Hervaeus Natalis, or Harvey Nedellec (c. 1250–1323) was one of the first followers of Thomas Aquinas, but also an original thinker, especially in the areas of intentionality and the mental word. Hervaeus was born in Brittany in the mid-thirteenth century. He entered the Dominicans in 1276 and studied at the University of Paris, where he commented on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, later received the degree of Master of Theology, and served as regent master in theology from 1307 to 1309. He was elected Provincial of France in 1309 and became Master General of the Dominicans in 1318. In the years following the condemnation by Étienne Tempier, the bishop of Paris, of 219 propositions—many of which touched upon the teaching of Thomas Aquinas—Hervaeus defended Aquinas's theological method in his Defensio doctrinae fratris Thomae and his theory of knowledge in his Quodlibeta. He actively promoted the canonization of...