Constanza Cavallero
2024-2025
Marcel Bataillon
CONICET - Universidad de Buenos Aires
There will be terrible times in the last days: the representations of Antichrist and the End of the World in Early Modern Spain (16th-17th Centuries)
Biography
Constanza Cavallero is an Adjunct Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) and a professor in the Department of Modern History at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires, where she earned her PhD in 2014.
She has focused her research on demonological discourse and religious controversy in the Hispanic kingdoms between the 15th and 17th centuries. She is the author of the books Los enemigos del fin del mundo. Judíos, herejes y demonios en el Fortalitium fidei de Alonso de Espina (2016) and Los demonios interiores de España. El obispo Lope de Barrientos en los albores de la demonología moderna (2011). She is also the co-editor of the books La Reforma protestante desde el margen (2020) and Furor Satanae. Representaciones y figuras del Adversario en la Europa Moderna (2023). She has written numerous chapters and academic articles published in Argentina and abroad, and has received national and international scholarships and awards for her research work.
Research project
Her research focuses on the representations of the Antichrist and the end of the world in the Hispanic kingdoms during the Early Modern period, a subject scarcely studied from a historical perspective despite the abundance of treatises on the matter.
The central objective is to demonstrate that, between the 15th and 18th centuries, the apocalyptic legend was adapted and reissued in successive contexts, becoming a substantial part of the most notable historical processes. It played a role in the more relevant theological and political debates of the period, conveying expressions of the disqualification of the Other, and emerged with particular force in critical times, expressing very diverse conceptions —whether conservative, critical, or transformative— of the established social order. Additionally, the impact of scientific and Enlightenment ideas on the eschatological thought of Catholic Spain will be examined. The study of the representations of the End thus serves as a gateway to understanding the process of the “disenchantment” of the world and the persistence and transformation of apocalyptic themes in response to the advance of what is broadly known as “secularization”.
Selected publications
2023. “‘Como otro demonio de carne’: el Anticristo, el diablo y la bruja en la España moderna (siglos XV-XVII)”, in Fabián Campagne y Constanza Cavallero (eds.), Furor Satanae: Representaciones y figuras del Adversario en la Europa Moderna, Buenos Aires, Miño y Dávila, pp. 181-224.
2023. “El converso que defendió la Inquisición: Antiluteranismo, apocalipticismo y paulinismo en los espejos de príncipes de Luis de Maluenda (1537-1545)”, Sefarad, 83:1, pp. 117-168.
2022. “Mujer perdidísima, depósito de inmundicias: representaciones de la madre del Anticristo en los reinos hispanos (ss. XV-XVIII)”, in Rosa Alabrús Iglesias (coord.), La realidad y la imagen de las mujeres en España y América (siglos XV-XVIII), Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, pp. 263-304.
2020. “‘Que se saquen todos los Moriscos’. Debates y transformaciones dentro del mundo contrarreformado”, in Santiago Peña, Constanza Cavallero et alii (eds.), La Reforma Protestante desde el margen: a 500 años del evento banal que revolucionó la cultura de Occidente, Buenos Aires, SB, pp. 133-160.
2019. “El discurso anti-islámico castellano: de disputa teológica a cimiento del proyecto universalista carolino (1460-1530)”, Medieval Encounters, 25, pp. 381-424.
