ANTONIO DE NEBRIJA: BIOGRAPHY AND WORKS - LITERATURE - 2025

Antonio de Nebrija (1441-1522) was an intellectual and humanist of the most outstanding of the Castilian letters. Its historical importance lies mainly in the fact that he was the author of the first Castilian Grammar, published in 1492, a dictionary and a Spanish-Latin and Latin-Spanish vocabulary book, in addition to many other texts, mainly on grammar and philology.

Nebrija's Castilian Grammar is considered the first normative text of this discipline for a vulgar language such as Spanish, which is why it set a precedent for later writings in other Romance languages.

Portrait of Antonio de Nebrija. Source: By Antonio_de_Nebrija.jpg: Antonio del Rincón (1446 - 1500) derivative work: Escarlati (Antonio_de_Nebrija.jpg), via Wikimedia Commons

This text was published with a dedication to Queen Isabel la Católica and was preceded by a famous prologue, where the author's motives for regulating Spanish are expressed. In addition, he is remembered for installing the first printing press in the city of Salamanca and was the first western writer to claim copyright.

He was also an outstanding professor of rhetoric and grammar; pedagogue, historian, translator, theologian and poet. It exerted a notable influence on the arrival in Spain of Italian humanist ideas that preceded the Renaissance, at least in terms of letters.

Biography

Birth, education and youth

Elio Antonio Martínez de Cala y Xarava (according to other sources, Antonio Martínez de Cala e Hinojosa) was born in Lebrija, then called “Nebrissa Veneria” (sometimes transcribed as Nebrija or Nebrixa), in the province of Seville, in the year 1444 (exact date unknown).

He was the second of the five children of Juan Martínez de Cala and Catalina de Xarava y Ojo. Both parents were Jewish converts to Catholicism. He had two brothers and two sisters.

From the age of 15 he studied humanities at the University of Salamanca. There he already stood out among his peers for his intellectual gifts and tendencies to letters.

Transfer to Bologna

After graduating at age 19, he moved to Bologna, Italy, where he stayed for several years expanding his humanistic training. There he was immersed in a very rich intellectual and cultural environment, unlike that experienced in Spain.

In that place he cultivated the ideas inherited from Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio and other authors. In Bologna the reading and teaching of the classics of Latin and Greek literature was prioritized.

At that time, in Italy, and as a fundamental basis of the Renaissance, man and his knowledge were taken as a measure of all things, paying the greatest attention to the development of intellectual activities, both in the field of letters and in astronomy, medicine and mathematics.

All these principles made him see the education of Spain as rudimentary or "barbaric", and later, in his career as an educator, he proposed to bring this style of anthropocentric training to his students.

At that time Spain was still subject to the Inquisition, an arm of the Catholic Church that held a theocentric doctrine (God and religion as everything), leaving aside scientific knowledge.

Scholarship in Bologna

In Bologna, thanks to a scholarship granted by the Bishop of Córdoba, he enrolled in the Colegio Español de San Clemente, where he began his studies on March 2, 1463. He received classes in theology, medicine, geography, history, mathematics, astronomy and right.

He studied in depth the “cultured” languages, that is, Latin and Greek, to which, according to de Nebrija, insufficient attention was paid in the educational centers of Spain. He also read the grammatical works of Diomedes Grammaticus, Elio Donato, and Prisciano and studied ancient Hebrew.

Later he continued taking courses at the University of Bologna, the oldest in Italy and one of the most prestigious in Europe. There he received classes from the Italian scholar Martino Galeoto, among other tutors who contributed to his comprehensive training.

Return to Spain and career as an educator

In 1470 he returned to Spain, specifically to Seville, determined to transfer Italian humanist ideas to his native province.

In Seville he was assigned as a teacher to the nephew of Archbishop Alonso de Fonseca, thus initiating his career as an educator. During these years he adopted the nickname of "Elio de Nebrija", to honor his city of origin.

