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Literary Contributions of Catholics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (continued)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Francis Borgia Steck
Francis Borgia Steck*
Affiliation:
Washington, D. C.
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Extract

It remains, in the study we are pursuing, to cite those Catholic Mexicans whose literary contributions during the Díaz era were made almost exclusively in prose. Among these, too, several survived the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz and continued to write and publish during the turbulent years that followed. But in keeping with the time-limit set for our study only such works of theirs will be considered as were written and published before the year 1910.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , April 1947 , pp. 66 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1947

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References

1 See Agüeros, Victoriano, Escritores Mexicanos Contemporáneos (pp. 111–128) for a biographical sketch; also El Tiempo, “Edición Literaria” (Mexico, 1883), pp. 433–440 Google Scholar; Divulgación Histórica (Mexico), Vol. III (1942), pp. 245–248 Google Scholar; Islas García, Luís, Trinidad Sánchez Santos (Mexico, 1945), pp. 27–30.Google Scholar

2 Agüeros, Escritores, p. 127.

3 González Peña, Carlos, Historia de la Literatura Mexicana, 2nd ed. (Mexico, 1940), p. 200 Google Scholar. Julio Jiménez Rueda does not mention him in his history of Mexican Literature.

4 García Cubas, Antonio, Diccionario Geográfico, Histérico y Biográfico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, (Mexico, 1899), Vol. I, p. 393.Google Scholar

5 Agüeros, Escritores, p. 123.

6 Ibidem, 127; El Tiempo, loc. cit., p. 440; Luís Islas Garcîa, op. cit., p. 28.

7 See Divulgación Histórica, Vol. III (1942), pp. 247–248.

8 See The Americas (Washington, D. C), Vol. II, No. 4 (April, 1946), p. 434.

9 See Almanaque de “El Tiempo” (Mexico, 1887), p. 126.

10 See El Amigo de la Verdad (Puebla), Vol. I, No. 62 (February 8, 1873), p. 4.

11 Ibidem, Vol. II, Nos. 60, 62, 84 (May 16, 30, October 31).

12 Iguíniz, Juan B., Bibliografía de Novelistas Mexicanos (Mexico: Monografías Bibliográficas Mexicanas, No. 3, 1926), p. 131.Google Scholar

13 Iguíniz, Juan B., “El Doctor Don Agustín de la Rosa” in Abside (Mexico), Vol. III (1939), pp. 42–53 Google Scholar. The essay presents a list (fifty-five items) of the writings of Rosa.

14 Téllez, Emeterio Valverde, Apuntaciones Históricas sobre la Filosofía en Mexico (Mexico, 1896). p. 309.Google Scholar

15 Concerning the Carta see infra, under Joaquin García Icazbalceta.

16 La Religión y la Sociedad (Guadalajara), Vol. I (1865) and Vol II (1865–1866), pp. 3–12, 113–118.

17 Ibidem, Vol. II (1865–1866), pp. 31–40, 41–51, 97–103.

18 For an account of his early life and activity see Agüeros, Escritores, pp. 87–99. The bio-bibliographical study prefacing his Historia Crítica de la Poesía en México, revised edition (Mexico, 1892), presents a classified and descriptive list of his writings.

19 See his Historia Crítics, p. 17.

20 Teixidor, Felipe, Cartas de Joaquín García Icazbalceta (Mexico, 1937), pp. 286–290 Google Scholar. Ten months later, on November 26, he succumbed unexpectedly to a stroke of apoplexy.

21 See his Historia Crítica, p. 18.

22 Ibidem, pp. 6, 880.

23 On the value of this essay see Agüeros, Escritores, p. 98.

24 See the Historia Crítica, p. 18.

25 See the “Prólogo” to the first edition (Mexico, 1885), of the Historia Crítica.

26 González Peña, op. cit., p. 278. He cites only the first (1885) edition of the Historia Crítica, not the second (1892) edition, though the second is a vast improvement over the first.

27 He discusses the matter in his Historia Crítica, second edition, pp. 691–693.

28 For a life-sketch of Agüeros, see Iguíniz, Bibliografía de Novelistas Mexicanos, pp. 12–14.

29 By its make-up and contents it reminds one strongly of the annual almanacs distributed among their subscribers by some of our periodicals fifty years ago.

