Sancho de Elso y su Doctrina Cristiana “en castellano y vascuence”

Abstract

The present article studies the life and work of Sancho de Elso, a XVI-century Navarran priest and author of the first book written in the Basque language in the peninsular Basque Country. The book, a bilingual catechism written in Castilian and Basque, would seem to have been written in order to mitigate the protestant current beginning to reach these lands in the mid-XVI century. The Spanish monarchs, aware of the damage that this change in religious tendency could cause their subjects, intensified catholic indoctrination and it was in this area that Sancho de Elso played an important role; his reputation as a preacher saw him travel to more than a thousand places in which, perhaps, nobody had ever addressed the faithful in their own language.