El púlpito entre el temor y la esperanza: ideas de castigo divino y misericordia de Dios en la oratoria sagrada neogranadina, 1808-1820

Abstract

The present article seeks to highlight the notions of divine punishment and God’s mercy to which clerics appealed within their sermons in the New Kingdom of Granada during the years 1808 and 1820. These years involved the invasion of Spain by the French army, the creation of the First Republic, the Reconquest campaign launched by the Spaniards and the development of the Battle of Boyacá. Taking into account these four episodes, I seek to emphasize the changes inside the discourses of the sermons regarding the experiences of this specific context. For this purpose, sermons of royalist preachers in favor of the monarchy and sermons of patriots, against it, will be analyzed in order to contrast the clerical debates, which revolved on the instauration of a new order or the preservation of the traditional monarchy. The analysis of these documents leads us to believe that the priests from one side and the other used the same argumentative base in order to delegitimize the opposition and hyperbolize their own. Both sides, patriots and royalists, asserted that the victories of the contrary were punishments sent by the divine Providence to purge their faults; and the triumphs their own group had were interpreted as signs of God’s Grace towards their people. The parishioners were caught in the middle of the disputes, which tried to persuade them on the best government: monarchy or republic.

Keywords: priest, sermons, New Granada, Independence, divine punishment, God’smercy.