The main aim of this paper is to offer an overview of the famous Spanish Reinassance Latin grammar Minerva seu de causis linguæ latinæ (1587) by Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas, known as 'el Brocense'. First, we compare his rationalistic approach to grammar with the more prescriptive and descriptivist one put forward by his distinguished predecessor, Antonio de Nebrija, whose work has been the authoritative grammatical reference in Spain for centuries. Second, after pointing out some of the major linguistic contributions made by el Brocense, among which his insightful theory of ellipsis deserves a special consideration, we exemplify his rationalistic methodology in the particular domain of verbs by showing some parallelisms between his analysis and classification of this basic predicative category and the ones currently found in some of our contemporary theories of grammar.