← Fame through time1500-1599
The 16th century
Whose working lives fell in the 16th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 16th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Miguel de Cervantes22 decades - 2
Teresa of Ávila22 decades - 3
Lope de Vega22 decades - 4
John of the Cross22 decades - 5
Bartolomé de las Casas22 decades - 6
Garcilaso de la Vega22 decades - 7
Luis de Góngora22 decades - 8
Luis de León22 decades - 9
Alonso de Ercilla22 decades - 10
José de Acosta21 decades - 11
Mateo Alemán21 decades - 12
Juan de Mariana22 decades - 13
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés18 decades - 14
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda21 decades - 15
Cristóbal de Morales18 decades - 16
Francisco López de Gómara14 decades - 17
Lope de Rueda22 decades - 18
Antonio Guevara Noroñanot measured- - 19
Benito Arias Montano22 decades - 20
Toribio de Benavente19 decades - 21
Diego Durán15 decades - 22
Vicente Espinel22 decades - 23
Fernando de Herrera22 decades - 24
Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda17 decades - 25
Juan del Encina2 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.