ÁLVAREZ, BALTASAR. – Spanish ascetical theologian, born at Cervera del Rio Alhama (1533 or 1534), died at Belmonte (Toledo) on 25 July 1580. He became a Jesuit in 1555,
and devoted almost his entire life to offices of government and spiritual direction. Vice-rector of the college of Avila, he served there for six years as St. Teresa’s confessor (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 during his final months.
A. left no printed works. His Pláticas y exposición de las reglas generales de la Compañía were published in Madrid in 1910; his Meditazioni are still unpublished. But he exerted a notable influence through the biography in which his disciple Luis de la Puente (v. DA PONTE) expounded his doctrines, a work that may be called a classic of 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 forth his ideas in two memoranda, abridged by Fr. de la Puente in the biography (chs. 13 and 41; the text of the first is lost, while the second was published in full in an appendix to the 1880 reprint).
(Alinari photograph)
ALUNNO, NICCOLÒ — Painting executed for the confraternity of S. Antonio — Deruta, Pinacoteca.
tuali », this was due, besides the Author’s exaggerated or confused expressions, to the fear of deviations from the Order’s genuine spirit, given the tendencies of some Spanish Jesuits of the time. Once these dangers had been overcome, at least in part, the new superior general Claudio Acquaviva, in his encyclical of 8 May 1590, was to establish more fully and comprehensively the Society’s traditional position on prayer and contemplation.