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The Divine Ideas Tradition in Christian
Mystical Theology
 The Divine Ideas
Tradition in Christian
Mystical Theology
M A R K A . MCI N T O S H

1
 3
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© Mark A. McIntosh 2021
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First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
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DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199580811.001.0001
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contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 For
Anne,
Liza and Nate

with all my love and gratitude

 Preface

When I began the research for this book, I had already grown increasingly
concerned that the human community’s response to global climate change
was sadly vitiated by denials of truth. Thousands of our fellow beings are
under threat because human self-interest seems more than capable of
insisting that facts simply cannot be agreed upon. And as I write this preface
we are in the midst of a global pandemic whose devastating effects are
exacerbated by political choices to deny the realities of nature.
I raise these issues because they have partly motivated my aims in
researching and writing this book, and because I hope this book will assist
others in reclaiming a theological perspective that honors truth with pro-
found reverence. Needless to say, none of the authors I discuss in this work
were concerned with our present crises—let alone can I say that they would
have certainly stood on one side of an argument or another (e.g., about
climate change or systemic racism); nonetheless, I do believe that they all in
various ways were devoted to truth in its deepest and most theological sense.
And that is no small gift in our present moment.
The argument of the book is straightforward: that for at least three-
quarters of the history of Christian thought, especially in the writings of
Christian mystical theologians, truth has been revered as, ultimately, the
manifestation of God’s own self-understanding, and that as a direct result of
this the beautiful intelligibility and truthfulness of all creatures finds its
imperishable ground in God’s infinite knowing of Godself. This perspective,
the divine ideas tradition, has allowed Christian theologians, spiritual
teachers, and mystics to contemplate the deep and often mysterious reality
of our fellow beings in the confidence that their truth could never be wholly
distorted or silenced by human mendacity, never finally destroyed by vio-
lence or disease, but that the imperishable truth and goodness of every being
is sustained eternally in the mind of God. Moreover the divine ideas
tradition fostered the conviction that humankind is called to a contempla-
tive vocation, a beholding of our fellow creatures and a reverent search for
ever deeper understanding of them, an understanding that must liberate
itself from all cultural biases, all forms of prejudice—precisely because the
viii 

truth of all flows directly from the infinite power and goodness of Truth
itself, who is God.
In ways that I had not expected, this book has become rather more
personal—though I hope not less accessible or accurate—than I had
imagined it would be. After many years of developing the research
I needed to feel even remotely confident in exploring so rich and diverse a
tradition, I was diagnosed with ALS, sometimes called motor neuron dis-
ease. As my physical incapacities became more challenging, I often won-
dered about the truth of my own life and how that truth might be grounded
in a deeper reality. This is not so different, of course, from our common and
beneficial awareness that the truth of our lives is never simply a private
matter but subsists in the relationships and experiences we share with
others. In some ways, you might say that the divine ideas tradition was
and is a theological realization of this awareness on a cosmic scale—the
truth-bearing relationships within which our identities come to full expres-
sion being none other than the life and relationality of God the Trinity.
Besides these thematic reflections, living with ALS also led to very prac-
tical impacts: I was increasingly unable to access any of my research notes,
the volumes I had glossed with marginal comments, and even eventually to
hold a book or turn a page. I am profoundly grateful to three long-time
teachers, mentors, and friends—Frank T. Griswold, former Presiding Bishop
of the Episcopal Church, and Professors Bernard McGinn and David Tracy
of the University of Chicago—who encouraged me to forge ahead and write
the book that I could write and not be discouraged by the thought of what
I was no longer able to achieve. Accordingly this book is simply a theological
essay that attempts, in conversation with a limited range of Christian writers
and mystical theologians, to elucidate the fundamental role and significance
of the divine ideas tradition across the range of Christian doctrines. I had
intended and prepared to write a longer book, with the first several chapters
devoted to the rich historical unfolding of the divine ideas, from the time of
the Middle Platonists to the crisis and transformation of the ideas in the later
Middle Ages and early modernity, to the new appropriation of the ideas in
the Romantic era, and concluding with an examination of the adoption of
this tradition in three twentieth-century writers: Bulgakov, Balthasar, and
Merton. The theological essay that I have written was meant to draw upon
these earlier historical chapters, which I now hope will find other and
undoubtedly more capable authors: there is much more to be discovered
and interpreted!
  ix

Much of the initial research for this book was conducted while I served as
the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at Durham University and canon
residentiary of Durham Cathedral. I am so grateful to my colleagues in the
University and the Cathedral, and to my students and members of the
Cathedral congregation, all of whom not only patiently bore my enthusi-
asms but encouraged me with deep friendship and wisdom. Among my
doctoral students at Durham, I’m especially grateful to Rachel Davies for her
devoted teaching assistance and for her own profoundly insightful scholar-
ship on the significance of the suffering body in the spirituality and theology
of Bonaventure. And above all it gives me great joy to thank another of my
PhD students, Benjamin DeSpain, for his remarkable work with all my
undergraduate students and for his equally exemplary research assistance;
his own doctoral research and dissertation on the divine ideas in Thomas
Aquinas provided continual illumination and encouragement, not to men-
tion immeasurable comradeship in a common project.
In 2014 Loyola University Chicago, where I had first begun to teach in
1993, invited me to return as the inaugural holder of its Endowed Chair in
Christian Spirituality, and I am enormously grateful to my colleagues there
for welcoming me back so warmly, and as the ALS developed for such
gracious and affectionate support. Although I can no longer move my
body, I can still speak and so the University most kindly arranged for
dictation software, and for two of my doctoral students to visit me regularly
at home. Without their erudite and endlessly patient assistance, this book
would have been impossible for me to write. So my deep gratitude goes to
John Marshall Diamond for all his help and for all the insights from his own
doctoral dissertation, “The Spark and the Darkness: The Relation of the
Intellect and Apophaticism in the Theological Anthropology of Meister
Eckhart.” And I am especially thankful for all the profoundly skillful and
deft assistance of Jacob Torbeck, who went far beyond the call of any
doctoral student in assisting my writing—and whose doctoral dissertation
has been a rich source of new understandings: “Turn Not Thine Eyes: Holy
Faces and Saving Gazes in Mystical and Liberation Theologies.”
Since 2014 our family has had the great joy of being members of the
Christian community of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Evanston, and I can
never sufficiently express our gratitude for all their kindness, care, and
support. This is equally true of all the colleagues, former students, and
friends, both in the UK and the US, whose many expressions of prayer
and affectionate encouragement have meant so very much.
x 

Caring for my daily needs has grown into quite a job and I could never
have finished this book without the gracious caregiving of Christine
Ogunbola and Evangelist Emeka Okere. For over a year now, Emeka has
been with me every day and his patience, skill, good humor, and Christian
friendship have made all the difference to me and our family.
The existence of this book is due to the endless love and companionship
of my family: my brothers and sister and their spouses—Gib and Sylvia,
Bruce and Priscilla, Kathy and Tom, you have been with me every step of
the way.
And above all, I am grateful beyond all words to my beloved wife, Anne,
and our two wonderful children, Liza and Nate. Anne has made life possible
for me and has been my dearest friend since we first met; her generous love
has given me life and the will to complete this work. To all three of them
I dedicate this book, for they have been the most intimate and constant sign
of what God’s love must be like.
In a season of considerable challenge for our world and for so many of us
individually, I hope more than I can say that readers may find within these
pages good cause to seek all that is true, and just, and beautiful.
 Acknowledgments

