Nulla lex est vera, licet possit esse utilis. Averroes’ “Errors” and the Emergence of Subversive Ideas about Religion in the Latin West

Abstract

In 1311, Raymond Lull wrote that “although they were infidels, Saracens stoned Averroes, who was himself a Saracen, because of the errors that he introduced against their religion” (quos contra legem eorum inducebat )1. A few years later, his disciple Thomas le Myésier described Averroes as a haereticus in omni lege2. Lull and his disciple voiced sentiments that would have a great diffusion in European culture from the 14th century onwards: one need only think of Benvenuto of Imola, who in his commentary on Dante’s ‘Inferno’ first ascribed to Averroes the “three impostors” theme (previously credited to the emperor Fredrick the Second and to Simon of Tournai)3; of Petrarch, who saw Averroes