Juan de Castellanos

Juan de Castellanos was born on 9 March 1522 in Alanís, in Andalusia. As a teenager he crossed to the Indies, served as a soldier on the coast of Venezuela, in the Antilles and in New Granada, worked in the pearl fisheries, searched for El Dorado with the others, then was ordained a priest in 1559. In the early sixties he obtained the benefice of Tunja, where he would remain more than forty years, had the cathedral built and died in 1607. There he questioned the survivors of the campaigns in which he had taken part.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryElegías de varones ilustres de IndiasJuan de Castellanos · 1589not translated into EnglishLiteraturePublic domain