Juan de Valdés

Origins and early life

Juan de Valdés was born around 1500 at Cuenca in Castile, the twin brother of Alfonso de Valdés, who has his own fiche on this site, and his place in this directory rests on the same family record: the Royal Academy of History's biographical dictionary states that their mother, María de la Barrera, came from a converso Jewish family, and their paternal grandmother likewise.

Work and career

This fiche notes plainly what that meant in practice: their maternal uncle Fernando de la Barrera was burned by the Inquisition in 1491 as a relapsed Jew — condemned, in the Academy's own words, without sufficient proof — and their father and elder brother were themselves prosecuted for protecting heretics. Juan was raised a Christian, studied at Alcalá, and became the most gifted Spanish disciple of Erasmus. His Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón and his Diálogo de doctrina cristiana of 1529 brought him to the notice of the Inquisition, and he left Spain for Italy in 1531, never to return.

In Rome and then in Naples he wrote, around 1535, the Diálogo de la lengua, the first serious reflection on Castilian as a literary language, arguing that it should be written as it is spoken by educated people, 'escribo como hablo', a book that founded Spanish linguistic thought and was not printed until 1737. At Naples he gathered around him a circle that included Giulia Gonzaga, Pietro Carnesecchi, Bernardino Ochino and Peter Martyr Vermigli, and taught an interior, scripture-centred Christianity that the Roman Inquisition later condemned; several of his disciples were executed or fled to the Reformation.

He died at Naples in August 1541, his chief spiritual work, the Ciento y diez consideraciones divinas, appearing posthumously.