PIETRO dell'AQUILA (Scotellus, di TONNAPARTE). — Scotist theologian, born at Aquila around 1300, died at Trivento in November 1361. He studied in Paris and obtained the degree of master of theology, and from posterity the honorific title of Doctor sufficiens. Around 1334 he was provincial of the Friars Minor in Tuscany and one of the five doctors who that year examined Guglielmo Rubione’s commentary on the Sentences; in 1344 he was chaplain to Giovanna I, queen of Naples and Sicily, and in 1346 inquisitor in Florence. Because of a conflict with the Florentine authorities, he was accused before Pope Clement VI but, having been recognized as innocent, was elevated on 12 February 1347 to the episcopal see of S. Angelo dei Lombardi, from which he was transferred on 30 May 1348 to that of Trivento.
Several works were attributed to him, but until now only his commentary on the four books of the Lombard’s Sentences was known; in substance, it is an abridgement of Scotus’s commentaries. For this reason it was called Scotellus, first the work and then the author himself. Although P. generally follows Scotus faithfully, he sometimes also draws on other Franciscan authors or adds material of his own. The work, which enjoyed wide circulation, was first printed at Speyer (1480), and most recently (1907–1909) at Rocco (vols. I–III) and Levanto (vol. IV), edited by C. Paolini. His Compendium super librum Sententiarum was recently discovered by F. S. Schmitt, O.S.B.