Lorenzo Ortiz de Buxedo

(Seville, 1632 – Seville, 1698)

We know very little about the Andalusian Jesuit Lorenzo Ortiz and his work, in spite of its undeniable interest, has barely been studied. We know that shortly after joining the Society in 1661 he was an elementary education teacher in the Colegio de Sanlúcar of Barrameda and later in the Colegio de San Hermenegildo of Seville. Subsequently we find him as an assistant to the Solicitor of the Indies [Procurador de Indias] in this city, beginning in 1669, and later, he would hold the office himself, from 1680 on. Two traits universally praised in his character are his integrity and cleverness, especially for accounting (he published an ABC of Calculating or Computing in Seville 1678) and for the art of calligraphy (The Master of Writing, Venice, 1696), as well as for his erudition and dedication to letters. He was a person who was much beloved by his companions owing to the humility with which he faced all tasks, and to the exemplary manner in which he combined his intellectual pursuits with other labors and duties of an administrative nature, at a relatively high level. The fact that he occupied a post of so much responsibility as that of Solicitor of the Indies without being a priest is singular proof of the confidence that his superiors had in his abilities.

Indeed, thumbing through his work we see immediately a brother of the Society with little formal learning but with a great love of letters. We do not detail here his work as a translator, but he crafted acceptable Spanish versions of sermons, including some by St. Stanislaus Koska, and several speeches by the then General of the Society, Juan Pablo Oliva (with Paolo Segneri and Antonio Vieira). In 1676 he published in Seville an Origen e Instituto de la Compañía de Jesús, basically a biography of Saint Ignatius, that is more than anything a translation of the Della vita e dell’instituto di S. Ignatio, fondatore della Compagnia di Gesù, by Daniele Bartoli. His dedication to the Society culminated in his most reprinted work (at least five times up until 1702): El príncipe del mar San Francisco Xavier (Brussels: Francisco Foppens, 1682), dedicated to the Marquesa de Brenes and with an engraving by Juan de Valdés Leal on the title page. Faithful to his love of poetry, 34 of the 41 chapters of this work conclude with verse.

We have already mentioned Ortiz's work as a teacher of calligraphy. In this activity he also managed to join together wit and pedagogy in his work El maestro de escribir, where he offers an exam through questions and answers and 32 engravings, intended to create innumerable letter forms. Finally, a manuscript volume of his poems is conserved in the Biblioteca Colombina of Seville (Ocio entretenido. Fragmentos poéticos), and another work attributed to him is the Fábula de Alfeo y Aretusa, housed in the Biblioteca del Gesù of Rome, dedicated to the Marqués de San Miguel de Híjar, Alcaide de los Reales Alcázares de Sevilla.

From a reading of his most personal work (the two emblem books that we publish here) we can glimpse the image of a man who was primarily dedicated to the domestic problems of the Colegio de San Hermenegildo in Seville, initially, and later to those of the Colegio de Cádiz. De He speaks of both, but especially of that of San Hermenegildo, with great affection, almost as if he was corroborating the well-known praise of the education imparted by the Jesuits of Seville that Cervantes wrote of in the Coloquio de los perros through the mouth of the dog Berganza. The approbations and preliminary materials to both works insist upon the amazement that an assistant brother [“hermano coadjutor”] would have the time and ability to carry out such lovely things [“primores”]. Father Pedro Zapata, for example, stresses this in one of the approbations to Memoria, Entendimiento y Voluntad, where he recalls how Saint Ignatius advised that the assistant brothers “occupy themselves with things greater than domestic exercises, according to the talents conceded to them by God” (n. p.). He ponders here the modesty and humility of Lorenzo Ortiz and his self-denying nature to the benefit of the community. The affirmation made by Pedro Torrado de Guzmán in the first tercet of the sonnet which closes these preliminary materials is quite curious: “En tu humildad se ve como preciso, / que las letras que huyó tu elección pía, / el cielo te las da por influencia” [“In your humility it is seen to be necessary / that the letters your pious choice fled from / be given to you by the influence of heaven”].

