5 - PROBABILITY AND PERSPECTIVE: NICHOLAS OF AUTRECOURT AND THE FRAGMENTATION OF VISION

Summary

Surveying the Parisian academic scene around 1330, Nicholas of Autrecourt laments. He sees men who have studied Aristotle and Averroes for years, even decades, until their hair turns grey. And though they have achieved some kind of success, though they are esteemed great scholars, Nicholas sees that this success has been achieved at great cost. They have abandoned the study of scripture, the performing of good works and everything moral. They have surrendered themselves to petty jealousies, envy and the desire for empty praise as they ceaselessly argue about the correct interpretation of pagan writers. What is worse, they seem content with this immoral state of affairs. When someone, a friend of the truth, rose up, Nicholas writes, “sounding his trumpet to awaken those sleepers from their slumber, they heaved a sigh, and looking altogether upset, attacked him as if engaged in deadly combat.” Needless to say, Nicholas himself was this friend of the truth, this herald coming from without to awaken and save his peers and teachers from their scholastic slumber. And, as he suggests here, in the prologue to the Exigit ordo, his so called Useful Treatise, people were not as receptive as he might have hoped. Seventeen years later, seventeen years filled with controversy and papal inquiries, people had grown even less receptive. In 1347, Nicholas of Autrecourt was compelled to recant sixty-six allegedly heretical propositions and watch the public burning of his works. He was stripped of his academic degrees. He lost the right to teach.