BARTOLOMEO MEDINA. – Dominican theologian, born at Medina Rioseco (province of Valladolid) in 1528, died at Salamanca on 30 December 1580. A religious at Salamanca, he taught at the College of Alcalá and at Salamanca, first in the chair of Durandus and then in the primary chair of theology (1576-58).
He published a commentary on the 1st-2nd part of the Summa Theologiae (Salamanca 1577), which went through many editions. He also wrote a commentary on the third part, questions I to IX (ibid. 1578), and a Breve instruction de comme se ha de administrar el Sacramento de la Penitencia (ibid. 1580).
Medina is considered the father of probabilism because he was the first to affirm that in moral life one may follow a probable opinion without reproach or blame, even if the opposing opinion is more probable. An opinion is probable, he held, when it is upheld by learned men and supported by the best arguments («a opinio probabilis est, quam asserunt viri sapientes et confirmant optima argumenta»: Exp. in Sum. Theol. 1-a-28a, q. 19, a. 6, concl. 3). His doctrine, accepted and defended for almost half a century by Dominicans and Jesuits alike, both in Spain (Báñez) and in Italy, Belgium, and France, was later abandoned by the former, especially after Alexander VII imposed on the General Chapter of the Dominicans (1656) the rejection of the laxist propositions, 45 of which were condemned in 1665-66 (Denz-U, 1101-14). For further developments V. PROBABILISM.
V. BERTRANDO DE TURRE, Los manuscritos de los teologos de la escuela salmantina, ibid., 22 (1930, 11), pp. 339-40; I. De Blic, B. De Medina et les origines du probabilisme, in Ephem. Theol. Louvain, 7 (1930), pp. 46-83; M. Gorge, A propos de B. de M. et du probabilisme, in Revue de science, relig., 1930, p. 480, 488; J. Ternus, Zur Vorgeschichte der Moralsysteme von Vittoria de Medina, Paderborn 1930.