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Fray Luis de León, born in Belmonte

Belmonte, La Mancha Conquense, Cuenca

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Fray Luis de León, born in Belmonte

Curiosity · Belmonte, La Mancha Conquense, Cuenca

Image of Belmonte, not of the place itself.

The Augustinian theologian, humanist and poet Friar Luis de León was born in Belmonte between 1527 and 1528, into a family of converted Jews, the son of the lawyer Lope de León and Inés Varela; the font where he was baptised is preserved in the collegiate church. He entered the Order of Augustinians at fourteen and was a professor at the University of Salamanca, where he held the chairs of Saint Thomas in 1561 and of Holy Scripture in 1579. He wrote odes on the longing for solitude and retreat in nature, and the prose work De los nombres de Cristo (1585). Denounced before the Inquisition between 1572 and 1576, chiefly for translating the Song of Songs without a licence, he spent more than four years imprisoned in Valladolid before being acquitted. He died in 1591 in Madrigal de las Altas Torres.

Photo: Cruccone (CC BY 3.0)

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