ELIZALDE, MIGUEL DE

Jesuit theologian; b. Echalar, Navarre, 1616; d. San Sebastián, Nov. 18, 1678. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1635, and later taught theology and philosophy at Valladolid, Salamanca, and Rome, and for a time was rector of the Jesuit college at Naples. In his Forma verae religionis quaerendae et inveniendae (Naples 1662) he ranked himself among the few 17th-century theologians who favored a more rationalistic apologetic, claiming that strict proof of the fact of revelation was possible. This idea was coldly received at the time but took better root in the 19th century and won wide acceptance. But Elizalde is better known for his attack upon probabilism. Without the approval of his religious superiors and in defiance of the criticism and advice of the revisers of the society, he published his De recta doctrina morum, quatuor libris distincta, quibus accessit: De natura opinionis under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Antonio Celladei (Lyons 1670). A second and enlarged edition was published posthumously (Fribourg 1684). Elizalde's own moral system is described as probabiliorism, but it could perhaps be better classified as tutiorism. On certain points he verged toward Baianist and Jansenist doctrine.

Bibliography: c. sommervogel et al., Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (Brussels-Paris 1890–32) 3:281–383. i. von dÖllinger and f. h. reusch, Geschichte der Moralstreitigkeiten in der römischkatholischen Kirche seit dem sechzehnten Jahrhundert, 2 v. (Munich 1889) 1:51–56, 141–144, 157, 203, 206; 2:23–45, 47–48.

[p. k. meagher]