Donat and Brother in the Order. Whatever the case, the Grand Master personally recommended Rispoli to King Henry IV of France in order to ensue his theological studies at the University of Sorbonne, in Paris. Thus Rispoli left almost immediately for France. This gave the twenty-four-year-old Rispoli an opportunity to upgrade his studies at one of the then most illustrious centres of learning in the world, and show his true colours. In fact, as it happened, this opening gave him great prestige throughout his whole life. Rispoli remained in Paris for the next six years. Throughout his stay there he was known as le Jacobin Maltois, the Maltese Dominican (since in France the Dominicans were known as Jacobins because their first convent in Paris was built near the church of Saint Jacques). His outstanding intelligence and erudition can be gauged from the fact that, just over two years into his studies at the Sorbonne, in 1609, the twenty-seven-year-old Rispoli was earmarked to be appointed professor to the seat theology teaching on Lombard's Sentences . Unfortunately, the professorship was eventually awarded to one of the two French candidates who were presented together with Rispoli, this being solely due to their nationality, since Rispoli was clearly tanto dotto e più di quelli due (by far much brighter than the other two). In the limelight Despite this setback which could have changed his life forever, during that same year (1609) Rispoli published a book which impressed his peers and contemporaries. It was entitled Status Controversiæ Prædefinitionum et Prædeterminationum cum Libero Arbitrio (The State of the Question dealing with the Predefinition and the Predestination of Free Will). Basically, Rispoli concludes that divine grace fully respects human freedom, and does not tarnish it in any way. This conclusion clearly sides with the position of the Dominican Domingo Bañez against the Jesuit Luis Molina in the famous and very often acrimonious controversy on the intervention of divine grace in relation to free will. The work surely did not go unnoticed for, some two years later, in 1611, it threw him in the limelight. It so happened that, in 1611, the General Chapter of the Dominican Order, gathering some 450 Dominicans from across the world, met at Paris. As was the custom, four of the best scholars were chosen to carry out a public disputation, and Rispoli was the first to be given this great honour. According