Angelo Volpe (†1647)

Life

Angelo Volpe, “one of the keenest theologians of the Seventeenth century,”1 was born in the southern Italian town of Montepeloso, today known as Irsina, around 1590.2 The Latin form of his name is Vulpes, which could be either singular or plural, and has been understood in both ways by authors writing in Italian.3 However, evidence from the 1600s makes it clear that the surname should be in the singular (Volpe): although Franchini uses the plural in his 1693 biography, Toppi’s 1678 biography in Italian uses the singular, and reproduces a poem in praise of our author (“Angelo Volpe”) published in 1645.4 Furthermore, the Neapolitan’s only published work in Italian still survives, and gives his name as “Angelo Volpe di Montepeloso.5

Young Volpe entered the Conventual Franciscans, studying under Gioseffo Napoli of Trapani.6 In 1614, he began his studies for the doctorate at the Sistine College in Rome. There his superiors noted his extraordinary theological acumen. Consequently, in 1617, when he had completed his studies, they sent him at once to teach theology in Assisi. Since this post was normally reserved for professors of proven ability, the assignment shows the unusually high confidence they had in him. He stayed there less than a year before being moved to Padua to take the place of a regent (the younger Gioseffo Napoli) elected minister provincial of Sicily. On June 7, 1620, the minister general, Montanari of Bagnacavallo, sent Volpe to Naples to be the second regent of this important college.7 Franchini assures us that Montanari was so learned and just that he would not have given him this position unless he truly merited it.8 He would hold it for over a quarter century, until his death. In the same year he received this assignment, 1620, the minister general promulgated his reform of studies, and on July 6 he named Volpe visitor for all the houses of study in the Kingdom of Naples. Our author carried out the same charge for another minister general, Felice Franceschini, in 1630. On June 1, 1630, he was named titular minister provincial of Ireland. Three years before, he had had the honor of being named a father of his friary and of his native province.9 We do not know when he was promoted to first regent of the college of Naples, but there are records of his reappointment in 1635, 1641, and 1645.

His life was dedicated almost entirely to academic work: teaching, writing, and public disputations. At the time, Naples was under the Spanish crown, which was very Immaculatist: in 1618 it had sent a delegation to Rome to obtain a dogmatic definition. The theologian of the delegation, Luke Wadding, was his friend for many years, and leaves us this sketch of him: “a learned man and affable, busied in studies, quite a stranger to striving for honors in Religion, dear to all in that city [Naples], of service to many.”10

Volpe was an able debater, even against the skilled opponents who were to be found in the large city of Naples. He took time away from his studies to employ his knowledge of moral and spiritual theology in the ministry of confession and spiritual direction. The Neapolitan baronage highly esteemed him for this knowledge, and consulted him as “the oracle of Naples.”11 The Neapolitan poet and medical doctor Antonio Bassi was another admirer: he published a poem in 1645 praising the theologian’s ability to penetrate the secrets of Heaven, and finding the explanation for this in the name Angelo (angel).12

He also visited the sick, and this may be what led to his death. Giacinto De Ruggieri, OP, says that he died after a brief illness:13 his epitaph records the date as March 19, 1647.14 Some say that this happened while he was assisting victims of an epidemic,15 but I have not found documentation of this. In recognition of the theologian’s merits, the Minister General ordered all the religious to offer the same suffrages for him that they would offer for a superior general.16

Works

His epitaph speaks of the “twelvefold mountain” he constructed. This refers to his life’s work, the first summa of Scotistic theology.17 The first two volumes were published in 1622. In 1627 he was aggregated to the friary of San Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples; Franchini tells us this was convenient for publishing books, and apparently it enabled him to complete the third volume, published in 1628. In 1630, he received from Pope Urban VIII the privilege to retain the proceeds of selling the volumes for the purpose of funding the publication of future volumes.18 The next volume appeared the following year, and from that point, he averaged two years between volumes.

