La legislatio en los progymnasmata españoles del siglo XVIdel ejercicio escolar al texto literario

Abstract

This piece of work aims to study in depth the reception of the rhetorical exercise known in Latin as legislatio (confirmation or refutation of a law) in Renaissance Spain. The first part of this paper focuses on the difficulties of com- 138 Pérez / La legislatio en los progymnasmata españoles del siglo xvi prehension and interpretation faced by humanists who updated this effective training method. For those scholars the main obstacle in the exegetical process was to find out the structure underlying the model provided by Aphthonius (the refutation of the law punishing adultery with death), as they could easily identify in it a series of contradictiones and solutiones, but not the argumentative topics recommended by the Greek rhetorician. The second part of this paper studies how the theoretical precepts about the legislatio were implemented to generate two different kinds of new texts: school compositions (models intentionally written to furnish progymnasmata handbooks with developed examples which could help students to know how to go from theory to practice) and literary texts (a speech by Palmireno and a text about political philosophy by Juan de Mariana). At the end it is concluded that the use of some specific argumentative strategies in literary texts can be explained not as a result of the writer’s inspiration, but as a result of mastering the ancient rhetorical technique to develop the legislatio.