page_title: Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas
section_title: Modern history (1577): Collegium Divi Thomae
hierarchical_section_title: Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas / History / Modern history (1577): Collegium Divi Thomae
caption_attribution_description: English: Tommaso Maria Cardinal Zigliara
context_page_description: The Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum in honor of its patron the Doctor Angelicus Thomas Aquinas, is a pontifical university located in the historic center of Rome, Italy. The Angelicum is administered by the Dominican Order and is the order's central locus of Thomist theology and philosophy.
  The Angelicum is coeducational and offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in theology, philosophy, canon law, and social sciences, as well as certificates and diplomas in related areas. Courses are offered in Italian and for some programs in English. The Angelicum is staffed by clergy and laity and serves both religious and lay students from around the world.
context_section_description: The late sixteenth century saw the studium at Santa Maria sopra Minerva undergo further transformation during the pontificate of Pope Gregory XIII.  Aquinas, who had been canonized in 1323 by Pope John XXII, was proclaimed fifth Latin Doctor of the Church by Pius V in 1567.  To honor this great doctor, in 1577 Juan Solano, former bishop of Cusco, Peru, generously funded the reorganization of the studium at the convent of the Minerva on the model of the College of St. Gregory at Valladolid in his native Spain.  The features of this Spanish model included a fixed number of Dominican students admitted on the basis of intellectual merit, dedicated exclusively to study in virtue of numerous dispensations from other duties, and governed by an elected Rector.
  The result of Solano's initiative, which underwent further structural change shortly before Solano's death in 1580, was the Collegium Divi Thomae or College of St. Thomas.  At the Minerva the College occupied several existing convent structures as well as new constructions.  A detail from the Nolli Map of 1748 gives some idea of the disposition of buildings when the Minerva convent housed the College.
  The College cultivated the doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas as a means of carrying out the Church's mission in the New World, where Solano had shown "much zeal in defending the rights of the Indians", and where Dominicans like Bartolomé de las Casas, "Protector of the Indians", Pedro de Cordova, critic of the Encomienda system, and Francisco de Vitoria, theorist of international law, were already engaged.
  At the beginning of the seventeenth century several regents of the College of St. Thomas were involved in controversies over the nature of divine grace.  Diego Alvarez (1550 c.-1635), author of the De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus and famous apologist for the Thomistic doctrines of grace and predestination, was professor of theology at the College from 1596 to 1606. Tomas de Lemos (Ribadavia 1540 - Rome 1629). was professor of theology at the College in 1610.  In the Molinist controversy between Dominicans and Jesuits the papal commission or Congregatio de Auxiliis summoned Lemos and Diego Alvarez to represent the Dominican Order in debates before Pope Clement VIII and Pope Paul V.  Lemos was editor of the Acta omnium congregationum ac disputationum, etc. and author of the much discussed Panoplia gratiae (1676).  In 1608 Juan Gonzalez de Albelda, author of the Commentariorum & disputationum in primam partem Summa S. Thome de Aquino (1621) was regent of studies at the College.  In the 1620s Juan Gonzales de Leon was regent  Concerning the dispute on the nature of divine grace he took up an alternative doctrine within the Thomist school, that of Juan Gonzalez d'Albeda regent at the College in 1608, that "sufficient grace not only prepares the will for a perfect act [of contrition], but also gives the will an impulse towards that act.  Yet due to man's defectability that impulse is always resisted."
  The College maintained the Dominican tradition of textual and linguistic activities as part of the Order's missionary dimension. Like Moerbeke's translations of Aristotle in the 1260s and the editio piana of 1570 (see above), editorial and translation projects were undertaken by the college's professors, the most notable of which would be the leonine edition of Aquinas' works (see below).  Vincenzo Candido (1573-1654) presided over the translation of the Bible into Arabic.  Candido had entered the Order at the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva completing there his novitiate and studies and becoming a doctor of theology, and later rector of the College in 1630.  Candido also was part of the commission that concemned Jansenism.  His own Disquisitionibus moralibus (1643) was later accused of laxims.  Giuseppe Ciante (d. 1670), a leading Hebrew expert of his day and author of works such as the De sanctissima trinitate ex antiquorum Hebraeorum testimonijs euidenter comprobata (1667) and De Sanctissima incarnatione clarissimis Hebraeorum doctrinis...defensa (1667),
caption: Tommaso Maria Zigliara
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