[9] He acquired fame in life for the stylistic distinction and conceptual depth of his oeuvre (which was praised for its first-rate accordance to the scholastic and baroque epistemological parameters of his time).

His polymathy, erudition and poetic ingenuity in the composition of sermons and literary works gained him the epithets of Sublime Doctor and Indian Demosthenes, as well as the less frequent ones of Criollo Phoenix and Tertullian of the Americas (all used to refer to him while alive).

Additionally, after the Peruvian independence from Spanish Imperial rule took place, Juan de Espinosa Medrano's memory begun to be used as an exemplary model of the intellectual and moral potential of the peoples from South America (criollo, mestizos and indigenous populations included).

It had impact exclusively in the Viceroyalty of Peru, nonetheless, particularly because of a sabotage plan carried out by Jesuit priests in Rome at the end of the 17th century, which succeeded in impeding the circulation of Juan de Espinosa Medrano's philosophic course in Latin across the Old World (the work is the aforementioned Philosophia Thomistica).

It was in this period that the Jesuit University of Saint Ignatius of Loyola contended with the Seminary of Saint Anthony the Abbot in Cuzco —institution that Juan de Espinosa Medrano represented— for the maintenance of its right in exclusivity to grant the degree of doctor to those instructed in Theology (a situation that forced the Seminary students, of Thomist instruction, to present themselves before a jury of Jesuit theologians —followers of the doctrine of Francisco Suárez— for the evaluation leading to the conferral of their degree).

[14] According to Luis Jaime Cisneros, Calcauso, 1630, appears to be the most accurate intersection in which to place the origin (the birth) of Juan de Espinosa Medrano.

[15] Consequently, Agustín Cortés de la Cruz's —disciple and first biographer of the author— assertion about the origin of Espinosa Medrano should be taken as true: "in his first stages, scant favor he received from what the vulgus calls Fortune.

"[16] Likewise, Clorinda Matto de Turner's novelization of the author's life as: "He who entered the world in humble cradle, set foot on the steps of book and prayer... Then ascended to reach the literary skies of the America of the South, as king of stars there he shined.

It has also led to manipulation and tendentious interpretations of the data preserved about his existence; such distortive reading has been especially pronounced in the many works of biographers, critics or commentators, akin to the political agenda of Criollo and Indigenismo in Peru.

[18] The enigma of Juan de Espinosa Medrano's origin acts (still) as a recurrent stimulus for the creation of an oral and written biography in which the author is Indigenous.

Three years later, after small corrections, she published the biographical study again in Pencil Sketches of Acclaimed Americans (1890),[1] book that includes a chapter on Juan de Espinosa Medrano that Clorinda Matto was able to elaborate after obtaining data from the oral tradition in rural Peru.

Clorinda Matto's biographical study is, in substantial sections, barely rigorous for it is troubled by the absence of documentary evidence —a void that she seeks to fill through an exercise of fictionalization of the life of Espinosa Medrano.

[1] Clarification in place, it is nonetheless necessary to briefly refer to the biography of Espinosa Medrano as it was composed in 1887/1890 by Clorinda Matto via the oral accounts by the people of Peru.

After a period of instruction and service in favor of the priest of Mollebamba, Juan de Espinosa Medrano would start a life in the city of Cuzco as an indio servant.

According to Matto, there he would obtain admission into the Seminary of Saint Anthony the Abbot, precinct where the young Juan de Espinosa Medrano would quickly develop mastery of different musical instruments and skill in seven languages.

That year a miners uprising takes places in the town of Laicacota, the same that is repressed by the Viceroy Pedro Antonio Fernández de Castro, Count of Lemos.

[1] From this period in the adult life of Juan de Espinosa Medrano, it is necessary to highlight two events in which he demonstrated his prowess to peoples in possession of high positions in the Spanish Imperial System.

According to the testimony of the aforementioned first biographer and executor, Agustín Cortés de la Cruz 'as soon as the Count of Lemos heard in Cuzco some works and verses [by Espinosa Medrano] with which the San Antonio College celebrated him, he had them copied, and there was not a single page that was not worthy of his esteem, in order to have them published in Spain.

In the letter, the bishop recommends the assignment of a position in the Cuzco Cathedral for Espinosa Medrano and writes to the king: 'He is the most worthy individual in the bishopric due to his extensive and outstanding knowledge and virtue'.

[1] Between 1655 and 1657, Espinosa Medrano would acquire the degree of Doctor in Theology (after evaluation at the Jesuit University of Saint Ignatius of Loyola), performing as professor of such sacred discipline at the Seminary starting from 1658.

This is followed by the "First sermon to Saint Anthony the Abbot" ("Sermón Primero de San Antonio Abad"), preached in 1658; the "First Sermon to Saint Blaise, bishop and martyr" ("Sermón de San Blas obispo y mártir"), preached in 1659; and "The panegyric prayer to James the Great" ("La oración panegírica a Santiago") in 1660, at the Cathedral of Cuzco before the city's nobility.

[1] It is important to highlight, however, that Espinosa Medrano's intellectual activity in the profane had already started in the decade of 1650 —the biblical play To Love One's Own Death (Amar su propia muerte) had been written c. 1650; the autos sacramentales The Seizure of Proserpine and the Dream of Endymion (El robo de Proserpina y sueño de Endimión) and The Prodigal Son (El hijo pródigo) had also been written c.1650 and c.1657 respectively.

In 1677, probably in July, he delivered the "Sermón de Nuestra Señora del Carmen" at the Monastery of the Descalzas Carmelitas of San José and Santa Teresa in Cuzco.

Espinosa Medrano also wrote La Lógica (Logic), the first volume of a tract devoted to the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which was published in Rome in 1688.

The outstanding edition of Amar su propia muerte by Juan Vittulli fills an enormous gap in scholarship on Espinosa Medrano’s work.

[32][33] It situates the play in all the ambiguity, ‘otherness’, and contradiction of a young Juan de Espinosa Medrano, an Indigenous Andean writer who would leave his small town and enter into the cloisters, classrooms and pulpits of the ‘lettered city’ in seventeenth-century Cuzco, Peru.