FRANCESCO DA VITORIA. - Dominican theologian, born probably at Vitoria (Alava) about 1492, died at Salamanca on 12 Aug. 1546.
I. LIFE
A religious in the convent of S. Paolo at Burgos, between 1506 and 1510 he was sent to the University of Paris, where Pietro Crockaert and Giovanni Fenario were his teachers. In 1513, by the General Chapter of Genoa, presided over by Gaetano, he was authorized to lecture on the Sentences. During this period of unremitting application to theological study, he edited the Sum. Theol. 2ª-2ª (Paris, 1512, reprinted in 1515), the Summa aurea of St. Antonino (ibid., 1521), and the Sermones dominicales of Pietro Covarrubias (ibid., 1521). Having obtained his academic degrees in 1522, he left the following year for Valladolid, where he taught theology; in 1526 he assumed the principal chair of theology at the University of Salamanca, which, during the twenty years of his teaching, he made famous throughout Europe through the loftiness of his learning and the charm of his person. Universally esteemed, he was consulted by prelates and princes; Carlo V appointed him as his theologian to the Council of Trent, to which Paolo III had likewise invited him. The humble religious replied that he was already on the road to eternity.II. WORKS
Although he printed nothing, F. da V. left a considerable number of works, the fruit of his daily and painstaking preparation for teaching. The manuscript lectures follow this order: 1526–29: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 2ª-2ª; 1529–31: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 1ª; 1533–34: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 1ª-2ª; 1534–37: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 2ª-2ª; 1537–38: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 3ª; 1538–39: commentary on the IV Sent.; 1539–40: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 1ª. The manuscripts of these lectures, taken down by his disciples, are described by Card. Ehrle and Fr. Beltran de Heredia O. P. (v. BIBLICA). The latter published the Comentarios a la 2ª-2ª de s. Tomás in the collection Biblioteca de Teologas Españoles, (I-II, Salamanca 1932; III-IV, ibid. 1934; V, ibid. 1935), using manuscript 43 of the Library of the University of Salamanca. Many have called for an edition that also takes the other manuscripts into account.But the most living part of his work remains the relectiones, upon which the truest and most enduring fame of the Spanish theologian rests. They are a kind of lecture summarizing the entire subject matter of the academic year, or the treatment of topics of particular contemporary interest, delivered before all the students of the faculty and sometimes of the University. The imposing audience required in the relector a particular mastery of the subject combined with an attractive presentation. These qualities shine forth to an eminent degree in the lucid relectiones, which were delivered in the following chronological order: De silentii obligatione (Christmas 1527); De potestate civili (Christmas 1528); De homicidio (11 June 1530); De matrimonio (25 Jan. 1531); De potestate Ecclesiae prior (early 1532); De potestate Ecclesiae posterior (May 1533); De potestate Papae et Concilii (Apr.–June 1534); De augmentio caritatis (11 Apr. 1535); De eo ad quod tenetur veniens ad unum rationis (June 1535); De simonia (May–June 1536); De temperantia
(1537–38); De Indis prior (June 1539); De Indis posterior sive de iure belli (19 June 1539); De magia (18 June 1540); De magia posterior (spring 1543). The first and the last no longer exist; according to some, they were never written. The 13 surviving relectiones had many editions (16 in the 16th–18th centuries): the first (Lyon 1557) appeared 11 years after the author's death, while the best is that of Ingolstadt (1580). Recently Fr. Alonso Getino edited a new complete edition: Relectiones teologicas del maestro fray Francisco de V. (3 vols., Madrid 1933–35). In the editor's intention this is a edición crítica, but, since it is based on the first Lyons edition, with not always consistent reference to the other editions and to the Palencia manuscript, it is far from meeting modern requirements. The following works are also attributed to F. da V.: Confessionario util y provechoso (Salamanca 1562); Parecer que dió el p. m. Francisco de V. sobre si los señores pueden vender a arrender las oficios (published in the work of D. de Zúñiga, Instrucción y refugio del alma, Salamanca 1552); Summa Sacramentorum Ecclesiae (a summary of his lectures, compiled by Tommaso de Chaves O. P., which had 34 editions between 1560 and 1629).
III. METHOD
The life of V. coincided with an age of particularly acute conflicts. The opposition between the old speculative theology of Cajetan and the humanistic and erudite tendencies of Erasmus was deeply dividing the University of Paris when the Dominican student arrived there. But F. da V., a man of open mind and endowed with a particular assimilative power, did not disdain subtle disputations and rigorous metaphysical inquiry, just as he enjoyed frequenting the erudite circles of Parisian Humanism. During the several years of his residence in the French capital, he assimilated the best that the culture of his time had to offer and, upon returning to his homeland, almost through a spontaneous movement of his intellect, fused its conflicting elements into a higher synthesis, in which the golden vein of Thomism was wedded to the beauties of humanistic style, while being enriched by documentation drawn from the sources. Thus modern theology arose at Salamanca, equally attentive to speculation and to the biblical and patristic foundations of dogma; its principles were established in the classical work De locis theologicis by the celebrated disciple of V., Melchior Cano. It arose in a propitious climate, namely, the golden age of Spanish civilization, when the internal unity of the kingdom, the discovery of America, and the artistic and cultural movement made the Iberian Peninsula the pivot of the Christian world; in this atmosphere Salamanca, chiefly through the merit of F. da V., rose to worldwide fame, eclipsing Paris. His countless and outstanding disciples (Azpilicueta, Cano, Ledesma, Vega, Pietro Soto, De Castro, Carranza, Salmerón, Lainez) spread the master’s new methods throughout Europe and brought his teaching to triumph in the deliberations of Trent.IV. THOUGHT
Under the influence of Crockaert and Fenario, F. da V. turned decisively toward Thomism, of which he became the most effective restorer. Following the great commentary of Cajetan, he brought to light the depth and solidity of the principles of Aquinas, from which he was able to draw the soundest conclusions, adapted to the needs of the times.By simplifying Cajetan’s formalistic procedure, he reached the substance of the doctrine more directly, and was able to present it in clear and concise language. A free thinker, he sometimes departed from the doctrines of St. Thomas and at times yielded to the minimalist tendency (for example, in the causality of the Sacraments), which nominalism had spread through all cultural circles; signs of this subtle and unconscious infiltration would be found in the later orientations of the “second scholasticism,” which traces its origins to Salamanca.
