Siger of Courtrai (SIGIERI DI COURTRAI) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XI, p. 349

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

SIGIERI di COURTRAI. - Master in the Faculty of Arts at Paris in 1309; subsequently doctor of theology in 1315 and procurator of the Sorbonne; died on 30 May 1341, bequeathing to the Sorbonne eight volumes containing writings of S. Tommaso.

His name is associated with several short treatises on formal logic, Ars Priorum, Summa modorum significandi and a series of Fallaciae and Sophismata, subjects upon which the young men preparing to undertake the study of natural philosophy sharpened their wits. This investigation of the “modes of signification,” widespread at the beginning of the fourteenth century, sought to discover the logical structure common to the grammars proper to every language; but it was discredited by the emergence of the new Ockhamist logic.

BIBL.: M. De Wulf, Hist. de la philos. en Belgique, Bruxelles-Paris 1910, pp. 133-34; G. Wallerand, Les oeuvres de S. d. C.,

Article illustration — SIGISMONDO, king of the BURGUNDI, saint, martyr - Votive Mass • Sancti Sigismundi regis • for a fever patient. Missal of Bobbio (eighth century) - Paris, National Library, ms. lat. 13246, f. 164.
(from M. Besson, Antiquitàe du Valois, Fribourg, Switzerland, B16, pl. 16)
(Les philos. belges, 8), Louvain 1913; M. Grabmann, Mittelalt. Geistesleben, I, Munich 1926, pp. 104-46. Bruno Nardi