FORER, LORENZ. — Jesuit theologian and controversialist, born in Lucerne in 1580, died in Ratisbona on 7 January 1659. Professor of dogmatic theology at the Universities of Ingolstadt and Dillingen, he was a vigorous polemicist who attacked Protestant theology head-on, precisely during the classical period of « Lutheran orthodoxy ».
Among his anti-Protestant writings, the following should be remembered: Lutherus thaumaturgus (Dillingen 1624); Bellum ubiquisticum vetus et novum (there 1627); Mantissa antianatomiae Iesniticae (there 1635), important for the history of the controversies of the seventeenth century; Antiquitas papatus (4 vols., there 1633–35), his principal work, in which F. deals with Scripture and Tradition, the Church and the pope, fasts and Confession, Baptism and the Eucharist (especially the real presence and the Mass); Questio vexata ac plus quam integro saeculo agitata: ubinam terrarum ac gentium fuerit ante Lutherum, Zwinglium, Calvinum protestantium ecclesia (I, Amberg 1653; II, Ingolstadt 1655). He also wrote several works on philosophy.
I, Nördlingen 1889, pp. 536–77; II, there 1889, pp. 300–16; B. Duhr, Gesch. der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge, II, II, Priburgo in Br. 1913, passim, but especially pp. 73–77; 411–13. Antonio Pirlanti