Gotti, Vincenzo Ludovico

GOTTI, VINCENZO LUDOVICO. - Dominican theologian and cardinal, b. in Bologna on 5 Sept. 1664, d. in Rome on 18 Sept. 1742. A religious in Bologna in 1680, he studied at Forlì, Bologna and then Salamanca. Having returned to Italy (1688), he taught philosophy in the Convent of Mantua, then in the College of S. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, and then in Bologna. In 1695 he became professor of theology at the University of Bologna. Appointed by Clement XI inquisitor at Milan (1715), after two years he returned to Bologna, where he held the chair of apologetics at the University. In the Consistory of 30 Apr. 1728 Benedict XIII created him patriarch of Jerusalem and cardinal priest of the title of St. Sixtus. A consultor of 9 congregations, he took an active part in all the discussions. Having fallen ill in the Conclave of 1740, he never recovered. He was buried in the church of his title.

G. was one of the finest minds of his age and never ceased to defend the Catholic faith with his pen. His first work was written while he was inquisitor in Milan: La vera Chiesa di Cristo dimostrata da' segni e da' dogmi contro i due libri di Giacomo Picenino intitolati Apologia per i riformatori e per la religione riformata e Trionfo della vera religione (3 vols., Bologna 1719; 2nd ed., Milan 1734; a Latin translation of this was published in Venice in 1750). It is a systematic refutation of the errors of the Calvinist G. Picenino, so that more than a polemical work it is a true treatise of apologetics. In this work, printed far from the author, offensive expressions against Picenino were introduced; G. condemned this in the preface to his second work: Colloquia theologico-polemica in tres classes distribuita (Bologna 1727). These are 38 conferences in which, in dialogic form, G. defends the celibacy of ecclesiastics against Picenino. But his principal work is the Theologia scholastico-dogmatica iuxta mentem D. Thomae Aquinatis (16 vols., ibid. 1727-35; 2nd ed., 3 vols., Venice 1750; 3rd ed., ibid. 1783), where the author, in the preface, maintains that there must be abolished in the study of theology purely scholastic questions, by now outdated, must be abolished in order to give greater importance to the study of the sources and of the heresies that must be combated. Against the Dutch Protestant G. Le Clerc, who maintained that the true Church was that of Calvin, he wrote: De eligenda inter dissentientes Christianos sententia, seu de vera inter Christianos religione eligenda (Rome 1734; 2nd ed., Ratisbon 1740; 3rd ed., Vienna 1749). In defense of the truth of the Christian religion he also wrote: Veritas religionis Christianae et librorum quibus inuntur contra atheos, polytheos, idolatras, mahometanos et iudaeos demonstrata (12 vols., Rome 1735; 2nd ed., Venice 1750). This second edition also contains the Colloquia and the De eligenda.

Alfonso D'Amato