Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace: Christians and Muslims in the Fifteenth Century

Chapter One: The Years at the University of Salamanca

Chapter One k The Years at the University of Salamanca M edieval universities had their origin in the cathedral schools, or studia, of the central Middle Ages, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries official documents still referred to them by this term. Whereas the earlier universities had drawn mostly clergy, by the fifteenth century students were more likely to be laymen preparing for a career in government, law, or medicine. In many cases it was not even necessary for them to complete a degree. Records indicate that between fifty and eighty percent of these aspiring professionals left before achieving that goal. Merely having spent time at the university was enough to give one connections and a certain status. Across Europe, and including in Spain, students tended to be neither from the uppermost nor the lowest classes. The poor could not afford university study, and nobles were not generally inclined toward it unless they were aspiring to a career in the church. This began to change in the fifteenth century, and by the early modern period attending the university became an expected phase in the life of a young nobleman.1 Nothing is known about the family or social origin of Juan Alfonso de Segovia. Elsewhere I have suggested that he likely came from 13 a family connected with the rising urban oligarchies emerging in Castile in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.2 Although “de Segovia” was a surname and does not in itself mean that its bearer came from this central Castilian city, in Juan’s case it appears that this was, indeed, his native city. Vatican records identify him as a priest from the diocese of Segovia.3 Although some have included the surname González among his name, giving his full name as Juan Alfonso González de Segovia, no extant contemporary documents support the inclusion of González in his name.4 It is not clear what Juan de Segovia ’s goals were when he went to Salamanca to study, but about ten years after arriving there, as we will see, he was energetically pursuing appointments to church benefices around Castile. He also became a faculty member at this studium and traveled, including to the royal court, on university business. If he hoped to work as a university professor and also be engaged with the central issues and power circles of his day, he would not have been the first to combine these two activities . And he would have been well positioned to do so. The purpose of this chapter is to explore Juan Alfonso de Segovia ’s formative years in the university community of Salamanca, one of Europe’s oldest universities. Juan de Segovia spent over two decades of his young adulthood there, from 1407 to 1431, as a student and then professor of theology before he left Castile for the Council of Basel (1431–49). My aim is to show that aspects significant to his thought in later periods of his life were evident in these early years. These include a strong biblical orientation in his thinking, which he would carry with him to and beyond Basel as he considered Islam. In these early years at Salamanca, he also revealed concern for renewal in the church and for presenting the Christian faith credibly to non-Christians, a curiosity about Islam, and a willingness to stand in opposition to a powerful prelate. In addition, I argue that he was both exposed to the currents of conciliar thought and sympathetic to conciliarism’s goal of collective governance. Contrary to what others have supposed,5 I submit that Juan was no convert to conciliarism when he arrived in Basel in the early 1430s. As a student arriving at the studium in Salamanca in the early fifteenth century, Juan Alfonso de Segovia surely already had benefited 14 Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace from some formal education. University students began their studies having already mastered certain fundamental skills such as literacy, although their preparation probably varied greatly from one student to the next. Almost no information survives concerning the instruction of Castilian children from the middle or lower nobility or the urban elite. Some of them might have had a private tutor, but most probably acquired their early training in the seigniorial household to which their family was tied by bonds of blood or clientage. Others may have attended one of the numerous grammar studia that were founded across the kingdom in the fourteenth...