Cypriano de Soarez

Cypriano Soarez y Herrera, S.J. (1524–1593) was a sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit who wrote De Arte Rhetorica, the first Jesuit rhetoric textbook.

Life Soarez was born in Ocaña in the Kingdom of Toledo. Soarez intended the De arte rhetorica as an introductory digest that would introduce students to the principles of rhetoric and oratory; though students had learned Latin grammar, he found that they were not guaranteed to have facility reading “Quintilian, Cicero, Virgil, Sallust, and the other authors." The De arte rhetorica went through more than 75 printings from 1460 to 1700. This included printings in Mexico City. The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum marked Soarez' De arte rhetorica the required rhetoric handbook in the second semester of the Humanities course for students at Jesuit colleges all over the world.