Henry’s date of birth is unknown, but should presumably be placed before 1240. Information about his career is also scarce. He was in Paris in 1265; from 1267, he begins to appear in the documents as magister, though nothing is known about his presumed teaching activity at the Faculty of Arts. From 1276, the year in which he disputed his first Quodlibet, until his death, Henry was Regent Master at the Faculty of Theology. He was canon of Tournai, archdeacon of Bruges (probably from 1277), and archdeacon of Tournai (from 1279). His name was recorded in the death register of Tournai cathedral on June 23, 1293.
During his university career in Paris, Henry was personally involved in almost all of the important events in university and ecclesiastical life. In 1277, he was a member of the commission of theologians set up by Bishop Tempier in order to censure propositions considered erroneous that were being taught at the Faculty of Arts and that would be condemned on March 7 of the same year. Nevertheless, not only did Henry affirm on different occasions that he neither understood nor approved of the condemnation of certain articles, but he himself was pressured by Tempier and the papal legate Simon of Brion to distance himself from the theory of the unicity of substantial form in man.
From 1281, the year ofthe publication ofthe papal bull Ad fructus uberes issued by Pope Martin IV, Henry represented the main theological reference point for the faction of prelates (secular clergy) in their conflict with the Mendicant Orders concerning the privileges granted by the Pope to the latter in matters of confession.
Henry is the author of a monumental, though incomplete, Summa (the second part De creaturis is missing, even though it was surely envisaged in the general plan of the work), 15 Quodlibeta, disputed and published while writing the Summa (GiSmez Caffarena 1957), a short commentary on the Book of Genesis (Lectura ordinaria super sacram Scripturam), a lengthy treatise on the issue of confession (Tractatus super factum praelatorum et fratrum), as well as a few sermons. The authenticity of the Quaestiones variae recently published in the series of the Opera omnia is doubtful. Other still unedited works are of uncertain attribution: a treatise on the Syncategoremata (probably authentic), a commentary on the Physics, and an incomplete commentary on the Metaphysics.
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