1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Durand, Guillaume (of St Pourçain)

DURAND, GUILLAUME (d. 1334), French scholastic theologian, known also by the Latin form of his name as Durandus of St Pourçain (de Sancto Porciano), and as Doctor Resolutissimus, was born at St Pourçain-sur-Sioule in the Bourbonnois. He entered the Dominican order at Clermont, and in 1313 was made a doctor in Paris, where he taught till Pope John XXII. called him to Avignon as master of the sacred palace, i.e. theological adviser and preacher to the pope. He subsequently became bishop of Limoux (1317), of Le Puy (1318) and of Meaux (1326). He composed a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, in which, breaking with the realism of St Thomas Aquinas, he anticipated the terminism of William of Occam, and gave up the attempt to show that dogmas can be demonstrated by reason. In the question of the beatific vision, arising out of opinions promulgated by John XXII. (q.v.), he sided with Thomas Walleis, Armand de Bellovisu and the doctors of the faculty of theology in Paris against the pope, and composed his De statu animarum post separationem a corpore. Mention should also be made of his De origine jurisdictionum quibus populus regitur, sive de jurisdictione ecclesiastica et de legibus.

See B. Hauréau, Histoire de la philosophie scolastique (2nd ed., Paris, 1872); C. Werner, Die Scholastik des späteren Mittelalters, vol. ii. (Vienna, 1883); H. S. Denifle, in Archiv f. Litteratur und Kirchengeschichte, ii. (1886); U. Chevalier, Rép. des sources hist. du moyen âge, s.v. Durand de St Pourçain.