Alfonso de Cartagena
Encyclopedia
Alfonso de Santa María de Cartagena (variants: Alfonso de Carthagena, Alonso de Cartagena) (1384, Burgos
—1456, Villasandino
) was a Jewish convert to Christianity
, a Roman Catholic bishop, diplomat
, historian
and writer of pre-Renaissance
Spain
.
, who converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1390 or 1391. At the same time, Alfonso and his four brothers, one sister and two uncles were baptized. His mother, however, was not. Cartagena studied law in Salamanca, and "was a great lawyer in canon and civil law", according to Claros varones de Castilla (1486). He served as dean of Santiago de Compostela
and Segovia
, later becoming apostolic nuncio and canon of Burgos (1421).
He was equally distinguished as statesman and as priest. In 1434 he was named by King John II
de Trastámara (1405-54) as the representative of Castile
at the Council of Basel, succeeding Cardinal Alonso de Carrillo. There he composed a famous discourse in Latin and Castilian (Propositio... super altercatione praeminentia, 1434), calling on the council to recognize the superior right of the King of Castile over the King of England.
The humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who became Pope Pius II
, in his memoirs called Cartagena "an ornament to the prelacy". Pope Eugenius IV thanked him for his services by making him bishop of Burgos when his father died (1435). Eugenius, learning that the bishop of Burgos was about to visit Rome, declared in full conclave that "in the presence of such a man he felt ashamed to be seated in St. Peter's chair".
After living in Rome for some time, dedicated to study, Cartagena returned to Burgos, where he founded a public school "of all doctrine", in which the most advanced Latinists of the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs
studied. These included Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo
, Alfonso de Palencia
, Diego Rodríguez Almela and perhaps Fernán Díaz de Toledo. Cartagena was a friend of fellow writer and humanist Fernán Pérez de Guzmán
(1378-1460), nephew of Pero López de Ayala
and señor de Batres, who included an affectionate biographical outline in his Generaciones y semblanzas (1450). Cartagena dedicated his Oracional (1454), a treatise on prayer, to him.
Cartagena went to Portugal
as an emissary of King John II, where he negotiated peace. He was also emissary to the kings of Germany and Poland and intervened in the conflicts of Castile with Aragon and Granada.
He helped with a large sum to build the monastery of San Pablo of Burgos and rebuilt other churches and monasteries of his see, among them the Cathedral of Burgos, whose construction had been interrupted a considerable time before.
In 1422 he undertook the translation of some works of Cicero
(De officiis, De senectute), ordered by the secretary of King John II, Juan Alfonso de Zamora. He also translated Cicero's De inventione, for use by then Prince Duarte of Portugal. His translations into the vernacular followed a clear humanistic intent, that of teaching the wisdom of the classics to gentlemen interested in the works, but not scholars themselves. For the same reason, but also for another reason (his inclination to Stoicism
), he translated the Treatises and Tragedies of Seneca the Younger
. He disputed with the humanist Leonardo Bruni
of Arezzo or Aretino (1370-1444) over a new translation by Bruni of the Ethics of Aristotle
. The conflict became extended in scope when Pietro Candido Decembrio
(1399-1477) came to the defense of Bruni, and Cardinal Pizolpasso (1370-1443) also became involved. At least six texts and 19 letters related to the dispute passed between Cartagena and Decembrio, including Cartagena's Declinations.
Heinrich Graetz
ascribes to the influence exercised by Carthagena over Eugenius IV the latter's sudden change of attitude toward the Jews. Carthagena alone, says Graetz, could have been the author of the complaints against the pride and arrogance of the Castilian Jews, which induced the pope to issue the bull of 1442, withdrawing the privileges granted to them by former popes.
He wrote besides some treatises on moral philosophy and theology. At the age of 60 he went on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, but died on the return to his diocese.
, Florus
and Jiménez de Rada and entitled Anacephaleosis that emphasized Castilian Gothicism. This was translated by Fernán Pérez de Guzmán and Juan de Villafuerte under the title Genealogía de los Reyes de España (Genealogy of the Kings of Spain) (1463). The translation was composed of a prologue and 94 chapters, of which seven contain a summary of the origins of the Spanish monarchy from Atalaric to the kings of Asturias and of Castile and Leon, and a genealogical tree showing their relationship to the monarchs of Navarre
, Aragon
and Portugal.
Among Carthagena's writings on history, morals, and other subjects, there is a commentary on the twenty-sixth Psalm, Judica me, Deus. Defensorium fidei, also called Defensorium unitatis christianae (1449-50), is a plea in defense of converted Jews. Oracional de Fernán Pérez (Burgos, 1487, written about 1454) is a treatise on a prayer edited around 1454 and addressed to his friend and confident Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, in 55 chapters and an afterword on virtues and the Mass. He also wrote Doctrinal de Caballeros (Burgos, 1487, written around 1444), which consists of an adaptation of the second Partida of Alfonso X the Wise
in four books covering faith, laws, war, rewards and punishments, revolts, challenges and duels, tournaments, vassals, bad actions and privileges.
Other works include Memoriales virtutum or Memorial de virtudes, various songs, aphorisms and compositions of love that appear dispersed in songbooks; Prefación a San Juan Crisóstomo, Allegationes... super conquista insularum Canariae (Allegations About the Conquest of the Canary Islands, 1437), which defends Castilian rights to the islands; Epistula... ad comitem de Haro (ca. 1440), prescribing a program of readings to educate the nobility, among them the moral texts of Cato
, and Contemptus mundanorum. He also wrote Duodenarium (1442), where he answers twelve questions of Pérez de Guzmán; Tractatus questionis ortolanus (1443-47), to Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo
, in which he defends the superiority of sight over hearing; a response to the Questión sobre la caballería (1444) of the Marqués de Santillana; a Devocional that has been lost, etc.
Burgos
Burgos is a city of northern Spain, historic capital of Castile. It is situated at the edge of the central plateau, with about 178,966 inhabitants in the city proper and another 20,000 in its suburbs. It is the capital of the province of Burgos, in the autonomous community of Castile and León...
—1456, Villasandino
Villasandino
Villasandino is a municipality located in the province of Burgos, Castile and León, Spain. According to the 2004 census , the municipality has a population of 240 inhabitants....
) was a Jewish convert to Christianity
Converso
A converso and its feminine form conversa was a Jew or Muslim—or a descendant of Jews or Muslims—who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. Mass conversions once took place under significant government pressure...
, a Roman Catholic bishop, diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
, historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
and writer of pre-Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
.
Biography
Alfonso de Cartagena was the second son of Rabbi Paul of BurgosPaul of Burgos
Paul of Burgos was a Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity, and became an archbishop, lord chancellor, and exegete. He is known also as Pablo de Santa Maria, Paul de Santa Maria, and Pauli episcopi Burgensis...
, who converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1390 or 1391. At the same time, Alfonso and his four brothers, one sister and two uncles were baptized. His mother, however, was not. Cartagena studied law in Salamanca, and "was a great lawyer in canon and civil law", according to Claros varones de Castilla (1486). He served as dean of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
and Segovia
Segovia
Segovia is a city in Spain, the capital of Segovia Province in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is situated north of Madrid, 30 minutes by high speed train. The municipality counts some 55,500 inhabitants.-Etymology:...
, later becoming apostolic nuncio and canon of Burgos (1421).
He was equally distinguished as statesman and as priest. In 1434 he was named by King John II
John II of Castile
John II was King of Castile from 1406 to 1454.He was the son of Henry III of Castile and his wife Catherine of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster by Constance of Castile, daughter of King Peter of Castile.-Regency:He succeeded his father on 25 December 1406, at the age of...
de Trastámara (1405-54) as the representative of Castile
Crown of Castile
The Crown of Castile was a medieval and modern state in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then King Ferdinand III of Castile to the vacant Leonese throne...
at the Council of Basel, succeeding Cardinal Alonso de Carrillo. There he composed a famous discourse in Latin and Castilian (Propositio... super altercatione praeminentia, 1434), calling on the council to recognize the superior right of the King of Castile over the King of England.
The humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who became Pope Pius II
Pope Pius II
Pope Pius II, born Enea Silvio Piccolomini was Pope from August 19, 1458 until his death in 1464. Pius II was born at Corsignano in the Sienese territory of a noble but decayed family...
, in his memoirs called Cartagena "an ornament to the prelacy". Pope Eugenius IV thanked him for his services by making him bishop of Burgos when his father died (1435). Eugenius, learning that the bishop of Burgos was about to visit Rome, declared in full conclave that "in the presence of such a man he felt ashamed to be seated in St. Peter's chair".
After living in Rome for some time, dedicated to study, Cartagena returned to Burgos, where he founded a public school "of all doctrine", in which the most advanced Latinists of the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs
Catholic Monarchs
The Catholic Monarchs is the collective title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; they were given a papal dispensation to deal with...
studied. These included Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo
Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo
Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo was a Spanish churchman, historian and political theorist....
, Alfonso de Palencia
Alfonso de Palencia
Alfonso Fernández de Palencia , was a Castilian pre-Renaissance historiographer, lexicographer, and humanist....
, Diego Rodríguez Almela and perhaps Fernán Díaz de Toledo. Cartagena was a friend of fellow writer and humanist Fernán Pérez de Guzmán
Fernán Pérez de Guzmán
Fernan Perez de Guzman was a Spanish historian and poet. He belonged to a family distinguished both for its patrician standing and its literary connections, for his uncle was Pero López de Ayala, Grand Chancellor of Castile, historian and poet, and his nephew was the Marquis of Santillana, one of...
(1378-1460), nephew of Pero López de Ayala
Pero López de Ayala
Don Pero López de Ayala was a Castilian statesman, historian, poet, chronicler, chancellor, and courtier. Ayala were one of the major aristocratic families of Castile; they were later claimed to be of the Jewish converso descent, but Pero's own father composed a genealogy tracing the family from...
and señor de Batres, who included an affectionate biographical outline in his Generaciones y semblanzas (1450). Cartagena dedicated his Oracional (1454), a treatise on prayer, to him.
