Escobar y Mendoza, Antonio

ESCOBAR Y MENDOZA, ANTONIO. - Jesuit, moralist, b. at Valladolid in 1589, d. there on 4 July 1669. He first displayed his talent in some literary works; but from 1630 he is found intensely engaged in cultivating moral theology and in various works of exegesis, published in the last years of his life.

His fame, however, is linked to three very important works of moral theology, both widely circulated and attacked: Examen y práctico de confessores y penitentes en todas las materias de teología moral (the place and date of publication are unknown; the 1st ed., the Madrid one of 1650, is the 39th) in the form of a simple and popular catechism: Liber theologiae moralis (Lyons 1644), in which the doctrine, taken from 25 theologians of the Society of Jesus, is that common to the times in which E. was writing. It cannot be denied, however, that he is somewhat inclined to excessive benignity (he maintains, for example, the licitness of theft in a case of extreme necessity [a proposition condemned by Innocent XI on 4 March 1679, propos. 36; Denz-U, 1156]). B. Pascal made this work the target of his attacks in the 5th and 6th of the Lettres provinciales; but wrongly, because he relies on passages torn from their context and worse interpreted: Universae theologiae moralis receptiones abque lite sententiae (7 vols., Lyons 1652-63). E. remains always a great moralist, despite the scant accuracy in his citations and judgments sometimes not founded on solid arguments; he may be called a little too benign, but not laxist.