Bernard of Trilia

Background

Bernard of Trilia was born circa 1240, in Nîmes, France.

Education

As a youth Bernard entered the Dominican Order in the province of Provence, possibly at Montpellier. Early catalogs of the order list him as a Spaniard; Quétif and Échard explain this by the supposition that Montpellier and Nîmes fell at the time under the king of Aragon, or had done so earlier under James I. Sometime between 1260 and 1265 Bernard was sent to Paris to study.

Career

Subsequently, Bernard taught at Montpellier (1266, 1268), Avignon (1267, 1274), Bordeaux (1271), Marseilles (1272), and Toulouse (1273, 1276).

Bernard returned to the priory of Saint-Jacques in Paris to lecture on the Sentences in 1279, then continued teaching there as a bachelor (1282 - 1284) and as a master of theology (1284 - 1287). From 1288 until his death he held various administrative posts in his order in Provence. Bernard of Trilia died on August 4, 1292, in Avignon, France.

Achievements

• Bernard of Trilia is remembered as a theologian, philosopher and one of the earliest Thomists, who applied strictly Thomistic doctrines to problems of his day.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Quaestiones de cognitione animae Separatae a Corpore: A Critical Introduction of the Latin Text 1965

Views

Bernard of Trilia was an early supporter of the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. He consistently explained and defended Aquinas’ teachings on the real distinction between essence and existence, on the pure potentiality of primary matter, and on the unicity of substantial form. The last two points are of some importance in the history of medieval science, since they committed Bernard to a rejection of the forma corporeitatis, or "form of corporeity" (a teaching of Avicenna that led some later Scholastics to a mathematical view of nature), and to an acceptance and elucidation of Thomas’ distinctive thesis on the virtual presence of elements in compounds.