Juan de Espinosa Medrano

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is de Espinosa and the second or maternal family name is Medrano.
Juan de Espinosa Medrano
Portrait of Don Juan de Espinosa Medrano
Born1630?
Cuzco, Viceroyalty of Peru
Died1688
Cuzco, Viceroyalty of Peru
Resting placeCathedral of Cuzco
Other namesLunarejo, Sublime Doctor, Indian Demosthenes, Tertullian of America, Creole Phoenix
EducationDoctor of Theology
Alma materSeminary of Saint Anthony the Abbot in Cuzco
EraColonial Spanish America (17th century)
Known forWriting the most famous literary apologetic discourse in Colonial America; displaying a Latin American proto-nationalist conscience and identity (called 'Criollo conscience'; being a model for the Latin American contemporary writer.
Notable workEl robo de Proserpina y sueño de Endimión (c. 1650), Amar su propia muerte (c. 1650), El hijo pródigo (c. 1657), Apologético en favor de Luis de Góngora (1662), Philosophia Thomistica (1688), La Novena Maravilla (1695).
StyleBaroque
Signature
Signature

Juan de Espinosa Medrano (Calcauso?, 1630? – Cuzco, 1688), known in history as Lunarejo (or "The Spotty-Faced"), was an Indigenous cleric, sacred preacher, writer, playwright, theologian, archdeacon and polymath from the Viceroyalty of Peru.[1] He is the most prominent figure of the Literary Baroque of Peru and one of the most important intellectuals from Colonial Spanish America (along with the New Spain writers Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora).[2]

Juan de Espinosa Medrano is the author of the most famous literary apologetic discourse in the Americas in the 17th century: the Apologético en favor de Don Luis de Góngora (1662). He also wrote autos sacramentales in Quechua —El robo de Proserpina y sueño de Endimión (c. 1650) and El hijo pródigo (c. 1657)—; comedies in Spanish —out of which only the biblical play Amar su propia muerte (c. 1650) is preserved—; panegyric sermons —compiled after his death in a volume called La Novena Maravilla (1695)—; and a course in Latin of thomistic philosophy —Philosophia Thomistica (1688)—.

He acquired fame in life for the stylistic distinction and conceptual depth of his oeuvre (which was praised for its first-rate accordance to the scholastic and baroque epistemological parameters of his time). His polymathy, erudition and poetic ingenuity in the composition of sermons and literary works gained him the epithets of Sublime Doctor and Indian Demosthenes, as well as the less frequent ones of Criollo Phoenix and Tertullian of the Americas (all used to refer to him while alive). Additionally, after the Peruvian independence from Spanish Imperial rule took place, Juan de Espinosa Medrano's memory begun to be used as an exemplary model of the intellectual and moral potential of the peoples from South America (criollo, mestizos and indigenous populations included).[3]

His vast baroque production, written in Spanish, Latin and Quechua—in an aesthetic register different to the dialects now extant—was published both in America and Europe, however, only at the end of his life in the Old World. It had impact exclusively in the Viceroyalty of Peru, nonetheless, particularly because of a sabotage plan carried out by Jesuit priests in Rome at the end of the 17th century, which succeeded in impeding the circulation of Juan de Espinosa Medrano's philosophic course in Latin across the Old World (the work is the aforementioned Philosophia Thomistica). It was in this period that the Jesuit University of Saint Ignatius of Loyola contended with the Seminary of Saint Anthony the Abbot in Cuzco —institution that Juan de Espinosa Medrano represented— for the maintenance of its right in exclusivity to grant the degree of doctor to those instructed in Theology (a situation that forced the Seminary students, of Thomist instruction, to present themselves before a jury of Jesuit theologians —followers of the doctrine of Francisco Suárez— for the evaluation leading to the conferral of their degree).[4][5]

  1. ^ Cisneros, Luis Jaime (1987). "Apuntes para una biografía de Espinosa Medrano". Fénix (in Spanish) (32/33): 96–112.
  2. ^ Moraña, Mabel (1998). "Barroco y conciencia criolla en Hispanoamérica". Viaje al silencio : exploraciones del discurso barroco (in Spanish). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
  3. ^ Matto de Turner, Clorinda (1890). "Don Juan de Espinosa Medrano". Bocetos al lápiz de americanos célebres (in Spanish). Translated by Ramos Chacón, Milton André (quotes). Bacigalupi. pp. 16–40.
  4. ^ Rodríguez Garrido, José Antonio (1997). "La defensa del tomismo por Espinosa Medrano en el Cuzco colonial". In Karl Kohut; Sonia V. Rose (eds.). Pensamiento Europeo y Cultura Colonial. p. 115.
  5. ^ Guibovich Pérez, Pedro (2006). "Como güelfos y gibelinos: los colegios de San Bernardo y San Antonio Abad en el Cuzco durante el siglo XVII". Revista de Indias.