"The Inca Garcilaso died in Córdoba, in his house in the Parish of Santa María on April 22, 1616: ten days after his 77th birthday. He was buried in the chapel that he himself ordered to be built for this purpose in the Cathedral of Córdoba. This chapel, due to its luxury and splendor, makes us believe that Garcilaso's poverty was not as much as he praised it. When he died he had five servants and a Moorish slave at his service; He had censuses of some consideration, taking into account the value of money at the time, including two that amounted to ten thousand ducats on the assets of the Marquis of Priego, and in his will he founded an anniversary of masses, naming the Dean and the Cabildo as patrons. of the Cathedral of Cordoba. Clements Robert Markham, a student of Garcilaso, gives a detailed account of the architecture and beauty of the mortuary chapel in the Cathedral of Córdoba: «It is dedicated to the Souls in Purgatory and is located in the North nave, the third to the East. His coat of arms is engraved there in marble and in bronze. It is made up of the four quarters of the families of Vargas, Figueroa, Saavedra and Mendoza. All of them enclosed by the weapons of the Incas. On the side of the gospel the following inscription is read:
«THE INCA GARCILASO DE LA VEGA. INSIGNE MAN, WORTHY OF PERPETUAL MEMORY. ILLUSTRIOUS IN BLOOD. EXPERT IN LETTERS. BRAVE IN ARMS. SON OF GARCILASO DE LA VEGA. OF THE HOUSES OF THE DUKES OF FERIA, AND INFANTADO; AND FROM ELISABETH PALLA; SISTER OF HUAYNA CAPAC, LAST EMPEROR OF THE INDIES. COMMENT THE FLORIDA. HE TRANSLATED LEON HEBREW AND COMPOSED THE ROYAL COMMENTS.
On the side of the epistle the following inscription is read:
«HE LIVED IN CORDOVA, WITH A LOT OF RELIGION. EXEMPLARY DIED: ENDOWED THIS CHAPEL. BURIED IN IT. I LINK YOUR PROPERTY, TO THE SUFFRAGE OF THE SOULS IN PURGATORY. THE LORDS, DEAN, AND THE COUNCIL OF THIS HOLY CHURCH ARE PERPETUAL PATRONS, PASSED AWAY ON APRIL XXII, M.DC.XVI. PRAY TO GOD FOR HIS SOUL»."
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INCA GARCILASO DE LA VEGA
"(Garcilaso de la Vega, called El Inca; Cuzco, present-day Peru, 1539 - Córdoba, Spain, 1616) Peruvian writer and historian. He was the son of the Spanish conquistador Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega and the Inca princess Isabel Chimpo Ocllo. Thanks to the privileged position of his father, who belonged to Francisco Pizarro 's faction until he went over to the side of Viceroy Pedro de La Gasca , the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega received a careful education in Cuzco alongside the children of Francisco and Gonzalo Pizarro , mestizos and illegitimate like him.
At the age of twenty-one he moved to Spain, where he continued a military career. With the rank of captain, he participated under the command of Juan de Austria in the repression of the Moors in Granada, and later also fought in Italy, where he met the Neoplatonic philosopher León Hebreo. In 1590, most likely hurt by the low regard in which he was held in the army because of his mestizo condition, he laid down his arms and entered religion. Since his return to Spain he had seen the right to use his father's name recognized (in addition to his father, Garcilaso de la Vega , Jorge Manrique and the Marquis of Santillanawere among his illustrious ancestors); He had also frequented the humanistic circles of Seville, Montilla and Córdoba, and had devoted himself to the study of history and the reading of classical and Renaissance poets. The result of these readings was the Italian translation that Inca Garcilaso made of the Dialogues of Love , by León Hebreo, which he released in Madrid the same year he retired.
Following the humanist currents in vogue, Garcilaso the Inca began an ambitious and original historiographical project focused on the American past, and especially that of Peru. Considered the father of letters on the continent, in 1605 he published in Lisbon his History of Florida and the journey that Governor Hernando de Soto made to it , a title that was synthesized in La Florida del Inca . The work contains the chronicle of the expedition of the conquistador Hernando de Soto , according to the stories that he himself collected for years, and defends the legitimacy of imposing Spanish sovereignty in those territories to submit them to Christian jurisdiction.
Because of the heroism displayed there and the hardships suffered, the story had plenty of incentive to tempt a writer. It is surprising, however, that Garcilaso chose him, he who was completely unaware of that territory and instead possessed such direct information about his native country, as he would later show. Garcilaso himself went ahead to explain it: Soto's company was referred to him so repeatedly by one of his participants, that he decided to expose it in writing, for which he also used data provided by two other witnesses. He did it quite extensively (one book for each year) and showed, above all, his literary skills, succeeding in reflecting the tragic beauty of that heroic attempt.
Garcilaso the Inca's most famous title, however, was the Royal Commentaries . The first part of this work was published in the city of Lisbon in 1609 and the second, which carried the title given by the editors of General History of Peru , was published posthumously in Córdoba (1617). The Inca Commentaries are a mixture of autobiography, vindication of his glorious lineage and an attempt to give a historical vision of the Inca Empire, whose conquest by the Spanish had been one of the milestones of the colonizing process that followed the discovery of America . .
This conjunction of arguments of diverse interest has given rise to a long controversy about the historical credibility of the data provided by the Inca Garcilaso in his writings, whose sources range from personal memories to the chronicles of Pedro Cieza de León, Agustín de Zárate and José from Acosta. On the other hand, from a purely literary point of view, his prose is considered one of the highest manifestations of the Spanish language and an inexcusable reference in the formation of a Latin American literary tradition.
The first part of the Royal Commentaries (1609) deals with the history and culture of the Incas , exalting that Cuzco was "another Rome", refuting those who treated the indigenous Peruvians as "barbarians". His providential vision distinguishes a wild time, prior to the civilizing mission of the Incas; with these, instead, a stage of high civilization was installed, which the Spaniards had to perfect with evangelization, just as Rome was Christianized in the Old World.
The second part (the General History of Peru ) focuses on the conquest, seen as an epic feat; The problem is that the conquest should have culminated in the Christianization of Peru, but "the work of the devil" fueled the deadly sins of the Spaniards, leading them to civil wars, the destruction of wise Inca institutions, and Toledo's policy adverse to Indians and mongrels.
Artistically, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega skilfully combined resources from the epic, utopia (Platonic genre of great cultivation among humanists) and tragedy. Epic and utopia are linked and reinforced until the middle of La Florida and Los Comentarios , then announcing the tragedy that ends up precipitating as the end of both chronicles approaches. Despite these disastrous endings, Garcilaso looks to the future with hope, as is clearly manifested in the dedication of the second part of the Commentaries .
Written from his own memories of childhood and youth, from epistolary contacts and visits to prominent figures of the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Royal Commentaries constitute, despite the problems of their oral and written sources and the inconsistencies of many dates, one of the most successful attempts, both conceptually and stylistically, to safeguard the memory of the traditions of the Andean civilization. For this reason it is considered his masterpiece and has been recognized as the starting point of Spanish-American literature."
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