John Capreolus

John Capreolus (Jean Capreolus, c. 1380–1444) was a French Dominican from the region of Rodez. He read the *Sentences* at Paris in the first years of the fifteenth century, became a master of theology there, and later taught in the Dominican houses of the south of France. He died at Rodez in 1444.

His one great work, the *Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis*, follows the four books of Peter Lombard's *Sentences*. Question by question it sets out Thomas's teaching in Thomas's own words and answers the objections raised against it by Scotus, Durandus, Peter Aureol, Henry of Ghent and others. Its method, defending Thomas from his own texts against named opponents, set the pattern for the Thomist commentators who followed, and it earned Capreolus the title *princeps Thomistarum*, the first of the Thomists.

None of his works is in the library yet. When the *Defensiones* arrives, it is the place to see how the questions Cajetan and the Salamanca masters argued over were first framed.