Gerard of Abbeville, secular master, on knowledge, wisdom, and contemplation

Gerard of Abbeville (d. 1272) was the foremost secular theologian at the University of Paris during the third quarter of the thirteenth century. Significantly, Gerard’s corpus includes the most comprehensive treatment of the nature and extent of human knowledge from the generation before Henry of Ghent. Stephen M. Metzger’s study presents Gerard’s complete theory of human knowledge, which is a hierarchy extending from the knowledge acquired in faith, through scientific thought and culminating in the full vision of God by the blessed in patria. It is the fullest exposition of the life, works and thought of Gerard yet written and is augmented by the presentation for the first time of editions of several disputed questions and other texts.