Tommaso de Vio Gaetani Cajetan

(Baptized GIACOMO.)

Dominican cardinal, philosopher, theologian, and exegete; born 20 February,

1469 at Gaeta, Italy; died 9 August, 1534 at Rome. He came of noble stock, and

in early boyhood was devout and fond of study. Against the will of his parents he

entered the Dominican Order before the age of sixteen. As a student of Naples,

Bologna, and Padua he was the wonder of his fellow-students and preceptors. As

bachelor of theology (19 March, 1492), and afterwards master of students, he

began to attract attention by his lectures and writings. Promoted to the chair of

metaphysics at the University of Padua, he made a close study of the prevailing

Humanism and Philosophism. Besides engaging in controversy with the Scotist

Trombetta, he took a stand against the Averroistic tendencies or teachings of

such men as Vernias, Pompanazzi, and Niphus, directing against them his

celebrated work, "De Ente et Essentiâ", counted the most subtle and abstruse of

his productions. At a general chapter of the order (Ferrara, 1494) Cajetan was

selected to conduct the customary defence of theses in presence of the

assembled dignitaries. He had to face Pico della Mirandola among others, and

such was his success that the students bore him in triumph on their shoulders to

receive the felicitations of the master general. He was immediately made master

of sacred theology, and for several years expounded the "Summa" of St.

Thomas, principally at Brescia and Pavia, to which latter chair he had been

called by the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. After two years he resigned and

repaired to Milan, whence in 1500 Cardinal Oliviero Caraffa procured his transfer

to Rome. In 1501 he was made procurator general of his order and appointed to

the chairs of philosophy and exegesis at the Sapienza. On the death of the

master general, John Clérée, 1507, Cajetan was named vicar-general of the

order, and the next year he was elected to the generalship. With foresight and

ability, he devoted his energies to the promotion of religious discipline,

emphasizing the study of sacred science as the chief means of attaining the end

of the order. His encyclical letters and the acts of chapters promulgated during

his term of office bear witness to his lofty ideals and to his unceasing efforts to

realize them. He was wont to say that he could hardly excuse from grevious sin

a brother Dominican who failed to devote at least four hours a day to study. "Let

others rejoice in their prerogatives", he once wrote, "but the work of our Order is

at an end unless sacred doctrine be our commendation." He was himself a

model of diligence, and it was said of him that he could quote almost the entire

"Summa" from memory. About the fourth year of his generalship, Cajetan

rendered important service to the Holy See by appearing before the

Pseudo-Council of Pisa (1511), where he denounced the disobedience of the

participating cardinals and bishops and overwhelmed them with his arguments.

This was the occasion of his defence of the power and monarchical supremacy of

the pope. It is chiefly to his endeavors that is ascribed the failure of this

schismatical movement, abetted by Louis XII of France. He was one of the first to

counsel Pope Julius II to convoke a real ecumenical council, i.e. the Fifth

Lateran. In this council Cajetan was deputed by the principal religious orders to

defend their common interests. Under the same pontiff he was instrumental in

granting to Ferdinand of Spain the first Dominican missionaries who devoted

organized effort to the conversion of the natives of America.

On 1 July, 1517, Cajetan was created cardinal by Pope Leo X. He was also

appointed Archbishop of Palermo, but opposition on the part of the Sicilian

senate prevented his taking possession and he resigned 8 February, 1518. On

taking the demand of Charles V, however, he was later made Bishop of Gaeta,

but this was after he had been sent in 1518 as Apostolic legate to Germany,

bringing the insignia of the cardinalate to Albert of Brandenburg, and a sword

blessed by the pope to Emperor Maximilian. On this occasion he was

empowered to confer with the latter and with the King of Denmark on the terms of

an alliance against the Turks. He also represented the pope at the Diet of

Frankfort (1519), and took an active part in the election of Charles V (1519),

thereby winning that emperor's friendship and gratitude. While executing these

missions, the more serious duty of meeting Luther, then started on his career of

rebellion, was assigned to him. Cajetan's theological learning and humane

disposition seemed to fit him for the task of successfully treating with the proud

and obstinate monk, and Protestants have admitted that in all his relations with

the latter Cajetan exhibited a spirit of moderation, that did honour to his lofty

character. But neither pleading, learning, nor conciliatory words availed to secure

the desired submission. Luther parleyed and temporized as he had done with the

Holy See itself, and finally showed the insincerity of his earlier protestations by

spurning the pope and his representative alike. Some have blamed Cajetan for

his failure to avert Luther's defection, but others like Hefele and Hergenröther

exonerate him. In 1523 he was sent by Adrian VI as legate to King Louis of

Hungary to encourage the Christians in their resistance to the Turks. Recalled

the following year by Clement VII, he became one of the pope's chief advisors.

