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Azor, or Azorius John

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a Spanish theologian, born in 1533 at Zamora, in Spain, died in 1603. Having entered the order of the Jesuits, he became professor of theology, first at Alcala, and subsequently in the Jesuit College at Rome. He published his lectures on moral theology under the title Institutiones Morales. Some of the opinions advanced in this work produced a considerable sensation. He, for instance, finds it "probable" that it is allowable for a man who is threatened by another with a box on the ear to kill the aggressor. The Dominicans violently attacked this proposition, but Pope Clement VIII authorized a new edition of the work. Subsequently Pascal resumed the attack in his Lettres Provinciales, in which the "probabilism," or the doctrine of probable opinions, of which Azorius is one of the authors, is severely censured. Notwithstanding these attacks, the work of Azorius had a large circulation in Italy, in Spain, and even in France, and was recommended by Bossuet to his priests. The Institutiones have frequently been published at Venice, Cologne, Rome, Lyons, and other places. — Hoefer, Biographie Generale, 3, 935.