GARCIA VILLADA, ZACARIAS

Historian; b. Gatón de Campos (Valladolid), March 16, 1879; shot and killed by Leftist militia in Vicálvaro, near Madrid, Oct. 1, 1936. As a Jesuit after 1894, he studied at Rome, Innsbruck, and Vienna. He taught historical method (Methodología, 1912) in Barcelona, continued Lowe-Hartel's Bibliotheca patrum latinorum Hispaniensis (1913), edited the Chronicle of Alfonso III (1918), and published a catalogue of the codices and documents of the cathedral of Léon (1919) and a textbook of Spanish paleography (1925). His small volumes on Cisneros (1920), Covadonga (1922), St. isidore the farmer (1922), and the Battle of Pavia (1925), have more value than their popular format indicates. His main work, Historia eclesiástica de España, 3 v. in 5, (1929–36), represents his many years of study. It was interrupted in May 1931, when material he had been collecting since 1902, much not available in Spain, was destroyed in the burning of the Jesuit Instituto Católico in Madrid, where he resided. He published lectures on the life of Spanish medieval writers (1926), and (upon his entry into the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid in 1935) on the organization of the Church in Spain from 711 to 1085. In El destino de España en la historia universal (1936), he rejects atheistic materialism in favor of divine providence, showing that when Spain was great, she traditionally associated herself with Catholicism.

Bibliography: Razón y Fe 8–103 (1904–33), passim.

[e. p. colbert]