MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY llTH AND 12TH CENTURIES ll5 



and wishes to dispute about all things, about divine things 

 and about secular things equally." '^^ He criticizes Abailard's 

 use of power, wisdom, and benignity to differentiate the persons 

 of the Trinity. In particular, he criticizes his use of the analogy 

 of the bronze seal and the distinction between materia and 

 materiatum to explain the relation of the Father and the Son.**^ 

 He expresses the wish that Abailard would read the Evangel 

 of God with the same simplicity as he reads Plato and that 

 he would imitate his beloved Plato, who proceeds cautiously 

 and prudently from the creation to the incomprehensibilities 

 of the Creator.^" He criticizes William of Conches for adding 

 a new philosophy to the theology of Abailard, confirming and 

 multiplying whatever Abailard said and adding more that he 

 did not say.'^ He says that William of Conches describes the 

 creation of the first man philosophically, or rather physically, 

 and holds that his body was not made by God, but by nature, 

 and that his soul was given to him by God, after his body had 

 been made by spirits, whom he calls demons, and by the stars. 

 William of Conches seems to him to follow the opinion of 

 certain stupid philosophers who say that nothing exists except 

 bodies and corporeal things, that God in the world is nothing 

 else than the concourse of elements and the harmony or tem- 

 perature of nature, and that he is himself a soul in body." 



** Guillelmus Abbas S. Theodorici, Disputatio adversus Petrum Abaelardum ad 

 Gaufridum Carnotensem et Bernardum, 1, PL 180, 250A. 



"* Ibid., 3, PL 180, 254C-7C. The analogy is also criticized by St. Bernard. 



'" Ibid., 7, PL 180, 270C-D. 



'^^ De Erroribus Guillelmi de Conchis ad Sanctum Bernardum, PL 180, 333 A. 



" Ibid., PL 180, 339A-40A. Walter of Saint Victor says that " William of Conches 

 held that all things are made from the concourse of atoms, that is, of the most 

 minute bodies," and that Peter of Poitiers used atoms to prove that the flesh of 

 Christ was not in Abraham or Adam. (Contra Quatuor Labyrinthos Franciae, IV, 

 25, ed. P. Glorieux, Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Litteraire du Moyen Age, XIX 

 (1953) , 289.) In the Dragmaticon which is in dialogue form, William of Conches 

 replies to his interlocutor's question about Epicureanism, denying that he is an 

 Epicurean, but adding that there is no philosophic sect so false that it has no truth 

 mixed with its falsehood; the Epicureans are correct in saying that the world is 

 composed of atoms, wTong in supposing that the atoms were without beginning and 

 that the four bodies of the world were composed by the bombardment of large 



