The Scholastic Schools from the Counter Reformation to the

Enlightenment: A Provisional Cartography*

M.W.F. Stone

Contrary to a well established view of the development of modern philosophy that explains its

progress solely in terms of a comprehensive rejection of scholasticism, it can now be shown that

from the sixteenth century up to the early career of Immanuel Kant,1 different scholastic schools

contributed a very great deal to the institutional profile and expression of philosophy not only in

Europe, but also in the Americas, and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of the Orient.2 Since so

* The following essay presents a new and more elaborate version of my earlier essay, „Scholastic

Schools and Early Modern Philosophy‘, in Donald Rutherford ed., The Cambridge Companion to

Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 299-327. I am

greatful to the editor and publisher for allowing me to cite and revise material used in that article. 1 Recent surveys of the scholastic schools in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries can

be found in: Ulrich G. Leinsle, Einführung in die scholastische Theologie, Paderborn: Schöningh,

1995, pp. 262-342; Paul Richard Blum, Philosophenphilosophie und Schulphilosophie. Typen des

Philosophierens in der Neuzeit (Studia Leibnitiana Sonder-hefter, 27), Stuttgart: Franz Steiner,

1998, pp. 117-262; Paul Richard Blum et alii., ‗Die Schulphilosophie in den katholischen

Territorien‘, in H. Holzhey, W. Schmidt-Biggemann and Vilem Murdoch eds., Das Heilige

Römische Reich Deutscher Nation Nord- und Ostmitteleuropa, 2 vols., (Ueberweg Grundriss der

Geschichte der Philosophie, Die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, 4), i, pp. 302-392; Jacob

Schmutz, ‗Bulletin de scolastique moderne (1)‘, Revue thomiste, 100, 2000, 270-341; Riccardo

Quinto, Scholastica. Storia di un concetto (Subsidia Medievalia Patavina, 2), Padua, 2002;

and Marco Forlivesi; ‗A Man, an Age, a Book‘, in Marco Forlivesi ed. Rem in Seipsa Cernere.

Saggi sul pensiero filosofico di Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673), Padua: Il poligrafo, 2006. The

remarkable web site created and maintained by Jacob Schmutz of Université de Paris-IV (The

Sorbonne), called Scholasticon (http://www.scholasticon.fr), contains much useful information on

every aspect relating to the study of early modern scholasticism. Like so many other scholars, I am

indebted to this indispensable resource. 2 The distinctive and innovative scholastic schools of Latin America, as well as the oriental colonies

of Spain and Portugal, are deserving of their own treatment, and it is shame that they should remain

hidden in this more general cartography of European scholasticism. For reasons of space, however,

I am unable to consider them in the detail they deserve, and hope to return to their ideas and

teaching at a later juncture. Important facts about them can be ascertained from the following

studies: John Tate Lanning, Academic Culture in the Spanish Colonies, Port Washington-London:

2

many confections of scholastic thought were present in early modern universities, academies, and

seminaries, and the works of individual authors were actively discussed and widely disseminated, it

is important to recognise that ‗philosophy‘ at this time embraced not just the established figures

who have come to dominate our analysis of seventeenth and eighteenth-century thought, such as

Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Réne Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Nicolas

Malebranche, Barruch Spinoza, Godfried von Leibniz, Issac Newton, George Berkeley, and David

Hume, but a much wider group of thinkers who looked to different intellectual traditions and

resources of argument.3 Even if we leave open the seemingly anodyne questions whether or not any

scholastic philosopher ever attained the plaudits of ‗originality‘, or else furthered the cause of

‗philosophical progress‘,4 the fact remains that by dint of their publications, and by virtue of their

Kennikat Press, 1971, Originally Published, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940; esp. pp. 3-33,

and 61-92; M. Mejía Valera, Fuentes para la historia de la filosofía en el Perú, Lima: 1964; Ignacio

Angelelli, ‗Sobre la ‗restauración‘ de los textos filosóficos ibéricos‘, Documentación crítica

iberoamericana de filosofía y ciencias afines 2 (1965): 423-446; Walter Redmond, Bibliography of

the Philosophy in the Iberian Colonies of America, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972; Mauricio

Beuchot O.P., Historia de la filosofia en le Mexico Colonial, Barcelona: Herder, 1996; and Kevin

A. White, ed., Hispanic Philosophy in the age of Discovery, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University

of America Press, 1997. 3 For a helpful advice as to how to characterise the terms „philosophy‟ and „philosopher‟ in the early

modern period see the essays by Richard Tuck, „Institutional Setting‟, in Daniel Garber and Michael

Ayers eds., The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols., Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998, i, pp. 9-32; and Stephen Menn, „The Intellectual Setting‟, ibid.,

i, pp. 33-86. See also Conal Condren, Stephen Gaukroger and Ian Hunter eds., The Philosopher in

Early Modern Europe. The Nature of a Contested Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2006. 4 The constant attempts of historians of early modern philosophy (especially in the English-

speaking world), to try to specify moments of real „originality‟ or philosophical „progress‟ in the

ideas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers, so often reveals an allegiance on their part to

a quasi „Whig‟ view of history, an allegiance which has most definitely hindered research on early

modern scholasticism. For, if one is committed to the opinion that the cause of advancement in

modern philosophy is only supported by the efforts of canonical figures, then one is liable to view

the work of sundry scholastics as part of a recalcitrant effort to preserve the retrograde teaching of

the Middle Ages against the inevitable progress of modernity. For good or ill, this position finds

broad support among contemporary historians of philosophy. In part, it helps to explain why most

students of philosophy are unaware of the scholastic schools and of their achievements.

3

prominence in important institutions of higher education, scholastic philosophers and theologians

were a significant and conspicuous presence in early modern intellectual life.

The schools that enjoyed influence and prestige in the years from the close of the Council of

Trent in 1562 to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 were distinct in orientation and

outlook, and promoted considerable flexibility in their use of method. Products of the early modern

age and of the powerful historical forces that had impacted upon the Western European Church,

higher education, and society in general, it is imperative that they are viewed not as a stalwart

champions of the putative verities of ‗medieval learning‘ in an age otherwise characterized by

profound advances in the sciences and letters, but as movements open and alive to the challenges of

modernity.5 Though some of the schools had their origins in specific aspects of late medieval

5 This last point contrasts with a more traditional historiography of the early modern schools which

is common to a more recent version of the scholastic heritage, known as „Neo-scholasticism‟. In

this tradition, which found a highly confident form of expression in Roman Catholic circles during

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we find a strong consensus that the schools to be

discussed below are to be classified under the rubric of a „second scholastic‟; that is, as following

on from yet inferior to the golden age of „High Scholasticism‟, personfied in the achievements of

late thirteenth-century thinkers such as Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and especially Thomas

Aquinas. For all Neoscholastic writers, and especially those who contributed a great deal to the

new discipline of „medieval philosophy‟ in the late nineteenth century such as Joseph Kleutegen

(1811-1883), Albert Stöckl (1823-1895), Karl Werner (1821-1888), and Maurice De Wulf (1867-

1947), the efforts of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries could never match the singular

achievements of thinkers like Thomas, whose intellectual patrimony had to be cleansed of the worst

aspects of modernity and restored to its rightful place as the fulcrum of Christian theology and

philosophy. Though the Neoscholastic movement did not hinder research into early modern

scholasticism as such, one has only to look at important works of commentary such as Werner‟s,

Die Scholastik des späteren Mittelalters, 4 vols. in 5 tomes, Regensburg, 1881-1887, and Franz

Suárez und die Scholastik der letzten Jahrdunderte, 2 vols., Regensburg, 1889; and Carlo Giacon‟s,

La seconda scolastica, 3 vols., Turin: 1942-1948, it is important to emphasise that it did tend to

judge the achievements of early modern authors against an idealised standard of excellence

presumed to have been set by Thomas and his peers. For further discussion of many of these

thinkers see John Inglis, Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval

Philosophy, Leiden: Brill, 1998.

4

thought,6 and strove to ensure continuity rather than strict conformity with those intellectual

traditions, they were more often than not inspired and conditioned by the overt theological and

ecclesiological allegiances of their religious and institutional sponsors, especially as individual

religious congregations and Catholic universities were moved to redefine their role and renew their

apostolic mission in the years after the Council of Trent.

Two of the greatest in terms of number and authority were the Scotist and Thomist schools.

Promoted by two prominent orders of friars, the Dominicans and Franciscans – although by no

means their exclusive preserve – both traditions proved themselves reasonably adept at

withstanding the intellectual pressures of the early modern period. Other major schools were

sponsored by both Orders of the Carmelites, the Capuchins, the Augustinian Hermits, as well as

other established orders such as the Mercedarians and Premonstratensians, and by new religious

orders such as the Jesuits, Piarists, and Theatines. Secular priests and laymen also contributed to

scholastic philosophy, as indeed did thinkers in traditional monastic orders such as the

Benedictines, Cistercians, and Carthusians.

6 Providing a coherent yet plausible explanation of the complicated transistion of „medieval‟ to

„modern‟ philosophy has proved one of the more daunting challenges in recent historiography of

European philosophy. One research project, however, the „Early Modern Thought‟ network funded

by the European Science Foundation between 1999-2001, has shed a good deal of new light on this

phenomenon, and has broken new ground in its four published volumes each of which chronicle

different aspects of the relationship between so-called „medieval‟ and „modern‟ thought in natural

philosophy, logic and language, metaphysics, and practical philosophy. See C. Leijenhorst, C.

Lüthy, and J.M.M.H. Thijssen eds., The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from

Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (Medieval and Modern Science, 5), Leiden: Brill, 2002; R.L.

Friedman and L.O. Nielsen eds., The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal

Theory, 1400-1700 (The New Synthese Historical Library, 53), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003; S.

Ebbesen and R.L. Friedman eds., John Buridan and Beyond. The Language Sciences 1300-1700,

Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, 200; and Jill Kraye and Risto

Saarinen eds., Moral Philosophy on the Threshold of Modernity (The New Synthese Historical

Library, 57), Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.

5

Across the newly instituted confessional divide of Europe, scholastic thinking graced the

Lutheran and Reformed confessions,7 and was an ever present feature among the cognoscenti of the

nascent the Church of England.8 Neither as robust nor as enduring as the schools of the Roman

Catholic Church, a fact witnessed by its slow but sure decline in the late seventeenth century, so-

called ‗Protestant scholasticism‘ made an important bequest to the theology and philosophy of the

era. Not only did its exponents help to fashion the institutional conditions in which figures such as

Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, and even the young Kant, were first exposed to logic, natural

philosophy, metaphysics, and ethics, an achievement not without consequence since many of these

‗canonical‘ figures would bemoan the putative deficiencies of their ‗scholastic education‘,9 but they

produced well known manuals that became staple fixtures of a philosophical education in Northern

Europe and North America down to the last decades of the eighteenth century.10

Here one thinks of

the influential textbooks produced by the Leiden professor Franco Petri Burgersdijck (1590-1635)

7 See Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, „Die Schulphilosophie in den reformierten Territorien‟, in

Holzhzy et alii. (2001), pp. 392-446; Wolfgang Rother, „Die Hochschulen in der Schweiz‟, ibid.,

pp. 447-474; and Walter Span, „Die Schulphilosophie in den lutherischen Territorien‟, ibid., pp.

475-587. 8 A good illustration of this fact can be reserved in the programmes of philosophical and theological

study sponsored by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. On this see William T. Costello,

The Scholastic Cirriculum at early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge, Cambridge MA: Harvard

University Press, 1958; and Nicholas Tyacke ed., The History of Oxford University, 4: The

Seventeenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 9 See, for instance, the case of Hobbes as discussed by R.W. Serjeantson, „Hobbes, the universities

and the history of Philosophy‟, in Condren et alii., (2006), pp. 113-140. 10

On Protestant scholasticism see Carl R. Trueman and R.S. Clark eds., Protestant Scholasticism.

Essays in Reassessment, Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999; and Willem J. Van Asselt and Eef

Dekker eds., Reformation and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise (Texts and Studies in

Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought) Grand Rapids, MA.: Baker Academic, 2001. A

Comprehensive treatment of scholasticism within Reformed tradition is provided by Richard A.

Muller, Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy,

ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 4 vols., Grand Rapids, MA.: Baker Academic, 2003.

6

which were used throughout the Protestant world.11

In the Netherlands, Calvinist scholastics were

among the very first to engage systematically with the approach to philosophy and science

advanced by Descartes,12

while in German-speaking countries a tradition of scholastic metaphysics

(Schulmetaphysik) remained a conspicuous presence in Lutheran academic life even as late as the

last decades of the eighteenth century and was closely associated with the work of Christian Wolff

(1679-1754).13

This robust tradition of metaphysical speculation also served to condition the initial

philosophical reflections of the young Immanuel Kant.14

Scholasticism also flourished in the

Lutheran Universities of Sweden, modern day Finland, and Denmark.15

Our focus, however, is on the schools of the Roman Catholic Church. A characteristic

feature of these academic communities was that they were neither monolithic nor closed intellectual

systems. When one reviews the central features of philosophical practice among the Thomist,

Scotist, Carmelite, Capuchin, Augustinian, or Jesuit schools, one is immediately struck by the

absence of any strict or overbearing ‗party-line‘, and the extent to which considerable disagreement

on issues in logic, metaphysics, ethics, and philosophical theology was permitted and even

encouraged in every school. For this reason it is hazardous to arrive at general definitions of

‗Thomism‘, ‗Scotism‘, and ‗Jesuit Scholasticism‘, since at this time uniformity in method is not

11

For further discussion see Egbert P. Bos and Henri A. Krop eds., Franco Burgersdijk 1590-1635,

Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. 12

On this see Theo Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reaction to Cartesian Philosophy

1637-1650, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. See also John

Platt, Reformed Thought and Scholasticism. The Arguments for the Existence of God in Dutch

Theology, 1573-1650 (Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 29), Leiden: Brill, 1982, for a

discussion of an earlier period of Protestant scholasticism in the Netherlands. 13

See Max Wundt, Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,

1939, and Die deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,

1945; and Span (2001). 14

Ulrich Lehner, Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie

und –theologie (Brill‟s Studies in Intellectual History, 149), Leiden: Brill, 2007. 15

On this topic see Simo Knuuttila, „Schweden und Finnland‟ in Holzhey et alii. (2001), ii, pp.

1227-1245; and Carl Henrik Koch, „Dänemark‟, ibid., ii, pp. 1246-1258.

7

always in evidence when one compares writers of the same school, but resident in different

universities and national contexts. Such flexibility in outlook could have surprising results.

Throughout the period it was quite common for a self-styled ‗Thomist‘ in one part of Europe or

Latin America, reading the very same texts as a colleague in another region of those same

continents, to arrive at entirely dissimilar views and opinions.16

Similar differences of outlook can

be found among members of the Scotist school,17

and can be discerned in the writings of Jesuit

philosophers. One has only to recall the bitter disputes between Gabriel Vázquez (1549-1604) and

Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) on numerous subjects,18

or else note the radical disagreements

among Jesuit metaphysicians on the topic of entia realis in the first half of the seventeenth

century.19

Scholasticism in the early modern period exhibited a mature tolerance of incongruity

(although this did admit of degrees), as well as an appetite for open discussion. Its broad discursive

culture was enhanced, rather than restricted, by the universal reach of the Latin language among the

educated elites of the Roman Catholic Church, a fact which helped to ensure that topical questions

were debated by an extensive network of international scholars rather than restricted to the

idiosyncratic concerns of a chosen few. It is somewhat ironic given the many pejorative

16

Compare for instance the different approaches to the texts of Thomas among the theologians of

Louvain, the Jesuits, and members of the Dominican order; see below section 2. 17

There were considerable disagreements among Scotist thinkers on issues of metaphysics. For one

such debate between the Irish Observant Franciscan John Punch (1599 or 1603-1661) and the

Italian Conventual thinker Bartolomeo Mastrius (1602-1673), see Lukás Novák, ‗Scoti de conceptu

entis doctrina a Mastrio retractata et contra Poncium propugnata‘, in Forlivesi (2006), pp. 237-

259. 18

Eleuterio Elorduy, „La predestinación en Suárez. Controversias con Vazquez, Salas, y Lesio‟,

Achivo Teológico Granadino, 10, 1947, 5-151; and Rainer Specht, „Zur Kontroverse von Suarez

und Vazquez über den Grund der Verbindlichkeit des Naturrechts‟, Archiv für Rechts und

Sozialgeschichte, 45, 1969: 235-255. 19

See Daniel Dominik Novotnỳ, „The Prolegomena to a study of Beings of Reason in Post-

Suarezian Scholasticism, 1600-1650‟, Studia Neoaristotelica, 3, 2006, 117-141.

