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A Humanist Reconquista: Hernando de Talavera’s Pedagogy of Good Manners and His Residential School for Morisco Boys
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2025
Abstract
From 1493 to 1507, Hernando de Talavera, the first archbishop of Granada after the Spanish Reconquista, ran a residential school for Morisco noble boys in his palace. This article argues that Talavera’s school set the foundation for the long history of residential schooling as a tool to transform or eradicate a conquered culture through the cultural assimilation of children. A champion of Christian humanism, Talavera thought that cultivating good manners (that is, adopting Spanish customs) was the main marker of a true Christian. Thus, his pedagogy aimed to educate everyone, particularly Morisco children, in what he considered the most reasonable and natural ways of living. By examining Talavera’s spiritual pedagogy, his humanist influences, and the educational experiences of Morisco boys at his palace, this paper lays the groundwork for a genealogical study of modern European colonial residential schooling for non-European children.
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References
1 Francesc Eiximenis, Libro de la vida de Ihesu Christo, trans. Hernando de Talavera (Granada: Meynardo Ungut y Johannes de Nurenberga, 1496), 2.xlvii.
2 Julio Caro Baroja, Los moriscos del Reino de Granada. Ensayo de historia social (Madrid: Istmo, 1985), 158-59.
3 For the text of the treaty, see Jon Cowans, ed., Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 15-19.
4 Francisco Núñez Muley, A Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 9; María Jesús Rubiera Mata, “La familia morisca de los Muley-Fez, principes meriníes e infantes de Granada,” Sharq al-Andalus 13 (1996), 159-67.
5 Núñez Muley, A Memorandum, 80-81.
6 Núñez Muley, A Memorandum, 79.
7 On buenas costumbres in colonial Spanish societies, see Irene Silverblatt, “Family Values in Seventeenth-Century Peru,” in Native Traditions in the Postconquest World, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone and Tom Cummins (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), 63-89; Deborah Root, “Speaking Christian: Orthodoxy and Difference in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” Representations 23 (1988), 118-34. Vida ordenada is a term that appears multiple times in Talavera’s moral writings and translations—for instance, in the text quoted in note 1.
8 Isabella Iannuzzi, “Educar a los cristianos. Fray Hernando de Talavera y su labor catequética dentro de la estructura familiar para homogeneizar la sociedad de los Reyes Católicos,” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos (2008), paras. 1-4, https://doi.org/10.4000/nuevomundo.19122.
9 On Hispanized Moriscos as cultural intermediaries, see Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2013), 65-94. On a later school for Morisco boys that served as a training center for cultural intermediaries, see Miguel López, “El colegio de los niños moriscos de Granada (1526-1576),” Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos. Sección Árabe-Islam 25 (1976), 33-68.
10 It would be questionable to qualify the Reconquista as a colonial project. Medieval Spaniards saw Granada as part of their historical territory rather than as a newly conquered land. However, regardless of the intentions and motivations of fifteenth-century Spaniards, the Reconquista had a direct influence on how subsequent Spanish and other European forms of colonialism were organised. Institutions like the encomienda, evangelisation methods such as preaching in local languages, campaigns of mass baptism, and (as this article argues) methods of cultural assimilation through residential schooling and other forms of education were first implemented in Granada and then adapted to the Americas and Asia. The classical study on the subject is Antonio Garrido Aranda, Organización de la Iglesia en el Reino de Granada y su proyección en Indias. Siglo XVI (Seville: CSIC-Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1979). Thus, even if we avoid calling the Reconquista itself a colonial project, its methods, institutions, and the kind of humanism it inspired can be qualified as colonial insofar as they anticipate and inform modern colonialism. See also Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 29-43.
11 The now-massive scholarship on colonial residential schools has almost exclusively focused on their development in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand; however, some studies do mention, at least in passing, the historical link between Spanish educational projects and residential schools established by the English and the French; for instance, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1, Origins to 1939 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 7-38; Alexander Dawson, “Histories and Memories of the Indian Boarding Schools in Mexico, Canada, and the United States,” Latin American Perspectives 39, no. 5 (2012), 80-99. There is also a large body of literature on residential schools for Indigenous boys and girls in Spanish colonies in the Americas; for instance, Lino Gómez Canedo, La educación de los marginados durante la época colonial. Escuelas y colegios para indios y mestizos en la Nueva España (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1982); Monique Alaperrine-Bouyer, La educación de las elites indígenas en el Perú colonial (Lima, Peru: Institut français d’études andines, 2007); Andrew Laird, Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024). However, the North American and the Latin American strands of scholarship have very rarely engaged in dialogue; see Peter B. Villella and Mónica Díaz, “Indoctrination and Inclusion: New Research on Native and Mestizo Educational Institutions in Spanish America,” Ethnohistory 69, no. 4 (2022), 371-79.
12 For example, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, The Unnatural History of American Indian Education (Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools, 1999), 3-6.
13 Quoted in Isabelle Poutrin, “Los derechos de los vencidos: Las capitulaciones de Granada (1491),” Sharq Al-Andalus 19 (2008-2010), 20.
14 Quoted in Francisco Javier Martínez Medina and Martin Biersack, Fray Hernando de Talavera, Primer Arzobispo de Granada. Hombre de Iglesia, Estado y Letras (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2011), 355.
15 Bert Carlstrom, “‘Induced to conform … to the conduct of Christians’: Pastoral Instruction and the Moriscos of Granada,” in Medieval Matters: Europe’s Premodern Religious Cultures in Honour of Miri Rubin, ed. Matthew S. Champion, Kati Ihnat, Eyal Poleg, and Milan Žonca (Brill, forthcoming).
16 Mark D. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 273.
17 Stefania Pastore, Un’eresia spagnola: Spiritualità conversa, alumbradismo e inquisizione (1449-1559) (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2004), 136.
18 Francisco Javier Martínez Medina, “Fray Hernando de Talavera: la corona y el altar en las bases de la organización del reino de Granada,” Revista del Centro de Estudios Históricos de Granada y su Reino 19 (2007), 40-42.
19 Alonso Fernández de Madrid, Vida de Fray Hernando de Talavera, primer arzobispo de Granada (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1992).
20 Despite their whitewashing of Talavera’s reputation, both authors are considered trustworthy sources of the archbishop’s actions and are cited by all Talavera scholars.
21 Some scholars started calling for a different assessment of Talavera as early as the 1970s. For instance, Garrido Aranda, Organización de la Iglesia, 66.
22 Talavera’s “Treatise against excess in clothing, footwear, food, and drink” is full of references to nature and reason. See Teresa de Castro, “El tratado sobre el vestir, calzar y comer del arzobispo Hernando de Talavera,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III, Historia Medieval 14 (2001), 60.
23 Carlstrom, “Induced to conform.”
24 Recent research is represented, among others, by Mark D. Johnston, “Gluttony and Convivencia: Hernando de Talavera’s Warning to the Muslims of Granada in 1496,” eHumanista 25 (2013), 122; Davide Scotto, “‘Neither through Habits, nor Solely through Will, but through Infused Faith:’ Hernando de Talavera’s Understanding of Conversion,” in Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam: Coercion and Faith in Premodern Iberia and Beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2019), 314-27; Carlstrom, “‘Induced to conform.”
25 For modern Talavera’s biographies, see Martínez Medina and Biersack, Fray Hernando; Isabella Iannuzzi, El poder de la palabra en el siglo XV: Fray Hernando de Talavera (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2009).
26 Isabella Iannuzzi, “Talavera y Nebrija: lenguaje para convencer, gramática para pensar,” Hispania: Revista española de historia 68, no. 228 (2008), 39-41.
27 Quintín Aldea Vaquero, “Hernando de Talavera, su testamento y su biblioteca,” in Homenaje a Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel OSB, vol. 1 (Silos: Abadía de Silos, 1976), 530-41.
