Antonio Escobar Y Mendoza, a Spanish casuist, born in Valladolid in 1589, died July 4, 1669. He was a Jesuit, distinguished for eloquence, and preached daily, and sometimes twice a day, during 50 years. He was also an indefatigable writer, and won a high reputation in his order for his works, which comprise over 40 volumes. His private life was marked by simplicity and purity; but the "probabilistic" principles on which is based the solution of many of his "cases of conscience" left him open to misconception and animadversion.

When Pascal, the great Jansenist writer, assailed the doctrines and morals of the Jesuits, Escobar's theology was selected by the satirist, as being the authorized teaching of the whole society. Although Pascal's Lettres provinciates were afterward condemned by the French episcopacy as heretical and defamatory, Escobar's name has continued to be held as typical of extreme laxity in morals; and the terms escobarder, escobarderie, escobartin, then introduced into the French language, still signify the reconciling of one's religious convictions with one's interest and passions. Among his works are: San Ignacio de Loyola, an heroic poem (1613); Historia de la Virgen Madre de Dios, an epic poem (1618); Summula Casuum Conscientioe (1626); and Liber Theologioe Mo-ralis, XXIV. Societatis Jesu Doctoribus rese-ratus, etc. (1646).