Castañiza, Juan

CASTAÑIZA, JUAN. - Spanish theologian and preacher, Benedictine, b. at Villadiego (diocese of Burgos) ca. 1545, d. at Salamanca in 1599. In 1563 he took monastic vows in the abbey of St. Saviour de Oña. Appointed preacher general by his superiors, he became preacher at the court of Philip II. He was also confessor to Card. Quiroga and later his executor.

The Combattimento spirituale cannot be attributed to C., whose authorship has been definitively claimed for Scupoli, but C. had made a Latin translation of it for the use of novices under the title Pugna spiritualis, whence arose the misunderstanding of the attribution.

In 1583 at Salamanca he published the Life of St. Benedict, translated from Book II of the Dialogues of St. Gregory, to which, besides the lives of Sts. Maurus and Placidus, is added an appendix worthy of note on the Approbación de la Regla de s. Benito en algunos concilios... con un catálogo de los príncipes, doctores y sanctos que han ilustrado la Orden de S. Benito. In the Life of St. Romuald (Madrid 1597), translated into Italian and French, the author offers a clear exposition of Benedictine spirituality; moreover his mystical doctrine is known even more from the notes to the edition of the works of St. Gertrude: Insinuationum divinae pietatis lib. V, in quibus vita et acta sanctae Gertrudis... confluentur. Accessere nunc denuo Exercitia ob eadem virgine composita... (Madrid 1577). The edition was later translated into Spanish under the title Practica spiritualis (ibid. 1599).

Ambrogio Mancone