oratory to bear on a subject which other writers had
treated only in legal terms. The political situation in the
wake of Sarmiento’s rebellion was volatile, however,
and, after Álvaro de Luna’s arrest and imprisonment
in his brother Pedro’s Burgos palace in March 1453,
Cartagena found himself in the invidious position of
having to draw up the charges for the execution of the
privado whose policy he had so loyally supported for
twenty years.
Cartagena’s last works were the Oracional (ca.
1455), a layman’s treatise on prayer written in Castil-
ian for Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, which lays stress on
the inwardness of spiritual life in ways which point to
the Devotio moderna and Illuminism rather than Italian
humanism, while the Latin Anacephaleosis regum His-
panie, on which he was working in the months before
his death and which he dedicated to Burgos cathedral
chapter, develops the Neo-Gothic myth expounded in
his father’s Coplas de las siete edades del mundo on the
Messianic imperial and crusading destiny of Hispania.
In the summer 1456 Cartagena undertook a pilgrimage
to Santiago for the jubilee, but he was already ill, and
had to return before the feast of St. James, dying at Vil-
lasandino on 22 July. His decease is recounted in touch-
ing terms, with the obligatory deathbed miracle, in the
contemporary De actibus domini Alfonsi de Cartagena
(BNM 7432, fols. 89–92v, attributed to his amanuensis
Juan Sƒnchez de Nebreda). Other tributes were penned
by Fernando de la Torre in a letter to Pedro de Carta-
gena; by Fernán Pérez de Guzmán in his Coplas sobre
el transitu del reverendo padre don
Alfonso de Cartajena (“Aquel Séneca espiró | a quien
yo era Luçilo”); and by his pupil and camarero Diego
Rodríguez de Almela in a semblanza included in a work
undertaken at Cartagena’s behest, Valerio de las estorias
escolásticas e de España, VIII, 6, 9 (completed March
1462, printed Murcia 1487). The most vivid portraits,
however, are those by his fellow conversos (Catholic
converts) Juan de Lucena (Diálogo moral de vita felici,
1463) and Fernando del Pulgar, whose semblanza shows
Cartagena as a man of deep intelligence, pious modesty,
and complete integrity (Claros varones de Castilla, ca.
1483–1486, published 1486).
See also Aquinas, Thomas
Further Reading
Birkenmajer, A. “Der Streit des Alonso von Cartagena mit
Leonardo Bruni Aretino,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der
Philosophie des Mittelalters 20 (1917–22), Heft 5 (1922),
128–210, 226–35.
Cartagena, A. de Defensorium unitatis Christianae. Ed. M.
Alonso. Madrid, 1943.
Espinosa Fernandez, Y. (ed.) La Anacephaleosis de Alonso de
Cartagena. 3 vols. Madrid, 1989.
Gómez Moreno, A. “La Qüestión del Marqués de Santillana a
don Alfonso de Cartagena,” El Crotalón: Ánuario de Filología
Española 2 (1985), 335–63.
González-Quevedo Alonso, S. (ed.) El Oracional de Alonso de
Cartagena. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983.
Lawrance, J. (ed.) Un tratado de Alonso de Cartagena sobre la
educación y los estudios literarios. Bellaterra, 1979.
Morrás, M. (ed). Texto y concordancias del De offi ciis de Cicerón,
traducción castellana por Alfonso de Cartagena. Madison,
Wisc., 1989.
Jeremy LawranceCARTAGENA, TERESA DE (1420/25–?)
Born between 1420 and 1425, Teresa de Cartagena
was the author of two important pious prose works,
the Arboleda de los enfermos (ca. 1450) and the Admi-
ración operum Dey (of uncertain date but written out of
self-justifi cation to counter the surprise caused by the
reception of the Arboleda). She was a member of the
most illustrious converso family of fi fteenth-century
Castile, the Santa María-Cartagenas, whose members
achieved great distinction in literature and the church.
She was the grandaughter of Pablo de Santa María, suc-
cessively the chief rabbi and bishop of Burgos as well as
the author of an historical work, Siete edades del mundo,
the niece of the humanist, statesman, and polemicist
Alfonso de Cartagena, also bishop of Burgos, as well as
his brother, the intellectual and chronicler Alvar García
de Santa María. Teresa also corresponded with Gómez
Manrique, one of the principal literary fi gures of the
realm, and was urged by Manrique to continue her lit-
erary endeavors. Teresa lost her hearing at an early age
and, educated at Salamanca, she became a Franciscan
nun. Her deafness appears to have been instrumental in
the development of both her spiritual sensibilities and
her literary enterprise.
The Arboleda de los enfermos is a consolatory
work couched in terms of an allegorical exposition and
meditation on the spiritual benefi ts of illness, specifi -
cally her deafness, as a means of isolation from worldly
distractions. In it, Teresa distinguishes between the
physical and the spiritual ability to hear, concluding
that deafness can be a defense against metaphysical
blindness. Her aim in writing it was to teach others to
cope with adversity. The work is rich with images and
demonstrates an intimate spirituality that also places
great value on human relationships, especially family.
Its sources are complex, largely biblical and Patristic
(Augustine, Boethius, Jerome, Gregory the Great, and
St. Bernard, among them), and stand as a testimonial
to Teresa’s learning and erudition. At the same time,
the Arboleda is notable for its authenticity and as a
record of an intimate religious experience tempered by
personal hardship.
The Admiración, although derived from largely
the same sources as the Arboleda, was composed inCARTAGENA, ALFONSO DE