Egídio Romano

Giles of Rome (c.1243/7–1316)

Giles of Rome was one of the most eminent theologians and commentators on the works of Aristotle at the University of Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century. He was probably a pupil of Thomas Aquinas, who exerted a deep influence on Giles’ metaphysical and theological thought. Giles’ reception of Aquinas’ positions, however, was often critical and original.

For historians of medieval philosophy, Giles’ name is mainly associated with the doctrine of ‘the real distinction’ between essence (essentia) and existence (esse). According to this doctrine, essence and existence are two completely distinct things (res) of which the ontological structure of every created being is composed. On the issue of the relationship between essence and existence Giles took a firm position against his contemporary Henry of Ghent, who maintained that existence is a mere relation of the essence of a created being to its creator. Giles was also involved in the debate over the unity of the substantial form in composite substances, another burning issue in the thirteenth century. As a commentator on Aristotle’s works, Giles made original contributions to the tradition of Aristotelian natural philosophy, especially in his treatment of extension, place, time and motion in a vacuum.

1 Life

Giles of Rome was born, probably in Rome, in the fifth decade of the thirteenth century. It seems that he entered the Augustinian Order at Rome. In order to study philosophy and theology he was sent to Paris, where he probably attended Thomas Aquinas’ lectures during the years 1269–72. Giles started his academic carrier as a bachelor of theology at the university of Paris around 1270, and in the period between 1270 and 1277 he lectured on the four books of the Sentences by Peter Lombard and wrote most of his commentaries on Aristotle’s works.

In 1277 he was one of those whose views were attacked in the condemnation of heterodox Aristotelianism initiated by the bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier (see Aristotelianism, medieval). Three main reasons for Giles’ condemnation have been detected: first, the similarities between some of his doctrinal positions and those of the masters of arts who were the principal targets of the condemnation (for example, Siger of Brabant); second, his critical attitude towards some masters of theology, especially Henry of Ghent; and third, his defence of some Thomist positions, such as those about the unity of the substantial form and the possibility of an eternal world (see Aquinas, T.; Eternity of the world, medieval views of). As a reaction against the condemnation, he wrote the sharply polemic treatise Contra gradus et pluralitatem formarum (Against the Degrees and Plurality of Forms), in which he argued that the doctrine of the unity of substantial form is not only sound but also the only one in agreement with faith.

Little is known about Giles’ activity in the years immediately after 1277. He probably left Paris and returned to Italy. During this period he wrote the De regimine principum (On the Governance of Princes), dedicated to the future French king Philip the Fair, whose tutor he is said to have been, possibly in the period between 1277/8 and 1281.

In 1285 Giles returned to Paris, where he was appointed master of theology. His activity in this position is mainly represented by six Quodlibeta discussed between 1286 and 1291 and by several collections of Quaestiones disputatae (Disputed Questions). The most heated phase of Giles’ polemic against Henry of Ghent on the issue of the distinction between essence and existence also dates to this period. In 1287 his teachings became the official doctrine of the Augustinian Order, of which he was elected prior general in 1292.

In 1295, Pope Boniface VIII appointed Giles archbishop of Bourges. He took an active part in the ecclesiastical life of that period. On the occasion of the controversy over the legitimacy of Boniface VIII’s election, Giles wrote the De renuntiatione papae (On the Abdication of the Pope), in which he took the pope’s side. In connection with the conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair, he wrote the De ecclesiastica potestate (On the Ecclesiastical Power), a work which exerted a strong influence on the pope. Giles died in Avignon on 22 December 1316.

2 Metaphysics

Giles’ philosophical and theological thought is much influenced by the writings of Aquinas, but his views do not faithfully express those of Aquinas. On the contrary, Giles often criticizes Aquinas’ positions, although in most cases his criticisms aim at correcting and integrating Aquinas’ doctrines rather than rejecting them completely. Furthermore, Giles’ methodological approach to philosophical problems is not the same as that of Aquinas. Giles pays more attention to the logical structure of argumentation and linguistic analysis, and also tries to formulate more general solutions.

