Description

Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza (1589-1669) is remembered today for the wrong reason: Pascal made his name a byword for casuistry in the Provincial Letters, and ‘escobarderie’ entered French as a word for moral evasion. He was also, in his own century, an immensely popular devotional writer. This Marian history — organised from the Immaculate Conception onward — belongs to that side of him: pious narrative built from scripture, apocrypha and accumulated legend, written for readers who wanted certainty rather than sources. Its reappearance in 1903 says as much as its composition: the Marian revival of the late nineteenth century sent publishers back to the old texts.