Juan De Segovia and the Lessons of History

Abstract

Juan Alfonso de Segovia (d. 1458), commonly known as Juan de Segovia, was a Spanish theologian who was one of Europe’s leading intellectuals of his time. Though his is not a household name, he is known to medievalists whose research concerns either Christian-Muslim dialogue and encounter or the Council of Basel (1431–1449). Segovia was a student and then a professor at the university in Salamanca in the early fifteenth century before he left in late 1431 or early 1432 to travel to Rome on university business. From Rome, he headed directly to Basel, and he never returned to Castile. Unlike many of his colleagues, who fought at Basel to restrain the power of the papacy but transferred their loyalties to the pope after it became apparent that the reformers’ aims were not going to prevail, he remained loyal to the council to the end. He spent the last few years of his life in a small Benedictine priory in Aiton, in the alpine duchy of Savoy.