Francisco Ribera facts for kids

Francisco Ribera (1537–1591) was a Spanish Jesuit priest and a smart thinker about religion. He is known for his ideas about future events in the Christian faith, especially about the end of the world.

Life of Francisco Ribera

Francisco Ribera was born in a town called Villacastín in Spain. He joined the Society of Jesus, a group of Catholic priests and brothers, in 1570. Later, he taught at the University of Salamanca, which is a very old and famous university.

Ribera also worked as a confessor for Teresa of Avila. This means he was a spiritual guide and listened to her confessions. Teresa of Avila was a famous Spanish saint and writer. Francisco Ribera died in 1591 when he was 54 years old. He passed away just one year after his important book, In Sacrum Beati Ioannis Apostoli, & Evangelistiae Apocalypsin Commentarij, was published.

Understanding Futurism

In Christianity, some people study the Book of Revelation. This book talks about future events. Futurism is a way of understanding this book. It means that the events described in the Book of Revelation are mostly about things that will happen in the future, right before the Second Coming of Jesus.

Francisco Ribera believed in a form of futurism. He thought that only the first few parts of the Book of Revelation were about ancient Rome. The rest of the book, he believed, was about a real time period of three and a half years at the very end of time.

Other important thinkers like Robert Bellarmine and Thomas Malvenda also followed Ribera's ideas. However, not everyone agreed with him. For example, Thomas Brightman, a Protestant writer from England in the early 1600s, disagreed with Ribera's views. Brightman had different ideas about how to understand the Book of Revelation.

See also

In Spanish: Francisco de Ribera para niños