Manuel de Lacunza y Díaz, S.J. (July 19, 1731 – , 1801) was a Jesuit priest who used the pseudonym Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra in his main work on the interpretation of the prophecies of the Bible, which was entitled The Coming of the Messiah in Majesty and Glory.
Biography The son of Carlos de Lacunza Ziaurris and Josefa Díaz Durán,Seperiza Pasquali, Iván. (2001). «Lacunza: el Milenarista». Consulted on 28 July 2009. "Manuel Lacunza, born July 19, 1731. His parents, Don Carlos and Doña Josefa Díaz" wealthy merchants engaged in colonial trade between Lima and Chile, Manuel entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1747. After the usual Jesuit training he was ordained to the priesthood in 1766 but began his service as a teacher of grammar in the :es:Universidad Pontificia Colegio Máximo de San Miguel in the Chilean capital, where he gained moderate fame as a pulpit orator.
In 1767 King Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from Spain and its possessions, (including South America) and Lacunza was sent into exile, first in Cádiz, Spain, and then in the Italian town of Imola, near Bologna in central Italy, where he found refuge with other Chilean Jesuits. Charles threatened to withdraw his subsidy of 100 piastres per annum if any Jesuit wrote in self-defence or in criticism of this move. Lacunza's life as a priest-in-exile was made more difficult when the next pope, Pope Clement XIV, issued the brief, Dominus ac Redemptor, which banned Jesuits from celebrating Mass or other sacraments, for which a fee was charged. In addition, his family in Chile fell on hard times and the remittances on which Lacunza relied became increasingly scarce.
During this time, Lacunza began an intensive programme of study, first of the Church Fathers and then of Biblical prophecies. He read all the commentaries available to him and after 1779 restricted his study solely to the Scriptures.
After five years of communal living with the other exiled Jesuits, Lacunza retired to a house on the outskirts of Imola where he lived alone, apart from a mysterious person whom he calls in his letters, "my good mulatto". During this time some of his Jesuit colleagues described him as "a man whose retirement from the world, his parsimonious way of life, the neglect of his own person, even from the comforts necessary to human life, and his indefatigable application to study, earned him the respect and admiration of all"."un hombre cuyo retiro del mundo, parsimonia en su trato, abandono de su propia persona en las comodidades aun necesarias a la vida humana, y aplicación infatigable a los estudios, le conciliaban el respeto y admiración de todos".
In 1773 Lacunza received another blow when, by the bull "Dominus ac Redemptor", the pope dissolved the Jesuit order in return for territorial concessions by France and Spain who were threatening the Papal States, the so-called "Patrimony of St Peter". Thus, by decree, Lacunza was reduced to a secular status.
Combined with the theological and Biblical study he had undertaken, this personal trauma led Lacunza to adopt a millenarian view of the near future. His developing ideas were first published in a 22-page tract known as "The Anonymous Millennium" which was widely circulated in South America (there is evidence that Lacunza did not authorise this publication and was annoyed by it). The tract gave rise to heated public debate, particularly in Buenos Aires. Lacunza's opponents denounced him to the Inquisition, which banned the booklet.
In 1790 Lacunza completed the three volumes of his major work, "The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty" (La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad). Recognising that royal patronage was the surest guarantee that his work would be published and that he would be protected against his enemies, he made repeated attempts to obtain approval by the Spanish court, but in this he was unsuccessful. However his book circulated in manuscript form in Spain and in the whole of South America.
The exact date of his death is uncertain because his body was found in a pit beside a road some distance from Imola. At the time it was assumed that the septuagenarian priest had died of natural causes while on one of his solitary walks.
The fate of his work Despite the prohibition of the Inquisition, "La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad" was secretly printed in Cádiz in 1810 or 1811 under the Jewish pseudonym of Rabbi Juan Josaphat ben-Ezra. A second edition was printed in Spain in 1812 and a third, in Castilian and funded by the Argentine General Manuel Belgrano, was published in London in 1816. In the same year the book was denounced before the Spanish courts and on January 15, 1819, the Spanish Inquisition ordered that the book be removed from circulation. Further editions were printed in Mexico in 1821/1822, in Paris in 1825, and again in London in 1826.
In September 1824, Pope Leo XII placed it on the Index of Prohibited Books. Those who opposed the book expressed particular concern about the appeal Lacunza's ideas exerted among the more conservative and active clergy. A pamphlet denouncing Lacunza's book, published in Madrid in 1824, was subtitled, "Observations to Guard the Public against the Seduction the Work can Cause".
