William of Saint-Amour

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Wilhelm von Saint-Amour ( French Guillaume de Saint-Amour ; * between 1200 and 1210; † September 13, 1272 ) was a secular theologian .

He came from the commune of Saint-Amour , located in what is now the French department of Jura . In the high Middle Ages of the 13th century, however, it belonged to the Free County of Burgundy and thus to the Holy Roman Empire .

Wilhelm was initially a canon in Mâcon , in 1238 he was named Pope Gregory IX in a letter . first mentioned as Magister of Arts and Decretals. Around 1250 he received a professorship at the University of Paris as a master of theology . Together with his friend Gerhard von Abbeville , he took over the leadership of the spiritual faculty there during the mendicant dispute against the student body composed of the still young mendicant orders ( Franciscans and Dominicans , called mendicants). He was supported by the poet Rutebeuf , among others . After the mendicants ignored a call by the university to strike against the Paris authorities in 1253, the professorships imposed their exclusion from teaching and the university excommunication. However, this led to an intervention by Pope Innocent IV , who revoked these measures. But as its spokesman, Wilhelm successfully defended the sanctions imposed by the university in front of the Pope in Anagni in 1254, thereby safeguarding the right of the Paris professors to self-recruit their students. He achieved this, among other things, by using the writing of the Franciscan Gerhard von Borgo San Donnino to question the teachings of the mendicants, in which he recognized an anti-Christian threat. His views were confirmed shortly afterwards by Pope Alexander IV .

At Easter 1256 Wilhelm published the pamphlet Tractatus brevis de periculis novissimorum temporum (“Short treatise on the dangers of the end times”), in which he questions the mendicant orders' right to exist. However, this earned him the accusation of heresy on the part of the mendicants and led the Pope to examine the scriptures in Rome . The curia not only rejected Wilhelm's demands, but also withdrew his benefice, forbade him to do any teaching or preaching, and ordered his banishment from France. King Louis IX intended, however, to resolve this conflict diplomatically, but in a personal conversation with him Wilhelm showed no willingness to compromise. He also attacked the king personally by accusing him of not being a king, but of being a beggar brother. Thereupon the king complied with the Pope's demand and banished Wilhelm from the country. But after he continued to preach against the mendicant orders, he was condemned by the Pope on October 5, 1256. Together with two of his comrades-in-arms, Odo von Douai and Chrétien von Beauvais, William traveled to the papal court in Rome to face legal proceedings. In the final verdict, the sanctions already imposed on him were confirmed, but he did not succumb to a heresy verdict.

Wilhelm withdrew to his hometown, where in 1266 he led another attack against the mendicant orders with the treatise Collectiones catholicae et canonicae scriptuare . Ultimately, however, he failed in his positions, not least because of the theological superiority of his opponents from the ranks of the mendicants, such as Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure .

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