these had become obligatory doctrine for the Dominicans, prohibited texts for
study among the Franciscans. After Aquinas’s relatively early death in the midst
of the struggle (indeed in the stress of his journey to Lyons, where he faced
condemnation), his pupil Giles of Rome defended his doctrine in famous
debates with Henry of Ghent.
The time was the beginning of reversal in the fortune of the papacy, and
of its allies in church politics.^9 Not only were the Franciscans by far the biggest
order, but by the end of the century, they had achieved virtually a lock on papal
influence with a majority on the Roman Curia. But the papacy itself was
overreaching in its claims of secular power over the kings, and the political
tides were turning. The condemnation of 1277, going far beyond the Averroists
to attack the other philosophical enemies of the dominant Franciscans, must
have looked like an arrogant abuse of power by a faction no longer strong
enough to carry it off. The precipitate of these realignments was the greatest
round of medieval philosophy.^10
Aquinas’s Compromise
The greatness of Thomas Aquinas is as an intellectual politician. He was a
man of moderation, going as far as possible with the new intellectual capital
of the time, but sharply distinguishing himself from the radicals. It is not
surprising that the church in centuries long past his time would lean increas-
ingly upon him for its official doctrine in a world of secularism and science.
Aquinas strikes the balance between science and theology, and he does it far
on the side of reason and, as much as possible, of empiricism. Aquinas holds
that each level of being has its mode of knowledge. Since humans are not angels
(which are simultaneously pure forms, logical species, and Intelligences), we
cannot directly apprehend the intelligible world of universals, as the “Aver-
roists” claimed; instead humans must proceed by means of particulars. It is
emblematic of Aquinas that he places man in the very middle of the metaphysi-
cal cosmos: highest of the material order, the human soul is just below the
angels, which are the immaterial Ideas leading up to God.
Aquinas is the great systematizer of philosophical and theological doctrine.
If there is a core to his doctrine, it concerns the nature of the human soul. This
is, so to speak, not only the midpoint of the universe but also a key point of
contention between Averroists and Augustinian traditionalists. Furthermore,
Aquinas’s conceptual strategy now ramifies into his arguments about the nature
of God and into the rest of his system. For a traditionalist such as Bonaventure,
matter is not corporeal only; incorporeals like angels are also individuals in
matter, although they are also universal forms, following the classic Neopla-
tonic hierarchy. This doctrine makes it easy to prove that the human soul is
Academic Expansion: Medieval Christendom^ •^479