Armando De Bellovisu (Armand De Belvezer) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 1147

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

ARMANDO DE BELLOVISU (ARMAND DE BELVEZER).

- Dominican philosopher and theologian, born in Provence in the second half of the 13th century; the date of his death is likewise uncertain. The surviving information concerning him is confined to the period 1326–34. In 1326 he appears as master of theology and regent of studies at the convent of Montpellier. Between 1326 and 1328 he was appointed Master of the Sacred Palace in Avignon.

Article illustration — ARMELLINI, CARLO — Portrait — Rome, Museo del Risorgimento.

The name of A. is linked to the question of the beatific vision, discussed in 1331 following the well-known sermon of Pope Giovanni XXII. The Master of the Sacred Palace was compelled to emerge from his reserve and take a position. He did so frankly and ironically, so that he seems to have fallen into the Pope’s disfavour.

Works: Responsiones mag. Armandi, magistri Sacri Palatii de ord. Praed. ad 19 articulos ex parte beatitudinis apostolicae missos fratri Armando, rectori sacri palatii (manuscripts in the library of Cambridge, Ji. 3. 10). A., recognizing that the articles censured by the papal commission of 7–8 September 1333 could admit different meanings, inclined toward the more favourable interpretation and defended Tommaso Walleis and Durando di S. Porciano.

In the work Epistulae de visione beatifica (Cambridge, loc. cit.), he rejected the thesis of Giovanni XXII as modum novum et extraneum.

He has other writings of note for the history of the origins of Thomism and for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.

BIBL.: P. Mandonnet, s. V. in DThC, I, cols. 1887–88 (cf. ibid., II, cols. 654–69; VIII, cols. 639–40); I. Taurisano, Hierarchia ordinis Praed., Roma 1916, p. 37; P.-M. Schaff, s. V. in DHG, IV, cols. 274–75; A. Bacic, Ex primordiis scholae thom., Roma 1928, pp. 64–65; Ch.-V. Langlois, Armand de Belvezer, in Histoire littéraire de la France, XXXVI, pp. 263–94; M. H. Laurent, Armand de Belvezer et son commentaire sur le « De ente et essentia », in Revue Thomiste, 35 (1930), pp. 426–36.

Francesco Pugliese