SIGER
784
SIGISMUND
subjects from the oath of loyalty. In the second
treatise Sigebert defended the masses of married
priests, the hearing of which had been forbidden bj'
the pope m 1074. When Paschal II in 1103 ordered
the Count of Flanders to punish the citizens of
Liege for their adherence to the emperor and to
take up arms against him, Sigebert attacked the pro-
ceeding of the pope as unchristian and contrary to
the Scriptures. His most celebrated work, "Chroni-
con sive Chronographia", is a chronicle of the world;
it must be confessed that in this work he has not
written history; he desired probably merely to give a
chronological survey, consequently there is only a bare
list of events even for the era in which he hved, though
the last years, including 1105-11, are treated more
in detail. The chronicle gained a very high reputa-
tion, was circulated in numberless copies, and was
the basis of many later works of history. Notwith-
standing various oversights and mistakes the indus-
try and wide reading of Sigebert deserve honourable
mention. He also made a catalogue of one hundred
and seventy-one ecclesiastical writers and their works
from Germadius to his o\\ti time, "De scriptoribus
ecclesiasticis". In this list he mentions his own
work.
P. L., CLX; HrascH, De vita et scriptis Sigeberti monachi Gemblacerisis (Berlin, 1841).
Klemens Loffler.
Siger of Brabant, indisputably the leader of Latin Averroism during the sixth and seventh decades of the thirteenth century'. Many influential masters of art espoused his principles, and Pierre du Bois praised his oral teachings ; finally Dante immortalized his name in these flattering verses of the "Divina Ck)mmedia: ParadLso", X, 136:
Essa e la luce etema di Sigieri Che, leggendo nel vico degh strami, Sillogizzo invidiosi veri. His illustrious colleague, St. Thomas Aquinas, ex- pressly refuted his teachings. There are few authentic details of tha life of Siger of Brabant. He was a master of arts at Paris, and for ten years the guiding spirit of the agitations that troubled the university. From 1266 he was with the legate, Simon de Brie, in dLsciplinarj' affairs. From 1272 to 1275 he held in check the rector of the university, Alberic of Reims, placing himself at the head of the opposition, which he recruited from the Garlande Quarter (scholares golardie). Though condemned in 1270 Siger still continued the propagation of his ideas, and his opposition to his Scholastic masters. A second con- demnation, in 1277, put an end to his teaching. He was brought before the tribunal of the Grand In- quisitor of France, was condemned, and took an appeal to the Roman Court. He died at Orvieto, between 1281 and 1284, having been assassinated by his secretary.
Of the works of Siger there are still extant: "De anima intellectiva", "De a^ternitatemundi", "Quajs- tionf« naturales", "Quajstiones logicales", "Quais- tio utrum ha;c sit vera: Homo est animal, nullo homine existente", and a collection of six "Irapo.s- sibiiia". Another unpublished "Quaestio" has just been discovered by Polzcr of Rome. Siger was the adversary of Albertus Magnus and of St. Thomas Aquinas, "contra pra?cipuos viros Albertum et Thomam". HLs principal work (De anima intellec- tiva) called forth St. Thomas's treatise on the unity of the int(rllect (De unitate intellcctus contra Averro- istas). Siger in fact supported all the belicifs of the Averroist philosfjphy, — the monism of the human intellect; one intellectual spirit for all men, w^parate from the body, is temporarily united with each human organism to a<'compli.sh the. process of thought. Man is mortal, but the race is iminortal. Hence the ques- tion of a future life is without meaning; immortality cannot be personal. The world is produced by jst.
Beries of intermediary agencies; hence there is no
providence in the government of men and of earthly
things. All these productions are necessary, co-
eternal with God. All is ruled by cosmic and psychi-
cal determinism. Celestial phenomena and the con-
junction of the planets control the succession of events
on our globe, and the destinies of the human race.
Man is not a free agent. There is an eternal reversa-
bility of civilizations and religions, the Christian
rehgion included, which is governed by the reversabil-
ity of the stellar cycles. Siger wished to remain a
professing Catholic, and to safeguard his faith he
had recourse to the celebrated theory of the two
truths: what is true in philosophy may be false in
rehgion, and vice versa. It is hard to tell whether
such a mental attitude indicates buffoonery or sin-
cerity. One is lost in conjecture as to the motive
which impelled Dante, the admirer of Thomism, to
place in the mouth of St. Thomas Aquinas the eulogy
of Siger of Brabant, the apostle of Averroism.
Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et Vaverroisme latin in Philos- ophes beiges, VI, VII, part i: Etude critique {Louva.m, \910) , part ii, Textes (Louvain, 1909), contains all the works of Siger; Baumker, Die Impossibilia d. Siger von Brabant, eine philosoph Streitschr. a^ls. d. XIII Jahrh. in Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. Mitt., II (1888), 6; Idem, Zur Beurleilung Sigers von Brabant in Philosophisches Jahrbuch (1911); Mandonnet, Autour de Siger de Brabant in Rev. thomiste, XIX, 1911. For the relations between Siger and Dante, see the studies published by Langlois, Gaston Paris, and Cipolla.
M. De Wtjlf.
Sigismund, King of Germany and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, b. 15 February, 1361, at Nu- remberg; d. at Znaim, Bohemia, 9 December, 1437. He was the second son of the Emperor Charles IV, who betrothed him to Maria, the oldest daughter of King Louis of Hungary and Poland, and thus pre- pared the way for a great extension of the power of the House of Luxemburg. During the reign of his elder brother. King Wenceslaus, Sigismund was able, upon the death of the King of Hungary, to maintain his claims to Hungary though only after a hard struggle, and on 31 March, 1387, he was crowned King of Hun- gary. In 1389 he was obUged to defend the bound- aries of his new kingdom against the Turks. In this year Sultan Amurath I had overthrown the Servian kingdom in the battle on the Plain of Kossovo (Plain of the Blackbirds). Amurath's son, Bajazet, defeated a Christian army under Sigismund at Nicopolis, and the lands along the Danube were only saved by the re- newed advance of the Osmanli. In 1389 the clergy and nobility of Bohemia rebelled against the adminis- tration of the Government by the favourites of King Wenceslaus; they were supported both by Jost of Mo- ravia and Sigismund. After this the intrigues in the royal family of Luxemburg were incessant. When, therefore. King Wenceslaus was deposed as emperor in 1400 at Oberlahn stein by the electors, and Rupert was elected emperor in his stead, Wenceslaus appointed his brother imperial vicar for Germany and governor and administrator of Bohemia. However, the ac- cord between the brothers was not of long duration, because Wenceslaus was not willing to confer the suc- cession in Bohemia upon Sigismund. P^or a time Sig- ismund was held prisoner by rebellious Hungarian subjects. The Emperor Rupert died on IS May, 1410, at a time of intense excitement when the ec- clesiastical confusion of the Great Schism had reached its height. There was a double election of a king of the Romans. On 20 Sejjteinber, 1410, Sigismund was chosen, and on 1 October of the same year his cousin, Jost of Bohemia, was also chosen. Th(> emi)ire, like the Church, had now three rulers. Tlie death of Jost of Moravia made it easier for Sigismund to gain recog- nition, for th(! fdectors who had chosen Jost agreed to the election of Sigismund on 21 July, 1411. The new emperor was King of Hungary and Margrave of Brandenburg, and thus had a dynastic power which
