Enrique de Villena is recognized today as one of the leading intellectual figures of early-fifteenth-century Castile, in spite of a pervasive reputation as a necromancer in his own time that transformed him into a grotesque character in some comedies written during the Golden Age of Spanish literature. He was an intellectual pioneer in a period when Castilian intellectual life was moving away from French toward Italian models. Vernacular humanism, the translation and adaptation of classical works for the entertainment and instruction of nobles, played a significant role in this transformation by changing secular elite attitudes toward reading and the classics. Villena did not belong to the world of official academic culture but mediated between official learning and vernacular lay culture and promoted Italian humanist thought in Castile.

Villena's real name was Enrique de Aragón. Born between 1382 and 1384, he was the second son of Juana of Castile...