8

connotations that presently surround the term ‗scholastic‘ in modern European languages, negative

caricatures that have their origin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,20

that the schools of the

Post-Tridentine era were neither as pedantic nor narrow-minded enterprises as their legion of critics

would have us believe. A pluralistic, cosmopolitan, and conceptually sophisticated phenomenon,

scholastic thought in the early modern age managed to sustain and refresh itself not only by relying

upon the institutional support of the Church, numerous religious orders, and universities, but also by

proving itself open to the challenges of modernity. This last feature is to be observed in the extent

to which members of the schools were minded to revise, recast, and adapt their understanding of the

philosophical patrimony of the medieval schools, their collective determination to appreciate the

manner in which this rich intellectual bequest had been passed down to them, and their on-going

efforts to discern the best means by which the defining doctrines of the scholastic tradition could be

made relevant to the needs of an entirely different era.

Given the texts and questions that an assortment of leading schoolmen struggled to

understand, it should not be so unsurprising that early modern scholasticism was an incubus of

genuine and earnest philosophical activity. The primary, but by no means exclusive, basis of

reflection was provided by the seminal books and ideas of Aristotle and Augustine, interpreted

according to a plurality of methods then common to the Post-Tridentine period.21

In addition to this,

20

On this see especially Erica Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and

Reformation, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995; Amos Edelheit, Ficino, Pico,

Savonarola. The Evolution of Humanist Theology 1461/2-1498, Leiden: Brill, 2009; and Lodi

Nauta, In Defense of Common Sense. Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy,

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. See also Quinto (2002). 21

Helpful companions to different early modern interpretations of Aristotle and Augustine are

provided by Constance Blackwell and Sachiko Kusukawa eds., Philosophy in the Sixteenth and

Seventeenth Centuries. Conversations with Aristotle, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999; Günter Frank and

Andreas Speer eds., Der Aristotelismus in der Neuzeit. Kontinuität oder Wiederaneignung?,

Weisbanden: Harrasowitz Verlag, 2007; Kurt Flasch and Dominique Courcelles eds., Augustinus in

9

the works of medieval scholastics such as Peter Lombard (c. 1100-1160) (although his authority had

declined by the advent of the seventeenth century), Bonaventure (1221-1274), Thomas Aquinas

(1224-1274), Henry of Ghent (c. 1217-1293), Giles of Rome (c. 1243-1316), John Duns Scotus

(c.1265/66-d. 1308), Durand of Saint Pourçain (c 1275-1334), John Baconthorpe (c.1290–1345/52),

Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), Renaissance and early modern commentaries on the works of Thomas and

Scotus, as well as tracts and disputations of a more recent provenance, also served to stimulate all

manner of philosophical discourse. This last corpus of works, when combined with the constant

endeavour to understand and reinterpret the ideas and legacy of leading medieval schoolmen,

occasioned multiple interpretations and encouraged divergent points of view. Since a great many of

the individual arguments and influential theses of authoritative tomes and thinkers gave rise to

equivocal readings, it became incumbent upon early modern interpreters to try to find coherent

explanations of contested ideas and disputed passages, even when such phenomena did not lend

themselves to simple or conclusive renderings. This last point helps to explain the extent of

disagreement that extisted within a particular school, and the wide-ranging disputes among

members of different scholastic traditions.

1. Scotism

The greatest of all the early modern schools of the Counter Reformation was Scotism, based

on the teaching of the Doctor Subtilis, or John Duns Scotus.22

Though indebted to previous

der Neuzeit, Turnhout: Brepols, 1998; and Laurence Devilliars ed., Augustin au XVIIe siècle,

Florence: Olschki, 2007. 22

For a general discussion of the school see Dominique de Caylus, „Merveilleux épanouisseement

de l‟école scotiste au XVIIe siècle‟, Études franciscaines, 24 (1910): 5-12, 493-502; 25 (1911): 35-

47, 306-317, 327-645; and 26 (1912): 276-278, a study which needs to be supplemented by P. Uriël

Smeets, Lineamenta bibliographie Scotisticae, Rome: Vatican Press, 1942; see also Bernhard

Jansen, „Zur Philosophie der Skotisten im 17. Jahrhunderts‟, Franziskanische Studien, 23, 1936: 28-

10

traditions of commentary in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,23

early modern Scotism, both

intellectually and geographically, was much more expansive than its late medieval incarnation,

providing a wider dissemination of the Subtle Doctor‘s ideas and methods. Its progress in Catholic

Europe (for Protestants proved mostly resistant to the charms of Scotus),24

and in the new colonies

was assisted from 1501 onwards, when regulations of general chapters of the Franciscans

recommended or directly prescribed the doctrina Scotistae as the teaching to be followed by the

Observant, Conventual, and Recollect varieties of the Franciscan order. Furthermore, in the late

fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, specialist chairs of Scotist theology were established at the

universities of Paris, Rome, Coimbra, Salamanca, Alcalá, Padua, and Pavia, thereby providing the

school with a strong institutional foundation. The school itself became an identifiable presence in

European thought at the beginning of the sixteenth century when the works of the Subtle Doctor

were collected, published in several editions, and systematically analysed. In 1639 at Lyons, the

Irish Franciscan Luke Wadding (1588-1657), a celebrated annalist of the Franciscan Order and a

distinguished theologian in his own right, published the Opera omnia of Scotus in twelve volumes.

58. All earlier studies have been superceded by Jacob Schmutz, ‗L‟Héritage des Subtils.

Cartographie du Scotisme de l‟âge classique‟, Études philosophiques, 57, 2002: 51-81. 23

See Camille Bérubé, „La première école scotiste‟, in Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux eds., Preuve et

raisons à la université de Paris. Logique, ontologie et théologie au XIVe siècle, Paris: Vrin, 1984;

and L. Honnefelder, „Scotus und der Scotismus: Ein Beitrag zur Bedeutung der Schulbildung in der

mittealterlichen Philosophie, in Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen et alii. eds., Philosophy and Learning:

universities in the Middle Ages, Leiden: Brill, 1995, pp. 249-262. 24

Scotist ideas, however, did influence aspects of Reformed thought, as opposed to Lutheran or the

theology in the Church of England. In recent years, some scholars have argued that Calvin‟s

theology bears a partial similarity to that of Scotus in respect of its emphasis on the divine will, and

in other areas of theological epistemology, see T. F. Torrance, „Intuitive and Abstractive

Knowledge from Duns Scotus to John Calvin‟, in De doctrina Ioannes Duns Scoti, Scotist

Commission ed., 4 vols. Rome: Scotist Commision, 1969, iv, pp. 291-306. A much more definite

Scotist influence, however, can be discerned in the writings of later Reformed theologians such as

the Utrecht professor Gisbertus Voetius; see Andreas J. Beck, „Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676):

Basic Features of His Doctrine of God‟, in Willem J. van Asselt and Eef Dekker eds., Reformation

and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001, pp. 205-226.

11

This edition would become the standard text for the study of the Subtle Doctor until the first half of

the twentieth century.25

Due to the industry of Wadding and other Franciscan friars, Scotism would reach its zenith

at the end of the first half of the seventeenth century, when one observer, the Cistercian polymath

Juan Caramuel y Lebkowitz (1606-1682), was moved to remark: ‗the school of Scotus is more

numerous than all the other schools taken together‘ (Scoti schola numerosior est omnibus aliis simul

sumptis).26

In the eighteenth century the movement still had an important following, especially in

Spain, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, but subsequently fell into decline, a state of affairs

explicable by the repeated suppressions endured by Franciscan communities in many countries, and

by the increasing tendency of several popes from the late eighteenth century onwards to recommend

the teaching of Thomas Aquinas as normative for Roman Catholic thinkers.27

Among the leading Scotists of the early modern period, the following are worthy of

mention. In the sixteenth-century, Paul Scriptoris (d. 1505), professor at the University of

Tübingen, proved an influential figurehead for the movement in German-speaking countires, while

25

On the edition itself and the circumstances of its composition see D. Scarmuzzi, „La prima

edizione dell‟ Opera Omnia di G. Duns Scoti, Studi Francescani, 27 (1930): 381-412; and C. Balić,

„Wadding the Scotist‟, in The Franciscan Fathers ed., Father Luke Wadding Commemorative

Volume, Killiney, Co. Dublin: Clonmore and Reynolds, 1957, pp. 463-507, esp. 486-507. 26

Juan Caramuel y Lebkowitz O. Cist., Theologia moralis fundamentalis, Lyon, 1657, Lib. II, disp.

10. On the quotation see Felix Bak, „Scoti schola numerosior est omnibus aliis simul sumptis‟,

Franciscan Studies, 16, 1956, 143-164. See also the remarks made by Luke Wadding, Annales

Minorum, 32 vols., 3rd

ed., Quarrachi, 1931-1964, see ad an 1308, nn. 52 and 54. 27

For an interesting account as to how the debates of the Enlightenment impacted upon one

Franciscan community see Thomas Kogler, Das philosophisch-theologische Studium der

Bayrischen Franziskaner. Ein Beitrag zur Studien- und Schulgeschichte des 17. und 18

Jahrhunderts, Münster: Aschendorff, 1925. See also an informative case-study of the Irish

Franciscans in the eighteenth century by Joseph MacMahon, „The Silent Century, 1698-1829‟, in

Edel Bhreathnach, Joseph MacMahon OFM, and John McCafferty eds., The Irish Franciscans 1534-

1990, Dublin: Four Courts, 2009, pp. 77-101.

12

the commentaries of Francis Lichetus, General of the Order (d. 1520) were greatly admired.28

Anthony Trombetta (1436-1517), the Paduan opponent of the Dominican Cajetan, wrote and edited

many able works of Scotist philosophy works,29

as did his colleague the Irish Franciscan Maurice

O‟Fihely (Ó Ficheallaigh) or Mauritius Hibernicus (c. 1460-1513).30

At Paris, Jacobus Almainus

(c.1520), although not a Franciscan, would help to establish through his teaching and writing a

tradition of scholastic thought which, though highly eclectic, drew on many aspects of the Subtle

Doctor‘s metaphysics.31

In the following century, this legacy would find expression in the

textbooks of the Parisian Cistercian Eustachius a Sancto Paolo (1573-1640),32

and in the writings of

28

E. Wegerich, ‗Bio-bibliographische Notizen über Franziskanerlehrer des 15. Jahrhunderts‘,

Franziskanische Studien, 29 (1942): 169-174; and Celestino Piana, ‗Gli Statuti per la riforma dello

Studio di Parigi (a. 1502) e Statuti posteriori‘, Archivium franciscanum historicum, 52 (1959): 293-

295. 29

For further discussion of Trombetta see Antonino Poppi, ‗Lo scotista patavino Antonio

Trombetta‘, Il Santo, 2 (1962): 349-367; Edward P. Mahoney, ‗Antonio Trombetta and Agostino

Nifo on Averroes and Intelligible Species: A Philosophical Dispute at the University of Padua‘, in

A. Poppi ed., Storia e cultura al Santo dal XIII al XX secolo, Vicenza : Neri Pozza, 1976, pp. 289-

301; and ‗Duns Scotus and the School of Padua around 1500‘, in Camille Bérubé ed., Regnum

hominis et Regnum Dei. Acta Quarti Congressus Scotistici Internationalis, 2 vols., Roma: Scotist

Commission, 1978, ii, pp. 214-227. 30

On O‟Fihely see my ‗Punch‘s Riposte: The Irish Contribution to Early Modern Scotism from

Maurice O‘Fihely O.F.M. Conv. to Anthony Rourke O.F.M. Obs.‘, in James McEvoy and Michael

Dunne (eds.), The Irish Contribution to European Scholastic Thought, Dublin: Four Courts, 2009,

pp. 137-191, esp. pp. 150-155. 31

For further discussion of Almain and the Theological Faculty at Paris during this period see

Ricardo G. Villoslada, La Universidad de Paris durante los etudios de Francisco de Vitoria O.P.

(1507-1522) (Analecta Gregoriana, XIV, series Facultatis Hist. Ecclesiasticae, sectio B (N. 2),

Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1938, pp. 165-179; and James Farge, Orthodoxy and Reform in

Early Reformation France. The faculty of Theology of Paris, 1500-1543, Leiden: Brill, 1985 32

On Eustachius, see Jacob Schmutz, „Eustache de Saint-Paul‟, in Luc Foisneau ed., Dictionary of

Seventeenth Century French Philosophers, 2 vols., London - New York, Thoemmes - Continuum,

2008,, i, pp. 447-450. See also Roger Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1999; Blum (1998), pp. 29-31, 35, 166-167; Stephan Meier-Oeser, Die

Spur des Zeichens, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997, pp. 178, 194, 243, 352 ; Leslie Armour, „Descartes and

Eustachius a Sancto Paulo: Unravelling the Mind-Body Problem‟, British Journal for the History of

Philosophy 1 (1993): 3-21; M. Bergam, L’anatomia dell’anima. Da François de Sales a Fénelon,

Bologna, Il Mulino, 1991, pp. 52-53; F. Van de Pitte, „Some of Descartes‟ Debts to Eustachius a

Sancto Paulo‟, The Monist, 71 (1988): 487-497. See also L.W.B. Brockliss, French Higher

13

the Capuchin Yves of Paris (c.1590-1678). At the close of the sixteenth century, José Anglés (d.

1588), a celebrated moralist (d. 1587), wrote the much cited Flores theologicae, while Damian

Giner (fl. 1605) produced an edition of the Opus Oxoniense Scoti which was to become a template

for the later critical edition of Wadding.33

As we observed above, Scotism came into its own in the seventeenth century. Then, the

crowning achievement of the school was the aforementioned publication by Wadding and other

Irish Franciscans working at the College of Saint Isidore in Rome of the complete philosophical and

theological works of Scotus. The work included detailed commentaries by Pitigianus of Arezzo (d.

1616),34

John Punch (Poncius),35

Hugh Mac Caughwell (Hugo Cavellus) (1571-1626),36

and

Anthony Hickey (1586-1641).37

The same century was also the heyday of the Scotist textbook.

Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century. A Cultural History, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1987, pp. 228-276. 33

Damian Giner, Scriptum Oxoniense in quatuor libros Sententiarum doctoris subtilis... Scoti, nunc

in commodiorum formam redactam (Valencia, 1598; and 1603). 34

On Pitigianus see De Caylus (1910), p. 33; and Wegerich (1942). 35

For discussion of Punch see Stone (2009), pp. 175-178. More detailed discussion can be found in

Maurice Grajewski, „John Pounce, Franciscan Scotist of the Seventeenth Century‟, Franciscan

Studies, 6 (1949): 54-92; Tobias Hoffmann, “Creatura intellecta”. Die Ideen und Possibilien bei

Duns Scotus mit Ausblick auf Franz von Mayronis, Poncius und Mastrius, Münster: Aschendroff,

2002, pp. 263-276; and Marco Forlivesi, „―Ut ex etymologia nominis patet‖. The Nature and Object

of Metaphysics according to John Punch‟, in M.W.F. Stone (ed.), From Ireland to Louvain. On the

Philosophical and Theological Achievements of the Irish Franciscans, Dublin: Four Courts, 2010. 36

On Cavellus see Cathaldus Giblin, „Hugh McCaughwell OFM and Scotism at St. Anthony‟s

College London‟, in De doctrina Ioannis Scoti. Acta congressus Scotistici Internationalis Oxonii et

Edinburgi 11-17 sept. 1966 celebrati, 4 vols., Rome: Scotist Commission, iv, pp. 375-397; James

McEvoy, „Hugh McCawell O.F.M., Scotist Theologan of the Immaculate Conception of Mary‟, in

Stone (2010); Michael Dunne, ‗Hugo Cavellus (Aodh Mac Aingil, 1571-1626) on Certitude‘, ibid.;

and P. Alessandro M. Apollonio, L’intellezione dei singolari materiali nelle ―Annotationes‖ di

Hugo Cavellus alle Quaestiones super libros Aristoteles de Anima attribuite al Beato G. Duns

Scotus, Ph.D Pontificia Universitas Sancta Crucis, Rome 2003. 37

Hickey‟s work is discussed in Stone (2009), pp. 170-172, with further references.

