For the time being we have left the form of the name, birth and death places and dates as they are in Italian edit16, because that is how they identify the author of the De auctoritate pontificis max. et episcoporum iurisdictione (TUI 1584 t. 13.1). DBE has a Francisco de Vargas Mexía, b. Toledo 1500, d. Toledo a. 20.iv.1566, ‘Regente, Jurista, Teólogo, Embajador, Consejero de Estado, Fiscal del Consejo Real de Castilla’, who certainly looks as if he may be the same person, but the reconciliation with the information in edit16 awaits consultation with the paper edition of DBE. There are reasons to doubt the death date of 1560 in edit16. The De auctoritate was first published in Roma in 1563 with the title De episcoporum iurisdictione et pontifici maximi auctoritate. It describes the author as a councillor of the Spanish king and his orator before Pius IV. The editor’s preface claims that what he is publishing is a speech actually given before the pope and the cardinals, which the pope then sent to the fathers of the council of Trent and then urged V. to prepare for publication. Pius IV did not convoke the last session of the council of Trent until January of 1562. The preface is sufficiently vague about dates that it is possible that the speech was given in 1560, but, assuming that the story is true, it would more comfortably fit in 1561 or later, when V., supposedly, was dead.

Source: CERL Thesaurus.

Entry by: CD 22.v.2019

TUI database