TRIONFO (Triumphus), AGOSTINO. - Augustinian philosopher and theologian, b. at Ancona around the middle of the 13th century, d. at Naples on 2 April 1328.
I. LIFE
Appointed in 1300 to lecture on the Sentences in Paris, he began lecturing on them around 1305-1307. In the following years he took part in the political-religious events of France with the treatises on the Templars and Against the defamatory articles against Boniface VIII, directed against Philip the Fair. Regent master in Paris, around 1318 he moved with the same office to Padua, and from there to the neighboring convents; the Expositio in Evangelium Matthaei is dated to Venice in 1321. On Oct. 30, 1324 he appears named for the first time in the Angevin registers, as counselor to King Robert and to Prince Charles. He remained in Naples until his death. His biographies after 1582 are inaccurate: his birth in 1240 or 1243 is improbable, given that he began to lecture on the Sentences in 1305; it is very doubtful, for the same reason, that he was a disciple and substitute of St. Thomas by mandate of Gregory X, at the Second Council of Lyon; it is impossible that he attended the lectures of St. Bonaventure in Paris; it is false that from 1284 onward he was at the Angevin court. The title of blessed, which some authors attribute to him, has not been confirmed by the Church; the surname Trionfi, under which he is generally known, is not found in any document, in any author, or in any of the numerous codices of his works before 1382.
II. WORKS
Of the numerous works (cf. the lists of B. Ministeri, A. d'Ancona; la sua vita, le opere e la dottrina della giustificazione; of D. Perini, Bibliogr. Augustiniana, IV, Florence 1937, pp. 20-28; and of P. Glorieux, Répertoire des Maîtres en théologie, II, Paris 1933, pp. 321-27), mention is made of the various scriptural commentaries (St. Matthew, St. Paul, the catholic epistles, the Pater, the Magnificat, etc.), the sermons, the philosophical works (especially the commentaries on Aristotle, Analytica priora, Metaphysica) and the various treatises: Summa de potestate ecclesiastica ad Johannem XXII (Augsburg 1473 with several editions), Contra divinatores et somniatores (Rome-Leipzig 1901); Tractatus contra articulos... ad diffamandum... Bonifacium Papam VIII (Münster 1902); Tractatus brevis de facto Templariorum (Stuttgart 1903). The copious dictionary on the works of St. Augustine, entitled Milleloquium veritatis, begun by the T., was completed by friar Bertolomeo of Urbino, under whose name it appears in the manuscripts and in the printed editions.
III. DOCTRINE
Augustine of Ancona, in the time of the golden age of Scholasticism, is one of the most distinguished masters of the Augustinian school. Basing themselves on the single treatise De cognitione animae, Prantl, Haureau and more extensively Werner affirmed in the last century that his gnoseological and psychological doctrine harmonizes with that of Giles of Rome. Recent studies on the manuscript works confirm this judgment and extend it to other parts of philosophy and theology (cf. Grabmann, Schmaus, Ministeri, cited in the bibliography). As an exegete he reveals himself as one of the best of the scholastic period; and the Summa de ecclesiastica potestate constitutes a true monument of ecclesiology; noteworthy is the framing of the questions on the primacy and on infallibility.
(Ist. Enc. Catt.)