Juan Eusebio Nieremberg Explained

Birth Date:9 September 1595
Birth Place:Madrid, Spain
Death Place:Madrid, Spain
Fields:Natural history
Workplaces:Colegio Imperial de Madrid
Alma Mater:University of Alcalá
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Parents:Gottfried Nieremberg and Regina Nieremberg (née Ottin)

Juan Eusebio Nieremberg y Ottín (9 September de 1595  - 7 April 1658) was a Spanish Jesuit, polymath and mystic.

Biography

Nieremberg was born in Madrid to German parents. His father was a Tyrolese, and his mother a Bavarian. He studied the classics at the Royal Court, science at Alcalá and canon law at Salamanca.

He joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1614, much against the wishes of his father who finally obliged him to leave the novitiate of Villagarcía. He remained firm in his resolution and was permitted to return to Madrid to finish his probation.

He studied Greek and Hebrew at the Colegio de Huete, arts and theology at Alcalá, and was ordained in 1623, making his profession in 1633. At the Colegio Imperial de Madrid he taught humanities and natural history for sixteen years and Sacred Scripture for three. As a director of souls he was much sought, being appointed by royal command confessor to the Duchess of Mantua, granddaughter of Philip II. Remarkable for his exemplary life, he was an indefatigable worker, and one of the most prolific writers of his time.

Seventy-three printed and eleven manuscript works are attributed to him, of these twenty-four at least are in Latin. His works are distinguished for their erudition, those in Spanish being characterized according to Capmany, by nobility and purity of diction, terse, well-knit phrases, forcible metaphors, and vivid imagery.[1] The Spanish Academy includes his name in the "Diccionario de Autoridades".

He was highly esteemed in devout circles as the author of De la afición y amor de Jesus (1630), and De la afición y amor de María (1630), both of which were translated into Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Latin. These works, together with the Prodigios del amor divino (1641), are now forgotten, but Nieremberg's version (1656) of the Imitation is still a favorite, and his eloquent treatise, De la hermosura de Dios y su amabilidad (1649), is the last classical manifestation of mysticism in Spanish literature.

Nieremberg published several books on natural history in which traditional Aristotelian conceptions tended to be replaced by a neoplatonic approach to nature. He was keenly interested in new animal and plant species from America and consulted many manuscript sources coming from across the Atlantic, including Francisco Hernández’s unpublished works on Mexican medicinal plants.

Works

Eponymy

The Spanish botanists Ruiz and Pavón (Hipólito Ruiz López and Jose Antonio Pavón y Jimenez) named an attractive plant in the tobacco family, Nierembergia, after him in their Flora Peruvianae, et Chilensis Prodromus (1794).

Bibliography

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: Capmany y Montpalau , Antonio de . Antonio de Capmany y Montpalau . V . Teatro histórico-crítico de la elocuencia española . 1848 . Barcelona . 271.

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