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this unintended consequence of his cham-
pionship of the Indians and argued that it
was also immoral to enslave the Africans.
During the last decades of his long life
Las Casas lived in Spain, concentrating on
written advocacy, the most notable exam-
ple of which was
Brevísima relación de la
destrucción de las Indias
(
Brief Account of the
Destruction of the Indies,
1552), a work whose
horrendous examples of cruelty by Spanish
conquistadores in the Americas were some-
times exaggerated and certainly provided
ample material for Spain's enemies. The
L
EYENDA
N
EGRA
(Black Legend) of Spanish
infamy would be exploited for centuries in
countries whose own colonial behavior was
scarcely better than that of which Spain
was accused. Although Las Casas's crusade
for justice was unsuccessful, he kept alive a
debate over human rights and social justice
that had no parallel in Europe during the
16th century.
of the 1970s, when the autonomous region
of Castile and León was created in the vast
territory of some 36,000 square miles dom-
inating north-central Spain. León is now
essentially a historical artifact.
León, Luis de (Fray Luis)
(1527-1591)
Spanish poet and scholar
Member of a family of distinguished jurists,
but one marked by the taint of Jewish
ancestry, León joined the Augustinian order
at an early age, distinguished himself in his
studies at the University of Salamanca, and
was appointed to a chair at that institution
in 1561. Admired for his lectures and writ-
ings, he also excited the jealousy of several
colleagues as well as the suspicions of those
perennially on the lookout for heresy in the
troubled Reformation period. In 1572 León
was accused of attacking the Latin (Vulgate)
translation of the Bible, which was the only
officially approved version of the Scriptures.
The fact that his great-grandmother had
been forced to convert from Judaism was a
factor just below the surface in the charge
against him. He was imprisoned under
harsh conditions (which led to the death of
a cellmate) but survived to be exonerated
and restored to his teaching duties at the
beginning of 1577. Despite—or perhaps
because of—his steadily growing reputation
of scholarship he was again accused of doc-
trinal irregularities in 1582 but escaped any
serious consequences. The rest of his life
was one of relative tranquility.
Fray Luis, as he was commonly called, is
one of the most important figures in Span-
ish Renaissance literature. The depth and
thoroughness of his learning, based on a
command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and
León
Emerging from the first manifestation of
Christian resistance to the Muslim conquest
of Spain in eighth-century A
STURIAS
, a sep-
arate kingdom of León dominated the next
stage of the R
ECONQUISTA
. During the early
Middle Ages this northern realm went
through a series of dynastic and territorial
interactions with C
ASTILE
. The leaders of
León prided themselves on their aristocratic
dignity, considering the Castilians as mere
foot soldiers in the great crusade against
Islam. By 1300, however, the larger and
more populous Castile had gained the
ascendancy. León would henceforth be a
subordinate domain of the Castilian monar-
chy. This situation was confirmed more
recently during the regional reconstruction
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