ARÉVALO, RODRIGO SÁNCHEZ DE

Spanish bishop and canonist-theologian; b. Santa María de Nieva, 1404; d. Rome, Oct. 4, 1470. His diplomatic career as well as his writings defended the papacy against conciliarist attacks after the Council of constance, promoted supreme spiritual and temporal papal primacy, and urged ecclesiastical reforms. Arévalo graduated from Salamanca (1428–29) with doctorates in civil and canon law. Between 1434 and 1439 he served as a member of the Castilian delegation to the Council of basel. By June 16, 1439, when that delegation under the leadership of Alfonso of Cartagena withdrew from Basel in protest over the council's attempt to depose Pope Eugene IV, Arévalo's anticonciliarist ideas had fully matured (see conciliarism). These he expressed in his De remediis schismatis, a tract resulting from diplomatic missions undertaken for his sovereign, John II of Castile. The tract promoted adherence to Eugene IV (d. 1447) in the courts of France, Germany, and Italy. Four similar works, written between 1447 and 1470, apply his basic attitudes to recurring instances of conciliarist agitation. On April 22, 1457, Pope Callistus III raised Arévalo to the Spanish bishopric of Oviedo. Later Pope Paul II made him bishop successively of Zamora, Calahorra, and Palencia. As royal procurator for King Henry IV, and then as adviser to Paul II, he resided in Rome, from 1460 to 1470, serving also as papal castellan of Castel San Angelo.

His ideas on the primacy of the pope were best formulated in his Libellus de libera et irrefragabili auctoritate

Romani Pontificis and De monarchia orbis; his ideas on reform in the church, in Defensorium ecclesiae et status ecclesiastici. His Latin letters to contemporary Italian humanists place Arévalo among Spain's foremost humanists (see humanism); his Castilian essays rank him first among his country's 15th-century writers in the vernacular. His writings are mostly unedited.

Bibliography: t. toni, Don Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo … su personalidad y actividades … (Madrid 1941). r. h. trame, R. S. de A., 1404–1470 (Washington 1958). r. b. tate, "R. S. de A. (1404–1470) and his Compendiosa Historia Hispanica, " Nottingham Mediaeval Studies 4 (1960) 58–80.

[r. h. trame]