Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo and later a cardinal, founded a university at Alcalá de Henares in 1499. Its first real piece of scholarly work was a six-volume printed Bible, the Complutensian Polyglot, assembled inside the university between 1502 and 1517, at enormous cost, by scholars he installed there for that purpose. In […]
The Argument Built Into a Page: The Complutensian Polyglot Bible Read More »
In December 1850, the people of Alcalá de Henares pooled their money and bought the empty buildings of the university their town had lost fourteen years earlier. That university had been founded in 1499 by Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, then Archbishop of Toledo and later a cardinal, and for more than three centuries the town
A University Founded in 1499: The History of the University of Alcalá Read More »
At the very top of the university’s façade, past four separate tiers of carved saints, emperors, and myths, a stone cross stands against the sky, and beneath it four figures sit along the roofline holding garlands: an old man and a young man on one side, an old woman and a young woman on the
The University He Never Saw: Reading Alcalá’s Façade, Tomb, and Courtyards Read More »
Walk through the door and the first thing that actually stops you isn’t the façade you just spent ten minutes photographing from outside. It’s the courtyard opening up in front of you all at once: three tiers of stone arcades rising overhead, grand enough to hold a cathedral’s worth of ambition, all of it wrapped
A Practical Guide to Visiting the University of Alcalá Read More »
