from Research in African Literatures Volume 29, Number 4
An Overview of Sources on the Life and Work of Juan Latino, the "Ethiopian Humanist"
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Maria Wolff 1
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The writer was not engendered in [this] region. He comes, Latino, from the land of the Ethiopians to sing the marvelous deeds of Austria with the art of song. --Juan Latino
. . . [I]f our black face, oh king, is displeasing to your ministers, the white face is not pleasing to the men of Ethiopia. --Juan Latino
Scholar of famous Granada and teacher of brilliant young students,
Orator pious in speech, outstanding in doctrine and morals,
Offspring and son deep black with Ethiopian forebears,
He learnt as an innocent child the precepts that lead to salvation.
He sang in the fair Latin tongue the illustrious Austrian's glories,
Under this pillar he lies; he will rise with his wife well-beloved.
--Juan Latino, epitaph
The first person of sub-Saharan African descent to publish a book of poems in a Western language was Juan Latino, a black African ex-slave, born in 1518, who would in 1566 become the Professor of Latin Grammar at the Cathedral in Granada. Both his appointment and the publication of his first book of poems in Latin in 1573 were unprecedented in the history of black Africans in Europe. By the time that Phillis Wheatley published her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), Juan Latino's Austriad had been in print for exactly two hundred years. Latino published two more volumes, one in 1576, the other in 1585.Phillis Wheatley encountered great difficulty finding a publisher for her volume of poems, the first to be published by a black person in English. When her master, John Wheatley, took her manuscript to printers in Boston, they expressed profound doubts about the very capacity of an African to write a poem in a Western language, especially the sort of verse to be found in Wheatley's manuscript, replete as it was with classical, canonical allusions to figures and themes of Graeco-Roman mythology, and Latin phrasing found here and there. In fact, it was precisely because of the skepticism of the Boston reading public (and by extension, the reading public in English) that Wheatley was forced to undergo an oral examination quite unlike any on record for a poet of her time. Before eighteen "respectable characters" of Boston, as they would later identify themselves, Wheatley was forced to demonstrate, to prove, that it was she who had indeed written the poems that she claimed to have written, that she had the requisite intelligence, imagination, and command of English and Latin to produce such a volume of poetry. Once satisfied, the eighteen white males signed a "Letter of Attestion" declaring their conviction, which prefaces the published volume itself. A remarkable array of scholars and public figures, from Voltaire and Abbé Grégoire to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, wrote about the significance of the publication of a work of imaginative literature by a person of African descent. Few of these commentators, however, knew that Wheatley's book was the second such publication, not the first.
Did Wheatley know that she had a black antecedent? While Wheatley does not mention Juan Latino in any of her poems, despite the fact that she does refer to other black contemporaries and even compares her status as a poet and a slave to that of Terence, she would have encountered a reference to Latino's existence in one of the poems that prefaces Don Quixote. Wheatley was given a copy of Tobias Smollett's 1770 English translation of this text by the Earl of Dartmouth during her visit to England in 1773, as she and her master's son sought an English publisher for her book. The reference to her black kinsman was unmistakable; it occurs in Cervantes's prefatory poem, supposedly the work of "Urganda the Unknown." The poem says, in part:
Seeing it was not Heaven's pleasureAs V. B. Spratlin glosses this passage:
To make thee learned as black Juan,
Do not the cloak of learning don
By quoting Latin in over-measure,
Displaying thy philosophic treasure
In long and windy argument,
Until some fellow irreverent,
Twisting his mouth at thine ear shall say:
"Why give me flowers, anyway?
On me such bounty is misspent."
(Putnam translation)
Urganda, discriminating in literary matters as well as clear-sighted regarding the future, professes restraint in the question of rhetoric, and recommends modesty to this history that is assuming form in the imagination of Cervantes. She is weary of the pompous stride of the old romances and warns that eloquence would better be reserved for a Hannibal, Francis, or Don Alvaro de Luna, when these exalted and betrayed personages make their appearance in literature to inveigh against Fortune and her fickle ways. Preferring the simple and direct style, she invokes divine guidance for the story, lest it fall in linguistic subtleties in the manner of 'el negro Juan Latino.' Faithful to the national tradition as against the abstruse importations of the humanists, she forbids any pedantic echoing of the classics. "Refuse to speak in Latin", she admonishes. (Juan Latino xi)With Wheatley's demonstrated command of Latin, she would have had no difficulty reading Latino's texts. We are left to speculate, however, about the effect of recognition that her encounter with the existence of another black poet might have produced in the young African poet so eager to identify herself as a part of the curious tradition of the African poet producing literature while a slave.
What do we know of the life and times of this African poet in Europe, whose publications broke the silence of the black African in the court of Western letters? One of Latino's biographers, Calixto C. Maso, refers to certain scholars who claim the poet's existence as merely legendary (1). While this is an extreme claim, there is very little scholarly material on Latino.
The Encyclopedia Espasa (1908) begins its entry on Juan Latino with the observation that his biography is "full of uncertainties for which the critics substitute conjectures" (1023). Indeed, we have no way of determining the exact date of his birth or death, nor of establishing important details about his career. The earliest sources of biographical materials, Bermúdez de Pedraza's Antiguidad y Excelencias de Granada (1608) and Ambrosio Salazar's Espejo de Gramática (1615), present conflicting and unsupported details. Nevertheless, Antonio Marín Ocete and Calixto C. Maso, in their comprehensive studies of Latino, have done much to establish a fairly reliable account of his life, while acknowledging fully the difficulties involved in doing so. Spratlin, author of an early lengthy study of Latino, is less reliable, because of his acknowledged reliance on Ximénez de Enciso's seventeenth-century play, Juan Latino. Marín Ocete and Maso's research is based on original documents found in the archives of various institutions in Granada, as well as on early printed sources. We have elected to follow their conclusions, very closely, in the brief biography summarized here.
We can only speculate about Latino's date and place of birth. While most scholars agree that he was born in sub-Saharan Africa, two claim that he was born in Spain. In his play, Juan Latino, Ximénez de Enciso has the protagonist speak the line "Son of a slave, I was born in Baena" (307). Similarly, Francisco Fernandez de Córdoba states that the companion of the Duke of Sesa was "Born in Baena" (Marín Ocete 6). Still, Bermúdez de Pedraza, a source earlier than both of these, writes that Latino was born in "Barbary" ("Berberia"). And Juan Latino himself, in an autobiographical statement, says "hic scriptor nec fuit orbe satus; Aethiopium terris venit. . . ." 'The writer was not engendered in [this] region; he comes from the land of the Ethiopians' (Marín Ocete 6). It is safe to assume, as Marín Ocete does, that Juan Latino and his mother were brought to Spain from Africa, landed perhaps at Seville, were sold there, and later resold in Baena (9). Spratlin also sees the fact that Juan Latino is never referred to as a "mestizo," and always as a "full-blooded African," as confirmation of this fact (xi, 7).
As to exactly where in Africa he might have been born, there is little agreement. Marín Ocete devotes much space to what Latino might have meant by "Ethiopia," which was one of several traditional European metaphors for Black Africa (along with Guinea, for example). From the fact that Latino was brought to Spain as a slave, he deduces that Latino must have come from Guinea, the area known as the "Slave Coast" (Marín Ocete 8-9). Maso takes "Ethiopia" to refer to the "area south of Egypt and of the Sahara, that is, to Black Africa" (20). Neither author, then, arrives at a satisfactory answer to this problem.
Marín Ocete gives us a probable date for Latino's birth: "To the conclusions regarding the birthplace of our author, we believe that we can add the probable, if not certain, date of his birth. 'Aetatis suae anno LVIII.' [(Published) in the fifty-eighth year of his life.] The work in which the above is written was printed in 1576 but his writing is earlier and underwent modifications. In September of 1574, the King granted him copyright privileges for ten years. The work was not printed at the time, the author judging it necessary to augment and modify it, and a new manuscript was sent to Madrid at the beginning of the year 1576. In which of these did Juan Latino draft his brief autobiography? A small calculation will suffice. In the same passage he says that he has held the University chair in Granada for twenty years, to which he was named, we add, in 1556. If he were writing twenty years later then it would have been 1576, He had been born, therefore, if he himself was not mistaken, in 1518" (Marín Ocete 10). Maso supports this, although he adds, "I believe that, to be raised with the young Duke of Sesa, he must have been born a little later" (22).
Juan Latino was a slave in the household of the Count of Cabra, Don Luiz Fernandez de Córdoba, and his wife, Doña Elvira. The slave was the same age as the couple's son, Don Gonzalo, the third Duke of Sesa, to whom he became a page and companion. Maso cites Latino's description of the closeness and affection existing between the two: "[I was] nurtured by him with the milk of infancy" (23). When the Count died, in 1530, Doña Elvira moved the family to Granada. It was there that both boys began their studies, through which Juan was to achieve his eventual fame.
Marín Ocete gives a vivid description of the intellectual climate at that time, citing the curious fact that the establishment of institutions of instruction in Latin grammar began shortly after the reconquest of the city (12). He cites various royal documents granting funds for paying teachers in the city. The young Duke and his page benefitted from this activity. The Duke attended the classes of Pedro de Mota, held in the Cathedral of Granada; Juan accompanied him "to carry the books to class" (Maso 23), and obviously absorbed much of what his master was taught.
Ximénez de Enciso gives a charming description of the slave's demonstration of his remarkable aptitude and love of learning (197). According to Bermúdez de Pedraza, he was for a time interested in medicine, but was dissuaded from this by his colleagues, and turned to more humanistic studies (139). It was perhaps during this time, as Juan Latino revealed a talent for Latin and Greek, that an "admiring fellow student" gave him the name "Juan Latino," which came to replace "Juan de Sesa" which would have been his customary name as a slave of that house (Spratlin, Juan Latino 11).
Juan Latino and his master furthered their studies at the University of Granada, which had been founded in 1526. Marín Ocete and Maso both speculate that he could have continued his studies with Pedro de Mota, who received a degree of "Master of Arts" in 1532. In any case, the slave continued his notable career at the University. In his history of that institution, Francisco Montells y Nadal includes Juan Latino among the illustrious men of Granada who studied there (840). Maso remarks that Juan Latino "aroused the admiration of all with a translation of Horace" and suggests that he might have begun to give his first private classes at this time (24). Marín Ocete mentions some lines in which Latino declares himself to have studied at Salamanca, but he dismisses this claim as an instance of Latino's "allowing himself to be carried away by vanity" for desiring the distinction of Spain's greatest university; no records of Latino's presence can be found there (15).
Latino received the "Bachillerato" from the University of Granada in 1546. Marín Ocete cites the Efemerides manuscript and an Acto in support of this date: "On February 4, 1546; before the Archbishop, the Auditor of the Royal Chancellery, the Conde de Tendilla, and many other gentlemen, [Juan Latino] received the Bachelor's Degree with 38 more students of Master Benito de Peso" (16).
Both Marín Ocete and Maso note that Latino was already twenty-eight at this time, and thus a bit old for completing this stage in his studies. They speculate that his continuing duties in the house of the Duke would have hindered his progress. The added cares of marriage and fatherhood might have delayed Latino's work towards the next degree, that of Licenciado, which he received in 1556, under pressure to improve his credentials (25). Latino also received the title of Master of Arts ("without prejudice because of his color," as Marín Ocete puts it) in the following year (qtd. in Maso 25).
Maso's mention of Latino's marriage gives us occasion to discuss this most "picturesque" episode in his life. The romantic speculations of Latino's biographers become quite flowery at this point, and Ximénez de Enciso makes this the focus of his entire play.
All these accounts first comment on Latino's social skills: he was noted for his "facile tongue and cunning wit" (Spratlin, Juan Latino 17) and for his skills as a musician. He made various distinguished friends in the city of Granada, including the Licenciado Carlobal, "variously described as governor of the estates of the Duke of Sesa, oidor and alderman." The Licenciado had several sons, who might have been Juan Latino's colleagues at Granada. He also had a daughter, Ana, renowned for her beauty, and he hired the scholar to teach her music, and perhaps Latin as well.
