A forgotten document of Jesuit expelled from Tucuman: the "Carta crítica sobre el uso de la Santa Biblia en lengua vulgar" by Diego León de Villafañe (1741-1830)

Abstract

Diego León de Villafañe (1741-1830) was the only non-secularized Jesuit who returned to the lands of the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata after the decrees of Godoy of 1797 and 1798. After his return he settled in the city of Tucumán where he was born; from there he stablished -throughout the thirty years between his return from exile and his death- numerous relations with members of the political, economic and religious elites of the region. However, this figure has been mostly negleted by the argentinian historiography. The objective of this work is to present a brief manuscript work -one of the few that remain of its authorship- written by Diego León de Villafañe preserved in the Archivo General de la Nación of Argentina on the problematic of the translation of the Bible to the "vulgar" languages. In his work Villafañe criticizes the appearance of numerous translations of the Christian holy book into Castilian. We will try to insert this work not only within the general theological context of anti-Jansenistic thought in Europe, but also within the religious debates that took place in the Rio de la Plata between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century.