Diego de Valera
Diego de Valera · Arts & Literature
Knight, diplomat and chronicler of the Catholic Monarchs, son of a converso royal physician, who defended the nobility of Jewish converts in the Espejo de verdadera nobleza
1412, Cuenca, Castille (Espagne) — vers 1488, El Puerto de Santa María, Andalousie (Espagne)
Cuenca, Ségovie, El Puerto de Santa María
Diego de Valera is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Knight, diplomat and chronicler of the Catholic Monarchs, son of a converso royal physician, who defended the nobility of Jewish converts in the Espejo de verdadera nobleza
Origins and early life
Diego de Valera was born in Cuenca in 1412, the son of Alonso Chirino, physician to Henry III and John II of Castile, whose family were conversos — Jews converted to Christianity, an ancestry that the historian Ángel González Palencia documented in 1922 and that archival finds of 1944 confirmed. He was raised at court as a page of John II, knighted young, and spent his twenties as a knight-errant of the old kind, jousting and serving in Bohemia against the Hussites, at the court of Burgundy, in Denmark, in England and in France, before fighting at the battle of Olmedo in 1445.
Work and career
He then served the crown as ambassador, as corregidor of Palencia and of Segovia, and finally as alcaide of the port of Santa María, from where he wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella the letters of counsel that make him one of the first political voices of their reign. His treatises founded a genre: the Espejo de verdadera nobleza, written around 1441, argued that true nobility lies in virtue and not in blood, and — a bold position for its time — that Jews of noble lineage who converted to Christianity kept their nobility, an argument that placed him squarely in the debate on the conversos that the Toledo statutes of 1449 would open.
Later years
As a chronicler he left the Crónica abreviada de España, called the Valeriana and printed in 1482, the Memorial de diversas hazañas on the reign of Henry IV, and the Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, and he died around 1488 in the port he governed.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Valera
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Knight, diplomat and chronicler of the Catholic Monarchs, son of a converso royal physician, who defended the nobility of Jewish converts in the Espejo de verdadera nobleza
Source: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Valera
