Contemporary with both Zurita and Morales, but far in advance of both of them as a writer of history, was the old statesman, Diego de Mendoza, whose fresh and vigorous account of the rebellion of the Moors in 1568 we have already considered, noticing it rather at the period when it was written than at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was first given to the world, and when Siguenza, Ribadeneyra, Mariana, Sandoval, and Herrera had already appeared, and determined the character which should be finally impressed on this department of Spanish literature. Of this group, the first two, who devoted themselves to ecclesiastical history, and entered into the religious discussions of their time, were, perhaps, originally the most prominent. Ribadeneyra, one of the early and efficient members of the Society of Jesuits, distinguished himself by his “History of the Schism in the English Church,” in the time of Henry the Eighth, and by his “Lives of the Saints.” Siguenza, who was a disciple of Saint Jerome, was no less faithful to the brotherhood by whom he was adopted and honored, as his life of their founder and his history of their Order abundantly prove. Both were men of uncommon gifts, and wrote with a manly and noble eloquence; the first with more richness and fervor, the last with a more simple dignity, but each with the earnest and trusting spirit of his peculiar faith.[204] [204] Pedro de Ribadeneyra, who died, aged 84, in 1611, and for whom a beautiful epitaph was composed by Mariana, wrote several works in honor of his company, and several ascetic works, besides his “Cisma de Inglaterra,” (Valencia, 1588,) and his “Flos Sanctorum,” Madrid, 1599-1601, 2 tom. folio. José de Siguenza, who was born in 1545, and died in 1606, as Prior of the Escurial,--whose construction he witnessed and described,--published his “Vida de San Gerónimo,” in Madrid, 1595, 4to, and his “Historia de la Orden de San Gerónimo,” in Madrid, 1600, 4to. He was persecuted by the Inquisition. Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition, Tom. II., 1817, p. 474.