Intersecting Wisdom: Thomas of York and His Sources

Thomas of York was a careful and pioneering reader of some philosophical texts that had little or no circulation in the Middle Ages. His major work, the Sapien- tiale, was the first medieval instance of a purely metaphysical investigation that falls outside the conventional frameworks of theological summae and commentaries to Aristotle. Despite this fact, the Sapientiale has long been read as a clear example of a form of ‘authentic Augustinianism’. This reading of the text treated Thomas of York as the founder, along with Bonaventure and Alexander of Hales, of a uniform Franciscan tradition that was later inherited by William de la Mare, John Peckam, Peter John Olivi, Peter of Trabibus, and Richard of Middleton. In this essay, Fiorella Retucci attempts to question the historiographic category of ‘authentic Augustinian- ism’, too often applied to Thomas of York’s thought, by carefully analyzing the Sapi- entiale and its sources. The study focuses in particular on three sources that play an important role in Thomas of York’s philosophical system: the Liber de causis, the Asclepius and Averroes