Fernando de Rojas
Fernando de Rojas (La Puebla de Montalbán, Toledo, c. 1465 - Talavera de la Reina, Toledo, 1541) was a Spanish writer, although on some occasions he has been described as a playwright due to the dialogue nature of the only work that has been attributed to him, La Celestina; However, it lacks some essential elements of the dramatic genre, which has caused numerous discussions about which literary genre it belongs to. Although Fernando de Rojas has gone down in the history of literature as the author of La Celestina , for his contemporaries he was fundamentally a highly valued jurist in Talavera de la Reina (in the Province of Toledo).
Biography
The university degree of Fernando de Rojas, his contribution to the work and place of birth are offered by the acrostic of the verses that precede the literary text:
The BACHILLER FERNANDO OF ROJAS CALIST AND MELIBEA AND NACIED IN THE MONTALBAN PEOPLE.
But if La Celestina entails so many problems that it is an inexhaustible source of even conflicting interpretations, the family origin and youth of Fernando de Rojas is not exempt from controversies either given the absence of univocal data in some of the preserved documents. On the one hand, a current of opinion—with the American professor Stephen Gilman as the main source—offers a Jewish image of Fernando de Rojas. According to Gilman, he would have been born in Toledo in 1476 into a family of Jewish converts and probably crypto-Jews, who reappeared in later inquisitorial processes for keeping Judaism secret from the Inquisition; His father would have been Hernando de Rojas, condemned to the stake in 1488; Rojas would have helped members of his family, the so-called marranos or crypto-Jews (anusim in rabbinic literature), affected by the persecutions of the Inquisition, and even he himself would have been under suspicion, as Gilman infers from the inquisitorial process initiated against his father-in-law Álvaro of Montalban. On the other hand, the scholars align themselves - in the case of UCM professor Nicasio Salvador Miguel - who judge this interpretation of such documents to be biased, provide arguments refuting it, defend that he is the son of the hidalgo Garci González Ponce de Rojas and Catalina de Rojas and not They doubt the birth of Fernando de Rojas in La Puebla de Montalbán. They show Rojas as a hidalgo as well as a fourth-generation convert, free from inquisitorial persecution and integrated into citizen life and Christian orthodoxy, a condition without which he would not have been able to achieve the dignity of Mayor or occupy the public positions he held in a town dependent on the lordship of the Archbishopric of Toledo, such as Talavera de la Reina.
There is no news about his childhood and adolescence. Perhaps, as professors Gilman, Russell and Salvador Miguel suggest, there is some echo of their experiences in auto XII of the Celestina, when Sempronio and Pármeno allude to the church of San Miguel (in La Puebla de Montalbán there was one dedicated to this archangel and Garci González Ponce de Rojas and Catalina de Rojas were buried there, to "Mollejas the gardener" (because a garden in La Puebla called & # 34; Huerta de Mollejas & # 34; is owned by the family) and to the friars of Guadalupe (with whom he was able to attend primary and secondary education and to whom he will grant a mandate in his will of the).
Although there are no documents proving that he studied Law at the University of Salamanca, it is deduced that this was the case from the preliminary paratexts of the work: in "The author to his friend" He identifies himself as a "jurist", in the acrostic verses (stanza 7) he says that "he saw the present work in Salamanca" and that it "finished" "on vacation", and in the acrostic it is called "bachelor" (approximately equivalent today to graduate). It is doubtful, although it is reasonable to assume, that Rojas took the Bachelor of Arts prior to the Bachelor of Laws (which was mandatory in other universities but not in Salamanca, which in those years only required it for doctors and theologians). As the Bachelor of Laws lasted six years and in the acrostic from the Toledo edition of 1500 he appears as a bachelor, Rojas would have been about 24 or 25 years old when he finished his studies and a little less when he wrote, totally or partially (a very debated by critics), the Celestina in its 16-car version titled Comedy of Calisto and Melibea.
It is worth wondering if once he finished his studies around 1499-1500 he would remain for some time in Salamanca or establish his residence in La Puebla de Montalbán, where his father had possessions and assets. What is documented is that he left his hometown to settle in Talavera de la Reina in 1508 because the Lord of La Puebla, like all the other noblemen of the town, imposed on him the obligation to pay taxes (the noblemen were exempt of such obligation). During these years he possibly dealt with the conversion of the Comedy of Calisto and Melibea in 16 cars into Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea i> in 21 records (regarding the authorship of this new version and the year in which it could be produced, there is also no unanimity of opinion). From this eight-year period three editions of the Comedia de Calisto y Melibea (Toledo 1500, Sevilla 1501 and Burgos 1499-1502?) and one of the < i>Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea (Zaragoza 1507), plus its translation into Italian (Rome 1506), although specialists postulate that their number must have been greater. The six editions with the date of 1502 in their rhymed colophon are actually later and came out of the presses when Fernando de Rojas had already left La Puebla de Montalbán and lived in Talavera de la Reina. None of them have his name on the cover.
Of his life as a professional jurist in Talavera de la Reina there is documentary evidence—quite and concrete—from the Municipal Archive of Talavera and the personal archive of Don Fernando del Valle Lersundi, a direct descendant of Fernando de Rojas: minutes, resolutions, sentences, receipts, will, inventory of assets... It is known that in 1508 it was already established in this town. In 1508, 1511, 1523 and 1538 he served as Mayor (whose function was to administer justice and issue sentences in civil lawsuits), which was the most outstanding privilege or honor of this episcopal town; In 1511 he spent 17 days in Toledo dealing with the Archbishop of Toledo, at the time Cardinal Cisneros, about the conflicts between Talavera and its Land with the Chancery of Valladolid; In 1517 he acted as a defense witness for Diego de Oropesa in his inquisitorial trial; in 1525-1527, 1535 and 1539-1540 he held the position of Lawyer of the City Council; In 1521-1523 he brought disputes over jurisdiction and territorial boundaries. He also served the Holy Brotherhood and was a lawyer and notary to eminent families.
Around 1512 he married Leonor Álvarez de Montalbán, daughter of the converso accused of Judaism Álvaro de Montalbán who in 1525 unsuccessfully asked the court of the Inquisition that his son-in-law, who "composed Melibea", be his defense attorney; Between 1513 and 1523 he was the father of four sons and three daughters. From 1509 until his death he belonged to the Brotherhood of the Conception of the Mother of God. He enjoyed great social prestige and a very solid economy as evidenced in his will and inventory of assets, which records a capital close to 400,000 maravedíes, a very respectable sum for the time, of which almost a third corresponded to census contracts. on houses and land (similar to current mortgage loans without the debtor losing his rights over the encumbered property and a very common business at the time throughout Europe). Judging by the books in his library, he liked to play chess and read.
However, he lived so far removed from literary circles that there is no evidence that he again left signs of his literary talent, nor are there any indications of commercial relations with printers or booksellers, nor any writer or commentator on the Celestina from the 16th and 17th centuries he relates it to her, despite the fact that until the day of his death some thirty-five editions had come out of the presses and until the middle of the century XVII almost ninety, plus translations into Italian, German, French, English, Dutch and Latin, all anonymous (except one made in Madrid in 1632), without the name of the Bachelor on the cover or on the title page. On the other hand, the father-in-law and the witnesses that the descendants of the Bachelor provide in courts of justice when they claim rights, do mention Rojas and do so expressly with the epithet "who composed Melibea", "that he composed the book of Celestina", "who composed Celestina the Old" or "who composed Celestina".
He died in 1541 in Talavera de la Reina, between April 3 and 8, possibly on the 5th, having made a will on the 3rd, feeling 'sick in body and healthy in memory, and being like I am in my natural sense and understanding. He would be about 65 or 66 years old. In his will he expresses his Christian orthodoxy and his post-mortem wishes: his burial in the church of the monastery of the Mother of God in this town of Talavera. # 3. 4; with a Franciscan habit as a shroud, celebration of numerous masses for his soul, donation of 2000 maravedíes "to the brotherhood of the Concepción de la Madre de Dios, where I am a brother [...], for poor and shameful people&# 34;, and other pious commands. He orders the return to his wife of the 80,000 maravedíes of her marriage dowry along with the delivery of another 20,000. He names heirs of his 'properties, actions, and rights'. to the six children he had left at that time. And he bequeaths to his first-born son, also a jurist Francisco de Rojas, "all the books of rights and laws that I have." and his wife, Leonor Álvarez, "all the romance books that I have that are not about laws or rights", among which were: Gospels and Epistles, Flos sanctorum, Altarpiece of the life of Christ, Journey to the Holy Land, Triumphs of Petrarch, Chronicle of King Don Rodrigo, Fables of Ysopo, General Songbook, the Three Hundred of Juan de Mena, Epistles of Seneca, Book of Chess, Book of Primaleón, Book of Platir, Book of Amadís, Book of Callisto, Book of Esplandián, Propaladia,etc. up to 49 volumes.
In May 1936, the scholar Luis de Careaga arrived in Talavera with the intention of searching for the remains of Fernando de Rojas in the church of the Mother of God monastery. He found them in a burial in the center of the presbytery at the foot of the altar, and, later, in the presence of authorities and specialists in anthropology and legal medicine who had identified the body, he placed the bones in a copper box that he deposited in the same place. In 1968, when the demolition of the already dismantled ecclesiastical building was imminent, the remains of Fernando de Rojas were transferred to the Talavera City Council, where they remained until 1980 when they were placed in an open niche in the wall of the cloister of the Collegiate Church of Santa María that once bordered the house where Rojas died. Talavera donated some bone remains to La Puebla de Montalbán that rest inside the statue erected specifically (located in the Plaza de la Glorieta) for this purpose and in homage to his illustrious son.
From his biography one can gather traits of his personality; but there is a lack of reliable testimony about its physical image, except for the judgment of the forensic anthropologists who examined its remains when they were exhumed in May 1936. Careaga notes that they estimated the length of the skeleton at one meter seventy-three centimeters and its teeth in perfect condition. The Valencian edition of 1518 has a woodcut next to the acrostic verses that represents the Bachelor with the attire of judicial authority: a suit, cap and baton. The Valencia edition of 1529 replaced this woodcut of the jurist and mature Rojas with another evocative of a young and student Rojas. The original source of the imaginary portrait of Fernando de Rojas that illustrates this Wikipedia page and that served as inspiration for the sculptor Juan Cantero (2016) to make the bronze statue that commemorates him in the Plaza Mayor (also called Plaza del Pan) in Talavera de la Reina, next to the Town Hall.
Fernando de Rojas as a novel character
Fernando García Calderón recreates the figure of Fernando de Rojas in his novel The Most Beautiful Jewess (Algaida, 2006), and assumes that to create the character of Melibea he was inspired by a woman named Susana de Your are. For his part, Luis García Jambrina wrote several novels with detective plots in which Rojas is the protagonist (The stone manuscript, Alfaguara, 2008; The snow manuscript, Alfaguara, 2010; The manuscript of fire, Espasa, 2018, The manuscript of air, Espasa, 2019; and The manuscript of Niebla, Espasa, 2022).