The authority of tales: religious fictionalism in the 13th century

Abstract

In this paper, I aim to provide a concise overview of the concept of religious fictionalism in the Middle Ages by shortly exploring various interpretations of Aristotle’s Metaphysics II(α) within the intellectual milieu of the 1260s-1270s (Averroës, Albert the Great, Giles of Rome and Thomas Aquinas). Additionally, I conduct a brief analysis of (1) the closing passages of Aquinas’s De unitate intellectus and (2) a well-known passage from Tempier’s introductory letter to his condemnation on 7 March 1277.