FRANCIS OF VICTORIA. - Dominican theologian, b. probably at Vitoria (Alava) ca. 1492, d. at Salamanca on 12 Aug. 1546.
I. LIFE
A religious in the convent of St. Paul in Burgos, between 1506 and 1510 he was sent to the University of Paris, where he had as teachers Peter Crockaert and John Fenarius. In 1513, by the General Chapter of Genoa, presided over by Cajetan, he was authorized to lecture on the Sentences. In this period of tireless application to theological study he edited the Sum. Theol. 2nd-2nd (Paris 1512, reprinted in 1515), the Summa aurea of St. Antoninus (ibid. 1521) and the Sermones dominicales of Peter Covarrubias (ibid. 1521). Having obtained his academic degrees in 1522, he left the following year for Valladolid, where he taught theology; in 1526 he ascended to the primary chair of theology at the University of Salamanca, which during the twenty years of his teaching he made famous throughout Europe through the loftiness of his learning and the charm of his person. Universally esteemed, he was consulted by prelates and princes; Charles V designated him as his theologian at the Council of Trent, to which Paul III had also invited him. The humble religious replied that he was by then on his way toward eternity.
II. WORKS
Although he printed nothing, F. da V. left a considerable number of works, the fruit of his daily and scrupulous preparation for teaching: the manuscript lessons follow this order: 1526-29: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 2nd-2nd; 1529-31: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 1st; 1533-34: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 1st-2nd; 1534-37: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 2nd-2nd; 1537-38: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 3rd; 1538-39: commentary on the IV Sent.; 1539-40: commentary on the Sum. Theol. 1st. The codices of these lessons, collected by his disciples, are described by Card. Ehrle and by Fr. Beltran de Heredia O. P. (v. bibl.). The latter published the Comentarios a la 2ª-2ª de s. Tomás in the collection Biblioteca de Teologas Españoles, (I-II, Salamanca 1932; III-IV, ibid. 1934; V, ibid. 1935), making use of ms. 43 of the Library of the University of Salamanca. An edition that also takes the other codices into account is desired by many.
But what remains most alive of his work are the relectiones, to which the truest and most lasting fame of the Spanish theologian is bound. They are a kind of summary lecture on the whole subject matter of the academic year, or the treatment of themes of special current relevance, delivered before all the students of the faculty and sometimes of the University. The imposing audience demanded in the relector a particular mastery of the subject matter combined with an attractive exposition. These qualities shine forth in an eminent degree in the lucid relectiones, which were held in the following chronological order: De silentii obligatione (Christmas 1527); De potestate civili (Christmas 1528); De homicidio (11 June 1530); De matrimonio (25 Jan. 1531); De potestate Ecclesiae prior (beginning of 1532); De potestate Ecclesiae posterior (May 1533); De potestate Papae et Concilii (Apr.-June 1534); De augmentio caritatis (11 Apr. 1535); De eo ad quod tenetur veniens ad unum rationis (June 1535); De simonia (May-June 1536); De temperantia
(1537-38); De Indis prior (June 1539); De Indis posterior sive de iure belli (19 June 1539); De magia (18 June 1540); De magia posterior (spring 1543). The first and the last no longer exist; according to some they were never written. The 13 surviving relectiones had many editions (16 in the 16th-18th centuries): the first (Lyons 1557) is from 11 years after the author's death, the best is that of Ingolstadt (1580). Recently Fr. Alonso Getino edited a new complete one: Relectiones teologicas del maestro fray Francisco de V. (3 vols., Madrid 1933-35). In the author's intention this is a edición crítica, but being based on the first Lyons edition with not always constant reference to the other editions and to the codex of Palencia, it is far from satisfying modern requirements. The following works are also attributed to F. da V.: Confessionario util y provechoso (Salamanca 1562); Parecer que dió el p. m. Francisco de V. sobre si los señores pueden vender a arrender las oficios (published in the work of D. de Zúñiga, Instrucción y refugio del alma, Salamanca 1552); Summa Sacramentorum Ecclesiae (it is a synthesis of his lessons, compiled by Tommaso de Chaves O. P., which between 1560 and 1629 had 34 editions).
III. METHOD
V.'s existence coincided with an era of particular conflicts. The opposition between the old speculative theology of Cajetan and the humanistic and erudite tendencies of Erasmus deeply divided the University of Paris when the Dominican student arrived there. But F. da V., an open soul endowed with a particular assimilative force, did not disdain subtle disputes and severe metaphysical inquiry, just as he loved to frequent the erudite circles of Parisian Humanism. In the various years of his stay in the French metropolis he assimilated the best that the culture of the time offered and, having returned to his homeland, almost by a spontaneous impulse of his genius, he fused its conflicting elements into a higher synthesis, where the golden vein of Thomism was wedded to the beauties of humanistic style, while being enriched by documentation drawn from the sources. Thus at Salamanca modern theology was born, equally solicitous of speculation and of the biblical-patristic foundations of dogma, whose norms were fixed in the classic work De locis theologicis of the celebrated disciple of V., Melchior Cano. It was born in a favorable climate, that is, in the golden age of Spanish civilization, when the internal unity of the kingdom, the discovery of America, and the artistic-cultural movement made the Iberian peninsula the pivot of the Christian world; in this atmosphere Salamanca, above all through the merit of F. da V., rose to world fame, eclipsing Paris. His innumerable and valiant disciples (Azpilicueta, Cano, Ledesma, Vega, Pietro Soto, De Castro, Carranza, Salmerón, Lainez) spread the master's new methods throughout Europe and made his teaching triumph in the Tridentine assemblies.
IV. THOUGHT
Under the influence of Crockaert and of Fenario, F. de V. oriented himself decisively toward Thomism, of which he became the most effective restorer. Following the great commentary of Cajetan, he brought to light the depth and solidity of the principles of the Aquinate, from which he knew how to draw the most just conclusions, adhering to the needs of the times.
Simplifying the formalistic procedure of Cajetan, he reached with greater immediacy the substance of the doctrine, which he knew how to present in a limpid and concise exposition. A free mind, he sometimes departed from the doctrines of St. Thomas and at times indulged in the minimistic tendency (for example, in the causality of the Sacraments), which nominalism had spread in all cultural circles; of this subtle and unconscious infiltration there will be indications in the later orientations of the "second scholasticism," which traces its origins back to Salamanca.
A man of his time, he had a vivid sense of reality, of what was stirring in souls, of the new intellectual ferment provoked by contemporary life. The relectiones on homicide, on simony, on temperance, on magic, on marriage put a finger on the wound of the corrupt social customs of the era. The treatises De potestate Ecclesiae, De potestate Papa et Concilio, De potestate civili touch on the most burning religious and political problems of the tormented 16th century. An anti-conciliarist like Cajetan, he demolishes the anti-papal errors of Gerson as of Luther, but says a frank word on the necessity of an ecclesiastical reform and on the urgent need for good example to come from above. On the power of the Church, equally averse to the extremisms of the Parisienses, supporters of regalism, as of the Augustinianes, assertors of the direct power of the Pope over temporal things, linking himself back to St. Thomas and to Torquemada (Turrecremata), he expounds the doctrine of indirect power, in terms so precise that, through the classic treatises of Suarez and Bellarmine, they arrived at the pontifical sanction of the Immortale Dei (1885) and of the Sapientiae Christianae (1869) of Leo XIII.
But it is in the Relectiones de India that he wrote his most glorious pages. In the first, with close criticism, he destroys all the sophisms accumulated by the greed of the conquerors, in order to indicate the truly just motives (above all the preaching of the Gospel) for the peaceful intervention of his countrymen in the lands discovered by Columbus. In the second he confronts the problem of war, so keenly felt at a moment when France and Spain were in perpetual struggle. The wise doctrine that he expounds there has become classic and perhaps confers on the author the first place among the founders of international law.