GIOVANNI DA BACONTHORP (BACONE). – Carmelite theologian, born in the county of Norfolk ca. 1280, died ca. 1348. He studied at Oxford under Roberto Walsingham and at Paris under Guido Terrena. At this University, in the academic year 1322–23, he obtained his master’s degree and remained there for the following two years as regent of the Carmelite school. He taught at Cambridge and Oxford. For some time he was provincial of England.
His literary production is extensive: In IV Sententiarum (Paris 1484, Milan 1510, Venice 1525, Cremona 1618, Madrid 1754); Quodlibeta, I–III (Venice 1527, Cremona 1618, Madrid 1754). He commented on Sacred Scripture (Mt. and several epistles of s. Paolo), Aristotle (De Anima, Metaphysica, Ethica), and various works of s. Agostino and s. Anselmo. He also wrote several treatises on Carmelite spirituality, published repeatedly.
He was regarded as the head of the Carmelite school and had many commentators, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The title “prince of the Averroists” was wrongly attributed to him, having no foundation other than a citation from Agostino Nifo. He had no connection whatsoever with Latin Averroism; indeed, he remained decisively within the sphere of orthodox and realist scholasticism, in opposition to the innovations of the terminists. An original thinker, he proposed personal solutions to many philosophical and theological problems: it is not excessive to speak of a Baconian scholastic system. Bringing the period of medieval scholasticism to a close, he appears as a critic who assesses the solutions proposed from s. Tommaso onward and gathers into a complex synthesis what he considers best thought out.
His solution to the problem of universals is characteristic: their foundation is neither a real, nor a rational, nor a formal composition of the individual, but rather the capacity of the individual itself to be grasped through a plurality of concepts; hence the intentional distinction (a term used by Enrico di Gand).
In the question of the formal principle of the supposit, in order to explain how an individuated nature can fail to be a person, he refers to the actualization of created substances and distinguishes two successive moments: first, it is constituted as a nature (that is, as a determinate individual substance), and then as a supposit and person (that is, as something enclosed within itself). In the Incarnation, the Word assumes human nature at its first stage of actualization and eminently supplies its second.
Very interesting, though little known, is his doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. From the very first moment of her conception, Maria is placed in a twofold relation: generation connects her to Adam, from whom she would derive original sin, but her predestination as Mother of God connects her to Christ, from whom she receives Grace. Since predestination as Mother of God governs her entire being, there is no lapse of time between the two relations to Christ and Adam, and therefore original sin could not stain her, because Grace prevailed in her from the very first moment, whereas in us this occurs only through Baptism.