This estimate was printed in 1599, eight years after Luis de Leon’s death and one year after Philip II’s death.  Making some allowance for the partiality of an admirer, Pacheco’s description may stand.  A dry contemporary chronicler, like Luis Cabrera de Cordoba,[262] after paying tribute to Luis de Leon’s intellectual gifts and heroic courage in adversity, speaks of his death as a national loss.  Even in his lifetime Luis de Leon was recognized by men of exceptional genius as one of themselves.  His poems, which were not published till forty years after his death, must have been handed about in manuscript long before.  In 1585 Cervantes in his Galatea introduced Luis de Leon into the Canto de Caliope.  It cannot well be maintained that Cervantes had been impressed by Luis de Leon’s Latin treatises, by De los nombres de Cristo, and by La perfecta casada.  The Canto de Caliope records the names of those only whom Cervantes considered to be eminent poets—­masters en la alegre sciencia dela poesia—­and hence it is to the poet that he refers when he writes in his 84th stanza: 

Quisiera rematar mi dulce canto en tal sazon pastores, con loaros un ingenio que al mundo pone espanto y que pudiera en estasis robaros.  En el cifro y recojo todo quanto he mostrado hasta aqui, y he de mostraros Fray Luys de Leon el que digo a quien yo reverencio, adoro, y sigo.

IV

[Footnote 189:  Bartolome Jose Gallardo, Ensayo de una biblioteca espanola de libros raros y curiosos (Madrid, 1863-66-88-89), vol.  IV, col. 1328:  ’En unos apuntes cronologicos que hacia en Salamanca un curioso (jesuita?) a fines del siglo XVI, fol. 23 de un tomo de Papeles varios, en folio, se lee: 

’Ano de 76, Martes 23 de diciembre dia de San Damaso, dieron por libre a fr.  Luis sin pena.  Y donde a 30 de diciembre entro en Salamanca a las tres de la tarde con atabales, trompetas y gran acompanamiento de Caballeros, Doctores, Maestros, &c.’]

[Footnote 190:  He is clearly wrong in stating that Luis de Leon was set free on December 23.  We have already seen that Luis de Leon presented two applications in writing on December 15.  From the nature of these applications, it is a fair inference that he was free when he made them.]

[Footnote 191:  Especially as the fact is confirmed by a contemporary Augustinian, Fray Juan Quijano:  see Blanco Garcia, op. cit., p. 206, n. 1.]

[Footnote 192:  This date is given on the authority of the anonymous writer quoted by Gallardo, op. cit., col. 1328:  ’Y lunes adelante le presento el Comisorio al Claustro, para que se le diese su proprio lugar, honra y catedra de Durando.  El no la quiso y la Universidad cedio 200 ducados de partido.’  The date in this case is corroborated by a summons from the Rector of the University:  see P. Fr. Luis G. Alonso Getino, O.P., Vida y procesos del maestro Fr. Luis de Leon (Salamanca, 1907), p. 244.]