Antonio de Lebrija, also known as Antonio de Nebrija, Elio Antonio de Lebrija, Antonius Nebrissensis, and Antonio of Lebrixa, (1441-1522) was a Spanish scholar born at Lebrija in the province of Seville.

Name

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His given name was Antonio Martínez de Calá. In typical humanist fashion, he latinized his name as Aelius Antonius Nebrissensis by taking Aelius from the Roman inscriptions of his native Lebrija, the Roman Nebrissa Veneria. He also signed his books as Antonius Lebrixen (1481) and Antonius Nebrissen (1501).

Life

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After studying at Salamanca he resided for ten years in Italy, and completed his education at Bologna University. On his return to Spain (1473), he devoted himself to the advancement of classical learning among his countrymen. After obtaining the professorship of poetry and grammar at Salamanca, he was transferred to the university of Alcalá de Henares, where he lectured until his death in 1522, at the age of seventy-eight.

His services to the cause of classical literature in Spain have been compared with those rendered by Valla, Erasmus and Scidaeus to Italy, the Netherlands and France. In 1492, he published the first grammar of the Spanish language (titled Gramática Castellana in Spanish), which was the first grammar produced of any Romance language. At this time, Castilian became Spanish, the official language of Spain, replacing Latin.

He produced a large number of works on a variety of subjects, including a Latin-Spanish dictionary, commentaries on Sedulius and Persius, and a Compendium of Rhetoric, based on Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. His most ambitious work was his chronicle entitled Rerum in Hispania Gestarum Decades (published in 1545 as an original work by his father), which twenty years later was found to be merely a Latin translation of the Spanish Chronicle of Pulgar, which was published at Saragossa in 1567. Nebrija also took part in the production of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible published under the patronage of Cardinal Cisneros.

References

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• Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, i. 132 (1888)
• Prescott, History of Ferdinand and Isabella, i. 410 (note)
• MacCrie, The Reformation in Spain in the Sixteenth Century (1829).

Spanish language | Spanish linguists | Spanish academics | Grammarians | 1441 births | 1522 deaths

Antonio de Nebrija | Antonio de Nebrija | Antonio de Nebrija