GUGLIELMO di CONCHES. — Scholastic, born at Conches (Normandy) in 1080, died in 1145. He belonged to the school of Chartres.
His principal works are the Philosophia mundi and the Dragmaticon philosophiae. The former had several editions, in which, however, it is attributed to other authors (Bede, Guglielmo di Hirschau, Onorio di Autun. Cf. PL 172
and 190); the latter was published under the title Dialogus de substantiis physicis confectus a Willelmo Aneponymo, (Strasbourg 1567), and is sometimes cited under the title Philosophia secunda. An unpublished passage from the Philosophia (perhaps from a third recension) was published by C. Ottaviano (v. BIBLICA). He also wrote Moralisum dogma philosophorum (Uppsala 1929) and unpublished glosses on Boethius’s Consolatio and on the Timaeus.
G. was a Platonist and was chiefly interested in the philosophy of nature. His principal source of inspiration was the Timaeus, which he interpreted in a creationist sense. The demiurge was identified with the Father, the ideas with divine Wisdom, and the good with the Holy Spirit. He later retracted an attempt of his to interpret the world soul as the Holy Spirit. Because of his Trinitarian doctrine, which tended to interpret the divine Persons as characteristics of God’s creative activity (power, wisdom, goodness), he was attacked by Guglielmo di St-Thierry, a friend of S. Bernardo.