Cornubiensis, Iohannes (John of Cornwall) (GIOVANNI DI CORNOVAGLIA (IOHANNES CORNUBIENIS))

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

GIOVANNI of CORNOVAGLIA (Iohannes Cornubienis). - Twelfth-century theologian, d. ca. 1176. Little is known of his life; even his place of origin is uncertain, and for this reason some consider him French, while others hold him to have been English. The only certain information is that he studied in Paris at the school of Pietro Lombardo, Roberto di Melun, and Maurizio di Sully.

Of the writings attributed to him, the Eulogium ad Alexandrum papam III, quod Christus sit aliquis homo (PL. 199, 1041-86) is unquestionably his; in it he combats the doctrines of Abelardo, Gilberto Porreano, and Pietro Lombardo, who maintained Christological nihilism (according to which Christ’s humanity was no more than a covering of the Word), condemned at the Council of Tours in 1163.

BIBL.: J. Baudot, s. V. in DThC, VIII, cols. 756-59 (with bibl.); A. Landgraf, s. V. in LThK, V, col. 488; F. Pelster, Eine ungedruckte Einleitung zu einer zweiten Auflage des Eulogium, in Histor. Jahrb., 54 (1934), pp. 223-29; F. R. Studeny, John of Cornwall, an opponent of nichilism. A study in the christological controversies of the twelfth century, Mödling (Vienna) 1939; I. De Ghellinck, Le mouvement théologique du XIIe siècle, 2nd ed., Bruges 1948, pp. 253-55; A. M. Landgraf, Einführung in die Geschichte der theologischen Literatur der Frühscholastik, Ratisbona 1948, pp. 111-12; E. Rathbone, John of Cornwall. A brief Biography, in Recherches de théol. anc. et médiév., 17 (1950), pp. 46-60.

Niccolò Del Re