Conimbricenses

The Conimbricenses were the Jesuits of the University of Coimbra in Coimbra, Portugal.

The Conimbricenses were Jesuits who took over the intellectual leadership of the Roman Catholic world from the Dominicans at the end of the 16th century. Notable Conimbricenses include Luis de Molina (1535–1600) and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617).

The Coimbra Commentaries also known as the Conimbricenses, are a group of 11 books on Aristotle (only 8 can be called commentaries). The names of 200 Jesuits, including those of professors and students, appeared repeatedly on the college registries. From the late 16th to the early 17th centuries, the university produced voluminous commentaries on Aristotle's philosophical writings. The commentaries were, in fact, dictated to the students by the professors and so were not intended for publication. After they were published anyway, to interpret and disown incorrect and unauthorized editions, Claudio Acquaviva, the General of the Society of Jesus, assigned Pedro da Fonseca, the provincial of the Portuguese province, the task of supervising the revision of the commentaries for authorized publication. Fonseca was called "the Aristotle of Portugal" by Charles George Herbermann in his Catholic Encyclopedia.

The treatises appeared in the following order:

A foreword prefixed the last treatise and disowned any connection with the work published at Frankfurt in 1604 and claiming to be the "Commentarii Conimbricenses". It reads in part, "Before we could finish the task entrusted to us of editing our Logic, to which we were bound by many promises, certain German publishers fraudulently brought out a work professing to be from us, abounding in errors and inaccuracies which were really their own. They also substituted for our commentaries certain glosses gotten furtively. It is true these writings thirty years previously were the work of one of our professors not indeed intended for publication. They were the fruit of his zeal and he never dreamed they would appear in print".

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