Dear list members,
Thank you for your help so far. Some further context for my quesetion:
The phrase _in prima figura_ is used a few times in a passage of Robert
Bellarmine's De Controversiis that I have have been working on. In this
passage, Bellarmine is answering Protestant objections to the Catholic
understanding of the Eucharist. Peter Martyr has brought up a series of
_reductiones ad absurdum_, one of which reads:
Tertium [argumentum] est in prima figura: "Omne Christi corpus, vel
quidquid est Christi corpus, est in coelo. Sed Sacramentum Eucharistiae
est Christi corpus, ergo Sacramentum Eucharistiae est in coelo."
Bellarmine's "solution" to this objection reads:
Tertium argumentum est quidem in prima figura si accipiatur corpus Christi
pro corpore Christi naturali, et mystico, sed tunc est falsa propositio:
"Omne corpus Christi est in coelo". Nam Ecclesia millitans est corpus
Christi, et non in coelo. Si vero accipiatur corpus Christi pro solo
naturali corpore tunc vera est propositio, sed non est universalis, neque
argumentum esse potest in prima figura. Non enim propositio est
universalis, si signum illud (Omne) addatur ad terminum singularem; idem
enim est: Petrus, et, Omnis Petrus, si de uno tantum loquaris. Praeterea
etiam assumptio est falsa. Non enim sacramentum Eucharistiae est corpus
Christi, sed continet corpus Christi: sacramentum enim est signum sensibile.
The way Bellarmine uses the phrase in these passages suggests to me that
_in prima figura_ is a logical term, not referring to an illustration
(since, to the best of my knowledge, the De Controversiis was never
illustrated).
Thank you again for your help. And my apologies for stretching the
boundaries of the list.
Donald Uitvlugt
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