John Montalvo
Juan María Montalvo Fiallos (April 13, 1832 in Ambato – January 17, 1889 in Paris) was an Ecuadorian novelist and essayist. His liberal thinking was strongly marked by anticlericalism and opposition to presidents Gabriel García Moreno and Ignacio de Veintimilla. After the publication of the magazine El Cosmopolita , in which he criticized the García Moreno presidency, Montalvo traveled to Colombia, where he wrote much of the rest of his work. One of his best-known books is Las Catilinarias , published in 1880. Among his essays are Seven Treatises (1882) and Moral Geometry (posthumous, 1902). He also wrote a sequel to Don Quixote de la Mancha, called Chapters that Cervantes Forgotten. He admired by writers, essayists, intellectuals of the stature of Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel de Unamuno. He died of pleurisy in Paris. His body was embalmed and is on display in a mausoleum in his hometown of Ambato.
Biography
Childhood and training
His father, Don Marcos Montalvo, the son of an Andalusian immigrant, was a street vendor. In Quinchicoto, near Ambato, he met Mrs. Josefa de Fiallos Villacrés, whom he married on January 20, 1811. After a while the couple moved to Ambato, a city in which Mr. Marcos came to stand out. some brothers in the age of infancy, Juan became the youngest of the boys, and his parents gave him pampering and care.
He had seven siblings: Francisco, Javier, Mariano, Alegría, Rosa, Juana and Isabel. His childhood was spent not only in his house, but also in the nearby Quinta de Ficoa. In 1836 he suffered from smallpox and his face was scarred. At the age of seven he went to school, a humble village house, one story, poorly managed and supported. In 1843, when he was eleven years old, his brother Francisco was arrested, imprisoned and exiled for politically confronting the dictatorship of Juan Jose Flores. According to the writer Galo René Pérez, his brother's exile "left him with a moral injury from which he never recovered", leading him to hate dictatorships. On February 17, 1857, during the government of Francisco Robles, Montalvo was appointed civil assistant to the Ecuadorian legation in Rome, while Francisco Javier Salazar was appointed secretary of the same.
In 1845, his brother returned from his exile in Peru, and took him with him to [Quito] to continue their studies. His two older brothers, Francisco and Francisco Javier, guided and influenced his taste for letters, apart from having created for him, each one with his prestige, a favorable environment in the world of his studies. Between 1846 and 1848 he began to study Latin grammar at the San Fernando school. Later he studied philosophy at the San Luis seminary, where he received a master's degree, and later he entered the University of Quito to study Law, not because he wanted to be a lawyer, but because among the professions of that time (medicine, law and theology) he was it was the least unpleasant.
In Quito he became friends with the poet and liberal politician Julio Zaldumbide, with whom he met continuously. At his house, practitioners of letters, destined to become well-known writers, sometimes attended: Agustín Yerovi, José Modesto Espinosa and Miguel Riofrío. Together they commented on the great European romantic authors. In 1853 President Urbina decreed the freedom of studies in colleges and universities. Due to the new regulations, Montalvo was deprived of his position as secretary at the San Fernando school and was also forced to abandon his law degree after only passing the second year. Thus, he decided to return to Ambato.
In the melancholic atmosphere of his home (his parents and his older brother had passed away by then) he concentrated on enriching his self-taught training, accustomed to taking notes of his readings in notebooks that are preserved. He studied grammar Spanish and language treatises. Professing a conscious respect for Capmany and Clemencín, he was convinced that it was necessary to base stylistic originalities on the possession of a correct form authorized by the classics and the most notable scholars of the language.
First trip to Europe
As an immigrant, during the government of Francisco Robles, Montalvo was appointed civilian adjunct to the Ecuadorian legation in Rome, while Francisco Javier Salazar was appointed secretary of the same. To a large extent this appointment was given thanks to the efforts of his influential brother, Dr. Francisco Javier Montalvo.In mid-July he arrived in France. Although the seat of his civil adjunct functions was Rome, Montalvo stayed six months in Paris, through no fault of his own. There he met Don Pedro Moncayo, an Ecuadorian diplomat, who provided him with facilities for his intellectual stimulation, and French celebrities such as Lamartine and Proudhon. From January to August 1858, he corresponded with his brother Francisco Javier for publication in the weekly from Quito La Democracy, which the latter directed. These writings, which made up a very important portion of his future magazine El Cosmopolita , were not well received in Ecuador.During this stage in Paris, Montalvo became melancholic, because he missed his province. In Los proscritos , an essay that appeared in El Cosmopolita , he wrote:
The nostalgia consists of an indecent love for the homeland and a profound dislike of the country in which it is... is a desire to cry at the same time that is impossible.
