Azor, Juan

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AZOR, JUAN

Jesuit moral theologian; b. Lorca, Spain, 1535, or more probably 1536; d. Rome, Feb. 19, 1603. Besides teaching extensively in Spain and Rome, Azor served from 1584 on the committee that drafted the ratio studiorum, the program of studies for Jesuit institutions. Since the Ratio required, in addition to a course explaining the Summa, another course on "cases of conscience," Azor wrote his Institutiones morales (3 v., Rome 160011), a new type of moral treatise in which the basic division followed that of the commandments, not the virtues. This was intended to supplant the smaller Summae confessorum and is rightly considered the forerunner of the modern manuals of moral theology.

Bibliography: j. e. de uriarte and m. lecina, Biblioteca de escritores de la Compañía de Jesús (Madrid 192530) 1:394399. e. moore, La moral en el siglo XVI y primera mitad del XVII (Granada 1956) 7879. b. hÄring, The Law of Christ, tr. e. g. kaiser, 3 v. (Westminster, Md. 1961) 1:1820.

[r. a. couture]