Fernando de Córdoba
[2] He travelled Europe in 1444–1446, amazing audiences with public dispuations and displays of erudition, but fell into obscurity until resurfacing during the Plato–Aristotle controversy in 1466.
Before he left Spain, he had extensively memorized the works of Augustine of Hippo, Averroes, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus.
[9] He claimed in 1445 to have been in Italy the previous two years performing some mission on behalf of King John II of Castile.
[10] The earliest definite evidence for Fernando in Italy comes from a letter of Lorenzo Valla dated at Naples on 25 July 1444.
Addressing King Alfonso the Magnanimous, Valla praises Fernando for the mastery of arts, law, medicine and theology that he displayed in three days of debates.
According to a letter to the chancellor of Brabant, Fernando wrote to King Charles VII of France in his capacity as a diplomat.
He arrived at the court of Charles VII with eight horses and demonstrated his knowledge of chivalry and his skills with the two-handed sword.
[14] Fernando arrived in Paris in December 1445 and asked the rector of the university "for permission to hold a dispuation in four days".
Before the dispuation could take place, he asked to be excused from his commitment so that he could go visit the court of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy by Christmas.
In many interviews, he claimed to have written commentaries on Ptolemy's Almagest and the Revelation of Saint John and demonstrated such breadth of knowledge that rumours were spread that he was the Antichrist.
Failing to find "grounds to charge him with heresy, fraud, or even magic", he was released, although the professors sent a letter of warning to Philip the Good.
[15] According to Mathieu d'Escouchy, Fernando's visit to the court of the duke of Burgundy in Ghent was highly successful.
On 6 June 1446, he held a public disputation in Genoa covering 28 questions on art, theology, philosophy and medicine.
He left a great impression on Giacomo Bracelli [it], who admired his knowledge of Arabic astrology, but Antonio Cassarino [it] called him a "little barbarian".
In October, he enrolled in the University of Vienna and the following month, with the support of the emperor-elect and cardinal, made his standard offer to hold a public disputation.
[29] In late 1483 or early 1484, Fernando was appointed by Sixtus IV to a panel charged with juding the orthodoxy of the Ianua Artis of the Lullist Pere Deguí.
It issued its report to Sixtus' successor, Innocent VIII, only after the election of one of its members, Francisco Vidal de Noya [es], as bishop of Cefalù in late 1484.
A large funerary monument was ereceted in San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli by Cardinal Jorge da Costa.
Commissioned by and dedicated to Cardinal Bessarion, De Laudibus is directed against George of Trebizond's Comparatio Philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis.
This was probably a defence of Bessarion's position in his own treatise, written between 1463 and 1469 in both Greek and Latin, which had been deemed heretical by George of Trebizond and Niccolò Palmieri.
[38] After some Fraticelli were found living near Rome in 1466, Fernando was commissioned by Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville to refute their heresy.
Revealing himself to be a hierocrat, Fernando defends the universal authority of the pope over both spiritual and temporal affairs in arguments very similar to those of Agostino Favaroni [it].
[40] Sometime during the pontificate of Sixtus IV (1471–1481) and after the death of Bessarion (1472), Fernando wrote De Misterio Pallii, et An pro Eo Aliquod Temporale absque Simonie Labe Exigi Possit, a defence of the subdeacons' practice of receiving payment for conferring the pallium, one of their traditional duties.
[41] De Consultandi Ratione, which Fernando dedicated to Cardinal Ausiàs Despuig between 12 December 1477 and 3 September 1483, is known from a single presentation copy, whereabouts unknown and possibly lost.
