John of Paris (Quidort, Lesourd, Dormiens, Surdus)

JOHN OF PARIS (Quidort, Lesourd, Dormiens, Surdus). - Dominican Scholastic, b. ca. 1269, d. at Bordeaux on 22 Sept. 1306. He entered the Order of Preachers after obtaining the baccalaureate in arts and distinguished himself by the ardor with which he embraced and defended Thomism. He taught in the faculty of arts and in 1304 obtained the licentiate in theology. A special theory of transubstantiation brought upon him a trial which he lost before the masters of Paris (1305). He appealed to Pope Clement V, but death surprised him while he was preparing his defense.

He wrote a Correctorium; De unitate esse et essentiae in creatis; a commentary on the Meteorologica and on the Physica; a Commentary on the Sentences, a treatise De Antichristo, against Arnald of Villanova, and another better known one, De potestate regia et papali, with which he took part in the literary and political struggle between the followers of Boniface VIII and Philip II the Fair. He was often cited by the Gallicans for some of his obiter dicta, but he deserves to be remembered chiefly for having conceived and set forth a balanced system on the relations between Church and State. He is not an advocate of universal monarchy and affirms that civil power does not derive from the pope, but, like spiritual power, directly from God through popular election. Ecclesiastical authority is not charged with the government of temporal things, but, by reason of the preeminence of its end, with a regulating action exercised through a moral jurisdiction over the conscience of peoples, and especially of those who direct their politics.

1922, pp. 1-603; J. Rivière, Le problème de l'Église et de l'État au temps de Philippe le Bel, Paris 1926, pp. 148-50, 281-300; H. Weisweiler, Die Impanatumslehre des J. Quidort, in Scholastik, 6 (1931), pp. 161-95; J. Leclercq, Jean de Paris et l'ecclésiologie du XIIIe siècle, Paris 1942.

Ugo Mariani