It was as a student of John de Nova Domo, the founder of the Albertist school, that Heymeric came to be a representative of Albertism, a fifteenth-century movement which defended Albert the Great’s reading of Aristotle against the interpretations of its major competitors, namely the Thomists, Scotists, and Nominalists. Albertism is distinguished from the other schools of thought by its strongly Neoplatonic orientation. One of its key distinguishing features is the teaching that it is possible for the intellect to attain knowledge ofseparate substances in this life and without the mediation of sensible experience. In defending this as an interpretation of Aristotle, the Albertists relied heavily on the concept of the ‘‘intellectus adeptus,’’ taken from the Islamic Aristotelians. In 1423, Heymeric penned the Tractatus problematicus (Problemata inter Albertum Magnum et Sanctum Thomam, printed in Cologne in 1496), an Albertist tractate in which he first identifies and rejects the position of the Nominalists, before examining the points of difference as well as agreement between the Thomists and Albertists. This treatise incited a violent response from Thomist Gerard de Monte, who rejected the notion that there might be any points of agreement between Albertists and Thomists. Heymeric’s influence on academic theology in the fifteenth century — especially through the Tractatus problematicus — was considerable, and his activities as a representative of Albertism were largely responsible for the institutional solidification of the Albertist school at Cologne and beyond.
See also: > Albert the Great > Albertism > Aristotelian-ism in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Traditions > Bonaventure > Nicholas of Cusa > Ramon Llull > Thomism > Trinity
World History
