ART. V. -- THE AEGIDIAN SCHOOL.

391. The Aegidian School. -- As an offshoot of Thomism, there arose in the fourteenth century an Aegidian school proper (321). It was formed in the Augustinian order and faithfully transmitted the eclectic teachings of Giles of Rome. In addition to JAMES OF VITERBO (321), its leading representatives are GERARD OF SIENNA, AUGUSTINUS TRIUMPHUS OF ANCONA (fl. 1328) and more especially THOMAS OF STRASSBURG (prior-general in 1345, died in 1357), author of Commentaries on the Sentences.

GREGORY OF RIMINI (fl. 1358), the successor of Thomas of Strassburg, and who has also left Commentaries on the Sentences, brought about a doctrinal schism in the order. His teaching has close affinities with that of William of Ockam: intuitive and direct cognition of the individual; conceptualism; identity of the soul with its faculties; hylemorphic composition of all creatures; doubts about the demonstrative force of the arguments for the creative causality of God, etc. Gregory of Rimini had a following; but towards the middle of the fifteenth century, doctrinal unity was re-established in the order. It was mainly in Italy that the Aegidian school recruited its philosophers and theologians.