Literatura para el combate anticlerical: La Bruja o Cuadro de la Corte de Roma, de Vicente Salvá (1830)

Abstract

Literature for anti-clerical combat: The Witch or Picture of the Court of Rome, by Vicente Salvá (1830)

This work analyses the literature produced in Spain and in exile during the first third of the 19th Century, against the repressive power of the Church and its instruments, such as the Inquisition. Anticlerical literature started with Cornelia Bororquia, by Luis Gutiérrez, evolving after 1823 during the exile of the liberal Spaniards in England, and after 1830 in France. It is in this year that the ex-deputy, bookseller and publisher Vicente Salvá y Pérez (1786-1849), soon after arriving in Paris, published La Bruja o Cuadro de la Corte de Roma, a furious anticurial and anticlerical manifesto that circulated in a very limited form in Spain over almost a decade. This article analyses the content of this manifesto and its relationship with other works of that time, aiming at unveiling its authorship with respect to the London edition of 1840, whose translater could not be identified.