ABSTRACT
Francisco Javier Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo (1747–95) was the son of a quechua surgeon and a Spanish woman from Riobamba. Known as Eugenio de Espejo, he practised law and medicine and enjoyed the life of a middle-income criollo in the Spanish Kingdom of Quito. 1 Scholars have discussed how Espejo’s dual emphasis on education and politics defined his literary production, and his life: he was imprisoned several times for his satires of political and religious figures. 2 He suffered his first imprisonment in 1785, after an aristocratic criolla sued him for defamation of character. 3 He was arrested again in 1795 for plotting to overthrow the Crown, and died from mistreatment in December of that same year. While literary historians have concentrated almost exclusively on Espejo’s satires, discounting his treatises and sermons, 4 historian Martin Minchom’s analysis of revolutionary activity in late viceregal Quito focuses our attention on the priest Juan Pablo Espejo, Eugenio’s brother, and his rather fluffy ideology. 5 Minchom overlooks the decades-long continental reach of Eugenio’s economic and political thought by ignoring his writings altogether. In what follows I focus on two panegyrical sermons on St Rose of Lima penned by Eugenio and delivered by Juan Pablo in 1793–94. The stated proposition of Espejo’s sermons is the exemplary life of St Rose of Lima. However, Rose of Lima becomes equal parts wise virgin and model paisana as Espejo develops through his headings the unstated proposition of Spanish-American unity and revolt against the Spanish Crown and Church. I approach these sermons as logical extensions of Espejo’s treatises from the 1780s, which balance a fiery condemnation of moral and political corruption with a sophisticated economic analysis of the Kingdom of Quito.
