Gracián y Morales, Baltasar - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, p. 597

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

GRACIÁN Y MORALES, BALTASAR. – Jesuit and Spanish writer, b. at Belmonte on 8 January 1601, d. at Tarazona on 6 December 1658. He entered the Society of Jesus at Tarragona (1619) and, after being ordained a priest, lived successively in Huesca, Zaragoza, Lérida, Gandia, Valencia, and, at intervals, in Madrid, where he distinguished himself as a sacred orator.

In religious conduct and literary taste he did not always display sound judgment. Thus he resisted the censorship of his books by the Order and, in his works, combined his merits with excesses of concision and acuteness.

His books are programmes of social education for the various types of men of the world: El Héroe (Madrid 1637), El político Fernando (Saragozza 1604), El discreto (Huesca 1646), El oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (there 1647), El Criticón (Saragozza 1651; Huesca 1653; Madrid 1657). The latter is a philosophical novel in three parts, corresponding to the three ages of man, inspired by the Acutezze of Pellegrini and the Canacchiale aristotelico of Tesauro, in which G. fully expressed his critical spirit, analyzing the types, regions, and customs of his time with sententious, profound, and at times implacable satire.

G. contributed greatly to the spread of culteranismo and conceptismo, especially through his Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Huesca 1648).

Free, however, from the customary formal defects is the Comulgatorio (Saragozza and Madrid 1655), in which G. reveals his devout spirit and the sincere core of his character.

BIBL.: Works: El discreto, Oráculo manual, El Héroe, in Bibl. de autores españoles, LXV; El Héroe, El discreto (with an introduction by A. Farinelli), Madrid 1900; Cartas autógrafas (edited by A. Bonilla), in Rev. crit. hisp., 2 (1916), pp. 212–35; El Criticón (edited by M. Romera-Navarro), Philadelphia 1938–40 (Italian translation by E. Mele, Bari 1927); Sommervogel, III, cols. 1646–56. Studies:

B. Croce, I trattatisti italiani del concettismo e B. G., Naples 1899; F. Rahola, Estudio critico sobre B. G. y an « Criticón », Barcelona 1908; A. Morel Fatio, Les moralistes espagnoles du XVIIe siècle et en particulier sur G. B., in Bull. hisp., 12 (1910), p. 377 ff.; A. Coster, B. G., in Rev. hisp., 20 (1913), p. 347 ff.; F. Maldonado, B. G. como pesimista y político, Salamanca 1916; A. F. G. Bell, B. G., Oxford 1921; G. Marone, Morale e politica di B. G., Naples 1925; E. Sarmiento, La estetica de B. G., in Bull. hisp., 37 (1935), p. 27 ff.; A. Farinelli, G. y la literatura dalica en Alemania, in Divagaciones hispánicas, II, Barcelona 1936, p. 97 ff. A bibliographical survey of G. by M. Romera-Navarro is found in Hisp. rev., 4 (1936), p. 11 ff. Cf. also: A. Ferrari, Fernando el católico en B. G., Madrid 1945; J. M. García López, G. B., Barcelona 1947. Costanzo Eguía