Marquis of Santillana

Casa natal del marquis de Santillana en Carrión de los Condes (Palencia, Castilla y León).

Gun Shield of the House of Mendoza in the home of the Marquis of Santillana in Carrión de los Condes (Palencia, Castilla y León)

Íñigo López de Mendoza y de la Vega better known as the marquis of Santillana, (Carrión de los Condes, August 19, 1398-Guadalajara, March 25 from 1458) was the 1st Marquis of Santillana, 1st Count of Real de Manzanares, 11th Lord of Mendoza, 3rd Lord of Hita and 3rd Lord of Buitrago, who was also a Spanish soldier and poet of the Pre-Renaissance, uncle of the also poet Gómez Manrique and He is also related to the poets Jorge Manrique and, already in the XVI century, to Garcilaso de la Vega.

Biography

A key character in Castilian society and literature during the reign of Juan II of Castile, he came from a noble family who had always been inclined to letters: his grandfather, Pedro González de Mendoza, and his father, the Admiral of Castilla Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, were also poets.

His children also continued this literary and cultural patronage work, especially the great Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza. His mother was the very rich lady of the Casa de la Vega, Leonor Lasso de la Vega, who was first married to Juan Téllez de Castilla, II Lord of Aguilar de Campoo and son of the infante Tello de Castilla and on this maternal side He was related to great literary figures of his time, such as Foreign Minister Pedro López de Ayala, Fernán Pérez de Guzmán or Gómez Manrique.

His father died when he was five years old (1404), which meant that his mother, Leonor, had to act with great skill to preserve her paternal inheritance (señoríos de Hita and Buitrago del Lozoya, etc.). Part of her childhood was spent at the home of Mencía de Cisneros, her grandmother. Later, the Archdeacon Gutierre, who would later become Archbishop of Toledo, formed with his uncle, and at the age of thirteen or fourteen he married Catalina Suárez de Figueroa, with which his patrimony increased greatly, transforming him into one of the nobles. most powerful of his time.

Shortly he went to Aragon, together with Fernando de Antequera's entourage, and there he was a cupbearer for the new King Alfonso V of Aragon, where he undoubtedly learned about the work of poets in Provençal and Catalan that he mentions in his Proem. Literally he was trained in the Aragonese court, accessing the classics of humanism (Virgil, Dante Alighieri...) and troubadour poetry alongside Enrique de Villena; In Valencia he established a relationship with Jordi de Sant Jordi, cupbearer, and Ausiàs March, royal falconer. In Aragon he also made close friends with the Infantes of Aragon, in whose party he would militate until 1429. His eldest son, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y Suárez de Figueroa, future Duke of Infantado, was born there in September 1417.

He returned to Castile at the time of the oath of King Juan II of Castile and participated in the power struggles between Enrique de Aragón and Álvaro de Luna, on the former's side. He was with him in the Tordesillas coup and in the siege of the castle of La Puebla de Montalbán, in December 1420.

After the prison of Enrique de Trastámara, he returned to his possessions in Hita and Guadalajara. In 1428 his sixth son was born in Guadalajara, who would become Cardinal Mendoza.

As a politician, from 1422 he tried to interfere as little as possible in state affairs and maintain his fidelity to King John II throughout his life. This led him to become enemies first with the infantes of Aragon in 1429, by not supporting the invasion of Castile by the King of Navarra in the summer of that year (battle of the Araviana river on November 11 of the same year); and later, from 1431, he fell out with the royal private Álvaro de Luna, although he would not return to the side of the Aragonesistas . In 1437 he was sent to Córdoba and Jaén, seizing Huelma and Bexia from the Moors. This is how Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo describes these adventures in his Batallas y quincuagenas:

I will say in sum how this lord is heard as a prudent captain; for he has done taking that villa [Huelma] For combat, the Moors were taken to the fortress, Íñigo López fought that castle. And since he was wanted to give the Moors, being in such a talk, they told him that the king of Granada came with all his power to help that villa. Íñigo López wanted to dig and go out into the field, and the diggers who with him were contradicting him and advising something else, and he told them that it did not seem to him to heal the treatment being in the field the enemies. And so determined and willing to go out, he knew that it was not true the coming of the king of Granada and the fortress was given.

Once again, he had friction with Álvaro de Luna due to the numerous disputes with which he was involved, even going so far as to have to defend with arms his own lands invaded by the constable and Juan II. Seriously wounded in the battle of Torote (1441), he withdrew to his territories in Guadalajara, confederating with those of de la Cerda and passing with them to a neutral position.

In the first battle of Olmedo (1445) he was in the ranks of the royal army, where the Coplas de la panadera paint him like this:

With almost foreign fount, / armed as French, / the noble new marquis / his courageous vow would give, / and so reluctant would he rejoice / with the opposites without supplication, / that alive flames of fire / paired to put them (249-256).

As a reward for his help, the king granted him the title of Marquis of Santillana (this is what the poem refers to as "the noble new Marquis") and the county of Real de Manzanares. Already the previous year, 1444, he had received royal confirmation of the privilege in his favor of the rights that the Crown had in Asturias de Santillana.

Íñigo clearly contributed to the fall of Álvaro de Luna, captured and executed in the public square of Valladolid (1453) and against him he wrote his Doctrinal de privados; from then on he begins to withdraw from active politics. His last major appearance occurs in the campaign against the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1455, already under the reign of Enrique IV of Castile. That same year his wife, Catalina Suárez de Figueroa, died and the marquis secluded himself in his palace in Guadalajara to spend the last years of his life in peace and study. On May 8, 1455, he made a will, while in Guadalajara, and endowed in 1456 several monasteries founded by him previously, and died in his palace in Caracas on March 25, 1458.

A man of great culture, he managed to put together an important library, which later became the famous Osuna library, and surrounded himself with brilliant humanists who kept him up to date on Italian literary novelties, such as Juan de Mena or his secretary and servant, Diego de Burgos, who composed a highly erudite poem upon his death, the Triunfo del Marqués, where his interest in the technique and gadgets of war stands out, which he remarkably modernized and still perfected:

He was the first to bring to this king many ornaments and tunnels, many new war apparatuses: and he was content to bring them out, but he added and moved in them and invented many other things for himself... So in the fechos of weapons none in our times is seen that so much attained nin that in the things that they are convinent to them, touch in these parts so great desires of glory

According to his contemporaries, his character was that of an imperturbable stoic who "neither big things upset him nor did he like to understand small things" (Hernando del Pulgar), something that Juan de Mena confirms when he wrote to him: & # 34; You are the one who, despite all sorrow and pleasure / makes a happy and safe gesture ». But the aforementioned Pulgar was the first biographer of him, and he painted his profile like this:

It was omme of medium stature, well provided in the composure of his mienbros, and fermost in the fations of his face, of noble Spanish and very old lineage. He was a sharp and discreet omme, and so great a coraçon that neither the great things alter him nor in the little ones he would understand. In the continence of his person and in the raçonar of his fabla must be omme generous and magnanimous. It fabs very well, and they never heard him say a word that would not be noticed, anything to dotrina quier para plazer. He was courteous and honoring of all who came to him, especially the ommes of science. [...] In his life he touched two remarkable exercises: one, in military discipline, another in the study of science [...] He had a great copy of books, go to the studio, especially of moral philosophy, and of pilgrim and ancient things. He always had doctors and teachers with whom he talks in the sciences and readings he studies. He also made other treaties in meters and in prose very dotrinable to provoke virtues, and to restrain vices: and in these things he spent the most of the time of his withdrawal. He had great fame and clear renown in many kingdoms outside Spain, but he reputs much more the estimation among the wise than the fame among the many.

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, in his Batallas y quincuagenas, insists more on his facet as a great and courageous warrior:

He began to be reputed by a very young man, because of the military trances that with Moors and Christian ovo, although in the battle of Araviana with the Aragonians, and in another that they say of Torote, he lost both days; but from one and the other he was honored and wounded, and not dismissed, but esteemed in those and many other battles, by courageous captain.

As for his literary work, it is the result of the crossroads of two tendencies, a predominantly cultured one and a less represented popular one. Among the direct assumptions of his work is classical Greco-Roman culture (Julius Caesar, Sallust, Livio, Seneca, Homer, Virgil, Aristotle...), Christian (the Bible) and contemporary Catalan literature (Ausiàs March, & "man of quite high spirit", in his own words, or Jordi de Sant Jordi), Galician, Provençal, Castilian and, above all, French and Italian (Guillaume de Lorris, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca) and he He is well aware of his unsuccessful attempt to insert the hendecasyllable and the sonnet into the Castilian metrical and strophic tradition through his 42 sonnets dated in the Italic mode, in which he would have more fortune already in the XVI his relative Garcilaso de la Vega. Well-known is his judgment on popular Castilian poetry "with which the low and servile people rejoice"; but his enthusiasm for the educated tradition does not mean that this last influence, although minority and slave of the other, is included in his work through collections of proverbs such as the Proverbs that old women say after the fire, in which assumes the condensed popular wisdom as assimilable to his lofty Stoic philosophical ideals, or in his Serranillas, in which the refined cultured tradition of the Provencal pastorela joins and unites the popular castiza of the serrana.

The first outline of the history of literature or literary criticism written by a Castilian author belongs to his learned work, the Prohemio e carta al constable don Pedro de Portugal, decisive for the understanding of his work literary and that is at the same time a poetics of the pre-Renaissance, a prescriptive and a history of European literature of that time. As poetic he defines literature as something sublime and useful elaborated by a rhetorical beauty in which the lyric stands out above all prose:

As it is true, this is a celestial zeal, a divine affection, an insatiable bait of the spirit, which, as matter seeks form, and imperfect perfection, never this science of poetry and gay science sought or found themselves in the gentile spirits, clear ingenuities and high spirits. And what is poetry, which in our vulgar 'gaya science' we call, but a fingering of useful things, covered or veiled with very beautiful coverage, composed, distinguished and cast by a certain tale, weight and measure? And certainly, very virtuous lord, they will be those who think they want or say that only such things consist and store vain and lactive things; that as the fruitful orchards abound and give good fruits for all the time of the year, so well born men and docts, whom these above sciences are infused, use of those and such exercise according to the ages. And if the sciences are desirable, as well as Tulio wants, which one of them is more lending, nobler and more worthy of man, or which more extensive to all species of humanity? The darkness and locks of them fall, who opens them, who enlightens them, who shows them and makes patents but the sweet and beautiful eloquence speaks, be it subway, be it prose? The more the excellence and prerogative of the rhymes and meters than of the prose release, but only those who care about the unjust endeavors to acquire proud honors, it is manifest. And so, making the way of the stoic, which with great diligence inquired of the origin and causes of things, I strive to say the metro to be before in time, and of greater perfection and more authority than release prose.

Other literary considerations appear in the prologues or prohemians that he put before his various works, the Glosses on Proverbs, a commentary of his own construction site; the Lamentation in prophecy of the second destruction of Spain, whose subject is taken from the General Chronicle. Some of his letters have also reached us, for example to Alonso de Cartagena About the trade of chivalry , or to his son about the usefulness of translations, etc. Among his cited Sonnets dated in the Italic mode stand out "Clara by name, by work and virtue", "Site of love with great artillery" and "En el prospero tiempo de las serenas" and especially a group of doctrinal works made up of the Proverbs of glorious doctrine in broken foot verses and the Dialogue of Bías against Fortuna, which constitutes a defense of stoicism deeply imbued with from his Seneca readings addressed to his cousin the Count of Alba, arrested by the Constable, whom he encourages to bear misfortune patiently. Of a political and moral nature are the Doctrinal de privados , a courageous proclamation dedicated to his enemy Álvaro de Luna, and Other verses of the said Marquis on the same case .

Other works are allegorical and inspired by Italian literature and courtly subtleties of the philosophy of love: the Denfunssión of Don Enrique de Villena, his friend and teacher, with grandiose packaging, with intervention of Nature and the poet, provided with small and surprising details of great poetic vigour; Coronation of Mossén Jorde , in which he praises the Catalan poet Jordi de Sant Jordi; The Queen's Plant; Margarida; Love quarrel ("The great night was passing / and the moon was hiding"); Vision, one of his masterpieces; the Inferno de los enamorados, inspired by the sixth canto of Inferno by Dante Alighieri; the Trionfete de amor, which adapts and reworks one of the Triumphs of Francesco Petrarca; the Comedieta de Ponça , an epic in dodecasyllabic royal couplets about the naval battle of Ponza that is the longest of his allegorical poems and the Canonización del maestro Vicente Ferrer .

Of more popular inspiration are the pieces gathered under the label Canciones y direres and his classic Serranillas. Also noteworthy is the Song that the Marquis of Santillana made to his gaze, praising his beauty .

Marriage and offspring

Íñigo López de Mendoza y de la Vega, when he was very young, married Catalina Suárez de Figueroa in Salamanca in 1412, daughter of the late Lorenzo I Suárez de Figueroa, Master of the Order of Santiago, and his second wife María de Orozco, lady of Escamilla and Santa Olaya. They had the following ten children:

• Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y Suárez de Figueroa, I duque del Infantado.
• Pedro Lasso de Mendoza, lord of the Lozoya valley, married to Juana Carrillo and Sandoval.
• Iñigo López de Mendoza y Figueroa (1418-1458), I conde de Tendilla.
• Mencía de Mendoza y Figueroa, esposa de Pedro Fernández de Velasco, Second count of Haro. Buried by her husband at the Condestable Chapel in Burgos Cathedral.
• Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza (m. 1481), I conde de Coruña and I vizconde de Torija.
• Juan Hurtado de Mendoza y Figueroa, I señor de Colmenar, El Cardoso y El Vado y II señor de Fresno de Torote.
• Pedro González de Mendoza (1428-1495), cardinal.
• María de Mendoza, wife of Per Afán de Ribera and Portocarrero, I count of the Molares. Sepultura en la Cartuja de Sevilla.
• Leonor de la Vega and Mendoza, wife of Gastón de la Cerda and Sarmiento, IV count of Medinaceli.
• Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza, Mr. Tamajón and advance of Cazorla.

Work

There are several editions of the complete works of don Íñigo López de Mendoza; that of Manuel Durán (Madrid: Castalia, 1975 and 1980), in two volumes (based on the old one by José Amador de los Ríos), and that of Miguel Ángel Pérez Priego (Madrid: Alhambra, 1983). The latest and most refined are the various ones composed by Ángel Gómez Moreno and Maxim P. A. M. Kerkhof (Obras completas, Barcelona: Planeta, 1988; Madrid: Biblioteca Castro, 2002 and Madrid: Castalia, 2003).

The marquis himself meditated extensively on his work and that of the authors of his time, as evidenced by the prologue he put to his works, the Proem and letter to the Constable Don Pedro of Portugal. In general, all of his production can be inscribed within the allegorical-Dantean School of the Pre-Renaissance of the XV century; he was undoubtedly the most fervent admirer that Dante Alighieri had in Spain, and he also assimilated what he could of the humanism of Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio.

He is especially remembered for his serranillas, little poems of minor art that deal with the encounter between a gentleman and a peasant woman, in imitation of the French pastorelas, but inspired by his own native popular tradition. He was the first author to write sonnets in Spanish, a stanza of Italian origin still poorly known in Castile: the 42 sonnets made in the Italic mode , although it seems that Juan de Villalpando also composed four sonnets in dodecasyllables at that time.. His masterpiece within the allegorical-Dantean style is the Comedieta de Ponza , where he describes the homonymous naval battle in royal couplets. He also wrote allegorical and doctrinal poems ( dezires ) and lyric songs, and compiled one of the first paremiological collections in Spanish, the Proverbs that old women say after the fire .

From the study that Lapesa made of his work (1957), it can be distinguished:

• Poetry
  • Less Lyrics, of which the Serranillas and Songs and lyric sayings.
  • Sonnets
  • Narrative deires, among which the Triunphete of Love, The hell of those in love and the Comedieta de Ponça.
  • Moral, political and religious poetry, of which the best known work is possibly the Bías versus Fortune.
• Prosa
  • Moral and political writings, such as Lamentaçión de Spaña.
  • Literary writings: Prophecy or Proemio e carta al condestable don Pedro de Portugal
  • Exegetic writings: Globes to the Proverbs.
  • Compilations: Refranes that say the old ones after the fire.

Outstanding work: Hell of lovers

Copies The hell of those in love in a manuscript of the centuryXV

• Brief argument

The play's plot places the protagonist in a cruel desolate setting. Fortuna, one of the protagonists takes the main character to a mountain where he is robbed. Hippolytus comes to her aid, like a very beautiful court gentleman whose person symbolizes chastity. The latter becomes the person who will guide the poet and as "defender", when the protagonist tells him that he will not stop being at the lady's service, they begin a journey that leads them to contemplate hell and couples. love affairs of antiquity that are found in it.

This bleak image is the work's ethics or moral idea, which warns lovers of the situation they may be exposed to if they distance themselves from this love that unites them.

• Analysis of the work

The work Los infiernos del amor, the name with which it is found in medieval sources, is found within the songbook poetry of the Marquis of Santillana, it appears in the Cancionero de Palacio (SA7), where the most prolific period of the author meets.

From among the genres that the author cultivated, he chose the narrative sayings to tell this story that he titled Hell of lovers. This is a topic already known in literature by several great literary icons such as Virgil of Greco-Roman antiquity or Dante, narrating feats that follow the same pattern.

It occupies an important place in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, which turns out to be an allegorical poem featuring hell, purgatory, and paradise. Hell is the part where negative feelings surface and are expressed as such; people cry, shout or wail. The topic of hell is linked to love, due to the allegorical tradition, it is the model that later love hells will follow.

This work is the point of union in which the wide tradition on the visions of the world and the trips through it come together, which reach the most remote points of it.

Ancestors