1 - Seeing through words

Summary

Fray Luis de León

Visitors to the old university city of Salamanca in the west of Spain often come across Fray Luis de León unexpectedly. A nineteenth-century statue of him gazes across a small courtyard towards the splendid plateresque gateway of the university. If they pass through this, they may be shown the hall where he used to lecture, complete with some of its original furnishings. At sunset, when the crowds have departed and the light deepens on the honey-coloured stones, it is easy to sit quietly and imagine that Fray Luis may come scurrying through the gate on his way back to supper.

His statue does not stand there simply because he taught at Salamanca for thirty years. Fray Luis was one of the foremost poets and prose stylists of the Golden Age of Spanish literature. He was destined to spend almost five years in his prime of life in the cells of the Spanish Inquisition, fighting to clear his name of a long series of accusations brought against him by some of his colleagues. After his release, he returned to Salamanca and became one of its most distinguished professors and famous sons. Though he is little known in the rest of Europe, his fame has remained undiminished in Spain into our own time.

Luis de León was born into a prosperous, professional family at Belmonte, a small town in the province of Cuenca and a local centre of devotion to Mary, probably in 1527.