Peter Nigri - Life

Life

He studied at different universities (Salamanca, Montpellier, Bologna, etc.) and entered the Dominican Order in 1452 at Eichstätt, Bavaria. After his religious profession he took up philosophy and theology at Leipzig, where he also produced his first literary work De modo praedicandi (1457). In 1459 he defended publicly in Freiburg a series of theses so successfully that the provincial chapter then in session there sent him to the University of Bologna for advanced courses in theology and canon law.

Recalled after two years, he was made lector of theology and engaged in teaching and preaching. In 1465 he taught philosophy and was regent of studies in Cologne; in 1467 taught theology at Ulm; in 1469 or 1470 was elected prior in Eichstätt, on 31 May, 1473, the newly founded University of Ingolstadt conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Theology; in 1474 he taught theology in the convent at Ratisbon and in 1478 became professor of Old Testament exegesis in the University of Ingolstadt.

Shortly after, on the invitation of the patron of learning, Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, he became rector of his newly-erected Academy of Philosophy, Theology, and Sacred Scripture at Buda, in gratitude for which Nigri dedicated to the king his Clypeus Thomistarum adversus omnes doctrinae doctoris angelici obtrectatores (Venice, 1481), in which he defends the teaching of Thomas Aquinas against the Scotists and Nominalists.