Apparently the teacher won his student's heart. The accounts, all quite romanticized, vary as to how this happened. Ambrosio Salazar gives a witty and somewhat risqué version, which ends with Latino's seduction of the woman (in Spratlin, Juan Latino 15). He also claims that Ana's father eventually died from displeasure at her marriage to a black man. Ximénez de Enciso, to whose dramatization Marín Ocete accords a degree of truth, depicts the slave overcoming Ana's initial reluctance and the family's opposition, through his great integrity, intelligence, and merit. Feliz Lope de Vega Carpio, citing Juan Latino and Ana as examples of history's great lovers, depicts the two discovering their mutual affection while conjugating the Latin verb amare "to love" (203).
However their courtship evolved, Juan and Ana eventually married. Marín Ocete, following Pellicer, describes the outcome thus: "In vain the family tried to dissuade her, and despite great diligence on the part of their relatives, the lady did not want to withdraw the promise she had made to the Black and, when asked before an ecclesiastical judge, she confirmed it and was married to Latino" (19). We have records of the birth of four children to Juan and Ana: Juana, baptized on 30 June 1549; Bernardino, born in 1552; Ana, born in 1556; and Juan, baptized on 5 March 1559 (Spratlin, Juan Latino 17). Marín Ocete obliquely suggests she may have had others (20).
Latino's marriage can allow us to infer that he gained his freedom at some point during this period, although no evidence is given as to the certainty of such an event. Spratlin, accepting Ximénez de Enciso's play as a source, gives more elaborate considerations and has the Duke refuse Latino freedom, to bring his own house greater glory (Juan Latino 20). George C. Ticknor also follows this lead (491).
In any case, Latino enjoyed a comfortable and peaceful domestic life after his marriage. Marín Ocete maintains the couple received some part of Ana's father's estate at his death, and that the house that Latino's family occupied was quite impressive. Despite his material comfort, however, Juan Latino's career as a teacher was not always as untroubled and rewarding as his domestic life apparently was.
Despite his considerable reputation, it is difficult to determine which professorship he held. Maso catalogues various reports. Neither Bermúdez de Pedraza--who says, "He studied Arts and taught them for more than 60 years"--nor Pellicer--who writes, "As he was an excellent Latinist (thus his nickname), he was granted the Professorship of Humanities of Granada"--specify where Juan Latino taught (qtd. in Maso 25). Montells y Nadal makes him a professor at the University, calling him a "distinguished professor" of the school at which he studied. The Encyclopedia Espasa entry states that Latino was appointed when the "professorship of Latin grammar at the University [of Granada] fell vacant" (1023). Indeed, popular tradition held this belief, and it was supported by the fact that in the concession for the printing of one of his works, permission to publish is granted to "the Maestro Juan Latino, Professor of the University of Granada" (Marín Ocete 22).
Nevertheless, Marín Ocete, in a rather evolved argument, proves that at that time no professorship of Grammar existed at the University; the professorship Latino held--and had such difficulty in obtaining, as we shall see--was that at the Cathedral. It is easy to understand, however, how some confusion might occur about this detail. In a very reasonable observation, Spratlin points out that, "In view of the strictly ecclesiastical nature of education in the Granada of that time, and of the cohesion that bound into a single unit the several institutions that flourished in the protecting shadow of the great Cathedral, we can infer that Juan Latino's influence carried over to the University, even if he was never officially a member of its staff" (Juan Latino 19). Moreover, Marín Ocete reminds us that Latino, as the Cathedral Professor of Grammar, held the privilege of attending the University Cloister.
Church and University politicking surrounded Juan Latino's appointment to the Cathedral professorship. He had a private "study," or class, which was very popular and enjoyed an excellent reputation. In the course of his academic pursuits, he had also gained the friendship and protection of Pedro Guerrero, who had become Archbishop in 1546. Marín Ocete tells us that the Archbishop intervened on Latino's behalf with Ana's brother, when he proposed marriage, and with the Duque de Sesa, in regard to the slave's manumission, but gives us no source for this, however. In 1566, when the death of Master Pedro de Mota left the Cathedral Professorship vacant, Guerrero "formed the decided proposal to bring Juan Latino to that position" (Marín Ocete 23).
Latino's candidature was challenged, though, by one Licenciado Villanueva, who also taught Grammar privately. Marín Ocete bases his account of this dispute on Ximénez de Enciso's portrayal of the episode; the playwright emphasizes the personal conflict between the two men. Apparently, when the University Cloister met to resolve the question, Villanueva appeared before it to repeat certain remarks supposedly made by Pedro de Mota. The Cloister listened to Villanueva but resolved to ask the Archbishop to name neither of the rivals, but rather a third candidate, from Toledo. Their attempt to compromise failed; Juan Latino was awarded the post.
Latino enjoyed considerable popularity as a teacher, culminating in a great honor. As Spratlin puts it, "The honors that Granada bestowed on Latino were climaxed in 1565 when he was chosen by the claustro to deliver the Latin oration in the colorful ceremony that inaugurated the academic year" (Juan Latino 20). He gave this address on 18 October 1565; Marín Ocete expresses regret that this oration has not survived "because the brief prose parts of his works promise a style even more smooth and elegant than his poetry" (28).
Despite his great successes, however, the later years of Juan Latino's career were not without incident. There was great conflict among the University, the Archbishop, and the Colegio Real (Colegio Imperial de Santa Cruz de la Fe), another educational institution of Granada, founded in 1526. Juan Latino once found himself in the middle of these squabbles. Marín Ocete's account, while it is documented from the proceedings of the Municipal Cathedral of Granada, is not at all clear in its details. Apparently, Juan Latino's classes were held in a University building built on the property of the church. The Colegio Real, formerly housed in the same building as the University, had expanded and, in search of larger quarters, attempted to dislocate Maestro Juan Latino. For a time, they succeeded. Latino applied to the Municipal Council on several occasions without success, until he was eventually allowed to continue his classes. Later, though, the Colegio made another attempt to dislodge him, going as far as an appeal to the king. This gave rise to an impassioned plea on Latino's behalf by the Archbishop Pedro Guerrero. Marín Ocete, who studied the document in the Municipal Archives of Granada, quotes the Archbishop's affirmation that the "sons of the citizens of the city, country and kingdom will profit in letters and virtue" if Latino is allowed to continue his work at his original location (37). The plea worked.
Marín Ocete gives only a few other details of Latino's career. He cites the scholar's presence at a University Cloister in 1576 when maneuvers against the Archbishop's group would have made the session particularly disagreeable for him. The critic also mentions his presence at a cloister held on 12 March 1587, shortly before his death. There are doubts as to the precise length of his career, as Maso points out: Bermúdez de Pedraza and Montells y Nadal set it at sixty years, while Marín Ocete, skeptical at this figure, says it was probably "a long while," but not sixty years (Maso 34). There is, however, no doubt that he continued to teach throughout his life, even after he became blind. Marín Ocete describes his dedication as a teacher, quoting the Archbishop Guerrero: "[N]ot only the acolytes of the church and the Royal Chapel, the Archbishop's pages and the canons and prebendaries . . . took advantage of his lessons but also the familiars of the Royal College who study Grammar and the books that are ready by said Maestro Juan Latino . . . who always teaches them without any self-interest" (26).
Juan Latino's literary activities evolved parallel tohis teaching interests. Not only did he teach the intricacies of Latin Grammar, he also wrote poetry in Latin, fashioning his works after those of authors such as Virgil and Martial. What was the intellectual milieu of Granada in his time, and the circumstances that led to the writing of his work, the Austriad?
Both Maso and Marín Ocete describe the intellectual trends in Spain at the time, as a background to their considerations of the import of Latino's career. According to Maso, "Juan Latino lived in the beginning of the Golden Age, when Carlos V and Felipe II reigned in Spain." He cites as Juan Latino's contemporaries, Boscán, Fray Luis de León, and Herrera, all learned men and poets (28), pointing out that "the spirit of humanism" reached Granada at this time, and in the house of the Mayor of the Generalife there arose a kind of "Tertulia" [literary conversation group] or Literary Academy. Maso cites Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo's list of those in attendance: "The founders and supporters of the literary movement in Granada were, as I understand it, D. Diego Hurtado de Mendonza, in his later years, Hernando de Acuña, who died there [in Granada], litigating the succession of the countship of Buendia; Gregorio Silvestre, a Portuguese organist, partisan of the school of Castillejo and, ultimately, a cultivator of the 11-syllable verse, for which he determined the law of accents; and the Black Juan Latino, noted for his poem in praise of Don Juan of Austria" (qtd. in Maso 28). Marín Ocete names, in addition, Luis Barahona de Soto, Pedro Padilla, Luis de Berrio and his son Gonzalo Mateo, Pedro Carceres de Espinosa, careful editor of Silvestre. Maso also identifies the Duke of Sesa himself as a poet, citing Francisco Rodriguez Marín's praise of him, and presenting two of the Duke's surviving sonnets, both rather mediocre works compared to Latino's accomplished verse.
The critics give us scant information as to how Latino fared in this circle. From the comment of one of its members, Pedro Carceres y Espinosa, we learn that the scholar was "most learned in Latin and Greek grammar," and that he was among the most famous men in Granada at that time (11). Despite his success, however, Latino bore the brunt of racist jokes: Marín Ocete comments that "[o]ur poet was esteemed by everyone, notwithstanding that sometimes his race and color gave rise to kindly jokes from his friends" (34). Carceres y Espinosa repeats one such incident: one day Gregorio Silvestre, speaking to a group of friends, addressed all except Latino. When Latino complained about being ignored, Silvestre explained, "I thought you were the shadow of one of these other gentlemen." The fact of Latino's blackness was never a neutral factor in his life, making his description of himself as "el negro Juan Latino," a declaration of pride and difference, despite his seemingly assimilated status within Granada society.
Through his contacts with the Duke of Sesa and Archbishop Pedro Guerrero, Juan Latino was also brought into the company of the most "majestic" figure who appeared in Granada at that time: Don Juan of Austria, illegitimate son of Charles V, the younger half-brother of Felipe II. The meeting insured Latino's immortality. Spratlin provides the most detailed account of their first meeting. Don Juan arrived in Granada on 12 April 1569, amid much celebration. Soon afterwards, Marín Ocete recounts, the Duke of Sesa, his subordinate, arrived, and most probably presented Juan Latino to Don Juan:
Our "Negro" received great pleasure with him and moreover through his mediation he was received by the young prince. The latter treated him [Juan Latino] with his usual kindness, informed himself of his life; he heard also the wonderful stories about him told by Don Pedro de Deza, his friend since he arrived in the city. Perhaps then he encouraged the black poet in the idea that the procession of Don Juan through Elvira Street had suggested to him: to sing his glories in Latin verse. Thus, Don Juan enjoyed his conversation, and more than once presided over the funny occurrence of seating two blacks at the princely table: the one, Juan Latino, and the other, Fray Cristobal de Meneses . . . . (39)Any Spanish history book will describe Don Juan's subsequent military victories. He defeated the Moors decisively in Granada, in a "cruel war that put an end to all Moorish hopes for a restoration of their Spanish Kingdom" (Spratlin, Juan Latino 30). His greatest victory, however, was as the commander-in-chief of the Holy League's (the Papacy, Venice, and Spain) forces, the defeat of the Turkish fleet at the naval battle in the Gulf of Lepanto on 7 October 1571. Twenty-five thousand Turks died, five thousand were taken prisoners to be sold into slavery, and two hundred twenty-four of their ships were lost. Most dramatic of all, twelve thousand Christian slaves were liberated from the arduous task of rowing the Turkish galleys. This feat made Don Juan Europe's "universal hero," and he was celebrated by many poets of the time, among them Herrera, Juan Rufo, and--most famously--Juan Latino.As Spratlin puts it, Juan Latino "reviewed his Virgil and practiced up on the elegaic couplet in order to pay a tribute of verse to triumphant Austria" (in "Juan Latino," Encyclopedia universal 30). The commemoration became Juan Latino's first book, the Austriad, published in 1573, and follows close on the event it celebrates. Latino would publish his second volume, featuring his epitaphs commemorating the transfer of the royal remains from Granada to El Escorial, in 1576. Marín Ocete also cites the existence of another work, an elegy to the Duke of Sesa, published as a separata in 1583 after the latter's death. Other scholars refer to a third published work, an elegy communicating Pope Pius V's gratitude to Philip II for his military victories.
