Masdeu, Baltasar

MASDEU, BALTASAR. - Jesuit, Neo-Scholastic philosopher, b. in Palermo on 7 May 1741, d. in Palma de Mallorca on 31 Dec. 1820. After a period of teaching literature at the College of Nobles in Barcelona, he was deported to Italy (1768) following Charles III's decree against the Jesuits, where he remained even after the suppression of the Order. He resided first in Ferrara and Ravenna; then, as spiritual director of the diocesan Seminary, in Faenza; then, from 1799, as professor of philosophy, in Piacenza at the College of St. Peter and finally in Cremona, at the Seminary, after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Piacenza. He returned to the Order shortly after its restoration (1814), and moved to the chair of philosophy at the Montession College in Palma de Mallorca.

Trained in the school of Cervera (Catalonia), where a movement for the restoration of Scholasticism had begun as early as 1750, M. exercised in Piacenza and Cremona an effective influence, especially on Buzzetti, for the renewal of Italian Scholastic and Thomist philosophy. He wrote a course of philosophy, of which however only the Ethicae seu moralis philosophiae epitome was published (2 vols., Piacenza 1805); while the other parts: Dialettica, Logica, Ontologia, Teodicea, Cosmologia, Psicologia, remained in manuscript in the Provincial Library of Palma de Mallorca (cf. the list and description in M. Batllori, op. cit. in bibl., pp. 5-32).

Paolo Dezza