30 See The Americas (Washington, D. C), Vol. II, No. 4 (April, 1946), p. 447.

31 These three works of fiction are listed by Iguíniz in his Bibliografía de Novelistas Mexicanos, pp. 13–14.

32 El Tempo, Edición Literaria (Mexico, 1883), pp. 276–295.

33 Quoted by Iguíniz in the Bibliografía de Novelistas Mexicanos, p. 13.

34 Plancarte, Gabriel Méndez, Horacio en México (Mexico, 1937), p. 181 Google Scholar. A life-sketch of Elguero is in this work and also in Junco, Alfonso, Gente de México (Mexico, 1957), pp. 45–54.Google Scholar

35 Museo Intelectual, Vol. I, Vanguardia (Mexico, 1928), p. 508.

36 Gabriel Méndez Plancarte, op. cit., p. 182.

37 Idem.

38 Museo Intelectual, Vol. I, Vanguardia, p. 13.

39 Ibidem, pp. 15–47.

40 Ibidem, pp. 49–91.

41 Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino, Antología de Poetas Hispano-Americanos, Vol. I (Madrid, 1927), “Introducción,” p. xxxi Google Scholar. In his essay, “Un Radical Problema Guadalupano” (Mexico: Academia Mexicana de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, 1932), Alfonso Junco quotes a writer as styling García Icazbalceta “maestro de todas las ciencias” (p. 31). Junco does not say who worded this encomium; but he is correct when he rejects it as a “harmful hyperbole” and refuses “to beliere” the Mexican scholar “infallible and to adopt blindly all his pronouncements” (p. 31). The encomium of Menéndez y Pelayo, as quoted, is far more acceptable to serious admirers of García Icazbalceta.

42 For biographical data to the year 1880 tee Agüeros, Escritores, pp. 35–56. For data after 1880 see Agüeros (ed.). Obras de D. J. García Icazbalceta, Vol. I (Mexico, 1896), pp. v-xvi, and Texidor, Felipe, Cartas de Joaquín García Icazbalceta, passim Google Scholar. A doctoral dissertation prepared by Manuel G. Martínez under the guidance of the present writer at the Catholic University of America (Washington, D. C.) and entitled Don Joaquín García Icazbalceta: His Place in Mexican Historiography is now in the press and will appear shortly.

43 García Cubas, op. cit., Vol. IV, pp. 28–29.

44 This date is in the prayerbook, El Alma en el Templo, 8th edition (1881).

45 Agüeros, (ed.), Obras de D. J. García Icazbalceta, Vol. I, pp. xv–xvi Google Scholar. See also Agüeros, Escritores, p. 49.

46 For a discussion of this letter see especially Iguíniz, ,Disquisiciones Bibliográficas (Mexico, 1943), pp. 195–226 Google Scholar; Junco, , El Milagro de las Rosas (Mexico, 1941), pp. 157–204 Google Scholar; Teixidor, , op cit., pp. 202 Google Scholar (note 5), 249, 250–251.

47 Luís García Pimentel y Elguero, (ed.) Don Joaquín García Icazbalceta Como Católico (Mexico, 1944)Google Scholar presents testimonies to prove that Don Joaquín was a loyal and practicing Catholic. While grateful to him for giving us these testimonies, the present writer is inclined to think, most probably with many others, that publishing them was a case of carrying coal to Newcastle. No one in his right mind could ever have doubted the scholar’s soundness and integrity on this point.

48 The writer excepts Mexico’s eminent scholar, Juan B. Iguiniz, who in his excellent study entitled “La Carta de Don Joaquín García Icazbalceta sobre la Aparición de la Virgen de Guadalupe” and printed in the Disquisiciones Bibliográficas (pp. 195–226) cites in full the relevant decision of the Fifth Provincial Council of Mexico (pp. 219–220) which was held in 1896. The writer has not seen the work from which Iguíniz quotes the council’s decision. But for its author, a bitter critic of García Icazbalceta at the time, the council’s decision must have settled the question of orthodoxy concerning the alleged Guadalupe apparition which, to quote the council, “sin ser un dogma de fé como pudiera interpretarse por la sencilla devoción de algunas almas piadosas, es una tradición antigua” (which), “without being a dogma of faith as it might be interpreted from the simple devotion of some pious souls, is an ancient tradition”). Nor does the apparition become a dogma of the faith by what the council further decided and related concerning it. The fact is, the “ancient tradition,” as the council calls it, is not “a dogma of faith”; nor is it theologically correct to hold that the further elucidation by the council, which was local and not universal in scope, makes it temerarium in point of the faith to reject the tradition as historically unfounded or at least questionable. Actually, then, in final analysis the council’s decision proved a defense of the position taken by García Icazbalceta. Nor was his position in any way synonymous with disloyalty and disrespect to Mary Immaculate, the Mother of Our Savior and the Queen of Heaven and Earth. A Catholic’s devotion to her under the invocation of Our Lady of Guadalupe is entirely compatible with his rejection of the Guadalupe apparitions as miraculous. It is a serious mistake, therefore, to interpret such rejection as an attempt to undermine the devotion so dear to Mexican Catholics. This was never the purpose of García Icazbalceta. It is a far cry from sincerely and enthusiastically fostering the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, as every Catholic in and out of Mexico should do, to defaming a Catholic scholar like García Icazbalceta who would have been first and foremost in proclaiming his Catholic faith in the matter of the Guadalupe tradition, if the tradition had been a matter of the Catholic faith and a rejection of it declared temerarium by the Holy See or a universal council in union with the Holy See.

49 Junco, El Milagro de las Rosas, 254–255.

50 See the letter of José María de Agreda y Sánchez to Francisco del Paso y Troncolo, written in January, 1895. Teixidor, op. cit., pp. 262–264.

51 See Teixidor, op. cit., p. 261.

52 The address is in the bishop’s Oraciones Fúnebres (Madrid, 1901).

53 It was a short-story, translated, presumably from the Italian and entitled “Un Aficionado.” It was published in the Catholic periodical La Cruz (Mexico), Vol. VI (1858), Num. 17 (January 2). pp. 542–547.

54 Reproduced in Teixidor, op. cit., facing p. 10.

55 Ibidem, facing p. 76.

56 Namely, Alejandro Rivero, Manuel Tossiat Ferrer, and four with whom my readers are acquainted: Casimiro Collado, José María Roa Bárcena, Alejandro Arango y Escandón, José Bernardo Couto.

57 It was this omission, in 1881, that started the Guadalupe controversy as far as García Icazbalceta was concerned. It must have been adding fuel to the fire to bring out the next year, 1882, in Puebla, a second edition of an anonymous work entitled La Virgen del Tepeyac. Disertación sobre la Aparición de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de México. The author of this work, anonymously published, was Esteban Anticoli, S.J., according to Iguíniz (Disquisiciones Bibliográficas, p. 205, note 12).

58 An Italian translation, prepared by Faustino Ghilardi, a Franciscan, was published at Quaracchi near Florence, Italy, in 1891. See Teixidor, op. cit., p. 180, note 5.

59 Biblioteca Mexicana del Siglo XVI, pp. ix-xxix; also in Agüeros (ed.), Obras de D. J. García Icazbalceta, Vol. I, pp. 1–64. It is in part a revision of the article “Tipografía Mexicana” which García Icazbalceta contributed in 1855 to the Diccionario Universal de Historia y de Geografía.

60 Biblioteca Mexicana del Siglo XVI, pp. 33–34, 253–308, 77–87, 148–154, 49–60; Agüeros (ed.), Obras, Vol. III (pp. 5–39, 131–293, 41–71, 317–337), Vol. IV (pp. 17–54).

61 Biblioteca, pp. 159–178; Obras, Vol. I, pp. 65–124.

62 Biblioteca, pp. 193–205; Obras, Vol. I, pp. 125–163.

63 Biblioteca, pp. 375–389; Obras, Vol. I, pp. 271–316.

64 Biblioteca, pp. 98–121; Obras, Vol. VI, pp. 347–433.

65 The essay was published by the Academia Mexicana in his official Memorias. Agüeros published it serially in Vol. I (1883) of his “Edición Literaria” of El Tiempo (pp. 5–14, 18–28, 32–38) and again in Obras, Vol. I, pp. 163–270.

