  Already during Godfrey’s student days in Arts and in Theology at Paris there was considerable discussion concerning the exact relationship between essence and existence in finite or created beings. Closely associated with the metaphysical thought of Aquinas was the view that in all finite beings there is a real, i.e., not merely a conceptual or mind-dependent distinction and composition of an essence principle and an act of existing (esse) or existence principle. Already in the 1270s Giles of Rome was developing his own theory of real distinction between essence and existence, and was soon engaged in ongoing controversy with Henry of Ghent. At times Giles referred to essence and existence as distinct “things” (res) and, while he denied that either could exist in separation from the other or that existence is an essence, his terminology left its mark on the theory and open to such misinterpretations; for it invited critics to view existence or the act of being as an entity rather than as a principle of an existing entity, as Aquinas had envisioned it. While Henry of Ghent rejected any real distinction between essence and existence, he defended something more than a merely conceptual distinction between them, namely a new and third type that would fall between the real distinction and the merely conceptual, an “intentional” distinction (Wippel, 1981, 40–45).