THOMAS OF SUTTON. - English Dominican theologian, chancellor at Oxford in 1290-91, regent master of theology around 1299-1300.

A defender of Thomism first against Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome, he later turned his weapons against a far more formidable adversary, Duns Scotus, and finally against the Franciscan Robert Cowton, master at Oxford. His literary activity covers a period extending from about 1280 to about 1316. After some hesitation regarding the real distinction between essence and existence, he ends by acknowledging its full importance. He emphasizes far more than St. Thomas the passivity of sensation and of the intellect in the face of the sensible and the intelligible. There is in him the ardor of the polemicist, who tends to exaggerate somewhat the theses he defends. His principal writings of certain authenticity are 35 Quaestiones disputatae, 4 Quodlibeta, the opuscule Contra pluralitatem formarum, already attributed to St. Thomas and printed several times among the Opuscula of the latter, and the Tractatus de product. formarum substant. He also brought to completion the Thomistic commentaries on the Perihermeneias and on the De gener. et corrupt. Pelster has restored to him the authorship of the treatise Contra primum Sent. Ioan. Scoti, published under the name of "Thomas Anglicus."

Bibliography9 works

BIBL.: F. Ehrle, Th. d. S., s. Leben, s. Quodlibet u. s. Qq. disp., in Festschr. f. G. v. Hertling, Kempten 1913, pp. 426-50; Fr. Pelster, Th. v. S., Ein Oxforder Verteidiger der thomist. Lehre, in Zeit. f. Kath. Theol., 46 (1922), pp. 227-36, 361-401; 47 (1923), pp. 483-94; id., Th. v. S., als Verfasser zweier Schriften über die Einheit der Wesensformen, in Scholastik, 3 (1928), pp. 411-413; id., Th. v. S. und Robert v. Oxford, in Gregorianum, 24 (1943), pp. 135-70; D. E. Sharp, Th. of S., in Rev. néoscolast., 1934, pp. 332-54; 1935, pp. 88-104, 219-33; O. Lottin, Th. de S. et le libre arbitre, in Rech. de théol. anc. et med., 1937, pp. 281-312; P. Glorieux, Sutton, Th. de, in DThC, XIV (1941), coll. 2867-73.

Bruno Nardi

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Thomas of Sutton

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