality
and merely as an impossible proposition, then, according to Hervaeus, it
does not necessarily involve incompossibles and opposites. And the reason
for this is that “no negative entails the existence of its subject”, and hence
by positing that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, one is not
also bound to posit that the Holy Spirit exists, rather it is open to us to
posit that the Holy Spirit does not exist. Here Hervaeus is exploiting an
inherent doubleness in negative propositions. Take his own example of the
proposition ‘no human being is white’. This proposition can be affirmed in
two separate ways, either because there are human beings but none of them
are white, or because there are no human beings at all. In just this way,
a negative positio impossibilis carries with it no ontological commitment,
and specifically the proposition ‘the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the
Son’ does not entail that the Holy Spirit exists, just as ‘no human being is
white’ does not entail that any human being exists. Thus, if one understands
the proposition in question as nevertheless entailing that the Holy Spirit
exists (secundum rem et rei veritatem), then it involves opposites and is
strictly impossible; if, on the other hand, one understands the proposition
as not entailing the existence of the subject, then it is perfectly acceptable,
since, if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, then the Holy Spirit
would not exist.44 According to Hervaeus, then, what the counterfactual
44 Hervaeus Natalis, De divinis personis, q. 6 (= De processione Spiritus Sancti): “Quod
autem dicunt ultra quod omnis propositio impossibilis includit opposita quia praedicatum
repugnat subiecto, dico quod licet omnis propositio impossibilis includat opposita, si con-
sideretur secundum rem et rei veritatem, non autem oportet quod includat opposita secun-
dum quod consideratur ut sic posita. Verbi gratia: ista propositio ‘Deus est non-ens’ includit
opposita et repugnantia, quia non-ens et Deus sibi repugnant, sed si ponatur ex hypothesi
quod Deus non sit aliqua res in rerum natura existens, tunc si consideretur Deus secundum
istam hypothesim, Deus et non-ens non repugnant, quia, si ita esset ut ponitur, scilicet quod
Deus non esset aliqua res, Deus et non-ens non repugnarent, immo invicem convenirent.
Similiter dico in proposito quod licet ista propositio ‘Spiritus Sanctus non procedit a Filio’
secundum rem et veritatem includit opposita et forte talia opposita quae sunt distingui et
non distingui, sed tamen considerando istam propositionem ‘Spiritus Sanctus non procedit
a Filio’ prout est sic posita, non oportet quod includat opposita, quia ex hoc quod ponitur
Spiritum Sanctum non procedere a Filio, non ponitur Spiritum Sanctum esse tertiahmi per-
sonahmi in divinis, sed negatur ab eo procedere a Filio. Ex hoc autem quod negatur Spiritum
Sanctum procedere a Filio, non ponitur esse aliquid vel aliqua persona divina, quia ex virtute
448 chapter seven
question, including its positio impossibilis, teaches us, is that the Holy Spirit
would not exist if he did not come from the Son. This result seems to
confirm the interpretation given above (after n. 40) of Hervaeus’ overall
view of the counterfactual question: that Hervaeus holds that if the Son did
not spirate the Holy Spirit, the Son might exist, distinct by filiation from
the Father (and all other existing things), but the Holy Spirit would not
exist.
We can see here that Hervaeus has developed a logical strategy that con-
forms completely to the theological (and metaphysical) views that he held
in trinitarian theology. It is a strategy that legitimates the use of positio
impossibilis as a technique for exploring physical and doctrinal impossibili-
ties, while simultaneously ruling out the Franciscan positive answer to the
counterfactual Filioque question. For Hervaeus Natalis, you can legitimately
ask the counterfactual question “if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the
Son, would they still be distinct?”, but the answer will always be negative,
since if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, the Holy Spirit would
not exist. The Franciscan view that the Holy Spirit could exist, even if he
did not come from the Son, involves an impossible inference and, hence,
incompossibility. In the end, Hervaeus’ treatment simply gives a framework
for and ballast to the view he was committed to on the basis of his principle
that personal distinction in God arises only from opposition of relations.
2. Durand of St. Pourçain and the

Radical Attenuation of the Psychological Model
In section 1 of this chapter, I used Hervaeus Natalis as an example of Domini-

can trinitarian theology in the first few decades of the fourteenth century.
In fact, the positions found in Hervaeus’ trinitarian theology appear to have
been defended by most of the Dominicans of the era. Thus, developing the
ideas of Thomas Aquinas, Dominicans generally held that opposed relations
locutionis nulla negativa infert suum subiectum esse, immo per oppositum, scilicet per non
esse sui subiecti potest verificari, haec enim ‘homo non est album’ potest verificari vel quia
homo non est (et sic homo non est album) vel quia ipso existente albedo sibi non convenit.
“Iterum etiam sicut dictum est, dato quod haec propositio ‘Spiritus Sanctus non procedit’
inferat et includat praedicta opposita, tamen hoc non potest facere ratione cuiuslibet partis
suae, immo unum oppositorum includit ratione unius et aliud ratione alterius; de hoc
autem quaeritur ut supra dictum est, scilicet quid includit ratione istius partis quae est non
procedere. Et satis credo quod est intentio istorum quod ex ista parte quae est non procedere
sequitur solum non distingui.” Paris, BnF lat. 14572, f. 222rb; Troyes, BM 717, f. 144ra–b.
were the sole constitutive factors in the distinction of the persons from each
other, and further that the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Son only if the for-
mer comes from the latter, a position based on the centrality of opposition of
relations to the constitution of the persons, and the concomitant deempha-
sizing of the emanations/disparate relations. In line with this, among the
Dominicans the distinction of the emanations was based at least definition-
ally upon the prior distinction of the persons (which in turn was based upon
opposition of relations), since the only features that distinguished genera-
tion from spiration was the different arrangement of the persons to each
other in the two emanations: one person from one person in generation,
one person from two persons in spiration. Finally, the denial that the ema-
nations were distinct on the basis of their sources, intellect and will, led at
least most Dominicans to reject the strong use of the psychological model as
well as, relatedly, what we have seen to be common “proofs” for there being
three and only three divine persons. All of these features were widespread
in the Dominican trinitarian tradition in these years, and all of them were in
one way or another descended from Aquinas and from the relation account
of the distinction of the persons that Aquinas had staunchly defended.
But not all was agreement and harmony among the Dominicans. In the
early fourteenth century, the thirteenth-century movement to unify the
intellectual mission of the Dominican order around the thought of Thomas
Aquinas took on new life. Much of this development appears to have been
pushed by Hervaeus, who, as mentioned above, as a bachelor of theology in
Paris wrote significant replies to Henry of Ghent’s philosophy and theology,
and who, moreover, wrote a defense of Thomas Aquinas’ thought, the Defen-
sio doctrinae Thomae (ed. Piccari). Hervaeus also expanded his defense of
Thomas’ thought outside the bounds of general apologetics and replies
to truly rival intellectual systems like Henry’s: indeed, Hervaeus began to
reply to Dominican thinkers whom he thought were not Thomist enough
in their ideas. Thus, Hervaeus wrote a Thomist-leaning Correctorium of the
Sentences commentary of James of Metz, a shadowy Dominican from the
early fourteenth century whose commentary nevertheless survives in a sig-
nificant number of copies in several redactions.45 More spectacularly still,
Hervaeus took the lead in replying to Durand of St. Pourçain, even setting
45 On James’ and Hervaeus’ trinitarian theology, see Decker 1967, pp. 285–581 passim;
most recently on James and Hervaeus, see Olszewski 2010. For literature on the Dominican
attempts (both legislative and polemical) to defend and to ensure support of Thomas
Aquinas’ doctrine, see Ch. 1, above, in n. 1.
450 chapter seven
in motion two separate Dominican investigations of Durand’s orthodoxy

and especially his Thomism. In Hervaeus’ and Durand’s exchange, trinitar-
ian theology was a featured subject. Although Hervaeus was, at least from
Durand’s own point of view, the most important thinker to reply to Durand’s
views, many other of Durand’s near contemporaries were deeply engaged
in replying to Durand. To take just one example to which we will return in
Chapter Nine, Peter Auriol paid a great deal of attention to Durand, often
taking him as his opponent. Durand’s trinitarian thought is, in fact, rich and
complex, and the remarkable reaction that he elicited makes it still more
interesting and significant. In what follows, after offering an indication of
how Durand’s trinitarian thought was an example of what his critics called
his opinio singularis (as opposed to the opinio communis of the common
doctor, Aquinas), I will examine Durand’s radical attenuation of the psy-
chological model in trinitarian theology, and set this in connection with
a Dominican marginalization strategy, a way around the Franciscan insis-
tence on a strong use of the psychological model. What is notable in this
particular case is that it can be argued that Durand, rather than rejecting
the general tack taken by his order in these major trinitarian questions, is in
fact following the tendencies of his order to a type of ultimate conclusion,
an ultimate conclusion that, to his contemporary confrères at least, went
all too far. When it came to the psychological model, Durand took standard
Dominican trinitarian theology to an unacceptable extreme, eliciting criti-
cism and censure.
It is worthwhile to give some background to Durand and to his works,
since they reflect the reception of his thought among his fellow Dominicans.
For Durand’s career was marked by nearly unbroken controversy focused
on his perceived intransigence in defending views that were incompati-
ble with the views of Thomas, as understood by contemporary Thomists.
Durand appears to have lectured on the Sentences at a provincial Dominican
studium sometime between around 1304 and 1307, and he put these lectures
into written form by at latest 1308. The main lines of Durand’s philosophical
and theological system are already clear in this first version of his Sentences
commentary, and, moreover, in it Durand made no great issue out of follow-
ing the doctrine of Aquinas strictly, something which, as mentioned above,
was mandated by the Dominican order. Further, and perhaps more impor-
tantly, on many issues Durand took positions that, while they could find
some support in the works of Aquinas, were nevertheless at odds with the
way Dominicans contemporary with him understood Aquinas. It seems that
in his Parisian Sentences lectures from ca. 1307–1308, Durand was just as
independent in his attitude towards Aquinas and contemporary Thomism,
and this appears to have led to his receiving warnings that he might well
sacrifice the master’s degree if he were not to begin following a more strict
Thomistic line. It is in this time period that Hervaeus Natalis, in his second
Quodlibet, first began to react to Durand, and particularly to the first version
of Durand’s Sentences commentary. Perhaps on account of the resistance he
was meeting, the second version of Durand’s Sentences commentary from
around 1311 exhibits signs of the moderation or abandonment of some of his
earlier views that could be taken to be non-Thomist. After receiving his doc-
torate, and after his Parisian regency (1312–1313), Durand was moved first to
the papal school in Avignon and then to several bishoprics, safely outside of
the jurisdiction of the Dominican order. This was a good thing for Durand: in
1314, a committee of Dominican theologians agreed on a list of 93 statements
to be found in Durand’s Sentences commentary and suspected of error or
heresy; although Durand made replies, these were clearly insufficient, since
a second committee was formed and, in 1316 or 1317, composed a list of 235
articles from Durand’s Sentences commentary in which Durand was consid-
ered to deviate from Thomas’ teaching. Throughout this time and into the
early 1320’s, Dominican theologians like Hervaeus, John of Naples, Peter of
Palude, and Durandellus, criticized many aspects of Durand’s theology and
philosophy. Durand replied to criticism from his Dominican brethren (and
from Hervaeus, in particular) in his Quodlibeta, and especially in the third
and last version of his Sentences commentary, in which he returned to many
of the positions (sometimes modified on the basis of his critics’ arguments)
that he had held in the first version.46 Trinitarian theology was a major point
of contention between Durand and his Dominican critics.
The most basic principle in Durand’s trinitarian theology is the same as
that of all of his Dominican confrères: personal distinction in God arises on
account of opposition of relations. But the way that this principle plays itself
out in Durand’s trinitarian thought diverges strongly from his more main-
stream Thomist critics, like Hervaeus Natalis and John of Naples.47 Durand
46 For a review of Durand’s life and works, as well as a recounting of the redactions of
Durand’s Sent. commentary and their place in early fourteenth-century theology, see the
Historical Introduction (pp. 184–215) in Schabel, Friedman, and Balcoyiannopoulou 2001. In
what follows, I use the Venice 1571 edition of the third and last version of Durand’s Sentences
(= Sent. (C)).
47 The following summary of Durand’s trinitarian theology is based in large measure on
Iribarren 2005, the only study of Durand’s trinitarian theology that actually looks at the
way his thought developed throughout his career, especially through his confrontation with
Hervaeus Natalis; Iribarren should be read in conjunction with Decker 1967 (esp. 427–438)
who deals with related matters in Durand’s earliest work. Durand’s trinitarian theology has
452 chapter seven
appears to have been highly concerned that the relation account as it was
used by, among others, Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome, was insufficient
to guarantee the reality of the distinction between the persons. We have
seen these types of worries before, and indeed they led Giles of Rome to
stress that a relation, in comparison to its correlative opposite, could take
on some reality of its own, a requirement, it seemed to him, because the rela-
tions must have some reality of their own apart from their foundation, the
divine essence, in order for a real distinction between the persons to arise.
Durand did not think that the dual nature of the divine relations was a suffi-
cient guarantee of the reality of the relations and hence of the reality of the
personal distinction. Motivated by this concern, Durand developed a view
of the category of relation and its application to the triune God that is remi-
niscent of Henry of Ghent’s.48 The categories, for Durand as for Henry, can be
divided into three overall classes: (1) substance; (2) the absolute accidents,
quality and quantity; and (3) relation and the other relative accidents—and
the paramount feature of relations and relative accidents is that they are
merely modes of being of their foundation, whether that foundation be a
substance, quality, or quantity. Henry had claimed that a relation, as a mode
of being of its foundation, has no reality of its own, since it takes all of its
reality from its foundation. Durand disagreed: relations, both divine and cat-
egorial, have some reality of their own, and, in fact, they are really distinct
from the substance, quantity, or quality upon which they are founded. With
that said, for Durand, relations are not subsistent realities, since they depend
for their existence upon their foundation, and hence they can make no com-
position with their foundation. To put it in another way, the type of modal
distinction that Durand was claiming there to be between a relation and its
foundation reflected the fact that mode and foundation are two items each
with their own reality, but two items in which one is so dependent upon
the other (since one is relative and the other absolute) that no composition
results from their being together. What this meant specifically in the case
of the Trinity is that, for Durand, the relations have the robust reality that
they need in order to guarantee the real distinction between the persons
also been studied in Schmaus 1930a, passim (see index); Philippe 1947; Decker 1967, passim
(see index: Decker especially considers whether any similarities between Durand and James
of Metz can be attributed to the influence of James on Durand); Schneider 1972 (focuses
on John of Naples’ replies to Durand: see esp. specific references in nn. 50 and 56 below);
Gelber 1974, 54–58, 127–129; Iribarren 2002a, 2002c. For a recent comparison of Durand’s and
Hervaeus’ theory of relations, see Dewender 2009.
48 On Henry’s theory of relation, see Ch. 4, § 1, above.
yet without compromising divine unity. When it came to trinitarian the-

ology, however, the crux of Durand’s problems with the likes of Hervaeus
Natalis was that ascribing reality to the divine relations made it seem as
though they were subsistent entities in God, thus shattering the simplic-
ity and the unity of the essence. The divergence between Durand and his
confrères was made even more pronounced by the fact that Durand main-
tained that, although opposition of relations is the foundation of supposital
distinction in God, nevertheless disparate relations could found a real dis-
tinction. Thus, for Durand, opposition of relations is required for the real
distinction between the persons, but not for the real distinction between
the disparate relations, which are distinct se ipsis.49 As Isabel Iribarren has
shown, between the metaphysics of the categories and the theological com-
mitments underlying Durand’s trinitarian view and those underlying the
view of, e.g., Hervaeus, there was such a vast gulf that discussion between
them was to a great degree marked by misunderstanding.
Thus, Durand was operating with a different notion of relation than his
Dominican contemporaries. In addition to this, however, Durand laid a
stress upon relations in trinitarian theology that was unparalleled. Thus, for
him—and this is a position on which he clearly went against the Thomistic
grain and upon which he was criticized by, among others, Hervaeus Nata-
lis—the source of the emanations is certainly not divine will or intellect,
and it is not even the undifferentiated divine essence (as Hervaeus main-
tained): it is the personal relations. Thus, strictly speaking, paternity is the
source of the Son’s generation, and this is because the power of generat-
ing, the source by which (principium quo) the generator generates, must
be distinct as a supposite from the term of generation, and therefore must
be the Father’s constitutive property, the relation paternity.50 As this might
49 See Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 13, q. 2, esp. nn. 32–34 (ed. 1571, f. 49ra–b, and further ff. 47va–
49ra). This view of Durand’s was a major source of friction between him and his Dominican
confrères, who argued that the disparate relations were distinct solely on the basis of the
opposed relations. See on this issue, e.g., Decker 1967, 351–381, on Durand esp. 373–381
(Decker noting that James of Metz also held this unusual view, although not convinced that
James had an influence on Durand); Iribarren 2005, esp. 121–136 and the the book’s remaining
sections entitled “The Processions”. Note that this view seems clearly to be related to the
position of Godfrey of Fontaines discussed in Ch. 5, above, at and around nn. 22–28.
50 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 7, q. 2 (“Utrum potentia generandi dicat hadi aliquid vel solum
quid”), n. 29: “… potentia generandi quae est principium quo generans generat sit sola rela-
tio paternitatis quae sola distinguitur secundum suppositum a Filio et filiatione. Et haec
est tertia opinio quae sola poterit habere veritatem secundum ea quae ponit fides. Neces-
sitas autem huius opinionis patet ex eo quod principium quo generans generat distingui-
tur necessario in divinis secundum suppositum a termino productionis …” Venice 1571,
454 chapter seven
suggest, Durand nearly totally deemphasizes the emanations, and the posi-
tion that is perhaps most emblematic of Durand’s stress on the relations is
his radical identification of the emanations and the relations, through this
identification basically eliminating the emanations as an item for them-
selves in God. Durand is candid about the fact that emanation as such is
by no means to be attributed to God: since there can be no movement or
motion in God, the emanations are, in fact, the respects or the relations
that hold between the persons, and for this reason there is no difference in
reality between relation and emanation. And Durand labels these respects
in a way that we have seen before: “which from which other” and “from
whom the other one”. These respects are completely static and relational,
implying no emanational process.51 Indeed, Durand devotes an entire, intri-
cate question to showing that we cannot even think the emanations prior
to the relations or vice-versa.52 It is simply not the case that the origins can
be the foundation of the relations, or that the relations presuppose origin:
this, according to Durand, is a complete misunderstanding of the relative
nature of the divine persons. The only foundation of the divine relations
is, Durand tells us explicitly, the essentia fecunda (I will return to this posi-
f. 33va. Cp. the views of Hervaeus (at n. 20 above) and John of Naples (at n. 91 below). See
on this issue, e.g., Decker 1967, 345–350; Schneider 1972, 63–71; Iribarren 2005, esp. 121–136
and the rest of the book’s sections entitled “The Processions”.
51 Durand, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (“Utrum generatio Filii et processio Spiritus Sancti sint ema-
nationes distinctae”), n. 4: “Cum processio in divinis non sit motus vel mutatio media inter
personam procedentem et illam a qua procedit, sed dicat solum respectum ut quod est ab
alio cui respondet oppositus respectus ut a quo est aliud qui respectus constituunt personas
et distinguunt, patet quia generatio activa est idem quod paternitas vel relatio paternitatis, et
generatio passiva est idem quod filiatio vel relatio filiationis, spiratio autem, sive active sive
passive accepta, est idem cum relationibus correspondentibus. Nisi ergo velimus gratis con-
tendere, non est aliud quaerere de diversitate istarum processionum secundum rem quam
quaerere de diversitate relationum, licet aliam rationem intelligendi habeant haec et illa.”
Venice 1571, f. 47vb. Also, ibid., q. 1 (“Utrum in divinis sit aliqua processio”), n. 4: “Exclusis enim
ab actione omni motu ex mutatione et innovatione, remanent soli respectus a quo aliud et
quod ab alio; haec autem reperiuntur in divinis.” Venice 1571, f. 47va. For uses of the phrases
qui ab alio and a quo alius, see Ch. 1, above, at and around n. 63.
52 See Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 27, q. 1 (“Utrum actus notionales sint priores relationibus”;
Venice 1571, f. 76rb–vb), esp. nn. 10–11: “Ex quo patet quod nunquam possunt praeintelligi rela-
tiones emanationibus … Item, nec emanationes possunt praeintelligi relationibus.” Venice,
f. 76vb. Decker 1967, 488–492, goes through Durand’s complex argumentation for the position,
and Decker (p. 492) says of the position: “Der Radikalismus, mit dem er den Gedanken, daß
die Personen nur durch die Relation unterschieden und begründet werden, zu Ende denkt,
hat ihn [i.e., Durandus] in Gegensatz zu Thomas gebracht.” The position of Aquinas’ that
Durand seems to have been contradicting is that mentioned above, in Ch. 1, n. 53, where
Aquinas says that we can assign an order to our concepts of relation and emanation.
tion below).53 Bearing this in mind, it is clear why Durand rejects a position
like Bonaventure’s concerning the ordering of our concepts of divine ema-
nations and relations with respect to each other. Bonaventure had claimed
that origin, according to the way we understand things, is prior to relation.
Durand prefers to say that relation qua relation is constitutive, because that
position is more probable (probabilius).54 The way in which this, accord-
ing to Durand, can be proved descends from Aquinas, and particularly from
the argument that above I labeled the “intrinsic constitutive” argument: the
constitution of something must come from what is intrinsic to it; but origin
is more of an act going out from one person and a way to another, whereas
relation is a form intrinsic to the person; therefore relation is the intrin-
sic constitutive of the persons.55 To Durand, it is just not correct to think
about the divine constitutive properties in emanational fashion: they are
relations. Taking as his point of departure this emphasis on relation qua
relation, Durand goes so far as to reject a position, surely to be attributed
to Thomas Aquinas, on which relation considered as property is constitu-
tive of the person, such that in the case of the Father, paternity as property
53 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 26, q. 1 (“Utrum omnes personae divinae distinguantur per
relationes”), n. 18: “Ad rationes alterius opinionis quae ponit quod ratio relationis non potest
esse constitutiva respondendum est, cum enim primo dicitur quod relatio supponit suum
fundamentum, concedatur; et cum dicitur quod origines sunt fundamentum relationum
divinarum, dicendum quod falsum est, et qui intelligit sic, falsum intelligit. Origines enim
non sunt nisi ipsaemet relationes, a quo aliud et quod ab alio, et non fundamentum earum.
Illud enim est essentia fecunda. Unde qui praeintelligit personas originibus aut origines
relationibus male intelligit. Sed simul intelligenda est persona constituta cum sua relatione
et origine.” Venice 1571, f. 75rb. For more on the fecund essence, see at and around nn. 64–67
below.
54 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 26, q. 1, nn. 13–14: “Quidam dicunt quod distinctio personarum
est per origines non per relationes sub r[el]atione relationis, quorum ratio talis est relationes
secundum modum intelligendi sequuntur suum fundamentum … Alii dicunt quod magis
proprie debet dici quod personae divinae distinguuntur et constituuntur per proprietates et
relationes quam per origines. Et hoc dicitur probabilius.” Venice 1571, f. 75ra. Text continued
in n. 55 below.
55 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 26, q. 1, n. 14 (text continued from n. 54 above): “Cuius ratio est
quia constitutio rei in se et eius distinctio ab alia re debet fieri per id quod rei intrinsecum
(sicut in creaturis fit per formam). Sed origines non significantur ut formae intrinsecae
personis, sed potius ut actus progrediens a persona in personam, quasi via media, sicut
generatio significatur ut via vel actus procedens a generante in genitum. Ergo per origines
non debent dici personae constitui vel distingui, sed per illa quae sunt in personis tamquam
formae intrinsecae et immanentes. Et hae sunt relationes vel proprietates quae se habent
ad personas aliquo modo sicut formae ad totum constitutum.” Venice 1571, f. 75ra. Cp. this
to Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 40, a. 2, resp., of which it is a nearly verbatim rendering. On the
“intrinsic constitutive” argument in Aquinas, see Ch. 3, above, at and around n. 3.
456 chapter seven
founds the person, not paternity as relation.56 Thus, the metaphysics under-
lying Durand’s stress on the relational aspect of the divine properties, and
the extreme lengths to which he took that stress, made for genuine disagree-
ment between Durand and his confrères, and gave to Durand’s trinitarian
theology a quite unique tone.
We can observe how this extremely strong emphasis on relation as the
sole operative factor in the distinction between the divine persons plays
out in one particular area in which Durand rejected an element—however
idiosyncratic—of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition: John Duns Scotus’
ideas on the absolute persons. We saw in Chapter Six, above, that Scotus at
least proposed, and perhaps defended at one point in his career, that the
divine persons were absolutes, constituted by absolute, non-quidditative
origin, and I suggested there that, in his emphasis on origin, i.e. emanation,
as the constitutive property of the persons, Scotus was taking to an extreme
tendencies that were already clear in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition
of his day.57 Certainly, Durand was not the only Dominican to reject Sco-
tus’ doctrine of the absolute persons;58 but Durand’s near total emphasis on
relation as constitutive of the persons leaves him with no sympathy for the
grounds of Scotus’ doctrine. Indeed, given his scepticism about Bonaven-
ture’s view concerning the conceptual priority of origin in the constitution
of the persons, it is no wonder that Durand never even mentions that Scotus
thought that origin or production was the actual source of personal dis-
tinction. Durand simply focuses on the fact that Scotus thought that these
non-quidditative origins were absolute and not relative realities. Durand
introduces Scotus’ position by saying:
They do not prove this conclusion directly, but only indirectly, saying that the
same difficulties (inconvenientia) that follow from their position, follow from
the one that says the persons are made distinct by relation, and that [these
difficulties] are dealt with in a like manner … since [the absolute modes] are
modes of things, and not quiddities, they do not make composition with the
essence.59
56 See for Durand’s rejection, I Sent. (C), d. 26, q. 1, nn. 15–17 (ed. Venice 1571, f. 75ra–b).
This view got Durand into trouble with his Dominican brothers; see on Aquinas’ view, Ch. 1,
above, at n. 53, and see, e.g., Decker 1967, 460–479, esp. 475–479 (Decker noting that James of
Metz may have influenced Durand on this issue), and Schneider 1972, 159–173. For a related
discussion in which Durand was criticized by his contemporary Dominicans, see n. 52 above.
57 On Scotus and absolute persons, see Ch. 6, § 1, above, and for my suggestion, see there,
at and around n. 89. For Durand’s response to this position in the first version of his Sent.
commentary, see Decker 1967, 475–476.
58 As an example, see § 3 below, for the Liber propugnatorius’ response to the doctrine.
59 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 26, q. 1, n. 9: “… nec probant directe conclusionem istam, sed
This is as fair a short summary of Scotus’ position as one could ask

for: there are too many problems with the relation account, therefore by
a process of elimination we can arrive at personal distinction through
absolute modes. Scotus had defended the orthodoxy of his view through
a complex marginalization strategy founded upon an appeal to a broad
interpretation of authoritative passages. According to Scotus, no position
could be ruled out that was not explicitly denied by authoritative texts,
and since absolute persons and properties were not explicitly denied, they
could be supported. But Durand rejects Scotus’ marginalization strategy,
saying that positing absolute persons goes “against the intention of the
saints and the determination of the Church”. Further, Durand asks why
Scotus cannot name these absolute realities that constitute the persons:
are they not merely nameless figments of Scotus’ imagination?60 All in all,
Durand’s heavy stress on relations in the constitution of the persons left him
with no understanding for the Franciscan trinitarian tradition’s emphasis
on emanations and origin in general, and Scotus’ particular version of that
emphasis with its support for absolute properties.
As noted above, Durand’s stress on relational constitutive properties led
him to hold some positions that were clearly opposed by the largest number
of contemporary Dominican authors. With that said, his very emphasis on
relation and on opposition of relations as the sole source of personal distinc-
tion in God meant that Durand shared quite a few overall positions and spe-
cific arguments with the more mainstream Dominican trinitarian thought.
Thus, to take one of the traditional flashpoints between the Franciscan and
Dominican trinitarian traditions, Durand maintains, in full agreement with
the Dominican stress on opposition of relations as the source of personal
distinction, that the Son and the Holy Spirit would not be distinct if the one
did not proceed from the other, using as a major reason what above in Chap-
ter Five was labelled the “Father” argument: that if disparate relations could
solum indirecte, dicentes quod eadem inconvenientia quae sequuntur ad positionem istam,
sequuntur ad illam quae ponit personas distingui[t] per relationes, et consimiliter evaduntur
… cum hmodi absolutii sint modi rerum, et non quiditates, non faciunt compositionem cum
essentia.” Venice 1571, f. 74vb.
60 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 26, q. 1, n. 10: “Istud autem esset expresse contra intentionem
sanctorum et contra determinationem ecclesiae … Item, haec positio est contra rationem,
primo, quia isti qui ponunt per tales modos personas distingui deberent istos modos in
speciali nominare ut sciremus qui sunt, qualiter vocantur, sicut nos qui ponimus eas distingui
per relationes expresse dicimus personas divinas distingui per paternitatem et filiationem
et per processionem. Quod tamen non faciunt, unde videtur esse purum (ed.: primum)
figmentum ponere tales modos.” Venice 1571, f. 74vb.
458 chapter seven
bring about personal distinction, then the Father would be two persons on
the basis of the disparate relations, generation and active spiration.61
Another example of Durand’s opposition to Franciscan trinitarian theol-
ogy is to be found in his treatment of the modes of procession, specifically
whether the Son proceeds by way of nature or intellect and the Holy Spirit by
way of will. Here Durand sets up an opponent whose position is that “the Son
is produced in the divine through an act of the intellect and the Holy Spirit
through an act of the will”, and he specifies that the ‘acts’ in question can be
understood either as the very productions of the persons or as the sources
of those productions.62 According to Durand neither of these alternatives
is at all plausible. It cannot be claimed that understanding and willing are
the very active productions of the persons, since the personal productions
are notional acts while understanding and willing are essential acts.63 This
strict demarcation between the essential acts shared by all three persons,
on the one hand, and the notional acts by which the persons are produced,
on the other, is a fundamental view of Durand’s, and it stands in sharp con-
trast to, for instance, Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus, who claimed in
different ways that the essential intellectual act by which all three persons
61 Durand, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (“Utrum si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, distinguere-
tur ab eo”), n. 9: “… plures relationes disparatae sunt in Patre producente, et non distinguunt
ipsum in plures personas; ergo relationes disparatae non sunt causae sufficientes distinc-
tionis personarum. Sed si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, nec e converso, inter eos
non essent nisi relationes disparatae; ergo non possent differre personaliter, sed solum sicut
differt una persona a se ipsa secundum diversas proprietates …” Venice 1571, f. 43va. For the
entire discussion, see Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 11, q. 2 (Venice 1571, ff. 43ra–44rb). For Durand on
disparate relations, see also at and around n. 49 above. On the Father argument, see Ch. 5,
above, at and around nn. 117–126.
62 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 6, q. 2 (“Utrum Pater genuerit Filium natura an voluntate”),
n. 6: “… quod enim Filius producatur in divinis per actum intellectus et Spiritus Sanctus per
actum voluntatis non potest intelligi nisi dupliciter. Uno modo quod isti actus sint ipsae
productiones personarum. Alio modo quod sint principia productionum …” Venice 1571,
f. 31rb. See on the issue as a whole, Philippe 1947, which studies Durand’s rejection of the
psychological model of the Trinity in both its psychological and its trinitarian dimension,
and sets it against the backdrop of Aquinas’ use of the psychological model as an analogy.
63 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 6, q. 2, n. 7: “… productiones personarum secundum omnes
sunt actus notionales et non essentiales, sed intelligere et velle sunt actus essentiales et non
notionales. Ergo non sunt ipsae productiones.” Venice 1571, f. 31rb. Durand also brings up (loc.
cit., nn. 8–9 [f. 31rb]) that if understanding and willing were the productions of the persons,
then each person would produce two other persons, since each person understands and wills,
and, moreover, since the productions of the persons are really distinct, on the one hand, while
understanding and willing in God do not differ in any way at all, on the other, the productions
and the essential acts cannot be identical. Cp. this with Hervaeus, at and around nn. 21–22
above.
understand and the notional intellectual act by which the Father produces
the Son are related to one another, and they even took pains to make their
concept theories explain just how these two acts are related. Not Durand:
for him, these two levels are completely separate; understanding and will-
ing are at the level of the essence and by no means at the level of the notional
acts. Indeed, Durand claims that the essential acts, like understanding and
willing, are “according to the way we understand things posterior to the
notional acts and are elicited from the persons already constituted through
the notional acts.”64 Since the persons share the same essential acts of under-
standing and willing, the notional acts by which the persons are constituted
must be “prior” to the essential acts, and for that reason the essential acts
of understanding and willing can have nothing to do with acts by which
the persons are produced. Nor, according to Durand, can the second way of
taking his opponent’s position be defended, namely that the acts of under-
standing and willing are the sources of the personal productions. Durand
appeals to Aristotle’s distinction in Metaphysics IX, 8 (1050a22–b1), between
transient acts, which produce something outside of the agent (like a builder
and the house he builds), and immanent acts, which remain internal to the
agent. The examples that Aristotle gives of immanent acts are vision and
understanding, and Durand takes this to mean that an act of understanding
remains within the one understanding and is not productive of anything.
Since, on this interpretation of Aristotle, understanding and willing are not
“fecund”, i.e. do not produce anything, while the sources of the personal
productions are fecund, these two groups of acts clearly cannot be identi-
cal.65 What Durand ends with is that the persons would be produced even
64 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 32, q. 1 (“Utrum Pater et Filius diligant se Spiritu Sancto”), n. 8
(italicized text translated): “… actus notionales quibus personae producuntur sunt actus
naturae divinae ut est fecunda, quam fecunditatem non habet ex hoc quod est intelligens
et volens, sed praecedit utrumque, ita quod est intelligere et velle nec sunt actus quibus
personae producuntur, nec supponuntur ab actibus productis, propter quod nullus actus
intellectus aut voluntatis potest esse notionalis, sed sunt secundum modum intelligendi
posteriores actibus notionalibus, et eliciuntur a personis iam constitutis per actus notionales,
qui sunt mere naturales.” Venice 1571, f. 87vb.
65 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 6, q. 2, n. 10: “Quod autem non sint principia productionum
patet sic. Illud cuius condicio est opposita fecunditati non potest esse principium actus
quo aliquid producitur, quia omnis productio provenit ex fecunditate. Sed condicio actuum
intelligendi et volendi est opposita fecunditati. Ergo non possunt esse principium actuum
quibus personae producuntur. Maior iam patet, sed minor probatur, quia haec est condicio
actus intelligendi vel volendi quod ex ipsis nihil aliud constituitur seu consequitur, ut patet
ex IX Metaphysicae; fecunditas autem est ex quo natum est alterum sequi; ergo condicio actus
intelligendi et volendi contraria est fecunditati.” Venice 1571, f. 31va.
460 chapter seven
if (counterfactually) there were no acts of intellect and will in God, and this
fits well with his claim that the notional acts are “prior” to the essential acts.
Moreover, Durand claims that the notional acts are in God on the basis of
“the infinity of the fecund divine nature”.66 What this must mean, remem-
bering that relations and emanations are absolutely identical for Durand,
and that in God’s reality these are relations, is that the essence is the foun-
dation of the relations that constitute the persons. This is what it is for the
divine essence to be fecund, since this is how the persons are constituted.
And thus, for Durand, what “production” is in God is the constitution of sub-
sistent persons on the basis of opposition of real relations.67
From this point in dealing with the question of the Son’s emanation by
way of nature, Durand proceeds much as we saw Hervaeus Natalis proceed,
so much so that Durand’s treatment may well have been inspired by Her-
vaeus’. Thus, Durand considers (1) the relationship of the productive power
to the act of production (habitudo virtutis productivae ad actum producendi),
(2) the supposites doing the producing (supposita producentia), and (3) the
order of products and productions (ordo productorum et productionum).
Considered in the first way, strictly speaking in God there is only emanation
by way of nature, since—utilizing the same type of argument as Hervaeus—
an emanation by way of will would not have the necessity of immutability
and the characteristic of being determined to just one effect that the divine
emanations have.68 In line with this, and just as we might expect after having
66 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 6, q. 2, n. 10: “Patet ergo quod intelligere et velle non sunt
productiones personarum nec principia productionum, sed exclusis a Deo per intellectum
intellectu et voluntate cum omnibus actibus suis, adhuc esset in divinis generatio Filii et
spiratio Spiritus Sancti, ita quod haec sunt in divinis ex fecunditate naturae radicaliter quam
fecunditatem habet ex sua infinitate et non ex hoc quod est intelligens et volens.” Venice
1571, f. 31va.
67 See n. 53 above for Durand’s explicit claim that the essentia fecunda is the foundation
of the relations.
68 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 6, q. 2, n. 16: “Si consideretur habitudo virtutis productivae ad
actum producendi, sic nulla persona procedit in divinis per modum voluntatis, sed quaelibet
per modum naturae. Cuius ratio est quia illud quod procedit a virtute agente ex necessitate
immutabilitatis et ex virtute determinata ad unum producitur per modum naturae; sed
quaelibet persona divina producitur ex necessitate immutabilitatis et virtute determinata
ad unum; ergo quaelibet persona divina producitur per modum naturae. Maior patet, quia
modus naturae in hoc differt a modo voluntatis in eliciendo actum, quia principium naturale
agens naturaliter non habet in potestate actum suum, nec est indifferens ad opposita, sed est
necessario determinatum ad unum; agens autem per voluntatem et modo voluntario habet
in potestate sua agere vel non agere et est indifferens ad opposita, sicut potestas rationalis.
Minor sic patet, quia nec Pater habet sic in potestate generare Filium, ut possit generare
vel non generare, nec Pater et Filius habent sic in potestate spirare Spiritum Sanctum quod
read Hervaeus’ claim about how the Son can be said to proceed by way of
nature, while the Holy Spirit can be said to proceed by way of will, Durand
maintains that these terms are applied from the likeness that the emana-
tions of the person have to the image of the Trinity in our soul. Specifically,
with regard to (2), i.e., the supposites bringing about the productions, the
Son’s production is by way of nature because in it one comes from one,
while the Holy Spirit’s is by way of will because in it one comes from two.69
With regard to (3), the order between products and productions, Durand
claims that the Son’s emanation is the first emanation that does not pre-
suppose another emanation, like the intellectual emanation of a word in
us, while the Holy Spirit’s emanation is the second emanation that does pre-
suppose the emanation of the Son, like the voluntary emanation in us that
presupposes the intellectual emanation since we cannot will what we do
not know.70 So little weight does Durand give to the emanations and the psy-
chological model in trinitarian theology, that he, in much the same way as
possint spirare vel non spirare, sed necessario Pater generat Filium, et Pater et Filius spirant
necessario Spiritum Sanctum.” Venice 1571, f. 31vb. Cp. this to Hervaeus, n. 24 above.
69 Durand, I Sent., d. 6, q. 2, n. 17: “Si vero consideremus supposita producentia, sic Spiritus
Sanctus producitur per modum voluntatis, Filius autem per modum naturae, quia modus
naturae in creaturis est quod unum sit ab uno tantum et non a pluribus eiusdem gradus et
ordinis, quorum quodlibet esset per se sufficiens ad totum perfecte faciendum. Quae autem
fiunt per voluntatem possunt fieri a pluribus agentibus eiusdem gradus et ordinis, quorum
quodlibet esset per se sufficiens ad totum perfecte producendum. Plures enim concurrunt
moderando per voluntatem virtutem suam .... Cum ergo Filius procedat tantum ab uno,
Spiritus autem Sanctus a duobus, scilicet a Patre et Filio, ita quod aeque perfecte producit
unus sicut ambo, nec perfectius ambo simul quam alter. Ideo Spiritus Sanctus dicitur produci
per modum voluntatis, Filius autem per modum naturae.” Venice 1571, f. 31vb. Cp. this to
Hervaeus, n. 26 above.
70 Durand, I Sent., d. 6, q. 2, n. 18: “Si autem attendatur ordo productorum et produc-
tionum, sic Filius dicitur procedere (ed.: producere) per modum intellectus, Spiritus autem
Sanctus per modum voluntatis. Cuius ratio est quia in imagine creata quae attenditur secun-
dum potentias et actus naturae intellectualis, prima emanatio est secundum intellectum,
alia autem sequens, in qua terminatur emanatio manens intra (ed.: infra) naturam intel-
lectualem, est emanatio pertinens ad voluntatem. Primo enim est cognitio boni, deinde ex
hoc oritur amor boni, et ibi sistit emanatio intra naturam intellectualem. Et ex hoc argui-
tur sic: illud quod in divinis procedit prima emanatione, procedit per modum intellectus ad
intra; aliud autem quod procedit secunda emanatione et ultima, in qua terminatur omnis
emanatio divina ad intra, procedit per modum voluntatis, quia sic est in imagine creata, ut
dictum est. Sed Filius procedit prima emanatione divina, Spiritus autem Sanctus sequente et
ultima; ergo Filius dicitur procedere per modum intellectus et Spiritus Sanctus per modum
voluntatis. Et sic intelligenda sunt quae dicuntur circa materiam istam de modo processionis
divinarum personarum, id quod volunt verba doctorum quae videntur insinuare quod intel-
ligere et velle seu diligere sint rationes emanationum divinarum. Hoc enim dicunt solum
secundum quandam adaptationem ad ea quae inveniuntur in imagine creata.” Venice 1571,
f. 31vb. Cp. this to Hervaeus, n. 27 above.
462 chapter seven
Hervaeus Natalis, admits that the standard proof for there being three and
only three persons holds exclusively on the supposition that there are just
two emanations. The number of supposites can only be “proven” through
scriptural arguments.71
Thus, for Durand, the Son’s production has nothing to do with an intel-
lect and the Holy Spirit’s nothing to do with a will. For present purposes,
however, the most important ramification of Durand’s extraordinary stress
on the divine relations and on the relation account of personal distinc-
tion was his claim that ‘Word’ and ‘Love’ are not personal names at all;
rather, for Durand, they are essential names merely appropriated to Son and
Holy Spirit, respectively.72 This is in fact the most significant way in which
Durand’s ideas on the psychological model are strikingly different from his
contemporaries, both Franciscans and Dominicans. Durand writes:
I say that ‘Word’ properly from its very meaning (vi nominis) indicates some-
thing essential and not personal, nevertheless on account of appropriation it
is drawn to the personal, just as ‘wisdom’ is .... No one, then, ought to imag-
ine that the Son proceeds from the Father through a mental act of saying,
and that thereby the Word properly comes about; nor [ought anyone imag-
ine that] the Holy Spirit [proceeds] from the Father and the Son through an
act of the will, and that thereby Love properly comes about. This is because,
with all acts of the intellect and the will set aside, still the Son’s generation
and the Holy Spirit’s procession would be in the divine … but such names are
apt for them on account of those things that we see in the created trinity.73
71 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 10, q. 2 (“Utrum in divinis sint tantum tres personae”), n. 4: “Dicen-
dum quod sicut pluralitas personarum divinarum non potest probari efficaciter et demon-
strative, ita nec numerus supposita etiam pluralitate. Unde si scriptura dixisset plures esse
personas, et numerum non determinasset, credo quod fuissent opiniones multae de numero
personarum nulla demonstratione ostendente certum numerum. Et quod dicitur de numero
personarum intelligendum est de numero emanationum, supposito tamen numero ema-
nationum, scilicet quod sint tantum duae, satis efficaciter probatur ternarius personarum,
et supposito ternario personarum efficaciter concluditur binarius emanationum …” Venice
1571, f. 42rb. See also ibid., d. 2, q. 4 (“Utrum cum unitate essentiae (ed.: potentiae) possit esse
personarum pluralitas”; ed. cit., ff. 19vb–20va). For Hervaeus’ similar view, see nn. 33–35 above.
72 For a discussion of Durand on the psychological model, based on material in the first
version of the Sent. commentary, as well as in his contemporaries, see Decker 1967, 299–329
(modi intellectus/naturae et voluntatis), 531–543 (Son as Word), 548–555 (Holy Spirit as Love
and Gift). Decker notes (p. 543) that, although most of the Dominicans he examined had
a non-psychological understanding of the psychological model, Durand went farther in his
rejection of the psychological model (and particularly with reference to the use of the term
‘word’) than did anyone else, including James of Metz. On “appropriation”, see the discussion
of John Pecham’s use of the term to describe Aquinas’ understanding of the psychological
model, Ch. 2, above, n. 69.
73 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 27, q. 3 (“Utrum verbum in divinis dicatur essentialiter an
personaliter”), nn. 6, 10: “Dico enim quod ‘Verbum’ de vi nominis et proprie dicit aliquid
Many thinkers in the Dominican tradition, from Thomas Aquinas to Her-

vaeus Natalis, had claimed that the modes of emanation, per modum nat-
urae/intellectus and per modum voluntatis, could not be understood in the
most straightforward way possible, inasmuch as they had nothing to do with
an intellect or a will, respectively. This in itself has been described in the pri-
marily German-language secondary literature on medieval trinitarian the-
ology as a “non-psychological” (unpsychologisch) use of the psychological
model.74 But with that said, since the time of Aquinas himself, no Dominican
had claimed that the personal names ‘Word’ and ‘Love’ were appropriated,
that is to say, that they were in reality essential names but linked for specific
reasons to one of the persons more than to the others. Indeed, Aquinas, who
in his early Sentences commentary had held the view that these terms were
in some way essential, had even participated in his later career in a con-
demnation of the view that ‘word’ was said essentially and not personally
in God.75 Durand has taken the Dominican stress on relation (and concomi-
tant deemphasizing of emanation and production) to its extreme with his
outright declaration that the psychological model is metaphorical or appro-
priated, and not even particularly useful as an aid to our understanding the
Trinity. Indeed, according to Durand, if one finds in the authoritative the-
ological tradition any passages that might be interpreted as saying that it
is proper to the Son to be the Word or it is proper to the Spirit to be a Gift,
then what ‘proper’ really means in that case is that the term ‘Word’ or ‘Gift’ is
“appropriate” (appropriatum) for the person in question on account of a uni-
versally customary way of speaking and writing.76 Durand even appeals to
essentiale et non personale, ex appropriatione tamen trahitur ad personale sicut ‘sapientia’

.... Nullus ergo debet imaginari quod Filius procedat a Patre per actum dicendi mentalem, et
ideo fiat Verbum proprie, et Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio per actum voluntatis, et ideo fiat
amor proprie, quia circumscriptis omnibus actibus intellectus et voluntatis, adhuc esset in
divinis generatio Filii et processio Spiritus Sancti … sed talia nomina eis aptantur propter illa
quae videntur in trinitate creata.” Venice 1571, f. 79rb–va.
74 On the “unpsychologisch” acceptance of the psychological model, see, e.g., the litera-
ture referred to in n. 100 below.

75 See on Aquinas’ views on this matter and his participation in the condemnation
mentioned, Ch. 3, above, at and around nn. 21–27.

76 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 27, q. 3, n. 11: “Quae appropriatio in tantum per consuetudine
inolevit, ut haec quae in principio argumenti sunt adducta ad quaestionem inveniantur ab

Augustino et quaedam similia ab aliis doctoribus, quamvis de vi vocis verbum mentale tam in
nobis quam in Deo sit ipsemet actus intelligendi, qui est aliquid essentiale. Nec mirum quia
apud homines omnes sola tertia persona in divinis vocatur Spiritus Sanctus, et hoc est ex
consuetudine loquendi, quia de vi vocis Pater est Spiritus et Filius est Spiritus, et uterque est
sanctus, unde ubicumque invenitur quod esse Verbum est proprium Filii et esse Donum est
proprium Spiritus Sancti, et tertiae personae est proprium esse Spiritus Sancti, exponendum
464 chapter seven
Augustine for evidence for this extremely strong marginalization strategy.

Thus, the reason that the Son is sometimes said to be properly the Word
is, according to Durand, because he is appropriately called the Word (see
n. 76). The Word is the divine intellectual act, not a product of an emana-
tion, and hence it is essential and not personal, although, on account of the
resemblance to human psychology, the Word is more appropriately applied
to the Son than to either the Father or the Holy Spirit (since, e.g., the Son
proceeds from the first emanation as does a human mental word). But it is
not, for Durand, the Son’s proper name. In admitting, in this way, that the
term ‘Word’ is said of the Son not properly but appropriately on account
of the divine Trinity’s resemblance to human psychology, Durand appears
unconcerned about the fact that he is accepting the validity of the general
Franciscan criticism of the Dominican position concerning the psycholog-
ical model. The Franciscans, from at least the time of John Pecham, had
accused the Dominicans of holding a merely appropriational or metaphor-
ical view of the psychological model, inasmuch as the Dominicans denied
there to be any strong link between the divine nature or intellect and the
emanation of the Son, on the one hand, and the divine will and the ema-
nation of the Holy Spirit, on the other. As far as I know, Durand is the first
figure in the Dominican tradition to basically concede the Franciscan point.
As appears from his rejection of the view that the production of the
Son is an act of the divine intellect (see at and around nn. 62–65 above),
Durand’s ground for dismissing the strong identification of the Son with the
Word derives in part from his own philosophical psychology. For Durand, a
concept or mental word is simply the intellect’s act of understanding, and
he rejects the mature theory of Thomas Aquinas, defended by among others
Hervaeus Natalis, that the act of understanding produces a separate entity,
which is a concept; in arguing for the view, Durand relies, in part, on the
Aristotelian distinction between transient and immanent acts mentioned
above (n. 65). As we have seen specifically in John Duns Scotus, there were
other medieval philosophers who held that a concept is an intellectual act;
but for Scotus the act is a quality with its own being inhering in the soul.
In contrast, for Durand an act is a modus essendi of its foundation: it is a
relational and not an absolute accident. Thus, according to him, the act of
est ‘proprium’, id est appropriatum ex universali consuetudine loquentium et scribentium,

quam expositionem innuit Augustinus, ubi dicit quod Pater est Charitas et Filius Charitas
et tamen Spiritus Sanctus ipse Charitas nuncupatur, quod non est intelligendum quod sic
proprie competat Spiritui Sancto, quod non competat aliis, quia esset contradictio in dictis
eius. Sed proprie competit, quia appropriate.” Venice 1571, f. 79va–b.
understanding has no absolute being of its own, since it is merely a way

that its foundation, the intellect, exists. It follows that the intellect does
not gain anything, nor is it altered in any concrete way, by this act; the act
of understanding is in and of itself nothing absolute, but rather it merely
marks that its absolute foundation, the intellect, stands in a relation to some
intelligible object.77 In line with this, the divine Word is not a supposite
produced through an emanation, which is the intellectual act; rather, for
Durand the Word in God is “the very act of understanding by which all things
are made manifest (manifesta) to God” and this corresponds to what a word
is in creatures.78 But this intellectual act is not a really distinct “thing”, and
it has no really distinct term; therefore, saying a word cannot be the source
of the Son’s personal production—saying a word is in fact an essential act,
common to all three persons, and, as we saw above, Durand is meticulous
about strictly distinguishing the essential from the notional acts.79 Durand
returns to a move that Aquinas made in his early Sentences commentary:
that the Son can be called a Word by reason of the divine essence and
of an essential property, and this is because, as Durand says it, the only
intellectual “manifestation” in God is essential manifestation.80 Durand uses
77 On Durand’s theory of concepts and concept formation, see Hartman 2012, Friedman
Forthcoming-b, and Solère Forthcoming.
78 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 27, q. 3, n. 3bis: “… sciendum quod in divinis Verbum est
ipsemet actus intelligendi quo Deo manifesta sunt omnia … Istud autem necessarium est
dicere quantum ad illos qui ponunt verbum in nobis esse actum intelligendi, quia illa
quae reperiuntur in Deo et in creaturis se habent proportionabiliter hinc et inde exclusis
imperfectionibus a Deo. Sed verbum mentale reperitur communiter in Deo et creaturis. Ergo
cum in creaturis sit ipsemet actus intelligendi, relinquitur quod idem sit in Deo, praecipue
quia actus intelligendi dicit summam et ultimam perfectionem in omni natura intellectuali.”
Venice 1571, f. 79ra (text continued in n. 82 below). For Durand’s theory of concepts, see esp.
ibid., d. 27, q. 2 (= “Quid est verbum in nobis?”; ed. cit., ff. 76vb–79ra).
79 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 27, q. 3, n. 6: “… illud quod non importat aliquam realem
emanationem, nec active nec passive, sed tantum secundum rationem, non est aliquid
personale. Sed ‘verbum’ in divinis est huiusmodi. Ergo, etc. Maior patet, quia persona et
omnia alia personalia pertinent ad emanationes. Minor similiter patet, quia verbum—ut
visum est prius—est actus intelligendi: emanatio autem actus intelligendi ab intelligente
et verbi a dicente, quod idem hesti, non est realis emanatio in divinis, sed tantum secundum
rationem. Intelligere enim non est producere intellectionem tamquam rem distinctam, sed
est habere intellectionem, et dicere non est producere verbum realiter distinctum, sed est
habere in se verbum, et haec in Deo nullam realem distinctionem habent. Quare patet quod
‘Verbum’ de vi vocis et proprie non dicat aliquid personale, sed potius essentiale, sicut et
‘Amor’.” Venice 1571, f. 79rb. See at and around nn. 63–64 above, on Durand’s distinction
between essential and notional acts.
80 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 27, q. 3, n. 9: “… in ‘verbo’ sumpto pro Filio nihil manifestatur
nisi ratione essentiae et non ratione proprietatis personalis. Sed nihil habet rationem Verbi
proprie nisi ut habet rationem manifestativi*. Ergo Filius non habet rationem Verbi nisi
466 chapter seven
several arguments from concept theory to make his point, over and above
claiming that, since the word in human beings is the intellectual act, and
we know that the word is found in both God and creatures, then in God the
Word is an intellectual act shorn of all the imperfections found in human
words, and this is all the more appropriate considering that the word is
the pinnacle of perfection in any intellectual nature.81 To mention just one
example of his argumentation. A mental word is something pertaining to
the intellect as it is actually understanding by some kind of intellection.
Thus, in God there are only three items that could possibly be the Word,
and these three items are merely rationally distinct from one another: the
divine intellect, the divine essence functioning as the object representative
of God himself and everything else, and the absolutely perfect act of divine
understanding. According to Durand, in God nothing but these three items
pertain to the intellect as it is actually understanding, and God would
perfectly understand even if there were no personal emanation. But the
word can be neither the intellect itself nor the object understood; therefore
it is the essential act of understanding.82
To sum up: for Durand, the divine Word is in actuality God’s essential act
of understanding, shared by all three persons equally, and this act is in no
way productive of a term, and hence cannot be claimed to be productive of
the Son. The term ‘Word’ can be applied to the Son more appropriately than
to the Father or the Holy Spirit simply because of a resemblance between
the Son’s emanation and the formation of a human concept. The Son has
absolutely no privileged relationship to the divine intellect and its act. What
ratione essentiae vel alicuius essentialis et non secundum aliquid personale. Patet ergo quod
‘Verbum’ de vi vocis et proprie est aliquid essentiale.” Venice 1571, f. 79va. On Aquinas’ use of
this type of move in his Sent. commentary, see Ch. 3, above, after n. 21. Of course, even in his
early work, Aquinas would have conceded that there is a sense in which the term ‘word’ can
be used personally of the Son.
82 Durand, I Sent. (C), d. 27, q. 3, n. 3bis (text continued from n. 78): “Item, verbum
est aliquid pertinens ad intellectum ut intelligens est intellectione quacumque vel saltem
intellectione expressa et perfecta. Sed in divinis non est intellectio nisi expressa et perfecta,
cuius sufficientissima ratio est essentia divina, ita quod in cognitione divina non sunt nisi
haec tria quae sunt unum re, licet differant ratione, scilicet intellectus divinus et essentia
eius, quae est primum obiectum eius sufficientissime repraesentativum sui et omnium
aliorum, et ipsum intelligere perfectissimum. Quicquid autem aliud ponitur, non pertinet
ad intellectum ut est intelligens, quia dato quod nulla emanatio esset in divinis adhuc Deus
ita perfecte intelligeret se tunc sicut nunc, propter quod oportet quod verbum sit alterum
trium (ed.: tertium) praedictorum. Constat autem quod non est intellectus nec obiectum ut
sub hac ratione. Ergo est ipse actus intelligendi.” Venice 1571, f. 79ra.
emerges from Durand’s investigation of the Son’s status as a Word is that, for
him, philosophical psychology is not especially helpful for clarifying how
the Son is generated by the Father; indeed we can say that Durand had a
completely non-psychological understanding of the psychological model of
the Trinity. For reasons of both philosophical psychology and trinitarian
theology, Durand rejected flatly that the psychological model is a proper
description of God’s trinitarian reality.
What was the Dominican reaction to Durand’s view on the appropriated
nature of the terms ‘Word’ and ‘Love’? On an official level, it appears to have
been relatively muted. In the July 1314 list of 93 articles taken from Durand’s
Sentences commentaries (versions A and B) and held to be erroneous or
heretical, the committee of nine theologians lists one article that has to do
with the psychological model, taking Durand to task for having maintained
that “in the divine, by its very meaning (de vi vocis) and properly, ‘word’
says something essential and not personal”. But the committee was unable
to agree even as to whether this claim was erroneous, with one of its
members denying it to be the case.83 Bruno Decker has suggested that the
dissenting voice on the committee may have been Hervaeus Natalis, since
in his Correctorium of James of Metz’ Sentences commentary, Hervaeus had
himself failed to denounce as anti-Thomistic a view similar to Durand’s,
giving as his reason that Thomas, in his Sentences commentary, held that the
Word is the intellectual act and, understood in that way, it might indeed be
permissible to say that the term cannot be applied personally and properly
to the Son.84 In the second Dominican investigation of Durand from 1316/17,
carried out by a committee charged with finding statements in Durand’s
Sentences commentary that deviated from the teaching of Thomas Aquinas,
none of the final list of 235 articles deals with Durand’s view that ‘Word’ is
said of the Son in an exclusively appropriated manner. Nevertheless, and
interestingly, Josef Koch identified a copy of this list in an Erfurt manuscript
that includes a rejection of Durand’s claims “that the word is the act of
the intellect and not something produced through it, and that the Word,
accepted properly in the divine, is essential and not personal.”85 Whether
83 Article 9: “D. 27 q. ultima ante finem positionis dicit quod in divinis verbum de vi vocis
et proprie dicit aliquid essentiale et non personale et convenit cuilibet personae respectu sui
et creaturae.—Erroneum reputamus excepto uno.” Ed. Koch 1973, p. 56.
84 See on this, Decker 1967, 539–543 and cf. 327 n. 106. On Aquinas’ early ideas on the
Word, see the brief description in Ch. 3, above, after n. 21.

85 Article 22a: “Dist. Eadem (= 27) articulo ultimo dicit quod verbum est actus intellectus
et non aliquid productum per ipsum; et quod verbum proprie acceptum in divinis est
468 chapter seven
this article was deliberately omitted from the final list, or whether it should
in fact have been included, is unknown, but if it was omitted, a plausible
explanation advanced by Gilles Emery (1997, 206 n. 176) is that John of
Naples, who himself actually defended the view that the concept is an
intellectual act and not the product of the act, compiled the list, and that
John did not agree with the censuring of (at least part of) this article.
Turning from the official reaction of committees charged with investi-
gating Durand’s work, what can we say about the way Dominican authors
contemporary with Durand viewed the claim that ‘Word’ is said only in an
appropriated manner about the Son? As the near censure of this view would
indicate, there appears to have been little sympathy for it. To understand
this development, two related issues in the early fourteenth-century discus-
sion of the psychological model need to be distinguished. On the one hand,
there is the issue of the ways in which the Son and Holy Spirit emanate. The
question here is: how are we to understand the terms per modum intellectus
and per modum voluntatis as applied to the Son’s generation and the Holy
Spirit’s procession, respectively? Are these emanations labelled in this way
because they genuinely have something to do with the divine intellect and
will (as the Franciscans would say) or for other reasons (e.g. the arrange-
ment between the persons, as Hervaeus and other Dominicans would say).
To put this issue in another way, we might say that it was about whether the
emanations should be understood in a psychological or a non-psychological
way. On the other hand, there is the issue of the way in which the terms
‘Word’ and ‘Love’ (or ‘Gift’) can be said of the Son and the Holy Spirit, respec-
tively. Here the question is: are these terms personal names, or are they
essential names merely appropriated to the persons? Or, to put it in another
way: are the second and the third person to be understood in a psychological
or non-psychological way.
These two issues are clearly linked (consider the Franciscan strong use
of the psychological model, which answers in the affirmative to both), and
yet Durand’s case shows that they are conceptually distinct. As we have just
seen, with regard to the first issue, Durand claimed that the persons’ modes
of emanation are appropriated, since it is not on the basis of the divine intel-
lect or will that Son and Holy Spirit emanate; he further claimed, with regard
essentiale et non personale et convenit omnibus personis hrespectui sui et creaturae, quia
quaelibet dicit se et creaturam.—Quae omnia, ut videtur, sunt contra Thomam prima p.
q. 34, aa. 1, 2, et 3 et in solutione argumentorum ibidem.” Ed. Koch 1973, p. 52. Only one other
manuscript contains the entire list, so it is an open question whether this article should have
been included in the final list or not.
to the second issue, that ‘Word’ and ‘Love’ are essential names merely appro-
priated to the Son and Holy Spirit, respectively. By claiming that on both
issues the psychological terms were merely appropriated, Durand’s attenu-
ation of the use of the psychological model is radical in comparison to his
Dominican contemporaries. Indeed, there seem to have been two different
groupings among the Dominicans of this era when it came to the psycholog-
ical model, and neither group would have countenanced Durand’s radical
attenuation. There appear to have been some members of the Dominican
order in the beginning of the fourteenth century who disagreed completely
with Durand about the application of the psychological model to trinitar-
ian theology. These thinkers, including John of Sterngassen, Peter of Palude,
and Bernard of Auvergne, maintained in one way or another that the divine
intellect does have something to do with the Son’s emanation and the will
with the Holy Spirit’s, and that Word and Love are personal names in God. It
seems impossible that this group of thinkers would be sympathetic to either
part of Durand’s view.86 There was, however, in this time period also a sec-
ond, and perhaps more prominent, group of Dominican theologians, includ-
ing Hervaeus Natalis, John of Naples, and the author of the Liber propugna-
torius, who like Durand denied that the intellect and will were the sources
of generation and active spiration, respectively, rejecting in this way deci-
sively the Franciscan strong use of the psychological model. To this extent,
this second group of Dominicans had a non-psychological understanding of
the divine emanations, and in this they agreed with Durand. Their disagree-
ment with Durand was over the second of the two issues, and particularly
Durand’s claim that the Son is the Word and the Holy Spirit is Love exclu-
sively through appropriation. It was one thing to reject that per modum
intellectus and per modum voluntatis did not have to do with intellect and
will, respectively; it was quite another to deny that Word was a proper name
of the Son. With the latter claim, in the view of this second group of thinkers,
Durand was going too far, venturing outside the proper limits of the trini-
tarian debate. It should be noted that, taking Aquinas’ writings as the point
86 Decker 1967, 327, mentions Sterngassen and Palude, as well as the thirteenth-century
Dominican Bernard of Trilia, as having defended the psychological model (see also the
literature referred to there), and see Ch. 5, above, at and around nn. 41–43, for Bernard of
Auvergne. This apparently more robust understanding of the psychological model among
Dominicans needs more investigation, especially to see how it relates to the Franciscan
strong use; Peter of Palude’s enormous and unedited commentary on I Sent. would be a
particularly important object of inquiry (for some text from Palude see Schmaus 1930a, 135–
136 [intellect and will as sources of productions], 225–227 [will as immediate source of Holy
Spirit’s production], 631 [divine Word]).
470 chapter seven
of departure, the combination of a non-psychological understanding of the

emanations with a psychological understanding of the persons is an emi-
nently defensible position: in his Summa theologiae, Aquinas had stated
explicitly that all names pertaining to the intellect are appropriated by way
of similitude (per viam similitudinis) to the Son, who proceeds by way of
intellect as the Word, and Aquinas also stated explicitly, in contrast to what
he maintained in his early Sentences commentary, that the term ‘word’ is
said only personally in God and in no way essentially.87
The question then becomes for this second group of Dominicans how
to balance the exigencies of their view? How to hold that the emanations
per modum intellectus and per modum voluntatis have nothing to do with an
intellect and a will—the basis of the Dominican rejection of the strong use
of the psychological model—while still holding that the Son is a Word and
the Holy Spirit Love? The way the Dominicans went about this was, as we
observed in Hervaeus Natalis, by developing a marginalization strategy. We
have seen that the Franciscans, trying to make room for an expanded use of
the emanations in trinitarian theology, developed various marginalization
strategies in order to set the relation account, and its way of interpreting
a number of important authoritative texts, to the margins of their trinitar-
ian theology. A marginalization strategy, then, was a way of neutralizing
possible criticism of the attenuation or rejection of traditional explana-
tory elements and traditional interpretations of authoritative passages in
the trinitarian discussion by giving those elements a very strictly defined
and delimited role and by offering new interpretative frameworks for the
authoritative passages. The group of Dominicans we are talking about are
in the same type of situation with regard to the psychological model as the
Franciscans were with regard to the relation account. The psychological
model was made into a coherent theory by Augustine, much of whose De
trinitate is devoted to the investigation of how human psychology is an apt
description (on one level or another) of God as Trinity. And Augustine’s the-
ological speculation in this regard was itself based on John’s Gospel, where
one could read that the Word, the Logos, who is God, became flesh and dwelt
among us. Yet a strong or literal understanding of the psychological model
fits uneasily with the Dominican emphasis on opposition of relations as the
sole factor in the constitution of the persons. Just as the emanation account
was the road to the Franciscan strong use of the psychological model, a
87 See for these positions, Ch. 3, at and around esp. nn. 24–27.
relation account, on which emanation and production were deemphasized,

made the psychological model difficult to integrate into trinitarian theology
in a literal way. Dominicans of the early fourteenth century, building on
Aquinas, acknowledge this in their denial that intellect and will are the
sources of generation and spiration.
Since these Dominicans were defending the view that the divine intel-
lect is not the source of the Son’s emanation, and the divine will is not
the source of the Holy Spirit’s, the question becomes how did they inter-
pret Augustine and John’s Gospel? How did they go about neutralizing the
authoritative passages that could be adduced for a literal understanding
of the psychological model, while not rejecting those authoritative pas-
sages and the psychological model outright? The Dominicans did this neatly
with a marginalization strategy descended from Aquinas, one that we saw
above in connection with its use by Hervaeus Natalis. For a further exam-
ple of this type of strategy for moving the psychological understanding
of the emanations to the margins of trinitarian speculation, here we can
look at John of Naples. John’s trinitarian theology is centered on the usual
Thomistic emphases on opposition of relations being the sole source of
personal distinction in God.88 He argues at length against the view that
emanation could ever be the property first constitutive and distinguish-
ing of the divine persons, as Franciscan authors had suggested. In making
his case, John relies on arguments that were common in the Dominican
tradition since Aquinas, such as the “intrinsic constitutive” argument we
have seen before, i.e. that the persons are constituted by what is intrinsic
to them and relation is more intrinsic to them than is emanation; or such
as the argument that an active emanation necessarily comes from a person
already constituted in being, while a passive emanation is more of a “way”
to a person than constitutive of the person.89 As we might expect from this
typically Dominican emphasis on relation, and particularly opposition of
relations, as the constitutive property of the persons, John holds that the
88 E.g., John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 13 (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus distinguere-
tur a Filio, si non procederet ab eo”): “… non solum personae divinae, sed etiam div-
inae hypostases distinguuntur non per relationes disparatas sed per oppositas solum.” Ed.
Schmaus 1930a, p. 141*4–6.
89 John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 30 (“Utrum distinctio realis divinarum ema-
nationum sit accipienda penes principia vel penes aliquid aliud”; ed. Schneider 1972, pp. 21–
22 n. 8 [= ed. 1618, p. 257]). For Durand’s use of the “intrinsic constitutive” argument in favor
of relation as constitutive of the persons, see n. 55 above. Note that John claims explicitly that
what is constitutive of the persons is also distinctive of them (see Schneider 1972, 22 n. 8).
472 chapter seven
emanations are distinct on the basis of the arrangement of the persons.90

In line with this, John explicitly claims—in agreement with Hervaeus (but
not with Durand)—that the unique source of both emanations is the divine
essence.91 He argues against the view that the divine intellect and will could
be the sources of and basis for the distinction between the emanations of the
Son and the Holy Spirit, respectively, using several arguments that we have
seen before. Thus, he offers the argument, seen since Aquinas, that divine
intellect and will are merely rationally distinct, and hence, if they were the
source of the production of the persons, then the persons would be merely
rationally distinct.92 And he argues, just as Hervaeus had, that neither the
intellect nor the will could communicate the divine essence in its entirety
to the emanated persons.93 In line with these views, and again in agreement
with the overall Dominican trinitarian view, John holds both that there can
be no proof for the number of the divine persons and that the Holy Spirit
and the Son would not be distinct from one another, if the former did not
proceed from the latter.94
As these views would suggest and as mentioned above: John has a non-
psychological understanding of the emanations. In his disputed questions,
John takes up the psychological model directly, giving a battery of reasons as
90 John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 30: “… emanationes divinae distinguuntur

secundum distinctionem realem terminorum, id est personarum emanantium.” Ed. Schnei-
der 1972, p. 34 n. 30 (= ed. 1618, p. 260).
91 John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 13: “… essentia divina ut est comprehendens
omnes perfectiones divinas, et non magis ut est intellectus quam ut est aliae, est principium
emanationis Filii. Et eadem ratio est de emanatione Spiritus Sancti.” Ed. Schneider 1972, p. 109
n. 36 (= Schmaus 1930a, p. 136*9–13). See for the same point in John, the text in n. 95 below.
For a more detailed explanation of John’s position, see Schneider 1972, 27–28, 72–84. For
Hervaeus’ view on the matter, see at and around n. 20 above; for Durand’s, n. 50.
92 John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 13 (ed. Schmaus 1930a, p. 135* 24–35). On this
topic in John of Naples, see Schneider 1972, 19–33; for this argument, pp. 28–29, 109.
93 John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 13 (ed. Schmaus 1930a, pp. 135* 40–136* 13); for
this argument in John of Naples, see Schneider 1972, 27–28; and for Hervaeus’ and others’ use
of this argument, see at and around n. 17 above. There are several passages used by John in
especially his Quaestiones disputatae, qq. 13 and 30, where the arguments and exposition are
extremely close to those used by Hervaeus in both his I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, and his De divinis
personis, q. 5. This raises the possibility that Hervaeus’ work was used as a type of template
by John (as it appears also to have been used by Durand: see at and around nn. 68–70 above).
I hope to return to this observation in a future study.
94 On John’s treatment of the proof of the number of persons, see Schneider 1972, 9–13. On
the counterfactual Filioque question, see John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 13, e.g.:
“… si inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum non sint relationes oppositae—quod esset, si Spiritus
Sanctus a Filio non procederet—, Spiritus Sanctus non esset persona vel etiam hypostasis
distincta a Filio.” Ed. Schmaus 1930a, p. 141*7–10. On this point, see Schneider 1972, 95–116.
to why a strong use of the psychological model is untenable. The reason that
the emanation of the Son is the emanation of a Word and the emanation of
the Holy Spirit is the emanation of Love is, he says, because the Son’s ema-
nation presupposes no other emanation, while the Holy Spirit’s emanation
presupposes the emanation of the Son.95 John then brings up an objection
to his view:
But it could be objected to this, because if it were the case, then it would
seem that the Son is called the Word only metaphorically and through a
certain likeness, and the Holy Spirit [is called] Love in a similar way. But
one should say in reply to this that the Son is truly and properly called
the Word, not because truly and properly he has only, or more, or more
principally that which belongs to the intellect than that which belongs to the
will, as is the case with the word of our intellect, but because [the Son] truly
and properly has that which is found in the word of our intellect, namely
that it emanates through an emanation that does not presuppose another
emanation. And something similar must be said about the Holy Spirit with
respect to Love.96
95 John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 30, ad 1: “Ad primum ergo factum in opposi-
tum dicendum est quod una emanatio dicitur esse Verbi et alia Amoris non quia per unam
communicetur solum vel magis vel per prius illud quod est intellectus quam illud quod est
voluntatis vel e converso, cum per utramque principaliter et perfecte communicentur omnes
divinae perfectiones. Contrarium enim dicere esset valde absurdum, quia secundum nos-
trum modum intelligendi per utramque principaliter communicatur divina natura, et con-
sequenter omnes aliae divinae perfectiones. Nec etiam propter hoc quod principium unius
sit intellectus et alterius voluntas, ut procedit argumentum—cum principium utriusque sit
divina natura ut comprehendens omnes divinas perfectiones, ut patet ex reprobatione ter-
tiae opinionis—sed quia sicut in intellectuali natura emanatio Amoris praesupponit emana-
tionem Verbi, emanatio autem Verbi nullam emanationem aliam praesupponit. Amor enim
procedit a Verbo, Verbum autem ab intelligente solo. Sic et in divinis personis emanatio
Filii nullam aliam emanationem supponit. Propter quod dicitur emanatio Verbi. Emanatio
autem Spiritus Sancti praesupponit emanationem Filii, a quo procedit, propter quod dicitur
emanatio Amoris, quamvis aeque perfecte et principaliter habeat Filius quicquid pertinet
ad voluntatem sicut Spiritus Sanctus. Et e converso, quicquid pertinet ad intellectum habet
aeque perfecte et principaliter Spiritus Sanctus sicut Filius.” Ed. Schneider 1972, pp. 44–45
n. 54 (= ed. 1618, p. 262). See for the same point, also Quaestiones disputatae, q. 13 (ed. Schmaus
1930a, pp. 136*30–137*19). Note that here John is adapting the argument Aquinas’ “psycholog-
ical argument”, on which see above at n. 27.
96 John of Naples, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 30, ad 1: “Sed contra hoc posset obiici, quia
secundum hoc videretur quod Filius dicatur Verbum solum metaphorice et per quandam
similitudinem, et similiter Spiritus Sanctus Amor. Sed ad hoc dicendum est quod Filius dici-
tur vere Verbum et proprie, non quia vere et proprie habeat solum vel magis vel principalius
id quod est intellectus quam id quod est voluntatis, sicut est de verbo intellectus nostri, sed
quia vere et proprie habet id quod invenitur in verbo intellectus nostri, quod scilicet emanat
secundum emanationem non praesupponentem aliam, et simile est dicendum de Spiritu
Sancto respectu Amoris.” Ed. Schneider 1972, p. 45 n. 55 (= ed. 1618, p. 262).
474 chapter seven
For John, what is most important about the Son is not that his emana-
tion has something inherently to do with an intellect, but rather that, like a
human word or concept, his emanation does not presuppose another ema-
nation. Likewise, the Holy Spirit is not called Love because the Holy Spirit’s
emanation is voluntary or comes from the will, rather he is called Love
because, like human volitions, his emanation presupposes another emana-
tion, i.e. the emanation of the Son. John supports the same view when he
discusses the Word directly: the word in us is the intellectual act itself, the
“first production ad intra in an intellectual nature, from which follows a sec-
ond, namely [that] of love”, and hence the Son or Word “in God is only per-
sonal” since “a word is something produced ad intra by the first production
in an intellectual nature”.97 What is produced first in an intellectual nature
is the word—whether the production has to do with an intellect or not—
and hence the Son is God’s Word. By defining the emanations in this way,
John can keep Augustine and John’s Gospel while simultaneously empty-
ing the psychological model of all actual psychological content.98 This, then,
is John’s marginalization strategy. As an interpretation of Augustine or of
John’s Gospel, it would certainly not be satisfactory to a Franciscan making
strong use of the psychological model; nor would it have been satisfactory
to Durand of St. Pourçain with his radical rejection of the personal use of
the terms ‘Word’ and ‘Love’. With regard to Durand, John of Naples says in
his works explicitly and on several occasions that ‘word’ is said truly and
properly and personally of the Son, and similarly Love is said truly, prop-
erly, and personally of the Holy Spirit. John is thus rejecting Durand’s radical
attenuation of the use of the psychological model in trinitarian theology,
while still agreeing with him that the emanations have no special link with
the divine attributes. With regard to the Franciscans, on the other hand,
John is rejecting their view that, if the emanation of a verbum mentis, in
97 John of Naples, Quodl. VIII, q. 4 (“Utrum Verbum in divinis dicatur essentialiter vel
personaliter”): “… verbum mentale est realiter productum per interiorem locutionem, quae
realiter est talis verbi productio et formatio, et talis productio mentalis est prima productio
ad intra in intellectuali natura, ad quam sequitur secunda, scilicet amoris. Et ex hoc de facili
potest probari tertium principale quod est principale quaesitum, quia esse productum prima
productione ad intra in Deo est personale tantum, ut de se patet. Sed verbum est aliquid
productum ad intra prima productione in intellectuali natura, ut patet per praedicta. Ergo
etc.” Ed. Schneider 1972, p. 93 n. 13. Note that John of Naples agrees with Durand—and
correspondingly disagrees with Thomas Aquinas and, e.g., Hervaeus Natalis—that a concept
is an intellectual act and not a term of that act. For literature on this point, see Schneider 1972,
88–94, Decker 1967, 531–543, and Emery (Gilles) 1997, 205–206.
98 For a nice presentation of John of Naples’ “unpsychologisch” understanding of the
psychological model, see Schneider 1972, 41–45 and 108–116.

God or humans, does not have a special link to an intellect, then it is merely
metaphorically per modum intellectus; similarly with the emanation of love
and a will. John thinks that the emanation per modum intellectus in God
simply is that emanation which does not presuppose another, and this is as
proper an attribution as we human beings can get when talking about God.
The Franciscan insistence on a literal understanding of the psychological
model in describing God’s trinitarian reality fails on theoretical grounds for
John, and he insists that the alternative understanding that he offers is no
more metaphorical or appropriated for its being non-psychological, and for
this reason he can say that he has not rejected the words of John’s Gospel or
Augustine. When it comes to the psychological model, then, John of Naples
is running a line between Durand’s radical attenuation, on the one hand,
and the Franciscan strong use, on the other: the Son is truly and properly
the Word emanating per modum intellectus but his emanation has no privi-
leged link with the divine intellect.
Two points need to be made here concerning this particular Domini-
can approach to the psychological model. First, the Dominican approach
shows clearly that, just as the Franciscans were, Dominicans like John
of Naples were aware that by emphasizing certain features of trinitar-
ian theory—e.g., relations over emanations—it was required of them to
account for how this emphasis affected other features, like the emanations
and the psychological model. And just as the Franciscans did, the Domini-
cans resorted to “marginalization strategies”, in this case setting the psy-
chological model safely to the side without rejecting it outright (in con-
trast to Durand, who had rejected it outright). The second point: in the
quotation above (at n. 96), John of Naples uses the term “metaphorical”
in his description of the objection to his position, and this is precisely
the term that had been used by the Franciscans since at least the time
of John Pecham to describe the status of the emanations in the Domini-
can relation account of personal distinction. As we saw above, John Duns
Scotus pointed out that if the Son’s emanation did not have something to
do with an intellect and the Holy Spirit’s something to do with the divine
will, then the Son would be Word and Holy Spirit Love only metaphorically,
and that contradicted the saints.99 Thus, by his use of the term ‘metaphor-
ical’, John of Naples reveals that it is on the basis of Franciscan critique
of the Dominican tradition that this particular marginalization strategy
came into being—the roots of the strategy go back to Aquinas, but this
99 For Scotus, see Ch. 6, above, at and around n. 135.

476 chapter seven
particular use of the strategy is part of the dialectic of scholastic discourse,

the thrust and parry of the debate between the two trinitarian traditions
motivating improvements in the basic positions and in the arguments used
to support them.
In the secondary literature concerning Dominican trinitarian theology
in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, one detects at times
an element of surprise that many of the theologians under examination
emptied the psychological model of all genuine psychological significance.
After all, had not Aquinas become increasingly reliant on the psychological
model in his later works, this best represented by the fact that in his late
works he uses the term per modum intellectus to describe the Son’s ema-
nation as opposed to per modum naturae? This is the background against
which Schmaus, Philippe, Decker, and Schneider saw the Dominican devel-
opments that I have been tracing here, and they all find it remarkable that
the Dominicans in this period turned their back on Aquinas on such an
important point.100 I would argue that there is nothing particularly surpris-
ing about the later Dominican tradition, and I would even argue further
that Hervaeus, John of Naples, and perhaps even Durand considered them-
selves to be good Thomists. These men had read Thomas thoroughly. It
cannot be seriously called into doubt that they knew that Thomas had come
to rely heavily upon the psychological model in his later trinitarian the-
ology. But by the same token, they could see that, throughout his career,
the relation account held pride of place for Aquinas in his explanation of
personal distinction, marginalizing to a significant degree the emanations.
The later Dominicans apparently concluded that a strict adherence to the
psychological model sat uneasily with a strict adherence to the relation
account. Most of them, then, took the consequence of this observation,
and either heavily attenuated the use of the psychological model, or, in
the case of Durand, rejected it completely as an accurate description of
God’s trinitarian reality. How Aquinas would have reacted to this interpre-
100 E.g., Schmaus 1930a, 130: “Ueberraschend ist, daß bei so namhaften Thomisten und
so überzeugten Gegnern des Durandus wie Johannes von Neapel und Herveus Natalis die
Formel per modum intellectus alles psychologischen Gehaltes entleert ist”, but by p. 216
Schmaus writes: “Es wundert uns auch nicht mehr, wenn wir bei Johannes von Neapel
eine unpsychologische Erklärung des per modum voluntatis treffen”. Of course, how much
of this is Schmaus’ own dramatic structuring of his book, and how much of it reflects
genuine surprise is unknown to me, but my point is merely that Schmaus presents the fact as
surprising. See also (referring to Schmaus and with less surprise): Decker 1967 (see the texts
referred to in n. 72 above, with summary pp. 326–329); Schneider 1972, esp. 41–45; Philippe
1947.
tation of his thought is impossible to say; but that it is an interpretation

that has some hold in the Angelic Doctor’s own works seems difficult to
deny.101
3. The Liber propugnatorius
The Liber propugnatorius of “Thomas Anglicus” is a fascinating document

for tracing the reception of Franciscan trinitarian theology in general, and
John Duns Scotus’ trinitarian theology in particular, inasmuch as it was
written specifically in reply to Scotus. A full scale study of the Liber prop-
ugnatorius and its critique of Scotus’ trinitarian thought formed the back-
bone of Michael Schmaus’ monumental Der “Liber propugnatorius”. One of
Schmaus’ goals there was to determine just who Thomas Anglicus was; at
that time, Schmaus, using the criteria that the anonymous author would
have to be named ‘Thomas’, would have to be English, and would have to
have been active in the early fourteenth century, gave three basic possi-
bilities: Thomas of Sutton, Thomas of Jorz, and Thomas Wylton. Although
Schmaus, perhaps, leaned towards Thomas of Sutton, he seems neverthe-
less to have been aware that he had no hard evidence for the case.102 By
the time that Schmaus published his edition of Sutton’s four Quodlibeta,
he had explicitly ruled out Sutton being “Thomas Anglicus”, and since then
H. Theissing and Johannes Schneider have each examined the issue and
found that Thomas of Sutton’s ideas seem too far removed from those found
in the Liber propugnatorius to allow for Sutton and Thomas Anglicus to
be one and the same. No consensus has yet emerged as to whom Thomas
Anglicus in fact was.103 Whatever the true identity of “Thomas Anglicus”,
101 Another Dominican who responded to Durand’s view that ‘Word’ is said essentially
and not personally in the divine is Durandellus, who focuses on Durand’s philosophical
psychology; see Durandellus, Evidentiae, I.23–24 (ed. Stella, vol. 1, pp. 191–204), and the
analysis in Emery (Gilles) 1997, esp. 205–212.
102 Schmaus attributes the Liber propugnatorius to Sutton in his bibliography (Schmaus
1930a, xix), but he appears to have recognized that the attribution was not airtight; see
Schmaus 1930a, 1–12, esp. 4–5, 10, e.g.: “Wenn Thomas von Sutton der Verfasser unserer
Streitschrift ist …”.
103 For references to the major contributions to the debate over the authorship, see
Friedman 2007a, 423 and n. 61. Chris Schabel (2000, 52–54, further 54–63) has presented
evidence that the ideas on God’s foreknowledge and future contingents found in the Liber
propugnatorius have considerable overlap with the ideas found in work known to be by
Thomas Wylton; Schabel’s evidence has prompted Zenon Kaluza (2001, 773) to write that it
is to Wylton that “sans doute il faudra attribuer le Liber propugnatorius et non comme, dans
478 chapter seven
and whether he was even a member of the Dominican order as the early
printed edition of the Liber propugnatorius claims,104 his critique of Scotus
as presented in this work is broad and fully representative of the Dominican
trinitarian tradition as we have seen it so far. A centerpiece of Thomas’
polemic against Scotus rests, unsurprisingly, on a rejection of the notion of
the absolute persons. Thomas claims outright that the position is heretical,
and so far from the truth that a Catholic should not take it seriously:
In this question Scotus claims a position to be probable that he, when he
taught it at Oxford, was forced to publicly recant. This is not surprising, since
it seems to be not only erroneous, but also heretical, as it comes close to the
heresy of Arius or Sabellius … One can argue against this position in many
ways, but it is not a position that a Catholic ought to attack by arguments
(insistere rationibus), so we let it pass, also because it is not to be thought
that any Catholic would want to stubbornly keep on defending or asserting
l’ édition, à un inconnu Thomas Anglicus”. I think that a good deal more work needs to be
done before the Liber propugnatorius can be firmly attributed to Wylton (whose thought is
at times characterized as “Scotistic”); a good place to start in that effort would be comparing
the Liber propugnatorius’ treatment of Scotus’ formal distinction in d. 8, q. 5 (see n. 110
below for a more precise reference) with Thomas Wylton’s ideas on that subject as found
in the text edited in Nielsen, Noone, and Trifogli 2003 and as further explicated in Noone
2009, 140–146 (and cf. Johannes Schneider’s “Introduction” to Thomas of Sutton’s Contra
Quodlibet Iohannis Duns Scotus, p. 17, which deals with the Liber propugnatorius and the
formal distinction).
Johannes Schneider, in his excellent “Introduction” (pp. 63*–66*, esp. p. 65*) to Sutton’s
Quaestiones Ordinariae, uses a point of trinitarian theology to argue that Sutton is not the
author of the Liber propugnatorius. Schneider concentrates on the fact that Sutton holds that
the Son must spirate the Holy Spirit in order for the Son and the Holy Spirit to be distinct
(“daß die aktive Hauchung den Sohn vom Hl. Geist unterscheide”, loc. cit. p. 49*; Sutton
advances the view in his Quaestiones ordinariae, q. 9 [ed. Schneider, p. 280312–322]), while
the Liber propugnatorius holds that filiation makes the Son distinct from all other things.
Sutton’s view, however, is neither an “Eigenlehre” (p. 49*) nor a “Sonderlehre” (p. 65*), but the
common property of the Dominican trinitarian tradition. All Dominicans I have examined
(including the author of the Liber propugnatorius, Hervaeus Natalis (see §1 above), and John
of Naples [see n. 94, above]) would claim that, if the Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit, the
Holy Spirit would be identical to the Son (and see even earlier Bombolognus of Bologna in
the italicized text in Ch. 3, above, n. 33). Thus, this seems poor evidence for Sutton not being
the author of the Liber propugnatorius. See for more on Sutton’s view, Ch. 8, below, at and
around nn. 71–75, where (n. 71) Sutton in his “Cowton Critique” explicitly holds the view that
filiation is the Son’s ultimate constitutive.
104 In the early printed edition of the work, the title of the Liber propugnatorius is “Thomas
Anglicus Doctor Lucidissimus Predicatorii ordinis contra Joannem Scotum Primo senten-
tiarum libro.” I have had the work available to me in this early printed edition (Venice 1523 =
X) as well as the two Vatican mss. (BAV lat. 872 = V1; and BAV Urb. lat. 120 = V2). The passages
from the work given below were collated from those three witnesses, although I have for the
most kept to the readings in the early printed edition. There are no firm dates for the Liber
propugnatorius, but see Schmaus 1930a, 4 n. 13.
it, since all the saints dealing with the distinction of the persons unanimously
speak against it, so an infinite number of authoritative passages could be
adduced against it.105
With the final sentences, Thomas makes abundantly clear that he did not
think that Scotus’ marginalization strategy—his broad construal of author-
itative text and especially his claim that authority does not hold in the
negative—106 sufficed to overturn the “infinite number of authoritative pas-
sages” that speak for the relation account. If these remarks are accurate, and
Scotus did in fact suffer theological censure as a result of his suggestion that
the divine persons are absolute, then Thomas was clearly not alone in his
view.
Of course, Thomas does offer arguments in order to show that Scotus’
view must be incorrect. First, if the absolute realities that constitute the
persons are “true things”, then Scotus has landed himself among the Ari-
ans; if they are not “true things”, then Scotus is a Sabellian. Further—and
here Thomas’ critique would apply to the Franciscan trinitarian tradition
in general—he questions how Scotus’ system of what I have called “nested
distinctions” works. Scotus had claimed that the persons might be dis-
tinct in a prior way by absolute origin, and in a posterior way by relation,
thereby making use of the Franciscan tradition’s system of nested distinc-
tions, i.e. the view that, even if there were no opposed relations between
the persons, they would be distinct by disparate relations or emanational
properties. Nested distinctions were a central part of the Franciscan tradi-
tion’s strategy for marginalizing the relation account of personal distinction.
Thomas Anglicus questions precisely these types of systems of nested dis-
tinctions, in which one sort of distinction-making property is more basic
than another. Thomas asks of the Franciscan tradition: what type of dis-
tinction would there be between the persons if one of the two kinds of
105 Thomas Anglicus, Liber propugnatorius, d. 26 (“Utrum personae divinae constituantur
in esse personali per relationes originis” X = 98vb–101vb; V1 = 130rb–134vb; V2 = 120va–125ra):

“In ista quaestione ponit doctor quandam opinionem tamquam probabilem quam cum
ipse eam doceret Oxoniae (Coloniae V2) compulsus est publice revocare. Nec mirum, quia
ipsa videtur esse non solum erronea, sed et haeretica utpote vicina haeresi ipsius Arii vel
Sabelii .... Contra istam opinionem posset multipliciter argui, sed non est opinio contra
quam catholici debeant rationibus insistere, ideo dimittatur, et quia non est praesumendum
quod aliquis catholicus velit eam pertinaciter defendere vel asserere, cum omnes Sancti
(om. X) tractantes de distinctione personarum illi unanimiter contradicant, unde contra
eam possunt auctoritates infinitae adduci.” X 100vb; V1 133rb; V2 123va. For more on Thomas’
rejection of Scotus’ theory of the absolute persons, see Schmaus 1930a, 498–503.
106 On Scotus’ marginalization strategy, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 7–9, 80–82.
480 chapter seven
distinction-making properties were removed, so that, e.g., the persons were

only distinct by absolute property or origin but not by relation? Would the
distinction between the persons be less in that case than it is with both of
the distinction-making properties in place? In short: why does one source
of distinction not suffice?107 In a sense, what Thomas Anglicus is doing here
is calling the bluff on the Franciscan marginalization strategy: if the persons
are (or could be) distinct by their mode of origin, then what purpose could
relational distinction serve? To a certain extent the Franciscan trinitarian
tradition had set themselves up for this criticism with their talk of persons
being “properly” (Henry of Ghent) or “perfectly” (Matthew of Aquasparta,
Alexander of Alessandria) distinct when constituted by opposed relations,
while nevertheless indeed distinct if they would be constituted by emana-
tions or disparate relations. What precisely, Thomas asks, do the Francis-
cans have in mind? Would the persons be “imperfectly” or “improperly” dis-
tinct with merely emanational distinction, and just what would that mean?
As we will see, Peter Auriol, at least, would take this criticism to heart, deny-
ing the implicit Franciscan claim that there are no genuine consequences
for the divine persons if they were to be constituted by emanations, on the
one hand, or by relations, on the other.108
Thomas Anglicus also deals with Scotus’—and the Franciscan tradi-
tion’s—ideas on the distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Son, given
that the former does not proceed from the latter. He rejects curtly Scotus’
affirmative answer to this question by claiming it to be based upon the
107 Thomas Anglicus, Liber propugnatorius, d. 26: “Probatio quia quando ponit personas
divinas distingui per realitates absolutas, quaero de istis realitatibus, aut sunt verae res aut
non, et hoc formaliter; si sunt formaliter verae res, ergo sunt naturae aliquae et essentiae seu
quiditates. Et cum sint absolutae, oportet quod sint naturae absolutae, et per consequens, si
distinguuntur personae per eas, sequitur quod in personis sit alia et alia natura et essentia
absoluta, et per consequens Pater et Filius non sunt omnino unius (eiusdem V1V2) naturae
nec essentiae absolutae, quod posuit Arius. Si autem istae realitates non sunt formaliter verae
res, ergo supposita per eas constituta et distincta non sunt realiter distincta nec formaliter
distincta (distincte V1V2; nec formaliter distincta] sed tantum formaliter X), quod posuit
Sabellius.
“Secundo arguo contra opinionem illam, quia secundum eam non est distinctio minima
inter supposita divina quae possit excogitari realis, quia secundum istam opinionem non
solum personae distinguuntur aliquo modo per relationes, sed etiam per absoluta, et ita
distinguuntur in duobus hmodisi, sed minor esset distinctio, si foret tantum in uno hmodoi,
vel absoluto tantum vel relativo. Ergo, etc.” X 100vb; V1 133rb; V2 123va. For Scotus and nested
distinctions, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 87–89.
108 See for Auriol, Ch. 9, below, at and around nn. 93–94, and further references there to
Matthew of Aquasparta, Henry of Ghent, and Alexander of Alessandria. See also Nicholas of
Ockham, Ch. 2, above, at and around nn. 131–132, for early recognition of this sort of problem.
prior error that the modes of emanation by way of intellect and by way
of will are really distinct.109 Against the real distinction of the emanations,
Thomas offers an updated version of the argument Aquinas had made
about the distinction between the divine intellect and will being merely
rational and therefore insufficient to ground the real distinction of the
persons. As we saw in Chapter Six above, Scotus, recognizing the force of
that argument, had then argued that the attributes are formally distinct
and not merely rationally. The logical reply to Scotus is the one given by
Thomas Anglicus: formally distinct attributes cannot suffice to ground the
real distinction between the emanations and, hence, between the persons:
to ground the latter distinction, the distinction between the attributes
would also have to be real.110 According to Thomas, and consistent with
everything that we have seen thus far from the Dominican tradition, the
distinction between the persons is definitionally prior to and determines
the distinction between the emanations. Although Thomas does not appear
to go so far as Durand of St. Pourçain did in saying that the names ‘Word’
and ‘Love’ are not applied personally and properly to the Son and the Holy
Spirit, respectively, nevertheless he thoroughly rules out the strong use of
the psychological model. Thomas in fact gives a very clear statement of what
the Franciscans would call the “metaphorical” status of the emanations in
his theology. Scotus was mistaken to claim that the intellect and the will
were the “elicitive sources” of the emanations of the Son and the Holy Spirit
respectively, because in God “the intellect is not the source of anything
109 Thomas Anglicus, Liber propugnatorius, d. 11, q. 2 (“Utrum si Spiritus Sanctus non
procederet a Filio posset stare distinctio realis ipsius a Filio”, X = 78rb–79va; V1 = 104rb–106rb;
V2 = 94rb–96ra): “In ista quaestione imaginatur Doctor iste quod, si Spiritus Sanctus non
procederet a Filio, adhuc distingueretur ab eo, et hoc sicut ab ente, quia si poneret Spiritum
Sanctum esse non ens illo supposito, tunc non solum esset distinctio per filiationem, sed
etiam magis per essentiam. Imaginatio autem ista fundatur super alia falsa imaginatione
quam habet de processionibus per modum intellectus et voluntatis, quae alias (alia X)
reprobata fuit. Et ideo totum est falsum quod imaginatur circa materiam istam.” X 79ra; V1
105rb; V2 95rb.
110 Thomas Anglicus, Liber propugnatorius, d. 8, q. 5 (“Utrum cum simplicitate divina stet
distinctio perfectionum essentialium praecedens aliquo modo omnem actum intellectus”, X

= 69ra–72vb; V1 = 91va–97rb; V2 = 81va–87rb): “… argumentum illud est contra eum, sicut con-
tra alios, quia si distinctio emanationum esset solum secundum distinctionem intellectus et
voluntatis, cum emanationes distinguantur realiter, oporteret quod intellectus et voluntas
distinguerentur realiter, quod ipse non concedit.” X 72ra; V1 96ra; V2 86ra. For Scotus’ argu-
ments concerning the formal distinction between the attributes as a basis for the distinction
between the emanations, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 136–141; and for the use of a
move similar to the one made here by Thomas Anglicus, see William Ockham, Ch. 10, below,
at n. 42.
482 chapter seven
of which the will is not the source.” Intellect and will are essential divine
attributes common to the three persons, and they have nothing particularly
to do with the emanations. Thus, according to Thomas Anglicus, the terms
‘intellectual procession’ and ‘Word’ are used merely because the Son is
produced in the same way as (producitur eo modo quo) a word is produced
in a creature. Mutatis mutandis, the same thing goes for ‘procession by
way of the will’ and ‘Love’. The resemblance that Thomas has in mind is
one that we have seen appealed to by others with a generally Dominican
approach to the Trinity: that in creatures the procession of a word does
not presuppose another procession, while the procession of love always
presupposes the procession of a word. Thus, Thomas Anglicus, much like
Hervaeus Natalis and John of Naples, has turned Aquinas’ “psychological
argument” for the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s procession from the Son
into the very model of the processions, and he has in fact accepted the way
that Scotus summarized the Dominican tradition’s thought on this issue.111
In Thomas Anglicus’ version of the argument, the Holy Spirit is Love because
his procession “presupposes” (logically) the emanation of the Son; the Son
is a Word because his emanation “presupposes” no other emanation.
Two main points can be made concerning Thomas Anglicus’ view of the
psychological model of the Trinity. First, the arrangement of the persons
with respect to one another is the distinguishing feature of the processions,
and this had been an element of Dominican trinitarian theology at least
since Thomas Aquinas wrote. Second, and relatedly, the processions by way
of intellect and will do not have anything to do with intellect and will. The
reason that we claim the Son proceeds by way of intellect and the Holy Spirit
by way of will is on the basis of the similarities these processions have to
the closest comparable processions in creatures, i.e. human concept and
volition formation: “… we come to know (cognoscimus) these processions
from creatures and we name them on the basis of created things, because we
do not have more expressive (expressiora) names.”112 Just as we have seen it
111 For Thomas Anglicus, see the text in n. 112 below; for Aquinas’ psychological argument
and for Hervaeus, see n. 27 above; for John of Naples, n. 96 above; for Scotus, Ch. 6, above,
nn. 134–135.
112 Thomas Anglicus, Liber propugnatorius, d. 2, q. 8 (“Utrum in divinis sint tantum duae
productiones intrinsece”, X = 29va–31va; V1 = 41ra–43rb; V2 = 35vb–38ra—translated passage in

italics): “Ad rationem autem unam qua dicitur et videtur velle probare distinctionem ex
parte rei inter intellectum et voluntatem, per hoc quod unum est principium elicitivum
alicuius productionis cuius alterum non est principium, dico quod accipiendo intellectum et
voluntatem praecise quantum ad illud quod dicunt in Deo subiective, nullo modo est inter
ea distinctio sicut alias patebit, nec intellectus est principium alicuius cuius voluntas non est
to be the case with other Dominicans active in the early fourteenth century
and examined here, Thomas Anglicus has an expressly “non-psychological”
understanding of the emanations and indeed of the Trinity itself.
(sit X) principium, nec dicitur Verbum divinum procedere per modum intellectus, et Amor
qui est Spiritus Sanctus per modum voluntatis, quia intellectus sit principium Verbi et non
Amoris vel quia voluntas non sit principium Verbi, sicut et intellectus quantum est ex parte
rei. Sed pro tanto dicitur Filius produci per modum intellectus quia producitur eo modo
quo producitur in creaturis illud quod producitur ab intellectu seu memoria intellectuali.
Et Spiritus Sanctus dicitur procedere per modum voluntatis quia procedit eo modo quo in
creaturis producitur aliquid seu procedit a voluntate tamquam formali principio productivo.
In creaturis enim verbum procedit a memoria non praesupposita alia processione infra
naturam intellectualem. Unde procedit prima processione quae est in natura intellectuali.
Amor vero procedit praesupposita processione verbi. Similiter Filius in divinis procedit
prima processione et Spiritus Sanctus procedit praesupposita processione Verbi in divinis
sive Filii. Similiter in creatura intellectuali, verbum procedit a non producto productione,
videlicet talis naturae, sed amor producitur a verbo producto productione intellectuali. Ita
est in divinis de Filio et Spiritu Sancto. Similiter in creaturis verbum procedit a memoria
tantum, sed amor procedit a memoria et verbo. Similiter Filius procedit tantum a Patre, et
Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Patre et Filio. Et ideo dicitur tertia persona in divinis procedere
per modum voluntatis, et secunda per modum intellectus, non autem est hoc intelligendum
quasi processiones divinae dependeant in se ab aliquo, sed illas processiones cognoscimus a
creaturis et ex creaturis eas nominamus, quia alia nomina expressiora non habemus.” X 31rb–va;
V1 43ra–b; V2 37vb–38ra.
chapter eight
FROM SCOTUS TO AURIOL: A SURVEY OF FRANCISCAN VIEWS
The years between Scotus and Auriol, roughly 1305–1315, present at least
two difficulties for those trying to trace the reception of Scotus’ trinitarian
thought, and thereby establish what its status was when Peter Auriol came
to criticize it. The first problem is one that we have already encountered
when surveying the Dominican scholastic production of these years, i.e. the
sources for determining this history are not easily available: the works of the
majority of theologians of these years, whether at Oxford or Paris remain
completely unedited and very little studied.
Second, in these years commentaries on the first book of the Sentences,
the most valuable source of information on trinitarian ideas, became larger
and more detailed. For determining with precision a theologian’s ideas this
can be an advantage, but especially with unedited works it may pose a grave
disadvantage. The growth in the Sentences commentary is, in part, to be
expected, since as time went on scholars had more material to work with:
taking Aquinas and Bonaventure as a starting point (as they often did),
those working in the first fifteen years of the fourteenth century had around
fifty years of theological discussion that they could be expected to take
into account and that they could use to help demarcate their own position.
Just one example of the way that this weight of theological discussion is
apparent at the beginning of the fourteenth century is Scotus’ presentation
of no fewer than seven positions on the issue of the distinction between
the divine productions. What is more, we have seen that Scotus uses these
positions in a complex, almost dramatic, fashion. This makes it more time
consuming—indeed, more difficult—to determine where he stands on the
issue than is the case with the rather standardized format of fifty years
before, in which the author first gave arguments against what would turn
out to be his position, then a sed contra, then a response, and finally replies
to the initial arguments. The movement from argument-centered question
structures to position-centered ones, which is so readily evident in Scotus’
works, was shared by many of those writing during the first two decades of
the fourteenth century.1
1 On Scotus, see Ch. 6, above, at and around n. 131.

486 chapter eight
For both of these reasons, here I can only begin to describe in a very
general fashion the reception of Scotus’ trinitarian thought among those
with an approximately Franciscan approach to trinitarian theology. Indeed,
I will concentrate exclusively on two trinitarian issues: absolute persons and
the counterfactual question concerning the distinction of the Holy Spirit
from the Son.2
1. Absolute Persons
It comes as no surprise to discover that the most controversial point of

Scotus’ trinitarian doctrine is that of the absolute persons. As far as I can
tell, no one adopted as his own or defended unambiguously this position
in the years immediately after Scotus’ activity. The Dominican reaction, as
we might have surmised, was uniformly negative in its pointed criticism of
Scotus. We saw in Chapter Seven, above, that both Durand of St. Pourçain
and the author of the Liber propugnatorius rehearsed Scotus’ view of the
absolute persons and rejected it outright. A similar reaction can be seen in
Thomas of Sutton, whose Quodlibet IV, q. 1 (ed. Schmaus and Haba, pp. 495–
500), is devoted to just this aspect of Scotus’ theology. But the Franciscan
reaction is more interesting, taking the form of a spectrum of views, ranging
from apology to rejection. Here we will look first at some reaction at Paris,
then some at Oxford.
Take, for example, the Franciscan Hugh of Novo Castro, who read the
Sentences at Paris probably in the early 1310’s and was Franciscan regent
master there in the early 1320’s. All four books of his Sentences commentary
have been preserved (several in two redactions), and parts of it are con-
2 Just for this reason, there are several important theologians with whom I will not
deal here, but whose works survive and are either largely unedited or deal with issues that
lie outside of my purposes in this chapter. Among these can be mentioned the following.
Radulphus Brito (read Sent. Paris, ca. 1309); see on Brito, Courtenay 2005, and the recent
editions from this work found in Rossini and Schabel 2005, 299–304 (= book I, dd. 38–39),
and in de Rijk 2005, 642–650 (= book I, d. 23); Brito’s question on the Filioque from I Sent., will
be edited and studied in Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming. John of Pouilly (d. after 1328),
who appears to take a basically Dominican tack in his trinitarian thought, has left a series of
important Quodlibeta from the period 1307–1312 in which a great deal of trinitarian material is
contained (on Pouilly and his Quodlibeta, see Hödl 2007 and the literature referred to there).
James of Ascoli has a number of both ordinary and quodlibetal questions from around 1310
dealing with trinitarian theology, on which see: Duba 2007a, 591–595, 645–646; Noone 2009,
134–139; and Schabel 2011, at and around 67 n. 39. On William of Alnwick (d. 1333), who also
read the Sent. at Paris in this period, see Ch. 10, below, at and around nn. 20–21, 91–97.
from scotus to auriol: a survey of franciscan views 487
tained in twenty-four manuscripts. Through this work in particular, Hugh,

himself heavily influenced by Scotus, exerted an important influence on
the first generation or two of especially Franciscan theologians who gen-
erally followed a Scotistic line.3 In d. 26, q. 1, of his Sentences commentary,
Hugh opens the issue of the absolute persons by saying that “certain great
men said that in the divine it is not possible for a person to be consti-
tuted by relative property”.4 He continues by giving several arguments—all
unmistakably taken from Scotus’ treatment of the issue—for this position.
Thus, Hugh claims that relation supposes the person as already constituted,
and in any event relation, a “quasi-accident” in God, cannot constitute sub-
stance.5 Further, although the persons are not made distinct by relation,
nevertheless their distinction is made known to us through the relations,
“and in this way he deals with all of the things said by the saints about these
relations and the fact that the person is signified to us in scripture by rela-
tive names.”6 Yet after describing Scotus’ reasons for positing absolute per-
sons, Hugh claims pointedly that “our Doctor does not hold this [view]” the
reasons being—Hugh here echoing Scotus himself—that “it goes against
3 On Hugh and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 77–78, and the literature
referred to there; more recently see Alliney 2005 and Rossini and Schabel 2005, both passim.
It is unclear from which “Novo Castro” Hugh came (e.g., Neufchateau in Lorrain or Newcastle
in England), so I retain the Latin.
4 I have had access to Hugh’s commentary on the Sentences in Paris, BnF lat. 15864. I Sent.,
d. 26, q. 1 (“Quaeritur utrum persona divina constituatur in esse personali per proprietatem
relativam”, f. 34ra–b): “Alius est modus dicendi magnorum dicentium* non est possibile
constitui personam in divinis proprietate relativa, quod probavit* multipliciter.” Paris, BnF
lat. 15864, f. 34ra.
5 Hugh of Novo Castro, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1: “Primo sic: illud quod supponit personam
constitutam, non constituit eam. Sed relatio supponit personam constitutam, quia nihil
refertur nisi constitutum et subsistens. Ergo, etc. Secundo sic: nihil constituitur in esse per
illud quod est extra suum genus, loquendo large de genere. Sed relatio est extra genus
substantiae. Ergo nihil substantiale constituitur per relationem. Cum ergo personae divinae
sint substantiales, ergo, etc. Tertio sic: nihil accidens vel quasi accidens potest constituere
suppositum, quia suppositum non pertinet ad genus accidentis, sed ad genus substantiae, ut
supra ostensum est. Sed relatio in divinis est quasi-accidens. Ergo, etc.” Paris, BnF lat. 15864,
f. 34ra. Cf. this to Scotus, above, Ch. 6, nn. 47, 77.
6 Hugh, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1: “Quarto (ms.: secundo) dicunt isti quod constituitur per
quoddam modum habendi intrinsicum qui non est unus, sed est triplex in divinis. Quinto
(ms.: tertio) dicunt quod licet personae non distinguantur nec constituantur per relationes,
isti tamen modi constitutivi et distinctivi innnotescunt nobis per relationes, et per hoc evadit
omnia quae dicuntur a sanctis de istis relationibus et quod persona in scriptura significatur
nobis per nomina relativa. Dicunt enim per hoc pro (ms.: per) tanto dicitur quia proprietates
constitutivae innotescunt nobis per relationes, sicut et principia et individua in creaturis
innotescunt /34rb/ nobis per quaedam accidentia.” Paris, BnF lat. 15864, f. 34ra–b. Cf. to Scotus,
above, Ch. 6, nn. 80, 87.
488 chapter eight
Sacred Scripture and against what was said by all the saints who spoke about
this matter.”7 Thus, for Hugh the only way to get Scotus “off the hook” was
to claim (along, it must be said, with Scotus himself) that Scotus merely
suggested the option of absolute persons, but of course he did not hold it
himself. And it is certainly worth remembering that if Hugh ever heard Sco-
tus lecture at Paris, Scotus may well not at that time have held the persons to
be absolute: as we saw above, the Subtle Doctor gave up the idea of absolute
persons in his later career, maintaining that we should admit personal con-
stitution by relations since this agrees better with the writings of the saints.8
With Alexander of Alessandria’s “later” Sentences commentary, we see
another type of Franciscan reaction to absolute persons: denial without
attribution. Alexander succeeded Scotus as Franciscan regent master at
Paris in 1307, in 1309 he was made a provincial of the order, and he was Fran-
ciscan Minister General from 1313 until his death in Rome on October 5, 1314.
All four books of the later version of his commentary, authorized by Alexan-
der himself, survive, and of them book I was by far the most popular, being
extant in seven witnesses and having had some impact on the first gener-
ations of thinkers coming to grips with Scotus’ thought, as recent research
has revealed.9 Alexander gives several arguments in favor of the position
of absolute persons, and several of them are taken nearly verbatim from
Scotus. Thus, we find the characteristically Scotist “prime substance” argu-
ments: relation cannot constitute substance, but the persons are substance;
and further the quiddities of relation and substance differ, therefore if rela-
tion had a part in the constitution of the persons, God’s simplicity would be
7 Hugh, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1: “Doctor noster non tenet hoc, principaliter ratio cuius est, quia
hoc videtur esse contra scripturam sacram et contra dicta sanctorum omnium de ista materia
loquentium.” Paris, BnF lat. 15864, f. 34rb. Cf. to Scotus, above, Ch. 6, n. 80. Immediately after
this remark, Hugh proceeds to a defense of the relation account on f. 34rb.
8 See above, Ch. 6, n. 96.
9 The later redaction of Alexander’s Sent. commentary—written sometime in the period
after 1307—is, as mentioned above (Ch. 5, n. 72), a substantial work of theology and phi-
losophy, very different in tone from his first Bonaventurean attempt (on which see above,
Ch. 5, § 2). On Alexander and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 74–75; Alliney 2005;
Rossini and Schabel 2005, esp. 275–278 on Alexander’s life and works. Significant trinitarian
passages from the work are published in the footnotes of Schmaus 1930a, e.g. 344–349, 516–
520. I have had Alexander’s I Sent. available to me in BAV Borgh. 311 and Paris, BnF lat. 15858;
the text presented here mostly follows the Vatican ms.
Alexander’s Quodlibet, found complete in 5 mss. (plus two fragments), also contains
trinitarian material (and Schmaus 1930a, 236–239, publishes an excerpt from a theological
question from the Quodl. mss. in the Vatican library; on these questions, see also n. 47 below).
On Alexander’s Quodl., see Duba 2007a, 579–582.
compromised.10 In reply to these arguments, Alexander does not attempt to

defend Scotus—he does not even mention him—instead he simply denies
that the persons are absolutes: the only absolute in God is the communi-
cable essence, and the persons are constituted by incommunicable relative
property.11 Basically Alexander’s reply to Scotus’ identification of the divine
persons with prime substance is to claim that there is no likeness between
supposites in God and supposites in creatures on this score. Whereas in
creatures an absolute gives a supposite incommunicability, in God the abso-
lute (i.e., the essence) is totally communicable, and only relation can bring
about the incommunicability of the persons.12
10 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio posterior), d. 25, q. 1 (“Quaeritur utrum in

divinis sit suppositum absolutum?” BAV Borgh. 311, ff. 98vb–99va; Paris, BnF lat. 15858, 110va–
111rb): “Alius modus est quod ponuntur tres rationes absolutae constituentes tria supposita.
Pro hoc est una ratio talis: Pater est quis et est Pater; sed non eodem est Pater et quis,
paternitate enim est Pater, et tamen paternitate non est quis vel aliquis; cuius ratio est quia
secundum hoc Filius non esset aliquis, cum non habeat paternitatem per quam Pater esset
aliquis. Si ergo Pater alio est Pater, alio aliquis, cum relatione sit Pater, sequitur quod absoluto
sit aliquis.
“Secunda ratio ad hoc est talis: quicquid est nobilitatis in creatura est ponendum in
Deo. Sed in creatura ita est quod ipsa est persona per aliquid sui generis, puta per aliquid
substantiae. Ergo similiter in divinis, Deus est persona per aliquid de genere substantiae. Sed
quicquid est in genere substantiae est absolutum. Ergo personae constituuntur per aliquid
absolutum, et per consequens est ibi suppositum absolutum.
“Tertio sic: si in divinis non est nisi suppositum relativum quasi constitutum per essen-
tiam et relationem, sequitur quod est quasi quid constitutum ex duabus quiditatibus, una
absoluta et alia relativa et per consequens non est summe simplex.
“Quarto sic: prima substantia est maxime substantia, et per consequens maxime debet
esse una per rem sui generis, scilicet per rem substantiae, quae est absoluta. Cum ergo per-
sonae in divinis teneant locum quasi primae substantiae, sequitur quod sint tales personae
vel talia supposita per rationem absolutam quae est ratio substantiae. Hoc autem ex hoc
probatur, quia maxima unitas est inter naturam et habentem naturam sive suppositum,
puta inter hominem et hoc hominem. Hoc autem non esset nisi homo esset hic homo per
aliquid sui generis, id est per aliquid substantiae; et eodem modo Deus esset persona per
aliquid substantiae, et quia substantia est quid absolutum, semper persona erit per rationem
absolutam.” BAV Borgh. 311, f. 99ra–b; Paris, BnF lat. 15859, f. 110vb. Cf. to Scotus, above, Ch. 6,
nn. 76–77.
11 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio posterior), d. 25, q. 1: “Non obstantibus
rationibus, dicendum est quod in divinis non est dare suppositum absolutum per istum
modum, cuius ratio est quia omne absolutum est commune in divinis, de ratione autem
suppositi est quod sit incommunicabile, quodlibet enim absolutum in divinis est illimitatum.
De ratione autem illimitati est quod non sistat in uno supposito, sed communicetur multis.
Quod autem communicatur fugit rationem suppositi, et per consequens non potest ibi esse
suppositum absolutum, quia eo ipso quod absolutum in divinis non concernit rationem
incommunicabilis, sed magis communicabilis. Persona autem sive suppositum concernit
rationem incommunicabilis.” BAV Borgh. 311, f. 99rb; Paris, BnF lat. 15859, ff. 110vb–111ra.
12 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio posterior), d. 25, q. 1: “Et secundum hoc ad
490 chapter eight
Something of a mixture of Hugh’s way and Alexander’s way of dealing

with Scotus’ suggestion of the absolute persons is found in Peter Auriol’s
Scriptum (substantially completed by late 1316). Auriol labels Scotus’ sugges-
tion “an erroneous view held by certain scholars” (opinio erronea quorum-
cumque). He describes this anonymous view in terms that leave little doubt
that it is Scotus whom he has in mind: “origin makes the persons distinct
principiatively” while relation shows the distinction, and this is the reason
primum argumentum, quando enim dicitur quod Pater alio est quis, alio est Pater, dicendum
est quod eodem est quis et Pater, licet quis dicat illud indeterminate et Pater determinate;
et similiter Filius filiatione est Filius et filiatione est quis, ex quo non sequitur quod Filius
non sit quis, quamvis non sit per paternitatem, quia est per filiationem, sic non sequitur
quod non sit persona quamvis non sit per paternitatem. Nam Pater non alio est persona et
haec persona, nec Filius, licet persona dicat indeterminate quod dicit haec persona, haec
enim persona, scilicet Pater, dicit incommunicabilitatem hanc tantum, persona autem dicit
incommunicabilitatem indeterminate.
“Ad secundum quando dicitur ‘quicquid est nobilitatis in creaturis’, etc. Dicendum est
quod aliter est in creaturis et aliter est in Deo. In creaturis enim ratio substantiae, quae est
ratio absoluti, potest esse incommunicabilis, et ideo potest dare personalitatem incommu-
nicabilem; natura enim creata de se non est singularis, et ideo possibilis est trahi ad singular-
itatem sive incommunicabilitatem sui generis. Ratio autem substantiae et absoluti in divinis
est ratio illimitati, et ideo semper communicabilis, et dum semper sistitur infra rationem
absoluti, semper sistitur infra rationem communicabilis, nec habetur ratio incommunica-
bilis nisi per aliud genus, scilicet per relationem. Ad formam argumenti ergo dicendum est
quod ex imperfectione creaturae est quod substantia per aliquid sui generis fiat ita incom-
municabilis quod non sit in pluribus suppositis, ex perfectione autem essentiae et absoluti
in divinis est quod semper sistat infra rationem communicabilis et quod non sit ibi ratio
incommunicabilis nisi adveniente relatione.
“Ad tertium dicendum est quod sicut non obviat summae simplicitati substantia et
relatio, ita non obviat illae duae quiditates, et hoc quia relatio non est alia res ab ipsa
substantia. De ratione etiam huius suppositi est ut dictum est quod quasi per aliud genus
fiat ratio incommunicabilis a ratione absoluti.
“Ad quartum quando dicitur quod prima* substantia est maxime substantia, dicendum
est quod in creaturis hoc habet veritatem ubi secunda substantia non est in se existens, sed
tantum accipit existentiam in suppositis, ibi etiam ratio primae substantiae potest esse per
proprium genus. In divinis autem essentia quae est communicabilis non sic accipit esse in
suppositis, quasi quoddam possibile, sed est quoddam necesse esse communicatum sup-
positis, quod etiam necesse esse non includit incommunicabile nisi adveniente relatione. Et
quando dicitur quod maxima unitas* debet esse inter habentem naturam et naturam, dicen-
dum est quod ibi est unio per identitatem, hperi identitatem* enim persona est essentia,
tamen non est ibi unio formalis quasi eodem formaliter sit essentia et persona, quia persona
concernit rationem incommunicabilis, quae incommunicabilitas est per relationem. Unde
secundum Augustinum alio est Deus, alio est Pater, et ut dictum est Pater paternitate est
persona et haec persona. Et ideo sequitur quod remota relatione per quam est incommuni-
cabilitas, amovetur distinctio personalitatis et ratio incommunicabilitatis, et licet relatio non
sit ratio per se existendi, tamen est ratio per se existendi incommunicabiliter.” BAV Borgh.
311, ff. 99rb–va; Paris, BnF lat. 15859, f. 111ra.
that the saints use only relative names for the persons.13 Further, Auriol gives
Scotus’ arguments from prime substance.14 But after having shown how this
position cannot stand, by pointing out, among other things, how strange it
would be that the Savior made no mention of these absolute modes,15 Auriol
goes on to give “Scotus’ position in the first book of the Sentences, d. 26”,
which is a defense of the claim that relations of origin constitute the per-
sons.16 Thus, when dealing with Scotus’ ideas on absolute persons, Auriol
corrects the Subtle Doctor’s view as an anonymous error, but attributes to
Scotus explicitly the view that the persons are relative.
A way of dealing with the suggestion of absolute persons that would
become rather popular among Franciscans in the fourteenth century can be
exemplified by looking at John of Bassol’s Sentences commentary. Although
this work is descended from lectures held at Reims around 1313, the thought
contained in it bears the mark of the contemporary Parisian and English
theological milieu, betraying the heavy influence of, e.g., Hugh of Novo Cas-
tro from Paris and Robert Cowton from Oxford. But by far the greatest
influence came from Scotus directly, as Walter Volz’ interesting and unfor-
tunately neglected study of Bassol’s treatment of the divine productions
13 Peter Auriol, Scriptum, d. 26, a. 1: “Propterea hdixerunti alii quod personae formaliter
distinguuntur et constituuntur in esse personali per quosdam modos absolutos … Unde et

origines distinguunt personas principiative atque constituunt, et relationes arguitive seu
ostensive, modi tamen absoluti trinae existentiae formaliter constituunt et distinguunt …
Nec auctoritates quae in oppositum inducuntur obviant isti modo dicendi, pro eo quod
omnes intelligentur quoad innotescentiam et manifestationem distinctionis personarum.
Clamant enim omnes sancti quod relationes personas distinguunt, quia distinctionem osten-
dunt … ergo in proposito personae modis suis absolutis invicem distinguuntur quibus pos-
sent nominari et distincte concipi, si essent nobis noti, sed quia ignoti sunt, nominantur et
innotescunt personae nominibus relativis.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 427–428, 433–435, 437–
439, 443–445 (on the Electronic Scriptum, see Ch. 9, n. 1); ed. 1596, p. 580aD–bA.
14 See ibid., pedes quaestionis (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 92–318; ed. 1596, pp. 575b–578a),
which contains Auriol’s preliminary arguments against relation as constitutive of the per-
sons. Here Auriol presents nearly all of the arguments that we saw Scotus use against the
relation account above, Ch. 6, § 1.
15 Auriol, Scriptum, d. 26, a. 1: “… sancti debuissent dixisse alicubi quod per relationes
personarum distinctio innotescit, et non dixisse ubique quod relationes distinguunt. Mirum
etiam extitisset quod Salvator qui tam sublimia et absconsa de trinitate nobis aperuit, nullam
mentionem fecisset de istis modis absolutis, nusquam enim locutus est de personis, nisi sub
vocabulis relativis.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 461–465; ed. 1596, p. 580bD.
16 Auriol, Scriptum, d. 26, a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 508–511; ed. 1596, p. 581aF–bF).
Here Auriol presents Scotus as holding that “de facto hpersonaei distinguuntur non per
modos absolutos, sed per relationes originis, et hoc tenendum est propter dicta sanctorum et
reverentiam auctoritatum, quibus ingenia debent submitti in obsequium Christi, non autem
propter rationes inductas, quae sicut patet de facili solvi possunt.”
492 chapter eight
shows. Besides correcting some common errors concerning Bassol, Volz

shows that in such matters as the number of productions and the distinction
between the productions, Bassol merely nuanced Scotus’ view, although
Volz gives examples of other areas in which Bassol was no slavish “Scotist”.17
What did Bassol have to say about Scotus’ theory of the absolute persons?
Bassol begins his discussion by offering a short synopsis of a rather generic
theory of absolute persons: the persons are constituted and made distinct in
the first place (primo) by non-quidditative absolute properties, and secon-
darily and quasi-incidentally (quasi adventitie) through the relations that
arise between the persons.18 Although this is a generic presentation of the
view, the use of the term ‘non-quidditative’ would seem to indicate that Bas-
sol had Scotus in mind here, as would his use of the Proverbs passage that,
as we saw in Chapter Six, Scotus thought gave implicit biblical support for
the view of absolute persons.19 Those who hold this opinion, according to
Bassol, claim that it is incompatible with neither faith nor Scripture, and,
17 See Volz 1969. With respect to Bassol and Scotus on the divine productions, Volz (p. 298)
summarizes his findings: “Auf weite Strecken stellt der Sentenzenkommentar des Johannes
de Bassolis tatsächlich nur eine getreue Kopie der diesem bekannten Werke des Doctor
subtilis dar.” Volz (47, 184–190) finds only one spot in the material that he examined in
which Bassol rejects Scotus’ view. Volz (298, 32–43) gives evidence that Bassol used a Parisian
reportatio version of Scotus’ Sentences commentary (that found in Todi 12, and BAV Borgh.
50 and 89 [on the last two mss., see Volz, 32 n. 13]) as well as the Ordinatio. For more on
Bassol and his sources, see esp. ibid., 28–64. As for correcting errors, Volz (10–11) shows, e.g.,
that there is no evidence that Bassol died in 1347 (a date that is common in the secondary
literature) but there is firm evidence for a date of 1333. On the other hand, Volz’ ultimate
conclusion (p. 300) that Bassol’s close reliance on Scotus shows that “die große, schöpferische
Epoche der Scholastik ist zu Ende gegangen, Kraft und Schwung des theologischen Denkens
sind erlahmt … der Herbst der scholastischen Theologie hat eingesetzt” is hard to take
seriously.
On Bassol’s Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 78–79, and the literature mentioned
there, to which should be added Bendiek 1959, 1–4; Heynck 1941; Olszewski 2001; Alliney 2005,
esp. 372–380. Friedman 2002a, 112, shows that on the issue of predestination, Bassol did not
follow Scotus.
18 John of Bassol, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2: “… fuit opinio aliquorum quod tres personae
divinae primo constituuntur et distinguuntur per aliquas proprietates personales absolutas,

quae quidem non sunt proprietates quiditativae sed personales vel hypostaticae .... Secundo
dicunt quod licet personae sic constituantur et distinguantur per absolutas proprietates,
tamen ipsas consequuntur relationes et proprietates relativae … licet non hpersonaei dis-
tinguantur primo per ipsas hrelativas proprietatesi sed secundario et quasi adventitie sunt.”
Ed. 1513, f. 151va–b.
19 For the Proverbs passage in Scotus, see Ch. 6, above, at n. 83, and for Bassol’s presenta-
tion, see I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3 (ed. 1513, f. 153ra), where Bassol rejects that the passage indicates
that the persons and properties are absolute. See also below, at and around nn. 28, 31, and
35, for treatment of the Proverbs passage by William of Nottingham and Robert Cowton,
respectively.
moreover, they give many arguments that indirectly prove it by showing

the absurdities involved in claiming that relation constitutes the persons.20
In reply to this position, Bassol presents ten arguments believed by those
who use them to demonstrate that in the divine there cannot be absolute
persons.21 To these arguments Bassol replies that “it seems to me that inso-
far as it comes from the force of reason (vi rationis) the position [of the
absolute persons] cannot be impugned, but it can rather be sustained”,
since everything that relational personal properties can explain, absolute
personal properties can explain as well. In confirmation of this view, he
goes on to refute each of the ten arguments that had been offered against
the theory of absolute persons.22 After giving both sides of the issue, and
leaning towards accepting absolute persons, Bassol gives his determina-
tion:
It seems to have to be said, first, that it cannot be shown from any article
of faith or from canonical Scripture that the divine persons are constituted
through absolutes or even that they are made distinct exclusively, definitively,
and precisely (determinate et praecise tantum) through relations. Nor can this
be shown through the force or the efficacy of reason. Second, it seems to me
that from what is said on the basis of the intentions of the saints and doctors it
can be shown and concluded that the persons are not made distinct through
absolutes but through properties of relation.23
20 John of Bassol, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2: “Hoc dicunt esse necessarium nec fidei dis-
sonum nec scripturae. In scriptura enim et dictis sanctorum et ab ecclesia nominantur istae
personae … sub nominibus relativis quasi sub notioribus proprietatibus et per notiores pro-
prietates nec ex tali nominatione sequitur quod primo distinguantur, sicut patet. Ad istam
conclusionem adducuntur multae rationes indirecte probando quod relationi repugnat con-
stituere suppositum divinum, et per consequens quod personae non possunt primo constitui
nec distingui per relationes.” Ed. 1513, f. 151va–b.
21 John of Bassol, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2: “Sed contra istam positionem hscil., personas esse
absolutasi adducuntur multae rationes aliquorum credentium demonstrare quod in divinis

non possunt esse supposita vel personae primo constitutae et distinctae per proprietates
absolutas.” Ed. 1513, f. 151vb. The ten arguments follow, loc. cit. (ff. 151vb–152ra).
22 John of Bassol, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2: “… videtur mihi quod quantum est ex vi rationis illa
positio habsolutarum personarumi non potest impugnari, sed potest valde bene sustineri et
probabiliter, solvendo praedictas rationes, possunt enim salvari omnia per illas proprietates
absolutas quas nos salvamus per relationes, non obstante aliqua praemissarum rationum,
sicut prosequendo apparebit.” Ed. 1513, f. 152ra. The refutations of the ten arguments follow,
loc. cit. (f. 152ra–b).
23 John of Bassol, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3: “… videtur dicendum primo quod ex aliquo fidei
articulo vel ex scriptura canonica non habetur quod personae divinae constituantur per
aliqua absoluta, vel etiam quod per relationes determinate et praecise tantum distinguantur
nec etiam per vim seu efficiatiam rationis. Secundo, videtur mihi quod ex dictis ex intentione
sanctorum et doctorum potest haberi et concludi quod personae non distinguatur per aliqua
absoluta, sed per proprietates relationis.” Ed. 1513, f. 152rb.
494 chapter eight
For Bassol, there is no way of proving that the persons are constituted
by either absolute or relative properties: there is no statement in Scripture
or Church tradition that explicitly and unequivocally supports one over
the other, and reason is incapable of deciding the issue. Nevertheless, if
we look at the intention of the saints and the doctors, we can conclude
that they supported relation. John adduces six authoritative passages from
Augustine, one from Boethius (“relation multiplies the Trinity”), and two
from Anselm, all showing that they intended for us to hold that the persons
are constituted and made distinct through relation.24 Thus, John of Bassol
gives a slightly stronger version of a type of view concerning absolute
persons that we will see offered later by (among others) William Ockham
and Francis of Meyronnes: that persons and properties are absolute is a
perfectly reasonable trinitarian position that cannot be demonstrated to be
incorrect, but on account of the saints we are to accept that the properties
are relative.25
These examples do not exhaust the ways that Franciscans at Paris dealt
with this radical position of their order’s most famous theologian. We will
see yet another way of tackling absolute persons when we come to Francis
of Marchia (below, Ch. 12, §2A). Francis does not really apologize for Scotus
and he certainly does not contradict him, rather he fits absolute persons,
as Scotus had argued for them, into his own system, and in the process
interprets Scotus to have meant the same thing as Aquinas, Bonaventure,
and—of course—Francis of Marchia!
If the continental thinkers we have so far considered had a variety of
reactions to Scotus, across the Channel at Oxford, two of their confrères
were also offering replies to Scotus that took into account some of the
Subtle Doctor’s arguments. William of Nottingham (d. 1336), who read the
Sentences probably between 1306 and 1308,26 presents Scotus’ opinion, and
the arguments that motivate it, as a variation on the position of William of
Auvergne, whose view Nottingham gives in some detail as that of a “certain
Parisian” (quidam Parisiensis).27 According to Nottingham, Scotus was one
24 John of Bassol, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3 (ed. 1513, ff. 152rb–153ra).

25 Indeed, this is Scotus’ own later view; see Ch. 6, above, at n. 96. For Ockham, see Ch. 10,
below, nn. 47–50; for Meyronnes, see Ch. 12, at n. 34.
26 On William and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 75–76, and the literature
referred to there.
27 On William’s presentation (in his I Sent., d. 26, q. 2 [“Utrum relationes in divinis consti-
tuant et distinguant personas”]) of Auvergne’s view, see Scotus, Opera Omnia, adnotationes
to d. 26 (VI, pp. 10*–20*). Nottingham attributes the view to Auvergne by writing “et huius
of a few modern authors who had maintained that the view of absolute
persons was not inconsistent with the faith, the Church, or the Scriptures.
Thus, in William’s rendition, Scotus claimed, first, that the contrary of the
position is not found in Scripture—a succinct way of expressing Scotus’
marginalization strategy that we can deduce nothing from the silence of
the authorities—and, second, that the position in fact seems to be implied
in Scripture. For this last statement, William supplies the passage from
Proverbs that, as we saw above in Chapter Six, Scotus himself, in both
his Lectura and his Ordinatio, had brought up in support of the absolute
persons: “What is his name, and what is his son’s name?” No one would
seek the Son’s name, Scotus had reasoned, unless there were in fact another
name for the Son different from the relative name.28
William’s reply to Scotus has two parts: first getting the Subtle Doctor off
the hook, and next showing why he was wrong to advocate absolute persons.
With regard to the first, William appears to say that, although Scotus did
hold that the persons were absolute, he never publicly asserted it; moreover,
Scotus changed his view when he went to Paris, so that by William’s day
no master of theology actually held the view of the absolute persons.29 As
mentioned in Chapter Six, then, William seems to offer evidence that Scotus
had given up the theory of the absolute persons, a theory that the Subtle
Doctor had merely suggested in any case. Just as interesting is William’s
own reply to Scotus’ ideas. In response to Scotus’ marginalization strategy,
William grants Scotus that the Church does not explicitly deny the theory
of the absolute persons. Nevertheless, William thinks that the rejection
opinionis, ut intellexi, fuit quidam Parisiensis, et hoc propter octo rationes praevias factas ad
principale” (Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 300/514, f. 70rb).
28 William of Nottingham, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2: “Dixerunt etiam alii aliqui moderni (mg:
Duns), licet pauci, quod illa positio non repugnat fidei nec Ecclesiae nec sacrae scripturae.
Non fidei nec ecclesiae, quia haec positio concedit omnia quae tradit Ecclesia et quae in
omnibus symbolis continentur. Nec repugnat scripturae, quia eius contrarium in scriptura
non invenitur, sed ipsa potius implicatur. Nam in Proverbiis h30,4i scribitur “Quod nomen
eius, et quod nomen Filii eius”, etc. Haec positio supponit unum et quaerit aliud. Supponit
enim nomen Filii et Patris, et quaerit alia nomina priora quasi constitutiva absoluta.” Cam-
bridge, Gonville and Caius 300/514, f. 70rb. For Scotus and the Proverbs passage, see Ch. 6,
above, at and around n. 83. It seems most likely that Nottingham was using Scotus’ Ordina-
tio, as the Scotus Editors also indicate (VI, p. 24*).
29 William of Nottingham, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2: “Sed haec opinio a nullo magistro authentico
tenetur iam. Ponunt enim omnes magistri moderni quod tam constitutio quam distinctio
personarum solum fit formaliter per proprietates relativas; et hanc conclusionem, mutata
prima opinione, quam asserendo fatebatur se alias et alibi tenere, scilicet Parisiis—nec
secundum rei veritatem umquam publice illam asseruit.” Cambridge, Gonville and Caius
300/514, f. 70rb (cf. Scotus, Opera Omnia, VI, p. 24*).
496 chapter eight
of the theory follows necessarily from the Canons of the Fourth Lateran
Council, which defend the view of Peter Lombard against Joachim of Fiore.
The Canons explicitly say that, although there is distinction between the
persons, and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are alius, alius, et alius,
nevertheless they are not aliud, they are utterly the same thing. William
denies that this could be the case if the persons were absolutes, and this
is why Lombard, in the Sentences, talks about relations and notions.30 Thus,
William undercuts Scotus’ marginalization strategy by claiming that, even
if the authorities do not explicitly rule out a position, if that position follows
necessarily from what they have ruled out, then it is to be rejected. In reply
to Scotus’ claim that the Proverbs quotation was implicit scriptural evidence
for the absolute properties and persons, William responds that the question
in Proverbs is not about another name but about the reality signified by
the name of the Son.31 William leaves nothing to chance and tells us on
several occasions that his own view is that the persons are constituted
through relative properties, and it is impossible for the divine persons to
be constituted by absolutes.32
Robert Cowton, who read the Sentences at Oxford probably in 1309–1311,
and hence immediately after Nottingham, also offers some evidence for the
reception of Scotus. Moreover, in contrast to Nottingham, whose Sentences
commentary survives in just one known copy, Cowton’s commentary was a
30 William of Nottingham, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2: “Quod autem alii dicunt quod alia opinio non
est contraria Ecclesiae, credo quod, licet Ecclesia illam non neget explicite, aliquid tamen
damnat ad quod sequitur necessario quod personae divinae non constituantur per absoluta.
Nam Extra de fide catholica Damnamus, ibi damnat Ecclesia opinionem Joachim, et approbat
opinionem Magistri Sententiarum: ‘Confitemur, inquit, cum Petro quod .... distinctiones sint
in personis et unitas in natura. Licet igitur alius sit Pater, alius Filius, alius Spiritus Sanctus,
non tamen aliud sed illud quod est Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus idem omnino.’ Haec ibi.
Sed si personae divinae essent absolutae, possent dici aliud et aliud. /71rb/ Unde Magister
Sententiarum diversis locis, et praecipue distinctione ista, docet quod distinctio illarum
personarum sumi debet ex proprietatibus istis relativis, quae sunt paternitas, filiatio, et
processio, quas etiam dicit relationes et notiones.” Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 300/514,
f. 71ra–b. The text elided in this passage is the quotation from the Canons of the Fourth Lateran
Council found in the Introduction, above, in n. 21, and the text from ‘Licet’ to ‘omnino’
continues directly the text of the Canon (see Denzinger 2005, 432).
31 William of Nottingham, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2: “Quod ulterius dicunt de illa quaestione in
Proverbiis “Quod nomen eius”, etc.—dicendum quod ipse supponit quid significatur* per
nomen et quaerit de realitate, non de alio nomine.” Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 300/514,
f. 71rb.
32 William of Nottingham, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2: “… ostendo quod impossibile sit quod per-
sonae divinae distinguantur vel constituantur per absoluta .... Dico igitur ad quaestionem
quod personae divinae constituantur et distinguantur per relationes vel proprietates relati-
vas.” Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 300/514, ff. 70vb, 71rb.
widely-read work surviving in whole or in part in seventeen manuscripts

and existing in a popular abbreviation from the early fifteenth century.
In his treatment of the theory of absolute persons, Cowton appears not
to mention Scotus by name, attributing the view about absolute persons
explicitly to Robert Grosseteste at least twice, and this despite the fact that
many of the arguments that Cowton gives are quite similar to the arguments
from William of Auvergne given by William of Nottingham.33 Nevertheless,
on at least two grounds we can be sure that Scotus’ view is luring just under
the surface. First, when presenting “Grosseteste’s” ideas, Cowton mentions
that “… the personal property is formally incommunicable and proper to
one; just as paternity in the Father is not formally the same as the essence
nor belongs to the concept of the essence … so this absolute property
is formally distinct from the essence.” The mention of formally distinct
properties is significantly different from anything found in the arguments
that we possess from either Grosseteste or William of Auvergne, and shows
quite clearly that Cowton had Scotus in mind here.34 More importantly
still, at a certain point in his discussion Cowton offers a compact summary
33 On Cowton and his Sent. commentary, see Friedman 2002a, 76–77, and the literature
referred to there. Robert’s attribution of the view to Grosseteste is found in his I Sent., d. 26
(“Utrum in divinis sit aliquod suppositum unum vel plura constituta et distincta proprietat-
ibus absolutis”): “Alia est opinio antiqua venerabilis Lincolniensis in quodam tractatu quod
in divinis sunt tria supposita absoluta et una essentia communis .... Confirmatur hoc idem*
a domino Lincolniensis.” Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 281/674, f. 88ra; Oxford, Merton Col-
lege 93, ff. 151va–b (although I have used microfilms of both manuscripts, in my transcriptions
I usually follow the Cambridge ms, which is more reliable). For a synoptic presentation of
the arguments for the absolute persons given by William of Auvergne, William of Notting-
ham, and Robert Cowton, see Scotus’ Opera Omnia, adnotationes to d. 26 (VI, pp. 10*–20*).
Schmaus 1930a, 542 n. 62, wonders whether the arguments in favor of absolute persons are
Grosseteste’s or rather Cowton’s own, and he settles on Cowton’s own as being most likely,
citing the following text: “Haec opinio multipliciter confirmatur. Primo sic: ostendo”. Nev-
ertheless, even if the ‘ostendo’ that Schmaus reads in the ms. at his disposal (Leipzig 1401)
should not rather be read “ostendendo quod” (as is at least possible with the Gonville and
Caius [f. 88ra] and the Merton mss. [f. 151vb]), still we could interpret the ‘ostendo’ as a rhetor-
ical device, in which case this passage falls into line with the remainder of the text, in which
Cowton eventually rejects absolute persons.
34 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 26: “… essentia est communis illis tribus personis absolutis,
et quaelibet proprietas personalis est formaliter incommunicabilis et propria uni; sicut

paternitas in Patre non* est formaliter idem quod essentia nec est de intellectu essentiae, est
tamen idem in Patre cum essentia per realem identitatem et hoc absque omni compositione
et imperfectione, sic[ut] illa proprietas absoluta propria primo supposito et constitutiva illius
est formaliter distincta ab essentia et extra intellectum eius.” Cambridge, Gonville and Caius
281/674, f. 88ra; Oxford, Merton College 93, f. 151va–b (see Schmaus 1930a, 542 n. 62, and Scotus,
Opera Omnia VI, pp. 13*–14*, for transcriptions of the entire passage). For the closest thing
we have to a presentation of Grosseteste’s position, see Ch. 6, above, n. 18.
498 chapter eight
of Scotus’ arguments for the view that absolute persons do not represent
a heterodox position. Cowton’s presentation includes both Scotus’ claim
that Christ was making accommodations to our limited intellects when
he used relative names to describe the persons of the Trinity and Scotus’
argument that the Proverbs quotation, which we also met in John of Bassol
and William of Nottingham, was implicit biblical acknowledgement that
the persons have absolute names. These arguments are unmistakably from
Scotus, being found in close proximity to each other in distinction 26 of both
Scotus’ Ordinatio and Lectura.35 On the other hand, Cowton, in contrast to
William of Nottingham, does not appear to present Scotus’ marginalization
strategy.
Cowton himself does not think there is anything intrinsically wrong
with the view of the absolute persons, believing it to be a “likely enough”
(satis probabilis) and Catholic view, and he takes to task those who, “not
understanding or wanting to understand” the view, portray it as erroneous.
According to Cowton, no composition or essential division would result
in God just on account of postulating the persons to be absolute, and he
appeals to his own defense of the formal distinction between the attributes
as a parallel case.36 This is the most positive fourteenth-century reaction
35 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 26: “Dicunt tamen tenentes hanc viam quod fidei Christianae
est credere unitatem essentiae quasi specifice in tribus suppositis constitutis ut sic sint unum
in essentia et tria in persona. Secundum quod illae personae constituuntur proprietatibus
relativis solum non est fidei credere. Nec valet contra istam opinionem quod Salvator nomi-
navit personam a quo erat essentia aeternaliter nomine Patris, et se ipsum nomine Filii, et
tertiam nomine Spiritus Sancti. Hoc enim, ut dicunt, fecit propter nos, condescendens nobis
huti (qui mss) facilius capimus distinctionem personarum; sed per nomina originis hfaciliusi
quam per alia nomina quae possent imponi ratione proprietatum absolutarum, quia illae
sunt nobis occultae. Verumtamen scriptura bene facit mentionem de aliis nominibus per-
sonarum: Proverbiis 30, quaerens scriptura quis sustinit terminos terrae ‘quod nomen eius
et nomen Filii eius, si nosti?’ Quaestio ista, ut videtur, nulla esset si personae divinae con-
stituerentur solum proprietatibus relativis originis et nominarentur solum nomine Patris et
Filii et Spiritus Sancti, quia, cum quaerit quod nomen Filii eius, si ille qui in divinis Filius est,
non haberet aliquod aliud nomen quam nomen Filii, heti de eodem nomine Filii eius scrip-
tura certa fuisset Filium denominando et non dubitasset eius nomen quaerendo; et similiter,
cum haberet nomen Filii, haberet nomen Patris, non quaereret quod nomen eius, scilicet
qui genuit, et Filii eius nomen nisi ille qui genuit et ille qui genitus est aliter possent proprie
nominari quam nominibus relativis originis, alioquin de eodem certus fuisset ille quaerens
et dubitasset …” Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 281/674, f. 88va; Oxford, Merton College 93,
ff. 152vb–53ra. Cf. this text with William of Nottingham’s in n. 28 above, and especially the
Scotus texts referred to there, as well as Ch. 6, above, at n. 83. It is not really possible to say
which version of Scotus’ text Cowton was using (I would lean more to the Ord.), but that he
was using Scotus’ text appears certain.
36 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 26: “Haec opinio quae satis probabilis est et catholica, puto
posset teneri in sensu quo intelligitur ab eis qui illam ponunt, sed aliqui non intelligentes eam
to the theory of absolute persons I have come across before Michael of

Massa OESA makes the view his own in the 1330’s (Ch. 12, § 3B, below).
Nevertheless, Cowton goes with the flow, saying that, since it is the common
school view, and since it can be argued for on the basis of statements
found in Augustine, Anselm, and Damascene, he will show why relative
persons are a better solution.37 Cowton then proceeds to argue at great
length in favor of the persons being relative, and even offers arguments
against the view of absolute persons. For a taste of Cowton’s treatment, one
of these will suffice. If some type of absolute properties directly, together
with the essence, were constitutive of the persons, then the persons would
be constituted on the basis of those absolute properties alone. But we
know that the persons are distinct on the basis of their origin one from the
other, and so one set of these distinction-making properties—i.e., either
absolutes or origins—, as well as the persons made distinct on the basis
of that set, would be superfluous. Since, argues Cowton, the Catholic faith
tells us that person comes from person, we know that origin cannot be
the superfluous source of distinction; therefore absolute properties are
superfluous.38 Although in this argument, Cowton invokes principles that
vel saltem volentes eam intelligere reputant eam erroneam. Nec sequitur aliqua compositio
in Deo absoluta nec divisio essentiae in tribus, sicut necnon sequitur compositio vel divisio
essentiae propter formalem distinctionem essentialium perfectionum attributalium, quam
posui supra in Deo. Et mirum est quod aliqui concedunt unum tamquam necessarium,
reputantes tamen istud secundum impossibile, incompossibile, et erroneum.” Cambridge,
Gonville and Caius 281/674, f. 88va; Oxford, Merton College 93, f. 153ra. Text continued in n. 37
below.
37 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 26 (text continued from n. 36 above): “Quia tamen schola
communis communiter tenet contrarium, probo, et maxime ex intentione doctorum Augus-

tini, Anselmi, et Damasceni, quibus in his quae hadi fidem sunt magis innitendum* est.”
Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 281/674, f. 88va–b; Oxford, Merton College 93, f. 153ra–b.
38 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 26: “Ad quaestionem principalem arguo sic: proprietas abso-
luta immediate se tenens cum essentia ad constitutionem suppositi non mediante aliquo
actu originis formaliter vel in virtute praecedit cum essentia omnem actum originis, ut patet
de proprietatibus perfectionalibus* absolutis, cuius sunt attributa sapientia, iustitia, etc. Sed
huiusmodi sunt proprietates personales absolutae, si ponuntur in divinis constituere per-
sonas distinctas cum essentia una. Igitur, si ponitur tales proprietates absolutas constituere,
necessario ante omnem actum originis formaliter vel in virtute erunt tres personae in divinis
actualiter constitutae per illas proprietates absolutas. Probatio minoris, quia nihil praesup-
ponit actum originis formaliter vel in virtute et ante, tamquam medium inter essentiam et
ipsum*, nisi relatio originis quae fundatur immediate super actum ipsum active vel pas-
sive signatum. Tales non sunt istae proprietates, alioquin, cum per ipsum actum originis
sit distinctio personarum, ante proprietates absolutas distinguentes esset alia distinctio et
constitutio prior, per ipsam scilicet originem virtutis formaliter, quod non concedis, quia
tunc constitutio per absoluta esset adventitia et non persona; sed ponere constitutionem
500 chapter eight
he tells us Scotus himself would concede, it seems safe to say that Scotus
in fact would insist that the absolute properties are non-quidditative origin,
and hence that there would be no “doubling up” of constitutive properties,
as Cowton claims. Summing up Cowton’s view as a whole, we can say that
he appears to agree with Scotus that the view that the persons are absolute is
not heterodox; nevertheless, on the basis of arguments both from authority
and from reason, he rejects the view.
Of course, theologians outside the ranks of Franciscans and Dominicans
also took note of Scotus’ theory of absolute persons. To take just one exam-
ple, Gerard of Bologna, OCarm, in his mostly unedited Summa theologica
seems to have reacted to Scotus in a way very similar to that we saw in
Alexander of Alessandria.39 Like Alexander he describes Scotus’ opinion on
the absolute persons in unmistakable detail, presenting some of the same
arguments that Alexander (and Hugh of Novo Castro) present, although
only linking the view to Scotus in the highly oblique statement that “some—
even moderns—” support the position of absolute persons.40 Again the main
personarum ante omnem originem est ponere originem superfluere nec unam personam
esse originem et aliam originatam, sed omnes tres esse aeque primo constitutas sine omni
origine, quod non sapit fides Christiana. Confirmatur: si enim perfectiones attributales natae
essent personas distinctas constituere, eo quod necessitate naturae insunt ipsi essentiae ante
omnem actum originis formaliter vel in virtute ante omnem originem distinctas personas
constituerent. Igitur eodem modo de istis proprietatibus absolutis quas tu ponis. Probatur
etiam minor principalis rationis sic: proprietas absoluta qua constituitur persona illa, quam
nunc dicimus Patrem, constituit cum essentia personam illam, nec praesupponit ante se in
ratione fundamenti medii aliquem actum originis, aliter cum origo distinguat et non nisi sup-
positum a supposito, ante constitutionem per talem proprietatem absolutam esset persona
constituta, et cum origo non constituat nisi ad aliud, esset persona ex prima constitutione
ad aliud relativum, non autem absolutum, quod tu negas, sed qua ratione una proprietas
absoluta se tenet cum essentia immediate in constitutione unius ante omnem originem,
eadem ratione et alia et tertia. Nulla igitur est origo inter personas, nec una est ab alia, sed
omnes tres aeque primo constituitur praeter omnem originem, quod non est verum, immo
repugnans.” Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 281/674, f. 89rb–va; Oxford, Merton College 93,
f. 154vb.
39 Gerard’s Summa, written between 1313 and 1317 was available to me in BAV Borgh. 27.
On Gerard and his works see the relevant section of Xiberta 1931, esp. 74–110, updated by
Schabel 2007b, 505–514, with references to further literature, and a discussion of Gerard’s
Quodlibeta, which also contain trinitarian material. Schmaus 1930a contains some discussion
of Gerard’s trinitarian theology, and here the Carmelite seems to take an overall Dominican
view of the Trinity.
40 Gerard of Bologna, Summa theologica, a. 39, q. 6 (“Utrum in divinis sit persona vel sup-
positum absolutum”, ff. 199ra–200ra): “… quarto potest intelligi quaestio an in divinis personae
sint distinctae per aliquid aliud a relationibus, quod quidem aliud sit aliquo modo absolu-
tum. Et dicunt aliqui, etiam moderni, quod sic. Quod probant primo sic: divinae personae
non possunt constitui per relationes quia referri supponit personam iam constitutam. Ergo
argument put forward in defense of absolute persons is that they are per se
existences or prime substances, which cannot be constituted by relation.
Gerard’s response is merely to point out that Scotus’ opinion is not the
common one, and justifiably so: as Scotus himself said, both the canon
and the saints seem to speak against it. Further, per se existence in God is
manifestly not like per se existence in creatures: the latter are absolutes, the
former are relatives.41
2. Filioque
A. Brief Overview
On the issue of the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit, in the Francis-
can order there was general acceptance of the way that Scotus had reformu-
lated the Franciscan position he inherited. As we have seen, this reformula-
tion included both stressing the nature of a true constitutive, and claiming
that what was significant in the issue of the constitution of a person was
the incompossibility or compossibility of the disparate relations in the same
necessarium est quod constituantur per aliqua absoluta et per consequens sunt personae
absolutae.
“Secundo sic: id quod est extra genus substantiae non potest constituere personam,
quia persona est substantia et per se existens. Ergo persona divina constituitur per aliquid
absolutum, et sic idem quod prius.
“Tertio sic: quod est accidens vel quasi accidens non potest constituere personam quae
est per se existens. Sed relatio est accidens vel quasi accidens. Ergo relatio non potest con-
stituere personam, et sic oportet quod constituatur per aliquid absolutum. Haec autem abso-
luta dicunt esse quosdam modos praevios relationibus constitutivos personarum, ad quos
sequuntur relationes; unde modi per relationes innotescunt. Et ideo sancti dicunt personas
divinas per relationes constitui, quia per illas innotescit nobis distinctio personarum, non
autem quia per eas fiat distinctio primo.” BAV Borgh. 27, f. 199rb. Cf. to Scotus, Ch. 6, above,
nn. 47–49, 76–77.
41 Gerard of Bologna, Summa theologica, a. 39, q. 6: “Ista positio non tenetur communiter
a doctoribus*, quia hdoctoresi expresse auctoritate canonis et sanctorum sunt ad oppositum,

scilicet ad hoc quod personae divinae solis relationibus distinguantur et constituantur …
(f. 199vb) “Nunc respondendum est ad argumenta. Ad primum ergo dicendum quod
secundum quosdam per se existentia (ms.: exntia) est duplex, scilicet absoluta, et haec est in
creaturis, et relativa, et haec est in divinis. Et quod in divinis sit per se existentia relativa patet,
quia in divinis sunt tres existentiae, nam ibi sunt tres personae. Ergo ibi sunt tres existentiae.
Et constat quod non sunt existentiae per accidens vel per inhaerentiam. Sunt ergo per se
existentiae et tres. Sed in divinis non sunt aliqua tria realia et realiter distincta nisi relativa.
Ergo illae tres per se existentiae realiter distinctae, sicut et personae, in quarum definitione
ponuntur, sunt relativae non absolutae.
“Et secundum hoc patet solutio ad argumentum, quia minor negatur, nam per se existere
relative quale est in divinis personis, unde convenit per relationem.” BAV Borgh. 27, f. 199va–b.
502 chapter eight
person. This last argument was then used to explain why the Son and the
Holy Spirit would be distinct given the counterfactual—because the incom-
possible rationes of their different modes of emanating, natural and free,
make them distinct emanations that cannot have one and the same person
as a term—, while the Father can have two disparate relations, to generate
and to spirate, since two distinct active productions are compossible in one
single source. Despite there being general Franciscan acceptance of Sco-
tus’ formulation of the position that the tradition had held since (at least)
Eustace of Arras, the extent to which the anonymous author of the Sentences
commentary preserved in BAV Ottobonensis lat. 360 adopts Scotus’ solu-
tion to this problem is extraordinary.42 This author is as close to being an
unqualified “Scotist” (as opposed to an “independent” one) as I have come
across: his discussion is a short synopsis of Scotus, that includes both the
argument from the formal nature of a constitutive and the argument from
the emanations, basically in an abbreviatio format.43 In fact, the presentation
42 This Sent. commentary is also contained in Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale 653, accord-
ing to Doucet 1954, 111–112. Chris Schabel, on the basis of his study of future contingents
(Schabel 2000a, 48 n. 2), argues that this commentary dates to the period between Scotus and
Auriol, since it displays no cognizance of Auriol’s views, and he notes both that the author is
a Scotist and that the commentary exhibits some similarities to the later work of the Francis-
can Peter of Navarre. My results agree well with Schabel’s. Thus, this commentary may prove
to be a significant witness to the state of Scotism in the period between Scotus and Auriol. An
interesting point of future research in this regard will be to examine the author’s treatment
of absolute persons.
43 Anonymous, I Sent., d. 11 (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus procedens a Patre et Filio aeter-
naliter, si a Filio non procederet, distingueretur ab eo realiter?”, ff. 77v–82r): “His praemissis
ponitur conclusio quod Spiritus Sanctus vere distingueretur a Filio etiam si non procederet
ab eo. Haec conclusio probatur sic. Et primo ex parte constitutivi, secundo ex parte emana-
tionum. Ex prima via arguitur sic: quo unumquodque formaliter suppositaliter constituitur,
eo a quocumque non-tali personaliter distinguitur, quolibet alio circumscripto, ex proposi-
tione praeaccepta. Sed Filius sic constituitur per filiationem. Ergo quolibet alio circumscripto
distinguitur per filiationem personaliter a quolibet non habente filiationem. Sed posito casu
quod Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, adhuc remaneret filiatio in Filio et non in Spir-
itu Sancto. Ergo distingueretur personaliter a Spiritu Sancto, posito illo casu.
“Secundo probatur conclusio sic: si per impossibile Spiritus Sanctus procederet a Filio et
non a Patre, adhuc distingueretur a Patre; ergo consimili modo in proposito, si procederet
a Patre et non a Filio, adhuc distingueretur a Filio. Antecedens patet, quia Pater in tali casu
adhuc distingueretur paternitate a Spiritu Sancto.
“Ex secunda via probatur conclusio, et arguitur sic: emanatio Filii et emanatio Spiritus
Sancti sunt alterius rationis, ergo posito casu illo quem tractamus, adhuc Spiritus Sanctus
distingueretur a Filio. Antecedens est evidens, quia una est emanatio per modum naturae,
alia per modum voluntatis. Sed consequentia probatur sic: impossibile (ill. del.) est duas
productiones alterius rationis terminari ad unum et idem productum; sed emanatio Filii
et emanatio Spiritus Sancti sunt duae productiones alterius rationis; ergo impossibile est
eas terminari ad idem productum. Ergo quocumque casu posito duae haec emanationes
is so succinct that it is worthwhile translating it to show the basic Franciscan

arguments on the matter, as they were handed down by Scotus:
The Holy Spirit truly would be distinct from the Son, even if he did not
proceed from him. This conclusion is proved in the following way: first on
the basis of what is constitutive, second on the basis of the emanations. On
the basis of the first way it is argued so: by whatever anything is formally
constituted as a supposite, by that, with all else set aside, it is personally made
distinct from anything that is not it (a quocumque non-tali)—this is from
the proposition accepted before. But the Son is constituted in this way by
filiation. Therefore, with everything else set aside, the Son through filiation is
made personally distinct from anything that does not have filiation. But with
the casus posited that the Holy Spirit would not proceed from the Son, still
filiation would remain in the Son and not in the Holy Spirit. Therefore the
Son would be personally distinct from the Holy Spirit, with the casus posited
....
The conclusion is proved on the basis of the second way, and it is argued
so: The Son’s emanation and the Holy Spirit’s emanation have different
rationes, therefore with the casus that we are dealing with posited, still
the Holy Spirit would be distinct from the Son. The antecedent is evident,
since one is the emanation by way of nature, the other by way of will. The
consequence is proved in this way: it is impossible for two productions having
different rationes to issue in (terminari ad) one and the same product. But
the Son’s emanation and the Holy Spirit’s emanation are two productions
having different rationes. Therefore it is impossible for them to issue in
the same product. Therefore, no matter what casus is posited, these two
emanations would have two distinct products, and consequently the Son
would be distinct from the Holy Spirit ....
In this way, then, the conclusion is clear on the basis of these two ways: both
because filiation is sufficiently distinctive and constitutive of the person of
the Son, and because the emanations of necessity issue in distinct products.44
The argument from the nature of a true constitutive and the argument
from the emanations: this organizational pattern was Scotus’ major con-
tribution to the debate on the counterfactual question, and it is summed
up with admirable clarity by the anonymous author of the Ottobonensis
haberent duo distincta producta, et per consequens Filius distingueretur a Spiritu Sancto ut
productum a producto. Maior huius argumenti patet, quia impossibile est idem productum
capere esse duabus productionibus totalibus; haec autem duae emanationes supponuntur
esse productiones totales; ergo impossibile est idem productum capere esse eis.
“Sic ergo patet conclusio istis duabus /81v/ viis: tum quia filiatio est sufficienter distinctiva
et constitutiva personae Filii, tum quia istae emanationes per necessitatem terminantur ad
distincta producta.” BAV Ottob. lat. 360, f. 81r–v.
44 For the Latin text, see throughout n. 43 above.
504 chapter eight
manuscript. The only point that Scotus had stressed that is not touched on
in these arguments is the incompossibility of the two passive productions as
the reason they must issue in distinct terms; but this point about incompos-
sibility was emphasized, as we will see, in other Franciscan treatments of
the issue.
While not being quite so dependent on Scotus as the Anonymous Otto-
bonensis is, nevertheless in the later redaction of his Sentences commen-
tary Alexander of Alessandria claims that what “opposition of relations”
really means is that two relations are incompossible in the same suppo-
site, thereby constituting distinct persons.45 Alexander also makes use of
the argument from the nature of a constitutive.46 In line with this Fran-
ciscan understanding of the counterfactual question, Alexander holds that
intellect and will are sources of the Son and the Holy Spirit respectively,
although he is somewhat pessimistic about our ability to prove this;47 in
45 See the text from the later redaction of Alexander’s I Sent. (d. 11, q. 6 = “Utrum si Spiritus
Sanctus non procederet a Filio, distingueretur ab eo”, BAV Borgh. 311, ff. 61vb–63ra; Paris,
BnF lat. 15859, ff. 67ra–68va) in Schmaus 1930a, 344–348, esp. 346–347: “Distinctio duarum
relationum incompossibilium in eodem supposito sufficit ad faciendam distinctionem in
divinis. Sed spiratio passiva et filiatio sunt huiusmodi, scilicet quod non compatiuntur se
in uno supposito. Ergo sufficiunt ad faciendam distinctionem in divinis. Minor probatur,
quia esse genitum et esse spiratum dicunt duas rationes quae non possunt esse in eodem
supposito, quia unum et idem suppositum non potest esse productum a voluntate et ab
intellectu … Quando enim dicitur quod omnis distinctio quae est in divinis est per opposita,
dico quod si opposita vocantur incompossibilia in eodem supposito, dico hoc esse verum ....
Licet enim aliquae relationes disparatae compatiantur se in eodem, tamen hae relationes,
scilicet genitum et spiratum non possunt esse eiusdem suppositi producti, sed necessario
arguunt duo supposita producta.”
46 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio posterior), d. 11, q. 6 in Schmaus 1930a,
347: “Quando aliquid distinguit aliquod suppositum adaequate, stante distinguente, semper
stabit distinctum. Sed filiatio distinguit suppositum Filii ab omni alio adaequate et spiratio
passiva suppositum Spiritus Sancti. Ergo stante filiatione et spiratione passiva semper stabit
distinctio.”
47 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent. (redactio posterior), d. 10, q. 2 (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus
sit a voluntate, BAV Borgh. 311, ff. 56va–57rb; Paris, BnF lat. 15859, ff. 60vb–61vb): “… ex praesen-
tia summi intelligibilis ad memoriam paternam producitur Verbum infinitum hypostaticum
… ergo ex praesentia summi diligibilis ad voluntatem infinitam poterit sequi amor infinitus
et hypostaticus, qui adaequatur* voluntati et obiecto. Hanc autem Amorem dicimus Spir-
itum Sanctum. In hac quaestione primo probandum est quod voluntas producit Spiritum
Sanctum; secundo videndum est quo modo se habet Spiritus Sanctus in divinis. Quantum ad
primum … sicut enim productio Verbi non potest probari per rationem ut dictum est supra,
ita nec productio Spiritus Sancti, tamen potest persuaderi per aliquas rationes. Prima ratio
est talis: sicut se habet fecunditas memoriae ad verbum, ita se habet fecunditas voluntatis ad
amorem. Sed memoria ut fecunda producit Verbum hypostaticum et subsistens. Ergo volun-
tas ut fecunda producit Spiritum Sanctum .... Secunda ratio manuductiva talis est creaturae
ut intellectae supponunt Verbum in /P 61rb/ divinis in quo Deus omnia disposuit et novit. Ergo
addition, he appears to hold that the psychological model is an accurate

description of God’s trinitarian reality.48 Hugh of Novo Castro is also quite
true to the Subtle Doctor in his treatment of this issue, using both of Scotus’
characteristic arguments in much the same terminology.49 Although not as
closely related to Scotus’ presentation as his Parisian contemporaries’ dis-
creaturae ut volitae supponunt personam productam a voluntate, in quo Deus quasi omnia
voluit .... Quantum ad secundum hprincipalei /V 57ra/ notandum est quod, sicut ex parte intel-
lectus ponimus aliquod quod est commune Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut intelligere,
nam omnes personae intelligunt, et aliquid quod est proprium tantum Patri, sicut dicere,
nam dictio idem est quod Verbi productio, productio autem Verbi convenit tantum Patri, et
aliquid quod convenit tantum Filio, sicut esse Verbum productum per dicere, ita ex parte
voluntatis aliquid ponimus quod est commune Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut velle et
amare, nam omnes personae volunt et omnes amant, et aliquid quod est proprium Patri et
Filio, sicut spirare vel Amorem subsistentem producere, et aliquid quod est proprium tantum
Spiritui Sancto, sicut esse Amor subsistens et Amor hypostaticus.” BAV Borgh. 311, ff. 56vb–
57ra; Paris, BnF lat. 15859, ff. 61ra–b. Note that Alexander claims that the Word is produced
when the intelligible object (the divine essence) is present to the paternal memory (and not
intellect). Michael Schmaus (1930a, 236–239) publishes related material from a question by
Alexander found in BAV Vat. lat. 932 (an ms. that also contains Alexander’s entire Quodlibet);
for arguments similar to the ones given here, see in the text published by Schmaus esp. p. 238.
48 Alexander of Alessandria, I Sent., d. 27, pars 2, q. 6 (“Utrum Verbum in divinis sit transla-
tive vel proprie”, BAV Borgh. 311, ff. 108vb–109ra; Paris, BnF lat. 15859, ff. 120vb–121ra): “Solutio:
dicendum est ad quaestionem, scilicet ‘quod Verbum esse in divinis’ potest intelligi duobus
modis: vel quantum ad rem significatam vel quantum ad impositionem nostram. Si primo
modo sic magis proprie est in divinis quam in nobis, nec est ibi translative, et hoc patet ex
nominis interpretatione, ‘verbum’ enim dicitur quasi ‘verum boans’, nascitur enim verbum
ut quid exprimens veritatem de qua nascitur; veritas autem et expressio eiusdem proprie et
non translative est in divinis. Secundo hoc patet ex verbi significatione, significat enim ver-
bum rem de cuius ratione est declarare et indicare. Haec autem proprie sunt in divinis, et
non translative. Si autem secundo modo, scilicet quantum ad impositionem nostram, quia
verbum nostrum est nobis notius quam Verbum divinum, ideo ad similitudinem verbi nostri
ascendimus in Verbum divinum, et ideo quantum ad hoc est ibi aliqualis translatio.” BAV
Borgh. 311, f. 109ra; Paris, BnF lat. 15859, f. 121ra. See also Alexander’s text in n. 47 above. Cf.
with Scotus, Ch. 6, above, n. 135, and with Auriol, Ch. 9, below, n. 100. Of course, determining
just how well integrated the psychological model is in Alexander’s trinitarian theology will
require further editing and study.
49 Hugh of Novo Castro, I Sent., d. 11, q. 3 (“Quaeritur si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a
Filio, distingueretur ab eo personaliter?”, Paris, BnF lat. 15864, f. 17va–b): “Alia est opinio quod,
dato per impossibile quod Spiritus Sanctus etc., adhuc personaliter distinguerentur. Ratio
prima, quia permanentibus* principiis primis distinctihoniis formaliter et personaliter, [a]
quocumque alio distinctivo remoto per possibile vel impossibile, adhuc remanet distinctio
personalis. Sed dato quod Spiritus Sanctus non (s.l.) esset a Filio, adhuc remanerent filiatio et
spiratio passiva (passivo! ms.), quae sunt principia distinguentia formaliter et personaliter,
quia ad hoc Spiritus Sanctus spiraretur a Patre. Ergo dato etc., adhuc Spiritus Sanctus
distingueretur a Filio, quia haberet principium personaliter constitutivum et distinctivum
… Item, posito etc., adhuc productio Spiritus Sancti esset alterius rationis a productione
Filii. Sed si productiones sunt distinctae, et producta debent esse distincta, producta enim
in divinis distinguuntur per rationes productionum. Ergo, etc.” Paris, BnF lat. 15864, f. 17vb.
506 chapter eight
cussions are, William of Nottingham’s Oxford treatment concisely presents

roughly the same line of argument concerning the distinction between the
Son and the Holy Spirit: the Son is constituted by filiation, because that is
the property truly constitutive of the Son, and the Holy Spirit is constituted
by passive spiration, which is a production really and formally distinct from
generation, and hence would issue in a distinct term, the Holy Spirit, even
if passive spiration did not come from the Son.50
What is interesting here is that the Franciscans to whom I have had access
clearly updated on the basis of Scotus’ reformulation what was already
their standard position on one of the major trinitarian flashpoints with the
Dominican trinitarian tradition. Scotus’ trinitarian thought—outside of the
concept of absolute persons—seems to have functioned as something of a
synthesis and revision, a point of departure for Franciscan theologians com-
ing after him.51 Of course, the detailed work of determining the reception of
Scotus’ trinitarian theology by these early fourteenth-century Franciscans
remains to be undertaken—we need to determine who gave Scotus’ view
a particularly influential formulation or who made additions or modifica-
tions to it that gained acceptance or were particularly incisive.52 But already,
50 William of Nottingham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2, a. 3: “… filiatio, cum sit per se et prima ratio
constitutiva ipsius hscil., Filiii, erit ex per se ratione Filii ut Filius est, etiam circumscripta
spiratione activa. Similiter spiratio passiva, cum sit constitutiva Spiritus Sancti, necessario
manet in Spiritu Sancto .... Quod autem haec oppositio disparata sufficiat ad distinguendum
Spiritum Sanctum realiter a Filio … aliter sic probo, nam si spiratio esset a solo Patre sicut
generatio, spiratio et generatio essent productiones distinctae inter se formaliter et realiter;
igitur termini eorum, qui sunt Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, essent realiter distincti …” Ed.
Friedman 2001, p. 137389–399.
51 John of Bassol’s treatment of the Filioque issue will be discussed in Friedman and
Schabel forthcoming, but a further example of this type of use of Scotus from a separate
trinitarian issue comes from Hugh of Novo Castro, who uses Scotus’ idea that essence and
constituting property are two acts, and not act and potency. See Hugh’s I Sent., d. 5, q. 4
(“Quaeritur utrum relatio sit actus essentiae?”, Paris, BnF lat. 15864, f. 10va–b): “… nihil potest
esse actus eius quod est summe actus. Hic primo ostendam quod relatio non debet poni
actualitas* (actualitatis* ms.) respectu essentiae, quia nec ipsam distinguit[ur] nec perficit
aut actuat … Sed hic restat difficultas quomodo illa duo ponantur in Deo, nec tamen unum
se habeat sicut potentia, reliquum sicut actus. Dico quod non est ibi ponenda potentia et
actus, sed actus et actus, actus scilicet qui de se est infinitus et actus qui secundum se non
est infinitus, et sic se habent essentia et relatio. Et illa non faciunt ibi compositionem, quia
infinito nihil advenit quod in ipso non includatur, et quod non sit idem cum eo.” Paris, BnF
lat. 15864, f. 10va. Cf. Scotus in Ch. 6, above, esp. nn. 107, 115–119.
52 That is to say, we need a study of trinitarian theology like that of Rossini and Sch-
abel (2005) for future contingents, or like Decker 1967 for the early fourteenth-century
Dominicans.
at least on the issue of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, given that
the former did not come from the latter, it appears that we can permit our-
selves to call many of these Franciscan theologians “Scotists”, since it was
primarily Scotus’ version of Franciscan trinitarian theology that they took
their cues from. With that said, however, it has to be stressed that, with
respect to the issues with which we are dealing here, Scotus himself was
an integral part of a forty-year-old Franciscan trinitarian tradition (includ-
ing Henry of Ghent). As we saw in Chapter Six, Scotus’ trinitarian theology
makes best sense when thought of as a part of the Franciscan trinitarian tra-
dition with its roots in Bonaventure and its first true elaboration in Eustace
of Arras and John Pecham. With this in mind, Scotism as a movement—
again with respect to the material that we are dealing with here—is just one
(albeit an extremely important one) of a number of ways of interpreting the
Franciscan theological tradition, and it should be seen as an organic part
of that tradition. As we will see, another way of interpreting the Franciscan
theological tradition was offered by Peter Auriol, who certainly took Scotus
as one point of departure, although more often than not he disagreed with
him.
B. A Franciscan/Dominican Debate: Robert Cowton and Thomas of Sutton

In the Sentences commentary of the English Franciscan Robert Cowton and
in the critique of that work written by Cowton’s countryman, the Domini-
can Thomas of Sutton, we have an interesting—indeed unique—spotlight
on the different receptions that Henry of Ghent’s and John Duns Scotus’
trinitarian thought received at the hands of a Franciscan and a Domini-
can. In their respective discussions of the distinction of the Holy Spirit
from the Son, Cowton and, critiquing him, Sutton engage in a one-way
debate on the central points of contention between the general Domini-
can and the general Franciscan views of trinitarian theology. As mentioned
above, Cowton’s Sentences commentary is probably related to lectures held
at Oxford around 1309–1311, and it was an extremely popular work. The
well-known Oxford Thomist, Thomas of Sutton, was apparently one of the
many attracted to Cowton’s work, since sometime after 1312 he used selected
questions from books I–III as a jumping-off point for presenting exten-
sively argued rebuttals from a Thomistic point of view (in book IV, Sutton
turned his attention to Scotus’ Sentences commentary).53 So, this debate is a
53 On Sutton’s “Cowton Critique”, see Friedman 2002a, 119, and the literature referred to
there.
508 chapter eight
ready-made case study of Franciscan and Dominican argument: which

issues are stressed, which arguments used. The debate is made all the more
interesting since Cowton’s question is for all intents and purposes com-
posed of long quotations from other theologians. Thus, Henry of Ghent’s
Summa, a. 54, q. 6, is mentioned explicitly twice, and several long passages
from that text are quoted verbatim, and the influence of William of Ware is
quite clear in at least one passage. But it is Scotus’ treatment of the issue in
his Lectura, d. 11, that exerted the most influence on Cowton: central parts
of Cowton’s discussion are lifted verbatim or closely paraphrased from Sco-
tus’ text.54 Moreover, Cowton clearly employed Scotus’ organization of the
treatment of the issue around two basic types of arguments, specifically,
arguments on the basis of the nature of the constitutive personal property
and arguments on the basis of the distinction between the emanations; he
also made use of the typically Scotistic term ‘incompossible’ to describe the
reason why the two divine emanations cannot produce the same supposite;
finally, Cowton suggested that nature and will in God are more than ratio-
nally distinct in order to evade the Dominican argument that their rational
distinction is not sufficient to found the real distinction between the ema-
nations and the persons, a tactic Scotus had already used.55 Thus, Cowton’s
text is a compilation of terms, arguments, and ideas from three of the Fran-
ciscan trinitarian traditions greatest lights, and this is what Sutton attacks
from a Thomist point of view.
Most particularly, when it comes to the logical foundations of the coun-
terfactual Filioque question, the reason why it is licit to ask the counterfac-
tual question and disregard the kinds of problems raised by the “highest
impossibility” argument, Cowton offers the following response:
Thus I say in response to the question that this does not follow formally and
by a formal consequence: if the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son,
then he is not distinguished personally from him, although it does follow
54 An edition of Cowton’s I Sent., d. 11, is found in Friedman 2001, 140–156; for Cowton’s
sources the apparatus fontium in the edition must be supplemented with the “addenda et
corrigenda” found in Friedman 2002b, 25–26 (for the explicit citations of Henry of Ghent,
see Friedman 2001, p. 14295, p. 149339, and for the influence of William of Ware, see loc. cit.,
pp. 153494–154507). The corresponding question in Sutton’s “Cowton Critique” is edited in
Friedman 2001, 157–168.
55 For Cowton’s labelling of the two types of arguments, see I Sent., d. 11, a. 2 (ed. Friedman
2001, p. 147262, p. 148319), and cf. Scotus, Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 127–130. For Cowton’s
use of ‘incompossible’ in connection with the productions, see ibid. (loc. cit., p. 148320–321,
p. 154531–532), and cf. Scotus, Ch. 6, at and around n. 127. For Cowton’s suggestion that intellect
and will are more than rationally distinct in God, see his I Sent., d. 11, a. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001,
p. 154508–514), and cf. to Scotus, in Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 136–141.
through argument (arguitive) through many consequences … it does not

follow formally, because the Son in fact (modo) is distinguished from the
Holy Spirit and from every non-Son by filiation (just as a human being is
distinguished formally from every non-human being by rational), and thus
[they would continue to be distinct] with every other ratio set aside from
the Son, and especially a ratio that is not an essential property of the Son (de
intellectu Filii) .... And active spiration is of this kind, since it is not an essential
property (de intellectu) of the Son.56
Adopting Henry of Ghent’s strategy as modified by John Duns Scotus, Cow-
ton details a logical framework descended from obligations theory in his
attempt to show that the counterfactual question itself is not incoherent,
and this logical framework provides the point of departure for Cowton’s
own solution. Using terminology that appears to be his own, Cowton claims
that there are two types of consequences. One type, called an ‘essential
consequence’, holds by utter essentialness (potissima essentialitate), that
is to say the consequent is essentially included (de per se intellectu) in
the antecedent, and the one cannot be posited without the other. There
are also “accidental consequences”, however, that hold through “an extrin-
sic topic”. In this case the consequent is not essentially included in the
antecedent, although the consequent does follow from the antecedent.57
In cases like this, the opposite of the antecedent may be assumed, as a
56 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2: “Ideo dico ad quaestionem quod non sequitur
formaliter et consequentia formali: si Spiritus Sanctus non procedat a Filio, quod non
distinguitur personaliter ab eo, licet sequitur arguitive per consequentias multas .... Non
tamen sequitur formaliter, quia modo Filius distinguitur a Spiritu Sancto et a quocumque
non-Filio filiatione, sicut homo per rationale distinguitur formaliter a quocumque non-
homine. Et ideo, circumscripta quacumque alia ratione a Filio et maxime illa ratione quae
non est de intellectu Filii .... Et huiusmodi est spiratio actio quae non est de intellectu Filii
…” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 151419–421,425–431. This passage is modified from Scotus, Lectura, d. 11,
n. 48 (XVII, pp. 14517–14611).
57 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2: “Sed istud dicere est fuga quaedam ne incidat in
difficultatem quaestionis. Et praeterea falsum supponit, scilicet quod hypothesis includit

opposita de primo intellectu hypothesis. Quia sicut quaedam sunt consequentiae essentiales
potissima essentialitate, quando videlicet consequens est de per se intellectu antecedentis,
et quaedam sunt consequentiae accidentales quae tenent per loca extrinseca, in quibus
antecedens non potest esse verum sine consequente, consequens tamen non est de per se
intellectu antecedentis, sicut accidit quandocumque antecedens est causa consequentis,
sicut subiectum est causa suae passionis, et per locum consimilem—sic ipsum positum
quod ponitur potest includere opposita ita quod includantur in eius intellectu primo et
consequentia essentiali, et tale poni non debet, quia sic sequerentur illa inconvenientia duo
supradicta destruentia omnem artem disputandi.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 143121–131. Most of
this passage is taken from Scotus, Lectura, d. 11, n. 24 (XVII, p. 1367–17), but the terminology for
the way that consequences obtain seems to be original to Cowton, who calls “consequentiae
essentiales potissima essentialitate” what Scotus calls “consequentiae naturales”.
510 chapter eight
pure counterfactual, a positio impossibilis: this applies in the case of the

Son’s distinction from the Holy Spirit. The metaphysical foundation for this
claim is to be found in Cowton’s view that active spiration is not a prop-
erty essential to the Son, it is not de intellectu Filii; by this Cowton means
that active spiration is not a property completely indispensable for the Son’s
constitution, and this is just to say that Cowton thinks that active spira-
tion is, as we have seen it called before, a “quasi-incidental” (quasi adven-
titia) property. Of course, as Cowton said in the quotation above, there
are arguments that prove that the Holy Spirit does in fact proceed from
both the Father and the Son,58 but the counterfactual is nevertheless valid.
The vocabulary that Cowton employs here is heavily influenced by Scotus,
but the example that Cowton uses to illustrate what he means is straight
out of Henry of Ghent’s Summa, a. 54, q. 6: the conditional proposition
‘human beings would differ from beasts, if they were not able to laugh’ is
true because the ability to laugh is not an essential human property and
can thus be set aside, while the rationality of human beings, the essential
property by which they differ from beasts, would still ensure their distinc-
tion from non-rational beasts.59 According to Cowton, the distinction of
the Son from the Holy Spirit corresponds exactly to the former case. Thus,
one can posit, by positio impossibilis, that the Son does not differ from the
Holy Spirit by active spiration, because active spiration is a quasi-incidental
feature of the Son, it is “outside the Son’s significate”, since the Son must
already have full being through filiation “before” he and the Father together
spirate the Holy Spirit. As Cowton also claims in the quotation above,
given the positio impossibilis, the Son would still be distinct by his “essen-
tial” property, filiation, from all non-Sons, including from the Holy Spirit.60
58 See the arguments found in Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 1 (ed. Friedman 2001,
pp. 14139–14298), and see Ch. 9, below, at and around n. 87 for an example of the arguments.
59 See Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 143131–144148), which is a
nearly verbatim quotation of the text from Henry’s Summa, a. 54, q. 6 found in Ch. 4, above,
n. 32 from the words “quando ponitur cum” to the end of the text.
60 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2: “Sicut igitur homo potest poni cum opposito risibilis,
quod est accidens eius et extra per se significatum termini et intellectum rei significatae,
sic in proposito, ponendo Filium in divinis, et non procedere ab eo Spiritum Sanctum,
spiratio enim activa est extra significatum Filii et quasi adventitia personae Filii constitutae
ordine quodam. Et ideo potest sustineri quod Filius, licet non spiret Spiritum Sanctum,
quod tamen differt a Spiritu Sancto nativitate vel filiatione tamquam suo formali proprio
intrinseco, sicut homo differret suo formali intrinseco, scilicet rationali, a bruto, si non
esset risibilis. Nec est summe necessarium quod Filius spiret Spiritum Sanctum, quia non
est necessarium consequentia essentiali potissima essentialitate, quia spiratio actio non
est de per se ratione Filii, sed sequitur consequentia accidentali et per locum extrinse-
This, then, is Cowton’s version of the argument from the nature of a true
constitutive.
Significantly, filiation, the constitutive property of the Son, is thought
about by Cowton in an emanational way. Unlike Henry of Ghent and Roger
Marston, Cowton claims clearly that disparate relations per se would not
be the cause of the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, given
the counterfactual; according to Cowton, the cause rather would be that
“one proceeds in one way sufficiently and the other in a different way from
the Father”.61 This is the basis of Cowton’s use of the argument from the
emanations. The different ways that the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed
from the Father are quite familiar: the Son proceeds by way of nature or
intellect, and the Holy Spirit by way of will.62 In fact, Cowton takes special
care to defend the identification of nature and intellect in God. An objection
to his view is raised claiming that the reason the Son and the Word are
not distinct from each other is because neither proceeds from the other,
therefore, likewise, if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, these
two persons would not be distinct.63 In answer, Cowton replies:
cum.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 144148–159; this text appears to be genuine Cowton. For the point
about filiation as constitutive of the Son, see also the text in n. 56 above, as well as Robert
Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 147252–262 [taken directly from Scotus, Lectura,
d. 11, n. 34 (XVII, p. 14013–25)]; pp. 147281–148318 [ll. 281–295 appear to be Cowton, most of the rest
is reorganized and rewritten from Scotus, Lectura, d. 11, nn. 36, 38 (XVII, pp. 141–143, passim)]).
61 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2: “Unde praecisa causa distinctionis personalis Spiritus
Sancti a Filio, retenta hypothesi quaestionis, non est propter relationes disparatas (aliter
Pater distingueretur personaliter a se et Filius nunc de facto), sed cum hoc quod unus
procederet uno modo sufficienter et alius alio diversimode a Patre.” Ed. Friedman 2001,
pp. 154539–155542. These words appear to be Cowton’s own.
62 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2: “Contra: si illae emanationes non sunt distinctae
nisi secundum rationem, sunt tamen ab uno principio habente modum naturae in prin-
cipiando et modum voluntatis. Quaero tunc sub quo modo primo producitur ista persona?
Non potest dici quod utroque modo aeque primo, cum modus naturae sit naturaliter prior
modo voluntatis in nobis et in omnibus. Similiter si utroque modo primo, cum uno modo
possit sufficienter procedere una persona, superflueret alia. Nihil autem superfluum ponen-
dum est in divinis. Igitur altero istorum modorum procedit primo; si modo naturae, igitur
circumscripto modo voluntatis adhuc produceretur modo illo, cum sit sufficiens modus pro-
ductivus; si non, sed modo voluntatis primo, tunc circumscripto modo naturae sufficienter
produceretur isto modo voluntatis. Igitur sequitur quod vel tantum uno modo procederet
una persona et alia alio modo a solo Patre, vel si una procederet utroque modo, sequitur
quod neutro modo procederet. Stat igitur ratio principalis.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 149346–357.
The thrust of the argument and some of the formulations come from Scotus (Lectura, d. 11,
n. 42; XVII, p. 1445–12), but Cowton’s treatment is more elaborate than Scotus’.
63 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2: “Item, ratione sic: quamvis in divinis Filius procedit
per modum naturae et Verbum per modum intellectus, quia tamen intellectus et natura in
Deo non differunt nisi secundum rationem, et Filius non procedit a Verbo nec econverso,
512 chapter eight
… the cause of the Word’s not being personally distinct from the Son is not
that one does not proceed from the other, but that to proceed by way of
nature and by way of intellect is to proceed in the same way, because in
intellectual [beings] nature and intellect are one source on account of their
identical way of being a source. This is because intellect, as it is a precondition
(praevius) for the will’s act, elicits its act by a certain impulse or by a certain
unchanging natural necessity just as absolute non-intellectual natures do.
Moreover, because nature and intellect are sources in the same way, where
they concur together, as they do in the divine, they have one term. The will,
however, does not produce in this way, but rather freely, and so it has a
production of a different ratio from the production of nature and intellect,
and so the term produced is distinct and formally of a different ratio.64
For Cowton, as it was for Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus, the founda-
tional source of distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit is that they
proceed in fundamentally different ways, naturally by way of nature and
freely by way of will. And also like Henry and Scotus, Cowton takes pains to
show that procession by way of nature and by way of intellect is the same
in God. Just on the basis of the text under investigation here, then, it seems
that Cowton adopted Henry’s strong use of the psychological model in trini-
tarian theology, and this impression can be confirmed from other texts of
his.65
ideo Filius et Verbum non differunt nisi secundum rationem. Igitur similiter, cum in Patre
idem sit re natura et voluntas, et differentia sola ratione, sicut natura et intellectus in eodem,
si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, procederet a Patre solo, per modum naturae et
per modum voluntatis non esset sufficiens ratio existendi inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum
realem distinctionem.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 14010–17.
64 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 2: “Respondeo quod in argumento est non-causa ut
causa, hoc enim non est causa quare Verbum non distinguitur personaliter a Filio, quia
non procedit ab eo, sed quia procedere per modum naturae et per modum intellectus
est procedere secundum unum modum, quia in intellectualibus natura et intellectus sunt
unum principium propter uniformem modum principiandi, quia intellectus ut praevius
actui voluntatis impetu quodam sive quadam immutabilitate naturalis necessitatis elicit
actum suum sicut natura absoluta non-intellectualis. Et quia uniformiter principiant natura
et intellectus, ideo ubi simul concurrunt—sicut in divinis—habent unum terminum. Non
sic autem voluntas, sed libere producit, et ideo habet productionem alterius rationis a
productione naturae et intellectus, et ita terminum productum distinctum et alterius rationis
formaliter.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 152450–460. This appears to be Cowton’s own work.
65 E.g., Cowton’s discussion in I Sent., d. 10, defending the will as the elicitive ratio of
active spiration: “… voluntas est principium elicitivum actus spirationis, quo producitur
Spiritus Sanctus et hoc satis docet Augustinus … Et istud idem probatur sic: omne principium
productivum perfectum potest producere terminum perfectum adaequatum tali principio,
si non impediatur. Sed Pater et Filius in divinis habent voluntatem fecundam, quae est
eis principium productivum non impeditum. Igitur possunt eo producere terminum intra
adaequatum. Terminus autem proximus productus per voluntatem non est nisi amor. Amor
autem est Spiritus Sanctus.” Ed. Schmaus 1930a, 235 n. 58. Cf. this to Scotus, Ch. 6, above, n. 151.
Thus, the central points of Cowton’s text can be boiled down to two:
1) the differing modes of emanating, namely, the mode of intellect/nature
and the mode of will, are the ultimate basis for the distinction between the
emanations, and 2) the emanations are the ultimate ground for the distinc-
tion between the persons. In accordance with these points, Cowton insists
that filiation, the Son’s intellectual emanation, would be sufficient on its
own to explain the Son’s distinction from the Holy Spirit: opposition of
relations is strictly speaking dispensable. These points—as Cowton him-
self explicitly admits—can be found in Henry of Ghent, and, moreover, they
can be found in even closer form in John Duns Scotus. And to these points
Thomas of Sutton makes reply in his critique of Cowton’s question, which
exhibits many of the features that we have observed repeatedly in Domini-
can trinitarian theology. Sutton’s work is, in fact, something of an update of
Aquinas’ position on the Trinity, answering newer arguments that Aquinas
himself did not live to see. Sutton’s conscious desire to defend Aquinas
against the misunderstandings that he thought had led especially Francis-
cans, but also Henry of Ghent, to reject the Angelic Doctor’s views can be
seen in much of what Sutton wrote after he became Master of Theology at
Oxford sometime in the period between 1290 and 1295. It is certainly on dis-
play in the trinitarian material included in his four Quodlibeta (largely in
reply to Henry of Ghent and, later, to Scotus), his set of Ordinary Questions
(mostly in reply to Scotus), his reply to the Quodlibet of John Duns Scotus,
as well as the “Cowton Critique” itself.66 How does Sutton reply to Robert
Cowton’s Franciscan take on the distinction between the Son and the Holy
Spirit?
The point of departure for Sutton in this question is, as it had been
for Aquinas, that the real distinction between the persons can only come
about on the basis of opposed relations, and further, on that basis, that
the distinction between the persons is logically and definitionally prior to
the distinction between the emanations. Thus, for Sutton, it is nonsense to
claim that proceeding by way of nature (or intellect) and proceeding by
way of will, understood independently of the arrangement of the persons
to one another, are the factors making the emanations, and therefore also
66 On Sutton and these works, see the summary in Friedman 2007a, 423–426, and for
more detail see Johannes Schneider’s “Introduction” to Sutton’s Quaestiones Ordinariae,

pp. 44*–54*. See Ch. 7, above, n. 103, for the use that Schneider makes of Sutton’s view on
the counterfactual question concerning the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit
when he discusses the controverted issue of Sutton’s authorship of the Liber propugnatorius.
Most recently on Sutton’s “Cowton Critique”, see Rodler 2011.
514 chapter eight
the persons, distinct: “if the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone,
he would not proceed from him by way of will, but by way of intellect
and by way of nature; and thus he would not be spirated, but would be
born, and so he would be the Word and the Son”.67 For Sutton, in other
words, procession by way of nature just is when one person comes from one
person, and thus, the Holy Spirit would proceed by way of nature if he came
from the Father alone. The modes of emanating, and hence the distinction
between the emanations, are defined on the basis of the arrangement
of the persons to each other. Consistent with this view, Sutton makes
a very clear statement of what the Franciscans would call a Dominican
“appropriational” or metaphorical view of the emanations: “intellect and
will are not the sources of the persons who proceed, but the Father is the
source of the Son, while the Father and the Son are the source of the Holy
Spirit, and intellect and will are the same for each of the persons.”68 The
generation of the Son does not have a direct connection with the divine
intellect as its source; the procession of the Holy Spirit does not have the
divine will as its source. Here there is as wide a gap as possible between the
two trinitarian traditions.
Sutton replies to several forms of Henry of Ghent’s positio impossibilis
argument, that human beings would still be distinct from beasts by ratio-
nality, if not by the ability to laugh, given the positio impossibilis.69 He states
outright that the question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son with-
out the former proceeding from the latter is rational, i.e. it does not involve
a contradiction.70 But even given that the question is a licet one, never-
67 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13: “… si Spiritus Sanctus procederet a solo
Patre, non procederet ab eo per modum voluntatis, sed per modum intellectus et per modum
naturae, et ideo non esset spiratus, sed esset natus, et sic esset Verbum et Filius.” Ed.
Friedman 2001, p. 164272–274. Cf. ibid. (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 15716–21; p. 163241–247; p. 167401–407;
p. 168437–439).
68 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13: “… intellectus et voluntas non sunt prin-
cipia personarum procedentium, sed Pater est principium Filii, Pater autem et Filius sunt
principium Spiritus Sancti; intellectus autem et voluntas sunt idem cum qualibet persona.”
Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 166361–363.
69 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13, arguments 8, 13, and 19–21 (ed. Friedman
2001, p. 15857–69; p. 15985–88; p. 160120–135) and Thomas’ replies to these arguments (ibid.,
p. 165304–312; pp. 165336–166340 [see n. 71 below]; p. 167381–398). Furthermore, arguments from
authority 10–12 (ibid., p. 15975–84) and the replies to them (ibid., p. 165314–335).
70 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13: “… ista quaestio introducitur ad sciendum
quid est principium distinctivum Filii a Spiritu Sancto, utrum scilicet filiatio vel aliquid aliud,
et est quaestio rationalis.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 15851–53. Ibid.: “Ad nonum patet per hoc idem,
quia verum concludit quod quaestio est rationabilis.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 165313. See also
ibid. (pp. 164295–165301), and n. 73 below.
theless the Holy Spirit would not be distinct from the Son if the former did
not proceed from the latter:
… just as rational makes human beings distinct from every non-human being,
so filiation makes the Son distinct from non-Son. But if the Holy Spirit were
not to proceed from the Son, the Holy Spirit would not be non-Son, but rather
he would be the Son, because he would proceed by way of nature, and so
filiation would not make the Son distinct from him, because in that case it
would make the Son distinct from himself.71
If filiation is truly constitutive of the Son, then should not the Son be made
distinct by it from all other things that are not the Son, including the Holy
Spirit? Should, as Cowton had claimed, filiation not be the necessary and
sufficient ground for the Son’s being distinct from every other thing, if
filiation is truly constitutive of him? In this passage and others like it, Sutton
replies in the affirmative. Consistent with the Dominican position, then,
Sutton does not deny here that filiation makes the Son distinct from all
non-Sons, rather he denies that the Holy Spirit would be included in the
class of things ‘non-Son’ if he did not proceed from the Son: opposition
of relations is necessary for the Holy Spirit and the Son to be distinct
persons.
Sutton fleshes out this view in reply to an objection that works off of
the position that filiation is incompossibile with the Holy Spirit, and the
reason for this incompossibility is that filiation and active spiration always
go together (filiatio … coexigit spirationem actionem), and so, just as fire
is incompossible with cold because the heat that always accompanies the
fire is incompossible with cold, so filiation is incompossible with passive
spiration because filiation is always accompanied by active spiration.72 Here
Sutton is taking seriously Cowton’s statement that there are arguments that
71 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13: “… sicut rationale distinguit hominem
ab omni non-homine, ita filiatio distinguit Filium a non-Filio. Sed si Spiritus Sanctus non
procedehreit a Filio, Spiritus Sanctus non esset non-Filius, sed esset Filius, quia procederet
per modum naturae, et ideo filiatio non distingueret Filium ab eo, sic enim distingueret
Filium a se ipso.” Ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 165336–166340. Cf. ibid. (p. 165325–335; p. 167386–394).
72 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13: “Omnis proprietas quae ex formali ratione
sua est incompossibilis alteri ex se distinguit a quocumque altero. Sed filiatio per formalem
rationem suam est incompossibilis Spiritui Sancto. Ergo distinguit Filium a Spiritu Sancto.
Minor ostenditur, quia filiatio per suam formalem rationem coexigit spirationem actionem,
ergo per eandem rationem repugnat spirationi passivae, sicut quia ignis per formalem suam
rationem determinat sibi calorem—alioquin non magis repugnaret frigiditas igni quam ligno
calido—ideo igni secundum suam formalem rationem repugnat frigiditas.” Ed. Friedman
2001, p. 15723–29.
516 chapter eight
show that the Holy Spirit must come from the Son, the argument in this case
being the absolutely necessary coincidence of filiation and active spiration
in the Son, which guarantees that the Holy Spirit comes from the Son. But
Cowton would also have insisted that this was not an essential consequence
but an accidental one, hence allowing him to say that active spiration could
counterfactually per impossibile be set aside and still the Son and the Holy
Spirit would be distinct on the basis of their incompossible emanations
from the Father alone. In response, Sutton denies that filiation, on its
own, is incompossible with the Holy Spirit; rather, as we saw above, active
spiration has to be “annexed” to filiation in order for the Son and the
Holy Spirit to be distinct from one another. Thus, in complete agreement
with what we have seen so far of his thought, and with the Dominican
trinitarian tradition as a whole, Sutton claims that the reason the Holy
Spirit is distinct from the Son is the Son’s active spiration: if it were not
for the fact that the Son spirates the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit would
not be distinct from the Son at all. But Sutton goes on, in effect, to deny
any difference between, on the one hand, the argument to which he is
replying (and the Franciscan logical strategy more generally) and, on the
other, the “highest impossibility” argument that we saw in Chapter Five,
above. Thus, Sutton maintains that, claiming filiation to be incompossible
with the Holy Spirit on account of the active spiration that necessarily
accompanies it is equivalent to claiming that active spiration is annexed
to filiation by filiation’s very nature, and if that is the case, then making the
positio impossibilis that the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son, would in
fact involve “incompossibles, and indeed contradictories, because if he were
not to spirate, the Son would not have the entire nature (ratio) of filiation,
and so the Son would not be the Son.”73 In other words, according to Sutton,
the only way that a Franciscan could argue (as Cowton said he could) to the
conclusion that the Son does indeed spirate the Holy Spirit, is by assuming
that active spiration is an “essential” (i.e., absolutely indispensable) factor
73 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13: “Ad secundum dicendum quod minor
propositio est falsa, quia filiatio non est incompossibilis Spiritui Sancto per rationem filia-
tionis, sed propter spirationem activam sibi annexam. Illa autem annexio spirationis non est
de ratione filiationis, quia si sic, hypothesis includeret incompossibilia, immo contradictoria,
quia si non spiraret, Filius non haberet totam rationem filiationis, et ita Filius non esset Fil-
ius. Et quia hypothesis tollit a Filio spirationem, ideo tollit a Filio incompossibilitatem eius
ad Spiritum Sanctum, qua remota, Spiritus Sanctus est Filius, et ita argumentum concludit
oppositum intenti.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 164264–271. The italicized hypothesis is my emenda-
tion: the mss. to which I have had access and the critical edition published in Friedman 2001
have hypostasis.
in the constitution of the Son, and this assumption is equivalent to saying

that the Son’s being the Son is bound up with his spirating the Holy Spirit.
And once you have assumed that, then the casus of the Son’s not spirating
is a positio incompossibilis, since the counterfactual involves removing one
of the Son’s “essential” properties, active spiration, while still remaining the
Son. Thus, Sutton is in effect saying that Cowton cannot at one and the same
time maintain, on the one hand, that he can prove that the Holy Spirit does
come from the Son through spiration, and, on the other, that spiration is
not an “essential” property of the Son: one or the other of these two has to
be given up.
With all this in mind, it appears that Sutton has a multi-layered argu-
mentative strategy with regard to the positio impossibilis argument. On the
one hand, as we have seen, Sutton himself maintains that, if the Son did
not spirate the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit would not exist (i.e., he would
be only rationally distinct from the Son), and this is in line with Hervaeus
Natalis’ logical strategy for dealing with the counterfactual question: positio
impossibilis carries no ontological commitment.74 Thus, for the Holy Spirit
to be distinct from the Son, the Holy Spirit must come from the Son, and
this agrees with Sutton’s view that, if the Holy Spirit came from the Father
alone, then he would emanate according to the mode of nature, and, as a
result, he would be the Son, since it is the Son who emanates according to
the mode of nature. In addition, however, Sutton points out that the affir-
mative answer to the counterfactual question itself creates an important
challenge for the Franciscans, who need to explain just how the view that
active spiration is a quasi-incidental property—an important element in
the way that the Franciscans dealt with this issue—squares with the uncon-
ditional internal necessity of the divine trinitarian nature, and specifically
with the fact that we know that the Son does indeed spirate (i.e., has active
spiration as a property). We will follow this type of challenge to the Francis-
can tradition—working off of the “highest impossibility” argument—in the
responses to it given by Henry of Harclay, Peter Auriol, and William Ock-
ham.75
One final interesting facet of Sutton’s discussion is his plain admission
that one of the grounds of the whole dispute lies with the problem of the
Greek Orthodox Church and the Filioque clause:

75 For Harclay, see at and around nn. 91–95 below; for Auriol, Ch. 9, below, at and around
nn. 74–94; for Ockham, Ch. 10, below, at and around nn. 81–85.
518 chapter eight
If the distinction between the three persons can be explained without it being
posited that the Son spirates the Holy Spirit, it follows that the position of the
Greeks is stronger and more reasonable than the position of the Latins, for it
is better to posit fewer than more, and to explain what has to be explained
through fewer things. It is not, however, against any authoritative passage
in Sacred Scripture that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, nor
can reason show that the Greek [position] entails any difficulty (inconve-
niens), except that the Holy Spirit would not be made distinct from the Son.
Thus, if this does not follow from the Greeks’ position, then they cannot be
accused of any difficulty (inconveniens). Therefore, we would posit the Son’s
producing the Holy Spirit in vain, since without this we can explain every-
thing. Indeed, since nothing in God is to be posited in vain, our position
is irrational, and the Greeks’ is rational, going against neither faith nor rea-
son.76
Why should the Latins hold against the Greeks that the Holy Spirit must
proceed from the Son, if the distinction between the two persons could
be explained just as well without this stipulation? No scriptural evidence
can be adduced against the Greek position, so the only reason that can
be given for the Filioque is that it is a necessary factor in the distinction
of the Son from the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we see the position of the Greeks
and the errors that arise from it brought up by Sutton in a number of
places in his text.77 Sutton’s remark reveals that the abstruse trinitarian
debate in the university context had ramifications for and was to some
extent conditioned by the larger religious, social, and political situation in
medieval Europe. This was not merely an arid and idle intellectual game,
but a significant and pressing issue. Moreover, perhaps this statement by
76 Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13: “Praeterea, si salvari potest distinctio trium
personarum absque hoc quod ponatur quod Filius spiret Spiritum Sanctum, sequitur quod
positio Graecorum potior est et rationabilior quam positio Latinorum; melius est enim
ponere pauciora quam plura et salvare omnia quae sunt salvanda per illa pauciora. Non est
autem contra aliquam auctoritatem scripturae sacrae quod Spiritus Sanctus non procedat a
Filio, nec per rationem concluditur aliquod inconveniens contra Graecos nisi quod Spiritus
Sanctus non distingueretur a Filio. Si ergo hoc non sequitur ad positionem Graecorum, ad
nullum inconveniens possunt duci. Frustra igitur poneremus nos Filium producere Spiritum
Sanctum, cum absque hoc possumus omnia salvare; immo cum in Deo nihil sit ponendum
frustra, positio nostra est irrationalis, et Graecorum rationabilis, non contra fidem neque
contra rationem.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 162208–218.
77 E.g., Thomas of Sutton, “Cowton Critique”, q. 13: “Anselmus autem assumit hoc tam-
quam nobis commune et Graecis, ut ex his quae ipsi concedunt nobis, tamen ostendat eis
quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Filio quod ipsi negant. Hoc autem facere non posset nisi
positio eorum includeret oppositum, si enim aliquis dicat duo et ex uno eorum necessario
concluditur oppositum alterius, illa duo includunt contradictionem.” Ed. Friedman 2001,
p. 164289–294. Also ibid., p. 164275–279.
Sutton gives us a window onto that larger situation: although no Franciscan

theologian from this period would have advocated the Greek position and
claimed that the Holy Spirit does in fact come from the Father alone, to
Thomas of Sutton, and other theologians in the Dominican current, the
Franciscan view on the counterfactual question clearly was not far enough
removed from the Greek view to inspire confidence. Indeed, as we just
saw, Sutton did not think that Cowton could offer any arguments for the
position that the Holy Spirit comes from the Son. Thus, for Sutton, in order
to guarantee that the Greek view is wrong, the Franciscan view had to
be wrong as well. Interestingly, this divide between the Franciscan and
Dominican way of looking at the counterfactual Filioque question seems
in fact to be reflected in contemporary views of the two orders. Thus,
Pope Clement IV (1265–1268) withdrew Franciscans negotiating with the
Greeks in Constantinople because he perceived them to be, in effect, “soft
on the Greeks” in contrast to the tougher Dominicans. Just as telling is
the fact that at the Second Council of Lyon (1274)—the council at which
the Greek and Latin Churches were (temporarily) united—Bonaventure
spoke on the unity of Christendom, while Aquinas, who did not live to
attend the Council, was to have spoken on the errors of the Greeks.78 These
examples appear to indicate that the two orders had different political and
perhaps religious attitudes, and these attitudes are reflected in the different
views of Dominicans and Franciscans on this question of the Holy Spirit’s
distinction from the Son. On the Filioque clause as a matter of Catholic
doctrine, the two religious orders and the two trinitarian traditions were
in total agreement; nevertheless, through the vehicle of the counterfactual
question they were able to express their widely differing perspectives on
God’s trinitarian nature, and these very different perspectives had real
significance for both sides.
78 See on these issues, especially the works of Donald M. Nicol. For Clement IV, see
idem, “The Greeks and the Union of the Churches: The Preliminaries to the Second Council
of Lyons, 1261–1274”, reprinted in Nicol 1972, ch. V, p. 459 n. 11: “Clement IV felt that the
Franciscan legates sent by Urban IV had exceeded their orders and had been altogether too
lenient with the Greeks. He himself was of the opinion that Dominican legates would be
more level-headed and less ready to compromise.” For Bonaventure and Aquinas, Nicol, “The
Byzantine Reaction to the Second Council of Lyons, 1274”, reprinted in Nicol 1972, ch. VI,
p. 128: “Thomas Aquinas had been commissioned, perhaps rather tactlessly, to deliver a
speech on the errors of the Greeks. But he died on his way to the Council; and so the Byzantine
legates were spared the shame of having to listen to the catalogue of heresies and faults that
they were supposed to be abjuring. But Cardinal Bonaventura preached a sermon on the
unity of Christendom.”
520 chapter eight
For Thomas of Sutton, just as much as for Giles of Rome, Godfrey of

Fontaines, and Hervaeus Natalis, the personal properties are relational,
and only opposed relations could bring about the real distinction between
the persons. Thus, no one property, for example filiation, could serve to
make one person distinct from the other two: the persons were distinct
from each other in pairs on account of opposed relations. For this rea-
son, the emanations as an explanation for personal distinction were deem-
phasized, and the different modes of emanation, by way of nature and
will, were reduced to “metaphorical” status. Thus, two very different ways
of looking at the Trinity—the Dominican and the Franciscan—emerge
clearly in the one-way “debate” between Robert Cowton and Thomas of Sut-
ton.
C. Henry of Harclay
The last figure with whom I will deal in this short study of the theologians
that offer reaction to Scotus is the secular theologian Henry of Harclay.
Harclay read the Sentences in Paris just after 1300, and appears to have
heard Scotus there. His commentary on I Sentences—written in the first
decade of the fourteenth century—reveals Scotus’ influence in most of the
areas investigated thus far. In 1312, Harclay became Chancellor of Oxford
University, and during this later period he authored a series of Quaestiones
that show a good deal more independence from and even criticism of
the Subtle Doctor. Harclay died in 1317, but his influence continued: Peter
Auriol cites him fairly often, and the Franciscan theologian Aufredo Gonteri
Brito writing in the mid-1320’s absorbed into his own I Sentences much of
Harclay’s commentary.79
That the early Harclay was reliant on Scotus is born out by a study of the
question he devotes in his Sentences commentary to the distinction of the
Son from the Holy Spirit, given that the latter does not proceed from the
former.80 In fact, this text leaves no doubt that Harclay used as his founda-
79 On Harclay’s Sent. commentary, see Duba, Friedman, and Schabel 2010, and the litera-
ture referred to there. Mark Henninger has been studying Harclay for many years now, and
two of his works are of direct relevance to the material dealt with here: Henninger 1981 and
Henninger 1989, 98–118 (and see the literature referred to there, esp. 98–99). Prof. Henninger
has now completed an edition of Harclay’s later Quaestiones, which includes a question deal-
ing with the distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Son (see n. 80 below): Henricus de Harclay,
Ordinary Questions.
80 A critical edition of this question, Harclay’s I Sent., d. 11, is found in Friedman 2001, 113–
125 (the edition is a composite one, compiled from both Harclay’s and Gonteri’s Sent. com-
tion Scotus’ work. Harclay blends neatly together Scotus’ two arguments for
the distinction of these persons by holding that emanations that would be
incompossible in one and the same supposite are each sufficiently consti-
tutive of a supposite, with all other sources of distinction set aside.81 This is
a fine statement of the way that the nature of a true constitutive and the
incompossibility of the emanations and their products show that the Holy
Spirit would still be distinct from the Son given the counterfactual. Whereas
Scotus had chosen natural and free as the incompossible rationes of the
two emanations, Harclay leans toward a related, but different dichotomy:
assimilative and non-assimilative, that is to say the emanation of something
similar and something not similar to the source of the emanation:
I take ‘to be generated passively’; it signifies formally that the supposite to
which it convenes is produced in being completely by the production that
is generation, and that production indeed from its formal ratio has that it
assimilates the product to the producer; ‘to be spirated’ signifies formally that
the supposite to which it belongs proceeds not as similar, for otherwise the
Holy Spirit would be the Image, just as the Son is. But these are incompossible
in the same supposite: to proceed as similar and to proceed as not similar.
Therefore to be generated and to be spirated are formally incompossible in
the same supposite.82
This is the basic position that Harclay takes throughout his discussion: the
Son and the Holy Spirit proceed in essentially diverse ways, therefore even if
they each proceeded only from the Father, they would still be distinct. Thus,
according to Henry, the opposition of relations required by the Dominican
tradition—in Harclay’s discussion represented by Aquinas and Godfrey of
Fontaines83—is only one kind of incompossibility, and not necessary for
mentaries). For the corresponding question in Harclay’s Quaestiones ordinariae, see q. 6 in

the new critical edition of Harclay’s Quaestiones (ed. Henninger), vol. 1, pp. 252–281.
81 Henry of Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… quaecumque illae relationes incompossibiles
in eodem supposito constitutivae personarum sufficienter distinguunt supposita omni alio

circumscripto.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 118163–165. Although Henry uses the term ‘relationes’
here, he is thinking of the relations as emanations; see the text in the following notes.
82 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… accipio ‘generari passive’; significat formaliter suppositum
cui convenit produci in esse complete productione quae est generatio, quae quidem pro-
ductio ex formali ratione sua habet quod assimilet productum producenti; ‘spirari’ significat
formaliter suppositum cuius est procedere non ut simile, aliter enim Spiritus Sanctus esset
Imago sicut Filius. Sed illa sunt incompossibilia in eodem supposito: procedere ut simile et
procedere ut non simile. Ergo generari et spirari formaliter sunt incompossibilia in eodem
hsuppositoi.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 118169–175. For more on assimilative and non-assimilative,
see n. 90 below.
83 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 116103–117160).
522 chapter eight
the distinction of person from person.84 Disparate, incompossible relations

also suffice for personal distinction.85
Thus, on this issue, like Gerard of Abbeville and Henry of Ghent, Henry
of Harclay is a secular theologian firmly in the Franciscan trinitarian tra-
dition. Harclay also exhibits this in other ways. For example, he claims—
thoroughly in line with Scotus and other Franciscans we have looked at
thus far—that the emanations are distinct formally in and of themselves
(se ipsis), but in terms of origin (distinctio originalis) they are distinct on the
basis of their sources, memory and will.86 And working further from Scotus’
trinitarian thought and the psychological model, Henry claims that “in the
first sign of origin, the Father on his own account (a se)” has “spirative power
and the desirable object present to him; therefore on his own account he has
the act of spirating.”87 Finally, Henry responds to two of the usual Dominican
arguments—the “psychological” and the “Father” arguments—in typically
Franciscan fashion. Thus, against the Dominican tradition, Henry argues
that a word is a necessary precondition for love, but it is not a true cause
of that love, but rather a merely sine qua non cause, and he gives several
interesting examples of two essentially ordered effects in which the first
does not cause the second. The Father, then, could generate the Son “first”,
and “thereafter” he alone could also spirate the Holy Spirit.88 To the “Father”
84 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Et per hoc ad illud ultimum argumentum dico quod pro
eo generare et spirare differunt quia unum est in supposito cui incompossibile est generare
active, puta in Filio; verum est autem nunc quod ideo generare est incompossibile Filio,
quia habet oppositionem originis ad generare, tamen posset esse alia incompossibilitas
quam oppositio originis. Probatio: duae proprietates individuales sunt incompossibiles in
aliquo uno supposito. Probatio: quia sunt ultima distinctiva, et ista incompossibilitas non
est ratione oppositionis originis, sed propter formales repugnantes istarum. Ita dico, etsi
spiratum non procederet a genito, dum tamen posset esse alia incompossibilitas inter
genitum et spiratum, sicut potest (et ostensum est), ergo adhuc distinguantur ad invicem.”
Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 118181–190. Harclay makes this argument in explicit response to the
position of Godfrey of Fontaines.
85 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Ad primum argumentum alterius doctoris, concedo quod
distinguuntur per relationes, tamen non per relationes oppositas secundum origines, sed
secundum relationes disparatas, incompossibiles tamen in uno supposito. Cum dicitur illa
relatio non fundatur super quantitatem, volo, sed super actionem et passionem, non quae
sint inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, sed inter utrumque istorum et tertium, scilicet
Patrem. Et tamen istae relationes non possunt convenire uni supposito.” Ed. Friedman 2001,
pp. 120260–121265.
86 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Dico tamen quod in proposito distinctio formalis illarum
productionum est ex se ipsis, sed earum distinctio originalis est ex principiis quo producendi,
quae sunt memoria et voluntas.” Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 121293–295.
87 See the italicized text in n. 93 below.
88 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Ad ultimum, dico quod in nobis verbum praecedit amorem,
argument—that the disparate relations in the Father would cause him to

be two persons—Henry replies that active generation and spiration are not
essentially incompatible, because one source can produce more than one
effect.89 Henry has a favorite illustration of the way that one source can pro-
duce in essentially diverse ways, as the Father produces the Son and the
Holy Spirit: a spider’s production of a web (fovea, tela) by way of “natural
industry” and the same spider’s production of other spiders by way of natu-
ral propagation.90
non tamquam causa effectum, sed sicut effectus effectum. Nam agens aliquod, ita se potest
habere ad duos effectus quod non potest producere unum suum nisi prius producto alio,
et tamen unus effectus non est causa alterius, sed iste ordo effectuum est ex natura causae
in se quae non potest in unum nisi producto alio. Et hoc modo dico quod notitia praecedit
amorem. Unde illud argumentum est valde forte ad oppositum, quia enim notitia non causat
amorem, sed tantum ostendit rem amabilem, qua ostensa, voluntas vel obiectum causat
amorem, ideo productio Verbi in divinis non videtur esse quasi causa spirationis amoris.”
Ed. Friedman 2001, p. 122307–315 (see further p. 122315–334).
89 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Ad secundum, nego assumptum, quia relationes passivae,
puta generari et spirari, magis sunt incompossibiles quam eaedem activae illis correspon-
dentes, quia manifestum est quod idem producens potest producere pluribus production-
ibus secundum numerum, ut unus Pater multos Filios; et tamen idem numero non potest
produci pluribus productionibus secundum numerum. Unde unus Filius non potest generari
pluribus generationibus secundum numerum. Praeterea, idem producens potest producere
pluribus productionibus distincta secundum speciem; patet in exemplo proposito de vulpe
vel aranea. Tamen idem non potest produci pluribus productionibus; et ratio huius est quia,
si produceretur in unica productione, iam alia, non produceretur vel non produceretur a
prima complete, quorum utrumque est falsum.” Friedman 2001, p. 121266–276. For the same
point, see also ibid. (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 121285–287).
90 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “Exemplum ibi ponit Doctor, sed pono aliud. Ecce: brutum
per principium naturale quod producit sibi simile in specie, puta vulpes † vel taxus †
quia forte aranea producit sibi simile per propagationem, et illud animal producit sibi
non simile per industriam naturalem, scilicet foveam. Et uterque effectus est a principio
naturali intrinseco, et tamen neuter effectus est ab alio. Et illi effectus sunt incompossibiles,
quia idem effectus non potest produci ab industria naturali, quae assimilatur arti, et a
natura. Dicis quod hoc esse propter diversitatem substantiae, nam non est eadem substantia
quae est producta ab arte et a natura. Sed illud ut videtur non est nisi fuga, quia verum
est quod nullum agens creatum potest producere aliquid in identitate numerali naturae;
producens autem increatum potest quidem producere idem in identitate naturae, sed non
suppositi. Sed esto, per impossibile, quod eadem substantia esset in tela araneae et in aranea
producta, adhuc essent distincta supposita, sicut in divinis. Probatio: illa productio quae
ex vi productionis est assimilativa producti ad producentem, et illa productio quae ex vi
productionis non est assimilativa, sunt productiones in se formaliter et realiter distinctae,
et per consequens impossibile est quod terminentur ad idem productum, impossibilitate
accepta a formali ratione istarum. Sed productio per artem et per naturam sunt huiusmodi,
etiam si terminarentur ad eandem naturam. Ergo non essent idem suppositum.” Friedman
2001, pp. 118191–119208. Ibid.: “Dico sicut dicitur communiter, nec impugnatur quod sciam quod
non exigitur tanta distinctio in principiis productionis quo quanta est in productionibus et
productis, quia omnis multitudo et procedit et oritur ab unitate. Exemplum huius apparet
524 chapter eight
In one important sense, however, Henry of Harclay’s treatment of this

issue is out of the ordinary. At the end of his discussion, Harclay, in a type
of coda to his question, does concede that there might be a sense in which
the Son and the Holy Spirit would not be distinct if the one did not proceed
from the other:
… it seems to me that the consequence [that the Holy Spirit would not be
distinct from the Son, if the former did not proceed from the latter] can be
proven like this: if the second person does not spirate, he will not be the Son;
but if he is not the Son, then it follows that the Son is not made distinct from
the Holy Spirit … the Son, by the fact that he is the Son, can spirate. But by
the fact that he can spirate, he does spirate, because, in everlasting (perpetuis)
and necessary things, being and being able do not differ. Therefore with that
granted (ex opposito), if he does not spirate, he is not the Son; but if he is not
the Son, then [the Son] is not made distinct from the Holy Spirit.91
Harclay’s argument for this position is based on what he clearly considers

to be two “givens” about God’s trinitarian reality. First, the Son has divine
nature perfectly communicated to him by the Father, and divine nature is
a sufficient source by which active spiration can come about. But, second,
because, as we saw above, generation and spiration are essentially ordered
so that the former must “precede” the latter, the Son has the spirative power
“before” the Holy Spirit is spirated just as does the Father from whom the
Son receives the divine nature.92 From these two facts, Harclay argues that,
since the Son has the power to spirate, then he must spirate, because of
the necessity of the divine nature: there is no potentiality in God, and thus
where there is a power it is actualized. Therefore, concludes Henry, if the
Son were not to spirate the Holy Spirit, the Son would not be the Son,
manifeste in exemplo adducto superius, quia naturalis instinctus vel industria existens in
aestimativa bruti et sua vis generativa naturalis non tantum distinguuntur sicut operatio
eius, quae est generatio sibi similis et constructio telae vel nidi.” Ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 121297–
122303. For the spider, see also n. 89 above.
91 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (text in italics is not translated): “Sed videtur mihi quod
consequentia potest probari sic: si secunda persona non spirat, non erit Filius; sed si non
est Filius, sequitur quod Filius non distinguitur a Spiritu Sancto. Quaelibet consequentia est
formalis in divinis, et antecedens est verum propter consequens. Probatio primae consequentiae:
eo ipso quod est Filius in divinis habet naturam divinam perfecte sibi communicatam. Sed
natura divina est sufficiens vis qua spiratur, si sit in supposito aliquo ordine prius quam actus
ponatur in esse. Ergo Filius ex vi productionis habet naturam qua tamquam principio quo potest
spirare, quia productio Verbi aliquo ordine praecedit actum spirandi. Ergo Filius eo quod Filius
potest spirare. Sed eo ipso quod potest spirare, spirat, quia ‘in perpetuis et necessariis non
differt esse a posse’. Ergo ex opposito, si non spirat, non est Filius; sed si non est Filius, ergo
non distinguitur a Spiritu Sancto.” Ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 122336–123346.
92 See the text marked in italics in n. 91 above.
since an indispensable part of the Son’s personality would not be actualized.

Nevertheless, for Harclay, if the Son did not spirate, the Holy Spirit would
still be the Holy Spirit, for as Harclay has already shown, the Father is
capable of spirating alone.93
There are several noteworthy points about this argument. First, it is
related to the “highest impossibility” argument that, as we saw above in
Chapter Five, was used to show that the very question of the Holy Spirit’s
distinction from the Son, given that the former did not proceed from the
latter, assumes the incompossible. In Harclay’s argument, God’s highest
necessity demands that if the Son can spirate, then he does so; the high-
est necessity of the Son’s spirating entails the highest impossibility of the
Holy Spirit not coming from the Son. In other words, for Harclay, active
spiration is by no means a “quasi-incidental” property to the Son, since
without it the Son would not be the Son, and hence positing the counter-
factual involves incompossibles. Harclay still allows the question, but for
all intents and purposes acknowledges that it is a positio incompossibilis,
involving “essential” (i.e., totally indispensable) trinitarian properties and
not “incidental” ones. Evidence for the link with the “highest impossibil-
ity” argument is strengthened by the fact that an argument with a thrust
similar to this one’s was presented as one of the highest impossibility argu-
ments by Richard of Mediavilla, and further by the fact that along similar
lines Thomas of Sutton had assimilated the Franciscan position on the dis-
tinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit to the highest impossibility
argument.94
Second, and relatedly, because in it active spiration is considered to
be an “essential” property of the Son, Henry’s argument moves the focus
of the counterfactual Filioque question decisively from the Holy Spirit to
the Son, and in this way Harclay is doing something quite extraordinary
in later-medieval trinitarian theology. The Franciscan trinitarian tradition,
93 Harclay, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (the italicized text is discussed at n. 87 above): “Praeterea:
spirare non significat formaliter actum egredientem a duobus suppositis. Probatio: nam spi-
rare non significat formaliter nisi actum suppositi habentis vim spirativam praesente obiecto
diligibili; sed hoc totum habet Pater a se in primo signo originis, scilicet vim spirativam et obiec-
tum diligibile sibi praesens; ergo a se habet actum spirandi. Ergo si per impossibile spiratio
non esset a Filio, posset intelligi esse a Patre; ergo spiratio formaliter non significat actum
egredientem a duobus suppositis. Sed spiratio in quantum spiratio est formaliter productio
distincta a generatione; ergo earum distinctio non est per hoc quod una est a Patre tantum,
et alia ab utroque.” Ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 119224–120232.
94 For Richard of Mediavilla see Ch. 5, above, n. 69. For Thomas of Sutton, see nn. 72–75
above.
526 chapter eight
of course, had all but unanimously described active spiration as a quasi-

incidental property of the Son, and this was the basis of their argument from
the nature of a true constitutive: filiation was the property constitutive of
the Son, and, with all other non-constitutive properties, like active spiration,
set aside, on its own it would still constitute the Son. But also Dominicans
routinely described active spiration in this same way. Thus, as was noted in
Chapter Three above, Aquinas had talked about active spiration as a prop-
erty that, as it were, supervened onto the already constituted supposites of
the Father and the Son (spiratio activa est relatio personae non personalis,
quasi personae iam constitutae superveniens). Moreover, although we saw
in Chapter Five, above, that Godfrey of Fontaines did make some attempt
to argue that active spiration was an “essential” (i.e., indispensable) ele-
ment in the Son’s constitution and not some quasi-incidental property of
the Son, still Godfrey admitted that “active spiration does not belong to
the nature and essence of the person of the Son without qualification” (spi-
rare active non sit de ratione et essentia personae Filii simpliciter), and in any
case the main thrust of Godfrey’s argumentation was to show that, if the
Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone, as the Son does, then the Holy
Spirit would be only rationally distinct from the Son, but the Son would still
be the Son.95 Both in the Franciscan and in the Dominican trinitarian tra-
ditions, then, filiation was looked at as the Son’s constitutive property, i.e.
the property that constituted the Son in being “before” he actively spirated
the Holy Spirit. Thus, the discussion between the Franciscan and Domini-
can traditions when it came to the counterfactual question was ultimately
about whether the Holy Spirit would have his personality if he did not come
from the Son, the Franciscans answering in the affirmative, the Dominicans
in the negative. In the debate on this issue between the two traditions, the
constitution of the Son was to a large extent left to the side. In comparison
to all of this, Harclay has moved the focus unequivocally to the Son, and this
is because for him active spiration is no quasi-incidental factor in the Son’s
constitution. For Henry of Harclay, if the Holy Spirit were not to come from
the Son, what would be different about the Trinity concerns exclusively the
95 For Aquinas and active spiration as a supervening property, see Ch. 3, above, at nn. 10–
11; for a similar line of thought, see Hervaeus Natalis, Ch. 7, above, at and around nn. 39–40.
For Godfrey on this issue see Ch. 5, above, around nn. 29–35, for the quotation from Godfrey,
see Ch. 5, at n. 34, and cf. also the beginning of the Latin text in Ch. 5, n. 30 (“Sed si Spiritus
Sanctus non procederet a Filio, licet Filius nihilominus haberet in se suam proprietatem
personalem per quam habet distinctionem personalem ab omni alia persona, tamen non
distingueretur personaliter nisi a Patre nec referretur etiam nisi ad Patrem”).
Son: the Son would not be the Son, because active spiration is a property
absolutely indispensable to the Son’s constitution; nevertheless, in line with
the Franciscan tradition, Harclay insists that the Holy Spirit would still be
the Holy Spirit if he proceeded from the Father alone. In this way, Harclay’s
position is a hybrid position, agreeing with the Dominicans that the Son and
Holy Spirit would not be distinct given the counterfactual, but agreeing with
the Franciscans that the Holy Spirit would still exist as the Holy Spirit.
A third reason that Henry’s view is of more than passing interest to us
here is that, when Peter Auriol takes up the question of the Son’s distinction
from the Holy Spirit, he adopts just this position.
chapter nine
PETER AURIOL
As we have seen, in the period immediately after John Duns Scotus taught
at Oxford and Paris, there were few, if any, theologians who went uninflu-
enced by his highly coherent rethinking of Franciscan trinitarian theology.
Whether they reacted by accepting or modifying certain of Scotus’ ideas,
but holding in the main to the system he had developed, as did the majority
of Franciscans from the period, or by vigorously rejecting elements of Sco-
tus’ trinitarian synthesis, as did the Dominicans as a group, Scotus elicited
reaction and his ideas were quickly and in a variety of ways taken up in
the trinitarian debate. Peter Auriol represents a new phase in this assimila-
tion of Scotus’ trinitarian ideas. Given what we know today, Auriol appears
to be the first in a string of thinkers—William Ockham, Walter Chatton,
and Adam Wodeham, Francis of Marchia, William of Rubio, and Gregory
of Rimini—who reject central elements of Scotus’ system and in the pro-
cess open up new horizons in the trinitarian debate. Trinitarian theology,
and particularly Franciscan trinitarian theology, was beginning a period of
considerable development.
On the basis of his later career it seems reasonable to suppose that Peter
Auriol was born around 1280, and we have evidence that he originated near
the city of Cahors in France.1 We know that Auriol joined the Franciscans
in the order’s province of Aquitania, probably sometime before 1300. From
1 For recent introductions to Auriol’s life, works, and thought, including bibliography,
see Friedman 2009b; Nielsen 2003. An extensive Auriol bibliography (including progress on
the project to critically edit Auriol’s works), along with preliminary editions of texts are
available on (Friedman and Wöller, administrators) The Peter Auriol Homepage (http://www
.peterauriol.net). NB: most of the texts from Auriol’s Scriptum in I Sent. used below have been
edited from Vat. Borgh. 329 (the copy of the Scriptum presented by Auriol to Pope John XXII)
and put on the web at the “Electronic Scriptum”, a part of the Auriol Homepage. Where
the text found below overlaps with the text that Eligius Buytaert edited (esp. d. 2, q. 3, and
d. 5), I have not referred directly to the Electronic Scriptum, although any deviations from
Buytaert’s text are based on a fresh collation with the Borghese manuscript and recorded in
the text found on the Electronic Scriptum. All text that is to date only available in published
form in the early printed edition of 1596 (esp. dd. 9, 10, 11, 13, 26, 27, 28), is referred to by line
numbers in the edition found at the Electronic Scriptum (text versions one).
530 chapter nine
the structure of the day’s Franciscan educational system we can deduce

that he studied in Paris sometime in the first decade of the fourteenth
century, but while it is not impossible that Auriol was in Paris in 1304 or
that he heard Scotus lecture there, nevertheless evidence that some scholars
have presented that this is the case is inconclusive. Auriol taught at the
Franciscan convents in first Bologna and then Toulouse between about 1311
and 1316. In one or both of these cities, he must have also been lecturing on
Peter Lombard’s Sentences, and his massive commentary on the first book
of the Sentences, his Scriptum super primum Sententiarum—more than 1100
folio pages in its early modern printing (Rome, 1596)—was almost certainly
substantially complete by the autumn of 1316 when Auriol arrived in Paris,
sent by the Franciscan order to earn his doctorate. The Scriptum is the
major source that will be used here in examining Auriol’s trinitarian views.
Auriol read the Sentences at Paris in the academic years 1316–1318. In a
letter dated July 14, 1318 no less a figure than Pope John XXII, a supporter
of Auriol, recommended to the Chancellor of Paris that Auriol be granted
the doctorate. The letter appears to have had the desired effect, and by late
1318 Auriol was the Franciscan regent master in theology in Paris, serving
until 1320 or 1321 (during which time he lectured on the Bible and he held
at least one quodlibetal disputations, which in the written form in which it
has come down to us contains both psychological and trinitarian material).2
From this later Parisian period we have reportationes of lectures that Auriol
held on all four books of the Sentences, some of which have obviously
been reworked to one degree or another by Auriol himself and some of
which are still found only in manuscript. One of these unedited works,
Auriol’s Reportatio in Primum Sententiarum, is a further important source
for his trinitarian (and psychological) views.3 In 1321, Auriol was elevated by
John XXII to the position of Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence, but Auriol died
soon after taking office, probably on January 22, 1322.
2 For the letter from John XXII, see CUP, vol. 2, p. 225, no. 772. A letter dated November 13,
1318 attests to Auriol’s being a regent master at Paris (CUP, vol. 2, 227–228, no. 776).
3 On Auriol’s Sent. commentaries, see most completely Nielsen 2002; on Auriol’s Quodl.,
see Nielsen 2007b and 2011. Lauge O. Nielsen (2002, 190 n. 104) notes that “Auriol’s views
on the nature of the Trinity and his attempts at reconciliating the unitary essence with the
ternary of persons is far from fully developed in the LC1 [= the Scriptum]. Accordingly, the
work was not the source on which contemporary opponents generally based their attacks
on Auriol. Instead they referred to what Auriol incorporated into the SC1 [= Reportatio in
Primum] and the pertinent questions in Auriol’s Quodlibet.” While Auriol does develop his
trinitarian views to one extent or another after he wrote the Scriptum (see also n. 19 below),
nevertheless historically speaking the Scriptum is by far the most important work in terms of
peter auriol 531
Two things must have struck Auriol as he came to grips with contempo-
rary trinitarian theology in the years before he finished his Scriptum. First,
the great divide that had formed between the Franciscan trinitarian tradi-
tion and the Dominican must have loomed large in his mind. And being
a Franciscan and accepting the Franciscan trinitarian emphases, his ideas
on the Trinity heavily stress action and emanation as distinctive of the per-
sons, while rejecting relation as such. But, second, Auriol seems to have
recognized that medieval trinitarian theology and particularly Franciscan
trinitarian theology had become complicated by many levels of distinctions.
Consider what theologians in the Franciscan tradition generally posited:
nested distinctions of emanations and relations; the distinction between
divine intellect and will, and the distinction between both intellect and will
as common (i.e., essential) attributes and as notional powers; and finally
Scotus’ distinction between various instants of nature in the production of
the persons, necessitated by the obligatory order between agent and act.
Against this complex of distinctions, the Dominican insistence on oppo-
sition of relations being the sole source of personal distinction must have
appeared attractively simple to Auriol, if nonetheless in error. And even the
Dominican tradition shared with the Franciscan a rather strong distinction
of the constitutive properties making the persons distinct from each other
as against the divine essence guaranteeing their identity.
This last distinction in particular appears to have motivated Auriol’s revi-
sion of the trinitarian problem of the persons in an attempt to make it
simpler and less cumbersome. Although Auriol cannot rid himself of all of
the distinctions that we have seen in other examples of Franciscan trini-
tarian theology, nonetheless his own trinitarian thought can be seen as an
attempt to streamline that tradition. Certain aspects of this streamlining
seem clearly to have been inspired—as we have seen also to have been
the case with some of Scotus’ developments—by criticisms made by the
Dominican tradition. Thus, Auriol will at times present his ideas on the
persons and the emanations in ways that suggest that he has taken into
account the Dominican critique of Scotus that we examined above in Chap-
ter Seven.
the impact it had. It appears that for all intents and purposes only Auriol’s most immediate
contemporaries—i.e. those, like Hervaeus Natalis, with whom he was actively engaged in
debating trinitarian issues, or those, like Landulph Caracciolo or Francis of Marchia, who
read the Sent. just after Auriol at Paris—had access to the Reportatio in Primum. Thus, given
the scope of the present work, I have chosen to concentrate on Auriol’s trinitarian theology
as presented in the Scriptum.
532 chapter nine
On a very basic level, Auriol’s far-ranging critique of the trinitarian the-

ology available to him can be boiled down to several tightly interwoven
principles or devices, including a strong use of the Augustinian psychologi-
cal model of the Trinity. That is to say, the components that make up Auriol’s
thought on the Trinity are few in number, but he uses them over and over
again to resolve many of the trinitarian problems that we have seen later-
medieval theologians wrestle with. More generally, at a very early stage of
his career, certainly several years before he completed his Scriptum, Auriol
must have decided on a small number of core ideas from which the rest
of his philosophy and theology radiates like spokes in a wheel. This makes
it in practice very difficult to present Auriol’s contribution to the trinitar-
ian debate: where should one start? But we can somewhat arbitrarily begin
with the de facto central problem in medieval trinitarian theology: the dis-
tinction of the persons.
1. Indistinction of Essence and Property, perseitas

tertii modi, and Unelicited Emanations
The central “error” that Peter Auriol thought had been made in the later-
medieval trinitarian thought available to him concerned the relationship
between the divine essence, the properties, and the persons. Surveying
medieval trinitarian theology on this issue, Auriol discerned that various
distinctions had been thought up in order to account for how property and
essence could relate to one another so that property was at once identical to
the essence and distinct from it. Into this category Auriol put the dual nature
of the divine relations as it was found in Aquinas, as well as Scotus’ formal
distinction.4 For Auriol, these kinds of distinctions were symptomatic of one
most fundamental problem: theologians prior to him, when dealing with
the Trinity, had postulated a divine essence having some sort of “unity”
4 For Auriol’s central discussion of trinitarian theology, see Scriptum, d. 2 (= sect. 11; ed.
Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 571–607; the entire text is also found on the Electronic Scriptum of The
Peter Auriol Homepage [see n. 1 above]). For Auriol’s description of the trinitarian thought
he was confronted with, including that of Aquinas and Scotus, see ibid. (ed. Buytaert, vol. 2,
pp. 587–596). Hester Gelber (1974, 130–142) presents an excellent analysis of this text. For a
still broader picture, and one that delves into the relationship between Auriol’s trinitarian
theology and his philosophical psychology, see Vignaux 1935–1936; as well as Schmaus 1930a,
esp. 152–154 (psychological model), 372–374 (distinction of Son from Holy Spirit), 548–549
(constitution of persons), 605–606 (innascibility). On the trinitarian image in the human
soul: Suarez-Nani 1986, and, with a focus on the voluntary emanation, Davenport 2006.
peter auriol 533
of its own as well as, distinct from the essence, properties having some
sort of “unity” of their own. Auriol rejects this, claiming instead that the
essence has no unity of its own, it is utterly indistinct, existing only in three
supposites. Likewise each of the properties is utterly indistinct from the
essence. Indeed, we cannot even think one of the properties without also
thinking the essence in some way: between essence and property there is
utter indistinction. It is only the three supposites resulting from essence
and properties that are distinct from each other and have some singular
unity. The type of unity that they have is called by Auriol perseitas tertii
modi.5
There was, of course, precedent for Auriol’s critique of the trinitarian
theology available to him: the dual nature of the divine relations had been
contested before by, for one, Henry of Ghent; Scotus’ formal distinction was
much discussed.6 Moreover, the problem that Auriol points out in the trini-
tarian theology that he critiqued is relatively clear: it is the persons and
only the persons who are distinct in God; the essence is possessed equally
by each of them, and is not some fourth thing with a unity all of its own;
nor can any of the properties have a unity of its own. This was already a
highly controverted issue between Joachim of Fiore and Peter Lombard—
Joachim apparently accusing Lombard of making the essence into a fourth
thing in the divine, i.e. quaternity instead of Trinity—, and Lateran IV in
1215 had confirmed the importance of the matter in pointedly taken Lom-
bard’s side.7 Thus, both historically and theologically the motivation for
Auriol’s criticism is not difficult to come to terms with. But his explana-
tion of the trinitarian mystery, and his way of getting around the problems
that he pointed out, are original and influential, and require some explana-
tion.
5 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 90: “… revocari oportet ad memoriam quod
supra dictum est, essentiam divinam non habere propriam unitatem nec proprietates habere
proprias unitates, sed singula earum cum essentia fundare penitus eandem unitatem et
indistinctionem, non solum secundum rem sed etiam secundum omnimodam rationem,
ut sic sint tres unitates in divinis, et per consequens tres per se primo distincti ad invicem
et discreti; qui quidem secundum quandam communem rem indistinctam a quolibet sint
individui, secundum vero proprias unitates et personalitates ac perseitates (quod idem est)
sint discreti …” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 59712–21. For the term perseitas tertii modi in Auriol, see,
e.g., below, at nn. 23, 25, 26, 30, 83, 84.
6 For Henry of Ghent, see Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 13–19. For later-medieval
discussion of Scotus’ formal distinction, see, e.g., Noone 1993; Nielsen, Noone, and Trifogli
2003; Dumont 2005; Noone 2009; as well as Ch. 7, above (esp. §3 on the Liber propugnatorius).
7 See on this, the Introduction, above, at and around nn. 20–21.
534 chapter nine
Auriol postulates that property and essence are joined together in utter
indistinction, neither have a unity of their own; a unity—the distinct per-
son—results from their inextricable “blending”. By “indistinction”, Auriol
envisions a unity that admits of no type of multitude at all: neither of
the two indistinct things is in potency to the other, they are absolutely
unified and simple, and they could not be more bound together.8 In other
words, for Auriol, between essence and property there is full identity.9 To
illustrate what full identity means, Auriol contrasts the identity of essence
and property with that of subject and predicate in per se primo modo and
per se secundo modo propositions, because “every per se predication is by
reason of some identity of predicate with subject.”10
For Auriol, per se predication primo modo is the identity of the very same
thing grasped by different concepts. Thus, in the proposition ‘Socrates is a
human being’, according to Auriol, the subject and predicate are the same
thing, they both are Socrates, because Socrates is a rational animal. Thus,
Socrates, grasped by two different concepts, is repeated about himself. The
same is true for any per se primo modo predication, e.g. ‘human being is an
animal’, because every human being is an animal. Revealing his conceptu-
alist view of universals, Auriol does point out that in predications of this
sort neither human being nor animal nor any other second substance has
extramental existence, while Socrates and all other singulars do. For this
reason, Auriol claims that in all per se primo modo predication at least one
of the extremes depends on the mind’s operation and exists only in the
intellect. Furthermore, as we will see, because Auriol believes that the con-
cept of Socrates literally is Socrates, just in another mode of being (modus
8 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 96: “Tertius autem gradus est actualissimae
indistinctionis, sic quod neutrum indistinctorum est in potentia ad reliquum. Et iste gradus
est summus, cum ibi sit purissima unitas absque admixtione multitudinis cuiuscumque,
actualis quidem et potentialis, cum ibi non sint multa in actu sicut in acervo, nec in potentia
sicut in composito ex materia et forma. Cum ergo ibi sit summa unitas ibi erit simplicitas, et
per consequens compositio nulla .... Illa vero unitas quae est inter essentiam et proprietatem,
et secundum rem et secundum rationem, tanta est ut nulla multitudo ibi valeat admisceri, et
per consequens est summa unitas, qua simplicitas non est maior quia summo non est maius.”
Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 601194–602217.
9 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 91: “… de identitate omnimoda hproprietatumi cum
essentia satis patet. Ubi enim nulla est distinctio, nec rei nec rationis, ibi plena identitas. Talis
autem est hic …” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 59726–28.
10 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 91: “Est autem considerandum, cum perseitas
reducatur ad identitatem—omnis namque praedicatio per se est ratione alicuius identitatis

praedicati cum subiecto—quod secundum modos praedicandi per se oportet distingui
modos identitatis.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 59729–31. On Aristotle’s four modes of per se
predication, see Post.An. 1, 4 (73a34–b16).
peter auriol 535
essendi)—intentional as opposed to real—, when he says that Socrates

is repeated, Auriol means it literally: both concept ‘Socrates’ and concept
‘human being’ are Socrates in intentional being or esse apparens.11
Thus, in per se primo modo predication there is a type of symmetry with
respect to the identity of the extremes: they are the same thing grasped
by different concepts, one thing repeated about itself. In per se secundo
modo predication, on the other hand, there is an asymmetry between the
extremes. Take the example of a triangle: we cannot think ‘shape having
three equal sides’ without thinking ‘triangle’, but we can certainly think
‘triangle’ without its numerous properties: many persons can and do think
‘triangle’ without thinking ‘angles equal to two right angles’. Thus, in this
type of predication there is asymmetry: “indistinction” with respect to one
of the extremes, e.g. a triangle’s property cannot be or be thought without
the triangle, but distinction both conceptual and real on the part of the other
extreme.12
Returning to trinitarian theology. With respect to their conceptual indis-
tinction from each other, Auriol claims that property and essence have
greater identity than the identity found in either of the types of per se pred-
ication that he has described. Essence and property do not have different
concepts according to Auriol: there is utter indistinction between essence
and property conceptually speaking.13 Thus, we cannot conceive the essence
11 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 91: “In primo ergo modo dicendi est identitas
rei eiusdem repetitae sub alietate conceptus, ut cum dicitur: ‘Sortes est homo’. Sortes enim
non est aliud secundum rem quam animalitas et rationalitas, quae sunt quiditas eius ....
Et in talibus quae sic idem sunt necesse est alterum extremorum vel utrumque immiscere
operationem intellectus, et non esse penitus extra in natura; alterum quidem quia, licet
Sortes sit extra, homo tamen qui praedicatur de eo non est extra; utrumque autem ut cum
dicitur: ‘homo est animal’, nec enim homo qui praedicationem suscipit, nec animal quod
praedicatur sunt extra. Nam de substantia, sola prima est extra intellectum, secunda vero in
solo intellectu secundum Philosophum, quamvis alia fuerit opinio Platonis.” Ed. Buytaert,
vol. 2, p. 59732–45. For more on Auriol’s ideas on concepts and predication see §4 of the
present chapter, and especially Friedman 1999a.
12 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 91: “In secundo autem modo dicendi per se est
identitas, non eiusdem rei repetitae, sed cuiusdam indistinctionis, secundum rem quidem
et intellectum ex parte alterius extremi, puta proprietatis, impossibile est enim esse vel
intelligi primitatem simpliciter absque trinario, et habere tres aequales absque triangulo; ex
parte vero alterius extremi est distinctio, et secundum rem et secundum intellectum; nam
realitas ternarii praecise concipi potest absque primitate, et trianguli absque aequalitate et
aequipollentia duorum rectorum.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 59745–59852.
13 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 91: “Ad propositum ergo dicendum quod proprietas
et essentia in divinis habent maiorem identitatem quantum ad indistinctionem secundum

intellectum primi modi et secundi. Nam non est alius conceptus essentiae a proprietate, nec
536 chapter nine
without conceiving one of the properties, nor can we conceive one of the
properties without conceiving the essence. If I conceive, for example, pater-
nity, I “automatically” conceive the essence, because these two realities
are so inextricably blended together that they are impossible to be sepa-
rated into distinct concepts. I may focus my attention more fully or more
directly on paternity, and then I grasp the essence through “co-inclusion” or
“obliquely”, but this stress, according to Auriol, is due to my way of conceiv-
ing, my modus concipiendi, a purely psychological phenomenon; and in any
event the essence will still be included in what I conceive. Mutatis mutandis,
the same goes if I were to attempt to conceive the essence without pater-
nity.14 As a consequence of this theory, Auriol claims that these propositions
are equivalent: ‘essence is essence’ and ‘essence is paternity’. In the proposi-
tion ‘essence is essence’, paternity is included obliquely and co-inclusively,
while it is included directly in ‘essence is paternity’; in any case, the indis-
tinction between essence and paternity is the same, and all that changes is
my way of conceiving. Looking at it in another way, although the amount of
indistinction remains the same, on a purely conceptual plane, the essence
is indistinct in itself in a different way than the essence is indistinct from
paternity: in ‘essence is essence’ the same extreme is directly repeated (and
paternity is included obliquely), in ‘essence is paternity’ the extremes are
not repeated but are “co-included obliquely”. No matter what, the difference
between these two propositions is due solely to my way of conceiving.15 As
e converso, sicut in primo modo alius est conceptus hominis a conceptu Sortis, et sicut in
secundo alius est conceptus subiecti a conceptu suae proprietatis (quamvis non e converso).”
Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 59853–59.
14 Scriptum, d. 1, q. 1 (= sect. 6), a. 2, nn. 67–68: “Ex quo igitur concipiens paternitatem non
addit solam rationem ad conceptum essentiae nec solam formalitatem, nec addit realitatem,
necesse est dicere quod nihil addat. Ergo concipiendo essentiam, concipiebatur paternitas,
et per consequens non potest essentia praecise concipi nec habet propriam unitatem. Nec
obviat si dicatur quod ratio videtur contradictoria implicare, dicendo quod sint duo actus,
et tamen quod intellectus nihil capiat per unum, quin capiat per alterum obiective. Hoc
quidem non obviat, quia possunt esse duo actus cadentes penitus circa idem, sed aliter et
aliter. Capit enim primo intellectus essentiam directe, et per co-inclusionem paternitatem,
pro eo quod non sunt distinguibilia, sed trahuntur ad unam unitatem; capit vero secundo
paternitatem directe et essentiam co-inclusive propter eandem causam.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 1,
pp. 35524–35637 (= ms. BAV Borgh. 329, f. 55ra). This passage is taken from Auriol’s discussion
of the blesseds’ vision of God, which is essentially a refutation of Scotus’ formal distinction
between essence and properties; four different proofs for Auriol’s own trinitarian theory are
given here (ed. Buytaert, vol. 1, pp. 346–358). On Auriol’s understanding of modi concipiendi
and differences according to ways of conceiving, see Friedman 1997a.
15 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 97: “Porro hoc advertendum est quod, cum
dicitur essentiam eandem esse paternitati, dicitur essentiam esse eandem sibi ipsi. Ipsum
peter auriol 537
we will see, what I in fact conceive in either case is what results from the
inextricable blending of essence and paternity, because that has a proper
unity of its own: the Father.
Although Auriol claims that a property and the essence are utterly indis-
tinct from and identical to one another, nevertheless he wants to preserve
the reality of both essence and property: neither of these are mental fabri-
cations, they truly exist in God. Thus, Auriol admits that essence and prop-
erty are indistinct realities: each separately has no unity of its own, they are
realities inextricably blended together. Thus, the essence is an indistinct
reality and each of the properties is an indistinct reality; in God, there are
three distinct realities, and these are the persons resulting from the inextri-
cable blending of essence with each of the properties. Thus, according to
Auriol, the real identity between the essence and any one of the properties
is less than that between the extremes of a per se primo modo proposition,
where one of the extremes always has existence only in the intellect.16 This
is only to say that essence and properties each have extramental reality of
their own. Yet the identity between essence and one of the properties is
more than that between the extremes of a per se secundo modo proposition,
where one of the terms, e.g. the subject, has real quidditative distinction
from its property, in such a way that the subject can be thought without
the property (but not vice-versa).17 The divine essence and each property,
enim et se, cum demonstrent rem essentiae, per necessitatem includunt illud quod est
indistinctum a re essentiae. Ergo implicant et demonstrant paternitatem, cum sit penitus
indistincta a re essentiae. Contingit autem aliquid implicari et demonstrari dupliciter; uno
modo per co-inclusionem et indistinctionem et quasi in obliquo, et sic implicatur paternitas
cum dicitur ‘essentia est eadem sibi ipsi’; alio modo in recto, ut cum dicitur ‘essentia est
eadem hpaternitatii [essentiae]’. Sic igitur alius est modus quo essentia est indistincta in
se, quia in hac distinctione extrema replicantur in recto; et alius modus quo est indistincta
a paternitate, quia extrema distinctionis non repetuntur in recto sed co-includuntur in
obliquo. Nihilominus indistinctio est aequalis, cum neutra relinquat minimum punctum
distinctionis, rectum namque et obliquum non intendunt nec minuunt indistinctionem, sed
ipsam alterant et ponunt diversum modum.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 603249–264. (For reasons
of sense, I have chosen ‘paternitati’ instead of ‘essentiae’, and this despite the fact that the
latter reading is found in both BAV, Borgh. 329, f. 94vb, and Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2243, f. 61ra).
16 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 91: “Quantum autem ad identitatem realem, maior
est in primo modo identitas extremorum recto aspectu quam proprietatis et essentiae in
divinis. Ibi enim eadem res repetitur aspectu recto, et per consequens alterum extremum
non est in rerum natura, sed ab opere intellectus. In divinis autem proprietas et essentia
quaelibet est res et in natura rerum posita, absque opere intellectus; et ideo paternitas non
repetit rem deitatis nec e converso sub aspectu directo intellectus, quamvis co-inclusive et
in obliquo.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 59859–66.
17 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 91: “In secundo autem modo minor est identitas
realis, immo summe minor quam sit proprietatis et essentiae divinae, pro eo quod subiectum
538 chapter nine
in contrast, are so inextricably blended together that we cannot conceive

them separately—they are perfectly indistinct from one another—and yet
we know that they must each have some reality in God, because each of the
three properties together with the essence founds a person that really differs
from the other two persons. There would be no basis for this real distinction
if the properties were not as real as the essence, and Auriol explicitly rejects
Praepositinus’ theory that the persons are distinct in and of themselves (se
ipsis).18
Auriol’s theory of indistinction between property and essence was one of
the portions of his trinitarian theory that was most controversial among his
contemporaries, who worried about, among other things, just what type of
unity indistinct realities have with each other and how they have it.19 Here I
am going to set aside the questions raised by the postulation of realities, true
things, that yet have no distinction or unity of their own, instead concentrat-
ing on what Auriol thinks he can explain with the theory he has advanced.
Because of the reality of the three properties and of the essence, and because
of the mutual indistinction of each of the properties and the essence, Auriol
believes that he can explain how the persons are distinct from each other.
Take the example of a surface: this surface is indistinct in every way (re et
ratione) from both its softness (levitas) and its triangularity, because surface
must be understood when either triangularity or softness are understood;
and yet softness and triangularity are distinct from each other. Again, con-
vexity and concavity are utterly indistinct from the convex or concave line
habet alietatem realem quiditativam et distinctam a sua proprietate, et idcirco proprietas

est realitas secundum quid et decidens in aliud praedicatum a suo subiecto. In divinis
autem realitas essentiae non est distincta a proprietate, cum fundent penitus eandem
unitatem. Unde nec essentia habet rationem subiecti nec proprietas rationem accidentis, nec
comparantur ad invicem sicut relatio et suum fundamentum, nec sicut modus et substratum,
quia in omnibus talibus substratum habet praecisam realitatem in se et propriam unitatem.
Concurrunt ergo quasi ex aequo ad fundandam penitus eandem unitatem et constituendam
unitissimam et summe identicam realitatem, quae quidem realitas est persona subsistens.”
18 For Auriol’s rejection of Praepositinus see Scriptum, d. 26, a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 383–425; ed. 1596, pp. 579bB–580aC); cf. also Scriptum, d. 33, a. 3 (ed. 1596, p. 735aA–B). For
more on Praepositinus and his trinitarian view, see Ch. 11, below, in the Excursus.
19 Such contemporaries as Hervaeus Natalis and Thomas Wylton; as a consequence of
the criticisms of these two authors, Auriol refined his ideas on unity and indistinction in
the later Quodl. and Reportatio in Primum, and the development in Auriol’s presentation of
his views was the main evidence used by Lauge O. Nielsen (2002, 190–202; see also Nielsen
2007a, 2007b, 2011) to elegantly determine the most probable order of composition of some
of Auriol’s later works. See also Ch. 12, below, at n. 30 for Landulph Caracciolo, and nn. 44–45
for John Baconthorpe, both of whom also criticized Auriol on this point.
peter auriol 539
respectively, and yet they are distinct from each other.20 Similarly, according
to Auriol, each of the divine properties founds with the divine essence a
unity of utter indistinction, and this unity is distinct from and mutually
opposed to the unities founded by each of the other two properties and the
essence.21 The medieval logicians’ “law of transitivity”, ‘quaecumque uni et
eidem sunt eadem’, does not apply here, because essence, paternity, filiation,
and passive spiration are different things, i.e. they exist in reality, and this
logical principle only applies in per se primo modo predication, according
to Auriol, where there is merely conceptual difference, the same thing
repeated by different concepts.22
Taking stock, then: for Auriol, the essence is an indistinct reality, and each
of the three properties are also indistinct realities. Each one of the properties
and the essence are so inextricably blended together—their identity is so
great despite the fact that they are each realities—that we cannot even
conceive them apart from each other. But what is founded by any one of
the properties and the essence together is a distinct thing: a divine person.
In fact, Auriol encapsulates this in his definition of ‘person’:
Person is a supposite, not in just any nature, but exclusively in an intellectual
nature, just as pug-nosed is concave exclusively in a nose. And so to inves-
tigate the nature (ratio) of personality is to inquire about the formal nature
(ratio) of a supposite, which indeed is nothing other than perseity (perseitas)
of the third kind. For that kind of perseity is existing solitarily, discretely, and
distinctly.23
20 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 92: “Et est exemplum ad hoc de levitate et trian-
gularitate respectu superficiei levis et triangularis. Constat enim quod utrumque est indis-
tinctum re et ratione a superficie, nam impossibile est realitatem triangularitatis intelligi
praecise absque superficie, et similiter levitatis, et tamen levitatis realitatem possibile est
intelligi et praescindi a triangularitate, ut patet. Est etiam hic exemplum de convexo et con-
cavo in linea circulari. Impossibile est enim convexitatem distingui et praescindi a linea,
et similiter concavitatem, fundant enim eandem unitatem et indistinctionem cum linea, et
tamen inter se sunt opposita et distincta.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 59990–100.
21 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 92: “A simili ergo et multo fortius, proprietates
divinae fundabunt singulae cum divina essentia singulas unitates, et erunt cum ea penitus
indistinctae et e converso. Nihilominus inter se non fundabunt easdem unitates, immo
remanebunt co-oppositae et distinctae.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 599100–104.
22 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 4, n. 92: “Illud namque principium: ‘quaecumque uni
et eidem sunt eadem’ non tenet nisi in his quae habent identitatem realem in primo modo
dicendi per se, quae est identitas per repetitionem eiusdem rei. In secundo autem modo non
tenet vel in his quae habent identitatem indistinctionis.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 59881–86. See
also loc. cit., p. 599104–114. On Auriol’s logical tactics, see Gelber 1974, esp. 136–142.
23 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 2, n. 33: “Persona namque est suppositum, non in
quacumque natura, sed in intellectuali tantum, sicut simum non est concavum nisi in naso
540 chapter nine
Auriol sets off this third way of existing per se from a number of other
types of existence. Perseitas tertii modi does not apply to accidents, because
accidents exist in a subject. Further, it does not apply to things that are
integral parts of other things, e.g. feet and hands, which are parts of a larger
whole. It does not apply to essential parts of a composite, like matter and
form, nor to universals and second substances, which do not exist in their
own right.24 Thus, this perseitas tertii modi characterizes something that
stands on its own, and is in no way a part of some more encompassing entity:
it is discrete and distinct from all others. What this type of per se existence
applies to then, claims Auriol explicitly, is first substance. In a passage
in which Auriol remarks that perseitas tertii modi was called the “mode
of solitude” by Robert Grosseteste, Auriol endorses Scotus’ own favorite
description of the divine persons as first substance. It seems likely, then,
that, like Scotus, Auriol was influenced by Grosseteste’s now lost work De
personis divinis.25
When this third type of being per se is found in an intellectual nature,
there is a person. Thus, for Auriol, there are three separate persons founded
in God’s intellectual nature, because out of the essence and any one of the
tantum. Et idcirco, rationem personalitatis investigare est rationem suppositi formalem

inquirere, quae quidem nihil aliud est quam perseitas tertii modi. Est namque illa perseitas
‘esse solitarie, discrete, et distincte’.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 5805–10. See also n. 25 below.
24 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 2, n. 33: “… idcirco non competit accidentibus quae
discrete non sunt et solitarie, sed in subiecto; nec competit partibus integralibus, pedi
videlicet et manui, quae distincte non sunt sed in toto; nec competit partibus essentialibus,
ut materiae et formae, non sunt enim per se sed in composito; nec competit universalibus et
secundis substantiis, quae dicuntur de primis et solitarie non existunt.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2,
p. 58010–16.
25 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 2, n. 34: “Ex hoc itaque posset colligi aliqualis
notificatio personae, ut dicatur quod vera persona nihil aliud est quam quod est per se primo
unum, positum solitarie, distincte, et discrete, dum tamen sit intellectualis naturae. Hoc
nimirum quod additur “intellectualis naturae” contrahit suppositum ad personam. Quod
vero dicitur “primo unum, positum solitarie, distincte, et discrete” tollit rationem suppositi
ab accidentibus et quibuscumque partibus et universalibus, et relinquit eam solis primis
substantiis. Quod vero praemittitur “quod est per se tertio modo” in generali concludit id
quod explicatur in speciali per “positum solitarie et distincte”. Nam tertius modus per se est
modus solitudinis secundum Lincolniensem.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 58021–58131. See also
ibid., n. 38 (p. 58291–97) for reference to first substance. Auriol does not refer here to any
specific work of Grosseteste, and Buytaert says (ed. cit., p. 584, apparatus fontium) that he
cannot find the passage, although he gives a reference to Grosseteste’s In libros Posteriorum,
cap. 2 (ed. 1494, f. 3ra; ed. Rossi, pp. 99–104). I think it just as likely that Auriol is using De
personis divinis, which was apparently quite popular at the end of the thirteenth and in the
fourteenth century, and where Grosseteste’s arguments about first substance are found, as
was noted above, in Ch. 6, at and around nn. 17–19.
peter auriol 541
properties—each of which are indistinct realities, without any unity of their

own—there arises (consurgit) or results (resultat) a distinct singular having
a proper unity of its own: the divine person with perseitas tertii modi.26
Auriol’s terminology here is important: he claims that each of the per-
sons results from essence and property. This and his related idea that there
are no elicited emanations in God are the final pieces necessary to under-
stand Auriol’s theory of the constitution of the divine persons and set it
in its historical context. Both of these ideas stem from Auriol’s denial of a
formal component to the persons: the persons are not formed, rather they
result from essence and relation (i.e., property). When, in d. 26 of his Scrip-
tum, Auriol discusses various ways that other medieval theologians had
explained the constitution of the persons, he lumps all previous explana-
tions together and sets his own off from them, by means of the following
analogy: “a white thing is constituted by whiteness in one way, a house is
constituted by roof, wall, and foundation in another.”27 For Auriol, these are
examples of two fundamentally different ways for something to be consti-
tuted. In the first case, something is constituted formally: whiteness is the
formal constitutive of a white thing, which conversely is the formal effect
of the whiteness being received in some passive material object. Whiteness,
then, is that in virtue of which the white thing, in this respect, has the state
it does; this is just what it means for something to be a formal cause. In con-
trast, a house is not a formal effect of its parts: in Auriol’s view, there is no
“information” involved in the constitution of a house out of its component
parts, the house merely arises or results when all the parts are present. As far
as Auriol is concerned, all of the theories that he had examined—including
Aquinas’ and Scotus’—had made either relation (i.e., property) or essence a
26 Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3 (= sect. 11), a. 2, n. 41: “Sed in divinis ex paternitate et essentia, quarum
neutra est res habens propriam unitatem, constituitur et resultat una distincta unitas, et
per consequens consurgit quidam aliquis modus unus, discretus, singularis, solus, per se
positus perseitate tertii modi. Et consimiliter ex essentia et filiatione consurgit unus alius.
Et eodem modo ex essentia et passiva spiratione consurgit alius. Probatum est enim supra
quod nec essentia nec proprietas habent propriam unitatem, sed quaelibet cum essentia
fundant singulas unitates. Ergo necesse est dicere quod personalitas vere triplicetur in Deo.”
27 Scriptum, d. 26, a. 3: “… suppositi constitutio non est per modum effectus formalis, sed
per modum cuiusdam resultantis. Est enim considerandum quod aliter album constituitur
per albedinem, et aliter domus per tectum, parietem, et fundamentum; sic enim albedo
album constituit quod esse album est effectus formalis ipsius; fundamentum autem, tectum,
et paries, non sic domum constituunt quod domus sit formalis effectus parietis, fundamenti,
et tecti, immo forma domus resultat ex illis et respicit ea ut fundamenta ex quibus consurgit.”
Electronic Scriptum, ll. 894–899; ed. 1596, p. 587aA.
542 chapter nine
formal constitutive while the other member of the dichotomy was in some
way “receptive” of the form, the person being a formal effect of the two, like
a white thing is a formal effect of whiteness.28
According to Auriol this is untenable, and his reasoning follows much
the same line as did Scotus’ when the latter attacked Henry of Ghent’s con-
tention that the essence was quasi-material and relation quasi-formal in the
constitution of the divine persons. Scotus had claimed that any suggestion
of matter or quasi-matter was to be avoided in God because of the poten-
tiality attendant on matter; he then went on to suggest that the essence was
the formal, quidditative act, while relation was the individuating act of the
persons, which did not actuate the essence in any way. Auriol claims that
Scotus’ attempt to get around the problem of a potency/act dichotomy will
not work: where there is form, there is something that takes form, something
that is actuated by that form. Regardless of Scotus’ protestations to the con-
trary, Auriol finds Scotus’ position and Henry of Ghent’s—not to mention
all others that he examines—to boil down to the same problem: potentiality
in God.29
Thus, Auriol turns to another explanation. The persons are not con-
stituted formally, but “fundamentally” (fundamentaliter) and “as a result”
(resultative). Take what Auriol calls a “rough example”: a house. Roof and
walls and foundation do not inform anything to make a house, a house sim-
ply results from them. Without these three components (or with any one of
the components missing), there is no house at all, but with the components
present in the correct configuration, the house arises immediately. There is
no question of matter or quasi-matter, no potency/act, either the compo-
28 Scriptum, d. 26, a. 3: “Consimiliter in proposito potest intelligi quod relatio constituat
personam divinam formaliter, sic quod esse suppositum vel personam sit effectus formalis
ipsius, et quod essentia illum effectum respiciat hreceptivei; sive et e converso, quod sit effec-
tus formalis essentiae, et quod relatio se habeat receptive; et sic videntur omnes opinantes
hucusque intellexisse.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 899–903; ed. 1596, p. 587aB.
29 Scriptum, d. 26, a. 3: “Praeterea, idem patet simul tam de essentia quam de relatione,
quoniam ubicumque est effectus formalis, necesse est quod susceptivum illius effectus se
habeat modo potentiae, et forma a qua profluit per modum actus. Sed manifestum est
quod essentia non est actus relationum, nec relationes sunt susceptivae aut substractae ipsi
essentiae; similiter nec essentia est susceptiva relationum, aut subiectum vel fundamentum
earum, sicut alias declaratum est supra, tunc enim divina essentia esset quasi materia, et
aliquid imperfectum. Unde cum relatio et essentia sint penitus indistincta, et fundent omn-
imodam unitatem, apparet ex terminis quod unum non est respectu alterius fundamentum
nec susceptivum. Ergo impossibile est quod personalitas sit effectus formalis essentiae vel
relationis.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 929–937; ed. 1596, p. 587aF–bA (Auriol refers here to, e.g.,
Scriptum, d. 5 [ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, nn. 68–72, pp. 785–787]). For Scotus’ critique of Henry of
Ghent, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 99–106.
peter auriol 543
nents that make up a house are present and there is a house, or not, and
then there is no house. According to Auriol, this is how essence and prop-
erty relate in the divine persons: neither is formal with respect to the other,
but a person results from the two of them, and if either of them were miss-
ing, then the person’s personality, its distinction and perseitas tertii modi,
would not come about. To drive his point home, Auriol draws the contrast
that we have already seen him draw between formal causality, on the one
hand, and the kind of true constitution by which the divine persons come
about, on the other. Properly speaking, a white thing is not constituted
through whiteness; rather a white thing exists (as white) through white-
ness, and this is just what formal causality is. The divine persons, on the
other hand, are truly constituted in personal being from both essence and
property, and this is just to say that they result from the two together, but
no person exists as a supposite through relation or essence; that type of
causality, formal or otherwise, does not enter into it.30 Two things should
be noted about Auriol’s view. First, it is part of a problematization of per-
sonal constitution in later-medieval trinitarian theology. Everyone agreed
that the divine persons are eternally distinct; the quest was to find a way
of explaining how they are distinct. Out of this quest arose various models
of personal constitution, along with—as we have seen in Henry of Ghent,
John Duns Scotus, and now Auriol—various criticisms of these models, crit-
icisms taking their point of departure in divine actuality and divine sim-
plicity. Eventually, several thinkers, like Robert Holcot, Gregory of Rimini,
30 Scriptum, d. 26, a. 3: “Si vero intelligatur haec constitutio non formaliter, sed funda-
mentaliter et quasi resultative, sic concedendum est quod persona constituitur in divinis ex
essentia et relatione; illud enim ex quo resultat negatio quam exprimit solitudo et perseitas
tertii modi constituit suppositum fundamentaliter et resultative, cum declaratum sit supra
quod nihil aliud est suppositum quam ens solitarium et per se, quod nullo modo est alterius
sed sui ipsius. Sed constat quod essentia et relatio in divinis sic se habent ad huiusmodi
negationem quod ex ipsis resultat; ex quo enim essentia non habet propriam unitatem, nec
etiam relatio, ambo simul iuncta fundant penitus eandem solitudinem, perseitatem, et uni-
tatem, et per consequens eandem personalitatem. Ergo essentia et relatio fundamentaliter
constituunt suppositum et personam, et hinc est quod proprie dictum est quod persona[e]
constitui dicitur ex partibus ex quibus resultat; album autem non dicitur proprie constitui,
sed esse per albedinem, unde non proprie diceretur quod Pater est suppositum per rela-
tionem vel per essentiam, sed quod in esse personali constituitur ex utroque.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 941–953; ed. 1596, p. 587bB–D (Auriol’s reference here is to Scriptum, d. 2, q. 3; cf.
the texts in nn. 23–26 above). For Auriol’s comment that this resultative constitution of the
persons “grosso modo exemplificari potest” by the house example, see n. 83 below. And for
more on Auriol’s rejection of any type of strict causality in the constitution of the persons,
see at and around n. 62 below.
544 chapter nine
and Hugolino Orvieto, will explicitly reject personal constitution: the per-
sons, for them, are distinct but not constituted, since constitution always
involves composition.31 The second point to be noted about Auriol’s view
is that it fits well with Auriol’s ideas as we have seen them thus far: each
person is a discrete unity that results from the utter indistinction of the
essence and a property. This is the crux of Auriol’s explanation for the trini-
tarian mystery: the essence is an indistinct reality and the properties are
indistinct realities; yet from the blending of each of the three properties
with the essence results three unities of utter indistinction, the three per-
sons.
Auriol’s further claim that the divine emanations are unelicited is merely
an application to the issue of the emanations of this theory that the persons
result and have no formal component. Here, indeed, we return to one of
the fundamental questions in later-medieval trinitarian theology, one that
has been discussed throughout this book: are the properties emanational
or relational? And yet, as will be discussed more fully below (§ 2), for
Auriol, properties are properties, and to say that relations as opposed to
emanations are constitutive of the persons is to quibble over a purely
conceptual difference, i.e. how we conceive the properties that constitute
the persons. To be sure, Auriol thinks that Aquinas was as wrong as he
could be to think that a relation could precede the act on which it is
founded in terms of conceptual ordering: acts always precede the relations
that correspond to them.32 Thus, Auriol supports what we have seen to be
Bonaventure’s position on the conceptual priority of the emanations. But
when Auriol comes to discuss the emanations directly, he claims that it is of
31 On Holcot, see Ch. 11, § 3 below—Rimini: Ch. 12, §5A—Hugolino: Conclusion.

32 Scriptum, d. 26, a. 2: “Secundo vero hopinio Thomaei deficit in eo quod ait quod rela-
tiones secundum nostrum modum intelligendi per prius et principalius constituunt et dis-
tinguunt personas quam origines ipsae, ut paternitas vel filiatio potius quam generare vel
generari. Illud enim quod est posterius secundum nostrum modum intelligendi et quasi fun-
datum in alio non videtur primo et principalius secundum modum intelligendi personam
constituere. Sed paternitas est posterior ipso generare, et filiatio ipso generari; impossibile
est enim quod intelligatur pater nisi qui generat vel qui genuit filium, nec filius nisi qui
generatur vel genitus est; unde Philosophus dicit in V Metaphysicae quod relationes huius-
modi fundantur super egisse; et Auctor Sex principiorum ait quod paternitas fundatur super
potentiam generativam actuatam. Ergo impossibile est quod primo et principalius intelli-
gatur paternitas Patrem constituere quam generare cum ipsum generare secundum nos-
trum modum intelligendi praecedat paternitatem, et sit fundamentum ipsius; similiter etiam
generari praecedit filiationem, et est ipsius fundamentum.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 667–678;
ed. 1596, p. 583bD–E. On this topic, see also § 2 of the present chapter, esp. at and around
nn. 66, 70–73.
peter auriol 545
no consequence at all whether we call the property distinctive of the Father

‘paternity’ or we call it ‘generation’: it is the reality to which both of these
correspond that he is interested in.33
But how should we think about or speak about the properties as emana-
tions? In particular, how does the essence relate to generation, active and
passive? On this question, Auriol examines a number of opinions and—as
we have seen him do before—boils them down to one root problem, albeit
with two parts. First, those who wrote before him thought of the emana-
tions as something elicited, something called forth or drawn out; in short,
they had thought of the emanations as taking their existence from some-
thing else. Second, they thought that the emanations give being to some-
thing else, as though in God something were a formal term of some passive
production.34 Among others that he takes to task for this error are Henry
of Ghent with his quasi-formal/quasi material distinction between essence
and property, and Scotus with his formal and first term of production.35 In
each of these theories, Auriol thinks that essence and emanational property
had been made all too distinct from one another, because the essence was
postulated to be something given by one person to another person through
emanation, and this error in turn, according to Auriol, is predicated upon
the assumption that the emanations are elicited, that they come from one
person already possessing the essence and terminate in another to whom
the essence is communicated.36 It must be said that Auriol has put his finger
on a significant characteristic of later-medieval trinitarian thought, espe-
cially (although certainly not exclusively) in the Franciscan tradition: the
33 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 3, n. 92: “Et si dicatur quod generare non constituit, sed
paternitas, nihil obstat, quia generare et paternitas eadem res sunt. Est autem hic inquisitio,
non de vocabulo aut conceptu, sed de re qua realiter a deitate distinguitur et constituitur
Pater.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 79420–23. The entire text of d. 5 is also found on the Electronic
Scriptum of The Peter Auriol Homepage (see n. 1 above).
34 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 3, nn. 90, 101: “Circa tertium vero considerandum est
quod communis imaginatio circa istam materiam decipit opinantes propter duo. Et primum
est quia imaginantur generationem esse aliquid elicitum in divinis .... Secundum in quo
decipiuntur est quia imaginantur quod in Filio sit aliquis formalis terminus quo producatur
quasi passive.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 793, p. 797.
35 For Auriol’s descriptions of his opponents’ views see Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), nn. 16–56
(ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 773–782). Here Auriol also gives the positions of Peter Olivi, Hervaeus
Natalis, and an anonymous; he attributes the view of Henry of Ghent also to William of Ware
and Durand of St. Pourçain. For Henry of Ghent’s view, see Ch. 4, above, at n. 12; for Scotus’
view, see Ch. 6, above, at nn. 75, 103–104.
36 Cf. n. 34 above. For Auriol’s direct criticism of the views mentioned in n. 35 above, cf.
Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 2, nn. 57–89 (ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 782–793). Cf. also around
n. 29 above, for similar arguments from Auriol in a related context.
546 chapter nine
emanations were nearly universally called ‘elicited’, and they were de-
scribed as though they took being from something else (e.g., an “elicitive
source”) and handed on being to something else.37 This was one of the major
uses of primity: to explain the existence of a “proto-Father” who brings
about the very first emanational act, generation, as though the emanation
has an origin and takes its being from somewhere else. If generation as
an act brings about distinction (even conceptual distinction) between the
Father and the Son, then primity explains from whom generation comes
or is elicited. And after Bonaventure, as we have seen, primity could no
longer be understood (as I argued it could be understood in Bonaventure)
as a merely conceptual tool; rather it clearly provided a real ground for
the first act of generation. Scotus’ use of instants of nature to posit order
between agent and act is a further manifestation of this conceptualization
of the emanations as elicited. In general, the trinitarian theology of the
period was written as though there was an agent from whom the emanation,
generation, emerged or was elicited (and mutatis mutandis the same was
true about the Father and Son as one simple spirator of the Holy Spirit).
For Auriol, elicited emanations simply make no sense. Just as much as the
divine essence itself, generation is an unproduced reality in God, “not going
or flowing out of anything”. As we might have expected from what we have
seen above, generation and essence are indistinct realities, the inextricable
blending of which constitutes the unity that is the Father. Neither of these
two realities from which the Father results precedes the other, nor can
one be the source of the other, because they are utterly indistinct.38 Again,
this is simply an application of Auriol’s position that neither essence nor
property are formal components of the person: the persons result from
37 See, for instance, Thomas Aquinas (Ch. 1, n. 72, and Ch. 3, at n. 3, which is Aquinas’
intrinsic constitutive argument according to which the emanation is a “way” to the person
emanated); Henry of Ghent (Ch. 4, nn. 27, 102, 117); William of Ware (ed. Friedman 2001,
p. 108335–347, p. 109363–366, pp. 109383–110389); Scotus (Ch. 6, nn. 137, 199); Hervaeus Natalis (Ch. 7,
nn. 23–25); Robert Cowton (ed. Friedman 2001, p. 150374–379).
38 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 3, n. 101: “Est ergo inconcusse tenendum quod, sicut deitas
est res a se non profluens nec realitatem suam accipiens ab aliquo, immo secundum id quod
est omnino a semetipsa, sic et generare est quaedam realitas in divinis penitus improducta,
non egrediens nec profluens ab aliquo, sed omnino a semetipsa secundum id quod est. Et
quia fundat penitus indistinctionem omnimodam et unitatem cum essentia, necesse est
quod generans et Pater, qui resultat ex ipsis, sit penitus a se ipso et primum suppositum
simplicissimum. Imaginantes autem quod generare eliciatur et profluat ab essentia tanquam
a ratione formali, nullo modo possunt evadere quin essentia generet prout est in Patre;
et idcirco omnes opinantes inde sumunt causam discedendi a vero.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2,
p. 796116–127.
peter auriol 547
essence and property, which are “equal partners” in personal constitution

and distinction. And, as mentioned above, the emanation, generation, and
the relation, paternity, are the very same property in reality, differing from
each other merely on account of the way we conceive the property; so for
this reason there is a precise correspondence between Auriol’s views on
relations and emanations as constitutive of the persons—a person results
from the utter indistinction of essence and a property.
Auriol gives many arguments against there being emanations that are
called forth or elicited. To begin with, there are only two things that genera-
tion could in any way be elicited from: the Father and the essence. We know
that generation cannot be elicited from the Father, because nothing elicits
its own formal constitutive, because this would be equivalent to its elicit-
ing itself. Nor can the essence elicit generation, for in that case the essence
would have to be really distinct from generation, because, again, the same
thing cannot elicit itself; since we know, however, that essence and gener-
ation are not really distinct (only the persons are really distinct in God),
the essence cannot elicit generation. Hence generation is not elicited.39 Fur-
thermore, no one would maintain that relations are elicited; but the ema-
nations cannot be elicited any more than the relations that correspond to
them, because in God they are the same.40 Auriol even refutes some of the
arguments that earlier Franciscans had used in order to show that innasci-
bility as primity gave a minimum being to the hypostases that “would be”
the Father: if this were the case, there would be a fourth supposite in the
divine.41
39 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 3, n. 92: “Praeterea, si generare est aliquid elicitum, aut
elicitur ab essentia aut elicitur a Patre. Sed impossibile est quod eliciatur a Patre, quia nulla
res elicit suum formale principium constitutivum; alias eliceret se .... Et adhuc impossibile est
quod eliciatur generare ab essentia deitatis, quia tunc distingueretur realiter a deitate. Idem
enim non elicit se, nec est causa sibi ipsi ut sit. Unde res elicita quae esse accipit aliunde
et res eliciens quae esse dat necessario distinguuntur. Impossibile est igitur quod generare
eliciatur.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 79317–79428.
40 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 3, n. 92 (ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 79420–23).
41 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 3, n. 95: “Praeterea, omnis actus profluit a supposito et
elicitur. Sed generare non profluit ab aliquo supposito. Non enim profluit a Patre, alioquin
causa formalis proflueret ab effectu. Nec profluit a Filio vel a Spiritu Sancto, quia tunc Pater
esset a Filio et non a semetipso, et esset circulatio in originibus divinis, quod impossibile est.
Nec profluit ab aliquo supposito priori Patre, quia tunc essent in divinis quatuor supposita,
et per consequens quatuor res, contra determinationem Concilii. Igitur generare non est res
egrediens aut profluens ab aliquo, sed est realitas improducta omnino.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2,
p. 79446–54 (the “determination of the Council” is a reference to the Canons of the Fourth
Lateran Council; see the Introduction, above, at n. 21). It is interesting in this regard that
Auriol denies that a supposite could be constituted on the basis of innascibility; see his
548 chapter nine
The situation is parallel with regard to the Son’s passive generation: noth-
ing is elicited through passive generation. It seemed to Auriol that earlier
thought on the emanations took the essence to be something acquired by
the Son through his generation, or that the Son in some way held being
through passive generation. According to Auriol, however, nothing takes
being through passive generation, because neither passive generation (or
filiation—call it what you will, since they are the same) nor the essence are
formal terms. The Son is constituted, he results, from essence and filiation.42
And Auriol can give a similar set of arguments to those he gave for active
generation. What is it that could hold being through passive generation?
The only possibilities are the essence, filiation, or the person of the Son. But
it cannot be the essence, because that holds being from nowhere. Nor filia-
tion, because that is utterly the same as passive generation itself. Finally, the
Son himself as a whole cannot be a term holding being through generation,
because passive generation is as it were (quasi) a part of the Son, and one
and the same thing cannot constitute itself.43 It is simply not the case that
passive generation hands on being or the divine essence to something else.
Divine emanations for Auriol are unelicited: they neither come from nor go
to something else.
extended treatment of the issue in Scriptum, d. 28 (e.g., a. 3: “… prima persona nullo modo
constituitur per innascibilitatem … sed per generare actuale et spirare, sive paternitatem et
spirationem activam … propter dicta superius distinctione 11, ubi ostensum est quod infra
personalitatem Patris intrinsece clauditur spirare et generare.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 544–
548; ed. 1596, p. 646bF; cf. Schmaus 1930a, 605–606).
42 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 3, n. 109: “Est igitur inconcusse tenendum quod Filius
verissime generatur tamquam constitutus ex passiva generatione et ex essentia; non autem

quod essentia acquiratur per passivam generationem, aut filiatio aut persona aut aliquis
alius terminus formalis; et in hoc decipiuntur omnes opinantes qui quaerunt ibi aliquid
formale. Non est enim aliquid aliud nisi ipsamet filiatio sive passiva generatio, quae infertur
a generatione quasi activa Patris.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 79993–99. On passive generation as
a logical marker (“infertur a generatione quasi activa Patris”), see at and around nn. 62–63
below.
43 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 3, n. 103: “Si enim aliquid sit in Filio quod esse capiat per
generationem passivam tamquam formalis terminus, aut illud est essentia aut filiatio aut
persona Filii tota. Non potest poni quod sit essentia, ne cogamur confiteri quod realitas
essentiae accipit quod sit res; nam secundum hoc oporteret quod realitas istius essentiae
non esset eadem cum realitate essentiae paternae, de qua constat quod habet esse a se
ipsa. Nec potest poni quod filiatio esse capiat generatione passiva, quia penitus eaedem
res sunt filiatio et generatio passiva; et per consequens idem esset formalis terminus sui
ipsius et se ipso produceretur; quod falsum est. Nec potest poni quod sit tota persona,
quia constituitur formaliter per generationem. Nullum autem formale attingit constitutum
originative et principiative; alioquin idem principium principiaret se, cum sit quasi pars illius
constituti.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 79724–79837.
peter auriol 549
Auriol’s claim that the emanations are unelicited is probably the most
influential of all his trinitarian doctrines, adopted and contested by theolo-
gians on both sides of the Channel very soon after Auriol’s time at Paris was
over.44 What is perhaps most significant about this doctrine in the context
of Auriol’s own trinitarian theology, however, is that it makes emanations
look like relations. These emanations do not emanare: they do not flow out
or in, nor do they take being or give being, they simply are. From these
emanations, however, and the divine essence, which is perfectly indistinct
from them, result the persons. In this book, I have traced the development
of a Franciscan tradition of relying on origin or emanation as the property
constitutive of the persons. From Bonaventure’s conceptual stress on ema-
nation to Scotus’ suggestion that absolute origin was distinctive of the per-
sons, the relations so favored by the Dominican tradition became gradually
more marginalized by the Franciscans as a group. Auriol does not reject this
Franciscan tendency, but he certainly alters it by insisting that the divine
emanations are unelicited: he makes the emanations as “relational” as they
possibly can be by denying any hint of motion or change in them.
And yet the simple fact is that Auriol is a Franciscan in his trinitarian
theology, and he exhibits Franciscan tendencies. His theory of the consti-
tution of the divine persons by indistinction of essence and property is in
part motivated by a rejection of the dual nature of the divine relations that
was so prominent a part of Dominican trinitarian theology. For Auriol, the
properties are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis), opposition of relations
is not required for personal distinction.45 In fact, against Aquinas, Auriol
even claims (perhaps unfairly) that the persons are not constituted by sub-
sistent relations, the persons are subsistent relations.46 The relation account
44 For evidence, see below: Ch. 10, at nn. 71–80, 103–105 (William Ockham), Ch. 11, at
nn. 161–169 (Walter Chatton, Adam Wodeham), and Ch. 12, at e.g. nn. 23, 47, 161 (Lan-
dulph Caracciolo, John Baconthorpe, Michael of Massa). Also Pierre Roger, the later Pope
Clement VI, appears to have adopted Auriol’s characterization of the emanations as unelic-
ited, although he used it to severly criticize Auriol; see on this, Pierre’s text in Stella 1975, e.g.
p. 56910–24. One further example: the anonymous Franciscan whose commentary on I Sent.
is found in ms. Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 1439, and who deals with Auriol’s
view in q. 22 (f. 18rb–vb); see on the commentary, Friedman and Schabel 1996.
45 See at and around nn. 105–108 below; same point n. 21 above, where Auriol claims
that the persons are “co-oppositae et distinctae” on the basis of the properties and essence.
Interestingly, Auriol does not so much deny as ignore opposition of relations as a factor in
personal distinction—if it plays any role in his extensive discussions, it must be a minimal
one.
46 E.g. Scriptum, d. 26, a. 2: “Sed hic modus dicendi deficit in duobus. Primo quidem, cum
ait quod relatio ut subsistens constituit suppositum, nullum namque suppositum constituit
550 chapter nine
is for all intents and purposes completely marginalized in Auriol’s trinitar-

ian theology. And the reason for this is that, despite all of Auriol’s claims to
the effect that paternity and active generation are absolutely the same, he
holds that the properties that distinguish the persons are actually actions
and passions; they are, however, “conceptually” relations. A part of Auriol’s
marginalization strategy, then, is stressing just how “relational” the divine
emanations are by arguing that they are unelicited. A larger part of Auriol’s
marginalization strategy, however, has to do with his own interpretation of
the Aristotelian categories, and the way that he claims the actual categories
of action and passion relate to the conceptual category of relation.
2. The Emanations, Auriol’s Marginalization

Strategy, and His Interpretation of the Categories
One of the fundamental features of later-medieval trinitarian theology that

we have followed throughout this book—both in the Franciscan and the
Dominican traditions—is the “marginalization strategy”. Franciscan the-
ologians used marginalization strategies in order to set the relation account
of personal distinction aside without seeming to simply deny its truth, as
well as the truth of the authoritative passages upon which it was based.
Dominican theologians used marginalization strategies in order to blunt
their attenuated use of the psychological model, and hence to neutralize
the authoritative passages upon which a more literal use of the psycho-
logical model was based. Peter Auriol’s trinitarian theology provides yet
another example of the creativity medieval theologians brought to the tasks
of harmonizing the varied—sometimes contradictory—authoritative foun-
dations of scholastic theology and making space for new interpretations of
that authoritative foundation. Auriol, as we will see, fits well into the Fran-
ciscan trinitarian tradition insofar as he stresses that the properties that are
constitutive of the persons are productions or origin: for Auriol, the Father
gives being to the Son, and the Father and the Son together give being to the
Holy Spirit. Of course, Auriol modifies this in an important way by claiming
suppositum. Sed relatio subsistens est ipsum suppositum, omne enim quod subsistit sup-
positum est. Ergo non potest dici quod relatio ut subsistens supposita constituat. Praeterea,
nullus dicit quod Pater constituat suppositum Patris nec Filius suppositum Filii. Sed manifes-
tum est quod relationes ut subsistentes non sunt aliud quam Pater, Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus,
cum nihil subsistat in divinis nisi tres personae. Ergo nihil est dictu quod relatio constituat
ut subsistens.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 648–655; ed. 1596, p. 583aF–bA.
peter auriol 551
that the emanations are not elicited, making them as much like static rela-
tions as he could. But the fact remains that Auriol stresses origin over rela-
tion, and thus he must find some way to marginalize the relations. He goes
about this by exploiting his understanding of the ten Aristotelian categories.
The most basic element in Auriol’s interpretation of the categories is
a reduction in the number of categories that actually exist. For Auriol,
only five categories have instances in actuality: substance, quality, quantity,
action, and passion. The other five categories, including relation, are “con-
ceptual categories”: none of them exist in this way in the extramental world,
but rather a mental act is required to arrive at any of them. Upon intellec-
tual acquaintance with one of the “actual categories”, then, our minds can
either conceive it as it exists actually (i.e., extramentally) or it can conceive
it in a different way, as the “conceptual category” that corresponds to the
“actual category” it is founded on. The actual category and the conceptual
category that corresponds to it do not differ in any way that could be called
real, since they are based on the same extramental reality: theirs is a purely
conceptual difference. Auriol in fact gives a rather full description of the way
that the conceptual categories are derived from the actual categories. In this
description there is—as there had been for Aristotle—a special connection
between the actual categories of action and passion, on the one hand, and
the second type of Aristotelian relation, on the other.47
If the distinction between actual and conceptual categories is crucial
to understanding Auriol’s interpretation of the categories, a further highly
important feature of his theory is the special role played in it by the actual
categories, action and passion. Auriol takes as governing an idea found in a
text from Averroes’ Physics commentary, in which the Commentator claims
that all concepts have either a mobile or static disposition, and it is on the
basis of this that all languages have verbs and nouns respectively.48 Auriol,
47 For Auriol’s ideas on the categories, see e.g. Scriptum, d. 30, a. 3 (ed. 1596, pp. 676b–
687b). There is no good study of Auriol’s interpretation of the categories, but see Henninger
1989, 150–173 (which focuses on the psychological dimension of Auriol’s theory of relation);
Nielsen 2003, 499–501; Nielsen 2011; Dewender 2009, 302–307. The terms ‘actual’ and ‘concep-
tual’ category are mine.
48 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1032–1039; ed. 1596, p. 610aB). Auriol
quotes Averroes’ words verbatim; for the original, see Physics V, com. 9 in Iuntina IV,
f. 215rB–C (not f. 99ra as Buytaert claims, Scriptum, p. 906, p. 918): “Et propter famositatem
istius divisionis, scilicet quoniam omnes intentiones dividuntur in habitus quiescentes et
mobiles, conveniunt omnes gentes in hoc quod posuerunt principia nominationum nomen
et verbum, et posuerunt nomen cuilibet formae quiescenti et verbum cuilibet formae mobili,
et posuerunt indeclinabile ad collationem inter illa duo.”
552 chapter nine
following Averroes, identifies the concepts having a static disposition with

the source of nouns, those having a mobile disposition with the source of
verbs. Auriol then applies this essentially grammatical relationship between
spoken word, concept, and thing to the categories. Whenever we can ex-
press something by a verb or a participle, then we have conceived what
is signified by the verb or participle as something belonging to either the
category of action or of passion; whenever we express something by a noun,
on the other hand, we have conceived what is signified as belonging to one
of the other eight categories. The great divide, then, is between, on the one
hand, action and passion, which involve movement or change, and thus are
“verbal” and exist in time, and, on the other, the remaining eight categories,
which are “nominal” and have no temporality. In a sense, for Auriol there are
three “super-categories”: action, passion, and the other eight.49 Moreover,
we are in principle able to conceive anything in any of these three ways,
actively, passively, or statically: there is merely a difference in the way that
we conceive the thing in question, a purely psychological difference, and
hence under our control. Taking an example, then: a flower exists in the
real world as an instantiation of the category of substance, and conceived
as such, it is expressed as a noun. If, however, we conceive the flower in
movement, and express the flower verbally, then it either belongs to the
category of action (active voice: to flower, florere, floresco) or the category
of passion (passive voice: ‘to be flowered’, floridari: Auriol says that the
vagaries of grammatical usage should not deceive us about the truth of his
claim).50
49 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: “Secundum hoc ergo omnes res possunt poni in tribus praedica-
mentis, quia secundum quod nominaliter significantur et concipiuntur in quiete, sunt in

aliquo determinato praedicamento, ut flos in praedicamento substantiae, et lux in genere
qualitatis; secundum vero quod exprimuntur per verba et concipiuntur in fieri et egressu,
sunt in praedicamento actionis vel passionis, ut florere vel floridari, lucere et lucidari sive
accendi. Et licet in aliquibus usus vocabulorum repugnet, nihilominus veritas non mutatur.
Quod enim lucere, ut sic concipitur, sit in praedicamento actionis, et lucidari sive accendi
de genere passionis, patet, quia verbum significat agere vel pati secundum grammaticum,
vel potius per modum agere et pati, res etiam quiescentes in rerum natura, quare conceptus
per florere importatus est in genere actionis. Et haec est expressa Commentatoris intentio, V
Physicorum, 9 com., motus enim, prout est transmutatio coniuncta cum tempore, est secun-
dum eum in praedicamento passionis, et hoc cum significatur verbaliter et passive dicendo
‘moveri’, et in praedicamento actionis dum significatur verbaliter et active, dicendo ‘movere’.
Moveri enim est pati, et movere est agere, et eodem modo florere et floridari. Unde pos-
sumus dicere quod flos floret, et quod florescit seu floridatur passive.” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 1040–1054; ed. 1596, p. 610aB–D. Cf. also ibid., a. 3 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1233–1241; ed.
1596, p. 612bE–F).
50 E.g., Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: “Hoc igitur supposito est ulterius attendendum quod
peter auriol 553
There are, then, two overall ways of conceiving every thing in the real
world, and the category in which we conceive the thing to be changes with
our way of conceiving (modus concipiendi) it: expressed verbally and con-
ceived per modum fieri et egressus it belongs to either action or passion
(depending on precisely the way in which it is conceived); expressed nom-
inally and conceived per modum quietis it belongs to one of the other eight
categories. Auriol has in fact to a certain extent grammaticized his theory of
concepts, and the Latin terms he uses reveals that he has done this by using
the terminology and ideas found in contemporary modist grammatical the-
ory.51
What about an example from the other direction? That is to say, since
action and passion are actual categories, i.e. action and passion have extra-
mental instances in their own right, what if we were to start with an action
or a passion as the extramental reality and we were to conceive it stati-
cally, so that it was expressed as a noun? For Auriol, action and passion
are the causal intervals between a producer and a product. Action, then,
is the originating of a product by a producer; in other words, it is the way
the producer attains the effect. Passion, on the other hand, is the “being-
originated” of a product from a producer; it is that by which the product is
produced.52 Thus, action and passion are two distinct and actual categories,
and further they are the only categories whose being is in fieri et egressu,
quandoque res sunt quiescentes, et intellectus concipit eas per modum fieri et egressus,
sicut patet de flore et luce, et tales quidem realiter pertinent ad praedicamenta formarum
quiescentium, utpote ad substantiam vel ad aliquod octo generum praeter agere et pati, con-
ceptibiliter tamen et prout exprimuntur per verba, spectant ad praedicamentum actionis vel
passionis. Quandoque vero res aliquae sunt in natura extra in quodam fieri et egressu, con-
cipiuntur tamen aliquando per modum quietis, et nominaliter exprimuntur, sicut cursus se
videtur habere ad currere; et talia quidem realiter pertinent ad agere vel pati, prout per verba
proprie exprimuntur, habent tamen ex opere intellectus, prout per nomina exprimuntur et
quiete concipiuntur, quod spectent ad aliud genus.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1055–1064; ed.
1596, p. 610aE–F. For Auriol’s disclaimer about the vagaries of language as well as for the
example of the flower, see n. 49 above.
51 For the terminology, see n. 50 above. On Auriol’s use of modi concipiendi more gener-
ally, see Friedman 1997a; on modism and modist grammar, see e.g. Rosier-Catach 1999 and
the literature referred to there. For a study of Auriol’s use of the conceptual distinction under
discussion here, see Wardzinsky 1976.
52 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 1: “… respectus originis sive qui est origo vere constituit praedica-
menta actionis et passionis: origo namque qua terminus originatur est passio, illa vero qua
agens originat terminum dicitur actio.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 211–213; ed. 1596, p. 598bB.
Ibid., a. 3: “Nulla autem res in natura existit, cuius esse sit in egressu formaliter, nisi illud
intervallum, de quo supra dictum est quod intelligitur inter producens et productum, quod
est attingere causativum quo producens attingit effectum; et aliud intervallum quod est
inter productum et producens, quo formaliter dicitur productum produci; nulla vero alia res
554 chapter nine
i.e. not fixed or stable; they are the causal intervals between cause and
effect or producer and product, and they cease to exist when the causality
ceases, just like movement ceases when the motive force behind it ceases.53
This is precisely the reason why, when we conceive stable things in fieri
et egressu, we conceive them as actions and passions: because this is the
way actions and passions are extramentally, and indeed they are the only
things like this extramentally.54 When we conceive actions and passions
as something stable, per modum quietis, on the other hand, we conceive
them as relation, as something that connects the producer with the product
or refers producer to product and vice-versa.55 This connection, however,
dicitur egredi vel esse in fieri, nisi ratione istius intervalli.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1064–1068;
ed. 1596, p. 610aF–bA. Nielsen (2003, 501) draws a link between Auriol’s theory of action and
passion as dynamic, transitory efficient causality and the modern concept of force.
53 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: “Terminus enim productus habet quod sit in continuo
egredi, quando indiget continue huiusmodi intervallo, sicut patet de motu: motus enim
fundat continue huiusmodi respectum ad agens, qui non est aliud quam egredi passive;
et movens etiam est in continuo attingere et egredi in motum, pro eo quod motus non
habet a se permanentiam vel existentiam, sed semper a motore, ut Commentator dicit, XI
Metaphysicae, com. 39. Et ideo motus semper dependet a motore et est in fieri, non quidem
formaliter quod motus sit ipsum fieri aut egredi a motore, sed quia exigit ipsum fieri et
egredi quo continue profluat a movente. Secundum hoc ergo sola haec intervalla sunt vere
et realiter in praedicamento actionis et passionis, et proprie exprimuntur per verba activa et
passiva, et omnia alia quae verbaliter exprimuntur, non aliter exprimuntur nisi quatenus
concipiuntur cum istis habitudinibus et intervallis, sicut patet quod florere intelligitur in
quodam egressu in aliquid per modum attingentiae activae, et floridari in quodam egressu
ab alio et in quodam causari passivo.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1068–1081; ed. 1596, p. 610bA–C.
For Auriol’s proof (made in explicit response to a view of Thomas Aquinas) that action and
passion are real, non-absolute categories differing both from each other and from motion,
see esp. ibid., a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 353–501; ed. 1596, pp. 600bA–602bA). See also at
and around n. 107 below.
54 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: “Propter quod omnes res quiescentes, in quantum induunt in
conceptu modum intervallorum huiusmodi, habent modum actionis et passionis, et redu-

cuntur conceptibiliter, etsi non realiter, ad haec duo praedicamenta.” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 1081–1083; ed. 1596, p. 610bC–D.
55 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: “E converso autem istae attingentiae et haec intervalla non
habent quod concipiantur modo quietis sive per oppositum ad egressum, nisi quatenus indu-
unt modum alterius praedicamenti ab agere vel pati. Non possunt autem induere modum
substantiae (quia non subsistunt, nec sunt hoc aliquid), nec quantitatis (quia non mensu-
rant), nec qualitatis (quia non modificant), nec ubi aut quando (quia abstrahunt a tempore
et a loco), nec positionis aut habitus (quia abstrahunt ab ornamento et situ); quare relin-
quitur ut induant modum relationis sive respectus, quia connectunt. Sunt enim intervalla
copulantia et nectentia producens cum producto, et e converso, hoc enim proprium est
relationis: ut concipiatur quasi quaedam connexio et copulatio extremorum. Sic igitur dum
egredi in effectum non concipitur per modum causativi quo ponatur effectus, sed tantum-
modo per modum connectentis agens cum effectu, non quia causet, tunc intelligitur agere
per modum quietis, et potest exprimi nominaliter, et habet modum relationis, et pertinet
peter auriol 555
does not—in fact, cannot—exist extramentally, according to Auriol: it is a

mind-dependent phenomenon based on intellectual acquaintance with the
causal interval existing between producer and product. Indeed, this is the
basic intuition lying behind Auriol’s rejection of the actuality, i.e. the extra-
mental existence, of any relation qua relation: in contrast to earlier thinkers
we have discussed, Auriol thinks about relation as being the connecting
interval between two really existing things. Aquinas, or Giles of Rome, or
even Henry of Ghent thought about relation as being in one thing towards
another. Auriol rejects that relation could be like this; for him, relation is
what “hangs” between two singular objects, whether this is the similitude
between two white things or the fatherhood that holds between a father
and his son. And according to Auriol nothing like this connecting interval is
found outside the mind.56 What exists outside the mind is, in the matter at
hand, the causal interval existing between producer and product—this we
can conceive to be a connecting, fixed relation.
This, then, is how we conceive, e.g., a father’s paternity on the basis of his
action of generating and how we conceive a son’s filiation on the basis of his
passion of being-generated: the action and passion are there in actuality,
but we conceive them in a different way, according to a different modus
concipiendi. Instead of per modum fieri we conceive them per modum quietis.
What actually (extramentally) is the causal interval between producer and
product we conceive as a static connection between them:
… whenever an interval is understood to be merely the connection between
terms and not to be the putting into existence (positio) of the one by the
other, that is understood to be merely relation, and not to be categorial
action or passion. For connection does not put terms into existence (ponit
extrema), but with their existence posited, it connects. On the other hand,
putting into existence (positio) does not connect the terms, because it does
not presuppose them, but constitutes and puts one into existence.57
conceptibiliter ad illud praedicamentum. Similiter etiam dum effectum egredi ab agente

solum accipitur ut connectit, nec concipitur per modum causativi et quasi verbaliter, tunc
induit modum relationis. Et secundum hoc paternitas non est aliud quam generare modo
quietis conceptum, quia tunc sibi tantum connectere competit et referre; nec filiatio est
aliud quam generari ut sic in quiete conceptum, et sic differunt solum conceptibiliter, et
sunt idem realiter iuxta propositionem assumptam.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1084–1100; ed.
1596, p. 610bD–F.
56 On Auriol’s arguments against earlier theories of relation as well as for this position of
his, see Henninger 1989, esp. 151–158.

57 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: “… quandocumque enim aliquod intervallum intelligitur mere
ut connexio extremorum, et non ut positio alterius per alterum, illud intelligitur mere ut
relatio, et non ut actio seu passio praedicamentalis. Connexio namque non ponit extrema,
556 chapter nine
Thus, the action, to generate, and the relation, paternity, are absolutely
the same thing (idem secundum rem et rationem), they differ merely on
account of our differing ways of conceiving that same thing. In actuality, i.e.
extramentally, what exists is the action and the passion, the causal intervals
between producer and product, but we can conceive these very same causal
intervals as connecting and referring producer and product and then we
understand them to belong to the second type of relations that Aristotle
described in his Metaphysics, relations like those obtaining between a father
and a son.58 When conceiving the causal interval as action and passion, then,
i.e. conceiving it per modum fieri et egressus, we conceive it as it actually
exists in time, and we express it as a verb; and when the causation ceases the
verb must be put into the past tense. When we conceive that same causal
interval as a connecting relation, and we express it as a noun, it abstracts
from time, and it remains just so long as both terms of the relation exist.59
Auriol applies this theory of the categories directly to God: in God there
really is origin of Son from Father, and therefore there really is that causal
interval spanned by the action, to generate, and the passion, to be gener-
ated. Yet, just as in the created world, to generate and paternity are totally
the same reality in God, they differ merely on account of different ways that
sed ea existentia et posita, connectit; e converso autem positio non connectit extrema, quia
non praesupponit, sed in esse constituit et ponit.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1127–1131; ed. 1596,
p. 611aE.
58 See Aristotle, Metaphysics, V, c. 15 (1021a15–27).
59 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: “Tertium etiam patet, impossibile est enim realitatem quae
concipitur modo fluxus concipi sine duratione certi temporis praesentis, praeteriti, vel futuri;
et idcirco, transeunte realitate, necesse est quod concipiatur in praeteritum abiisse, et ideo
positio, qua ponitur extremum, intelligitur vel ut praesens vel ut praeterita vel ut futura; unde
pater generat, vel genuit, vel generabit et erit pater. Realitas vero quae concipitur ut connexio
extremorum, abstrahit a tempore et omni duratione, non est enim de conceptu rei intellectae
per modum habitus et quietis aliquod tempus; unde nomen non significat cum tempore,
sicut patet I Periermenias. Secundum hoc ergo quamdiu intelligetur Sortes et Plato, et cum
hoc quod inter Sortem et Platonem fuit quidam effluxus quo Sortes Platonem genuit, necesse
est ut intelligatur eadem realitas inter ambos per modum cuiusdam connexionis, quae non
est aliud quam paternitas. Unde mens Sortem concipiens patrem Platonis, illam realitatem
qua genuit—quae vere fuit generare—apprehendit per modum connexionis amborum.
Semper enim dum eos concipit cum praevio generare, necessario eadem realitate illos
connectit, et continue dicit eos connexos, et manet ista connexio quamdiu manet uterque,
et desinit, altero desinente. Et sic transit res importata per generare et per paternitatem
quantum ad esse. Quantum ad intelligi vero etiam transit ut importatur per generare; non
tamen transit ut intelligitur quasi connexio et per modum paternitatis. Ergo manifeste
apparet quod generare et paternitas differunt quidem conceptibiliter, et sunt idem realiter; et
idem est de omni relatione fundata super agere et pati, sive producere et produci.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 1169–1187; ed. 1596, pp. 611bF–612aC.
peter auriol 557
we conceive that same reality: per modum fieri as opposed to per modum qui-
etis. With this said, however, Auriol makes absolutely clear that this reality
is in God actually the action, to generate:
… the reality which is designated (importatur) by ‘to generate’ per modum
fluxus and by ‘paternity’ per modum quiescentis, has in its existence the mode
of action and of flux, but the mode of habit and of staticness only from the
work of the intellect, because if it were the other way around, the Son would
not truly and really be produced by the Father; indeed [the Son] would be
connected and would refer to [the Father] really, yet he would not emanate
really.60
In line with the Franciscan tradition, Auriol’s trinitarian theology takes its
starting point in the fact that the Son is truly produced, i.e. given being,
by the Father. But this would not be the case if the properties constitut-
ing the persons were in their actuality relations. Thus, according to Auriol,
those properties are actions and passions and not relations at all.61 This
position makes sense, of course, also to Auriol the philosopher, since on
Auriol’s understanding of the categories there is no actually existing rela-
tion: relation is a conceptual category. With all that said, Auriol cannot
merely transfer categorial actions and passions to God. In particular, ‘pas-
sion’ by the very meaning of the word seems to present problems when
applied to God. Auriol thus insists that whereas categorial passion has
three salient features—a subject that receives the passion, something that
really holds being through the passion, and the fact that the passion follows
60 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4: “Sed realitas illa quae per generare per modum fluxus
importatur, et per paternitatem per modum quiescentis, habet in sui existentia modum
actionis et fluxus, modum vero habitus et quiescentis ex solo opere intellectus, quia si esset
e converso, non vere et realiter Filius produceretur a Patre, sed connecteretur quidem et
referretur ad ipsum realiter, non tamen realiter emanaret.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1311–1315;
ed. 1596, p. 613bE.
61 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 1: “Sed istis non obstantibus, dicendum est quod habent modum
actionum et passionum, et non relationum. Quod ex praecedentibus satis patet, tum quia per
generare et generari vere capit Filius suam realitatem, quod non competit habitudinibus de
genere relationis; tum quia generari est vera origo, origo autem non habet modum relationis,
sed passionis; tum quia generare est quoddam originare et quidam egressus realis, quo
Pater prorumpit in Filium, et similiter generari est quidam exitus, quo Filius egreditur a
Patre, sicut ipse testatur Iohanne 16 quod exivit a Patre, et venit in mundum. Ostensum
est autem quod haec nullo modo conveniunt praedicamento relationis, sed actionis et
passionis. Ergo modum habent actionum et passionum potius quam relationum .... oportet
dici quod hgenerarei habeat modum actionis, non tamen elicitae, pro eo quod est positiva
et originativa Filii, nec est solum habitudo ad ipsum.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 523–539; ed.
1596, pp. 602bE–603aA. See also the text in n. 73 below, for Auriol’s stress on the Son as
produced.
558 chapter nine
necessarily from an action—in God only the last of these holds. This fits
quite well with Auriol’s ideas on the divine emanations as we have seen
them: the emanations in God are unelicited, neither arising from something
nor going to something. Thus, in God there is neither receiving subject nor
product holding being; there is only the fact that the passion follows from
the action. There is no matter or quasi-matter in God, nor any passivity at all,
but there is a type of logical order. According to Auriol, then, action and pas-
sion in God are exclusively markers of a type of logical necessity: where there
is the action, generation, there is also its necessary consequence, the pas-
sion, being-generated.62 Consistent with this view, as well as with his view
of the unelicited nature of the divine emanations, when Auriol talks directly
about the way that the Father gives the essence to the Son, he describes it
as a “transfusion in the way of a symbolic form” (essentia communicatur per
modum formae symbolicae; transfusionem eiusdem substantiae per modum
formae symbolhiciae).63
Thus, with these important qualifications, true to the Franciscan trini-
tarian tradition, Auriol has an emanation trinitarian theology: the guiding
principle, as we have seen, is that the Son is produced by the Father through
emanation or production. Moreover, like the rest of the Franciscan tradi-
tion, Auriol has been led by his emphasis on emanations to construct a
marginalization strategy—a way of including the relations in his theory but
playing down their importance—, and it is an ingenious marginalization
strategy indeed. For Auriol, the realities that are the distinguishing proper-
ties in God are actually actions and passions, i.e. emanations. Yet although
these properties are actually actions and passions in God, they are also
62 Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 3: “… de ratione enim passionis est quod sit quaedam illatio
actionis, res ergo generationis passivae, quia illata, est vere et realiter a re ipsius generatio-
nis activae, aliqualem modum habet passionis. Non quod sit proprie conceptus passionis
praedicamentalis in divinis, sicut nec conceptus praedicamentalis substantiae aut relatio-
nis; de conceptu enim passionis est quod recipiatur in subiecto, et terminetur ad aliquid esse
capiens passive per eam, et quod inferatur ab actione. Res igitur generationis quae est in Deo
non retinet primum nec secundum, sed tertium, unde non est in praedicamento passionis,
quamvis sit ibi aliquis modus illius praedicamenti.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 721–728; ed. 1596,
p. 325bB–C. Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: “Non valet etiam tertia, quia generare non concipitur
in divinis ut fluxus et fluens, vel elicitus aliunde, sed potius ut inferens generari et totum
suppositum constitutum per generari, scilicet Filium.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1257–1259; ed.
1596, p. 613aB.
63 Scriptum, d. 5 (= sect. 17), a. 4, nn. 125–128 (ed. Buytaert, pp. 805–807). Although I think
that Auriol attempted to make his views here internally consistent, whether the various
aspects of “production” by unelicited emanation actually hang together or not is an issue
for further research.
peter auriol 559
relations, because an action and its corresponding relation “are the same
thing and ratio conceived in different ways, and consequently [they are]
the same constitutive property”.64 There is no difference in reality between
action and relation, it is the same reality conceived in different ways, and
for this reason, although relation is not actually there, it is really there. In
this way Auriol marginalizes the relations in trinitarian theology.
Neither Auriol nor any other figure discussed in this book ever use the
term ‘marginalization strategy’ (or anything like it) to describe the meth-
ods they employ to neutralize authoritative passages that appear to speak
for a trinitarian view incompatible with that which they themselves have
argued for—in this case the relation account. Nevertheless, there can be no
doubt that Auriol was aware of this dimension of his thought. Thus, when
Auriol gives a number of arguments against his view, he includes several
objections based on authoritative grounds. For example, if generating and
being-generated are the actualities of the divine properties, then why are
the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’, based as they are on the relations paternity
and filiation, used universally in Scripture, and not ‘Generator’ and ‘Gener-
ated’. Further, there are passages from respected figures—Auriol talks about
Boethius and Damascene—that state outright that in God paternity and fil-
iation are the constitutive properties of the Father and the Son.65 Auriol’s
reply to these arguments show clearly how, through his interpretation of
the categories, he marginalizes the relation account and neutralizes scrip-
tural and patristic passages problematic for his view.
Thus, in answer to the first of these objections, Auriol holds explicitly that
“the person of the Father more truly and more principally is constituted
through generation (generare) than through paternity”, since “what exists
extramentally (ex natura rei) is said more truly and more principally than
what comes about through consideration (secundum considerationem) and
from the operation of the intellect.” Generation is actually in God; paternity
requires a mental act. Nevertheless, Auriol can still maintain that it is better
64 See n. 68 below.
65 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4: “Quarto autem quia scriptura sacra personas exprimit sub
nominibus Patris et Filii, et non generantis aut generati; baptismus etiam non traditur
in nomine genitoris et geniti, sed in nomine Patris et Filii; Commentator etiam super
Boethium De trinitate dicit quod Pater et Filius distinguuntur paternitate et filiatione; et
Damascenus, lib. I, dicit quod differentiam hypostasum intelligimus in solis proprietatibus
paternitatis et filiationis, et idem dicit, lib. III, cap. 5. Ex quibus videtur posse concludi quod
paternitas suppositum Patris constituat primo et principalius quam generare secundum
modum intelligendi.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1289–1295; ed. 1596, p. 613bA–B. I have been
unable to determine who the “Commentator on Boethius’ De trinitate”, referred to in this text,
is, although Stephen Brown, in personal correspondence, has suggested Gilbert of Poitiers.
560 chapter nine
to call the first person “Father” as opposed to “generator”, and hence that
his theory conforms perfectly well to the usage found in Scripture.66 This is
because, since there can be no paternity without generation, ‘paternity’ and
hence ‘Father’ automatically make us aware of their necessary antecedent,
generation. Thus, ‘Father’, by the very meaning of the word (vi nominis), tells
us more about the first person than would ‘Generator’, despite the fact that
generation is the actual constitutive of the first person. ‘Father’ inherently
includes ‘Generator’, and hence ‘Father’ is the term we should prefer for the
first person of the Trinity.67
What about the many passages from Scripture and the Church Fathers
that claim in one way or another that properties constitutive of the persons
are relations, passages that especially the Dominicans had shaped into
a coherent foundation for the relation account of personal distinction?
Auriol uses a variation on the argument mentioned above, and returns to
a marginalization strategy that we have also seen Scotus use:
The passages of Boethius and Damascene, which seem to assert that the
supposites are distinct solely by the relations of paternity and filiation, do
not exclude to generate and to be generated, since these are the same thing
and the same ratio conceived in different ways, and consequently the same
constitutive property. On account of which, since there is not added a mark
of exclusion to one, the other ought to be understood not to be excluded.68
66 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4: “Quarta vero propositio est quod persona Patris verius et prin-
cipalius constituitur per generare quam per paternitatem, nihilominus melius exprimitur
secundum usum loquendi per nomen Patris quam per vocabulum generantis vel genitoris.
Et primum quidem patet, quia illud dicitur verius et principalius quod est ex natura rei quam
quod secundum considerationem fit et ex opere intellectus.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1375–
1379; ed. 1596, p. 614bD–E. For more on relations and emanations, see particularly n. 32 above,
and nn. 67–71 below.
67 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4: “Et quoniam ‘paternitas’ dat intelligi generare vel genuisse per
modum cuiusdam praevii circa illud suppositum quod habet paternitatem, ita quod si ipsam
habet extrinsece, generare intelligitur extrinsecum, si vero intrinsece, generare intelligitur
intrinsecum illi supposito, et pertinet intranee ad subsistentiam eius, idcirco nomen Patris,
dum substantive tenetur, melius et proprius exprimit primum suppositum in divinis quam
vocabulum generantis vel genitoris, non quidem quia paternitas magis constituat quam
generare, sed quia ex vi nominis intelligitur non solum paternitatem, immo et eius praevium
(quod est generare) ad illius subsistentiam intranee pertinere, qui substantive dicitur ‘Pater’.”
Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1397–1405; ed. 1596, p. 615aB–C.
68 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4: “Et per idem patet ad quartum, nisi quod auctoritates
Boethii et Damasceni, qui videntur asserere quod solis relationibus paternitatis et filiationis
supposita distinguantur, non excludit generare et generari, cum sint eadem res et eadem
ratio diversimode concepta, et per consequens eadem constitutiva proprietas, propter quod
cum uni hnoni additur nota exclusionis, intelligi debet reliquum non excludi.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 1437–1441; ed. 1596, p. 615bC.
peter auriol 561
As Auriol sees it, neither Boethius nor Damascene ever said that emana-
tions do not constitute the persons; they said only that relations do consti-
tute the persons. But this, according to Auriol, is correct, since the relations
are the emanations, differing merely on account of the way that we conceive
them. This is Auriol’s marginalization strategy: only action and passion exist
extramentally, nevertheless they are the basis upon which we conceive the
relations corresponding to them, and so relation really (not actually) exists
as action and passion. Thus, the divine relations, paternity and filiation, cor-
respond to (and indeed are) the realities (generation and being generated)
that in fact bring about distinction, just as Boethius and Damascene main-
tained. Moreover, the very foundation of Auriol’s argument here seems to
hark back to John Duns Scotus: since neither Boethius nor Damascenus had
explicitly denied that emanations constitute the persons, this position can-
not be ruled out, no matter what the earlier authors had said about the role
of the relations in personal constitution. The silence of authorities, Auriol
seems to imply, cannot be used to exclude a theological position.69
Over and above the typically Franciscan emphasis on emanation and
the marginalization of the relation account, Auriol makes crystal clear to
his reader how well he fits into the Franciscan tradition by giving a type
of “showdown” between Aquinas and Bonaventure on the order between
our concepts of relation and emanation.70 Aquinas, of course, had argued
that, as we conceive them, the divine relations precede the corresponding
emanations, while Bonaventure had maintained that origin must precede
relation.71 Auriol not surprisingly defends Bonaventure: the Father is the
Father because he generates a Son. Moreover, tying this material into his
view on the unelicited emanations, Auriol can even explain that the reason
Aquinas believed incorrectly that the static relation had to be prior concep-
tually to the emanation was because Aquinas thought that the emanations
were elicited. As Auriol sees it, it was because Aquinas conceived the ema-
nations as coming from somewhere or arising from something that he was
forced to postulate that a supposite had to be distinct by paternity before it
could generate.72 Bonaventure had more correctly realized that in the order
69 For Scotus’ position on authorities, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 7–9, 80–82.
70 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1263–1346; ed. 1596, pp. 613aC–614aE).
71 For the positions of Aquinas and Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, above, around nn. 49–61; for
Auriol’s recitation of their views, see Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1263–
1301; ed. 1596, p. 613aC–bC).
72 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4: “Nec procedunt motiva primae opinionis, fundantur enim
in falsa imaginatione, scilicet quod generare sit ab aliquo esse capiens elicitive, et quod
562 chapter nine
of our concepts—i.e. the way that we are constrained to think about any
production or causal relation—the origin by which the Son is produced
by the Father must precede the relation between the producer and what
is produced.73
Auriol’s attempt to link his trinitarian theology to Bonaventure’s should
not blind us, however, to the great differences between the two Franciscans.
More than just 65 years separate them: they stand on two sides of a great
divide. For Bonaventure, when it came to the order of our concepts of God,
emanation and origin was prior to relation; but in reality all that remained
in God was substance and relation: the properties for Bonaventure were
relations, and he used the standard relation account of personal distinction.
Emanation and origin, for Auriol too, have conceptual priority over relation,
but the reality in God is actually action and passion. The divine properties
in God are origin; they are relation only after a mental act. Auriol can
certainly posit, like Bonaventure, that there is only a conceptual difference
between emanation and relation in God, but the reality designated by those
generari sit via qua aliquid esse capiat elicitive in divinis. Et secundum hoc sequeretur quod
intellectus non posset concipere Patrem constitui per generare, quia necessario intelligeret
quasi quoddam extrinsecum generare, et quasi aliquid egrediens et exiens a supposito Patris;
et eodem modo concipere non posset personam Filii constitui per generari, quia necessario
haberet intelligere generari quasi quiddam extrinsecum per modum praevii et viae cuiusdam
ad suppositum Filii et personalitatem ipsius. Sed quia hoc omnino falsum est, ut declaratum
est saepe, ideo cessat haec difficultas, debet enim concipere, qui recte circa divina considerat,
quod generare a supposito Patris elicitive esse non capiat, sed quod una cum essentia fundet
omnimodam unitatem et Patris personalitatem; et similiter de generari respectu Filii et
suae personalitatis. Et quod dicitur de paternitate, quod secundum modum intelligendi
videtur intranea Patri, et generare extraneum sive progrediens, et ita videtur quod paternitas
praecedat ipsum, dicendum quod ea necessitate qua intellectus paternitatem intraneam
alicui apprehendit, eadem concipit quod eius praevium et causa—videlicet generare, sine
quo paternitas capi non potest—est quid intraneum et insistens.” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 1409–1424; ed. 1596, p. 615aD–F. Auriol attacks on several occasions Aquinas’ ideas on the
conceptual ordering in the constitution of the persons; see, e.g., at and around n. 32 above.
73 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 4: “… sicut dicit opinio secunda, generare secundum modum
intelligendi paternitatem praecedit. Quandocumque enim res aliqua habet duos modos
concipiendi, unum quidem secundum quod est in rerum natura, et alium tantummodo
ex operatione intellectus, primus dicitur praecedere secundum, sicut patet quod ordine
rationis conceptus floris per modum stantis praecedit florere, quod per modum fluxus
concipitur, quoniam in rerum natura flos habet modum quiescentis, modum vero fluentis
a solo opere intellectus. Sed realitas illa quae per generare per modum fluxus importatur,
et per paternitatem per modum quiescentis, habet in sui existentia modum actionis et
fluxus, modum vero habitus et quiescentis ex solo opere intellectus, quia si esset e converso,
non vere et realiter Filius produceretur a Patre, sed connecteretur quidem et referretur ad
ipsum realiter, non tamen realiter emanaret. Ergo secundum modum intelligendi generare
praecedit paternitatem.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1305–1316; ed. 1596, p. 613bD–F.
peter auriol 563
different concepts has been switched. Thus, Auriol agrees with Bonaventure
on a conceptual plane, but in terms of God’s reality, he fits well into the Fran-
ciscan tradition that descended from but reified Bonaventure’s emphasis on
emanations.
Although Auriol fits in well with the Franciscan tradition’s insistence on
the reality of the divine emanations, he also, as we saw above, is interested
in cutting down on the levels of distinction, thereby simplifying the complex
Franciscan trinitarian theology. This is also apparent in his ideas on action
and passion and relation: there is only emanation in God; relations are a
result of cognitive activity. Thus, Auriol’s interpretation of the categories
functions in the context of his trinitarian thought both as a marginalization
strategy and as a means of simplifying the explanation for personal distinc-
tion in God. We can now look at this latter topic in more detail.
3. Personal Distinction, The Divine

Productions, and the Psychological Model
We can observe both Auriol’s stress on the emanations and production

in his trinitarian theology and how Auriol makes use of his own highly
personal theory on the distinction of the persons in one of the flashpoints
that we have encountered throughout this book: the distinction of the
Son from the Holy Spirit. This discussion also provides yet another good
indication of the way that Auriol carefully evaluated the trinitarian thought
available to him. Auriol describes two positions on the matter: the position
of the Dominican tradition as represented by Thomas Aquinas and Godfrey
of Fontaines, and that of the Franciscan tradition as represented by Henry of
Ghent and John Duns Scotus. For the Dominicans, Auriol gives the standard
opposition of relations argument,74 as well as what I above labelled the
“Father” argument: that if disparate relations were sufficient to constitute
74 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 2: “Propter quod dixerunt alii, supponentes quod quaestio rationabilis
sit, sicut patet quod nullo modo Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur personaliter, si non proced-
eret a Filio. Quod potest multipliciter declarari. Omnis enim distinctio in divinis est per
relationes oppositas. Ait enim Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, capitulo 3, quod
omnia unum sunt in divinis, ubi non obviat aliqua relationis oppositio; unde dicit quod dis-
tinctionem facit in Deo oppositio relativa, quod etiam patet ex hoc quod relatio transit in
substantiam, nisi dum ad oppositum comparatur, unde tantummodo distinguit a suo co-
opposito. Sed si Spiritus Sanctus non procedat a Filio, non erit inter eos oppositio relativa.
Igitur personaliter non distinguentur.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 450–458; ed. 1596, p. 354bE–F.
For Auriol’s evaluation of the counterfactual question’s legitimacy, see Ch. 5, above, at n. 105.
564 chapter nine
the persons, then the Father would be two persons on the basis of his
two disparate relations, active generation and active spiration.75 For the
Franciscans, Auriol claims that filiation and passive spiration are proper
constitutives of the Son and the Holy Spirit respectively, and thus their
distinction would remain even if the latter did not proceed from the for-
mer, making allusion to what I have been calling “nested distinctions”.76
Further, different perfect productions cannot produce the same term, or
else that term would take complete being more than once; since genera-
tion and spiration are perfect productions, each produces a different sup-
posite regardless of whether the Son spirates the Holy Spirit or not. And
Auriol uses the standard reply to the “Father” argument in this context:
that one and the same agent can produce two effects through two different
acts.77
Auriol’s own examination of the problem is a fascinating example of
how independent-minded he was, and how he put his ideas on personal
distinction in God to use in solving the pressing trinitarian problems of his
time. Against the Dominican position Auriol argues that it cannot be the
case that the Son is made distinct from the Holy Spirit only (praecise) by
active spiration, i.e. active spiration cannot be the necessary and sufficient
75 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 2: “Praeterea, relationes disparatae non distinguunt supposita, alio-

quin generare et spirare distinguerent Patrem—et ratio huius est quia relatio est habitudo et
intervallum inter correlativa tantum, propter quod nihil aliud differre facit nisi correlativa.
Sed generari et spirari sunt tantummodo proprietates disparatae. Igitur supposita Spiritus
Sancti et Filii non distinguunt.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 485–488; ed. 1596, p. 355aE. For the
“Father” argument and responses to it, see Ch. 5, § 4 above.
76 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 2: “Dixerunt vero alii quod Filius distinguitur personaliter a Spiritu
Sancto, primo quidem et sufficienter per filiationem, secundo vero et concomitanter per acti-
vam spirationem; et per consequens dato quod Spiritus non emanaret ab eo, adhuc sufficien-
ter distingueretur, cum remaneret primum et formale et sufficiens principium distinctivum.”
Electronic Scriptum, ll. 524–528; ed. 1596, p. 355bF. For a more explicit recognition of nested
distinctions, see the last arguments of d. 11, a. 2 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 561–572; ed. 1596,
p. 356aF–bB).
77 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 2: “Praeterea, productiones incompossibiles in eodem supposito
sufficienter distinguunt supposita, etiam omni alio circumscripto, alias si non distinguunt,
concurrunt in eodem supposito, cuius oppositum accipiebatur in subiecto propositionis,
sumebatur enim quod essent incompossibiles in supposito eodem. Sed generari et spirari
sunt incompossibiles in eodem supposito, impossibile est enim idem suppositum bis produci
aut duplici perfectione perfecta et completa, ita quod quaelibet producat totum—tunc enim
altera superflueret cum altera faceret totum. Ergo generari et spirari sufficienter distinguunt
modo suppositali et personaliter Spiritum Sanctum et Filium, esto etiam quod unus ab alio
non procedat. Et per oppositum patet quomodo generare et spirare non distinguunt Patrem,
quia idem suppositum et potest duo producere et duplici productione producere, sicut ad
sensum patet.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 540–550; ed. 1596, p. 356aB–D.
peter auriol 565
source of that distinction. To show this, Auriol modifies the argument that
we have seen Scotus use against the Dominican tradition: what makes a
thing distinct is what constitutes it in being. For Scotus, this had meant
that filiation is what both constitutes the Son as a person, and makes him
distinct from both of the other persons.78 Auriol, however, gives his own
twist to the argument: if it were active spiration that made the person of
the Son distinct from the person of the Holy Spirit, then active spiration
would be the true constitutive of the Son. If this were true, however, filia-
tion would be an “incidental” property (proprietas adventitia), outside of the
Son’s personality proper, something the Dominicans would never admit.79
In short: if the Dominicans maintain that the Holy Spirit would only be
distinct from the Son on account of active spiration (i.e., on account of oppo-
sition of relations), then what role would filiation play in the trinitarian
scheme? Following on from this and relying on a typical Franciscan argu-
ment, Auriol repeats the common view that the Father and the Son are
one spirator by their common spiration; thus, if the Son were made dis-
tinct from the Holy Spirit only on account of active spiration, the Father
and the Son would not be distinct. Because what brings about distinc-
tion is what constitutes, filiation must have a role in the constitution of
the Son, and hence in the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit, and
Auriol takes this as arguing against the Dominican view that the Son and
the Holy Spirit would not be distinct from one another, if the Son did
not spirate the Holy Spirit (i.e., did not have active spiration as a prop-
erty).80
78 For Scotus, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 56–57, 128–129.
79 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Prima quidem quod persona Filii non distinguitur personaliter
a persona Spiritus Sancti per spirare praecise, illo namque persona Filii distinguitur per-
sonaliter, a quo habet quod sit persona, eadem enim est differentia constitutiva speciei, et
condivisiva ab alia specie infra idem genus, ut Porphyrius dicit. Et est notum per se quod
omnis res in tali esse constituit, in quali esse distinguit; unde si albedo distinguit qualitative
album a nigro, dat esse qualitativum, et si distingueret substantialiter, daret esse substan-
tiale. Quod igitur distinguit personaliter, dat esse personam. Sed constat quod Filius non est
praecise persona per spirationem activam, tunc enim filiatio esset extra personalitatem Filii,
et ita non esset proprietas personalis, quod est contra concessum ab omnibus. Ergo spirare
praecise sumptum non distinguit personam Filii a persona Spiritus Sancti.” Electronic Scrip-
tum, ll. 583–592; ed. 1596, p. 356bC–D.
80 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “… quia spirare est idem in Patre et Filio, Pater et Filius sunt unus
spirator. Sed constat quod Pater et Filius non sunt una persona respectu Spiritus Sancti, sic
quod distinguantur ab eo tamquam una persona ab alia una persona. Ergo non distinguuntur
praecise per spirare a persona Spiritus Sancti, immo cum hoc quod per spirare distinguuntur,
aliquid facit ex parte personae Patris paternitas et filiatio ex parte Filii.” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 605–609; ed. 1596, p. 357aA.
566 chapter nine
On the other hand, if it is absurd that filiation is a property incidental

to the Son, something outside of his personality, it is just as absurd that
spiration is some kind of accident that adds itself to the Son.81 Thus, Auriol
turns the same type of argument he used against the Dominicans against
his predecessors in the Franciscan tradition. We have seen several authors
in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition—Henry of Ghent, William of Ware,
and John Duns Scotus among them—claim outright that active spiration
is a quasi-incidental property, a property coming to the Son “after” he is
already constituted and made sufficiently distinct from each of the other
two persons by filiation.82 Auriol finds this to be completely unacceptable.
Auriol is sure that he understands why the Franciscan tradition had made
that mistake: they had thought about filiation as a formal component giving
being to the person of the Son formally, “as whiteness gives being to a white
thing.” As we have already seen, Auriol thinks that this is wrongheaded. To
be sure, Auriol agrees that filiation is important to the Son’s constitution,
and in a certain sense it can even be called “principal”, just as the roof is
considered the principal part of a house. Nevertheless, this does not alter
the fact that the Son cannot arise from filiation alone. For Auriol, as we have
seen, the persons result from the properties like a house results from walls,
roof, and foundation.83 And using his own ideas on personal distinction
81 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Secunda vero propositio est quod nec filiatio sufficienter distinguit
Filium a Spiritu Sancto in personalitate, illud enim non praecise distinguit quod non prae-
cise constituit. Sed filiatio non praecise constituit Filii personalitatem, quia secundum hoc
spiratio activa esset adventitia et extra personalitatem Filii et suam perseitatem ac person-
alem discretionem, quod esse non potest, quia tunc esset accidens sibi adveniens, tamquam
aliquid extrinsecum et sine quo remaneret persona. Ergo impossibile est poni quod sola fili-
atione personaliter distinguatur.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 631–637; ed. 1596, p. 357aE–F.
82 For Henry, see Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 31–32; for Ware, Ch. 5, at and around
n. 91; for Scotus, Ch. 6, at and around nn. 128–129. Aquinas, too, comes close to saying that
active spiration is a “quasi-incidental” property; see Ch. 3, above, at and around nn. 10–11.
83 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Si diceretur etiam quod filiatio constituit modo formali Filii
personalitatem, dicendum est quod personalitas non est participatio alicuius formae eo
modo quo effectus formalis est forma participata; non est enim aliud album quam albedo
communicata subiecto. Non sic autem de personalitate, sed est aliquid resultans, sicut grosso
modo exemplificari potest in forma domus, quae resultat ex pluribus, fundamento videlicet,
parietibus, ac tecto. Iuxta istam ergo similitudinem ratio personalitatis, quae non est aliud
quam perseitas tertii modi aut per se unitas, dicitur resultare ex essentia, generatione passiva,
et spiratione activa in Filio, pro eo quod nullam habet unitatem per se, sed constituunt
eandem unitatem sive perseitatem, et per consequens personalitatem. Dicitur tamen filiatio
‘formalis’, non quod sit forma, sed quia quodam modo principalis, eo modo quo tectum in
domo.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 718–727; ed. 1596, p. 358bB–D.
Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Nec motiva opinionis secundae oppositum huius concludunt. Pri-
mum siquidem non, assumit enim quod sola filiatio constituit Filii personalitatem et quod
peter auriol 567
Auriol can handily explain how the person of the Son is distinct from the
Holy Spirit:
Whenever some things relate in such a way that neither of them has a proper
unity, but they found [together] utterly the same unity, of necessity they
found the same personality, for from the fact that perseity of the third kind
or per se unity is the same as personality, if it is in an intellectual nature, …
if there are some things not having per se unity, then the same number [of
those things] as concur in founding [one and] the same unity also pertain
intrinsically to the same personality. In the Son, however, the essence does
not have unity per se, nor does being-generated, nor even spirating, but they
found the same unity, and are united in utter indistinction .... so there results
from them one perseity and personality. Thus, they concur intrinsically to the
constitution of one person, so that one without the others does not suffice,
nor two without the third.84
For Auriol, the Son is constituted in being when all three indistinct reali-
ties, essence, filiation (or passive generation), and active spiration, result in
one simple unity. Auriol yields no ground to the typical Franciscan argu-
ment that active spiration is not an “essential” (i.e., indispensable) aspect of
the Son’s personality: there are no accidents in God, and the idea of quasi-
incidental properties reminds Auriol of Gilbert of Poitier’s censured posi-
tion on “assisting relations”.85 What constitutes the persons are intrinsic to
spirare sit adventitium et extra personalitatem .... cum hpersona Filiii sit simplex, debere con-
stitui aliquo simplici constitutivo, dicendum quod hoc procedit ex imaginatione quae vera
non est, qua aliqui imaginantur quod proprietas det formaliter esse personam, sicut albedo
dat esse album; non est autem sic, sed personalitas est quaedam per se unitas ex essentia et
proprietate resultans, et pari ratione potest consurgere ex essentia et pluribus proprietati-
bus. Quo vero additur Filium esse personam perfectam, prout a Patre producitur, dicendum
quod verum est, sed ut sic essentia et spirare sibi communicantur; unde sua personalitas ex
illis consurgit, non ex filiatione sola.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 750–766; ed. 1596, p. 359aB–D.
84 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Quandocumque enim aliqua sic se habent quod neutrum illorum
habet propriam unitatem, sed fundant penitus unitatem eandem, de necessitate fundant
personalitatem eandem. Ex quo enim perseitas tertii modi sive per se unitas est idem
quod personalitas, si sit in natura intellectuali … si sint aliqua non habentia unitatem per
se, quot concurrunt ad fundandam eandem unitatem, tot pertinet intrinsece ad eandam
personalitatem. Sed in Filio, nec essentia habet unitatem per se nec generari, nec etiam
spirare, sed fundant eandem unitatem et uniuntur per omnimodam indistinctionem .... et
resultet ex eis una perseitas et personalitas, et per consequens quod concurrant intrinsece
ad constitutionem unius personae, ita ut unum sine aliis non sufficiat, nec duo sine tertio.”
Electronic Scriptum, ll. 643–659; ed. 1596, p. 357bA–D. For the same idea, see the text in
nn. 86, 88, and 89 below.
85 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Praeterea, si personalitas Filii intrinsece non includeret nisi essen-
tiam et generationem passivam, tunc activa spiratio assisteret personae et non constitueret
eam. Hoc autem est erroneum, redit enim error dicentium proprietates assistere perso-
nis. Ergo spirare pertinet intrinsece, et per modum constituentis ad personalitatem Filii et
568 chapter nine
them, and active spiration is just as intrinsic and indispensable to the con-
stitution of the Son as is the divine essence itself, especially since both of
these are communicated from the Father to the Son at once.86 Thus, if the
Son did not spirate with the Father, the Son would not be the Son and would
not even be a person: one of the necessary components of his personality
would be missing.
What is at work here, quite clearly, is the “highest impossibility” argu-
ment mentioned in Chapter Five above. There is only absolute necessity in
God; therefore since the Son can spirate, because he receives the spirative
power from the Father, the Son must spirate, or else the Son is not the Son.87
This method of arguing rules out descriptions like “quasi-incidental” being
applied to God: for Auriol quasi-incidental divine properties are a contradic-
tion in terms. And this is not only true in the case of the Son, but also of the
Father: if the Father did not spirate, he would not be the Father—indeed,
he would not be a person—, since the Father’s spirating is an indispensable
aspect of his personality.88
similiter ad hypostasim Patris.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 671–674; ed. 1596, pp. 357bF–358aA.
On Gilbert of Poitier’s position, see Ch. 4, above, at and around n. 18.
86 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Praeterea, sicut se habet essentia ad personalitatem Filii, sic
se habet spiratio activa, communicatur enim spiratio activa simul et eodem ordine cum
essentia, non est enim imaginandum quod prius communicetur essentia et uniatur filiationi
et deinde quod superveniat spiratio activa, immo eodem ordine quo omnes perfectiones
simpliciter communicantur cum essentia duobus, Filio scilicet et Spiritui Sancto, eodem
ordine cum essentia communicatur Filio spiratio activa, communicatur enim sibi quicquid
est in Patre ad quod non habet oppositionem; non habet autem oppositionem ad activam
spirationem, sicut nec habet ad essentiam, propter quod simul sibi communicantur et
ordine eodem. Sed constat quod essentia communicatur sibi, non tamquam adventitium
personalitatis suae, immo quasi intraneum, ex quo cum proprietate persona constituitur.
Ergo sic erit de spiratione.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 694–703; ed. 1596, p. 358aD–F.
87 On the highest impossibility argument, see Ch. 5, §4 above. Indeed, this is the standard
argument used by Franciscan theologians to prove the necessity of the Latin position on the
Filioque, i.e. that the Holy Spirit is necessarily spirated by both the Father and the Son; Auriol
has merely claimed that this has consequences also for the counterfactual Filioque question,
not only for the de facto question. See for the use of this type of argument, e.g. William of
Ware, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1 / d. 9, q. 3 (= q. 54) (ed. Friedman and Schabel 2004, p. 139428–442); Scotus,
I Ord., d. 11, q. 1, nn. 11–13 (V, pp. 4–5) and I Lectura, d. 11, q. 1, nn. 8–11 (XVII, pp. 128–130);
William of Nottingham, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1 (ed. Friedman 2001, pp. 131185–13294, clearly inspired by
the passage from Ware referred to above); Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 11, a. 1 (ed. Friedman 2001,
pp. 14143–14298, most of which is taken from the passages from Scotus’ Lectura and Ware’s
Sent. commentary referred to above). It should be noted that the factor that motivates Auriol
in the present context—God’s absolute necessity—seems to be very much like that which
guided Auriol to reject the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained powers; see on
this rejection, Schabel 2000a, esp. 76–87.
88 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “… Pater non remaneret persona, si Spiritus Sanctus ab eo non
peter auriol 569
But the fact that Auriol thus turns his back on one of the standard
positions of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition does not mean that he
abandons it in its entirety. The Son would not be the Son if he did not spirate
the Holy Spirit, because there would be missing one of the foundations
absolutely necessary for his personality to result. But, for Auriol, if he were
not spirated by the Son, the Holy Spirit would still have his complete
personality, that is to say essence and passive spiration indistinctly united,
because the Father on his own can perfectly spirate the Holy Spirit: the
Father does not depend on the Son in any way.89 Thus, for Auriol, the Son
would not be distinct from the Holy Spirit if the former did not spirate the
latter, because although the Holy Spirit would remain a perfect person, the
Son would lose his personality. Auriol recognizes that this is not quite the
same as the general Dominican position on the issue, according to which,
if the Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit would be merely
rationally distinct from the Son. For the Dominicans, if the Holy Spirit did
not come from the Son, the Son would still be the Son, while the Holy Spirit
would be merely rationally distinct from the Son; for Auriol, the Son would
not be the Son—would not be a person—, while the Holy Spirit would still
be a fully distinct person as he is now.90
procederet, pro eo quod demeretur spirare quod concurrit intrinsece ad eius personalitatem.
Unde idem iudicium est de Patre, quod est de Filio; a quocumque enim auferatur activa
spiratio, ille non remanet persona.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 778–781; ed. 1596, p. 359aF–bA.
89 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Primum ergo potest faciliter ex praecedentibus concludi, quan-
documque enim aufertur ab aliquo id quod est de intraneitate suae perseitatis et personal-
itatis, aufertur necessario personalitas, et personalis distinctio eiusdem ab alio quocumque.
Sed si Spiritus Sanctus a Filio non procedit, statim aufertur a Filio spirare, quod erat de
perseitate et personalitate Filii, et per consequens generari et essentia, quae remanent, car-
ent unitate, nec fundant aut constituunt perseitatem aliquam seu personalitatem. A Spiritu
vero Sancto non aufertur spirari, cum perfecte spiretur a Patre, non enim unam partem
spirat Filius et aliam Pater, sed est complete et perfecte est ab ipso Patre, et per conse-
quens tota personalitas Spiritus Sancti remanet integra, cum nihil auferatur. Ergo si Spiritus
a Filio non procedat, Filius desinet esse persona, Spiritu Sancto remanente persona, et sic
non distinguetur personaliter Filius a Spiritu Sancto, quod non erit ex parte Spiritus, sed ex
parte Filii, qui desinet esse persona.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 739–749; ed. 1596, pp. 358bF–
359aA.
90 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “… si Spiritus Sanctus non emanaret a Filio, non distingueretur Filius
personaliter ab eo, non quia concurrerent Filius et Spiritus Sanctus in eandem personam, ut
imaginatur prima opinio, immo Spiritus Sanctus remaneret perfecta persona; sed quia Filius
desineret esse persona, contra id quod imaginatur opinio secunda …” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 732–735; ed. 1596, p. 358bE. For examples of the general Dominican view, see, e.g., Godfrey
of Fontaines (Ch. 5, at and around n. 24), Thomas of Sutton (Ch. 8, at and around nn. 69–
72).
570 chapter nine
Although, if he did not spirate the Holy Spirit, the Son would not be the
Son and therefore Son and Holy Spirit would not be personally distinct,
Auriol insists that some thing (aliqua res) would be distinct from the Holy
Spirit, even if it were not the person of the Son. That this would be the
case is clear through the arguments that Scotus had labeled “on the basis
of the emanations”: two perfect passive productions are incompossible in
the same supposite and the Father would have two perfect active produc-
tions under all circumstances.91 Thus, the Father, on account of his two
perfect modes of production, would produce by generation some thing—
not the Son—and by spiration the Holy Spirit, even if the Son did not spi-
rate.
In sum, Auriol has delineated very precisely a type of hybrid position,
with elements taken both from the Dominican and from the Franciscan
positions. Against the Franciscans, the Son and the Holy Spirit would not be
personally distinct if the Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit, because active
spiration is not a property quasi-incidental to the Son, but one fundamental
to his personal constitution; without active spiration, the Son does not
result. Against the Dominicans, however, the Holy Spirit would be just as
much of a person as he is now if he were spirated by the Father alone; and
further, something would exist in place of the Son, and would be distinct
from the Holy Spirit on the basis of their two different modes of production,
generation and spiration. As was the case above with Henry of Harclay,92 it
is Auriol’s focus on the necessity of intrinsic constitutives that leads him to
adopt this hybrid position, although Auriol has worked out the details of the
position far more precisely than Harclay, and has fit the position snugly into
his own trinitarian system.
91 Scriptum, d. 11, a. 3: “Secundum vero, videlicet quod adhuc in Filio remaneret aliqua
res distincta a Spiritu Sancto et incompossibilis personalitati ipsius, manifeste sequitur ex

praedictis. Duae namque passivae productiones, per quas perfecte capit esse productum,
impossibile est quod attingant idem productum; cum enim altera totum faceret, altera nihil
faceret, et iterum una dempta, totus effectus remaneret, quod est contra rationem omnis
causalitatis, quia dempta causa demitur effectus et iterum altera superflueret. Unde ex termi-
nis apparet quod est repugnantia duarum productionum, quarum quaelibet totum complete
producat respectu eiusdem producti. Sed generari et spirari sunt duae productiones passivae,
quae etiam essent distinctae, dato quod Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio …” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 795–803; ed. 1596, p. 359bC–E. For related argumentation, see also nn. 77, 89
above. For Scotus and the “argument on the basis of the emanations”, see Ch. 6, above, at
and around n. 130.
92 See Ch. 8, above, at and around nn. 91–94. I can note here that it would be useful to
examine more thoroughly the relation between Harclay’s and Auriol’s trinitarian theologies
(see also n. 101 below).
peter auriol 571
Above, it has been seen time and time again that theologians holding
a generally Franciscan position made use of nested or layered distinctions
as a way to marginalize the relation account of personal distinction. Thus,
the indispensable emanational distinction was nested inside a relational
distinction of secondary importance. Here it should be noted that Auriol’s
amalgamation of the solutions of the two trinitarian traditions to the prob-
lem of the Son’s distinction from the Holy Spirit does make use of a type of
nested distinction. What Auriol repudiates about the nested distinctions as
they were used by the Franciscans we have seen so far is that moving (coun-
terfactually) from one type of distinction to the other type made no practical
difference to the person constituted. Take as an example either Henry of
Ghent’s proprie/not proprie nested distinction, or the perfecte/imperfecte
distinction of Matthew of Aquasparta or of Alexander of Alessandria in his
early work: the question begs to be asked, what difference is there between
the Son perfecte or proprie constituted and the Son imperfecte or not proprie
constituted?93 The Franciscans claimed (again: counterfactually) that there
were two ways the persons could be constituted, but whether the person
came about in the one way or in the other seemed to have no consequence
for the person constituted. The only purpose nested distinctions would
seem to have served was to make clear the Franciscan prioritizing of the
emanations. Auriol was certainly not the first to wonder about this. Indeed,
awareness of the issue can already be observed, as we saw in Chapter Two
above, in the work of William of Baglione and of Nicholas of Ockham; more-
over, as we saw above in Chapter Seven, in the Liber propugnatorius Thomas
Anglicus could ask Scotus—and the Franciscan tradition as a whole—why
one source of distinction does not suffice, and what the result of the “half-
way” distinction is.94 Auriol, no doubt influenced by the Dominican critique
of this aspect of Franciscan trinitarian theology, also asks this question, and,
as we have seen, he answers it by saying that if the Son were not constituted
proprie, then he would not be the Son, although some thing—not the Son—
would be constituted by the Father’s perfect active generation indistinctly
united with the divine essence.
In several passages examined above, Auriol adopts the characteristically
Franciscan designation for the properties, ‘productions’: as we have seen
before, for Auriol, the properties are actions and passions. Given this, it
93 For Matthew of Aquasparta, see Ch. 2, above, at and around n. 115; Henry of Ghent,
Ch. 4, around nn. 33 and 52; Alexander of Alessandria (first redaction), Ch. 5, n. 81.
94 For William of Baglione and Nicholas of Ockham, see Ch. 2, above, at and around
nn. 34–35 and nn. 131–132 respectively. For Thomas Anglicus, Ch. 7, nn. 107–108.
572 chapter nine
raises the question of how these productions, generation and spiration, are
distinct from each other. This, as we have seen many times, was a flashpoint
between the Dominican and the Franciscan traditions. The Franciscan tra-
dition held generally that generation and spiration were distinct in and of
themselves (se ipsis) but the distinction was based in some way on the dis-
tinction between their sources, nature (or intellect) and will, respectively.
Beginning with Henry of Ghent, this was the foundation of a strong use of
the psychological model of the Trinity. Dominicans, on the other hand, com-
monly held that the emanations were distinct on the basis of the arrange-
ment of the persons with respect to one another, e.g. because in generation
one comes from one, in spiration one comes from two. As is the case with his
discussion of the related issue of the Son’s distinction from the Holy Spirit,
Auriol’s discussion of the distinction of the properties recognizably belongs
to the Franciscan way of looking at that issue, but he definitely advances a
highly personal point of view.
The position that Auriol is most anxious to refute is a metaphorical
understanding of the emanations. Take the major Dominican characteriza-
tion of the emanations from the time of Thomas Aquinas on: generation is
from one alone (the Father), while spiration is from two (the Father and the
Son). The defining characteristic of the emanations was the arrangement
between the persons; and this made sense, because the Dominicans gener-
ally stressed opposition of relation as the factor constitutive of the persons,
relegating emanation to the background. Auriol claims that this cannot
stand. To begin with, how can something’s being from one and something
else’s being from two serve by that mere fact to make those things distinct
from each other: we see many examples of things that can arise from any
number of sources and yet be of the same nature, for example heat from
fire alone or heat from iron and stone colliding to make a spark.95 Further,
it cannot be that spiration is distinct from generation precisely on account
of the former’s coming from the generated person in the Trinity, since the
Son is not a spirator precisely because he is generated, for if being gener-
ated were the reason a divine person spirated, then the ungenerated Father
95 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2: “Praeterea, illud non inducit in productionibus rationis diversi-
tatem, quod potest indifferenter competere productionibus eiusdem et alterius rationis. Sed
esse ab uno et a duobus, potest indifferenter competere productionibus eiusdem rationis et
alterius; unde tractus navis potest esse ab uno solo et a pluribus, et similiter generatio caloris
potest esse ab uno solo, sicut ab igne, et a duobus, sicut a ferro et lapide, ex quorum colli-
sione generatur flamma in aere. Ergo illud non potest esse ratio quod generatio et spiratio
sint productiones alterius rationis.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 440–445; ed. 1596, p. 377aF.
peter auriol 573
would not spirate.96 Finally, bringing up a position that we have already seen
in his solution to the problem of the distinction of the Holy Spirit from the
Son, we know that the Father could perfectly spirate on his own or else he
would depend on the Son; therefore the defining characteristic of spiration
cannot be that it comes from two.97
If Auriol wants to defend a robust understanding of the emanations, he
particularly wants to preserve the strong use of the psychological model.
His principal argument runs like this: since it is not a feature essential and
unique to the Word and the Spirit that the one comes from one and the other
from two—in fact many different things come about in these two ways—,
then if these were the features that made the emanations distinct, the Word
and the Spirit would not be a Word and a Spirit in the truest sense. Put in
another way: being from one and being from two, according to Auriol, is an
extrinsic resemblance rather than an intrinsic property.98 Given his desire
to defend the strong use of the psychological model, it is not surprising that
on this issue in several places throughout his Scriptum Auriol’s principal
opponent is Durand of St. Pourçain. Auriol takes nearly every conceivable
96 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2: “Praeterea, illud non causat distinctionem spirationis quod accidit
spirationi ipsi et est extra rationem ipsius. Sed extra rationem Filii in quantum spirat est
esse genitum. Unde generari accidit sibi, spirator enim in quantum spirator non est genitus,
alioquin Pater non esset spirator; et iterum sicut Filius non eo quo genitus est creator, sic
nec eo quo genitus est spirator, generare insuper et generari accidunt principio spirativo.
Unde nec Pater spirat in quantum generans, nec Filius in quantum generatus. Ergo esse a
genito non distinguit spirationem a generatione.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 402–407; ed. 1596,
p. 376bF.
97 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2: “Praeterea, a quo habent generatio et spiratio esse secundum suas
completas rationes, ab eo habent et in ordine ad ipsum suam completam distinctionem; con-

stat enim quod distinctio generationis a spiratione consequitur eorum rationes completas.
Sed generatio et spiratio sunt secundum suas completas rationes sufficienter et perfecte et
a solo Patre, aeque enim perfecte solus Pater spirat sicut simul Pater et Filius; et similiter
Pater perfecte generat. Ergo generatio et spiratio perfecte distinguuntur in ordine ad solum
Patrem, et per consequens non habet spiratio quod a generatione distinguatur per hoc quod
est a Filio, cum distinguatur ab ea etiam secundum quod est a Patre.” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 365–372; ed. 1596, p. 376aF. For use of the same kind of argument, see at and around n. 91
and esp. n. 89, above.
98 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2: “… in verbo et in spiritu se habent tamquam extrinseca quod
verbum sit ab uno, spiritus autem a duobus, tamquam autem intrinseca sunt quod verbum
constituatur in esse relucenti et spiritus in esse procedenti; esse namque ab uno vel a duobus
potest reperiri in aliis quam in verbo vel spiritu et in aliis quam in natura intellectuali, esse
autem verbum et spiritum competit soli naturae intellectuali. Ergo si Verbum et Spiritus in
divinis solum participent esse ab uno et esse a duobus, non participabunt nisi proprietatem
extrinsecam Verbi et Spiritus, non intrinsecam aut formalem, et per consequens non erit in
eis ratio Verbi et Spiritus principaliter …” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 355–362; ed. 1596, p. 376aD.
574 chapter nine
opportunity to lambast Durand’s particular version of Dominican trinitar-

ian theology. And the reason for this is that, as we have seen, Durand gives
an unmitigated rejection of the psychological model, taking the Dominican
attenuation of its use to an ultimate conclusion. Not only does Durand rad-
ically identify the relations and the emanations, thereafter to nearly totally
marginalize the significance of the emanations, he even specifies that the
psychological model is applicable to God on the basis of appropriation
only.99 For Durand the psychological model was fundamentally metaphor-
ical, and said nothing about God’s trinitarian reality. This Auriol will not
accept:
… the Holy Spirit does not pertain to love metaphorically or transumptively,
rather most properly. For an exemplar is not called such because of its
likeness to the image—quite the opposite: the image is called such because of
its likeness to the exemplar. The trinity, however, that pertains to the image
in us consists in a word pertaining to the intellect and a spirit that pertains to
love. Therefore, it is not because of their likeness to [the word and spirit] as
they exist in us, that the Word and Spirit in the divine, whose image is in our
soul, will pertain to the nature (ratio) of intellect and of love, but rather vice
versa.100
Our mind is an “image” of the divine Trinity. Does it make sense, asks Auriol,
that the exemplar is only metaphorically like the image? The image takes its
meaning from the exemplar; therefore, for there to be an image at all, it must
share features with its exemplar. In us there is an image in which the word
pertains to intellect and the spirit to love; in God therefore the exemplar of
this image must likewise comprise a Word pertaining to the divine intellect
and a Spirit pertaining to divine Love. This is not because God resembles
us, but because we resemble (i.e., are an image of) God. Thus, Auriol rejects
Durand’s metaphorical understanding of the psychological model: in fact
99 For Durand see Ch. 7, § 2, above, esp. nn. 72–76. For some of Auriol’s many attacks on
Durand’s position, see: n. 100 below; Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 158–167,
227–251; ed. 1596, pp. 317bD, 318bC–319aA); Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 156–213, ed. 1596, pp. 619bA–620aD), a. 3 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 1057–1093, 1136–1211, 1333–
1350; ed. 1596, pp. 632aC–bC, 633aD–634aD, 635bF–636aB). For recent studies of Auriol’s
reply to Durand in a related area of theology, see Kitanov 2009; Jeschke 2011, esp. 459–477.
100 Scriptum, d. 10, a. 3: “Quarta demum propositio est quod Spiritus Sanctus non meta-
phorice aut transumptive pertinet ad amorem, immo maxime proprie. Exemplar enim non
dicitur tale per similitudinem ad imaginem, sed magis e converso, imago talis dicitur per
similitudinem ad exemplar. Sed trinitas, quae est in nobis pertinens ad imaginem, consistit
in verbo pertinente ad intellectum et spiritu qui pertinet ad amorem. Ergo Verbum et Spiritus
in divinis, quorum imago est in anima nostra, non pertinebunt ad rationem intellectus et
amoris per similitudinem ad ista, ut sunt in nobis, immo magis e converso.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 334–341; ed. 1596, pp. 342b–343a.
peter auriol 575
the divine Word is more of a word than is the created word. Auriol will
use the psychological model in a strong way. Indeed, Auriol claims that we
can be assured that God exists as three supposites simply because we know
that God has an intellectual nature and that all such beings exist in three
supposites (be they real supposites or merely intentional), just as when our
mind understands and loves itself. The image is thus the basis for a type of
proof of the Trinity.101
The strong use of the psychological model had led both Henry of Ghent
and John Duns Scotus to postulate that there were elicitive sources for the
emanations of the Word and the Spirit: the divine intellect and will. This
was an important element in the strong use of the psychological model: in
both God and in us, word and spirit are produced through an intellectual
and a voluntary emanation, respectively. Thus, in God there is some kind of
intrinsic connection between, respectively, Word and Spirit, their emana-
tions, and the elicitive sources of those emanations, intellect and will, which
act as a type of ultimate foundation for the real personal distinction between
the Son and the Holy Spirit. In fact, the sources of the emanations had been
an important part of Franciscan trinitarian theology from its very earliest
days. They had also been an important part of the Dominican critique of
the Franciscan emanation account. The Dominicans had insisted that the
rational distinction between the attributes of intellect/nature and will was
not sufficient to found the real distinction between the persons; indeed,
only opposition of relations could bring about that real distinction, and the
role the emanations played in personal distinction was deemphasized or
(in the case of Durand) basically eliminated. Although we have seen that
Auriol rejects that last Dominican view, he was influenced by the Domini-
can critique of Franciscan ideas on the emanations’ sources. Auriol rejects
completely the view that the emanations have a source. His major reason for
this we have already encountered: the emanations are unelicited for Auriol,
101 Scriptum, d. 3, q. 3 (= sect. 14), a. 3, n. 54: “… dicunt aliqui trinitatem demonstrari posse ex
imagine, alii vero quod non. Unde dicendum est iuxta illud quod videtur esse verum, quod et
potest demonstrari quod primum principium subsistit in tribus suppositis, uno quidem reali
et duobus intentionalibus, vel quod in omnibus tribus existentibus realibus. Et hoc patet ex
propositionibus duabus. Prima quidem quod omne intelligens se et complacens vel amans se
necessario in tribus subsistentibus triplicatur. Secunda vero quod, cum Deus intelligens sit,
quaevis pars hpotesti eligi: quod illa supposita sint realia, vel quod sint intentionalia quoad
duo, reale vero tantum unum.” Ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, p. 7123–13 (= ms. BAV Borgh. 329, f. 113va). As
occurs not infrequently, this position of Auriol’s bears some similarity to Henry of Harclay’s
view on the matter; cf. Schmaus 1930a, 39–40. Schneider 1972, 13, suggests that John of Naples
in his Quodl. IX, q. 1, may have been replying to this view of Auriol’s.
576 chapter nine
they are simply not the kinds of realities that arise, and therefore they have
no source.102 And yet, as we have seen, Auriol wants to maintain a strong
use of the psychological model, and hence he has an interest in upholding
some kind of connection between, on the one hand, intellect and Word, and,
on the other, will and Holy Spirit. Auriol deals with this particular conun-
drum by holding that, instead of the emanations taking their distinction
from intellect and will, quite the opposite is the case in reality: the intel-
lect and will take their distinction in part from the distinction between the
emanations. For Auriol, the distinction between the attributes, in both God
and in creatures, is a connotative distinction.103 Auriol’s connotative distinc-
tion between the attributes can be characterized as follows: one absolutely
simple thing can nevertheless be assigned distinct features on account of
the different ways that this one simple thing relates to or connotes various
things somehow or another extrinsic to it. The divine essence is one abso-
lutely simple thing, and yet it connotes various things extrinsic to it, and on
the basis of these connotations, we can assign to it attributes that are then
connotatively distinct. Take the divine intellect and will: the divine intel-
lect is utterly the same as the divine essence, but it is the divine essence
as it connotes or stands in a special kind of relation to only certain kinds
of extrinsic actions and objects; the divine will is also utterly the same as
the divine essence, but it connotes a different group of extrinsic actions
and objects than does the divine intellect. Thus, the divine intellect and
102 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2: “Quod enim penes intellectum et voluntatem tamquam penes
productiva principia processiones non distinguantur, ex supradictis apparet; ubi enim non
est elicitivum principium nec productiones elicitae sunt, ibi processionum distinctio ex
productivis principiis ortum habere non potest. Sed saepe extitit declaratum quod ista
in divinis non sunt. Igitur ex ipsis non habet ortum distinctio processionum.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 293–298; ed. 1596, p. 375aF. On unelicited emanations, see §1 of the present
chapter, esp. at nn. 32–43.
103 Scriptum, d. 8, q. 3 (= sec. 23), a. 2, nn. 68, 61: “Ex praemissis potest concludi quid sit
attributum definitive. Est enim conceptus indeterminatus principaliter et in recto secundum

rem et rationem, includens in obliquo certum aliquod connotatum, pertinens ad perfec-
tionem simpliciter, communis Deo et creaturae, in idem re et ratione coincidens cum illo in
quod specificatur … Iustitia vero quo quis reddit unicuique quod suum est … Constat autem
quod in omnibus istis conceptibus nihil est determinatum principaliter, sed solum connota-
tive, cum totus conceptus entis principaliter importetur. Cum enim concipio quo quis reddit
alicui quod suum est, illud ‘quo’ non est determinatum aliquid, sed potest competere omni
rei vel rationi, qua reddatur unicuique quod suum est …” Ed. Buytaert, pp. 9911–7, 98837–44
(also found on the Electronic Scriptum). On Auriol’s connotative distinction and several of
its uses, see: Vignaux 1934, esp. 61–64, 72–80; Gelber 1974, 142–143; Halverson 1998, esp. 34–
39, 63–70; Friedman Forthcoming-d. For considerations of Auriol’s rejection of the formal
distinction, see Wardzinsky 1976, 279–301; Noone 2009, 148–149.
peter auriol 577
will are in every way (secundum rem et rationem) the same, they are the
divine essence, but they are the essence as it connotes different realities
that are in one way or another extrinsic to it. One of Auriol’s most important
examples of the extrinsic realities that the essence connotes that contribute
to the connotative distinction between the divine intellect and will are
the saying of the Word (the intellect) and the emission of the Spirit (the
will).104
This view—that the emanations have no source and that, far from the
divine intellect and will being the basis of the distinction between the ema-
nations, the Word and the Spirit are one of the factors in the connotative
distinction between the divine intellect and will—besides being a logical
consequence of Auriol’s position on unelicited emanations, is also a way
for him to answer a major Dominican critique of the emanation account.
We have already seen that Scotus modified Henry of Ghent’s claim that
the distinction of the emanations could be based on the rational distinc-
tion between the intellect and the will. Agreeing with the Dominicans that
a rational distinction could not be the ground of a real distinction, Scotus
claimed that there was a formal distinction between the attributes. Auriol,
rejecting the formal distinction, denies that intellect and will play any role
at all in the distinction of the emanations: in fact, he insists that quite the
opposite is the case. Auriol has taken an element of the Franciscan trinitar-
ian tradition—that the sources of the emanations were the divine attributes
of intellect and will—and rejected it, while nevertheless, through the device
of the connotative distinction between the attributes, he can still hold an
extremely important feature of the strong use of the psychological model:
he still maintains that there is a tight link between the divine attributes and
the divine emanations. If we consider Scotus and Auriol as taking steps to
counter Dominican criticism of earlier Franciscan trinitarian views by mak-
ing modifications to those earlier views, then we will see a sort of endpoint
to this development in the thought of several Franciscan thinkers working
104 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2: “Praeterea, processionum distinctio ortum non habet ex iis quorum
distinctio attenditur penes ipsasmet processiones. Sed dictum est supra quod intellectus
et voluntas distinguuntur penes connotata, unum autem ex connotatis per intellectum
potest esse dictio Verbi seu generatio, et ex connotatis per voluntatem emissio Spiritus sive
spiratio flatus, saltem eo modo quo intellectus et voluntas activa sunt. Ergo productiones non
distinguuntur penes intellectum et voluntatem, sed magis e converso, intellectus et voluntas
penes productiones connotative distingui possunt.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 302–308; ed. 1596,
p. 375bB. There are other connotata that contribute to the connotative distinction between
God’s intellect and will, e.g. God knows but does not will evil.
578 chapter nine
after Auriol (e.g., Walter Chatton, Francis of Marchia, and William of Rubio),
who in fact reject that the psychological model is a literal description of
God’s trinitarian reality (see Chs. 11 and 12 below).
Auriol’s own solution to the problem of the distinction of generation from
spiration is, however, heavily indebted to his own Franciscan tradition, in
which the productions were held to be distinct in an irreducible way.105
Auriol maintains that passive generation and passive spiration—roughly
what the Franciscan tradition had called “disparate relations”—are distinct
in and of themselves (se ipsis),106 and he even makes the stronger claim
that “relations and actions and passions and the rest of the categories
that indicate the circumstances of things or forms advening extrinsically
are formally of different rationes [from each other].” Action and passion
are, according to Auriol, by their very nature distinct; hence the divine
properties are by their very nature distinct.107 So, the properties constitutive
of the divine persons are distinct in and of themselves, and this applies
fully to the disparate relations, passive generation and passive spiration. Of
course, there was a common Dominican argument against the irreducible
distinctness of disparate relations (and hence the emanations): disparate
relations are only distinct because their foundations are distinct. Auriol
thinks that he can refute that by a simple counterexample: take a fire
that starts another fire; these two fires are similar by their quality of heat;
105 See, e.g., Bonaventure, Ch. 1, above, at nn. 76, 84; and Scotus, Ch. 6, at nn. 142–147.
As noted above, the thought of Henry of Ghent diverges somewhat from the Franciscan
tradition on this point: Henry holds that the distinction between the emanations is in fact
grounded upon the distinction between their sources, the divine intellect and will; cf. Ch. 4,
at and around nn. 53–58.
106 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 4: “Recolligendo igitur ea quae dicta sunt, apparet quod passiva gen-
eratio et passiva spiratio distinguuntur realiter, et sunt alterius rationis ex se ipsis formaliter.
Similiter etiam generare et generari distinguuntur realiter et sunt alterius rationis, in quan-
tum generare est activa productio et generari passiva; eodem autem modo distinguuntur
spirare et spirari; generare autem et spirare nullo modo realiter distinguuntur, nec sunt
etiam alterius rationis praecisibilis et distinctae intelligibilis, quamvis sint alterius rationis,
indistinctae tamen.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 833–837; ed. 1596, p. 382bF. Scriptum, d. 13, ad
quinto obiecta: “… dicendum est quod veritatem concludunt; generatio namque passiva et
passiva spiratio, et realiter et formaliter sive quiditative distinguuntur se ipsis.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 922–923; ed. 1596, p. 384aA–B. See also at and around n. 45 above. For Auriol’s
detailed argument—based on his understanding of philosophical psychology—for this view,
see Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 560–625; ed. 1596, p. 379a–b).
107 For the quotation see n. 108 below, and see also the first quotation in n. 106 above. Auriol
argues at length for the view that action and passion are two distinct categories, and hence
that their instances are distinct se ipsis, in Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 447–
558; ed. 1596, pp. 377bA–379aA) and Scriptum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 353–501;
ed. 1596, pp. 600bA–602bA); see also at and around nn. 52–53 above.
peter auriol 579
the heat of the first fire is also the source of the heat in the second fire;
therefore these disparate relations, similitude and production, have the
same foundations, yet are distinct.108 Thus, for Auriol, these properties by
which (together with the essence) distinct persons result, precisely because
of their utter indistinction from the essence, must be themselves irreducibly
distinct: there is no prior cause of or reason for their distinction. And Auriol
names the properties that are distinct in this irreducible way in God: being
the one who conceives, being the one who is conceived, and being the
one given (like love). The ultimate explanation for distinction in Auriol’s
trinitarian theology, as it was for Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and
many other theologians in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition, is provided
by the psychological model.109
4. Auriol on the Word: Concepts as esse apparens110
In recent publications, Claude Panaccio has pointed out that two interre-
lated currents run through late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century
108 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2: “Quod igitur relationes, et actiones ac passiones, et cetera praedica-
menta, quae dicunt rerum circumstantias seu formas extrinsecus advenientes, sint formaliter
alterius rationis et non per fundamenta, quamvis in fundamentis, declarari multipliciter
potest. Si enim relationes essent alterius rationis propter fundamenta et terminos, non pos-
sent esse rationis alterius, manentibus eisdem terminis et eisdem fundamentis; sed cum ignis
generat ignem sibi simillimum in calore, calor existens in igne generante et ille qui existit in
igne genito sunt fundamenta et termini duarum relationum alterius rationis, videlicet simil-
itudinis, quae est relatio de primo modo, et relatio principii, quae est de secundo modo.
Constat enim quod unus calor est principium alterius et quod secundum eos assimilatur
genitum generanti. Ergo relationes sunt alterius rationis se ipsis formaliter et in eisdem fun-
damentis et terminis.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 491–500; ed. 1596, p. 378aB–C.
109 Scriptum, d. 13, a. 2: “Ex praedictis itaque quatuor propositionibus colligi potest, quid
veritatis sit in praesenti quaesito, quoniam distinguuntur Verbum et Spiritus, generatio et

spiratio suis formalibus rationibus et sunt propriissimae in Deo. Patet etiam quare Spiritus
non potest dici Filius, quia non procedit quo modo formatus et in esse conspicuo positus,
quod est esse similitudinarium, et esse natum ac conceptum, sed procedit quo modo datus
et in esse egresso positus, secundum vim et motum amoris.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 609–614;
ed. 1596, p. 379bD.
110 There is a great deal of literature on Auriol’s psychology and epistemology. Places to
begin would include: Pinborg 1974; Tachau 1982, 1983, and 1988, esp. 85–112; Kobusch 1987,
pp. 141–155; Perler 1994a, 1994b, 2004, esp. 253–294; Pasnau 1997, 69–76; Friedman, 1997a,
2009b (and further literature referred to there); Rijk 2005, esp. 352–357 and 695–747 (ed. of
Scriptum, d. 23); Amerini 2009. I am currently working on a book Peter Auriol on Concepts
(Friedman Forthcoming-c), where I will deal at greater length with many of the issues
discussed in the section below and contextualize them in Auriol’s ontological, psychological,
and epistemological thought.
580 chapter nine
Franciscan psychology.111 The first we have already seen in Scotus: Francis-

cans tended to deny that there is a product separate from and produced
by the intellectual act, and hence they claimed that the intellectual act
itself is the word or concept. The second dealt with the relation between
the external object, the concept, and the spoken word: what does the spo-
ken word primarily signify? The Franciscans practiced a “back-to-the-thing”
approach: spoken words for the Franciscans primarily signify the thing the
word is about, and this signification is merely mediated by the concept.
Because signifying a thing calls that thing to mind (i.e., causes an intellection
of it), the primary significate must be what is called to mind, which is not
the concept, but the extramental thing itself.112 Thus, Franciscan philosoph-
ical psychology and semiotics were on the whole directed toward having as
strong a link as possible between language and reality, and toward making
mental intermediaries play as minor a role as possible.
Peter Auriol stands firmly within the Franciscan tradition with respect
to the second of these philosophic currents, but interestingly he goes about
guaranteeing the link between spoken words and reality in a manner that
bucks the first of them. This is just to say that Auriol insists on a very
close connection between spoken word and thing signified, but in his
theory this very close connection is secured by postulating a term for the
mental act of conception. In fact, Auriol thinks that this term of the mental
act—the word or concept—and the external thing that is conceived are
identical by a strict numerical identity. Auriol insists that concepts are
extramental particulars, but having a different type of existence, a different
modus essendi, than the real existence they have extramentally. Auriol
calls this special type of existence ‘intentional’ or ‘objective’ existence,
or alternatively he says that the concept is the extramental thing in esse
apparens.113 Thus, Auriol claims that “in every intellection there emanates
111 See esp. Panaccio 1992, 129–132; Panaccio 1999, 177–219. As Panaccio shows, although
not all those who fit into these two philosophical currents were Franciscans, the majority
were. On this topic (and its aftermath in late-scholasticism), see also Meier-Oeser 1997,
esp. 86–103; Meier-Oeser 2004, esp. 243–246.
112 See Panaccio 1992, 131; Panaccio 1999, 214–219.
113 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Relinquitur ergo ut detur septimum, scilicet quod hconceptusi
sint verae rosae particulares et flores, non quidem ut existunt exterius, sed ut intentionaliter
et obiective, et secundum esse formatum concurrunt in unum quid simpliciter, quod est
praesens in intellectu per speciem intelligibilem vel per actum. Et cum constet quod tale quid
non est in animo nisi dum actu intelligit, species autem intelligibiles remanent sine actu,
manifeste concluditur quod talis res in esse huiusmodi non emanat nisi dum actu intelligitur
et in intellectione sive notitia actuali.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 520–525; ed. 1596, p. 624bB. For
Auriol’s use of the phrase res in esse apparenti, see e.g. n. 127 below.
peter auriol 581
and proceeds nothing other than the cognized thing itself in a certain
objective existence through which (secundum quod) it serves to terminate
the intellect’s gaze.”114 What characterizes this type of existence is that it is
a particular extramental object, e.g. Socrates, but indistinguishably mixed
together with (indistinguibiliter immiscetur) passive conception, i.e. the
formation of a concept grasping Socrates. A concept of Socrates, then, is
Socrates as conceived, it is Socrates as an object of the intellect.115 Upon
intellectual acquaintance, Socrates as really existing is converted through
the act of conception, i.e. by being conceived, into Socrates as intentionally
existing.
We know on at least two grounds that Auriol means literally what he
says about the concept of some thing being that thing in esse apparens,
and not being a mere token of that thing fashioned by the mind. First,
Auriol attributes just this latter theory—that the concept is a “specular idol”
with some type of real existence produced by the intellect and terminating
its gaze—to Thomas Aquinas and his followers, and Auriol rejects it.116
114 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 1: “… in omni intellectione emanat et procedit, non aliquid aliud,
sed ipsamet res cognita in quodam esse obiectivo, secundum quod habet terminare intuitum
intellectus.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 365–366; ed. 1596, p. 622aF. Cf. Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 1:
“Quod in omni intellectione necesse est quod res emanet in esse intentionali …” Electronic
Scriptum, l. 324; ed. 1596, p. 320aA.
115 Scriptum, d. 23, a. 2, § 22: “Unde considerandum quod secus est de conceptione pas-
siva qua formaliter res constituitur in esse concepto, illa enim clauditur indistinguibiliter
intra rationem animalis et hominis et ceterorum conceptuum obiectivorum … Et propter
hoc obiectiva conceptio passive dicta non respicit rem per modum substrati, immo res quae
concipitur est aliquid sui et immiscetur indistinguibiliter sibi. Unde conceptio rosae idem
est quod rosa, et conceptus animalis idem quod animal. Iste nimirum conceptus claudit
indistinguibiliter realitates omnium particularium animalium et quendam modum essendi,
qui est intentionalis, qui non est aliud quam passiva conceptio. Non quod possit intellectus
realitates illas prout clauduntur in conceptu praecise accipere et super illas modum inten-
tionalem essendi sive conceptionem passivam superextendere eo modo quo super albe-
dinem fundat similitudinem, immo realitates illas a conceptione distinguere non potest. Sed
constituitur unus conceptus simpliciter et intentio, quae dividi non potest. Super hoc autem
totum postmodum reflectendo fundat relationem seu habitudinem intellectus. Et secundum
hoc patet quomodo animal et homo ut sic absque omni respectu ad intellectum sunt inten-
tiones primae, quoniam claudunt realitatem ut conceptam passive.” Ed. Perler 1994a, p. 248
(= ed. Rijk 2005, pp. 71817–71912).
116 Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 1: “Opinio Thomae, parte prima, q. 33, a. primo, et Hervaei
in tractatu De verbo et in suo quolibet, et Bernardi in impugnationibus contra Henricum.

