Medieval France
(d. after 1151). A Breton by birth, Thierry was probably not the younger brother of Bernard of Chartres, as is sometimes asserted. He studied arts at Chartres and was master of the schools there in 1121. He went ca. 1124 to teach in Paris, where John of Salisbury was one of his pupils. He continued in a conventional ecclesiastical career, becoming archdeacon of Dreux in 1136 and archdeacon and chancellor of Chartres in 1141. In 1148, he was a member of the synod of Reims that condemned Gilbert of Poitiers and in 1149 was present at the Diet of Frankfurt. Sometime between 1151 and 1156, however, he retired into a monastery, and we know nothing more of his life.
Thierry lays claim to be the most interesting Neoplatonist of Chartres. His interpretation of Genesis 1, a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus called De sex dierum operibus, contains his statement of divine formalism: that God is the form of all created things.
Thierry also displays the influence of Aristotelian logic. In the De sex dierum and in his three commentaries on Boethius’s De Trinitate, he attempted to develop a rational justification for the Trinity, describing it in terms of Aristotle’s four causes: Father as efficient cause, Son as formal cause, Holy Spirit as final cause, and divinely created matter as material cause. His other works include a commentary on Cicero’s De inventione and a textbook for the Trivium and Quadrivium, the Heptateuchon.
Lesley J.Smith
[See also: CHARTRES; PHILOSOPHY; PLATO, INFLUENCE OF]
Thierry of Chartres. Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and His School, ed. Nikolaus M.Häring. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971.
——. The Latin Rhetorical Commentaries by Thierry of Chartres, ed. Karin M.Fredborg. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988.
Dronke, Peter, ed. A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 358–85.
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