Following the book's publication in London, the Rev Edward Irving, who formed the Catholic Apostolic Church after being disfellowshiped from the Presbyterian Church, came across Lacunza's work. He had already begun to learn Spanish by allowing a refugee Spanish officer to tutor him as a way of helping the man. He was so impressed by Lacunza's work that he spent the summer of 1826 translating it into English. In 1827 his two-volume translation was published under the title "The Coming of the Messiah in Majesty and Glory".See "Edward Irving, an Ecclesiastical and Literary Biography" by Washington Wilks, London: William Freeman, 1854 p. 273 Appendix
Lacunza's Ideas Lacunza believed that he had made some "new discoveries, in a subject which certainly is not one of mere curiosity, but of the greatest interest." The first of these "new discoveries" was that "I am not of the opinion that the world – that is, the material bodies or celestial globes that God has created (among which is the one on which we live) – has to have an end, or return to chaos or nothingness from which it came forth." He protested against the common teaching that at the end of the world, the earth would be consumed by fire and quoting from an Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon text, which is found in Catholic Bibles, but not in Protestant Bibles, declared:
How can it be a universal fire which burneth up and consumeth every thing without exception upon our globe, and the globe itself, when the scripture saith, 'Then shall the right aiming thunderbolts go abroad; and from the clouds, as from a well drawn bow, shall they fly to the mark – Wisdom 21.'Secondly, Lacunza concluded that the Biblical expressions "end of the age" and "end of the world" refer to two different times. He understood the "end of the age" or "day of the Lord" as merely the end of a phase of human history that would be closed by the coming of Christ and the beginning of His kingdom on Earth. At this time the living would be judged and the Jews converted, after which a new society would be established for a thousand-year reign of justice and peace.
El Terino (a very learned author) … His words are these: 'But it shall be fully accomplished towards the end of the world, in the general conversion of all the Jews unto Christ.' That which is here declared and avowed by this learned man, is substantially the same which I say, with this only difference, that I place after the end of the age, the same event which he without any reason pretends to place 'towards the end of the world.' … along with this great event announced in almost all the scriptures, you shall likewise find at the end of this present earth, or which is the same, the end of the day of men, which the Lord so frequently called the consummation of this age; and immediately after this day, you shall find that of the Lord, the age to come, the kingdom of God, the new earth and the new heavens, wherein dwelleth righteousness, peace, love, and uniformity in the same faith, in the same worship, in the same laws and customs, a uniformity of language among all the peoples, tribes, and families of the whole earth.
While the "end of the world" will be marked by the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgement, this event would take place after the thousand years of Christ's pacific earthly kingdom, at which the dragon would then be loosed, so that the nations might once again be deceived, at which fire then comes down from heaven and consumes the dragon, the beast and the false prophet in the "lake of fire" (Rev. 20:9,10). After this, the "last judgment, the ultimate sentence" of the "second death" takes place before the throne of God, as described in Revelation 22:11, at which "the greatness, the majesty, the infinite sovereignty of that throne and of the supreme prince who sitteth thereon, before whose presence, and in whose sight the heaven and earth should flee away and hide themselves, with all who dwell, and all are found therein." According to Lacunza:
If the xxth chapter of the Apocalypse is to be literally understood, Jesus Christ himself with all his saints now risen, ought actually to reign in Jerusalem over the whole orb of the earth, and that for a thousand years … It ought then be admitted, that those thousand years of the pacific kingdom of Jesus Christ, being passed into innocence, in goodness, and righteousness, the dragon will once again be loosed, and will return to deceive the whole world … What wonder then, if after a thousand years, (or, if you please, a hundred thousand) of righteousness and goodness, the world should once more come to be perverted? … Nevertheless, among these individual things pertaining to this very mystery, I find only one which I am not ignorant of, nor can fail to perceive, which is, the circumstance of the time at which the whole mystery shall come to pass. I mean that the whole mystery, or which is the same thing, the resurrection of all the individuals of Adam's race, the last judgment, the ultimate sentence, and the execution of this ultimate sentence, cannot take place immediately upon and in the very natural day of the coming in glory and majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ; because that idea is visibly and evidently repugnant to the text of St. John [in the book of Revelation].
Lacunza's position on the identification of the Antichrist Lacunza's interpretation of Biblical prophecy led him to believe that during the period before the "day of the Lord" there would be an apostasy within the Catholic Church which would make it part of a general system which he labelled Antichrist, in the sense that there would be a general "falling away" in doctrine among the churches, resulting in moral apostasy. In this sense the Antichrist would be composed of "a moral antichristian body, composed of many individuals … animated by the same spirit", which would consist of "seven false religions [that] should unite to make war against the body of Christ, and against Christ himself" – which was in accordance with his personal interpretation of Revelation 13:1. In The Coming of the Messiah in Majesty and Glory, Lacunza compared his views on the Antichrist – that Antichrist was a general moral apostasy within the churches – with what he declared to be the "universally recognized" view of his day: