Cervantes was born in Alcala de Henares, near Madrid, into an itinerant apothecary-surgeon's family. Little is known of Cervantes's childhood, though it is assumed that his schooling was minimal and his comforts few, given the family's continual sojourn throughout the regions of Castile, Seville, and Andalusia as the father searched for work. The first documented evidence concerning Cervantes's life, other than his birth record, places him at the Estudio de la Villa de Madrid, a pregraduate liberal arts school, in 1568. While studying in Madrid, Cervantes probably wrote his first known works: elegiac verses on the death of Queen Isabel de Valois. Cervantes's schoolmaster, humanist Juan Lopez de Hoyos, edited and published these and other poems, with approbatory reference to Cervantes, in 1569. By this time, however, Cervantes had moved to Rome to serve as steward to Cardinal Guilio Acquaviva.
Goes to War and Imprisoned
The following year, Cervantes enlisted with Spanish forces stationed in Italy that planned to help defend the countries of southern Europe against the burgeoning Ottoman-Turkish empire, which threatened invasion. In 1571, under the general command of Don John of Austria, Cervantes fought heroically in the naval battle of Lepanto off the coast of Greece.
This is a free page. This page contains 189 words. This
biography contains 3,081 words (approx. 10 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Miguel de Cervantes Access Pass.