Fuerunt alii qui dixerunt quod per actum intellectus producitur conceptus mentis, qui
quidem non est species impressa in intellectu a phantasmate, nec est ipse actus intelligendi,
sed differt realiter ab utroque; est autem quaedam forma specularis ad quam intellectio
terminatur, et in qua tamquam in idolo rem aspicit ultimate.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 169–
174 (the presentation of the view continues to l. 184); ed. 1596, pp. 317bF–318aB. Auriol replies
582 chapter nine
Second, if the extramental thing and its concept were not identical, Auriol
would undermine the strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian
theology that we have seen he holds: for Auriol, the divine Word is more
of a word than is our word. Yet, if the concept produced were not identical
to the thing conceived (merely in another mode of existence), then Auriol’s
theory could not explain how the Son is (strict identity) the divine essence,
merely differing from the other persons because of his passive conception
as the divine Word.117
Thus, Auriol’s philosophical psychology is clearly directed toward solving
trinitarian difficulties. It is also, however, fashioned in answer to problems
that he perceived in the various theories of concepts and their formation
with which he was confronted. Auriol arrives at the word’s being the thing
conceived in another state of existence, i.e. intentional existence, through a
process of elimination. He sets out what is in effect a riddle, and enumerates
seven options in answer to it. Auriol’s premiss is that no one can deny that
we can have universal concepts, i.e. concepts of some thing not limited to
any of its particular instantiations. Take for instance the concept ROSE:118
this universal concept is all roses, since it is rose without any qualifications
or limitations whatsoever (rosa simpliciter). Mutatis mutandis, the same
goes for the universal concept FLOWER. Further, we can make universal
judgements on the basis of these concepts, e.g. that all roses are flowers.119
Given these premisses, Auriol’s problem is to explain what a universal
concept is:
Because it is either the intelligible species; or a species existing in the phan-
tasm; or the intellect’s act; or some accidental thing existing subjectively in
the intellect to which the intellection is terminated; or some kind of subsis-
tent rose or flower, as Plato maintained; or particular roses existing extra-
mentally; or the particular roses existing objectively in the soul according to
another [type of] being, namely intentional or formed being.120
at length to this position at ibid., ll. 253–322 (ed. 1596, pp. 319aB–320aA). See also Scriptum,
d. 27, q. 2, a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 246–252; ed. 1596, p. 620bE), where the same position
is imputed to Aquinas, Hervaeus, and Bernard, and is among the views that Auriol rejects.
117 For further arguments used by Auriol in favor of the necessity of esse apparens in
intellectual cognition, see esp. Friedman 2009b, § 3.

118 In what follows I have designated universal concepts by words in all capitals.
119 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Nullus enim potest negare quin experiatur concipere se rosam
simpliciter, et florem simpliciter, et compositionem floris cum rosa, aspiciendo quod rosa
est flos, et ita iudicando de rosa, ergo et flore, quem sic quilibet dum intelligit praesentem in
animo experitur, oritur nostra quaestio: quid sit illud?” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 460–463; ed.
1596, p. 623bD.
120 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Aut enim est species intelligibilis; aut species existens
peter auriol 583
Auriol eliminates the first four options he presents on two main grounds.
What all of the first four options share is the postulation of some type of
real being existing subjectively—i.e., inhering—in the soul, whether that is
some type of species or the intellectual act or a “specular idol” that results
from the intellectual act. These are all concept tokens, with their own real
and particular being. But for this very reason, according to Auriol, if any
of them were (ontologically speaking) the universal concept, then when
I predicated flower of rose, I would make a false predication, inasmuch
as concept ROSE would not be concept FLOWER. A predication of this
sort would be as faulty as claiming ‘Socrates is Plato’, given that Socrates
and Plato are two really differing human beings.121 Further, following up
on a typical Franciscan motivation, Auriol claims that if concepts were
some type of representational entity with subjective being inhering in the
soul, then we would never have intellectual acquaintance with extramental
things themselves, since our knowledge would extend only to these really
existing entities.122
Upon similar grounds, we cannot allow Plato’s solution to the problem of
universals, that animal and human being as such (ut sic or in quantum huius-
modi) have any real extramental existence. First, when we predicate flower
of rose, we would simply be maintaining that the unique idea FLOWER
could be predicated of the unique idea ROSE, not that every rose is a flower.
In fact, according to Auriol, on Plato’s view we could never have univer-
sal knowledge at all, since our intellectual acquaintance would extend only
to the subsistent ideas and never to particular instantiations of the idea.123
in phantasmate; aut actus intellectus; aut res aliqua accidentalis existens subiective in
intellectu ad quam intellectio terminetur; aut rosa quaedam vel flos subsistens sicut posuit
Plato; aut rosae particulares existentes extra; aut rosae illae particulares secundum aliud
esse, intentionale videlicet et formatum, existentes in anima obiective.” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 464–468; ed. 1596, p. 623bD.
121 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… conceptus esset falsus quo intra nos intuemur rosam esse
florem, si vel rosa et flos quae praesentia experimur species essent intelligibiles, vel species
in phantasmate, vel actus intellectus, vel formae accidentales existentes in mente: non enim
unum esset aliud, si sic foret.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 471–474; ed. 1596, p. 623bE.
122 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Tum quia nec scientiae nec definitiones nec disputationes
essent de rebus quae sunt extra, quia non disputamus nisi de flore et rosa quos in anima
praesentia intellectualiter experimur. Si ergo ista fuerint actus vel species et ibi sistitur,
numquam disputamus nec habemus scientiam de rebus quae sunt extra, et sumus caeci circa
ea.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 479–482 (see further, ll. 482–489); ed. 1596, p. 623bF (see further
624aA–B). For the same argument used about Platonic ideas, see n. 123 below.
123 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Non potest etiam dari quintum, videlicet quod flos vel rosa
quos in animo praesentialiter experimur sicut existentes extra in aliqua realitate … Tum quia
nec praedicationes essent verae unius taliter subsistentis de alio subsistente; tum quia nec
584 chapter nine
On the other hand, if our concepts were particular things in the extramen-
tal world as they exist extramentally—a final alternative Auriol offers—we
would be unable to make universal judgements of any kind, since there
would be nothing universal about our knowledge: instead of knowing that
all mules are sterile, we would know only that this mule is sterile and that
that mule is sterile.124 To generalize Auriol’s major argument: if our universal
concepts were any particular “thing” with real being—regardless of whether
that real being were intra- or extramental—, then we would never have the
necessary, immutable, scientific knowledge, that we know we have, since
we would never get beyond the particular to the universal.
What Auriol has done is give the parameters in which his own answer
must fit: all of the other alternatives erred either (or both) on the side of
being too far divorced from particulars, thereby cutting off our intellect
from the real world, or being limited only to particulars, thereby robbing
us of universal and necessary science. He has given a fundamentally epis-
temological conundrum that leads him to a specific ontology of concepts:
a concept must be the thing it is a concept of, and have no real being of its
own, merely diminished or intentional being, or else it would be an interme-
diary cutting us off from what we should have knowledge of. Thus, Auriol’s
conclusion is that the universal concepts ROSE and FLOWER are particular
roses and particular flowers, not as they exist outside in the real world, but in
esse apparens, intentional existence, and this just is particular things inex-
tricably mixed together with passive conception. Concepts, then, only exist
while we actually understand,125 and hence while we are putting the thing
understood into esse apparens. In fact, following up on Duns Scotus’ criti-
cism of Henry of Ghent’s ideas on the verbum mentis, Auriol maintains that
every act of the intellect produces a word, confused and imperfect words
emanating from confused and imperfect acts, distinct and perfect words
from distinct and perfect acts. Thus, Auriol repudiates Henry’s view that
scientiae essent de particularibus, sed de talibus subsistentibus rebus, nec, scito quod omnis
triangulus habet tres, aliquid noscerem de particulari triangulo.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 490–
496; ed. 1596, p. 624aC.
124 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Non potest etiam poni sextum, quod videlicet particulares
rosae vel flores ut sunt extra in rerum existentia particulariter et distincte sint rosa vel flos
simpliciter quod experimur in mente … quia scientiae et definitiones non essent de naturis
simpliciter et universalibus, sed de particularibus et individuis ut particularia et individua
sunt, quod est contra Philosophum, VII Metaphysicae et II Priorum, qui ait quod scire possum
de omni mula quod est sterilis, vel de omni triangulo quod habet tres, et tamen ignorare de
hac mula particulari …” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 502–511; ed. 1596, p. 624aE–F.
peter auriol 585
knowledge is at two settings only: confused knowledge that is not a word,

and distinct or declarative knowledge that is a word.126
We have seen that, in line with general Franciscan tendencies, Auriol has
made the concept “invisible” by identifying it in a very strict sense with the
thing understood (merely in another mode of existence). Simultaneously
he has turned his back on another Franciscan tendency: that of identifying
the act of understanding with the concept. Auriol abandons this Franciscan
idea, because the act of understanding has real, subjective existence, which
Auriol claims a concept cannot have. Of course, the act of understanding
is a crucial element in our having concepts, since it is through the act of
understanding, i.e. passive conception, that the thing takes its intentional
existence. What is required, on Auriol’s account, in order for us to have an
act of understanding are the following: our own conceptual faculties and
some representation or “likeness” of the object. The composite from faculty
and likeness Auriol calls “the absolute in the intellect” or “the absolute of
intellection”, and this absolute is the sine qua non of the formation of the
esse apparens, since esse apparens, like every diminished being, depends
completely for its existence on some absolute being.127 This absolute of
126 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 1: “Quarto vero, quia dicit notitiam claram et distinctam tantum-
modo dici verbum, certum est enim quod in omni notitia gignitur verbum, vel perfectum vel
imperfectum: in obscura quidem verbum obscurum, et in confusa confusum, in clara vero
et distincta, distinctum et clarum, sicut Augustinus dicit V De trinitate, cap. 15 .... Unde quod
concipitur realiter, dicitur foetus, aliquando tamen non perficitur, sicut patet in abortivis; et
eodem modo de verbo et conceptu mentali: sunt enim aliqui conceptus imperfecti et quasi
abortivi, omnes tamen possunt dici conceptus et verbum.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 342–350;
ed. 1596, p. 622aB–C.
Ibid., a. 2: “Non valet etiam quinta, verum est enim quod in omni actu intellectus
emanat verbum: in confuso quidem confusum, et in distincto distinctum, in imperfecto
imperfectum, et in perfecto perfectum. Et quod Augustinus dicit non in omni conceptu
formari verbum, intelligendum est quod non verbum perfectum vel verbum amatum, ea
enim quae sic concipimus, quod odimus et nolumus, non proprie dicimur concipere, sed
magis abicere et refugere. Et ad hoc refertur intentio Augustini ut apparet ibidem.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 788–793; ed. 1596, p. 628aE–F. In the first quotation, Auriol is explicitly replying
to Henry’s view (on which see Ch. 4, § 3 above, passim). For further reaction of Auriol to
Henry’s ideas on concept formation, see Ch. 6, above, in n. 184.
127 Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 1: “Secunda vero propositio est quod res non potest habere tale
esse apparens, nisi ratione alicuius absoluti realis existentis in intellectu: omne namque
deminutum reducitur ad aliquid reale, alioquin nihil esset et in se et in alio. Sed res in
esse apparenti sive rei apparitio est omnino quid deminutum, unde nihil est in se. Ergo
necesse est quod sit aliquod reale in intellectu, ratione cuius dicatur esse .... Relinquitur ergo
quod sit illud absolutum a quo oritur notitia obiectiva coniunctum quoddam ex potentia
intellectiva et ex similitudine ipsa. Nec enim potentia per se ipsam ponit res in esse formato,
nec similitudo, aut qualitas quaecumque, sed utrumque simul parit notitiam obiectivam
586 chapter nine
intellection is indeed the act of understanding or actual intellection through

which the thing is put into esse apparens,128 and this act itself necessarily
has two aspects to it. First, it is a production, since it makes something
appear by putting that thing into esse apparens. But because everything
that appears, appears to someone or some cognitive power,129 by virtue of
the actual intellection that puts something into esse apparens, the mind
understands that thing. The intellect, then, through an intellectual act,
understands that which it put into esse apparens through the very same
intellectual act. Auriol should probably not be interpreted as meaning that
these aspects are temporally distinct moments—there is merely a logical
order: understanding the object of cognition presupposes the production of
esse apparens. This one act, then, has two logically ordered functions. Thus,
the formation of a concept and the understanding of what is grasped in that
concept are inextricable for Auriol.130 On this scheme, the thing posited in
sive ponit res in esse apparenti …” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 365–369, 394–397; ed. 1596,
pp. 320bC, 321aB. For Auriol’s complete discussion, see ibid., Electronic Scriptum, ll. 364–425;
ed. 1596, pp. 320bB–321bA. For the term, “absolute of intellection” (absolutum intellectionis),
see below, nn. 130, 135, and for more on this aspect of Auriol’s thought see Friedman
Forthcoming-a.
128 Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 1: “Ex quo patet quod intellectio actus non nominat solam
similitudinem nec unam formam simplicem, sed compositum ex potentia et ex similitudine

rei, ambo enim constituunt intellectionem, quia sola similitudo non est intellectio, nec
sola potentia, sed simul utrumque et ab utroque paritur obiecti apparitio sive praesentia
intentionalis et relucentia obiectiva.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 415–418; ed. 1596, p. 321aE–F.
129 Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 1: “… omne quod apparet, alicui apparet, et omne quod lucet,
alicui dicitur lucere; talis autem conceptus dicitur apparitio et relucentia quaedam; habet
ergo habitudinem ad intellectum in actu tamquam ad id cui lucet et cui apparet.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 441–443; ed. 1596, p. 321bC. Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… apparere non est aliud
quam obiici alicui potentiae cognitivae, unde importat habitudinem ad cognitionem, omne
enim quod apparet, alicui cognoscenti apparet.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 883–885; ed. 1596,
p. 629bD (also, e.g., ibid., Electronic Scriptum, ll. 904–906; ed. 1596, p. 630aA).
130 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Tertio etiam non obsistit, quia licet in intellectione actuali
emanet obiectum in esse terminativo et intentionali, nihilominus intelligere non dicitur

formaliter producere illud obiectum, quia cum absolutum intellectionis illud obiectum in
esse intentionali producat, et intra se producat; quae quidem sunt habitudines duae: sub
prima habitudine qua producit appellatur ‘loqui’ vel ‘dicere’, sub illa vero qua intra se vel
sibi ‘intelligere’ nominatur, ut sit loquens vel dicens intellectus noster prout per absolutum
intellectionis obiectum illud producit, sit autem intelligens prout sibi illud locutum est vel
productum. Unde si imaginarentur quod produceret alteri et extra se, iam non loqueretur sibi
nec intelligeret.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 557–565; ed. 1596, p. 625aB–C. This view of Auriol’s,
that there are two “moments” in the same act of understanding is discussed several times
in his Scriptum; see also, e.g., d. 9, q. 1, a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 427–489, ll. 580–588; ed.
1596, pp. 321aA–322bE, p. 323bC–D); d. 35, q. 1, a. 1 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 650–762; ed. 1596,
pp. 756bB–758aE); for a study, see Friedman Forthcoming-a.
peter auriol 587
esse apparens is the balance point, a type of hinge, on which the two aspects
of the act of understanding turn: it is the product of that act, it is also the
object of our understanding, that which and by which we understand.131
What the act of understanding does to the thing understood, then, is
put it into another state of being: intentional being. Auriol explicitly says
that “a thing and its intention [i.e. concept] do not differ numerically with
respect to anything absolute”; they are the same thing numerically. What
thing and a concept of the thing differ by is a respect or a relation—and
this is no ordinary respect “fixed to or superimposed upon that thing, as
are other relations; rather it is utterly intrinsic and indistinguishably joined
to it”. This intrinsic relation, Auriol tells us, is the appearance of the thing
as an object of perception (apparere) to a perceiver.132 Hence, for Auriol, it
is intrinsic to each and every thing to have two different modes of being:
real or extramental being, on the one hand, and intentional or objective
being, on the other. Unlike real being, the thing’s intentional being needs
a perceiver in order to actualize it. This is only to say that, it is through the
act of conceiving that a thing is put into intentional being, and that, as we
have seen, the thing and passive conception are so indistinguishably mixed
together that they cannot be separated.
Just from the terminology he uses in his philosophical psychology we
might have guessed that for Auriol concept theory was meant to answer
trinitarian questions. In fact, Auriol claims that “everything said about the
Word is saved, if he emanates as God posited in objective being”, and what
specifically is saved is “the identity of essence and distinction of origin”.133
For Auriol a mental word is the extramental thing in intentional existence,
and this existence is, as we have seen, described by him as being the thing
indistinguishably mixed together with passive conception. Thus, the two
“parts” making up a concept of something—the thing itself and the passive
131 I am deliberately leaving to the side here many issues that a more complete discussion
of Auriol’s theory of concept formation would have to take into account, e.g. the status of
intelligible species and the functions of the agent and possible intellect. I will deal with these
issues at greater length in Friedman Forthcoming-a and Forthcoming-c; see also Friedman
2000.
132 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… considerandum est quod res in esse formato posita
non claudit in se aliquid absolutum nisi ipsam realitatem. Unde non ponit in numerum
res et sua intentio quantum ad aliquid absolutum, claudit tamen aliquid respectivum,
videlicet apparere. Quod non debet intelligi ut affixum aut superpositum illi rei, sicut ceterae
relationes, sed omnino intrinsicum et indistinguibiliter adunatum.” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 584–588; ed. 1596, p. 625aF–bA. The same point is made in the text found in n. 115 above.
133 See the text found in n. 143 below.
588 chapter nine
conception of the thing—cannot be separated, because they form one

utterly simple unity. Indeed, Auriol claims that any judgement that can be
made about the extramental thing can also be made about the concept of it,
because the two elements that make up the concept are inseparably joined
together.134 Of course, this is parallel to the way that Auriol described the
divine essence and the divine properties: two utterly indistinct realities,
neither having a proper unity of its own, but together forming an utterly
simple and distinct unit, a person. And Auriol makes explicit the way his
philosophical psychology works as an integral part of his trinitarian thought:
I say that just as the absolute of intellection relates to actively forming
or making a thing appear, in this way the essence in the divine relates to
generating, and neither can be conceived without the other; thus, they are
one by a unity of utter indistinction. Similarly also the passive appearing
(apparitio) through which a rose holds universal being (esse simpliciter)
cannot be conceived without the universal rose (rosa simpliciter), nor vice-
versa. Thus, although the concept ROSE is not exclusively being-conceived,
since in addition it is rose, nevertheless it cannot be analyzed (resolvi) into the
realities of rose and of being-conceived as if it were two things .... In the same
way the Word in the divine, which includes both being-conceived or being-
generated passively as well as the divine essence, cannot be analyzed (resolvi)
by any intellect into being-generated and essence, and it is an absolutely
simple thing on account of the unity of utter indistinction …135
134 Scriptum, d. 23, a. 2, § 23: “Dicendum quidem ad hoc quod idem est iudicium de
prima intentione et de vera re, unde si ista est per se primo modo ‘animal est vera res’,
et ista ‘animal est prima intentio’. In utraque namque praedicatur ens: in prima ens reale,
in secunda ens intentionale. Cum igitur animal in quantum differt ab homine ratione non
sit praecise res, immo includens aliquid rationis, nec sit praecise ratio, immo includens
aliquid verae realitatis, nec sit compositum ex realitate et ratione tamquam ex duobus quae
distinguibilia sint, sed sit aliquid simplicissime et indistinguibiliter adunatum, tam ‘vera res’
quam ‘prima intentio’ praedicari possunt per se de ipso, quia non se habent per modum
partis, et praedicantur in primo modo sicut et ens; nec ponuntur in definitione animalis sicut
nec ipsum ens.” Ed. Perler, pp. 248–249 (= ed. Rijk 2005, p. 71916–27).
135 Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 1: “Sicut inquam se habet absolutum intellectionis ad formare
active sive res facere apparere, sic se habet essentia in divinis ad generare, quod concipi
non potest sine ipso, nec e converso; unde sunt unum unitate omnimodae indistinctionis.
Similiter etiam apparitio passiva per quam rosa capit esse simpliciter concipi non potest
absque rosa simpliciter, nec e converso. Unde conceptus rosae, licet non sit purum con-
cipi, immo cum hoc est rosa, resolvi tamen non potest in realitatem rosae et ipsum concipi
tamquam in duo, immo conceptus rosae obiicitur tamquam quid simplicissimum, et impos-
sibile separari in duo. Et eodem modo Verbum in divinis, quod includit concipi seu generari
passive et cum hoc divinam essentiam, resolvi non potest per aliquem intellectum in generari
et essentiam, immo est quid simplicissimum propter unitatem indistinctionis omnimodae,
quae tanta est realiter in conceptu divino, quanta est intentionaliter in conceptu rosae ab
intellectu nostro formato.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 477–488; ed. 1596, p. 322aC–E.
peter auriol 589
Auriol’s theory of concept formation accounts precisely for the way the
Son results from two indistinct realities, passive conception and the divine
essence; in fact it accounts for the way that both the Father and the Son
result from essence and their respective properties. The Son is the divine
essence conceived, i.e. a concept of the divine essence; and just as when
we conceive a rose, the concept is the extramental rose inextricably mixed
together with passive conception, so essence and filiation (or the passive
conception of the essence) are inextricably mixed together, forming one
person, a unity of utter indistinction, distinct from and mutually opposed
to the unities founded by each of the other two properties and the essence.
In both cases, that of concept ROSE and that of the Son, the respective
property and the absolute thing are so inextricable that we cannot even
conceive them apart from each other. In a similar way, the Father is the
divine essence that says the Word, essence and property (saying the Word)
being likewise inextricably mixed together, and Father and Son are then
distinct on account of the mutually opposed respects—respects distinct in
and of themselves (se ipsis)—they have to one another: saying and being
said, or conceiving and being conceived.136 Auriol then extends this model
to the Holy Spirit’s emanation as a Gift or Spirit.137 Thus, Auriol’s trinitarian
theology is the psychological model, explaining, as he says, that “God is
one, really subsisting in three ways (ter), through the mode of conceiver
and Father, through the mode of concept, Word, and child, and through
the mode of breath, gift, and Spirit, one and the same in everything, except
in a perseitas multiplied threefold through respects of relative origin.”138
136 See n. 138 below; and on distinction of the properties se ipsis, see at and around nn. 105–
109 above.
137 See n. 138 below. For Auriol’s ideas on the Holy Spirit, see esp. Scriptum, d. 10, a. 3
(Electronic Scriptum, ll. 367–529; ed. 1596, pp. 343a–345b). In contradistinction to Scotus,
for whom the Holy Spirit is Love, for Auriol the Holy Spirit is produced through the power or
movement of love (vim et motum amoris; see n. 109 above) but is God posited in “given being”
(esse dato).
138 Scriptum, d. 26, a. 1 (text in italics translated): “Manifestum est autem quod haec tria
supposita constituuntur per esse conspicuum, et esse latum, et esse ponens, quae sunt
habitudines originum; nec est aliquid aliud in anima ut conspicue posita quod non sit
in ponente praeter poni et ponere. Unde in his solum distinguuntur, ut patet, nec inter
verbum mentis et mentem potest aliqua distinctio assignari, nisi penes concipere et concipi:
parens enim est ut concipiens, verbum vero ut concepta; et si esse conspicuum et esse
conceptum esset reale quid, non dubium quod essent duo realia supposita hperi concipere
et concipi constituta suppositaliter et distincta. Ergo in illa ineffabili trinitate distinguuntur
et constituuntur supposita in vero esse reali per concipere et concipi, et flare et flari, ita ut
sit unus Deus realiter ter subsistens, per modum concipientis et Patris, per modum conceptus,
590 chapter nine
As he tells us himself, then, Auriol employs philosophical psychology in

trinitarian theology to explain two paramount points: identity of essence
and distinction of origin.139 With regard to identity of essence, Auriol’s
use of philosophical psychology centers, as just mentioned, around the
device of “indistinction” and “inextricable mixture”. For Auriol, essence and
property are indistinct realities making up one simple unit, the person; just
so with his philosophical psychology, thing and appearance are inextricably
mixed together in a concept of the thing. Interestingly, then, Auriol was
accommodating both his trinitarian theory and his concept theory to the
exigencies of each other in a seamless web to explain how (in this case) the
Son is identical to the divine essence. This is a superb example of the strong
use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology inasmuch as Auriol
was using his own highly distinctive theory of concept formation to answer
trinitarian questions. But secondly, and simultaneously, Auriol employs
philosophical psychology as his best answer to the traditional problem of
the persons: how the persons are distinct from one another through origin.
For Auriol, the persons are the essence in three irreducibly distinct modes of
being: their relations of origin to each other, and these modes are thought of
in a psychological fashion as Conceiver, Conceived, and Given. The Father
is the essence conceiving, the Son is the essence conceived (in real not
intentional being) and the Holy Spirit is the essence given (again, in real
not intentional being).
One controverted issue that we have seen in the thought of both Henry of
Ghent and John Duns Scotus was the way in which the notional act of saying
the Word related to the essential act of understanding the essence.140 Essen-
tial understanding shared by the three persons comes about on Auriol’s view
because God the Father says the Word to all three persons, and thus, the
Word appears to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is only to
say that the second aspect of the act of the divine intellect pertains to all
of the persons and not just to the Father who said the Word, i.e. the Word
can appear to more than just the one who says the Word. Recall that the
act of the human intellect for Auriol has two aspects or moments: first it is
the production of esse apparens; second—since all that appears, appears to
Verbi, et prolis, per modum flatus, doni, et Spiritus; in omnibus unus et idem, praeterquam
in trina perseitate multiplicata per habitudines originum relativarum.” Electronic Scriptum,
ll. 567–577; ed. 1596, p. 582aD–F.
139 See n. 143 below.
140 On this disagreement, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 196–201; on Henry, Ch. 4, at

peter auriol 591
someone—it is the act of understanding the thing in esse apparens. Saying

and appearing, the two aspects of the intellectual act, are not necessarily
co-extensive phenomena, and, in God, the Father says the Word to all three
persons, who thereby have one identical act of essential understanding.
Moreover, Auriol flatly denies that there is any problem with the essential
act of understanding depending on the notional act of saying the Word: in
some cases an essential act does indeed presuppose a notional act.141 Scotus
had contended, in opposition to Henry of Ghent, that the two acts of the
Father, understanding the essence and saying the Word, were ordered but
independent; Auriol clearly agrees with Henry here, since he holds that the
one act presupposes the other. Nevertheless, Auriol stands Henry’s ideas on
their head, by reversing the order of these acts. For Henry, the notional act
of saying the Word is founded on the essential act of understanding shared
by all three persons, for Auriol it is the essential act of understanding that
necessarily presupposes the notional act of saying the Word. The Father
forms the Word and does not communicate that ability to the other two per-
sons, because that is the Father’s constitutive property; but the Father does
share with the other persons that the Word appears to them and hence that
they understand by one and the same unique divine act of understanding.142
In this way notional saying is the basis for essential understanding, and all
three divine persons understand the essence in the one divine Word.
141 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Non obstat autem octavum, verum est enim quod Pater, Fil-
ius, et Spiritus Sanctus intelligunt in se ipsis formaliter, in quantum cuilibet apparet Verbum
in se ipso; quilibet etiam dicitur ‘obiectum’ ratione divinae essentiae, quae eadem est cum
quolibet, et quae cuilibet obiicitur. Non tamen esse cuiuslibet est esse obiectivum sive esse
apparens reali apparentia, sed solus Filius est isto modo obiectum, quod eius subsistere pro-
prium consistit in obiici, et quodam apparere reali. Et si dicatur quod secundum hoc dicere
Verbi, quod est notionale, praecedet intelligere, et per consequens essentiale dependebit a
notionali, dicendum quod intelligere praeexigit dicere, non quia intelligere causetur a dicere,
sed quia apparere causetur ab eo, apparere autem non est intelligere, sed est intelligere id
cui fit huiusmodi apparere. Unde ille intelligit cui aliquid tamquam praesens apparet, non
est autem inconveniens quod aliquod essentiale indigeat notionali, eo modo quo expositum
fuit supra, d. 6.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 974–985; ed. 1596, pp. 630bF–631aB (the discussion
in d. 6 [= sect. 18] referred to here is in a. 3 of that distinction “Quod Filius quodammodo pro-
ducitur necessitate indigentiae” [ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 831–833]). See also Scriptum, d. 27,
q. 2, a. 2 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 913–929; ed. 1596, p. 630aC–E.) On Auriol’s use of the term
intelligere here, see Friedman Forthcoming-a.
142 Scriptum, d. 9, q. 1, a. 1: “Ad propositum itaque in divinis, cum essentia deitatis sit quod-
dam intelligere eminentissimum omnis rei, ipsa quidem ponit in esse apparenti semetipsam
et omnem rem. Nec intelligi potest sine ista activitate qua ponit omnes res in esse conspicuo,
et quoniam ista positio est realis, ne conceptus heiusi habeat esse deminutum, consequens
est ut ipsa et omnis res posita in esse formato habeat esse reale, et hoc est Verbum in
592 chapter nine
Auriol also took Scotus to task for his use of philosophical psychology in
trinitarian theology: basically Auriol argues that the use of Scotus’ theory of
concepts in particular presents insurmountable problems on the trinitarian
plane. Thus, contrasting his own solution with Scotus’, Auriol says that on
Scotus’ own admission an intellectual act or actual intellection is something
inhering in the mind, and is really (realiter) different from the object under-
stood. But if that is the case, in what way can a mental act theory of concepts
account for the Son’s being a Word? Either we have to say that the Son is not
like any created word at all (i.e., not inhering and not really distinct from
what it grasps) or else we should find a theory that better corresponds to
what we know about trinitarian theology.143 Moreover, Auriol argues that if
the Son were God’s actual intellection, then the Son would appear to under-
stand more directly than the other persons do and, moreover, the Son would
seem to have two intellections, one that he shares with the other persons
and then, on top of that, his own personal intellection as the Word.144 These
divinis. Quia cum res ponit se ipsam in esse formato, non distinguitur nisi penes formare
et formari, producere et produci, unde necesse est quod deitas posita in esse formato sit
eadem cum deitate cui coniungitur formare, et per consequens quod sit idem Deus, quamvis
sit realis distinctio infra ipsum. Et quia actus intellectus prout erat formativus appellabatur
dicere sive loqui, ideo solus Pater dicit et loquitur, ac profert Verbum in divinis, nec com-
municatur Filio actus intellectus, prout virtute eius capit res quod sit apparens; actus tamen
intellectus, prout sibi res apparet et est id cui fit locutio et dictio, communicatur Filio et
Spiritui Sancto. Hoc autem erat formaliter intellectio et intuitio, propter quod quilibet trium
formaliter intelligit et intuetur. Unde Pater Verbum concipit intra se, et quia concipit, ideo
generat, loquitur, et dicit; sed quia intra se obiective, ideo dicitur intelligere, quasi intra se leg-
ere, colligeri, et intueri; communicat autem Filio omnia praeter generare et producere ipsum
Filium, quia hoc communicare non potest, contradictio quidem est quod idem producat se.
Restat ergo quod Filio communicet actum intellectus, prout est id cui lucet res formata et cui
apparet; et quod recipit rem sic positam obiective, et ita communicat sibi suum intelligere
et suum intueri. Et secundum hoc solus Pater dicat Verbum sibi et omnibus tribus, ipse vero
et omnes tres simul capiant obiective et sit unicum intelligere in omnibus tribus.” Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 559–579; ed. 1596, p. 323aE–bC.
143 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Praeterea, illo modo emanat Verbum in divinis, quo salvantur
omnia quae dicuntur de Verbo, et aliter non salvantur. Sed si emanet ut Deus positus
in esse obiectivo et terminativo ac apparenti, salvantur omnia quae dicuntur de Verbo,
videlicet identitas essentiae et distinctio originis, immo quod in omnibus est identitas
praeterquam ingenerare et generari .... Non potest autem hoc salvari, si ponatur quod
Verbum sit intellectio, actus enim intellectus est aliquid inhaerens, et realiter differens a re
cuius est, sicut patet. Salvantur etiam ex isto modo quomodo nulla perfectio erit bis in Filio
et quomodo non erit per prius intelligens quam Deus, quoniam emanat ut Deus positus in
esse formato.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 864–867, 871–875; ed. 1596, p. 629aF–bB.
144 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… potest concludi quod nec Filius ut intellectio actualis,
alioquin Filius per prius esset intellectio quam Deus, et directius esset beatus quam Pater, et
quod eo esset beatus quo Verbum, et quod duplici ratione esset beatus et intelligens, et quod
aliqua perfectio simpliciter duplicaretur in divinis (esset enim ibi intellectio producta et
peter auriol 593
insuperable difficulties should have led Scotus to reject a mental act theory
of concepts—and accept Auriol’s own ideas. What we can take from this
is that Auriol thought not only that he had compelling epistemological and
psychological reasons to hold the concept theory that he held, but also com-
pelling trinitarian reasons. For Auriol, philosophical psychology had to be
able to account not just for human psychological experience, but every bit
as much for the basic trinitarian issues.
Of course, for Auriol, as for every medieval theologian, there are limita-
tions to the precise correspondence between human psychology and God’s
trinitarian reality. For one thing, as we have seen and as Auriol repeats time
and again, a concept in us is merely intentional being, but in God the Word
is real being.145 Thus, when Auriol intimates that the divine Word is more
of a word than is ours,146 it should be taken literally: the Son is the divine
essence conceived in real, not diminished, being. There is nothing merely
intentional about the person of the Son, he is really the divine essence pas-
sively conceived. Further, the property that is constitutive of the Word, his
passive conception, is unelicited. This is to say that it does not take being
from something; it does not arise, it is merely a marker of the logical conse-
quence of the Father’s active conception of the essence. Put into the more
familiar terminology we have seen in Augustine, Henry of Ghent, and Sco-
tus, Auriol’s doctrine of the unelicited emanations ensures that the divine
Word does not come to be and pass away: it is not the result of a transient
or episodic act of understanding. Moreover, this last observation points to
a more general conclusion: Auriol’s theory of the Word, like his trinitarian
theology more generally, reveals continuity with his tradition, but at the
same time immense originality.
intellectio improducta), et multa alia quae deducuntur ibidem.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 265–
269; p. 621aA–B. See also the text in n. 143 above. Dominicans used (to a very different end) a
related type of argument regarding the linking of essential and notional acts; see Ch. 7, above,
nn. 21–22 (Hervaeus Natalis), n. 63 (Durand). For arguments parallel to the ones found here
(in nn. 143–144) made by Auriol against Scotus with respect to the constitution of the Holy
Spirit, see Scriptum, d. 10, a. 2 (Electronic Scriptum, ll. 317–330; ed. 1596, p. 342bB–D).
145 Scriptum, d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… illud enim est Verbum in divinis quod maxime imitatur a
verbo nostro, quia verbum nostrum est simillimum illi secundum Augustinum. Sed proba-
tum est quod res posita in tali esse obiectivo est verbum in nobis. Ergo omni imperfectione
semota Verbum in divinis simile poni debet. Erat autem hoc imperfectionis quod poneretur
in esse deminuto et intentionali; hoc igitur amoto Verbum divinum erit sic positum, realiter
tamen et vere …” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 877–882; ed. 1596, p. 629aD. See also the text from
d. 9 in nn. 135 and 142 above.
146 Cf. n. 100 above.
594 chapter nine
5. Conclusion
Peter Auriol’s trinitarian theory, like much of his philosophical and theo-
logical system, is marked by two clear characteristics. First, Auriol’s ideas
are unremittingly systematic. It is difficult to say, for instance, whether
he fashioned his philosophical psychology on the basis of his theory of
the Trinity or vice-versa, so tightly do these two elements in his thought
fit together. This characteristic is also prominently displayed in the heavy
intertwining of Auriol’s philosophy and theology, as for example the theo-
logical use as a marginalization strategy to which Auriol puts his distinctive
interpretation of the categories. The way that his connotative distinction
between the divine attributes is used to solve a typical Dominican com-
plaint about Franciscan trinitarian theology—that the less-than-real dis-
tinction between the attributes cannot be the ground of the real distinction
between the persons—is yet another example of this relentless systemati-
zation.
And this leads us to the second point about Auriol’s trinitarian thought:
it is noteworthy for its attempt to confront the problems of his contempo-
rary trinitarian theology, and the open-minded approach to solving those
problems. One of the characteristics of the Franciscan tradition that I have
called attention to above was the “partyline”-like adherence to the main ele-
ments of that tradition: nested distinctions, primity, the distinction of the
Holy Spirit from the Son even if the former did not proceed from the latter.
Not every Franciscan held all of these elements, of course, and there was
a rather wide range of opinions that deserve the general label “Franciscan
trinitarian theology”, but the main outlines of the view became quite stan-
dard. Auriol, while clearly a part of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition in his
emphasis on emanation and on the psychological model, is nevertheless no
“partyliner”: he modifies in significant ways many of these important fea-
tures of that trinitarian tradition.
At the very foundation of Auriol’s rethinking of trinitarian theology was
his attempt to have his trinitarian explanations ensure that God’s simplic-
ity went uncompromised. His motivation in much of his criticism of earlier
thought was precisely his conviction that it had failed to sufficiently pre-
serve divine simplicity. In the thirty years after Auriol was at Paris, on both
sides of the Channel, this “search for simplicity” lay at the heart of a move-
ment to revamp the general Franciscan trinitarian tradition and the period’s
trinitarian theology more generally. Auriol’s own contribution to the search
for simplicity in trinitarian theology, as we will see, looms large in the dis-
cussions of the period 1320–1350.
Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University
Volume Two
Studien und Texte
zur Geistesgeschichte
des Mittelalters
Begründet von
Josef Koch
Weitergeführt von
Paul Wilpert, Albert Zimmermann und
Jan A. Aertsen
Herausgegeben von
Andreas Speer
In Zusammenarbeit mit
Tzotcho Boiadjiev, Kent Emery, Jr.
und Wouter Goris
BAND 108/2
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/stgm

Intellectual Traditions
at the Medieval University
The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian
Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans,
1250–1350
Volume Two
By
Russell L. Friedman
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Friedman, Russell L.
Intellectual traditions at the medieval university : the use of philosophical psychology in
Trinitarian theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans, 1250-1350 / by Russell L. Friedman.
p. cm. – (Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters ; Bd. 108)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
ISBN 978-90-04-22985-3 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-23198-6 (e-book) 1.
Trinity–History of doctrines–Middle Ages, 600-1500. 2. Franciscans–Intellectual life. 3.
Dominicans–Intellectual life. 4. Intellectual life–Religious aspects–Christianity–History–Middle
Ages, 600-1500. 5. Psychology–Philosophy. I. Title.
BT109.F74 2012
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To Pernille
CONTENTS
VOLUME ONE
List of Symbols, Abbreviations, and Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Introduction. Two Trinitarian Theories, and One Contested Model . . . . 1

1. The Relation Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2. The Emanation Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3. The Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
PART I
Introduction to Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
I. The Makings of a Trinitarian Controversy: Aquinas and

Bonaventure on Relations, Emanations, and Personal
Distinction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
1. Aquinas and the ratio of Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2. Bonaventure and “Modes” of Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3. Bonaventure and Aquinas on the Emanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
II. Emerging Trinitarian Traditions I: Franciscans, ca. 1255–1280 . . . . . 91

1. Gerard of Abbeville. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
2. Walter of Bruges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3. William of Baglione and Eustace of Arras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4. John Pecham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5. Paris after Pecham: William de la Mare and Matthew of
Aquasparta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6. Oxford Theology: Nicholas of Ockham and Roger Marston . . . 149
viii contents
III. Emerging Trinitarian Traditions II: Dominicans and Others,

ca. 1255–1280 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
1. From the Early to the Later Aquinas: Selected
Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
2. Bombolognus of Bologna and Roman of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
3. Expanding Trinitarian Traditions: Giles of Rome and Others 202
PART II
Introduction to Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
IV. Henry of Ghent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

1. Henry of Ghent on the Divine Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
2. Henry of Ghent and Franciscan Trinitarian Theology . . . . . . . . . 236
3. Henry of Ghent on the Word: Concepts as Declarative
Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
V. Late Thirteenth-Century Trinitarian Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

1. Some “Dominican” Views: Giles of Rome, Godfrey of
Fontaines, Bernard of Auvergne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
2. Cautious Franciscans: Richard of Mediavilla, Alexander of
Alessandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
3. The Franciscan Tradition in the Late Thirteenth Century:
Peter of Trabes and William of Ware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
4. Towards Scotus: Five Arguments on the Holy Spirit’s
Distinction from the Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
5. Conclusion: The Development of the Trinitarian Traditions . . 337
VI. John Duns Scotus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

1. Absolute Persons and the Use of Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Excursus: A Very Brief History of Absolute Persons . . . . . . . . . . 348–356
2. Scotus’ Critique of Henry of Ghent’s Trinitarian Thought . . . . . 376
3. Scotus on the Word: Concepts as Mental Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
VII. Dominicans in the Early Fourteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

1. Hervaeus Natalis against Franciscan Trinitarian Theology . . . . 423
contents ix
2. Durand of St. Pourçain and the Radical Attenuation of the

3. The Liber propugnatorius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
VIII. From Scotus to Auriol: A Survey of Franciscan Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

1. Absolute Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
2. Filioque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
A. Brief Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
B. A Franciscan/Dominican Debate: Robert Cowton and
Thomas of Sutton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
C. Henry of Harclay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
IX. Peter Auriol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

1. Indistinction of Essence and Property, perseitas tertii modi,
and Unelicited Emanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
2. The Emanations, Auriol’s Marginalization Strategy, and His
Interpretation of the Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550
3. Personal Distinction, The Divine Productions, and the
4. Auriol on the Word: Concepts as esse apparens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
VOLUME TWO
PART III
Introduction to Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597
X. William Ockham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601

1. Ockham, Nominalism, and Fideism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
2. The Personal Properties and the Formal Distinction . . . . . . . . . . 608
3. Ockham, the Franciscan Trinitarian Tradition, and the
4. Sola fide: Putting Ockham’s “Fideism” in Perspective . . . . . . . . . 652
XI. The Oxford Trinitarian Debate, 1315–1350 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663

1. Walter Chatton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 664
A. Walter Chatton’s Method in Trinitarian Theology . . . . . . . . 665
Excursus: A Very Brief History of Praepositinianism . . . . . . . . . . 678
x contents
B. Chatton and the Distinction between the Persons . . . . . . . . 683

C. Chatton and the Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
2. Adam Wodeham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 715
3. Robert Holcot and William Crathorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
4. Traditional Treatments and Waning Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 743
Annex: Oxford Theologians ca. 1330–1350 and Trinitarian
Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748
XII. Paris, from Auriol to Rimini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753

1. An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754
A. The Trinitarian Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 755
B. Independent: John Baconthorpe, OCarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 768
C. Independent: Gerard Odo, OFM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
D. Independent: Nicholas Bonet, OFM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 785
2. Francis of Marchia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
A. Super-rationes and Eminent Containment in Marchia’s
Trinitarian Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
B. Francis of Marchia and the Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . 803
3. Michael of Massa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809
A. Michael of Massa and the Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . 811
B. Massa on Absolute Properties and Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 822
4. William of Rubio, Praepositinianism, and the Psychological
Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831
5. Gregory of Rimini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 845
A. Rimini’s Praepositinianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 847
B. Rimini and the Psychological Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 860
6. The Search for Simplicity in Retrospect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867
Conclusion. The Diversity of Later-Medieval Trinitarian Theology . . . . . 873
Appendix. Eustace of Arras’ Question on the Distinction of the Holy

Spirit from the Son: Critical Edition from the Known
Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 899
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 931
Index of Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 975
Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 979
Index of Subjects and Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 992
PART III

INTRODUCTION TO PART III
The driving force behind the most innovative trinitarian theology of the
period between Peter Auriol and Gregory of Rimini is what I call the search
for simplicity. In particular, a group of theologians from these years—most-
ly, although not exclusively, Franciscans and Augustinian Hermits—take
defending God’s absolute simplicity to be the most important goal in trini-
tarian theology, and their preoccupation with this is reflected in their solu-
tions to the traditional theological questions that we have been dealing with
throughout this book. In particular the search for simplicity manifests itself
in two specific ways.
First, there is a gradually strengthening tendency to deny any kind of
ex natura rei distinction between divine essence and personal properties.
For Franciscans from the period after Auriol this often took the form of
a rejection of Scotus’ formal distinction between essence and properties.
We have already seen in the trinitarian theology of Auriol himself a first
step in this direction: in the process of explaining the distinction between
the persons Auriol rejects both the dual nature of the divine relations and
the formal distinction between properties and essence, maintaining instead
that the essence and each of the properties are indistinct realities, each
property together with the very same essence constituting one of the three
really distinct persons. Auriol’s motivation was, as noted above, that he
thought any type of distinction between essence and property necessarily
would compromise God’s simplicity, and thus he turned his back on earlier
attempts to explain personal distinction. This same motivation can be seen
at work in William Ockham, Walter Chatton, Adam Wodeham, and Robert
Holcot at Oxford, and in Francis of Marchia, Michael of Massa, William of
Rubio, and Gregory of Rimini at Paris. The search for simplicity is pressed
so far by these figures that, at least in the works of Chatton, Holcot, Rubio,
and Rimini, there is a return to one of the trinitarian views most lambasted
throughout the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: Praepositinus’
view that person and property are precisely the same and that the persons
are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis).
The second way that the search for simplicity manifests itself is through
the dismissal of the strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian the-
ology. Here the trend goes against Auriol, who was extremely interested in
defending the basic idea behind the strong use: that the Son’s emanation is
598 introduction to part iii
literally an intellectual emanation as a Word and the Holy Spirit’s emana-

tion is literally a voluntary emanation as a Gift or Love. Auriol, it is true, had
modified this general Franciscan view in order to rebutt typical Dominican
critique of it: in contrast to, e.g., Scotus, Auriol did not hold that the divine
intellect and will have to be distinct in any ex natura rei way, rather intellect
and will are connotatively distinct in part because they connote respectively
the intellectual emanation of the Son and the voluntary emanation of the
Holy Spirit. Auriol’s insistence on the reality of the psychological model is in
rather stark contrast to many figures coming after him, who either reduce
the significance of the psychological model, or who reject it altogether, or—
as is increasingly the case—who simply ignore the issue.
The search for simplicity is certainly a major trend that we see in the
figures of these years, but it vies for space with more traditional Francis-
can viewpoints held in particular by authors of a rather Scotistic stamp like
Landulph Caracciolo, Francis of Meyronnes, and Peter of Aquila. Even a
Carmelite scholar like John Baconthorpe advocates an interesting Francis-
can-style viewpoint in the process of attacking Auriol for having abandoned
the strong use of the psychological model! Dominican viewpoints are harder
to find, but we have already mentioned Durandellus and Bernard Lombardi,
who wrote in this period, and Thomas of Strasbourg also attempts to mod-
ernize Aquinas. So the Search for Simplicity was not the only game in town.
But from a theological and an historical point of view it was perhaps the
most interesting game, since it injected some rather unusual views into the
later-medieval trinitarian discussion. Just why such new views came about
or were thought necessary, we will return to after having examined the
evidence, first at Oxford (Chs. 10 and 11), then at Paris (Ch. 12); but here at
the outset we can suggest two things about the development of (especially
Franciscan) trinitarian theology ca. 1320–1350.
First, among Franciscan theologians, the search for simplicity must have
been at least partially a reaction to Dominican criticism of the Franciscan
position. We have followed throughout this book the way that Franciscans
modified their view to take into account Dominican critique of their posi-
tions. Ultimately, much of the Dominican criticism could be understood
as a call to reject the strong use of philosophical psychology as well as
its underpinnings, e.g. (in Scotus’ system) the formal distinction between
the attributes. This call was taken into account by theologians in the later
Franciscan tradition after Auriol, some of whom did indeed reject both the
strong use and its underpinnings.
It seems certain that Dominican criticism played a role in the later (post-
Auriol) development of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition, and especially
introduction to part iii 599
in the turn to simplicity among some Franciscan thinkers of the period. But
that this cannot be the whole explanation for developments in this period
seems equally certain, because several of the later thinkers, in their search
for simplicity, advocated positions that traditional Dominicans would find
absolutely unacceptable. Indeed, the theologians we examine below as case
studies in the fourteenth-century trinitarian search for simplicity, in several
important ways go beyond the boundaries of the trinitarian traditions as a
whole. Case in point: Praepositinianism, which was unacceptable to both
the Franciscan and the Dominican trinitarian traditions in their more cus-
tomary form. Thus, the search for simplicity cannot be entirely explained by
appeal to the pressures of argument and debate, and we have to look outside
of the rival trinitarian traditions for supplementary historical explanation.
Perhaps the most that we can say is that the search for simplicity represents
a change in “theological aesthetic”, i.e. a change in the most basic criteria
upon which it was judged whether or not a theological position was satis-
factory. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that for some theologians the
very nature of what constituted satisfactory trinitarian explanation began
to change in this period. The earlier paradigm, perhaps exemplified best
by Scotus, called for explanatory completeness, and to get this explanatory
completeness off the ground, a number of distinctions were postulated to
be “in” God. Theologians from the later period under discussion here in
Part III, on the other hand, following their search for simplicity, appear to
have replaced the earlier paradigm with another one, in which divine sim-
plicity, and the attendant lack of distinction in God, was stressed to the
point of excluding any real explanation for the distinction between the per-
sons or the psychological model. Preserving divine simplicity by dismissing
distinction in God went hand in hand with the call for economy of explana-
tion, even at the cost of leaving many things completely unexplained. It also
went hand in hand with an appeal to the faith as the only way of justifying
various trinitarian positions taken; those thinkers for whom no explanation
could be given as to, e.g., why the persons are distinct or why the Son is a
Word, were often left with maintaining that these doctrines were held on
faith alone (sola fide). Thus, the search for simplicity, and the change of
theological aesthetic accompanying it, may well be (at least in trinitarian
theology) one of the major factors behind the “fideism” that is a notorious
element in fourteenth-century scholastic thought, not least that of William
Ockham. Explanation, simplicity, and fideism will be dealt with throughout
the next three chapters, and I will return explicitly to the change in theolog-
ical aesthetic in the conclusion to this part of the book (Ch. 12, § 6).1
1 For more on the search for simplicity, see also Friedman 2010, Chs. 3 and 4.
chapter ten
WILLIAM OCKHAM
In this chapter and the next, we look at Oxford (and more generally English)1
trinitarian thought in the period 1315–1350. On the whole, Oxford thought
from this period offers incredibly rich prospects for the historian of phi-
losophy and theology, since an impressive number of texts survive from it.
Of course, many of the basic texts remain in manuscript. But the recent
editions of works by Walter Chatton, Adam Wodeham, Robert Holcot,
and William Crathorn, when placed besides the Franciscan Institute’s edi-
tion of William Ockham’s Opera Omnia, give the possibility, especially
for the 1320’s and 1330’s, to reconstruct debates between close contempo-
raries, tracing arguments and counterarguments through texts, and even
discovering when a thinker changes his mind on the basis of criticism
from a colleague. Over the past several years, there have been a num-
ber of examples of just this kind of detailed doctrinal study.2 A recon-
struction of this sort is also my goal in the following two chapters: it is
my basic aim to trace the debate on the major trinitarian issues that we
have been following throughout this book—e.g., the constitution of the
persons, emanations and relations, the use of the psychological model,
and “authority”. Roughly speaking the present chapter deals with Ock-
ham and Chapter Eleven concerns the trinitarian thought of such figures
as Chatton, Wodeham, Holcot, and Crathorn. An entire chapter on Ock-
ham undoubtedly needs no explanation, since he deserves it solely on
account of his recognized importance and incisive mind. But it is a strik-
ing fact that, with the exception of his use of logic in trinitarian theol-
ogy, there is, to my knowledge, no major examination of Ockham’s trini-
tarian thought.3 Besides going a little way to filling that gap, this type of
1 The term ‘Oxford’ when used in this chapter and the next is shorthand for ‘Oxford
and the rest of England’, including especially the London Franciscan convent, which may
have been the scene of the greatest part of Ockham’s, Chatton’s, and Wodeham’s writing and
debating with each other; for some reservations about this last claim, however, see Courtenay
1990a.
2 See, e.g., the relevant sections of Tachau 1988 and Schabel 2000a, and more particularly
Hoffmann (Fritz) 1998 and Gelber 2004.

3 As far as I am aware only two issues in Ockham’s trinitarian thought have received
602 chapter ten
examination gives me the opportunity to discuss Ockham’s views on faith

and reason and his alleged “fideism”. Since, as will be detailed below, the
appeal to faith as the primary or even the exclusive means of justifying or
explaining the Trinity runs throughout a good deal of the trinitarian thought
of this later period at both Oxford and Paris, this discussion will continue
in Chapters Eleven and Twelve, with an overall assessment at the end of
the latter chapter (§6). Finally, dealing at some length with Ockham is
absolutely required, because, as we will see throughout Chapter Eleven, his
trinitarian ideas—and to a lesser extent those of John Duns Scotus and Peter
Auriol—are the point of departure for later Oxford thinkers. In short: one
cannot understand the later debates of Chatton and Wodeham, and to a
lesser degree the trinitarian thought of Holcot, Crathorn, and several other
thinkers of the period, without understanding Ockham. And it is certainly
worthwhile looking at these later thinkers, since they defended some highly
interesting and unusual views, and since this period at Oxford saw the total
eclipse of the psychological model and the disappearance of the trinitarian
traditions.
Although Ockham is the main point of departure, Ockham’s trinitarian
theology itself clearly has a context. The remote context was the thought of
Scotus and, to a lesser extent, Auriol, Aquinas, and several other thinkers of
the university era. A more immediate context, however, was to be found at
Oxford itself just prior to Ockham’s reading the Sentences there. The history
of Oxford trinitarian theology, 1315–1350, in fact, begins with a condemna-
tion, and this condemnation has been seen in the secondary literature as
background to Ockham’s troubles with the Chancellor of Oxford Univer-
sity, John Lutterell. We do not know the name of the person who was the
focus of the investigation and subsequent censure, but he was very likely
an Oxford bachelor of theology, who, probably while lecturing on the Sen-
tences sometime in 1313–1315, made some theologically questionable state-
ments concerning the Trinity.4 Some of the eight theses attributed to the
serious modern attention: 1) Ockham’s trinitarian use of the formal distinction (and the
logical issues involved in it) and 2) what Ockham’s trinitarian ideas say about his view of
the relationship between faith and reason. See on these two issues, the literature mentioned
below, esp. in nn. 18 and 49. Otherwise, I can refer only to Schmaus 1930a (see below for
specific references, and see Schmaus’ index) and Marshall 2007 (Paasch 2012 reached me too
late to discuss it here). For Ockham bibliographies, see Beckmann 1992; Zürn and Kraml 2007.
4 On this condemnation, see esp. Courtenay 1991a, which gives the text of the articles
condemned in both Latin and English translation, and studies the censure from both a
procedural and doctrinal perspective; Etzkorn 1987c, 32–33, also gives an edition of the
william ockham 603
anonymous bachelor ran into trouble because they raise the possibility of
a temporal priority in God (i.e., that God the Father could create before
producing the Word, which would entail the Word’s production being in
time, art. 1, cf. also arts. 4, 7, 8), others were deemed unacceptable because
they involve one of the persons of the Trinity having an activity ad extra
that the other two do not have (i.e., that the Father could create without
the Son, art. 2, cf. also arts. 3, 5, 6). Interesting in the context of this book is
especially article 4: “if a creature were produced before the Word, it ought
to be understood to be produced by the first person in the divine, not by the
Father.” Although the possibility of temporality in the divine productions
that is raised by this particular formulation is unacceptable, the idea that the
first person could have some type of being “before” generating the Son is one
that we have seen in many Franciscan thinkers in the context of discussions
of primity.5 In any event, in February 1315 twelve regent masters of theology
at Oxford—this may well have been all there were at the time—led by
the Chancellor of the University, Henry of Harclay, and including also the
Dominican regent Nicholas Trivet, unanimously condemned as erroneous
the eight propositions. And that is all we hear of the matter.
What effect the condemnation of February 1315 had on trinitarian spec-
ulation later in the period is difficult to say. The condemned articles do not
appear to have been mentioned in later Oxford trinitarian theology. More-
over, at least in the years immediately following the condemnation there is
no lack of evidence that interesting and innovative trinitarian ideas were
aired at Oxford and in England more generally. All of the major figures
we will examine in the present chapter and in the next—Ockham, Chat-
ton, Wodeham, Holcot, and Crathorn—had some fairly radical views that
diverged in significant ways from the trinitarian discussion of the preceding
sixty or so years. Of them, only Ockham ran into any trouble for his trini-
tarian speculation, and this appears to have had little or nothing to do with
the fate of the anonymous bachelor. It seems, then, that the 1315 condemna-
tion did not create any type of environment that discouraged highly original
trinitarian speculation.
condemned articles, and Kelley 1987, 7, uses them as background to Ockham’s trouble with
Lutterell, noting that “Ockham, for his part, when discussing these matters, could not have
been more in accord with the officially sanctioned view”.
5 This is further evidence for the eight articles’ overall Franciscan orientation, on which
Courtenay remarks (1991a, 16–17).

604 chapter ten
1. Ockham, Nominalism, and Fideism
As William J. Courtenay has shown very clearly over the course of his
career, the term ‘nominalism’ as applied to medieval philosophy and the-
ology has taken on a variety of meanings and connotations, some more
historically accurate than others. In the secondary literature dealing with
especially fourteenth-century thought, for instance, ‘nominalism’ has been
used very precisely to refer to the epistemological and ontological view
that universals have no extramental existence. The term has, however,
also been employed to describe the use in theological speculation of God’s
absolute and ordained powers, and a corresponding stress on the ultimate
contingency of the theological, the moral, and the natural orders, as well
as a generally fideistic and even skeptical point of view. Research into
the “nominalistic” tendencies of the fourteenth century that concentrate
on these non-epistemological/ontological aspects of the term, often por-
tray nominalism as anything from a steep decline from the highpoint of
scholastic theology in the thirteenth century, on the one hand, to a totally
bankrupt theological system undermining Church, Christianity, and society
at large, on the other.6 And the one medieval thinker who is nearly inevitably
associated with ‘nominalism’ understood in this less-than-flattering way is
William Ockham. While other scholastic figures have been associated with
the nominalistic “movement”, nevertheless they have been held to be in
some way or another followers of Ockham: “Ockhamists”, who more or less
drew out additional problematic conclusions on the basis of the thought of
the master. Courtenay, together with, e.g., Hester G. Gelber and Katherine
H. Tachau, have poked holes in this view, showing that there never was a
monolithic “Ockhamism” in the fourteenth century, that Ockham and the
alleged “Ockhamists” often had strong philosophical and theological dis-
agreements, and that the use of God’s absolute and ordained powers in the
fourteenth century was not radically different from the use made of it by
such thirteenth-century theologians as Thomas Aquinas, and certainly was
6 Courtenay deals with this theme in many of his works, but see esp. 1974a, 1983, 1991b,
as well as other of his studies collected and updated in Courtenay 2008. The classic example
of this type of scheme is Etienne Gilson’s; cf., e.g., Gilson 1955, and see for more on this
view § 4 below. That Gilson’s vision lives on is clear from C.F.J. Martin’s Introduction to
Medieval Philosophy (Martin 1996—see, e.g., the review in Marenbon 1998). On the historical
background to Gilson’s view of medieval philosophy, and in general on the origins and
development of historical research into medieval philosophy, see the fascinating study in
Inglis 1998.
william ockham 605
not intended to endanger the theological, natural, or societal orders.7 More-

over, on the basis of particularly Tachau’s work, a sharp distinction should
be drawn between skeptical implications of a theory of knowledge, and skep-
tical motivations for developing such a theory. Ockham’s motivation was
not to undermine knowledge, but rather to set it upon what he consid-
ered to be a firm footing; whether in the opinion of others he succeeded or
not is another question entirely.8 Indeed, in a recent article, Richard A. Lee
has argued that accusing Ockham (or other later-medieval philosophers) of
“skepticism” is a type of category mistake.9 In other aspects of his philoso-
phy, in his logic and his ideas on mental language, for instance, Ockham has
recently been hailed as a true revolutionary, understood in the most posi-
tive sense of that word.10 Nevertheless, despite this rehabilitation, William
Ockham still has something of a questionable reputation, as a glance at even
quite recent medieval history textbooks shows.11
7 On “Ockhamism” and Ockham’s fourteenth-century reception, see, e.g., Courtenay
1984c, 1987b, 1995a, 1997a; Gelber 1974, 2004; Tachau 1988. On absolute and ordained power,
and Ockham’s place in the discussion, see Gelber 2004, Ch. 8 (“God’s Absolute and Ordained
Power”), and the literature mentioned there (esp. Courtenay 1990b).
8 This is one of the main general points that I think can be taken away from Tachau
1988. I take it that it is just this sort of distinction that Lee (2001, 4) is indicating when
he distinguishes between the charge that “medieval nominalism fails in its epistemological
goals” (skeptical implications) as opposed to “medieval nominalists held that the world is in
principle unknowable” (skeptical motivations).
9 Lee 2001. Although I might disagree on details, nevertheless I think that Lee has done a
service in reminding us of the organic view of reality that all later-medieval thinkers shared
and that basically ruled out the kind of subject/object distinction that lies at the heart of
Cartesian skepticism. There are two points that I would like to make about Lee’s presen-
tation. First, I think that those who accuse fourteenth-century thinkers of being “skeptical”
were aware of his main point and were using ‘skeptical’ in a different sense than Cartesian
skepticism (see, e.g., Maurice De Wulf, in n. 120 below). Second, in his review of the modern
historiography attributing skepticism to Ockham (pp. 4–7), Lee’s conclusion that “medieval
philosophy is just as much about us as it is about medieval thinkers” is in accord with the con-
clusions of intellectual historians like William J. Courtenay (e.g., 1974a) and Steven Ozment
(1980, 9–21, a review of some major historical reconstructions of later-medieval thought).
Medieval “skepticism” (in the modern epistemological sense of the term) has been the sub-
ject of considerable research recently; see, e.g., Perler 2006 and Lagerlund 2010.
10 E.g., Panaccio 1999, 14, where in response to the revisionist work of Courtenay, Kaluza,
and Tachau, Panaccio writes: “Mon hypothèse était—et est toujours—que Guillaume d’Ock-
ham accomplit, dans les années 1315–1325, une révolution théorique majeure et extrêmement
influente, par la mise au point précisément de ce concept d’oratio mentalis.” There are
now several high quality, broad ranging, and basically sympathetic studies of Ockham’s
philosophy (and theology); see particularly Adams 1987; Maurer 1999; the articles found in
Spade 1999; and Keele 2010.
11 E.g., Davies 1997, 433: “Ockham, the venerabilis inceptor, excommunicated for his pains,
was the leader of the so-called Nominalists. His demolition of the reigning Platonic notion
606 chapter ten
It is worth noting that, in linking nominalism’s problematic nature with

Ockham, modern historians have been following in the footsteps of real-
ists of the fifteenth-century Wegestreit, who attempted to condemn the
nominalism of their day by its association with the excommunicate Ock-
ham, who did, after all, reject any form of ontological realism. In the fif-
teenth century (as opposed to the fourteenth), there actually were groups
of self-proclaimed realists and nominalists who struggled for philosophi-
cal supremacy at the European universities, and association with Ockham
could indeed present difficulties for the nominalists, on account of the trou-
bles with the pope that Ockham had during his own lifetime.12 Ockham was
born sometime around 1287 in England, and after moving up the Franciscan
educational ladder, he read the Sentences at Oxford probably in the years
1317–1319. As is well known, the Venerable Inceptor seems never to have
obtained the master’s degree, even though from 1319–1324 he was teach-
ing, writing, and debating probably in Oxford and London. From this later
period stems his Ordinatio on the first book of the Sentences, as well as
his Summa Logicae and his Quodlibeta septem (which were, however, com-
pleted during his Avignon period), all of which contain trinitarian material.13
of universals—abstract essences that were thought to exist independently of particular

objects—undermined the philosophical foundations of many inflexible medieval conven-
tions, including the social orders .... His complete separation of reason from faith opened the
way for scientific and secular investigations.” Hollister 1994, 352–353: “Ockham argued that
God and Christian doctrine, utterly undemonstrable, must be accepted on faith alone, and
that human reason must be limited to the realm of observable phenomena. In this unpre-
dictable world of an unfathomable Creator, one can reason only about things that one can see
or directly experience. Ockham’s radical empiricism ruled out all metaphysical speculations,
all rational arguments from an observable diversity of things to an underlying unity of things
.... Many late medieval philosophers rejected Ockham’s criticism and remained Thomists.”
These types of misrepresentations of Ockham (and later-medieval thought in general) are
not limited to survey works—take Coleman 1975, 131: “Possibly as a result of Ockham’s discov-
ery that God was, at best, a distant benevolence, [in the fourteenth century] the structured
unity of things on all levels needed to be reaffirmed”; I do not mean to take away from the
major thrust of Coleman’s fine study—merely to show that even specialists can attribute to
Ockham all sorts of views.
12 See on the use of Ockham during the Wegestreit, e.g., Hoenen 2003.
13 I will concentrate in what follows on Ockham’s trinitarian theology as found in his
Ordinatio = Opera theologica (hereafter: OTh), vols. II–IV. For a good recent overview of
attempts to reconstruct Ockham’s biography prior to his leaving for Avignon, see Courtenay
1990a, as well as Courtenay 1999. Girard J. Etzkorn (2001) has recently suggested that Quodl. VI
and VII were both disputed in Avignon, basing his claim on the fact that the two Quodlibeta
seem to be replies to criticisms of his doctrines made by the Franciscan provincial chapter
in 1323 and by the Avignon committee examining his works. On Ockham’s Quodlibeta, see
most recently Keele 2007a, 654–666.
william ockham 607
In 1323 Ockham was called upon to explain aspects of his view of the
category of relation before a Franciscan English provincial chapter;14 and
just the next year, Ockham left for Avignon where he had to defend himself
from the charge of heresy suggested by the Chancellor of the University of
Oxford, John Lutterell. There, while he was awaiting the judgement of a
commission appointed to examine his writings by Pope John XXII, Ockham,
who leaned toward the Spiritual wing of the Franciscan order, became
convinced that the Pope was a heretic, and he fled in May 1328 to the court
of Emperor Louis of Bavaria in Munich, where he spent the rest of his life
writing political treatises against the Pope and his successors. Ockham died,
impenitent, in Munich in April 1347.15 Ockham’s strained relations with the
Church of his day, then, were used by later realists in the Wegestreit as a
form of “guilt by association” to brand nominalism (or more accurately:
conceptualism) as problematic.
It should be noted that none of Ockham’s views examined by the papal
commission were condemned outright. This fact, in combination with the
modern reevaluation of Ockham’s thought mentioned above, might give
us pause before seeing in the Venerable Inceptor the beginning of the
end of medieval thought. In the pages below we can examine at least one
element of the traditional view of Ockham and his “nominalism”: Ockham’s
“fideism”. If in recent years specialists have generally rejected claims that
Ockham was a skeptic and that his thought carried with it a necessary
weakening of the theological and natural orders, what about Ockham’s
purported belief that God and the tenets of the Roman Catholic faith are
impenetrable to human reason, and that at least in this life we have to rely
solely on revelation and our faith? It has been claimed, not infrequently, that
Ockham completely divorced reason and revelation, and consequently that
God was “removed” from his systematic thought.16 As Etienne Gilson (1955,
14 See Etzkorn 1990; Etzkorn 2001.

15 That Ockham died in 1347 was shown by Gedeon Gál (1982), and for further evidence,
see Wood 1997, 11 n. 29.
16 See, e.g., the works quoted in n. 11 above; but for a general corrective, see the thoughts
in Gelber 1974, esp. 1–11, 280–283 (on Robert Holcot), 318–322. Freddoso 1999 is a very
illuminating study of the issue of faith and reason in Ockham, with a comparison to the
attitudes exhibited by Scotus and especially Aquinas. Adams 1987, vol. 2, 961–1010, deals
with faith and reason by examining aspects of Ockham’s doctrine on the Incarnation and
the Trinity. One area of Ockham’s thought that has been fairly well studied for what it says
about his conception of faith and reason is his proofs of God’s existence; see, e.g., Guelluy
1947, Baudry 1962; more generally: Ghisalberti 1996 and Biard 1999, esp. 21–62.
608 chapter ten
498) so eloquently put it: “Ockham is perfectly safe in what he believes; only
he does not know what he believes, nor does he need to know it”. We can
test this statement by looking at Ockham’s views on the Trinity. Trinitarian
theology lends itself to an investigation of the relationship between reason
and revelation, since it is clearly one of the most revelation-based dogmas
of the Roman Catholic Church. What can we say about William Ockham’s
“fideism” on the basis of a study of his treatment of trinitarian theology?
What does he explain, what does he leave to faith? What can be proven,
what is deemed indemonstrable? And perhaps most importantly, how does
he arrive at his answers to these questions? The conclusion can be summed
up briefly. William Ockham represents a shift from the likes of Henry of
Ghent and John Duns Scotus, and even Peter Auriol: in the aspects of
trinitarian theology we are dealing with he is indeed not so optimistic as
they were about the power of human reason to penetrate and to explain
and to prove. He is in fact more prone to maintain that we have to accept
things on faith alone (sola fide). With that said, Ockham arrives at these
conclusions through the use of reason expressed through arguments. That
is to say, he does not reject out of hand reason’s ability to tackle trinitarian
problems, but only after a rather thorough critical examination of then
current attempts at explaining the Trinity. Indeed, Ockham thought that
his view of the relationship between faith and reason was in fact more
reasonable than that of thinkers more inclined to allow for what we could
call “natural theology”. We will return to the issue of fideism after looking at
Ockham’s ideas themselves, but it must be said that, although he certainly
arrives at some overtly fideistic conclusions, Ockham’s theological method
can hardly be characterized as “fideistic” or a “divorce” of faith and reason.
He clearly held that theology should be approached through reason, and
it was only when in his view reason could not satisfactorily deal with
the exigencies of revelation that the appeal to faith and revelation took
precedence.
2. The Personal Properties and the Formal Distinction
For our purposes, the central issue in William Ockham’s treatment of trini-
tarian theology is his famous rejection of any use of John Duns Scotus’
formal distinction except between the divine essence and the three divine
properties. Scotus, as we saw above, had used the formal distinction—a dis-
tinction that was in the thing itself prior to any mental activity, but was
not as great as the distinction between two different things (res)—in a
william ockham 609
variety of theological and philosophical contexts.17 Thus, Scotus explained

through the formal distinction not only the way divine essence and personal
property differed, but also the distinction among the divine attributes and
between the attributes and the essence, as well as the distinction between,
e.g., the soul and its powers, and between quiddity and haecceity in indi-
vidual creatures. Scotus’ extensive employment of the formal distinction
throughout his philosophy and theology meant that it was a concept that
later thinkers were virtually forced to evaluate, and reaction to the for-
mal distinction, and especially any restriction imposed upon its use, might
have considerable consequences for, e.g., a theologian’s trinitarian theology.
William Ockham is a case in point. Ockham broaches the issue in the first
question of distinction two of his Ordinatio, where he asks whether there
is as much identity between the essence and the attributes, and among the
attributes, as there is between the essence and itself.18 Here Ockham begins
by presenting a long string of arguments, both from authority and based on
reason, taken basically verbatim from Scotus’ I Ordinatio, all of them try-
ing to show that the divine attributes are formally distinct from the essence
and from each other. Among these arguments, several seek to prove that
the distinction between the divine emanations requires a formal distinc-
tion between the elicitive sources of those emanations, intellect and will. As
we saw in Chapter Six above, Scotus held that in order to preserve the dis-
tinction between the emanations, and hence between the divine persons,
the elicitive sources of the emanations, intellect and will, had to be in some
way distinct—not merely rationally distinct, as Henry of Ghent had main-
tained, but formally distinct. Only in this way, according to Scotus, would
the persons be emanated in two irreducibly distinct ways, per modum intel-
lectus and per modum voluntatis.19 After this presentation of some of Scotus’

18 William Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “Utrum sit tanta identitas divinae essentiae et omnis
modus identitatis ex natura rei ad perfectiones attributales et ipsarum perfectionum attribu-
talium inter se, qualis est divinae essentiae ad divinam essentiam.” OTh II, p. 312–15. Ockham’s
most detailed remarks on the formal distinction itself are in the context of his consideration
of universals and individuation in Ord., d. 2, q. 6 (OTh II, 160–224) and Summa Logicae, I,
14–19 (OPh I, pp. 47–67). There is a large literature on Ockham on the formal distinction, but
among the more important studies are: Gelber 1974, 172–185; Adams 1976, esp. 59–74; Jordan
1984, 172–202; Shank 1988, esp. 63–71; Adams 1987 (see index); Schönburger 1990; Damiata
1997, 35–46 (deals with Ockham’s rejection of the formal distinction and his own explana-
tion for the distinction between the attributes); Maurer 1999, 73–79.
19 For Ockham’s presentation of these arguments, see Ord., d. 2, q. 1 (OTh II, p. 810–20); on
Scotus’ view and its relation to Henry of Ghent, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 127–142.
610 chapter ten
arguments for the formal distinction between the attributes, Ockham turns
to a more recent theologian, Scotus’ own secretary in Paris, William of
Alnwick (d. 1333), who in his Quodlibet, q. 2, had argued for the same view
that Scotus had.20 Alnwick was regent master at Oxford sometime between
1315 and 1317, i.e. immediately prior to Ockham’s reading the Sentences there,
and for this reason Alnwick may have loomed particularly large on Ock-
ham’s horizon. Whatever reason Ockham had for choosing Alnwick, what
is striking about the majority of the many arguments that Ockham quotes,
often verbatim, from Alnwick’s text is that they deal with the relation
between the Trinity, on the one hand, and the formal distinction between
the attributes, on the other. That is to say, Alnwick argued, just as Scotus
had, that the formal distinction between the attributes is necessary in order
to explain the distinction between the emanations and hence the real dis-
tinction between the persons.21 An absolutely indistinct source, both for
Scotus and for Alnwick, cannot produce in fundamentally different ways,
and hence an absolutely indistinct divine essence could not account for
the distinction between the divine emanations and, further, the divine per-
sons. We will return to these specific arguments and to Ockham’s response
to them in the next section (§3, below, at and around nn. 91–97), but suf-
fice it to say that Ockham’s presentation reveals that he considered the link
between divine attributes and emanations to be a central issue in trinitarian
theology.
Ockham’s reply to Scotus’ view on the distinction between the attributes
is as firm as can be: “I argue against this opinion through one argument
that counts equally against a formal distinction or non-identity wherever
it is posited.”22 The argument he gives is based on the relationship between
contradiction and distinction, Ockham claiming specifically that wherever
20 Alnwick’s Quodlibet is edited in Quaestiones disputatae de esse intelligibili et de quodli-
bet, ed. Athanasius Ledoux; q. 2 is found on pp. 201–249. The Quodlibet should probably be
dated to Alnwick’s time as regent master at Oxford, ca. 1315–1316; see Duba 2007a, 598–600.
On aspects of Alnwick’s ideas on the formal distinction, see Gelber 1974, 166–172; Noone 1993;
Noone 2009, 146–148. On Alnwick more generally, see Friedman 2002a, 79–80, and the lit-
erature cited there, to which should be added Alliney 2005, esp. 380–384; Alnwick’s Sent.
commentary also contains trinitarian material, see, e.g., Schmaus 1930a, 242, 349–351, 525–
527, 641 (Schmaus was unsure as to Alnwick’s authorship of the commentary on I–II Sent.
found in ms. Padua, Bibl. Anton. 291, but we now know that the commentary is Alnwick’s).
21 For Ockham’s presentation of Alnwick, see Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1 (OTh II, pp. 8–14);
for Alnwick himself, see Quaestiones quodlibetales, ed. Ledoux, pp. 206–220.
22 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “Contra istam opinionem arguo per unum argumentum quod
est aequaliter contra distinctionem vel non-identitatem formalem ubicumque ponatur.”

OTh II, p. 148–10.
william ockham 611
there is some distinction or non-identity, there contradictories can be af-

firmed. Given that a and b are not the same in every way, then a is the
same as a in every way, while b is not the same as a in every way, so that
“being the same as a in every way” can be affirmed of a, while “not being the
same as a in every way” can be affirmed of b. Generalizing, then: wherever
contradictories can be affirmed, there is distinction of some kind (this is
an application of the so-called Principle of Indiscernibility of Identicals).
Contradictories, however, can only be affirmed in one of three cases: when
we are dealing with distinct things (res), when we are dealing with distinct
rationes (i.e., beings of reason, entia rationis), or when we are dealing with
a thing and a ratio. But if we are talking about an extramental distinction,
a distinction ex natura rei, then we can rule out that the distinction we
are dealing with is between different rationes or between a thing and a
ratio—the distinction must be between two things.23 Ockham concludes:
“universally, real non-identity can be inferred from the affirmation and the
negation of the same. Therefore, if being formally the same as wisdom
is truly affirmed about wisdom and is truly denied about goodness, it is
required that divine wisdom and divine goodness signify (importent) items
that are not really the same.”24 Given that it is explicitly an ex natura rei
distinction, argues Ockham, Scotus’ formal distinction collapses into a real
distinction.
Moreover, Ockham asks Scotus (and Alnwick) to spell out the criteria
for identifying a formal as opposed to a real distinction. For Scotus, two
really identical items, can nevertheless be formally distinct and this formal
distinction explains how contradictories can be affirmed of them. Divine
wisdom and divine goodness are really identical, but formally distinct, and
23 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “… ubicumque est aliqua distinctio vel non-identitas, ibi
possunt aliqua contradictoria de illis verificari; sed impossibile est contradictoria verificari
de quibuscumque, nisi illa, vel illa pro quibus supponunt, sint distinctae res, vel distinctae
rationes sive entia rationis, vel res et ratio; sed si omnia illa sint ex natura rei, non sunt
distinctae rationes, nec res et ratio; igitur erunt distinctae res. Maior est manifesta, quia si a
et b non sint idem omnibus modis, tunc sunt istae ambae verae: a est idem a omnibus modis,
et b non est idem a omnibus modis, ita quod esse idem a omnibus modis et non esse idem a
omnibus modis verificantur de a et b.” OTh II, p. 1410–20. At ibid. (pp. 1420–1525) Ockham gives
a long proof of the exhaustiveness of the options that the distinction applies either to two
things, two rationes, or a thing and a ratio.
24 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “… universaliter ex affirmatione et negatione eiusdem contingit
inferre non-identitatem realem. Ergo si esse idem formaliter sapientiae vere affirmatur
de sapientia et vere negatur a bonitate, oportet quod sapientia divina et bonitas divina
importent aliqua quae non sunt idem realiter.” OTh II, pp. 1525–163.
612 chapter ten
properties can be affirmed of the one than can be denied of the other
because of their formal distinction. Ockham asks: if we allow that the formal
distinction is a device that we can appeal to on a regular basis in philosoph-
ical analysis, then how could we ever say whether two items were really
distinct as opposed to merely formally distinct? Since the formal distinc-
tion actually covers the most important indication of real distinction, the
affirmation of contradictories, then the formal distinction can be appealed
to in cases where traditionally a real distinction was recognized. Given this,
Ockham asks how would you be able to tell when you were dealing with a
real and when with a merely formal distinction? For instance, if I can say
that divine wisdom and divine goodness are really the same, and yet I can
nevertheless affirm of one what I deny of the other, solely on account of the
formal distinction between them, then why can I not just as well say that a
and b are really the same, while at the same time affirming that a exists and
b does not exist on account of the formal distinction between them? “Every
means of proving real distinction or real non-identity would perish” if one
allowed the Scotist formal distinction, Ockham maintains. Another exam-
ple: the fact that an ass is not rational but a human being is rational could
be explained by appealing to the formal, as opposed to the real, distinction
between them.25 Clearly, for Ockham, the formal distinction involves insu-
perable difficulties for knowledge as such.
We are, of course, catching a glimpse here of the gulf that separates Sco-
tus’ metaphysics from Ockham’s. Ockham the conceptualist cannot accept a
distinction midway between real and rational, depending as it does on Sco-
tus’ realism: for Scotus, there are “entities” out there that correspond to our
concepts even if these entities are not really distinct from one another. This
just muddies the waters, as far as Ockham can see—for him, there are singu-
lar things and there are intellects that draw distinctions of reason, and, even
if those distinctions of reason have some foundation in extramental reality,
that does not entitle us to posit on this basis extramental entities and to
25 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “… qua ratione tu dicis quod aliquid idem potest vere negari de
sapientia divina et vere affirmari de bonitate divina, non obstante reali identitate, propter
solam distinctionem formalem, eadem facilitate dicam universaliter quod esse et non-
esse verificatur de a et b propter distinctionem formalem, non obstante quod sint idem
realiter; et ita perit omnis via probandi distinctionem vel non-identitatem realem inter
quaecumque. Si enim dicas quod asinus non est rationalis et homo est rationalis, igitur homo
et asinus distinguuntur realiter—dicam quod non sequitur, sed sufficit quod distinguantur
formaliter.” OTh II, p. 164–14. For Ockham’s argument against there being distinct formalities
in God (as opposed to formally distinct entities), see Ch. 11, below, in n. 134.
william ockham 613
say that there is some kind of extramental distinction between them. With
this basic divide between the two thinkers recognized, however, here we are
most interested in the limits and in the consequences of Ockham’s rejection
of the formal distinction. And this Ockham presents very succinctly:
Because of this argument, I say that divine wisdom is the same as the divine
essence in all the ways in which the divine essence is the same as the
divine essence, and this is also the case for divine goodness and justice; nor
is there any extramental (ex natura rei) distinction there at all, nor even
any non-identity. And the reason for this is that, although such a formal
distinction or non-identity could be posited just as easily between the divine
essence and divine wisdom as between the essence and relation, nevertheless
because it is as difficult as can be to posit it anywhere, nor do I believe
that [the formal distinction] is easier to hold than the Trinity of persons
with the unity of the essence, so it ought only be posited where it evidently
(evidenter) follows from the things believed (credita), handed down in Sacred
Scripture or in the determinations of the Church (on account of whose
authority all reason ought to be held captive). And thus, since all the things
handed down in Sacred Scripture and the determinations of the Church
and the assertions of the saints can be saved without positing [a formal
distinction or non-identity] between essence and wisdom, so I deny without
qualification that such a distinction is possible there, and I deny it everywhere
in creatures.26
For Ockham, the formal distinction makes no sense. You could, of course,
claim that there was a formal distinction or non-identity between the divine
attributes, or even in creatures, but Ockham asks, why would you want to
do that? What compelling reason have we to support a philosophical tool
that bears with it, in Ockham’s eyes, such devastating problems. The only
26 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “Ideo propter istam rationem dico quod sapientia divina
omnibus modis est eadem essentiae divinae quibus essentia divina est eadem essentiae div-
inae, et sic de bonitate divina et iustitia; nec est ibi penitus aliqua distinctio ex natura rei vel
etiam non-identitas. Cuius ratio est, quia quamvis talis distinctio vel non-identitas formalis
posset poni aeque faciliter inter essentiam divinam et sapientiam divinam sicut inter essen-
tiam et relationem, quia tamen est difficillima ad ponendum ubicumque, nec credo eam
esse faciliorem ad tenendum quam trinitatem personarum cum unitate essentiae, ideo non
debet poni nisi ubi evidenter sequitur ex creditis traditis in Scriptura Sacra vel determina-
tione Ecclesiae, propter cuius auctoritatem debet omnis ratio captivari. Et ideo cum omnia
tradita in Scriptura Sacra et determinatione Ecclesiae et dictis Sanctorum possunt salvari
non ponendo eam inter essentiam et sapientiam, ideo simpliciter nego talem distinctionem
ibi possibilem, et eam universaliter nego in creaturis …” OTh II, pp. 179–185. The editors of
the critical edition note (ibid., p. 18 n. 2) that this passage was the source of one of the arti-
cles brought up against Ockham, specifically: “Item, quod ita bene possit sustineri trinitas
personarum in creaturis sicut in Deo.”
614 chapter ten
reason that one would want to accept the formal distinction is if one had
to. And as far as Ockham is concerned there is only one instance in which
our hand is forced: the Trinity. In the one case of the Trinity, and particularly
between the divine essence and each personal property, Ockham holds that
the only way that we can reach a satisfactory understanding of the things
that Roman Catholics believe (credita) is by positing a formal distinction.
We do not need the formal distinction to explain the sayings of the Bible
and the saints and the Church when it comes to either the distinction
between the divine attributes, or the distinction between the attributes and
the essence, or any distinction in creatures. In all those cases we should
reject the formal distinction,27 and specifically we should maintain that the
divine attributes are utterly the same as the essence and as each other; any
distinction that might seem to arise is due solely to our language and the
way we talk about the attributes.28 But because of what we know through
revelation, the Trinity is a special case. Indeed, Ockham for all intents and
purposes defines the formal distinction as being the type of distinction that
obtains in the case of the Trinity, where we know on the basis of Scripture
that one thing is really the same as two things that are really distinct from
each other, the way that the Father and the Son are both the essence and
yet are really distinct from each other.29
27 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “Ita dico in proposito quod, quia ex traditis in Sacra Scriptura
evidenter sequitur quod essentia divina non est formaliter relatio, sicut post patebit, et non
sequitur ex istis nec ex determinatione Ecclesiae nec ex dictis Sanctorum quod essentia
non est formaliter sapientia nec ratio hoc concludit, ideo simpliciter dico quod essentia
est formaliter sapientia et omnibus modis sapientia, bonitas, etc., quia nulla talis distinctio
media est ponenda nisi praecise propter tradita in Scriptura.” OTh II, pp. 1814–192.
28 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “Et ideo cum omnis res quae est essentia, sive illa sit absoluta
sive relativa, est etiam sapientia et bonitas divina et iustitia divina, ideo essentia divina et
bonitas divina vel sapientia nullo modo distinguuntur, nec formaliter nec quocumque modo.
Nec aliquid debet concedi de uno et negari ab alio, nec cum determinatione quacumque nec
sine determinatione, nisi modus grammaticalis vel logicalis impediat. Propter hoc etiam non
debet poni distinctio formalis in creaturis …” OTh II, p. 1918–25 (the quotation is continued
in n. 39 below). Ockham repeats many times that “diversitas modorum grammaticalium
vel logicalium” is the source of non-real distinction; see, e.g., nn. 39 and 65 (diversi modi
significandi) below; ibid., d. 10, q. 1 (OTh III, p. 32616–17).
29 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “Immo distingui formaliter non est aliud, sicut ego teneo
distinctionem formalem, et hoc est quid nominis ipsius, scilicet quod unum illorum est
aliqua res absoluta vel relativa et alterum non est illa res, sicut essentia est Filius et Pater non
est Filius, ideo essentia et Pater distinguuntur formaliter, ex quo sunt una res, quia essentia
est Pater. Et quando est hoc possibile invenire, tunc est ponenda distinctio formalis, quia
nihil aliud voco distingui formaliter; et quando non est possibile, tunc non est ponenda.”
OTh II, p. 1910–18.
william ockham 615
How did Ockham arrive at the conclusion that the use of the formal
distinction should be limited to the one case of the divine Trinity? When
he deals directly with the plurality of the persons, Ockham pinpoints the
difficulty in this way: “if essence and relation and person are numerically
one thing, indistinct without qualification, it is difficult to see how there are
many relations and many persons and not many essences.”30 In the course of
his discussion, Ockham argues against the relation account, and particularly
against the dual nature of the divine relations upon which Thomas Aquinas’
version of the relation account was predicated.31 He also attacks, for rather
obvious reasons, a theory on which essence and relation are really distinct.32
But the greatest part of his attention is devoted to Scotus and the formal
distinction, which he describes like this:
… essence and relation are one thing (res), nevertheless they are not the same
in every way in reality, but in reality they have some mode of non-identity,
and this non-identity is enough (sufficit) for the real distinction between the
divine supposites.33
There is, according to Ockham, only one argument that is of any use for
proving that there is some less than real non-identity between essence and
property, and it goes back to Ockham’s point, mentioned above, about the
30 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11: “Difficultas istius quaestionis oritur ex identitate divinae

essentiae cum relatione et cum persona, quia si essentia et relatio et persona sint simpliciter
una res numero indistincta, difficile est videre quomodo sunt plures relationes et plures
personae et non plures essentiae.” OTh II, p. 35912–16.
31 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11 (OTh II, pp. 359–361). Ockham’s rejection of Aquinas’ view
proceeds basically from an attack on the dual nature. What difference does it make whether
the intellect compares the relation to the essence or to the relation opposed? A human being
compared to a cow is not different from a human being compared to a stone. To this extent
Ockham’s critique reminds somewhat of Henry of Ghent’s, on which see Ch. 4, above, at
and around nn. 13–19. For Aquinas’ view, see Ch. 1, at and around n. 19; as mentioned there,
Aquinas would insist that the “comparison” involved here is metaphysical and not merely
psychological, in contrast to what Ockham seems to assume.
32 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11 (OTh II, pp. 361–363). A note in one of the manuscripts
containing Ockham’s text attributes this view to Walter Beaufon (read Sent. at Cambridge
ca. 1317–1318), but Ockham’s editors (ibid., p. 361 n. 2) add that it could be William of Ware
(who speaks for the reality of a relation even in comparison to the essence at his I Sent., q. 98
[“Utrum relatio in divinis differat ab essentia in qua fundatur”; the question number is from
Daniels 1917, 233]; see the text at loc. cit. in the Ockham edition), and I can add that in a very
general way this is the view of Durand of St. Pourçain (on whom see Ch. 7, above, at and
around nn. 47–49) On the position that Ockham describes, see also Gelber 1974, 178–179.
33 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11: “Tertia opinio est quod essentia et relatio sunt una res, nec
tamen sunt eadem omnibus modis ex natura rei, sed ex natura rei habent aliquem modum
non-identitatis, et ista non-identitas sufficit ad distinctionem realem inter supposita divina.”
OTh II, p. 3635–8.
616 chapter ten
relationship between distinction and contradiction. If contradictories can

be affirmed of two items, then there must be some form of distinction or
non-identity between them. But, e.g., the Father has both communicable
being, i.e. the essence, and incommunicable being, i.e. paternity, and hence
contradictories can be posited of the one person, the Father. Therefore,
between communicable essence and incommunicable property there must
be some form of non-identity.34 But this clearly cannot be real non-identity
or real distinction, since the Father is really one and the same person;
therefore, it must be a formal non-identity or distinction. Indeed, this is
Ockham’s general rule for determining the existence of a formal distinction:
if you can truly predicate contradictories of two “entities” (entitates) that
are nevertheless really the same, then those entities differ formally. Of the
ways that had been advanced in order to explain how the unity of essence is
compatible with the Trinity of persons, Ockham says that he finds positing a
formal distinction between essence and property (and between essence and
person) to be the “most probable”,35 and his reason for this is that without
the formal distinction he cannot see how to hold at one and the same time
the Trinity, on the one hand, and the universality or formality of Aristotelian
syllogistic logic, on the other. This requires some explanation.
It was mentioned above in Chapter Six that two major motivations lay
behind the use of the formal distinction in Scotus’ theology: it was an extra-
mental distinction, and it answered what can be described as metaphysical
questions (best illustrated by the distinction between the divine attributes),
but it also had a logical motivation, since it was Scotus’ way of approaching
the problems that the Trinity seemed to create for Aristotelian syllogistic
logic and especially the expository syllogism.36 Take the following syllogism:
34 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11: “Quod autem sit aliqua talis non-identitas inter relationem et
essentiam probatur sic, nec credo quod sit aliud argumentum efficax ad istam conclusionem.
Arguitur igitur sic: ‘Primum suppositum habet realiter entitatem communicabilem, alioquin
non posset eam communicare; habet etiam realiter entitatem incommunicabilem’; igitur ibi
est aliqua entitas incommunicabilis et aliqua communicabilis. Sed contradictoria non pos-
sunt verificari nisi propter aliquam distinctionem vel non-identitatem, igitur inter essentiam
divinam quae est communicabilis et relationem quae ex natura rei non est communicabilis
oportet ponere aliquem modum non-identitatis.” OTh II, p. 3638–19.
35 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11: “Ideo respondeo cum ista opinione, quae videtur mihi proba-
bilior, quod est aliquis modus non-identitatis inter naturam divinam et suppositum.” OTh II,
p. 3647–9.
36 On this aspect of Scotus’ doctrine, see the literature referred to above, in Ch. 6, n. 117. As
mentioned there, Scotus may have changed his mind about the precise degree of reality that
we should attribute to the formal distinction (see on this especially Cross 2004 and Dumont
2005, and the literature referred to there), but this does not affect what I am saying here.
william ockham 617
The divine essence is the Father

The Son is the divine essence
Therefore the Son is the Father
Both of the premisses here are true: The Father is the essence, and the
Son is the essence as well, since all three divine persons are identical with
the essence. And yet, the conclusion of the syllogism is false, because the
Son is not the Father, the Son is a person really distinct from the Father.
Why does an apparently valid syllogism yield a false conclusion? This is a
serious problem: Aristotelian logic was a universal tool of inquiry used by
all scholastics, and hence logic, of all things, should apply in every possible
situation. Thus, if logic broke down here, it might create a crisis in the
scholastic enterprise as a whole. As the Dominican theologian William
Crathorn would later put it:37 “If the syllogistic form were not to hold with
these terms (in materia ista), we would have to doubt whether it held with
any, for there is no reason that the form of arguing generally accepted
(tradita) holds with some terms more than with others.” Scotus, then, in
order to solve the serious challenge the Trinity posed for Aristotelian logic,
posited a formal distinction or non-identity between the divine essence, on
the one hand, and the properties that make each of the persons distinct,
on the other. According to Scotus the problem with the syllogism above is
that it fails to take into account the formal distinction that obtains between
person (or property) and essence. It is true that the divine essence is the
Father essentially, but there is nevertheless a formal distinction between
them—the Father is not purely or absolutely identical with the essence.
The same is true of the Son: Son and essence are the same essentially, but
there is some formal non-identity between them. On account of the formal
distinction, then, the syllogism does not conclude—one of the fallacies that
Aristotle catalogued in his Sophistical Refutations, the “fallacy of accident”,38
arises and blocks the syllogism. Hence, Scotus believed that the formal
distinction safeguarded both the doctrine of the Trinity and Aristotelian
syllogistic logic: there was a perfectly good reason that the syllogism did not
result in a true conclusion.
Ockham, despite his open dislike of the formal distinction, nevertheless
agrees with Scotus that in the case of the Trinity the formal distinction is the
37 See Ch. 11, below, n. 200.

38 See Soph.El. 5 (166b29–36); on the use of the fallacy of accident in later-medieval
trinitarian theology, see esp. Gelber 1974, esp. 212–234 but also passim, and Gelber 1987. For
Ockham’s presentation of the so-called “expository syllogism” and the fallacy of accident, see
n. 39 below.
618 chapter ten
only way to safeguard both the Trinity and syllogistic logic. Unless we posit
some form of extramental non-identity between essence and Father and
between essence and Son, either there is something wrong with syllogistic
logic or we must accept that the Father is the Son. Thus, essence and
person are distinguished formally, although, of course, not really (realiter).39
But as we can imagine from Ockham’s categorical dismissal of the formal
distinction when it came to the divine attributes, he is not entirely happy
about having to appeal to a formal distinction between essence and person.
Thus, just as above we saw him do, here too Ockham claims that the formal
distinction is only to be posited when we are compelled to do so by what
we believe (credita).40 The formal distinction in the case of the Trinity is a
measure of last resort, a device that we are forced to posit on the basis of
the strictures of faith, and this is why Ockham basically defines the formal
distinction as being the distinction that obtains when there is a Trinity of
persons in a unity of essence: in this case the essence is the same as three
things really distinct from each other, and therefore there must be a formal
39 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1 (text continued from n. 28 above): “Propter hoc etiam non debet
poni distinctio formalis in creaturis, quia ibi nulla una res simplex est plures res distinctae
realiter et quaelibet earum, sicut essentia divina est plures personae et est quaelibet illarum
personarum. Et ista est causa quare est hic fallacia accidentis ‘essentia est Pater, essentia
est Filius, ergo Filius est Pater’, quia scilicet essentia unica est plures res realiter distinctae
…” OTh II, pp. 1924–202. See also n. 29 above, and for an explicit linking by Ockham of
the use of the formal distinction with maintaining the universal validity of Aristotelian
syllogistics, see, e.g., Ord., d. 2, q. 6 (OTh II, pp. 17413–17510). As Gelber (1974, 233) notes
“Ockham … did not tie the fallacy of accident to the formal distinction as Scotus had done,
but instead perceived it as dependent in syllogisms about God on the real distinction of the
three persons”; elsewhere (226) she calls the fallacy of accident the “logical equivalent” of
the formal distinction for Ockham, inasmuch as the fallacy of accident arises because the
persons are really distinct. Thus, in both the case of the fallacy of accident and the formal
distinction, in Ockham’s trinitarian theology we are led to these devices because we know
the persons are really distinct and essentially identical (see further, below, at and around
nn. 40–44, esp. n. 43).
For “formally, although not really”, see Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11: “Et potest dici, secundum
bonum intellectum, quod distinguuntur formaliter quamvis non realiter .... Igitur quod
illud idem negetur de Patre et affirmetur de essentia non potest hoc contingere propter
aliquam diversitatem modorum grammaticalium vel logicalium, igitur praecise hoc erit
ratione alicuius modi non-identitatis inter illud quod significatur per Patrem et illud quod
significatur per essentiam; igitur inter Patrem et essentiam est ex natura rei aliquis modus
non-identitatis.” OTh II, p. 3649–22. See also ibid., d. 2, q. 1 (OTh II, p. 193–10).
40 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11: “… dico, sine assertione temeraria et praeiudicio, quod talis
distinctio est ponenda … sed non est ponenda nisi ubi credita ad hoc compellunt.” OTh II,
37014–17. For similar statements, see n. 26 above; Ord., d. 2, q. 6 (OTh II, p. 1756–10); ibid., d. 1,
q. 5 (OTh I, p. 4555–20).
william ockham 619
distinction between essence and properties, and essence and persons.41 This
becomes even clearer when Ockham replies to a Dominican criticism of the
use of the formal distinction in the constitution of the persons. We have seen
this type of criticism before: how does a merely formal distinction help to
explain the real distinction between the persons; surely any real distinction
must be based on an anterior real distinction.42 Ockham basically concedes
the point: it is not that the formal distinction is the basis or ground for the
real distinction between the persons, rather we infer the existence of the for-
mal distinction between essence and properties and between essence and
persons on the basis of the real distinction between the persons, and we
know about that from Scripture.43 Later in his career, in his first Quodlibet,
Ockham will answer in just this way a similar criticism made by his confrère
Walter Chatton.44 So, we can be sure that this was the Venerable Inceptor’s
considered opinion. In the one instance of the Trinity, Ockham could see no
way out of appealing to the formal distinction, a device that he found “no
easier to hold than the Trinity of persons with the unity of the essence”,45
since without the formal distinction between essence and properties, he
thought that the universal applicability of Aristotelian logic would be com-
promised, endangering scientific knowledge as such. In Ockham’s view, we
know that there has to be a formal distinction because of the parameters of
the trinitarian mystery—three persons really distinct from each other but
really identical with the shared divine essence—, and we affirm the formal
41 See n. 29 above. Marilyn McCord Adams (1987, vol. 2, 1002–1003) has pithily described
this move of Ockham’s like this: “Ockham embraces orthodoxy … but he takes himself merely
to have labelled a mystery and in no way to explain it!” For a similar move in another
trinitarian context, see at and around n. 118 below.
42 For the criticism, see Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11 (OTh II, p. 36712–19). For earlier versions
of this criticism of Scotus’ formal distinction, see e.g. that of Thomas Anglicus in the Liber
propugnatorius (Ch. 7, above, at and around n. 110).
43 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 11: “… ex sola distinctione formali non contingit habere distinc-
tionem realem a priori, et ideo ex sola distinctione formali relationis et essentiae non contin-
git a priori distinctio realis personarum, sed e converso ex distinctione reali personarum et
identitate essentiae cum personis et relationibus contingit inferre distinctionem formalem
relationis et essentiae. Et ita distinctio realis personarum non est quia essentia et relatio per-
sonarum distinguuntur formaliter, sed quia duae relationes reales distinguuntur.” OTh II,
p. 3729–17. See also ibid., d. 2, q. 1 (OTh II, p. 193–10).
44 See Ockham, Quodl. I, q. 2 (OTh IX, pp. 16–19). For Chatton’s criticism, see Walter
Chatton, I Reportatio, d. 2, q. 5, n. 11 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 1802–11); see also Ch. 11,
below, at and around nn. 61–62.
620 chapter ten
distinction between essence and person (and essence and property) on that
basis, and on that basis alone. The formal distinction is solely a stopgap mea-
sure.
We will return to Ockham’s rejection of the formal distinction between
the attributes in the next section (§3, below, at and around nn. 91–97), and
see what consequences it has for other elements in Ockham’s trinitarian
theology and especially his use of the psychological model. But here I
can note two things about what we have seen thus far. First, in rejecting
the formal distinction between the attributes and holding that “divine
wisdom is the same as the divine essence in all the ways in which the
divine essence is the same as the divine essence”,46 Ockham is drastically
simplifying, e.g., Scotus’ notion of God. On the level of the attributes God
is totally indistinct, totally simple. Here we see the tendency to simplicity
that becomes a major aspect of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition from
Peter Auriol on; we will observe this tendency in Ockham again. Of course,
on the trinitarian plane, Ockham accepts a formal distinction between the
personal properties and the essence—to this extent God’s utter simplicity
cannot be upheld. Nevertheless, as we have seen, Ockham accepts the
formal distinction grudgingly. In fact, he only accepts it because, as far as he
is concerned, not to do so would shake the very foundations of Aristotelian
syllogistic logic. And this brings us to the second point. Is this fideism?
Certainly there is the appeal to Scripture and the Church as the only reason
for postulating the formal distinction. But Ockham’s major interest is to save
by any means available the basis for all scholastic discourse: logic. If logic
did not function in all possible situations, how could it be the universal
tool of inquiry and discussion that the scholastics made it? There had to
be a way to explain how logic could deal with the enormous challenge the
Trinity posed for it.47 This is hardly a “fideistic” motivation, no matter how
one defines ‘fideism’. I will return to Ockham’s “fideism” in the final section
of the present chapter (§4).
If there is a formal distinction between the divine essence and each of
the personal properties for Ockham, what exactly is the nature of these
personal properties in Ockham’s view? There are two major issues here: are
the properties relative or absolute, and are the properties relation or origin?
With regard to the first issue, Ockham is clearly attracted by the possibility
of absolute properties. He says outright that the position holding absolute

47 Gelber 1974 is the now classic discussion of these issues.
william ockham 621
properties more easily explains the fact that there are three persons and
one God than does the position advocating relations, clearly basing him-
self on his own view of relation, on which relation as such does not exist.
Given Ockham’s understanding of relation, he found it no more difficult
to believe that there could be several absolutes really identical with one
essence than to believe that there could be several relations really iden-
tical with one essence.48 With that said, however, and perhaps reflecting
on the trouble that Scotus apparently had at Oxford when he argued there
for absolute persons, Ockham ends by saying: “Although the fourth posi-
tion [about absolute persons] could seem probable to some, nevertheless
because the authoritative passages of the saints are seen expressly to posit
relations in the divine … so, in keeping with [the saints], I say that the
divine persons are constituted and are made distinct through relations of
origin.”49 This reliance on revelation as the determining factor in the nature
of the properties, Ockham also exhibits when he gives a type of “proof” that
the properties cannot be absolutes. Here Ockham makes an appeal to the
48 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 1: “Verumtamen nec istam opinionem hscil., opinio de absolutisi
nec priorem hscil., opinio de personibus constitutis per proprietates absolutas primo, et
per relationes quasi ex consequenti vel distinguuntur per illasi teneo propter auctoritates
Sanctorum, quamvis mihi videatur quod tam ista quam praecedens, quantum ad illud
commune in quo concordant, facilius, quamvis non verius, posset sustineri cum isto articulo
‘tres sunt personae et unus Deus’, quam opinio de relationibus. Cuius ratio est quia ita
est difficile intelligere quod relatio sit quaedam res, et sit alia realiter in creatura, et quod
multiplicetur sine multiplicatione essentiae quae est eadem realiter cum relationibus, sicut
ponere multiplicationem absolutorum sine multiplicatione essentiae quae sit eadem realiter
cum illis absolutis. Immo sicut potest sustineri quod sunt tres relationes realiter differentes,
et tamen quod una essentia sit realiter illae tres relationes, ita faciliter potest poni quod tria
absoluta sunt realiter distincta, et tamen quod una essentia sit realiter illa tria absoluta.”
OTh IV, p. 1532–16. The opinion that Ockham describes at ibid., pp. 147–152, that “personae
constituuntur per proprietates absolutas primo, et per relationes quasi ex consequenti vel
distinguuntur per illas” is assigned by the Ockham editors on the testimony of Scotus to
Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, q. 3 (Opera Omnia, vol. 1, pp. 456–458), but the language here
is quite close to the reports that we have of Robert Grosseteste’s position (see Ch. 6, above,
at and around n. 18). On Ockham’s views on relation, see, e.g., Adams 1987, vol. 1, 215–276;
Henninger 1989, 119–149; Maurer 1999, 47–53. See also Ch. 11, below, at and around n. 51, for
Ockham’s response to Praepositinus’ theory that there are no personal properties.
49 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 1: “Quamvis ista quarta opinio hscil., de personis absolutisi posset
alicui videri probabilis, verumtamen quia auctoritates Sanctorum videntur expresse ponere
relationes in divinis .... ideo tenendo cum eis dico quod personae divinae constituuntur et
distinguuntur per relationes originis.” OTh IV, pp. 15622–1577. Both Adams 1987, vol. 2, 1003–
1007, and Freddoso 1999, 343–345, look at this passage and how it fits into Ockham’s broader
views on faith and reason. See also n. 48 above. For the troubles Scotus is reported to have
had at Oxford for holding that the persons are absolute, see Ch. 6, above, at and around n. 95.
622 chapter ten
principle of parsimony. When it comes to items that seem to conflict with

natural reason, we should posit no more than are strictly necessary, i.e.
exclusively those that the Scriptures and saints lead us to posit; but abso-
lute properties like the ones under discussion conflict with natural reason
(perhaps no more than relative properties do, but nonetheless), and nei-
ther the Scriptures nor the saints mention them; therefore, by the prin-
ciple of parsimony we should only posit what the Scriptures do mention,
i.e. relative properties.50 Ockham clearly does find the Trinity to be basi-
cally beyond the capacity of human rationality to fathom, and when he
deals with the issue as a systematic theologian he keeps very close to the
one genuine source that he maintains that he has for the doctrine: revela-
tion.
With regard to the second issue—whether the properties are relation or
origin—we see very clearly that one driving motivation behind Ockham’s
trinitarian theology is the safeguarding of divine simplicity. Ockham’s posi-
tion on the matter is that this is a false question: relation and origin are
absolutely the same, there is neither distinction nor priority between them.51
For Ockham ‘divine relation’ and ‘divine origin’ refer to precisely the same
reality, the divine property, and hence, relying on the type of argumentation
that above we saw him use concerning distinction and contradiction, Ock-
ham will argue that no difference or priority can be posited between them;
they are one utterly simple property, the same secundum rem et rationem.52
50 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 1: “… frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora, nec
ponenda sunt plura mirabilia, quae videntur rationi naturali repugnare, sine auctoritate
Scripturae vel Sanctorum. Sed ponere talem proprietatem absolutam videtur repugnare
rationi naturali, nec habetur expresse in Scriptura vel dictis Sanctorum. Igitur, etc.” OTh IV,
p. 15720–25. On Ockham’s “razor”, see the nuanced discussion in Keele 2010, 89–110.
51 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 2: “Ideo dico aliter ad quaestionem. Et primo ostendam quod
origo et relatio nullo modo distinguuntur ex natura rei. Secundo ex hoc inferam quod tam
origo quam relatio constituit et distinguit personas … Ideo dico quod quidquid dicitur de
relatione divina, dicitur de origine divina et e converso; et quidquid negatur ab uno et a
reliquo. Et ideo non plus relatio divina praesupponit originem divinam quam e converso. Nec
origo divina distinguitur a relatione divina, nec secundum rem nec secundum rationem, nec
est prior ea nec posterior …” OTh IV, pp. 17614–17, 18020–25. Ockham also emphasizes the lack
of priority between production and relation when he discusses Scotus’ view that the essence
is the formal term of production; see Ord., d. 5, q. 3 (e.g., OTh IV, pp. 72–74).
52 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 2: “… accipio praecise illam originem quae Deus est; illa nec
secundum rem nec secundum rationem distinguitur a relatione quae est realiter Deus. Quod
non secundum rem, concedunt. Quod non secundum rationem … ostensum est quod a nullo
reali differt aliquid reale secundum rationem. Unde ratio illa esset falsa quae diceret quod
origo, quae est realiter Deus, differt a relatione quae est realiter Deus.” OTh IV, pp. 16920–
1702.
william ockham 623
There is in fact nothing that you can say about the relations that you cannot
also say about the origins.53 In his treatment of the question, Ockham makes
short shrift of the arguments that the Franciscan trinitarian tradition had
advanced to the effect that relation “presupposes” its term “already” put
into being through origin, and hence must be posterior both to the action
of originating and to the supposite bringing about that action. Ockham,
employing a Dominican tactic, replies simply enough that this is how things
work in creatures but not in God, leaving unstated that arguing uncritically
from creatures to God is unacceptable. In God, relation and the origin
corresponding to it are completely the same.54
But if Ockham turns his back on the Franciscan tradition’s view of this
matter, the view he seems most anxious to rebut is Thomas Aquinas’. As we
have seen,55 Aquinas in his later work held that the persons were constituted
and made distinct by relation, and further that, e.g., paternity as constitutive
property precedes generation, which in turn precedes paternity as relation.
All of this was, for Aquinas, at the level of our conceptualization only, but
Ockham rejects it for reasons corresponding to those he used against the
Franciscans:
The first thing that [Aquinas] says, that the persons are not constituted
through origins, is simply false. The reason for this is that when two [items]
are the same in all ways, and one is truly predicated of the other, if one
constitutes, then the other constitutes as well. But divine origin is in no way
distinct from relation, and relation constitutes, therefore origin [constitutes]
as well.56
Ockham clearly thinks that Aquinas runs into trouble by positing such a
strictly delineated difference between the function of the relations and
the function of the origins in the constitution of the divine persons. If
relation and origin are the same, then they function in precisely the same
53 See the text found in n. 51 above.

54 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 2: “Ad primum principale dico quod non omnis relatio est
posterior actione, quia hoc est falsum in divinis—quidquid sit in creaturis—immo illa relatio
est eadem omni modo cum actione quae realiter est una res in Deo.” OTh IV, p. 18413–16. For
Ockham’s statement of the general Franciscan position, see ibid., p. 1674–7; for Dominican
use of the same argument, see, e.g., Roman of Rome, Ch. 3, above, at and around n. 54.
55 Ch. 1, in nn. 52–53; Ch. 3, § 1.
56 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 2: “In ista opinione dicuntur multa falsa et sibi invicem repug-
nantia. Primum quod dicit, quod personae non constituuntur per origines, est simpliciter
falsum. Cuius ratio est, quia quando aliqua sunt idem omnibus modis, et unum vere praed-
icatur de reliquo, si unum constituit, et reliquum constituit. Sed origo divina nullo modo
distinguitur a relatione, et relatio constituit, igitur et origo.” OTh IV, p. 16910–16.
624 chapter ten
way, according to Ockham. Of course, Aquinas is welcome to suggest that

origin and relation differ merely by mode of signifying (diversos modos
significandi), but since modi significandi apply only to signs and not to
things, and since we are investigating what actually constitutes the persons
in God, this is besides the point.57 And against the main reason Aquinas gives
for his position, Ockham argues in a way that brings to mind Peter Auriol’s
argumentation for the view that the emanations are unelicited. According
to Ockham, Aquinas had thought that an origin or mode of origination, like
generation, must go out from a fully established person, the Father, and
therefore the Father must be constituted by the property paternity in order
to originate the Son through generation. Ockham denies this to be the case:
The origin, which is God, is not going forth from a person as though it were
posterior to that person and presupposing it, rather [the origin] constitutes
[the person]. In the same way, nativity is not the way to a person, as if it is
prior to [the person], but it is in every way in reality the relation constituting
the person.58
Ockham, like Auriol, makes the emanations as much like static relations as
possible—the emanations do not come from a person, nor are they the way
to a person. Although when he discusses it directly, Ockham basically rejects
Auriol’s contention that there is not an elicitive source of the emanations,
nevertheless Ockham’s ideas on the emanations as presented here in his
discussion of the divine properties do resemble Auriol’s.59 Ockham claims
57 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 2: “Si dicatur aliter quod origo et relatio differunt secun-
dum modum significandi, et ideo potest aliquid praedicari de uno quod non praedicatur
de reliquo—hoc non valet, quia illa solum differunt secundum modum significandi quae
habent diversos modos significandi. Sed talia non sunt nisi voces vel aliqua signa, heti non
res quae non sunt signa. Nunc autem non quaerimus de istis vocibus vel conceptibus vel sig-
nis quibuscumque, utrum talia constituant divinas personas, quia manifestum est quod non.
Sed quaerimus de illa origine quam ponimus in Deo realiter et de relatione illa quae Deus est,
quae non differunt secundum modum significandi quia non sunt signa. Igitur non possumus
dicere quod illa origo non constituit et relatio constituit quia differunt penes modos signifi-
candi.” OTh IV, p. 1703–16.
58 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 2: “… origo, quae Deus est, non est progrediens a persona, quasi
posterior persona et eam praesupponens, immo ipsam constituit. Eodem modo nativitas non
est via ad personam, quasi sit prior ea, sed est ipsa relatio omni modo a parte rei constituens
personam.” OTh IV, p. 1734–8. There can be little doubt that here Ockham has in mind Aquinas’
“intrinsic constitutive” argument, according to which the emanation is the “way” to the
emanated person (see Ch. 3, above, at and around n. 3, and further references there).
59 For Auriol’s theory of the unelicited emanations, see Ch. 9, above, at and around nn. 34–
44. For aspects of Ockham’s discussion of this view of Auriol’s, see at and around nn. 103–105
below, and for further similarities between Ockham’s and Auriol’s trinitarian positions, see
at and around nn. 83–87 below.
william ockham 625
outright—again arguing much as Auriol had—that active generation is just

as intrinsic to the Father as is paternity; indeed it could be no other way,
because active generation is paternity without any differences.60 In line with
this position, when Ockham discusses the way that essence and paternity
constitute the person of the Father, his position bears some resemblance
to Auriol’s theory on constitution resultative: there is no significant sense
in which the essence “precedes” paternity or in which the essence and
paternity “precede” the Father. Given essence and paternity, Ockham seems
to say, the Father arises as a unity without being composed of paternity
and essence as though these were parts of him.61 Like Auriol and for similar
reasons, Ockham rejects the kinds of relationship between property and
essence “within” a divine person that Henry of Ghent had posited with
his quasi-formal/quasi-material distinction, or Scotus with his distinction
between formal and final term of production.62 As for Auriol, so for Ockham,
property and essence are equal partners in the constitution of the persons,
neither having any precedence over the other (albeit, in contradistinction
to Auriol, Ockham thinks that essence and property are formally distinct).63
60 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 2: “… quando aliquid est intrinsecum alicui et proprium sibi, per
illud distinguitur ab alio. Sed origo est Patri intrinseca .... Igitur per generationem-actionem
distinguitur Pater ab omni alia persona. Quod autem generatio-actio sit intrinseca Patri
ostendo. Quia generatio-actio nullo modo ex natura rei distinguitur a paternitate; sed a
parte rei paternitas est intrinseca Patri; igitur a parte rei generatio-actio est intrinseca Patri.”
OTh IV, p. 1715–12. For a corresponding argument, dealing with generation and the divine
essence, from Auriol, see Ch. 9, above, at n. 39.
61 E.g., Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 1: “Si dicatur quod omne compositum de necessitate
praeexigit partes et partium unionem, igitur prius est paternitas unita essentiae quam Pater
constituatur .... Respondeo quod hic non est aliquod compositum, nec sunt hic aliquae
partes. Et ideo Patri paternitas non praesupponitur, nec paternitas quacumque prioritate
est prior Patre, quamvis ipsa essentia quadam prioritate communitatis vel consequentiae sit
prior Patre …” OTh IV, pp. 15818–1592.
62 For Ockham’s rejection of Henry’s view (as well as the related position of Robert
Cowton), see Ord., d. 5, q. 2 (OTh III, esp. pp. 48–55, 62–66); for Ockham vs. Scotus, see Ord.,
d. 5, q. 3 (OTh III, pp. 66–75). One major motivation for Ockham’s rejection (as it had been for
Auriol) was that neither essence nor relation could be in potency to the other; Ord., d. 5, q. 2:
“… relatio et essentia sunt una res, et ideo neutrum est potentia respectu alterius.” OTh III,
p. 628–9. For Henry’s own view, see Ch. 4, above, at and around n. 12; Scotus, Ch. 6, at and
around nn. 99–106; Auriol, Ch. 9, at and around nn. 27–30. For more evidence concerning
Ockham’s ideas on personal constitution, see at and around nn. 81–85 below.
63 For the simplicity of essence and relation as Father, see n. 61 above. For Ockham’s view
on the nature of a person or a supposite, see Ord., d. 23, q. un. (OTh IV, esp. pp. 61–63), where
Ockham gives the definition of ‘supposite’ that is also found in n. 64 below. See also Ockham’s
Quodl. I, q. 3 (OTh IX, pp. 19–23), where Ockham, replying to criticism from Walter Chatton,
deals with the lack of distinction between paternity and the Father.
626 chapter ten
This is further manifested when Ockham considers the status of active spi-
ration in the constitution of the first person. Since a supposite is “complete
being, not constituting [another] being per se one, nor by its nature inhering
in something else, nor sustained by any other thing”, the supposite con-
stituted from essence and paternity and active spiration, i.e. the Father, is
per se one. Hence, active spiration could never be a quasi-incidental prop-
erty as, e.g., Henry of Ghent, William of Ware, and John Duns Scotus had
argued. Without active spiration, according to Ockham, the Father would
not exist, and hence it is just as indispensable to the Father’s being a sup-
posite as are the essence and paternity.64 Property and essence are equal
partners, from the union of which a person arises—this was also the core
idea behind Auriol’s theory of constitution resultative. It is interesting to
note that Walter Chatton will remark at one juncture on the similarities
between Auriol’s and Ockham’s views on the unelicited emanations and the
distinction between the persons (Ch. 11, below, at n. 96). Nevertheless, even
though Ockham’s view is similar to Auriol’s constitution resultative, Ock-
ham gives it his personal stamp insofar as he accepts the use of the formal
distinction in trinitarian theology. Thus, for Ockham active spiration in the
Father is really paternity; in the Son, active spiration is really filiation; never-
theless, Ockham maintains that in the Father active spiration and paternity
are formally distinct, since it can be affirmed of active spiration that it is in
the Son, while it can in no way be affirmed of paternity that it is in the Son;
mutatis mutandis, the same holds for the formal distinction between active
spiration and filiation in the Son.65 As we have seen, a formal distinction is
64 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 3: “… dico quod spiratio-activa non est adventitia personae, non
plus quam essentia vel paternitas. Sed distinguo de constitutivo quod dupliciter accipitur.
Uno modo pro omni illo quod est de essentia et quiditate alicuius, ita quod ipsum sine illo
esse non potest .... Primo modo dico quod spiratio-activa est constitutiva sicut paternitas
et essentia .... suppositum est illud quod est ens completum, non constituens aliquod ens
per se unum, nec natum alteri inhaerere, nec ab aliquo alio sustentificatum. Sed accipiendo
praecise unum constitutum ex essentia et paternitate, illi non plus convenit haec descriptio
quam essentiae divinae. Igitur illud non plus est suppositum quam essentia; igitur ipsum
cum aliquo constituit suppositum; sed non potest constituere suppositum cum aliquo nisi
cum spiratione activa; igitur etc. Assumptum patet, quia tale constitutum ex essentia et
paternitate constituit per se unum cum spiratione activa, quia totum constitutum ex illo
constituto et spiratione activa non est unum per accidens, igitur est per se unum.” OTh IV,
pp. 18624–18717. Below, I deal with the second of Ockham’s two senses of ‘constitutive’ (a
stricter notion of constitutive than that found here, i.e. “pro illo quod est de essentia alicuius
distinguens ipsum ab omni alio”, ibid., p. 1871–2), at and around nn. 68–74, esp. n. 71.
65 Ockham, Ord., d. 27, q. 1: “… paternitas et spiratio non sunt plures relationes quia non
differunt realiter; secundo quod non sunt idem formaliter. Primum patet, quia quaelibet
william ockham 627
what obtains when contradictories can be affirmed about what are really the
same, and on the basis of the Roman Catholic faith we know this to be the
case with active spiration and paternity in the Father and active spiration
and filiation in the Son.
A final manifestation of Ockham’s tendency to simplify the trinitarian
scheme is his complete identification of innascibility with paternity. For
Ockham, if, when you say ‘innascibility’, you really mean ‘paternity’, then
the property is constitutive of the Father; but if you are thinking about
innascibility as a property all its own, then it is just a name (praedicabile)
for the Father, merely signalling that the Father comes from no other, but
of no significance in the constitution of the person.66 Indeed, Ockham goes
so far as to say that, there are not, as, e.g., Thomas Aquinas had claimed, five
divine notions; there are in fact only four notions in God, since innascibility
is not a notion distinct from paternity.67
Thus, Ockham postulates properties formally distinct from the divine
essence in order to preserve the universality of logic. He maintains that
the properties are relative (as opposed to absolute), and that there can
be affirmed no priority or distinction between properties as relation and
properties as origin. Finally, he champions a significant simplification in
the description of God as Trinity, including a rejection of innascibility as
a personal property of the Father, and a reduction of the number of notions
from five to four. On the basis of this tendency to simplicity, Ockham was
led—probably independently—to positions that bear some resemblance
to those taken by Peter Auriol, i.e. unelicited emanations and constitution
persona est realiter quidquid habet, nisi quod non est alia persona quam habet. Sed si
spiratio-actio non esset realiter paternitas, non esset etiam Pater, et per consequens Pater
non esset realiter spiratio-actio, et ita non esset quidquid habet .... Secundum, scilicet quod
non sunt idem formaliter, probo. Quia quandocumque aliquid verificatur de aliquo termino
et non de alio, aliquid importatur per unum quod non est idem realiter vel formaliter cum
importato per aliud, nisi diversus modus significandi impediat. Sed hic in proposito non est
talis diversus modus significandi, et paternitas non est in Filio et tamen spiratio-actio est in
Filio. Igitur non sunt idem formaliter.” OTh IV, pp. 19117–19225.
66 Ockham, Ord., d. 28, q. un.: “Et ita patet quod innascibilitas quae ponitur proprietas
distincta a paternitate non est constitutiva Patris. Et ratio est quia innascibilitas, quae
est distincta proprietas quocumque modo imaginabili a paternitate, non est nisi unum
praedicabile de solo Patre; quod praedicabile, quamvis supponat pro Patre, non tamen est
realiter Pater, nec est realiter Deus, et per consequens non est de essentia Patris, et ita non
est proprietas constitutiva Patris.” OTh IV, pp. 27021–2715.
67 Ockham, Ord., d. 28, q. un.: “… in divinis non sunt quinque notiones quarum quaelibet
sit realiter in Deo et realiter idem cum Deo .... innascibilitas … non est realiter Deus, sed
tantum est quoddam praedicabile de Deo et quod supponit pro solo Patre.” OTh IV, p. 2717–13.
For Aquinas on the number of the notions, see Ch. 1, above, at n. 3.
628 chapter ten
resultative. But one can ask, where does Ockham stand in the Franciscan
trinitarian tradition? We have already seen that at times he clearly rejects
the Franciscan view; he is in discussion, sometimes critically, with John
Duns Scotus, and, to a lesser degree, Peter Auriol. But where does Ockham
come down on some of the issues that we have seen divide the Franciscan
from the Dominican trinitarian traditions?
3. Ockham, the Franciscan Trinitarian

Tradition, and the Psychological Model
Two of the “flashpoints” in the later-medieval trinitarian debate, places

where the differences between the two major trinitarian traditions were
clearly visible, were the related issues of the distinction of the Son from
the Holy Spirit given that the latter did not come from the former, and the
distinction between the emanations. By looking at Ockham’s ideas on these
two issues, we can get a sense of where he fits in the Franciscan trinitarian
tradition.
In Ockham’s treatment of the first of these issues, the counterfactual
Filioque question, the statement and the refutation of Thomas Aquinas’ view
on the matter is the centerpoint in the discussion. Aquinas, of course, had
claimed that only opposed relations could bring about the distinction of the
persons, and hence the Holy Spirit would only be distinct from the Son, if the
former came from the latter and there was opposition of relations between
them.68 Ockham rejects Aquinas’ view primarily through an argument that
we have seen Scotus make: the very nature of a constitutive, i.e. something
that constitutes, rules it out. De facto the Son is distinguished by filiation
from the Holy Spirit, because filiation is proper to the Son; therefore, even if
the Son did not actively spirate the Holy Spirit, filiation would be a sufficient
source of distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit to guarantee
their real distinction.69 Although, as we will see, Ockham will proceed to
nuance this first statement of his agreement with the Franciscan trinitarian
68 For Ockham’s presentation of Aquinas’ view, see Ord., d. 11, q. 2 (OTh III, pp. 362–364).
For Aquinas himself, see above, Ch. 3, § 1. Ockham also deals with this question, particularly
its logical dimensions, in his Summa Logicae III–3.42 (OPh I, pp. 739–741), in the context of
his discussion of the theory of obligations. In what follows (at and around nn. 69–74) I am
dealing with the second of the two senses of ‘constitutive’ mentioned by Ockham in the text
in n. 64 above.
69 See Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2 (OTh III, pp. 36416–3654, further p. 3655–18). For Scotus’ use
of this type of argument, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 56–59 and 128.
william ockham 629
tradition, nevertheless it is on the basis of this argument that Ockham

denies the very foundation of Aquinas’, and the Dominican trinitarian
tradition’s, position on the matter: “when it is accepted that the persons are
made distinct only by opposed relations, it is not true”.70 What is important
according to Ockham is not whether the relations are opposed, but whether
the relations are “really distinct” (realiter distinctae)—Scotus would have
called this “incompossible in the same supposite”. Really distinct relations,
like passive spiration and filiation, constitute really distinct supposites.71
It is true, of course, that all the opposed relations are really distinct and
that the supposites they constitute are made distinct through them, but
this is not so much (praecise) because they are opposed, rather first and
foremost it is because they are really distinct. Thus, if it could have been
the case that the divine relations were opposed and not really distinct, then
they would not have constituted really distinct persons. This just is the
nature of things that constitute for Ockham: if they are really distinct, no
matter whether they are absolutes or relatives, opposed or not, then they
make the things constituted through them really distinct.72 Just to make
his dismissal of the necessity for opposition of relations absolutely clear,
Ockham adds explicitly that through filiation the Son could be made really
distinct from the Holy Spirit, despite the fact that through filiation he would
70 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “… quando accipitur quod personae tantum distinguuntur rela-
tionibus oppositis, illud non est verum, quia personae distinguuntur omnibus relationibus
distinctis realiter, sive sint oppositae sive non.” OTh III, p. 36520–23. For Ockham’s nuancing
of this statement to reflect his view that a supposite constituted by filiation alone would not
be the Son, since active spiration is a property “essential” (i.e., indispensable) to the Son, see
nn. 81–85 below.
71 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “Sed quia de facto et secundum veritatem filiatio et spiratio-
passio sunt duae relationes realiter distinctae, sicut paternitas et filiatio sunt duae rela-
tiones realiter distinctae, ideo—quocumque alio amoto—constituta per ipsas distinguuntur
realiter.” OTh III, p. 3663–7. For Scotus and “incompossible in the same supposite”, see Ch. 6,
above, at and around n. 127. Clearly, the notion of a constitutive used by Ockham here is dis-
tinct from the notion of a constitutive discussed in n. 64 above, but corresponds to a more
strict definition of constitutive as “what makes something distinct from all else”, as men-
tioned in that note.
72 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “Et ideo verum est quod omnes relationes oppositae distin-
guuntur realiter et distinguunt constituta per ipsas, non praecise quia sunt oppositae, sed
primo quia sunt distinctae realiter, in tantum quod si possent esse relationes oppositae et
non distinctae realiter, non distinguerent personas realiter. Et ideo omnes relationes distinc-
tae realiter—sive sint oppositae sive non—distinguunt constituta per ipsas realiter. Quia hoc
est commune omnibus constituentibus distinctis realiter—sive sint opposita sive non, sive
absoluta sive relationes—quod omnia constituentia distincta realiter distinguunt constituta
realiter.” OTh III, p. 3667–17.
630 chapter ten
not refer to the Holy Spirit.73 And at one point in his discussion, replying
to the Dominican “Father argument”—i.e., the argument that if disparate
relations could constitute persons, the Father would be two persons based
on the disparate relations in him, paternity and active spiration—, Ockham
notes that the reason the argument fails is that only really distinct properties
constitute persons, and paternity and active spiration are, as we saw above,
merely formally and not really distinct. Active spiration, then, could never
constitute a distinct person, since it is really the same as both paternity
and filiation (although formally distinct from them).74 In his treatment thus
far, then, Ockham fits squarely into the Franciscan trinitarian tradition,
rejecting the Dominican insistence that opposed relations are necessary for
After having established at least to his own satisfaction that the Domini-
can point of view on this matter is incorrect, Ockham next proceeds to
his own position. Ockham’s interpretation of the question being asked is
right in line with the Franciscan trinitarian tradition’s interpretation, as we
have seen it in, e.g., Scotus. Thus, the principal intention of the question is
“whether in the Son—besides active spiration, which is really distinct from
the Holy Spirit—there is something … that is really distinct from the Holy
Spirit, and consequently, with it retained and all other things removed, …
the thing constituted from it and the divine essence would be really dis-
tinct from the Holy Spirit.”75 The question, then, is about filiation as a con-
73 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “Et ideo per filiationem posset Filius distingui realiter a Spiritu
Sancto quamvis per filiationem non referretur ad Spiritum Sanctum.” OTh III, p. 36713–15.
74 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “… personae distinguuntur per relationes disparatas realiter
distinctas, nec ex hoc sequitur quod sunt quatuor supposita in divinis, quia non sunt quatuor
relationes in divinis realiter distinctae. Quia quamvis spiratio activa distinguatur realiter
a spiratione passiva, non tamen distinguitur realiter a paternitate vel filiatione. Et ideo
quamvis faciat numerum cum spiratione passiva, ut vere dicatur ‘spiratio activa et spiratio
passiva sunt duae relationes’, non tamen facit numerum cum paternitate et filiatione, ut
vere dicatur quod sunt tres relationes, et ideo nec sunt quatuor supposita.” OTh III, p. 3724–13
(the italicized ‘disparatas’ in the quotation is found in the text of the critical edition but is
omitted in ms. C [= Oxford, Balliol College 299] and it would appear to be an unwarranted
addition to Ockham’s text). Ockham’s claim that there are not four relations in God was
flagged by the commission that examined his writings, in an interesting article that explicitly
allows for disagreement about whether opposed or disparate relations are constitutive,
but not about the actual number of relations (i.e., four); see the Apparatus fontium to
loc. cit. For paternity and active spiration being formally distinct, see at and around n. 65
above.
75 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “Sed principalis intentio quaestionis est quaerere utrum in
Filio—praeter spirationem activam quae realiter distinguitur a Spiritu Sancto—sit aliquid

william ockham 631
stitutive property of the Son: could filiation together only with the divine
essence constitute something really distinct from the Holy Spirit? There is
a secondary intention of the question, according to Ockham, and this on
account of the Greek position on the Filioque: with it given that the distinct
persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are one God, what is the epistemo-
logical status of the consequence ‘The Holy Spirit does not proceed from
the Son, therefore the Holy Spirit is not distinct from the Son’? Does the
opposite of the antecedent in that consequence follow evidently (eviden-
ter) from the opposite of the consequent? In general, do we know with the
kind of strict demonstrative knowledge that cannot be denied, i.e. on the
basis of an evident consequence (consequentia evidens), that the Holy Spirit
comes from the Son.76 Of crucial importance here—as it is to the entire
issue of faith and reason and scientific knowledge in Ockham—is his notion
of evident knowledge (notitia evidens): for Ockham, demonstrative scien-
tific knowledge is an edifice composed of interlocking propositions built
up syllogistically from prior premisses, and only when those premisses are
themselves “evidently cognized” can the conclusions reached on their basis
be considered scientific knowledge strictly speaking. And evidently cog-
nized premisses are propositions that either are formed on the basis of terms
intuitively cognized, or are known per se, or are themselves conclusions of
demonstrative syllogisms. Significantly, taking something on faith for Ock-
ham, as we do when we accept revelation, cannot qualify for the kind of
evident knowledge that is required for scientific knowledge, but can at best
lead to justified belief.77 This is the force of the term ‘evident’ that is at work
… quod realiter distinguatur a Spiritu Sancto, et per consequens, quo retento omni alio amoto
… constitutum ex illo et essentia divina distingueretur realiter a Spiritu Sancto.” OTh III,
p. 3685–12.
76 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “Secundario est intentio quaestionis quaerere—propter
Graecos—an consequentia evidenti, supposita pluralitate personarum divinarum—puta

trium—possit inferri Spiritum Sanctum procedere a Filio. Et per consequens, an supposita
eadem trinitate personarum, scilicet quod Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus sunt unus Deus,
sequatur evidenter oppositum antecedentis ex opposito consequentis ‘Spiritus Sanctus non
procedit a Filio, ergo Spiritus Sanctus non distinguitur a Filio’.” OTh III, p. 36820–27. On Ock-
ham’s use of the term evidenter, see n. 77 below.
77 On Ockham’s use of the term evidenter, see, e.g., Martin (Christopher J.) 1997, 260;
Martin (Christopher J.) 2004, 142–143; Knuuttila 1997, 284–285, and on evident cognition in
Ockham, Perini-Santos 2006. I have learned a great deal about evidence, evident cognition,
and scientia in Ockham from Jenny Pelletier, both in conversation and in her doctoral dis-
sertation (Pelletier 2010). For other examples of Ockham’s use of evidenter in the trinitarian
context, see also the texts in nn. 26–27 above, and nn. 79, 81, 86, and 107 below, as well as his
explicit statements on the subject of the scientific nature of theology found in Ord., prol., q. 7
(OTh I, pp. 183–206, esp. pp. 199–200).
632 chapter ten
in Ockham’s notion of “evident consequence”. It should be noted that, no

matter what answer Ockham reaches with regard to the evidence of the
consequence concerning the Holy Spirit’s proceeding from the Son, he is
adamant that no one should take the investigation he is embarking on as
being about the possibility that the Holy Spirit is really distinct from the
Son and that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son: that, accord-
ing to Ockham, is strictly impossible, since the Holy Spirit’s not coming
from the Son is strictly impossible. Ockham is a Roman Catholic, and the
Roman Catholic faith rules out that the Holy Spirit not come from the Son.78
When we broach the counterfactual question, what we are interested in is
the nature of filiation as a constitutive property and with what degree of
demonstrative certainty we can show that the Holy Spirit comes from the
Son. For Ockham, that the Holy Spirit comes from the Son is not up for dis-
cussion, since the faith guarantees it.
What, then, does Ockham say to the question? First, with regard to
the epistemological issue, Ockham denies that it can be evidently inferred
(evidenter inferri) that the Holy Spirit comes from the Son, if we know
only that three really distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are
one God. Given the bare fact of the Trinity with no other data, Ockham
denies that the Filioque is demonstrable in any strict sense. To put it into
the language of inferences that he prefers, in the following consequence
the consequent does not follow evidently from the antecedent: ‘the Holy
Spirit is distinct from the Son, therefore the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Son’. The reason that he holds this inference not to be evident is that, as
we have seen, Ockham denies that opposition of relations is necessary in
order for the persons to be made distinct from each other—what is both
necessary and sufficient is that whatever constitutes the persons are really
distinct from each other, and whether the constitutives are opposed or
non-opposed relations or even absolutes is of lesser importance.79 Once
78 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “… intentio quaestionis non est quaerere … de possibilitate
istius copulativae ‘Spiritus Sanctus non procedit a Filio et Spiritus Sanctus realiter distingui-
tur Filio’. Et manifestum est quod ista copulativa est simpliciter impossibilis, quia altera pars
est simpliciter impossibilis, scilicet ‘Spiritus Sanctus non procedit a Filio’.” OTh III, pp. 36719–
3681.
79 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “… ex illa hypothesi hscil., quod Pater et Filius et Spiritus
Sanctus sunt tres personae et unus Deusi praecise non sequitur evidenter Spiritum Sanctum
habere aliquam relationem oppositam relationi Filii, cum relationes non-oppositae sicut et
absoluta realiter distincta sufficienter distinguant constituta per ipsa. Igitur per hoc praecise,
quod tres personae sunt unus Deus, non potest evidenter inferri quod Spiritus Sanctus est a
Filio.” OTh III, p. 36916–22; see further ibid., p. 3691–6.
william ockham 633
opposition of relations is rejected as the necessary factor in the distinction

of the divine persons, then any evident demonstration for the Holy Spirit
necessarily proceeding from the Son must also be abandoned. Once again,
we see that the Dominican view on the necessity for opposition of relations
can be very closely tied in with the Latin insistence on the Filioque; indeed,
Ockham is here agreeing with, for instance, Thomas of Sutton’s critique of
the Franciscan position. Sutton had argued that if insistence on opposition
of relations is given up, then demonstrative evidence for the Filioque is
also given up, and we have nothing left with which to argue against the
Greeks.80 Ockham agrees with this—it should merely be added that Ockham
dropped opposition of relations because he did not think that there was any
evidence for it, and hence, despite Dominican protestations to the opposite,
it could never actually contribute to a strict demonstration of the Filioque.
In short, for Ockham, a view like Thomas of Sutton’s involved a form of
circular reasoning: we accept opposition of relations because the Filioque is
necessary; we prove the necessity of the Filioque on the basis of opposition
of relations.
With all that said, however, Ockham gives no ground to the Greek posi-
tion, maintaining that, although it is not evident to us, nevertheless this
consequence follows “formally and necessarily”: ‘The Holy Spirit does not
proceed from the Son, therefore the Holy Spirit is not distinct from the Son’.
In the final analysis what lies behind this is a strict delimitation by Ockham
of what is demonstrable, i.e. evidently known to us in his sense of “evi-
dently”, versus what we know on the basis of the Roman Catholic faith: we
cannot demonstrate that the Holy Spirit comes from the Son, but the Roman
Church tells us this is so, and therefore the inferences must be sound. Nev-
ertheless, Ockham does give an argument for his view, an argument that
reveals something of his conception of the personal properties and the con-
stitution of the persons: if active spiration were not in the Son (i.e., if the
Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit), then neither would filiation be in the
Son, and in that case the Son would not be the Son and hence would not
be distinct from the Holy Spirit.81 The proof is quite simple for Ockham:
80 For Thomas of Sutton, see Ch. 8, above, at and around nn. 76–77.
81 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “… formaliter et necessario sequitur ‘Spiritus Sanctus non
procedit a Filio, ergo non distinguitur a Filio’, quia sequitur ‘Spiritus Sanctus non procedit
a Filio, ergo spiratio activa non est in Filio’. Et sequitur ‘spiratio activa non est in Filio, ergo
filiatio non est in Filio’ et ultra ‘ergo Filius non distinguitur realiter a Spiritu Sancto’.” OTh III,
pp. 36927–3704. For “not evident to us” (non sit nobis evidenter notum), see ibid., p. 3697–9, and
n. 86 below.
634 chapter ten
filiation is proper to the Son, and hence without filiation the Son does
not exist. Since we know that active spiration and filiation are really the
same (although, as we saw above, they are formally distinct), then if active
spiration is not in a supposite to which filiation is proper, neither is filiation
there. Ockham is adamant that it makes no difference to this argument
whether active spiration is common to the Father and the Son or not, it
only matters that active spiration is really the same as filiation.82 Thus, in
the Son, if there were not active spiration, there would not be filiation,
and hence the Son would not exist. For Ockham, it is absolutely necessary
that the Son spirate the Holy Spirit—just as necessary, in fact, as the Son’s
being generated by the Father. Ockham, it should be noted, gives a precisely
parallel discussion when it comes to the Father’s active spiration: if the Holy
Spirit did not come from the Father, then the two would not be distinct
because the Father would not be the supposite, the Father.83 Clearly at
work here is the “highest impossibility” argument that we have been tracing
since Chapter Five: in God there is only absolute necessity, therefore since
the Holy Spirit does come from the Son, it is strictly necessary that this
is so—God would not be the God we know there to be if the Holy Spirit
did not come from the Son. Reflection on God’s absolute necessity has led
Ockham, as it led Henry of Harclay and Peter Auriol before him, to claim
that, if the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son, the two would not be
distinct, because the Son would not exist.84 Moreover, the ideas on personal
82 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “… quandocumque aliqua sunt idem realiter, quorum unum vel
utrumque est proprium illi in quo est, in quocumque non est alterum illorum, in eodem non
est illud quod est proprium illi in quo est. Sed spiratio-actio et filiatio sunt idem realiter, et
filiatio est propria illi in quo est. Igitur sive spiratio sit propria illi in quo est sive communis—
sicut est secundum veritatem communis Patri et Filio—, sequitur: ‘spiratio-actio non est
in hoc supposito cui propria est filiatio, igitur filiatio non est in hoc supposito’. Maior
est manifesta: quando sunt aliqua propria et sunt unum realiter, manifestum est quod in
quocumque est unum et reliquum. Quia si non,—cum nullum eorum, ex hoc ipso quod est
proprium illi in quo est, possit esse in pluribus—, sequitur quod si unum illorum possit esse
in aliquo, reliquo non exsistente in eodem, in nullo uno sunt illa duo, et per consequens non
sunt idem realiter; quod est oppositum positi.” OTh III, p. 3705–20. On active spiration and
filiation being really the same and formally distinct, see at and around n. 65 above.
83 Ockham, Ord., d. 26, q. 3 (OTh IV, pp. 188–190). In this text, Ockham uses the term
‘supposite’ analogously to the way Auriol uses the term ‘person’—the supposites are Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit as they are now; take away any of their constitutives and they do not
remain supposites, but rather distinct things. For Ockham on supposite, see at and around
n. 64 above. For Auriol on the personality of the divine persons, see Ch. 9, above, at and
around nn. 83–92.
84 On the highest impossibility argument, see Ch. 5, above, at and around nn. 101–116.
For Harclay, see Ch. 8, above, at and around nn. 91–95; for Auriol, Ch. 9, at and around
william ockham 635
constitution on which Ockham’s view is predicated are, as was also noted

above, similar to Auriol’s constitution resultative: the persons result from
their constitutives; take any one of those constitutives away, and the person
no longer exists.85
Nevertheless, Ockham is far more concerned than either Harclay or
Auriol had been to show the epistemic status of any conclusions we draw
about the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son. Thus, Ockham recognizes
that it might be objected to this proof of the necessity and formality of the
Holy Spirit’s coming from the Son that the Greeks would simply deny one of
the premisses, namely that active spiration and filiation are really the same.
But this is immaterial, according to Ockham, since it was never his intention
to argue against those who deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Son. Ockham’s sole aim was to show that all those accepting the truth of
the faith would have to grant that the Holy Spirit’s coming from the Son is
necessary. In other words, we cannot prove the Filioque, we do not have the
evident cognition that would be required to do that, and this situation is a
result of the fact that we have first to accept the Filioque on faith. Once the
Filioque is accepted, we can show why it is necessary because of the internal
necessity of God’s very nature—but this is no demonstration.86 The Roman
nn. 74–94 and § 3 passim. It cannot be ruled out that Ockham had read Auriol’s treatment
of this issue—Ockham tells us himself in several other contexts that he had seen Auriol’s
work (e.g. OTh III, p. 8221–22; OTh IV, pp. 230–238, esp. 2385–9), and he discusses (or refutes)
several of Auriol’s views. A further possibility is that both Ockham and Auriol independently
had seen Henry of Harclay’s view of the matter. Harclay, who died in 1317, was Chancellor of
Oxford University in the period just prior to Ockham’s reading of the Sent., so he is a figure
whom Ockham would have known by reputation, if nothing else, and Auriol in his Scriptum
addresses several of “Henry of England’s” positions. A final possibility is that the common
desire to streamline and simplify trinitarian theology may have led them all independently
to similar positions.
85 See at and around nn. 58–64 above. Interestingly, Auriol does not appear to have an
analogue to Ockham’s argument that, all other things being the same, if active spiration were
not in the Son, neither would filiation be in the Son, and hence the Son would not exist;
Auriol states rather that the Son would not be a person because one of his indispensable
constitutive elements would not exist, i.e. active spiration, but he does not say that the
other constitutive element would not exist, as does Ockham. Nevertheless, Ockham, like
Auriol, does acknowledge that filiation (or active spiration) alone would have the capacity
to constitute some person—just not the Son (see at and around n. 87 below).
86 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “Si dicatur quod ista propositio ‘spiratio-actio et filiatio sunt
idem realiter’ negaretur a ponentibus contrarium, hoc non valet, quia per istud argumentum
non intendo arguere contra protervos, nec probare contra negantes Spiritum Sanctum
procedere a Filio. Sed intendo probare quod secundum veritatem est consequentia formalis
et necessaria ‘Spiritus Sanctus non procedit a Filio, ergo Spiritus Sanctus non distinguitur
a Filio’, et quod istam consequentiam esse formalem habent concedere omnes tenentes
636 chapter ten
Catholic faith is so fundamental to any discussion of the Filioque that it is a

category mistake to talk about demonstrating it. Ockham is drawing a sharp
distinction between two levels of epistemological certitude: demonstrative
knowledge that is evident to us, and a knowledge that can only be arrived
at on the basis of premisses supplied by faith.
Ockham’s ideas on personal constitution, as we have seen, resemble
Auriol’s, and as a result of this his ideas on the distinction between the Son
and the Holy Spirit also resemble to a certain extent Auriol’s. Like Auriol
(and Harclay) Ockham agrees with the Dominican tradition (and disagrees
with the Franciscan tradition) that the Son and the Holy Spirit would not
be distinct if the latter did not come from the former, since the Son would
not exist, although Ockham puts strict limitations as to the level of demon-
strability we can attribute to a proof of this. The resemblance between
Ockham and Auriol extends to one further feature. Ockham argues that
if the Holy Spirit only came from the Father, then on the basis of filiation
alone something—not the Son—would be constituted and would be dis-
tinct from both the Father and the Holy Spirit. For the Franciscan tradition,
for Auriol, and for Ockham, filiation together with the divine essence could
constitute something in the same way that passive spiration together with
the essence constitutes the Holy Spirit. In Ockham’s terminology: filiation
is really distinct from passive spiration, and therefore can constitute some-
thing in the divine. But Ockham has already shown that this thing could not
be the Son, because the Son has active spiration as a necessary constituent.
Therefore, something would be distinct from the Holy Spirit on the basis
of filiation and essence, but that thing would not be the Son.87 As far as I
can tell, this was a conclusion that, before Ockham, only Peter Auriol had
veritatem fidei, sicut expressa est in Sacra Scriptura et a determinatione Ecclesiae et a Sanctis
exponentibus Scripturam, quamvis ista consequentia—ponendo praecise pro antecedente
quod Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus sunt tres personae realiter distinctae et unus Deus—
non sit nobis evidenter nota.” OTh III, p. 3718–20.
87 Ockham, Ord., d. 11, q. 2: “… filiatio distinguitur realiter a spiratione passiva. Igitur,
ipsa posita, quocumque alio circumscripto, sequitur ipsam distingui a spiratione passiva.
Et per consequens sequitur constituta ex spiratione passiva et quocumque alio ex una
parte, et filiatione et quocumque alio ex alia parte, distingui realiter. Et ita in Filio, praeter
spirationem activam, est aliquid sufficienter distinguens ipsum a Spiritu Sancto realiter.”
OTh III, pp. 37121–3722. For the same position, see also ibid. (p. 36910–15; p. 3733–8), and
for Ockham’s claims that something (aliquid) would be distinct from the Holy Spirit, see
ibid.: “… circumscripta spiratione activa adhuc remanet aliquid realiter distinctum a Spiritu
Sancto.” OTh III, p. 3737–8. Ockham gives a corresponding analysis of there being constituted
a supposite distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit, if a supposite (not the Father) would
not generate but only spirate; see the text referred to in n. 83 above.
william ockham 637
arrived at; as mentioned in Chapter Nine (§3) it was a way of showing the
difference between personal constitution in a “proper” sense as opposed to
the kind of constitution that would arise given a thought experiment (i.e.,
that the Holy Spirit not come from the Son) and it stands in contrast to the
earlier Franciscan tradition, which had postulated, e.g., nested distinctions,
without postulating a corresponding difference between the results when
one moved (counterfactually) from distinction based on opposition of rela-
tions to distinction based on disparate relations (i.e., emanations).
Taking stock of Ockham’s discussion of the distinction between the Son
and Holy Spirit, one can point out that Ockham accepts many views that
we have seen to be characteristic of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition, e.g.
he holds that opposition of relations is not a necessary factor in the consti-
tution of the persons. His discussion resembles Peter Auriol’s more particu-
larly insofar as a guiding principle seems to be God’s absolute necessity, and
this leads him to say that it is necessary for the Son to spirate the Holy Spirit
(or else the Son would not exist), although he delineates more carefully than
Auriol the epistemic status of this statement. We cannot demonstrate the
Filioque, since it is ultimately based on faith; we know it is necessary with-
out true demonstration.
Do Ockham’s Franciscan tendencies also surface when he takes up the
related topic of the distinction of the emanations from each other? Inter-
estingly, Ockham simply ignores Dominican theories on the distinction of
the emanations, i.e. theories on which the distinction between the ema-
nations is at least definitionally posterior to the distinction between the
persons, for instance because in generation one comes from one, while in
spiration one comes from two.88 It seems clear that he ignores these theories
because he thinks they are completely wrongheaded. The main component
of Ockham’s view on the matter is, at any rate, straight out of the Franciscan
tradition:
… the spiration of the Holy Spirit is not the generation of the Son, because
these passive productions are distinct just as their products are. But the per-
sons produced are really distinct, therefore the productions are too .... gen-
eration and spiration passively taken are not compatible with each other in
88 See Ockham’s statement in n. 92 below that he passes over in silence the many theories
about how the emanations are distinct. This is the only statement that I find in Ockham that
might be construed as referring to the Dominican views on the matter of the distinction
between the emanations; he appears not to have seen himself as being in conversation with
that view.
638 chapter ten
the same person, because it is impossible that the same person is generating
or generated and spirated. Thus, generation and spiration passively taken are
really distinct.89
This comes as no surprise, of course, since this is the view that underlies
Ockham’s claim that something, although not the Son, would be distinct
from the Holy Spirit even if the Holy Spirit were not to come from the Son:
filiation or being generated—as we have seen, these are totally the same for
Ockham—can with the essence alone constitute something other than the
Father and the Holy Spirit, since it is a property really distinct from both
paternity and passive spiration. And, again, this is, in somewhat new cloth-
ing, simply the traditional Franciscan view that the divine productions or
disparate relations are sufficient for constituting a person, and that oppo-
sition of relations is dispensable. Thus, when Ockham says that the divine
“productions are distinct formally, in and of themselves” (productiones se
ipsis formaliter distinguuntur) he might well have been quoting Scotus, and
he was certainly echoing a sentiment found among Franciscan theologians
from the time of Bonaventure.90
Yet, in one extremely important way, Ockham turns his back on the
Franciscan tradition. Henry of Ghent had linked in a strong way the ratio-
nal distinction between the divine attributes, intellect and will, with the
distinction between the persons for whom those attributes serve as elic-
itive sources, Son and Holy Spirit, Word and Zeal. From Henry’s day on,
in the Franciscan tradition some sort of distinction between the attributes
was closely linked to the distinction between the productions, guarantee-
ing an intellectual emanation of the Son as Word and a voluntary emana-
tion of the Holy Spirit as Love (or a Gift). This was the foundation of the
strong use of the psychological model in trinitarian theology. Specifically,
Scotus had modified Henry’s view in part with an eye towards answering
Dominican criticism of Henry: for Scotus, not rationally but formally dis-
tinct attributes founded the formal distinction between the productions,
89 Ockham, Ord., d. 13, q. un.: “… spiratio Spiritus Sancti non est generatio Filii, quia
istae productiones passivae distinguuntur sicut ipsa producta. Sed istae personae productae
realiter distinguuntur, ergo et ipsae productiones .... generatio et spiratio passive sumpta non
compatiuntur se in eadem persona, quia impossibile est quod eadem persona sit generans vel
generata et spirata. Ideo generatio et spiratio passive sumpta realiter distinguuntur.” OTh III,
p. 4226–9, 18–21.
90 For se ipsis formaliter distinguuntur, cp. the text in n. 92 below or Ockham, Ord., d. 2,
q. 1 (OTh II, p. 4218–20, p. 437–11), with Scotus, Ch. 6, above, n. 144 and with Bonaventure, Ch. 1,
above, nn. 76, 84.
william ockham 639
and hence the real distinction between the persons.91 But we saw above
in §2 of the present chapter that Ockham rejects Scotus’ formal distinc-
tion everywhere except in the one instance of the divine essence and the
trinitarian properties. In particular, Ockham considered and rejected many
arguments, both from Scotus and from William of Alnwick, all of which
had been designed to show that in order to preserve the distinction of the
emanations, the elicitive sources of these two emanations, intellect and
will, had to be formally distinct. The central element in both Scotus’ and
Alnwick’s arguments was that a totally indistinct source cannot produce
in fundamentally different ways. Since the basis of the distinction between
generation and spiration was that the former is natural, i.e. not involving
choice, and the latter is free, and since an utterly indistinct divine essence
could not produce in these two mutually exclusive ways, then according
to Scotus and Alnwick there must be an ex natura rei distinction between
the divine intellect and will whereby the Son can be produced by way of
nature (i.e., intellect) and the Holy Spirit by way of will. God’s intellect and
God’s will had to be formally distinct from the divine essence and from each
other.
Ockham simply disagrees with this. When he said that the divine pro-
ductions were formally distinct in and of themselves, he meant that their
distinction presupposed no other distinction at all.92 And he says outright
that, just as one source in creatures can produce in various ways (presum-
ably like a painter can produce both a biological child and a painting), so it
is in the divine. Indeed, for Ockham the absolutely indistinct divine essence
91 See on Henry of Ghent, above, Ch. 4, at and around nn. 53–60; on Scotus, Ch. 6, at and
around nn. 136–147.

