ASTRAIN, ANTONIO. - Jesuit and historiographer, b. at Undiano (Navarre) on 17 Nov. 1857, d. at Loyola on 4 Jan. 1928. Endowed with excellent qualities as a writer and historian, he first devoted himself to directing the Mensajero del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús and the important publication Monumenta Historica S. I. From 1895 he applied himself exclusively to writing the history of his Order in the European and overseas provinces of the Spanish language, travelling for this purpose through libraries and archives in various parts of the world.
The work was finally published in 7 vols.: Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en la Asistencia de España (Madrid 1902-1925). Rich in documentation, largely unpublished, composed according to the best scholarly criteria and with full mastery of the subject, it constitutes a source of primary value also for the history of the Church in Spanish lands. A. also wrote a Vida breve de s. Ignacio (Madrid 1921) and was a regular contributor to various periodicals (Razón y Fe, Gregorianum, etc.) and to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
BIRL.: A. Pérez Goyena, El r. p. A. A., in Razón y Fe, 2 (1928), pp. 170-75. Celestino Testore