His misanthropy was also accentuated, an inclination he had had since his childhood, for being in a strange and indifferent environment. His stay in Paris lasted three years, during which he dedicated himself to his studies, contacts with personalities, the urban walks of profitable observation, the elaboration of literary pages, several love affairs and brief office tasks. Also, during this time he developed acute rheumatism, the effects of which accompanied him for the rest of his life.
He left France and in January 1858 he was already in Italy. He visited Rome, greatly enjoyed his visit to Florence, and equally memorable were his impressions of Naples, Sorrento, Pompeii, and Venice. From Italy he traveled to Spain, and especially liked Andalusia; he visited Granada and Córdoba, enjoying the Muslim architecture of the Alhambra and the Generalife. From Granada he returned to Paris, crossing La Mancha, where he verified the misery in which the region was at that time.
Return to Ecuador and exile
He had to return to Ecuador not only because of the instability of the governments and the political turmoil, but also because of the arthritis that afflicted him. When he arrived, in 1859, the country was governed by García Moreno. The first thing he did was write the president a long letter, somewhat discursive, but loaded with admonitions and threats, which apparently did not completely irritate him. At the end of 1861 he collaborated in the literary magazine El Iris of Quito. In 1865 his love affairs began with María Adelaida Guzmán, with whom he finally married in Ambato on October 17, 1868 and had two children.
On January 3, 1866, after García Moreno's first presidential term, he published El Cosmopolita, a 40-page political-literary magazine published in Quito, whose subsequent installments continued to appear until January of 1869, and held a heated controversy with José Modesto Espinosa, who came up against him. In 1867 he published El Precursor del Cosmopolita and the following year he began to correspond with Eloy Alfaro and argued with Juan León Mera, publishing two pamphlets against him: El Masonismo Negro and Dancing on the Ruins. In 1869, when García Moreno promoted the so-called "Carta Negra", Montalvo decided to expatriate, fearing for his life. He went to the Colombian embassy, and as soon as he received his passport to leave the country, he left on the morning of January 17, 1869 for Ipiales along with two other exiles: Mariano Mestanza and Manuel Semblantes.
The Arellano del Hierro family, from Tulcán, recommended Montalvo to Dr. Ramón Rosero, from Ipiales, to welcome him into their home; he was later recommended to Mrs. Filomena Rojas. For their part, Mestanza and Semblantes continued their journey to the coast, to sail to Panama and from there to Europe. During his stay in Ipiales, Mrs. Filomena Rojas gave him a gold feather and Montalvo received the first letter from Eloy Alfaro from Panama, inviting him to accompany him. They soon fraternized and Alfaro installed him comfortably; He bought her a ticket to France, gave her a sum of money for the first weeks of her stay in that country, and promised to give her any help that she might later request. Arriving in the French capital, his immediate interest was to establish connections with people who might be in a position to help him, since since his exile he fell into a situation of urgency; he had left Ecuador with few belongings and it was impossible for him to obtain a safe and regular income, he returned to Panama, heading to Ipiales. And although there he lacked money to continue his trip, Alfaro once again came to his aid. Montalvo relates it as follows:
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Among the names that are to bless on account of me, there is Eloy Alfaro, young man hardly known to me, friend never. As soon as he knew the trance he found me, he came to me for his steps, and reassured me with the most exquisite delicacy. And not happy to bring me a first-class ticket, he offered me a letter to Barbecues of the sum I wanted, which I refused, because in that city another friend, another brother, was expecting me.
Once in Ipiales, he decided to continue to Peru, where he met José María Urbina, banished by García Moreno. There he sought to foment opposition against the government of his country, and perhaps a revolution, but he was unsuccessful, and frustrated, he returned to Ipiales. During his exile he wrote several books, such as The Barbarian of America in the Civilized Towns of Europe, The Book of Passions, Diary of a Madman, Of the virtues and vices and Chapters that Cervantes forgot. In 1872, his son Carlos Alfonso, five years and eight months old, died; the news was communicated to him from Ambato.