66 Agüeros (ed.), Obras, Vol. IX, pp. 5–194. There is no way of learning either from this edition of the essay or from any source available to the writer when García Icazbalceta wrote this essay.

67 Ibidem, Vol. VI, pp. 5–67.

68 Ibidem, Vol. I, p. xiii.

69 Ibidem, Vol. VI, p. 9.

70 Ibidem, Vol. VI, pp. 151–346.

71 This dialogue, the first in the series, was reproduced with most of the notes by the National University of Mexico in the third volume (Mexico, 1939) of its excellent Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario.

72 These notes comprise a hundred pagel in Obras, Vol. VI, pp. 247–346.

73 Ibidem, Vol. II, pp. 306–368. The fourth and sixth of Eslava’s Coloquios were included by José Rojas Garcidueñas in the volume he edited under the auspices of the National University of Mexico, Autos y Coloquios del Siglo XVI (Mexico: Ediciones de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma, 1939). It is No. 4 in the series Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario and is made doubly valuable by the inclusion of two sixteenth-century autos and by a splendid essay in which the editor traces the origin and development of religious stage plays in Europe, Spain, and Mexico. He gives due credit to García Icazbalceta and reprints critical notes which the Mexican scholar wrote for his edition of the two coloquios in 1877.

74 See Francisco Pimentel, Historia Crítica, pp. 130–170.

75 Agüeros (ed.), Obras, Vol. IV, pp. 109–115; Vol. I, p. xii. For a study of El Peregrino Indiano, see Pimentel, Historia Crítica, pp. 171–191.

76 Ibidem, Vol. II, pp. 217–306. Concerning Terrazas and his poetry see Pimentel, Historia Crítica, pp. 97–101.

77 Ibidem, Vol. II, pp. 305–306.

78 Ibidem, Vol. II, pp. 187–215. Recently the National University of Mexico sponsored a new edition of Grandeza Mexicana and of two fragmentary poems of Balbuena, in Vol. 23 of the Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario. The volume is entitled Grandeza Mexicana y Fragmentos del Siglo de Oro y El Bernardo (Mexico: Ediciones de la Universidad Autónoma, 1941). A fine introductory essay by the editor, Francisco Monterde, deals with Balbuena and his poetry. On Balbuena and his work see Pimentel, Historia Crítica, pp. 112–117.

79 Coester, Alfred, The Literary History of Spanish America (New York, 1938), p. 21.Google Scholar

80 Agüeros, (ed.), Obras, Vol. II, pp. 210–211.Google Scholar

81 In Teixidor, Cartas de Joaquín García Icazbalceta. See also Iguíniz, Disquisiciones Bibliográficas, p. 203.

82 Agüeros (ed.), Obras, Vol. II, p. 163.

83 Both the bibliographical study by García Icazbalceta and his translation from the Latin of a brief biography of Alegre were printed by Agüeros in Obras, Vol. IV, pp. 141–163, 165–195.

84 See Teixidor, Cartas, pp. 182 (note 3), 184 (note 4), 279, 328. The present writer failed to get Bishop Carrillo y Ancona’s Carta de Actualidad sobre el Milagro de la Aparición Guadalupana en 1531, cited by Teixidor, op. cit., p. 182 (note 3).

85 For biographical data tee Iguíniz, Bibliografía de Novelistas Mexicanos, pp. 60–62; Agüeros (ed.), Almanaque de “El Tiempo” (1886), pp. 121–122; prologue to the first and the third edition of Carrillo y Ancona’s Historia Antigua de Yucatán.

86 Iguíniz, op. cit., p. 60.

87 See the third edition of the Historia Antigua de Yucatán, p. 553 (note 1).

88 Iguíniz, op. cit., p. 62.

89 Almanaque de “El Tiempo” (1886), pp. 58–66.

90 Iguíniz, op. cit., pp. 62–63.

91 Listed and described in Bibliografía Americana, No. 4, of the Librería de Porrua Hnos (Mexico, 1931), p. 39.

92 See Rubio Mañé, Jorge Ignacio, La Personalidad de Juan Francitco Molina Solís como Historiador (Mérida de Yucatán, 1932), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar