Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World 1611484960, 9781611484960

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Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World

Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World Edited by Jason McCloskey and Ignacio López Alemany

Published by Bucknell University Press Co-published with The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2013 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available. ISBN 978-1-61148-496-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61148-497-7 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

To our Professors and Mentors

List of Illustrations 1.1. Titian. Danae and the Shower of Gold. Prado Museum, Madrid. 1.2. Titian. Venus and Adonis. Prado Museum, Madrid. 1.3. Titian. Perseus and Andromeda. Wallace Collection, London, Great Britain. 1.4. Titian. Diana and Callisto. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. 1.5. Titian. Diana and Actaeon. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. 1.6. Titian. The Rape of Europa. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. 4.1. Guillim Scrots. Portrait of Prince Edward VI. Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. 4.2. Fresco of Marcus Curtius Romanus in the Palace of Álvaro de Bazán. 5.1. Re-stamped vellón coins, obverse. Museo de las Ferias, Medina del Campo. 5.2 Re-stamped vellón coins, reverse. Museo de las Ferias, Medina del Campo. 5.3. Centén, obverse. Museo Casa de la Moneda, Madrid. 5.4. Centén, reverse. Museo Casa de la Moneda, Madrid. 9.1. El Greco. Allegory of the Holy League. Real Monasterio del Escorial, Madrid. 9.2. El Greco. The Martyrdom of St. Maurice. Real Monasterio del Escorial, Madrid. 10.1. Frontispiece of Juan de Castellanos’s Primera parte de elegías de varones ilustres de Indias 10.2. Titian. Religion Succored by Spain. Museo del Prado, Madrid. 10.3. Titian. The Glory. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Preface Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World explores the representation of political, economic, military, religious, and juridical power in texts and artifacts from early modern Spain and the Spanish American viceroyalties. In addition to analyzing the dynamics of power in written texts, certain chapters also examine pieces of material culture including coats of arms, coins, paintings, engravings and frescoes. Signs of Power also brings together studies of both canonical literary works as well as more obscure texts, and the position of the texts studied with respect to the official center of power also varies. Whereas certain essays focus on the ways in which portrayals of power champion the aspirations of the Spanish Crown, other essays attend to voices of dissent that effectively call into question that authority. Thus, as the title suggests, this volume is concerned with signs and with power, concepts whose precise significations can be difficult to ascertain. The following essays reflect the polyvalence of both of these terms in the early modern Spanish language, as seen, for example, in the Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Treasury of the Castilian or Spanish Language). This early seventeenth-century dictionary compiled by Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco registers seña, señal, and signo, all of which would be rendered as “signs” in English. Reflecting upon the implications of his definitions for these words provides an instructive starting point for the discussions in this collection. One of the most illuminating explanations provided by Covarrubias is for seña. The lexicographer notes that seña derives from the Latin, signum, which has its own broad array of meanings. This Latin word could refer to a variety of marks, military flags, symptoms, passwords, and constellations, and most pertinently for this volume, it also encompassed a number of art objects including statues, pictures, and engravings.[1] Covarrubias informs readers that seña is said to denote the token by which two parties can understand one another, but the fulfillment of this communicative objective depends on a mutual pact. He writes that a seña is “la señal que de concierto tienen entre dos para entenderse” [the sign by which two [parties] have agreed upon in order to understand one another].[2] Although he goes on to associate señas with such specific objects as battle standards, his initial description remains quite elastic and attests to the wide range of objects and ideas that could meet his criteria for this sort of sign. Moreover, his definition is revealing of the relation that señas have to their use in social contexts in which at least two groups or individuals endeavor to communicate. For Covarrubias, señas are intended to be recognized and understood. Of course, this foreshadows the potential for breakdowns in understanding when the two sides are not in agreement over the meaning of the signs. His allusion to the necessary consensus that allows for universal comprehension of the seña also recalls what has become common knowledge today thanks to the work of linguists: signs, like words in a language, are

attributed meaning from outside themselves. Covarrubias next defines señal, which can have the same signification as seña, but it evinces an additional dimension by which it calls attention to itself and stands out. Thus, for a person to be señalado is to be distinguished such as in battle or in learning, for example. He clarifies that señal, “[u]nas veces sinifica lo mesmo que seña, y otras el indicio de la cosa ausente, la huella del jabalí impresa en la tierra es señal de que anda en aquel lugar, y por ella suelen los monteros discurrir sobre si es la res grande o pequeña y otras cosas de que ellos están muy diestros” [Sometimes it refers to the same thing as seña, and other times, to the indication of the missing thing, the footprints of the wild boar stamped into the ground are a señal that it is walking around the area, and through it [the señal] hunters can ponder if it is a large or small animal, and other things at which they are adept].[3] His definition points to the potential absence to which signs can allude and of which their existence is indicative, suggesting that signs can act as marks left by other forces. This, of course, seems almost prescient of Derrida’s concepts of the trace and différance, but the analogy employed by the Spanish lexicographer implies that there is an ultimate—albeit elusive—source, which in this case is the boar. Covarrubias’s explanation presents the image of a band of hunters tracing signs back to the animal that created the tracks in the ground so as to capture their prey. In this way, readers today might take the boar as a metaphor for the Latin concepts of auctor and auctoritas, which refer to notions of an originator, origination, and authority.[4] Signs can be seen from this perspective as vestiges of authority, and they are revealing of the power behind them. The question of power also impinges upon Covarrubias’s seemingly clear-cut definition of seña in which the process by which the agreement over the meaning of a sign is left unexamined. Of course, where the absolute power of the Habsburg monarchy is concerned, the signification of a sign might be imposed rather than emerge from a common agreement. And when imposed meaning on signs is challenged, that royal authority itself can come into dispute. These same dynamics and problems are analyzed in detail in the following chapters of this collection. The first part of the volume, called Myths of Power, contains four chapters that examine classical figures as flexible signs with varied relations to power. The essays of this section remind readers of the importance that Greco-Roman myths and legends exercised on early modern Spain, whose nobility and educated were as interested in the power of the classical tradition as many of them were fervent in their religious beliefs. Indeed, as Anne Cruz emphasizes in chapter 1, even King Philip II, the pious Habsburg monarch, was deeply invested in, and appreciative of, classical pagan culture. The series of mythological paintings by Titian and the art collections in his multiple palaces attest to this dimension of the king’s tastes. The fabulous and legendary characters studied in the following studies appear in a wide range of artistic media including frescoes, medals, portraits, paintings, statues, gardens, and, of course, works of poetry and prose. Sometimes these figures are employed to question the power of the monarchy or to provide a timely warning. Other times, the myths typify aspirational ideals of the ruling class, and in the most provocative

instances, they empower or have the potential to excite and arouse the reader or viewer. Classical mythology signified many things to many people during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but on a literal level much of it was undeniably erotic. Much of it was, in fact, exhilaratingly licentious and lascivious. This side of mythology appears especially conspicuous in the series of paintings that Titian created for Philip II, known as the poesie. This artwork recreated Ovid’s tales about Danae, Venus and Adonis, Perseus and Andromeda, Europa, Diana and Acteon, and Diana and Callisto. Similarly, Luis de Góngora’s famous mythological poem, La Fábula de Polifemo, which depicts the love triangle between the titular Cyclops, Galatea, and Acis, clearly demonstrates the power of amorous passion. The reception of this aspect of mythology by intended viewers and readers is the focus of the studies by Anne J. Cruz and Lucia Binotti. In chapter 1, Cruz begins by highlighting the enthusiasm for classical culture in early modern Spain before and during the reign of Philip II. She moves to center her study on the sexuality with which Titian’s poesie is saturated and seeks to understand how this dimension of the mythological paintings would have resonated with the recent experiences of Philip II. The decade during which the Venetian artist worked on this series of canvases was a crucial time for Philip as he went from being prince to monarch. From his tense relationship with Mary of Tudor and the failure of their marriage to produce an heir, to the pressures of ascending the throne and his illicit affair with Isabel of Valois’s attendant, Cruz deftly explores how such experiences would have influenced Philip’s perception of Titian’s paintings. For Binotti, the poesie provide an important point of reference for understanding Góngora’s Polifemo. In chapter 2 she first examines how the lofty style of the poem, with its Latinate lexicon and syntax, has seemed to rule out critical readings that highlight the salaciousness of the text. She adeptly dispatches with such artificial obstacles and argues that the Polifemo was intended for intimate readings in much the same way that Titian’s paintings were meant to be displayed and viewed by private audiences. She also likens the power of the Venetian’s mythological series to arouse its beholders to the sexual stimulation created in readers of Góngora’s poem. In fact, in her interpretation readers become like voyeurs, who witness a pictoriallyinspired rendering of the sexual pleasure between Galatea and Acis. Through a reading sensitive to erotic resonances of the fertile language employed by Góngora, she demonstrates that the poem celebrates the virtues of sexual self-pleasure for both men and women. Her provocative chapter shows the Polifemo to be a poem of sensual bliss free from the violence often associated with sexual intercourse. In this way, Góngora’s poem is breaking from the Ovidian precedent, which continues in the poesie. The Rape of Europa perhaps speaks most eloquently about the power differential between the imperious desire of Jove and the defenselessness of the innocent nymph. European monarchs also saw heroic virtues in classical figures that they sought to claim as their inheritance through fabricated genealogies. For this reason, as Frederick A. de Armas’s essay recalls, Hercules was portrayed as an ancestor to the

Habsburg kings, and the deeds supposedly carried out on the Iberian Peninsula by this mythological strong man were especially important to the construction of Spanish identity. Other attempts to identify with admirable attributes of classical heroes were less bold than inventing mythological lineages. Legendary figures could also be promoted as role models or they could be portrayed as mythological precursors whose feats were analogous to those accomplished or sought out by heroes of the present age. These strategies endeavor to appropriate the power, recognition and authority celebrated in such legendary figures—perfect examples of personages who are señalados, or distinguished—and this is the focus of the essays by Frederick A. de Armas and Ignacio López Alemany. In chapter 3, de Armas examines Don Quijote’s mythological self-perception and the battle that ensues between him and his rival, Sansón Carrasco, for the title of modern-day Hercules. As a contender against Don Quijote, Carrasco relies on the invention of a series of imaginary labors that take the form of statues in a mental garden reminiscent of those popular places of retreat during the Renaissance. The tests that Carrasco claims to have undergone incorporate Spanish landmarks, such as the famous weathervane atop the Cathedral in Seville, the cave near Córdoba called the Sima de Cabra and the Celtiberian bulls of Guisando. The labors and their setting envisioned by Carrasco might be interpreted as striving to uproot the herculean stalk of the Habsburg monarchy and questioning the policies of retirement and peace favored by Philip III. Moreover, the grotesque nature growing in Carrasco’s imagination sets the aesthetic pattern for the second half of Cervantes’s novel, which contrasts with the first part of the book. Another sort of heroism is embodied by the legendary Marcus Curtius Romanus, whose widespread presence is studied by López Alemany in chapter 4. As López Alemany shows, the story of Marcus Curtius, who allegedly leapt headlong into a chasm in Rome to save the city from ruin, lent itself to contrasting interpretations as a sign of auctoritas as well as a sign of fortitudo. Examples of the latter signification appear in the fresco in a palace at El Viso, Spain, as well as in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana. In keeping with Ercilla’s ambivalent attitude toward the war in Chile, it is the famous Indian rebel, Lautaro, who is likened to Marcus Curtius as an emblem of martial valor. Yet in the sixteenth century, the Roman general most frequently served as a sign of political authority, as he appeared in his most characteristic formulation in Luis Milán’s dedication of his El cortesano to Philip II. In this way, López Alemany reads Marcus Curtius as a transitional figure, whose portrayal is indicative of the shift away from medieval culture, which privileged the martial role of the knight in society, toward a modern culture in which the qualities of a courtier came to be prioritized. The six chapters in the second part of this volume, titled Challenges for Power, reflect on interests competing to control, define, and advise the Habsburg kings and to affect or comment on the consequences of their policies and actions. The essays examine forces that decenter, limit, restrict, reorient and subordinate power. Certain challenges that are studied result from a conscious desire to defy political power. Other limitations to power result not so much from willful dissent by any one group or individual as from their historical and economic circumstances. The sorts of signs

discussed in the essays range from the more abstract, such as laws, to the most material, such as coins. Just as these signs differ among themselves, so too, do the crises to which the signs attest or even cause. The frequently discussed financial precariousness of the Spanish Empire, the problem of English piracy, the everpresent threat of treason, the legality of the Spanish conquest and the problem of symbolic representation of monarchic legitimacy are joined by what E. C. Graf calls the “salvific crisis” of Spain at the turn of the seventeenth century. These chapters offer new understandings of the familiar crises and bring to light those which have received less critical attention. Ideally, both coins and coats of arms unequivocally signify royal power. As the studies by Elvira Vilches and John Slater demonstrate, however, these signs depend heavily on consensus and convention. In chapter 5, Vilches delves into the monetary crisis in seventeenth-century Spain, which stems from rampant inflation and the proliferation of valueless copper coins called vellones. She examines the ways certain texts of this time engage in the discourse of economics and speak to the anxieties that emerge from a society whose monetary system had an unstable grounding. In theory, the value stamped on a coin was equivalent to the intrinsic value of the metal of which the money was made, and public confidence depended on this equation to remain consistent. Yet, as Vilches shows, the worth of the vellón came almost entirely from the collective trust in the coin and its issuer. Public consensus, however, could only go so far, and ultimately it could not replace the kind of one-toone equivalence that such coins as the gold escudo or the silver real assured. The material value behind these coins made their worth unassailable, and the very names of these pieces of money, meaning shield and royal respectively, attest to the close relation that coins and the monarchs that issued them had. A shield of a different sort features in Slater’s chapter 6, in which he analyzes Juan de Palafox y Mendoza’s controversial alterations of Philip IV’s royal coat of arms for the Cathedral of Puebla in New Spain. Slater’s study reveals several insights into the functioning of heraldry that resonate with the problems of the vellón in the same century. Like the copper coins, whose value depended on public consent, designers of coats of arms were expected to follow the strict, universally held conventions of heraldry if they were to produce crests with guaranteed unitary meaning. Slater explains that heraldic images conveyed certain permanent, specific ideas and that such symbols could not be substituted or scrambled without seriously impinging on the representation of the king’s power. This, Slater shows, is precisely the mistake that Palafox incurs in his innovative configuration of the royal crest. Slater argues that Palafox conflates metaphor with heraldic symbol and thereby undermines the very system on which coats of arms derive their representational capacity. Palafox’s offense is deemed so great by some that he is even accused of treason. His critics argued that the unorthodox way in which the heraldic design positioned the symbols of Castile and Aragon challenged the absolute power of Philip IV. Both Vilches’s and Slater’s essays demonstrate what occurs when convention and consensus break down and ambiguity seeps into signs that were thought to be transparent.

The treason imputed to Antonio Pérez, who also had ties to Aragon, rested upon a much less symbolic basis than a coat of arms. The former secretary to Philip II had, in fact, murdered a fellow courtier and went public with state secrets. His case, about which Ana María G. Laguna writes in chapter 7, as well as that of his contemporary, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, examined in chapter 8 by José A. Cárdenas Bunsen, demonstrate how legal categories can be turned into signs. Laguna explores how Pérez refashions the concept of treason, which was amorphous and in the process of evolution during the sixteenth century. Pérez attempts to define treason by telling his version of the story in two texts, his Memorial and the Relaciones, from within the legal asylum afforded by the local laws of Aragon and under the protection of Philip II’s rival monarch, Elizabeth I, Queen of England. As an individual, Pérez successfully challenges the absolute power of the king through his astute rhetorical and political moves, but he leaves a man dead, foments the Black Legend of Spain and incites a rebellion in Aragon that is violently suppressed by royal forces. The effects of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s historiographical account of his ancestors before and after the Spanish Conquest were no less far reaching. Cárdenas contends that Garcilaso expresses his juridical arguments about the principles of just war mimetically in the historical figures and events in his narrative. Following this approach, he studies Garcilaso’s portrayal of the Incas as legitimate instigators of war and the Spanish as illegitimate aggressors, but the mestizo historiographer goes further to turn the tables on Spain’s claims to authority over the former Inca empire. His text portrays the voluntary concession of the followers of Huaina Capac as the only source from which Spain could legally derive its dominion over Peru. Thus both Pérez and Garcilaso make legal categories into signs, which they proceed to fill with their own significations that restrict the power of the Spanish Crown by delineating and limiting its jurisdiction. Pérez gives meaning to the sign of treason discursively in his accusations and exposé of Philip II’s administration, while Garcilaso dramatizes the tenets of just war through his depiction of the Incas and the Spanish. They also manipulate the very authority upon which the monarchy could claim power against the king. To bolster his own defense, for instance, Pérez cites what he portrays as the self-incriminating statements made by Philip II to him concerning the assassination, and to assert the sovereignty of the Incas, Garcilaso uses the same juridical codes (but different aspects, of course) with which apologists of colonization constructed their defenses of imperialism. Legal codes are just one flexible sign that can be leveraged to restrict the power of the king. As E. C. Graf and Jason McCloskey demonstrate, religion can serve as another check on the authority of the Habsburg monarchy, and this can be rendered visually in the form of paintings. In chapter 9 Graf employs the artwork of El Greco to uncover a subtle critique of Philip II that also surfaces in Miguel de Cervantes’s contemporaneous drama, La Numancia. Graf’s analysis of the iconography in El Greco’s Allegory of the Holy League, The Healing of the Blind Man, The Disrobing of Christ, and The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice reveals that these pieces of artwork contest, in a similar fashion, the extent of the power of the Habsburgs. Likewise, the

Eucharistic imagery in Cervantes’s play permits Graf to identify Scipio’s moral lesson for Philip II, who must learn to honor his religious obligations before attending to his worldly ambitions. Yet, as Graf discusses, such a curb to a monarch’s power remains consistent with Philip’s own self-image as pious ruler subject to the authority of the Church. Indeed, it is this sort of portrayal of the king in Titian’s The Glory that forms an important part of McCloskey’s reading of the allegorical introduction in Lope de Vega’s epic, La Dragontea. The Glory, which was painted for the aging Charles V, shows this king, his heir, Philip II, and other members of the royal family piously kneeling before the throne of the Christian Trinity. And like The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice, this painting came to hang in El Escorial, one of Philip II’s palaces. In chapter 10, McCloskey studies Lope’s ekphrasis of The Glory and another by Titian, Religion Succored by Spain. Unlike El Greco’s artwork studied by Graf, the canvases by Titian do not convey a subversive message that challenges the Habsburg monarchy. Yet in his turn to the iconography of Titian’s artwork as signs of the triumph over the pirate Francis Drake, his verbal reconfigurations of the images have the effect of subordinating the role of Philip II and the ostensible hero of the epic, Diego Suárez de Amaya, to the Christian Religion. This represents the real power operating above and beyond the earthly action transpiring within the poem. In their placing of limits on Habsburg authority, the essays of this section vary in the degree of their intentionality and openness. For example, the Spanish Crown is itself responsible for the copper coins that aggravate its own financial instability, as the natural value of copper imposes material limits on the ability of the monarch to conduct his business. Also, Palafox’s polemical heraldic arrangement underscores just how tight the connection between the royal coat of arms and the king himself was perceived to be; and his design exposes the limits of the symbolic representation of the power of the monarch. Similarly, Lope de Vega’s attempt to overcome the very real threat posed by the pirate Francis Drake textually through ekphrastic allusion reveals the difficulties that can unexpectedly arise from the allegorical representation of the Spanish Empire and its rulers. These challenges contrast with much more conscious critiques of the other essays, which, although they defy Habsburg authority, range in the openness of their message. Indeed, despite dealing in the same kinds of signs, Pérez and Garcilaso mark out opposing poles in announcing their intentions. For while there is no mistaking Pérez’s brazen and open defiance of Philip II, Garcilaso couches his challenge to the legitimacy of the same king in the security conferred by universally recognized legal codes. The full impact of his position is further mediated through its mimetic transformation into the actions described in his text. Somewhere between these extremes lie the lessons subtly expressed in El Greco’s paintings and Cervantes’s La Numancia, which are there for the monarch to observe if he looks and reads with a receptive eye. That he declined to establish a lasting relationship with El Greco as court painter suggests that this was, in fact, how he interpreted the canvases.

