DURAND OF SAINT-POURÇAIN. - Born Guillaume Durand, known as the “doctor resolutissimus,” a celebrated Dominican theologian and writer, b. at Saint-Pourçain in France in 1275, d. at Meaux on 10 Sept. 1334. After entering the religious life at Clermont-Ferrand and studying at the University of Paris, he became master in theology in 1312, then Master of the Sacred Palace in Avignon, and on 16 Aug. 1317 bishop of Limoux, whence he was transferred in 1318 to Le Puy and finally in 1326 to Meaux.
Of quick intelligence, wide learning, and brilliant exposition, Durand was also highly independent in his judgments, and in philosophy he accorded no value to authority. Fundamentally Aristotelian, he was in some respects Platonist-Augustinian and showed the influence of his teacher James of Metz. Already in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, delivered at the University of Paris, he departed in many points from the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas. This provoked a natural reaction throughout the Dominican Order, leading to a special ordinance of the General Chapter of 1309, which obliged all lectors to adhere to the doctrines of the Angelic Doctor. The condemnation, which seemed at first to be avoided, nevertheless came to pass. A commission presided over by Hervé Nédellec drew up a list of 93 erroneous propositions, 91 of which were condemned by the General Chapter of London in 1314. Later, several Dominican masters under Hervé Nédellec attacked Durand’s writings and refuted these errors. Durand reaffirmed his positions in the third redaction of his Commentary on the Sentences, and the controversy between him and the Thomists was concluded by the treatise of Durandellus (c. 1330): Evidentiae contra Durandum.
His most important works are: Commentarii in IV libros Sententiarum (Paris 1308, 1515, 1533, 1539, 1547, and later various other editions at Lyons, Antwerp, and Venice); De origine potestatum et iurisdictionum (Paris 1506); De visione Dei quam habent animae sanctorum ante iudicium generale (partially ed. in O. Raynaldus, Annales ecclesiastici [ed. Mansi], IV, Lucca 1750, cols. 570–74); De paupertate Christi (partially ed. ibid., cols. 575–77).