Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz

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Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (May 23, 1606 in Madrid—September 8, 1682 in Vigevano) was a Spanish Catholic ecclesiastic and writer.

He was a precocious child, early delving into serious problems in mathematics and even publishing astronomical tables in his tenth year. After receiving a superficial education at college, where his unusual ability brought rapid advancement, this prodigy turned his attention to the Asiatic languages, especially Chinese. He was received into the Cistercian Order at the monastery of La Espina, in the diocese of Palencia, and after ordination entered upon a singularly varied and brilliant career.

His sermons attracted the favorable attention of the Infante Ferdinand, Governor of the Low Countries, while he was attached to the monastery of Dunes in Flanders, and in 1638 he was honoured with the degree of Doctor of Theology by the University of Louvain. When he was obliged to leave the Palatinate, the Philip IV of Spain made him his envoy to the court of the Emperor Ferdinand III. He was in turn Abbot of Melrose, Scotland (Scotland), Abbot-Superior of the Benedictines of Vienna, and Grand-Vicar to the Archbishop of Prague.

In 1648, when the Swedes attacked Prague, he armed and led a band of ecclesiastics who did yeoman service in the defence of the city. His bravery on this occasion merited for him a collar of gold from the emperor. Soon after he became Bishop of Königratz, then Archbishop of Otranto, and at his death was Bishop of Vigevano.

His books are even more numerous than his titles and his varied achievements; for, according to Jean-Noël Paquot, he published no less than 262 works on grammar, poetry, oratory, mathematics, astronomy, architecture, physics, politics, canon law, logic, metaphysics, theology and asceticism. But he produced little that is of permanent value. He loved to defend novel theories, and in Theologia moralis ad prima atque clarissima principia reducta (Louvain, 1643) tried to solve theological problems by mathematical rules. His permissive moral opinions were criticised in Pascal's Provincial Letters and gained for him from Alphonsus Liguori the title of "Prince of the Laxists".

His mathematical work centred on combinatorics and he was one of the early writers on probability, republishing Huygens's work on dice with helpful explanations.