THE THOMISTS AND THEIR ENEMIES

One of John Mair's pupils at the Collège de Montaigu in the opening years of the sixteenth century was Pierre Crockaert (c. 1450–1514), who had come from Brussels at the relatively late age to study at the University of Paris. Crockaert began as a student and teacher of the via moderna, but in 1503 he seems to have sufferent a revulsion from his training: he abandoned the study of Ockham, turned instead to Thomism, entered the Dominican Order and joined the Collège de Saint-Jacques, famous for its associations with Aquinas and Albert the Great (Renaudet, 1953, pp. 404, 464). In 1509 he began to lecture on Aquinas's Summary of Theology instead of the traditional Sentences of a Peter Lombard, and in 1512 he published a commentary on the last part of the Summary in collaboration with his pupil Francisco de Vitoria (Renaudet, 1953, pp. 469, 594). Crockaert died in 1514, but his influence as a teacher, and in consequence the popularity of the via antiqua at Paris, continued to increase. His College financed the publication of further commentaries on Aquinas in 1514, while Crockaert's own Thomist teachings were carried on by a number of brilliant pupils, including Fabrius and Meygret as well as Vitoria (Renaudet, 1953, p. 659).