WILLIAM OF AUXERRE
(ca. 1150–1231). Little is known of the career and works of this influential secular master
of Paris, although he was teaching in Paris by 1189. A useful administrator as well as
theologian, William was made archdeacon of Beauvais by Pope Honorius III sometime
between 1216 and 1227; he was a member of the commission appointed by Gregory IX
in 1231 to examine and amend the physical treatises of Aristotle, whose use had been
forbidden at Paris in 1210. He was himself among the first users of these Aristotelian
treatises.
William’s chief work, called the Summa aurea (1215–20) by admiring
contemporaries, takes the form of a loose commentary on the Sententiae of Peter
Lombard but shows much of William’s originality of thought and reformist tendencies.
He often introduces specific, contemporary examples and is concerned for the moral
reform of the church.
Lesley J.Smith
[See also: ARISTOTLE, INFLUENCE OF; THEOLOGY; UNIVERSITIES]
William of Auxerre. Summa aurea, ed. J.Ribaillier. 7 vols. Grottaferrata (Rome): Collegio
S.Bonaventura, 1980–87.
Principe, Walter H. The Theology of the Hypostatic Union in the Early Thirteenth Century. 4 vols.
Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963–75, Vol. 1: William of Auxerre’s
Theology of the Hypostatic Union.
St. Pierre, Jules A. “The Theological Thought of William of Auxerre: An Introductory
Bibliography.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 33(1966):147–55.
WILLIAM OF CHAMPEAUX
(ca. 1070–1121). Much of our information about William comes from Abélard and so
cannot be judged uncritically; little of his writing is extant. It seems that William studied
philosophy and theology with Anselm of Laon, probably with Roscelin at Compiègne,
and possibly with Manegold of Lautenbach at Paris. He became archdeacon of Paris and
head of the cathedral school (ca. 1100), where Abélard was one of his pupils; but he left
the schools, probably because of Abélard’s hostility, in 1108.
William established a religious community at a site dedicated to St. Victor just outside
the walls of Paris, organized it according to the new rule of Augustinian regular canons,
and laid the foundations of the school there. The abbey flourished under his direction, and
it attempted to bridge the widening gulf between monks and schoolmen. In 1113,
William became bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne, remaining as a reforming bishop until his
death in 1121.
William’s thought has been characterized (through Abélard’s depiction) as
“exaggerated realism” (a Neopla-tonic view that held that concepts as much as
individuals have existence), so that William regarded the individuals in the same species
as having an identical reality.
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1848