**ÁLVAREZ, Baltasar.** - Spanish ascetical theologian, b. at Cervera del Rio Alhama (1533 or 1534), d. at Belmonte (Toledo) on 25 July 1580. A Jesuit from 1555, he devoted almost his entire life to administrative duties and spiritual direction. He served as vice-rector of the college at Avila, where he was confessor to St Teresa for six years (1560–1566). He was master of novices at Medina del Campo (1566) and Villagarcia (1577), rector at Salamanca (1574), visitor of the province of Aragon (1574), and provincial of the province of Toledo in his final months.
Álvarez left no printed works. His *Pláticas y exposición de las reglas generales de la Compañía* were published in Madrid in 1910; his *Meditaciones* remain unpublished. Yet he exerted considerable influence through biography, in which his disciple Luis de la Puente (v. DA PONTE, LUIGI) expounded his doctrines; this work may be considered a classic in spiritual literature. Álvarez’s teaching on prayer, and especially on “the prayer of silence,” seemed to his superiors to stray from the spirit of St Ignatius. To justify himself, Álvarez set forth his ideas in two memorials, summarized by Fr de la Puente in the biography (chs. 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, grounded in uncommon experiential knowledge, enjoy great authority among spiritual masters. Although his superiors and the General Mercurian, while keeping Álvarez in positions of trust, required him to abandon some of his ideas on prayer and return to the methods of the *Spiritual Exercises*.
**ALU
