Alcázar, Luis de (Ludovicus ab [o de] Alcásar)

ALCÁZAR, Luis de (Ludovicus ab [o de] Alcásar). - Jesuit exegete, b. in Seville on 6 April 1554, d. there on 14 July 1613. He taught philosophy and, for twenty years, Sacred Scripture at Cordoba and Seville.

He devoted himself mainly to the study of the Apocalypse, on which he left (posthumously): 1) Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypsi, with the appendix De sacris ponderibus et mensuris, edited by Juan de Pineda (Antwerp 1614 and 1619; Lyon 1618). 2) In eas Veteris Test. partes quas respicit Apocalypsis II. 5, with the opuscule De malis medicis (that is, The Fruits of Media), edited by Jorge Hemelman, with a notice on the author (Lyon 1631). Although prolix, these works are erudite and acute; A. is the first to develop in them the thesis that the Johannine visions, concerning the triumph of the Church over the Synagogue and over polytheism, do not extend beyond the destruction of the Roman Empire: a thesis glimpsed by Salmerón and popularized by Bossuet. In the Library of the University of Salamanca other works of A. are preserved in manuscript: Expositio libri Iob, with the date 1588, and commentaries, such as In Ioannem and In Proverbia Salomonis.

Igino Cecchetti