Information about this publication:
¿Enrique de Villena o Diego Moxena de Valencia? En torno al autor de la primera traducción de la Divina Commedia (s. XV)

Summary: The noble and erudite Spaniard, Enrique de Aragón (or de Villena), who translated Virgil’s Aeneid between 1427-1428, had himself left notice that, at the request of the celebrated humanist Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana, he had completed an entire translation of The Divine Comedy in Castilian prose.  The testimony of Villena was known in the literary history of Spain, but his version of The Divine Comedy had never been located.  Considering this, in 1899, the Frenchman, Mario Schiff, an expert on Spanish literature, made known that the relevant MS 10186 of the BN of Madrid, contains within, a version in Castilian prose of the entire DC, which moreover had sure signs of belonging to the library of Santillana.  With little hesitation, Schiff attributed the version of his uncovered text to Villena.  With more or less the same conviction, all historians of literature continuously accepted the above theory.  That is, stating its validity to be principally based on the arguments of the difficulty in locating any other possibility for any alternative other than Villena to put forward.  The author of the here presented study proposes instead, as a more valid candidate, the Franciscan Diego Moxena de Valencia, celebrated theologian of the Council of Constance.  Until the present time, few knew that he came to be cited by use of two titles: D. Moxena and D. de Valencia.  The author presents his proposal in three sections:  In the first, he demonstrates that little or no credibility is merited in the testimony of the strange personality of Villena;  In the second, he presents Moxena as feasible and valid candidate;  In the third and final section, he examines the solid relatedness between Moxena and the unknown translator, based on a comparison of some 38 texts of the DC.