HENRY OF GHENT (HENRICUS DE GANDAVO) (d. scholastic philosopher, known as "Doctor Solemnis," was born in Ghent, where he studied before going to Cologne. In 1267 he was a canon of Toureai and in 1276 archdeacon of Bruges. By 1277 he was a master of theology at Paris, where he strongly opposed the mendicants.
Henry's philosophy, with its strong Augustinian colouring of peripatetic elements, closely resembles that of the early Fran ciscans. Thus, like them, he maintains that matter has its own actuality and by the Divine power could exist apart from form, that there is no real distinction between essence and existence or between the soul and its faculties, that a forma corporeitatis in man must be assumed if the independent natures of body and soul are to be ensured, that divine illumination is necessary for true knowledge, and that an eternal creation is impossible. Duns Scotus, whose formal distinction and voluntaristic leanings Henry anticipates, attacks his more original contributions, including his theory of negation as the principle of individuation, his rejection of the species intelligibiles in cognition, his stress on the activity of the intellect, his philosophy of conscience, and his theories that the Divine essence under a relatio rations to a creature is the form in which God knows things and that creatures existed secundum esse essentiae in the Divine mind from all eternity.
Quodlibeta was published at Paris (1518) and at Venice (16o8 and 1613), and his Summa theologiae at Paris (1520) and at Ferrara (1646) . His Comm. on the Physics, his Quaestiones on the Metaphysics and a logical treatise are still in manuscript. The De Scriptoribus ecclesiasticis is probably not by him. See F. Ehrle, "Beitr. zu den Biographien beruhmter Scholastiker" in Archiv. fur Lit. a. Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters (1885) ; H. Delehaye, Nouvelles Recherches sur Henri de Gand (1886) ; C. Werner, Heinrich von Gent als Reprdsentant des christlichen Platonismus (Vienna, 1878) ; De Wulf, Hist. de la Phil. scholastique dans les Pays-Bas (1895) ; G. Hagemann, De Henrici Gandavensis quern vocant ontologismo (1898) ; J. Lichterfeld, Die Ethik Heinrichs v. Gent (1906) ; R. Braun, Die Erkenntnislehre Heinrichs v. Gent (1916) .