JUAN MANUEL, INFANTE OF CASTILE. — Writer, born in the castle of Escalona (Toledo) in 1282, died around 1348. Nephew of St. Ferdinand III, he took part in military actions and the political events of his time, especially during the minority of Ferdinand IV and of Alfonso XI, his ward, against whom he plotted to seize the throne in agreement with the King of Aragon.
His restless life did not prevent him from engaging in extensive literary activity. In the *Libro de Patronio* or *Conde Lucanor* (1335), a notable document of Castilian prose that sums up and surpasses with aristocratic refinement the manifold narrative currents of the Middle Ages, Count Lucanor presents various questions of social ethics to the wise counsellor Patronio, who resolves them with 50 apologues or tales of diverse nature and source (Aesopic tradition, the East, the Bible, medieval legends) and closed by an appropriate rhymed “moral.” Some themes were later taken up by Shakespeare (*The Taming of the Shrew*), Cervantes (*Retablo de las maravillas*), Andersen, and others.
The *Libro de los estados* (1330) was composed when he was 48, during a phase of spiritual crisis and physical suffering. Religious interests predominate, and alongside numerous autobiographical touches, it includes a Christian adaptation of the legend of the Buddha, mediated through an Arabic or Latin text of the romance of Barlaam and Joasaph.
Also noteworthy is the *Libro del caballero et del escudo* (1326), and, as a singular document of Juan Manuel’s devotion to the Virgin, the *Tractado en que se prueba por razón que Sancta Maria está en cuerpo y alma en paraíso*.
His physical likeness has been preserved in a portrait (the earliest known of a Spanish writer), the work of Barnaba da Modena, preserved in the cathedral of Murcia. His moral character is marked by a striking presence of contrasts, as intrigue and devotion, restlessness and the search for solitude and study, morality and a certain Machiavellianism *ante verbum* alternate and coexist in him.