Antonio de Lebrija

ANTONIO DE LEBRIJA, an-tō´ni-ō dê lê-brî´ ha, (Lat. Ælius Antonius Nebrissensis, i.e., “of Lebrija,” the ancient Nebrissa, on the Guadalquivir, 34 m. s. of Seville): Spanish humanist; b. 1442 (1444?); d. at Alcala July 2, 1522. He studied in his native land, and for about ten years in Italy, and returned to Spain with a plan for reforming the schools and studies. As professor in Salamanca and by his Introductiones in Latinam grammaticam (1481; innumerable editions, translations, and adaptations, even as late as Paris, 1858; an Eng. ed., London, 1631), he led the way to a knowledge of the classics. Retiring from the university, he spent eight or ten years in the preparation of a Latin-Spanish and Spanish-Latin lexicon (Seville, n.d.; Alcala, 1532; and often), a pioneer work at that time. He published also archeological works and a grammar of Greek and of Castilian, and labored to improve the text of the Vulgate. He was one of the chief workers on the Complutensian polyglot, and spent his last years as teacher at Alcala, protected by Cardinal Ximenes from the attacks of the adherents of the old scholastic school. As historiographer to Ferdinand the Catholic he wrote a history of two decades of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (Granada, 1545) [by some assigned to Hernando da Pulgar rather than to Antonio; cf. Potthast, Wegweiser, Berlin, 1896, p. 946].

K. Benrath.

Bibliography: Nicholaus Antonius, Bibliotheca Hispana nova, i. 132-139, Madrid, 1783; J. B. Muñoz, in Memorias de la real academia de la historia, iii. 1-30, Madrid, 1799; C. J. Hefele, Cardinal Ximenes, pp. 116-117, 124, 379, 458, Tübingen, 1844.