ÁLVAREZ, BALTASAR. - Spanish ascetical theologian, b. at Cervera del Rio Alhama (1533 or 1534), d. at Belmonte (Toledo) on 25 July 1580. A Jesuit in 1555, he devoted almost his entire life to offices of government and to spiritual direction. Vice-rector of the college of Avila, he was confessor there of St. Teresa for six years (1560-1566). Master of novices at Medina del Campo (1566) and Villagarcia (1577), rector at Salamanca (1574), he was visitor of the province of Aragon (1574), and provincial of that of Toledo in the last months of his life.

A. left no printed works. His Pláticas y exposición de las reglas generales de la Compañía were published in 1910 at Madrid; his Meditaciones are still unpublished. But he exercised a notable influence through the biography in which his disciple Luis de la Puente (v. DA PONTE) set out his doctrines, a work that may be called classic in spiritual literature. Father A.'s teaching on prayer, and especially on "the prayer of silence," seemed to his superiors to depart from the spirit of St. Ignatius. To justify himself, A. set out his ideas in two memorials, summarized by Father de la Puente in the biography (chaps. 13 and 41; the text of the first is lost, the second was published in full in an appendix to the 1880 reprint).

These documents, founded upon an uncommon experimental knowledge, enjoy great authority among spiritual masters. If the superiors and the general Mercurian, while keeping A. in positions of trust, imposed on him the abandonment of some of his ideas on prayer, so as to return to the methods of the "Spiritual Exercises tual", this is due not only to exaggerated or confused expressions of A., but also to the fear of deviations from the genuine spirit of the Order, given the tendencies of certain Spanish Jesuits of that time. Once these dangers had been at least partly overcome, the new general Claudio Acquaviva, in his encyclical of 8 May 1590, was to define in a more complete and comprehensive way the traditional position of the Society on prayer and contemplation.

Bibliography6 works

BIBL.: L. de la Puente, Vida del p. B. A., Madrid 1615 (numerous editions and translations, two in Italian, Rome 1692 and Venice 1793; the Spanish reprint of Madrid 1880, edited by p. J. de la Torre, has valuable additions and appendices); A. Astrain, Hist. de la Comp. de Jesús en España, II-III, Madrid 1905-1909, passim; H. Brémond, Hist. littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, VIII, II, Paris 1928, pp. 228-69; P. Dudon, Les leçons d'oraison du p. B. A. (1573-78), in Revue d'ascétique et de mystique, 2 (1921), pp. 36-57; E. Hernández, s. v. in DSp, I, coll. 405-406.

Edmondo Lamalle

@incollection{ec1_alvarez_baltasar, author = {Lamalle, Edmondo}, title = {Álvarez, baltasar}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {949--951}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/alvarez-baltasar} }

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Álvarez, Baltasar

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