Hortensio Felix Paravicino Y Arteaga - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

HORTENSIO FELIX PARAVICINO Y ARTEAGA (1580-1633), Spanish preacher and poet, was born at Madrid on the 12th of October 1580, was educated at the Jesuit college in Ocana, and on the 18th of April 1600 joined the Trinitarian order. A sermon pronounced before Philip III. at Salamanca in 1605 brought Paravicino into notice; he rose to high posts in his order, was entrusted with important foreign missions, became royal preacher in 1616, and on the death of Philip III. in 1621 delivered a famous funeral oration which was the subject of acute controversy. He died at Madrid on the 12th of December 1633. His Oraciones evangelicas (1638-1641) show that he was not without a vein of genuine eloquence, but he often degenerates into vapid declamation, and indulges in far-fetched tropes and metaphors. His Obras posthumas, divinas y humanas (1641) include his devout and secular poems, as well as a play entitled Gridonia; his verse, like his prose, exaggerates the characteristic defects of Gongorism.