Complete Works

he held all the sayings of that doctor before his eyes and ready at hand; and in like manner he had recognized all the schools. He had sifted through every paper, yet you should not believe him so devoted to any one of them (as is the custom among our men) that he would scorn the others. For he had been so instructed and so disposed by letters that he sought the truth in them, and he venerated the discoveries of whomever he found with equal honor until the truth itself shone forth, stripped of any private affection. Nevertheless, what he thought of individuals who are generally considered more famous can be seen in the preface to his Apologia, where he recounted the properties and particular praises of the barbarian, Greek, and Latin philosophers. Whenever mention was made during conversation of those philosophers or theologians who wrote by debating in the Gallic manner, he was accustomed to praise Thomas Aquinas above all others, as one who, more than the rest, leaned upon the solid foundation of truth. He also names him the "splendor of our theology" in the Heptaplus; and when asked very frequently about this, even by me, he gave the same response. Nor should some things contained in his Apologia—to be disputed elsewhere—which expressly contradict the opinions of Thomas, persuade anyone to the contrary. For he was then a very young man, eager for glory, seeking to win fame in that most celebrated city [Rome] after the manner of Gorgias of Leontini by defending any side whatever. Gorgias Leontinus Furthermore, the fact that out of ten thousand propositions he did not agree with, but rather opposed, only three or four, does not prove him an adversary. Moreover, he was most skilled in debating, and he spent frequent and most intense labor on literary contests while his mind was fervent. When he was objecting, you could easily have detected the sharpness and vigilance of Scotus, the acrimony of Francis, and the abundance and multitude Scoti acumen of Aureolus; nor were there lacking those knots complicated by manifold turnings, supported not so much by tickling subtleties as by gravity. When he was responding, you would have perceived the strength and power of Thomas, and the breadth of Albert. But he had long since sent a notice of divorce to these conflicts, and from day to day he loathed that duty more and more; so much did he decline it, that when Hercules d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, requested it most earnestly both through a messenger and in person—asking that he might not find it troublesome to debate while the General Synod of the Friars Preachers was being celebrated at Ferrara—he long resisted complying. Yet, yielding at last to many entreaties, he obliged that prince, whose love for him was no ordinary thing. Whence it came to be doubted whether he appeared more skillful or more eloquent, more learned or more humane. Indeed, from the face of the disputant such an alacrity of mind was always evident that he seemed to be contending over a pleasant and agreeable matter rather than one sharp and difficult; wherefore those who hung upon his words as they listened were moved to a wonderful love for him. But he had a frequent adage: Adagium that such a task belonged to the dialectician, not the philosopher. He likewise said that those disputations were beneficial which were exercised with a calm mind to track down and investigate the truth in private places and with witnesses removed. But those were most harmful which were done in public to show off learning or to catch the breeze of the common people and the applause of the unlearned. He judged it almost impossible that the desire for the infamy and confusion of the one with whom one disputes—a lethal wound to the soul and a deadly poison to charity—should not be joined by an inseparable bond to that craving for honor by which those "forehead-wandering" disputants are driven. Nothing at all escaped him pertaining to the little traps and quibbles of the sophists and the "Suissetic" trifles which they call "calculations"; these are mathematical commentaries applied to more subtle—lest I say more troublesome—natural investigations. Truly, even if he had sweated in them and had read writings of that kind which perhaps Italy does not fully know (for no paths of literature were so pathless and inaccessible that they had not been abundantly explored by his tracking and "Suissetically" examined), he nevertheless seemed to hate and detest them. In my judgment, their trifles are of little value.