During the course of my research for this volume, I was able to develop
initial arguments for several aspects of the work. Portions of this book
appeared in these earlier forms and I am grateful to be able to draw upon
them here. These were originally published as the following:
“Mystical Theology at the Heart of Theology,” chapter 2 in The Oxford
Handbook of Mystical Theology, co-editor (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2020), pp. 25–44.
“The Father’s Vindication of the Word,” chapter 6 in Christian Dying, ed.
George Kalantzis and Matthew Levering (Eugene, OR, Cascade Books,
2018), pp. 124–133.
“The Contemplative Turn in Ficino and Traherne,” in The Renewal of
Mystical Theology: Essays in Memory of John N. Jones, ed. Bernard McGinn
(New York: Crossroad, 2017), pp. 162–176.
“Beautiful Ideas: The Visibility of Truth,” in The Recovery of Beauty, ed.
Corinne Saunders (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 21–34.
“The Maker’s Meaning: Divine Ideas and Salvation,” Modern Theology,
vol. 28/3 (July 2012): 365–384.
While continuing the research for this book I was also honored to deliver
the following lectures, all of which were important steps in the development
of my thinking and interpretation, and I am very grateful to the original
audiences for their conversation and insights.
“Green Trinity: Creation’s Mending and Trinitarian Life in an Age of
Environmental Crisis,” The DuBose Lectures 2017, endowed lecture series,
three plenary addresses, The University of the South, the School of
Theology, Sewanee, TN, September 27–28, 2017.
“Mystics and the Mind of God,” The 2015 Belk Lecture (Plenary
Address), Wesleyan College, Georgia, September 22, 2015.
“Divine Ideas and the Incarnation,” Paper for Templeton Foundation
Colloquium, Copenhagen, 2011.
“The Artisan’s Design: Creation in the Mind of God,” Plenary Address,
British Patristics Society, Durham University, September 2010.
 Introduction

Sometimes old academic debates, seemingly consigned with relief (on all
sides) to the dusty realms of historical curiosities, spring astonishingly to life.
I believe we are in one of those moments. The goodness and beauty of our
planet have been exploited so grievously as to lay bare, with raw and urgent
relevance, our apparent obliviousness of older views—theological visions
that would have regarded the goodness and beauty of each creature, not as
merely a construction of human value, appreciated or dismissed according
to economic reasons, but as the radiant epiphany of the divine goodness and
beauty from which all creatures flow. In fatal correlation to the denial of the
planet’s real goodness and vulnerable beauty, we find an equally devastating
denial of the truth about what helps or harms the planet’s well-being. In fact
the rampant abuse of truth in the digital age seems to be encouraging an
online arms race of misinformation, in which narratives are asserted not
because they are true but because they are a badge of one’s faction against all
others. So, for example, an entire online “community” has been built up
around the grotesque denial of truth regarding the mass shooting of children
in schools across America—not only denying solace and respect for the
victims and their families, but perpetuating a cloud of obfuscation that
seems to cloak authentic amelioration of the problem in impossibility,
precisely because the actual facts are continually distorted.
For most of the history of Christian thought, especially amongst the
teachers of Christian mystical theology, truth, goodness, and beauty appear
in our world with a sovereign majesty that calls forth human reverence, and
a profound human desire to understand the sacramental depth of meaning
inherent in all creation. In order to think and teach more profoundly about
this divine resonance within all beings, and about the human calling to
contemplate and revere this fullness of meaning, Christian mystical theolo-
gians often drew upon their belief in God as Trinity. God’s life, they taught,
is a life of infinite knowing and loving, a relational life in which the divine
Persons are as they enact the inexhaustible self-giving that is existence itself.
In this eternal and perfect life of knowing and loving, the processions of the

The Divine Ideas Tradition in Christian Mystical Theology. Mark A. McIntosh, Oxford University Press (2021).
© Mark A. McIntosh. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199580811.003.0001
2     

divine Word and Holy Spirit, God also knows and loves from eternity all the
ways in which creatures come to share in a likeness to God, by God’s gift to
them of finite existence in time. In the mind or Word of God are the divine
ideas of all that ever has been or will be, not as moments of foreknowledge
about things that will come to pass, but as the Father’s infinite self-
understanding and self-giving in the Son and their mutual joyful love in
the Spirit. The divine ideas, in other words, are not dependent on creatures-
to-be, but rather creatures come to be because God eternally knows and
loves the truth of God, including the truth of God’s gift of existence to other
beings. So the divine ideas teaching allowed its exponents to contemplate
with reverence and wonder the goodness, truth, and beauty of our fellow
creatures because it taught that at the core of every being is the continual
speaking of its imperishable truth in God, the intelligible form or idea by
which God thinks and creates each being.
In the preface I have explained briefly why this book must leave to others
the rich historical contextualization, the philosophical problematics, and the
biblical foundations with which I would have liked to approach the divine
ideas tradition.¹ For good or ill this is a shorter book than it might have been,
and perhaps it would most kindly be received as simply a theological essay, a
conversation with several of the most outstanding teachers of the divine
ideas tradition. There are, however, at least two possible misimpressions that
my necessary approach to discussing the divine ideas may unintentionally
give, and I hope that by alerting readers to these in advance I may mitigate
the problem. First, and most obviously, by working with a fairly narrow
group of thinkers, and highlighting points of intrinsic coherence among
their different approaches to the divine ideas, I might give readers the
impression of a far greater homogeneity than I mean to suggest. It goes
without saying that each author reflects the very different historical and
theological contexts in which they wrote, and while I wish to draw readers’
attention to the broad family resemblance among their approaches to the
divine ideas, I certainly would not wish to imply that they are always of one
mind on every issue. The second possible misimpression stems from my
desire to illustrate how the divine ideas teaching might be extended into our
contemporary discussions, and how matters which are implicit in ancient or
medieval treatments of the divine ideas might suggest ways forward for us
today. I hope readers will easily sense when I am drawing out notions that
are perhaps implicit in our authors, but which represent my own attempt to
advance a discussion about the potential significance of the divine ideas in
Christian mystical theology. This second issue may arise particularly
  3

because I have, fairly consistently throughout the book, attempted to show

the possible role of the divine ideas in thinking about the death and
resurrection of Christ; and while, as we will see, a thinker such as Bonaventure
does make a rich and direct use of the divine ideas in that context, other
thinkers whom I treat are less explicit in this regard. In short, I hope readers
will find my constructive engagement with these important historical figures
to be intriguing and suggestive but not misleading; perhaps in a case such as
this forewarned is forearmed, and I am grateful for the reader’s patience and
imagination as I attempt to make my case.
Readers familiar with ancient and medieval Christianity will immediately
recognize the book’s structure as attempting to follow the path of Pseudo-
Dionysius and Thomas Aquinas, striving to articulate a theological pattern
that mirrors what they and I believe to be the dynamic structure of existence
itself—coming forth from the infinite Existence we call God and returning to
God along the way pioneered, Christians believe, by Jesus through the Spirit.
Accordingly, the first chapter introduces the divine ideas tradition as
grounded in the Trinitarian life of God (and also offers some important
clarifications about the nature of my argument). The second chapter in-
vestigates the way in which the divine ideas teaching inflects the Christian
understanding of creation, as well as offering some attempt to think about
the historical marginalization of this perspective in the late medieval and
early modern periods. Chapter 3 argues that the Incarnation and Paschal
mystery fundamentally reconstitute the divine ideas within Christological
and Trinitarian modes of reflection, and the chapter further proposes that it
is on these doctrinal grounds that the divine ideas teaching might prove a
helpful rediscovery. Chapter 4 explores more fully how the resurrection of
Christ, considered through the lens of the divine ideas tradition, can be seen
as re-creating and bringing to life the truth of all creatures; further, the
chapter suggests that the Christian community, desiring to share ever more
fully in Christ’s dying and rising, develops a new understanding of human-
ity’s contemplative calling—so that a continual conversion of contemplative
consciousness collaborates in Christ’s re-harmonizing of creation with
God’s knowing and loving of each creature. The final chapter suggests
how the divine ideas permit mystical theology to envision a fourfold analogy
of intelligibility: in the mind of God, in human (and angelic) acts of
understanding, in the vindication of Christ (through his resurrection) as
the truth of God and of creation, and in the consummation of the human
desire to know the truth in the vision of God.
4     

