"A Most Fruitful Understanding of the Mysteries": William of Auxerre on the Nature of Theology

Abstract: With his Summa Aurea ("Golden Summa"), William Auxerre, was a pioneering secular (i.e., non-mendicant) master at the University of Paris in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Though typically eclipsed by a more famous, younger generation of scholastic masters at Paris, including Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and, of course, Sts. Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, William made important, seminal contributions to the emerging mode of scholastic theology, including its scientific character and its systematic presentation. But William also strove to hold on to older theological traditions, which viewed theology as both the pursuit of sapiential insight into the coherence and fittingness of its overarching account of reality and also as having a contemplative, indeed experiential telos. In these ways, William's theology stands as a kind of transition and watershed moment, which merits greater scholarly appreciation.