Abstract

In April 20th, 1743, upon request from a father, José Valeriano de Ahumada wrote a memorial titled «Respuesta jurídica a una consulta sobre facultad del padre para desheredar a una hija que se casa contra su voluntad». Basing his argument on the intellectual legacy of Euripides, Cicero, Sallust, Plutarch, Seneca the Elder, Marullus, the Twelve Tables, Virgil, Marcel, Ovid, and Claudius Claudianus, Ahumada justified – normatively and historically – why the daughter of a member of Santiago’s elite could not be married to a man considered as a plebeian. Opposing paternal authorities, the fiancées’ intentions produced both a social disillusion (a historically and socially failed marriage) and an intellectual translation of classical authorities within a different normative and cultural context. This document reveals a physiognomy of classical texts (faces, presences, and the repertoire of authors) and a morphological understanding of classics (the shapes and forms that classical culture assumed in other contexts) in order to decipher an unequal marriage in Santiago de Chile. This document ultimately anticipates the directions of the «Real Pragmática», issued in March 23, 1776.