MACEDO, FRANCESCO. - Friar Minor, theologian, also known as da S. Agostino. Born at Coimbra in 1596, died at Padua on 1 May 1681. Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1610, he later passed (1642) to the Reformed Minors and thence (1645) to the Observant Minors.
In his native country he supported the house of Braganza and was appointed Latin chronicler by King Giovanni IV of Portugal. He was also preacher and counsellor to Queen Anna of France. Summoned to Rome by Alessandro 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 eccentric disposition, he conducted solemn public disputations in Rome and Venice: in the latter city, after the disputation, which lasted seven days, de omni re scibili, he was granted citizenship ad honorem. For many years he also held the chair of moral philosophy at the University of Padua.
He published more than one hundred works—great in erudition, lacking in critical spirit—which he himself reviewed in Myrothecium (Padua 1675), and left many others unpublished. Worth recalling are: 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.