MALVENDA, TOMÁS. - Dominican exegete and philologist, b. at Játiva near Valencia in May 1566, d. at Valencia on 7 May 1628. He made his profession in the Dominican convent of Santa Croce at Lombay, where for 4 years he taught philosophy and for 10 theology. Of strong intellect, he taught himself Greek and Hebrew, and at the age of 19 composed his first erudite work (lost) on St. Anne and St. Joseph.
He sent learned observations (1600) on his Martyrology to C. Baronio, who had him come to Rome (1601), where he suggested to the cardinal many emendations to his Annales. In Rome M. worked with Isidoro Aliaga (1568-1648) and was the principal corrector of the Dominican Missale and Breviarium (Rome 1603); he elaborated the Martyrologium Romanum a Baronio recensitum, additis sanctis ac beatis Ord. Praed. (ibid. 1603), with which the Martyrology of Usuard, until then in use in his Order, was abandoned; he collaborated on the Librorum prohibitorum index expurgatorius published by Jo. M. Brassichelensis Mag. s. Pal. (Rome 1607). He expurgated the Bibliotheca SS. Patrum of Margarin de la Bigne (1586) and his Annotationes were inserted in the Paris edition of 1605. He compiled the Annales O. P. (down to 1246), which he was unable to finish and which were published without his consent (Annalium s. Ord. Praed. Centuria prima sola edita, Naples 1627).
He returned to Spain in 1608 with Aliaga, who was elected provincial of Aragon and shortly afterwards bishop of Albarracín. M. lived in the convent of Valencia (except for a two-year period in Madrid [1610-12], at the house of the inquisitor Bernardo de Rojas), devoting himself to critical-exegetical works.
The work that revealed M.'s immense erudition was De antichristo II. XI (Rome 1604); the text was tripled by M. in the Valencia edition of 1621 and the Lyon edition of 1647 (2 vols., edited by T. Turco, who dedicated them to Innocent X). Also much appreciated was De paradiso voluptatis (Rome 1605). At the death of M., who left a new version of the books of the Old Testament with a literal commentary (only I-II Mach. and the prophets after Ez. 16, 16 are missing), his writings were collected by his friend I. Aliaga, archbishop of Valencia, who entrusted them to his confrere Tommaso Turco; the Dominican Caspar Dinghens (d. in 1678) published the Commentaria in S. Scripturam una cum nova de verbo ad verbum ex Hebraeo translatione (5 vols., in-fol., Lyon 1650), a most learned work but criticized by R. Simon and by A. Calmet for the obscurity of the translation.
Bibliography2 works
Antonino Romeo