VIATORE da COCCAGLIO. — Capuchin theologian of the former province of Brescia, surnamed Bianchi, born at Coccaglio on 20 April 1706, died at Cologne on 18 January 1792.
Having entered the novitiate at Vestone in December 1724, he subsequently held various offices in the Order and from 1771 to 1774 was provincial minister. The fruits of his forty years of teaching are: Tentamina theologico-scholastica (6 vols., Bergamo 1768–71), in which he assigns a prominent place to positive theology; the work was abridged for use in the schools; Tentaminum scholasticorum synopsis (2 vols., Venice 1782); Tentamina theologico-moralia (6 vols., Lucca 1778–80), in which he follows and defends probabiliorism; Tentaminum theologico-um in moralibus synopsis (2 vols., Venice 1791). For this important activity he received particular praise from Clement XIV.
V. da C. occupies a place of the first order in the doctrinal controversies of that period. A determined defender of Augustinianism in the questions then under debate concerning Grace, the knowledge of God, predestination, etc., he deepened Augustinian doctrine by studying and disseminating, in several monographs, the doctrinal position of s. Prospero d’Aquitania (v.). He brilliantly defended himself against the accusation of Jansenism in the long and bitter controversy over the bull Unigenitus (v.), conducted against the former Jesuits L. Mozzi and A. Zaccaria. A pamphlet against devotion to the Sacred Heart was also falsely attributed to him. With great erudition and sound arguments, he upheld the rights of the Church and of the supreme pontiff against the errors and supporters of Febronianism.
defroy, s. V. in DThC, XV, II, cols. 2836–42; Melchior a Pobladura, Hist. gener. Ord. Fr. Min. Capucc. III, Rome 1951, pp. 309, 316, 559 s.; Lex. Capucc., Rome 1951, col. 1807.
Melchiorre da Pobladura