Medina, Bartolomeo

MEDINA, BARTOLOMEO. - Dominican theologian, b. at Medina Rioseco (province of Valladolid) in 1528, d. at Salamanca on 30 Dec. 1580. A religious in Salamanca, he taught in the College of Alcalá and of Salamanca, first in the chair of Durandus and then in the primary chair of theology (1576-80).

He published the commentary on the 1st-2nd of the Sum. Theol. (Salamanca 1577), which had many editions. He also wrote a commentary In tertium partem a quaestione I ad IX (ibid. 1578) and a Breve instruction de comme se ha de administrer el Sacramento de la Penitencia (ibid. 1580).

M. is considered the father of probabilism because he was the first to affirm that in the moral life one may follow a probable opinion sine reprensione et vituperazione, even if the opposite opinion is more probable. And probable is the opinion that is upheld by learned men and is founded on the best arguments ("ea opinio probabilita est, quam asserunt viri sapientes et confirmant optima argumenta"; Exp. in Sum. Theol. 1st-2nd, q. 19, a. 6, concl. 2). His doctrine, accepted and defended for almost half a century by the Dominicans and the Jesuits, both in Spain (Bañez) and in Italy, in Belgium and in France, was later abandoned by the former, especially when Alexander VII imposed on the General Chapter of the Dominicans (1656) the rejection of the laxist propositions, 45 of which he later (1665-66) condemned (Denz-U, 1101-1145). On the other developments v. PROBABILISMO.

V. Beltran de Heredia, Los manuscritos de los teólogos de la escuela salmantina, ibid., 22 (1930, II), pp. 339-40; I. De Blic, B. De Medina et les origines du probabilisme, in Ephém. Theol. Lovan., 7 (1930), pp. 46-81; M. Gorge, A propos de B. de M. et du probabilisme, in Revue de science, relig., 1930, p. 480-482; I. Ternus, Zur Vorgeschichte der Moralsysteme von Vitoria bis Medina, Paderborn 1930.

Alfonso D'Amato