Delrio, Martin Antony

, a very learned Jesuit, was born at Antwerp of Spanish parents, in 1551. The progress he made in letters, while a very boy, is recorded with wonder. He was taught grammar in the Low Countries, and then sent to Paris to learn rhetoric and philosophy under the Jesuits. Afterwards he went to study civil law in the new university of Do way; but removing from thence to Louvain, he laid aside that pursuit, and applied himself to polite literature, which he cultivated with so much ardour and success, that he surprised the public, when he was only nineteen years of age, with some good notes upon the tragedies of Seneca. “What is more,” says Baillet, “he cited in this work almost 1100 authors, with all the assurance of a man who had read them thoroughly, and weighed their sentiments with great judgment and exactness.” The reputation he acquired by this first essay of his erudition was afterwards increased. He is said to have understood at least ten languages, and to have read every thing, ancient and modern, that was thought worth reading. He was admitted LL. D. at Salamanca in 1574; and was afterwards a counsellor of the parliament of Brabant, and an intendant of the army. In 1580 he became a Jesuit at Valladolid; from whence going into the Low Countries, he taught divinity and the belles lettres, and contracted a firm friendship with Lipsius. He taught also at Liege, at Mentz, at Gratz, and at Salamanca. He died at Louvain, in 1608, about two years after his friend Lipsius.

Besides notes upon Seneca, Claudian, and Solinus, he wrote a great number of works, the principal of which are, 1. “Disquisitiones Magicae,” 1601, 3 vols. 4to, an | elaborate work, but too well suited to the credulity of the age.

2. Commentaries upon some books of the Old Testament.

3. Explications of some of the hardest and most important texts of scrpture. ¹