Profile Major Works Resources

Francisco de Toledo, 1532-1596.

16th Century Spanish. Jesuit theologian and philosopher at Salamanca.

Francisco de Toledo studied under Domingo de Soto at the Dominican bastion of  Salamanca.  The precocious Toledo taught philosophy at Salamanca in the 1550s before joining the Jesuit Order in 1558.  He subsequently became a professor at the pontifical Collegio Romano, where he carved a reputation as a leading scholar of Aristotle, papal counselor and the Jesuit Order's principal contact in Rome. Toledo was the first Jesuit to be appointed Cardinal.

Toledo famously led the independent 1571 Jesuit commission that spearheaded the easement of the Catholic ban on usury.  In response to a series of papal bulls (1569, 1573, 1586) condemning conventional dodges (e.g. triple contracts) and new instruments (e.g. annuities, bills of exchange) that seem to violate the ban on usury, Toledo (often in consultation with his former Salamanca colleague Navarrus) delivered interpretations (e.g. 1573, 1599), partly scholastic, partly based on natural law, that rendered them toothless and legitimized the practices.

 

  

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Major Works of Francisco de Toledo

  • Introductio in dialecticam Aristotelis, 1561
  • Commentaria una cum quæstionibus in universam Aristotelis logicam, 1572
  • Commentaria de physica auscultatione, 1573
  • De anima, 1574
  • De generatione et corruptione, 1575
  • Opera omnia. Opera philosophica, 1586-92.
  • Summa casuum sive instructio sacerdotum, 1599

 
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Resources on Francisco de Toledo

 

 
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