Antonio De Molina was a Spanish
Carthusian ascetical
Asceticism (; from the el, ἄσκησις, áskesis, exercise', 'training) is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world for their p ...
writer.
[ ]
Biography
Antonio De Molina was born about 1560, at Villanueva de los Infantes. In 1575 he entered the
Order of Augustinian Hermits, was elected superior at one of their houses in Spain, and for some time taught
theology. But wishing to join an order of stricter discipline, he became a
Carthusian at
Miraflores, where he died
prior
Prior (or prioress) is an ecclesiastical title for a superior in some religious orders. The word is derived from the Latin for "earlier" or "first". Its earlier generic usage referred to any monastic superior. In abbeys, a prior would be l ...
of the monastery.
Works
Antonio De Molina wrote in
Spanish a few
ascetical
Asceticism (; from the el, ἄσκησις, áskesis, exercise', 'training) is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world for their p ...
works, especially adapted for priests, which became the most popular books of their kind in Spain, and were translated into various foreign languages. The most famous of these is a manual for priests and bears the title: ''Instruccion de Sacerdotes, en que se dá doctrina muy importante para conocer la alteza del sagrado oficio Sacerdotal, y para exercitarle debidamente''. Twenty editions of this work are known to have been published, among them a
Latin translation by the Belgian
Dominican Nicolás Janssen Boy, which received five editions (Antwerp, 1618, 1644; Cologne, 1626, 1711, and 1712), and an
Italian translation (Turin, 1865). It was severely attacked by the
Jansenist Antoine Arnauld (''De la fréquente communion'', 1643) but ably defended against him by
Petavius (''Dogmata theologica'', ''De Pœnitentia'', lib. III, cap. vi; new ed., Paris, 1865-7, VIII, 286-8). He is also the author of two ascetical works adapted for laymen. The one, ''Exercicios espirituales para personas ocupadas de cosas de su salvacion'', was published at Burgos in 1613; the other, ''Exercicios espirituales de la excelencias, provecho y necesidad de la oracion mental'', etc., was first published at
Burgos in 1615, and was translated into Latin.
Bibliography
*
Nicolás Antonio, ''Bibliotheca hispana nova'' (Madrid, 1783-8). I, 145;
*
Hugo von Hurter, ''Nomenclator'', 3rd ed., 111, 608-9.
References
Carthusians
1560 births
1619 deaths
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