About: Francisco Cervantes de Salazar

Francisco Cervantes de Salazar (1514? – 1575) was a Spanish man of letters and rector of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, founded in 1551. He was born and raised in Toledo, Spain. He first attended Alejo Venegas’s Grammar School and then studied at the University of Salamanca. In 1539 he accompanied Licenciado Pedro Giron to the Low Countries where he met Juan Luis Vives. In 1546 he published a collection of three works, Apólogo de la ociosidad y el trabajo by Luis Mejia, Introducción y camino de la sabiuduría by J. L. Vives, and Diálogo de la dignidad del hombre by Pérez de Oliva, which Cervantes completed by adding almost two-thirds to the original draft by Oliva.