2020_12_17_FYL_noticia_palafox

The University of Navarra has presented the book "En las entrañas del atardecer de Palafox en Puebla. Duties and affections found", by Professor Ricardo Fernández Gracia, director of the Chair of Heritage and Navarrese Art of the School of Philosophy and Letters of the academic center. This is the eleventh monograph that the author, Distinguished Citizen of the city of Puebla (Mexico) since 2015, dedicates to the figure of the Blessed born in Fitero.

Published by the high school of programs of study Auriseculares, in this volume, Fernández Gracia rescues 98 unpublished missives that the bishop exchanged with some of his contemporaries during his last period in Puebla before returning to Spain, at the beginning of the 17th century. "Among the senders are people from the entire social spectrum, from magistrates, merchants and high clergy, staff of the Royal Audience and the University of Mexico, to simple people of different professions such as notaries, military, governors and aldermen, merchants, Creoles, friars of different orders, without missing the organist of the Cathedral of Mexico and some curious characters, such as Doña María Altamirano y Ponce de León, wife of the military deserter Don Pedro Vélaz de Medrano y Manso de Zúñiga", explained the author.

As he pointed out, "the epistolary genre is a good way to know how the people of an era expressed themselves, how they expressed their affection, their ideas... Palafox himself pointed out that in family letters, such as the ones we analyze in this book, the soul and the condition of the author are more evident, and his interior and exterior are drawn with more property and more vivid colors". Thus, through these missives, "in which his closest friends and other people who, because of their positions, had a close relationship with him, say goodbye", we discover a man "concerned about the dignity of people, who overcame his context and was ahead of his time". Among the letters, preserved in the file Catedralicio del Burgo de Osma, "there is one written in Náhualt, language , corresponding to the Tlaxcalan mayors".

The work also includes some reflections on the consecration of the cathedral of Puebla, shortly before Palafox returned to Spain, as well as the study and transcription of the instructions he left to those who were to govern the diocese in his absence, "in which he takes care of every last detail, typical of a privileged head", and which are preserved in the Library Services Nacional de Madrid. On the other hand, Fernandez Gracia discovers to the reader unpublished texts related to the people or themes that are treated in the monograph, coming from the particular file of the Blessed.

The event, in which the author remembered Fernando Seves Morentin, President of the association de Amigos del Monasterio Cirterciense de Santa María la Real (Fitero), who died at the beginning of 2020 and to whom the book is dedicated in memoriam, was presided over by Iciar Astiasarán, Vice President of research of the University of Navarra. It also included the participation of Father Ildefonso Moriones, doctor in Church History and postulator of the cause of canonization of Palafox; Ramón Serrera, Full Professor of History of America at the University of Seville and author of the presentation of the monograph, which has been connected online from the Andalusian capital; and Jaime Cuadriello, from high school of Aesthetic Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who participated from Latin America.