Alva Y Astorga, Pedro De

Alva y Astorga, Pedro De a Spanish Franciscan, who assumed the habit of that order in Peru, and flourished in the seventeenth century. Upon his return to Spain, he spent his time chiefly in traveling about to obtain all the information in his power which might tend to support the privileges of his order. He published at Madrid in 1651 an absurd work, similar in design to the notorious Conformities of Albizzi SEE ALBIZZI: it is entitled Naturoe Prodigiumi et Gratioe Portentum, and contains 4000 pretended conformities between our Lord and St. Francis. Some years after he published another extraordinary work, "Funiculi nodi indissolubiles de conceptu mentis et conceptu ventris … . . ab Alexandro Magno VII, Pont. Max. solvendi aut scindendi" (Brussels, 1661, 8vo). It is a collection of all the opinions and disputes on the subject of the conception of the Blessed Virgin. He published on these and other matters an immense mass of writings, which amount to forty folio volumes. He died in the Low Countries in 1667. — Richard and Giraud, who cite Antonio, Bibl. Script. Hisp.; Landon, Eccl. Dict. s.v.