The Italian Aristotelian philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525) was associated with the rationalist and humanist currents that swept Padua, Bologna, and other northern Italian universities in the early 16th century.

The fame of Pietro Pomponazzi rests principally on the De immortalitate animae, published in Bologna in 1516. In this work he concluded that the immortality of the soul, a cardinal doctrine in Christianity, could not be proved by philosophical argument.

Pomponazzi was born in Mantua on Sept. 16, 1462. At the University of Padua he studied natural philosophy under Nicoletto Vernia and Pietro Trapolino, metaphysics under Francesco Securo da Nardò, and medicine under Pietro Roccabonella. After 1487, with some interruptions, he taught philosophy at Padua, where he began his commentary on Aristotle's De anima and had as a pupil the future cardinal and Catholic reformer Gasparo Contarini. The siege of Padua and the closing of the university in 1509 compelled Pomponazzi to move...