Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada is familiar to all Latin Americanists as the conqueror of what is now Colombia and the founder of Santa Fe de Bogotá. He is less widely known as the author of a historical polemic, the Antijovio, written as an antidote to what he considered the errors and misconceptions regarding Spain and the reign of Charles V which the Italian humanist, Paolo Giovio, had included in his popular Historia sui temporis published a few years earlier. Quesada composed this polemic in 1567, but it remained unpublished until 1952.
From the standpoint of historical knowledge the Antijovio is of questionable worth. But as an example of Manierism, that involved, complex, strained, antagonistic, and often contradictory style of writing which characterized the transitional period between the late Renaissance and the early Baroque and which reflected quite accurately the stresses and uncertainties of post-tridentine, Counter Reformation society and thought, it has outstanding merit, as Víctor Frank] proves conclusively in this extremely thorough, penetrating, highly stimulating study. In the process of doing so he makes a distinct contribution to the history of ideas in general and the cultural and intellectual historiography of Spanish America in particular.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to do justice to the quality and scope of Frankl’s thought and reasoning in a brief review such as this. His major aim is to analyze the ideological background and structure of the Antijovio, to determine, if possible, the currents of historiographical thought which may have directly or indirectly influenced Jiménez de Quesada’s intellectual development and thus helped shape the philosophy underlying the Antijovio. This he does in a superlative fashion through a comparative study of the ideas contained in the writings of scores of classical, medieval, and early modern authors such as Thucydides, Polybius, Lucan, Dante, Augustine of Hippo, Antonio de Guevara, Pérez de Guzmán, Juan de Mena, Vives, Machiavelli, Francisco López de Gómara, Joachim du Bellay, Guicciardini, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, Gutierre Díaz de Gámez, Palacios Rubios, the Nominalist school of philosophers, Cervantes, and Shakespeare.
These are only a few of the individuals or groups of individuals whose philosophical, theological, mystical, political, historical, literary, or sociological orientation displayed an affinity to what Frankl finds reflected in Quesada’s work. The inferences which he draws from these comparisons are not always convincing—as he himself readily admits—but they are invariably exciting. And few readers will quarrel with his major conclusion that the Antijovio “es el primer libro verdaderamente hispanoamericano, según su íntima estructura literaria e ideológica; es, con sus amplísimas polaridades, sus abismáticas contradicciones, su frenética pasión espiritual y formal, el verdadero preludio del auténtico Barroco hispano-indo-americano. EL ANTIJOVIO es una obra de neto estilo manierista-prebarroco; y es, precisamente por esto, la primera obra clásica de Hispanoamérica” (p. 695).
The author’s lengthy parenthetical observations, his complex, elongated sentence structure, the diffuse type of reasoning he employs, and the plethora of abstract terminology and philosophical allusions all combine to make this a difficult book to read. But the reading of it is definitely rewarding.