At the heart of the argument in this essay are a number of material

convictions about the substance of the divine ideas teaching but also some
hypotheses about the formal significance of the divine ideas—that is hy-
potheses about the particular role the divine ideas teaching has played and
why that might be so. For example, a central material implication of the
divine ideas tradition is that theology can and should respect the loving and
lovable gratuity at the ground of all creatures—because it is the echo within
them of the loving freedom of their Author. What the divine ideas tradition
serves to do, in an instance such as this, is to help us contemplate precisely
this crucial nexus between the creatures, in all their particularity and
vulnerable cherishability in time, and the eternally free activity of knowing
and loving by which God is God and in virtue of which the creatures have
their existence. In the Christian tradition, I’m arguing, precisely because the
ideas are God’s own knowledge of how every creature participates in the
divine self-sharing of existence, the ideas can be seen as inherently imbued
with the self-communicating and relational agency of the Trinitarian life in
which they are eternally known and loved. So, I will argue later in this book,
the embodied historical struggle of every creature to discover and to be its
true self, to communicate the vivacious idea at its core, is never left behind
but is integral to its consummate realization, to its fullness of life. And as the
creature fully lives into its self-communication, this true life surges past all
false selves constructed by sin and prejudice and violence of every kind, and
onwards into the inexhaustible self-sharing of its truth; for the truth at the
heart of every creature is God’s eternal and imperishable knowing and
loving of it, and this is the life from which it flows and which, Christians
believe, God intends it to enjoy forever.
Among the many uses and attributes of the divine ideas teaching, one in
particular, I suspect, may have given rise to its near ubiquity in the history of
Christian thought prior to modernity. This is the fact that the divine ideas
function for Christian teachers and mystics as a way of thinking about and
indeed, contemplating, the communion among God, creatures, and the
human person. Within each corner of this metaphorical triangle of com-
munion, the ideas have both a metaphysical function (explaining how things
come to exist as what they are) and also a noetic or epistemological function
(explaining how the truth of things can be known). In God, the divine ideas
are understood by the tradition to exist as an aspect of God’s knowing of
Godself, and within that eternal self-understanding in the Word, all the ways
in which creatures might come to participate in or imitate the divine reality.
If theologians are contemplating the ideas as the causes of all creatures, they
  5

may refer to the ideas as exemplars or archetypes, being as it were the

blueprints by which God brings the creatures into their individual finite
existence. But if theologians are contemplating the ideas primarily as intel-
ligible forms within God’s eternal knowing, then the ideas may be referred to
as the eternal reasons, namely, the ideas by which God knows the truth of all
the creatures precisely as aspects of God’s own essence. I emphasize that this
distinction, with respect to God, between the metaphysical and the episte-
mological is of course purely a matter of human focus: in God, for our
thinkers, being and knowing are simply one reality.
These two aspects, the noetic and the metaphysical, are also present in the
second corner of this triangle of cosmic communion: namely, in the crea-
tures themselves. For at the heart of every creature is the divine exemplar
that causes it to be precisely and wonderfully what it is; and looked at
noetically, this creative exemplar can also be understood as the creature’s
intelligible form, the idea by which it may be rightly and fully understood in
all its truth. At the third corner of our metaphor of cosmic communion, we
have the rational creatures: angels, and more particular to our purposes,
human beings—for the human person, who shares in the sensible, physical
reality of all other creatures, is also able to recognize the creature’s intelli-
gible form or idea, and this, when actualizing the mind of a human knower,
instantiates a link or moment of communion among the creature who exists
intelligibly in the mind of the human knower, the knower herself, and God’s
own knowing and loving, from which both the creature and its human
contemplator flow. I’m suggesting then that God’s knowing and loving
freely communicates itself, both in the finite creaturely expression of the
divine ideas, and in the transformation of consciousness that the contem-
plation of the ideas in creation brings about. And in this way, Christians
believe, God nurtures a consciousness of the hidden divine presence in all
beings, and the possibility of ever fuller communion among creatures, and
between creatures and God. While the divine ideas have sometimes been the
subject of profound philosophical analysis in the history of Christian
thought, this book is an effort to understand the role of the divine ideas
teaching in Christian mystical theology—an effort, that is, to notice and
interpret the role of the ideas in the thought of Christian mystical teachers,
who have sought to awaken their fellow Christians to God’s hidden or
mystical presence within all things, deepening the contemplative response
to God’s presence.
As we will see throughout this book, the exponents of the divine ideas
teaching compass a wide range of understandings with respect to both the
6     

metaphysical and the noetic aspects of the divine ideas. While I will seldom
devote much attention to fine distinctions in this regard, it may be helpful to
readers to consider for a moment the diversity of positions that might be
possible and how they interact with each other—that is, to consider the
reciprocal influence of particular stances on both the metaphysical and
noetic issues in thinking about the divine ideas. As a way of making this
more evident, we might consider a diagram with two axes as displayed
below:
a. Theophany

d. consciousness
c. individualist
participating in
consciousness
divine ideas

b. Only imitation / No participation

Considering the vertical (a–b) axis, we can think of the upper reaches as
perspectives that understand creaturely reality as itself a theophany, an
expression in finite form of God’s own reality. In this view, the divine
ideas are expressed in time in individualized, finite form, within every
creature. At the other end of this axis (b), would be the perspective that
understands finite reality as not participating in the actual divine being, but
rather as imitating it—like a self-portrait by a painter, or a recording of a
singer, the creation is not the expression of the immediate presence of the
divine, but only imitates it in some way. In this perspective, then, the divine
ideas are not directly present within each creature but are only reflected or
echoed at the heart of each creature.
Turning to the horizontal axis (c–d), the leftmost position represents
human consciousness that is entirely untouched by divine illumination
and experiences reality from the individualist perspective of a human ego
looking “out” at all other beings as “objects,” either of attractive or repellent
significance. This perspective is, by most of our thinkers, understood to be
profoundly vitiated by sin, turning the subject–object division in human
  7

consciousness into a mindset marred by fear and antagonism towards the

other. At the other end (d) is the perspective of a participant sharing in
God’s own knowing and loving of all reality, and understanding the divine
truth of every creature from that wholistic and loving vantage point. This
perspective is especially marked by its embrace of the unified diversity of
reality as the wholly beneficent expression of divine infinity. In other words,
it experiences reality as liberated from division or enmity and as entirely one
within the divine embrace. If we look at the trajectory marked by the arrow
moving from X to Y, we can use that to trace the sort of progression sought
by such important thinkers in the divine ideas tradition as Augustine,
Pseudo-Dionysius, Hadewijch, or Eckhart. This progression shows the
intrinsic link between the shift in contemplative consciousness and the
apprehension of reality in a completely different manner. The spiritual
journey, in other words, means not simply a change in what one sees, but
in the knower herself: as consciousness shares more fully in God’s own
knowing and loving, so too the actual presence of that knowing and loving at
the heart of each creature becomes more vividly apparent. My hope is that
this highly oversimplified discussion will assist readers in pondering the
mutually implicating significance of these two aspects of the divine ideas
teaching, thus allowing us to notice more easily what is at stake in the
different stances adopted and encouraged by our writers.
As I have just suggested, Christian thinkers often find an intrinsic
connection between the divine ideas teaching and the human calling to
contemplate reality and find God in all things. Moreover, as I will suggest
in Chapter 1, the divine ideas are far more present implicitly throughout the
whole range of Christian teaching than any particular explicit references to
them might suggest. And this combination, namely their intrinsic dynamic
towards contemplation and their implicit presence within almost every area
of Christian belief, means that the divine ideas seem to function throughout
Christian theology as invitations into the divine presence. The divine ideas
teaching, I am arguing, holds open within theology what we might think of
as a hidden spiritual door in every doctrinal locus—a threshold across which
reflection on doctrine passes onwards towards an encounter with the living
mystery to which the doctrine is meant to guide believers. We get a good
glimpse of the phenomenon I’m pointing to in this passage from William of
St. Thierry (c.1085–1148):

