Defensio Tridentinæ fidei catholicæ, 1578 - Title Page (BNP)

''Defensio Tridentinæ fidei'' (full title: ''Defensio Tridentinæ fidei catholicæ et integerrimæ quinque libris compræhensa aduersus hæreticorum detestabiles calumnias & præsertim Martini Kemnicij Germani'', or "A Defence of the Catholic and Most Sound Faith of the Council of Trent, in five books, against the Detestable Calumnies of Heretics, and especially those of Martin Chemnitz") is a 716 page book first published in Lisbon, in 1578, written by

Diogo de Payva de Andrada Diogo de Payva de Andrada (26 July 1528 – 1 December 1575) was a celebrated Portuguese theologian of the sixteenth century. Biography He was born at Coimbra, the son of the grand treasurer of João III. His original bent was towards fo ...

in response to

Martin Chemnitz Martin Chemnitz (9 November 1522 – 8 April 1586) was an eminent second-generation German, Evangelical Lutheran, Christian theologian, and a Protestant reformer, churchman, and confessor. In the Evangelical Lutheran tradition he is known as ...

's '' Examen Concilii Tridentini'' (1565–73). The dispute between Andrada and Chemnitz had gone back and forth since Chemnitz published ''Theologiae Jesuitarum praecipua capita'' in 1562. Andrada, then a delegate at the

Council of Trent The Council of Trent ( la, Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described a ...

, replied with the ten-volume ''Orthodoxarum explicationum libri decem'' (1564), in which he discussed and defined the chief points of doctrine attacked by the

Lutherans Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...

. Chemnitz's equally extensive reply came with the famous '' Examen Concilii Tridentini'' (1565–73) — to which Andrada replied with the ''Defensio'', published posthumously in 1578 by Andrada's brothers: regarded as his best work, it is remarkable for its learned statement of various opinions regarding the

Immaculate Conception The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception. It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, meaning that it is held to be a divinely revealed truth w ...

. Nevertheless, even though the ''Defensio'' was reprinted in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

(1580) and

Ingolstadt Ingolstadt (, Austro-Bavarian: ) is an independent city on the Danube in Upper Bavaria with 139,553 inhabitants (as of June 30, 2022). Around half a million people live in the metropolitan area. Ingolstadt is the second largest city in Upper Ba ...

(1580 and 1592), it seems to have been less circulated in Europe than Chemnitz's ''Examen''.

References

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