Crotalón

The "Crotalón" (or "Crótalon"), a dialogue attributed to Cristóbal de Villalón, is a work written in the mid-16th century, coinciding with a time of growing tension between the ideas of the Reformation and those born against it in Rome and in The Vatican. The text, which takes up the plot of "El gallo" by Luciano de Samósata, presents us with a sharp and satirical portrait of social vices, finished off by a final chapter in which the dialogue becomes a novel diatribe against the state of affairs of the European and Spanish society of his time. The renewed interpretation that the author makes of Luciano, without separating himself from a solid evangelical foundation, also supports a revision of moral customs and places him in the line of the great reformers of Renaissance Europe.