13th century (condemnation – 1270)

The Arrival of Aristotle in the West: Universities, Three Thirteenth-Century Responses and the Condemnation of the Averroists (1270)

Translations in Toledo and direct translations from the Greek flooded Latin Europe with the writings of Aristotle and the Arabic philosophers, above all Averroes ("the Commentator"); according to González, the whole edifice of medieval theology was shaken. Lane writes that philosophy came to seem a rival system of thought; Aristotle's metaphysics was banned for a time. González distinguishes three responses: the traditional Augustinian framework (Bonaventure), synthesis (Albert and Thomas) and the demand for philosophy's independence from orthodoxy (Siger of Brabant). In 1270 the bishop of Paris condemned thirteen theses of extreme Aristotelianism. At the same time the structure of the scholastic method became fixed in the universities.