Angelo Volpe managed to write and publish twelve folio volumes of his Summa. Each is about five hundred pages, for a total of some six thousand pages. Despite the vast size of the work, it is incomplete, covering only the topics of the first three books of the Sentences. Lorenzo Card. Brancati set about completing the work by setting forth Scotistic doctrine on the fourth book of Sentences,19 but in a somewhat different format. Volpe dispenses with the division of the Sentences into distinctions, not adopting the structure of Aquinas’s Summa either, but dividing his material into four parts, and each of these into a series of disputations, and these in turn into one or more articles.20

The doctrine of the Summa is not purely that of Duns Scotus: the Subtle Doctor’s teaching is, in any case, subject to interpretation on some points, and the Neapolitan theologian also treats questions unknown in Scotus’s time, applying Scotist principles as he sees fit.

At the end of the fourth part, all of which is dedicated to the Incarnation of the Word, he adds a further fifteen disputations that form a treatise of Mariology in 248 folio pages. Some topics treated in it were already discussed previously in the Summa, but now he proposes to discuss them in a “more scholastic” manner. This is the part of the Summa that has been the most studied in recent times.

Volumes of Volpe’s Summa

This list of volumes and the content summaries are based on an article by Di Fonzo.21 The links are to Google Books.

  • pars 1, tomus 1 (1622): De natura Theologiae and De Deo Uno
  • pars 1, tomus 2 (1622): De Deo Uno and De divino auxilio
  • pars 1, tomus 3 (1628): De Deo Trino
  • pars 2, tomus 1 (1631): De Creatione and De Angelis
  • pars 2, tomus 2 (1633): De Creatione hominis, de Actu humano, de Conscientia, and de Passionibus
  • pars 2, tomus 3 (1635): De Virtutibus and de Peccatis
    • The frontispiece of the GB copy is missing, but the dedication says it’s the sixth volume.
  • pars 3, tomus 1 (1638): De Lege and De Gratia
  • pars 3, tomus 2 (1640): De Fide and other virtues and vices
  • pars 3, tomus 3 (1641): on the cardinal virtues and De iustitia et iure
  • pars 4, tomus 1 (1642): De Incarnatione Verbi
  • pars 4, tomus 2 (1644): De Incarnatione Verbi
    • The date is not printed at the end of the volume, but the approbatio ordinis is dated December 5, 1643.
  • pars 4, tomus 3 (1646): De Incarnatione Verbi and Disputationes magis scholasticae de Maria Vera Christi Parente

Condemnation and appreciation

When Luke Wadding wrote that the Neapolitan Conventual was “dear to all in that city,”22 he evidently was not thinking of the Regent of the royal college of St. Dominic, Giacinto De Ruggieri. The Dominican had been irritated by the disrespect he felt Volpe showed to St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa, and had begun to write against him, but then laid the work aside. After the Conventual’s death he took it up again, wrote the remaining 80% of it, and published it in 1655. De Ruggieri’s campaign was a success in that in 1659, tome 3 of part IV of Angelo Volpe’s Summa was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. The reasons for the condemnation remain somewhat unclear. The usual explanation given is his immoderate criticism of Thomas, but Scaramuzzi and Di Fonzo consider this explanation inadequate.23 Indeed, if this was the problem, why was only one volume condemned, and why absolute? Would it not be sufficient to correct the volume by removing or moderating the offending statements? Something must have been considered to be contrary to faith or morals. One possible doctrinal motive for placing the volume on the Index is Volpe’s defense of the thesis that Mary did not have a debitum peccati. Although this is not a just motive for condemnation, it did motivate the 1636 condemnation of the Mariological work of Giovanni Maria Zamoro of Udine (†1649),24 which was not reversed until the time of Leo XIII.

The fact that the last volume was on the Index doubtless limited its readership, but there is evidence that Franciscans continued to appreciate it. The sources speak to us of disciples known as “Volpisti.25 The copy of this volume preserved in Google Books bears an annotation that it was in the use of Pietro Marini Sormani while he was Minister General of the Minorites (1682–1688).26 Card. Brancati recounts in his autobiography that when he studied at the Sistine College (1634–1637), he read the first three volumes of Volpe’s Summa to learn theology on his own, because the instruction he received was inadequate.27 Franchini praised Volpe’s Summa in his 1693 life of the author; curiously, he made no mention of the condemnation.28

In the early eighteenth century, the remaining volumes were examined and placed on the Index by a series of decrees (1714–1726). Only the first two tomes of part I and the first tome of part II were condemned donec corrigantur (until it is corrected), the rest absolute. I have not found any source that explains what provoked these further condemnations. One thing they do show is that Volpe still had admirers, for there is no need to condemn a book that no one reads.

Although the Scotist School declined after that, Volpe’s work continued to be appreciated. Di Fonzo wrote in 1941: “Volpe is studied and cited even today among the leading Scotists. There are those who, after having examined the volumes, state that they have not found anything against the doctrine of the Church.”29

In the last century, Volpe was studied principally for his Mariology, and was often described in flattering terms: he is called “great,”30 “famous,”31 and “one of the keenest theologians” of his century.32 He has been studied in relation to the predestination of the Blessed Virgin,33 her Immaculate Conception,34 Divine Maternity,35 Coredemption,36 Universal Mediation,37 Assumption,38 and Queenship.39 No one has studied his teaching on the virgin birth in recent times.

More than one author has noted his originality. Carol writes, “the greatest merit of the author lies in the fact that he is the first theologian (as far as we know) to use the very terms ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ in connection with Our Lady’s co-redeeming function.”40 As regards the Immaculate Conception, while Volpe argues for it in terms of an exemption from the general law, as Scotus did, he also argues for it—developing Scotus’s principles—as a consequence of Mary’s eternal predestination to be Mother of God. The latter argument, which the Neapolitan clearly favors, would become common among Scotists after him: he thus led the way, not only by being one of the first to use this argument, but also by developing the argument with unusual breadth and solidity.41 Not all of his original arguments were so successful: we will soon see how he argued for the virginitas in partu.

Volpe’s limits have also been noted by those who have studied his work in depth.42 In a word, his proofs are not always of quite so much value as he thinks they are. Although he intends to write as a theologian, at times he slips into the arguments of an orator, which have more rhetorical than logical value. As Di Monda notes, this is not surprising, given the culture in which he lived: he was southern Italian, Franciscan, and lived in the 1600s, in the midst of intense debates over the Immaculate Conception that saw excesses on both sides. This is also the context for his excessive criticism of St. Thomas Aquinas, who is for him not so much the Doctor Communis as the authority upon whom his adversaries rely in order to deprive the Blessed Virgin’s crown of the glorious gem of the Immaculate Conception. This does not justify his excesses, but it does help us to understand them.


  1. Juniper Benjamin Carol, “Our Lady’s Part in the Redemption According to Seventeenth Century Writers,” Franciscan Studies 3 (1943): 10. Since he considers some seventy authors in this article alone, Carol had a basis on which to compare. The praise is repeated in an even broader survey: Juniper Benjamin Carol, A History of the Controversy over the "Debitum Peccati" (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1978) 72.↩︎

  2. For his date of birth see Lorenzo Di Fonzo, “La mediazione universale di Maria in un trattato mariologico del P. Angelo Volpi, O.F.M.Conv., grande teologo scotista del Seicento (1590–1647),” Miscellanea Francescana 41 (1941): 175–226 177. The most extensive source of information on his life is Giovanni Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie di scrittori francescani conventuali ch’hanno scritto dopo l’anno 1585 (Modena: per gli eredi Soliani, 1693), https://books.google.com?id=TqllzZ662AcC 52–57. The most useful additions to this are Luke Wadding, Scriptores Ordinis Minorum : quibus accessit Syllabus illorum, qui ex eodem Ordine pro fide Christi fortiter occubuerunt. Priores atramento, posteriores sanguine, Christianam religionem asserverunt (Romae: ex Typographia Francisci Alberti Tani, 1650), https://books.google.com?id=ygQ_AAAAcAAJ 26; Nicolò Toppi, Biblioteca Napoletana, et apparato agli hvomini illvstri in lettere di Napoli, e del Regno delle famiglie, terre, citta, e religioni, che sono nello stesso regno : dalle loro origini, per tutto l’anno 1678 (Napoli: Antonio Bulifon, 1678), https://books.google.com?id=LiWcNOtmK2kC 19–20; Diomede Scaramuzzi, Il pensiero di Giovanni Duns Scoto nel mezzogiorno d’Italia (Roma: Collegio S. Antonio; Desclée e c., 1927) 146–152. However, this last author is not altogether reliable, due to his imperfect understanding of Latin. Another important addition is the chronological data from the Regesta of the Conventuals supplied by Pio Iannelli, Lo Studio Teologico OFMConv nel San Lorenzo Maggiore di Napoli: Cenni storici e Serie dei Reggenti, Lettori e Studenti (1482–1848), Guardiani del convento (1482–1990) (Roma: Miscellanea Francescana, 1994) 129–130.↩︎