Giles’ metaphysics is mainly characterized by two doctrines: the real distinction between essence and existence and the unity of the substantial form. As to the first doctrine, although Giles finds a distinction between essence and existence in Aquinas’ writings, he is particularly original in his interpretation of this distinction. Indeed, Giles’ view on this topic is much more clear-cut and radical than that of Aquinas, for he maintains that essence and existence are two completely distinct things (res), of which the ontological structure of any created being is composed. According to Giles, in order to account for the passage of an entity from potentially existing to actually existing, it is necessary to regard existence as a res which is added to the essence of this entity. On the basis of this account of coming into being, Giles strongly criticizes and rejects Henry of Ghent’s notion of existence as a mere relation of the created essence to the creator. Despite Giles’ refusal to identify existence with an accidental form, the essence–existence relationship in his treatment of it turns out to be very similar to the Aristotelian substance–accident relationship (see Aristotle). This implies in particular that essence is ontologically prior to existence. In this respect, Giles’ position is closer to an Avicennian than to a Thomist position (see Existence; Ibn Sina).

Giles’ position on the issue of the unity of the substantial form is not perfectly uniform. In the Errores philosophorum (Errors of the Philosophers) he criticizes Aristotle’s theory of the unity of the substantial form in every composite substance (however, Giles’ authorship is not certain). On the contrary, in the Contra gradus et pluralitatem formarum he denies the plurality of forms in any composite. In his later writings, however, he seems to be more concerned with the theological implications of the doctrine as applied to the human being, and adopts a more prudent view, holding that there is only one substantial form in any composite with the exception of the human being, and leaving the question open in this latter case.

The nature of individuation is another important topic in Giles’ metaphysics. Following Aquinas, he maintains that prime matter is pure potentiality and that therefore a quantitative principle must be added to matter in order to account for the multiplication of the substantial form. This quantitative principle is described by Giles in terms of Averroes’ notion of indefinite dimension (dimensio indeterminata), where the adjective ‘indefinite’ reflects the fact that this dimension exists in matter prior to the substantial form (see Ibn Rushd). In replying to some objections against the priority of extension over substance resulting from his account of individuation, Giles specifies that the principle of individuation is not quantity conceived of as a thing distinct from matter, but a quantitative mode (modus quantitativus) of being which indefinite dimensions confer upon matter (see Matter).

3 Theory of soul and of knowledge

Giles’ psychology and epistemology reflect mainly Aristotelian and Thomistic principles, with no special inclinations towards Augustinian or Averroistic positions. As to the theory of soul, for instance, Giles follows Aquinas’ view on the real distinction between the soul and its faculties. In theory of knowledge, Giles emphasizes the Aristotelian principle that any knowledge starts from sense experience. Accordingly, he rejects the Platonic theory of innate ideas as well as the Augustinian theory of illumination (see Augustinianism; Platonism, medieval). While the starting point of intellectual knowledge is the sensory cognition of sensible substances, its proper object is the immaterial quiddity of these substances. Therefore, intellectual knowledge also requires a process of abstraction from material conditions, in which, according to Giles, both the agent intellect (intellectus agens) and an intelligible species (species intelligibilis) play an essential role (see Knowledge, concept of).

As to the theory of truth, while in Aquinas both the Augustinian–Anselmian and the Aristotelian traditions are combined, Giles firmly adopts the latter. That is, he maintains that truth is not a property inhering in extra-mental things independently of any cognitive act, but a correspondence between these things and the propositions formed by the intellect (adaequatio intellectus et rei).

Regarding the issue of the unicity of the intellect, Giles strongly rejects both the doctrine of the unicity of the agent intellect, which he ascribes to Avicenna (see Ibn Sina §3) and the Averroistic doctrine of the unity of the possible intellect (see Averroism) In Giles’ view, individual knowledge and the ontological status of the intellect as an intermediate entity between material and immaterial forms can be accounted for only if rational soul is the form of the body and is multiplied by inhering in different bodies.

4 Natural philosophy

Giles’ natural philosophy is still basically Aristotelian. His most systematic and extensive treatment of physical concepts is contained in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, which was widely used by later commentators. In addition to a careful exegesis of Aristotle’s text, Giles also presents original positions on some of the fundamental issues of Aristotelian natural philosophy, as for instance extension, place, time and the eternity of the world.

In order to account for the processes of condensation and rarefaction, Giles postulates the existence of two independent quantities inhering in a physical body: the corporeal dimensions, which vary when the body is condensed or rarefied, and the quantity of matter (quantitas materiae), which does not vary. This distinction has strong similarities to the modern distinction between volume and mass.

