The works of Aristotle were translated (from Greek, or from Arabic translations) during the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth century in Sicily and Toledo. William of Moerbeke (d. 1286) translated Aristotle, or revised existent translations, allowing his fellow Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, to write important commentaries on the Aristotelian oeuvre on the basis of more reliable texts. From the middle of the thirteenth century, the works of Aristotle were a well-established part of the academic curriculum in Paris and elsewhere, despite initial (and recurring) reservations about Averroism. Some of these concerns were raised in the 1270s.

A first official reaction occurred on December 10, 1270 when Etienne Tempier, bishop of Paris, condemned thirteen propositions, as opposed to the Christian faith. The key issues were monopsychism (the teaching that there is only one intellect for the human race, i.e., the divine intellect); the denial of individual immortality which follows from monopsychism; denial of freedom of will; the doctrine of the eternity of the world (Aristotle, like other Greek thinkers, was not familiar with the notion of a world created out of nothing); and the denial of God’s knowledge of individual things, and hence of Providence.