399. Averroïsm in Italy. -- From the middle of the fourteenth century down even to the seventeenth, the north of Italy, and especially the University of Padua, remained a hotbed of Averroïsm. The University adopted the teaching of John of Jandun, openly acknowledging its indebtedness to him. The Averroïst school owed its origin there to a physician named PETRI D'ABANO (fl. 1316). It had as masters the Servite, URBAN OF BOLOGNA (fl. 1405), NICOLETTO VERNIAS (about 1500), the Hermit, PAUL OF VENICE (fl. 1429) and CAJETAN OF THIENE (Thienaeus). The Summulae Logicae of Paul of Venice were adopted as a text-book at Padua by a decree of 1496.

As time went on, the Averroïsts showed themselves less and less concerned to preserve even the semblance of an agreement between philosophy and theology. And finally, when the Renaissance came, it made Averroïsm openly and avowedly independent of all relations with Christian dogma.