TAMBURINI, TOMMASO. - Jesuit, moralist, b. at Caltanissetta on 6 March 1591, d. at Palermo on 10 Oct. 1675.
He first taught rhetoric, philosophy and dogmatic theology; then for 17 years moral theology in the colleges of Messina and Palermo; he was also several times rector and was numbered among the consultors and censors of the Inquisition of Sicily.
The excellent success of his first three works, reprinted in various editions: Methodus expeditae Confessionis (Rome 1647), Methodus expeditae Communionis (ibid. 1648), De sacrificio Missae expedita celebrando (Palermo 1649), in which he resolved almost all the cases that can arise in the practice of these Sacraments, with clarity, brevity and mildness, induced the general V. Carafa to propose that he write a complete Summa of casuistry; there thus appeared: Expeditae Decalogi explicationes (2 vols., Venice 1654); Expedita iuris divini, naturalis et ecclesiastici moralis explicatio (3 vols., Palermo 1661); Tractatus de Bulla Cruciatae (ibid. 1663). If the numerous editions won him a great reputation, moreover well deserved, for doctrine and erudition, they did not fail also to stir up against him the recriminations and heated wrath of theologians of other schools, who denounced him as a laxist, pernicious, a destroyer of Christian morality. He himself, under the pseudonym of don Luigi Sanmario, defended himself against p. V. Baronio: Germana doctrina r. p. Thomae Tamburini perspicue repellens impugnationes r. p. Vincentis Baronii adversus illum allatus (ibid. 1666). One may nevertheless regard T. as a probabilist theologian, noting however that certain overly broad solutions cannot entirely excuse him from the reproach of a laxist tendency. And the judgment of St. Alphonsus de' Liguori is by now commonplace: «Negari non potest quod auctor iste multum facilis fuerit ad tribuendum probabilitatis pondus opinionibus, quae probabiles dici non merebantur, unde cum cautela legendus est» (Theol. moralis, lib. IV, n. 645). On the other hand, if some of his solutions were later condemned by the Church, this proves only that he erred and not that he was a deliberate laxist. Posthumously there appeared, about twenty years after his death: Tractatus quinque in quinque Ecclesiae praecapta (Palermo 1694) edited by Filippo Sidonetti; but these are the lectures to which T. had not been able to give the final touch.
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