Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz | |
|---|---|
| Bishop of Vigevano | |
 | |
| Church | Catholic Church |
| Diocese | Vigevano (1673–1682) Campagna andSatrianum (1657–1673) |
| Successor | Ferdinando de Rojas |
| Previous post | Grand-Vicar to theArchbishop of Prague |
| Orders | |
| Consecration | 29 July 1567 by CardinalFrancesco Brancaccio |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1606-05-23)23 May 1606 Madrid, Spain |
| Died | 8 September 1682(1682-09-08) (aged 76) Vigevano, Italy |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Alcalá University of Salamanca Old University of Leuven (Ph.D., 1629;Th.D., 1638) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 17th-century philosophy |
| Region | |
| School | Aristotelianism Scholasticism Probabilism |
| Institutions | University of Salamanca Old University of Leuven |
| Main interests | Metaphysics,moral philosophy,mathematics,astronomy |
| Notable ideas | |
| Occupation | Mathematician and theologian |
Juan Caramuel y LobkowitzOCist (Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz, 23 May 1606 inMadrid — 7 or 8 September 1682 inVigevano) was a SpanishCatholicscholastic philosopher, ecclesiastic,mathematician,polyglot,[4] and writer. He is believed to be a great-grandson of Jan Popel yLobkowicz.
Juan Caramuel was born in Madrid on 23 May 1606.[5] His father, Lorenzo Caramuel de Lobkowitz, was descended from a nobleFlemish family; his mother, Catarina Frisse, was related to theDanish royal family.[6] He was instructed in oriental languages by Archbishop Juan de Esron (Ezron). By the age of 17, he was studying at theUniversity of Alcalá de Henares, where he took his degree in the humanities and philosophy.[7] His theological teachers at the University of Alcalá included the DominicansJohn of St. Thomas (João Poinsot, 1589–1644) andFrancisco de Araujo (1580–1664) as well as the Cistercian Pedro de Lorca (1521–1621).
He was a precocious child, early delving into serious problems inmathematics and even publishingastronomical tables at the age of ten,Caramuelis primus calamus (Madrid 1617).[8] He studiedChinese. He was received into theCistercian Order at themonastery of La Espina, in thediocese of Palencia in 1625, and after ordination entered upon a varied and brilliant career. He served in the monastery of Montederramo (diocese of Orense), then Santa María del Destierro (Salamanca), where he completed his studies. He probably attended the last classes ofAgustín Antolínez (1554–1626), in that time the major theologian of theAugustinian Order in Salamanca. He then taught in houses in Alcalá, Palazuelos, and Salamanca. He then travelled to Portugal for the sake of studying oriental languages, and from there he moved to the Low Countries (the Spanish Netherlands), where he resided from 1635 to 1644.[9]
Caramuel'ssermons attracted the favorable attention of theInfante Ferdinand, Governor of theLow Countries, while he was attached to themonastery of Dunes inFlanders. He assisted Don Ferdinand in the defense of the city of Louvain from the attacks of the French and the Dutch, as engineer and chief of works, for which Don Ferdinand appointed him court preacher. Through Don Ferdinand, Caramuel became friends withMarie de' Medici, the exiled former queen-mother of France (1630–1642), who lived in Bruxelles, though she visited her daughter, the queen of England, for a period of three years. Through Marie's influence, Caramuel was appointed Vicar General of the Carthusians in England, Ireland, and Scotland; and named Abbot of Melrose.[10]
In 1638 he defended his academic theses with great success, and was granted the degree ofDoctor of Theology by theUniversity of Leuven on 2 September 1638.[11] Having learned more of the doctrines ofCornelius Jansen, who had died earlier in that year, Caramuel embarked on a preaching crusade through Belgium and Germany, especially Mainz. An inscription in the cathedral of Vigevano claims he brought some 30,000 persons back to practicing Roman Catholicism.[12]
Caramuel's patron, the Cardinal Infante Ferdinand, died on 9 November 1641. When he was obliged to leave theElectorate of the Palatinate,Philip IV of Spain made him his envoy to the court ofEmperor Ferdinand III whose court was residing in Prague at the time.[13] He was in turn Abbot of Melrose (Scotland), Abbot-Superior of theBenedictines of Vienna, Abbot of the BenedictineEmmaus Monastery in Prague (1647), and Grand-Vicar to theArchbishop of Prague, Ernst Augustus z Harrach (1623–1667).[14]
In 1648, when theSwedes attacked Prague, Caramuel armed and led a military division of ecclesiastics who helped defend the city. His bravery on this occasion merited for him a collar of gold from the emperor. "Being active in the political struggles of his time and carrying out the project of re-Catholicisation perhaps too vigorously," according to Petr Dvořák, "he made himself many enemies even within the Catholic camp."[15] He soon left Central Europe for Italy.
