Marcelino Legido López

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Marcelino Legido López
Born	January 1st, 1935 San Esteban de Zapardiel (Ávila, Spain)
💀Died	September 23, 2016 Salamanca (Spain)September 23, 2016
🏳️ Nationality	Spanish
🏫 Education	Ph. D. in Phylosophy, Ph. D. in Theology
🎓 Alma mater	University of Salamanca
💼 Occupation	Phylosopher, theologist, catholic priest
Notable work	The problem of God in Plato, Metaphysics of common good, Misericordia Entrañable (Tender Mercy), Contemplatio

Marcelino Legido López (January 9, 1935 – July 23, 2016) was a Spanish philosopher, writer and professor at the University of Salamanca. Later was a catholic priest and theologian as well. He was a philosopher in the Personalism tradition in s. XX, and also was a great expert of Greek philosophy and of the Fathers of the Church. He was also a specialist in the thought of Miguel de Unamuno and other philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Mounier, Maritain, Jaspers, etc. In addition, was a respected exegete on Old Testament and Epistles of St. Paul.

After many years working as a teacher, philosopher and theologian, he decided in 1970 to leave the University of Salamanca and dedicate himself to being a simple rural healer in the most remote and unassisted villages of the province of Salamanca, in line with his personal position and his thought.

He had an appreciable influence on the renewal of the Spanish and Latin American Church, making clear the need for the social commitment of the Catholic Church. Although personally close to authors of the so-called Liberation Theology, such as Xabier Pikaza and José Ignacio González Faus, he could certainly not fit into it, although he maintained close positions in some aspects, but nearer to nowadays Theology of the People Nevertheless, he remained faithful to the Magisterium and was a close collaborator of theologians such as Olegario González de Cardedal or Senén Vidal . In any case, it can be said that Marcelino Legido has marked an era of the Catholic Church in Spain in view of the numerous testimonies of those who knew him. The same Olegario González de Cardedal, in a book about the last half century of theology in Spain places it in a relevant place; and the dictionary of Christian thinkers of Xabier Pikaza puts him on a list of the 85 most influential Christian thinkers of Christianity along with figures such as Karl Rahner or Joseph Ratzinger.

Biography

Marcelino Legido was born on January 9, 1935 in San Esteban de Zapardiel, a small town in the province of Ávila, not far from Salamanca. Son of Policarpo Legido and Lucía López, farmers. He was baptized on the 27th of that same month of January, he made his Christian Initiation in that parish community and his primary education in the Primary School of the neighboring town of Barromán (Ávila). He went to Arévalo, where he studied high school (1945-1952) and officially examined himself at the National Institute of Secondary Education in Ávila.

In 1952 he started the studies at the University of Salamanca in the Faculty of Philosophy. On June 15, 1957 he obtained the Degree of Bachelor with extraordinary prize. From 1957 to 1959 he prepared his Doctorate degree as assistant professor of the classes of Greek Philosophy in Salamanca, and later in the German universities of Göttingen, Munich and Pullach, with a scholarship from the Oriol-Urquijo Foundation, to further inside on his studies. At that time, he met there relevant professors of the time, among others Philipp Lersch, J. B. Lotz, Romano Guardini, Michael Schmaus, Karl Rahner, Ratzinger, etc.

He obtained the degree of Doctor with the qualification of "outstanding laude" unanimously, a bit later, in 1960, he obtained the position of professor of the subject "Fundamentals of Philosophy and History of Philosophical Systems" of which he became in charge of chair in 1962 at the University of Salamanca.

Before him, lovingly, Hans Küng and many others bowed their heads and called him Herr Professor as a sign of recognition. He was a man of great intellectual stature, speaking classical Greek, and with a deep knowledge the Bible. He, he said, became a priest to serve God and Christ in the poor, and in Munich he celebrated Mass for migrants, among the garbage cans. An experience of emigration and the poor marked his whole life.

He began his ecclesiastical studies at the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical University of Salamanca and moved to live in the Barrio de Pizarrales, one of the most humble neighborhoods of Salamanca. It follows with intensity the evolution of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). He promotes the Paul VI Chair together with E. Freijo Balsebre for dialogue with Marxism. It coincides at this time with Enrique Tierno Galván and Francisco Tomás y Valiente who together with other professors promoted a cultural and political change.

He was ordained a priest on June 19, 1966 by the Bishop of Salamanca, Mauro, conciliar father, and incardinated to the parish of San José Obrero of the neighborhood of Pizarrales. Later, he was parish priest in several towns of this Salamanca diocese: El Cubo de Don Sancho, Traguntía, Peralejos de Abajo, Peralejos de Arriba and Torrejón de Alba.

Being a professor at the University of Salamanca, the third oldest university in the world, fruit of a deep discernment of his faith, he decided in 1970 to leave everything and change it to be a diocesan priest in small villages far away and unassisted from the diocese.

In the early years of the XXI century age began to take its toll on his health and he spent his last years in the Diocesan Residence of Salamanca where he entered on April 30, 2009, where he died of cardio-respiratory failure on July 23, 2016.

Thought

In his philosophical and theological writings, Marcelino Legido shows a clear concern for social justice and the common good. The common good always appears as a primary reality in the human community, in every collective sphere, but nevertheless, because it is the common unity of men, it refers to the individual, essential human person. Marcelino Legido considers that there are three ontological conditions that delimit the human person:

i) man is a finite being, ii) an incarnate spirit, and iii) a person. Because he is finite, that is, limited, the human being is in himself needy and, therefore, needs others. In other words, man is a being-in-the-world, in a concept similar to that used by existentialists; a being-with-others, so that we can say that finitude generates community. Secondly, being an incarnate spirit, it has two intrinsic dimensions, one material and one spiritual, which can be called body and soul. Their joint and substantial activity forms the person, who, by his use of reason and his freedom, tends to communicate with others, with the other, and in this way, the person generates community. The person "is" in religation with God and in communion with other people.

