## 1. Life and Writings



James was born in Viterbo around 1255. Nothing is known about the
early years of his life. It is presumed that he joined the order of
the Hermits of St. Augustine somewhere around 1272. He is first
mentioned in 1283 in the capitular acts of the Roman province of his
order as a recently appointed lecturer (*lector*) in the
Augustinian Convent of Viterbo. This means that he must have spent the
previous five years (i.e., 1278-83) in Paris, as the Augustinian
order required its lecturers to be trained in theology in that city
for a period not exceeding five years. James returned to Paris not
long after his appointment in Viterbo, for he is mentioned again in
the capitular acts in 1288, this time as *baccalaureus
parisiensis*, i.e., as holding a bachelor of theology degree from
the University of Paris. After completing his course of studies, James
was appointed Master of Theology in 1292 (Wippel 1974) or 1293 (Ypma
1974), teaching in Paris for the next seven years. His output during
that time was considerable. All of his works in speculative theology
and metaphysics date from the Parisian period. In 1299-1300, he
was named *definitor* (i.e., member of the governing council)
of the Roman province by the general chapter of his order, and in May
of 1300 he became regent master of the order's *studium
generale* in Naples.  These would be the last two years of
his academic career, however, for in September 1302 he was named
Archbishop of Benevento by Pope Boniface VIII, possibly in gratitude
for the support James had shown for the papal cause in his great
treatise, *De regimine christiano* (*On Christian
Rulership*). In December of the same year, at the request of the
Angevin King, Charles II, he was transferred to the Archbishopric of
Naples. He remained in Naples until his death, in 1307 or 1308.



James wrote the bulk of his philosophically relevant work while in
Paris. Nothing remains of his early production in that city. His
commentary on Peter Lombard's *Sentences* has been lost,
although still extant is a so-called *Abbreviatio in I Sententiarum
Aegidii Romani* (*Summary of the First Book of the Sentences of
Giles of Rome*), which recent scholarship suggests might be
James' preparatory notes for lectures on the Sentences rather
than a summary of Giles' commentary to the same (Tavolaro 2018),
although it is unclear whether these notes were prepared during
James' student years in Paris or whether they date from his
later teaching in Naples. Also lost are a treatise on the animation of
the heavens (*De animatione caelorum*), as well as a commentary
on Aristotle's *Metaphysics* (*Expositio primae
philosophiae*), two works to which James refers explicitly in his
Quodlibets and which Ypma surmises must have been written during
James' four-year residency as a "formed bachelor",
i.e., between 1288 and 1292 (Ypma 1975).



James' most significant works written while in Paris are his
four quodlibetal questions and thirty-four disputed questions on the
categories as they pertain to divine matters (*Quaestiones de
praedicamentis in divinis*), although five of them have actually
nothing to do with theology or the categories, as they deal with the
human will and the habits (see Ypma 1975 for a possible explanation
regarding their inclusion in the *Quaestiones*). These two
works constitute the most important sources for our knowledge of
James' philosophical thought.



In Naples, James wrote the work for which he is arguably best known
(Gutierrez 1939: 61-2), the *De regimine
christiano*, an important work in the history of late medieval
political thought, and the only philosophical work he wrote in the
last eight or so years of his life.



James is not the author of two works that have been regularly
attributed to him by scholars, the *De perfectione specierum*
(Ypma 1974, Tavolaro 2014), and the *Quaestiones septem de
verbo* (*Seven Disputed Questions on the Divine Word*)
(Guttierez 1939, Scanzillo 1972, Ypma 1975). The author of the
*De perfectione specierum* is James of Saint Martin (Maier
1943), or James of Naples, as he is referred to in the manuscripts, an
Augustinian Hermit who was active in the late fourteenth century; and
the author of the *Quaestiones septem de verbo*, as Stephen
Dumont has recently shown (Dumont 2018b), was James'
confrere and near-successor at the head of the Augustinian
school in Paris, Henry of Friemar. 



The following table provides the list of James' authentic works
with approximate dates of composition. Single asterisks mark those
which have been fully edited; double asterisks indicate those for
which there exist only partial editions:


1. *Lectura super IV libros Sententiarum* (1286-1288)
2. *Quaestiones Parisius disputatae De praedicamentis in
divinis*\*\* (1293-1295)
3. *Quaestio de animatione caelorum* (1293-1296)
4. *Expositio primae philosophiae* (1293-1295)
5. *Quodlibeta quattuor*\* (1293-1298)
6. *Abbreviatio In Sententiarum Aegidii Romani*\*\* (1286-1288
or 1300-1302)
7. *De regimine christiano*\* (1302)
8. *Summa de peccatorum distinctione*\*\* (1300-1308)
9. *Sermones diversarum rerum*\*\* (1303-1308)
10. *Concordantia psalmorum David* (1302-1308)
11. *De confessione* (1302-1308)
12. *De episcopali officio*\* (1302-1308)


## 2. Philosophical Theology


### 2.1 Theology as a Practical Science



Like many of his contemporaries, James devotes serious attention to
determining the status of theology as a science and to specifying its
object, or rather, as the scholastics say, its subject. In
*Quodlibet* III, q. 1, he asks whether theology is principally
a practical or a speculative science. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, for an
Augustinian, James responds that the end of theology resides
principally not in the knowledge but in the love of God. The love of
God, informed by grace, is what distinguishes the way in which
Christians worship God from the way in which pagans worship their
deities. For philosophers--James has Cicero in
mind--religion is a species of justice; worship is owed to God as
a sign of submission. For the Christian, by contrast, there can be no
worship without an internal affection of the soul, i.e., without love.
James allows that there is some recognition of this fact in Book X of
the *Nicomachean Ethics*, for the happy man would not be
"most beloved of God," as Aristotle claims he is, if he
did not love God by making him the object of his theorizing. In this
sense, it can be said that philosophy as well sees its end as the love
of God as its principal subject. But there is a difference, James
contends, in the manner in which a science based on natural reason
aims for the love of God and the manner in which sacred science does
so: sacred science tends to the love of God more perfectly. One way in
which James illustrates the difference between both approaches is by
contrasting the ways in which God is the "highest" object
for metaphysics and for theology. The proper subject of metaphysics is
being, not God, although God is the highest being. Theology, on the
other hand, views God as its subject and considers being in relation
to God. Thus, James concludes, "theology is called divine or of
God in a much more excellent and principal way than metaphysics, for
metaphysics considers God only in relation to common being, whereas
theology considers common being in relation to God"
(*Quodl.* III, q. 1, p. 20, 370-374). Another way in
which James illustrates the difference between natural theology and
sacred science is by means of the distinction between the love of
desire (*amor concupiscientiae*) and the love of friendship
(*amor amicitiae*) to which I will return in section 7.3. James
defines the love of desire as "the love of some good which we
want for ourselves or for others," and the love of friendship as
"the love of someone for their own sake." The love of God
philosophers have in mind, James contends, is the love of desire; it
cannot, by the philosophers' own admission, be the love of
friendship, for according to the *Magna Moralia*, friendship
involves a form of community or sharing between the friends that
cannot possibly obtain between mere mortals and the gods. Now although
James concedes that a "community of life" between God and
man cannot be achieved by natural means, it is attainable through the
gift of grace. The particular friendship grace affords is called
charity and it is to the conferring of charity that sacred scripture
is principally ordered.