92 Ockham, Ord., d. 13, q. un.: “Et ideo omissis multis opinionibus circa illam tertiam dif-
ficultatem hi.e., supposito quod emanationes distinguantur realiter, per quid distinguunturi,
dico breviter quod istae productiones se ipsis formaliter distinguuntur, nec aliquam distinc-
tionem sine qua non possunt distingui praesupponunt, quia si aliquam praesupponerent,
maxime praesupponerent distinctionem principiorum elicitivorum. Sed illam non praesup-
ponunt nec etiam coexigunt, quia non est inconveniens idem principium illimitatum esse
principium elicitivum distinctarum productionum.” OTh III, p. 4153–10. Despite his claim here
that, if the distinction of the productions presupposed another distinction, then that other
distinction would be the distinction between the elicitive sources, elsewhere Ockham con-
cedes that if some distinction must necessarily be associated with the distinction between
the productions, then it would be the distinction of their terms, i.e. the really distinct per-
sons of the Son and Holy Spirit; cf. Ord., d. 2, q. 1 (OTh II, p. 4218–20) and see the text in
n. 89 above. As was mentioned in Ch. 6 above (at nn. 142–147), Scotus held that it was not
strictly necessary for the se ipsis formaliter distinctae emanations to presuppose the formally
distinct attributes as their elicitive source, but that this is de facto the way things are in
God.
640 chapter ten
is one unlimited elicitive source of two distinct divine productions.93 Four

related positions are involved in this statement.
First and foremost, as we have seen, Ockham rejects any formal distinc-
tion between the divine attributes, and moreover he rejects any distinction
of reason (or rational distinction) between them; nothing in the essence
could lead us to form different attributal concepts. Here we see Ockham’s
emphasis on divine simplicity at work: the essence is absolutely indistinct,
although Ockham will admit that the essence relates to or connotes things
external to it in various ways, offering the possibility of a very weak con-
notative distinction between at least some of the attributes, a connotative
distinction in some ways resembling Peter Auriol’s.94
Second, Ockham holds that one indistinct source can produce distinct
kinds of acts. As mentioned, the crux of Scotus’ and later Alnwick’s argu-
ments for a formal distinction between the attributes was their claim that
the indistinct essence cannot produce in diverse ways, like naturally and
freely; therefore the divine intellect and will must be formally distinct from
the essence and from each other. Ockham denies that this is the case; in
fact Ockham gives two grounds for rejecting Scotus and Alnwick’s major
reason for postulating the formal distinction between the attributes (over
and above his rejection of the formal distinction itself). In the first place,
Ockham claims explicitly that one indistinct source can indeed produce in
opposite ways like freely and naturally:
… it is not required on account of this diversity [i.e. between the modes of
emanation] to posit a distinction of this kind between the elicitive sources,
because … what is the same, totally indistinct in every way (re et ratione),
can be a natural source with respect to one and a free source with respect to
another, and the same source can relate in different ways to the one and to
the other. And so all such otherness (alietas) or diversity can be explained just
as well through one elicitive source as through many.95
93 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “… dico quod distinctio emanationum divinarum non praesup-
ponit distinctionem principiorum elicitivorum, nec ex natura rei, nec distinctionem rationis;
sed sicut videmus in creaturis quod idem principium totaliter est principium elicitivum
diversorum, ita est in divinis.” OTh II, p. 3414–18. For the essence as “unlimited” (illimitatum),
see n. 92 above. See also Ord., d. 7, q. 2 (OTh III, p. 14512–19).
94 Cf. Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 2 (OTh II, pp. 50–74), which is Ockham’s detailed treatment of
the distinction between the attributes; for secondary literature, see particularly: Gelber 1974,
173–177; Adams 1987, vol. 2, 941–952; and Maurer 1999, 184–204. For Ockham vs. what he takes
to be the Thomist rational distinction between the attributes, see also e.g. Ord., d. 6, q. un.
(OTh III, pp. 84–95, esp., e.g., pp. 8714–907). Finally, see at and around nn. 106–117 below, for
some trinitarian consequences of Ockham’s ideas on the distinction between the attributes.
95 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “Concesso etiam cum eis quod Filius producatur naturaliter et
william ockham 641
Thus, Ockham argues that, even if one were to grant Scotus and Alnwick
that the generation of the Son is natural and the procession of the Holy
Spirit free, there would still be no need to posit formally distinct intellect
and will in God to explain how this could be the case. The utterly indistinct
divine essence could produce in two irreducibly distinct ways, naturally and
freely.96 But—and this is the second ground Ockham has for denying Scotus’
and Alnwick’s argument—Ockham insists that the voluntary emanation of
the Holy Spirit is every bit as natural as is the Son’s natural emanation. There
is nothing “free” about the spiration of the Holy Spirit. Since, for Ockham,
“freedom” strictly speaking entails some sort of contingency and the real
ability not to come about, it is in no way possible that the Holy Spirit’s
spiration is free.97 Thus, Scotus and Alnwick were wrong on two counts: the
emanations do not have opposed modes (i.e., natural and free) requiring
formally distinct intellect and will, and even if they were to have these
opposed modes the indistinct essence could perfectly well be the source of
both emanations.
Spiritus Sanctus libere et quod principium elicitivum aliter se habet ad productionem Filii et
ad productionem Spiritus Sancti, dico quod non oportet propter istam diversitatem ponere
talem distinctionem inter principia elicitiva, quia sicut dictum est distinctione praecedenti,
idem totaliter indistinctum re et ratione potest esse principium naturale respectu unius et
principium liberum respectu alterius, et idem principium potest aliter se habere ad unum
et ad aliud. Et ita omnis talis alietas vel diversitas ita potest salvari per unum principium
elicitivum sicut per plura.” OTh II, pp. 3520–367. For the text to which Ockham refers with
“sicut dictum est distinctione praecedenti”, see the reference in n. 96 below.
96 In Ord., d. 1, q. 6 (OTh I, pp. 491–492), Ockham attempts to prove this point against
Scotus. Here Ockham argues that “si hScotusi intelligat quod eadem res operativa indistincta
omni modo ex parte rei non habet respectu distinctorum distinctos modos principiandi,
est simpliciter falsa”, and he goes on to give counterexamples from Scotus’ own theology
(e.g., the divine will freely but not contingently producing the Holy Spirit and contingently
creating), as well as arguments based on Ockham’s understanding of the intellect and will
being indistinguished and yet acting in diverse ways.
97 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “… proprie accipiendo libertatem et stricte, secundum quod
distinguitur contra principium activum vel productivum naturale, non est concedendum
quod una emanatio est per modum intellectus sive naturae et alia per modum voluntatis
sive libertatis, quia hoc esset dicere quod una persona produceretur naturaliter et alia
non produceretur naturaliter sed libere. Sed hoc est impossibile, quia proprie loquendo
nihil producitur libere et non naturaliter nisi quod producitur contingenter et potest pro-
duci et non produci. Sed quaelibet persona necessario et naturaliter producitur, nam ita
ex natura habet Pater producere Spiritum Sanctum sicut Filium, et ita necessario pro-
ducitur Spiritus Sanctus sicut Filius.” OTh II, pp. 3419–3510 (the text is continued in n. 114
below). Ockham deals with this question at greater length in Ord., d. 10, q. 2 (OTh III,
pp. 330–345). On the background to this issue, and to Ockham’s and Scotus’ different
views of what constitutes true freedom, see Friedman 2007b, and the literature referred to
there.
642 chapter ten
This leads us, then, to the third related position that goes into Ockham’s
view that the indistinct divine essence is the one source of both emana-
tions. For Ockham, only the indistinct essence could be the source of the
emanations in God, since the essence is the only absolute in God. That the
source of the emanations must be an absolute, Ockham attempts to show
in a number of ways. He employs, for instance, an argument that goes back
at least to William of Auvergne and that became standard in the Franciscan
trinitarian tradition (appearing most recently in Peter Auriol): one relation
cannot be the source of its correlative. Relation, as the Franciscans had
been pointing out for decades, does not put its correlative into existence;
therefore relation cannot be the elicitive source of its correlative. But since
the faith tells us, for instance, that the Holy Spirit is truly produced, and
since, as we just saw, the productive source of the Holy Spirit cannot be
relation, Ockham concludes that the elicitive source of the emanations is
absolute—and the only absolute in the divine is the essence.98 Moreover,
no personal property could be the elicitive source of the emanations, since,
e.g., the personal property of the Father is active generation, and nothing
can elicit itself; nor can the personal property be the elicitive source of pas-
sive generation, since active and passive generation must have the same
elicitive source, and Ockham has shown that the personal property is not
the source of active generation.99 The only option is that the essence, the
one absolute in God, is the source of all the productions, both active and
passive. With that said, Ockham thinks it necessary to nuance his posi-
tion by specifying just what type of a source the essence is. Because the
essence is really identical to each of the productions, and because there is
always a real distinction between a source and its product, it is not pos-
sible that the essence itself directly brings about the productions. Thus,
Ockham comes to the conclusion that God’s essence is not what acts (quod
agit) but that by which something acts (quo agit).100 In other words, the one
98 Ockham, Ord., d. 10, q. 1: “… secundum veritatem fidei Spiritus Sanctus vere producitur a
Patre et Filio. Igitur si sit aliquod principium productivum ipsius—cum illud non possit esse
relatio, quia una relatio non potest esse principium elicitivum alterius relationis correlativae,
nec sui ipsius—oportet quod principium elicitivum sit aliquod absolutum. Sed ostensum est
prius quod nihil est absolutum in divinis nisi essentia divina …” OTh III, p. 3269–15. For the
roots of the general type of argument that Ockham uses here, see, e.g., William of Auvergne,
Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 14–15; Scotus, Ch. 6, at and around nn. 50–53; Auriol, Ch. 9, at
99 See Ockham, Ord., d. 7, q. 1 (OTh III, pp. 113–115). For similar arguments in a parallel
discussion, see Peter Auriol, Ch. 9, above, at and around nn. 39–43.
100 Ockham, Ord., d. 7, q. 1: “… quia sola essentia divina requiritur ad generationem activam
william ockham 643
essence is the power through which both productions come about, but it
is the really distinct persons who produce and are produced. Consistently
with this, Ockham says outright that “the Father produces the Son, and
the Father and the Son produce the Holy Spirit, through the same power
(virtus)”. But if you ask why the divine productions occur in precisely this
way, Ockham says that in this life it is not possible for us to know this,
and we have merely to accept it on the basis of faith.101 In fact, returning
to the main question of how the emanations are distinct from each other,
Ockham admits that he himself is not up to the task of explaining just why
spiration is not generation: the indistinct essence is the source of both,
and they are both equally natural, and for this reason it is beyond us to
give a genuine propter quid explanation for why they are distinct from
one another. But even though we cannot give a sufficient reason for this
difference in this life, it is nevertheless to be believed.102 There is really no
way that we can tell the emanations apart a priori—we know, however, that
one is the production of the Holy Spirit, while the other is the production of
the Son.
Finally, the fourth position involved in this view of Ockham’s is that the
essence is the elicitive source of the emanations. We saw in the previous
paragraph that Ockham uses the term ‘elicitive’ to describe the source of
the divine emanations; this is not just loose language, this is Ockham’s
considered opinion. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, Ockham scrutinizes the
issue of the elicited emanations in one of the few sustained examinations
et passivam, et spirationem activam et passivam, vel saltem solum aliquid absolutum, isto
modo, ideo praecise aliquid absolutum est ratio eliciendi istas productiones tam activas
quam passivas. Sed quia ista essentia a nulla istarum realiter distinguitur—et semper inter
principium et principiatum est realis distinctio—ideo essentia non est quod agit, sed est
quo agit. Et quia, non obstante identitate reali inter essentiam et istas productiones, tamen
propter distinctionem realem istarum productionum inter se constituit cum ipsis supposita
distincta realiter, ideo unum illorum erit producens et aliud productum. Absolutum tamen
est ratio eliciendi, quia nihil est ibi nisi absolutum praeter istas productiones.” OTh III,
pp. 11426–11512. Gregory of Rimini will criticize a view closely resembling this one of Ockham’s;
see Ch. 12, below, at and around nn. 266–273.
101 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1: “.... eadem causa poterit primo producere aliquem effectum
et postea cum illo tamquam cum causa partiali poterit producere alium effectum. Ita est in
proposito, quod Pater producit Filium, et Pater et Filius producunt Spiritum Sanctum per
eandem virtutem. Et si quaeratur quae est causa, dico quod ita est, sed sola fide est hoc
tenendum, nec est possibile aliquem in vita ista scire quare ita est.” OTh II, p. 4412–18.
102 Ockham, Ord., d. 13, q. un.: “… ad investigandum distinctionem inter generationem
et spirationem, et quare spiratio non sit generatio, scio me totaliter insufficientem .... non
est possibile assignare rationem sufficientem quare productio Spiritus Sancti non dicatur
generatio, et hoc pro statu isto. Tamen hoc est credendum …” OTh III, pp. 4221–3, 42311–13.
644 chapter ten
in his œuvre of a view of Peter Auriol’s.103 Responding to Auriol, Ockham

draws a distinction between two ways the word ‘elicited’ can be taken. In
one sense, it means that something is truly produced by something else.
In the second sense, it refers to that on account of which one thing is said
to produce another (illud quod denominat aliquid producere aliud). Taken
in the first sense, Auriol is quite right to maintain that the emanations are
unelicited: none of the divine productions are “produced” realities, rather
they are totally unproduced. As mentioned above (at and around n. 58),
Ockham, like Auriol, makes the productions as much like static relation as
he possibly can, and the emanations do not arise or come into being—they
simply are. So, to this extent Ockham’s view is very much like Auriol’s ideas
on unelicited emanations. In the second sense of ‘elicited’, however, the
emanations are indeed elicited, because “the Father by active generation
is said to generate the Son”. Generation, then, is that “by which formally
the Father is said to generate”, and this is what it means to be elicited in
the second sense of the term. Although he does not say it quite so clearly,
Ockham intimates that this is parallel to the way that something hot heats
because of the heat in it; it is on the basis of the heat in it both that we call it a
hot thing and that it heats other things, and in this case and for these reasons
the heat is an elicitive source. By insisting on, e.g., generation being elicited
in this sense, Ockham is clearly working backwards from the commonly
granted scholastic view that the Father is the Father because he generates
(or, what is the same for Ockham, through paternity), as well as from the
view that through generation the Father produces the Son. The productions
are elicited, according to Ockham, because through them the persons are
properly called what they are called and are properly said to produce what
they produce. In general, Ockham appears to be endeavoring to preserve the
productive aspect of the emanations: generation is precisely that by which
103 For Ockham’s presentation of Auriol’s view, see Ord., d. 7, q. 1 (OTh III, pp. 11514–1164)—
see, more generally, ibid., d. 7, q. 1 (OTh III, pp. 115–123, esp. 1185–24); see also at and around
n. 59 above. Ockham deals with this material briefly, and from a slightly different angle,
in Ord., d. 5, q. 3 (OTh III, pp. 76–83, esp. pp. 8221–833) and esp. Quodl. III, q. 3 (OTh IX,
pp. 212–214). For further similarities between Ockham’s and Auriol’s trinitarian positions, see
at and around nn. 83–87 above. Ockham discusses Auriol’s ideas at many places throughout
his works, most famously in his rejection, in Ord., d. 27, q. 3, of Auriol’s fictum theory of
concepts; for studies of some of these discussions, see, e.g., Dettloff 1963, 253–290 passim
(with conclusion, pp. 283–284); Gelber 1974, 177, 181–182; Adams 1987, vol. 1, 75–105; Tachau
1988, 135–153. For the two thinkers’ views on predestination, see Halverson 1998, 113–122, who
suggests some similarities between them; more concise, Halverson 1995; and Vignaux 1934,
97–140 (= ch. 3: “Guillaume d’ Occam, critique de Pierre d’Auriole”).
william ockham 645
the Father is said to produce the Son, and in this sense generation must
be said to be elicited. Consistently with this and with what we have seen
him say up until now, Ockham maintains that the emanations are elicited
from the divine essence, because there is nothing else in God that could be
the elicitive power.104 It is for this reason that Ockham calls the essence the
elicitive source of the two divine productions. In answer to Auriol’s major
argument against the essence being the elicitive source of the emanations—
that this would mean that the essence would elicit itself—Ockham merely
points to his view that essence and emanations are in fact formally distinct,
and thus they are not strictly identical.105
In sum, then, in the complex of issues surrounding the divine emana-
tions, Ockham has rejected the formal distinction between the attributes,
and maintains that the indistinct divine essence is one simple elicitive
source of both the emanations, i.e. that by which the persons produce and
are produced. Thus, Ockham rejects any type of tight link between the
attributes and the emanations. This view leads Ockham to several conclu-
sions that run counter to the Franciscan tradition as we have traced it in this
book, conclusions having to do with the use of philosophical psychology in
The first of these conclusions has to do with our ability to deduce the
number of divine emanations. One of the reasons that William of Alnwick
had given for postulating the formal distinction between the productive
104 Ockham, Ord., d. 7, q. 1: “… dico quod aequivocatio est de elicito. Aliquid enim dicitur
elicitum quia est aliquid vere productum ab aliquo .... Aliter dicitur aliquid elicitum esse
illud quod denominat aliquid producere aliud, sicut calefactio dicitur elicita ab igne quia
ignis calefactione denominatur calefacere lignum. Et quia Pater generatione activa dicitur
generare Filium, ideo dicitur generatio activa ‘elicita’ isto secundo modo. Sed non primo
modo, quia generatio activa non est aliqua realitas producta, sed est simpliciter improducta.
Est tamen illud quo formaliter aliquid dicitur generare, et hoc est eam esse elicitam. Quia
tamen praeter eam nihil est nisi essentia, quamvis ipsam essentiam non denominat ut
essentia dicatur ea generare, dicitur tamen elici ab ipsa essentia, quia nihil aliud ibi concurrit
praeter essentiam et personam constitutam per ipsum generare.” OTh III, p. 1185–7,13–24.
Although Ockham’s example of the fire heating wood is not particularly clear, I think that
my explanation accurately represents his view; see also Walter Chatton’s interpretation of
Ockham’s view, Ch. 11, below, at n. 73. Consider also John Baconthorpe’s and Gregory of
Rimini’s critiques of Auriol’s ideas on unelicited emanations, Ch. 12, below, at and around
nn. 47 and 266, respectively.
105 Ockham, Ord., d. 7, q. 1: “Et quando dicitur ‘idem non elicit se’, verum est ‘idem’ for-
maliter. Quando tamen non sunt idem formaliter, non est inconveniens unum esse elici-
tivum et aliud elicitum, sicut non est inconveniens unum esse absolutum et fundamentum et
aliud esse relationem. Non tamen est aliud nisi nomen; sed non est idem formaliter.” OTh III,
p. 11920–25. For Auriol, see Ch. 9, above, at n. 39.
646 chapter ten
sources, intellect and will, was that it was then assured that there were only
two productions; if there were not two and only two productive sources,
there might be an infinite number of productions and of persons.106 Indeed,
as we have seen, from an early date in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition
this argument was related to a type of proof that there are and can be
three and only three persons in God: the only two productive sources
are nature (or intellect) and will, therefore there are three persons, one
unproduced, and two produced. We have seen arguments like this used
by Henry of Ghent, Scotus, and Auriol. But, as we have also seen, the
Dominicans, who insisted that the indistinct divine essence was the source
of both productions, denied the validity of this “proof”: we know that there
are three divine persons only on the basis of Scripture, and knowing the
number of persons we can deduce the number of emanations. Ockham also
denies that distinct intellect and will are the sources of the persons, and,
like the Dominicans, he denies that the Trinity is amenable to any kind of
demonstration (non potest inferri evidenter); we accept that there are three
and only three persons on faith alone (sola fide).107 The number of persons
is a mystery revealed to us through sacred writings, and believed on that
basis. No attempt to “prove” that there is a Trinity of persons could possibly
succeed.
A second conclusion has to do with the Son’s intellectual emanation as a
Word. Ockham’s summary of his position is categorical: “the essence as such
(essentia sub ratione essentiae) is the elicitive source of the generation of the
Word”.108 Ockham, as we have seen, denies that there is any distinct intellect
106 For his presentation of Alnwick’s argument, see Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1 (OTh II, pp. 822–
103); Ockham’s reply, ibid. (OTh II, pp. 3617–4023). For an argument of this type by Scotus, see
Ch. 6, above, around n. 133.
107 Ockham, Ord., d. 10, q. 1: “Ex praedictis patet contra tertium quod ex dualitate princi-
piorum productivorum—si poneretur—non potest probari trinitas personarum, quia non

potest probari dualitas personarum productarum, cum—sicut probatum est—non potest
probari quin illa principia productiva possint concurrere ad unum productum … dico quod
ex pluralitate productionum in divinis non potest inferri evidenter tantum dualitas, quia non
potest sufficienter probari quin unum principium productivum possit esse respectu plurium
productorum quam duorum … hdicoi quod sola fide tenetur quod tantum sunt duae per-
sonae productae et una non-producta, et ideo trinitas personarum sola fide tenetur.” OTh III,
p. 32516–21 and p. 3289–15. For Henry of Ghent’s use of this type of argument, see Ch. 4, above,
at n. 60; for Scotus, see Ch. 6, at n. 133 (and Friedman 2010, 109); for Auriol, Ch. 9, at n. 101. For
Dominican rejection of the proof, see Ch. 7, above, nn. 33–35 (Hervaeus), 71 (Durand), and
94 (John of Naples).
108 Ockham, Ord., d. 7, q. 2: “… cum in divinis sit praecise essentia, ita quod non est ibi aliq-
uid absolutum quocumque modo ex natura rei distinctum vel non idem cum essentia,—et
william ockham 647
in God, and he correspondingly affirms that the indistinct essence is the

source of both emanations. But given that the essence and not the intellect
is the source of the Word’s emanation, is the Son a Word in any strict or
literal sense? Ockham replies in the affirmative: John the Evangelist in his
first letter tells us that “three there are who give testimony in heaven, Father,
Word, and Holy Spirit”,109 therefore only the Son is the Word. But according
to Ockham that the Son is a Word, and that what is born (genitum) in the
divine is a relative person, is held by faith alone—sola fide—, on account
of the many authoritative passages in which one can read that it is so. This
identification is not amenable to proof.110 The question arises, then, in what
way is the Son’s emanation an intellectual emanation, when the indistinct
essence is the source of the Son’s generation? We know that the Son is a
Word; it would then seem, contrary to Ockham’s stated theory, that the
intellect should be involved in the Son’s generation. In short, does Ockham
use the psychological model of the Trinity in a “strong” way? Ockham does
not by any means want to contradict the saints and what is commonly said,
so he utilizes a type of marginalization strategy, by which he can maintain a
very diluted strong use of the psychological model, not requiring any type of
distinct intellect and will, while still being able to claim that the Son is the
Word who proceeds through intellectual emanation. This marginalization
dictum est in praecedenti quaestione quod aliquid absolutum est principium elicitivum—,
ideo dico quod essentia sub ratione essentiae est principium elicitivum generationis Verbi.”
OTh III, p. 1417–12. Cf. also ibid., d. 10, q. 1 (OTh III, esp. pp. 326–327).
109 For the passage in Ockham, see n. 110 below. This passage (I Io. 5:7) is known as
the “Comma Johanneum”, an early-medieval addition to the Latin vulgate, which has been
excluded from most modern versions of the New Testament (including the official Catholic
Latin text of the New Testament). Thus, it should come as no surprise that, despite its
recognized inauthenticity today, many theologians from the later-medieval period use this
text as scriptural evidence in their trinitarian theology, e.g., Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 30, a.
2, sed contra; Scotus, I Ord., d. 26, n. 67 (VI, p. 2715–17); Auriol, Scriptum, d. 26 (Electronic
Scriptum, ll. 324–325; ed. 1596, p. 578bD); William of Rubio, I Sent., d. 2, q. 5 (ed. 1518, f. 78ra).
In any event, the passage that Ockham was quoting was a part of the standard text of his day
(pace my suggestion in Friedman 2010, 128 n. 35). Thanks to Stephen Menn for setting me
straight on the “Comma Johanneum”.
110 Ockham, Ord., d. 27, q. 3 (“Utrum solus Filius sit Verbum”): “‘Tres sunt qui testimonium
dant in caelo: Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus’. Igitur Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus
sunt tres; igitur Pater non est Verbum nec Spiritus Sanctus. Et certum est quod Filius est
Verbum; igitur etc. Circa istam quaestionem primo supponendum est unum concessum ab
omnibus, scilicet quod Verbum est genitum. Ideo primo videndum est quid est genitum
in divinis; secundo quod illud genitum est Verbum .... dico quod illud genitum est persona
relativa. Sed hoc non potest probari per rationem, sed est sola fide tenendum. Et quod hoc
sit tenendum patet multis auctoritatibus tam Bibliae quam Sanctorum …” OTh IV, pp. 22815–
2292; p. 22921–24.
648 chapter ten
strategy is based on various ways of accepting the term ‘intellect’. Thus,

Ockham says ‘intellect’ can be taken precisely for what is absolute in God,
with it not connoting anything whatsoever. In this sense, it is true that the
intellect is the source of the Son’s emanation, but taken in this way it is just
as true that the intellect is the source of the Holy Spirit’s emanation and,
further, that the will is the source of both the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s
emanations. This is so, because the intellect is the will is the essence in God,
and nothing can be predicated of one that is not predicated of the others,
since all those words stand for just one thing: the divine essence.111 On the
other hand, the term ‘intellect’ connotes things that the term ‘essence’ does
not. In a rather lengthy and complicated text, Ockham teases out the various
ways in which the term ‘intellect’ can be understood to connote the Son’s
generation.112 Some of these meanings of ‘intellect’ are equivalent to the first
sense (i.e., ‘intellect’ means nothing other than ‘essence’), others of them
are simply false. But one of these ways of taking ‘intellect’ as a connotative
term is precisely what we mean when we say “the intellect is the source of
producing the Word”. If we take that statement as being in the first mode of
saying per se, then this is just right. By this Ockham means only that, if we
define ‘intellect’ in God as “source of producing the Word”, then we end up
with an identity statement, and statements like “the intellect is the source of
producing the Holy Spirit” or “the will is the source of producing the Word”
will be false. According to Ockham, this is the only way one can talk about
the intellect as being the one and only productive source of the Word and
only the Word, without saying something false.113 The important point here
111 Ockham, Ord., d. 7, q. 2: “Tamen pro dictis aliquibus communibus, quibus dicitur
quod Filius procedit per modum intellectus non per modum voluntatis, et Spiritus Sanctus
e converso per modum voluntatis et non per modum intellectus, dico quod intellectus
et voluntas multipliciter accipiuntur. Uno modo quod intellectus dicat praecise aliquid
absolutum in Deo, nihil notionale determinate connotando .... Primo modo dico quod
intellectus est principium cuiuslibet productionis et similiter voluntas, quia ipsa voluntas est
simpliciter indistincta et ab essentia et ab intellectu, et ideo quidquid attribuitur uni et alteri
.... Et isto modo concedo quod essentia est principium elicitivum, et similiter intellectus et
voluntas et actus intelligendi et actus volendi. Et sic de omnibus talibus attributis dico quod
de quolibet illorum verificatur ‘esse principium elicitivum’, non pro se sed pro re, puta pro
divina essentia.” OTh III, p. 14113–19, p. 1425–17.
112 Ockham, Ord., d. 7, q. 2 (OTh III, pp. 14218–1458).
113 Ockham, Ord., d. 7, q. 2: “Si primo modo hscil., dicendi per sei, tunc est haec falsa
‘intellectus est principium producendi Spiritum Sanctum’, et haec est vera ‘intellectus est
principium producendi Verbum’ .... Et isto modo accipiunt omnes tales propositiones quae
aliquid negant de voluntate respectu Verbi et concedunt de intellectu respectu Verbi, et e
converso de voluntate, si bene loquuntur, quia aliter dicerent simpliciter falsum.” OTh III,
william ockham 649
is that Ockham goes out of his way to allow for a special link between
the intellect and generation, because we know on the basis of revelation
that the Son is a Word. Nevertheless, he severely marginalizes the link-
age between intellect and generation—it becomes basically a question
of semantics, by defining ‘intellect’ in just the right way. In Ockham, the
psychological model hangs by a thin thread. Indeed, on occasion Ock-
ham says outright that the foundation of the psychological model—the
Son’s production by way of intellect—can be maintained only “loosely”
or “metaphorically”. Franciscans, including Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol,
had been attacking since the last quarter of the thirteenth century the
Dominican rejection of the strong use of the psychological model precisely
by accusing them of accepting the psychological model only metaphor-
ically.114 For all that his marginalization strategy lessens the break, it is
a fact that Ockham is taking a very different tack when it comes to the
psychological model than had virtually the entire Franciscan tradition for
some forty years. And it is worth noting that it is his rejection of the
formal distinction between the attributes, itself linked to Ockham’s ten-
dency to make God as simple as possible, that is the root of this develop-
ment. In short: this is a manifestation of an emphasis on divine simplicity,
and hence of what I am calling the fourteenth-century search for simplic-
ity.
With regard to the voluntary emanation of the Holy Spirit, Ockham gives
an analysis and conclusion precisely parallel to that concerning the Son
and his intellectual emanation. We know that the will is the source of the
spiration of the Holy Spirit. It cannot be otherwise, because the saints—
Ockham mentions Augustine in particular—tell us that the Holy Spirit is
pp. 14317–1448. Ockham’s clearest expression of this position is in an analogy with the way
the Sun is the productive source of both insects and plants, nevertheless you can define
a to be the Sun as productive of insects and b to be the Sun as productive of plants;
ibid. (OTh III, pp. 14417–1458). See also Ockham’s summary of his position, ibid. (OTh III,
p. 1468–16).
114 Ockham, Ord., d. 2, q. 1 (text continued from n. 97 above): “Tamen metaphorice
loquendo et large potest aliquo modo concedi quod una persona producitur per modum
naturae sive intellectus, et alia per modum voluntatis sive libertatis. Et hoc sic intelli-
gendo quod intellectus et voluntas uno modo, prout usitantur a Sanctis, connotant actum
generandi et actum spirandi, ita quod intellectus dicit ipsam divinam essentiam elicitivam
actus generandi, et voluntas dicit ipsam divinam essentiam elicitivam actus spirandi.” OTh II,
p. 3510–17. For Franciscan attacks on the metaphorical understanding of the psychological
model see, e.g., Ch. 2, above, at and around nn. 67–72 (Pecham) and nn. 174–178 (Marston);
Ch. 6, at and around n. 135 (Scotus); Ch. 9, at and around nn. 98–101 (Auriol).
650 chapter ten
love, and we know that love is produced by the will.115 But as we have seen,
Ockham holds that the indistinct essence is the elicitive source of both of the
emanations, and Ockham takes Scotus to task for his view that the formally
distinct will is the source of the Holy Spirit.116 Nevertheless, the saints spoke
truly, and Ockham refers back to his discussion of the way the intellect can
be said to be the elicitive source of the Son, and he claims that mutatis
mutandis the same is true of the will with regard to the Holy Spirit.117 So,
we are justified in maintaining that the will is linked in a special way to
spiration, however tenuous that link may be.
In his treatment of the emanation of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is
notable that Ockham is affirming a mystery without actually explaining it.
We have some facts given through revelation, i.e. that the Son is a Word
and the Holy Spirit is Love; those facts must be literally true since they
are revealed; how, then, do those facts square with the position to which
reason has led us, that the only source of the emanations is the indistinct
essence? How can the Son’s emanation be intellectual and the Holy Spirit’s
voluntary? Ockham’s solution is by fiat: in God, the intellect just is the source
of the Word’s emanation, despite the fact that there is no distinct intellect
there. His is a solution through definition of terms, not through an attempt
to genuinely explain how the elements in his theory that seem to conflict
with each other are reconcilable. As was also the case with his trinitarian use
of the formal distinction, at a very basic level Ockham is willing to leave the
mystery as a mystery: the Word just is a Word, and no further explanation
is possible or required.118 This way of proceeding is rather different than that
found in the majority of theologians we have examined up to this point, and,
in my view, is indicative of a somewhat different theological aesthetic than
was common in the previous 70 or so years.
With all that said, Ockham would clearly like to have some explanation
to legitimate a strong use of the psychological model. His marginalization
strategy is evidence of this. Further evidence is found in the course of
his discussion of the distinction between the emanations, where Ockham
does in fact give a psychological explanation for the Trinity. We know
115 Ockham, Ord., d. 10, q. 1: “… quod voluntas sit principium spirandi patet ex auctoritati-
bus Sanctorum, quia secundum Sanctos Spiritus Sanctus est amor et caritas; sed talis persona
producitur a voluntate tamquam a principio elicitivo; ergo, etc.” OTh III, p. 3273–6. For the
appeal to Augustine, see ibid. (OTh III, p. 31811–13).
118 See, for a similar move in regard to the formal distinction, at and around n. 41 above.
william ockham 651
that God’s essence is truly understanding and truly willing, despite the fact
that it is totally indistinct. Thus, by understanding himself, God produces
a Word completely similar to the Father who is understood, and these
two persons, since the one is similar to the other, must be really distinct.
Mutatis mutandis, by willing himself, God is the source of producing the Gift
given to the loved one.119 But, in agreement with everything we have seen
in his trinitarian theology, Ockham prefaces and intersperses his remarks
with waivers about the imperfection of this imagery. And, in comparison
to a Henry of Ghent or a John Duns Scotus or a Peter Auriol, Ockham’s
remarks on how the psychological model explains the constitution and
the distinction of the persons are extremely brief and vague. It is certainly
not that Ockham lacked a well developed theory of concepts or theory of
volitions; he simply did not think it worthwhile to apply these theories to
explaining God’s trinitarian reality. And this is itself merely a reflection of
the fact that, for Ockham, although we know from revelation that the Son is
a Word and the Holy Spirit Love, nevertheless an explanation for just how
this is so and even what this means in an utterly simple God is not open to
us in this life.
In Ockham, the psychological model had met the search for simplicity
in the form of Ockham’s rejection of any kind of distinct intellect and will
that could serve as sources for the emanations. On this basis, although he
does not reject the psychological model outright, he heavily marginalizes
it, developing a type of “psychological model lite”, in which much of the
sophisticated apparatus that had been developed in the forty or so years of
Franciscan discussion between Henry of Ghent and Peter Auriol is simply
swept away. What we know, based on John’s Gospel and on Church Fathers
like Augustine and Anselm, is that the Son is a Word, and just on this basis
Ockham is unwilling to completely dismiss the psychological model. But to
119 Ockham, Ord., d. 13, q. 1: “Ex istis hconsiderationibus de imagine in nobisi possumus
aliquo modo, licet imperfecte, imaginari in divinis quare spiratio Spiritus Sancti non sit
generatio. Quia quamvis voluntas divina et intellectus divinus nullo modo distinguantur,
nec inter se nec ab essentia divina, tamen essentia divina vere et realiter est non tantum
intellectio et volitio sed intelligens et volens, et vere intelligit se ipsam et vult se ipsam,
et intelligendo se ipsam vere est principium productivum Filii tamquam alicuius quod est
simillimum ipsi Patri intellecto, non tamen praeintellecto sicut est in nobis. Et quia sicut
productum est simillimum, oportet quod distinguatur realiter ab illo quod producit … ipse
Spiritus Sanctus producitur virtute volitionis, quae quamvis sit eadem formaliter cum divina
essentia et intellectione, tamen vere potest esse principium donandi aliquid dilecto. Et divina
volitio non tantum potest esse principium donandi aliquid dilecto, sed etiam potest esse
principium producendi donum …” OTh III, pp. 42022–4215,13–18. The entire discussion is at
ibid. (OTh III, pp. 417–422).
652 chapter ten
say much more than “the Son is a Word” would be pure speculation. The
Holy Spirit’s procession has something to do with the will; we know that
from Augustine. But to explain why and how this is the case is beyond us.
4. Sola fide: Putting Ockham’s “Fideism” in Perspective
When early twentieth-century historians of philosophy like Maurice De

Wulf, Konstanty Michalski, and Etienne Gilson attached the label ‘fideism’
or ‘fideistic’ to “nominalist” theologians of the fourteenth century, the cen-
tral issue for them was demonstration. Specifically, these historians were
interested in documenting the gradual reduction in the number of meta-
physical and theological truths that were held to be able to be demon-
strated—strictly proven—using natural reason alone; moreover, they
thought that the fideistic questioning of reason’s abilities had been detri-
mental to scholasticism and to European thought more generally. Indeed,
for them, skepticism concerning the power of human reason is simply the
flip side of fideism, since if reason on its own could not penetrate the meta-
physical and theological mysteries, then the faith, i.e. revelation and official
Church pronouncements, would necessarily fill the void as the final arbiter.
In an early edition of his Histoire de la philosophie médiévale, for instance, De
Wulf defines skepticism as “an anxiety to restrict the sphere of those truths
that can be demonstrated by reason, a tendency to depress fallible reason
and exalt infallible faith.” In later editions of the same work, the fact that “the
ambit of indemonstrable truths kept steadily widening” is bemoaned by De
Wulf, since this resulted in a sort of “humiliation of reason”, which in turn led
to a general suspicion that “everything in scholasticism was unsound”.120 For
his part, Michalski talks about “le fidéisme sceptique si caractéristique pour
le XIV siècle”. Several of Michalski’s works can be read as catalogues of pre-
cisely which articles of faith certain fourteenth-century scholars relegated to
120 See for the first quotation, De Wulf 1909, 418 (I have not had access to the original
French edition of this work)—at the same spot, De Wulf also makes clear that the type of
skepticism he is describing has nothing to do with Cartesian skepticism: “There is no question
here of the deceptive theory which proclaims all certitude illusory: terminism, like all other
scholastic systems, was essentially dogmatic in its teaching about certitude”. For the other
quotation, see De Wulf 1925 (5th ed.), vol. 2, p. 158: “Le nombre de théories indémontrables
se multiplie et le cercle des vérités de pure foi s’ élargit d’autant. Il en résulte une sorte
d’ humiliation de la raison, et une défiance à son endroit.” De Wulf changes his view of
“terminism” (his word for ‘nominalism’) quite radically in the 6th edition of the work; see
De Wulf 1934–1947, vol. 3.
william ockham 653
the category of “indemonstrable”, articles of faith such as the soul’s immor-

tality, every human being’s having a soul, God’s existence and unity, and
God’s knowledge of things other than himself. For Michalski, this limiting of
reason’s reach had a “dissolving” effect on metaphysics.121 As Ernest Moody
noted in his classic 1958 essay “Empiricism and Metaphysics in Medieval
Philosophy”, the assumption that underlies the linking of metaphysics with
the articles of faith so evident in this historiographic view is that “the aim of
scholasticism [was] to support theology with a metaphysics”.122 In sum: for
historians like De Wulf and Michalski, fourteenth-century thinkers, William
Ockham prominent among them, claimed that human reason is not up
to the task of demonstrating the truths of the faith, and, on account of
this skepticism they turned to fideism, the appeal to revelation or religious
decrees; the truths, then, could not be known, only believed. This skepticism
about the reach of human reason was, on the view of De Wulf and Michal-
ski, destructive of metaphysics, of philosophy, and of the scholastic project
as a whole. The subtext to all this was that in thirteenth-century philosophy,
and especially in Thomas Aquinas, there was to be found a sounder, health-
ier harmony of philosophy and theology, in which metaphysics and human
reason could do what they were appointed to do: underpin the scholastic
theological enterprise.
While De Wulf and Michalski were certainly important historians, the
greatest champion of this type of historiographic scheme was and is Etienne
Gilson—indeed, to such an extent that we can label the scheme with only a
modicum of anachronism the “Gilsonian paradigm”. When Gilson accused
Ockham of fideism, he was specifically criticizing the fact that Ockham “con-
siderably increased the list of those revealed truths which a Christian should
believe, but cannot prove” (1950, 85). In Gilson’s works, Thomas Aquinas
is often explicitly contrasted to Ockham: Aquinas maintained that many
revealed truths could be proven by purely natural means, and hence that
doctrines essential to the Christian faith, like God’s existence and the soul’s
121 For “fidéisme sceptique”, see Michalski 1922, 17; for “processus dissolvant la méta-
physique”, see Michalski 1924, 64 (and Michalski 1922, 8–12, for three factors in Ockham’s
philosophy each of which was “dissolvant de la synthèse scolastique en général, de la méta-
physique en particulier …” [p. 10]); for a discussion by Michalski of Ockham’s fideism and
skepticism, see, e.g., Michalski 1927, 176–182. For similar observations, see also Michalski 1926.
On Michalski and his view of medieval philosophy, see Panaccio 2009.
122 Moody 1975, 287–291, quotation from 291. Moody’s own view as articulated in this
important paper was that there was indeed a noticable change in stress from metaphysical
to empirical philosophy when one turns from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries, but
he gave this change a positive evaluation in contrast to the earlier literature.
654 chapter ten
immortality, enjoyed two distinct forms of support, demonstrative proof as

well as revelation. Ockham, in contrast, denied the demonstrativeness of
rational proofs of God’s unique existence and the immortality of the soul;
for Ockham, probable proofs could be offered, but nothing more.123 If one
wanted certainty, according to Ockham, one could find it in revelation. In
Aquinas’ view of the relation between reason and revelation, Gilson found
not only the sole justification for a believer to take philosophy seriously
(Gilson 1950, 89) but also a cure for “the intellectual and moral crisis” that
confronted the later Middle Ages (Gilson 1950, 84). In contrast, from Ock-
ham’s rejection of the broad harmony between reason and revelation that
Aquinas had subscribed to, Gilson proceeded to talk about Ockham’s influ-
ence “invading” the fourteenth-century universities, resulting ultimately in
“the total wreck of both scholastic philosophy and scholastic theology as the
necessary upshot of the final divorce of reason and Revelation”.124
My purpose here is neither to attack the Gilsonian paradigm nor to
defend Ockham from it,125 and this despite the fact that the Gilsonian
paradigm is still well represented in non-specialist secondary literature
on medieval thought.126 Indeed, trinitarian theology occupies an unusual
123 See, e.g., the literature cited in n. 16 above. For further consideration of the Gilsonian
paradigm vis-à-vis trinitarian theology, see Friedman 2010, Ch. 4.

124 Gilson 1950, 87–88. Gilson is most explicit about all this in Ch. 3 of Gilson 1950 (“The
Harmony of Reason and Revelation”), which is basically a laudation of Aquinas’ correct

answer to the relation between faith and reason, and a denigration of Ockham’s incorrect
one.
125 For interesting ways of understanding the historical background that conditioned the
Gilsonian paradigm, see Inglis 1998, as well as many of the articles in Imbach and Maierù
1991. For defenses of Ockham against the paradigm, see, e.g., Adams 1987, vol. 2, 1007–1010,
where Adams suggests that Gilson’s view is at some level self-contradictory, since if, as Gilson
maintains, the harmony or disharmony between a philosophical position and Christian
doctrine is a good indicator of the worth of that philosophical position, then it appears at
the very least ad hoc to chastise Ockham for allowing Christian doctrine to guide some of
his philosophical positions (e.g., the acceptance of the formal distinction in the Trinity). See
also Gelber’s eloquent formulation (Gelber 1974, 318–222, esp. 319–320) of the view that, when
it comes to value judgements like those behind the Gilsonian paradigm, the correctness of
a medieval theologian or philosopher is in the eye of the historian: “… no matter what a
Medieval scholastic attempted to do [in reconciling logic and the Trinity], he would be open
to criticism unless he followed strictly the line of the particular doctor dear to the heart of
the modern historian studying him.”
126 See, e.g., the literature cited in nn. 6 and 11 above. For the record, I find unfortunate and
basically unnecessary the assignment of relative “values” on a grand scale to the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries that is such a large part of the Gilsonian paradigm; far more
important is the attempt to understand what motivated different theologians to have their
different views of, e.g., the relation between faith and reason.
william ockham 655
position vis-à-vis the Gilsonian paradigm, since it—in contrast to, e.g., God’s
existence or the immortality of the soul—is one area in which all medieval
theologians would have agreed that revelation is the absolutely crucial
source of our knowledge. Aquinas, for instance, would certainly concede
that, without it having been revealed that it is so, no theologian working
solely with natural reason could ever have arrived at God’s triune nature.
So, the Trinity is one of the essential tenets in the Roman Catholic faith
concerning which Aquinas and Ockham would agree that the doctrine
cannot get off the ground without revelation, and, consequently, it is not
one of those tenets for which Gilson, De Wulf, or Michalski would have
ever claimed there to have been two distinct forms of support, reason and
revelation.
Nevertheless, at least two reasons make it crucial to cast an eye on
the attitude that Ockham displays towards faith and reason in trinitarian
theology. First, Ockham makes some of his most explicit remarks about the
relation between faith and reason in precisely the texts that we have been
considering here.127 As mentioned above (§1), since trinitarian theology is
one of the most revelation-based dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church,
issues of reason and revelation are basically unavoidable when discussing
it; as we have seen, Ockham is no exception in this regard. Moreover,
the place occupied by Ockham in the Gilsonian paradigm would seem to
be confirmed by his appeals to sola fide as the only genuine ground for
holding several trinitarian views that earlier thinkers might have considered
amenable to some form of rational proof or (at least) defence. This makes it
highly desirable to examine Ockham’s explicit statements concerning faith
and reason and consider the nature of his appeals to faith in trinitarian
theology.
There is a second, related reason for considering Ockham’s fideism in
the light of the study offered in the present chapter: Ockham’s appeals to
faith in trinitarian theology, and the fideism and skepticism with which
the Gilsonian paradigm associate him, have in fact been used to argue that
his thought, however tenuously and however unintentionally, may have
led to the eventual rejection of the Trinity by the earliest anti-trinitarians.
The important Church historian, Roland Bainton, argued that the early
anti-trinitarian Michael Servetus (d. 1553) “was the bridge from scholastic
scepticism to the sectarian repudiation of the doctrine [of the Trinity] in
127 This is why the discussions of Ockham on faith and reason in both Adams 1987, vol. 2,
pp. 960–1010, and Freddoso 1999, use this material extensively.

656 chapter ten
the sixteenth century” (emphasis mine). Bainton, it should be noted, like

De Wulf, Gilson, and Michalski, linked explicitly fideism and skepticism.
Bainton admitted that “one may seriously doubt whether [Servetus’] initial
impulse toward Anti-trinitarian speculation was derived from the scholas-
tics and not rather from the New Testament”. Moreover, he acknowledged
that, despite their “scepticism” and “fideism” neither Ockham, nor the four
other late-scholastic authors mentioned by Servetus and studied by Bain-
ton (Robert Holcot, Gregory of Rimini, Pierre d’ Ailly, and John Major), had
any doubts about the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity. Nevertheless,
Bainton sees Servetus as picking up on the trinitarian problems isolated
by Ockham and others in the “fideistic” current, and, drawing the conclu-
sion that the problems were insurmountable, rejecting the entire doctrine
and passing on to later Reformation thought the skepticism he had inher-
ited. Thus, Bainton suggests that Ockham’s skepticism about the power of
human reason to at least come to terms with the trinitarian mystery, and
his willingness to accept the Trinity on faith despite the difficulties he saw
in the doctrine, played an unintended role in the rejection of the doctrine
two centuries later. In this way, the Gilsonian paradigm has influenced our
contemporary understanding of Ockham’s (and, more generally, “nominal-
ism’s”) place in the broader history of trinitarian speculation.128
What, then, does the foregoing study of Ockham’s trinitarian theology
tell us about his fideism and his ideas on faith and reason more gener-
ally? Do Ockham’s trinitarian views justify accusing him of divorcing reason
and revelation? The first thing to be noticed is that Ockham thinks that
human reason is thoroughly subordinate to revelation. He says explicitly
(n. 26 above) that reason is to be held captive to the authority of the Church,
and repeats on several occasions (nn. 27, 40) that fully counterintuitive, and
indeed counterrational, philosophical notions like the formal distinction
128 See Bainton 1953. For the first quotation, p. 46; second quotation, p. 29. Bainton
introduces the fideistic attitude that characterizes nominalistic theology on p. 37, and deals
with Ockham on pp. 38–40; he must be read with caution. Bainton attributes “the altered
attitude toward the problem of the Trinity” (i.e., fideism) to nominalism about universals,
since “the one substance cannot be regarded as a ‘universal’ holding the three persons
in unity” (p. 37). Although clearly some medieval thinkers (e.g., Scotus) conceived of the
essence in a fashion rather strictly analogous to a universal with the persons being individual
supposites of that universal, it seems to me that there is nothing at all inevitable about this
model—indeed, Aquinas (!) rejects it (see Iribarren 2005, 35–37). Just to give one alternative,
one could follow Henry of Ghent’s and Godfrey of Fontaines’ hylomorphic model of the
person as quasi-composite of form (property) and matter (essence). I think that the roots
of Ockham’s fideism in trinitarian theology must be sought elsewhere. See for more on this
topic, Ch. 12, § 6, below.
william ockham 657
can be countenanced, but only in cases in which the credita (that is, Scrip-
ture, sayings of the saints, and pronouncements of the Church) compel us
to countenance them. Indeed, in one passage examined above (n. 50), Ock-
ham invokes the razor in order to make the claim that we should posit as
few counterrational devices and positions as possible. This is equivalent to
saying that these should be posited only when the faith gives us absolutely
no choice but to posit them. When it comes to the formal distinction, and
hence to the Trinity itself, Ockham not only rejects that there are any good
arguments or reasons that might lead us to posit or defend their existence,
he in fact holds that reason gives us basically watertight grounds for denying
them. If we only had reason to work with, Ockham maintains, we would be
fully justified in flatly rejecting the formal distinction. The only grounds for
overturning the natural conclusion of reason in this case is the credita. Thus,
for Ockham there are indeed some instances in which the credita force us to
accept philosophical and theological positions that run counter to all reason
and good sense. With that said, Ockham is clearly very interested in keep-
ing to a minimum any possible breaches of rationality, and he does this by
requiring us to be completely certain that the credita actually warrant that
breach, saying (n. 26 above) that the conclusion to counterrationality must
follow evidently (evidenter) from the credita; there should be no possibility
of doubt about the necessity for these breaches of reason. Another example
of Ockham’s high bar for accepting counterrational elements in his trini-
tarian theology can be found in his dismissal of absolute divine properties:
divine properties are beyond our capacity to fathom in the first place, and
since Scripture and the saints only ever discuss relational properties (n. 50),
we should accept only relational properties and reject absolute properties.
Countenancing relational properties is striking, of course, since Ockham
thought he had compelling reasons to reject the extramental existence of
anything in the category of relation. For Ockham, the only breaches of ratio-
nality that can be accepted are those that revelation obliges us to accept.
Just on this basis, it seems to me that any discussion of Ockham’s so-
called fideism has to start out by admitting that, in his trinitarian theology
(as in other matters), Ockham does indeed have a fideistic streak in him.
This is only to say that, in comparison with a Thomas Aquinas, a John
Duns Scotus, or a Peter Auriol, Ockham is more willing to say that we
human beings, through the use of reason alone, are unable to penetrate
mysteries like the Trinity. On several issues that we have examined, Ockham
concludes that reason is insufficient to decide crucial questions and, as a
result, he appeals to faith as our only ground for holding the doctrine in
question. We saw this to have been the case with the fact that the Son is a
658 chapter ten
Word, the fact that there are three and only three persons, and the fact that
there are two divine productions. On all of these issues, Ockham came to
explicitly fideistic conclusions: revelation, he maintained, forces us to admit
what is beyond our abilities to know without revelation. This is one facet of
the changing theological aesthetic of these years: Ockham—and he is not
the only one—is more tolerant of leaving mysteries as mysteries.
Thus, Ockham draws what can best be termed fideistic conclusions. With
that said, however, we should also recognize that Ockham is by no means
denying the extremely large role that reason plays in speculative theolog-
ical inquiry generally, and in trinitarian theology in particular. Ockham,
then, may arrive at fideistic conclusions, but he arrives at these conclusions
through a method that is in no way fideistic. Indeed, when he postulates
a counterrational device or he appeals to faith alone as justification for
holding a view, Ockham never simply claims this to be the case. Rather,
when he limits the role of reason in trinitarian theology, he does so only
after an examination of current positions on the matter and the arguments
used to support them; only after refuting these (to his own satisfaction) on
the basis of reason, does he allow fideistic conclusions. Let us take once
again as an example Ockham’s process of arriving at the use of the formal
distinction between essence and property. Ockham accepts the formal dis-
tinction as the measure of last resort only after having examined on the
basis of reason alternative positions on the matter and having found them
inadequate. The relation account that Thomas Aquinas supported cannot
work; postulating that the essence and the personal properties are really
distinct cannot work either. What is left is to postulate a formal distinc-
tion, and we do so because faith compels us to do so. Certainly Ockham, just
like Thomas Aquinas (and every other theologian mentioned in this book),
thought that revelation laid some constraints on theologians dealing with
the Trinity. The fact that, upon examination, Ockham found Aquinas’ ideas
on the Trinity wanting, does not in itself make Ockham more fideistic—
Ockham thought that he was approaching the parameters set out by the
faith in a more reasonable way than the Angelic Doctor had, since Ockham
thought that Aquinas’ solution failed. Ockham employs a similar approach
in every trinitarian issue that we have examined here, evaluating other posi-
tions on the basis of reason, and only after their rejection resorting to the
appeal to faith or to counterrational views. In a very real sense, accusing
Ockham of divorcing faith and reason is to ignore the entire methodol-
ogy through which Ockham arrives at his sometimes fideistic conclusions. I
would argue that, for Ockham, reason is indeed at the heart of the theolog-
ical enterprise.
william ockham 659
Moreover, one can detect Ockham’s non-fideistic methodology in his cre-

ation of a theological system. His use of the formal distinction between
essence and property provides an example. If revelation and Church pro-
nouncements have led him to posit a device that is counterrational, then
Ockham clearly believes that that device can and should be used in order
to lend systematic coherency and plausibility to the theory in which it is
applicable. Ockham accepts the formal distinction in this one case only on
the basis of the pronouncements of the Church; the formal distinction is
quite literally as incomprehensible as the Trinity itself, it is a mystery, but it
allows Ockham to explain the universal validity of the expository syllogism
when confronted with the Trinity. But once Ockham has accepted the for-
mal distinction, he uses it to explain, e.g., the reason why active spiration
and paternity do not constitute two persons (since they are not really but
only formally distinct), as well as the reason why the essence can be the elic-
itive source of the emanations without this entailing that the essence elicits
itself (because essence and emanation are formally distinct).129 Clearly, sys-
temic explanatory coherency is an integral part of Ockham’s theology, even
if it is ultimately based upon counterrational positions that we are forced to
accept on the basis of revelation. No matter how it is understood, ‘fideism’
does not seem to be the right word to describe Ockham’s methodological
principles in this case; rather they seem to be rational and rigorous.
Finally, we should return to the issue of demonstration with which
this section began. As mentioned, demonstration was the central issue in
the charge of fideism and skepticism that is levelled at Ockham (and at
fourteenth-century scholasticism more generally) in the Gilsonian para-
digm. And, indeed, to the extent that Ockham has a fideistic streak in trini-
tarian theology, demonstration and the limits of our knowledge is at the
heart of it. That is to say, often Ockham appeals to sola fide in the context
of determining the precise epistemic status of our views about the Trinity.
Ockham, more than any other thinker examined in this book, was intensely
interested in the limitations that applied to our knowledge, and this is often
expressed in his appeals to the faith as the deciding factor in speculation
on the Trinity. As we have seen, for Ockham it is only when we have evi-
dent cognition of the premisses upon which our syllogisms and arguments
are based that we can truly claim to have demonstration and demonstra-
tive knowledge;130 therefore, there is basically nothing in trinitarian theology
that can be described as demonstrative, since we have no evident cognition
129 For the first, see at n. 74 above; for the second at n. 105 above.
660 chapter ten
in these matters. For example, Ockham starts from the fact that we only
know that the Son is a Word because John the Evangelist tells us this is the
case. This initial reliance on Scripture colors the epistemological status of
all statements we make concerning this matter, and for Ockham this must
be explicitly acknowledged in our discussion. In this way, Ockham thought
that he was being more reasonable, more rational, by admitting that the
foundation of our knowledge of a doctrine like the Trinity is revelation,
as expressed in the Bible, in the saints, and in the determinations of the
Church, and hence the best a theologian can do when discussing them is to
revert to the source. So, if we take a second look at Gilson’s statement (men-
tioned above [§1]), that “Ockham is perfectly safe in what he believes; only
he does not know what he believes, nor does he need to know it”, we can
affirm that Ockham is secure in his belief and that, in the material that we
have examined, he often admits that he does not know (in any strict sense)
what he believes. But what about his not needing to know it? In a certain
sense Gilson seems to be correct about this: Ockham is often content to
label mysteries rather than explain them.131 Nevertheless, Ockham’s over-
whelming interest in the epistemic status of religious “knowledge” (broadly
taken) seems to tell another story. He uses all too much energy precisely
on showing why we do not know truths of the Catholic faith with any kind
of demonstrative knowledge. His great concern was clearly in determining
through the use of reason the precise limits of our religious knowledge and
using reason just as far as it could be used in these revelation-based matters,
e.g. in showing why earlier solutions to the issues had failed. Only in this way
could we safely believe what we believe. Again, we appear to have a highly
“reason-based” methodology that led on occasion to fideistic conclusions.
We see this testing of the limits of our theological knowledge very clearly
in Ockham’s discussion concerning the Filioque. Merely asserting, without
(in Ockham’s view) having any proof of the matter, that opposition of
relations is necessary for personal distinction does not make the Filioque
any more demonstrative, as Dominicans like Thomas of Sutton had seemed
to claim (see above, at nn. 79–80). We might as well get our terminology
correct, Ockham appears to say: we cannot demonstrate the Filioque by
pure reason, that is simply not open to us in this life, since we have no
evident cognition upon which we could base the necessary deductions.
Nevertheless, if we believe and acknowledge to be true what Scripture, the
saints, and the Church say, then we can indeed give some formally necessary
131 See, e.g., at and around nn. 41, 118 above.

william ockham 661
consequences showing that the Holy Spirit must come from the Son. But
this is based on faith, and only those who are already believers could ever
be expected to concede it. Ockham is certainly limiting the role of reason
here, and appealing to the faith, but only to the extent that he thought that
the Dominican solution was basically begging the question: opposition of
relations was posited solely to undergird the plausibility of the Filioque, with
no extrinsic source of legitimacy. Demonstration, then, is clearly of the issue
for Ockham, but demonstration in its strict sense involves a type of evidence
that cannot be found in trinitarian theology; read in this way, Ockham
can be seen as advocating intellectual modesty. Far from denigrating or
humiliating reason (cf. De Wulf, at n. 120 above), Ockham appears to have
wanted to evaluate it as honestly as he could, eliminating excesses.
A final worthwhile consideration is that when it comes to Ockham’s
many appeals to the faith in the context of his discussion of the psycho-
logical model, his positions are not actually that different from a number of
prominent Thomists of the period. No one would accuse Hervaeus Natalis
of exhibiting unbridled fideism; moreover, Hervaeus undoubtedly believed
that his views were legitimate interpretations or developments of Aquinas’
ideas. Yet Ockham shares with Hervaeus (and several other Dominicans)
the view that the indistinct divine essence is the source of both emanations,
and Hervaeus correspondingly rejects any proofs that there are three and
only three persons, rejects that the emanation of the Son has anything to
do with an intellect or the emanation of the Holy Spirit anything to do with
a will, and rejects that the Son’s emanation is any more natural than the
Holy Spirit’s. All of these positions Hervaeus Natalis and William Ockham
share, and in some of them an explicit appeal is made by Hervaeus to Scrip-
ture as the only source of our knowledge. The only locus in the material that
we have seen on which Ockham and Hervaeus would have disagreed on an
appeal to the faith is that, whereas Ockham says we must just believe that
the emanations are distinct, Hervaeus thought that generation and spira-
tion were distinct because the former was the emanation of one from one
and the latter one from two. Ockham does not even bother to reply to this
position, perhaps because he thought the Dominicans had no evidence for
the necessity of opposed relations upon which this position is predicated.
I would like to make two suggestions as to what lurks behind Ock-
ham’s fideistic streak in the issues examined here, and both of these sug-
gestions have to do with the changing theological aesthetic in fourteenth-
century theology that has been mentioned several times. First and most
obviously, Ockham is simply more tolerant of appeals to faith than were ear-
lier thinkers; satisfactory trinitarian speculation did not rule out appealing
662 chapter ten
to faith. Second, is the importance to Ockham of divine simplicity. The

search for simplicity, and particularly the rejection of the formal distinction
between the attributes, is the root source of many of Ockham’s appeals
to faith when it comes to the psychological model. In Ockham, simplicity
has become a major factor in the shaping of his trinitarian theology. The
rise of simplicity as the key motivation in trinitarian theory becomes even
more evident in the thought of Ockham’s confrère Walter Chatton. It is to
Chatton, and to other Oxford thinkers who were engaged in the search for
simplicity, that we now turn.
chapter eleven
THE OXFORD TRINITARIAN DEBATE, 1315–1350
In Chapter Ten, I examined the more metaphysical side of William Ock-

ham’s trinitarian thought. In the present chapter, one of my aims is to see the
reception of Ockham’s thought in England in especially the 1320’s and 1330’s.
As will become clear, Ockham was a real point of departure for many of the
theologians we will examine. But it will also become clear that English the-
ologians from the period 1315–1350, exhibit the same tendency as Ockham
himself to look to John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol as major interlocutors,
with other theologians like Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Giles of
Rome, playing more minor roles.
The trinitarian theology of the period 1315–1350 will be traced here by
focusing on the search for simplicity. We have already seen that simplic-
ity was a major factor in Ockham’s trinitarian thought, and we will see that
Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham were also clearly influenced by the
ideal of absolute divine simplicity, each approaching with creativity and
freshness the aspects of trinitarian theology that we have been following
in this book. In addition, the Dominican theologians Robert Holcot and
William Crathorn, writing just around 1330, are illustrative of tendencies in
the period’s trinitarian theology and develop interesting and, especially in
Holcot’s case, untraditional views. Beyond those theologians, until around
1330 there are several others who, at least in the parts of their extant (and
unedited) works that I have examined, approach the Trinity from rather
more traditional perspectives. After 1330 on the other hand, the metaphys-
ical Trinity, the psychological model, and the other topics focused on in
the present book, fade from view, as theologians settled on logical issues as
the most important ones in trinitarian theology, and as other theological
and philosophical matters take precedence in the English scholastic dis-
cussion, especially questions concerning free will and volitions, intension
and remission of forms, and divine omnipotence.1 In this way, from the full
1 On the changing scholarly interests in these years, see esp. Courtenay 1987a, esp. 255–
258, 276–280 (on p. 280 Courtenay notes that after 1334 “problems of trinitarian theology lost
their hold on English theologians in favor of a short list that included problems of will, sin,
664 chapter eleven
engagement in the later-medieval trinitarian debate that we witness in

Ockham and Chatton, the twenty-year period following their activity sees
for all intents and purposes a total collapse of interest in trinitarian issues.
1. Walter Chatton
Walter Chatton was born around 1285 or 1290, and it seems likely that he
was pursuing theological studies at Oxford when William Ockham was read-
ing the Sentences there. At any rate, Chatton certainly knew many of Ock-
ham’s arguments, and, when Chatton himself read the Sentences, probably
(although not certainly) at the Franciscan order’s studium in London in
1321–1323 and again in 1323–1324 (and Chatton’s Reportatio was made on the
basis of the latter lectures), Chatton subjected Ockham’s ideas to a great
deal of critical scrutiny. Ockham was present in the same convent during
that time, as was the younger Adam Wodeham, and this fact may have con-
tributed to the debate that one finds in their works: in both his later Ordina-
tio (I Sentences only) and Quodlibetal questions, Ockham changed his mind
on some matters (e.g., on the ontology of concepts) at least in part due to the
force of Chatton’s arguments.2 Ockham also defended himself against Chat-
ton when he thought that Chatton had gotten it wrong; one example of this
is, as we saw in the previous chapter, Ockham’s defense of his own use of the
formal distinction against Chatton’s critique.3 At some point in this period,
Chatton composed an ordinatio version of his Sentences commentary, the
so-called Lectura, although he completed only up to d. 17 of book I (and
thus omits a fair amount of trinitarian material important to the present
study).4 As we will see below, when Adam Wodeham read his own Sentences
law, grace, future contingents, and transsubstantiation”); see also Courtenay 1992, esp. 21–29
for a description of the major topics treated by the post 1330 generation of scholars at Oxford.
2 See, however, Boler 2003; Panaccio 2004, 23–27; and Brower-Toland 2007, esp. 102–106,
all of whom argue that Ockham’s change of view comes as much (if not more) from exigencies
internal to his own thought than from Chatton’s critique.
3 See Ch. 10, above, at and around n. 44.
4 It is for this reason that my exposition below is based in the first instance on the
Reportatio, although I bring in the Lectura on occasion. I can add that Chatton is somewhat
more open about his positions in the Reportatio—as one might expect from both an earlier
and more oral work—although his basic views on trinitarian matters are the same in the
Reportatio and the Lectura. Chatton also has a Quodlibet, on which see Keele 2007a, 666–
678, as well as Etzkorn 1987a and Etzkorn 1987b, 324–326, 332–333 (one question in the
Quodl. has to do with trinitarian theology: q. 21 = “Utrum ad salvandum fidem de trinitate
sit necessarium recurrere ad terminos reduplicativos”).
the oxford trinitarian debate, 1315–1350 665
commentaries (between 1329 and 1334), he sometimes took Ockham’s side,

and he often criticized Chatton heavily. Chatton himself was Franciscan
regent master at Oxford in 1330, where he remained until he left for Avignon
in 1333. There he participated in papal investigations of the Dominican
theologians Thomas Waleys and Durand of St. Pourçain, as well as in the
preparation of the new legislation for the Franciscan order promulgated by
Benedict XII in 1336. He died in 1343.
Until quite recently, Walter Chatton’s fame was based primarily on the
fact that he sometimes made Ockham change his mind, that he countered
Ockham’s razor with an “anti-razor” of his own, and that he held unusual
views like atomism.5 But over the course of the last two decades, the work
of a number of researchers—not least Gelber, Tachau, and Schabel6—has
given us a more all-round view of Chatton’s thought; even more importantly,
through the editorial project initiated by Joseph C. Wey and continued by
Girard J. Etzkorn, we now have good critical editions of nearly all of Chat-
ton’s works,7 which will make much easier the task of those studying this
extremely fertile and daring mind. For, if his trinitarian theology is any-
thing to judge by, fertile and daring Chatton’s mind truly was. Not only were
the conclusions that Chatton arrived at highly unusual in the context of the
scholastic discussion on the Trinity, but Chatton has a conscious method-
ology when he approached the trinitarian issues we deal with here. And
behind the methodology lies one goal: the preservation of divine simplic-
ity.
A. Walter Chatton’s Method in Trinitarian Theology

Chatton has two procedures or routines that he uses consistently through-
out his trinitarian theology in order to examine the matter at hand. In his
discussion of basically every issue that we have addressed in the course of
this book, Chatton uses one or both of the two procedures in order to deal
with the trinitarian issue at stake. Thus, it is best to isolate and explain these
two procedures before looking more systematically at Chatton’s trinitarian
5 See most recently for a survey of Chatton’s philosophy with extensive review of the
literature, Keele 2007b.

6 Gelber 1974, 185–205, 601–614; Tachau 1988, 180–208; Schabel 2000a, 231–240; Schabel
2002b (with consideration of the dating of Chatton’s career); more bibliography in Keele
2007b.
7 See the bibliography below, s.v. ‘Gualterus de Chatton’. Many thanks go to Girard
Etzkorn for his kindness in sending me advanced copies of text from both Chatton’s Repor-
tatio in Primum and Lectura (which have both since appeared in print in their entirety).
666 chapter eleven
theology, giving an example of each in order to show how he proceeded and

what he thought he was achieving by proceeding in that way. In other words:
here I want to elucidate Chatton’s method in trinitarian theology.
The first of the two procedures is Chatton’s insistent questioning: in
nearly every traditional trinitarian context he asks his chosen adversary
to define the most important terms or assertions that the adversary had
used. Often Chatton’s questions take the form: “what do you mean by the
terms ‘essence’, ‘Father’, ‘Son’, ‘Holy Spirit’”. Let us take an example. When
Chatton deals with the issue of whether the will is an elicitive source of the
Son, he mentions Ockham’s position that indeed the will is. As we have seen,
Ockham argued that since there is no distinction between will and essence,
and since the essence is the elicitive source of the emanations, clearly the
will is the elicitive source of the generation of the Son.8 Chatton replies to
Ockham:
I say that many such things depend upon (currunt super) what is signified
by the terms, which [Ockham] uses differently than the common school.
For what do you understand by ‘the essence’ when you say that the essence
is the elicitive source? If [you understand] that thing which is at once all
three persons, and each one per se, it is plain that [the essence] is not
the elicitive source. If [you understand by ‘the essence’] any one person
(aliquam personarum), the Church does not use [the term] in this way. If [you
understand by ‘the essence’] a fourth thing and any kind of part in any way,
the Church condemns this.9
What do you mean by ‘essence’, asks Chatton. You cannot mean by the
term all the persons at once and each individually (since that would involve
something being its own source). Standard Church usage blocks under-
standing ‘essence’ as any one of the persons to the exclusion of the others.
8 Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., n. 4: “In ista quaestione, primo videndum est si voluntas
sit principium elicitivum generationis. Et dicitur quod sic, quia ista consequentia est bona
‘essentia est principium elicitivum, igitur et voluntas’, quia nulla distinctio est ibi inter
essentiam et voluntatem.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 41717–21. For Ockham’s view, see,
e.g., Ch. 10, above, at and around nn. 115–117.
9 Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., n. 5: “Sed dico quod multa talia currunt super significatum
vocabuli, quo isti aliter utuntur quam communis schola. Quid enim intelligis per essentiam
quando dicis quod essentia est principium elicitivum? Si illam rem quae est simul omnes
tres personae et quaelibet per se, planum est quod illa non est principium elicitivum.
Si aliquam personarum, sic non utitur Ecclesia. Si quartam rem et partem quamcumque
vel quomodocumque, hoc damnat Ecclesia; et probo hoc cum Ecclesia, quia simplicitas
est generale attributum, igitur aequaliter convenit essentiae et cuilibet personae et simul
omnibus aequaliter, quomodocumque propositio sit per se vel non per se.” Ed. Wey and
Etzkorn (vol. 1), pp. 41723–4188 (for italicized text see at n. 12 below).
But if ‘essence’ stood for anything but the three persons taken together and
individually, then the essence would be a fourth thing in God, and that is
expressly forbidden by the Church. Setting aside the issue of the fairness of
Chatton’s critique of Ockham, it is important to notice that a motivation
underlying this first procedure of Chatton’s is the desire to get basic defi-
nitional issues straight. Unless we know what we are talking about when
in trinitarian theology we use terms like ‘essence’, we will not get very far
in coming to grips with the actual theological issues. Nevertheless, Chatton
has another goal with this procedure: he wants to guard against “hyposta-
cization” in God, i.e. the postulation of any hypostasis or otherwise distinct
unit except for the three persons. As Chatton says many times throughout
both of his extant commentaries on I Sentences, the three really distinct
persons are one God and there is no fourth thing.10 For Chatton, God is
three persons, really distinct and essentially identical, and to hypostacize
any other term that we use about God, whether that term be ‘essence’, ‘will’,
‘active generation’, ‘paternity’, etc., would be to posit a “fourth thing” in God,
and that is expressly forbidden by the Canons of the Fourth Lateran Coun-
cil: there is Trinity in God, not quaternity.11 Here we see the first sign of
Chatton’s overwhelming interest in divine simplicity. God is, for Chatton,
absolutely simple. Of course, all of the theologians that we examine in this
book would have agreed with Chatton on this point, although how exactly
to understand the term ‘simple’ would have been a topic for discussion. But
Chatton takes simplicity to be the central issue in trinitarian theology—
he explicitly calls simplicity “the general attribute” (simplicitas est generale
attributum),12 and throughout Chatton’s trinitarian theology all other expla-
nations and arguments are subordinated to divine simplicity. Through his
insistent questioning about the meanings of the basic terms used by his
opponents, Chatton was able to show very precisely where he thought his
opponents had compromised divine simplicity. For Chatton, three really
distinct persons are one God, and no other distinctions are necessary. In
10 E.g., Chatton, I Rep., d. 33–34, q. un., n. 17: “Asserendum est primo quod tres personae
divinae sunt realiter distinctae; secundo, quod est unus Deus; et tertio, quod in divinis non
est quarta res.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 29017–19. Also, e.g., ibid., d. 2, q. 1, n. 16: “… quia
nulla res est in Deo nisi essentia et tres personae.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 9524–25;
ibid., d. 26, q. un., a. 1, n. 15 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], p. 18021–23).
11 For the Canon, see the Introduction, above, at n. 21. Chatton himself refers to this Canon
as justification for his view at, e.g., I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, n. 31 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 3946–9);
I Rep., d. 33–34, q. un., nn. 12, 23 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], pp. 28915 and 29132), and it is
implicit in the text quoted in n. 9 above.
12 See the italicized text in n. 9 above.
668 chapter eleven
fact, so simple is God that positing any other distinction whatsoever would
entail the hypostacizing of a fourth thing in God, and that is strictly pro-
hibited. Chatton, then, through his questions about the meaning of terms,
can identify what he considers to be illicit hypostacization by employing
one clear-cut rule: no fourth thing in God. And, as noted, this move is in
turn contingent upon Chatton’s view that God’s simplicity demands that
there are no distinctions except for the real distinction between the per-
sons.
Nevertheless, Chatton is well aware that earlier and contemporary the-
ologians had talked about God as if there were various distinctions in him,
although the types of distinctions and just how they were employed had
varied from theologian to theologian.13 More importantly, in some of the
foundational documents of the Christian faith assertions appear that seem
to attribute to God distinct properties and attributes.14 So, Chatton needs to
explain these types of assertions, while still holding on to his view of God’s
uncompromised simplicity. Simply put, Chatton needs what I have been
calling throughout this book a marginalization strategy. He answers this
need through the second procedure that makes up his theological method
in trinitarian theology. This procedure is considerably more complex than
was the first, and requires correspondingly more detailed explanation. But
fundamental to Chatton’s second procedure is a distinction between asser-
tions made about God that are de facto or secundum veritatem, and asser-
tions made about God that are per se or de se. This is merely shorthand for
two levels on which discussion of God can take place. On the de facto plane
we are discussing God’s nature as it really is, and here simplicity reigns. That
is to say, when discussing God de facto three really distinct persons are one
God, and there is no fourth thing. On the other hand, Chatton appeals to
the per se plane of discussion in order to account for the many statements
that had been made about God that appear to compromise God’s simplicity
by positing distinctions in him other than the real distinction between the
three persons. This second, per se level of discussion is based on what can
be characterized as an aggressive use of positio impossibilis techniques from
13 For this recognition, see e.g. Chatton, I Rep., d. 28, q. un., n. 16 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn
[vol. 2], p. 2103–8; part of that text is quoted in n. 35 below).

14 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, a. 1, n. 39: “… fides multas locutiones ponit ac si esset distinctio
in re: in omnibus affirmativis quas concedit fides de essentia, non de persona aliqua, puta
quod essentia Patris est communicabilis Filio, id est Pater et Filius sunt unus Deus; in
negativis, Pater non est Filius, id est non sunt una persona.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1),
p. 1882–6. See also, e.g., the texts in n. 35 below.
the art of obligations, i.e. these are counterfactual statements made on the
basis of assuming to be the case what is in reality impossible.15 An example
will help make this clearer.
One discussion in which Chatton explains this procedure particularly
well is necessary for us to examine in any case: the distinction between the
divine attributes. Here, once again, Chatton takes Ockham as his opponent,
and asks whether God’s being wise is just as per se as God’s being God.16 The
details of Chatton’s individual arguments against Ockham’s position on the
matter need not detain us here. It is Chatton’s own view that is of interest,
and that view has two parts. First, Chatton agrees with Ockham insofar as
he says that God is just as much wise as he is God, or to use Chatton’s own
terms: God is wise and God is God by maximal identity in reality. If this were
not the case, then it would be possible for God not to be wise, which is clearly
in error.17 So, de facto God is absolutely simple, and this entails that God is
wise to the same degree that he is God, i.e. there is no distinction between
God and his wisdom. But this is where the agreement between Chatton and
Ockham ceases; for the second part of Chatton’s view is that if we turn to the
per se level of discussion, then God is not as wise as he is God. This statement
bears quotation:
The second conclusion is that it is not equally true to say that God is per se God
and that God is per se wise, by understanding ‘per se’ as it has frequently been
explained, with impossible circumscriptions posited and through contradic-
tion. For if, through contradiction, there were in the thing just the kind of
distinction corresponding to the abstract concepts as those concepts indicate
(qualis est ipsorum conceptuum), then these propositions in the concrete—
‘God is wise’, ‘God is God’—would be affirmed in the same way as they are
now. For example, if we were to posit with respect to the second [proposi-
tion] that God were composed of parts, just as a human being is composed of
15 Chatton’s views on positio impossibilis have not been entirely neglected. See, e.g.,
Martin (Christopher J.) 1997; Knuuttila 1997. The place in which he explains his view on per
se predication and its application to God most extensively is in his Prologue, q. 3, esp. aa. 1–2
(ed. Wey, pp. 146–188); this text deserves a dedicated analysis, but such analysis lies outside
the scope of the present book.
16 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 1: “Utrum talis sit natura Dei, de qua verum sit hitai ipsam esse
per se iustam sicut per se esse Deum.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 914–5. For convenience’
sake, in the discussion in the main text I have used ‘wise’ and ‘wisdom’ instead of ‘just’ and
‘justice’.
17 Walter Chatton, I Reportatio, d. 2, q. 1, n. 24: “Haec est prima conclusio igitur, quod per
idem in re summa identitate est Deus sapiens et Deus.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 9817–18.
For the argument about God not being wise, as well as for the term maximal identity (maxima
identitas), see ibid., n. 18 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 9624–9714).
670 chapter eleven
body and soul, and with respect to the first [proposition] that wisdom were
a thing distinct from deity, then ‘God is God’ would still be per se in the first
mode (per se primo modo) and essential (in quid), for the thing corresponding
to the abstract concept of the predicate would be an intrinsic part of deity;
but in that case the [proposition] ‘God is wise’ would not be per se in the first
mode and essential in this way, because then wisdom would no longer be
intrinsic to deity nor a part of it.18
The key to the per se investigation of these propositions is a type of analy-

sis that Chatton characterizes as “through impossible circumscription” (per
impossibilem circumscriptionem) or “through contradiction” (per contradic-
tionem). Chatton uses these terms interchangeably and, as here, often in
conjunction, and what they mean is that we proceed through an appeal to
an impossible positio. Take two abstract terms, wisdom (sapientia) and deity
(deitas), Chatton maintains that if per impossibile God were composed—
put together—in the way that, e.g., human beings are, then there would be
things in God corresponding to these abstract terms, i.e. wisdom and deity
would be distinct entities in God. But if this were the case, then it would have
immediate consequences for the propositions that result when the concrete
terms corresponding to ‘wisdom’ and ‘deity’, i.e. ‘wise’ and ‘God’ (Deus), are
predicated of God. Specifically, ‘God is God’ is clearly essential predication,
while ‘God is wise’ would be not essential but accidental predication, since
wisdom would not be an intrinsic part of deity. In this sense, then, ‘God is
wise’ is less per se than ‘God is God’, and God is not as wise as he is God.
Thus, for Chatton, despite the fact that we know that God is utterly simple,
and that de facto God is as wise as he is God, if we want to investigate the
perseity of these propositions, then we have to turn to the art of obligations
and impossible circumscription,19 and here there is indeed a difference.
18 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 1, n. 25: “Secunda conclusio est quod non est aeque verum
dicere Deum esse per se Deum et Deum esse per se sapientem, intelligendo ‘per se’ sicut fre-
quenter exponitur, positis circumscriptionibus impossibilibus et per contradictionem. Nam
si per contradictionem talis esset distinctio in re correspondens conceptibus abstractis qualis
est ipsorum conceptuum, adhuc propositiones istae in concreto uniformiter verificarentur:
‘Deus est sapiens’, ‘Deus est Deus’ sicut modo. Puta si ponamus quod Deus componeretur
ex partibus sicut homo componitur ex corpore et anima quoad secundam, et quod sapientia
esset res distincta a deitate quoad primam, quod adhuc haec esset per se primo modo et in
quid ‘Deus est Deus’, res enim correspondens hconceptuii abstracto praedicati esset pars dei-
tatis intrinseca; et haec non esset tunc sic per se ‘Deus est sapiens’ primo modo et in quid, quia
adhuc tunc sapientia non esset intrinseca deitati nec pars eius.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1),
pp. 9820–998. For a similar statement, see ibid., n. 12 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 9416–27).
19 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 1, nn. 12, 14: “… quid sit per se penes artem investigandi persei-
tatem propositionis, etiam per circumscriptiones impossibiles .... nec Sancti nec philosophi
Someone, perhaps Ockham, made the obvious objection to this view: it

is merely playing with words. If God is in reality absolutely simple, and,
in order to introduce distinction into him, we need to resort to thought
experiments that we acknowledge are impossible, then what difference
could this possibly make to our theology?20 Chatton has a response, and it
shows the metaphysical foundation of his view:
[the difference in perseity] arises simultaneously from the nature of the thing
and from the order of concepts, specifically because that thing is the kind of
nature that truly of its very nature (nata est) is signified by many concepts
having different rationes, and, on the basis of these concepts, propositions
and complex statements (complexa) can be formed, of which one is more per
se and the other less per se. And when you show the opposite, that this is not
on the basis of the order of the terms, because the placement (situatio) of the
terms is under our control (in libera potestate nostra), I hold the opposite, that
the perseity of the proposition is not up to us, but it is like this because such
is the nature of human beings and of animals, and the disposition in natures,
that the proposition predicating the one concept is more per se true than the
proposition predicating the other. And when you show that in the matter
at hand this [characteristic] is not from the thing [i.e., from God], because
in the thing there is highest identity, I say that the identity is only deity,
and deity is the kind of thing about which concepts having different rationes
can be formed, on the basis of which concepts diverse complex statements
(complexa) can be formed, of which one is more true and the other less,
[speaking] per se.21
For Chatton, some things, like God, are of their very nature the types
of things about which many concepts can be formed, and the concepts
aliam artem tradiderunt investigandi propositionem esse per se.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn
(vol. 1), pp. 9425–27, 952–3. See also the obligations terminology used by Chatton (obligatus, per
impossibile, positio impossibilis) in, e.g., nn. 30, 59, 80, 83, and 85 below. On obligations and
impossible positio, see esp. Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 28–32, and Ch. 8, at and around
nn. 56–60, 69–75.
20 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 1, n. 40 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 10314–24).
21 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 1, n. 46: “… dico quod hoc provenit et ex natura rei et ex ordine
conceptuum simul, quia videlicet res illa talis natura est quae vere nata est significari pluribus
conceptibus alterius rationis, ex quibus possunt formari propositiones et complexa, quorum
unum sit magis per se et alterum minus per se.—Et cum probas oppositum, quod non
ex ordine terminorum, quia illa situatio terminorum est in libera potestate nostra, teneo
oppositum, quod perseitas propositionis non est ad libitum nostrum, sed ideo quia talis est
natura hominum et animalium et dispositio in naturis, quod propositio praedicans istum
conceptum est magis per se vera quam hpropositioi praedicans illum.—Et cum probas quod
in proposito non est hoc a re, quia in re est summa identitas, dico quod illa identitas non est
nisi deitas, et deitas est talis de qua possunt formari conceptus alterius rationis, ex quibus
possunt formari diversa complexa, quorum unum magis sit verum et aliud minus, per se.”
Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 1054–20.
672 chapter eleven
that are formed on that basis have an intrinsic order among themselves
that dictates the type of perseity any proposition formed out of those
concepts will have. Any intellectual creature is, of course, free to make up
out of the concepts available to it any proposition that it desires, by, for
instance, positioning the terms in different places. But the perseity that
characterizes these different propositions is strictly dictated by the nature
of the thing and the order of the concepts; the perseity itself, then, is not
a purely mental phenomenon, but is firmly rooted in reality. Thus, God is
absolutely simple, and yet we grasp him by various concepts, and these
concepts have a natural order to them such that the perseity of propositions
formed from them is fixed. In this way, Chatton can argue that God is
absolutely simple on the de facto plane, and yet our per se distinctions
about God are anchored in the structure of the world and of our concepts.
Indeed, for Chatton it is not only our intellect that would form these types
of concepts and recognize that propositions formed out of them are of
unequal perseity: he says explicitly that God’s intellect would do so as well.22
Just as God knows the difference between a stone and a piece of wood,
so he knows that he himself is God and that he himself is wise, and he
can judge that propositions formed on the basis of these concepts are of
unequal perseity. There is a fundamental structure to reality and to the
order of concepts, and even God’s intellect is, in a certain sense, bound
by that structure. All this in spite of the fact that these concepts all signify
the same simple thing, God, and that there is de facto no divine wisdom
distinct from deity. Indeed, Chatton is careful to stress that the divine
attributes as such are concepts and only concepts—wisdom is not “in” God,
except by a type of extrinsic denomination, i.e. because we form many
concepts based on the essence, we can say improperly that the attributes
are “distinct” and that they are “in God”.23 Elsewhere in his Reportatio,
22 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 1, n. 92: “Verum est quod Deus non habet multas intellectiones
quarum una non est alia. Quomodo igitur potest distinguere? Dico quod illo modo quo
distinguit lapidem a ligno, et hoc non est aliud nisi Deum scire lapidem non esse lignum.
Sic in proposito: talis est natura Dei quod ipse scit de se posse formari plures conceptus ex
quibus propositiones formarentur et componantur quarum una magis per se et alia minus
per se sint significantes in re summe idem.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 11617–24.
23 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 1, a. 2, nn. 64, 69–70: “… quando absolute dicitur ‘cognitio’
vel ‘intellectio’, nescitur de quo vis loqui, hinc habet ortum quod denominamus obiecta
extrinseca per actus, et dicimus ‘intellectio lapidis’, et e converso ‘lapis intellectus’ vel ‘lapis
in anima’. Et secundum hoc attributa distingui ratione non est nisi plures cognitiones
haberi in mente denominantes extrinsece eandem rem .... mens causat istas rationes, id
est, cognitiones … hintellectus causati plures intellectiones eiusdem rei a quo illa extrinsece
Chatton makes clear that the order between the concepts is set by their
rationes definitivae; so the order between them comes from the unchanging
definitions of these types of things. Chatton even specifies that the reason
that there are no distinct things in God corresponding to these concepts
comes “from elsewhere”, meaning by this, as we will see momentarily, from
divine simplicity itself.24 Thus, as Chatton says many times, when we employ
this per se procedure what we do is posit “per impossibile a distinction in
reality (in re) corresponding to the distinction between the concepts” that
we have about God.25 And we do this in order to examine the order between
these concepts, allowing us to say counterfactually just how God would be,
if his perfect simplicity admitted of distinction or composition.
It should be noted that the ideas on this topic found in Chatton’s later
Lectura do not diverge in any significant way from those we have seen pre-
sented in his early Reportatio. Thus, in the Lectura Chatton holds that there
is no distinction in God and hence there is utter identity between deity and,
e.g., divine wisdom—God is just as much wise as he is God.26 Nevertheless,
concepts that we form about God, e.g. wisdom and justice, differ definition-
ally; thus, the total identity and the unity of definition of what corresponds
in God to these concepts does not arise from these definitions but rather
“from simplicity or from infinity or from elsewhere”. To put this in another
way: what blocks the fact that divine wisdom and divine justice are in no
way distinct is simply divine nature itself; everywhere else that you find wis-
dom and justice, they will be distinct and this is reflected in their differing
definitions.27 This is the reason why, Chatton tells us in his Lectura, we often
denominatur, et propter hoc solum dicitur distingui ratione; vel pluribus, id est, pluribus
intellectionibus intelligi; et hoc est attributa distingui ratione.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1),
p. 1106–12, p. 1119–15. Cf. ibid., a. 1, n. 38 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 10213–1033), where
Chatton explains that saying that the attributes are “in” God is merely a way of speaking as if
God were composed of parts.
24 See, e.g., n. 59 below; for more on “from elsewhere”, see at and around n. 27 below.
25 See, e.g., the text in nn. 80, 83, 85, and 115 below.
26 E.g., Chatton, Lectura, d. 2, q. 3, a. 2, n. 59: “Est igitur prima conclusio huius quaestionis,
quod omni identitate quae est extra animam, qua deitas est deitas, est deitas sapientia, ita
quod inter deitatem et sapientiam nulla est distinctio, nec simpliciter nec secundum quid,
nec magna nec parva …” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 29712–16.
27 E.g., Chatton, Lectura, d. 2, q. 3, a. 1, nn. 14–15: “Confirmatur, quia licet illi rei necessario
repugnet repugnantia summa reali summa reali omnis distinctio inter illam sapientiam et
illam iustitiam, tamen illi rei non repugnat talis distinctio ex unitate suae descriptionis,
seu quasi definitionis, datae per conceptus absolutos .... Unde breviter, ista res non est talis
entitas quae solum est conceptibilis conceptibus absolutis componentibus propositiones
in quid. Igitur illa res non est talis entitas cui repugnet ex unitate definitionis distinctio in
674 chapter eleven
speak as if God had parts, despite the fact that he clearly has none.28 Thus,
the procedure of analyzing statements about God according to their perse-
ity, and relying on the theory of positio impossibilis, was one that Chatton
utilized throughout his career in basically the same way.29
Chatton’s use of positio impossibilis in order to distinguish how we talk
about God from the way things really are in God was controversial. We
know from Chatton himself that William Ockham in many contexts denied
that Chatton’s use of this logical tool was legitimate. When dealing with
Ockham’s view that the essence is the elicitive source of the emanations,
Chatton writes:
… when they show that the essence is elicitive because, with the essence
posited, and with everything else circumscribed, etc.—either in this circum-
scription you [Ockham] posit an impossible position, and then I have what
I was after (intentum) in many matters, i.e. that we have to proceed through
such circumscriptions (which you frequently deny) …30
Ockham was not the only one who found Chatton’s extensive use of positio
impossibilis in trinitarian theology suspect. We will see below that Adam
Wodeham also took Chatton to task for using the tool in situations where
it was (in Wodeham’s view) not strictly required. On the other hand, on the
re, licet aliunde sibi repugnet, loquendo large de definitione .... illi rei ex descriptionibus
iustitiae et sapientiae non contradicit per se et primo quod ibi sit distinctio inter sapientiam
et iustitiam, licet aliunde sit contradictio ex simplicitate vel ex infinitate vel aliunde.” Ed.
Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), pp. 2848–12,21–25, 28511–14. The formulation “ex aliunde”, referring to
the reason that the attributes or the properties can be absolutely identical in God, is also
found in Chatton’s Rep.; see, e.g., n. 59 below; also I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, a. 1, n. 25 (ed. Wey and
Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 18317–20).
28 E.g., Chatton, Lectura, d. 2, q. 3, a. 4, n. 113: “Unde sicut adhuc hodie in multis locis
loquimur ac si esset distinctio in Deo, dicimus enim quod Pater habet vitam in semetipso
.... Ideo licet in hoc fuerit locutus ac si esset distinctio in re, tamen solum intendebat quod
res esset talis pro qua haec praedicatio non esset per se primo modo dicendi per se …” Ed.
Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 31224–26, p. 31313–16.
29 This is all the more clear from the fact that the major direct discussion of the method
comes in the Prologue to Chatton’s Sent. commentary, which only exists in the later Lectura
version; for reference to the text in question, see n. 15 above.
30 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, n. 59: “Item, cum probant quod essentia sit elicitivum quia
ipsa posita, circumscripto omni alio etc., aut in ista circumscriptione ponis impossibilem
positionem, et tunc habeo intentum in multis materiis: quod per tales circumscriptiones est
procedendum, quod frequenter negas.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 4017–11. For similar
statements from Chatton, see also ibid., d. 2, q. 1, a. 1, nn. 13–14 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1],
pp. 9428–9516); ibid., d. 26, q. un., n. 57 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], p. 18713–14); Reportatio et
Lectura, Prol., q. 3, a. 1 (ed. Wey, pp. 152–158), which is a general treatment of the validity of
reasoning per impossibile.
basis of one passage it appears that Robert Holcot may have accepted to
one extent or another Chatton’s use of impossible positio to explain why
we often speak as if there were distinction in God when in fact there is
none.31 Chatton himself defends his pervasive use of positio impossibilis,
suggesting that it was one way in which the Church went about examining
trinitarian issues when challenged by heretics,32 and bringing up some of
the traditional spots in Augustine where the saint clearly made use of
counterfactuals, like Augustine’s claim in De trinitate that, had the Father
not generated, he could still have been the ungenerated person.33 In any
case, Chatton needed this tool. As he openly admits, statements often occur
in documents of the faith that make it appear that there is distinction
actually in God, and these statements had to be explained in some way.34
Time and again Chatton claims that “the doctors” spoke “as if” (ac si) there
were distinction in God, and to explain why they spoke in this way, despite
the fact that they knew about God’s absolute simplicity, he appeals to
the per se level of discussion.35 With this procedure, then, Chatton has
elaborated (just as throughout this book we have seen many theologians
elaborate) a marginalization strategy—a way of explaining authoritative
passages that did not agree with his express view. Chatton holds that God
is absolutely simple; why, then, do modern doctors, Church Fathers, and
even the Bible itself use formulations that clearly imply that “in” God there
are elements distinct from one another? Chatton’s answer is that all the
sources of the faith were discussing God per se—how God would be, if
31 For Wodeham, see at and around n. 170 below; for Holcot, at and around n. 190.
32 E.g., Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, n. 96: “… possit dici quod Ecclesia, occasione data
ab haereticis, voluit investigare quae propositio esset per se in locutionibus circa divina
et in abstractis locutionibus ad clarius distinguendum aliquando illum subintelligere ac si
apponeretur ‘per se’ …” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 2012–6.
33 For the appeal to Augustine, see, e.g., Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 1, a. 1, nn. 14, 26 (ed. Wey
and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 951–9, p. 999–12); Reportatio et Lectura, Prol., q. 3, a. 1, argumentum 5
(ed. Wey, p. 155312–319). On the Augustine quotation mentioned here, see Ch. 5, above, n. 111
(and n. 45 below).
34 See, e.g., n. 14 above, and n. 35 below (on Scripture).
35 E.g., Chatton, I Rep., d. 28, q. un., n. 16: “… dico quod concretive significat Patrem ac
si in Patre esset distinctio realis correspondens abstractis, et sic etiam loquuntur Doctores,
ac si esset distinctio.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 2106–8. Ibid., d. 33–34, q. un., n. 21: “…
doctores loquuntur frequenter ac si esset distinctio in eadem persona et alibi, ubi tamen
nulla est distinctio. Nec mirum, quia isto etiam modo loquitur Scriptura, ubi dicitur ‘unitas
in Trinitate et Trinitas in unitate’, et quod sapientia est in Deo et huiusmodi.” Ed. Wey and
Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 29118–22. For further examples, see, e.g., n. 32 above, and nn. 62, 85, and 87
below. The “ac si” statements are extremely common in the parts of Chatton’s work dealing
with trinitarian theology, as will be clear from the text contained in the footnotes below.
676 chapter eleven
God were counterfactually composed out of more or less discrete elements

corresponding to the concepts that we have about God; but, of course,
God is de facto utterly simple, and the Fathers knew this full well. Chatton,
then, is attempting to sideline the authoritative passages that seem to speak
against his own view of God’s unmitigated simplicity. Indeed, he even to
a certain extent rewrites the history of medieval trinitarian theology by
arguing that John Duns Scotus did not hold that the formal distinction was
an ex natura rei distinction, since of course Scotus held de facto that God
was absolutely simple, not admitting of any distinction; but per se the Subtle
Doctor followed the form of expression of his time and talked as though
there were distinction in God.36 At times Chatton extends this rereading
of medieval theology to Henry of Ghent and his intentional distinction.37
Linked to this marginalization strategy is a more general claim by Chatton
that he is willing to be corrected if his assumptions are in error, and further
that, in the “dangerous material” of the constitution and distinction of the
divine persons, he is only working off of the statements of the doctors, saying
nothing original himself.38
36 See n. 59 below. Chatton makes statements like this on a number of occasions in both
his Reportatio and Lectura, and he sometimes refers to Scotus’ Parisian Logica as support
for his view (see n. 37 below); on this aspect of the issue, see Dumont 2005 (esp. at nn. 9,
37–46); also Gelber 1974, pp. 190–194. It should be noted that Chatton’s view is related to
the so-called propositio famosa Scoti, according to which what are merely rationally distinct
have the same order between them as they would have if they were really distinct; on this,
see Dumont 1992b (and for a trinitarian use of the principle behind the propositio famosa, cf.
Chatton, I Rep., d. 7, q. un., n. 129 [ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 45720–26], and the reference
there).
37 E.g., Chatton, I Rep., d. 19, q. un., nn. 7–9 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], p. 1206–19);
ibid., d. 25, q. un., dub. 3, n. 19 (ed. cit. [vol. 2], pp. 17416–1753); ibid., d. 33–34, n. 16 (ed. cit.
[vol. 2], p. 2902–13). In the latter two spots, in addition to Henry, Chatton mentions Scotus
and his logical questions; see Dumont 2005, esp. at nn. 9, 37–46 (see also on the third passage
mentioned, Gelber 1974, 194 and n. 94).
38 Chatton, I Rep., d. 33–34, q. un., nn. 17–18: “Dico quod aliqua sunt asserenda et aliqua
inferenda ex dictis Doctorum, et non asserenda nisi recitative et cum intentione retractandi
ea si necesse sit .... Inferendum est autem ex dictis doctorum per quem modum possunt vitari
difficultates circa istam materiam. Nihil volo dicere circa hoc ex capite meo, sed faciendo
finem de hac materia quae periculosa est, dico quod posui tres vias …” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn
(vol. 2), p. 29014–23. Chatton uses the phrase “periculosa materia” in other contexts as well, e.g.,
future contingents (see Schabel 2000a, 230). In d. 5 of his Lectura secunda, Adam Wodeham
notes that Chatton, under pressure of criticism, changed his view after d. 30 of his Reportatio
to be more in line with orthodoxy on these trinitarian issues, and perhaps it is statements
like this of which Wodeham was thinking; see Lectura secunda, d. 5, q. un. §2 (ed. Gál and
Wood [vol. 2], p. 26166–73) and see Rega Wood’s Introduction to the critical edition (ed. cit.
[vol. 1], pp. 13*–14*). See for more on the context of the dispute at and around n. 141 below.
Although the topic and the opponents will change, Chatton’s method
remains the same throughout his trinitarian work, in both versions of his
Sentences commentary.39 In quaestio after quaestio, distinction after distinc-
tion, Chatton proceeds to make (in his view) God as simple as possible
by 1) asking what is meant by the various terms his opponents use, and
2) by claiming that if God were composed like creatures, then the distinc-
tion (and hypostacization) that often crop up in our discourse about God
would actually obtain, but since God is absolutely simple, these are merely
descriptions, ways of speaking, ruled out on the de facto level by God’s utter
simplicity. Simplicity is the key word for Chatton throughout—it is “the gen-
eral attribute”.
Chatton’s fixation on simplicity was the foundation of his method, and it
had consequences for his trinitarian theology of more than a purely verbal
or linguistic significance. To be sure, Chatton thought that his predecessors
and contemporaries had spoken loosely about God. But the central place
that divine simplicity has in Chatton’s thought leads him to reject most
of the devices that had been posited to explain God’s trinitarian reality.
As we will see, simplicity is stressed at the expense of explanatory cover-
age or completeness. Many of Chatton’s trinitarian “explanations” are in
fact just restatements of the trinitarian mystery itself: three really distinct
persons are one essence, and there is no fourth thing. Two positions in
particular will be of interest to us here, and will amply illustrate why Chat-
ton needed as sophisticated a marginalization strategy as his distinction
between the de facto and per se levels of discussion. One of these posi-
tions is that, at one stage of his career, Chatton, like Durand of St. Pourçain,
entirely rejects the psychological model as an accurate description of God’s
trinitarian nature: ‘Word’ and ‘Love’ are said about the Son and the Holy
Spirit, respectively, purely according to appropriation. Second, Walter Chat-
ton revives Praepositinus’ theory of the constitution and distinction of the
divine persons—a theory that had been out of use for around a century
when Chatton wrote.
39 In the Lectura, a written (as opposed to a “reported”) work, Chatton resorts less
frequently to the more oral and pedagogical device of the questions, although he does use
it on occasion (see, e.g., Gelber 1974, 194, for an example from the Lectura). The ideas are
roughly the same, although perhaps slightly more circumspectly put in the Lectura.
678 chapter eleven
Excursus: A Very Brief History of Praepositinianism

The Italian theologian Praepositinus (born before 1140; d. after 1210), was active as
a teacher of theology at Paris and Mainz in the last decades of the twelfth century
and the first decade of the thirteenth. From 1206–1209 he was Chancellor of Notre
Dame cathedral in Paris, and hence Chancellor of the University of Paris itself. His
works have been characterized as conveying the theology of the school of Peter
Lombard. His most important work is a theological Summa in 4 books, known by
its incipit as Summa “Qui producit ventos”, written in the last decade of the twelfth
century (perhaps 1190–1194). The first book of this Summa contains a treatment of
trinitarian theology in which Praepositinus rejects that the persons are constituted
by personal properties. Instead, in a presentation that would become notorious in
the thirteenth century, Praepositinus maintains that the persons are distinct in and
of themselves (se ipsis), so that when we say something like “the Father is distinct
from the Son by paternity” (Pater paternitate distinguitur a Filio), this is merely a
manner of speaking that genuinely means “paternity is in the Father, i.e. the Father
is the Father—just as when I say ‘I beg your generosity’ (benignitatem), i.e. you
who are generous (benignum), and likewise in similar cases.”40 Calling the Father
by the name ‘paternity’ is no different than calling a powerful ambassador “your
excellency”, which really just means “you who are excellent” and denotes no reality
above and beyond the ambassador herself.
Thus, for Praepositinus, the properties are the persons, and when we talk about
the properties as being different from the persons, this is merely a manner of
speaking, a constraint of the language that we have to use about God. We could
describe it best as a merely grammatical difference with nothing corresponding to
40 Praepositinus, Summa “Qui producit ventos”, I, q. 17 (italicized text translated): “Ex prae-
dictis innotuit diversas esse opiniones de proprietatibus. Quidam enim dicunt, ut dictum est,
paene infinitas in Deo proprietates, ut Magister Gilbertus; quidam sex, ut magister Gandul-
phus; quidam quinque, ut Magister Petrus Lombardus; quidam tres, ut Magister Robertus
hde Montei; quidam nullam, in qua sententia dicitur fuisse Magister Ivo Carnotensis, et huic
opinioni consentimus. Dicimus ergo quod cum dicitur ‘paternitas est in Patre’ vel ‘Pater
paternitate distinguitur a Filio’, modi loquendi sunt, et est sensus: ‘paternitas est in Patre’, id
est Pater est Pater, sicut cum dico ‘rogo hed.: diligoi dilectionem tuam’, id est te dilectum, et in
similibus similiter .... Quaeritur autem a nobis: si personae non distinguuntur proprietatibus,
quibus distinguuntur? Ad hoc respondentes dicimus quod se ipsis distinguuntur. Dicit enim
Ieronimus quod personae se ipsis et nominibus distinguuntur. Ergo Pater se ipso distingui-
tur a Filio et Spiritu Sancto, et ita de aliis personis.” Taken from Angelini 1972, pp. 2771–10,
2791–6 (compared with Scotus, Opera Omnia, vol. VI, p. 2, notes to lines 13–16 and 20–22).
A transcription of the entire passage from Uppsala, Universitetsbibliotek C 617, ff. 11r–13r, is
in Stegmüller 1948, 177–181. In the translation in the main text, I have substituted ‘benigni-
tatem’ and ‘benignum’ for ‘dilectionem’ and ‘dilectum’, since the former pair appear virtually
everywhere in the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century trinitarian literature. On
Praepositinus, see Lacomb 1927 (153–182 on the Summa, with mss. and question lists), and on
his trinitarian thought in its historical context, see Angelini 1972, and for a recent endeavor
to place some of his grammatical and logical doctrines into their theological contexts, see
Valente 2008, esp. 235–257, 333–336.
it in divine reality. Further, the abstract noun, i.e. the property, is grammatically
derived from the concrete noun, the person. Thus, the divine persons themselves
are simply or irreducibly distinct from each other, no mechanism need be given
to explain the distinction—the Father is distinct from the Son and both the Father
and the Son are distinct from the Holy Spirit in and of themselves. If we were to boil
down Praepositinus’ theory of the persons to its absolute essentials, then, it would
have two main claims: first, there is no distinction between person and property;
second, and relatedly, the persons are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis).
Although Praepositinus had at least one high profile supporter in the early
thirteenth-century theologian William of Auxerre (d. 1231),41 as far as I can tell, at
least from the mid-thirteenth century his theory about the distinction of the per-
sons was rejected by every author whose work survives, Franciscan, Dominican, or
otherwise. The arguments given vary and they change over time. Thomas Aquinas’
rejection in his Summa theologica is categorical. We see in creatures that simple
forms are named in the abstract (whiteness—albedo) while subsistent entities are
named using concrete nouns (white thing—album); thus, since our language can-
not adequately represent God’s absolute simplicity, we also use abstract and con-
crete nouns when discussing the divine persons, each of the persons themselves
being described as a “who” (quis) and the properties as that “by which” (quo). For
Aquinas, “it is necessary to posit properties in the divine”.42 Aquinas would be fol-
lowed in his flat rejection by among others Giles of Rome, who, however, does make
more out of the fact that for Praepositinus person and property were not distinct
in any way, whereas for Giles they are distinct according to ratio. Ultimately Giles
asserts that the persons are constituted, made distinct, and related by the prop-
erties, and this could not be the case if property were not “in” person, property
41 Summa Aurea I, 7, 6 (ed Ribaillier, pp. 125–127), where William (p. 1265) calls Praepositi-
nus’ theory “multum probabilis”. Most recently on William’s trinitarian theology, see Arnold
1995, esp. 192–202 passim, on William’s view of Praepositinus’ theory.
42 Thomas Aquinas, Sum. theol., I, q. 32, a. 2: “Respondeo: dicendum quod Praepositivus,
attendens simplicitatem personarum, dixit non esse ponendas proprietates et notiones in

divinis, et sicubi inveniantur exponit abstractum pro concreto. Sicut enim consuevimus
dicere ‘Rogo benignitatem tuam’, id est te benignum, ita cum dicitur in divinis paternitas,
intelligitur Deus Pater. Sed, sicut ostensum est supra, divinae simplicitati non praeiudicat
quod in divinis utamur nominibus concretis et abstractis, quia secundum quod intelligimus,
sic nominamus. Intellectus autem noster non potest pertingere ad ipsam simplicitatem
divinam, secundum quod in se est consideranda. Et ideo secundum modum suum divina
apprehendit et nominat, id est secundum quod inveniuntur in rebus sensibilibus a quibus
cognitionem accipit. In quibus ad significandam simplices formas nominibus abstractis
utimus, ad significandum vero res subsistentes utimur nominibus concretis. Unde et divina,
sicut supra dictum est, ratione simplicitatis per nomina abstracta significamus, ratione vero
subsistentiae et complementi per nomina concreta. Oportet autem non solum nomina
essentialia in abstracto et in concreto significare, ut cum dicimus deitatem et Deum, vel
sapientiam et sapientem, sed etiam personalia, ut dicamus paternitatem et Patrem .... Et ideo
essentia significatur in divinis ut quid; persona vero ut quis, proprietas autem ut quo.” In Sum.
theol., I, q. 40, a. 1, Aquinas says “necesse est autem ponere proprietates in divinis”. See also
at the end of n. 44 below.
680 chapter eleven
and person differing from one another by ratio.43 Bonaventure exhibits a general
approach to the rejection of Praepositinus’ view relying on problems that would
arise if it were true: how could it be explained on Praepositinus’ view that some per-
sons have more than one property, i.e. that one and the same person is related in
various ways to the other persons; or how could it be explained that some properties
are shared by two persons (i.e., common spiration). For Bonaventure, the inference
was obvious: since properties and persons do not neatly coincide, the properties
cannot be the same as the person. According to the Franciscan, the common view in
his day was that the properties of the persons differ really (realiter) from each other
on their own account (a se), and moreover they differ from the persons in some way
(aliquo modo).44 This type of argumentation was utilized in more specific form by
43 Giles of Rome, I Sent., d. 33, princ. 1, q. 1: “Secundus modus dicendi praescribitur Prae-
positivo, qui dicit quod relationes non sunt in personis sed sunt ipsae personae, unde pater-
nitas nullo modo differt a Patre, sed Pater dicitur paternitas quasi emphatice et secundum
expressionem, sicut cum dicitur ‘rogo benignitatem tuam’, id est te benignum. Ita cum dici-
tur paternitas, nihil intelligitur aliud, nec re nec ratione, quam ipse Pater, et ideo non est in
Patre, sed est ipse Pater. Ratio autem quae posuit ipsum movere potuit esse simplicitas per-
sonae divinae, nam quod est in aliquo videtur facere componere in illo, ut igitur personahmi
simplicissimahmi poneret, non posuit relationes in ea. Sed hoc non est verum, oportet enim
(ed.: tamen*) nos ponere relationes non solum esse personas sed etiam in personis. Huius
autem ratio triplex esse potest, nam relatio ad personam triplicem habet comparationem.
Primo, quia eam constituit, secundo quia eam ab aliis personis distinguit, tertio quia per
eam realiter una persona ad aliam refertur. Propter haec tria sequitur quod relationes sunt
in personis, nam non constituit aliquid formaliter nisi quod in illo est in eo, nec distinguit
formaliter aliquid nisi quod est in illo, nec refertur aliquid realiter nisi quia est in eo realiter
relatio .... Relationes sunt in personis, quia per eas personae constituuntur, distinguuntur, et
referuntur realiter et sunt ipsae personae, quia nullam compositionem in eis efficiunt, et licet
sint ipsae personae et realiter ab eis non differant, tamen differunt ratione propter quam dif-
ferentiam unum se habet ut constituens, aliud ut constitutum, unum ut ratio referendi vel
ut referrens, aliud ut relatum.” Ed. 1521, f. 170vaM–bO.
44 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, solutio: “Quoniam ergo viderunt aliqui summam
simplicitatem in persona sicut in essentia, posuerunt quod sicut in essentia omnino est idem
quo est et quod est, ita in persona omnino idem qui distinguitur et quo, et ita suppositum
et proprietas, differens autem solo modo loquendi, sicut si dicatur ‘rogo te benignum’
vel ‘benignitatem tuam’. Sed ista positio non potest stare, quoniam, sicut in opponendo
probatum est, in eadem persona sunt proprietates differentes non solum modo loquendi,
sed et realiter. Videmus enim, quod una persona uno modo comparatur ad unam, ut Pater
ad Filium; et videmus, unam personam uno modo sive una habitudine comparari ad plures,
ut Spiritus Sanctus ad Patrem et Filium; et iterum, unam personam pluribus modis comparari
ad plures, ut Filius ad Patrem et Spiritum Sanctum. Similiter videmus plures personas eodem
modo comparari ad unam, ut Pater et Filius ad Spiritum Sanctum. Ergo unitas habitudinis
non potest accipi a parte essentiae—certum est—, nec a parte personae quae refertur, nec a
parte personae ad quam refertur. Restat ergo quod sit alius modus dicendi sumptus a parte
rei. Et ideo nunc communis opinio tenet in divinis esse proprietates personarum realiter
differentes a se invicem, et per hoc etiam differentes a personis aliquo modo.” Opera omnia,
vol. 1, p. 452b (see also Ch. 1, above, nn. 76, 84). Aquinas, too, raises this type of objection to
the Praepositinian view; see, e.g., Sum. theol., I, q. 32, a. 2, solutio.
later thinkers. Thus, Peter of Tarentaise concentrates on the relationship between

paternity and innascibility in the Father: we know from Augustine that innascibility
is a different property from paternity, because he is not the Father on account of
his innascibility, while nevertheless innascibility could constitute a person without
paternity; but if these two properties differ, then Praepositinus must be wrong
and it cannot be that the Father is absolutely identical to paternity.45 William
de la Mare, on the other hand, asks, if person and property were absolutely the
same, how would we deal with the active spiration shared by Father and Son?
On Praepositinus’ view, according to William, either necessarily common spiration
would have to be the same as the constitutive properties of both Father and Son
(in order to prevent there being a fourth person) or else Father and Son would
have to be one and the same person corresponding to common spiration (in which
case there is either duality or quaternity, but not Trinity).46 This type of argument
against the Praepositinian view of personal distinction will be found in Henry of
Ghent—whose Summa, a. 55, q. 1,47 is a detailed broadside against Praepositinus
in which Henry also responds to a reply that Praepositinus apparently made to
this sort of argument48—, as well as in John Duns Scotus.49 But with Henry of
Ghent several other arguments also come to play an important role in combating
Praepositinus’ view, the most significant of which historically speaking is as follows:
45 Peter of Tarentaise, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1 (“An proprietates ponant aliquid realiter

in personis”): “Alii, ut Praepositivus, dixerunt quod proprietates nihil sunt aliud nisi ipsae
personae quae se ipsis distinguuntur, unde paternitas nihil aliud est quam Pater, significatur
tamen abstracte secundum modum emphaticae locutionis, sicut dicitur, rogo benignitatem
tuam, id est te benignum. Contra hanc positionem est quod secundum hoc una proprietas
Patris de altera praedicaretur, id est paternitas de innascibilitate sicut Pater de innascibili,
quod falsum est, nam ut dicit Augustinus, V De trinitate, non ideo dicitur Pater quia ingenitus,
ideoque alia est notio qua intelligitur genitor, alia qua ingenitus.” Ed. 1652, pp. 216b–217a. The
Augustine reference is to De trinitate V, 6, 7; for the text, see Ch. 5, above, n. 111.
46 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1 (“Utrum proprietas sit persona”): “Alia fuit positio
Praepositini et suorum sequacium quod proprietates divinae sunt id ipsum penitus quod
personae, differentes solum secundum modum dicendi, sicut si dicerem: rogo benignitatem
tuam, id est te benignum, et ille modus dicendi dicitur emphaticus. Haec positio non stat,
quia si idem penitus esset proprietas et persona, cum una proprietas sit in duabus personis
sicut communis spiratio in Patre et Filio, necessario sequeretur quod una proprietas esset
duae vel duae personae una persona.” Ed. Kraml, p. 38440–46.
47 Ed. Badius, vol. 2, ff. 106rM–107vB.
48 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 1: “Ex quo sumitur quarta ratio ad idem quam inducit
contra se Praepositinus talis: si Pater et Filius sunt unum principium Spiritus Sancti, sed
non sunt unum in persona, ergo sunt unum in proprietate qua referuntur ad Spiritum
Sanctum, et ideo in Deo est ponere proprietatem, et si unam, eadem ratione et plures. Et
respondet Praepositinus, dicens quod ideo unum sint principium Spiritus Sancti quia uno
modo spirant. Quod non valet [ei] ad suum propositum, quia non spirarent eodem modo nisi
esset aliquid idem in eis quo differrent a Spiritu Sancto, quod non potest esse nisi proprietas,
quia ratione substantiae communis non sunt unum principium spirativum, aliter enim ipse
Spiritus Sanctus spiraret.” Ed. Badius, vol. 2, f. 107rY.
49 Scotus, I Ord., d. 26, q. un., opinio prima, nn. 10–11 (Vatican Opera Omnia, VI, p. 3). For
more on Scotus’ rebuttal of Praepositinus’ theory, see Wetter 1967, 284–286.

682 chapter eleven
if simple things differ in and of themselves, then they differ totally and in no way are
united; but we know that the divine persons are simple things and that they differ
personally and are essentially united; therefore the persons are not distinct in and
of themselves (se ipsis).50 If there were no personal properties, Henry’s argument
maintains, then the persons would be essentially distinct; hence, Praepositinus’
view is tantamount to Arianism. This last argument will reappear as one among
several in Scotus, but in Ockham it is the only argument offered, albeit in several
versions.51 As late as Ockham, then, the common view was that essentially identical
persons could not be distinct from each other without some sort of distinguishing
property, which was in some way distinguishable from the essence and the persons.
Interestingly for this book, where there is a focus is on rival trinitarian traditions
in the Dominican and Franciscan orders, at least the early Franciscans routinely
accused Aquinas of being a “crypto-Praepositinian” (my term). As we have seen,
Aquinas maintained that person and property differed merely by mode of signifying
(modi significandi), i.e. by a grammatical difference (specifically, as an abstract
noun from a concrete noun).52 To the Franciscans, at any rate, this appeared to
amount to Praepositinus’ view. Thus, Roger Marston, typically derisive, once again
appeals to his “simplicity” as we saw him do in Chapter Two above, when he says
that Aquinas’ view approaches that of Praepositinus, which is “generally damned by
the masters”.53 William de la Mare, for one, joins Marston in arguing that Aquinas,
despite having explicitly rejected Praepositinus’ theory, ran into the same problems
that Praepositinus’ theory ran into.54
50 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 55, q. 1: “Quaecumque simplicia se ipsis differunt, differunt
eo quod est sui, aliter enim differrent aliquo quod est sui et aliquo non differrent. Quae-
cumque autem sic differunt omnino differunt, et in nullo conveniunt, quemadmodum dif-
ferunt genera praedicamentorum substantiae et accidentis. Si ergo sic differrent divinae per-
sonae, omnino different et in nullo convenirent. Consequens falsum est, ergo et antecedens.”
Ed. Badius, vol. 2, f. 106vT.
51 Scotus, I Ord., d. 26, q. un., opinio prima, nn. 9, 13 (VI, pp. 3–4); Ockham, I Ord., d. 26,
q. 1, opinio prima (OTh IV, pp. 144–145).

52 See Ch. 1, above, nn. 23–24; cf. also the texts referred to in n. 42 above.
53 Roger Marston, De em. aet., q. 3, ad 7: “… cum dicitur quod ‘personae divinae se
ipsis distinguuntur et distinguuntur relationibus, ergo relationes differunt solum secundum

rationem a personis’, concedunt aliqui conclusionem; non enim differunt in divinis concre-
tum et abstractum nisi secundum modum intelligendi nostrum, ut paternitas et Pater. Istud
tamen in simplicitate mea non reputo sane dictum, quia multum appropinquat errori Prae-
positini damnato communiter a magistris, dicentis quod omnimoda identitas est personae et
proprietatis, sicut cum dicitur: rogo tuam benignitatem, id est te benignum. Sic enim tantum
differrent in modo significandi et non a parte rei, et rediret dicta opinio. Item, duae sunt pro-
prietates in una persona, scilicet in Patre paternitas et spiratio communis, realiter differentes,
alioquin Filius et Spiritus Sanctus non differrent realiter a Patre; sed impossibile est quod
realiter different, si tantum secundum rationem differunt in tertio a quo sunt .... Item, nihil
constituit se ipsum; sed persona constituitur relatione; ergo non est omnimode ipsa relatio;
relatio autem non constituit personam nisi secundum quod comparatur ad personam ipsam;
ergo secundum illum modum oportet invenire differentiam inter eas.” Ed. 1932, pp. 60–61 (cf.
idem, Quodl. II, q. 8, ed. Etzkorn and Brady, pp. 377–379).
54 William de la Mare, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1: “Fuerunt autem quidam moderni satis appropin-
Significantly, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Giles of Rome (among others) all as-
serted that the motivation behind Praepositinus’ position was to ensure the abso-
lute simplicity of the divine persons. This assertion does indeed pinpoint Praeposit-
inus’ big idea: he stressed simplicity “in” the divine persons, rejecting any type of
constitution of the persons out of essence and property on analogy to matter/form
composition, which medieval theologians—as we have seen—appealed to quite
often. For Praepositinus, the persons are absolutely simple and their real distinc-
tion from one another is irreducible in spite of their essential identity. Their utter
simplicity ruled out that a property could “bring about” their distinction or consti-
tute them in any way, and all attempts to legitimate a distinction between person
and property, by attempting to explain how that distinction would not compro-
mise the pure simplicity of the divine persons, failed. What is sacrificed, however,
in Praepositinus’ scheme is explanatory comprehensibility. Praepositinus offers no
explanation for the distinction between the divine persons, he merely asserts that
the persons are distinct in and of themselves. Human reason can come no further
in this matter. If explanatory “density” or “coverage” is the driving motivation in
theological speculation, as it was in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth cen-
turies, Praepositinianism certainly would appear unattractive. But with the new
sensibility, the new “theological aesthetic”, that we began to trace in the third
part of this book (and earlier with Peter Auriol)—a new sensibility emphasizing
the centrality of divine simplicity in trinitarian theology as opposed to explana-
tory completeness—it was only a matter of time before Praepositinianism became
an attractive option. In the period covered by the present book, the first theolo-
gian who seems to have viewed Praepositinianism in this way was Walter Chat-
ton.
B. Chatton and the Distinction between the Persons

There can be no reasonable doubt that Walter Chatton’s position on the
distinction and constitution of the divine persons is Praepositinian. He
explicitly supports the two major ideas that lie at the heart of Praepositinus’
view: that the persons and the properties are absolutely identical, and
that the persons are distinct from each other in and of themselves (se
ipsis):
I respond in a different way to the question, by saying that in reality (a
parte rei) personal property is utterly the same as essence and person [in the
divine], so that there is no distinction in reality between the essence and any
quantes Praepositino qui dixerunt quod proprietas et persona sunt idem re, sed differunt
ratione … quia secundum ipsos proprietas et persona differunt sicut concretum et abstrac-
tum .... Sed hoc nihil est, quia concretum et abstractum differunt tantum quantum ad modum
significandi et non a parte rei, ergo si persona et proprietas tantum hoc modo differunt, redit
opinio Praepositini.” Ed. Kraml, p. 38447–55.
684 chapter eleven
of the personal properties, nor between property and person, nor between
essence and person. Thus, I say that there is no distinction in the same person,
but in the divine only distinction between the persons.55
In response to what was asked, then, whether whatever is in one person is
in another. Either you understand that [one person] is the same as another
essentially, and I say that the faith holds this. If [on the other hand you
understand] that [one person] is the same as another personally, this is not
the case, because they are personally distinct supposites. For just as according
to those positing a non-identity between essence and paternity, essence
and paternity are the same in and of themselves [semetipsis] essentially
and really, and not the same in and of themselves [semetipsis] formally, so
the persons in and of themselves and on their own account (se ipsis totis)
are the same essentially and are distinct personally .... In reality, in and of
themselves (se ipsis) and not through any added things, [the persons] are
united (conveniunt) essentially and are distinct personally.56
For Walter Chatton, then, person and property are de facto identical. Quo-
tations like the first above (at n. 55) could be multiplied basically at will.
Chatton is absolutely open about his motivation in holding this: if the per-
sonal property were an entity in any way distinct within a person, if there
were any distinction whatsoever within a person between essence and prop-
erty, composition would result, and God’s simplicity would be compro-
mised.57 Thus, there is total identity between person and personal prop-
erty, and between person and essence, and between property and essence.
Since it is the more fundamental of the two main ideas that make up the
55 Chatton, I Rep., d. 33–34, q. un., n. 10: “Respondeo aliter ad quaestionem, quod sic,
scilicet quod proprietas personalis est idem cum essentia et cum persona omnino a parte rei,
ita quod nulla est distinctio a parte rei inter essentiam et aliquam proprietatem personalem,
nec inter proprietatem et personam, nec inter essentiam et personam. Unde dico quod nulla
est distinctio in eadem persona, sed solum est distinctio in divinis inter personas.” Ed. Wey
and Etzkorn (vol. 2), pp. 28828–2895.
56 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, a. 3, nn. 99–100: “Ad quaesitum igitur, an quidlibet quod est in
una persona sit in alia. Aut intelligis quod sit idem essentialiter alteri, et dico quod hoc tenet
fides. Si quod sit personaliter idem alteri, non, quia sunt personaliter distincta supposita.
Sicut enim secundum ponentes non-identitatem inter essentiam et paternitatem, essentia
et paternitas sunt semetipsis idem essentialiter et realiter, et semetipsis non idem formaliter,
ita personae se ipsis totis sunt idem essentialiter et distinguuntur personaliter. Sed hoc potest
dupliciter intelligi: vel quantum ad rem, vel quantum ad expressionem. Quantum ad rem, se
ipsis etiam, et non per res additas, conveniunt essentialiter et distinguuntur personaliter.”
57 E.g., Chatton, I Rep., d. 33–34, q. un., n. 3: “hSi proprietas personalis in divinis non sit
idem cum essentia et cum personai, in persona esset compositio ex distinctis, scilicet ex
proprietate et essentia.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 28717–18. For the same point, see,
e.g., ibid., d. 26, q. un., a. 4, n. 75 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], p. 18916–22), and n. 62 below.
Praepositinian position, we need to look first at how Chatton argues for

the view found in the first of the two quotations; only then can we turn
to the se ipsis distinction between the persons; after that we will look at
the way Chatton’s Praepositinianism manifests itself when he takes a posi-
tion on some of the traditional issues in the medieval trinitarian discus-
sion.
William Ockham, and everyone else examined thus far in this book, had
argued that essence and personal property together constitute the divine
person, Ockham further arguing that personal property and essence had to
be formally distinct because they were really identical (since they are really
one and only one person) but nevertheless contradictories could be pred-
icated of them, i.e. the essence belongs to all three persons, while the per-
sonal property is unique to one person alone. This view of personal constitu-
tion, then, was the way it had been settled upon to explain how the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit were essentially identical and personally distinct: the
essence was shared while the property was not, and the person was con-
stituted by both essence and property “working” together. Now, personal
constitution was a much debated topic, and a major part of later thirteenth-
and early fourteenth-century trinitarian discussions, as we have seen, was
about eliminating any hint of potency/act distinction within the constituted
person, and a number of different models were formulated each trying to
describe the way person is constituted from essence and personal property
(opposition of relations combined with the dual nature of the divine rela-
tions; emanational distinction relying on disparate relations, with or with-
out the psychological model; formal distinction between essence and prop-
erty; constitution resultative). But it was the precise model of constitution
that was at issue in these debates; that the persons are indeed constituted
in this general way appears to have gone unchallenged.
Chatton rejects outright personal constitution understood in this way,
“for to posit in the person of the Father anything in whatever way distinct
in reality, would not be to preserve the highest simplicity.”58 We can look
at the case of paternity and essence as elements constitutive of the Father.
Ockham would argue that paternity and essence must be formally distinct.
Chatton denies this, appealing to his distinction between de facto and per
se levels of discourse, and enlisting Scotus himself in his defense:
58 Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., n. 9: “… ponere enim in persona Patris aliqua distincta
quomodocumque in re, non esset salvare summam simplicitatem.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn
(vol. 2), p. 17828–29. For a similar stress on the simplicity of the persons, see ibid., d. 2, q. 5,
a. 1, n. 4 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 1787–10).
686 chapter eleven
It is not [Scotus’] view that the non-identity exists de facto on the part of
the thing or in the thing outside the soul, but rather that it would involve
no inconsistency for it to exist outside the soul, as far as the definition of
essence and of person are concerned. And then the sense is this: that essence
is not de se paternity, so that this [proposition] ‘deity is paternity’ is not per se
in the first mode, since if per impossibile they were really distinct, etc. (I say
here in every way just as I said about the essence and the attributes). Thus,
such a distinction is not incompatible with the essence or with the person on
account of (ex) its definitional ratio, but from elsewhere.59
On a purely definitional level, just as it is true to say that ‘deity is wisdom’ is
not essential per se predication, so it is true to say that ‘deity is paternity’
is not. Thus, if we are speaking on the per se plane, Scotus was certainly
right to insist that there is a non-identity between essence and paternity,
since their definitions differ. Nevertheless, in God, another factor enters in
that prevents this type of non-identity: divine simplicity. Per se, we can talk
about a distinction between essence and paternity; de facto, this distinction
is ruled out in God, where there are three really distinct persons that are one
essence and there is no fourth thing.
We need not dwell here on the specific arguments that Chatton uses
against Ockham’s view of the formal non-identity between essence and
property, but it is worthwhile noting that these arguments boil down to
a viewpoint that Ockham himself basically shared: all distinction is real
distinction.60 Chatton argues that it is on the basis of the real distinction
between the persons that we know that the essence is the Son and paternity
is not the Son, and thus we would seem only to be entitled to argue to a real
distinction between paternity and essence, or to no distinction at all, but
certainly not to an intermediate formal distinction.61 As we saw in Chapter
59 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, n. 10: “Sed teneo oppositum, nec credo quod fuerit mens
Doctoris Subtilis quod in re sit talis non-identitas de facto, licet fuerit usus modo loquendi
qui currebat tempore suo, qui modo verius est in parte. Est igitur mens sua, non quod illa
non-identitas sit de facto a parte rei vel in re extra animam, sed potius quod non repugnaret
esse extra animam, quantum exigeret definitio essentiae vel personae; et tunc est sensus iste,
quod essentia non est de se paternitas, ita quod haec non est per se primo modo ‘deitas est
paternitas’, quoniam si per impossibile distinguerentur realiter etc. Per omnia dico hic sicut
dixi de essentia et attributis. Talis igitur distinctio non repugnat essentiae vel personae ex
ratione definitiva, sed aliunde.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 17915–27. See also at and around
n. 36 above.
60 As Gelber noted: 1974, 191.
61 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, n. 11: “Arguo igitur contra primum modum dicendi. Ista
opinio arguit non-identitatem illam in Patre inter essentiam et paternitatem ex hoc quod
aliquid convenit uni quod non alteri. Sed si ex hoc procedat, videtur quod debeat accipere
Ten above (at and around n. 44), in his later work, Ockham responded
directly to Chatton’s argument, replying that we infer the formal distinction
from the real distinction between the essentially identical persons, and that
the formal distinction is the only way to make metaphysical (or logical)
sense of this (even though ultimately it can be no better understood than
a Trinity of really distinct and essentially identical persons can). Chatton
clearly was unimpressed with that sort of argument. Certainly the doctors
had spoken as though there were distinction within a person between
property and essence; but if things were really like that in God, then there
would be composition and imperfection in each of the persons, and that is
clearly unacceptable.62 Thus, we end up with Chatton’s own view: person
and personal property are absolutely identical, that is to say, person is
personal property. Moreover, person and essence are absolutely identical,
as are personal property and essence. As we have seen, for Chatton, God
is three persons and there is no fourth thing; thus, there are no distinct
personal properties and there is also no distinct essence and there is no
personal constitution.
As we will see in more detail below, throughout his trinitarian theology,
Chatton consistently rejects any distinction between property and essence,
and he consistently uses against it the argument we have just seen: any
distinction within a person would entail composition, and hence compro-
mise God’s simplicity. Call them what you like, relations or emanations,
if you posit personal properties in God distinct in any way from the per-
sons, or if you posit any essence distinct from the persons, then you have
posited a fourth thing, and that is prohibited. The second of Chatton’s Prae-
positinian positions—that the persons are distinct in and of themselves—
follows directly from the position that person and property and essence are
absolutely identical: the persons are not made distinct in any way what-
soever, they just are distinct. In fact, Chatton, as mentioned above, prob-
lematizes the entire idea of personal constitution. This is a radical move:
distinctionem realem magis, quia distinctio quae debet argui per separabilitatem aliquorum,
si illa separabilitas sit realis, magis debet argui esse realis quam alia. Sed in proposito, quod
essentia est Filius et paternitas non est Filius, arguitur ex reali separabilitate seu distinctione
suppositorum, igitur vel nullam vel realem debes concludere distinctionem.” Ed. Wey and
Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 1802–11.
62 Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 1, n. 16: “Si igitur velis loqui de facto, dico quod deitas
est totus Pater, totus Filius, etc. Si velis loqui cum Doctoribus, ac si esset distinctio in eadem
persona, tunc conformiter loquendo, dicendum est quod essentia est communis tribus, et
relatio personalis non, et consequenter ponenda est compositio et imperfectio in persona
qualibet.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 18024–29.
688 chapter eleven
every theologian that we have considered in this book had accepted that the
persons are constituted, that there is some way of explaining how the per-
sons are distinct from one another and yet the same as the essence. In other
words, on the understanding of the divine persons common until Chatton’s
time (and beyond), personal distinction was explained by personal constitu-
tion. There had been, as mentioned, a variety of models of personal con-
stitution, but there was total agreement that there was something about
the distinction of the divine persons that needed to be explained, and that
personal constitution covered that need. This is what Chatton rejects: expla-
nations for personal distinction were a mirage, the persons were distinct
in and of themselves and nothing more basic could be appealed to. To put
this in another way, it was not one model or another of personal consti-
tution that Chatton rejected; it was personal constitution tout court. And
he explicitly draws the connection between the elimination of the personal
properties and the elimination of constitution. Discussing the nature of the
personal properties he asks his interlocutor, William Ockham
What do they call “to constitute a person”? For by holding, along with the
doctors and the determination of the Church, that there is no plurality in the
same person, there is in God (ibi) no constitution extramentally (extra ani-
mam), but you will only have the constitution of one total personal concept
out of the concepts of essence and relation, which are concepts of utterly the
same thing. For in reality, to the many personal concepts and the concept of
the essence there corresponds nothing more than the essence’s being three
persons.63
Here is the direct link between the simplicity of the divine persons, on the
one hand, and Chatton’s further claim that there is no personal constitu-
tion, on the other. No matter what model of constitution you were to sup-
port, constitution requires plurality in the same person, i.e. the person in
some way or another being “put together” out of various elements. Chat-
ton maintains that there are no elements in the absolutely simple persons,
hence there can be no constitution. How does Chatton legitimize this move?
His tactic is revealed in a passage that we have already examined (at n. 56
above):
63 Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 1, n. 14: “Quid vocant constituere personam? Tenendo
enim cum Doctoribus et determinatione Ecclesiae quod in eadem persona nulla sit plurali-
tas, nulla est ibi constitutio extra animam, sed tantum habebis constitutionem unius totalis
conceptus personalis ex conceptu essentiae et relationis, qui sunt penitus eiusdem rei. In re
enim pluribus conceptibus personalibus et essentiae non plus correspondet nisi quod essen-
tia est tres personae.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 17921–27.
For just as according to those positing a non-identity between essence and

paternity, essence and paternity are the same in and of themselves [semetip-
sis] essentially and really, and not the same in and of themselves [semetipsis]
formally, so the persons in and of themselves and on their own account (se
ipsis totis) are the same essentially and are distinct personally.
According to Chatton, theologians (like Scotus and Ockham) who posit that
there is a formal non-identity between essence and property must say that,
e.g., essence and paternity are really identical on their own account and
formally distinct on their own account. There is nothing that makes the
properties at once both identical with the essence and (formally) distinct
from it—the properties just are that way. Chatton saw, then, that earlier
theologians had argued for a type of native, irreducible identity and dis-
tinction between essence and property. This unmediated, unconstituted,
and simultaneous identity and distinction, Chatton merely transfers to the
real distinction between the persons, thereby eliminating the need for the
properties altogether. The persons just are in and of themselves really dis-
tinct and essentially united, nothing makes them be that way. This tactic
is even clearer when Chatton points out quite correctly that it was often
said in the trinitarian theology up until his day that, e.g., the two properties
paternity and filiation are distinct in and of themselves and yet are essen-
tially identical.64 As we have seen time and again in Franciscan authors, the
relations or properties bringing about the real distinction between the per-
sons were said to be distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis); this was true
for opposed relations and it was also true for disparate relations.65 Chatton
quite clearly asked himself, if it is legitimate to claim that the personal prop-
erties are essentially identical and yet distinct in and of themselves, then
why is it not also legitimate to make the same claim about the persons?
Why not eliminate the middle element, the properties, and thereby win all
of the benefits for divine simplicity that he had shown to accrue from the
complete dismissal of personal constitution? This is Chatton’s way of justi-
fying to the Franciscan trinitarian tradition in which he worked his return to
64 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, a. 3, n. 52: “Item, paternitas et filiatio sunt una essentia divina,
et tamen se ipsis distinguuntur realiter, igitur ex se ipsis convenire et differre non arguitur
impossibile.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 1905–7. For the same idea, see also ibid., n. 49
(ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 18914–17).
65 For examples of Franciscan authors who held the relations or productions to be distinct
se ipsis, see Bonaventure, n. 44 above (a se); William of Ware, I Sent., d. 27, q. 1 (ed. Schmaus
1930a, p. 247*4–5); Richard of Mediavilla, Ch. 5, above at n. 52; Scotus and Ockham, Ch. 10,
above, nn. 90, 92; Auriol, Ch. 9, at and around nn. 45, 105–108.
690 chapter eleven
Praepositinus. Something had to be se ipsis distinct in God; the only way

to safeguard divine simplicity was to maintain that that something was the
persons, and eliminate all properties.
The position, then, that Chatton espouses is a radical one: the persons
are distinct in and of themselves, but they are essentially identical in and of
themselves:
If it is inquired as to how it is really [in God], we ought to imagine that
each person is absolutely simple (simplicissima), having no duality, large or
small, but the persons are totally distinct in and of themselves by personal
distinction, and they are totally united (conveniunt) in and of themselves by
essential unity (convenientia); I say that extramentally (extra animam) they
are united (conveniunt) in their every totality in being one God, but they differ
in being distinct persons in and of themselves in all ways (utrobique) and not
only by a part of them (aliquo sui).66
Two things should be noticed about this Praepositinian view. First, once
again we see that simplicity stands at the heart of Chatton’s trinitarian
project. There can be no distinction whatsoever “within” a person, for,
as we saw above, that would entail composition, and would compromise
God’s total simplicity. This, as we have seen, led Chatton to reject any form
of personal constitution, since all models of constitution require positing
some distinction between essence and property in God. So, Chatton claims
that there is personal distinction without personal constitution: the per-
sons are distinct in and of themselves. This leads us to the second point
that should be noticed about Chatton’s theory: he explains nothing. To give
a loose paraphrase of the bottom line for Chatton, we could say that he
holds that three divine persons are really distinct by personal distinction
and essentially one by essential oneness—end of story. God’s reality is so
simple that explanation as such is impossible; and this is because expla-
nation requires analysis, which in turn requires distinction, and there are
no distinctions to which we can appeal when talking about God. In short,
Chatton’s trinitarian theory involves little more than repeating what the
articles of faith tell us about the triune God: God is three really distinct
persons, all essentially identical.67 Saying that the Son just is personally
66 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, a. 1, n. 29: “Si igitur inquiratur quomodo est in re, debemus imag-
inari quod quaelibet persona est simplicissima, nullam habens dualitatem nec parvam nec
magnam, sed personae se ipsis totaliter distinguuntur distinctione personali, et se ipsis total-
iter conveniunt convenientia essentiali; totalitate omni extra animam conveniunt, inquam,
in essendo unus Deus, sed differunt in essendo distinctae personae, se totis utrobique et non
aliquo sui tantum.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 39314–21.
67 See n. 10 above, on what Chatton claims we know about God’s triune nature.
distinct from the Father but essentially the same as the Father does not
explain anything, but it is where Chatton’s overwhelming interest in pre-
serving divine simplicity has led him. Explanatory coverage has been jetti-
soned in order to make room for absolute simplicity. And this, as mentioned
above, has to do with a new theological aesthetic on which God’s simplic-
ity is valued more highly than is any kind of genuine theological explana-
tion.
Chatton’s Praepositinianism colors his entire trinitarian theology. To
take a first example, Praepositinianism lies behind Chatton’s solution to the
complex of problems that can be conveniently brought under the label of
“logic and the Trinity”. Hester Gelber has remarked (Gelber 1974, 191, 193)
that Chatton tends to look at the logic-related “trinitarian problems from
an epistemological perspective” and that, for him, these sorts of problems
“could be resolved at the conceptual level without resorting to any onto-
logical distinction”. And this is precisely correct, since Chatton denied that
there was any ontological distinction to be resorted to when talking about
God, with the one exception of the real distinction between the divine
persons. For example, when Chatton discusses the trinitarian paralogisms
associated with the expository syllogism,68 he gives a loose set of rules for
substituting definitions or descriptions for the terms in the premises and
conclusion of such syllogisms, rules that would show when the syllogism
concludes and when it does not. Take the case of the following clearly prob-
lematic syllogism:
This essence is the Son
This Father is not the Son
Therefore this Father is not the essence
Here, Chatton suggests that by substituting ‘the Son’ for ‘this essence’ in
the first premiss and the conclusion, you avoid the syllogistic difficulties.69
68 For a short introduction to the logical problems that the doctrine of the Trinity seems
to involve (the “trinitarian paralogisms”), see Ch. 10, above, nn. 36–38.
69 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, a. 1, nn. 27, 33: “Contra utrumque modum videntur esse
paralogismi communes. Primo per medium syllogismi expositorii negativi sic ‘haec essentia
est Filius, hic Pater non est Filius, igitur hic Pater non est essentia’. … debet, cum proponitur
ista ‘essentia est Pater’ vel ‘essentia est Filius’, distinguere, quia cum dicis ‘haec essentia est
Filius’, aut intelligis per hanc essentiam, Patrem vel Spiritum Sanctum, et falsa est; vel Filium,
et vera est; vel omnes tres personas simul, et falsa est; vel quartam rem de facto distinctam,
et nulla talis est ibi; vel intelligis aliquam rem quae non est per se et de se Filius, licet de
facto sit Filius, puta si esset tanta distinctio per contradictionem inter essentiam et Filium
quantam permitteret eius definitio vel descriptio, tunc concedendum est in eodem sensu
692 chapter eleven
Chatton had high hopes for this method and its general utility: “always
put a description in place of the name, and work it out, and it will be
clear”, “in this way all possible difficulties in these matters can be laid to
rest.”70 The important thing for us here is that, instead of appealing to any
ontological distinctions that might have been used to explain how to deal
with problematic statements about the Trinity—as, for instance, Scotus had
used the formal distinction—Chatton’s Praepositinianism ensures that he
can only call upon the precise determination of what terms and statements
mean. In some cases the propositions and syllogisms will be good, in other
cases bad; but our understanding of them must proceed from the basic idea
that God is three persons and there is no fourth thing.
As this example shows, Chatton’s treatment of trinitarian logic takes its
point of departure in and is fully governed by his Praepositinianism. And
this is just as true of basically all points in trinitarian doctrine that we have
been following in the present book. Throughout book I of his Sentences com-
mentaries, Chatton examines effectively all forms that principles or proper-
ties constitutive of the persons might take, and he consistently rejects them
on the grounds that any distinct property would be a real fourth thing in
the divine, and hence would violate the faith. This is apparent, for example,
in Chatton’s discussion of the issues surrounding the relationship obtain-
ing between the divine essence and generation, traditionally dealt with in
distinction five of I Sentences. Here Chatton asks what active generation’s
elicitive source is—a question we have seen to be a point on which Ock-
ham disagreed with Auriol. Chatton takes advantage of the disagreement by
making his own presentation something of a face-off between the two ear-
lier Franciscans. Auriol, in Chatton’s presentation, broke with the received
view, and came up with a better way, namely that “active generation is not
elicited”.71 In this way, Chatton gives relatively explicit confirmation that
quod essentia non est per se Filius; et conclusio paralogismi in eodem sensu concedatur,
et concorditer responde; et non erit paralogismus, sed bonum argumentum uniformiter
concludendo.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 18412–15, p. 1865–17.
70 First quotation: Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, a. 1, n. 37: “Pone semper descriptionem loco
nominis, et resolve, et clarum erit.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 18713–14. Second quotation:
ibid., a. 3, n. 91: “… secundum istum modum evacuatur omnis difficultas creabilis in hac
materia.” Loc. cit., p. 2002–4. Chatton deals at considerable length in both versions of his
Sent. commentary with these rules (and, in fact, with four different sets of rules) for sorting
through problematic trinitarian statements; see Gelber 1974, 194–197. For Adam Wodeham’s
criticisms of Chattons’s ideas on this point, see Gelber 1974, 247–249.
71 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2, n. 42: “… circa hoc sunt duae opiniones. Una antiqua. Sed
ab isto Petro Aureoli bene investigata et discussa et melior via est, quam viderim de eo. Tenet
Auriol, with his position on the unelicited emanations, was in fact injecting
a new view into the scholastic trinitarian debate. After giving several of
Auriol’s arguments for his position, as well as a number of objections and
responses,72 Chatton offers a very short description of Ockham’s position
that the essence is generation’s elicitive source and that generation itself “is
elicited, not because it is something produced, but because with it posited,
the supposite is said to generate, just as heat heats because, with it posited,
something heats.”73
Chatton rejects both of these views. Against Auriol, he brings up Auriol’s
insistence that the essence is passed from Father to Son just like a “symbolic
form”. Chatton, reverting to his questions, asks of Auriol: just what is this
“essence” that is communicated from Father to Son? Auriol appears to
think of it as part of the Father, the part that is shared with the Son,
while another part of the Father, active generation, is proper to the Father
alone. Chatton rejects this for the reason that we have seen him give time
and again: this would posit a distinction between essence and property in
the Father, compromising his simplicity.74 Chatton rejects Ockham’s view
as well, and on similar grounds. Ockham, remember, had ruled out that
paternity could be the elicitive source of active generation since, for him,
enim quod generatio activa non est elicita, quia tunc Pater in divinis esset elicitus et non esset
simpliciter a se, quia cuius formale constitutivum est elicitum, illud non est simpliciter a se.”
Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 39716–21. For Auriol’s view, see Ch. 9, above, at and around
nn. 34–44.
72 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2, nn. 43–51 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 397–399).
73 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2, nn. 52–53: “Alia est opinio quod essentia est principium
elicitivum generationis, et quod ipsa est elicita, non quia sit aliquid productum, sed quia
est qua posita, suppositum dicitur generare, sicut calor calefacit quia est quo posito aliquid
calefacit.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 3997–10. For Ockham’s view, see Ch. 10, above, at
74 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2, n. 54: “Videtur mihi prima via multum probabilis, sed
neutram possum tenere. Prima tenet quod essentia communicatur sicut forma symbolica
etc. Quaero igitur quid vocant essentiam et quid generationem activam. Si per generationem
activam intelligunt Patrem, et eadem ratione per passivam Filium, eadem ratione habent
intelligere Patrem per essentiam. Sed hoc videtur contra te, quia generatio passiva, ut dicit,
habet principium elicitivum generationem activam, et non essentiam; igitur ponis in Patre
distinctionem aliquam talem tantam quanta requiritur ad salvandum quod essentia esset
principium elicitivum generationis. Si intelligas quartam rem, illam refugio. Si Filium vel
Spiritum Sanctum vel omnes tres personas simul, patet quid consequenter dicendum sit.”
Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), pp. 39920–4008. For Adam Wodeham’s presentation of and
response to this argument of Chatton’s, see nn. 166–169 below, and for Auriol’s position that
the essence is communicated in the manner of a symbolic form, see Ch. 9, above, at and
around nn. 62–63.
694 chapter eleven
paternity and active generation are the same in every way, and one and the
same thing cannot elicit itself; thus, Ockham said that the elicitive source
must be the divine essence.75 Chatton asks what Ockham is taking ‘essence’
and ‘paternity’ to mean here? As far as Chatton is concerned, when Ock-
ham says that the essence elicits but paternity does not, the Venerable
Inceptor is positing a fourth thing in God, and this is strictly forbidden.76
Chatton’s own view is that, when you ask whether the essence elicits gen-
eration, by ‘essence’ you must understand ‘Father’ and you are really asking
whether the Father generates, because God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
and there is no fourth thing. Thus, on the de facto plane of discourse “the
Father generates the Son, and one person in and of himself is from another,
and one [person] in and of himself generates the other.”77 This is just an
expression of Chatton’s Praepositinianism: there is no generation, pater-
nity, or essence by which Father is distinct from (or identical to) Son; in
and of himself the Father produces and is distinct from the Son. Another
way that Chatton puts this is that active generation is the Father;78 Chat-
ton has merely shaved away the personal properties as separately exist-
ing entities. Again: that is on the de facto plane of discourse about God,
describing how God actually is, and here the persons are absolutely sim-
ple. In addition, we can inquire on the per se plane of discourse, i.e. we
can ask whether essence would be elicitive of generation “if per impos-
sibile there were a distinction in reality corresponding to the distinction
of concepts”. On the per se plane, Chatton claims that active generation
would not belong to the Father’s quiddity (i.e., they differ definitionally
75 For Ockham’s view, see Ch. 10, above, nn. 103–105.

76 For Chatton’s critique of Ockham, see Chatton’s I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2, n. 58 (ed. Wey and
Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 400–401), and see at and around n. 30 above.
77 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2, n. 62 (italicized text translated): “Dico igitur quod
consequenter respondendum est iuxta duplicem modum superius tactum, quia aut fit sermo
de facto, aut quid conveniret alicui per se. Si de facto, ibi sunt tres personae et unus Deus
sine pluri. Et ideo cum quaeris utrum essentia eliciat generationem, quid vocas essentiam?
Si tres personas simul, non, quia tunc quaelibet eliceret generationem activam. Si Filium
vel Spiritum Sanctum, non. Si quartam rem, non. Si Patrem, tunc essentiam elicere non est
nisi Patrem generare. Quid est igitur in rei veritate? Nihil nisi quod Pater generat Filium, et
una persona se ipsa est ab alia, et alia se ipsa generat aliam.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1),
p. 40120–30. This text continues in n. 80 below.
78 Chatton, I Rep., d. 11, q. un, a. 3, n. 48: “Quare autem de facto generatio activa non est
communicabilis, ratio est quia non est nisi ipse Pater, et ideo sicut Pater hesti incommu-
nicabilis, ita illa, quia idem est. Et quare non per se? Quia et si distingueretur, adhuc non
esset sua quiditas sed proprietas incommunicabilis.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), pp. 2334–
244.
from one another), and hence active generation would be distinct from the
Father;79 the same is true of the Father and the divine essence. Speaking
on this per se plane, and in answer to the main question, Chatton leans
towards the view that, if generation were elicited, it would be elicited by
the essence, since it could not be elicited by any of the divine attributes and
it could not elicit itself. He stresses, however, that this is a purely counter-
factual claim: de facto and in reality, generation is not an elicited act, just
as Auriol’s arguments show, since as Chatton claims “a [divine] person is
absolutely simple (simplicissima)” and each person totally on his own (se
tota) differs from and is united with the other persons.80 Thus, in this face-
off between Auriol and Ockham, Chatton says that Auriol was more right if
we are speaking about God de facto, since generation is in no way elicited
(although Chatton adds the important Praepositinian proviso that gener-
ation is nothing other than the Father); on the other hand, on the per se
level of discourse, Chatton tends to agree with Ockham that the essence
would be generation’s elicitive source if, counterfactually, the divine per-
sons were composed of parts. Thus, in this issue we see Chatton using his
questions and his marginalization strategy of de facto vs. per se planes of dis-
course, and behind his own position is his uncompromising understanding
of divine simplicity and the Praepositinianism to which this understanding
leads him.
Chatton takes the same sort of tack when he examines whether the
essence is generated as a subject. Henry of Ghent, as we saw in Chapter Four
above, had said that, in the constitution of each divine person, the essence
was like quasi-matter, the personal property like form. But of course, accord-
ing to Chatton, this should be rejected, since it would involve positing a
79 See n. 78 above; for the text “if per impossibile there were …” (si per impossibile esset),
see n. 80 below.
80 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2, n. 63 (text continued from n. 77 above): “Si non eas ad
scrutandum quomodo sit de facto, sed ad perseitatem, tunc dico quod si per impossibile
esset distinctio in re correspondens distinctioni conceptuum, et quaereretur an tunc essentia
esset elicitiva generationis, videretur mihi quod sic, ad istum intellectum: quod si eliceretur,
eliceretur ab essentia; non enim a se nec ab attributis; igitur magis tribuendum est hoc
essentiae. De facto tamen non est actus elicitus, nec essentia de facto elicit, quia de facto
persona est simplicissima et se tota differt et convenit cum alia persona differentia et
convenientia quae sibi competit extra animam. Et hoc probant argumenta Doctoris Petri
potius quam prima opinio hscil., antiqua opinio quod generatio activa elicita esti.” Ed. Wey
and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 4021–12. See also for generation being elicited from the essence, if
generation were distinct from the essence, ibid., d. 28, q. un., a. 1, n. 25 (ed. cit. [vol. 2],
p. 21120–23).
696 chapter eleven
distinction within the divine person between property and essence, and
that would in turn mean the existence of a fourth thing in God.81 In response,
Chatton claims:
… the Father does not communicate to the Son a part of his substance but
his entire substance, because he is utterly simple and without parts. If you
imagine in any way that the essence is communicated to the Son, this is
merely to say that the Father produces the Son, who is essentially the same
as the Father, such that they are the same God …82
The Father produces the Son, and they are distinct as persons and essentially
the same. Of course, Chatton continues, if you investigated the matter on
the per se plane, and counterfactually took God to be composed of parts
corresponding to the concepts ‘essence’, ‘paternity’, ‘filiation’, etc., then
indeed you would be obliged to agree with Henry and claim that the essence
is quasi-matter, and that in the divine persons there would be some type
of composition involving potency and act.83 So, Henry was wrong if we
are talking about God’s trinitarian reality, but counterfactually speaking he
would have been right. The same sort of thing can be said about Scotus’
view that the essence is the formal term of generation. De facto this view
is simply wrong, since it makes the essence into some fourth thing; on the
de facto plane of discourse, the Son totally on his own account (se toto) is
the sole term of generation.84 If, on the other hand, we were to proceed per
se, as the “words and inquiries of the Doctors” do, then we would be obliged
to concede Scotus the point and say that the essence would be the formal
term of generation.85
81 For Henry, see Ch. 4, above, at nn. 12, 38–40. Chatton’s replies are found at I Rep., d. 5,
q. 2, a. 1, nn. 18–23 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 407–408), and see the text in n. 82 below.
82 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 2, a. 1, n. 22: “… Pater communicat Filio, non partem substantiae
suae, sed totam substantiam suam, quia omnino simplex est non habens partem et partem.
Si imagineris alio modo quod essentiam communicari Filio non est nisi Patrem producere
Filium, qui est idem essentialiter cum Patre, sic quod sunt idem Deus …” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn
(vol. 1), p. 4089–14.
83 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 2, a. 1, n. 30: “Si autem velis investigare quid convenit alicui per
se, tunc ars est ponere per impossibile distinctionem in re correspondentem conceptibus
abstractis; et tunc ultra eo ipso habet sic obligatus dicere quod essentia est quasi materia,
et quod Pater compositus sit, et Filius similiter, ex actu et potentia.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn
(vol. 1), p. 4106–11.
84 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 2, a. 2, n. 47: “Sed quid tunc est terminus? Dico quod Filius
solus se toto terminat generationem.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 4141–2. For Chatton’s
presentation of the view, and rejection of it, see ibid., pp. 410–415, and for Scotus himself, see
Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 74–75, 103–106.
85 Chatton, I Rep., d. 5, q. 2, a. 2, n. 47: “Si autem velis ire ad per se,—quia ad hunc
Along the same lines, when Chatton addresses the traditional question
of whether the persons are constituted by relations of origins, he rejects
that persons have parts through which constitution could come about. Of
course, on the per se plane we could speak like the doctors do, as if there
were distinction in a person, and then we would say that, e.g. the Father
was ultimately constituted by paternity, and not by essence; but this does
not reflect God’s de facto trinitarian reality.86 Another issue: is paternity the
property making the Father distinct, or is it generation? Chatton insists that,
de facto, through ‘paternity’ and ‘generation’ you can only understand the
Father himself, and the Father is distinct in and of himself. Nonetheless,
Chatton concedes that, if there were parts to the Father, then generation
would be the principal constitutive, since conceptually speaking the action
is prior to the relation.87 Thus, on this flashpoint between the Dominican
and Franciscan trinitarian traditions, concerning whether the constitutive
properties were relation or emanation, Chatton inclines slightly (and on the
per se level only) to the Franciscan view. What about the status of active
spiration? Ockham, as we saw above in Chapter Ten (at and around nn. 63–
65), had posited that in the constitution of the Father, active spiration is
indispensable, since without it the Father would not be constituted as the
Father; but Ockham had added that active spiration is formally distinct
from paternity and essence. Chatton pounces on this “fantasy” that “runs
according to a plurality in the same person”. The only thing that Ockham
could mean by ‘spiration’, if he wants to avoid positing distinction within
intellectum quid convenit alicui per se et quid non, in istis inerunt verba et inquisitiones
Doctorum, ita quod per gradus talis esset distinctio in rebus qualis est conceptuum, et per
consequens in proposito est quod generatio activa distinguatur ab essentia—, tunc virtute
obligationis dicendum est quod sic essentia esset terminus formalis, et non generatio passive
…” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 4143–9.
86 For this discussion see Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 1 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2],
pp. 179–181); for Chatton’s de facto vs. per se statement, see ibid., n. 17: “Sed constituitne per se
Patrem deitas vel essentia?—Dico quod paternitas per se, et non deitas, ad illum intellectum
quod si esset distinctio deitatis a paternitate in eadem persona, tunc paternitas ultimate
constitueret, et non deitas.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), pp. 18030–1811.
87 Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 2, nn. 28–29: “Aliter igitur respondeo an sub ratione pater-
nitatis vel generationis activae. Quid intelligis per istam generationem vel paternitatem? ....
oportet intelligere aliquam personam, scilicet Patrem .... Si velis loqui ac si distinguerentur, et
tunc quaerere quid illorum esset principale constitutivum, dicerem quod generatio activa.”
Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), pp. 18228–1836. Chatton in fact hedges his bets even more by
denying that generation and paternity are distinct even in creatures, and so even on the per se
plane you should not posit their distinction in God (ibid., n. 30 [ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2),
p. 1839–15]).
698 chapter eleven
the persons and hence a fourth thing in God, is “The Father or the Son or
both at once.”88 And this is indeed Chatton’s view. You could investigate the
matter on the per se plane, and then it seems likely that active spiration
would be a distinct property constitutive of the Father, since if it were not,
then the Father would be more tightly bound to the Son than to the Holy
Spirit. But de facto, spiration does not constitute the Father or the Son; de
facto spiration simply is the Father and the Son.89 Since there can be no
distinction in the same person, spiration, the production of the Holy Spirit,
cannot be a property distinct from the spirating persons; rather spiration
is the Father and the Son and each of them at once, in just the same way
that God is all three persons and each of them at once.90 As one final
example, I can mention that Chatton gives a similar analysis when it comes
to the Father’s innascibility: on his own account, and not on account of any
property, it is logically inconsistent that the Father is produced by another.91
Is there anything, according to Chatton, that can help us to understand
how the persons are in and of themselves distinct and identical? As we
have seen, by denying personal constitution Chatton rules out any real
explanation for the way in which person is distinct from person while
still being the same God. Nevertheless, Chatton does suggest two ways of
“piously” imagining real personal distinction and essential identity, i.e. two
metaphors. First, and rather cryptically, Chatton invites us to imagine, along
with those “working primarily to account for the highest essential identity”,
88 Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 3, n. 49: “Sed [[nec]] ista imaginatio currit secundum
pluralitatem in eadem persona. Quid enim intelligis per spirare? Vel quartum, et tunc erit
pluralitas in eadem persona; vel illam summam rem quae est simul tres et quaelibet, et illa
non constituit; igitur oportet intelligere Patrem vel Filium vel ambos simul, sed tunc nihil
est dictu ponere spirare cum essentia constituere Patrem vel Filium.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn
(vol. 2), p. 1868–13 (I have removed the ‘nec’ in the passage for sense).
89 Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 3, nn. 54–55: “… oportet quod hper spirationem intelligisi
Patrem vel Filium vel ambos, et tunc dicere eam constituere est dicere Patrem constituere,
quod nihil est. Si vis loqui ac si esset distinctio in re, tunc probabile est quod sic, quia aliter
tunc Pater magis intrinsece et magis per se requireret Filium quam Spiritum Sanctum.” Ed.
Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 1875–10. See on this point also d. 12 of Chatton’s I Rep. (ed. cit.
[vol. 2], pp. 26–35).
90 Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 4, n. 72: “Dico igitur aliter, quod nulla penitus est
distinctio in eadem persona, sed sicut illa summa res est tres simul et quaelibet earum, ita et
spiratio duae personae et quaelibet earum.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 1897–9.
91 Chatton, I Rep., d. 28, q. un., a. 1, n. 20: “… se ipso repugnat sibi produci ab alio. Nego
enim ibi pluralitatem quorumcumque, quorum uno (et alio non) in eadem persona de facto
repugnat sibi produci ab alio.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 21027–29. Cf. ibid., a. 3, n. 45 (ed.
cit. [vol. 2], p. 21424–26; note that at loc. cit., n. 48, Chatton mentions ‘primity’, a term that had
been used less and less frequently since the late 13th century).
one angel existing in three places, so that the one angel subsists in three
ways with respect to place. Eliminate all traces of place from this metaphor,
Chatton says, and you have a reasonable way of looking at the divine essence
and the three persons, since “the divine essence, which is more one (by
essential unity, I say, not personal) than is Socrates’ unity with himself, is
a threefold personal subsistence.”92
Chatton’s second analogy is rather more revealing. One person being in
and of himself distinct from another is like the way a relation is distinct
from its term.93 Chatton settles on this as the best way of illustrating se ipsis
distinction, and this is because he holds that the distinction of a relation
from its term involves no composition whatsoever (in contrast to the dis-
tinction between a relation and its foundation, which involves inherence
of an accidental form in a subject).94 What is most interesting, however,
is what Chatton denies could be a suitable analogy for the se ipsis distinc-
tion between the persons: disparate relations. Chatton says explicitly that
the distinction between disparates always involves an essential distinction
between absolutes, and so it is useless to resort to it as a means of describ-
ing the distinction between the persons.95 In this respect, then, Walter
92 Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 1, n. 15: “… laborantes principaliter ad salvandum iden-
titatem essentialem summam … essentia divina hquaei est magis una—unitate essentiali,
dico, non personali—quam sit unitas Sortis ad se ipsum, est triplex subsistentia personalis.”
Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 1806–7,13–15, and the entire passage is found at ibid., pp. 17929–
18023. This analogy is mentioned again at ibid., n. 76 (ed. cit. [vol. 2], p. 18923–30), and once
again at ibid., d. 33–34, q. un., n. 26 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], p. 29212–24).
93 See, e.g., Chatton, I Rep., d. 2., q. 5, a. 3, n. 77 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 19521–22)
and the text in n. 97 below.

94 Chatton, I Rep., d. 2, q. 5, a. 4, n. 108: “… si distinctio esset ibi per absoluta, tunc non
esset nisi unum genus distinctionis, scilicet a subiecto vel hai fundamento vel ab aliquo
disparato, igitur si circumscribis distinctionem a subiecto, circumscribis omnem distinc-
tionem. Sed aliter est de relatione, quia licet propter simplicitatem salvandam circumscribas
distinctionem relationis a fundamento, tamen cum hoc stat quod distinguatur ab aliquo
realiter distinctione relationis a termino; sed illa distinctio nihil faceret ad compositionem,
quia compositio non habet ortum nisi ex hoc quod aliqua vere faciunt unum, sicut mate-
ria et forma vel sicut subiectum et accidens vel sicut potentia et actus, qualiter in proposito
hrelatioi non se habet ad terminum a quo ponitur realiter distingui; aliud enim est distingui
terminative, quo modo distinguitur relatio a correlatione, et aliud est distingui subiective;
licet igitur distinctio subiectiva non stet cum summa simplicitate, terminativa tamen, qualis
est relationis a termino, bene stat cum ea.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 2059–26. Cf. ibid.,
d. 26, q. un., a. 1, n. 12 (ed. cit. [vol. 2], p. 1799–16).
95 See n. 94 above, and nn. 97–98 below; Chatton, I Rep., d. 26, q. un., nn. 51, 78 (ed. Wey
and Etzkorn [vol. 2], pp. 18618–24, 1904–13). See for this same tactic used by thinkers in the
Dominican trinitarian tradition, Giles of Rome (Ch. 5, above, at nn. 6–7) and Godfrey of
Fontaines (ibid., at n. 23).
700 chapter eleven
Chatton rejects for all intents and purposes the entire Franciscan trinitarian
tradition that we have been tracing in this book, adopting a Dominican-
leaning trinitarian view that disparate relations are distinct because of the
absolute distinction between their foundations, and correspondingly deny-
ing that disparate relations can be resorted to as a metaphor to understand
the distinction between the persons of the Trinity.
Chatton’s surprising support of this Dominican position has at least
one very interesting effect: he maintains that, if the Holy Spirit does not
come from the Son, the two will not be distinct from each other. In his
discussion of this major flashpoint between the two trinitarian traditions,
Chatton presents and rejects Auriol’s view on the matter—that without
active spiration the Son would not be the Son, although the Holy Spirit
would still be the Holy Spirit on account of the Father’s active spiration—as
well as Ockham’s view, which Chatton claims is “just about the same” (quasi
idem) as Auriol’s.96 In response, Chatton maintains that you can indeed deny
the following consequence: ‘if the Holy Spirit were not to proceed from
the Son, he would not be distinct from him’, in just the way that Auriol,
Ockham, and basically the entire Franciscan tradition had done since the
time of Gerard of Abbeville. But, Chatton hastens to add, what those who
deny that consequence are forgetting is that the Son and the Holy Spirit are
one God:
This seems to me to be an evident consequence … ‘The Holy Spirit is the same
God as the Son, and he does not proceed from him, therefore he is not distinct
from him’ .... This is because if [the Holy Spirit] is the same God as [the Son]
and is distinct from him, then [this is the case] either by the distinction of a
relative from its opposite, and then [the Holy Spirit] proceeds from him; or by
a distinction of disparates, and then [the Holy Spirit] would not be the same
God as [the Son], because distinction of this type, as has been shown, is not
compatible with the highest essential identity, nor with the simplicity of the
person. And it is in this way that I understand the doctors who deny the prior
consequences, [i.e.] they do not add in the antecedent the following: that they
are the same God. This is because without that added, the consequence is not
96 For Chatton’s discussion of the issue, see I Rep., d. 11, q. un., a. 1, and esp. for his
presentation and refutation of Auriol and Ockham, see nn. 4–21, 25–31 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn
[vol. 2], pp. 14–20). The first opinion there is attributed by the editors to Giles of Rome, but it is
very clear that Chatton is thinking of Auriol’s view (on which see Ch. 9, above, at and around
nn. 74–92). Chatton’s claim, that Auriol’s and Ockham’s views are just about the same, agrees
well with the contention that I made when discussing Ockham, that the views of the two
thinkers concerning personal constitution resemble each other closely; see Ch. 10, above, at
and around nn. 58–65, 84–87.
impeded through the distinction of disparation; but as a result [of its being
added] composition must be conceded, and the highest simplicity must be
denied.97
Chatton, as we have seen, believes that the distinction between disparate

relations always involves the distinction between absolutes, i.e. an essen-
tial distinction, and this type of distinction, involving composition, is com-
pletely unacceptable in God.98 For Chatton, the way the persons are se ipsis
distinct is like the way a relative is distinct from its term; disparate relations
will not do, only opposed relations. In line with this, Chatton has no hesita-
tion in saying that the Holy Spirit must proceed from both Father and Son, if
they are all one simple God, leaning him closer to the standard Dominican
view on the matter. Indeed, the Filioque for Chatton becomes the guaran-
tor of divine unity and (extremely important for Chatton) divine simplicity,
an absolutely indispensable element in proper trinitarian doctrine. Thus,
Chatton rejects not only the specific position that the Holy Spirit and the
Son would indeed be distinct in some way if the former did not come from
the latter, but also one of the most basic elements of the Franciscan trinitar-
ian position since the 1260’s: that disparate and not only opposed relations
are sufficient to constitute a person. If his other positions had left one in any
doubt, this alone would amply illustrate Chatton’s free-ranging mind; he is
a thinker who is extraordinarily difficult to put into a box.
97 Chatton, I Rep., d. 11, q. un., a. 1, nn. 23–24: “Sed illa videtur mihi evidens consequentia
… ‘Spiritus Sanctus est idem Deus cum Filio, et non procedit ab eo, igitur non distinguitur
ab eo’, propter argumentum prius factum. Quia si est idem Deus cum eo et distinguatur ab
eo, igitur aut distinctione relativi ab opposito, et tunc procedit ab eo; aut distinctione dis-
paratorum, et tunc non esset idem Deus cum eo, quia talis distinctio, ut probatum est, non
stat cum summa identitate essentiali, nec cum simplicitate personae. Et sic intelligo Doc-
tores negantes priores consequentias, non addito hoc quod sint idem Deus in antecedente,
quia hoc non addito, non impeditur consequentia per distinctionem disparationis, sed con-
sequenter tunc concedenda hesti compositio, et neganda summa simplicitas.” Ed. Wey and
Etzkorn (vol. 2), pp. 1827–198.
98 Chatton, I Rep., d. 11, q. un., a. 1, n. 15: “Quod autem distinctio disparatorum vel dispara-
tionis non stet cum summa simplicitate personarum probo hquiai omnis distinctio disparato-
rum est tanta quod ipsa sine omni alia distinctione sufficit ad hoc quod sic distincta unirentur
et componerentur ad invicem; sed ita est in personis quod personae, quae sunt essentialiter
unus Deus, tali distinctione quae sufficeret ad compositionem hnoni distinguantur, igitur
non distinguuntur disparate. Minor est evidens, quia talibus personis repugnat distinctio
essentialis, et illa distinctio, quae sufficit ad unionem et compositionem disparatorum, infert
distinctionem essentialem illorum. Maiorem probo quia omnis distinctio disparatorum est
talis qualis est distinctio absolutorum. Quantum est ex parte distinctionis, sufficit ad hoc
quod illa absoluta unirentur et componerentur, et per consequens est distinctio essentialis.”
702 chapter eleven
In sum, Walter Chatton adopted a thoroughgoing Praepositinianism in

trinitarian theology: the persons and the properties are absolutely iden-
tical, and the persons are distinct from each other in and of themselves
(se ipsis). Reviving a view that had been totally out of favor for more than
a century was a risky affair, and this is only confirmed by the fact that
Adam Wodeham will claim that Chatton’s theory is tantamount to Arian-
ism.99 Chatton was indeed well aware of the risk. Clear evidence for this
can be found in a passage from Chatton’s later work, the Lectura. Here,
after presenting his Praepositinian view in crystal clear terms, he raises
the objection that the masters’ general rejection of Praepositinus’ view
seemed to be a stumbling block for Chatton’s own view. To this Chat-
ton responds simply that Praepositinus “conceded things that [Chatton’s
own] view would not concede.”100 Tellingly, Chatton offers not one exam-
ple of the differences he claims exist between Praepositinus’ theory and
his own—if he could have found any, they would surely have been very
minor. We also certainly see Chatton’s awareness that he was treading dan-
gerous ground in his complex marginalization strategy that allowed him
to claim that all talk of distinction in God, whether found in Scripture, in
the Fathers, or in more contemporary theology, was made on the per se
plane of discussion according to a positio impossibilis. In himself, de facto,
God is absolutely simple, and there are no personal properties at all, the
persons being really distinct from each other in and of themselves; per se
and counterfactually, on the other hand, one could talk about distinction
in God. Through this marginalization strategy, Chatton attempted to neu-
tralize the texts that would seem to speak against his view of a radically
simple God. Chatton would have ample opportunity to call on this marginal-
ization strategy again in his treatment of the psychological model of the
Trinity.
99 See on Wodeham’s charge, at and around nn. 143–144 below.

100 Chatton, Lectura, d. 2, q. 6, a. 5, nn. 234–235: “Ad istum igitur articulum, patet quid
secundum istud est dicendum, quia diceretur quod personae divinae se totis, totalitate
quae est de facto extra animam, sunt idem identitate essentiali et distinguuntur distinc-
tione personali, quia distingui ibi personaliter, non est quod non sint eadem essentia, sed
quod non sint eadem persona. Et ideo cum dicitur ‘Pater non est Filius’ seu ‘paternitas
non est filiatio’, non significat quod non sint idem essentialiter, sed solum significat quod
non sunt idem personaliter. Contra ista videtur opinio Praepositini communiter a Mag-
istris reprobata. Diceretur quod non, quia ipse aliqua concessit quod opinio non conced-
eret.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), 49612–22. Schmaus 1930a, 547, mentions this passage in
passing.
C. Chatton and the Psychological Model

Above, when discussing Chatton’s procedure in trinitarian theology, we saw
that he rejects any distinct attributes in God, since God is just as wise or just
or good as he is God. Of course, on the per se plane of discussion, if we were
to talk about God as if he were composed of parts like a creature is, then
indeed we would say that attributes like the intellect and the will would be
distinct from the essence, since intellect and will do have definitions that
differ both from each other and from the definition of essence. But de facto,
Chatton insists, if either intellect or will were actually distinct in God, then
the attribute would necessarily be a “fourth thing” and hence compromise
Chatton’s rule for God’s simplicity: three really distinct persons are one God
and there is no fourth thing. Thus, God may indeed be understanding and
willing, but this does not mean that there is any distinct will or intellect “by”
or “through” which he understands or wills.
This is the background to Chatton’s uncompromising rejection of the
strong use of the psychological model. While at the most basic level Chat-
ton here turns his back on some forty years of Franciscan adherence to the
strong use, in one sense he is part of a trend within the Franciscan order, as
can be seen by considering Peter Auriol and William Ockham. Auriol, stress-
ing God’s simplicity as well as replying to earlier Dominican criticism of the
Franciscan claim that the distinction between the emanations is grounded
on the prior distinction between the attributes, eliminated any ex natura rei
distinction between the attributes. Auriol maintained instead that the con-
notative distinction between the attributes is in part based on the fact that
the divine intellect is the divine essence as it connotes the Word’s emana-
tion, the divine will is the essence as it connotes the Holy Spirit’s emanation.
Ockham, rejecting still more categorically than Auriol any distinct divine
intellect and will, ended up appealing to faith and authority when it came to
explaining the Son’s being a Word and the Holy Spirit’s being Love or a Gift,
as well as when it came to explaining why and how generation is distinct
from procession. Chatton goes a step further still, for he is not even inter-
ested in preserving the strong use of the psychological model in the “lite”
version that Ockham had proposed. He rejects the distinction between the
attributes and, as a consequence, claims outright that the name ‘Word’ is
merely appropriated to the Son; there is no intrinsic reason why the Son
is more a Word than the Father or the Holy Spirit is, this is really just a
metaphor. Thus, Chatton brings to completion a progression—motivated
at least in part by the search for simplicity (and in part by Dominican
criticism)—that had led earlier Franciscans to modify in significant ways
704 chapter eleven
their views on the ontological status of the attributes, on the link between
the attributes and the emanations, and, concomitantly, on the strong use
of the psychological model. In this connection, it is important to note that
roughly contemporaneously with Chatton, the Parisian Franciscan Francis
of Marchia was also rejecting the strong use of the psychological model (see
Ch. 12, §2B).
A good example of the way in which Chatton presents his case is found
when he discusses the question of whether the will is the source of pro-
ducing the Holy Spirit.101 Here, Chatton takes Ockham as his opponent, and
particularly Ockham’s view that because the source of the productions is
the only absolute in God, i.e. the essence, and because the divine will is
completely identical to the essence, the will can be said to be the source
of the Holy Spirit.102 Chatton’s reply, as so often is the case, takes its point of
departure in questioning his opponent: what does Ockham understand by
‘the will’? It cannot be all three persons at once, since the Holy Spirit can-
not produce himself. Nor, if we accept Ockham’s view that the source of the
emanations is absolute, can “the will” be the Father and the Son, because
the persons are not absolute, and Ockham himself held that the source of
the Holy Spirit is an absolute.103 But, as we have seen, for Chatton the three
persons exhaust the options of what there can be in God, since three distinct
persons are one God and there is no fourth thing. Thus, Chatton concludes
that on Ockham’s view the will would have to be a fourth thing in God, a
hypostacized attribute—for Chatton, a clearly unacceptable conclusion.104
Nor, according to Chatton, can we even say that, if God were composed of
parts and his will were distinct from his essence, then the Holy Spirit would
be produced by the will. This is because—appealing to his major justifica-
tion for rejecting the strong use of the psychological model—the Holy Spirit
is God in the very same way that the Father and the Son are God. The Father
101 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 3 (“Utrum voluntas sit principium producendi Spiritum
Sanctum”; ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], pp. 5–7.)

102 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 3, n. 33: “Tenet una opinio quod sic, tum quia principium
illius productionis est aliquod absolutum, igitur voluntas, quia voluntas ibi nullo modo
distinguitur ab aliquo absoluto essentiali.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 528–30. Chatton
does not mention the important caveats that Ockham gives, e.g. that the will would also be
the source of the Son.
103 On this view of Ockham’s, see Ch. 10, above, at and around nn. 98–100.
104 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 3, n. 37: “Item, quid intelligis per voluntatem? Non scilicet
tres simul, quia tres simul non sunt principium Spiritus Sancti. Non Patrem et Filium, quia
ponunt principium absolutum requiri. Igitur oportet quod intelligant de quarta re.” Ed. Wey
and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 619–22.
is just as much love and in just the same way as are the Son and the Holy
Spirit. We might say that, for Chatton, the persons are completely equal,
and indistinguishable from each other except in and of themselves; thus,
there is nothing that the one has more or differently than another has, since
that would imply the existence of a feature or property distinctive of the
persons, and, as we have seen, Chatton rejects personal properties of any
kind. Clearly Chatton holds that there is a non-temporal order of production
among the persons—Father produces Son, and the two of them produce the
Holy Spirit—, but for Chatton this appears to be the same as saying that the
persons are distinct in and of themselves. Since the Holy Spirit, then, cannot
be love in a different way than the Father or the Son are love, the will can
under no circumstances be a factor in the production of the Holy Spirit.105
Given this inquiry into the will’s being the source of the Holy Spirit,
Chatton can then map the results onto his distinction between the de facto
and per se levels of discourse. If it is asked whether de facto the will is the
source of the production of the Holy Spirit, Chatton draws a distinction. If
we understand ‘will’ to be something shared by the three divine persons,
then the “will” is not the source of the Holy Spirit, because, if it were, we
would end up with a fourth thing in God. For Chatton, God is a willer but
has no distinct will. On the other hand, if we understand the term ‘will’ to
mean the Father and the Son, then indeed the will is the source of the Holy
Spirit.106 And this is just what we would expect from what we have seen of
Chatton’s trinitarian theology: active spiration is the Father and the Son;107
thus, Father and Son are the source of the Holy Spirit. If you want to call
these two persons “the will” that does not appear to bother Chatton, since
they are indeed the source of the third person. So, on the de facto plane of
discussion, Chatton admits that there is a way in which we can say the will
is the source of the Holy Spirit, but it is only by defining the will to be the
persons who indeed produce the Holy Spirit. If we move, however, to the
105 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 3, n. 36: “Sed quod dicunt quod si voluntas distingueretur
ab essentia, adhuc esset principium producendi Spiritum Sanctum.—Contra: Spiritus Sanc-

tus aeque et non aliter est Deus quam sit Pater, igitur non aliter amor; igitur voluntas tunc
non esset eius principium, nec eius productio per se requireret voluntatem ut principium.”
106 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 3, n. 38: “Ideo dico aliter, quia aut quaeritur de facto
utrum voluntas sit principium Spiritus Sancti, et dico quod sic, quia Pater et Filius, non ad
illum intellectum quod voluntas illa sit in tribus quae est principium Spiritus Sancti, quia
imaginatio hillai vadit ad quartam rem.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 624–28.
107 See nn. 88–90 above.
706 chapter eleven
per se plane of discussion, then we need to ask whether the production of

the Holy Spirit requires the will as a source, i.e. whether it is bound up in
the very definition of spiration that spiration is from will as a productive
source. Chatton denies this to be the case. As mentioned just above, Chatton
maintains that the Holy Spirit is Love, just as he is God, in exactly the same
way that the Father and the Son are Love and God. It follows from this, then,
that the spiration of the Holy Spirit does not necessarily, i.e. definitionally,
involve will.108 Given this, it is no surprise that Chatton concludes that, if
the divine will were distinct from the essence, then the essence, and not the
will, would be the source of the Holy Spirit. Thus, speaking on the per se
plane and hence counterfactually, Chatton agrees with what we have seen
to be Ockham’s—and the Dominican trinitarian tradition’s—position that
the undivided essence would be the source of the production of the Holy
Spirit. With that said, however, Chatton does concede that the term ‘will’
would be “appropriated” to the essence in this case,109 thus opening up for a
metaphorical use of the psychological model.
This is Chatton’s way of approaching the issue of the psychological model
throughout his I Reportatio: he takes as his point of departure that no person
is God differently than any other person is, and from there he eliminates
any vestige of the strong use of the psychological model from his trinitarian
theology. And it should be noted that not only does Chatton eliminate
the strong application of the psychological model on the de facto plane of
discussion, but also on the per se plane—even if God were composed of
parts like creatures are, and there were in him a will in some way distinct
from the divine essence, nonetheless the divine will would not be the
source of the Holy Spirit. Let me offer some further examples of Chatton’s
approach. Chatton asks: is the Holy Spirit Love? His response: because the
Holy Spirit is God in the same way as the other persons are God, the Holy
108 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 3, n. 39: “Si quaeras secundo, an illa productio per se
requirat voluntatem sicut principium, vel sub aliis verbis an voluntas sit principium illius
productionis per se, dico quod non, quia Spiritus Sanctus non est aliter amor, sicut nec aliter
Deus, quam Pater et Filius.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 629–33.
109 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 3, n. 40: “Si tertio quaeras utrum si voluntas distingueretur
ab essentia, an tunc esset principium Spiritus Sancti, si tunc produceretur, dico quod non, sed
essentia. Sed tamen essentiae appropriaretur vocabulum productionis per modum amoris,
sicut et ipsi producto quod sit amor, non proprie quidem, quia non plus convenit productioni
Spiritus Sancti ex vi sua quod sit per se assimilativa quam convenit productioni amoris
in imagine naturae creatae quod sit per se assimilativa.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2),
p. 71–8. For discussion of Chatton’s view of appropriation, see at and around nn. 124–126
below.
Spirit is Love in the same way as the other persons are. The Holy Spirit is
not properly Love, then, but only through appropriation. This also seems
to Chatton to follow better from the faith,110 presumably meaning by this
that it would be unfitting to say that Father or Son were not Love. Another
issue: is the Holy Spirit produced freely (libere)? If you were to insist that
the Holy Spirit were produced by the will, then the production of the Holy
Spirit would indeed be free. But in point of fact, if the essence and will were
distinct in God, then, as we have already seen, the essence would be the
source of the emanation of the Holy Spirit (and hence the Holy Spirit would
not be produced freely). But all of that is counterfactual speculation: in
reality the production of the Holy Spirit is no more free than the production
of the Son, although the saints did appropriate the term ‘free’ to the Holy
Spirit and use it of his production because it brings to mind clemency and
piety.111 Chatton continues: does ‘gift’ indicate a personal property of the
Holy Spirit? In reality, the Holy Spirit is no more of a gift and no differently
than either the Father or the Son are; the term is appropriated to the Holy
Spirit just as the term ‘love’ is.112
Of course, Chatton does not limit himself to discussion of the Holy
Spirit. He is well aware that it is “commonly held” that the Son is both
wisdom and the Word from the nature of his production (ex vi productionis
suae) and that the memory in the Father is the elicitive source of the
110 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 1, n. 8: “Teneo,—etiam ut mihi videtur magis con-
sequenter ad fidem—quod de virtute sermonis et realiter, non aliter est Spiritus Sanctus
amor quam aliae personae, sed tantum per appropriationem, quia ita essentialiter est Deus,
igitur non aliter amor proprie, sed tantum per appropriationem.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn
(vol. 2), p. 21–5. For the entire discussion of the Holy Spirit as Love, see ibid., aa. 1–2 (ed.
Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], pp. 1–5); this includes a rebuttal Peter Auriol’s view on the
matter.
111 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 4, n. 65: “Ad articulum igitur istum dico quod productio
Spiritus Sancti non plus per se libera est de virtute sermonis quam productio Spiritus
Sancti vel Filii, sed tantum per appropriationem, sicut sibi appropriatur nomen amoris et
productio amoris. Sed potest concedi quod productio eius sit libera, si sic intelligas, quod
scilicet productio eius vel principium productionis eius sit voluntas sic. Si autem an per
se sit libera, non, quia Spiritus Sanctus essentialiter est Deus. Et ideo si distinctio esset
ibi inter voluntatem et essentiam, esset eius principium essentia. Sed Sancti ex devotione
appropriabant sibi hoc et alia huiusmodi vocabula, quae sonant in clementiam et pietatem
et huiusmodi.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), pp. 1230–1310. The entire article (ed. Wey and
Etzkorn [vol. 2], pp. 7–13) includes discussion of William Ockham’s and Peter Auriol’s views,
and Adam Wodeham (in his Lectura Secunda, d. 10 [ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3), pp. 143–
163]) will later respond to Chatton’s attack on Ockham. This debate, largely philosophical
in nature, deserves closer attention.
112 Chatton, I Rep., d. 18, q. un., n. 9 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], p. 11816–25).
708 chapter eleven
act of saying by which the Word is produced.113 Although Chatton’s treat-

ment of these matters is interspersed with a fair amount of philosophi-
cal psychology—especially in reply to the views of Ockham and Auriol—
nevertheless his main point is that the strong use of philosophical psychol-
ogy has (in his view) unacceptable consequences for trinitarian theology.
Thus, with regard to the memory of the Father, Chatton insists that you have
to define what you mean by ‘memory’. If you say that memory is all three per-
sons at once, then of course it cannot be the Word’s productive source. Nor,
as Chatton never tires of reminding us, can it be some fourth thing in God.
Thus, all that ‘memory’ could be is one of the three persons, and in particular
the person of the Father, “who by his real power, namely in and of himself,
can generate, because he is that active production, and [he is] whatever is in
him, because he is simple to the highest degree.”114 So, if memory is strictly
equated with the Father, then the memory is indeed productive of the Son.
That seems to Chatton to be what we should say on the de facto plane of
discussion about God, on which God is three persons and there is no fourth
thing. But what about the per se plane, on which the theologians speak as if
there were distinct things in God corresponding to distinct concepts? Chat-
ton insists that on the per se plane the essence, not the memory, would be
the source of the Son’s generation, appealing to his claim that Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit are in every way equally memory (as they are in every way
equally any possible distinguishing feature). Talk of the memory as produc-
tive of the Son could only be through appropriation.115 Indeed, Chatton says
113 Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., dubium 2, n. 10: “Communiter ponitur hic quod secunda
persona est sapientia et Verbum ex vi productionis suae. Et isti habent dicere quod memoria
in Patre est principium elicitivum actus dicendi, quod secundum eos est activa productio
Verbi et secundae personae quae est Verbum, in tantum quod, ut addit una opinio, Deus
positus in esse prospecto est Verbum.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 41914–19. The opinion
mentioned in the last sentence is, of course, that of Peter Auriol.
114 Chatton, I Rep., d. 7, q. un., a. 2, n. 66 (italicized text translated): “Dico igitur aliter ad
istum articulum, et primo praemitto quid intelligunt per memoriam. Aut tres simul, et hsii sic
debeat memoria sumi, dico quod memoria non est principium elicitivum Verbi nec potentia
generandi. Nec pro quarta re, ut supra. Igitur oportet quod accipiatur pro aliqua personarum,
puta pro Patre, et si sic, tunc eo modo est memoria principium generandi quo Pater, qui potest
potentia sua reali, scilicet se ipso, generare quia est productio ipsa activa, et quidquid est in eo,
quia hesti summe simplex.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 44410–18. Cf. also I Rep., d. 6, q. un.,
dubium 2, n. 17 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 4216–11), where Chatton appears to concede
that, because the Father is the source of the Son, if you take memory to be a name of the
Father, then in this weak sense you say the Son is produced by divine “memory”.
115 Chatton, I Rep., d. 7, q. un., a. 2, n. 73: “Si igitur quaeras de facto, cum de facto non
possit memoria sumi nisi pro tribus simul, et sic non, nec pro quarta re, oportet quod
explicitly that strictly speaking (de virtute sermonis) memory is something

common to the three persons, although the term has been appropriated to
the Father for two reasons: because there are heretics who might assert that
the Father, on account of the feebleness of age, has no memory, and because
memory is the first part of God’s image in human beings and hence is best
suited to labeling the first person.116 Under no circumstances, however, is
there a distinct memory through which the Father produces the Son as a
Word; that there is a memory productive of the Word, and that this is linked
to the Father, is understood to be through appropriation on Chatton’s view.
A similar line of reasoning is given with regard to the Son: the second
person is properly speaking no more the Word or wisdom than the other
two persons are; this is said through appropriation, whether to counter
heretics who might think the Son to be lacking in wisdom (insipiens),117
or because the saints, wanting to show that the Father is the productive
source and the Son the product, appropriated to them the names ‘memory’
and ‘Word’ respectively.118 Of course, de facto the Son’s emanation is by no
pro Patre; et tunc eo modo est principium quo Pater, et non aliter. Sed praeter hoc etiam
usus theologorum est loqui ac si esset in re distinctio correspondens distinctis conceptibus,
et secundum illum modum loquendi dicendum est quod essentia est principium, et non
memoria de virtute sermonis, sed tantum per appropriationem.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1),
p. 44610–17. For Chatton’s appeal to the equality of the divine persons, see ibid., n. 68 (ed. cit.
[vol. 1], p. 44513–19 esp.).
116 Chatton, I Rep., d. 7, q. un., a. 2, n. 67: “Et ulterius dico quod de virtute sermonis memoria
est quid commune, sed per appropriationem convenit Patri propter duas causas. Prima est
contra haereticos, quia sicut contra eos sapientia appropriatur Filio, ne credatur insipiens
propter hoc hquodi est continue in generari, ita in Patre memoria, ne propter senium
credatur perdidisse memoriam. Secunda causa est, quia memoria est prima pars imaginis
in nobis ex qua consurgimus ad cognoscendum Deum et Trinitatem, et ideo vocabulum
‘memoria’ appropriamus primae personae in divinis.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 44419–28.
For similar statements, see n. 117 below, and cf. Ch. 3, n. 27, above, where Aquinas attributes
this type of argument to Augustine.
117 Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., dubium 2, n. 11: “Sed ego dico aliter, promptitudine
tamen revolvendi, quod proprie non aliter est secunda persona Verbum vel sapientia quam
alia persona, sed tantum per appropriationem, et contra haereticos, ne Filius credatur
insipiens; ideo enim sibi appropriatur nomen Verbi et nomen sapientiae, sicut et Patri
nomen potentiae, ne propter senium credatur impotens.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1),
p. 41921–26. For the same point, see also ibid., n. 27 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 4237–12)
and n. 116 above.
118 Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., dubium 2, n. 24: “Alio autem modo, investigando per se, tunc
hoc est quaerere utrum, si talis esset distinctio in re, utrum tunc natura, intellectus vel memo-
ria esset hic principium. Dico quod natura esset tunc principium elicitivum, et nec intellectus
nec memoria proprie loquendo, quia quod esset essentialiter Deus, non esset essentialiter
notitia distincta a deitate; sed illo posito Filius esset Deus essentialiter et non notitia, et per
710 chapter eleven
means intellectual. The Son, as we have already seen, is produced by the

Father; neither intellect nor memory has anything to do with it, since if that
were the case, there would necessarily be some fourth thing in God.119 But,
moving to the per se plane of the discussion, even if there were an intellect
or memory in God distinct from divine nature, the Son would still not be
produced by intellect or memory but by the divine essence.120 Once again
we see that Chatton eliminates all traces of the strong use of philosophical
psychology in trinitarian theology.
From Chatton’s view that the Son is called the Word through appropri-
ation, several other positions follow. For one thing, for Chatton, the com-
mand of the will is not at all involved in the production of the Son, although
Chatton does give several possible scenarios of how the command of the will
might relate to the Son’s generation, on the (false) assumption there were
both a distinct will in God and temporal or logical succession there.121 More-
over, labelling the Son’s active production ‘saying’ (dicere) or his passive
production ‘being said’ (dici) is only done through appropriation.122 Indeed,
when Chatton in d. 27 of his Reportatio directly discusses the way the Son is
called a Word, he singles out for special treatment Henry of Ghent and his
way of using philosophical psychology in a strong way:
consequens non requirit pro principio per se memoriam vel intellectum. Tamen dico quod
usus Sanctorum et theologorum est appropriare nomen memoriae principio productivo,
quia sicut appropriant nomen Verbi producto, ita appropriant nomen memoriae principio
productivo.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 42219–30.
119 Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., dubium 2, n. 23: “Aut quaeris quomodo est de facto,
aut investigas cui convenit per se. Si primum, tunc ut supra quaero quid intelligitur per
intellectum, memoriam, intellectionem, vel naturam? Aut aliquam personarum, aut tres
simul, aut quartam rem. hSii pro quarta re vel pro tribus simul vel pro Filio et Spiritu Sancto,
patet quod non sit ponendum aliquod istorum esse principium elicitivum. Si pro Patre,
certum est quod Pater producit; non tamen ideo concedendum est quod natura divina
generat, vel memoria vel intellectus, quia ista non sunt nomina notionalia nec concreta, ideo
non supponunt proprie pro Patre. Sed si velis sic intelligere: memoria vel natura generat, id
est generans est essentia divina, esset consequenter dicendum.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1),
p. 4227–18.
120 See nn. 115 and 118 above, and for the same point see Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., dubium
1, n. 6 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], p. 4189–17).

