Francis Toletus, the first important Jesuit philosopher, was born in Córdoba, Spain. He studied philosophy at the University of Valencia and theology at the University of Salamanca under Dominic de Soto. While a professor of philosophy at Salamanca, Toletus entered the Jesuit order (1558). He taught philosophy at the order's Roman College from 1559 to 1563 and theology from 1563 to 1569. In 1593 Toletus became the first Jesuit cardinal. He died in Rome.

Toletus's Latin philosophical works include commentaries on the logic, physics, and psychology of Aristotle; Toletus's commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Summa (Enarratio in Summam Theologiae Divi Thomae) also contains philosophical material. In all these works his views are Thomistic with many personal modifications. In the theory of knowledge, Toletus taught that individual things are directly apprehended by the intellect, that the primary object of knowledge is a sort of particularized form (species specialissima) and not being...