Thomas Cajetan ( KAJ-ə-tən; 20 February 1469 – 9 August 1534), also known as Gaetanus or Cajetanus, commonly Tommaso de Vio or Thomas de Vio, was an Italian philosopher, theologian, the Master of the Order of Preachers 1508 to 1518, and cardinal from 1517 until his death. He was a leading theologian of his day who is now best known as the spokesman for Catholic opposition to the teachings of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation while he was the Pope's legate in Augsburg, and among Catholics for his extensive commentary on the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas.
He is not to be confused with his contemporary Saint Cajetan, the founder of the Theatines.
He was born in Gaeta, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, as Jacopo Vio. The name Tommaso was taken as his religious as a friar, while the surname Cajetan derives from his native city. At the age of fifteen, he entered the Dominican order and devoted himself to the study of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, becoming before the age of thirty a doctor of theology at Padua, and subsequently professor of metaphysics. A public disputation at Ferrara (1494) with Pico della Mirandola made his reputation as a theologian.
He became general procurator in 1507 and general of the Dominicans a year later in 1508.
In 1511 a group of dissident cardinals called the Conciliabulum of Pisa (1511–1512) against Pope Julius II, who had ignored the electoral capitulations he had accepted before being elected. Cajetan displayed vigorous support for the papacy in a series of publications. These were condemned by the Sorbonne and publicly burnt by order of King Louis XII.
At the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) which Pope Julius II set up in opposition to that of Pisa, De Vio played the leading role. During the second session of the council, in which he gave the opening oration, he obtained the approval of a decree recognizing the superiority of papal authority to that of councils.
Cajetan composed in defence of his position the Tractatus de Comparatione auctoritatis Papæ et conciliorum ad invicem. Jacques Almain answered this work, and Cajetan replied in his Apologia. Cajetan refused to accept Almain's argument that the Church's polity had to be similar to a lay regime, complete with limits on the ruler.
For his support of papal rights, Cajetan was made Bishop of Gaeta, and in 1517 would be made a cardinal and archbishop of Palermo by Pope Leo X.
In 1517, Leo X made him cardinal presbyter of San Sisto in Rome for his services. In the following year, he became Archbishop of Palermo. He resigned Palermo in 1519 to become Bishop of Gaeta, as granted him by the Emperor Charles V for whose election De Vio had laboured zealously.
In 1518, Cajetan was sent as legate to the Diet of Augsburg and at the behest of the Frederick III, Elector of Saxony was entrusted with examining the teachings of Martin Luther. According to Hilaire Belloc, "[Luther] had not been treated roughly by his opponents, the roughness had been on his side. But things had gone against him, and he had been made to look foolish; he had been cross-examined into denying, for instance, the authority of a General Council — which authority was the trump card to play against the Papacy."
In 1519, Cajetan helped in drawing up the bill of excommunication against Luther.
Having proved to be an able diplomat and administrator, Cajetan was employed in several other negotiations and transactions. In conjunction with Cardinal Giulio de' Medici in the conclave of 1521–1522, he secured the election of Adrian Boeyens, then Bishop of Tortosa, as Pope Adrian VI. He retained influence under Pope Clement VII, suffered a short term of imprisonment after the storming of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon and by Frundsberg (1527), retired to his diocese for a few years, and, returning to Rome in 1530, assumed his old position of influence with Pope Clement, on whose behalf he drafted the decision rejecting the petition made by Henry VIII of England for the annulment of his marriage to Catharine of Aragon. Appointed by Clement VII to the commission of cardinals assigned to report on the "Nuremberg Recess", De Vio, in opposition to the majority, recommended certain concessions to the Lutherans, notably the marriage of the clergy as in the Greek Church and communion in both kinds according to the decision of the Council of Basel.
Cajetan died on August 9 in Rome in 1534.
As a philosopher and logician, Cajetan defended the idea of analogy.
Though as a theologian Cajetan was a scholastic of the older Thomist type, his general position was that of the moderate reformers of the school to which Reginald Pole, later archbishop of Canterbury, also belonged; i.e., he desired to retain the best elements of the humanist revival in harmony with Catholic orthodoxy illumined by a revived appreciation of the Augustinian doctrine of justification. In the field of Thomistic philosophy, he showed striking independence of judgment, expressing liberal views on marriage and divorce, denying the existence of a material Hell and advocating the celebration of public prayers in the vernacular.
Some Dominicans regarded his views as too independent of those of Saint Thomas. The Sorbonne in Paris found some of these views heterodox, and in the 1570 edition of his celebrated commentary on Aquinas' Summa, the objectionable passages were expunged. In this spirit, he wrote commentaries upon portions of Aristotle and upon the Summa of Aquinas, and towards the end of his life made a careful translation of the Old and New Testaments, excepting Solomon's Song, the Prophets and the Revelation of St John. Cajetan also wrote opinions on subjects of practical importance, such as the disposition of plundered goods whose ownership could not be determined.
Of the Reformation he remained a steadfast opponent, composing several works directed against Martin Luther, and taking an important part in shaping the policy of the papal delegates in Germany. Learned though he was in the scholastics, he recognized that to fight the reformers he would need a deeper knowledge of the Scriptures than he possessed. To this study he devoted himself with characteristic zeal, wrote commentaries on the greater part of the Old and the New Testament, and in the exposition of his text, which he treated critically, allowed himself considerable latitude in departing from literal and traditional interpretations.
Cajetan was a man of austere piety and fervent zeal. And from the standpoint of the Dominican idea of the supreme necessity of maintaining ecclesiastical discipline, he defended the rights of the papacy and proclaimed that the pope should be "the mirror of God on earth."