Filippo Fabri, O.F.M. Conv. (†1630)

Filippo Fabri (Latin: Faber) was born in 1564 in a locality named Spianata, in the territory of Brisighella and the district of Faenza (whence he is also called Faventinus). In 1582 he entered the Conventuals, and after professing vows, studied in the Order’s colleges at Ferrara, Padua, and Rome (St. Bonaventure), receiving his degree in 1593. He then taught in the Order’s colleges until, in 1603, he received the chair of metaphysics in via Scoti in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Padua. In 1606 he was promoted to the chair of theology in via Scoti of the same Faculty. He collaborated in writing the Urbanian Constitutions, which adopted Montanari’s reform of studies. Notwithstanding this and other duties in the Order and his own requests to the Senate of Venice to stop teaching, he remained a professor until his death in 1630.1

At the end of the 1600s, Franchini recalled him as the one who broke the long silence that followed Cajetan’s criticisms of Scotus, and who was then followed by Volpe, Brancati, Mastri, and others (all those named are Conventuals).2 In him Scotism was reborn, he says: “we owe the doctrine to Scotland, the clarity to Romagna.”3

His principal theological work is the Disputationes theologicæ (1613–1614). These cover all four books. They still follow the order of the distinctions, but divide each into disputations as necessary. See PRDL for copies of his works.

  1. Cf. Marco Forlivesi, “Filippo Fabri vs Patrizi, Suárez e Galilei: il valore della ‘Metafisica’ di Aristotele e la distinzione delle scienze speculative,” in Innovazione filosofica e università tra Cinquecento e primo Novecento: Philosophical Innovation and the University from the 16th Century to the Early 20th, ed. Gregorio Piaia and Marco Forlivesi (Padova: CLEUP, 2011), 95–96; his sources are Matija Frkić, “Vita Philippi Fabri faventini theologi publici patavini,” in Expositiones et disputationes in XII Libros Aristotelis Metaphysicorum, by Filippo Fabri (Venetiis: Marcus Ginammus, 1637), [v]–[xi], https://books.google.com?id=9lxWAAAAcAAJ; Giovanni Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie di scrittori francescani conventuali ch’hanno scritto dopo l’anno 1585 (Modena: per gli eredi Soliani, 1693), 204–18, 583–84, https://books.google.com?id=TqllzZ662AcC.↩︎

  2. Cf. Franchini, Bibliosofia e memorie letterarie, 584.↩︎

  3. Franchini, 204.↩︎