14

Contributors to this genre were the very clever Bonaventuri Belluti (1600-1676),38

who edited with

Bartolomeo Mastrius, one of the most widely regarded Scotist manuals of the period, the Cursus

integer philosophiae ad mentem Scoti (Venice: 1678, 1688, and many other editions). Mastrius

himself wrote a celebrated Disputationes theologiae (many editions) and Theologia ad mentem

Scoti (1671), a work which probably represents the high water mark of Scotist thinking in the

period.39

Mastrius was by no means the most original or innovative of the Scotist philosophers of his

day, but he was among the more learned. His knowledge of most aspects of the medieval and

Renaissance scholastic tradition was probably unsurpassed, and he was nicknamed ‗dottore

ubertoso’ by his biographer in virtue of the plethora of authorities (auctoritates) he cited. Mastrius‘s

development of a philosophical opinion was a remarkable feat of synthesis and conceptual

engineering, whereby different aspects of medieval Scotism would be fused, compared, or even

gainsayed by strictures drawn from contemporary debate. This method enabled Mastrius to

demonstrate the diversity of arguments available to Scotist thinkers. His studies displayed the

subtlety and rigour traditionally associated with Duns Scotus himself.

Contemporaneous with Mastrius, other Scotist thinkers continued to labour to some point

and purpose. The Paduan based Crotian Matthaeus Ferchius (Mate Frce or Ferkic) (1583-1666)

wrote the Vita et apologia Scoti,40

while the Frenchman Jean Gabriel Boyvin (1605-1681) wrote the

38

For further discussion of Belluti‟s ideas see Forlivesi (2006); and Daniel D. Novontny, „Forty-

Two Years after Suárez. Mastri and Belluto‟s Development of the «Classical» Theory of Entia

Rationis‟, Quaestio, 8 (2008): 473-498. 39

On Mastrius see Marco Forlivesi, Scotistarum princeps: Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673) e il suo

tempo (Fonti e studi francescani, 11), Padova: Centro di studi antoniani, 2002; and Forlivesi (2006).

See also Tullio Faustino Ossanna, Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673) OFMConv. Teologo

Dell’Incarnazione, Rome: Miscellanea Franciscana, 2002. 40

N. Roscic, ‗Mateo Frce (Ferkic, Ferchius). Un grande scotista croato‘, in Studia mediaevalia et

mariologica p. Carolo Balic OFM septuagesimum explenti annum dicata, Rome, 1971, pp. 377-

15

esteemed Theologia scoti a prolixitate et subtilitas eius ab obsuritate libera et vindicate, 4 vols

(Caen: 1665-1671).41

Another valuable work, the product of an eclectic as opposed to a purely

Scotist mind, was the Collationes by a Portuguese Augustinian Hermit who was a professor at

Padua, Francisco a Santo Augustini Macedo O.E.S.A. (1596-1681).42

This work set itself the

unenviable task of assessing the respective merits and compatibility of Thomist and Scotist

doctrines, and as such it throws a great deal of light on the disputes (at least at Padua) conducted by

these competing schools. Another important Scotist of the period was the French Recollect Claude

Frassen (1620-1711). His encyclopedic Scotus academicus, first published at Paris in 1672

remained a staple textbook among different Franciscan communities. Such was the esteem the

work gained for itself, that it was frequently reprinted, even as late as the opening decade of the

twentieth century.43

As we move toward the last decades of the ancien regime, Scotist philosophy continued to

hold its own in some parts of the Catholic world, although elsewhere it went into a slow decline.

Many Enlightenment writers found its metaphysics anachronistic or prolix, while Catholic thinkers

looked increasingly to Thomas, or else to those vestiges of their tradition that had been

402; and Antonino Poppi, ‗Il De caelesti substantia di Matteo Ferchio fra tradizione e innovazione‘,

in G. Santinello ed., Galileo e la cultura padovana. Atti del Convegno promosso dall'Accademia

Patavina di scienze, lettere ed arti (13-15 febbraio 1992, Padova, 1992, pp. 13-56 41

G. Delorme, ‗Le P. François Boyvin‘, La France franciscaine 4 (1921): 365-375; and Jacob

Schmutz, ‗Boyvin, Jean Gabriel‘, in Foisneau (2008), i, pp. 216-217. 42

De Caylus (1910), pp. 57-60; and I. de Sousa Ribeiro, Fr. Francisco de Santo Agostinho de

Macedo. Um filósofo escotista português e um paladino da Restauração, Lisbon, 1951; E. Troilo,

‗Franciscus a S. Augustino Macedo‘, in Relazioni fra l’Italia e il Portogallo (Reale Accademia

d‘Italia), Rome, 1940, 239-260; L. Ceyssens, OFM, ‗François de Saint-Augustin de Macedo. Son

attitude au début du Jansénisme‘, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 49 (1956): 1-14. 43

On Frassen see Jacob Schmutz, ‗Le petit scotisme du Grand Siècle. Étude doctrinale et

documentaire sur la philosophie au Grand Couvent des Cordeliers de Paris‘, in Pasquale Porro and

Jacob Schmutz eds., The Legacy of John Duns Scotus [Quaestio, 8, 2008, 365-473], Turnhout:

Brepols, 2008, pp. 405-408, 426-430.

16

reinvigorated and renewed by their own ‗Enlightenment‘.44

By the end of the eighteenth century,

individual Scotists can be said to manifest an unwillingness to engage historically or else critically

with their pluriform tradition. It is instructive to compare, in this regard, the erudition of Mastrius

and Frassen, or the intelligence of Belluti and Punch, with writers such as Du Randus (d. 1720).

His popular Clypeus scotisticus (many editions) merely aimed to expound the kernel of Scotist

teaching without much thought to demonstrating objectively its truth or plausibility. There were,

however, some better examples of Scotist writing in the period as can be observed in the profound

and lucid work of Hieronymus a Montefortino (1632-1738), Duns Scoti summa theologiae ex

universis opp. eius . . . juxta ordiner Summae Angelici Doctoris (6 vols., 1728-34), and the

Theologiae scholasticae morali-polemicae liber IV sententiarium iuta vera sensum, et mentem

doctoris subtilis Joannis Duns Scoti (Augsburg: 1732), of the German moralist Marinus Panger

(1664-1733).45

Two other works from the first half of the eighteenth century deserving of comment are by

two Irish Franciscans: Francis O‟Devlin O.F.M. (fl. 1710), and Anthony Rourke O.F.M. (fl. 1746)

of Valladolid. Of the former we know very little, except that he taught in Prague and he published

at Nürenberg in 1710 a four volume work, Philosophia scoto-aristotelica universa, intentioni

volentium cito et sufficienter philosophicum cursum consummare, that presented an articulate

synthesis of Scotist and Aristotelian philosophy.46

The book reveals a thorough knowledge of the

early modern Scotist heritage and of the writings of individual Irish friars, especially Cavellus and

44

This phenomenon was especially pronounced in German-speaking countries. See Michael Printy,

Enlightenment and the Creation of German Catholicism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2009; and Ulrich Lehner and Douglas Palmer eds., Brill’s Companion to the Catholic

Enlightenment in Europe, Leiden: Brill, 2009. 45

On Pranger see Blum (2001), pp. 373-374. 46

For further information on O‟Devlin see Jan Pařez, „The Irish Franciscans in Seventeenth and

Eighteenth Century Prague‟, in Thomas O‟Connor and Mary Ann Lyons (eds.), Irish Migrants in

Europe after Kinsale, Dublin: Four Courts, 2003, pp. 104-117.

17

some of the arguments used by John Punch in his Integer cursus philosophicus, but rarely advances

points of original commentary or introduces novel opinions. Written as a textbook and heartily

committed to its reader‟s formation in the principles of scholasticism, it does not offer any real

insight into the possible sources of innovation among Scotist thinkers at this time, but merely serves

to confirm that the school still enjoyed a firm institutional profile in Southern Germany and

Bohemia (the same can also be said for Italy, Spain, and Latin America), and that it saw the need to

sustain itself by commissioning new manuals of instruction.

Rourke was a Scotist theologian of Irish origin, who taught in the Observant province of the

Immaculate Conception. Not much is known about his life, or his stature in the Franciscan studium

at Valladolid. He produced a lengthy course of Scotist theology, the Cursus theologiae

scholasticae, 6 vols. (Valladolid: 1746-1764), which is a work of genuine substance and not just a

vade mecum of Scotist doctrine in the fashion of O‟Devlin. Rourke‟s book is firmly engaged with

the topical scholastic debates of his time, and one feature of the Cursus is its protracted criticism of

several theses advanced by prominent members of the early modern Thomist school. Figures such

as Juan González de Albelda O.P. (d. 1622),47

Jean-Baptiste Gonet O.P. (1615-1681), and John of

St. Thomas (João Poinsot) (1589-1644), are all singled out for disparagement and correction

whenever they are deemed to contradict the hallowed teaching of Scotus. Not content with

lambasting his Dominican opponents, Rourke reserved his more virulent censure for several of his

fellow Franciscans, with Francisco de Herrera (1551-1609)48

and John Punch falling short of his

own pristine standards of Scotist orthodoxy. Rourke was especially hostile to Punch‟s doctrine of

the „autonomy of possibles‟, a theory which he was convinced had dramatically departed from the

47

See Agostini (2008), pp. 154-155, 199-202, and 278, 281. 48

On Herrera see Isaac Vázquez Janeiro, ‗Fr. Francisco de Herrera, OFM, y sus votos en la

controversia de auxiliis‘, Verdad y vida, 23 (1965): 271-318; and Stone (2009), pp. 155-158.

18

accepted teaching of Scotus, and which he believed had no place in the schools (see Cursus, i, §§

387-399).49

The Valladolid theologian‘s animadversions against Punch are of great interest, not

least for the fact that they show that the the Irish friar‘s innovative metaphysics was still ruffling

feathers in certain quarters of the Scotist school many years after his demise.50

2. Thomism

The writings of Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) proved an enduring source of inspiration to

scholastic philosophers in early modern times, and for this reason ‗Thomism‘ is most worthy of

inclusion in any cartography of the scholastic schools.51

Bequeathed to our period by a renewed

and systematic interest in Thomas‘s corpus coincident with the great sixteenth-century

commentaries of the Dominicans Sylvester Mazzolini (1456-1523),52

Francesco Silvestro di Ferrara

(c. 1474-1528),53

Cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1468-1534),54

and Chrysostom Javelli (1470-

49

For more general discussion of the scholastic discussion of this issue see Jeffrey Coombs, „The

Possibility of Created Entities in Seventeenth-Century Scotism‟, Philosophical Quarterly, 43

(1993): 447-459. 50

Punch‟s influence and posterity in scholastic circles is discussed in my forthcoming monograph,

Scotus Hibernicus. The Irish Franciscans and the Heritage of Blessed John Duns Scotus. 51

Useful discussions of early modern Thomism can be found in Bernhard Jansen, ‗Zur

Phänomenologie der Philosophie der Thomisten des 17./18 Jahrhunderts‘, Scholastik 13 (1938): 49-

71; Paul O. Kristeller, Le thomisme et la pensée italienne de la Renaissance, Paris: Vrin, 1967;

Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, ‗Thomisme et thomistes dans le débat théologique à l‘âge

classique. Jalons historiques pour une caractérisation doctrinale‘, in Y. Krumenacker and L.

Thirouin (eds.), Les écoles de pensée religieuse à l’époque moderne (Actes de la Journée d‘Études

de Lyon (14 janvier 2006), Chrétiens et Sociétés. Documents et Mémoires, 5, 2006, 65-109; and

Jacob Schmutz, „Bellum scholasticum. Thomisme et antithomisme dans les débats doctrinaux

modernes‘, Revue thomiste 108 (2008): 131-182. 52

On Mazzolini see Michael Tavuzzi, Prierias. The Life and Work of Silvestro Mazzolini da

Prierio, 1456-1527, Durham, NC-London: Duke University Press, 1997. 53

For discussions of Ferrara see F. Laurent, „Quelques notes concernant le pensée de Silvestre de

Ferrare et de Cajetan sur la justice originelle, d‟après leurs commentaires sur la Somme

Théologique‟, Revue Thomiste, 11 (1928): 428-441; Hermann Lais, Die Gnadenlehre des heiligen

Thomas in der Summa contra Gentiles und der Kommentar des Franziskus Silvestris von Ferrara,

Munich, 1951; and Johannes Hegyi, Die Bedeutung des Siens bei den klassiche Kommentatoren des

19

1538),55

its triumphal march led to the coronation of Thomas Aquinas as the ‗Prince of

Theologians‘ when his Summa theologiae was laid beside the Sacred Scriptures at the Council of

Trent. In 1567 pope Pius V proclaimed him a Doctor of the Universal Church, and the publication

of the famous ‗Piana‘ edition of his works in 1570 ushered in several editions of his Opera omnia, a

great many of which graced the libraries of the learned world. Most aspects of Thomist thought

were refreshed and further developed, especially in the fields of moral and political philosophy, by

leading thinkers of the so-called ‗school of Salamanca‘.56

Of these Francisco de Vitoria (1486-

1546),57

Dominigo de Soto (1495-1560),58

Melchior Cano (1509-1560),59

Peter Soto (1494-

heiligen Thomas von Aquin Capreolus – Silvester von Ferrara – Cajetan, Pullach bei München:

Berchmanskolleg, 1959, pp. 55-106. 54

See Leinsle (1995), pp. 257-262; Jared Wicks, ‗Between Renaissance and Reformation: the Case

of Cajetan‘, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 68 (1977): 3-91; and Barbara Hallensleben,

Communicatio. Anthropologie und Gnadenlehre bei Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Münster: Aschendorf,

1985. Further references to the secondary literature on Cajetan can be found at

http://www.scholasticon.fr 55

Etienne Gilson, ‗Autour de Pomponazzi: problématique de l‘immortalité de l‘âme en Italie au

début du XVIe siècle‘, AHDLMA 28 (1961): 163-279, esp. pp. 259-277; G. Di Napoli,

L'immortalità dell'anima nel Rinascimento, Turin, 1963, pp. 325-335; Kristeller (1967), ad indicem;

Michael Tavuzzi, ‗Chrysostomus Iavelli OP (c. 1470-1538). A Biobibliographical Essay: Part I,

Biography‘, Angelicum 67 (1990): 457-482; and ‗Chrysostomus Iavelli OP (c. 1470-1538). A

Biobibliographical Essay: Part II, Bibliography‘, Angelicum 68 (1991): 109-121. 56

For further discussion see Juan Belda Plans, La Escuela de Salamanca y la renovación de le

teología en el siglo XVI, Madrid: BAC, 2000. 57

On Vitoria see ibid., pp. 313-398, with bibliography pp. 945-953. Despite Vitoria‟s justified

reputation as a political theorist, critic of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and place in the

history of the development of international law, it is important to remember his more general

philosophical profile and other achievements in the field of ethics; on these see J. Millet,

„Fondements philosophiques de le pensée de Vitoria: Rapports entre Vitoria et saint Thomas

d‟Aquin‟, Revue d’Éthique et Théologie Morale, Le Supplément, 160 (1987): 100-120. 58

The most recent synoptic assessment of Soto‟s work can be found in Belda Plans (2000), pp. 399-

500, with a full bibliography at pp. 954-956. See also V.D. Carro, Domingo de Soto y su doctrina

juridica, Salamanca: Biblioteca de teologos Españoles, 1944; Vincente Beltran de Heredia,

Domingo de Soto. Estudio biografico documentado, Salamanca: Biblioteca de teologos Españoles,

1960; S. Di Liso, Domingo De Soto dalla logica alla scienza, Bari: Levante, 2000; William A.

Wallace, Domingo de Soto and the Early Galileo, Aldershot: Variorum Reprints, 2004; and Juan

Cruz Cruz ed., Le Ley Natural como fundamento moral y jurídico en Domingo de Soto, Pamplona:

EUNSA, 2007.

20

1563),60

Bartholome de Medina (1528-1580),61

and Domingo Báñez (1528-1604)62

stand out as

highly capable exponents of Thomist philosophy and theology.

