LLORENTE, JUAN ANTONIO, a Spanish historian, was b. at Rincon del Soto, near Calahorra, Mar. 30, 1760. He was educated by his maternal uncle, and received orders in 1779. He took his degree in canon law, and ',vas named successively advocate of the •council of Castile in 1781, vicar-general of Calahorra (1782), and finally secretary of the inquisition in 1789. Llorente was from an early period attached to the liberal party. .0n the fall of Jovellanos he was deprived of his employments, and remained in dis .grace till 1805, when he recovere,d favor as the rewaid of a literary service of a very .questionable character which he rendered to Godoy, by a historical essay against the -liberties of the Basque provinces. On the intrusion of the Napoleon dynasty Llorente became a zealous partisan of the French, and an active instrument of the French policy, to which he lent all his support at the press, as well as in office; and being obliged to fly, on the restoration of Ferdinand, he fixed his residence in Paris, where he published the work to which his celebrity is chiefly due—his Critical History of the Inguisztion. This work, which professes to be founded on authentic documents, although throwing much light on a subject previously inaccessible, has, in the judgment of impartial his torians, as Prescott, Itanke, and others, lost most of its value by its plainly partisan
.character, and by the exaggerations in which it abounds. See INquisrriorr. Written by Llorente in Spanish, it was translated into French, under the author's eye, by Alexis .Pellier (Par. 1817-18), and has been translated into most of the European languages. Llorente published, during his residence in Paris, several other works, some literary, as .his Critkal Observations on Gz7 Blab; some polemical, as his Portraits Poldigues des _Papes; and others, it is alleged, of a more questionable character in a moral point of ,view. His work on the popes led to his being compelled to quit Paris in 1822, and a .few days after he reached Madrid lie died, Feb. 5, 1823. He was also the author of Memoirs of the Spanish, R,evolution, 3 vols. 8vo, 1819, and an Esscry an a 1?eligious .Constitution, 1819. Most of Ins works were published both in Spanish and in French.