ALCÁZAR, LUIS de (Ludovicus ab [o de] Alcasar). — Jesuit exegete, born in Seville on 6 April 1554, where he died on 14 July 1613. He taught philosophy and, for twenty years, Sacred Scripture at Córdoba and Seville.
He devoted himself principally to the study of the Apocalypse, on which he left the following works (published posthumously): 1) Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypa, 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 booklet De malis medicis (that is, I frutti della Media), edited by Jorge Hemelman, with a notice on the author (Lyon 1631). Although prolix, these works are erudite and acute; in them A. was the first to develop the thesis that the Johannine visions, concerning the triumph of the Church over the Synagogue and polytheism, do not extend beyond the destruction of the Roman Empire: a thesis glimpsed by Salmerón and disseminated by Bossuet. Other works by A. are preserved in manuscript in the Library of the University of Salamanca: Expositio libri Iob, dated 1588, and commentaries such as In Ioannem and In Proverbia Salomonis.