Antonio de la Calancha
Fray Antonio de la Calancha, also known as Father Calancha (Ciudad de la Plata de la Nueva Toledo, today Sucre 1584 - Lima, March 1, 1654), was an Augustinian religious and chronicler of Charcas (today Bolivia).
Biography
Son of the Creole María de Benavides and the Andalusian encomendero Francisco de la Calancha, he renounced the succession of his father's encomienda —Ambana in Larecaja— to enter the religious order of the Augustinians.
He took the habit in the convent of his hometown, Sucre, and studied first at the Augustinian College of San Ildefonso, in Lima —of which he would later become rector—, and later at the University of San Marcos, where he studied graduated in theology.
He reached high positions in his order, which led him to tour Peru: he lived in Potosí (1610-1614), held a chair in his order's convent in Cusco; he knew Arequipa and Mizque; in Trujillo he was prior and witness to the earthquake of 1619, which destroyed the city.
In those places he gathered a large number of news items for his Chrónica moralizada del orden de San Agustín en el Perú, published in Barcelona in 1631, translated shortly after into Latin and French and republished in Lima in 1653. Calancha continued gathering data with a view to producing another volume, but his work remained unfinished.
His disciple, Father Bernardo de Torres, passed on the second part that Calancha had not been able to finish, finished it and published it in 1655 under the title Chronicle of the Sanctuaries of Our Lady of Copacabana and the Meadow.
In 1630 Calancha occupied the priory of the convent of his order in Lima and years later he founded the Prado convent.
He died at the age of 70, on the morning of March 1, 1654, the second Sunday of Lent, when he was preparing to celebrate mass.
Father Calancha also wrote the Report made to the Viceroy, on the beavers that are hunted from Callao to Chile, stating that they are the true ones and that His Majesty can extract from them (1642; by beavers he meant sea wolves), the Life of the Servant of God Catalina de Arroyo, a native of Lima, a donated nun in the Descalzas Monastery of the Patriarch Saint Joseph, who despising his nobility, he resplendent in virtues and a Brief history of the University of San Marcos (published in 1660).
Calancha's style is "bombastic and ornate". A fervent culterano, he followed the Gongorina current. In its pages one often finds the baroque formula of the struggle between good and evil, darkness and sin and dream worlds invaded by supernatural and divine apparitions, in which the author believed & # 34;.