Porcacci (Porcatius), Filippo

PORCACCI (Porcatius), FILIPPO. - Scotist philosopher and theologian of the Conventual Friars Minor, b. at Bagnacavallo (Ravenna), d. at Rome, at the Ss. Apostoli where he is buried, on 13 Sept. 1511.

He taught theology at Venice, metaphysics (1506-10) and moral philosophy (1507-10) at the University of Bologna, which as early as 9 Apr. 1488 admitted him to its College of Theologians (1488, 1504, 1507). He was provincial minister of his Bolognese province (1500-1504, 1508-10); at the General Chapter of Terni (1500) he was one of the provincials deputed to draft the new constitutions of the Order (the "Alexandrine" constitutions). He became procurator general (1506-1509) and at the Chapter of Rome in 1510 was elected 42nd minister general of the Order after St. Francis. He governed for a year and three months, greatly esteemed by Pope Julius II, who had summoned him to Rome for important affairs of the Church.

To his philosophical and theological studies are owed the editions of Scotus's Opus Oxoniense and Quaestiones quodlibetales (Venice 1497, 1503, 1505). At the end of the first book of the Sentences of the Opus Oxoniense he collected the Addictiones prologi primique Sententiarum libri, which in other editions are found scattered here and there; the second book was followed by the Opusculum in II Librum Sent. Scoti of his confrere B. Bellati (v.); to the whole work, which has the Quaestiones quodlibetales as a fifth book, he added (v. ed. 1505) the Tabula Generalis ac mare magnum scoticae subtilitatis of Antonio de Fantis. The text is illustrated with annotations of sentences and opinions of various doctors and with texts from Aristotle's commentaries. Hence perhaps the Aristotelian commentaries attributed to him by Wadding. Other writings and coniones are attributed to him by Sbaralea.

Giovanni Odoardi