Informations, chronicles and relations of the sixteenth century as precedents of the fake news. The case of the “invention” of San Segundo

Abstract

Infomations, stories and chronicles of the sixteenth century are proto-journalistic forms that fully enter in the History of Communication, but when they build or recreate fictions, they can beconsidered antecedents of fake news. In this text, we analyse several stories of the discovery in 1519 and translation in 1594, of the mortal remains attributed to San Segundo, considered the first bishop of Ávila; specifically a document from 1574 entitled “Infomations”, by Melchor Nieto, and a chronicle about the remove, included in a book from 1595, published by Antonio Cianca. The sociological approximation allows observing repercussions of events of a social, cultural, religious and festive typologie that ratify the relevance of the remains discovery.