Prepararse a bienmorirlas últimas voluntades del obispo cuencano Andrés Quintián Ponte y Andrade

Résumé

It is our purpose in the present paper to show the last wishes of don Andrés Quintián, bishop of Cuenca (Ecuador), as registered in the wills drawn up in 1813, the last year of his life. They are kept in the "Archivo Nacional de Cuenca" and have not been published until now. After a brief survey of Cuenca in the last decades of the colonial period, we try to introduce the figure of this controverted prelate. He is well known for his out-and-out defence of the royalist cause. Besides contributing some new unknown details about his biography, his last will and testament sheds some light on his spiritualy, temperament and social bakground. The article ends wilth an assessment of that will, which highlights both the formal similarity with other models common after the second part of the 17th century and its perculiar contents, and closes with its transcription.