CIENFUEGOS, ÁLVAREZ. — Celebrated Spanish Jesuit theologian, bishop, and cardinal, born at Oviedo (Asturias) on 27 Feb. 1657, died at Rome on 19 Aug. 1739. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1676 and taught philosophy at Santiago and theology at the University of Salamanca. During the Spanish War of Succession he sided with J. Thomas Henriquez in support of Charles III, Archduke of Austria, who entrusted him with important negotiations with the King of Portugal. However, after the Bourbon victory he was unable to return to Spain. After a time in Lisbon, he was summoned to Vienna by Charles III, who had become Emperor as Charles VI, and sent on further state missions to England and Holland. Later he served as the Emperor’s plenipotentiary minister to the Holy See, was made a cardinal in 1720, bishop of Catania in 1722, archbishop of Monreale in Sicily in 1724, and bishop of Fünfkirchen in Hungary in 1735.
His two famous works: Aenigma theologicum (Vienna 1717) on the Holy Trinity, and Vita abscondita, seu speciebus eucharisticis velata (Rome 1728), won both lively approval for their originality and acuteness and widespread disapproval for the boldness of certain opinions (e.g., on the real presence of Jesus Christ and the essence of the sacrifice of the Mass).