[193] The celebrated scholar, Francisco Sánchez, usually called El Brocense from his native place, was born at Las Brozas (Extremadura) in 1523, became professor of Greek and Rhetoric at Salamanca, and died in 1601. He edited Garcilaso (Salamanca, 1581), Juan de Mena (Salamanca, 1582), Horace (Salamanca, 1591), Virgil (Salamanca, 1591), Politian's Silvae (Salamanca, 1596), Ovid (Salamanca, 1598), Persius (Salamanca, 1599). To these should be added the Paradoxa (Antwerp, 1582), and a posthumous commentary on Epictetus (Pamplona, 1612). A Practical Grammar of the Latin Tongue, based on Sánchez, was published in London as recently as 1729. El Brocense was prosecuted by the Inquisition in 1584, and again in 1588. The latter suit was still dragging on when Sánchez died. See the Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España (Madrid, 1842, etc.), vol. ii., pp. 5-170.
[194] The lawyer Francisco de la Cueva y Silva was born at Medina del Campo about 1550. His verses appear in Pedro Espinosa's Flores de poetas ilustres de España; he wrote a prefatory poem for Escobar Cabeza de Vaca's Luzero de la tierra sancta, and is said to be the author of a play entitled El bello Adonis. Lope de Vega's Mal Casada is dedicated to Cueva whose high professional reputation may be inferred from the closing lines of a well-known sonnet by Quevedo:—
Todas las leyes, con discurso fuerte
Venció; y ansí parece cosa nueva,
Que le vinciese, siendo ley, la muerte.
Cueva is mentioned, together with Berrío (see note 58), in the Dorotea (Act. iv. sc. ii.): "Don Francisco de la Cueva, y Berrío, jurisconsultos gravísimos, de quien pudiéramos decir lo que de Dino y Alciato, interpretes consultísimos de las leyes y poetas dulcísimos, escribieron comedias que se representaron con general aplauso."
[195] The famous mystic writer and poet Luis Ponce de León was born at Belmonte (Cuenca) in 1527, joined the Augustinian Order in 1544, and was appointed professor of theology at Salamanca in 1561. He became involved in an academic squabble and was absurdly suspected of conspiring with the professors of Hebrew, Martín Martínez de Cantalapiedra and Juan Grajal, to interpret the Scriptures in a rabbinical sense. A plot seems to have been organized against him by Bartolomé de Medina, and, perhaps, by León de Castro, the professor of Greek at Salamanca. Luis de León was likewise accused of having translated the Song of Songs in the vernacular, and it has hitherto been thought that this charge told most heavily against him in the eyes of the Holy Office. It now appears that the really damaging accusation in the indictment referred to the supposed heterodoxy of Fray Luis's views as to the authority of the Vulgate: see a learned series of chapters entitled Fray Luis de León; estudio biográfico y crítico published by the Rev. Father Francisco Blanco García (himself an Augustinian monk) in La Ciudad de Dios (from January 20, 1897 onwards, at somewhat irregular intervals). Luis de León was arrested in March 1572 and imprisoned till December 1576, when he was discharged as innocent. In 1579 he was appointed to the chair of Biblical History at Salamanca, his chief competitor being Fray Domingo de Guzmán, son of the great poet Garcilaso de la Vega. In 1582 Fray Luis was once more prosecuted before the Inquisition because of his supposed heterodoxy concerning the question de auxiliis: see the Segundo proceso instruído por la Inquisición de Valladolid contra Fray Luis de León (Madrid, 1896), annotated by the Rev. Father Francisco Blanco García. In 1591 Fray Luis was elected Provincial of the Augustinian Order: he died ten days later. While in jail he wrote what is, perhaps, the noblest mystic work in the Spanish language, Los Nombres de Cristo, the first two books of which were published in 1583—the complete work (including a third book) being issued in 1585. In 1583 also appeared his Perfecta casada. Fray Luis, in a fortunate hour for mankind, edited the writings of Santa Teresa, rescuing from the rash tamperings of blunderers works which he instantly recognized as masterpieces. His verses were published by Quevedo in 1631: they at once gave Fray Luis rank as one of the great Spanish poets, though he himself seems to have looked upon them as mere trifles.
[196] Matías de Zúñiga, whose genius Cervantes here declares to have been divine, does not appear to have published anything.
[197] Certain poems ascribed to Damasio de Frías are given by Juan José López de Sedano in El Parnaso Español (Madrid, 1768-1778), vols. ii. and vii.
[198] Barrera merely states that Andrés Sanz del Portillo resided in Castilla la Vieja: his writings have not reached us.
[199] Possibly this writer may be identical with the Pedro de Soria who contributed a sonnet to Jerónimo de Lomas Cantoral's Obras: see note 83.
[200] The Obras of Jerónimo de Lomas Cantoral appeared at Madrid in 1578. They include translations of three canzoni by Luigi Tansillo.