Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora

From Hispanopedia
Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora
BornAugust 15, 1645
Mexico City, New Spain
DiedAugust 22, 1700 (aged 55)
Mexico City, New Spain
Writing career
LanguageCastilian

Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (Mexico City; August 15,[1] 1645 – August 22, 1700) was an intellectual, polymath, historian and writer of New Spain, belonging to the Society of Jesus, who held numerous academic and government posts in New Spain.

He was also a cosmographer and professor of mathematics at the Mexican Academy.[2] He directed the excavations at Teotihuacan in 1675, the first archaeological excavations carried out in Mexico during the viceregal period.[3][4] In 1693 he published the first newspaper of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Mercurio Volante.[5]

Biography

He was the second of nine siblings (four girls and five boys) and was related to the famous Spanish Baroque and culterano poet Luis de Góngora. His mother was Dionisia Suárez de Figueroa y Góngora, born in Seville. His father was Don Carlos Sigüenza, born in Madrid, who had been a tutor to the royal family in Spain and who, upon emigrating to the New World in 1640, joined the viceregal bureaucracy for the rest of his life. With a secure job and teaching experience, he had no difficulty providing his children himself with the basic education they needed.

On May 17, 1660, Sigüenza began his studies in Tepotzotlán with the Jesuit fathers, and had to wait until the age of 15 to become a novice. In 1662 he continued his studies at the Colegio del Espíritu Santo in the City of Puebla, and that same year he took his simple vows. In 1667, because of youthful indiscipline, he was asked to leave the order (see Peraza-Rugeley). He returned to Mexico City and entered the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico.[6] In 1668 his text Primavera indiana, inspired by the Virgin of Guadalupe, was published. That same year he asked Juanito Pablo Oliva to be readmitted to the Jesuit order, but his request was rejected. In 1671, after carrying out his astronomical observations, he published his first lunar calendar and almanac. In 1672 he won the chair of astrology and mathematics, a post that Diego Rodríguez had held 30 years earlier; he held it for 20 years, making notable contributions, while simultaneously serving as chaplain of the Hospital del Amor de Dios.[7] At that institution he stood out as one of the principal promoters of Mathematics in New Spain. From 1671 to 1701 (posthumously), he wrote an almanac every year (A. Margarita Peraza-Rugeley has studied his surviving almanacs extensively in her 2013 book.[8]). In 1673 he was ordained a priest. By then he had been asked by the French King Louis XIV to join his court, an offer he declined. He did, however, accept the post of royal cosmographer to Charles II, for whom he made the first general map of Mexico in 1675.[9]

In 1681 Sigüenza wrote the book Manifiesto filosófico contra los Cometas, in which he sought to calm the superstitious fear that this cosmic phenomenon provoked in people. By separating superstition from observable facts, Sigüenza was in effect separating astrology from astronomy, as we conceive of them today. The Jesuit Eusebio Francisco Kino strongly criticized this text from an Aristotelian-Thomist point of view and in 1681 published the Exposicion Astronomica de el Cometa, Que el Año de 1680. por los meʃes de Noviembre, y Diziembre, y eʃte Año de 1681. por los meʃes de Enero y Febrero, ʃe ha viʃto en todo el mundo, y le ha obʃervado en la Ciudad de Cadiz, el P...., of which there is a modern edition by Montané Martí;[10] but, far from being intimidated, Sigüenza responded by publishing another work, Libra astronómica y philosophica (1690), in which he rigorously grounded his arguments about comets in the most up-to-date scientific knowledge of his time; against Father Kino's Thomism and Aristotelianism, he cited authors such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe.

Until recently it was thought that the work Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez[11]—published by Sigüenza in 1690 and describing the voyage around the world of Alonso Ramírez, a Spaniard native to San Juan de Puerto Rico—was a fiction invented by Sigüenza. However, José F. Buscaglia Salgado Archived 2022-10-27 at the Wayback Machine[12] and Fabio López Lázaro[13] have offered documentary evidence drawn from various archives proving that Infortunios is a dense and complex biographical account based on the life of a real, though very elusive, person. It was Buscaglia who, in 2009, after more than a century of controversy over the genre and authorship of the work, put an end to the debate by presenting incontestable evidence of the existence of Alonso Ramírez. Among other documents, Buscaglia presented in his Cuban edition of the Infortunios the marriage certificate of Alonso and Francisca Xaviera and the report of the Governor of Manila informing the King of the capture of the frigate Nuestra Señora de Aránzazu, captained by Ramírez and captured by English pirates, among them the famous William Dampier, on Tuesday, March 4, 1687.[14] In addition, after three expeditions to the coast of Bacalar, Buscaglia has located the exact spot where his vessel was shipwrecked and, as he reports in his bilingual edition of the Infortunios/ Misfortunes, also its remains.[15][16]

The heavy rains of 1691 flooded the fields and threatened to inundate the city, and a blight, a consequence of all that humidity, consumed the cornfields. In his writings Sigüenza mentioned this blight, known as Chiahuiztli, the Nahuatl word for corn rust. As a consequence of this disaster, the following year there was a severe food shortage that provoked a popular riot. The crowds looted the shops of the European Spaniards, setting numerous fires in the government buildings. Sigüenza managed to rescue the records of the city's Ayuntamiento from the fire, saving the city from a great loss. The riot was put down, as usual, with violence. Sigüenza's calculations put the number of participants in the riot at some ten thousand.

As royal cosmographer of New Spain he drew hydrological maps of the Valley of Mexico. In 1693 he was sent by the Viceroy Gaspar de la Cerda y Mendoza, Count of Galve, to accompany Admiral Andrés de Pez on a voyage of exploration to the northern Gulf of Mexico and especially to the Florida peninsula, where he drew maps of Pensacola Bay and of the mouth of the Mississippi River.

In his last years he devoted much time to collecting material for a history of ancient Mexico. Unfortunately, his death interrupted that work, which was not taken up again until 80 years later, when criollo consciousness, represented by Francisco Javier Clavijero, had developed enough to take an interest in the identity of its nation.

On his death he donated his valuable library and his scientific instruments to the Colegio Máximo de San Pedro y San Pablo of the Society of Jesus (in whose chapel he was buried, since he had been admitted into the order shortly before dying). He also ordered that his body be handed over to medicine, so that the cause of his death could be studied.[17]

Works

  • Glorias de Querétaro en la nueva congregación eclesiástica de María Santísima de Guadalupe con que se ilustra y en el suntuoso templo que dedicó a su obsequio Don Juan Caballero y Ocio, presbítero, comisario de corte del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición (Mexico, Viuda de Bernardo Calderón, 1680).[18]
  • Teatro de virtudes políticas que constituyen a un príncipe, advertidas en los monarcas antiguos del mexicano imperio, con cuyas efigies se hermoseó el arco triunfal que la Muy Noble, Muy Leal, Imperial Ciudad de México erigió para el digno recibimiento en ella del Excelentísimo Señor Virrey Conde de Paredes, Marqués de la Laguna, etc. (Mexico, Viuda de Bernardo Calderón, 1680).[19]
  • Triunfo parténico que en glorias de María Santísima, inmaculadamente concebida, celebró la Pontificia, Imperial y Regia Academia Mexicana en el bienio que como su rector la gobernó el Doctor Don Juan de Narváez, Tesorero General de la Santa Cruzada en el Arzobispado de México y al presente catedrático de Prima de Sagrada Escritura (Mexico, Juan de Ribera, 1683).[20]
  • Paraíso occidental, plantado y cultivado por la liberal benéfica mano de los muy católicos y poderosos reyes de España, nuestros señores, en su magnífico Real Convento de Jesús María de México, de cuya fundación y progresos y de las prodigiosas maravillas y virtudes con que, exhalando olor suave de perfección, florecieron en su clausura la V. M. Marina de la Cruz y otras ejemplarísimas religiosas... (Mexico, Juan de Ribera, 1684).[21]
  • Libra astronómica y filosófica en que Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Cosmógrafo y Matemático Regio en la Academia Mexicana, examina no sólo lo que a su Manifiesto filosófico contra los cometas opuso el R. P. Eusebio Francisco Kino, de la Compañía de Jesús, sino lo que el mismo R. P. opinó y pretendió haber demostrado en su Exposición astronómica del cometa del año de 1681 (Mexico, Viuda de Bernardo Calderón, 1690).[22]
  • Infortunios que Alonso Ramírez, natural de la ciudad de San Juan de Puerto Rico, padeció, así en poder de ingleses piratas que lo apresaron en las islas Filipinas, como navegando por sí solo y sin derrota hasta varar en la costa de Yucatán, consiguiendo por este medio dar vuelta al mundo (Mexico, Viuda de Bernardo Calderón, 1690).
  • Trofeo de la justicia española en el castigo de la alevosía francesa, que al abrigo de la Armada de Barlovento, ejecutaron los Lanceros de la isla de Santo Domingo en los que de aquella nación ocupan sus costas, debido todo a providentes órdenes del Excelentísimo Señor Don Gaspar de Sandoval Cerda Silva y Mendoza, Conde de Galve, Virrey de la Nueva España (Mexico, Viuda de Bernardo Calderón, 1691).
  • Oriental planeta evangélico, epopeya sacro-panegírica al Apóstol grande de las Indias S. Francisco Xavier (Mexico, María de Benavides, 1700).

