Hernán Núñez facts for kids
Hernán Núñez de Toledo y Guzmán (born in Valladolid in 1475, died in Salamanca in 1553) was a very smart Spanish scholar. He was known as a humanist, which means he studied ancient Greek and Roman culture. He was also a classicist, a philologist (someone who studies language), and a paremiographer (someone who collects proverbs).
People called him el Comendador Griego (the Greek Commander) because he knew so much about Greek. They also called him el Pinciano because he was from Valladolid, which was called Pintia in Latin.
Hernán Núñez got his university degree in 1490 from a college in Bologna, Italy. He came back to Spain in 1498. He worked as a teacher for the Mendoza family in Granada. In Granada, he learned classical languages like Latin and Greek. He also studied Hebrew and Arabic.
Later, a very important church leader named Cardinal Gonzalo Ximénez de Cisneros hired him. Hernán Núñez worked as a censor for the cardinal's printing press in Alcalá de Henares. There, he helped create a special Bible called the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. He worked on the Greek part of it, known as the Septuagint.
Hernán Núñez became a professor at the Universidad Complutense. This university was new at the time. He taught rhetoric, which is the art of speaking and writing well. From 1519, he also taught Greek. During a conflict called the Castilian War of the Communities, he supported the common people. Luckily, he was not punished for this.
After that, he taught at the University of Salamanca. He took over the position that another famous scholar, Antonio de Nebrija, once held. When he was 50, he stopped teaching full-time. He wanted to focus completely on his research. However, it seems he still taught some Hebrew classes at the University of Salamanca.
Contents
What Hernán Núñez Wrote
Hernán Núñez wrote many important works. He helped people understand older texts and collected wise sayings.
Studies on Famous Books
He wrote notes and explanations for a famous poem called Laberinto de Fortuna by Juan de Mena. These notes helped readers understand the poem better. His work was published in 1499 and again in 1505.
Collecting Proverbs
In 1508, he started collecting and explaining many different proverbs and adages (short, wise sayings). This collection was first published in Seville. After he died, it was published again in 1555 with the title Refranes o proverbios en romance.
His collection included proverbs from many different languages. These included Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, French, Italian, Asturian, Aragonese, Latin, and Greek.
This book was very popular and was printed many times. However, some parts were removed later due to censorship. This means some proverbs that were considered rude or foreign were taken out. His work also inspired other people to create similar proverb collections in other countries.
Translations and Other Works
In 1509, he translated a book called History of Bohemia into Castilian. The original book was written by Enea Silvio Piccolomini.
In 1519, he published a Greek and Latin version of a letter. This letter was called “To the Christian youths” and was written by Saint Basil.
He also wrote important studies about the works of ancient writers. These included Pliny the Elder, Theocritus, Seneca, and Pomponius Mela. He also studied the writings of Saint Jerome.
List of Main Works
- Glosa sobre las Trezientas (Notes on Juan de Mena's poem), published in Seville (1499) and Granada (1505).
- L. Annaei Senecae Opera (Works of Seneca), published in Basel in 1529. This book was reprinted ten times until 1627.
- Observationes Fredenandi Pintiani in loca obscura et depravata Hist. Natur. C. Plinii (Observations on Pliny's Natural History), published in Salamanca in 1544.
- Refranes de la lengua castellana (Proverbs of the Castilian Language), published in Salamanca in 1555.
See also
In Spanish: Hernán Núñez de Toledo para niños
