Hellenism in Modern Spain: Francisco de Mendoza y Bovadilla’s Greek Books and Manuscripts

Abstract

Cardinal Francisco de Mendoza y Bovadilla (1508-1566) is better known as a bibliophile than as a scholar: although his published work is not voluminous, his library, mostly preserved at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, may be explored in order to understand how he learnt Greek, what were the texts he was interested in, and how he read and used them. Some Aldine incunabula and other old printed books by Homer, Lucian, Sophocles, Theocritus, Xenophon and Aristotle, as well as the Mss/6205 at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, show the deep study of these authors by Mendoza under the direction of his teacher, El Pinciano, at the University of Salamanca. Later on, when he was living in Rome as Charles V’s ambassador, he acquired an outstanding group of Greek manuscripts, most of them contemporary. His secretary, Juan Páez de Castro, studied and annotated some of them. Back in Burgos, Mendoza employed another secretary, Flemish Bonaventura Vulcanius, whose Greek and Latin handwritings can be identified on the margins of Mendoza’s manuscripts.