Esteban Manuel de Villegas

Despite coming from a wealthy family, he spent his entire life in financial difficulties due to his numerous children and his continuous involvement in litigation.

It seems probable that the rest of the sentence was remitted, for the report of the local inquisition lays stress on Villegas’s simple piety, on the extravagance of his attire, and on the eccentricity of his general conduct and conversation, so marked as to suggest a mental disturbance.

Villegas wrote a lyrical book that was very original for its time, "Las Eróticas" (Nájera, 1618, later widely reprinted, especially by Sancha in Madrid, 1774 and 1797), the title-page of which bore under a rising sun the motto "Me surgente, quid istae?".

This book earned him more than a few enemies because of his excessive pride, and he tried to suppress the emblem of the copies that he could; Lope de la Vega referred to this in his Laurels for Apollo, but did not mention Villegas by name.

Dulce vecino de la verde selva huesped eterno del Abril florido, vital aliento de la madre Venus, Zephyro blando,[2] Sweet denizen of verdant woods, eternal guest of flowery April, vital breath of mother Venus, soft Zephyr.

At an advanced age, he translated Boethius' "De consolatione Philosophiae" and, wiser after his encounter with the Inquisition, left in Latin the part corresponding to free will.