He was also the tutor of other young Sevillians, teaching his classes in the Granada chapel, which was located in the Patio de los Naranjos, behind the Cathedral of Seville.

In 1473 he was appointed professor at the University of Salamanca, where he was once a student, taking charge of the chairs of Rhetoric and Grammar. In his classes he made an effort to teach Latin to his students.

Marriage

That same year, 1473, he married Isabel Solís de Maldonado, with whom he had seven children (six boys and one girl) and in later years he lived in Extremadura for some periods. He had as many illegitimate children.

In 1488 he went to work with Juan de Zúñiga, who was the Master of the Order of Alcántara and became its patron for seven years since then. During this time he devoted himself to expanding his studies and producing his most important writings.

In 1509 he returned again to Salamanca, at whose University he returned to work as a professor of rhetoric. Throughout his career in this study center he had a series of disagreements with his colleagues, in part because he despised the teaching methods and theories taught by his contemporary Spanish etymologists, lexicologists and grammarians.

As of 1514, thanks to the influence of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, he served as visiting professor of the chair of rhetoric at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Madrid, where he was widely celebrated by both his students and his colleagues.

Death

He held this position until his death, which occurred on July 7, 1522 in Madrid, at the age of 78, as a result of a stroke.

I work as a printer

In 1492 the first printing press was installed in the city of Salamanca. It was there that some of Nebrija's major works were printed.

Many scholars state that Nebrija himself was in charge of this company, however he chose to keep his signature anonymous. It is believed that he did this because the position as an academic legally prevented him from doing business. The printing house was located in the so-called street of the booksellers.

It was his successors who developed the business and obtained the monopoly in Spain and America of the Nebrija works during the following decades. Particularly his son Sancho de Nebrija and his son and Catalina de Patres, Antonio de Nebrija.

The printing press was owned by the family until Elio's great-grandson, Agustín Antonio de Nebrija, decided to delegate the management of the business to other printers.

Plays

Introductiones Latinae

In 1481, while he was a professor at the University of Salamanca, Introductiones Latinae, his first known important work, was published. It is a pedagogical text that summarizes in a relatively simple way its innovative techniques for teaching Latin to students.

Introductiones latinae. Source: By http://catalogo.bne.es/uhtbin/cgisirsi/0/x/0/05?searchdata1=bima0000115856, via Wikimedia Commons

The Spanish version of this work was edited by Nebrija himself and published in 1488.

Lexicon latino-castellanum et castellano-latinum

In 1492 Nebrija published the dictionary Lexicon latino-castellanum et castellano-latinum. This book was an obligatory reference at that time, and for many years after, both for readers who wanted to access the classic works written in Latin, and for foreigners who wanted to understand the texts in Spanish.

Castilian grammar

In the same year the first edition of his Castilian Grammar was published, coinciding with the arrival to the New World of the expeditions of Christopher Columbus.

It was a work of difficult acceptance at the time of its publication, since it had a novel format and was the first grammar written for a “vulgar” language, such as Spanish, which did not have the same acceptance as Latin for writing. formal.

Spanish-Latin and Latin-Spanish vocabulary

In 1495, the Spanish-Latin and Latin-Castilian vocabulary was published, which complemented the aforementioned dictionary. These two texts contained more than thirty thousand terms for Latin-Castilian and twenty thousand for Castilian-Latin, being works without precedent for a Romance language.

Complutense Polyglot Bible

Later he worked for several years as a Latinist in the realization of the Complutense Polyglot Bible, a collective work sponsored by Cardinal Cisneros.

The result of their collaboration was published in 1516, in a work entitled Tertia Quinquagena, which consists of a series of explanatory notes on the Sacred Scriptures.

Rules of Spanish spelling and other texts

By 1517, Rules of Castilian spelling was published, a text that continued his grammar studies and his effort to regulate Castilian.

Other texts and essays on law (Lexicon Iurus Civilis), pedagogy (De liberis educan dis), astronomy, archeology (Antiquities of Spain), numbering, among other topics of study are authored.

