Aureol, Peter (c.1280–1322)

A master of theology at the University of Paris and a member of the Franciscan order, Peter Aureol helped shape the philosophical agenda of the fourteenth century. His original and provocative views were widely discussed during the later Middle Ages, but his influence was rather indirect since his views almost always met with hostility. Although Aureol wrote extensively on a wide range of philosophical and theological issues, his most-discussed contributions to philosophy, in epistemology and metaphysics, centre on his theory of esse apparens (apparent existence).