NOTES

1. Sir William Smith and Sir John Lockwood, Chambers Murray Latin-English Dictionary (Edinburgh: Chambers, 1995), s.v. signum. 2. Sebastián Covarrubias Horozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, eds. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2006), 1436. 3. Ibid. 4. Sir William Smith and Sir John Lockwood, Chambers Murray Latin-English Dictionary (Edinburgh: Chambers, 1995), s.v. “auctor” and “auctoritas.”

Acknowledgments This volume has its origins in the symposium “Sacred and Profane in the Early Modern Hispanic World,” organized by Steven Wagschal and hosted by Indiana University and the Indiana Museum of Art in October 2009. There, chapters 1, 4, and 10 made their first appearance as conference papers. There also, Anne Cruz suggested that we convert our studies into the basis of a collection of essays dealing with the representation of power during the Habsburg empire. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Anne for her initial encouragement, her guidance through the preliminary stages of this project and her continued advice, assistance, and support. This book would not have existed without her inspiration. We would also like to thank all the contributors to this volume, whose hard work, creative and intellectual energy, and abiding patience made this collection possible. We greatly appreciate their participation in what was truly a gratifying and enriching endeavor for us. We hope that readers find it equally rewarding. We would like to express our gratitude to the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the Fondazione Banca Agricola Montovana, the Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda, the Fundación Museo de las Ferias de Medina del Campo, and the Museo y Archivo Histórico General de la Marina “Álvaro de Bazán,” for generously granting us access and permission to reproduce images in their collections. We also would like to convey our appreciation to our colleagues in our departments at Bucknell University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for their encouragement and inspiration. And finally, we extend our thanks to Greg Clingham at Bucknell University Press; his kindness, encouragement, and willingness to offer helpful suggestions and guidance throughout this process has made working with him a true pleasure. We also acknowledge permission to use textual excerpts from the following: Elias Rivers’s English translation of Luis de Góngora y Argote’s Fabula de Polifemo y Galatea from Renaissance and Baroque Poetry of Spain (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1988). Reprinted by permission of Waveland Press. All rights reserved. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, translated by Harold V. Livermore (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966). Excerpts used by permission of University of Texas Press.

Part I

Myths of Power

Chapter 1 TITIAN, PHILIP II, AND PAGAN ICONOGRAPHY Anne J. Cruz Early modern Spain’s Catholic conservatism has far too often been claimed its most overriding feature, in particular after the Council of Trent. Yet the country’s visual and literary arts not only owed a vast debt to its classical legacy, but continued to be profoundly influenced by pagan culture.[1] Roman iconography remained a forceful reminder of the country’s past history, as the Iberian peninsula’s conquest by the Romans resulted in its Romanization over a period of six hundred years until the invasion of the Visigoths in the fifth century and their fall to the Muslims in the eighth century. Across the expanse of the peninsula—from Numancia and Tarragona to Évora and Itálica, and from Mérida to Valencia—Roman ruins spoke eloquently of the loss of Rome’s reign over its Iberian provinces. The physical reminders of the past, however, took on new life as the sites’ abundant materials were regularly reworked into new building construction throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.[2] Seville’s proximity to Itálica, for instance, assured the city’s reliance on the reinforcement lent by marble blocks and pillars from the Roman outpost’s temples. Most significantly from a cultural standpoint, the salvaging of still-usable resources from abandoned or destroyed locales functions as an organic metaphor for the hybrid nature of cultures.

SPAIN’S CLASSICAL TRADITION Such cultural synthesis is most evident in Spain’s artistic production, since architectural, visual, and written works, as the major expressions of a culture, serve to record both their diachronic and synchronic contact with other groups. The underlying layers of previous cultural contacts never disappear altogether and, in fact, continually emerge in changed but recognizable forms. During the historical period that came to be called the Renaissance, Spanish art harked back to its pagan legacy, all the while taking on new characteristics and cohering with other artistic strains. In particular, Spain’s relations with Italy—whose own high Renaissance, as Ingrid Rowland reminds us, not only hailed a rebirth of ancient values but exported them by what is known as translatio studii or the transfer of learning—helped to re-engage Spain with its Roman past. Literary scholars have followed this cultural movement from east to west by noting the many translations from Latin and Italian into the Spanish vernacular even before the beginning of Spain’s Renaissance in the late fifteenth century.[3] Indeed, the Spaniards’ relative lack of knowledge of Latin actually proved helpful in that classical texts often needed to be translated into Castilian and other languages of the Iberian peninsula. Early Spanish humanism was thus characterized by its penchant for translation as much as for its imitation of the classics; parts of Homer’s Iliad were translated from its Latin translation into Castilian

by Alfonso de Cartagena ca. 1446–1452.[4] And in spite of the printing press’s undeniable importance in disseminating these humanist endeavors, Virgil’s Aeneid was translated for the first time into Castilian by Enrique de Villena for his nephew, the King of Navarra, as early as 1428.[5] Echoes of Roman martial grandeur also crossed over to the Iberian peninsula: as Italy’s military power faded, Spain’s monarch Charles V (1500–1558), governing as Holy Roman Emperor, was given the title of “Caesar” by both his poets and his soldiers. Not to be outdone, the chroniclers of the Spanish conquistadores compared their feats of conquest to that of the Romans. Bernal Díaz del Castillo defended Hernán Cortés by asserting that “While the Romans granted triumphs to Pompey and to Julius Caesar and to the Scipios, our Cortés is more worthy of praise than the Romans.”[6] Marie Tanner has brilliantly delineated the genealogical mythmaking and prophesies that syncretized classical, Judaic, and Christian traditions presaging the return of a Golden Age based on the Habsburg dynasty’s claim to its Roman roots, stating that “Charles’s Trojan heritage is traced to the Roman heritage and Aeneas.”[7] Yet, if in the early 1500s Spain was an empire in the making, some Spanish authors, again remembering its pagan past, would soon question its gains. Turning the tables on the victors, in his complex play, La destrucción de Numancia, Cervantes reconfigured the Spaniards as their pagan ancestors the Celtiberians. Accosted by the Romans, they chose suicide over defeat. Diana de Armas Wilson in fact points out that the Romans provided a stunning model, not only for the rise of empire—which Aeneas initiates when he sails from Carthage—but more importantly for its fall.[8] Throughout the Renaissance, therefore, the influence of the Roman world emboldened both Spain’s literary canon and its historiography. For Rudolph Schevill, there was perhaps no Latin author more pagan than Ovid. Yet, as the Middle Ages sought to disguise his sensuality, the Metamorphoses gradually came to be regarded as symbolic of the Christian perspective. The pagan transformational myths were read as allegories of the mysteries of the true faith, allowing them to be studied in schools and convents, “The many gods of the ancients became demons, while the personae of the myths were compared with characters in the bible or other sacred writings.”[9] Jorge de Bustamante’s famous translation of the Metamorphoses, printed before 1546, predated the work’s second edition in Latin.[10] His claim that readers would easily distinguish the moral message in Ovid’s tales instead vouchsafed their popularity, as readers found them vastly entertaining.[11] The notion that pagan stories held a hidden moral meaning indeed permitted their aesthetic as well as emotive enjoyment. As Jean Seznec and others have noted, the ethical cover given these myths functioned as fig leaves that obscured the very real erotic attraction of pagan art.[12] Nonetheless, the religious thrust to mask the graphic eroticism of both visual and verbal art still dominates our perception of early modern Spanish culture. As the articles in this collection amply make clear, however, the strategy of Spain’s first Renaissance king, Charles V, and of his Habsburg relatives to glorify the empire

through visual culture such as paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and armor, necessitated the patronage of an array of renowned artists.[13] As with the humanist translations of the classics, the art patronized by the royal family brought a renewed awareness of pagan themes. Charles did not hesitate to call Titian, the leading artist of Renaissance Venice, to Austria, where he soon became the court painter of the Habsburgs. A now-lost portrait of the emperor garnered the artist a patent of nobility; [14] the famous painting Charles on Horseback at the Battle of Mühlberg (Prado, Madrid, 1548) sealed their relations, and the artist apparently met one year later with his son Philip when the young prince was on his grand tour of Europe.[15] Titian would soon produce several portraits of Philip, including a full-bodied portrait in armor that established an enduring model for portraiture for the Habsburg court (Prado, Madrid, 1550–1551).[16]

PHILIP II AND THE BLACK LEGEND Much more so than his father Charles V, his son Philip III, or his grandson Philip IV, Philip II suffered from what is known as the “black legend,” a term coined by the Spanish writer Julián Juderías in 1914 to refute Protestant Europe’s mounting assaults against Spain.[17] Although the demonization began with Las Casas’s indictment of the Spanish conquerors’ mistreatment of new world indigenous, the continuing attacks were aimed primarily at Philip after he sent troops to the Netherlands under the mandate of the Duke of Alba, whose severe rule was quickly baptized the “Tribunal of Blood.” In 1581, William of Orange wrote his “Apology” accusing Philip not only of bloodshed and cruelty, but of incest, adultery, and the murder of his wife and his only son.[18] Twelve years later, Philip’s ex-secretary, the escaped convict Antonio Pérez, sent Elizabeth I of England his version of Philip’s murderous plots. While historians have rectified most of the black legend’s exaggerated claims, the Spanish monarch is still, to this day, depicted as a morose and zealous Catholic who remained under the thumb of the Inquisition.[19] In fact, Philip’s reign would prove the most advanced of early modern Europe. As historian Henry Kamen tells us, “Philip’s commitment to Catholic orthodoxy was beyond question. But beyond this, he kept his pulse on all branches of enquiry.”[20] While he undoubtedly wished to protect Spain from heresy, Philip never intended to seal the country off from the rest of Europe: the Aranjuez pragmatic, which forbade Spaniards from studying abroad, was very loosely enforced. Rather than travel to another country, many students opted to enroll in Spanish universities whose prestige was equal to other European centers of study; medical studies in Spain, for example, relied on classical treatises by Galen and especially Hippocrates.[21] After Philip rewarded the famous physician and anatomist Andreas Vesalius with a pension for life, the University of Salamanca created a chair dedicated to his teaching and findings.[22] Philip himself had received an excellent education under the tutelage of renowned humanists.[23] Geoffrey Parker has documented his love of books from an

early age with his purchase of Josephus’s Jewish War, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the Bible; other books purchased for or by him included classical works, books on theology, and works by such controversial authors as Erasmus, Marsilio Ficino, and Copernicus.[24] Favorably inclined toward the sciences, Philip was intrigued by the application of scientific methods. To this purpose, he ordered a geodesic map of the countryside and maps of the principal cities.[25] Hydraulic works were installed, most notably by the Italian engineer Juanelo Turriano in Toledo, which furnished the city 16,000 liters of water daily.[26] As sovereign of the Netherlands and Italy, Philip made full use of these countries’ artists, intellectuals, architects, and even gardeners. Indeed, his interest in architecture changed the face of Castile; he employed thousands of workmen to create a series of palaces and hunting lodges, now known as the “reales sitios,” or royal sites, without equal in Europe, including Aranjuez, El Pardo, and Valsaín, where he personally oversaw the planting of medicinal herb gardens.[27] His concern for the aridity of Castile’s landscape and his commission of the first natural history report of the new world has led Henry Kamen to call Philip one of the first “ecologist rulers in European history.”[28] Although, as a collector, he has been ridiculed for his obsession with saints’ relics (he had collected over 7,000 by the end of his life), also by the time of his death, he had accumulated 14,000 volumes for his library in the Escorial.[29] The Escorial itself was designed by architect Juan Bautista de Toledo, who had worked with Michelangelo in Italy, and continued by Juan de Herrera. Even though the tessellated plan comes from the Arabic tradition, Palladio’s influence is obvious, as is that of St. Peter’s basilica on its church.[30]

PHILIP, TITIAN, AND THE POESIE It is unfortunate, therefore, that art historian Jane Nash, in her otherwise excellent book on Titian’s paintings for Philip, Veiled Images, falls prey to the black legend when she states: Spain’s political policy was that of a crusade: its philosophy one of mysticism, and its culture an inbred continuation of its own past which was suspicious of potentially corrupting foreign influences. While the rest of Europe was experiencing social, political, and intellectual innovation, Spain remained, essentially, a medieval country that was resistant to progressive ideas.[31] Nash’s book focuses on the six paintings that Philip II received from Titian over a span of ten years, from approximately 1553 to 1562.[32] Known as the “poesie,” or visual poems, these paintings were inspired by classical literary sources, principally Ovid’s Metamorphoses. They were not, however, meant to illustrate the fables but instead presented exercises in poetry without verbal signs.[33] Intended as pairs, the paintings depicted six classical myths: Danae and the Shower of Gold, Venus and

Adonis, Perseus and Andromeda, The Rape of Europa, Diana and Actaeon, and Diana and Callisto. Like Ovid’s fables, the painting’s portrayals of violent amorous encounters have been assigned allegorical, moral, and religious meanings; nonetheless, contemporary viewers were often unnerved by their voluptuousness. Writing to Charles’s minister and Titian’s patron Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle,[34] the Spanish ambassador of Venice Francisco de Vargas protested that while the Venus and Adonis was of high value and Titian had worked exceedingly hard, the painting was far too lascivious.[35] It is clear, however, that the eroticism radiating from his female portraits was not an issue for the Venetian painter, whose reclining Venuses demonstrate his early interest in the classical female form.[36] Neither was their eroticism a problem for Philip. Although Charles V had favored Titian for his portraits and religious paintings—and while Titian continued to paint both portraits and religious topics for the Habsburgs—the poesie’s themes resonate with the renewed interest in pagan iconography.[37] Art historian Charles Hope believes that the subjects were chosen by Titian,[38] yet what is not in doubt is that Philip greatly admired the paintings and worried about their condition when delivered.[39] Nonetheless, the black legend again appears in Philip’s appreciation of Titian’s art.[40] Hope has attempted to set the record straight by stating, “it has surprised some historians that a man as straitlaced as Philip should have acquired such overtly sensual pictures,”[41] since other aristocratic patrons had received similar paintings. He suggests instead that these paintings were done as an opportunity to display Titian’s skill by emulating the great poets. Hope adds that it is not “appropriate to argue [ . . . ] that Philip’s poesie were meant to be understood as elaborate allegories, with a profound philosophical nor even religious content.”[42] In her landmark book, Titian’s Women, Rona Goffen challenges such a view, arguing that Titian imbued his nudes with real human traits and psychological attributes. Yet art critics have continued to disagree over the meaning and intent of the paintings; Loren Partridge for example, criticizes Goffen’s secular approach: Goffen’s tendency to side-step Christian morality and theology within the deepening Counter Reformation considerably diminishes Titian. Goffen does not understand Titian as a profound commentator on the aims and anxieties of his time, nor interpret his late poesie as deep meditations on fate and faith, sin and moral responsibility, works and grace, generation and regeneration, damnation and redemption.[43] By the time Titian sent Philip the first of the poesie in 1553, however, he had already painted numerous nudes, including a version of the Danae for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Capodimonte Museum, Naples, 1545). On seeing the painting in Titian’s studio, Papal legate Giovanni Della Casa wrote Farnese that it made the famously sensual Venus of Urbino (Uffizi, Florence ca. 1538) look like a “Theatine nun.”[44]

Titian’s contemporaries were thus well aware of the mythological paintings’ erotic appeal. The gendered entitlement inherent in the patron’s masculine gaze made it obvious that at least one aspect of the paintings had as its purpose to arouse sexual feelings;[45] another was Titian’s rightful pride in his painterly excellence, exhibiting, much in the same way as his nudes, his artistic abilities while placing them at the service of his patrons.[46] Yet another aspect of these paintings should be considered, one that in part acknowledges Partridge’s frustration with Goffen’s rejection of an allegorical interpretation. The poesie may be seen as permeated by the implications inherent to contemporary occurrences; that is to say, no longer encapsulated within the Ovidian narrative, but contextualized instead by the historical time frame in which they were completed, delivered, and viewed. Most art historians agree that at least one of the poesie’s goals was to firmly secure Philip’s patronage, Titian must have aimed to please the world’s most powerful monarch.[47] Nonetheless, in the exchange between Titian and Philip, the paintings assume their own subjectivity as shifting cultural signifiers whose narratives obliquely reflect their pagan origins while accumulating and translating contemporary historical accounts. These classical iconographical objects of exchange, therefore, become the subject of a new, yet classicizing Habsburg history.

PHILIP’S GRAND TOUR Prince Philip’s tour of the various Spanish domains in Northern Europe, where he would meet Titian and other artists, began in 1548 and lasted several years. At the entry festivities prepared for his arrival in Augsburg in 1549, heralded as the most magnificent in history,[48] he was identified with various classical figures, all forming part of the Habsburg mythology, among them Jason, Hector, and Ascanius. He was also lauded as Aeneas’s heir, since it was expected that the Trojan settlement of Rome should devolve on Philip.[49] Moreover, although the prince would not become emperor, the vast expanse of the Habsburg possessions allowed his identification with Jove.[50] Two years after his return in 1551, at the time of the poesie’s initial commission, the death of Edward VI placed Mary Tudor on England’s throne. For Charles V, who had already decided to abdicate, a marriage between Mary and Philip would ensure control of the Netherlands and restrain the French.[51] That Philip would soon inherit Charles’s crown could not have been overlooked by Titian, who had painted both figures in various regal poses on numerous occasions. The Ovidian fables selected by him carried the “tone” of the poesie, or visual poetry, enhancing the paintings’ receptivity. If they did not narrate the exact stories told in the Metamorphoses, they nevertheless evoked their pagan subtext. Although he did not select Philip’s preferred mythos of Apollo, the sun god,[52] Titian focused on the mythical figures of Adonis, Acteon, Perseus, and Jupiter, underscoring, along with their erotic content, the violence and pathos associated with love, death, and redemption.[53]

Titian. Danae and the Shower of Gold. Prado Museum, Madrid. Source: Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

The first poesia, Danae and the Shower of Gold, was sent to Philip in England, after his wedding to Mary Tudor, whose portrait Philip had requested from another of the artists he had met in the Netherlands, Antonio Moro. The Venetian ambassador was less charitable toward Mary than Antonio’s brush: he described the queen as “unattractive, wrinkled, very short-sighted, and with a rough and loud voice, like a man’s.”[54] The young prince had already been married at sixteen, widowed at eighteen, and left with a sickly and troublesome son, Don Carlos. The Spanish empire required the assurance of a male heir, yet by 1554, Don Carlos had already begun to give signs of his mental instability. Philip’s marriage to Mary Tudor, who was his aunt, brought together two warring parties and cemented Catholicism in England.[55] As in all dynastic marriages, its political success was entirely dependent on Mary’s producing an heir, yet she was already 37 and 11 years older than Philip. It does not seem coincidental that Titian’s first poesia, sent to Philip soon after his marriage, would depict a scene of royal impregnation, as Jupiter, transformed into gold coins, rains down on Danae’s supine figure. Although Titian painted several versions of the Danae myth, in its more explicit sensuality, the poesia sent to Philip diverges from the earlier Farnese Danae in which a complicit Cupid coyly observes the scene and the young woman’s right thigh is more modestly draped with a cloth. By contrast, entirely nude, Philip’s Danae gazes ecstatically upward, reflecting Jupiter’s golden shower in her own glow of heated passion.[56] Nash comments that her hand exaggerates the conventional chaste gesture of the Venus pudica, blatantly contradicting its original sense by assuming a pose similar to Titian’s most famous nude, the decidedly impudica Venus of Urbino. [57] Several years after Nash published Veiled Images, Rona Goffen clarified the

Urbino hand position as one of female auto-eroticism, following the Renaissance belief that a woman needed to reach orgasm in order to become pregnant.[58] As an epithalamic painting, Venus stands for the figure of a recently married young woman; the two figures in the background are unpacking her cassone, or marriage chest. By contrast, Nash enumerates the interpretations given the classical myth of Danae: Horace, Fulgentius, and Boccaccio regarded her as a prostitute, the golden shower her payment, and the old woman, her procuress.[59] Others believed her corrupted by the sin of avarice, as an example of the power of wealth. The Ovide Moralisé went so far as to see her as a prototype of the Virgin Mary, impregnated by an incorporeal god. Noticing the little dog on the bed as the typical symbol of marital fidelity, Nash suggests that the painting evokes the figure of an ideal bride. Yet she sees a contradiction between its nuptial references and what she calls the more overt eroticism and allusions to prostitution; there is besides, she states, an atmosphere of dark foreboding that confounds any scene of wedded bliss.[60] Such differing allusions have convinced Nash that the painting, as she states, is “undecipherable.” Nonetheless, the fact that it was intended for Philip inserts the poesia into history as part of a larger symbolic system.[61] My interpretation of Titian’s paintings is based on their value as cultural constructs that continue to accrue historical meaning, whether or not Titian intended the paintings to be understood as such. Indeed, although art historians continue to concern themselves with the poesie’s ambiguities, few have extended their thoughts beyond Titian’s sphere of interest to that of the paintings’ royal recipient.[62] My own analysis focuses on the paintings as they become subjectivized at the time of their reception. Prudencio Sandoval, the emperor’s chronicler, had written that, in accepting the marriage to Mary Tudor, Philip “acted like the Biblical Isaac; he let himself be sacrificed to the will of his father.”[63] It is not unlikely that the mature Titian, who himself had spent much time with a melancholy Charles and was familiar with the reproductive exigencies of the Habsburgs, knew the pressures imposed on the young prince to consummate the marriage. Philip had already received one of Titian’s reclining nudes, the so-called Pardo Venus, or Jupiter and Antiope (Louvre Museum, Paris, 1540–1542).[64] The Danae relies on its erotic attraction to perform the role expected of the Venus of Urbino: that of finding fulfillment in marriage.[65] It is a painting that depicts the woman’s legs open and foreshortened, actively encouraging female fecundity. Yet the paradoxes created by the old crone busily collecting coins and the darkness reveal more than a marriage picture. The ominous tones make the viewer vividly aware of the high cost of the political marriage. Tellingly, in his letter to Philip, Titian congratulates him, not for his marriage, but for the new kingdom God has given him. Ludovico Dolce’s treatise Dialogo della pittura intitolato l’Aretino [Dialogue on Painting], published in 1557, summarized the concepts applied by Renaissance painters: for Titian, the poesie afforded him the opportunity to select his own topics, or inventio, and to demonstrate chromatic excellence, or colorito. Indeed, although he was followed by Tintoretto and Veronese, not until Rubens is women’s flesh depicted

as dazzlingly as Titian painted the female nude. The paintings’ design or disegno was also of concern to him. According to Javier Portús, Titian’s famous letter to Philip comparing the female forms of the first two poesie proves that he not only conceived of the collection as a series, but that he wished to establish a narrative with formal connections: “Since the Danae, which I have already sent your Majesty, is seen from the front, I wanted to vary it in this other poesia, and show her from the other side, to make the room where they will be displayed more attractive” (41).[66]

Titian. Venus and Adonis. Prado Museum, Madrid. Source: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY

The other poesia Titian refers to, Venus and Adonis, is, according to Nash, even more complex than the Danae, “Although Ovid asserts that Venus, after warning Adonis against hunting, left him, Titian shows the hunter striding away with his dogs, coldly abandoning Venus.”[67] Citing Dolce, Paola Tinagli tells us that the harmony, animation, coloring, and grace of a female body demonstrated the painter’s skill and ensured the viewer’s pleasure.[68] For Dolce, a painting’s eroticism served as the vehicle conveying the very essence of painting. Yet the painting also lends itself to other interpretations: Nash affirms that iconographically, the painting suggests the impotence of carnal love in the sleeping and disarmed Cupid and the overturned urn. [69] Nash is right, I believe, in portraying the spiritual conflict of the lovers: rather than following Ovid, he inverts the story in that it is Adonis who decides to abandon Venus. [70] As Venus grasps Adonis, the beautiful youth pulls away, the movement repeated through the hunting dog’s tug at its leash. Thomas Puttfarken also cites Dolce, who uses the term meraviglia to describe the painting.[71] He explains that the term, which

he translates as “amazement,” although no doubt referring to the painting’s erotic effect and to artistic achievement, was also induced by “the sight of death, of tragic pathos, of suffering and fear.”[72] Sent to London shortly after Philip’s voyage, Venus and Adonis anticipates the tensions that arose between Philip and Mary, as the queen suffered from various maladies and remained barren throughout the marriage. Titian’s painting captures the forces that pull Adonis away from Venus; the two bodies, fused at Venus’s hip and Adonis’s upper thigh, nevertheless strain in opposite directions. Although Mary did not die until 1558, Philip spent less than two years in England, called by Charles to Brussels, where the exhausted emperor abdicated in 1556. While no causality can be attributed to Titian’s choice of myth, Puttfarken perceptively notes that its peripety “stands in direct contrast to that of the Danae, where the intervention of divine love brought about liberation and new life.”[73] Moreover, a closer look at the various portraits of Philip II allows us to suggest an identification between him and the Prado Adonis. Not only is the lover depicted at his favorite sport, hunting, but his features closely resemble those of Philip.[74] The similarity is most obvious at the hairline, the eyes, and the mouth. Moreover, it would not be the only time that Titian inserted the royal figure in a painting, as he included Philip, his parents, and his sisters in his Adoration of the Holy Trinity, known as the Gloria (figure 10.3).[75]

Titian. Perseus and Andromeda. Wallace Collection, London, Great Britain. Source: By kind permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London / Art Resource, NY

The next poesia sent by Titian, Perseus and Andromeda, was mentioned in the

same letter the artist wrote to Philip in 1554, “soon I will send you the poesia of Perseus and Andromeda which will have a different viewpoint to these two, and also Jason and Medea.”[76] It is probable, however, that he sent the painting to Brussels, not England, since Philip left England in October 1555, when Charles made him ruler of the Netherlands. Despite the painting’s sensuality, its theme alludes more strongly to Habsburg imperial politics than the earlier two, whose topic can be understood within the privacy of Philip’s relations with Mary Tudor. Nonetheless, they are closely related, since Perseus was the offspring of Danae’s impregnation by Jupiter. As we can now see in an X-ray of the painting, Titian’s original plan for Perseus and Andromeda had at first focused on the couple’s romantic encounter as Perseus approaches to unchain Andromeda, yet he redesigned the composition to emphasize instead the precariousness of heroic rescue.[77] In his study of the “Sala Reservada and the Nude in the Prado Museum,” Portús tells us that the traditional meaning of Perseus and Andromeda was that of a subjugated prince fighting for an ideal. Of all the classical heroes, Perseus was unanimously praised for his exploits; unlike so many others, he neither behaved unworthily nor died tragically.[78] Although it is Andromeda who will be saved, her startlingly upright position, with the weight of her body seemingly sustained only by her chained left arm and right foot, structurally balances Perseus’s foreshortened figure, keeping him from falling into the jaws of the sea monster. When Perseus recovers from the sight of Andromeda’s striking beauty in time to save himself and release her, her statuesque body is transformed into the prize; as Puttfarken rightly comments, she is the cause of the myth’s action.[79] Perseus’s vanquishing of the sea monster and the myth’s ending happily with the couple’s fecund marriage carried both personal and political meaning, since at the time the painting was sent to Philip, he had assumed the weight of the world’s largest empire.[80] What was now required was an allegory of Spain as a government able to defend and liberate its people from its enemies.[81]

Titian. Diana and Callisto. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. Source: Scala / Art Resource, NY

Titian. Diana and Actaeon. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. Source: Scala / Art Resource, NY

Two poesie illustrating episodes of the goddess Diana were sent to Philip after he had returned to Spain, a widower for the second time, having been rejected in marriage in 1558 by his dead wife’s sister, now Elizabeth I of England. Following the

goddess’s favorite sport, both Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon are hunting scenes, painted on similar-sized canvases. According to Nash, they are the most troubling of all the works that Titian produced for Philip. Ovid narrates the rape of the nymph Callisto by Jupiter, who is then transformed by a jealous Juno into a bear. In the Acteon myth, the hunter is turned into a stag and torn apart by his own hunting dogs. The interpretations of the myth’s themes include the punishment of lust, the role of free will, and regeneration. In Diana and Callisto, however, what is most evinced is the obsession with fertility—few other secular paintings depict a pregnant woman, although in the poesie, she will be punished for the transgression. Philip’s third marriage had been arranged in order to seek both peace with France and a male heir, given his only son, Don Carlos’s increasing instability. The marriage to Isabel of Valois in 1560 was not consummated immediately due to her young age, but Philip at this time was known for his roving eye; he had an illegitimate son with Eufrasia de Guzmán, one of Isabel’s young ladies-in-waiting. Funloving and artistically talented, the young queen encouraged and participated in leisurely activities such as hunting, music, dancing, and especially, play-acting by the courtiers, who dressed in mythological costumes. From 1561 to 1563, the famous playwright Lope de Rueda was contracted as a theatrical producer, and it was not unusual for the ladies at court to dress as Diana. One of the most popular books at the time was Jorge de Montemayor’s pastoral novel, The Seven Books of Diana, dedicated to the mythical goddess.[82] Unlike the other four poesie, these paintings, which Isabel of Valois would have seen, brim with female bodies and feminine activity. While the myths’ pastoral settings evoke the woods surrounding Philip’s hunting lodges, Diana’s nude nymphs resemble Isabel’s lively entourage of French and Spanish ladies in waiting.[83] In both scenes, the presence of a man has created havoc. The chronological parallels between Titian’s paintings and Philip and Isabel’s life at court are not, of course, meant to be exact: the two Diana paintings anticipated the young queen’s arrival in Spain by almost six months.[84] Yet they prepare the ambiguous ambiance in which Philip found himself after his father’s death, his adjustment to kingship, and to yet another dynastic marriage. The pastoral setting attracts the viewer, with its bower of bliss and classical architectural pieces. For Puttfarken, the male viewer Philip identifies with Actaeon, and is threatened by Diana’s doubly cruel justice.[85] In Ovid, as Nash reminds us, both Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon express the goddess’s harsh temperament, condemning others to apparently undeserved punishments.[86] Yet Titian seems to reinvest these paintings with the lessons gained, not from Ovid’s pagan fables, but from a more recent source, the psychological plot of failed desire narrated in Petrarch’s Rime sparse. The Petrarchan allegory is one of a man pursued by his own desires: I shall speak the truth, perhaps it will appear a lie, for I felt myself drawn from my own image and into a solitary wandering stag from wood to wood quickly I

am transformed and still I flee the belling of my hounds.[87] Evading Actaeon’s physical transformation, and catching him instead in the act of a voyeur, Titian portrays the moment immediately before the transgression, when Actaeon must either hide or reveal himself. The Actaeon painting depicts the hunter as the hunted at the moment when his gaze takes in not only the angered goddess who demands cover from a servant, but a stag’s skull blindly staring back. Petrarch’s Canzone 23, which links the various Ovidian myths with the psychological instability of the lover, gives us a clue as to the relations of the individual poesie to each other. As in Titian, the myths follow each other in a series of images, yet each responds to the previous one. Robert Durling has summarized the theme of Petrarch’s poem as “the incomprehensible changeability of the self in love”[88] and it is not coincidental that the poem’s commiato returns to the myth of Danae and Jupiter: Song: I was never the cloud of gold that once descended in a precious rain so that it partly quenched the fire of Jove, but I have certainly been a flame lit by a lovely glance.[89] For Petrarch, the comparison fails because his lover rejects identification with a fearsome Jove; his love is on too small a human scale. Titian’s Actaeon also embodies a failed lover: unlike Adonis, who spurns Venus to die gored by his animal prey, his desire is annihilated by the vindictive Diana. And unlike in the Danae poesia, no male god appears in Diana and Callisto, as Jove’s seduction has already taken place; what is left are the consequences of desire. Puttfarken speaks to the horror of both scenes, of “tragic drama about to unfold.”[90] But are the transgressions entirely innocent? These are the only poesie in which a woman, albeit a cruel goddess, forcefully punishes male and female sexual transgressions. Indeed, Diana appears in both paintings as the avenging goddess of chastity. The mirror that reflects back on the viewer—no doubt Philip, but other males who gaze with excessive passion—is one of caution and of a lesson learned.

Titian. The Rape of Europa. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Source: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

For the companion piece to Perseus and Andromeda, instead of proceeding with the promised painting of Jason and Medea, Titian substituted the Rape of Europa. Nash rightly asks why Titian replaced the story of the Golden Fleece, which is, after all, the symbol of the Habsburg dynasty. She answers her own question when she states that unlike Perseus, Jason was not a model hero, since he deserted the woman who had helped him capture the fleece, an act that drove her to insanity.[91] Perhaps more accurately, Hope considers Jason, a prince betrothed to a foreign queen, a topic far too inappropriate for Titian’s royal patron.[92] In the Rape, as in another of his interpretations, Titian moves away from Ovid to present only those aspects he is interested in and to elaborate, in this case, with cupids and sea creatures. Again, the various allegories of the myth include the Old Testament story of the Golden Calf, of God’s acceptance of the human form for his love of man, and as a symbol of man’s lust.[93] Paul Watson has stated that Titian’s portrayal of Europa as a “bride stripped bare”[94] surely appealed to Philip, who received the painting shortly after his third marriage. Yet one other interpretation might possibly be political: as the last of the poesie, the Rape of Europa was sent to Philip in 1562, when he had achieved a series of military victories. He had defeated the French at San Quentin in 1557 and at Gravelines in 1558; the peace of Cateau-Cambresis, signed in 1559 as part of the nuptial agreement with Henri II’s daughter, Isabel of Valois, was a major victory. According to historian Geoffrey Parker, the treaties proved to be “the bedrock of Spanish preponderance in western Europe for almost a century and allowed Philip II to act as ‘the gendarme of Europe’ for most of his reign.”[95] Watson perceptively

notes the detail in the churning waters of the dolphin-like fish swallowing a smaller fish.[96] The observation, in which he cites Breughel’s engraving that “the great ones eat up the little ones,” does not fail to bring to mind the recent victory over France.[97] Nonetheless, Philip continued to be preoccupied with the problem of succession and of maintaining an increasingly elusive peace across Europe. The cycle of the poesie, the pagan myths that Titian carefully prepared and chose for Philip, are themselves cyclical reminders of Philip’s concerns, uniting in the similar and multilayered messages, what their narratives convey. The erotic display of the female nude functions both as a stimulus for dynastic generation, as in the Danae and the Venus and Adonis, and as warnings against sexual excess, as in the Diana pendants. Perseus and Andromeda teams with the Rape of Europa to remind the recipient that he is at once ruler of and accountable for Europe. It is no surprise that Philip would be captivated by Titian’s version of these pagan fables: their chromatic beauty encompassed the fascinating stories of birth, death, and regeneration. Yet as in the Death of Actaeon, the unfinished final painting of the poesie that Titian did not send Philip, the tragedy that lies immediately beyond the early eroticism and the later compulsion for control remained for Philip and the viewer, a reminder always of the price exacted by power and desire. Javier Portús comments that while Philip II celebrated the pagan beauty of Titian’s art, his son, Philip III (1599–1621), hid the poesie away from view, ordering the nudes immediately covered whenever the queen or other women approached.[98] It was not until the reign of Philip IV (1621–1665) that the paintings were again valorized. Philip II was not merely the passive, albeit royal, recipient of Titian’s art; he actively welcomed and understood the formal poses, chromatic brilliance, and multilayered meanings of classical iconography. Philip IV was one of the greatest collectors and connoisseurs of painting in the history of modern Europe, enjoying the poesie in a vaulted room where he would retire after meals.[99] Nonetheless his collection would have been greatly diminished had Philip II not developed an abiding appreciation for classical myths and pagan iconography.

