Gaspare di Baldassare da Perugia O.P. (1465–1531): A Little-Known Adversary of Cajetan

GASPARE DI BALDASSARE DA PERUGIA O.P. (1465-1531): A LITTLE-KNOWN ADVERSARY OF CAJETAN MICHAEL TAVUZZI, 0.P. Pontificia Universita S. Tommaso Rome, Italy THE LEADING EXPONENTS of early sixteenth-century Thomism would certainly have been surprised by the kind of reputation that Tommaso De Vio da Gaeta has enjoyed among so many nineteenth- and twentieth-century NeoThomists . The latter have generally acclaimed Cardinal Cajetan as the most authoritative commentator on the Summa theologiae and even as the paradigm of fidelity to the doctrines of Aquinas. Yet, even though Cajetan's cleverness undoubtedly earned the admiration of his contemporaries, and his remarkable career possibly their envy, his many singular opinions just as surely did not gain their unquestioning adhesion. The exact opposite, in fact, seems to have been the case: no other Thomist of the period was the target of such unrelenting, and at times bitter, polemics as Cajetan. His critics, moreover, included all the most important representatives of the Thomism of his generation: his own teacher in Padua, Valentino da Camerino; Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio; Francesco Silvestri da Ferrara; Crisostomo Iavelli da Casale; Bartolomeo Spina da Pisa; and Ambrogio Caterino (Lancelotto de' Politi). Furthermore, even though some of these men are now usually remembered solely for their involvement in the "Pomponazzi affair," their opposition to Cajetan was not confined to his "notorious " stand on the interpretation of Aristotle on the immortality of the soul and its suspected influence on Pomponazzi. In fact, 595 596 MICHAEL TAVUZZI, O.P. their objections to Cajetan ranged over the entire field of speculative issues in both philosophy and theology and it was Cajetan's supposed failure to adhere to the authentic teaching of Aquinas that was most often taken to task. To see that this was indeed the case it suffices to cast a glance at, for example, the commentaries on the Prima Pars composed by Prierias' and Iavelli.2 The subject of this essay, Gaspare da Perugia, is to be counted among Cajetan's now almost forgotten antagonists. It is disappointing that it is not possible to discover the substance of Gaspare's doctrinal disagreement with Cajetan, for his polemical works are on the whole no longer extant. But, even though he was not a major figure and recent scholarship seems to remember him solely as a teacher in Padua of Pietro Martire Vermigli,3 Gaspare is certainly also of interest in his own right. In his own time he was renowned as both preacher and academic and his life, moreover, epitomizes the kind of internal turmoil and factionalism that consumed the religious orders, especially the mendicants , in the period immediately preceding the Reformation. In view of this, Gaspare surely warrants some attention. We are fortunate to possess two contemporary biographical accounts of Gaspare. These appear as obituary notices in the chronicles of the two Dominican convents around which his life mostly revolved: San Marco in Florence4 and San Domenico in Perugia.5 Both of these accounts were written by friars who had actually known Gaspare; taken together they provide us with a fairly reliable framework that can be filled in from other sources, 1 Conflatum ex S. Thoma (Perugia: per Hieronymum quondam Francisci Chartularii, 1519). I discuss this work below. 2 Expositio in primum tractatum primae partis D. Thomae (qq. I-XIII) and Expositio super tractatum de Trinitate primae partis D. Thomae (qq. XVII-XL!II), both written ca. 1520 but first published posthumously as appendices in Thomas Aq., Summa Theologiae, Ia, ed. by Seraphinus Capponi a Porrecta (Venice: apud Iuntas, 1596). Iavelli constantly polemicizes against Cajetan whom he does not name but refers to as the "Expositor." 3 See P. McNair, Peter Martyr in Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 103-4. 4 Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana: MS. San Marco 370 Chronica conventus S. Marci Florentiae (hereafter CSM), f. 17 lr. 5 Perugia, Biblioteca Comunale Augusta: MS. 1141 Chronica conventus S. Dominici de Perusio (hereafter CSD), f. 70r-v. A LITTLE-KNOWN ADVERSARY OF CAJETAN 597 especially the still mostly unedited Registers of the Dominican masters general.6 Gaspare was born in Perugia in 1465. Since it was then customary to refer to religious, especially the friars, in terms of...