author
Benito Jerónimo Feijoo
1676–1764
A Benedictine monk, essayist, and one of the clearest early voices of the Spanish Enlightenment, he wrote to challenge superstition and make new ideas accessible to ordinary readers. His lively essays helped bring scientific curiosity and critical thinking into 18th-century Spanish culture.
4 Audiobooks
Essays, or discourses, vol. 1 (of 4) : Selected from the works of Feyjoo, and translated from the Spanish
by Benito Jerónimo Feijoo
Essays, or discourses, vol. 2 (of 4) : Selected from the works of Feyjoo, and translated from the Spanish
by Benito Jerónimo Feijoo
About the author
Born in Galicia in 1676, Benito Jerónimo Feijoo entered the Benedictine order while still young and later taught philosophy and theology at the University of Oviedo. He became known not only as a learned churchman but as an unusually public-minded writer who wanted scholarship to speak plainly to a wider audience.
Feijoo is best remembered for Teatro crítico universal and Cartas eruditas y curiosas, wide-ranging collections of essays on science, medicine, language, education, popular belief, and everyday errors. Again and again, he urged readers to test inherited claims against reason and observation, which made him a central figure in the spread of Enlightenment thinking in Spain.
What still makes him interesting is the tone of his work: curious, skeptical, and often surprisingly modern in its desire to replace rumor and habit with evidence. He died in Oviedo in 1764, leaving behind a body of writing that helped shape Spanish intellectual life far beyond the monastery and university.