### 2.2 Divine Power



Like all scholastics since the early thirteenth century, James
subscribes to the distinction between God's ordained power,
according to which "God can only do what he preordained he would
do according to wisdom and will" (*Quodl.* I, q. 2, p.
17, 35-37) and his absolute power, according to which he can do
whatever is "doable," i.e., whatever does not imply a
contradiction. Problems concerning what God can or cannot do arise
only in the latter case. James considers several questions: can God
add an infinite number of created species to the species already in
existence (*Quodl.* I, q. 2)? Can he make matter exist without
form (*Quodl.* IV, q. 1)? Can he make an accident subsist
without a substrate (*Quodl.* II, q. 1)? Can he create the
seminal reason of a rational soul in matter (*Quodl.* III, q.
10)? In response to the first question, James explains, following
Giles of Rome but against the opinion of Godfrey of Fontaines and
Henry of Ghent, that God can by his absolute power add an infinite
number of created species *ad superius*, in the ascending order
of perfection, if not in actuality, then at least in potency. God
cannot, however, add even one additional species of reality *ad
inferius*, between prime matter and pure nothingness, not because
this exceeds his power but because prime matter is contiguous to
nothingness and leaves, so to speak, no room for God to exercise his
power (Cote 2009). James is more hesitant about the
second question. He is sympathetic both to the arguments of those who
deny that God can make matter subsist independently of form and to the
arguments of those who claim he can. Both positions can reasonably be
held, because each argues from a different (and valid) perspective.
Proponents of the first position argue from the point of view of
reason: because they rightly believe that God cannot make what implies
a contradiction, and because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that
making matter exist without form does involve a contradiction, they
conclude that God cannot make matter exist without form. Proponents of
the second group argue from the perspective of God's omnipotence
which transcends human reason: because they rightly assume that
God's power exceeds human comprehension, they conclude (rightly
or wrongly) that making matter exist without form is among those
things exceeding human comprehension that God can make come to
pass.



Another question James considers is whether God can make an accident
subsist without a subject or substrate. The question arises only with
respect to what he calls "absolute accidents," namely
quantity and quality, as opposed to relational accidents--the
remaining categories of accident. God clearly cannot make relational
accidents exist without a subject in which they inhere, for this would
entail a contradiction. This is so because relations for James, as we
will see in
 section 3.3
 below, are modes, not things. What about absolute accidents? As a
Catholic theologian, James is committed to the view that some
quantities and qualities can subsist without a subject, for instance
extension and color, a view for which he attempts to provide a
philosophical justification. His position, in a nutshell, is that
accidents are capable of existing independently if they are thing-like
(*dicunt rem*). Numbers, place (*locus*), and time are
not thing-like and are thus not capable of independent existence;
extension, however, is and so can be made to exist without a subject.
The same reasoning applies to quality. This is somewhat surprising,
for according to the traditional account of the Eucharist, whereas
extension may exist without a subject, the qualities, color, odor,
texture, necessarily cannot; they inhere in the extension. James,
however, holds that just as God can make thing-like quantities to
exist without a subject, so too must he be able to make a thing-like
quality exist without the subject in which it inheres. Just which
qualities are capable of existing without a subject is determined by
whether or not they are "modes of being," i.e., by whether
or not they are relational. This seems to be the case with health and
shape: health is a proportion of the humors, and so, relational;
likewise, shape is related to parts of quantity, without which,
therefore, it cannot exist. Colors and weight, by contrast, are
non-relational, according to James, and are thus in principle capable
of being made to exist without a subject.



The fourth question James considers in relation to God's
omnipotence raises the interesting problem of whether the rational
soul can come from matter. James proceeds carefully, claiming not to
provide a definitive solution but merely to investigate the issue
(*non determinando sed investigando*). The upshot of the
investigation is that although there are many good reasons (the
soul's immortality, its spirituality and its *per se*
existence) to say that God cannot produce the seminal reason of the
rational soul in matter, in the end, James decides, with the help of
Augustine, that such a possibility must be open to God. Thus, it is
true in the order which God has *de facto* instituted, that the
soul's incorruptibility is repugnant to matter, but this is not
so in absolute terms: if God can miraculously cause something to come
to existence through generation and confer immortality upon it (James
is presumably thinking of Christ), then he can make it come to pass
that souls are produced through generation without being subject to
corruption. Likewise, although it appears inconceivable that something
material could generate something endowed with *per se*
existence, it is not impossible absolutely speaking: if God can confer
separate existence upon an accident--despite the fact that
accidents naturally inhere in their substrates--then, in like
manner, he can confer separate existence upon a soul, although it has
a seminal reason in matter.


### 2.3 Divine Ideas



The scholastics held that because God is the creative cause of all
natural beings, he must possess the ideas corresponding to each of his
creatures. But because God is eternal and is not subject to change,
the ideas must be eternally present in him, although creatures exist
for only a finite period of time. This doctrine of course raised many
difficulties, which each author addressed with varying degrees of
success. One difficulty had to do with reconciling the multiplicity of
ideas with God's unity: since there are many species of being,
there must be a corresponding number of ideas; but God is one and,
hence, cannot contain any multiplicity. Another, directly related,
difficulty had to do with the ontological status of ideas: do ideas
have any reality apart from God? If one denied them any kind of
reality, it was hard to see how they could function as exemplar causes
of things; but to assign too much reality to them was to run the risk
of introducing multiplicity in God and undermining the *ex
nihilo* character of creation. 



One influential solution to these difficulties was provided by Thomas
Aquinas, who argued that divine ideas are nothing else but the diverse
ways in which God's essence is capable of being imitated, so
that God knows the ideas of things by knowing his essence. Ideas are
not distinct from God's essence, though they are distinct from
the essences of the things God creates (*De veritate*, q. 2, a.
3).



