Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues

Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues

Author: Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J.

Year: 1929

ALPHONSUS RODRIGUEZ (not to be confounded with his canonized namesake, a Jesuit laybrother) was born at Valladolid in 1526, entered the Society of Jesus in 1546, and died 20 February, 1616. But for one visit to Rome, where he sat in the Fifth General Congregation of the Society, he spent his whole life in Spain, teaching Moral Theology, governing a College as Rector, acting as Master of Novices and Spiritual Father and composing this work. It came out in three parts, all which appeared together in 1609. Of its composition he tells us himself: "It being the custom in our Society for an Exhortation to be addressed to the Community at least every fortnight, and I having been engaged in that office for more than forty years, addressing as well the novices as their Seniors in Religion, I have gathered together much matter which my Superiors thought it would be for the service of God for me to revise and put in order." The first complete English translation came out in 1699. The anonymous translator has recently been identified as Sir John Warner, S.J., Bart. Father Warner, most unhappily, overlooking the original Spanish, translated the French version of Regnier des Marais. Des Marais t