ISLA Y ROJO, JOSÉ FRANCISCO DE
✝︎
Volume VII · p. 196 · 1951
English translation · Testo originale italiano
ISLA Y ROJO, JOSÉ FRANCISCO de. — Jesuit, preacher, and satirical writer, born at Vidanes in
1703, died on 2 November 1781 at Bologna, where he had moved following the expulsion of his Order from Spain. The fruit of his preaching, which he alternated with teaching, is the Sermones (6 vols., Madrid 1792–93), not free from the kind of conceit that I. was later to combat with the Historia del famoso predicador fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zares (there 1758). A picaresque novel, but without the improprieties of the genre, and didactic in its discussions of sacred eloquence, which I. sought to reform with the weapon of ridicule, but without allusions to any specific Orders and never falling short of reverence for religious life. The work aroused such agitation that in 1760 the Inquisition forbade anyone to write either for or against II. The second volume was published in 1768 without the author’s knowledge and in a very corrupt form.
His Cartas familiares, published posthumously by his sister Maria Francisca de Ayala (Madrid 1785–86), are valuable. Other ascetical works remain unpublished in the archives of the Order. G. Baretti, who was his friend, called I. “the modern Cervantes.”
BIBL.: Sommervogel, IV, cols. 655–86; the
Fray Gerundio, the
Cartas familiares, and other writings were published by P. F. Monlau, with a biographical and bibliographical introduction, in vol. XV of the
Biblioteca de autores españoles, Madrid 1830 (reprint 1918);
Fray Gerundio alone in the Brockhaus edition, Leipzig 1885. Studies:
Compundio historico de la vida, caracter moral y literario del célebre p. José Francisco de I., dolo a lue Doma Maria Francisca de Isla y Loada, Madrid 1803 (the work is by Fr. J. J. Tolrà, but revised by the sister of Fr. I.); F. Brunetière,
La question de Gil Blas, in
Histoire et littérature, II, Paris 1891, pp. 235–60; B. Gaudreau,
Les prichères burlesques en Espagne au XVIIIe siècle, there 1891; V.
CAINAN,
L'immigrazione dei Gesuiti spagnoli letterati in Italia, Turin 1895, passim; A. Baumgartner,
Der spanische Humorist p. José Francisco de I., in
Stimmen aus Maria Loach, 68 (1905), pp. 82–92, 183–205, 240–315; I. Cosmo, G. Baretti e J. F. de I., in
Giann. II. lett. ital., 45 (1905), pp. 193–314; S. Gigli,
Contributio a la bibliografia del p. I., in
Rev. filol. esp., 10 (1923), pp. 63–82. Costanzo Eguia
