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GILBERT DE LA PORREE

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 11 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GILBERT DE LA PORREE , frequently known as Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis (1070-1154), scholastic logician and theologian, was See also:born at See also:Poitiers. He was educated under See also:Bernard of See also:Chartres and See also:Anselm of See also:Laon. After teaching for about twenty years in Chartres, he lectured on dialectics and See also:theology in' See also:Paris (from 1137), and in 1141 returned to Poitiers, being elected See also:bishop in the following See also:year. His heterodox opinions regarding the See also:doctrine of the Trinity See also:drew upon his See also:works the condemnation of the See also:church. The See also:synod of See also:Reims in 1148 procured papal See also:sanction for four propositions opposed to certain of Gilbert's tenets, and his works were condemned until they should be corrected in accordance with the principles of the church. Gilbert seems to have submitted quietly to this See also:judgment; he yielded assent to the four propositions, and remained on friendly terms with his antagonists till his See also:death on the 4th of See also:September 1154. Gilbert is almost the only logician of the 12th See also:century who is quoted by the greater scholastics of the succeeding See also:age. His See also:chief logical See also:work, the See also:treatise De See also:sex principiis, was regarded with a reverence almost equal to that paid to See also:Aristotle, and furnished See also:matter for numerous commentators, amongst them Albertus See also:Magnus. Owing to the fame of this work, he is mentioned by See also:Dante as the Magister sex principiorum. The treatise itself is a discussion of the Aristotelian categories, specially of the six subordinate modes. Gilbert distinguishes in the ten categories two classes, one essential, the other derivative. Essential or inhering (formae inhaerentes) in the See also:objects themselves are only substance, quantity, quality and relation in the stricter sense of that See also:term.

The remaining six, when, where, See also:

action, See also:passion, position and See also:habit, are relative and subordinate (formae assistentes). This See also:suggestion has some See also:interest, but is of no See also:great value, either in See also:logic or in the theory of knowledge. More important in the See also:history of See also:scholasticism are the theological consequences to which Gilbert's See also:realism led him. In the commentary on the treatise De Trinitate (erroneously attributed to See also:Boetius) he proceeds from the metaphysical notion that pure or abstract being is See also:prior in nature to that which is. This pure being is See also:God, and must be distinguished from the triune God as known to us. God is incomprehensible, and the categories cannot be applied to determine his existence. In God there is no distinction or difference, whereas in all substances or things there is duality, arising from the See also:element of matter. Between pure being and substances stand the ideas or forms, which subsist, though they are not substances. These forms, when materialized, are called formae substantiales or formae nativae; they are the essences of things, and in them-selves have no relation to the accidents of things. Things are temporal, the ideas perpetual, God eternal. The pure See also:form of existence, that by which God is God, must be distinguished from the three persons who are God by participation in this form. The form or essence is one, the persons or substances three.

It was this distinction between Deitas or Divinitas and See also:

Deus that led to the condemnation of Gilbert's doctrine. De sex principiis and commentary on the De Trinitate in See also:Migne, Patrologia See also:Latina, Ixiv. 1255 and clxxxviii. 1257; see also See also:Abbe Berthaud, Gilbert de la Porree (Poitiers, 1892) ; B. See also:Haureau, De la philosophie scolastique, pp. 294-318; R. Schmid's See also:article " Gilbert Porretanus " in See also:Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. f. protest. Theol. (vol. 6, 1899); Prantl, Geschichte d. Logik, ii. 215; See also:Bach, Dogmengeschichte, 1t.

133; article SCHOLASTICISM.

End of Article: GILBERT DE LA PORREE

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