Juan Latino participated in the rich cultural life of Granada, and contributed to the Humanist movement in Spain through his neo-Latin work, celebrating a hero of his own times in the model of the classical writers. He also contributed to the rise of Humanism in another way: as a teacher. As the Encyclopedia Espasa states, "One of the greatest merits of the famous Black professor was that of having turned out, in his classes, numerous Grenadine writers, imitators and translators of the classics, who gave rise to our literature's Golden Age" (1023). Juan Latino's usual way of signing his name, with the designation "Magister Latinus," thus takes on special significance.
The final years of Juan Latino's life were marked by a series of tragedies. Juan Latino's protector, the Archbishop Pedro Guerrero, died in 1576, and Ana Carlobal passed away in the same year, or perhaps slightly earlier (Maso 33). The year 1578 was an especially sad one for the scholar: Don Juan of Austria, subject of the Austrias Carmen, and the Prince Fernando, whose birth he had commemorated in another poem, both died in that year. Another death the poet would have felt more deeply was that of the Duke of Sesa, his friend, classmate, and former master, who died on 3 December (Marín Ocete 39).
Maso also cites Bermúdez de Pedraza's observation that Latino "went blind in his old age and nevertheless gave lectures in the schools and went about the streets" (33). Marín Ocete cites a supposed highly poetic encounter between San Juan de la Cruz and the blind Juan Latino, in the fields of Granada, which could possibly have taken place; but he adds, "The occurrence deserves to be true, but we can only say, despite all of our effort, that we believe it to have been imagined, based on the coincidence of dates, by Nicolas Penalver y Lopez who presented it in his article published in La Alhambra in 1843" (43).
There is evidence that Juan Latino was very ill at this time. Marín Ocete cites Antonio Gonzalez Garbin's reference to a document, a resolution of the Municipal Cathedral, in which the need to find a successor to him is discussed (59). But he apparently recovered, for there is evidence of his having attended a University Cloister on 12 March 1587, proof, according to Marín Ocete, "that the bodily energy common to those of his race had not been weakened" (41). The racism that he experienced while alive manifests itself even in the scholarship about him.
We can only speculate about Juan Latino's death. Marín Ocete documents the surrounding confusion. Nicolas Antonio cited an epitaph supposedly written by Juan Latino himself, dated 1573, and this date was accepted by such scholars as Pellicer and Cejador. However, as Marín Ocete points out, "the date is without a doubt that of the composition of the Epitaph" (44). Furthermore, the Cloister attendance cited above makes this date unacceptable. In this, Maso agrees and speculates that "perhaps the inscription refers to the purchase of the tomb and perhaps his wife is buried in it" (33). In addition, Angel de Arco apparently misquotes Nicolas Antonio, stating that Juan Latino died in 1623. Arco eventually sets the date at 1616 or 1617 (Marín Ocete 44), but this is impossible, too, because the work of Bermúdez y Pelayo, Arco's source, was published in 1602, and it infers that Latino was already dead.
Marín Ocete thus sets Latino's date of death as 20 November 1597, based on statements made that year about his son-in-law, Licenciado Fuentes, in the University Cloister. This fellow, none too distinguished as a scholar, was awarded the title of Canon Licenciado, despite his slim merits, out of respect for his late father-in-law; documentation of the event allows Marín Ocete to estimate 1597 as the year of Latino's death, and he reasons as follows: "The last certain date we have of him is from 1587 in his class attendance, and from this date until 1594, his death notice does not appear in the perfectly preserved books in this period of the Santa Ana parish where he was buried. (In short, in none of the archives from 1594-1597 does the death of the famous black man appear.)"(45, 21).
Maso, on the other hand, does not accept this. He assumes the date of publication of Bermúdez y Pedraza's work to be 1608. Saying "the most correct is to assume he died before this date, for Pedraza says that Juan Latino 'lived 90 years, leaving children and grandchildren still alive today.'" He estimates that Latino died between 1600 and 1607, "which would agree with the other facts of his life" (34). Maso refutes Marín Ocete because if we accept the latter's date, Juan Latino would have lived only 76 to 78 years, not the 90 accorded him by Bermúdez de Pedraza.
Juan Latino was almost certainly "buried in the Santa Ana Church," although "no trace remains today in the beautiful Moorish church" (Marín Ocete 46). No portraits of Juan Latino survive. Maso reminds us that "[I]n Ximénez de Enciso's play, it is said that Don Juan of Austria ordered that a portrait be painted of him, and though some say they had seen it, it has not been found" (35). He does not tell us, though, who claims to have seen it.
Maso concludes his version of Latino's life declaring himself to have refuted all who might claim that el negro Juan Latino, the first person of African descent to publish a book of poems, was only a traditional or a legendary figure (35). There can be no doubt that this great poet lived and that he was a central figure in the Humanist movement in sixteenth-century Granada. That Cervantes chose to commemorate him, and indeed to represent him as the epitome of the neo-Latin tradition that the vernacular language of Don Quixote challenged, is only one sign of this black poet's secure place in the history of Spanish literature.
Several scholars discuss Juan Latino's activities as a translator. Marín Ocete mentions his version of Menander, and other sources tell us of his translations of Horace (13, 15). Jose A. Sánchez Marín tells us, "Through the testimony of his contemporaries we know that Maestro Juan Latino wrote works in prose and verse in Spanish" (21), but he does not give the sources for this affirmation and acknowledges these works are lost. Sánchez Marín does tell us of, and reproduces, Latino's Spanish translation of a Latin epigram dedicated to Seville.
Despite this work in Spanish, however, the most important part of Juan Latino's oeuvre is written in Latin and is found in two volumes. The first, published in 1573, contains the following, as its preface tells us:
A book of epigrams dedicated to the Catholic and invincible Philip, King of Spain by grace of God, on the subject of the very fortunate birth of Prince Philip. Also one book about the facts and feelings of the Highest Pontifex of the Roman Church, Most Holy Pius V, towards the most Christian King Philip. The poem Austriad [is] about the deeds of the most excellent Lord Sire Don Juan of Austria, son of Charles V and the brother of the Invincible Philip, on the occasion of the admirable victory of the said Philip against the Turks; dedicated to the most Illustrious and Most Reverend Sire Don Pedro de Deza, President and Military Prefect of Philip. Written by Master Juan Latino, guide of the studious youth of Granada. Two volumes. By the privilege of his royal majesty, in Granada, in the workshop of Hugo de Mena. In the year 1573. The volumes are to be found in the home of the bookseller Juan Diaz in the neighborhood of Santa Maria. (Sánchez Marín 25)The second volume, published in 1576 after much revision (Marín Ocete 40), contains epitaphs dedicated to the transfer of the royal remains of King Philip's mother, the Empress Isabel, and of his first wife, Mary of Portugal, and of his brothers Ferdinand and John, from Granada to the monastery of El Escorial; epitaphs to the transfer of the mortal remains of Doña Juana la Loca; and elegies and the autobiography of the poet (Sánchez Marín 13, 26). There is also a loose broadsheet, published in 1585, supposedly containing an elegy to the Duke of Sesa, which Marín Ocete describes, but Sánchez Marín notes he was unable to find this work either in the Library of the University of Granada or in the National Library (26). Spratlin, however, quotes from it (Juan Latino 61).
The most detailed comments on Juan Latino's work are to be found in Sánchez Marín's Spanish edition of the Austriad, and in Spratlin, who covers all the works. José Lopez de Toro, in his work on The Poets of Lepanto (1950) and Menéndez y Pelayo, in his Studies on the Theater of Lope de Vega (1927) also comment on the Austriad. It is useful to summarize their critical comments.
We begin with Latino's first and major work, the Austrias Carmen, made up of 1,837 hexameters, divided into two volumes of 763 and 1,074 verses: "The central theme is the bellicose event and the exaltation of the conquering hero" (Sánchez Marín 27). Latino seems to have attempted "to achieve an application of linguistic elements in every way similar to that of ancient poets, especially Virgil," in verse form. This attempt leads to some stiffness: "It is probable that a disparity between form and content as well as the lack of fluidity and the lack of spontaneity found in certain passages of the narrative may be due to the actual artificiality inherent in borrowing material" (Sánchez Marín 29). Juan Latino employs comparisons to ancient figures to describe Don Juan's glory. Sánchez Marín notes his "religious inspiration," remarking that "[i]t is curious that the philosophical elements that Latino takes from Classical antiquity are used in praise of Rome, in defense of the Roman Catholic Church . . ." (30) and describes the "mixture of Christian and mythological elements in the poem." He considers the "language and style" of the Austriad, analyzing the Latin of the humanists in comparison to Medieval and Classical Latin, and considers Latino's metric system. Latino's style, while it is "definitely that which was common in the Renaissance," still has some personal traits (32), for example, the poet's use of adjectives and of phonic ornament. Finally, he notes the difficulties of his own Spanish translation, due to the confused nature of the narrative, with its "numerous historical digressions, reflections of all kinds, mythological enumerations, lexical reiterations, abundant rhetorical figures, syntactical and structural irregularities" (37). Sánchez Marín makes the interesting observation that the version he produces is "rather repetitive and mixed with concepts and terminology" but "it is thus that the Renaissance humanists understood it and they expressed themselves thus in the vernacular, so that the later compositions of the Renaissance abide, to a great extent, by the Spanish Baroque style."
In a study which reveals the "classical background of the Grenadine master" (242), Miguel Matilla examines the influences on Juan Latino's poetry. He says, "As a humanist and poet he was inspired primarily by Virgil" and finds in these lines from an epigram dedicated to Felipe II, about the possibility of writing an Austriad, echoes of Virgil's "arma virumque cano":
Omnia quae Latino scribit sermone LatinusMatilla observes, "In Latino's verses, there are frequent Virgilian 'overtones' both lexical and morpho-syntactic, as well as an imitation of his metrical techniques, more or less successful," adding, "there is not only a decisive influence of Virgil, and allusions to Caesar and Livy, but we have also found lexical and linguistic recollections of Horace" (241). He finds a "certain lexical resemblance to the Carmen Saeculare" in these lines of Latino's:
Versibus et veris arma ducesque canit. (24)Latino records all these things in the Latin language: arms and the leaders he sings in truthful verse.
Navis cara mihi, fatalis regia Turcis--And he quotes these lines from Horace for comparison:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
aut si adversa tuis rebus fortuna minatur,
occumbras pariter per flectas obruta, quando
Hispanos portus nequeas captiva subire,
nec grandem poterunt aliena et iura domare,
nec poteris Dominum vel fratrem ferre Philippi.
--Austriad, Book 2: 19 versoDear ship of mine, royal doom to the Turks . . . . victorious today, you shall see the Spaniards attack the captives of the Byzantines--you shall see a speedy victory. But if fortune gives signs adverse to your cause, may you perish at once, overwhelmed by the waves, when you cannot, in captivity, enter the ports of Spain: thus neither will another man's rule master a great ship, nor will you be able to transport your lord nor his brother Philip.
O navis, referent in mare te noviSpratlin is interested in other aspects of what he calls a "phantasy on a triple motif," finding the opening lines "particularly significant because of the light that they shed on the poet's origin" (Juan Latino 40). He quotes the following lines of Latino's: "The writer was not engendered in [this] region, he comes, Latino, from the land of the Ethiopians to sing the marvelous deeds of Austria with the art of the song" (41). Spratlin writes, "One might wonder to what extent race consciousness entered into the psychology of this expatriated African, who could appropriate for himself the most subtle references of the Renaissance" (41). In Latino's address to Philip, in which he requests permission to sing the praises of Don Juan, he seems to assert his African heritage somewhat. Spratlin asks, melodramatically:
fluctus. O quid agis? fortiter occupa
portum. (c.I.14)O ship, a new wind will take you out again to sea. What are you doing? Make firm haste for the port!