  3. Those who opt for the singular are Scaramuzzi (1927, 1938–1939) and Di Fonzo (1941), along with Cecchin (2010). The plural is more common, especially in more recent authors: it is used by Conti (1946, and 1947 in a thesis directed by Di Fonzo), Di Monda (1957), Odoardi (1958), Pompei (1981), and Apollonio (2010).↩︎

  4. The poem by the Neapolitan doctor and poet Antonio Basso (†1648), was published in 1645. It was reprinted in Toppi, Biblioteca Napoletana 20, and more recently by Giovanni Croce in a 1910 collection of poetry from this period.↩︎

  5. Angelo Volpe, Breve narrazione della vita, martirii e miracoli dell’invittissimo S. Gregorio martire: Apostolo, Arcivescovo, e Primate della Grand’Armenia, Tutelare del Nobilissimo Monastero de Sacre Vergini, Protettore di tutto il Regno, e di questa Fedelissima Città di Napoli (Napoli: Lazaro Scoriggio, 1636).↩︎

  6. Cf. Scaramuzzi, Il pensiero, 146. On this figure, erroneously called “Giovanni” by Scaramuzzi, see Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie 84–86; Iannelli, Lo studio teologico 131. There were two friars of this name, uncle and nephew, both outstanding theologians. It was the latter who developed the doctrine of the concomitant decree to solve the problem de auxiliis. Volpe learned it from him. Later, in 1623, Mastri was sent to Naples to study under the nephew, who was the other regent alongside Volpe.↩︎

  7. Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie, 55. says this was the Order’s largest college, with fifty students, but he’s mistaken. The confusion arises (also in others), from the fact that the college of Naples had collegiali dell’Immacolata Concezione and collegiali dei Buonaiuto. The typical number of collegiali (students) was twenty-five, and doubling this gives fifty. But in reality the latter group of students was a subset of the former (twelve out of twenty-five), who received additional support from an endowment (cf. Iannelli, Lo studio teologico, 67–71).↩︎

  8. Cf. Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie, 55.↩︎

  9. For the significance of these honorary titles, see Iannelli, Lo studio teologico 102–103.↩︎

  10. Wadding, Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, 26.: “vir doctus, et affabilis, assiduus in studiis, ab appetendis Religionis honoribus valde alienus, illa in urbe omnibus charus, plurimis proficuus.” He calls Volpe “carus et sincerus amicus noster” in (Luke Wadding et al., Annales Minorum seu Trium Ordinum a S. Francisco institutorum, ed. José Maria Ribeiro Fonseca de Ébora, 3rd ed. (Quaracchi, 1931–1964), 2:424). This affirmation was originally published in 1625.↩︎

  11. Cf. Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie, 56.↩︎

  12. The poem can be found in Toppi, Biblioteca Napoletana, 20.↩︎

  13. Cf. Giacinto De Ruggieri, Defensorium doctrinae divi Thomae contra objecta patris magistri fratris Angeli Vulpis (Neapoli: ex Typographia Honuphrii Savii, 1655), 89. De Ruggieri specifies that Volpe fell ill on the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (March 7), although this date is highly suspect, since it is in a harshly polemical work against Volpe for his criticism of Aquinas. Furthermore, since De Ruggieri is unsure of the date of death (March 9 or 19), which was written on the epitaph, it does not seem to have taken much care to establish the facts.↩︎

  14. Angelo Volpe was buried in San Lorenzo Maggiore; his epitaph can be found in Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie 57; Toppi, Biblioteca Napoletana 20. There are minor variations between the two. Scaramuzzi, Il pensiero 147 misunderstands the date (“XIV. Kal. Aprilis”) as April 14. The epitaph praises our author in these words:

