Giovanni Lorenzo Berti

Giovanni Lorenzo Berti (1696–1766), also known by his Latinized name Johannes Laurentius Berti, was an Italian Augustinian theologian. The General of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, Schiaffinati, instructed him to write a book, to be used by all the students of the Order, expounding the whole of Augustine of Hippo's thought and particularly his doctrine of grace and free will. His huge Opus de Theologicis Disciplinis expounded not the private views of a theologian, but those of the Augustinian Order and therefore had a semi-official status in the Roman Catholic Church.

He was denounced to the Holy Office as a Jansenist by two French bishops. In December 1750, Pope Benedict XIV wrote a letter to one of them saying that the work had been submitted to competent theologians who had judged it to be sound; to the other he wrote a letter in May 1751 saying, that nothing had been found in his work contrary to any decision of the Church.

Biography Born in 1695, in the Tuscan town of Serravezza, from a modest family, he entered the Order of Augustinians at the age of 15, in which he was later called to assume important positions: secretary general of the Order and prefect of the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome.

A man of varied culture, an expert in Greek language and Hebrew language and also interested in mathematical disciplines, Berti taught ecclesiastical history at the University of Pisa. Berti in his defense published (Rome, 1747) Augustinianum systema de gratia ab iniqua Bajani, & Janseniani erroris insimulatione vindicatum....

He died in Pisa, aged sixty-nine, in 1766.