Alfonso de Valdés

Origins and early life

Alfonso de Valdés was born around 1490 in Cuenca, in Castile.

Work and career

His converso ancestry is among the best documented of this whole directory: the Royal Academy of History's biographical dictionary records Jewish converso descent on two branches — through his mother, María de la Barrera, and through his paternal grandmother — with names, dates and the Inquisition's own sanctions in the record. He became the finest Erasmian pen of Spain and, as secretary for Latin letters to the emperor Charles V, wrote at the very center of European power.

After imperial troops sacked Rome in 1527 he composed the Dialogue on the Things that Happened in Rome, a defense of the emperor that turned into a scathing indictment of the corruption of the Church, followed by the Dialogue of Mercury and Charon — two masterpieces of Spanish Renaissance prose. A friend and correspondent of Erasmus himself, he pressed for reform and conciliation as Christendom split.

Later years

He accompanied the court to the Diet of Augsburg, and died of the plague in Vienna on 6 October 1532; his twin brother Juan de Valdés carried the family's daring thought into Italy.