Juan de Ovando de Páredes (†1610)

Life

Juan de Ovando de Páredes was born in Cáceres (Extremadura, Spain) in 1553 and entered the Santiago province of the Franciscan Observants.1 He was baptized Mateo, but took the name of his brother Juan Ovando when the latter died courageously in battle (1560).2 This website calls him “Juan de Ovando” because that is what appears on the title page of his works. He taught in various studia of the province, and lastly at Salamanca, perhaps for as long as sixteen years.3 Hugh MacCaghwell was one of his students. Ovando was a provincial definitor 1604–1607 and died in 1610. For centuries he was confused with another Spanish Franciscan theologian named Juan de Ovando, who was a member of the province of Castile: Juan Mejía de Ovando.4 Their works were listed together, as if they were the same person.

Works

Among the works of Juan de Ovando de Páredes is a commentary on the third book of the Sentences, published in 1597.5 Mindful of the difficulty that Scotus’s style poses for readers, he decided to reorganize the text of the Opus Oxoniense (book III, dd. 1–13) and publish it with his commentary. For the first three distinctions, the pages are laid out with Scotus’s commentary in the center and Ovando’s commentary around it, like an edition of the Glossa ordinaria. This may have proved too labor-intensive because the remaining distinctions do not have this layout. This commentary was printed again at Valencia in 1624.6

Another work is his Discursus praedicabiles super mysteria fidei, which was printed at least three times: at Alcalá de Henares (Compluti) in 1593 (Google Books), at Brescia in 1603 (Google Books), and at Paris in 1606 (Google Books). Juan de San Antonio said he saw copies at Lyons in 1606 and at Venice in 1606 (another source says 1605), but Vazquez was unable to find copies of these printings.7

He also wrote a Tratado pastoral ordenado por discursos (Salmanca: 1601) and Consideraciones y exercicios sanctos, sobre los evangelios de las Dominicas despues de Penthecostes (Lisbon: 1609).8 See Vazquez for two works dubiously attributed to him and for the works of the other Juan de Ovando.

  1. Cf. Isaac Vázquez Janeiro, Los Juan de Ovando. Dos teólogos homónimos del siglo XVI (Madrid: Instituto Francisco Suárez del C.S.I.C., 1980), 15–16.↩︎

  2. Cf. Vázquez Janeiro, 14.↩︎

  3. Cf. Vázquez Janeiro, 17–19.↩︎

  4. Vázquez Janeiro, 8–9.↩︎

  5. Juan de Ovando, Comentarii in III librum Sententiarum subtilissimi doctoris Ioannis Duns Scoti, eius quæ litera, per articulos et conclusiones elaboratissime elucidata, ad clarissimum ordinem redacta, vt omnibus ad eam facilis præbeatur aditus (Valentiæ: apud Alvarum Francum, 1597), https://books.google.com?id=LvZPK_N-uyIC.↩︎

  6. Vázquez Janeiro, Los Juan de Ovando, 21.↩︎

  7. Juan de San Antonio, Bibliotheca universa franciscana, sive Alumnorum trium ordinum S. P. N. Francisci qui, ab ordine seraphico condito usque ad praesentem diem, latina sive alia quavis lingua scripto aliquid consignarunt encyclopaedia (Matriti: ex typogr. Causae V. Matris de Agreda, 1732–1733), 2:197; Vázquez Janeiro, Los Juan de Ovando, 21.↩︎

  8. Vázquez Janeiro, Los Juan de Ovando, 22.↩︎