When the object of thought is God and the things which relate to God and
the will reaches the stage at which it becomes love, the Holy Spirit, the
8     

Spirit of life, at once infuses himself by way of love and gives life to
everything, lending his assistance in prayer, in meditation or in study to
human weakness. Immediately the memory becomes wisdom and tastes
with relish the good things of the Lord, while the thoughts to which they
give rise are brought to the intellect to be formed into affections. The
understanding of the one thinking becomes the contemplation of the one
loving.²

William evokes the circumstances in which so much of Christianity’s theo-

logical reflection was achieved in the era between the age of the Mothers and
Fathers of the Church and the high scholastic period of the later Middle
Ages. Note the carefully limned sequence that William suggests a person
might perceive, and, undoubtedly, acknowledge with the most profound
gratitude: the mind gives itself to thinking about God and “the things which
relate to God,” but as this happens, the heart is overtaken with love for that
infinite goodness of God that the mind’s thoughts had conceived as truth but
never fully comprehended. The infinite beauty of God’s life, that the mind
meets as dazzling truth, the will tastes as Wisdom’s generous and loving
goodness. In such moments, says William, it is the Holy Spirit who as the
divine love “infuses” Godself and “gives life to everything.” What is this
“everything”? William describes here, I believe, the optimum theological
moment, when “the understanding of the one thinking becomes the con-
templation of the one loving,” when the theological labor of the earthly
church is welcomed, for a moment at least, into the consummate joy of its
sisters and brothers who now see what can by wayfarers only be believed.
I want to suggest that for most of the history of Christianity, the divine ideas,
present as an aspect of the central beliefs of Christian faith, were particularly
apt means for thinking to be strengthened by loving, for understanding to
expand into that living encounter we call contemplation. As God’s own
“thoughts” (albeit of course conceived anthropomorphically but still ana-
logically), the divine ideas are very rarely considered by our authors to be
knowable in and of themselves by human knowers—they would be too
overwhelmingly charged with the infinite reality of God; yet the divine
ideas are by our authors considered to befriend and illuminate the human
mind in search of understanding. And this very thought of the ideas, in
generous love beckoning the mind and heart towards Wisdom’s banquet,
infuses Christians—who thus come to recognize the ideas as they are
embodied within time and space, kindling within believers an ardent desire
to behold the full radiance of the ideas as they exist imperishably in the
Another random document with
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135. Año 1547. El bachiller Sebastián Fernández
publicó la Tragedia Policiana. En la qual se tractan
los muy desdichados amores de Policiano é
Philomena Executados por industria de la diabólica
vieja Claudina Madre de Parmeno é maestra de
Celestina, Toledo, 1547, 1548; Madrid, 1910, en los
Orígenes de la novela, t. III, de M. Pelayo. Hay un
epílogo de Luis Hurtado (de Toledo) "Al lector", en
que se declara autor de la obra. Es, pues, una
imitación y como preámbulo de la Celestina, con los
mismos personajes, intriga y aun razonamientos y
sentencias. Es más casta en escenas y palabras que
las otras imitaciones, más recatada; pero tan realista
como ellas, de elegante composición y rico lenguaje,
como obra de un estudiante que admirando la
primera Celestina no se atreve á salir de ella, pero
tiene ingenio y gusto para remedarla, lográndolo bien
en el realismo, en el dialogado y en el lenguaje, en el
que es de notar el villanesco de algunos personajes.

El Bachiller Bartolomé Palau, natural de

Burbáguena, provincia de Teruel, estudiante de
Salamanca, publicó en el primer tercio del siglo xvi la
Farsa Llamada Custodia del hombre, Astorga, 1547.
Farsa llamada Salamantina, 1552 (Bibl. real de
Munich); entremés de estudiantes, tomadas las
escenas de la realidad, con recuerdos de la
Celestina. Historia de Santa Orosia. Dedicó al
arzobispo don Hernando de Aragón (1529-1577) la
comedia Victoria Christi, é imprimióse en Zaragoza,
1569. Y el mismo año Historia de Santa Librada y de
sus ocho hermanas, Zaragoza, 1569.
136. Palau debió de ser contemporáneo de Carvajal. Efectivamente,
la Farsa Salamantina es del primer tercio del siglo xvi. Llámase el
autor "súbdito capellán" de un prelado de "real prosapia", esto es, de
don Fernando de Aragón, arzobispo de Zaragoza desde 1529.
Además: "¿Por qué, veamos, no asentáis | con los nobles de valía? |
Que en Salamanca hoy día | hartos hay, si los buscáis. | ¿Con quién
puedo? | Con un don Diego Acebedo | ó un señor don Bernardino... |
con don Rodrigo Mejía". Ahora bien, Pedro González de Trasmera,
en el Triunfo Raimundino (ms. Bibl. Nac.): "De Acebedo, gran solar, |
salió don Diego esforçado, | que en Salsas fué señalado | con
esfuerzo militar". Aquella acción fué en 1503, luego á principios del
siglo xvi se escribió la Farsa Salamantina, siendo mozo su autor, y
más tarde, ya de edad, escribió la Victoria Christi, cuya primera
edición conocida es: Victoria Christi nuevamente compuesta por el
Bachiller Bartolomé Palau, natural de Burbáguena. La materia de la
qual es una alegoría. Representación de la captividad espiritual, en
que el Linaje humano estubo por la culpa original debaxo del poder
del Demonio, hasta que Christo nuestro Redentor con su muerte
redimió nuestra libertad, y con su Resurrección reparó nuestra vida.
Fué impresa la presente Obra con licencia del Excmo. Sr. D.
Hernando de Aragón, arzobispo de Zaragoza..., Zaragoza, 1589. Así
la transcribe Latassa (Escritor. arag., t. I, pág. 280). Aquí hay error
en poner 1589, en vez de 1569, como ha demostrado Juan M.
Sánchez, Bibliografía aragonesa del siglo xvi, t. II, pág. 183. Hay
además las ediciones de 1570; Barcelona, 1577; Valencia, 1583. La
Historia de S. Librada se cita en Nic. Antonio y en el Museo ó
Biblioteca selecta del excelentísimo señor don Pedro Núñez de
Guzmán, marqués de Montealegre, al v.º del fol. 61.
Bartolomé Palau, Historia de la gloriosa Santa Orosia, ed. A.
Fernández Guerra y Orbe, Madrid, 1883; Farsa llamada
Salamantina, ed. A. Morel-Fatio, en Bulletin Hispanique (1900), t. II,
págs. 237-304; L. Rouanet, Una edición desconocida de la "Victoria
de Cristo", del Bachiller Bartolomé Palau, en Revista Crítica, etc.
(1899), t. IV, páginas 430-435; L. Rouanet, Bartolomé Palau y sus
obras: "Farsa llamada Custodia del hombre", en Archivo de
investigaciones históricas (1911), t. I, págs. 267-303, 356-390, 535-
564; (1911), t. II, páginas 93-154.