One can discern two answers to the problem of divine ideas in the
works of James of Viterbo. At an early stage of his career, in the
*Abbreviatio in Sententiarum Aegidii
Romani*--assuming one accepts, as seems reasonable, the
early dating suggested by Ypma (1975)--James defends a position
that is almost identical to that of Thomas Aquinas (Giustiniani 1979).
In his *Quodlibeta*, however, he defends a position that is
closer to that of Henry of Ghent. In the following I will sketch
James' position in the *Quodlibeta* as it provides the
most mature statement of his views. For detailed discussions, see
Gossiaux (2007) and Cote (2018). 



Although James agreed with the notion that ideas are to be viewed as
the differing ways in which God can be imitated, he did not think that
one could make sense of the claim that God knows other things by
cognizing his own essence unless one supposed that the essences of
those things preexist in some way (*aliquo modo*) in God.
James' solution is to distinguish two ways in which ideas are in
God's intellect. They are in God's intellect, firstly, as
identical with it, and, secondly, as distinct from it. The first mode
of being is necessary as a means of acknowledging God's unity;
but the second mode of being is just as necessary, for, as James puts
it (*Quodl.* I, q. 5, p. 64, 65-67), "if God knows
creatures before they exist, even insofar as they are other than him
and distinct (from him), that which he knows is a cognized object,
which must needs be something; for that which nowise exists and is
absolutely nothing cannot be understood."  But James also
thinks that the necessity of positing distinct ideas in God follows
from a consideration of God's essence. God enjoys the highest
degree of nobility and goodness. His mode of knowledge must be
commensurate with his nature. But according to Proclus, an author
James is quite fond of quoting, the highest form of knowledge is
knowledge through a thing's cause. That means that God knows
things through his own essence. More precisely, he knows things by
knowing his essence as the cause of those things, knowledge that is
distinct in James's view from God's mere knowledge of
himself.



Although James' insistence on the distinctness of ideas with
respect to God's essence is reminiscent of Henry of
Ghent's teaching, it is important to note, as has been stressed
by M. Gossiaux (2007), that James does not conceive of this
distinctness as Henry does. For Henry, ideas possess "being of
essence" (*esse essentiae*); James, by contrast, while
referring to divine ideas as things (*res*), is careful to add
that they are not things "in the absolute sense but only in a
qualified sense," viz., as cognized objects (*Quodl.* I,
q. 5, p. 63, 60). Thus, divine ideas for James possess a lesser degree
of distinction from God's essence than do Henry of
Ghent's. Nevertheless, because James did consider ideas to be
distinct in some sense from God, his position would be viewed by some
later authors--e.g., William of Alnwick--as compromising
divine unity. (See Cote 2016) 


## 3. Metaphysics


### 3.1 Analogy of Being



The concept of being, all the medievals agreed, is common. What was
debated was the nature of this commonness. According to James of
Viterbo, all commonness is founded on some agreement, and this
agreement can be either merely nominal or grounded in reality.
Agreement is nominal when the same name is predicated of wholly
different things, without there being any objective basis for the
application of the common name; such is the case of equivocal names.
Agreement is real in the following two cases: (1) if it is based on
some *essential* resemblance between the many things to which a
particular concept applies, in which case the concept applies to these
many things by virtue of the self-same *ratio* and is said of
them univocally; or (2) if that concept is truly common to the many
things of which it is said, although it is not said of them in
relation to the same nature (*ratio*), but rather it is said in
a prior sense of one and in a posterior sense of others, insofar as
they are related in a certain way to the first. A concept that is
predicated of things in this way is said to be analogous, and the
agreement displayed by the things to which it applies is said to be an
agreement of attribution (*convenientia attributionis*). James
believes that it is according to this sense of analogy that being is
said of God and creatures, and of substance and accident
(*Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis* I, q. 1, p. 25,
674-80). For being is said in a prior sense of God and in a
posterior sense of creatures by virtue of a certain relation between
the two; likewise, being is said first of substance and secondarily of
accidents, on account of the relation of posteriority accidents have
to substance. The reason why being is said in a prior sense of God and
in a secondary sense of creatures and, hence, the reason why the
'*ratio*' or nature of being is different in the
two cases is that being, in God, is "the very thing which God
is" (*Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis*, q. 1, p.
16, 412), whereas created being is only being through something added
to it. From this first difference follows a second, namely, that
created being is being by virtue of being related to an agent, whereas
uncreated being has no relation. These two differences can be
summarized by saying that divine being is being through itself
(*per se*), whereas created being is being through another
(*per aliud*) (*Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis*,
q. 1, p. 16, 425-6). In sum, being is said of God and creature,
but according to a different *ratio*: it is said of God
according to the proper and perfect nature of being, but of creatures
in a derivative or secondary way.


### 3.2 The Distinction of Being and Essence



The question of how being and essence are related to each other, and
in particular whether they are really identical or not, attracted
considerable interest in the last quarter of the thirteenth century,
with all major masters devoting some discussion to it. James of
Viterbo is no exception. Drawing his inspiration from Anselm's
semantics, he attempts to articulate a compromise solution (Gossiaux
2018) between the main competing solutions on offer in his day.



James' most detailed discussion of the distinction between being
and essence occurs in the context of a question that asks whether
creation could be saved if being (*esse*) and essence were not
different (*Quodl.* I, q. 4). His answer is that although he
finds it difficult to see how one could account for creation if being
and essence were not really different, he does not believe it is
necessary to conceive of the real distinction in the way in which
"certain Doctors" do. Which Doctors does he have in mind?
In *Quodl.* I, q. 4, he summarizes the views of three authors:
Godfrey of Fontaines, according to whom the distinction is only
conceptual (*secundum rationem*); Henry of Ghent, for whom
*esse* is only intentionally different from essence, a
distinction that is less than a real distinction but greater than a
verbal distinction; and finally, Giles of Rome, for whom *esse*
is one thing (*res*), and essence another. Thus, James agrees
with Giles, and disagrees with Henry and Godfrey, that the distinction
between being and essence is real; however, he disagrees with Giles
about the proper way of understanding the real distinction.



The starting point of his analysis is Anselm's statement in the
*Monologion* that the substantive *lux* (light), the
infinitive *lucere* (to-emit-light), and the present participle
*lucens* (emitting light) are related to each other in the same
way as *essentia* (essence), *esse* (to be), and
*ens* (being). The relation of *lucere* to *lux*,
James tells us, is the relation of a concrete term to an abstract one;
but this is just the relation that obtains between being and essence.
Now, a concrete term signifies more things than the corresponding
abstract term; for an abstract term signifies only a form, whereas the
concrete term signifies the form and the "subject", i.e.,
the bearer of the form; it is said to signify the former principally,
and the latter secondarily. So it is in the case of being and essence:
*esse* signifies the form (principally) and the subject
(secondarily), while essence signifies the form only. What is taken
for granted in this analysis is that the distinction between a form
and its bearer is a real one, at least in creatures. This is how James
achieves his compromise solution: *pace* Godfrey of Fontaines
and Henry of Ghent there is a real distinction (that between the
subject and the form) but *pace* Giles, it is real only in
qualified sense, since being principally signifies the same thing as
essence. 


