| PROSE AT KING FELIPE II'S AGE |
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| FICTION |
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 Granada's War | 2.c.- Civil Wars of Granada (1595 and 1619) by Gines Perez de Hita (Murcia, 1544-1619?) -whose actual title is History of Zegries and Abencerrajes Factions, Moor Chevaliers of Granada (...) until King Don Fernando V Conquered It- was composed in two parts. First one is a romanesque story adapted to general title of the work: during 15th century, Granada Kingdom supported violence from Abencerrajes family, attacked by traitors Zegries. Muça, son of Mulahazen King, tries to conciliate both factions, who enjoyed loves and weddings often ruled by Christian Gentlemen. When Zegries denounce Sultanne because of her supposed infidelity, Abencerrajes will serve King Fernando, who beats King Chico and takes Granada. Narration is ornated with poems and moorish ballads. |  Civil Wars of Granada |
 Jungle of Adventures |
A Second Part dealt with Alpujarras riots.
2.d.- Other works will show again Positive Moorish side: History of Ozmín and Daraja -short love tale about two young people professing a different religion, that Mateo Aleman included in his Guzman de Alfarache in 1599-. These tales would be remembered in european Romanticism in 19th century. 3.- Greek Roman goes on with Jungle of Adventures (1565) by Jeronimo de Contreras. Its protagonist is pilgrim Luzman, and his adventure shows stoic resignation to Fortune. |
 After Dinner and Relief for Walkers |
4.- Joan de Timoneda (Valence, 1518/20-1583) wrote Good Advice Keepertales (1564), but his masterwork is Patranuelo (1567), a collection of twenty-two patranas or tales, close to those of italian novels, since many of them are developped in this country. Others show their folk condition. Because of its central place, we point out to the eleventh one: a long tale of Apolonius, King of Tiro. A minor work would be After Dinner and Relief for Walkers (1569). |
 Patranuelo |
| IDEOLOGICAL PROSE |
 Spiritual Letters |
5.- Ideological prose, was marked by Counter-reform and Trento's Council (1545-1563). It watched over religious moral and orthodoxy in texts. 5.1.- Juan de Avila (1500-1569), accused by Inquisition between 1531 and 1533, is the author of more than 250 Spiritual Letters in five parts, published after 1578. They are devoted to persons in different social states whose names disappeared in printed editions: these persons take advices for their lifes. |
 Manuscript by Juan de Avila |
 Book of Prayer and Meditation |
5.2.- His friend, Luis de Sarria, a dominican born in Granada, was best known as Fray Luis de Granada (1504-1588). He wrote short latin works and his Book of Prayer and Meditation (1545-54), whose third part was Guide for Sinners (Lisboa, 1556 and 1557). It is a short moral and religious treatise, remade in 1567, because of Inquisition who saw in it traces of Erasmism. The first book deals with suffering in Hell and the second one "about vices and its remedies" and "about exercise and use of virtues". |
 Introduction to Symbolism of Faith |
 Introduction to Symbolism of Faith | His masterwork, Introduction to Symbolism of Faith (1583) praises divine Creation: it appears like an Encyclopaedia on natural elements, vegetables and animals. Its second part deals with the minor world called Man, in four parts. The fifth one was published in 1585. |  Introduction to Symbolism of Faith |
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5.3.- Other spiritual writers from this age were Diego de Estella (1524-1578) and Malon de Chaide (1530-1589). 5.4.- Fray Cristobal de los Angeles (Avila, 1536-1609) composed Triumphs of God's Love (1590) and ten Dialogs on God's Kingdom Conquest (Madrid, 1595) between a M[aster] and a D[isciple], about soul, virtues for getting God's Kingdom, Christ Death, vices against Him and Contemplation that makes possible Seclution in order to get it. 6.- San Juan de la Cruz (Juan de Yepes: 1542-1591), was a carmelitan and author of Commentaries to his poems, simple because of his single erudition close to biblical books. |
 Dialogs on God's Kingdom Conquest |
 Autograph Manuscript of The Moradas |
7.- Carmelitan and converso, Teresa de Ahumada is best known as Santa Teresa de Jesus (Avila, 1515-1582). She writes, obeying her confessor, a Book of Her Life, finished in 1562 and corrected in 1565. Following St. Augustine's Confessions (354-430) and Spiritual Alphabet by Francisco de Osuna, Teresa composes with simplicity, fourty chapters with her life and the phases of her spiritual career. She criticizes hypocrisy of many nuns and compares soul to a garden that needs being irrigate: seclution, quietness, dream, union and ecstasy are the steps for this Mystical way. Foundation of San Jose de Avila Monastery and some visions of the nun complete this autobiography. |
 Works (1588) |
The same didactic purpose is seen in Way to Perfection, kept in two autograph different versions of 1564 and 1569. Its 44 chapters rule contemplative life, prayer and interpretation of Pater Noster. Similar subjects form the three parts of Book of Foundations, begun in 1573. It includes a list of monasteries founded by the author, from San Jose del Carmen. Developping the analogy of a spiritual castle, she composed in 1577, the seven sections of The Moradas, that deal with condition of soul, perseverance, dryness of life, prayer for secluding, union, signs from God to souls and spiritual wedding. Her prose is completed with a collection of Letters and minor works. In 1588 Fray Luis de Leon wrote an authorization and a prolog to her Works. |
 Works (1588) |
 On Christ's Names | 8.- Many years after, the also converso and prisoner of Inquisition, Fray Luis de Leon (Cuenca, 1527-1591) would write On Christ's Names (1583) in 1572. It consists of a dialog in wich Marcello exposes his friends Juliano and Sabino, his anotations on Christ's names in a farm close to Tormes river. A first edition, in two volumes, dealt with names under a general point of view and with ten Christ's names. Each part was closed by a poem. After the name Husband -the last in the second part- began The Perfect Married Woman, an exposition on the last chapter of Proverbs. A second edition in 1585 included a Third Book, omiting the name Lamb, that appeared in a posthumous edition from 1595. Today we read 14 names in this work explained through a ciceronian dialog, in an exquisite romance language -Fray Luis apologized it against latin- that included some naturalist scenes and points close to socratic dialog. Our author follows biblical sources that make his prose close to his verse as we can see in name Prince of Peace, a possible glose to his Ode to Salinas. |  Fray Luis' Autograph |
 Two Treatises by Cipriano de Valera |
9.- The name of protestant Casiodoro de Reina (ca.1520-1594) should be stood out since he translated into spanish the Bear-Bible (1569), so called because of one of its engravings. Cipriano de Valera (Seville, 1532-1602) was his fellow in exile. He corrected this work (ed.1602) and wrote different short treatises. Amberes Bible (1570) appeared a year later than Bear's one. It was edited by Arias Montano. 10.- Fadrique Furio Ceriol (Valence, 1527-1592) published in Amberes The Council and Prince's Councelors (1559), devoted to King Felipe II. Close to erasmism, this partisan of castilian Bible asks absolute power for the king. He stood in Europe the most of his life, far from surveillance around him. |
 Amberes Bible |
| MISCELLANEOUS |
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11.- Following the Silva with a Varied Lecture many works on proverbs, jokes or short stories are published now.
11.a.- The most well-known work by Juan de Mal Lara (Seville, 1524-1571), was Vulgar Philosophy (1568), a collection of glosed proverbs, as those created by Hernan Nuñezat the beginning of this century. |
 Satirical Conversations |
11.b.- Garden of Curious Flowers (1570) by Antonio de Torquemada (Leon, ¿1507?-1569) consists of six treatises written as dialogs. They deal with monstrous and supernatural phaenomena; rivers, lakes, Earthly Garden of Eden and Christianity; devils, withches and phantoms; fates and Fortune. Two last chapters deal with Northern lands: geography, prodigies and animals. The author names classical sources as Aristote, Plinius, Boethius or Solinus, and moderns, as Pero Mexia and, specially, Saxus Gramaticus and Olaus Magnus, author of a Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1562) Years before, its author published Wit or Play of Marro, of Point, or Draughts... (1547), Satirical Conversations (1553), a book of cavalry: Olivante de Laura (1564) and Handbook for Writers (1574). |
 Garden of Curious Flowers |
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11.c.- The work by Melchor de Santa Cruz (Toledo, ca.1505-1585), Spanish Flowerbed of Proverbs and Sentences, witly and wisely told by some spanish (1574) is a collection of jokes and short stories in eleven parts: on clergymen, nobility, witty answers, judges, professionals, artists and lovers, funny stories, cripple and injured, tricks, absurd proverbs, women and invalids. 12.- Joaquin Romero de Cepeda (Extremadura) tells in Rosian de Castilla (Lisboa, 1586), the birth and breeding of this knight by philosopher Peristrato. After many alegorical adventures in wich he overcomes sensuality, a hermit takes him. Wearing the skin of a snake obliges him to take shelter in Osera monastery and become a farmer. He defeats his enemy Belarina and, fighting against Tower Castle, he meets Calinoria Princess. He will become the King of New Kingdom, but, disillusioned, comes back to Calinoria and promises a third part of his adventures. This work, that began like a gnomic book, shows the actuality of cavalry books. 13.- The Dialog of Servants, from the last third of the century, was composed by Diego de Hermosilla. In four conversations it criticizes landlords and ideas of nobility and hidalgy and shows rules for breeding of princes, nobles and women. |