121 Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., dubium 5, nn. 37–39 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 42520–
42617).
122 Chatton, I Rep., d. 6, q. un., dubium 2, n. 14: “Dices: sicut productio activa est dicere,
ita productio passiva Filii est dici; sed illud quod dicitur proprie est Verbum et notitia; igitur
etc.—Dico quod sicut Filius per appropriationem dicitur Verbum, ita productio eius passiva
vocatur ‘dici’; et activa ‘dicere’ tantum per appropriationem; et principium productionis
eodem modo vocatur memoria; frequenter etiam dicunt Sancti quod Filius est sapientia de
sapientia.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 1), p. 4208–15.
There are books by Doctors that are full of “declarative” [knowledge] and
[claims] about the intellect converting itself over itself, and many other
amazingly subtle things, all of which I understand to be said about God
through appropriation alone, because from the fact that I will appropriate to
[the Son] the names ‘wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’, I will appropriate to him the
name of most perfect knowledge, which is had with deliberation mediating
and with love mediating.123
All of the elaborate explanatory mechanism that Henry had built up—and
we could just as well be talking about Scotus or Auriol here—were subtle,
but, for Chatton, they ultimately said nothing proper about God.
Just on the basis of the material examined here, it is clear that ‘appro-
priation’ is the key word in Chatton’s use of the psychological model. For
Chatton, sometimes terms were appropriated to specific persons to com-
bat heresy, sometimes on account of piety. But Chatton’s main reason for
the appropriation of specific terms to a specific person in a specific way, the
reason to which he returns time and again, was on account of the image—
as we saw above (at and around n. 116) to be the case with the memory as
source of the Word’s production, where the first part of the image is appro-
priated to the first divine person. This is fairly easy to see with the Father
and the Son: memory as productive, Word as produced. But what about the
Son and Holy Spirit? What justifies the appropriation of certain psycholog-
ical terms to one or the other of them? Here Chatton turns to the notion of
“assimilation”. In answer to the question “what is the cause of ‘love’ being
appropriated to the Holy Spirit?” Chatton says:
Because in our soul there are two productions, namely of knowledge, which
is per se assimilative from its nature (ex vi sua), and the production of Love,
which is not per se assimilative, and from our image we rise to knowledge
of the Trinity, so we appropriate to the first person the productive source
of knowledge here. And to the first production in that highest intellectual
nature, which from its nature (ex vi sua) is per se assimilative, we appropriate
the terms for the production of the second part of our image, and we appro-
priate to the first product there the terms ‘Word’ and ‘knowledge’, which are
names of the first product, i.e. of the second part of the created image. And
we appropriate to the third person in the divine the terms for the third part
123 Chatton, I Rep., d. 27, q. un., n. 65: “Ad primum argumentum principale, aliqui libri
Doctorum replentur de ‘declarativo’ et quod intellectus convertit se supra se, et multa

mirabilia subtilia, quae omnia intelligo dici de Deo per appropriationem tantum, quia ex
quo appropriabo sibi nomen sapientiae et notitiae, appropriabo sibi nomen perfectissimae
notitiae quae habetur mediante deliberatione et mediante amore, et sic patet ad primum.”
Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), pp. 20524–2063.
712 chapter eleven
of our image and for its production, which is not per se assimilative. And
this is because the production of the third person in the divine is not per se
assimilative, just as neither is the production of love, which is the third part
of our image.124
Here we see the major way that Walter Chatton justifies his fully appropria-
tional use of the psychological model in trinitarian theology. When we look
at human psychology, knowledge, the second part of the image, resembles
the source from which it comes, and its production is thus “assimilative”;
the third part of the image, love, on the other hand, does not resemble the
source from which it comes, and its production is thus non-assimilative.
Since the production of the second person of the Trinity is assimilative, we
appropriate to both the second person and his production terms having to
do with the second part of the image. Mutatis mutandis the same is true of
the non-assimilative production of the third divine person.
The question begs to be asked, however, how we know in the first place
that the production of the second person is assimilative, while the produc-
tion of the third person is not? Chatton has no particular problems answer-
ing this: perhaps unsurprisingly, he claims we know this only on account
of the faith. We read in the Athanasian creed, for instance, that the Holy
Spirit is “not made nor created nor born but proceeding”; on this basis it
can be immediately deduced that the procession of the Holy Spirit is not
generation, and hence not assimilative.125 Further, if we did not say that the
124 Chatton, I Rep., d. 10, q. un., a. 2, n. 28: “… quia in anima nostra est duplex productio,
scilicet notitiae quae est per se assimilativa ex vi sua, et productio amoris quae non est
per se assimilativa, et ex imagine nostra assurgimus ad notitiam trinitatis, ideo principium
productivum notitiae hic appropriamus primae personae. Et primae productioni quae est
in illa summa natura intellectuali, heti quae ex vi (ed.: via) sua est per se assimilativa,
appropriamus vocabulum productionis secundae partis imaginis nostrae, et primo producto
ibi happropriamusi vocabulum Verbi et notitiae, quae sunt nomina primi producti, id est
secundae partis imaginis creatae. Et vocabulum tertiae partis imaginis nostrae et suae
productionis, quae non est per se assimilativa, appropriamus tertiae personae in divinis;
et hoc ideo quia nec illa productio tertiae personae in divinis est per se assimilativa, sicut
nec productio amoris, quae est tertia pars imaginis nostrae.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2),
p. 420–34. For a similar statement, see ibid., d. 13, q. un., n. 13 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2],
p. 3722–26), and see n. 109 above, on the production of the Holy Spirit as non-assimilative.
125 Chatton, I Rep., d. 13, q. un., n. 17: “… illo modo innotescit quo et quod producitur Spiritus
Sanctus, fide scilicet, quia fides dicit “non factus nec creatus nec genitus, sed procedens”. Ex
hoc statim habeo dicere quod non est generatio, nec per consequens per se assimilativa.” Ed.
Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 3811–15. In the same spot, n. 16 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2],
p. 381–10) as well as in d. 27, n. 45 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 2], pp. 19926–2001), Chatton
defends the fact that the persons can be totally similar, equally perfect, and of the same
species, and yet their productions differ in terms of assimilative and non-assimilative, by
production of the Son was assimilative, then we could not explain why John
says in his Gospel “In principio erat Verbum”. Why did John appropriate to
the Son the term ‘word’ in the first place? For Chatton, the reason is that the
Son’s production, like a concept’s, is assimilative.126
Walter Chatton, then, made the entire psychological model metaphor-
ical, on both the de facto and per se levels of discussion. Up to this point,
the only thinker we have seen do this was Durand of St. Pourçain, who like
Chatton claimed that the Son was Word and the Holy Spirit Love through
appropriation alone. Interesting in this regard is that, in his later Lectura,
although Chatton will continue to hold that neither the Son nor the Holy
Spirit are produced by any intellect or will distinct in any way in God,127
nevertheless he appears to tone down his complete rejection of the psycho-
logical model, allowing that there is a sense in which ‘Word’ can be said
only of the Son, since the Son is the product of the divine nature as it is
intellectual, and likewise there is a sense in which ‘Love’ can be said only
of the Holy Spirit, since he is the product of the divine nature insofar as it
is a willing nature.128 In the Reportatio, however, Chatton’s dismissal of the
appealing to essentially identical persons differing from the nature of their production (ex vi
productionis); this seems to be a difficult point for Chatton’s theory, since it looks like he is
reintroducing properties and productions distinct in one way or another from the persons. In
contrast to this point in Chatton’s doctrine, in Gregory of Rimini (Ch. 12, §5B below) we will
see that no reason is given for the difference between the productions, and concomitantly
for the appropriation of psychological terms.
126 Chatton, I Rep., d. 27, q. un., dubium 3, n. 43: “Dico quod oportet dicere quod assimila-
tiva magis, quia aliter non posset ratione assimilationis appropriari Filio quod esset Verbum.”
127 In the Lectura Chatton continues to deny that there are distinct intellect and will in
God, although, of course, God is both a knower and a willer, and these positions plays a great
role in this view of his. He also uses an argument that we saw him employ in the I Rep.: that
if, e.g., the Holy Spirit were produced by the will, then he would be Love more than Father or
Son would be Love, which is incorrect (cp. at and around nn. 105, 110, 112 above). E.g., Chatton,
Lectura, d. 10, q. 1, a. 2, n. 14: “Sumendo tamen volitivum ut est nomen attributale per se idem
significans quod voluntas seu potentia volendi, videretur dicendum quod non conveniat illi
rei in quantum est volitiva nec in quantum est voluntas quod ipsa sit principium ibi, quia si
sic, sequeretur quod Spiritus Sanctus magis esset amor, qui est perfectio simpliciter, quam
aliae personae divinae, quia non apparet quod illa res in quantum est potentia volitiva sit
principium productivum respectu alicuius amoris nisi tantum illius qui per se opponitur
odio et inaffectioni respectu boni; sed amor divinus sic sumptus est perfectio simpliciter
melius convenire cuilibet personarum divinarum quam non convenire; igitur etc.” Ed. Wey
and Etzkorn (vol. 3), pp. 16626–1672.
128 E.g., Chatton, Lectura, d. 10, q. 1, a. 2, n. 29: “Alio autem modo sumitur amor in divinis,
pro producto per naturam rationalem in quantum volitiva est, et isto modo tantum convenit
Spiritui Sancto. Quia sicut sumendo nomen Verbi pro producto per naturam rationalem in
quantum est natura intellectualis, sic solus Filius in divinis est Verbum, quia solus Filius
714 chapter eleven
psychological model appears to be uncompromising, and, as was also the

case with his adherence to Praepositinianism, his rejection of the psycho-
logical model is motivated by the search for simplicity. Not only are there
no attributes in God, like intellect or will, that could serve de facto as the
elicitive sources of the emanations, the three divine persons are God to the
same degree and in the same way with no differences. There is an order
between the persons, to be sure, arising from God’s very nature, but the
persons are distinct in and of themselves, and this fits together with the
fact that for Chatton there are no special characteristics or properties that
could set one person apart from the other over and above their order—and
it seems that for Chatton we only know about this order from revelation.
Thus, Chatton’s ideas on the psychological model, paralleling his ideas on
the personal properties and constitution, are an exercise in explaining basi-
cally nothing, thereby avoiding the introduction of any explanatory devices
that might compromise God’s simplicity. Simplicity, for Chatton, is “the gen-
eral attribute”,129 driving his trinitarian theology and overriding all other
explanatory considerations.
Taken altogether Chatton’s trinitarian theology is a fascinating study in
the effects of the search for simplicity. Simplicity is the guiding motivation
in Chatton’s Praepositinianism, the rejection of any distinction within the
persons and the acceptance of se ipsis distinct persons, as well as in his
appropriational use of the psychological model. In both of these cases,
the desire to preserve divine simplicity in the strictest sense imaginable
trumped the desire for explaining God’s trinitarian reality. In this way,
Chatton’s trinitarian theology offers a bold example of a new theological
aesthetic, on which explanation as a theoretical desideratum is heavily
devalued insofar as it might be construed to conflict with divine simplicity.
Indeed, on the de facto level there really is no explanation in Chatton’s
trinitarian theology: it boils down to three person are one God and there
is no fourth thing. This situation is mitigated by Chatton’s clever use of the
distinction between de facto and per se levels of discussion, through which
he could provide an explanation for the statements found in Scripture, the
est ibi productus per naturam divinam in quantum intellectualis est, ita sumendo nomen
amoris generaliter pro producto per naturam divinam in quantum est natura volitiva, sic
solus Spiritus Sanctus est amor in divinis, quia solus ipse est sic productus.” Ed. Wey and
Etzkorn (vol. 3), p. 17017–25. This change of view deserves more attention than I can give it
here, but see also below, in the section on William of Rubio, Ch. 12, §4.
129 For “simplicitas est generale attributum”, see the italicized text in n. 9 above.
Fathers, and recent theologians that spoke as if there really were distinc-
tion in God. This apparently unique marginalization strategy merely under-
lines how inventive medieval theologians could be when confronted with
authoritative statements that seemingly contradicted a view of their own.
Yet, for all its cleverness, not everyone was satisfied with Chatton’s method
in trinitarian theology and the use of positio impossibilis that undergirded
it. In particular, as we will see, Adam Wodeham criticized it; and although
Wodeham was by no means hostile to the search for simplicity, he was
not prepared to go quite so far down that particular road as Chatton had
been.
2. Adam Wodeham
Adam Wodeham was born in 1298, or a little before, near Southampton in

southern England. It is certain that he was studying at one of the English
Franciscan convents, perhaps London, in 1321–1323, and here he both at-
tended the lectures that formed the basis for Chatton’s Reportatio and was
in close contact with William Ockham, to whom Wodeham showed reports
that he made of one of Chatton’s lecture series. It seems pretty clear that
Wodeham was something of a whiz kid, already in his early twenties offer-
ing penetrating criticism of Chatton and, on his own testimony, influencing
Ockham’s ideas on the nature of indivisibles. He delivered several sets of
Sentences lectures, some in London (from which came the so-called Lectura
prima, which is now lost), in Norwich (between 1329 and 1332 from which
stems the Reportatio contained in the Lectura secunda that Wood and Gál
have edited), and finally at Oxford around 1332 according to the most recent
findings. From these last lectures stem the still mostly unedited Ordinatio
Oxoniensis, which, however, was abbreviated in the late fourteenth century
by Henry Totting of Oyta; in 1512 this abbreviation was published in Paris
under the auspices of John Major. We also have from Wodeham two trea-
tises that deal with the continuum, infinity, and indivisibles. Sometime in
the period 1335 through 1337 Wodeham was Franciscan regent master in the-
ology at Oxford. He died in 1358.130
130 For Wodeham and his intellectual context and heritage, see especially Courtenay 1978a;
there (pp. 183–234) Courtenay gives question and manuscript lists for all surviving versions
of Wodeham’s commentary. Rega Wood’s introduction to the edition of Wodeham’s Lectura
secunda (vol. 1, pp. 5*–49*) gives a good overview of Wodeham’s life, Wodeham’s relationship
with his most significant intellectual interlocutors, and salient features of his thought. Wood
716 chapter eleven
Just those of Wodeham’s writings that still survive are voluminous, and
trinitarian theology was a major preoccupation of his. Surprisingly, how-
ever, besides Hester Gelber’s careful study,131 to my knowledge Wodeham’s
trinitarian theology remains basically unexplored. This is regrettable: Wo-
deham was an extremely gifted thinker who wrote extensively on the Trin-
ity, and his views, especially in the still mostly unedited Ordinatio, deserve
detailed analysis. Here, however, I can make only the most modest begin-
ning on filling that gap, since my aim is to indicate in brief compass where
Wodeham fits into the trajectory of the development of later-medieval trini-
tarian theology, and especially the search for simplicity, that we have been
following here.
That Wodeham was engaged in his own search for simplicity is clear from
his ideas on the divine attributes and on the psychological model. When
Wodeham addresses the question whether in the divine there is in reality
(a parte rei) any non-identity between God’s nature and the divine will,132
he argues in three conclusions that 1) whatever it is that corresponds to
our concepts of, e.g., divine will and intellect are not things distinct among
themselves, 2) nor are they formalities distinct among themselves or for-
mally distinct, instead 3) they are utterly the same with absolutely no dis-
tinction.133 He appeals in all cases to God’s “highest simplicity”, and implicit
argues there (pp. 30*–38*) that 1) the Ordinatio Oxoniensis postdates the Lectura secunda and
2) that the Lectura secunda is a reportatio (pp. 9*–10*) of Wodeham’s Norwich lectures (both
pace Courtenay). For an introduction to Wodeham’s thought with bibliography, see Wood
2003. See also Schabel 2002b, 360–362, on the dating, and passim for some of Wodeham’s
ideas. Most recently, see the webpage The Adam Wodeham Critical Edition Project, run
by John T. Slotemaker and Jeffrey C. Witt (http://jeffreycwitt.com/adamwodeham/), which
contains updated mss. and bibliographic information, as well as text editions.
131 For Wodeham’s treatment of esp. trinitarian logic, see Gelber 1974, 235–264 (and more
specific references below). In his monumental study of later-medieval trinitarian theol-

ogy, Michael Schmaus mentions Wodeham just twice (Schmaus 1930a, 550 n. 79, where
Schmaus claims that Wodeham defended a kind of Praepositinianism, and in the same
footnote on p. 553, Schmaus reports that Marsilius of Inghen in d. 27 of his Sent. com-
mentary lumps Wodeham together with Grosseteste as holding that the properties con-
stitutive of the persons are absolutes. See q. 30, a. 1 [= d. 27, a. 1] of Marsilius’ I Sent.
[ed. 1501, f. 121rb–vb, esp. 121va] for the claim; on Marsilius’ trinitarian thought, see Möhler
1949).
132 Adam de Wodeham, Lectura Secunda, d. 6, q. 1: “Utrum a parte rei in divinis sit aliqua
non-identitas inter naturam Dei et voluntatem divinam.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), pp. 278–
312. See on this matter in Wodeham, Gelber 1974, 235–240.
133 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, §§ 3–5: “Et prima conclusio sit ista quod intellec-
tus Dei vel sapientia vel volitio quae Deus est, vel in Deo est, non sunt res distinctae inter
se vel a natura Dei … propter summam simplicitatem .... Secunda conclusio est quod sapi-
in his rejection of the formal distinction is an insistence that the only

types of identity and distinction are real identity and real distinction.134
For Wodeham, when dealing with the extramental world, there is no dis-
tinction “less” than a real distinction. When it comes to refuting argu-
ments in favor of a formal distinction between the attributes, Wodeham is
just as concerned as Ockham had been to show that Scotus and William
of Alnwick—Wodeham adduces arguments from them both135—were not
entitled to reason from the distinction between the emanations to the for-
mal distinction between their sources, intellect and will. Thus, Scotus had
argued that the distinction of the emanations necessarily presupposes a
more-than-merely-rational distinction of their elicitive sources. Wodeham
asks Scotus, which emanations he means? It is true, according to Wodeham,
that passive generation and passive spiration presuppose as their source,
respectively, the really distinct Father, and the Father and the Son; as for
the active emanations, appealing to a view of his that we will return to,
entia divina et volitio divina et deitas hnon sunti inter se distinctae formalitates eiusdem rei
absolutae, circumscripta omni cognitione qua apprehendantur … Tertia conclusio est quod
sapientia divina omnibus modis a parte rei est essentia divina vel eadem essentiae quibus
essentia divina est idem essentiae divinae.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), pp. 280–285.
134 For summa simplicitas, see, e.g., n. 133 above. Wodeham’s proof against the formal
distinction attempts to show that if a thing and its formality are not in reality the same in all
ways (if they are the same in all ways, then Wodeham has his point), then “sicut formalitas
b sive sapientiae non est a sive formalitas essentiae, ita nec erit res essentiae” (ed. Gál and
Wood [vol. 2], p. 28327–28). Wodeham notes that this is really all he needs to show (“… quod
falsum est, cum nihil sit in divinis quod non sit realiter essentia vel res essentiae”; ibid.,
p. 28328–29), but recognizing that the argument depends on a flat denial of any distinction
mediate between real distinction and real identity, he continues by arguing that if reality
and formality are not absolutely the same in reality, then the reality must differ from the
formality by a formality, and hence there must be a formality of the reality differing formally
from the original formality, in which case it can be asked how the formality of the reality
differs from the reality, and the answer will be by a formality, and an infinite process of
postulating distinct formalities will ensue (“Si realitas essentiae et formalitas … non sunt
idem omnibus modis a parte rei, igitur … alia erit formalitas realitahhtiiis (ed.: hseui realitas)
essentiae ab ipsa formalitate essentiae. Et de formalitate realitatis essentiae quaero ut prius:
aut est eadem omnibus modis a parte rei illius realitatis aut non. Si sic, ut prius. Si non,
processus in infinitum”; p. 28331–36). This argument is reproduced in Wodeham’s I Ordinatio,
d. 33, q. 1, a. 1 (ed. in Gelber 1974, 629 n. 1); the argument, as Gelber (1974, 235, cf. 180) notes,
is descended from Ockham (Ord., d. 2, q. 11 [OTh II, p. 3682–25]), who argues in this way
against there being distinct formalities in God, in contradistinction to property and essence
being formally distinct. In contrast to Ockham, Wodeham denies that there is any difference
between maintaining “they are distinct or not the same formally” and “they are distinct
formalities” (Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, § 4 [ed. cit. (vol. 2), p. 28341–45]).
135 For Wodeham’s presentation of these arguments, see Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, §16 (ed.
Gál and Wood [vol. 2], pp. 304–306).

718 chapter eleven
Wodeham denies that they, “any more than deity itself, either are elicited
or have a source.”136 Thus, in reply to Scotus and Alnwick, Wodeham affirms
that the active productions have no source (they are unelicited), while the
only source of the passive productions are the persons doing the producing,
i.e. Father, and Father and Son. The attributes do not even enter into
the picture. In this context Wodeham explicitly acknowledges adopting
several of Ockham’s positions, arguing for example that “the same utterly
indistinct source could be a natural source with respect to one for which
it is the source, and a free hsourcei with respect to another”.137 But as we
have seen, Ockham still attempted to hold the psychological model in
an extremely attenuated fashion: for Ockham, the psychological model is
a literal description of God’s trinitarian reality, despite the fact that we
have no idea why or how this is so. Wodeham, like Chatton and their
contemporary Parisian confrère Francis of Marchia (Ch. 12, § 2B, below),
was willing to give up in its entirety the strong use of the psychological
model. In fact, Wodeham simply states that, e.g., ‘memory’ applies to the
Father and ‘word’ applies to the Son “through appropriation only or in
some similar way, and this is indeed what I think.”138 Wodeham does not go
into any great detail about the way that this appropriation works, although
he does seem to suggest that it has to do with the order of production
between the persons corresponding to the order of production found in
the human mind.139 What he does not leave to the reader’s imagination is
136 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, § 16: “… distinctio emanationum [[hpersona-
rumi]] divinarum necessario praesupponit distinctionem principiorum elicitivorum, et non

distinctionem rationis, igitur distinctionem eorum ex natura rei. Respondeo: de quibus ema-
nationibus loqueris tu? Aut de passivis, et hoc est verum, quia generatio passiva praesupponit
secundum originem Patrem ipsum, et spiratio passiva, Patrem et Filium .... Si loqueris de
emanationibus activis, illae non eliciuntur nec principiantur non plus quam deitas ipsa …”
Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), pp. 30425–30534. The editors add ‘personarum’ but it is in fact an
unnecessary emendation. On Wodeham and the unelicited nature of the emanations, see at
and around nn. 161–173 below.
137 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, § 16: “Et ulterius concedo cum Ockham quod idem
principium penitus indistinctum posset esse principium naturale respectu unius principiati
et liberum respectu alterius.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 30548–49. On Ockham’s position,
see Ch. 10, above, at nn. 95–96.
138 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, § 17: “… dico quod actum dicendi Verbum, id est
generationem activam, esse actum memoriae potest multipliciter intelligi .... Aut quarto, per
appropriationem tantum vel aliquo simili modo, et hoc bene volo.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2),
p. 30739–40,46–47.
139 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, § 17: “Ratio autem appropriationis, vel aequiv-
alentis responsionis, praetacta est una de ordine productionum in divinis, et in anima

intellectionis vel volitionis.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 30749–50. I have been unable to
any possibility that he thinks that the psychological model can account
for God’s trinitarian reality, claiming with no caveats that it can be con-
ceded that in God, e.g., “memory says the Word” only if through appro-
priation the Father is called memory.140 Thus, Wodeham goes farther than
Ockham did in eliminating the strong use of the psychological model: for
him psychological terms are used about the Trinity through appropriation
only.
Does Wodeham also defend the second major aspect of the search for
simplicity as we have seen it in Walter Chatton? Is Wodeham a Praeposi-
tinian? Wodeham addresses Chatton’s view directly when he asks whether
the divine essence generates or is generated. Here, Wodeham presents Chat-
ton’s view by reproducing his insistent questioning and his answers. Thus,
Wodeham has Chatton ask: in the question “does the essence generate”,
what do you understand by ‘essence’? It cannot be either the Son or the
Holy Spirit, because neither of these persons generate, and for the same rea-
son it cannot be all three persons at once or any two of them. Nor in that
question can ‘essence’ mean the Father, because we know from the Fourth
Lateran Council that the essence does not generate, while the Father does
generate. But finally, it cannot be some fourth thing in God, since this also
the Fourth Lateran Council prohibits. Chatton, as Wodeham presents him,
denies that there is any meaningful sense according to which we can say
that the essence generates, even denying that the essence qua Father gen-
erates, since Lateran IV tells us the Father generates but the essence does
not.141 Wodeham forcibly rejects Chatton’s position as a whole, saying that
it will lead either to the Sabellian heresy or especially to the Arian heresy,
i.e. that “the three persons are really distinct among themselves, so that
none of them is the other, neither essentially nor personally, neither per se
locate the discussion that Wodeham refers to (… praetacta est …; the reference in the critical
edition, loc. cit., appears to be mistaken).
140 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, § 17: “Nisi enim vocabulum memoriae permittatur
ibi sumi (ed.: summi) aliquando notionaliter, aliter quam vocabulum deitatis vel essentiae,
non plus habet concedi proprie quod memoria ibi dicit Verbum quam quod deitas generet
Filium. Sed per appropriationem bene potest concedi quod memoria, id est Pater, qui per
appropriationem dicitur memoria, dicit Verbum; vel alio modo simili exponantur huius-
modi.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), pp. 30752–30857.
141 For Wodeham’s presentation of this view, see Lectura secunda, d. 5, q. un., §2 (ed. Gál
and Wood [vol. 2], p. 2597–15). For Chatton’s corresponding text, see I Reportatio, d. 5, q. 1. a.
1, nn. 30–31 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 393–394). Rega Wood mentions this aspect of
Wodeham’s dispute with Chatton in her Introduction to the edition of the Lectura secunda
(vol. 1, pp. 13*–14*). See also n. 38 above for Wodeham’s criticism of Chatton in this context.
720 chapter eleven
nor not per se, instead [they will be] absolutely [distinct] …”142 In his criti-
cism of Chatton’s view, Wodeham concentrates on what he considers to be
Chatton’s all too weak understanding of the divine essence. For Wodeham,
Chatton’s claim that “three persons are one God and there is no fourth thing”
erased the essential identity of the persons by erasing the divine essence
itself. In particular, Wodeham takes Chatton’s view to boil down to “the
three persons only are the three persons, so that they are not one essence
or one God except by taking one essence or one God for the three persons
at once.”143 In effect, Wodeham maintains that Chatton’s efforts to eliminate
any parts within the persons, resulted in the elimination of the essence itself.
And Wodeham thinks that this is completely unacceptable. The divine
essence for Wodeham is precisely the mark of the unity of the three per-
sons, and Chatton’s tendency to eradicate from his theology any mention of
essence (and property) leads Wodeham to liken the divine persons on Chat-
ton’s view to “a collective unity … and then there is true distinction without
any essential identity, [agreeing in this] with Arius”.144 Thus, in Wodeham’s
eyes Chatton’s version of Praepositinianism led inevitably to heresy: three
persons who were essentially distinct, forming a unity only as some sort of
aggregate or collection. Wodeham, then, gives his own reply to Chatton:
I say that what ought to be understood by ‘divine essence’ ought not to be
unknown to a theologian. For it is deity or the first entity, and we ought to
understand through ‘divine essence’ neither precisely the Father nor precisely
the Son nor precisely the Holy Spirit nor precisely the three persons at once
nor precisely any two of them at once, but an entity that is all [of them] at
once and each and every one of them individually, just as the Church teaches,
and neither is it a fourth thing other than the persons, and this entity is most
truly and most really each and every one of the persons individually and all
[of them] at once.145
142 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 5, q. un., § 2: “Istam responsionem tenere non audeo,
quia nescio cavere quin incurram in sententiam Arianam vel Sabellianam .... Nam tres
personae sunt inter se realiter distinctae, ita quod nulla istarum est alia, nec essentialiter
nec personaliter, nec per se nec non per se, immo absolute …” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2),
p. 26018–22.
143 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 5, q. un., § 2: “… si tres personae tantum sint tres
personae, ita quod non sint una essentia vel unus Deus nisi sumendo unam essentiam vel
unum Deum pro tribus personis simul, tunc non video quod esset in divinis nisi unitas
collectiva qualem posuit Ioachim, et tunc vera distinctio absque omni identitate essentiali
cum Ariano.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 26043–47.
145 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 5, q. un., § 2: “… dico quod non debet esse ignotum
theologo quid intelligi debeat per divinam essentiam. Ipsa enim hesti deitas, sive prima
This seems to be a fairly clear dismissal of the idea that there is no essence
as such in God, and one can surmise that Wodeham rejects Praepositinian-
ism and holds that, in order to arrive at an adequate trinitarian theology,
we need to postulate both essence and personal properties in God. If this
is so, then the question must be: on Wodeham’s view, just how do essence,
property, and person relate to one another?
An answer to that question and a statement of Wodeham’s attitude
towards Praepositinus’ position is found when he deals directly with the
issues of the distinction between the persons and the nature of the personal
properties, a discussion that Wodeham puts under the heading “whether
the divine persons are made distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis)”.146 After
considering in detail Scotus’ arguments for absolute persons,147 Wodeham
comes out weakly in support of the “common” position that the persons
are distinct on account of the relations between them, saying, however,
that he can see no reason, either in terms of the arguments offered or
in terms of Church doctrine, why in principle one could not support the
theory of absolute persons.148 Nevertheless, he replies to arguments that
Scotus and Ockham had given both in support of absolute properties and
in opposition to the relation account, Wodeham trying at least to show that
the relation account had some intrinsic plausibility to it.149 In a reply to
entitas; et nec praecise Patrem debemus per divinam essentiam intelligere, nec praecise
Filium, nec praecise Spiritum Sanctum, nec praecise tres personas simul, nec praecise
aliquas duas de eis simul, sed aliquam entitatem quae est omnes simul et quaelibet earum
singillatim, sicut docet Ecclesia, nec tamen est quartum a tribus personis, quae hentitasi
est verissime et realissime quaelibet earum singillatim et simul omnes.” Ed. Gál and Wood
(vol. 2), p. 26282–89.
146 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1: “Utrum personae divinae se ipsis distinguantur”
(ed. Gál and Wood [vol. 3], pp. 413–439).

147 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, §§ 2–4 (ed. Gál and Wood [vol. 3], pp. 414–420).
148 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 4: “Istas vias hscil., viae tenentes personas
divinas constitui per absolutai licet non audeam asserere esse falsas, donec Ecclesia aliter
determinaverit quam adhuc viderim, quia omnes determinationes circa hoc ante tempus
Scoti, ipse hScotusi collegit … pono hmei ad respondendum secundam viam communem
hscil., via relationisi, pro qua tamen nihil arguo, quia tam rationes quam auctoritates quae
pro illa esse possint, quantum mihi apparet, sufficienter solvit Scotus … et ideo tantummodo
ponam me ad respondendum rationibus iam adductis, quarum multae taediosae mihi viden-
tur et brigosae.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3), p. 42044–46,52–54,58–59. Wodeham agrees explicitly
with Ockham, and appeals to Ockham’s razor in support, that whether you call the personal
properties relation or origin is immaterial—in God origin and the relation corresponding to
it are utterly the same; ibid. § 10 (ed. cit., vol. 3, p. 4348–18).
149 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, §§ 5–9, passim (ed. Gál and Wood [vol. 3],
pp. 421–433).
722 chapter eleven
one of Scotus’ arguments against the relation account, Wodeham offers

some general remarks on how to understand essence, property, and per-
son:
I posit that each and every divine person is per se primo modo deity. And
[each person] is also per se primo modo a relative entity, e.g., active or passive
generation or active or passive spiration. And I say that one of these—
we allow ourselves to speak with some impropriety—is per se primo modo
relative, but not vice-versa. For deity, which is this relation and this [relation]
and this [relation] together (communiter), is none of these per se primo modo;
but, on the other hand, each of the divine relations is per se primo modo deity.
And so none of [the relations] constitute anything with deity, because each
of them, internal to its quidditative simplicity, is essentially deity.150
Each divine person is (in the strongest sense of that word) both essence and
property (i.e., relation); for instance, Father is essence and paternity. Never-
theless, there is a lack of symmetry between the essence and the properties.
Each property—which, again, simply is the person in the strongest sense
possible—is the essence, taking ‘is’ in that strongest possible sense, per se
primo modo. On the other hand, the essence is not totally identical to any of
the properties; clearly so, since the essence is not only one of the properties,
but is each of the three properties equally and together (communiter). There
is a metaphysical asymmetry, then, between property and essence: property
is essence, but essence is more than any of the properties, since it is in fact all
the properties.151 This view allows Wodeham to solve two trinitarian difficul-
ties. First, he can argue that there is no need for a formal distinction between
150 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 6: “Sed pono quod persona quaelibet divina est
per se primo modo deitas ipsa. Et est etiam per se primo modo entitas aliqua relativa, puta
generatio activa vel passiva vel spiratio activa vel passiva. Et dico quod istorum unum, ut ita
loqui liceat cum aliqua improprietate, est per se primo modo relativum sed non e converso.
Deitas enim, quae est communiter haec et haec et haec relatio, nulla istorum est per se
primo modo; sed econtra quaelibet relatio divina est per se primo modo deitas ipsa. Et ideo
nulla earum cum deitate aliquid constituit, quia quaelibet earum intra suam simplicitatem
quiditativam est essentialiter deitas ipsa cum qua deberet aliquid constituere.” Ed. Gál and
Wood (vol. 2), pp. 42326–42434. This text continues in n. 153 below.
151 Moving from this metaphysical plane to the corresponding logical plane, Wodeham
neatly captures the way that person, property, and essence relate to each other through
his use of the distinction between identic predication and inherent predication. In identic
predication, one of the terms supposits more broadly than the other term does. In inherent
(or formal or denominative) predication, on the other hand, subject term and predicate term
supposit in precisely the same way. The logical asymmetry in identic predication clearly
mirrors the metaphysical asymmetry Wodeham postulates: the property is absolutely the
same as the divine essence, while the essence is not absolutely the same as each of the
properties, since the essence can also be predicated of the other two properties. Wodeham
essence and property, pace both Scotus and Ockham. For Wodeham, the
mere fact that there is an asymmetry or (to use his term) non-convertibility
between person and property, on the one hand, and essence, on the other,
does not call for the postulation of a distinction between these entities.152
The second trinitarian challenge Wodeham can address is the problem of
personal constitution, as the last sentence in the quotation above (at n. 150)
shows. Although Wodeham quite clearly rejected Chatton’s Praepositini-
anism, he nevertheless was well aware of Chatton’s main motivation for
holding the view: personal constitution, and the difficulties that it created
for divine simplicity. As far as Wodeham was concerned, his own model
of the divine persons did not require constitution: quidditatively intrin-
sic to each person is a property, and quidditatively intrinsic to that very
same person is the essence. The fact that the same essence is also quid-
ditatively intrinsic to two other persons does not mean that the persons
are in any way constituted out of different constituent parts. For some-
thing to be constituted, according to Wodeham, it has to be made up of
parts that can be understood separately from each other; but this is defi-
nitely not how it is in God, where the property is the essence primo modo
dicendi per se. Since property cannot be understood without essence, it
cannot even be imagined that the person is constituted by property and
essence.153 Each person just is one divine property and the essence, and
we need not resort to personal constitution to explain the fact that three
really distinct persons are essentially one God. In fact, according to Wode-
ham, it is a contradiction to think that something is added to the essence
uses the distinction between identic and inherent predication to deal with some of the
problems the Trinity raised for Aristotelian syllogistic logic; see on this, Gelber 1974, 235–
264, esp. 243–244.
152 Gelber 1974, 246–247, deals with Wodeham’s rejection of Scotus and Ockham on
the formal distinction, and see especially the text she presents (pp. 636–637 n. 24) from
Wodeham’s I Ordinatio Oxoniensis, d. 33, q. 1, a. 3.
153 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 6 (text continued from n. 150 above): “Ad hoc
autem ut aliqua qualitercumque aliquid per-se-unum vel qualitercumque unum-per-se con-

stituerent, requireretur quod utrumque in suo ordine haberet intrinsece suum completum
intellectum alio excluso. Si enim b sit per se primo modo a, numquam poterit aliquid con-
stituere cum a. Iam enim antequam apportes ipsum a, ex quo b est essentialiter et per se
primo modo a, habetur et ponitur ipsum a. Et ita non solum non poterit in re aliquid per
se unum constituere cum ipso a, immo nec contingit absque inclusione contradictionis hoc
imaginari.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3), p. 42435–42. I think it likely that Wodeham learned
something here from Auriol’s ideas on the indistinction between property and essence; for
Wodeham’s presentation of some of these ideas of Auriol’s, see at and around n. 168 below;
for Auriol’s own views, see Ch. 9, above, at and around nn. 8–22.
724 chapter eleven
in order to arrive at a person: anything you think or imagine to be “in” God

is perfectly the essence. So, personal constitution, in Wodeham’s lights, is
nonsense.154
This view is carried over directly into Wodeham’s explicit considerations
of the Praepositinian view that the persons are distinct se ipsis. The term
‘to be made distinct in and of themselves natively or on their own account’
(distingui se ipsis primo vel se totis) when applied to the persons can be
understood in three ways according to Wodeham. First, it might mean that
the persons were made personally distinct by nothing belonging to them
but only in and of themselves. Second, it might also mean that the persons
were made distinct from each other by something belonging to them in
the way that Aristotle says self-moving things move, i.e. natively (primo)
and not through anything but themselves. Third, it could be understood
to mean that what makes the persons distinct are convertibly and natively
and adequately the persons who are made distinct.155 In the first way, the
Father and the Son are made distinct in and of themselves natively, since
they are distinct on the basis of their properties paternity and filiation,
and each of these properties is perfectly identical (per se primo modo) with
the person it makes distinct; this is just as true for the Holy Spirit with
respect to the Father and the Son, but it is not true of the Father and the
Son with respect to the Holy Spirit.156 In short: you cannot say that the
154 See, e.g., Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, §6: “Iterum dico in proposito quod
repugnantia plana est et contradictio imaginari quodcumque positivum in divinis quod cum
divinitate personam constituat. Quia super quodcumque positivum ceciderit imaginatio,
iam cecidit super illud quod est per se primo modo intrinsece et quiditative ipsa deitas haec,
sed tamen hhnonii omnino sic e converso.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3), p. 42443–47. The ‘non’
was added by me for sense.
155 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 12: “… ‘distingui se ipsis primo’ vel ‘se totis’
personas divinas potest dupliciter intelligi, personaliter et tantum personaliter. Uno modo
quod distinguantur personaliter et nullis sui sed tantum se ipsis. Alio modo quod quolibet
sui distinguatur una persona personaliter ab alia, modo quo Philosophus loquitur VII Physi-
corum hcap. 2i, de illo quod moveret se ipsum primo. Tertio quod illis distinguantur personae
ab invicem quibus sint convertibiliter et primo et adaequate personae ipsae quae distingu-
untur, ita quod nullis aliis propriis distinguantur quam se ipsis.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3),
p. 4363–11. Aristotle says at the cited spot (243a21–23): “Omne igitur quod fertur aut etiam
ipsum a se ipso movetur aut ab altero. Si enim a se ipso, manifestum est quod, in se ipso
movente existente, simul movens et quod movetur erit, et nullum ipsius medium.” (Transla-
tio vetus, AL VII.1.2, p. 2618–11).
156 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 12: “Primo modo Pater et Filius se ipsis primo
distinguuntur, quia nullis sui sed tantum se ipsis distinguuntur. Nam deitate et spiratione
activa non distinguuntur personaliter sed paternitate et filiatione. Et illae sunt hidemi
adaequate et omni modo identitatis quae arguat perfectionem identitatis ipsae personae,
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct because of anything
but themselves, and this is on account of their complete identity with the
source of their distinction, paternity and filiation and passive spiration
respectively. Wodeham also accepts that the persons are distinct se ipsis
in the third way he mentioned: since there is no part or whole in the
person, what makes the person distinct must be convertibly the same as the
person.157 In both of these ways of discussing se ipsis distinction between the
persons, Wodeham is clearly looking to preserve a role for the properties
(and the essence), while rejecting any form of personal constitution that
might imply a distinction between a divine person and his property. Person
and property are absolutely identical. The second way of being distinct se
ipsis, on the other hand, Wodeham rejects out of hand:
I say that no divine persons are made distinct on their own account or in and
of themselves natively [taking those terms] in the second way, because each
and every divine person by something belonging to it or by something that is
it (even per se primo modo), namely by deity, is made distinct from no [other]
divine person. And understanding things in this way, well and appropriately
the doctors deny the opinion of Praepositinus.158
Just as we saw above in examining Wodeham’s criticism of Chatton’s Prae-
positinianism, here Wodeham lays stress on the fact that the divine persons
are identical in one essence. The problem with this second way of under-
standing being distinct se ipsis, which Wodeham identifies with the view
of Praepositinus, is precisely that it does not have a means to account for
the essential unity of the three persons, concentrating as it does exclu-
sively on the irreducible distinction between the persons. The persons, on
this view, are like self-moved movers; they just are distinct. Wodeham,
scilicet Pater et Filius, per maximam alias positam quod essentia nihil est quin Pater sit illud
nec econtra .... Spiritus Sanctus se ipso primo ad istum sensum et nullo sui distinguitur tam
a Patre quam a Filio.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3), p. 43612–17,26–27. See the text elided from this
passage for Wodeham’s reasoning regarding the Father and Son with regard to the Holy Spirit
and why they are not se ipsis distinct in the sense under discussion.
157 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 12: “Tertio modo est verum de quibuscumque
personis, quod se ipsis primo et se totis hdistinguunturi, ut ita loquar. Quia secundum
veritatem ibi nec est totum nec pars hquaei distinguuntur.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3),
p. 43733–35.
158 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 12: “Secundo modo dico quod nullae personae
divinae distinguuntur se totis vel se ipsis primo, quia quaelibet persona divina aliquo sui
vel aliquo quod ipsa est (etiam per se primo modo), deitate scilicet, a nulla persona divina
distinguitur. Et ad hunc intellectum bene et convenienter negant Doctores opinionem
Praepositini.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3), pp. 43628–43732.
726 chapter eleven
in contrast, retains both essence and properties in his trinitarian theory,

and he does this because eliminating the essence (and concomitantly, the
properties) was just where he thought that Praepositinus (and Chatton)
had gone wrong. Thus, for Wodeham, there is something of the persons
that all the persons share, and that is the essence; there is also something
of the persons that makes each of them distinct from the other persons,
and that is the property. But for Wodeham, the mere fact that essence
and property are in some way real does not in turn entail personal con-
stitution, i.e. that the persons are in some way put together from essence
and property. Rather all that this means is that by something belonging
to them (aliquo sui) the persons all convene essentially and are not made
distinct, namely by the essence, and with the essence none of the per-
sons are convertibly the same; nevertheless the persons are made distinct
se ipsis, inasmuch as the persons simply are their properties.159 In sum,
Wodeham posits a divine essence that is “an entity that is all [of the per-
sons] at once and each and every one of them individually”,160 and he does
this in order to avoid the Arian heresy he thought that Praepositinianism
led to; concomitantly Wodeham posits personal properties, but personal
properties whose independent existence is extremely attenuated, since the
persons are their properties in the strongest possible sense. One might
almost say that Wodeham posits personal properties because he posits an
essence, and that he comes as close as possible to eliminating the per-
sonal property without actually doing so. As a result of all this, Wodeham
allows for the persons being se ipsis distinct—if se ipsis is understood in
the proper way—and he maintains that there is personal distinction, but
no personal constitution. Thus, while rejecting Chatton’s Praepositinian
view as being tantamount to heresy, Wodeham accepts from Chatton the
need to eliminate personal constitution, motivated, as Chatton himself
had been, by the desire to make the divine persons as simple as possi-
ble.
We can get a better idea about Wodeham’s views on personal constitu-
tion, and simultaneously see how he reacts in one context to Chatton and
to Peter Auriol, by looking at his discussion of whether the power to gen-
erate can be communicated to the Son. Wodeham addressed this issue in a
159 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 13: “… licet aliquo sui conveniant et non
distinguantur, tamen nullis sui sed primo se ipsis distinguuntur divinae personae, ita quod
ipsae sint prima earum distinctiva …” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 3), p. 43840–42.
160 For the text, see n. 145 above.
treatment that is verbatim identical in his Lectura secunda and his Ordina-
tio,161 so we can be quite certain that we are dealing here with his considered
opinion. After initial arguments, Wodeham gets right to the heart of the
matter as he sees it:
Because this question, and many other theological questions, suppose active
generation in the divine to be elicited, to have a source (principiari), and to be
originated, so it must first be seen whether this supposition is true. Second,
by supposing that it is not true …162
The language that Wodeham employs here brings to mind immediately
Auriol’s claim that the emanations are unelicited. In fact, Wodeham admits
that much of his discussion is based upon Auriol’s Scriptum, distinction
5, and many of Wodeham’s arguments are just a rehash of Auriol’s.163 By
admitting that the emanations are not produced, originated, or elicited in
any way, Wodeham thinks that “innumerable difficulties can be solved and
laid to rest, which … are scarcely or with very great difficulty avoided” by
what he calls the “common way”,164 and Wodeham even gently criticizes
Ockham at one point for having rejected Auriol’s view.165 Setting Auriol
off from the common opinion, and then going on to agree with him is
161 For a composite edition of the text, see Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. unica (ed. Gál and Wood
[vol. 2], pp. 328–342: “Utrum potentia generandi possit communicari Filio in divinis”). In the
Ordinatio Oxoniensis (book I), the text is called d. 33, q. 5.
162 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 1: “Quia ista quaestio, et multae aliae theo-
logicae, supponunt generationem activam in divinis elici, principiari et originari, ideo primo
videndum est an illud suppositum sit verum. Et secundo, supposito quod non …” Ed. Gál and
Wood (vol. 2), p. 32924–26.
163 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 2: “Quoad primum teneo conclusionem (ed.:
conclusion) negativam cum Petro Aureoli, distinctione quinta primi, articulo 3.” Ed. Gál
and Wood (vol. 2), p. 3293–4. Auriol’s arguments are given in more or less verbatim form
ibid., pp. 3294–33057, pp. 3314–33238. Wodeham claims at no fewer than four places that he
is agreeing with Auriol or that Auriol’s arguments suffice or are valid. See Ch. 9, above, at
nn. 35–44, for Auriol’s own discussion of unelicited emanations. Note that as part of this
same discussion, Wodeham rehearses and rejects a view of Gerard Odo; see on this Ch. 12,
below, at and around n. 68.
164 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 3: “Et conclusionem istarum rationum con-
cedo et dico quod generatio activa est simpliciter improducta et non originata nec elicita …
Et ex hac conclusione innumerabiles solvi possunt et evacuari difficultates, quae secundum
communem viam, quae ponit et imaginatur generationem activam elici et principiari, vix
aut cum nimia difficultate evaduntur.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 3313–9.
165 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 6, q. 1, § 17: “Ockham respondet in re, et sufficit, salvo
quod nimis perpendat argumentis quod illae productiones active principiarentur aut elicer-
entur, quod non est verum.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 3063–5. For Ockham’s rejection
of Auriol’s conception of unelicited emanations, see Ch. 10, above, at and around nn. 103–
105.
728 chapter eleven
high praise from Wodeham, but as was mentioned above in Chapter Nine
(at and around nn. 36–37), with this particular critique Auriol seems to have
hit on a weak point in his era’s trinitarian theology: many theologians who
wrote before Auriol do seem to have conceived the emanations as coming
from somewhere and going to somewhere. In fact, theologians before Auriol
seem to have simply taken this as given, a theological datum upon which
they did not reflect. Wodeham—and we have seen with Chatton and we will
see several times again that he was not the only one—agrees with Auriol
that this is a misconception; others (we have already seen Ockham) will
argue in favor of the elicited character of the emanations. In any event, it
seems that it was Auriol’s critique that made elicited emanations into an
issue.
Although much of Wodeham’s discussion is basically a repetition and
affirmation of Auriol’s own, there are two points of note. The first is Wode-
ham’s presentation and refutation of objections made by Chatton to Auriol’s
position—and Wodeham knows that Chatton is responding directly to
Auriol.166 As Wodeham presents him, Chatton’s objections, as usual, spring
from a question about the meaning of the terms that Auriol is using, in par-
ticular the meaning of ‘essence’ when we ask whether the essence is the
elicitive source of generation. If Auriol means by ‘essence’ the essence as
common to the three persons, then on Auriol’s own theory there would nec-
essarily follow a distinction within the Father between essence and active
generation. This is because for Auriol himself, passive generation follows
from (it is an illatio of) active generation but it does not follow from the
divine essence. Since both active generation and essence are the Father, this
would entail there being a distinction between them in the Father. Chat-
ton rejects that this is possible. On the other hand, if Auriol agrees, as he
seems to, that there is no distinction between essence and active genera-
tion in the Father, then asking whether the essence in the Father is elici-
tive of active generation is tantamount to asking whether the Father elicits
active generation (since the essence just is the Father), and what is wrong
166 See Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., §§ 5–6 (ed. Gál and Wood [vol. 2], pp. 334–
336). As Wodeham’s editors note (loc. cit., p. 334), certain of these objections are contained in
Chatton’s I Reportatio, d. 7, q. un., a. 1 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 430–441, esp. 430–433
on the question “Utrum essentia divina sit principium generandi”) others are from a work
lost or at least not yet found. Wodeham gives evidence that Chatton in his own arguments
was consciously responding to Auriol, e.g., see the italicized words in the text in n. 167 below.
For more on Chatton’s evaluation of Auriol’s view on the unelicited emanations, see at and
around nn. 71–80 above.
with answering that question in the affirmative, if it is true to say that the
Father generates? Either way, Auriol’s arguments appeared flawed to Chat-
ton.167
Wodeham lets Auriol answer this charge for himself, in the process
revealing that he understood the basic idea behind Auriol’s theory of the
indistinction between essence and property, and even intimating that he
thought that his own ideas on personal distinction and Auriol’s were sim-
ilar.168 But he also makes his own case for Auriol’s account, and using ter-
minology we are familiar with from Chatton himself: de facto, maintains
Wodeham, if something is elicited, there is a distinction between that which
is elicited and that which elicits.169 This was Auriol’s main point in arguing
against the elicited nature of the emanations and it is also Wodeham’s: noth-
ing can elicit itself, therefore if the emanations were elicited, there would be
a real distinction between them and their elicitive source. But Wodeham
then goes on to make an interesting statement about de facto versus coun-
terfactual reasoning:
I say that all who pursue useful investigation inquire whether de facto [gen-
eration] is elicited and originated, because I consider superfluous and vain
those studies of ours in which we would proceed by investigating how it
would be in the divine, if we proceed only according to what would be the
167 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 5: “Ex quo ponis quod generatio passiva est
illatio generationis activae, ad modum loquendi auctoris Sex principiorum, in parte, et non
ponis quod sit illatio essentiae a Patre, igitur ponis in Patre inter essentiam et generationem
activam tantam non-identitatem quanta requiritur ad salvandum quod essentia hhnonii esset
principium elicitivum generationis activae. Item, quid ponis essentiam in Patre cum quaeris
an essentia in Patre sit principium elicitivum generationis activae? Aut Patrem ipsum, quia
de facto nulla est distinctio magna vel parva, etiam per te Petre Aureoli, in persona Patris
inter essentiam et paternitatem, et per consequens tantum est ibi Pater. Et si sic loqueris,
tunc idem est ac si quaereretur utrum Pater sit elicitivum generationis. Et tunc, cum idem
sit Patri elicere generationem et generare, quare non concederetur ibi principium elicitivum
generationis activae?” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 3344–15 (italics mine, and the ‘non’ is added
by me for sense). The argument given in this note, Wodeham calls the “common argument”
(argumentum commune) against Auriol’s view (ed. cit., p. 33547).
168 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 6: “… Petrus Aureoli, contra quem hChattoni
arguit, vocat—et ego similiter—essentiam in Patre istam rem quae est omnes tres personae
divinae simul, et singillatim quaelibet earundem. Et bene volo quod nec de facto nec de
possibili est inter illam et generationem activam quaecumque distinctio parva vel magna.”
(ed. Gál and Wood [vol. 2], p. 33613–17, further, pp. 3353–33625). Wodeham discusses Auriol’s
ideas (as found in both Auriol’s Scriptum and his Quodlibet) on indistinction between essence
and property in Lectura secunda, d. 26, q. 1, § 6 (ed. cit., vol. 3, pp. 42578–426133). See also my
remarks in n. 153 above.
169 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 5: “Igitur, inquit, non est elicita, quia tunc de
facto esset distinctio inter elicitum et elicientem.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 33536–37.
730 chapter eleven
case with everything involving a contradiction set aside or other like claims
(positionibus). In fact, I say that only a foolish person does this intentionally,
unless they raise (exprimit) the type of casus the doctors do when they inquire
whether, if (assuming the impossible) the Holy Spirit would not proceed from
the Son, he would be distinct from the Son. Nor do [the doctors] undertake
this inquiry without good reason, namely because the Greek church posits
this to be true de facto …170
For our purposes, there are two important points to notice about this pas-
sage. First, it is a firm attack on one part of Chatton’s theological method.
Chatton, as we have seen, forcefully used positio impossibilis and investi-
gation “with impossible circumscription and through contradiction” as the
foundation of his distinction between the de facto and the per se levels
of discourse when discussing God.171 If we consider God de facto, then he
is absolutely simple; if we think about the terms that we are using about
God and conceive God “through contradiction” as if he were composed of
parts, then we are speaking per se. This was Chatton’s marginalization strat-
egy. Wodeham objects to this type of use of positio impossibilis, just as we
have seen William Ockham do.172 For Wodeham, counterfactual reasoning
about God’s nature is not to be undertaken lightly, and the instance that he
gives of legitimate counterfactual reasoning—the Holy Spirit’s distinction
from the Son—is legitimate precisely on account of the Greeks’ insistence
that de facto the Son does not spirate the Holy Spirit. The live theologi-
cal debate is what justifies counterfactual exploration of God’s nature, to
see what we can allow ourselves to say and what is strictly out of bounds.
Thus, Wodeham thought that Chatton’s use of positio impossibilis was run
rampant. This last observation about live theological issues being the nec-
essary justification for counterfactual reasoning brings us to the second
point about Wodeham’s statement: it shows quite clearly that the later-
medieval trinitarian debate was a vital affair, of genuine significance to the
170 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 5: “Ego dico quod omnes utiliter inquirentes
inquirunt utrum de facto sit elicita et originetur, quia superfluum et vanum reputarem
studium nostrum quo laboraremus investigando quomodo sit in divinis, si tantum iremus ad
hoc quod (ed.: quid) esset factis circumscriptionibus includentibus contradictionem vel aliis
consimilibus positionibus. Immo dico quod nunquam aliquis, nisi fatuus, hoc intendit nisi
cum exprimit talem casum, sicut Doctores faciunt cum inquirunt utrum si per impossibile
Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, distingueretur a Filio. Nec hoc inquirunt sine causa
magna, pro eo scilicet quod ecclesia Graecorum ponit hoc esse verum de facto.” Ed. Gál and
Wood (vol. 2), p. 33538–46.
172 On Ockham’s objections, see n. 30 above.
academic community and to the larger social and religious context. Tak-
ing a stand on a trinitarian issue meant something, in part because there
were current trinitarian errors that gave rise to aspects of the university
debate. Moreover, Wodeham’s way of regarding the counterfactual Filioque
question stands in rather sharp contrast to the way that earlier Francis-
can theologians presented it. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries, Franciscan theologians primarily used the counterfactual ques-
tion and positio impossibilis as a means of clearly displaying their priori-
tizing of the emanations over the relations. Their position on the coun-
terfactual question was one important manifestation of the fact that they
conceived the properties making the persons distinct to be emanational.
The Greek aspect of the debate, as we have seen, became submerged—and
indeed, Thomas of Sutton can accuse Robert Cowton and the Franciscan
tradition of watering down the Latin position to such an extent that the
Greek position becomes more viable than the Latin. Wodeham brings this
debate back to its roots—we can examine the counterfactual issue, but only
because the Greeks claim that the Holy Spirit indeed does not come from
the Son.173
In this discussion of whether the power to generate can be communi-
cated to the Son, Wodeham offers one other important piece of evidence
that he knew Auriol’s work well, and it impinges directly upon the subject
of the relation between essence, personal property, and person. Discussing
the constitution of the divine persons, Wodeham reacts strongly against
any language that would seem to imply composition in the divine persons,
claiming: “I do not want to say that a person includes relation and essence
… nor that it is constituted or that it results from property and essence.”174
Auriol, as we have seen, maintained that the persons resulted from essence
and property like a house results from roof, walls, and foundation, posit-
ing this in order to rid himself of any hint of act/potency or form/matter
distinctions in the constitution of the persons. Wodeham clearly criticizes
173 For Wodeham’s own discussion of the counterfactual Filioque question, see Lectura
secunda, d. 11, q. un. (ed. Gál and Wood [vol. 3], pp. 164–173). On Wodeham’s view of the
use of Anselm’s De processione Spiritus Sancti in this trinitarian question, see Ch. 5, above, at
n. 154.
174 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 8: “… sed volo potius sustinere personam esse
aeque simplicem sicut essentiam vel personalem proprietatem, ideo nolo dicere quod per-
sona includit relationem et essentiam, de virtute sermonis loquendo, nec quod constituitur
vel quod resultet ex proprietate et essentia.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 3385–9. Wodeham
uses the term resultatio on p. 33915.
732 chapter eleven
the critic here: to say that a person “results” from essence and property at
the very least smacks of composition. Wodeham himself prefers to use an
iterative formula to describe the persons: “I want to say that [a person] is
essence and that it is property. And I say the same about property, that
it is essence and that it is property.”175 This is, of course, merely another
way of saying what we have already seen from Wodeham: person is, in
the first way of saying per se, property, and person is, in the first way of
saying per se, essence; there is no personal constitution as such, because
quidditatively intrinsic to each person is both property and essence. And
as is suggested by Wodeham’s formulation here, there is a metaphysical
asymmetry in God between, on the one hand, the properties, each of which
is the essence per se primo modo, and, on the other, the essence, which is
more extensive than any of the properties. And again, Wodeham argues in
this way because he wants to maintain God’s perfect simplicity—there are
no parts or wholes in a divine person,176 and there is no constitution, since
the essence is a mark of essential unity, the property a mark of personal
distinction.
This survey of Adam Wodeham’s trinitarian theology has been necessar-
ily brief, strictly subordinated as it is to my main aim of tracing the search
for simplicity. Nevertheless, despite its brevity, it makes quite clear that
Wodeham was an acute and independent thinker whose trinitarian the-
ology definitely deserves greater attention, especially attention focused on
his later and more detailed work, the Ordinatio Oxoniensis. Wodeham crit-
icized the formal distinction between the attributes along the lines that
Ockham had laid down, but more consistently than Ockham he went on to
reject the strong use of the psychological model. He took note of the motiva-
tion behind Chatton’s Praepositinianism, and as a consequence discarded
personal constitution, but he rejected Praepositinianism itself because he
thought it led to Arianism. More generally, in his trinitarian thought, Wode-
ham is very much a representative of that element of his era’s theology that
placed a premium on divine simplicity, a representative of a new theological
aesthetic.
175 Wodeham, Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un., § 8: “Sed volo dicere quod hpersonai est essentia
et quod est proprietas. Et hoc idem dico de proprietate, quod ipsa est essentia et ipsa est
proprietas.” Ed. Gál and Wood (vol. 2), p. 3389–10.
176 For “no parts or wholes” in God, see Wodeham’s text in n. 157 above.
3. Robert Holcot and William Crathorn
One final manifestation of the search for simplicity needs to be dealt with
here, and it is interesting not only because it includes an expression of the
search itself in the Dominican Robert Holcot, but also a rebuttal of the
search in a text that may have been written by Holcot’s exactly contempo-
rary confrère William Crathorn.
Holcot read the Sentences at Oxford beginning in 1331, lectured on the
Bible there in 1334, and was Dominican regent master there probably be-
tween 1336 and 1338. From his years as regent master probably come his
numerous quodlibetal questions and his Determinationes, although there
is also a case to be made for assigning especially the Quodlibeta to the
time before Holcot’s regency. Holcot died of the plague in 1349, after having
associated closely with the famous bibliophile and bishop Richard of Bury
and after having spent time in Northampton where he was licensed to hear
confession.177
Holcot shows a clear tendency, which we will trace further in § 4 below,
of ignoring many of the “metaphysical” trinitarian issues that we have been
following in this book, being occupied instead with the types of logical
issues that we touched on in William Ockham above and that Hester Gelber
has studied so ably.178 Thus, as far as I can tell, Holcot never deals directly
with the psychological model and its application to the Trinity, nor does
he deal with the controversial issue of whether the Holy Spirit would be
distinct from the Son if the former were not to come from the latter. It is
possible, however, to excavate some of Holcot’s views on divine simplicity,
the constitution of the divine persons, and the relation between essence and
property, thereby giving some indication of where he stands on the search
for simplicity.
When it comes to the distinction between the divine attributes, Holcot
minces no words: “The attributes are not distinct in God, neither really (nec
177 On Holcot, see Gelber 2004, 92–98, and the literature referred to there; on Holcot’s
Quodlibeta, see most recently Keele 2007a, 678–687.

178 Gelber 1974 (on Holcot’s trinitarian theory, esp. 265–283, 299–317). In addition, see
Gelber’s Introduction to her edition of three of Holcot’s trinitarian questions in Exploring the
Boundaries of Reason, pp. 23–28; Shank (1988, 74–79) deals briefly with Holcot. My treatment
is, of course, most indebted to Gelber’s analysis of Holcot’s trinitarian theology. The three
trinitarian questions that Gelber edits have a complex and problematic textual tradition;
see Gelber’s introduction to the edition, pp. 3–23. Meissner 1953 contains much interesting
material on both human knowledge of God and on God’s attributes, but nothing directly
relevant to Holcot’s trinitarian thought.
734 chapter eleven
secundum rem nec realiter), nor formally, nor through connotata, because
they are not in God.”179 If an attribute were really in God (‘really’ here
meaning essentially in the first mode), then either the attribute would be
God or it would be something other than God. But if the attribute is God,
then it is not in God, because nothing is in itself. If, on the other hand, the
attribute is not God, then it is a creature, and certainly no creature is in
God.180 The extension of this argument to other types of distinction is clearly
based on Holcot’s view that the only type of distinction is real distinction.181
In fact, according to Holcot, the attributes are either words or concepts,
and hence they are creatures, and can only be said to be in God “through
predication”.182
Thus far, much like Ockham and Wodeham, Holcot has rejected any
distinction between attributes and essence and among the attributes. But
Holcot goes much farther than Ockham, and even Wodeham, when it comes
to the constitution of the persons and the distinction between essence
and personal properties. As we have seen, Ockham had accepted Scotus’
formal distinction in this one case, because he thought that this was the
only way to save the universal applicability of Aristotelian logic. Holcot,
after describing this view and attributing it to Ockham,183 pointedly rejects
it. In his refutation Holcot gives several arguments focusing on the way
179 Robert Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum perfectiones attributales essentiales in divinis distincte
praecedant omnem operationem intellectus”: “Quarta conclusio est ista: attributa non distin-
guuntur in Deo, nec secundum rem, nec realiter, nec formaliter, nec per connotata, quia non
sunt in Deo.” Ed. Gelber, p. 5768–70.
180 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum perfectiones attributales …”: “… nullum attributum est in Deo
realiter et primo modo essendi. Haec hhconclusioii patet quia vel illud est Deus vel aliud a
Deo. Si est Deus, non est in Deo quia nihil est in se ipso. Si est aliud a Deo, ergo est creatura;
sed nulla creatura est in Deo quia nihil in Deo praeter Deum; igitur, etc. Et propter eandem
causam sunt omnes tales falsae: aliqua realitas est in Deo, perfectiones creaturarum sunt in
Deo, creaturae sunt in Deo, et huiusmodi, sicut istae: perfectiones attributales vel rationes
attributales sunt in Deo, formalitates sunt in Deo, modi reales sunt in Deo, et huiusmodi.”
Ed. Gelber, p. 5640–48.
181 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum perfectiones attributales …” (ed. Gelber, pp. 58101–60131), and
cp. the analysis in Gelber 1974, 274–276.

182 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum perfectiones attributales …”: “… nullum attributum est perfec-
tio simpliciter. Haec hhconclusioii patet quia nulla vox vel conceptus est perfectio simpliciter
.... quando arguitur, ergo pluralitati attributorum correspondet aliqua distinctio realis, con-
cedo, quia multorum nominum, conceptuum, vel signorum. Et quando concluditur: ergo ista
distinctio est in Deo, nego consequentiam, quia ista distincta sunt creaturae et signa quae
non sunt in Deo nisi per praedicationem …” Ed. Gelber, p. 5749–50, p. 61155–161.
183 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum cum unitate essentiae divinae stet pluralitas personarum”, ad
sextum dubium (for the presentation of Ockham’s view, see Gelber’s edition, pp. 97873–99909).
he thinks that a formal distinction collapses into either a real distinction

or no distinction at all.184 In a more general way, however, Holcot thinks
that the appeal to a formal distinction in order to save logic is completely
fruitless. What needs to be explained in trinitarian theology is how one and
the same predicate (e.g. ‘communicable’) can be affirmed of the essence and
not of the Father, when nevertheless ‘essence’ and ‘Father’ indeed supposit
for the same thing. Ockham says that this is the case because essence and
Father are formally distinct. But, for Ockham, that the essence and the
Father are formally distinct means nothing more or less than that one and
the same term is truly predicated of the essence that is not predicated of
the Father, even though ‘essence’ and ‘Father’ supposit for the same thing.
Holcot considers this to be a perfect example of circular reasoning—like
saying that a human being has an intellective soul because a human being
is a rational animal, but, upon inquiring further what a rational animal
is, saying that it is that which has an intellective soul. Clearly for Holcot,
the formal distinction is a phantom explanation, and merely playing with
words.185 In fact, Holcot denies that the essence and the personal properties
are in any way distinct from each other, “not really nor modally nor formally
nor by reason nor convertibly nor in any other way.” Essence and property
are so identical that you cannot even claim that they are “the same”, because
just the use of the plural verb would imply some sort of distinction.186
184 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum cum unitate essentiae …” (ed. Gelber, pp. 99910–101971).
185 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum cum unitate essentiae …”: “Praeterea, frustra fingitur iste mo-
dus loquendi in materia ista, quia in nullo evacuat vel declarat difficultatem plus quam
quicumque alius modus loquendi usitatus theologorum. Nam omnes concedunt quod aliqua
praedicata conveniunt huic essentiae quae non conveniunt Patri. Sed ibi est difficultas,
quomodo hoc est possibile cum essentia et Pater supponunt pro eadem re. Et ipse assignat
pro causa quia essentia et Pater distinguuntur formaliter vel non sunt idem formaliter. Hoc
est, secundum eum, aliquid praedicatur de essentia quod non praedicatur de Patre, licet
essentia et Pater supponant pro eadem re. Ecce quod idem assignatur pro causa sui ipsius,
et nihil aliud est nisi inculcatio verborum vel circulatio terminorum distinctorum secundum
vocem et significantium idem, sicut si quaereretur quare homo habet animam intellectivam
et diceretur quia est animal rationale, et si ulterius quaereretur quid est esse animal rationale
et responderetur quod esse animal rationale est habere animam intellectivam. Unde nihil est
nisi multiplicatio frustra fictorum.” Ed. Gelber, pp. 101972–102986. I am not entirely sure that
Ockham would attempt to deny Holcot’s charge, given the Venerable Inceptor’s openness to
the fact that the formal distinction is a stopgap measure we are compelled to use on account
of the strictures of revelation; of course, one can then ask with Holcot: “Why bother?”
186 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum cum unitate essentiae …”: “… essentia et relatio in divinis non
distinguuntur realiter nec modaliter nec formaliter nec ratione nec convertibiliter nec aliquo
alio modo .... haec non est concedenda: essentia et relatio sunt idem, proprie loquendo de
virtute sermonis, quia sequitur: sunt idem, ergo sunt una res, et ultra: sunt una res, ergo
736 chapter eleven
Holcot’s position that there is no distinction between essence and prop-

erty directly impinges upon his view of the constitution of the persons. In
particular, he considers “the fantasy of some” (imaginatio quorumdum) that
the common essence and paternity concur in the constitution of the Father,
so that essence is that by which the Father is God and paternity is that by
which he is Father.187 Holcot rejects this opinion because it would entail
there being in each divine person a complex of several things. Moreover,
Holcot points out that constitution of this kind always involves some type of
causality; but neither efficient, nor formal, nor material causality are found
internal to God. Holcot concludes: “neither God nor any person is consti-
tuted through something, but without any constitution or causality ad intra
God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”188 If this were to leave us in any doubt
about the Praepositinian bent in Holcot’s trinitarian thought, he makes it
unmistakably clear: “speaking properly, the Father is distinguished in and of
himself (se ipso) from the Son, and nothing makes the Father distinct from
the Son”, although Holcot does concede that the Father can be said to make
the Son distinct inasmuch as the Father generates the Son.189
Holcot, then, clearly driven by the search for simplicity, rejects any dis-
tinction internal to God except for the real distinction between the three
divine persons. Nevertheless, Holcot recognizes that earlier thinkers—Hol-
cot mentions Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus—
had spoken about personal distinction as though the Father were con-
stituted by essence and relation. This “improper way of speaking” Holcot
explains in a fashion that reminds much of Walter Chatton’s marginaliza-
tion strategy, including an appeal to positio impossibilis:
sunt, et ultra: sunt, ergo sunt aliqua, et ita non sunt una res. Consequentia patet quia illud
verbum ‘sunt’ est pluralis numeri, et ideo consignificat multas res.” Ed. Gelber, p. 1021001–1003,
p. 1031007–1011.
187 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum cum unitate essentiae …” (ed. Gelber, p. 1041030–1037).
188 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum cum unitate essentiae …”: “Sed iste modus loquendi non est
conveniens, tum quia in persona ponit plurium rerum aggregationem necessario, quod
tamen non est verum, tum quia omne quod constituitur per aliquid, constituitur per illud
per aliquod genus causae, ut puta efficientis, formalis, vel materialis, sed in Deo nulla istarum
debet poni ad intra. Unde dico quod Deus non constituitur nec aliqua persona per aliquid,
sed sine quacumque constitutione vel causalitate ad intra Deus est Pater, Filius, et Spiritus
Sanctus.” Ed. Gelber, p. 1041038–1045.
189 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum cum unitate essentiae …”: “… quando accipitur quod idem con-
stituit Patrem in esse Patris et distinguit, dico etiam quod haec est metaphorica et impropria
locutio: aliquid distinguit Patrem a Filio, quia proprie loquendo Pater distinguitur se ipso a
Filio, et nihil distinguit Patrem a Filio. Sed bene potest dici quod aliquid distinguit Filium a
Patre, quia Pater qui generat distinguit Filium qui generatur.” Ed. Gelber, p. 1071117–1122.
… when it is argued that something constitutes the Father in the Father’s

being, but [this something is] not the essence, therefore [it is] something
other than the essence—it is to be said that if the major is accepted properly,
it is false, because the Father is not constituted in the Father’s being. Nor
is this way of speaking to be extended, but rather it is to be explained,
because it is improper, although some doctors spoke in this way, e.g., Henry,
Thomas, Scotus, and others. But they spoke like this because if per impossibile
paternity were to differ from the essence in God, then in the person of
the Father they would be two, and by one of these two, i.e. the essence,
he would be united with the other persons, and by the other he would
differ.190
Holcot, very much like Chatton, claims that earlier thinkers spoke the way
they did, because if counterfactually there were in God elements somehow
distinct from one another, then indeed the Father would be composed of
these elements. But, insists Holcot, this is not the way that God is: in God
all is perfect simplicity, with no distinction except for the real distinction
of the three persons. In line with this emphasis upon divine simplicity to
190 Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum cum unitate essentiae …”: “… quando arguitur aliquid constituit
Patrem in esse Patris, sed non essentia, ergo aliud ab essentia, dicendum quod si maior
accipiatur proprie, falsa est, quia Pater non constituitur in esse Patris. Nec est iste modus
loquendi extendendus, sed potius exponendus quia est improprius, licet doctores aliqui sic
locuti sint, sicut Henricus, Thomas, Scotus, et alii, sed ideo sic dicunt quia si per impossibile
paternitas differret ab essentia in Deo, tunc in persona Patris forent duo quorum uno, puta
essentia, conveniret cum aliis personis, et alio differret.” Ed. Gelber, p. 1061089–1096. Gelber’s
claim about this passage (Gelber 2004, 188) that Holcot here “attributes such per impossibile
arguments to Henry of Ghent, Aquinas, Scotus and others only to dismiss them as improper”
is not entirely accurate—it is the way of speaking that Holcot describes as improper and, as
a result, needs to be explained, it is not the use of positio impossibilis, which is the means
Holcot himself uses to explain the earlier theologians’ improper way of speaking. That is to
say, since the earlier thinkers were decidedly not arguing through impossible positio, it seems
clear that Holcot accepted this way of arguing per impossibile—he is imputing it to them as
the only means of explaining their improper way of speaking. On Chatton’s marginalization
strategy, see § 1A of the present chapter, passim.
Interestingly, in his Sent. commentary, q. 5 (“Utrum Deus sit tres personae distinctae”),
Holcot gives an argument similar to this, in which he also touches on the topics of personal
constitution and the elicitation of the personal operations (cf. also the text in n. 189 above):
“Ad quartum, quando dicitur sic: Deus est tres personae, igitur Deus est compositus, etc.,
nego consequentiam. Et ad probationem: omne constituens distinguitur a constituto, con-
cedo, sed negatur minor, quia cum probatur per communem modum loquendi, dico quod
doctores in multis loquuntur ex proposito metaphorice et secundum nostrum modum intel-
ligendi qui est imperfectus de divinis. Unde nolunt dicere quod bene sentiunt quod Pater
sit constitutus per aliud, sed si essentia et paternitas essent duae res in Patre ut materia et
forma in creaturis, tunc paternitas constitueret Patrem, hoc est per paternitatem foret illud
compositum formaliter Pater. Similiter nihil est ibi elicitivum operationis nisi persona.” Ed.
Lyon, 1497 (unfoliated).
738 chapter eleven
the near exclusion of any type of trinitarian explanation, Holcot appeals to

revelation to justify any seemingly contradictory claims in our statements
about the Trinity. Reason cannot penetrate these types of mysteries, and
we need to believe them strictly on faith.191 With this said, Holcot’s own
repeated efforts to supplement Aristotelian logic in order to explain how
logic could also account for God’s trinitarian nature shows that he was
intent on explaining as much as he thought possible.192 In sum, then, Robert
Holcot appears to have been fully engaged in what I have called the search
for simplicity, sharing the same theological aesthetic as Walter Chatton, on
which divine simplicity was valued more highly in trinitarian theology than
was explanation.
William Crathorn preceded Robert Holcot in his lectures on the Sen-
tences by one year, beginning at Oxford in 1330, and completing his lec-
tures by 1332.193 In his Sentences commentary of some twenty questions,
Crathorn devotes little attention to the types of metaphysical trinitarian
issues that we have traced in this book, and in this respect he is fully rep-
resentative of the Oxford trinitarian discussion of the second quarter of the
fourteenth century. As mentioned above in connection with Holcot, and
as will be seen below (§4), the amount of attention theologians devoted
to questions dealing with the metaphysical Trinity declined steeply in this
period.
We can take a few examples of this to show how it manifests itself, in the
process extracting what we can about Crathorn’s trinitarian doctrine. Thus,
in his question on the image, Crathorn deals almost as an afterthought with
the application of the psychological model to the Trinity, using the question
191 E.g., Holcot, Quaestio “Utrum haec sit concedenda: Deus est Pater et Filius et Spiritus
Sanctus”: “… nescimus scientifice defendere quod articuli quos credimus non includunt
contradictionem, quaelibet enim via adhuc inventa magis intricat quam declarat, et ideo
dicendum est quod credimus eos fore possibiles veros et compossibiles quia sanctis patribus
sunt revelati, et per miracula facta ad monitionem eorum qui talia docuerunt sunt facti nobis
credibiles, et non per rationem naturalem.” Ed. Gelber, pp. 49–50423–428. Holcot appeals to
revelation as the sole ground for holding the Trinity at several junctures in the questions
Gelber edits (e.g., pp. 31–36, pp. 6642–6759, p. 89665–667). On fideism in Holcot, see also the
brief remarks in Vignaux 1935, 96, and Bainton, 1953, 40–42 (although Bainton’s article must
be read with caution).
192 See on these issues, Gelber 1974, 265–283, 299–317.
193 On Crathorn, see most recently Gelber 2004, 87–91, and the literature referred to there;
on Crathorn’s first name being William—long a subject of doubt—see Gelber 2004, 100
n. 140, which appears to be conclusive. For discussion of the specific questions in the Sent.
commentary mentioned below, see Hoffmann’s short introductions to each of the questions
in his “Einführung” to the edition, pp. 17–66.
as an opportunity to discuss human psychology.194 Moreover, Crathorn deals

with the issue of whether the Father generates the Son by will or by nature
in a question that occupies just one page in the critical edition. Crathorn is
here mostly concerned to rule out that the Father generates the Son con-
tingently; nonetheless, along the way Crathorn admits that “that by which
the Father generates the Son is the will”, which might well indicate that
he held there to be no distinction between the divine intellect and will,
although I have found no explicit statements to that effect in Crathorn’s
commentary. In the same question, Crathorn rejects any use of signs of
origin (i.e., instantia naturae) as a means of positing logical priority in the
divine.195 In a question on the Father’s generative power, Crathorn does
bring up the possibility of elicited emanations, and he argues that active
generation is in no way elicited, while one can say that passive genera-
tion has an elicitive source in active generation (i.e., paternity), as well
as in the Father and in the essence (since these are active generation).196
Finally, in his treatment of the possibility of the Son being able to gener-
ate a son, Crathorn admits that this is not something that can be proved,
but must be accepted on faith.197 In this last context, Crathorn rejects argu-
ments made by Aquinas and by Ockham in their attempt to demonstrate
that the Son cannot generate, although Crathorn does acknowledge that
Ockham had admitted that his arguments were dialectical “persuasions”
only.198
194 William Crathorn, I Sent., q. 7 (“Utrum omnis creatura rationalis sit imago trinitatis”);
in conclusions 10–12 Crathorn deals obliquely with the Trinity (ed. Hoffmann, pp. 342–344).
On these issues in Crathorn, see Hoffmann (Fritz) 1998, 105–107.
195 Crathorn, I Sent., q. 8b (“Utrum Pater genuit Filium voluntate vel natura”): “Tertio modo
potest intelligi quod Pater generet Filium voluntate, quia id quo generat Filium, est voluntas,
et sic haec est vera: ‘Pater generat Filium voluntate’ .... hnoni sunt ibi aliqua talia signa originis,
quorum unum sit prius alio …” Ed. Hoffmann, p. 35722–28.
196 Crathorn, I Sent., q. 9 (“Utrum potentia generativa Patris sit aliquid absolutum vel
respectivum”), see conclusions 1–5 for these points (ed. Hoffmann, pp. 359–360).
197 Crathorn, I Sent., q. 10 (“Utrum Pater possit communicare Filio potentiam generandi”):
“Et tenendum est per fidem, non propter rationem aliquam, quia nulla ratio evidenter probat
quod Filius non genuit nec quod non possit generare Deum. Et ideo solvendae sunt aliquae
rationes quas aliqui doctores adducunt ad probandum quod Filius non genuit Deum vel quod
non possit generare Deum.” Ed. Hoffmann, p. 36121–25.
198 Crathorn, I Sent., q. 10: “Istae tres rationes sunt Wilhelmi Ockham, quas adducit pro
ista conclusione reprobans rationes Doctoris communis; dicit tamen quod rationes suae
non sunt nisi persuasiones et dicit verum, quia nulla ratio est nobis possibilis pro statu
isto ad probandum quod Filius non possit generare, sed hoc habemus tenere per fidem.”
Ed. Hoffmann, p. 36222–26. For the arguments of Aquinas and Ockham, as well as Crathorn’s
replies, see ed. cit., pp. 361–364.
740 chapter eleven
But what makes Crathorn’s commentary of special interest to us here

is the twentieth question in the commentary, entitled “Utrum proprietas
relativa sit omnibus modis idem cum essentia divina”. This question is prob-
lematic inasmuch as we cannot be sure that it in fact belongs to Crathorn,
since it is not contained in the manuscript that specifically attributes the
commentary to Crathorn and there are certain characteristics of the ques-
tion that depart from those of the other nineteen questions in the commen-
tary.199 To avoid any confusion, I will refer to the author as Crathorn*. Now,
much of this question deals at length with what can be called the logical
issues of the Trinity: how to explain the problems with the expository syllo-
gism that were noted above when dealing with William Ockham.200 But in
the course of his treatment, Crathorn* gives a defense of personal proper-
ties in trinitarian explanation, and hence shows a reaction to the search for
simplicity and to the Praepositinianism that we have been tracing. In the
body of the question, Crathorn* argues for the view that essence and per-
sonal property come together in a unity of utter simplicity to constitute a
divine person. Thus, in one of ten “conclusions”, Crathorn* postulates that
“although a divine person results or is constituted from essence and relation,
which really are not the same, this does not hinder that the person is still just
as simple as is the essence”. Surely, argues Crathorn*, essence and person
must be of equal simplicity, since whatever might diminish the simplicity
of the person applies equally to diminishing the simplicity of the essence:
essence is person.201 The important thing here is that Crathorn* held that
199 See on this Hoffmann’s introduction to the edition, pp. 63–64. It can also be mentioned
that the question is not where it should be were it an integral part of a commentary on the
Sent., since it corresponds to material that should be found in dd. 33 or 34 but it in fact comes
after material on future contingents which is normally found in d. 38.
200 See Ch. 10, above, at and around nn. 36–38. Crathorn deals with the logical issues
in the Trinity and especially with the problem of the expository syllogism in q. 5 of his
commentary. Although these issues are strictly speaking outside the scope of the present
work, it is worth noting two things. First, William Ockham is Crathorn’s primary oppo-
nent. Second, Crathorn gives as perfect a statement as one could wish of the trouble the
trinitarian paralogisms pose to the formality of logic: “Forte dicetur ad ista quod syllogis-
mus expositorius et forma syllogistica non tenet in materia ista. Contra: si forma syllogis-
tica non teneret in materia ista, haberemus dubitare utrum teneret in aliqua materia, quia
non est maior ratio quod forma arguendi tradita generaliter teneat in una materia quam
in alia.” (Ed. Hoffmann, pp. 30931–3103—I translate part of this passage above, Ch. 10, at
n. 37).
201 Crathorn*, I Sent., q. 20: “Conclusio decima est quod quamvis persona divina resultet
vel constituatur ex essentia et relatione realiter non idem exsistentibus, hoc non obstat quin
adhuc sit aeque simplex ipsa persona sicut essentia. Ista patet sic, quia omne quod posset
essence and property “worked” together to constitute person. Several objec-

tions to this view are raised all taking their point of departure in the idea
that this type of constitution or resulting of the divine person necessarily
entails composition, the way that, e.g., Walter Chatton might argue.202 To
this Crathorn* responds with a firm defense of the necessity of properties
in trinitarian theology.
Crathorn* claims that it can be demonstrated that there is a real non-
identity between essence and relative properties, e.g., because we know
essence is shared by the persons, while the property cannot be shared.203
Further, we know from Augustine that “the Father is not the Father by that
by which he is God”; but the Father is Father by paternity and is God by
deity; therefore paternity and deity cannot be the same without qualifica-
tion.204 If you claim that maintaining some form of distinction of the essence
over against the three properties entails a quaternity in God, much as we
have seen Chatton argue, Crathorn* is without remorse. There are several
ways of understanding ‘quaternity’, but if you mean by it that in God there
is one absolute thing and three relative or respective things, then there is
indeed a quaternity in God. Crathorn* maintains that a quaternity of this
kind does not endanger the simplicity of either the essence or the per-
son, since “simplicity is only destroyed by composition”.205 Thus, Crathorn*
holds that the “highest unity of simplicity” or “identity of simplicity” that
adimere vel minuere simplicitatem personae respectu simplicitatis essentiae divinae, hoc
convenit ipsi essentiae sicut personae; ergo essentia et persona sunt aequalis simplicitatis.”
Ed. Hoffmann, p. 51615–20.
202 Crathorn*, I Sent., q. 20 (ed. Hoffmann, pp. 51629–51711).
203 Crathorn*, I Sent., q. 20: “… tum quia essentia divina est realiter communicabilis, pro-
prietas vero realiter incommunicabilis, tum quia essentia est ad se, respectus ad alterum,
tum quia Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus different realiter et non tantum realitate funda-
menti .... quae omni intellectui bene disposito sunt non-identitatem realem inter essentiam
et proprietates relativas demonstrative concludentia.” Ed. Hoffmann, p. 51713–21.
204 Crathorn*, I Sent., q. 20: “… per beatum Augustinum in libro De trinitate, ubi dicit
quod Pater non eo est Pater quo Deus; constat autem quod est Pater paternitate et Deus
deitate; ergo secundum ipsum non est bene dictum: ‘essentia est paternitas’.” Ed. Hoffmann,
p. 51724–27. There appears to be no exact match in Augustine for the quotation attributed to
him here (and elsewhere in later-medieval trinitarian texts, see e.g. the Conclusion, below,
n. 18), but for possible sources, cf. De trinitate V, 5, 6 (CCSL 50, p. 2101–17), De trinitate VII, 4, 9
(CCSL 50, p. 260141–150).
205 Crathorn*, I Sent., q. 20: “h… quaternitatem esse in divinis potest intelligii sic quod
essentia divina sit una res absoluta et proprietates relativae sint tres res relativae vel respec-
tivae, et sic in divinis sunt quatuor res et per consequens quaternitas … hsic intelligituri dico
quod in divinis est quaternitas, nec ad hoc sequitur aliquod inconveniens .... respectus relativi
non componunt in divinis nec adimunt per consequens essentiae vel personae quamcumque
simplicitatem, cum simplicitas per solam compositionem tollatur.” Ed. Hoffmann, p. 5188–28.
742 chapter eleven
obtains between essence and property excludes any “identity of compo-

sition”, meaning by this the type of identity found in things that are put
together.206 Crathorn* lays particular stress, however, on his claim that the
denial of some form of non-identity between essence and properties would
land one in the Sabellian heresy. Indeed, this is “more clear than light”,
because if the properties, through which the persons are constituted, are
really (realiter) the same as the essence, then it follows necessarily that the
persons themselves are really the same, just as Sabellius said.207 Not only was
the Praepositinian position wrong, according to Crathorn*, it was hereti-
cal.
Thus, in this question several arguments were offered all designed to
show that there must be some kind of distinction between essence and
property, and that this was by no means incompatible with either Church
doctrine or God’s simplicity. Not that these arguments would have con-
vinced someone like Chatton or Holcot, who put divine simplicity—and a
more restricted notion of simplicity than that which Crathorn* was working
with—at the center of their trinitarian theologies. We see in this question,
then, a reaction to the search for simplicity, and to the new theological
aesthetic that conditioned and motivated that search. Crathorn* is most
interested in being able to explain the constitution and distinction of the
persons, and concomitantly was willing to allow distinction or non-identity
of some kind. In contrast, Chatton and Holcot are more willing to put expla-
nation to the side in order to preserve what they see as God’s most important
feature: simplicity in its strictest possible sense.
206 Crathorn*, I Sent., q. 20: “Ad propositum: summa unitas simplicitatis excludit summam
non-unitatem oppositi generis, scilicet compositionis, quae compositio simplicitati opponi-

tur. Unde postquam unitas vel identitas, quae est terminus transcendens, determinatur ad
identitatem vel unitatem simplicitatis, tunc sive modificetur vel determinetur cum hoc quod
est summum sive cum quocumque alio termino consimili, tunc nihil excludit nisi oppositum
suum, scilicet identitatem compositionis, et hoc concedo fideliter in divinis.” Ed. Hoffmann,
pp. 51939–5203.
207 Crathorn*, I Sent., q. 20: “Quod autem propter negationem quaternitatis sicut dictum
est sumptae hscil. una res absoluta et tres res relativae vel respectivaei sequeretur haeresis
Sabellii, patet luce clarius. Si enim proprietates relativae sunt idem realiter essentiae divinae,
tunc cum per ipsas constituantur personae divinae, etiam personae necessario erunt idem
realiter, sicut dixit Sabellius …” Ed. Hoffmann, p. 51835–50.
4. Traditional Treatments and Waning Interest
What of the other English theologians of the period from 1315 up until
roughly 1330? Upon examination of the extant theological works composed
in England in that period, we see rather more traditional treatments of the
topics than was the case with Ockham, Chatton, Wodeham, or Holcot. The
same types of questions were asked that had been asked in the period 1250–
1310, and solutions were defended that had been defended in the earlier
period. In short, the search for simplicity does not appear to be at the heart
of any of these other discussions surviving from the period 1315 until ca. 1330.
Primarily for this reason—but with the added justification that most of
the material remains unedited—I will deal with these figures in a cursory
manner; but it should go without saying that my treatment does not do the
material justice and that further research and editing of texts are needed to
chart the development of trinitarian theology in the period.
From John of Reading, who read the Sentences at Oxford just prior to
William Ockham, we have a sizeable question, edited by Schmaus, which is a
defense of the relation account of personal distinction versus accounts rely-
ing on absolutes or on origin—here Reading does his best to explain away
Scotus’ use of the term ‘absolute’, and insists on the total identity of rela-
tion and origin in God. In Schmaus’ study of the trinitarian thought found
in Reading’s mammoth Sentences commentary, the Franciscan appears to
have been highly influenced by Scotus in the trinitarian use of the psycho-
logical model.208 The Benedictine Robert Graystanes, lecturing on the Sen-
tences at Oxford probably in 1321–1323, defended the typical Franciscan view
of the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, given that the latter
did not come from the former, in a large and detailed question on the mat-
ter; given the thoroughness of this question and the fact that Graystanes in
other contexts offers reaction to Ockham, a meticulous study of his two sur-
viving commentaries on the Sentences will probably repay itself.209 Indeed, if
208 On Reading in general, see Livesey 1989, 3–14; Alliney 1996, 274–288. For Reading’s
trinitarian question, see Schmaus 1930a, 286*–307*. Despite its ca. 280 folios, Reading’s Sent.
commentary, surviving in Florence, BNC, conv. soppr. D.4.95, contains only the Prologue and
book I, dd. 1–6, and hence probably does not deal with many of the issues that have been
traced here. See on Reading’s trinitarian thought, Schmaus 1930a, passim (see index).
209 Graystane’s question has been edited in Schabel and Friedman 2003, 53–73; see the
Introduction to that article for further literature and information on his life and work.
Courtenay 1987a, 267 n. 32, observes about Graystane’s commentary that it “may well be our
richest source for Oxford theology in the early 1320s.”
744 chapter eleven
Chatton, Wodeham, Holcot and Crathorn left us in any doubt, other figures
from the period show through their direct replies to Ockham that the
views of the Venerable Inceptor, along with those of Scotus, Auriol, and
Aquinas, were central to the period’s trinitarian theology. For example, in
his treatment of the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, the
Franciscan John of Rodington, reading the Sentences around 1328–1329 and
regent master at Oxford ca. 1332–1333, attacks Ockham from a decidedly
Scotistic point of view.210 The Dominican Hugh of Lawton, on the other
hand, in his discussion of the same issue in his Sentences commentary from
sometime in the 1320’s (perhaps sometime in the period 1326–1330), sets
Ockham up against Aquinas, and agrees with Aquinas, although Lawton
is willing to grant that no “determinate evidence” against the Greek view
on the matter can be adduced.211 In none of this material is the search for
simplicity on display.
The secular priest, Richard FitzRalph, later Chancellor of Oxford Univer-
sity and Archbishop of Armagh, read the Sentences at Oxford in 1328–1329,
and has a discussion in that work of the counterfactual question of the Holy
Spirit’s distinction from the Son. Ockham goes unmentioned in FitzRalph’s
fully traditional treatment of the issue, in which John Duns Scotus and
Henry of Ghent are pitted against Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines,
and Giles of Rome. FitzRalph ends up reconciling the differences between
the two large traditions on this trinitarian point.212 But what is most strik-
ing about FitzRalph’s Sentences commentary taken as a whole is what is
not dealt with in it. FitzRalph dedicates just two questions to trinitarian
issues. One of these questions deals with issues surrounding the Holy Spirit
(including the treatment of the counterfactual question mentioned above);
the other question deals with the logical issues surrounding the Trinity,
210 For Rodington’s question, see Schabel and Friedman 2003, 80–88, and for literature
on Rodington, see the Introduction to that article. In personal communication, William

J. Courtenay has confirmed to me that in his Sent. commentary Rodington devotes some 19
qq. to various trinitarian issues.
211 For Lawton’s question, see Schabel and Friedman 2005, 38–44, along with the Introduc-
tion loc. cit., 32–33. On Lawton himself, see Gelber 2004, 85–87. In personal communication,
William J. Courtenay and Hester G. Gelber have independently confirmed to me that in his
Sent. commentary Lawton deals extensively with the Trinity, devoting some 17 qq. to various
issues.
212 For FitzRalph’s question, see Schabel and Friedman 2003, 74–79, with references to
further literature in the Introduction, loc. cit., p. 42, to which should be added Dunne 2010,
which includes mss and qq. lists and a general status quaestionis on FitzRalph’s work.
and with whether the essence generates or is generated.213 Nowhere in his

commentary does FitzRalph subject to a lengthy analysis the psychological
model and how it applies to the Trinity. And this is not for lack of opportu-
nity: roughly a third of FitzRalph’s commentary deals directly with psycho-
logical issues, and most of the questions he asks there are clearly related to
the Image and the psychological model.214 FitzRalph was simply not inter-
ested in pursuing the possible trinitarian ramifications of this material.
FitzRalph’s lack of interest in the more “metaphysical” trinitarian issues,
matches up with a pattern that we have already met in Robert Holcot
and William Crathorn, and to a much lesser extent in Adam Wodeham.
The Trinity as a topic for extensive analysis was falling out of favor in
England in these years. In 1330–1350, i.e. the final years of the period under
examination here, this waning of interest in trinitarian issues continues and
becomes even more marked. It is, of course, risky to make general claims
about any period of medieval philosophy, and perhaps especially about
Oxford in the 1330’s and 1340’s, where we have a large number of unedited
works, and where the Sentences commentaries increasingly are organized
in highly intricate ways, often with many subsidiary discussions embedded
in treatments of issues to which they appear to relate only loosely. And yet,
so clear is the trend from the evidence at our disposal, that it seems highly
unlikely that further research will do more than nuance the conclusion
presented here.215 What we see, in fact, are four related developments.
First, the application of the psychological model to the Trinity disappears
from the discussion; when the psychological model is mentioned at all, it
is usually in the context of investigating human psychology. Second, the
discussion of relations and emanations and the constitution of the persons
is cut back severely; just how, or even whether, the persons are constituted
213 See the questions and the detailed articulation listed in the Annex at the end of this
chapter.
214 These questions (following the listing in Dunne 2010, 410) are: 6) Utrum mens humana
sit imago trinitatis increatae; 7) Utrum mens ipsa et ceteri habitus sibi praesentes sint
principia in memoria respectu sui; 8) Utrum ex praesentia speciei in memoria sequatur
necessario cogitatio actualis per illam; 9) Utrum intellectus agens sit aliqua pars imaginis;
10) Utrum amor procedat ab aliqua notitia. In his study of FitzRalph’s Sent. commentary,
Gordon Leff, reflecting FitzRalph’s own interests, deals with the Trinity only as it relates to
the Image and philosophical psychology (Leff 1963, 52–55, “The Mind as Trinity”); for a more
recent, concise study of FitzRalph’s noetics and epistemology, see Tachau 1988, 236–242; for
the most recent work on FitzRalph, see Dunne 2010; Dunne is currently preparing a critical
edition of FitzRalph’s entire Sent. commentary.
215 My conclusion confirms Courtenay’s statement mentioned in n. 1 above.
746 chapter eleven
was no longer of significant interest. Third is the related development that

questions about the Filioque, and particularly the counterfactual question
concerning the distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, drop out of
the discussion. All three of these issues had been flashpoints at the heart of
the dispute between the Dominican and Franciscan trinitarian traditions,
and thus it is no surprise that, fourth, this very dispute drops out of view
at Oxford in the 1330’s and 1340’s. Not only were Dominicans like Holcot
and (to a lesser degree) Crathorn and Lawton in discussion with Ockham
as much as or more than they were with Aquinas, the issues over which the
trinitarian traditions had clashed dropped out of the university discussion.
This is tantamount to saying that the trinitarian traditions die out at Oxford
in this period—and this conclusion agrees well with the broader studies of
Courtenay and Gelber on the subject of “schools” at Oxford in this period.216
Turning from the big picture to the theological works themselves surviv-
ing from the period 1330–1350, a few general remarks can be made.217 Some
commentaries from the period, like those of Richard Kilvington, Robert Hal-
ifax, the Monachus Niger, and Alexander Langeley appear to contain no
trinitarian material to speak of. Quite a few commentaries contain material
only on the logical aspects of the Trinity; here can be mentioned Thomas
Buckingham’s short treatment on the application of supposition theory to
selected trinitarian formulas, Roger Roseth’s question on the trinitarian par-
alogisms, and several questions of John Went (although Went includes sev-
eral questions that appear to deal with the Trinity and the psychological
model, but in fact deal nearly exclusively with human psychology). The only
works from these twenty or so years that explicitly take up questions about
216 For Courtenay’s most detailed remarks, see Courtenay 1987a, 171–192, esp. 189–192 (“The
Disappearance of Schools of Thought”), where he points to the fact that “school” mentality is
not to be found at Oxford in this period (see also Courtenay 1992, 9–13); my evidence merely
corroborates Courtenay’s observation. Gelber claims (2004, 14, further 10–19) that, for these
later Dominicans, opinions from, among others, Aquinas functioned “not so much as spurs to
discussion … but as a means of capping or framing argument”, and she says outright (p. 107)
that the Oxford Dominicans of the 1320’s and 1330’s “were not even Thomists in any obvious
historical sense of the term”.
Of course, part of this development may have to do with the fact that we do not have
many Dominican works from these years; nevertheless, because all these trinitarian issues
drop out of the debate, we have no means of seeing who held Dominican views and who
held Franciscan, and this in turn strongly suggests that the basic divide did not mean much
to the theologians of this period.
217 For more detail on the trinitarian contents of these works, see the list of theological
works composed at Oxford ca. 1330–1350 found in the Annex at the end of the present
chapter.
the metaphysical Trinity are three questions from what Jean-François Gen-
est has convincingly argued is Thomas Bradwardine’s Sentences commen-
tary (ca. 1332–1334), as well as one question that appears to belong to the
Carmelite Osbert Pickingham (late 1340’s), but which is heavily dependent
upon earlier quodlibetal questions by Osbert’s confrère, John Baconthorpe.
Given this change in focus away from the trinitarian issues that had
held the attention of scholastics for nearly 80 years, the question has to be
asked: why did this occur? At this point I can only suggest a few possible
answers. First, the amount of time that Oxford theologians had in which
to work on their Sentences lectures declined in this later period—around
1320 the period allotted to Bachelors’ lectures on the Sentences was reduced
from two years to one—and this may have encouraged a rationalizing, by
concentrating on fewer issues. At the same time, it clearly became good
academic practice to go through the issues broached very thoroughly and
at great length.218 Trinitarian theology was on the whole not one of the
limited number of topics that captivated the theologians of this era; more to
their taste were issues like free will and volitions, intension and remission
of forms, and God’s power. It is telling that the one area of trinitarian
theology that is discussed throughout the period (although not on a regular
basis) is logic and the Trinity: this was the more or less hot and new topic
from the 1320’s, and undoubtedly captured and held the interest of the
Oxford scholars for this reason. And this could indicate that the search for
simplicity itself had an effect on the trinitarian discussion: if you accept
that there is nothing to be explained about the constitution of the divine
persons, then perhaps the one area that is worthwhile discussing is the way
the Trinity does not compromise the formality of logic. If Oxford scholars
became on the whole convinced that God’s simplicity trumps explanatory
completeness, as we have seen Ockham, Chatton, Wodeham, and Holcot
held to varying degrees, this might explain the waning of interest in issues
concerning the metaphysical Trinity. Whether this is the case or not will
require more research—and we may in fact never know.
Interestingly, while Oxford theologians were gradually winding down
their engagement with trinitarian theology, across the Channel in Paris,
theologians were carrying out their own search for simplicity.
218 On the changing structure of Sent. commentaries in this era, see esp. Courtenay 1978a,
177–179; 1987a, 251–258; 1992, 3–5; Schabel 2002b, 362–363.

748 chapter eleven
Annex: Oxford Theologians

ca. 1330–1350 and Trinitarian Theology219
Arnold of Strelley, OP (read Sent. sometime between 1323 and 1330, most
probably at Oxford; see in general Gelber 2004, 79–83, and literature referred to
there)—Based on Gelber’s work it seems most likely that Strelley was the author
of the Centiloquium theologicum that used to be assigned to Ockham and was
published in OPh VII, 371–505, trinitarian material primarily in conclusiones 55–77,
of which 55–61 (pp. 463–479) focus on the logical issues while 73–77 (pp. 487–489)
focus on relations in God (on aspects of the Centiloquium’s trinitarian theology, see
Gelber 1974, 283–291; Shank 1988, 71–74).
Richard FitzRalph (Sent., 1328–1329; Chancellor of Oxford University 1332–1334,
see Dunne 2010 and literature referred to there). Trinitarian questions in FitzRalph’s
Sentences commentary:220
4) Circa d. 2 et 9 quaero utrum in divina essentia sit trinitas personarum (F1 10vb–
12vb; F2 6vb–9ra; P 17rb–21ra)
a) utrum cum summa simplicitate divinae essentiae stet pluralitas person-
arum, de quo articulo tractat Magister primo libro d. 8 … (F1 11ra–va; F2 7rb–vb;
P 17vb–18vb)
b) secundus articulus: utrum omne quod dicitur de Deo ad se sive absolute
dicatur singulariter de tribus personis et non pluraliter, de quo articulo
tractat Magister d. 22 … (F1 11va–12ra; F2 7vb–8ra; P 18vb–19rb)
c) tertius articulus: utrum divina essentia sit gignens vel genita, de quo
articulo tractat Magister distinctione 5 … (F1 12ra–va; F2 8ra–vb; P 19rb–20rb)
d) quarto tractabitur an sit alia distinctio a parte rei formalis aut alia inter
attributa et essentiam sive relationem et essentiam vel inter ipsa attributo
(non inveni F1F2P)
e) quinto et ultimo tunc patebit solutio principalis quaestionis et argumen-
torum … (F1 12va–b; F2 8vb–9ra; P 20rb–21ra)
219 From this period not included on this list: Chatton (Lectura), Wodeham, Holcot,
Crathorn. In addition, Nicholas Aston is sometimes listed as having read the Sent. at Oxford
sometime ca. 1345–1350, but Courtenay 1987a, 334–335 n. 17, argues that his Sent. lectures
took place after 1350. I thank William J. Courtenay for taking the time to help improve this
list. Courtenay made me aware of several English authors from the later fourteenth century,
e.g. Richard Brinkley (on whose theological works see esp. Kaluza 1989) and several anonymi,
whose surviving works contain trinitarian theology (see below in this Annex). It should also
be mentioned that the slighly later John Wyclif’s trinitarian theology has received a fine
recent exposition in Lahey 2006.
220 The list is constructed from the following manuscripts containing FitzRalph’s work:
P = Paris, BnF lat. 15853; F1 = Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. A.3.508; F2 = Firenze, BNC, conv.
soppr. A.6.611. For a full question list, see Dunne 2010, 408–414. Book VI of FitzRalph’s Summa
de quaestionibus Armenorum (written in the 1340’s, published in Paris in 1512, and surviving
in some 35 mss) deals with the relevant issues concerning the Holy Spirit, but I have not
examined this text.
5) Utrum Spiritus Sanctus procedat a Patre et a Filio (F1 12vb–15ra; F2 9ra–11va;

P 21ra–24vb)
a) utrum Spiritus distingueretur a Filio, posito quod non procederet ab eo (F1
13ra–14ra; F2 9rb–10rb; P 21rb–23ra; ed. in Schabel and Friedman 2003, 74–79)
b) secundus articulus est utrum Spiritus Sanctus mittatur sive detur a Patre
et Filio (F1 14ra–va; F2 10rb–11ra; P 23ra–24ra)
c) Ad quaestionem principalem cum quaeritur utrum Spiritus Sanctus pro-
cedat a Patre et Filio (F1 14va–15ra; F2 11ra–va; P 24ra–vb)
Thomas Felthorp (ca. 1330–1332—on the surviving fragments of this commentary,
see Kaluza 1983; Edwards 2002, 381)—apparently no trinitarian theology.
John Grafton, OP (lectured on Sent. Oxford 1332–1333; possible Quodlibetal ques-
tions in a section of Wien ÖNB, Ms Palat. Lat. 5460; see Tachau’s Introduction
[pp. 15–17], to Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly; esp. Gelber 2004, 98–101).
Thomas Bradwardine (Sent. ca. 1332–1334; Genest 2002)—three questions dealing
with trinitarian theology in Paris, BnF lat. 15805: Utrum per discursum rationis
humanae possit sciri aliqua veritas in divinis (ff. 41rb–vb: this deals with logical issues);
Utrum in Deo sit tantum trinitas personarum (ff. 41vb–43rb); Utrum personalis
proprietas sit persona (f. 43rb–va): cf. Genest 2002, 397). Bradwardine’s Summa de
causa Dei, released in a definitive version around 1344, but undoubtedly available
in non-definitive versions earlier (cf. Genest 2002, 413–421), contains no trinitarian
theology of note (see on the dating e.g. Courtenay 1974b, 100 n. 16; Courtenay 1978a,
117–118).
Richard Kilvington (Sent. ca. 1333–1334; Jung-Palczewska 2000, esp. 189–199 on
the Sent., with qq. list and list of mss., p. 189 n. 43; Edwards 2002, 382, 384–385).—No
Robert Halifax, OFM (Sent. in the period 1335–1340; Edwards 2002, 382; Courtenay
1973, with question list and list of mss [pp. 140–141])—appears to contain no
trinitarian theology).
Thomas Buckingham (Sent. in period 1333–1340; Edwards 2002, 382): q. 2 = “Utrum
essentia divina generet vel generetur” (this discussion comprises 8 pages in the 1505
edition, unfoliated, but starting on p. e.iiira).
Roger Roseth, OFM (Sent. in period ca. 1334–1337). Of the five questions found
in this commentary, only q. 3, a. 1 (“Utrum regulae traditae a Philosopho ad reg-
ulandum modos arguendi tenent in divinis”) deals at length with the trinitarian
paralogisms; this text has been studied in detail in Hallamaa 2003, and an edition is
found in Hallamaa 2005, 67–80—otherwise no trinitarian theology.221
Monachus Niger, OSB (Sent. in period 1335–1341, either at Oxford or Cambridge;
Courtenay 1978a, 90–95, with list of mss. on p. 91 n. 192;—qq. list from ms. Fribourg,
Cordeliers 26 in Trapp 1956, 207–211 [and see Trapp’s further reflections, including
221 Thanks to Dr. Hallamaa for information regarding Roseth’s commentary, and see
Hallamaa 2010 for more information on it.

750 chapter eleven
a total description of the contents of this ms. in Trapp 1965b]; more recent informa-
tion and bibliography in Courtenay 1987, 274; Edwards 2002, 382).—No trinitarian
theology.
Haveral, OFM (Questions determined at the custodial school in Norwich; see
Doucet 1953, esp. 93–95 [with question list], the remarks on Doucet 1953 found in
Courtenay 1982, and Courtenay 1987, 274).—No trinitarian theology.
Alexander Langeley, OFM (Sent. in the period 1335–1340; see Courtenay 1974b,
Edwards 2002).—No trinitarian theology.222
John Went, OFM (Sent. ca. 1336–1337; Doucet 1953, esp. 96–98 [with detailed qq.
list]; Kennedy and Romano 1987 [with qq. list and discussion of mss, pp. 138–
140—Kennedy and Romano correctly list one more question in the Commentary
than does Doucet = q. 5 on K&R’s list], Edwards 2002, esp. 382, 389–393).—Qq. 3
(“Utrum in anima humana reperiatur imago sive similitudo trinitatis increatae”), 4
(“Utrum Creator caeli et terrae creavit imaginem trinitatis in anima” [ff. 145r–145v
pace Doucet]), and 5 (“Utrum semper perfectior imago trinitatis sit magis capax
maioris beatitudinis sive miseriae” [this question is missing from Doucet’s list, but
is found in 5 articles on ff. 146r–149r]), deal on the whole with human psychological
makeup; q. 6 (“Utrum investigatio theologorum circa trinitatem sit expediens ad
salutem”) is devoted to the logical aspects of trinitarian theology.
Adam Ely (or Adam Junior): (Sent. ca. 1337 in either Oxford or Cambridge; see
Doucet 1954, 7–8; Courtenay 1987, 109–111, 274)—apparently only III–IV Sent. sur-
vive.
John of Stukle, OSB (Sent. commentary found in ms. Troyes 505, ff. 84r–109v, and
to be dated ca. 1330–1347 [the commentary is cited by Hugolino of Orvieto]; see
Courtenay 1978b, 435–438).—On the basis of Courtenay’s brief description of the
contents, there appears to be no trinitarian theology.
Roger of Nottingham, Introitus on the Sentences (Courtenay 1992, 30–31: prob-
ably between 1340 and 1346; edition of the text, dealing with creation and God’s
existence, is found in Synan 1963).—No trinitarian theology.
Geoffrey Alienand, Ocarm, Introitus ad bibliam (Sharpe 2001, 120, no. 309; Cour-
tenay 1992, pp. 30–31: probably between 1340 and 1346).—No trinitarian theology.
Osbert Pickingham, Ocarm, Quaestiones theologicae (on Osbert in general, see
Xiberta 1931, 241–284; mss. and question list: 243–248. Courtenay 1992, p. 30 n. 96,
notes that Katherine H. Tachau observed that a copy was to be found in Florence
in 1348, so these questions must belong to the 1340’s: Courtenay 1992, 31, suggests
them having been written between 1340 and 1346)—q. 20: “Utrum essentia divina
sit tres personae et earum quaelibet”; about this question Xiberta says “Q. 20
invenitur in uno codice O, adeoque quid de ea sentiendum nescio” (O = Oxford,
222 Thanks to the editor of the first book of Langeley’s Sent. commentary, Raymond
Edwards, for confirming for me in personal correspondence that no trinitarian theology is

found there.
Magdalene College 194, this question ff. 273r–276r. Xiberta 1931, 283–284, claims that
Pickingham in this question depends on Baconthorpe [I Sent., d. 33, Quodl. III, qq.
7–8: see on Baconthorpe’s Quodlibetal text, Gelber 1974, 291–299], and Xiberta gives
a short excerpt).
Lesser Known Works, Still More Difficult to Date223

Geoffrey Herdeby, OESA, Questiones super Sententias between 1340 and 1360
(Paris, BnF lat. 16535, ff. 75r–110r, 116r–117v; Palermo, Bibl. Com., 2.Qq.D.142, ff. 60r–
72v).
q. 7: Utrum omnipotens Pater Filium et Spiritum Sanctum aeternaliter producit a
se personaliter condistinctos (Paris, 101v–110r)
Thomas Ringstead, OP, Questions in Erfurt, Wiss. Stadtbibl., CA 4, 110, ff. 1ra–20rb
q. 4 (11va): Utrum generatio Filii a Patre sit aeterna
Vatican Anonymous (BAV, Vat. lat. 13002, ff. 2r–91v). Questions date to 1330’s or
1340’s
Sent. I, q. 2: Utrum cum simplici unitate divinae essentiae sit pluralitas person-
arum (55ra)
Erfurt Anonymous (Erfurt, Wiss. Stadtbibl., CA 2, 180, ff. 1ra–101rb). Tachau (1988,
165 n. 28) dated it between 1323 and 1330; using evidence found in the commentary’s
trinitarian theology, Gelber (2004, 79–81) hypothesized that Arnold of Strelley was
the author.
Sent. I, d. 2: Utrum summa essentiae divinae unitas aliquam rerum pluralitatem
intra se permittat (19va)
Sent. I, d. 24: Utrum termini numerales aliquid ponantur in divinis (27rb)
Worcester Anonymous (Worcester, Cath. Libr., F 3, ff. 147v–166r). England, prob-
ably Oxford ca. 1320. 6 questions, 5 of which are on the Trinity.
q. 1: Utrum principium formale et immediatum elicitivum omnium actionum
notionalium in divinis sit ipsa essentia divina absolute
q. 2: Utrum Pater et Filius necessario concurrant in unitate principii activi respec-
tu spirationis Spiritus Sancti
q. 3: Utrum, si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, an posset distingui person-
aliter ab eo
q. 4: Utrum cum summa unitate et simplicitate principii simpliciter illimitati stet
distinctio aliquorum realiter et formaliter distinctorum ab eodem
q. 5: Utrum productio causarum per actum causandi praesupponat necessario
trinitatem personarum in ratione causae
223 I owe quite literally all the information on these lesser-known works to William
J. Courtenay.
752 chapter eleven
Merton Anonymous (Oxford, Merton College, O.1.9, ff. 4r–114v). Commentary

compiled between 1347 and 1360, probably closer to the earlier date, and essentially
abbreviations of questions of earlier authors, many of them from Ockham.
q. 14: Utrum cum unitate numerali divinae essentiae stet pluralitas personarum
q. 23: Utrum Deus generet Deum (32r)
q. 24: Utrum Deus sit Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus (33r)
q. 25: Utrum essentia divina generet vel generetur (34r)
q. 26: Utrum Filius generetur de substantia Patris (36r)
q. 27: Utrum essentia sit terminus formalis generationis (37r)
q. 28 (d. 5): Utrum Pater genuit Filium natura vel voluntate (38r)
q. 29: Utrum potentia generandi in Patre sit aliquid absolutum vel respectivum
(39r)
q. 30: Utrum potentia generandi possit communicari Filio a Patre (41r)
q. 34: Utrum Filius in divinis vere generetur a Patre (46r)
q. 35: Utrum generatio in divinis sit univoca (47r)224
224 Courtenay writes (personal correspondence): “In fact, qq. 36–46, 51–59 are all on the
Trinity”.
chapter twelve
PARIS, FROM AURIOL TO RIMINI
A striking feature of the Parisian discussion of the trinitarian issues that

this book has focused on, and particularly the discussion concerning the
role of the psychological model, is its strong continuity in the period 1320–
1345. As we saw in Chapters Ten and Eleven, at Oxford in the same period
trinitarian issues that had dominated the debate for nearly 75 years—right
up to the time of Ockham and Chatton—fell out of the discussion nearly
entirely; although questions dealing with especially the logical aspects of
trinitarian theology are represented at Oxford in the second quarter of
the fourteenth century, nevertheless it is rare to find any investigation of
the more “metaphysical” issues having to do with the Trinity. Thus, the
trinitarian topics on which this book has focused were more or less ignored.
As mentioned above, some of this has to do with the fact that Oxford
Sentences commentaries—very nearly the only source that we have for
Oxford trinitarian thought in the period—became more and more selective
in the issues broached, concentrating on fewer subjects, but going into those
few subjects in sometimes excruciating detail. Nevertheless, this does not
change the fact that the Trinity was one of the subjects that came to be
selected out—Oxford theologians chose to marginalize trinitarian theology,
and this is one way in which mid-fourteenth-century Oxford theology is
discontinuous with the trinitarian discussion of the mid-thirteenth to early
fourteenth centuries. This was not at all the case at Paris in the same period,
and in this way, among others, Oxford and Paris had divergent intellectual
tendencies in the fourteenth century.1
As with Oxford, at Paris too, Sentences commentaries are basically our
sole source of information about the period’s trinitarian theology; but unlike
at Oxford, the many theologians from the period for whom we have surviv-
ing commentaries appear to have attempted to write their commentaries
1 On diverging intellectual tendencies at Oxford and Paris in this period, see, e.g.,
Courtenay 1984a; Courtenay 1987a, 147–167; Courtenay’s view that, from 1326 until 1340,
Paris went into a “dormition” may have to be nuanced as we learn more about the period,
although more recent studies (e.g., Schabel 2002a) have substantially corroborated it. See
also Courtenay 1995–1996, on English scholars in Paris during this period.
754 chapter twelve
on a broad range of issues that, roughly speaking, follow the order that Lom-
bard had set down in the first book of the Sentences. Thus, at Paris there truly
was a continuous debate on trinitarian theology—continuous with the past
debate from at least the time of Bonaventure and Aquinas, but continuous
also as a unit in itself. In this respect, it is worthwhile noting that, although
modern historians have shown beyond a doubt that Gregory of Rimini was
heavily influenced by Oxford thought and even acted as a conduit whereby
that thought was transmitted to continental European scholars, neverthe-
less it has also become increasingly apparent that he was also operating in
a very lively Parisian discussion that took its point of departure especially
in the ideas of Scotus and Auriol.2 Here, for several reasons, I cannot do jus-
tice to the entire Parisian discussion from Auriol to Rimini concerning the
trinitarian issues that have been regularly examined in this book. For one
thing, the very fact that there is a continuous tradition in trinitarian specula-
tion from these years means that there is a tremendous amount of material,
and any kind of detailed analysis would require (at least) a monograph in
itself. Moreover, very little of the theological work that survives from these
years has ever been printed, let alone printed in critical edition; for the most
part, doing research on this period requires extensive manuscript work.
But if I cannot give any kind of comprehensive survey, I can nevertheless
give (§1) some indications of the contours of the period’s trinitarian dis-
cussion, and the place of the trinitarian traditions in it, dwelling briefly on
several figures who for one reason or another are of special interest. After
doing that, I examine in some depth (§§2–5) the trinitarian thought of four
theologians who clearly embarked on the search for simplicity: Francis of
Marchia, Michael of Massa, William of Rubio, and Gregory of Rimini. In a
conclusion to the chapter (§6) I make some more general remarks about
the fourteenth-century search for simplicity.
1. An Overview
As mentioned, there are, in fact, a considerable number of extant theologi-

cal works from this period at Paris, and there is very little secondary litera-
ture that deals with philosophical or theological issues from the period as a
2 See, e.g., Bermon 2002, esp. 268–269; Schabel 2000a, esp. chs. 7–9, 11; Schabel 2002a. For
information on any of the Sent. commentaries mentioned below, see the relevant sections of
Schabel’s studies; my own remarks are by way of supplements and specifications.
paris, from auriol to rimini 755
whole.3 If we look at the issues in trinitarian theology, it appears that the fig-
ures from the period can be divided into three main categories: those who
fit roughly into the trinitarian traditions that we have been tracing through-
out this book, with strong Dominican or Franciscan leanings; those who
seem to be somewhat independent (eclectic or unusual) in their thought
and whose work definitely deserves greater attention than it receives here;
and finally the four theologians mentioned above—Marchia, Massa, Rubio,
and Rimini—who are clearly participating in the same search for simplic-
ity that we saw with Ockham, Chatton, Wodeham, and Holcot at Oxford,
and even earlier with Auriol at Paris. Placing figures into especially the first
two of these categories is somewhat hazardous until we have more system-
atic examinations of their trinitarian thought.4 Some who appear on a quick
examination to be rather derivative may turn out to have introduced new
elements into the discussion; those who appear to be independent and wor-
thy of greater consideration may upon that greater consideration turn out
merely to have utilized new vocabulary to describe rather run-of-the-mill
solutions. Thus, the overview presented here is by no means intended to
be the last word on the subject: much more work needs to be done on all
aspects of the trinitarian thought of this period before we have a nuanced
picture.
A. The Trinitarian Traditions

Both Dominican and Franciscan trinitarian theology is recognizably present
in this period at Paris. The Dominican trinitarian tradition is not as well
represented in the surviving literature as is the Franciscan, but as was
mentioned in Chapter Seven above, two figures from the late 1320’s or
early 1330’s, Bernard Lombardi and Durandellus, were Dominicans, and
both towed a Dominican line. As mentioned in Chapter Seven, Durandel-
lus wrote explicitly and at length against the parts of Durand’s trinitarian
3 Exceptions include Dettloff 1963, chs. 2–4 passim; Tachau 1988, 315–383; Bakker 1999,
passim; Schabel 2000a, 135–220, 259–274. Schabel 2002a, presents a valuable overview of
the Sent. commentary literature from this period (which, as mentioned, is basically all the
theological literature at our disposal), and he rightly singles out there (p. 221) the works
of Pierre Duhem and Anneliese Maier for containing many studies of the period’s natural
philosophy.
4 Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming will present editions of all surviving texts from this
entire period dealing with the Filioque issue that have not as yet received a critical edition,
and the Introduction to the editions will contain a study of the ebb and flow of debate and
the originality of the individual thinkers.
756 chapter twelve
theology that Durandellus thought deviated from genuine Thomistic teach-

ing (see Emery [Gilles] 1997). For his part, Bernard, in his discussion of the
counterfactual question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, brings
up three positions, Thomas’, Henry of Ghent’s, and Auriol’s, and after reject-
ing the latter two views (and Auriol’s in great detail), he opts for Thomas’
view, which is “ancient and founded on Sacred Scripture.”5 This is not the
only area in which Bernard appears to follow Thomas’ general line: on the
issue of the constitution of the persons, Schmaus calls Bernard a genuine
“Anhänger” of Thomas, and notes that Lombardi’s rejection of Durand’s
view on the matter reminds strongly of John of Naples’.6 In addition to
Durandellus and Bernard, one could also mention that the third version of
Durand’s Sentences commentary was released in this period, and the Quodli-
beta of Henry of Lübeck date from disputations held in Cologne in the early
1320’s. Certainly Durand and probably also Henry fit into the Dominican
trinitarian tradition.7
A further element in the Dominican trinitarian tradition in this period
is the contribution of the Augustinian Hermits. Giles of Rome, as we saw
in Chapters Three (§3) and Five (§1) above, modified Thomas Aquinas’
thought in important ways, but definitely fell into the broad Dominican
trinitarian tradition. Giles was made the teaching doctor of his order soon
after his rehabilitation in 1285, and his presence as head of the order from
1292 until 1295, and his continued participation in ecclesiopolitical and
academic debate until his death in 1316 undoubtedly helped to make his
theology, and the inclinations on display in his theology, an extraordinar-
ily important part of the intellectual makeup of Augustinian theologians.
Augustinus Triumphus (d. 1328), for instance, in his Sentences commen-
tary from the early part of the first decade of the fourteenth century, took
5 Bernard Lombardi, I Sent., d. 12, q. 3 (“Utrum si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a
Filio, distingueretur ab eo”): “… ista opinio est antiqua et fundata in scriptura sacra.” Erfurt,
Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, C.A. 2o 368, f. 22ra; Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek 542, f. 31ra.
The entire text will be published and analyzed in Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming.
Schabel (2002a, 255 n. 75, and see also Schabel, Friedman, and Balcoyiannopoulou 2001, 247–
248) has suggested that, for parts of the Sent. commentary, two redactions of the text are to
be found in the surviving manuscripts, with a slightly reworked version in Naples, BN VII. G.
98 as compared to the other mss; we will discuss this in Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming.
6 Schmaus 1930a, 441–442. Schmaus deals with other areas of Bernard’s thought (see the
index), and notes (331–332) about the Dominican’s treatment of the procession of the Holy
Spirit from the Father and the Son that it contains nearly verbatim quotations from Durand
(as is often the case in Bernard’s work).
7 See Ch. 7, above, especially § 2, for Durand. For some idea of Henry of Lübeck’s
trinitarian theology, see Schmaus 1930a, 45 n. 88, 439–440.

a basically Dominican view of the Trinity.8 Thus, on the traditional flash-

point between the trinitarian traditions, the counterfactual Filioque ques-
tion, Augustinus unequivocally rejects the Franciscan view that the Son and
the Holy Spirit would be distinct even if the latter did not come from the
former. He proves the traditional Dominican position by appealing to the
necessity of opposition of relations, and concomitantly the dual nature of
the divine relations, and by resorting to what I called above, in Chapter
Five, the “Psychological” argument, i.e. that love must come from a word.9
On the related issue of the distinction between the emanations, Augustinus
rejects one Franciscan-leaning position (the emanations are really distin-
guished on account of their really distinct “foundations” [fundamenti], i.e.
the generative and spirative powers) and one slightly Dominican-leaning
position (the emanations are distinct because they are disparate relations
that are in distinct supposites, the Son and the Holy Spirit). Augustinus him-
self accepts a view similar to that of Godfrey of Fontaines (and by extension
others who support a Dominican type of trinitarian theology): the distinc-
tion between the disparate relations is totally parasitic on the distinction
between the opposed relations. This is, of course, fully in line with the
Dominican stress on the priority of opposed relations to emanations, and
Augustinus tells us explicitly that “all real distinction in the divine is to be
accepted through opposed relations.”10 Along the way, Augustinus takes the
8 On this work—found in a single copy (Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale 296)—, see
Friedman 2002a, 80–81, and esp. Schmaus 1935. On Augustinus, see Zumkeller 1964, 201–202;
Olszewski 2005; Olszewski 2009.
9 Augustinus Triumphus, I Sent., d. 11, q. 3 (“Utrum si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet
a Filio distingueretur ab ipso”, ff. 72ra–vb): “Responsio: dicendum quod aliqui dicunt Spir-
itum Sanctum a Filio distingui posse dato quod nunquam ab ipso procederet .... Sed ista
positio non est bona .... Dicamus ergo quod si Spiritus Sanctus a Filio non procederet, non
distingueretur ab eo. Quod dupliciter quantum ad praesens potest ostendi .... Prima ratio sic
patet: nam relatio dupliciter considerari potest, primo ratione fundamenti in quo fundatur,
secundo ratione oppositi ad quod refertur. In divinis ergo relatio non potest distinguere
ratione fundamenti in quo existit .... Distinguit ergo ibi relatio ut comparatur ad oppositum.
Si ergo Spiritus Sanctus a Filio non procederet, non haberet relationem oppositam ad ipsum,
et sic … nulla distinctio inter utrumque reperiretur, si ab eo non procederet. Secunda ratio
sic ostenditur: nam, ut dictum est supra, [quod] Filius procedit per modum intellectus ut
Verbum, Spiritus vero Sanctus per modum voluntatis ut Amor, cum (ms.: causa) igitur Amor
nunquam producatur nisi mediante Verbo, quia illud proprie amatur quod Verbo concipitur,
sequitur quod Spiritus, si non (ms.: vero) procederet a Filio tamquam a Verbo, quod ab ipso
non distingueretur, immo sequitur quod nullo modo procederet nec haberet esse.” Troyes,
BM 296, f. 72ra–va. On the psychological argument, see Ch. 5, §4 above.
10 Augustinus Triumphus, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2 (“Utrum processio Filii et processio Spiritus
Sancti realiter distinguantur”, f. 79ra–vb—italicized text translated): “… aliqui dicunt Filium

et Spiritum Sanctum ad invicem realiter distingui propter diversum* modum procedendi
758 chapter twelve
opportunity to deny that the intellect and will could be the source of the real
distinction between the emanations, since the formal distinction between
the attributes is merely one of modi significandi.11 Thus, it appears that we
can situate Augustinus firmly in the Dominican trinitarian tradition.
utriusque … et isti diversi modi procedendi realiter distinguuntur* propter realem distinc-
tionem fundamenti, nam … virtus generativa, quae est fundamentum generationis*, realiter
distinguitur a virtute spirativa, quae est fundamentum spirationis .... Sed ista positio non est
bona .... Ideo alii melius dicunt. Volunt enim quod processio Filii et processio Spiritus Sancti,
cum nominent relationes disparatas, realiter differre non possunt nisi ratione subiecti vel
suppositi .... Volunt ergo isti inter processionem Filii et processionem Spiritus Sancti esse
realem differentiam, quia dato quod processio Filii, quae est generatio, et processio Spiri-
tus Sancti, quae est spiratio, nominent relationes disparatas, et per consequens secundum
se realiter non differant, quia ad invicem oppositionem non habent, tamen eo ipso quod
tales relationes sunt in suppositis realiter distinctis, oportet inter ipsas realem differentiam
assignare. Sed nec istud est bene dictum, quia, ut ipsimet dicunt, relationes disparatae in
eodem supposito esse possunt .... Dicendum est ergo .... distinctio realis inter relationes dis-
paratas in divinis accipienda est ex parte relationum oppositarum. Nam quia generare et
gigni opponuntur ad invicem realiter, ideo spirare realiter distinguitur ab utroque, quia ut
spirare est in Patre est coniunctum paternitati, et est coniunctum generationi active dictae.
Sicut ergo paternitas et generare differunt realiter a filiatione et a gigni, sic spirare realiter
oportet distingui a filiatione et generatione passive sumpta. Similiter spirare ut est in Filio est
coniunctum filiationi et gigni. Sicut ergo filiatio realiter distinguitur a paternitate et a genera-
tione active dicta, et si secundum quod spiratio est in Patre realiter distinguitur a generatione
passiva et secundum quod est in Filio realiter distinguitur a generatione activa, oportet quod
spiratio universaliter distinguatur a generatione, et per consequens processio Filii realiter
distinguetur a processione Spiritus Sancti non propter se sed propter relationes oppositas.
Ex quo patet quod si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, non distingueretur ab ipso,
quia ex hoc quod spirare potest stare cum generatione active sumpta in Patre, habetur quod
Spiritus Sanctus distinguitur a Patre, eo quod spirare et spirari oppositionem habent. Ex hoc
vero quod ipsum spirare potest stare cum generatione passive sumpta in Filio, habetur quod
distinguatur a Filio, eo quod sic per spirare et spirari ad invicem oppositionem habent. Tota
ergo distinctio realis in divinis sumenda est per relationes oppositas, quia enim solum istae rela-
tiones distinguant ab opposito, ideo solum distinctio talium relationum compatitur secum
unitatem essentiae divinae et omnium absolutorum.” Troyes, BM 296, f. 79ra–vb. For the view
that Augustinus here defends—and its relation to Giles of Rome—see n. 17 below.
11 Augustinus Triumphus, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2: “… Filius procedit per modum intellectus et
Spiritus Sanctus per modum voluntatis, et intellectus divinus formaliter non est voluntas
nec voluntas formaliter est intellectus. Ergo similiter processio Filii formaliter non erit
processio Spiritus Sancti nec e converso, sed differentia formalis inducit differentiam realem
.... Ad primum igitur, dicendum quod cum dicamus* voluntas divina est intellectus … non
obstante ergo differentia formali secundum modum significandi inter virtutem generativam
et virtutem spirativam vel inter intellectum et voluntatem, est tamen ibi vera identitas
realis*, et per consequens nec inter generationem et processionem secundum se aliqua
differentia realis esse potest nisi per relationes oppositas.” Troyes, BM 296, f. 79ra, 79vb. It is
hard to know to whom Augustinus is replying here, but the mention of the formal distinction
between the attributes, plus the idea that the formal difference leads to the real difference,
brings John Duns Scotus to mind. Schmaus (1935, 929–935) edits two of Augustinus’ questions
dealing with the distinction between the divine attributes, but Scotus does not seem to make
an appearance there.
This Dominican inclination among the Augustinian Hermits continues at

Paris in the period under discussion here with the Sentences commentaries
of Dionysius de Burgo Sancti Sepulchri (d. 1342), who read the Sentences at
the same time as Peter Auriol, and Gerard of Siena (d. 1336), with lectures on
the Sentences around 1325.12 Dionysius, for example, in his discussion of the
counterfactual Filioque question, agrees explicitly with Thomas, Godfrey,
and Giles that the Son and the Holy Spirit would not be distinct, if the latter
did not come from the former. Also Gerard in his Sentences commentary
takes the standard Dominican view on the matter. But Gerard’s treatment
differs in at least two respects from that of Dionysius. First, Gerard takes
Auriol’s position into account on several occasions, arguing in detail against
it. Second, although Gerard leans heavily towards the Dominican view, he
speculates at some length about just how the Son and the Holy Spirit would
be distinct if the Franciscan view that they could be distinct given the
counterfactual were correct.13 Moreover, in another context—that of the
psychological model of the Trinity—Gerard appears to support a position
that more approaches the Franciscan than the Dominican view.14 All of
this shows just how careful we need to be when talking about schools and
traditions: Gerard is noted for having been a staunch supporter of Giles of
Rome, yet just the fact that he had to defend Giles’ general positions from
12 Dionysius’ work survives in one ms. (Erfurt, Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, C.A. 2o 131);
d. 11 (ff. 38va–42rb) on the Filioque will be published and studied in Friedman and Schabel
Forthcoming. On Dionysius’ commentary, see Schabel 2002a, 249–250, and on Dionysius
more generally, see Zumkeller 1964, 207. Gerard’s Sent. commentary is found in some 28
manuscripts and a printed edition from 1598; d. 11 (ed. 1598, pp. 320b–341a) of the work
will be published and studied in Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming. On Gerard’s Sent.
commentary, see Courtenay 2009, and on Gerard more generally, see Zumkeller 1964, 208–
209 and Schabel and Courtenay 2007, 557 ff. See also below, in n. 141, on the Augustinian
Hermit James of Pamiers, who also deals with trinitarian theology in his Quodlibet from this
period.
13 Gerard of Siena, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2, a. 3: “… videtur mihi dicendum cum prima opinione
quae ut melius intelligatur probo duas conclusiones per ordinem, quarum prima est quod
si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, nulla esset realis distinctio inter ipsos. Secunda
quod supposito cum secunda opinione esse realem distinctionem inter Filium et Spiritum
Sanctum, remota spiratione activa a Filio, talis distinctio esset personalis ex parte utriusque,
magis tamen ex parte Filii quam ex parte Spiritus Sancti, contra secundam opinionem.” Ed.
1598, p. 338a. The “second opinion” mentioned in the passage is Auriol’s. Interestingly, this
discussion about who would be more really distinct, the Holy Spirit or the Son, if the former
did not come from the latter, is not limited to Gerard, and appears to have its roots in Auriol’s
contention that, given the counterfactual, the Son would be some thing, but not a person,
while the Holy Spirit would retain his entire personality. On this, see the Introduction to
Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming.
14 For a brief discussion of Gerard’s ideas on the psychological model, see n. 144 below.
760 chapter twelve
the likes of Peter Auriol (who began reading the Sentences at Paris in the
year of Giles’ death) meant that Gerard had to develop the views further. He
could not have begun to have effectively defended the position by merely
parroted the teaching doctor of his order. Further, despite what appears to
be a fundamentally Dominican orientation, nevertheless at times Gerard
shows a willingness to entertain views that he basically disagrees with, and
even to adhere to positions that might fit more comfortably in a Franciscan-
leaning trinitarian theology. Gerard demonstrates quite clearly that hard-
and-fast talk about “schools”, while useful as a historical convenience, must
be tempered by nuance. And for nuance we will need more detailed studies.
All of that is true for Thomas of Strasbourg (d. 1357), who read the Sen-
tences at Paris no later than 1334–1335, and who was the head of the Augus-
tinian Hermits from 1345 until his death. His ultimate position in the order
may have contributed to the enormous popularity of his Sentences commen-
tary, parts of which exist today in at least fifty manuscripts. In recent studies,
Strasbourg has emerged as a rather interesting theologian, who, influenced
particularly by Peter Auriol, held some unusual views concerning, e.g., pre-
destination and future contingents.15 But an inspection of his I Sentences
does not reveal any particular divergence from a general Dominican trini-
tarian theology. To be sure, Thomas castigates Durand of St. Pourçain for
having held an appropriational psychological model, and even claims that
without the divine intellect and will there would be no production of Word
and Spirit.16 But as far as I can tell Strasbourg never specifies what role
the intellect and the will play in the divine productions. Rather, when he
deals with the distinction between the processions, he rejects Scotus’ view
on the formal distinction between the attributes and he claims explicitly
that “the divine essence, formally and really indistinct, is the productive
source of the two supposites according to their distinct emanations.” Thus,
in Dominican fashion, Thomas claims that the divine intellect and will are
not the distinct sources of generation and active spiration, respectively, a
position that appears to run against the strong use of philosophical psychol-
ogy in trinitarian theology. In this discussion, Thomas himself defends what
15 On Strasbourg, see Zumkeller 1964, 212–214. For Strasbourg on predestination, where
he defends a version of Auriol’s theory (“General Election”), see Halverson 1998, 134–143.
On Strasbourg’s theory of future contingents and divine foreknowledge, again influenced
by Auriol, see Schabel 2000a, 259–262. Halverson (1998, 143, 148, also Schabel 2002a, 258,
264) shows that Strasbourg’s theory of predestination was one of Gregory of Rimini’s targets.
Strasbourg also replied to Auriol in his cognitive theory; see Lindner 1930, Reina 1995.
16 Thomas of Strasbourg (i.e., de Argentina), I Sent., d. 10 (ed. 1564, ff. 57ra–58rb).
he labels the view of doctor noster, i.e. Giles of Rome, on the distinction
between the emanations against several views, including that of Thomas
Aquinas.17 In line with this position, Strasbourg denies that we can use the
number of productive sources in God to show that there are two and only
two productions and hence three and only three persons, again targeting
Scotus; according to Strasbourg, this is an article of faith not amenable to
demonstrative proof.18 And, in agreement with this, Thomas argues that
the Son and the Holy Spirit would not be distinct if the Son did not spi-
rate.19 Thomas is an energetic debater, and the margins of the early printed
edition of his I Sentences are full of references to other theologians. Peter
Auriol makes his appearance in several places, for example when Strasbourg
rejects Auriol’s ideas on the indistinction between essence and property
and on unelicited emanations.20 In this way, then, Strasbourg is interest-
ing as a witness to this period’s trinitarian debate and as a contrast to the
far more radical Augustinian Hermits from this period, Michael of Massa
and Gregory of Rimini, whose thought will be examined below (§ 3 and § 5,
respectively).
If we turn to the Franciscan trinitarian tradition at Paris in this period,
what we find is “Scotists”. One hesitates to use the term ‘Scotist’ to describe
anyone, since it seems to consign that scholar to oblivion as a mere parroter
of Scotus’ ideas. Let it be stated, then, at the outset: recent research has
revealed great diversity in the Scotist movement of the early fourteenth
17 Strasbourg, I Sent., d. 12 et 13, q. 1, a. 2 (“Utrum generatio et spiratio differant realiter”):
“… ipsa divina essentia formaliter et realiter indistincta est principium productivum duorum
suppositorum secundum duas distinctas emanationes.” Ed. 1564, f. 64ra. For the rejection of
Scotus, see ibid., f. 63vb, and for Strasbourg’s defense of Giles of Rome against Aquinas, ibid.,
f. 63rb–vb—Strasbourg here defends a view as being Giles’ that is roughly the same as that
which Augustinus Triumphus defended (n. 10 above), but I have been unable to locate the
view in Giles’ works.
18 Strasbourg, I Sent., d. 2, q. 2 (“An trinitas divinarum personarum cum summa unitate
sit compossibilis”), esp. a. 2 against Scotus (ed. 1564, ff. 30vb–31rb): “… non possumus probare
necessaria ratione distinctionem realem divinarum personarum, quia illud quod est articu-
lus fidei supremus et excellentissimus non potest demonstrari.” Ed. 1564, f. 30vb.
19 Strasbourg, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (“An Spiritus Sanctus distingueretur a Filio si non proced-
eret ab eo”; ed. 1564, ff. 60va–62va). A critical edition of this text will be included in Friedman
and Schabel Forthcoming.
20 For the first, see Strasbourg, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1 (“Utrum proprietas relativa in divinis
realiter differat ab essentia”), a. 1 (ed. 1564, f. 98rb–vb), rejecting that essence and relation can
be totally indistinct as Auriol held. For the second, ibid., d. 5, q. 1 (“Utrum Filius generetur
in divinis de substantia Patris”), a. 3 (ed. 1564, ff. 41vb–42vb), arguing that the Son must be the
formal term of generation or he would not be God.
762 chapter twelve
century.21 Scotism, at least in this period, cannot be considered a monolithic

movement that straitjacketed those who clearly thought Scotus had been on
the right track in his general approach (and often in his specific theological
positions). Further, simply because a theologian can be characterized as a
Scotist in trinitarian theology does not automatically mean that he was a
Scotist tout court. When I use the term ‘Scotist’ here, I mean scholars who
consciously and explicitly maintain doctrines that Scotus himself held, at
least in part because Scotus held them. Only more study will be able to
show the difference between those who slavishly follow Scotus—it is my
impression that, anonymous works aside, these are very rare indeed—,
those who are to one extent or another “independent” Scotists, and those
who do not really deserve the label ‘Scotist’ at all. Moreover, only more
intense research will reveal the lines of influence among these thinkers—
who came up with the compelling interpretations of Scotus’ doctrine or with
the innovations that captivated other thinkers—as well as which of their
opponents were considered to be most worthy of response and hence, we
can deduce, were perceived to be the greatest threats to the Scotist project.
To give just an impression of the Scotists of this period, we can take the
Italian Franciscan Landulph Caracciolo (d. 1351), who read the Sentences at
Paris in 1318–1319. Landulph was thus Peter Auriol’s immediate successor
as Franciscan Bachelor of the Sentences, and this situation is reflected in
Landulph’s work: on trinitarian issue after trinitarian issue Auriol is very
much Caracciolo’s major opponent.22
Caracciolo’s trinitarian theory is centered, as was Scotus’, on the psycho-
logical model: the two productions by which the Son and the Holy Spirit are
constituted are intellectual and voluntary production respectively, along
the lines that Scotus understood. Thus, the perfect memory in the Father,
the intellect with the divine essence present to it, is the elicitive source of
21 E.g., Rossini and Schabel 2005. For general statements on Scotism in the fourteenth
century and beyond, see, e.g., Bérubé 1984; Honnefelder 1995; Friedman 2002a, 111–113.
22 Later in his career, Landulph was Bishop of Castellammare (1327–1331) and then Arch-
bishop of Amalfi (1331–1351); significant parts of his Sent. commentary are found in some
25 mss. See for the most recent considerations of Landulph’s dating and career, Schabel
2009b. One extremely important article dealing with Landulph is Knuuttila and Lehtinen
1979, which shows how Caracciolo used “instants of nature” in order to explain physical and
metaphysical change and which suggests that many of the important thinkers of the period
took Caracciolo’s view as representative. In his study of the reception of Scotus’ ideas on
acceptance and merit, Dettloff (1963, 196) says: “Landulfus Caracciolo ist innerhalb unserer
Untersuchung der erste Theologe, der die scotische Akzeptations- und Verdienstlehre in
ihren Grundzügen richtig wiedergibt.”
the Son’s intellectual production as Word. This position involves Landulph

in a rejection of Auriol’s idea of unelicited emanations,23 and he defends the
position that the person is the term of production and the essence is com-
municated through the productions.24 For the Holy Spirit, Landulph claims
that the will in the Father and the Son with the divine essence present to it
as the infinite desirable object is the productive source of infinite love, i.e.
the Holy Spirit.25 And it should be noted that Landulph rejects outright an
“appropriated” or metaphorical understanding of the psychological model,
including Dominican schemes on which the distinction between intellec-
tual and voluntary production comes from the fact that, in the former, one
23 Landulph Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 9, q. 3 (“Utrum generatio possit probari esse in divi-
nis”): “Prima hratioi: quicquid de ratione sua est principium productivum, in quocumque
ponitur sine imperfectione, semper erit principium productivum. Memoria perfecta est prin-
cipium productivum notitiae genitae. Ergo, cum in divinis ponatur memoria perfecta, erit
principium productivum notitiae genitae .... Ad istam rationem respondetur dicendo quod
haec ratio supponit tria falsa, scilicet quod memoria in Patre dicat principium elicitivum
et quod generare in Patre sit elicitum et quod principium elicitivum dicat perfectionem et
ideo ponatur in Deo. Dico quod ista solutio negat tria vera. Ostensum est enim quinta et
septima distinctione quod in divinis est principium elicitivum et quod generare est actus
elicitus sicut productio non sicut terminus productus .... Secundo arguo sic: obiectum ut est
hini memoria producit se ipsum ut in intelligentia, sicut patet in nobis, quia ex cognoscente et
cognito producitur notitia, quae est similitudo obiecti in intellectu .... Ergo cum in divinis sit
perfecta memoria, vidheliciet intellectus habens obiectum actuale et praesens, ergo sequitur
quod producet se ipsum per actualem notitiam in intelligentia .... Quamvis in nobis obiectum
habeat esse forte deminutum in specie et etiam actus genitus distinguathuri a potentia, hoc
accidit tamen quia in nobis est potentia limitata finita. Si autem esset potentia infinita, sicut
in divinis, obiectum esset idem sibi et etiam ipsa notitia genita sub opposito relativo.” Ed.
Schmaus 1930a, 35–36 n. 61 (from ms. Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. B.5.640, f. 50vb). For related
statements, see also Schmaus 1930a, 142–145 with text 146–149 n. 65, as well as the text in n. 25
below. Compare Landulph’s view with Scotus’, above, Ch. 6, at and around nn. 149–150.
24 Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 5, q. 1 (“Utrum Filius in divinis per generari accipiat esse elicitive”):
“… per generari Filius accipiat esse ut terminus.” Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 44rb. Ibid., q. 4 (“Utrum
essentia divina generet vel generetur”): “… quamvis negatur ista ‘essentia generatur’, non
tamen negetur ista ‘essentia communicatur’.” Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 45ra.
25 Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1 (“Utrum voluntas sit principium formale ad producen-
dum Spiritum Sanctum”): “… voluntas et volubile sibi praesens est principium producendi
Spiritum Sanctum in supposito convenienti, scilicet Patre et Filio, ita quod ista duo, scilicet
voluntas habens obiectum volubile praesens infinitum, est principium producendi Spiritum
Sanctum. Probatio: sicut se habet memoria ut principium sufficiens respectu Verbi, ita se
habet voluntas ut principium sufficiens respectu Spiritus Sancti. Sed intellectus et obiectum
sibi praesens faciunt perfectam rationem memoriae. Ergo voluntas et obiectum sibi praesens
faciunt fecundum principium ad producendum Spiritum Sanctum.” Dole, BM 80, p. 133b;
Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 62rb–va. The entire distinction will be published in critical edition in Fried-
man and Schabel Forthcoming. Compare Landulph’s view with Scotus’, above, Ch. 6, at and
around n. 151.
764 chapter twelve
comes from one, while, in the latter, one comes from two.26 As with Scotus,
then, we have here an example of the strong use of philosophical psychol-
ogy in trinitarian theology. And also like Scotus, Landulph maintains that
the necessary prerequisite for distinct productions with opposite modes,
natural and free, are formally (not rationally) distinct sources for those pro-
ductions, memory and will.27 In line with this heavy stress on production
and emanation, Caracciolo holds that, if per impossibile the Holy Spirit did
not come from the Son, these two persons would still be distinct from one
another.28 When it comes to the constitutive properties themselves, Carac-
ciolo attacks Auriol’s theory of constitution resultative,29 as well as Auriol’s
related idea of indistinction between essence and property, holding instead
to a version of Scotus’ formal distinction.30 Finally, he gives an extensive,
26 Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1 (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus vi suae productionis habeat quod
sit amor actualis”): “… illud quod competit personae productae ex productione proprie et
non appropriate, competit sibi vere vi productionis. Sed esse dilectionem actualem competit
Spiritui Sancto proprie et non appropriate. Ergo competit sibi vere vi productionis.” Dole,
BM 80, p. 129a; Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 60rb.
Ibid., d. 13, q. 2 (“Utrum generare et spirare differant penes principia productiva”): “…
nihil proprium productionis in divinis accipitur ex aliqua* similitudine in creaturis. Sed in
divinis proprie ex natura rei est productio per modum voluntatis et per modum naturae.
Ergo non accipitur ex similitudine in creaturis .... Filius non habet quod sit Verbum nec
Spiritus Sanctus quod sit Amor ex similitudine in creaturis, sed per hoc Filius est Verbum,
quod procedit per modum intellectus, et Spiritus Sanctus Amor, quod procedit per modum
voluntatis.” Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 66va. This text is written in response to the Dominican view
mentioned in the main text.
27 Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 13, q. 2: “… spirare et generare principiative distinguuntur penes
principia formalia, non eadem productiva. Probatio: principium ad producendum Verbum

est memoria et Spiritum Sanctum est voluntas habens obiectum praesens. Sed ista duo habet
aliquam non-identitatem ex natura rei, quae necessario praesupponitur productioni* Verbi
et Spiritus Sancti. Ergo istae duae productiones differunt principative penes ista principia ....
attributa in divinis sunt non-idem formaliter, et per consequens memoria et voluntas. Sed
quod ista sint praevia necessario distinctioni harum productionum patet per iam dicta, quia
impossibile est ab eodem principio omni modo eodem esse duas productiones oppositas
quarum quaelibet adhaeret totam rationem principii. Si igitur spiratio est libera, generatio
naturalis in divinis, cum quaelibet adhaeret rationem sui principii, requirent praeviam non-
identitatem in principio.” Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 66vb. Note that Landulph follows Scotus in
holding that the source of the Word is properly speaking the divine paternal memory and
not intellect.
28 Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 11, q. 4 (“Utrum si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, dis-
tingueretur ab eo”). The entire distinction will be published in critical edition in Friedman
29 Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1 (“Utrum ex essentia et relatione fiat aliquid unum in
divinis”). I hope soon to make this distinction of Caracciolo’s I Sent. available in critical
edition. See n. 164 below, for the use that Michael of Massa seems to make of part of this
distinction of Landulph’s Sent. commentary.
30 Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1 (“Utrum proprietates personales distinguantur ab essentia
and rather vociferous, rebuttal of the theory of absolute persons.31 If the

length and the forcefulness of the argumentation is anything to judge by,
then Landulph appears, as Schmaus noted, to have been truly convinced that
the persons were relative and did not merely accept the position because
the authoritative passages seemed to support it.32 That Caracciolo’s view on
this matter differs considerably from that of William Ockham and Francis
of Marchia—two thinkers who can only be considered part of the Scotistic
movement understood in the widest of senses—is perhaps unsurprising;33
but it also stands in contrast to scholars close to the heart of the period’s
Scotistic movement, like Francis of Meyronnes (d. ca. 1330), the “Prince
of Scotists”, who says explicitly that he holds the persons to be relational
more on account of the statements of the saints than any convincing argu-
ments.34
Summing up this very brief overview of Landulph’s trinitarian theology, I
want to stress two main points. First, it follows the basic outlines of a Scotis-
tic system; that is to say it is definitely a Franciscan-style trinitarian theory
that makes use of characteristically Scotist devices (the formal distinction,
a specific understanding of the psychological model) in characteristically
Scotist places. The devil is in the details, however, and only close studies
of particular positions will reveal just how Landulph tweaked Scotus’ the-
ory to make it fit a new theological environment. And this brings me to the
second point: as was the case with Gerard of Siena, Landulph took Auriol’s
per meram indivisionem absolutam”, Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 105ra–vb). This entire question targets
Auriol’s view, and is testimony to Landulph’s having used Auriol’s Reportatio in Primum and
not his Scriptum (this has been noted for other areas of Landulph’s thought by Dettloff 1963,
192–196, esp. 193; Schabel 2000a, 138–147, esp. 140; Schabel 2002c, esp. 63; Schabel 2009, 161).
Caracciolo defends a version of the formal distinction between essence and property in q. 2
of the same distinction (ms. cit., ff. 105vb–106va, esp. 106rb–va).
31 Caracciolo, I Sent., d. 26, qq. 2 (“An in divinis personae constituantur per absoluta”) and
3 (“An personae in divinis constituantur per relationes”).

32 Schmaus 1930a, 537–539, at 537: “Den Eindruck einer von Herzen kommenden Gegn-
erschaft gegen absolute Proprietäten hat man bei der Lektüre des Sentenzenkommentars
des Landulphus Carraccioli (sic).” Interestingly, Caracciolo (I Sent., d. 26, q. 3; Dole, BM 80,
p. 202b; Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 96ra) derides the use of the passage from Proverbs that we saw
Scotus invoke (Ch. 6, at n. 83) as scriptural support for absolute persons, the same passage
from Proverbs that above in Ch. 8 we saw John of Bassol (at n. 19), William of Nottingham (at
nn. 28 and 31), and Robert Cowton (at n. 35) also rejected.
33 On Ockham, see Ch. 10, above, at and around nn. 48–50; for Marchia, see below, at n. 138.
34 Meyronnes, Conflatus, d. 26, q. 4 (“Utrum personae divinae constituantur per propri-
etates relativas”, f. 83ra–vb): “Sic ergo dico ad quaestionem, magis motus ex auctoritatibus
Sanctorum et sacri canonis quam ex rationibus, quod personae divinae constituuntur per
relationes vel relativas proprietates eo modo quo dictum est.” Ed. Venice 1520, f. 83rbH.
766 chapter twelve
trinitarian theology to be the greatest threat of the day, and as a result to one
extent or another he was forced to interpret or modify Scotus in response to
Auriol’s provocative critique. This says something about Auriol’s influence
at Paris in this period, but it also says that Landulph—and presumably many
others with a basically Scotistic point of view—could not merely repeat
what they had from the master. There is undoubtedly a story to tell about
the development of Scotism and scotistic trinitarian theology in these years.
Other figures from this era who, on quick inspection, appear to defend
main points of Scotus’ trinitarian thought run as follows, in rough order of
their reading the Sentences. First, and probably most important, is Francis
of Meyronnes, mentioned above, who followed immediately after Landulph
Caracciolo and Francis of Marchia as Franciscan bachelor of the Sentences
at Paris (i.e., Meyronnes read the Sentences ca. 1320–1321).35 Despite Scotus’
clear influence on Meyronnes, the latter was by no means afraid of contra-
dicting Scotus,36 and perhaps this mix of conservatism and innovation led
in our period to Meyronnes having a number of followers in several areas
of thought, and enough theologians in the later fifteenth century looked to
Meyronnes as their source of inspiration that there was a recognized “Mey-
ronnist” branch of Scotism at the time. Probably soon after Meyronnes it
was the turn of an anonymous Franciscan to read the Sentences at Paris;
his commentary is found in Vienna ms. ÖNB 1439 and Schabel has called
this anonymous theologian a “sequax” of Landulph Caracciolo on the sub-
ject of future contingents.37 Manuscript explicits tell us that the Spanish
Franciscan Aufredo Gonteri Brito lectured on the Sentences at Paris in 1325,
although he certainly lectured first in Barcelona; although it does appear to
contain a considerable amount of material original to him, Gonteri’s Sen-
tences commentary contains an assemblage of texts from Henry of Harclay,
35 Meyronnes composed several versions of his Sent. commentaries and made important
contributions to trinitarian theology. On Meyronnes’ works, see especially Roßmann 1971 (cf.
also Schabel 2000a, 149–155, and Schabel 2002a, 237–238), Roßmann 1972, and Duba 2007a,
609–621. On aspects of Meyronnes’ trinitarian theology, see (besides passim in Schmaus
1930a): Roth 1936, Gelber 1974 (esp. 143–158), and Maierù 2005. In addition, Meyronnes’
1320–1321 disputation with the Benedictine theologian Pierre Roger (later Pope Clement VI),
edited by Barbet (1961), contains trinitarian material (and cf. Barbet 1968, Ruello 1965, and
Stella 1975). A Reportatio version of Meyronnes, I Sent., d. 11 will be edited in Friedman and
Schabel Forthcoming. Interestingly, Schabel (2005, 65–66) has shown that this unpublished
Reportatio version of Meyronnes Sent. was used by, e.g., Himbert of Garda and Paul of Perugia.
36 See, e.g., Dettloff 1963, 168–180, esp. 178: “… in seiner Akzeptations- und Verdienstlehre
[ist Francis] … nicht der treue Scotusanhänger … als der er weitgehend angesehen wird.”
37 See on this commentary (with question and citation list), Friedman and Schabel 1996,
and more recently Schabel 2000a, 147–149, Schabel 2002a, 228–229.

Hugh of Novo Castro, and perhaps other earlier theologians.38 Next should
be mentioned two theologians whom Schabel has shown followed Fran-
cis of Meyronnes extremely closely on the issues of future contingents and
predestination, Himbert of Garda (read Sentences mid 1320’s) and Pastor of
Serrescuderio (1332–1333).39 The Sentences commentary of William of Bri-
enne (1330–1331), whose treatment of future contingents Schabel (2000a,
210; Schabel 2002a, 236) has linked to Francis of Marchia, survives in one
Prague manuscript. Two Spaniards can be mentioned next, Peter of Navarre
and Peter Thomae, in addition to the Italian Peter of Aquila (read Sentences
ca. 1337, d. 1361), also known as Scotellus. Not all of these thinkers, it should
be noted, composed their extant works at Paris—Himbert of Garda prob-
ably read his Sentences commentary in Italy,40 while the commentaries of
both Peter of Navarre and Peter Thomae may descend from lectures in
Barcelona41—nevertheless all of these thinkers can be said to have worked
in the Parisian orbit. And based on what we know about their works as
well as my own examination of portions of their Sentences commentaries,
it seems very likely that they held, on the whole, to a Scotistic view of the
Trinity.
Although recent studies, especially Schabel’s, have begun to give us an
idea of the lines of influence and the major figures and major followers in
the broad Scotist movement of this period, nevertheless—and this must
be stressed—only further specialist studies will give us a more adequate
picture of the ebb and flow of debate and get us closer to seeing the dynamic
among the (to varying degrees) Scotist Franciscans in this period.
What this brief overview shows quite clearly is that the trinitarian tradi-
tions, Franciscan and Dominican, were alive and well at Paris (and on the
continent) throughout this later period. This, as mentioned above, stands in
marked contrast to Oxford, where they basically die out by the early 1330’s;
38 On Gonteri and his Sent. commentary, see Duba, Friedman, and Schabel 2010; see also
Duba 2007a, 621–625.

