## 1. Life




As is the case with many medieval thinkers, Autrecourt's
biographical details are few. What we know about his intellectual life
has to be reconstructed using dates that are attached to the handful of
documents in which he is mentioned. One of these is a record from
sometime between 1333-36, indicating that he served as prior at the
College de Sorbonne. Another important document is a papal
letter of 1338 in which Benedict XII confers upon him the function of
canon at Metz Cathedral, and refers to him as a master of arts and
bachelor of theology and civil law. Evidently, however, Autrecourt did
not claim his prebendary stipend until after his trial in 1347.




On the basis of such references, Autrecourt's date of birth can be
placed sometime between 1295-98. He originated from Autrecourt
in the diocese of Verdun, and was probably a student in the arts
faculty at Paris, belonging to either the English, or, more likely, the
French nation. His master's degree in arts can be dated around 1318-20.
While a student, he must have come across such famous masters as John
of Jandun, Marsilius of Padua, Thomas Wilton, Walter Burley,
Bartholomew of Bruges, or Siger of Courtrai. Since his law degree was
in civil rather than canon law, he must have left Paris at some point
for a minimum of five years, probably to study at Orleans,
Avignon, or Montpellier.




His membership in the College de Sorbonne places Autrecourt
back in Paris in the 1330s as a student of theology. On November 21,
1340, Pope Benedict XII summoned him from Paris to Avignon to respond
to allegations of false teaching. In his letter, the pope refers to
Autrecourt as a *licentiatus* in theology, meaning that
Autrecourt had fullfilled the formal requirements for the theology
degree, e.g., lecturing on the Bible and the *Sentences*. But
does it also mean that he was a full-fledged master of theology? The
question is controversial. In the judgment at his trial, it was
stipulated that Autrecourt could only obtain "magisterial honor and
degree" after special permission from the Apostolic See, which seems
to imply that he was not allowed to progress to inception in theology
(the ceremony in which the magisterial honors would be conferred)
until the pope decided otherwise. Moreover, there are no records
referring to Autrecourt as a master in theology. This suggests that
Autrecourt remained a *licentiatus* in theology when he moved
on to Metz to take his position as canon (and later dean) of the
cathedral chapter. He died in 1369, on either July 16 or 17. Another
scenario is that Autrecourt's licenciate in theology was removed as a
result of his conviction and that it had been restored by the time
that he was confirmed as dean of the chapter at Metz (Courtenay, in
Caroti and Grellard, 2006, pp. 42-43).


## 2. Autrecourt's Trial and Conviction




Autrecourt's time of trial began in 1340 when he was first summoned
to appear before the papal court in Avignon and lasted until his
conviction in 1346. An extensive, though as yet incomplete, dossier of
the judicial process at Avignon has been preserved in the form of an
*instrumentum publicum* (actually, a draft copy thereof), which
served as a model for the preparation of the official record of the
process. The papal dossier contains copies of a number of records that
played a role during earlier stages of Autrecourt's trial, and gives an
account (*narratio*) of the judicial proceedings from the moment
Cardinal Curti, the judge, took over the investigation.




The record specifies the charges and summarizes the false teachings
of which Autrecourt was accused in the form of four lists, together
totalling 66 erroneous propositions or "articles" (*articuli)*.
The articles were culled from Autrecourt's writings and oral teachings.
On the basis of this record, it would appear that the papal commissions
of Pope Clement VI and Cardinal Curti used evidence from earlier
proceedings at the University of Paris and Autrecourt's response to
this evidence to reach their verdicts. If this scenario is correct, it
raises two obvious questions: why was Autrecourt's trial transferred
from Paris to Avignon, and how did it begin in the first place?
Unfortunately, the surviving historical evidence is insufficient to
answer either question.