Statue of Antonio de Nebrija. Source: By Javier Mediavilla Ezquibela, from Wikimedia Commons

The endeavor of his life was to spread the teaching of the classical languages ​​and the great literary works written in these languages. He also focused on outlining the varied knowledge acquired in the long years of learning, thus leaving his mark on inventing and implementing a grammatical system for Spanish.

This impressive literary work, the daughter of his period as a student in Italy, led him to be considered one of the greatest humanists of Spanish letters.

Details of the Castilian Grammar

The Castilian Grammar, whose original Latin title is Grammatica Antonii Nebrissensis, was written in the Latin manner. The structuring terms and principles were based on the Latin forms. Nebrija considered Latin as a more perfect language than the rest of the languages ​​derived from it.

Structure

Castilian grammar is structured in five books. The first, made up of ten chapters, deals with spelling. The second deals with the syllable and prosody. The third book contains seventeen chapters on diction and the etymology of terms.

The structure of the sentences and the correct syntax are explained in the seven chapters that make up the fourth book. And, finally, in the fifth book the author talks about learning Spanish as a foreign language.

This structuring, which lasted in Europe for a few centuries, obeys Nebrija's principle that the learning of every language is composed of: spelling, prosody, syntax and etymology, all of them of equal importance for grammar.

He is also responsible for the marking of the parts of the sentence, such as: article, name, pronoun, preposition, verb, participle, adverb, conjunction, gerund and infinite participle name.

Importance of the prologue

Almost as important as the work itself, was its prologue, written as a dedication for Queen Isabel of Castile. In this the author spoke about the motivations that prompted him to write the Castilian Grammar.

In this remarkable introduction to the book, Nebrija emphasized the need to issue regulations for the correct use of the Spanish language. Its objective was to ensure the permanence in time of the language, as well as to achieve that Latin was learned starting from the Romance languages.

He had been developing this last idea since his years as a professor of grammar and rhetoric at the University of Salamanca, when he noticed that it was difficult for students to learn Latin.

For Nebrija, Spanish was a valid language and its correction was an urgent matter. However, with all his consideration, he still had this language as inferior to Latin.

Political character of the book

According to various readings, a third motivation of a political nature can be sensed.

The idea of ​​making the Castilian language something standard and homogeneous, available to everyone, was necessary so that it could serve as a unifying instrument for the Spanish Empire.

In addition to this, it was sought that the language could be taught in foreign regions, either within Europe itself (between French, Italians, Navarrese, Biscayan…) or in more distant places.

This use of language as a unifying element proper to the empire is an idea similar to that held by some Florentine humanists of the same period. Already, since ancient times, there was talk of the need to unify the states that made up Italy through the Tuscan language, the basis of modern Italian.

The use of literary figures

Another aspect highlighted by the many scholars of Castilian Grammar is the link established by its author between the study of grammar and literary figures. By making use of this link between language and literature, it promoted a better learning of it and a greater correction in its daily use.

Nebrija's was the first published grammar for a Romance language. Its appearance was fundamental for the diffusion of the Castilian language. This book was used as a colonization tool in the newly discovered American regions at the time.

In addition, it served as a model for later grammars, both in Spanish and in other Romance languages.

References

1. Antonio de Nebrija. (S. f.). (N / a): Wikipedia. Recovered: es.wikipedia.org
2. Elio Antonio de Nebrija. (S. f.). (N / a): Biographies and Lives, the online biographical encyclopedia. Recovered: biografiasyvidas.com
3. Elio Antonio de Nebrija. (S. f.). (N / a): Cervantes Virtual Center. Recovered: cvc.cervantes.es
4. Elio Antonio de Nebrija. (S. f.) (N / a): Search Biographies. Recovered: Buscabiografias.com
5. Who was Antonio de Nebrija? (S. f.). (N / a): Kerchak. Recovered: kerchak.com