39 See Schabel 2000a, 155–158, and 2002a, 238–240. On Pastor and his Sent. commentary
(with question list), see Courtenay 1996. For more on Himbert, see at and around n. 40 below.
40 See Schabel 2000a, 155–157, for the argument, as well as for the attribution to Himbert
of a second manuscript.
41 See Schabel 2002a, 240–243. On both Peter of Navarre and Peter Thomae, see Duba
2007a, 625–627. On Peter Thomae in particular, see Schabel 2003c, and Maierù 1991 (on his
trinitarian logic). See Martin (Christopher J.) 2000, for a study of Peter of Navarre’s treatment
of positio impossibilis. It should be noted that, with the exception of Gregory of Rimini’s
I–II Sent., Peter of Navarre’s commentary on I Sent. is the only “Parisian” theological work
from the period published in critical edition in its entirety (ed. Azcona, Petri de Atarrabia In
primum Sententiarum scriptum).
768 chapter twelve
this also, as mentioned above, bears witness to a remarkable continuity in

the debate at Paris. And playing a central role in this debate was clearly
the trinitarian theology of Peter Auriol. In addition to the thinkers who
fit into the trinitarian traditions, however, there were from this period at
Paris at least three theologians who, without engaging deeply in the search
for simplicity, are more difficult to classify. In the next three subsections I
examine these rather independent theologians and try to give a picture of
their trinitarian views and approaches. After that we will follow the search
for simplicity in the works of Francis of Marchia, Michael of Massa, William
of Rubio, and Gregory of Rimini.
B. Independent: John Baconthorpe, OCarm

In trinitarian theology, John Baconthorpe (d. ca. 1348) appears to be an
example of an independent thinker. Baconthorpe is generally considered
to be, along with Gerard of Bologna, the most significant of the Carmelite
theologians of the Middle Ages, and both his Sentences commentary and
his three Quodlibeta were printed several times in the early modern period.
Baconthorpe read the Sentences at Paris around 1320, although the ver-
sion of his commentary eventually printed was completed after 1325. In
line with these dates, Peter Auriol figures widely in Baconthorpe’s trinitar-
ian theology as he does in other aspects of Baconthorpe’s thought.42 To be
sure, Baconthorpe deals with the views of such thinkers as Scotus, Henry of
Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, Giles of Rome, Guy Terrena, and Robert Wals-
ingham; nevertheless in issue after issue in trinitarian theology Baconthorpe
most often uses criticism of Auriol as a springboard to his own theory. It
is clear that Baconthorpe had read extensively in Auriol, and understood
the highly systematic nature of the Franciscan’s thought. Although he finds
many of Auriol’s ideas to be inadequate, Baconthorpe nevertheless appears
to have respected the Franciscan, saying at one point that Auriol’s “argu-
ments do not hang together, although they are beautiful”.43
We can begin by looking at Baconthorpe’s critique of Auriol’s ideas on
personal distinction. As we saw in Chapter Nine above, Auriol’s views on
this topic were built up around three closely interrelated ideas, specifi-
42 On Baconthorpe, see Schabel 2002a, 252–254, Schabel 2003a, and esp. Schabel 2007b,
527–537; for a study of Baconthorpe’s ideas on the logical paralogisms associated with
trinitarian theology, see Gelber 1974, 291–299 (Baconthorpe is mentioned in passing in
footnotes just three times in Schmaus 1930a [69, 479, 640]).
43 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 10, q. un., a. 1: “Istam opinionem reprobo statim infra, sed
interim ostendo quod ista hargumentai non cogunt, licet sint pulchra.” Ed. 1618, p. 160bD.
cally that property and essence are indistinct, that the persons are con-
stituted “as a result” (constitution resultative), and that the emanations
are unelicited. Baconthorpe weighs all three of these ideas and finds them
wanting. With regard to indistinction of property and essence, Baconthorpe
attacks Auriol’s contention that there is not a positive unity between prop-
erty and essence but rather a merely negative indistinction, Baconthorpe
claiming both that this is not true, and that it would solve neither the logical
nor the metaphysical problems that Auriol thought it would solve.44 Bacon-
thorpe’s own view appears to be a rather traditional relation account of per-
sonal distinction including an appeal to the dual nature of the divine rela-
tions and to Aquinas’ authority.45 With regard to the second of Auriol’s three
main interrelated ideas, Baconthorpe describes Auriol’s theory of constitu-
tion resultative using the favored example of a house that results out of foun-
dation, walls, and roof. In reply, Baconthorpe argues that individuals, like
the divine persons, cannot be “assembled” in the way that Auriol envisages
from various components of equal importance; rather they are precisely one
individual because they are one formal effect of one substantial form, oth-
erwise a divine person would not be an individual at all.46 Thus, here we see
44 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 33, q. un.: “Primo ponenda est opinio Aureoli, qui ponit quod
licet essentia non distinguatur a relatione formaliter et positive, tamen contradictio non
verificatur de eodem secundum idem, dicendo ‘essentia est communicabilis; paternitas non
est communicabilis’, quia unitas secundum quam sunt idem non est aliquid positivum.
Secundo ostendam quod principale fundamentum suum, scilicet quod unitas aut identitas
est formaliter privatio, est falsum.” Ed. 1618, p. 340aA–B. Baconthorpe’s description of Auriol’s
position is found ibid., a. 1 (pp. 340aC–341aD); his reply takes up the rest of the distinction,
aa. 2–5 (pp. 341aD–346aB). The terminology used by Baconthorpe in this spot would seem
to indicate that he was utilizing Auriol’s Quodl., q. 3 (ed. 1605, pp. 16–44; see further qq. 4–5
[ed. 1605, pp. 44–64]), or perhaps Auriol’s still unpublished Reportatio in Primum, in d. 33
of which Auriol greatly elaborated on the theory of indistinction as it was presented in the
Scriptum. Moreover, it should be noted that Thomas Wylton attacked this aspect of Auriol’s
trinitarian thought on just this ground (see Nielsen 2002, 199–200), and so here, as elsewhere
(see Schabel 2000a, 54–63, 175–179), Baconthorpe may be lifting from Wylton’s attack on
Auriol.
45 E.g., Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 34, q. un., a. 5: “… relatio comparata ad essentiam ex
natura rei est eadem sibi formaliter; si tamen essentia et relatio accipiuntur secundum
rationes definitivas earum, et comparentur ad intellectum qui natus est differentiam eis
imponere, differunt ex natura rei, alia enim est definitio relationis, alia essentiae, quia
definitio essentiae est ad se, relationis ad aliud. Haec est opinio Thomae quam intendo sequi
…” Ed. 1618, p. 355bA. Cf. also ibid., d. 34, a. 2, § 2 (ed. 1618, p. 349a–b).
46 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2: “Aureolus … ponit quod personalitas in Patre vel Filio
non est effectus formalis alicuius formalis relationis … immo est aliquid resultans ex unione
plurium .... hquandoi fundamentum et tectum et paries constituunt domum, esse domus non
est effectus formalis fundamenti et tecti, etc .... Si individuum est individuum et hoc aliquid
per formam resultantem, tunc non est individuum per hoc quod haec forma recipitur in hac
770 chapter twelve
a clash between two very different models of the divine persons, each with
their advantages and disadvantages: Auriol’s rejection of a formal constitu-
tion model in favor of a resultative model because he thought that formal
“causality” of a person implied potentiality and hence imperfection; Bacon-
thorpe, on the other hand, embracing formal constitution against Auriol’s
resultative model precisely because formal constitution appears to answer
the question as to why the person is one individual person. Third, and lastly,
Baconthorpe describes as “dangerous to the faith” Auriol’s claim that the
emanations are unelicited, because the position seems to imply that the
Father does not truly produce the Son, and hence that there is no founda-
tion for the real relations between the persons. Baconthorpe clearly wants to
preserve the emanations’ productive character—going so far as to claim that
the categories of action and passion are formally in God—, and he does not
see how unelicited emanations can do that. Moreover, elicited emanations
in the divine are unproblematic as long as we remove any taint of imperfec-
tion and recognize, e.g., that the Father does not move from potency to act
and that he does not need any material subject on which to act.47 Now, as we
saw in Chapter Nine above, one of Auriol’s central tenets in trinitarian the-
ology was that person is produced by person—this was the foundation of
his strong use of the psychological model. In effect, Baconthorpe’s criticism
materia, sed est individuum per hoc quod ex hac materia et hac forma consecutive ipsum
consurgit, sicut ex pluribus fundamentis seu materialibus partibus consurgit esse hoc aliquid
et per se. Istud patet per eos. Sed primo modo est individuum naturale individuum. Ergo esse
individuale non est effectus resultans.” Ed. 1618, pp. 280aD–E, 281aA–B. Eloquent testimony
to Baconthorpe’s close reading of Auriol is the fact that he notes that Auriol conceded that
one of the properties could be called the principal property, e.g., paternity in the Father
(cf. Ch. 9, above, at and around n. 83); in response, Baconthorpe thinks that the fact that
the Father takes his name from paternity argues even more that paternity is the formal
component in the constitution of the persons (ibid., p. 281aE–bA).
47 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 5, q. 1: “Aureolus hdiciti … quod generare non est actus elicitus
.... Contra conclusionem in se probo quod est periculosa in fide, si intelligatur quod Pater in
generando Filium non producit ipsum per actionem vere dictam et per potentiam elicitivam
vere dictam .... tota scriptura vult salvare quod suppositum Patris est suppositum relativum.
Sed hoc destruit ista positio. Ergo. Probatio minoris … ponit Philosophus relationem pater-
nitatis in actu elicito coexigitive saltem … sed actum elicitum negat ista positio. Ergo destruit
suppositum relativum .... Generatio elicitiva potest concedi in Deo si possit praescindi ab ea
omnis intentio imperfectionis, per hanc enim regulam conceditur in Deo relatio. Sed hoc est
imperfectionis in generatione ut est actus elicitivus: quod agens per ipsam exit de potentia
ad actum et quod agens coexigit passum circa quod .... praedicamenta actionis et passionis
sunt formaliter in Deo.” Ed. 1618, pp. 119–122, esp. 119bE, 120aC–D, 121aE–bB. For a similar type
of argument, see Gregory of Rimini, at and around n. 266 below. The motivation for this criti-
cism of Auriol’s theory of unelicited emanations seems to be similar to that of Ockham’s; see
Ch. 10, above, at and around n. 104.
is that, by maintaining that the emanations are unelicited, Auriol rules out
production (and hence relative persons). Auriol cannot have his cake and
eat it too, according to Baconthorpe: it is either production or unelicited
emanations, but it cannot be both at once. Thus, Baconthorpe is attacking
one of Auriol’s most fundamental views by claiming that it is at odds with
another of his most fundamental views.
We see a similar strategy when it comes to Baconthorpe’s response to
Auriol’s ideas on the distinction between the emanations. Auriol, as we have
seen, maintained that the Son was truly a Word and the Holy Spirit truly
a Gift; but in order to preserve God’s simplicity, and taking into account
Dominican criticism of earlier Franciscan positions, Auriol maintained a
tight link between intellect and the emanation of the Son and will and
the emanation of the Holy Spirit by arguing that, e.g., the intellect is the
simple divine essence as it connotes the emanation of the Son. Bacon-
thorpe rejects this on the grounds that it cannot preserve the strong use of
philosophical psychology in trinitarian theology. As far as he is concerned,
a connotative distinction between the attributes is a merely “metaphori-
cal” distinction, and if the distinction between the attributes were indeed
merely metaphorical, then the distinction between the persons would also
be merely metaphorical. In contrast, Baconthorpe himself insists: “from the
fact that Word and Love are most truly there [in the divine]” we know that
intellect and will must also be there truly distinct from each other ex natura
rei.48 Just as God understands and wills not through his essence but through
his intellect and will respectively, so the productive acts of these powers,
by which Word and Love are produced, should be assigned to them and
not to the essence.49 Thus, Baconthorpe again says to Auriol that he can-
not have it both ways, he cannot have both a distinction between intellect
and will that is not ex natura rei and yet maintain that the Son’s emanation
is intellectual and the Holy Spirit’s voluntary. The kernel of Baconthorpe’s
critique, then, is that if the intellect took its distinction from the production
48 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 10, a. 2, § 2: “Item, qua ratione in divinis est verissime Verbum
et Amor, eadem ratione est ibi verissime intellectus et voluntas, quia qua ratione dicetur
unum metaphorice et non vere, eadem ratione et reliquum. Sed ex hoc quod verissime sunt
ibi Verbum et Amor, ipsa ex natura rei distinguuntur. Ergo et hic.” Ed. 1618, p. 164aE.
49 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 10, a. 2, § 2: “Item, quibus conveniunt actus operativi, eisdem
competunt actus productivi, sicut enim intellectui competit intelligere, ita verbum formare,
etiam in nobis. Sed intelligere non attribuitur essentiae in divinis, sed intellectui; velle etiam
non attribuitur essentiae, sed voluntati. Igitur intellectui in divinis non essentiae attribuitur
generatio Verbi, et eodem modo spiratio Amoris vel Spiritus Sancti voluntati.” Ed. 1618,
p. 164aD.
772 chapter twelve
of the Word, and not vice-versa, on what grounds would we call the ema-
nation of the Word an intellectual emanation in the first place? This was,
indeed, one of the reasons behind the earlier Franciscan tradition’s insis-
tence upon a distinction between intellect and will that in turn anchored
the strong link between, respectively, intellect and Word and will and Holy
Spirit, the very link that lay at the heart of the strong use of the psychological
model.
Baconthorpe’s Franciscan orientation on the question of the use of the
psychological model is confirmed when he examines the view of his con-
frère, Guy Terrena (d. 1342), Master of Theology at Paris from 1313 until
around 1317, and Carmelite Prior General from 1318.50 As Baconthorpe pres-
ents it, Guy held a typical Dominican position on the matter of the psycho-
logical model: the Son is a Word because, like human concepts, the Word is
the first product in an intellectual nature, and the Holy Spirit is Love because
he is the second product, just like human love. There is no connection, how-
ever, between the intellect and the emanation of the Word, on the one hand,
and the will and the emanation of the Holy Spirit, on the other—the indis-
tinct essence is the source of both.51 If accurate (as it appears to be), then
the Carmelite Guy held, in typical Dominican fashion, that the psycholog-
ical model applied to the divine not literally but as a type of resemblance.
John dismisses Guy’s view for the very same reason that he had dismissed
50 On Guy, see Xiberta 1931, 137–141, Schabel 2003, and esp. Schabel 2007b, 517–523. For
aspects of Guy’s trinitarian theology (and more on Guy himself), see Xiberta 1925, 288–297,
and Xiberta 1932, 181–188 (in both of which places Xiberta gives evidence that confirms Guy’s
thought fits well with what I have been calling a Dominican style of trinitarian theology).
Note that Guy has a treatise Quaestiones de Verbo that survives unedited in two Florence
mss (see n. 51 below). Another Carmelite, and Guy’s student and successor in the Carmelite
chair in theology at the University of Paris, Sibert of Beek (d. 1332), also holds a basically
Dominican view in his Quodl. I, q. 3 (the disputation that this work is based on may have
taken place in 1317); on Sibert, see Schabel 2007b, 524–527, and for Sibert’s text, Friedman
51 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 1, § 3: “Sed contra distinctionem formalem princi-
piorum sunt tres difficultates Guidonis, prima quaestione ex ordinariis … Ad propositum

dicunt quod in divinis verissime salvatur, Verbum scilicet et Amor, quantum ad hoc quod
Filius, quod est primum productum in natura intellectuali, est Verbum, et Spiritus Sanctus,
quod est secundum productum in natura intellectuali, est Amor. Non autem in divinis debet
salvari verissime Amor et Verbum quantum ad hoc quod Verbum procedit ab intellectu et
Spiritus Sanctus a voluntate tamquam a principiis distinctis.” Ed. 1618, p. 165aA, 165bA. For
Baconthorpe’s presentation of Guy’s view that the essence is source of each emanation, see
ibid., p. 165aD–E. Baconthorpe is undoubtedly referring to Guy’s Quaestiones de Verbo, con-
sisting of 12 questions and extant today in two manuscripts in the BNC in Florence (II.II.281
and conv. soppr. J.I.2). On this work of Guy’s, see Xiberta 1932, 38–40, with qq. list on 271–272.
Auriol’s view: if you want to say that the Son is a Word, then you need a
distinct intellect; if you want to say that the Spirit is Love, then you need a
distinct will.52 For Baconthorpe himself, the attributes are not formally dis-
tinct, but are nevertheless formally ex natura rei in God, and he understands
this in a way that resembles how Thomas Aquinas understood rationes to
be in God: we form the concepts intellect and will about God based on his
one undivided essence, but these concepts correspond to something in God.
In this same context, Baconthorpe interestingly claims that the absolutely
undivided divine essence could indeed produce several persons, but if that
were the case, none of those persons would be a Word or Love.53 It is, then,
precisely because the second and third persons in the Trinity are a Word and
Love that it is absolutely required that formally existing intellect and will
must be the source of the one and the other, respectively. Baconthorpe was
clearly extremely concerned to utilize the psychological model in a strong
way, and, according to him, intellect and will existing formally in God are
required in order to preserve that strong use.
We should look at one final interesting feature of Baconthorpe’s trinitar-
ian theology, one that again seems to mark him as an independent thinker,
and just as importantly one that shows that in trinitarian theology the influ-
ence of Henry of Ghent extended well into the fourteenth century. As we
have seen many times in this book, a great deal of attention was lavished by
medieval theologians on determining the precise constitutive property of
the first person: was it paternity or was it generation, or was it, as some early
Franciscans maintained, innascibility. Baconthorpe supports yet another
candidate for the personal property of the Father: generativity (genera-
tivitas), or the aptitude of the Father to generate the Son. This notion of
52 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 1, § 3: “… quando dicitur quod sufficit quod essentia
non sit sub respectu repugnante vel opposito, verum est quod sufficeret ad productionem
distinctorum suppositorum, sed si supposita ponerentur fore talia, scilicet Verbum et Amor,
tunc requiritur distinctio intellectus et voluntatis.” Ed. 1618, p. 166aE.
53 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 1, § 3: “… licet in Deo non distinguantur formaliter vol-
untas et intellectus, tamen in Deo est formaliter intellectus et formaliter voluntas. Quando
ergo quaeritur quomodo erit ibi verissime Verbum et verissime Amor, sufficit quod ibi sit
formaliter ex natura rei intellectus et voluntas .... Essentia, ut illimitate et unite continet
omnes perfectiones, posset personas distinctas producere, dummodo haberet principium
producendi illas quodam ordine … propter condicionem tamen productorum, scilicet quod
una persona est Verbum et alia persona Amor, necessario requiritur talis distinctio corre-
spondens principiis elicitivis, scilicet intellectus et voluntatis …” Ed. 1618, 165bB, 166aB–C.
Baconthorpe refers here to the discussion he dedicates to the divine attributes in I Sent.,
d. 2, qq. 1–2 (ed. 1618, pp. 66b–83a). On Aquinas on the ratio, see Ch. 1, above, at and around
nn. 11–18.
774 chapter twelve
“generativity” does not come out of the blue: when discussing the concep-
tual order of the properties that could be said to be constitutive of the
Father, Henry of Ghent had settled on generativity as being the first in
that order, that is to say, when we think of the property constitutive of the
Father, we should think first of the Father’s ability or aptitude to generate.54
Henry’s basic argument was that the act of generation requires an agent
already in existence to bring it about; therefore the Father who generates
is constituted by the very potentiality for generation, and this potentiality
is “generativity”.55 But Henry had attenuated his view by emphasizing that
generativity was first according to a conceptual ordering only, and further
by claiming that in truth the property constitutive of the Father is innom-
inata.56 Nevertheless, his view attracted some attention. William of Ware,
for instance, conceded Henry’s argument, but preferred to talk about a pro-
54 See, e.g., Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 4: “Quia vero non constituit personam pro-
prietas aliqua nisi ut est dans esse personale eidem, ideo non est proprietas illa constitutiva
personae Patris nisi secundum rationem illam qua dat esse ei … Secundum rationem ergo
illam primam qua Pater dicitur esse generativus est proprietas dicta constitutiva personae
Patris, dans ei esse personale, et ut sit principium primum emanandi personam aliam ab
ipsa, et omnes aliae rationes sunt quasi superventitiae personae iam constitutae in esse
.... Idcirco ergo generativum est secundum rationem primum, potens generare secundum,
generare vero tertium, Pater autem quartum. Propter quod proprietas illa realis unica qua
generans respicit genitum nec sub ratione Patris, nec sub ratione generare, nec sub ratione
potentis generare, est constitutiva personae generantis, sed solummodo sub ratione gen-
erativi.” Badius, vol. 2, f. 135rL–N. Ibid., a. 59, q. 3: “Et ideo sicut ex parte Patris generare
non est proprietas constitutiva personae Patris sed potius generativum esse, sic ex parte
Filii generari non est proprietas constitutiva personae Filii sed potius genitum esse.” Ibid.,
f. 145vH.
55 Henry of Ghent, Summa, a. 58, q. 4: “… generare sub ratione eius quod est generare dicit
actum elicitum ab una persona producente alteram per illum actum qui necessario supponit
personam perfectam constitutam actum elicientem, nullo modo generare sub ratione eius
quod est generare potest esse proprietas constitutiva personae generantis.” Badius, vol. 2,
f. 134rK. The argument is, therefore, closely related to the argument that made Aquinas
postulate the property paternity being conceptually prior to the relation paternity, since the
relation can only arise after the Father’s constitution, as well as to the argument that led
Bonaventure to postulate primity as the grounds for the Father’s generating; on these issues
in Aquinas and Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, § 3 above.
56 Schmaus (1930a, 479–480, 592) remarks on these passages, at first recognizing the
ordering as a logische Reihenfolge, but later claiming outright that “generativum esse das
constitutivum des Vaters und der Grund der Zeugung ist.” While on some level or another
Schmaus’ second claim must be right—whether we are talking about a conceptual ordering
or not, generativity seems to be Henry’s ultimate solution to the issue—nevertheless Henry
does waver a bit, and this stands in contrast to the figures we will examine in the present
chapter. See Ch. 4, § 2, above, for more on Henry’s ideas on the constitution of the person of
the Father (for innominata, see there, at n. 34).
prietas innominata constitutive of the Father, as opposed to generativity.57

Scotus had rejected Henry’s view, since he thought that the potentiality that
characterized generativity made it too imperfect to be the Father’s consti-
tutive property; Scotus required a fully actual relation, and he settled on
paternity (i.e., generation) as the property constitutive of the first person.58
But Robert Cowton, neatly blending Henry’s basic argument with a Scotist
emphasis on formally distinct items, appears to have suggested that in one
and the same personal property there were several distinct formalities, and
the first of these formalities, and the one constitutive of the Father, is gen-
erativity.59
Thus, there was a small but significant group of theologians in the late
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries who held that the property con-
stitutive of the first person was generativity. But Henry of Ghent, William
of Ware, and Robert Cowton all looked at generativity as being but one
aspect of the Father’s constitutive property. Baconthorpe, as far as I can tell,
begins a new trend, since for him the Father is constituted by generativity—
full stop. Baconthorpe brings up Scotus’ view that “generativity cannot be
posited in the divine” and that “generation or generating constitutes the first
supposite”, and the Carmelite identifies the major motivation behind Sco-
tus’ view as being the fact that the Father’s constitutive property must be
absolutely actual with no potentiality.60 Baconthorpe rejects Scotus’ view,
basically because the act of generating has to come from the supposite
57 Ware’s discussion of Henry’s position along with his own view is found in I Sent., d. 28,
q. 2 (“Utrum generare sit proprietas constitutiva Patris sive primae personae”; ed. Schmaus
1930a, pp. 275*–282*), and I Sent., d. 28, q. 3 (“Utrum generari sit proprietas constitutiva Filii”;
ed. Schmaus 1930a, pp. 282*–285*).
58 Scotus, I Ord., d. 28, q. 3, nn. 64–67 (VI, pp. 142–145). See for a nice discussion of the
issues, Cross 2005a, 185–189, and see Ch. 6, above, at nn. 64, 92 on Scotus’ view of the Father’s
constitutive property.
59 Robert Cowton, I Sent., d. 28: “Ideo dico ad quaestionem istam sic: quod prima per-
sona in divinis constituitur proprietate et relatione reali positiva ad secundam. Sed quia in
eadem relatione secundum rem, quae constituit, sint plures formalitates distinctae a parte
rei, secundum quas primum suppositum respicit secundum, et non respicit primum supposi-
tum secundum nisi ut persona est constituta proprietate reali relativa, qua ipsum respicit,
ideo sub ista ratione qua respicit ipsum primo tali proprietate, constituit proprietas ista sup-
positum primum et ista prima formalis ratio istius proprietatis est generativitas et sub ista
ratione vel formalitate proprietatis relativae remotius se habet ad secundum suppositum.”
Ed. Schmaus 1930a, 604 n. 105 (from Leipzig, Universitätsbibl. Ms. 1401).
60 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1, § 3: “Est … opinio Scoti, quae ponit generationem
vel generare constituere primum suppositum quia est actualissima .... In divinis debet omitti
illud quod est imperfectionis … sed hoc est imperfectionis, scilicet generativitas in aptitudine
et potentia, quia possunt separari ab actu … igitur ut sic non possunt poni in divinis.” Ed. 1618,
p. 272aC.
776 chapter twelve
of the Father already in existence, and hence the act of generating can-
not itself be the Father’s constitutive property.61 We have seen this type of
argument time and again: acts come from agents, and therefore the Father
must have some existence “before” he generates. Baconthorpe maintains
that the property that gives the Father that existence is generativity. Nor is
Baconthorpe convinced by Scotus’ arguments that an aptitude to generate
is more imperfect than actually generating: since in God there is only pri-
ority of origin, the aptitude to act is in no way separate from the act itself,
and hence no imperfection arises.62 For Baconthorpe, “generativity is the
first relative incommunicable ratio preceding the act, and the first incom-
municable ratio ought to constitute the first supposite; thus, generativity
constitutes.”63 Baconthorpe’s argument for the primacy of generativity runs
like this: Augustine says that, if the Father did not generate, he would still
be ungenerated, i.e. he would still be the ungenerated non-absolute suppo-
site in God (according to Baconthorpe, the Father cannot be an absolute
supposite, since this is tantamount to Arius’ heresy); but this could not be
the case if paternity were the Father’s constitutive property, because then
the Father would not be constituted at all if he did not generate; therefore
Augustine’s words would only be true if the Father’s constitutive property
is generativity, since generativity, the aptitude to generate, “precedes” the
Father’s generating.64 To put it in another way, if the Father did not gen-
61 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1, § 4: “Secundo arguo directe contra conclusionem
probando quod generare non possit constituere primum suppositum in divinis .... Item, actus
proprius naturaliter est a proprio agente .... Sed generare est actus proprius. Igitur est a
proprio agente. Quod autem est ab alio oritur ab eo; igitur generare oritur a proprio agente,
quod est Pater.” Ed. 1618, pp. 272bD/E–273aA.
62 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1, § 3: “Contra rationem istorum arguo sic: tota ratio
quare generativitas non constituit est quia ut est prior actu dicit imperfectionem. Sed hoc
est falsum, quia prioritas aptitudinis sive potentiae non dicit imperfectionem, quia prioritas
talis non dicit [in]separabilitatem vel prioritatem nisi originis, et alia non conceditur in
divinis. Sed prioritas originis non dicit imperfectionem, quia tunc vel Pater vel Filius dicerent
aliquam imperfectionem. Igitur, etc.” Ed. 1618, p. 272bA.
63 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, § 2: “Secunda conclusio patet, quia generativitas
est prima ratio relativa incommunicabilis et praecedens actum. Sed prima ratio incommu-
nicabilis debet constituere primum suppositum. Igitur generativitas constituit.” Ed. 1618,
p. 275bB.
64 Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, § 2: “… licet enim Augustinus deducat in aliquibus
contra hAriumi, tamen istud dictum concedit illi, scilicet quod ‘si non genuisset, adhuc fuisset
ingenitus’ .... hoc oportet Augustinum addere ad hoc quod vera sit propositio quod ingen-
itum innitatur alicui positivo relativo, quia aliter staret opinio Arii, scilicet quod primum
suppositum esset absolutum. Istud autem non potest salvari si paternitas sit illud positivum
relativum et incommunicabile primum a quo ingenitum possit accipere quod esset propri-
etas Patris. Potest tamen evidenter salvari si generativitas, quae in ordine originis praecedit
erate, the only way he could be constituted at all (as Augustine tells us he
would be) is if generativity, the potential to generate the Son, were the first
relative property constitutive of him.
Although Baconthorpe appears to be the first to hold in such an unadul-
terated way that generativity is the Father’s constitutive property,65 in this
period at Paris, as we will see, he is not alone: both Gerard Odo and Michael
of Massa take the same position. The position, as with the other posi-
tions examined here, shows a certain independence of mind on John’s part.
Baconthorpe’s trinitarian theology has very clear Dominican elements in
it—witness his use of the relation account and his Thomistic description of
the distinction between the attributes—but he rejects the general Domini-
can view of the psychological model and he leans towards the emanational
“generativity” as the Father’s constitutive property, here patently influenced
by the Franciscan trinitarian tradition. One thing that stands out is the
important role Peter Auriol played as a foil against which Baconthorpe cre-
ated his own ideas, and several of Baconthorpe’s criticisms of Auriol’s views
clearly do raise significant difficulties for the Franciscan’s trinitarian theol-
ogy.
C. Independent: Gerard Odo, OFM

Gerard Odo (d. 1349), Minister General of the Franciscan Order 1329–1342,
and his thought are hardly known even among specialists on fourteenth-
century theology and philosophy. Gerard’s major theological work, a Sen-
tences commentary read at Paris probably in the years 1326–1328 but incor-
porating earlier material from his time at Toulouse, is nearly entirely uned-
ited—indeed, before recent work by Chris Schabel we were on the whole
actum generandi, sit primum positivum relativum incommunicabile cui ingenitum inni-
tatur. Igitur convenienter oportet ponere generativitatem constituere. Probo minorem quia
paternitas in ordine originis sequitur actum generandi … igitur paternitas non potest esse
illud positivum primum secundum quod Pater posset dici ingenitus, si non genuisset. Immo
necessario si paternitas esset illud primum, sequeretur quod ingenitum fundaretur super
genuisse affirmative, generativitas vero ordine originis praecedit actum generandi, et per
consequens si generativitas esset primum positivum relativum, super quo fundaretur ingen-
itum, posset primum suppositum in divinis esse ingenitum et relativum incommunicabile,
etiam si non genuisset, et ita patet minor.” Ed. 1618, pp. 275bC–276aA. For the text of the
Augustine quotation from De trinitate V, 6, 7, see, Ch. 5, above, n. 111.
65 Even Baconthorpe hedges his bets a bit by giving schemes for the conceptual order in
which the Father is constituted: first generativity, then the supposite of the Father, then the
act of generation, then paternity (Baconthorpe, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3; ed. 1618, pp. 279bE–
280aA).
778 chapter twelve
ignorant of its contents.66 This situation, of course, has deterred research,

and it makes evaluating the originality and significance of Gerard’s thought
difficult. For instance, as far as I am aware Gerard’s trinitarian theology
has never been studied. Nevertheless, in basically every area of his thought
examined to date—for example, his views on future contingents and pre-
destination, on atomism, and on divorce67—Gerard has emerged as a highly
independent and unusual thinker, and there are definite signs that this is
also the case with Gerard’s trinitarian thought.68
With regard to the psychological model, Odo appears to have defended a
strong use. Thus, he says outright that the divine intellect “concurs” with
the divine essence as cognoscible object in the production of the Son as
Word, and that the divine will “concurs” with the essence as apprehended
object in the production of the Holy Spirit as Love. Odo relies on Augustine
to support his claims. Ultimately, the formal term of the production of the
Word is “wisdom knowledge” (sapientalis notitia), while the formal term of
the production of the Holy Spirit is Love.69 Thus, Odo fits into the broad
66 See Schabel 2004b, which is the starting point for all further research on Gerard’s
theology (and much of his philosophy). The other person who must be mentioned when it
comes to studies of Gerard is the indefatigable L.M. de Rijk, who published two large volumes
of Gerard’s Opera philosophica, all the texts of which are closely related to material in the
Sent. commentary, as Schabel shows (art. cit., 121–122); for de Rijk’s work, see most recently:
de Rijk 2005. For further literature and information on Gerard, see Duba 2007a, 629–638,
and the articles collected in Vivarium 47/2–3 (2009), which is devoted to Gerard and edited
by William Duba and Chris Schabel.
67 Future contingents, Schabel 2000a, 149–162 and 2002d; predestination, Schabel 2002a,
243–249 and 2002c; atomism, Zoubov 1959; divorce, Mruk 1960. Perhaps the most sustained
examination of Odo is found in Bonnie Kent’s doctoral dissertation on his Ethics commentary
and its place in the Franciscan discussion of moral philosophy (Kent 1984, see also Kent 1986).
68 Perhaps indicative of this is the fact that one of Gerard’s trinitarian positions was
interesting enough to have been mentioned by Adam Wodeham: Lectura secunda, d. 7, q. un.,
§ 3 (ed. Gál and Wood [vol. 2], p. 33110–20). The context is Gerard’s view (from his I Sent., d. 6,
qq. 4–5) that the action generation is in what is generated, and hence that generation action
is in some sense identical to generation passion and is either identical to or an intrinsic part of
the Son. Wodeham, while disagreeing, is extremely polite to the Minister General of his order.
69 Gerard Odo, I Sent., d. 13, q. un. (“Utrum Spiritus Sanctus sit genitus”): “… est dicendum
quod inter generationem et spirationem sunt sex differentiae, quarum duae sumuntur
penes principia, duae penes terminos, duae penes ipsasmet. Inter differentias sumptas
penes principia, prima est quod productio Verbi habet pro principio intellectum, productio
Spiritus Sancti voluntatem; hoc habetur per Augustinum, XV De trinitate, cap. ultimo ....
Secunda differentia est quod in productione Verbi essentia divina concurrit cum intellectu
in ratione cognoscibilis et non cogniti, sed in productione Spiritus Sancti essentia concurrit
cum voluntate in ratione cogniti et ut apprehensa. Primum, scilicet quod in productione
Verbi concurrat essentia cum intellectu, apparet per Augustinum, IX De trinitate, cap. ultimo
.... Quod autem ad productionem Spiritus Sancti concurrat essentia ut apprehensa vel ut
Franciscan tradition, accepting that the psychological model accurately

describes God’s trinitarian reality. Moreover, he appears to accept a Scotistic
understanding of the “concurring” of intellect and essence, and will and
essence, in the emanation of Word and Love, respectively.
More interesting is Gerard’s approach to the counterfactual question
about the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit. Here, Gerard takes
a type of hybrid position. He argues for two conclusions. The first is that, if
the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son, then neither the Son nor the Holy
Spirit would exist, since neither of them would be God or a divine person.
The second is that, with all things remaining just as they are now in God, the
Son is in fact distinct from the Holy Spirit as a generated thing from a non-
generated thing and the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Son as something
spirated from something non-spirated, i.e. in both cases by emanational and
not by (oppositional) relational distinction.70 The first conclusion is proven
by a variation of the highest impossibility argument that we have been trac-
ing since Chapter Five above: it is absolutely necessary both that the Son spi-
rates and that the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and the Son; therefore
if the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son, neither of them would exist.71
Gerard’s is a fairly unusual answer to this counterfactual question. Many
Dominicans had answered the question in the negative by claiming that, if
the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son, then the Holy Spirit would not
exist but the Son would. Peter Auriol and William Ockham, elaborating a
cognita cum voluntate habetur ab Augustino in principio X De trinitate .... Inter differentias
vero sumptas penes terminos, prima est quod terminus formalis productionis Verbi est
sapientalis notitia, ut supra d. 4, terminus autem formalis productionis Spiritus Sancti est
Amor.” Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional 65, ff. 92vb–93ra; Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 48vb.
70 Odo, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… prima hconclusioi est quod si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet
a Filio, non distingueretur ab eo, quia neuter esset Deus vel persona. Secunda quod, rebus
se habentibus ut nunc, Filius distinguitur a Spiritu Sancto per generari tamquam a non-
generato et Spiritus Sanctus a Filio per spirari non solum tamquam a spirante sed tamquam a
non-spirante.” The text is taken from a provisional edition that will appear in definitive form
in Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming (= Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 89va; Sarnano, Bibl. com.,
E.98, f. 47rb). I wonder whether the italicized non-spirante carried in all surviving mss. should
not rather be non-spirato.
71 Odo, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… ad esse Spiritum Sanctum necessario sequitur produci ipsum,
et per consequens produci a Patre et a Filio, quia quanta necessitate producitur a Patre tanta
et eadem producitur a Filio. Quare optima consequentia est: ‘Spiritus Sanctus est, ergo a
Filio productus est’. Item, ad esse Filium etiam sequitur producere Spiritum Sanctum, quia
qua necessitate est Spiritus Sanctus eadem necessitate Pater et Filius producunt ipsum, et
ideo bene sequitur: ‘est Dei Filius, ergo producit Spiritum Sanctum’.” Friedman and Schabel
Forthcoming (= Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 89vb; Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 47rb). For the “highest
impossibility” argument, see Ch. 5 above, at and around nn. 101–116.
780 chapter twelve
position that appears to have originated with Henry of Harclay, had claimed
that, given the counterfactual, the Holy Spirit would exist, but the Son would
not exist as the Son (some thing constituted by passive generation and the
essence would exist instead of the Son).72 Odo, on the other hand, claims
that, given the counterfactual, neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit would
exist. The Son’s spirating is so necessary to both the Son and the Holy Spirit
that neither of them would exist if the Son did not spirate. This approaches,
in fact, saying that the counterfactual question involves incompossibles, a
position that was rejected by Franciscans and Dominicans alike since it was
first raised in the late thirteenth century. But if, with regard to the first con-
clusion, Odo resembles a Dominican slightly more than a Franciscan, the
second conclusion reveals his Franciscan roots. As things actually stand, in
God, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct by disparate relations and not
by opposed ones at all. Odo’s proof of this conclusion relies basically on the
strategy set in stone by Scotus, working from two arguments, one on the
basis of the nature of something that formally constitutes, the other on the
basis of the distinction of the emanations. With regard to the first of these,
Odo argues, as Scotus had, that the Son has personal being through being
generated, and therefore the Son is distinct from everything else through
being generated (mutatis mutandis the same is true for the Holy Spirit and
being spirated).73 The distinction between the emanations provides further
support for this conclusion: the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct effi-
ciently (efficienter) through origin, therefore their entire formal distinction
arises on account of these origins—not, it is understood, through any kind
of opposed relation.74 Despite the fact that the Son spirates the Holy Spirit,
72 For a brief recounting of the Dominican view, and the way in which Thomas of Sutton’s
diverges slightly from it, see Ch. 8, above, at and around nn. 68–75; for Harclay, Ch. 8, at
and around nn. 91–95; for Auriol, Ch. 9, at and around nn. 83–92; for Ockham, Ch. 10, at and
around nn. 81–85.
73 Odo, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… quia omnis persona habet distinctum esse personaliter per
illud per quod habet esse personaliter, quia per idem unumquodque habet esse et distinctum
esse. Sed Filius habet esse personaliter per generari. Quare per ipsum habet esse distinctum
personaliter a quocumque distingueretur personaliter.” Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming
(= Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 89vb; Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 47rb). For the corresponding
arguments in Scotus, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 128–130.
74 Odo, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2: “… quia quaecumque sunt distincta originaliter per origines ipsa
sunt distincta formaliter per habere origines, quia sicut generationes naturales distinguunt
efficienter res naturales, sic etiam modi proprii illarum generationum distinguunt formaliter
generata. Sed Filius et Spiritus Sanctus distinguuntur originaliter. Quare efficienter per
origines. Quare distinguentur formaliter per habere proprie istas origines et per ea quae sunt
propria istis originibus.” Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming (= Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 89vb;
Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 47rb).
according to Gerard Odo, in God’s trinitarian reality their distinction comes

from their disparate relations as generated thing and spirated thing. It seems
clear that, for Odo, in good Franciscan fashion, the rock-bottom ground for
the distinction between the second and third persons is their different ways
of emanating. Thus, Odo has sketched out an unusual hybrid position on
this issue, holding important elements from both of the major trinitarian
positions: the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct on account of their dif-
fering emanations, yet neither of them would even exist if the Son did not
spirate the Holy Spirit.
One other example of Gerard’s independence may be mentioned, specif-
ically his ideas on the personal properties. Gerard presents four different
views on the nature of the properties: relations, absolutes, Praepositinian-
ism (no properties at all), and finally non-relational properties the nature
of which we do not know. Gerard opts for the view that he says is “the
common view of the doctors and saints: the persons are constituted by rela-
tions.”75 So far, Gerard falls fairly well in the mainstream. But this begins to
look less accurate when he addresses the question of whether the Father is
constituted in personal being through paternity. Odo begins his discussion
proper by drawing a semantic distinction: ‘paternity’ can take on any one
of three meanings. It can signify either (1) the Father’s having the existing
Son, i.e. the fact that the Son exists (an extrinsically denominated sense),
or (2) the Father’s generating the Son or giving the Son existence (a causal
sense), or (3) the Father’s being the source of the Son’s generation (signify-
ing the potential or power to generate the Word).76 Now, Odo rejects that
75 Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 1 (“Utrum personae constituantur per relationes”), aa. 1–2:
“… una sententia communis est doctorum et sanctorum quod personae constituuntur per
relationes .... Aliqui alii opinati sunt quod personae distinguuntur per absoluta .... Tertia
opinio dicit quod personae se ipsis distinguuntur, nec est quaerere quibus distinguuntur
vel constituuntur .... Quarta opinio dicit quod personae non constituuntur per relationes
quia relationes non sunt in divinis formaliter, sed constituuntur per aliquas proprietates,
sed quibus hoc ignorat .... Eligo primam sententiam, scilicet Augustini, Anselmi, Damasceni,
Richardi, Boethii, quia illa videtur mihi verior …” Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 159ra–b; Sarnano,
Bibl. com. E.98, f. 84ra–b. The fourth view—that the properties are not formally relation
but properties the nature of which is unknown to us—is almost surely that of Francis
of Marchia, who read the Sent. at Paris just a few years before Odo; cf. below, §2A, e.g.,
n. 112.
76 Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 2 (“Utrum Pater constituatur in esse personali per paterni-
tatem”), a. 1: “Quantum ad primum sciendum quod hoc nomen ‘paternitas’ sumitur trip-
liciter. Uno modo pro eo quod est habere Filium. Secundo modo pro eo quod est gener-
are Filium. Tertio modo pro eo quod est esse principium generationis Filii .... Primo modo
est denominatio extrinsica, secundo modo denominatio causalis, tertio est idem quod
782 chapter twelve
paternity taken in either of the first two ways could be the Father’s consti-
tutive property.77 With regard to the first way of understanding paternity,
Odo’s worry is that the Son’s own existence is not intrinsic to the Father in
the way that he thinks a constitutive property ought to be: paternity taken
in this way is extrinsically denominated to the Father, and as such cannot
be the Father’s own constitutive.78 Nor can the act of generating be constitu-
tive of the Father, because the Father is the source of the act of generating,
and clearly the Father cannot be constituted by his own act.79 Since neither
of the two other options can succeed, Gerard will choose the third: that the
Father’s potential to generate the Son is his constitutive property. We have
met this solution before, and Gerard even uses the same term that John
Baconthorpe used: the Father’s constitutive property is his “generativity”.
But, as we will see, despite the similarity of their solutions the two treat-
ments are surprisingly different.
What is interesting about Odo’s presentation thus far is that he has in a
way rejected both a Dominican and a Franciscan view of personal constitu-
tion. The first way he posited of understanding ‘paternity’ fits very well with
a Dominican understanding of the Trinity: the Father is constituted on the
basis of opposed relations to the Son, i.e. the Father is distinct because he
has a Son. Odo rejects this because having a Son does not seem to be the kind
of characteristic that is intrinsic enough to the Father to be constitutive of
the Father. To put this in terms that we have seen before, Odo is reviving the
very old argument that the Father’s constitution cannot depend upon the
potentialitas sive principium generationis Verbi.” Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 161ra–b; Sarnano,
Bibl. com., E.98, f. 85ra–b.
77 Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 2, a. 2: “… prima hconclusioi quod paternitas ut dicit habere
Filium non constituit Patrem in esse personali. Secunda conclusio quod paternitas causaliter
accepta, scilicet pro actu generandi, non constituit Patrem in esse personali. Tertia quod
paternitas tertio modo sumpta, scilicet pro potentialitate generandi, constituit Patrem in
esse personali.” Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 161rb; Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 85rb.
78 Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 2, a. 2: “Primam conclusionem probo quia nulla proprietas
non-realis et non realiter inexistens personae constitutae constituit personam. Ista patet
quia constitutivum cuiuslibet personae formaliter est in persona quam constituit. Sed pater-
nitas primo modo sumpta non est realis nec est in Patre, cum, sicut dictum est, non sit nisi
denominatio relativa ab extrinseco, denominatur enim ab extrinseco quia a Filio.” Madrid,
Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 161rb; Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 85rb.
79 Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 2, a. 2: “Secunda conclusio, scilicet quod paternitas sumpta
pro actu generandi non constituit Patrem in esse personali, probatur sic: nulla res constituit
Patrem in esse personali cuius rei Pater est actor, quia tunc esset actor personae propriae.
Sed Pater est actor generationis qua generat Filium, ut probatum est supra. Ergo Pater non
constituitur in esse personali per generationem isto modo sumptam.” Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65,
f. 161rb; Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 85rb.
Son in any way.80 The second view, on the other hand, leans toward a Fran-
ciscan understanding of the personal properties: the Father is constituted by
the act of generating the Son. And in confirmation of the Franciscan nature
of the view, Odo (at n. 79 above), like Baconthorpe (at n. 61 above), even
uses a Dominican argument to reject this way of understanding the Father’s
personal property: since the time of Aquinas, Dominicans had been argu-
ing that acts are only performed by distinct individuals; therefore the act of
generating the Son could not be constitutive of the Father, since that would
entail the Father’s giving being to himself.
Thus, Odo has rejected both a Dominican-like solution to the nature of
the personal properties and a Franciscan-like one. What he is clearly looking
for is a constitutive property for the Father that is relational and in addition
is both intrinsic to the Father himself and is not itself dependent upon
the Father’s very existence. The solution that he decides best fits the bill is
generativity, the power or the potential to generate the Son. In stark contrast
to Baconthorpe’s Augustinian argument for the position (at and around
n. 64 above), Odo’s argument is basically a process of elimination. What
constitutes the Father in being is “a real and positive property really existing
in the Father and only in the Father”. But the Father has only four notions
in total. Two of these, unborn (ingenitus) and unproduced (inproductus),
are neither real nor positive properties, and hence cannot be constitutive
of the Father. The Father also has two real and positive properties. But one
of these two, his being the source of spiration, the Father shares with the
Son, and hence this is ruled out as constitutive uniquely of the Father. What
is left is the Father’s being the source of the generation of the Son, i.e. the
Father’s generativity.81 This potentiality for generating the Son, then, is the
Father’s constitutive property. Of course, just as Baconthorpe was, Gerard
80 For an early example of this type of argument, see William of Auvergne, Ch. 6, above,
at n. 15.
81 Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 2, a. 2 (italicized text translated): “Tertia conclusio pro-
batur, scilicet quod Pater constituatur in esse personali per paternitatem sumptam pro
ultimata potentialitate, quia omnis proprietas realis et positiva quae realiter inest Patri et
sola est propria Patri constituit Patrem in esse personali. Sed generativitas quae est poten-
tialitas ultimata, secundum quam Pater ultimate est principium generationis, est huius-
modi. Quare talis generativitas et talis paternitas isto modo sumpta est constitutiva per-
sonae Patris. Maior patet quia sicut persona est propria Patri, ita oportet quod consti-
tutivum sit proprium. Minor probatur, quia in Patre non sunt nisi duae notiones priva-
tivae, scilicet ingenitus et inproductus, quae non possunt esse constitutivae, cum
non sint reales nec positivae, et aliae duae positivae, scilicet principium spirationis,
quod non potest esse constitutivum personae Patris cum communicat Filio sicut et
Patri, et principium generationis, quod est constitutivum personae Patris, cum nulla alia
notio vel proprietas possit constituere personam Patris, ut deductum est. Item, Pater
784 chapter twelve
is aware of the type of objection that Scotus had made to this view (see
n. 58 above): on account of its imperfection no potential relation could
constitute a person; therefore only a fully actualized relation can do so.
To this Gerard responds that the potentiality does not apply in any way
to the Father, but to the Son. The Father exists in first act (that is to say,
immediate readiness) with respect to the generation of the Son—Gerard,
reverting to the psychological model, calls this the act of memory (in actu
memoriali); but there is no potentiality as such on the side of the Father,
since it all applies to the Son’s being.82 This seems merely to shift the worry
to the Son, however, and perhaps with this in mind Gerard has a further
line of defense, and it is one he shares with Baconthorpe. In God, an eternal
and necessary being, potentiality and actuality can never be separated. The
potentiality that is constitutive of the Father is necessarily actuated, and
hence is necessarily terminated to the actual existence of the Son.83 In this
way Gerard can affirm that this is potentiality in only the most attenuated
of senses, since the Father for all eternity has the Son.
In terms of its historical significance, Odo’s and Baconthorpe’s (and
later Michael of Massa’s) adoption of Henry of Ghent’s generativity as the
constitutive property of the Father shows that, in the second quarter of the
fourteenth century, Henry still exerted some influence. But another way to
look at generativity is in relation to the thirteenth-century Franciscan view
of primity, i.e. the property of the Father that “prior” to the emanation of
constituitur in esse personali per habitudinem relativam ad Filium. Sed nulla alia est nisi
ista generativitas seu ista potentialitas.” Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 161va; Sarnano, Bibl. com.,
E.98, f. 85rb.
82 Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 2, a. 2: “Pater enim est in actu primo, scilicet in actu memoriali.
Iste autem actus habet potentiam ad aliquid, scilicet ad esse Filii vel ad bene esse eius. Non
dicit tamen potentiam ad esse vel ad bene esse Patris, et ideo non reddit suppositum cuius est
potentiale potentialitate quae dicit imperfectionem, sicut materia est in potentia respectu
formarum vel intellectus respectu intellectionum, in quibus sunt potentialitates imperfec-
tae. Suppositum ergo Patris non redditur potentiale, cum sit actualissimum.” Madrid, Bibl.
Nac. 65, f. 161vb; Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 85rb–va. The italicized actu is esse in the Sarnano
ms (f. 85rb).
83 Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 2, a. 2: “… in aliquibus sunt tria essentialiter ordinata,
scilicet possibile esse, necesse esse, et actuale esse vel actu esse. Primum est commune ad
necessarium et non-necessarium. Ubi autem est cum necesse esse, coincidit cum necesse
esse, quia secundum quod habetur II Physicorum, “in perpetuis non differt esse et posse” ....
Filius ergo est possibilis produci et necesse produci et actu productus .... Habitudo ergo Patris
necessario terminatur ad Filium simul ut possibilem et ut actualem et necessarium.” Madrid,
Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 161vb; Sarnano, Bibl. com., E.98, f. 85va. With regard to the Son’s constitutive
property, Gerard holds that “filiatio sub ea ratione qua est actio constituit Filium in esse
personali” (Odo, I Sent., dd. 25–26, q. 2, a. 3; Madrid, Bibl. Nac. 65, f. 162ra; Sarnano, Bibl. com.,
E.98, f. 85va).
the Son gives the Father enough being to generate, and only “later”, through
that act of generation, does the Father take on full personal or emanational
being. For Odo and Baconthorpe, the Father is constituted on the basis of
his being able to generate the Son, his “generativity”. This is roughly the
role that primity played in the trinitarian theologies of, e.g., John Pecham,
Matthew of Acquasparta, and Roger Marston. The difference is that for
these earlier figures primity gave the “proto-Father” just enough being to
get true emanational distinction off the ground; for Baconthorpe and Odo,
this is the source of the Father’s constitution: it is the relational property on
account of which the Father has personal being. Gerard Odo, then, as we
have also seen to be the case in the context of the counterfactual Filioque
and as is undoubtedly true of other aspects of his trinitarian theology, has
retained some of the overall Franciscan approach to the Trinity, but he has
thoroughly revamped that approach and added innovations that appear to
be his own. Gerard Odo appears to have been an independent thinker who
created an interesting version of the more general Franciscan trinitarian
theology.
D. Independent: Nicholas Bonet, OFM

The French Franciscan theologian Nicholas Bonet (d. 1343) probably taught
at Paris in the latter half of the 1320’s, although his Sentences commentary
appears to have been lost. Aspects of Bonet’s physical theories have been
studied as they were presented in a series of Aristotle commentaries, the
1505 publication of which confirms that Bonet was still known and dis-
cussed in the Early Modern period. This research has shown that in one of
his more extraordinary views, his atomism, Bonet was influenced by Gerard
Odo, an atomist himself. Chris Schabel has recently confirmed Bonet’s con-
tinued significance into the late fifteenth century concerning future con-
tingents and God’s foreknowledge.84 Here, however, Bonet deserves some
attention for two major reasons. First, Bonet’s trinitarian theology shows
the clear influence of Peter Auriol. Although Auriol appears never to have
been explicitly mentioned in Bonet’s trinitarian work, nevertheless termi-
nological and conceptual similarities can leave no doubt about some direct
or indirect positive influence of the former on the latter. A second reason to
84 Most recently on Bonet and his works, see Mandrella 2008, esp. 166–169. On Bonet and
his place in the later-medieval discussion on future contingents and divine foreknowledge,
see Schabel 2000a, 162–170 (see also n. 91 below). On Bonet’s atomism, and especially his
relationship with Gerard Odo, see Zoubov 1959.
786 chapter twelve
look more closely at Bonet is that his trinitarian thought is presented not in
the context of a Sentences commentary, but in his so-called Theologia natu-
ralis. This work of Bonet starts from the proof of a prime mover that is God
and moves to show the properties and attributes of that first being along
the lines of a more geometrico. Book V and part of book VI of the treatise
deal with trinitarian issues, and Bonet’s discussion is striking because there
is not one appeal to authority: Bonet attempts to prove the existence of the
Trinity—or at least show that it cannot be disproved—on the basis of rea-
son alone.
How can one prove the existence of a Trinity of persons in a single nature
without appealing to revelation or to theological tradition? In typically
Franciscan fashion, Bonet settles on the psychological model. The founda-
tion of his view is three points that he takes to have been demonstrated
earlier in the treatise: that the prime mover is actually (actu, i.e. occurently)
understanding and willing; that the prime mover has the same type of intel-
lect and will that creatures do; and finally that in human beings intellect and
will are in some fashion productive.85 With these points understood, Bonet
uses philosophical psychology to make his case for the real distinction and
essential identity of the divine persons. In short: he supports the strong use
of the psychological model:
First of all, we propose an affirmative proposition: that internal to the prime
mover there is necessarily some production or natural generation. Therefore,
we suppose first of all that every object actually cognized necessarily is
produced in some being, which is called “cognized” or “certain being”, and
this has been abundantly explained in the book of the Categories .... But
with this assumed we have demonstrated what we needed, like so: every
intellect existing in the gaze of intelligence necessarily produces a word,
either subsistent or having diminished being; the prime mover’s intellect is
necessarily in the gaze of intelligence; therefore it necessarily produces a
word—not a diminished word but one with every imperfection suppressed
and removed, and consequently subsistent .... From the active production
or active expression of the object in the prime mover the first supposite
85 Nicholas Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 2: “Perscrutemur ergo … quod in primo motore
est generatio et productio in identitate naturae et suppositi distinctione. Supponamus ergo

quod primus motor simpliciter immobilis est actu intelligens et volens, sicut libro tertio et
quarto ostensum fuit. Secundo supponamus ex iam dictis in nostra Metaphysica quod intel-
lectus et voluntas sunt eiusdem rationis in primo motore et in aliis in quibus formaliter
existunt. Tertio supponamus quod intellectus et voluntas in nobis sunt principium produc-
tivum ipsius intellectionis et volitionis.” Ed. 1505, f. 118va. My presentation here simplifies
Bonet’s extremely complex treatment, which involves three different types of psychological
arguments for personal production in God (see also n. 92 below).
is constituted, and from the passive production and expression of the object
the second person is constituted, who is the Word .... where the same thing
understands itself there is only a personal distinction of supposites through
those origins …86
Thus, for Bonet, the way that we can prove that God is three and one is by
strong use of the psychological model. But then the question becomes: just
what kind of philosophical psychology? Do the details of the psychologi-
cal theory make any difference to Bonet’s point? As we might expect on
the basis of other examples of the strong use of philosophical psychology in
trinitarian theology examined in the present book, Bonet thinks that it does
make a difference. Concentrating on the Son’s status as a Word or Concept,
Bonet presents three basic options concerning the ontological status of a
concept, evaluating each of them from both a psychological and a trinitar-
ian perspective. One of them he holds to be psychologically wrong: this is a
Thomist position, according to which the Word is an “exemplar form” or an
“idol”, a really existing product of the intellectual act. Bonet cannot see that
there is any compelling reason to posit such a “specular form” in intellectual
cognition, since you can just as well account for the observed phenomena
through the ontologically simpler mental act theory of intellectual cogni-
tion or an esse deminutum theory; to make his point clearer, Bonet brings up
vision, claiming that vision can be explained successfully without recourse
to any idol in real being.87 Further, even if we were to posit such a specular
86 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 2: “Et in primis proponamus propositionem affirmati-
vam quod in primo motore necessario est ad intra aliqua productio seu generatio naturalis.
Supponamus igitur in primis, quod omne obiectum actu cognitum necessario est productum
in aliquo esse, quod dicitur esse cognitum seu certum, et hoc satis abunde declaratum fuit
in libro Praedicamentorum .... Hoc autem supposito propositum demonstratur, et hoc sic:
omnis intellectus existens in acie intelligentiae necessario producit verbum, vel subsistens
vel habens ens deminutum. Intellectus primi motoris necessario est in acie intelligentiae.
Ergo necessario producit Verbum—non deminutum, sed submota vel semota omni imper-
fectione, et per consequens subsistens .... Ex ista autem productione activa seu expressione
activa obiecti in ipso primo motore constituitur primum suppositum, et ex productione et
expressione passiva obiecti constitutum secundum, quod est Verbum … ubi autem idem
intelligit se ibi tantum est distinctio suppositorum personalis per ipsas origines …” Ed. 1505,
f. 119rb.
87 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 2: “Et si quaeras de isto modo productionis in nobis
et in intelligentiis cui potest produci verbum per ipsam intellectionem sicut quaedam
forma exemplaris, et conformiter ponit in voluntate volitionem et spirationem et terminum
spiratum. Dicit enim in productione verbi ista tria. Primum est ipsa intellectio quae est
quaedam qualitas; deinde est ibi dicere; et tertio est verbum dictum, quod est quaedam forma
specularis in qua relucet obiectum. Palam quod iste modus nullam includit necessitatem
verbi, quia non apparet aliqua necessitas ponendi tot realitates in intellectu ad hoc quod
intelligat et producat verbum et quod ponatur ibi productio talis idealis et formae specularis,
788 chapter twelve
form, it would not be the word, since the word must intrinsically include
some respect to the one saying the word, which the absolute being of a
specular form would seem to rule out.88 Bonet makes even shorter shrift of
the second option he presents: a view that especially Durand of St. Pourçain
might accept, on which the word is the mental act having totally relative
being. Bonet maintains that this theory is untenable, for it makes the word a
totally relative item, without any absolute aspect to it.89 The “specular idol”
view is too absolute, the “mental act” view is too relative; the middle way
that Bonet explicitly prefers is clearly that of Peter Auriol:
It is clear therefore that the word is [1] something constituted from a respect
to the one saying the word (verbantem) and from some other absolute, and
consequently from passive diction and knowledge produced through such
a passive production, from which two there arises and results (consurgit et
resultat) the word, which is not one per se by perseity of the first kind, since
it includes respects of diverse genera, or [2] it is required that the word is
something constituted from passive diction or from passive conception and
from the object that it grasps, and in this way the nature (ratio) of a word
results from these two, namely from being conceived and the object, for this
is called the word and the offspring of the mind.90
cum in aliis potentiis sensitivis, quae sunt apprehensivae suorum obiectorum, non formetur
tale idolum nec talis forma specularis, sicut patet in visu, in quo nihil aliud est ad hoc quod
actu videat nisi visio, quae est quaedam qualitas absoluta a qua denominative color dicitur
visus, vel, si est ibi aliquid aliud ultra illud, est productio obiecti in esse deminuto, scilicet in
esse viso, quod quidem esse deminutum est ipsa productio passiva obiecti in tali esse. Ideo
frustra ponit istud idolum et sine aliqua necessitate.” Ed. 1505, f. 119vb.
88 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 3: “… per verbum non intelligo aliquod idolum, nec ali-
quam formam exemplarem productam per actum dicendi, quia (ut immediate supradictum
fuit) talis forma specularis non est ponenda. Et si poneretur, non esset verbum, quoniam ver-
bum videtur essentialiter et in primo modo includere respectum ad verbantem. Haec autem
forma specularis est quoddam ens absolutum, nec relationem includit essentialiter, licet eam
forte terminet vel fundet.” Ed. 1505, f. 120ra.
89 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 3: “Adhuc autem non intelligo esse istam notitiam
absolutam eadem ratione. Nec intelligo verbum praecise actum dicendi, et ratio huius dicti
est ista: quoniam verbum non est praecise respectus, sed necessario est aliquid excepta
relatione.” Ed. 1505, f. 120ra. A criticism like this might be appropriate in reaction to a theory
like Durand’s, who thought about the concept as being pure respect (see Ch. 7, above, at and
around n. 77), but a more Scotistic view of the mental act as a type of quality of the soul is
less open to this critique.
90 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 3: “Palam ergo quod verbum est aliquid constitutum
ex respectu ad verbantem et quodam alio absoluto, et per consequens ex dictione passiva et

notitia producta per talem productionem passivam, ex quibus duobus consurgit et resultat
ipsum verbum, quod non est unum per se perseitate primi modi, cum includat respectus
diversorum generum. Vel oportet quod verbum sit aliquid constitutum ex dictione passiva
seu ex conceptione passiva et ex obiecto quod attingit, et sic ratio verbi resultat ex istis
duobus, scilicet ex concipi et obiecto, hoc enim verbum vocatur et proles mentis.” Ed. 1505,
Although technically speaking there are two separate views here, never-
theless they are bound together by the fact that Auriol’s terminology runs
through them both. On view (1), a word “arises and results” (consurgit et
resultat), terms that we have seen Auriol use explicitly and repeatedly in
both his philosophical psychology and his trinitarian theology. Neverthe-
less, view (2), on which the word is constituted from passive conception and
the ultimate object of cognition, is more clearly Auriol’s own view. The fact
that Bonet actually uses the term esse apparens in his text is still more evi-
dence of Auriol’s impact.91 Now, Bonet says that readers of his text who are
interested in using philosophical psychology to provide grounds for belief
in the divine Trinity should choose whichever one of these two views they
prefer, although he also says that view (2), i.e. Auriol’s actual view, seems
“more choosable” (magis eligibilis).92 Indeed, Bonet even claims that a pure
philosopher would necessarily have to grant that God as a knower has an
intellectual production that has cognized being (esse cognito) as its term.93
The problem with a view like Auriol’s—and Bonet is explicit about this—is
that it offers no way to prove that the divine Word has real being, since all
other words have merely intentional or diminished being. All philosophers
f. 120ra. Further evidence of Auriol’s impact is found in the fact that Bonet uses Auriol’s
terminology “per se unum perseitate tertii modi” when discussing the personal properties
at ibid., VI, cap. 3, prop. 4 (f. 123va).
91 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 2: “… obiectum exprimatur in esse cognito vel in esse
apparente.” Ed. 1505, f. 119rb. Chris Schabel has also documented Auriol’s impact on Bonet’s
discussions of future contingents (Schabel 2000a, 163–170) and the nature of place (Schabel
2000b, 140–141).
92 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 3: “… eligas quem volueris de istis duobus modis. Et bre-
viter si teneas secundam viam probandi emanationem in primo motore, tunc consequenter
dicas quod verbum est aliquid constitutum ex productione passiva notitiae absolutae et ex
ista notitia hi.e. (1)i, si autem dicas et teneas tertiam viam, tunc habeas consequenter dicere
quod verbum constituitur ex conceptione passiva et ex obiecto quod concipitur hi.e. (2)i. Ter-
tia autem via videtur magis eligibilis.” Ed. 1505, f. 120ra. The second and third ways that Bonet
talks about here are different ways of using a psychological account to prove emanation and
Trinity in God (see ibid., c. 2, ff. 118va–119va).
93 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 2: “Et si quaeras quis modus simpliciter est probabilior,
dicitur quod tertius modus de productione in esse cognito est valde probabilis, immo
necessarius, et quod hunc modum concesserunt nostri progenitores philosophi, quoniam
concesserunt quod ibi est intelligens et intellectum, et cognoscens et cognitum. Et quod ibi
est aliqua generatio et productio obiecti in esse cognito et intellecto, licet talis productio
sit in esse deminuto et non in esse reali, vel saltem quod sit in esse reali non demonstratur,
nec evidenter nec apparenter.” Ed. 1505, f. 119va. Ibid.: “… sequitur quod necessario in primo
motore est una productio et generatio, et hoc saltem in esse deminuto. Utrum autem ex hoc
concludatur quod ista productio sit realis et constitutiva personae subsistentis clare ex hoc
non habetur.” Ed. 1505, f. 119rb.
790 chapter twelve
accepting Auriol’s view would have to believe that God has a concept, but
these philosophers might well deny that God’s concept has real being, and
not merely diminished being as human and angelic concepts have. Here,
on the trinitarian plane, a view like Aquinas’ or Scotus’ has some advantage
over Auriol’s, since there can be no question that, following these theories,
the word produced will have some real being of its own, and hence that
God’s word is a real subsisting person.94 Thus, although Bonet clearly thinks
that Auriol’s view accounts best for the psychological data, and he thinks
that it is the most likely way of proving a Trinity of persons in the same
essence, he also maintains that the view leaves something to be desired as
a rationally derived description of God’s trinitarian reality. And it is true
that Auriol never attempted to show that the Son is the divine essence
conceived in real, not intentional, being; this claim remained at the level
of bare assertion.95 In the final analysis, because Bonet is trying to operate
under the constraints of reason alone, he is extremely sensitive to the fact
that there are advantages and disadvantages to the different theories, and
this gives his ideas on trinitarian theology an interestingly deliberative
character. Moreover, his treatment also shows that the psychological model
was the most easily exploitable way of “proving” the Trinity; this is, of course,
also discernible in the thought of Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus, but
Bonet takes it further. And Bonet definitely stands in contrast to the trend
towards fideism that we saw in Chapters Ten and Eleven above, and that we
will see again below.
Bonet deals with other issues that we have been following in this book.
He supports the typical Franciscan view when it comes to the counterfac-
tual question of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son, and for typical
reasons. Thus, the Son and the Holy Spirit are each the term of a distinct
production, and hence they would be distinct even if the latter did not pro-
ceed from the former.96 Further, and again revealing Auriol’s significance,
94 Cf. Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 2, via secunda, where Bonet is dealing with a term
of intellectual production “capiens esse simpliciter” (ed. 1505, ff. 118va–119rb). For Bonet’s
doubts about whether Auriol’s theory can prove the Word’s real (as opposed to diminished)
existence, see n. 93 above.
95 For Auriol, see Ch. 9, above, at and around nn. 145–146. Indeed, Auriol himself appears
to admit the truth of Bonet’s claim; see the text in n. 101 of Ch. 9, above.
96 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 4: “Prima propositio sit talis: quod tertium suppositum
distingueretur a secundo formaliter ex natura rei. Haec probatur, quoniam per se terminus
spirationis activae et passive et quiditative distinguitur a per se termino generationis activae,
scilicet Amor et Notitia .... Secunda propositio sit talis: si tertium suppositum non procederet
a secundo, adhuc distingueretur ab eo. Hoc probatur, quoniam realitate quae est in isto et
Bonet claims that the active emanations are non-elicited, and, although he
grants that the passive emanations are elicited, he understands ‘elicited’ to
mean something like “following necessarily from the corresponding active
emanation”—a use to which Auriol himself might not have objected.97
Finally, when he treats the nature of the divine constitutive properties,
Bonet brings up seven (!) possible views on the matter, including absolute
properties, origin, and relative properties. Once again Auriol’s terminology
is a marked element in the discussion.98 But most interesting is that the
conclusions that Bonet gives—his seven “propositions”—are all reached,
he says, “according to principles common to us and the philosophers”
(secundum principia nobis et philosophis communia). In line with this, most
of his conclusions show what cannot be demonstrated according to natural
reason, e.g., he claims to show that it cannot be proven that “the supposites
of the first intelligence are not constituted through absolute realities” or that
these supposites “are not constituted through relations”.99 With all that said,
at the end of his discussion, Bonet claims that it is difficult to say just which
of his seven propositions are most probable, but that the two positions
that are most common and accepted by the largest number are properties
as origins and properties as relations.100 The limits of natural reason when
dealing with trinitarian theology become perhaps even more evident in a
purported Natural Theology, and for this reason above all Bonet’s work is
fascinating.
non alio distingueretur. Est autem aliqua realitas in tertio supposito, ut spiratio passiva, quae
non est in secundo supposito.” Ed. 1505, f. 121va–b. A critical edition of this text will appear in
Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming.
97 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, V, c. 1: “Dicamus ergo primam conclusionem affirmativam
de passione productiva ad intra, et sit talis: omnis passio est elicita. Haec probatur quoniam
omnis passio infertur ab actione cum sit eius illatio .... Secunda conclusio sit talis et sit
negativa: nulla actio ad intra, si aliqua est in primo motore, est elicita. Hoc probatur quoniam,
cum talis actio sit formale constitutivum suppositi in quo formaliter existit, ut inferius
dicetur, sequeretur quod omne tale suppositum esset formaliter elicitum.” Ed. 1505, f. 116vb.
For Auriol’s view on the actions and passions in God as mere markers of logical priority, see
98 See, for examples, n. 90 above; various forms of the word ‘resultare’ also crop up in this
discussion (VI, c. 2; ed. cit., f. 123ra–vb).

99 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, VI, c. 2 (ed. 1505, f. 123ra, 123va).
100 Bonet, Theologia naturalis, VI, c. 2: “Et si quaeras quae istarum propositionum sint
veriores seu probabiliores, respondeo tibi quod quaelibet est difficilis ad impugnandum,
et omnes rationes quae fieri possent sequendo principia nobis et philosophis communia
sunt dissolubiles, quae ergo tibi placuerit hanc eligas. Illae tamen duae propositiones quae
ponunt—quod constituuntur supposita per origines activas et passivas et per relationes,
scilicet paternitatem et filiationem—sunt communiores et a pluribus acceptantur.” Ed. 1505,
f. 123vb.
792 chapter twelve
2. Francis of Marchia
While Baconthorpe, Odo, and Bonet were independent and held unusual
views, they do not appear to have been engaged to any great extent in the
search for simplicity. We can turn, in the remainder of this chapter, then, to
the four theologians from this period at Paris who were clearly engaged in
that search.
The first of the four is the Italian Franciscan Francis of Marchia. Marchia
was born probably around 1290, and reached the pinnacle of the Franciscan
educational system when, almost certainly in the years 1319–1320, he read
the Sentences at Paris. Several relatively distinct redactions of a Sentences
commentary were made by Marchia probably on the basis of these lectures,
and these are the most important sources in our study of his thought. After
a time in Avignon, where he probably disputed his one series of Quodlibetal
questions, Marchia, in the company of Michael of Cesena, Bonagratia of
Bergamo, and William Ockham, fled from the city on May 26, 1328, and
joined the court of Emperor Louis of Bavaria. Taking refuge in Munich,
Marchia wrote his Improbatio, a large treatise targeting pronouncements
of Pope John XXII. The last document that mentions Marchia alive is his
1343 recantation of his errors and reconcilation with the Roman Catholic
Church.
Unfortunately for Marchia studies, his Sentences commentary, found
in whole or in part in some 25 manuscripts, is still largely unedited, and
indeed largely unstudied, although recent efforts have begun to rectify this
situation.101 Marchia was long numbered among the “faithful Scotists”, and
this despite the fact that by the mid-twentieth century it was recognized
that Marchia’s views in natural philosophy were highly unusual, including
a forerunner of impetus theory, the claim that sub- and supralunary matter
are of basically the same nature, and the acceptance of an actual infinite.
101 On Marchia’s life and works, with detailed question lists from the Sent. commentaries,
see Friedman and Schabel 2001; the Introduction (pp. 1–20, with extensive bibliography)
to and articles in Friedman and Schabel 2006; and most recently Suarez-Nani and Duba’s
extremely thorough Introduction to Franciscus de Marchia, OFM, Reportatio IIA, qq. 1–12,
which is the first volume in the series Francisci de Marchia Opera philosophica et theologica.
For a good introduction to Marchia’s thought, see Schabel 2007c. Fr. Nazareno Mariani has
been extremely active in publishing texts of Marchia. Unfortunately, Mariani’s study of the
Marchia manuscript tradition (Mariani 2002, which is basically repeated in the Introduction
to Mariani’s edition of Marchia’s Commentarius in IV libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, 1)
is highly flawed; for examples of the problems to be found there, see Lambertini 2004, Duba
2004, and esp. Schabel 2004a and Friedman 2004. Most recently on the Quodlibet (also edited
by Mariani), see Duba 2007b.
More recent research has indicated that Marchia had interesting and out-
of-the-ordinary ideas on the nature of metaphysics, on future contingents
and predestination, on sacramental theology, and in political philosophy,
where he had an influence on William Ockham. Thus, it seems safe to say
that Marchia can be termed a ‘Scotist’ only in the most general of senses, and
even then the term would probably obscure more than it would reveal. This
conclusion is confirmed in full by an examination of Marchia’s trinitarian
theology—here Marchia clearly belongs to the group of thinkers who, in
pursuit of divine simplicity, rejected a large part of the Scotistic inheritance
available to them. Although Marchia was not as radical in his search for
simplicity as was Walter Chatton—Marchia maintains explicitly that the
persons are constituted and made distinct on account of properties, not
se ipsis—,102 nevertheless he is clearly interested in eliminating as many
distinctions in God as he thinks he can, and the need to explain God’s
trinitarian nature is correspondingly low for Marchia. Here we will look at
two major issues: the nature of the personal properties and the use of the
psychological model.
A. Super-rationes and Eminent Containment in Marchia’s Trinitarian

Theory
The place in Marchia’s Sentences commentaries where we can see most
clearly how the search for simplicity plays itself out in his thought is the two
questions contained in his Scriptum on I Sentences, d. 27. This was the dis-
tinction in which a theologian traditionally considered concepts, concept
formation, and the application of concept theory to trinitarian theology; it
was also here that he investigated whether the properties constitutive of
the persons were relations or emanations. It is with the second of these
issues—a major flashpoint between the Franciscan and the Dominican way
of looking at the Trinity—that Marchia begins the first part of his d. 27,
and through an examination of it we can get a better idea of how Marchia
approached trinitarian theology more generally.103
102 Francis of Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 34, q. 2: “Ideo dico quod cum personae distinguantur
per relationes et sint idem per essentiam, et relatio distinguatur ab essentia ex natura rei
secundum quid, ut dictum fuit in alia quaestione, ideo personae non distinguuntur se ipsis
sed aliquo sui, nec sunt eaedem se ipsis sed aliquo sui.” BAV Chigi. B VII 113, f. 92rb. Marchia
clearly uses here a version of the formal distinction between essence and property, but how
Marchia’s thought on this issue relates to Scotus’ has not be studied in any depth (although
see Friedman 2004).
103 A preliminary edition of all of Marchia’s I Scriptum, d. 27, is found in Appendix 10
794 chapter twelve
Marchia begins his discussion by detailing three different positions on

the issue of the divine properties. The first position that Marchia brings up
is clearly that of Peter Auriol: the properties in God are actions and passions
and not relations at all.104 The sophisticated marginalization strategy that
Auriol employed to lessen the impact of his rejection of relations and the
relation account are not found in Marchia’s discussion of the view, but the
main argument Marchia gives for the view is Auriol’s own: relation does
not put its term into being; therefore, because the Father truly puts the
Son into being, the Father refers to the Son through the action, generation,
and not the relation, paternity.105 A second position that Marchia gives on
the issue of the constitutive properties is one that can be characterized as
Dominican: generation is only a relation in God; action and passion are in no
way transferred from creatures to God. A final position Marchia describes is
that both the action, generation, and the relation, paternity, remain in God
as formally distinct constitutives of the Father.106
Marchia rejects each of these views on a number of grounds. That Auriol
is incorrect is clear because supposites of the same nature, like the divine
persons, cannot be constituted by things (res) of different genera. But action
and passion are different genera. Therefore it is impossible that the action
generation and the passion generation constitute supposites of the same
nature.107 Proceeding from this, Marchia claims that the passive productions
of Friedman 1997b; I refer to and quote from this edition in the footnotes below, silently
correcting that text where necessary. An edition of aa. 1–2 (a. 3 is omitted) of I Scriptum,
d. 27, pars 2, is found in N. Mariani, ed., Quodlibet cum quaestionibus selectis, pp. 295–303 (=
Appendix I, 1.1) and this will also be referred to in § 2B below.
104 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Primus modus dicendi est quod in divinis non
manet paternitas formaliter sub ratione relationis, sed solum sub ratione actionis; similiter
filiatio opposita non manet sub ratione relationis, sed sub ratione passionis. Quod probatur,
quia terminus paternitatis non accipit esse per paternitatem in quantum est relatio, sed
solum in quantum est actio. Patet quia relatio ut relatio non ponit terminum in esse, licet
coexigat. Sed Pater ponit Filium in esse per proprietatem personalem. Igitur Pater non
refertur ad Filium per paternitatem in quantum est relatio, sed per generationem in quantum
est actio. Igitur paternitas sub ratione relationis non manet ibi, sed solum sub ratione
actionis.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 55515–22 (and see further 55523–31). On Auriol’s theory, see
Ch. 9, § 2 above, esp. at and around nn. 60–61.
106 See for these two positions, Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1 (ed. Friedman 1997b,
pp. 55532–55657).
107 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Item, supposita eiusdam naturae non constituun-
tur per res alterius generis. Sed supposita divina sunt supposita eiusdem naturae. Actio vero
et passio sunt alterius generis in creaturis, et quasi alterius in divinis. Igitur supposita divina
non constituuntur per actionem et passionem, quia tunc suppositum unum constitueretur
per rem quasi alterius generis ab alio supposito. Sed paternitas et filiatio sunt quasi relationes
by which the Holy Spirit and the Son would be constituted would differ less
among themselves than either would differ from the active production con-
stitutive of the Father: e.g., the constitutive property of the Son would differ
from that of the Father by genus (a passion and an action, respectively),
while it would differ from that of the Holy Spirit by species (two different
passions).108 Marchia’s general conclusion on the basis of these arguments
is that, contrary to Auriol, it is better to say that the persons are constituted
by relations than by action and passion.
Yet the arguments against relation being the property constitutive of the
persons—arguments that Franciscans had been using for decades—were
still valid, according to Marchia: relation cannot constitute that which is
related through it, but rather with one relatum put into existence by another
through production, the relations arise. Like Auriol and Scotus and many
other Franciscan authors, then, Marchia thus affirms that one person is put
into being by another, and relation is not the sort of thing that accounts for
this.109 Further, as an argument against either relations or productions being
the constitutive properties, Marchia claims that relation and production are
of equal imperfection, and so there is no greater reason for the one to remain
in God than for the other.110
This last argument would seem to indicate that Marchia adheres to the
third position that he described: that both generation and paternity remain
formally in the Father as constitutive of him. Yet Marchia, using the Father
eiusdem generis, licet sint alterius rationis. Igitur supposita divina, si constituantur per ali-
qua istorum, magis constituentur per paternitatem et filiationem quam per generationem
actionem et passionem.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 55674–81.
108 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Confirmatur quia unum suppositum divinum
non magis differt ab alio quam a tertio. Sed generatio actio et generatio passio magis differunt
inter se quam duae productiones passivae differant inter se, quia productio actio et productio
passio sunt alterius rationis quasi genere, duae productiones vero passivae sunt alterius
rationis quasi specie. Igitur si Pater constituatur in esse per generationem actionem et
Filius per generationem passionem et Spiritus Sanctus per spirationem vel processionem
passivam, sequitur quod Filius magis differat a Patre quam a Spiritu Sancto, quia a Patre
differhait quasi genere, a Spiritu Sancto quasi specie, quod est inconveniens.” Ed. Friedman
1997b, p. 55782–89.
109 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Contra secundum modum: unum relativum
non ponitur in esse per aliud, circumscripta productione activa et passiva. Sed una persona
ponitur in esse per aliam. Igitur una non constituitur in esse personali per relationem
praescindentem actionem.” Friedman 1997b, p. 55790–92. See further, ibid., p. 55797–105.
110 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Item, quando aliquid non importat maiorem
imperfectionem quam alterum, neutrum magis attribuitur Deo quam alterum. Sed produc-
tio, ut dicit ordinem ad terminum, non importat maiorem imperfectionem quam relatio.
Igitur si unum manet in Deo, et reliquum.” Friedman 1997b, p. 55793–96. See further, ibid.,
p. 55659–64.
796 chapter twelve
and the Son as his example, rejects this position as well: how could two
things that differ by species (paternity and filiation) and two that differ by
genus (active generation and passive generation) coincide formally in—and
indeed constitute—the very same supposites?111
Thus, taking the specific case of the constitution of the first person,
Marchia rejects that relation and action together can remain in the Father
formally, and further he rejects that either relation or action on its own
can explain the constitution of the first person. Indeed, Marchia claims that
neither paternity nor generation is in the Father formally, instead postu-
lating a different property whose unnamed and unknown ratio contains
eminently—not formally—the rationes of paternity and of generation:
I maintain that in the divine neither the ratio of paternity nor of generation
nor of spiration remains formally, but there is in the Father formally a ratio
unknown to us and different from active generation and paternity, containing
eminently the perfection of each. Further, in the Son there is neither passive
generation nor the consequent filiation, but another, different ratio contain-
ing eminently the ratio or perfection of each, both of passive generation and
also of filiation. The same goes for the Holy Spirit, since in him there is for-
mally neither passive spiration nor the consequent relation, but another ratio
that is neither, containing each of them eminently. And so in this way all the
things that are said about God can best be saved.112
Thus, Marchia comes up with a type of hybrid position in order to do

away with a question that had been disputed back and forth between
Dominicans and Franciscans for over fifty years: the constitutive properties
are neither relations nor are they emanations; they are both and they
are neither. For his position Marchia marshals many clever arguments.
And this is what must be admitted about Marchia: one may not like his
111 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Contra tertium modum: illa quae differunt quasi
genere non possunt coincidere quasi in idem formaliter cum his quae differunt tantum quasi
specie. Sed generatio actio et generatio passio differunt genere in creaturis, paternitas autem
et filiatio differunt specie. Igitur non possunt coincidere in idem formaliter.” Friedman 1997b,
p. 557106–116.
112 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Et ita dico quod in divinis quod non manet for-
maliter ratio paternitatis nec generationis nec spirationis, sed est in Patre formaliter alia
ratio nobis ignota a generatione activa et paternitate, continens eminenter perfectionem
utriusque. Et in Filio non est generatio passio nec filiatio consequens, sed alia ratio alterius
rationis, continens eminenter rationem sive perfectionem utriusque, tam generationis passi-
vae quam etiam filiationis. Idem de Spiritu Sancto, quoniam nec in ipso est formaliter spiratio
passio nec relatio consequens, sed alia ratio neutra, utramque illarum continens eminenter.
Et sic per istum modum melius possunt salvari omnia quae dicuntur de Deo.” Ed. Friedman
1997b, p. 561271–278. For “unnamed” (innominata), see the text in n. 119 below. Cf. also ibid., a.
2 (p. 562328–333). Gerard Odo appears to refer to this view of Marchia’s; cf. above, in n. 75.
solution—it has the appearance of a patchwork that holds many things

together without really explaining anything—but his arguments for the
position and his attempt to mediate widely differing views are fascinating
historically, theologically, and philosophically. Moreover, Marchia’s view
had some historical influence, as we will see below with Michael of Massa’s
employment of Marchia’s notion of “containment eminenter”.113
We can pinpoint with some precision the authoritative texts that pro-
vided Marchia with the framework for his view. In De trinitate VII, Augustine
claims, “that by which he is the Son, by that he is the Word, and that by which
he is the Word, by that he is the Son” (Eo quippe Filius quo Verbum, et eo Ver-
bum quo Filius). Marchia asks what the reduplicative force of the ‘by that’
(eo) could be. He rejects that Augustine could have meant either that the
Word is the Word by filiation (the constitutive property of the Son) or that
the Son is the Son by “verbation” (the constitutive property of the Word).
Since the Word is the Son, it is clear that there is only one constitutive
property involved, and yet it just does not seem true that the reduplication
concerns either the one or the other of the constitutive properties. There-
fore what is reduplicated must be a ratio that is the ratio of neither of the
constitutive properties, and yet serves the function of both, that is to say a
ratio that makes the second person both the Son and the Word. Marchia
concludes that the second person—the Word and the Son—is constituted
by a property having a third ratio, a ratio containing eminently the ratio of
both verbation and filiation, but being neither of them formally.114 The oppo-
sition, then, that Marchia wants to draw between his own position and that
of the third position he described and rejected is that the properties, active
113 For Massa, see § 3A below, at n. 160. For a further example of Marchia’s influence, see
n. 75 above, for Gerard Odo’s mention of Marchia’s view on the divine properties.
114 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Pro ista parte minoris et conclusionis simul est
Augustinus, VII De trinitate, cap. 2: ‘Eo quippe Filius quo Verbum, et eo Verbum quo Filius.’
Quaero quid reduplicat ly ‘eo’ in utraque propositione? Aut reduplicat tantum rationem
Verbi aut tantum rationem filiationis; quod non potest esse, quia si redupliceret alterum
tantum, tunc idem esset dicere ‘eo Verbum quo Filius’, id est ea filiatione qua est Filius est
Verbum, et ea verbatione qua Verbum est Filius; et ita nihil esset aliud dicere quam Verbum
sicut verbatione est Verbum, ita verbatione esset Filius, et Filius sicut filiatione est Filius, ita
filiatione sit Verbum—quod non videtur verum. Igitur reduplicat rationem neutram aliam ab
utraque, ita quod per eandem rationem neutram tertiam continentem* utramque competit
sibi ratio Verbi et ratio Filii eminenter.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 558141–150. The Augustine
quotation is from De trinitate VII, 2, 3 (CCSL 50, p. 2506). For Marchia’s use of the same
quotation from Augustine, see further ibid., pp. 55724–55840, p. 561262–270. Marchia’s repeated
use of this quotation reveals its significance for his trinitarian views; the quotation is also
used by Marchia in I Scriptum, d. 11 (ed. Friedman 1999b, p. 53, §37).
798 chapter twelve
generation and paternity, do not remain in God the Father formally, in

the Scotistic sense of formally ex natura rei, but they remain eminently:
their characteristics are contained in one more encompassing ratio, a super-
ratio, that is formally neither active generation nor paternity, but eminently
both. And by eminent containment we can probably understand that the
functionality or operationality of what is eminently contained is present
without there also being any kind of ontological presence. Thus, relation
and action are “there” only to the extent that their effects or characteristics
are there, and in no more ontologically committing way.
Marchia uses a second quotation from Augustine to make the jump from
“verbation” and filiation, on the one hand, to filiation and passive genera-
tion, on the other: “Anyone is a son because he was begotten, and because he
is a son, he was certainly begotten” (ideo quippe filius quia genitus, et quia fil-
ius utique genitus). For Marchia this means that passive generation and filia-
tion go together, and never is the one found without the other: the Son, con-
stituted by filiation, is a Son because he was begotten (genitus). The same is
true for the Father: paternity and active generation must both remain, and
one cannot be there without the other.115 But Marchia claims that paternity
could not be produced by active generation, because—perhaps echoing
Auriol’s insistence on the non-elicited nature of the properties—“nothing
is produced in the Father really, since anything produced in God is subsis-
tent.” Marchia’s conclusion, then, is that neither paternity nor active gen-
eration are in God formally.116 His further conclusion will be that paternity
and active generation are eminently contained in a third ratio that is the
true constitutive property of the first person of the Trinity.
In order to add weight to his contention that the relation paternity
cannot be the formal constitutive of the first person, Marchia starts with
the typical axiomatic Franciscan position: the first person puts the second
115 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Patet etiam auctoritate Augustini, V De trini-
tate, cap. 7: ‘ideo quippe Filius quia genitus.’ Igitur ubicumque est generatio passio, et fili-
atio est habita per generationem passionem. Et eodem modo paternitas per generationem
actionem, quia paternitas se habet ad generationem actionem sicut filiatio ad generationem
passionem.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 558156–159. The Augustine quotation is from De trinitate V,
7, 8 (CCSL 50, p. 2133–4). For Marchia’s use of the same Augustine quotation, see further ibid.,
p. 55652–53, p. 561262–270.
116 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “… paternitas in Deo Patre non est producta
nec causata per generationem actionem, quia nihil est productum in Patre realiter, cum
omne productum in Deo sit subsistens. Igitur paternitas non manet ibi formaliter, nec eadem
ratione generatio actio, quia ubicumque est generatio actio in natura intellectuali, ibi est
paternitas.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 558161–165. Cf. ibid., a. 2 (p. 562334–340). I have not identified
any explicit treatment by Marchia on whether the emanations are elicited or not.
person into being. But the first person does this according to his proper
ratio: it is proper to the first person to put the second into being. But since
it is not proper to one relatum to put another into being, the first person
cannot possibly put the second into being by paternity, but rather by active
generation. For this very reason, the Father as Father (Pater) cannot put
the Son into being, since the Father’s constitutive property is paternity, and
paternity cannot put the Son into being. Marchia concludes that the first
person is not formally the Father constituted by paternity, but rather he is
eminently the Father.117 We will return to this conclusion below.
Yet Marchia is just as clear that passive generation cannot remain for-
mally in the Son. The Son’s generation by the Father is as much of an article
of faith, claims Marchia, as is the world’s creation. Yet, creation passion is
not formally in creatures, but “causally or fundamentally and eminently”.
Marchia defends this last claim by a process of elimination: if creation pas-
sion were formally in creatures, then it would either be the being of those
creatures formally, or something following or something preceding that
being. Creation passion cannot be formally the same as the being of crea-
tures because then no philosopher would be able to doubt that the universe
had been created, since “when things are the same formally, anyone under-
standing one, understands the other.” Nor can creation passion be some-
thing that formally follows from creatures, because it is creation passion
that causes the very existence of creatures in the first place. Finally, if cre-
ation passion formally preceded the existence of creatures, then it could
certainly not also be formally in creatures, since something that precedes
the existence of something else cannot be part of that second thing (since
then the existence of the formal part would precede the existence of the
whole of which it is a part). Marchia’s conclusion is that generation passion
is no more in the Son formally than creation passion is in creatures: they are
both there eminently.118
117 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Item, tertio principaliter illud quod circumscripto
omni alio extra rationem suam ponit terminum in esse non est formaliter illud quod circum-
scripto omni alio non ponit illum terminum in esse. Sed prima persona, circumscripto omni
alio quod est extra rationem suam, ponit in esse personam aliam, quia prima persona non
ponit in esse secundam personam per aliquid quod est extra rationem suam. Pater autem
non ponit in esse Filium circumscripto omni eo quod est extra rationem Patris. Igitur prima
persona non est formaliter Pater, sed tantum eminenter. Probatio minoris: generatio actio est
formaliter extra rationem paternitatis. Patet quia actio est formaliter extra rationem relatio-
nis. Sed unum relatum non ponit in esse alterum relatum circumscripta omni productione
activa et passiva. Igitur Pater non ponit in esse Filium circumscripto omni eo quod est extra
rationem Patris.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, pp. 558166–559176.
118 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Item, sexto, non magis generatio passio est
800 chapter twelve
Through these arguments, Marchia believes that he has shown via spe-
cific cases that neither relation nor action and passion, whether on their
own or together formally, can explain the constitution of the divine persons,
but only a super-ratio containing eminently the rationes of both relation,
on the one hand, and action or passion, on the other. As further support for
his position, however, Marchia thinks that he can point to several impor-
tant scholastic authors who seem also to have adhered to his view. What
could Bonaventure have possibly meant when he claimed that the Father
was constituted in personal being through innascibility as primity, and not
by paternity or by generation? According to Marchia, Bonaventure clearly
thought that this positive aspect of innascibility giving being to the Father
was a third ratio different from both paternity and from generation but con-
taining both of their rationes eminently.119 What could Aquinas have meant
when he claimed in his Summa theologiae that the Father is constituted by
paternity, with paternity taken not as a relation but as a property? Only
that the first person is constituted not by paternity or generation, but by a
different ratio that is neither: the same ratio that Bonaventure had called
“innascibility”.120 Marchia even offers Scotus’ postulation of absolute per-
formaliter in Filio quam creatio passio sit formaliter in creatura. Patet quia sicut Filium
esse genitum a Patre est articulus fidei, ita mundum esse creatum est articulus fidei. Sed
creatio passio sub ratione productionis passivae non est formaliter in creatura, sed tantum
causaliter sive fundamentaliter et eminenter. Igitur nec generatio passio est formaliter in
Filio. Probatio minoris: si creatio passio esset formaliter in caelo vel in terra, aut esset
formaliter ipsa entitas caeli aut aliquid consequens aut aliquid praevium. Non est ipsa entitas
caeli, quia quando aliqua sunt idem formaliter, intelligens unum, intelligit reliquum. Sed
philosophi intellexerunt caelum et dubitaverunt utrum esset factum vel non. Igitur factio
non est formaliter eius entitas. Similiter visus percipit eius quantitatem, et non percipit
eius factionem. Igitur unum non est formaliter aliud. Necque est formaliter consequens
entitatem caeli, quia prius non accipit esse causaliter per posterius. Terminus autem accipit
esse causaliter per ipsam creationem passionem, si ponatur. Igitur non est aliquid formaliter
consequens. Necque est aliquid formaliter antecedens terminum. Probatio: quia illud quod
praeintelligetur primo esse creaturae non est aliquid formaliter ex parte creaturae, quia tunc
esset antequam esset. Sed primum esse creaturae quod habet realiter est esse quod habet in
termino creationis. Igitur nihil quod praeintelligitur termino creationis est aliquid formaliter
ex parte creaturae.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, pp. 559212–560229.
119 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Haec fuit intentio omnium doctorum. Et primo
dictum fratris Bonaventurae, quod Pater constituitur in esse personali non per paterni-
tatem nec per generationem, sed per innascibilitatem. Constat autem quod non intellexit
per innascibilitatem negationem, cum hoc ipse excludat. Quid igitur per innascibilitatem
nisi quandam rationem tertiam neutram innominatam, continentem eminenter rationem
paternitatis et generationis activae?” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 560241–247.
120 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Praeterea, Thomas in Summa quaerens istam
quaestionem dicit quod Pater non constituitur per generationem activam, quia actio prae-
supponit suppositum constitutum. Et postea distinguens dicit quod paternitas potest hintel-
sons as evidence for his own view. When Scotus claimed that the divine
persons were not constituted by relations, he was certainly correct, because
the properties constitutive of the persons do not formally have the ratio of
relation, but a different ratio, containing the ratio of relation eminently. This
is not to say, Marchia is quick to stress, that rationes of this kind are formally
absolute, merely that they are of a different ratio formally than relations
are.121 The danger of dismissing the relation account and of employing Sco-
tus’ absolute properties still loomed large in the late teens and early twenties
of the fourteenth century.
This position, however, leads to one awkward question for Marchia. Take
the case of the Father. If neither paternity nor active generation formally
constitutes the first person, but rather a property of a third ratio that
contains the other two eminently without formally being either, then why
is the Father more the Father than the Son is, and why does the Father
generate more than the Son does?122 If Marchia is correct and neither active
generation nor paternity is formally in the first person, then how do these
names ‘Father’ and ‘Begetter’ apply to the first person at all, except as a
metaphor? A similar type of accusation had been leveled by the Franciscan
tradition against the Dominican metaphorical understanding of intellectual
procession: if the Son is not emanated by way of intellect, then how is he
more of a Word than the Holy Spirit is?
ligii dupliciter: uno modo ut relatio et sic non constituit (quia relatio, ut contra actionem
distinguitur, non ponit in esse relatum); alio modo ut proprietas et sic constituit. Sed quid
est dicere quod paternitas ut relatio non constituit sed ut proprietas, nisi quia proprietas sub
ratione constitutiva non est formaliter relatio, nec per consequens paternitas, nec generatio,
sed est neutra ratio quam primus doctor vocat innascibilitatem et alius proprietatem?” Ed.
Friedman 1997b, p. 560248–255.
121 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Hoc idem videtur sensisse doctor modernus
Scotus, nam ipse dicit quod personae divinae non constituuntur in esse personali per rela-
tiones. Quod utique verum est, quod relationes constitutivae non sunt formaliter huiushmodi
rationesi ab relationibus, sed sunt alterius rationis habi eis continens eas eminenter tan-
tum, non autem formaliter continen[te]s. Nec tamen dico quod huiusmodi rationes sint
formaliter absolutae, immo possunt esse relativae, licet sint alterius rationis formaliter ab
istis.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 560256–261. Marchia does support relative properties, but only on
account of what the saints said; see below, at n. 138.
122 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Sed contra hoc arguo primo, quia si in Patre non
est plus formaliter paternitas quam filiatio, nec in Filio sive secunda persona filiatio magis
quam paternitas, ergo prima persona non erit magis Pater quam Filius, nec secunda persona
magis Filius quam Pater. Praeterea secundo, per idem potest argui de generatione, quia si
in Patre non est formaliter generatio activa magis quam passiva nec in Filio magis generatio
passiva quam activa, igitur non magis Pater generat quam Filius, nec Filius magis generatur
quam Pater. Sed omnia ista sunt absurda. Igitur, etc.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 561279–285.
802 chapter twelve
Just as above we saw him suggest (at n. 117), when he claimed explicitly
that the first person is not formally but rather eminently the Father, here
Marchia concedes the point: formally paternity is not in the Father any
more than is filiation, nor is active generation in him more than is passive
generation. Despite this, Marchia claims that we can still apply the terms
‘Father’ and ‘Begetter’ more appropriately to the first person than to the
second. This is because we only speak about God “proportionately”, by
attributing to God what we know about creatures. Yet, no matter where
we find active generation, we find passive generation following it, and the
same is true of paternity with respect to filiation. Therefore, because of the
order that exists between the first and the second persons we can through
this likeness more properly call the first divine person the Father and say
that he generates the second divine person, the Son, than the reverse.123 On
account of his use of the super-ratio that eminently contains both relation
and action or passion, Marchia has accepted a purely metaphorical model
of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
What we can piece together from this discussion about Marchia’s ideas
on the Trinity more generally is that there are in God only four mutually
distinct rationes. There are three super-rationes that are constitutive of
the persons, distinct from each other (and from the divine essence); each
of these super-rationes eminently contains the rationes of both a divine
relation and the action or passion corresponding to it. In addition, there
is one super-ratio that contains eminently the ratio of the essence and, as
we will see, all of the attributal rationes.124 As a consequence of his use of
123 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 1: “Responsio: concedo quod in Patre non est
formaliter paternitas nec generatio activa magis quam filiatio vel generatio passiva, nec
illa in Filio magis quam opposita, quo tamen non absolute magis attribuuntur primae
personae ista quam illa, vel opposita istis secundae magis quam alia. Ratio eius est, quoniam
oportet loqui in divinis proportionaliter secundum illa quae reperiuntur in creaturis, ex
quibus Deo attribuimus quicquid attribuimus. Nunc* autem in creaturis, ubi istae rationes
sunt formaliter, puta generatio actio et generatio passio et relationes consequentes, ita
est quod [propter] generationem [consequentem] actionem sequitur generatio passio et
non e converso. Et per consequens relatio etiam consequens generationem passionem,
puta filiatio, sequitur paternitatem, quae est relatio consequens generationem actionem, et
non e converso. Generatio autem activa praecedens sive paternitas consequens est a qua
quis in creaturis denominatur Pater, sicut et generatio passio quae consequitur sive filiatio
est a qua quis dicitur Filius. Et quia in divinis, quibus talia attribuimus ex creaturis, una
persona sequitur aliam—puta secunda sequitur ad primam sive post ipsam ordine quodam,
et non e converso—ideo prima magis dicitur Pater quam Filius, et secunda e converso
propter rationem oppositam, enim dicitur magis Filius quam Pater.” Ed. Friedman 1997b,
p. 561286–301.
124 E.g., Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 1, a. 2: “Dico concludendo ex istis in primo articulo
eminent containment and super-rationes, Marchia has encompassed both

the Dominican and the Franciscan trinitarian positions in an overarching
system; as mentioned, his solution is a hybrid one. Thus, already on the
basis of the first part of I Scriptum, d. 27, it is clear that Marchia takes
a special place in the development of Franciscan trinitarian thought: his
position cannot really be described as falling into the Franciscan trinitarian
tradition’s mainstream. And one can suggest that, like Auriol, Chatton, and
Wodeham, the source of Marchia’s divergence from the mainstream is a
desire to cut down on the explanatory devices used in trinitarian theology.
Instead of relations and emanations vying for primacy in the constitution
of the persons, each person has a sole constitutive property that negates
the necessity for discussing any other constitutive factor. Hence, Marchia
seems here to be engaged in the search for simplicity. In any case, on the
question of the emanational or the relational distinction of the persons,
Marchia has clearly rejected the solution typical of Franciscans in general
since the 1260’s.
B. Francis of Marchia and the Psychological Model

In the second part of d. 27, Marchia deals with the Word and its way of
proceeding, and he is primarily interested in the function of the divine intel-
lect in the production of the Word.125 Thus, his discussion fundamentally
concerns whether the psychological model of the Trinity is to be taken to
apply literally to God, or merely metaphorically. Here too, Marchia employs
a method of dealing with problems by “swallowing” conflicting elements in
an all-embracing solution, and in this context Marchia reveals very clearly
that he is engaged in his own form of the search for simplicity.
Marchia begins his discussion of the topic by drawing a basic distinction
between the divine intellect compared to the divine essence as the intel-
lect’s foundation, the divine intellect compared to the divine essence as the
intellect’s object, and the divine intellect compared to the divine will as to
quod, licet in tribus personis divinis sint tres rationes distinctae inter se et etiam ab essentia,
ut alias fuit visum, in natura tamen persona est nisi unica sola ratio personalis propria cum
essentia communi tribus personis.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 562324–327. On the status of the
divine attributes in Marchia’s theology, see at and around nn. 130–134 below.
125 Marchia also deals here (ed. Friedman 1997b, pp. 563378–565445; ed. Mariani, Quodlibet
cum quaestionibus selectis, pp. 29517–29892) very briefly with the ontological status of the
concept, considering the views of Henry of Ghent, Scotus, and Auriol; for a short discussion,
see Friedman 1997b, 355–357.
804 chapter twelve
another source.126 The position that he then sets out is manifestly Scotistic.
The infinite divine intellect in the Father together with the essence acting
as the intellect’s object is one total source of the production of the Word,
while the infinite divine will and the essence acting as the will’s object is
one total source of the production of the Holy Spirit. Further, the will does
not have any causality with respect to the production of the Word, nor does
the intellect have any causality with respect to the production of the Holy
Spirit.127
Marchia claims that this position is probable (probabilis), but that he sees
two problems with it. The first problem concerns the way that the divine
intellect and will are claimed to relate to the essence. In the second article
of this part of the distinction, Marchia had shown to his own satisfaction
that the essence of the intellectual soul as it serves as the foundation for
the intellect is the principal agent in the production of a word or concept;
the intellect itself is a merely instrumental cause.128 But, in Scotus’ view, the
divine essence as it is the foundation for the divine intellect has no causality
with respect to the production of the Word; only the essence insofar as it is
the intellect’s object does. But if this were true, insists Marchia, the divine
essence would be more imperfect with respect to its own intellect and will
than the essence of the soul would be with respect to the created intellect
126 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2, a. 3: “Quantum ad tertium articulum dicitur quod
intellectus divinus potest comparari vel ad essentiam in qua fundatur sub ratione funda-
menti vel potest comparari ad eam sub ratione obiecti vel comparari ad ipsam voluntatem
sicut ad principium reliquum, et sic dicitur quod intellectus concurrit cum essentia divina in
ratione obiecti sicut unum principium totale ad productionem Verbi, ita quod voluntas nul-
lam habet causalitatem super productionem Verbi, nec ipsa essentia sub ratione fundamenti
sed solum sub ratione obiecti. Similiter voluntas cum essentia divina in ratione obiecti, sicut
unum principium totale concurrit ad productionem Spiritus Sancti, ita quod intellectus non
habet aliquam causalitatem super productionem Spiritus Sancti, nec essentia sub ratione
fundamenti.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 569657–665.
127 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2, a. 3: “Quod probatur quia intellectus infinitus for-
maliter habens obiectum infinitum est sufficiens principium Verbi infiniti in supposito con-
veniente, sicut intellectus finitus cum obiecto finito est unum totale principium verbi finiti.
Sed intellectus divinus est formaliter infinita et essentia divina est formaliter infinita. Igitur
intellectus divinus cum essentia in ratione obiecti integrat unum totale principium pro-
ductivum Verbi. Et suppositum Patris est conveniens ad producendum, quia est primum
suppositum non praesupponens Verbum productum. Ergo per intellectum cum essentia pro-
ducit Verbum, et eodem modo voluntas cum obiecto producit Spiritum Sanctum.” Ed. Fried-
man 1997b, p. 569666–673. Arguments for the view are offered by Marchia at ibid., p. 569674–680,
and see also n. 126 above. For Scotus, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 149–150.
128 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2, a. 2 (ed. Friedman 1997b, pp. 565448–566497; ed.
Mariani, Quodlibet cum quaestionibus selectis, pp. 29892–299147).

and will. This cannot be: for Marchia, if the divine essence is distinct from
the intellect for which it is the foundation (as Scotus would have it), then
the essence as a foundation must act in the production of the Word.129
A second problem that Marchia sees with Scotus’ position also offers a
perspective on his own explanation for the intellect’s role in the production
of the divine Word. Marchia objects to Scotus’ claim that the intellect and
the essence, as it is the intellect’s object, concur or act together in the pro-
duction of the Word. What this objection boils down to is Marchia’s rejec-
tion of Scotus’ formal distinction between the attributes and the essence,
Marchia arguing instead that each source that is productive of a person
is formally one (unum formaliter).130 Perhaps the strongest argument that
Marchia marshals for this position is simply that if the divine intellect and
the essence as the intellect’s object were formally distinct from one another
and concurred in the production of the Word, then it would follow that each
is in some way limited and imperfect, unable to produce the Word on its
own.131
129 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2, a. 3: “Contra primum: essentia divina non est imper-
fectior respectu proprii intellectus et voluntatis in ordine suo quam sit essentia animae
intellectivae respectu proprii intellectus et voluntatis proprie in ordine suo. Sed essentia ani-
mae intellectivae in quantum est fundamentum intellectus et voluntatis concurrit effective
principalius ad productionem verbi et amoris quam intellectus et voluntas, quia essentia
animae concurrit per modum agentis principalis, potentiae autem concurrunt sicut instru-
mentum, ut probatum est in secundo articulo. Igitur multo magis essentia divina in quantum
est fundamentum intellectus et voluntatis divinae, si distinguatur ab eis et sit fundamentum
ipsorum, concurrit active ad productionem Verbi et Spiritus Sancti et non solum in ratione
obiecti.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 570685–693. For further arguments along the same lines, cf.
ibid., p. 570694–697, p. 571747–753.
130 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2, a. 3: “Contra secundum: illud est principium quo
immediate productivum Verbi super quo fundatur respectus Patris ad Verbum, et quod
est ratio terminandi respectum Verbi ad Patrem. Sed respectus Patris ad Verbum est unus
formaliter, et e converso primus et immediatus. Igitur principium quo productivum est
unum formaliter, quia idem respectus non potest fundari immediate super duo principia
formaliter distincta. Igitur intellectus et essentia sunt idem formaliter et voluntas et essentia
sunt idem formaliter, et ita non concurrit plus unum formaliter quam aliud.” Ed. Friedman
1997b, p. 570698–704. The rejection of Scotus’ formal distinction between the attributes runs
throughout the areas of Marchia’s theology that have been examined to date; see Friedman
1999b, which studies I Scriptum, d. 11, and see especially Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 22, q. 2, the
text that deals explicitly with the distinction between the attributes, in ed. Mariani, Quodlibet
cum quaestionibus selectis, pp. 398–413 (App. IV, 2.2).
131 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2, a. 3: “Item, quandocumque ad aliquem effectum
communem concurrunt plura principia quo quorum neutrum sufficit sine alio, utrumque
est limitatum in sua causalitate, et imperfectum. Patet quia principium simpliciter illim-
itatum continet omnem causalitatem sui generis. Sed essentia et intellectus concurrunt
ad productionem Verbi sicut duo principia quo distincta, secundum istam opinionem,
806 chapter twelve
In dealing with the issues as he has presented them, Marchia turns again
to his super-ratio eminently containing other rationes. In creatures, on
account of their imperfection, the essence of the soul needs as instruments
the intellect and the will to carry out its operations. But God, on account
of his perfection, does not need these faculties. Thus, there are no formally
distinct intellect, will, and essence in God, all of these rationes are included
eminently in the more comprehensive ratio of the divine essence.132 Like
Auriol and Ockham, Marchia’s criticism of Scotus’ formal distinction is
linked to a requirement for stricter divine simplicity than the Subtle Doctor
himself thought necessary, and hence it is clearly a manifestation of the
search for simplicity.
We saw in Chapter Ten above (at and around nn. 106–119) that Ockham’s
rejection of the formal distinction between the attributes and his further
claim that intellect and will are indistinct in God had immediate ramifica-
tions for his trinitarian theology and especially his view of the psychological
model. This is just as true for Francis of Marchia, who says:
From what has been said, I conclude as a corollary that the divine Word does
not proceed through an act of the intellect, nor the Holy Spirit through an
act of the will, since neither of these powers is formally in God, but both
produced persons proceed through an act of that third ratio, eminently and
utterly simply containing all these …133
Marchia, going farther than did Ockham who mitigated his rejection of the
psychological model of the Trinity, has a fully metaphorical understanding
of the psychological model. In fact, on this issue Marchia seems to be more
quorum neutrum continet causalitatem alterius. Igitur utrumque est imperfectum in suo
ordine, quod est inconveniens. Igitur non distinguuntur.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, pp. 570724–
571730. For a confirmation of this argument, see further ibid., p. 571731–746.
132 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2, a. 3: “Et ideo quia nullum istorum ponitur in Deo
formaliter, sed eminenter, non enim intentio quod essentia sit aliquid in Deo quod sit
fundamentum intellectus et voluntatis nec alicuius talium, cum ista formaliter non sint
ibi. Quia enim essentia animae est imperfecta, ideo propter sui imperfectionem indiget
intellectu et voluntate et habet huiusmodi potentias sicut quaedam instrumenta in eius
operationibus. Verbi gratia: principale agens est sine omni imperfectione, et huiusmodi
agens est Deus, tamen non indiget aliquo alio a se qualitercumque distincto ad aliquam
operationem. Et ideo dico quod in Deo non est formaliter intellectus nec voluntas, sed
est in eo unica ratio eminens continens supereminenter omnia ista.” Ed. Friedman 1997b,
p. 571756–765.
133 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2, a. 3: “Ex praedictis concludo correlative quod Verbum
divinum non procedit per actum intellectus nec Spiritus Sanctus per actum voluntatis,
cum neutra istarum potentiarum sit formaliter in Deo, sed ambae personae productae
procedunt per actum illius rationis tertiae eminenter et simplicissime continentis omnia ista
eminenter.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 571770–773.
in agreement with the Dominican trinitarian tradition than with the Fran-
ciscan. Although he does not say as much, one can surmise that Marchia
would claim, in a similar manner to his claim about the first person being the
Father by a “proportional” similarity to fathers in creatures, that the Word is
a Word because it is the first product in the divine, not because of any spe-
cial connection with the divine intellect.134 Scotus—and for that matter the
rest of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition of which Scotus was an important
part—would have rejected this aspect of Marchia’s trinitarian theology on
the grounds that it was a purely “metaphorical” understanding of the psy-
chological model.135 Like his contemporary Walter Chatton (see Ch. 11, § 1C),
Francis of Marchia has given up a key element of the Franciscan trinitar-
ian theology of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: that the
productions of the Son and the Holy Spirit were, respectively, productions
by way of nature (or intellect) and by way of will. While inasmuch as his
understanding of the divine properties seems to stress production and ori-
gin, Marchia can still be said to have Franciscan tendencies in his trinitarian
theology, he has nevertheless surrendered the strong use of the psycholog-
ical model as a description of the Trinity that Henry of Ghent had adopted
not even fifty years before.
I can mention here several unusual features of Marchia’s trinitarian
thought that become somewhat clearer when understood in connection
with his rejection of the strong use of the psychological model of the Trinity.
For one thing, nearly every later-medieval theologian had devoted a sub-
stantial portion of his I Sentences, d. 27, to discussing concepts and concept
formation; especially theologians in the Franciscan trinitarian current had
attempted to tie their philosophical psychology and their trinitarian the-
ology closely together. In his I Scriptum, d. 27, on the other hand, Marchia
seems basically uninterested in concepts. From what we have seen of his
trinitarian theology, this is easy to understand: for Marchia, concepts and
concept theory really add nothing to our understanding of God, and so
134 Cf. for a hint of a proportional understanding concerning the personal productions,
Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 27, pars 2: “Ad primum, cum dicitur “primum productum”, etc., con-
cedo; sed tunc nego minorem, quia nec essentia nec intellectus est primum principium pro-
ductivum, cum neutrum illorum sit ibi formaliter; sed illa ratio neutra continens omnia ista
eminenter, et ista est primum principium productivum.” Ed. Friedman 1997b, p. 572781–784.
Marchia does not appear to directly address the issue of whether ‘word’ is said of the Son
properly or in a purely appropriated way (i.e., metaphorically), and to this extent we do not
know just how radical his rejection of the strong use of the psychological model is.
135 For Scotus’ view, see Ch. 6, above, at and around n. 135.
808 chapter twelve
he uses his d. 27 to show why they add nothing to our understanding, i.e.
because the Son is not produced by an intellectual act, and hence must be
a Word in a highly attenuated sense only.136 This is confirmed by Marchia’s
position that we cannot reason from the image of the Trinity in creatures
to the divine Trinity itself. The Franciscan strong use of the psychological
model had assumed that the closest created image of the Trinity—the
human mind, its knowledge, and love—could be used to say something
significant about God’s very nature. Even the metaphorical Dominican use
of the psychological model seems to have taken the image of the Trinity in
the human mind to be useful in explaining a particularly difficult piece of
Catholic doctrine. Marchia claims explicitly that the image has no cognitive
value for us: we know that we are an image of God because God created
us in his “image and likeness”, but the viator has no way of knowing what
that means. This rejection of the significance of the image as an explanatory
tool fits in perfectly well with Marchia’s rejection of the strong use of the
psychological model of the Trinity. We know that there is a Trinity, and we
know that we are an image of the Trinity, but we can conclude nothing on
that basis.137
One further manifestation of Marchia’s personal search for simplicity,
and especially his rejection of relations and emanations as the properties
constitutive of the persons, can be seen when he discusses explicitly the
relations as constitutive properties. Here, he denies that we have any ratio-
nal grounds to think that relation is the property constitutive of the persons,
but he supports that view nonetheless by appealing explicitly to the faith: “I
hold that these relations in God are real, not on account of any cogent argu-
136 See also n. 125 above. Marchia thus provides an interesting contrast to William Ockham,
who used nearly all of qq. 2–3 of his Ordinatio, d. 27 (dealing with mental words), to discuss
concepts, appealing briefly to faith to explain why the Son is truly a Word. More generally
Ockham and Marchia offer quite an interesting parallel: both reject any distinction between
the divine attributes and on that basis severely restrict (Ockham) or totally reject (Marchia)
the validity of the strong use of the psychological model. They are also both insistent
upon the radical identity of the divine properties as relations and emanations. In both
these cases, however, their way of approaching the issues and their preferred solutions are
extremely different, indicating that they share a motivation (what I have called the search
for simplicity) but that they implement it through highly personal theological solutions.
137 Marchia’s argument for the image’s lack of cognitive value is as follows: I Scriptum, d. 3,
q. 2: “… patet quod homo vel creatura alia rationalis quantum est ex ratione sua repraesentat
trinitatem, quia est facta ad imaginem Dei. Sed quod intellectus creatus ex ea non possit
cognoscere trinitatem, hoc est ex defectu potentiae cognoscendi* specialiter hominis in
isto statu.” BAV Chigi. B VII 113, f. 38rb; ed. Mariani, Quodlibet cum quaestionibus selectis,
p. 359274–277.
ment, but solely because the authoritative passages of the saints—whom I

believe to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit and whose pronouncements
the Church approves—seem to agree more with this position than with the
other one.”138
These last aspects bring us to a core feature of Francis of Marchia’s trini-
tarian theology as we have seen it here: its negative nature. Marchia’s rejec-
tion of the typical Franciscan strong use of the psychological model of the
Trinity was apparently part of an attempt, motivated by the search for sim-
plicity, to break down the wall between the two great trinitarian traditions,
by incorporating elements from each of them into an overarching system.
In order to hold so much together at once, he was forced to advocate a
largely negative trinitarian theology: three properties the rationes of which
are “unknown to us” are constitutive of the persons, and these are neither
relations nor emanations, but eminently both.139 The sources of the pro-
ductions are not will and intellect, but rather there is one source that is
eminently both of these. We know that we are an image of the Trinity, yet
we can say nothing about God’s trinitarian nature on this basis. The nega-
tive character of Marchia’s trinitarian thought is confirmed by the fact that
the greatest part of the distinction examined here was composed of argu-
ments against other points of views—especially those of Peter Auriol and
John Duns Scotus. Yet Marchia’s negative trinitarian theology is of interest,
not only because of its historical significance, but also for the originality
and insightfulness of Marchia’s critique of other positions in his attempt to
mediate the two widely differing points of view.
3. Michael of Massa
The Augustinian Hermit Michael of Massa has left enormous commentaries

on books I and II of the Sentences. Massa himself has received good marks for
his theology, and his Sentences commentary has been pinpointed as “one of
the richest unedited and, for the most part, unstudied texts of the fourteenth
138 Marchia, I Scriptum, d. 26, a. 2: “Ideo pono istas relationes reales in Deo non propter
alihquiam rationem cogentem, sed solum propter auctoritates sanctorum quae istam partem
videntur magis sonare quam aliam, quos credo fuisse Spiritu Sancto inspiratos et quorum
dicta ecclesia approbat.” BAV Chigi. B VII 113, f. 79ra. The other position of which Marchia
makes mention here is that the divine relations are not real. Marchia’s view on this issue is
similar to those of, among others, Scotus (Ch. 6, in n. 96), Ockham (Ch. 10, at and around
nn. 48–50), and Francis of Meyronnes (at n. 34 above).
139 For “… alia ratio nobis ignota …”, see n. 112 above.
810 chapter twelve
century.”140 We do not know exactly when Massa’s Sentences commentary

came into existence, but recent attempts at dating it indicate that book I is
from the late 1320’s and that it preceded his actual Parisian lectures on the
Sentences.141 Massa died in 1337 without having obtained the master’s degree.
That Massa had some impact seems fairly clear from the fact that his com-
mentary on I Sentences exists in three (partial) copies and was abbreviated
at least twice in the fifteenth century, and that in the mid-1340’s he is quite
often explicitly mentioned in the Sentences commentary of the Augustinian
Hermit Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo. Moreover, Chris Schabel has recently
argued that Massa was the conduit by which some of Francis of Marchia’s
ideas on future contingents came to Gregory of Rimini.142 Schabel’s con-
clusions stands in rather stark contrast to the portrait of Massa as “ultra-
Aegidian” that Damasus Trapp (1956, 163–175) painted in his foundational
work on the intellectual tradition of the later-medieval Augustinian Her-
140 For a very positive statement about Michael, see, e.g., Lang 1930, 130: “Michael von
Massa, ein äußerst begabter und fruchtreicher Theologe der Augustinerschule ....”; the com-
ment about Massa’s Sent. commentary comes from Courtenay 1995b, 191. A complete ques-
tion list from Massa’s commentaries (with marginalia) is found in Trapp 1965a; see Schabel
1998 for an evaluation of the surviving manuscripts; and see Courtenay 1995b, 191–194, for
some slight residual doubts about the attribution to Massa of the commentary on book II of
the Sent. found in ms. BAV, Vat. lat. 1087 (and for a study of some of the positions found in
that commentary on II Sent., see Hödl 1975).
141 See Schabel 2002a, 252. For considerations of the dating, see Courtenay 1995b and
Schabel 1998. Roughly speaking, Courtenay (e.g., p. 204) thinks that Massa’s I Sent. as found
in the main manuscript (Bologna, Biblioteca universitaria 2214) dates from ca. 1324 or shortly
thereafter, that Massa read the Sent. at Paris ca. 1332 and from this another version of the work
descends, and finally that his II Sent. reflects work done between 1332 and his death in 1337.
Schabel (1998, 168–171) offers some additions and possible modifications that would make
all copies of Massa’s I Sent. descend from a version written ca. 1330. Schabel and Courtenay
2007, 567, support early 1330’s as the date for Massa’s Sent. lectures. One of the important
pieces of evidence in the debate on Massa’s dating is that James of Pamiers, OESA, in one of
his quodlibetal questions, mentions Massa; as it turns out, this question deals with Massa’s
trinitarian theology, and indeed basically all of the 20 or so questions in Pamiers’ incomplete
Quodlibet deal directly with trinitarian theology, mentioning, among other authors, Francis
of Meyronnes, Francis of Marchia, Gerard Odo, and above all, Peter Auriol. See on Pamier’s
Quodlibet, most recently Schabel and Courtenay 2007, 562–568, who accept as its likely
date of composition “1332 or after”. (Pelster 1955, which discusses Pamiers, on 31–39, also
discusses the Dominican Raymond Bequini [d. 1328], qq. 4–6 of whose reply to portions of
Auriol’s Scriptum deal with trinitarian material; see for more recent information on Bequini,
Friedman 2007a, 464–465, and Nielsen 2009, esp. 206–208.) A further issue in the dating of
Massa’s Sent. commentary is that Ockham’s physical theories and Occamistae are mentioned
in Massa’s commentary on II Sent.; see on this (in addition to Courtenay 1995b, 204–207),
Courtenay 1997a, 49–55, Courtenay 1997b, 116–119, and Courtenay 2003 (with text edition
[pp. 253–259] from Massa’s II Sent.).
142 See Schabel 1998, esp. 165–168; Schabel 2000a, 214–220, 268.
mits. Indeed, a story is beginning to emerge in which Massa is an important

figure in the realignment of Augustinian theology from a Thomist-Aegidian
orbit to a more Franciscan, but ultimately independent, position. We will
see that there are indications that this is the case in trinitarian theology, in
which, far from following Giles, Massa offers Franciscan-leaning but highly
personal positions; moreover, in his trinitarian theory Massa is clearly influ-
enced by Francis of Marchia, and the background to some of Massa’s posi-
tions is the search for simplicity.
A. Michael of Massa and the Psychological Model

We can begin by looking at Massa’s treatment of the voluntary emanation
of the Holy Spirit, a topic which, as we have seen time and again, became a
locus classicus for discussion of the strong use of philosophical psychology.
Massa’s version of the question is “whether the will in the divine is the
source of communicating nature”.143 Massa frames the entire discussion
around the two major views that we have been tracing throughout this book:
the Franciscan strong use of the psychological model, on the one hand, and
the highly attenuated Dominican use of it, on the other.
In presenting the Franciscan view, Massa relates the positions of Henry
of Ghent as well as those of Massa’s confrère Gerard of Siena, the theologian
who throughout Massa’s Sentences commentary is all in all his most fre-
quent object of attack.144 But Massa presents the views of Henry and Gerard
as a variation on a theme, a theme that he clearly thought John Duns Scotus
developed best. Massa gives a fairly balanced presentation of Scotus: intel-
lect and will in God are two formally distinct sources of distinct emanations,
and it is on account of them that the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct and
that the one is truly a Word, the other truly Love. Massa also mentions the
typical Franciscan argument that, if the undifferentiated essence, and not
intellect and will in some way distinct, was the source of the emanations,
143 Michael of Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1 (“Utrum voluntas in divinis sit principium commu-
nicandi naturam”; ms. Bologna, Biblioteca universitaria 2214, ff. 138va–142ra).

144 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2 (Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, ff. 139vb–140ra [Henry] and 140ra–va
[Gerard]). For Henry, Massa refers the reader to Summa, a. 60, q. 1. Gerard’s treatment is
found in his Sent. commentary, d. 10 (ed. 1598, pp. 306b–330a, esp. 309a–313a), where he calls
what I have labelled the Franciscan view the opinio magis communis (p. 309a), and presents
both Scotus and Henry of Ghent before enlisting Giles of Rome as yet another defender of this
view (esp. p. 311). It is interesting that Gerard here defends a more or less Franciscan view,
since he is best known for having towed an Aegidian line (see, e.g., Schabel 2000a, 184–188;
2002a, 250–251).
812 chapter twelve
there might be infinite emanations. Thus, Scotus postulated that the infinite
divine intellect with the divine essence as its object has the character of
fecund memory from which emanates the infinite divine Word, and that,
from the infinite divine will with the essence present to it, there emanates
infinite divine Love, the Holy Spirit.145
Massa gives Scotus a little bit of ground, saying that he too thinks that the
attributes and the essence “concur” in the production of the divine persons;
nevertheless he claims that Scotus’ position seems to him to be false both “in
itself and in what motivates it”, and specifically because the attributes can-
not be the proximate and immediate source of the emanations.146 Massa’s
arguments against Scotus’ position focus on the notion of “formal source”,
playing on the fact that, for Scotus, divine intellect and will are formally dis-
tinct both from each other and from the divine essence, and that they are
sources of the emanations precisely insofar as they are formally distinct. We
can look at two related arguments. First, appealing, perhaps misleadingly, to
book VII of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Massa claims that, since the divine pro-
ductions are unique, the formal source of each divine production and the
formal term of that same divine production must be identical; but (as Sco-
tus himself also held) the formal term of the divine productions is the divine
essence, that by which all the persons are equally God; therefore, according
to Massa, the formal source of the divine productions must be the divine
essence and not one of the divine attributes. One can wonder whether the
major of this syllogism is as “clear” as Massa claims it to be, but the argument
145 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “… est una opinio quae ponit quod in essentia divina sunt
duo principia, scilicet intellectus et voluntas, quae quidem sunt distincta ex natura rei saltem
virtualiter* et in principiando distinctas emanationes. Nec possent esse in divinis tales
distinctae emanationes, scilicet generatio et spiratio, nisi* essentia divina esset formaliter
intellectus et formaliter voluntas. Nec una persona in divinis haberet rationem Verbi et altera
rationem Amoris nisi principium unius esset formaliter intellectus et principium alterius
esset formaliter voluntas. Iterum, nec esset determinatus numerus emanationum divinarum
si essentia divina esset principium immediatum omnium divinarum emanationum, quia
tunc omnes divinae emanationes essent eiusdem rationis. Nec esset dare causam quare
Verbum esset magis Filius quam Spiritus Sanctus, si ita esset quod principium productivum
utriusque esset natura eiusdem rationis in essendo et in principiando.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ.
2214, f. 138vb. On f. 139ra, Massa goes on to present the details of Scotus’ view on the production
of Word and Love (on which see above, Ch. 6, § 3 passim).
146 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Istam opinionem non puto esse veram, nec in se nec in
suo motivo. Concedo enim, sicut videbitur inferius, quod ad productionem Spiritus Sancti
concurrahnit essentia* divina et voluntas divina habens per suam rationem intrinsecam
perfectionem infinitam; tamen licet ista duo concurrant ad productionem Spiritus Sancti,
tamen proximum et immediatum principium elicitivum spirationis non potest esse voluntas
divina etiam quamvis sit formaliter infinita.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 139ra.
is instructive as to the thoughts driving his own view. For Massa, since the
essence is what is “most perfect and most actual” in the produced supposite
and “including eminently every act in the spirated supposite”, the essence
qua essence is the formal term of the production through which the sup-
posite has all its being.147 Massa clearly thought that a formal term like this
could only be communicated through that formal element itself, and there-
fore essence qua essence had to be just as much formal source as formal
term. The divine essence, then, is both the being of the supposite and the
formal source through which the supposite has that being, and neither intel-
lect qua intellect nor will qua will suffice as formal productive sources.
This brings us to a second argument that Massa uses. Briefly put, how
could the divine intellect or the divine will be the source of the Son and
the Holy Spirit respectively, when the intellect and will do not “contain” all
that the Son and the Holy Spirit do? Whatever a supposite has that is not
in its formal source formally or virtually, Massa claims is in that supposite
“accidentally or consecutively (consecutive), not directly and per se”. Massa
continues: if the divine will, despite its infinity, were the immediate formal
147 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Primo ostendo ergo quod praedicta opinio deficiat in
conclusione principali .... Primum patet sic: in omni productione unica formale principium
productionis et formalis terminus productionis sunt eiusdem rationis, sicut patet VII Meta-
physicae. Sed productio qua producitur Spiritus Sanctus est productio unica, et terminus
formalis in supposito producto est essentia divina sub ratione essentiae divinae, ut per eam
habet Spiritus Sanctus quod sit cum Patre et Filio idem Deus numero. Ergo in Patre et Filio
principium formale elicitivum Spiritus Sancti est ipsa essentia divina sub ratione essentiae
divinae et non sub ratione voluntatis vel cuiuscumque attributi. Maior patet, sed declaro
assumptam propositionem quantum ad duas partes. Primo quod productio Spiritus Sancti
sit unica. Nam, si non esset unica productio, ergo Spiritus Sanctus ex vi productionis suae non
haberet quod esset aequaliter perfectus cum Patre et Filio qui producunt ipsum; sic etiam
declaratum fuit supra d. 7 quod Filius non esset aequaliter perfectus cum Patre generante
[quantum*] ex vi productionis nisi esset generatio unica. Nunc autem certum est quod est
impossibile Spiritum Sanctum cum Patre et Filio non esse aequaliter perfectum ex vi suae
productionis, sicut impossibile est Filium cum Patre non esse aequaliter perfectum ex vi
generationis qua gignitur a Patre. Patet etiam in eadem minor propositio quantum ad aliam
partem, scilicet quod essentia divina in ratione essentiae divinae sit formalis terminus pro-
ductionis in supposito spirato. Nam in omni producto capiente totum suum esse ex vi pro-
ductionis oportet quod terminus formalis sit illud quod est perfectissimum et actualissimum
in eo. Sed perfectissimum in eo, scilicet perfectissimum simpliciter et actualissimum inclu-
dens eminenter omnem actum in supposito spirato est essentia divina sub ratione essentiae
divinae et non sub ratione voluntatis. Ergo terminus formalis suae productionis qua capit
totum suum esse est essentia divina sub ratione essentiae divinae et non sub ratione volun-
tatis vel cuiuscumque attributi.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 139ra. On Scotus on the formal
term of production, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 75, 103–105. It is difficult to see that
Massa can find for his claim genuine support in Metaphysics VII, Aristotle’s detailed investi-
gation of substance, form, and definition.
814 chapter twelve
productive source of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit would not be God in a
direct and per se way, since the divine will does not contain the entire divine
essence, and (it is understood) the essence, the formal term of production,
is that by which the person is God.148 The divine intellect and will are
simply not powerful or comprehensive enough “delivery devices” to convey
the entire divine essence to the persons; hence, if the attributes were the
immediate sources of the two emanations, the persons would not hold
the entire divine essence through their productive source, and the persons
would be God only accidentally—a clearly absurd conclusion.
From these two arguments, it seems that when Massa talks about the
formal source of the divine personal productions, he considers that source
to be a type of cause, and the cause must virtually contain the effect, and
hence everything that the Son or the Holy Spirit has, i.e. the divine essence
itself, the source of their production must have. Neither divine intellect nor
divine will as such could possibly fill that requirement, and thus, for Massa,
neither of them could be the immediate source of the divine emanations.
In some way, then, the divine essence must be the formal source of the
productions.
If Massa rejects the general Franciscan approach to the problem, claim-
ing that intellect and will cannot be the proximate sources of the two divine
productions, he is just as merciless with the opinion that is “totally contrary
to all the preceding views and totally rooted in opposed principles”. This is
148 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Praeterea: illud quod est principium formale producendi
aliquod productum debet continere formaliter vel virtualiter quicquid est in supposito pro-
ducto ex vi productionis. Sed voluntas divina, quamvis sit intrinsece per suam rationem
infinita, tamen sub ratione voluntatis non continet formaliter vel virtualiter quicquid est in
supposito spirato. Ergo voluntas divina sub ratione voluntatis non est principium elicitivum
sive productivum Spiritus Sancti. Maior patet, quia si detur quod in supposito sit aliquid quod
nec formaliter nec virtualiter contineatur in principio quo productum capit esse, ergo illud in
supposito producto erit per accidens et consecutive et non directe et per se ex vi productio-
nis, cuius oppositum supponitur. Sed minor propositio apparet, nam Spiritus Sanctus habet
ex vi suae productionis essentiam divinam, alias Spiritus Sanctus ex vi suae productionis
non esset Deus directe et per se, sed concomitanter et consecutive et quasi penitus per acci-
dens, quod est impossibile. Quia, cum Spiritus Sanctus non sit aliquo alio modo Deus nisi
ex vi suae productionis, sequeretur quod simpliciter loquendo Spiritus Sanctus esset Deus
penitus per accidens, quod est absurdum. Oportet ergo necessario concedere quod Spiritus
Sanctus capiat a Patre et Filio essentiam divinam ex vi suae productionis. Sed voluntas div-
ina quantumcumque infinita sub ratione voluntatis non continet formaliter vel virtualiter
essentiam divinam, voluntas enim divina est infinita in genere, scilicet in ratione voluntatis,
sed non est infinita simpliciter et omnibus modis sicut divina essentia. Quare, etc.” Bologna,
Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 139rb. For earlier uses of this type of argument, see Hervaeus Natalis, Ch. 7,
above, at and around nn. 16–17 (with further references in n. 17).
the view, Massa tells us, that Durand of St. Pourçain follows,149 and indeed,
as we have seen (Ch. 7, §2), Durand took to a type of ultimate conclusion
the more general Dominican view along with its opposition to the Francis-
can strong use of the psychological model. Thus, here Massa is in a certain
respect taking on the Dominican trinitarian tradition. Once again Massa
presents the view generally but accurately. According to Massa, Durand
held that in this context one can think about the Holy Spirit in relation to
three items: to the productive source of the Holy Spirit’s emanation, to the
supposites that produce the Holy Spirit, and to the two emanations them-
selves. When compared to the formal productive source, Durand’s view is
that the utterly undifferentiated divine essence is the source of both the Son
and the Holy Spirit; neither intellect nor will enters the picture. Compared,
on the other hand, to either the supposites that produce or to the emana-
tions, Durand holds that “through appropriation” (appropriate) one can say
that the Holy Spirit proceeds by way of will.150 Massa lays stress on the last
point: Durand claimed that the Son is not a Word nor is the Holy Spirit love
properly (proprie) but by appropriation (appropriate) only.151
149 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Et ideo est alia opinio totaliter contraria omnibus
praecedentibus opinionibus et totaliter radicata super oppositis principiis. Quam quidem
opinionem sequitur Durandus in Scripto, d. 10.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 140va. A marginal
note at the same spot in the ms. tells us that it is the “opinio Durandi et Godofredi”.
150 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Dicit enim ista opinio quod Spiritus Sanctus potest
referri ad tria. Quod primo potest referri uno modo ad virtutem productivam, secundo modo
potest referri ad supposita producentia, tertio modo potest referri ad ipsasmet productiones.
Si autem compararetur Spiritus Sanctus ad principium formale productivum sive ad vir-
tutem productivam, sic non est dicendum quod procedat per modum voluntatis tamquam
voluntas sit aliquo modo totale vel partiale principium elicitivum, sed eadem essentia div-
ina est immediate sub eadem ratione penitus a parte sui principium productivum tam Filii
quam etiam Spiritus Sancti. Si autem referatur Spiritus Sanctus ad supposita producentia, sic
appropriate dici potest quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit per modum voluntatis et quod volun-
tas divina sit principium communicandi sibi essentiam divinam. Iterum, si Spiritus Sanctus
comparetur ad ordinem ipsarum emanationum sive ad ipsas emanationes, sic appropriate
dici potest quod procedat per modum voluntatis.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 140va. Massa
presents the view in greater detail and divided into three conclusions, ibid., f. 140va–b. Com-
pare Massa’s text to that of Durand found in Ch. 7, above, nn. 68–70. Durand, in fact, thinks
that the personal properties are the source of the emanations (see Ch. 7, above, at n. 50),
although see also his view that the fecund essence is the reason the notional acts are in God
(Ch. 7, nn. 66–67).
151 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Et isti doctores secundum istam viam habent dicere
et* expresse dicunt quod Filius in divinis non dicitur Verbum proprie sed appropriate, nec
procedit per modum intellectus proprie sed appropriate; similiter Spiritus Sanctus non est
Amor proprie sed appropriate, nec procedit per modum voluntatis proprie sed appropriate.”
Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 140vb.
816 chapter twelve
Massa’s objections to this view are basically two. First, Massa cannot
see how the emanations, and hence the persons, would be distinct at all
if the same totally identical and undifferentiated divine essence were the
source of both. There has to be some note (ratio) differentiating between the
source of the Son’s and the source of the Holy Spirit’s emanation, otherwise
the emanations themselves would be the same and the two produced
persons would be the same. Moreover, we know from Augustine that the
emanations differ in character, since the Son proceeds as born, the Holy
Spirit as given. For this reason, there has to be at least a difference in ratio
between the source of the Son’s generation and the source of the Holy
Spirit’s procession.152 Moreover, second, and again appealing to the saints
and Augustine in particular, we know that the Son truly is a Word, the Holy
Spirit truly is Love—these are proper and not appropriated names for these
two persons. The only way that this could be the case is if “the productive
source of the Son either has formally the ratio of intellect in its existence
or takes on (induens) the mode of intellect virtually and in being a source
(principiando), and the same is the case for the Holy Spirit with respect to
the will.”153 For Massa, Durand’s (and the Dominican trinitarian tradition’s)
152 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “hIsta opinio deficiti quia dicit quod essentia divina
omnino sub eadem ratione, et in essendo et principiando, est principium sufficiens elici-
tivum utriusque emanationis. Et istud videtur esse falsum, unde arguo sic. Illae emanationes,
quae habent idem principium totale elicitivum sub eadem ratione in essendo et princip-
iando formaliter et virtualiter et habent terminum formalem omnino eiusdem rationis, sunt
omnino eiusdem rationis. Sed secundum opinionem praecedentem divinae emanationes
habent principium elicitivum idem (ms.: ideo) et sub eadem ratione, et habent terminum
formalem eiusdem rationis, sicut superius declaratum fuit d. 7. Ergo divinae emanationes
erunt eiusdem rationis, et per consequens [scilicet] emanatio Spiritus Sancti erit generatio
et Spiritus Sanctus erit hFiliusi (lac. ca. 5 litt.), quod est contra dicta Sanctorum. Nam Augusti-
nus, V De trinitate, cap. 20, manifeste vult quod alterius rationis sit emanatio Spiritus Sancti
ab emanatione Filii. Unde dicit quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit ‘non quo modo natus’, sicut
Filius, ‘sed quo modo datus’.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 140vb. This argument is a variation on
the theme of Henry of Ghent’s reductio ad absurdum argument for the distinction between
the emanations (Ch. 4, above, at and around nn. 24–25).
153 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2 (italicized text translated): “Praeterea, intentio sanctorum
videtur manifeste quod Verbum in divinis dicat personaliter et non essentialiter. Unde
Augustinus, V De trinitate, cap. 17, dicit quod in hac trinitate non dicitur Verbum nisi Filius
nec Donum sive Amor nisi Spiritus Sanctus .... Tunc ergo arguo sic: impossibile est aliquid
productivum habere per modum sibi propriam rationem Verbi nisi* principium ipsius sit
vel intellectus formaliter et in essendo vel aliquid supplens vicem intellectus et induens
modum intellectus virtualiter et in principiando. Sed Filius in divinis habet quod proprie sit
Verbum et non solum appropriate. Ergo principium productivum Filii est vel habens formaliter
rationem intellectus* in essendo vel induens modum intellectus virtualiter et in principiando. Et
eodem modo potest argui de Spiritu Sancto per habitudinem ad voluntatem.” Bologna, Bibl.
Univ. 2214, f. 141ra.
claim that the Son’s emanation is intellectual because in it one comes from
one, while the Holy Spirit’s is voluntary because in it one comes from two, is
insufficient to avoid a metaphorical or appropriational understanding of the
psychological model, and such an understanding directly contradicts the
saints. If there is a voluntary emanation of the Holy Spirit as Love or a Gift,
then the divine will must be the elicitive source “either formally or virtually”;
the same is true for the divine intellect and the intellectual emanation of the
Son.154 The strong use of the psychological model is clearly a driving factor
in Michael of Massa’s trinitarian theology.
Notice Massa’s wording in the passages quoted just above. In order to
maintain that the Son truly is the Word proceeding by intellectual emana-
tion, the divine intellect must be the source of the Son’s emanation either,
on the one hand, “formally in its existence (formaliter in essendo)” or, on the
other, “virtually” and “taking on the mode of the intellect in being a source
(principiando)”. These are the only two alternatives, as Massa sees them:
either the attributes are the sources of the emanations formally with respect
to their existence or they are sources virtually and only precisely as they
are sources. But Massa ruled out the first alternative, since this was exactly
Scotus’ view: that the formally distinct divine attributes were the proximate
formal sources of the divine emanations. Indeed, Massa, summing up the
parameters into which his own solution must fit, says that 1) intellect and
will cannot be the per se elicitive sources of the emanations, since they do
not contain the divine essence and hence would be producing something
greater than themselves,155 and 2) the utterly undifferentiated divine essence
154 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “… ut visum est ad hoc ut aliquid dicatur esse principium
alicuius per modum voluntatis oportet quod principium elicitivum sit vel formaliter vel
virtualiter voluntas in principiando*, et accidit omnino quod tale principium sit in uno
vel in pluribus suppositis. Similiter visum est superius quod ad hoc quod aliquid dicatur
principium alicuius praedicti per modum voluntatis non sufficit ordo inter productiones.”
Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 141rb.
155 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Est ergo ista prima conclusio quam elicio ex his quae dicta
sunt, quod intellectus et voluntas ut sunt attributa non sunt immediatum principium elic-
itivum divinarum emanationum, et hoc patet quia, sicut supradictum est, principium elici-
tivum alicuius productionis, si sit per se principium elicitivum, [quod] debet formaliter hveli
virtualiter continere formalem terminum productionis. Sed intellectus vel voluntas ut sunt
quaedam attributa distincta secundum rationem ab essentia divina non continet ut sic for-
maliter vel virtualiter [formaliter] terminum productionis, scilicet essentiam divinam, quae
est simpliciter et omni modo infinita, loquendo hdei infinitate virtutis. Quare, etc. Praeterea,
si intellectus et voluntas essent principia elicitiva divinarum emanationum, sequeretur quod
attingerentur ad producendum aliquid perfectius se ultra totam suam speciem, et hoc omni
propria virtute. Consequens est impossibile. Ergo, etc.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 141rb.
818 chapter twelve
is not the immediate elicitive source of the divine emanations, since in that
case the emanations would be undifferentiated.156 What Massa ends up with
is what he calls a middle way (via media):
… the divine essence alone is the immediate elicitive source of the divine
emanations, [i.e.] the divine essence qua divine essence, as it is contradistinct
from the intellect and will according to ratio (or whatever type of distinction
there may be), and yet as it [the divine essence] is virtually and as a source
(principiando) containing the ratio of intellect and the ratio of will. And
this is clear: that which through its own proper (praecisam) ratio is virtually
and equivalently containing the ratio of intellect and the ratio of will is the
immediate elicitive source of the divine emanations. And this is clear: that
which through its own proper ratio is virtually and equivalently containing
the ratio of intellect and the ratio of will can through its own proper ratio be
the elicitive source of something by way of intellect and of something by way
of will. But the divine essence through its own proper ratio as contradistinct
from intellect and will is equivalently and eminently containing the ratio of
each.157
This is the foundation of Massa’s middle way: as it acts as a source, the
essence contains virtually, equivalently, and eminently the rationes—the
characteristics or virtues or functionalities—of both intellect and will. This
156 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Secunda conclusio quam elicio ex dictis etiam est nega-
tiva, scilicet quod essentia divina ut nullo modo induens formaliter nec virtualiter rationem
intellectus et voluntatis, sed ut omnino indistincta formaliter et in essendo et virtualiter
in principiando, non est immediatum principium elicitivum divinarum emanationum. Et
hoc patet quia impossibile est aliquod principium elicitivum unius et eiusdem rationis in
essendo formaliter et in principiando virtualiter prorumpat in productiones diversarum
rationum—et oppositum dicere videtur contradictio. Sed divinae emanationes sunt distinc-
tarum rationum. Ergo principium elicitivum utriusque emanationis non potest esse aliquid
eiusdem rationis in essendo formaliter et in principiando virtualiter.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ.
2214, f. 141rb–va.
157 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Tertia conclusio quam elicio ex dictis est affirmativa
et est ista: quod sola essentia divina per rationem divinae essentiae ut condistincta con-
tra intellectum et voluntatem secundum rationem (vel qualiscumque distinctio sit illa),
tamen ut continens virtualiter et in principiando rationem intellectus et rationem volun-
tatis, est immediatum principium elicitivum divinarum emanationum. Et hoc patet: quod
(ms.: per) illud quod per suam praecisam rationem est virtualiter et aequivalenter conti-
nens rationem intellectus et rationem voluntatis est immediatum principium elicitivum
divinarum emanationum. Et hoc patet: quod illud quod per suam praecisam rationem est
virtualiter et aequivalenter continens rationem intellectus et rationem voluntatis potest per
illam suam praecisam rationem esse principium elicitivum alicuius per modum intellectus et
alicuius per modum voluntatis. Sed essentia divina per suam praecisam rationem ut condis-
tincta intellectui et voluntati est aequivalenter et eminenter continens rationem utriusque.
Ergo, etc.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 141va. For Massa’s use of the term via media, see ibid.,
f. 141rb.
is clearly the same “virtual containment” that we have seen Massa explicitly
differentiate from formally distinct attributes, i.e. the position of Scotus that
he rejected.
But how does this help Massa? His view is that intellect and will are not
distinct formally and in their existence, but only in being a source or in
producing (essendo vs. principiando et producendo). The intellect and will
for Massa do not exist in any way, formally or otherwise, distinct from the
divine essence; nevertheless in the emanations of the persons, and only
in this respect, the intellect adds a note or distinguishing feature to the
intellectual emanation of the Son, while the will adds a different note or
distinguishing feature to the voluntary emanation of the Holy Spirit. In
this way (and here Massa agrees with Scotus), intellect and will necessarily
concur with the essence in the production of the Son and the Holy Spirit,
respectively. And this is possible because the essence virtually or eminently
contains the rationes of both intellect and will. Will and intellect, then,
merely determine the way the essence produces the Son and the Holy Spirit,
so that the productions have the proper (and distinct) rationes that we
know they must have. Thus, according to Massa, although the essence is
a sufficient elicitive source of both emanations, nevertheless there must
concur with it two “superadded determinatives”, each of which fixes the
distinguishing characteristic of the emanation that it determines. What
these notes give to the divine productions, says Massa explicitly, is their
proper order: first the intellectual emanation of the Son, then the voluntary
emanation of the Holy Spirit.158
158 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Quarta conclusio quam elicio ex dictis est quod intellec-
tus et voluntas secundum suas formales rationes, licet non claudantur in principio formali,
tamen necessario concurrunt tamquam coexigita propter determinatum ordinem produc-
tionum inter se. Sicut (ms: alibi*) dicebatur superius, d. 7, quod quamvis respectus personales
non claudantur in principio elicitivo, tamen necessario concurrunt tamquam determinativi
eius quod est principium formale ad determinatum suppositum, sic etiam formales rationes
intellectus et voluntatis necessario concurrant tamquam determinativae eius quod est prin-
cipium formale ad determinatum ordinem productionum. Concurrunt enim quod essentia
divina cum ipso intelligitur, non quidem sic essentia divina indigeat ad esse* principium
sufficiens elicitivum et formale generationis Filii, sed tamquam eo quod est determinativum
essentiae divinae ad executionem primae productionis ut est prima productio. Similiter con-
currit cum ipsa voluntate non tamquam coagente in ratione principii elicitivi partialis vel
totalis, mediati vel immediati, sed tamquam determinativo ad executionem secundariae
productionis ut secundaria est. Et hoc potest declarari primo sic. Sicut se habet illud quod
est pura potentia, scilicet materia, ad susceptionem omnium formarum virtualiter in ipsa
contentarum virtualitate potentiae passivae, ita se habet actus Patris, scilicet essentia div-
ina, ad productionem personarum divinarum. Sed nec est ita quia materia prima, quamvis
per suam essentiam aut sufficiens principium receptivum nullo indigeat in ratione partialis
820 chapter twelve
According to Massa, his view has several advantages. First, as just men-
tioned, it explains the order of the emanations—first intellectual and then
voluntary emanation; this is a consequence of the superadded “notes”. Sec-
ond, the emanations are absolutely equal, since they have the same formal
source, the essence, differing merely by these notes virtually contained in
that formal source. But Massa lays perhaps most weight on the fact that in
this way the Son is a Word proceeding by intellectual emanation and the
Holy Spirit is Love proceeding by voluntary emanation, just as the saints
tell us they are.
[In this way] it is best explained that one divine emanation is by way of
intellect and the other by way of will, because the same divine essence
through its own proper (praecisam) ratio is containing virtually insofar as a
source both the ratio of intellect and the ratio of will, and so it can be the
source of the emanation by way of intellect just as perfectly as if it were
to include formally the ratio of intellect, and it can be the source of the
emanation by way of will just as perfectly as if it were to include formally
the ratio of will. Further, [in this way] it is best explained that one person
produced is the Word properly and personally and the other is Love, just
as if the sources of their emanations were to have rationes distinct in their
existence (in essendo) .... The divine essence through its own proper ratio as
contradistinct in terms of ratio from intellect and will is virtually intellect and
virtually will. It follows that on its own it could be the sufficient source of
producing the personal Word by way of intellect and of producing personal
Love by way of will, just as if it were to include distinctly [and] in existence
the ratio of intellect and the ratio of will.159
receptivi aliquibus dispositionibus, tamen indiget determinatis dispositionibus propter or-

dinem receptionum, quia ex hoc quod materia prima coniungitur determinatae dispositioni
determinatur ad susceptionem alicuius formae prius* quam alterius formae. Ergo quamvis
essentia divina sit sufficiens principium elicitivum divinarum emanationum, tamen ad hoc
ut prius principiet unam emanationem, puta generationem Verbi, indiget sicut [de] deter-
minativo aliquo superaddito, scilicet formali ratione intellectus, et ad hoc ut secundario
principiet spirationem Spiritus Sancti, indiget sicut determinativo formali ratione voluntatis.
Et secundum istam viam salvantur dicta sanctorum et doctorum.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214,
f. 141va–b.
159 Massa, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 2: “Iterum, optime salvatur quod una divina emanatio
sit per modum intellectus et alia per modum voluntatis, quia eadem essentia divina per
suam praecisam rationem est continens virtualiter in principiando* tam rationem intellec-
tus quam rationem voluntatis, et ideo aeque perfecte potest esse principium emanationis
per modum intellectus sicut si includeret formaliter rationem intellectus, et aeque perfecte
potest esse principium emanationis per modum voluntatis sicut si includeret formaliter
rationem voluntatis. Iterum, optime salvatur quod una persona producta sit Verbum proprie
et personaliter, et alia sit Amor, sicut hsii principia ipsarum hemanationumi essent distinc-
tarum rationum in essendo .... Essentia divina per suam praecisam rationem ut condistincta
secundum rationem intellectui et voluntati est virtualiter intellectus et virtualiter voluntas.
Thus, Massa thinks that his via media has all the advantages the Francis-
can tradition’s view had, most especially that it accommodates the explicit
statements of the saints through the strong use of the psychological model:
the Son really is a Word, the Holy Spirit really is Love, and their emana-
tions have something to do with intellect and will respectively. At the same
time, in partial agreement with Durand’s view, Massa has cut down on the ex
natura rei distinctions necessary to account for the strong use of the psycho-
logical model: intellect and will are not present in the essence in any formal
existence, but rather the essence virtually or eminently contains them; the
essence has the functionality of intellect and will without there being any
intellect and will in actuality. This move to cut down on the distinctions in
God is clearly a variant on the search for simplicity.
Two points of historical connection should be made about Massa’s view.
The first of these has to do with Massa’s distinction between the divine
attributes understood as “formally in existence” (in essendo), on the one
hand, and as “virtually in being a source” (in principiando), on the other.
This terminology is noteworthy because these precise terms, or ones very
similar, were used by early theologians in the Franciscan trinitarian tra-
dition like Gerard of Abbeville, Eustace of Arras, and John Pecham when
they talked about the attributes as sources of the emanations: the attributes
were not distinct in being but in being sources of the emanations (natura
et voluntas non distinguuntur in essendo sed in principiando).160 This termi-
nological overlap is suggestive of the Franciscan moorings of Massa’s view,
although, of course, in its details Massa’s actual view is very far from the
early Franciscan tradition’s. These Franciscan moorings are confirmed in a
very different way by the second historical point: the terminology and the
conceptual apparatus of “virtual” or “eminent containment” that is the foun-
dation of Massa’s view is something he borrows from the Franciscan Francis
of Marchia. As we saw above (§2B), Marchia holds that the divine essence
has a ratio that virtually contains the rationes of the divine attributes, and
he explicitly rejects Scotus’ view requiring formally distinct attributes. On
Sequitur quod per se ipsam posset esse sufficiens principium producendi Verbum personale
per modum intellectus et producendi Amorem personalem per modum voluntatis, sicut si
includeret distincte in essendo rationem intellectus et rationem voluntatis.” Bologna, Bibl.
Univ. 2214, f. 141vb.
160 For Massa’s use of the terminology, see, e.g., nn. 145, 152, 156 above. For the terminology
in these earlier thinkers, see, e.g., Ch. 2, above, at and around nn. 8 (Gerard), 45 (Eustace
of Arras), 67 (Pecham), 135 (Nicholas of Ockham), and 177 (Marston); Ch. 5, above, at n. 87
(Peter of Trabes).
822 chapter twelve
this issue, then, Massa is a silent “Marchist”, as Chris Schabel (2000a, 214–
220) has shown him also to be on the issue of future contingents. It should
be noted, however, that Massa uses Marchia’s trinitarian ideas in a radically
different way than Marchia himself did. For the Franciscan, as we have seen,
the ultimate consequence of his rejection of distinct divine attributes is
the dismissal of the strong use of the psychological model of the Trinity:
the Son does not emanate by way of intellect, because there is no distinct
intellect in God. In stark contrast, Massa, as noted above, uses the device of
virtual containment as a way to reject any in re distinction between essence,
intellect, and will, while at the same time retaining a strong use of the
psychological model. Thus, despite his indebtedness to Marchia, Massa is
clearly his own theologian, appropriating ideas and then using them as an
integral part of his own theological system.
B. Massa on Absolute Properties and Persons

There are many other areas of Massa’s trinitarian thought that would repay
study. To mention just one aspect that must be passed over here, Massa
gives unequivocal evidence for Peter Auriol’s influence in the Parisian trini-
tarian debate of the 1320’s and 1330’s. Thus, in the texts examined above,
Massa often mentions the “elicitive sources” of the emanations. This was a
turn of phrase that, as we have seen (Ch. 9, § 1), Peter Auriol railed against.
And not surprisingly, in book I, d. 5 of his Sentences commentary, Massa
asks “whether active generation in the divine is properly elicited so that it
would truly have an elicitive source in the Father by which it is produced
by the Father.”161 Here Massa’s one and only adversary is Peter Auriol. Fur-
ther, in an enormous discussion of the complex of issues surrounding the
Filioque, Massa devotes a substantial part of the text to examining Auriol’s
view that both filiation and active spiration are constitutive properties nec-
essary for the Son to exist; the view is found wanting.162 Thus, Massa, like
all the other theologians studied in this chapter, shows clearly that Auriol
161 Massa, I Sent., d. 5, q. 2: “Utrum generatio activa in divinis sit proprie elicita ita quod
vere habeat in Patre principium elicitivum quo a Patre producatur.” The question is found
in Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, ff. 111r–113r, according to Damasus Trapp (1965a, 71) from whom I
have my information.
162 Massa, I Sent., d. 11, q. 2 (discussion of Auriol in Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, ff. 146va–147vb;
other aspects of Auriol’s view crop up at f. 150va). The entire text of Massa’s distinction—some
20,000 words!—will be published and studied in Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming. Fried-
man 1997b, 347–349, contains a short examination of Massa’s view on the counterfactual
Filioque question taken from an abbreviation of his I Sent. found in Firenze, BNC, C.8.794.
was a major presence in the theological debate of the era. But here we will
examine in detail just one further view of Massa’s, a view that marks him
as a truly unusual theologian: Massa holds in his own special way that the
properties constitutive of the persons are absolute.
Massa presents his own position quite early in the text of his I Sentences,
d. 26: “I think that the view that posits that the divine persons are con-
stituted formally in personal being through absolute modes cannot effec-
tively be disproved, and indeed it can reasonably be maintained”.163 After
opening arguments defending the position that the divine personal prop-
erties can be relation and only relation—arguments interestingly enough
that are taken more or less verbatim from Landulph Caracciolo’s Sentences
commentary—,164 Massa presents a number of views on the subject. The first
is, appropriately, “an ancient view which [Bishop Robert Grosseteste] of Lin-
coln posits in a certain treatise of his, entitled De personis divinis et imagine
creata, and many doctors have also followed this view, especially James of
Viterbo”. Thus, right from the start Massa presents Grosseteste as well as
Massa’s own confrère James of Viterbo as having held the position that he
will himself support.165 Then Massa gives “some of the arguments of doc-
tors who attack this view”, including (marginal notation tells us) arguments
from Peter of Palude, Robert Cowton, Gerard of Siena, and, last but not least,
quite a few from John Duns Scotus himself. Massa seems unimpressed by
these arguments against absolute properties and persons. For example, to
163 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un. (“Utrum personae divinae constituantur in esse personali
proprietatibus absolutis vel relativis”; Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, ff. 202vb–207ra): “Opinio quae
ponit personas divinas constitui formaliter in esse personali per modos absolutos puto quod
non possit efficaciter improbari, quinimmo potest rationabiliter sustineri.” Bologna, Bibl.
Univ. 2214, f. 203va.
164 In brief, the arguments found in Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un. (Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214,
f. 202vb) are more or less verbatim equivalent to those found in Landulph’s I Sent., d. 26,
q. 2, conc. 4 (Wien, ÖNB 1496, f. 95va–b). Although I have not pursued this link in detail (e.g.,
by checking whether these arguments are presented elsewhere in these formulations and
order), it is interesting to note that Tachau 1988, 333 n. 53, suggests that in his discussion
of Peter Auriol’s notion of esse apparens Massa may have been relying on Landulph’s Sent.
commentary, since Landulph was used by other thinkers of this later period at Paris in just
this way (e.g., by Peter Ceffons—see Tachau 1988, 321–322 n. 19).
165 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “Responsio: circa istam quaestionem fuit una antiqua opinio
quam ponit Lincolniensis, in quodam suo tractatu De personis divinis et imagine creata, quam
etiam opinionem multi doctores secuti sunt, specialiter fuit Jacobus de Viterbio, Quolibet III,
q. 7, quod divinae personae non constituuntur neque distinguuntur primo in esse personali
per aliquas relationes, sed relationes adveniunt suppositis constitutis per quosdam modos
absolutos.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 203ra (the treatment of this position continues until
f. 204ra).
824 chapter twelve
an argument maintaining that, if the persons were constituted by absolutes,

then the divine relations would be extrinsic, incidental, and even acciden-
tal to the persons, since they would advene to persons already constituted,
Massa points out that this is precisely parallel to the relation of active spira-
tion, which “according to the common view” advenes to the Father and the
Son already constituted by paternity and filiation.166 Why should this argu-
ment be more telling against absolutes than against relations? Nor is com-
position of absolute property with absolute essence a problem in Massa’s
eyes: these absolute properties might be totally the same as the essence but
distinct among themselves, just as many posit the personal divine relations
to be the same as the essence but distinct among themselves.167 These are
clearly variations on an argument that we have seen many times, an argu-
ment claiming that, since the divine relations have unique and in some way
paradoxical properties, therefore other less traditional trinitarian solutions
cannot be disqualified simply because they too have unique and in some
way paradoxical properties.168
What about authoritative texts, the real difficulty for anyone who wants
to hold the absolute properties view? Massa is acutely aware of the problem
created by the many authoritative passages speaking for relational proper-
ties and persons, giving at one point a series of quotations from Augustine,
166 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “Praeterea, tunc sequeretur quod relationes divinae essent
extrinsecae et adventitiae et quasi omnino accidentales personis divinis, quod est incon-
veniens tamen, cum tota scriptura sacra clamet personas esse relativas. Dicendum quod
eodem modo posset dici de omnibus relationibus divinis, supposito quod personae constitu-
antur per modos absolutos, sicut secundum communem doctrinam dicitur nunc de facto de
communi spiratione activa, quae advenit Patri et Filio iam constitutis, et tamen non dicitur
accidens et extrinseca, quia idem est identice, per exclusionem (ms.: conclusionem) omnis
distinctionis et negationis a persona Patris et Filii. Et sic in proposito. Et cum dicitur quod
clamat scriptura personas divinas esse relativas, dicendum quod vere sunt relativae, sed non
relationibus constituentibus primo in esse suppositali sed in relationibus constituentibus
supposita constituta, sicut, quamvis spiratio actio non constituat personam Patris nec Filii,
tamen vere Pater persona spirativa et relativa hesti relatione spirationis activae, et idem patet
de persona Filii.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, ff. 204vb–205ra.
167 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “Praeterea: tales modi absoluti quibus ponitur personas
divinas constitui vel totaliter transeunt in divinam essentiam omnibus modis ex natura rei, et
sic non poterunt distinguere personas divinas, aut non totaliter transeunt, et similiter facient
compositionem cum divina essentia, quod est impossibile. Ista ratio non concludit, quia
dicam tibi quod per compositionem ad essentiam sunt penitus idem identice, immo etiam
et formaliter per exclusionem omnis distinctionis vel negationis ab essentia*, et tamen inter
se distinguuntur sicut alii dicunt de relationibus suo modo.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 205ra.
168 For examples of this type of argumentation, see, e.g., Roman of Rome (Ch. 3, at nn. 52–
53), John Duns Scotus (Ch. 6, at n. 79), and Walter Chatton (Ch. 11, at nn. 64–65).
Hilary of Poitiers, Damascene, and Boethius—just some of “the nearly

infinite passages from the saints” (quasi infinitae auctoritates sanctorum)
that seem to prove the relational nature of the personal properties.169 He
says that there is only one recourse for those who want to defend absolute
persons:
This view has one way to respond to all the authoritative passages of the
saints that seem to hold that divine relations constitute and make distinct as
supposites the divine persons, like the passage from Boethius, I De trinitate,
at the end, where he says that substance in the divine contains unity but
relation multiplies the Trinity. For to this and to all similar [passages] the
doctors maintaining this view respond that relation multiplies the Trinity, i.e.
it shows it multiplied or makes known that it is distinct, so that (tamquam)
the distinction of the divine persons is better known to us.170
This was, in fact, a view that Grosseteste appears to have espoused (and it
is related to Bonaventure’s ideas on how to explain the priority of origin
over relation): the persons are made distinct through absolute origin, and
the relations make the distinction of the divine persons known.171
Massa’s own position can be summed up most generally in the following
way: relation cannot constitute the persons, and therefore the persons are
absolute. More specifically, he claims that “the personality of each and every
divine person is first (primo), formally, and directly an absolute personality,
not including formally and directly any relative property.”172 His arguments
for the persons’ being absolute are closely related to those that were given
by William of Auvergne, Robert Grosseteste, and John Duns Scotus. First,
the term of a relation is always an already existing absolute; since, e.g.,
paternity is terminated to the person of the Son, therefore the Son must
169 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un. (Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 205va–b).
170 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “Habet autem ista opinio unum modum respondendi ad
omnes auctoritates Sanctorum quae videntur praetendere quod relationes divinae constitu-
ant et distinguant suppositaliter divinas personas, sicut est auctoritas Boethii, libro primo
De trinitate, in fine, ubi dicit quod substantia in divinis continet unitatem, relatio vero mul-
tiplicat trinitatem. Nam ad hanc et ad omnes consimiles respondent doctores sustinentes
istam opinionem quod relatio multiplicat trinitatem, id est multiplicatam ostendit seu dis-
tinctam notificat, tamquam id quod circa distinctionem personarum divinarum est nobis
notius.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 203ra. For more on Massa’s response to authority, see
n. 166 above, and the text referred to in n. 169 above.
171 For Grosseteste, see Ch. 6, above, at and around n. 18. For Bonaventure, see Ch. 1, at and
around nn. 60–61.

172 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “… personalitas cuiuslibet personae divinae est primo
formaliter et in recto personalitas absoluta non includens formaliter et in recto aliquam

relativam proprietatem.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 205ra.
826 chapter twelve
be an absolute.173 This is an argument that we have seen many times in a

number of forms: relation cannot precede, and hence cannot constitute,
its foundation or its term, and therefore the persons must be absolute and
the relations between them must arise consequently. Massa gives a second
argument that goes to the heart of his own position, and this argument
works off of the persons being first substance. Here Massa uses Auriol’s
terminology of “perseity of the third kind”:
The supposite is the same as first substance subsisting per se in an intellectual
nature by perseity of the third kind. [But] no relative property enters into
[a first substance subsisting per se by perseity] of the third kind. Therefore
no relative property can formally and directly enter into the domain of the
supposite or of personality, but it is required that the formal constitutive of
some personality subsistent per se by perseity of the third kind is something
formally absolute, to which absolute subsistency is appropriate (competit).
The major is clear from the terms. But I explain the minor: it is certain that
nothing is formally first substance through relation, since the categories never
mix; nor even does [first substance] have perseity of the third kind through
relation formally and directly, but rather through something formally of its
own genus (sui generis), at least through reduction. But now relation, neither
per se and directly nor through reduction, is in the category of substance,
and thus it is impossible that it is the formal property essentially and directly
giving to substance per se existence by perseity of the third kind. Therefore
something else formally absolute is that by which each and every divine
person is subsisting per se by perseity of the third kind.174
173 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “Omnis relatio terminatur ad aliquid primo absolutum.
Sed absolutum in persona Filii terminans relationem paternitatis non est essentia sed
persona. Ergo Filius in quantum est persona terminans relationem paternitatis est persona
absoluta non includens in sua personalitate essentialiter et in recto relationem filiationis
sive aliam quamcumque relationem. Et eadem ratione oportet dicere de personalitate Patris
terminante relationem filiationis et de personalitate Spiritus Sancti terminante relationem
spirationis activae.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 205ra. For this type of argument in William of
Auvergne and Scotus, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 14, 47–49.
174 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “Suppositum est idem quod prima substantia in natura
intellectuali subsistens per se perseitate tertii modi. hSed in prima substantia subsistente
per se perseitatei tertii modi non ingreditur aliqua proprietas relativa. Ergo infra ambitum
suppositationis vel personalitatis non potest ingredi formaliter et in recto aliqua proprietas
relativa, sed oportet quod formale constitutivum alicuius personalitatis per se subsistentis
perseitate tertii modi sit aliquid formaliter absolutum cui competat subsistentia absoluta.
Maior patet ex terminis, sed declaro minorem quia certum est quod nihil est formaliter prima
substantia per relationem, cum praedicamenta sint impermixta. Nec etiam habet persei-
tatem tertii modi per relationem formaliter et in recto, sed per aliquid formaliter sui generis,
saltem per reductionem. Nunc autem relatio nec per se et directe nec per reductionem est in
praedicamento substantiae, et ideo impossibile est quod sit formalis proprietas essentialiter
et in recto dans substantiae per se esse perseitate tertii modi. Ergo aliquid aliud formaliter
Following in the footsteps of Grosseteste, of Scotus, and of Auriol, Massa

holds that the divine persons are first substance and that substance could
never be constituted by another genus like relation. The formal constitutive
property of the divine persons, since it gives to those persons that they
are first substance, must itself be substance, according to Massa. Here,
Massa is diverging considerably from Scotus, who gave this same basic
argument about the impossibility of one genus constituting another genus,
but then used it to show that the divine personal properties had to be
non-quidditative origin, i.e. a property with no place in the predicamental
hierarchy.175 Massa disagrees: the argument shows that the constitutive
properties must themselves be first substance. And the only substance in
God is the divine essence. Thus, according to Massa, the divine essence
itself is the formal constitutive property of each of the persons, since the
property must be substance and the essence is the only substance in God.
Massa notes that he makes this somewhat unusual claim “not by asserting
in a pertinacious way but by discussing in a probable way.”176
Clearly Massa needs to explain just how one divine essence can be the
absolute constitutive properties for each of three really distinct persons.
Surely some distinguishing mark must be involved in the constitution and
distinction of the persons? Massa’s way of tackling this issue is implicit in
the terminology that he used in describing his position: he claimed that the
absolute persons do not include “formally and directly” any relative prop-
erty (see, e.g., n. 172 above). Massa is giving himself an exit strategy: relation,
absolutum est illud quo quaelibet persona divina est per se subsistens perseitate tertii modi.”
Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 205ra–b. This is Grosseteste’s major argument for the view of abso-
lute persons; see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 17–19. For Auriol’s use of the term perseitas
tertii modi, see Ch. 9, above, at and around nn. 23–26.
175 For Scotus’ view on the properties’ being non-quidditative origin, see Ch. 6, above, at

176 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “Tertia conclusio quam ego pono, non tamen eam per-
tinaciter asserendo sed probabiliter conferendo, est ista: quod essentia divina ut copulata
determinato personali respectui sive ut connotans determinatum personalem respectum est
formale constitutivum divinae personae in suo esse formaliter personali .... volo persuadere
tertiam conclusionem, scilicet quod essentia divina ut non includens essentialiter et in recto
respectum personalem dat formaliter esse personale, quamvis includat eum ex connotato
et in obliquo tamquam id sine quo non. Et hoc patet ex his quae dicta sunt patere. Nam
persona in divinis non est aliud formaliter et in recto nisi prima substantia in divina natura
subsistens per se perseitate tertii modi. Sed hoc convenit alicui per illud quod est formaliter
pertinens ad praedicamentum substantiae, et haec est essentia in divinis. Ergo essentia ut
est formaliter substantia, non includens formaliter et in recto relationem vel aliquid aliud
alterius generis a substantia, est formale constitutivum [essentiae] divinae hpersonae in suo
essei formaliter personali.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, ff. 205vb–206ra.
828 chapter twelve
although not playing a formal and direct role, nevertheless plays some role
in his theory of personal constitution. Relation, Massa argues, is necessar-
ily held within the formal constitutive of the persons “connotatively and
obliquely”. Indeed, in the personality of each divine person “the relative
personal property concurs necessarily at least as a cause sine qua non and
connotatively and obliquely.”177 The persons would not be distinct without
relation concurring with the essence, yet the essence itself is the absolute
property that Massa has tried to show is directly constitutive of the persons.
Here Massa seems in fact to be making precisely the same move that he
made with regard to the distinction between the emanations. In that con-
text, the essence was the formal source of the emanations, but the essence
concurred with the intellect and will that it eminently (not formally) con-
tained, so that the proper “note” (ratio) was added to each of the emana-
tions, making them ordered and distinct. Here Massa claims that the abso-
lute essence is the property constitutive of each of the persons formally and
directly, but the essence must concur with each of three relative proper-
ties, each of which is then included connotatively and obliquely (but not
formally and directly) in the personality of the pertinent person. Although
I have not seen him say it outright, it is tempting to suggest that these rela-
tive properties are not distinct in any way (formally or otherwise) from the
essence itself, but they add a note to the essence that is a necessary part of
the distinction between the persons, as a type of cause sine qua non.178
177 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un. (italicized text translated): “… licet relatio non claudatur
formaliter et in recto infra formale constitutivum personae in divinis, tamen claudatur nec-
essario ex connotato et in obliquo, ita quod formale principium constitutivum, quicquid sit
illud (de quo dicetur in tertia conclusione quod est essentia divina ut copulata determinato
respectui), non constituit divinum suppositum in esse personali nisi ut copulata determinato
personali respectui, sicut verbi gratia essentia in divinis non constituit persona Patris in esse
suppositali nisi ut copulata alicui personali respectui. Quis autem sit ille personalis respec-
tus, utrum videlicet sit paternitas vel generatio actio vel alius respectus prius (ms.: proprius)
paternitati et generationi activae, scilicet respectus generativitatis, videtur d. 28. Probo ergo
istam secundam conclusionem, scilicet quod ad personalitatem cuiuslibet personae divinae
concurrat personalis relativa proprietas necessario saltem sicut causa sine qua non et ex con-
notato et in obliquo.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 205rb. On Massa’s use of generativitas, see
n. 183 below.
178 It is interesting to note that in d. 26, a. 2, of his Scriptum, Peter Auriol recites an
anonymous view that reminds very much of Massa’s, so it appears that Massa was picking
this up from somewhere and adapting it to his purposes. Auriol writes: “Quapropter dixerunt
alii quod relatio non constituit suppositum in divinis, sed est tantum causa sine qua non.
Essentia enim ut est sub paternitate constituit personam Patris, ut vero est sub filiatione
constituit personam Filii. Sed concurrit ibi relatio, quia essentia denudata a proprietatibus
omnibus est penitus indistincta. Non concurrit autem per modum formalis constitutivi,
Why does Massa go to all this trouble? Why not just claim that the
persons are constituted by essence as absolute property and be done with it?
Or why not take a Praepositinian line, and claim that there are no properties
in the first place? In part, the answer seems to be that this is Massa’s
theological “style”: he operates by making the essence do all the work,
while sneaking the traditional view in through the backdoor, so to speak,
by saying the essence holds, e.g., the attributes or the relative properties
eminently and virtually or connotatively and obliquely. Moreover, in part
this is due to Massa’s own ideas on the persons being first substances, and
as such constituted by the only substance in God, the essence; some type
of characteristic, however attenuated, still seems to be required in order to
distinguish the three properties and the three persons. And, although the
search for simplicity is a clear element in Massa’s thought, he was clearly
not prepared to give up on explanation and reject any kind of properties
at all. But the major motivation for him to get relations into the trinitarian
scheme is clearly authoritative passages that speak exclusively of relations
as constitutive of the persons. Massa was not satisfied with claiming that
the relations merely make the distinction of the persons known: the saints
actually said that the divine persons were constituted and made distinct
by (opposed) relations, and therefore relation must play some role in the
constitution of each of the divine persons. By claiming that relation is
included in the personality of each person connotatively and obliquely and
as a cause sine qua non, Massa is holding his own view that the persons are
prime substance and absolute, while getting relation to play some role in
personal constitution, just as the saints so clearly tell us it does. This is the
way Massa makes room for relation in his theory of personal constitution—
through a type of marginalization strategy, attenuating the significance of
the relations while still including them.179
quia suppositum et prima substantia idem sunt; relatio autem nulli potest dare quod sit
prima substantia; et idcirco concurrit ut causa sine qua non, tamquam id sub quo essentia
constituit personas. Et est exemplum ad hoc de essentia animae, quae sub uno respectu
dicitur voluntas, sub alio memoria, et sub alio intellectus.” Electronic Scriptum, ll. 757–764;
ed. 1596, p. 585aA–C.
179 Massa, I Sent., d. 26, q. un.: “Ex intentione sanctorum videtur haberi satis expresse
quod personae divinae constituuntur et distinguuntur per relationes oppositas, quicquid

sit de glossis quibus possunt glossari auctoritates. Sed hoc non esset nisi personalis relatio
concurreret necessario ad personalitatem cuiuslibet personae divinae. Et quia non concurrit
tamquam intrinsecum et formale (alias personalitates divinae essent primo relativae, cuius
oppositum probatur in prima conclusione), ergo concurrit saltem sicut causa sine qua non
ex connotato et in obliquo.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 205rb–va.
830 chapter twelve
As one can almost deduce from the treatment examined here, absolute
properties and persons are no marginal view in Massa’s trinitarian thought.
Indeed, the view was so central to Massa’s trinitarian project that he men-
tions it in other contexts where he might well have refrained—in contrast to
Scotus, who brought up absolute properties and persons infrequently, and
basically only where it was unavoidable.180 This is interesting if for no other
reason than the fact that Massa appears to be the only scholar from the time
of Scotus until John of Ripa in the late 1350’s who outright defended abso-
lute persons.181 Perhaps the advent in the meantime of even more radical
views—like Praepositinianism—gave Massa the leeway to defend a posi-
tion that all others had rejected.182 In line with this rather maverick spirit,
Massa, like John Baconthorpe and Gerard Odo, holds outright that the rel-
ative property constitutive of the first person—constitutive obliquely and
connotatively, of course—is generativity. Also in this way, Massa was some-
what unusual.183
180 One example of Massa’s willingness to mention the view, from his I Sent., d. 11, q. 2:
“… sola proprietas prima personalis constituet Filium praecise in esse personali et incom-
municabili. Et dico ‘proprietas prima personalis’ ut praeservare* me* a ‘filiatione’, quod
non intendo dicere quod filiatio praecise constituat Filium in esse personali, quia—sicut
videbitur quando inquiretur de principio constitutivo divinarum personarum—aliqua pro-
prietas incommunicabilis est prima formaliter in Filio, qui constituit ipsum primum esse in
primo esse incommunicabili. Sed ad praesens non sit nobis cura[e] distinguere inter illam
hinicommunicabil[itat]em proprietatem et ipsam filiationem. Accipiamus ergo ad praesens
loco incommunicabilis proprietatis personalis Filii ipsam filiationem condistinctam contra
communem notionem.” Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, ff. 147vb–148ra (to appear in Friedman and
Schabel Forthcoming).
181 On Ripa’s use of absolute properties, see Schmaus 1930a, 551, and esp. Borchert 1974,
475–494.
182 Interestingly, Trapp (1956, 172–173) made a great deal of Massa’s supposedly problem-
atic career path, i.e. the fact that he appears never to have become a master of theology and
the fact that Thomas of Strasbourg never cites him explicitly. The redating of Massa’s career
championed by Courtenay and Schabel (see n. 141 above) has a tendency to make Massa’s
“troubles” disappear, since he seems to have died too soon after he read the Sent. at Paris
(i.e., in the early 1330’s) to have reasonably been expected to have obtained the doctorate
and since his work is nearly contemporaneous with that of Thomas of Strasbourg, who may
simply not have known about Massa (and it remains to be seen whether Thomas did not in
fact enter into discussion with Massa without noting it explicitly).
183 See n. 177 above. Massa, I Sent., d. 28 (“Utrum prima personalis proprietas concurrens
primo cum essentia divina ad constitutionem primi suppositi in divinis sit innascibilitas”;
Bologna, Bibl. Univ. 2214, ff. 210vb–212ra): “Pater est Pater quia genuit Filium, et per consequens
paternitas sequitur ad generationem activam sicut ad eius causam. Sed oportet dicere quod
ex quo suppositum Patris constituitur, vel formaliter et in recto vel saltem ex connotato et
in obliquo, per aliquem respectum et specialiter per respectum de generatione relationis,
coguntur dicere quod ille respectus sit praevius generationi activae et paternitati[s]. Est
autem ille respectus praevius relatio quaedam generativitatis et aptitudinis ad generandum,
At least as much as the other scholars mentioned in this chapter, Massa

deserves a good deal further study. Yet already on the basis of the mate-
rial presented here, one general conclusion can be provisionally suggested.
Massa seems to represent a turning point in the Augustinian order’s intel-
lectual inclinations. Although there is at least one major exception in James
of Viterbo, nevertheless, as mentioned above, the trinitarian theology of the
Augustinian Hermits from Giles of Rome and Augustinus Triumphus to Ger-
ard of Siena and Dionysius de Burgo Sancti Sepulchri was heavily oriented
towards the Dominican trinitarian tradition. Massa, however, appears no
longer to move in the Dominican trinitarian tradition, as the Franciscan-
leaning strong use of the psychological model and defense of absolute prop-
erties clearly shows. This fourteenth-century realignment of Augustinian
theology from Dominican-influenced to Franciscan-influenced, beginning
with Massa, continues in the 1340’s with Gregory of Rimini and Hugolino
of Orvieto, nor is it limited to trinitarian theology, as Chris Schabel has
shown.184 With this in mind, Massa’s role in the development of fourteenth-
century Parisian theology is all the more deserving of study.
4. William of Rubio, Praepositinianism, and the Psychological Model
We know very little about the life of the Aragonese Franciscan William of
Rubio. From manuscript explicits we can be sure that he served as an offi-
cial reportator for at least books II and IV of Francis of Marchia’s Parisian
lectures on the Sentences, which would place him in Paris in 1319–1320. This
means that Rubio was a direct student of Marchia’s, and in several studies
Chris Schabel has pointed out where Rubio relied on certain of Marchia’s
ideas.185 Probably Rubio’s own Sentences commentary was composed some-
time in the late 1320’s or early 1330’s, at least no later than 1334, when on May
25 a commission appointed to examine it, and describing it as “new” (novum
opus editum a fratre Guilielmo de Rubione), declared it free from errors. No
less a figure than the Minister General of the Franciscan Order, Gerard Odo,
nec tamen est intelligendum quod illa aptitudo ad generandum distet ab actu …” Bologna,
Bibl. Univ. 2214, f. 211va. For generativity in John Baconthorpe, see at and around nn. 54–65
above; in Gerard Odo, nn. 75–83 above.
184 See Schabel 2000a, 220 (future contingents); Schabel 2002a, 259–260 (predestination).
185 Schabel 2000a, 210–214 (future contingents); Schabel 2002a, 235 (predestination). The
major works on Rubio are still those of Rubert y Candáu (1928–1931, 1934, 1952, s.a—much of
s.a. is a lightly reworked version of 1928–1931); see also Farré 1931 (with reprinting of III Sent.,
d. 3, q. un.).
832 chapter twelve
convened the commission and signed off on its results; Peter of Aquila was
involved in the commission’s work.186 The Sentences commentary itself was
printed in two volumes in Paris in 1517–1518; no manuscript copies of it have
yet been found. Although the Sentences commentary is the only work of his
that appears to be extant, at several junctures in it Rubio refers to his own
Quodlibeta.187 The last solid date in Rubio’s biography is 1334, when as head
of the Franciscan province of Aragon he attended the Franciscan General
Chapter in Assisi; by 1336 he no longer held that position, perhaps as a result
of his death.188
The view of Ehrle that Rubio was basically a Scotist has been thoroughly
debunked. While some influence of Scotus on Rubio is undeniable, never-
theless even pioneers in the study of medieval philosophy like Michalski and
Rubert could show that Ockham played an important role, Schabel (as men-
tioned above) has added Marchia, and throughout Rubio’s commentary
Auriol often figures as the butt of the arguments.189 One other theologian was
clearly a major source for Rubio: Walter Chatton. It has been known since
the 1920’s that aspects of Rubio’s theology show the influence of Chatton’s
ideas, particularly as they are found in Chatton’s Lectura.190 This is certainly
186 See Ehrle 1925, 256 n. 1, and Rubert 1928–1931 (1928), 19–20, for a reproduction of the
commission’s attestation. The attestation precedes the Sent. commentary in the early printed
edition (f. 1v). Note that the date given in the attestation is 1333, but Rubert (1928, 11; s.a.,
10), following Sbaralea, suggests convincingly that 1333 should be corrected to 1334, since
the commission and Odo signed the document in Assisi, and the only time during Odo’s
generalship that the Franciscan General Chapter (at which presumably the document was
signed) took place in Assisi was in 1334—there was no Franciscan General Chapter in 1333
(thanks to William Duba for help with matters Franciscan). A further committee member
was Bernard of Arezzo, who is most famous for an exchange with Nicholas of Autrecourt;
see Kaluza 1991 and Dumont Forthcoming (and many thanks to Prof. Dumont for making his
paper available to me).
187 On the Quodlibeta, see the passages collected in Rubert 1928–1931 (1928), 28–32 (= s.a.,
24–27), as well as Duba 2007a, pp. 628–629. Rubio mentions explicitly a first and a second
Quodlibet, so we know that he had at least two.
188 Rubert 1928–1931 (1928), 13 (also s.a., 12), arrives at 1326–1336 as the longest possible
duration for William’s term as head of the Aragon province. For a concise summation of all
of Rubert’s results, see Rubert 1952, 5–7.
189 Ehrle 1925, 259: “Wilhelm ist wohl im wesentlichen der Skotistenschule zuzuteilen.
Hierfür spricht sein Verhältnis als Schüler zu einem hervorragenden Skotisten [i.e. Mar-
chia]”. (Of course, I would be very hesitant to make any generalizations about Marchia
being a Scotist.) For Rubio’s sources, see most completely Rubert 1928–1931 (1929), 145–
160 (including textual comparisons to Ockham) = s.a., 28–43. Also Farré 1931, who declares
(27): “Rubió és una veu dissonant, dintre de l’harmonia escotisa, malgrat haver-ne sofert la
influència.”
190 Immediately after discussing Rubio’s ideas on the constitution of the persons, Schmaus
1930a, 545, writes: “eine verwandte Stellungnahme treffen wir bei Walter Chatton” (Lescún
the case with trinitarian theology. Indeed, Rubio’s trinitarian theology is to

a great extent simply Walter Chatton’s trinitarian theology. Rubio’s reliance
on Chatton is so extensive that the full edition of Chatton’s Lectura, recently
completed by Girard J. Etzkorn, is a prerequisite for determining just what
of his trinitarian theology is original to Rubio and what he copied from
Chatton. In what follows, I intentionally base the bulk of my exposition on
distinctions from Rubio’s Sentences commentary coming after d. 17, which,
as far as we know, is the last distinction Chatton wrote of his Lectura. The
way that Rubio formulates his views in this material may be original to him,
but in any case, as will become clear, in spirit Rubio’s views follow Chat-
ton closely. To reveal beyond doubt, however, just how influential Chatton’s
thought was on Rubio, I will refer in footnotes (specifically nn. 200, 224) to
discussion earlier in Rubio’s commentary, where it can be shown that Chat-
ton is Rubio’s direct source.
Two major worries lie at the heart of William of Rubio’s ideas on the
Trinity: the simplicity of each of the divine persons, and preserving three
and only three really distinct entities in God. These major worries lead him
to Praepositinianism. He sums up his view in I Sentences, d. 26, q. 2, a. 2,
in which he is responding to the question of “whether the divine persons
are constituted personally and are made distinct really through relations of
origin or through absolute properties”.191 Rubio writes:
On the basis of what has been said, it follows as a corollary that the divine
persons are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis). This appears in the first
place because they are constituted and made distinct by the same, namely
by the aforesaid relations of origin; but, as was said, relations of origin of this
kind are totally the same as the persons; therefore, etc. This appears in the
second place because diverse things that are without qualification simple and
distinct can only be made distinct in and of themselves; but all the divine
persons are simple without qualification and nevertheless they are distinct;
therefore [they are distinct] not with anything else mediating but in and of
themselves. In the third place this appears because, if the divine persons
1970, 171–172, makes a similar claim), and in the same year Albert Lang (1930, 111–113) claimed
that there were “viele Berührungspunkte” between Chatton’s and Rubio’s treatments of the
status of the articles of faith, and he gave some examples of titles of articles in the two
treatments that were virtually verbatim identical. Lang himself was building on Michalski
(1927, 185–186, 191–192), who first revealed the link between Rubio and Chatton, as well as
on Rubert (see ref. in n. 189 above). See also Farré 1931, 14; Bendiek 1959, 12–15; Kaluza 1991,
445–448; and Dumont Forthcoming.
191 William of Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “Utrum personae divinae constituantur
personaliter et distinguantur realiter per relationes originis an per proprietates aliquas

absolutas.” Ed. 1518, f. 175va; the article itself is found on ff. 176ra–177va.
834 chapter twelve
were to be constituted and made distinct not in and of themselves but by

something else distinct from them, or [if] they were not to be made distinct
totally on their own (se totis) but by some [other] things and were to convene
in other things distinct from them, then it would follow, first, that there would
be in extramental reality (in re extra) in the divine more than three distinct
things, and, second, that each of the divine persons would be composed in
some way, because it would be constituted by several things; but all of these
are absurd; therefore, etc.192
In this relatively short passage, Rubio shows that he reached the same con-
clusion that Walter Chatton had reached and for the very same overarching
reasons. If the persons were constituted or made distinct through personal
properties distinct in any way from the persons themselves, this would both
compromise the simplicity of the person so constituted and entail that there
were more than three distinct things in God. Therefore, for Rubio, there is
no distinction between person and property, and the persons are distinct in
and of themselves. Rubio’s position, then, is Praepositinian, and he claims
explicitly on several occasions that Praepositinianism is the only way to deal
with the trinitarian mystery: no Catholic ought to be in doubt about the fact
that personal distinction is not brought about by properties distinct in any
way from the persons themselves.193 Moreover, Rubio’s explicit linking of his
view to the simplicity of the persons shows that here the search for simplic-
ity is once again at work.
To flesh out Rubio’s view just a bit, we can look at the process by which
he arrives at his Praepositinian view in this question. Although Rubio’s
view is nearly identical to Chatton’s, the structure of his texts is rather
192 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “Ex praedictis sequitur corollarie quod divinae personae
sunt se ipsis distinctae. Hoc apparet primo quia eisdem constituuntur et distinguuntur,
videlicet relationibus originis supradictis; sed, ut dictum est, huiusmodi originis relationes
sunt idem totaliter cum personis; ergo, etc. Secundo quia res diversae simpliciter simplices
distinctae non possunt distingui nisi se ipsis; sed omnes divinae personae sunt simpliciter
simplices, et tamen distinctae; ergo non aliis mediantibus a se ipsis. Tertio quia si personae
divinae constituerentur et distinguerentur non ex se ipsis sed aliis ab eis distinctis, vel non
se totis sed aliquibus distinguerentur et in aliis ab illis distinctis convenirent, sequeretur
primo quod in divinis essent plura distincta in re extra quam tria; secundo quod quaelibet
divina persona esset aliquo modo composita, quia ex pluribus constituta; sed ista omnia sunt
absurda; ergo, etc.” Ed. 1518, f. 176va. Cp. the text in italics to the argument from Henry of Ghent
reproduced above in Ch. 11, n. 50; there is little room for discussion between such radically
divergent views of simplicity and distinction.
193 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2: “… ista quaestio nullum habet dubium apud catholicum ....
Quia constat catholico ex fide esse tantum tres res increatas, quarum una est realiter ab alia,
puta secunda a prima et tertia a prima et secunda; sed per praedicta, puta per paternitatem
vel filiationem (vel passivam generationem) et spirationem divinam non potest intelligi, ut
probatum est, aliquid ab istis tribus rebus increatis distinctum in re extra, vel si intelligatur,
constat non esse talia in divinis. Ergo, etc.” Ed. 1518, f. 175va.
different from what one finds in either Chatton’s Reportatio or Lectura, and
for this reason alone, it will be interesting to attempt in the future to sort
out the nature and the extent of Rubio’s reliance on Chatton. Thus, Rubio
nearly always begins the individual articles—the smallest units of inquiry in
his Sentences commentary—with a short text defining important terms or
issues that will be central to the treatment he is embarking on. To the extent
that Rubio does this, his texts resemble more those of Gregory of Rimini
than those of Chatton, although it seems unlikely that Rubio could have
influenced Rimini on this score. After defining his terms, Rubio gives four—
as far as I can tell, always four, never fewer and never more—conclusions
that express his view on the matter at hand, often rounding out the article
with a recapitulation. This seems to be his set way of proceeding.
In his discussion of the issue of whether relations of origin or absolute
properties are constitutive of the persons (I Sentences, d. 26, q. 2, a. 2), Rubio
begins by specifying his terminology, and in particular he is interested in the
precise meanings of the phrase ‘that a divine person is constituted’. The dis-
tinction he draws here is a bearing element in his solution to the problem of
the persons. The term ‘constituted’ in the phrase ‘that a divine person is con-
stituted’ can be understood in two ways, strictly and broadly. Understood
strictly, only things that contain within themselves several other things dis-
tinct among themselves can be called “constituted”, and taken in this strict
sense nothing simple, like an intellectual soul, is constituted—clearly, since
that thing has no constituent elements in it, being totally uncomposed. On
the other hand, taken broadly, even absolutely simple things that are never-
theless distinct from other things can be said to be “constituted”, and taken
in this way, all that ‘constituted’ means is “to be in and of itself (per se ipsum)
unique and distinct from everything else”.194 Thus, just in virtue of being
distinct from all other things can an absolutely simple thing be said to be
“constituted”, although this is not constituted in any strict sense since the
simple thing has no constituent parts.
194 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “ ‘Personam divinam etiam esse constitutam’ dupliciter
potest intelligi. Uno modo proprie et alio modo large. ‘Constitutum’ proprie sumptum dici-
tur esse illud quod continet aliqua plura constituentia inter se distincta, nullum enim unicum
carens multitudine omnium distinctorum dicitur proprie constitutum, sicut simplex forma
ut anima intellectiva non dicitur proprie constituta. Alio modo large potest vocari, licet
improprie, constitutum quodcumque in esse positum unum ab alio distinctum quantum-
cumque simplicissimum nec continens in se seu includens aliqua in re extra distincta, ut
esse constitutum sic sumptum non sit aliud quam esse unicum et distinctum ab omni alio
per se ipsum.” Ed. 1518, f. 176ra.
836 chapter twelve
Rubio’s four conclusions flow out from this clarification of terms, which
allows him to attenuate significantly any claim that the divine persons
are “constituted” without dropping the trinitarian use of the term entirely.
Indeed, like Walter Chatton, Rubio rejects any form of personal constitu-
tion, understood in the way that medieval scholastics had understood it
since the mid-1250’s, i.e. understood in such a way “that a divine person …
is constituted from relation and from essence”.195 Thus, in his first conclu-
sion, Rubio argues that if ‘constituted’ is accepted strictly, then no divine
person is really constituted, since this would involve that person containing
or including several mutually distinct constituent entities. “But no divine
person contains or includes intrinsic to itself several things distinct in extra-
mental reality, since there is no extramental plurality of distinct things in
the divine, excepting only [the plurality] of the persons.”196 Rubio’s argu-
ments for this position mirror Chatton’s inasmuch as they boil down to the
claim that personal constitution as traditionally understood would involve
the persons being composites and that this would be incompatible with
absolute divine simplicity. Thus, Rubio argues that the divine essence, on
account of its absolute simplicity, cannot be constituted, “since everything
properly constituted is composite”. But each divine person is just as simple
as is the essence. Therefore the persons cannot be any more really consti-
tuted than the essence is (or, for that matter, than the relative property
would be, if we postulated divine relative properties for the sake of argu-
ment), or they would in fact be composites.197 In short, the absolute sim-
plicity of the persons is the major factor in Rubio’s rejection of any form of
personal constitution involving essence and relation “working together”.
195 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “… ponentes personam divinam esse realiter constitutam
dicunt ipsam ex relatione et ex essentia existere constitutam.” Ed. 1518, f. 176ra.