The commission of prelates and theologians, which under the
chairmanship of Cardinal Curti had discussed all of the articles
attributed to Autrecourt, came to the conclusion that they contained
many false, dangerous, presumptuous, suspect, erroneous, and heretical
statements. For this reason, Autrecourt's writings were ordered burned
either at Pre-aux-Clercs or Pre-de-Saint-Germain at Paris
at an unspecified future date. Moreover, Autrecourt was ordered to
publicly recant several of the articles specified in the legal record.
These recantations and declarations, which Autrecourt was first
required to make at the palace of Cardinal Curti in Avignon, had to be
repeated at the University of Paris. Autrecourt's recantation at the
papal court took place before May 19, 1346. The exact date is unknown
because it was left blank in the draft prepared by the notary Bernard.
In addition to the recantation, Autrecourt was declared unworthy to
ascend to the magisterial rank in the theological faculty. Anyone in
possession of the authority to present or promote Autrecourt to the
magisterium of the faculty of theology was thereafter forbidden to do
so.




The Parisian part of the sentence was fulfilled the following year.
On November, 20, 1347 the regent and non-regent masters of the
university met at the Church of Saint-Mathurin, where papal letters
and the process "concerning certain articles" were
read. This material had been brought from Avignon by Autrecourt
himself. On November 25, Autrecourt recanted the four confessed
articles and the articles from the letter "*Ve
michi*" in the Church of the Dominicans, and publicly
declared that the propositions contained in the other two lists were
wrong. In addition, he burned these articles and a treatise, most
likely the *Exigit ordo*. The public reading of the
*instrumentum* and the recantation served an important purpose.
It not only made the sentence effective, but also informed the
scholarly community of Autrecourt's errors and of the punishments set
out in the *instrumentum*, which they would incur if they were
to teach the censured errors. Years later, scholars such as John
Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, and Andre of Neufchateau
(Andreas de Novo Castro) cited the condemned erroneous propositions as
the *articuli cardinalis (albi)*.


## 3. Writings




Autrecourt's oeuvre is not large. There is a correspondence with the
Franciscan theologian Bernard of Arezzo, and with a certain Master
Giles (possibly Giles of Feno), and a treatise that has come to be
known as the *Exigit ordo*. Furthermore, we have a theological
question dealing with the intension and remission of forms and the
problem of minima and maxima (*utrum visio alicuius rei naturalis
possit naturali intendi* [Could the vision of any natural thing be
naturally intensified?]).




Autrecourt wrote nine letters to Bernard of Arezzo, only two of
which survive. In addition, there is one letter from master Giles
addressed to Autrecourt, along with a brief response by the latter,
which, however, breaks off in mid-sentence. The correspondence has been
preserved in two manuscript copies from the intellectual milieu of the
College de Sorbonne. Together the letters form a small dossier,
the central item of which is the letter from Master Giles. Apparently,
the only reason the two letters to Bernard were copied was because they
are mentioned in the letter from Master Giles. The correspondence
between Autrecourt and Bernard of Arezzo is much earlier, dating from
the time when both were theology students, engaged as opponents in each
other's *Principia*, i.e., inaugural lecture on the
*Sentences*. They can be dated between October 1335 and June
1336, although both *Principia* are now lost. There is no
evidence that Autrecourt ever actually wrote a commentary on the
*Sentences*, which, in any case was not a formal requirement for
obtaining a degree. The theme of the discussion in the
*Principia* and the letters to Bernard of Arezzo is the validity
of Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction, as presented in Book IV
of the *Metaphysics*.




The *Exigit ordo* is the fruit of Autrecourt's teaching in the
arts faculty. In the first of its two prologues, it is addressed to
the *reverendi patres*, i.e. to the theologians in religious
orders. Instead of expounding his views in commentaries on Aristotle's
texts, Autrecourt chose to write an independent treatise discussing
issues pertaining to natural philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology,
philosophical psychology, and ethics, and engaging in debate with
unnamed contemporaries. The work is not a neat sequence of chapters or
questions with pro and con arguments. It has been suggested that the
*Exigit* was a draft version in which Autrecourt had penned
ideas, arguments and fragments of disputations that were awaiting
their final ordering. The work was completed in the years 1333-35, at
which time Autrecourt was preparing his commentary on the
*Sentences*. For financial reasons, Autrecourt taught in the
arts faculty while he was enrolled as a student in theology. Possibly,
he even wrote the *Exigit* after he commented on the
*Sentences*, but before 1340, when he was summoned to
Avignon.