Apart from the Dominican order, the decision of the Jesuits to adopt Thomas as the official

philosopher of their Order, provided additional impetus and direction to Thomist philosophy,

although as we shall see many Jesuit writers arrived at doctrines quite at variance with those of

more ‗orthodox‘ Dominican exegetes.63

Thomism was embraced and valorised by the Reformed

Carmelite theologians of Salamanca, the Salmanticenses, whose voluminous Cursus theologicus

(1631-72) was widely cited and respected,64

and was also adopted by the Benedictines of Southern

Germany and Austria.65

In many universities throughout the Catholic world, Thomas‘s Summa

theologiae became the most authoritative theological textbook, replacing by the turn of the

59

Cano‟s ideas are fully discussed by Belda Plans (2000), pp. 501-750. See also Charles Lohr,

„Modelle für die Überlieferung theologischer Doktrin: von Thomas von Aquin bis Melchor Cano‟,

in W. Löser et alii., Dogmengeschichte und Katholische Theologie, Würzburg: , 1985, pp. 148-167;

and S. Di Liso, „Melchor Cano e i Loci theologici‟, in A. Lamacchia ed., La filosofia nel «Siglo de

Oro». Studi sul tardo Rinascimento spagnolo, Bari: Lavante, 1995, pp. 119-167. 60

On Peter Soto see V.D. Carro, El maestro Fr. Pedro de Soto, O.P. y las controversias politico-

teológicas en el siglo XVI, 2 vols., Salamanca: CISC, 1931-1951. 61

For further discussion of Medina‟s work see Belda Plans (2000), pp. 771-779; and Francisco

O‟Reilly, Duda y opinión. La conciencia moral en Soto y Medina, Pamploma: Cuadernos de

Pensamiento Español, 2006, with further references to the relevant secondary literature on Medina,

see pp. 98-102. 62

On Báñez see Vincente Beltran de Heredia, Domingo Báñez y las controversias sobre la gracia.

Textos y documentos, Salamanca: CSIC, 1968; Ignacio Jericó Bermejo, Domingo Báñez, Teología

de la infidelidad en paganos y herejes (1584), Madrid: Editorial Revista Augustiniana, 2000; and C.

González-Ayesta ed., El alma humana: Esencia y destino. IV Centenario de Domingo Báñez (1528-

1604), Pamplona: EUNSA, 2006. 63

On the Jesuit decision to adopt Thomas, and the interesting consequences that ensued from this

far from obvious choice see John O‟Malley, The First Jesuits, Cambridge MA.: Harvard University

Press, 1993, pp. 244-253. 64

See Bartholomeo Fanti-Maria Xiberta y Roqueta, „Le thomisme de l‟école carmélitaine‟, in

Mélanges Mandonnet, 2 vols., Paris: Vrin, 1930, i, pp. 440-448; Enrique del Sagardo Corazon

O.C.D., Los Salmanticenses: Su Vida y su Obra, Madrid: Editorial de Espiritualidad, 1953; and M.-

B; Borde, „Le désir naturel de voir Dieu, chez les Salmanticenses‟, Revue thomiste, 101 (2001):

265-284. 65

Emmanuel J. Bauer, O.S.B., Thomistische Metaphysik an der alten Benediktineruniversität

Salzburg, Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1997; and Blum (2001), pp. 362-365.

21

seventeenth century the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Protestant thinkers, in turn, appropriated

Thomistic ideas and in countries such as England, Aquinas‘s natural theology, with its emphasis on

the importance of a posteriori proofs for the existence of God, proved an enduring resource for

savants as diverse as Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Henry More (1614-1687), and John Norris of

Bemerton (1657-1717).66

A very different kind of commentary on the writings of Thomas was penned by theologians

in those parts of the Low Countries that had remained loyal to Catholicism. This genre while

mindful of the Angelic Doctor‘s stature and authority, was much less deferential and decidedly

more critical in its approach to the study of his ideas. Prominent among this merry band of

commentators were Johannes Malderus (1596-1633), Johannes Wiggers (1571-1639) and François

Du Bois (Sylvius) (1581-1649). Wiggers, a contemporary of Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638), was a

theologian of Louvain whose main work, the posthumously published Commentaria in totam D.

thomae summam (Louvain: 1641), contained a wealth of interesting arguments and suggestions on

topics such as philosophical theology and philosophy of mind. A curious and agile thinker,

Wiggers‘s commentary was alive to the tensions and ambiguities that reposed in Thomas‘s great

work. He was also very critical of the Angelic Doctor, especially when he deemed the great

Dominican to have departed from the teaching of the ancient Church, or else to be at variance with

the theological heritage of Augustine that was so diligently upheld by members of his own faculty.

The Douai based theologian, François Du Bois, who wrote the Commentaria in summa theologiae

S. thomae (Douai, 1620-1635; 1622-1648), also made a valuable contribution to the Thomist

exegesis of his time. Less critical than Wiggers, Du Bois provided balanced and thorough comment

on most aspects of the Thomistic system. He too, however, was not adverse to pointing out where

66

See J.K. Ryan, „The Reputation of St. Thomas Aquinas among English Protestant Thinkers of the

Seventeenth Century‟, New Scholasticism, 22 (1948): 1-33, and 126-208.

22

parts of the Summa theologiae had gone awry, especially with regard to the sustenance they seemed

to provide for those more nefarious ‗modern‘ scholastics (recentiores or neoterici) such as Cajetan

and Suárez who championed the ‗deviant cause‘ of the pure state of nature.67

Considered together, these commentaries are representative of a distinctive genre of

‗Thomism‘ peculiar to the Spanish Netherlands. In these lands, scholastic thought had come under

concerted attack not just from Protestant divines, but also from Catholic thinkers who wished to

replace what they perceived to be the blandishments of an excessively rational yet traditional

scholasticism with a biblically based theology augmented by Patristic tradition.68

This position

emphasised the importance of individual faith in God over a demonstration of His existence, and an

account of human nature that drew sustenance from the anti-pelagian writings of Augustine.

Supporters of these opinions, who ranged from figures as different as Baius, Libertus Fromondus

(1585-1653), and on to Jansenius himself, argued that a non-scholastic form of theological

discourse would serve more effectively the verities of the Christian tradition, and help to address the

grievances of the Protestants.69

Fighting a reguard action in this situation, scholastic theologians such as Malderus,

Wiggers, and Du Bois sought to promote those arguments of Thomas that they held to be

indispenable to proving doctrines such as the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and

grounding an account of human agency uncompromised by fulsome descriptions of divine

providence. However, they were also minded to criticise Thomas at various points whenever they

67

On this debate, with reference to the teaching of the earlier Louvain theologian Michel Baius

(1513-1589), see Henri De Lubac, Augustinisme et théologie moderne, Paris: Aubier, 1965. 68

On this see the essays in Mathijs Lamberigts ed., L’augustinisme a l’ancienne faculté de

théologie de Louvain, Louvain: Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 1994. 69

See Lamberigts (1994); and Jean Orcibal, Jansénius d’Ypres (1585 - 1638).

(Études augustiniennes. Série Moyen Age et Temps modernes, 22), Paris: Études augustiniennes,

1989.

23

deemed his views unacceptable, such as on the state of pure nature (which was often attributed to

Aquinas by contemporary scholastics), purgatory, and his more optimistic portrayal of the moral

capabilities of fallen human nature. An interesting footnote to Wiggers‘s researches was that they

influenced one of the few well-known figures of early modern scholasticism, Johannes Caterus

(1590-1655), who composed the First Set of Objections to Descartes‘s Meditations.70

Caterus had

been a pupil of Wiggers at Louvain, and most certainly carried forward his old master‘s

commitment to a version of Thomist natural theology. He was clearly unimpressed by what he

believed to be Descartes‘s disregard of more traditional forms of scholastic argument.71

Beyond these Lovanienses, a highly capable quartet of French Dominican friars based at

convents in Toulouse and Bordeaux, took up the challenge of setting down an account of morality

and human action inspired by the teaching of Thomas. The first of these was Vincent Baron (1604-

1674), whose pristine moral theology sought to flay the hide of ‗that dangerous innovation‘, this

being the doctrine of probabilism then championed by Jesuit casuists.72

The second was Pierre

Labat (d. 1670), who wrote a seven volume Theologia scholastica secundum illibitan D. thomae

doctrine sive cursus theologicus (Toulouse: 1658-1661) which fired a dual broadside at Jansenism

and Molinism.73

In addition to these authors, the Theologia mentis et cordis seu speculationes

universae sacrae (Lyon: 1668-1669) of Vincent Contenson (1641-1674), combined a sophisticated

70

On Caterus see Theo Verbeek, „The First Objections‟, in Roger Ariew and Marjorie Grene eds.,

Descartes and his Contemporaries. Meditations, Objections, and Replies Chicago: The University

of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 21-33. 71

Jean-Robert Armogathe, „Caterus‟ Objections to God‟, ibid., pp. 34-43. 72

Baron‟s writings are discussed by Leinsle (1995), pp. 321-322. 73

On Labat‟s philosophical theology and ethics see Igor Agostino, L’infinitia di Dio. Il dibattito da

Suárez a Caterus (1597-1641), Roma: Riuniti, 2008, pp. 209-220, 243, 351, 353-354, and Santo

Burgio, Teologia barocca. Il probabilismo nell’ epoca di Filippo IV Cantania: Società di Storia

Patria per la Scilia Orientale, 1998, p. 160.

24

blend of metaphysics, biblical exegesis, and dogmatic theology,74

while the Clypeus thomistica

contra nova eius impugnatores (Bordeaux: 1659-1669) of Jean-Baptiste Gonet, took up the task of

defending Thomist moral teaching against the Jesuits.75

Prominent supporters of the Angelic Doctor based in Paris struggled to match the

contribution of their southern colleagues. One of the best known ‗Thomists‘ of the French capital

was Nicolas Ysambert (1569-1642), a secular priest who became Professor of Theology at the

Sorbonne. Ysambert held the first chair in ‗controversy‘, an institution created in imitation of the

highly successful Jesuit practice, perfected by the likes of Robert Bellarmine (1547-1621) and

Martin Becanus (1563-1624), in which a professor discussed topical arguments. From 1616 to just

before his death in 1642, this indefatigable Master of the Sorbonne lectured on the Summa

theologiae, the results of which were posthumously published as Disputationes from 1643-1648.

An overbearing and ponderous thinker, Ysambert attempted to create a doctrinal synthesis of the

teaching of Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Scotus, and seems to have convinced very few that a union

of the doctrines of these august minds was in fact possible.76

One of the more interesting French Dominicans was the historian and moralist Alexandre

Noël (Natalis) (1639-1724). 77

He published in ten octavo volumes a commentary on the

Catechismus Romanus entitled Theologia dogmatica et moralis (Paris: 1693), a work which

74

For an assessment of Contenson‟s moral theology see Santa Burgio (1998), pp. 171-180. 75

See B. Peyrous, „Un grand centre de thomisme au XVII siècle. Le couvent des Frères Prêcheurs

de Bordeaux et l‟enseignement de J.-B. Gonet‟, Divus Thomas (PL), 77 (1974): 452-473; and

Leinsle (1995), pp. 321-324. 76

See Agostini (2008), pp. 178-182, 295-296, and 376. See also Jean-Robert Armogathe, „An Deus

Sit. Les preuves de Dieu chez Marin Mersenne‟, Les Etudes philosophiques, 1-2 (2004): 161-170. 77

On Natalis see Rémi Coulon, „Jacobin, Gallican et „Appelan‟: le P. Noël Alexandre.

Contribution à l‟histoire théologique et religieuse du XVIIIe siècle‟, Revue des sciences

philosophiques et théologiques (1912): 49-80, 279-320; and Jean-Louis Quantin, „Entre Rome et

Paris, entre histoire et théologie, les Selecta historiae ecclesiasticae capita du P. Noël Alexandre et

les ambiguïtes de l‟historigraphie gallicane‟, Mémoire dominicaine, 20 (2007): 67-100.

25

provides a clear statement of Thomist moral thought against the Jesuit casuistry of the day. A

prominent figure in intellectual circles, Natalis was no stranger to controversy, and his heated spat

with the Jesuit Gabriel Daniel (1649-1728) on probabilism and Molinist ideas of grace and

predestination, aroused such acrimony that the parties were eventually silenced by a weary Louis

XIV. Like other Dominicans, Natalis‘s polemical case was clear: there was no basis for these

dangerous Jesuit ‗innovations‘ in the texts of Thomas. While writing his moral works he also

published several historical dissertations in which he attempted to defend the idea that Thomas was

the author of the entire Summa Theologica, against the outlandish and erroneous accusations of then

contemporary Franciscans that Thomas had ‗appropriated‘ the thought and teaching of their own

medieval luminary, Alexander of Hales (d. 1245). In addition to his historical midwifery, Natalis

wrote an engaging short dialogue between a Franciscan and a Dominican on the subject of the

originality of Thomas. His double conclusion was that Thomas was not a disciple of Alexander,

and that the Secunda Secundae of the Summa theologiae was not borrowed from the latter, as had

been claimed by these ‗scurrilous‘ and ‗impertinent‘ Franciscan friars.

Moral debates asides, other Thomists were moved to defend other distinctive philosophical

theses, all of which had a strong basis in the texts of Aquinas. First, was the idea that angels and

human souls are without matter, but every material composite being (compositum) has two parts,

prime matter and substantial form. The thought here is that in a composite being which has

substantial unity, and is not merely an aggregate of distinct units, there can be but one substantial

form. For Thomists, the substantial form of man is his soul (anima rationalis), to the exclusion of

any other soul and of any other substantial form. The principle of individuation, for material

composites, is matter with its dimensions: without this there can be no simple numerical

26

multiplication; distinction in the form makes specific distinction, hence there cannot be two angels

of the same species.78

Another characteristic feature of early modern Thomism was its detailed defence of the

Angelic Doctor‘s moral psychology. At Summa theologiae, Ia qq. 82-86, and De malo, q. 6,

Thomas had argued against then contemporary forms of moral psychology which stressed that the

that the will moves the intellect quoad exercitium, i.e. in its actual operation, and that the intellect

moves the will quoad specificationem, i.e. by presenting objects to it: nil volitum nisi praecognitum.

In the seventeenth century, Thomists were concerned to counter such opinions whether they be

derived either from late medieval philosophy, or else inherited from the theological debates of the

Renaissance and Reformation.79

The origin of human action, the Thomists said, resided in the

apprehension and desire of good in general (bonum in communi), since all human beings desire

happiness naturally and necessarily, and not by a free deliberate act; particular goods (bona

particularia) are choosen freely. Thus, the will (voluntas) though a proactive force in human action

is not the superior partner in the composite known as liberum arbitrium (freedom of decision); as a

faculty it always policed and conditioned by the last judgment of the practical intellect (ratio

practica).80

78

See Giacon (1942); and Denis Des Chene, Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the

Soul, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. For further discussion of the context in which

these and related arguments were broached see Charles Lohr, „Metaphysics‟, in C. Schmitt and Q.

Skinner (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1988, pp. 535-638. 79

For further discussion of these debates see A. Bonet, La filosofia de la libertad en las

controversias teológicas del siglo XVI y primera mitad del XVII, Varcelona, 1932; A. Poppi, „Fate,

Fortune, Providence and Human Freedom‟, in Schmitt and Skinner (1988), pp. 641-667; and Walter

Redmond, El albedrío: Proyección del tema de la libertad desde el Siglo de Oro español,

Pamplona: EUNSA, 2007. 80

On this see Louis Leahy, Dynamisme volontaire et judgement libre. Les sens du libre arbitre

chez quelques commentateurs Thomiste de la Renaissance, Burges-Paris: Desclée, 1963.

