ARRIAGA, RODRIGO

ARRIAGA, RODRIGO. – Spanish Jesuit, renowned philosopher and theologian, b. at Logroño on 17 January 1592, d. at Prague on 7 June 1667. After studying at Valladolid, where Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza was his teacher, he himself taught philosophy at Valladolid and was beginning to teach theology when he was appointed to the University then entrusted to the Jesuits at Prague. He prepared for another year at Salamanca and arrived in the capital of Bohemia in 1625. There he was professor of dogmatic theology (1626–37), dean of the theological faculty (1637–41), chancellor of the Ferdinanda University (1642–53), and from 1654 onward prefect of studies at the Collegio Clementino. He had been Spanish teacher to Emperor Ferdinand III and preacher to Empress Maria Anna. His works make him one of the principal representatives of Jesuit scholasticism and of the school of Suárez in the seventeenth century. The Cursus philosophicus (Antwerp 1632, with many reprints) displays independence of thought, for example in cosmology in its theory of the composition of bodies, and encountered some difficulties. More important are the prolix Disputationes theologicae on the Summa of St. Thomas (8 vols. in folio, Antwerp 1643–55, reprinted at Lyon 1659–69; vol. IX, De iure et iustitia, remained unfinished); more speculative than positive in his outlook, A. relies much more on theological reason than on the authority of Scripture or the Fathers; at times he abounds in subtleties and polemical discussions. It is not accurate to say that A. published the works of the distinguished Belgian mathematician Gregorio de Saint-Vincent S. I., whose manuscripts he saved during the sack of Prague carried out by the Saxons in 1631.