Was the result a morbid sensitiveness in the harrassed soul of the slave, or did he present a black face to a white world without apology?(41) The following lines are the answer:
Is genibus flexis orat te, invicte Philippe,Yet, as Spratlin points out, "Juan Latino, though proud of his color, was hardly an advocate of racial culture" (42).
cantator fratris possit ut esse tui.
Nam si nobilitant Austridae bella poetam,
Phoenicem Austriadam quod niger ille facit.
Terribilis classis gentes motura Philippi,
orbi portentum tunc erit Austriades.
Prodigiosa viros turbabit fama poetae
volventes fastis haec monumenta tuis.
Aurora hunc peperit reges Arabumque beatos
primitias gentum quos dedit illa Deo.
Quod si nostra tuis facies, rex, nigra ministris
displicet, Aethiopum non placet alba viris.
Illuc Auroram sordet qui viserit albus,
suntque duces nigri, rex quoque fuscus adest.
Candace regina genus nigrumque ministrum
vel curru Christo miserat illa suum:
legerat ille genus non enarrabile Christi;
Austriadae pugnas non canet iste tui?On bended knees, invincible Philip, he begs you that he may be the singer of your brother. For if the wars of Austria bring fame to the poet, it is also true that he, being black, is making a Phoenix of Austria. When the fleet of Philip is about to stir up terrible people, Austria will be a portent to the earth. The prodigious fame of the poet will excite men who discover these monuments in your records. The East produced him and the blessed kings of the Arabians, whom she gave to God as the first fruits of the people. For if our black face, oh king, is displeasing to your ministers, the white face is not pleasing to the men of Ethiopia. There, he who, white, visits the East is held in little esteem. The leaders are black, and the king there is black. Queen Candace assuredly sent her offspring and her black minister in a chariot to Christ. Did he not comprehend the luminous spirit of Christ; shall not this [bard] sing the battles of your Austria? (Spratlin 41-42)
Turning his back on the tribal gods, he accepts Christianity as the universal religion and commends Philip for his missionary efforts among the Africans;
Obvius Aethiopem Christum docet ore Philippus,Beyond this, Spratlin praises Latino's ability to give vivid descriptions of the battle scenes, writing that "Latino envisions the battle of Lepanto with the imagination of a painter" (50). This evocative power is, for Spratlin, its greatest merit, as "[t]he banalities of his eulogies are occasionally relieved by passages of exuberant imagery" (53). He also says, "Such a prolix work will inevitably be of unequal merit, but by virtue of the Negro's descriptive as well as encomiastic powers, there are passages that are dynamic and grandiose, and the reader might think that Juan Latino, like Cervantes, had been present at Lepanto" (49).
Discipulum Christus mittit ad Aethiopem,
Non temere Aethiopi coelo datus ergo Philippus.
Ne Aethiopi iusta haec forte Philippe neges.Philip meeting the Ethiopian teaches him Christ by word of mouth. Christ sent a disciple to the Ethiopian. Philip was therefore not given to the Ethiopian by heaven accidentally. Great Philip, do not deny these just things to the Ethiopian. (42)
We should also mention here three other discussions of the work. Marín Ocete apparently praised the originality of Latino's poem, and pointed out the absence of a model for him to follow on this topic. But López de Toro takes exception to this claim:
. . . Marín Ocete would not have maintained . . . the absence of a model for the Black Juan Latino's Austriad if he could have consulted some of the works cited by Menendez y Pidal.(96) López de Toro does not go into detail, however, on which of these works predate Latino's, nor does he himself proceed with a study of the Austriad. He does compare it with the work of another author:
. . . . . . . .
One can not say so assuredly [as Marín Ocete does]: "It becomes more valuable if we take into account the absence of a model to be followed more or less carefully" because the immense pléiade of poets of the naval battle also didn't have one. And when Marín Ocete says, "The analysis of the poem confirms our hypothesis on the lack of models. For the author, a brief account of the facts was enough to elaborate a conception which has an unmistakable personal touch." We think he allows himself to be carried away by affection for the author he studies, and he exaggerates, moreover, in all his comments on the poem of the Black, based erroneously on such a subjective hypothesis. Not only did Francisco Herrera and Juan Rufo write about Lepanto. There were many contemporary writers on the battle who wrote on it in verse, and innumerable who did so later. And it is a tangled jungle, difficult to cross, without making one's garments into rags, this confused mountain of Latin poems celebrating such a happy event in the most diverse tones, meters, genres and interpretations. The books entitled Deliciae poetarum, which later came out of forming a kind of anthology of each nation which loved its--major and minor--poets, offer us a fantastic quantity of such compositions . . . . Juan Latino's poem, then, is one of many . . . .If so much and such well earned praise has been given to the Black Juan Latino's Austriad, to the point that Menendez y Pelayos says it was "the most singular tribute which the language of the learned gave to the victor at Lepanto," it is an obvious injustice to omit the poem of Pedrosa, only because the other, albeit rare and famous, was printed and the reading of it meant a pleasure more easily achieved, although not more complete and satisfying. The Black's Austriad has 35 pages; Pedrosa's Naumachia has 93 folios--not counting the preliminaries and colophon---of cramped writing, which would give us 196 pages in print. Both are Virgilinas, each with the personal differences of their respective temperaments. More objective than the Black, more detailed and ample in his descriptions, Pedrosa is at some times necessarily more prosaic than the former, but in other moments he gives nothing away to the best descriptions of the Ethiopian humanist . . . . (84)Finally, López de Toro quotes Menéndez y Pelayo's observations on the work, which are, it seems, rather critical of the work itself but admiring of Juan Latino's "human" accomplishments:. . . [T]he most singular tribute that the language of the learned paid to the victor at Lepanto was the Austriad (Austriados libri duo) of the Black Juan Latino, a professor of humanities in Granada, a rare and famous book, because it is, as it seems, the oldest printed literary work of an individual of the dark race and of Ethiopian descent. From this, principally, comes its celebrity, but we must add that the hexameters of the poor slave who, thanks to his inborn talent and the Christian charity of our ancestors, achieved not only freedom, but also a distinguished marriage, an honorable position and even a funeral monument with a majestic epitaph, are to be appreciated in themselves, within the artificial and scholastic genre to which they belong, and reveal that their Black author was quite caught up in the reading of Virgil, from whom he takes sentences and also heimistiches, in accordance with the usual procedure of the producers of such poems, beginning with Petrarch's Africa. (95)Spratlin includes translations of some of Juan Latino's lines in commemoration of the birth of the prince (42-43), which include a description of Granada in celebration. Spratlin also describes the fervor and faith of Juan Latino, as expressed in his work on Pius V. The critic comments, "The extent of Spain's devotion to the Catholic faith can be measured by the fanaticism of this imported Negro, whose early Gods were as the antithesis of the God of the Hierarchy" (45). Spratlin also presents information on Latino's second, more "somber" work, written to commemorate the transfer of the royal remains. This work begins with "a prose account, in Latin naturally of the events that inspired his poem."Spratlin tells us that "De augusta et catholica regalium corporum translatione per catholicum Phillipum consists of 600 lines. It was finished in 1574, but the final privilegio was not granted until 1576. . . . Composed in the elaborate fashion of the Austrias carmen, it is as much a eulogy as an elegy . . . ." Moreover, "[i]t was composed not long after the first work of the poet and does not differ essentially from it in style" (Juan Latino 58). Ultimately, Spratlin finds this a stiff and lugubrious work:
The subject of the Translatio is not a fertile one, nor is andante lamentoso the rhythm of the epic; hence these variations on a somber theme grow colorless and monotonous, despite the frequent modulation into the major mode of Hapsburg glory. To be sure, there is a certain liturgical solemnity about this prolix requiem that accords well with the Latin medium in which it is sung, but sooner or later the verses appear to be merely the perfunctory accompaniment to an event that was no doubt significant enough to a society that could be impressed by the trappings of royalty. We have seen that Juan Latino was not devoid of imagination and could visualize Lepanto like one who had fought at the side of Don Juan; his resources were not subtle enough, however, to vitalize the barren theme that was this procession of regal catafalques, although he could treat it with due regard for the exigencies that royal tradition and religious orthodoxy prescribed. Such a work can only be at best a museum-piece. (60-61)Marín Ocete, though, has another view: "Not a word too many nor an idea too few. The exact, precise verses, one would say made of fine steel with all its strength, but also all its flexibility and often inspiration succeeds, without artifices, in giving the exact, measured and serene, but terribly real, tone of the idea of death" (qtd. in Maso 41-42).Juan Latino's final work is a loose pamphlet, only 12 pages long, published in 1585. It is a "fervent and sincere homage to the family of the man who gave him the opportunity to become what he did, and also a heartfelt recollection of his protector and brotherly friend" (Maso 42). It had been already prepared for publication in 1576, but Juan Latino postponed publication until after the Duke's death (in 1579). Latino sings the glories of the house of the Duke's ancestor, the Great Captain, and also of his friend's father, Luis Fernández de Córdoba, finally turning to Gonzalo himself.
Most of the encyclopedia entries and brief references praise his work, especially the Austrias Carmen. The Encyclopedia Espasa says, "Including the pagan marvellous element in a Christian and Spanish work, the Austriad is an artistic monument to the style of the Renaissance, which would be one of the most perfect of our literature" (1023). Rodríguez Marín remarks that it "will be acclaimed as long as there is a taste for letters in the world."
Spratlin situates his evaluation of Latino's work in the context of Spanish humanism, of the renewed study of classical learning. He describes the flowering of the literary scene in Granada, remarking, "The irony of it was that the chief votary of the enlightenment should have been a slave" (Juan Latino 35). Spratlin feels Juan Latino's work is technically admirable but barren of feeling and originality, "an exercise of the mind rather than a revelation of the heart": "His performance dazzles us only to leave our sensibilities cold" (36).
Spratlin tells us that neo-Latin poetry "has often been censured as stifling to the native expression"; the Latinists "were scholars rather than poets. Theirs were the limitations of academicians" (36). He laments that Juan Latino did not feel "impelled to express himself in Spanish" and to tell us more of "the yearnings of his own soul" (37). The critic points out that much of Juan Latino's work is occasional verse, while he would have wished for a more sincere "sorrowsong." Spratlin finally makes the following rather harsh judgment: "He [Juan Latino] could write a prolix Latin poem and decorate it with poetic garlands borrowed from the classics; his works have much of the tediousness of occasional verse, yet he could brighten them with occasional flashes of real poetic inspiration. This was his talent--only this and nothing more" (37).
We find similar harsh comments in Sánchez Marín's introduction to the work he translates. Praising, as does Spratlin, the poet's capacity to give us vivid panoramas of action, he nonetheless points outs the stiffness of the work:
The unity of the narration is disrupted not only by the speeches that the poet introduces and that are taken up by the two generals, but also by abundant digressions; in this respect it fits in with the esthetics of the Renaissance, which favors variety and even excess, as well as variety in content and form; it [the narrative] is versatile in rhetorical devices, sometimes an excessive artificiality as well as a monotony burdens the creative imagination; however, at other times the heterogenous description and the lexical repetitions have a particular end in expression, that of communicating the confusion of the debate, the bustle of the ships, the agitation of the enemy, the numerous forces on both sides which go to make victory an indecisive matter. (28-29)Sánchez Marín also states that Latino's attempt to write in a Virgilian mode about current events hindered his artistry: "It is possible that the disparity between form and content as well as the lack of fluidity and the lack of spontaneity found in certain passages may be due to the actual artificiality inherent in borrowing material" (29).Juan Latino is a most curious figure in the history of Renaissance humanism and of Africans in Europe. Nevertheless, he seems destined to remain at the margin of the canon of Spanish literature, important as an example of the course taken by humanism in Spain, the culmination of the tradition in Latin, a tradition that would be eclipsed completely by Cervantes's dramatic achievements in the vernacular just a few years hence.
The most "notable" fact of Juan Latino's existence, according to subsequent scholars, has been his blackness. This distinguishes him from the other, similarly somewhat talented, literary and academic figures of his time; it, rather than his poetry, makes his career more remarkable.