Lorenzo Ortiz published his first book at the age of 45. He was totally aware that collections of emblems were no longer an editorial novelty at that time. He calls his creations “imprese” but offers no theoretical discussion about his choice of this term. The innovation that he claims to have contributed to the genre in this Memoria, Entendimiento y Voluntad, is to arrange the succession of emblems in such a way as to develop a demonstrative discourse:

“la primera es la proposición del asunto, la última su conclusión y las tres de enmedio las tres Potencias. En las otras, es libre el cuerpo de la empresa, en éstas no porque todas han sido nacidas del uso de la mano. En las otras, el alma o mote unas veces ha sido ajeno y otras propio, ya verso, ya prosa, ya latín, ya de otra lengua. Aquí todos (perdóname el de la quinta empresa por ser y por aver de ser único) son ajenos y todos versos heroicos de singulares poetas españoles”. [“the first is the proposition of the matter, the last its conclusion, and the three in between the three Faculties. In the others, the body of the impresa is unrestricted, but not in these, because they have been born of the use of the hand. In the others, the soul or motto at times is mine, at times from other authors, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, at times in Latin, at times in other languages. Here all of them (please excuse that of the fifth impresa for being, for having to be unique) are all from other authors and all heroic verses of singular Spanish poets”].

He even makes a strong effort to attribute to his work other traits of originality worthy of commentary. In the first place, he stresses an interesting bibliophilic concern. A book is an object that must possess quality in its physical makeup. Well-aware of recent Jesuit tradition, Ortiz believed that in the Spain of his time poorly made books could not be justified. Thus, the printing of his book would be really careful and even luxurious, unlike others, he says, that “foreigners” make fun of: “Se imprimen, singularmente en Madrid, libros por mercadería [...], se ponen en tal papel, se les da tal letra y tal desaseo que testifican bien el intento del que a su costa les imprimió” (“In Madrid especially, books are printed for commercialization … printed on such paper with such poor lettering and so untidily that they are a good testimonial to the intent of the printer who produced them at his own expense”). His control over the production of the book was so total, in fact, that he himself made the engravings, for which he asks forgiveness for their mediocre quality: “solo habrás de suplir la poca destreza del buril de las láminas porque quise que no fuese de otra mano que de la mía” (“you will have to make up for the little skill of the engraver’s chisel on the plates because I did not want them to issue from any hand except my own”). In any event, unhappy with the results, ten years later, when he published Ver, Oír, Oler, Gustar, Tocar, he commissioned an engraver to do them.

In the second place, Ortiz highlights three aspects that he thought would distance his work from run of the mill emblem books: that it is a book of thematic unity, that it makes use of the poetry of contemporary Spanish authors as the principal ornamentation and that it features the depiction of a hand as the primary image in all of the engravings. These same characteristics would also appear in Ver, Oír, Oler, Gustar, Tocar, which was to be presented explicitly as a complement to Memoria, Entendimiento y Voluntad. In fact, he provides us with reasons that lead us to believe that he began his project by writing the book on the senses, which are the “doors” of the soul, and that only afterwards did he want to publish the book on the “faculties” of the soul, or to make a single work with both (MEV, “Prologue”, n. p.). He also informs us that if his duties allow he would make yet another book of imprese on the “seven Christian and cardinal virtues”, directed more towards the religious man than towards the “rational and political man” that this book is aimed at (he never wrote it, as far as we know). The Spiritual Exercises proposed to “guide the senses” towards contemplation and, by means of the “interior senses” to deepen contact with Christian truths. And indeed, Lorenzo Ortiz must have been profoundly imbued with the meticulously directed program of moral perfection of the Spiritual Exercises, where the senses and the faculties were simultaneously mobilized by means of a discursive training, which in the final analysis was rhetorical, which would result in that desired restructuring of the psychic life. We believe that an analysis of each one of the elements of originality indicated by Ortiz can lead to a relatively complete understanding of both books.

