CASTILLEJO, CRISTOBAL DE Spanish poet, was born at Ciudad Rodrigo. When quite young he entered a Carthusian monastery, but in 1525 he became secretary to Charles V.'s brother, Ferdinand of Austria, in whose service he spent the rest of his life, mostly outside Spain. He died and was buried at Vienna. Castillejo's poems are interesting, not merely because of their intrinsic excellence, but also as being the most powerful protest against the metrical innovations imported from Italy by Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega. He adheres to the native metres except when parodying the new school—as in the lines Contra los que dejan los metros castellanos. He excels by virtue of his charming simplicity and his ingenious wit, sometimes cyn ical and sometimes urbane. His plays are lost; the best text of his verses is that printed at Madrid in 1926.
See C. L. Nicolay, The Life and Works of Crist6bal de Castillejo (Iwo).