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Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas

Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1549 28 March 1626[1] or 27 March 1625[2]) was a chronicler, historian, and writer of the Spanish Golden Age, author of Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del mar Ocano que llaman Indias Occidentales ("General History of the Deeds of the Castilians on the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea Known As the West Indies"), better known in Spanish as Dcadas and considered one of the best works written on the conquest of the Americas. He was Chief Chronicler of Castile and the Americas during the reigns of Philip II and Philip III. Cristbal Prez Pastor called him the "prince of the historians of the Americas".[3] He is considered the most prolific historian of his era, and his works also include a general history of the world, a history of Portugal, and a description of the Americas. His output also features translations of works from Italian and Latin into Spanish, and a translation of his own Descripcin de las Indias Occidentales ("Description of the West Indies") into Dutch. He was born in Cullar, Province of Segovia, into a well-to-do noble family, the son of Rodrigo de Tordesillas (the son of another Rodrigo de Tordesillas who died at the hands of the comuneros) and Ins de Herrera. He himself placed his mother's surname before his father's in opposition to convention. He undertook his earliest studies in the grammar school of his hometown, developing a notable facility for getting to know people and an inexhaustible capacity for work, which would later be confirmed. His education (especially in Latin), perhaps pursued at the University of Salamanca, reached its pinnacle in Italy. In 1570 he traveled to Italy in the service of Prince Vespasiano I Gonzaga, one of the most distinguished personages of his era in Italy. His knowledge of Latin increased as he learned Italian. In 1572 Gonzaga was named Viceroy of Navarre. Herrera accompanied him and established a residence in Pamplona. He continued to enjoy the viceroy's confidence when he took up the analogous post in Valencia in 1575, although Herrera moved his residence to Court as Gonzaga's most trusted aide, resolving issues on his behalf before the King and the Court. Meanwhile Herrera expanded his circle of friends and established contact with influential people as, little by little, he amassed a small fortune. In the last years of Gonzaga's life, he introduced Herrera to King Philip II as one learned in historical matters. It was the starting point of a relationship which Herrera was able to maintain, beginning by doing the self-interested courtesy of dedicating his historical works (which he had already started) to important people. To get his acquaintance with the King started on the right foot, he translated from the Italian Giovanni Tommaso Minadoi's Historia della guerra fra turchi et persiani. While living in Pamplona he met the woman who would become his first wife, Juana de Esparza y Artieda. They married in 1581 and the union afforded him a social standing of a certain distinction, despite his not yet having secured significant capital or equity, although he was on his way to achieving it. Their only child, Juana, died in 1587 at a young age, three years after her mother.

After a decade of widowerhood, he married secondly a woman from Cullar, Mara de Torres Hinestrosa, a descendant on one side of the Lords of Henestrosa, and on the other, via an illegitimate child, of King Alfonso IX of Len. They had no children. Church of Santa Marina, of which only the tower remains. Drawing byFrancisco Javier Parcerisa in 1865.

Herrera died in Madrid on 28 March 1626[1] or 27 March 1625[2]. He ordered in his will that his body be buried "in the parish church of Santa Marina in the town of Cullar, at the altar there with the arch in the main chapel on the epistle side, to which end it will be prepared by order and will of my heir, placing upon it a sign in Castilian roman letters which will be found among my papers and, conforming to what is found written in Latin, will be placed on my grave",[5] and his terms were fulfilled. Herrera set out a maximum time frame of two years for burial Cullar, taking into account possible obstacles in doing so immediately, and proposed as a provisional burial place the Monastery of San Hermenegildo, in the chapel of Captain Juan Bautista Anotonelli, whose patron he was, and this provision was carried out. In the 19th century, during the ecclesiastical confiscations, the church was sold and the new owner used the tombstone as a stair, so that the gilding of the inscription was lost, while the mortal remains were moved in 1886 to the nearby Church of San Pedro, and when this was secularized in 1890, they were moved to one of the rooms of the Cullar Town Hall, where they remain today with those of his wife and the tombstone, which at the urgings of the Real Academia de la Historia was donated in 1952 by the owner of the church.[6] The tombstone bears the following inscription: Ant, Herrera Tordesillas. Chronicu Philip, 2 & 3 Castell & Indiar. Gene ral. Inquis. Familiaris Nauarr, et Valenti, a Secretis Regi Famili Domesticus, vixit cum nobili vxo D. M. de Torres an[nis 38] [a] laborib, felix , pmijs n suppar. Obijt M[atriti] [anno] 1626, die, 28 Mr. illa 3[0] An 1641. Antonio Herrera Tordesillas, chronicler of the kings Philip II and III of Castile and the Americas, Familiar of the General Inquisition, Secretary of those of Navarre and Valencia, Servant of the Royal Household. He lived 38 years with his noble wife Doa Mara de Torres, happy in his labors, but not receiving the prizes he deserved. He died in Madrid on 28 March 1626. She died on 30 March 1641.

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