196 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “Prima hconclusioi est quod accipiendo proprie ‘consti-
tutum’ nulla persona divina est realiter constituta. Haec apparet quoniam omne realiter et
proprie constitutum includit in se seu continet plura constituentia inter se distincta .... Sed
nulla persona divina continet seu includit aliqua plura in re extra distincta sibi intrinseca,
cum nulla sit in divinis pluralitas distinctorum in re extra nisi tantummodo personarum.
Ergo etc.” Ed. 1518, f. 176ra. For Chatton’s rejection of personal constitution, see Ch. 11, above,
at and around nn. 57–58, 63–65.
197 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “Praeterea, ad idem arguitur quia eorum quorum quodli-
bet est aeque simplicissimum unum non est magis realiter constitutum quam alterum, cum
omne proprie constitutum sit compositum. Sed quaelibet divina persona est aeque simpli-
cissima sicut essentia et proprietas relativa. Ergo, etc. Confirmatur, quia divina essentia nec
est realiter constituta nec est res aliqua quae sit proprie constituta, cum omnis talis sit com-
posita. Sed divina essentia est omnis persona divina. Ergo nulla persona divina est proprie
constituta.” Ed. 1518, f. 176ra.
Nevertheless, Rubio wants to leave some room for the use of at least the
term ‘constitution’ in his trinitarian system. Thus, his second conclusion is
that “accepting ‘constituted’ broadly and improperly, each divine person
is constituted”. Each divine person certainly is one and certainly is really
distinct from everything else, and that was precisely the meaning of ‘consti-
tuted’ taken in this broad sense: “to be unique and distinct in and of itself
(per se ipsum) from everything else”.198 Using the term ‘constituted’ in this
way, Rubio tells us, “to say there are three constituted divine supposites is
nothing other than to say there are three really distinct divine supposites”.199
And he states outright that this use of ‘constituted’ rules out any composi-
tion in the things constituted. Indeed, returning to the original motivation
for the notion of personal constitution—explaining how the persons can
all be identical with the divine essence but distinct among themselves—,
Rubio simply claims that the persons are distinct among themselves while
being totally indistinct from the divine essence.200 Just as the persons are
absolutely identical to the essence, so, as we have already seen, are they
absolutely identical to their respective personal properties, and this Rubio
makes explicit in his third conclusion, claiming that the persons are in no
way constituted “by relations of origin or by absolute properties as by any-
thing distinct in any way extramentally from the persons”, since neither
absolute nor respective properties can exist as distinct from the persons.201
198 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “Secunda conclusio est quod accipiendo large et improprie
‘constitutum’, quaelibet persona divina dicitur constituta. Haec apparet, quoniam omne
unum ab omni alio realiter distinctum dicitur isto modo constitutum. Sed quaelibet persona
divina est una et ab omni alio realiter distincta. Ergo etc.” Ed. 1518, f. 176ra. See at n. 194 above,
for the broad definition of ‘constituted’.
199 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “… dicere tria esse divina supposita constituta non est
aliud quam dicere tria esse divina supposita realiter distincta.” Ed. 1518, f. 176ra.
200 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “… per ‘constitutum’ hoc modo sumptum non intelligitur
compositum, sed quodcumque unum tantum ab omni alio realiter distinctum. Sed licet
divina essentia non sit res una tantum, sic enim est una numero quod est plura, videlicet tria
supposita inter se realiter distincta, sed ab ipsa essentia totaliter indistincta.” Ed. 1518, f. 176ra.
Rubio often maintains that essence and person are ‘indistinct’, and in this very discussion
(ed. cit., f. 175va) he refers back to his treatment of the issue in d. 2. There, in language very
reminiscent of Chatton, Rubio first in I Sent., d. 2, q. 5 (ed. 1518, ff. 66va–71va) describes how the
persons are indistinct from the divine essence; he then goes on in I Sent., d. 2, q. 6 (ed. 1518,
ff. 71va–74rb) to reject Auriol’s use of the term ‘indistinction’ as a description of the relation
between essence and property, here following quite closely Chatton’s Lectura, d. 2, q. 6, a.
3 (ed. Wey and Etzkorn [vol. 1], pp. 460–482; Chatton includes there (p. 46021) an explicit
reference to Auriol’s Quodl., q. 3, a. 2).
201 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “Tertia conclusio est quod personae divinae non dicuntur
esse modo praeexposito, videlicet large et improprie constitutae per relationes originis nec
per proprietates absolutas tamquam per aliqua ab ipsis personis distincta aliqualiter in re
838 chapter twelve
To prove this last claim, Rubio can in part appeal to the same reasoning
that Chatton appealed to: if there were a constitutive property of any kind
in any way distinct from the person, then there would be more than a Trin-
ity of distinct things in God, which we know to be incorrect.202 Summing up,
then: for Rubio, the persons are “constituted” only because each of them is
singular and is distinct from the other two persons (and everything else as
well); they are in no way constituted in the sense of having constituent ele-
ments in them, and specifically they are in no way distinct from the divine
essence and they do not contain any properties distinct from themselves in
any way.
Finally, and most interestingly of all, in his fourth conclusion, Rubio
makes the claim that taking ‘constituted’ in this broad sense, then the
persons can in no way be said to be constituted by absolute properties,
but they can be said to be “constituted by relative properties of origin
totally indistinct extramentally from the persons who are constituted”.203
Rubio rejects completely that the persons could be distinct by anything
absolute, since the divine essence is the only absolute in God, and it, as
we have seen, is totally indistinct from each of the persons.204 That the
properties constitutive of the persons are relative Rubio takes to be a logical
consequence of the fact that they cannot be absolutes: in God there is only
one absolute essence and it cannot be said in any way to constitute the
persons; therefore the properties are relatives.205 But Rubio insists:
extra .... nihil absolutum vel respectivum ab omnibus divinis personis in re extra distinctum
est in aliqua personarum …” Ed. 1518, f. 176rb.
202 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1: “… nec per proprietatem absolutam nec per relationem
originis in divinis est intelligendum aliquid in re extra distinctum a personis .... cum in divinis
non sit maior pluralitas quam trinitas distinctorum in re extra, per relationes originis non est
intelligendum aliquid a personis omnibus distinctum, sed quodcumque absolutum quod est
Deus est etiam idem penitus in re extra cum quaelibet personarum et cum omnibus simul
sumptis. Ergo nec per proprietatem absolutam nec per relationem est intelligendum aliquid
a divinis personis distinctum.” Ed. 1518, f. 175vb.
203 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “Quarta et ultima conclusio est quod personae divinae
eo modo quo dicuntur constitutae sunt constitutae non per proprietates absolutas, sed per
proprietates originis relativas ab ipsis personis constitutis in re extra totaliter indistinctas.”
Ed. 1518, f. 176rb.
204 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “… illa hic vocantur personarum constitutiva quibus ipsae
personae realiter sunt distinctae. Sed personae non distinguuntur per aliquid absolutum,
essentia enim divina, quae sola est absoluta ab eis omnibus quibus est communis, est totaliter
indistincta.” Ed. 1518, f. 176rb. For a rejection of absolute constitutive properties, see also the
text in n. 202 above.
205 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “… constituantur per proprietates originis respectivas …
non enim est in divinis nisi essentia absoluta unica, triplex proprietas relativa; sed essentia
non est personarum constitutiva et distinctiva; ergo, etc.” Ed. 1518, f. 176rb.
that relations of origin of this kind, constitutive of the persons, are totally
indistinct in extramental reality from the persons who are constituted is
proven .... [since if that were not the case] it would follow that in the divine
there would be a greater plurality than a Trinity of things distinct in some way
in extramental reality, and [it would follow] that no person would be perfectly
simple (simplicissima) but would be a composite (since everything consti-
tuted from something really distinct from it is in some way a composite), and
because just as in created things, so also in the divine, neither the person pro-
ducing produces nor the [person] produced is produced with any mediating
production distinct even in the slightest in extramental reality from the per-
sons produced and producing.206
The first two reasons that Rubio gives here we have seen before both in
Rubio himself and in Walter Chatton: if the persons were constituted by
essence and relation then there would be more than three distinct things
in God and none of the persons would be absolutely simple. But Rubio’s
third reason for rejecting distinct constitutive properties appears to depart
significantly from anything that Chatton held: Rubio claims that neither in
God nor in creatures is there a distinct property by which or through which
one thing produces or is produced by another. One fire causes another fire,
but there is nothing by which or through which this happens—causality is
unmediated between the cause and its effect. The same is true of a father
and a son: a father brings about a son with nothing mediating, i.e. there
is no distinct form or action by which or through which the father acts.207
Rubio seems, then, to reject the extramental existence of any categorial
actions or passions or relations of the second type. Some terms do indeed
appear to signify actions and passions (e.g., active and passive generation)
or relations of the second type (e.g., paternity and filiation), but in fact what
these terms signify are the absolute entities that produce or are produced.
Thus, Rubio claims that “a respect in creatures is totally indistinct from the
206 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “… quod relationes huiusmodi originis personarum
constitutivae sint ab ipsis personis constitutis indistinctae totaliter in re extra probata

est .... hquiai sequeretur quod in divinis esset maior pluralitas quam trinitas distinctorum
aliqualiter in re extra, et quod nulla persona esset simplicissima sed composita (cum omne
ex aliquo a se distincto realiter constitutum sit aliqualiter compositum), tum quia sicut in
creatis ita et in divinis nec persona producens producit nec producta producitur productione
aliqua mediante a personis ipsis productis et producentibus distincta quantumcumque
modicum in re extra.” Ed. 1518, f. 176rb.
207 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2: “… ignis generat ignem et homo hominem nullo mediante
in generante vel in genito existente et ab utroque differente .... Nec activa nec passiva pro-
ductio nec paternitas nec filiatio significat aliquid in creatis distinctum realiter ab extremis,
videlicet a generante et genito, patre et filio.” Ed. 1518, f. 175ra.
840 chapter twelve
extremes”,208 maintaining that the only sense in which these respects can be
called “real” is if you understand them to be the two extremes that refer to
one another, e.g. father and son, one of which in and of itself (per se ipsum)
puts the other into being. This is all that there is, according to Rubio: two
absolutes that refer to each other in and of themselves simply because the
one produced the other. In line with this, Rubio maintains that relational
terms like active generation and passive generation signify (importat) two
and only two absolute entities one of which has been produced by the
other; these terms are, to use terminology Rubio himself uses, connotative
terms.209 Moving to the trinitarian plane, then, it is precisely because the
Father produces the Son, and Father and Son together produce the Holy
Spirit, that they are relatives; but as we saw above in the last quotation (at
n. 206), there is no property by which or through which these productions
happen, the person producing simply produces the person produced, and
it is on the basis of this fact that they are relatives. Here, I will not delve
into Rubio’s lengthy defense of this view both in I Sentences, d. 26, and
in book II of his Sentences commentary,210 limiting myself to noting the
contrast with Walter Chatton. Recall that, for Chatton, the concepts that
we form about God, like wisdom or justice, paternity or filiation, on a per
se plane, i.e. according to their definitions (rationes definitivae), correspond
to distinct entities in extramental reality; for Chatton, it is a unique case, an
exception, that de facto in God there are no distinct entities corresponding
to our attributal and notional concepts, a unique case that arises on account
of absolute divine simplicity.211 Rubio appears to disagree: as we have seen,
208 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1: “… opinio ista quae ponit respectum in creaturis esse
indistinctum totaliter ab extremis salvat quod non potest facere alia ipsi contraria …” Ed.
1518, f. 174vb.
209 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1: “… quodlibet nominum praedictorum hscil., activa generatio
vel passiva, paternitas et filiatioi importat praecise plura absoluta entia isto modo, videlicet
ut unum eorum est in esse positum ab alio, non autem aliquid aliud ab eis distinctum
aliqualiter in re extra .... Si vocas respectum realem formam aliquam per se unam ab omnibus
absolutis realiter differentem, nullum horum hnominum praedictorumi respectum aliquem
importat in creatis, cum respectus talis non sit possibilis .... hsii vocas respectum ipsa extrema
absoluta quorum unum per se ipsum non per aliquod sibi appositum dicitur referri ad
alterum, sic concedo quod ista omnia dicunt respectus reales in creaturis.” Ed. 1518, f. 174va–b.
For Rubio’s use of ‘connotative term’, see, e.g., ibid., conc. 2 (ed. 1518, f. 175rb).
210 Cf. Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, aa. 1–2 (ed. 1518, ff. 173rb–175va); Rubio, II Sent., d. 1, q. 1 (ed.
1518, ff. 243va–248rb). Rubio uses this view in other trinitarian contexts, e.g. in I Sent., d. 5, q. 2,
a. 2 (ed. 1518, f. 111va); ibid., d. 9, q. 1, conc. 4 (ed. 1518, f. 132ra).
211 For Chatton and this view, see Ch. 11, above, at and around nn. 24–29, 58–59. I have not
come across anything like Rubio’s reductionist view in Chatton’s Lectura; indeed, Chatton
attempts to prove at I Sent., Prol., q. 6, a. 3 (ed. Wey, pp. 341–343) that, at least in the soul,
he claims explicitly that neither in God nor in creatures will you find an
active generation or a paternity distinct in any way from the person giving
being to another person. Active generation just denotes the fact that one
person puts another into being, and that is just as much the case in God as
in creatures. Thus, in contrast to Chatton, on this point Rubio insists on a
parallelism between God and creatures.
Interestingly, although Rubio occasionally utilizes Chatton’s distinction
between per se and de facto planes of discussion,212 he does not seem to
use it in the way that Chatton did, i.e. in order to defuse authoritative
passages potentially problematic for his Praepositinian view. One can per-
haps see, however, a form of marginalization strategy in Rubio’s efforts to
allow for some way in which to call the persons relative (and deny that
they are absolutes) and his reluctance to reject the idea of personal con-
stitution outright. The ideas that the persons are relational and that they
are constituted had a heavy weight of tradition behind them, and Rubio’s
rejection of relational properties and personal constitution as they were
understood in his day while simultaneously finding a way to visibly retain
the terms as part of his trinitarian theory is eloquent evidence of this. Inter-
estingly, Gregory of Rimini will simply reject personal constitution, not even
attempting to find a way to use it in his trinitarian thought, and even deny-
ing that it had any basis in the ideas of the Church Fathers.213 In fact, as
far as I can tell, in his treatment of the issue of the personal properties
in I Sentences, d. 26, Rubio makes mention of only one authoritative text.
This comes after Rubio has affirmed yet again that “the divine persons are
one essence, common to all and yet not anything distinct from them in
extramental reality but rather totally indistinct”.214 Rubio makes the obvi-
ous objection to his Praepositinian view: how can the essence be totally
the same as three persons, since if that were the case the essence would
seem to be in reality “only one and many” (tantum unum et plura).215 Rubio
action or production is distinct from absolute operations (absolutae operationes) (cf. also I
Rep., d. 26, q. un., a. 2, nn. 36–38 [ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 1841–27]).
212 For a prominent use, see, e.g. Rubio, I Sent., d. 2, q. 5, a. 1 (ed. 1518, f. 70rb). See also below,
n. 225 for use of positio impossibilis in a way reminiscent of Chatton.

213 See at and around n. 242 below.
214 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “… personae divinae sunt una essentia communis omnibus,
non tamen aliquid ab eis in re extra distinctum sed totaliter indistinctum.” Ed. 1518, f. 176vb.
215 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2: “Et si quaeras quomodo potest esse unum quod est a tribus
totaliter indistinctum, et ita, cum essentia sit unica, quomodo potest esse idem cum tribus
personis totaliter in re extra, cum impossibile videatur idem totaliter in re extra esse tantum
unum et plura.” Ed. 1518, f. 176vb (text continued in n. 216 below).
842 chapter twelve
denies that the essence is only one and many—that would be a manifest
contradiction—; the essence is, however, one and many, and we know this
on the basis of the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council, where we read that
the divine essence is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are three persons
really distinct from each other. Indeed, according to Rubio, the Fourth
Lateran Council should leave us in no doubt that, even though it is difficult
to understand Praepositinianism, and impossible to understand it without
faith, nevertheless Praepositinianism is still less difficult to understand than
any trinitarian position on which the essence is some thing distinct in any
way from the persons in extramental reality, since this would compromise
God’s simplicity.216 As we saw him do above, then, Rubio stresses that
Praepositinianism is the only viable approach to the trinitarian mystery,
even while basically admitting that it explains nothing and is impossible
to understand. Divine simplicity, for Rubio, trumps explanation, and this
is an expression of the new theological aesthetic that we have already
met in Walter Chatton and Robert Holcot, and in less extreme form in
William Ockham, Adam Wodeham, Francis of Marchia, and Michael of
Massa.
Authority and authoritative texts are definitely also at issue in Rubio’s
treatment of the psychological model, and particularly of the application
of the term ‘word’ to the Son, found in his I Sentences, d. 27, q. 2, where
the question is “whether alone the Son of God is the uncreated Word?”
Here, Rubio begins his treatment with the evidence most often used to
support some kind of identification of the Son with a Word: the relevant
216 Rubio, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2 (text continued from n. 215 above): “Respondeo: et concedo
quod unum et idem non potest esse unum tantum et plura, quia quod est plura non est
tantum unum, nec quod est tantum unum est plura, alias idem esset tantum unum et non
tantum unum; licet autem idem non possit esse tantum unum et plura, quia tunc sequeretur
contradictio manifesta, potest tamen esse unum et plura, et hoc oportet concedere omnem
catholicum, ut apparet Extra de summa trinitate et fide catholica. Ibi enim expresse habetur
quod divina essentia quae est unica, non producens nec producta, est Pater, Filius, et
Spiritus Sanctus, quae quidem personae sunt tres realiter distinctae. Hoc autem videre licet
sit difficile, immo et impossibile sine fide, impossibilius tamen seu difficilius esse videtur
intelligere divinam essentiam esse rem unicam distinctam a personis omnibus in re extra et
tamen esse quamlibet personarum nec ponere cum eis in numerum, cum omnia distincta
in re extra sint plura nec unum eorum sit alterum. Ergo.” Ed. 1518, f. 176vb. Cf. the text at and
around n. 193 above, for Rubio’s claim that a Praepositionian view is the only acceptable
one for a Catholic; for further appeals by Rubio to the Fourth Lateran Council as the major
justification for holding Praepositinianism, see ibid., d. 2, q. 5, a. 1 (ed. 1518, f. 67va). For
the Canon of the Fourth Lateran Council referred to here, see the Introduction, above, at
n. 21.
passages from John’s Gospel.217 Moreover, Rubio’s Praepositinianism is the

governing feature throughout his discussion: there is no distinct property
“generation” mediating between the Father who generates and the Son who
is generated, and mutatis mutandis for the Holy Spirit.218 It is partly on the
basis of his Praepositinianism that Rubio rejects a view of the Son as Word
that seems to be Peter Auriol’s: for Rubio, it cannot be the case that the
Word is constituted from passive diction and the absolute essence, since
the person is in no way distinct extramentally from either the essence or
from any relative property.219 Nor, in Rubio’s view, can what appears to be a
more Scotistic solution to the issue be maintained, i.e. that the Son is a Word
because he is “actual knowledge or wisdom” (notitia seu sapientia actualis),
since, according to Rubio, knowledge and wisdom are essential properties
and hence can only be applied to the Son through appropriation and not
properly.220 Nevertheless, Rubio’s own view, that “ ‘word’ properly taken is
said about anything produced first by the memory”, appears in fact to be
very close to Scotus’ position. In explaining his view, Rubio tells us that he
is equating a word with the intellectual act and distinguishing it from habits,
which are not produced first by the memory (since habits only follow upon
the production of acts).221
217 Rubio, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1: “Secundo quaero de Verbo increato, utrum solus Dei Filius
sit Verbum increatum. Et videtur quod sic, quia in divinis est unicum Verbum tantum. Sed
Dei Filius dicitur Verbum iuxta illud Ioannis, primo: ‘Verbum caro factum est’. Ergo nulla alia
persona divina dicitur esse Verbum.” Ed. 1518, f. 179vb.
218 Rubio, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1: “Quarta et ultima conclusio est quod Dei Filius est a
Patre genitus non mediante aliqua generatione distincta ab ipso et a Patre generante, sicut et
consimiliter Spiritus Sanctus est spiratus a Filio et a Patre, videlicet absque aliqua spiratione
mediante a personis distincta.” Ed. 1518, f. 180ra.
219 Rubio, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… aliqui dicunt quod Filius Dei solus in divinis dicitur
Verbum, quia Verbum importat constitutum ex aliquo absoluto et ex dictione passiva. Sed
Filius Dei est tale suppositum ex dictione passiva et ex absoluta essentia constitutum ....
Sed sic dicentes deficiunt, quia falsum innuunt et supponunt, videlicet Filium Dei esse ex
essentia et ex dictione passiva tamquam ex aliquibus distinctis in re extra quantumcumque
modicum constitutum. Hoc enim est impossibile, quia nec essentia est in re extra distincta a
persona nec a proprietate aliqua relativa …” Ed. 1518, f. 180va. Cp. the position Rubio describes
here to the positions described by Nicholas Bonet, above, at n. 90.
220 Rubio, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “Alii dicunt aliter, videlicet quod Filius Dei dicitur Verbum
quia est notitia seu sapientia actualis .... Sed nec hoc sufficit, quoniam licet Filius Dei dicatur
sapientia seu notitia actualis appropriate, non tamen proprie magis quam Pater vel Spiritus
Sanctus, omnes enim personae sunt una sapientia, sicut et una essentia. Ergo si Verbum
importat notitiam actualem tantum, non magis proprie dicitur de Filio Dei quam de Patre et
de Spiritu Sancto.” Ed. 1518, f. 180va. For same point, see also ibid. (f. 181ra, at the response to
the preliminary argument).
221 Rubio, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… verbum proprie sumptum dicitur de quocumque a
844 chapter twelve
Is the Son, then, properly speaking a Word? According to Rubio, we know

from the saints that the Son is an intellectual supposite produced by way
of nature; this entails that the divine essence insofar as it is intellectual
memory is generative of the divine Word, i.e. the Son, and Word is a proper
name for the Son.222 Thus, Rubio accepts the later Chatton’s view that Word
and Love are proper (as opposed to appropriated) names for the Son and
the Holy Spirit, respectively, and not Chatton’s early unmitigated rejection
of the psychological model.223 Nevertheless, Rubio hastens to clarify, again
following Chatton, that there is no distinct memory or intellect or will in
God: the utterly indistinct essence is the source of generating the Word, just
as it is the source of spirating the Holy Spirit.224 What the essence being the
memory means is simply that if, per impossibile, there were no spiration of
the Holy Spirit, then the essence would still produce the Son as a Word; by
extension, the essence as will means that if, per impossibile, the essence did
not produce the Son through intellectual production, the Holy Spirit would
still be spirated.225 In another spot, Rubio seems to suggest that memory (or
memoria primo producto. Dico autem ‘primo’ propter habitum a memoria creata median-
tibus actibus, et ideo non primo productum, qui quidem habitus non dicitur verbum, sed
tantum intellectivus actus …” Ed. 1518, f. 180va.
222 Rubio, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… secunda persona divina dicitur proprie Verbum et Fil-
ius. Haec apparet et sequitur ex praedicta, quoniam tam Filius quam Verbum significat omne
intellectuale suppositum per memoriam productum, omne enim intellectuale suppositum
ab alio eiusdem rationis secum qualitercumque productum dicitur proprie eius filius. Ver-
bum autem sic ab eo hoc modo videlicet per memoriam modo praeexposito est productum.
Sed secunda persona divina est intellectuale suppositum a Patre essentialiter eodem secum
productum, cuius principium productivum est memoria …” Ed. 1518, f. 180vb.
223 On Chatton’s later view, see Ch. 11, above, at nn. 127–128. See also for a comparison to
Gregory of Rimini, n. 274 below.

224 Rubio, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2: “… sicut Spiritus Sanctus dicitur produci per modum
voluntatis quia exigit voluntatem ut suum principium productivum, ita et Filius per modum
intellectus, quia videlicet requirit intellectum esse suum principium productivum, non
tamen sic intelligendo ut aliqui male intelligunt, quod intellectus seu memoria et voluntas
sint aliqua duo distincta, quorum unum sit principium Verbi et alterum Spiritus Sancti.
Eadem enim omnino essentia et indistincta totaliter in re extra est principium generandi
Verbum et spirandi Spiritum Sanctum.” Ed. 1518, f. 180va (text continued in n. 225 below).
For more on this material, and especially the Holy Spirit, see ibid., d. 10, q. un., a. 1 (ed.
1518, ff. 132rb–133ra), which is pieced together from Chatton’s Lectura, d. 10, q. 1 (ed. Wey and
Etzkorn, vol. 3, pp. 163–182), although Rubio drops Chatton’s presentation of and response
to Ockham’s views, instead concentrating on Peter Auriol (and some of Rubio’s response to
Auriol may be either from other spots in Chatton’s work or from another scholastic’s work,
rather than original to Rubio).
225 Rubio, I Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 2 (continued from n. 224 above): “Sane hoc intelligendo
ut in praecedentibus fuit expositum, sed quia sic illa essentia unica ut Verbi generativa
est memoria intellectiva, hoc est talis res qualis per memoriam importatur, quod si per
intellect) and will are used of the divine essence in an appropriated manner
in connection with the emanation of the Word and Love, respectively.226
Thus, it seems that our knowing from the saints that the Son is Word and the
Spirit Love gives us license to use a psychological description of the Trinity,
but the absolute simplicity of the essence trumps any proper application
of terms like ‘intellect’ and ‘will’. Rubio’s is still a highly attenuated use of
the psychological model. The Son is a Word and the Spirit Love, and surely
divine nature is intellectual and volitive, but the connection between these
facts is left wide open, and philosophical psychology does not really appear
to answer trinitarian questions in Rubio’s theology.
This brief examination of William of Rubio’s trinitarian theology can
serve to show that, despite tremendous differences in structure and style
between Rubio’s I Sentences and Walter Chatton’s Lectura, Chatton was the
major influence on Rubio in this area. Not merely the positions themselves,
and particularly Praepositinianism, does Rubio seem to have taken from
Chatton, but even the overarching arguments for the position originated
with Chatton. With that said, as we have seen, on at least one issue Rubio
appears to depart in a significant way from Chatton: his claim that produc-
tive properties are not distinct from producers or products in either God
or creatures. This divergence make an exhaustive study of Rubio’s trinitar-
ian thought even more desirable, with detailed comparisons to the works of
Chatton and others, in order to evaluate the coherency of Rubio’s trinitar-
ian thought as a whole. One thing seems absolutely certain: at the heart of
Rubio’s trinitarian project lay the search for simplicity.
5. Gregory of Rimini
Born around 1300, the Augustinian Hermit Gregory of Rimini was educated
at Paris in the late 1320’s. After teaching in a number of his order’s studia, in
1343–1344 it was his turn to read the Sentences at Paris, and the written com-
impossibile non esset talis hresi qua[le]m importat voluntas, adhuc esset generativa Verbi,
non autem si esset voluntas et non memoria, sed tunc esset spirativa Spiritus Sancti. Hoc
modo est intelligendum …” Ed. 1518, f. 180va–b.
226 Rubio, I Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 2: “… memoria potest dici principium dicendi Verbum et
voluntas principium spirandi Spiritum Sanctum … non proprie sed appropriate .... divina
essentia, quae sola est principium dicendi Verbum et spirandi Spiritum Sanctum est ab
intellectione et a volitione omnino indistincta .... ipsa essentia potest dici isto modo memoria
ut Verbi generativa et voluntas ut est Sancti Spiritus spirativa.” Ed. 1518, f. 114va. For a related
view—that the Father’s essence can be called the power by which the Father generates the
Son—see the Conclusion, below, in n. 18.
846 chapter twelve
mentary on I–II Sentences that we have is clearly based on those lectures.

The Sentences commentary is basically the only work of his that we have
of major theological or philosophical significance.227 After a stint as regent
master at Paris, Rimini served in various capacities in the hierarchy of the
Augustinian Hermits, until in 1357, upon the death of the then Augustinian
Prior General, Thomas of Strasbourg, Rimini became the head of the order.
He held that post for just a year, dying at the end of 1358 and being buried,
along with his immediate predecessor, in Vienna.
Rimini’s historical importance is great. He appears to have acted as a con-
duit by which aspects of Oxford’s golden-age thought—ideas of Ockham, of
Wodeham, of Holcot, of FitzRalph, and of the calculator tradition—were
transmitted to Paris and beyond. He was, in any event, the first Parisian
scholar we know to use this Oxford thought both explicitly and extensively.
This is well attested and even fairly well studied.228 In keeping with this role
as conduit, we know that Rimini was read into the seventeenth century, as
the more than twenty manuscripts and six early modern editions of his Sen-
tences commentary show. Rimini’s popularity may have had something to
do with his thorough familiarity with Augustine, but more important still
was undoubtedly Rimini’s first-class theological and philosophical mind.
Rimini’s Sentences commentary reveals a thinker who routinely draws razor
sharp distinctions, constructs arguments and analyses of impressive logical
rigor, and offers coherent and often startling positions on a great number
of issues. Indeed, Rimini was clearly rather uninhibited when it came to
maintaining unusual views, arguing for the possibility of actual infinites,
for double particular election in predestination, and for a fully deductive
science of theology.229 In trinitarian theology, Rimini is just as worthy of
attention, advocating what can best be described as a trinitarian theology
227 For excellent introductions to Rimini and his Sent. commentary, see Bermon 2002;
Bermon 2007, 17–101; Schabel 2010.

228 See, e.g., Courtenay 1984a, 121–137; Schabel 2002a, 374–377 (on Rimini’s transmission of
the complexe significabile to the continent). As we have seen (§4 above), William of Rubio
used Chatton’s thought extensively, but not explicitly; on Rubio’s role in bringing Oxford
thought to Paris, I have benefitted from Dumont Forthcoming.
229 On Rimini’s ideas on infinity, see Cross 1998 and the literature referred to there; on
predestination, see Halverson 1998, 143–157; on theology as a strictly deductive science,

see, e.g., Brown 2003. Two further recent studies of Rimini’s thought are Chris Schabel’s
on Rimini’s ideas on God’s foreknowledge and future contingents (Schabel 2000a, 264–274)
and Pascale Bermon’s on Rimini’s theory of knowledge, logic, and philosophical psychology
(Bermon 2007, 105–370). Bermon’s book, pp. 232–239, contains a discussion of Rimini’s ideas
on the divine persons and personal properties, as part of her explication of Rimini’s use of
the complexe significabile.
of radical minimalism. Driven by the search for simplicity, Rimini embraces

Praepositinianism and rejects completely the strong use of the psychologi-
cal model.230
A. Rimini’s Praepositinianism
Rimini approaches the issue of personal distinction directly when he com-
ments on dd. 26 and 27 of book one of the Sentences together. Here he asks
whether by their properties the divine persons are constituted and made
personally distinct from each other.231 Typically for Rimini, he begins his dis-
cussion by drawing distinctions, focusing on the meaning of ‘property’ (pro-
prietas personae) and the meaning of ‘persons being made distinct through
something’ (personas distingui per aliqua). There are three ways that the
term ‘property’ can be accepted, according to Rimini. First, by ‘properties’
we can mean the persons themselves, and in this case when we say “proper-
ties of the persons” we are using an “intransitive construction”, which Rimini
explains as “identity predication”, in which, although we say that one thing
is “in” another or “belongs to” another, in fact they are not at all distinct
but perfectly identical.232 ‘Property’ can also be accepted “for things that are
of [the persons] according to a transitive expression”, meaning by this that
the one thing truly is in the other and that there is some kind of distinc-
tion between these two things, and in this way we can say: “this person has
230 Rimini’s trinitarian theology has received some attention. See Lescún 1966a and 1966b,
and especially Lescún 1970; also Shank 1988, 81–85, on Rimini’s views on logic and the Trinity.
231 Gregory of Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1: “Utrum divinae personae suis proprietatibus
constituantur et ab invicem personaliter distinguantur.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 593–4. There
is considerable overlap between the material in this distinction and that in d. 33–34, where
Rimini asks “utrum in Deo persona vel proprietas personalis distinguatur ab essentia divina
seu deitate communi personarum …” (ibid., pp. 184–210).
232 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 1: “… dico quantum ad propositum quod proprietates
personarum possunt tripliciter accipi. Uno modo pro ipsismet personis .... in hoc sensu
constructio est intransitiva, cum dicitur ‘proprietates personarum’, id est proprietates quae
sunt personae.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 605–6,12–14. Rimini explains the terms ‘transitive’ and
‘intransitive’ in the course of his later discussion; ibid., a. 2: “… dico quod aliquid potest dici
esse alicuius vel in aliquo duplicitur. Uno modo proprie, ut constructio sit transitiva, et omne
quod sic est alicuius vel in aliquo, est distinctum ab eo; isto modo dicitur equus esse Socratis,
et anima dicitur esse hominis et in homine, et forma in materia, et locatum in loco, et sic de
aliis modis quibus aliquid proprie dicitur esse in aliquo. Alio modo improprie, ut constructio
sit intransitiva, et istud consuevit ab aliquibus vocari ‘esse in aliquo per identitatem’, quia
scilicet quod sic dicitur esse alicuius vel in aliquo non distinguitur ab illo, sed est ipsum;
isto modo loquimur cum dicimus ‘essentia angeli’ vel ‘essentia dei’, id est essentia quae est
angelus et essentia quae est Deus, simili modo locutionis dicimus quod sapientia est in Deo,
id est Deus est sapientia, et e converso.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, pp. 6633–679.
848 chapter twelve
that property”. Understood in this second, transitive way, the term ‘prop-
erty’ has in fact two further meanings (for the total of three meanings).233
First, it can stand for an entity proper to the person and signifiable by a
term (an incomplexe significabile). This is the normal understanding of the
term ‘property’ as used in the trinitarian theology of the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries, as Rimini makes clear by telling us that some say “that in
the Father there is an entity common to him and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
namely the divine essence, and an entity not common to them but proper
to him, which they call ‘paternity’, and they say that this is the Father’s prop-
erty.”234 Second and finally, ‘property’ taken in a transitive way can also be
accepted for a complex statement (complexe significabile) or a description
of one person in its relation to the other persons—Rimini gives as examples
“the Father begot one Son” and “the Son is born from the Father”. But Rim-
ini is quick to point out that properties understood in this way do not exist
outside the mind, because even though each term in the statement signifies
a really existing thing, nevertheless the statement itself is merely a descrip-
tion of a state of affairs and what the statement as a whole signifies has no
extramental existence.235
Thus, with regard to the use of the term ‘property’, there are three basic
alternatives: property can mean the person; property can mean what it tra-
233 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 1: “Secundo possunt accipi proprietates personarum,

non pro ipsismet personis, sed pro aliquibus quae sunt ipsarum secundum transitivam
locutionem, et hoc dupliciter.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 6015–17. For the meaning of ‘transitiva
locutio’, see n. 232 above.
234 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 1: “Uno modo hproprietates personarum possunt
accipii pro aliquibus entitatibus sibi propriis incomplexe significabilibus, pro quibus termini
complexi possunt personaliter seu significative supponere, et sic supponentes esse subiecta
propositionum, quo modo nonnulli opinantur proprietates personarum dicentes quod in
Patre est aliqua entitas communis sibi et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, scilicet essentia divina, et
aliqua entitas non illis communis, sed sibi propria, quam vocant paternitatem, et hanc dicunt
esse proprietatem eius …” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 6017–23.
235 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 1: “Alio modo possunt accipi huiusmodi propria
personarum etiam secundum transitivam locutionem pro aliquibus non incomplexe sed
complexe tantummodo formaliter vel aequivalenter significabilibus .... Constat autem quod
talia propria non sunt aliquae entitates secundum se extra animam propriae personis. Non
enim est entitas aliqua ‘Pater unum Filium genuit’ nec etiam ‘Filius nascitur ex Patre’; nam,
quamvis Filius sit vera res et nativitas vera res et similiter Pater, quae significantur per
terminos huius complexi ‘Filius nascitur ex Patre’ non potest tamen dici quod hoc totum
‘Filius nascitur ex Patre’ sit aliqua res, nisi forte materialiter et non significative sumeretur
istud dictum .... Cum ergo dicitur quod proprietas Patris est quod unum genuit Filium aut
quod Filius nascitur ex eo, non denotatur quod aliqua entitas extra animam existens sit
propria ipsi Patri, sed tantummodo quod ipse solus genuit Filium et, quod idem est, quod
ex eo tantum nascitur Filius.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, pp. 6026–6113. For a further use of these
sorts of distinctions, see n. 259 below.
ditionally meant in the scholastic trinitarian discourse, i.e., a really existing

entity proper to but in some sense distinct from the person; finally prop-
erty can mean statements describing the ways the persons relate to one
another. Having made this point, Rimini goes on to inquire what it means
to say that “the persons are made distinct from one another through some-
thing” (quod personas distingui ab invicem per aliqua). Here there are two
possibilities: first, this phrase could mean that the persons are made dis-
tinct through grounds (rationes) or sources of their mutual distinction. The
phrase can also be taken “improperly” to mean that the persons are made
distinct by those things through which their distinction can be known or
inferred; thus, because Adam was not born of man and woman, but Abel
was, Adam and Abel are known to be distinct, although the diverse circum-
stances in which they came into being is not the source of their distinction
in any strict sense—that would be their souls and their bodies.236
This preliminary discussion by Rimini, clarifying the possible meanings
of crucial terms at the outset, is typical of his theological procedure. More-
over, the distinctions he draws here about the meaning of ‘property’ and of
‘personal distinction’ serve as the basis for four “conclusions” that encapsu-
late Rimini’s view:
Having made these points, I posit four conclusions with regard to the ques-
tion, nevertheless [I do this] without assertion and without excluding any
better view. The first conclusion is that the divine persons are constituted
by no properties, no matter how ‘property’ is taken. Second, that the divine
persons are made personally distinct through their properties, with ‘property’
accepted in the first way, that is in and of themselves. Third, that the divine
persons are not made personally distinct by any properties accepted in the
second way. Fourth, that they are made distinct by properties accepted in
the third way, while understanding that they are made distinct through those
properties in the second way set out above, that is that it can be concluded
and cognized from these properties that the persons are distinct from one
another, but they are not made distinct through these properties in the first
way, i.e. as though through grounds (rationes) or sources bringing about dis-
tinction.237
236 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 1: “Secunda distinctio est quod personas distingui
ab invicem per aliqua potest dupliciter intelligi. Uno modo quod distinguantur per illa,
tamquam per ea quae sunt rationes vel principia mutuae distinctionis. Alio modo, quamvis
improprie, potest dici quod distinguantur per ea velut per illa ex quibus potest cognosci et
inferri mutua earum distinctio. Exemplum: Adam et Abel distinguebantur ab invicem primo
modo per suas animas et per sua corpora. Secundo autem modo per hoc quod Adam non
erat ex viro et femina natus, Abel autem sic.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 6114–21.
237 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “His praemissis pono ad quaestionem, absque asser-
tione tamen et sine praeiudicio melioris sententiae, quatuor conclusiones. Prima est quod
850 chapter twelve
At work in the first two conclusions is a distinction that Rimini draws

between personal constitution and personal distinction: the persons are not
constituted, yet they are distinct, albeit distinct in and of themselves (se
ipsis). This, of course, is one of the two main points of Praepositinianism: the
persons are natively distinct. The second main point of Praepositinianism—
that there are no properties distinct from the persons—is confirmed in Rim-
ini’s third conclusion: the properties are not entities distinct in any way from
the persons themselves. In conclusion four, Rimini makes more precise in
what sense we can say that the persons are made distinct through proper-
ties, namely when accepting properties as complex descriptions only (i.e.,
the third and final understanding of ‘property’ that he had distinguished in
his preliminary discussion) and when accepting the second way of talking
about something making another thing distinct, and not the first way. Thus,
in the fourth conclusion Rimini claims that “the persons are made distinct
through properties” is true if understood to mean that through the prop-
erties (i.e., complex descriptions) the persons are known to be distinct, but
untrue if it is understood to mean that these properties are the actual source
of distinction; divine properties, then, merely indicate that the persons are
distinct but they do not bring that distinction about. For Gregory of Rim-
ini there are no properties bringing about personal distinction: Rimini is a
thoroughgoing Praepositinian.
A look at Rimini’s arguments for his conclusions shows quite clearly what
we already might have suspected: that the motivation behind his view is
to uphold what he considers to be the strictest divine simplicity possible.
Thus, in his proof of the first conclusion—that the persons are in no way
constituted—Rimini’s argument takes its point of departure in divine sim-
plicity: “Each and every divine person is utterly simple; therefore no divine
person is constituted in its being through something.”238 The more detailed
argument is that either the property that supposedly constitutes the per-
son is merely a concept or a mental construct of some kind, in which case
nullis proprietatibus, qualitercumque sumantur proprietates, personae divinae constituun-

tur. Secunda, quod personae divinae distinguuntur personaliter suis proprietatibus primo
modo acceptis proprietatibus, id est se ipsis. Tertia, quod divinae personae non distinguuntur
personaliter aliquibus proprietatibus secundo modo acceptis. Quarta, quod distinguuntur
proprietatibus tertio modo acceptis, intelligendo tamen eas distingui per illas proprietates
secundo modo praemisso, id est quod ex illis proprietatibus potest concludi et cognosci quod
ipsae personae ab invicem distinctae sunt, non autem distinguuntur per eas primo modo, id
est tamquam per rationes vel principia distinctiva.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, pp. 6129–623.
238 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “Quaelibet persona divina est simplex omnino; igitur
nulla persona divina per aliquid in suo esse constituitur.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 625–6.
it can have no bearing on the actual constitution of the eternal divine per-
sons, or the property is extramental, and in that case, whether you call it
“a thing or a formality or a modality or by whatever name you like”, the
property will not be the person but something belonging to the person, and
in that case the person will not be absolutely simple.239 Furthermore, each
divine person is no less simple than the divine essence or any of the per-
sonal properties (assuming for the sake of argument that there are personal
properties); therefore, since no one suggests that essence or property is con-
stituted, it is absurd to admit that the persons are constituted.240 Moreover,
theories of personal constitution assume some kind of parallelism between
property and essence in the constitution of the person, and hence, if the
property constitutes the person, then the essence constitutes the person as
well; but the essence does not constitute the person, the essence is the per-
son, and thus these theories compromise the identity between essence and
person, because essence would not be person but merely constitute the per-
son.241 Clearly, for Rimini, any form of constitution whatsoever is incompat-
ible with strict identity between essence and person. Rimini concludes his
discussion of constitution by using the terminology of formal and material
constitutives harking back to the days of Henry of Ghent and by appealing
to the figure of greatest authority short of the Bible itself, Saint Augustine:
It is in no way to be thought that there is in God something really constituted
through some formal or material constitutive, but all that is there, in and of
itself formally and not through something belonging to it (speaking transi-
tively), is all that there is, although a producer and someone who is produced
239 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “Si autem illud constituens non est ipsa persona
constituta, sed aliquid eius, aut illud habet esse per operationem animae tantum, et tunc
constat quod non constituit personam aeternam, quae summa res est, aut est aliquid extra
animam, et quicquid ipsum sit, sive res sive formalitas vel modalitas, aut quovis alio nomine
appellare velis, ex quo ipsum non est persona, sed aliquid eius, et non possit intelligi quod
sit eius extrinsece sicut forma materiae, sed intrinsece sicut pars est aliquid totius, sequitur
quod persona non sit omnino simplex.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 6214–21.
240 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “Secundo, non minus est simplex persona divina quam
est essentia divina aut aliqua proprietas personalis, quaecumque sit illa, si qua est. Ergo non
magis ipsa constituitur ex aliquibus vel per aliqua quam ipsa essentia vel proprietas. Sed
nec essentia nec proprietas constituitur per aliqua, ut omnes concedunt .... Igitur nec ipsa
persona per aliquid constituitur.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 6222–29. For a similar argument in
a different context, see Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1 (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 18218–24), and see
also the text in n. 244 below.
241 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “Tertio, et sequitur ex eo quod iam tactum est, si
persona constitueretur per proprietatem aliquam, constitueretur etiam per essentiam, et

essentia constitueret personam, verbi gratia Patrem, et per consequens essentia non esset
Pater, quod est contra determinationem ecclesiae in capitulo Damnamus.” Ed. Trapp et al.,
vol. 3, p. 6230–33. Cf. the similar argument at ibid. (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 7032–37).
852 chapter twelve
truly are there, and the one produced has being from the one producing. On
account of this, terms like ‘constitutive’, ‘constitution’, and ‘constituted’ … are
not suitably applied to the divine, and it would be better not to use them in
these matters, and certainly I find nowhere that Augustine or any other of the
saints of his day made use of such terms when they spoke about the distinc-
tion between the divine persons.242
In God, one person truly produces another, producer giving being to pro-
duced, but there is no personal constitution, since in order to get that off the
ground the absolute simplicity of the persons would have to be shattered
by positing distinct essence and property. Thus, in the first conclusion he
defends, the search for simplicity has led Rimini to break the link between
constitution and distinction that many medieval theologians had more or
less explicitly held. And Rimini, in response to arguments of Scotus trying
to show that what constitutes something also makes it distinct, arguments
examined in Chapter Six above, says explicitly that this does not hold in
utterly simple beings. Scotus and the other theologians who had insisted on
personal constitution were led astray, Rimini seems to suggest, by having
anchored themselves too firmly in the created world, where constitution
and distinction are in fact equivalent.243 In God this is not the case.
Although they are not constituted, the three persons are distinct, distinct
in and of themselves. Rimini proves this second conclusion appealing once
again to the one non-negotiable fact: divine simplicity. The persons are just
as simple as the divine essence or any thinkable property; therefore, just
as essence or property (if there were one) does not include components
that are distinct in any way, neither do the persons. Thus, the persons are
not made distinct through or by anything, but are distinct in and of them-
242 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “… nullatenus aestimandum est esse in Deo aliquid
realiter constitutum per aliquod formale vel materiale constitutivum, sed omne, quod ibi
est, se ipso formaliter et non per aliquid sui transitive loquendo est omne quod est, quamvis
ibi sit vere producens et qui producitur, et productus a producente habeat esse. Propter
quod huiusmodi vocabula ‘constitutivum’, ‘constitutio’, et ‘constitutum’, et similia, in sensu
praemisso non convenienter, ut videtur, assumuntur ad divina, et melius esset non uti eis
in materia ista, et pro certo nullibi invenio Augustinum aut alium aliquem illius temporis
sanctorum, ubi locuti sunt de distinctione divinarum personarum, talibus usum fuisse
vocabulis.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 633–12.
243 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “Ad illud vero quod ulterius additur in argumento,
scilicet quod ‘unumquodque eo constituitur, quo distinguitur ab aliis’, dicendum hoc non
esse universaliter verum, quoniam non in his quae nullo constituuntur, quale est omne
simplex. In his autem, quae ex aliquibus constituuntur, habet veritatem, quoniam sua
constitutiva sunt etiam, per quae illud ab aliis est distinctum.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 7810–14.
For Scotus’ argument, see Ch. 6, at and around n. 56.
selves.244 There cannot be a more basic source of distinction between the

persons than the persons themselves. Yet, for all of the confidence with
which Rimini presents this Praepositinian view, he is well aware that it is
controversial, and he attempts to downplay the novelty of his idea by claim-
ing that “also ancient doctors maintained” this second conclusion, “and
even some moderns now defend it”.245 Moreover, Rimini responds to a set
of five objections about the view, objections taken from Aquinas, Scotus,
and Ockham.246 In the course of answering these objections, Rimini fleshes
out some of the details of his Praepositinian view. Thus, in reply to the
objection that the Father refers to the Son by one relation and to the Holy
Spirit by a different one, Rimini replies that “the same absolutely simple
entity, which is the Father, is spiration and paternity, and corresponds to
filiation in the Son and to the coopposite spiration in the Holy Spirit.”247
Another obvious objection is that, since the persons are identical in the
essence and yet are personally distinct, they cannot be distinct in and of
themselves; there must be a ground for their distinction or they would be
merely identical. Rimini answers that personal distinction through proper-
ties distinct in any way from the persons themselves is equivalent to con-
stitution, and “nothing constituted from common and proper is simple”.248
Nevertheless, Rimini claims that “something is the Father that is not dis-
tinct from the Son, namely the divine essence”.249 Thus, Rimini like Walter
244 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “… personae sunt summe et omnino simplices, ita quod
nec essentia simplicior est personis, nec aliqua proprietas est cogitabilis in persona nec est
simplicior quam ipsa persona, et per consequens nulla aliquo modo inter se distincta includit
ipsa persona. Igitur qualibet persona a quocumque distinguitur, se ipsa et non aliquo sui
primo transitive loquendo distinguitur.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, pp. 6325–642. See also Rimini’s
parallel argument in n. 240 above.
245 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “Contra istam conclusionem, quam et antiqui doctores
posuerunt, ac etiam aliqui moderni nunc defendunt …” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 644–5.
Although Gregory clearly believes that, e.g., Jerome holds this view, it is interesting to note
that in d. 26–27 itself Rimini mentioned in marginal notation a position of Praepositinus (cf.
ed. cit., p. 73 n. 3); it seems likely that the “modern doctors” Rimini mentions are Chatton and
Rubio, although we may never know for certain.
246 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2 (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, pp. 64–65 [objections], pp. 65–
69 [Rimini’s responses]).
247 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “… eadem entitas simplicissima, quae est Pater,
est spiratio et paternitas, et correspondet filiationi in Filio et spirationi cooppositae in

Spiritu Sancto.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 6615–17. For some of these arguments against
Praepositinianism, see Ch. 11, above, in the Excursus.
248 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “… nullum constitutum ex communi et proprio est
simplex.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 6918.

249 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “… aliquid tamen est Pater quod non distinguitur a
Filio, scilicet essentia divina.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, p. 6724–25.

854 chapter twelve
Chatton, Robert Holcot, and William of Rubio, does not explain the trinitar-
ian mystery, but merely restates it: Father and Son are essentially the same
and personally distinct.
The third conclusion, that there can be no properties that are entities
belonging to the persons and making them distinct, Rimini proves using a
battery of arguments similar to the ones we have already seen. Thus, here
Rimini focuses on his most basic point: that if there were properties like
this, the simplicity of the divine persons would be compromised.250 But the
fourth conclusion—that properties understood to be complex statements
about the divine allow us to know that the persons are distinct but are not
themselves sources of distinction—is basically proven by appeals to author-
ity. Indeed, the reason why Rimini seems to have needed this conclusion is
to deal with authoritative passages that appear to have mentioned prop-
erties understood to be entities. For example, Rimini examines a passage
from Lombard’s I Sentences, d. 27, a passage that at one time had evoked a
great deal of debate over whether the Father generates because he is Father
or whether he is Father because he generates.251 There Lombard says that
the Father’s property “is because he always begat, and this is called pater-
nity or generation”. In that text, then, Lombard appears to move from a
state of affairs (the Father’s always begetting) to a term that labels that state
of affairs. For Rimini this just goes to show that when we are confronted
in an authoritative text with terms like ‘paternity’ or ‘filiation’, ‘generation’
or ‘nativity’, and these terms appear to signify entities belonging to the
persons, the terms should in fact be expanded into their proper, complex
descriptions of divine reality, most particularly a description of the order
that obtains between the persons. It is true, of course, that the Father gen-
erates the Son, but it is not true that the Father has generation; rather the
Father is generation, he is the source of the Son.252 And all other “proper-
ties” can be converted into a description of the order obtaining between the
persons, describing “from whom a person comes” (de quo aliquis) and “who
250 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2 (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, pp. 69–74).
251 See Lombard, I Sent., d. 27, pars 1, cc. 1–3; and cf. Ch. 1, above, at and around n. 50.
252 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “Notandum autem quod, quamvis proprie huius-
modi proprietates non nisi complexe valeant significari, aliquando tamen invenimus eas
significatas fore in scripturis incomplexis nominibus et abstractis. Sed tunc talia nomina
aequivalent in significando praedictis complexis et orationibus. Haec patent per Magistrum
27 distinctione, ubi dicit quod proprietas Patris ‘est quia semper genuit, et haec dicitur pater-
nitas vel generatio’ .... Et ideo, quando invenitur a sanctis quod proprietates sunt essentiae vel
personae, intelligendae sunt proprietates primo modo.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3, pp. 7531–762,
p. 7729–30. On properties primo modo, see at and around n. 232 above.
comes from this person” (qui de aliquo), descriptions, as Rimini tells us, that
are sometimes called the divine relations.253 In this way, Rimini gives his
own method for neutralizing authoritative passages that apparently conflict
with his trinitarian ideas: in an authoritative text when a term appears to sig-
nify a distinct personal property “in” a persons, that term needs only to be
expanded into a complex statment in order to see that it is merely a descrip-
tion of God’s trinitarian reality, not an independently existing properties. In
other words, terms like that are really just abbreviations for a description of
how things are in God, and not a personal property distinct in any way from
the divine person. This is Rimini’s marginalization strategy, and its purpose
is to open up the space he needs to reject personal properties (as commonly
understood in his day) and adopt Praepositinianism.
This, then, is the core of Gregory of Rimini’s trinitarian view: out-and-
out Praepositinianism. We can see how it plays out in his trinitarian system
by briefly examining Rimini’s solution to one issue that we have followed
throughout this book: the distinction of the Son from the Holy Spirit if the
latter does not come from the former. Rimini claims at the outset of his
discussion that this question can be dealt with in two ways: either as an
investigation of the sufficiency of filiation to make the Son distinct from the
Holy Spirit, or as an investigation of the possibility of proving against the
Greeks that the Holy Spirit comes from both the Father and the Son, when
the only information given is that the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct
from each other.254 With regard to the first of these investigations, Rimini
mentions the view that, in the Son, not only active spiration makes the Son
distinct from the Holy Spirit, but that filiation does too, and on account of
this, if the Son did not spirate the Holy Spirit, they would still be distinct
on account of filiation. As examples of those holding this position, Rimini
offers Henry of Ghent (and mentions Henry’s claim that active spiration is
quasi-incidental [quasi adventitia] to the Son), Peter Auriol, and William
253 Rimini, I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2: “… patet primo quod quaedam nomina praedicata de
Deo significant ‘quia est de quo aliquis’ et ‘qui de aliquo etc.’, et sic aequivalent in significando
complexis. Item, patet quod talia significata etiam vocantur relationes.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 3,
p. 7621–23.
254 Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1: “Haec quaestio potest in duplici sensu tractari: uno modo
ad videndum an praecise per hoc quod Filius spirat Spiritum Sanctum et Spiritus Sanctus
spiratur et procedit a Filio, Filius distinguatur a Spiritu Sancto, vel non per hoc tantum, sed
et per aliquid aliud distinguitur Filius a Spiritu Sancto .... Secundo potest tractari quaestio
ad videndum utrum ex hoc quod Spiritus Sanctus distinguitur a Filio, possit concludi quod
procedat ab eo, et hoc propter Graecos qui concedunt primum et negant secundum …” Ed.
Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 1781–4,10–13.
856 chapter twelve
Ockham, discussing briefly each of their positions.255 Rimini claims that

these views have two assumptions in common: 1) that in the Son there are
both spiration and filiation in such a way that the Son is really distinct from
the Holy Spirit on account of each of them, and 2) that the Son is constituted
in personal being through filiation.256 Unsurprisingly Rimini rejects both
of these assumptions flat, giving several arguments for this rejection, all
rooted in his view of divine simplicity and working from his dismissal of
personal constitution and of personal properties.257 Rimini replies, then, to
this question in the following way:
If in the first sense we ask through what the Son is made distinct from the Holy
Spirit, I say that he is distinct in and of himself and not through something
belonging to him, speaking according to an intransitive construction. And
this is proven from the fact that the Son is an absolutely simple person, not
including many things distinct in any way from each other, and so, from
whomever he is distinct, he is distinct in and of himself natively (primo) ....
And further … I say that besides spiration there is nothing in the Son through
which he is made distinct from the Holy Spirit. This is clear because the
absolutely simple person of the Son is spiration and vice versa. But nothing
is in the Son that is not the Son and the person of the Son, and consequently
[nothing is in the Son] that is not spiration.258
255 Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1: “… dicitur a multis quod in Filio praeter spirationem
activam, in qua distinguitur a Spiritu Sancto, est aliud distinctivum in quo distinguitur
ab eo, scilicet filiatio, ita quod, si per impossibile circumscriberetur a Filio spiratio activa,
remanente filiatione, adhuc Filius distingueretur a Spiritu Sancto.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2,
p. 17824–28. Rimini discusses Henry’s, Auriol’s, and Ockham’s opinions at ibid., pp. 178–179,
and Rimini is rather careful in his description of Auriol’s and Ockham’s views to say that
something (but not the Son) would be distinct from the Holy Spirit, given the counterfactual
(see, e.g., n. 256 below).
256 Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1: “Hi omnes conveniunt in duobus, ut patet: unum est quod
in Filio est spiratio et praeter illam etiam est in eo filiatio, per quarum utramque realiter
Filius distinguitur a Spiritu Sancto, et quod, si spiratio circumscriberetur a Filio et filiatio
remaneret, adhuc remaneret aliquod constitutum ex filiatione et essentia, quod realiter
distingueretur a Spiritu Sancto. Secundum est quod Filius constituitur in esse personali per
ipsam filiationem.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 18120–25.
257 For these arguments see Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1 (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, pp. 18126–
18317).
258 Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1: “Si ergo in primo sensu quaeratur per quid Filius distingui-
tur a Spiritu Sancto, dico quod se ipso et non aliquo sui secundum intransitivam construc-
tionem loquendo. Hoc autem probatur ex hoc quia Filius est persona simplicissima, nulla
plura et inter se aliquo modo distincta includens, et ideo, a quocumque distinguitur, se ipso
primo distinguitur .... Et ulterius … dico quod praeter spirationem non est in Filio aliquid,
quo ipse distinguatur a Spiritu Sancto. Quod patet, quia ipsa persona Filii simplicissima est
spiratio et e converso. Nihil autem est in Filio quod non sit Filius et persona Filii, et per con-
sequens quod non sit ipsa spiratio.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 18411–21.
Rimini, then, rejects the Franciscan reasoning that had led to such views
as Henry of Ghent’s and John Duns Scotus’, who maintained that filiation
is the most basic constitutive property of the Son and that, consequently,
the Son would still be the Son if the Son did not actively spirate the Holy
Spirit. Rimini also rejects such views as Auriol’s and Ockham’s, according
to which passive generation on its own was able to constitute something,
although not the Son. For Gregory of Rimini, the Son has no properties and is
totally unconstituted—otherwise the Son would not be perfectly simple—,
and hence ‘active spiration’ and ‘Son’ are merely two different words for the
same divine person,259 and this divine person is distinct se ipso primo, in and
of himself natively, from the Holy Spirit.
This first investigation primes Rimini for the second part of his discus-
sion, and this concerns whether it is even possible for the Son and the Holy
Spirit to be distinct from one another if the latter does not come from the
former, or whether the Greek rejection of the Filioque can be shown to be
wrong. Despite his having linked this question to the Greeks, Rimini appears
in fact to be uninterested in the Greek view: he takes it as axiomatic that the
Holy Spirit comes from both the Father and the Son (and this on the basis
of the faith). Working from this, his reply to the issue is clearly motivated by
the view that lay behind what I have been calling the “highest impossibil-
ity argument”: in God there is only absolute necessity, and therefore if the
Father and the Son in fact spirate the Holy Spirit together, then it is as impos-
sible as can be that they do not spirate the Holy Spirit together. Thus, Rimini
argues that, since the Father cannot produce more or otherwise than he
does now, if the Father and the Son did not produce the Holy Spirit together,
the Holy Spirit would not be produced. In other words, the Father on his own
could not “make up” for the Son’s not spirating; Father and Son must spirate
together if there is to be spiration at all.260 Given this argument, which runs
259 In this context, Rimini distinguishes between properties existing in re and properties
that are mere descriptions and through which distinction is made known, holding consis-
tently with his view in d. 26–27 (see at and around nn. 232–235 above) that only properties
that are mere descriptions correspond to God’s trinitarian reality (and involve no ontological
commitment); see Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1 (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 18319–37).
260 Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 2: “Filius est per se principium Spiritus Sancti; ergo, si Filius
non produceret Spiritum Sanctum, Spiritus Sanctus non produceretur, et per consequens
non esset .... si Filius non produceret, nullum aliud productivum supplere posset productiv-
itatem eius; nec ipse Pater nunc producens plus aut aliter producere posset quam nunc, et
per consequens ipse supplere non posset productivitatem Filii respectu Spiritus Sancti. Ex
quo sequitur quod Spiritus Sanctus non produceretur.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 18710–12,20–24.
Rimini gives two further arguments ibid., pp. 186–188, for the position that the Holy Spirit
858 chapter twelve
directly counter to Franciscan views on the sufficiency of the Father on his

own perfectly to produce the Holy Spirit,261 it is no surprise at all that Rimini
dismisses the traditional Franciscan view as found in Henry of Ghent and
John Duns Scotus, i.e., that, if the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son,
the Holy Spirit would still be distinct from the Son. More interesting is that
Rimini appears also to be committed to rejecting the Dominican view that,
if the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son, then the Son and the Holy
Spirit would simply be the same person and hence not distinct. Above, we
saw that the Dominicans posited this view in order to deny the Franciscan
view while at the same time allowing the counterfactual question. For,
e.g., Hervaeus Natalis, you can ask whether the Son and the Holy Spirit
would be distinct if the latter did not come from the former—this is a
legitimate question—, but since counterfactuals do not have any existential
import, the answer to the question is “no”, since the Holy Spirit would
not exist and hence would not be distinct from the Son. It would appear
that Rimini takes the matter one step further; for him, if you maintain
that both the Holy Spirit and the Son exist, and at the same time you
maintain that the Holy Spirit does not come from the Son, then you are
necessarily maintaining contradictories at once, namely that the Son and
the Holy Spirit are distinct and not distinct. His argument for this position
is that the Son and the Holy Spirit would both exist as distinct from one
another, since (appealing to his Praepositinianism) they are distinct from
one another in and of themselves, and yet the Holy Spirit would not exist,
since the Holy Spirit is the Gift of the Father and of the Son, and cannot
exist in any other way than as spirated by the two of them. Hence the Holy
Spirit would both exist and not exist, and, although Rimini does not say
this explicitly, it would appear that no type of logical maneuver (à la the
Dominicans) could possibly mitigate the contradiction (precisely because,
can only exist if he proceeds from both the Father and the Son, one of which is based on
attestations from both Paul and Augustine that the Holy Spirit is the Gift of the Father and
the Son. On this argument, see also n. 262 below.
261 See, e.g., Eustace of Arras (Ch. 2, § 3, above), John Pecham (Ch. 2, at and around nn. 54–
55), John Duns Scotus (Ch. 6, n. 130), Peter Auriol (Ch. 9, n. 91). More specifically, Rimini’s view
is a tacit repudiation of the position, current at least since William of Auvergne (see Ch. 6,
above, at n. 15) and commonly seen in the Franciscan trinitarian tradition in the context
of the counterfactual question concerning the Holy Spirit, that the Father can depend in
no way on the Son; on the other hand, since Rimini would undoubtedly deny that he was
claiming that the Father does “depend” on the Son, he would have to maintain that the
Franciscan argument cannot prove what it claims to prove, since he arrives at the opposite
conclusion.
for Rimini, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct in and of themselves).262
Rimini says that exactly the same inference would be made about the claim
that the Son is unproduced and yet is distinct from the Father: the very
assumption involves the contradictories that the Son is both distinct and
not distinct from the Father.263 Rimini here comes extremely close to the
most radical expression of the “highest impossibility” argument, which had
been rejected by Franciscans and Dominicans alike since the 1280’s:264 the
counterfactual question about the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son
involves the assumption of incompossibles, and hence the question itself
is unintelligible.
Two things become clear from the examination of Gregory of Rimini’s
treatment of the topic of the Holy Spirit’s distinction from the Son. First,
his Praepositinianism is fully evident as is the fact that divine simplicity
is the motivation behind it. Rejection of personal properties and personal
constitution are an integral part of Rimini’s trinitarian theology.265 Second,
Rimini is a stickler not only for divine simplicity but also for divine necessity,
so much so that he believes that the truth of the Filioque is incontestable
exclusively on the basis of the position of the faith and the exigency of divine
necessity.
262 Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 2: “… supposito quod Spiritus Sanctus esset et similiter Fil-
ius esset, et tamen Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, numquid distingueretur ab illo?
Respondeo quod ista suppositio includit contradictoria. Nam ponit Spiritum Sanctum esse,
et quia cum hoc etiam ponit ipsum non procedere a Filio, simul ponit Donum Patris et Filii
non esse et per consequens, cum Spiritus Sanctus non sit nisi Donum Patris et Filii, ponit Spir-
itum Sanctum non esse. Propter quod ex ista hypothesi includente contradictoria sequuntur
contradictoria, videlicet quod distingueretur et non distingueretur a Filio. Distingueretur
quidem, quia uterque esset, et uterque ab altero se ipso distinguitur, sicut dictum est in primo
articulo. Non distingueretur autem, quia Spiritus Sanctus non esset.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2,
p. 1888–18.
263 Rimini, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 2 (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 18818–32).
264 See, e.g., Ch. 5, above, at and around nn. 101–116.
265 A further excellent example of the way Rimini’s Praepositinianism lies at the heart of
his trinitarian theology is found in his I Sent., d. 4 (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 1, pp. 426–440), where
he investigates whether the Father’s generating (generare) is in the Father. Here, Rimini
distinguishes two main ways of taking the term ‘generation’. If what is meant by ‘generation’
is the act of generating, then generation is the Son and is really distinct from the Father. If
what is meant by ‘generation’ is the respect between Father and Son, then generation is the
Father and is really distinct from the Son. Thereby, Rimini eliminates any hint of properties
in God. Since this text, however, is a Quaestio additionalis—one of the texts that Rimini took
away from the final version of his Sent. commentary—I have decided not to deal with it at
length.
860 chapter twelve
B. Rimini and the Psychological Model

Rimini’s rejection of the psychological model is just as uncompromising
as is his rejection of traditional ideas on personal properties and constitu-
tion. The heart of the rejection is found in a prolonged investigation into
the nature of the source (principium) of the emanations, found in Rimini’s I
Sentences, d. 7, q. 1, a. 2.266 The discussion there takes its point of departure
in a common medieval distinction between a source that acts, a princip-
ium quod, and a source by or through which something else acts, a prin-
cipium quo. Everyone agrees, according to Rimini, that it is the Father who
generates—i.e. the Father is the principium quod—but there are a variety
of positions concerning the principium quo.267 Rimini offers as examples of
this variety of views those of Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome, of Scotus,
and of Ockham, all attempting to show that the divine essence is the source
by which the Father produces the Son through generation, as well as that
of William of Ware, who argued that the Father’s personal property is the
principium quo of generating.268 What all of these views have in common,
Rimini informs us, is that “each of them postulates a productive source of
the Son that does not produce the Son but is that by which the Father pro-
duces.” Thus, they all claim there to be two sources of generation in God,
a principium quod, the Father, and a principium quo, a source by which the
Father generates.269 Totally in line with his marked tendency to reject any
266 In the first article of this distinction (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, pp. 1–14) Rimini criticizes
at length Auriol’s view (found in Scriptum, d. 7, a. 2; ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 849–857) that
there is no productive source of generation (related as it is to the view that the emanations
are unelicited) as well as the associated view that the relations are merely markers of logical
order. For Rimini this is tantamount to saying that the Father does not really produce the Son
and hence it is clearly false (for a similar type of argument, see Baconthorpe, at and around
n. 47 above).
267 Rimini, I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2: “Quantum ad secundum articulum communiter distingui-
tur de duplici principio. Nam est principium quod agit et est principium quo agens agit ....
Quantum ad propositum conveniunt de principio generationis divinae quod generat, nam
illud est Pater. Sed de principio, quod quidem non generat, sed est illud per quod Pater gen-
erat, est diversitas opinionum.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 147–8,11–14. Basing himself on the
canons of the Fourth Lateran Council, Rimini had shown in I Sent., d. 5, that the divine
essence, taken as a principium quod, could neither generate nor be generated (ed. Trapp et
al., vol. 1, esp. pp. 450–451).
268 Rimini, I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2 (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, pp. 1415–166). On Ockham’s ideas
on the essence being the quo agit of the divine productions, see Ch. 10, above, at and around
n. 100.
269 Rimini, I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2: “Hae opiniones, sicut patet, conveniunt in hoc, quod
quaelibet ponit principium aliquod productivum Filii quod non producit Filium, sed est
quo Pater producit. Et sic ponunt duplex principium quod et quo iuxta communem modum
distinction in God except the distinction between the persons, Rimini dis-
misses the idea of there being any principium quo productive of the Son
that is in any way distinct from the principium quod that actually produces
the Son, i.e. distinct from the Father. For one thing, argues Rimini, if the
Father generated the Son through something other than himself, then that
other thing would in some way be the cause of the Father, and the Father
would depend on it. Indeed, wherever the principium quod is distinct from
the principium quo, the principium quo in some way perfects or constitutes
the principium quod, just as fire is dependent in some sense for its existence
as fire on the form of heat through which the fire heats things. This depen-
dency of the Father on the principium quo Rimini finds to be unacceptable
and expressly contradicting the saints.270 Just as importantly, Rimini argues
that the postulation of a principium quo distinct in any way from the princip-
ium quod would compromise the absolute simplicity of the divine persons.
Thus, Rimini argues that since the source that generates God the Son, i.e. the
Father, is infinitely simple, it must produce in and of itself natively (se ipso
primo). This follows from the fact that the Father clearly could not produce
through something extrinsic to him, but neither could he produce through
something belonging to him intrinsically (aliquod sui intrinsece), because
whatever that was would have to be in some sense distinct from the Father
and thereby compromise his simplicity. Hence, since the Father produces in
and of himself natively, he does not produce through anything else.271 Thus,
distinguendi. Differunt autem in assignando illud principium quo. Mihi salvo meliori iudicio
apparet quod in utroque deficiant.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 168–12.
270 Rimini, I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2: “Secundo, si Pater aliquo alio a se generaret tamquam prin-
cipio quo, aliquid esset aliquo modo causa Patris. Hoc autem est expresse contra sanctos.
Consequentia probatur, quia omne quod agit per aliquid aliud, aliquo modo habet esse vel
tale esse per illud. Unde, nisi ignis esset calidus per calorem seu per calorem informaretur,
non plus calefaceret per calorem quam infrigidaret per frigiditatem aquae. Unde in quibus-
cumque talia principia quo et quod distinguuntur, principium quo est forma constituens vel
perficiens ipsum principium quod.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 176–13.
271 Rimini, I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2: “… principium producens Filium se ipso primo producit;
igitur non est aliquod principium quo aliud a principio quod producit. Consequentia patet,
si enim sit aliud principium quo producens producit et aliud principium ipsum producens,
iam non se ipso primo producit sed alio principio. Antecedens probo, si enim non produceret
se ipso primo, cum per se producat, produceret primo per aliquod sui. Aut igitur per aliquod,
quod est sui extrinsece, et hoc dici non potest, cum nihil tale locum habeat in Deo, aut per
aliquod quod est sui intrinsece, et nec hoc, quia omne quod producit primo per aliquod
intrinsecum sibi et non se ipso includit in se aliquam entitatem ultra id per quod dicitur
primo producere, ac per hoc ad minus duas entitates includit. Hoc autem est impossibile de
principio quod generat Deum, cum ipsum sit infinitae simplicitatis.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2,
pp. 1618–175. A second lengthy argument for the same point from divine simplicity is found
ibid. (ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 1714–31).
862 chapter twelve
in order to dismiss any form of principium quo, Rimini appeals to the same
sort of argument that we saw him use against the existence of personal prop-
erties: any entity intrinsic to the persons but distinct in some way from the
person would compromise divine simplicity; hence there is only a princip-
ium quod of generation, i.e. the Father himself. In fact, Rimini’s rejection of
personal properties and of a principium quo have precisely the same motiva-
tion: there can be absolutely nothing by or through which any of the divine
persons are made distinct; as we have seen, they are distinct in and of them-
selves.
Moreover, after having proven to his own satisfaction the general conclu-
sion that there is no principium quo by which or through which the Father
produces the Son, Rimini looks specially at the divine essence as a possible
principium quo. The divine essence cannot be the principium quo since the
divine essence is not really distinct from the product of generation, the Son.
But any source of generating must be really distinct from what is generated.
It cannot be maintained that, because the essence is a principium quo and
not a principium quod, essence and person do not have to be really distinct,
because, Rimini argues, if they were not really distinct we could not tell the
two apart and would not know in which direction production flowed, i.e.
which was product and which principium quo.272 Furthermore, if the essence
were in any way a source of the Son’s generation, then the essence could be
called ‘source’ relatively to the Son’s generation; but this is, of course, not
possible, since the essence is not relative to the persons at all.273
Thus, for Rimini, there is no principium quo, no power or source through
which, e.g., the Father gives being to the Son; there is only the Father
who is the principium quod of the Son, and Father and Son who are one
272 Rimini, I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2: “… omne principium generandi est realiter distinctum
a generatione vel a genito. Essentia divina non est realiter distincta a generatione divina
nec a genito Deo. Igitur non est principium generandi genitum Deum. Minor patet; maior
probatur, quia omne principium distinguitur ab eo cuius est principium, omne autem
principium generandi est principium generationis vel geniti. Ad hanc rationem dicitur quod
principium quod utique distinguitur a principiato, non autem principium quo. Contra: si hoc
esset verum, non magis principium quo esset principium principiati quam e converso …”
Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, pp. 1734–184. Gregory himself attributes the objection here to Thomas
Aquinas. Note that Ockham had argued that the formal distinction between the essence and
emanation was sufficient to block the type of argument that Rimini advances here; see Ch. 10,
above, at and around n. 105. Behind Rimini’s arguments here appears to lie the conviction
that there is no extramental distinction midway between a real distinction and full identity.
273 Rimini, I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2: “… si essentia esset principium generationis vel Filii,
essentia diceretur relative principium ad illam vel illum. Consequens falsum; consequentia
patet, quia …” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 195–7.
single principium quod of the Holy Spirit.274 On this basis, Rimini makes
short work of the strong use of the psychological model, the foundation
of which, as we have seen, was a tight link between the productions or
emanations, generation and spiration, and the divine attributes, intellect
and will, respectively. Referring explicitly to the arguments that we have just
examined from his I Sentences, d. 7, Rimini reasons as follows with regard
to the will as source of the Holy Spirit. The divine essence common to the
persons is not the principium quod of either the Son or the Holy Spirit, since
it neither generates nor is generated, neither spirates nor is spirated (Rimini
argued for this common scholastic position in d. 5 of his I Sentences); since
this is the case, and since (as he showed in d. 8) the divine will is in no way
distinct from the divine essence, neither is the divine will a principium quod.
But, as we have seen, he showed in d. 7 that there was no principium quo
distinct from the principium quod when it came to the divine productions.
Thus, in no way whatsoever is the divine will productive of the Holy Spirit.275
Moreover, the divine will, just as the divine essence, is completely identical
274 On the Father and Son as one spirator of the Holy Spirit, see Rimini, I Sent., d. 12, q. 1
(ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, pp. 190–196), and see also n. 278 below. This position of Rimini’s
allows us to note some difference among those who hold a Praepositinian view: the later
Chatton and William of Rubio both admit that in some sense the divine essence is the source
of the emanations, since for them Word and Love are in some sense proper names of Son and
Holy Spirit, and this requires that God’s intellectual nature is the source of the emanations—
with it understood, of course, that we are talking about the essence as Father in the case of
generation, and essence as Father and Son in the case of spiration. Cf. Chatton, Lectura, d. 7,
q. 1, n. 84: “Ad istum igitur articulum potest dici quod essentiae divinae convenit, in quantum
est natura intellectualis talis personae, quod ipsa sit potentia productiva secundae personae
quae est Verbum, quia productio secundae personae est dicere, igitur requirit per se quod
eius principium sit natura intellectualis.” Ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 41511–15; cp. Rubio,
I Sent., d. 7, q. 2, a. 2 (ed. 1518, f. 117rb) and nn. 222–226 above.
275 Rimini, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 1: “… conformiter ad illud quod supra distinctione 7 dictum
est de principio productivo Filii, dico quod voluntas non est principium Spiritus Sancti
productivum. Quod probo per similes rationes, quibus probatum est quod essentia non est
principium productivum Filii, primo sic: omne quod est principium productivum Spiritus
Sancti, producit Spiritum Sanctum; voluntas divina non producit Spiritum Sanctum; ergo,
etc. Minor patet, quia, sicut essentia communis personis non generat aut generatur, nec
spirat aut spiratur, ut dicit concilium, sic nec voluntas, cum voluntas sit essentia adaequate et
omnibus modis ex natura rei. Maior vero probatur, quia in Deo non distinguitur principium
productivum quo a principio quod producit, ut ibi hscil., d. 7i probatum est; igitur omne
quod in Deo est principium productivum, producit, et per consequens omne principium
productivum Spiritus Sancti producit Spiritum Sanctum.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 1603–15.
On the discussion in d. 5, see n. 267 above; for Rimini’s discussion of the absolute identity of
the divine attributes with the essence and with each other, see I Sent., d. 8, q. 1 (ed. Trapp et
al., vol. 2, pp. 25–48, esp. 37–41), and cf. n. 277 below.
864 chapter twelve
with the Holy Spirit; therefore it cannot be productive of the Holy Spirit.276 It
should be noted that these arguments depend on yet another manifestation
of Rimini’s engagement in the search for simplicity: his insistence that the
divine attributes are in reality (ex natura rei) utterly indistinct from the
essence and utterly the same as it.277
Thus, the Father and the Son are the productive source of the Holy Spirit,
and, even though the Father and the Son are the divine will, you can no more
say that the will is the productive source of the Holy Spirit than you can
say that, because the Father is the divine essence and the Father generates,
therefore the essence generates.278 Mutatis mutandis, the same is true of the
Father and the intellect with respect to the production of the Son. Rimini’s,
then, is an uncompromising rejection of the basis for the strong use of the
psychological model: intellect plays no role in the generation of the Son, will
plays no role in the spiration of the Holy Spirit. Given this uncompromising
rejection, however, Rimini must address one crucial question: why do we
find in the Bible and other foundational texts of the Christian tradition
terms like ‘Word’ being applied to the Son? He deals with this question
when he considers whether spiration is generation. His answer is clear:
spiration is not generation, just as the Holy Spirit is not the Son, and we
know this from the Bible and the creeds and Augustine and other Church
Fathers. Nevertheless, Rimini is just as clear that we have no idea why or
how spiration is not generation. He says:
Thus, I say that spiration and generation are distinct productions and are
formally distinct in and of themselves, just as the Son, who is generation, and
the Holy Spirit, who is spiration, are distinct in and of themselves, as was said
above, and [I say] that spiration is not generation nor is generation spiration,
just as the Holy Spirit is not the Son nor is the Son the Holy Spirit, i.e. the Gift,
and [I say] that the procession of the Holy Spirit is spiration because the Holy
Spirit is the Holy Spirit or the Gift, and the procession or production of the
Son is generation because the Son is the Son or the Word. But that he is the
276 Rimini, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 1: “… voluntas divina est Spiritus Sanctus; ergo voluntas divina
non est productiva Spiritus Sancti.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 16016–17.
277 Rimini, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1: “… voluntas divina est penitus indistincta ex natura rei ab ipsa
essentia et omnino sibi eadem, ut supra patet distinctione 8.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 15925–26.
278 Rimini, I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 1: “… cum dicitur quod ‘talis persona producitur a voluntate
tamquam a principio elicitivo’, nego; sed dico quod producitur a Patre et Filio, qui sunt
voluntas, et Pater et Filius, qui sunt voluntas, sunt principium productivum Spiritus Sancti.
Nec ex hoc sequitur quod voluntas sit principium productivum Spiritus Sancti, sicut non
sequitur ‘Pater qui est essentia generat, ergo essentia generat’.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2,
p. 16223–28.
Word and the Son but is not the Gift, and consequently that his production,
which is quite simply he (thus ‘production of the Son’ is said intransitively,
i.e. [so that it means] ‘which is the Son’), is generation and not spiration, and
that [the Holy Spirit] is the Gift but is not the Word or the Son, and for that
reason that his production is spiration and is not generation, I say that it is not
possible for me to understand .... But although we cannot understand these
things, nevertheless we confess and believe that it truly is this way.279
In Gregory of Rimini’s trinitarian theology, we have come full circle. As was

noted above, in his treatment of the distinction between the persons, Rimini
did not really explain anything, but merely restated the trinitarian mystery;
this same characteristic can be seen also in his handling of the issues
surrounding the emanations and the psychological model. For Rimini, there
are no personal properties, no emanations or relations, by which or through
which the persons are distinct, the persons just are distinct in and of
themselves. Thus, generation is the Son—they are totally identical—, and
spiration is the Holy Spirit. And since we know that the Son is distinct
from the Holy Spirit, so we know that generation is distinct from spiration.
There is nothing really to understand about this matter, and, as Rimini
here admits, we have no idea why this is so; we cannot explain this fact,
even though we must acknowledge that it is a fact on the basis of Scripture
and the writings of the saints. Each production is “ineffable and to us
incomprehensible in our present state”,280 and on account of this we must
make do with faith. There is a corresponding claim with regard to the terms
279 Rimini, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1: “Dico ergo quod spiratio et generatio sunt distinctae produc-
tiones et se ipsis formaliter sunt distinctae, sicut Filius qui est generatio et Spiritus Sanctus
qui est spiratio sunt se ipsis distincti, ut supra dicebatur, et quod spiratio non est generatio
nec generatio est spiratio, sicut Spiritus Sanctus non est Filius nec Filius est Spiritus Sanc-
tus, id est Donum; et quod processio Spiritus Sancti ideo est spiratio, quia Spiritus Sanctus
est Spiritus Sanctus seu Donum, et processio seu productio Filii est generatio, quia Filius est
Filius seu Verbum. Quod autem iste sit Verbum et Filius, non sit autem Donum, et per con-
sequens eius productio, quae non est nisi ipse (unde dicitur productio Filii intransitive, id
est quae est Filius), sit generatio et non spiratio, et quod ille sit Donum, non sit autem Ver-
bum nec Filius, ac per hoc eius productio sit spiratio et non sit generatio, dico quod non est
mihi possibile intelligere … Quamvis autem ista intelligere non possumus, veraciter tamen
sic esse confitemur et credimus.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, pp. 19922–2005.
280 Rimini, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1: “Quamvis autem ita sit, differentiam tamen spirationis a
generatione et cur productio Filii sit generatio, non autem productio Spiritus Sancti, et cur
Spiritus Sanctus non sit etiam Filius, ita ut ambo producti dicantur Filii et geniti, in vita ista
per tales, quales nos sumus, explicari reputo impossibile. Et ratio est quia productio utraque
est ineffabilis et incomprehensibilis a nobis in statu praesenti …” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2,
p. 19725–30. Paul Vignaux (1935, 97–98) uses this passage as evidence in his short discussion
of fideism among “nominalist” trinitarian theologies; also Bainton 1953, 42–43 (which should
be read with caution).
866 chapter twelve
‘Word’ and ‘Gift’: we know from the Bible that the Son is the Word, but we do
not know why. As we have seen, Rimini rejects that this has anything to do
with the Son’s intellectual procession from the paternal intellect. The same
is true of the Holy Spirit’s being the Gift. Appealing to a principle similar
to one we saw Walter Chatton use, Rimini tells us very precisely why any
attempt to justify the link between Son and Word and between Holy Spirit
and Gift fails:
… it is just as unknown to us that the Holy Spirit is not the Word of the Father
and the Son as it is that his production is not generation. And it is just as
unclear (immanifestum) that he is not the Word as that he is not the Son.
Thus, since the Holy Spirit is just as similar to the Father and the Son as the
Son is similar to the Father, and [since] intellection and volition are in no way
in reality distinguished in God, it is not apparent why the Holy Spirit is not a
Word that the Father and the Son produce by understanding themselves just
as the Son is indeed the Word that the Father produces by understanding
himself.281
Just as we saw with Chatton,282 for Rimini there are no distinguishing fea-
tures that set off the persons from each other (with the one exception,
noted above [nn. 252–253], of their order); the Holy Spirit is just as sim-
ilar to the Father and the Son as the latter two are to each other. All we
know is that the persons are distinct from each other in and of themselves,
and this explains—as Rimini here admits—nothing. We have also several
names applied specially to particular persons, like ‘Word’ and ‘Gift’, but any
attempt to explain why these names apply correctly to the appropriate per-
son would, according to Rimini, compromise the simplicity of the divine
persons, and it is therefore doomed to failure. What we can say, then, is that
the persons are really distinct and essentially identical, but how they are
distinct and identical in this way is not something that we can understand,
but is something to be accepted as a fundamental part of the Catholic faith.
281 Rimini, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1: “… aeque incognitum est nobis quod Spiritus Sanctus non sit
Verbum Patris et Filii, sicut quod eius productio non sit generatio. Et aeque immanifestum
est quod ipse non sit Verbum sicut quod ipse non sit Filius. Unde, cum Spiritus Sanctus sit
aeque similis Patri et Filio sicut Filius Patri, et intellectio et volitio nullo modo distinguantur
ex natura rei in Deo, non apparet cur Spiritus Sanctus non sit Verbum quod se intelligendo
producunt Pater et Filius, ita bene sicut Filius est Verbum quod se intelligendo Pater pro-
ducit.” Ed. Trapp et al., vol. 2, p. 19913–20.
282 See for Chatton, Ch. 11, above, at and around nn. 105, 124–129. Rimini is, however, more
consistent than is Chatton in rejecting any features of the persons that could be used to
distinguish the persons from each other (and hence at the very least remind of properties);
see on this n. 125 in Ch. 11, above.
Gregory of Rimini’s trinitarian thought exhibits the most consistent and

thoroughgoing later-medieval application of the search for simplicity to
the Trinity of which I am aware. In the course of elaborating his radically
minimal trinitarian theory, he makes no apologies (like Chatton with his
per se and de facto levels of discourse) and exhibits no hesitation (like
Ockham with his psychological model-lite). Moreover, when he confronts
the explanatory incompleteness of his theory, Rimini appears unabashed
at his having to appeal to authority or to the faith or to our inability to
penetrate the trinitarian mystery. What clearly matters most to him—as
we have seen time and time again—is the preservation of divine simplicity
understood in the most strict sense, and even to the exclusion of any
genuine trinitarian explanation.
6. The Search for Simplicity in Retrospect
Before moving on to a consideration of the earliest Parisian reaction to Gre-

gory of Rimini’s trinitarian theology and to a conclusion to this book as
a whole, I want to offer some thoughts on the search for simplicity. And
the first thing that ought to be noted about it is just how much diver-
sity it encapsulates. In Chapters Eleven and Twelve, I have concentrated
on the search in its most radical form: the rejection of personal proper-
ties and the concomitant assertion that the persons are distinct in and of
themselves, as well as the explicit elimination of the psychological model
except as a type of metaphor the significance of which we do not under-
stand. But it is noteworthy that even in this extreme form, while the moti-
vation was relatively uniform—divine simplicity—, the ways these posi-
tions were expressed were extraordinarily diverse, from Chatton’s per se
vs. de facto marginalization strategy to Holcot’s nearly incidental state-
ment of the position to Gregory of Rimini’s outright rejection of proper-
ties, personal constitution, and the psychological model. Moreover, at the
heart of the search for simplicity lay the goal of cutting down the num-
ber and the degree of distinctions in God, and understood in this way, the
search in this period includes highly diverse trinitarian views. Contrast,
for instance, the position of Peter Auriol, who accepted both properties
and personal constitution as well as the strong use of the psychological
model, with that of Gregory of Rimini, who rejected all of these cleanly.
In short: the search for simplicity was expressed in many ways, and these
expressions are a reflection of the balancing act that later-medieval theolo-
gians had to perform when taking into account authoritative passages and
868 chapter twelve
their traditional interpretation, the constraints imposed by divine simplic-

ity, and the impulse to explain trinitarian theology.
If we look at the search in its most radical form, particularly Praeposi-
tinianism, perhaps the best way to put it into perspective is to start from a
passage by the grand master of historians of medieval trinitarian theology,
Michael Schmaus (1930a, 568):
Wie ich jedoch keine große geistige Entfernung zwischen Präpositins An-
schauung und der Theorie von absoluten Proprietäten sehe, so glaube ich
aus dem gleichen Grund, daß starke geistige Verbindungslinien von ihr zu
der im Nominalismus vorherrschenden Theorie hinüberführen, daß die Per-
sonen durch sich selbst unterschieden sind. Von absoluten Proprietäten zu
deren voller Leugnung ist der Weg kürzer als von relativen zu absoluten Pro-
prietäten.
Schmaus here makes two assertions: that there is not much distance be-
tween absolute properties and the Praepositinian rejection of properties
tout court, and that the rise of the Praepositinian view is related to the rise
of nominalism. I want to examine each of these claims, taking the second
one first.
If we take ‘nominalism’ to mean the rejection of extramental universals,
then Schmaus’ claim that there is a “strong line of connection” between
nominalism and Praepositinianism needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
The nominalist (or conceptualist) William Ockham defended the divine
properties and personal constitution, while the realist Walter Chatton re-
jected both (on the de facto plane of discourse). Marsilius of Inghen (d. 1396)
and Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), later nominalists who were both associated (albeit
in different ways) with the nominalist via moderna of the fifteenth century,
do the same as Ockham with regard to the personal properties.283 The
motivation behind Praepositinian trinitarian theories was the preservation
of divine simplicity, ‘simplicity’ taken in the strictest sense possible. Perhaps
nominalists, who were surely prompted to deny the extramental existence
of universals at least in part by a less flexible understanding of the principle
of parsimony than their realist colleagues were prepared to acknowledge,
would be more inclined on that ground to insist on strict divine simplicity.
283 On Marsilius, see Lescún 1970, 184–185, who examines this same passage from Schmaus
and cites Marsilius as a counterexample, referring to Möhler 1949, esp. 72–74. On Biel, see
Friedman 2003, and the literature referred to there. Here it is worthwhile mentioning that
Thomas Aquinas rejected that the divine essence is (like) a universal with respect to the
singular persons participating in it (see Iribarren 2005, 35–37): there is no easy passage from
realism/nominalism concerning universals to any particular trinitarian view.
To this extent one can perhaps agree with Schmaus. And yet, nominalists
had no monopoly on either the principle of parsimony or a rigorous under-
standing of simplicity. Moreover, there is a great difference between, on the
one hand, explaining the metaphysical foundations of human understand-
ing and of created natural kinds when choosing to be a nominalist or realist
with regard to universals, and, on the other, discussing the utter simplicity of
the divine persons and essence. Both historically and doctrinally speaking,
the notions of simplicity and parsimony that held in the one had no neces-
sary connection to those holding in the other. Thus, as I see it, there is no
quick and easy generalization to be made about nominalism and its effects
on trinitarian theology, and unless one can show a link between a specific
figure’s nominalism and his search for simplicity in trinitarian theology, it
is probably best not even to try to make the connection.284
What about the link Schmaus claims there to be between absolute per-
sons and the Praepositinian position? I think that, taking into consideration
the actual history of medieval trinitarian theology, this conclusion must be
taken with a very large grain of salt.285 Take Scotus’ theory and its use of
284 See also Ch. 10, § 4, above, for more on nominalism and the Trinity.
285 By way of explanation, Schmaus (1930a, 568) writes: “Ja ich möchte meinen, daß die auf
Ivo von Chartres zurückgehende Haltung des Präpositinus trotz der Bekämpfung, welche er
von Duns Skotus erfährt, nicht weit von der Theorie von absoluten Proprietäten entfernt ist.
Denn wenn man relative Konstitutionsprinzipien ablehnt, so bleibt nur irgendwie geartetes
Absolutes übrig. Ob man nun sagt, daß die Personen durch etwas Absolutes verschieden sind,
oder ob man sagt, daß sie an sich verschieden sind, ist nur eine verschiedene Wendung eines
und desselben Gedankens, daß die Relationen im Aufbau der Dreipersönlichkeit Gottes
keine Rolle spielen.” I must say that I do not think that even on a doctrinal plane this is
correct. Schmaus here seems to me to be conceiving of the Trinity in an extremely Thomistic
fashion: the only divine property is a relative property, and if the property is not relative, then
it is nothing. Scotus thinks that the absolute properties are non-quidditative origin, and to
this extent, as I argued above, Scotus is simply exhibiting a common Franciscan stress on
emanation. Interestingly, William of Rubio, holding a Praepositinian view, rejects completely
that the persons can be claimed to be constituted by absolute properties, but accepts an
untraditional way in which they can be said to be constituted by relative properties (see
nn. 203–211 above). Further, it should be pointed out that Gregory of Rimini laid a great deal
of stress on the order between the divine persons, but Rimini did not think that the order
comes about through properties with their own entity (as Scotus might say), but rather, for
Rimini, the persons just exist in this ordered way (see nn. 251–253 above, and cp. to Hugolino
of Orvieto, Conclusion, below, nn. 23–26). In fact, the only figure examined in the present
book who might possibly offer some evidence in support of Schmaus’ view seems to me to
be Michael of Massa, who comes as close as possible to eliminating the personal properties
through his insistence that the persons are absolute, but who nonetheless holds that the
relative properties do play a role in the constitution of the divine absolute persons in the most
water-downed manner possible, “connotatively and obliquely”. Even Michael, then, draws a
line between Praepositinianism and absolute properties.
870 chapter twelve
absolute persons as an example (remembering that Scotus may well have

changed his mind or only meant the position as a suggestion). Among the
most striking things about Scotus’ trinitarian theology is its complexity. And
the complexity appears to have its root in the fact that Scotus wanted to
explain as much as possible: e.g., two and only two formally distinct produc-
tive sources, being each the basis of one divine emanation, shows that there
are three and only three persons (one unproduced and two produced). In
the case of the divine properties, Scotus wanted to explain how one divine
person can be essentially the same as another but personally distinct, and to
do this he appealed to personal properties that function as individuators in a
manner analogous to the way in which the haecceitas individuates one (e.g.)
human being from another. This is only to say that, for Scotus, the existence
of divine properties (ignoring whether they are relative or absolute) is indis-
pensable to his project, and the fact that these properties were absolute does
not mean that they were merely a throwaway device on the path to reject-
ing properties tout court. For Scotus, then, explanatory completeness was of
higher value than a super-strict understanding of divine simplicity. As we
have seen, Walter Chatton, Robert Holcot, William of Rubio, and Gregory
of Rimini had a completely different set of motivating factors. For them, the
kinds of distinctions that Scotus posited in order to explain the distinction
and identity of the persons compromised divine simplicity, and that was
unacceptable. Simplicity trumped explanation. Above, I wrote that the dif-
ference between views like Scotus’ and views like Chatton’s was grounded in
a “change in theological aesthetic”. And I want to maintain more generally
that this change lies behind the disagreement between, on the one hand,
those who claim that personal properties, whether relative or absolute, are
a necessary part of any trinitarian doctrine and, on the other, those who
claim that properties of any kind are the ruin of trinitarian doctrine. The gap
between these views appears to me to be unbridgeable; there is an incom-
mensurability in the discussion between the two sides of this dispute, and
this gap or incommensurability severely undermines Schmaus’ claim con-
cerning the general proximity of absolute properties and the Praepositinian
position.
It is precisely the new theological aesthetic, valuing absolute simplicity
more than explanatory coverage, that gives one very special characteristic
to the trinitarian theologies that have been examined here as part of the
search for simplicity: they are frequently explicitly fideistic. As mentioned
above, this fideism does not appear to have anything essential to do with
“nominalism” (understood as a position about universals). The appeal to
faith at crucial junctures in the elaboration of many of the trinitarian the-
ories we have examined has appeared and may still appear unsatisfactory
to some, but it was clearly a shared feature of many of the trinitarian theo-
ries of this era. Hence, it is worthwhile making the attempt to understand
the roots of and the motivation for this fideism. For theologians like Wal-
ter Chatton, Robert Holcot, William of Rubio, and Gregory of Rimini, where
there is explanation and analysis, there is distinction, and where there is
distinction, there is no simplicity. Better, then, to appeal to faith rather than
postulate distinctions and orderings that we have no actual grounds to pos-
tulate and that would compromise divine simplicity in any case. This, as I
see it, is the root of the very different and more fideistic character of the
theology of the search for simplicity than that of the earlier period or more
“traditional” treatments in the later period.286
286 It should be remembered that some appeals to faith characteristic of the trinitarian
theology influenced by the search for simplicity were common in the Dominican tradition
and descended from Aquinas, e.g., that the number of persons and number of emanations
were not amenable to proof.
conclusion
THE DIVERSITY OF LATER-MEDIEVAL

TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
Among those who today study Gregory of Rimini and his legacy, two points
are generally acknowledged: first, that Rimini himself was a top-notch
thinker, and, second, that he was a major influence from the time he read the
Sentences right into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With the latter
point in mind, we might profitably ask just how Gregory of Rimini, and the
trinitarian theology of radical minimalism that he championed, fared in the
immediate aftermath of his lectures, i.e. in the time period from roughly 1344
until 1350. We have extant works by five theologians who read the Sentences
at Paris in these years: Gregory’s two confrères Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo
(read Sentences 1344–1345) and Hugolino of Orvieto (1348–1349), the two
Cistercians John of Mirecourt (1344–1345?) and Peter Ceffons (1348–1349), as
well as the Carmelite Paul of Perugia (ca. 1344).1 While here I will not be able
to give any kind of definitive answer to the question of Rimini’s influence in
the final years of the 1340’s, I can indicate enough to show that Gregory had
a mixed reception among his immediate contemporaries at Paris.
Three of these thinkers can be dealt with rather quickly. With regard
to Paul of Perugia, who read the Sentences roughly simultaneously with
Rimini, Chris Schabel’s recent study of his Sentences commentary reveals
that he did not mention Gregory explicitly, and this confirms Xiberta’s
earlier investigations. Looking at some of Paul’s positions, he appears to
have used the psychological model in a strong way, contending that the Holy
Spirit does not proceed by way of nature, and he argues for the Franciscan
view that the Son and the Holy Spirit would be distinct if the latter did
not come from the former, in the process criticizing (without basis, as it
turns out) Landulph Caracciolo. Moreover, he clearly maintains that the
persons are constituted by essence and relation, even claiming (with Henry
of Ghent) that the essence acts in personal constitution as quasi-matter,
while (with Durand of St Pourçain, according to Xiberta, but it could also
be with Henry) relation modifies the essence, giving to it the mode of being
1 On the Sent. commentaries of these years and later, see Bakker and Schabel 2002.
874 conclusion
towards another.2 Clearly, then, the search for simplicity traced in Part III of
this book was not at the heart of Paul’s trinitarian enterprise, and we may
find that Paul’s trinitarian theology has a decidedly Franciscan cast to it.
The Cistercian John of Mirecourt is probably best known for having been
censured in 1347 by the Paris faculty of theology for making suspect state-
ments in his Sentences commentary: we have both the censure and Mire-
court’s own defense, and there have been studies of specific aspects of the
case.3 At issue in Mirecourt’s troubles appear to be statements, many made
using new techniques and notions stemming from England, that on quick
reading or without proper instruction might be interpreted in a false or even
heretical way. Mirecourt almost certainly did not mean these statements in
any problematic way, but to the theological authorities they appeared easily
misunderstood. The recent internet publication of Mirecourt’s I Sentences
makes it possible to examine the work in toto, and it is fair to say that its
complex structure of questions, conclusions, and propositions, interspersed
with various positions and their rebuttals, could certainly contribute to con-
fusion about Mirecourt’s own view.4 Case in point: although Mirecourt does
2 On Paul, see Schabel 2005, with citation and question list; most of the information here
on Paul’s trinitarian theology is taken from Xiberta 1931, 285–316 (with question lists pp. 290–
295), esp. 304–305. A critical edition of Paul’s I Sent., qq. 21–22, on the distinction of the
Son from the Holy Spirit, will appear in Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming. It is interesting
that Paul does cite Rimini’s slightly junior confrère, Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo (even in a
trinitarian context: Xiberta 1931, 299), but apparently not Rimini himself.
3 Mirecourt’s two apologies in answer to his censure are found in Stegmüller 1933
(Stegmüller’s text supersedes the one found in Birkenmajer 1922). For the original form of
the condemnation see Courtenay 1986, and see the study of an aspect of the incident in
Courtenay 1972–1973, along with Schabel 2000a, 280–284. Trinitarian theology does not seem
to have played any role in Mirecourt’s censure. See also nn. 13 and 16 below.
4 See the website run from the University of Milan hhttp://filosofia.dipafilo.unimi.it/
~mparodi/mirecourt/home.htmi, which contains a useful bibliography of secondary litera-

ture on Mirecourt, as well as a provisional transcription of Mirecourt’s I Sent. All section num-
bers for the Mirecourt text given below refer to these provisional transcriptions. Given the
complex structure of Mirecourt’s commentary, it is completely understandable that Schmaus
(1930a, 551), working only on the basis of the list of questions found in Birkenmajer 1922,
thought that Mirecourt did not address the issue of the constitution of the persons at all.
Questions in Mirecourt’s I Sent. dealing with trinitarian theology (in addition to those men-
tioned below) are: q. 22 (“Utrum cum hoc quod Deus sit unus stet quod tres personae sint illae
unus Deus”—concentrates on logical issues, with interesting discussion of the epistemolog-
ical status of our trinitarian notions, denying they are in any way “evident”); q. 23 (“Utrum in
qualibet creatura reperiatur vestigium et imago trinitatis”—concentrates on the human psy-
chological side of the matter, no application of psychological model to Trinity); q. 33 (“Utrum
Deus sit quaelibet res quae est Deus totaliter”—on distinction, and Mirecourt claims explic-
itly [§ 44] that all distinction is real distinction).
the diversity of later-medieval trinitarian theology 875
deal with the distinction between the persons, he is rather difficult to pin
down on the matter. Claims like “paternity is the same property and the
same thing as active spiration, although it is not each of the things that
active spiration is”, when combined with assertions in another context to
the effect that active spiration is the Father and the Son, leave the impres-
sion that Mirecourt wanted to strictly identify person and personal proper-
ties, perhaps in a Praepositinian way.5 He also argues that if any personal
property were something (aliquid), then there would be more than three
things in God, which he considers heretical.6 In this context, Mirecourt takes
up Rimini’s terminology of “intransitive” and “transitive” constructions, i.e.
statements that (despite appearances to the contrary) express strict iden-
tity between property and person (intransitive) and statements that express
some type of distinction between property and person (transitive). Mire-
court uses Rimini’s distinction to explain why “the doctors” say things like
“paternity is the Father’s property”, which Mirecourt says is not true de vir-
tute sermonis.7 But although he admits that it is not unreasonable to hold
that “paternity is not something, nor filiation, but that paternity would be
a condition (condicio) of the Father and filiation a condition of the Son”,
Mirecourt himself thinks it “safer” for the time being to hold that the prop-
erties are something (aliquid).8 His own apparent solution reminds a bit of
5 Mirecourt, I Sent., q. 31 (“Utrum Deus sit quaecumque res quae est Deus realiter”), esp.
conc. 3 (“Tertia conclusio est ista: quaecumque res est Deus et non est quaelibet res quae est
Deus est aliqua persona realiter” = §§ 24–31): “Secunda: paternitas est eadem proprietas et
eadem res cum spiratione activa, licet non sit quaelibet res quae est spiratio activa.” §28.2.
Cf. ibid., q. 24 (“Utrum Deus sit ab aliquo producibilis”), esp. conc. 6 (“Sexta conclusio: Pater
et Filius sunt unum principium spirans Spiritum Sanctum” = §§81–92): “Tertia: Pater et
Filius sunt unus spirator Spiritus Sancti, unum principium Spiritus Sancti, una activa spiratio
Spiritus Sancti, una entitas spirans Spiritus Sancti, una res spirativa Spiritus Sancti. Quarta:
spiratio activa est Pater, spiratio activa est Filius, spiratio activa est Pater et Filius. Quinta:
nulla entitas est spiratio activa alia ab essentia divina, aliqua tamen entitas est spiratio activa
vel spirans quae non est Pater scilicet Filius, et aliqua est quae non est Filius, scilicet Pater, et
aliqua est quae non est Pater et Filius, scilicet Pater vel Filius, omnis tamen entitas spirativa
est Pater vel Filius.” §§ 87.3–5.
6 Mirecourt, I Sent., q. 31, conc. 3: “Sed minorem probo, scilicet quod proprietas personalis
sit persona primo sic: si proprietas personalis non esset persona aliqua et ipsa esset ali-
quid, sequeretur quod essent plures res quam tres, quarum quaelibet esset Deus; quod est
haereticum et contra Decretalem. Consequentia patet, quia proprietas personalis, si sit ali-
quid, est Deus, et ipsa non est aliqua persona ut assumitur; igitur, etc.” §§25.2, 25.2.1.
7 Mirecourt, I Sent., q. 31, conc. 3 (§§ 28.5–6). For Rimini’s use of transitive and intransi-
tive, see Ch. 12, above, at and around nn. 231–233.

8 Mirecourt, I Sent., q. 31, conc. 3: “Sed qui teneret, sicut rationabiliter posset teneri, quod
non assero nec asserere volo nec audeo, quod paternitas non esset aliquid nec filiatio, sed
paternitas esset condicio Patris et filiatio Filii, sicut aliqui dicerent in creaturis de motu, de
876 conclusion
Adam Wodeham’s, and this might not be surprising given Mirecourt’s noted
penchant for lifting thoughts and words from English thinkers of the 1320’s
to 1340’s.9 Thus, Mirecourt denies personal constitution, while holding that
person is property and person is essence (presumably in per se primo modo
identity), and moreover that in this sense the persons can be said to dif-
fer and to convene se ipsis.10 He reminds of Wodeham in another respect:
he appears to suggest that the Holy Spirit is called Love in an appropriated
way.11 And Mirecourt tells us outright that any such appropriation is based
on the fact that the emanation of the Son is the emanation of one from
one in the way a word emanates, while the emanation of the Holy Spirit
is the emanation of one from two in the way love emanates.12 The psycho-
logical model, then, seems in Mirecourt’s trinitarian theology merely to be
used to explain the appropriated names of Word and Love. Insofar as we
can take the views he expresses to be his own, we can say that Mirecourt
took the search for simplicity to heart, without, however, wholeheartedly
embracing Praepositinianism, and with it Gregory of Rimini’s trinitarian
theology of radical minimalism. But what is most striking about Mirecourt’s
Sentences-commentary treatment of personal constitution and of the psy-
chological model is that it has a different “feel” to it than did those from
actione, de passione, de tempore, de qualibet relatione, de quantitate et huiushmodii, non

teneret illa quae dicta sunt; sed pro nunc tutius apparet mihi dicendum sicut est dictum.”
§ 28.6.2.
9 See on this esp. Genest and Vignaux 1988.
10 Mirecourt, I Sent., q. 31, conc. 3: “Et sit prima hpropositioi ista: nulla persona divina
habet partem et partem nec constituens et constitutum nec constituitur ex essentia et

relatione, sed est essentia et relatio, quia persona quaelibet est summe simplex, ut ait
Decretalis. Secunda: nulla persona aliquo sui convenit cum alia persona et aliquo sui differt
ab eadem, sed se ipsa convenit et differt, id est est res quae convenit et est res quae differt ab
alia; patet, quia hhaliterii denotaretur ibi constitutio aliqua.” §§30.1–2. On Wodeham’s ideas,
see Ch. 11, above, at and around nn. 146–160.
11 Mirecourt, I Sent., q. 24, conc. 5 (“Pater et Filius spirant Spiritum Sanctum”, §§64–
80): “… iste terminus ‘amor’ vel ‘dilectio’ potest sumi personaliter et appropriate pro Spiritu
Sancto.” § 72.1.
12 Mirecourt, I Sent., q. 31, conc. 4 (“Quaecumque res est tres personae divinae est quae-
libet res quae est Deus realiter”, §§ 32–40): “Tertia: Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Patre et Filio,
sicut amor procedit ab anima et cognitione tamquam a producente et producto, quia Pater
est producens et Filius productus et Pater et Filius producunt Spiritum Sanctum, ideo pro-
cedit sicut amor vel volitio. Quarta, quod Filius producitur a Patre sicut notitia, quia pro-
ducitur a Patre sicut a re improducta, sicut notitia ab anima quae non producitur tamquam
aliquis actus animae, ita quod, sicut intellectus non praesupponit aliud productum in anima
ad sui productionem, sic nec Filius. Et ideo dicunt sancti Filium procedere modo naturae, id
est sicut intellectionem, et Spiritum Sanctum modo voluntatis, id est sicut amorem vel voli-
tionem; propter hoc etiam dicunt quod Filius procedit quo modo natus et Spiritus Sanctus
quo modo datus.” §§ 37.3–4. See also ibid., § 39.2 for the same sort of statement.
Paris between Auriol and Rimini. The structure of the questions he asks is
very different, the order of the questions and conclusions does not recog-
nizably correspond to Lombard’s ordering of chapters (and distinctions),
and the discussion of the metaphysics of the Trinity is piecemeal and at
times difficult to decipher. The way that he discusses these matters, then,
is much more clearly related to the later Oxford discussion, in figures like
FitzRalph, Holcot, or Crathorn, than to the Parisian discussion of Massa,
Marchia, Rubio, or Rimini.
It is through hints from Mirecourt’s confrère, Peter Ceffons, that Damusus
Trapp originally deduced that Gregory of Rimini himself sat on the theolog-
ical commission that censured Mirecourt’s work, one of “three old foreign
witches” pursuing their witch hunt.13 Ceffons is clearly perturbed by the situ-
ation in the faculty of theology in his day. Whether this had any impact upon
his trinitarian theology is very difficult to say. Ceffons asks several trinitar-
ian questions.14 Most of a relatively short question concerning whether the
Holy Spirit proceeds by way of love is used by Ceffons to discuss the Greek
position on the Filioque (q. 27). In this question, however, he does seem to
exhibit a trinitarian use of the psychological model based on resemblance,
claiming that the Holy Spirit is Love because he is one from two, the Son
is the Word because he is one from one.15 With regard to the constitution
of the persons and the ontological status of the personal properties, most
13 On Ceffons’ life and work and his attitude towards the censure of Mirecourt, see most
completely Trapp 1957 (esp. pp. 149–154 on Rimini’s connection to the censure; there is a
small edition of text from Ceffon’s I Sent. in Michalski 1937, 407–409); for a more recent
summing up, see Schabel 2003b.
14 Ceffons’ Sent. commentary is found in ms. Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale 62, book I
found on ff. 7v–82v. I have located the following questions dealing with trinitarian theology:
q. 22 = “Circa d. 5, in qua quaerit Magister utrum essentia divina gignit, quaero utrum essentia
divina generet vel generetur. Et videtur primo quod sic …” (ff. 48ra–49ra); q. 25 = “Circa d. 9, in
qua tractatur de generatione Filii in divinis, quaero utrum Patrem generare Filium sit aliqua
entitas complexa praeter res incomplexas. Et videtur primo quod sic …” (ff. 51rb–52va); q. 26 =
“Secundo circa eandem d. hscil. d. 9i, quaero utrum sit aliqua pluralitas in divinis. Et videtur
quod non …” (ff. 52va–54vb); q. 27 = “Circa d. 10, in qua Magister tractat de Spiritu Sancto,
quaero utrum Spiritus Sanctus procedat per modum amoris. Et videtur primo quod non …”
(ff. 54vb–55rb).
15 Ceffons, I Sent., q. 27: “Spiritus Sanctus dicitur procedere per modum amoris. Ista
conclusio patet per commune dictum, nam Filius ponitur procedere per modum quo gignitur
notitia a mente, sed amor procedit a mente et a notitia, ideo dicitur quod Spiritus Sanctus,
qui procedit ab utroque, dicitur procedere per modum amoris. Et per hoc assignant aliqui
imaginem in mente creata sic quia* dicitur Spiritus Sanctus procedere a Patre et a Filio.”
Troyes, BM 62, f. 54vb. At the bottom of the same column, Ceffons claims that the term ‘love’ is
essential, but also a term applying specially to one person (“terminus congruens* specialiter
uni personae”). This question will be published in Friedman and Schabel Forthcoming.
878 conclusion
promising as a source for Ceffon’s views appears to be a question asking

whether the Father’s generating the Son is some complex entity over and
above a non-complex thing (q. 25). But after preliminary remarks, this ques-
tion turns into a long and detailed investigation of whether the complexe
significabile is the object of knowledge and belief, Ceffons claiming that he
found this logical device in the works of Gregory of Rimini, Adam Wodeham,
and (as he himself believes) Walter Chatton.16 Two other questions in the
commentary deal with the logical issues associated with the expository syl-
logism (q. 26) and the issues surrounding the claim that the essence neither
generates nor is generated (q. 22), the latter question involving a significant
amount of Lombard exegesis. In short, Ceffons, like Mirecourt but to an even
greater degree, appears to have “late English” tendencies: his Sentences com-
mentary deviates from a structure of chapters and distinctions, and in trini-
tarian theology he concentrates on the logical and semantic issues, leaving
the more metaphysical concerns to the side. Although he knows Rimini and
even Chatton, in trinitarian theology Ceffons does not seem to have openly
entered into the debates related to the search for simplicity.
Turning now to the two Augustinian Hermits from whom we have Sen-
tences commentaries composed in these years, it is perhaps easiest to begin
with the work of Hugolino of Orvieto.17 Gregory of Rimini appears quite
frequently in Hugolino’s trinitarian theology, and not always in the most
positive of lights. Thus, on the issue of the power by which the Father gen-
erates the Son (or, as Hugolino says, by which “the Father is able to say the
Word”—potens dicere Verbum) Hugolino rejects Rimini’s contention that
16 Ceffons, I Sent., q. 25: “In ista quaestione periculosum est his diebus, ut estimo, aliquid
definire, ideo non volo aliquid determinare. Unde et dudum multa de hac materia scripsi
quae ego delevi, quia scio quod viderentur nimis miranda. Sed tamen circa hoc est scien-
dum quod est una opinio quae tenet significabilia complexa multum generaliter et multas
condiciones eis attribuit. Et illam non recito, quia potest inveniri in Adam, in primo opere,
et in Gregorio, Super primum in Prologo, et credo etiam quod aliquid vidi de ea in Cathone.
Ulterius est sciendum quod vidi aliquos qui, ut dicebant, ore erant affectati … ad negandum
significabilia complexa. Nihil tamen de hoc vidi in scriptis, nec vidi aliquem qui illa bene
improbaret. Nec scio quod aliquis adhuc temptaverit improbare.” Troyes, BM 62, f. 51va. Trapp
1957, 152, mentions this passage, among others, as evidence that Rimini was one of the “three
old foreign witches” who had censured Mirecourt; see also Tachau 1988, at and around 377
n. 74. On the complexe significabile, see, e.g., Zupko 1994–1997 and the literature referred to
there.
17 Most conveniently on Hugolino, his life and works, see Zumkeller 1990, with extensive
references to secondary literature. Willigis Eckermann has edited the Sent. commentary,
which is the source of my exposition here. In 1372, Hugolino wrote a treatise De Deo trino
et uno, which has been edited in Stegmüller 1955. The fate of several aspect of Hugolino’s
trinitarian theology is treated in cursory fashion in Marcolino 1990, 306–307.
the generative power is the Father. Hugolino freely concedes that the Father
is the sole producer. Nevertheless, appealing tacitly to Augustine’s having
claimed “the Father is not the Father by that by which he is God”, Hugolino
argues that the power of saying the Word, while it certainly is the Father,
is also both the Son and the Holy Spirit; in other words, that by which the
Father is able to say the Word must be other than that by which the Father
is the Father, and, as will become clear shortly, for Hugolino, the Father is
the Father in and of himself (se ipso), i.e. the Father is that by which the
Father is the Father. Moreover, how could one of the persons have this per-
fection and the others not? The power by which Father generates is, then,
the divine essence, and Hugolino informs us that this was also the view of
Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, John Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent, and
Anselm.18 Rimini’s name crops up again when Hugolino deals with the dis-
tinction between generation and procession. Here Hugolino takes Rimini
to task for contradicting Augustine when Rimini maintained that the dis-
tinction between the emanations can be assigned neither on the basis of
the producers (i.e., that generation is from one, spiration from two) nor on
the basis of the mode of production (i.e., that generation is that by which
the Son is Word and Image, in contrast to the Holy Spirit, who is Gift and
Love). As we saw in Chapter Twelve above, for Rimini the productions and
their distinction are ineffable and incomprehensible, and we have no basis,
apart from Scripture, for telling them apart. Hugolino, however, disagrees:
although, like the Son, the Holy Spirit is image and knowledge, nevertheless,
18 Hugolino of Orvieto, I Sent., d. 4–7, q. 2: “Dicit tamen Gregorius quod potentia dicendi
Verbum est Pater, qui non est Filius .... Responsio: Pater solus est producens. Sed sicut
dicimus Pater non eo Pater quo Deus, sic non eo potens dicere Verbum quo Pater, immo
eo potens quo omnipotens persona improducta. Dico igitur quod potentia dicendi Verbum,
licet sit Pater, est etiam Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Alioquin, cum posse producere Verbum sit
perfectionis simpliciter et hoc posse nominaliter sumptum sit praecise Pater, tunc videtur
perfectior.” Ed. Eckermann, pp. 177117–178136 (the appeals to Aquinas et al. are found on
the next few lines in the Hugolino critical edition). On the Augustinian quotation “Pater
non eo Pater quo Deus”, which was also used by Crathorn* as one way of arguing against
Praepositinianism, see Ch. 11, above, at n. 204. On Rimini’s position on this issue, see Ch. 12,
above, at and around nn. 265–278. That the essence is the power by which the Father
generates was also claimed by William of Rubio (I Sent., d. 7, q. 2, a. 2: “… sicut essentia dicitur
terminus generationis et spirationis … ita consimiliter essentia Patris generantis potest dici
principium generandi, quia licet ab ipsa non generetur persona, est tamen Patris generantis
natura qua Pater ipse est potens generare.” Ed. 1518, f. 117rb) and Walter Chatton (see, e.g.,
Lectura, d. 7, q. 1, a. 2, n. 59 [ed. Wey and Etzkorn (vol. 2), p. 40719–33] and ibid., a. 3, n. 82
[ed. cit., p. 4145–13]). Clearly, then, this was an issue of some importance standing between
defenders of Praepositinianism, with Rimini on the one side of the issue, and Rubio, Chatton,
and Hugolino on the other.
880 conclusion
in contrast to the Son who has this through his way of emanating (genera-
tion), the Holy Spirit does not have this from his way of emanating (spi-
ration). Hugolino appears to suggest that the Holy Spirit’s being an image
is not something he gets from his way of proceeding, but from somewhere
else; through his way of proceeding, the Holy Spirit gets precisely that he is
the Gift and Love. Something similar would presumably be said about the
Son: he is Love and a Gift, but not on account of his way of proceeding, since
through his generation the Son gets only that he is the Word and Image sim-
ilar to the one producing him. On this basis, Hugolino can indeed claim that
there is a reason for assigning a difference between the two emanations: i.e.,
the Son is the Word because he is generated, the Holy Spirit is not.19 Thus,
Hugolino appears to see a greater role for the psychological model than did
Rimini, although as far as I can tell the topic is never discussed directly in
Hugolino’s Sentences commentary. It is also interesting to note that in both
of these cases Hugolino uses Rimini’s favorite authority, Augustine, in order
to undermine Rimini’s own position.
And yet, if Hugolino did not hesitate to criticize Rimini roundly, nev-
ertheless he accepted from him probably the central idea of his Praeposi-
tinian trinitarian theology: that the persons are distinct in and of them-
selves. In fact, his discussion of the question “whether the divine persons
are made distinct in and of themselves or by properties” is built up around
the investigation we have already met in Rimini of the various senses in
which the terms ‘property’ and ‘persons being made distinct through some-
thing’ can be taken, and in the process of determining these various senses
Hugolino borrows Rimini’s distinction between intransitive and transitive
19 Hugolino, I Sent., d. 10–13, q. un., dubium 4: “Quantum ad quartum dubium, an scil-
icet processio Spiritus Sancti et generatio Filii distinguuntur .... Prima differentia assignatur
ex producentibus. Nam Verbum, Filius ab uno, amor vel caritas a duobus. Haec est assig-
natio Augustini .... Sed magister Gregorius dicit eam non sufficere .... Secunda differentia
ex modo producendi. Nam Spiritus est amor vel caritas et ideo procedit quomodo donum,
Filius vero Verbum procedit quomodo proles, notitia scilicet genita, ideo quomodo Ver-
bum. Ista est assignatio Augustini .... Sed idem magister non acceptat eam sufficere .... Sed
instantia non valet .... hHugolinus respondet:i Licet ergo Spiritus Sanctus sit imago et notitia,
non tamen per hoc quia procedit, sed quia procedit est donum, amor, communio, cari-
tas, nexus, quorum nullo designatur quod sit similis producenti, nec quod sit imago. Ideo
eius productio non est generatio. Nam generatio est productio qua genitus per hoc prae-
cise est Verbum … quod ex modo procedendi sit similis et Filius seu proles.” Ed. Eckermann,
pp. 2231–22541. For Rimini’s position on the issue, see Ch. 12, above, at and around nn. 278–
282.
constructions.20 Hugolino elaborates a bit on Rimini’s discussion; and yet

there can be no doubt that he is consciously following Rimini’s lead, going
so far as to say that Gregory missed a certain point which led him to overlook
a possible way of understanding ‘persons being made distinct through
something’.21 Hugolino’s own position on the issue involves three major
points. First, for him there are no properties understood to be entities in any
way distinct from the persons themselves, and he maintains this because
he thinks that otherwise the persons would not be absolutely simple; thus,
Hugolino in his search for simplicity rejects personal constitution.22 Second,
and correspondingly, Hugolino claims outright that the persons are distinct
se ipsis: “by accepting ‘to be made distinct’ in the first way [i.e. as a source
of distinction], the persons are made distinct in and of themselves”; this
is clear, because if they were made distinct through something else, i.e. a
property, there would be a “multiplicity” in each divine person.23 In these
first two major points of his theory, Hugolino follows Rimini fairly closely:
there are no personal properties and there is no personal constitution, the
persons are distinct in and of themselves, otherwise divine simplicity would
be compromised. But in the third major point of his position, Hugolino
20 Hugolino, I Sent., d. 19–30, q. 2 (“Utrum personae divinae se ipsis vel proprietatibus
distinguantur”, ed. Eckermann, p. 2682–3). The discussion of the meanings of ‘property’ and
‘making distinct’ is found in a. 1 (ed. cit., pp. 268–271). Cf. Gregory of Rimini’s parallel
discussion mentioned in Ch. 12, above, at and around nn. 231–236.
21 Hugolino, I Sent., d. 19–30, q. 2, a. 1: “Hoc non notavit Gregorius, ideo exemplum suum
‘Adam non est genitus ab homine’, ‘Abel est genitus etiam ab Adam’, non est proprium in
proposito in tertio modo quem non posuit.” Ed. Eckermann, p. 271110–113. For more on this
point, see n. 25 below, and for Rimini’s example, see Ch. 12, above, n. 236.
22 Hugolino, I Sent., d. 19–30, q. 2, a. 2: “Personae divinae non distinguuntur proprietatibus
secundo modo intelligendo proprietates hscil., alia entitas ipsius personae sibi propria, qua,
ut quidam imaginari videntur, persona constituitur in esse personali iuncta essentia et
qua formaliter distinguitur ab alia personai. Nam tales proprietates non essent personae
formaliter, sed aliquid eius esset paternitas .... Si vero distinguitur paternitas a Patre, igitur
Pater non est simplex aeque ut paternitas, et secundo paternitas non est essentia, cum qua
constituit Patrem et Pater resultat et cetera, tunc enim formalitati paternitatis deest essentia.
Igitur illa formalitas ut sic non est formaliter Deus.” Ed. Eckermann, p. 27459–66.
23 Hugolino, I Sent., d. 19–30, q. 2, a. 2: “Secunda conclusio et prima Gregorii: accipiendo
‘distingui’ primo modo hscil., per proprietatem tamquam per rem incomplexam qua una est
ab alia condivisai personae se ipsis distinguuntur, non est intelligenda nisi sic: personae,
ut sunt proprietates, id est hypostases origine se habentes, se ipsis ut sic distinguuntur ....
Secundo hprobatur conclusioi: personae distinguuntur. Patet, quia generans non est persona
quam generat. Aut igitur persona A se ipsa est alia a persona B sic, sicut se ipsa producit B,
aut non sed aliquo sui. Si primum, propositum. Si secundum, igitur in A est multiplicitas, etc.
Ex hoc patet quod paternitas formaliter sumpta est Pater. Igitur non plus Pater distinguitur
paternitate quam paternitas Patre.” Ed. Eckermann, p. 27225–28, p. 27340–45.
882 conclusion
appears to have gone beyond Rimini, laying more stress than Rimini had
on the fact that the persons are ordered according to the origin of one
from another: it is because the Father begets the Son that they are dis-
tinct, but this state of affairs is not on account of any properties (under-
stood as entities distinct from the persons themselves), this is just the
way that the Father and the Son are (as Hugolino says, this is their sic
esse). Thus, Hugolino can say that “the persons, as they are properties,
i.e. hypostases relating by origin, are distinct in and of themselves”,24 and
he notes on a number of occasions that, since the distinction between
the persons is on account of one producing another, if you took away
the order between the persons, their sic esse, then they would not be
distinct.25 So, the persons are in and of themselves ordered, i.e. one pro-
duces the other, and without this ordering there would be no distinction.
Hugolino even tells us why he thought that this point—one which Rim-
ini would undoubtedly have agreed with—deserved so much attention:
if you understand the persons not to be ordered or related in this way, it
ultimately leads to Arianism, since the essential connectedness of the per-
sons goes unstated.26 This last point shows that, although Hugolino was
heavily reliant on Rimini in this context, nevertheless he was not slavishly
so.
Turning from Hugolino to his slightly senior confrère Alphonsus Var-
gas of Toledo, we move from a basically positive reception of Rimini’s big
Praepositinian idea on personal distinction to a completely negative one.
It should be noted that Alphonsus appears to have rejected the psycholog-
ical model as an adequate description of God’s trinitarian reality, replying
specifically to Scotus and to Landulph Caracciolo, and in this way Vargas
agrees with both Rimini and the Dominican trinitarian tradition.27 But the
24 See n. 23 above; for sic esse see n. 25 below.

25 E.g. Hugolino, I Sent., d. 19–30, q. 2, a. 1: “… quando per ‘sic esse’ non solum denotatur
personam distingui, sed clauditur in illo ‘sic esse’ praecisa ratio distinctionis de per se, sicut
quia Pater genuit Filium, ideo Pater non est Filius ille, quem genuit. Et subducto quod non
sic esset, nulla penitus esset distinctio inter personas illas.” Ed. Eckermann, p. 271106–110. This
is the point which Hugolino says that Rimini failed to see; see n. 21 above. See also for the
same basic point ibid. (ed. cit., p. 26953–61).
26 Hugolino, I Sent., d. 19–30, q. 2, a. 2: “Si personae divinae capiuntur praecise pro primario
significato personae et pro subsistentiis non claudendo hoc origine se habentibus, ut supra,
sic non se ipsis distinguuntur .... Et hic incipit error Arianorum.” Ed. Eckerman, pp. 27486–
27593. (See further: loc. cit.).
27 Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo, I Sent., d. 8, q. 1, aa. 3–4 (ed. Venice 1490 [unfoliated—
rpt. 1952, for Scotus, Landulph, and Francis of Meyronnes, esp. cols. 375–378, with rejection
of any strong link between intellect and generation, will and procession, col. 378–379]). On
psychological model does not seem to have been an object of great interest
to him. This stands in contrast to the issue of the constitution of the persons.
In d. 25–27 of his I Sentences, Vargas presents a complex overview of many
positions that had been taken in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century trini-
tarian theology on the subject of the constitution and distinction of the per-
sons. In fact, the treatment is a treasure trove for the historically minded. We
have already seen that Vargas gives us the best information that we possess
on Robert Grosseteste’s lost De personis divinis, and he offers an evaluation
of the differences between Grosseteste’s position on absolute divine persons
and that of James of Viterbo (an Augustinian Hermit, it should be remem-
bered).28 Vargas also examines briefly the view of “a certain doctor of ours”
(quidam doctor noster), Michael of Massa, that the persons are absolutes,
as well as aspects of Scotus’, Ockham’s, and Thomas of Strasbourg’s views.29
But Vargas devotes a not inconsiderable part of his discussion to a rebuttal
of Rimini’s distinction between properties belonging to persons transitively
or intransitively and, in a separate treatment, to “the opinion of Praepositi-
nus, Gregory, and Hugh” (Hugonis, by whom Vargas may mean Hugolino of
Orvieto).30 Vargas’ treatment of Gregory’s (and Hugolino’s) use of the transi-
tive/intransitive distinction comes in the midst of his argument against the
persons being se totis distinct, a term that Vargas uses as a rough synonym
for the more usual “se ipsis distinct” employed by adherents of the Praeposi-
tinian view.31 Vargas’ argument against the Praepositinian position is one
we have seen before: if something is distinct in and of itself from something
else, then everything belonging to the one (quodlibet sui) is distinct from
the other; but this is not the case for the divine persons, who are identical in
the essence; therefore they are not distinct in and of themselves. According
to Vargas, Rimini might have suggested that, in God, the quodlibet sui (i.e.,
the “everything belonging to the one”) should be taken intransitively as a
Alphonsus Vargas and his Sent. commentary, see esp. Kürzinger 1930, 1–107; Trapp 1956, 213–
222; Zumkeller 1964, 224–225.
28 On Grosseteste and Viterbo, see Ch. 6, above, at and around nn. 17–19 and nn. 25–36.
For Vargas’ discussion, see I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., aa. 3–4 (ed. Venice 1490 [unfoliated—rpt.
1952, col. 538–541]).
29 See Vargas, I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., a. 2 and aa. 3–4 (ed. Venice 1490 [unfoliated—rpt.
1952, esp. col. 533–537, 541–544]).

30 On transitive and intransitive, see Vargas, I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., a. 2 (ed. Venice 1490
[unfoliated—rpt. 1952, col. 534–535]). On “Opinio Praepositivi, Gregorii, et Hugonis”, see

ibid., aa. 3–4 (col. 537–538), and see further n. 35 below.
31 See, e.g., nn. 34–35 below, for an indication that these two terms are roughly (although
not entirely) synonymous for Vargas.

884 conclusion
relationship of complete identity, and hence Vargas’ argument was invalid.32

Vargas dismisses this “evasion” as being not to the point. Two things that are
distinct in and of themselves are simply and without qualification distinct,
whether you are talking transitively or intransitively. On the other hand,
Vargas invites us to take the hypothetical case of a human being who is dis-
tinct from something by his soul but not by his body: he is not se toto distinct
from that other thing (since not by his body), yet he is distinct from the other
thing by something of his taken not transitively but rather intransitively,
Vargas assuming here that his soul is totally he by identity. This is precisely
the way it is with the divine persons, according to Vargas: on account of
divine simplicity, essence and property are intransitively the same as the
person—these are identical—and yet one person is distinct from another
by property but not by essence.33 Rimini and Hugolino might well object
to Vargas’ example, both because it seems highly counterfactual (and per-
haps counterintuitive) and because it moves rather quickly from the created
world of composite objects to God’s absolute simplicity; but Rimini and
Hugolino would certainly object to Vargas’ claim that persons containing
properties and essence could still be maximally simple. Alphonsus Vargas,
then, relies on a relatively standard refutation of Praepositinianism, and this
refutation clearly took its point of departure in a mainstream view of divine
constitution: the persons are identical in the essence and distinct by prop-
erties, and therefore they cannot be se totis or se ipsis distinct.34
32 Vargas, I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., a. 2: “… quod se toto distinguitur ab aliquo quodlibet sui
distinguitur ab illo. Oppositum praedicati infert oppositum subiecti; sed nulla persona divina
quolibet sui distinguitur ab alia, quia non deitate distinguitur ab alia. Ergo etc .... Gregorius
Ariminensis. Forte dicetur ad istas rationes iuxta principalia quorundam modernorum ....
Maior est vera si ly ‘sui’ teneatur transitive, sed sub isto sensu minor est falsa, licet sit vera
si ly ‘sui’ teneatur intransitive.” Ed. Venice 1490 (unfoliated—rpt. 1952, col. 533–534). For an
earlier use of this type of argument against Praepositinianism, see Henry of Ghent’s in Ch. 11,
above, at n. 50.
33 Vargas, I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., a. 2: “Sed ad veritatem haec evasio est nulla, quia per
eam non solvitur aliqua rationum. Non quidem prima, quia maior est vera non solum si ly
‘sui’ teneatur transitive sed etiam si teneatur intransitive, quia si homo esset anima et cor-
pus, et distingueretur ab aliquo per animam et non per corpus, non distingueretur ab illo
se toto, quia non distingueretur ab illo per corpus, quo tamen casu posito non esset aliquid
hominis secundum transitivam constructionem sed secundum intransitivam tantum, et sic
est in proposito, ut patet quia, licet deitas et proprietas personalis non sint idem personae
divinae secundum transitivam constructionem sed secundum intransitivam, quia quaelibet
persona divina propter sui simplicitatem est deitas et est personalis proprietas, nulla tamen
distinguitur ab alia per suam deitatem et quaelibet distinguitur ab alia per suam person-
alem proprietatem, et per consequens nulla se tota distinguitur ab alia.” Ed. Venice 1490
(unfoliated—rpt. 1952, col. 534).
34 Vargas, I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., a. 2: “… quando aliqua duo sic se habent quod aliquid
Vargas does not leave it at that, but takes up “an ancient opinion, which
certain moderns now follow who posit that the divine persons are made
distinct on their own account or in and of themselves natively (se totis sive
se ipsis primo)”; it is at this point that he mentions Praepositinus, Gregory,
and Hugh (Hugolino?) by name.35 Here he presents the opinion very briefly,
using some verbatim quotations from Rimini’s treatment.36 These quota-
tions show clearly that Vargas had understood that Rimini’s main concern
was the preservation of divine simplicity. Vargas is unimpressed: the per-
sons are absolutely simple (simpliciter simplex), “nevertheless each of [the
persons] includes the essence, which is common to all through identity,
as well as something proper to [that person], because the Father includes
paternity, which is proper to him, and the Son filiation, and the Holy Spirit
passive spiration, and so they cannot be distinct in and of themselves (se
totis), notwithstanding their simplicity.”37 Vargas is certain that no compo-
sition arises on account of the constitution of the persons by properties,
and this certainty stems from his view that essence and property are not
two somethings distinct ex natura rei, although there is in each divine per-
son something proper to that person alone and something common to that
omnino idem et indistinctum est in utroque, et tamen aliquid est in uno quod non est
in alio, non distinguuntur se totis. Personae divinae sunt huiusmodi .... Sequitur quod
personae divinae non distinguuntur se ipsis primo, quia quae non distinguuntur se totis, non
distinguuntur se ipsis.” Ed. Venice 1490 (unfoliated—rpt. 1952, col. 534).
35 Vargas, I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., a. 2: “… quaedam opinio antiqua quam nunc quidam
moderni sequuntur quae ponit personas divinas distingui se totis sive se ipsis primo.”
Ed. Venice 1490 (unfoliated—rpt. 1952, col. 537). It is interesting that Vargas talks about
Hugolino—at least I cannot see what other “Hugo” he can have in mind—, since Vargas
read the Sent. at Paris some four years before Hugolino. Thus, it may well be either that
Vargas’ text as it has come down to us was redacted sometime around 1350 or that Hugolino’s
Sent. commentary was circulated (in draft form) earlier then his actual lectures, or some
combination of these two possibilities. This may indicate that the relative dating of the six
Parisian theologians from the 1340’s from whom we have texts needs to be more closely
investigated.
36 The material is taken from conclusion 2 in Rimini’s I Sent., d. 26–27, q. 1, a. 2. With
the exception of the second argument that Vargas offers, which I do not find in Rimini, and
allowing for early modern typographical errors, the argument of Rimini’s found above in
Ch. 12, n. 244, is given verbatim, as is a reference to a Jerome quotation also found in Rimini
at that spot in his Sent. commentary.
37 Vargas, I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., a. 2: “… simpliciter simplex includens aliquid commune
sibi et aliis per identitatem et aliquid proprium sibi non potest a quocumque distingui se toto.
Sic est in proposito, quia quamvis omnis persona divina sit simpliciter simplex, quaelibet
tamen includit essentia, quae communis est omnibus per identitatem, et aliquid proprium
sibi, quia Pater includit paternitatem quae est sibi propria, et Filius filiationem, et Spiritus
Sanctus passivam spirationem, et ideo non possunt distingui se totis, non obstante earum
simplicitate.” Ed. Venice 1490 (unfoliated—rpt. 1952, col. 538).
886 conclusion
person and to the other persons.38 Clearly, Vargas, in accordance with the
mainstream of medieval trinitarian theology, had a broad enough idea of
simplicity to accommodate persons that “include” or are constituted by
essence and property, and he recognized that without this type of com-
position nothing could be offered to explain the distinction between the
persons. Rimini and Hugolino, on the other hand, worked with a far more
stringent notion of simplicity, ruling out personal constitution, and with it
any real possibility of metaphysical explanation for the distinction between
the persons. We see yet again the incommensurability between two differ-
ent theological aesthetics: Alphonsus Vargas, on the one hand, and Gregory
of Rimini and Hugolino of Orvieto, on the other, could not really talk with
each other, so different were the values motivating their respective trinitar-
ian theories.
What is perhaps most interesting when we consider as a group the five
thinkers from the 1340’s examined here is that, between them, they repre-
sent a wide variety of views. Among these theologians is an adherent of rad-
ical simplicity (Hugolino); two with rather conventional ideas who would
probably have felt at home in the discussion around 1300, one of whom
seeming to lean towards a Franciscan understanding of the Trinity (Paul
of Perugia), the other towards the Dominican (Alphonsus Vargas); and two
whose engagement with the trinitarian issues that this book has traced is
clearly not very great, and who, like their English colleagues from the 1330’s,
were mostly interested in logical matters (Mirecourt and Ceffons). The atti-
tudes of the five theologians towards Rimini reflect the same breadth of
opinion, from adherent to opponent to indifferent. To this extent, it is apt
to end this study with these five thinkers, reflecting as they do the diversity
of later-medieval trinitarian theology.
The diversity in later-medieval trinitarian ideas is itself worthy of some

attention by way of conclusion to this book as a whole, not least consider-
ing the fact that it has often gone unrecognized. Take basically any general
38 Vargas, I Sent., d. 25–27, q. un., a. 2: “… non sequitur Pater aliquo sui distinguitur a Filio et
aliquo sui non, igitur persona Patris est aliquo modo composita. Et quando dicitur quod ubi
est aliquid et aliquid, ibi est compositio, patet quid dicendum, quia ex hoc non sequitur quod
in Patre si aliquid et aliquid, id est aliqua distinctio ex natura rei, sed sequitur quod in ipso
sit aliquid commune sibi et aliis et aliquid proprium sibi, et ex hoc non concluditur aliqua
distinctio, multo minus compositio.” Ed. Venice 1490 (unfoliated—rpt. 1952, col. 538). Vargas
deals at greater length with how person can include both shared essence and unshared
property with no distinction between them, in I Sent., d. 33–34 (ed. Venice 1490 [unfoliated—
rpt. 1952, col. 588–604]).
history of Catholic dogma or systematic introduction into trinitarian theol-

ogy, and a perusal reveals that later-medieval (or just “medieval”) trinitarian
theology is coextensive with the trinitarian views of Thomas Aquinas, i.e. a
relation account of personal constitution.39 Indeed, one of the difficulties
with studying medieval trinitarian theology is that it has been a foregone
conclusion in much of the secondary literature that a Thomistic under-
standing of the Trinity—assuming that there is one, identifiable Thomistic
understanding of the Trinity—is the benchmark view, and that disagree-
ment with it spelled failure and was not really worthy of consideration. This
type of historiographic assumption can be seen in earlier literature in many
ways,40 but it was expressed in the midst of a passage of incredible elegance
on the final page of Michael Schmaus’ magnum opus on later-medieval trini-
tarian theology:
Man muß gestehen: Wer mit den Augen des hl. Thomas auf Gott schaut, hat
sich den günstigsten Standort gewählt. Ihm ist ein klarer Durchblick durch
die göttliche Wirklichkeit vergönnt. Aber viele Bezirke des göttlichen Seins
bleiben dabei in Dunkel gehüllt. Wer vom Standorte des Skotus aus auf Gott
schaut, der sieht diese dunklen Gebiete hell und licht werden. Dafür bleiben
andere im Schatten.41
39 Just two examples. Oberdorfer 2001, a truly impressive study of the Filioque controversy,
deals with Anselm, Peter Lombard, and Aquinas, jumping from there to the Reformation; as
far as I can tell Oberdorfer mentions just once (p. 192 n. 76) that there was an emanation
trinitarian theology in the later Middle Ages that took a different position than Aquinas
did. Jenson 1997: according to the index, Thomas Aquinas is mentioned on 41 pages, and
he appears to be the only later-medieval author mentioned (neither Bonaventure, Scotus,
or Ockham appear); ‘Relations, trinitarian’ is listed in the index as appearing in 8 spots in
the book (for a total of 23 pages), while neither ‘procession’ nor ‘emanation’ are mentioned
in the index. NB: my criticism is not of these publications themselves; the fact that they
ignore the diversity of later-medieval Latin trinitarian thought is itself conditioned by the
lack of recognition of that diversity in the literature at large (and especially in the specialist
literature on medieval trinitarian thought).
40 For an early example, consider the description in the Revue des sciences philosophiques
et théologiques (17, 1928, 807) of Slipyi 1927–1928: “Au point du vue doctrinal, les scotistes
ont mal compris le concept de relation, et l’ axiome de la théologie trinitaire que ce concept
fonde”. See also my comments on Roland Teske’s evaluation of William of Auvergne’s theory
of absolute persons (Ch. 6, above, n. 11) and on Michael Schmaus’ discussion of absolute
properties and Praepositinianism (Ch. 12, § 6, above). My point is not that this Thomistic
slant is necessarily wrong, but rather that it appears to be a default position, taken without
significant reflection on any possible advantages of the alternatives to Thomas’ view.
41 Schmaus 1930a, 666. In the interest of fairness to Schmaus, I give the rest of the passage:
“Im Bewußtsein der Blickenge unseres Geistes, angesichts der unendlichen Inhaltsfülle
Gottes, infolge deren Gottes Begreifbarkeit immer wieder in endlose Fernen entschwebt,
vermählt sich der Wetteifer um den Besitz der Wahrheit mit dem Danke dafür, daß wir den
Weg zu den Weiten und Tiefen Gottes an der Hand zweier großer Führer gehen dürfen, des
doctor angelicus und des doctor subtilis.”
888 conclusion
This passage sums up to the point of perfection an important aspect of the

discussion between the trinitarian traditions. The emphasis on relation in
the Dominican view explains some things wonderfully, but it leaves others
unclear. The Franciscan view with its emphasis on emanation, while elu-
cidating many of the points that go unexplained in the Dominican view, is
correspondingly weak on other points. With all that said, however, Schmaus
asserts quite categorically that Thomas’ view is the best one possible.
My task here has not been doctrinal, and I have indeed attempted to
give a balanced presentation of the medieval rivalry between the Francis-
can and Dominican trinitarian traditions without taking sides in it. But I
need to point out an historiographical fact: taking Thomas’ essential cor-
rectness as a point of departure has had real consequences for the study and
the understanding of medieval trinitarian thought. On a most general level,
it has, as mentioned, to a certain extent blinded those interested in the his-
tory of Christian dogma to the many distinctive types of medieval trinitarian
theologies, views that disagreed with Aquinas in whole or in part—witness
those survey works in which later-medieval Latin theology is often identi-
fied with Aquinas’ position. Further, in specialist literature it has undoubt-
edly hindered the more thorough investigation of what I have called here
the Franciscan trinitarian tradition. Indeed, while there are dozens of books
on Thomas’ trinitarian theology, and Dominican trinitarian theology more
broadly has received some specialist studies, corresponding works for the
Franciscan trinitarian current are scarce (a few studies of the trinitarian the-
ories of Bonaventure, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus notwithstand-
ing). But what the overwhelming interest in Thomas most obscures is the
trinitarian traditions themselves, and the fact that their interaction drove
much of the period’s trinitarian discussion, forcing theologians, whether of
a Franciscan or a Dominican “persuasion”, to hone their views, defend their
positions, meet new attacks.42 Nearly all of the dynamic of the medieval
dicussion, as well as much of the discussion itself, in this way goes unre-
marked.
My aim in this book has been to illuminate one complex of issues that
manifests the diversity of later-medieval trinitarian theology. I have tried to
give Thomas Aquinas his due as the developer of a compelling and influen-
tial trinitarian theory that was itself defended and developed in the 75 years
42 It should be said that, although Schmaus 1930a presents the thought of a mammoth
number of medieval theologians, and certainly recognizes the trinitarian traditions, nev-
ertheless the very structure of the book, divided up according to doctrinal categories, and
subdivided by religious order, tends to obscure the rivalry.
following his death. Indeed, a point that clearly emerges from the present
book, is Aquinas’ importance to the later-medieval trinitarian discussion
as a whole. To be sure, much more work needs to be done on Dominican
trinitarian theology, illuminating both the presence of views alternative to
Aquinas’ (e.g., Albert the Great’s) and the development of Thomistic trini-
tarian positions by later thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Domini-
cans. But even on the basis of the material analyzed here, Thomas’ signif-
icance for the emergence of a recognizable Dominican trinitarian view is
evident from the 1260’s and 1270’s with Peter of Tarentaise, Bombolognus
of Bologna, Roman of Rome, and Giles of Rome, through the 1320’s with
Durand of St. Pourçain, Hervaeus Natalis, John of Naples, and even Hugh
of Lawton. Over these fifty or sixty years, Aquinas’ position, modified to be
sure, lay at the heart of the trinitarian theology of the largest number of
Dominicans, as well as of many thinkers from outside the order, like Godfrey
of Fontaines, Guy Terrena, and Thomas of Strasbourg. Aquinas’ centrality in
the trinitarian discussion emerges just as clearly when we turn to the main
focus of attention in this book: the rival Franciscan trinitarian tradition. As
I have shown, from the 1260’s on, nearly all of the most important authors
writing as part of the Franciscan trinitarian current considered Aquinas’
view, or developments thereof, to be in error and in need of refutation.
Thus, from Eustace of Arras, John Pecham, and Roger Marston, through John
Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol, and William Ockham, Aquinas was taken to be
a major representative of the Dominican trinitarian tradition, and his view
was attacked precisely for that reason. Even later thinkers, engaged in the
search for simplicity, like Gregory of Rimini, still rehearsed Aquinas’ view,
nearly always with an eye to refuting it.
But, if in this book I have indicated the immense historical significance
that Aquinas’ trinitarian theology had in the hundred years studied here,
I have done that in the process of demonstrating that in the same period
there were competing visions of the Trinity, answering the same trinitarian
questions in radically different ways, or even arguing that divine simplic-
ity demanded that those questions go unanswered. Specifically, the book
has explored the underpinnings of the widespread use of the psychological
model of the Trinity as one of the defining elements in Franciscan trinitar-
ian theology in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. I have
argued that Henry of Ghent was a catalyst for the Franciscan trinitarian tra-
dition. He opened up a path by combining a Franciscan trinitarian theology
stressing emanations, on the one hand, with Aquinas’ interest in philosoph-
ical psychology, and especially in concept formation, on the other, a path
that was further explored by John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol, and by
890 conclusion
many others, including William of Ware, Henry of Harclay, Robert Cow-

ton, Alexander of Alessandria (in his late Sentences commentary), Landulph
Caracciolo, and Nicholas Bonet. The reason that Henry’s “strong use” of the
psychological model of the Trinity—his identification of saying and gener-
ating, and the Son with the Word—was so compelling to Franciscan the-
ologians seems to have been because Henry himself set his psychological
theory into an emanation account of the distinction of the persons. The
emanations had been stressed in Bonaventure’s trinitarian thought, and the
use of the emanation account of personal distinction was typical of the Fran-
ciscans writing contemporarily with or just prior to Henry. In fact, Henry
can hardly be understood except as a part of the Franciscan trinitarian tra-
dition. Although later Franciscan theologians disagreed with Henry on the
details of the use of concept theory in trinitarian theology, nevertheless the
overarching framework he outlined seems to have been generally accepted.
At the broadest level, Henry’s ideas on trinitarian theology would en-
counter problems because they stressed emanations. In this, he was no
different from any other adherent of the Franciscan trinitarian model: the
adoption of an emanation account preferenced certain authoritative texts
and certain explanatory desiderata at the expense of others. The emana-
tion account had a rival, built up around a competing set of authoritative
texts and explanatory desiderata: the relation account, with authoritative
support stemming from Augustine and Boethius, and with a centuries-long
tradition of interpretation of those authoritative texts that made it nearly
impossible to reject out of hand that relation had some role in explain-
ing the distinction between the persons. Scotus, by suggesting that the
divine persons are “absolutes” and distinct from one another through abso-
lute (non-relative) properties, came near to explicitly rejecting the rela-
tion account, and he seems to have been officially censured as a result;
even close followers of his like Hugh of Novo Castro and Landulph Carac-
ciolo distanced themselves from his radical idea, although other Francis-
can theologians, like William Ockham, Francis of Marchia, and Francis of
Meyronnes, accepted on faith alone that the personal properties are rela-
tional, maintaining that reason could give us no grounds for rejecting abso-
lute properties. In the period dealt with here, only the Augustinian Her-
mit Michael of Massa appears to have defended Scotus’ radical suggestion.
And yet, although Scotus’ suggestion was radical, it was in fact in line with
the Franciscan trinitarian tradition that included Henry of Ghent: like the
Franciscan tradition more broadly, Scotus stressed origin, production, and
emanation, since he held that the absolute properties constitutive of the
persons are non-quidditative origin and the persons are thus distinct on
account of production. Their emphasis on emanation required of the Fran-

ciscans a great deal of ingenuity due to the immense authoritative weight
that relation had in discussions of personal distinction. In effect the Fran-
ciscans had to figure out a way to, at one and the same time, both dismiss
and hold the relation account; to preference one set of authoritative texts
without rejecting another set that nevertheless seemed to late thirteenth-
and early fourteenth-century theologians to exclude the first. The resulting
Franciscan “marginalization strategies” are a fascinating manifestation of
the creativity of medieval theologians in the face of conflicting authorita-
tive texts and the interpretive contexts that gave them so much authority.
The major critique of the Franciscan trinitarian tradition was offered
by the rival Dominican tradition that took its roots in Thomas Aquinas’
work, emphasizing opposition of relation as the explanation for the dis-
tinction of the persons, and holding what the Franciscans claimed was
a “metaphorical” or “appropriational” understanding of the psychological
model of the Trinity. By this charge, the Franciscans were pointing out that
most Dominicans had a “non-psychological” understanding of the divine
emanations, i.e. for the Dominicans, the Son’s emanation as a Word has
nothing to do with the divine intellect as such, and the Holy Spirit’s ema-
nation as Love has nothing to do with the divine will as such. This Domini-
can non-psychological understanding had its background in the Domini-
can stress on (opposition of) relations and the relation account, which
went hand-in-hand with a deemphasizing of the emanations and produc-
tion; thus, as I have argued here, the Franciscans’ strong use of the psy-
chological model, with its emphasis on production, fit together uneasily
with a relation account of the Trinity. But if to the Dominicans the non-
psychological understanding of the emanations was simply an internally
consistent extension of their trinitarian theory, to the Franciscans it was
a rejection of the authoritative basis for the psychological model found
in John’s Gospel and in Augustine. If the Son’s emanation was not an
emanation from the divine intellect, asked the Franciscans, in what sense
could the Son be the divine Word or Concept? The same question could
be asked about the Holy Spirit, the divine will, and Love. For the Fran-
ciscans, the Son’s emanation as a Word had to have a privileged link to
the divine intellect or else his intellectual emanation (and hence his sta-
tus as the Word) was merely metaphorical; mutatis mutandis with the link
between the divine will and the Holy Spirit’s emanation as Love. Domini-
cans in general did not agree. Most Dominicans in fact denied that they
they held a metaphorical understanding of the psychological model as a
whole, although Durand of St. Pourçain did claim outright that the Son was
892 conclusion
a Word, the Holy Spirit Love, in a purely “appropriated” way. The Domini-
cans met the Franciscan criticism of their understanding of the psycho-
logical model by developing a marginalization strategy of their own: they
claimed that intellectual emanation in God simply is the type of emana-
tion that the Son has, not because it involves the divine intellect as such,
but because it has certain characteristics that identify it as being intellec-
tual (e.g., it is the emanation in which one person comes from one person).
The same is true of the Holy Spirit’s voluntary emanation: it has nothing
to do with the divine will as such, but it has certain characteristics that
identify it as the voluntary emanation in God (e.g., it is the emanation in
which one person comes from two persons). According to the Dominicans
of this period, the psychological model, built as it is upon John’s Gospel, is
not false or metaphorical, but it needs to be understood correctly. In this
way, the Dominicans could retain the psychological model, but attenuate
its significance to such an extent that it fit with their relation-based trinitar-
ian theology.
As these examples may suggest, a significant part of this book has been
concerned with exploring the way the development of each of the two trini-
tarian traditions was tightly intertwined with the development of the other.
From the earliest skirmishing in the pages of Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’
Sentences commentaries up through the stabilization of the trinitarian tra-
ditions and on through to William Ockham at Oxford and Thomas of Stras-
bourg at Paris, these two ways of conceptualizing the Trinity grew together,
inasmuch as their mutual criticism forced reevaluation and development
that might well not have taken place if there had been one monolithic later-
medieval view of God’s trinitarian nature instead of two rival views. The
intertwined growth of the trinitarian traditions can certainly be seen in
the development of the marginalization strategies mentioned just above:
Franciscan criticism of the Dominican “metaphorical” understanding of the
psychological model clearly led the Dominicans to develop their marginal-
ization strategy, and mutatis mutandis the same is the case with Franciscan
methods for neutralizing authoritative texts that appeared to speak against
their emanation trinitarian theology. Moreover, in the Franciscan trinitar-
ian tradition traced here we can see that some of the most interesting devel-
opments were suggested by criticisms or ideas advanced by the Dominican
tradition. Indeed, we can observe a type of “dialectic” of scholastic argumen-
tation which is well illustrated by contrasting the roles of, e.g., John Pecham
or Roger Marston with that of Henry of Ghent in the emerging Franciscan
trinitarian tradition of the late thirteenth century. For Pecham and Marston,
from premisses to conclusions, Thomas Aquinas was just wrong, and there
was not much to be learned from him except what not to think. Theirs was
a significant role to play at this early stage in the Franciscan trinitarian
tradition: the arguments and authoritative texts that Pecham and Marston
collected and developed to criticize Aquinas were used by later theologians.
When one turns to Marston’s contemporary, Henry of Ghent, one finds that
he had another part to play. Henry was willing to accept that Aquinas had
something to teach the Franciscan tradition (this willingness may have had
something to do with the fact that Henry himself was a secular theolo-
gian and thus better able to test the boundaries of the Franciscan “line”).
Thus, Henry transferred Aquinas’ preoccupation with the Word, and with
concepts and concept formation, directly into an emanational trinitarian
understanding, and the trinitarian theory that resulted—and particularly
its strong use of concept theory and strong identification of the Son with
the Word—appealed powerfully to others in the Franciscan trinitarian tra-
dition.
This dialectic in scholastic trinitarian doctrine continues with Scotus
and with Auriol, who adopt the main framework of Henry’s trinitarian the-
ology, but modify it on the basis of criticism and suggestions from the
competing Dominican trinitarian tradition. Thus, for example, Scotus takes
seriously the Dominican—ultimately Thomist—criticism of Henry’s idea
that the rational distinction between intellect and will in God could be
a basis for the real distinction between the emanations and the persons.
This seems to be an important reason for Scotus to postulate the formal
ex natura rei distinction between the attributes. Auriol in his turn also
takes the Dominican criticism seriously and, appealing to the idea of a con-
notative distinction between the attributes, he claims that the distinction
between the persons is not based on the distinction between the attributes,
but rather the reverse is the case. Thus, to Auriol, the absolutely simple
divine essence, as it connotes the really distinct Word, is the divine intel-
lect. In this dialectic of scholastic discourse, as we have already noted,
several thinkers from the period after Auriol—Ockham, Chatton, Wode-
ham, Marchia, Rubio, Rimini—mark something of an endpoint. These later
thinkers reject the “strong” use of the psychological model as a descrip-
tion of God’s trinitarian nature, thereby setting aside one of the basic ele-
ments of Franciscan trinitarian theology since Henry of Ghent. All of these
thinkers, with the exception of Ockham, in fact accept that the psycholog-
ical model is to the largest extent metaphorical: exactly the position that
Franciscans from Pecham through Auriol had charged Dominicans with
maintaining and had said was unacceptable, since it contradicted sacred
Scripture itself.
894 conclusion
This relegation of the psychological model to metaphorical status reflects

a fourteenth-century theological “search for simplicity”, itself a manifesta-
tion of what I have called a changing theological aesthetic. When it came
to trinitarian theology, explanatory completeness was extremely important
in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The goal was to explain as
much as possible (and deciding just how much was possible was a major
issue, also between Franciscans and Dominicans), even if fulfilling this goal
involved postulating, for instance, formally distinct attributes in God. The
later thinkers discussed here, from Ockham to Rimini, dismissed explana-
tory completeness as a phantom, and a dangerous one at that. For them
God’s absolute simplicity was the alpha and omega of trinitarian theology,
and this entailed rejecting any type of distinct attributes, and in conse-
quence any type of privileged link between the emanations and attributes.
For these thinkers, the Son’s emanation, for instance, could not be “intel-
lectual” in the sense of coming from the divine intellect, since there is no
distinct intellect in God. This same motivation is what lies behind the Prae-
positinian tendencies in several of these thinkers; for them, the absolute
simplicity of the persons would be compromised through the postulation of
any type of personal properties in the attempt to explain why the persons
are distinct from one another, and therefore it is far better to leave essential
identity and personal distinction unexplained than to postulate such illu-
sory properties. The period covered in this book thus witnesses the rise of
a new theological aesthetic, one that was intolerant of explanatory devices
that could in any way compromise divine simplicity, and concomitantly one
that was open to appeals to faith as the sole ground of most (if not all) of our
ideas about God’s trinitarian nature.
As this suggests, the early to mid fourteenth-century search for simplic-
ity involved a more widespread fideism than had been common in earlier
trinitarian theology. The new theological aesthetic countenanced positions
on which, for instance, the Son is a Word, although we do not know why
or how this is the case, and thus we must simply believe it; it also counte-
nanced the Praepositinian view that the real personal distinction and real
essential identity of the three persons of the Trinity cannot be explained as
such, we must simply believe it. Indeed, one topic that has been touched on
many times in this book is the relation between faith and reason: just how
far can reason take us in our speculations concerning God and the Trinity? If
faith and reason have been a large topic here, the book as a whole addresses
the connected topic of the relation between philosophy and theology, since
here I have traced the use of philosophical psychology—what we today con-
sider to be a philosophical discipline—in trinitarian theology, which is a
dogmatically driven theological discipline. What can we say about the rela-
tion between philosophy and theology as it has appeared in this complex
medieval discussion? All of the theologians examined here thought that to
attain the best trinitarian theology they would have to use the best philoso-
phy: we have seen time and again that a trinitarian theory could be defended
or attacked on the basis of both philosophical and trinitarian grounds. For
instance, for many Franciscan theologians not only did their concept the-
ory have to be satisfactory in its psychological dimension, but it also had to
be satisfactory in its trinitarian role(s). This is clearest, of course, with the
three figures whose use of concept theory in trinitarian theology has been
most extensively studied here: there can be no doubt that Henry of Ghent,
John Duns Scotus, and Peter Auriol wanted their theories of concepts to
answer in the most satisfactory way possible both psychological questions
and trinitarian questions. At a very basic level, the purely philosophical and
the purely theological blur, and the relation between them becomes difficult
to define, in part because trinitarian theology was so deeply infused with
philosophical analysis and doctrine. Certainly no one that we have consid-
ered here saw there to be any kind of systemic “conflict” between faith and
reason, and all used both “philosophical” and “theological” arguments in the
construction of their own trinitarian theories and in their criticism of oth-
ers’. This is as true for Durand of St. Pourçain, as it is for Henry of Ghent,
John Duns Scotus, and Peter Auriol. Dominicans did not reject the psycho-
logical model as a precise description of God’s trinitarian nature out of any
suspicion about philosophy’s value in theological investigation. They did
this rather because their emphasis on relation and the relation account of
personal distinction—itself perhaps linked, as mentioned in the Introduc-
tion above, to an intuition that God as pure act should not be described
using process terminology but rather using static relation terminology—
was incompatible with the emanation account that was required for the
strong adoption of the psychological model. On the other hand, the Francis-
cans did not reject relation as the basic source of personal distinction in God
out of any suspicion about the usefulness of relation in (trinitarian) theol-
ogy, but perhaps because they thought emanational act and process termi-
nology better reflected God’s nature. Even the fourteenth-century authors
on their search for simplicity were not skeptical of reason as such, and they
used reason in order to show why complex trinitarian theories failed to mea-
sure up to pure divine simplicity; they, like everyone else discussed in this
book, were balancing authoritative texts, divine simplicity, and the desire
to use human reason to explain the Trinity. An extremely interesting man-
ifestation of this balancing act is William Ockham’s nuanced discussions of
896 conclusion
what he thinks to be the epistemic status of his trinitarian views; accepting

that his own reasoned trinitarian positions took their point of departure in
belief in Scripture and Church pronouncements, Ockham explored just how
that fact affected the knowledge claims he could make for those positions.
In the material examined throughout this book, then, the major concern
does not seem to have been whether or how much philosophy should be
incorporated into trinitarian theology, rather it seems to have been whose
philosophy—they wanted to use the best they could—and how precisely it
had to be delimited in order to account for God’s reality.
With regard to this last item—the delimitation and use of philosophy
in theology—, a matter that looms especially large is that of the precision
of theological language. There appears to be a continuing effort to make
more precise the language being used to describe God’s trinitarian real-
ity, such that it better reflects the type of being God is. For instance, in
first Scotus’ and then Auriol’s criticism of the Franciscan trinitarian tradi-
tion before them, we can see that a major motivation for change in trini-
tarian theory is perceived imprecision in the use of language. An exam-
ple can be found in the various models of personal constitution that were
suggested in the period. Thus, Henry of Ghent postulated a hylomorphic
model of constitution, upon which the essence is quasi-material while the
personal property is quasi-formal. Scotus took Henry to task because even
the suggestion of “quasi-matter” in God leads one to think that God is in
some way potential; Scotus elaborated instead a model of personal con-
stitution on which the divine essence and property are both acts, but the
essence is a quidditative act while the property is an individuating act, much
as in a created individual there is a common (quidditative) nature con-
tracted to the individual through its individuating haecceitas. Peter Auriol
thought that Scotus’ language and model did not guard well enough against
the suggestion of potentiality in God, and Auriol rejected any type of for-
mal constitution, instead resorting to a model of personal constitution on
which the persons result from property and essence (“constitution resul-
tative”) but neither is formal with respect to the other. The major issue
in these correctives is the extent to which it is necessary to tighten philo-
sophical and theological language in order to describe God in a satisfac-
tory way. Both Henry and Scotus believed that God was pure act with no
hint of potentiality; yet Auriol attacked them both for using terminology
that suggested otherwise (and Auriol will himself later be criticized in a
similar way by both John Baconthorpe and Adam Wodeham). The quest
for precision of theological/philosophical language, then, seems indeed, as
I have shown, to be a basic issue in the particular manifestation of the
medieval relation between philosophy and theology examined in this book.

Indeed, the limitations of (philosophical) language to adequately reflect
God’s perfection is clearly at issue in the many attempts by such thinkers
as Peter Auriol, William Ockham, and Francis of Marchia to get beyond
the strict duality of either relation or emanation through such devices as
unelicited emanations (Auriol) and properties that are eminently both rela-
tion and emanation (Marchia). To a certain extent, adherents of radical
divine simplicity like Robert Holcot or Gregory of Rimini represent an end-
point to this attempt to accommodate language to God, since they reject
that it can be done: for them, we need to believe that God is three in
one, but we cannot really explain or describe this in any more detailed
way.
Here, at the very end, I should return to the diversity of later-medieval
trinitarian thought, which I hope the preceding pages have amply doc-
umented. In the final analysis, what strikes me most about the material
presented in this book is the immense richness of medieval theology and
the immense creativity of the medieval theologian. These are apparent in
the way that several different theologians—and not exclusively Thomas
Aquinas—become the focus of the discussion as time goes on, with Henry
of Ghent, and then John Duns Scotus, and then Peter Auriol and (to a
lesser extent) William Ockham, each in turn taking center stage, eliciting
response and renewal in the trinitarian theology of their day. The richness
and creativity of medieval theology are also apparent not only in the many
explanatory devices used, the different types of marginalization strategies
employed, and the countless arguments that were offered and refuted, but
also in the highly systematic and comprehensive nature of the trinitarian
thought. Nowhere is this last feature more evident than in the many dis-
parate elements of medieval theology and philosophy linked together by the
issue of the divine Word, an issue that itself had its origins in four words: In
principio erat Verbum.
appendix
EUSTACE OF ARRAS’ QUESTION ON THE DISTINCTION

OF THE HOLY SPIRIT FROM THE SON: CRITICAL
EDITION FROM THE KNOWN MANUSCRIPTS
Eustace of Arras’ quaestio “Utrum Spiritus Sanctus personaliter distingue-

retur a Filio si non procederet a Filio”, dedicated to the counterfactual
Filioque question, is edited here, to my knowledge, for the first time ever.
For literature on Eustace, see Ch. 2, above, in n. 36. In general on the
manuscript transmission of this quaestio, see Delmas 2010, 365–366.
The question survives in the following three manuscripts:
D Dole, Bibliothèque municipale 81, pp. 169a–174a
F Firenze, BNC, conv. soppr. B.6.912, ff. 89rb–93vb
V BAV Borgh. 139, 3vb–6va
Manuscripts F and V both carry the complete text; these two manuscripts
complement each other nicely, producing a text that is relatively unprob-
lematic. Manuscript D is fragmentary both inasmuch as it omits several
large portions of the text (ll. 36–45, 55–79, 137–194, 204–243, 278–286, 308–
338, 347–354, 424–431, 440–474, 491–494, 504–521, 714–727) and inasmuch
as the text in it breaks off at l. 775. Interestingly, nearly all the large omis-
sions in D coincide with full paragraphs (according to the text established
below). The text that manuscript D does carry is also riddled with many
singular errors of omission and commission (even with a principle of char-
ity applied), although it has many readings that agree either with V against
F or with F against V.
I have recorded all variants, except for scribal self corrections, and
igitur/ergo, illa/ista. Abbreviations in the apparatus are defined in the
“List of Symbols, Abbreviations, and Conventions” above, unless they are
completely standard; for sources used here, see the Bibliography to this
book as a whole.
Eustachius Atrebatensis OFM,
Quaestio “utrum Spiritus Sanctus personaliter
distingueretur a Filio si non procederet a Filio”
Quaesitum fuit de divinarum personarum distinctione. Et primo quae-

situm fuit de ipsa in generali, secundo in speciali. Prima quaestio alibi
determinatur. Quaeritur ergo in speciali de distinctione personali ipsius
Spiritus Sancti a Filio, et est quaestio utrum Spiritus Sanctus personaliter
distingueretur a Filio si non procederet a Filio, vel necessarium sit quod a 5
Filio procedat ad hoc quod sit persona ab ipso distincta.
hArgumenta pro opinione quod essent personaliter distinctii
Quod autem esset persona distincta personaliter a Filio, licet non pro-
cederet a Filio, sicut ponunt Graeci, ostenditur multiplici auctoritate et
ratione. 10
Primo sic: Augustinus, V De trinitate, cap. 14: “Solet multos movere, cur
non sit Filius etiam Spiritus Sanctus, cum et ipse a Patre exeat, sicut in
Evangelio legitur?” Et respondet dicens: “Exit enim non quo modo natus
D 169b sed quo modo datus. Et ideo non dicitur ‘Filius’ quia neque natus est sicut |
unigenitus neque factus ut per Dei gratiam in adoptionem nasceretur 15
sicut nos.” Ex his verbis Augustini habetur quod Spiritus Sanctus per hoc
personaliter distinguitur a Filio: quia ipse est natus, iste vero datus. Sed
dato quod Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, adhuc Filius procederet
a Patre quo modo natus et Spiritus Sanctus a Patre quo modo datus, quia
ut donum amoris a datore. Ergo maneret causa distinctionis personalis. 20
Ergo esset a Filio personaliter distinctus.
Item, Augustinus, XV De trinitate, cap. 26: “Quomodo ergo non absur-
V 4ra dissime Filius diceretur amborum, cum sicut Filio praestat essentiam |
sine ullo initio temporis, sine ulla mutabilitate naturae de Patre generatio,
ita Spiritui Sancto praestet essentiam sine ullo initio temporis, sine ulla 25
3 determinatur] terminatur VD | personali om. F 4 Spiritus Sanctus inv. F 5 proce-

deret] proderet F 6 persona] personaliter V | distincta] distinctus V 9 ostenditur]
etiam D 17 distinguitur] distincto F 19 Sanctus om. D 22 Quomodo om. D
24 mutabilitate] praeimmutabilitate F 25 praestet] praestat F
2 prima quaestio] Non inveni 11–16 Augustinus, V … nos.”] Augustinus, De trinitate V,

14, 15 (CCSL 50, p. 2227–12) 22–26 Augustinus, XV … processio?”] Augustinus, De trinitate
XV, 26, 47 (CCSL 50a, p. 528102–106)
the holy spirit’s distinction from the son 901
mutabilitate naturae de utroque processio?” Ex his verbis apparet quod

generatio et processio sunt rationes quare ille dicitur ‘Filius’ et iste dicitur
‘Spiritus Sanctus’. Ergo generatio et processio sunt rationes distinguendi
personaliter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum. Sed dato quod Spiritus Sanctus
non procederet a Filio, adhuc maneret in divinis generatio Filii, cum pro- 30
cessio Spiritus Sancti a Filio non sit causa vel ratio generationis Filii; adhuc
etiam maneret ibi processio Spiritus Sancti a Patre, cum non habeat Pater
a Filio quod ab ipso procedat Spiritus Sanctus, sed potius e converso. Ergo
cum manerent rationes distinguendi personaliter, maneret Filii et Spiri-
tus Sancti ab invicem personalis distinctio. 35
Item, Augustinus, XV De trinitate, cap. 27: “Cur non dicatur natus esse
sed potius procedere Spiritus Sanctus?” Et respondet: “Quoniam si et ipse
‘Filius’ diceretur amborum, utique diceretur ‘Filius’, quod absurdissimum
est.” Ex hac auctoritate vult Augustinus quod, si Spiritus Sanctus esset
natus, quod esset Filius, sed quia procedit, ideo nec natus est nec Filius. 40
Ergo per processionem et nativitatem distinguuntur personaliter Filius
et Spiritus Sanctus. Sed manente causa, manet effectus. Si ergo adhuc
essent ibi processio et nativitas, dato illo impossibili, scilicet quod Spiritus
F 89va Sanctus non procederet a Filio, cum hoc | non sit causa vel ratio illorum,
ergo adhuc esset ibi personalis distinctio Filii et Spiritus Sancti. 45
Item, Augustinus, XV De trinitate, cap. 27: “Attolle oculos ad ipsam
lucem et eos in ea fige si potes, sic enim videbis quid distet nativitas Verbi
Dei a processione Doni Dei propter quod Filius unigenitus non de Patre
genitum, alioquin frater eius esset, sed procedere dixit Spiritum Sanc-
tum.” Ex hac auctoritate ostenditur sic: plus distat processio a generatione 50
quam generatio a generatione. Sed hic dicit Augustinus quod, si Spiritus
Sanctus esset genitus a Patre, quod esset frater Filii et ita distinctus esset
a Filio. Ergo multo magis si a solo Patre procederet, distingueretur a Filio
personaliter ratione processionis et nativitatis.
28 generatio om. D | rationes om. F 30–31 processio] processus F 31 vel ratio

generationis Filii] generationis Filii vel ratio F 32 ibi om. V 35 ab] ad D 36–45 Item,
Augustinus … Spiritus Sancti om. D 36 XV De trinitate] De trinitate XV F 38 ‘Filius’
diceretur inv. F | diceretur ‘Filius’ inv. F 40 ideo om. F 42 adhuc om. F 47 ea] eas
F | sic] si F 48 Dei2] det F | quod] hoc F, om. D 49 frater eius inv. F 52 frater]
pater D 52–53 esset a Filio] a Filio esset F 53 magis] ergo add. D | Filio2] procederet
distingueretur a Filio add. D
36–39 Augustinus, XV … absurdissimum est.”] Augustinus, De trinitate XV, 27, 48 (CCSL

50a, p. 53021–23) 46–50 Augustinus, XV … Spiritum Sanctum.”] De trinitate XV, 27, 50
(CCSL 50a, p. 53283–87)
902 appendix—critical edition of eustace of arras
Item, Augustinus in libro De trinitate quasi per totum dicit quod dis- 55
tinctio personarum divinarum fit per proprietates personales. Sed dato
quod Spiritus Sanctus non procedat a Filio, adhuc sunt in divinis pro-
prietates personales distinguentes. Ergo adhuc est Filii et Spiritus Sancti
personalis distinctio. Quod autem ibi sint, hoc dato, patet per Damasce-
num—qui Graecus fuit—I lib., cap. 10, qui dicit quod omnia habet Pater 60
quae habehnit Filius et Spiritus Sanctus et e converso “praeter ingene-
rationem, generationem, et processionem. In his enim solis hypostaticis
proprietatibus ab invicem differunt hae sanctae tres hypostases, non sub-
stantia.” Ergo istae tres proprietates sunt distinctivae personarum. Idem
etiam habetur eodem libro, cap. 11, ubi dicit quod “secundum omnia sunt 65
unum Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, praeter ingenerationem”, etc. Sed
istae tres manerent ibi, quia non minus spiraret Pater aut generaret, licet
Filius non spiraret, quia nihil habet a Filio, nec vim generativam aut spi-
rativam habet ex comparatione ad spirationem Filii activam. Ergo adhuc
distinguerentur personaliter. 70
Item, Damascenus, I lib., cap. 10: “Propter Patrem, hoc est propter esse
Patrem, Filius est et Spiritus Sanctus, et propter Patrem habent Filius et
Spiritus Sanctus omnia quaecumque habent.” Sed propter quod habet
Filius quod sit Filius et propter quod Spiritus Sanctus quod sit Spiritus,
et omnia quae habent, propter illud habent distinctionem personalem 75
Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Si ergo istud est esse Patrem, et esse Patrem
istud esset licet Spiritus Sanctus a Filio non procederet. Ergo dato quod
non procederet, Spiritus Sanctus esset distinctus personaliter a Filio, quia
manente causa distinctionis manet distinctio.
Item, Anselmus in libro De processione Spiritus Sancti, loquens de ista 80
materia, ita dicit cap. 2: “Filius Deus est de Patre Deo nascendo et Spi-
ritus Sanctus Deus est de Patre Deo procedendo.” Et post haec subdit:
55–79 Item Augustinus … manet distinctio om. D 61–62 ingenerationem] et add. F

63 sanctae tres] tresanctae F 64 istae] haec F 67–68 Pater aut … non spiraret om. F
68 aut] nec F 74 quod2] habet add. F 81 ita dicit cap. 2] dicit ita 2 cap. F
59–64 Damascenum … substantia.”] Ioannes Damascenus, De fide orthodoxa (versio Bur-

gundionis) I, 8 (ed. Buytaert, p. 40224–227) 65–66 eodem libro, cap. 11 … ingenerationem”,
etc.] Ioannes Damascenus, De fide orthodoxa (versio Burgundionis) I, 8 (ed. Buytaert,
p. 44279–281) 71–73 Item, Damascenus … habent.”] Ioannes Damascenus, De fide ortho-
doxa (versio Burgundionis) I, 8 (ed. Buytaert, p. 40222–224) 80–82 Item, Anselmus …
procedendo.”] Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, c. 1 (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 17814–15)
82–85 subdit: “Haec … de Deo.”] Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, c. 1 (ed. Schmitt,
vol. 2, p. 17912–14)
“Haec itaque sola causa pluralitatis in Deo ut Pater et Filius et Spiritus

Sanctus dici non possint de invicem, sed alii sunt ab invicem, quia prae-
dictis duobus modis est Deus de Deo.” Sola igitur differentia nativitatis et 85
processionis est ratio totius personalis distinctionis in divinis. Sed adhuc
manet ibi processio et nativitas a Patre, licet non sit processio a Filio,
sicut ponit Damascenus et Graeci. Ergo adhuc manet ibi distinctio trium
personarum, scilicet Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Ergo distinguuntur per-
sonaliter. 90
F 89vb Item, Anselmus, libro De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 2, mani-|-
festat istud expressius, dicens: “Quippe quoniam Filius est de Patre et
Spiritus Sanctus est de Patre, nec ille de quo est aliquis, potest esse ille qui
de se est, nec qui de aliquo est valet esse ille de quo est, idcirco nec Pater
est Filius aut Spiritus Sanctus, nec Filius sive Spiritus Sanctus est Pater, 95
Filius autem, ut interim, aliam causam dicam, quoniam nondum constat,
quia Spiritus Sanctus de illo sit et procedat, ideo non est Spiritus Sanctus,
nec Spiritus Sanctus est Filius, quia Filius nascendo habet esse de Patre,
D 170a Spiritus Sanctus vero non nascendo | sed procedendo.” Ergo secundum
Anselmum, licet Spiritus Sanctus non procedat a Filio sed a solo Patre, 100
tamen distinctus est a Filio propter diversum modum existendi a Patre.
V 4rb Item, Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 3: | “Cum dicitur
‘Deus est Spiritus Sanctus’, requirit unitas praedicta”, scilicet unitas natu-
rae, “Patrem quoque et Filium esse Spiritum Sanctum. Sed nec Pater, de
quo est Spiritus Sanctus, potest esse ille qui de se est, nec Filius, qui existit 105
de Patre nascendo, est ille qui de eodem Patre est procedendo, id est Spiri-
tus Sanctus. Cum autem apparebit, quia Spiritus Sanctus est de Filio, tunc
quoque palam erit, quia propter hoc Filius nequit esse Spiritus Sanctus
et Spiritus Sanctus Filius.” Ex hac similiter auctoritate Anselmi habetur
quod duplex est ratio distinguendi Spiritum Sanctum a Filio: una est quia 110
aliter exit a Patre quam Filius, alia est quia exit a Filio (quod postea proba-
bit). Ergo dato per impossibile quod non procedat a Filio, sed a Patre solo,
83 pluralitatis] est add. D 85–86 et processionis om. D 89 Patris] et add. D | Ergo]

adhuc add. F 92 istud] istius* F | Patre] et Spiritus est de add. D 95 aut] nec
F 96 autem] vero* V 97–98 de illo … Sanctus om. D 97 ideo non est iter. V
98 Sanctus] om. F 101 tamen] tunc D 106 id est] scilicet F 109 Anselmi] angelica D
111 quia] quod F 112 non procedit a Filio] a Filio non procedit F
91–99 Item, Anselmus, … procedendo.”] Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, c. 1 (ed.

Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 1809–17) 102–109 Item, Anselmus, … Filius.”] Anselmus, De processione
Spiritus Sancti, c. 1 (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 18210–16)
adhuc est distinctus personaliter a Filio, per aliam rationem distinguendi,

quae est alius modus procedendi a Patre sive exeundi.
Item, Anselmus adhuc expressius dicit hoc in libro De processione Spiri- 115
tus Sancti, cap. 5: “Habent utique a Patre esse Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, sed
diverso modo, quia alter nascendo, alter procedendo, ut alii sint per hoc
ab invicem; et ideo cum nascitur unus, non potest cum eo nasci ille qui per
hoc est alius ab illo, quia non similiter nascitur sed procedit. Et cum unus
procedit, nequit ille similiter procedere, qui per hoc est alius ab illo, quia 120
non similiter procedit sed nascitur, nam etsi per aliud non essent plures”,
id est distincti (quam supple: nativitate et processione) “per hoc solum
essent diversi”, scilicet quia unus nascitur, alius procedit, id est distincti.
Ergo, licet Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, tamen per hoc persona-
liter distingueretur a Filio, quia scilicet aliter acciperet esse a Patre quam 125
Filius.
Item, Anselmus in libro De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 23, loquens
secundum sententiam veritatis, et recapitulans quae ante dixit in libro,
ita dicit: “Patet ergo, sicut supra praemisi, praeter hoc quia Filius existit
nascendo et Spiritus Sanctus procedendo, hac quoque causa, quia scilicet 130
Spiritus Sanctus est de Filio, eos de invicem non posse dici.” Assignat
ergo ibi Anselmus duplicem causam distinctionis Filii et Spiritus Sancti:
prima est quia diversimode oriuntur, secunda est quia Spiritus Sanctus a
Filio procedit et spiratur. Si ergo prima non dependet a secunda, et potest
stare sive intelligi esse sine illa, ergo, adhuc illa manente, essent distincti 135
personaliter, licet non esset secunda ratio distinguendi.
Item, Richardus, IV lib. De trinitate, cap. 15: “Invenimus quod plures
illae in deitate personae, quamvis habeant unum et idem per omnia indif-
F 90ra ferens esse | quod pertinet ad identitatem substantiae, possunt tamen
secundum originalem causam mutuam differentiam habere si unus 140
115 adhuc] adeo V | hoc] quod D | libro De om. F 116 a Patre esse] esse a Patre F
117 nascendo, alter procedendo] procedendo alter nascendo F 118 eo nasci ille] nasci
ille eo F 121 non2 om. F 122 id est om. D 124 a Filio om. D 125 quia] quasi
F | a2] de D 127 cap. 23 om. D 130 et om. F | causa] omnia D | quia scilicet inv.
V 132 ibi om. F 136 licet] sed D 137–194 Item, Richardus … Spiritus Sanctus om. D
138 deitate] divinitate F
115–123 Item, Anselmus, … diversi”,] Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, c. 1 (ed.

Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 1853–11) 127–131 Item, Anselmus, … dici.”] Anselmus, De processione
Spiritus Sancti, c. 15 (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 21528–30) 137–144 Item, Richardus …
differentiam.”] Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate IV, 15 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 17726–
17835)
existit a se ipso, alter originem trahit ab altero, et si originem habentes

differunt in obtinendi modo. In divina namque natura circa originem
solam oportet quaerere tam personarum quam existentiarum differen-
tiam.” Haec Richardus. Sed si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio,
adhuc tamen uterque esset ab alio, scilicet a Patre, et differrent in modo 145
obtinendi originem et naturam, quia ille obtinet nascendo, iste proce-
dendo. Ergo si haec est causa distinctionis personalis in divinis, ergo
adhuc distinguerentur personaliter Filius et Spiritus Sanctus.
Item, Richardus, IV De trinitate, cap. 13: “Secundum solam originem
est illa varietas existentiae, quando pluribus personis est unum idemque 150
et indifferens esse. Inveniuntur tamen secundum originem mutuam ad
invicem differentiam habere. Secundum vero originem differunt, si unus
originem habet, alter origine caret, vel si originem habentium origo unius
differt ab origine alterius.” Ex hac auctoritate habetur quod distinctio
personarum est duobus modis penes originem: uno modo quando una 155
habet originem, alia non, vel quando utraque habet originem, tamen
origo unius differt ab origine alterius. Sed dato quod Spiritus Sanctus non
procederet a Filio sed a solo Patre, adhuc origo Filii differret secundum
speciem ab origine Spiritus Sancti a Patre. Ergo adhuc distinguerentur
personaliter penes origines diversas Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. 160
Item, Richardus, V libro De trinitate, cap. 1: “Nihil aliud est persona
divina quam incommunicabilis existentia. Notandum itaque quod quaeli-
bet existentia divina, si vel unum aliquid invenitur habere incommunica-
bile, ex eo utique solo deprehenditur atque convincitur esse persona. Nam
etsi plura habeat incommunicabilia, sufficit tamen unum solum ad com- 165
probandum* quod sit persona.” Sed Spiritus Sanctus habet duplex incom-
municabile: unum est procedere a duobus, aliud est procedere liberaliter.
Haec enim duo ei soli conveniunt. Ergo altero remanente, semper erit per-
sona distincta sive incommunicabilis existentia. Sed si non procederet a
duobus sed ab uno solo, adhuc remaneret ei unum incommunicabile, sci- 170
licet liberaliter procedere. Ergo adhuc esset persona et incommunicabilis
141 existit] exit F 146 ille] iste F | iste] ille vero F 150–151 unum idemque et
indifferens] idem indifferensque F 151–152 ad invicem differentiam habere] habere
differentiam ad invicem F 155 est duobus modis penes originem] penes originem in
duobus modis V 165–166 comprobandum*] approbandum F 168 ei soli inv. F
| remanente] manente F 171 esset] esse V
149–154 Item, Richardus, … alterius.”] Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate IV, 13 (ed.
Ribaillier, p. 17512–17) 161–166 Item, Richardus, … persona.”] Richardus de Sancto Victore,
De trinitate V, 1 (ed. Ribaillier, p. 19524–30)
existentia, et ita distincta, quoniam idem est personam esse et distinc-

tam esse, cum sit existentia incommunicabilis et etiam sit “individua sub-
stantia naturae rationalis”. Ergo adhuc esset Spiritus Sanctus personaliter
distinctus a Filio per illud unum incommunicabile, quia non conveniret 175
alii personae in divinis nisi ipsi.
Item, sicut vult beatus Augustinus, “Pater est principium totius divi-
nitatis.” Sed omnis emanatio et productio quae fit in divinis et quae ibi
potest esse aut est per generationem aut per spirationem. Ergo necesse
est quod in Patre sit vis generativa et vis spirativa, et cum sit in ipso tam- 180
quam in primo principio, ergo perfectissime est in Patre vis spirativa et
vis generativa. Et cum nulla possibilitas cadat circa ipsum, ergo utraque
vis est in ipso in summa actualitate et in summa perfectione. Ergo Pater
non potest non generare et non spirare tamquam primum principium.
Ergo, dato quod Filius, qui est principium de principio, quod nihil dat 185
Patri sed totum accipit ab ipso, non spiret, nihilominus Pater perfectis-
F 90rb sime et actualissime | generat vel spirat. Aut ergo eundem generat et spirat
V 4va aut alium et alium; | sed non eundem, quoniam impossibile est eandem
divinam personam diversis emanationibus emanare, cum distinguantur
et accipiant esse per emanationes. Ergo necesse est quod alium generet et 190
alium spiret. Sed qui generatur est Filius, qui spiratur est Spiritus Sanctus.
Ergo necesse est adhuc Filium et Spiritum Sanctum esse alium et alium.
Sed non nisi personaliter. Ergo adhuc sunt personaliter distincti Filius et
Spiritus Sanctus.
Item, sicut, secundum beatum Augustinum et Hilarium, Filius nihil 195
habet nisi quod nascendo accipit, et sic nihil habet quod non habeat ab
alio, sic Pater nihil habet quod non habeat a se ipso. Ergo virtutem gene-
rativam et spirativam habet a se ipso, et nullo modo ab alio. Sed quod
habet aliquid a se ipso necessario habet illud cessante vel remoto omni
174–175 personaliter distinctus a Filio] a Filio personaliter distinctus F 175 non om. F
177 beatus om. F 180 ipso] Christo F 182 possibilitas] impossibilitas F 184 et om. F
187 vel] et F 189 divinam personam inv. F 193 personaliter2 om. F 195 beatum om.
D 196 habeat] habebat D 197 habeat] habebat D 199 aliquid om. V
173–174 “individua substantia naturae rationalis”] Cf. Boethius’ De persona et duabus

naturis, cap. 3 (PL 64, 1343D) 177–178 Augustinus, … divinitatis.”] Augustinus, De
trinitate IV, 20, 29 (CCSL 50, p. 200121–122) 195–197 Augustinum et Hilarium … ab alio,] Cf.
e.g. Augustinus De trinitate XV, 26, 46: “… vita quam Pater Filio gignendo dedit coaeterna
sit vitae Patris qui dedit .... Si enim quidquid habet de Patre habet Filius, de Patre habet
utique ut et de illo procedat Spiritus Sanctus.” (CCSL 50a, p. 52893–94,98–100). Augustinus, De
trinitate V, 15, 16: “Interius autem quaeritur utrum quemadmodum Filius non hoc tantum
habet nascendo ut Filius sit sed omnino ut sit …” (CCSL 50, p. 2241–3)
alio. Ergo dato quod Filius non spiret, nihilominus Pater generat Filium et 200
spirat Spiritum Sanctum. Sed constat quod diversae emanationes neces-
sario habent diversa obiecta, sicut diversi motus diversos terminos; ergo
necesse est adhuc Filium esse distinctum a Spiritu Sancto personaliter.
Item, omne agens vel producens infinitae potentiae, si agit vel producit
secundum infinitatem et totalitatem suae virtutis, necessario producit 205
quid perfectum. Sed vis generativa in Patre, et similiter spirativa, est
infinita; est etiam simplicissima. Ergo secundum totalitatem utriusque
spirat et generat. Ergo Pater non potest generare nisi quid perfectum, hoc
est personam perfectam, nec spirare nisi personam perfectam, cum isti
actus terminentur ad personam. Ergo, cum duo perfectissima in genere 210
aliquo non possint convenire in unum in genere illo, ergo impossibile
est quod eandem personam vel suppositum generet Pater et spiret. Sed
dato quod Filius non spiraret, tamen Pater generaret et spiraret, cum non
habeat hanc duplicem vim ex comparatione ad Filium, sed ex ratione
primitatis suae, et non generaret nisi Filium et non spiraret nisi Spiritum 215
Sanctum. Ergo adhuc essent personaliter distincti necessario Filius et
Spiritus Sanctus.
Item, quae maiorem habent convenientiam et germanitatem minus
videntur distinguibilia et distincta quam quae non sunt huiusmodi. Sed
si Spiritus Sanctus esset a solo Patre, totum haberet ab illo; ergo maiorem 220
haberet convenientiam et germanitatem cum Patre quam cum Filio. Ergo
si tunc esset distinctus personaliter a Patre, ergo multo magis et a Filio,
quia aliter esset a Patre quam Filius, et nihil haberet ab illo.
Item, Gregorius*: “In natura creata consideramus quid in increata pen-
sare debeamus”, et praecipue istud est verum de illis quae sunt nobilitatis 225
et perfectionis. Sed in natura creata videmus quod ab uno puncto possunt
egredi plures lineae differentes, et distinctae et immediatae, ita quod una
non ab alia. Et similiter ab uno fonte immediate plures rivuli, ita quod
non unus ab alio, et istud est potestatis et virtutis. Ergo multo magis in
natura increata a Patre, in quo est fontalis plenitudo et qui est principium 230
200 nihilominus] novus* D 204–243 Item, omne … Spiritus Sanctus om. D 208 spirat
et generat] generat et spirat F 210–211 genere aliquo inv. F 212 generet] generat
F | spiret] spirat F 213 tamen] adhuc F | generaret et spiraret] spiraret et generet F
214 ex2 om. F 215 et2 om. V 222 et om. F 223 nihil] nisi F 225 est verum inv. F
| quae] qui F 227 et2 om. F 230 et om. F
224–225 Item, Gregorius*: … debeamus”,] Gregorius: recte (?) Richardus de Sancto Vic-
tore, De trinitate I, 9: “In natura creata legimus quid de natura increata pensare vel estimare
debeamus” (ed. Ribaillier, p. 9412–13)
totius divinitatis, possunt procedere immediate duae distinctae personae

ita quod neutra ab alia. Ergo non oportet ad hoc quod Spiritus Sanctus
distinguatur personaliter a Filio quod procedat ab ipso, sed sufficit quod
F 90va uterque | immediate a Patre.
Item, omne agens vel producens, per se sufficiens et a nullo dependens 235
et per nihil impediri valens, potest semper et in omni statu in suam
coessentialem operationem. Sed Pater in divinis est huiusmodi. Ergo, etc.
Ergo constat quod nihil potest impedire quin semper spiret et generet*,
cum spirare et generare sint actiones Patris coessentiales et inseparabiles.
Ergo dato quod Filius non spiret, adhuc tamen Pater spiraret et generaret. 240
Ergo essent adhuc in divinis unus spiratus, scilicet Spiritus Sanctus, et
alius genitus, scilicet Filius. Ergo essent duo et distincti Filius et Spiritus
Sanctus.
Item, omne agens vel producens virtutem agendi seu producendi alii
conferens potest agere vel producere illo non agente sive producente, sed 245
non e converso. Unde Philosophus dicit quod si primum dat virtutem
secundo, secundum non potest agere sine primo, sed primum potest agere
D 170b sine secundo. Et ponit exemplum de igne | et ferro. Sed Pater dat virtutem
spirandi Filio. Virtus autem generandi est in ipso solo. Ergo potest spirare
Filio non spirante, et similiter generare. Sed quantum ad actus divinos, qui 250
sunt intrinseci, semper est potentia coniuncta actui. Ergo Pater semper
actu generat et spirat ipso Filio non spirante. Ergo semper est ibi Filius
genitus et Spiritus Sanctus spiratus. Ergo distincti personaliter.
Item, posterius dependet a priori et non e converso. Unde Boethius
in prologo Arithmeticae dicit quod posito posteriori necessario ponitur 255
prius, sed non destruitur ipso destructo sed potius e converso. Sed ema-
natio quae est generatio necessario prior est secundum rationem intel-
ligentiae quam emanatio quae est spiratio. Ergo dato quod Filius non
spiraret, nihilominus Filius generaretur et Pater generaret. Ergo similiter
231 distinctae personae inv. F 232 oportet] quod add. F 233 personaliter a Filio] a
Filio personaliter F 238 generet*] generaret F 240 dato] adhuc add. F | adhuc om. F
241 essent adhuc inv. F 243 Sanctus om. F 244 producens] procedens D | seu] vel
D 245 sive] vel F 246 si primum] supremum* D 248 ponit] petit D 249 autem]
enim F 255 ponitur] et add. F 256 non destruitur ipso destructo] ipso destructo non
destruitur F 257 est2 om. D 258 est] generatio necessario prior secundum rationem
intelligentiae quam emanatio quae est add. D 259 generaretur] generaret F
246–248 Unde Philosophus … ferro.] Non inveni apud Aristotelem 254–256 Unde
Boethius … converso.] Cf. Boethius, De arithmetica: “Quaecumque natura priora sunt,
his sublatis simul posteriora tollluntur; quod si posteriora pereant, nihil de statu prioris
substantiae permutatur” (ed. Oosthout et Schilling, CCSL 94A, p. 1280–82)
et spiraret, quia spiratio similiter secundum rationem intelligentiae per 260

prius respicit Patrem quam Filium, sive vis spirativa, et praecipue cum
summa liberalitas, hoc dato, nihilominus in Patre esset. Sed generatio et
spiratio sunt distinctae emanationes, ergo distinctae personae produce-
rentur secundum ipsas. Sed non nisi Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Ergo adhuc
distincti essent personaliter Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. 265
Item, Richardus, V lib. De trinitate, cap. 1: “Ubi plures habent indifferens
esse ex differenti origine, sic servant unitatem substantiae ut tamen non
desint plures existentiae”, id est personae. Sed dato quod Spiritus Sanctus
esset a solo Patre et non a Filio, haberent plures indifferens esse ex
differenti origine, scilicet Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Ergo sic servarent 270
adhuc unitatem substantiae quod essent plures et distinctae personae
Filius et Spiritus Sanctus.
Item, quando aliqua duo agentia vel producentia non dependent ab
invicem, defectus actionis in uno non ponit defectum actionis vel produc-
V 4vb tionis in alio. Sed Pater et Filius sunt huiusmodi. Ergo dato quod | Filius 275
non spiraret, non propter hoc Pater non generaret et non spiraret. Immo
generaret et spiraret. Sed constat quod non unum, ergo duos et distinctos.
Item, quod aliquis habeat socium in conferendo vel dando aliquid, hoc
non facit eius liberalitatem sed mera gratia dantis. Ergo non propter hoc
caret aliquis sua liberalitate si non habet socium in conferendo aliquid. 280
Ergo non est dicendum quod Pater sua summa liberalitate careret si
Filius non spiraret Spiritum Sanctum. Ergo adhuc summe liberalis esset.
F 90vb Sed summa liberalitas non potest esse | sine productione. Ergo adhuc
spiraret Spiritum Sanctum. Sed non spiraret nisi distinctum suppositum,
et similiter generaret distinctum suppositum. Ergo distincti essent Filius 285
et Spiritus Sanctus.
Item, secundum beatum Augustinum, inter quaecumque est relatio,
inter eadem est distinctio. Sed dato quod Spiritus Sanctus non procedat
a Filio, tamen inter ipsos est relatio. Ergo inter ipsos est distinctio. Minor
261 sive om. D | vis spirativa inv. D 262 hoc dato om. F 265 distincti essent
personaliter] essent personaliter distincti F 267 servant] servat D 268 desint] desit V
270 sic] hic D 270–271 servarent adhuc] adhuc servant F 273 ab] ad F 274–275 vel
productionis in alio] in alio vel productionis F 276 et non] vel F 278–286 Item, quod
… Sanctus om. D 285 Ergo] et F 288 procedat] procederet F
266–268 Item, Richardus, … existentiae”,] Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate V, 1

(ed. Ribaillier, p. 19522–24) 287–288 beatum Augustinum … distinctio.] Non inveni apud
Augustinum, sed vide De trinitate, V passim
patet per Anselmum, libro De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 2, qui dicit: 290
“Nam quoniam Filius existit de Deo”, scilicet Patre, “nascendo, et Spiritus
Sanctus procedendo, ipsa diversitate nativitatis et processionis ad invi-
cem ut diversi et alii ab invicem refertur.” Ergo ad invicem ipsa diversitate
nativitatis et processionis, licet unus non procedat ab alio, et ita necessa-
rio, non essentialiter sed personaliter, distinguuntur. 295
Item, differentia secundum oppositionem maior est quam differen-
tia secundum disparationem; ergo differentia secundum disparationem
magis cadit et convenit in simplici quam quae est secundum oppositio-
nem. Sed divinum esse simplicissimum est, et in ipso cadit distinctio vel
differentia secundum oppositionem, hoc est secundum relationes oppo- 300
sitas, sicut inter Patrem et Filium. Ergo multo magis cadit ibi distinctio
secundum disparationem, hoc est secundum relationes disparatas. Ergo
magis congruit dicere quod divinae personae distinguantur per dispa-
ratas origines et relationes quam per oppositas. Sed si Spiritus Sanctus
non procederet a Filio, licet non haberet oppositam relationem ad ipsum, 305
tamen haberent disparatas origines et relationes. Ergo adhuc distingue-
D 171a rentur distinctione quae maxime competit ipsi esse divino. |
Item, sicut dicit Philosophus in libro De causis, virtus unica plus est
infinita se ipsa multiplicata. Sed ubi natura et voluntas sunt differentes
per essentiam, ibi sunt causae diversarum et distinctarum emanationum. 310
Ergo multo magis ubi vere sunt et perfecte, et ubi unum sunt per essen-
tiam, ibi sunt rationes diversarum et distinctarum emanationum et ema-
nantium et principia. Sed ita est in divinis, quoniam in Deo natura et
voluntas sunt idem per essentiam. Ergo maxime in divinis possunt natura
et voluntas esse principia per suas fecunditates diversarum emanationum 315
et emanantium absque hoc quod unus sit ab alio, sed sicut potest ibi esse,
ita est, cum divinum esse sit actualissimum. Ergo natura ibi est principium
291 Deo] Patre Deo F | scilicet Patre om. F 294–295 necessario om. F 295 non
essentialiter inv. F | personaliter om. F | distinguuntur] distinguitur D 297 ergo] si
add. F 298 convenit] communiter* F | quam om. D 298–299 oppositionem] hoc est
secundum relationes oppositas, sicut inter Patrem et Filium add. D 302 relationes
disparatas inv. F 303 magis] multo magis D | divinae] duae F | distinguantur]
distinguuntur V 306 disparatas origines inv. F 308–338 Item, sicut … ab alio om. D
308 virtus] omnis virtus F 312 ibi om. V | rationes] causae F 312–313 emanantium]
emanationum F 316 emanantium] emanationum F 317 ita est om. F | ibi om. F
290–293 per Anselmum … refertur.”] Anselmus, De processione, cap. 1 (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2,
p. 17915–17) 308–309 Philosophus … multiplicata.] Liber de causis, XVI (XVII), 138:
“Omnis virtus unita plus est infinita quam virtus multiplicata” (ed. Pattin 1966, p. 17115–16).
Cf. Auctoritates Aristotelis (ed. Hamesse 1974, p. 23296)
unius emanationis et per* hoc* unius emanantis, et similiter voluntas

unius emanationis alterius, ac per hoc alterius emanantis, scilicet Spiritus
Sancti. Ergo necessario distinguuntur Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, licet unus 320
ab alio non procedat. Ac per hoc apparet quod male dicunt illi qui dicunt
eos non distingui nisi unus ab alio procedat, quia voluntas et natura sunt
unum, et ideo non possunt esse rationes sive principia diversarum emana-
tionum ac per hoc diversorum emanantium nisi unus producatur ab alio.
Licet enim natura et voluntas sint unum in essendo, sunt tamen diversa 325
sive distincta in principiando, quia quaelibet habet ibi suam propriam et
essentialem fecunditatem, secundum quam est ratio producendi perso-
nam.
Item, si gravitas, quae est principium motus localis, et frigiditas, quae
est principium infrigidandi, essent idem in tertia*, nihilominus essent 330
principium istorum duorum actuum diversorum quae sunt moveri loca-
liter et infrigidari. Unde essent principium movendi localiter et infrigi-
dandi. Ergo similiter, licet natura et voluntas sint idem per essentiam
in Deo, tamen quia utraque secundum veritatem et perfectionem est
F 91ra ibi, licet per indifferentiam, utraque habet ibi fecunditatem | suam, et 335
est principium sive ratio propriae et distinctae emanationis ac per hoc
distincti emanantis, scilicet Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Ergo sunt distincti abs-
que hoc quod unus procedat ab alio.
Item, “prius est a quo non convertitur consequentia.” Sed optime sequi-
tur: ‘iste est ab uno vel a duobus, ergo distinguitur’, sed non sequitur e 340
converso, quia tunc Pater in divinis non distingueretur vel duo disparata.
Ergo prius est distingui quam esse ab uno vel a duobus. Sed posito priori,
non est necesse poni posterius, immo potest esse prius sine posteriori,
licet non e converso. Ergo non sequitur necessario: ‘iste distinguitur, ergo
est a duobus’. Ergo in divinis non oportet ponere ad hoc quod Spiritus 345
Sanctus sit distincta persona quod procedat a duobus. Ergo dato quod non
318 et per* hoc* unius emanantis om. F 322 voluntas et natura] natura et voluntas
F 327 essentialem] coessentialem F 330 tertia*] terra* F 331 duorum om.
F 337 emanantis] emananti F 339 est] illud add. F 340 a om. F | distinguitur]
distinguuntur D | sequitur om. F 342 est om. F 343 est necesse inv. F 344 non e
converso] e converso non F
325–326 Licet enim … principiando,] Cf. Gerardus de Abbatisvilla, Quodl. VII, q. 2 (ed.
Friedman 2002, p. 2966–67): “natura et voluntas idem sunt in essendo, sed differunt in
ratione principii in producendo” 339 “prius … consequentia.”] Aristoteles, Categoriae
12 (14a35–36): “… prius autum videtur esse illud a quo non convertitur subsistentiae
consequentia” (translatio Boethii, AL 1,1, p. 3719–20)
procederet a Filio sed a solo Patre, adhuc esset simpliciter personaliter

distinctus, et ita esset distinctus personaliter a Filio.
hArgumenta ad oppositumi
Ad oppositum obicitur per auctoritatem et per rationes. h1i Dicit enim 350
Boethius in libro De trinitate quod in divinis “substantia continet uni-
tatem, relatio multiplicat”, hoc est distinguit, “trinitatem”. Sed haec est
relatio personae ad personam. Ergo ubi nulla relatio inter personas diver-
sas, ibi nulla distinctio. Sed si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, nulla
esset relatio eius ad ipsum Filium, quoniam relatio personae ad personam 355
in divinis non est nisi relatio originis. Ergo si non procederet a Filio, nullo
modo personaliter distingueretur a Filio. Ex quo necesse est ipsum proce-
dere.
h2i Item, Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 3: “Videamus
quomodo unitatis Dei consequentiam restringat relatio. Quoniam ergo 360
unus est Deus Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, exigit unitas Dei”, id est
divinitatis, “ut Filius sit Pater et Spiritus Sanctus. Sed obviat relatio quae
prohibet Filium et Spiritum Sanctum esse Patrem. Quippe nec natura
permittit nec intellectus capit existentem de aliquo esse de quo existit,
V 5ra aut de quo existit esse | existentem de se.” Ex hac auctoritate habetur 365
quod sola illa relatio qua una persona refertur ad aliam, quia existit de
illa vel e converso, facit distinctionem inter personas, ita quod una non
potest dici alia. Sed talis relatio non est inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum
nisi procedat Spiritus Sanctus a Filio. Ergo non est distinctio personalis
inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum nisi Spiritus Sanctus procedat ab ipso, 370
quoniam deest ibi causa huius distinctionis, et sic patet quod personaliter
non distinguerentur.
347–354 sed a solo … a Filio om. per homeo. D 348 distinctus personaliter inv. F
350 per auctoritatem] quod auctoritates F 353 nulla] est add. F 354 nulla1] est
add. F 355 ipsum om. F | personae] pertinet F 357 personaliter distingueretur a
Filio] distingueretur a Filio personaliter F 359 Item] Contra D | cap. 3 inv. F 363 nec
natura] quia natura non F 365 aut de quo existit om. F 367 quod] ex D 371 deest]
adest D 372 distinguerentur] distinguentur D
351–352 Boethius … trinitatem”.] Boethius, De trinitate, cap. 6 (De consolatione philoso-

phiae. Opuscula theologica, ed. C. Moreschini [Biblioteca Teubneriana]. Munich and Leip-
zig: 2000, p. 180339–340; Boethius, The Theological Tractates, H.F. Stewart & E.K. Rand eds.,
London, 1918 [Loeb Classical Library 74], 287–9; PL 64, 1255A) 359–365 Anselmus, … de
se.”] Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 1 (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, pp. 18125–1824)
h3i Item, Anselmus, eodem libro, eodem cap., in fine, ita dicit: “Cum
apparebit quia Spiritus Sanctus est de Filio, tunc quoque palam erit, quia
propter hoc Filius nequit esse Spiritus Sanctus et Spiritus Sanctus Filius.” 375
Ergo ista est causa distinctionis eorum secundum Anselmum, quia scilicet
unus est ab alio. Ergo ipsa remota non esset personalis distinctio inter
Filium et Spiritum Sanctum.
h4i Item, inter distincta summe convenientia non potest esse distinc-
tio sine habitudine nec habitudo potest esse sine relatione. Sed, quicquid 380
dicatur vel ponatur, Filius et Spiritus Sanctus summe conveniunt, quo-
niam sunt unius eiusdemque simplicissimae et indifferentis naturae. Ergo
non potest esse distinctio inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum sine habitu-
dine nec habitudo sine relatione. Sed nulla est relatio Spiritus Sancti ad
Filium nisi procedat a Filio et e converso. Ergo nulla habitudo. Ergo nec 385
distinctio. Ergo personaliter non distinguerentur.
h5i Item, Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 21: “Non est
alius Deus Pater necque alius Deus Filius nec dissimiliter sunt id quod
sunt, sed in eo quod ille est Pater, iste est Filius, est alius iste alius ille.”
Ex hac auctoritate habetur quod Filius non esset distinctus a Patre nisi 390
F 91rb procederet | a Patre. Ergo similiter necque Spiritus Sanctus a Filio nisi
procederet a Filio.
h6i Item, plures emanationes ab eodem principio non distinguerent
creaturas nisi esset in eis differens qualitas, sicut apparet in angelis, secun-
dum Richardum, IV De trinitate, cap. 13 et 14 et 15; et tamen creatio unius 395
non est creatio alterius. Ergo similiter plures emanationes non distingu-
unt personas ad invicem nisi adsit differens qualitas vel una sit ab alia.
Sed differens qualitas non potest esse in divinis personis, nec sic possunt
distingui, quoniam istud incompossibile est cum simplicitate divini esse.
Ergo oportet ad hoc quod distinguantur quod una sit ab alia. 400
373 ita dicit inv. F 375 hoc om. D 376 ista] ita D | causa om. F | secundum] per D
376–377 scilicet unus] unus scilicet F 377 est om. DF 382 eiusdemque] eiusque D; et
eiusdem F | indifferentis] differentis D 388 necque] nec F | nec] necque D 389 iste
alius ille] ille alius iste F 391 necque] nec F 393 emanationes] emanatione D
394 creaturas] naturas* F 398 personis] ergo add. F | nec sic] ut se D | sic possunt inv.
F 399 quoniam] quia F | incompossibile] impossibile F
373–375 Item, Anselmus, … Filius.”] Anselmus, De processione Spiritus Sancti, cap. 1 (ed.
Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 18214–16) 387–389 Item, Anselmus, … ille.”] Anselmus, De processione
Spiritus Sancti, cap. 14 (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 21318–20) 393–395 Item, … 15] Cf. Richardus
de Sancto Victore, De trinitate IV, 13–15 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 175–178), praecipue IV, 14 (ed.
Ribaillier, pp. 17618–17728)
D 171b h7i Item, quodlibet inconveniens | Deo est impossibile, sicut dicit
Anselmus, Cur Deus homo. Sed inconveniens est quod Pater generet
Filium nisi perfectissimum; non autem perfectissimus nisi communicet
in virtute productiva cum Patre quam [dico] Pater potest communicare,
cuiusmodi est vis spirativa. Ergo non generatur a Patre Filius nec distin- 405
guitur a Spiritu Sancto nisi communicet in virtute spirativa cum Patre, hoc
est nisi cum Patre spiret Spiritum Sanctum.
h8i Item, Filius eo quod generatur procedit ut Imago, quia perfecta
generatio et univoca non est nisi similis et ut similis. Sed non esset Imago
nisi produceret Spiritum Sanctum. Ergo non generaretur neque distin- 410
gueretur a Spiritu Sancto nisi produceret Spiritum Sanctum. Quod autem
non esset Imago nisi produceret Spiritum Sanctum patet per Richardum,
VI lib. De trinitate, cap. 11, qui hanc solam rationem assignat quare Filius
dicitur Imago Patris, et non Spiritus Sanctus, quia scilicet Pater habet ple-
nitudinem omnem et dat, Filius similiter accipit a Patre et dat, Spiritus 415
Sanctus accipit et non dat, et sic patet quod obiicitur.
h9i Item, Richardus, V lib. De trinitate, cap. 1, in fine, dicit quod distinc-
tio et differentia personaliter attenditur “circa solam differentiam origi-
nalis causae”. Et similiter IV lib., cap. 15, in fine. Sed nulla est habitudo
nec differentia originalis causae sive secundum originalem causam inter 420
Filium et Spiritum Sanctum nisi unus procedat ab alio, quia ambo proce-
derent ab uno, scilicet a Patre, et non unus ab alio. Ergo nulla esset inter
ipsos distinctio.
h10i Item, sicut Filius in divinis procedit per modum naturae, et nisi
sic procederet non esset Filius distincta persona in trinitate, sic Spiritus 425
Sanctus, secundum beatum Augustinum, procedit per modum amoris
401 Deo est inv. F | impossibile om. D 403 non] est add. F 404 Pater om. DF
406 nisi] nec D 408–409 quia perfecta … Imago om. per homeo. D 410 neque] nec
om. D 414–415 plenitudinem omnem inv. F 415 Filius] et add. D 419 causae]
essentiae* D 419–420 Et similiter … originalis causae om. per homeo. F 419 lib. om.
D 421–422 procederent] procederet D 422 alio] altero D 424–431 Item, sicut …
distincta a Filio om. D
401 quodlibet … impossibile] Cf. Anselmus, Cur Deus homo, I, 20: “… quamlibet parum
inconveniens impossibile est in Deo” (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2, p. 8622–23). Vide, e.g., Bonaven-
tura, Breviloquium, pars 1, c. 7 (De omnipotentia): “… quia, ut dicit Anselmus, quodlibet
inconveniens, etiam minimum, apud Deum est impossibile” (Opera Omnia, vol. 5, p. 215b)
411–416 Quod autem … obiicitur.] Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate VI, 11 (ed.
Ribaillier, praecipue pp. 24020–24130) 417–419 Item, Richardus, … causae.”] Richar-
dus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate V, 1 (ed. Ribaillier, p. 19542) 419 Et similiter … fine.]
Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate IV, 15 (ed. Ribaillier, p. 17833–35) 425–427 sic
Spiritus … concordiae;] Non inveni apud Augustinum, sed vide De trinitate IX, XI, et XV
mutui sive concordiae; ergo nisi sic procedat, non est Spiritus Sanctus
persona distincta in trinitate. Sed nisi procedat a Filio non sic procedit,
quia amorem mutuum sive concordiam necesse est procedere a duobus.
Ergo nisi Spiritus Sanctus procedat a Filio non est persona in trinitate 430
distincta a Filio.
h11i Item, omnis distinctio aut est penes aliquid absolutum aut penes
aliquid respectivum. Sed non distinguerentur Filius et Spiritus Sanctus
penes aliquod absolutum, quoniam omne absolutum in divinis essen-
tiale est, simplicitas autem divina non patitur secus aliquam diversita- 435
tem essentialem. Similiter nec distinguerentur penes aliquod respecti-
vum, quia si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio, nullus esset respectus
nullaque relatio horum ad invicem. Ergo nullo modo personaliter distin-
guerentur.
h12i Item, necessarium est quod impossibile est aliter se habere. Sed 440
unum necessarium est istud, scilicet Spiritum Sanctum procedere a Patre
et Filio, et per hoc esse distinctum personaliter ab utroque. Ergo impossi-
bile est hoc totum aliter se habere. Ergo dato quod Spiritus Sanctus non
procedat ab utroque, sed a solo Patre, non est distinctus ab utroque per-
sonaliter, sed a solo Patre a quo existit. Non ergo a Filio, si non procedit 445
ab ipso.
F 91va h13i Item, quanto amor communior et | tendens in plures tanto est
perfectior. Sed amor mutuus est communior et tendens in plures. Ergo
necesse est amorem perfectissimum esse mutuum. Ergo cum Spiritus
Sanctus procedat ut amor perfectissimus, necesse est quod procedat ut 450
V 5rb amor | mutuus. Si ergo Spiritus Sanctus est Amor et non potest esse nisi
Amor perfectissimus, ergo non est nec esse potest Spiritus Sanctus ut
persona distincta nisi procedat ut Amor mutuus. Sed hoc non potest esse
nisi procedat a duobus. Ergo non potest esse nec est persona distincta
nisi a duobus procedat, scilicet Patre et Filio; et ita, si non procederet a 455
Filio, non esset persona distincta a Filio, cum necesse sit amorem mutuum
procedere ab uno in alterum et e converso.
h14i Item, ubi natura et voluntas sunt penitus unum, ibi est una ema-
natio naturae et voluntatis, quoniam aliter non essent penitus unum nisi
430 est] Spiritus Sanctus add. F 430–431 in trinitate distincta] distincta in trinitate
F 436 aliquod] aliquid D 440–474 Item, necessarium … quod procedat a Filio om. D
441 unum] verum F 442 esse distinctum personaliter] personaliter esse distinctum F
444–445 ab utroque personaliter] personaliter ab utroque F 448 tendens] intendens
F 449 perfectissimum esse] esse perfectissimum V 450 Sanctus om. V 451 et om. V
| esse] Amor add. F 454 esse] Amor add. F 458 est iter. F 459 unum om. F
sicut in essendo, sic essent unum in agendo sive in principiando. Sed in 460
divinis natura et voluntas sunt penitus unum. Ergo emanatio naturae et
voluntatis sunt ibi penitus una. Ergo cum per penitus unum non possint
distingui personae, ergo penes emanationem naturae et emanationem
voluntatis non possunt distingui personae. Sed penes aliud non distin-
guerentur, si Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio et penes hoc non 465
possunt. Ergo necesse est ad hoc quod distinguantur personaliter quod
Spiritus Sanctus procedat a Filio.
h15i Item, sicut se habet Filius procedendo per generationem ab uno,
sic se habet Spiritus Sanctus suo modo procedendo per spirationem sive
secundum liberalitatem a duobus. Sed Filius ita procedit ab uno per gene- 470
rationem quod, posito quod non procedat ab uno per generationem, nec
est Filius nec est persona distincta. Ergo a simili, nisi Spiritus Sanctus
procedat a duobus non est persona distincta. Ergo ad hoc quod sit per-
sonaliter distinctus a Filio necesse est quod procedat a Filio.
h16i Item, sicut vult Philosophus, in ad aliquid non est motus, et hoc 475
verum est tam in creatura quam in creatore. Ergo omnis distinctio quae
est in relatione vel est per suppositum in quo est vel per aliquid eius. Ergo
cum persona Patris sit simplicissima, nec sit in Patre diversitas aliqua, si
generatio et spiratio quae sunt relationes distinguuntur, necesse est quod
spiratio non sit a solo Patre sed etiam a Filio, aliter non distinguerentur 480
generatio et spiratio nec genitus et spiratus, cum relationes distinguantur
per suppositum.
h17i Item, est productio sive emanatio duplex: una est activa, alia pas-
siva. Sed videmus quod plures emanationes activae non distinguunt per-
sonam producentem personaliter, Pater enim generat et spirat et tamen 485
non est nisi una persona; nec per hoc est differentia in ipso nisi solum in
notione vel proprietate. Ergo nec plures emanationes passivae distingu-
unt personas. Ergo Filius et Spiritus Sanctus non distinguuntur per hoc
quod unus generetur et alter spiretur, immo necesse est unum procedere
ab alio ad hoc quod personaliter distinguantur. 490
462 ibi om. F | possint] possunt F 463 et] penes add. F 474 distinctus] distincta
F 478 sit in Patre] a Patre sit F | diversitas aliqua inv. F | aliqua om. D 481 relationes
distinguantur] relatio distinguatur DF 483 alia] est add. F 484 Sed om. F | activae] a
creatore F 485 et2 om. D 486 nec] ergo nec F 489 unum procedere] quod unus F
490 alio] procedat add. F | quod om. V
475 Philosophus … motus,] Aristoteles, Physicorum V, 2 (225b11)

h18i Item, Verbum, Imago, Filius non faciunt vel distinguunt tres perso-
nas, immo conveniunt uni soli personae, scilicet Filio. Ergo similiter nec
duplex emanatio distingueret Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, immo necesse
F 91vb est ad istud quod unus procedat ab alio. |
h19i Item, si Spiritus Sanctus non procedit a Filio et distinguitur ab 495
ipso, aut hoc est ex parte Patris producentis aut ratione emanationis. Non
ratione Patris distinguitur, quia Pater unus est. Similiter nec ratione ema-
nationis, quia demus quod Filius procedat per modum liberalitatis sicut
Spiritus Sanctus, tamen adhuc sunt distincti Filius et Spiritus Sanctus,
quia unus procedit ut dilectus, alter ut condilectus, et tamen habent ean- 500
dem emanationem; ergo emanatio nihil operatur aut facit ad personarum
D 172a distinctionem. Ergo per emanationes | non distinguerentur nisi procede-
ret Spiritus Sanctus a Filio.
h20i Item, distinctio in divinis ponit et includit summam germanitatem
in personis distinctis; ergo sine illo non potest intelligi esse distinctio in 505
divinis personis, sine quo non potest esse summa germanitas in illis. Sed
summa germanitas non potest esse in illis nisi una sit ab alia, hoc est
nisi sit persona producens et persona producta, hoc est nisi quaelibet
se habeat ad quamlibet sicut ad producentem vel ad productam a se.
Ergo nec distinctio. Sed si Spiritus Sanctus non procedit a Filio, non se 510
habet ad ipsum nec ut ad producentem nec ut ad productam, immo nullo
modo se habet ad ipsum. Ergo nullo modo distinguerentur personaliter
ad invicem. Quod autem non esset summa germanitas nisi una se haberet
ad aliam ut producens vel ut producta ab ipsa patet per Richardum, qui
dicit, V lib. De trinitate, cap. 2, quod non esset inter personas divinas 515
summa germanitas si unaquaeque esset a semet ipsa, et hoc quia tunc
nihil haberet una ab alia. Unde dicit sic: “Si unaquaeque persona a se ipsa
esse dicitur, talis itaque pluralitas nulla sibi affinitate coniungitur, nulla
mutuo germanitate copulatur.” Si ergo Spiritus Sanctus nihil haberet a
Filio, nec e converso nulla esset germanitas sive affinitas inter eos, et ita 520
nulla distinctio.
491–494 Item, Verbum … ab alio om. D 491 faciunt vel om. F 498 Filius] Spiritus
Sanctus F 500 quia] et D | et om. D 501 aut] vel F 504–521 Item, distinctio … nulla
distinctio om. D 506 divinis personis inv. F 508 producens] ducens V 510 procedit]
procedat F 511 ut1 om. V 515 esset] essent F | inter iter. F 516 esset] procederet F
518 esse om. F
514–519 per Richardum … copulatur.”] Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate V, 2 (ed.

Ribaillier, p. 19612–14)
h21i Item, distinctio in divinis personis ponit necessario unitatem

essentiae sive naturae; ergo sine illa numquam est. Sed non potest esse
unitas naturae inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum nisi Spiritus Sanctus pro-
cedat a Filio. Ergo nec distinctio. Minor patet, quoniam secundum Augu- 525
stinum unitas naturae est in divinis personis per hoc quod una communi-
cat alii suam essentiam, una dat et alia accipit ab ipsa, quod non esset hic.
h22i Item, omnis distinctio in divinis est per relationes; hanc supponi-
mus a sanctis. Sed nulla relatio distinguit relata nisi respiciat unum sicut
subiectum, alterum ut obiectum, sicut patet de paternitate et filiatione, 530
vel utrumque sicut subiectum et obiectum, sicut patet in similitudine. Si
ergo nulla talis relatio est inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, si unus non
procedit ab alio, ergo nulla distinctio.
Responsio
Dicendum quod circa quaestionem istam variantur sententiae diversi- 535
mode opinantium.
hOpinio aliorum quod non essent distinctii
Ponunt enim aliqui et affirmant ratione quod, si Spiritus Sanctus non

procederet a Filio, non esset persona distincta a Filio nec vere posset
intelligi distincta. Quorum rationes sunt istae. 540
Prima est quia omnis distinctio personalis, ut dicunt, in divinis est
per relationes, non qualescumque sed per relationes oppositas, quibus
scilicet una persona refertur ad aliam. Et quoniam nulla talis relatio esset
F 92ra inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, ideo | non haberent distinctionem
V 5va personalem. Isti enim | ponunt quod sola ratio distinctionis personalis est 545
per relationes oppositas fundatas super hoc quod una persona producitur
ab alia, ac per hoc refertur ad ipsam et distinguitur ab ipsa.
522 divinis personis inv. F 527 suam om. D 529 sicut] ut F 530 alterum ut] et D
530–531 de paternitate … sicut patet om. per homeo. D 532 si] nisi F 532–533 non
procedit ab alio] ab alio procedit F 535 Dicendum om. DF | quaestionem istam inv.
D | sententiae] scientiae* F 538 affirmant] adstruunt DF 541 Prima] Quam D
| personalis] naturalis F 542 oppositas] oppositionis DF 546 oppositas] oppositionis
F 547 ad ipsam om. D
525–527 secundum Augustinum … ipsa,] Non inveni apud Augustinum, sed vide v.g. De
trinitate XV, 26, 47: “Quomodo ergo non absurdissime Filius diceretur amborum cum
sicut Filio praestat essentiam sine initio temporis, sine ulla mutabilitate naturae de
Patre generatio, ita Spiritui Sancto praestet essentiam sine ullo initio temporis, sine ulla
mutabilitate naturae de utroque processio?” (CCSL 50A, p. 528102–106)
Alia ratio ipsorum est quia dicunt quod, si Spiritus Sanctus non pro-
cederet a Filio, quod non esset Spiritus Sanctus, quia non spiraretur nec
Filius generaretur, et ita ista positio ponit Filium non esse et Spiritum 550
Sanctum non esse, et ita non esse distinctos personaliter. Dicunt enim
quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit per modum amoris, non cuiuslibet sed
mutui. Amor autem mutuus non est nisi procedat a duobus et ideo, nisi
Spiritus Sanctus spiretur a duobus, non spiratur nec est persona, et nec
habet personalem distinctionem, cum non sit persona. Dicunt etiam quod 555
Pater non generaret Filium nisi Filius spiraret Spiritum Sanctum, et ita
non esset Filius. Cum enim generatio sit productio per modum naturae,
generatio necessario exigit ut generans conferat virtutem ipsi genito, ac
per hoc genitus est imago generantis, quia accipit naturam et virtutem
productivam generantis. Unde, si Filius non haberet virtutem spirativam 560
Patris, non esset imago Patris, et ita non esset Filius, et ita non esset geni-
tus, et ex hoc sequeretur quod non esset, et ita personaliter a Spiritu
Sancto non distingueretur.
hContra opinionem aliorumi
Sed rationes istae erroneum habent fundamentum. Prima namque ratio 565
dicit quod sola ratio distinctionis personalis in divinis est per relationes
oppositas; falsum supponit tamen, quia relatio non distinguit personas
nisi ratione originis supra quam fundatur; unde sicut plane vult Augusti-
nus et Richardus, IV De trinitate, origo in divinis est causa distinctionis
personalis, relatio autem in quantum relatio non, sed ostendit distinctio- 570
nem, pura enim relatio in quantum huiusmodi non, sed supponit distinc-
tionem in relatis, relatio autem originis ipsa distinguit, et hoc ratione ori-
ginis; differentes autem haberent origines Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. Sup-
ponit etiam falsum per hoc quod dicit quod solum per relationes oppo-
sitas distinguuntur, quia non oportet hoc, immo sufficit per relationes 575
disparatas fundatas super origines disparatas.
552 sed] amoris add. F 553 autem] enim et D; enim F | nisi2 om. D 554 Sanctus om. F
| et om. F | nec2] non D 557 productio] in esse add. F 558 generans] necessario add.
F 559 naturam et virtutem] virtutem et naturam F 560 productivam] ipsius add. F
567 oppositas] oppositionis D 568 supra] super F | fundatur] fundantur D 569 IV]
III F | origo] erit add. D | est causa inv. D 570 quantum] est add. D 574 hoc] etiam
add. D 576 disparatas fundatas super origines om. per homeo. D
569–570 Richardus … relatio non,] Cf. e.g. Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate IV, 15
(ed. Ribaillier, pp. 177–178, praecipue p. 17833–35)
D 172b Similiter secunda ratio adhuc maiora inconvenientia sup-|-ponit. Con-

cedimus enim secundum veritatem quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit sicut
amor mutuus, et sic a duobus, et sic per hoc distinguerentur. Sed dato
quod non procederet a Filio, adhuc procederet a Patre secundum ratio- 580
nem amoris, sed non secundum rationem mutui, et sic esset adhuc per-
sona. Et maximum est inconveniens ponere quod Pater non spiraret amo-
rem a se, et ille esset persona, cum Pater habeat in se virtutem spirativam
perfectissimam et actualissimam, nec illam habeat a Filio, sed potius e
converso. Unde dato quod Filius non spiraret nihil est quod aufferret Patri 585
vim spirativam quin spiraret Amorem qui esset persona, sed ille non spi-
raretur ut Amor mutuus Patris ad Filium.
Similiter in hoc dicunt ipsi falsum, quia assumunt quod Pater non gene-
raret Filium nisi Filius spiraret. Generatio enim Filii est emanatio prior
secundum rationem intelligentiae quam spiratio, sicut vult Richardus, et 590
sunt emanationes differentes specie, unde nec aliquo modo dependet a
F 92rb spiratione. Rursus vis generativa | esset nihilominus perfecta et actua-
lissima in Patre, unde nec negare quis posset vere quin Pater generaret
Filium perfectum, cui communicaret suam essentiam et essentialem vir-
tutem, licet non notionalem sive quod pertinet ad notionem; nec propter 595
hoc non esset aequalis Patri, cum aequalitas personarum non attendatur
penes notionalia sed penes essentialia, alioquin Spiritus Sanctus non esset
aequalis aliis, nec Filius Patri, cum non habeat potentiam generandi sicut
Pater.
Item, non propter hoc esset Filius minus Imago. Filius enim, secun- 600
dum Augustinum, VII De trinitate, cap. 2, dicitur Imago Patris quia ipse
est sapientia nata. Unde ratione modi emanandi a Patre, qui est secun-
dum rationem similis, dicitur ipse Imago et Filius et Verbum, ut dicit
Augustinus; non autem proprie propter rationem spirandi Spiritum Sanc-
tum, immo istud secundum rationem intelligentiae consequitur Imaginis 605
rationem in Filio, et est manifestativum eius.
581 esset adhuc inv. F 582 est inconveniens inv. F | inconveniens ponere inv.
D 583 virtutem] virtu in se F; virtutem in se D 588 hoc] quod add.
F | quod] quia F 591 nec aliquo modo] aliquo modo non F | dependet om. D
595 notionalem] spirandi Spiritum Sanctum F | notionem] illud* + lacuna ca. 6 litt. F
| nec] non D 597 notionalia] personalia F 600 esset Filius] Filius esse V | esset
Filius minus] minus esset Filius D 602 modi] unum D 604 propter om. D
600–604 Filius enim, secundum Augustinum, … dicit Augustinus;] Cf. Augustinus, De

trinitate VII, 2, 3 (CCSL 50, pp. 2491–25030)
Et propter hoc, secundum iudicium sanae mentis, istae rationes eorum

et responsiones fundantur super falsum et super magna inconvenientia,
sicut apparere posset diligenter perscrutanti eorum dicta.
hOpinio propriai 610

Propterea alii, qui innituntur sententiis sanctorum et auctoritatibus ex-
pressis, videlicet beati Augustini, Anselmi, et Richardi de Sancto Victore,
ponunt quod, dato quod Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio sed a solo
Patre, tamen adhuc a Filio personaliter distingueretur. Unde et Graeci et
Damascenus, qui hanc positionem tenent, posuerunt nihilominus Spiri- 615
tum Sanctum distingui personaliter a Filio—unde et Filius a Patre, hoc
dato, generaretur et Spiritus Sanctus ab ipso Patre procederet et spirare-
tur. Et nimirum, quoniam in Patre semper esset vis generativa et spirativa,
utraque perfectissima et actualissima, unde secundum utramque produ-
ceret, et non eundem (sicut dictum est) sed distinctos. Aliter enim non 620
esset vis generativa et vis spirativa perfecte in Patre nisi alium generaret
V 5vb et alium spiraret, ut sicut distinguuntur vis | generativa et spirativa notio-
naliter in Patre, ita distinguantur personaliter ille qui generaretur et ille
qui spiraretur, et nisi Pater tunc generaret et spiraret, non esset perfectis-
sime et absolute in eo vis generativa et spirativa; immo iam videretur ab 625
alio dependere.
Propter hoc ergo dicendum est firmiterque tenendum quod, licet Spi-
D 173a ritus Sanctus non procederet | a Filio sed a solo Patre, tamen personaliter
distingueretur a Filio. Unde ponimus secundum Anselmum et Richardum
quod duplex est causa vel ratio distinctionis personarum divinarum. Una 630
est origo sive emanatio personae a persona, et haec secundum verita-
tem distinguit personaliter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, quia, secundum
608 super magna inconvenientia] sunt multa inconvenientia et magna et D 611 inni-
tuntur] imitantur F 612 Anselmi] et Anselmi F 616 distingui personaliter inv.
F 618 nimirum] lacuna ca. 7 litt. D 619 unde] et add. DF 619–620 produceret]
producent D 621 vis2 om. F | perfecte in Patre] in Patre perfecte F 622 ut] et D
| distinguuntur] personaliter add. D 622–623 vis generativa et spirativa notionaliter in
Patre] in Patre vis spirativa et generativa notionaliter F 623 distinguantur] distinguatur
F | generaretur] generatur DF 624 Pater tunc inv. DF | non] et non D 625 eo] ipso
DF 627 ergo dicendum est] dicendum D 628 solo] Filio D 628–629 personali-
ter distingueretur inv. F 630 quod om. D | vel ratio om. F | divinarum] in divinis DF
631 personae] et add. D
Augustinum et Anselmum, “nec natura permittit nec intellectus capit

existentem de alio esse illum de quo existit.” Alia autem ratio vel causa
distinctionis est diversitas sive distinctio originis et emanationis in per- 635
sonis emanantibus, cum enim quaelibet emanatio in divinis sit perfecta
et terminetur ad suppositum, necesse est quod quaelibet terminetur ad
suppositum perfectum et distinctum, alioquin, nisi sic essent supposita
distincta sicut sunt emanationes, non essent emanationes actuales et per-
fectae. Et propterea secundum istam viam adhuc distinguerentur perso- 640
F 92va naliter Filius et Spiritus Sanctus, quia | dissimiliter procederent a Patre,
et quilibet tamquam hypostasis perfecta correspondens propriae emana-
tioni.
Ad cuius evidentiam notandum est quod in divinis personis est tria
considerare, videlicet: unitatem (unde Iohannes 14: “Ego et Pater unum 645
sumus”); similiter distinctionem, quia una persona non est alia; similiter
et habitudinem secundum quam una persona se habet ad aliam. Unde
in divinis personis est unitas et distinctio et habitudo. Unitas ergo quam
habent divinae personae fundatur super naturae divinae simplicitatem et
indivisibilitatem, quia enim natura divina est simplicissima et nullo modo 650
capax divisionis et diversitatis, ideo necesse est quod sit omnino una in tri-
bus personis, et propter hoc tres personae dicuntur esse unum sive unus
Deus. Similiter dico quod distinctio personarum in divinis, secundum
Richardum, IV De trinitate, cap. 13 et 14 et 15, fundatur super originem sive
super emanationem. Sed hoc contingit dupliciter, sicut vult ibi Richardus: 655
vel quia una persona origine caret et alia originatur et emanat ab ipsa,
secundum quem modum persona Patris distinguitur a persona Filii et Spi-
ritus Sancti, vel quia utraque persona habet originem, tamen origo unius
non est origo alterius. Cum enim origines sint distinctae et quaelibet sit
perfecta, necesse est quod cuilibet respondeat originatum distinctum et 660
perfectum, alioquin non essent perfectae. Similiter dico quod habitudo
personarum fundatur super relationem, hoc ipso enim quod una refertur
634 illum] filium D 636 perfecta] perfectiva F 641 quia iter. F 642 quilibet] in*
D 645 14] 4 F 647 et om. F 648 et1 om. F | ergo om. D 649 naturae divinae
simplicitatem] simplicitatem divinae naturae F 651 et] vel F | ideo om. F | sit] sint D
655 ibi Richardus inv. F 659 non om. D 660 originatum] ordinatum F
633–634 Anselmum … existit.”] Anselmus, De processione, cap. 1 (ed. Schmitt, vol. 2,

p. 1822–3) 645–646 Iohannes … sumus”] Io 10, 30 653–661 distinctio personarum
… perfectae.] Cf. Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate IV, 13–15 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 175–
178), praecipue IV, 15 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 17724–17835)
ad alteram, habent ad invicem habitudinem. Sicut enim vult Richardus,

IV De trinitate, “circa originem solam oportet quaerere personarum diffe-
rentiam”, unde origo sive emanatio distinguit personas, non autem relatio 665
in quantum huiusmodi, et hoc est quoniam per originem accipit persona
esse, relatio autem consequitur originem sive emanationem secundum
rationem intelligentiae et ipsum esse personae. Et propter hoc relatio in
quantum relatio non dat esse personae, sed origo, nec distinctionem, sed
importat iam distinctorum habitudinem. Unde sancti qui dicunt et aucto- 670
res quod relationes sive proprietates constituunt sive distinguunt perso-
nas, hoc dicunt ratione originis super quam fundantur et quam important.
Nulla enim proprietas vel relatio secundum quod huiusmodi distinctiva
est vel constitutiva suppositi, sed potius distinctionis ostensiva sive indi-
cativa. Sed quod dicuntur distinguere et personas constituere, hoc est 675
D 173b ratione originis quam important et super quam fundantur. Aliae namque |
proprietates vel relationes purae quae non sunt huiusmodi non distin-
guunt supposita, sed distinctionem ostendunt et important habitudinem
distinctorum et consequuntur ipsam distinctionem. Unde paternitas et
filiatio distinguunt supposita ratione originis annexae quam dant intel- 680
ligere et super quam fundantur. Et hoc plane dicit Richardus, qui solam
causam distinctionis personarum dicit esse originem sive emanationem,
IV De trinitate, cap. 15, in fine, et similiter V lib. De trinitate, cap. 1, in fine.
Quoniam igitur divina natura est simplicissima et summe una, ideo
Filius et Spiritus Sanctus semper sunt unum in essentia, et similiter Pater, 685
qui dat eis naturam. Quoniam etiam habent emanationes diversas et
distinctas, licet Spiritus Sanctus non procederet a Filio sed a solo Patre,
ideo necesse esset Filium et Spiritum Sanctum esse personas differentes
F 92vb et distinctas, alioquin vis productiva in Patre | careret actu suo, quod
esset summum inconveniens. Quoniam autem omnis relatio personarum 690
in divinis super hoc fundatur quod una persona est ab alia, ita quod
663 ad2 om. V 666 quoniam] quia F 667 consequitur] sequitur F | secundum]
per D 670 importat iam] importatam D 671 sive2] et DF 672 dicunt] autem D
673 quod om. D | distinctiva] distincta V 676 quam2 om. D 678 supposita om. D
682 esse originem inv. D 683 V] IV F 684 igitur] hoc* D | ideo om. D 686 habent
emanationes inv. D 688 esset] est D 690 omnis om. D 691 super hoc fundatur] est
super hoc F | fundatur om. D
663–665 Richardus … differentiam”,] Richardus de Sancto Victore, De trinitate IV, 15 (ed.

Ribaillier, p. 17833–35) 681–683 Richardus … in fine.] Cf. Richardus de Sancto Victore,
De trinitate IV, 15 (ed. Ribaillier, p. 17833–35); idem, De trinitate V, 1 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 19539–
19643)
una dat esse et alia accipit, ideo inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, hoc
dato, nulla esset personalis relatio et ita nec personalis habitudo. Unde
si hoc poneretur, dico quod haberent personalem distinctionem sine
habitudine, quia unitatem in natura haberent per hoc quod eandem 695
V 6ra indifferentem | naturam acciperent a Patre, sed habitudinem personalem
invicem non haberent, sed ad solum Patrem, et hoc quia unus non daret
sive communicaret alii naturam et esse. Quia tamen Latini secundum
veritatem catholicae fidei tenent quod Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Filio,
ideo secundum veritatem tenendum est quod habent distinctionem cum 700
habitudine quae super hoc fundatur quod una persona procedit ab alia.
Concedimus ergo secundum Anselmum et secundum Richardum, quo-
rum dictis magis est innitendum* quam phantasiis hominum, quod sola
causa distinctionis personarum in divinis emanantium non est per hoc
quod una procedit ab alia, immo etiam est per hoc quod una non emanat 705
sicut alia, immo habent differentes emanationes quas impossibile est con-
venire eidem hypostasi, et ideo, sublata prima causa distinctionis, adhuc
maneret alia inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum. Concedo tamen quod non
esset ita perfecta et conveniens sicut est modo, secundum veritatem, quia
diversimode emanant et quia una emanat ab alia, et propter hoc deci- 710
piuntur Graeci qui non ponunt Spiritum Sanctum procedere a Filio, quia
secundum veritatem utraque est causa distinctionis eorum.
hAd argumenta in oppositumi
Ad primam ergo rationem in oppositum dicendum quod distingui per

relationes est dupliciter, scilicet vel per relationes oppositas vel per rela- 715
tiones disparatas. Hoc est dictu quod “distingui per relationes” potest
dupliciter intelligi: vel relationes quibus invicem referantur vel quibus
diversimode referantur ad eundem, scilicet ad Patrem. Dico ergo quod
illo posito non distinguerentur Filius et Spiritus Sanctus personaliter per
relationes ad invicem, quia invicem non referrentur, sed secundo modo 720
per relationes distinguerentur, quoniam uterque personaliter referretur
694 hoc] homo D 698 sive] non F 699 tenent] teneret F 702 secundum2 om. D
703 magis est inv. D 704 in divinis emanantium] emanantium in divinis DF | per hoc
om. F 705 etiam om. F 705–706 etiam est … immo om. per homeo. D 705 per]
propter F 706 est om. DF 708 maneret alia inv. F | quod] una add. F 710 hoc om.
D 711 procedere a Filio] a Filio procedere F 714 ergo om. D 714–727 dicendum
quod … secundam similiter om. D 718 referantur] referuntur F 719 Sanctus om.
F 720 referrentur] referuntur F | modo om. F 721 uterque personaliter] utraque
personarum F
ad Patrem, sed alio et alio modo, et alia et alia relatione, sicut alia et alia
origine. Et dico quod non solum relatio mutua sive opposita est causa
distinctionis trinitatis, immo etiam relationes disparatae ratione diversa-
rum emanationum super quas sunt fundatae, sicut plane habetur ex dictis 725
Anselmi et Richardi.
Ad secundam similiter patet responsio, concedo enim quod relatio
mutua personae ad personam, quia una est ab alia, distinguit personas,
sed dico quod non sola, immo etiam est alia causa distinctionis earum,
scilicet diversitas originum et relationum super eas fundatarum. 730
Ad tertiam similiter patet responsio, quia Anselmus intendit dicere
quod hoc quod Spiritus Sanctus secundum veritatem procedit a Filio est
causa distinctionis eorum personalis, sed non sola, immo postea assignat
aliam, scilicet quia iste nascendo ille procedendo existit a Patre.
Ad quartam rationem, concedo quod distinctio personarum divinarum 735
quasi consummatur et completur sive perficitur in habitudine. Unde ratio
ista probat quod necesse est Filium et Spiritum Sanctum sic distingui
quod habeant habitudinem ad invicem mutuam, et ita est secundum
veritatem. Sed tamen si ita esset sicut ponunt Graeci, quod carerent ista
F 93ra habitudine, tamen adhuc haberent | distinctionem personalem, sed non 740
D 174a sic | consummatam, quia alia est causa distinctionis quam origo unius ab
alio, sicut dictum est, scilicet differens origo sive emanatio ab eodem quae
necesse est quod faciat duos distinctos.
Ad quintam rationem dicendum quod non est simile de distinctione
Patris et Filii et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, quoniam distinctio personalis Patris 745
et Filii non potest habere nisi unam causam vel rationem, scilicet hanc
quod Pater producit Filium et Filius emanat a Patre, quoniam Pater non
habet emanationem passivam ab alio per quam possit distingui a Filio, sed
necesse est eos distingui per emanationem activam in Patre et passivam
in Filio. Sed quia tam Filius quam Spiritus Sanctus emanant differenter et 750
accipiunt esse ab alio, ideo sola causa distinctionis eorum non est quod
722 sicut] et add. F 723 solum] sola F 730 relationum] relationes F 731 tertiam]
aliud D | similiter patet inv. F 732 secundum veritatem procedit a Filio] procedit a
Filio secundum veritatem F | procedit a Filio] a Filio procedit D 734 quia] quod
F | procedendo] producendo F | existit] exit D 735 quartam rationem] aliud D
| personarum divinarum inv. F 737 sic distingui inv. D 739 ita esset inv. F 740 adhuc
haberent inv. F 741–742 causa distinctionis … scilicet] est D 742 sicut] ut F
743 est] et V | quod] ut D | quod faciat] facere F 744 quintam rationem] aliud D
745 personalis om. D 746 causam] distinctionis add. F | scilicet hanc inv. F 748 ab
alio] ad aliam F
unus sit ab alio, immo quia diversimode emanant ab uno, scilicet a Patre,
et quia, sublata alia, ista remaneret, ideo distinguerentur personaliter.
Sed non sic est de Filio et Spiritu Sancto respectu Patris, quia tota ratio
distinctionis eorum a Patre est quia scilicet emanant ab ipso. 755
Ad sextam rationem dicendum quod non est simile de distinctione per-
sonali in creaturis et in divinis, quoniam distinctio personalis in creaturis
necessario ponit diversitatem sive differentiam essentialem, et hoc est
quia, cum Deus producit creaturam, producit eam non de se sed de nihilo
et extra se, et in quodam recessu et distantia ab ipso qui est immensus. Et 760
ideo necesse est quod illud esse et illa natura quam dat huic creaturae sit
limitatum, et ideo impossibile est quod illa eadem numero natura quae
datur huic angelo, detur alii. Quia ergo distinctio personalis ibi neces-
sario ponit differentiam essentialem, ideo sola pluralitas emanationum
non sufficit ibi ad distinctionem personarum, sed differentia naturarum 765
sive formarum secundum numerum vel speciem, quam appellat Richar-
dus differentiam personarum. Sed processus divinarum personarum et
distinctio est intra divinum esse, et ideo ita distinguuntur personae quod
habent naturam divinam quae non potest esse nisi una in ipsis, ideo non
distinguuntur secundum formam sed secundum originem solam, et hoc 770
vel quia una ab alia (et sic est secundum veritatem distinctio inter Spiri-
tum Sanctum et Filium) vel quia duae sunt ab una secundum differen-
tem emanationis modum, et differenti modo obtinet esse, et sic esset
ibi distinctio, et est supposita positione Graecorum. Unde male procedit
ratio, quia non tantum requiritur ad distinctionem personalem in divinis 775
sicut in creaturis.
Ad septimam rationem dicendum quod illa ratio supponit falsum. Dico
enim quod Pater adhuc generaret Filium perfectum, licet Filius non spira-
V 6rb ret, quia perfectio proprie loquendo non attenditur | quantum ad notiona-
lia, de quibus est vis generativa et vis spirativa, sed quantum ad essentialia, 780
et adhuc communicaret Filius omnia essentialia Patris. Propterea argu-
mentum istud plus probat quod necesse est Spiritum Sanctum procedere
752 quia] quod F 753 alia om. D 755 quia] quod D 756 sextam rationem] aliud D
758 sive differentiam om. F 759 producit1] produxit F 761 est om. D 762 est om.
DF | numero natura inv. F 763 detur] datur D | personalis om. V 766 formarum] vel
add. F | vel] secundum add. F 768 ita om. D 770 distinguuntur] differt D | formam
om. D | solam] solum F 775 distinctionem] hic terminat textus in D 778 enim] adhuc
F | adhuc om. F 780 vis2 om. F
765–767 differentia naturarum … differentiam personarum] Non inveni apud Richardum

de Sancto Victore, De trinitate
a Filio—quod concedo—quam aliud, scilicet quod dato quod non pro-

cederet ab eo per impossibile quod non distinguerentur: hoc enim non
probat. 785
Ad octavam dicendum quod, dato quod Spiritus Sanctus non proce-
deret a Filio, tamen adhuc esset Filius imago Patris expressa et perfecta,
et hoc ratione modi emanandi a Patre, qui est secundum modum natu-
rae. Et illa ratio imaginis, quam assignat Richardus, non est principalis et
essentialis ratio, immo ratio emanandi, sed est quasi consequens et mani- 790
festativa ipsius imaginis in Filio.
Ad nonam rationem dicendum secundum Richardum quod etsi origi-
F 93rb nalis causa eorum esset una in essendo, | tamen multiplex in producendo.
Pater enim, licet unus, tamen habet vim generativam et vim spirativam,
quae sunt differentes notionaliter in Patre in quantum est principium pro- 795
ductivum. Et sic, quia secundum diversos modos emanandi procederent
ab ipso, distinguerentur personaliter.
Ad decimam rationem dicendum quod ista ratio probat quod necesse
est Spiritum Sanctum procedere a duobus, quia per modum nexus et
concordiae procedit. Sed dato per impossibile secundum Graecos quod 800
procederet a Patre solo, dico quod non procederet per modum concordiae
et amoris mutui, tamen procederet sicut amor sed non ut amor mutuus,
et esset persona ratione suae originis et distincta a Filio. Licet enim non
procederet per modum amoris mutui, tamen procederet per modum
amoris et liberalitatis. 805
Ad undecimam rationem dicendum quod non distinguerentur penes
aliquod absolutum (cum omne tale sit essentiale in divinis), sed penes
respectivum. Sed distingui penes aliquid respectivum est dupliciter: vel
quo unum habeat mutuum respectum et relationem ad alterum (et sic
non distinguerentur penes respectivum aliquod) vel penes respectivum 810
alterum et alterum per quod iste haberet alium respectum et aliam rela-
tionem ad personam producentem ipsum quam ille ad eandem personam
(et sic distinguerentur penes respectiva).
Ad duodecimam rationem dicendum quod haec ratio probat quod
necesse est Spiritum Sanctum procedere a Filio secundum veritatem et 815
quod ista est ratio distinctionis unius ab alio, sed non est sola vel tota
787 esset Filius inv. F | expressa et perfecta] perfecta et expressa F 792 secundum]
quod F 794 vim spirativam inv. F 798 ista] illa F 800 dato] quod add.
F 802 amor2] om. V 807 aliquod] aliquid V 808 aliquid respectivum inv. F
811 haberet alium inv. F | respectum] aspectum* V 814 haec om. F
causa seu ratio distinctionis. Unde dato quod non procederet ha Filioi sed
a solo Patre, adhuc esset distinctus a Filio, nec hoc improbat haec ratio.
Ad 13am rationem dicendum quod bene verum est quod procedit ut
amor mutuus et ideo necessario a duobus. Sed tamen facta positione 820
prima per impossibile, sicut ponunt Graeci, dico quod non procederet
ut amor mutuus, sed tamen ut amor perfectus qualis deberet ibi esse
secundum positionem et ut distinctus per aliam emanationem a Filio.
Ad 14am rationem dicendum quod sicut potentia, sapientia, et voluntas
in Deo sunt penitus unum secundum rem, tamen quia verissime sunt 825
in Deo, licet tamen per indifferentiam et indivisionem realem, et ideo
quaelibet habet ibi suum actum proprium ac verissimum, sic dico quod
natura et voluntas sunt unum penitus realiter in Deo et per indivisionem,
quia tamen verissime sunt in Deo, ideo quaelibet ibi habet suam veram
ac propriam productionem sibi correspondentem, ita quod licet unum in 830
essendo sint, tamen plures vel ut plures in causando sive in principiando,
immo in ratione principiandi. Quia enim natura vere est ibi et voluntas
vere est ibi, licet per omnimodam indifferentiam realem, tamen facit
ibi vere quod suum hactumi est, et similiter voluntas, et ideo diversae
emanationes eis respondent, ac per hoc diversi emanantes. 835
Ad 15am rationem dicendum quod non est simile, quia vis produc-
tiva personae non potest esse nec intelligi in paucioribus quam in una
persona. Et ideo si Filius non procederet ab uno, scilicet Patre, non pro-
cederet, et ita non esset Filius nec persona. Sed productio personae a
paucioribus potest esse quam a duobus et potest intelligi. Unde licet Spi- 840
ritus Sanctus non procederet ut nexus et ut amor mutuus a paucioribus
quam a duobus, tamen ut amor procederet ab uno, scilicet a Patre, dato
per impossibile quod ita esset. Et sic hoc dato dico quod esset persona et
distincta a Filio per emanationem.
F 93va Ad | 16am rationem dicendum quod, etsi Pater sit unus personaliter sive 845
una persona, est tamen—ut ita loquar—multiplex in vi productiva perso-
nae; unde in Patre est vis generativa et vis spirativa perfectissime, et hoc
ratione fontalis plenitudinis quae est in Patre ratione suae primitatis. Vis
autem generativa et vis spirativa in Patre, etsi sint unum in Patre essen-
819 procedit] producit F 823 aliam emanationem inv. F 825 penitus unum inv.
F 827 suum actum inv. F 829–830 habet suam veram ac propriam] suam veram ac
propriam habet F 838 scilicet] a add. F 839–840 a paucioribus potest esse] potest
esse in paucioribus F 840 a om. F 845 16am om. F 846 in vi inv. F 849 in Patre
om. F
830–832 ita quod licet … principiandi.] Cf. ad ll. 325–326 supra (Gerardus de Abbatisvilla)
tialiter, tamen sunt plures causaliter, hoc est in principiando, et ratione 850
huius possunt esse emanatio generationis et spirationis, quae etiam sunt
relationes quaedam ab ipso Patre, et ut distinctae et differentes.
Ad 17am rationem dicendum quod non est simile, quoniam emana-
tio activa non dat esse personae producenti, hoc est per illam non acci-
pit esse, sed ratione illius habet habitudinem ad personam productam, 855
et ideo diversitas emanationis activae non distinguit personaliter perso-
V 6va nam producentem sed solum facit in ea differentiam | in notione sive
in proprietate. Sed persona producta per emanationem accipit esse et
naturam, et ideo secundum quod sunt diversae emanationes diversimode
accipit esse persona producta, et ideo secundum diversitatem emanatio- 860
num oportet esse diversitatem personarum productarum propter diver-
sum esse et naturam obtinendi modum, sicut vult Richardus.
Ad 18am rationem dicendum quod Verbum, Imago, et Filius sunt una
et eadem notio ipsius Filii, secundum Augustinum, VII De trinitate, cap. 2:
eo enim est Imago quo Filius et eo ipso Verbum; et ideo non facit distinc- 865
tionem personalem in Filio. Sed aliter est de diversis emanationibus per
quas personae accipiunt differenti modo esse.
Ad 19am rationem dicendum quod si unus procederet ut dilectus, scili-
cet Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus ut condilectus, non distinguerentur ratione
emanationis, quae est per modum liberalitatis a solo Patre, sed distingue- 870
rentur per hoc quod secundum istam positionem Spiritus Sanctus pro-
cederet a Filio, cum procederet ut condilectus, et ita necesse esset quod
esset alius ab illo, quia procederet ab eo.
Ad 20am rationem dicendum quod posita illa positione esset ibi dis-
tinctio inter Filium et Spiritum Sanctum sine illa germanitate et habitu- 875
dine quae est inter eos eo quod unus procedit ab alio; tamen nihilomi-
nus esset ibi distinctio, et adhuc aliquam germanitatem haberent per hoc
quod ambo procederent ab eodem, scilicet a Patre. Unde argumentum
istud probat quod necesse est Spiritum Sanctum procedere a Filio ad hoc
quod habeant distinctionem cum germanitate et habitudine, sed non ali- 880
ter.
850 tamen sunt] sed tamen F 853 rationem om. V | quoniam] quia F 867 personae
accipiunt] acceperunt F 868 procederet] produceret F 872 esset] est F
860–862 secundum diversitatem … Richardus.] Cf. e.g. Richardus de Sancto Victore, De

trinitate IV, 15 (ed. Ribaillier, pp. 17726–17835) 863–866 Verbum, Imago, … in Filio.] Cf.
Augustinus, De trinitate VII, 2, 3 (CCSL 50, pp. 2491–25030)
Ad 21am rationem dicendum quod unitas naturae non esset inter

Filium et Spiritum Sanctum per hoc quod unus acciperet naturam ab
alio, sed per hoc quod ambo acciperent unam naturam simplicem ab uno,
scilicet a Patre. 885
Ad 22am rationem dicendum quod duplex est distinctio. Quaedam
est quae solam ponit differentiam disparationis, cuiusmodi est inter duo
homines vel inter duos lapides. Alia est distinctio quae ponit respectum
mutuae habitudinis, scilicet inter distincta, et ista fundatur necessario
super relationes oppositas, quae unum respiciunt ut subiectum, alterum 890
ut obiectum; et de ista procedit illa ratio. Sed prima distinctio fundatur
supra relationes et origines disparatas. Unde hic esset distinctio quasi
disparationis et esset sine habitudine personali.
Et sic patet responsio ad obiecta.
F 93vb Fatendum est ergo et firmiter tenendum, secundum | auctoritates sanc- 895
torum et doctorum quorum dicta authentica sunt, quod duplex est ratio
vel causa distinctionis personalis Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Una est diversi-
tas originum sive emanationum qua unus per modum naturae, alius per
modum liberalitatis procedit, hoc est iste nascendo et ille procedendo.
Alia autem ratio distinctionis personalis et habitudinis est quia Spiritus 900
Sanctus a Filio procedit, et hanc ignorant Graeci; ponunt tamen primam.
Et haec secunda est congruentissima ipsi divino esse, et distinctionis per-
sonalis inter eos summe perfectiva; non sic autem prima, nam summe
convenit divinis personis habere distinctionem cum mutua habitudine
cum summa germanitate. Tamen dato per impossibile quod non esset 905
ista, adhuc tamen prima esset et intelligeretur ibi, et secundum illam
distinguerentur, et secundum eam ponunt Graeci eos personaliter distin-
gui, et bene; sed in hoc errant ipsi pessime tamquam caeci: quod non cre-
dunt ibi esse secundam rationem distinctionis personalis. Et propter hoc
valde errant a veritate non attendentes quod in divinis necesse est perso- 910
nas habere summam germanitatem et habitudinem cum distinctione.
883 unus] una F 884 acciperent] acciperint F 887 est2] distinctio add. F | duo]
duos F 891 ista] istis* F 892 supra] super F 895 tenendum] credendum F
900 habitudinis] habitudinalis F | quia] quod F 903 eos] et add. V | summe2] sicut F
909 ibi esse inv. F 911 summam] suam V
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbreviations Used
AFH Archivum Franciscanum Historicum

AFP Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum
AHDLMA Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age
AMP Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf-Mansion Centre, Series 1
BFS Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica medii aevi
BGPTM Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (more recently:
… der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters)
BPM Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale
CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina
CIMAGL Cahiers de l’institut du Moyen Age grec et latin
D&S Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale
FIP Franciscan Institute Publications
FS Franciscan Studies
FranzSt Franziskanische Studien
MS Mediaeval Studies
MPP Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum
MPT Medieval Philosophy and Theology
PL Patrologia cursus completus … series latina (ed. J.P. Migne, 1844–1864)
RSPT Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
RT Revue Thomiste
RTAM Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale (since 1997: … Recherches
de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales= RTPM)
RTPM Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales
SEP The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.) = http://
plato.stanford.edu/
STGM Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters
VKHTG Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Herausgabe ungedruckter
Texte aus der mittelalterlichen Geisteswelt
ZKTh Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie
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INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS
Assisi
Biblioteca Comunale
154 (Petrus de Trabibus, I Sent.): 315–318, 329–330n
158: 149n
196 (Anon., I Sent.): 323–324
Bologna
Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio
A.971 (Iacobus de Viterbio, Quaest. 7 de verbo): 354n
B.1420 (Bombolognus de Bologna, IV Sent.): 188n
Biblioteca Universitaria
753 (1506) (Bombolognus de Bologna, I Sent.): 187–196
2214 (Michaelis de Massa, I Sent.): 810–831
2243 (Petrus Aureoli, Scriptum): 537n
Brugge
Openbare Bibliotheek
491 (Anon., I–IV Sent.): 423
Cambridge
Gonville and Caius
281/674 (Robertus de Cowton, I Sent.): 497–500
300/514 (Guillelmus de Nottingham, I–IV Sent.): 494–496
Dole
Bibliothèque Municipale
80 (Landulphus Carraciolus, I Sent.): 763–765
81 (Eustachius Atrebatensis): 899–930
Erfurt
Wissenschaftliche Allgemeinbibliothek
C.A. 2o 131 (Dionysius de Burgo Sancti Sepulchri, I Sent.): 759n
C.A. 2o 180 (Anon, Sent.): 751
C.A. 2o 368 (Bernardus Lombardi, I Sent.): 756n
C.A. 4o 110 (Thomas Ringstead, QQ): 751
Firenze
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
II. II. 281 (Guido Terrena, Quaest. de Verbo): 772n
Conventi soppressi A.3.508 (Richardus Radulfi, I Sent.): 748–749
976 index of manuscripts
Firenze (cont.)
Conventi soppressi A.6.611 (Richardus Radulfi, I Sent.): 748–749
Conventi soppressi A.8.815 (Ioannis de Erfordia, I Sent.): 318n
Conventi soppressi B.5.640 (Landulphus Carraciolus, I Sent.): 763n
Conventi soppressi B.6.912 (Guillelmus de Baglione/Eustachius Atrebatensis): 109–
110, 899–930
Conventi soppressi C.8.794 (Michaelis de Massa, abbreviatus I Sent.): 822n
Conventi soppressi D.4.95 (Ioannis de Reading, I Sent.): 743n
Conventi soppressi D.6.359 (Petrus de Trabibus, Quodl.): 316n
Conventi soppressi G.4.854 (Ioannis Pecham, I Sent.): 122–138, 159–160n, 335
Conventi soppressi G.5.858 (Nicolaus de Ockham, I Sent.): 124n, 150–156, 329
Conventi soppressi J.I.2 (Guido Terrena, Quaest. de Verbo): 772n
Fribourg
Bibliothèque des Cordeliers
26 (Monachus Niger, Sent.): 749–750
Kraków
Biblioteka Jagiellońska
1276 (Anon., I Sent., q. 1): 422–423n
Leipzig
Universitätsbibliothek
542 (Bernardus Lombardi, I Sent.): 756n
1401 (Robertus Cowton, I Sent.): 497n, 775n
Lyon
653 (Anon., I Sent.): 502n
Madrid
Biblioteca Nacional
65 (Gerardus Odonis, I Sent.): 778–785
Napoli
Biblioteca Nazionale
VII C 2 (Ioannis Pecham, I Sent.): 122–138, 159–160n, 335
VII G 98 (Bernardus Lombardi, I Sent.): 756n
Oxford
Balliol College
299 (Guillelmus de Ockham, I Sent.): 630n
Magdalene College
194 (Osbertus Pickingham, QQ theologicae): 750–751
index of manuscripts 977
Merton College
93 (Robertus Cowton, I Sent.): 497–500
O.1.9 (Anon., Sent.): 752
Padova
Biblioteca Antoniana
158 (Eustace of Arras, I Sent., dd. 1–9): 111n
291 (Guillelmus de Alnwick, I–II Sent.): 610n
Palermo
Biblioteca comunale
2.Qq.D.142 (Geoffrey Herdeby, Sent.): 751
Paris
Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal
379 (Ranulphus de Hombloneria, Quodl. I–II): 202–203
Bibliothèque Mazarine
880 (Anon., I, II, IV Sent.): 422–423
Bibliothèque Nationale de France

lat. 3085A (Gualterus Brugensis, I Sent.): 101–106, 236–237n
lat. 14572 (Hervaeus Natalis, De proc. Spiritus Sancti): 443–448
lat. 14899 (Adenulphus de Anagni, Quodl.): 204–205
lat. 15805 (Thomas de Bradwardine, QQ. Sent.): 749
lat. 15350 (Servatius de Monte St. Eligii, Quodl.): 205n
lat. 15370 (Anon., I, II, IV Sent.): 422–423n
lat. 15853 (Richardus Radulfi, I Sent.): 748–749
lat. 15859 (Alexander de Alexandria, I Sent. [redactio prior]): 488–490, 504–505
lat. 15864 (Hugo de Novo Castro, I Sent.): 487–488, 505, 506n
lat. 16535 (Geoffrey Herdeby, Sent.): 751
Sarnano
Biblioteca Comunale
E.98 (Gerardus Odonis, I Sent.): 778–785
Todi
Biblioteca Comunale
12 (Ioannes Duns Scotus, I Sent. [Rep.]): 492n
122 (Mattaeus de Aquasparta, I Sent.): 149n
Troyes
62 (Petrus de Ceffona, I Sent.): 877–878
296 (Augustinus Triumphus, I Sent.): 757–758
505 (Ioannis de Stukle, Sent.): 750
717 (Hervaeus Natalis, De proc. Spiritus Sancti): 443–448
978 index of manuscripts
Uppsala
Universitetsbiblioteket
C 617 (Praepositinus, Summa): 678n
Vaticano, Cittá del

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
Borgh. 27 (Gerardus de Bononiensi, Summa theologica): 500–501
Borgh. 50 (Ioannes Duns Scotus, I Sent. [Rep.]): 492n
Borgh 89 (Ioannes Duns Scotus, I Sent. [Rep.]): 492n
Borgh. 139 (Eustachius Atrebatensis): 899–930
Borgh. 311 (Alexander de Alexandria, I Sent. [redactio posterior]): 271n, 488–490,
504–505
Borgh. 329 (Petrus Aureoli, Scriptum): 529n1, 536n, 537n, 575n
Chigi. B VI 94 (Gualterus Brugensis, I Sent.): 101–106, 236–237n
Chigi. B VII 113 (Franciscus de Marchia, I Sent.): 793n, 808n, 809n
Ottob. lat. 360 (Anon., I Sent.): 502–504
Ottob. lat. 623 (Nicolaus de Ockham, I Sent.): 150–156, 329
Palat. lat. 331 (Romanus de Roma, I–II Sent.): 187, 196–202, 335n
Ross. 252 (Alexander de Alexandria, I Sent. [redactio prior]): 310–314
Urb. lat. 120 (Thomas Anglicus, Liber propugnatorius): 478–483
Vat. lat. 872 (Thomas Anglicus, Liber propugnatorius): 478–483
Vat. lat. 932 (Alexander de Alexandria, Quaest.): 505n
Vat. lat. 1087 (Michaelis de Massa [?], II Sent.): 810n
Vat lat. 1114 (Anon., I–II Sent.): 423
Vat. lat. 13002 (Anon., QQ): 751
Wien
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
lat. 1439 (Anon., I Sent.): 549n, 766
lat. 1496 (Landulphus Caracciolus, I Sent.): 763–765, 823n
lat. 5460 (Ioannis Grafton [?], Quodl.): 749
Worcester
Cathedral Library
F.3 (Anon., Sent.): 751
Q.99 (QQ theologicae): 149n
INDEX OF NAMES
All names of authors who worked before ca. 1500 are alphabetized according
to their given names. Names of medieval authors are anglicized (e.g., Henry
of Ghent, Peter Auriol, William Ockham) except where it has become stan-
dard usage in English to use their foreign-language names (e.g., Hervaeus
Natalis). A reference in bold is to the main discussion(s) of a theologian’s
trinitarian ideas. A reference of the form “XXX–YYYn” indicates that the
name appears only in footnote(s) on pages XXX–YYY. A reference to a work’s
title (under the entry for the author of the work) is to discussion of the work
itself (e.g., date and place of composition, manuscript copies or editions) or
to important mentions of the work; I have been selective with these sorts of
references, which are exhaustive neither with respect to authors and works
nor with respect to the pages on which the works appear in the book. For
more information on theological works from the period, see esp. pp. 419–423
and 748–752, above.
Abendt, Petra, xix Alliney, Guido, 488n, 492n, 610n, 743n

Adam Ely (Adam Junior), 750 Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo, 350n,
Adam Wodeham, xiii, 336, 394n, 529, 355n, 394n, 810, 873, 874n, –
597, 601–603, 663–665, 674, 676n, 
692n, 693n, 702, 707n, –, Amalfi, 762n
734, 743–745, 747, 748n, 755, 778n, Amerini, Fabrizio, 579n
803, 842, 846, 876, 878, 893, 896 Anatolios, Khaled, 5n
Adams, Marilyn McCord, 381n, 382, Andrew Sunesen, 60n
605n, 607n, 609n, 619n, 621n, 640n, Andrews, Robert, 13n
644n, 654–655n Angelini, Giuseppe, 678n
Adenulph of Anagni, – Anheim, Etienne, 139n
Aertsen, Jan A., xx, 270n Anonymous (Master of the Val des
Aiello, Andrea, 206n Ecoliers), 315n
Aix-en-Provence, 530 Anselm of Canterbury, 12, 16, 19n, 22,
Alarcón, Saco, 150n 39n, 43, 62, 112, 115, 125–126, 166,
Albert the Great, 171, 889 185, 189, 204n, 245n, 325, 341–342,
Alexander of Alessandria, 146n, 271n, 345n, 357, 372, 440n, 494, 499, 651,
301, –, 328, 337, 375n, 480, 879, 887n—De processione Spiritus
–, 490, 500, –, 571, Sancti 333–337, 731n; Monologion
890 39n
Alexander of Hales, 80n, 83n, 85n, Aquitania, 529
106n, 159, 337 Aragon, 832
Alexander Langeley, 746, 750 Argerami, Omar, 111n
980 index of names
Aristotle, 269–270, 274, 341, 343, 464, Bermon, Pascale, 754n, 846n
534—Cat. 62, 63n; De anima 40; Bernard of Arezzo, 832n
Metaph. 13, 25, 259n, 459, 556, 812, Bernard of Auvergne, 37, 283, –
813n; Phys. 25, 325, 724; Post.An. , 331, 332n, 337–338, 421, 469,
534n; Soph.El. 617; Top. 243n 582n
Arius, 4–6, 284, 478, 720, 776 Bernard Lombardi, 422, 598, 755–756
Armagh, 744 Bernard of Trilia, 282, 469n
Arnold of Strelley, 748, 751 Berthold, George C., 334n
Arnold, Johannes, 80n, 679n Bérubé, Camille, 264n, 762n
Assisi, 832 Bianchi, Luca, 109n
Athanasius (Athanasian Creed), 5, 712 Biard, Joël, 607n
Aufredo Gonteri Brito, 520, 766 Bieniak, Magdalena, xxi, 80n
Augustine of Hippo, 8, –, 19, 20, Birkenmajer, Alexander, 874n
22–23, 25, 27, –, 35, 39–41, 43, Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus),
50, 52, 62, 78, 80n, 105n, 112–113, –, 19, 20, 22–23, 50, 52, 62, 78,
121n, 133, 142, 166, 185, 194n, 200, 204n, 227, 236, 334n, 347, 355, 357,
204n, 227, 236, 257, 260n, 267, 269, 371, 372n, 494, 559, 561, 825, 890
274, 277, 279, 325, 334, 341–343, 347, Boler, John, 664n
355, 357, 377, 393, 402, 404–405, Bologna, 530
408–409, 412, 464, 470–471, 474– Bombolognus of Bologna, 74n, 92, 171,
475, 494, 499, 593, 649, 651–652, 173n, 180n, 187, –, 197, 199,
675, 681, 709n, 741, 776, 777–778, 201–202, 306, 307n, 327, 338, 478n,
797–798, 816, 824, 846, 851–852, 889
858n, 864, 879–880, 890, 891 Bonagratia of Bergamo, 792
Augustinus Triumphus, 207n, 332n, Bonaventure, xiv, xvi, 17n, 21, 23, 26n,
–, 761n, 831 41, 47, 49–51, 52n, 58, –, 91, 93–
Averroes (Ibn Rushd), 266, 267n, 95, 98–99, 103, 106–107, 110, 112–114,
341—Comm. Phys. 551–552 116, 118–120, 130, 132, 134–136, 141,
Avicenna (Ibn Sina), 270n 144, 147, 149n, 155, 158, 159n, 163, 167,
Avignon, 419, 451, 606–607, 665, 792 177n, 181, 189–190, 191n, 193, 194n,
Ayres, Lewis, 4–5n, 12n 196n, 202–203, 209n, 211, 219, 223–
225, 227–228, 230, 233, 235–236,
Bakker, Paul J.J.M, xx, xxi, 150n, 755n 245–246, 248–249, 253, 257, 301–
Bainton, Roland, 655–656, 738n, 865n 302, 304–305, 307, 310–311, 312n, 315,
Balcoyiannopoulou, Irene, 418n, 451n, 318n, 321, 338, 347, 349, 355, 356n,
756n 359, 365–367, 373, 379, 387, 393,
Barber, Malcolm, 6n 455–456, 485, 494, 507, 519, 544,
Barbet, Jeanne, 766n 546, 549, 561–563, 578n, 621n, 638,
Barcelona, 766–767 680, 683, 689n, 754, 774n, 800, 825,
Barnes, Michel René, 4n, 9n 887n, 888, 890, 892
Bataillon, Louis Jacques, 140n Bonner, Gerald, 12n
Baudry, Léon, 607n Borchert, Ernst, 375n, 830n
Beckmann, Jan P. , 602n Botte, Petrus Chrysologus, 374n
Behr, John, 4–5n, 9n Bougerol, J.G., 64n, 71n
Bendiek, Johannes, 492n, 833n Boulnois, Olivier, xxi, 383n, 398n, 401n
Benedict XII, Pope, 665 Boureau, Alain, 94n, 120n, 121n
Berman, Connie, xix Bourges, 205
index of names 981
Bozeman, Dwight, xix Daley, Brian E., 9n

Brady, Ignatius, 108, 109, 111n, 156n Damiata, Marino, 609n
Brower, Jeffrey, 53n, 228n, 369n Daniels, Augustinus, 615n
Brower-Toland, Susan, 664n Davenport, Anne, 352n, 383n, 532n
Brown, Peter, 12n Davies, Norman, 605n
Brown, Stephen F., xxi, 398n, 559n, Davis, R.H.C., 9n
846n Deahl, Julian, xx
Burbach, Maur, 50n, 202n Decker, Bruno, xvii, 226n, 292n, 421,
Burr, David, 120n, 157n, 305n, 352n, 415 423, 424–425n, 449n, 451–454n,
Buytaert, Eligius, 529n 456n, 462n, 467, 469n, 474n, 476,
506n
Cacciapuoti, Pierluigi, 17n Decorte, Jos, 228n
Cahor, 529 Delmas, Sophie, 111n
Cajetan (Thomas de Vio), 365–366 Delorme, Ferdinand, 121n
Caldera, Federica, 140n Dettloff, Werner, 644n, 755n, 762n,
Cambridge, England, 615, 749–750 765–766n
Canterbury, 121 Dewender, Thomas, 452n, 551n
Cantor de Perona, 185 De Wulf, Maurice, 287n, 605n, 652–
Castellammare, 762n 653, 655–656, 661
Catto, Jeremy, 345n Dionysius the Areopagite, see Pseudo-
Chadwick, Henry, 4n Dionysius the Areopagite
Charlemagne, 8 Dionysius de Burgo Sancti Sepulchri,
Châtillon, Jean, 129n 759, 831
Chênevert, Jacques, 40n Donati, Silvia, 205n
Clark, Mary T., 12n Dondaine, A., 56n
Clement IV, Pope, 519 Doucet, Victorin, 750
Clement VI, Pope, see Pierre Roger Duba, William, xx, 310n, 486n, 488n,
Coleman, Janet, 606n 520n, 610n, 766–767n, 778n, 792n,
Colish, Marcia, 73n 832n
Cologne, 344, 421–422, 756 Duhem, Pierre, 755n
Constantine the Great, 4–5 Dumont, Richard E., 397–398n
Constantinople, 4, 10, 519 Dumont, Stephen D., xxi, 73n, 223n,
Constantius II, 5 230n, 344n, 377n, 380–381n, 402n,
Contenson, P.-M. de, 74n 533n, 616n, 676n, 832–833n, 846n
Courtenay, William J., xxi, 37n, 352n, Dunne, Michael, 744–745n, 748
486n, 601–603n, 604, 605–606n, Durand, Emmanuel, 80n, 82n
663–664n, 715–716n, 743–744n, 746, Durand of St. Pourçain, xvi, xvii, 34–
747–748n, 749–750, 751–753n, 759n, 35, 37, 42n, 129n, 165n, 173n, 183, 188,
767n, 810n, 830n, 846n, 874n 202n, 222, 261, 292n, 300, 332, 375n,
Crawford, Cyril , 9n 417–423, 434, –, 471n, 472,
Cross, Richard, xxi, 227n, 341n, 344n, 474–476, 477n, 481, 486, 545n, 573–
356n, 361n, 374n, 380n–381n, 398n, 575, 593n, 615n, 646n, 665, 677, 713,
616n, 775n, 846n 755–756, 760, 788, 815–816, 821, 873,
Cullen, Christopher M., 64n, 71n 889, 891–892, 895
Durandellus, 35, 419, 451, 477n, 598,
D’Amato, Alfonso, 189n 755–756
Dales, Richard, 109n, 111n, 120n
982 index of names
Eardley, Peter, 101n, 333n 494n, 497n, 507n, 513n, 520n, 535–
Ebbesen, Sten, xix, 60n, 63n 536n, 549n, 553n, 576n, 579n, 582n,
Eckermann, Willigis, 878n 586–587n, 600n, 610n, 641n, 646–
Edwards, Raymond, 749–750 647n, 654n, 743–744n, 755–757n,
Ehrle, Franz, 121n, 832 759n, 761–764n, 766–767n, 772n,
Emery, Gilles, 51n, 172n, 419, 423n, 779n, 791–794n, 803n, 805n, 810n,
438n, 468, 474n, 477n, 756 822n, 830n, 868n, 874n, 877n
Emery Jr., Kent, xxi, 260n
England, 121, 149, 156, 603, 606, 663, Gabriel Biel, 868
715, 743, 745 Gál, Gedeon, 607n
Etienne Tempier, 202, 223 Geanakoplos, Deno J., 10n
Etzkorn, Girard J., xxi, 121–122n, 139n, Gelber, Hester G., xvii, 51n, 53n, 56n,
144n, 156–157n, 602n, 606–607n, 64–67n, 86n, 95n, 189, 196n, 206n,
664n, 665, 833 209n, 216n, 226n, 232n, 240n, 253n,
Eudes Rigaud, see Odo Rigaldi 301n, 315n, 381–382n, 423n, 424,
Eustace of Arras, 23, 93, 102n, 108, – 452n, 532n, 539n, 576n, 601n, 604,
, 120, 122–124, 126–127, 131–132, 607n, 609–610n, 615n, 617–618n,
135–136, 142, 144–146, 150–152, 153n, 620n, 640n, 644n, 654n, 665, 676–
171, 179n, 193, 238n, 240n, 243–244, 677n, 686n, 691, 692n, 716, 717n,
256, 290, 327, 332n, 338, 431n, 440, 723n, 733, 734n, 737–738n, 744n,
502, 507, 821, 858n, 889 746, 748–749, 751, 766n, 768n
Genest, Jean-François, 747, 749, 876n
Farré, Lluís Maria, 831–833n Geoffrey Alienand, 750
Fletcher, Richard, 6n Geoffrey Herdeby, 751
Florence, 750 Gerard of Abbeville, 13n, 93, –,
Flores, Juan Carlos, xxi, 226n, 238n, 102, 106n, 108, 111n, 112–113, 116–118,
242n, 257n 123, 127, 145, 152, 153n, 167–168, 185,
Folger-Fonfara, Sabine, xxi 237n, 240n, 245n, 255–256, 283, 338,
France, 529 522, 700, 821
Francis Caracciolo, 422 Gerard of Bologna, –, 768
Francis of Marchia, xiv, xvi, 27, 395, Gerard Odo, 246n, 727n, –, 792,
, 529, 531n, 578, 597, 704, 718, 796–797n, 810n, 830–831
754–755, 765–768, 781, –, Gerard of Siena, 207n, –, 765,
810–811, 821–822, 831–832, 842, 877, 811, 823, 831
890, 893, 897 Ghisalberti, Alessandro, 607n
Francis of Meyronnes, 375, 494, 598, Gilbert of Poitier, 233–234, 559n, 567,
765–767, 810n, 882n, 890 568n
Freddoso, Alfred J., 607n, 621n, 655n Giles of Rome, 37, 47, 58–59, 74n, 92,
Friedberg, A., 11n 150n, 153, 155n, 156, 171, 173n, 187n,
Friedman, Melvyn, xxi 202, –, 223, 224n, 225, 227–
Friedman, Russell. L., 2n, 74n, 94–98n, 228, 230–233, 235, 239n, 245n, 278n,
101n, 121n, 140n, 144n, 150n, 196n, –, 290, 295, 313, 337–338,
206n, 226n, 257n, 259–261n, 298n, 356n, 376, 385, 404n, 452, 520, 555,
301–302n, 310n, 315n, 318n, 330n, 663, 679–680, 683, 699, 744, 756,
338n, 344n, 354n, 382n, 387n, 390n, 758n, 759–761, 768, 811, 831, 860,
418n, 425n, 427n, 430n, 442–443n, 879, 889
451n, 465n, 477n, 487–488n, 492n, Gill, Joseph, 10n
index of names 983
Gilson, Etienne, xiii, 604n, 607–608, Hennessy, Kristin, 9n

652–656, 660 Henninger, Mark, xxi, 53n, 209n, 227–
Ginther, James, xxi, 350n 228n, 232n, 369n, 520n, 551n, 555n,
Glorieux, Palémon, 50n, 202n, 422– 621n
423n Henry of Ghent, xiv, xvi, 2, 23, 27,
Godfrey of Fontaines, 37, 221, 237n, 36–37, 40, 42, 47, 50, 59, 71, 73n,
241n, 253n, 283, –, 324, 327, 85n, 88–89, 91–94, 97–99, 101, 103,
330–331, 332n, 337–338, 356n, 376, 106–108, 116n, 124, 137, 139, 152,
388, 397, 401, 421, 453n, 520–521, 158, 159n, 162, 163n, 168–169, 171,
522n, 526, 563, 569n, 656n, 699, 744, 177, 206, 216, 220–221, –,
757, 759, 768, 815n, 889 281–283, 285–293, 295–302, 308–
Goehring, Bernd, 223n 309, 314–315, 318–319, 321n, 322,
Gómez Caffarena, José, 224n, 226n, 324, 328–330, 332, 333n, 337–340,
229n, 231n, 237n, 249n, 356n 347, 354, 356n, 357, 362, 369, 373,
González de Cardedal, Olegario, 17n, 375–381, 384, 386, 388–395, 397–
80n 399, 406–409, 411–412, 415–417,
Goris, Wouter, xxi, 262n 421–422, 424, 426, 430, 436, 437n,
Gøthgen, Agnete, xxi 438, 442, 449, 452, 458–459, 480,
Grand, Philippe, 94n 507–514, 522, 533, 542–543, 545,
Gregory of Nyssa, 9n 546n, 555, 563, 566, 571–572, 575,
Gregory of Rimini, xiii, xiv, xvi, 38– 577, 578n, 579, 584–585, 590–591,
39, 362n, 529, 543, 597, 643n, 645n, 593, 608–609, 615n, 625–626, 638,
656, 713n, 754–755, 760n, 761, 767n, 646, 651, 656n, 663, 676n, 681–682,
768, 770n, 810, 831, 835, 841, 844, 696, 710–711, 736, 744, 756, 768,
–, 869n, 870–871, 873, 874n, 773–775, 784, 790, 803n, 807, 811,
875–882, 884–886, 889, 893–894, 816n, 851, 855, 856n, 857–858, 873,
897 879, 884, 888, 890, 892–893, 895–
Grevin, Benoît, 139n 897
Gribben, John, 342n Henry of Harclay, 37, 152, 288n, 292n,
Guelluy, Robert, 607n 326, 328, 331n, 333, 345n, 517, –
Guldentops, Guy, xxi , 570, 575n, 603, 634–636, 766,
Gutiérrez, D. , 352n, 355n 780, 890
Guy Terrena, 768, 772, 889 Henry of Lübeck, 422, 756
Henry Totting of Oyta, 715
Haddad, Rachid, 7n, 10n Hervaeus Natalis, xvi, 35, 37, 165n,
Hallamaa, Olli, xx, 749 183n, 188, 222, 261n, 299n, 300, 322–
Halverson, James, xxi, 576n, 644n, 323, 326, 332, 336n, 390n, 417–422,
760n, 846n –, 449–451, 453, 454n, 458n,
Hannibaldus of Hannibaldi, 187 459–464, 467–472, 476, 478n, 482,
Hanson, Richard Patrick Crosland, 4n 517, 520, 526n, 531n, 538n, 545–
Harrison, Carol, 12n 546n, 582n, 593n, 646n, 661, 814n,
Harsting, Pernille, xxi 858, 889
Hartman, Peter John, 465n Heynck, Valens, 492n
Haveral, 750 Hilary of Poitiers, 8, 80n, 825
Hayes, Zachary, 17n, 52n, 64n, 71n, Himbert of Garda, 766n, 767
76n, 80n, 85n, 114n Hinnebusch, William A., 50n
Heather, Peter, 6n Hippolytus, Roman theologian, 4n
984 index of names
Hödl, Ludwig, 22n, 56n, 253n, 486n, 645n, 747, 751, –, 782–785,
810n 792, 830, 831n, 860, 896
Hoenen, Maarten J.F.M., 606n John of Bassol, 371n, –, 498,
Hoffmann, Fritz, 601n, 738–740n 506n, 765n
Hoffmann, Tobias, 259n, 333n, 380n, John Bekkos, 9n
391n John of Berewick, 324
Hoffmans, J., 287n John Damascene, 7n, 16, 112, 204n,
Hollister, C. Warren, 606n 342–343, 345n, 499, 559, 561, 825
Honnefelder, Ludger, 762n John Duns Scotus, xiv, xvi, xvii, 2,
Honorius IV, Pope, 205 24, 37, 42, 50, 73n, 87, 94, 101, 106,
Hopkins, Jasper, 334n 120, 128, 129n, 130, 158, 160, 161n,
Hugh of Lawton, 744, 889 163–164n, 165, 167–169, 177n, 180,
Hugh of Novo Castro, 375n, –, 199n, 221, 223–224, 230n, 242n,
490, 500, , 506n, 767, 890 261n, 263, 274–275, 277, 279, 281,
Hugh of Strasbourg, 171 288n, 292n, 297, 301–302, 305,
Hugolino of Orvieto, 544, 750, 831, 873, 310, 312n, 315, 318, 322–323, 325n,
–, 883–886 328, 330n, 331, 333n, 336, 340,
Huning, Alois, 315n –, 417–420, 422, 424, 430,
437n, 438, 440, 456–459, 464,
Iammarrone, Luigi, 341n 475, 477–482, 485–492, 494–498,
Imbach, Ruedi, 654n 500–510, 511n, 512–513, 520–522,
Inglis, John, 604n, 654n 529–530, 532–533, 540, 542–543,
Innocent V, Pope, 65n, 95 545–546, 549, 560–561, 563, 565–
Iribarren, Isabel, xxi, 228n, 292n, 421, 566, 568n, 570–571, 575, 577, 578n,
423–424, 425n, 442n, 451–452n, 453, 579–580, 584, 590–593, 597–599,
454n, 868n 602, 607n, 608–612, 615–617, 618–
Ivo of Chartres, 869n 619n, 620–621, 622n, 625–626,
Iwakuma, Yukio, xxi 628–630, 638–641, 642n, 646,
647n, 649–651, 656n, 657, 663,
James of Ascoli, 486n 676, 681–682, 685–686, 689, 692,
James of Lausanne, 421–422 696, 711, 717–718, 721–723, 734,
James of Metz, 292n, 420–421, 449, 736, 743–744, 754, 758n, 760–
452–453n, 456n, 462n, 467 766, 768, 775–776, 780, 784, 790,
James of Pamiers, 759n, 810n 793n, 795, 800–801, 803n, 804–
James of Viterbo, –, 365n, 421, 807, 809, 811–812, 817, 819, 821,
823, 831, 883 823, 824n, 825, 826n, 827, 830,
Jenson, Robert W. , 887n 832, 843, 852–853, 857, 858, 860,
Jerome, 853n, 885n 869, 879, 882–883, 887, 887n, 888–
Jeschke, Thomas, 574n 890, 893, 895–897—Biography
Jesus Christ (Savior), 28, 345, 370, 372, 344; Quaestiones miscellanea de
491, 498 formalitatibus (Parisian Logica)
Joachim of Fiore, 10, 496, 533 381n, 676n; Quodl. 381n; Reportatio
John (the Evangelist), 1, 2, 28, 32, 34, 1-A 344, 361n
166, 257, 345, 470–471, 474–475, 647, John of Erfurt, 318n
651, 660, 713, 843, 891–892 John Grafton, 749
John XXII, Pope, 529n, 530, 607, 792 John of La Rochelle, 86n
John Baconthorpe, 37, 246n, 538n, 598, John of Lichtenberg, 423n
index of names 985
John Lutterell, 602, 603n, 607 Knudsen, Christian, 55n

John Major, 656, 715 Knuuttila, Simo, xx, 9n, 124n, 240n,
John of Mirecourt, 873, –, 878, 242, 394n, 631n, 669n, 762n
886 Kobusch, Theo, xxi, 579n
John of Naples, 35, 42n, 165n, 173n, Koch, Josef, 443n, 467
183n, 188, 222, 332, 390n, 418, 420, Köhler, Theodor W., 109n
422–423, 427n, 451, 452n, 454n, Kolbaba, Tia, 10n
468–469, –, 476, 478n, 482, Kopecek, Thomas A., 4n
575n, 646n, 756, 889 Kosla, Henryk Romuald, 397n
John (Quidort) of Paris, 180n, 282, 419, Kraml, Hans, xxi, 140n, 602n
427n Krempel, A., 53n
John of Parma, 423n Kretzmann, Norman, 2n, 12n
John Pecham, 23, 74n, 93, 98, 102n, Krogh Hansen, Hannah, xix
107–108, 111, 117, –, 140–145, Kürzinger, Josef, 883n
147–152, 153n, 156–157, 159n, 160–
162, 164n, 166–168, 171, 176, 185, 193, Laarmann, Matthias, 223–224n
240n, 243, 256, 289n, 290, 293–294, Lacomb, Georges, 678n
307–308n, 312n, 315, 317, 335, 338, Lagerlund, Henrik, 605n
373, 462n, 464, 475, 507, 649n, 785, Lahey, Stephen E. , 748n
821, 858n, 889, 892–893 Lambert, Malcolm, 6n
John of Pouilly, 486n Lambertini, Roberto, xxi, 189n, 205n,
John of Reading, 743 792n
John of Ripa, 375n, 830 Lamont, John, 62n
John of Rodington, 744 Landulph Caracciolo, 37, 371n, 531n,
John of Sterngassen, 419, 469 538n, 598, –, 823, 873, 882,
John of Stukle, 750 890
John Went, 746, 750 Lang, Albert, 810n, 833n
John Wyclif, 748n Lasker, D.J., 7n
Jordan, Michael Joseph, 13n, 64n, 381n, Lawrence, C.H., 50n
609n Lecce, 422
Jung-Palczewska, Elzbieta, 749 Ledsham, Callan, xx
Lee, Richard A., 605
Kaluza, Zenon, 477n, 605n, 748n, 749, Leff, Gordon, 745n
832–833n Lehtinen, Anja I., 762n
Keele, Rondo, 605–606n, 622n, 664– Leibold, Gerhard, 344n
665n, 733n Lemaigre, B.M., 56n
Keffer, Hajo, 240n Lescún, Eliseo García, 832–833n, 847n,
Kelley, Francis E., 603n 868n
Kelly, J.N.D., 3–4n, 6n, 8–9n Liber propugnatorius, 37, 332, 375, 418,
Kennedy, Leonard A., 750 420, 422, 456n, 469, –, 486,
Kenny, Anthony, 2n 513n, 533n, 571, 619n
Kent, Bonnie, 101n, 333n, 402n, 415n, Lindner, Benedikt P., 760n
778n Little, A.G., 149n
King, Peter, 42n, 379n, 398n Livesey, Steven, 743n
Kitanov, Severin, 574n London, 601n, 606, 664, 715
Kjeldgaard-Pedersen, Steffen, xxi Lonergan, Bernard J., xvii, 40n, 390n
Klatt, Wolfram, xix Longpré, E., 101n
986 index of names
Louis IX, King of France (St. Louis), 111, Menn, Stephen, xxi, 647n
348 Merton College, Oxford, 752
Louis (Ludwig) of Bavaria, Emperor, Meyendorff, John, 9n
607, 792 Michael of Cesena, 792
Luna, Concetta, 74n, 206n, 209n, 245n Michael of Massa, 37, 101n, 199n, 246n,
Lund, Vivi, xix 375, 427n, 499, 597, 754–755, 761,
Lux, Susanne, xix 768, 777, 784, 797, –, 842,
869n, 877, 883, 890
MacDonald, Scott, xiii, xix, 12n, 29, Michael Servetus, see Servetus,
214n Michael
Macken, Raymond, xxi, 224n Michalski, Konstanty, xiii, 652–653,
Magee, John, 12n 655–656, 832, 833n, 877n
Maier, Anneliese, 755n Michel, Thomas F., 7n
Maierù, Alfonso, xxi, 654n, 766–767n Min, Anselm K., 172n
Mainz, 678 Möhler, Wilhelm, 716n, 868n
Malet, A., xvii, 106n Monachus Niger, 746, 749
Mandrella, Isabelle, 785n Moody, Ernest, 653
Mann, William E. , 334n Moonan, L., 183n
Marcolino, Venicio, 878n Moore, R.I., 6n
Marenbon, John, 12n, 604n Moorman, John, 50n
Mariani, Nazareno, 792n Morard, Martin, 139n
Marrone, Steven P., 120n, 121n, 260n, Mühlen, Heribert, 129n
263n, 267n, 269, 270n, 397n Mulder, Marcella, xx
Marshall, Bruce D., xx, 9n, 146n, 602n Munich, 607, 792
Marsilius of Inghen, 716n, 868
Martin, C.F.J., 604n Naples, 422
Martin, Charles Trice, 121n Nicaea (Nicene Creed), 4–5, 238n
Martin, Christopher J., xxi, 240n, 394n, Nicholas of Autrecourt, 832n
631n, 669n, 767n Nicholas Bonet, –, 792, 890
Mathieu, Luc, 36n, 64n, 76n, 80n, 85n Nicholas of Ockham, 93, 108, 117, 120,
Matthew (the Evangelist), 370 124n, –, 158, 159n, 168n, 180,
Matthew of Aquasparta, 93, 108, 120, 201, 208, 257n, 308, 317n, 328n, 329,
132, 134n, –, 150–151, 152n, 338, 480n, 571, 821n
256, 307, 312n, 314, 480, 571, 785 Nicholas Trivet, 421, 603
Matthews, John, 6n, Nicol, Donald M., 9n, 10n, 519n
Matthews, Scott, 37n, 120–121n Nielsen, Lauge O., xix–xx, 234n, 382n,
Maurer, Armand, 605n, 609n, 621n, 425n, 443n, 478n, 530n, 533n, 538n,
640n 551n, 554n, 769n, 810n
McEvoy, James, 350n Noone, Timothy B., xxi, 121n, 380n,
McGrath, Alister E., 343n 382n, 478n, 486n, 533n, 576n,
McGuire, Brian, xxi 610n
McKenna, Stephen, 28n Northampton, 733
Meier-Oeser, Stephan, 28n, 580n Norwich, 715, 716n, 750
Meissner, Alois, 733n Noto, Antonio di, 315n
Meister Eckhart, 419 Noyon, A., 422n
Melani, Gaudentius, 121n Nys, Theophilos, 260n
Melone, Maria Domenica, 17n
index of names 987
O’Daly, Gerard, 28n Peter Auriol, xiv, xvi, xvii, 2, 24, 27, 37,
Odo Rigaldi (Eudes Rigaud), 86n, 106n 42, 87, 101, 128, 129n, 152, 167–169,
Oberdorfer, Bernd, 9n, 887n 222, 227, 274–275, 297, 322, 323n,
Oberman, Heiko A., 343n 326, 351, 375n, 395, 407–408, 414–
Oliva, Adriano, 140n, 188 416, 422, 425n, 437n, 442–443n, 450,
Olszewski, Mikolaj, 420, 449n, 492n, 480, 485, –, 502n, 507, 517,
757n 520, 527, –, 597–599, 602,
Osbert Pickingham, 747, 750–751 608, 620, 624–628, 634–637, 640,
Oxford, 121, 139, 149–150, 281, 318, 344, 642, 644–646, 647n, 649, 651, 657,
350, 375, 395, 421, 485, 486, 491, 494, 663, 689n, 692–693, 695, 700, 703,
506, 513, 520, 529, 597–598, 601–603, 707n, 708, 711, 723n, 726–729, 731,
606–607, 610, 621, 664–665, 715, 733, 744, 754–756, 759–766, 768–771,
738, 743–751, 753, 755, 767, 846, 877, 773, 777, 779, 785, 788–791, 794–
892 795, 798, 803, 806, 809, 810n, 822,
Ozment, Steven, 605n 826–827, 828n, 832, 843, 844n, 855,
856n, 857, 858n, 860, 867, 877, 889,
Paasch, JT, 602n 893, 895–897—Biography 529–
Paissac, H., 28n, 34n, 40n 530; Quodl. 530n, 538n, 729n, 769n,
Panaccio, Claude, 28n, 40n, 41, 42n, 837n; Rep. in I Sent. 530, 538n, 765n,
270n, 579, 580n, 605n, 653n, 664n 769n; Scriptum 530, 727–728
Paris, xiv, 10n, 51, 64, 94, 98, 101, 109, 111, Peter Ceffons, 823n, 873, –, 886
120, 122n, 139, 144, 149, 150, 156, 185, Peter of John Olivi, 261, 305, 315, 346n,
187–188, 196–197, 201–202, 204–205, –, 355, 356n, 401, 545n
223, 226, 283, 318, 375, 381n, 395, Peter Lombard, xv, 10, 73, 74n, 195n,
416–417, 419–420, 423n, 424, 450, 496, 533, 754, 854, 877–878, 887n
485–486, 488, 495, 506, 529–530, Peter of Navarre, 502n, 767
549, 594, 597–598, 602, 610, 678, 715, Peter of Palude, 35, 421–422, 451, 469,
747, 748n, 753–755, 760–762, 766– 823
768, 772, 777, 781n, 785, 792, 810, Peter of Spain, 63n, 345n
822, 830n, 831–832, 845–846, 874, Peter of Tarantaise, 65–67n, 95, 103n,
877, 892 187, 189, 681, 889
Pasnau, Robert, 42n, 261, 273n, 398n, Peter Thomae, 767
401n, 579n Peter of Trabes, 153n, 158, 161n, –
Pastor of Serrescuderio, 767 , 329, 337–338, 373, 821n
Pattin, Adriaan, 94n Philippe, M.-D., 423n, 452n, 458n, 476
Paul (the Apostle), 858n Pickavé, Martin, xx, 206n, 261–262n
Paul of Perugia, 766n, –, 886 Pierre d’Ailly, 656
Paulus, Jean, 227n Pierre Roger (Pope Clement VI), 549n,
Pedersen, Fritz S., xx, 144n 766n
Pelikan, Jaroslav, 3n, 6n, 9n, 174n Pinborg, Jan, 2n, 60n, 579n
Pelletier, Jenny, xx, 631n Pini, Giorgio, xxi, 56n, 185n, 278n,
Pelster, Franz, 149n, 810n 283n, 369n, 398n, 404n
Perlini-Santos, Ernesto, 631n Piron, Sylvain, xxi, 139n
Perler, Dominik, 261n, 579n, 605n Plato, 583
Perrier, Emmanuel, 74n Poirel, Dominique, 129n
Peter Abelard, xv Poitiers, 101
Peter of Aquila, 598, 767, 832 Porebski, Stanislaw, 422n
988 index of names
Porro, Pasquale, 223–224n Robert Graystanes, 207n, 288n, 292n,

Praepositinus of Cremona, 60n, 77n, 336, 337n, 743
204, 357, 538, 597, 621n, –, Robert Grosseteste, 101n, 348, –
680–682, 690, 702, 721, 725–726, , 355–356, 365n, 497, 540, 621n,
853n, 883, 885 716n, 825, 827—De divinis personis
Priscillian of Avila, 4n 350–351, 540, 823, 883; Notula super
Prague, 767 Damasceni De Trisagion 350n
Prösch, Otto, xxi Robert Halifax, 746, 749
Proverbs, 371, 492, 495, 496, 498, 765n Robert Holcot, xiii, 543, 597, 601–603,
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, 13n, 607n, 656, 663, 675, –, 742–
16, 80n 747, 748n, 755, 842, 846, 854, 867,
Punta, Francesco Del, xxi 870–871, 877, 897—Sent. 737n
Robert Kilwardby, 121
Radulphus Brito, 486n Robert of Orford, 206n, 332n
Rankin, Oliver Shaw, 7n Robert Walsingham, 183n, 337n, 768
Ranulph of Houblonnière, –, Robert of Winchelsea, 149n
204–205 Robilliard, J.-A., 74n
Raymond Bequini, 422, 810n Rodler, Klaus, 344n, 513n
de Régnon, Théodore, xvii, 9n, 26n, Roensch, Frederick J., 50n, 121n
71n, 85n Roger Marston, 93, 99n, 108, 111n, 120,
Reims, 491 129n, 130, 132, 134n, 137, 139, 149,
Reina, Maria Elena, 760n 153n, –, 176, 177n, 183, 185,
Remigio dei Girolami, 419 193, 237n, 243–244, 254n, 256, 290,
Ribaillier, Jean, 17n, 19n 293–294, 303, 308n, 312n, 315, 317,
Richard Brinkley, 748n 320, 322, 324n, 325n, 328–329, 333,
Richard of Bromwich, 330, 331n, 336, 335, 338, 373, 388n, 404n, 511, 649n,
337n 682, 785, 821n, 889, 892–893
Richard of Bury, 733 Roger of Nottingham, 750
Richard of Conington, 230n Roger Roseth, 746, 749
Richard FitzRalph, 207n, 288n, – Roland of Cremona, 337
, 748–749, 846, 877 Roman of Rome, 74n, 92, 171, 173n,
Richard Kilvington, 746, 749 187–188, –, 329, 335n, 338,
Richard Knapwell, 121 623n, 824n, 889
Richard of Mediavilla, 156, 158, 160, Romano, Margaret E. , 750
237n, 256, –, 313n, 322, 324n, Rome, 121, 144, 146, 488
329, 337, 356n, 373, 525, 689n Rosemann, Philipp, 73n
Richard of St. Victor, –, 27, 71, Rosier, Irène (Irène Rosier-Catach),
73n, 80n, 99, 110, 112–113, 115, 136, 60n, 553n
250n, 325, 334 Rossini, Marco, 487–488n, 506n, 762n
Richter, Vladimir, 341n, 344n, 397n Roßmann, Heribert, 766n
Rijk, L.M. de, 579n, 778n Roth, Bartholomäus, 766n
Robb, Fiona, 10n Rubert y Candáu, José Maria, 831n,
Robert Cowton, 37, 302, 310n, 321n, 832, 833n
322, 325, 326n, 328, 331, 371n, 422, Ruello, Francis, 766n
492n, –, –, 515–517,
519, 546n, 568n, 625n, 731, 765n, Saarinen, Risto, xx
775, 823, 890 Sabellius, 3–4, 235, 284, 478, 742
index of names 989
Savior, see Jesus Christ Spade, Paul Vincent, 240n, 605n

Sbaralea, Johannes Hyacinthus, 832n Speer, Andreas, xx
Schabel, Chris, xx, 10n, 144n, 315n, Spruit, Leen, 261n, 397n
330n, 352n, 354n, 418n, 422n, 451n, Southampton, 715
477n, 486–488n, 500n, 502n, 506n, Stegmüller, Friedrich, 678n, 874n,
520n, 549n, 568n, 601n, 665, 676n, 878n
716n, 743–744n, 747n, 753–756n, Stella, Prospero T., 261n, 419, 549n,
759–765n, 766–767, 768–769n, 766n
772n, 777, 778n, 779, 785, 789n, 791– Stephen Langton, 60n
792n, 810, 811n, 822, 830n, 831–832, Stohr, Albert, xvii, 17n, 26n, 64–65n,
846n, 873, 874n, 877n 71n, 76n, 80n, 83n, 94n, 171n, 226n,
Schabel, Frank, xxi 381n
Schabel, Liz, xxi Strottman, Mary, xix
Schinzer, R. , 226n Studer, Basil, 3n
Schmaus, Michael, xvii, 2, 12n, 17n, Stump, Eleonore, 12n, 240n
26n, 28n, 39n, 64n, 71n, 76n, 83n, Sturlese, Loris, 422
85n, 106n, 150n, 154n, 171n, 192n, Suarez-Nani, Tiziana, 532n, 792n
196, 201n, 204, 226n, 315n, 318n, Synan, Edward A., 750
348n, 351, 355n, 375n, 418, 420–421,
423, 424n, 452n, 469n, 476–477, Tabarroni, Andrea, xxi
478–479n, 488n, 497n, 500n, 532n, Tachau, Katherine H., xiii, xix, 260–
548n, 575n, 602n, 610n, 702n, 716n, 261n, 397–398n, 401n, 601n, 604–
743, 756, 757–758n, 763n, 765, 774n, 605, 644n, 665, 745n, 749–751, 755n,
830n, 832n, 868–870, 874n, 887–888 823n
Schmidt, Robert W., 53n, 56n Tertullian, 3–4
Schneider, Johannes, 73n, 477, 478n, Teske, Roland J., 348n, 887n
513n Theissing, H. , 477
Schneider, Richard, 422–423, 452n, Thomas, David, 7n
454n, 456n, 472n, 474n, 476, 575n Thomas Anglicus, see Liber propugna-
Schönburger, Rolf, 53n, 228n, 369n, torius
609n Thomas Aquinas, xiii, xiv, xvi, 21–22,
Schurr, Viktor, 12n 26n, 34–35, 38, 40–42, 47, 49–50,
Senner, Walter, 419 –, 65–66, 67–68n, 69, 71, –
Servais of Mont-Saint-Eloi, 205n , 91–92, 95, 97, 103, 112, 114n, 117,
Servetus, Michael, 655–656 120–121, 126–129, 130n, 131–133, 135,
Shank, Michael H., 7n, 609n, 733n, 748, 140, 142–143, 146, 152–154, 156–160,
847n 162–168, 171, –, 189, 191–193,
Sheehan, M.W., 37n 194n, 195–196, 199, 200n, 201, 203,
Sheppard, J.A., 344n 206–211, 213, 216, 219, 223–225, 227–
Sibert of Beek, 772n 228, 230, 233, 235–236, 238–239n,
Siecienski, A. Edward, 10n 242n, 245, 248, 253, 254n, 257n,
Sinclair, Lynn, xxi 258, 260, 270n, 274, 278n, 280, 282,
Sirridge, Mary, 28n 285–286, 289, 295, 298–299, 301n,
Slipyi, Joseph, 85n, 94n, 99n, 144n, 302, 303n, 304–307, 310, 313, 315,
226n, 324n, 887n 322, 327, 329, 331, 332n, 333–334,
Slotemaker, John, xxi, 716n 336–339, 351, 355–356, 376, 387,
Solère, Jean-Luc, 465n 388n, 389–390, 397, 404–406, 415,
990 index of names
Thomas Aquinas (cont.), 417–418, 423– Vignaux, Paul, 532n, 576n, 644n, 738n,
425, 427, 432–433, 434, 437–439, 865n, 876n
448–450, 452, 454n, 455, 456n, Visser, Sandra, 334n
458n, 462n, 463–465, 467, 469– Volz, Walter, 491–492
472, 473–474n, 475–477, 481–482, Vos, Antonie, 344n, 397n
485, 494, 513, 519, 521, 526, 532, 544,
546n, 549, 554n, 555, 561–563, 581, Walter Beaufon, 615n
582n, 598, 602, 604, 607n, 615, 623– Walter of Bruges, 93, –, 111–112,
624, 627–629, 647n, 653–655, 656n, 116, 118, 120, 122, 123n, 130–132, 134n,
657–658, 661, 663, 679, 680n, 682– 136, 137n, 138, 147, 149n, 158, 161,
683, 709n, 736, 739, 744, 754, 756, 163n, 167, 168n, 201, 236n, 256, 302,
759, 761, 769, 773, 774n, 783, 790, 305, 312, 327, 338, 373
800, 853, 860, 862n, 868n, 871n, 879, Walter Chatton, xiv, xvi, 27, 129n,
887–889, 891–893, 897 199n, 271n, 394n, 395, 529, 578, 597,
Thomas Bradwardine, 747, 749 601–603, 619, 626, 645n, 662–663,
Thomas Buckingham, 746, 749 –, –, 718–720, 723,
Thomas Felthorp, 749 725–726, 728–730, 732, 736–738,
Thomas of Jorz, 477 742–744, 747, 748n, 753, 755, 793,
Thomas Ringstead, 751 803, 807, 824n, 832–836, 837n, 838–
Thomas of Strasbourg, 207n, 598, – 842, 844–845, 846n, 853–854, 863n,
, 830n, 846, 883, 889, 892 866–868, 870–871, 878, 879n, 893—
Thomas of Sutton, 37, 222, 282, 325– Biography 664–665; Lectura in I
327, 331, 332n, 334, 335n, 337–338, Sent. 664, 673–674, 677n, 702, 713–
376, 390, 419, 422, 477, 478n, 486, 714, 832–833, 837n, 844n; Quodl.
507–508, –, 525, 569n, 633, 664n; Rep. in I Sent. 664–677, 683–
660, 731, 780n 715, 728n
Thomas Waleys, 665 Wardzinsky, Mary Felicity, 553n,
Thomas Wylton, 477, 478n, 538n, 576n
769n Ware, Timothy, 9n
Thomas, David, xxi, 7n Wéber, Edouard-Henri, 71n
Todi, 144n Weisheipl, James A., 51n
Torrell, J.-P., 51n Wetter, Friedrich, xvii, 226n, 341n,
Toulouse, 530, 777 348n, 361n, 375n, 381n, 681n
Trapp, Damasus, 749–750, 810, 822n, Wey, Joseph C., 665
830n, 877, 883n Wielockx, Robert, 206n, 223–224n,
Trifogli, Cecilia, 382n, 478n, 533n 256n
Trottmann, Christian, 435n Wilkins, Jeremy, 257n
Tweedale, Martin, 381n William of Alnwick, 165, 250n, 486n,
, 611, 639–641, 645–646, 717–718
Ulfila, 6, 6n William of Auvergne, 80n, 114, –
Ulrich of Strasbourg, 171 , 350, 355, 360n, 494, 497, 642,
Urban IV, Pope, 519n 783n, 825, 826n, 858n, 887n
William of Auxerre, 80n, 679
Valente, Luisa, 678n William of Baglione, 93, –,
Vanier, Paul, xvii, 26n, 71n, 74n 137n, 148n, 152n, 571
Venice, 205n William of Brienne, 767
Vienna, 846 William of Conches, 60n
index of names 991
William Crathorn, 601–603, 617, 663, 230n, 237n, 238n, 271n, 288n, 292n,
733, –, 744–746, 748n, 877, –, 322–323, 325n, 328–329,
879n 331, 333, 335–338, 356n, 357, 362,
William of Macclesfield, 324 366, 367n, 373, 386, 398n, 409n, 417,
William de la Mare, 93, 108, 120, 124n, 508, 545n, 546n, 566, 568n, 615n,
–, 149, 152n, 156, 157n, 160n, 626, 689n, 774–775, 860, 890
168n, 329, 338, 681–682 Williams, R.D., 4n
William of Nottingham, 302, 322, 324, Williams, Scott M., xxi, 227n, 257n,
325n, 371n, 375, 492n, –, 277n
497–498, , 568n, 765n Williams, Thomas, xix, 334n, 344n,
William Ockham, xiii–xiv, xvi–xvii, 383n
27, 152, 165, 168, 261, 271n, 297, 326, Wilson, Gordon A. , 223n, 229n, 234n,
328, 375, 382, 388n, 395, 437n, 481n, 249n, 356n
494, 517, 529, 597, 599, –, Wipfler, Heinz, 17n
663–667, 669, 671, 674, 682, 685– Wippel, John, 286n, 397n
689, 692–695, 697, 700, 703–704, Witt, Jeffrey C. , 716n
706, 707n, 708, 715, 717–719, 721, 723, Wölfel, Eberhard, 341n
727–728, 730, 732–735, 739–740, Wolfram, Herwig, 6n
743–744, 746–748, 752–753, 755, Wolfson, Harry A., 4n, 8n, 28n, 36n
765, 770n, 779, 792–793, 806, 808– Wolter, Allan B. , 344n, 379n
809n, 810n, 832, 842, 844n, 846, Wood, Rega, 149n, 607n, 676n, 715–
853, 855–857, 860, 862n, 867–868, 716n, 719n
883, 887n, 889–890, 892–897—
Biography 606–607; Ordinatio I Xiberta, Bartholomaeus, 500n, 750–
Sent. 601–662, 664; Quodl. 606n, 751, 772n, 873, 874n
619, 625n, 644n, 664; Summa
Logicae 609n, 628n Ypma, Eelko, 352n, 353, 354n
William Peter of Godino, 292n, 420 Yrjönsuuri, Mikko, 240n
William of Rubio, 27, 395, 529, 578,
597, 647n, 714n, 754–755, 768, – Zoubov, Vassili P., 778n, 785n
, 846n, 853n, 854, 863n, 869n, Zumkeller, Adolar, 205n, 757n, 759–
870–871, 877, 879n, 893 760n, 878n, 883n
William of Ware, 37, 50, 158, 168, 221, Zurn, Beatrix, 602n
INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND TERMS
References of the type 316–327 indicate that the subject or term plays a
role from p. 316 up to p. 327, but not necessarily that it occurs on every
page. A reference of the form “XXX–YYYn” indicates that the name appears
only in footnote(s) on pages XXX–YYY. Entries in bold (e.g. “arguments,
standard trinitarian”) are meant to direct the reader to more specific entries;
references in bold come closest to a definition of the entry in question. An
entry in English may stand for a Latin subject or term used in the text (or
vice-versa).
absolute Albigensian Crusade, 10

in God, 198, 642–643 aliquod sui (quodlibet sui), 724–726,
in intellect, 585–586 883–884
persons and properties, see analogy, 435–438
persons, absolute Anselm’s rule, 22n, 62, 126, 334–335
abstractive cognition (abstraction), see also De processione Spiritus
40–42 Sancti (arguments from)
act of understanding, see essential anti-Trinitarianism, 655–656
act (divine) of understanding; appropriation of trinitarian terms,
intellectual act; notional act of –, 166–167, 186–187, 222,
saying the Word 434–438, 462–476, 677, 703–713,
act requires agent to bring it about, 73, 718–719, 815–817, 843–845, 876, 891
79, 132, 154, 200, 248–249, 776 aptitude to bring about a notional
action and passion, Aristotelian action, 105n, 134, 163n, 307
categories of, 13n, 24, 405–406, 550– arguments, standard trinitarian, see
563, 794–795, 839–841 act requires agent; constitutive,
active spiration, see spiration, active formal, nature of; emanations,
actuality, see potentiality/actuality in divine, argument on the basis
God of; De processione Spiritus
actual intellection, see intellectual act Sancti (arguments from); Father
actus dicendi (act of saying), 266–275, argument; Father, does not depend
406, 465–466 on the Son; highest impossibility
adoptionism, 3–4n argument; ideas argument;
adventitia, see spiration, active, intrinsic constitutive argument;
as quasi incidental; relation as psychological argument; Proverbs;
supervening on person rational distinction cannot ground
Aegidianism, 810–811 real distinction; reductio ad
aesthetic, see theological aesthetic absurdum argument for distinct
agent intellect (active intellect), 40– emanations; source not as diverse
42, 263–274, 398–403, 587n as products
index of subjects and terms 993
Arian heresy, 4–6, 8, 10, 702, 719–720, causality, 401–402, 839–840

726, 776, 882 cause
ars obligatoria, see positio impossibilis formal, 541–543, 566–567, 769–770
a se/ex se, Father as, 114–117, 163, 249– sine qua non, 232–234, 254, 333,
252, 396, 414, 522 401, 522, 828–829
a se distinction between divine twofold, for distinction between
properties, 680, 689n Son and Holy Spirit, see twofold
assimilative/non-assimilative, 521, reason for distinction of Son
711–713 from Holy Spirit
Athanasian Creed, 5, 712 censure of Durand of St. Pourçain,
atomism, 665, 778 450–451, 467–468
attention in concept formation, 411 censure of Scotus at Oxford, 375, 479
attributes, divine, see connotative changing scholarly interests, 663–
distinction between divine 664n, 747, 753
attributes; distinction between circumscription, see impossible
divine attributes; infinity, of circumscription
divine attributes; intellect, cogitative process, 268–274
divine; will, divine; in ratione cognition, human, see abstractive
essendi vs. in ratione principiandi; cognition; intuitive cognition
psychological model of the Trinity, Comma Johanneum, 647n
strong use of; rational distinction common spiration, 15
cannot ground real distinction communicability, 16, 363, 489
(emanations); sources (elicitive) of communio, 95–96, 145
the emanations complacens, 413–414
authority/authoritative tradition, xv, complete constitution/distinction
333–337, –, 352n, 370–375, of divine person, 109–111, 135–138,
432–436, 463–471, 621–622, 647, 147–153, 160–161, 202–203
786, 820–821, 824–825, 841–845, complexe significabile, 846n, 848, 878
851–855, 864–867 composition (ontological), 14, 54, 58,
see also marginalization strategy 65, 70–71, 215, 227, 357, 364, 369,
Augustinian Hermits, trinitarian 383, 684, 687, 696, 699, 701, 731–732,
theology of, 756–761, 831 741–742, 837
composition and division (mental),
basis on which we know, see ratio, see discursive reasoning
innotescendi concept/concept formation, see word,
mental
categories, Aristotelian, 12–15, 24, 550– conceptualism, about universals, 534,
563, 578–579—see also action and 612
passion, Aristotelian categories of; condemnation
relation, Aristotelian category of; of 1277, 224n
quality, Aristotelian category of; of Oxford 1315, 602–603
substance, Aristotelian category of Word is not Son’s personal name,
Cathars, 6, 10 35n, 98–99n, 185, 463
causality (quasi) in distinction of confused knowledge, 266–274, 406–
emanations/persons, 129–130, 153– 412
154, 159–160, 166, 317, 320, 736 congruentia/congruentissima
causative, 320 (perfectly fitting), 118, 122–123
994 index of subjects and terms
connotative Correctoria controversy, 37, 139

distinction between divine council, ecclesiastical, see Con-
attributes, 576–578, 598, 640, stantinople, Council of; Florence,
703, 771–772, 893 Council of; Fourth Lateran Council;
term, 648, 840 Lyon, Second Council of; Nicaea,
consequence (consequentia), 509–510, Council of
515–517, 631–634, 660–661, 700 counterfactual Filioque question,
Constantinople, Council of (381), 4–7 19n, 20–21, 93–102, 111–119, 121–126,
constitution, personal (divine), 2, 52– 137–139, 141–142, 144–146, 150–153,
71, 76–78, 153, 158–164, 624–627, 164–168, 173–181, 193, 197–199, 206–
633–635, 740–743, 756, 781–784, 207, 219–220, 237–244, 283–285,
793–803, 835–842, 882–886, 896 287–301, 308–310, 312–337, 361,
hylomorphic model, 229–230, 896 384–387, 438–448, 457–458, 472,
individuation model, 351–352, 377– 478n, 480–481, 501–527, 563–571,
384, 896 628–637, 660–661, 700–701, 730–
problematization of, 543–544 731, 733, 743–744, 746, 756–761,
rejection of, 678, 685–691, 723–724, 779–781, 790, 822–823, 855–859,
732, 850–852, 881–882 873
resultative, –, 566–568, 624– see also Filioque, doctrine; twofold
627, 633–635, 731–732, 769–777, reason for distinction of Son
788–791, 896 from Holy Spirit
vs. distinction, 153–154, 179–180, creation of the world, 799
471n, 565, 688 credita, 613–618, 657
see also complete constitution; creed, see Athanasian Creed, Nicene
Father, divine, personal Creed, Niceno-Constantinopolitan
constitution of; personal creed
constitution vs. hypostatic crypto-Praepositinian, 682
constitution
constitutive, formal, nature of, 361– Damnamus, see Fourth Lateran
364, 442, 501–511, 521, 525–527, 628, Council
780 de facto vs. per se (levels of discourse),
see also filiation as Son’s constitu- 668–677, 685–686, 693–697, 703–
tive property 715, 729–730, 840–841, 867
contingency of the created world, 604 declarative knowledge, 269–279, 406–
see also future contingents 412, 711
continuity in 14th-century Parisian demonstrative knowledge, 631–637,
discussion, 753–754, 767–768 652–654, 659–661
contradiction De processione Spiritus Sancti
as mark of distinction, 610–612, (arguments from), –
615–616 see also Anselm’s rule
see also impossible circumscription denomination, see extrinsic denomi-
conversion of intellect, 268, 407–408, 711 nation
convertibility of being and goodness, de virtute sermonis, 707n, 709, 731n,
213–215 875
convertibility/non-convertibility of dependency in God, see Father does
property and essence, 722–726, not depend on the Son
731–732 diminished being, 584
discursive reasoning (inquisitio, 608–610, 638, 764–765, 811–812,

investigatio), 260, 268–274, 407–412 893
disparate relations, 94–102, 112–119, distinction, intentional, 676
122–126, 152–153, 160–163, 166–167, distinction se ipsis (in and of
175–176, 192–193, 237–239, 244–248, themselves), 453
251–254, 284–285, 288–295, 304, between divine emanations/
318–319, 326–329, 334–336, 347, 373, productions/properties, 84–
384–385, 453, 457–458, 578–579, 85, 95, 102–103, 129–130, 149n,
699–700, 780–781 166–167, 190, 206–207, 304, 306,
incompossible in same supposite, 312, 317, 320–321, 393–395, 522,
328–329, 385–386, 501, 508, 521– 549–50, 572, 578, 589, 638–639,
522, 629–630 680–682, 689, 864–866
see also opposition of relations between divine persons, 77n, 204,
dispositional knowledge, see memory, 538, 597, 678–691, 701, 714–715,
intellectual 721–726, 736, 793, 833–834, 850–
distinction vs. constitution, see 867, 876, 879–886—see also
constitution, personal, vs. Praepositinianism
distinction divine foreknowledge, see future
distinction between divine attributes, contingents
85–88, 127–128, 285, 299–301, 354, divine power, absolute and ordained,
481, 508, 576–578, 638, 669–674, 568n, 604–605
703, 733–734, 771–773 divorce, 778
see also connotative distinction Dominican trinitarian tradition, 21–25,
between divine attributes; dis- 34–38, 49–51, 89, 91–92, 107–108,
tinction, formal, between divine 201–201, 205–206, 219–222, 282–283,
attributes; in ratione essendi vs. 337–340, 387–388, 393, 417–418,
in ratione principiandi 423–424, 448–451, 457–458, 467–
distinction between divine emana- 471, 577–578, 682, 703, 706, 755–761,
tions, 83–88, 102–103, 126–131, 140– 807, 814–817, 858, 889–893
141, 149–153, 164–168, 174–175, 190– see also censure of Durand of St.
193, 198–199, 285, 288–295, 298– Pourçain
299, 305–306, 312, 320–321, 334–335, dual nature of divine relations see
386–395, 425–438, 471–472, 481– relations, divine, twofold nature of
482, 501–508, 571–579, 637–645, Durand of St. Pourçain, see censure of
757–758, 771–773, 879–886 Durand of St. Pourçain
distinction, formal, 381–384, 478n, dynamic theological language, 25–27,
602n, 676 79n, 246, 895
rejection of, 577, 610–613, 620, 639–
640, 649, 662, 716–717, 722–723, efficient source of personal distinction
734–735, 760, 805–806 (efficienter), 159, 303–304, 367–375,
among divine properties and 780–781
essence, 383–384, 497, 532, 536n, emanational distinction vs. relational
597, 608–609, 613–620, 626, 630, distinction, see nested distinctions
656–657, 685–686, 734, 764–765, emanation account of personal
793n distinction, 16–19, 92–93
between divine attributes (and vs. relation account, 19–21, 889–
essence), 391–395, 481, 577, 598, 890
emanations, divine, 17–19, 25–27, 225 real non-identity with properties,

argument on the basis of (Scotus, 741–742
et al.), 386–387, 502–511, 521– relationship to first person, 250–251
522, 570, 780 as unique, undifferentiated source
vs. divine relations, 72–88, 103–107, of both emanations, 35, 164, 182–
158–159, 176–180, 192–193, 202– 183, 390, 427–428, 472, 718, 760,
205, 302–305, 310–311, 315, 338– 772–773, 804–807, 814–822, 844
339, 359–360, 369–375, 453–458, as universal/second substance,
544–545, 561–563, 622–623, 697, 351–352, 367–369, 377–384
743, 779, 791, 793–803, 896–897 as unlimited elicitive source
elicited, 545–546, 642–645 —see (Ockham), 640–645, 674
unelicited emanations essential act (divine) of understand-
unelicited, see unelicited ing, 275–279, 409–415, 590–591
emanations see also order (logical) essential
see also distinction between the acts/notional acts
emanations; order between evidens, evidenter, 613, 631–636, 646,
divine emanations 657, 659–660, 700
eminent containment (eminen- ex amicabili societate (community
ter/virtualiter), 796–803, 806–807, based on friendship), 431–432
813, 816–821, 897 ex consequenti real distinction, see
equality relation, 211–212 real distinction, per se vs. ex
esse (of an accident, of relation), 53– consequenti
54, 209–210, 284–285, 385 explanation, trinitarian, xv, 599–600,
esse apparens, 579–593, 788–790, 823n 619n, 650–652, 677, 683, 688, 690–
essence, divine 691, 742, 747, 809, 841–842, 854,
as fecund, see fecundity 864–871
as formal term of divine produc- expository syllogism, 616–618, 659,
tion, 368, 377–378, 545, 622n, 691–692, 740, 878
625, 696 ex se, see a se, Father as
as foundation of divine relations, extrinsic denomination, 672, 781–782
210–216, 460 “extrinsically attached” relations, see
as generating or generated, 745, 878 relations, divine, as extrinsically
indistinct from property, see attached
indistinction of property and
essence factio, 405–406
as infinite quidditative act, 377– faith and reason, 182–183, 375, 599–
384, 506n—see also property, as 600, 602n, 607–608, 631–636,
non-infinite personal act 652–662, 738, 894–896—see also
as mark of persons’ unity, 720–726 fideism; sola fide
as object of intellect/will in Father argument, 190n, –, 385–
production of persons, 396–397, 386, 457–458, 522–523, 563–564
803–805, 811–812 Father, divine, constitution of, 20, 73–
as principium quo/quod, 860–864 76, 79–82, 104–108, 109–111, 132–139,
as quasi matter/quasi material, 146–149, 154–56, 158–164, 199–201,
229–230, 287, 376–377, 426n, 203, 207–208, 220, 245–255, 302–
542, 545, 625, 695–696, 851–852, 305, 311, 375, 561, 697, 773–777,
896 781–785, 854–855
Father does not depend on the Son, formality of logic, see logic, formality
114–117, 122–123, 131–132, 144–145, of syllogistic
414, 569, 573, 782–783, 858n foundation of a relation, 211–216, 228–
fecundity (of divine essence, nature, 235
will), 194–196, 204, 317, 392–393, Fourth Lateran Council, on Trinity
414, 454–455, 460, 812 (Damnamus), 10–11, 496, 533, 547n,
fideism, xiii, 599–600, 604, 607–608, 667, 719, 842, 851n, 860n
620, 643, 652–662, 712, 737–739, Franciscan trinitarian tradition, 21–24,
790, 808–809, 865–867, 870–871, 36–38, 49–51, 78–79, 89, 91–94, 106–
894–896 108, 119–121, 143, 156–158, 219–222,
filiation, 15 225–226, 235–237, 255–258, 337–
as Son’s constitutive property, 177, 340, 373, 379, 384–385, 387–389,
242–243, 248, 295–297, 319, 386, 393–395, 415, 507, 549, 562–563,
440–442, 501–511, 514–517, 524– 571–572, 578–580, 594, 637–638,
527, 565–568, 631–637, 855–857 645, 649, 682, 689–690, 701, 761–
Filioque, doctrine, 7–10, 342, 350, 517– 768, 777, 807, 811–814, 821–822,
519, 631–636, 701, 730–731, 744, 857, 857–858, 889–893
877 free, see Holy Spirit, free emanation of;
see also counterfactual Filioque will, human, as free faculty
question; “proof “that Holy fuga quaestionis, 325, 442
Spirit comes from the Son future contingents, 477, 492, 502n,
first substance, see person, divine, as 506, 644, 664, 676, 740n, 760, 766–
prime substance 767, 778, 785, 789, 793, 810, 822, 831,
first term of production, see person, 846
divine, as first term of production
flashpoint, definition of, , –, 138 generation (Son’s emanation from
Florence, Council of (1439), 10 Father), 19, 644–645, 859n
fontal plenitude, 79–81, 104–106, as constitutive of Father, 73–76,
109–111, 134–136, 142–143, 146–149, 79–82, 109–111, 132–139, 146–149,
155–156, 194, 311n 154–156, 158–164, 190, 199–201,
see also innascibility as primity 207–208, 245–255
formal causality, see cause, formal generative power, 739–740, 878
formal constitutive, see constitutive, generativity (generativitas), 246n,
formal 773–777, 782–785, 828n, 830–831
formal source of personal distinction germanitas, 95–98, 118, 122–123, 145
(formaliter vs. efficienter), 153–154, Gift, see Holy Spirit as divine Love
159–160, 303–304 gignitio, 406
formal distinction or non-identity, see Gilsonian Paradigm, 652–656, 659
distinction, formal Greek trinitarian theology, 7–10, 112,
formal term of divine production, 761 118, 167, 173–174, 342, 350n, 517–
see also essence, divine, as formal 519, 631–636, 730–731, 744, 857,
term 877
formal presence of constitutive difference with Latin trinitarian
properties (vs. eminent/virtual), theology, 9n
796–803, 817–821, 827–829
formalities, distinct, vs. formal habit, cognitive, 400–403, 843
distinction, 717n see also memory, intellectual
habitudo (reference), 64–66, 118, 135, impossible circumscription (impossi-

159–161, 202–204, 354 bilis circumscriptio), 670, 730
haecceitas, 870 incidental, see spiration, active, as
highest impossibility argument, 240– quasi incidental
241n, 309–310, –, 441–448, incomplete constitution/distinction
508, 516, 525, 568, 634, 779–780, of divine person, see complete
857–859 constitution
Holy Spirit as divine Love (or Gift), indifferens ad opposita, 425, 429–430
33–34, 113–114, 331–333, 396, 574– indistinction
575, 589–590, 706–707, 763, 778– of person and essence, 837
779, 811–822, 843–845, 858, 864–867 of property and essence, –,
Holy Spirit, free emanation of, 390– 567, 587–590, 729, 761, 764, 769,
391, 502–504, 639–641, 707 837n
Holy Spirit, natural emanation of, indistinct realities, see realities,
425–438, 641 indistinct
Holy Spirit, voluntary emanation of, individuation, theory of, 379–380
see will, divine, emanation by way of infinity, of divine attributes, 392
hylomorphic model of personal see also essence, divine, as infinite
constitution, see constitution, quidditative act; property,
hylomorphic model divine, as non-infinite personal
hypostacization (Chatton), 667–668, act
677 innascibility, 15, 19, 81–82, 93, 133–134,
hypostatic constitution, see personal 208, 219, 374n, 627, 698
constitution (vs. hypostatic innascibility as primity, 79–82, 87–88,
constitution) 93, 104–107, 109–111, 116–119, 132–139,
142–143, 146–149, 155–156, 159–164,
ideas argument, 141n, – 190–196, 199–201, 220–221, 225, 248–
identic vs. inherent predication, 722n 257, 276, 306–308, 311, 315–316, 415,
identity predication, 847 424n, 546–547, 603, 698n, 774n,
identity relation, 211–211 784–785, 800
identity of essence and property, 533– see also act requires agent
541, 721–726 innominata, see property innominata
see also indistinction of property in quid predication, 14, 670
and essence inquisitio, see discursive reasoning
image of Trinity in humans, 28–34, in ratione essendi vs. in ratione
331–333, 398n, 402, 461, 521, 532, principiandi, 97–98, 116–117, 127–
574–575, 709–712, 738, 745, 808– 128, 152–153, 167n, 317, 821
809, 879–880 see also principiando
imagination (internal sense), 262–263 instans naturae (signum naturae), 73n,
immanent acts, 459, 464 413, 522, 546, 739
imperfecte distinct divine persons, see intellect as natural faculty, 168–169,
perfecte distinct divine persons 225, 258–259, 308–309, 390–391,
impossibility/incompossibility, 240– 429–431
243, 322–326, 441–448, 780 intellect, divine, as source of Son’s
see also positio impossibilis; dis- emanation, see intellect, divine,
parate relations, incompossible emanation by way of
in same supposite intellect, divine, emanation by way
of (per modum intellectus), 34–36, liberalitas, 113–117, 130, 167, 204

85–88, 152, 178–179, 185–187, 225, logic, formality of syllogistic, 616–620,
247–248, 255–259, 293–294, 332, 691–692, 734, 738, 744–747, 750,
337, 435–438, 460–476, 511–514, 768n, 847n, 878
576–578, 598, 609, 646–649, 709– love, emanation by way of , 116, 128–
713, 803–807, 811–822, 844, 864–867 131, 167
intellect, human, as active/passive, 401 Love, divine, see Holy Spirit as divine
see also agent intellect; conversion Love
of intellect; material intellect; Lyon, Second Council of (1274), 10, 519
possible intellect
intellectual act, 40–42, 183–185, 265– manifestive knowledge, see declara-
274, 402–415, 464–467, 580–587, 843 tive knowledge
see also actus dicendi; cogitative marginalization strategy, –,
process; essential act (divine) 78–79, 107–108, 113, 220–222, 237,
of understanding; mental act 346–348, 370–375, 432–436, 457,
theory of concepts; notional act 463–464, 470–476, 479, 550, 558–
of saying the Word; operation; 561, 647–651, 668–677, 695, 702,
production 730, 736, 794, 829, 841, 854–855,
intellectualism, 333 890–892
intelligible species, 40–42, 183–185, material intellect (intellectus
260–264, 397–410, 582–583, 587n materialis), 266–267
intentional existence, see esse medium cognoscendi, 183
apparens memory
interpretative tradition, see tradition, intellectual (dispositional
interpretative knowledge), 28–30, 40–42, 264–
intransitive construction (vs. 274, 399–414, 843
transitive), 847–849, 856, 865, 875, perfected, as productive of mental
880–881, 883–884 word, 402–412
intrinsic constitutive argument, 82n, as productive source of divine Son,
–, 191, 200n, 208n, 219, 303– 395–397, 522, 707–708, 719, 762–
304n, 455, 471, 546n, 624n 763, 812, 843–844
intuitive cognition, 631 mental act theory of concepts, 402–
investigatio, see discursive reasoning 406, 464–465, 468, 787–788
see also intellectual act
Jewish attacks on Trinity, 6–7 metaphorical use of the psychological
John Duns Scotus, see censure of John model, 86–87, 222, 293–294, 389–
Duns Scotus 391, 473–476, 514, 574–575, 801–802,
806–807, 892–893
knowledge, human, 28–31, 33–34, 259– see also appropriation of trinitarian
274 terms
see also abstractive cognition; metaphysical asymmetry between
confused knowledge; declara- property and essence, see
tive knowledge; demonstrative convertibility/non-convertibility
knowledge; intuitive cognition; Meyronnists (branch of Scotism), 766
memory, intellectual; psychol- modism (grammatical theory), 553–
ogy, human; simple knowledge; 555
word, mental modus concipiendi, 536, 552–555
modus essendi, 66–67, 228–233, 315, non-assimilative, see assimilative/

464–465, 534–535, 580–581 non-assimilative
modus grammaticalis vel logicalis, non-quidditative origin (Scotus), 367–
614n 370, 373, 376, 379, 414, 492, 500, 890
modus intelligendi, 66–67 “note” (ratio), differentiating sources
modus obtinendi, 99 of emanations, 816–822
modus se habendi (mode of reference), notion, divine (notio), 15, –, 109–
66–71, 189, 228, 302, 311, 315 111, 345–346, 627
modus significandi (mode of notional act
signifying), 60, 289, 303, 624, 758 of saying the Word, 2, 276–278,
monarchianism, 3–4 409–415, 590–591
see also adoptionism, sabellian see also emanations; order (logical)
heresy essential acts/notional acts
Muslim attacks on Trinity, 6–7 notional reality (re notionali), 102, 306,
312
nature, divine, emanation by way of
(per modum naturae), 20, 34–36, objective existence, see esse apparens
85–88, 96–98, 116, 128–131, 163–164– obligations, art of, see positio
168, 173, 178–181, 193, 197–199, 204, impossibilis
206, 255–259, 293–294, 317, 337, obliquely (in obliquo), 536–537, 576n,
360, 390–391, 425–438, 460–462, 827–830, 869n
502–504, 511–514, 639–641, 844 Ockhamism (Ockhamists, Occamis-
see also Holy Spirit, natural tae), 604–605, 810n
emanation of Ockham’s razor, see principle of
nature, identification with intellect, parsimony
see intellect as natural faculty ontological commitment, 446–448,
necessity, 460, 524, 634, 637, 859 517
Neoplatonism, 26 operatio (intellectual act), 183, 266–
nested distinctions, –, –, 275
96n, 103–108, 118–119, 123–124, 136– opposition of relations (opposed
139, 145–152, 158–164, 220–222, 225, relations), 22–23, 61–64, 93, 97,
237, 244–245, 288, 303–305, 314–319, 115–119, 172–183, 197–199, 209–216,
347, 372–373, 441, 479–480, 564, 219–222, 282–285, 304, 334, 384–
571–572, 637 385, 425, 434, 438–440, 446–449,
see also perfecte distinct divine 451–452, 457–458, 471, 504, 513,
persons; proprie distinct divine 520–522, 549–550, 628–632, 700–
persons; complete constitution; 701, 757, 891
twofold reason for distinction of see also disparate relations
Son from Holy Spirit order (logical) between divine
Nicaea, Council of (325), 4 emanations, 254–255, 277–279,
Nicene Creed, 4–5 332–333, 431–433, 819–820
Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, 4–8 order between emanations and
nominalism relations, see emanations divine,
about universals, xiii, 604–606, vs. divine relations
656n, 868–871 order (logical) essential acts/notional
historiographic category, 604, 652, acts, 275–279, 412–415, 458–460,
656 465–467. 590–591
order between divine persons, 854– as prime substance, 100–101, 350–

855, 881–882 351, 360–361, 487–491, 501,
see also qui ab alio/a quo alius 540–541, 825–829
order of relation to term, 212–216, 230– as first term of production, 377–
235, 284–285 384, 545, 625
origin, see emanations; non- identical with property, 678–
quidditative origin 681, 684–688, 736, 836, 847–
originaliter, 103, 130, 166, 306, 312, 317, 855, 867, 875–865—see also
393 Praepositinianism
as principium quod, 860–864
paralogisms, trinitarian, 691–692, 740, see also personal constitution (vs.
744–747, 749–750, 768n hypostatic constitution); order
passion, Aristotelian category of, see between divine persons; proprie
action and passion, Aristotelian distinct divine persons; perfecte
categories of distinct divine persons
paternity (as constitutive property, as personal constitution
relation), 15, 106, 132, 154–155, 191– vs. hypostatic constitution, 93, 104–
192, 194–196, 200–201, 207–208, 219, 107, 118–119, 138–139, 160–164
251–252, 302–305, 306–308, 455– see also constitution, personal, vs.
456, 623–624, 627, 774n, 781–783, distinction
800 persons, absolute, 221, 305, 341n,
see also generativity 346–376, 378–379, 384, 395, 414,
perfecte distinct divine persons, 146, 456–457, 478–480, 486–501, 620–
150–152, 314, 480, 571 622, 721, 743, 765, 776, 781, 791,
perfected memory, see memory, 800–801, 823–831, 837–839, 868–
perfected 870, 890
per impossibile, see positio impossibilis persuasive, 437
per modum fieri et egressus, 553–557 phantasm, 40–42, 398–403, 582–583
per modum intellectus, see intellect, universal (Henry of Ghent), 261–
divine, emanation by way of 266, 273, 399
per modum naturae, see nature, place, theories of, 789n
emanation by way of Platonic ideas, 582–584
per modum quietis, 553–557 plurality of forms debate, 37, 137n
per modum voluntatis, see will, divine, positio incompossibilis, 295–297, 517,
emanation by way of 525
per se vs. de facto, see de facto vs. per se positio impossibilis (obligationes),
per se real distinction, see real distinc- 117–118, 124–126, 137–138, 144–145,
tion, per se vs. ex consequenti 160–161, 239–244, 251, 295–297,
per se primo/secundo modo (predica- 315n, 322–326, 393–394, 440–448,
tion), 534–539, 648, 670, 722–726, 503, 508–511, 514–517, 525–527,
732, 876 628n, 668–677, 686, 729–731, 736–
periculosa materia, 676 737, 844–845
perseitas tertii modi (perseity of the see also de facto vs. per se; highest
third kind), 533, –, 566–567, impossibility argument;
788–789, 826–827 impossibility/incompossibility
perseity of a proposition, 671–674 possible intellect (potential intellect),
person, divine, 4, 17n, 136, 539 40–42, 264–274, 399–405, 587n
potentia generandi, 726–732 “proof “of the Trinity, 85–86, 164–165,

potentiality/actuality in God, 376–381, 181–183, 250n, 254, 300–301, 320,
541–543, 696, 770, 775–777, 784 436–438, 461–462, 472, 575, 645–
power, divine, see divine power 646, 786–790, 810–811, 871n
Praepositinianism, 60n, 677–702, 719– proper name, see appropriation of
726, 734–738, 741–742, 781, 830, trinitarian terms
833–845, 847–871, 875–876, 880– property (proprietas), divine, 16, 19–
886 20, –, 109–111
see also distinction, se ipsis, absolute, see persons, absolute
between the divine persons; identical with person, see person,
indistinction, of person and identical with property
essence; person, identical with ignota (unknown to us), 781, 796,
property 809
predestination, 492, 644, 760, 767, 778, indistinct, see indistinction of
793, 831, 846 property and essence
predication, see identic vs. inherent innominata, 245, 774–775, 796,
predication; in quid predication; 800n
per se primo/secundo modo as non-infinite personal act, 377–
prime mover, 249, 786 384, 506
prime substance, see person, divine, as principal, 566–567, 770
prime substance as principium quo, 860–864
primity, see innascibility as primity quasi-formal, 229–230, 376–377,
principiando (in being a source), 816– 542, 545, 625, 851–852, 896
821 quasi-incidental (quasi adventitia),
see also in ratione essendi vs. in see spiration, active, as quasi
ratione principiandi incidental
principiative, quasi (as though from a quasi-material, 105, 287
source), 364–368, 394, 490 propositio famosa Scoti, 676n
principium quod/principium quo, 453, proprie distinct divine persons, 106,
860–864 162, 237, 244–248, 252, 314, 480, 571,
see also quo agit/quod agit 637
principle of indiscernibility of “proto-Father”, “proto-being”, –,
identicals, 611 110, 137
principle of parsimony (Ockham’s Proverbs argument for absolute
razor), 622, 665, 868–869 persons, 371, 492, 495–498, 765n
Priscillianism, 4n, 8n psychology, human, 745–747, 750
procession, 15, 19 see also agent intellect; conversion
see also emanations of intellect; habit, cognitive;
production (intellectual act), 266– intellect, human; intellectual
278 act; intelligible species;
production of divine persons, 395– knowledge, human; material
396, 553–559, 571–572, 770–771, 795, intellect; memory; phantasm;
803–805, 890–891 possible intellect; will, human;
see also emanations word, mental
“proof” that Holy Spirit comes from psychological argument, 113–114, 177–
the Son, 95, 117–119, 167, 508–510, 179, –, 388n, 431–432, 473n,
515–517, 568n 482, 522, 757
psychological model of the Trinity, quod quid est, 268–274, 406–410

28–39, 96–97, 152, 185–187, 354n, quodlibet sui, see aliquod sui
677, 733, 745–746, 759–760, 842–
845 radicaliter (radicata), 130–131, 134–135,
“non-psychological” understanding 163–164, 392
of, 462–477, 481–483, 876 ratio
rejection of strong use, 703–714, of an accident, of relation, 53–64,
716–719, 732, 760, 803–808, 860– 172, 189, 209–216, 228, 284–285
867, 882–883, 893 innotescendi, 77, 311, 487
strong use of, xiv, , 221–222, 224– see also “note” differentiating
225, 256–259, 275–280, 299–301, sources of emanations; super-
337–340, 389, 412–415, 430–431, ratio(nes)
435–438, 462–477, 481–483, 504– rational distinction (Aquinas), 55, 66,
505, 512–514, 573–578, 587–593, 86–87
597–598, 646–652, 743, 760– rational distinction cannot ground
761, 762–766, 771–773, 778–779, real distinction (emanations), 86,
786–790, 811–822, 873, 889– 97–98, 117, 127, 140–141, 150–151,
893 167n, 193, 197, 252–254, 285, 300–
see also appropriation of trinitarian 301, 309–310, 313, 317, 329, 389–391,
terms; metaphorical use of the 434, 472, 481, 575
psychological model see also in ratione essendi vs. in
ratione principiandi
quaestiones, argument vs. position ratio(nes) definitiva(e), 673, 686, 840
centered, 387, 485 real distinction, per se vs. ex
quality, Aristotelian category of, 405– consequenti, 290–297
406, 592 real relation, reality of relation, 211–
quasi-adventitia (quasi incidental), see 216, 227–235, 452–453
relations, divine, as supervening realism, about universals, 606, 612–
upon constituted persons; 613, 868
spiration, active, as quasi realities, indistinct, 537–540, 589–590,
incidental 597
quasi causality, see causality (quasi) reason, see faith and reason
quasi-formal property, see property, reductio ad absurdum argument for
quasi formal distinct emanations, 116–117, 237–
quasi-material essence, see essence, 238, 288–293, 312, 319, 816n
divine, as quasi material reference, see habitudo
quasi-material property, see property, reflexivity/reflexive act, 267–275, 407–
quasi material 408
quasi principiative, see principiative, Reformation, 656
quasi (as though from a source) relation, Aristotelian category of, 13–
qui ab alio/a quo alius, 78, 854–855 15, 70–71n, 211–212, 216, 228–229,
quiddity, 59–60, 209–216, 368, 380, 385 550–563, 608, 621, 657, 839–841
see also non-quidditative origin relation of reason, 211–216
quo agit/quod agit, 642–643, 860n relation as modus essendi, 228–233,
quo modo natus (Son)/ quo modo 248
datus (Holy Spirit), 95–97, 314n, see also equality relation, identity
816, 876n relation, real relation
relational distinction vs. emanational Sabellian heresy (modal monarchian-

distinction, see nested distinctions ism), 3–5, 8, 719–720, 742
relations, disparate, see disparate scholarly interests, see changing
relations scholarly interests
relations, divine, 14–16, 51–52, 109–111, schools of thought, 759
350, 622 demise at Oxford, 746
vs. absolute properties, 358–375, Scotism (Scotists), 27, 506–507, 761–
456–457, 486–501, 620–622, 823– 768, 792–793, 832833
827, 837–839—see also persons, search for simplicity, 38–39, 222, –
absolute , 649–651, 703, 714, 716, 732,
vs. divine emanations, see 733, 736, 742, 747, 754, 768, 792,
emanations, divine, vs. divine 803, 806, 808, 811, 821, 829, 834, 845,
relations –, 876, 881, 894
as “extrinsically attached” (Gilbert second substance, see essence, divine,
of Poitier), 233–234, 567 as universal or second substance
as non-infinite personal act, secular-mendicant controversy, 98–
see property, as non-infinite 99
personal act se ipsis, see distinction se ipsis
as supervening upon constituted se ipsis totis, 321
persons, 348–349, 358–359, sensible species, 40–42
492 Sentences commentaries, changing
twofold nature of, 58–59, 69–70, structure, 747n, 753–754
168, 172–173, 179–180, 189, 196, see also quaestiones, argument vs.
209–216, 220, 230–235, 246– position centered
247n, 286, 302, 311, 347, 357, signum naturae, see instans naturae
369–370, 452, 532, 597, 615, 757, sic esse (divine persons), 882
769 simple knowledge, 266–274
relations, opposition of, see opposi- simplicity, divine, xv, 38–39, 54–57,
tion of relations (opposed rela- 65–66, 594, 509–600, 620, 622, 640,
tions) 649, 662, 665–668, 675–679, 683–
relation account of personal 691, 693, 695, 701–703, 714–716, 726,
distinction, 12–16, 22–25, 189, 196, 732, 737–738, 740, 747, 771, 806,
311, 346–348, 357–358, 369–370, 425, 833–871, 893–897
448–449, 615, 743, 769 see also search for simplicity
vs. emanation account, 19–21, 889– sine qua non cause, see cause, sine
890 qua non
vs. absolute properties and persons, skepticism, xiii, 603–604, 652–654
357–364, 369–375 sola fide, 599–600, 608, 643, 646–647,
relative reality (res relativa), 321 655, 659
res of relation (Henry of Ghent), 228– Son, divine
229 intellectual emanation of, see
respectus of a relation (Henry of intellect, divine, emanation by
Ghent), 229 way of
resultative constitution, see constitu- natural emanation of, see nature,
tion resultative divine, emanation by way of
revelation, see authority; faith and see also Word, divine; Word as
reason Son’s personal name
source not as diverse as products, term of a relation, 211–216, 227–235

326–331, 440n, 523, 564, 639–640 theological aesthetic, –, –,
sources (elicitive) of the emanations, 650, 658, 661–662, 683, 690–691,
252–253, 320, 388–395, 425–438, 714–715, 732, 738, 742, 870–871, 886,
458–460, 481–482, 512, 522, 546, 894
575–578, 642–650, 692–695, 757– theological language, 25–27, 79n, 246
758, 763–765, 771–772, 803–805, Thomism (Thomists), 449–451
811–821, 860–864 tradition, interpretative, 343–344, 347,
see also distinction between 370–375
divine emanations; “note” traditions, trinitarian (definition,
differentiating sources of interaction), xiv–xv, –, 37–
emanations 39, 338, 475–476, 518–519, 598, 759,
species, cognitive, see intelligible 767–768, 888–893
species; phantasm; sensible species see also Dominican trinitarian
specular form (concept), 581–583, tradition; Franciscan trinitarian
787–788 tradition
speculative intellect (intellectus transient acts, 459, 464
speculativus), 266–268 transitive construction, see intransi-
spiration, 15, 19 tive construction
spiration, active, as quasi incidental Trinity, divine, formulation of
(quasi adventitia), 165n, 176–180, doctrine, 2–5
242–243, 295–297, 318–319, 386, Attacks on by Muslims and Jews,
510, 515–517, 524–527, 565–560, 626, 6–7
697–698, 855 twofold nature of divine relations, see
spirative power, 114 relations, divine, twofold nature
“static” theological language, 25–27, of
79n, 246, 895 twofold reason for distinction of Son
strong use of psychological model of from Holy Spirit, 115–116, 122–132,
the Trinity see psychological model 136, 145, 162, 220, 440n
of the Trinity, strong use of
subjective existence, 583–585 ultra-Aegidian, 810–811
substance, Aristotelian category of, unelicited emanations, 544–549, 561,
13–14, 350, 366 575, 624–627, 643–645, 692–695,
see also person, divine, as prime 717–718, 726–732, 739, 761, 762–
substance; essence, divine, as 763, 770–771, 791, 798, 822, 860n,
universal or second substance 897
substantifica (substance giving), 96–99 universals, see conceptualism,
super-ratio(nes), 796–803, 806–807 about universals; nominalism,
supervening properties, see relations, about universals; realism, about
divine, as supervening upon universals
constituted persons; spiration, universal judgements, 582–584
active, as quasi incidental univocal production, 427
supposition theory, 746
symbolic form , 558, 693 via moderna, 868
systematicity of later-medieval virtual containment (virtualiter), see
thought, xvi, 226 eminent containment
voluntarism, 333
voluntary emanation of the Holy will, human

Spirit, see will, divine, emanation as free faculty, 390–391, 425–426,
by way of 429–431
role in concept formation, 271–274,
ways of emanating, 18–19, 781 400–412
see also intellect, divine, emanation Word, divine, 1, 27–28, 31–33, 151–152,
by way of; nature, divine, 331–333, 396, 463–466, 574–575,
emanation by way of; will, 587–583, 763, 778–779, 811–822,
divine, emanation by way of 841–845
Wegestreit, 606 as Son’s personal name, 35, 169n,
will, divine, as source of Holy Spirit’s 183–188, 435–436, 435–436, 462–
emanation, see will, divine, 476, 646–649, 707–710, 803–807,
emanation by way of 844–845, 864–867—see also
will, divine as source of Son’s condemnation, Word is not
emanation, 666, 710 Son’s personal name
will, divine, emanation by way of (per word, mental (verbum cordis, verbum
modum voluntatis), 20, 34–36, 85– mentis), 28–34, 39–42, 183–185,
88, 96–98, 128–131, 164–168, 173, 259–274, 397–412, 464–467, 579–
178–181, 193, 197–199, 206, 247–248, 593, 651, 786–790, 807–808
255–259, 287, 293–294, 317, 332, 360, see also esse apparens; mental act
396, 425–438, 460–476, 511–514, theory of concepts; specular
576–578, 598, 609, 639–641, 649– form
650, 704–706, 762–765, 811–822,
844, 864–867

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Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University

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List of Symbols, Abbreviations, and Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Introduction. Two Trinitarian Theories, and One Contested Model . . . . 1

I. The Makings of a Trinitarian Controversy: Aquinas and

II. Emerging Trinitarian Traditions I: Franciscans, ca. 1255–1280 . . . . . 91

III. Emerging Trinitarian Traditions II: Dominicans and Others,

Introduction to Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

IV. Henry of Ghent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

V. Late Thirteenth-Century Trinitarian Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

VI. John Duns Scotus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341

VII. Dominicans in the Early Fourteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

2. Durand of St. Pourçain and the Radical Attenuation of the

VIII. From Scotus to Auriol: A Survey of Franciscan Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

IX. Peter Auriol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

Introduction to Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597

X. William Ockham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601

XI. The Oxford Trinitarian Debate, 1315–1350 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663

B. Chatton and the Distinction between the Persons . . . . . . . . 683

XII. Paris, from Auriol to Rimini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753

Conclusion. The Diversity of Later-Medieval Trinitarian Theology . . . . . 873

Appendix. Eustace of Arras’ Question on the Distinction of the Holy

hxi (in a Latin text): I have added x to the text

theory, and philosophical psychology more generally, influenced by its close

such a strict understanding of divine simplicity that trinitarian explanation

my thanks go to Paul Bakker, Magdalena Bieniak, Olivier Boulnois, Stephen

TWO TRINITARIAN THEORIES, AND ONE CONTESTED MODEL

1 By my use of ‘later-medieval’ or ‘later Middle Ages’, I am accepting the designation

anti-trinitarian polemic from Muslims writing in both Arabic and Persian.12

15 As later-medieval theologians recognized, Augustine explicitly claimed that the Holy

This statement was the point of departure of every later-medieval theolo-

approaches that was a major motor behind the university discussion of

1. The Relation Account

tatem.” Ed. Moreschini, p. 180339–340; ed. Stewart-Rand-Tester, p. 287–9.

To look at Augustine’s and Boethius’ theory of the constitution of the

2. The Emanation Account

passages. This is how in the later-medieval period the emanation account

personarum numerum in infinitum extendamus, oportet procul dubio ut concedamus quod

40 See Richard’s text and my remark in n. 39 above.

trinitarian thought is not as cut and dried as it appeared to later thinkers,

that a general approach to certain philosophical and theological problems

sufficient, while relational distinction was considered at best necessary (not

in Bonaventure and Aquinas is to contrast “Augustinian-Anselmian” (or even Peripatetic)

“relations of origin”, i.e. of production; several Franciscans, on the other

3. The Psychological Model45

conveniently translated by the English ‘memory’, this should not lead us to

55 See the quotation above at n. 49.

of Augustine’s psychological model in the context of clarifying a part of

and likeness”, on the basis of his psychological model, Augustine maintains

as Chapter Seven outlines, Durand was severely criticized by his Domini-

Henry of Ghent’s strong use of philosophical psychology in trinitarian

for these theologians analysis and, concomitantly, explanation became not

psychological works of Aristotle, especially the De anima, and his Muslim

73 For more on this matter, see Ch. 3, § 1 below.

a critical encounter with—Aquinas’ synthesis, with various later scholars

below, at nn. 72–74.

theories. Moreover, it is worth remembering that in the original works from

EMERGING TRINITARIAN TRADITIONS, CA. 1250–1280

THE MAKINGS OF A TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY:

In the twentieth-century literature on medieval thought there has been

Aquinas had compelling intellectual systems combined with these church-