Palencia, Alonso De

Palencia, Alonso De a celebrated Spanish author, deserves a place here for his labors in practical religions literature and his edition of Josephus. Palencia was born in 1423; at the age of seventeen became page to the bishop of Burgos, and, after' travelling in Italy and on the Continent, was made royal historiographer. He died near the close! of his century. He wrote El Espejo de la Cruz (1485), and several other works of like character, still in MS., besides the great historical works on which his fame rests. His version of Josephus was finished in 1492. See Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, 1, 136; English Cyclop. s.v., and the literature there given.