AVERROISTS, a sect of Peripatetic philosophers, who appeared in Italy some time before the restoration of learning, and attacked the immortality of the soul. They took their denomination from Averroes, from whom they borrowed their distinguishing doctrine. The Averroists held that the soul was mortal, according to reason or philosophy, yet pretended to submit to the Christian theology, which declares it immortal. But the distinction was accounted suspicious; and this divorce of faith from reason was rejected by the doctors of that time, and condemned by the last council of the Lateran under pope Leo X.