Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza

Philosophical work

Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza entered the Jesuit order in 1595 in Salamanca. He was a teacher of theology and philosophy in Valladolid and he occupied a chair at the University of Salamanca.

Hurtado belonged to the third generation of Jesuit scholars and initiated the shift from more realist positions of Francisco Suárez and Gabriel Vásquez towards conceptualism, characteristic of that generation. His conceptualist tendencies were further developed by his pupils Rodrigo de Arriaga and Francisco Oviedo. His variously titled volume on scholastic philosophy (last Universa Philosophia) is the earliest example of the genre of Baroque cursus typical of 17th- and 18th-century scholastic philosophy and theology.