If there is a famous story book by its title, that is Utopia Tomas Moro. So popular did the title jumped out of the cover to dictionaries, become a noun and adjective to define universally and stone, something like a pipe dream, an image of perfection that we can never touch. At Utopia same thing happens to Don Quixote, that everyone knows but hardly anyone has read (Pyrenees down).
Utopia is a flower Renaissance Seedborn of Plato and his Republic. In the early sixteenth century are discovering the territories of the world and are creating new cities. The thought of social renewal with the ability to build better societies, round the heads of thinkers from all over Europe.
This small book is divided into two related but different. In Part Two, Described in detail Moro Island Abraxa, where Utopo creates the republic of Utopia, a society in peace and harmony where gold is a precious metal and there is speculation. Maybe for XXI century a citizen reading this second part, it is somewhat naive, given how cities have become until today. But you wrong, posed text as absolutely current concepts today as barter, alternative money, mobility, food self-sufficiency, real, participatory democracy and a lot of concepts that are now flag movements hipster West.
Well, but that being said let's focus on the first part to go looking for the essential relationships that this booklet has with the city of Córdoba. In this first part narrates the interesting conversations that Moro, on a trip to Antwerp, maintained with an acquaintance of his friend and host Peter Gilles, and the seed will germinate later in The Utopia. This character, Real perhaps, speaking of utopias and unknown worlds is a peninsular origin marine, say Portuguese, one named Rafael (primer nod to Cordoba). Rafael is a dark tanning, wise and experienced, that accompanied Amerigo Vespucci in three of his four trips around the world. Is a outsider extravagant for that inquisitorial Europe, Talking openly about their experiences traveling, policy and even philosophy: “Latinos have left nothing of importance in this field, except for some works of Seneca and Cicero” (second nod to Cordoba).
Good, if you get here, at least I've gotten to know, more or less, what is this universal booklet. Now I will tell the true and interesting book relationship with the city of gazpacho.
Since the first editions (The first was published in 1516), Thomas More's Utopia circulated throughout the old continent written in Latin in the humanists environments. But this Spanish (as dark) did not come until after a century. The first to be interested in the book and translated some passages is Quevedo (my beloved Quevedo). This has a good friend in Cordoba (Weird right??). Antonio is Medinilla Jerónimo, Corregidor and then Justice of the City. An interesting character, good warrior, good rider and best Latin reader. For some unknown reason, Quevedo thought it would be a useful text for the people of Sierra Morena under Philip IV. So instructs his friend Jerome to translate the book Castilian Thomas More. The book sees the light for the first time in Spain in 1637 in print by Salvador Cea, located in a street about Bookshelves (Today Córdoba Street Journal) and is the edition that prevails to 1946 in revising and supplementing the translation. This edition of Utopia soon acquired great popularity among intellectuals Spanish and travels to America where he finds its practical development. It becomes a real “political program” novel inspiring social projects such as hospitals towns of Vasco de Quiroga or Reductions organized by the Jesuits, that are true islands of Utopia, and incidentally, the real reason for his expulsion of most of the colonial powers. The main objective of these Jesuit missions was to create partnerships with the benefits and qualities of European Christian society, but absent from the vices and evils that characterized. These missions were founded by the Jesuits in all colonial America, synthesizing the views of other scholars besides Thomas More, and constitute one of the most remarkable in the history utopias.
It is curious to see how a city that prides itself on its culture, may have forgotten historical events such as the publication of this book equity, in his chronicles and annals. As much as I fetched, I could not find any reference to this issue in the books and publications of the city, either in the documentation of the Noble and Royal Fine. No streets or squares in Cordoba to celebrate this enviable ephemeris, and see that it would have been easy in a saturated street saints of martyrdom and pain, because after all other saint is St. Thomas More. It is seen that the church still has outstanding bills with your memory, and possibly as this Cordoba “gongorrina” Readers of this book may be one… or ninguno.
"As much as I walk,
never reach.
What is the utopia?
For that serves: to walk "
Eduardo Galeano
Leave a Reply