Juan Antonio Llorente, ORE (30 March 1756 in Rincón de Soto (La Rioja), Spain – 5 February 1823 in Madrid) was a Spanish historian.
Biography
Llorente was raised by an uncle after his parents died. He studied at the University of Zaragoza, and, having been ordained priest, became vicar-general to the bishop of Calahorra in 1782. In 1785, he became commissary of the Holy Office (Inquisition) at Logroño and, in 1789, its general secretary at Madrid.
left|thumb|The prefectures of 1810.
In the crisis of 1808, Llorente identified himself with the Bonaparte regime and was engaged for a few years in superintending the execution of the decree for the suppression of the monastic orders, in examining the archives of the Spanish Inquisition and in arguing for the submission of the Spanish church to the Bonaparte monarch.
His 1810 project for a division of Spain in prefectures and subprefectures (under the French revolutionary inspiration) was never brought into practice because of the war. On the return of King Ferdinand VII to Spain in 1814, he retreated to France, where he published his great work, Historia critica de la inquisicion de España (Paris, 1817–1818). His works "were the first fully documented accounts of the Inquisition to have seen the light of day in over three hundred years of the tribunal's existence."