Vicente Espinel

Vicente Espinel
Vicente Gómez Martínez Espinel. He invented the décimas named after him, the Espinelas, and added the sixth course to the vihuela.
Born	Vicente Gómez Martínez Espinel December 28, 1550 Ronda, Málaga, Spain
Died	February 4, 1624(1624-02-04) (aged 73) Madrid, Spain
Occupations	Writer, musician, composer
Parent(s)	Juana Martínez Francisco Gómez

Vicente Gómez Martínez Espinel (Ronda, Málaga, December 28, 1550 – Madrid, February 4, 1624) was a Spanish priest, writer and musician of the Golden Age.

Beginning with his Diversas rimas of 1591, he transformed the structure of the décima, a stanza also known as the espinela in his honor. He was also the author of the famous picaresque novel Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón (1618).

In music he became famous for giving the guitar its fifth string, adding a lower string to the four that existed at the time, as related by Lope de Vega, who was his pupil.

Biography

The son of Francisco Gómez, who came from the Asturias de Santillana, in present-day Cantabria, and of his lawful wife Juana Martínez, he studied his first letters and music in Ronda with the bachelor Juan Cansino and enrolled at the University of Salamanca, where he is recorded for the courses of 1571 and 1572 under the name Vicente Martínez Espinel, taking his father's second surname. He supported himself by giving singing lessons, «more often given than paid for», and witnessed the inquisitorial trial against Fray Luis de León. He returned to his homeland, as he himself confesses, «traveling in the apostolic manner». In that same year of 1572, some uncles of his granted him a chaplaincy they had founded, on the advice of the Trinitarian Fray Rodrigo de Arce.

With the favor of this religious he was able to return to Salamanca, where he became friends with such important figures as Luis de Vargas Manrique, the two Leonardo de Argensola brothers, Lupercio and Bartolomé; Pedro Liñán de Riaza, Marco Antonio de la Vega, Luis de Góngora, Luis Gálvez de Montalvo and many others, and his music opened the doors of the palaces of the Marquis of Tarifa, of the Alba and of the Giróns. He also frequented the house of the noble lady Doña Agustina de Torres, a singer with whom the best musicians of the day gathered: Francisco de Salinas (1512–1590), Juan Navarro (1528–1580), Matute, Lara, Julio, Castilla, and others. With her daughter, also a singer and a poetess as well, Ana de Zuazo y Torres (1580–1618), Espinel would maintain a great friendship.

He lived for some time in Zaragoza with Lupercio and Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola. He then tried a military career and was a soldier, and in Valladolid, from 1574 to 1577, he was squire to the Count of Lemos; he was on the point of accompanying him when the latter set out with King Don Sebastián on the ill-fated African campaign that ended with the Battle of Alcácer Quibir, but he stayed in Seville, living dissolutely among brothels and cheap eating houses, accompanied by his inseparable guitar; to this period belongs "Sátira a las damas de Sevilla", Espinel's earliest known work. That dissipated life, largely on the margins of the law, led the Marquis of La Algaba, who protected him at the time, to withdraw that protection, and Espinel then had to hide from the law and took sanctuary in a church.

The Marquis of Denia got him out of there and sent him to Italy to serve Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y Sotomayor, Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had been appointed to govern Milan; but he was captured by Barbary corsairs and was held as a slave in Algiers until the Genoese got him out; he landed in Genoa in 1573 and shortly afterwards went to Flanders, ending up in the army of Alexander Farnese as it was preparing to assault Maastricht. There he met his uncle Hernando de Toledo, to whom he addressed a most beautiful Eclogue that sings of his love affair with Doña Antonia de Calatayud in Salamanca and Seville.

He returned to Milan with Octavio de Gonzaga and for three years traveled all over Lombardy, now as a soldier, now as a musician in the household of Don Antonio de Londoño. Weary of the pikeman's trade and tired of his wandering life, he obtained a benefice in Rome (1587), where he was esteemed as «a good Latinist and a good singer of plainchant». His parents died and he returned to Spain, landing in Málaga, where his friend Francisco Pacheco de Córdoba was bishop. At that time he wrote his «Canción a su patria» and the Epistle to the Bishop of Málaga, poems of repentance for his turbulent life that earned him the right to be ordained a priest. He went to Madrid with that idea, and was in fact ordained in 1589, the same year in which he resumed his studies, studying moral theology in Ronda, singing his first Mass in Málaga and obtaining a benefice in that city; he graduated in Granada as a Bachelor of Arts in 1589.

