MEDINA, BARTOLOMEO. — Dominican theologian, born in Medina Rioseco (province of Valladolid) in 1528, died in Salamanca on 30 December 1580. A religious in Salamanca, he taught at the Colleges of Alcalá and Salamanca, first in the chair of Durandus and then in the primary chair of theology (1576–80).
He published a commentary on the 1st–2nd parts of the Sum. Theol. (Salamanca 1577), which went through many editions. He also wrote a commentary In tertium partem a quaestione I ad IX (there 1578) and a Breve instruction de comme se ha de administrer el Sacramento de la Penitencia (there 1580).
M. is considered the father of probabilism because he was the first to affirm that in moral life one may follow a probable opinion sine reprensione et vituperazione, even if the opposing opinion is more probable. An opinion is probable when it is upheld by learned men and 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 nearly half a century by the Dominicans and Jesuits, both in Spain (Bañez) and in Italy, Belgium, and France, was subsequently abandoned by the former, especially when Alexander VII ordered the general chapter of the Dominicans (1656) to reject the laxist propositions, 45 of which he later (1665–66) condemned (Denz-U, 1101–1145). For the other developments V. PROBABILISMO.
V. BERTRANDO DE TURRE, 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, pp. 480–482; I. Ternus, Zur Vorgeschichte der Moralsysteme von Vitoria bis Medina, Paderborn 1930. Alfonso D'Amato