The *Exigit ordo* is also known as the *Tractatus
universalis* (Universal Treatise). The latter title is actually a
misreading of the first two words of the treatise, "*tractatus
utilis*" (useful treatise). It has been preserved in a single
manuscript copy, which, like the Giles letter, breaks off in
mid-sentence. It is divided into two prologues, two treatises, and
several chapters, which, unfortunately, the scribe has placed in the
wrong order. The Latin edition and English translation both preserve
the order of the medieval manuscript without correction.




The theological question is a report (*reportatio*) of a
theological disputation in which Autrecourt served as respondent to
the objections. Although the presiding master of a disputation would
usually have to be considered its real author, matters may be
different here. Since it is a *reportatio* -- i.e., a text
which, unlike an *ordinatio*, was not subjected to later
editing by the master himself -- Autrecourt's views probably
appear in unadulterated form. The question was disputed between
1336-39, and has been little studied by scholars.


## 4. Epistemology




Central to Autrecourt's teaching is the view that all *evident*
knowledge (with the exception of the certitude of faith) must be
reducible to the first principle (*primum principium*), i.e.,
to the principle of non-contradiction. An inference yields evident
knowledge only when the affirmation of its antecedent and the negation
of its consequent are contradictory. This means that the antecedent and
the consequent, or, more precisely, what is signified by the
antecedent and the consequent, must be identical, "because if this
were not the case, it would not be immediately evident that the
antecedent and the opposite of the consequent cannot stand together
without contradiction." It is in the context of this theory that
Autrecourt launches an attack on our claim to have certain knowledge
of the existence of substances and causal relations. If A and B are
two distinct entities, he says, one cannot infer with certainty
(knowledge of) the existence of A from that of B or vice versa, for
the affirmation of the one and the denial of the other does not result
in a contradiction. On the basis of this principle, one may not infer
(knowledge of) the existence of effects from knowledge of their
causes, nor (knowledge of) the existence of substances from knowledge
of their accidents. Autrecourt's theory about the evidentness of
inferences was contested by his contemporaries and should be
understood in the light of the late-medieval theory of
consequences.




This view runs contrary to the Aristotelian position, according to
which causal relations really exist and are discoverable by means of
induction, so that the existence of substances can be inferred from the
perceptible accidents inhering in them. The upshot of Autrecourt's view
is that we do not have experience of causal relations or substances,
nor does logic provide certain knowledge of them. There are no logical
reasons to assume that there is an evident relation between a cause and
an effect, or between a substance and an accident.




The position outlined above is developed in Autrecourt's
correspondence. It has led historians of philosophy to characterize
him as the most important, if not the only, "real"
representative of medieval scepticism, as "the medieval
Hume", to use Hastings Rashdall's epithet. On closer
inspection, however, it turns out that Autrecourt's scepticism
is reserved for rationalist claims about the truth of our commitments
to causality and substance, concepts for which we have no empirical
proof. It is now generally agreed that he is not a sceptic at all when
it comes to defending the reliability of sense-perception.




In his *Letter to Bernard*, Autrecourt takes on Bernard of
Arezzo, who had argued that the intellect is neither certain of the
existence of those things of which it has a clear intuitive cognition,
nor of its own acts. Autrecourt reveals the full implications of this
position by pointing out to Bernard that "you are not certain of
those things which are outside of you. And so you do not know if you
are in the sky or on earth, in fire or in water...Similarly, you do
not know what things exist in your immediate surroundings, such as
whether you have a head, a beard, hair, and the like." He
concludes that Bernard's stance is even worse than that of
"the Academics," that is, the ancient Skeptics.


## 5. Metaphysics




To Bernard's skeptical challenges Autrecourt replies that sense
experience is reliable. This theme is not further developed in the
letters to Bernard, however. For discussion of this topic we must turn
to the *Exigit ordo*. In one section of this treatise, which is
reminiscent of Aristotle's *Metaphysics* IV, 5, Autrecourt
addresses one of the central issues of metaphysics, namely the relation
between appearance and reality. He addresses Protagoras' view that
whatever is apparent is true: *An omne illud quod apparet sit*?
(Does everything that appears exist?).




