Cota de Maguaque, Rodrigo de
COTA DE MAGUAQUE, RODRIGO DE
COTA DE MAGUAQUE, RODRIGO DE (fl. 1470), Spanish Converso poet. He was related to Diego Arias de Avila, the chief paymaster of Castile. Probably in the 1480s, Cota de Maguaque, incensed at not being invited to an Arias family wedding, wrote an Epitalamio ("Epithalamium") satirizing the groom. This contains many allusions to Jewish customs of the period. Cota de Maguaque was not content merely to convert. He felt or feigned hatred toward his former coreligionists, and sided with the "Old Christians" in their persecution of the Conversos. This animosity inspired the bitter satire directed against him by Antón de *Montoro. Cota de Maguaque was long credited, erroneously, with the authorship of many important 15th-century Spanish poems. There is no doubt, however, about his composition of the Diálogo entre el amor y un viejo, the deep humanity of which is in marked contrast to the superficiality and artificiality of the poetry of the period.
bibliography:
A. Cortina, in: Revista de la Biblioteca, Archivo y Museo, 6 (1929), 151–65; Cotarelo y Mori, Boletín de la Real Academia Española, 13 (1926), 11–17; Baer, Spain, 2 (1966), 300–1, 311–2.
[Kenneth R. Scholberg]