La "Regla de vida cristiana" de San Francisco Javier y el soneto "no me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte"

Abstract

The French Jesuit Pièrre Poussines (1609-1686) published in 1667 an edition of Saint Francis Xavier’s collected letters that was more complete than previous ones. In this he was helped by Fr. Francesco Saverio Filippucci (1632-1692), who, on his journey to the East, sent him from India the letters of Xavier that he could find. In Poussines’ edition an instruction of the great missionary, unknown until them, was included; it was a rule of Christian life, how to spend the day in a saintly manner, which the saint had distributed to the faithful of India. In it, a poem to move to the pure love of God is commended. The collected letters were published in Latin, as was the poem, but it is clear that the poem is none other than the No me mueve, mi Dios, para quererte sonnet, which tradition has ascribed to Saint Francis Xavier. This seemed to confirm in a well-informed way the Xaverian attribution, as it is manifested in the vernacular editions that were made until the XIX century. But Fr. Poussines explains that the poem was added by Fr. Filippucci, and later on it has been verified that the different manuscripts, have it not. Consequently, the main basis for the Xaverian attribution of the famous sonnet was lost