Refuga legis ac Christi hostis e subtilis Commentator: Averroè nelle opere di Dionigi il Certosino

Denys of Rijkel (1402-1471), Carthusian monk, devotes a large part of his huge literary production to philosophy, which, in his view, is the lowest level of a hierarchy rising through scholastic theology and culminating in mystical theology. Philosophy adumbrates the superior modes of supernatural knowledge at a natural level. Since Averroes is certainly among the philosophers most cited by Denys, this article examines Denys’s attitude towards him and points out that it oscillates between a respect for Averroes as an authoritative representative of philosophic wisdom and a disapproval of the perfidious Averroes who denies the basic Christian truths. The essay first examines Denys’s invectives against Averroes, casting light on the philosophical reasons behind the rhetoric of the damned and impious Averroes; it demonstrates how thirteenth-century Scholastics influenced Denys’s approach to Averroes’s philosophical doctrines; finally, it reconstructs Denys views on two crucial noetic issues related to Averroes’s philosophy: monopsychism and intellectual happiness.