28 On Talavera’s work as a writer, see José María Gómez Gómez, “Fray Hernando de Talavera y su obra literaria,” Alcalibe 7 (2007), 17-42; Julián Martín Abad, “Apunte brevísimo sobre la imprenta incunable granadina,” in La imprenta en Granada, ed. Cristina Peregrín Prado (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1997), 13-21.
29 Felipe Pereda, Las imágenes de la discordia. Política y poética de la imagen sagrada en la España del 400 (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2007), 249-402.
30 Víctor Infantes, De las primeras letras. Cartillas españolas para enseñar a leer de los siglos XV y XVI (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1998), 21-28; Danièle Alexandre-Bidon, “La lettre volée. Apprendre à lire à l’enfant au Moyen Age,” Annales 44, no. 4 (1989), 985-88.
31 Tarsicio de Azcona, “El tipo ideal de obispo en la Iglesia española antes de la rebelión luterana,” Hispania Sacra 11 (1958), 32.
32 For the Spanish titles and modern editions of treatises 6, 8, and 9, see Castro, “El tratado”; Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, “Gastar bien el tiempo y ordenar los oficios: consejos, instrucciones y ejemplos de fray Hernando de Talavera,” in Castilla y el mundo feudal: homenaje al profesor Julio Valdeón, vol. 3, ed. María Isabel del Val Valdivieso and Pascual Martínez Sopena (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2009), 269-94; Mark D. Johnston, Hernando de Talavera’s treatise on gossip and slander (1496): Introduction, text, and translation (Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2018).
33 Carlstrom, “Induced to conform.”
34 Ladero Quesada, “Gastar bien el tiempo,” 282.
35 Castro, “El tratado,” 21-24. See also Johnston, “Gluttony and Convivencia,” 122-24.
36 Rudolph M. Bell, How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 1-16; Aldo Scaglione, Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 256-57; Jorge Arditi, A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 1-4.
37 Anja-Silvia Goeing, Summus Mathematicus et Omnis Humanitatis Pater: The Vitae of Vittorino da Feltre and the Spirit of Humanism (London: Springer, 2014), 48.
38 On Erasmus’s attention to external behavior as a sign of internal disposition, see Hanan Yoran, Between Utopia and Distopia: Erasmus, Thomas More, and the Humanist Republic of Letters (Lanham. MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 70-77.
39 Jean-Luc Le Cam, “Teachers and Teaching,” in A Cultural History of Education in the Renaissance, ed. Jeroen J. H. Dekker (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 141-42.
40 Gregor Müller, Mensch und Bildung im italienischen Renaissance-Humanismus. Vittorino da Feltre und die humanistischen Erziehungsdenker (Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 1984), 296-98.
41 Goeing, Summus Mathematicus, 13-56.
42 Goeing, Summus Mathematicus, 27.
43 Goeing, Summus Mathematicus, 13-56.
44 Carlo de’ Rosmini, Idea dell’ottimo precettore nella vita e disciplina di Vittorino da Feltre e de’ suoi discepoli (Bassano: Tipografia Remondiniana, 1801), 249-476.
45 For modern editions of Vergerio, Piccolomini, da Verona, and Vegio’s treatises, see Craig W. Kallendorf, ed., Humanist Educational Treatises (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Maffeo Vegio, Maphei Vegii Laudensis De educatione liberorum et eorum claris moribus libri sex (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1933-1936). Mentions of virtus as external behavior are common throughout these treatises.
46 For a modern edition of both humanists’ texts, see Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, Tratado sobre técnica, método y manera de criar a los hijos, niños y jóvenes (1453) (Navarra: Cuadernos de Anuario Filosófico, 1999).
47 Susana Guijarro González, “Las escuelas de gramática en la castilla bajomedieval (siglox XIII-XV),” Studia Historica. Historia Medieval 36, no. 2 (2018), 10-13; Infantes, De las primeras letras, 16-28.
