The Jesuit system of secondary education had infiltrated both Portugal and Spain by the latter 16th century; nearly 120 Jesuit colleges in Spain by 1600 had graduated some 10,000 boys each year. There evidently has been no extensive study concerning the curricula of public schooling in either country during the Renaissance published, and we cannot assume that humanistic education reached small towns whose citizens had no strong connections to the court. Before the Jesuits virtually took over secondary education, however, the courts of both Spain and Portugal responded positively to humanistic educators during the 15 th and early 16th centuries. The universities in Spain boasted several noted teachers of Greek and even of Hebrew, trained as students by humanists in Italy. The greatest of these was Antonio Lebrija (1442-1522), who returned from Italy in 1473 to teach at the University of Salamanca and then at the University of Alcala de Henares. His Spanish-Latin dictionary was used in the Spanish school system, and his compendium of classical rhetoric became part of the humanistic curriculum.
During the 15th century the Spanish court in Naples ruled by Alfonso V (1396-1458), king of Aragon from 1416 to 1458 (partially in dispute; see Chapter 1), was an important humanistic center. Selected as his capital city in 1443, Naples hosted humanists, artists, and architects, such as Francesco Filelfo. Alfonso V founded a Greek school in Messina as well as a university in Catania (Sicily), and he expanded the University of Naples. The king’s devotion to the classical authors, for example, that he carried copies of works by Julius Caesar and Livy on military expeditions, was legendary. Some of the universities in Italy had separate humanistic college for students from other countries, notably the College of San Clemente at the University of Bologna, attended by many Spanish students. Others studied at the university in Rome or Florence, learning about classical authors through Italian humanistic programs. Isabella I (Isabella the Catholic, 1451-1504), queen of Castile and Aragon, was the first Spanish monarch to establish humanistic education at the court. She hired the noted humanist Pietro Martire d’Anghiera (1457-1526) to organize a school for the sons of nobility (which a few noble girls attended). Martire d’Anghiera was famous as both a teacher and a soldier, as a participant in the expulsion of the Moors and Jews from Granada in 1492. Doubtless this experience doubly qualified him to train the future leaders of Iberia.
From the Portuguese court, students often attended the university in Paris because of ties between the courts of France and Portugal. By the beginning of the 16th century King Manuel I (1469-1521) had introduced humanism to his court. In 1496 he married a daughter of Isabella I, and after her death he married her sister, Maria, both of whom had been raised at the humanistic court of Spain. The king hired the Portuguese scholar Arias Barbosa to establish a school at the Portuguese court. Barbosa, who had studied Greek in Italy under Angelo Poliziano (1454-94, a renowned Hellenist and poet, had distinguished himself as a professor of Greek for 20 years at the University of Salamanca. The Portuguese humanist-poet Garcia de Resende (c. 1470-1536), who had studied in Spain under Antonio Lebrija, served as Manuel I’s private secretary.
World History
