Given the etymology they provide for intellectus, the medievals have a tendency to use intelligentia and intellegentia ( where the form legô, “to read,” is more immediately transparent ) as equivalent terms. Authors in the twelfth century generally go along with Boethius in distinguishing between sensus, imaginatio, ratio, intellectus and intelligentia/intellegentia—mens staying, as it does for Saint Augustine, in a generic position, in the sense of “soul.” This is the case, for example, with Isaac of Stella, Epistula de anima, PL 194, 1884C–1885B; Sermo, 4, PL 194, 1701C–1702C ), with Alcher of Clairvaux ( De spiritu et anima, chap. 4, PL 40, 782 and 7, PL 40, 787 ) and with Alain de Lille ( PL 210, 673D ). At that time ratio, intellectus, and intelligentia/intellegentia form a real triad of terms. For Isaac ( a ) “reason,” ratio, is the “faculty of the soul that perceives the incorporeal forms of corporeal things,” ( b ) “intellect,” intellectus, is the “faculty of the soul that perceives the forms of truly incorporeal things,” ( c ) and intelligentia/intellegentia, “intelligence,” is the “faculty of the soul that has God as its immediate object.” In his De anima, written between 1126 and 1150, Dominique Gondissalvi developed the distinction by contrasting intellectus as a purveyor of science ( scientia ), which separates the intelligible from the sensible ( by abstraction ), with intelligentia/intellegentia, which generates wisdom ( sapientia ), “the superior eye” of the soul, devoted exclusively to contemplating pure intelligibles. This type of knowledge, the “intelligence” that surpasses “science,” allows the soul to “contemplate itself” and to “reflect while contemplating them, as in a mirror, both God and the eternal intelligibles.” It is assimilated to “rapture,” the prototype of which is the ascension to the “third heaven” that the apostle Paul speaks of. (BCDU)