Torres (Turrianus), Francesco

TORRES (Turrianus), FRANCESCO. - Patrologist and controversialist, b. at Herrera (Valencia), or at Léon, around 1509, d. at Rome on 21 November 1584.

He was one of the most prolific theologians of his time. He took part in the Council of Trent as a papal theologian; having entered the Society of Jesus in 1566, when he had already published 14 works, he spent the rest of his life in Germany and in Rome, leaving behind an extensive output of theological and patristic writings.

The subjects he treated most were questions concerning the authority of the Pope (the work De Summi Pontificis supra concilium auctoritate Libri tres, Florence 1551, is very well known), the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the canons and decrees of various councils, particularly the obligation of residence of pastors, the administration of vacant churches, the reading of Sacred Scripture, the Eucharistic Sacrament, and in general the most controversial questions of the time, particularly against the Magdeburg Centuriators, the Ubiquitists, the Arianists and various Lutheran Protestants, among them Antonio Sadaele. Torres acquired a particular merit for having made accessible, through his translations into Latin, many patristic works of the Eastern Church, among them the orations of Anastasius Sinaita, patriarch of Antioch, the book of St. John Damascene against the Acephali and the Monophysite Jacobites, those of Leontius of Byzantium against the Eutychians and Nestorians, and many others.

Arnaldo M. Lanz