### 3.3 Relations



James devotes five of his *Quaestiones de divinis
praedicamentis* (qq. 11-15), representing some 270 pages of
edited text, to the question of relations. It is with a view to
providing a proper account of divine relations, he explains, that it
is "necessary to examine the nature of relation with such
diligence" (*Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis*, q.
11, p. 12, 300-301). But before turning to Trinitarian
relations, James devotes the whole of q.11 to the status of relations
in general. The following account focuses exclusively on q. 11. James
in essence adopts Henry of Ghent's "modalist"
solution, which was to exercise considerable influence among late
thirteenth-century thinkers (Henninger 1989), although he disagrees
with Henry about the proper way of understanding what a mode is.



The question boils down to whether relations exist in some manner in
extra-mental reality or solely through the operation of the intellect,
like second intentions (species and genera). Many arguments can be
adduced in support of each position, as Simplicius had already shown
in his commentary on Aristotle's *Categories*--a
work that would have a decisive influence on James' thought. For
instance, in support of the view that relations are not real, one may
point out that the intellect is able to apprehend relations between
existents and non-existents, e.g., the relation between a father and
his deceased son; yet, there cannot be anything real in the relation
given that one of the two relata is a non-existent. But if so, then
the same must be true of all relations, as the intellectual operation
involved is the same in all cases. Another argument concerns the way
in which relations come to be and cease to be. This appears to happen
without any change taking place in the subject which the relation is
said to affect. For instance, a child who has lost his mother is said
to be an orphan until the age of eighteen, at which point it ceases to
be one, although no change has occurred: "the relation recedes
or ceases by reason of the mere passage of time."



But good reasons can also be found in support of the opposing view.
For one, Aristotle clearly considers relations to be real, as they
constitute one of the ten categories that apply to things outside the
soul. Furthermore, according to a view commonly held by the
scholastics, the perfection of the universe cannot consist solely of
the perfection of the individual things of which it is made; it is
also determined by the relations those things have to each other;
hence, those relations must be real.



The correct solution to the question of whether relations are real or
not, James contends, depends on assigning to a given relation no more
but no less reality than is fitting to it. Those who rely on arguments
such as the first two above to infer that relations are entirely
devoid of reality are guilty of assigning relations too little
reality; those who appeal to arguments such as the last two, showing
that relations are distinct from their subjects in the way in which
things are distinct from each other, assign too great a degree of
reality to relations. The correct view must lie somewhere in between:
relations are real, but are not distinct from their subjects in the
way one thing is distinct from another.



That they must be real is sufficiently shown by the first Simplician
arguments mentioned above, to which James adds some others of his own.
However, showing that they are not things is slightly more
complicated. James' position, in fact, is that relations are not
things "properly and absolutely speaking," but only
"in a certain way according to a less proper way of
speaking." A relation is not a thing in an absolute sense
because of the "meekness" of its being, for which reason
"it is like a middle point between being and non-being"
(*Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis*, q. 11, p. 30,
668-9). The reasoning behind this last statement is as follows:
the more intrinsic some principle is to a thing, the more that thing
is said to be through it; what is maximally intrinsic to a thing is
its substance; a thing is therefore maximally said to be on account of
its substance. Now a thing's being related to another is, in the
constellation of accidents that qualify that thing, what is minimally
intrinsic to it and thus farthest from its being, and so closest to
non-being. But if relations are not things, at least in the absolute
sense, what are they? James answers that they are *modes* of
being of their foundations. "The mode of being of a thing does
not differ from the thing in such a way as to constitute another
essence or thing. The relation, therefore, is not different from its
foundation" (*Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis*, q.
11, p. 33, 745-7). Speaking of relations as modes allows us to
acknowledge their reality, as attested by experience, without
hypostasizing them. A certain number's being equal to another is
clearly something distinct from the number itself. The number and its
being equal are two "somethings" (*aliqua*), says
James; they are not, however, two *things*; they are two in the
sense that one is a thing (the number) and the other is a mode of
being of the number.



In making relations *modes* of being of the foundation, James
was clearly taking his cue from Henry of Ghent, "the chief
representative of the modalist theory of relation" (Henninger
1989). For Henry and James, relations are real in the sense that they
are distinct from their foundations and belong to extra mental
reality. However, James' understanding of the way in which a
relation is a mode differs from Henry's. For Henry, a
thing's mode is the same thing as its *ratio* or nature;
it is the particular type of being that thing has, what
"specifies" it. But according to James'
understanding of the term, a mode lies *beyond* the
*ratio* of a thing, like an accident of that thing
(*Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis*, p. 34,
767-8).



In conclusion, one could say that in his discussion of relations,
James was guided by the same motivation as many of his contemporaries,
namely securing the objectivity of relations without conferring
full-blooded existence upon them. Relations do exhibit some form of
being, James believed, but it is a most faint one
(*debilissimum*), the existence of a mode qua accident.


### 3.4 Individuation



James discusses individuation in two places: *Quodl.* I, q. 21
and *Quodl.* II, q. 1. I will focus on the first treatment,
because it is the lengthier of the two and because the tenor of
James' brief remarks on individuation in *Quodl.* II, q.
1, despite certain similarities with his earlier discussion (Wippel
1994), make it hard to see how they fit into an overall theory of
individuation.



The question James faces in *Quodl.* I, q. 21 is a markedly
theological one, namely whether, if the soul were to take on the ashes
or the matter of another man at resurrection, the resulting individual
would be the same as before resurrection. In order to answer that
question, James tells us, it is first necessary to determine what the
cause of numerical unity is in the case of composite beings. There
have been numerous answers to that question and James provides a short
account of each. Some philosophers have appealed to quantity as the
principle of numerical unity; others to matter; others yet to matter
as subtending indeterminate dimensions; finally, others have turned to
form as the cause of individuation. According to James, each of these
answers is part of the correct explanation though each is insufficient
if taken on its own. The correct view, according to him, is that form
and matter taken together are the principal causes of numerical
identity in the composite, with quantity contributing something
"in a certain manner." Form and matter, however, are
principal causes in different ways; more precisely, each accounts for
a different kind of numerical unity. For by 'singularity'
we can really mean two distinct things: we can mean the mere fact of
something's being this or that singular thing, or we can point
to a thing qua "something complete and perfect within a certain
species" (*Quodl.* I, 21, 227, 134-35). It is
matter that accounts for the first kind of singularity, and form for
the second. Put otherwise, the kind of unity that accrues to a thing
on account of its being a mere singular results from the concurrence
of the "substantial" unity provided by matter and the
"accidental" unity provided by quantity. By contrast, the
unity that characterizes a thing by virtue of the perfection or
completeness it displays is conferred to it by the form, which is the
principle of perfection and actuality in composites.