    Vere humanis noscendis
    Vulpes
    Verius Divinis Rimandis
    Angelus
    Duodenario theologicorum
    Voluminum extructo Monte
    Usquequaque conspicuus
    Truly in human things to be learned
    A fox,
    More truly in divine things to be investigated
    An angel,
    Having constructed a twelvefold
    Mountain of theological volumes,
    He was prominent everywhere.
    ↩︎
  15. Cf. Alessandro M. Apollonio, “La Corredentrice e la Chiesa in Angelo Volpi,” in Maria Corredentrice: Storia e Teologia XII (Frigento (AV): Casa Mariana Editrice, 2010), 114.; also Peter Damian M. Fehlner, personal communication. The latter may well have heard this in the 1950s when he was studying at the Seraphicum under Di Fonzo and Pompei.↩︎

  16. Cf. Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie, 56–57.↩︎

  17. Besides his Summa, he published the short biography already mentioned: Volpe, Breve narrazione della vita. I was unable to find the other work (Judicium de vera Animæ rationalis immortalitate ex Scoto [Neapoli 1632]) attributed to him by Juan de San Antonio, Bibliotheca universa franciscana, sive Alumnorum trium ordinum S. P. N. Francisci qui, ab ordine seraphico condito usque ad praesentem diem, latina sive alia quavis lingua scripto aliquid consignarunt encyclopaedia, 3 vols. (Matriti: ex typogr. Causae V. Matris de Agreda, 1732–1733) 1:86.↩︎

  18. The privilege is published in the front matter of tome 1 of part II of his Summa, together with another privilege confirming his aggregation to San Lorenzo Maggiore by apostolic authority.↩︎

  19. Cf. Francesco Costa, “Il cardinale Lorenzo Brancati OFMConv (1612–1693): L’uomo, lo scrittore, ritratto morale,” Miscellanea Francescana 93 (1993): 649.↩︎

  20. For the subjects treated in each volume, see the list in Di Fonzo, “La mediazione universale di Maria” 182–183.↩︎

  21. Di Fonzo, 182–83.↩︎

  22. Wadding, Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, 26.↩︎

  23. Cf. Scaramuzzi, Il pensiero, 152; Di Fonzo, “La mediazione universale di Maria,” 181.↩︎

  24. Cf. Gabriele M. Roschini, Maria Santissima nella storia della salvezza: trattato completo di mariologia alla luce del Concilio Vaticano II (Isola del Liri (FR), Italy: M. Pisani, 1969), 1:500–501. Although Scotists of our day also argue that the Blessed Virgin had no debitum peccati, Roschini and others disagree. Cf. Alessandro M. Apollonio, “Il debitum peccati,” in Maria Corredentrice: Storia e Teologia XI (Frigento (AV): Casa Mariana Editrice, 2008), 173–214 175–177,180. An earlier version of this article was translated as Alessandro M. Apollonio, “Mary’s so-Called ‘Debitum Peccati Originalis’,” in Bl. John Duns Scotus and His Mariology: Commemoration of the Seventh Centenary of His Death (Symposium on Scotus’s Mariology, New Bedford, MA: Academy of the Immaculate, 2009), 321–48. See also pp. 275–278 in the same volume.↩︎

  25. Cf. Di Fonzo, “La mediazione universale di Maria,” 181.↩︎

  26. https://books.google.com/books?id=hCcKe9Y9D_wC&pg=PP6: “Ad Usum Reverendissimi Patris Petri Marini Sormani, Ministri Generalis” (accessed June 10, 2020). This is on the verso of an otherwise blank page, whose recto bears the handwritten annotation “Pertinet ad conventum S. Bonaventurae de urbe.” From there it apparently passed into the hands of the Jesuits: inside the front cover is the printed annotation “Ex Bibliotheca majori Coll. Rom. Societ. Jesu.” The metadata indicates that when the volume was digitized by Google (April 21, 2011), it was part of the “Lyon Public Library (Bibliothèque jésuite des Fontaines).”↩︎

