Petrus Aureolus

Background

Petrus Aureolus was born about 1280 in Gourdon, France.

Career

Petrus taught at the Franciscan convent in Bologna, then at the convent in Toulouse, around 1314. He went to Paris in 1316 in order to qualify for his doctorate, where he read the Sentences. In 1318 he was appointed master of theology at the University of Paris. In 1321, he was appointed by his mentor, Pope John XXII, to the position of Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence, but died not long after in 1322.

Auriol's first work was on evangelical poverty, where he argued for a moderate position between those of the spirituals and conventuals. He wrote Tractatus de principiis, a non-theological work, while he was lector at the Franciscan convent in Bologna some time before 1312, and some treatises on the Immaculate Conception at the Franciscan convent in Toulouse.

Achievements

• He is best known for the enormous Scriptum super primum Sententiarum, his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which runs to more than 1100 folio pages and was eventually printed in Rome in 1596.
  
  His ability earned for him the titles of Doctor Facundus and Doctor Abundans.

Views

Auriol was at first a Scotist. But later, he was one of the first to attack the realist doctrines of Duns Scotus, and is interesting mainly as the precursor of William of Occam in his revival of Nominalism. He denied the reality of universals, the existence of species and of the active intellect, the distinction between essence and existence, and the distinction between the soul and its faculties.