Antonio de Lebrija, also known as
Antonio de Nebrija,
Elio Antonio de Lebrija,
Antonius Nebrissensis, and
Antonio of Lebrixa, (1441-1522) was a
Spanish scholar born at
Lebrija in the
province of
Seville.
Nebrija wrote a
grammar of the
Castilian language, credited as the first published grammar of any
Romance language.
Name
His given name was Antonio Martínez de Calá. In typical
humanist fashion, he
latinized his name as
Aelius Antonius Nebrissensis by taking
Aelius from the Roman inscriptions of his native Lebrija, the Roman
Nebrissa Veneria. He also signed his books as
Antonius Lebrixen (1481) and
Antonius Nebrissen (1501).
Life
After studying at
Salamanca he resided for ten years in
Italy, and completed his education at
Bologna University. On his return to Spain (1473), he devoted himself to the advancement of classical learning among his fellow countrymen. After obtaining the professorship of poetry and grammar at Salamanca, he was transferred to the university of
Alcalá de Henares, where he lectured until his death in 1522, at the age of seventy-eight.
His services to the cause of
classical literature in Spain have been compared with those rendered by
Valla,
Erasmus and
Scidaeus to Italy, the
Netherlands and
France. In 1492, he published the first grammar of the
Spanish language (titled
Gramática Castellana in Spanish), which was the first grammar produced of any Romance language. At this time, Castilian became Spanish, the official language of Spain, replacing
Latin.
He produced a large number of works on a variety of subjects, including a Latin-Spanish
dictionary, commentaries on
Sedulius and
Persius, and a
Compendium of Rhetoric, based on
Aristotle,
Cicero, and
Quintilian. His most ambitious work was his chronicle entitled
Rerum in Hispania Gestarum Decades (published in 1545 as an original work by his father), which twenty years later was found to be merely a Latin translation of the Spanish
Chronicle of Pulgar, which was published at
Saragossa in 1567. Nebrija also took part in the production of the
Complutensian Polyglot Bible published under the
patronage of
Cardinal Cisneros.
It was said that he as a Scholar suggested to
Columbus to capture the land by way of language of the place rather than arms and weapons.
Works
- Introductiones latinae, 1481
- Latin-Spanish (1492) and Spanish-Latin (1495) dictionaries.
- Reglas de ortografía española, 1517.
- Reglas de orthografía en la lengua castellana (published posthumously, 1523).
In addition Nebrija wrote minor works on education, weights and measures and numbering systems.
