The materialistic pantheist of the Middle Ages David of Dinant taught at Paris near the beginning of the thirteenth century. Apart from this fact, almost nothing is known of his life. It is uncertain whether he derived his name from Dinant in Belgium or Dinan in Brittany. His major work, De Tomis, Hoc Est de Divisionibus, is probably identical with the Quaternuli condemned at a provincial council in Paris in 1210, and his writings were among those banned at the University of Paris in 1215 by the papal legate, Robert de Courçon. Our knowledge of his ideas is largely derived from Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas of Cusa.

David developed his philosophy at a time when Latin Christian thought was facing an almost unprecedented challenge from rival world views. Neoplatonism, introduced into the medieval West by John Scotus Erigena and popularized in the...