ESCOBAR Y MENDOZA, ANTONIO: Spanish Jesuit; b. at Valladolid 1589; d. there July 4, 1669. He was a scion of a distinguished family of intense piety, and was noteworthy for his asceticism and his energy as a preacher and priest. His literary productivity was enormous, his works filling eighty-three volumes. He began his literary career with the epics San Ignacio de Loyola (Valladolid, 1613) and Historia de la Virgen Madre de Dios (1618), but the remainder of his writings are devoted either to exegesis or to moral theology. To the former category belong, among others, In Evangelia Sanctorum commentarii (6 vols., Lyons, 1642-1648); In Evangelia temporis commentarii (6 vols., 1647-48); Vetus ac Novum Testamentum litteralibus et moralibus commentariis illustratum (8 vols., 1652-1667); and a number of commentaries on individual books of the Bible, among which special mention may be made of his In Cantica commentarii, sive de Mariæ Deiparæ elogiis (Lyons, 1669). The fame of Escobar is chiefly based, however, on his works on moral theology, of which the Summula casuum conscientiæ (Pampelune, 1627) is the shortest, the Universæ theologiæ moralis receptiores absque lite sententiææ (7 vols., Lyons, 1652-66) the longest, and the Liber theologiæ moralis viginti-quattuor Societatis Jesu doctoribus reseratus (1664) the best known. The last-named work summarizes the contributions of Escobar's chief predecessors to probabilistic casuistry. A certain apparent laxity in ethics exposed the author to many attacks, particularly from Pascal in his Lettres provinciales, while the Roman Catholic world gradually formed an unfavorable judgment of the work. The parliaments of Paris, Rennes, and Rouen condemned the book to be burned, and modern Jesuits disavow the work more or less completely.

(O. ZÖCKLER†.)