biography
| name: |
Sarmiento, Martín
|
| |
known as Fray Martín, originally Pedro José García Balboa
|
pronunciation:
[sah(r)mientoh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1695–1772)
|
| biography:
| Benedictine scholar and private librarian, born in Villafranca del Bierzo, León, NW Spain. He devoted his life from 1750 entirely to writing and to assisting Fray Benito Feijóo with writing his books. Sarmiento's library consisted of about 8000 volumes, and his greatest bibliographical achievement was the discovery of the two Rome cancioneros. By far the greater part of his manuscripts remain unpublished, including the useful ‘Onomástico etimológico de la lengua gallega’. Índice de una colección manuscrita de ... Sarmiento, seguido de varias noticias biblio-biográficas del mismo (1888) was compiled by M Gesta y Leceta from the 23 volumes in the Cabinete de Historia Natural in Madrid. The more important of his two published works is the Memoria para la historia de la poesía y poetas españoles (1775), which is the first and only volume of the Obras póstumas planned. The only book Sarmiento published in his lifetime was the Demostración crítico-apologética en defensa del ‘Theatro crítico universal’ (2 vols, 1732), an immediate reply to S J Mañer's attack on Feijóo entitled Anti-Theatro Crítico (1729–31). Sarmiento had assisted Feijóo in many points of detail and felt personally aggrieved by Mañer's often petty complaints against what was generally recognized as a work of major significance. |
|
|
