Luis de Leon: The Names of Christ

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The Crux of Prayer

Luis de Leon: The Names of Christ
translated and introduced by Manuel Duran and William Kluback preface by J. Ferrater Mora

As Christ is a source or rather is an ocean which holds in itself all that is sweet and meaningful that belongs to man, in the same way the study of his person, the revelation of the treasure, is the most meaningful and dearest of all knowledge. Luis de Leon (1527-1591)

The Names of Christ is a masterpiece of the Golden Age of Spain. Written in the style of a pastoral novel, the work is a meditation on the philosophical and theological significance of the names of Christ. Based on a careful examination of ten names given Christ in the Scriptures, the book reflects elements of Augustinian, Jewish, and Islamic spirituality that were part of sixteenth-century Spain.

Luis de Leon was born in 1527 in Belmonte, a small village in the Castile region of Spain. An Augustinian friar, a brilliant professor, an artful poet, he was a true Renaissance man whose vision of the fullness of Christ sustained him in the face of persecution at the hands of the Inquisition and infused his writing with a sensitivity that has made The Names of Christ a treasure of Spanish literature and a classic of Catholic mysticism.