Pomponazzi Pietro (1462–1525), Italian philosopher, an Aristotelian who taught at the universities of Padua and Bologna. In De incantationibus (‘On Incantations,’ 1556), he regards the world as a system of natural causes that can explain apparently miraculous phenomena. Human beings are subject to the natural order of the world, yet divine predestination and human freedom are compatible (De fato, ‘On Fate,’ 1567). Furthermore, he distinguishes between what is proved by natural reason and what is accepted by faith, and claims that, since there are arguments for and against the immortality of the human individual soul, this belief is to be accepted solely on the basis of faith (De immortalitate animae, ‘On the Immortality of the Soul,’ 1516). He defended his view of immortality in the Apologia (1518) and in the Defensorium (1519). These three works were reprinted as Tractatus acutissimi (1525). Pomponazzi’s work was influential until the seventeenth century, when Aristotelianism ceased to be the main philosophy taught at the universities. The eighteenth-century freethinkers showed new interest in his distinction between natural reason and faith. P.Gar.