Autrecourt defends the thesis that what appears, is, and that what
appears true, is true. He finds this view more plausible than its
opposite, viz., that the intellect cannot possess
certitude. Autrecourt does not have a meta-theory in which he defends
his model of certain knowledge against alternative theories. His
appeal that his theory is the more probable one, however, saves him
from charges of dogmatism. His concept of appearance plays a key role
in his doctrine of certain knowledge. It is used in a phenomenological
sense, to describe perceptual experiences. According to Autrecourt,
the intellect is certain of everything that is evident to it in the
final analysis. This is the case for everything that appears in a
proper sense (*apparet proprie*), i.e., that appears clearly in
an act of the external senses *(in actu sensuum
exteriorum*). He identifies appearances with the objects of
immediate sensory experience, which are considered evident. In this
way, he implies that sense perception is a reliable source of truth,
i.e., that the apparent properties of an object are its actual
properties.




But is sense perception reliable? Perceptual errors and dreams seem to
indicate that things are not always as they seem. Autrecourt discusses
several sceptical doubts (*dubia*), versions of what would
later be called the "argument from illusion" and the
"argument from dreaming". These arguments work from the
common sense assumption that things often appear to be other than they
are: e.g., sweet food can appear bitter, a white object can appear
red, in sleep it can seem to someone that he is flying through the air
or fighting the Saracens.




Autrecourt responds to these sceptical doubts by distinguishing
between appearance and judgment. Appearances are always veridical:
experience cannot be other than it is. However, judgments made from
experience can be erroneous, especially if they are based on images
rather than on what is perceived "in the full light." In
other words, Autrecourt denies any conflict of appearances. Those not
"in the full light" are not in themselves misperceptions
because the experiences themselves are not illusory. They merely fail
to give us the real properties of the object perceived. Potential
conflict creeps in at the level of judgment, where ontological claims
are made on the basis of appearances. Only those appearances that are
"in the full light" reveal the true properties of the
perceived object, and only they can provide the basis for true
judgments. Appearances of objects that do not come to the perceiver
"in the full light" are incomplete or contaminated, as if
the observer were looking into a mirror. In other words, Autrecourt
carefully distinguishes between '*x*
appears *F*' from '*x* is *F*',
for even if *x* is not really *F*, it can still appear
*F* and cause someone to believe that it is *F*. In this
way, illusions and dreams turn into mistaken beliefs. Only clear
appearances (*apparentiae clarae*) can cause veridical
judgments.




A final topic taken up by Autrecourt in this context is the problem of
the criterion: How can one discriminate between appearances that
provide the basis for true judgments and those that do not? Like
Aristotle, he holds that appearances from what we perceive under
"normal" conditions cause true judgments. Also like Aristotle, he
asserts that there is no further proof that the criterion on which the
distinction between veridical and false judgments rests is correct.
Both dismiss worries about the justification of the criterion as
absurd. In the words of Autrecourt: "One must accept as true what
appears in the full light. Now, concerning the minor premise of this
argument, how can you have certainty? ... One way of answering
this would be to say that there is no way of proving the conclusion,
but that the concept of certitude which is present comes as a certain
natural consequence, and not as a conclusion. An example, among
others, is that white and black are different. This concept of their
difference is not gotten by way of conclusion."




The reason why our senses can give us veridical access to the objects
is, because these objects determine the contents of what
appears. Autrecourt believes that there is a necessary connnection
between the mental act and the object of which it is a mental act. The
object "configurates" the mental act, which becomes identical to
it. The metaphysical foundation of this theory is Autrecourt's
realism: he assumes that the same universal nature manifests itself in
numerically different objects in the world, and in the mind, although
in the latter in a different mode of being (*secundum aliud esse
objectivum*) (Kaluza, 1998; Perler, in Caroti and Grellard,
2006).