27

There was also wide support thesis was that the senses and the intellect are passive or

recipient faculties that do not create, but ‗receive‘, that is, perceive their objects.81

In addition to

this, we find an extensive discussion of the theory that the direct and primary object of the intellect

is the universal, which is prepared and presented to the passive intellect (intellectus possibilis) by

the active intellect (intellectus agens) which illuminates the phantasmata, or mental images,

received through the senses, and divests them of all individuating conditions.82

For the Thomists,

this was called ‗abstracting‘ the universal idea from the phantasmata, and there was a lively debate

among them as to how such abstraction was to be understood.83

Such as it was, the consensus they

formed amounted to the idea that abstraction is not a transferring of something from one place to

another. Rather, illumination causes all material and individuating conditions to disappear, and then

the universal alone ‗shines‘ out and is perceived by the workings of the intellect. Because this

process was believed to be vital, and elevated far above material conditions and modes of action,

the nature of the acts and of the objects apprehended was thought to show that the soul was

immaterial and spiritual. Thus, the soul was by its very nature held to be immortal. Not only was it

thought to be true that God will not annihilate the soul, but from its very nature the soul was held to

continue to exist, there being in it no principle of disintegration. This last stricture formed the basis

of Aquinas‘s much disputed doctrine that human reason can prove the incorruptibility (i.e.

immortality) of the soul, which his early modern enthusiasts who took to be vindicated by the

teaching of the Fifth Lateran Council (1513),84

81

See Giacon (1942); and Des Chene (2000). 82

See ibid., pp. 119-154. 83

For a discussion of these and related matters see Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From

Perception to Knowledge, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994-1995, see Vol. 2: Renaissance Controversies,

later scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern philosophy, pp. 30-98. 84

For further discussion see Gilson (1961); Di Napoli (1963); and Eckhard Kessler, ‗The

Intellective Soul‘, in Schmitt and Skinner (1988), pp. 485-534. See also Christopher M. Martin,

28

While it is always invidious to elevate one individual above all others, a case could be made

that the most important Thomist thinker of the seventeenth century was ‗John of St Thomas‘, this

being the religious name of the Portuguese Dominican João Poinsot. A student at Coimbra and a

doctor of Louvain, who became confessor to Philip IV of Spain,85

John‘s major philosophical works

were collected and published during his lifetime under the title, Cursus philosophicus thomisticus

(Madrid and Rome: 1637; Cologne: 1638; and after his death, Lyons: 1663). This collection is

comprised of detailed tracts on logic and natural philosophy. His theological writings, named the

Cursus theologicus, were originally prepared in the form of a commentary on the Summa

theologiae, and published at Alcalá, Madrid, and Lyons from 1637 onwards.86

Though in every sense a dedicated disciple of Thomas, Poinsot was by no means an

unreflective follower of his master‘s ideas. In one of the more methodologically self-conscious

passages written by an early modern Thomist (see Cursus theologicus, tractatus de approbatione et

auctoritate doctrinae D. thomae, Disp. II, a. 5), Poinsot provides five marks (signa) which he

believes ought to guide the reading of Thomas. These can be paraphrased as follows: (i) when there

is doubt about what Thomas means one should defer to authoritative commentators; (ii) the faithful

reader of Thomas should aim to ‗energetically‘ defend and explain Thomas‘s teaching rather than

‗disagreeing captiously‘; (iii) the commentator should stress the ‗glory and brillance‘ of the

„On a Mistake Commonly Made in Accounts of Sixteenth-Century Discussions of the Immortality

of the Soul‟, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 69 (1995): 29-37. 85

See Orietta Filippini, La coscienza del Re. Juan de santo Tomás, confessore di Filippo di Spagna

(1643-1644), Florence: Olschki, 2006. 86

On John of St. Thomas see Agostini (2008), pp. 124-126, 135, 144, 152, 155, 173, 202-206, 218-

220, 234-235, 241-243, 278-281, and 308-310. See also Marco Forlivesi, Conoscenza e affectività.

L’incontro con l’essere secondo Giovanni di San Tommaso. Bologna: Studi Domenicano, 1993; and

„Le edizioni del “Cursus theologicus” di João Poinsot (1589-1644)‟, Divus Thomas (Bon.), 93

(1994): 9-56. Poinsot‟s semiotics has also been studied in great detail by John Deeley, see John

Poinsot, Tractatus de signis. The Semiotic of John Poinsot. Berkeley CA.: University of California

Press 1985.

29

master‘s teaching rather than parade his own talent; (iv) the commentator should endeavour to

explain Thomas‘s reasons in his own terms; and (v) the test of fidelity is to be observed in the

agreement of the commentator with the earlier disciples of Thomas. Faithfulness meant everything

to Poinsot; yet his was a critical fealty that aimed to tease out ambiguities and resolve textual

problems in order to make the mind of Thomas tractable and appealing.

A noteworthy but rarely explored feature of Thomism in the late seventeenth century was

the manner in which it because increasingly fixated with a historical treatment of its own portfolio

of arguments. Several Dominican works written at this time sought to recreate the authentic

teaching of Thomas himself by means of detailed forms of historical inquiry, inquiries which had as

their objective the exposure of the bogus claims of contemporary ‗Thomists‘ – usually the hapless

Jesuits – who sought a warrant for their views in the corpus Thomisticum. Powerful examples of

this type of work were tomes of moral theology by the aforementioned Alexander Natalis, as well

as by Daniel Concina (1687-1759),87

and the studies on grace and nature by Jacques Hyacintha

Serry (d. 1738), who penned the influential Historia congregationis de auxiliis (Louvain: 1700).88

While the advent of this more historically sensitive genre of theology did not signal a total decline

in more speculative Thomist thought — the theoretical writings of Charles-René Billuart (d.

1757),89

especially his Summa S. Thomae hodiernis academiarum moribus accomodata, sive cursus

theologiae (Paris: 1746-1751) reveal that aspect to be in reasonable order — it does show that by

the end of the eighteenth century many Thomists were thinking about the history and development

87

On Concina see Pierre Hurtubise, La casuistique dans tous ses états. De Martin Azplicueta à

Alphonse Liguori, Ottawa: Novalis, 2005, pp. 48, 87, 168, 178, 20, and 263. 88

See the article by M.M. Gorce, „Serry, Jacques‟, Dictionnaire théologie Catholique, XIV/2

(1941), cols. 1957-1663. 89

For Billuart see A. Mortier, Histoire des maîtres generaux de l’Ordre des frères prêcheurs, 8

vols., Paris: Picard, 1903-1920, see vii, p. 375f; L. Flynn, Billuart and his Summa, London, Canada,

1938; Ulrich Horst, Papst, Konzil, Ufehilbarkeit: der Ekklesiologie der Summenkommentare von

Cajetan bis Billuart, Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1978; and Inglis (1998), pp. 19-20.

30

of their tradition, rather than with the enterprise of sketching a definitive picture of the ‗mind of

Thomas‘ (ad mentem Thomae) by means of a fixed and invariant set of doctrines. This last

tendency which is common to most ‗Thomist‘ schools of the modern era,90

stands testimony to the

fact that many of the more innovative hermeneutical aspects of the eighteenth-century Thomist

tradition did not survive the French Revolution, but were universally rejected by later Neo-

scholastics thinkers when Thomism claimed the allegiance and affection of Catholic thinkers in the

nineteenth century.91

Viewed thus, early modern Thomism, especially in its late eighteenth-century

incarnation, was a very different phenomenon to those Thomist movements of a more recent

provenance.

3. The Jesuits

Just as it made an enduring contribution to the arts, sciences, politics, and religious life of its

day, so the Society of Jesus, or the ‗Jesuits‘, provided a home to original philosophical

achievement. Deferential though never wholly compliant to their auctoritates maiores such as

Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and highly respectful of auctoritates minores such as Scotus and

Renaissance luminaries such as Cajetan, Jesuit authors from the foundation of the Society in 1540

to its suppression in 1773, were responsible for innovations in logic, natural philosophy (including

psychology), metaphyics, ethics (including casuistry), jurisprudence, political philosophy, and

90

Useful appraisals of these movements can be found in Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of

Thomism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002; and Brian Shanley, The Thomist Tradition, Dordrecht:

Kluwer, 2002. 91

Detailed study of Nineteenth-Century Thomism can be found in Geogres Van Riet,

L’Épistemologie Thomiste. Recherches sur le problème de la connaissance dans l’école Thomiste

contemporaine, Louvain: Éditions de l‟Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1946; and

31

philosophical theology.92

The achievements of individual Jesuit authors such as Francisco Suárez

were widely acknowledged by a diverse group of early modern intellectuals, even to the point

where elements of metaphysics were adopted by German Lutherans and Dutch Calvinists, and other

Jesuits such as Jacques Dinet (1584-1653) and Bartholomew De Bosses (1668-1738), became

important patrons and correspondants to both Descartes and Leibniz respectively.93

Some of the best known figures in the annals of early modern scholasticism were Jesuits.

First and foremost was Francisco Suárez,94

whose magisterial Disputationes metaphysicae

(Coimbra: 1597) and Tractatus de legibus ac deo legislatore (Coimbra: 1612) were read and

admired throughout the period by Catholics and Protestants alike.95

Following Suárez in

intellectual stature is Luis de Molina (1536-1600), author of the Concordia (Lisbon: 1588). This

work instituted one of the most enduring debates of early modern scholasticism, the De auxiliis

dispute, a heated theological spat concerning the compatibility of human freedom and divine

92

On the labours of the Jesuits in these fields see Ugo Baldini, Legem impone subactis: Studi su

filosofia e scienza dei Gesuiti in Italia, 1540-1632. Rome: Bulzoni, 1992; Mordechai Feingold ed.,

Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters. Cambridge, MA: 2003; Harro Höpfl, Jesuit Political

Thought. The Society of Jesus and the State, c. 1540-1630. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2004; Marcus Hellyer, Catholic Physics. Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern

Germany, Notre Dame Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005; and Robert Alexander

Markys, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits. The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral

Probabilism. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008. 93

Descartes‟s relationship to the Jesuit order who educated him has been the occasion of much

debate. Among the more significant attempts to specify the extent of the philosophical debt that

Descartes did or did not owe to Jesuits scholastics are Timothy J. Cronin, Objective Being in

Descartes and Suarez (Analecta Gregoriana, 154, Series Facultatis Philosophiae, sectio A, n. 10),

Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1966; Ariew 1999; and David Clemenson, Descartes’ Theory of

Ideas, London: Continuum, 2007. On Leibniz and his relationship with the Jesuits see B. Look and

D. Rutherford eds., The Leibniz-Des Bosses Correspondance (The Yale Leibniz), New Haven-

London, Yale University Press, 2007. 94

The famous Bibliographical Suareziana, which keeps an up-to-date list of all secondary literature

on the Doctor exigimus can be consulted on-line at http://www.scholasticon.fr 95

For evidence of this see not only the studies of Wundt (1939), and (1945), but also the more

recent monograph by Asa Goudriaan, Philosophische Gotteserkenntnis bei Suárez und Descartes in

Zusammenhang mit der niederländischen reformierten Theologie und Philosophie des 17.

Jahrhunderts, Leiden: Brill, 1999.

32

providence, which commanded the attention of (among others) Báñez, Arnauld, Leibniz, and

Malebranche. The debate even influenced the Dutch Calvinist censure of the thought of Jacob

Arminius (1550-1609).96

Molina‘s other great work, De iustitia et iure (Cuenca: 1593-1600)

proved to be one of the most durable books of philosophia practica or ‗practical philosophy‘ of the

period, making many novel contributions to ethics, politics, and economics.97

Finally, the

Conimbricensis (1592-1606), a collection of Jesuits writers based at the University of Coimbra rose

to eminence. This group which included Emmanuel de Goes (1542-1597), Cosmas de Magelhases

(1551-1624), Balthsar Alávrez (1561-1597), and Sebastian do Couto (1567-1639), were responsible

for a highly successfully series of commentaries on Aristotle‘s Physics, De caelo, Meteorum, Parva

naturalia, Ethics, De generatione et corruptione, De anima, and Dialecticam (Commentaries on the

logical treatises). Combining scholastic argument with an humanist attention to philology, these

works had been reprinted a staggering 112 times by 1633 in Catholic countires such as Portugal,

France, Italy, and Rheinland Germany.98

Less well known in our time but highly regarded in their own day were another group of

Jesuit thinkers. These included the aforementioned Vázquez,99

Pedro da Fonseca (1528-1599),100

96

For further discussion see Eef Dekker, „Was Arminius a Molinist?‟, Sixteenth Century Journal,

27 (1996): 337-352. 97

Francisco Gomez Camacho, Economia y filosofia moral: La formacion del pensamiento

economico europeo en la escolastica española, Madrid: Síntesis, 1998, pp. 87-108. 98

Pinharanda Gomes, Os Conimbricenses, Lisbon, Instituto de Cultura e Língua, 1992; and John P.

Doyle ed., The Conimbriencenses. Some Questions on Signs (Medieval Philosophical Texts in

Translation, 38), Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2001, pp. 15-30. 99

Quite different aspects of Vázquez‘s wide-ranging thought are treated by Louis Vereecke,

Conscience morale et loi humaine selon Gabriel Vázquez, Paris-Tournai-New York: Descleé, 1957;

Luis Maldonado Arenas, El comentario del Gabriel Vázquez a la «Quaestio I» de la Summa

(Victoriensia, 18), Vitoria: Eset, 1964. 100

On Fonseca see Miguel Baptista Pereira, Pedro Da Fonseca, Comibra: Univeridade de Coimbra,

1967; António Manuel Martins, Lógica e ontologia em Pedro da Fonseca, Lisbon: FCG/ JNICT,

1994; my ‗Explaining Freedom through the texts of Aristotle: Pedro da Fonseca S.J. (1528-1599) on

liberum arbitrium, in Günter Frank and Andreas Speer eds., Der Aristotelismus in der Frühen

33

Gregory de Valencia (1550-1603),101

Leonardus Lessius (1554-1623),102

Adam Tanner (1572-

1632),103

Antonio Perez (1599-1648),104

Juan De Lugo (1583-1660),105

Thomas Carleton Compton

(1591-1666),106

Pietro Sforza Pallavicino (1607-1667),107

and Sebastián Izquierdo (1601-1681).108

Neuzeit — Kontinuität oder Wiederaneignung? (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, Band 115),

Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007, pp. 215-258. A very complete study of Fonseca‘s work

which contains an extensive bibliography is João Madeira, Pedro da Fonseca’s Isagoge

Philosophica and the Predicables from Boethius to the Lovanienses, Ph.D Faculty of Philosophy,

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2006. 101

See Wilhelm Hentrich, Gregor von Valencia und der Molinismus, Vienna: Rauch, 1925; and

Agostini (2004). 102

On Lessius see Toon Van Houdt and Wim Decock, Leonardus Lessius: Traditie en Vernieuwing,

Antwerp: Belpaire, 2005, with further references. 103

On Tanner see Wilhelm Lurz, Adam Tanner und die Gnadenstreitigkeiten des 17. Jahrhunderts.

Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Molinismus, Breslau: Muller and Seiffert, 1932; and Piero Di Vona,

„La persona e la sua analogia nella teologia di Adam Tanner‟, in L. Malusa et alii. eds. Lineamenti

di un personalismo teologico. Scritti in onore di Carlo Arata, Genova: Briganti, 1996, pp. 363-375. 104

Jacob Schmutz, ‗Dieu est l‘idée : la métaphysique d‘Antonio Pérez (1599-1649) entre néo-

augustinisme et crypto-spinozisme‘, Revue thomiste 103 (2003): 495-526; and Sven Knebel,

‗Antonio Pérez (1599-1649) in seinen Beziehungen zur polnischen Jesuitenscholastik‘, Forum

philosophicum 3 (1998): 219-223. 105

J. del Arco, ‗La formación del continuo según el Cardenal Juan de Lugo‘, Estudios Eclesiásticos

11 (1932): 382-400; Adolfo F. Díaz-Nava, ‗El dominio según la doctrina del Cardenal Lugo (1583-

1660)‘, Estudios Eclesiásticos 36 (1961): 35-55; Carlos Baciero, ‗Juan de Lugo y su autógrafo

inédito de Filosofía‘, Miscelanea Comillense 45-46 (1966): 169-211; 47-48 (1966), 407-433; &

Estanislao Olivares, ‗Juan de Lugo (1583-1660): Datos biográficos, sus escritos, estudios sobre su

doctrina y bibliografía‘, Archivo Teológico Granadino, 47 (1984): 5-129. 106

J.F. McCormick, ‗A Jesuit Contemporary of Descartes‘, The Modern Schoolman 14 (1937), 79-

82; Ester Caruso, Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza e la rinascita del nominalismo nella scolastica del

Seicento, Florence : La Nuova Italia, 1979; John P. Doyle, ‗Thomas Compton Carleton S.J. : On

Words Signifying More than their Speakers or Makers Know or Intend‘, The Modern Schoolman 66

(1988), 1-28; and ‗Another God, Goat-Stags, Men-Lion. A Seventeenth-Century Debate about

Impossible Objects‘, The Review of Metaphysics 48 (1995), 771-808; and Knebel (2000). 107

See Sven Knebel, ‗Pietro Sforza Pallavicino‘s Quest for Principles of Induction‘, The Monist, 84

(2001): 502-51; and Jacob Schmutz, ‗Aristote au Vatican. Le débat entre Pietro Sforza Pallavicino

(1606-1667) et Frans Vanderveken (1596-1664) sur la théorie aristotélicienne de la vérité‘, in Frank

and Speer (2007), pp. 65-95. 108

On Izquierdo see the important articles by Jacob Schmutz, ‗Sebastián Izquierdo: de la science

divine à l‘ontologie des états de chose‘, in Jean-Christophe Bardout and Olivier Boulnois eds., Sur

la science divine, Paris: PUF, 2002, pp. 412-435; ‗Quand le langage a-t-il cessé d‘être mental ?