48 Fernández de Madrid, Vida de Fray Hernando de Talavera, primer arzobispo de Granada, 52-54; Martínez Medina and Biersack, Fray Hernando, 352-53.
49 Fernández de Madrid, Vida, 79-80; Martínez Medina and Biersack, Fray Hernando, 353.
50 Carlstrom, “Induced to conform.”
51 Jesús Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción de fray Fernando de Talavera para el régimen interior de su palacio,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 96 (1930), 785-835. Although Fernández de Madrid reports that Talavera wrote the Instrucción before becoming the archbishop, the descriptions of life at the palace in his biography and Núñez Muley’s testimony accord with Talavera’s Instrucción, which is the main source for the following paragraphs.
52 Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción,” 791, 811.
53 For a list of Old Christian alumni of Talavera’s school, see Fernández de Madrid, Vida, 118-22.
54 Rubiera Mata, “La familia morisca.”
55 Stephanie M. Cavanaugh, “Litigating for Liberty: Enslaved Morisco Children in Sixteenth-Century Valladolid,” Renaissance Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2017), 1282-320. The Imperial College of San Miguel, a later residential school for Morisco children in Granada, housed orphan children. See López, “El colegio.”
56 Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción,” 825-29.
57 Pereda, Las imágenes, 281-82.
58 Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción,” 793, 816, 823-24.
59 Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción,” 811-12, 824.
60 Sánchez de Arévalo, Manera de criar, 73-81, 111-15.
61 Fernández de Madrid, Vida, 80.
62 Fernández de Madrid, Vida, 79-80; on Nebrija and clothing, see Sánchez de Arévalo, Manera de criar, 101-4.
63 Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción,” 58-59, 67-69; Amanda Valdés Sánchez, “La misión granadina de Maryam: la construcción de una imaginería mariana para los moriscos granadinos y la versión talaveriana de la Vita Christi de Francesc Eiximenis,” Anuario de Estudios Medievales 50 (2020), 473-503.
64 Pereda, Las imágenes, 255-56; Carlstrom, “Induced to conform.”
65 Núñez Muley, A Memorandum, 80.
66 Núñez Muley, A Memorandum, 85, 87.
67 Núñez Muley’s manuscript can be found in Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 6176, ff. 311r-331v.
68 On Sánchez de Arévalo and leisure (otium), see Sánchez de Arévalo, Manera de criar, 37, 40, 66, 76-78, etc.
69 Sánchez de Arévalo, Manera de criar, 77-88, 108-11.
70 Sánchez de Arévalo, Manera de criar, 79, 114.
71 Sánchez de Arévalo, Manera de criar, 43-44, 71-74, 79-80, 104-8.
72 Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción,” 825-32.
73 Cristina Moya García, “La mesa de fray Hernando de Talavera a través de la Instrucción que ordenó para el regimiento de su casa,” eHumanista 51 (2022), 86-89.
74 Fernández de Madrid, Vida, 71-73.
75 Domínguez Bordona, “Instrucción,” 823.
76 López, “El colegio”; José Antonio Peinado Guzmán, “La Iglesia moderna en Granada: fin de la Reconquista y siglo XV. Los inicios del inmaculismo,” Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia Andalusa 7 (2014), 314, 327.
77 Gómez Canedo, La educación, 5-12.
78 Jorge Augusto Gamboa M., “La encomienda y las sociedades indígenas del nuevo reino de Granada: el caso de la provincial de Pamplona (1549-1650),” Revista de Indias 64, no. 232 (2004), 752-54.
79 On Enriquillo’s education, external behavior, appearance, and abilities in the Spanish language, see Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias III (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1986), 457-68. See also Ida Altman, “The Revolt of Enriquillo and the Historiography of Early Spanish America,” The Americas 63, no. 4 (2007), 589-90.
80 See the bibliography in note 11 above.
81 For a comparison between the residential schools in Hispaniola and those in early Mexico, see Laird, Aztec Latin, 116-23.
82 David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 52.