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Baltasar Gracián's Preachers: Sermon-Sources in the Agudeza

1986; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 63; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382862000363327

1469-3550

Hilary Dansey Smith,

Historical Art and Architecture Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: AGUDEZA Y ARTE DE INGENIO [B. GRACIÁN]CONCEPTISMOGRACIÁN [Y MORALES], BALTASAR (1601–1658)RELIGION — HISTORYRELIGION [AS LITERARY, CULTURAL & IDEOLOGICAL THEME]RHETORICSOURCES Notes 1. Leland Chambers, ‘Theory and Practice in the Agudeza y arte de ingenio’, Litterae Hispaniae et Lusitanae, ed. H. Flasche (Munich: Hueber, 1968), 109–17. 2. I refer throughout to E. Correa Calderón's two-volume edition (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1969). References to the Arte de ingenio and the Criticón are from the Obras completas, ed. A. del Hoyo (Madrid: Aguilar, 1960). 3. H. Dansey Smith, Preaching in the Spanish Golden Age (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1978), 12–13. 4. ‘“Concept” and “Conceit”: An Aspect of Comparative Literary History’, MLR, LXXVII (1982), 21–35. My own article was prompted and advanced by a number of helpful discussions which I had with Professor Parker, to whom I am most grateful. 5. These are Diego de Baeza, Francisco Boil, Agustín de Castro, Francisco de Castroverde, Jerónimo de Florencia, Diego López de Andrade, Plácido Mirto and Francisco Terrones del Caño. 6. Jerónimo Bartoli, S. J. (Arte, 1240; Agudeza II, 178) and Felipe Gracián (Arte, 1243; Agudeza II, 187; although there are 8 more references to Felipe in the Agudeza). 7. Obras completas de Baltasar Gracián (Madrid: Aguilar, 1944), lxxii. 8. M. Batllori, Gracián y el barroco (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958), 17. No printed sermons have been found by either Alverite (1591–1631) or Azaola (1585–1629). Both are recorded in J. E. Uriarte and M. Lecina, Biblioteca de escritores de la Compañía de Jesús pertenecientes a la antigua asistencia de España (Madrid: Vda. de López del Horno, 1925), I, 71 and 392. 9. Born at Sassari in Sardinia in 1575, it has been claimed that he was the ‘padre sardo de este colegio’ to whom Gracián wrote of the relief of Lérida in 1646, by which time Pinto was at the Colegio Imperial in Madrid, having served a term at the college in Zaragoza from 1628. M. Batllori and C. Peralta, Baltasar Gracián en su vida y en sus obras (Zaragoza: C.S.I.C, 1969), 85n, 95n, 158. 10. Another Sardinian, born in Alghero in 1595, he was made Predicador del Rey at some time after 1635. At some stage he was Difinidor General of the Mercedarian order in Aragon. He was a controversial figure and there are frequent references to his inflammatory sermons in the Cartas de algunos PP de la Compañía de Jesús sobre los sucesos de la Monarquía 1634–1648, in Memorial Histórico Español (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1861–65), vols. XIII–XIX. 11. Arcipreste de Morella and nephew of the more famous preacher Gaspar Ram, see R. del Arco, La erudición española en el siglo XVII y el cronista de Aragón, Andrés de Uztarroz (Madrid: C.S.I.C, 1950) II, 188. 12. Gracián y el barroco, 27. See especially Discurso IX of the Agudeza. 13. This leads, for example, to the exclusion of P. Pablo de Rajas, the supposed author of the Critica de refleccion y censura de censuras (Valencia: Bernardo Nogués, 1658), an attack on the Criticón. Also excluded are PP Francisco de Mendoza, Sebastián de Barradas, Bernardino de Villegas and Juan Márquez. 14. The poetry is praised in Agudeza II, 130,159 and 164, whereas the sermons feature in Agudeza II, 187 and 252–53, and possibly II, 175–76, although this is only attributable through the phrase ‘un fenis orador christiano’ when the same quotation appears in the Arte, 1238. 