Juan de Mal Lara

Juan de Mal Lara (Sevilla, 1524 – Sevilla, 1571) was a Spanish humanist, poet, playwright and paremiologue at the University of Seville during the period of the Spanish Renaissance in the reign of Philip II of Spain.

Mal Lara studied Latin and Greek grammar at the College of San Miguel in Sevilla. His teacher was Pedro Fernandez de Castilleja and later Mal Lara taught humanities to Mateo Alemán. It was a decade later, after studying at the University of Salamanca, where he was student of Hernán Núñez one of classmates was Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas, known as the "Brocense"; later he went to Valencia and Barcelona, where he completed his studies with Francisco Escobar before returning again to Salamanca. In 1548 he returned to Seville to study Arts. By 1550 he taught at humanities and literature in a grammar school in Sevilla.

In 1565, the Count of Gelves in Seville, established his "Merlin's Garden" in the fields near Tablada, and this became a regular gathering of an academic circle which also included Baltasar del Alcázar, Francisco Pacheco, Juan de la Cueva Christopher Mosquera de Figueroa, Cristóbal de Mesa, Francisco Medina and Fernando de Herrera, which group later were known as the Sevillian Poetry School.

Mal Lara was investigated by the Spanish Inquisition in 1561, but was cleared of all charges in 1566, the year he moved to Madrid to join the royal court of king Philip II of Spain. Philip of Spain also claimed to be king of England and Ireland following his marriage to Mary I of England was known as 'the prudent' since despite several financial crisis was an intelligent ruler and dedicated philosophical scholar who particularly studied the work of the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero which is why in modern Spanish a serious but informal discussion is called "una tertulia"

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