Remarques sur les sources scolastiques de Bernard Bolzano‘, in J. Biard ed., Le langage mental à

l’âge classique, Louvain-la-Neuve : Editions de l‘ISP, 2009, pp. 307-337; and ‗Sebastían Izquierdo

(1601-1681)‘, in Colette Nativel ed., Centuriae latinae II. Cent une figures humanistes de la

34

This pool of talent was supplemented by writers of important textbooks such as Francisco Toletus

(1534-1596),109

Rodrigo de Arriaga (1592-1667),110

and Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (1578-

1641),111

all of whom advanced the scope and cause of scholastic philosophy by making its ideas

tractable and rigorous. The Jesuits played a further part in the dissemination of scholastic thought

through their elaborate network of schools and colleges in Europe and the New World, of which the

Collegio Romano was the most influential.112

Many intellectuals of the period, including clerics,

laymen, and notable intellectuals like Descartes and Voltaire, were educated in Jesuit schools and

university colleges.

When compared with the far more homogeneous schools of Dominican Thomism and

Franciscan Scotism, it is significant that Jesuit scholastics were less motivated to construct a

binding philosophical consensus, especially in subjects such as metaphysics and ethics, even though

Renaissance aux Lumières. A la mémoire de Marie-Madeleine de La Garanderie, Genève: Droz,

2006, pp. 415-423. 109

L. Gómez Hellín, ‗Toledo lector de filosofía y teología en el colegio romano‘, Archivo Teológico

Granadino, 3 (1940): 1-18; Baldini (1992); and Des Chene (2000), pp. 3-4, 35, 42, 47-9, 60, 155-

157, and 195-197. 110

Stanislav Sousedík, ‗La obra filosófica de Rodrigo de Arriaga‘, Ibero-Americana Pragensia, 15

(1981): 103-146; F. Muñoz Box, ‗La filosofia natural de Rodrigo de Arriaga‘, Etudios filosoficos

39 (1990): 591-604; Elisabette Tozza, ‗Rodrigo de Arriaga e l‘aristotelismo‘, Atti della Academia

pontiniana, 47 (1998): 297-308 ; and Jean-Robert Armogathe, ‗Dubium perfectissimum: The

Skepticism of the ‗Subtle Arriaga‘‘, in J.R.M. Neto and R. Popkin eds., Scepticism as a Force in

Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Thought. New Interpretations, Amherst-New York: Humanity

Books, 2004, pp. 107-121. 111

See Pietro Di Vona, Studi sulla scolastica della Controriforma, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1968,

p. 109-122; Caruso (1979); Knebel (2000); and Jacob Schmutz, ‗Hurtado et son double. La querelle

des images mentales dans la scolastique moderne‘, in L. Couloubaritsis and A. Mazzù eds.,

Questions sur l’intentionnalité, Brussels: Ousia, 2007, pp. 157-232. 112

See Riccardo G. Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano dal suo inizio (1551) all soppressione

della Compagnia di Gesù (1773) (Analecta Gregoriana, LXVI, Series Facultatis Historiae

Ecclesiasticae, Section A (n. 2)), Rome: Universitatis Gregorianae, 1954. For an instructive „case

study‟ of the teaching of philosophy and the sciences at an early modern Jesuit university see Ulrich

Leinsle, Diliganae Disputationes. Der Lehrinhalt der gedruckten Disputationen an der

Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Dilingen 1555-1648 (Jesuitica, 11), Regensberg: Schell-

Steiner, 2006.

35

various Generals of the Order had endorsed the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. In the case of

metaphysics, nowhere is this more apparent than in the great Disputationes metaphysicae of Suárez.

Such is the originality of this work — a book whose arguments are prosecuted by means of a

sustained reflection on the seminal debates of medieval and Renaissance thought — that Suárez‘s

final opinion was neither beholden to ‗Thomism‘ nor ‗Scotism‘. Whenever he was minded to side

with either Thomas or Scotus, he was led to endorse their respective positions by means of an

impartial scrutiny of the claims at issue. This approach led him to modify aspects of their teaching

for his own purposes. For example, he accepted the doctrine of analogical predication, siding with

Thomas, but thought that a concept of being (esse) can be found which is strictly unitary, thereby

supporting the communis opinio defended by Scotus and his late medieval disciples. Conversely, he

embraced the Scotist doctrine of matter‘s existing without form by divine power, but sided with

Thomas on the issue of the plurality of forms. The extent of Suárez‘s distance from late medieval

Thomism is most forcefully paraded in his discussion of the so-called ‗real distinction‘, whereby the

‗essence‘ of things is distinguished from their ‗existence‘. Against Thomas, he argued that there is a

third distinction other than the ‗real and rational‘. Sceptical of the traditional Thomist dichotomy

between essence and existence, especially as that dichotomy had come down to him from

Renaissance Thomist commentators,113

Suárez posited a distinction of reason with a basis in things,

and a distinction between substance and accidents.114

In matters of philosophical controversy, the

Doctor exigimus kept his own counsel.115

113

On this see Giacon (1942); and Doyle (2010). 114

For further discussion of this same point see Roger Ariew, „Descartes and the Jesuits: Doubt,

Novelty, and the Eucharist‟, in Mordechai Feingold ed., Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters,

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003, pp. 157-194. 115

For contrasting accounts of Suárez‟s distinctive approach to metaphysics see John P. Doyle,

Suárez: Collected Studies, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2010. See also Jean-François

Courtine, Suarez et la système de la métaphysique, Paris: PUF, 1990; Rolf Darge, Suárez

36

In moral philosophy, many Jesuits endeavoured to defend versions of an Aristotelian-

Thomist philosophia practica, a rich tradition which also nourished their distinctive approach to

applied ethics or ‗casuistry‘. Here again there were profound differences of opinion among Jesuits,

as well as a propensity on the part of individual authors to think beyond the texts of Aristotle and

Thomas on a range of controversial issues. If there is a common tendency among Jesuit writers in

practical philosophy, it is best illustrated by their penchant to defend an account of morality that

emphasised the importance of human freedom. Jesuit writers often cited the account of freedom set

down by Molina‘s Concordia (see IV, esp. q. 14, a. 13, disp. 2, §3), whose practical implications

were subsequently worked out by the same author in his later De iure et iustitia.116

For Molina, what helps to define a human being as a rational creature is the power to act

freely. The faculty of liberum arbitrium, or the ability to make reasoned choices, distinguishes

human beings from other animals and living things. Under the doctrine of ‗middle knowledge‘

(scientia media), the liberum arbitrium of human beings is not effected by divine causality or by

God‘s foreknowledge of future contingent events; free actions shape and mould the direction of any

human life because they are undertaken in conditions exempt from all coercion and constraint.117

It

is against the background of this account of free human action that Molina outlined his own

distinctive view of the natural law.

transzendentale Seinauslegung und die Metaphysik-tradition (Studien und Texte zur

Geistegeschichte des Mittelalters, 80); Leiden: Brill, 2004; and José Pereira, Suárez. Between

Scholasticism and Modernity, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007. 116

See Höpfl (2004), pp. 204-207; F. B. Costello, The Political Philosophy of Luis de Molina S.J.

(1535-1600), Rome: Biblioteca Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 1974; and Romano García,

„Luis de Molina, camino de la Ciencia Económica. La Moral frente a un nuevo orden económico y

social‟, in Irene Borges-Duarte ed., Luís de Molina regressa a Évora, Évora: Fundação luis Molina,

1988, pp. 123-152. 117

On Jesuit accounts of human freedom see Gerard Smith, Freedom in Molina, Chicago: Loyola

University Press, 1966; and Stone (2007).

37

Few would deny the influence of Thomas and his Salamancan interpreters on Molina‘s De

iure et iustitia, but his strong emphasis on the mutability of the principles of the natural law, a

flexibility he deemed to be indispensable for their subsequent application to the varied contexts of

human action, is indicative of a distinctive Jesuit perspective.118

Molina first began to discuss this

question in his 1570 lectures on Summa theologiae, Ia-IIae, qq. 98-108. There, he adopted a

position familiar to earlier thinkers such as Vitoria and Soto that while the principles of the

Decalogue and other valid universal principles do not admit of exceptions, judgement is required to

determine how and when they apply to a particular case. Molina developed this opinion a stage

further, however, by arguing that certain principles, especially those that express general moral

norms, do not always oblige in recalcitrant cases. The point here, is not that such episodes

constitute genuine exceptions to these principles, but rather that no appropriate specification of the

general principles is possible. Such ideas, so often misunderstood by rigoristic critics such as

Blaise Pascal and Pierre Nicole, were an important component of Jesuit casuistry.119

It is commonplace among historians to declare that later Jesuit writers, be they

metaphysicians, moralists, or contributors to debates in natural philosophy and psychology, did not

maintain the high intellectual standards of their late sixteenth-century forebears. This of course

may be true, since at first glance the decades following the publication of Pascal‟s Les proviniciales

in 1656 appear bereft of thinkers of any great „originality‟. Still, this verdict like so many others

imposed upon the study of early modern scholasticism in general, and on the Jesuits in particular, is

at best unfair and at worst derisory. The fact of the matter is that even after many years of historical

study of eighteenth-century philosophy, vast quantities of scholastic works and textbooks,

118

José Maria Díez-Alegría, El desarrollo de la doctrina de la ley naturale en Luis de Molina y en

los maestros de la universidad de Évora de 1565-1591. Estudio histórico y textos inéditos,

Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1951. 119

See Hurtubise (2005); and Markys (2009).

38

especially those by Jesuit authors in the years up to their suppression in 1773, are unread and

unstudied. It is premature to assume that there are neither interesting texts nor real conceptual

achievements in the twilight years of this exemplar of the scholastic tradition.

Evidence that later Jesuit authors, especially in the field of natural philosophy, were helping

to recast existing scholastic paradigms can be found in Catholic Germany. In the colleges and

universities of this region, Jesuit philosophers were actively absorbing a more experimental natural

philosophy, and other crucial components of the Scientific Revolution. They also extended a

greater openness to the ideas of Newton and even Galileo. Though their efforts were invariably

characterised by a creative tension and an initial reluctance to accept that the new learning was not

always detrimental to the Christian faith, their commitment to „modern science‟ is apparent in

particular aspects of their conceptual labours.120

Something further of the intellectual energy of eighteenth-centuty Jesuit thinkers in France

can be learned by glancing at those figures who were actively involved in the debates of the day.121

The writings of Claude Buffier (1661-1737), especially his Traité des premières veritéz et de source

de nos jugements (Paris: 1724), are known to have influenced Thomas Reid, and were widely

discussed outside scholastic circles.122

Bertold Hauser (1713-1762), a professor of mathematics at

Dillingen, wrote the Elementa philosophiae ad rationis et experientiae ductum conscripta atque

usibus scholasticus accomodata (Augsburg: 1755-1758), which drew heavily on the thought of

Christian Wolff.123

Despite diverging from Wolff on questions regarding truth and mind-body

120

Hellyer (2005). 121

Catherine Northeast, The Parisian Jesuits and the Enlightenment, 1728-1762, Oxford: Voltaire

Foundation, 1991. 122

On this see Louise Marcus-Leus, Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid: Two Common-Sense

Philosophers, Montreal: McGill-Queen‟s University Press, 1982. 123

For the influence of Wolff on Catholic thinkers see Bruno Bianco, ‗Wolffianismus und

katholische Aufklärung. Storchenaus‘ Lehre vom Menschen‘, in Harm Klueting ed., Katholische

39

union, Hauser was motivated to use him as a suasive authority on many questions, hence the

occurrence of phrases like „Wolfio ipso fatente et docente‟. Many of the preoccupations of

„Wolffian metaphysics‟, such as a developed interest in the principle of sufficient reason, were

adopted by other Jesuit authors working in German-speaking lands. The writings of Sigismund

Storchenau (1731-1798), one of the last great metaphysicians of the Society of Jesus at the time of

its suppression,124

provides a final illustration of the fact that Jesuit thinkers were applying

themselves to the topical concerns of their day, and that they were active in the renewal of

scholasticism during the closing decades of the eighteenth century.

4. Other Schools and Scholastics

Scholasticism was also sustained in the early modern period by the endeavours of members

of traditional monastic orders. The Benedictines, Cistercians, and even the Carthusians in the

person of Anselmus a Buxheim (fl. 1634),125

all made redoubtable contributions to the traditional

philosophy of the schools, while sponsoring moments of innovation. Members of different

Benedictine communities, for instance, such as the encumbents of the Congregation of Saint Maur

in Paris like Jean Mabillon (1632-1707),126

were especially active in refashioning some of the more

Aufklärung - Aufklärung im katholischen Deutschland (Studien zum Achtzehnten, Jahrhundert, 15),

Hamburg: Meiner, 1993, pp. 67-103. 124

On Storchenau see Bernhard Jansen, ‗Die Pflege der Philosophie im Jesuitenorden während des

17./18. Jahrhunderts‘, Philosophie Jahrbuch, 51 (1938): 442-444; and Wilhelm Baum, ‗Sigismund

von Storchenau (1731-1797), Jesuit und Wegbereiter der Aufklärung in Österreich‘, in

Bundesgymnasium und Bundesrealgymnasium Klagenfurt, 122. Jahresbericht, Klagenfurt: 1990,

pp. 33-54. 125

Anselmu of Buxheim was the author of the Cursus philosophicus. Organon, Physica,

Metaphysica, Buxheim 1634-1635. Such as it was, the „Carthusian tradition‟ in early modern

scholasticism merits further study. 126

It would be wrong to classify Mabillon as a „scholastic‟ tout court, since his wide and divergent

interests and considerable talents as a historian, fell outside the purview of a more traditional

member of the schools. However, his writings, even including those on the finer points of monastic

40

jaded aspects of scholastic discourse by bringing to bear the techniques of so-called ‗positive

theology‘ (theologia positiva), and a thorough knowledge of the history of Church and the

development of its doctrines.127

In German-speaking countries, several Benedictine scholars were

active participants in the Catholic Enlightenment.128

One of the more innovative scholastics of the baroque period was the Spanish Cistercian,

Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz.129

He left an extensive body of writing that contrives to say

something sensible on just about every topic it considered, ranging from logic, mathematics,

metaphysics and natural science, to theology, moral philosophy, casuistry, architecture, and music.

Trained at Louvain, although beholden to a multitude of influences, Caramuel works reveal the

mark of Plato, and Ramón Lull (ca. 1235-1315) to more established scholastic sources such as

Aristotle, Thomas, and Scotus. In a time of considerable ferment in the arts, sciences, and politics of

the Catholic Europe, Caramuel was on hand to witness these intellectual shifts by virtue of his

prolonged residencies in Spain, Portugal, the Low Countries, Bohemia, and Italy. His philosophical

writings from 1660 onwards are especially important in that they display a detailed appreciation of

the work of Descartes and other innovators in the natural sciences.130

Willing to acknowledge the

theology, reveal an understanding of scholasticism, and were alive to the ways in which its methods

could be recast as a result of introducing modern techniques. For a synoptic portrait of his

achievements see Daniel-Odon Hurel, Érudition et commerce épistolaire: Jean Mabillon et la

tradition monastique, Paris: Vrin, 2003. 127

On the use of aspects of positive theology and the teaching of the Fathers see Jean-Louis

Quantin, Le catholicisme classique et les pères de l’église, Paris: Institut d‘Études Augustiniennes,

1999. 128

In this respect see the work of Beda Mayr OSB (1742-1794). For further discussion see Ulrich

Lehner ed., Beda Mayr Vertheidigung der katholischen Religion. Samnt einem Anhange von der

Möglichkeit einer Vereinigung zwischen unserer, und der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (1789)

(Brill‟s Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, 5). Leiden: Brill, 2009, see esp. ix-lxxvii. 129

For a sunoptic assessment of Caramuel‟s career see Petr Dvořák and Jacob Schmutz eds., Juan

Caramuel Lobkowitz: The Last Scholastic Polymath, Prague: Filosofia, 2008. 130

See Dino Pastine, Juan Caramuel: Probabilismo ed Enciclopedia, Florence: La Nuova Italia

Editrice, 1975, pp. 27-152.

