A few months after Marco-e-Hidalgo (a native of Alcaraz) published a flowery biography of Oliva Sabuco (1901), he stumbles onto a will and Testament (Feb 1588) of her father where -forcefully and without support- claims the authorship for himself alleging that previous stakes (even those to the King in 1586) had been a derision just for his daughter's bliss. Marco-e-Hidalgo recognizes in his article of 1903, Oliva no es Autora that some parts of the will don't jibe but proceeds anyway to unceremoniously strip her of the rights to Nueva Filosofía.
Some years later, Benjamin Marcos -scholar of erudite reputation- lets the cat out of the bag, and brings the case to public censure accusing Oliva of pretentiousness and deceit, and adds with contempt the "...oh, well, we all suspected it...", i.e.: a woman ( much less one of 16C Alcaraz) could never have written such a masterpiece.
Mr. Domingo Henares, a comtemporary critic of considerable learning, and a dedicated historian of philosophy and of events in that part of the country, has recently hammered in the proverbial final nail when he found a certificate of attendance at a Latin School in the U of Alcalá de Henares of a certain Miguel Sabuco which Henares proceeds to gleefully ascertain to be the Bachiller Sabuco (dismissing, perhaps, at least seven other namesakes). We seem now to have solved the puzzle for he is the one who really read Pliny and wrote the Dictae Breviae. How could a young woman be gifted with brain enough to read -let alone write- Latin?
In spite of all this circumstantial evidence -interesting but in want of corroboration- Spain's top cataloguer, the Catalan Palau-i-Dulcet, shielded behind the Will, opts for divesting Oliva Sabuco of her authorship rights. Henceforth, Spain National Library dutifuly amends (ca 1975) the registry to show Miguel Sabuco as the author of Nueva Filosofía.
If you are interested in the subject -which became a candidly crucial one to Waithe and Vintro at the moment of assigning "author" to their first ever "New Philosophy" translation of the Sabuco work- you may want to consult the Authorship page in this website
The Will (*) and Testament of Bachiller Sabuco is of such importance that we have decided to offer an annotated face-to-face Spanish - transliteration <> English - translation (by Waithe and Vintro) of the document. For more dedicated readers we have provided facsimilies of
page1,
page2,
page3,
page4,
page5 and
page6,of the original Will (in 16C Castilian.)
- (*) Recently found records show Bachiller Sabuco still alive fourteen years after his "last" will of 1588. If you browse through (14 yrs), the facsimile of the original record of his son's 1602 marriage banns (to Isabel de las Vacas) you will notice that no mention is made in it of his deceased second wife, Ana Garcia. Bachiller's name is identified though free of any ad-hoc demise symbol. This appears to fit with the custon of the time, i.e.: only people alive are mentioned in the family roster of the banns. Miguel Sabuco is most likely alive in 1602, and who knows how many other "last" wills has he dictated.(Back)>