MACEDO, FRANCESCO. - Friar Minor, theologian, also called of St. Augustine. Born in Coimbra in 1596, died in Padua on 1 May 1681. Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1610, he later passed (1642) to the Reformed Friars Minor and from these (1645) to the Observant Friars Minor.
In his homeland he took the side of the House of Braganza and was appointed Latin chronologer by King John IV of Portugal. He was also a preacher and counselor to Queen Anne of France. Summoned to Rome by Alexander VII, he taught theology at the College of Propaganda Fide and ecclesiastical history at the Sapienza, and held offices in the curia. A powerful and encyclopedic mind, but of a bizarre disposition, he held solemn public disputations in Rome and in Venice: in the latter city, after the disputation, which lasted seven days, de omni re scibili, he was granted citizenship ad honorem. He also held the chair of moral philosophy at the University of Padua for many years.
He published more than a hundred works - his erudition was great, his critical spirit scant - which he himself reviewed in Myrothecium (Padua 1675), and he left many unpublished. Noteworthy among them: Cortina d. Augustini de praedestinatione et gratia (Paris 1648) against Jansenism; De clavibus Petri (Rome 1660); Scholae theologicae postitvae (ibid. 1664); Collationes s. Thomae et Scoti (3 vols., Padua 1671-80), which is his principal work.
Bibliography6 works
Giovanni Bastianini