Libraries

Juan de Zabaleta was a Spanish chronicler and writer of the seventeenth century, who belonged to the court of King Felipe IV and wrote, among many other works, a treatise of customs where he described the vices and frequent characters in Madrid life and in the royal court. In this treatise he enumerates personalities like the glutton, the poet, the sleeper, the avaricious, among others, making brief comments alternating between characters and narrator. This book achieves the function of being the conscience and defender of morality. This work has been considered a very important work of the Spanish Golden Age, because it explains many habits and daily tasks of the time, which had never been recorded so directly elsewhere.

Cardenas mentions this book and this author in his final section, where he concludes with objections that he calls notes. In the mentioned notes he expands himself in a long and hard critic to the vices of his society and he does not have the slightest objection in condemning them. The book of Zabaleta serves as a reference to end this series of attacks, raising the argument that more reasons could be found, if you want to explore in more detail the matter. This is another of the references, as curious as subtle, of the plural and interdisciplinary understanding – if the term is correct- of the intellect of Santiago de Cárdenas.