ARÉVALO, RODRIGO de. — Spanish ecclesiastical diplomat and writer, born at S. Maria de Nueva (Segovia) in 1404, died in Rome on 4 October 1470. Under the kings of Castile, Giovanni II and Enrico IV, he was chaplain, secretary, and counsellor, and carried out various embassies from 1440 to 1448 to bring the princes to obedience to Eugenio IV during the Council of Basel. From 1448 he lived in Rome, where he received numerous offices from the Popes. Callisto III appointed him bishop of Oviedo (1457), and Paolo II, in 1467, of Zamora (for which reason he is often called Rodrigo di Zamora), then of Calahorra (1468) and of Palencia (1469), sees in which A. never resided.
He was papal referendary and castellan of Castel S. Angelo in 1468, when he was entrusted with the custody of B. Platina and the other Pomponian academicians arrested by order of Paolo II. On this occasion Platina composed the Alteratio sive disputatio de pace et bello, in which he defended the advantages of peace, while A. advocated the public utility of war. Cardinal Barbo was to be its final judge. A. also exchanged letters with Platina.
He was a prolific writer, esteemed by the humanists (B. Platina introduces him as an interlocutor in the De Jalo et vero bono, 1469), of history (Compendiosa historia hispanica, Rome ca. 1470), and of ecclesiastical public law. But only five of his works were published; fourteen (several of them on moral subjects) survive in manuscript, for the most part in cod. Vatic. 4881.
A.’s fame is linked to the Speculum vitae humanae (Rome 1468), a moral treatise in two books dedicated to Paolo II, in which A. examines all the social classes, impartially criticizing their defects (including those of the clergy and the Curia), and pointing out the path of virtue. Extremely widespread in his time, it was translated into German (1475), French (1477), and Spanish (1491).