NOTES 1. While much has been written recently about Spain’s “orientalism,” and Maurophilia, studies of the Spanish peninsula’s Romanization should remind us of the forceful impact of Roman laws, art, architecture, and customs on its Iberian provinces even after the Muslim invasion and the Reconquest. See Leonard Curchin, The Romanization of Central Spain: Complexity, Diversity, and Change in a Provincial Hinterland (New York: Routledge, 2004) and his article, “The Romanization of Art in Celtiberia (Central Spain),” Brathair 7, no. 1 (2007): 3-17; see also John S. Richardson, The Romans in Spain (Oxford, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996). 2. A remarkable example of cultural synthesis is the Great Mosque of Córdoba, built in the eighth century on the site of a Visigothic basilica earlier converted from a Roman temple. In 1236, the mosque was reconverted into a cathedral utilizing Roman pillars from nearby Mérida. In the sixteenth century, the cathedral was expanded without destroying the Muslim coordinates. As a secular example, the so-called Casa de Pilatos in Seville reflects the combination of Roman antiquarian art and Andalusian mudéjar construction. 3. For excellent overviews of Italy’s influence on Spain from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, see Antonio

Gargano, “Humanismo y Renacimiento,” Ínsula 757–58 (enero-febrero 2010): 12–16; and Ángel Gómez Moreno, “Del Duecento al Quattrocento: Italia en España, España en Italia.” Ínsula 757–58 (enero-febrero 2010): 7–11. 4. Guillermo Serés, La traducción en Italia y España durante el s. XV. La Ilíada en romance y su contexto cultural (Salamanca, Universidad de Salamanca, 1997), 18. 5. In contrast, Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), begins his study of “ecolinguistic revolution” or languages as they affected communities with the invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century (10). For other examples of Spanish medieval and early modern translations of Latin texts, see Marina Scordilis Brownlee, The Sever’d Word: Ovid’s Heroides and the Novela Sentimental (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Frederick A. de Armas, ed., Ovid in the Age of Cervantes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); Thomas A. O’Connor, Myth and Mythology in the Theater of Calderón (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 1988); and María Cristina Quintero, “Translation and Imitation in the Development of Tragedy during the Spanish Renaissance,” in Renaissance Rereadings: Intertext and Context, ed. Maryanne C. Horowitz et al. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 96–110. 6. David A. Lupher, Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 11. 7. Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 113. 8. Diana de Armas Wilson, “Chivalry to the Rescue: The Dynamics of Liberation in Don Quijote,” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 27, no. 1 (2007): 253. See also Aaron M. Kahn, The Ambivalence of Imperial Discourse: Cervantes’s La Numancia within the ‘Lost Generation’ of Spanish Drama (1570-90) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008). 9. Rudolph Schevill, “Ovid and the Renascence in Spain,” University Publications in Modern Philology 4, no. 1 (1913): 13. 10. Ibid., 148. 11. Ibid., 159. 12. Besides Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in the Renaissance Humanism and Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); see Leonard Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). For the attraction of the classics in Spain, see essays in the collection edited by Isabel Torres, Rewriting Classical Mythology in the Hispanic Baroque (London: Tamesis, 2007). 13. Charles’ aunt, Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, and his sisters—especially Mary of Hungary— patronized mainly Flemish artists and amassed a collection of Flemish art that would enrich their heirs’ holdings. Mary also patronized Titian. See Jane de Iongh, Mary of Hungary: Second Regent of the Netherlands, trans. M. D. Herter Norton (New York: W. W. Norton, 1958), 221–23, 227. 14. Jonathan Brown, Painting in Spain: 1500–1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 47. 15. According to Charles Hope, Philip met Titian in Milan; in January, 1549, Philip ordered that Titian be paid a thousand gold scudi for various portraits he had done of Philip (“Titian, Philip II, and Mary Tudor,” in England and the Continental Renaissance: Essays in Honour of J. B. Trapp, eds. Edward Chaney and Peter Mack [Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990], 54). 16. J. Brown, Painting, 48. 17. See Julián Juderías, La leyenda negra: estudios acerca del concepto de España en el extranjero (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León – Consejería de Educación y Cultura, 1997). See also Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763 (London: Penguin Books, 2002), 365–66. 18. Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 255. 19. Even Philip’s physical appearance was denigrated; despite his good looks, reported by a Scottish traveler as “well-favoured with a broad forehead, and grey eyes, streight-nosed [sic] and manly countenance,” quoted in Geoffrey Parker, Philip II, 4th ed. (Chicago: Open Court, 2002), 11. He was often described as physically repulsive.

As late as in the popularizing Time-Life series, The World of Titian c. 1488–1576 (New York: Time-Life Books, 1969), Jay Williams presumes that the artist had a difficult time creating a handsome portrait of Philip, since he was not only “handicapped by the Hapsburg nose, pouting lower lip, and prognathous jaw, but also by a moody and sullen temperament” (142). 20. Kamen, Philip of Spain, 179. 21. Joseph Pérez, La España de Felipe II, trans. Juan Vivanco (Barcelona: Crítica, 2000), 75. 22. Ibid., 75. Also, according to Joseph Pérez, Salamanca’s statutes allowed students to choose to study from among Euclid’s Elements, Ptolemy’s Almagest, and the Copernican system. The latter was not placed on the Inquisitional index until 1631 (Ibid., 76). For the role of the Jesuits in the diffusion of scientific knowledge in seventeenth-century Spain, see Víctor Navarro, “Tradition and Scientific Change in Early Modern Spain: The Role of the Jesuits,” in Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, ed. Mordechai Feingold (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 331–87. 23. Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella taught the prince Latin and Greek; Honorato Juan, mathematics and architecture; and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, geography and history (Parker, Philip II, 6–7). 24. Ibid., 8, 14. 25. Philip also founded an academy of mathematics in 1582, subsidizing four chairs to teach such subjects as architecture, geography, navigation, and artillery, along with mathematics (Ibid., 52; Navarro, “Tradition and Scientific Change,” 333). 26. Pérez, La España de Felipe II, 77. For a study of applied science in early modern Spain, see María Isabel Vicente Maroto and Mariano Esteban Piñeiro, Aspectos de la ciencia aplicada en la España de la Edad de Oro, 2nd. ed. (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2006). For the maps by Anton Van den Wyngaerde, see Richard L. Kagan, Cities of the Golden Age: The Views of Anton Van den Wyngaerde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 27. Parker, Philip II, 49. For an important reassessment of Spain’s contribution to the natural sciences, including Philip’s commission of physician Francisco Hernández’s report of new world plants, see Antonio Barrera-Osorio , “Knowledge and Empiricism in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Atlantic World,” in Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500–1800, ed. Daniela Bleichmar et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 219– 32; and other essays in Bleichmar et al. 28. Kamen, Philip of Spain, 182. 29. See Gregorio de Andrés, Real Biblioteca de El Escorial (Madrid: Aldus, 1970); Pilar García Morencos, “Importantes incunables españoles en la Biblioteca de El Escorial,” in Fe y sabiduría. La biblioteca. IV Centenario del Monasterio de El Escorial, ed. Francisco Solano (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1986): 89–99; and María M. Portuondo, “The Study of Nature, Philosophy, and the Royal Library of San Lorenzo del Escorial,” Renaissance Quarterly 63, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 1106–150, especially for an excellent description of the Royal Library. For his relic collection, see Guy Lazure, “Possesing the Sacred: Monarchy and Identity in Philip II’s Relic Collection at the Escorial,” Renaissance Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2007): 58–93. 30. Henry Kamen, The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010) challenges the traditional view of the Escorial as reflective of Philip’s gloomy personality. 31. Jane C. Nash, Veiled Images: Titian’s Mythological Paintings for Philip II (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1985), 23. Another unfortunate example is Thomas Puttfarken’s regrettable bias against Spain, “In Italy, in the sixteenth century, attitudes toward classical, pagan literature and art were perhaps more advanced and relaxed than in the provincial backwaters of Spain” (Titian and Tragic Painting: Aristotle’s Poetics and the Rise of the Modern Artist [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005], 141). 32. Titian reported to Philip II that he was sending the Venus and Adonis September 10, 1554, after having sent the Danae (Hope, “Titian, Philip II, and Mary Tudor,” 62). 33. Nigel Llewellyn has explained that Titian’s concept of “poesie” challenged the subject-matter of what came to be known as “istoria” or “history” paintings. “Illustrating Ovid,” in Ovid Renewed: Ovidian Influences on Literature and Art from Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1990), 157–58. 34. Hugh Trevor-Roper considers Granvelle the greatest art collector of his time (Princes and Artists, Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts 1517–1633 [London: Thames & Hudson, 1976], 112). 35. “A Su Magestad Real va otro de Adonis, que es cosa de grande estima y que Ticiano se ha esmerado mucho, sino que es demasiadamente lascivo” [Another one about Adonis, which is a thing of great esteem and into which Titian has put a lot of effort, is on its way to Your Royal Magesty] (B.P. II-2286, fol. 66, quoted in Matteo Mancini, Tiziano e le corti d’Asburgo nei documenti degli archivi spagnoli, Memorie classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti, vol. 75 [Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1998], 233). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 36. Titian’s mythological paintings for Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, reflect as early as 1520 his interest in classical erotic themes; he was later to paint for the Duke the justly famous Venus of Urbino. For an important study of Titian’s interest in portraying strong women against the idealization of female nudes, see Rona Goffen, Titian’s Women (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997). 37. The Venus and Adonis, for instance, arrived together with a painting of Mary Magdalen, called “most beautiful” [“harto linda”] by Vargas (Mancini, Tiziano, 233). 38. Hope, “Titian, Philip II, and Mary Tudor,” 82. 39. Regarding the Venus and Adonis, Philip states to the Venetian ambassador, “me paresce de la perfection que dezis, aunque vino maltratado de un doblez que traía al traves por medio dél [ . . . ] Los otros quadros que me haze le dad prissa que los acabe” [it seems to me as perfect as you have said, although it was somewhat damaged by a fold across the center ( . . . ) Tell him to hurry and finish the others he is painting for me] (London, 6 December 1554; quoted in Mancini, Tiziano, 234). 40. The Time-Life series flagrantly describes Philip as “a Catholic zealot, a fanatical enemy of Protestantism, [he] was a private voluptuary who selfishly concealed the Danae and other poesie that Titian created, in a room designed for his personal pleasure” (Williams, Titian, 145). 41. Hope, “Titian, Philip II, and Mary Tudor,” 82. 42. Ibid. 43. Loren Partridge, Review of Titan’s Women, by Rona Goffen, Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 522. 44. Paola Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art: Gender, Representation, Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 137. Della Casa added that Titian was to give the painting the face of the cardinal’s love interest, a courtesan named Angela. According to Tinagli, he had originally painted the body as a nude, but converted it into a mythological figure, presumably to make the painting more appropriate for a cardinal (136). 45. Although conceding their interpretive difficulties, when comparing Alfonso d’Este’s earlier series to the Philip’s poesie, Thomas Puttfarken states that “both sets are unequivocally painted to be seen by men” (Titian and Tragic Painting, 135). 46. If Titian’s meanings are often in doubt, art historians agree on the painter’s masterful disegno and colorito. They also agree on his status as an outsider, on his ability to detach himself from his patrons and render keenly objective portraits. See Antonio Paolucci, “The Portraits of Titian,” in Titian, Prince of Painters, ed. Susana Badiene (Venice: Prestal, 1990), 105. 47. Titian’s ingratiating language in an early letter to Philip reveals his desire, and no doubt his need, for patronage, “non è altra cosa il grande esser di Vostra Alteza et tutte le sue actione alla quale desidero tanto servire che per solo questo haverò cara la vita già dedicata et consacrata a Vostra Alteza [(it) is none other than your Highness's greatness and all your plans, which I desire to serve so much that for this alone I will take better care of my life, as it is already dedicated and consecrated to Your Highness] (Titian to Philip, Venice, 23 March 1553; quoted in Mancini, Tiziano, 218). My thanks to Professor Laura Giannetti for her help in translating this passage. 48. Tanner, Descendant of Aeneas, 133. 49. Ibid., 137. 50. Philip’s voyage was recorded by his tutor, Calvete de Estrella in a three-volume work that also details the

Northern lands visited. See Dina Aristodemo and Fernando Brugman, “The Joyeuses Entrées of 1549: The Staging of Royal Power and Civic Prestige,” in The Seventh Window: The King’s Window Donated by Philip II and Mary Tudor to Sint Janskerk in Gouda (1557), ed. Wim de Groot (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2005), 29–37. 51. Pérez, La España de Felipe II, 27. 52. Víctor Mínguez, Los reyes solares: iconología astral de la monarquía hispana (Castelló de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, 2001), 210. 53. For the pathos expressed in a majority of Titian’s paintings, see Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting. 54. Quoted in Kamen, Philip of Spain, 59. 55. Mary was Charles V’s first cousin, as her mother Catherine of Aragon was his aunt. 56. Nash, Veiled Images, 25. 57. Ibid. 58. Titian’s Women, 152-53. 59. Nash, Veiled Images, 27. 60. Ibid., 28. 61. Similarly, Puttfarken considers the series created by Titian for Mary of Hungary as a painted tragedy, each representing the “Four Great Sinners” of classical mythology (Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and Ixiun), “acting as a spur to punish [ . . . ] Lutherans and the Turks, perhaps also the French” (Titian and Tragic Painting, 93–95). See also Steven N. Orso, who describes them, along with others exhibited in the “Sala de las Furias” by Philip, as “imperial allegories filled with symbolic allusions to the emperor’s power [ . . . ] his opposition to the Turkish empire, Habsburg marriages, and the continued dominion of the Habsburg dynasty” (Philip IV and the Decoration of the Alcázar of Madrid [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986], 71; and quoted in Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting, 95). 62. Perhaps only Keller has given thought to the poesie’s political meanings, considering them a “mirror for princes” and thus exemplary. I rely on Puttfarken’s discussion of Harald Keller, Tizians Poesie für König Philipp von Spanien (Wiesbaden, 1969), (Titian and Tragic Painting, 142; 159–60). 63. Kamen, Philip of Spain, 59. 64. Hope identifies this painting with the “landscape” mentioned in Titian’s letter 11 October 1552. Philip, who received the painting 12 December 1552, wrote Titian to thank him (“Titian, Philip II and Mary Tudor,” 61). 65. Goffen, Titian’s Women, 154. 66. “e perché la Danae che io mandai a Vostra Maestà si vedeva tutta dalla parte dinanzi ho volute in questàltra poesia variare, e farle mostrare la contraria parte, acciochè risca il camerino dove hanno de stare più gracioso alla vista” (quoted in Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, “Presencia de Tiziano en la España del Siglo de Oro,” Goya 135 [1976]: 141). 67. Nash, Veiled Images, 29. For the painting’s mythological references to Philip II, see Frederick A. de Armas, “Adonis y Venus: Hacia la tragedia en Tiziano y Lope de Vega,” in Hacia la tragedia áurea: lecturas para un nuevo milenio, ed. Frederick A. de Armas, Luciano García Lorenzo and Enrique García Santo-Tomás (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2008), 102–3. 68. Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art, 140. 69. Nash, Veiled Images, 31. Nash gives several interpretations of the Adonis myth; as a vegetation myth, as a political tale, and as a Christological fable (29–30). 70. Ibid., 29. 71. Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting, 157. 72. Ibid., 158. 73. Ibid., 164. 74. A comparison with a later version for the Farnese family, now lost, but related to copies now at the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art show that Titian rendered Adonis’s facial features entirely differently. Historians have also seen a resemblance to one of the versions of Venus and the Organ Player

(Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, 1550–1552), although Hope disagrees (“Titian, Philip II, and Mary Tudor,” 56n17). 75. Philip’s resemblance to Adonis may be observed in the marked hairline given him in the Gloria, which Cordone calls “la pierre angulaire d’une idéologie picturale, religieuse mais aussi politique, témoignant de la grandeur de la dynastie” [the cornerstone of a pictorial ideology, religious but also political, witnessing the [Habsburg] dynasty’s grandeur] (Caroline Schuster Cordone, “La Gloria de Titien: une image au service du pouvoir,” Annales d’histoire de l’art et d’archeologie 29 [1999]: 25). It is noteworthy that Titian includes a self-portrait in this painting, albeit in a “humble position” (28). 76. “Tosto le manderò la Poesia di Pereseo e Andromeda che avra una altra vista diversa de queste, e così Medea e Iasone” (quoted in Pérez Sánchez, “Presencia de Tiziano,” 141). 77. Cecil Gould, “Perseus and Andromeda and Titian’s Poesie,” Burlington Magazine 105 (1963): 112–17. 78. Nash, Veiled Images, 34. 79. Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting, 168. 80. The myth’s political value was clearly understood by Philip’s grandson, Philip IV, who placed Rubens’ painting of the pair not in closed quarters, but in the Salon Nuevo, or new room of the Madrid Palace, one of the Alcázar’s most symbolic rooms and used for public functions (Javier Portús, The Sala Reservada and the Nude in the Prado Museum. Museo Nacional del Prado, June 28-September 29. [Madrid: Turner, 2002], 56). 81. Although there may be no connection intended, Perseus’s Roman-like tunic sports the red and gold colors associated with the Habsburg coat of arms. 82. The crescent moon adorning Diana’s head was also the symbol of another Diana, the powerful mistress of Isabel of Valois’ father, Diana de Poitiers. 83. An anonymous sonnet even accused a lady in waiting of being a puti-doncella, or whore-damsel, waiting to be ravished by the king (Agustín González de Amezúa y Mayo, Isabel de Valois Reina de España, vol. 1 [Madrid: Dirección General de Relaciones Culturales, Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 1949], 166n54). 84. Isabel married Philip by proxy in June 1559; the poesie were sent to Philip in September of that year, some four months before Isabel’s arrival in Spain. 85. Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting, 176. 86. Nash, Veiled Images, 39. 87. Canzone 23 vv. 156–60 in Francesco Petrarch, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime sparse and Other Lyrics, ed. and trans. Robert Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 67. “Vero dirò; forse e’ parrà menzogna; / ch’ i’ senti’ trarmi de la propria imago / et in un cervo solitario et vago / di selva in selva ratto mi trasformo, / et ancor de’ miei can fuggo lo stormo.” 88. Editor’s introduction to Petrarch, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 27. 89. Canzone 23, vv. 161-164 in Petrarch, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 69. “Canzon, i’ non fu’ mai quel nuvol d’oro / che poi discese in preziosa pioggia / sì che ‘l foco di Giove in parte spense; / ma fui ben fiamma ch’ un bel guardo accense.” 90. Puttfarken, Titian and Tragic Painting, 177. 91. Nash, Veiled Images, 35. 92. Hope, “Titian, Philip II, and Mary Tudor,” 65. 93. Ibid., 37. 94. Paul F. Watson, “Titian’s ‘Rape of Europa:’ A Bride Stripped Bare,” Storia dell’arte 28 (1976): 258. 95. Parker, Philip II, 63. 96. . Watson, “Titian’s ‘Rape of Europa,’” 255. 97. Ibid., 254n46. 98. Portús, Sala Reservada, 39. 99. Ibid., 43.

