CASANOVA, Ignasi. – Jesuit, born in Santpedor (Catalonia) on 13 August 1872, he entered the novitiate of Veruela in 1888. After his years of formation (1888–1905), he spent the rest of his life in Barcelona engaged in apostolate among the cultured classes.
He began by delivering series of apologetic and social lectures, later collected in the volumes *La religio natural* (Barcelona 1907); *Teoria de la revelació* (ibid. 1908); *Nuestro estado social* (ibid. 1910); *Acción de la mujer en la acción social* (ibid. 1911 and 1914). At that time he also wrote on Catalan linguistics and aesthetics, and laid the groundwork for his future studies on Jaume Balmes, his great inspiration and model (*L'apologetica de Balmes*, ibid. 1910; *Reliquias literarias de Balmes*, ibid. 1910). He also translated into Spanish from Catalan the *Cartas pastorales* of the distinguished bishop of Vic, Josep Torres i Bages (3 vols., Barcelona 1915).
From these years onward, Fr. Casanova played a decisive role in the development of the “Foment de pietat catalana,” founded shortly before by the priest Eudald Serra and established as an independent religious publishing house in 1916. In 1923 he completed it by opening the “Biblioteca Balmes” to promote ecclesiastical studies and prepare the way for a Catholic institute; to this library, in 1925, he gave as its organ the periodical *Analecta sacra Tarraconensia*, alongside a series of more extensive studies (e.g., *Biblioteca histórica de la Biblioteca Balmes*), which he greatly enriched with his own works.
From around 1916, Fr. Casanova’s literary output took on a predominantly historical and ascetical character. His hagiographical works are above all penetrating psychological essays: *S. Alonso Rodriguez* (anonymous, Barcelona 1917; Italian trans. by Fr. St. Orzechowski: *La vita e lo spirito di s. Alfonso Rodriguez*, Rome 1918); *S. Ignasi de Loyola* (Barcelona 1922; in Spanish, Madrid 1930); *La madre Pilar Borras, carmelita de la Caridad* (Vic 1920); *L'anima de s. Teresa de Jesús Infant* (Barcelona 1929). The result of many years of preparation are the edition of the *Obras completas* of Dr. Jaime Balmes (Barcelona, Biblioteca histórica de la Biblioteca Balmes, 33 vols., 1925–27) and the weighty monograph: *Balmes, la seva vida, el seu temps, les seves obres* (3 vols., ibid. 1932). Research into 18th-century Catalan culture, the prehistory of Balmesian thought, led to *Josep Finestres: estudis biogràfics* (Barcelona 1932, plus two vols. of *Epistolari*, 1933–34); other monographs on the subject were cut short by events.
To the “Foment de pietat catalana” Fr. Casanova gave a *Biblioteca d’Exercicis espirituals* (11 vols., Barcelona 1930–36), which contains one of the best and most extensive modern commentaries on the book of St. Ignatius. Hidden in Barcelona at the start of the Marxist revolution, he was arrested and murdered by anarchists in September 1936, thus crowning with martyrdom a life of rare fruitfulness. His foundations survived (taking the name “Balmesiana”) and continue to exert great influence on the ecclesiastical culture of this part of Spain. “Balmesiana” began in 1942 a complete Spanish edition in 18 volumes of the principal works of Fr. Casanova.