Luis de León, Fray (c. 1527–1591)

Spanish poet, writer, and translator. An Augustinian friar, he spent most of his life as a teacher at Salamanca University. In his lifetime he was recognized as one of the greatest Spanish prose writers of his age, his most important work being De los nombres de Cristo (1583), a meditation on the names applied to Christ. The same originality can be seen in his few poems (not published until 1631).

Born the eldest son of a judge in Belmonte, La Mancha, Luis de León entered the university of Salamanca about 1541, and then joined the Augustinian order, taking vows in 1544. He was elected to the chair of St Thomas Aquinas in 1561.

After the decrees of the Council of Trent were promulgated in Spain in 1564, there was pressure to impose orthodoxy on university teachers. For various reasons he fell foul of the Inquisition (he was secretly denounced by rival professors) and was imprisoned during 1572–76. The possible reasons include his translation of the biblical Song of Songs made privately for a cousin who was a nun, a work that was thought licentious; his public criticism of the Vulgate; and perhaps even the fact that a great-grandmother was a conversa (a convert from Judaism). Finally acquitted, he returned to Salamanca, holding the chairs of moral philosophy from 1578 and biblical studies from 1579. He became provincial of the Augustinian order in Castile shortly before his death.

His 29 poems were influenced by Virgil, Horace, and neo-Platonic philosophy and are, like those of St John of the Cross, highly personal expressions of intense religious feeling. They include odes that are among the best examples of the lira stanza introduced into Spanish by Garcilaso de la Vega.

His De los nombres de Cristo, written while he was in prison, is a dialogue on the scriptural names of Christ (‘the Way’, the ‘Shepherd’, the ‘Bridegroom’ and so on). He also wrote La perfecta casada (1583), a commentary on chapter 31 of the Book of Proverbs expounding the duties of a married woman. He was as fluent a writer in Latin as in Spanish, and also translated works by Pindar, Seneca, Tibullus, Bembo, and della Casa.