Enrique de Villena

There he was raised by his aristocratic grandfather, Alfonso de Aragón, first Marquess of Villena, who was a grandson of King James II of Aragon and Blanche of Naples.

However, Villena encountered difficulty towards the end of the fourteenth century when his grandfather began losing power in the Castilian court.

Historians believe Villena traveled to Castile during the first years of the fifteenth century, took residence there, and married María de Albornoz, a wealthy heiress from Cuenca, Spain.

However, upon Ferdinand I's death in 1416, Villena returned to Castile and spent the next several years at his wife's estates in Cuenca taking care of family affairs.

From 1426 to 1429, Alfonso the Magnanimous stripped Villena of his promised inheritance as Duke of Gandía, giving the position instead to his own brother.

In addition to describing the origin of the evil eye, he offers traditional and "present" methods for the prevention, diagnosis and cure of the illness.

Written in Catalan and then adapted into Castilian, the work contains obvious and didactic moral messages which Villena found applicable and important within the framework of contemporary Spain.

Written in 1417, Twelve Works of Hercules made Villena's literary reputation, perhaps because it lacks the erudition and theoretical complexity of the later treatises.

Described as "frustrating and sterile" (85), Arte de Trovar is a treatise on the rules and proper prosody of troubadour poetry.

The work, like Villena's other treatises, is erudite and difficult, concerning itself with complex laws of meter and versification, which were laid down as a result of lesser poets violating the structures of the "gay science" of Troubadour poetry.

Arte de Trovar attests to the important cultural exchange between Catalonia and the Provençal region of southern France (the home of troubadour lyric poetry), and conveys a sense of nostalgia on Villena's part for the chivalric and highly decorous world of troubadour subject matter.

Villena was the first translator and one of the first to translate in prose, respectively, Dante's poem into another vernacular language and Virgil's epic poem into a Romance language (1427–28), and was faced with the difficulty of maintaining the subtlety and depth of The Aeneid while appealing to a largely unlearned audience that was used to easily decipherable allegorical stories.

These translations of classical literature were widely read by a growing community of literary nobility, a social circle in which Villena was among the most important members.

In the first, Villena appropriated biblical discourse, citing several passages of Peter Comestor's paraphrased bible Historia Scholastica which acquiesce in astrology and magic.

[3][4] Villena's deep interest in science and his great knowledge of astrology and other religious mystical systems gave him the reputation of a necromancer during his lifetime.

This started a movement to convert classical works into modern vernacular languages so that they could be read and enjoyed by more than just Latin scholars.

[2] He translates the work and provides commentary that enables readers to grasp the obscurity of the text and gives literal interpretations of specific information in order to teach the Castilian society the proper behaviors of courtiers.

Lope de Vega's Porfiar hasta morir illustrates Villena as more of a hero figure who works for justice.