Benito Arias Montano, A Reader of Thomas More
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1
Universidad de Jaén
info
ISSN: 1475-3839, 1478-3398
Año de publicación: 2023
Volumen: 100
Número: 3
Páginas: 289-307
Tipo: Artículo
Otras publicaciones en: Bulletin of Hispanic studies ( Liverpool. 2002 )
Resumen
Thomas More is included in the Virorum Doctorum of Philip Galle and Benito Arias Montano, a collection of 44 engravings of men of renown published in Antwerp in 1572. Like any other sixteenth-century European, Montano, chaplain to Philip II of Spain, had obviously heard about More. But it is my contention that as a scholar and a humanist, he might actually have been familiar with this Englishman, who had been Chancellor to England’s King Henry VIII, a prolific writer, a skilled diplomat and a humanist and was well acquainted with the most brilliant minds of his days (Erasmus of Rotterdam and Vives, especially). My purpose is to present different ways, scenarios and possibilities in which Benito Arias Montano (1527–1598) might have come to know about the English humanist and his written output before 1572, the year of publication of Virorum Doctorum. I thus provide a context for More’s presence in the said work.