William of Auxerre (1140/50–1231)

William’s career spans the decades at the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century during which the newly recovered Aristotelian natural philosophy, metaphysics and ethics and the newly available works of great Muslim thinkers such as Avicenna and Averroes brought enormous energy and upheaval to intellectual culture. William’s own views are traditional, owing their largest debts to Augustine, Boethius and Anselm. However, his major work, Summa aurea, is an influential precursor of the monumental systematic theological treatises that followed half a century later.