Las armas y las letras

(1503), where firearms were first used extensively against cavalry. Weapons and letters were, along with religious life, the two main ways to ascend socially in 15-17th century Spain, especially for nobility and hidalgos, who found no equivalent esteem in workmanship, commerce or other jobs. The quick expansion of the Spanish Empire also required a stable source of administrators and men of letters, often common people, which forced their entry in the court by their own merits. It was therefore considered that the weapons and sciences ennobled commoneers and validated noblemen. War itself changed heavily with the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. Leaving behind many noble or knightly ideals, Renaissance armies broke the aristocratic monopoly and gave passage for many common people, often mercenaries or condottieros fighting for an income, employing techniques based on cold calculation like artillery and firearms, which displaced chivalric elements like personal valor. This coincided with the end of the Reconquista in Spain with the conquest of Granada, reducing the aristocracy's chances to earn glory in battle, yet at the same time allowing them the free time to cultivate intellectual disciplines. Knowledge became another obligatory field of nobility. As a result, science and studies became a newfound bridge to personal glory in Golden Age Spain, placed at the same level as warrior feats. Through them the man of letters ascended to the level of the hidalgo. However, Spanish culture of honor continued differentiating between them. Men dedicated to intellectual matters were not expected to be challenged to duels of weapons, nor were they expected to accept such challenges, while the opposite was true for men dedicated exclusively to the weapons in the legal context. The motif was also addressed in other nations, with authors like Ludovico Ariosto in Italy, François Rabelais in France and Edmund Spenser in England, but according to historian Ernst Robert Curtius, never with the same vigor and depth as in Spanish Golden Age. ==History==

Late Middle Ages Historian Peter Edward Russell saw medieval precedents in Enrique de Villena and Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana, who practised it in their own career, becoming famous for their knowledge of science and war alike. Santillana was aware of the motif and addressed it explicitly many times in his works, espousing that studying sciences did not hinder the training in weapons. This was referenced in the poetry of Juan de Mena and Juan de Lucena. Other examples before the Renaissance were also Don Juan Manuel, Pedro López de Ayala, Alfonso de Cartagena and Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, uncle to Santillana. The motif would only strengthen in the light of Renaissance humanism. In a letter to the Marquis of Santillana, Alonso de Cartganea described milicia (the profession of arms) as both a physical and a spiritual quest, reclaiming the term of mílite (translated by him as soldier, militiaman or defender of the realm) for scholars and priests, which he also called caballeros de la caballería desarmada ("knights of the unarmed chivalry"). In 1444, in his Doctrinal de Caballeros, he attempted to refute the still usual belief that arms and letters were incompatible. Reign of Charles V . The motif was opposed by Erasmus in his 1503 Enchiridion militis Christiani, where he reduced weapons to metaphors and declared the best weapons are prayer and knowledge of divinity. Going further, in 1511 he wrote in In Praise of Folly an even more direct pacifist manifesto, although he went to justify the Italian Wars by the sake of France. The work also shows an impeccable knowledge of the last advances in firearms of his time. Cervantes develops also the union of arms and letters in another of his works, his posthumours novel Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, where he claims the best soldiers are these coming from intellectual backgrounds. In 1634, Francisco Cascales profiled scholarship as a worthy pursuit for nobility, just like weapons. In the same age, Baltasar Gracián considered the city of Madrid, made imperial capital in 1561, an "august stage of the arms and the letters". Although without taking arms personally, instead serving as a military chaplain, Gracián participated actively in the 1640 Reapers' War, which also saw the participation of Portuguese soldier and writer Francisco Manuel de Melo. ==See also==