Camillo Mazzella — Camillus Mazzella on his Latin title pages — was a Neapolitan Jesuit driven from Italy by the suppressions of 1860, who taught dogmatic theology at Georgetown and was the first prefect of studies at Woodstock College in Maryland, where his great cycle of scholastic-dogmatic praelectiones began to appear.
Recalled to Rome by Leo XIII, he held the chair of dogma at the Gregorian University as prefect of studies and professor of theology, labored in the revival of Thomism at the Pope’s side, and was created Cardinal in 1886 — serving as prefect of the Congregations of Studies, of the Index, and of Rites.
Two treatises of his cycle are offered here in English for the first time: the De Deo Creatore, the lectures on creation, man, and the angels which he delivered to his students at Woodstock in 1872–73 and printed there in 1873 — presented with the Latin text and English side by side; and the De Religione et Ecclesia, on religion, revelation, and the Church — through the constitution, endowments, and visible Head of the Church to the infallible magisterium defined at the Vatican Council.