Although James thinks he can quite legitimately enlist the support of
such prestigious authorities as Aristotle and Averroes in favor of the
view that matter and form together are constitutive of a thing's
numerical unity, his solution has struck commentators as a somewhat
contrived and ad hoc attempt to reach a compromise solution at all
costs (Pickave 2007; Wippel 1994). James, it has been
suggested, "seems to be driven by the desire to offer a
compromise position with which everyone can to some extent
agree" (Pickave 2007: 55). Such a suggestion does accord
with James' oft-expressed preference for solutions that present
a "middle way" (*media via*) among competing
theories (*Quaestiones de divinis praedicamentis*, q. 11, p.
23, 513; *Quodl.* II, q. 7, p. 108, 118; *De regimine
christiano*, 210; see also *Quodl.* II, q. 5, p. 65,
208-209), although these professions of moderation must
sometimes be taken with a grain of salt, as we will see in
 Section 8
 below.


## 4. Natural Philosophy (The Doctrine of Seminal Reasons)



The belief that matter contains the 'seeds' of all the
forms that can possibly accrue to it is one of the hallmarks of James
of Viterbo's thought, as is the belief that the soul
pre-contains, in the shape of "fitnesses"
(*idoneitates*), all the sensitive, intellective, and
volitional forms it is able to take on, though, as we will see, there
is an important difference between both cases. I will present
James' doctrine of "fitnesses" in the intellect in
 Section 6,
 and his doctrine of fitnesses in the will in
 Section 6.
 In this section, I review James' arguments in favor of seminal
reasons (For a full account see Pickave and Cote
2018). 



James takes as the point of departure of his analysis of change the
view commonly attributed to Aristotle by the medievals according to
which substantial change involves a natural agent educing a form from
the potency of matter. His contention is that for the form to be
educed from prime matter it has to preexist in prime matter in an
"incipient or inchoate" state. Otherwise the forms would
have to be put into matter by an external cause. That cause could only
be a natural agent or a supernatural one. It cannot be the latter, for
then change would no longer be natural; but nor can it be the former
because James holds that forms do not "migrate" from one
substance to another. Hence the forms must preexist in matter. 



James holds that the inchoate form present in matter is the same as
the full-fledged, actualized form, differing from it only modally
(*Quodl.* II, q. 5, p. 70, 386-388). To the objection
that if this were true nothing "new" would result from the
process of change, he responded by pointing out that the assumption
that natural change results in the emergence of new things is rejected
by no less an authority than Averroes himself, who denies that natural
agents "induce something extrinsic in matter"
(*Quodl.* II, q. 5, p. 77, 621). What newness does result from
natural change is accounted for by the modal difference between the
potential and the actualized form.



James holds that natural change requires two active principles: that
of the potential form existing in potency in matter, i.e., the seminal
reason, and that of the extrinsic natural agent acting on the matter.
He explicitly denies that the potential form on its own is a
sufficient cause of change (*Quodl.* II, q. 5, p. 89,
1012-1014). The first active principle is that of the inchoate
form itself: it is active "by means of inclination", that
is, it is active inasmuch as it naturally tends to its actualization.
The second active principle is the extrinsic agent that educes the
form from matter; it is active by means of *transmutation*,
i.e., by efficiently causing the change by virtue of the power of
acting (*virtus agendi*) conferred upon it by God. Both causes
cooperate in the production of the effect.



Although James teaches that there are preexisting ideas and volitions
in the soul similarly to the way in which seminal reasons preexist in
matter, there is an important difference between the two cases. For
the "inclining principles" in matter, he explains in
*Quodl.* III, q. 4 (p. 70, 416-424), stand farther from
their actualization than do the inclining principles in the soul. They
thus require more on the part of the extrinsic transmutative cause
than do the soul's inclining principles. So much so, James
explains, that it sometimes appears that all the work is being done by
the extrinsic agent. This is not so, of course, as the
"intrinsic inclining principle" also plays a role. Because
James assigns such an important role to external agent causes in his
account of natural change, one of the common complaints directed
against theories of seminal reasons, namely that they deny the reality
of secondary causes, clearly does not apply to his version of the
theory. 



James' doctrine of seminal reasons would elicit considerable
criticism in the early fourteenth century and beyond (Phelps 1980).
The initial reaction came from Dominicans. Bernard of Auvergne wrote a
series of *Impugnationes* (i.e., refutations) *contra
Jacobum de Viterbio* (see Pattin 1962 and Cote 2016),
attacking various aspects of James' metaphysics, including his
theory of seminal reasons; and John of Naples later argued against
James' distinction between the potency of matter and matter *tout court.*  James' theory also encountered resistance from
within the Augustinian Order, e.g., from Alphonsus Vargas of Toledo.
Even arts masters entered the fray. The Milanese arts master Maino de
Maineri devoted a lengthy section of one of his questions in his
question-commentary on Averroes' *De substantia orbis*
dating from 1315-1317 to a presentation and rebuttal of James'
theory of natural change (see Cote 2019). 


## 5. The Soul and Its Powers



According to Aristotle in the *De anima*," the soul is in
a sense all things." James wants to infer from this that all
things must somehow preexist in the soul "by a certain
conformity and resemblance." (*Quodl.* I, q. 7, p. 91,
403). James distinguished between three sorts of conformity: the
conformity between the sense and the sensibles, that between the
intellect and intelligibles, and that between the will and appetibles.
He thus believed that all sensibles must preexist in the sense-power,
all intelligibles in the intellective power, and all
"appetibles" in the appetitive power, i.e., the will. They
do not preexist in their fully actualized state, of course; but nor do
they preexist as purely indeterminate capacities: James holds that
they preexist as "incomplete actualities," innate and
permanent qualities of the soul tending toward their actualization.
Borrowing from Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's
*Categories,* James described a power of the soul as a
"general (*communis*) aptitude (*aptitudo*) or a
fitness (*idoneitas*) with respect to the complete act"
(*Quodl.* I, q. 7, p. 92, 421) that is divided into further
specific "fitnesses" (*speciales idoneitates*),
"following the diversity of objects" of that power. For
instance, intellect is a general *idoneitas* that is subdivided
in specific *idoneitates* "following the diversity"
of intelligibles. Despite what the phrase "following the
diversity" would have us believe, James did not assert that the
division of fitnesses in the soul exactly mapped the division of kinds
of objects. Though he was clearly committed to some correspondence
between the two, he believed it was not possible in this life to know
how far the division into specific "fitnesses" proceeded,
and hence how many "fitnesses" there are in the soul. 



