Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y Pacheco (; 150314 August 1575), Spanish novelist, poet, diplomat and historian, born in Granada in 1503. Life He was a younger son of the second Conde de Tendilla Íñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones and Francisca Pacheco. His older siblings were: Luis de Mendoza y Pacheco, II Marquis de Mondejar, III Count Tendilla, governor of Granada; Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, first Viceroy of New Spain and later Peru; Bernardino de Mendoza y Pacheco, Captain of the Spanish Galleys most noted for the (temporary) victory over Tunis; Francisco de Mendoza y Pacheco, Bishop of Úbeda; and Maria Mendoza y Pacheco (María Pacheco), a leader of the 1519 Revolt of the Comuneros. The Marquis of Santillana was his great-grandfather. On leaving the University of Salamanca, Mendoza abandoned his intention of taking orders, served under Charles V in Italy, and attended lectures at the universities of Bologna, Padua and Rome. In 1537 he was sent to the Kingdom of England to arrange a marriage between Henry VIII and Christina of Denmark, the widowed Duchess of Milan, as well as a marriage between Prince Louis of Portugal and Mary Tudor. Despite the failure of his mission, he retained the confidence of the emperor, and in 1539 was appointed ambassador at Venice. During his years in Venice he built up his library, buying books printed by the Aldine Press and employing scribes to copy Greek manuscripts. He procured copies of the Greek manuscripts belonging to Cardinal Bessarion, and acquired other rare codices from the monastery of Mount Athos. The first printed Greek edition of the works of Josephus, based on texts from Mendoza's collection, was edited by the Flemish humanist Arnoldus Arlenius, who worked in Mendoza's library, and published in Basle by Hieronymus Froben in 1544. He acted for some time as military governor of Siena, represented Spain diplomatically at the Council of Trent, and in 1547 was nominated special plenipotentiary at Rome, where he remained till 1554. He was never a favourite of Philip II, and a quarrel with a courtier resulted in his banishment from court in June 1568. The remaining years of his life, which were spent at Granada, he devoted to the study of Arabic (which he had learned at home when growing up), to poetry, and to his history of the Moorish insurrection of 1568–1570. He died in 1575, leaving his library to the