Nebrija, Elio Antonio de, 1444(?)-1522.

Nebrija's Lexicon : (Roman/Canon Law, 1559)

Elio Antonio de Nebrija, 1444(?)-1522.

John Ruskin made the following succinct and amusing observation:  "[The humanists] discovered suddenly that the world for ten centuries had been living in an ungrammatical manner, and they made it forthwith the end of human existence to be grammatical."

Antonio de Nebrija was a key Spanish author, humanist, philologist, and educator. He was born in Lebrija (the Latin name is Nebrissa), Seville, and lived and studied in Salamanca and Bologna, concentrating on classical languages but reading widely in law, medicine, and theology. In 1502 he was a member of a group of scholars gathered by Cardinal Ximénes de Cisneros at Alcalá to produce the Complutensian Polyglot Bible.

Nebrija was passionate about standardizing and regularizing the Spanish language and spelling. He published the first sound Latin grammar in Spain, Introductiones latine (1481), which he later translated into Spanish for Queen Isabella. He also wrote Interpretatio dictionum ex sermone latino in hispaniensem (1492), a Latin-Spanish dictionary, listing 30,000 words. In the same year he published the first scientific grammar of any European vernacular language, Gramática sobre la lengua castellana (1492), which he offered to Queen Isabella, observing that it would serve as a tool of unity and communication for the peoples soon to become part of the Spanish crown. Nebrija pointed out the political importance of the language and added "...language has always been the companion of Empire..."

The 1559 and 1606 editions of the Vocabularium, like many others, are actually two separate works bound together: they include both the Vocabularius attributed to Jodocus of Erfurt (see above), bound with Nebrija's own Lexicon iuris civilis, which Nebrija had published independently in earlier years. The juxtaposition of these two works is somewhat awkward, as the works' philosophies and methods are inconsistent. The Vocabularius is a typical, simple medieval dictionary, while the Lexicon is a philological and historical commentary very unlike medieval texts. On the other hand, attaching his work to the already much-published Vocabularius guaranteed the spread of Nebrija's name and work throughout Europe. The book was a great success in Spain and elsewhere, and passed through at least twenty-five editions, most of them in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Later in life Nebrija faced persecution and suppression; he was accused in 1505 of having contact with Jews and manipulating texts. His entire body of work and translation and his study of sacred scriptures were condemned. However, because of his connection with Cardinal Cisneros and the act of dedicating to the Catholic Queen of one of his books, he was allowed some leniency. Nevertheless, the dissemination of his work and its influence was indirectly controlled.

More information about Nebrija's life and work can be found in Antonio de Nebrija: Edad Media y Renacimiento, ed. Carmen Codoñer and Juan Antonio González Iglesias (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1994), and Nebrija y la Introducción del Renacimiento en España edited by Víctor García de la Concha (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1981).

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