In October 1874, through Alfaro's personal diligence, his libel La dictatorship perpetua was published, but it did not begin to circulate in Ecuador before May 1875. In any case, The perpetual dictatorship inspired a group of young liberals (Roberto Andrade, Manuel Cornejo, Abelardo Moncayo and Manuel Polanco) to assassinate García Moreno on August 6. However, the most notorious perpetrator of the assassination was a man unrelated to the conspirators, the Colombian mercenary Faustino Lemos Rayo, who even held some public positions in the García governments, for which the president did not suspect him. Upon hearing the news, Montalvo stated: "It wasn't Rayo's machete, but my pen that killed him." Shortly after, he published the essay The Last of the Tyrants.
In May 1876, voluntarily and with the financial help of his liberal friends, Montalvo returned to Ecuador. In Quito he published the pamphlet From the Minister of State through which he attacked and caused the resignation of Manuel Gómez de la Torre, Minister of Government of President Antonio Borrero. On June 22, the first number of the magazine El Regenerador appeared, whose last number was published on August 26, 1878. On July 9, he organized what was called the & # 34; Republican Society & # 3. 4; and in his inaugural address he exalted the importance of the International and proposed some of its principles. He said:
The goal (of the International) is honest, moderate; the means to be used are lawful; their plausible longings. The organization of work, the correspondence of fees and salaries with trades and works; the freedom covered by law, supported by duty and other similar purposes, are those of that association that is overflowing in Europe...The International recognizes the principle of property does not want but that the laborious classes do not harm their work and the industry has its laws to which leisure and luxury are subject. This society is not persecuted by the public force; the enemies of the people are shouting against them, right: But what authority do the alharacas of Napoleon III and Bismarck have for democracy?
He temporarily left the city to rest in a property belonging to his brothers, near Baños. But he was soon called by Eloy Alfaro, who had arrived in Guayaquil to prepare a pronouncement against the Borrero government. Thus, on September 6 of the same year, Montalvo arrived in Guayaquil and was received by an enthusiastic crowd. He was unable to speak in public, and rather promised thanks in his own way, through the printed word, which indeed circulated among the people of Guayaquil the next day. And although Montalvo had managed to find himself publicly flattered that day, his joy did not last long., since Ignacio de Veintemilla proclaimed himself dictator on September 8. His friends warned him of the risk he was running under the new government, but Montalvo could not go into exile, since he did not have sufficient financial resources.
In the 1877 elections, he was elected deputy for the province of Esmeraldas, but he never attended the Chambers. After a while, he finally left for Ipiales, where he lived concerned and concerned about his safety. He traveled to Panama for a month with the intention of publishing Las Catilinarias. When he returned to Ipiales after 3 months, he immediately engaged in concrete actions of popular agitation and armed uprising against the Veintemilla presidency.He left Ipiales again, and on July 30, 1881 he was already in Barbacoas (Nariño); he stayed there for more than twelve days, before heading to Tumaco and from there to Panama, where he would remain for an indefinite period of time. At this time, the relationship he had with his wife was completely broken by the lifestyle that Montalvo led and for his disengagement in family obligations. Eloy Alfaro had only announced that his trip to Europe no longer admitted doubts; Together with José Miguel Macay, his prosperous financial partner, he promised to help him financially and to oversee the publication of his pamphlets. Finally Montalvo traveled to Paris with the desire to edit his work Seven treatises .
Third trip to Europe
He was proud of his Seven Treatises and wanted to publish them in the most luxurious way possible. But he did not manage to raise the money that the project demanded, until he obtained the sponsorship of the businessman José Joaquín from the city of Besançon. When his Seven Treatises were published, Montalvo was recognized and praised by several European critics, although only in the field of Hispanic culture (maintained by Spanish and Hispanic-American emigrants through publications) or hispanists from Paris. Consequently, Montalvo hastened to promote his treatises in Spain. At the end of May, the director of the newspaper El Globo and Emilio Castelar had received the two volumes of the Seven treatises. On October 23, 1882, his wife María Adelaida died, and the same year Montalvo began a sentimental relationship with the French Augustine-Catherine Contoux, who he maintained until his last days, with whom he would have a son in 1886, the result of concubinage. her.
