Domenico Palmieri

Domenico Palmieri (1829–1909) was born at Piacenza and entered the Society of Jesus in 1852. He taught philosophy at the Roman College and theology at the Jesuit scholasticate of Maastricht in the Netherlands, and later returned to Rome, where he worked as a consultor and writer. His interests ranged from metaphysics and dogmatic theology to Scripture and the theology of the Eastern Churches.

He belongs to the Roman school of nineteenth-century theology, which renewed positive theology with close attention to the Fathers and the councils. His treatises on God, on grace, on the Church and on the Roman Pontiff were widely used, and his philosophy course, the Institutiones philosophicae, reflected the scholastic revival of his time while keeping some independence from strict Thomism. In later life he wrote on Orthodox theology and Church union and edited and continued the moral theology of Antonio Ballerini.

The library holds his Tractatus de gratia divina actuali, on actual grace. It sets out the Jesuit position on the relation of grace and freedom and is a useful counterpart to the Thomist treatises of Báñez and Billuart on the same subject.