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
He entered the Order of St. Dominic at Salamanca in 1523, where he first studied under Diego de Astudillo and then under the great renewer of Spanish theology and founder of the “school of Salamanca,” Francesco de Vitoria. He later found Astudillo as regent at S. Gregorio in Valladolid (1531), where C. himself began teaching in 1533. His rivalry with his confrere and fellow teacher Bartolomeo Carranza then began—a rivalry that was to last until his death and to keep the Spanish Dominicans divided for many years. Having been made master of theology in Rome in 1542 and gaining renown for his brilliant abilities, C. successfully competed, the following year, for the first chair of theology at the University of Alcalá. In 1546, in the same way, he obtained the chair left vacant at Salamanca by the death of Francesco de Vitoria, and retained it until 1552. In the years 1551–52, he attended the Council of Trent as an imperial theologian, commissioned by 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 had him promoted by Julius III to the episcopal see of the Canaries (August 1552); but C., who had been obliged to leave the chair at Salamanca for his new office (which then passed to Domenico Soto), soon resigned his bishopric (1553) and withdrew to Piedrahita (Avila) 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 S. Gregorio (1554), he had to concern himself with the religious-political affairs of the court of Madrid, for which he had to endure many struggles and face many enmities. C. supported the policy of King Philip II, hostile to Paul IV, and succeeded in becoming his confessor; he also fiercely opposed the exemptions of the great Chapters. He took part in the inquisitorial proceedings against his confrere and rival Bartolomeo Carranza, archbishop of Toledo from 1557, and severely censured his Comentarios sobre el catecismo cristiano. It was also then that he displayed great animosity toward the new Order of the Society of Jesus, which in his impassioned invectives he associated with the Lutherans, Erasmians, and Illuminists. An apology has recently been attempted for C.’s readily extreme attitudes 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 S. Stefano in Salamanca in 1557, C. was chosen that 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. Shortly after Paul IV’s death, C. 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 delivered by C. at Salamanca in the years 1547 and 1548. They contain certain strange propositions that no theologian today would uphold.The principal work, to which C. owes his fame as a renovator of theological methodology and founder of modern fundamental theology, is the Libri 12 de locis theologicis, published posthumously in 1565 and often reprinted; the 1714 edition, prepared by the Dominican Fr. Giacinto Serry, has an important “prologo galeato,” subsequently reproduced in the following editions, which defends the author against the criticisms directed at him. Manifestly inspired by the study made by the humanist Rodolfo Agricola of the Tomo aristotelici, the author examines in succession ten sources of theological demonstration: Sacred 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, much 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 deal with the use of the same “loci” in the study of Sacred Scripture and in controversy against pagans, Jews, and Saracens (Muslims). The Loci theologici, besides being a powerfully original masterpiece in the firmness and clarity of its thought and the richness of its learning, have the merit of having restored to theological literature the use of an elegant literary form, which the author adopted in order to appeal to humanists. The predominantly positive orientation taken by modern theology is due in large part to the influence of C., who in this remained faithful to the directives of his teacher Francesco de Vitoria.
Other treatises by C., namely the Commentari sulla I e la II parte della Somma teologica, 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 Consultazioni teologiche (including the opinion on the war against Paolo IV and the censure of Carranza) and twenty-three letters were published by F. Caballero in an appendix to his biography of C. C.’s censure of the Society of Jesus was printed at the end of the eighteenth century, during the struggles preceding the suppression of the Jesuits, and reprinted in 1900 at Barcelona by an anti-Jesuit pamphleteer under the title: Crisis Societatis Iesu.
The short 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, unaware that it had been condemned at Rome, seems to have had a certain influence on the development of his thought, driving his suspicions concerning novelty and mysticism to extremes.