Eager to achieve fame in Spain, Montalvo immediately organized a trip to Madrid, arriving in the city on June 2, 1883. He settled in the best hotel of those years: the Hotel París, located in the Puerta del Sol. Many men of letters visited him or invited him to meet with them: Gaspar Núñez de Arce, Jesús Pando y Valle, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo and Manuel del Palacio, as well as Juan Valera, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Leopoldo García Ramón and Carlos Gutiérrez, to more than two Italian figures: Cesare Cantù and Edmundo de Amicis. The same year President José Plácido Caamaño offered him a deputy, which he rejected.
However, the Seven Treatises were not well received by everyone; The Church in Ecuador, through the Archbishop of Quito Monsignor José Ignacio Ordóñez, showed his dissatisfaction with the work. On February 19, 1884, the archbishop reproved and condemned the Seven Treatises by means of a pastoral letter. Montalvo soon responded to the clergyman through his book Ecclesiastical Mercurial, written with astonishing improvisation and full of violent attacks against Ordóñez and the Church. For this reason, Archbishop Ordóñez traveled to Rome with the intention of obtaining the Pope's prohibition against reading them, and in a short time Leo XIII included the Seven Treatises in the Index of prohibited books.
Later, in 1886, Montalvo began the publication of El Espectador, a book made up of three volumes, each of which contained seventeen, nineteen and nine essays each. Back in France, his plans to return to Ecuador failed, and he had to remain in Paris. In 1888 President Antonio Flores Jijón offered him the position of consul in Bordeaux and Montalvo did not accept his proposal. In Paris, possibly between March 8 and 10, 1888, his health deteriorated abruptly due to bad weather: a heavy downpour surprised him while he was returning from the publishing house where he had corrected certain details of the third volume of El Espectador, and he contracted pneumonia.
Last days
In the days that followed, the symptoms of his illness worsened and Montalvo became practically destitute. During that long period of suffering, Agustín L. Yerovi and Clemente Ballén visited him frequently. The doctors who had treated Montalvo the first days of his illness did not realize that the initial pneumonia that afflicted him had turned into a pleural effusion, as determined by the doctor León Labbeé, who subjected him to a treatment that, although it he improved for a while, he could not stop his increasingly intense suffering. When Labbeé realized, after a new examination of the pleural fluid, that a dangerous source of suppuration had appeared, he indicated the advisability of carrying out an immediate, very difficult operation, to which Montalvo agreed to undergo.
When the day of the operation arrived, at the moment of saying if he granted his permission for the anesthesia, to everyone's surprise he replied saying: & # 34; At no time in my life have I lost consciousness of my actions. Don't be afraid, doctor, let me move. You will operate as if your blade did not cause pain". The testimonial details of Dr. Agustín Yerovi, on this fact, are as follows:
The operation Montalvo suffered horrifies. It consisted of lifting two ribs of the dorsal region, after cutting in an extension of a decimeter, the soft parts of that region; giving the greatest dilation to the wound, by means of clamps that collect bloody meats, and then placing something like a bomb, which has the double object of suctioning the products of the purulent spot, and injecting antiseptic liquids; that is, something like fire. - All this lasted about an hour; in the meantime, the sick man had not exhaled a complaint, nor had a muscle. The serene attitude and even majestic, interested doctors, practitioners and spectators. One of them exclaimed: that man is a character.
A very questionable fact both in the testimony and in the actors of that supposed act, since no human being can resist such martyrdom and suffering, Montalvo also underwent an operation of apostemas in the throat. At the end of the long surgical process, the surgeon warned that there was evidence that the infectious focus had invaded other parts of the body, and that there was no other option than to leave the wound open to periodically drain the purulent fluid. That wound remained open until his death. Montalvo understood that his end was approaching and asked to be taken to his house at 26 rue Cardinet where he said: "I just feel that my whole life is focused in my brain I could compose an elegy today as I have not done in my youth" Leopoldo García Ramón, who confessed that he was going to accompany him weekly while he was prostrate, recounted the following:
When at my return from Spain in September of last year (1888), I went to visit him, my heart was painfully oppressed by checking the progress of the terrible purulent pneumonia that consumed him. I thought you were lost. He carried on the side a wound that the doctors purposely kept open; they had practiced in his throat a difficult and painful operation; in spite of everything, what a cleansing of his underwear! With what anguish he fixed the cuffs of the sleeping shirt to hide his poor dolls! How much he thanked my wife for seeing him like this, without shaving, disrespecting, ruining! He fought rage against the disease: he didn't want to die.
