Raymond of Sabunde (or Sebunde)

Raymond Of Sabunde (Or Sebunde), a French ecclesiastic, who was a native of Spain, but flourished in the first half of the 15th century at Toulouse, is noted as a philosopher and theologian. About 1436 he taught medicine at Toulouse, and perhaps also theology. He is especially noteworthy as the author of Liber Naturloe s. Creaturam, etc., which has had several emendations and translations. Raymond sought in a rational, yet in some respects rather mystical, manner to demonstrate the harmony between the book of nature and the Bible. He asserts that man has received from the Almighty two books, wherein he may discover the important facts which concern his relation to his Creator, viz. the book of Revelation and that of Nature; affirming the latter to be the most universal in its contents, and the most perspicuous. He endeavored by specious rather than solid arguments to deduce the theology of his age, even in its more peculiar doctrines, from the contemplation of nature and of man. "Setting out with the consideration of the four stages designated as mere being, life, sensation, and reason, Raymond (who agrees with the Nominalists in regarding self-knowledge as the most certain kind of knowledge) proves by ontological, physico-teleological, and moral arguments (the latter based on the principle of retribution) the existence and trinity of God, and the duty of grateful love to God, who first loved us. His work culminates in the mvstical conception of a kind of love to God by which the lover is enabled to grow into the essence of the loved" (Ueberweg). This attempt of Raymond of Sabunde to prove the doctrines of Christianity from the revelation of God in nature has no imitators. It certainly deserved, from its just observations on many subjects, especially on morals, greater success than it met with. Montaigne directed to it the attention of his contemporaries by a translation he made of it. (See Montaigne's observations in his Essays, lib. 2, ch. xii.) The best Latin editions of the Liber Naturoe are those of Frankfort, 1635, and Amsterdam, 1761. See Matzke, Die naturl. Theol. des R. v. Sab. (Breslau, 1846); Nitzsch, Qucest. Raimundance, in Zeitsch. fur hist. Theol. 1859. No. 3; Zockler, Theol. Natur. (Frankf. 1860), vol. i; Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines (see Index); Ritter, Christl. Philos. ii, 747-754; Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos. i, 465467. — Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s.v.