mere philosophers teaching subjects belonging to theology. The prohibition did
not easily hold. God could also be taken as a subject of philosophy (for
instance, as the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle’s system of astronomical spheres).
On the other side, rational theology easily turned into abstract issues of
philosophy, and most of the great philosophers, on into the 1300s, did at least
part of their work while teaching theology.
The struggle which broke into the open in the 1270s is obscured in hind-
sight by the polemics which have survived, primarily those expressing the
official position of the conservatives. The young radicals in the lower faculty
are much less well known from the published record. At first, the very term
“Averroist” was likely a hostile one imposed by their persecutors. The radicals,
those who made the most extreme use of Aristotle and of “the Commentator,”
as Averroës was honorifically known, were the arts masters, above all at the
preeminent university, Paris. Averroës’s version of Aristotle, formulated in a
Muslim world when theology was much more estranged from philosophical
circles, was a kind of religion of the intellectuals. It held that scripture is a
gross kind of metaphorical truth, sufficient only for the masses; and that pure
philosophy is not just intellectually higher but itself the path to salvation. This
was supported metaphysically by the doctrine of the Agent (or Active) Intellect,
a sphere of Ideas which shapes the sublunar world, and in which the human
intellect participates when it knows truth. For Averroës (and perhaps for some
of his Parisian admirers) there is no individual immortality of the soul; each
human soul is immortal only to the extent that it is filled with philosophical
truth and directly participates in the larger Agent Intellect of the world. When
in 1270, and more forcefully in 1277, Averroism was condemned by the church
authorities, probably the touchstone among the long list of prohibited propo-
sitions was the one which maintained the unity of the Agent Intellect—the
single world-soul in which all human souls participate.
Also condemned was the proposition that the highest happiness humans
can know is philosophy, which is to say, rather than the Christian happiness
of salvation. One of the few radicals who is known by name, Boethius of Dacia,
wrote a prayer to the First Principle, discovered and contemplated by reason,
the highest delectation of the soul. The religion of reason came into confron-
tation with Christian religion. Most famous, perhaps because the relative
moderateness of his claims made him especially appealing, was Siger of Bra-
bant, who would have been about 25 years old at the time when the contro-
versy started in the 1260s. Siger was the public figurehead of the movement
and the personal target of philosophical attacks.
The condemnation of 1277 was a concerted effort by conservatives of all
camps. The most important secular theologian of the period, Henry of Ghent,
was on the panel of Bishop Tempier of Paris which issued the condemnation
476 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths