One of the minor mysteries of John Minsheu’s Pleasant and delightfull dialogues (1599) is the bit in the seventh dialogue where the sergeant lists four contemporary Machiavellian treatises which every good soldier should know should he wish to avert another Mühlberg:
cuatro o çinco tratados que andan de ello en lengua española, uno de el capitán Martín de Eguiluz y otro de Escalante otro de don Fernando de Cordua, y otro de don Bernardino de Mendoza, que allí lo verá bien pintado.
Three are easily identifiable – Martín de Eguiluz, Milicia, discurso y regla militar del capitán (1595), Bernardino de Escalante, Diálogos del arte militar (1595), Bernardino de Mendoza, Teórica y práctica de la guerra (1596) – but tracing Fernando de Cordua is slightly more complicated.
For me a strong candidate is Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (1453-1515). This is the gran capitán of Granada and the Italian wars, whose military reforms provided the basis for the tercios that dominated western Europe after his death, but who is only now known residually for his proverbial accounts.
Diego de Salazar’s Tratado de re militari (1536) plagiarises Machiavelli’s Arte della guerra (itself based on Vegecio and others), placing the dialogues in the mouths of “Don Gonçalo Fernandez de Cordoua llamado Gran capitan … y Don Pedro Manrrique de Lara,” and a popular edition was published in Brussels in 1590 in the context of a continuing personality cult of el gran capitán – the Rocabertis (1556) De gloria militaris palma, a revival of the tradition of Alexander, Hannibal and Scipio competing to be the best general down below, sounds ever so faintly amusing.
So, could Fernández and Fernando be used interchangeably in the late 16th century? In the 18th century the answer may be yes: for example, Robinson Crusoe’s islands, discovered in 1574, may be attributed to Juan Fernando or Fernández. However, I don’t know of any early modern description or prescription of surname etiquette. Any clues, anyone?
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The name list is an abbreviated version of this Mexican genealogy site’s.
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