Benedictus Pererius: Renaissance Culture at the Origins of Jesuit Science

Benedictus Pererius (1535–1610) published in 1576 his most successful book De principiis, after he had taught philosophy at the Roman College of the Jesuits. It will be shown that parts of this book are actually based on his lectures. But the printed version was intended as a contribution to the debate within his Order on how science should be conceived. Pererius redefined the meaning of scientific speculation to the effect that metaphysics was split into ontology and natural theology, and that further speculative sciences, such as physics, gained their own competence. Throughout this book, as well as in his warning against magic and in his commentaries on the Bible, the Jesuit addresses Renaissance strains of neo-Platonism, Aristotelianism, and syncretism. Sometimes one can tell a book from its cover: On the principles and properties common to all natural things (De Communibus omnium rerum naturalium Principiis et Affectionibus). The title of the best known book by the Jesuit Benedictus Pererius (1535–1610) tells the reader of the late 16th century that the author was determined to compete with Renaissance natural philosophers, because the title echoes recent books in natural philosophy such as Bernardino Telesio’s anti-Aristotelian De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (started to be published in 1565) or that of Pietro Pomponazzi: De naturalium effectuum causis sive de incantationibus (written in 1520, printed a.o. in 1567) or that of his follower Simon Portius (Porzio, Porta): De rerum naturalium principiis (1553). Those books claimed to account for universal principles of everything within nature, maintaining that such principles were causal to their properties. Pererius thus promises a naturalist theory and report about observable reality. His book is commonly perceived as an important step towards modern – or, rather, enlightenment – metaphysics, as he redesigns the role of physics in the whole of philosophy and expressly states, for the first time, that there is a metaphysics that precedes all particular regions of philosophy. This overarching, ‘general’ metaphysics, later termed ‘ontology’, would lay the foundations for the ontological discussions of any particular being, starting with the intelligences (later including natural theology) down to physics. However, Pererius’ book can also be read in the context of the Jesuits’ strife for a Science & Education (2006) 15:279–304 Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s11191-004-2456-4