It may be that the name of Luis de Leon is comparatively unknown outside the small group of those who are regarded as specialists.  Luis de Leon is nothing like so famous as Cervantes, as Lope de Vega, as Tirso de Molina, as Ruiz de Alarcon, and as Calderon, whose names, if not their works, are familiar to the laity.  This is one of chance’s unjust caprices.  With the single exception of Cervantes perhaps no figure in the annals of Spanish literature deserves to be more celebrated than Luis de Leon.  He was great in verse, great in prose, great in mysticism, great in intellectual force and moral courage.  Many may recall him as the hero of a story—­possibly apocryphal—­in which he figures as returning to his professorial chair after an absence of over four years (passed in the prison-cells of the Inquisition) and beginning his exordium to his students with the imperturbable remark:  ‘We were saying yesterday.’  Mainly on this uncertain basis is constructed the current legend that Luis de Leon was a bloodless philosopher, incapable of resentment, and, indeed, without a touch of human weakness in his aloof and lofty nature.  His works do not lend colour to this presentation of the man, nor do the ascertainable details of his chequered career.  The conception of Luis de Leon as a meek spirit, an unresisting victim of malignant persecution, is not the sole view tenable of a complex character.  However, the recorded facts may be trusted to speak for themselves.

II

What was Luis de Leon’s full name?  Was it Luis Ponce de Leon?  So it would appear from the summarized results of P. Mendez printed in the Revista Agustiniana.[1] The point is not without interest, for Ponce de Leon is one of the great historic names of Spain.  If Luis de Leon was entitled to use it, he appears not to have exercised his right, for in the report of his first trial[2] he consistently employs some such simple formula as:—­’El maestro fray Luis de Leon... digo’.[3] The omission of the name ‘Ponce’ during proceedings extending over more than four years can scarcely be accidental.  It may, however, have been due to monastic humility,[4] or to simple prudence:  a desire not to provoke opponents who declared that Luis de Leon had Jewish blood in his veins.[5] Whether this assertion, a serious one in sixteenth-century Spain, had any foundation in fact is disputed.  It is apparently certain that Luis de Leon’s great-grandfather married a Leonor de Villanueva, who is reported to have confessed to practising Jewish rites and to have been duly condemned by the Inquisition in 1513 or thereabouts.[6] This does not go to the root of the matter, for Leonor de Villanueva is alleged to have been Lope de Leon’s second wife.  His first wife is stated to have been Leonor Sanchez de Olivares, a lady of unquestioned orthodoxy, and mother of Gomez de Leon,[7] the future grandfather of the Luis de Leon with whom we are concerned here.  If this statement be correct,[8] obviously there can be no ground for asserting that Luis de Leon was of Jewish blood.  But it must in candour be admitted that the point is not wholly clear from doubt.[9]