In addition to explaining how the soul's powers relate to
intelligibles, sensibles and appetibles, James also described their
relation to occurrent *acts* of understanding, sensing, and
willing. As with seminal reasons, an aptitude in potency in the soul
and the corresponding actualized aptitude were not viewed as really
but only as modally distinct (*Quodl.* III, q. 5, p. 84,
62-63). James also held that each power was both passive and
active in relation to its actualization: passive inasmuch as a power
qua power is not yet actualized, active insofar as it tends toward its
actualization (*Quodl.* I, q. 12, p. 165, 281-285). To
the argument that nothing could be both active and passive in the same
respect, James responded that this was true only of *transeunt*
actions, such as fire heating a pot, which require the active cause of
change to be distinct from the passive recipient of change, not of
*immanent* actions, as are the operations of the soul.



Although James held that all the soul's powers were active, they
were not so to the same degree: the will and its aptitudes were
considered to be more active and thus "closer" to their
actualization than those of the intellect; and the intellect and its
aptitudes, in turn, were viewed as more active and closer to their
actualization than those of the senses. Accordingly, James considered
that the more active an aptitude or "inclining principle"
was, the more causal power it had and the less causal input it
required from other sources.



From the foregoing it is easy to see what position James would take in
what was a commonly discussed topic in the thirteenth century, namely
the problem whether or not the "essence" of the soul was
really different from its powers. The position espoused by the
scholastics whose teachings James studies most carefully, namely
Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, and Godfrey of Fontaines was the soul
was indeed really distinct from its powers. There was, however, a
commonly discussed minority position, one that eschewed both real
distinction and strict identity (which had few followers): that of
Henry of Ghent. Henry believed that the powers of the soul were
"intentionally," not really distinct from its essence.
James, however, sided with Thomas, Giles, and Godfrey, against Henry
(*Quodl.* II, q. 14, p. 160, 70-71; *Quodl.* III,
q. 5, 56-84,63). His reasoning was as follows. Given that
everyone agreed that there was a real distinction between the essence
of the soul and one of its powers in *act*, that is, between
the soul and, e.g., an occurrent act of willing, then if one denied
that there was a real distinction between the soul and its powers, as
Henry had, one would be committed to the existence of a real
distinction between the power in act (the occurrent act of willing)
and that same power in potency (the will qua capable of produce that
act). But as we have already seen, James believed that something in
potency is not really distinct from that same thing in act. Hence the
soul's essence must be distinct from its powers.


## 6. Cognition



James' longest discussion of cognition occurs in question 12 of
his first Quodlibet, which asks whether it is necessary to posit an
agent intellect in the human soul that is distinct from the possible
intellect (for discussion see Cote 2013, and
Solere 2018a and 2018b). Since the view that there is such a
distinction was an important component of abstraction theories of
knowledge, what was really at stake was whether abstraction theory
provided the correct account of knowledge acquisition. According to
abstraction theory, of which Aquinas was one of the most famous
exponents, the mind derives its content from an engagement with
sense-images (phantasms). The agent intellect, a "part" of
the intellectual soul, was held to abstract intelligible species from
the sense-images, and these species were then "received"
by the possible intellect. Since the same power could not be both
active and passive, the two intellects had to be distinct. As can be
gathered from the preceding section, James would not be favorably
disposed to such a theory. Since intelligibles, for him, preexisted in
the soul in the form of "aptitudes" or
"fitnesses," there was no need for them to be abstracted;
and since the main reason for positing an agent intellect was to
perform abstraction, there was no reason to suppose that such a
faculty existed -- which is exactly the position he defended in
question 12. James' theory of innate  *idoneitates* in
the soul thus entailed a wholesale rejection of abstraction theories
of knowledge and of the model of the soul on which they rested
(Cote 2013). 



James was well aware that by denying the distinction between the two
intellects, he was opposing the consensus view of Aristotle
commentators. Indeed, his views seem to run counter to the *De
anima* itself, though, as he would mischievously point out, it was
difficult to determine just what Aristotle's doctrine was, so
obscure was its formulation (*Quodl.* I, q. 12, p. 169,
426--170, 439). He explained that what he was denying was not
that there was a "difference" in the intellect--the
soul's powers did exhibit such a difference since they were both
active and passive--rather, what he was denying was that's the
existence of a difference implied a real distinction of powers
(*Quodl.* I, q. 12, p. 170, 440-45).



As far as James was concerned the relevant question was not how
intelligibles are abstracted so as to produce occurrent acts of
cognition, but rather how innate intellectual aptitudes can develop
into occurrent acts of cognition. The key to his solution lay in his
view that aptitudes actively tend toward their completion. James
described such active inclination as a kind of
self-motion--*formal* self-motion-which he viewed as
the main created causal contributor to a power's actualization.
But of course "main causal contributor" does not mean
"sole causal contributor.;" Although the soul's
powers stand closer to their actualization and exercise greater formal
self-motion than do the seminal reasons in matter, and although the
intellect and its aptitudes likewise stand closer to their
actualization and exercise greater self-motion than do the senses and
their aptitudes, no "fitness" on its own is sufficient to
bring about its actualization (*Quodl.* I, q. 7, p. 102,
777-778; something further is required. In the case of the
senses, what is required is the "excitative" causality
(*excitatio*) exercised by the physical change in the organ of
sense; in the case of the intellect, it is the excitative causality
supplied by the phantasm. In both cases, James held that the
power's formal self-motion together with the
"rousing" action stemming from the organ or the phantasm
necessarily entailed their effect.



James of Viterbo is thus part of a group of thinkers in the history of
philosophy for whom the intellect itself, as opposed to extra-mental
objects or their proxies in the soul, is the main causal factor not
only of the production of acts of knowledge but of their conceptual
content as well. Indeed, for James, that content is already present in
the soul in the form of general and specific "fitnesses"
or "aptitudes." The aptitudes are innate (*naturaliter
inditae*, "always present in [the soul]"
(*Quodl.* I, q. 7, p. 92, 422-423), ready to be
actualized in the presence of the appropriate triggering factors. Few
other scholastics were ready to espouse such an extreme form of
innatism, which some scholars have likened to the theory innate ideas
of the Early Moderns (Solere 2018a).