Chapter 2 VISUAL EROTICISM, POETIC VOYEURISM Lucia Binotti Ekphrasis and the Complexities of Patronage in Góngora’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea Luis de Góngora y Argote’s mythological poem Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea has received uninterrupted attention since it first circulated in manuscript at the court of Madrid in 1613. At the time it was as much the object of fiery and scandalized repulsion as of exultant praise, and today the Polifemo (along with Góngora’s other long poem, Soledades) is considered a masterwork of Spanish Baroque poetry. Based on the Ovidian fable of the ill-fated love between the nymph Galatea and the young shepherd Acis, the poem departs from and expands upon Ovid’s version, focusing on the amorous encounter that will bring about the couple’s tragic demise as Acis is crushed by a boulder by the jealous Cyclops, Polyphemus. Formally the poem is characterized by its extreme linguistic and rhetorical complexity. It reads as a maze of convoluted metaphors that seem to spring endlessly one from the other. This maze creates a multi-leveled game of cross-referencing and compels the reader to maintain a dialogic tension with the rich constellation of classical texts that support the poem. Reinforcing this metaphorical pregnancy, the Polifemo conspicuously bends the canonical rules of Renaissance poetic language, multiplying rhetorical figures such as alliteration, hyperbole, oxymoron, and the like, while bending the syntactical rules of Spanish with violently deforming hyperbata. Grandiose in its engaging imagery and in its linguistic experimentation, but often obscure to the point of inaccessibility, the poem has defied comprehensive interpretation. Its vast modern bibliography, dominated by studies focused on discrete thematic, stylistic, and ideological themes, resembles a heavily faulted topography.[1] In general the work is regarded as one of Góngora’s most lofty poetic endeavors, where he realizes the final summit of his sophisticated poetic style. At the same time its predominant themes, jealousy and competition, reflect the actual competitive environment and worldly aspirations that drove Góngora’s culterano program. Edward Friedman points out how Góngora’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea offers an extended view of writing as competition: The baroque poet vies with a classical tradition and with Renaissance neoclassicism. The idea of writing as rewriting touches questions of subject matter, of form, and of language. [ . . . ] In the Polifemo [ . . . ] Góngora addresses these points and defines his own creative space. Far from the disengaged, “absent” poet, he enters the text in order to exert control, to claim authority. He chooses a fable that he can use to replicate his situation as poet and that he can revise as a vehicle for his particular poetics.[2]

Within this critical landscape, readings that engage the poem’s most voluptuous aspects are surprisingly scarce. In particular, it is remarkable how little attention has been given to the question of “sexual pleasure” in the Polifemo. Góngora’s full participation in the vigorous tradition of classicizing representations of the sensual and the sexual is hardly overlooked, yet it seems that once the poem is identified as a mythological tale, its sexual explicitness is met with an array of emblematic rationalizations. Many readers have long noted that the Polifemo is open to countless interpretations associated with eros and erotic play. But a detailed analysis of the purpose and meaning of the poem’s erotic figuration has eluded them.[3] I ask what the erotic may mean in the Polifemo, and how it might have functioned to signal Góngora’s exploitation of rhetorical and aesthetic theories aimed at attracting a particular kind of readership, one that endorsed a distinct set of aristocratic social practices and distinct patterns of patronage. Without a doubt baroque audiences were fine-tuned to detecting what we now call subtext in a way that we can hardly begin to imagine. And it is impossible to dismiss the central role played by sex and the sexual pun in the Cordoban poet’s burlesque poetry and parodic compositions[4]––after all, his short poems and his play are stuffed with the kind of double entendres and obscene word play that would make our most risqué stand-up comics blush. Yet modern criticism has been reticent in recognizing the presence of the sexually transgressive and the obscene in Góngora’s “heroic” poems, the Polifemo and the Soledades. It would seem that for early and modern commentators alike the elevated style in which the Polifemo is composed precludes the possibility of seeing its use of the erotic as a stimulus and perhaps a supplement to sexual self-pleasuring. Is it the case that when figures (of speech in this case) are sufficiently cloaked in the Italian, High Renaissance codes of idealization, which is a stylistic convention, they sublimate the corporality of sexual arousal?[5] In his analysis of the discursive strategies of the genus turpe in Góngora’s burlesque poetry, Luján Atienza argues that Góngora’s game of “indeterminaciones enunciativas y de solapamiento de instancias discursivas” [expository indeterminacies and of discursive instances of evasiveness] forces the reader to make an interpretive effort that transforms him or her into the poem’s coauthor.[6] After having recognized —or guessed—the obscene reading, the reader will be left with the perplexity of having invented a figure of expression for which he or she is the only one responsible, “sin poder pedir cuentas a un autor que ha jugado a dejar sin determinar sus propias figuras y relaciones enunciativas” [without being able to hold accountable the author who has played with leaving his own figures and expository relations undetermined].[7] This is of course only possible because we assume that in order to elicit its meaning the genus turpe counted on the intention and the complicity of the audience to fill “neutral” discursive strategies valid for any content with the allusion to degraded meanings.[8] Such intention and complicity relied on the presupposition that internal decorum regulated the coherence among the different layers and elements of the text while in turn the principle of coherence ensured that text and audience were in an

appropriate communicative relationship. Thus, it was assumed that simple matters expressed in vulgar language projected an image of simplicity and vulgarity on those who heard or read them. Consequently, a lowly discourse identified its participants with an uneducated, lowly public.[9] Under the prescriptive rules of internal decorum, therefore, a reading of the Polifemo as a “dishonest” poem would be impossible, since decorum would preclude filling its elevated form with lowly content. In my opinion, however, it is Góngora’s obscurity, the difficulty of his “high style” poetry, what opens the door for “obscene” readings, because such obscurity allows also for an inversion of value.[10] When Aretino wrote his letter condemning Michelangelo’s Last Judgment for its lascivia [lasciviousness], he insisted that he was not accusing the sainted Michelangelo of obscenity, but rather, of indecorousness: the selfexposing contortions of Michelangelo’s nudes were for the sake of artifice (difficult, obscure), rather than for the sake of the papal chapel—but Aretino’s punch line was that the resulting effect was obscene precisely because it came from an inversion of value, as laudably “difficult” nude poses inevitably enable obscene “exposure.”[11] In truth, the Polifemo blurs the boundaries between rhetorical discourses so blatantly that still today discussions on the appropriateness of its style remain at the center of the great debate regarding the poem’s influence on the poetic theory and practice of the Golden Age. For instance, in his most recent work Jesús Ponce Cárdenas has stressed how the aesthetic tension between tradition and innovation that characterizes the Polifemo can only be understood and appreciated if we see it as a complex and refined example of epyllion, a hybrid genre that oscillates in difficult equilibrium between narration and lyricism.[12] The critic’s recourse to an obscure poetic form[13] to explain the stylistic complication of the Polifemo belies a resistance to believing that Góngora was breaking the laws of decorum, forgetting perhaps that we do not need recourse to the epyllion to justify the playful hybridization of styles that is a quintessential feature of the Italian treatment of classical mythology from Poliziano to Marino.[14] It is more important instead to point out that with the term epyllion scholars of Elizabethan English literature connote a particular type of composition that shares many generic commonalities with the Polifemo. Georgia Brown tells us that an epyllion is a brief narrative poem about desire. It derives its material from Ovid, usually from the Metamorphoses, but also draws on the Amores, Heroides and Tristia. In Elizabethan literature, epyllia are witty, erotic, and urbane poems that place great emphasis on style and invention, and constitute virtuoso displays of poetic skill. Moreover, the genre is extremely self-conscious, and the epyllion writers ostentatiously raid each other, copy each other and continue each other’s work, thereby establishing themselves as poets who are instantly recognizable as members of a literary avant-garde. [ . . . ] Like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the epyllion stands in oblique relationship to epic, and triviality is endemic to the genre, whether it is expressed in the frivolous tone, or in the brevity of the

poems. At the same time, however, the epyllion exaggerates certain aspects of the epic, including its ekphrastic tendencies and potential for digression.[15] The resemblances between the stylistic self-consciousness, the witticism and the plasticity of the Polifemo, and those of these poems are striking. Moreover, similar to the treatment reserved for the Polifemo, most modern critics of the epyllion approach the form as an essay on love, tending to soften and sentimentalize its focus. “As a result,” Brown continues, modern criticism has failed to do justice to the most striking aspects of the epyllion, including its tonal ambiguity, wittiness and self-indulgent eroticism. [ . . . ] No doubt, the epyllion capitalizes on the salacious appeal of its erotic stories but uses its erotic material in emblematic ways to redefine the role of author and reader, and to explore the nature of literary morality. In the epyllion, the fundamental processes of writing and reading, as well as the structural and stylistic elements that characterize the literary text, are eroticized with the result that the literary text becomes a source of, and substitute for, sexual gratification. Literature becomes a fetish [that] is irrationally reverenced, and becomes both a stimulus to sexual desire and the end of sexual desire.[16] In this light, it does not seem so preposterous to read the Polifemo as a frivolous poem of triviality and salacious appeal, perhaps in the line of some recent readings of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis.[17] To do justice to the baroque masterpiece we need to accept that the Polifemo is one of the most complex texts in the history of literature, yet an explicitly sexual poem as well. In this essay I argue that to fully understand the extent of Góngora’s Polifemo as aesthetic manifesto we need to read it as a work of sophisticated “pornography,”[18] where the titillation of desire is inextricably bound to the profoundly masked linguistic titillation. Sexually charged metaphors force the implied reader to view the poem both as a stimulant to intellectual witticism and as an instrument of erotic desire. The mythological poem thematizes the reader’s imaginative participation in the described image, both as voyeur and as poetical interpreter/commentator, but this participation rests on the insinuated balance that the poem maintains between the transposed eroticism of the pagan fabula and its more indecent––and literal—interpretation. The Polifemo relies on the dexterity and willingness of the reader to exercise his wit by skillfully transposing complicated tropes onto visual images. This transposition is made possible through engagement of a discerning erotic imagination that relies on the rhetorical conventions of painting to access the realm of the body. Góngora thus transforms his reader into a viewer––a sophisticated twist that presupposes and takes advantage of the spectator’s already educated competence to view a painting as a poem and vice versa—and concomitantly gives us clues that indicate the function that the Polifemo was to have for such readers. Although the linguistic decoding requires significant intellectual effort and deep familiarity with classical and

Petrarchan poetic vocabulary, the transgressive power of the eroticized gaze permits the reader to apply to the poem the rhetorical conventions of pictorial representation, which are simpler, and more vernacular, than the convoluted verbal ones that shroud it. As a poem the Polifemo in fact is encoded within the strict rules that the theory of decorum applied regarding function and congruency of works of art. But as a painting the poem can abandon the composure and gravitas of the classics, and of Ovid himself, to center on the most physical and dynamic aspects of the story. Stylistically, by requiring that his readers “look at,” rather than read, the poem, Góngora exploits the textually spatial coexistence of different registers, from the loftily Neo-Platonic to the transgressively sexual while still ensuring the honest integrity of his implicit, but very defined, reader. The interplay between an idealized image of the classical past along with the evocation of an unambiguous and explicit gaze is evidently meant to attract attention to the poem from the viewpoint of a special kind of reader, the art collector––he who consumes, enjoys and values a work of art for its own sake, dispensing with considerations of a public, political, or religious nature. It is obvious that Góngora never meant for the Polifemo to be enjoyed in those larger representational spaces that welcomed pagan allegories and profane art of a heroic nature. Rather, I believe, Góngora envisioned the poem as belonging to the same repertory of mythological images and nudes whose enjoyment occurred intimately in camerini and studioli, spaces that encouraged the expression and satisfaction of private pleasures and remained unmindful of the moral consideration that accompanied the display of pagan myths and nudity in public spaces.[19] By titillating his audience’s erotic wit, Góngora invites it to interpret the poem as a painting, or rather as a series of paintings, nested one inside the other. This elicits a similar response, aesthetic and erotic at the same time, to that expected from the viewer of those notable Italian erotic paintings collected by both Philip II and Philip III. Por ser poesía y pintura virtudes hermanas, que traen consigo utilidad, deleyte y alivio a los hombres de ingenio, he querido dedicar a V.M. (como quien conoce la dignidad de ambas cosas) este volumen, a fin de que con su entretenimiento, pueda a ratos restaurar el ánimo fatigado de los importunos negocios y grandes cuidados que siempre andan en compañía del honroso peso que sobre sí lleva . . . [20] [Because poetry and painting are sister virtues that offer utility, pleasure and consolation to men of intelligence, I wanted to dedicate this volume to Your Majesty (as one who understands the dignity of these things), so that, with its entertainment you can occasionally restore your spirit from the fatigues of the inopportune business and the great concerns that always accompany the heavy burden that you bear . . . ] This dedication to one of the Spanish translations of the Metamorphoses, addressed to Estevan de Yvarra, one of Philip II’s secretaries, gives Checa a clue

about the function that Titian’s mythological paintings––especially his series of “poems” based on the Ovidian stories (figures. 1.1–1.6)—served while hanging in the king’s private chambers. The allusion to the classical topos, ut pictura poesis, points to their explicit objective to attain not only usefulness but also “deleyte y alivio” [pleasure and consolation] to restore the spirit from the fatigues of “negocios y cuidados” [business and concerns].[21] Checa insists that it is in this series where the duality of uses, public and private, appears more evident. “Los seis cuadros enviados a Felipe II desde el año 1554 al 1562 constituyen imágenes muy sugestivas de la priva-cidad del Príncipe, en las que, además, es muy fuerte el componente erótico” [The six paintings sent to Philip II from 1554 to 1562 constitute images very suggestive of the privacy of the prince in which, additionally, the erotic component is very strong].[22] Titian’s recommendation that his paintings be placed in a camerino where they would be “más graciosas a la vista” [more pleasing to the sight],[23] supports the view that the author composed this series with the Prince’s diletto in mind, where diletto included sensual and erotic pleasure. The private use meant for these paintings throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries presupposes as well an interpretation devoid of excessive symbolic content. It was not expected that objects of art composed to occupy a private space would ever undergo complicated symbolic elaborations of a moral or political nature. Thus seen, the paintings had the ability to elicit aesthetic pleasure and sensual divertimento alongside the uncomplicated moral admonition that all allegorized pagan mythologies concealed.[24] A reading of Góngora’s Polifemo in the sexual key will show how the poem was meant to serve a similar function as the one just described for Titian’s mythologies, that of eliciting a quite concrete sexual excitement––as I am sure it did in the circle of male aristocrats who shared private readings of the poem for several years before it was finally published after Góngora’s death in 1627––without ponderously pressing issues of grave importance.[25] In what follows I will offer a sample of how the poem’s linguistically complex imagery allows for an overtly sexual interpretation, and I will then address the techniques employed by Góngora to place his poem theoretically within the tradition of visual eroticism. At this point my interpretation of the poem builds on a word-forword textual analysis focused on baring the sexual symbolism contained in each stanza. Thus, Polyphemus’s gaze is figured as the gaze of the desiring, but passive, voyeur.[26] He frames the action and contains it. When he interferes, the spell is broken and disaster ensues. Polyphemus is a metaphor at different levels: he represents the spectator, so he stands both as the implied reader and, because of his size, power, and ironically grotesque figure, as Gongora’s desired patron, the king. At the rhetorical level he stands for the amplification of discourse and its obscurity. In psychoanalytical terms Polyphemus represents a big phallus, sexual energy without restraint, penetration without foreplay. Conversely, Acis and Galatea embody the exclusive delights of mutually pleasurable gratification (without violence), while at the same time they perform a choreographed ritual for the voyeuristic

enjoyment of the reader/spectator who is engaged in masturbation. Galatea symbolizes the feminine discovery of pleasure away from the fear of penetration. She remains a virgin throughout the whole narration, yet she assumes power at two crucial moments when giving pleasure to Acis and when forcing him to give her pleasure. Paradoxically, Acis appears as the least “active” of the three characters. At the beginning of their lovemaking he feigns sleep, so that the encounter takes place in silence. He is literally taken by Galatea, and kindly forced to take her. On the other hand, Acis’ furtive delivery of several delicately chosen gifts for the nymph serves as catalyst for the escalating scene. Since each one of those gifts—fruit, almonds, milk and honey—can be translated into a symbol for male genitalia, they are the medium through which Galatea will acknowledge the power of masculine desire without having to accept its forcefulness. That the poem was to be read in a setting agreeable to the contentment of the flesh I believe is encoded in the first three stanzas, in the extended dedication to the Count of Niebla.[27] Here, with ironic persuasion, Góngora invites the count to yield to the delights of onanism. I. Estas que me dictó rimas sonoras, culta sí, aunque bucólica, Talía, ¡oh excelso conde!, en las purpúreas horas que es rosas la alba y rosicler el día, ahora que de luz tu Niebla doras, escucha al son de la zampoña mía, si ya los muros no te ven, de Huelva, peinar el viento, fatigar la selva.[28]

[1. These resounding rhymes which were dictated to me by the cultured, yet bucolic, Thalia,—oh excellent Count!—, during the purple hours when the dawn is roses and the day is rosy, now that you are gilding your “mist” with light [i.e., are in your village of Niebla], listen to them [these rhymes], sung to the sound of my pipes, if the walls of Huelva no longer see you combing the wind and beating the forest [hunting].] From the onset the dedication is vague. We find no reference to the poem’s subject, except perhaps, in the fourth verse of the last stanza, a veiled allusion to Polyphemus’s powerful chant. Instead, the sexual implications begin immediately in line one, “Estas que me dictó, rimas sonoras” [These resounding rhymes which were dictated to me].[29] Góngora’s contemporary commentators declare the verb dictar more Latin than Spanish; with the sense of “being inspired by,” many Latin poets used similar expressions.[30] By alluding to the Latin poets, Góngora inserts the Polifemo into the prestigious tradition of Augustan poetry. Moreover, his familiarity with this tradition suggests an assertion of superiority over Ovid. Góngora positions the evocative Latinism “dictar” adjacent to the keyword “rimas,” [rhymes][31] thus cueing his reader toward an explicit interpretation: Juvenal and various other classical writers used rima (literally fissure, or chink) as a synonym for female genitalia, and as Sheila

Delany suggests, it would not be unusual for Ovid, “the archpoet of urbane dalliance to signal in this way the erotic urgency motivating the poem.”[32] Seventeenth-century Spanish readers would have known the meaning and the sexual implication of the Latinism, and would probably have recognized it in this context as a direct quotation from the Meta​morphoses. From this viewpoint it seems less perplexing that these rhymes should be inspired by Talía, the muse of Comedy. Góngora’s choice to invoke Talía to inspire his verses has been seen as a declaration of his debt towards Virgil, who uses Talía, a muse not afraid of rustic verses, to signal the novelty of his Bucolica in Latin poetry. [33] The adversative contrast “culta sí, aunque bucólica, Talía,” [cultured, yet bucolic, Thalia][34] echoes the two instances where the Roman poet mentions the muse, both instances in passages that allude to bucolic poetry as a genre that would have been regarded with some disdain by the leading poets of those days. In both cases the contrast serves also to remind his readers that Virgil is looking to debut in the Poetae Noui’s style of urbanitas, a term that covered the notions of erudition, frivolity, refinement, and a certain degree of arrogance, and whose practitioners advocated the philosophy of “art for art” sake. Significantly, Stefan van den Broeck remarks that Virgil shielded himself from the criticism that the Bucolics would have caused to arise in such circles by introducing sexual overtones, an urbane motif par excellence, in the poems.[35] Ever the subtle player, in invoking Talía, Góngora pleads that his Polifemo occupies the same ambiguously refined, erudite space that Virgil’s poetry aspired to and Ovid’s quintessentially represented. Like the Poetae Noui Góngora will indulge the literary tastes of his urbane readers with the introduction of innuendos, puns and double entendres of lascivious, or obscene nature. Another wink at the poem’s disingenuous readership is introduced in the invitation extended to the Count to rest from his strenuous exercise and listen to the poet’s instrument at a particular time of the day, dawn. “Ahora que de luz tu Niebla doras / escucha al son de la zampoña mía, / si ya los muros no te ven, de Huelva, / peinar el viento, fatigar la selva” [now that you are gilding your “mist” with light, listen to them [these rhymes], sung to the sound of my pipes, if the walls of Huelva no longer see you combing the wind and beating the forest [hunting]].[36] Góngora delicately paints this dawn in pinks and translucent reds, the Count’s presence illuminating its foggy–– as the Count’s name—air like the golden shower that made love to Danae. But is not dawn the time the count would be departing for the hunt? So the sentence “Si ya los muros no te ven, de Huelva,” [if the walls of Huelva no longer see you][37] would suggest. Why then would he want to interrupt an exercise he has barely started? Unless, of course, the exercise the verses allude to was not hunting and Huelva’s walls could not see him anymore because he was indoors. In his reading of these stanzas Ponce Cárdenas presupposes that Góngora inserted the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea in the encomiastic poetic genre that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries displayed highly social values and carried a constitutive public dimension, therefore visualizing the reading of the poem as a public event, almost as a theatrical

performance: “En el pórtico de estas tres estancias, las marismas de Huelva y la campiña del condado de Niebla configuran el teatro de lectura donde el aristócrata escuchará en digno ocio, con toda atención y apacible silencio la historia milenaria del cíclope y la nereida” [In the portico of these three stanzas, the marshes of Huelva and the landscape of the county of Niebla constitute the theatre of reading where the aristocrat will listen in dignified leisure, with rapt attention and peaceful silence, the age old story of the Cyclops and the Nereid].[38] This interpretation in turn supports the view that the Polifemo belongs to a quintessentially hybrid genre, the epyllion, a term meaning “little epic,” that refers primarily to the type of erotic and mythological long elegy of which Ovid remains the master: El arranque sublime de la Fábula plantea simbólicamente (con la conjunción de los tres instrumentos: zampoña, cítara, clarín) un prodigiosa fusión, característica de un género híbrido como el epilio, ya que en sus plásticas estancias se entremezclan los caminos humildes de la poesía bucólica (entorno rústico), el espacio intermedio de la poesía lírica (relato amoroso) y el elevado estro de la gran epopeya (tema mítico).[39] [The sublime starting point of the Fábula symbolically posits (with the combination of the three instruments: the pipes, the zither and bugle) a prodigious fusion, characteristic of a hybrid genre like the epyllion, since the humble roads of bucolic poetry (the rustic setting) the intermediate space of lyric poetry (the love story) and the lofty inspiration of the grand epic (mythic subject) are blended in its expressive stanzas.] However if Góngora’s intent with the Polifemo were that of composing a “poem”––in the visual, Titianesque sense––reserved for the count’s diletto, the hybridization of styles offered by the epyllion would be just another sign of how the poet expects us to read his work: employing the same technique used by Titian in his mythologies, the poet gives in to the ambiguity of meaning that the classical fabula invites. The stylistic hybridization at the linguistic level replicates the pictorial reflection on one of the favorite aesthetic meditations of the Renaissance, the dialectics between nature and artifice. The counterpoint between the rustic surroundings of bucolic poetry and the monumentality and dynamism of epic discourse is a manifesto in defense of literature from the point of view of painting. If Titian, inspired by the conventions of literature, had surpassed in his poesie the topic of ut pictura poesis, and interpreted the literary sources to create a discourse aware of the specific needs of the pictorial realm, so Góngora, inspired by the conventions of painting, is able to recreate a discourse that essentializes the needs of his poetic language. From verse 6––“escucha, al son de la zampoña mía” [listen to them [these rhymes], sung to the sound of my pipes][40] ––on, the obscene subtext referring to the male organ develops in crescendo, preparing the reader for the ironic interpretation of what will follow.

