Cornelia Bororquia

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Cornelia Bororquia. Historia verdadera de la Judith española is a letter novel by Luis Gutiérrez (1771–1809) from 1799. The historical background is provided by the biographies of the evangelical martyrs Maria de Bohorques and Maria Cornel.

The novel takes the form of an exchange of letters between the protagonists of a tragedy located in Seville in the mid-sixteenth century, that is, during the height of the Inquisition's actions against evangelical Christians. This reflects the letter form of the novel El evangelio en triunfo, o historia de un filósofo desengañado by Olavide from 1797. In this revocation, which reached seven editions between 1797 and 1800, the most famous living victim of the Inquisition denied his earlier opinions by defending the Holy Office and opposing its tribunals positively to those of revolutionary France. This about-face shocked progressive Spaniards; and Cornelia Bororquia represents an attempt by one of these people to straighten the picture.

The story begins with the disappearance of Cornelia, the eponymous heroine, daughter of the governor of Valencia. Her father suspects her lover Bartolomé Vargas, an enlightened young Sevillian. The father writes to his friend Meneses in Seville to find the young man. The real kidnapper is none other than the Archbishop of Seville, who was seized by a secret passion for Cornelia and, after bribing a servant for a testimony, had her thrown into the prison of the Inquisition in order to more easily overcome her virtue can.

Gutiérrez's intention was to criticize the Inquisition and expose it to ridicule. He had to flee to Bayonne for fear of punishment . The book was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum .

Even Juan Antonio Llorente , an eloquent opponent of the Inquisition, criticized the book. In general it was not rated negatively, but the incorrect claim of historicity made by the author was perceived as disturbing. It should be noted here that Llorente was a historian, not a novelist, arguably considered himself an expert on the Inquisition, and had difficulties with the author's artistic freedom.

In this way he proved that Cornelia Bororquia never existed, but that the work was based on the life of the evangelical martyrs Maria de Bohorques and Maria Cornel, which the author, perhaps out of ignorance, was based on in a very free treatment of the biographies into a fictional person. Both died at the hands of the Inquisition in Seville in 1559. Their names were probably taken from the Historia inquisitionis of Philippus van Limborck and put together in the short forms Bohorquia and Cornelia used there . The name of the Inquisitor Vargas is also pure fiction. Llorente criticized the love affair alleged in the novel between the Lutheran and the Inquisitor General, as well as alleged investigations that never took place. Just because Maria de Bohorques lived in Seville and the Inquisitor General resided in Madrid , the claim of the love story, according to Llorente, does not do justice to Gutiérrez's historical claim. Llorente considered a realistic representation of the historical events in the sense of a criticism of the Inquisition to be more effective than a satirical description with numerous fictional elements. Gutiérrez cited Boulanger, Langle, Limborch and Marsollier as the authorities for the historicity of his novel, which Llorente could easily refute.

The first edition, entitled Bororquia, o la víctima de la Inquisición , was first published in Paris in 1801. A copy was listed in the catalog of the Bibliothèque Nationale but was lost and had to be reconstructed from a French translation published two years later and dedicated by the translator to Lucien Bonaparte. The second edition, 'revista, corregida y aumentada', was published in Paris in 1802 under the modified title Cornelia Bororquia and became the standard text. The novel is available today in paperback under the title:

Luis Gutiérrez: Cornelia Bororquia o La víctima de la Inquisición , Ediciones Cátedra, Sa, 1st edition (June 30, 2005), ISBN 8437622522

literature