Before and After Aquinas: Roland of Cremona and John Baconthorpe on Prophecy

In this essay, we consider the evolution of the prophetological debate by way of contrast, through a comparative study of two cases that are chronologically distant yet almost equidistant from Aquinas’s writings on the topic: Roland of Cremona and John Baconthorpe. In his Summa, Roland of Cremona emphasises the importance of the definitional process, whereas the epistemology of the prophet – Aquinas’s primary concern – receives only limited attention. Baconthorpe seems to suggest that the paradigm shift introduced by Aquinas had become at least partially established. However, Baconthorpe’s work also provides insight into how prophetology developed in directions partially divergent from Aquinas’s after his time. He centres his discussion on the relationship between prophecy and truth, asking “utrum prophetia contineat veritatem”, following the example of two late 14th-century thinkers, Olivi and Vitale du Four