137. Año 1547. Lorenzo de Sepúlveda, célebre

romancerista popular, imitador de los romances
viejos, vecino de Sevilla y escribano, publicó la
Comedia de Sepúlveda, reimpresa por Emilio
Cotarelo, Madrid, 1901, en Revista Española de
literatura, historia y arte. Parece fundada en Il
Negromante, de Ariosto, y en Gl' Inganni, de Niccolo
Secchi. Publicó además Romances nuevamente
sacados de historias antiguas, Amberes, 1551; pero
parece hubo edición ó ediciones anteriores; ibid.,
1566, 1580; insertólos casi todos Durán en su
Romancero. Ebert cita ediciones de 1563, 1566,
1580 y 1584. Recopilación de romances viejos,
sacados de las coronicas españolas, romanas y
troyanas, Alcalá, 1563; diferente en algunas partes
de la de Amberes de 1551. Romances sacados de la
Historia de España del rey don Alonso, Medina,
1562; Amberes, 1580. Cancionero de Romances
sacados de las Coronicas antiguas de España con
otros hechos por Sepúlveda..., Medina, 1570. Otros
Romances sacados de la Historia y de los 4 Cantos
de Alonso de Fuentes, Burgos, 1579.
Lorenzo de Sepúlveda, Romances nuevamente sacados de historias
antiguas de la crónica de España, etc. [facsímile de la ed. de 1551,
por Archer M. Huntington], New-York, 1903.

138. Año 1547. Antonio de Torquemada sirvió de

secretario al Conde de Benavente más de cuarenta
años, desde 1530, hombre de feliz y agudo ingenio,
poeta no vulgar y muy versado en los conocimientos
de su tiempo. Publicó El ingenio ó juego de Marro,
de punta ó Damas, Valencia, 1547; los Colloquios
satíricos, con un colloquio pastoril al cabo,
Mondoñedo, 1553. Son seis diálogos, que tratan: 1.º,
de los daños del juego; 2.º, de lo que los médicos y
boticarios han de hacer para cumplir el deber; 3.º, de
las excelencias de la vida pastoril; 4.º, del desorden
en el comer y el beber; 5.º, del desorden en el vestir;
6.º, del pundonor mundano. Es una verdadera sátira
social en prosa dialogada, que toca las principales
tonterías y vicios del mundo con donaires castizos,
anécdotas y chistes, pinturas de costumbres y
honda, pero amena moral. El Coloquio pastoril, así
como el tercer diálogo, publicados antes de la Diana,
de Montemayor (1559), fué la primera muestra de la
novela pastoril, no quedando por bajo de él, á no ser
en la extensión. Describe la vida campestre con el
apacible y dulce estilo, que fué desde entonces
propio de este género de novelas. Más tarde publicó
la Historia del invencible caballero don Olivante de
Laura, príncipe de Macedonia, Barcelona, 1564.
Después el Jardín de flores curiosas, en que se
tratan algunas materias de Humanidad. Philosophía,
Thelogia y Geographia con otras cosas, Salamanca,
1570. Es la colección, dice La Barrera, más
extraordinaria de absurdos, patrañas, ridículas
consejas y casos extravagantes inventados por la
credulidad más supersticiosa y apoyados por las
ideas científicas más equivocadas que puede
haberse compilado y publicado jamás. Tiene seis
diálogos. Su agradable estilo y el gracejo con que
están narrados los cuentos y casos raros
contribuyeron á la aceptación que tuvo de un público
ganoso de lecturas fantásticas y espantables.

En 1547 se escribieron la Carta del Bachiller de

Arcadia y la Respuesta del Capitán Salazar, no se
sabe por quién, aunque se han atribuido á don Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza. Pero pasajes hay que no dicen
con el valor y cargos de aquel prócer; antes parecen
dichos por algún eclesiástico, bachiller en Artes por
París, que en Roma pretendía algo para Granada, su
patria, y no había escrito nada. El capitán Salazar
debía de ser algún Salazar granadino que como
capitán anduvo con el Emperador y acaso sin ser
cronista escribió de aquella guerra. Esto, si ya no fué
un tercero el que todo esto finge ó parte de ello.
Tampoco parece sea Pedro de Salazar el aquí
llamado capitán Salazar, y cuya obra se publicó en
Nápoles, 1548, un año después de Carta y
Respuesta.
139. Antonio de Torquemada, Colloquios satíricos con un colloquio
pastoril al cabo, Mondoñedo, 1553; Bilbao, 1584; Madrid, 1907, por
M. Pelayo, Nueva Bibl. de Aut. Esp., t. VII. Quijote: "¿Quién es ese
tonel?, dijo el Cura. Éste es, respondió el barbero, don Olivante de
Laura. El autor dese libro, dijo el Cura, fué el mismo que compuso á
Jardín de Flores; y en verdad que no sepa determinar cuál de los
dos libros es más verdadero ó, por mejor decir, menos mentiroso;
sólo sé decir que éste irá al corral por disparatado y arrogante". Por
lo hinchado y arrogante le llamaría tonel, no por el tomo, que no es
excesivo, con sus 253 hojas foliadas. Tradújose el Jardín al italiano,
al francés y al inglés, The Spanish Maundeville of Miracles, Londres,
1600. Tuvo en castellano estas ediciones: Salamanca, 1570;
Zaragoza, 1571; Amberes, 1573; Lérida, 1574; Amberes, 1575;
Salamanca, 1577; Medina, 1587, 1599; Barcelona, 1621.

La batalla de Mulhberg se dió en 1547, y poco después de ella y en

breves horas escribió el capitán Salazar la relación de ella. Véase
Lucas de Torre, Carta del Bachiller de Arcadia y Respuesta del
Capitán Salazar, edición crítica con introducción y notas, en Revue
Hispanique, 1913. ¿Será el capitán Diego de Salazar? (véase año
1536). La Bibliografía véase al tratar de Mendoza, núm. 97.

140. Año 1547. El licenciado Jerónimo Fernández,

burgalés, hijo de Toribio Fernández y hermano de
Andrés Fernández, que fué licenciado en Derecho y
vivió en Madrid, publicó el Libro primero del Valeroso
ᘔ invencible Príncipe don Belianis de Grecia (1.ª y 2.ª
partes), Burgos, 1547; Estella, 1564; Burgos, 1579;
Zaragoza, 1580; Burgos, 1587. Tercera y quarta
parte del imbencible príncipe don Belianis de Grecia,
Burgos, 1579, 1587; dió á luz estas partes su
hermano Andrés, por muerte de su autor. "Aquí se
acaba la tercera y quarta parte de don Belianis de
Grecia, compuesta por el licenciado Jeronimo
Fernandez, así mismo autor de la primera y
segunda", Burgos, 1587. Véase Quijote, I, 6.
Tradújolo al francés Cl. du Bueil, París, 1625 (1.ª
parte); al italiano, Oratio Rinaldi Bolognere, 2 vols.,
Ferrera, 1586, y Verona, 1587; al inglés, en 1587 y
en la Biblioteca de Lowndes, 1834, etc.

