Finally, the fifteenth century saw the invention of printing, a development that made a radical change in the accessibility of texts to the reading public. A sign of the importance of the Summa is that it was printed early and often. If the Gutenberg Bible can be dated to circa 1455, it is noteworthy that by circa 1463 the earliest printing of the most popular part of the Summa, the IIaIIae, appeared in Strassburg. The Prima Pars was printed in Venice in 1484, and both the Ia and the IaIIae came out together in Basel in the same year. (Given that manuscripts of the Summa generally were copied as parts, this practice is not surprising.) The first complete printing of the Summa theologiae also appeared in Basel in 1485. Altogether there were twenty-nine incunables, or early printings, of the Summa before 1501. It was no accident that the same half century that saw the emergence of the Summa as a class text witnessed the work’s rapid movement into print.
The Summa in Divided Christianity (1500–1650)
By the first quarter of the sixteenth century the Summa was widely used in teaching theology. The European religious scene, however, shifted dramatically after 1517, when the Augustinian Martin Luther mounted a challenge to the whole edifice of scholastic theology and the medieval conception of the church. Before looking at the encounter between Thomas and Luther, it will be useful to consider the status of the Summa among Catholic theologians during the period 1500–1550. In Roman Catholicism the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are often described as the “Golden Age” of Thomist commentators, the time of “Second Thomism.”46 Many theologians set forth their views about philosophy, theology, ethics, and politics as much through their commentaries on the thirteenth-century Dominican’s book as through their own writings. Still, we should not think that everyone was a Thomist. As in the late Middle Ages, different theological schools still contended, but Thomism acquired a preponderance it had not enjoyed previously.
The most significant figure in early sixteenth-century Thomism was Tommaso di Vio, Cardinal Cajetan.47 Cajetan was educated in Naples and Bologna and in the 1490s began lecturing at Padua, where he contended with but also absorbed some of the Averroistic Aristotelianism popular in this center of Italian philosophy. He then went to Pavia (1497–99), where he was the first Italian to teach the Summa. The friar taught at Rome (1501–8) before becoming the Master General of the Dominicans (1508–18). Deeply involved in the Roman reaction against Luther, Cajetan confronted the Reformer at the Diet of Augsburg in 1518, served on the theological commission that resulted in Luther’s excommunication in 1520, and wrote a number of treatises against his teaching. Cajetan became a bishop, papal legate, and eventually a cardinal. This Italian Dominican was not only a skilled politician but also an original thinker who wrote extensively on philosophy (especially commentaries on Aristotle), on biblical exegesis (late in life), and on Thomas. In the 1490s he composed a series of treatises collected under the title The Analogy of Names (1498) in which he advanced a metaphysics of analogy that he claimed was an explanation of Thomas, but which recent scholarship has seen as more his own construction. Nevertheless, The Analogy of Names was one of the most influential texts in the history of Thomism. Cajetan also took up the monumental task of writing the first full commentary on the Summa theologiae, which he published between 1508 and 1522. Although he expressed a basic adherence to Thomas, Cajetan was not loath to disagree with his Dominican predecessor on such issues as the ability of reason to prove the soul’s immortality, which the cardinal denied. Cajetan’s view of sacred teaching as a “habit of conclusions” was also not that of Thomas. Cajetan was not the first to introduce the non-Thomist notion of “pure nature” (natura pura) into his reading of the Summa’s account of the creation and finality of human nature, but he was surely among the most influential.48 The significant differences between the two thinkers, however, cannot be explored here.
Cajetan’s commentary on the Summa is based on a distinction between “formal exposition,” where he explains Thomas’s arguments in syllogistic form, and a “magisterial exposition,” where he treats issues raised by Aquinas’s positions. His respect for his predecessor is evident in the words of the Preface:
In the case of such a great collection of issues our vast Thomas (immensus Thomas) is not less to be admired for how he brought arguments and words together in a rational way than in how he treated and penetrated such a mass of material. The limpidity of his style is such that nothing can be added to it; taking anything away would be to reduce it to ashes.
Cajetan was one of the most influential of all Thomists, as witnessed by the fact that both the first papally approved printing of the Summa issued by Pius V in 1570–71 as well as the edition sponsored by Leo XIII include Cajetan’s Commentary along with the text of Thomas. Cajetan’s contemporary Francisco Silvestri of Ferrara (d. 1528), who also served as Dominican Master General, wrote an equally classic Commentary on the Summa contra Gentiles during this same period.
Cajetan’s Thomism, while the most significant of its time, had many rivals, as the influence of the Second Thomism deepened its hold on Catholic Europe. In the period up to the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545 and Luther’s death in 1546, Thomism, and especially lecturing on the Summa theologiae, spread widely. If the use of the Summa had begun in Germany and moved on to Italy and France, its penetration into Spain, which became the most powerful Catholic state in the mid-sixteenth century, was crucial. As noted above, Peter Crockaert taught the Summa at Paris from 1507. Among his pupils was the Spanish Dominican Francisco de Vitoria (ca. 1483–1546), who studied at Paris between 1508 and 1522 and then returned to Spain to teach first at Valladolid (1523–26) and then at Salamanca (1526–46), the premier Spanish theological faculty. In both places Vitoria introduced the custom of lecturing on the Summa and thus helped establish the hold that Thomas had on Spanish theology for more than a century. Vitoria’s most noted contribution to Thomism was his Commentary on the Secunda Secundae, which laid the foundation for his defense of the human rights of the Indians of the New World and for his famous writings on just war (1538, 1539). The Dominican’s work has been seen as at the origins of modern views on international law and had an influence on the Protestant jurist and theologian Hugo Grotius (d. 1645). Other Salamancan Dominicans who left commentaries on the Summa include Vitoria’s pupil Domingo de Soto (d. 1560).49
Thomists of the first half of the sixteenth century were in the forefront of the fight against Luther and his followers. But what was Luther’s view of Thomas and the Summa? Did the Reformer have a real encounter with the book? Luther was trained in medieval scholastic theology at Erfurt, though not in the via Thomae but in the via moderna of the Nominalists. He was certainly aware of Thomas to some extent through the use of the Dominican by the Nominalist theologian Gabriel Biel (d. 1495). Luther may have read something of Thomas during his training and after he began teaching at Wittenberg in 1511, but we are not sure. Thomism did not play any real role in his intellectual formation.
During the second decade of the sixteenth century Luther broke with the scholasticism in which he had been trained and eventually with the papal church. Luther’s initial reaction was primarily directed against the Nominalistic theology he knew well, as can be seen in his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology of 1517. Like some Humanists but for different reasons, Luther felt that the original sin of scholasticism was the introduction of the foul water of philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, into the limpid springs of the Gospel. Thomas was certainly more than tainted by this error, so, however much Luther did or did not know of the Dominican, there was a significant difference in their conceptions of theology.
Luther had harsh things to say about Thomas from 1518 on. In his 1524 treatise Against the New Idol he denounces Thomas “as the source and foundation of all heresy, error, and obliteration of the Gospel.”50 Luther’s sharp language against Thomas, however, was provoked not so much by Thomas as by his followers.51 The Reformer’s main opponents in his attack on the validity of indulgences an
d other religious abuses of the day were Dominican Thomists, like Cajetan, Sylvester Prierias (d. 1523), and Ambrose Catharinus (d. 1553). Against their claims for Thomas as the ultimate authority in theology, Luther argued that no teacher, let alone Thomas, has an authority higher than scripture and the councils. Thomas’s views were theological opinions, not defined truth as the Thomists contended. As the disputes deepened, Luther came to agree with his opponents that Thomas’s teaching was, indeed, the mainstay of the papal church and was therefore in opposition to the Bible. In The Babylonian Captivity of the Church of October 1520, he even denounces “the Thomistic church.”52 If Luther decisively rejected the authoritative Thomism of his day, we can still ask about the deeper relation between the theology of the Reformer and that of the thirteenth-century Dominican.
Modern research has given a more nuanced answer to this question than what was common in the pre-ecumenical era. Work still needs to be done on how much Luther may have actually had direct knowledge of Thomas and the Summa—though the answer seems to be relatively little.53 If historical research does not yield strong connections, attempts to compare the mode of theology of Aquinas and Luther, such as those conducted by Otto Hermann Pesch, have been more fruitful.54 The details of these comparisons cannot be pursued here, but the core of Pesch’s argument is that for all their serious differences, Thomas and Luther were often not as far apart as has been thought in the past, especially on such questions as the certitude of salvation, sin and grace, the role of faith and charity in salvation, and saving knowledge of God. Pesch argues that Thomas’s “sapiential style” of theology, that is, looking at the world objectively from God’s point of view as it were, in contrast to Luther’s “experiential style,” that is, “a way of doing theology from within the self-actuation of our existence in faith,”55 always needs to be taken into account when seeking to determine how far the Reformer really disagrees with the author of the Summa theologiae.
Had Luther been the only person disaffected by the abuses and intransigence of the late medieval church, he would have remained a footnote. His call for reexamination of questionable teachings and practices met with rapid success, not only among theologians, but also in wide swaths of believers across Europe. The Reformation sundering of Western Christianity was a matter of both ecclesiastical structures and theological differences, though the latter have often come to be seen today as misunderstandings as much as real differences. Obviously, Thomas and his Summa theologiae were mostly viewed in negative terms by the majority of the Reformers and their successors, but the rise of what has been called “Protestant scholasticism” in the late sixteenth century represents a complicated adoption and rejection of medieval scholasticism in general and of Thomas in particular. Learned Protestant divines, both on the Continent and in England, could scarcely avoid Thomas and the Summa, though their degree of knowledge and use varied.56
During the two decades of upheaval that followed Luther’s attack on the papacy, the popes continued to resist serious reform while more and more areas in Europe abandoned obedience to Rome. Eventually, in December 1545 a council convened by Paul III met in Trent to address both the doctrinal challenges of the Reformers and to take up the issue of the reform of Catholic Christianity. The Council of Trent that met sporadically between 1545 and 1563 addressed the first charge by clearly laying out Roman Catholic theology against Reformation views on such issues as the relation of the Bible and tradition, original sin, justification, and the sacraments. Reform decrees on the parochial and diocesan levels were approved, but not for the Roman curia, where Pius IV, the last pope of the council period, reserved such reforms to himself. The Council of Trent helped form modern Catholicism down to the mid-twentieth century—the First Vatican Council of 1870 can be considered as a kind of addendum to issues of ecclesiology that Trent postponed due to lack of consensus.57
A popular legend (one repeated by Leo XIII) has it that Thomas’s Summa theologiae was set up on the altar at Trent next to the Bible so that the council fathers could pay equal homage to these joint sources of truth. This never happened. The shifting membership of Trent during its many sessions included representatives from all the late medieval schools of theology: Thomists (i.e., Dominicans), Scotists (Franciscans, who appear to have had the largest number), and Augustinians, whose major representative was Cardinal Seripando (d. 1563). With regard to dogmatic issues, the council fathers wisely abstained from making decisions favoring one or the other position in the contested world of late medieval theology. As “committee documents,” the Tridentine decrees were framed in ways that would exclude Protestant “error,” but allow for readings consonant with Dominican, Franciscan, or Augustinian interpretations. A study of the conflicts between Thomists and Scotists in the debates on such issues as justification and the causality of the sacraments shows how consensus language was gradually achieved.58 Later attempts to make Trent a “Thomist” rejection of the Reformation are wide of the mark.59 This is not to say that the Thomists who attended Trent, such as Melchior Cano (d. 1560), Domingo de Soto, and Pietro Bertano, did not play significant roles in the discussions and final decisions.