In the first place, the structure of Lorenzo Ortiz’s is not traditional. The engraving is not followed by the customary epigram and prose commentary amplification but rather the order is inverted and the development of each impresa ends with a poem specially written by the author himself as a kind of summary or recollection of the ideological keys of everything presented. This poem, in addition, is written with the somewhat forced contrivance of ending with the verse that serves as motto, thus resulting in a perfect circular closure for each emblem. Nevertheless, it is a fact that in the middle of the poems, the internal dispersion is enormous. This structure, so totally opposite of the canonical, is thus required by an ordering principle that the author is aware of having violated unacceptably in his development. The poem makes a conclusive summary of each emblem, but Lorenzo Ortiz nevertheless finishes off both books with a closing impresa that he calls “Conclusion of the work” or “of the matter” where he insists on their global intent. What is certain, is that even then the unity of composition is broken. In Lorenzo Ortiz, an ordering principle (ideologically maintained by a reiterated idea of cosmic harmony to which man must reintegrate himself) and a tendency towards mundane curiosity are at work in a contradictory and unresolved manner, a tendency to act in the way Gracián defined his Discrete man: “hombre noticioso, más de «plausibles noticias», que de «noticiosa erudición», mundano”. With this tendency as a point of departure, at times Ortiz unleashes a kind of automatic writing based on associations and memories from books he has read where the demonstrative thread is completely.

The best example of this manner of proceeding is an extensive fragment (cf. 4r-16v) from the impresa dedicated to memory. There, the contemplation of a gallery of paintings by a “learned gentleman”, his memory well-provided with recollections, lets loose in second person – obscurely addressing an ignorant friend that accompanies him – a whole chain of anecdotes, varied bits of knowledge, and sudden manifestations of verses by well-known poets, that call to mind the enraptured trance of one who speaks only to himself, breathing upon the external world an interior world defended to the end as superior to the merely sensible one. Based upon this we realize that Lorenzo Ortiz, in spite of his theories, is going to produce a text that is not propaedeutic nor even a compilation, but rather, above all, courtly, from a discrete gentleman who wants to be seen as adorned with knowledge that saves him, and who earnestly entreats others to adopt this same attitude. And, at the heart of it there is a quite evident touch of the evasion of everyday reality. The erudition that he wants to display to us is of all types. Above all it is historical, but also scientific, although his learning does not exceed. He is unable to keep silent, for example, that from the highest sphere to the Earth there is a distance of “twenty-six million, nine hundred and seventy-nine thousand, five hundred and thirty-one leagues” (12v), an attention to detail of a Jesuitical tradition. In this impresa on memory, that could have yielded so much given the revitalization that artificial memory acquired in the hands of the Jesuits, we see clearly that Lorenzo Ortiz, more concerned with natural memory, belongs to a phase in the evolution of Jesuit emblem books in which the process of the “reconversion of rhetorical memory towards a Memory which, alongside Understanding and Will, was to form part of the superior virtue of Prudence”, was drawing to a close, and indeed, prudence is one of the absolute key words in both books.

It is also a matter of teaching how to read the great book written by God that is the world. And it cannot be denied that Lorenzo Ortiz possessed a sensorial imagination, clearly Baroque insofar as it was trained in the imaginative practices of Saint Ignatius, but also in the reading of texts such as the Introducción al símbolo de la fe: “since for no other reason” he says “does it seem that he (God) created the beautiful and fragrant flower of the passionflower in which the instruments of the Passion are seen with such marvelous and distinct expression” (MEV, 18v). His images, nevertheless, and as opposed to those of the Spiritual Exercises, never dwell on the unpleasant nor do they lower themselves to truculence. In short, Lorenzo Ortiz’s guide is the daily practice, frequently expressed with a ne quid nimis, that is, with a “nothing in excess” as the directive principle for all actions. But above all he opts for the attitude and knowledge that will help him to situate himself in community. Thus, the kindnesses of learned and friendly conversation are permanently extolled.

