The fundamental concept of Jerome’s thought is the archetypal world (mundus archetypus), which also represented the central interest of other Bohemian university masters of this period. This concept was used in a counter-distinction from the world that was perceived by the senses and, perhaps, it was inspired by the School of Chartres. The image of a perfect normative ideal, implied by this concept, could be utilized for efforts to reform contemporary Church, as well as society (Herold 1990).
The archetypal world, as understood by Jerome, consists of a multiplicity of ideas that are located in the mind of God. These ideas are uncreated, eternal, and immutable rationes, really distinct from each other. However, they are just formally distinct from God’s essence. This formal distinction between God and the ideas means that the ideas are not on the same ontological level as God Himself because they need to be based in God’s essence. It then follows that the discussed world of the archetypes could not be situated outside the Divine essence.
According to Jerome, the ideas are joint causes (concausae) of the things in the world perceptible by senses, and there are as many of them as there are created things or things which are possible to be created. These joint causes, however - in order to cause the sensibly perceptible world (mundus sensibilis) - necessarily require the First Cause, that is, God, who creates the mundus sensibilis rationally, that is according to the ideas contained in the mundus archetypus. According to Jerome, a harmony among the ideas in God’s mind must, therefore, be posited for a harmony to exist in the sensibly perceptible world.
For Jerome, knowledge of intelligible ideas is a precondition of human wisdom. A philosopher in particular, if he were a lover of wisdom, had to be thoroughly acquainted with the problematics of the ideas, and had every right to be involved in this area. Hence, it was not a body of knowledge, with which only theologians should be permitted to deal. Jerome was primarily interested in philosophy and it was exactly his philosophical approach to the problems of the ideas that antagonized Chancellor John Gerson (Kaluza 1985; Herold 1990). The outcome was their conflict with its tragic denouement. One of the reasons for this was that Gerson, in general, preferred a theological approach and rejected the realism derived from Platonism; at the same time, it is clear that Gerson was not fully acquainted with Jerome’s positions (Kaluza 1985; Herold 1995).
World History
