La exigua celebridad de las causas en la España del setecientos

Abstract

The text attempts to describe the echo of Gayot de Pitaval’s Causes célèbres in Spanish literature throughout the 18th century, and the variations of meaning (contexts and readings) that those ›famous legal cases‹ suffered. Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, who was undoubtedly one of the fathers or precursors of the Spanish Enlightenment, and other much less well-known writers (Barberi, Sánchez Sánchez) in the second half of the century, dismembered Pitaval’s Causes and reused the fragments in order to give, besides many other moral and historical ›examples‹, a fascinating overview of human behaviour. The secrets of the heart (good and evil, right and wrong) could hence be openedto a generic public, wider than jurists; the former legal character of the Causes were just called up to sustain the certainty of the offered ›facts‹ and at the same time to consecrate the trial-like way to truth: the contest between reality and fallacy, the critical progress amid the shadows or the intimacy with personal secrets, could be attributes of justice, but also and above all were pursued by many reformers focused on such extended fields as historiography, legislation and social values.