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A NOTE ON THE BIOGRAPHY OF JUAN DEL ENCINA* RICHARD SHERR Smith Colige Many biographers of Juan del Encina have drawn attention to the difficulties he had in obtaining political and ecclesiastical appointments ; indeed, the man's character and his poetry have been analyzed as reflecting a life of constant frustration in this regard.' A few documents survive showing that Encina attempted to obtain ecclesiatical benefices while in Salamanca (where he was thwarted by local opposition) and later in Rome through the influence of the pope, and it has been suggested plausibly that his decision to leave Spain around 1499 was triggered by a desire to seek benefices from the Spanish pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia). He was, in fact, moderately successful, the pope providing him with at least two bulls granting benefices in Salamanca and supporting him against the local officials, while also accepting him into the papal household. But from 1502 (the date of Alexander's last letter) to 1508 (the date of a bull by Julius II) there has been practically no information about Encina's ecclesiastical career, nor indeed about Encina himself. Documents recently discovered in the Vatican Archive help fill part of this lacuna (the years 1503-06). They show Encina still residing in Rome, in contact with a heretofore unknown patron, and actively pursuing his beneficial career. 159 160BCom, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Winter 1982) The bulk of this new information comes from an enormous series of registers in the Vatican Archives known as the Registers of the Supplications . 2 These contain records of all requests for benefices that had been approved by the pope or by his surrogate. When a supplicant wished to obtain a benefice, he submitted a legal document (the Supplication ) to an official known as a Referendary who brought it to the pope for action. If the pontiff approved the request, the document was given a date by the Datary, and at this point had the force of law. The Datary then took the approved supplications to the scribes of the Registers of the Supplications whose job it was to copy the supplications as they stood and as soon as possible. Once a supplication had been registered, it was sent to the Chancery or Apostolic Chamber for the preparation of the actual bull to be sent back to the supplicant. These completed bulls were also recorded, but the Registers of the Supplications are the most complete of any of the records of the papal benefice granting procedure. Unfortunately, this completeness is the very reason they have not been often used by scholars; for the reign of Julius II alone (1503-13), there are some 240 extant volumes, of about 300 folios each, with about 6 entries per folio (hence, hundreds of thousands of supplications), all completely unindexed.J A recent search through 40 volumes of the Registers covering the years 1503-06 has turned up 14 documents concerning Encina, these documents giving a picture of him as he acted within the court of the successors of his original patron, Alexander VI (See Appendix). It is apparent from the first documents, for instance, that Encina stopped being a member of the papal household on the death of Alexander; this is simply because he does not describe himself as being a familiar of the next pope (Pius III) to whom the letters are addressed, as he almost certainly would have done had that been the case. He is, however, asserting privileges belonging to the familiars of Alexander, since many of the benefices requested were held by deceased members of Alexander's household. Document 3, though, adds an intriguing bit of information: it states that Encina («dictus orator») has described himself as having been in the service of Cesare Borgia (son of Alexander VI), and as having entered the pope's household through Cesare's influence. If this is true, then the earliest it could have happened was in 1500, since in 1498 and 1499 Cesare was either in France (receiving a French duchy and a French bride after having been allowed to resign the cardinalate ), or engaged in military campaigns in the Romagna. He returned to Rome in February, 1500, and stayed...

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