- Pietro Maria Gazzaniga
Pietro Maria Gazzaniga (b. at
Bergamo , Italy,3 March 1722 ; d. atVicenza ,11 December 1799 ) was an Italian Dominican theologian.Life
At a very early age he entered the Order of St. Dominic, and studied the various branches of ecclesiastical sciences, especially philosophy and theology. He was then, despite his youth, appointed to teach philosophy and church history, first in the various houses of his order and later at the
University of Bologna .The
University of Vienna had in 1760 a vacancy for the chair ofdogmatic theology , which had been assigned exclusively to members of the Dominican Order. TheEmpress Maria Theresa appealed to Gazzaniga's superiors to have him transferred. At his feet sat the Empress herself,Cardinal Migazzi , andGarampi ; andPope Pius VI , during his sojourn in Vienna, attended his lectures. After twenty years he returned to Italy, where he continued to lecture in various places until his death.Works
In theology Gazzaniga was a leading defender and exponent of the
Thomistic school during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the beginning of the eighteenth, century. By strict adherence to the traditional teaching of his school, he set himself against the spirit of his age, which sought to modernize and to conduct all theological schools of Austria on plans designed to render them more independent of ecclesiastical and royal authority. He succeeded in winning over to his causeSimon Rock , till then an associate ofGerard van Swieten , the promoter of theJansenist spirit in Austria, and with his assistance restored Thomism in the schools. His fidelity toAquinas likewise rendered him very bitter againstMolinism ; so much so, in fact, that he succeeded in persuadingGomarist Calvinists, as against theArminian s, to subscribe to the Thomistic doctrine ofpredestination andreprobation (ad sanam Thomistarum de predestinations et reprobatione doctrinam descenderunt, Proelect., vol. II, diss. 6, n. 242).His principal work, the "Praelectiones theologicae habitae in vindobonensi universitate, nunc vero alio methodo dispositae, emendatae et auctae", went through many editions (9 vols., Bologna, 1788-1793; Bassani, 1831).
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