James of Metz

GIACOMO di METZ. - Dominican theologian and writer, born at Metz. Nothing is known of his life, except that he commented twice on the Sentences of Lombard at Paris between the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth. He was never, however, a master. He probably had Durando da St-Pourçain as a disciple. His Commentary on the Sentences is preserved in seven manuscripts, of which the only complete one is in the Vatican Library (Borghese, cod. 122). G. is an acute and always clear theologian; in philosophy he is Aristotelian, but in theology he is influenced more by pre-Thomistic Augustinianism than by s. Tommaso: he denies, for example, the real distinction between nature and suppositum; in the Trinity he posits a real distinction between the divine essence and the relations; for him original sin would be a mere reatus poenae; he likewise denies the causality of the Sacraments. All doctrines taken up again by Durando. A Correctorium was written against him, almost certainly by Erveo di Nédellec, the greatest opponent of Durando.