Juan Calderon

Juan Antonio Hermógenes Calderón Espadero (Villafranca de los Caballeros, Toledo, April 19, 1791 – London, January 28, 1854) was a Spanish Protestant writer, grammarian, Cervantes and Hellenist.

Biography

He spent his childhood in Alcázar de San Juan as the son of the second doctor, later titular, of the same name. At a very young age he entered the convent of San Francisco in this town, more out of love for studies than out of desire to lead a life monastic; he completed his studies in the convent of the Franciscan order in Lorca (Murcia). He fought in the War of Independence as a pawn for his maternal uncle, the military man Pedro José Espadero. In Valencia he learned French and came into contact with the materialist philosophies of the Enlightenment, with which he began to become a deist. Returned to Alcázar de San Juan, he taught there moral philosophy and, in 1820, the Constitution of Cádiz. He took part in the Patriotic Society of the town, but this signification of liberalism earned him an attempt on his life in 1823, for which he emigrated to France, where he eked out a living working as a shoemaker and teaching Spanish. in Bayonne. There, instructed by Pastor Henri Pyt, he converted to the evangelical faith, married, and published grammatical studies and theological controversies. Transferred to Bordeaux, he published there a Revue grammaticale de la langue espagnole and an Examen raisonné de l'emploi des verbes ser et estar . Married to a French woman, he was born in 1833 in Poitiers his only son, Philip Hermogenes Calderón, who would become a famous English painter. A grandson of Juan Calderón was also a painter, William Frank Calderón. In 1841 he argued with the Franciscan Father José Areso, restorer of the order in France, over his activities as a distributor of Spanish-language Bibles among Spanish émigrés from the south. Juan Calderón's response was to publish a Response in which he defended himself against all these accusations, fundamentally referring to the poor quality of the translations and their errors.

He went to London to preach to the liberal émigrés, but, reluctant to forget his homeland, he maintained his memory by reading Don Quixote, for which reason, when he returned during the regency of Espartero, he composed his Cervantes vindicated in 115 passages, published posthumously in 1855 and where he mainly corrects a series of philological mistakes made by another commentator on Don Quixote, Diego Clemencín. He also published in Madrid a grammar titled Logical and grammatical analysis of the Castilian language (1843) which years later was established as an official textbook for learning the Spanish language by foreigners, knowing two more editions.. In London, he copied several manuscripts from the Library of the British Museum for the Hebraist Luis de Usoz, who used his philological knowledge to edit several classic works of Spanish Protestantism. Luis de Usoz would later be the editor of his Autobiography (1855) and his Cervantes vindicated (1855). Also in London he revised and translated the New Testament from the Greek, a task in which death surprised him; Said New Testament appeared published in Edinburgh in 1858. He also wrote several essays, some on Spinoza's atheism, in two Protestant magazines that he edited in Spanish, El Catolicismo Neto and El Examen Libre, whose mission was to disseminate the Protestant faith and which were distributed clandestinely in Spain. These magazines can be considered the first Protestant magazines composed in the Spanish language; in them he argued against the Catholic thinker Jaime Balmes. He died in London in 1854.

Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo places him among the three most important Spanish heterodox of the XIX century:

"Out of Blanco White and of Usoz, the only Spanish Protestant worthy of memory among those of this century, and certainly not for the original and pilgrim of their religious errors, but for the importance they gave him their merits of philologist and humanist and the docta purity with which he handled the Castilian language, is Don Juan Calderón, apostate of the order of San Francisco."

He was also a competent Cervantist. His work Cervantes vindicated in one hundred and fifteen passages is considered an essential work in the textual criticism of Don Quixote of the century XIX.

Works

• Cervantes vindicated in one hundred and fifteen passages of the text of the Ingenious Hidalgo D. Quiujote de la Mancha, who have not understood or misunderstood some of their commentators or critics. Madrid: Print by J. Martín Alegría, 1854. There is a modern edition of Angel Romera, Alcázar de San Juan: Patronato de Cultura, 2006.
• Don Juan Calderón. Luis de Usoz y Río, Madrid, 1855. Translated and enlarged with information from his son and wife by Joseph Nogaret, with the title Don Juan Calderon. Sa vie écrite par lui-même, suivie de courtes notices sur quatre chrétainings espagnols et sur l'évangelisation de l'Éspagne. Paris: J. Bonhoure et Cíe, 1880. A third edition was made with the title From darkness to light, Barcelona: Printing and Lithography of J. Robreño Zanné, 1884. There is modern critical edition of Angel Romera with the title Autobiography, Alcázar de San Juan: Patronato de Cultura del Ayuntamiento, 1997.
• Revue grammaticale de langue espagnole. Bordeaux: E. Mons, 2 vols, 1838 and 1839. The first part is a dictionary of rules and difficulties of the Spanish language. It was reprinted translated partly into its Revista Gramatical de la Lengua Española. Madrid, No. 1, 2, 3 (Fabrero, March and April 1843; the fourth number, corresponding to May, is the Logical and grammatical analysis of the Spanish language.
• Logical and grammatical analysis of the Spanish language. Madrid, 1843. Reissued twice more with notes by Francisco Merino Ballesteros (Madrid, 1852 and 1861
• Raisonné exam of l'emploi des verbes ser et estar dans langue espagnole. Bourdeaux: E. Mons, 1836. Extracted in Manuel Martínez de Morentin, Philological studies, London: Trübner & Coa, 1857, p. 21-43.
• Response of a Spanish emigrated to the letter of Father Areso, Bordeaux: E. Mons, 1841.
• Dialogues between a pastor and a feligree on the right of every man to read the Holy Scriptures and to form, according to their content, their religious belief, manuscript published almost integer for deliveries with the title Friendly Discussion of a pastor with one of his parishioners about the right of every man to read and study the Holy Scriptures in their magazines Catholicism Neto (No. 2, 3 and 5, 1849-1850) and The Free Review (No. 1, 1851)) and translated with title Friendly discussions with my Priest, London: Jackson & Walford, 1854.