Peter Fonseca, the neo-Scholastic Aristotelian philosopher, was born at Proença-a-Nova, Portugal, and died at Lisbon. He entered the Society of Jesus at the age of twenty, completed philosophical and theological studies in that order, and spent most of his life as a professor of philosophy at Coimbra, where he was the leader of a group of scholars who produced a famous series of textbooks (Cursus Conimbricensis). Fonseca has been called the Aristotle of Portugal. His Institutionum Dialecticarum (Eight Books on Logic; Lisbon, 1564), was widely used as a textbook throughout Europe, and in 1625 it was in its thirty-fourth printing.

Basically an interpreter of the philosophy of Aristotle, Fonseca corrected the Aristotelian text then in use, using Greek manuscripts, and started the process of improving the Renaissance Latin versions. His logic is the traditional syllogistic which continued to be taught in Europe until J. S...