The Contested Theological Authority of Thomas Aquinas - The Controversies Between Hervaeus Natalis and Durandus of St. Pourcain, 1307-1323 (Hardcover)

The rise and establishment of the theological authority of Thomas Aquinas, something that ran counter to every current running through the late thirteenth-century Church, is investigated in this work. Unclear about whether propositions drawn from Thomas' teachings had been included in the Condemnations of 1277, a debate raged in the Church culminating in a series of bitter polemical battles between Hervaeus Natalis, the most prominent of Aquinas' early defenders and eventual Master General of the Dominican Order, and Durandus of St. Pourçain, the last major Dominican thinker to openly attack Aquinas' teachings. Elizabeth Lowe explicates how the controversies between Natalis and Durandus contributed to Aquinas' theological authority within the Dominican Order - an authority which surpassed even that of Augustine.