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My objective has been to examine, selectively, auctoritates which Villena, who was working during the early days of the emergence of ‘vernacular humanism’ in Castile, used in his body of work, and to identify their possible sources. My approach assigns all authoritites used by Villena to seven key groups (e.g., classical, biblical) and eight categories of possible source works (e.g., florilegia, encyclopaedias), for which I determine relationships. In what I consider the key component, I review the Latin extracts used by Villena in Consolación, Lepra and Aojamiento in an extensive exercise in which I identify more than 300 possible primary references. I find that approximately one third of these references can be attributed to Vincent de Beauvais’s Specula and his briefer works. This figure can be extended to more than 400 examples when secondary possible sources are taken into account. Other significant possible sources I identify include Auctoritates Aristotelis, popular in the Middle Ages, Compendium moralium notabilium (using the 1505 printed version Epytoma sapientie), Pietro Alighieri’s Commentum, and the Verona florilegium (of 1329). I have also made an assessment of the extent to which Auctoritates Aristotelis might be a possible source throughout Villena’s body of work, not solely for Aristotle, but also for Boethius and Seneca. In a third evaluation, I assess the possible sources of what I identify as a ‘double authority’ in Glosas 35 (Plato/Boethius and Vegetius). As a result, I have formed the opinion that a conjectural notebook, similar in scope to the Count of Haro’s Vademecum, a collection of excerpts distilled from several other collections of excerpts, including, for example, Auctoritates Aristotelis, could have been compiled for Villena’s use, obviating his need to access more than 20 source works or necessitate his dependence on complete texts of the works to which he makes reference in his writings. Overall, I judge that my work is significant in the study of Villena insofar as it establishes a substantially enhanced understanding of Villena’s use of authorities and his possible sources that is not dependent on the work of Cotarelo.

The dissertation is an edition of Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo’s 'Suma de la política' with an introductory essay that focuses on the main political and ethical ideas addressed in the treatise, the texts and sources used, and the general implications that the text and its author have in the context of Spanish vernacular humanism. The introductory essay underscores that Arévalo’s writing in Spanish is much more novel and interesting than literary critics have often recognized and points out that Arévalo’s attitudes toward Renaissance humanism are more open than several acclaimed scholars have been willing to admit, or at least to recognize. This edition intends to supplant Mario Penna’s (1959), as his text has many errors and a limited critical apparatus. Moreover, I have added commentary on the treatise, located many of the numerous texts and authors mentioned by Arévalo in his text, and offered a complete critical apparatus that includes not only Penna, but also the first copy to appear in print of Arévalo’s work by Juan Beneyto Pérez (1943) and a recent French translation—based on Penna’s text—by Beátrice Leroy (2015). Both the edition and the introductory essay intend to provide a reliable scholarly edition, as well as new perspectives on one of Castile’s most important, yet not fully appreciated, political and ecclesiastical figures of the fifteenth century. Moreover, the edition and introduction will offer new insights and views on the impact of the recent revival of Classical thought through Renaissance humanism in the reconfiguration and reorganization of government in Castile, especially through the lens of the monarchy’s attempts to rein in the nobles and (re)construct society, politics, and literature around the king himself.

In 1438, Milanese humanist Pier Candido Decembrio finished the vernacular translation of Quintus Curtius’s Historiae Alexandre Magni, made at the request of his patron, Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan, and accompanied it with a work of his own, the Comparatione di Cesare et d’Alexandro. Decembrio’s Istoria and Comparatione would go on to become widespread, undergoing multiple textual and linguistic transformations as they circulated far beyond the Duke’s court. Prominent among these transformations are the multiple fifteenth-century Iberian translations of the Istoria and the Comparatione: a translation into Castilian of the Comparatione by Martín de Ávila, made for renowned writer and bibliophile Íñigo López de Mendoza; an anonymous and widely copied Castilian version of the Istoria with the Comparatione, eventually printed in 1496, which was in turn translated into Portuguese; a different Castilian version by Aragonese nobleman Alfonso de Liñán; and a Catalan translation printed in 1481. These versions have yet to receive the sustained critical attention they deserve. In this article, we will argue that the Iberian translations of Decembrio’s Alexandrine works are critical to our understanding of the cultural and political networks forged or strengthened through vernacular humanism—and thus, of vernacular humanism itself. We will examine not only the manuscripts and incunabula containing the Iberian translations of the Istoria and the Comparatione, but also those codices in the original Lombard that were linked to Iberian owners or copied in the Iberian Peninsula. The relationships and patterns of circulation revealed by these manuscripts will allow us to demonstrate the concurrent reception of the vernacular Quintus Curtius in Milan, Naples, and Iberia, as well as to establish the ways in which Iberian readers manipulated Decembrio’s texts. As we will contend, it was the existence of a shared cultural and political project, rooted in monarchic ideals and expressed through vernacular humanism, that linked the Milanese, Neapolitan, and Iberian courts, allowing for the triangular and simultaneous reception of the vernacular Quintus Curtius.

Estudio sobre el origen del humanismo vernáculo castellano en el ámbito del humanismo medieval. Se analizan sus características, contrastándolas con las del humanismo latino clasicista del siglo XV. Se ilustra por qué es un humanismo total, que, por influjo de la filosofía aristotélica, incluye las letras y las ciencias, e integrador de las tres culturas presentes en la sociedad peninsular del siglo XIII, las cuales usaron el vernáculo como lengua común., A study of the origins of Castilian vernacular humanism in the context of medieval humanism. Its characteristics are analyzed and contrasted with the Latin classicist humanism of the XVth Century. The study illus-trates why vernacular humanism, due to the influence of the Aristotelian philosophy, is comprehensive, integrating both the letters and the sciences, and it is inclusive of all three cultures present in the Spanish society of the XIIIth Century that used the vernacular as their common language.

La composición del compendio cuatrocentista de la Ética nicomáquea ha sido atribuida tanto a Alfonso de Cartagena como a Nuño de Guzmán. La atribución al obispo de Burgos se halla reflejada en el incipit de los MSS/Cambridge University add. 8275, Madrid BNE 1204 y Vaticano BAV Ottob. lat. 2054, mientras que la autoría de Nuño de Guzmán se inferiría a partir de su introducción al MSS/Oxford Bodleian Library Span.d.1. Con el fin de descartar ambas atribuciones se analizará la introducción del compendio y su procedencia aragonesa. Asimismo, para evaluar el alcance de las intervenciones del bibliófilo cordobés, se proporcionará un listado de las correcciones e interpolaciones integradas en su castellanización, así como una relación de sus omisiones., The composition of the fifteenth-century epitome of Nicomachean Ethics has been illegitimately attributed to Alfonso de Cartagena and to Nuño de Guzmán. The attribution to the Bishop of Burgos is reflected in the incipit of the MSS/Cambridge University add. 8275, Madrid BNE 1204 and Vatican BAV Ottob. lat. 2054; whereas the authorship of Nuño de Guzmán has been deduced from his introduction to the MSS/Oxford, Bodleian Library Span.d.1. In order to reject both attributions, we will analyze the introduction of the epitome and claim that its origin is Aragonese. Finally, in order to assess the quality of Guzman’s interventions, an inventory of the corrections and interpolations and a list of omissions will be provided.