Son of the Alhambra

Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, 1504-1575

Bibliographic Data

ID23205248
AuthorsErika Spivakovsky (corresponding author)
Year1970
Publication date1970-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueSon of the Alhambra (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Texas Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7560/700932
OpenAlexW4236732782
ISBN9781477303122
Open LibraryOL34913271M
LanguageEN
Citations received2

Last of the Spanish Renaissance men, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1504–1575) was a master of the humanist disciplines as well as an active diplomat whose correspondence provides insight into the workings of power politics in the first post-Machiavellian decades. This account of Mendoza's diplomatic career is a living commentary on the mid-sixteenth century, the time of the Spanish Inquisition and the Reformation, with its upheavals in the European balance of power. Mendoza served as ambassador of Charles V to Venice and Rome and as governor of Siena. His political life complements the reign of the Emperor whose ambition was to become a universal monarch. An interesting contradiction in Mendoza's thought—his humanist theories versus personal ambition—prevented him from successful implemention of tyrannical imperial policies. His role in the government of the Holy Roman Empire shows how the exertion of imperialist power, humanist ethics notwithstanding, inevitably entails corruption, hypocrisy, greed, and imbalance in the one who tries to wield this power. Gifted to the point of universal genius, Mendoza was perhaps the foremost representative of the splendid but little-known epoch of Spanish humanism, the era between the death of Queen Isabel (1504) and the abdication of her grandson Charles V (1556). Spain's short-lived Renaissance came to an abrupt end with the accession of Philip II and the almost simultaneous onset of the Counter Reformation. To this changed Spain, under monolithic thought control now exacted and enforced by monarch and Inquisition, Mendoza returned to live the last third of his life, mostly in obscurity, and in the last few years in royal disgrace. Based on primary sources, this first biography of Mendoza in English also examines the relevance of some of Don Diego's disputed literary works to the legend that grew up around him as a spokesman for latent unorthodox opinion.

Geology · Islamic Studies and History · Ambassadors · biography · Diego Hurtado de Mendoza · diego hurtado de Mendoza (1503-1575) · Generals · Spain

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