Giovanni da Casale

Who is Giovanni da Casale?

Giovanni da Casale was an Italian Franciscan scholar, author of works on theology and science, and a papal legate.

He was born in Casale Monferrato around 1320 and entered the Franciscan order in the Genoese province. During the period 1335–1351/2 he was a lector at Assisi and at Cambridge, an inquisitor in Florence, and a lector in Bologna. In 1375 Pope Gregory XI appointed him papal legate to the court of King Frederick of Sicily, from which point he seems to disappear from the historical record.

His theological works include the Quaestio de Gratia Sacramentali et de Predestinatione and biblical commentaries such as Lectura super Epistolas S. Pauli. His Quaestio de Velocitate Motus Alterationis, influenced by the ideas of Richard Swineshead of Merton College, Oxford and by the Frenchman Nicole Oresme, introduced the ‘new physics’ of northern Europe to the Italian peninsula.