The Spanish Editions of Ioannes Dantiscus’ Religious Hymns as a Tool of the Publisher’s Self-Promotion

Abstract

The Spanish editions of Dantiscus’ minor work Hymni aliquot ecclesiastici (Cracow, 1548), submitted for publication many years after the author’s death by his son-in-law Diego Gracián de Alderete, in fact, are not a reprint of the Cracow edition but a compilation of three prints: Hymni aliquot ecclesiastici (1548), Dantiscus’ poem De nostrorum temporum calamitatibus (1530), and the Genethliacon for Dantiscus penned by Caspar Ursinus (1522). Gracián uses them to build a monument to his father-in-law’s outstanding achievements and a testimony to his impeccable morals, supplementing them with a panegyrical preface and making significant changes to the poem by Ursinus and to introductory texts taken from the original editions.