Pedro de Lerma

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pedro de Lerma (* approx. 1461 in Burgos ; † August 11, 1541 in Paris ) was a Spanish theologian and the first chancellor of the University of Alcalá . Persecuted by the Inquisition , he emigrated to Paris at an old age.

Live and act

Collège de Navarre , Paris

Pedro de Lerma came from a respected family in Burgos, northern Spain . He studied at the University of Paris and initially taught liberal arts at the Collège de Navarre . From 1500 he pursued his studies at the Sorbonne , where he received his doctorate in theology in 1504. In 1506 he was called to Burgos as a canon and returned to Spain. On August 11, 1508, he followed a call as a teacher at the University of Alcalá, founded in 1499 by Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros . He became the first chancellor of this university.

In 1527, at the request of Alonso Manrique, Inquisitor General in Spain, he took part in a conference in Valladolid from June 27th to August 13th to study the writings of Erasmus with other scholars on the basis of complaints from the Inquisition. Pedro de Lerma supported Erasmus. In 1535 he gave up his position as chancellor of the university and returned to Burgos. In 1537, Pedro de Lerma was accused by the Inquisition of heresy for allegedly promoting Erasmus' ideas in his sermons, and forced to repeal them publicly. At the end of the year, Lerma decided to leave Spain at the age of almost seventy and returned to Paris, where he taught theology at the Sorbonne until his death in 1541, most recently as dean of the faculty.

Some verses have come down to us from Lerma, published in Paris in 1498. One of his younger relatives was Francisco de Enzinas , who did the first translation of the New Testament into Spanish and was present in Paris when Lermas died.

literature

  • Luis A. Pérez, Thomas Brian Deutscher: Pedro de Lerma. In: Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2003; P. 325 ( online ) ISBN 0802025072
  • Ignacio J. García Pinilla: Pedro de Lerma. Real Academia de la Historia, 2018, accessed March 24, 2020 (Spanish).