## 6. Natural Philosophy




The point of departure for Autrecourt's physics is a thesis which
strikes him as more probable than its opposite, namely that all things
are eternal. Autrecourt assures the reader that he is speaking as a
natural philosopher, and that he is not contradicting Catholic
faith. One of the implications of his thesis is that there is no
generation or corruption in the universe. Autrecourt refutes
Averroes's (and Aristotle's) doctrine of prime matter in which
substantial forms are generated and corrupted. He replaces the theory
of hylemorphism, which attributes the coming-to-be and passing-away of
properties and of objects to forms that begin and cease to exist in
matter, by atomism. Change in the natural world is caused by the
movement of atoms. These atoms are to be understood as infinitely
small parcels of matter which have properties.




As Autrecourt explicitly indicates, his discussion of the eternity of
things is linked to his views on motion and on atomism. For this
reason, he places the section on the divisibility of matter in between
his treatment of eternity and of motion, "because some of the points
to be raised about indivisibles will prepare us for the question of
movement". What Autrecourt means is that a number of arguments about
the divisibility of space and time involve moving objects.




Autrecourt opens his discussion of atoms or indivisibles by restating
Aristotle's position that no continuum is composed of indivisibles. He
presents five arguments in support of this thesis, and places beside
them his own counterarguments, which are meant to prove "with
sufficient probability" the opposite conclusion. The section makes
clear that Autrecourt is familiar with the contemporary debates at
Paris about the divisibility of the continuum. It is not possible,
however, to identify his opponents, and at times his discussion lacks
coherence. In keeping with this atomistic view, he also holds that
space and time consist of indivisible units, viz., points and
instants, respectively.




The discussion of motion, which focuses on its ontological status, is
placed in the larger context of a discussion of quantity. The reason
is, that motion is one particular type of quantity, namely successive
quantity (as distinct from permanent quantity). Autrecourt argues that
material substance and its quantity are not distinct. The same holds
true for other characteristic properties of a substance, the sensible
qualities: they are not distinct from their substance. Autrecourt
claims, for instance, that fire and its heat and water and its
coldness are not distinct. At the background of this section is the
late-medieval debate about the basic ontological categories, induced
by Aristotle's *Categories* and *Metaphysics*. Given
these preliminaries, it comes as no surprise that Autrecourt also
defends the thesis that motion is not distinct from the mobile
object.




Autrecourt argues that motion is not a thing distinct from the
moving object. Following Ockham, he rejects the idea that motion is a
positive thing inhering in the mobile object. Thus, the loss of motion
should not be described as the destruction or corruption of an entity,
and the eternity doctrine is saved.


## 7. Semantics




Autrecourt did not leave any logical writings, nor does he discuss
logic or semantics in the *Exigit ordo* or in his
correspondence. However, from his theological question and a few of
the censured articles it is clear that he was familiar with the
logical debates of his time. According to one of the articles,
Autrecourt claimed that the proposition "Man is an animal"
is not necessary according to the faith, because in that sense one
does not attend to the necessary connection between its terms. The
article should be seen against the background of the sophism
"Man is an animal", which received considerable attention
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It served to clarify the
relation between meaning (*significatio*) and reference
(*suppositio*) by investigating the verification of
propositions concerning empty classes. Would the proposition
"Man is an animal" still be true if no man exists? This
article suggests that Autrecourt may have denied any form of natural
and metaphysical necessity, and for this reason was condemned (Zupko,
in Caroti and Grellard, 2006, p. 186)




Five other articles that turn up in Autreourt's condemnation
concern the *complexe significabile*, or what is signified by
an entire proposition. According to adherents of the doctrine such as
Adam Wodeham and Gregory of Rimini, the object of knowledge is not the
proposition, or the things (*res*) referred to in the external
world, but "that which is signified" by the proposition
(*complexe significabile*). One of the problems raised by this
theory concerned the ontological status of the *complexe
significabile*: Is it something (*aliquid*) or nothing
(*nihil)*? Echoes of this and other debates can be found in
these articles.