Caramuel

(Juan de Lobkowitz), a Spanish theologian, was born at Madrid, May 23, 1606. He became a Cistercian, and after several preferments, among which was the abbey of Melrose, in Scotland, was made vicar general of the archbishopric of Prague. When the Swedes, in 1648, besieged the city, Caramuel, forgetting his episcopal character, set himself at the head of a body of ecclesiastics on the battle-field. His services were rewarded by the emperor with a collar of gold. In 1657 he was made bishop of Campagna, in Naples, which he resigned in 1673, but afterward became bishop of Vigevano, in the Milanese, where he died, Sept. 8, 1682. He was "a man of vast but ill-digested learning, with an ill-regulated imagination. His moral theology (Theologia Moralis, Louvain, 1643, fol.) is so universally decried that even Romanists have censured it. He taught that the commandments of the Decalogue are not immutable in their nature, and that God is able to change or dispense with them, as in cases of theft, adultery. etc.; he also held that the smallest degree of probability justified any criminal action." A list of his numerous writings (37 volumes) is given by Nicolas Antonio, Bibliotheca Hisp. Nova. — Nouv. Biog. Generale, 8:666.