Education for courtisan children in two pedagogical treatises of the first castilian humanism (15th-16th centuries)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to compare two pedagogical treatises written during the first Renaissance period in Castile: Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo’s Breuis tractatus de arte, disciplina et modo alendi et erudiendi filios, pueros et iuuenes (ca. 1453) and Elio Antonio de Nebrija’s De liberis educandis libellus (1509). Both works intended to provide nobility children, that is, the future members of the court, with an educational frame. The two texts will be put on their chronological context, and then it will be shown which educational aspects were original and which were still anchored in the pedagogical tradition of the Middle Ages. Lastly, we will focus on the concept of «virtuous behaviour» and try to stablish which values helped to define moral excellence on education during the 15th and 16th centuries.