Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla

Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla

Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla (born June 28, 1585 in Toledo ; † August 30, 1620 there , actually Baltasar Eloy de Medinilla ) was a Spanish writer and religious lyric poet of Siglo de Oro .

Life

Baltasar Eloy de Medinilla (pronounced Medineea) was born on June 28, 1585 in Toledo, the son of the city council Alonso de Medinilla, member of a large and noble Toledan noble family, and Ana de Arrieta Barroso. He did not adopt the more poetic first name Elisio until after 1605. His father died when he was only five years old. While the mother entered into a new marriage, the grandfather Baltasar de Medinilla took over the guardianship and kept it until his death in 1595. The custody of the children fell to the mother, who was again a widow. He had two younger sisters who joined the Augustinian Order founded in the 14th century in Santa Úrsula in Toledo. He himself joined the brotherhood of Santa Caridad de Toledo on January 19, 1594 instead of his father. However, he had to sell his office of city council because of his precarious financial situation. From 1595 to 1602 he stayed to complete his training in Illescas , where his uncle, the licentiate Lope de Bustamante y Bustillo, had taken him. In 1604 his friend José de Valdivielso in Toledo asked him for a poem for the preface to the poetic story San José .

At the literary competitions in Toledo in 1605 in honor of the birth of Philip IV , he first appeared with a sonnet . In the competitions of 1612 (the occasion was the beatification of St. Ignatius of Loyola ) and 1614 (in honor of the beatification of Teresa of Ávila ) he was awarded first prize for his songs. He also wrote the sayings for these competitions.

In 1607 he went to Madrid to enter the service of Count de Lemos through the mediation of his friend Lope de Vega , who had already promoted other writers as patrons . However, he suffered a rebuff from fellow poet Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola , who was commissioned by the Count to select the applicants. The collaboration with Bernardo de Balbuena did not bring the hoped-for artistic recognition. Disappointed, he turned his back on Madrid in 1608 and went back to Toledo . There, Elisio and Lope were immediately commissioned by a brotherhood in San Nicolás to write the introductory words for a literary contest on Corpus Christi.

He only experienced his artistic breakthrough when he entered the service of the Count of Mora, Francisco de Rojas y Guzmán , from around 1610 . Only he finally offered him the necessary financial security and gave him access to a rich library. In it he found enough material to shape his poetic personality.

Medinilla was very well read and enthusiastic about theology . He admired the poetry of Lope , which he took for his own work as a model. He had a great friendship with Vega himself, whom he met in Toledo in 1603. He corrected the proofs of Lope's La Jerusalén conquistada and helped him with many of his works. Lope, on the other hand, dedicated many comedies to him and praised him beyond measure in La Jerusalén conquistada . Lope was also his mentor in the edition of his main work, which Elisio did not dare to publish for two years for fear of the church critics in the Dominican Order because of the beliefs it contained. Both corresponded a lot with each other. Lope was all the more shocked by the violent death of his friend Elisio.

Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla was murdered by Jerónimo de Andrada y Rivadeneira at the age of 35 . Don Jerónimo actually wanted to stab his sister Inés, who had claimed the entire inheritance on the basis of the Mayorazgo law for herself. When Elisio stood protectively in front of the beloved, the fatal stab hit him.

Services

Poetry

Annunciation
( El Greco around 1595–1600)

The main meaning of Medinilla lies in the religious poetry that he wrote in Latin and Castellano . Originally, Elisio devoted himself to secular subjects in his poetry, such as pastoral life and the world of emotions. From 1610 he turned increasingly to religious song texts.

The most important work is Limpia Concepción de la Virgen Nuestra Señora , which consists of 500 octave dances in five chants and on which he had worked for seven years. Another collection of poems to the Virgin and to various saints is Obras divinas , which he was unable to publish and of which the manuscripts have been preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de España . In contrast to Limpia Concepción , he no longer uses the Italian, but a popular metric and uses a simpler language.

The Descripción de Buenavista , with which he partially imitated Lope's La descripción de la Abadía, Jardín del Duque de Alba and the song in stanzas “Selva de Aranjuez” by Gregorio Hernández de Velasco , is to be mentioned as an important lyrical story . Buenavista was an estate near Toledo owned by Cardinal Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas , where the Toledan intelligentsia gathered and literary meetings were held both in the palace and in its magnificent gardens.

At the end of the first chapter, Madroñal says that this golden century of Toledan poetry has practically ceased to exist since 1620 . The group of poets who brought so much “good fruit” to Spanish poetry has disappeared. From the list of talents that Lope lists in his Laurel de Apolo , only the names have survived. The death of Medinilla marks the end of this section of poetic wealth.

prose

Medinilla is an author of various prose works, generally of minor importance, which remained almost unpublished during his lifetime. The only printing he has still seen was a memorandum A la imperial ciudad de Toledo for a great son of the city, which contains a political-literary discourse on repairing the damage to the affairs of Toledo.

A much more important group of prose works consists in his letters on a wide variety of subjects, in which he shows an elegant manner of expression and a profound education. A very telling example is the letter of condolence to Lope de Vega Carpio on the death of his beloved son Carlos Félix in 1612.

Perhaps the most important prose work is a literary dialogue El Vega. De la Poética Española on the literary theories of Lope de Vega and other talents on whom he had last worked and whose manuscripts have been preserved in the National Library of Spain . The opinion expressed in it about poetry is based on Platonic and Pythagorean ideas about celestial mechanics and the harmony of the spheres . Poetry comes from God, just like the rest of nature is "divine music". The author says literally: “With poetry, many ailments can be healed, many sad souls can be comforted, the pain evaporates. Young people adorn themselves with it, old age is amused, eloquence increases, language is enriched, pronunciation is softer, ideas flourish, things become more beautiful ”.

Works

Poetry

• Limpia Concepción de la Virgen Nuestra Señora. Madrid 1617, 2nd edition ibd. 1618
• Algunas obras divinas. Original manuscript, BNM 3954 (see below literature)
• Descripción de Buenavista. Original manuscript, 1st version BNM 3954, 2nd version BNM 4266

prose

• A la imperial ciudad de Toledo. 1618
• A Lope de Vega Carpio en la muerte de Carlos Félix, su hijo, consolación. BNM , 4266
• El Vega. De la Poética Española. Dialogo literario. BNM , 4266
• A los aficionados a los escritos de Lope de Vega Carpio. Preface to Jerusalem conquistada , Madrid, Juan de la Cuesta, 1609

literature

• Madroñal Durán, Abraham: Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla y la poesía Toledana de principios del Siglo XVII. Con la edición de sus 'Obras divinas', Vervuert, 1999, ISBN 3893543929
  Note: Chapter V contains a multi-page, complete bibliography by and about Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla

Web links

Commons : Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Baltasar Elisio de Medinilla in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin
• Spanish National Library search form - Enter search term: "Medinilla, Baltasar Elisio de" (→ 10 hits)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ MONUMENTOS DE TOLEDO ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ JP Wickersham Crawford: A Letter from Medinilla to Lope de Vega. In: Modern Language Notes. Volume 23, No. 8 (December 1908), pp. 234–238 ( digitized version )
3. ↑ Toledo - ToledoWeb.org - Toledo en la Literatura ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. as well as the Spanish Wikipedia article; contradicting this ARTEHISTORIA - Historia de España - Ficha Medinilla, Baltasar Eliseo ; identical Crystal Reference Encyclopedia: Baltasar Elisio Medinilla ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.