José Amador de los Ríos y Serrano (30 April 1818 – 17 February 1878) was a Spanish intellectual, primarily a historian and archaeologist of

art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

and

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

. He was a graduate in history of the

Complutense University of Madrid The Complutense University of Madrid (, UCM; ) is a public research university located in Madrid. Founded in Alcalá in 1293 (before relocating to Madrid in 1836), it is one of the oldest operating universities in the world, and one of Spain's ...

. In 1844 he was the secretary of the Comisión Central de Monumentos. With Antonio de Zabaleta, he co-directed the ephemeral ''Boletín Español de Arquitectura'', the first Spanish journal dedicated exclusively to architecture, published only from 1 June to December 1846.José Enrique García Melero (2002), ''Literatura española sobre Artes Plásticas: Bibliografía aparecida en España entre los siglos XVI y XVIII'' (Encuentro), 176. In 1852 he published the complete works of

Íñigo López de Mendoza Inigo is a masculine given name deriving from the Castilian rendering (Íñigo) of the medieval Basque name Eneko. Ultimately, the name means "my little (man)". While mostly seen among the Iberian diaspora, it also gained a limited popularity ...

. Amador de los Ríos first used the term '' mudejarismo'' in 1859 to describe a form of architectural decoration. In 1861 he published the first volume of ''Historia crítica de la literatura española'', the first general history of Spanish literature written in Spain.David Thatcher Gies (2004), ''The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 28–30 The work remained incomplete. Ideologically, Amador de los Ríos, influenced by liberal and romantic, conceived of Spain as a unified entity, simultaneously

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

and Castilian. He saw it as a

constitutional monarchy Constitutional monarchy, also known as limited monarchy, parliamentary monarchy or democratic monarchy, is a form of monarchy in which the monarch exercises their authority in accordance with a constitution and is not alone in making decisions. ...

(though it was not yet established) connected to its past by an ''idea luminosa'' (luminous idea). Countering foreign historians who regarded medieval Spain as a backwater, he also defended Spanish literature as the foremost among those that emerged after the

Fall of Rome The fall of the Western Roman Empire, also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome, was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vast ...

. Though he only covered the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, he demonstrated that he regarded Spanish American literature as part of the Spanish tradition. In another work, ''Historia social, política y religiosa de los judíos de España'', he included Spanish

Jewish literature Jewish literature includes works written by Jews on Jewish themes, literary works written in Jewish languages on various themes, and literary works in any language written by Jewish writers. Ancient Jewish literature includes Biblical literature ...

as part of the tradition, considering it "bloomed" on Spanish soil. Unlike

Adolf de Castro Adolf (also spelt Adolph or Adolphe, Adolfo, and when Latinised Adolphus) is a given name with German origins. The name is a compound derived from the Old High German ''Athalwolf'' (or ''Hadulf''), a composition of ''athal'', or ''adal'', mean ...

, however, he did not condemn the

Spanish Inquisition The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition () was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile and lasted until 1834. It began toward the end of ...

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Amador De Los Rios, Jose 1818 births 1878 deaths Spanish art historians Complutense University of Madrid alumni 19th-century Spanish historians