Collegium Conimbricense

The Collegium Conimbricense (‘Coimbra group') or the Conimbricenses were late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Jesuit philosophy professors at the University of Coimbra, specifically in the College of Arts, which in 1555 had been placed under the direction of the Society of Jesus. Encouraged by their religious superiors and especially by Pedro da Fonseca, between 1592 and 1606 the Conimbricenses published five volumes containing eight treatises of commentary on Aristotle. Distributed particularly through the Jesuits, these volumes were widely influential in Europe, America, and the Far East, including Japan and China. On this last, Sommervogel (1891) has cited the seventeenth-century Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, to the effect that by his time all the Coimbra commentaries had been translated into Chinese. Chief members of the Collegium Conimbricense were Emmanuel de Goes (1542-97), Cosmas de Magelhães (1551-1624), Balthasar Alvarez (1561-1630), and Sebastian de Couto (1567-1639).