Meet William of Auvergne

Theologian, Bishop of Paris, Papal Hope & Disappointment

Dear bookish friend,

Every now and then I read a medieval writer entirely new to me, one that I know very little about. Sometimes in that process, I am abruptly plunged into a history with a historical person whose character seems to jump right off the page—a rarity in the medieval era, where documentation is scarce and often you’re dealing with names and their writings and very little else. William of Auvergne is one such character, a force to be reckoned with for good and ill.

William of Auvergne was born around 1180-1190 in south-central France, perhaps into an impoverished family. He rose to become a theologian at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, one of the very first thinkers in the Latin West to seriously consider the new translations of ancient philosophy and science emerging from the Muslim and Jewish thinkers of the Middle East and Spain. His writing output was immense. He composed an enormous seven-part work called Teaching on God in the Mode of Wisdom. Theologians like William, beginning new discourses on subjects like the soul influenced by all these new-yet-ancient works coming out of the East, were setting the stage for the next wave of great theologians like Thomas Aquinas, who would also come to the University of Paris in 1245. William became a master of theology at the university in 1223, then bishop of Paris in 1228.

This is where we start to see William’s forceful personality leap out of the text. He was a canon at the cathedral of Notre-Dame, and when the previous bishop of Paris died in 1227, the canons had to hold an election for who would take his place. At the time, William was a canon and deacon and very, very unhappy with the dean of the cathedral who had been chosen as bishop. So unhappy, in fact, that he traveled to Rome and made a case to Pope Gregory IX that the election was invalid. Pope Gregory was so convinced by William’s passionate argument that he made none other than William himself the new bishop of Paris. Gregory wrote to the overruled canons that Master William had “unsullied virtue” and “excellent knowledge” and “after ordaining him priest and consecrating him bishop, we return him to you”…!¹

Yet William’s bishopric was quite tumultuous and Pope Gregory was not pleased with him for long. In 1229, William appointed the first Dominican master to the University, a move that had many in the faculty concerned. Even worse, also in 1229, only a year after William received the see of Paris, students at the University of Paris got in a brawl over a bill at a bar on the holiday that would become known as Mardi Gras in the neighborhood of St. Marcel. Keep in mind that in the medieval era, university students were typically around the ages of 13-19, so… trouble. Really starting their Lent off explosively, these future clerics returned to riot in the streets around the bar, beating any unfortunate Parisians they came across, and pouring out all the wine jugs at the establishment. The prior of St. Marcel complained to William who complained to the Queen Regent. The chronicler Matthew of Paris describes with disgust (and not a little misogyny) what happened next: “with the impulsiveness of women” the queen ordered the city guardsmen to punish the offenders. The guardsmen left the city walls fully armed and came across a number of clerks, students, playing various sports, students who were unconnected to the violence of Ash Wednesday, and mercilessly slaughtered and wounded them outside of the city walls. The horrified and outraged university masters then came and complained to William and the papal legate, who sort of sat on their hands. The end result was that the masters and students scattered and the university went on strike for three years!

Gregory, an alumnus of Paris himself, absolutely roasts William in a scathing letter:²