15. Agudeza I, 71, 93, 133, 150, 154, 212, 262; II, 40, 174, 242, 253. Unfortunately, all the sermons mentioned come from a collection of sermones de santos which has not been found. He died in either 1628 or 1633. 16. In the Dedicatoria to the third part of the Criticón (Madrid, 1657) in Obras completas, 829. 17. Agudeza II, 190. I have been unable to find any details about this preacher in any of the standard works of reference. His Blasones de la Virgen Madre de Dios y Señora Nuestra Compuesto i repartidos en sermones was printed in Zaragoza by Juan de Larumbe in 1635. A second, revised edition printed in Zaragoza at the Hospital Real in 1636 is in Barcelona University Library. 18. Ed. F. G. Olmedo (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1946), 50. The same advice is also found in the manuals for preachers produced by Diego de Estella and Luis de Granada. 19. These are usually called ‘materia predicable’, ‘cosas notables’ or ‘lugares comunes’, although Juan Rodríguez de León's El Predicador de las Gentes, San Pablo (Madrid: Maria de Quiñones, 1638), contains a ‘silva de concetos, para los sermones del año’, sig. a6. 20. Miserias del hombre y de los varios successos de la vida (Barcelona: Mauricio y Onofre Angladas, 1604), fol. §§4v. The Bodley copy is bound with J. Pérez de Moya, Comparaciones o similes para los vicios y virtudes (Valencia: Pedro Mey, 1599). 21. Antonio Pérez, O.S.B., Apuntamientos quadragesimales (Valladolid: Christoual Lasso, 1610), Prologo al Lector, (fol. B). 22. M. J. Woods, ‘Sixteenth Century Topical Theory: Some Spanish and Italian Views’, MLR, LXIII (1968), 66–73. The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum of 1599 was firmly based on Quintilian's Oratoriae Institutionis and would have been a fundamental influence on Gracián. 23. El Passagero (Madrid, 1617; ed. Madrid: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1914), alivio IV, fol. 168v; 193. 24. Conceptos extravagantes y peregrinos, sacados de las divinas y humanas letras y Santos Padres (Barcelona: Gabriel Graells, 1619). Another of his sermon collections is entitled Puntos escripturales de las divinas letras y Santos Padres (Barcelona: Gabriel Graells, 1618). 25. Jeronimo Bautista de Lanuza's sermons are said to contain ‘pensamientos delgados’ and ‘conceptos escogidos’, Homilias (Barcelona: Sebastian de Cormellas, 1626), sig. A2 and 3, while Cristóbal de Avendaño praises fellow preachers Rafael Fernández and Diego Niseno for their ‘conceptos muy agudos y singulares’ in Sermones para algunas festividades de … los santos (Valladolid: Iuan de Rueda, 1628), sig. §§5. 26. Quoted by E. C. Riley in Cervantes’s Theory of the Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 149. 27. A. García Berrio, ‘Quevedo y la conciencia léxica del “concepto”‘, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos (1980), Nos. 361–62, 10. 28. Cristóbal de Avendaño, Otro tomo de sermones para muchas festividades de los Santos (Valladolid: Iuan de Rueda, 1629) sig. §5v: ‘aqui es donde se han de ver las flores de los conceptos … pues el fin que con los pensamientos y conceptos agudos se tiene, es admirar los oyentes, para que cobren concepto del soberano entendimiento del Predicador, y por aqui le vengan a rendir la voluntad, que es lo que se pretende, para mejor arrancar vicios, y plantar virtudes’. 29. ‘Reparar’ carries the sense of ‘dudar’ in the Diccionario de Autoridades (1765) and we also find ‘reparaciones’ given as: ‘En las Escuelas se llama aquel acto literario y exercício que hacen en ellas los Estudiantes, diciendo la leccion: y en algunas partes arguyendose unos a otros’ (III, 577 in facsimile edn., Madrid, 1969). ‘Ponderar’ means ‘exagerar y examinar alguna cosa con mucha diligencia y cuidado’ (Covarrubias, Tesoro [Barcelona: Horta, 1943] 876) and is used frequently by preachers, particularly P. Jerónimo Continente in his Predicación fructuosa, edited by Gracián (Zaragoza: Diego de Dormer, 1652). 