CANO, MELCHOR

CANO, MELCHOR. - Spanish Dominican and distinguished theologian of the 16th century, born in Tarancón (Cuenca), probably on 6 January 1509, and died in Toledo on 30 September 1560.

I. LIFE

He entered the Order of St Dominic in Salamanca in 1523, where he first studied under Diego de Astudillo and then under the great reformer of Spanish theology and founder of the “School of Salamanca,” Francisco de Vitoria. He later found Astudillo again as regent at San Gregorio in Valladolid (1531), where Cano himself began teaching in 1533. This marked the beginning of his rivalry with his fellow professor and opponent Bartolomé Carranza, a rivalry that would last until his death and divide Spanish Dominicans for many years. Created Master of Theology in Rome in 1542, and esteemed for his outstanding qualities, Cano successfully competed the following year for the first chair of theology at the University of Alcalá. In 1546, he likewise obtained the chair left vacant at Salamanca by the death of Francisco de Vitoria, remaining its holder until 1552. In the years 1551–52, he attended the Council of Trent as imperial theologian on behalf of Charles V and played an important part in the discussions on the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist and on the Mass. To reward him, the emperor secured his promotion by Julius III to the episcopal see of the Canary Islands (August 1552); but Cano, who had to relinquish his Salamanca chair (then passed to Domingo de Soto) for this new office, soon resigned the bishopric (1553) and retired to Piedrahita (Ávila) to complete his great work *De locis theologicis*. His prestige, however, did not allow him long to remain in solitude; summoned to Valladolid as regent of studies at the College of San Gregorio (1554), he had to attend to matters of religious policy at the court of Madrid, for which he had to engage in many struggles and incur many enmities. Cano supported King Philip II’s policy, hostile to Paul IV, of whom he became confessor, and vigorously opposed the exemptions claimed by the great cathedral chapters. He intervened in the Inquisition’s proceedings against his opponent and rival Bartolomé Carranza, who from 1557 was archbishop of Toledo, and severely censured the latter’s *Comentarios sobre el catecismo cristiano*. It was also at this time that he displayed great animosity toward the new Society of Jesus, which he lumped together in his impassioned invective with Lutherans, Erasmian humanists, and illuminists. A recent attempt has been made to defend Cano’s often extreme stances in these religious controversies (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 San Esteban 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, nor when it was repeated in 1559 by the Chapter held at Segovia. After the death of Paul IV, Cano went 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 in Salamanca in 1550 and reprinted in 1563, are the lectures Cano delivered at Salamanca in 1547 and 1548. They contain some strange propositions that no theologian would uphold today. The principal work, to which Cano owes his fame as a renewer of theological methodology and founder of modern fundamental theology, is the *Libri XII de locis theologicis*, published posthumously in 1563 and often reprinted; the 1714 edition, edited by the Dominican Fr Giacinto Serry, contains an important “prologue in armor,” later included in subsequent editions, which defends the author against carping criticism. Clearly inspired by the humanist Rudolph Agricola’s study of the Aristotelian *Topics*, the author successively examines ten sources of theological demonstration: Holy Scripture, oral tradition, the authority of the Catholic Church, of councils, of the Roman Church, of the Fathers, of scholastic theologians, of natural reason, of philosophers, and of history. Book XII, much more developed than the others, on the use of these “loci” in theological disputation or controversy, remained incomplete. Two other books that Cano 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 pagans, Jews, and Saracens (Muslims). The *Loci theologici*, besides being a powerfully original masterpiece for the firmness and clarity of its thought and the richness of its scholarship, have the merit of having restored to theological literature the use of a fine literary form, deliberately chosen by the author to make his work readable by humanists. It is largely to Cano’s influence, faithful in this to the directives of his master Francisco de Vitoria, that modern theology owes its predominantly positive orientation.

Other treatises by Cano, namely his commentaries on the first and second parts 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 collections of the Vatican Library. Six theological consultations (including his opinion on the war against Paul IV and the censure of Carranza) and 32 letters are published by F. Caballero as an appendix to his biography of Cano. Cano’s censure of the Society of Jesus was printed at the end of the 18th century, during the struggles preceding the suppression of the Jesuits, and reprinted in 1900 in Barcelona by an anti-Jesuit pamphleteer under the title *Crisis Societatis Iesu*.

The small *Tratado de la victoria de si mismo*, translated from the Tuscan (Valladolid 1550), an adaptation Cano made of a work by the Dominican Battista da Crema without knowing it had been condemned in Rome, seems to have influenced the evolution of his mind, pushing his suspicions of novelty and mysticism to extremes.

Edmondo Lamalle