Outline
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Oliva Sabuco (1562-1629?) published in Madrid (1587) Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del Hombre [New Philosophy of human Nature] [NF]. This oeuvre -in Castilian and Latin- explores the relationship between emotions and physical health, expounding how passions may impair health, and cause premature death. It urges physicians to diagnose and treat the whole person in unison: body, mind and soul. Pre-Descartes Sabuco dwells in dualism and psychosomatics in a pioneering way, and does not spare scathing remarks about how Aristotles and Galeno had often misled medicine. No other work by Sabuco is known. Skepticism about the fitness of a 16C Spanish young woman to tackle such topics has lingered to today. The scholarly analysis of [NF] may have been penalized by the folksy "Oliva, the smart maid" myth. Yet, recognition of the work has grown steadily in Spain from the first (1587) throughout the eigth (2010) Castilian/Spanish editions. |
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since 1975 |
Migueul<>Oliva |
1587-1975 | ||||
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Full Name |
Miguel Sabuco Alvarez |
The authorship of [NF] has been disputed since 1903 by those who consider Miguel Sabuco -her father- its true generator, and judge Oliva's submission apocryphal. The National Library of Spain -following Palau-i-Dulcet- lists (since ca 1975) [NF] under Miguel Sabuco-Author (formerly Oliva Sabuco). The US Library of Congress has obliged (1985), and is listing Miguel as author with a caveat for an eventual restitution to Oliva should new evidence warrant it. |
Full Name : |
Luisa Oliva Sabuco Nantes Barrera |
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Alcaraz
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The city played a significant role during Spain's Golden Age. At the time, it featured estates appertaining to the clergy and the orders. Nobility, secular professions, and military rank had here their abodes too. The enclave (city and fortress) was a strategic outpost of troops on their way to expand the "Christian" frontier at the receding peninsular Moor border. By mid 16C, having the Moor expulsion (or conversion/assimilation) been completed, it ceased to be the military linchpin of yester, and became an occasional relief post for troops on their way to Continental or New World struggles. Alcaraz -at a mere 150 miles of the Middle-Ages-cosmopolitan Toledo (craddle of Jewish/Arabic culture in Europe from 12C through 15C)- still abides remnants of its ghetto. By Sabuco's time it was inhabited by less than a few dozen "conversos" -Jews officially, often forcefully, converted-, a testimony of the plundering-cum-exiling of the Jewish population by the Alhambra Decree. By 17C, the community stooped into a languishing from which it does not seem to be awakening fast. By mid 16C the town still was a shelter to an artistic, literary, clerical and academic elite that had outgrown the town. Visiting and residing judicial, military and clerical cadres had bred this gentility in the midst of a 95% rural population of farmers (llanos) far busier -unfortunate economy- with sheep and equine than with wheat. Among Sabuco's contemporaneous figures we find :
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1587
[NF] was published roughly one century after the loss of the schools of Toledo, smothered by the Reconquista. No record of outsatnding local erudition in philosophical/medical subjects has been found in the secular and clerical archives and libraries in and around Alcaraz. The customary reference of Miguel as bachiller is derived from his alleged studies, learning or practice as pharmacist/apothecary at an unknown school and town. There are no records of any additional academic or scholastic endeavours by either Oliva or Miguel other than a claimed -and questioned- residence of Miguel in the university of Alcala de Henares to learn Canonical Law , hence Latin. With the exception of Simon-Abril, no other Sabuco's contemporaneous writer was of any relevance in the Philosophy of Medicine. Then, out of nowhere, an all inclusive opus on psychosomatic medicine and a mind/body dualism innovator sees the light in the Alcaraz of 1587. In attempting to unriddle this enigma, the overview below may prove useful.
In 1587 Philip II's Spain had reached the zenith as an empire saddled over New and Old World. Yet a malaise is angling: the irritation produced by the relentless Francis Drake's raids and besieges of peninsular and New World ports adds to the all-absorbing exertion in the pursuit of funds by the state, and its subsequent bankrupties. Spain is burdened by the Anglo-Spanish war that will result in the weather-fated Spanish Armada fiasco -for which exorbitant taxes had been levied- that ended in the pillorying of Grivelines, some believe the begining of the twilight of Spain's Golden Age. Not all the national stamina is sapped by those conflicts. Philip II cultivates literary endeavors (e.g.: granting Privilege to such esoteric calling as [NF}) while -for example- one of his most illustrious subjects, Lope de Vega -the summit of Spanish dramaturgy- is spreading enlightment of secular nature among Spaniards with his popular playrights -even if incarcereted for that this year.
Overview of Sabuco's contemporary (and quasi-contemporary) philosophers: in the search of context, influences and pursuances |
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CASTILE and ARAGON/CATALONIA |
REST of EUROPE | ||||
1340-1440 |
Cresques |
Rationalist/Non-Aristotelian/Last Sephardim philosopher |
1401-1464 |
deCusa |
Cardinal/Pantheisti/Doubted geocentrism & orbit-circularity |
Biographies
Oliva Sabuco
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Attempts to come up with a rigorous biography of Luisa Oliva Sabuco (de Nantes Barrera) have met with scant success. Facts about her life are scarce: we do not know when was she born or where/if she went to school or received any formal education. The date of her alleged (1622) death, has been recently(1997) rported after 1629. Oliva is as much an enigmatic figure as her father. Only a few church banns, and a handful of civil records are available about her. We know not of other writings by Oliva (or by any other Sabuco). Her fame among Spain common and erudite folks since 16C cuts through social strata, and lingers for centuries. When she was unceremoniously dispossessed (1975) of the authorship of [NF] -with a smattering of evidence, and a stretch of scorn- hints of heavy-handed gender bias (common in Spain at the dawn of 20C) come into sight. With the evidence summoned, it would nowadays be laborious to defrock authorship from a woman in order to render it to her father even in the endeavor of authenticating an oeuvre such as [NF], that stands on its own, in need of no masculine endorsement. |
upbringing |
adulthood |
death |
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| Luisa Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera was born to Francisca de Cosar and Miguel Sabuco y Alvarez, the fifth of eight siblings. We know not the her birthdate. Marco-e-Hidalgo claims (1903) to have seen her baptismal registry -now lost- of December 2, 1622. Oliva's schooling is entirely undocumented. She could have attended [1] Alcaraz Council's Primeras Letras school or,[2] received schooling with the nuns at the Dominican Convent, for it seems that a few young women students were accepted as seniors there (perhaps in-lieu-of [3]attending the Council's ephemeral Cátedra de Gramática) albeit there is no record that she was a pupil anywhere. The nuns of the Dominican Convent believe [2] plausible for they claim that the Order has maintained -since 15C- a library, and encouraged intellectual pursuit.Oliva might have been tutored by her father, an apothecary(?) with seemingly professional knowledge of Botany (and possibly of Latin), by her brother, a pharmacist, and by her godfather, the physician Heredia. Among other potential tutors, we should cite one or both of the de Sotomayor, one a cleric, the other an attorney and a poet, close to the family. Prominent in her education might have been Pedro Simón-Abril. |
The marriage banns of Oliva Sabuco and Acacio de Buedo were posted on December, 1580. There was an apparent falling-out between Oliva and her widowed father at the time of his remarriage to Ana Navarro García, of Oliva's age. Her father sired another son, Miguel, from this second marriage. Miguel Sabuco states in his 1588 "last" Will and Testament that the couple, Oliva and Acacio, had sued him to collect the overdue dowry and arrived at a settlement of 52,500 maravedis. The qualifier "last" is suspect on account of a 1997 report claiming that Miguel was apparently still alive fouteen years after that testament. Oliva's dowry plus the 1585 settlement of her mother's estate, amounted to a tidy sum even if eroded by Buedo's quietus of a debt with his in-law Miguel Sabuco. Oliva and her husband apparently lived the remainder of their lives in Alcaraz. During the years following the publication of his wife's book, Acacio de Buedo was elected to the constabulary position of Caballero de la Sierra and later to Alcalde Mayor (second to the Corregidor. Municipal and church records of 1596, 1600,1612 and 1613 where the couple is asked to perform as godparents, witnesses and testimonials at several social events, point to a good standing of the Buedos in Alcaraz. |
In the process toward the third edition of [NF] in Portugal, the editorial committee appointed Dr B, Alvarez on Oct.10, 1616 as scrutinizer of the book contents and its adherence to the author's claims. On Oct.13, 1616, Dr. Alvarez announces that the proofs had been duly expurgated. The following day Oliva Sabuco is granted permission to print the book as amended. She instructs deBasto of Lisbon on March 8,1617 to put out the edition, For undisclosed reasons the Levy was not assessed until Oct. 5,1622. There, in a three-page appendix, deBasto states that the author has died in the interim. Previously unknown records -ecclesiastical archives in Albacete- of 1589,1600 and 1629 seem to contradict deBasto's claim: Oliva and her husband, for example, witnessed the marriage of their daughter, Luisa de Buedo on August 26, 1629. Church documents of the time seem to indicate that deceased relatives were NOT usually recorded in the banns and registries: only those alive did. Hence, though we do not know the date of Oliva's death, these Banns provide some imdication e that she died after August 26, 1629. |