As with the curious invocation of Talía, critics have puzzled over the choice of a bagpipe as an instrument well suited to the dignified task of singing to the Count, also because it is impossible to sing while playing the bagpipe. It has been argued that “zampoña” [pipes][41] referred to the bucolic setting of the poem, or that Góngora really meant “sanfoña,” a stringed instrument, as both derive from Latin symphonia. [42] This argument is untenable: Góngora weighed his language with calculated precision. With the term “zampoña” he launches the cascade of polysemous terms that jokingly tease the reader in the next two stanzas, while concomitantly he involves himself in the eroticisms of the text. To this latter observation I return later. “Zampoña” is the first of the thirty-five words in the next nineteen verses––from a total count of sixty-six words with semantic meaning––, to have a sexual connotation. All thirty-five are documented in the dictionary of Golden Age erotic terms compiled by Robert Jammes and his team.[43] si ya los muros no te ven, de Huelva, peinar el viento, fatigar la selva.[44]

[if the walls of Huelva no longer see you combing the wind and beating the forest [hunting].] “Muro” [wall] is another metonymy for female genitalia, dear to the imagery of courtly love. “Now that the walls of Huelva cannot see you,” tells us that the count is alone. “Peinar” [combing] recalls the action of unruffling (smoothing) pubic hair, an analogy that refers to masturbation and is found often in Italian texts.[45] Similarly, “Fatigar la selva” [to tire the forest][46] suggests the stroking of pubic hair while the semantic coincidence recalls the alivio that pintura and poesía offer to the “ánimo fatigado.” In the next stanza and one half the double-entendres follow in sequence: II. Templado pula en la maestra mano el generoso pájaro su pluma, o tan mudo en la alcándara que en vano aun desmentir al cascabel presuma; tascando haga el freno de oro, cano, del caballo andaluz la ociosa espuma; gima el lebrel en el cordón de seda y al cuerno, al fin, la cítara suceda. III. Treguas al ejercicio sean robusto ocio atento, silencio dulce, en cuanto debajo escuchas de dosel augusto del músico jayán el fiero canto.[47]

[2. Well conditioned, let the noble bird [falcon] preen his feathers upon the master’s hand, or upon his perch, so quietly that he may try, in vain, to belie the bell [tied to his foot]; by champing, let the Andalusian horse make hoary his golden bit with his idle foam; let the hound whine upon his silken leash. And, finally, let the hunter’s horn yield to the poet’s harp. 3. Respite from that robust exercise be your attentive leisure and sweet silence while under august canopy

you listen to the brutish song of the musical giant.] Although for a few words, like templado, oro, freno, tasca, [tuned, gold, rein, pocket][48] I have not found direct textual references that justify an obscene reading, the passage as a whole contains so many innuendos to make it impossible to mistake the direct allusion to the exciting buildup of a well-orchestrated masturbatory session, crowned by a satisfying ejaculation at the end. In the following endnote I list the sexual equivalents of many of the words present in these three stanzas.[49] Much research is still needed that will expand the seminal repertory of sexual vocabulary and sexual puns of Renaissance Spanish literature so carefully studied by Robert Jammes and his team.[50] I do not think that further commentary is necessary here; yet I would argue that the canopy sheltering the count is that of a sumptuous bed, where sweet silence and leisure of the senses follow the thunderous explosion of a well maneuvered onanistic orgasm. The last two verses of the third stanza close the dedication by picking up the opening motive, that of the sonorous rhymes Góngora sings: Alterna con las Musas hoy el gusto que si la mía puede ofrecer tanto clarín (y de la Fama no segundo) tu nombre oirán los términos del mundo.[51]

[Replace with the Muses today your sports; for if my Muse is capable of blowing such a trumpet (second to none of Fame’s), your name will be heard to the ends of the earth.] “La mía” [my own],[52] has no clear antecedent. It could refer to the poet’s muse, to his bagpipe or his own fame, a mix-up that muddles the promised aspiration to laud the count. In the opening stanza the poet had invited the count to listen to his instrument’s sound. Those initial lines are already ambivalent. On the one hand, they are an elegant take-off on the traditional invocation of the muse (writer asks muse to guide his song / hold his playing hand), and on the other hand, they are a request that the muse arouse him in a sexual sense. Zampoña and clarín have the same double meaning in the dedication as the words for bird, stallion, hound (“pájaro,” “caballo,” “le-brel”); the sonorous rhymes (“rimas sonoras”) remind us that Talía is a woman; and the triumphant sound of the clarion competes with the victorious sound of horn and zither. Thus Góngora included himself in the enticement to “alterna el gusto con las musas” [Replace with the Muses today your sports][53] and surely intended to suggest also the meaning “having sexual intercourse with the Muses.” In today’s Spanish usage “alternar” still means to socialize, and “un bar de alterne” is a brothel. [54] Whereas the mystics describe union with God through metaphors of human sexual experience, Góngora—ever the pagan—uses sex as a metaphor for poetic creation. It is as if the poet, in the act of composing this lusty fable, shares in its sensuality with a little help from his muse.[55] Thus the priceless pun that the Spanish meaning of the

word “rima” [rhyme, poem] creates, extends to the three stanzas of the Dedication; the sonorous rhymes that Talía dictates allow the poet to involve himself in the eroticisms of the text. Furthermore, the direct correlation between the pleasure felt by the Count in being teased and that felt by Góngora at teasing him with his rhymes, highlights that writing is arousing for both author and spectator and that, like sex, the more one partner is aroused, the more the other one gets aroused too. As a counterpoint to these sequences of images that awaken our physical senses, the hand, the bird, the horse, exercise and tiredness, leisure and contentment, it is worth paying attention to the tension created between sound and silence. In stanza I we find the poet’s invocation to follow his inspired rhymes to the sound of a bagpipe. Stanza II contrasts in crescendo the hawk’s silent demeanor, the tinkling of his bell, the hound’s wail to the reverberating horn and the unmistakably victorious echo of the zither. Finally in stanza III silence (“silencio”)[56] and noise (“fiero canto”)[57] function interdependently on one another as the silence of the listener makes room for the rumbling song of the Cyclops. In both the opening and the closing of the dedication, music is the vehicle of the poet’s voice, blurring the boundaries between rational speech, speechless noise, and silence. We know that throughout the poem Góngora will deny his reader the stability of language. At the level of elocution he will use syntactical, rhetorical, and imagistic devices to throw the reader out of balance and force the reader to constitute the fiction without ever being allowed to stop to catch his or her breath. Yet for all these words, the poem is strikingly characterized by its lack of speech. The Count is bid to listen in silence; nonetheless what he will listen to is devoid of utterance, as nobody speaks a single word during the entire text. Polyphemus does sing, for that matter he produces a deafening pandemonium, yet there is no articulated word after the first person of the dedication becomes omniscient.[58] This is due in part to the fact that Góngora is cueing his reader to become a viewer, thus flirting with the pictorial convention that would praise a painting for being alive in every respect but for speech. Enrica Cancelliere has highlighted the analogies shared between Velázquez’s innovative poetic practice and Góngora’s. For the Italian scholar the colors and the canvases of Velázquez’s paintings exist as signifiers in their pure materiality. Likewise, for Góngora, words are taken in their heavy materiality to plastically create the form of the expression and the form of the content. In this operation colors (the real ones and all those symbolized in flowers, stones, animals, etc.) play a central role in capturing the “real” and creating a “poetics of vision” that rests on visual elements rather than content.[59] For his part, Steven Wagschal insists that Góngora’s audacity is to be found not just in the strong “plastic” component of his metaphors, but also in the hybridism that interweaves poetry and painting, developing them into a competitive relationship. The Polifemo is inscribed in the tradition of the paragone, and here Góngora competes with all genres of painting: Al enfocarse tan intensamente en lo visual, Góngora demuestra que la poesía puede superar a la pintura en la presentación del material visual, y así, usando

los propios medios de la pintura y el propio campo de ésta, la vista, revela la superioridad de la poesía.[60] [By focusing so intensely in the visual, Góngora demonstrates that poetry can surpass painting in the presentation of visual material, and thus, using the very media of painting and its own domain, sight, it reveals the superiority of poetry.] Both these insightful readings of the Fábula neglect the more theoretical aspects of the visual elements at the core of the Polifemo. Góngora mobilizes all the clichés of art criticism to induce us to apply the tools of pictorial rather than poetic language towards the unveiling of the Fábula’s mysteries. As in the medieval interpretation of Scripture, which consisted of unveiling overlapping layers of signification, Renaissance poetry offered itself as a “fictive veil” to the informed reader. Góngora adheres narrowly to this concept in the only known text where he briefly articulates his own poetic ideas, a concise epistle in which, in defense of his obscurity, he dares the reader to peel the bark (“corteza”) that envelops his poetry, to unveil what mystery it conceals.[61] What is striking here is not Góngora’s use of the very premise of Renaissance poetics, codified by Petrarch and argued at length by Boccaccio in Book 14 of the Genealogiae deorum, that poetry is a fervor [that] brings forth far-fetched and unheard-of inventions of the mind;... composes these meditations in a fixed order, adorns the whole composition with unusual interweaving of words and thoughts; and thus... covers truth with a comely veil of fable. . . . Whatever we compose under a veil . . . is poetry and poetry alone.[62] Rather, what deserves attention here is that Góngora steers his reader’s interpretive act so that it is fulfilled through the agency of pictorial techniques that were inextricably linked to the style of Titian and his school. As Mary Pardo has shown, Titian was able to realize this concept of figurative veiling at a much deeper level than any other of his contemporaries.[63] She vividly summarizes this effect: Apart from any interpretive act, the viewer’s viewing is structured into the painting’s system of concealments and disclosures. We are made complicit with the painter, and not just through the image, but through Titian’s ‘broad’ manner of painting it-his open-ended manner of constructing the image with brushes and oil paint on the canvas surface, allowing for a flow of ‘inspired’ adjustments, even radical changes, and resulting in surface-discontinuities that the viewer alone can bridge. Even when we cannot identity the various steps by which the image finally crystallized, we are made aware of them by its visible layering of strokes, in dialogue with the ridged surface of the coarse canvas favored by the artist. In this sense, the velvet curtain behind the Venus is a double for painting itself.[64]

Góngora’s tropes transcend poetic language to adopt the techniques and the effects of painting, in an ekphrastic process that will ultimately return to language only after having treated the poetic image as a system of concealments and disclosures in all ways similar to the veiling and unveiling used by Titian in his erotic paintings. Throughout the poem we are confronted with an elaborate procedure that surpasses what we customarily define as ekphrasis. Beyond its traditional connotation of textual description of anything made by nature or art, ekphrasis stands as a literary technique that is first of all relational, in that it encodes and displays the temporal and logical priority of an artifact and consequently the secondariness of a related discourse. Discourse is placed in a position of supplementarity with respect to the artifact. Michael Vincent calls the ways in which a given text tends to reveal this relationship, ekphrastic modes. He distinguishes between the iconic mode, ekphrasis as pure, static description, which attempts to display an artifact as artifact, and the poietic mode, ekphrasis that emphasizes the making of an object, and is therefore dynamic, the poet calling attention simultaneously to the art of making as well as to what is made.[65] Góngora’s Polifemo revolves around two ekphrastic descriptions, one iconic, or static, the other poietic or dynamic. As we will see, both of them thematize gaze and point of view, to ultimately tackle the complex relationship the poem institutes with its spectatorship. The static ekphrasis forcefully introduces the cyclops: VII. Un monte era de miembros eminente este (que, de Neptuno hijo fiero, de un ojo ilustra el orbe de su frente, émulo casi del mayor lucero) cíclope, a quien el pino más valiente bastón le obedecía tan ligero y al grave peso junco tan delgado, que un día era bastón y otro cayado. VIII. Negro el cabello, imitador undoso de las obscuras aguas del Leteo, al viento que lo peina proceloso vuela sin orden, pende sin aseo; un torrente es su barba impetüoso, que, adusto hijo de este Pirineo, su pecho inunda o tarde, o mal o en vano surcada aun de los dedos de su mano. IX. No la Trinacria en sus montañas fiera armó de crüeldad, calzó de viento, que redima feroz, salve ligera su piel manchada de colores ciento: pellico es ya la que en los bosques era mortal horror al que con paso lento los bueyes a su albergue reducía, pisando la dudosa luz del día.[66]

[7. A lofty mountain of limbs was this (fierce son of Neptune, illuminating the orb of his forehead with one eye, which almost competes with the greatest star)

cyclops, to whom the most valiant pine tree was obedient as a cane so light, and so slender a reed under his heavy weight, that one day it was a cane and the next a crook. 8. His black hair, wavily imitating the dark waters of Lethe, in the wind that stormily combs it flies disorderly, hangs unkempt; an impetuous torrent is his beard, which (the burnt offspring of this Pyrenee) inundates his breast, [his beard which is] either too lately, or badly, or vainly plowed even by the fingers of his hand. 9. Trinacria [Sicily] in its mountains has never armed a beast with ferocity or shod it with the wind to fiercely redeem or swiftly save its skin, marked with a hundred colors: a jacket of skins is already that [beast] which in the woods was a deadly terror for him who with slow step led the oxen back to his shelter, treading the dubious light of the day [twilight].] Treated as an enormous statue, Polyphemus’s depiction keys us to a pictorial interpretation that equates the whole poem to a painting di macchia or con borrones. Often cited as quintessentially Titianesque, this is the broad brushstroke procedure that gives a painting detailed and colorful complexity when seen from a distance, in spite of the fact that nothing but blurred blotches of color are apparent to close observation. Debates over the appropriateness of the style of colorito, and whether this should be preferred to disegno [profiling], were paramount among Spanish seventeenth century art theorists. Even though Titian continued to be unanimously admired among the critics, pintar con borrones elicited contradictory responses. Profiling was generally considered a more masterful solution, notwithstanding some critics did note the convenience of the “pintura de mancha,” when a painting was to be observed from afar. Thus, for example, in 1630, Carducho writes in his Diálogos de la pintura: y en lo colorido (que es la calidad, las sombras, y luzes que son accidentes) se hará la misma consideración en la parte que toca a la fuerza de los espíritus visivos, o especies: y así si para quatro pies de distancia fue necesario como dos el color de la mexilla (que se haze con vermellón y carmín, que los coloristas llaman frescor) para veinte pies será menester como tres, o como quatro, y lo mismo en las luzes que se hazen con albayalde, y la unión y concordancia que hazen las unas con las otras (en razon del obrar) ha de ser con mayor fuerza de su unión, ruido y es truendo en la vista; porque mediante la distancia, y la turbación del aire haga el efecto que pretende, y las sombras con mas escuridad, gastando negro puro, con ferocidad y fiereza; y esta pintura hecha por este modo, el indocto en el Arte, y poco esperimentado, le parecerán los perfiles, y proporciones llenos de sobrehuesos, y desconcertados músculos, y el colorido lleno de borrones, y colores mal colocados, y descompuestas, sin proporción ni arte: y así reparando en estas pinturas, y en sus efectos, ¿quien no conocerá, que las que están hechas con este docto artificio merecen mas superior estimacion que las otras, que con solos preceptos comunes se hazen? [67]

