1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Saavedra Fajardo, Diego de

SAAVEDRA FAJARDO, DIEGO DE (1584-1648), diplomatist and man of letters, was born of a noble family at Algezares (Murcia) on the 6th of May 1584. Educated for the church at Salamanca, he took orders, and in 1606 was appointed secretary to Cardinal Gaspar Borgia, the Spanish ambassador at Rome. Ultimately he became Spanish plenipotentiary at Regensburg in 1636 and at Munster in 1645. He returned to Spain in 1646 and took up the post of member of the council of the Indies to which he had been nominated in 1636, but shortly afterwards retired to a monastery, where he died in 1648. In 1640 he published his Empresas politicas, ó idea de un principe politico cristiano, a hundred short essays on the education of a prince; these were written primarily for the son of Philip IV. Its sententious style is still admired in Spain. It passed through a number of editions and was translated in several languages, the English version being by Astry (2 vols., 8vo, London, 1700). An unfinished historical work, entitled Corona gótica, 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; see also vol. xxv. of the Bibl. de aut. esp. (1853).