Colloquium: Project "The School of Salamanca": Epitomizing and 'Tridentinizing' Vitoria: Tomás de Chaves’s Summa sacramentorum (1560)

Colloquium

  • Date: Feb 6, 2019
  • Time: 02:30 PM - 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: José Luis Egío (MPIeR)
  • Organisation: Christiane Birr (MPIeR)
  • Location: MPIeR
  • Room: Z01
Colloquium: Project "The School of Salamanca": Epitomizing and 'Tridentinizing' Vitoria: Tomás de Chaves’s Summa sacramentorum (1560)

José Luis Egío will discuss Francisco de Vitoria’s/ Tomás de Chaves’s Summa sacramentorum, the most recent text that has been edited by the team of the project The School of Salamanca. A Digital Collection of Sources and a Dictionary of its Juridical-Political Language.

First published in 1560, this manual for the administration of sacraments reflects an important part of Francisco de Vitoria’s (1483-1546) normative thinking. Edited by one of Vitoria’s pupils, Tomás de Chaves, the text reveals how Vitoria’s courses in Salamanca were synthetised and epitomised into manuals of pastoral theology. The Summa sacramentorum – and a Confessionario (1562) also included in the corpus of sources edited by the Salamanca project – can be seen as the links that allowed the transmission of Vitoria’s thinking from the erudite space of the University of Salamanca’s lecture rooms to the level of individual churches and parishes, that is to say, to the everyday life of priests and congregations throughout the entire Catholic world.

Tomás de Chaves’s contribution to the Summa was not limited to the epitomisation of Vitoria’s lessons at Salamanca. After the conclusion of the Council of Trent, Chaves brought the Summa sacramentorum in line with the council’s decisions. A closer look at his corrections and reformulations will allow us to identify some points of conflict between Vitoria’s normative thinking and some of the juridical and theological trends reflected in the Tridentine canons. A side effect of this necessity to adapt and ‘update’ the Summa was to encourage a progressive emancipation of Vitoria’s disciples from their master’s authority.    

The Colloquium will be held in English.

Go to Editor View