It is a religation of which I had already spoken Xavier Zubiri, as a constitutive act of man, but to which Marcelino Legido gives a radical social component. The metaphysical constitution of man and his threefold ontological condition ultimately leads to community, so that the person founds the community and the community is personal in nature. The communitarian is expressed in the fact that man is an essential and constitutively communicative being, and this communication means that only in society can man be fully realized.

Society is a community of people but not as a simple aggregate of individuals that generates a mere material framework, but, formally, in its form, it is constituted by the set of links necessary for a coexistence that allows a common project. The person is the cause of the community and also its end, and has already defined the 4 causes of Aristotelian metaphysics. The person founds the community and in it arises the common good.

But the community is not an end in itself, but a means of fulfillment of the person: " if the person gives himself to the community, the community reverts to the person ". Then all of them open themselves to dialogue with God and consummate its realization, as a kind of absolute common good. Thus, in line with Jacques Maritain, the individual is ordered to the community and its common good, and conversely, the community is at the service of the person and the person at the service of God.

Even though he is a philosopher, an expert in ancient and medieval philosophy, the weight of Christianity in his thinking is enormous. The journalist Agustín Ortega says of him:

"He was a prophet and witness of the Gospel of Jesus, testimony of faith, fraternity and mercy, of solidarity love and justice with the poor (impoverished and excluded, last and oppressed). A life given in love for God in Christ, for the Church and for the poor in solidarity poverty. He left a broad spiritual and cultural, theological and moral legacy that we must update, deepen in the social and historical reality in which we live. The first thing to highlight is his incessant search for truth, beauty and goodness, for the transcendence, spirituality and mysticism of life in communion with the Other, with God, with others and with the cosmos. A spirituality of the incarnation in life, in reality and the world to bring the gift of God, his grace and salvation in fraternal love, intimate mercy and justice with the poor of the earth".

Works

Marcelino Legido wrote books and articles on Philosophy, on the one hand, and Theology and Sacred Scripture, on the other. Also some writings on ecclesial issues, mainly in the social and commitment aspect. The following can be highlighted:

• "Good, God, Man. Studies on Greek thought", in which he addresses the good in Plato's philosophy and specifically in the metaphysics of the good as the culmination of an ideal world. Additionally, he analyzes the concept of God in Aristotle's Metaphysics XII and also analyzes the concept of "life according to nature" as a model to follow in ancient philosophy.
• "The problem of God in Plato. A theology of Demiurge" which makes a philosophical analysis of the concept of God in Platonism that has had so much influence on Western thought and Christianity, directly and through Neoplatonism. Many of the concepts used in metaphysics and theology, which have given it wings and have also weighed it down, have their starting point in Plato.
• "Contemplación", Contemplation in English, in which he gives lucid guidelines for self-reflection on one's own existence, on its meaning and full deployment, in the search for the human in the light of transcendence. It is a deep analysis of human conscience under personalism perspective.
• "Gospel to the poor" in which he develops his Christian experience, from the perspective of the poor.
• "Metaphysics of Common Good", a metaphysical study of the ontological foundations of common good in the human society and individuals.

However, the book for which Marcelino Legido has been best known is "Misericordia Entrañable", "Tender Mercy" in English, published in 1987. It is a book that addresses the theme of divine mercy from a theological and spiritual perspective. In this work, he explores the concept of mercy in Christianity and reflects on its importance in the lives of believers. The book invites reflection on God's compassion, forgiveness and unconditional love for humanity.

"Tender Mercy" is considered one of Marcelino Legido's major works and was positively received by both theologians and readers interested in Christian spirituality, in a Catholic ecclesial environment. Through its focus on divine mercy, according to the point of view of the magisterium of the Catholic Church, the book offers a profound insight into the importance of living mercy and solidarity in people's lives and in their relationships with others.

His Doctoral Thesis in Philosophy dealt with the demiurge in Plato, a topic on which he would deepen in some of his books. The presence of Platonic and Neoplatonist concepts in Christian theology has always been the subject of study and debate, although Marcellin Legido used above all the more Aristotelian perspective, specifically his metaphysics.

His doctoral thesis in Theology was entitled: "The Church of the Lord: A Study of Pauline Ecclesiology" from which another book came out in 1977, along with Georg Eichholz, entitled: The Gospel of Paul: Outline of Pauline Theology. In both books, especially in the first, he offers an overview of the tradition of Paul (focusing in a special way on the Letter to the Ephesians), to link the mystery of Christ with his presence in the poor, the mysticism of the body of Christ with the mysticism of the social body, from the perspective of the discarded of the world.

He never intended to construct a systematic theology in use in the second half of the twentieth century, but his theological itinerary would be rather an 'apostolic theology' or a 'theology on the way'. If historical circumstance put him in contact his theological reflections with the historical reality and the life of the Church in which he had to live. This means that his aim was rather to accompany the life of the Church and the communities over which he presided as a priest, with the light of the intelligence that was born above all of the contemplation and study of Sacred Scripture, as well as of the critical analysis of reality.

External links

There is abundant information on the web, but mainly in:

• Website of Marcelino Legido (Spanish): https://marcelinolegido.es/
• Article by Prof. Ángel Cordovilla, Universidad Pontificia de Comillas (Spanish): A theological portrait of M. Legido

References

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