Pietro Colonna Galatino
Encyclopedia
Pietro Colonna Galatino also known as Petrus Galatinus, was an Italian Friar Minor, philosopher, theologian and Orientalist.

Biography

Galatino was born at Galatina
Galatina
Galatina , known before the unification of Italy as San Pietro in Galatina, is a town and comune in the Italian province of Lecce in Apulia.Among the most important cities in Salento, it is situated some 21 km south of the city of Lecce....

, in Apulia
Apulia
Apulia is a region in Southern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Òtranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south. Its most southern portion, known as Salento peninsula, forms a high heel on the "boot" of Italy. The region comprises , and...

.

He received the habit as early as 1480, studied Oriental languages in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 and was appointed lector at the convent of Ara Coeli; he also held the office of provincial in the province of Bari
Bari
Bari is the capital city of the province of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea, in Italy. It is the second most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy after Naples, and is well known as a port and university city, as well as the city of Saint Nicholas...

, and that of penitentiary
Apostolic Penitentiary
The Apostolic Penitentiary, formerly called the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, is one of the three tribunals of the Roman Curia. The Apostolic Penitentiary is chiefly a tribunal of mercy, responsible for issues relating to the forgiveness of sins in the Catholic Church.The...

 under Leo X.

Galatino wrote his chief work De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis, at the request of the pope, the emperor, and other dignitaries, in 1516, at which time, owing mainly to John Reuchlin's Augenspiegel, the famous controversy on the authority of the Jewish writings was assuming a very high profile. Galatino took up Reuchlin's defence. Resolved to combat the Jews on their own ground, he turned the Cabbala against them, and sought to convince them that their own books yielded proof of the truth of the Christian religion, hence their opposition to it should be branded as obstinacy. He gave his work the form of a dialogue. The two conflicting Christian parties were represented by Capnio (Reuchlin) and the Inquisitor Jacob van Hoogstraaten
Jacob van Hoogstraaten
Jacob van Hoogstraten was a theologian and controversialist, born about 1460, in Hoogstraeten, Belgium; died in Cologne, 24 January 1527.- Education, professor :...

, O.P. In conciliatory terms, Galatino responded to the queries and suggestions of the former, and refuted the objections of the latter. He had borrowed largely from the Pugio Fidei of the Dominican Raymond Martini, remodelling, however, the material and supplementing it with copious quotations from the Zohar
Zohar
The Zohar is the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah and scriptural interpretations as well as material on Mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology...

and the Iggeret ha-sodot of the Jewish convert Pablo de Heredia.

In a long letter to Paul III (MS. Vat. Libr., cod. Ottob. Lat. 2366, fol. 300-308) he vehemently defended himself and his party against the charge of having forged the last-named book, which he firmly held to be the work of Rabbenu ha-Kadosh. Galatino was aware, no less than his critics, that his De Arcanis had many shortcomings, both in matter and form, and he begged his readers to consider that he was compelled to finish it within the space of a year and a half. The work became very popular and ran through several editions.

For the rest, Galatino's extensive knowledge and his thorough acquaintance with Greek, Hebrew, and Jewish Aramaic is fully borne out by his numerous other unpublished writings. In bold language he inveighs against the corruption among the clergy and discusses the question of reform. While engaged on his remarkable work De Vera Theologia his strength threatened to fail him by reason of his great age and infirmity, but, having taken a vow to defend in the course of this work the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, he instantly, so he tells us, recovered his strength and health (MSS. 52, 54, 60, St. Isidore's Coll.).

In 1539, Paul III, in a special Bull, bequeathed Galatino's works, about thirty in number, to the convent of Ara Coeli and enjoined that special care be taken of them. The manuscripts are now preserved in various Roman archives.

Galatino died in Rome.

External links

  • De arcanis catholicae veritatis, a digitized copy of the first edition (Ortona a Mare 1518) online here
  • Oratio de circumcisione dominica, a digitized copy of the edition Rome 1515 online here


Attribution
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK