Las obras de Luciano samosatense, orador y filósofo excelete

Ms. 55 (M-164) of the Menéndez Pelayo Library in Santander, with its forty-four Lucianic translations, can be considered an important link for the study of the presence of Lucian of Samosata in the peninsula of the Golden Age; likewise -excepting the collective effort of the different Opera Omnia of the Samosata native, prepared in Europe throughout the 16th and 17th centuries- it constitutes the only collection so numerous of Lucianic translations made by the same translator, Juan de Aguilar Villaquirán (Escalona, ​​1564-1618), and translated from Latin -and Italian- into a vernacular language. Among the other Peninsular translators of Erasmus of Samosata during the Golden Age, Francisco de Enzinas stands out with five translated works, and Francisco Herrera Maldonado with eight. In Europe, notable examples include Vincentio Obsopoeo and Jacobo Moltzer, each with more than twenty translations, and Erasmus of Rotterdam with eighteen, all of which are Latin. Manuscript 55 also contains the Castilian translation—also unique in the Golden Age—of Erasmus of Rotterdam's Colloquy Charon.

The study and edition of Ms. 55 was carried out in several stages. First, the text was transcribed after establishing the editorial criteria. The modernization of the Golden Age text was chosen—always respecting the phonetics—to offer an easy and enjoyable reading experience. Part of the transcription was carried out, with difficulty, in Madrid using photocopies. For the illegible pages and the final revision of the text, the original was consulted directly in Santander, where the codicological description was also prepared and an attempt was made to find out how and when it began to form part of the Santander library's holdings.