NACCHIANTI, GIACOMO. - Dominican theologian and bishop, b. in Florence ca. 1500, d. at Chioggia on 6 March 1569. He became a religious in 1518; in 1529 he was at the Dominican Studium generale of Bologna; in 1534 he was magister studentium of the new convent of Perugia; prior at Pisa in 1536 and at Lucca in 1537; in 1541 at S. Maria sopra Minerva. He took part in the disputes that Paul III had conducted at his table by the best-known theologians of the city. On 30 Jan. 1544 he was appointed bishop of Chioggia and as such took part in the first phase of the Council of Trent.
His interventions in the conciliar sessions were numerous and at times inopportune, as when (5 Apr. 1546) he opposed the words of the decree concerning Tradition, « pati pietatis affectu ac reverentia suscipienda S. Scriptura ». Although he accepted, with exemplary submission, the definitive judgment of the Fathers (sess. IV, 8 Apr. 1546), from that moment he became suspect, and in 1548, provoked by an accusation from a certain Giulio Ercolano, a master of Chioggia, a trial was begun against him, entrusted to Massarelli, secretary of the Council, then transferred to Bologna. Despite Massarelli's animosity, the trial had an outcome favorable to N., who reappeared at Trent, in the other two phases of the Council, intervening on important questions (the residence of bishops, the sacrificial nature of the Last Supper). Having returned to his diocese, he zealously applied the decrees of the Council and celebrated the diocesan Synod (Aug. 31, 1564).
His numerous works were printed in Venice in 1567 (2nd ed., in 2 vols., Lyon 1657). The principal ones are: Enarrationes in Ep. ad Ephesica; Enarrationes in Ep. ad Romanos; Sacrae Scripturae medulla; Tractationes XVIII theologales variae: brief pamphlets and concepts on vari-
matters of current interest at the time of the Council of Trent, e.g., De existentia existendique modo Christi corporis in Sacramento (op. 1); De communione Corporis et Sanguinis Christi nobis praecepta (op. 2); De summo sacerdotis Christi (op. 3); De primatis (op. 7); De sacrosanctis indulgentiis (op. 10); De Sacramento Matrimonii (op. 14); De sacrificio Missae (op. 15); Quattuor quaestiones (creation, immortality of the soul, contingency, infinity of the first mover); Theoremata theologica, metaphysica, naturalia.
A follower of St. Thomas, N. enriched the master's doctrine with abundant positive material, presenting the old and the new in a personal synthesis, written in a sober style not devoid of elegance. His works on Scripture are more a Theologia biblica than an exegesis, since, following the method already in use in the 15th century (v., e.g., Favaroni), he took as his starting point certain themes of the Pauline epistolary to condense around them a body of positive data and theological considerations such as to constitute a veritable treatise; thus, e.g., in the Enarrationes in Ep. ad Romanos he speaks predominantly of justification, and in the Enarrationes in Ep. ad Ephesica of the predestination of Christ: there he expounds and advocates the Scotist theory, with that freedom that various 16th-century Thomists, e.g., Politi (v.), took with respect to the common current. The whole output of N. has the merit of combating Protestantism, opposing to the empty Lutheran conception the riches of Pauline theology, whose doctrine of the Mystical Body he develops with verve and warmth, insisting on the subsistentia mystica.