Early-twentieth-century biographers of Diego de Valera such as Lucas de Torre y Franco-Romero and José Antonio de Balenchana tend to dismiss Valera as little more than a pedant and a brigand. This portrait has been extensively revised by scholars such as César Real de la Riva, Nicasio Salvador Miguel, and Jesús D. Rodríguez Velasco in his well-documented treatment of Valera's life and works in El debate sobre la caballería en el siglo XV: La tratadística caballeresca castellana en su marco europeo (The Debate on Chivalry in the Fifteenth Century: Castialian Treatises on Chivalry in Their European Context, 1996). Valera's exact birth date is unknown, but it is clear that he was born in the year 1412 in Cuenca. He was the youngest son of Alfonso Chirino, personal physician to King Juan II of Castile, by Chirino's first wife, Mar...