From the reading of these works we can derive come thematic constants that have very little to do with what the author proposed initially. As an example, let us consider the slipperiness of the meaning of the book's title on the five senses. In reality it is a matter of two verbs, of the actions linked to these senses, but we will see right away how they fill up with a limited series of concepts that appear time and again. The chapter dedicated to “hearing” expounds on that idea of speaking discrete and socially acceptable speech that we have pointed out and which appears in almost all the imprese. The chapter dedicated to “smelling” is structured along the lines of the ancient model of the Characters by Theophrastus in subsections on those who have noses like those of puppies, bucks, rabbits or foxes, attributing to them respectively the qualities of curiosity, of those who believe that they know more than they do, of presumptuousness and of prudence. And so on.

We have mentioned prudence, elaborated as a cautious attitude which Ortiz openly recommends on occasion, like Torquato Accetto did (Della dissimulazione onesta, 1641), or Gracián, as dissimulation and hiding the truth, an idea joined to the lesson of constant disillusionment that man should learn from his passage through this world. The majority of the examples head in this direction. Human dealings and culture are understood as elements that can save one from human animality, and moderation if the principal virtue. But in addition to these ideas that can be abundantly documented, it is interesting to take note of some subthemes. He is preoccupied with the education of children. As an educator, he believes that teachers can do nothing without the help of parents. Example is the best kind of persuasion, and not punishment, and the nobility are not guaranteed of intellectual nor moral superiority just because they are noble. We see everywhere an author accustomed to dealing with practical problems and who finds in literature a means to escape from his daily worries.

Another constant that is not purely thematic, rather one of structure and mental habit, also clearly of Jesuit origin, is the permanent dialectic of interior / exterior that governs the polarity between the two books: soul / body, senses / faculties, knowledge of the world / self-knowledge. “He who has experience of himself” he says “will be able to extend himself” and deal adequately with reality (VOOGT, 224). The impresa “Touch” is especially interesting in this respect. Touch is the only sense present in the whole body and it is presented as the sentinel that stands guard over it in the face of the exterior (cf. The disquisition between active and passive touch p. 223).

The other trait that Ortiz defended as original was the adornment of his book with fragments of contemporary Spanish poetry. In the first place we should note that Lorenzo Ortiz’s library, his sources, is not very copious, and practically the same for both books. The constitution of each impresa as a kind of silva or miscellany of historical cases is brought about through the intensive exploitation of very few reference works. Fray Antonio de Guevara and Pedro Mejía or Pérez de Moya provide the source of his raw materials, second-hand, but the classical source most utilized is Plutarch, whether or not the extracted anecdote is germane. Nevertheless in VOOGT the variety is somewhat greater, with the main difference being the appearance of some Italian authors. Among the classical sources, outside of the extremely quoted Plutarch, we find Valerius Maximus, Pliny, and then very sporadically, Aristotle, Ovid and a few more. Among the religious authors, Saint Augustine, due to the undeniable role he has in the configuration of certain aspects of Jesuitism, could not help but appear, but the greatest praise is reserved for the previously mentioned Fray Luis de Granada, although he has hardly ever utilized in an explicit way; Saint Theresa and several lives of saints, Father Juan Eusebio Nieremberg and Thomas a Kempis pretty much complete the list. Among the emblemists, Lorenzo Ortiz only cites Spaniards, and in this order of importance: Covarrubias, from whom he takes quite a few ideas, his brother Juan de Horozco, and Saavedra Fajardo. And among the symbolic repertories, Nieremberg aside, only that of the Jesuit Nicolás Caussin (Causino), author of the Símbolos selectos y parábolas históricas (under this title Francisco de la Torre translated the first books of vol. 12 of Caussin’s complete works, published in Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1677) that came out in Spanish the same year in which the MEV was published. Between MEV and VOOGT, that important difference of the appearance of quotes from Italian authors is seen especially in the names of Petrarch, Ariosto and Emmanuele Tesauro, as well as in the added difference of a greater number of poetic fragments adduced.

In fact, as we can see, it was not true that only Spanish poets appeared. As far as Portuguese poetry is concerned, Camões is first, but we also have the Baroque poets Faria e Sousa or Francisco Manuel de Melo, who is cited with some frequency. Without any doubt, the poet who is quoted most often is Quevedo (never mentioned as a prose writer), and only the Quevedo at his most neo-stoical; therefore, practically all of the references from this author pertain to his translation of Epictetus. We also find some poets who were temporally or geographically close to Lorenzo Ortiz, whose works were quite accessible, such as Gabriel Bocángel, Francisco López de Zárate, Luis de Ulloa y Pereira, Calderón... He gives as an example of a good moral poem one by Saavedra Fajardo (“Risa del monte, de las aves lira...”); and he includes an interesting roll-call of women: Luisa de Carvajal, Beatriz de Aguilar, María de Villafuerte, Marina de Escobar (VOOGT, 273-77).

Lorenzo Ortiz, who confesses to be a devotee of honest poetry, disseminates in both books his opinions defending a clear style and witty conceits over verbal obscurity. Indeed, his own style is essentially flat with some imitation of sermon style (more pronounced in MEV than in VOOGT). Neither does he neglect to aim a barb at the obscurity of a Góngora in the impresa devoted to “seeing”, making a joke about the single eye of Polyphemus. But he praises the “humorous” sacred conceptismo in the work of Bonilla (VOOGT, 287). He repeats on several occasions that culture, books, study and therefore writing, should be taken seriously or put aside. And we see in this the seriousness of purpose of one who never had the time nor the opportunity necessary to dedicate himself to letters as he would have liked, and who despises lazy or vulgar poetasters.

In short, by taking advantage of an atmosphere that was favorable to emblematic literature and the overwhelming gestation of this type of book in Jesuit circles, Lorenzo Ortiz proved his poetic and literary abilities in general, constructing a work that took only its general impulse from the strictly Jesuitical, but then went its own way. In Lorenzo Ortiz, a lay brother of an average culture, writing is a task of personal salvation, a challenge to himself and a way to dignify a life devoted to the day to day business of the Order. Imbued with the mental habits of the Exercises, he nevertheless does not elaborate a work that delves deeply into these avenues that had proven to be so fertile, limiting himself to a certain display, though somewhat ingenuous, of his literary abilities, knowledge and quotations.

Works by Lorenzo Ortiz

• Memoria, Entendimiento y Voluntad. Empresas que enseñan y persuaden su buen uso en lo moral, y en lo político. Ofrécelas a D. Iuan Eustaquio Vicentelo y Toledo, Cavallero de el Ábito de Santiago. Hijo primogénito del Señor D. Iuan Antonio Vicentelo y Toledo, Cavallero del Ábito de Santiago, del Consejo Supremo de Guerra de su Magestad, y de Iunta de Armadas, y Capitán General de la Real Armada de la Guarda de la Carrera de las Indias. El Hermano Lorenzo Ortiz, de la Compañía de Iesús. Seville: Juan Francisco de Blas, 1677.

• La fragrante azuzena de la Compañía de Iesús B. Estanislao de Kostka su novicio, Panegyrico en la solemnidad de su beatificación. Orado en Roma por el Rvdo. P. Iuan Pablo Oliva, Prepósito General de la Compañía, Que traducido de italiano en español lo dedica al Señor D. Antonio de Castro Marqués de Villacampo, el Hermano Lorenzo Ortiz, de la misma Compañía. Véndese en calle de Génova en Casa de Iuan Salvador Pérez, s. a. [“Aprobación” of 1677].

• Plática espiritual hecha a la comunidad de la Casa Professa de la Compañia de Iesús de Roma, el día de Santa Catalina de Sena del año de 1677. Por el Rmo P. Ivan Paulo Oliva, Prepósito General de toda la Compañia de Iesús. Y traducida de Toscano en Español por el Hermano Lorenzo Ortiz, de la misma Compañía. En Sevilla, Por Iuan Francisco de Blas, Impressor mayor. Año 1678.

• Origen y instituto de la Compañía de Iesús en la vida de San Ignacio de Loyola su padre y fundador que ofrece a las sus muy religiosas y apostólicas provincias de la Compañía de Iesús de las Indias, Occidentales que comprehende la assistencia General en Roma, por la Corona de Castilla / el hermano Lorenzo Ortiz religioso de la mesma Compañía de Iesús. Sevilla: en el Colegio de San Hermenegildo de la Compañía de Iesús: véndese en casa de Ivá Salvador Pérez, 1679.

• Pláticas domésticas espirituales, hechas por el Reverendíssimo Padre Juan Paulo Oliva, Prepósito General de la Compañia de Jesús, a las Communidades de su Casa Professa, y demás Colegios de Roma, traducidas de Toscano en Español por el Hermano Lorenzo Ortiz de la Compañia de Iesús. Y las ofrece a la muy Religiosa, y muy Apostólica Provincia del Pirú de la misma Compañia de Iesús. En Brusselas, por Francesco Tserstevens, 1680.

• El Príncipe del Mar San Francisco Xavier: de la Compañía de Jesús, Apóstol de el Oriente, y patrón de sus navegaciones... singulares demonstraciones de su amor para con los navegantes, y seguras prendas de su patrocinio en todos los peligros del mar, Por el Hermano Lorenzo Ortiz, de la misma Compañía. Bruselas: Francisco Foppens, 1682. There are editions in Seville: Imprenta castellana y Latina de Diego López de Haro (n. d., but certainly the same as the 1st ed, 1682); Cádiz: Imprenta del Colegio de la Compañía de Jesús, por Christóval de Requena, 1688 (the title indicates that it is the “second printing expanded and emended”); Seville, en la Imprenta de Manuel Caballero, 1701; Seville: Lucas Martín de Hermosilla, 1702. (the title indicates that it is the “fifth printing, expanded and emended by its author”); Seville: 1731.

• Ver Oír, Oler, Gustar, Tocar. Empresas que enseñan y persuaden su buen uso en lo Político y en lo Moral; que ofrece el hermano Lorenço Ortiz, de la Compañía de Jesús, al Illustrísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Don Manuel Hernández de Santa Cruz, de el Consejo de su Magestad, Obispo de la Puebla de los Ángeles. Lyon, en la Emprenta de Anisson, Posuel y Rigaud. A costa de Francisco Brugieres, y Compañía, 1686.

• Ver, Oír, Oler, Gustar, Tocar: Empresas que enseñan y persuaden su buen uso en lo moral, y en lo político, que ofrece el hermano Lorenço Ortiz de la Compañía de Jesús al Excelentíssimo Señor Don Rodrigo Manuel Fernández Manrique de Lara Ramírez de Arellano, Mendoza y Albarado, Conde de Aguilar, y de Frigiliana, & c. Gentilhombre de la Cámara de su Magestad, Capitán General de la Armada, y Exércitos de el Mar Océano, y de sus Costas de la Andalucía y Presidios de África, &c. Lyon: en la Emprenta de Anisson, Posuel y Rigaud. A costa de Francisco Brugieres y Compañía, 1687.

• El maestro de escrivir. La theórica y la practica para aprender y para enseñar este utilíssimo arte con dos artes nuevos, uno para formar rasgos, otro para inventar innumerables formas de letras... que ofrece el hermano Lorenzo Ortiz, de la Compañia de Iesús. Venecia: presso Paolo Baglioni, 1696.

• Ocio entretenido. Fragmentos poéticos. (Seville, Biblioteca Colombina, prints and mss.)