JUAN FRANCISCO

MASDEU (1744-1817)  , Spanish historian, was born at Palermo on the 4th of October 1744 . He joined the Company of Jesus on the 19th of December 1759, and became professor in the Jesuit seminaries at Ferrara and Ascoli . He visited Spain in 1799, was exiled, and returned in 1815, dying at Valencia on the lath of April 1817 . His Storia critica di Spagnae della cultura spagnuola in ogni genere (2 vols., 1781—1784) was finally expanded into the Historia critica de Espana y de la cultura espanola (1783—1805), which, though it consists of twenty volumes, was left unfinished; had it been continued on the same scale, the work would have consisted of fifty volumes . Masdeu wrote in a critical spirit and with a regard for accuracy rare in his time; but he is more concerned with small details than with the philosophy of history . Still, his narrative is lucid, and later researches have not yet rendered his work obsolete .