Juan Andrés

Juan Andrés y Morell (15 February 1740 Planes, Alicante– 12 January 1817 Rome) was a Spanish Jesuit priest, Christian humanist and literary critic of the Age of Enlightenment. He was the creator of world history and comparative literature (i.e. of Letters and Sciences of the eighteenth century) through the most important and extensive of his works:Dell'Origine, progressi e stato d'ogni attuale letteratura (1st ed. Italian, Parma, 1782–1799) – Origen, progresos y estado actual de toda la literatura (Madrid, 1784–1806, but was incomplete as it did not include the part devoted to the ecclesiastical sciences) only recently restored to a critical and complete edition.

Scholar

He was considered an extraordinarily intellectual figure in the Europe of his time, however he was ignored for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as if he was a mere shadowy scholar. This was for several different reasons, as much circumstantial as general interest. Andrés trained in the former University of Gandia, was a Professor of Rhetoric and a young Jesuit forced into exile in Italy 1767). He first settled in Ferrara, and then the Marquis of Bianchi welcomed him to his palace in Mantua. Here, he enjoyed life with the Marquis's family, until the arrival of Napoleon, more than twenty years of happy and productive stay that allowed him to complete the major part of his work.

Juan Andrés (disambiguation)

Juan Andrés may refer to:

See also

Juan Andrés (convert)

Juan Andrés, Latinized Joannes Andreas (active 1487–1515), is the name chosen by a Spanish Muslim scholar who converted to Catholicism and wrote a well known polemical work against Islam, the Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán.

Life

The man subsequently known as Juan Andrés was born in Játiva, Spain, the son of an Islamic scholar. Trained as a faqīh himself, he converted to Catholicism in 1487 in Valencia Cathedral and took the Christian name Juan Andrés. Becoming a priest, he was made an envoy by the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinando and Isabela, to preach Christianity in Granada after it was reconquered. He worked closely with the Aragonese Inquisitor Martín García.

Around 1516 there was a canon of Granada Cathedral by the name Juan Andrés, but it is not certain that this is the same man.

Works

Juan Andrés' main apologetical work, Confusion de la secta mahomatica y del alcoran (Valencia, 1515), while written to encourage Muslims to convert to Christianity, was later banned by the Spanish Inquisition due to the extensive quotations from the Qur'an that it contained. It nevertheless went into many further editions.