Everything about Carlos De Sig Enza Y G Ngora totally explained
Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (
August 14,
1645 –
August 22,
1700) was one of the first great
intellectuals born in the Spanish viceroyalty of
New Spain. A
polymath and writer, he held many colonial government and academic positions.
Early career
Sigüenza was born in
Mexico City in
1645. He studied
mathematics and
astronomy under the direction of his father, a
Peninsular who had been a tutor for the
royal family in Spain.
Sigüenza entered the
Society of Jesus as a
novice August 17,
1660, took
simple vows
August 15,
1662 at
Tepotzotlán, and left the society (or was expelled) in
1667 or
1669. On
July 20,
1672, he was named to the chair of mathematics and exact sciences at the
University of Mexico and was ordained a priest the following year. He was chaplain of the Hospital del Amor de Dios (now Academia de San Carlos) from
1682 until his death. He was well-known in the colony as a man of science. He was also a poet, non-fiction writer,
historian,
philosopher,
cartographer, and
cosmographer. Such was his prestige that the French King
Louis XIV tried to induce him to come to
Paris.
He published his first poem in
1662. In
1671 he published an almanac. In
1693, he published
El Mercurio Volante, the first
newspaper in New Spain.
The Ixtlilxochitl-Sigüenza-Boturini collection
At the hospital he became a close friend of
Juan de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, who put at his disposal a rich collection of documents of his ancestors, who included the historian
Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl and the kings of
Texcoco. In
1668, Sigüenza began the study of Aztec history and Toltec writing. On the death of Ixtlilxochitl he inherited the collection of documents, and devoted the later years of his life to the continuous study of
Mexican history. (For an account of what happened to these documents after the death of Sigüenza, see
Lorenzo Boturini Bernaducci.)
The Virgin of Guadalupe
Among these documents was purported to be a "map" (
codex) documenting the
1531 apparition of the
Virgin Mary as
Our Lady of Guadalupe that
Luis Becerra Tanco claimed to have seen in the introduction to his
1666 defense of the apparition tradition.
Because of his association with these early documents, Sigüenza played a significant role in the development of the legend. He was a devotee of the Virgin, and wrote
Parnassian poems to her as early as
1662. But his most lasting impact on the history of the apparition was his assertion that the
Nican mopohua, the
Nahuatl-language rendition of the narrative, was written by
Antonio Valeriano, a conception that persists to this day. He further identified Fernando Alva de Ixtlilxochitl as the author of the
Nican motecpana. This declaration was stimulated by
Francisco de Florencia's
Polestar of Mexico, which claimed that the original Nahuatl account had been written by
Jerónimo de Mendieta.
In
1680, he was commissioned to design a
triumphal arch for the arrival of the new
Viceroy,
Cerda y Aragón.
Also during the
1680s, he wrote histories of Mexico that speculated that the
Olmecs had migrated to the
New World via
Atlantis and that
Thomas the Apostle had
evangelized the natives shortly after the death of Christ.
Royal geographer
In
1691, he prepared the first-ever map of all of New Spain. He also drew
hydrologic maps of the
Valley of Mexico. In
1692 King
Charles II named him official
geographer for the colony. As royal geographer, he participated in the
1692 expedition to
Pensacola Bay,
Florida to seek out defensible frontiers against French encroachment. He mapped Pensacola Bay and the mouth of the
Mississippi: in
1693, he described the terrain in
Descripción del seno de Santa María de Galve, alias Panzacola, de la Mobila y del Río Misisipi. When a Spanish attempt to colonize Pensacola Bay in
1698 was thwarted by the arrival of a French fleet, Sigüenza was blamed by the leader of the expedition,
Andrés de Arriola, for inciting the French action. He successfully defended himself against these charges in
1699.
Rescue of documents from the New Spain archives
In
1692, there was a severe drought in New Spain and a disease attacking wheat. This caused a severe shortage of food. Sigüenza was able to identify the cause of the wheat disease as a small insect called
chiahuiztli. There was no
maize in the capital and many people were hungry. On
June 8,
1692, a crowd gathered in front of the viceregal palace. They threw stones and set the
archives on fire. Sigüenza saved most of the documents and some paintings, at the risk of his own life. This act preserved a considerable number of colonial Mexican documents that would otherwise have been lost. He later wrote an account of these events.
Later career and death
In
1694, he retired from the University and apparently reentered the Jesuit Order.
In November
1699, Sigüenza was named
corregidor general (book examiner) for the
Inquisition. He died of a
kidney ailment in
1700 in the Hospital del Amor de Dios in Mexico City, where he'd spent much of his career. He left his body to science, and his library to the Jesuit Colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo. He also left a number of unpublished manuscripts, only fragments of which survived the Jesuit expulsion from the viceroyalty.
Works
- Oriental planeta evangélica, epopeya sacropanegyrica al apostol grande de las Indias S. Francisco Xavier (1662).
- Primavera indiana, poema sacrohistórico, idea de María Santíssima de Guadalupe (1662).
- Las Glorias de Queretaro (1668) (poem).
- Teatro de virtudes políticas que constituyen a un Príncipe (1680).
- Glorias de Querétaro en la Nueva Congregación Eclesiástica de María Santíssima de Guadalupe... y el sumptuoso templo (1680).
- Libra astronomica (1681).
- Manifiesto philosóphico contra los cometas despojados del imperio que tenían sobre los tímidos (1681).
- Triunfo parthénico que en glorias de María Santíssima... celebró la... Academia Mexicana (1683).
- Parayso Occidental, plantado y cultivado en su magnífico Real Convento de Jesüs María de México (1684).
- Piedad heroica de Don Hernando Cortés, Marqués del Valle (1689).
- Infortunios que Alonso Ramírez natural de la ciudad de S. Juan de Puerto Rico padeció... en poder de ingleses piratas (1690).
- Libra astronómica y philosóphica en que...examina... lo que a [Sigüenza's] Manifiesto... contra los Cometas... opuso el R.P. Eusebio Francisco Kino (1691).
- Relación de lo sucedido a la armada de Barloventoen la isla de Santo Domingo con la quelna del Guarico (1691).
- Trofeo de la justicia española en el castigo de la alevosía francesa (1691).
- Descripción del seno de Santa María de Galve, alias Panzacola, de la Mobila y del Río Misisipi (1693).
- Elogio fúnebre de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1695).
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