Gregory of Rimini

Blessed Gregory of Rimini O.E.S.A

Born	c. 1300 Rimini
Died	1358 (1359) Vienna, Duchy of Austria, Holy Roman Empire

Education
Education	University of Paris
Philosophical work
Era	Medieval philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Scholasticism Augustinianism
Main interests	Theology, metaphysics, epistemology, economics

Blessed Gregory was born in Rimini around 1300. He joined the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine before studying theology in the 1320s at the University of Paris, where he encountered the ideas of the late Franciscan Peter Auriol. In the 1330s he taught at Augustinian schools in Bologna, Padua and Perugia, where he became familiar with the recent work of Oxford thinkers such as Adam Wodeham, William Ockham, and Walter Chatton. He returned to Paris in 1342 to prepare his lectures on Peter Lombard's Sentences, which he delivered in 1342–1344. Because of his familiarity with English philosophy during this time, he effectively transmitted contemporary Oxford ideas—with an Augustinian tinge—to Paris. He became a Master of Theology in 1345 and subsequently taught at schools in Padua and Rimini. In 1357, he was elected Prior General of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, and was known for his punishments for those who went against the Rule, and the spirit of religious life, by acquiring comforts for themselves. For example, he is recorded as having punished a certain number of religious for having used fine sheets and mattresses:

B. Gregorius Ariminensis dum esset Ordinis Prior Generalis (electus an. 1357) inflixit poenam humi sedendi in publico refectorio per quindecim dies Prioribus vigintiquatuor quia non observarant sic dictam quadragesimam S. Martini in Ordinis constitutionibus part. 2, cap. X, n. 2, praescriptam; itemque privavit voce activa, et passiva, atque vestiario per unum annum aliquot Religiosos, qui sindones, et culcitram adhibuerant.

A year later, in 1358, he died in Vienna.

In his lifetime, Gregory composed a number of philosophical works including analytical tables to accompany his own lectures, tables on Saint Augustine's works, and a few governmental letters. Yet, his most important works are the lectures on Books I and II of Peter Lombard's Sentences. (This should have been on the four books, but books III and IV seem to have been lost, or were never written).

Many later scholastics copied long passages from his works. Those who borrowed from him or were influenced by him include the Cistercian James of Eltville, Pierre d'Ailly, and Henry of Langenstein.

Augustinianism

The most significant influence in Gregory's thought was St Augustine. Gregory studied Augustine more carefully and extensively than his predecessors, allowing him to critique Auriol for his misquotations, as well as for his Semipelagianism. Blessed Gregory was strongly shaped by Augustinian soteriology, arguing for the traditional Augustinian and Catholic teaching on predestination, that God freed whom He willed from the massa perditionis on the basis of His beneplacitum, the same beneplacitum being the cause of antecedent reprobation, but foreseen mortal sins being the cause of consequent reprobation.

Gregory adhered strictly to Saint Augustine's doctrine on the punishments of those who die both without baptism and without actual mortal sin: not only the pœna damni, because of which they descend into hell (cf. Conc. Florent. sess. ult.), but also the pœna sensus (licet, as Saint Augustine says, mitissima), earning him the nickname Tortor Infantium (torturer of infants). Other scholastics, following Petrus Lombardus' theory of limbo, taught that they descend into a place in hell called limbus infantium, in which they have the pœna damni, but neither interior affliction because of this, nor any sensual pains, and indeed have natural happiness. Saint Augustine's doctrine, which is more common among the Fathers and more concordant with Sacred Scripture, is that they descend into Gehenna with the rest of the mortal sinners, but are punished with lighter punishments of the same genera (the genera being pœna damni, vermis conscientiæ, and pœna sensus).

Some reformed authors consider him to have taught their view on concupiscence as sin. However, as Fr. Johannes Laurentius Berti, O.E.S.A. notes (Opus de Theol. Disc., lib. xiii., cap. v.), Blessed Gregory taught that concupiscence was the materiale of original sin, not the formale, as the Lutherans and Calvinists held. He moreover taught that original sin, after baptism, remained, quantum ad essentiam: not, however, referring to the formale, but rather the materiale. Thus, insofar as the reatus culpæ--the formale, the privation of original justice--inheres (inest) in the concupiscence, and this inhesion remains until it is removed at baptism, in this sense, which differs wholly from the reformed position, concupiscence can be called a sin in the unbaptized: not merely because it comes from sin and inclines to sin, but also because the formal aspect, the guilt, inheres in the concupiscence. Yet, he says this without making concupiscence into the formal aspect.

Theory of sentences

Initially, with the intention of defining theology and natural sciences, Gregory developed a theory of sentences to describe scientific knowledge. He believed sentences neither to be extra-mental nor propositional; in this theory, sentences signify something exclusively by the make-up of their terms, but are neither reducible to individual terms nor are "mental sentences" identifiable. Defenders of this view claim that beliefs about the world are too complicated to correspond to specific language structures and thus, cannot serve as objects of scientific knowledge.

Nominalism

Gregory had a unique take on traditional nominalist views. He thought that to contrive understanding in physical reality by incorporating abstract objects was nonsensical, due to his belief that mental objects are used strictly for useful social conventions and nothing else. With this divide between complex thought and physical reality, Gregory also believed statements describing infinitely many points, infinitely many lines, infinitely many planes, etc. are all false. Since these are all mental, abstract objects, they only exist in the minds of people who think about them. Thus, the notion of physical infinity is not applicable. Furthermore, God was always in close relation to these abstract objects, too. Gregory's nominalist view claims that God has the ability to distinguish abstract objects but has no need to manipulate them. To him, God has no need to manipulate mathematical propositions because he exists outside of time and thus, has no need to think about the individual abstract objects anyway.

Gregory of Rimini

Life

Philosophy

Augustinianism

Theory of sentences

Nominalism

Works

See also

References

Further reading

External links

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