Francisco Torres

(TURRIANUS.)

Hellenist and polemicist, born in Herrera, Palencia, about 1509; died at Rome, 21 November, 1584. He was the nephew of Dr. Torres, Bishop of the Canaries. He studied at Salamanca and lived in Rome with Cardinal Salviati and Seripando. In 1562 Pius IV sent him to the Council of Trent, and on 8 January, 1567, he became a Jesuit. He was professor at the Roman College, took part in the revision of the Sixtine Vulgate, and had Hosius and Baronius for literary associates. His contemporaries called him helluo librorum for the rapidity with which he examined the principal libraries. He defended the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception, the authority of the sovereign pontiff over the council, the Divinely appointed authority of bishops, Communion under one kind for the laity, the authenticity of the Apostolic Canons and the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, and pleading the antiquity of the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, which Pius V had suppressed, worked for its reinstatement. Blondel accuses him of want of critical judgment, and Nadal of mordacity against Protestants. He wrote more than seventy books, principally polemical, against Protestants, and translations especially of Greek Fathers, many treatises of whose works he found hidden away in libraries.