In 1591 he placed a substitute in the chaplaincy of the Royal Hospital of Santa Bárbara in Ronda and went to Madrid, where in that same year he published his Rimas, which had been reviewed by the censor Alonso de Ercilla in 1587, who praised them as «among the best in Spain». In 1596 his benefice was taken from him because of his disorderly conduct and life at Court.

In 1599 he graduated as Master of Arts at the University of Alcalá and took possession of the post of chaplain to the Bishop of Plasencia in Madrid, a position that Don Fadrique Vargas Manrique had reserved for him with annual emoluments of 30,000 maravedíes and the attached post of music master, with 12,000 maravedíes more, duties he carried out until his death.

In Madrid, besides belonging to the famous confraternity of writers and intellectuals of the Most Holy Sacrament, he belonged to the Poetic Academy under the patronage of Félix Arias Girón, and took part in the literary contest organized in 1622 on the occasion of the canonization of Saint Isidore.

Vicente Espinel was a highly respected writer and musician. Cervantes, Lope de Vega and other figures of the time admired him. He died in Madrid on February 4, 1624, while serving as Chief Chaplain and music master of the Chapel of the Bishop of Plasencia in the parish of San Andrés, and he is buried in the crypt of that same church.

Work

In 1591 he published a compilation of his poetic work, the aforementioned volume Diversas rimas. The book covers almost all the metrics of the time, trying out every possible stanza, including the so-called décima, in a special form called, in homage to the author himself, regarded as its inventor, the décima espinela or simply the espinela; it consists of a grouping of two quintillas with this fixed structure: abbaaccddc. Samuel Gili Gaya (1892–1976), a great scholar of the author, explained that he was not the first to use this combination (it had already been done by Juan de Mal Lara and others); «what he did was to perfect it, giving it unity and lightness; his prestige helped to spread it and make it fashionable».

In America the décima espinela served numerous purposes:

"… it served both for collective song and for soliloquy; the functions of the décima diversified in such a way that there was no individual or collective action in the life of the Hispanic American peoples that did not find in the décima its preferred poetic expression; and so we find it as much in the tavern (in the 'pulperías', as the 'payadores' say) as in the church, in the public square as in the home, at festive gatherings and at wakes; it served as much for wooing as for lamenting lost love, as much for the declaration of love as for complaint. It became, above all, the preferred expression of the peasant, but it did not abandon its attachment to the academic poet; it even came to fulfill one of the noblest functions to which any text can give rise":

"The teacher of the rural schools
recited it
to teach the vowels

of our sonorous language"

As a humanist he also translated the Epistola ad Pisones of Horace, better known as the Ars Poetica.

Individual poems of his are also found scattered in other works, following the author's eventful career. There are some early ones in the Cancionero de López Maldonado (1586) or in the Flores de poetas ilustres of Pedro Espinosa; others praise books, such as the Guzmán de Alfarache of Mateo Alemán (1599), the Peregrino indiano of Antonio de Saavedra Guzmán, the Modo de pelear a la jineta of Simón de Villalobos and other works by Gaspar de Villagrá, Gonzalo Céspedes y Meneses, Fray Hernando de Camargo, Pérez del Barrio, and others. He also acted as censor for more than eighty books; indeed, it seems that he was an exceedingly kind and approachable person, open with everyone.

Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregon

The publisher Juan de la Cuesta published in 1618 his picaresque novel, furnished with many autobiographical elements, Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón.

Immediately, in that same year, two unauthorized editions were printed in Barcelona, those of Jerónimo Margarit and Sebastián de Cormellas, and a French translation was also made that same year by Vital de Audiguier, lord of La Menor (Povergue) (Paris: Petitpas), an edition that would later inspire the Gil Blas de Santillana of Alain René Lesage. The book was reprinted twice more in Spain: Pedro Gómez de Pastrana paid for an edition in Seville in 1641, and the fifth, of 1657, was dedicated in Madrid by the printer Gregorio Rodríguez to Sr. D. Juan Bautista Berardo, Treasurer General of the Royal Council of the Indies. It is a more agile narrative than that of Mateo Alemán and, although the author does not refrain from moralizing, he does so in a way that neither annoys nor cloys as the Sevillian does. The English version was made by Algernon Langton (London, 1816), and the German one by Ludwig von Tieck (Breslau, 1827). In Spain it was reprinted several more times: 1744, 1804, 1863, 1868, 1881 (by J. Pérez de Guzmán); 1922 (edition by Samuel Gili Gaya), 1944 (by Valbuena, for Madrid: Aguilar), 1970 (critical edition and introduction by María Soledad Carrasco Urgoiti, for Madrid: Castalia), and others.