## 7. Ethics


### 7.1 Freedom of the Will



The scholastics all agreed that the human will is free. They also
agreed that the will and the intellect both played a role in the
genesis of the voluntary act. What they disagreed about was which of
the two faculties had the decisive role. For Henry of Ghent, the will
was the sole cause of its free acts (*Quodl*. I, q. 17), so
much so that he tended to relegate the intellect's role to that
of a "sine qua non" cause. At the other end of the
spectrum of opinions, Godfrey of Fontaines held that the will is
always passive in regard to the intellect and that it is the intellect
that exercises the decisive motion in producing the voluntary act
(*Quodl*. III, q. 16). Although James of Viterbo used language
apt to suggest that he wanted to steer a middle course between Henry
and Godfrey (*Quodl*. II, q. 7), his preferences clearly lay
with a position like that of Henry's, as can be gathered from
his most detailed treatment of the question in *Quodl*. I, q. 7
(see Dumont 2018a for a complete treatment of the issue in James).



James' thesis in *Quodl*. I, q. 7 was that the will both
moves itself and is moved by another. An agent that is moved by
another can be said to be free as long as it also moves itself in some
way. The human will is just such an agent: it is moved by itself; but
it is also moved by another, namely by the object of willing outside
the soul, and it is moved by that same object insofar as it is
apprehended by the intellect. To explain how this was so, James used
Aquinas' distinction between the specification of an act of will
(the will's willing this as opposed to that) and the exercise of
the act (the will's actually willing this). The will formally
moves itself in regard to the exercise of its act; it is moved by the
object outside the soul in regard to the specification of its act; and
it is moved by the intellect, or more precisely by the object as
apprehended by the intellect, both in regard to the specification and
the exercise of its act. James called the motion by which the will was
specified by the object as apprehended by the intellect
"metaphorical" motion, as distinct from
"proper" motion. Final causes were metaphorical movers in
this sense. James called the motion by which the will is moved to its
exercise by the object as apprehended by the intellect
*efficient* motion. This is *prima facie* a surprising
move given what we know about James' theory of the soul as a
self-mover. For even though James was keen to show that the will
cannot, so to speak, "go it alone," did not making the
object as understood by the intellect the efficient cause of the
will's exercise to act risk tilting the causal balance too far
in the direction of the intellect? But in fact if the intellect was an
efficient cause, it wasn't so in the usual sense of the word
"efficient." James claimed to follow Aristotle in
*Metaphysics* in distinguishing two ways in which something
could be moved efficiently. The first was through direct efficient
causation; in this sense, only God was the efficient cause of the
will's motion. The second sense was through "a certain
connection" that obtains between two things that are rooted in
the same subject. It is this second sense that is relevant for
understanding how the intellect moves the will. As James understood
the matter, "because the will and the intellect are rooted and
connected in the same essence of the soul, it follows that when the
soul is in actuality in relation to the intellect, there arises
(*fit*) in the soul a certain inclination such that it becomes
in actuality in relation to the will, with the result that (the will)
moves itself." It is, he concluded, "on account of that
inclination that the intellect moves the will;" and the motion
by which it does so can be termed a "rousing up"
(*excitatio*) ( *Quodl.* I, q. 7, p. 104,
849-855). 



Thus, despite what the language of "efficiency" might
suggest, James' account of how the intellect moves the will is
similar to his account of how the sense organ moves the power of sense
and how the imagination moves the intellect: in all three cases the
motion is of the "excitatory" variety; the power itself as
the formal cause of its acts supplies the lion's share of the
voluntary act's causality. If anything, the will itself can be
considered to be an efficient cause (in the first sense of the word),
if only *per accidens.* This is because the will, like heavy
objects but unlike the intellect and the senses, belongs to the class
of things that both move themselves formally and move others
efficiently. Thus, just as a heavy object is formally self-moved as a
result of its heaviness but moves another efficiently inasmuch as it
divides the medium it traverses, so too the will is a self-mover that
efficiently moves the intellect and the other faculties, and hence can
be said to move itself  *per accidens* (*Quodl.* I, q.
7, p. 98, 633-640). 



What is unclear is how any of the above makes the will's
volitions free. After all, by James' own admission, the senses
and the intellect are also formal self-movers, and yet they are not
free. The difference is that whereas acts of sensation and
intellection, given the self-motion of the senses and the intellect,
will necessarily follow upon the motions of the organs of sense and
the motion of the imagination, no act of willing according to James is
necessitated by the efficient causality (in James' sense of the
word) of the intellect. Thus, although any act of willing must be
preceded by an act of the intellect, no act of the intellect
necessarily entails a particular act of willing. This makes the will
the only power of the soul that is essentially free, though some other
powers may be called free "by participation," insofar as
they are apt to be moved by the will. (*Quodl.* I, q. 7, p.
107, 935-944) 


### 7.2 Connection of the Virtues



Like Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, James of Viterbo holds that
the moral virtues, considered as habits, i.e., virtuous dispositions
or acts, are "connected." In other words, he believes that
one cannot have one of the virtues without having the others as well.
The virtues he has in mind are what he calls the "purely"
moral virtues, that is, courage, justice, and temperance, which he
distinguishes from prudence, which is a partly moral, partly
intellectual virtue. In his discussion in *Quodl*. II, q. 17
James begins by granting that the question is difficult and proceeds
to expound Aristotle's solution to it, which he will ultimately
adopt. As James sees it, Aristotle proves in *Nicomachean
Ethics* VI the connection of the purely moral virtues by showing
their necessary relation to prudence, and this is to show that just as
moral virtue cannot be had without prudence, prudence cannot be had
without moral virtue. The connection of the purely moral virtues
follows from this: they are necessarily connected because (1) each is
connected to prudence and (2) prudence is connected to the virtues
(*Quodl*. II, q. 17, p. 187, 436 - p. 188, 441).


### 7.3 Love of Self vs. Love of God



Although there has never been any doubt among medieval theologians
that man ought to love God more than he loves himself, medieval
theologians did disagree about whether man can fulfill this obligation
by purely natural means or whether he requires grace in order to do
so. The consensus in the thirteenth century, shared, among other
authors, by Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, and Godfrey of Fontaines,
was that although perfect love of God is possible only through grace,
man does have the natural capacity to love God more than himself (See
Osborne 2005 for discussion of the topic in the thirteenth century,
including in James of Viterbo). Many of these authors believed that
granting man such a capacity was necessary in order to safeguard the
universally accepted principle that "grace perfects, not
destroys, nature". For if man is naturally inclined to love
himself more than God and is made to love God more than himself only
through grace, then that natural inclination is not so much perfected
as replaced by a different one. Against these authors, James of
Viterbo in his *Quodlibet* II, question 20 famously defended
the view that man naturally loves himself more than God. Before
stating James' argument in support of this position, it is
important to be attentive to the precise way in which he formulated
the question, as well as to how he understands the term
"love" (*diligere*). 



