CHINCHILLA, ALONSO. - Benedictine theologian and ascetical writer, b. at Valladolid in 1574: there he became a monk in the monastery of S. Benedetto in 1591; from there he went to S. Martino in Madrid; d. at Valladolid in 1631.
A man of sincere piety and great learning, as a theologian he is known for the considerable part he played, together with his better-known confrère Marzilla, in defending frequent Communion, on which subject he composed several pamphlets, still useful today. The most important of these, Memorial de algunos efectos que el Sacramento de la Eucaristía causa en el alma (1611), is perhaps a new edition of that published in 1608: Consideración de la Comunión. The editions of this work, and of his other writings, published several times, were soon exhausted and were already unobtainable in the seventeenth century.