CARAMUEL LOBKOWITZ, JUAN de. — Spanish theologian and erudite scholar, born in Madrid on 23 May 1606, died at Vigevano on 8 September 1682. His first teacher was his father, Count Lorenzo, a student of the astronomical sciences; later he learned the Oriental languages under the guidance of Giovanni Ezron, a native of Syria.
The vivacity of his intelligence became apparent as soon as he had passed beyond childhood. At the age of eleven, he published his first work: Caramuelis primus calamus (Madrid 1617); at fifteen he obtained a degree in philosophy; at seventeen he entered the convent of La Spina of the Cistercian Order, in the diocese of Palencia.
To complete his theological studies and learn the other sciences, which were to make him an encyclopaedist admired throughout the world, he was sent first to Salamanca, where he also taught; then to Louvain, where in 1638 he received his doctorate in theology. Shortly afterward, he was sent as visitor of the Cistercian houses in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and fulfilled his mission with such zeal and wisdom that he was appointed grand prior of the military Order of Calatrava. On returning to Louvain, he had occasion to read the writings of Jansenius, was the first to identify their errors, and refuted him. He then travelled through Belgium and Germany preaching, especially in the diocese of Mainz, where he converted many heretics.
An exceedingly skilled architect, also trained in the military arts, C. liberated the city of Louvain from the siege of the Duke of Orange in 1635 and, in 1648, the city of Prague from the Swedes with a corps of ecclesiastical volunteers. Ferdinand III conceived such esteem for him that he commissioned him to inspect the fortresses throughout Hungary and prepare plans for putting them in good condition, and appointed him minister of state. The archbishop, Cardinal Ernesto D'Arrach, also wanted him as his vicar general. At the same time he served as court preacher, privy councillor, and abbot of the Cistercian abbeys of Montserrat and Vienna. In 1655 Alexander VII, who had known him during his nunciature in Cologne, summoned him to Rome to serve on the Congregations of Rites and of the Holy Office, and in 1657 appointed him bishop of Campagna in the Kingdom of Naples. In September 1673 he was transferred to Vigevano, then a small but well-endowed diocese, as a place of well-deserved repose. C. did not rest there, however, but continued his prodigious activity, reforming institutions and customs. At Vigevano there still remain, as monuments to his architectural competence, the façade of the Cathedral and the arrangement of the ducal square with the grand staircase leading to the castle.
C. was truly an extraordinary and most erudite man, acquainted with twenty-four languages. His contemporaries called him «C. magnus». He wrote more than seventy works dealing with every science and art, especially theology and civil and military architecture.
His love of paradox sometimes led him, in his writings, to rash dogmatic assertions and excessively lax opinions in moral matters, earning him from St. Alfonso the title of «lavistarum facile princeps». His work Apologema pro antiquissima et universalissima doctrina de probabilitate (Lyons 1663) was in fact placed on the Index (1664), and he had to defend himself before the Pope; he was also obliged to remove several propositions from his Theologia fundamentalis (Frankfurt 1651). Among his principal works, almost all forgotten and partly lost, the following deserve mention: Hierarchia ecclesiastica (Prague 1653); Cabalae theologicae excidium (Rome 1656); Theologia intentionalis (Lyons 1664); Theologia praeterintentionalis (ibid. 1664); Theologia regularis (ibid. 1665); Logica moralis seu politica (Vigevano 1680); Critica philosophica (ibid. 1681).