[and in the coloring (which is the quality, the shadows and the corresponding effects) the same considerations will be made with respect to the strength of that which is visible and the particulars: thus, if it is necessary to double the color of the cheek (which is made from vermillion and carmine and is called fresh by the coloristas) for viewing from a distance of four feet, it is necessary to triple or quadruple it for a distance of twenty feet; and likewise with the lights that are made from white lead; and the union and harmony that both have (because of working) as well as the union, noise and thunder for the gaze must be strengthened; so that, through the distance, the turmoil of the sky has the desired effect, and the shadows are obscure, applying pure black with ferocity and savagery; and to the untrained, inexperienced eye, the painting made in this way will seem profiles, swollen proportions, unbalanced muscles, and the coloring will appear full of smudges, poorly placed and indistinct colors without proportion or artfulness: and thus reflecting on these paintings and their effects, who will not realize that paintings made according to this learned artifice deserve higher praise than others, which are only made with basic precepts?] If one reads Góngora’s description of Polyphemus in light of Carducho’s quote, there emerge striking similarities between the Cyclops and pintura de borrones. To begin with, Polyphemus is a giant; hence the eye could only appreciate him from a distance. More closely, disembodied fragments of his enormous limbs would produce an unsettling feeling of chaos. His voice, the only audible voice in the poem, is “bárbaro ruïdo” [barbarous noise][68] not at all dissimilar to the “ruido y estruendo en la vista” [noise and thunder for the gaze] that a pintura de borrones requires in order to attract its viewer. Polyphemus’s hair and beard fly disorderly, stormily combed by the wind; likewise the “turbación del aire” [turmoil of the sky] between spectator and painting will create the effect of movement, enhancing the contrast between shadows and light. This effect will be heightened by the fierce and ferocious application of pure black, which recalls the giant’s scary blackness. His eminent mountain of limbs emulates the disproportionate muscles and lopsided “sobrehuesos,” bothersome growths, which Carducho identifies in this kind of painting. Furthermore, Carducho’s “colorido lleno de borrones y colores mal colocados” [coloring full of smudges and poorly placed colors] finds its counterpart in the coat of the ferocious beast “manchada de colores ciento” [marked with a hundred colors][69] that Polyphemus wears as a trophy of his own fierceness. Thus, Polyphemus’s colossal description determines the distancing and the style with which the poem in its entirety should be looked at. By treating the Cyclops as an artifact, Góngora instructs the reader to search for the invention and the poetic fury that it conceals. Each stanza contains in fact a reference to the creative powers of imitatio: Polyphemus’ single eye emulates the sun, while his wavy hair evokes the murky waters of Lethes. This playful referentiality culminates in the obscure (no pun intended) allusion to the artfulness of painting light, in a verse that over time has generated endless puzzled interpretations: “pisando la dudosa luz del día” [treading the dubious light of the day [twilight]].[70] But,

as always with Góngora, there is more: the ekphrastic description of Polyphemus places the poem outside the realm of discourse; before we can attempt to make sense of its tropes and produce sensible meaning, we are expected to see the Polifemo, to imagine it with our own means. This is the first challenge we have to overcome. Góngora asks us to constitute the fiction, while he uses syntactical, rhetorical, and imagistic devices to throw the reader out of balance. As a result, being denied the stability of language, we are reduced to our senses, mainly our vision. The reader’s responsibility to search for the mystery under the tropes becomes all the more evident in the juxtaposition of this first, iconic ekphrasis, to the second, poietic one. Framed within the poem by a very Titianesque drawing of a curtain, it narrates the lovemaking rite between Acis and Galatea. As in the background “performance” in Velázquez’s Las Hilanderas, the scene occupies the central part of the poem, a fábula within the fábula, and it displays the textured quality of a painting, or a tapestry perhaps. In contrast with the static description of Polyphemus physical aspect, this scene fully satisfies the definition of dynamic ekphrasis. While the picture described illustrates the paced progression from Galatea’s first notice of the beloved object to the climactic moment of fulfilled pleasure, the spectator also partakes of the making of an artifact: a painting, or a tapestry, of textile and textured qualities, of vivid colors and delicate profiling. XXXII. Llamáralo, aunque muda, mas no sabe el nombre articular que más querría; ni lo ha visto, si bien pincel süave lo ha bosquejado ya en su fantasía. Al pie, no tanto ya del temor grave, fía su intento y, tímida, en la umbría cama de campo y campo de batalla, fingiendo sueño al cauto garzón halla. XXXIII. El bulto vio y, haciéndolo dormido, librada en un pie toda sobre él pende, urbana al sueño, bárbara al mentido retórico silencio que no entiende: no el ave reina, así el fragoso nido corona inmóvil, mientras no desciende, rayo con plumas, al milano pollo que la eminencia abriga de un escollo, XXXIV. como la ninfa bella, compitiendo con el garzón dormido en cortesía, no sólo para, mas el dulce estruendo del lento arroyo enmudecer querría. A pesar luego de las ramas, viendo colorido el bosquejo que ya había en su imaginación Cupido hecho con el pincel que le clavó su pecho, XXXV. de sitio mejorada, atenta mira en la disposición robusta aquello que si por lo süave no la admira, es fuerza que la admire por lo bello. Del casi tramontado sol aspira

a los confusos rayos su cabello; flores su bozo es, cuyas colores, como duerme la luz, niegan las flores.[71]

[32. Although silent, she would call him, but she doesn’t know how to articulate the name which she would most like to; nor has she seen him, although a soft brush has already sketched him in her fantasy. To her foot—no longer so heavy with fear—she entrusts her attempt; and timidly, in the shady field-bed and battlefield, she finds the cunning boy feigning sleep. 33. She saw his figure and, supposing him asleep, she, balanced on one foot, hangs completely over him (kind to his sleep, uncouth with respect to the mendacious rhetorical silence which she doesn’t understand): not so motionless does the queen of birds [the eagle] hover over the craggy nest, before she plunges down—a feathered thunderbolt—upon the kite’s nestling which the peak of a rock protects, 34. as the lovely nymph, competing in courtesy with the sleeping boy, not only stands still, but would like to silence the sweet noise of the slow-moving brook. Then, despite the branches seeing colored the sketch which Cupid had already made in her imagination with the brush which had pierced her breast, 35. having improved her position, she attentively looks, in his robust lines, at that which, if it doesn’t amaze her because of its delicacy, necessarily amazes her because of its beauty. His hair competes with the vague rays of the sun which has almost set; his downy lip is like flowers, whose colors, since the light sleeps, are withheld by the flowers.] Once again, it is difficult to miss the painterly allusions: Cupid’s arrow is a paintbrush that “bosqueja,” or sketches, an imagined portrait of Acis in Galatea’s heart. The equation arrow = brush is sufficiently relevant to be repeated two stanzas later. At first, as I just mentioned, Cupid imprints Acis’ image in Galatea’s eye.[72] Subsequently, eighteen verses below, Galatea will compare her mental “bosquejo” [sketch][73] with the young man she is observing. In both instances, critical keywords, “bosquejo” and “pincel” [brush][74] are repeated in the same order. The second time, however, “colorido” [colored] further qualifies “bosquejo,” as if Cupid’s delicate profiling had been wisely spread with paint. During these eighteen verses, Galatea has been shifting position, until she has found a better-suited perspective to study the sleeping Acis. Inventor in her imagination of an object of desire, spectator of the artifact she just created, and artifact herself, as part of the painting that encapsulates her fiction, Galatea impersonates the triangulation between artist, artifact and audience, as she herself identifies with all of them. Thus the inextricable relationship between imagination, gaze and point of view is constantly submitted to our scrutiny, meant to serve as an interpretive grid through which to extricate ourselves from the poem’s metaphorical maze.[75] XL. Sobre una alfombra que imitara en vano el tirio sus matices (si bien era

de cuantas sedas ya hiló, gusano, y artífice tejió la primavera) reclinados, al mirto más lozano una y otra lasciva, si ligera, paloma se caló, cuyos gemidos, trompas de Amor, alteran sus oídos. XLI. El ronco arrullo al joven solicita, mas con desvíos Galatea suaves a su audacia los términos limita y el aplauso al concento de las aves. Entre las ondas y la fruta imita Acis al siempre ayuno en penas graves: que en tanta gloria, infierno son no breve fugitivo cristal pomos de nieve. XLII. No a las palomas concedió Cupido juntar de sus dos picos los rubíes, cuando al clavel el joven atrevido las dos hojas le chupa carmesíes. Cuantas produce Pafo, engendra Gnido, negras vïolas, blancos alhelíes, llueven sobre el que Amor quiere que sea tálamo de Acis y de Galatea.[76]

[40. They having reclined upon a carpet whose colors the Tyrian would imitate in vain (although it was made only of the silks spun by Springtime as a worm and woven by her as an artisan), upon the leafiest myrtle first one and then another dove, lasciviously if swiftly, alights, and their moans—Love’s trumpets—disturb their ears. 41. The hoarse cooing excites the youth; but Galatea, with gentle evasion, sets limits to his audacity and limits his applause to the birds’ harmony. Caught between the waves and the fruit, Acis imitates him who was always hungry in great torment [Tantalus]: for, in such a heaven, no slight hell is fleeing crystal and snowy apples. 42. Hardly did Cupid permit the doves to join the rubies of their two beaks when the daring youth sucks the carnation’s two red petals. All the dark violets and the white gilliflowers produced by Paphos and begotten by Gnidos [cities sacred to Venus] rain down upon what Love wants now to be a bridal couch for Acis and Galatea.] As Dámaso Alonso observed many years ago, these three stanzas constitute the most sensual passage of all Spanish Golden Age poetry.[77] Martin’s erotic reading of them, lingers on the intensity communicated by the verb “chupar” [to suck]: “En las estrofas mencionadas del Polifemo [ . . . ] todo parece conducir al momento del profundo beso en que Acis literalmente absorbe la boca de Galatea, y con ello se sugiere la unión de sus cuerpos” [In the stanzas mentioned from the Polifemo [ . . . ] it all seems to lead to the moment of the deep kiss in which Acis literally absorbs the mouth of Galatea, and with it the union of their bodies is suggested].[78] Critics generally have dismissed the fact that the fine, fuzzy petals of a carnation share many more visual and literary connotations with the multi-petaled contours of female

genitalia than with the fleshy fullness of oral lips. “Hojas,” [leaves][79] like “rimas” [rhymes][80] visually recall an elongated shape while conceptually relate to the thinness of a metal blade, or paper, thus evoking the leafy aperture of inner labia, a body part that is much more likely to be “chupado” [sucked] than a mouth.[81] In which case, this “profundo beso” [deep kiss] does not need to suggest anything else. It does not symbolize “la union de sus cuerpos”––I imagine Martin implies coitus—but rather concretely describes an episode of oral sex. The key to this reading is encoded in the previous stanza. The meaning of the two verses “a su audacia los términos limita / y el aplauso al concento de las aves” [with gentle evasion, sets limits to his audacity and limits his applause to the birds’ harmony][82] has been debated at length. It is the word “aplauso” [applause][83] that confuses critics. Is Góngora using the Latin verb plaudo [to clap] in its rare specific meaning of “flapping wings” and plauso as “noise that birds, especially doves produce when flapping their wings”? Or would it perhaps be more plausible that Góngora used plaudo with the meaning of “caressing”?[84] The main lexical signification of plaudo, however, is “to clap, beat, of two bodies struck together.”[85] Albeit plaudo is not documented, other verbs connoting “beating” and “pounding” are found in Latin elegiac poets with clear allusion to copulation.[86] Acis is aroused––literally hard—by the unequivocally sexual moans of the doves. The qualification of the birds as lascivious makes the scene very explicit. But this, Góngora tells us, will not be a rape. The doves rest on a myrtle, the tree that iconographically stands as an emblem for marriage but that symbolizes the clitoris, signaling thus the centrality of female pleasure in the scene.[87] In fact, when Acis prepares to penetrate Galatea, she gently diverts his attention, limiting his audacity, and leaving consummation to the birds. Taking control of the action, the nymph steers Acis toward her vulva. Once more, the word “atrevido” [daring][88] signals the explicitness of the scene. Galatea’s centrality is iconic of the very poetics of Góngora. In this role, it is not an accident that she never speaks. Góngora’s departure from the Ovidian paradigm, where speech is always at the center of the action––think of Galatea narrating in first person her lust for the young man and her disgust for the giant—serves to project the Spanish poem away from the violence of the Latin tale, but it also reminds the reader that pleasure of the senses does not depend on a verbal world. Lynn Enterline interrogates the deeply influential connections between rhetoric and sexuality in Ovid’s text;[89] and she demonstrates the foundational, yet often disruptive, force that his tropes for the voice exert on early modern poetry, particularly on early modern representations of the self, the body, and erotic life. Ovid’s tropes of the voice are represented as a productive yet potentially violent distortion of the world (and body) it claims to represent. If in Ovid the repression of the voice signifies subjugation of the body, if Ovid uses stories about bodily violation to dramatize the vicissitudes of language, could it be assumed that the silent scenes of Góngora’s Polifemo symbolically define a space of nonviolence? The Polifemo, as many other Renaissance interpretations of the Metamorphoses, is captivated by the trope of the

voice, yet it will engage it with a provocative twist.[90] In the Metamorphoses the voice of a sorrowful Galatea narrates an act of violence that occurred in the past, like a flashback.[91] In the Polifemo the action occurs forward, narrated from without the poem. The language is so descriptive that even though events unravel rapidly the reader has the impression of a pictorial stillness. The violent act that is central to Ovid’s tale in the Polifemo takes place in the penultimate stanza and the poem ends abruptly after that. Notably, in this very stanza both Acis and Galatea speak for the first time, she to summon her sisters the sea nymphs, and he in an agonizing invocation to be saved.[92] By displacing the narration away from the disruption of the violent ending, and by sparing his characters from the suffering of “telling,” Góngora contemplates a privileged bodily state, one of such undisturbed pleasure that in its intact completion is Lacanianly pre-speech, necessarily pre-violence. This privileged bodily state, the poem tells us, can temporarily be attained through self-pleasure. To the poet sexual arousal will bring about communion with the muse, creative inspiration. The Count in turn will obtain peaceful rest, oblivious to the demands of a companion. Galatea, for her part, will experience the uncoerced fulfillment often denied to women. At the same time, the thematization of pleasure as self-pleasure, nonviolent and silent, raises once again the question at the center of the poem, that of the audience to whom it was addressed. If we agree that the text constructs a metaphoric erotic, that its intentional eroticism is more than an allusion, then we have to take seriously its implication: who is expected to get aroused by the description of love-making? As I have argued throughout this essay, every clue brings us to the conclusion that the poem’s intended audience was the aristocratic elite, who assumed the union of art and literature in all of life’s manifestations––the public and the private—, who was conversant with the theoretical vocabulary of rhetoric for all the arts, who was used to the use of mythology to sexually elicit the senses, and who delighted in the collection of objects of art not only as a public display of their status but also as aids to personal leisure. I do agree with Adrienne Martin, however, in wanting to expand the boundaries of that audience to also include the possibility of a female gaze, partaking of such pleasures although perhaps not directly involved in patronage practices.[93] In the case of a painting, a reclining nude for instance, whether mythological or much more rarely secular, we have clear evidence of male patronage—The Venus of Urbino was purchased by Guidobaldo della Rovere; Titian’s second Danae (figure 1.1) was for Philip II. on the other hand, as Rona Goffen has argued, beginning with Titian’s Venus predecessor of 1504–1509, the Sleeping Venus of Giorgione, whether or not the purchaser is a male patron, the subject is female pleasure.[94] These paintings, designed to adorn bedrooms and private galleries, would still be accessible to female viewers. Not only would they be accessible to female viewers, but more importantly, they were meant as an invitation to high-born women to prepare themselves for sexual enjoyment. Likewise Gongora’s tropes straightforwardly imply the likelihood of erotic pleasure on both parts. When Galatea looks at the beauty of

Acis, however that might be interpreted, we are being shown a woman’s sexual arousal. And if the masculine gaze will be tickled by the image of Galatea playing with Acis’s genitalia, there is concomitantly the possibility of a feminine audience becoming aroused not only by the virile beauty of Acis’s “member,” but also by the momentary power that the action itself provides. This power is prolonged when Galatea avoids a more typically masculine quick penetration and gently forces Acis to cunnilingus. Enterline observes that Ovid’s stories fascinate contemporary feminists writing about female subversion and resistance much as they once did medieval and early modern writers preoccupied with stories about love and male poetic achievement. In my opinion the Polifemo engages the discourse of feminism in an innovative way, by confronting issues of male versus female sexuality from a position that foregrounds the congenial aspects of love-making rather than the domineering ones. For this reason perhaps Góngora changes the critical language with which to interpret the poem, from poetic to pictorial. Confronted with the fact that the poem bares the limits of language, the rhetorical tension between aesthetics and violence, speakable and unspeakable, he tests those limits by adding a visual dimension. Fortunately, when read with a pictorial idiom in mind, Góngora’s encoded solution to the linguistic trompe l’oeil becomes apparent. Indeed the insertion of a poetic invention that was not in Ovid signals the different interpretive code the ekphrasis calls for. The poietic ekphrasis almost acrostically guides us to the lifting of the fictive veil of poetry. The narration thematizes the process of intellectual recognition that happens when the veil is lifted. It begins when the wind draws its imaginary curtain to reveal the grassy bed where Acis will feign sleep. From there a series of recognitions will ensue: Galatea will recognize Acis from the portrait in her heart, Acis will wake up in recognition of the nymph’s presence. During their lovemaking Galatea will recognize pleasure while Acis will accept control. From without the framed fábula Polyphemus will confront betrayal and pain, and finally from without the text the reader will unveil the mystery. María Cristina Cabani notes that in the Polifemo the linguistic fabric is totally literary but concomitantly not at all allusive.[95] Imitation, understood as inclusion in the tradition, is a “pretextual” element, a question of code rather than language. Góngora foresees only one kind of reader, the hypercompetent, he who has the tools and the abilities to peel the bark and unveil what the difficulty of the littera conceals. The intertextual dimension is not an acquisition that this reader discovers and enjoys as a conquest, because had he not possessed the tradition, like one possesses a language, he would not be able to understand the text. El reconocimiento, más que una operación que proporciona satisfacción, es un acto obligado, y el placer se concentra por completo en la conquista del sentido, en la nueva relación instituida con una realidad deformada, pero al mismo tiempo referencial, más que con el substrato literario.[96] [Recognition, more than an operation that provides satisfaction, is an obligatory act, and the pleasure is completely concentrated in the conquest of the meaning,

in the new relation established with the deformed, but at the same time referential, reality, more than with the literary substratum] I agree with Cabani that the pleasure of interpretation does not stem from the conquest of meaning. It rather resides in the discovery, beyond the literary substratum, of the directness and explicitness of painting. Under the allusive veil there is not a deformed reality, there is a painted reality. Ut pictura poesis.

