Education

Pedro de Silva was the son of his homonymous father, marquis de Santa Cruz, and María Cayetana Sarmiento, marquise of Arcicóllar and countess of Pie de Concha.

As part of the ruling class, he studied at the Seminario de Nobles, an institution run by the Jesuits in Madrid.

Career

Initially pursuing a military career, he served in the engineers' corps and in the bodyguards corps of the Spanish army. In July 1772, as colonel of the African infantry regiment, he escorted the duke of Arcos to Naples, where the latter was sent to act on behalf of king Carlos III as godfather of the viceroy's newborn daughter. By 1773 Pedro de Silva was appointed brigadier, and after participating in the 1775 Algiers expedition, he achieved the rank of field marshal in 1776. He was also honored with the title of knight commander of Eljas in the order of Alcántara.

Shortly afterwards, following a religious calling Pedro de Silva quit the army to prepare himself for priesthood at the Orihuelo seminary and was ordained in 1778. He was first nominated chaplain of the Royal Monastery of La Encarnación in Madrid, then chaplain of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and he eventually assumed the honorary title of Patriarch of the West Indies towards the end of his life.

Pedro de Silva developed his early interests as a man of letter in parallel with his other achievements: in 1766, he was elected as an honorary academic at the Real Academia de la Nobles Artes in Valencia. Member of the Real Academia Española since 1771, he became its director in 1802, replacing his older brother José, marquis of Santa Cruz.

In 1800, Carlos IV appointed Pedro de Silva chief librarian of the Biblioteca Real, a position he actively held until 1807. In this capacity, he was able to increase the budget allocated to the library, reform its staff introducing properly trained humanist librarians and change the procedures of catalogation of the royal collection.