SIMON OF TOURNAI

Theologian; b. Tournai c. 1130; d. c. 1201. If he was the reporter of the second half of Odo of Soissons' (Ourscamp's) Quaestiones, as seems likely from the language and technique, he was doubtless the master of Odo's school and his successor in the chair of theology from 1165. Before that he taught the arts for ten years. He used Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, and De anima, newly translated from the Arabic, and admired Abelard and Gilbert de la Porrée. He excelled in dialectics and in clarifying and classifying concepts. Accusations of blasphemy, heresy, and incontinence, made some years after his death, have been discredited. The chronology and relationship of his works with those of other Porretani, especially Alain of Lille and Raoul Ardent, and with Peter of Poitiers are not yet established. His following works have been printed: Disputationes, Expositio super Simbolum, a sermon on the antiphon O Sapientia (by J. Warichez, Louvain 1932); Expositio Symboli S. Athanasii [in Bibliotheca Casinensis. Florilegium, 4 (Montecassino 1880) 322–346]; and the Trinitarian portion of his Institutiones in sacra pagina [M. Schmaus, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 4 (1932) 59–72, 187–198, 294–307]. The sacramental portion of the latter was copied from Ps.-Hugh, Speculum ecclesiae (Patrologia latina 177:335–380), and the Summa decretorum of Rufinus.

Bibliography: d. van den eynde, "Deux sources de la Somme théologique de Simon de Tournai," Antonianum 24 (1949) 19–42. p. glorieux, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 14.2:2124–30. a. m. landgraf, Einführung in die Geschichte der theologischen Literatur der Frühscholastik (Regensburg 1948); revised as Introducción a la historia de la literatura teológica de la escolástica incipiente (Barcelona 1956). j. n. garvin, "Peter of Poitiers and Simon of Tournai on the Trinity," Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 16 (1949) 314–316. p. s. moore et al., eds., Sententiae Petri Pictaviensis, 2 v. (Notre Dame, Ind. 1943–50) v.2. m. cappuyns, Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 49 (1954) 564–565.

[j. n. garvin]