Elio Antonio Cala y Jarana, better known by the place name of the town where he was born, Nebrija, was a philologist and humanist who developed his career in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
After beginning his studies in his native town, he spent five years at the University of Salamanca and then went to study in Italy, where he enjoyed a scholarship at the Royal College of Spain at the University of Bologna.
His Italian experience made him absorb the humanist ideas of the time and increased his desire to be able to implement them in the Spanish university.
On 22nd January 1476, he took up the chair of Prima de Gramática in Salamanca. When he began to exercise his functions, he realised that he could not offer his students any manual in accordance with his ideas and his method. He therefore decided to write his Introductiones latinae, which he printed in Salamanca in 1481. In the following years and centuries, numerous editions were made. He himself, while experimenting, made constant improvements to this important work.
The text is accompanied, from the first edition, by a Latin-Spanish vocabulary which is usually called Lexicon seu parvum vocabularium [ in quo breviter invenies vocabula scolasticis valde necessaria ]. This vocabulary grew in successive editions.
In 1495 the third edition of the Introductiones appeared, which is the definitive version of the work. To this was added a series of grammatical commentaries on the five books of the grammar. It is preceded by a laudatory preface addressed to the Catholic Queen.
In 1492 the Gramática sobre la lengua castellana was printed. Contrary to what had happened with the introductions, the first grammar devoted to a Romance language did not have much impact in its time and it was not until the 18th century that it received attention. The Latin-Spanish Dictionary dates from the same year.
