The commonly known as Bishop of Cuenca , Lope de Barrientos , lived in the fifteenth century; He belonged to a family from Medina del Campo:he was the second of the family's children, so he had to pursue an ecclesiastical career, which in his case became a political career. In Salamanca he held a chair in Theology, during possibly his most intellectual and quiet stage; from there Juan II, king of Castile, took him to court as tutor to his son, the future Enrique IV. From the first moment he gained the trust of the monarch, as is reflected in the chronicles of the time in which it is told how he saved Don Enrique's life during an earthquake, and his position at court was increasingly important and influential. .
In my opinion there are two episodes that have distorted the vision of Lope de Barrientos that has survived to this day:the purge and burning of Enrique de Villena's library and the defense made of the converts in the Toledo revolt of 1449.
The purge and burning of Enrique de Villena's library It is the first documented burning of books in the kingdom of Castile and such fame was possibly the later inspiration for Miguel de Cervantes for his chapter 6 of Don Quixote I, where he recounts the scrutiny of Don Quixote's books by the hand of the barber and the priest.
The exact reasons why John II accepted the accusations made against Enrique de Villena are still unknown today, but the truth is that upon his death he expropriated the Marquis's assets and, since the crimes imputed to him were those of necromancy and sorcery , entrusted Lope de Barrientos with the task of purging and burning those dangerous volumes that might be in his library.
According to his own words, he first did a thorough reading of the books and, although he did not agree with the king's command, he respected the order that had been entrusted to him. However, it seems that the only books that he burned were those that he could not read, that is, those that were written in Greek and Hebrew, languages that Enrique de Villena knew, but not Barrientos. Although not proven, it would fit in with the practices of the Dominican order to which he belonged, who had the custom of reading all books, including the prohibited ones (especially these, which they kept in their cells for personal use), which has every logic, since they had to consult them to determine what was lawful from what was unlawful. And on this topic Lope de Barrientos had to document himself very well, since after this burning, he wrote some treatises commissioned by Juan II himself to delimit legal and illegal magical practices. It is in these treatises that Barrientos justifies his action and explicitly says that there are no good or bad books, but that everything depends on the reader.
The first reproach that is documented is that of the poet Juan de Mena, who accuses him of having kept all the books of the Marquis of Villena. Later the accusation varies, so that over time the number of volumes he burned is talked about, which certainly increases over the centuries. I am especially interested in Juan de Mena's vindication:in the first place, because he is contemporary with the facts; and secondly, because it is consistent with the personality of the bishop. However, to this day it cannot be verified that this was the case, since the books in the Lope de Barrientos library were plundered after the death of the bishop, who was denounced by his successor in the episcopal see of Cuenca. Later he was acquitted of all accusations, but many of his assets had already disappeared, including the library.
Another of the most relevant actions of the bishop of Cuenca was his participation during the anticonversa revolt of Toledo in 1449. Starting in the 14th century, different confrontations against converts had been taking place, since the obligation to convert to Christianity in order to preserve life and property aroused logical suspicions that many of these conversions were not authentic. This mistrust will become the breeding ground that will characterize Castilian society during the Middle Ages, but above all in the 16th and 17th centuries, since precisely this conception of religious cleansing will penetrate so deeply that the consequences will be expulsions and the establishment of a permanent court of the Holy Inquisition in Castile to judge false conversions.
I am especially interested in the conflict in Toledo in 1449 precisely because of the literature of religious controversy that is going to be generated. Events break out when Don Álvaro de Luna approves a tax whose collector is Alonso de Cota:he belongs to the circle of Jewish-converts of Toledo and the citizens refuse to pay it, because they see in this group the maximum beneficiaries. The citizens storm the collector's house and the chief warden, Pedro Sarmiento, promulgates his Sentencia-Estatuto , June 5. In this Sentence the expulsion of the new Christians, the converts, is called for, alleging a whole series of accusations that will make this text the first to speak about purity of blood. The fact itself is the consequence of the tensions that have been experienced in recent decades, so the writing of this document is the culmination of this anti-Semitic atmosphere.
Lope de Barrientos actively participates to put an end to this tense situation. He responds with two letters and his personal intervention:when Sarmiento's rebellion is suffocated, it is Barrientos himself who communicates the royal order to leave the city. Fernán Díaz de Toledo sends Barrientos a work, Instruction , where he provides Barrientos with the necessary arguments to defend the converts against the position of the rebels . With this reworking of the rapporteur's work, Barrientos positions himself and also discredits the rumors that the rebels spread about him. One of those rumors was that he himself was a convert:he made such an impression on this accusation that in the Brand of the nobility of Spain , published two centuries later, his name still appeared in the list of famous men who had been converted. Current historians deny this origin of Barrientos, but I consider that it is one more reason why the centuries have forgotten the historical importance of this character.
Once the waters calmed, Lope de Barrientos wrote a small treatise in Latin, Opusculum super intellectu , of which the Castilian translation of the same fifteenth century is also preserved, in which he reflects on the question of the converts. These works are in the same ideological line as other writings of the time such as the Treatise against the Midianites and Ismaelites by Juan de Torquemada or the Defensorium Unitatis Christianae of Alonso of Cartagena. In these works, the equal rights of Christians and converts are defended, since the latter are also Christians.
On the political level I have to underline the intervention in the Vatican conflict :from here a series of bulls are promulgated (requested from the Castilian court) that in the first instance condemn the event and those involved; but the latter forgive them. This change of position must respond to a political question, since it seems that Álvaro de Luna himself requests these last bulls:in the codex of the Vatican Archive where the settlement of these documents is collected, there is an annotation that precedes them in which gives an account of a donation made by Luna on behalf of the Castilian king.
The fact that Álvaro de Luna is involved in the beginning and the end of the conflict leads me to conclude that the converse controversy was used for political purposes, rather than ideological. The conclusion of the event must not have sat well with Lope de Barrientos, since he positions himself ideologically in favor of the converts. There is no record of his reaction, except that he left the court for a while to go to the Cuenca diocese, his refuge whenever he needed it.
Listing his achievements and his performances would take several tens of pages, and still not achieve my purpose. In these lines I have only given a couple of brushstrokes that sketch the portrait of a man who managed to be powerful and influential during his long life, but whose memory was erased for posterity. Hence, his story is one of infamy and oblivion, a story damaged by manipulation, envy and resentment.