MALDONADO (Maldonatus), GIOVANNI. - One of the founders of modern exegesis, b. at Casas de la Reina (Estremadura) in 1533, d. at Rome on 5 January 1583. At the University of Salamanca he acquired a solid humanistic, philosophical, and theological training under the guidance of distinguished masters (Dom. Soto, Melchior Cano, Fr. Toledo). He later succeeded Toledo in the chair of philosophy, and shortly afterwards in that of theology. Having entered the Society of Jesus at Rome on 10 August 1562, he was ordained priest in 1563 and assigned to the Collège de Clermont in Paris, where he taught philosophy and later theology (1565–77).
His success was immense. His lectures were attended with the greatest interest not only by students but also by professors from other faculties, ecclesiastics, and even Calvinists. In the 16th century theology had strayed, becoming excessively devoted to purely speculative philosophical questions. M., however, adapting the salutary reforms he had learned at Salamanca from Dominican masters, treated theology by grounding it in Scripture, the holy Fathers, and ecclesiastical Tradition, thus rendering it an effective weapon against the snares of the spreading heresy. At the request of Charles IX, he also worked directly for the Catholic Reformation, conducting missions and delivering conferences in a thoroughly Protestant environment. Owing to the jealousies of the Sorbonne, M. was forced to leave Paris and his teaching post, retiring to Bourges, where he devoted himself to compiling commentaries on Holy Scripture.
In 1578 he was appointed visitor of the Society in Lorraine; in February 1581 he took part in the General Congregation of the Order. Gregory XIII kept him in Rome as a member of the commission charged with receiving and publishing the Greek Bible of the Seventy. Having put the final touches to his commentary on the Gospels, on 21 December 1582 he presented to Fr. General Claudio Acquaviva the first part, the commentary on Matthew. A few days later he died suddenly, barely fifty years old.
In his biblical commentaries, especially in that on the Gospels—which is his masterpiece and one of the finest modern commentaries—M. displays his vast erudition, expounding the literal sense of the sacred text and adding numerous historical-theological dissertations.
All of M.’s works are posthumous. The principal ones are: *Commentarii in Evangelistas* (Pont-à-Mousson 1596, 2 vols. fol., reprinted in many other editions); *Commentarii in prophetas, I, Ieremiani, Ezechielem, Baruch et Danielem* (Lyons 1609 and subsequent editions); *Commentarii in praecipuos S. Scripturae libros Veteris Testamenti* (Paris 1643); *De caeremoniis tractatus*, on the ceremonies of the Mass, published by F. A. Zaccaria in *Biblioteca ritualis* (II, II, Rome 1781, pp. 1–210).