  27. Lucianus Ceijssens, “Cardinalis Laurentii Brancati de Laurea Ord. Fr. Min. Conv. Autobiographia, Testamentum et alia documenta,” Miscellanea Francescana 40 (1940): 83.↩︎

  28. Cf. Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie, 53–54.↩︎

  29. Di Fonzo, “La mediazione universale di Maria,” 181.: “Il Volpe è studiato e citato anche oggi, tra i maggiori Scotisti. C’è chi dopo averne esaminati i volumi asserisce di non averci trovato alcunché contro la dottrina della Chiesa.”↩︎

  30. Di Fonzo, “La mediazione universale di Maria”; Giovanni M. Conti, “La predestinazione e la divina maternità di Maria secondo il P. M.° Angelo Volpi, O.F.M.Conv., grande teologo scotista del seicento (†1647)” (STD thesis, Pontificia Facultas Theologica Fratrum Minorum Conventualium in Urbe, 1947); Giovanni Odoardi, “Volpi Angelo,” in I grandi del cattolicesimo: enciclopedia biografica, ed. Carlo Carbone et al. (Roma: Ente librario italiano, 1958), 607.↩︎

  31. Giovanni M. Conti, “L’Assunzione di Maria nell’opera mariologica del P. M.° Angelo Volpi, O.F.M.Conv., celebre teologo scotista del seicento,” Miscellanea Francescana 46 (1946): 105–23.↩︎

  32. Carol, “Our Lady’s Part in the Redemption According to Seventeenth Century Writers,” 10.↩︎

  33. Conti, “La predestinazione e la divina maternità di Maria.”↩︎

  34. Antonio M. Di Monda, “L’immacolata nell’opera mariologica dello scotista Angelo Volpi, O.F.M.Conv. (+1647),” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 7/2 (Congressus Mariologicus-Marianus Romae anno MCMLIV celebratus, Romae, 1957), 242–73; Antonio M. Blasucci, “La dottrina scotistica della predestinazione assoluta di Maria e il dogma dell’Immacolata Concezione,” in Virgo Immaculata, vol. 9 (Congressus Mariologicus-Marianus Romae anno MCMLIV celebratus, Romae: Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1957), 138–63.↩︎

  35. Conti, “La predestinazione e la divina maternità di Maria”; José Martín Palma, “El influjo físico de María en la unión hipostática. Orientaciones ideológicas e históricas,” Archivo Teológico Granadino 17 (1954): 41–42.↩︎

  36. Carol, “Our Lady’s Part in the Redemption According to Seventeenth Century Writers,” 10–11; Apollonio, “La Corredentrice e la Chiesa in Angelo Volpi.”↩︎

  37. Di Fonzo, “La mediazione universale di Maria”; Alejandro de Villalmonte, “María y los ángeles,” in Maria et Ecclesia, vol. 6 (Congressus Mariologicus-Marianus in civitate Lourdes anno 1958 celebratus, Romae: Academia Mariana Internationalis, 1959), 413.↩︎

  38. Conti, “L’Assunzione di Maria”; Tiburtius Gallus, “Reconciliatio privilegii immortalitatis B. Virginis cum facto mortis apud A. Vulpes (+1647),” Divus Thomas (Piacenza) 53 (1950): 466–73; Karlo Balić, Testimonia de Assumptione Beatae Virginis Mariae ex omnibus saeculis, vol. 2 (Romae: Academia Mariana, 1950), 167–73.↩︎

  39. Cherubinus Sericoli, “De regalitatis B.M. Virginis iuxta auctorum franciscalium doctrinam,” Antonianum 30 (1955): 105–18, 221–44.↩︎

  40. Carol, “Our Lady’s Part in the Redemption According to Seventeenth Century Writers,” 11. Readers unfamiliar with the subjective-objective distinction can consult (Manfred Hauke, Introduzione alla mariologia (Lugano: Eupress FTL, 2008), 255).↩︎

  41. Cf. Di Monda, “L’immacolata nell’opera mariologica,” 267.↩︎

  42. Cf. Di Fonzo, “La mediazione universale di Maria,” 224–25; Di Monda, “L’immacolata nell’opera mariologica,” 271–72.↩︎