Montalvo's condition was getting worse, and on January 15, 1889, he had Dr. Agustín L. Yerovi approached to express his last wishes (including being buried in Paris); on January 16 he began to die, on January 17, he asked his housekeeper to dress him in his black suit and tails and asked her to try to buy a handful of carnations for his coffin. They were his last words.
The Ecuadorian colony paid for his funeral, which was solemn and in the church of San Francisco de Sales. During the progressive era, his embalmed remains were repatriated to Guayaquil, and on July 12, 1889 they were buried in the city cemetery, where they remained until April 10, 1932. The day after their exhumation they were moved to Ambato, to where they arrived on the 12th, to rest since then in his mausoleum. In 1895, Chapters that Cervantes Forgotten was published posthumously in France; and in 1902, Moral Geometry.
Work
Influence
Classical antiquity
Montalvo read everything that could be read at that time about Hellenic History, Philosophy and Literature, and quoted many ancient Greeks directly or glossed in his works. In the same way, although to a lesser degree, he felt admiration by ancient Rome. The Roman theater of Terence, Plautus and Seneca served, if not as an inspiration, as a model, for the five dramas he wrote and which were compiled in his Book of Passions: The Leper i>, Jara, The Discommunicated, Granja and The Dictator. In short, the Greco-Latin reached the highest level of his knowledge, being the solid foundation of his training and the weapon he wielded in his bitter polemics. He admired Socrates from Greece, and Julius Caesar from Rome, as an example of the soldier, and to Cicero, for his oratory.
Spanish Literature
He knew a good part of Spanish literature, from romances to romanticism. On more than one occasion he criticized several Spanish literary works and dedicated his essay El buscapié to exalt them. He felt special admiration and respect for Cervantes and considered his Don Quixote de la Mancha as the most complete in the world of letters, at the same time that he despised the continuation written by Avellaneda. On the other hand, Montalvo considered contemporary Spanish letters (second half of the XIX century) as vague and unproductive, especially the bad translations of texts, although he knew how to appreciate the Spanish intellectuals of the time.
French Literature
French literature, before and after the Wars of Independence, had a decisive influence on Spanish-American writers. Both Spanish and Spanish-American romanticism had its seeds in France, and in America it sprouted first and lasted longer. Montalvo was a romantic ideologue of liberalism; his models were Chateaubriand, Rousseau and Victor Hugo, while he had a deep appreciation for Lamartine. He also admired Montaigne and Montesquieu, who together with Rousseau inspired his political thought. De Montaigne took not only the exaltation of man in his natural state, but various themes and the literary technique he used in his essays. Many of Montalvo's ideas, without necessarily being copied, echo Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, and Rousseau influenced the Ecuadorian writer for his ideas on education, government, the State, citizenship etc., expressed in Emilio and The Social Contract.
Other influences
As for English literature, he greatly admired Byron and Milton, and his essays were probably also inspired by Bacon. His magazine El Espectador was inspired by The Spectator of Addison. American literature was also cited by Montalvo, although without critical judgments. He knew the great literary works published in Italian, although he apparently was not influenced by the style, themes and ideas of the Italian masters. As for literature in German, he studied the classics of the 18th century century, although he did not know the language. He felt admiration by Goethe; about him, Schiller and Klopstock said that they were "geniuses of the first order, of those very high torches that are in full view of all nations". Grammar of Andrés Bello, the poetry of Olmedo and the Argentine precursors of romanticism.
Genres
If essays are understood as a genre, and journalism as a branch of essays, all of Montalvo's work would be essays, with the exception of his Libro de las pasiones, made up of five dramas, and Chapters that Cervantes Forgotten, which is a novel. According to Professor Antonio Sacoto Salamea, the essay is the "genre in which Montalvo as a tapestry copies the bloody political struggle of an era, gives us concepts of culture and barbarism, highlights the evils that corrupt a society and he mercilessly denounces the elements causing this stagnation". It should be noted, however, that in the composition of his essays digressions are frequent
As for the lyrical, he did not publish any book of poetry, but there are some loose through his writings. His poetry has been considered cold and full of reminiscences and from the thematic point of view, lacking in originality. Regarding the dramas he wrote, only five are known, published after his death under the title The book of the passions. They were not creations to be represented, although they could well be staged; his concern was rather didactic, since his plays had a moralistic background.
