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Biography
Cypriano de Soarez, S.J. (1524–1593) was a sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit who wrote De Arte Rhetorica, the first Jesuit rhetoric textbook. Concerned that young students in Jesuit colleges were not ready for major rhetorical texts such as Aristotle's Rhetoric, Cicero's De Oratore, and Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria, Soarez wrote De Arte Rhetorica as digest of their work as an introduction for students still learning Latin.
Soarez wrote the first draft of the work around 1562; it was revised by fellow Jesuit Peter John Perpinian in about 1565.
The De Arte Rhetorica (1568) was organized in Aristotelian form but borrowed its content heavily from Cicero. Soarez intended the De Arte 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."