Durand of St. Pourcain (c. 1275-1334) was a Dominican theologian whose independent outlook set him against his order’s authorities at a time when it was actively involved in the promotion of Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine. Born in Auvergne around 1275, Durand joined the Dominican convent in Clermont and was later sent to Paris to continue his studies at St Jacques. In 1307, he produced a first recension of his commentary on the Sentences, probably a preliminary work prepared in some Dominican studium. In its open departure from fundamental Thomist theses in spite of recent Dominican legislation, this early commentary was badly received by the order’s authorities. As a result, Durand was compelled to write a more compliant recension of his commentary, a work which corresponded in all probability to his first reading of the Sentences at the University of Paris, between 1310 and 1312.
During his short regency at Paris, Durand produced two Quodlibets and a couple of treatises, De habitibus and De libero arbitrio. In early 1313, Clement V appointed him as lector at the papal curia in Avignon, a post ratified in 1316 by the succeeding pope John XXII. During his time in Avignon, Durand determined in three quodlibetal disputations.
Wanting to set a precedent of Durand’s case, in 1314 Dominicans issued a censure containing problematic theses extracted from both versions of his commentary. This censure was followed by another one three years later, this time aiming specifically at Durand’s deviation from Aquinas’ doctrine. Both censures were led by the provincial of France, Hervaeus Natalis, an advocate of Thomism and Durand’s most determined opponent.
In 1317, Durand was appointed bishop of Limoux, an office which freed him from Dominican jurisdiction. In 1318, he was transferred to the bishopric of Le Puy, which he left in 1325 owing to a conflict with his canons. He regained Avignon, where he acted as theological advisor to the pope on several occasions: in 1318, in the case of the rebel fraticelli; again in 1322, during the poverty controversy with the Franciscans; finally in 1326, regarding the inquiry into William of Ockham’s orthodoxy.
Between 1318 and 1325, Durand produced a final recension of his commentary, reaffirming his previous position, while mitigating its most problematic aspects. This version is alone acknowledged by the author as an authentic expression of his thought. It was widely diffused in the sixteenth century in a number of printed editions.
This new redaction probably motivated a final tract against Durandus, Evidentiae contra Durandum, produced in 1325 by a Dominican author known as Durandellus.
In 1326, Durand was appointed as bishop of Meaux. To this period belongs his political treatise on the origin of power, De origine potestatum et iurisdictionum quobus populus regitur (1329). Between 1331 and his death in 1334, Durand was involved in the beatific vision controversy, which saw the Paris theological establishment set against pope John XXII’s opinion. Durand gave his expert opinion on the subject in De visione Dei quam habent animae sanctorum ante iudicium generale (1332), a work which earned the pope’s hostility but whose view was posthumously vindicated by the succeeding pope, Benedict XII. Despite a life punctuated by controversy, Durand was highly respected in the later Middle Ages.
The character of Durand’s thought is well illustrated by his double sobriquet of doctor modernus and doctor resolutissimus: an independent spirit prepared to espouse the most original views, while refusing to capitulate to recent magisterial trends. Drawing a clear distinction between reason and authority, Durand claims that when the issue does not directly concern an article of faith, ‘‘we should rely on reason rather than on the authority of some doctor, however famous’’ (Sent., Prol.). On matters of faith, however, theology does not proceed demonstratively but derives its knowledge from revelation and rests on authority alone. Durand thus rejects the Thomist notion of theology as a speculative ‘‘science.’’ The object of theology is not God’s nature but the meritorious acts that lead to salvation.
Revealing of the intellectual climate following the 1277 Paris condemnation, Durand is very critical of Aristotelian philosophy and its relevance to theology. It is this stance that probably best explains his departure from Thomism. Three themes are particularly illustrative of Durand’s thought and its polemical nature: the notion of ‘‘relation,’’ the theory of cognition, and divine causality.
On the basis of a modal doctrine indebted in principle to Henry of Ghent, Durand defines relation as a mode of being really distinct from its foundation. As a mode, relation is both distinct from substances in that it is incapable of subsisting by itself, and irreducible to absolute accidents (like quality and quantity) in that it does not effect composition. Durand thus challenges the traditional interpretation of Aristotelian categories as a division between substances and accidents in order to introduce an alternative ontological division based on ‘‘absolute’’ and ‘‘relative’’ beings. The modal conception of relation presented obvious advantages for answering a number of questions. In Trinitarian theology, Durand rejects Duns Scotus’ notion of “formal distinction” between the essence and the divine persons in favor of a ‘‘real’’ distinction based on the notion of relation as a diminished being. As he saw it, a real distinction of this kind facilitates an explanation of personal distinction in God without jeopardizing the unity of the essence. On the question of the soul and its faculties, intellect and will constitute one and the same reality in the soul: they are distinct only according to their relation to the different acts of cognizing and willing respectively.
In epistemology, Durand denies the existence of an intelligible species as a necessary principle of cognition. Cognition consists in the direct relation between the intellect and an object present to it. There is no need to posit an additional reality that would move the intellect to its object and make it intelligible. Durand’s reason for rejecting Aristotelian epistemology is closely connected to his commitment to nominalism: the primary object of knowledge is not a universal concept but a singular object outside the mind. A universal is only the end product of a process of intellection that starts with the perception of a singular object.
Durands’ criticism of intelligible species forms part of a wider intellectual project, which reacts against the positing of intermediary principles purporting to build a foolproof causal system between God and His creation. This forerunner to Ockham’s principle of economy constitutes an attempt to safeguard God’s absolute power and the voluntary character of His creation. One expression of this is Durand’s denial of all causal power to divine ideas. God pre-contains creatures not formally, according to a pattern of imitability, but ‘‘virtually,’’ according to the way in which an efficient cause pre-contains its effects. The relation between God and creatures is then not formal but strictly causal. Likewise, against the Thomist theory of sacramental causality based on some superadded virtue infused in the sacrament, Durand claims that the sacrament becomes efficacious rather on the basis of a voluntary pact established between man and God. Finally, Durand denies the necessity of an infused habit of grace in order to attain salvation. On the basis of His absolute power, God could effect the salvation of a man who has died without grace.
Durand’s readiness to depart from Aristotelian philosophy bears as much affinity to the approach of Franciscans such as Bonaventure and Peter John Olivi, as it heralds Ockham’s ‘‘nominalism’’ in both its epistemological and theological dimensions. This could explain why Durand became the chosen target of Dominican censure, over other non-Thomist Dominicans like James of Metz or Dietrich of Freiberg. To question Aquinas on avowedly un-Aristotelian grounds was like revisiting the 1277 Paris condemnation.
See also: > Aristotelianism in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Traditions > Bonaventure > Dietrich Of Freiberg > Henry of Ghent > Hervaeus Natalis > James of Metz > John Duns Scotus > Parisian Condemnation of 1277 > Peter John Olivi > Thomas Aquinas > Thomism > Universals > William of Ockham
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