Character guide

Lazarillo de Tormes

major

Also known as Lazarillo, Lazaro, Lazaro de Tormes, Poor Lazaro

Born to a thief and a washwoman and passed along as a servant, Lazarillo learns early that his belly, not his honor, sets the terms of each day. His voice is sly, self-deprecating, and startlingly modern: he confesses shame without surrendering his appetite for a better life. Because he narrates the early episodes as a grown man addressing a patron, every childhood trick doubles as evidence in his own defense, making the reader his confidant and his judge.

The Blind Man

major

Also known as the blind man

Lazarillo's first master, he survives on alms and cleverness, keeping his wine and sausages under lock while his servant starves beside him. He is cruel, shrewd, and oddly instructive, beating the boy for every failed trick yet sharpening the very wits that will eventually undo him. Their contest of appetite and vigilance sets the book's comic engine in motion and gives Lazarillo his first hard lesson in self-reliance.

The Priest

major

Also known as the priest, the miserly priest

Lazarillo's second master, he embodies the gap between the Church's plenty and its ministers' greed, keeping a chest of loaves while his servant gnaws hunger. His obsession with accounting turns charity into arithmetic, and the boy's desperate schemes to reach the bread become a small war of attrition. This episode sharpens the book's anticlerical bite and shows Lazarillo graduating from petty theft to calculated survival.

The Squire

major

Also known as my master, my good master

Lazarillo's third master, he owns nothing but his lineage and a carefully brushed coat, and he would rather go hungry than admit poverty to a servant. For the first time the boy must beg on someone else's behalf, discovering that pride can be as ravenous as any stomach. Their strange, tender arrangement complicates the novel's satire, turning contempt into something closer to pity and giving Lazarillo a mirror of his own precarious respectability.

The Friar

minor

Also known as my fourth master

Lazarillo's fourth master, a friar who abandons him after a short time.

The Bull Seller

supporting

Also known as my fifth master

Lazarillo's fifth master, he travels from town to town hawking bulls of pardon, and when sales lag he stages a heavenly rebuke with a confederate and a conveniently timed fit. His fraud exposes how easily faith can be manufactured for a crowd, and Lazarillo watches the machinery of deception from the inside. The episode is among the book's most daring satires, and it shows the boy learning that the greatest tricks are played on whole congregations at once.

The Chaplain

minor

Also known as my seventh master

Lazarillo's seventh master, a chaplain who gives him a steady job.

The Archpriest

supporting

Also known as the Archpriest, the archpriest

The Archpriest of San Salvador becomes Lazarillo's patron in his adult years, arranging his marriage to a servant woman and securing him a modest post. His generosity is real but tangled, and the town's whispers about his interest in Lazarillo's wife hover unresolved over the household. He matters because he represents the compromise Lazarillo finally accepts: comfort purchased with silence, a prosperity that asks him not to look too closely at its source.

The Archpriest's Maid

supporting

Also known as your master's wife

The woman Lazarillo takes as wife at the Archpriest's urging, whose suspicious household arrangements keep the town's tongues wagging and his honor on edge.

Diego Hurtado de Mendoza

supporting

Also known as Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Don Diego de Mendoza, Diego, Don Diego

The nobleman-poet to whom Lazarillo de Tormes is traditionally attributed, a Mendoza scion whose lineage runs from chivalric battlefields to the Marquis of Santillana's verse.

Íñigo López de Mendoza

minor

Also known as Mendoza, Inigo, Lopez de Mendoza, Inigo Lopez, Don Inigo Lopez de Mendoza

Marquis of Santillana, a prominent ancestor in the Mendoza family history.

Doña Eleanor Hurtado

minor

Also known as Hurtado, Eleanor Hurtado, Doña Eleanor

A female ancestor in the Mendoza family tree, mentioned in the genealogy.

Maria de Haro

minor

Also known as Maria

A family member in the Mendoza lineage, mentioned in the genealogy.

Juan de Luna

minor

Also known as Luna

A person mentioned in the context of the book's publication or translation history.

Abel Jeffes

minor

A printer or publisher associated with an early edition of the book.

David Rowlands

minor

A translator of the book into English, mentioned in the translation history.

Charles V

minor

Also known as Charles

Holy Roman Emperor, mentioned as a historical figure in the narrative.

Cervantes

minor

The famous Spanish author, mentioned in the introductory material.

Don Diego Lopez de Pacheco

minor

Also known as Don Diego Lopez, Don Lopez, Diego

A nobleman mentioned in the Mendoza family context.

The Painter

minor

Also known as my sixth master

Lazarillo's sixth master, a painter who leaves town quickly.

Juan de Mendoza

minor

Also known as Juan I, Don Juan de Mendoza

A historical figure in the Mendoza family lineage mentioned in the introductory chapters.

Doña Maria Laso de Mendoza

minor

Also known as Doña Maria, Maria de Mendoza, de Mendoza

Another female ancestor in the Mendoza family, noted in the introductory chapters.

Don Garcia de Toledo

minor

Also known as Toledo

A historical figure mentioned in the introductory chapters.