Diego de Saavedra Fajardo
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Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (May 6, 1584, Algezares, in Murcia—1648) was a Spanish diplomat and man of letters.
Educated for the church at Salamanca, he took orders, and in 1606 was appointed secretary to Cardinal Gaspar Borgia, the Spanish ambassador at Rome.[1] Ultimately he became Spanish plenipotentiary at Regensburg in 1636 and at Münster in 1645. He returned to Spain in 1646 and took up the post of member of the Consejo de Indias to which he had been nominated in 1636, but shortly afterwards retired to a monastery, where he died.
In 1640 he published the book he is best known for: his anti-Machiavellian emblem book Empresas politicos [Political Maxims], Idea de un príncipe político cristiano, a hundred short essays on the education of a prince. These sententious works were written primarily for the son of Philip IV. It passed through a number of editions and was translated in several languages. An unfinished historical work, entitled Corona gatica, castellana, y austriaca politicamente ilustrada, appeared in 1646. Another work ascribed to Saavedra, the República literaria, was published posthumously in 1670; it is a satirical discussion on some of the leading characters in the ancient and modern world of letters.
Collected editions of his works appeared at Antwerp in 1677-1678, and again at Madrid in 1789-1790.
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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
