Vicente de la Fuente

Portrait of Vicente de la Fuente by Luis Carlos Legrand (Lithograph from 1865, collected in España sagrada, Volume 49, in the National Library of Spain)

Vicente de la Fuente (29 January 1817 – 25 December 1889) was a Spanish canonist, jurisconsult and historian.

Biography

Vicente de la Fuente was born at Calatayud in the Province of Zaragoza into a middle-class family dedicated to commerce. He did his early studies at the Piarist school in Daroca and, for eight months in 1827, at the school in Zaragoza. Later (from 1828 to 1831) he studied philosophy at the Conciliar Seminary of Tudela. He always obtained in the exams the first places and passed némine discrepante. On June 12, 1829 he received his first tonsure and obtained the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy in Zaragoza (September 7, 1831); he studied another three years of Theology at the University of Alcalá, where he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Theology on June 26, 1834. He then went on to study the two laws in Madrid and also obtained a doctorate in Theology. He was rector of the Complutense College of Malaga between 1838 and 1842, and had the painful responsibility of closing the centenary foundation of Bishop Moscoso.

Vicente de la Fuente later in life

He joined the Madrid Bar Association in 1844, and that same year he was also appointed professor of ecclesiastical sciences at San Isidro. He also studied oriental languages: Hebrew and Arabic. He was a professor in Salamanca and Madrid, and rector of the university of the Central University. He belonged to the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation since 1843 and to those of History and of Moral and Political Sciences; the latter named him librarian in 1844. On February 18, 1845 he was appointed interim senior librarian of the University of Madrid, a position he held free of charge. On October 2, 1848 he was commissioned to transfer the library of the defunct University of Alcalá to the Central University: in this work he distributed, classified and placed in the space of three months the 20,000 volumes that formed it in the establishment that was opened in the street of San Bernardo on January 10, 1849.

In May 1852 he was appointed professor of canon law at the University of Salamanca, a post he held until early 1858, when he was transferred to the University of Madrid as professor of ecclesiastical history. The Academy of History, of which he had been a full member since 1861, appointed him in 1867 to represent it at the Archaeological Congress of Antwerp. He was dean of the Faculty of Law for many years.

Doctor and professor of Theology, he later switched to Law when the Faculty of Theology was suppressed from the Spanish universities, and he was in charge of the subject of Ecclesiastical Discipline.

With the Restoration of Alfonso XII, he was appointed rector of the Central University from April 7, 1875, the year in which he was received at the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, until the second half of June 1877.

He stood out for his defense of Catholicism and the Spanish tradition. He was a contributor to the newspaper El Pensamiento Español and the magazine Altar y Trono. In the 1880s, he wrote for the newspaper La Unión, unofficial organ of the Catholic Union of Alejandro Pidal y Mon.

Writings

He wrote about eighty books, among them a History of the always august and most faithful city of Calatayud (1880–1881); volumes 49 and 50 of the unfinished Sacred Spain by Enrique Flórez; a famous and documented History of the Secret Societies in Spain (1870–1871); an Ecclesiastical History of Spain — conceived as a continuation of the Sacred Spain of Father Flórez — (1855–1859), initially in four volumes and corrected and increased to six (1873–1875); The Communities of Castile and Aragon under the geographical point of view; Expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and History of the Universities, seminaries, colleges and other educational establishments of Spain, four volumes, published between 1884 and 1889, among other works of no lesser importance. He also edited and annotated the Life and Book of the Foundations of Saint Teresa of Jesus with the photocincography of the original text; La Virgen María y su culto en España in two volumes and Las Quincuagenas de la Nobleza de España by Captain Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, with notes, in addition to the works of Father Benito Jerónimo Feijoo for the BAE.

Luis Araujo-Costa defined him ideologically as "ultramontane, like Golmayo and the American Justo Donoso". Vicente de la Fuente was radically opposed in his work to the regalists and to everything foreign, wanting to find everything in the Iberian Peninsula, which is why in his Historia eclesiastica de España he did not give excessive importance to the liturgy nor did he value an author like Dom Guéranger. According to Araujo, for Fuente the fact of not being born in Spain was an "unforgivable sin". He abhorred the Bourbons and the ministers of Ferdinand VI and Charles III, some of whom he contemptuously called philo-British. An enemy of Freemasonry, he saw the hand of the lodges in the actions of Spanish liberalism. All in all, Araujo valued his work positively and defined Vicente de la Fuente y Bueno as "a positive value of the University, erudition and bibliography of our Homeland".

