Calle de Nieremberg

The name evokes Juan Eusebio Nieremberg y Ottín, born in Madrid in 1595, son of two servants who had come to Spain in the service of María of Austria, daughter of Charles V: the father from the Tyrol, the mother from Bavaria. He studied in Madrid, Alcalá and Salamanca, and in 1614 entered the Society of Jesus against his father’s wishes. Ordained a priest in 1623, he taught natural history and Sacred Scripture for years at the Colegio Imperial in Madrid. From his pen came one of the great successes of the Baroque, De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno, a book of meditation reprinted and translated across Catholic Europe. Alongside that ascetic vein he cultivated curiosity about the physical world, gathering the wonders of nature to the taste of the age. The street, in Ciudad Jardín, carries the German surname of that Madrid native.