The De causis in Thomas of York

The essay brings new insights into the presence of the Book of Causes in England by studying all explicit citations in Thomas of York’s influential, yet still unedited, Sapientiale. Composed between 1250 and 1260 while Thomas was at Oxford and Cambridge, the Sapientiale contains one hundred four explicit references to the Book of Causes (and four in a primitive draft), using twenty-two out of thirty-one (thirty-two) propositions. Thomas of York, unlike many of his contemporaries, did not attribute the Book of Causes to Aristotle (at least not the theorems) because he understood that it belongs to the Platonic tradition. One of his main arguments is that the metaphysical hierarchy linking the divine mind and the realm of material beings through intermediary causes is affirmed by Plato, Avicebron, and the Book of Causes, and is rejected by Aristotle. The article corrects a commonly held view among scholars that, according to Thomas of York, the Book of Causes had Christian origins. In reality, he attributed it to one of the sapientes mundi. All the quotations from the Liber de causis contained in the Sapientiale are published in the appendix