Bibliofilia humanista en tiempos de Felipe II: la biblioteca de Juan Paez de Castro. By ARANTXA DOMINGO MALVADI. (Obras de referencia, 32.)

Abstract

Juan Páez de Castro (c. 1510–70) is little remembered today, largely because his works remained only in manuscript. Like many humanists of his time he was both a figure at court and an active correspondent with colleagues in Spain and Italy. At Alcalá he studied under Alonso de Zamora, editor of the Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Complutensian Polyglot, hence his knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and ‘Chaldean’ (Aramaic). He also owned Arabic manuscripts. He was at Trento in the entourage of Francisco de Vargas. On the recommendation of Gonzalo Pérez, translator of Homer into Spanish, he was introduced to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, ambassador and poet, whose library he used. Domingo Malvadi pronounces him a formative influence (p. 22). He was secretary to Bishop Francisco de Mendoza in Rome. In 1555 he was appointed Latin chronicler and chaplain to Charles V (and later Philip II). To Philip he addressed his ‘Memorandum on how to form a library’ of 1556 (first printed in 1749 and most recently in 1883 — a new edition is overdue), in which he urged the King to create a royal library, stocking it in part with manuscripts from decayed Italian religious houses (p. 35). He was frankly offering his own services, which the King did not take up. Páez followed his own advice and acquired Greek manuscripts from a monastery in Sicily, swapping Greek manuscripts the monks could not read for printed books (p. 67). In Flanders he knew various Spanish intellectuals, among them Archbishop Carranza. For his Chronicle he asked Philip for documents of ‘weight and authority’, unwilling to rely on ‘letters of soldiers or what people say in the squares’ (p. 41).