Manuel Belgrano en sermones revolucionarios (Siglo XIX): El héroe clásico y el guerrero de la independencia

Abstract

?e present proposal for a presentation is the continuity in the line of investigation and analysis of sermons and homilies from the revolutionary era that we began a few years ago. When analyzing at that time the presence and influence of classical Greco-Roman antiquity in these oratory pieces, we observed, among other variables, that the contonators appealed to the constant comparison between the military heroes of the Bible and of ancient Greece and Rome with the chiefs military of the war of independence. We have recorded how in an earlier stage, that of the colony, the characters who were equated with these heroes were the king and other officials of the crown (e.g. the viceroys), for whom exceptional epithets such as person, ruler, believer and military were designated. We now seek to deepen that aspect or dimension of sacred prayers in the revolutionary period. We understand that the valorization of patriotic leaders as military and civilian models was intended to transfer into the imaginary of the time the values that were preached from the royal officials and from the monarch himself to these new leaders. An attempt was made to fill the empty space, which the sacred rhetoric emptied, with new archetypes of leaders. Rhetoric, homiletics and politics came together to praise the new archetypes of the revolution and the American war, among which we can highlight Guillermo Brown, Diego and Antonio González Balcarce, José de San Martín and, of course, General Manuel Belgrano. We will stop at Belgrano's funeral sermons to analyze the image of the classic hero that they construct and how they transpose it into the figure of the military man and patriot. To do this, we will investigate these premises in oratory pieces of various characteristics and genre, such as funeral prayers, sermons, thanksgiving sermons, eulogies, and so on.