If we know little of Juan Latino today, and regard him primarily as a curiosity, such was not always the case. Among the earliest references of Juan Latino are the elegies and tributes, often in verse, made to him by his contemporaries. One is an elegy written in Latin by Alonso or Alfonso Pérez, a beneficiary of the "Santa Escolastica de Granada," who wrote a biography in Latin of El Cid. Maso reproduces his tribute.
The poet Gabriel Rodríguez de Aridilla, or Ardila, dedicated a poem to Juan Latino, from which Maso quotes the following lines:
gloria del duque de SesaFinally, we must return to the famous mention of Juan Latino by Cervantes in one of the poems which preface Don Quijote (1605):
maestro de tantos buenos
honor de tantas escuelas (37)glory of the Duke of Sesa
teacher of so many good men
honor of so many schools.
Pues al cielo no le plu-All of these writers focus on Latino's skill as a Latinist, on his erudition, and, in the case of Pérez, on his poetic talent. Although Cervantes calls him "el negro," this does not seem the major point in his comment. These acknowledgments of Juan Latino's erudition are similar to that of another contemporary, Cárceres y Espinosa, whose comment on Latino's learning we have quoted above. The brief entry on Juan Latino in Andreas Schottus's Hispaniae Bibliotheca (1608) seems to follow this pattern as well; it refers to Latino's scholarly and creative production without further comment.
que saliesses tan ladi-
como el negro Juan Lati-,
hablar latines rehu-***. (Maso 37)Seeing it was not Heaven's pleasure to make thee as learned as black Juan, you refuse to speak Latin.
Nevertheless, in other fairly contemporary accounts of Juan Latino, a certain additional process takes place, which we might call the "fictionalization" of this figure. Poets, dramatists, and even biographers make use of him to provide interesting anecdotes, tell a good story, or for other purposes. It thus becomes significant that we have no true "portrait" of Juan Latino--authors such as Lope de Vega, Ximénez de Enciso, and Ambrosio Salazar paint the picture they choose of him. We can already see a touch of this in Cervantes's mention, where Juan Latino is a metaphor for traditional Renaissance humanism.
This "fictionalization" can be seen in less obviously novelistic, more "informational" accounts such as that Bermúdez de Pedraza gives in his Antiguedades y Excelencias de Granada, a work which serves as a source to later authors such as Clemencin and Rodríguez Marín. Bermúdez y Pedraza includes Juan Latino in a chapter entitled "On Three Famous Blacks of This City," which he begins thus:
Although it seems ridiculous to write on theHe mentions one woman, Catalina de Soto, an embroideress, on whom he prefers to "maintain silence," and two men, Fray Cristobal de Meneses and the Licenciado Ortíz, before turning to Juan Latino, of whom he writes the following:
Blacks of this city, I will do it, as many wish,
as there were, among others, three in this city,
the honor of the Ethiopian nation. (138)
The third was Maestro Juan Latino, a native of Barbary, who was brought, as a child, a captive with his mother to Spain, where he was brought up in the house of the Duke of Terranova, the widow of the first Captain, with the care of his grandson the Duke of Sesa, whom he served in bringing his books to class, and thus he had a chance to pick up the Latin language, much better than his master did, as he [Juan Latino] was more gifted for it, so that the Duke often said of him, "Rara avis in terra, corvo simillima nigro," which means, "My Black is as rare on this earth as the Phoenix."* On reaching manhood, he was married, out of love, to Doña Ana de Carlobal, a woman of note, the daughter of Licenciado Carlobal, governor of the Duke's estate, because in giving lessons to this lady, he so charmed her with his gifts and witty remarks, that she promised to marry him, and when asked before the ecclesiastic judge, she confirmed it, and married him. He studied the Arts and was a teacher of them. He wanted to study medicine, and at his friends' advice, he gave it up, and dedicated himself to the study of grammar, and held the city's chair in it for more than 60 years. He was so esteemed by the Dukes of Sesa, the Archbishops and notable people of the city, that all had him at their table and in their homes. For in addition to being a great Rhetorician and Latin poet he had a witty tongue and was a good player of the "vihuela." He lived 90 years, leaving sons and grandchildren alive today. He went blind in old age and in spite of this taught in the schools and went about the streets. He is buried in the church of Santa Ana of this city. (139)In this little account, several elements stand out:*An accurate translation is "a rare bird in these parts, quite like the black raven."
Another source which reveals this "fictionalizing" tendency goes much further; this is Ambrosio Salazar's work on Spanish grammar, Espejo General de Gramática, published in Rouen in 1615. (Spratlin gives its title as Gramática francesa y castellana en dialogos.) In this work, an account of Juan Latino's life apparently serves as a practice text for students of Spanish. Yet Salazar, although he states that he knew Juan Latino (Clemencín, in his edition of the Quijote, quotes this), renders a spicy, elaborate version of the scholar's life, full of juicy incidents and verbal games which lead us to wonder if Salazar did not do some embellishing. Spratlin, in his work, gives us some interesting quotations from Salazar, and expresses a skepticism about him similar to our own:
- Bermúdez de Pedraza's reference to the city's "three blacks" as a kind of curiosity. These four leading figures are remarkable for their race, and their accomplishments are all listed with an unspoken "in spite of"--or, in the case of Catalina, with a more obvious one--her "ebony hands were more esteemed in handworking, embroidering and drawing than the fine ladies of white hands."
- Bermúdez de Pedraza gives attention to the more "novelesque" aspects of Latino's career, such as his marriage and the Duke's remark. He also gives less emphasis to Juan Latino's scholarly achievements than to his social talents--as a musician, that is, a performer. This initiates a curious trend in Juan Latino's scholarship, of stressing these more frivolous aspects of his abilities; it carries all the way up to Spratlin, as we shall see.
The latter writes, "Complementing this gaiety of temperament and flippancy of speech was his skill in music. Truly the African psyche found complete expression in the soul of this black" (Spratlin, Juan Latino 13). This seems to be an odd mixture of the "natural rhythm" idea and a revindication of African-ness.
Ambrosio Salazar gives a curious account of the romance. The basic facts of his version may be authentic, although their treatment was no doubt colored by Juan's fame as a wit as well as the credulity of the author. There is an extravagance and abandon about the tale that is typically Renaissance; it could have been written by Boccaccio in Florence or Marguerite de Navarre in Nérac, and told at a Borgian banquet. The book of Salazar, it should be noted, is a 'method' for learning French and Spanish. It consists of a series of stories and anecdotes in sundry subjects presented in alphabetical order. A bilateral procedure is followed; to the left is a column of Spanish text--to the right the corresponding French version of the same material. The lesson that interests us is based on the letter 'M'; the word chosen to illustrate it is manera--chosen because of the audacious way in which Juan Latino played on its double meaning in the wooing of Ana Carlobal. These meanings are 'manner or means' and 'a pocket in a woman's dress'.Spratlin also quotes the following episode found in Salazar:Salazar describes the lesson scene as follows: "One day he took her hand; another day he kissed it, and she did not rebuke him sufficiently severely, so that on the third day he dared to place his hand in the pocket of her skirt. She reproved him severely and sewed up the pocket. And Juan Latino, finding the pocket closed, left off going to teach her. Her father, seeing that she was no longer learning, when he found the Negro at the door of the Oidores de la Cancillería asked him at eleven o'clock in the morning why he no longer taught his daughter. Then the Negro replied that there was no manera. The oidor thought that his daughter was not capable, and when he returned home rebuked her because there was no manera. And the daughter, without wishing to make reply of a single word, unsewed the pocket, and the first time that Juan Latino came to teach her he put his hand in her pocket, and without shame did this so many time, that . . . ." (Juan Latino 14-15)
Ambrosio Salazar recounts one that makes us wonder if the rogue was the author of a simile that has become a familiar note along the chromatic scale: "Another day an important gentleman came to see him in the morning; finding himself indisposed, Juan commanded him to enter, who seeing him so black between sheets so white, was astonished. And Juan Latino said to him, 'Sir, there is no occasion to marvel, because I am like a fly in milk'." (13)As we see in these passages, Salazar was quite interested in Latino's marriage, and the interracial, interclass aspects of it sparked the author's imagination. Juan Latino takes on features of a picaresque hero, a well-spoken rogue, and also of a jester or buffoon, his blackness providing him only with an added dimension, an added topic of wit, in this respect.Salazar's account has some pretensions to "fact"; in it, this fictionalization creeps in unannounced. Two other mentions of Juan Latino bring him more obviously into the realm of literature, though. In his La Dama boba (1613), Lope de Vega cites Juan Latino as a famous lover who was successful against all odds; we give Spratlin's summary of the situation and his translation of the passage:
The reference occurs in scene twenty-one of the second act of the play. Don Octavio, a worthy old hidalgo of Madrid, is the father of two marriageable daughters, Finea, the 'foolish lady', whose sizeable dowry compensates for her astonishing stupidity, and the discreet and lovely Nise. In the course of the love-intrigue that complicates the plot, Nise has occasion to speak with a young blade in the garden of her home. Don Octavio learns of the rendezvous and, jealous of the family honor, remonstrates with his daughter against such rashness. Nise reassures him: the youth is honest; he discourses on literary subjects, and she considers him more as a dominie than a gallant. Thereupon Don Octavio, realizing the romantic possibilities of the relationship of master and pupil, cites the case of Juan Latino and Ana Carlobal in justification of his fears:Once again, through the "amo, amas" detail, we have Juan Latino as the hero of a light drama, in which love conquers all--even his race and status.No era tan blanco en Granada
Juan Latino, que la hija
de un veinticuatro ense-aba;
y con ser negro y esclavo,
porque era su madre esclava,
del claro Duque de Sesa,
honra de Espa-a y de Italia,
Vino a casarse con ella
que gramtica estudiaba,
y la ense--- a conjugar,
En llegando al 'amo, amas'
Que as' llama al matrimonio el latin.(Juan Latino in Granada was not so white, who taught the daughter of an alderman; and though a Negro and a slave, because his mother was a slave of the illustrious Duke de Sesa, honor of Spain and Italy, he came to marry her, who was studying grammar; and he taught her to conjugate when they came to "amo, amas," for thus Latin terms matrimony.) (Juan Latino 15-16)
By far the most important fictionalization of Juan Latino, however, is that which occurs in Ximénez de Enciso's play, Juan Latino. Spratlin makes use of this as a factual source, although, as we shall see, the play is more a work of literature than a representation of actual events.
It is difficult to date Enciso's Juan Latino; its author lived from 1585 to 1634, but the play was published only in 1652. Spratlin, basing his calculations on the possible date of a play that was an imitation of it, estimates it was written between 1610 and 1621.
It is Spratlin who gives us the fullest account of the details surrounding the play, and also a serviceable, if not artistic, translation. For a good study of the play's relationship to historical events, especially the war with the Moors, he should be consulted. Here, we are most interested in the play as literature, and in its treatment of the figure of Juan Latino and related themes. It soon becomes apparent that Enciso uses episodes from the humanist's life which fit well into the Golden Age taste for lively action, a good "all's well that ends well" love story and much verbal play. He had drawn on historical sources before--as the title of his play Los Medicis de Florencia shows. In Juan Latino, he twists history a bit, introducing Don Fernando de Valor, the Moorish noble and rebel leader of Granada, as a rival (although one who is eliminated early on, when he is imprisoned) to Juan Latino for Ana's love. Enciso invents another character, a Black Moor, as a rival to Don Fernando as leader of their people, in a subplot, involving the Moor's rebellion, which branches off the Don Fernando subplot. As Spratlin puts it, "Enciso, planning his drama around a black motif, needed for the completion of the pattern a Negro character who might antagonize Fernando de Valor in his royal aspirations just as Juan Latino thwarted him in his wooing of Ana Carlobal" (Juan Latino 208).