Luis Hurtado de Toledo (1532-1579), rector de la

parroquia de San Vicente, de aquella ciudad, de
donde era natural, fué escritor fecundo y castizo en
prosa y verso. El portugués Francisco de Moraes
Cabral había escrito en portugués el año 1544 la
Crónica de Palmeirim de Inglaterra, primeira e
segunda parte, como se lee en la edición de 1592.
Luis Hurtado tradujo este libro con el título de Libro
del muy esforçado cauallero Palmerin de inglaterra, y
lo imprimió en Toledo, libro primero, 1547, y libro
segundo, 1548. Tradújolo al francés Jaques Vincet,
Lyon, 1553; París, 1574; al italiano, Mambrino
Roseo, Venecia, 1553 ó 1555, 1584, 1609; al inglés,
Anthony Monday, Londres, 1602, 1609, 1639, 1664,
1691, y Roberto Southey, 1807. En 1553 publicó el
mismo Luis Hurtado de Toledo la égloga
representable en coplas de arte mayor, titulada
Comedia Tibalda ó de Preteo y Tibaldo ó Disputa y
remedio de amor, Toledo, segunda edición;
Valladolid, sin fecha, cuando ya "su anciano y sabio
autor" había muerto. El editor pondera con razón la
"facilidad de vocablos y vivacidad de sentencias",
aunque es poco dramática. Fué su autor el
comendador Perálvarez de Ayllón, de quien hay
en el Cancionero general (núm. 884) un testamento
de amores. En 1557 publicó Cortes d' casto amor: y
cortes de la muerte con algunas obras en metro y
prosa. Toledo, Las Cortes de casto amor son una
novela alegórica en prosa. Las Cortes de la Muerte
fueron compuestas por "Michael de Caruajal y Luys
Hurtado de Toledo", como allí se dice. Las otras
obras son: Coloquio de la prueva de leales; dos
composiciones latinas; Hospital de Galanes
enamorados... en verso; Hospital de Damas de amor
heridas, en verso; Espejo de gentileza para damas y
galanes cortesanos, en verso; otros versos: Ficción
deleytosa y triumpho de amor; Tres epístolas en
tercetos. En 1582, á imitación del Laberinto, de
Mena, teniendo cumplidos cincuenta años, publicó
Las Trecientas de Luis Hurtado, Poeta Castellano,
en defensa de Illustres mujeres, llamadas Triumpho
de Virtudes; contiene además el Theatro Pastoril,
novela pastoril en prosa; el Templo de Amor, el
Hospital de necios, en décimas; la Escuela de
avisados, la Sponsalia de Amor. (Véase Ant. Neira
Nosquera, Semanario pintoresco Español, 1853).
También, en papel volante: Romance nuevamente
hecho por Luis Hurtado, en el cual se contienen las
treguas que hicieron los troyanos y la muerte de
Hector y cómo fué sepultado. También van aquí los
amores de Aquiles con la linda Policena. Historia de
San Joseph, en octavas, Toledo, 1598. Las
metamorphoses de Ovidio, en 15 libros, Toledo,
1578; Amberes, 1595; Madrid, 1622. Égloga Silviana
del galardón de Amor, Valladolid. Memorias de
algunas cosas memorables que tiene la Imperial
ciudad de Toledo, al rey don Felipe II (Ms. de la
Acad. Hist.), para responder al interrogatorio que el
Rey envió á los pueblos de Castilla en 1572, escrito
en 1576. Un romance suyo en el Cancionero de
Amberes, 1550, y en Durán (t. I, núm. 474).
141. Palmerín de Inglaterra, ed. A. Bonilla y San Martín, Nueva Bibl.
de Aut. Esp., t. XI. Consúltense: W. E. Purser, Palmerin of England,
Dublin-London, 1904; señora C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, Versuch
über den Ritterroman Palmeirim de Inglaterra, Halle, 1883; M.
Pelayo, Oríg. nov., t. I. pág. cclxx; Quijote, I, cap. VI. Comedia
Tibalda, edic. y estudio de A. Bonilla, Bibl. Hispánica, t. XIII.
Memorial..., ms. en la Academia de la Historia. Las Cortes de la
Muerte, en el t. XXV de la Bibl. de Aut. Esp.

142. Año 1547. El magnífico cavallero Alonso de Fuentes,

sevillano, publicó Summa de Philosophía natural en la qual
assimismo se tracta de astrulugía y astronomía y otras sciencias. En
estilo nunca visto, Sevilla, 1547; Venecia, 1569 (en ital.). Al fol. vj se
lee: "Nota lector el artificio de esta obra que toda la prosa en que
pregunta y habla Ethrusco es verso suelto Italiano: Y la prosa en
que responde y habla Vandalio es verso suelto castellano".
Quarenta cantos de diversas y peregrinas historias, declarados y
moralizados, Sevilla, 1550; Granada, 1563; Zaragoza, 1564;
Granada, 1567; Burgos, 1579; Alcalá, 1587. Es obra importante para
conocer nuestros antiguos romances. Tradujo el Asno de oro, de
Apuleyo, en 1564.

Fray Luis de Alarcón, de la Orden de San Agustín, publicó el

Camino del Cielo, en que se demuestra cómo se busca y halla Dios
de todo corazón cristiano, y se declara la maldad y ceguedad de
este mundo, Alcalá, 1547; Granada, 1550.—Compendio de toda la
Filosofía natural de Aristóteles, Estella, 1547; por un benedictino tal
de Canales, en coplas de arte mayor.—Fernando Díaz, con el
doctor Aguilera y el doctor Victoria, publicó El Repertorio de las
Leyes de todos los Reynos de Castilla, Valladolid, 1547. Acaso es
Fernando Díaz de Valdepeñas, de quien se trata en el año 1543.—
Enrique Enríquez de Valderrábano, de Peñaranda, publicó Libro
de música de vihuela, intitulado "Silva de Sirenas", Valladolid, 1547.
—En 1547 se publicó Regla de la orden y cavallería de S. Santiago
de la Espada con la glosa y declaración del maestro Isla, freile de
la misma orden, Alcalá.—El licenciado Andrés Martínez de
Burgos, vecino de Astorga, publicó Repertorio de todas las
Premáticas y capítulos de cortes, hechos por su magestad, desde el
año de 1523 hasta el año de 1544, Medina, 1547, 1555 (llega hasta
1555).—Fray Andrés de Olmos, franciscano burgalés, escribió en
1547, Arte de la lengua mexicana (ms.), traducida al francés, París,
1875. Ars et vocabularium mexicanum, Méjico, 1555.—Libro del
infante don Pedro de Portugal, el qual anduvo las cuatro partidas del
mundo, compuesto por "Gomes de Sant Esteban, uno de los doze
que anduvieron con el dicho infante á la vez", Salamanca, 1547;
Burgos, 1563; Zaragoza, 1570; Barcelona, 1595. Se reimprimió
mucho y todavía se imprime como libro de literatura de cordel.
Tradújose al portugués en 1644. Véase Cesáreo Fernández Duro,
Viajes del infante D. Pedro de Portugal en el siglo xv, Madrid, 1903,
y Oliveira Martins, Os filhos de D. João I, Lisboa, 1891; Carolina
Michaëlis, en el Homenaje á M. Pelayo, t. I, págs. 637-732. Parece
imitación del Mandeville castellano (véase año 1515 de nuestra
Literatura).—Antonio de Segovia publicó la Murmuración de vicios,
á manera de Diálogo, Valladolid, 1547.—Fray Domingo de
Valtanás Mexía (1488-1560?), dominico de Villanueva del
Arzobispo, publicó Aristóteles: Compendio de la Filosofía natural,
Sevilla, 1547. De la Justificación, ibid., 1550. Confesionario: Tratado
de Excomuniones, Usura, Matrimonio y Votos, ibid., 1554; Burgos,
1555. Margarita seu Summa Confessorum olim ab monacho
praedicatorum ordinis Hispalensis coenobii composita, Alcalá, 1554.
Doctrina Christiana, Sevilla, 1555. Vita Christi ó Flos Sanctorum,
ibid. Epítome y sumario de la vida y excelencias de trece Patriarcas
del Testamento nuevo y de nueve muy esclarecidas Santas, ibid.,
1555. Compendio de sentencias morales y de algunas cosas
notables de España, ibid., 1555; ibid., 1558. Exposición sobre los
Evangelios, ibid., 1555. Enchiridión de Estados, 1555.
Concordancias de muchos pasos difíciles de la divina Historia, ibid.,
1555, 1556. Apologías sobre ciertas materias morales, ibid., 1556.
Satyra contra los Tahures, ibid., 1557. La vida y hechos admirables
del Real Profeta David, ibid., 1557. Paradoxas y sentencias
escogidas, ibid., 1558.