His only novel, Chapters that Cervantes Forgotten, is a continuation of Don Quixote set in some geographical section and at an indeterminate moment in the character's route, in the context of his third outing, in which Montalvo was very concerned with demonstrating the linguistic perfection that Cervantes reached, instead of developing his characters. his article "Don Quixote"(volume 6, page 2099), Montalvo's novel is considered the best approach in this genre to the Cervantine character, since it has generally been reproduced biasedly by other authors. Textually, the mentioned article says:"In the 19th century we must highlight the valuable interpretation of the Ecuadorian J. Montalvo, who in the Chapters that Cervantes forgot drew a portrait of the hero who did not I would disdain its own author: the sense of race, tragedy and sublimation were magnificently highlighted by the eminent Ecuadorian polygrapher". As a journalist, Montalvo was aware of the influence of journalism as a generating engine in culture and in social and political life, although he used it to support with a certain eagerness to proselytize points of view that combined his ideological and political orientation.
Frequent Topics
Civilization and Barbarism
In the Spanish-American essay of the time, it was considered that barbarism was the obstacle to the advance of civilization, the propagation of culture. Montalvo, in accordance with this idea, described as barbarism, among other things, the use of brute force, acts of imperialist oppression, the despotism of governments, and religious fanaticism.
Politics
Montalvo was an idealist and disliked the political reality of Ecuador. He relied on morality and principle as the basis for the nation's functioning, and was very concerned about highlighting the importance of the moral gifts of politicians, when in fact both conservatives and liberals were flawed. That is why Professor Louis Arquier stated that "Every time he talks about politics, the columnist is faced with a contradiction, the subject attracts and repels him at the same time."
Montalvo was very respectful of the laws, but he was annoyed by the fact that some were unfair. In El Cosmopolita he attacked legislators who created or repealed laws at their convenience:
A deputy has the goods on his way to customs, bill decreasing the rights annexed to those goods. The nation cares about that sale. Another deputy owns a factory where a certain article is drawn up, a bill reducing the pension imposed on that article. The Republic cares about that reduction.
He also despised tyranny, which he referred to, among other things, as "triumphant, arrogant, unbreakable abuse" In his opinion, for there to be tyranny there must necessarily be a people willing to put up with it, either due to shyness or apathy; thus, the people were as guilty of establishing a tyranny as the tyrant himself. His liberal position led him to oppose any regime that has not been elected by suffrage, although he came to oppose the popular vote if the country did not enjoy its liberties.
Regarding the rights of individuals, she defended women's rights on several occasions. He also defended the rights of indigenous people and blacks, more because of his idea of equality of all men before God than out of sympathy for them, since he probably had racial prejudices. Aware of the great responsibility that weighed on intellectuals with respect to the social problems of indigenous people, states:
No, we have not made this being humiliated, morally spoiled, abandoned from God and luck; the Spaniards left us, as it is and as it will be for centuries.
Montalvo rarely referred to the military. He thought that history and war are inseparable and he limited himself to discerning between just and unjust wars. Likewise, as a man of his time, he did not remain insensitive to the heroic aspect of the struggles and the greatness of despising one's own life for the sake of an ideal.
