The first mention of Siger of Brabant dates to August 27, 1266, when the papal legate Simon de Brion calmed a crisis dividing the Faculty of Arts in Paris. Paris University was in fact made up of four faculties. Three higher faculties: medicine, canon law, and particularly theology, which were accessible only after having studying for several years at the largest faculty, the Faculty of Arts. Siger was a professor in the Faculty of Arts at a time when it was involved in serious intellectual and political disputes. The four nations that composed it were also divided by controversy. Siger, in the Picardy Nation, was portrayed as a troublemaker. He was suspected of having participated in the kidnapping of a master of the French Nation and of having locked him up. This is the traditional view, which makes Siger to be a leader and head of a sect whose ideas became a kind of ‘‘radical Aristotelianism,’’ highly critical of Christianity.
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On the contrary, other historians have concluded that Siger was innocent in the kidnapping case, that political tensions had nothing to do with the philosophical debates about Aristotle, and especially that Siger was a character of limited importance. Was he the head of a sect or an unimportant person? The views are certainly divided.
Besides some logical works a commentary on the third book of the De anima of Aristotle, Quaestiones in tertium de anima, has been found from Sigers career before 1270. It was transmitted in the form of a reportatio, that is, as unreliable notes of the teaching of the master. This book is of great importance because it is the only witness to the ‘‘Averroistic’’ period in which he defended the thesis of the unity of the intellect.
World History
