William of Auxerre was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 scholastic

Scholasticism

Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...

 theologian and official in the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

.

The teacher by whom William was most influenced was Praepositinus

Praepositinus

Praepositinus was an Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher and theologian. He was a liturgical commentator, and supporter a res-theory of belief. He discussed intentional contexts....

, or Prevostin, of Cremona, Chancellor of the University of Paris from 1206 to 1209. The names of teacher and pupil are mentioned in the same sentence by Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...

.

He was an Archdeacon of Beauvais

Beauvais

Beauvais is a city approximately by highway north of central Paris, in the northern French region of Picardie. It currently has a population of over 60,000 inhabitants.- History :...

 before becoming a professor of theology at the university in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. In 1231, he was made a member of the commission appointed by Gregory IX to examine Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

's writings on the natural sciences and to offer amendments where religiously necessary. Consequently, William was one of the first theologians to be influenced by Aristotle. His Summa Aurea shows a debt still to Peter Lombard

Peter Lombard

Peter Lombard was a scholastic theologian and bishop and author of Four Books of Sentences, which became the standard textbook of theology, for which he is also known as Magister Sententiarum-Biography:Peter Lombard was born in Lumellogno , in...

, and it advances the ontological argument

Ontological argument

The ontological argument for the existence of God is an a priori argument for the existence of God. The ontological argument was first proposed by the eleventh-century monk Anselm of Canterbury, who defined God as the greatest possible being we can conceive...

 (which would soon be rejected officially), but it also shows novelty and an intellectual awareness and insistence on the physical that had not been seen earlier. Summa Aurea influenced John of Treviso.

External links

• Fischer, Franz (ed.): Wilhelm von Auxerre. Summa de officiis ecclesiasticis. Kritisch-digitale Erstausgabe, PhD, University of Cologne 2007; preliminary online version.
• The pluralistic approach – The first scholarly edition of William of Auxerre's treatise on liturgy

Attribution