Nevertheless, Caneri becomes an impressive figure, and his fate seems to mirror, in the background, Juan Latino's. Indeed, the whole tale of the Moorish uprising is woven into this drama at various points, and, in the final scene, when we see Juan Latino achieve domestic happiness and academic glory, we are also told that Caneri's uprising has failed. Another historical touch is the presence of Don Juan de Austria, who acts as a kind of deus ex machina (although a rather ineffectual one, as he does not succeed in gaining Juan Latino's freedom).
Rather than a tightly woven plot, Juan Latino presents a series of scenes which are amusing or dramatic in themselves. These include a scene in which Juan Latino, among a group of revellers which includes Don Fernando, first glimpses Ana Carlobal, and attracts her attention; a confrontation between Don Fernando and Caneri; Juan Latino's pleas for freedom from his master; Juan and Ana's schoolroom scenes and courtship; Juan's meetings with Don Juan of Austria; Juan's election to the professorship of Grammar over the opposition of the Licenciado Villanueva, and Juan's final triumph, as he is awarded the title of "Licenciado."
Two incidents merit remark, because of their relationship to our other sources. The first is the "manera" incident included here in the second act, as an episode in which Ana finally declares her love for Juan. We know this episode specifically through Ambrosio de Salazar. What is the relationship between the two texts? The other incident involves a stranger--in this play, a lowly charcoal seller--who knocks at the door of Latino's house and, when Latino himself opens the door, asks to see the master of the house, assuming the Black is a slave. Latino tells him to wait, and he is ushered into the presence of a more elegantly dressed Latino, who is indeed the master. In the play, it is incorporated into a sequence in which Latino later dresses up as a charcoal seller to gain access to the convent in which Ana's disapproving brother has confined her, and steal her away to be married. This incident is also recounted by Marín Ocete, who does not give his source for it:
Incident: Juan Latino lived in what must have been a principal house of the time, and as he was relaxing one day in his patio, the teacher, "surrounded by his many servants . . . had not finished dressing, when some gentlemen came to see him, and they said to him, 'Negro, is your master at home?' and he answered yes--'then go tell him that if he wish, that we would like to speak to his grace?' Juan Latino went into a room, put on a robe, and sat in a chair and bid them enter. The visitors were disturbed and confused. But he told them to say what they wanted, that what had happened mattered nothing." (29)At one point Castillo, Juan Latino's sidekick, a buffoon, also makes a quip that recalls the witticisms Cárceras y Espinosa attributes to Silvestre, telling Juan Latino he took the Black man for the "shadow cast" by another nobleman (Ximénez de Enciso 162; 82 in Spratlin's trans.).Beyond these bibliographical details, the following elements are among those worthy of note:
Another curious aspect is the strength and interest of the villains, Caneri, especially, and, to a lesser extent, Don Fernando. In a highly interesting speech, the latter defends the rights of the Moors to retain their language and customs, rebelling against the Duke's "unjust prohibitions" (Ximénez de Enciso 176; 112-14 in Spratlin's trans.). This speech is eloquent and impassioned. D. Fernando, the white, "good," reasonable Moor is balanced against Caneri, the violent, dark ("Black") Moor, who incites his people into an ultimately disastrous rebellion. The scenes in which these two meet, Caneri appearing as a spectre and monster haunting D. Fernando, are eerie and seem to have some philosophical resonance. Caneri, despite his supposedly negative connotations, appears as a strong, larger-than-life figure. This subplot of the rivalry of the two and their exploits in asserting their race, is almost more serious and interesting than the main action concerning Latino, which seems ultimately commonplace. In the last scene, as Latino receives his honors and trades witticisms with Castillo, we hear the news of the two Moors' downfall. Yet even the description of Caneri's death has a certain stoic heroism and fascination:
- One of the important conceits of the play is that of the body/soul division. Latino says, for example, "My studious labors shall produce a soul / As lovely as my body is uncouth" (Ximénez de Enciso 198; 104 in Spratlin's trans.). He also refers to his other great "misfortune," the condition of a slave, saying that while his body may be bound his soul is free; the latter is all he can give to Doña Ana (Ximénez de Enciso 337; 190 in Spratlin's trans.). This distinction seems to be used to get around the fact that Latino never is freed--he is noble albeit a black slave. Annette Ivory's discussion of the aspect is quite interesting.
- The most common term used to insult Juan Latino is that of "dog." It is used, for example, by Villanueva as he argues before the Cloister that a Black and, more especially, a slave, should not hold the office both seek; among Villanueva's arguments is that: "Slaves are not men. / They count for naught; I rate them with the dead" (Ximénez de Enciso 270; 150 in Spratlin's trans.; Pellicer 16a).
Doña Ana also calls him a dog, and some word play results (Ximénez de Enciso 250; 150 in Spratlin's trans.).
- This play makes Juan Latino into a rather flat Golden Age hero. He is a witty-tongued lover who surmounts obstacles to rise to fame and fortune. All the "issues"--his race, especially--are subsumed into various verbal contests, in which a cheering audience seems to decide the victor. This is true of his confrontation with Villanueva, of his small conflicts with the nobles, and especially in his dialogues with Castillo. Indeed, the play ends with long discourses by the latter, in which he makes every play possible with the idea of blackness, calling Juan Latino a "super-black" ("proto-negro"), and with Juan Latino answering his sallies. One of the more interesting lines here is when Castillo invokes the body/soul distinction, clearly valorizing white over black, as he says, "[Latino is] Señor potato, who though dark without / Is white enough down underneath the skin. / Latino has a soul of tempered steel, / Resplendent, fine and cutting, though encased / In sheath of toughest leather" (Ximénez de Enciso 250; 197 in Spratlin's trans.).
The plays on the concept of blackness are many, involving not only Latino but also Caneri, whom D. Fernando calls a shadow and a shade, associating him with a death-figure.
- It is either a sign of Enciso's artistry or of his lack of artistry that the play, despite its happy ending, strikes so many incongruous notes. Among them is the highly ambiguous element of the Duke's refusal--and the acquiesence of Don Juan of Austria, the "order" figure, in this--to grant Latino his freedom. The latter makes a long, impassioned plea for it, and his slavery is truly tragic for him, yet he remains a slave, to add greater glory to the House of Sesa. In one of the final discourses, Castillo makes a long joke about a dark, overpeppered sausage which, "a little blackened by the smoke . . . decorates the ducal kitchen. . . . It dangles there suspended by a cord / And wants to walk around the master's house-- / A captive sausage longing to be free" (Ximénez de Enciso 346-47; 196 in Spratlin's trans.). The image is grotesque and incongruous.
The rebel king, Fernando, dead, this blackHe almost overshadows Latino who is, after all, a rather shallow figure. Don Juan's final praise of Latino is one of "reconciliation"; he advises Carlobal to consider Juan Latino "your brother":
Sought out a tower from whose dizzy height
He hurled himself with that tranquility
A Moslem knows when fate decrees his death. (Ximénez de Enciso 354; 201 in Spratlin's trans.). . . Ebon skin should not impede.As one of the characters remarks, Latino's honor is won through his "wit and scholarship." This path seems less exciting than Caneri's rebellion, and ultimately the play's message of "racial harmony" is undercut by the disproportionate glamor of its villains.
Latino's face was burnished by the sun
Because, more bold than we, he dared to look
With steadfast courage into its flaming rays. (Ximénez de Enciso 355; 202 in Spratlin's trans.)The relationship between Latino and these characters, and the possible meaning of the play, is the subject of an interesting article by Anette Ivory. She considers the symbolic meaning of the figure of Juan Latino in the context of the Spanish national image in its theater. The portrayal of Latino differs sharply from the usual earlier portrayal of Blacks as buffoons. Ivory examines "the Spanish dramatists' attempt to recreate and redefine reality by using the Black protagonist-hero as a figure through which the Spaniard might find inspiration" (614). Ivory contrasts Juan Latino's fate with that of representatives of Spain's other minorities in the play--Villanueva, whose name suggests he is a Christian convert, a new Christian, or a former Jew, and the two Moors, Caneri, and D. Fernando. She points out that "[t]heir heroism and power, which Latino exemplifies, serve essentially to control, dominate and crush the ambitions of the converted Jews and minorities in the play" (615). Latino becomes an exemplary "white sheep" and a lesson that assimilation with the established order is the best road. There are certain incongruities in this, however, chief among them being his continuing to be a slave. Juan Latino becomes a hero to support the traditions of Spain, but at a great cost to himself. Ivory ties this all to the theme of the fate of minorities in Spain; for her, Enciso tries to reconcile through fiction problems occurring in history: "Latino, a nationalistic play, appeared in honor of such democratic values as education and marriage at the very moment when oppressed minorities were rebelling in the mountains of Granada (Moriscos) and defending themselves in Cofradias in Seville (Blacks)" (617).
After the few roughly contemporaneous commentaries on Latino, there is a distinct break in the significant material published about the poet. In 1788, we find him mentioned in Nicolas Antonio's Bibliotheca Hispano-Nova (Madrid, 1788). Antonio is responsible for the affirmations that Ana Carlobal fell madly in love with her teacher despite his condition ("matrimonio insuper honestae nec ignobilis feminae supra conditionem ornatus") and that he is buried in the chapel of Santa Ana ("Jacet in Sanctae Annae parocciali ecclesia Granatensi"), picked up by later writers (1: 716).
We find an interesting footnote to the lines of Cervantes in Juan Antonio Pellicer's edition of the Quijote (1788), which reads: "Como el negro Juan Lati--: he came with his parents to Spain from Ethiopia at an early age: he was a slave of the Duke of Sesa, grandson of the Great Captain, with whom he was brought up and studied. He was favored, or freed, and as he was such an excellent Latinist (hence his nickname) he was installed in the Professorship of Humanities at Granada, in function of which he died in 1573, having been married to Ana Carlobal, a distinguished woman. D. Diego Ximénez de Enciso wrote a play on him . . . ."
Several nineteenth-century references to Latino appeared in encyclopedias, published in France, which are more interesting for the insight they give us into their authors' intellectual background, than for information on Latino himself. We list them briefly here:
The use of the term "Ethiopian" for Black was common. No previous accounts mention such a contact between Latino and Clenard. The former was a professor of Latin, born in Diest in 1495, who went to Spain in 1532, in search of someone to teach him Arabic. He taught at Salamanca, in Portugal, and eventually in Granada.
- In Biographie Universelle Classique (1829):
Latinus (Jean) Name by which an Ethiopian disciple of the famous Clenard taught Rhetoric of the "College" of Granada in the later years of the sixteenth century. We have from his works a little poem called "de navali Joannis Austracis ad Echinadas insulas victoria, etc." (11: 1641)
This account, full of obvious factual errors, gives as its sources Nicolas Antonio and Ticknor. Aside from these mistakes, we can note its insistance on its version of Juan Latino's marriage.
- The entry in F.-X. Feller's Biographie Universelle des Hommes qui se sont fait un nom (1860) is obviously based on that quoted above, but it adds some interesting comments, although without giving its sources:
Latinus (Jean) Name under which a famous Ethiopian disciple of the famous Clenard, is celebrated in learned circles. He developed a genius and knowledge which one would be far from imagining in a sixteenth century African, and gave public music, poetry and Latin lessons in a "college" of Granada. His reputation was extraordinary and all the curious people flocked to see a Black [emphasis in text] shine in his knowledge of the finest minds of Europeans, and teach them to the Europeans themselves. "Yet another proof, after so many others," says a physiologist, "that man's reason is unto itself, that it is a celestial fire, as one of the ancients says, that develops everywhere it can, divine particule aura; and that whether the surroundings or organic factors place barriers in its path or provide assistance, they can never be its cause or producer." Latinus died about 1590. We have of his works a little poem, called "De navali Joannis Austracis ad Echinadas insulas victoria, etc." (5: 170)
This account expresses wonder at Latino's success, given his origin. It also provides the picturesque detail of Latino as a public side show, teaching Europeans about their own greatminds, despite his status as an African. Latino's success is proof of this "scientific" adage that man's inherent reason triumphs above all, dominates all.
