Defensorium

Initially, the ecclesiastical authority stopped the publication. Pomponazzi asked the Dominican theologian Chrysostom Javelli to write some Solutiones, to be included in the text, in order to reaffirm the immortality of the soul as an article of faith.

As a result, the Defensorium was published together with Solutiones and the dedicatory epistle to Lorenzo Fieschi, bishop of Mondovì and apostolic pro-legate of Bologna.

The treatise is conceived as a prompt reply to Agostino Nifo's De immortalitate animae adversus Pomponatium.

The Defensorium confirms the epistemological premises established in the De animae immortalitate and in the Apologia, to reaffirm the philosophical thesis of the mortality of the soul, according to the 'genuine' Aristotle's lesson and against the immortalistic interpretation suggested by Nifo.

Pietro Pomponazzi

 Pietro Pomponazzi, said Peretto, was born in Mantua, on September 16th, 1462.

He studied at the University of Padua in 1484, and he graduated in artibus in 1487.

He taught at Padua from 1488 to 1496.

The composition of the Tractatus de maximo et minimo ad Laurentium Molinum, in manuscript form, is prior to 1496.

From 1496 to 1499, Pomponazzi, as teacher of logic, followed Alberto Pio of Carpi in his exile in Ferrara.

From 1499 to 1509, he returned to Padua to teach.

From 1510 to 1511, he was in retreat in Mantua.

From 1512 to 1524, he taught at the University of Bologna.

There are numerous handwritten reportationes of Pomponatian lectures written by his students and admirers.

In Bologna, Pomponazzi published all his treatises: Tractatus de intensione et remissione formarum (1514), Tractatus de reactione including Quaestio de actione reali (1515), Tractatus de immortalitate animae (1516), Apologia (1518), Defensorium (1519), Tractatus de nutritione et augmentatione (1521).

Two texts remained unpublished: De incantationibus and De fato, composed in 1520 circa and published posthumously, respectively, in 1556 and in 1567.

The Dubitationes in IV Meteorologicorum was published posthumously in 1563.

The collection of the Tractatus acutissimi, utillimi et mere peripatetici, including the six Bononian treatises and Quaestio de actione reali, was printed in Venice in 1525.

Pomponazzi died in Bologna, on May 18th, 1525.