BOLIVAR, SIMÓN. - Founder of the independent states of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, b. 24 July 1783 at Caracas, d. 17 Dec. 1830 near S. Marta. In 1810 he fought under the orders of General Miranda to free Venezuela from Spanish rule, but this attempt failed. Three years later, he led a new struggle for the independence of his homeland, and in 1819 he established the republic of Greater Colombia, comprising the present-day states of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. In 1824 he became dictator of Peru, and in 1826 protector of Bolivia. The rivalries among the various states made impossible the realization of a great pan-American union of the former Spanish possessions, a union he dreamed of, so that, deeply embittered, after witnessing the disintegration of his political construction, he withdrew to the shores of the Atlantic on a friend's estate, and died at the age of 47. The attitude of the Holy See toward the independent states that arose through B.'s action was, from the very first emergence of the new situation, attentive to the spiritual questions and interests that it involved and raised, so that after the battle of Ayacucho (1824), whose outcome definitively put an end to Spanish rule, Leo XII provided for the vacant episcopal sees with prelates proposed by B. The "Libertador," in turn, in 1828 issued various laws favorable to the Catholic Church.

Bibliography4 works

BIBL.: For a complete bibliography cf. B. Sánchez Alonso, Fuentes de la historia española e hispano-americana, Madrid 1927. - Among the most recent works see especially C. Parra-Perez, B., Paris 1928 (It. trans. Rome 1930); G. Lafond-G. Tersane, B. et la libération de l'Amérique du Sud, ibid. 1931; V. A. Belaunde, B. and the political thought of the Spanish American revolution, Baltimore 1938. - On relations with the Holy See, cf. P. Leturia, La acción diplomática de B. ante Pío VII, Madrid 1925, and B. y León XII, Caracas 1931, as well as, for a brief synthetic overview, J. Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte der neuesten Zeit, I. Munich 1933, passim; cf. also P. Leturia, Gregorio XVI y la emancipación de la América española, in Gregorio XVI. Miscellanea commemorativa, part 2, Rome 1948, pp. 295-322.

Silvio Furlani

@incollection{ec2_bolivar_simon, author = {Furlani, Silvio}, title = {Bolivar, simón}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {II}, pages = {1773--1774}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/bolivar-simon} }

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Bolivar, Simón

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