Simón de Roxas Clemente y Rubio
Encyclopedia
Titaguas
Titaguas is a municipality in the comarca of Los Serranos in the Valencian Community, Spain....
(Valencia, Spain) on 27 September 1777; died in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
on 27 February 1827) was a renowned Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
botanist, considered to be the father of Spanish ampelography
Ampelography
Ampelography is the field of botany concerned with the identification and classification of grapevines, Vitis spp. Traditionally this has been done by comparing the shape and colour of the vine leaves and grape berries; more recently the study of vines has been revolutionised by DNA...
.
Early Days
Born into a numerous family of 15 siblings (only six of which survived to adulthood) Simón de Rojas was a son of his father’s second wife, Juliana Rubio, and was fourth in line in term of inheritance and thus only had a very slight possibility of inheriting the family notary business. At the age of 10 he entered the seminary of SegorbeSegorbe
Segorbe is a municipality in the mountainous coastal province of Castelló, autonomous community of Valencia, Spain. The former Palace of the Dukes of Medinaceli now houses the city's mayor...
, and after studying humanities for four years he was sent to Valencia to continue his secondary education. There he studied philosophy with Antonio Galiana and became an arts professor. He also studied other subjects in the ecclesiastical curriculum and he excelled in philology especially Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, Hebrew and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. However, he was more attracted to the natural sciences and he put together several collections and classifications of plants and animals. At that time, Antonio José de Cavanilles Published Observaciones sobre el Reyno de Valencia (1795-97) which stimulated Rojas’ interest in botany.
Work Experience
In 1800, at the age of 23, he went to MadridMadrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
to apply for the professorship of Logic and Ethics at the Seminario de Nobles and even though he failed to win it he was awarded a post at the Colegio de San Isidro. He also enrolled there as a student where he took Arabic, Botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
, Mineralology and Chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
and he made contact with people he would collaborate later, for example Casimiro Gómez Ortega
Casimiro Gómez Ortega
Casimiro Gómez de Ortega was a Spanish physician, and botanist who was the First Professor of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid...
(Añover del Tajo, 1741 - Madrid, 1810), botanist and head of the Madrid Botanic Gardens; Mariano Lagasca y Segura (Encinacorba, 1776 - Barcelona, 1839), with whom he co-published Introducción a la Criptogamia Española in 1802.
In 1802 Rojas was nominated professor of Arabic in replacement of Miguel García
Miguel García
Miguel Angel García Sifontes is a former Major League Baseball left-handed relief pitcher who played for the California Angels and Pittsburgh Pirates ....
who was ill. It was then that he met the famous Catalan traveller and spy Domingo Badía y Leblich, more commonly known as Alí Bey, a fellow enthusiast of the Arabic language and botany and the natural sciences. He managed to persuade Rojas to accompany him on a supposed scientific project in the north of Africa, but which in reality was a spying mission for Manuel Godoy.
He travelled through France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
with Badía and on these trips he collected and classified nine volumes of plant-lore, which he donated to the Botanic Gardens on his return to Madrid. Badía abandoned Rojas in the north of Africa, but Manuel Godoy paid for his silence with a stipend of 1,500 reales/month for the next four years and commissioned him to carry out a study of the natural history of the former Kingdom of Granada, independently of any academic or administrative authority.
For almost two years he travelled about the Granada
Granada
Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...
, Jeréz de la Frontera
Jerez de la Frontera
Jerez de la Frontera is a municipality in the province of Cádiz in the autonomous community of Andalusia, in southwestern Spain, situated midway between the sea and the mountains. , the city, the largest in the province, had 208,896 inhabitants; it is the fifth largest in Andalusia...
and Sanlúcar
Sanlúcar
Sanlúcar may refer to:*Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Spain*Manolo Sanlúcar, flamenco composer and guitarist*Sanlúcar la Mayor, Sevilla, Spain...
areas collecting samples of wild and cultivated plants, observing agricultural practices, noting soil characteristics, micro-climates, and the adaptation of the flora to their natural environment. The results of this work were deposited, unedited, in the Botanic Gardens in Madrid. He also travelled to Seville
Seville
Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...
in 1804. He published several articles in 1806 and 1807 in the Semanario de Agricultura y Artes, run by Francisco Cea, which would later form part of his book Variedades de la Vid Común que Vegetan en Andalucía, published in 1807.
