Sixteenth-century Seville was a learned, cosmopolitan city in which education focused on the subjects of the trivium, including rhetoric. Imitation of a model and transfer by analogy were important elements of rhetoric, the goal of which was to teach, persuade, and move. Juan Bermudo's five-volume treatise Declaración de instrumentos (1555) presents its theoretical remarks in the language of rhetoric, offering examples from Morales as models to be followed. Morales, in turn, praised Bermudo's treatise for showing theory and practice "coming together in consonance and proportion." Morales's own Missarum liber secundus of 1544 includes a full range of stylistic traits, with the individual masses arranged in a proper rhetorical scheme.

Works: Cristóbal de Morales: Missarum liber secundus (240-43).

Index Classifications: 1500s

Contributed by: Felix Cox