VALDIVIELSO, JOSÉ DE

VALDIVIELSO, JOSÉ de. — Spanish poet, born in Toledo around 1560, died in Madrid on 19 June 1638.

A priest and chaplain, first to the cardinal of Toledo Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas and later to the cardinal infante d. Fernando d'Austria, he poured forth his sense of the divine in delightful lyrics in which theological doctrine, intense piety, and popular candor merge in a persuasive synthesis reminiscent of the enchantment of Murillo’s religious paintings. With accents of particular tenderness he evoked the mysteries of the Nativity and the Passion; he celebrated Eucharistic splendors in the Romancero espiritual del S. Sacramento (1612) and in the Doze autos sacramentales, which form the link between the early dramatists and Calderón. More intermittent is the poetic tension

VALDO and VALDENSIANS — Final part of the profession of Catholic faith of Pietro Valdo and his brothers (1179–84) and beginning of the Liber antiheresis, by a Waldensian author, written against Cathar dualism, Madrid, National Library, modern 1114, fol. 2r (end of the twelfth century).

of the poem Vida, excelencias y muerte del gloriosismo patriarca s. José (1602).

V. also wrote a poem entitled Sagrario de Toledo (1616), another devoted to the miracles of s. Ildefonso and, at the wish of Filippo III and the cardinal infante, the Exposición parafrástica del Psalterio y cánticos del Breviario (1623). He comforted Lope de Vega on his deathbed and was a friend of Cervantes.