Pighius, Albertus

PIGHIUS, pi-gî´Us, ALBERTUS (ALBERT PIGGHE): Dutch Roman Catholic controversialist; b. at Kampen (9 m. n.n.w. of Zwolle) c. 1490; d. at Utrecht Dec. 26, 1542. He studied philosophy and mathematics at the University of Louvain and completed his theological studies at the University of Cologne in 1517. He was canon (1524–35) and provost (1535–42) at the Church of St. John the Baptist, Utrecht. Pope Hadrian VI. called him to Rome in 1523 and he took part in the diets of Worms and Regensburg, the issue of which were his publications: Controversiarum præcipuarum (Cologne, 1541); Ratio componendorum dissidiorum (1542); and Apologia adversus M. Buceri (Mainz, 1543). Pighius was one of the most resolute defenders of 68the papacy, and in his comprehensive principal work, Hierarchiæ ecclesiasticæ assertio (Cologne, 1538), he unfolded most conclusively the papal system from a substructure involving a critical survey of the sources of Christian truth. He was the first to make tradition a basis of knowledge alongside of Scripture, in order to cut off Protestant argument in advance. On the other hand, his zeal of argument almost betrayed him as an unconscious disciple of Protestantism. The freedom of the will he asserted to such an extent, in De libero hominis arbitrio (1542), that original sin seemed to him scarcely as actual corruption but rather the imputation of the sin of Adam. This view carried with it the consequence of regarding justification as the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.

(E. F. Karl Müller.)

Bibliography: Bayle, Dictionary, iv. 637–641; A. Schweizer, Die protestantischen Centraldogmen, i. 180 sqq., Zurich, 1854; Linsenmann, in TQ, 1866, pp. 571 sqq; K. Werner, Geschichte der apologetischen and polemischen Litteratur, iv. 241 sqq, 275 sqq., Schaffhausen, 1865; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, ix. 936 sqq.