Major works

• Nuevas noticias acerca de Palacios Rubios, descubrimiento de un libro sobre las Indias y juicio crítico de él
• Observaciones sobre el protestantismo (1842)
• Doña Juana la Loca, vindicada de la nota de herejía (1849)
• Catálogo de los libros manuscritos que se conservan en la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Salamanca y publicado por orden del señor Rector de la misma (1855; with Juan Urbina)
• Historia eclesiástica de España o Adiciones a la Historia General de la Iglesia (1855–1859; 4 volumes)
• Biografía de León de Castro (1860)
• Historia militar, política y económica de las tres Comunidades de Calatayud (1861)
• Elogio del Arzobispo D. Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (1862; speech)
• El tercer jubileo del Santo Concilio de Trento. Comparación entre el catolicismo y el protestantismo en su estado actual relativamente al dogma y a la disciplina (1863)
• La Santa Iglesia de Tarazona en sus estados antiguo y nuevo (1865; España Sagrada, 49)
• La retención de bulas en España, ante la Historia y el Derecho (1865)
• La pluralidad de cultos y sus inconvenientes (1865–1866)
• Eclesiastical Disciplinae ex Sacro Tridentino Concilio necnon ex Hispanis Synodis conventinibus (1866)
• Las Hervenciadas de Avila. Contienda histórico-literaria provocada por el Sr. D. ... y sostenida por D. Juan Martín Carramolino sobre la falsedad o verdad del notable suceso que con tal título recuerda la historia de Ávila (1866)
• La división de poderes. Sobre las relaciones entra la Iglesia y el Estado (1866)
• 1767 y 1867 (1867; Collection of articles on the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, published in the Revista Semanal, 2 parts, pp. 76–200)
• La sopa de los conventos, o sea Tratado de Economía Política en estilo joco-serio acerca de los obstáculos tradicionales en nuestro país (1868)
• Tratado teórico práctico de procedimientos eclesiásticos (1868; with Francisco Gómez Salazar)
• La corte de Carlos III (1868)
• El protestante protestado. Andres Tunn (1869)
• Sancti Anselmi Lucensis epicospivita, a Rangiero succesore suo, ... latino carmina scripta opus hactenus ineditum valdeque desideratum (1870)
• Historia de las sociedades secretas antiguas y modernas de España, especialmente de la Franc-Masonería (1870–1871; 2 volumes)
• Los Concordatos: Cuestiones de Derecho Público Eclesiástico sobre su revocabilidad (1872)
• Vindicación del opúsculo sobre los Concordatos (1872)
• Historia de la Instrucción Pública en España y Portugal (1873)
• Historia Eclesiástica de España (1873–1875; 2nd edition, corrected and enlarged; 6 volumes)
• La Enseñanza Tomística en España. Noticia de las Universidades, Colegios y Acedemias Tomistas, con las Fundaciones de ellas (1874)
• Lecciones de Disciplina eclesiástica y suplemento al tratado teórico práctico de Procedimientos eclesiásticos (1874; with Francisco Gómez Salazar)
• De la Separación de la Iglesia y el Estado (1875; speech)
• El Ascetismo Liberal: Articulos Publicados en El Siglo Futuro (1875)
• Vida de Santa Teresa de Jesús (1881; with Juan de Ávila)
• Historia de las Universidades, Colegios y Demás Establecimientos de Enseñanza en España (1884–1889; 4 volumes)
• Cartas de Vicente de la Fuente a José M.ª Quadrado (1981)

Selected publications

• "Los señoríos de Aragón", Revista Hispanoamericana, VIII.
• "Las vaquillas de San Roque", Semanario Pintoresco Español (1840)
• "El salmón de Alagón", Semanario Pintoresco Español (1842)
• "El Conde de Campomanes", Semanario Pintoresco Español (1842)
• "Palacios Rubio. Su importancia política, jurídica y literaria", Revista de Legislación y Jurisprudencia (1869)
• "El báculo de don Pedro Martínez de Luna", Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, Vol. VII (1877)
• "Contestación..." In: Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia de la Historia en la recepción pública de... Francisco Codera Zaidin... (1879)
• "Las Comunidades de Castilla y Aragón bajo el punto de vista geográfico", Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid, Vol. III (1880)
• "Las primeras cortes de Aragón", Revista de Historia, Vol. III (1881)
• "Los preludios en la Unión en tiempo de D. Jaime I el Conquistador", Revista Hispanoamericana, Vol. IX (1882)
• "Noticia histórica de la Academia", Memorias de la Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas (1884)
• "Las tres Comunidades de Aragón", Estudios Críticos, Vol. II (1885)
• "La Cruz patriarcal o de doble travesía y su antigüedad y uso en España", Boletín de la Real Academia de Historia, Vol. IX (1886)
• "Mosaico romano de Belmonte", Boletín de la Real Academia de Historia, Vol. IV (1889)
• "Rosmini y sus obras", Memorias de la Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas (1889)
• "Constitución política de Aragón en el año 1300", Memorias de la Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas, Vol. VII (1893?)
• "Archivos de Tarazona, Veruela, Alfaro, Tudela, Calatayud y Borja", Boletín de la Real Academia de Historia, Vol. XXIV (1894)
• "Del elogio fúnebre de D. Santiago de Masarnau, (fragmento)." In: Colección de trozos (1911)

References

• Álvarez Lázaro, Pedro F. (1983). "Masonería y Enseñanza Laica durante la Restauración Española," Historia de la Educación: Revista Interuniversitaria, No. 2, pp. 345–52.
• Calderón Argelich, Alfonso (2019). "La Polémica sobre la Expulsión de los Jesuitas por Carlos III en la España Liberal (1856-1868): Entre la Indagación Histórica y el Combate Político", Historia Social, No. 95 , pp. 3–20.
• Ezpeleta Aguilar, Fermín (2019). Vicente de la Fuente y el Costumbrismo Estudiantil. Zaragoza: Taula.
• Ezpeleta Aguilar, Fermín (2021). "El estudiante en el costumbrismo español: escenas, tipos y fisiologías (Vicente de la Fuente y Jaime Tió)." In: Luis Beltrán Almería and Dolores Thion Soriano-Mollá, eds., Nuevos asedios a la novela entre fronteras: Aragón-Aquitania, relatos sin fronteras. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, pp. 79–95.
• Fuente Sanjuán, Carlos de la (2018). "Vicente de la Fuente, vivo en la historia (1817-1889)," Cuarta Provincia, No. 1, pp. 215–38.
• Holladay, Elsie Marie (1932). Some Notes on the Costumbrismo of Vicente de la Fuente. The Ohio State University.
• Sánchez de Palacios, Mariano (1982). El Siglo XIX: del Absolutismo al Liberalismo: Don Vicente de la Fuente y su Entorno Histórico y Cultural. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Madrileños.

External links

• Vicente de la Fuente (1817-1889)
• Works by Vicente de la Fuente at Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library