Aleman
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MATTEO (ä-lā-män'), a Spanish novelist, born in Seville about 1550. For some time an official in the royal treasury, he resigned or was dismissed, and about 1608 went to Mexico. His fame rests on the satirical romance, "The Life and Deeds of the Picaroon Gusman de Alfarache," one of the most famous representatives of the "picaresque" novel. Its first part, under the title of "Watch-Tower of Human Life," appeared in 1599. The work was translated into every European language, and, in 1623, even into Latin. He died in Mexico after 1609. ALEMANNI or ALAMANNI, a confederacy of several German tribes which at the commencement of the 3d cent after Christ, lived near the Roman terri tory, and came then and subsequently into conflict with the imperial troops. Caracalla first fought with them in 213, but did not conquer them; Severus was likewise unsuccessful. About 250 they began to cross the Rhine westward, and in 255 they overran Gaul along with the Franks. In 259 a body of them was defeated in Italy at Milan, and in the following year they were driven out of Gaul by Postumus. In the 4th century they crossed the Rhine and ravaged Gaul, but were severely defeated by the Emperor Julian and driven back. Subsequently they occupied a considerable territory on both sides of the Rhine; but at last Clovis broke their power in 496 and deprived them of a large portion of their possessions. Part of their territory was latterly formed into a duchy called Alemannia or Suabia. It is from the Alemanni that the French have derived their names for Germans and Germany.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's put Mateo Alemán's birth "about 1550" and had him dying in Mexico "after 1609"; archival work since has fixed his baptism at Seville in 1547 and his death in New Spain around 1615, after he published his Ortografía castellana in Mexico City in 1609 — the first book on Spanish spelling printed in the Americas. Modern criticism also stresses what the 1921 notice omits: Alemán came of converso (Jewish-convert) stock, and Guzmán de Alfarache is now read as much for that outsider's view of Counter-Reformation Spain as for its rogue's adventures. On the Alemanni, the narrative of Caracalla, Julian and Clovis still stands, though historians no longer treat them as a fixed "confederacy of several German tribes" so much as a shifting coalition that formed on the Roman frontier itself. A stone altar unearthed at Augsburg in 1992 records a Roman victory over Germanic raiders in 260, giving hard evidence for exactly the decade of Rhine crossings the entry describes.
Written for this edition, 2026.