- Another description of Latino is found in the Nouvelle Biographie Générale (1862). The curious information it includes appears to be taken from Nicolas Antonio's account:
LATINO, Juan. Black poet, lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Brought, while quite young, from Africa by the Spanish, he was first the slave of the grandson of the famous Gonçalo de Cordoba, who educated him and freed him. He set up in Granada and taught Greek and Latin in a school affiliated with the cathedral of that city. A young woman of a good family whose education had been entrusted to him took a fancy to him and married him, after her husband's death, she had erected in the church of Santa Ana a monument to his memory, in which the following line stands out: "Filius Aethiopium prolesque nigerrima patrum." ["Son of the Ethiopians, and blackest progeny of his parents."] Of the works of Juan Latino, also called Juanus Latinus, we have a collection of Latin poems . . . Grana 1573, pet. in-40, . . . on the birth of the child Ferdinand, on Pope Pius V, on the death of Don Juan of Austria and the city of Granada. This is one of the rarest books known to us. The author is the same character of whom Cervantes speaks in a poem which accompanies Don Quijote and it is also probably he whom Lopez de Enciso [sic] has put on stage in the play Juan Latino. (29: 824)
We observe how Larousse twists the information found in earlier entries to give Latino's success as a teacher and, more notably, to make his point that Latino was not a "white black."
- Certain phrases from the above account, somewhat interpreted, find their way into Pierre Larousse's Grand Dictionnaire Universal du XIXe siècle (1873):
LATINO (Juan). Black poet of the sixteenth century. He was born in Africa, from where he was taken, while quite young, to Spain; there he became the slave of the grandson of Gonalo de Cordoba, who had him brought up with care and then returned him his liberty. Latino then opened in Granada a school of Latin and Greek, where he obtained, it seems, much success, for he was called in as a teacher to many of the city's richest families. One of his students fell in love with him and married him. One must not infer from this fact that Latino was what is called in America a white black. He was, on the contrary, of the purest Black, as is proven by this line from the epitaph engraved on the tomb his wife later had raised to him: "Filius Aethiopum proesque nigerrima patrum." We have of his works a collection of Latin poems on various subjects which is one of the greatest bibliographical rareties we know. (10: 235)
Beyond these references, we have a few others during this period. One is a footnote in George Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature (1849) in which Juan Latino is mentioned as the author of a "curious" poem praising Don Juan of Austria (2: 491-92). Ticknor says Juan Latino's poetry is "respectable," and calls his work published in 1573 "not only one of the rarest books in the world but (also) one of the most remarkable illustrations of the intellectual faculties and possible accomplishments of the African race" (493).
- For convenience's sake, we also include here the entry on Juan Latino in the Encyclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana (1908), or Encyclopedia Espasa (1923). We have cited this article, which is too long to quote in its entirety, with respect to Latino's work and to certain bibliographical information. Certain elements of it stand out, though, for their own sake: it expresses wonder at Latino's achievements, its tone being generally that of open-mouthed admiration; it says, at one point, that the Duke of Sesa was "amazed by his talent"; this comment is self-referential. It sums up Latino's career thus, expressing equal marvel at his social and scholarly progress: "We can hardly understand how that child of the Black race and the condition of a slave could come to wear the toga of a professor, to become related through marriage to an illustrious family and to be the object of admiration of the writers and scholars of Granada and even of all Spain." This account translated all of Latino's achievements into glowing terms: Juan Latino's appointment as a professor, whose problems we already know, is described as having been received "with the applause of the University Cloister and of all Granada, who judged the Black poet as an eminent figure." Don Juan de Austria "had him frequently at his table and conversed as a friend with the noted professor on questions of politics and literature." Latino's marriage is described thus: "In his close contact with families of the nobility, the youth came to inspire a vehement passion in Doña Ana Carvajal [sic], a beautiful and haughty lady to whom he gave guitar lessons, whose hand he won." His individual traits seem somehow undermentioned, as his blackness, for example, is drowned in the heaps of praise, forgotten in the list of his achievements.
Another mention is found in Francisco Rodríguez Marín's biography of Luís Barahona de Soto, published in 1903 (Rodríguez Marín 35). Barahona de Soto was one of Latino's intellectual sparring partners in the tertullias of the School of Granada. Rodríguez Marín cites Latino's "remarkable talent" and provides, in an Appendix, a reproduction of Latino's signature (493).
Antonio González Garbín's article, "Glorias de la Universidad Granadina: El negro Juan Latino," published in 1886, is a curious piece of work, chiefly in the way its author, "moved by a strong and irresistible desire of will to raise up the weak and oppressed," seeks to make use of his scholarly knowledge to give us the "biography of the erudite humanist and inspired poet, JUAN LATINO, of that unique famous Ethiopian." The description of the spirit and factors which we must sum up in the case of the Black which prefaces his study merits quotation, as does González Garbín's footnote in praise of the liberators of Blacks in America:
A populous human race condemned to a barbaric martyrdom, over the course of centuries, has come to ours, after a long and very painful pilgrimage, to plant definitively its aching feet in the promised land of justice and right. Only the sweet hand of evangelical charity has tempered at times the pitiful wounds of the sad, fortuneless martyr; only some fortunate sons of this scorned race, as the doors of the temple of God, two by two, have opened to them, have been allowed to taste, with the sweet benefits of love, the ineffable delights of civilization and justice. To feel and to love, to think and to want, to struggle and to die in combat, to experience all the soul's great forces, has this intelligent race shown itself ably prepared: she has given the world brave soldiers, heroes of saintliness, inspired poets, zealous citizens . . . . Why have we delayed so long in recognizing this brother of ours, gifted as we are with those splendid wings that lift the spirit to the sky?1Unfortunately, the account of Juan Latino's life that follows has little worthy of note. Working from Bermúdez y Pedraza and from various documents, González Garbín gives us a very romanticized, novelistic description of the events. He presents first Juan Latino's scholarly achievements, then his poem to Don Juan, then finally indulges in a three-handkerchief version of the "novelistic story of the loves" between Juan Latino and Ana. The gushy, overplush, and cloying style of his writing, throughout the account, succeeds in damning his subject with overloud praise; Juan Latino emerges as a marvel, a paragon--and quite an unbelievable (that is, realistically unlikely) one. Of Juan Latino's work, for example, González Garbín writes, "In his harmonious lines the learned find the pleasant perfume given off by the poetic flowers of the tender singer of the Aeneid, mixed with the divine aromas awakened by the celestial Eden of Christian mystic poetry." The only real item of note in the account itself is the number of ways González Garbín describes "the Black Juan Latino": our poet is also "the famous African," the "young Berber" and "incomparable Ethiopian."(1) In the early days of this great 19th century in which the human family advances, with hasty rhythm, and around errors and detours, along the ever more ample path of liberty and progress, the unfortunate, enslaved and cursed black race shook, with heroic passion, the heavy and vile yoke of its servitude in a French colony of America. A new, valiant Spartacus, Tous-Saints Ouverture, was the one who raised up the flag of emancipation, around which the eternally disinherited and oppressed gathered. That honorable black slave, that superior spirit, that powerful soul, that sublime representative of his martyred race, was named Consul of the new Republic that rose in the free American continent. The greeting of Ouverture, "from the first of the Blacks to the first of the Whites," directed with noble dignity to an infamous treachery which made the black end his days in the dark, damp prison,--that eminent republican, who with so much greatness and noble superiority had raised up his miserable disdained race. It is true that this dark page of his bloody history caused great remorse to the exile of Santa Helena . . . . The rights of man have been recognized, but this pariah, called a vile beast, or traded like mere merchandise, for centuries, must still founder in the bitter sea of his eternal pains. More than half a century still remained for all nations, so-called Christian and civilized, to throw off forever the bloody whip, moved by the victim's tremendous pleas, "this black flesh, sweet like the white"--Glory to Lincoln!
We come now to the three major studies of Latino's life and work which have provided most of our biographical and bibliographical information: Marín Ocete (1925) Spratlin (1938), and Maso (1972). At this time, we will attempt to evaluate each author's picture of Juan Latino.
Marín Ocete situates his study of Juan Latino within what would be an overall re-evaluation and revindication of "a school of Granadine poets," of humanist acitivity in that city. After all, Marín Ocete was the rector of the University of Granada. Yet his account also is fascinated with the more novelesque details of Latino's life. In his introduction, he writes, "To the interest awakened by his educational and literary work is added that of his own life, that alternates with everyday chance, the arrogance and exploits of an unfeigned hero, of picaresque adventures and the dignity and composure of a learned humanist" (2). Thus his study is mostly an account of that life, as he sifts out the facts and the myths about Juan Latino.
It is difficult to detect Marín Ocete's "ideology" in writing this account. We might say, though, that he tends to smooth over the possible difficulties in Juan Latino's life, to assimilate him unproblematically into the world of society. On the lateness of Juan Latino's receiving the Bachillerato, for example, he writes, "the date might appear late when one takes into account the slow rhythm of life in that era and above all that Juan Latino could not dedicate himself fully as he might have liked to his academic work. He went on being a slave, and although his master loved and protected him . . . it was impossible for him to totally abandon his duties in the Ducal house." This sentence seems to gloss over a possible traumatic relationship (16). He also cites without comment the incident of Juan Latino being addressed as a slave when he was actually the master of the house, as well as Silvestre's remark on the "shadow." Marín Ocete seems oblivious to the unique aspects of his subject, citing only a declaration that he received the degree of Master of Arts "without prejudice as to color." He presents a very romanticized account of Juan Latino's romance with Ana, emphasizing the role of Juan Latino's wit, and also provides a highly colored picture of what his classes must have been like. He stresses Juan Latino's influential friends, such as the Archbishop and Don Juan of Austria, seeing this obviously as a measure of Juan Latino's success. Marín Ocete finally presents an evocative description of Juan Latino's later years, when "Misfortune was beginning to cloud the Black man's lucky star" (37), painting Latino's tragic blindness and his loss of so many dear friends.
We might say that Marín Ocete sees Juan Latino as an example of "local boy makes good." What is so interesting in his account is its tranquility, and a desire to stick to some sort of facts without speculating on what must have been most interesting in the humanist's career. He describes in detail, for example, the conflict between Villanueva and Latino's candidacies, without going into any possible ramifications of this conflict. He gives us Latino as rubbing shoulders with the other humanists, and as a teacher of classics fostering the humanist movement in Granada, but this is the only larger context in which he places this account. There is only one note of betrayal in the whole account, when, on refuting a certain version of Latino's youth, Marín Ocete writes:
In order to affirm this we may begin by doubting as notoriously false Salazar's affirmation that he came to Spain at the age of twelve. Studying it closely, the strangest aspect of his personality is such a complete adaptation to such a different environment, the perfection of his character and of his intelligence in the middle of civilization, until he became not only a cultured man but a sage, a perfect expert in the classical languages and literatures, an eminent teacher and above all, a Latin poet of extraordinary fecundity. How is it possible to obtain such a result from a nature brought up in a savage state during the first twelve years, which are most suited to scientific and intellectual formation? Only living almost since birth in such an environment would explain such a surprising result even still worthy of admiration. (9)Marín Ocete remains unaware of the racism of this passage, not going into the obviously curious aspects of it. This silence is significant.Valaurez B. Spratlin first produced a dissertation, written in Spanish, on Juan Latino, entitled "Juan Latino: Un estudio sobre el ébano humano." He later published a book which contains much that is a revision of this thesis: Juan Latino: Slave and Humanist (1938). The former is notable for its meandering. It is obviously an attempt to consider Latino as a Black, but it is a rather feeble one. Spratlin, in his prologue, cites his fascination with the relationship between Africa and Spain--i.e., Picasso, the popularity of Josephine Baker in Spain, etc. etc. He cites a desire, in his doctoral thesis, to explore the "fate of the African races in many countries" and makes the statement, "The world is inclined to judge the cultural capacity of the Black through this mastership in the arenas of dance and such diversions, denying completely the capacity to acquire a genuine and profound culture." He will thus give us "the case of Juan Latino, Black, a slave and a humanist who, through the tremendous gifts of his spirit conquered all obstacles set before him by a society that did not wish to pardon him his race or status as a slave" (7).