Modern editions

  • Manuel Romero de Terreros gathered some of Sigüenza's works, which he called Relaciones Históricas, and which appear in the 1954 and 1972 editions of the Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario.
  • Obras históricas, edited with a prologue by José Rojas Garcidueñas. Mexico, Porrúa, 1983.
  • Poemas. Irving Leonard. Preliminary study by E. Abreu Gómez, Madrid, Biblioteca de Historia Hispano-Americana, 1931.
  • Seis obras, prologue by Irving Leonard. Edition, notes and chronology by William Bryant, Caracas, Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1984.
  • Historias del Seno Mexicano, José Francisco Buscaglia Salgado, ed., intro. Havana: Casa de las Américas, 2009.
  • Alboroto y Motín de los indios de la Ciudad de México, 1692. In Centro de Estudios Literarios, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas de la UNAM. Literatura Mexicana. Vol. 20, no. 2, 2009.
  • Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez: Edición crítica de José F. Buscaglia, José F. Buscaglia Salgado, ed., intro., Madrid: Polifemo/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2011.
  • The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez: The True Adventures of a Spanish American with 17th Century Pirates, historical study and translation by Fabio López Lázaro, University of Texas Press, 2011.
  • Peraza-Rugeley, A. Margarita, Llámenme «el mexicano»: Los almanaques y otras obras de Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2013. Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures Series. Vol. 215.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Leonard, Irving. "1". In William G. Bryant (ed.). Seis obras (in español). México. p. 3. ISBN 84-660-0126-3.
  2. ↑ de Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos. Relaciones históricas. Prologue by Manuel Romero de Terreros. Volume 13 of Biblioteca del estudiante universitario. Publisher UNAM, 1992. ISBN 9789683617668. p. 2.
  3. ↑ Vázquez León, Luis (2003). CIESAS (ed.). El Leviatán arqueológico. Antropología de una tradición científica en México (in español). ISBN 9707013877., p. 257
  4. ↑ Alcina Franch, José (1988). Anthropos (ed.). El descubrimiento científico de América (in español). ISBN 8476580932., p. 257.
  5. ↑ Orozco, Fernando; L, Orozco Linares Orozco (1996). Fechas históricas de México: las efemérides más destacadas desde la época prehispánica hasta nuestros días (in español). Panorama Editorial. ISBN 978-968-38-0295-8. Retrieved 2021-11-21.
  6. ↑ Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos de. "Los infortunios de Alonso Ramírez" (PDF). Biblioteca Antológica (in español). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 28, 2014. Retrieved August 20, 2013.
  7. ↑ "Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. Relectura criolla de los «Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez»" (PDF). Centro Virtual Cervantes (in español). Retrieved August 20, 2013.
  8. ↑ Peraza-Rugeley, A. Margarita, Llámenme «el mexicano»: Los almanaques y otras obras de Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2013. Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures Series. Vol. 215.
  9. ↑ "Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora - Diccionario Biográfico de la Real Academia de la Historia" (in español).
  10. ↑ Montané Martí, Julio César (1997). "Intriga en la corte". books.google.com.mx (in español). Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora. Retrieved 2023-05-18.
  11. ↑ Available at: Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez.
  12. ↑ See: José F. Buscaglia Salgado Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos de (2011). José F. Buscaglia Salgado, (ed.). Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez: Edición crítica de José F. Buscaglia (in español). Madrid: Polifemo/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. ISBN 978-84-00-09365-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  13. ↑ Fabio López-Lázaro, The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez: The True Adventures of a Spanish American with 17th Century Pirates, University of Texas Press, 2011, and "La mentira histórica de un pirata caribeño: el descubrimiento del trasfondo histórico de los Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez, "[1], Anuario de Estudios Americanos, Vol. 64, No. 2 (2007)
  14. ↑ Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos de (2009). José Francisco Buscaglia Salgado (ed.). Historias del Seno Mexicano (in español). La Habana: Casa de las Américas. ISBN 978-959-260-274-8.
  15. ↑ Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos de (2011). José F. Buscaglia Salgado (ed.). Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez: Edición crítica de José F. Buscaglia (in español). Madrid: Polifemo/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. ISBN 978-84-00-09365-5.
  16. ↑ Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos (1690). Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez / The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramirez (José F. Buscaglia-Salgado ed.). Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813593074. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
  17. ↑ "Biografía de un ilustre jesuita mexicano, nacido en la ciudad de México en 1645". México Desconocido (in español). Retrieved August 20, 2013.
  18. ↑ Available here.
  19. ↑ Available here.
  20. ↑ Available here.
  21. ↑ Available here.
  22. ↑ Available here.
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