Juan de Espinosa Medrano

Juan de Espinosa Medrano (Calcauso?, 1630? – Cuzco, 1688), known in history as ''Lunarejo'' (or "The Spotty-Faced"), was an Indigenous cleric, sacred preacher, writer, playwright, theologian, archdeacon and polymath from the Viceroyalty of Peru. He is the most prominent figure of the Literary Baroque of Peru and one of the most important intellectuals from Colonial Spanish America (along with the New Spain writers Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora).

Juan de Espinosa Medrano is the author of the most famous literary apologetic discourse in the Americas in the 17th century: the ''Apologético en favor de Don Luis de Góngora'' (1662). He also wrote ''autos sacramentales'' in Quechua —''El robo de Proserpina y sueño de Endimión'' (c. 1650) and ''El hijo pródigo'' (c. 1657)—; comedies in Spanish —out of which only the biblical play ''Amar su propia muerte'' (c. 1650) is preserved—; panegyric sermons —compiled after his death in a volume called ''La Novena Maravilla'' (1695)—; and a course in Latin of thomistic philosophy —''Philosophia Thomistica'' (1688)—.

He acquired fame in life for the stylistic distinction and conceptual depth of his oeuvre (which was praised for its first-rate accordance to the scholastic and baroque epistemological parameters of his time). His polymathy, erudition and poetic ingenuity in the composition of sermons and literary works gained him the epithets of ''Sublime Doctor'' and ''Indian Demosthenes'', as well as the less frequent ones of ''Criollo Phoenix'' and ''Tertullian of the Americas'' (all used to refer to him while alive). Additionally, after the Peruvian independence from Spanish Imperial rule took place, Juan de Espinosa Medrano's memory begun to be used as an exemplary model of the intellectual and moral potential of the peoples from South America (criollo, mestizos and indigenous populations included).

His vast baroque production, written in Spanish, Latin and Quechua—in an aesthetic register different to the dialects now extant—was published both in America and Europe, however, only at the end of his life in the Old World. It had impact exclusively in the Viceroyalty of Peru, nonetheless, particularly because of a sabotage plan carried out by Jesuit priests in Rome at the end of the 17th century, which succeeded in impeding the circulation of Juan de Espinosa Medrano's philosophic course in Latin across the Old World (the work is the aforementioned ''Philosophia Thomistica''). It was in this period that the Jesuit University of Saint Ignatius of Loyola contended with the Seminary of Saint Anthony the Abbot in Cuzco —institution that Juan de Espinosa Medrano represented— for the maintenance of its right in exclusivity to grant the degree of doctor to those instructed in Theology (a situation that forced the Seminary students, of Thomist instruction, to present themselves before a jury of Jesuit theologians —followers of the doctrine of Francisco Suárez— for the evaluation leading to the conferral of their degree). Provided by Wikipedia