Martin de Azpilcueta (Navarrus)

MARTIN DE AZPILCUETA (Navarrus). - Moral theologian and canonist, b. 13 May 1492 and called "Navarro" from his place of origin (Barasoain, in Navarre), d. in Rome on 21 June 1586. He was a cousin of St. Francis Xavier, with whom he maintained an epistolary correspondence; a doctor (1541) and professor of canon law at Cahors (before 1520) and then at Toulouse, where he had studied and had been ordained; at Salamanca he was professor de decreto (1532), then de prima (1533) at Coimbra, where he organized the University (1538-55).

He intervened as a theologian in the dispute between Philip II and Paul IV, skirting schism, through excessive compliance with the king. Nevertheless he defended against that same and in Rome, as a lawyer, the celebrated archbishop Carranza: something for which the king never forgave him. In Rome he was dear to the popes Pius V, Gregory XIII and Sixtus V; he was appointed consultor of the Penitentiary and did not receive the purple only because of the opposition of Philip II. Against him M. published an indignant justification: Epistola apologetica ad... ducem Albuquerqueensem (Rome 1570). A most refined man and of austere life, full of charity toward his neighbor, he is to be numbered among the greatest of his time as a moralist, canonist and ascetic author. His works, repeatedly printed even after his death, were, at least in part, regarded as classics. Among the best known is his Manuale sive enchiridion confessoriorum et paenitentium (Antwerp 1573), which is a reworking of his Manual de confesores y penitentes (Coimbra 1553). His works on law are innumerable: very well known, among others, is his De redditibus beneficiorum ecclesiasticorum (Rome 1568, 1574; 1st ed. in Spanish Valladolid 1566). He wrote many other works on the Breviary, the regulars, ecclesiastical property, etc., which were published in a complete edition at Rome (3 vols., 1590), Lyon (1589-91), Venice (5 vols., 1602), Cologne (2 vols., 1615).

Lorenzo Simcone