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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

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

Extract

Although their writings belong more properly to science than to belles-lettres, five Catholic scholars deserve a place in our study. Rafael Angel de la Peña was born in Mexico City in 1837 and died there in 1906. He received his elementary schooling and first lessons in the humanities from his father and his elder brother. At the age of twelve he entered the Seminario Conciliar in his native city where he completed his humanistic training and then, with the consent of the proper authorities who probably hoped to direct him into the priesthood, he followed the regular courses in the various disciplines of theology and in both laws, ecclesiastical and civil. It was obviously an unusual expression of confidence in the young man’s virtue as well as ability when, immediately upon his graduation, the Seminary authorities engaged him to teach theology and philosophy. In 1860 the National University of Mexico, whose prescribed examinations he passed with marked success, conferred on him the academic degree in both philosophy and theology; and the highest honor, that of doctor, was about to be conferred when by decree of the civil government the university ceased to function.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1946

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References

1 On Peña see Victoriano Agüeros, Escritores Mexicanos Contemporaneos (Mexico, 1880), 163–167; Joaquín D. Casasúi, En Honor de los Muertos (Mexico, 1911), 81–114; Frederick Starr, Readings from Modern Mexican Authors (Chicago, 1904), 181–188.

2 See the foreword to the volume devoted to Peña in the Biblioteca de Autores Mexicanos of Agüeros.

3 Ibidem, xiii–xiv.

4 Ibidem, 71–103.

5 Ibidem, 107–132.

6 Ibidem, 137–156.

7 Ibidem, 159–220.

8 See José López Portillo y Rojas, “Elogio de Manuel José Othón”, prologue to Obras de Manuel José Othón, Tomo I: Poesías (Mexico: Publicaciones de la Secretaría de Educación PÚblica, 1928), p. xxxix.

9 Alberto María Carreño, Obras Diversass Semblanzas, II (Mexico, 1938), 235–251; Starr, op. cit., 15–25.

10 Starr, , op. cit., 15–16.Google Scholar

11 Carreño, , op. cit., 235Google Scholar.

12 Spell, Jefferson Rea, “Mexican Literary Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century” in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (New York), LII (1937), No. 1 (March), 289.Google Scholar

13 The Porrua catalogue for the year 1931, page 77, lists eleven published works of García Cubas.

14 Starr, op. cit., 20–25.

15 de Valle-Arizpe, Artemio, Historia de la Ciudad de México según los Relatos de Sus Cronistas, (Mexico, 1939), 486488.Google Scholar

16 González Peña, Carlos, Historia de la Literatura Mexicana, 2a edición (Mexico, 1940), 256.Google Scholar

17 Valle-Arizpe, , op. cit., 485486.Google Scholar

18 For biographical data see Carreña, Obras Diversas: Semblanzas I, 76–121; Juan B. Iguíniz, Disquisiciones Bibliográficas (Mexico, 1943), 91–98.

19 See THE AMERICAS, July, 1946, p. 79.

20 Carreño, op. cit., 101–102.

21 These were José María de Jesús, a Carmelite friar, José María de Agreda y Sánchez, and Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, according to Carreño, op. cit., 102.

22 The general plan of the Ensayo and considerable material for it had been collected by Andrade’s fellow priest, Agustín Fischer, who died in December, 1887, having charged Andrade to publish what material had been gathered. See Andrade’s prologue to the Ensayo, p. v.

23 With these two works and the Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVIII (Mexico, 1902) by Nicolás León in seven volumes, the bibliography of the entire colonial epoch of Mexican history is covered.

24 Iguíniz, Juan B., Bibliografía Biográfica Mexicana Tomo I (Mexico, 1930), 2136.Google Scholar

25 For biographical data see Jesús Galindo y Valle, Don Francisco del Paso y Troncoso: Su Vida y Sus Obras (Mexico: Anales del Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historia y Etnografía, Vol. I, 1922), pp. 301–579; also Memorias de la Sociedad “Antonio Alzets”, Vol. 42 (Mexico, 1925); and Luís González Obregón, Cronistas e Historisdores Mexicanos (Mexico, 1936), pp. 175–195. On Paso y Troncoso’s career and activity in Europe see Silvio Zavala, Francisco del Paso y Troncaso: Su Misión en Europa (Mexico, 1928), pp. v-xx.

26 The present life sketch is based here on that of González Obregón, op. cit., 175–195.

27 From here onward the life sketch is based chiefly on Zavala, op. cit., pp. v-xx.

28 Zavala, op. cit., pp. xiv-xvi.

29 These were embodied by Zavala in his Epistolario de Nueva España, 16 vols. (Mexico, 1939–1942).

30 Included by Aguitín Yáñez in Mitos Indígenas, Vol. 31 of the Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma, 1942), pp. 1–36.