The growing role of Thomism in Roman Catholicism was a product not of Trent, but of the classroom and of the papacy. Along with the widening academic use of the Summa theologiae in the first half of the sixteenth century, the proliferation of editions and commentaries grew exponentially. The Council of Trent and the subsequent Counter-Reformation introduced the period often referred to as the time of Baroque scholasticism (ca. 1550–1700). The Dominican Order, especially in Spain, emerged as the center of Thomism through the efforts of classic commentators on the Summa like Bartolomeo de Medina (d. 1580) and Domingo Bañez (d. 1604), as well as Seraphino Capponi (d. 1614) in Italy. Bañez, who served as Teresa of Avila’s confessor, was praised by Etienne Gilson as one of the few commentators on the Summa who got Thomas’s teaching on the primacy of existence (esse) right. Commenting on Ia, question 3.4, Bañez put it with some exasperation: “And this is what Thomas calls out so often and what Thomists don’t want to hear, that existence is the actuality of every form and nature.”60 Nonetheless, the most significant boost to the role of Thomas and the Summa in the wake of Trent was the initiative of the stern Dominican Michael Ghislieri, Pope Pius V (1566–72), who did much to further the reform initiated at Trent. In 1567 Pius took the unprecedented step of naming Thomas Aquinas a “Doctor of the Church,” a title hitherto restricted to eight traditional patristic teachers (four from Eastern Christianity and four from Western). Pius also sponsored what was meant to be the definitive edition of Opera omnia of Thomas Aquinas, which appeared in seventeen volumes in Rome in 1570–71 (the Editio Piana). The emergence of Thomas and the Summa as the central theological resource for Catholicism was now an established fact.
Another key moment in the history of Thomism was the adoption of the “Angelic Doctor” (as he was now called) as the official teacher of the Jesuit order organized by Ignatius Loyola from the 1520s on and given papal recognition in 1540. Ignatius himself (1491–1556) was not a theologian, but a converted soldier and courtier who devoted his energy, organizing skills, and deep piety to creating a new form of religious life that would combine action and contemplation. The highly disciplined, centralized, and well-educated Jesuits became the mainstay of the Counter-Reformation. Ignatius’s preference for the theology of Thomas Aquinas was evident (see his Constitutions of the Jesuit Order 4.14.1), but it was not until 1593 that the Jesuit General Chapter adopted Thomas as their official theologian. This decree, however, did allow departure from Thomas’s views in extraordinary cases, an exception that the Jesuits seem to have employed too frequently—at least as viewed by the Dominicans. The Jesuit theological school in Rome, the Collegio Romano, founded by Ignatius in 1551 and later supported by Pope Gregory XIII (1572–85)—today named after him as the Gregorian University—became another center for the study of Thomas. The Jesuits produced their own commentators on the Summa, such as Fran
cisco de Toledo (d. 1596) and Gabriel Vazquez (d. 1604). The Jesuits were also responsible for the earliest dissemination of Thomas into Asia, when seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries led by Louis Buglio produced an edited Chinese version of the Summa (1654–78).61
The greatest of the Jesuit thinkers of the time was Francisco Suarez (1548–1617). Suarez was very familiar with Thomas and wrote a long commentary on the Summa published between 1590 and 1620. This commentary was unusual in paying particular attention to the Christology of Thomas’s Tertia Pars, to which the Jesuit devoted no fewer than three volumes. A glance at these reveals how complex commentaries on the Summa had become. For example, the first volume of Suarez’s commentary on the IIIa, covering questions 1 to 26 (published 1590), contains not only Thomas’s text and Suarez’s explanation of it, but no fewer than fifty-six disputations, some of considerable length, defending and extending Thomas’s views. Suarez, like Cajetan, was an independent thinker, philosophically and theologically. The Spanish Jesuit’s metaphysics, for example, broke with Thomas and came closer to Scotus in teaching that being is a general category embracing both God and creatures and in denying the distinction of essence and existence in created beings.62 Despite his distance from Thomas, Suarezian “Thomism” was formative in Jesuit education for centuries.
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