143. Año 1548. El licenciado Sebastián de

Horozco, vecino de Toledo, y natural
probablemente de la misma ciudad ó de Salamanca,
fué hijo de Juan de Horozco, uno de los que firmaron
con Alonso de Covarrubias y con Antonio de Egas,
en 1512, la declaración y parecer sobre el modo de
construir la catedral de Salamanca. Casó con María
Valero y Covarrubias, hija de Marcos de Covarrubias
y sobrina del Alonso de Covarrubias citado. Tuvo de
ella dos hijos y una hija, Sebastián, Juan de Horozco
y Covarrubias y Catalina. El un hijo, don Juan, fué
canónigo de Sevilla y obispo de Agrigento y de
Guadix, autor de los Emblemas morales; el otro, don
Sebastián, fué canónigo de Cuenca y autor del
famoso Tesoro de la lengua castellana; doña
Catalina casó con Diego de Alarcón, secretario y
mayordomo del bailío de Lora. Vivió por lo menos
hasta 1578, y fué jurisconsulto en Toledo,
desempeñando el cargo de asesor de un alcalde de
Hermandad y el de abogado del Municipio ó
consultor del Ayuntamiento, como se decía
entonces. Fué escritor incansable de todos los
acontecimientos que hubo durante su larga vida,
mayormente de los que atañen á Toledo, y además,
y sobre todo, uno de los mejores poetas españoles
de su tiempo. "Hay en los tratados suyos que
conozco, dice Martín Gamero, una riqueza tal de
detalles, que inútilmente se buscará cosa parecida
en ningún escritor toledano de su centuria. Él
describe los sucesos y pinta las costumbres y se
codea con los hombres principales del siglo xvi". Sus
obras conocidas en verso son el Cancionero, poco
ha impreso, y los Refranes glosados en verso, que
preparó para publicarlos y que á haberse publicado
"no cabe duda que á él se hubiese tributado con
preferencia el aplauso y la honra que mereció la
Filosofía vulgar, de Mal-lara. Gracia, discreción é
ingenio, dice Gamero, derramó sin medida en esa
miriada apotegmática, donde el buen juicio y la
profundidad y sana intención de la idea disputan el
campo á la ligereza de la frase, á la sal terenciana y
al buen humor que no le abandonó nunca. El
filósofo, el historiador y el poeta aparecen allí juntos
en una persona, para darnos á conocer lo que valía
el hombre oscuro á quien no apreciaron sus
contemporáneos lo bastante, porque extremó
siempre la modestia de escritor". Sus obras en prosa
son: primero, la Recopilación de refranes y adagios
comunes y vulgares de España. El volumen tiene
8.311 refranes y empieza en la E y es la Tercera
parte; ¿cuántos serían los de la obra completa? En
Hernán Núñez sólo hay 6.000. Está el manuscrito en
la Biblioteca Nacional. Colección de varios sucesos,
dos tomos, autógrafos, el uno en la Biblioteca
Nacional, el otro en la Biblioteca Real. El índice
puede verse en las Cartas impresas en el
Cancionero. Horozco se muestra en su Cancionero
poeta enteramente castizo en los asuntos, manera y
metro. Son los asuntos de circunstancias; la manera
epigramática, en cierto modo, esto es, al modo de
Marcial, cuando describe y burla tipos y costumbres,
aunque de ordinario más dilatadamente; el metro es
el octosílabo, comúnmente en décimas antiguas ó
sean dos quintillas. Sigue, pues, la tradición de los
poetas cortesanos del siglo XV, por ejemplo, los del
Cancionero de Baena. Son coplas castellanas,
decires españoles. Pero ¡qué diferencia en la
sinceridad, en la gracia, en el donaire! Como que en
Baena rara vez sopla á los poetas la Musa popular, y
á Horozco es la única que le sopla. Había ahondado
en el refranero vulgar y así muchas veces no hace
más que glosar refranes ó cantarcillos. Es satírico
sin mordacidad, riéndose bonachonamente de las
necedades humanas, con una punta de socarronería
delicadísima, un gusto tan fino y una tan ática
elegancia, que derrama la belleza hasta en los
asuntos más sucios. Erasmista, como los más de su
tiempo, carga lindamente la mano á clérigos y frailes
andariegos y mundanos. Cita á muchas personas de
la corte toledana y aun fechas, como en la
composición "El auctor quando en el año de 1552
vino á Toledo por Juez de residencia el Ldo. Castro,
oydor de Valladolid y escogió para alcaldes
ordinarios quatro xrnos viejos, todos cofadres de San
Pedro, que fueron Juan de Villaquirán, Juan
Martínez de Mora...". Hay coplas, preguntas,
canciones, diálogos, el Coloquio de la muerte con
todas las edades y estados, un Entremés, Coloquios
en Eco y tres Representaciones, la de la parábola de
San Mateo á los XX capítulos del sagrado Evangelio,
la qual se hizo y representó en T.º en la fiesta del
Smo. Sacramento por la Sta. Iglia. Año de 1548
años; la de la historia Evangélica del cap. X de S.
Joan y la de la famosa historia de Ruth. Estas
Representaciones son del género sagrado, con el
elemento humano lleno de realismo y el donaire y
gallarda versificación propia de Horozco. Han de
compararse con la Tragedia Josefina, de Carvajal,
sino que son del género cómico. El editor moderno
del Cancionero pone las Representaciones antes del
año 1548 y Fitzmaurice-Kelly advierte que "las puso
en escena antes que Lope de Rueda". De todos
modos la escena de la segunda de ellas, en que
condensado se halla el cuento del Lazarillo con su
amo el ciego, se representó antes de 1554, en que
se publicó el Lazarillo de Tormes, obra que
probabilísimamente fué compuesta por Sebastián de
Horozco.
144. "Vecino de Toledo" se llama siempre, no añadiendo "natural
de", aunque ya para entonces ponían natural ó vecino,
indistintamente. Don Tomás Tamayo de Vargas, el primero que citó á
Seb. Horozco en la Junta de libros la mayor que España ha visto en
su lengua hasta el año 1624, dice que fué "toledano y jurisconsulto";
los demás le califican de "famoso jurisconsulto". En la declaración y
parecer, que firmaron á 3 de setiembre de 1512 varios maestros de
arquitectura, sobre el modo de construir la catedral de Salamanca,
figura con el famoso Alonso de Covarrubias, tío de la mujer de
nuestro Sebastián de Horozco, otros dos maestros, Antón de Egas y
Juan de Horozco. Sabemos que el Alonso casó con una nieta del
Egas, y es probable que, estrechadas desde entonces, y por la
igualdad de profesión, sus relaciones con Juan de Horozco, hubiese
lugar y ocasión para que su sobrina María, hija de su hermano
Marcos, se desposase con un hijo del mismo Juan de Horozco.
Hácelo presumir el haber dado el mismo Sebastián Horozco á uno
de sus hijos su propio nombre, Sebastián, y á otro el del abuelo,
Juan, siguiendo la costumbre de aquella época. Si así fuese,
vendría á resultar que cuatro troncos de artistas: los dos
Covarrubias (Alonso y Marcos), Egas y Horozco, mezclados y
confundidos por sus enlaces, produjeron los cinco ingenios más
eminentes que salieron de Toledo en el siglo xvi. Á estas
observaciones, que tomo de la carta de Antonio Martín Gamero á
don José María Asensio y se halla al frente del Cancionero de
Sebastián de Horozco (Bibliófilos Andaluces, 1874), no me parece
demás añadir dos palabras, recordando quiénes fueron los
Covarrubias así enlazados con nuestro Sebastián Horozco. Alonso
de Covarrubias, nacido en Covarrubias, provincia de Burgos, en
1570, tomó su apellido por el lugar probablemente, y lo llevaron
igualmente sus hermanos Juan y Marcos; pero el de la familia hubo
de ser Leiva, usado por sus hijos Diego y Antonio. Estudió
arquitectura en la escuela del alemán Simón de Colonia y después
con el flamenco Enrique de Egas. Nombrado en 1534 maestro
mayor de las obras de la catedral de Toledo, labró la capilla de los
Reyes nuevos, los dos patios y fachadas del palacio arzobispal de
Alcalá y la portada del Colegio Mayor de Salamanca. Nombróle su
arquitecto Carlos V en 1537, y reedificó los alcázares de Toledo y
Madrid con Luis de Vega. Él y Diego de Siloe introdujeron en
España el estilo greco-romano. Su hermano Marcos de Covarrubias
fué famoso bordador en Toledo, donde, en 1514, bordó el terno del
cardenal Cisneros. Su hija María fué la esposa de nuestro Sebastián
de Horozco. El otro hermano de Alonso y Marcos fué el doctor Juan
de Covarrubias, magistral de Cuenca, con quien parece se educaron
los hijos de su hermano Alonso. Estos fueron Diego y Antonio de
Covarrubias y Leiva, á cual más famosos jurisconsultos y teólogos
toledanos. El don Antonio, después de acompañar á su hermano al
Concilio de Trento, fué canónigo y maestrescuela de la
metropolitana de Toledo y miembro del Consejo de Castilla.
Helenista y anticuario y autor del Derecho que el señor rey Felipe II
tuvo á la corona de Portugal. Dos retratos suyos, hechos por el
Greco, su gran amigo, se guardan en la Biblioteca Provincial y en el
Museo de Toledo. Mayor fama tuvo todavía su hermano don Diego,
discípulo de Martín de Azpilcueta Navarro y profesor de Derecho
canónico en Salamanca y organizador de aquella Universidad,
llamado el Bartolo Español, catedrático también en la Universidad
de Oviedo, juez en Burgos y oidor en Granada. Propúsole, en 1549,
para el Arzobispado de Santo Domingo, el emperador Carlos V, y
luego fué nombrado Obispo de Ciudad Rodrigo. En Trento redactó,
con el cardenal Buoncompagni (después Gregorio XIII), los famosos
decretos De Reformatione. Nombrado miembro del Consejo de
Castilla en 1572, dos años después fué su presidente. Sus obras
son muchas y muy celebradas. El Greco le retrató varias veces. Él
fué quien adoctrinó á sus sobrinos Sebastián y Juan de Horozco y
Covarrubias, hijos de nuestro Sebastián de Horozco. El don Juan
fué canónigo de Sevilla y obispo de Agrigento y de Guadix y autor
de los Emblemas morales (Segovia, 1589) y otras obras eruditas y
literarias. El don Sebastián fué canónigo de Cuenca, capellán de
Felipe III y consejero del Santo Oficio. Canonista distinguido, muy
versado en la historia antigua, docto en las lenguas latina, griega y
hebrea y uno de los filólogos á quien más debe la lengua castellana.
Pues suyo es el famoso Tesoro de la lengua castellana (Madrid,
1611), lo mejor que se escribió hasta el Diccionario de Autoridades,
de la Academia. Nicolás Antonio tomó de Tamayo de Vargas cuanto
escribió de Sebastián de Horozco, del cual trataron don José María
Asensio en 1847 y Gallardo en el último número de El Criticón y,
sobre todo, don Antonio Martín Gamero en dos cartas á Asensio,
insertas en la única edición del Cancionero, 1874. Que Sebastián de
Horozco vivía en 1578 se ve por su Ms. del Palacio Real (fol. 198),
donde escribió la muerte del príncipe don Fernando, hijo de Felipe II
y de su cuarta y última mujer doña Ana de Austria, muerto en Madrid
el 18 de octubre de 1578. Véase una muestra de sus Refranes
glosados en verso:

"Á rocín viejo, caueçadas nueuas.

Sea hombre ó sea muger,
en pasando de sesenta,
¿para qué quiere entender
en polir ni componer
ni tener con esto quenta?
Lo que yo les aconsejo,
sin andar en otras prueuas,
que busquen buen vino añejo:
lo al es á rocín viejo
poner cabezadas nueuas".

Doscientos y pico versos gasta en glosar el Andad, que allá os lo

dirán, sacando á plaza los vicios de todas las clases y sexos,
apostrofando al religioso, al clérigo, al casado, al mancebo, al
caballero, al juez, al procurador, al letrado, al médico, al boticario, al
oficial, á la monja, al tabernero, al carnicero, á la beata, á la casada,
á la viuda, á la alcahueta, á la doncella, á la ramera y á la vieja. En
el códice de la Bibl. Real, en la foja 193: "En otro cavo la tengo más
por estenso con todo lo demás en un volumen por sí, véase allí".
Trátase de la batalla de Lepanto (1571). Ese volumen se ha perdido.
Ahora bien, don Tomás Tamayo de Vargas dice haber visto un
volumen en que se hallaban las siguientes obras, que copia Nic.
Antonio: "Relación verdadera del levantamiento de los Moriscos en
el reyno de Granada y Historia de su guerra. Cosas que pasaron
muerta la Reyna Católica, y lo particular de las Comunidades.
Consejos y Proverbios en verso para sus Hijos, que después glosó.
Refranes vulgares glosados. Libro de Cuentos. Del Número
septenario. Suma de la Coronica de Portugal desde su principio
hasta el Rey D. Juan, sacada de autores Portugueses, el primer
libro de Duarte Galbán, el II. de Ruy de Pina Secretario y Coronista
de D. Juan el II." ¡Es extraño lo de la Historia de la guerra de
Granada! Mendoza escribió otra, y á él se atribuyó el Lazarillo, que
es, probablemente, de Horozco.

Sebastián de Horozco, Cancionero, Soc. de biblióf. andaluces, 1.ª

serie, t. VII, Sevilla, 1874. Algunas relaciones y noticias toledanas
que en el siglo xvi escribió, publícalas el Conde de Cedillo, Madrid,
1905. Consúltese: J. M. Asensio y Toledo, Sebastián de Horozco,
Noticias y obras inéditas de este autor dramático desconocido,
Sevilla, 1867.