Gazzaniga, Pierro Maria

GAZZANIGA, PIERRO MARIA. - Dominican theologian and writer, b. at Bergamo on 3 March 1722, d. at Vicenza on 11 Dec. 1799. After completing his studies at Bologna, he taught at Pavia (1747-50), at Bologna (1750-53), at Genoa (1753-56), then again at Bologna from 1756 to 1758. The following year the chair of Thomist theology, then newly founded by the Empress Maria Theresa, was entrusted to him at Vienna. He held it until he returned to Italy in 1782. The following year he was elected provincial of Lombardy (1783-85). He enjoyed the esteem and friendship of Pius VI, who at Vienna attended his lectures, of the nuncio Garampi and of the emperor Joseph II, who after his teaching assigned him an annual pension of 300 florins.

He published the Praelectiones theologicae (4 vols., Vienna 1763-66; eight subsequent editions, the last in 9 vols., Bassano 1851); they treat of God and his properties, of the Most Holy Trinity, of human acts, of Grace and of the theological virtues. His other works: Theologia dogmatica in systema reducta (2 vols., Vienna 1786), reprinted later; Theologia polemica (2 vols., ibid. 1778-79). He was a most strenuous opponent of probabilism and of the Molinists, and therefore had polemics against the Jesuits, particularly Gioacchino Cortes and Gian Carlo Brignole, who would have accused him of Jansenism.

Alfonso D'Amato