1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Raymond of Sabunde

RAYMOND OF SABUNDE, or Sabiende (fl. 1434), Spanish scholar, was a teacher of medicine and philosophy and finally regius professor of theology at Toulouse. His Liber noturae sive creaturarnm, f9°c. (written 1454-36), marks an important stage in the history of Natural Theology. The book was directed against the position then generally held, that reason and faith, philosophy and theology were antithetical and irreconcilable. Raymond declares that the book of Nature and the Bible are both Divine revelations, the one general and immediate, the other specific and mediate. The Editio Princeps of the book, which found many imitators, is undated but probably belongs to 1484; there are many subsequent editions, one by J. F. von Seidel as late as 1852. In 1595 the Prologus was put on the Index for its declaration that the Bible is the only source of revealed truth. Montaigne (Essays, bk. ii. ch. xii., “An Apologie of Raymond Sebond”) tells how he translated the book into French and found “the conceits of the author to be excellent, the con texture of his work well followed, and his project full of pietie. . . . His drift is bold, and his scope adventurous, for he undertaketh by humane and naturall reasons, to establish and verine all the articles of Christian religion against Atheists.”

See D. Beulet, Un Inconnu célebre: recherche historiques et critiques sur Raymond de Sabunde (Paris, 1875).