MENDOZA y BOBADILLA, FRANCISCO de. - Theologian and cardinal, b. at Cuenca on 25 Sept. 1508, d. at Arcos (Burgos) on 26 Nov. 1566. Having earned a doctorate in utroque iure at the University of Salamanca, where he probably came to know Francisco de Vitoria (v.), he became maestrescuela of the chapter of Salamanca, archdeacon of Toledo, and bishop of Coria (1535). Sent to Rome by Charles V, he remained there almost uninterruptedly until 1557, effectively promoting the interests of Spain, particularly in the matter of the Council of Trent and in the conclaves.
An intimate friend of St. Ignatius of Loyola, whom he had known and admired since 1527 in the prisons of Salamanca, he defended his ascetical doctrine, furthered his work (in the founding of the German Colleges, of Salamanca and of Burgos, in the spread of the Society) and vindicated his memory. Created cardinal in 1544 by Paul III ad praeses Caesaris, in 1550 he became bishop of Burgos, which, urged by St. Ignatius, he reached in person in 1557. He renewed his diocese through the pastoral visitation, the erection of the seminary with a rich library, the economic improvement of the capitular mensa, the restoration of the episcopal palace, the embellishment of the Cathedral, and the solemn promulgation of the Tridentine decrees (11 June 1564). So many activities had marked him out for the benevolence of Philip II, who had him promoted archbishop of Valencia, but death prevented him from taking possession of the new see.
Formed in the climate of nascent Spanish Humanism, M. y B. became a distinguished representative of it. Esteemed by Erasmus, in contact with the best men of the Italian Renaissance and of the Catholic Reformation, an assiduous cultivator of St. Thomas and of the greatest scholastics, a passionate collector of manuscripts, in 1557 he returned to Spain with many crates of codices and with a greater store of patristic and theological knowledge, which he used in the composition of a eucharistic work, conceived in defense of the real presence against the Protestants, in particular against Oecolampadius: the extensive treatise De naturali cum Christo unitate, quam per dignam Eucharistiae sumptionem fideles consequuntur. Written between 1561 and 76, it develops with warmth and extraordinary erudition a thesis of striking originality: the Eucharist worthily received produces two unions, one spiritual through sanctifying Grace (common to all the Sacraments), the other natural (in the sense of true and real), which consists in the communication of all the properties of Christ's human nature to the whole substance of the faithful (and therefore not only to the soul, but also to the body, per quandam redundantiam), by virtue of the sacramental Grace proper to the Eucharist. This special charism is a donum quoddam christificum, which makes the communicant "Christ-formed," as habitual Grace makes the baptized "God-formed." Such a union endures even after "the species have passed away" and produces in the faithful the most profound concord among themselves, an irrepressible inclination toward unity with the Father in heaven, and an intimate exigency for somatic resurrection at the end of time (v. COMUNIONE EUCARISTICA). The author develops this theme in five books, in which vast positive learning is fused with the best Thomist speculation.
The work, which remained unpublished and therefore poorly understood, was the occasion of many disputes during the author's own lifetime, of which after forty years Gabriel Vásquez preserved a vivid memory (Commentarii et disputationes in III Sum. Theol., disp. 204, cap. 1). The decided opposition of his contemporaries had its epilogue in an adverse judgment by Suárez. Vásquez, the only one who had read the work in a Toledo manuscript, greatly softened the unfavorable verdict of the Doctor Eximius, and from that time in eucharistic theology there arose a threefold current of decided opponents (Henriquez, Tanner, Wiggers, Fugandez, Martínez del Prado, Becanus, Mastro, Granado, the Salmanticenses), of moderate defenders (Pietro Martínez, Diego de Tapia, Luis de León, Andrea de la Guadalupe Thomassin) and of exaggerated amplifiers of Mendoza's thought (Card. Cienfuegos, De la Raguera, Selleri, Card. Belluga, Rabago and Agramunt). In the eighteenth century, with the decline of theology, almost every trace of M. y B. and of his doctrine was lost.
The Mendoza manuscript having been rediscovered in 1937 by A. Piolanti in the library of the Roman Seminary (to which it had come, by testament, from Msgr. Ubaldo Mannucci), it was published by the same scholar with introduction and notes in the Lateranum collection. In today's fervor for the doctrine of the Mystical Body, the work of M. y B. becomes topical again and is susceptible of further deepening, since it belongs to the ever-living tradition of Greek realism and of Thomist speculation.