41

force of a good argument, Caramuel reveals himself open to the claims of the new learning and tries

to appropriate many of its insights within the accepted parameters of scholastic discourse. Of

particular interest is his discussion of the Cartesian method of hyperbolic doubt and his thoughts on

the nature of logic.131

In the sphere of moral theory, Caramuel brought to bear a distinctive

understanding of the theory of probabilism, and argued that cases of conscience could be resolved

by recourse to the lesser as opposed to the greater probable opinion.132

His elaborate defense of this

position won him a reputation for laxism,133

a charge which is unjust given that many of his more

rigoristically minded critics did not always understand the theoretical foundations on which his

ideas concerning probability were based.134

Caramuel is a synoptic thinker whose writings deserve

to be better known.

The innovations of Caramuel were not always typical of monastic scholastics in the second

half of the seventeenth century. More typical fayre is on offer from the Austrian Benedictine

Maurus Oberascher (d. 1697) who wrote solid if arid commentaries on Aristotelian logic, while his

fellow countryman, Joachim Morsack (fl. 1682), penned an enthusiastic if unconvincing defense of

Thomist metaphysics.135

Their efforts were assisted by the more intelligent tomes of Ludwig

Babenstuber (1660-1729), whose writings in the field of natural philosophy again testify to the fact

131

On this matter see Petr Dvořák, „Formal Logic in Caramuel‟, in Dvořák and Schmutz (2008), pp.

31-44. 132

The most extensive discussion of Caramuel‟s probabilism is by Julia Fleming, Defending

Probabilism. The Moral Theology of Juan Caramuel, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University

Press, 2006. 133

Massimo Petrocchi, Il Problema del Lassismo nel Secolo XVII, Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1953;

Jean-Louis Quantian, Le rigorisme Chrétien, Paris: Cerf, 2001, pp. 45-71; and Hurtubise (2005), pp.

69, 134, 138, 144, 176, 194, and 239. 134

On this see Fleming (2006), pp. 73-94; and Jean-Robert Armogathe, „Caramuel, a Cisterican

Casuist‟, in Dvořák and Schmutz (2008), pp. 117-128. 135

Maurus Oberascher, Commentarius in universam Aristotelis logicam, Salzburg: 1658; and

Joachim Morsack, Quaestiones logico-physicae, Salzburg, 1683. For further discussion of these

and other Benedictine authors see Bauer (1996), pp. 770-779; and Blum (2001), pp. 362-365

42

that so many Benedictine scholastics, especially those resident in Austria, were bound to an

Aristotelian-Thomist physics despite the encroachments of the new scientific learning.136

Still, it is

important to note that there were Benedictine monks who refused to uphold a more traditional

perspective. Andrew Gordon (1712-1751), an individual of Scottish heritage based in Southern

Germany, was at the forefront of a concerted reaction to the older dispensation, and his writings and

scientific interests helped to disseminate new scientific and philosophical ideas among German-

speaking Benedictines.137

Further to the assorted efforts of the monks, other orders of friars also promoted

scholasticism. Historically speaking, the Carmelites were not required to follow any particular

school except to favour as much as possible the medieval luminaries of their own Order, such as

John Baconthorpe, Gerald of Bologna (d. 1317), and Thomas Netter of Walden (Waldensis) (c.

1372-1430).138

In its general chapter of 1593, however, this injunction changed with the imposition

of Thomism upon the theologians of the Order. With the spilt among the friars also occurring

during this period, we can discern among the two branches of the Carmelite family, the Ancient

Observance and the Discalced friars, different attitudes toward their own theological patrimony and

the principles of Thomism. For the most part, theologians and philosophers of the Ancient

Observance tended to be less enthused by Thomas than their Discalced brethern, and looked much

more for inspiration to Carmelite figures from the past such as Baconthope (Doctor resolute).

136

For Babenstuber see Leinsle (1995), pp. 274, and 324-328; Bauer (1997). For more specific

commentary see L. Glückert, „P. Ludwig Babenstuber. Ein benediktinisches Gelehrtenbild‟,

Benediktinische Monastsschrift zue Pflege religiösen und geistigen Lebens, 8 (1926): 141-148; and

Vilem Mudroch, „Ludwig Babenstuber‟, in Holzhey (2001), pp. 366-370. 137

On Gordon see Blum (1998), pp. 209-223. 138

For the history of medieval Carmelite scholasticism see Bartholomaeus a Sancto Angelo,

O.C.D., Collectio scriptorium Ordinis Carmelitarum excalceatorum utrisque congregationis et

sexus, 2 vols., Savonae: Ricci, 1884; and Barthomeu Fanti-Maria Xiberta y Roqueta, De scriptoris

scholasticus saeculi XIV ex ordine Carmelitarum, Louvain: Bibliothéque de la Revue d‟Histoire

Ecclesiastique, 1931.

43

Among members of the other constituency, the Discalced friars of Salamanca, known universially

as the Salmanticenses, stand out as some of the more distinguished ‗Thomists‘ in the Carmelite

tradition.139

They produced a celebrated Cursus theologicus, and a detailed course on moral

theology (which contains innumerable discussions relevant to philosophical ethics) which drew

heavily on the ideas of Thomas and his Iberian commentators. A much more overt set of

philosophical works were produced by the Discalced Carmelites of Alcalá (Collegium

Complutense), which aimed to clarify the works of Aristotle according to the mind of Thomas. In

this school, Blasius a Conceptione (fl. 1650), published a comprehensive account of Aristotelian-

Thomist metaphysics which was widely cited.140

Many of the more outstanding Carmelite thinkers of the Ancient Observance, however, such

as Joseph Zagaglia (1619-1711), tended to compose philosophical and theological works according

to the mind of Baconthorpe.141

In the eighteenth century, Ignatius Ponce y Baca (fl. 1748),

produced a similar course that followed the teaching of the Order‘s reverred medieval theologians,

and in a similar vein John Jiménez (fl. 1750) treated several questions such as supernatural belief,

causation, and free will, in a series of treatises published in Spain from 1752 to 1764.142

All these

works testify to these authors‘ informed understanding of developments in early modern

scholasticism, especially with regard to the Thomist, Scotist, and ‗Jesuit‘ schools. However, unlike

139

See Del Sagrado Corazon (1955); and Teodoro Sierra del Santisimo Sacramento, El curso Moral

Salmanticense. Estudio historico y valoracíon critica. Salamanca: Universidad Pontifica, 1968. 140

On Blaise see Agostini (2008), pp. 157-158, 206-208, and 220-221. 141

Joseph Zagaglia, Cursus theologicus de Deo ad mentem Doctoris resolute, Ferrara, 1671. On

this work and its relationship to the ideas of Pierre Gassendi who had strong connections with the

Carmelite convent at Aix-en-Provence, see Jean-Robert Armogathe, „L‟enseignement de Pierre

Gassendi au Collége Royal d‟Aix-en-Provence et la tradition philosophique des Grands Carmes‟, in

Sylvia Murr ed., Gassendi et l’Europe, Paris: Vrin, 1997, pp. 9-20. 142

For further discussion of these authors and their context see Joachim Smet, O. Carm., The

Carmelites. A History of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Revised Edition, 4 vols. in 5

tomes, Darien, Illinois: Carmelite Spiritual Center, 1988, see 3/1, pp. 318-337.

44

comparable scholastic texts published elsewhere in Europe, most notably in German-speaking

lands, these works display no obvious sign of any substantive engagement with the ideas of the

‗Enlightenment‘ or with established scientific learning. Though coherent and intelligent tomes,

when considered in their own terms, these Carmelite treatises still bear witness to the intellectual

insularity of a large part of eighteenth-century Iberian scholasticism.

The Order of Franciscan Capuchins also maintained a robust presence in the early modern

schools.143

Though never as influential as scholastics in the Observant, Conventual, and Recollect

congregations, they still managed to produce works of philosophy that were distinctive and which

reflected the predilections and charism of their Order. In contrast to the vast majority of their

Franciscan colleagues who looked to the ideas and legacy of Scotus, many Capuchins made a

determined effort to advance the cause of Bonaventure (Doctor Seraphicis), and sought to

champion a system of philosophy and theology built around his ideas. In the field of philosophical

theology, the Italian friar Giuseppe Maria Zamoro (1579-1649) produced an accomplished work

that aimed to clarify conceptually not only the very concept of divinity, but also to defend doctrine

of the Trinity.144

Significantly, he was minded to argue that, as such, the opinions of Bonaventure

were compatible with the views of Thomas and Scotus. The conflation of the different yet related

intellectual legacies of Bonaventure and Scotus was a common ploy among Capuchin writers,

especially among thinkers intent on raising the profile of the Seraphic Doctor in the schools. Other

leading Capuchins who wrote works of substance were Louis Béreur (d. 1636) who is cited in

143

Something of the „Seraphic school‟ can be learned from Camille Bérubé, „Les capuchins à

l‟école de saint Bonaventure‟, Collectanea Franciscana, 44 (1974): 275-330. Of further interest is

Andrea Maggioli and Pietro Maranesi eds., Bartolomeo Barbieri da Castelvetro. Un cappuccino

alla scuola di San Bonaventura nell’Emlia del ’600 (Bibliotheca Seraphico-Capuccina, 55), Rome:

Instituto storico dei Cappuccini, 1998. 144

On Zamoro see Agostini (2008), pp. 270-271.

45

Leibniz‘s Theodicy (I, § 27), the aforementioned Yves de Paris,145

and Gratianus Monfortius

(d.1650). Béreur and Monfortius are especially noteworthy since they reveal other influences at

work in the ‗Seraphic School‘; for the former‘s writings manifest the pronounced influence of

Durandus of Saint Pourçain (a medieval scholastic who was read and respected in the early modern

period),146

while the latter devoted himself to producing an axiomatisation of Aristotelian

philosophy. Viewed thus, there was much more to the early modern Capuchins than a simple

interest in Bonaventure.

Though many members of the Augustinian Hermits were especially critical of modern

scholasticism throughout the period under discussion, and sought ways in which the theological

heritage of Augustine could be used to undermine the claims of the „modern schoolmen‟ or

recentiores, there existed within prominent circles of the Order an interest in the scholastic

patrimony of their own theological tradition. This interest tended to be specified in the person of

Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus), with a gentle nod in the direction of other medieval figures

such as Gregory of Rimini (1300-1358) and Thomas of Strasbourg (c. 1257-1357). During the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more scholastically inclined Augustinian friars promoted their

own version of the scholastic heritage, the schola Aegidiana, a school which took its impetus and

direction from the work and ideas of Giles of Rome, and the completion of a new critical edition of

his Opera omnia published at Cordoba between 1699-1712. The members of the school include:

145

For a useful discussion of Yves see Jacob Schmutz, „Yves de Paris‟, in Foisneau (2008), ii, pp.

1270-1276; and especially the magisterial biography by Charles Chesneau (Julien-Eymard

D‟Angers), Le P. Yves de Paris et son temps (1590-1678), 2 vols. Paris: Société d‟histoire

ecclésiastique de la France, 1946. 146

Evidence for this claim can be found in the establishment of „Durandian‟ chairs in Portugese

universities, see Freidrich Stegmüller, Filosofia e Teologia nas Universidades de Coimbra e Évora

no século XVI, Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1959, pp. 32-34. The work of the holders of

these chairs await formal study, as indeed does the „Durandian tradition‟ in early modern

scholasticism.

46

Frederico Nicola Gavardi (1640-1715), Schola aegidiana, sive theologia exantiquata iuxta

doctrinam S. Augustini ab Aegidio Columna expositam (Naples: 1683-90); Juan Hidalgo (d. 1736),

Cursus philosophicus ad mentem B. Aegidii Columnae Romanae, 4 vols. (Cordoba: 1736-1736);

Nicholas Girken (d. 1717), Summa summae theologiae scholasticae [...] secundum tuta et

inconcussa dogmata SS. Augustini et Thomae, 4 vols. (Cologne: 1704-1712). (d. 1717); and Enrique

Flórez de Setién (fl. 1732), Theologia scolastica juxta principia scholae augustiniano-thomisticae,

5 vols. (Madrid: 1732-1737). What is intriguing about these complex works is that they provide

evidence of the Order‟s commitment to scholasticism even at a time when so many of its leading

lights, such as Giovanni Lorenzo Berti (1696-1766), were engaged in a long term critique of the

ideas of the modern schools, especially those advanced by the Jesuits.147

Outside the cloisters and studia of the friars, scholastic learning was also supported by lesser

known religious orders, especially those that had come down to the early modern world from

medieval Christianity. Of these, the Canons Regular of Prémontré, also known as the

Premonstratensians, or ‗Norbertines‘, or White Canons (in the British Isles),148

and the

Mercedarians, can be credited with sponsoring some innovation in scholastic circles. With regard to

the former, Otto Litsich von Scheyern (fl. 1657), introduced and then helped to sustain a version of

Thomism then common to the German-speaking Benedictines in his own Order, while Hieonymius

Hirnhaim (1637-1679) of the famous Strahov monastery in Prague, defended a form of Christian

pyrrhonism much more common to critics of scholasticism such as the French thinker Pierre-Daniel

147

On Berti see Erich Naab, ‗Katholishe Verteidigungen. Beobachtungen zum Augustinismus nach

Bajus (1513-1589) und Jansenius (1585-1638)‘, in Norbert Fischer ed., Augustinus. Spuren und

Spiegelungen seines Denkens, 2 vols. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2009, ii, pp. 237-249, esp. 242-249. 148

Ulrich Leinsle, Studium im Kloster. Das philosophisch-theologische Hasstudium des Stiftes

Schlägl 1633-1783, Averbode: Praemonstratensia, 2000.

47

Huet (1630-1721).149

Other noteworthy Premonstratensian scholastics are Franz Freislaben (fl.

1650), who took exception to the writings of the Jesuit Arriaga, and the Spanish theologian

Francisco Dubal (fl. 1660), who wrote on ethics. Among the Mercedarians, who tended to be more

active in the universities of Iberia,150

Ambrosio Machin de Aquena (d. 1640) and Pedro Oña (d.

1626) were also well known theologians. The most distinguished among their number, however,

was Francisco Zumel (1540/1-1607), who made a formidable contribution to the discussion of the

issues of the De auxiliis controversy. His detailed theory of grace and related remarks on

theological anthropology are worthy of much greater attention, even though aspects have been

studied by Spanish scholars.151

Notwithstanding the contribution of the different orders of monks, friars, clerks, and canons,

it is also important to recognise that scholastic philosophy and theology were sustained by members

of the secular clergy. Throughout our period, the great faculties of theology as well as the faculties

arts of leading Counter Reformation universities such as Paris, Louvain, and Salamanca, all

supported the methods and techniques of the schools. Many universities had their own distinctive

traditions of scholasticism. At Louvain, for instance, an indigeneous if highly eclectic form of

scholastic philosophy and theology, which dated back to the foundation of the university in 1425,

sat alongside a form of Augustinian theology sponsored by the likes of Baius and Jansenius.152

For

149

On Hirnhaim see C.S. Barach, Hieronymus Hirnhaim. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der

philosophisch-theologischen Cultur im 17 Jahrhundert, Vienna, 1864; and Ulrich Leinsle, „Abt.

