De Vio, Thomas, called Cajetan

DE VIO, Thomas, called Cajetan. - Dominican philosopher and theologian, b. at Gaeta on 20 February 1468 and d. at Rome on 10 October 1533.

I. LIFE

He became a religious in 1484 at Gaeta, and completed his studies at Naples, Bologna and Padua. There in 1493 he was made a bachelor after lecturing on the Sentences, thus entering the University. The following year he obtained there the chair of Thomistic metaphysics, at the same time exercising, it seems, the office of regent of studies in his convent of St. Augustine. At the General Chapter of Ferrara (1494), after a brilliant disputation with Pico della Mirandola, he was made master of theology at the request of Duke Ercole. In the two years 1497-99 he taught theology, on the text of St. Thomas, at the University of Pavia. After 1500 he was called to important offices: from 1501 to 1508 he held the office of Procurator General of his Order, while teaching philosophy and exegesis at the Sapienza of Rome; in 1508 he was elected Master General of the Order. From 1512 to 1517, both as general of the Dominicans and as procurator of Prince George of Saxony, he took an active part in the XVIII ecumenical Council (V of the Lateran), celebrated under Julius II and Leo X. In 1517 he was made cardinal with the title of St. Sixtus by Leo X, remaining however General until 22 May of the following year; on 8 Feb. 1518 he received in commendam the archbishopric of Palermo, and in Apr. of the same year he went to Augsburg as legate of the Holy See, to proceed against Luther. In 1519 he was at the Diet of Frankfurt, where he effectively favored the election of Charles V as emperor. While he was still in Germany he was appointed bishop of his native city (13 Apr. 1519). Having returned to Rome in the summer of 1519, he worked on the drafting of the bull Exurge Domine against Luther. In the Conclave of 1527 he favored the candidacy of the Dutch pope Adrian VI. From 1523 to 1524 he was legate in Hungary. In the same year he was recalled to Rome by the new pope Clement VII. After the sack of Rome (1527), in which he was taken prisoner and suffered the gravest humiliations, he resided in his diocese of Gaeta. Having returned to Rome in 1529, he remained there until his death. He was buried outside the church of St. Mary sopra Minerva.

II. WORKS

A scholar by temperament, even amid absorbing offices, Cajetan worked with tireless zeal. His philosophical, theological and exegetical output is imposing.

The most notable works in philosophy are: Commentaria super tractatum de ente et essentia Thomae de Aquino (Venice 1496, recent ed. by H. Laurent, Turin 1934); Commentaria in Libros posteriorum analyticorum (Brescia 1496); Commentaria in Porphyrii Isagogen ad praedicamenta Aristotelis (ca. 1497, recent ed. by J. Marega, Rome 1934); Commentaria in Aristotelis praedicamenta (Pavia 1498; new ed. by H. Laurent, Rome 1939); De nominum analogia (Pavia 1498; reprint edited by P. Zammit, Rome 1934); Commentaria in III libros Aristotelis de anima (Rome 1509; the new ed. by I. Coquelle contains Book I [1938] and Book II [1939]); De conceptus entis (Rome 1509; reprinted by P. Zammit, together with the De nominum analogia, Rome 1934); Opuscula oeconomico-socialia: under this title Zammit reprinted in Rome in 1934 an interesting collection of brief economic-social questions, of which the principal ones are: De elemosynae praecepto (1496); De monte pietatis (1498); De cambiis (1499); De usura (1500).

Cajetan is famous for his classic commentaries on the whole Summa theologica of St. Thomas, to which his name and his most enduring fame remain bound. The commentary on the First Part was finished in 1507; the commentary on the First Part of the Second Part in 1511; that on the Second Part of the Second Part in 1517; that on the Third Part in 1520. In the Leonine edition of the works of St. Thomas (begun in 1882) they occupy volumes 3-12. He also wrote Summula de peccatis (reprinted several times from 1525 to 1627) and the celebrated De auctoritate Papae et Concilii utque invicem comparata (Rome 1511), with the related Apologia de comparata Papae et Concilii auctoritate (ibid. 1512; a new ed. of both works was edited by V. M. Pollet, ibid. 1936). He also left numerous short treatises (about 80), on the most controversial points of dogmatic and moral theology. D. V. also has a name in biblical exegesis for his commentaries on the Old and New Testament, to which he devoted himself in the last decade, in the desire to oppose Lutheranism.

III. THOUGHT

Born in an age of transition, Cajetan experienced all the travail of two eras in conflict. An authentic Scholastic and a convinced Thomist, he penetrated deeply into the latent potentialities of the thought of the Angelic Doctor, bringing out its internal harmony and the assimilative force of the best philosophical currents, but, anxious to defend it from the attacks of the Scotist Antonio Trombetta and the Paduan Averroists (Pomponazzi and Nifo), he indulged in a polemic that was bound to lend his powerful work something contingent and ephemeral.

Even the proverbial obscurity: "si vis intelligere Caietanum lege Thomam," perhaps arises from his frequent excursions into a philosophical sector that left no mark on the general development of thought and that therefore remains unknown territory for posterity.

Endowed with extraordinary vigor of mind, De Vio could not fail to impress upon the great commentary the marks of his strong personality. Thus it happened, perhaps unconsciously, that he departed at certain points from St. Thomas and from the best tradition of his school, both in philosophy (the object of metaphysics, the concept of analogy, the formal constitutive element of the person, the principle of individuation, the philosophical demonstration of the immortality of the soul) and in theology (the form of Baptism, the validity of Baptism conferred in nomine Christi, the salvation of children in voto parentum, the possibility of the figurative sense of the words of consecration, the distinction of the inspired canonical books "ad firmandum illa quae sunt fidei" from the non-inspired canonical books "ad aedificationem fidelium"). But these are slight cracks, which do not undermine the solid block of the vast work.

Particularly attached to the Apostolic See, Cajetan defended its prerogatives with depth and verve in the celebrated treatise De auctoritate Papae with its related Apologia, which crushed the conciliarist ambitions of Pisa (1511) and prepared in advance the condemnation of the Gallican error.

An open intelligence, sustained by sincere piety and heartfelt love for the Church, he lived with deep awareness the tragic events in which he took part, and, facing the arduous problems that the rising error of Luther posed, he traced with a sure hand their solution in the golden eucharistic and penitential opuscules, which were widely used at the Council of Trent. Even his exegetical works, undertaken with a spirit superior to his scant linguistic and positive preparation, show, despite their grave defects, intuitions (for example, the non-authenticity of the Johannine comma) of an acute and far-sighted mind.

The wrath and indignation, aroused even among his confreres (Bartolomeo Spina, Ambrogio Catarino, Melchior Cano) and which found their natural epilogue in a posthumous condemnation by the Sorbonne, had already subsided by the end of the 16th century, when precisely St. Robert Bellarmine defined him as "vir summi ingenii et non minoris pietatis" (De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, ad annum 1500). In the 18th century Ughelli exalted him as "alter Thomas et ingeniorum extrema linea" (Italia Sacra, I, Venice 1717, col. 544), and at the beginning of our century Pastor declared him, with slight exaggeration, the greatest theologian after St. Thomas.

Umberto Degli Innocenti