Vigil, Francisco de Paula González (1792–1875)

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Vigil, Francisco de Paula González (1792–1875)

Francisco de Paula González Vigil (b. 13 September 1792; d. 9 June 1875), Peruvian priest, liberal politician, and author. Vigil rose to prominence in the early post-Independence era for his 1832 attack on presidential usurpation of constitutional authority. In 1834 he presided over the liberal National Convention, and in 1836 he helped prevent Bolivian annexation of his native Tacna. From 1845, Vigil served as director of Peru's National Library, writing voluminously on church-state relations and national reform. Influenced by Enlightenment thought, Vigil extolled the virtues of reason, freedom of conscience, republicanism, education, and work. His religious dissertations provoked condemnation by the church for their assertion of the authority of national churches over the Roman Curia.

See alsoAnticlericalism; Libraries in Latin America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jorge Basadre, "Homenaje: Francisco de Paula González Vigil," in Textual 10 (October 1975): 13-23.

Jeffrey L. Klaiber, Religion and Revolution in Peru, 1824–1976 (1977).

Additional Bibliography

Broadhurst, John Christian. "Francisco de Paula González Vigil: Peruvian pensador." Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974.

                                Matthew J. O'Meagher