First, the question James raised in *Quodl.* II, q. 20, was not
(a): "Does man naturally love God more than he loves
himself?" or (b): "Does man naturally love himself more
than God," but rather (c): "Does man naturally love God
more than himself, or the converse (*vel econverso*)?"
What (c), but not (a) or (b), rules out is that man can love himself
and God equally. James did not think that this was so. He compared the
case of self-love vs. love of God to the distinction between natural
and supernatural knowledge: "Natural knowledge starts from
creatures and proceeds thence to God; contrariwise, supernatural
knowledge begins with God and proceeds thence to creatures."
Since the distinction between natural and supernatural knowledge is
exhaustive and mutually exclusive, there is no other kind of
knowledge, and hence none that would proceed "equally"
from creatures and God. But for the comparison between knowledge and
love to hold, the conclusion that applies to the former must apply to
the latter, and that conclusion is that if man does not love God more
than himself, then he loves himself more than God; and conversely.



Second, following the practice of many scholastics, James
distinguished between two forms of love: the "love of
desire" or "love of covetousness" (*amor
concupiscentiae*), which he defined as the "love of some
good which we want for ourselves or for others," and the love of
friendship (*amor amicitiae*), or the love of someone for their
own sake. Although James believed that rational creatures love God in
both these ways, he was clear that the debate about whether or not man
loves himself more than God or the converse concerned only the love of
friendship; the debate, then, was about whether man naturally loves
himself for his own sake more than he loves God for his own
sake--which was the view James defended--or the converse.




James offered two arguments to support his position. The first was
based on the principle that the mode of natural love must be
commensurate with the mode of being and, hence, of the mode of being
one--since everything that is is one. Now a thing is one with
itself by virtue of numerical identity, but it is one with something
else by virtue of a certain conformity. For instance, Socrates is one
with himself by virtue of his being Socrates, but he is one with Plato
by virtue of the fact that both share the same form. But the being
something has by virtue of numerical identity is "greater"
than the being it has by reason of something it shares with another.
And given that the species of natural love follows the mode of being,
it follows that it is more perfect to love oneself than to love
another (*Quodl*. II, q. 20, p. 206, 148 - p. 149, 165).
The second argument attempted to derive the same conclusion from the
principle that "God's love of charity elevates [human]
nature's" love of God ( *Quodl.* II, q. 20, p. 207,
166-167). James reasoned that there was only one way in which
charity could elevate nature, namely by making it love God above all
else. But if this was so, it had to follow "that nature in
itself cannot love God in this way (...). For if it could, it would
not need to be elevated by charity." (*Quodl.* II, q. 20,
p. 207, 181-184). And for James to say that nature itself cannot
love God above all else was just to say that man naturally loves
himself above all else. QED.



But if charity elevated nature in this way, did it not
"destroy" nature after all, by substituting for the
inclination to love the self above all else the entirely different
inclination to love God above all else? James' answer was that
it did not, since "through charity man loves himself no less
than before; he simply loves God more." (*Quodl.* II, q.
20, p. 210, 280-282).



James' opposition to the consensus position on the issue of the
love of self vs. love of God did not go unnoticed. It elicited
considerable criticism in the years following his death, from such
authors as Durand of Saint-Pourcain, Peter of Palude, and John
of Naples (Jeschke 2009).


## 8. Political Thought



Although James touches briefly on political issues in *Quodl*.
I, q. 17 (see Kempshall, 1999, and Cote, 2012), his most
extensive discussions occur in his celebrated *De regimine
christiano* (*On Christian Government*), written in 1302
during the conflict pitting Boniface VIII against the king of France
Philip IV (the Fair). *De regimine christiano* is often
compared in aim and content with Giles of Rome's *De
ecclesiastica potestate* (*On Ecclesiastical Power*), which
offers one of the most extreme statements of pontifical supremacy in
the thirteenth century; indeed, in the words of *De
regimine*'s editor, James' goal is "to formulate
a theory of papal monarchy that is every bit as imposing and ambitious
as that of [Giles]" (*De regimine christiano*: xxxiv).
However, as scholars have also recognized, James shows a greater
sensitivity to the distinction between nature and grace than Giles did
(Arquilliere 1926). 



*De regimine christiano* is divided into two parts. The first,
dealing with the theory of the Church, is of little philosophical
interest, save for James' enlisting of Aristotle to show that
all human communities, including the Church, are rooted in the
"natural inclination of mankind." The second and longest
part is devoted to defining the nature and extent of Christ's
and the pope's power. One of James' most characteristic
doctrines is found in Book II, chapter 7, where he turns to the
question of whether temporal power must be "instituted" by
spiritual power, in other words, whether it derives its legitimacy
from the spiritual, or possesses a legitimacy of its own. James states
outright that spiritual power does institute temporal power, but notes
that there have been two views in this regard. Some, e. g., the
proponents of the so-called "dualist" position such as
John Quidort of Paris, hold that the temporal power derives directly
from God and thus in no way needs to be instituted by the spiritual,
while others, such as Giles of Rome in *De ecclesiastica
potestate*, contend that the temporal derives wholly from the
spiritual and is devoid of any legitimacy whatsoever "unless it
is united with spiritual power in the same person or instituted by the
spiritual power" (*De regimine christiano*: 211).



James is dissatisfied with both positions and, as he so often does,
endeavors to find a "middle way" between them. His
solution is to say that the "being" of the temporal
power's institution comes both from God--by way of
man's natural inclination--in "a material and
incomplete sense," and from the spiritual power by which it is
"perfected and formed." This is a very clever solution. On
the one hand, by rooting the temporal power in man's natural
inclination, albeit in the imperfect sense just mentioned, James was
acknowledging the legitimacy of temporal rule independently of its
connection to the spiritual, thus "avoid[ing] the extreme and
implausible view of [Giles of Rome]" (Dyson 2009: xxix). On the
other hand, making the natural origins of temporal power merely the
incomplete matter of its being was a way of stressing its
subordination and inferiority to the spiritual order, in keeping with
his papalist convictions. Still, James' very choice of analogies
to illustrate the relationship between the spiritual and temporal
realms showed that his solution lay much closer to the theocratic
position espoused by Giles of Rome than his efforts to find a
"middle way" would have us believe. Thus, comparing the
spiritual power's relation to the temporal in terms of the
relation of light to color, he explains that although "color has
something of the nature of light, (...) it has such a feeble
light that, unless there is present a more excellent light by which it
may be formed, not in its own nature but in its power, it cannot move
the vision" (*De regimine christiano*: 211). In other
words, James is telling us that although temporal power does originate
in man's natural inclinations, it is ineffectual qua power
unless it is informed by the spiritual.