Alonso de Zamora is conspicuous among the historians who wrote in the early part of the eighteenth century: His _Historia de la provincia de San Antonino del nuevo reino de Granada del orden de Predicadores_ (Barcelona, 1701) is called a first volume, but there is no adequate evidence that a second volume was ever written. The author was born in Bogotá in 1660. He entered the Dominican order in his native city, studied at the University of St. Thomas, and subsequently undertook the work of a missionary. His fame as a theologian and as a writer and preacher doubtless contributed to his appointment, in 1690, as chronicler of his order. He was especially commissioned to write a general history of the ecclesiastical province, then under the direction of the provincial Antonio Choche. At this time Quesada’s _Compendio historial_ was still in existence, and Zamora used it as a source of information. In 1696 he completed his manuscript and sent it to Spain for publication. In view of the circumstances under which Zamora wrote and the nature of his subject, one might very well expect that his book would be a panegyric on the history and character of his order; and the book justifies such an expectation. The author magnified the influences and services of ecclesiastics in promoting civilization in America, which secular opinion had tended to belittle. In his style and the arrangement of his material he falls short of the excellence attained by Piedrahita.[153] [Sidenote: Oviedo y Baños] [Sidenote: _Conquista de Venezuela_] A higher standard was reached by José de Oviedo y Baños in his _Historia de la conquista y población de la provincia de Venezuela_. This author was born in Bogotá in 1674, but spent the greater part of his life in Venezuela, and died at Caracas, where his _Historia_ was written. The first volume was printed in Madrid in 1723. The complete work was issued in the _Biblioteca de los americanistas_ (Madrid, 1885), in two volumes, preceded by an introduction by Cesáreo Fernández Duro, in which he says that this narration was made with the impartiality and the high critical spirit of the true historian and forms a source from which those who study the history of Caracas are compelled to draw. Diego, a brother of José de Oviedo, was an oidor in Guatemala, then promoted to the audiencia of Mexico, and later was a member of the Council of the Indies. He wrote a commentary in two volumes on the _Recopilación castellana_. [Sidenote: The bishop of Caracas] [Sidenote: Vicente de Oviedo]