Among Espinel's pupils was Lope de Vega, who always had words of praise for him, for example in El laurel de Apolo, where he calls him «the only Latin and Castilian poet of these times», or in the prologue to La viuda valenciana, where he calls him «father of music»; he dedicated a sonnet to him and the comedy El caballero de Illescas (1602).

He was also a friend of Cervantes, who mentions him in the Canto de Calíope, as well as of Góngora (whose poems he helped to publish) and Quevedo.

As a musician he is credited with having added a fifth string to the vihuela, but this is debatable, since Bermudo, in 1544, already mentions the five-string guitar.

Legacy

Teatro Vicente Espinel in Ronda

The legacy of Vicente Espinel in the Spanish literary and musical sphere is very important. His work has been the subject of study at numerous universities and is considered fundamental to understanding the evolution of literature in Spain. Despite his importance, Espinel has not always received the recognition he deserves, as he is often overshadowed by other better-known authors of the Spanish Golden Age, many of whom showed their recognition and admiration for Espinel's work; in any case, his contribution to literature and music is indisputable.

The Teatro Vicente Espinel, located in his hometown of Ronda, was created in his memory. There, too, the 400th anniversary of Vicente Espinel was commemorated in 2024 with the play Autorretrato Espinel: Marcos de Obregón, an event during which the life and work of this illustrious Golden Age author was explored.

The first secondary school (Instituto de Bachillerato) in the province of Málaga, located on Calle Gaona in the provincial capital, has borne his name since 1956. There is also a public school named after him on Calle Granada in his hometown.

Bibliography

• Obras completas, critical ed. by Gaspar Garrote Bernal. Málaga: Diputación Provincial, 2001-2002, 2 vols.
• Relaciones de la vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón, Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1618, but also Barcelona: Sebastián de Cormellas, 1618 and Barcelona: Gerónimo Margarit, 1618. It was reprinted in that same century (Seville: Pedro Gómez de Pastrana, at his own expense, 1641, and Madrid: Gregorio Rodríguez, at his own expense, 1657). Also in the 18th century (Madrid, 1744) and the 19th (1804, 1851, 1863, 1864, 1868, 1881). In the 20th century, the editions of Ignacio Bauer (1901 and 1928), Samuel Gili Gaya (1922 and 1940), José Mallorquí Figuerola (1940), etc., stand out.
• Diversas Rimas de Vicente Espinel, beneficiado de las iglesias de Ronda, con el Arte poética y algunas Odas de Oracio, traduzidas en verso castellano, Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1591 (there are three different issues by the same printer and year).
• AGUAYO CISTERNAS, Gonzalo. "Marcos de Obtegón en la novela picaresca". Connotas. Revista de crítica y teoría literarias, no. 14-15 - Universidad de Sonora, 2015.
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• GÓMEZ CANSECO, Luis. "Dos sonetos bubosos entre Mateo Alemán y Vicente Espinel. Edición crítica y estudio". Revista de Filología Española - XCIV, 1º, January-June 2014.
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• HEATHCOTE, Anthony. "Selecta malacitana: vida y época de Vicente Espinel". Jábega, no. 63 - Málaga, 1989.
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• LARA GARRIDO, José. "La Sátira a las damas de Sevilla de Vicente Espinel: edición crítica y comentario literal". In Vicente Espinel. Historia y Antología de la crítica, eds. José Lara and Gaspar Garrote, II, 411-446. Málaga: CEDMA, 2 vols., 1993.
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• LARA GARRIDO, José. "Vicente Espinel, un poeta entre dos siglos. Romancero, música y lírica cantada desde un ramillete de textos nuevos". Canente, 2 - 2001.
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• VÁZQUEZ OTERO, Diego. "Vida de Vicente Martínez de Espinel". Diputación Provincial de Málaga - Publicaciones del Instituto de Cultura, 1948.
• VV.AA. "El canon poético de Vicente Espinel". Coord. José Lara Galindo - Alecta Malacitana - Fundación Universidad de Málaga, 2009.
• VV.AA. "Homenaje a Vicente Espinel en el 450 aniversario de su nacimiento". Comisión T.E.S. de Ronda - Imprenta Galindo, 1999.
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External links

• Biografía y antología de Vicente Espinel en Los Poetas — biography and anthology of Vicente Espinel at Los Poetas (in Spanish)
• Portrait of Vicente Espinel with a short summary of his life, included in the book Retratos de Españoles ilustres, published in 1791.
• Digitized works of Vicente Espinel in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the National Library of Spain
• I.E.S. Vicente Espinal "Gaona", Málaga (Spain)