Correctorium
| Latin | Correctorium fratris Thomae; Correctorium corruptorii |
|---|---|
| Treatise | Not a work of Thomas; controversy over Summa theologiae I, question 76 |
| Controlling authority | Council of Vienne; historical sources of 1913 |
| Doctrinal standing | Vienne's definition on the soul as form is dogma; the correctoria are historical school documents, not magisterial acts |
| School | Thomism |
| Branch | Thomistic controversies |
Correctorium names the late-thirteenth-century Franciscan list of objected Thomistic theses, especially William de la Mare's Correctorium fratris Thomae, and the Dominican replies titled Correctorium corruptorii.
A pamphlet, not a council
After the Paris condemnations of 1277, some Franciscan readers treated a set of Thomistic positions as dangerous, above all the unicity of substantial form in man. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on Thomism records that William de la Mare, O.S.F., wrote a Correptorium fratris Thomae, and that an English Dominican, Richard Clapwell, replied in a treatise Contra corruptorium fratris Thomae. Other replies circulated under the title Correctorium corruptorii, attributed variously to Clapwell, John of Paris, or Giles of Rome.[1][2]
The names already show the fight. One side presented a correction of brother Thomas. The other presented a correction of the corruptor. Neither document is a magisterial act. Neither is a work of Aquinas. They are intramural Catholic theology after a crisis, using the Summa as the contested text.
What was at stake
The disputed points clustered around anthropology and the metaphysics of form. If the intellective soul is the one substantial form of the body, what happens to the corpse, to the remaining accidents, to the numerical identity of the body in the tomb? Opponents feared that unicity implied that a dead body is not the same body, or that Christ in the tomb was not true man. Thomists answered from Summa theologiae I, question 76, that one form gives one being, and that death is the loss of that form, not the survival of a corporeity-form as a second substance.[3]
Related worries touched the eternity of the world, the unity of the intellect, and the status of Aristotle. The 1277 articles mixed Averroist errors with positions that Thomists judged orthodox. Kilwardby at Oxford attacked the unity of substantial form. Albert the Great went to Paris to defend his pupil. Dominican chapters at Milan in 1278 and Paris in 1279 took measures against members who spoke injuriously of Thomas.
Vienne and canonization
The Council of Vienne defined that the rational soul is of itself and essentially the form of the human body, against Peter John Olivi. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on Thomism presents that definition as a solemn vindication of the Thomistic side of the anthropology fight, without claiming that every line of the Correctorium corruptorii was thereby canonized. The canonization of Thomas in 1323 was, in the same account, a death-blow to his detractors as a party.[4]
The definition is dogma. The reading of the definition as a complete victory for unicity in every technical respect remains a Thomist interpretation. Other Catholic historians may stress what Vienne did not say. They may not reopen the defined unity of soul and body.
How to read the correctoria now
The correctoria are evidence of how quickly Thomism became a school with opponents inside the Church. They are not a syllabus of errors for modern Catholics, and they are not Holy Scripture. They show the cost of a new Aristotelian grammar in Christian anthropology, and the Dominican determination to keep Thomas's unicity thesis.
An encyclopedia article on the Correctorium is therefore history in the service of doctrine. It names the documents, the combatants, and the later conciliar bound. It does not baptize a pamphlet. It does not treat Franciscan plurality of forms as a heresy merely because a Dominican reply was sharp.
References
- Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Thomism — Public-domain history of Thomist principles, the correctoria after 1277, the unicity of substantial form, and the Leonine restoration.
- Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Form — Public-domain account of substantial and accidental form in scholastic philosophy.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 76 — Primary hylomorphic anthropology: the intellective soul as form of the body and the rejection of a plurality of substantial forms in man.
- Back to citation Council of Vienne, Fidei catholicae — Conciliar definition that the rational soul is of itself and essentially the form of the human body, against any denial of that substantial unity.