The De expensis et meliorationibus (TUI 1584 t. 17) was first published in Alcalá de Henares [prov. Madrid] in 1578. It enjoyed a large printing success, being reprinted many times and well into the 17th century. We have found no copy of the first edition online, but the edition of Antwerpen of 1586 (online) seems to contain the original dedicatory epistle to the bishop of Patti [prov. Messina, Sicilia], the president of senate of all Spain (roughly equivalent to the parlement of Paris). G. there calls himself ‘Ioan. Gars. Gallecus’, i.e. Juan García Gallego, and he is also so called on the title page. The title page adds the he ‘in Galleco olim, nunc in Supremo Hispaniae Senatu causarum forensium relator [est]’. We have no reason to doubt any of this, nor do we have any particular reason to doubt what G. says in the dedicatory epistle, that the work is one of his youth, done when he was a student at Salamanca. What is missing is any connection with the ancient Galician noble family of Saavedra, something that virtually every library cataloguer adds, perhaps by association with the 17th-century Spanish jurist, sometimes called ‘the younger’, who does seem to have been named Juan García de Saavedra.

Source: Not in DBE. CERL Thesaurus.

Entry by: CD 22.v.2019

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