Las empresas de los Reyes de Castilla (y León) de Francisco de la Reguera y Serna: hierografías barrocas para instrucción de príncipes (estudio de las empresas de los reyes de época medieval)

Abstract

Francisco de la Reguera y Serna (Valladolid, 1595-1673), a polygraph, a poet and a draftsman, has the merit of having composed the first Spanish book of political devices, Empresas de los Reyes de Castilla (y León), which was not published until the end of the twentieth century. This collection of devices, or hierographies (a name also given by the author to this variant of the emblematic genre), is actually a manual to indoctrinate the prince with a select repertory of symbolic figures (the lion, the pelican, the goshawk, the ermine, the book, the caravel…) and accurate political maxims that allow the author to expose, sometimes with stark frankness, the king’s obligations, the favorite, the social groups, the religious unity and the armed peace. In this occasion, the analysis of the first fourteen devices, all of them referred to medieval kings, specially to Alphonsus the Eleventh’s device, Malo mori quam foedari, serves to illustrate the author’s methodus as well as the true sources used by him.