William of Saint-Amour

William of Saint -Amour (French Guillaume de Saint -Amour, * 1200-1210; † September 13, 1272 ) was a world of spiritual theologian.

He came from the town of Saint -Amour, located in present-day French Jura. In the high Middle Ages of the 13th century, but they belonged to the Free County of Burgundy, and thus the Holy Roman Empire.

William was a canon in Mâcon, in 1238 he is in a letter of Pope Gregory IX. first mentioned as a Master of Arts and decretals. Around 1250, he was the master of theology a chair at the University of Paris. Together with his friend Gerard of Abbeville, he became during the Mendikantenstreits the leadership of the world's spiritual teachers against the of the young mendicant orders ( Franciscan and Dominican, called mendicants ) assembled student body. He was supported, among others, by the poet Rutebeuf. After the mendicants in 1253 ignored a call for a strike at the University of Paris against the order of God, the professoriate imposed their exclusion from teaching and the university excommunication over them. However, this led to an intervention by Pope Innocent IV, who recanted these measures. But as her spokesman defended Wilhelm 1254 the sanctions taken by the university successfully before the Pope at Anagni, and thus preserved the right of the Paris faculty of self- recruitment of its student body. He achieved among other things by the teachings of the mendicants drew from Scripture of the Franciscan Gerard of Borgo San Donnino in doubt, in which he recognized a anti-Christian menace. His views were confirmed shortly afterwards by Pope Alexander IV.

At Easter 1256, Wilhelm the pamphlet Tractatus brevis de periculis novissimorum temporum ( " Short Treatise on the dangers of the end times " ), in which he doubts the right of existence of the mendicant orders. This earned him though on the part of mendicants the charge of heresy, and led to an examination of written by the Pope in Rome. The Curia had not only the claims of William back, but also deprived him of his benefice, forbade any teaching and preaching and ordered his banishment from France. King Louis IX. intended, however, this conflict is resolved diplomatically, but in a personal conversation with him was Wilhelm no willingness to compromise. He referred to the king in person by accusing to be a king but a begging brother to him. The king came to the demand of the pope and banished William from the country. After the but continued preaching against the mendicant orders, he was condemned by the Pope on October 5, 1256. Together with two of his colleagues, Odo of Douai and Chrétien Beauvais, William traveled to face there in a judicial proceeding to the papal court in Rome. In the final judgment, the already imposed sanctions against him were confirmed, but he did not fall a judgment of heresy.

William retired to his hometown, where he in 1266 with the treatise Collectiones catholicae et canonicae scriptuare led a new attack against the mendicant orders. Ultimately, however, he failed in his positions, not least because of the theological superiority of his opponents from the ranks of the mendicants, as Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure.