Godfrey of Fontaines - Writings

Writings

The most significant of Godfrey's writings are transcriptions of Quodlibets, for which he participated in fifteen of during his tenure at the University of Paris. These were week-long sessions held before Christmas and Easter in which participating Masters were required to answer questions chosen by their students. This was taxing to the Master, who would have to argue a thoughtful and researched answer on an incredibly diverse range of subjects. Many Masters chose not to engage in the Quodlibets. Godfrey of Fontaines completed at least fifteen Quodlibetal sessions. Hence, Godfrey discussed a very wide range of issues. These and other writings show him to have been not merely a distinguished theologian and philosopher, but also a canonist, jurist, moralist, and conversationalist, who took an active part in the various ecclesiastical, doctrinal, and disciplinary disputes that stirred Paris at that period.

Godfrey was reportedly influenced by Thomas Aquinas, and was a defender of Thomism against his contemporaries. Thomism was a novel theory at the time, and was condemned by Étienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris (Condemnation of 1277), and opposed by John Peckham and many others. This is despite Godfrey attacking the mendicant orders throughout his career, whereas Aquinas was a member of the Dominican mendicant order. Wippel says, Godfrey opposed the Mendicant orders for the belief that, "those who had confessed to mendicants by reason of the privileges granted to the latter by Pope Martin's bull were still bound to confess the same sins once again to their own priests"

One of Godfrey's largest contributions were to the field of metaphysics. He was opposed to platonic arguments advanced from his contemporaries, such as Henry of Ghent. For example, he argued against the concept of platonic ideal forms, and that something's essential substance and existence were one and the same. His philosophy was strongly influenced by Aristotle.

In the Quodlibetal VIII, Godfrey argues against the Franciscan Christian order and lays an early groundwork of political philosophy where he discusses the ideas of natural rights. Godfrey believed that natural law was dependent on individual self preservation rather than a religious obligation; he says, “because by natural law each person is obliged to maintain his life...each person has dominion and a certain right in the common exterior goods of this world, a right that he cannot licitly renounce”, says author Jussi Varkemma as noted in Conrad Summenhart’s Theory of Individual Rights. He objects that the fundamental Franciscan approach to rights is illicit to human activity and natural rights. He says later that everyone has a right to subsistence - a right that people can never renounce. This applies to the mendicant orders because it applies to all members of society.

Stephen D. Dumont quotes Godfrey, in the book Philosophical Debates at Paris in the Early 14th Century, that “Medieval sources are nearly unanimous in identifying Godfrey as a prominent source for the unusual but very influential account of intention and remission known as the ‘succession of forms." As explained by Dumont, Intension and remission of forms concerns the problem of a change of degree within a given kind of quality, like the shading of a color, adjustment of heat or even the altering of moral or cognitive habits. Godfrey held the position that all specific forms are “in their nature indivisible, invariable, and lacking in degrees” (43) and “the specific form of a quality in itself does not undergo any intension or remission but does so insofar as it is individuated in a subject.” This line of thought differs drastically from other thinkers around this time like Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent, who held that there was a variation of specific forms which are a divisible extensions. Godfrey refutes their claims through the reasoning that because qualities cannot change in degree because they are indivisible then they must change insofar as they are individuals, so he concludes that a “change in degree in an individual quality will also be a change of the individual itself, even when its species remains the same”.

Nine other noteworthy topics that Godfrey wrote about in the Quodlibetal are Subject of metaphysics, Division of being, Analogy of being, Transcendentals, Essence and existence, Knowledge of God’s existence and essence, eternity of the world, Substance and accidents, and Abstraction