GIOVANNI de la ROCHELLE (Johannes de Rupaella). - Franciscan, d. 1245. He studied in Paris at the school of Alessandro di Hales and succeeded him in the chair in 1238 or 1241. He is the author of commentaries on Holy Scripture, disputed questions, a Summa de anima (ed. T. Domenichelli, Prato 1882), and other unpublished Summae (de virtutibus, de vitiis, de articulis fidei).
Among the Franciscan masters, he is perhaps the one closest to the Thomistic position. He does not admit the hylomorphic composition of spiritual substances, but only that between quo est and quod est. The soul is a simple substance, the form of the body, spiritual and immortal. In the soul he distinguished various faculties: sense, imagination, reason, intellect, and intelligence. Intellective knowledge is explained by the Aristotelian theory of abstraction and of the agent intellect (created), a theory that is reconciled with the Augustinian theory of illumination.