“THEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE ” IN GREGORY OF RIMINI AND HIS FOURTEENTH-CENTURY CONTEXT

The professional theologian attempts to distinguish herself by claiming some kind of “epistemic advance ” over the person of mere belief. This claim to knowledge—and the relation of this knowledge to the other sciences—can therefore be subject to philosophical analysis. What is the subject matter of this discipline? What is the method by which it secures its results? And how does its practitioner “know ” when she has passed beyond mere belief? The theologians of the high and late Middle Ages faced a unique historical challenge. At this time, “theology ” first emerged as a distinct academic discipline, and the theological doctors were perpetually engaged in a debate about the exact nature of theology. On the one hand, they were eager to assert that theology made a real epistemic contribution that should be respected by the other sciences. On the other hand, these same theologians struggled with the fact that their discipline did not neatly meet the conditions of epistēmē or scientia laid down by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. The main historical focus of this study is Gregory of Rimini, an Augustinian hermit, who flourished in the mid-fourteenth century. But I aim to consider Rimini’