New testimonies of the anti-Catholic poem La barca de Simón, by Tomás de Iriarte: history, edition and rewritings

Abstract

In the present work we identify new handwritten and printed testimonies of Tomás de Iriarte’s poem La barca de Simón, considered by Menéndez Pelayo «the oldest heterodox poetry that I know in the Spanish language». We propose the first critical edition of the poem in order to show that the most popular edition contains a series of trivializations that should be corrected in the future. Beyond this, the poem experimented a copious transmission, to the point that, devoid of any indication of authorship, it was published numerous times in the press between 1811 and 1814, both by liberals and reactionaries. This was due to the fact that the text, which consists of a criticism of the economic power of the Church, was read in the key of an attack on Pius VII at the time when he was a captive of Napoleon, which was far from the intentions of Iriarte, died in 1791. The success of the poem reached such a point that numerous responses and rewritings also appeared in the newspapers on the part of the Papists, who tried to refute the thesis of the poem by twisting its original verses.