Héctor Herrera Cajas

Héctor Enrique Herrera Cajas (13 September 1930 – 6 October 1997) was a Chilean historian and scholar who specialized in Byzantine studies. He is remembered for being a polyglot, and is known for teaching two winners of the National History Prize in his country: Gabriel Salazar and Eduardo Cavieres, researchers in economic and social history.

Herrera is a follower of Greek historian Fotios Malleros, and is considered the first Byzantinist of Latin America. His works on the history of Byzantium specifically address Byzantine foreign relations and art. At the Universidad de Chile, his alma mater, he taught regular courses. He was the co-founder of the Universidad de Chile Center for Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies, the only institution of its kind on the subcontinent. Later, he was a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso (PUCV) and since 1954, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC).

Among his more important works are ''Tacitus' Germany: The problem of the meaning of the shield'' (1957) and "Res Privata–Res publica–Imperium" (1977). The first is considered a pioneering study of the history of mentalities in Chilean historiography. He examines Tacitus' work to analyze the symbolism of the shield to early Germans, then analysed the moves towards medieval history. José Marín said he makes "the source speak in a really remarkable way, since Tacitus himself says little about the subject in question". His article "Res Privata–Res publica–Imperium" "conceptually examines the trajectory of Roman institutions from their foundation until the fall of the Western Empire", and addresses the particularities of the private world and its relationship with public institutions that, at the end of the Empire, would perish by socially re-privatizing themselves. Herrera argued that this re-privatization occurred due to the influence of Germanic peoples with their private institutions, and he discarded theories of rupture or continuity between one world and another.

From 1958 to his death, Herrera studied the foreign affairs of the Byzantine Civilization from which he relates topics such as the foundation of its imperial ideology, its relations with the Church, its art and its symbols of imperial power to the Frankish Kingdom and the Abbasid Caliphate.

Herrera was the head of the Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación (UMCE) from 1986 to 1989, and he founded its Classical Studies Center. A few days after his death, the Finis Terrae University opened the celebration of ''Jornadas de Historia Héctor Herrera Cajas''. In 1989, he had been accepted as a full member of Academia Chilena de la Historia and, since November 1997, the main classroom of the PUCV History Institute was named after him.

Among those influenced by Herrera, Salazar maintained that he preferred him "for his human quality and his way to make lessons". This appreciation did not deny the antagonistic political thought between them, since he was a member of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) while Herrera Cajas was opposed 1960s rebel movements. Similarly, from the start of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship (1973–1990), Herrera was an ally of the doctrinal line of the Ministry of Education that was aligned with the military regime. Provided by Wikipedia