ABSTRACT
In a certain sense, the 'Thomist tradition' begins in the early fifteenth century when the French Dominican John Capreolus (c. 1380-1444) set about to 'defend' the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas. After the work of Capreolus, however, theologians were able to identify themselves as Thomists. Thus, Capreolus is called the princeps Thomistarum, the first in a distinguished line that would soon include the better-known Thomist figures of the sixteenth century, such as Cardinal Cajetan. For reasons that are associated with the tumultuous circumstances of his period in history, Capreolus accomplished his work in the French provinces. Capreolus's critique of Durandus's views about the theological virtue of faith clearly illustrates the temper of Capreolus's Defensiones Divi Thomae, the multivolume collection of arguments and replies that he completed in 1432. Faith perfects the mind. It is, of course, the intellectual character of belief that triggers the exchange between Durandus and Capreolus about the virtue's certitude.