The first chapter is a discussion of slavery in world history and especially in Spain, where it supposedly lasted longer because of Islamic influence. Spratlin gives us an indictment of slavery, citing Clarkson's examples of illustrious slaves. He goes on to give several Spanish examples, like Juan de Pareja. In one of the many irritating personal observations that punctuate this thesis, Spratlin describes the inspiration he received to vindicate the Black race and especially Juan Latino.
The history of slavery provides a background for the biography of Juan Latino which is included in the second chapter.
Throughout the thesis, Spratlin's attempt to express outrage at the treatment of Blacks and admiration for their achievements is evident. Writing of Juan's education, for example, he mentions the usual custom of keeping Blacks uneducated, and adds: "It is difficult to determine how many talented people perhaps as capable of shining as Juan Latino were dimmed by the ominous darkness of ignorance" (46). There are curious elements in the glorification, however. For one thing, as we have seen in his introduction, Spratlin wants to see Latino and his success in terms of the values of the society of the time. His archetypes are a bit mixed-up. Latino and Ana are compared to Othello and Desdemona (46). Also, Spratlin uses the very stereotypes he is supposedly trying to combat: of Juan Latino's courtship, he writes that the poet "could depend on all the qualities attributed to his race--notable among them being music. The Black slave and song are inseparable, and North America has in the simple, spontaneous art of the 'spirituals' one of its most appreciated treasures . . ." (46). Nevertheless, Spratlin can be considered the first proponent of the trend that dominates twentieth-century scholarship on Juan Latino--the emphasis on his race, in a positive sense, which tries to read him in a context of African influences. But Spratlin handles this very clumsily--he goes out of his way to talk about Blacks, even those who have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Before giving us his comments on Juan Latino's works, which we have quoted elsewhere, Spratlin presents some comments on the Black in Spanish literature. He says that in Spain "representation of a Black as the protagonist in a serious drama like this one" (71) shows a maturity reached early on, much earlier than in American literature where such a representation is very biased. He gives other examples from Spanish art and literature. All this, though, is a preface to a long consideration of Ximénez de Enciso's life and his play--a switch which throws the reader off guard.
Perhaps aware of this defect, in his book, Spratlin seems to give equal weight to Ximénez de Enciso's play and Juan Latino's own life and work. Still, the book is basically a reorganized version of the thesis. It includes a translation of the play, as well. Spratlin also adds a long section on Don Juan of Austria and his relationship to Juan Latino as a preface to the discussion of the Austriad and Latino's other works. What is most interesting is the shift away from the emphasis on blackness, etc., to a greater concentration on a more general topic of humanism. While Spratlin does cite, once again, the Blacks of Granada and still includes the passages cited above, the introduction has a less vehement tone. Spratlin seems to express concern with Latino as an enigma and an "anomaly" in history. He tells us that despite the fact we know little about Juan Latino, he can still serve as an example of "the dynamism of the human spirit." We see, thus, that the Black element is less stressed.
Calixto C. Maso can be seen as continuing the trend of Spratlin in that he is interested in Latino as a Black who rose to literary distinction; he mentions that his concern is related to his work with Black Caribbean literature. He also seems to have a peculiar relationship to Spratlin in that his work follows the same general outline as the other scholars, although with more detail and more order: a brief history of slavery, a biography of Juan Latino, and a chapter on the Black in Spanish literature from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Oddly enough, Maso does not mention Spratlin in his fairly complete bibliography.
In his introduction, Maso states his thesis that the nature of Juan Latino's achievements proves that "in sectors of the Spanish population of that time, there was no racial prejudice" (1). This seems a rather unrealistic view, and Maso seldom refers to it again in the rest of the study, though he declares he has proved it, at the end (60). Other of Maso's ideas, such as his view that the Black population in Spain declined and disappeared because it was absorbed through intermarriage (44), not through being packed off to America (as Ivory asserts), seem shaky. Such a conclusion undermines the value of the many statistics Maso gives us in his first chapter. He waffles on the question of the status of Blacks, as can be seen in the various affirmations on page 17, where he cites Blacks who rose to fame and fortune, but adds that there were those who exploited slaves as well as open-minded humanitarian figures.
This effort to demonstrate that there was no race prejudice in the Spain of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries extends to his chapter on literature, where he tells us, "The Spanish writers of that time show that they have no racial prejudices, for they face up to the problem of miscegenation and show us Blacks who, through their virtues, reached the highest holiness and social and human rank of the time" (Maso 44). What follows is a catalogue of the mention of Blacks by various authors; it is a fairly superficial list, which jumps to conclusions, although it provides some very interesting examples. This section is worth reading, if only as a catalogue.
Maso concludes with a sort of "assimilationist" note, asserting through a quote from Marín Ocete that man is man, no matter what his color. He is much more low key and conciliatory in his treatment of Juan Latino's blackness, and the vindication of his dignity, than two other scholars, writing in a similar vein, who mention Latino. These last studies are contemporary to Maso's as well.
Janheinz Jahn, in his Who's Who in African Literature (1972), makes Juan Latino into a much more assertive, aggressive figure (189). Cutting through all the scholarly quibbling which marks other accounts, he also finds African elements at the drop of any hat. Juan Latino becomes his master's tutor. As to his nickname, he himself "renounced his slave name Juan de Sesa and called himself Juan Latino." Juan "played the organ, lute, guitar and 'other strange things,' perhaps African ones." In a critical gesture that would certainly have shocked Juan Latino, Jahn says of the Austriad that, "though written in scholarly language [it] is like a long African 'praise song' for the victor of Lepanto." In creating his fiction of Juan Latino, this author has re-Africanized him to a nearly comic extent.
The mere gesture of including Juan Latino in a volume of African authors is significant here and also in the collection by Donald Herdeck, African Authors: A Companion to Black African Writing (1973, p. 196). Herdeck uses Jahn as one of his sources. Herdeck, though, includes a quote from Juan Latino's works in which the latter "vigorously rejects racial stereotypes" in Herdeck's interpretation.
From this survey, we might formulate the following conclusion. In nearly all that has been written on Juan Latino, we find this pattern of "fictionalizing" him, of appropriating this figure for other uses. In general, in the earlier sources, this takes the form of novelistic rewritings, as Juan Latino becomes a witty gallant, a picaro, a rogue-like seducer, or a noble, exemplary figure. In the nineteenth century, he is used within more wide-ranging theories on the nature of man. Finally, in the twentieth century, more emphasis is placed on his "African-ness" : he becomes an object of interest as to the extent this shaped his life.
NOTE1. This article is an extract of the introduction to the first English edition of Juan Latino's poetry, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., Juan Latino: The First Black Poet, with trans. by John Winkler (unpublished). Additional help with translations and clarification of the Latin passages was offered by Charles Babcock and John O'Neal.
WORKS CITED
Key
(B) Bibliography
(E) Encyclopedia
(BK) Book
(D) Dissertation
(J) Journal Article
(NC) Not consulted by me; unavailable
Antonio, Nicolas. Bibliotheca hispana nova. Madrid: Apud Joachimum de Ibarra Typographum Regum, 1788. (B)
Arco, Angel. "Juan Latino." Boletin arqueológico de Tarragona (1901). (J) (NC)
Bermúdez de Pedraza, Francisco. Antiguedad y Excelencias de Granada. Madrid: Lus Sánchez, 1608. 139.
Cárceres y Espinosa, Pedro. "Discurso." Las Obras del famoso poeta Gregorio Silvestre Rodríguez y Mesa. Lisbon: Manuel de Lyra, 1592. 10-14. (BK)
Cejador y Franca, Julio. Historia de la lengua y literatura castellana. Revista de los Arquivos (Madrid) 3 (1915): 131-32. (BK)
Clarkson, Thomas. An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. London, 1785.
Clemencín, Diego, ed. Don Quijote de la Mancha. 130 vols. By Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Madrid: D. E. Aguado, 1833.
Feller, F.-X. "Jean Latinus." Biographie universelle des hommes qui se sont fait un nom. Paris: J. B. Pelegaud, 1860. 5: 170.
Fernández de Córdoba, Francisco. Historia de la casa de los Córdobas. Ms. In the National Library of Madrid. (BK) (NC)
González Garbín, Antonio. "Glorias de la Universidad Granadina: El Negro Juan Latino." Boletin del Centro Artistico de Granada 56 (1886). (J)
Gutiérrez, Miguel. "Juan Latino." Los Lunes del Imparcial 28 Sept. 1896. (N) (NC)
Herdeck, Donald E. "Juan Latino." African Authors: A Companion to Black African Writing. Vol. 1 1300-1973. Washington, DC: Black Orpheus, 1973. 196.
Hurtado, Juan, and Angel González Palencia. "Juan Latino." Historia de la literatura espanola. 2nd ed. Madrid: Revista de Arquitetura, Bibliotecas y Museos, 1925. 1: 297. (BK)
Ivory, Annette. "Juan Latino: The Struggle of Blacks, Jews and Moors in Golden Age Spain." Hispania 62.4 (1979): 613-18.
Jahn, Janheinz. "Juan Latino." Who's Who in African Literature. Tübingen: Horst Erdmann Verlag, 1972. 189.
Larousse, Pierre. "Juan Latino." Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. Paris: Administration du Grand Dictionnaire Universel, 1973. 10: 235. (E)
"Jean Latinus." Biographie universelle classique ou dictionnaire historique portatif. Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1829. (E)
"Juan Latino." Encyclopedia universal illustrada europeo-americana. Barcelona: Hijos de J. Espasa, Editores, 1908. 29: 1022-23. (E)
"Juan Latino." Nouvelle biographie générale. Ed. Jean Christian Hoeffer. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1862, 29: 824. (E)
Lafuente Alcantara, Miguel. Historia de Granada. 1843. (BK) (NC)
López de Toro, José. Los Poetas de Lepanto. Madrid: Instituto Histórico de Marina, 1950. 50-51, 84-85, 93-99.
Marín Ocete, A. "El Negro Juan Latino." Revista de Estudios Históricos de Granada y su Reino. 1925. (J)
Maso, Calixto C. Juan Latino: Gloria de España y de su raza. Chicago: Northeastern Illinois UP, 1973. (BK)
Matilla, Miguel. "Algunas observaciones en torno a la vida y a la obra del Humanistia Juan Latino." Durius 4 (1976): 237-42. (J)
Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcellino. Estudios sobre el teatre de Lopez de Vega. Vol. 6. Obras Completas. Vol. 15. Madrid: Libreria General de Victoriano Suarez, 1927. 142. (BK)
_____ . Horacio en España. Madrid: Imprenta A. Perez Dubrull, 1885. 11: 72. (BK) (NC)
_____. "Humanistas del siglo XVI." Apuntes para la biografia de Menendez Pelayo. By M. García Romero. 1879. (BK) (NC)
Montellas y Nadal, Francisco. Historia del origen y fundación de la Universidad de Granada. Granada: D. Imprenta de I. Ventura, 1870. 840. (BK)
Pellicer, Juan Antonio, ed. Don Quijote de la Mancha. By Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Madrid: Gabriel de Sancha, 1979. 1: ccxxiii-ccxxiv. (BK)
Putnam, Samuel, trans. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha. By Cervantes. New York: Modern Library, 1949. (BK)
Rodríguez Marín, Francisco. Luis Barahona de Soto. Madrid: Successores de Rivadeneyra, 1903. 31, 32, 34, 35-36, 493. (BK)
Salazar, Antonio. Espejo General de Gramática. Rouen, 1615. (BK) (NC)
Sánchez Marín, Jose A., ed. and trans. La Austriada de Juan Latino. Granada: Instituto de Historia de Derecho, 1981. (BK)
Schottus, Andreas. Hispaniae Bibliotheca. Frankfurt: Apud Claudium Marnium & Haeredes Iohannes Aubrij, 1608. 29. (BK)
Spratlin, Valurez B. "Juan Latino: Un estudio sobre el ébano humano." PhD diss. Middlebury College, n.d. (D) . Juan Latino: Slave and Humanist. New York: Spinner, 1938. (BK) Ximénez de Enciso, Diego. El Encubierto y Juan Latino. Madrid: Aldus, 1951. (BK)
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