ROBERTO di COURSON. — Theologian and cardinal, born near Eccleston (Dirby, England) ca. 1155–60, died near Damietta on 6 March 1219. A Pietro Cantore (v.), he formed a friendship with the future Innocent III.
A master and regent in theology, canon of Noyon (1204), then of Paris (1210), in 1212 he was created cardinal by Innocent III, who appointed him his legate in France with the aim of preparing the Fourth Lateran Council. R. therefore presided over various Councils (Paris, 1213; Bordeaux, July 1214; Rouen, Dec. 1214); in that same year, 1214,
he took part in the crusade against the Albigensians, confirming to Simon de Montfort the conquests he had made. By a special mandatum of the Pope, in Aug. 1215 R. promulgated the new statute of the University of Paris, in which, among other things, it was forbidden to legere la metaphysica and the philosophia naturalis of Aristotle. Having become unpopular, he lost the favor of Innocent and especially of Honorius III. After attending the Lateran Council in Nov. 1215, he remained in Rome until 1218, when he departed for the crusade not as legate (that office being held by Cardinal Pelagius) but as a preacher. As a Parisian master, R. composed a commentary on the Sentences of Pietro Lombardo, which is lost; preserved in numerous codices is an extensive Summa Theologica, composed between 1204 and 1210, in which, following the practical orientation of Pietro Cantore, he deals chiefly with moral and sacramental theology.
V. Rome 1941, pp. 37–42 and passim; P. Anciaux, La théol. du Sacrement de Pénitence au XIIe siècle, Louvain-Gembloux 1949 (v. index); Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Eglise, XIII, Paris 1931, pp. 191–94. Antonio Piolanti