ROBERT OF COURÇON

Theologian, cardinal; b. Keddleston?, England c. 1158–60; d. Damietta, Egypt, February 1219. Having been a student of arts in Paris from c. 1180 to 1190, Robert also studied theology there between 1190 and 1195 under peter cantor. From 1204 to 1210 he taught theology in Paris, was a canon of Noyon (1204) and Paris (1209), and took part in the process against amalric of bÈne and his followers. In 1212 Pope Innocent III raised him to the cardinalate, and on April 19, 1213, he was made legate to France; in this office he was often severe and not always prudent in his decisions. He reorganized studies at the University of Paris in 1215, and he drew up a set of statutes for the arts faculty and theologians, repeating, with additions, a previous prohibition against the teaching of Aristotle (see scholasticism, 1). In February of 1216, he returned to Rome; then in August of 1218 he accompanied the Crusaders to Egypt, and died during the siege of Damietta. As a scholastic, Robert was a theologian of a primarily practical bent; his Summa, written between 1204 and 1208, contains many canonicomoral questions and medical cases. According to some catalogues, he also commented on parts of the Sentences of peter lombard.

Bibliography: M. and c. dickson, "Le Cardinal Robert de Courson: Sa vie," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen-âge (1934): 53–142. m. grabmann, I divieti ecclesiastici di Aristotele sotto Innocenzo III e Gregorio IX (Rome 1941). a. b. emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to a.d. 1500, 3 v. (Oxford 1957–59) 1:498–499. v. l. kennedy, "Robert Courson on Penance," Medieaval Studies 7 (1945): 291–336.

[i. c. brady]