The first book was printed in Valencia as early as the year 1474; but the
prospects of literature remained dark until the termination of the
Moorish wars. On the capture of Granada it was thought necessary to
obliterate the memory of the Koran, and scores of thousands of volumes,
or a million as some say, were destroyed by Cardinal Ximenes in a
celebrated _auto-da-fe_. About three hundred Arabic works on medicine
were preserved for the new library which the Cardinal was founding in his
University of Alcala. The Cardinal spent vast sums in gathering materials
for his Mozarabic Missal and the great Complutensian Polyglott. It is
said that to avoid future criticism he gave his Hebrew originals to be
used in the making of fireworks, just as Polydore Vergil was accused in
our country of burning the monastic chronicles out of which he composed
his history, and as many Italian writers were believed to have destroyed
their classical authorities. When Petrarch lost his Cicero, it was
thought that Alcionio might have stolen it for his treatise upon exile;
but we should probably be right in rejecting all these stories together
as mere calumnies and 'forgeries of jealousy.'
Antonio Lebrixa, who worked under the Cardinal till his death in 1522,
had done much to revive a knowledge of books, and may be regarded as the
principal agent in the introduction of the new Italian learning. His
pupil Ferdinand Nunez, or Nonnius as he is often called, carried on the
good work at Salamanca, and left his great library to the University.
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