Antonio de Herrera Y Tordesillas - Biography

Biography

He was born in Cuéllar, Province of Segovia, into a well-to-do noble family, the son of Rodrigo de Tordesillas (the son of another Rodrigo de Tordesillas who died at the hands of the comuneros) and Inés de Herrera. He himself placed his mother's surname before his father's in opposition to convention.

He undertook his earliest studies in the grammar school of his hometown, developing a notable facility for getting to know people and an inexhaustible capacity for work, which would later be confirmed. His education (especially in Latin), perhaps pursued at the University of Salamanca, reached its pinnacle in Italy. In 1570 he traveled to Italy in the service of Prince Vespasiano I Gonzaga, one of the most distinguished personages of his era in Italy. His knowledge of Latin increased as he learned Italian.

In 1572 Gonzaga was named Viceroy of Navarre. Herrera accompanied him and established a residence in Pamplona. He continued to enjoy the viceroy's confidence when he took up the analogous post in Valencia in 1575, although Herrera moved his residence to Court as Gonzaga's most trusted aide, resolving issues on his behalf before the King and the Court. Meanwhile Herrera expanded his circle of friends and established contact with influential people as, little by little, he amassed a small fortune.

In the last years of Gonzaga's life, he introduced Herrera to King Philip II as one learned in historical matters. It was the starting point of a relationship which Herrera was able to maintain, beginning by doing the self-interested courtesy of dedicating his historical works (which he had already started) to important people. To get his acquaintance with the King started on the right foot, he translated from the Italian Giovanni Tommaso Minadoi's Historia della guerra fra turchi et persiani.

While living in Pamplona he met the woman who would become his first wife, Juana de Esparza y Artieda. They married in 1581 and the union afforded him a social standing of a certain distinction, despite his not yet having secured significant capital or equity, although he was on his way to achieving it. Their only child, Juana, died in 1587 at a young age, three years after her mother.

After a decade of widowhood, he married secondly a woman from Cuéllar, María de Torres Hinestrosa, a descendant on one side of the Lords of Henestrosa, and on the other, via an illegitimate child, of King Alfonso IX of León. They had no children.