ARGENSOLA (ARJENSOLA), BARTOLOMÉ LEONARDO de. – Spanish poet, narrator, and historian, from a family originally Italian, the Leonardos of Ravenna; b. at Barbastro on 26 August 1562, d. at Saragossa on 14 February 1631. He studied at Huesca, Saragossa, and Salamanca and, having been ordained a priest in 1588, later became chaplain to Marianna d’Austria. After the empress’s death, he withdrew from the court, but was appointed Chief Chronicler of the Crown of Aragon.
Although his historical work is of considerable merit (Relación de las alteraciones populares en Zaragoza, año de 1591, left incomplete; Primera parte de las Anales de Aragón [1630], as a continuation of Zurita; Memorias de la gloriosa Santa Isabel, infanta de Aragón y reina de Portugal; Historia de la conquista de las Islas Molinas [1609]), he owes his greater fame to his poetic gift, which earned him the esteem of Lope and Calderón and won him, together with his brother Lupercio, the title of “Spanish Horace.” His work was principally religious and, on account of its sumptuous sonority, rhetorical dignity, and powerful, enthusiastic flight, seemed to Valbuena comparable to some of the finest poems of the English metaphysical school, especially those of Richard Crashaw. In this connection, his songs and sonnets on the death of Christ, St. Teresa, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Lawrence, St. Michael, and others are remembered and admired.