During the sack of Rome by the imperialist army (1527) Cajetan, like other

principal persons, was seized, and obtained the release of himself and household

only on payment of five thousand Roman crowns of gold, a sum which he had to

borrow and which he later made up by strictest economy in the affairs of his

diocese. He was one of the nineteen cardinals who, in a solemn consistory held

by Clement VII (23 March, 1534), pronounced definitively for the validity of the

marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. This was about the last public

act of his life, for he died the same year and was buried, as he requested, in an

humble tomb in the vestibule of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. It was

the common opinion of his contemporaries that had he lived, he would have

succeeded Clement VII on the papal throne. Much interest attaches to a portrait

of Cajetan, the only one known, recently discovered by Père Berthier, O.P. in a

collection of notables of the Reformation, owned by Count Krasinski of Warsaw,

Poland (see bibliography).

Cajetan has been described as small in bodily stature but gigantic in intellect. In

all his varied and laborious offices he never omitted his daily study and writing,

nor failed in the practices of the religious life. He faced the trying issues of his

times calmly and fearlessly, and endeavored by learning, tact, and charity to

pacify hostile minds, to lead back the erring, to stem the tide of heresy, and to

prevent schism. His written solutions of living moral problems cover a wide field.

His circumstances and position often required him to take part in polemical

discussions, yet he is said never to have given personal offence in his writings.

His style, purely scientific and unrhetorical, is the more noteworthy for having

attained its directness and simplicity in the golden age of Humanism. More than

any other philosopher and theologian of his epoch, he ministered to actual

intellectual needs of the Church. With penetration and sagacity he ranged

beyond the confines of contemporary thought, and in his tentative solutions of

grave problems, still open and unsettled, displayed judgment and frankness. It is

not strange that he developed tendencies which surprised the more conservative,

and essayed opinions which in some instances were, and have remained,

unusual and occasionally erroneous. He found numerous critics, even in his own

order, who were as censorious of him as his friends were zealous in upholding

his merits. Among his opponents, the learned Dominican Bartholomew Spina

(died 1542) was conspicuous. His persistent antagonism began, strangely

enough, after he had written a laudatory preface to Cajetan's commentary on the

"Secunda Secundae" (second section of the second part of the "Summa") of St.

Thomas, whose publication he supervised for the author in 1517. The next year,

in his refutation of Pompanazzi, Spina appears to have considered Cajetan as

falling party within the scope of his strictures because of certain alleged

concessions to the prevalent Averroistic rationalism in a commentary on the "De

Animâ" of Aristotle. Cajetan held that Averroes had correctly exhibited the

Stagirite as a believer in monopsychism, or the doctrine of the unity of one

intellectual soul for humanity and the mortality of individual souls. Whilst working

for, and concurring in the council's condemnation of this doctrine in 1513,

Cajetan had not favoured the requirement that in their public lectures professors

of philosophy should bring up no teachings in conflict of Christian faith without

refuting them; this, he contended, was the proper office of theologians.

Elsewhere Cajetan had also intimated that reason left to itself could not

adequately and conclusively demonstrate the soul's immortality. From these

beginnings, Spina, who during his later years was Master of the Sacred Palace,

relentlessly pursued Cajetan living and dead. On these slender grounds some

writers, including Renan (Averroés et l'Averro=8Bsme, Paris, 1867, 351) and

Botta (Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, tr. Morris, New York, 1903, II, Appendix

II), have misrepresented Cajetan as "boldly asserting the eternity of the universe

and the destruction of personality at death", and have classed him with the very

men against whom he wrote, as an initiator of a new period in the development of

anti-Scholastic philosophy.

In theology Cajetan is justly ranked as one of the foremost defenders and

exponents of the Thomistic school. His commentaries on the "Summa

Theologica", the first in that extensive field, begun in 1507 and finished in 1522,

are his greatest work and were speedily recognized as a classic in Scholastic

literature. The work is primarily a defence of St. Thomas against the attacks of

Scotus. In the third part it reviews the aberrations of the Reformers, especially

Luther. The important relation between Cajetan and the Angelic Doctor was

emphasized by Leo XIII, when by his Pontifical Letters of 15 October, 1879, he

ordered the former's commentaries and those of Ferrariensis to be incorporated

with the text of the "Summa" in the official Leonine edition of the complete works

of St. Thomas, the first volume of which appeared at Rome in 1882. This edition

has restored a number of passages which St. Pius V desired to have expunged

from the texts, the publication of which he ordered in 1570. The suppressed

parts, now for the most part inoffensive, were largely in the nature of personal

views and had no direct bearing on Thomistic doctrine as a system. In his

exegetical work, begun in 1523 and continued to the time of his death, Cajetan

sought to counteract the Biblical extravagances of the Humanists and to defeat

the Lutheran movement on the ground from which it had chosen to reject the

authority of the Church and of tradition. Chiefly with rabbinical assistance, it is

said, being himself unversed in Hebrew, and with the aid of current Greek

versions he prepared a literal translation of the Bible, including the Old Testament

as far as the end of the third chapter of Isaias, and all the New Testament except

the Apocalypse, which on account of its difficulties he was unwilling to

undertake. It was his object, he declared in a dedicatory letter to Clement VII

published in his edition of the Gospels, to ascertain the true literal sense of the

Scriptures, and he did not hesitate to adopt new renderings, provided they did not

conflict with the Sacred Word and with the teachings of the Church. This

position, much criticized in his time, is now quite in line with the common

method of Catholic exegetics. Though closely following St. Jerome on the

authenticity of the Biblical texts and utilizing the New Testament version and

notes of Erasmus, with whom he was on friendly terms, he produced a work

whose importance was not overlooked, but whose freedom and wide departure

from the Fathers and the theological schools created distrust and alarm. In his

critical interpretation, for instance, he ventured an allegorical explaination of the

first chapters of Genesis, and he seemed more than three centuries in advance

of his day in questioning the authenticity of the last chapter of St. Mark, the

authorship of several epistles, viz., Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John,

Jude, the genuineness of the passage of the three witnesses of (I John, v, 7), etc.

In this field also he was bitterly assailed, especially by Ambrose Catharinus, an

extraordinary but erratic genius, who had abandoned the law to enter the

Dominican Order, and had become a bishop. Cajetan's accompanying

theological observations, however, are important, and many scholars have

profitably studied them in conjunction with his commentaries on the "Summa".

It has been significantly said of Cajetan that his positive teaching was regarded

as a guide for others and his silence as an implicit censure. His rectitude,

candour, and moderation were praised even by his enemies. Always obedient,

and submitting his works to ecclesiastical authority, he presented a striking

contrast to the leaders of heresy and revolt, whom he strove to save from their

folly. To Clement VII he was the "lamp of the Church", and everywhere in his

career, as the theological light of Italy, he was heard with respect and pleasure

by cardinals, universities, the clergy, nobility, and people. The works of Cajetan

aggregate about 115 titles. The commentaries on the several parts of the

"Summa" exist in many editions. Of complete editions, sometimes including the

text of the "Summa" and sometimes without it, the following are noteworthy: 10

vols. fol., Lyons, 1540; edition of Pius V in complete works of St. Thomas,

Rome, 1570; 7 vols. 8vo with commentaries of Javelli and Caponi, Venice, 1596;

10 vols. fol., Rome, 1773; Leonine edition of St. Thomas (Summa) Rome, 1888.

Other works of Cajetan are:

"Opuscula omnia tribus tomis distincta" (fol., Lyons, 1558; Venice, 1558;

Antwerp, 1612), a collection of fifty nine treatises;

"Commentaria super tractatum de ente et essentiâ Thomae de Aquino;

super libros posteriorum Aristotelis et praedicamenta", etc. (fol., Venice,

1506);

"In praedicabilia Porphyrii praedicamenta et libros posteriorum

analyticorum Aristotelis castigatissima commentaria" (8vo, Venice, 1587,

1599);

"Super libros Aristotelis de Animâ", etc. (Rome, 1512; Venice, 1514;

Paris, 1539);

"Summula de peccatis" (Rome, 1525, and in many other corrected and

augmented editions);

"Jentacula N.T., expositio literalis sexaginta quatuor notabilium

sententiarum Novi Test.", etc. (Rome, 1525);

"In quinque libros Mosis juxta sensum lit. commentarii" (Rome, 1531, fol.;

Paris, 1539);

"In libros Jehosuae, Judicum, Ruth, Regum, Paralipomenon, Hezrae,

Nechemiae et Esther" (Rome, 1533; Paris, 1546);

"In librum Job" (Rome, 1535);

"In psalmos" (Venice, 1530; Paris, 1532);

"In parabolas Salomonis, in Ecclesiasten, in Esaiae tria priora capita"

(Rome, 1542; Lyons, 1545; Paris, 1587);

"In Evangelia Matt., Marci, Lucae, Joannis" (Venice, 1530);

"In Acta Apostolorum" [Venice, 1530; Paris (with Gospels), 1536];

"In Epistolas Pauli" (Paris, 1532);

"Opera omnia quotquot in sacrae Scripturae expositionem reperiuntur,

curâ atque industriâ insignis collegii S. Thomae Complutensis, O.P." (5

vols. fol., Lyons, 1639).

FONSECA, Biographical notice of Cajetan in introduction to Commentary on Pentateuch (Paris,

1539); QUÉTIF-ECHARD, Script. Ord. Praed. (Paris, 1719), II, 14; CIACCONIUS, Vitae et res gestae

pontificum Romanorum et cardinalium (Rome, 1675), III, 392; TOURON, Hist. des hommes illus.

(Paris, 1743), IV, 1-76; LIMBOURG, Kardinal Cajetan in Zetschr. f. kath. Theol. (Innsbruck, 1880),

IV, 139-179; HURTER, Nomenclator (Innsbruck, 1903), II, 1201; COSSIO, Il Cardinale Gaetano e la

Riforma (Cividale, 1902); MANDONNET in Dict. de théol. cath. (Paris, 1904); BERTHIER, Il Ritratto

del Gaetano in Il Rosario (Rome, Aug., Sep., 1907), ser. II, vol. IX, No. 476-477.

John R. Volz

Transcribed by Matthew Reak

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume III

Nihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor

Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org