VILLADA GARCÍA, ZACARIAS. – Jesuit, historiographer, born at Gatón de Campos (diocese of Palencia) on 16 March 1879, killed by the Spanish Reds near Vicálvaro (Madrid) on 1 October 1936.
Having entered the Order in 1894 and completed his religious and literary formation, he was assigned to the editorial staff of Razón y Fe (1914–25), while teaching at the Centro de Estudios históricos Academy and publishing, in addition to several articles in the journal, a number of works intended to assist and guide students: Metodología y crítica histórica (Barcelona 1912); Come se aprende a trabajar científicamente. Leciones de la Crónica de Alfonso III (Madrid 1918); Catálogo de los codices y documentos de la catedral de León (ibid. 1919); Cisneros según sus íntimos (ibid. 1921); Paleografía española precedida de una introducción sobre la paleografía latina (ibid. 1923), etc. But his principal work is Historia eclesiástica de España, carried forward to 1085: I, I and II (ibid. 1929); II, I and II (ibid. 1932); III, I (ibid. 1936). The social-Communist Revolution of 1931 destroyed, together with his residence in Madrid, all his manuscripts, notes, and files for continuing the work, the fruit of an entire lifetime of labor. V. began his work anew and succeeded in publishing the second and third volumes; but when he was discovered by the Reds’ police in mid-September during the Revolution of 1936, he was initially released as an academician of the Centro histórico, but was soon condemned and killed for counterrevolutionary activity, on the charge of having attempted to reach Toledo, which had then been liberated by the national army. V. is also responsible for the discovery of the celebrated Codex of Roda, which had disappeared in the middle of the eighteenth century. Written on parchment and belonging to the third period of Visigothic script, it is important for knowledge of the origins of the Kingdom of Navarre.