 Spanish Flowerbed of Proverbs |
 Minerva |
14.- Philology met his most brilliant server in Francisco Sanchez de las Brozas (Extremadura, 1551-1623), who worked from 1562 in a great latin grammar: Minerva (1587). He is today seen as a logician or rationalist, but he never forgot the use of literary authorities. 15.- Quod nihil scitur (1581) is the title of the philosophical work by the portuguese doctor Francisco Sanchez (1550-1623), who exposes there his humanist scepticism and his antiaristotelian empirism. |
 Quod nihil scitur (Lyon, 1581) |
 General Chronicle of Spain | 16.- Ambrosio de Morales (Cordoba, 1513-1591), a disciple of Melchor Cano, projected his linguistic career in his Speech on Castilian Language and corrected the work by his uncle, Fernan Perez de Oliva. As historian, he went on with the General Chronicle of Spain (1574-86) by Florian Ocampo and wrote the Antiquities of the Spanish Cities (1575), forerunning the Historia (1592) by P. Mariana, in its latin version. |  De Rege et Regis Institutione |
 Spanish Galateo | 17.- Gonzalo Argote de Molina (Sevilla, 1548-1596) composed a Speech on Castilian Poetry (1575), included in his edition of Lucanor Count. This Speech is a very short history of spanish poetry close to the Proemial Letter by Marquis de Santillana. Argote is the author of Nobility of the Andalucia (Sevilla, 1588). |  Nobility of the Andalucia |
 Examination of Witts |
18.- Juan Huarte de San Juan (Navarre, ca.1530-1589) published a medical and philosophical treatise: the Examination of Wits for Sciences (1575), in wich he deals with different human builds, classified by their phisical and, specially, spiritual features. He had problems with Inquisition during the 1580s. The fifteen chapters of his book show in wich way Nature distributes each disposition in human body and soul: memory, knowledge or imagination, following Plato, Aristote or Galenus. He describes childlike intellectual faculties from their birth and those of men in general influenced by empedoclean four humors. Scholars discuss about the influence of this work on Don Quixote character. |  Examination of Wits |
 Treatise on Mathematics |
19.- A version of the work by Giovanni della Casa is Spanish Galateo (Madrid, 1582) by the director of El Escorial Library: Lucas Gracian Dantisco (Valladolid, 1543-1587).
20.- Juan Perez de Moya (S.Esteban del Puerto, 1513-1596) was a mathematician and author of several treatises on Natural Philosophy. He published Secret Philosophy (1585), a treatise on classical mythology divided in seven books: on God's origin and the five senses of their fables; histories on masculine Gods declared and moralized; on Godess with a historical and alegorical sense; heroes and semigods with a declaration; monsters, chimeras and fables to pursue virtue; ovidian transformations and mythes about death. |
 Natural Philosophy |
 Secret Philosophy |
Moya shows his sources: Genealogia Deorum by Boccaccio, Natale Conti, Ovide and el Tostado, among others.
21.- A disciple of Pedro Simon Abril was Oliva Sabuco de Nantes (Albacete, 1562), who wrote a New Philosophy of Human Nature (1587), that included a Conversation About Oneself's Knowledge. There, three shepherds, Antonio, Veronio and Rodonio, discuss about a microcosmos called Man, related to animals, following Plinius, Solinus and Plato. It also includes a short Treatise on World's Composition, on atmospheric phaenomena and on sky; a conversation about the things that could improve this world and its Republics, on social improvments; two on Medicine and one on advices. Under Oliva's name we could find her father's authorship: Miguel Sabuco. |
 New Philosophy of Human Nature |
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22.- An exposition on classical poetics can be read in Lopez Pinciano: Old Poetic Philosophy (1596). He took ideas from Aristote and Horatius and was well-known in his age. 11d.- The popularity of books on proverbs and curiosities can be seen in the Miscellaneous by Luis Zapata, prior to 1596, and in the work by Juan Rufo (Cordoba, 1547-after 1620), who followed Melchor de Santa Cruz: The Six Hundred Proverbs (Toledo, 1596), a collection with more than six hundred amusing situations and many poems. 23.- Jesuit Pedro de Rivadeneyra (1527-1611) wrote a Treatise on Tribulation (1589), following Seneca, and a life of Ignacio de Loyola (1594). |
 Life of Ignacio de Loyola |
 Moralized Emblems |
24.- Literature on emblems was created by italian Andrea Alciato (1492-1550). In Spain Hernando de Soto (ca.1568-after 1622) wrote many, alegorically exposed in one of the four medieval senses: it can be seen in his Moralized Emblems (1599).
25.- A good work to close this century can be found in sevillian Mateo Aleman's (1547-1615): Guzman de Alfarache (Madrid, 1599). Its title introduced the world picaro applied to its protagonist: it was the climax for picaresque roman, wich would be developped in 17th century. |
 Pirate edition of Guzman de Alfarache (Zaragoza, 1599) |
D.Miguel Pérez Rosado.
Ph.D.in Philology.