Born in 1592, at
Logroño in
Castile, he joined the
Society of Jesus on 17 September 1606, when he was 14 years old. He studied philosophy and theology under
Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza and taught philosophy (1620–1623) and theology (1624) in
Valladolid and theology in
Salamanca (1624–1625). On 12 November 1623, he took the
fourth vow in the Society of Jesus. In 1625 he was sent to the
University of Prague, where he remained for the rest of his life. Arriaga was solemnly declared a doctor of theology in Prague in January 1626, and shortly thereafter began teaching. Arriaga was instrumental in establishing Jesuit control over the Bohemian educational system. He served as professor of theology until 1637, when he became prefect of studies in the theology faculty. He held that position until 1642, when he became chancellor of the
Clementinum, remaining in this post until 1654. In 1654 he was again appointed prefect of studies and retained this position until his death. Arriaga gained a wide reputation, not only in Spain, but all over Europe. So great was his intellectual authority and his fame as a teacher that he was the subject of a popular quip: "Pragam videre, Arriagam audire"—"To see Prague, to hear Arriaga." The Jesuit province of Bohemia three times made him a deputy to
Rome to attend the
General Congregation of the Jesuit Order. He was highly esteemed by
Urban VIII,
Innocent X, and the Emperor
Ferdinand III. He died in Prague on June 17, 1667. Arriaga was a good friend and colleague of the Belgian
mathematician Grégoire de Saint-Vincent. When, after the
Battle of Breitenfeld, the
Saxons pillaged Prague and set fire to many parts of the city, it was Arriaga who saved
Saint-Vincent's manuscripts from destruction. Arriaga occupies an important place in the history of
modern philosophy. Among the attempts made in the course of the seventeenth century to revive and reinvigorate medieval
scholasticism, the of Arriaga, scholastic alike in contents, in arrangement, and in form, is one of the most skilful. Arriaga had studied with attention the recent writings of the anti-Aristotelians; and, giving effect to many of the opinions advanced by them, he endeavoured by modifications and concessions to adapt to modern use the logic and metaphysics, but still more the physical hypotheses, of his scholastic masters. In this attempt at compromise he went further than any other scholastic philosopher of the seventeenth century. In his own day, as a Jesuit teaching the doctrines then approved by his order, he was indeed safe from any serious charge of
heterodoxy; but his position as an innovator laid him open to many attacks from the uncompromising adherents of the Aristotelian school. He was openly denounced as a
sceptic, and accused of wilfully suppressing or weakening the answers to plausible objections against the system which he professed to teach. Opposers of Aristotelianism, on the other hand, like the
Platonist philosopher
Jan Marek Marci, seized upon Arriaga's concessions as proving the unsoundness of the foundations upon which the Aristotelian philosophy rests. == Philosophy ==