A man of his time, he had a keen sense of reality,
of what was stirring in souls, and of the new intellectual ferment provoked by contemporary life. The relectiones on homicide, simony, temperance, magic, and marriage put their finger on the sore spot of the corrupt social customs of the age. The treatises De potestate Ecclesiae, De potestate Papa et Concilio, De potestate civili address the most pressing religious and political problems of the troubled sixteenth century. An opponent of conciliarism like Cajetan, he demolishes the anti-papal errors of Gerson as well as those of Luther, but speaks frankly of the need for ecclesiastical reform and of the urgent necessity that good example come from above. Regarding the power of the Church, equally distant both from the extremism of the Parisienses, supporters of royalism, and from that of the Augustinianes, proponents of the Pope’s direct power over temporal affairs, and connecting his doctrine with St. Thomas and Torquemada (Turrecremata), he expounds the doctrine of indirect power in terms so precise that, through the classic treatises of Suarez and Bellarmine, they reached pontifical sanction in the Immortale Dei (1885) and the Sopientiae Christianae (1869) of Leo XIII.
But it is in the Relectiones de India that he wrote his most glorious pages. In the first, through rigorous criticism, he destroys all the sophisms accumulated by the greed of the conquistadors, in order to indicate the truly just motives—above all, the preaching of the Gospel—for the peaceful intervention of his compatriots in the lands discovered by Columbus. In the second, he confronts the problem of war, so keenly felt at a time when France and Spain were in perpetual conflict. The sound doctrine that he sets forth there became classical and perhaps gives the author first place among the founders of international law.
BIBLI: N. Pfeiffer, Doctrina iuris internationalis imata Franciscan de Vitoria, in Xenia Tuomistica, III, Rome 1925, pp. 301–321; L. Allevi, F. de V. e il rinnovamento della scolastica nel sec. XVI, in Riu. della fitta, neoscolastica, 19 (1927), pp. 401–441; V. BERTRANDO DE TURRE, Les manuscrites du monstre fray Franciscan de Vitoria, Madrid 1928; C. Barcia Trelles, Francisco de Vitoria fundador del derecho internacional moderno, there 1928; H. Bours-Metz, La théorie des pouvoirs publics d'après François de Vitoria et ses rapports avec le droit contemporain, Paris 1928; F. Ehrle, Les manuscrites vaticanes de les teologies valmontines del siglo XVI, Spanish trans. by I. March, Madrid 1930, pp. 12–28; L. Alonso Getino, El monstro Francisco de Vitoria. Su cadu. su doctrina y su influencia, Madrid 1930; F. Pelser, Der Geschichte des Schulz von Salamanca, in Gregorianum, 12 (1931), pp. 303–13; G. M. Bertini, F. de V. e la civiltà spagnola, in Memorie domenicale, 49 (1932), pp. 6–28; F. Stegmüller, F. de V. y la doctrina de la gracia en la escuela salmantina, Barcelona 1934; V. CAROTO, Das ebrea importantes del monstro Francisco de Vitoria fundador del derecho de peores, in Anglicium, 12 (1935), pp. 44–51; A. Naszalyi, Doctrina F. de Vitoria de Statu, Rome 1937 (with an extensive bibliography); H. Muñoz, Vitoria and the conquest of America, Manila 1938; C. Giacon, La seconda scolastica, I, Milan 1943, pp. 163–213; R. G. Villoslada, La Universidad de París durante los estudios de F. de Vitoria, Rome 1938; R. Gonzalez, F. de V. Estudia bibliográfico, Buenos Aires 1946; Juan de Jesús María, F. de V. conciliatoria?, in Epidem. Carmelithese, 1 (1947), pp. 103–47; A. Piolanti, Card. P. Mendoza: de naturalis cum Christo unitate, Rome 1948, pp. XXXI–XXXVI (on V.’s method); V. BERTRANDO DE TURRE, Vitoria (Français de) : vie et production littéraire, in DTHC, XV, cols. 3117–33 (particularly important for the new indication of the date of birth); I. G. Menendez Raigada, Doctrina juridique de Vitoria, ibid., cols. 3133–44; C. Barcia Trelles, Interpretación del hecho americano por la España universitaria del siglo XVI, Montevideo 1949.