Martinus Antonius del Rio

Martin Delrio (Latin: Martinus Antonius Delrio; Spanish: Martín Antonio del Río; French: Martin-Antoine del Rio; 17 May 1551 – 19 October 1608) was a Jesuit theologian, born in the Low Countries but of Spanish descent. He studied at numerous institutions, receiving a master's degree in law from Salamanca in 1574. After a period of political service in the Spanish Netherlands, he became a Jesuit in 1580. He studied or taught at Jesuit colleges across Catholic Europe, including Bordeaux, Douai, Graz, Mainz, Leuven, and Salamanca. He was the friend of the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius, a relative of Michel de Montaigne, and an enemy of the Protestant scholar Joseph Scaliger. He was the author of a large number of books, including classical commentaries and works of biblical exegesis. He remains, however, best known for his six-volume Magical Investigations (1599-1600), a work on magic, superstition, and witchcraft.

Martin Delrio was born in Antwerp on 17 May 1551, Whit Sunday, to the Spanish merchant Antonio del Río (d. 17 February 1586) and his wife Eleonora López de Villanova (d. 21 April 1602). The Del Río family were part of a sizeable Spanish community in Antwerp, more than 200 merchants were active in Antwerp in 1540. Young Martin studied at a Latin school in nearby Lier, Belgium and soon revealed himself as a childhood prodigy. He matriculated at the Old University of Leuven on 1 December 1563, at the age of 12. There he studied under the humanist Cornelius Valerius and met a number of other young promising scholars, including André Schott, Willem Canter, and Justus Lipsius. In middle age their friendship would significantly change the course of both their lives. Delrio’s first publication, an edition of the late Roman grammarian Gaius Iulius Solinus, was based on a manuscript borrowed from Lipsius and included suggested emendations by his tutor Valerius. Delrio also published edition of Claudian. Particularly proud he was of the edition of Senecan tragedy, published in 1576 but which he (falsely) claimed to have completed before his twentieth birthday. His travels during his peregrinatio academica are difficult to follow. He can be placed at the University of Paris in 1567 and 1568. He also spent some time in Douai where he refused to share a bed with an unnamed famous man (cited by his 1609 Jesuit hagiography as proof of his chastity). In 1572 he matriculated at the University of Salamanca on 1 December 1572 and graduated with a two years later. At Salamanca he would see the ‘the remnant of an evil gymnasium’ where Muslims had allegedly taught magic.

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