Giles also distinguishes between material place (locus materialiter) and formal place (locus formaliter). Material place is place in the Aristotelian sense, that is, the inner surface of the containing body. Formal place is an order (ordo) or a distance (distantia) between the located body and the fixed points of the universe. Following Aquinas, Giles introduces the notion of formal place in order to account for the immobility of place, but he departs from Aquinas regarding the relationship between material place and formal place. In Giles’ view, formal place is not a property of material place, but something independent of it. His motivation for separating formal from material place is to be found in the distinction between two roles that the notion of place must play: first, a principle of delimitation of the extension of the located body; and second, a frame of reference for describing the body’s motion and rest. The first requirement is adequately met by material place, the second by formal place.

Although Giles agrees with most of Aristotle’s presuppositions about time, he also admits the simultaneous existence of many temporal durations and the existence of a discrete time, that is, of a succession of instants conceived of as temporal atoms rather than as mere cuts in a temporal continuum, whereas Aristotle holds that there is just one time and that it is a continuum. In particular, the notion of a discrete time plays an important role in Giles’ treatment of motion in the void, since he argues that such a motion would not take place instantaneously, as Aristotle and Averroes claim, but in a succession of instants, that is, in a discrete time.

On the issue of the eternity of the world, in his early writings Giles follows a Thomistic position. On the one hand, he claims that Aristotle’s and Averroes’ arguments for an eternal world are not conclusive, since they falsely assume that any production involves motion; on the other hand, however, he admits that an eternal world is at least theoretically possible. After the condemnation of 1277, Giles takes a more moderate position, according to which it is theoretically possible to prove that the world had a temporal beginning, although adequate arguments for this conclusion have not yet been proposed (see Eternity of the world, medieval views of; Natural philosophy, medieval).

5 Theology

Giles’ conception of God centres on the notion of divine unity, which he regards as the primary divine attribute. The priority of divine unity is particularly evident in his approach to trinitarian problems, in which he stresses the supremacy of the unity of the divine essence over the multiplicity of the divine relations. Giles’ emphasis on the unity of God, however, does not imply that divine relations are weakened. On the contrary, his doctrine of divine relations is much more complex and articulated than that of Aquinas. Giles’ doctrine is based on a distinction between three kinds of relations (opposite, disparate and similar), which turns out to be a very powerful conceptual tool for dealing with some traditional problems of trinitarian theology, such as those concerning the priority–posteriority relationship among divine relations, their real distinction and their multiplication.

Among divine attributes, infinity ranks second only to unity. The importance of the infinity of God appears especially in Giles’ discussion of the problem of the object of theology. Contrary to Aquinas, he constantly remarks that the object of theology cannot be God as God, since our finite intellect cannot grasp the infinity of God. Instead, the object of theology is to be identified with God regarded as the ‘principle of our restoration and the completion of our glorification’ (principium nostrae restaurationis et consummatio nostrae glorificationis), according to the formula which characterized Giles’ position in a long lasting debate in which Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines were also involved. Giles’ emphasis on the wide gap between finite creatures and infinite God does not lead him to a sceptical conclusion about the possibility of rational knowledge of the divine nature. He shows, for instance, an optimistic attitude towards our knowledge of the Trinity, since he maintains that natural reason can prove that the arguments against the Trinity of the divine persons are not conclusive (see God, concepts of; Trinity).

Finally, Giles was also a preacher. His preaching activity, as attested to by a collection of seventy-six sermons written by Giles himself, is one of the most original in the thirteenth century, since it is characterized by strong doctrinal commitments and is closely related to his theological works. Indeed most of Giles’ sermons can be considered as short theological treatises and represent an important source for a final assessment of his theological thought.

6 Politics

Giles’ political thought centres on the theory of the supremacy of spiritual power over temporal power. In the De regimine principum he holds that the state originates from the natural tendency of human beings to live in a civil society, but in the De ecclesiastica potestate he also stresses that the state must be subordinated to spiritual power. In Giles’ view, the distinction between temporal and spiritual power is based on the distinction in the human being between body and soul, but the subordination of temporal to spiritual power is based on the order in the universe, according to which only spiritual power derives directly from God, whereas temporal power is dependent upon the spiritual.