Antonio de Nebrija on the Ancient History of Spain: Localism, Nationalism, and the Shadow of Annius of Viterbo.

Abstract

This paper explores the views on Spanish ancient history expressed by Antonio de Nebrija, the first great Spanish humanist, in his Muestra de las antigüedades de España (1499), and his prologue to the Decades (c. 1509). We will focus on two issues: first, his strong focus on the South, especially on the area of Seville and Lebrija, his hometown, which causes him to criticise certain sources and ignore or drop others in benefit of his favoured localist narrative. The second issue is his general stance on the subject of Spain as a land conquered by other peoples in the past. As an early humanist, Nebrija stands at an interesting crossroads between two conflicting historical models: the ancient and medieval one, where the Iberian Peninsula is constantly invaded by others, and the new model which would follow Giovanni Nanni of Viterbo’s false Berosus, who gave Spain a legendary past full of expansionist kings that mirrored the country’s glorious present. We will investigate how Nebrija deals with this shifting paradigm by analyzing the choices he makes.