Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.
DE LELLI, TEODORO. – Bishop, theologian, and jurist, b. in Teramo in 1427, d. in Rome on 31 March 1466. Having taken his degree at Padua in utroque iure, he soon became an auditor of the Roman Rota and held many offices in the Curia, which he discharged with prudence and ability. In 1462 Pius II appointed him bishop of Feltre and employed him on delicate diplomatic missions to Venice and France, to Louis XI. Paul II, whose closest collaborator he was, transferred him to the see of Treviso, but an incurable illness carried him to the grave in the prime of life. He was buried at S. Maria Nuova, where his epitaph can still be read.
Endowed with uncommon intelligence, and despite being absorbed in intense diplomatic and forensic activity, he wrote three works defending the primacy and infallibility of the pope and his superiority over the council and the college of cardinals, at a time when conciliar theories were also accepted by well-intentioned minds: *Tractatus contra pragma-
(from E. Bourguet, Les ruines de Delphe, Paris 1915) DELFI, ORACOLO di – Plan of the sanctuary of D.ticam sanctionem (cod. Vat. lat. 3878, ff. 81-96): he refutes the objections of the French royalists against the reservations of the Holy See; Replica Th. L. pro Pio II et Sede Romana (ed. Frécher-Struve, in MGH, Scriptores, II, pp. 214-28: a very imperfect edition): a forceful argument in favor of the Head of the Church; Contra supercilium (cod. 27, CC. bibl. Lolliniana of Belluno): a treatise, in two parts, against the cardinals, in which he recalls their origin and their office as advisers to the Roman pontiff. As a good Christian humanist, he edited the treatises and letters of St. Jerome (Parma 1480). He also left a considerable number of unpublished orationes and epistolae, and a Summarium* of the trial of St. Joan of Arc (cod. Vat. lat. 3878, ff. 41-61).
BIBL.: Pastor, II (v. index); I. B. Sägmüller, Ein Traktat des Bischofs von Feltre und Treviso T. de L., über das Verhältnis von Primat und Kardinalat, Rome 1893; L. Alpago-Novello, T. De L. vescovo di Feltre e Treviso, in Archivio veneto, 5th series, 16 (1936), pp. 238-61, and above all the exhaustive dissertation by R. Dell'Ossa, Un teologo del potere papale e sui rapporti col cardinalato nel sec. XV, Belluno 1948; H. Jedin, Storia del Concilio di Trento, I, Brescia 1949, pp. 65, 77, 79. Antonio Piolanti
Cite this article
“DE LELLI, TEODORO.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IV (1950), p. 792. Azione Romana digital edition, https://azioneromana.com/article/de-lelli-teodoro.
