Gregory of Rimini

Gregory of Rimini (c. 1300, Rimini – November 1358, Vienna), also called Gregorius de Arimino or Ariminensis, was one of the great scholastic philosopher-theologians of the Middle Ages. He was the first scholastic writer to unite the Oxonian and Parisian traditions in 14th-century philosophy, and his work had a lasting influence in the Late Middle Ages and Reformation. His scholastic nicknames were "Doctor acutus" and "Doctor authenticus".

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. He returned to Paris in 1342 to prepare his lectures on Peter Lombard's Sentences, which he delivered in 1342–1344. He became a Master of Theology in 1345 and subsequently taught at schools in Padua and Rimini. Gregory died in 1358 shortly after being named General of his Order.

The most important influence in Gregory's thought was St Augustine. Gregory read Augustine more carefully and extensively than his predecessors, and so was able to attack Auriol for his faulty citations and quotations of Augustine, as well as for his Semipelagianism. Gregory adhered to Augustine's double predestination and famously condemned unbaptised infants to Hell, for which he gained the nickname "Infantium Tortor", "Torturer", or "Tormentor", "of Infants".

His most important work is 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.

Primary sources

*"Lectura super Primum et Secundum Sententiarum", vols I-IV, ed. A. Trapp,Berlin and New York 1979-84.

External links

* [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gregory-rimini Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Gregory of Rimini]