Rupella, Johannes De (John of La Rochelle) (GIOVANNI DE LA ROCHELLE (JOHANNES DE RUPELLA))

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

GIOVANNI de la ROCHELLE (Johannes de Rupella). - 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 T. Domenichelli, Prato 1882), and other unpublished Summae (de virtutibus, de vitiis, de articulis fidei).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 Franciscan masters, he is perhaps the 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. Different faculties are distinguished in the soul: sense, imagination, reason, intellect, and intelligence. Intellectual knowledge is explained by the Aristotelian theory of abstraction and of the (created) agent intellect, a theory reconciled with the Augustinian theory of illumination.

BIBL.: List of writings in P. Glorieux, Répertoire des maîtres en théologie de Paris au XIIIe siècle, II, Paris 1934, pp. 25-30; M. De Wulf, Histoire de la philosophie médiévale, II, 6th ed., Louvain-Paris 1936, pp. 110-12 (bibl.); C. Fabro, La distinzione tra « quod est » e « quo est » nella Summa de anima di G. de la R., in Divus Thomas, 15 (1938), pp. 208-252; M. Buccellato, De quaestionibus quibusdam ad Summam de anima Joannis de Rupella spectantibus, in Sophia, 8 (1940), pp. 207-217.

Sofia Vanni Rovighi