Counted among the evil ones. Father Manuel Lacunza's rhetoric and millenarism

Abstract

Father Lacunza's La Venida del Mes?as en gloria y majestad presents a millenarist interpretation of the book of Revelation. It announces the coming of a collective Antichrist, followed by the Second Coming of Christ, and His thousand-year-long reign between His two resurrections. The rhetorical character of this work makes us suspect that it is not only a treatise of Biblical exegesis, but more significantly an attack on the official position of the Church, which in the author's eyes is guilty on two counts: the expulsion of the Jesuits and the moral and doctrinal decadence of the faith. This makes Lacunza's treatise at once a Christian apologetic and an invective against the Church, a peculiar but common phenomenon in Spanish American letters. Consequently, Lacunza predicts that the Antichrist will emerge out of the Church itself, and that a triumphant Messiah will come and reward the steadfastness of the faithful and avenge all suffering and injustice.