30. Aprobacion to Minas Celestiales descubiertas en los Evangelios de Quaresma (Madrid, 1629) sig. §§3v. 31. Retórica Eclesiástica (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1863), BAE, II, vii, 513. 32. Tomás Ramón, Nueva prematica de reformacion, contra los abusos de los afeytes, calçado, guedejas, guardainfantes, lenguaje critico, moños, trajes y exceso en el uso del tabaco (Zaragoza: Diego Dormer, 1635), 335. 33. L. Stinglhamber, ‘Baltasar Gracián et la Compagnie de Jésus’, HR, XXII (1954), 197. 34. ‘La oratoria sagrada en el Seiscientos’, RFE, XXX (1946), 353–68. The manuscript attributed to P. Valentín de Céspedes under the pseudonym Juan de la Encina has since disappeared from the Biblioteca Pública, León. Céspedes is a problematical figure, see J. Sage, ‘Valentín de Céspedes—poet, collector or imposter?’ in Homage to John M. Hill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 85–112. 35. ‘La oratoria sagrada en el Seiscientos’, RFE, XXX (1946), 353–68. The manuscript attributed to P. Valentín de Céspedes under the pseudonym Juan de la Encina has since disappeared from the Biblioteca Pública, León. Céspedes is a problematical figure, see J. Sage, ‘Valentín de Céspedes—poet, collector or imposter?’ in Homage to John M. Hill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 359. 36. Criticón, III, x, 974–75: ‘Dejaron la substancial ponderación del sagrado texto y dieron en alegorías frías, metáforas cansadas, haciendo soles y águilas los santos, naves las virtudes, teniendo toda una hora ocupado el auditorio, pensando en una ave o una flor.’ 37. Discursos VI, VII, XI, XIV, XV, XX, XXIII, XXIV, XXIX, XXXIV, XXXIX, LI, LIII, LIV. 38. In Agudeza I, 268 Gracián quotes verbatim and precisely identifies a passage from the ‘sermón segundo de Cuaresma [Jueves despues de la Ceniza], y en la Consideración tercera’ in Hernando de Santiago's Consideraciones sobre todos los Evangelios … de la Quaresma (Valladolid: Luis Sanchez, 1606), 32–33. He echoes the same passage very closely in the Criticón, III, xi, 990. His other reference to Santiago, in II, 201, can also be identified as a condensed form of pp. 318–20 in the same volume of sermons. The Paravicino passage in II, 252–53 comes from his Oraciones evangelicas o Discursos panegiricos y morales (Madrid: J. Ibarra, 1766), IV, 355 onwards. The Valderrama passage in II, 67 comes from an Easter Sunday sermon in the ‘tercera parte’ of the Exercicios Espirituales para todos los dias de la Quaresma (Barcelona: Jayme Cendrat, 1604), fol. 99v. 39. This is the typological approach, used in scriptural interpretation, which links the Old and New Testament through type and antitype. 40. Discursos predicables sobre todos los Evangelios que canta la Iglesia en las Festividades de Christo (Zaragoza: Angelo Tauanno, 1607), Prologo al lector. 41. See H. Dansey Smith, op. cit., 44–59. 42. El Passagero, ed. cit., fols. 161 and 161v. 43. This comes from the first sermon on the birth of the Virgin Mary in the second volume of Florencia's Mariai que contiene varios sermones de todas las fiestas de Nra Señora (Alcalá: luan de Orduña, 1625), fol. 1. 44. The palace metaphor (II, 172) is praised for ‘lo selecto de sus partes y lo primoroso de su unión’, while the eagle (II, 176–77) has a powerful threefold structure which Gracián expounds with evident relish, showing the preacher successively ‘dificultando’, ‘ponderando’ and ‘satisfaciendo’. 45. In Sacra decima y primicia evangelica de sermones (Zaragoza: Pedro Verges, 1645), 48–79.