Published in Life and Thought, Religiosity and Conflict, Pleasure and Crime on Both Sides of the Mediterranean (the Crown of Aragon and Acre)

Keywords: Arbuixech, Ballester, Guerau, Homilethics, Oratory, Seventeenth century, Valencian.

The Valencian sermonist acquired an unquestionable power in the 17th century. An example of this is found in the figures of Arbuixech, Ballester and Guerau, in them we find protagonists with their own name in the religious field and local preaching preaching. In fact, they were the most remarkable personalities of the homilética genre that arose in Valencia in the middle of the six hundred that, along with other intellectuals, shaped a genuine cultural circle. Indeed, together they would integrate the triada of the native sacred oratory of the Baroque one by antonomasia. The three would be linked to the Congregation of the Oratory of Sant Felip Neri of the capital of Turia, to the immaculist cause and the devotion to San Vicente Ferrer. The historiography, however, has ignored our protagonists. There is no monographic study dedicated to them, beyond the biographical reviews of V. Ximeno or J. Rodríguez. Certainly, we have found them as part of essays devoted to classmates or preachers, already in works on preaching in the Baroque or in volumes about the University of Valencia, Valencian philology or literature. In addition, his work has reached us very unevenly. With the following lines, for all this, we will try to deduct them in value. Serve this article as a prologue to a larger work on them.