Gregory of Rimini (c.1300–58), Italian philosopher and monk. He studied in Italy, England, and France, and taught at the universities of Bologna, Padua, Perugia, and Paris before becoming prior general of the Hermits of St. Augustine in his native city of Rimini, about eighteen months before he died.
Gregory earned the honorific title ‘the Authentic Doctor’ because he was considered by many of his contemporaries to be a faithful interpreter of Augustine, and thus a defender of tradition, in the midst of the skepticism of Ockham and his disciples regarding what could be known in natural philosophy and theology. Thus, in his commentary on Books I and II of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, Gregory rejected the view that because of God’s omnipotence he can do anything and is therefore unknowable in his nature and his ways. Gregory also maintained that after Adam’s fall from righteousness, men need, in conjunction with their free will, God’s help (grace) to perform morally good actions.
In non-religious matters Gregory is usually associated with the theory of the complexe significabile, according to which the object of knowledge acquired by scientific proof is neither an object existing outside the mind, nor a word (simplex) or a proposition (complexum), but rather the complexe significabile, that which is totally and adequately signified by the proposition expressed in the conclusion of the proof in question.
See also COMPLEXE SIGNIFICABIL. G.S.