31 Zavala, , Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, pp. 341342 Google Scholar, lists the five pieces.

32 Thirteen of these were translated into Spanish by Angel María Garibay K. in Poesía Indígena de la Altiplanicie, Vol. 11 of the Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma, 1940), pp. 1–30. See also Garibay’s Épica Nabuatl, Vol. 51 of the Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma, 1945), pp. 29–83.

33 González Obregón, , op. cit., p. 195.Google Scholar

34 Rubio Mañé, Jorge Ignacio, La Personalidad de Juan Francisco Molina y Solís como Historiador (Mórida de Yucatán, Mexico, 1933)Google Scholar.

35 Rubio Mañé, , op. cit., 1718.Google Scholar

36 Ancona, Eligio, Historia de Yucatán, 4 vols. (Mérida de Yucatán, 1878–1880); 2nd edition, 1889; 3rd edition, 1917.Google Scholar

37 This study is not listed by Alfred M. Tozzer (ed.) Landa’s Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), p. 351, though reference is made to “Articles on Landa” (p. 337) which Eligio Ancona published in 1879 in Molina Solís’s periodical Semanario Yucateco.

38 This study is listed by Tozzer (op. cit., p. 351) together with three other essays which Molina Solís published in 1897.

39 Rubio Mañé, , op. cit., p. 27.Google Scholar

40 See Ancona, op. cit., 3rd edition, Vol. II, pp. 181–184. Ten years before, 1879, Ancona had published a novel under the same title, El Conde de peñalosa. See Iguíniz, Bibliografía de Novelistas Mexicanos, No. 3 of the Monografías Bibliográficas Mexicanas (Mexico, 1926), p. 25.

41 Rubio Mañé, , op. cit., p. 27.Google Scholar

42 A second edition in two volumes was published in Mexico City in 1943 with a prologue by Antonio Mediz Bolio and a biographical sketch of Molina Solís by Ermilo Abreu Gómez.

43 See THE AMERICAS, July, 1946, p. 90.

44 He published it a few years later in the first volume of his history of Yucatán under Spanish rule. See Rubio Mañé, op. cit., p. 30.

45 Rubio Mañé, op. cit., p. 31.

46 Idem.

47 Ibidem, p. 33.

48 Ibidem p. 33–34.

49 Ibidem p. 34.

80 Read Jefferson Spell, “The Costumbrista Movement in Mexico” in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (New York), L (1935), No. 1 (March), pp. 290–315. The writer is indebted to Professor Spell for a reprint of this excellent study.

51 See THE AMERICAS, April, 1946, pp. 449–453.

52 On Hidalgo see Juan B. Iguíniz, Bibliografía de Novelistas Mexicanos, pp. 168–170. Unless otherwise noted, all the bio-bibliographical data and critical citations concerning the novelists that follow are taken from this work, in which the novelists are treated alphabetically.

53 ”La Religón en México” in La Sociedad Católica, III (1870), pp. 117–129; an appraisal with critical comments of an anti-Catholic address delivered by a certain Margaret Bonet, Ibidem, III (1870), 245–253.

54 According to Iguíniz the twelve volumes were published in 1874.

55 The first edition of this work Historia del Apostólico Colegio de Nuestra Señora it Guadelupe de Zacatecas, was published at Zacatecas in 1874. The second edition appeared in 1889.

56 See THE AMERICAS, July, 1946, p. 74.

57 Starr, , op. cit., p. 392.Google Scholar

58 These figures are computed from the essay “Rafael Delgado: Notas Bibliográficas y Críticas”, prepared by Ernesto R. Moore and James G. Bickley and published in Revista Iberoamericana (February, 1943). Reprint, pp. 17–30.

59 Starr, op. cit., 393.

60 For a list of Delgado’s dramas and essays see Moore-Bickley, op. cit., 30–34.

61 Jiménez Rueda, Julio, Antologíe de la Prosa en México (Mexico, 1937), p. 227.Google Scholar

62 González Peña, , op. cit., p. 250.Google Scholar

63 Starr, , op. cit., p. 394.Google Scholar

64 See the prologue to Los Parientes Ricos, Porrua edition (Mexico, 1944), p. 8. The translation of the portion quoted is by Starr, op. cit., pp. 394–395.

65 González Peña, , op. cit., p. 254.Google Scholar

66 These two treatises are listed in the Porrua catalogue for the year 1931, p. 172.

67 González Peña, , op. cit., p. 254. Google Scholar

68 Read, J. Lloyd, The Mexican Historical Novel, 1826–1910 (New York: Instituto de las Españas, 1939), p. 295.Google Scholar

69 González Peña, , op. cit., p. 254.Google Scholar