Raised to Rule: Educating Royalty at the Court of the Spanish Habsburgs, 1601–1634

03 Teachers and Formal Instruction

teaCheRs and foRMal instRuCtion 55 From the times of Catholic kings, the Spanish royal family appointed both humanists and churchmen of a variety of descriptions to educate their children. Such luminaries as the composer and playwright Juan del Encina, the historians Lucio Marineo Sículo and Pedro Martir de Angleria, and the poet Antonio Geraldini surrounded the heir of Isabel and Ferdinand, while Allessandro Geraldini focused particularly on the education of the infantas and wrote a treatise on the education of girls. The Dominican Diego de Deza was bishop of Salamanca when the monarchs named him tutor to the seven-year-old prince, while churchmen of more modest rank, including Pedro de Ampudia, Andrés de Miranda, and Juan de Ávila, taught the infantas.1 The teachers chosen for Archduke Charles of Burgundy, eventual heir of the Catholic Kings, reflect the blend of nationalities the future emperor would embody during his reign. His ayo was a nobleman from the Low Countries, Guillaume de Croy, sieur de Chièvres; his religious instructor was Adrian of Utrecht, the future pope Adrian VI; and his Spanish instructors included Luis Cabeza de Vaca and Pedro Ruiz de la Mota. The education of Charles’s brother Ferdinand, designed by their grandfather Ferdinand the Catholic, focused more narrowly on Spain, reflecting his hope that his namesake grandson would rule Spain. All of Ferdinand’s instructors were Spanish, among them Pedro Nuñez de Guzmán, Antonio de Rojas, and the bishop of Astorga, Alvaro Osorio de Moscoso.2 Philip II’s first teacher with the title of maestro was Juan Martínez Siliceo, a learned man of humble origins who had studied mathematics and philosophy at Valencia, Rome, and Paris. He had returned to his native Spain and was earning a reputation at Salamanca, writing extensively on Aristotle and on mathematics and dialectics, when his scholarship brought him to the attention of Empress Isabel.3 Philip II also studied under Juan Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella, known later for his account of the prince’s journey to Flanders, and Honorato Juan, the Louvain-educated author of a Castilian-Valencian dictionary. Honorato Juan later also taught Philip II’s son Carlos, as did an Augustinian monk named Juan de Muñatones, whose specific duties were to teach grammar and give religious instruction.4 Muñatones, a court preacher and former confessor of the infantas María and Juana, had a reputation for austerity, while Honorato Juan, although the holder of an ecclesiastical title, apparently was not an instructor in religious subjects and is occasionally referred to specifically as Carlos’s master of Latin. Philip III’s primary tutor was García de Loaysa y Girón. Son of the court chronicler, Pedro Girón, he had studied Latin and Greek at Salamanca and the- 56 Childhood ology and philosophy at Alcalá. By the time of his appointment he was also the royal almoner and the primary royal chaplain, and he can be seen as combining the qualities of both humanist and religious tutors from earlier generations. In the prince’s late teen years, observers alternatively described his cousin the archduke Albert as his ayo and tutor, an unofficial appointment that took place within the context of a small council of ministers charged with introducing the prince to political life.5 Albert, highly knowledgeable in Spanish affairs, was well qualified to guide the prince as he entered the first stages of his political education . He should not be seen, however, as giving the prince formal lessons. While the daughters of Isabel and Ferdinand received a rigorous education that rivaled their brother’s, an educational choice shaped by their mother as a ruler in her own right, the education of infantas received less attention in subsequent generations.6 Occasionally, the infantas shared the services of the tutor employed for the prince. While Philip II’s sister María later had a teacher with more strictly religious qualifications appointed for her own service, she first studied with Siliceo, who initially reported equally on the progress of both the prince and the infanta.7 Philip II’s youngest sister, Juana, likewise benefited from the services of the teacher assigned to her nephew Carlos when he was a child of six and she was sixteen.8 In this case, the difference in their ages highlights the fact that royal tutors were assigned according to the child’s status rather than...