David of Dinant

David of Dinant (c. 1160 – c. 1217) was a pantheistic philosopher who may have been influenced by the Amalricians. His work, "Quaternuli" (Little Notebooks), was condemned by a provincial council in Paris in 1210, leading to its banning and his flight from France. The condemnation was repeated in 1215. Consequently, little of his work survives, and his philosophy is primarily known through the writings of his contemporaries and opponents, notably Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas. David's core philosophical idea was that all reality could be reduced to three fundamental categories: bodies, minds, and eternal substances. He posited that the underlying substrate of bodies is matter (hyle), the substrate of minds is intellect (nous), and the substrate of eternal substances is God (Deus). Crucially, David identified these three as being identical, leading to the conclusion that all things, whether material, intellectual, or spiritual, share the same essence: God. This pantheistic view equated God with the material substratum of all things, known as "materia prima" (prime matter). His phraseology and the title "De Tomis" suggest an influence from Johannes Scotus Eriugena. The condemnation of David's ideas, alongside those of Aristotle's works on natural philosophy, was part of a broader effort by the Catholic Church to combat perceived heresies and preserve orthodox Christian dogma.