A Biscayan jurist in the Renaissance

Summary Fortún García de Ercilla (Fortunius) was a quite known jurist in his century, quoted and discussed by some significative authors of his time. He was also a politician with relevant mandates in the service of Emperor Charles v . However, his name faded away in the following centuries. It is only very recently that his contributions to different areas of law, as well as to Castilian and Navarrese politics, have been vindicated. This article a) begins with a brief outline of his hitherto insufficiently well-known biography; b) proposes an updated list of his written works, including news of two recent findings, and places him as an actor in the communicative process that sixteenth century law was; and c) defends the hypothesis that the political and legal culture of his homeland, and the specific position of his lineage, allows a better understanding of some of the implications the topic of his first work, De Pactis (1514), had for him.