Los studia humanitatis según Alonso de Cartagena

Alfonso de Cartagena was the first Spanish author, who used the term studia humanitatis. He did it three times: in a letter to the milanese humanist Pier Candido Decembrio (1438), in the Duodenarium (1442), which was dedicated to Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, and in the Defensorium unitatis christianae (1449), referring to King John II. Don Alonso doesn't provide an explicit definition of the term. It doesn't refer to specific contents, although a vague relationship with ethics, with the translation of Greek authors and, more vaguely, with the liberal arts can be identified. It points rather to intellectual attitudes, the assessment of debate and discussion, the exercise of the word in a dialogic situation. Cartagena doesn't identify studia humanitatis with the use of Latin, because he includes in it the literary activity of his friend Pérez de Guzmán. The use that Cartagena made of it is a very interesting document of the spread of humanism in Spain