Gregory of Rimini | Biography

In 1961 historian of medieval philosophy Gordon Leff had an article published titled "Gregory of Rimini: A Fourteenth-Century Augustinian." It was followed the same year by his Gregory of Rimini: Tradition and Innovation in Fourteenth-Century Thought. Since then, no book in English on Gregory has appeared. Between 1979 and 1984, however, the leading scholar on Gregory, Damasus Trapp, together with Venicio Marcolino, edited Gregory's magnum opus, the Lectura super Primum et Secundum Librum Sententiarum (Lectures on the First and Second Books of the Sentences [of Peter Lombard], 1343-1347). The product of Gregory's teaching years at the University of Paris, the Lectura is an outstanding witness to the central debates on philosophy and theology at the university in the fourteenth century. The lack of a presentation of Gregory's philosophical position, or a down-playing of that position in modern textbooks and histories of philosophy, has led to a distorted view of medieval philosophy. Most students, when introduced to medieval philosophy, confront the problem of universals; and the texts have used such generalizations as "extreme realist," "moderate realist," and "nominalist" to describe the various positions on the issue. The difficulty is that positions such as those of William of Ockham, on the one hand, and of Gregory of Rimini, on the other, are not so easily pigeonholed. Masterpieces of analytic thinking, they are nuanced and thorough.

Gregory of Rimini was born around 1300. His scholarly career seems to have begun in 1323 at the University of Paris, where he studied as a bachelor for six years. These were significant years for philosophy, during which William of Ockham and Meister Eckhart were called to the papal court at Avignon to defend their views; both were condemned.

In 1329 Gregory returned from Paris to his native Italy and became lector (reader) at Bologna until 1338, then at Padua and Perugia. He returned to Paris in 1341, and from 1343 to 1347 he lectured on the Libri Quatuor Sententiarum (Four Books of Sentences, 1157-1158) of Peter Lombard, the normal task of a regent master in theology. By 1345 he was known as magister cathedraticus. In 1347 he became lecturer at Padua. In 1351 he was named master of studies and prior of the Augustinian studium (house of studies) at Rimini. He remained there until he was elected prior general (head) of the Augustinian order in 1357. He was involved in travel and administrative duties from that time until his death in November 1358 at Vienna.

Gregory can be seen as a representative of the new "linguistic" turn in fourteenth-century thought after the manner of William of Ockham. He used Ockhamist methods to retrieve and defend traditional Augustinian metaphysics and philosophical psychology. On the important issue of the potentia absoluta Dei (absolute power of God), Gregory held that the power of God to do whatever he pleased (short of a logical contradiction) was limited by virtue of God's being the summum bonum (highest good).

Gregory's doctrine of the complexe significabile (complex significable) was developed as a direct answer to the semantics of William of Ockham and his followers. Ockham had developed the "terminist" view of logic, which owed its origins to William of Sherwood, Roger Bacon, and others in the thirteenth century, to its extremes. Terminism held that the meaning of a proposition had to be determined on the basis of the meaning of each term taken singly; thus, it was not the proposition as a whole which was the locus of meaning. Apart from terminist theories of meaning, there was another medieval tradition, going back to Boethius, which has been called "dictism." Here, a proposition was seen as an expression which signifies what is true or not true. Terms are not mere sounds or marks on paper. Rather, a term signifies a thought, which in turn indicates the actual things which are the subject of thought.

Gregory recognized that single words can signify beings, but he held that the terminist view ignored the central role of the proposition. Single words are not on the same level as the proposition, which signifies in a holistic manner: it is a complexe significabile, something which no word or grouping of words without affirmative or negative force can be.

Over and above the linguistic expression and the extramental reality, Gregory recognizes the existence of an objective realm of meaning. The significatum (that which is meant) of a proposition is not the linguistic expression itself, nor is it a piece of the world: it is an object in a realm of objective meaning. It does not exist in the sense that physical things and linguistic expressions exist, but it is still real. For Gregory, the primary objects of belief and knowledge are these meaningful entities. Meaning bridges the gap between the sign (word or proposition) and the thing; sign and object share in a world of meaning. Gregory of Rimini's theory of the proposition as complexe significabile has similarities to certain theories of such modern philosophers as Gottlob Frege, Edmund Husserl, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger.

For Ockham, a rigorous empiricist, all knowledge begins with a direct sensory intuition of the sensible object. The role of species, or mental representations, as mediators between the external world and the knower is curtailed. The term denotes the existing thing itself, not the mental concept. In Gregory's epistemology, on the other hand, the species retains its role as a mediating element in knowledge. Furthermore, knowledge, for Gregory, is not limited to the perception of a present object: there is also memory of past objects and projection of future ones. Thus, whether or not an object exists in reality, it can be present to consciousness as a meaningful object. In brief, while Gregory is as rigorous as Ockham about empirical knowledge of the external world, he differs from Ockham in recognizing a world of meaning which is not circumscribed by the empirical.

For Ockham, the object of knowledge in science is the conclusion of a demonstration. Gregory rejects Ockham's account: in addition to knowing the conclusion, one must know whether or not that which the conclusion signifies is the case. The conclusion of a demonstrative proof could be shown by experience to be false.

Gregory held fast to Augustine's moral vision. He could not accept a view in which God was seen as having an inscrutable will which could confuse good and evil. Gregory's God was that of Augustine--a God of absolute goodness, whose will was circumscribed by goodness, justice, and love. The tradition which Gregory of Rimini handed on stressed the primacy of love over knowledge; it defended the primacy of good over truth and of will over understanding. This tradition was different from that of Aquinas (Thomism), which stressed the primacy of truth; and it differed from Ockhamism in that its doctrine of the sovereignty of the good recognized limits to the will of God. For these Augustinian thinkers, theology was not a speculative science in competition with philosophy; rather, it was an affective science of the heart.

A major consequence of this view of theology is the marked tendency in Augustinian thinkers to limit the domain of philosophy in favor of theology. This is the great enigma of the Augustinian tradition: beginning with Augustine, it presented a powerful philosophical anthropology replete with significant metaphysical, psychological, and ethical insights; but because of its emphasis on the primacy of love, it always had within it the tendency to subordinate reason to action.

Gregory of Rimini used reason--that is, Aristotelian argument; he valued it highly in his philosophical semantics. In subordinating reason to faith, or the creature to the Creator, he was recognizing that philosophy, like all other human things, is contingent and finite; he was arguing that philosophy should not claim to have a God's eye view of all things. (Neither should theology make such a claim.) Philosophy, for Gregory, found its completion in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.