Cartagena went to Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
as an emissary of King John II, where he negotiated peace. He was also emissary to the kings of Germany and Poland and intervened in the conflicts of Castile with Aragon and Granada.
He helped with a large sum to build the monastery of San Pablo of Burgos and rebuilt other churches and monasteries of his see, among them the Cathedral of Burgos, whose construction had been interrupted a considerable time before.
In 1422 he undertook the translation of some works of Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
(De officiis, De senectute), ordered by the secretary of King John II, Juan Alfonso de Zamora. He also translated Cicero's De inventione, for use by then Prince Duarte of Portugal. His translations into the vernacular followed a clear humanistic intent, that of teaching the wisdom of the classics to gentlemen interested in the works, but not scholars themselves. For the same reason, but also for another reason (his inclination to Stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
), he translated the Treatises and Tragedies of Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
. He disputed with the humanist Leonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni
Leonardo Bruni was an Italian humanist, historian and statesman. He has been called the first modern historian.-Biography:...
of Arezzo or Aretino (1370-1444) over a new translation by Bruni of the Ethics of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
. The conflict became extended in scope when Pietro Candido Decembrio
Pietro Candido Decembrio
Pietro Candido Decembrio was a well-known Italian humanist and author of the Renaissance, and one of those involved in the rediscovery of ancient literature.The son of the humanist Uberto Decembrio, he was born in Pavia, and named after his father's employer Peter of Candia...
(1399-1477) came to the defense of Bruni, and Cardinal Pizolpasso (1370-1443) also became involved. At least six texts and 19 letters related to the dispute passed between Cartagena and Decembrio, including Cartagena's Declinations.
Heinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz was amongst the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective....
ascribes to the influence exercised by Carthagena over Eugenius IV the latter's sudden change of attitude toward the Jews. Carthagena alone, says Graetz, could have been the author of the complaints against the pride and arrogance of the Castilian Jews, which induced the pope to issue the bull of 1442, withdrawing the privileges granted to them by former popes.
He wrote besides some treatises on moral philosophy and theology. At the age of 60 he went on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, but died on the return to his diocese.
Works
Besides his translations of twelve books of Seneca, in which he was particularly interested, and of the works of Cicero mentioned above, he wrote Rerum in Hispania gestarum Chronicon. Around 1456 he wrote a history of Spain based on Flavius JosephusJosephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
, Florus
Florus
Florus, Roman historian, lived in the time of Trajan and Hadrian.He compiled, chiefly from Livy, a brief sketch of the history of Rome from the foundation of the city to the closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus . The work, which is called Epitome de T...
and Jiménez de Rada and entitled Anacephaleosis that emphasized Castilian Gothicism. This was translated by Fernán Pérez de Guzmán and Juan de Villafuerte under the title Genealogía de los Reyes de España (Genealogy of the Kings of Spain) (1463). The translation was composed of a prologue and 94 chapters, of which seven contain a summary of the origins of the Spanish monarchy from Atalaric to the kings of Asturias and of Castile and Leon, and a genealogical tree showing their relationship to the monarchs of Navarre
Navarre
Navarre , officially the Chartered Community of Navarre is an autonomous community in northern Spain, bordering the Basque Country, La Rioja, and Aragon in Spain and Aquitaine in France...
, Aragon
Aragon
Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
and Portugal.
Among Carthagena's writings on history, morals, and other subjects, there is a commentary on the twenty-sixth Psalm, Judica me, Deus. Defensorium fidei, also called Defensorium unitatis christianae (1449-50), is a plea in defense of converted Jews. Oracional de Fernán Pérez (Burgos, 1487, written about 1454) is a treatise on a prayer edited around 1454 and addressed to his friend and confident Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, in 55 chapters and an afterword on virtues and the Mass. He also wrote Doctrinal de Caballeros (Burgos, 1487, written around 1444), which consists of an adaptation of the second Partida of Alfonso X the Wise
Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X was a Castilian monarch who ruled as the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1252 until his death...
in four books covering faith, laws, war, rewards and punishments, revolts, challenges and duels, tournaments, vassals, bad actions and privileges.
Other works include Memoriales virtutum or Memorial de virtudes, various songs, aphorisms and compositions of love that appear dispersed in songbooks; Prefación a San Juan Crisóstomo, Allegationes... super conquista insularum Canariae (Allegations About the Conquest of the Canary Islands, 1437), which defends Castilian rights to the islands; Epistula... ad comitem de Haro (ca. 1440), prescribing a program of readings to educate the nobility, among them the moral texts of Cato
Cato
-Literature:*Distichs of Cato, or simply Cato, a Latin collection of proverbial wisdom and morality from the 3rd or 4th century AD author Dionysius Cato...
, and Contemptus mundanorum. He also wrote Duodenarium (1442), where he answers twelve questions of Pérez de Guzmán; Tractatus questionis ortolanus (1443-47), to Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo
Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo
Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo was a Spanish churchman, historian and political theorist....
, in which he defends the superiority of sight over hearing; a response to the Questión sobre la caballería (1444) of the Marqués de Santillana; a Devocional that has been lost, etc.