My objective has been to examine, selectively, auctoritates which Villena, who was working during the early days of the emergence of ‘vernacular humanism’ in Castile, used in his body of work, and to identify their possible sources. My approach assigns all authoritites used by Villena to seven key groups (e.g., classical, biblical) and eight categories of possible source works (e.g., florilegia, encyclopaedias), for which I determine relationships.

In what I consider the key component, I review the Latin extracts used by Villena in Consolación, Lepra and Aojamiento in an extensive exercise in which I identify more than 300 possible primary references. I find that approximately one third of these references can be attributed to Vincent de Beauvais’s Specula and his briefer works. This figure can be extended to more than 400 examples when secondary possible sources are taken into account. Other significant possible sources I identify include Auctoritates Aristotelis, popular in the Middle Ages, Compendium moralium notabilium (using the 1505 printed version Epytoma sapientie), Pietro Alighieri’s Commentum, and the Verona florilegium (of 1329). I have also made an assessment of the extent to which Auctoritates Aristotelis might be a possible source throughout Villena’s body of work, not solely for Aristotle, but also for Boethius and Seneca. In a third evaluation, I assess the possible sources of what I identify as a ‘double authority’ in Glosas 35 (Plato/Boethius and Vegetius).

As a result, I have formed the opinion that a conjectural notebook, similar in scope to the Count of Haro’s Vademecum, a collection of excerpts distilled from several other collections of excerpts, including, for example, Auctoritates Aristotelis, could have been compiled for Villena’s use, obviating his need to access more than 20 source works or necessitate his dependence on complete texts of the works to which he makes reference in his writings.

Overall, I judge that my work is significant in the study of Villena insofar as it establishes a substantially enhanced understanding of Villena’s use of authorities and his possible sources that is not dependent on the work of Cotarelo.