(1398–1458)
The Marqués de Santillana was a Spanish poet, soldier, statesman, literary critic, and patron. Profoundly influenced by the great Italian writers DANTE, BOCCACCIO, and especially PETRARCH, Santillana is often seen as a humanist and transitional figure between medieval and renaissance Spain. He wrote long allegories influenced by the Italians, and he was the first poet to write SONNETS in the Castilian language, but his best-known works are his lyric poems in the style of the Provençal TROUBADOURS. Santillana was born Iñigo López de Mendoza in Carrión de los Condes, Palencia. His father was Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, the grand admiral of Castile, a title Iñigo inherited. His father died in 1404, after which the young Mendoza went to live with his wealthy and cultured grandmother, Doña Mencia de Cisneros. Between 1412 and 1418, he served at the royal court of Aragon, where in 1416, he seems to have met and married Catalina de Figueroa, the daughter of the grand master of Santiago. He began making a name for himself as a soldier in 1420, by supporting the Infante Don Enrique, heir to the Castilian throne. He fought in support of King Juan II of Castile (1405–1454) in several battles, gaining the king’s gratitude in particular for his victories at Huelva in 1436, and in the Battle of Olmedo in 1445, after which Juan conferred upon him the title Marqués de Santillana and Conde del Real de Manzanares.
With other Castilian nobles, Santillana took part in a struggle with the royal favorite, the constable Álvaro de Luna, who was executed in 1453. When King Juan died the following year, Santillana largely withdrew from public affairs, and after the death of his wife and son shortly thereafter, he spent the final years of his life in seclusion at his palace in Guadalajara, where he died in 1458. Santillana was a highly educated man, able to read Italian, Catalan, Galician-Portuguese, and French. Although he does not seem to have known Greek or Latin himself, he collected numerous classical manuscripts.He also commissioned Spanish translations of the Iliad, the Aeneid, and Seneca’s tragedies. Having befriended the Spanish poet and scholar Enrique de Villena, Santillana commissioned him to translate DANTE’s DIVINE COMEDY as well (completed in 1428). By his reading, collecting, and literary patronage, Santillana was able to build up the greatest private library of his day, now part of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid.
Santillana’s Prohemio, or preface to a collection of his own poetry, which he prepared to be sent to Don Pedro of Portugal in 1449, is generally considered the first work of literary criticism in Spanish. In it Santillana expresses his preference for strict classical models of literature, praises the Italian poets as well as the Provençal-inspired Galician-Portuguese lyrics, and denigrates popular and folk songs. He categorizes poetry into three styles; The sublime style (referring to Greek and Latin poets), the middle style (by which he refers to learned poetry in the vernacular), and the low style (in which he includes ballads and other folk songs). Finally Santillana extols the role of literary patrons.
Santillana’s own poetry shows a remarkable variety. He introduced the sonnet form into Spanish literature, composing some 42 sonnets in the Petrarchan style. His longer poems are generally written in a form called arte mayor, consisting of eight-line stanzas with 11- or 12-syllable lines rhyming abbaacca. These tend to be ALLEGORICAL and to show the influence of Italian poets as well, particularly of Dante. Perhaps his best-known allegorical poem is Comedieta de Ponza (1436), which deals with the defeat of Alfonso V of Aragon and his Navarrese allies by the Genoese navy in battle off the island of Ponza in 1435.His Diálogo de Bías contra Fortuna (1448) was written apparently to comfort the Conde de Alba, Santillana’s cousin who had been imprisoned by his enemy, de Luna. The text, owing something to BOETHIUS, portrays a debate between the Stoic philosopher Bías and the figure of Fortuna. Another of Santillana’s longer poems, the Doctrinal de prìvados, celebrates the downfall of de Luna, represented in the form of a public confession of the royal favorite’s sins. Another didactic work is Santillana’s Proverbios de gloriosa doctrina e fructuosa enseñanza, a rhymed collection of proverbs originally written, it is presumed, for the Infante Don Enrique. The collection became well known and was translated into English in 1579.
But despite these more ambitious projects, Santillana is best remembered today for his short lyric poems, influenced to a large extent by Portuguese and French lyrics, and owing something to the troubadour tradition, in particular his pastoral songs called serranillas. Santillana’s lyrics have been praised for their elegant simplicity. It is on these simple songs that his contemporary reputation rests.
Bibliography
■ Foster, David William. The Marqués de Santillana. New York: Twayne, 1971.
■ Trend, John Brande.Marqués de Santillana: Prose and Verse. London: Dolphin Bookshop, 1940.