José de la Canal

Who was José de la Canal?

José de la Canal was a Spanish ecclesiastical historian.

He was born to poor parents, in Ucieda, a village in Cantabria, Spain. Under the care of an uncle, an Augustinian friar, he studied in the Dominican and Augustinian convents of Burgos; at Burgos, in 1785, he was formally received into the Augustinian Order. Subsequently he became professor of philosophy, first at the convent of his order at Salamanca, and then at Burgos.

Returning from the latter place to Salamanca he was librarian of the university, from 1789 to 1800. After spending four years in Toledo, he came to Madrid, where he taught philosophy in the College of San Isidro. On account of certain articles in a paper of liberal tendencies called El Universal, he was, on the return to Spain of King Ferdinand VII, confined for one year in a convent near Ávila. At the end of this period he returned to Madrid and with his brother Augustinian, Fr. Antolin Merino, was appointed by the King to continue the monumental España Sagrada, begun in 1743 by the Augustinians Henrique Flórez and Manuel Risco.