Gregorio Mayans y Siscar

Gregorio Mayans y Siscar (9 May 1699 – 1781) was a Spanish historian, linguist and writer of the Enlightenment in Spain.

Early life

Gregorio Mayans was born on 9 May 1699 in Oliva, Valencia, Spain. His father, Pasqual Maians, fought on the Austrian side in the War of the Spanish Succession and accompanied Archduke Charles VI to Barcelona in 1706; this resulted in the later marginalization of Gregorio Mayans, who lived in Spain when the House of Bourbon dominated it. Until 1713, when he returned to Oliva, Mayans studied with the Jesuits of Cordelles, but his grandfather, a mayor named Juan Siscar, encouraged him to study law. He attended the University of Valencia, where he learned from the most distinguished of the novatores, men such as Tomás Vicente Tosca, Juan Bautista Corachán, and Baltasar Íñigo, who introduced him to the ideas of John Locke and René Descartes, which would become important in Mayans' later development.

In 1719, Mayans traveled to Salamanca to continue studying law. One of his professors, Borrull, put him in contact with Manuel Martí, dean of Alicante, who became his mentor and guided him in studying the classics, Spanish as well as Latin and Greek. Martí introduced Mayans to the study of the Renaissance and the Spanish humanists of the sixteenth century: Antonio de Nebrija, Benito Arias Montano, Friar Luis de Granada, Friar Luis de León, Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas el Brocense, Juan Luis Vives, San Juan de la Cruz, Teresa of Ávila, and Miguel de Cervantes. Mayans dedicated the rest of his life to preserving this tradition, which he thought was forgotten in Baroque Spain.