SARMIENTO, MARTÍN. — Spanish Benedictine, b. at Villafranca del Bierzo on 6 March 1695, d. at Madrid on 7 December 1772.
He was the finest disciple of Fr. Feijóo and one of his most ardent supporters. A keen critic of the ills of high society and an oracle of the court of Filippo II, he maintained cultural relations with Linnaeus and Muratori and left, unpublished, about a hundred treatises on almost all the sciences (especially botany, physics, pedagogy, and sociology), as well as literary works. S. produced the first history of literature in Spain (Memorias para la historia de la poesía y poetas españoles, posthumous ed., Madrid 1775).
BIBL.: M. Gesta y Leceta. Índice de una colección manuscrita de obras de M. S., Madrid 1888; A. López Peláez, El gran Gallego, La Coruña 1893; id., Los escritos de S. y el siglo de Feijóo, there 1901; I. M. Chacón y Calva, El p. S. y el poema del Cid, in Rev. Fil. Esp., 21 (1934), p. 142 ff. Anscario Mundó y Marcet