Opuscula Omnia

The most able and eloquent of the Renaissance followers of the Thomist school of scholastic theology, Thomas de Vio took the name Cajetan from his hometown of Gaeta in Italy. As a youth he entered the Dominican order and, after a rigorous training in philosophy and theology, taught at the University of Padua, then a major center of Aristotelian philosophy, and later at Pavia and Rome. He became master general of the Dominican order in 1508 and a cardinal in 1517. A mission to Germany (1518-1519) brought him into the forefront of the Church's confrontation with Martin Luther, with whom he engaged in a celebrated theological debate at Augsburg.

In addition to commentaries on works of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Cajetan composed theological treatises and essays on social philosophy. His most famous work is his massive commentary on Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, which played a major role in the development of scholastic theology during the sixteenth century. As a philosopher, Cajetan provided an influential exposition of the concept of analogy and came to reject the possibility of a philosophical proof of the soul's immortality.

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