Magín Ferrer

Magín Ferrer y Pons (18 October 1792 – 16 April 1853) was a Spanish Mercedarian friar, lexicographer and writer. He is known for having been, together with Vicente Pou, one of the first propagandists of the Carlist cause.

Biography

He was born in Barcelona, the son of Mariano Ferrer and Magina Pons. In 1807, at the age of fourteen, he entered the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy, where he studied irregularly due to the Spanish War of Independence. After the restoration of Ferdinand VII, he took competitive examinations and obtained the rank of professor. From 1824, he was rector of the college of San Pedro Nolasco in Tarragona. Later, he was chamber secretary in the bishoprics of Solsona and Burgos.

After the outbreak of the first Carlist war, he wrote La cuestión dinástica, a plea in favor of the rights to the crown of the infante Carlos María Isidro de Borbón, which, however, would not be published until many years after his death, in 1869, after the overthrow of Isabel II. During the first Carlist war, Magín Ferrer would have proposed to the Carlist junta of Berga to ask the pretender to reestablish the Catalan privileges suppressed in 1714, as Juan Mañé Flaquer affirmed to the Diario de Barcelona half a century later. With the defeat of the supporters of Don Carlos, he went into exile for a time in France.

It is attributed to him to have had a history of the Count of Spain published in Barcelona in 1840, just after the war, under the pseudonym of Felix Ramon Tresserra y Fábrega, who would have been an imaginary Elizabethan. However, the Carlist historian Melchor Ferrer questions this because of the difference in styles. José Antonio Garí also attributes to him a political and military history of Napoleon Bonaparte under the pseudonym of Fortian José Pons. In 1841, he published in Toulouse a work in French in defense of the rights of the Church in Spain. His most important work was Las leyes fundamentales de la Monarquía Española según fueron antiguamente, y según según conviene que sean en la época actual (1843), which he had printed in Barcelona in two volumes.

In his lexicographical facet, he published two Spanish-Catalan dictionaries, which were reprinted during the reign of Isabel II, and in which he proposed orthographic innovations for Catalan, such as the adoption of the spelling ñ instead of the digraph ny or the suppression of the final h in words ending in c.

He excelled as a preacher, preaching the Lent of the Royal Orders in Madrid, the Pilar in Zaragoza and many sermons. He installed a printing press in his convent, and he himself worked as a printer. While working as secretary to the Archbishop of Burgos, Cirilo de Alameda y Brea, he was entrusted with the editing and direction of the Librería religiosa de Barcelona, but died on April 16, 1853 in Madrid, while he was on his way to Barcelona.

He was buried in the church of Santiago.

Works

• Diccionario manual castellano-catalán (1836)
• Diccionario catalán-castellano (1839)
• Historia de la última época de la vida política y militar del conde de España y de su asesinato (as "Felix Ramon de Tresserra y Fábrega", 1840)
• Historia política y militar de Napoleon Bonaparte, puesta en su verdadero punto de vista (as "Fortian José Pons", 1840)
• De la doctrine, des droits et des malheurs de l'Eglise d'Espagne (1841)
• La alocución de N. S.mo P. Gregorio XVI vindicada de las declamaciones hipócritas y calumniosas del Manifiesto publicado en nombre del Gobierno español (1841)
• Las leyes fundamentales de la Monarquía Española según fueron antiguamente, y según conviene que sean en la época actual (1843)
• Impugnación crítica de la obra titulada: Independencia constante de la Iglesia Hispana y necesidad de un nuevo Concordato (1844)
• Historia del derecho de la Iglesia en España (1845)
• Anuario de Maria ó el verdadero siervo de Maria santísima (Translated from the French)
• Carta en defensa del derecho de la libertad del Clero para proveerse de libros del rezo divino de donde y como mejor le convenga, contra un artículo que se publicó en la «Censura» del mes de mayo del año 1847
• Carta dirigida al ilustrísimo señor Obispo de Canarias, en la cual se denuncia como altamente injuriosa á S. I. un libro titulado: «Cartas del Obispo de Canarias al Censor de su libro: Independencia de la Iglesia hispana
• La cuestión dinástica (1869)