Anticlericalism
Montalvo wanted the separation of Church and State, and in his writings he did not intend to speak to his readers about religion and faith but about Ecuador and its government. He attacked or defended the clergy depending on their political situation. On more than one occasion, seeking in vain political support from him, he wrote to praise the qualities of good clergy, but more often than not his writings were anti-clerical. In The Cosmopolitan he attacked the clergy because he was a strong and influential member of the Conservative Party then in power; also for being more interested in earthly goods than in heavenly ones, for simoniac. When he wrote this work, in 1866, the clergy were very powerful in Ecuador, and not only did they not accept the slightest hint of opposition, but also considered it heresy. Regarding religious fanaticism, he related an interesting but exaggerated anecdote in Las catilinaries:
A bastard of Méndez has been seen in Quito, going up to the pulpit, burning his hands in a lighter, putting a candle in his mouth, and trying with this that the virtue of God was working on it, shouting that at that moment the devil was walking loose through the church, and forming dreadful tugs of deluded and scorned plebe. And there has not been a policeman who goes down to that neckline and imposes a strong corporal punishment on him, nor a government that sends him with shackles to Guayaquil, to embark on the first ballenero vessel that seems to be. The same penitent deceiver had been seen, when the Imbabura earthquake hit the streets of Quito, and shouting that for the evils and lack of devotion of the people had occurred that disgrace. There a wooden frame was erected at the point in the square of the Cathedral of Quito, the archaeologist went up there, and, bare by six fingers below the navel, lined the back with a cow leather under a black tulle, it was given five thousand spans, thus mocking the holy things, of the assembled people, of the nineteenth century, of the Government, and even of Sancho Panza, who passed by In Bogota, Caracas, Santiago, Lima, Buenos Aires, these scenes of nefanda barbarie seem impossible, which have been seen repeated a thousand times in Quito in the greatest public afflictions. Earthquakes, rains of ash, ravaged choleras of the volcanoes, there are the gachupine friars to burn their hands in the pulpit, to bite candle caps, to see the devil with their eyes, and to say that they all provoke and do it by the liberals.
He continued with his opposition to the clergy in his Seven Treatises and in the aforementioned Las catilinarias, because he felt disappointed to see that the clergy did not fight against Veintemilla. His most furious work was Ecclesiastical Mercurial , written in response to the condemnation of the clergy spokesman, Monsignor José Ignacio Ordóñez, of his work. However, it can be ensured that in practice Montalvo got along better with ecclesiastical authority than with conservative Catholics. An illustrative case is his Reply to the letter from a Catholic priest to the editor of El Cosmopolita, published in number 3 of your magazine. The aforementioned priest was the apostolic nuncio, Monsignor Antonelli, who with great courtesy defended the need for the Concordat. With the same deference, Montalvo in 25 pages expresses himself with the greatest clarity about what, in his opinion, relations between Church and State should be. He declares himself a supporter of the royal Board of Trustees, affirms that in case of disagreement reason of State must prevail, rejects the Concordat signed by García Moreno and ends by specifying that he considers Christianity to be the true religion and asserting: "I will never be contrary unless of superstition, fanaticism and the abuses of bad priests". The nuncio sent him a second letter with a friendly tone, always defending the point of view of the Church but without condemning the personal positions of the writer.
Montalvo was opposed to clerical domination, like any other, and questioned the "myth of a perfect Church down to the smallest detail and thus authorized to sanction any hint of criticism". In short, his position vis-à-vis the clergy he obeyed politics in the first place, then his anti-theocratic liberal affiliation and experiences lived before the clergy, despite which he did not stop being religious.
Marriage and offspring
Juan Montalvo married María Manuela Guzmán in his hometown on October 17, 1868, from whom he had two children: Juan Carlos Alfonso Montalvo Guzmán, baptized on July 29, 1866, and who died at 7 years. On May 8, 1869, his second daughter, María del Carmen Montalvo Guzmán, was born.
María Manuela Guzmán, his legitimate wife, died on October 23, 1882 at the age of 42.
During his self-exile in Ipiales, he had a relationship with a young woman named Hernández with whom he had two children: Adán and Visitación.
During his last trip to Europe in Paris he met Augustine Contoux with whom he lived in concubinage during his last years and had a son named Jean Contoux who was born in 1886.
List of works
He was a very prolific author. His philosophical work is close to a thousand pages, his fiction nine hundred, and his main essays more than two thousand. Some were published by him, although there is also an abundant posthumous work, since his book studies have not lost popularity:
First works in newspapers
- 1848: The Reason
- 1849: The Veteran
- 1854: The Evangelical Moral
Political and religious essays
- 1856: The Spectator, in three tomes 581 p.
- 1865: The Cosmopolita, nine books
- 1880: The Catilinaries, twelve tomos
- 1884: Ecclesiastical Mercury, 230 p.
Philosophical essays
- 1882: Seven Treaties, in two tomes 866 p.
- 1902: Moral Geometry, 214 p.
Fiction
- 1895: Chapters that were forgotten by Cervantes, novel 448 p.
- 1935: The book of passions: La Leprosa, Jara, Granja, el Descomulgado, and the Dictator, dramas 456 p.
Miscellaneous
- 1873: Judas in 38 p.
- 1916: laughter physiology, rehearsal in 50 p.
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