RIVADENEIRA (RIBADENEIRA), PEDRO de. — Jesuit, writer, b. at Toledo on 1 Nov. 1526, d. at Madrid on 22 Sept. 1611.
At the age of thirteen he followed Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to Rome as a page, and there met St. Ignatius of Loyola, who protected him and then welcomed him among his sons on 18 Sept. 1540. He studied at the Universities of Paris, Louvain, and Padua; ordained a priest in 1553, he spent the period 1555–60 in the Netherlands, securing official recognition there for the Society of Jesus; from 1560 to 1572 he was in Italy, where he held various offices: provincial, commissary, visitor, and assistant. Upon the death of St. Francesco Borgia, he was removed from Rome, as a Spaniard, and went to Toledo, where he devoted himself to the composition of his works, most of them in classical Castilian.
R. was the first biographer of St. Ignatius. He began with Vita Ignatii Loisiae (Naples 1572), concerning whose history cf. P. Tacchi Venturi, Della prima edizione della vita di s. Ignazio (Naples 1901); he himself expanded and corrected it, translating it into Castilian (Madrid 1583), and it was subsequently reproduced and translated into various languages down to the present day. R. was also the first biographer of the Society, with Illustrium scriptorum religionis S. I. (Madrid 1602; 3rd posthumous ed., ibid. 1613). Other principal historical works include Vida del p. Diego Lainez (ibid. 1594) and that of p. Francisco de Borja, added to the Ignatian biography in the 1594 ed.; he completed these writings on the Society with Tratado con lo qual se da razón del instituto de la Compañía de Jesús (ibid. 1605); Tratado del modo de gobierno que nuestro p. Ignacio ha tenido (ibid. 1878). Historia eclesiástica del Scisma del Reyno de Inglaterra (ibid. 1588); new ed. edited by E. Rey. Historia de la Controviforma por el p. R. (ibid. 1945). Among his ascetical and moral works, the following deserve mention: Tratado de la tribulación (ibid. 1589); Tratado de
