Gaudenzio da Brescia

Gaudenzio da Brescia (1612–1672), born Gaudenzio Bontempi to a noble family of Brescia, entered the Capuchin friars and taught theology in houses of the order in the province of Brescia and elsewhere in Italy. He died suddenly at Oriano while preaching a Lenten course, and his remains were later moved to the Capuchin church at Verolanuova.

His reputation rests on the Palladium theologicum, a complete scholastic theology written to restore and defend the doctrine of Bonaventure, whose positions, he held, had been neglected or misread. It follows the order of Thomas Aquinas's Summa while taking Bonaventure as its master. A former pupil, Gianfrancesco Durantio, brought the manuscript to publication after his death; it was examined by doctors of the Sorbonne and printed at Lyon in seven folio volumes in 1676, under the patronage of Louis XIV. It is one of the principal works of the Bonaventurian school.

The library holds the fifth tome of the Palladium theologicum, on the virtues. Read alongside Bonaventure's Breviloquium, it shows how the later Franciscan school systematized his teaching.