This book was published as a result of his having met three prestigious agronomists: Esteban, Claudio Boutelou and Francisco Terán, head of the Botanic Gardens of Sanlúcar de Barrameda
Sanlúcar de Barrameda
Sanlúcar de Barrameda is a city in the northwest of Cádiz province, part of the autonomous community of Andalucía in southern Spain. Sanlúcar is located on the left bank at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River opposite the Doñana National Park, 52 km from the provincial capital Cádiz and...
. They encouraged him to develop what was then a new discipline inn Spain, that of ampelography or the study of vines. Rojas was to become the foremost European authority on this subject.
In 1807 he returned to Sanlúcar to run the Botanic Gardens, which he expanded by creating an experimental section with the aim of containing an example of every type of grape vine growing in Spain at the time, along the lines of what Chaptal
Jean-Antoine Chaptal
Jean-Antoine Claude, comte Chaptal de Chanteloup was a French chemist and statesman. He established chemical works for the manufacture of the mineral acids, soda and other substances...
had proposed in France when he was Minister of the Interior.
Napoleonic War
The downfall of the Godoy government and the Napoleonic WarsNapoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
interfered with these plans however. Rojas tried to play both sides of the fence (pro-French and patriotic), as his liberal leanings made him favour the puppet government, but at the same time did not want to be considered a collaborator. He was able to travel freely all over Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
and to Madrid, but in 1812 he settled down in Titaguas
Titaguas
Titaguas is a municipality in the comarca of Los Serranos in the Valencian Community, Spain....
. According to his first biographer, Miguel Colmeiro, he undertook many scientific and humanitarian projects: he wrote the civil, natural and ecclesiastical history of Titaguas, made topographical drawings of the municipality, researched the genealogy of the local surnames, taught children and adults to classify the different species of birds and plants and created an amateur theatrical company where he himself played a part in Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
’s El Médico a Palos and Calderón’s El alcalde de Zalamea.
After the war he was called on to work on the topographical drawings of the province of Cadiz
Cádiz
Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....
but he preferred to take the post of Librarian at the Madrid Botanic Gardens, under his friend Mariano Lagasca. In 1817 they both catalogued the collections of South American plants shipped back to Madrid by José Celestino Mutis
José Celestino Mutis
-External links:*** at The Catholic Encyclopedia official site...
. He then edited Gabriel Alonso de Herrera
Gabriel Alonso de Herrera
Gabriel Alonso de Herrera was a Spanish author, best known for his Obra de Agricultura , published in 1513 under the patronage of Cardinal Cisneros....
’s Agricultura General in order to improve the original 1513 version with more rigorous scientific updates. He wrote a new prologue and added sections on species of wheat, cotton cultivation and most significantly on varieties and cultivation of grape vines and the main wines produced in Spain.
Later life
In 1820 when Riego reestablished the Courts of Cadiz, Rojas supported him and was active in the liberal movement, and he was nominated to head the list of the deputies of the Valencia constituency. He accepted the post and formed part of the commissions on Health, Agriculture and Public Health. However, he only participated once in the Parliament in order to propose the creation of an experimental agricultural farm in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.With his health deteriorating, due to his having had yellow fever in the past, he asked for sick leave to recover, and he retired to Titaguas in 1821, where he spent the next five years of his life. There he continued to compile data for his Historia Natural de Titaguas and to complete his collections of plants, insects and animals. He also began to study bee-keeping and made notes in the margins of a copy of Alonso de Herrera’s Agricultura General and in notebooks which ended up in the hands of the family of Antonio Sandalio de Arias. He returned to Madrid in 1826 to organise and finalise some of his many unfinished works, and he died there on 27 February 1827.
Legacy
Simón de Rojas Clemente is renowned for the initial planning and planning of the collection of grape vine varieties in the Plano de Flor.External links
- http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_de_Rojas_Clemente