In 1656 Caramuel visited Rome for the first time, wherePope Alexander VII named him Consultor of the Holy Office (Inquisition) and Consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Rites.[16] Pope Alexander knew Caramuel well, since he had been papal legate in Cologne from 1639 to 1651. Soon after, on 9 July 1657, he was named Bishop ofCampagna eSatrianum (1657–1673), a small and poor diocese in the Kingdom of Naples.[17]
On 25 July 1673, Caramuel was appointed to thediocese of Vigevano near Milan (1673–1682),[18] which he held until his death on 8 September 1682.[19]
Caramuel was in active correspondence with famous scholars:[20] the philosophersRené Descartes andPierre Gassendi; theJesuitpolymathAthanasius Kircher; the CzechCapuchin friar andastronomerAnton Maria Schyrleus of Rheita, theBohemian doctorJan Marek Marci,Pope Alexander VII (Fabio Chigi), who was a great admirer of his work; the Belgian astronomerGodefroy Wendelin, the theologiansFranciscus Bonae Spei andAntonino Diana,Giovanni Battista Hodierna,Johannes Hevelius,Valerianus Magnus,Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, and many others.
He knew 24 languages.[4]
His books are even more numerous than his awards and varied achievements. According toJean-Noël Paquot, he published no fewer than 262 works on grammar, poetry, oratory, mathematics, astronomy, architecture, physics, politics,canon law, logic, metaphysics, theology, andasceticism.[21]
Caramuel distanced himself from all established philosophical schools of theBaroque era (he often praisedThomas Aquinas but explicitly denied being aThomist). Although educated in the Thomist tradition, he firmly believed in thehumanist ideal ofnullius addictus iurare in verba magistri (‘not to swear slavishly by the words of any master’). He refused to be enrolled in a specific school of thought and felt free to choose among all the authorities that would best suit his project of constructing a renovatedChristian philosophy. He refers this attitude back toAugustine's teaching: ‘Augustine was no tyrant, since he was the Divine Master’, writes,[22] and reminds that Augustine did not wish to be followed blindly. Augustine gave himself the example of a continuous change and progress of opinion in his numerousRetractationes (cf. Aug.'s reconsideration inpersev. 21.55).
Caramuel loved to defend novel theories, and inTheologia moralis ad prima atque clarissima principia reducta (Leuven, 1643) tried to solve theological problems by mathematical rules. He was a leading exponent ofprobabilism and his permissive moral opinions were criticized inPascal'sProvincial Letters and gained for him fromAlphonsus Liguori the title of "Prince of the Laxists".[23] Contemporary theologian Julia A. Fleming argues with this assessment.[24]
His mathematical work centred oncombinatorics and he was one of the early writers onprobability, republishingHuygens's work on dice with helpful explanations.[25] Caramuel'sMathesis biceps presents some original contributions to the field of mathematics: he proposed a new method of approximation for trisecting an angle and proposed a form oflogarithm that prefigurecologarithms, although he was not understood by his contemporaries.[26] Caramuel was also the first mathematician who made a reasoned study on non-decimal counts, thus making a significant contribution to the development of thebinary numeral system.[20]
Caramuel’sArchitectura civil, recta y obliqua, his most important writing on architecture, was published in Vigevano in 1678. The first volume provided a theological justification for the development of architecture from theTemple of Solomon, Jerusalem, to theEscorial (completed 1584), Madrid. Continuing a theme fromVitruvius (On Architecture I.i), he also expounded at length on the natural sciences that an architect should know: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music—thears antiqua andars nova. The principal innovation of the treatise was contained in the second volume in a discussion ofarchitectura recta (‘orthogonal architecture’; Tratado V) andarchitectura obliqua (‘oblique architecture’; Tratado VI), which dealt respectively with the orders and the distortions (anamorphosis) that he believed were necessary to accommodate them to the more dynamic contemporary architecture. The third volume contained the illustrations, drawn by Caramuel himself; he described numerous variations on setting out the orders, including an Ionic order designed byMichelangelo for his buildings on theCapitoline Hill (begun 1560s), Rome; he also showed indigenous architecture from theNew World, including a plan of the settlement ofHochelaga on the site of modernMontreal.
Caramuel claimed that his ideas on anamorphosis dated from 1624. Architects were already designing buildings with complex plan shapes, but Caramuel sought to extend the distortions from the wall surface to the orders themselves, so that all sloping elements in a building would involve the use of equivalent oblique members such as balusters, column capitals and architraves. This theory met with little application among practising architects because it necessitated the abandonment of the modular basis of Classical architecture in favour of a geometrical basis.
Caramuel was responsible for the design of the façade of theVigevano Cathedral, an eclectic design showing some virtuosity in its geometrical relationship to the square.[27] It corrects the irregular relationship of the cathedral to the square in the Renaissance layout and makes it symmetrical by means of a skillful illusion created by the addition of an axis to the façade where a side-strect flanks the cathedral. The eclecticism of the form recalls related configurations of Nicolaus Goldmann ("second example of a church") andChristopher Wren (Saint Peter Cornhill).
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