ESCOBAR Y MENDOZA, ANTONIO. — Jesuit, moral theologian, born at Valladolid in 1589, died there on 4 July 1669. At first he applied his talent to certain literary works; but from 1630 onward he is found devoting himself intensively to the cultivation of moral theology and to various exegetical works, published during the final years of his life.
His fame, however, is linked to three highly important works of moral theology, widely disseminated and debated: Examen y práctico de confessores y penitentes en todas las materias de teología moral (the place and date of publication are unknown; the first edition, Madrid 1650, is the 39th), in the form of a simple and popular catechism; Liber theologiae moralis (Lyons 1644), in which the doctrine, drawn from 25 theologians of the Society of Jesus, is that commonly accepted in the period in which E. was writing. It cannot nevertheless be denied that he was somewhat inclined toward excessive leniency (he maintained, for example, the lawfulness of theft in a case of proven necessity [a proposition condemned by Innocent XI on 4 March 1679, proposition 36; Denz-U, 1156]). B. Pascal made this work the target of his attacks in the 5th and 6th of the Lettres provinciales; but unjustly, because he relied on passages removed from their context and, worse, misinterpreted: Universae theologiae moralis receptiones abque lite sententiae (7 vols., Lyons 1652–63). E. always remains a great moral theologian, despite the lack of precision in his citations and judgments at times unsupported by solid arguments; he may be called somewhat too lenient, but not laxist.