Luis de León: The Names of Christ

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 León 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.