CANO, MELCHOR. - Spanish Dominican and distinguished sixteenth-century theologian, b. at Tarancón (Cuenca), probably on 6 January 1509, and d. at Toledo on 30 September 1560.
I. LIFE
Having entered the Order of St. Dominic at Salamanca in 1523, he studied there first under Diego de Astudillo, then under the great renewer of Spanish theology and founder of the "school of Salamanca," Francisco de Vitoria. He later found Astudillo again as regent at St. Gregory's in Valladolid (1531), where Cano himself began to teach in 1533. It was then that his rivalry began with his confrere and colleague in teaching Bartolomé Carranza, a rivalry that was to last until his death and to keep Spanish Dominicans divided for many years. Made master of theology in Rome in 1542 and having won esteem for his brilliant gifts, Cano successfully competed, the following year, for the first chair of theology at the University of Alcalá. In 1546, he obtained in the same way the chair left vacant at Salamanca by the death of Francisco de Vitoria and held it until 1552. In the years 1551-52, he attended the Council of Trent as imperial theologian, on the commission of Charles V, and took an important part in the discussions on the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist and on the Mass. To reward him, the emperor had Julius III promote him to the bishopric of the Canaries (Aug. 1552); but Cano, who had had to abandon the chair of Salamanca for his new office (which then passed to Domingo Soto), did not delay in renouncing his bishopric (1553) and withdrew to Piedrahita (Ávila) to devote himself to completing his great work De locis theologicis. The authority he enjoyed, however, did not allow him to remain long in this solitude; called to Valladolid as regent of studies at the College of St. Gregory (1554), he had to concern himself with the affairs of religious policy of the court of Madrid, for which he had to sustain many struggles and face many enmities. Cano supported the policy, hostile to Paul IV, of King Philip II, whose confessor he managed to become, and fought bitterly against the exemptions of the great Chapters. He intervened in the inquisitorial trial against his confrere and rival Bartolomé Carranza, archbishop of Toledo from 1557, and severely censured his Comentarios sobre el catecismo cristiano. It was also then that he manifested great animosity against the new Order of the Society of Jesus, which in his passionate invectives he linked with the Lutherans, Erasmians and illuminists. An apology has recently been attempted concerning Cano's readily extreme attitudes in these religious polemics (v. V. Beltrán de Heredia, Las corrientes de espiritualidad entre los Dominicos de Castilla durante la primera mitad del siglo XVI, Salamanca 1941). Elected prior of St. Stephen's in Salamanca in 1557, Cano was chosen the same year by the Chapter of Plasencia as provincial of Spain (Castile), but the election was not confirmed by the Pope, not even when it was repeated in 1559 by the Chapter held at Segovia. Paul IV having died shortly afterward, Cano came to Rome and obtained from his successor, Pius IV, confirmation of his appointment, shortly after which he died on his return to Spain.
II. WORKS
The two Relectiones de Sacramentis in genere and De Poenitentia, printed together at Salamanca in 1550 and reprinted in 1563, are the lectures given by C. at Salamanca in the years 1547 and 1548. They contain some strange propositions, which no theologian would maintain today.
The capital work, to which C. owes his fame as a renewer of theological methodology and as the founder of modern fundamental theology, is the Libri 12 de locis theologicis, published posthumously in 1565 and often reprinted; the edition of 1714, edited by the Dominican Father Giacinto Serry, has an important "prologus galeatus," taken up again in the following editions, which defends the author against the criticisms leveled at him. Manifestly inspired by the study made by the humanist Rodolphus Agricola of the Topica aristotelica, the author examines in turn ten sources of theological demonstration, namely Holy Scripture, oral tradition, the authority of the Catholic Church, of the councils, of the Roman Church, of the Holy Fathers, of the scholastic theologians, of natural reason, of the philosophers and of history. Book XII, far more developed than the others, on the use of these "loci" in theological disputation or controversy, remained incomplete. Two other books, which C. did not have time to write, were to treat of the use of the same "loci" in the study of Holy Scripture and in controversy against the pagans, the Jews and the Saracens (Muslims). The Loci theologici, besides being a powerfully original masterpiece for the firmness and clarity of its thought and for the richness of its erudition, have the merit of having restored to theological literature the use of a beautiful literary form, desired by the author in order to be read by the humanists. To the influence of C., faithful in this to the directives of his master Francisco de Vitoria, is due in large part the predominantly positive orientation taken by modern theology.
Other treatises of C., namely the Commentaries on the First and Second Part of the Summa theologica, dictated in his lectures at Alcalá and Salamanca, are preserved in manuscript in the University Library of Salamanca and in the Vatican Latin and Ottobonian holdings of the Vatican Library. Six Theological Consultations (among them the opinion on the war against Paul IV and the censure of Carranza) and 23 letters are published by F. Caballero in the appendix to his biography of C. C.'s censure against the Society of Jesus was printed at the end of the 18th century, during the struggles that preceded the suppression of the Jesuits, and reprinted in 1900 at Barcelona by an anti-Jesuit pamphleteer under the title: Crisis Societatis Iesu.
The little Tratado de la victoria de sí mismo, traducido del toscano (Valladolid 1550), an adaptation that C. made of a work by the Dominican Battista da Crema, without knowing that it had been condemned at Rome, seems to have had a certain influence on the evolution of his mind, pushing his suspicions to the extreme in matters of novelty and mysticism.