Hieronymus Hirnhaim. Zur Wissenschaftskritik des 17. Jahrhunderts‟, Analecta

Praemonstratensia, 55/54 (1979): 171-195. 150

On the Order itself see Bruce Taylor, Structures of Reform: the Mercedarian Order in the

Spanish Golden Age, Leiden: Brill, 2000. 151

Vicente Muñoz, El Influjo del Entendimiento sobre la Voluntad sgun Francisco Zumel

Mercedario (1540-1607), Rome: Angelicum, 1950; and Zumel y el Molinismo, Madrid:

Publicaciones de la Revista Estudios, 1953. 152

On this tradition see H. de Jongh, L’ancienne fculté de théologie de Louvain au premier siècle de

son existence 1432-1540, Utrecht: HES, 1980; originally published 1911; E. Van Eijl ed., Facultas

48

most of the sixteenth century, the theologians at Louvain still read Peter Lombard‘s great

compendium of scholastic learning, the Sentences, albeit in an increasingly etiolated form whereby

the whole of the work was compressed into to a selection of topics from drawn from Books III and

IV. When in 1596 Philip II of Spain, then ruler of the Spanish Netherlands, imposed the Summa

theologiae upon the Faculty of Theology as its primary textbook,153

thereby bringing Louvain into

line with his other Iberian universities, the Lovanienses did not warm to the teaching of Thomism,

especially those elements that were at clear variance to their traditional scholastic principles and

Augustinian allegiances. This helps to account for the quite critical tone that pervades some of the

Louvain commentaries on the Summa, as can be observed in the writings of Johannes Wiggers and

others. The scholastic credentials of the Lovanienses are also in evidence in their treatment of many

aspects of the new learning. Among the first Catholic faculties to discuss, and then condemn in

1662, the ideas of Descartes, the theologians of Louvain sought to defend a more traditional view of

cosmology while at the same time offering a guarded welcome to more sanitised elements of the

new science.154

Perhaps more than at any other institution, it was at the University of Paris that scholastic

thinkers were embroiled in protracted dialogue and dispute with the progenitors of the new

S. Theologiae Lovaniensis 1432-1797, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1977; Lamberigts (1994);

and Toon Quaghebeur, Pro aris et focis. Theologi en macht aan de Theologische Faculteit te

Leuven 1617-1730, 2 vols., Ph.D, Faculteit Letteren, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2004. 153

For a brief discussion of the introduction of Thomas Aquinas to Louvain see H. De Jongh, „Deux

lettres se rapportant à la substitution de la Somme de saint Thomas aux Sentences de Pierre

Lombard dans l‟enseignement de la théologie à Louvain en 1596‟, Analects pour servir à l’histoire

ecclésiastique de la Belgique, 35 (1909): 370-376; and R.M. Martin, „L‟introduction officielle de la

„Somme‟ de saint Thomas dans l‟ancienne Université de Louvain‟, Revue Thomiste, 18 (1910):

230-239. 154

Georges Monchamp, Histoire du Cartesianisme en Belgique, Hayez, 1886, pp. 136-187; and

Jean-Robert Armogathe and Vincent Carraud, „The First Condemnation of Descartes‟s Œuvres:

Some Unpublished Documents from the Vatican Archives‟, Oxford Studies in Early Modern

Philosophy, 1, 2003: 67-110.

49

learning.155

During the 1690‘s the conflict between ‗Aristotelian-scholastics‘ and self-styled

Cartesians within the University of Paris reached a crescendo. The dispute concerned the highly

contested area of natural philosophy in which the ‗new science‘ and the ‗old Aristotelian-

scholasticism‘ were inevitably drawn into conflict. Matters came to a head in 1691 when eleven

propositions allegedly taken from the work of Descartes were banned by the university authorities.

It was at this point that the Irish born philosopher, Michael Moore (c. 1639-1726), who was to

become a senior figure in the university, published his most important work: De existentia Dei et

humanae mentis immortalitate secundum Cartesii et Aristotelis doctrinam disputatio (Paris,

1692).156

This tome was a spirited defense of scholasticism against the seemingly novel claims of

Cartesianism. Moore subjected every step of Descartes‘s arguments for the existence of God and

the immortality of the soul to a lengthy and complex critique, and at each juncture he adduced

reasons why they did not pass muster. Though Moore‘s more positive proposals for replacing

Cartesianism with a revived Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy have not secured the unanimous

approval of posterity, his book made a real impression in its own day. For at that time many

supporters of Cartesianism expressed genuine doubt whether his new system really could uphold

the presumed verities of the Christian faith. Moore was aware of this unease and skillfully

exploited it in order to prosecute a detailed case for a more traditional scholasticism.157

In the last

decades of this life, Moore authored several more tracts of scholastic philosophy, all which helped

155

The assorted theological allegiances of Parisian „scholastics‟ have been studied by Jacques M.

Gres-Gayer, Théologie et pouvior en Sorbonne. La Faculté de théologie de Paris et la bulle

Unigentius, Paris: Klincksieck, 1991; Le Jansénisme en Sorbonne 1643-1656, Paris: Klincksieck,

1996; Le Gallicanisme de Sorbonne. 1657-1690, Paris: Champion, 2002; and D’un jansenisme à

l’autre. Chroniques de Sorbonne 1696-1713, Paris: Nolin, 2007. Much useful information can still

be found in Charles Jourdain, Histoire de l’Université de Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris,

1862-1869. 156

See Liam Chambers, Michael Moore c. 1639-1729. Provost of Trinity, Rector of Paris, Dublin:

Four Courts, 2005. 157

Ibid., pp. 116-130.

50

to confirm his reputation and eminence among the theologians of Paris. Though open to specific

elements of modern scientific and philosophical learning, the University of Paris would remain a

broadly scholastic institution up until the very last decades of the ancien regime.

5. Conclusion

If this provisional cartography has shown anything, I trust it has illustrated the claim made at

the outset that early modern scholasticism was an international, vibrant, and pluralistic intellectual

tradition that played a full part in seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophy. The very best

scholastic thinkers made a salient contribution to the philosophy of the period not only in their

development of new ideas and positions within existing paradigms of scholastic argument, but also

in their patient scrutiny of novel ideas by recourse to arguments from authority and an appeal to the

weight of tradition. Here one thinks (among other things) of Caterus‟s plausible criticisms of

Descartes, the innovations of Caramuel, Michael Moore‟s patient exposure of the shortcomings of

the new learning, or the repeated attempts made by sundry Scotists, Thomists, and Jesuits, to recast

and renew their particular traditions by means of producing new insights and imaginative works of

commentary. Even in those scholastic schools such as in both branches of the Carmelite Order or

the Benedictines of Southern Germany, where there is much less evidence of an engagement with

the topical philosophical and scientific theories of early modernity, there is still a body of intelligent

and coherent conceptual criticism that looks to refresh and recast its own tradition of discourse,

rather than engage with a wider purview of more topical philosophical and scientific ideas. Putting

these considerations together, it should not be too difficult to appreciate why the scholastics of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are worthy of much more extensive study. They are important

to the history of philosophy not simply because they cast light much needed on the „founding

51

fathers‟ of modern thought, and provide a clear window on how an ancient and medieval patrimony

was disputed and appropriated throughout the course of the early modern era, but because they

attempted to explain the verities of a rich and historically robust philosophical heritage to an age

preoccupied with thoughts of change and innovation. For this reason alone, their value to our

understanding of the development of modern philosophy is palpable, and it is to be hoped that

future generations of scholars will bestow upon them the time and attention they deserve.

Principal Primary sources:

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1634-1635.

Charles-René Billuart O.P., Summa S. Thomae hodiernis academiarum moribus accommodata, sive

cursus theologiae. Paris 1746-1751.

Jean Gabriel Boyvin OFM Obs., Theologia scoti a prolixitate et subtilitas eius ab obscuritate libera

et vindicate 1-4. Caen 1665-1671.

Claude Buffier S.J., Traité des premières veritéz et de source de nos jugements. Paris 1724.

Francois Du Bois (Sylvius), Commentaria in summa theologiae S. Thomae. Douai 1620-1635.

Juan Caramuel y Lebkowitz O. Cist., Theologia moralis fundamentalis. Lyons 1657.

Vincent Contenson O.P., Theologia mentis et cordis seu speculationes universae sacrae. Lyons

1668-1669.

Claude Frassen O.F.M. Rec., Scotus academicus. Paris 1672. Modern edition, 12 vols. Rome

Typographia Sallustina, 1900-1902.

Frederico Nicola Gavardi O.E.S.A., Schola aegidiana, sive theologia exantiquata iuxta doctrinam

S. Augustini ab Aegidio columna expositam. Naples 1683-1690.

Nicholas Girken O.E.S.A., Summa summae theologiae scholasticae … secundum tuta et inconcussa

dogmata SS. Augustini et Thomae 1-4. Cologne 1704-1712.

Jean-Baptiste Gonet O.P., Clypeus thomistica contra nova eius impugnatores. Bordeaux 1659-1669.

52

Bertold Hauser S.J., Elementa philosophiae ad rationis et experientiae ductum conscripta atque

usibus scholasticus accommodata. Augsburg 1755-1758.

Juan Hidalgo O.E.S.A, Cursus philosophicus ad mentem B. Aegidii Columnae Romanae 1-4.

Cordoba 1736.

Pierre Labat, O.P., Theologia scholastica secundum illibitan D. Thomae doctrine sive cursus

theologicus. Toulouse 1658-1661.

Bartolomeo Mastri OFM Conv., Cursus integer philosophiae ad mentem Scoti. Venice 1678.

––, Theologia ad mentem Scoti. Venice 1671.

Luis de Molina S.J., Liber arbitri cum gratiae donis, divinia praescientia, providentia,

praedestinatione et reprobatione concordia. Lisbon 1588. Modern edition ed. I. Rabeneck, Oniae-

Madrid: Collegium Maximus Societatis Iesu-Societatis Edit. Sapientia, 1953.

––, De iustitia et iure. Cuenca 1593-1600.

Hieronymus a Montefortino OFM, Theologiae scholasticae morali-polemicae liber IV sententiarum

iuxta vera sensum, et mentem doctoris subtilis Joannis Duns Scoti. Augsburg 1732.

Michael Moore, De existentia Dei et humanae mentis immortalitate secundum Cartesii et Aristotelis

doctrinam disputatio. Paris 1692.

Joachim Morsack OSB, Quaestiones logico-physicae, Salzburg, 1683.

Alexandre Natalis O.P., Theologica dogmatica et moralis. Paris 1693.

Francis O‟Devlin OFM Obs., Philosophia scoto-aristotelica universa, intentioni volentium cito et

sufficienter philosophicum cursum consummare. Nürnberg 1710.

Maurus Oberascher OSB, Commentarius in universam Aristotelis logicam, Salzburg: 1658;

João Poinsot (Johannes a Sancto Thomae) O.P., Cursus philosophicus thomisticus. Madrid and

Rome 1637. Modern edition, 4 vols. in 5 tomes, Paris-Tournai-Rome, 1931-1946.

––, Cursus theologicus. Alcala 1637. Modern edition 3 vols.,

Anthony Rourke OFM Obs., Cursus theologiae scholasticae 1-6. Valladolid 1746-1764.

Jacques Hyacintha Serry O.P., Historia congregationis de auxiliis. Louvain 1700.

Enrique Flórez de Setién O.E.S.A, Theologia scolastica juxta principia scholae augustiniano-

thomisticae 1-5. Madrid 1732-1737.

53

Francesco Suárez S.J., Disputationes metaphysicae. Coimbra 1597. Modern edition, Disputaciones

Metafisicas by S.R. Romeo, S. C. Sánchez, and A. P. Zanón, Madrid: Biblioteca Hispanca de

Filosofia, 1960. This edition stil be compared against the text preserved in vols. 25 and 26 of

Suárez‟s Opera omnia, 28 vols., ed. C. Berton, Paris Vives, 1857.

––, Tractatus de legibus ac deo legislatore. Coimbra 1612. Modern edition by L. Pereña et alii., 6

vols. (Corpus Hispanorum de Pace, vols. xi-xvii), Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones

Cientificas, 1971-1981.

Johannes Wiggers, Commentaria in totam D. Thomae summam. Louvain 1641.

Joseph Zagaglia OCD, Cursus theologicus de Deo ad mentem Doctoris resolute, Ferrara, 1671.

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Roma: Riuniti, 2008.

Roger Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Jean-Robert Armogathe, „L‟enseignement de Pierre Gassendi au Collége Royal d‟Aix-en-Provence

et la tradition philosophique des Grands Carmes‟, in Sylvia Murr ed., Gassendi et l’Europe, Paris:

Vrin, 1997, pp. 9-20.

––, „Caramuel, a Cisterican Casuist‟, in Petr Dvorák and Jacob Schmutz eds., Juan Caramuel

Lobkowitz: The Last Scholastic Polymath, Prague: Institute of Philosophy, 2008, pp. 117-128.

Jean-Robert Armogathe and Vincent Carraud, „The First Condemnation of Descartes‟s Œuvres:

Some Unpublished Documents from the Vatican Archives‟, Oxford Studies in Early Modern

Philosophy, 1, 2003: 67-110.

Mauricio Beuchot O.P., Historia de la filosofia en le Mexico Colonial, Barcelona: Herder, 1996;

English translation, The History of Philosophy in Colonial Mexico, Washington DC: The Catholic

University of America Press, 1998.

Richard Paul Blum, Philosophenphilosophie und Schulphilosophie: Typen des Philosophierens in

der Neuzeit, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999.

L.W.B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century. A Cultural

History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Dominique de Caylus, „Merveilleux épanouisseement de l‟école scotiste au XVIIe siècle‟, Études

franciscaines, 24, 1910, 5-12, 493-502; 25, 1911, 35-47, 306-317, 327-645; and 26, 1912, 276-278.

Liam Chambers, Michael Moore, c.1639-1726 Provost of Trinity, Rector of Paris, Dublin: Four

54

Courts, 2005.

Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,

1988.

Dennis Des Chene, Physiologia. Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought,

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996.

––, Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,

2000.

––, Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University

Press, 2001.

Pietro Di Vona, Studi sulla scolastica della Controriforma, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1968.

Petr Dvořák and Jacob Schmutz, eds., Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz: The Last Scholastic Polymath,

Prague: Institute of Philosophy, 2008.

Marco Forlivesi, Conoscenza e affectività. L’incontro con l’essere secondo Giovanni di San

Tommaso. Bologna: Studi Domenicano, 1993;

––, „Le edizioni del “Cursus theologicus” di João Poinsot (1589-1644)‟, Divus Thomas (Bon.), 93

(1994): 9-56.

––, Scotistarum princeps: Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673) e il suo tempo, (Fonti e studi

francescani, 11), Padova: Centro di studi antoniani, 2002.

Marco Forlivesi, „A Man, an Age, a Book‟, in Forlivesi ed., Rem in seipsa cernere. Saggi sul

pensiero filosofico di Bartolomeo Mastri, 1602-1673, pp. 23-144.

Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700. Teaching and Texts at

Schools and Universities, Ashgate: Variorum, 1999.

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Thirouin (eds.), Les écoles de pensée religuieuse à l’époque moderne (Actes de la Journée d‘Études

de Lyon (14 janvier 2006)), Chrétiens et Sociétés. Documents et Mémoires, 5, 2006, 65-109.

55

Berhard Jansen, „Zur Philosophie der Skotisten im 17. Jahrhunderts‟, Franziskanische Studien, 23,

1936, 28-58.

—, ‗Die scholastische Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts‟, Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 50, 1937, 401-

444.

—, ‗Zur Phänomenologie der Philosophie der Thomisten des 17./18 Jahrhunderts‘, Scholastik 13,

1938, 49-71.

Sven Knebel, Wille, Würfel und Wahrscheinlichkeit: Das System der moralischen Notwendigkeit in

der Jesuitenscholastik 1500-1700, Hamburg: Meiner, 2000.

Ada Lamacchia ed., La Filosofia nel Siglo de Oro. Studi sul Trado Rinascimento Spagnolo, Bari:

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Ulrich G. Leinsle, Einführung in die scholastische Theologie, Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995.

—, Studium im Kloster. Das philosophisch-theologische Hausstudium des Stiftes Schlägl 1633-

1783, Praemonstratensia VZW: Averbode, 2000.

—, „Abt. Hieronymus Hirnhaim. Zur Wissenschaftskritik des 17. Jahrhunderts‟, Analecta

Praemonstratensia, 55/54 (1979): 171-195.

Georges Monchamp, Histoire du Cartesianisme en Belgique, Brussels: Hayez, 1886.

Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 4 Vols., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978 -2003.

Daniel Dominik Novotnỳ, ‗The Prolegomena to a study of Beings of Reason in Post-Suarezian

Scholasticism, 1600-1650‘, Studia Neoaristotelica, 3, 2006, 117-141.

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56

—, „Bellum scholasticum. Thomisme et antithomisme dans les débats doctrinaux modernes‘, Revue

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Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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