NOTES 1. Much has been written on the Polifemo. The quality and quantity of criticism may make any attempt to study yet another aspect of the poem seem futile. Steven Wagschal helpfully sorts the main views of the Polifemo under three categories: “The first, which characterizes both Dámaso Alonso's and A. Parker's interpretations of the poem, is said to concern opposing dualisms (monstrosity/beauty, darkness/ light, love/jealousy) united and balanced in an organic whole. According to the second view, the positive values in this dualism are celebrated; for R. O. Jones, these are beauty and life, while for Robert Jammes, they are love and other pastoral ideals. The third holds that the negative values of the dualism triumph; for instance, Melinda Eve Lehrer interprets much of Góngora's poetry, including the Polifemo, as ‘beautiful pastorale[s] . . . built up and then shattered’”(Wagschal, “‘Mas no cabrás allá’: Góngora's Early Modern Representation of the Modern Sublime,” Hispanic Review 70, no. 2 [Spring, 2002]: 169). Other interpretations focus on the stylistic violence of the poem; R. John McCaw's recent article, for instance, treats the poem's subversion of pastoral: “The contradiction between Polyphemus’ words and deeds, then, signif[ies] the triumph of instinct over intellect, and, generally, the deflation of the integrity of pastoral ideals” (“Turning a Blind Eye: Sexual Competition, Self-Contradiction and the Impotence of Pastoral in Góngora’s Fabula de Polifemo y Galatea,” Hispanófila 127 [1999]: 32). For an up-to-date bibliography see Jesús Ponce Cárdena’s edition of Luis de Góngora y Argote’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (Madrid: Cátedra, 2010), 145–51. Antonio Vilanova’s monumental work Las fuentes y los temas del ‘Polifemo’ de Góngora (Madrid: CSIC, 1957), remains an indispensable tool for navigating the extensive criticism on the poem from the time of its composition to the mid-twentieth century. 2. Edward H. Friedman, “Creative Space: Ideologies of Discourse in Gongora's Polifemo,” in Cultural Authority in Golden Age Spain, eds. Marina S. Brownlee and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 53. 3. Many critics place eros and desire at the center of their analysis of the Polifemo. See, among the most recent: Jesús Ponce Cárdenas, El tapiz narrativo del Polifemo: Eros y elipsis (Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2010); Mary Barnard, “The Gaze and the Mirror: Vision, Desire and Identity in Góngora’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea” Calíope 8.1 (2002): 69–85. More in line with my own analysis is the beautiful article by Adrienne Martin, “Góngora y la visualización del cuerpo erótico” in Góngora Hoy IX. “Ángel fieramente humano.” Góngora y la mujer, ed. Joaquín Roses (Córdoba: Diputación de Córdoba, 2007), especially 278–79 and 285–86, where she talks about “erotismo cromático.” This approach takes its impetus from the seminal work of Robert Jammes, who as early as 1967 had acutely noted that Góngora may have written Polifemo because it offered the opportunity to treat risqué subjects cloaked in the fictions of classical mythology: “el recurso a la libertad del paganismo hacía más plausible lo que, situado en el mundo contemporáneo y cristiano, hubiera sido difícilmente tolerable” [the recourse to the freedom of paganism made more plausible that which, in the contemporary Christian world, would have been hardly tolerable] (La obra poética de don Luis de Góngora y Argote, trans. Manuel Moya [Madrid: Castalia, 1987], 458–59). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 4. See for instance, Poesía erótica del Siglo de Oro, ed. Pierre Alzieu et al. (Barcelona: Crítica, 2000); Antonio Carreira, Nuevos poemas atribuidos a Góngora (Barcelona: Sirmio-Quaderns Crema, 1994); Marcia Welles, Arachne’s Tapestry: The Transformation of Myth in Seventeenth Century Spain (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1986); María Cristina Quintero, Poetry as Play. Gongorismo and the Comedia (Amsterdam: Purdue

University Monographs in Romance Languages, 1991); Emilie Bergman, “Violencia, Voyeurismo y genética: Versiones de la sexualidad en Góngora y Sor Juana,” in Venus venerada. Tradiciones eróticas de la literatura española, ed. José Ignacio Díez Fernández, et al. (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 2006), 89–106; and Crystal Chemris, “Violence, Eros and Lyric Emotion in Góngora’s Soledades,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 37 (2003): 463–85, which discusses sexual violence and rape in the Soledades. 5. In a recent essay discussing the preeminence that Golden Age poetry attributed to the erotic imagination over sensual experience to ignite sexual excitement, Ignacio Navarrete notes that “la mitología, el sueño, el conceptismo y otros recursos retóricos y poéticos sirven para alejar la descripción concreta de la imaginación amorosa; son técnicas que funcionan como señal que indica que esto es aceptable por ser poesía y que no es puramente pornografía” [mythology, dreams, conceptismo and other rhetorical and poetic recourses serve to distance the concrete description from the amorous imagination; they are techniques that function as a sign that indicates that this is acceptable because it is poetry and that it is not purely pornography] (“La poesía erótica y la imaginación visual,” in Venus venerada. Tradiciones eróticas de la literatura española, ed. José Ignacio Díez and Adrienne L. Martín [Madrid: Editorial Computense, 2006], 82). 6. Ángel Luis Luján Atienza, Las voces de Proteo. Teoría y práctica poética en el Siglo de Oro (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2008), 302. 7. Ibid. 8. Classical rhetoric considered the treatment of a genus turpe, opposed and separated from the genus honestum, from different viewpoints: ethical, judicial and decorous. See Heinrich Lausberg, Manual de retórica literaria (Madrid: Gredos, 1966), §64. In practice Golden Age manuals of rhetoric only explained and regulated honest and serious discourse. For a detailed discussion of onesto vs. disonesto in Italian Renaissance discourse about the erotic, see Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions. On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 101–24. 9. Lausberg, Manual, §1056-57. 10. The most scandalous renaissance print erotica, I modi, combines “high” style and “low” content (“anonymous” men and women). Less scandalous, because more overtly “high” in content (classical deities with recognizable attributes), was Caraglio’s no less sexually explicit “Loves of the gods” (Talvacchia, Taking Positions, 158–60). 11. Carteggio inedito d’artisti dei secoli XIV, XV e XVI, ed. Giobanni Gaye (Firenze: Molini, 1839), 2:332. 12. Ponce Cárdenas, El tapiz narrativo del Polifemo; “Introducción,” to Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea, by Luis de Góngora, ed. Jesús Ponce Cárdenas (Madrid: Cátedra, 2010), 62–70; and “Góngora y el Conde de Niebla. Las sutiles gestiones del mecenazgo,” Criticón 106 (2009): 131–32. 13. This is not the place to discuss whether the use of the name epyllion is misleading and whether as a defined genre it has any foundation in antiquity. In a famous article, Walter Allen argued that the term “epyllion” has no proper place in the critical vocabulary, as our use of the name has no foundation in classical antiquity nor there has been any success in ascribing common literary characteristics to the poems usually classed as epyllia. He proposed to regard these poems as results of the Alexandrian fondness for mixed poetical genera (“The Epyllion: A Chapter in the History of Literary Criticism,” Transactions of the Americam Philological Association 71 [1940]: 1). 14. Franco Ferrucci, “Il mito,” Letteratura Italiana 5. Le Questioni (Torino: Einaudi, 1982), 529–36. 15. Georgia Brown, Redefining Elizabethan Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 105. 16. Brown, Redefining, 106. 17. See Peter Smith, “A ‘Consummation Devoutly to Be Wished’: The Erotics of Narration in Venus and Adonis,” Shakespeare Survey 53: Shakespeare and Narrative, ed. Peter Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 25–38. 18. I use “pornography” here with the definition given by Talvacchia: “a modern system of discourse that creates and defines a category of unsanctioned sexual representation, and I am warned not to substitute it for the discourse engaged in the sixteenth century in Italy. Since both the particular application of the word pornography and the specific discourse it defines are modern inventions, they should not be imposed anachronistically on earlier periods,

especially since such an imposition usually ends up substituting our values for those of other times. Yet it is undeniable that most societies have rigorously designated certain kinds of sexual representation as offensive, and have prohibited or strictly controlled some of them. Further, there were in earlier periods debates and struggles to determine the classification of the unsanctioned and the illicit” (Taking Positions, 104). 19. On the conceptual evolution of the theory of decorum, from the considerations about the appropriateness of displaying art solely based on formal preoccupations to the inclusion of concerns about its suitable placement based on morality and decency, see Palma Martínez-Burgos García, “El decoro. La invención de un concepto y su proyección artística,” Revista de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia 2 (1988): 91–102. On the development of two distinct iconic circuits, one, public, widespread and socially undifferentiated, and the other, private, circumscribed and socially elevated, see Carlo Ginzburg, “Titian, Ovid, and Sixteenth-Century Codes for Erotic Illustration,” in Titian’s “Venus of Urbino,” ed. Rona Goffen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 23–36. 20. Dedication of Las Transformaciones de Ouidio (Anvers, 1595) by the editor Pedro Bellero to Estevan de Yvarra, Philip’s II secretary. Quoted in Fernando Checa, Tiziano y la monarquía hispánica. Usos y funciones de la pintura veneciana en España, siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Nerea, 1994), 98. 21. Checa, Tiziano, 98. 22. Checa, Tiziano, 99. 23. Titian, letter sent to Philip in 1554 (Quoted in Checa, Tiziano, 99). 24. Checa, Tiziano, 99. Titian’s contemporaries were well aware of his mythological paintings’ erotic appeal. Nevertheless, critics have continued to disagree over the meaning and intent of the six poesie that the painter sent to Philip II between 1553 and 1562. Anne Cruz’ s insightful essay in this same volume discusses how the poesie may be also seen as permeated by the implications inherent to contemporary occurrences and how they can be contextualized by the historical time frame in which they were completed, delivered, and viewed. 25. Referring to Javier Portús, Cruz (chapter 1 of this volume) comments that while Philip II celebrated the pagan beauty of Titian’s art, his son, Philip III (1599–1621), hid the poesie away from view, ordering the nudes immediately covered whenever the queen or other women approached. Since the Polifemo was composed during the reign of Philip III, one could speculate that one of Góngora’s intentions could have been that of offering a poetic artifact that could serve the same purpose as the currently invisible poesie, that of titillating the senses through the deconstruction of complex visual or, in the case of the Polifemo, linguistic metaphors. 26. For an interpretation of the poem that posits in the Cyclops’ one-eyed gaze an “inability to see,” thus demarcating the temporal and textual parenthesis that allows Acis and Galatea’s lovemaking, see Julio Baena, “Tiempo pasado y tiempo presente: De la presencia a la estereofonía en la Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea,” Calíope 2.1 (1996): 70–99. 27. A recent treatment of the dedication can be found in Ponce Cárdenas, who argues that these three initial octaves “cumplen con los rituales propios de la epopeya (proposito de la materia cantada, declaración de una poesía inspirada por la musa)” [fulfill the rituals proper to the epic purpose of the material being sung, declaration of poetry inspired by a muse)] while at the same time “ofrecen una estampa soberbia de don Manuel en el marco formado por el edificio de la cetrería” [offer a prideful stamp of don Manuel on the falconry framework] (“Góngora y el Conde de Niebla,” 131). 28. Luis de Góngora y Argote, Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea, ed. Jesús Ponce Cárdenas (Madrid: Cátedra, 2010), vv. 1-8; Elías L. Rivers, ed., Renaissance and Baroque Poetry of Spain (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1966), 164. All citations of the Fábula refer to line number in Ponce Cárdenas’s edition of the Spanish text, followed by reference to the page number in the English prose translation from the anthology edited by Rivers. 29. Góngora, Fábula, v. 1; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 30. Andrés Cuesta, Notas al Polifemo, fol. 282 r., quoted in Góngora, Fábula, 179. See also, Dámaso Alonso, Góngora y el Polifemo (Madrid: Gredos, 1967), 3:40. 31. Góngora, Fábula, v. 1; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 32. Sheila Delany, The Naked Text: Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 127.

33. “Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere versu / nostra neque erubuit silvas habitare Thalea” [My Muse first deigned to sport in Sicilian strains, and blushed not to dwell in the woods] (Virgil, “Eclogue 6” in Eclogues, Geogrics, Aeneid I-VI, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999] vv. 1–2); “Pollio amat nostram, quamvis est rustica, Musam” [Pollio loves my Muse, homely though she be] (Virgil, “Eclogue 3,” v. 84). 34. Góngora, Fábula, v. 2; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 35. Stefan Van den Broeck, “Foulmouthed Shepherds: Sexual Overtones as a Sign of Urbanitas in Virgil’s Bucolica 2 and 3,” Electronic Antiquity 12.2 (May 2009): 2–12. 36. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 5-8; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 37. Góngora, Fábula, v. 7; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 38. Ponce Cárdenas, “Góngora y el Conde de Niebla,” 132. 39. Ibid. 40. Góngora, Fábula, v. 6; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 41. Góngora, Fábula, v. 6; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 42. Dámaso Alonso, Góngora, 3:42–43. 43. Pierre Alzieu, Robert Jammes, and Yvan Lissorgues, eds., Poesía erótica del Siglo de Oro (Barcelona: Crítica, 1984). José Luis Alonso classifies those semantic fields most commonly exploited as sources of erotic metaphors in “Claves para la formación del léxico erótico” Edad de Oro 9 (1990): 7–18; among these of course conspicuously stands war and battle terminology along with terms relating to fire and burning. Well represented, nonetheless, are the similes to hunting and playing an instrument, especially a wind instrument. 44. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 7–8; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 45. Valter Boggione and Giovanni Casalegno, Dizionario letterario del lessico amoroso. Metafore, eufemismi, trivialismi (Torino: Utet, 2000). 46. Góngora, Fábula, v. 8; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 47. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 9-20; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 48. “Templado:” Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco offers several meanings all related to the semantic fields of musical instruments, hunting and weapons: “Vale acordar y poner en su punto las cuerdas de las vihuelas, los caños de los órganos y de los demás instrumentos. Témplase también el hierro [ . . . ] Templar el halcón, término de cazadores” [It is the same as to tune and to adjust the strings of vihuelas, the organ pipes and other instruments. To temper iron [ . . . ] To temper the falcon, a hunting term] (Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra [Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2006], s.v. “templar”; Covarrubias, Tesoro, s.v. “freno,” cf. “frenillo,” also referred to the string of skin that attaches the foreskin to the penis. “Oro” recalls Jupiter’s golden shower on Danae, thus staying for ejaculation. “Tascar”: “Comer de socapa y a excusadas, como si uno se arrebozase la capa para disimular y debajo de ella comiese. Esta palabra se dijo de tasca, nombre italiano que vale talega” [To eat secretly and under cover as if concealing oneself with a cloak to eat underneath it so as to dissimulate. This word comes from the Italian, tasca, meaning sack] (Covarrubias, Tesoro, s.v. “tascar”). By extension then to “enter” a pocket furtively. See Boggione and Casalegno, Dizionario letterario, s.v. “tasca” (=female sexual organ). 49. Translations:“Alcandara” is an interesting case: “Alcándara,” proparoxytone, connotes “…la percha o el varal donde ponen los halcones y aves de volatería” (Covarrubias, Tesoro, s.v. “alcándara”). But “alcandara,” paroxytone, refers to a type of underwear. In Ms. Chacón the word appears without a diacritical sign that would cue the reader to one pronunciation, thus leaving to the reader the choice of meaning without interfering with the rhythm and syllabic count of the verse. 50. Perhaps to date the most extensive repertory of Spanish erotic literature and its lexicon––of difficult and mysterious consultation—is José Antonio Cerezo, Literatura erótica en España. Repertorio de obras 1519–1936 (Madrid: Ollero y Ramos, 2001); José Ignacio Díez Fernández has been working on erotic poetry of the Siglo de Oro and his book La poesía erótica de los Siglos de Oro (Madrid: Laberinto, 2003), opens new approaches to creating a corpus of erotic early modern Spanish poetry. Díez Fernández discusses the concept and the critical uses of the

terms “eroticism” vs. “pornography” when applied to Golden Age literature in “Asedios al concepto de literatura erotica,” in Venus venerada: tradiciones eróticas de la literatura española, ed. Díez Fernández (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 2006), 1–18. Ponce Cárdenas proposes an analysis of the erotic vocabulary that he finds interspersed in burlesque epyllia of the Golden Age. In contrast to this still meager landscape, Shakespearean studies and a prolific vein of studies on Italian Renaissance erotica offer a much richer perspective of the use of sexual puns in literature. See, for instance: Pauline Kiernan, Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Most Outrageous Sexual Puns (New York: Gotham Books, 2007); Frankie Rubinstein, A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and Their Significance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); Peter Smith, “A‘Consummation Devoutly to Be Wished:’ The Erotics of Narration in Venus and Adonis,” in Shakespeare Survey 53: Shakespeare and Narrative, ed. Peter Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Boggione and Casalegno, Dizionario letterario; Valter Boggione and Giovanni Casalegno, Dizionario storico del lessico italiano. Metafore, eufemismi, oscenità, dopi sensi, parole dotte e parole basse in otto secoli di letteratura italiana (Milano: Longanesi, 1996); Talvacchia, Taking Positions. 51. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 21-24; Rivers, Renaissance, 164–65. 52. Góngora, Fábula, v. 22. 53. Góngora, Fábula, v. 21; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 54. Robert Ball, “Góngora’s Parodies of Literary Convention,” (dissertation, Yale University, 1976), 592–95. 55. Luján Atienza, Voces de Proteo, 310, notes that Góngora likes to include himself in his poems to confuse the reader, but I don’t think that the reader is that confused here. 56. Góngora, Fábula, v. 18. 57. Ibid., v. 20. 58. Enrica Cancelliere, Góngora, percosi della visione (Palermo: Flaccovio, 1990), 76–94, analyzes the many implications of sound in the poem, at the phonetic level of the poetic expression and at the figurative level of its description. Julio Baena sees Poliphemus’s song as a parenthesis that provides the text with the possibility of “stereophony.” The song allows Góngora to keep in coexistent “present,” rather than in narrative sequence, the Cyclops’s lament and the loving scene between Acis and Galatea: “Góngora recoge esa simultaneidad como la gran fuerza de la fábula: por una parte el cíclope que canta solo. Por otra, los amantes que constituyen la más plena realización [ . . . ] de aquello cuya ausencia forma no sólo el canto de Polifemo sino el hecho de que cante” [Góngora brings together this simultaneity as the great force of the fable: on one hand the Cyclops that sings alone. On the other, the lovers that constitute the fullest realization [ . . . ] of that whose absence forms not only the song of Polyphemus, but the fact that he sings] (Baena, “Tiempo pasado,” 83). 59. Cancelliere, Góngora, 97-97. 60. Steven Wagschal, “El Polifemo, la ékfrasis y el arte europeo,” In Colección de estudios gongorinos, ed. Joaquín Roses (Córdoba: Exma. Diputación de Córdoba, 2005), 3:79. 61. Luis de Góngora y Argote, “Respuesta de don Luis de Góngora,” in Obras completas, ed. Antonio Carreira, (Madrid: Fundación José Antonio de Castro, 2000), 2:295–98. 62. Charles Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry. Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Books of Boccaccio’s Genealogia Deorum Gentilium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1930), 39. 63. Mary Pardo, “Artifice as Seduction in Titian,” in Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe: Institutions, Texts, Images, ed. James Grantham Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 88. 64. Ibid., 88. 65. Michael Vincent, “Between Ovid and Barthes: Ekphrasis, Orality, Textuality in Ovid’s Arachne,” Arethusa 27 (1994), 368–69. 66. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 49–72; Rivers, Renaissance, 166–67. 67. Vicente Carducho, Diálogos de la pintura: su defensa, origen, esencia, definición, modos y diferencias, ed. Francisco Calvo Serraller (Madrid: Turner, 1979), 265–66. 68. Góngora, Fábula, v. 90; Rivers, Renaissance, 168.

69. Góngora, Fábula, v. 68; Rivers, Renaissance, 167. 70. Góngora, Fábula, v. 72; Rivers, Renaissance, 167. On the corporality of light in the poem, see Jorge Guillén’s observations and his editors’ comments in Notas para una edición comentada de Góngora, eds. Antonio Piedra and Juan Bravo (Valladolid: Fundación Jorge Guillén, 2002), 145. 71. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 249-80; Rivers, Renaissance, 174–76. 72. Góngora, Fábula, v. 252. 73. Góngora, Fábula, v. 270; Rivers, Renaissance, 175. 74. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 251, 272; Rivers, Renaissance, 174, 175. 75. Adrienne Martin proposes a reading of the earlier stanzas (13–14) that describe Galatea that also tightly connects Titian’s mythological poems to the Polifemo. In her analysis, Góngora uses a very “Titianesque” descriptive vocabulary of the feminine body to create the same sexual elicitation of the senses that the Venetian painter’s “poesie” were supposed to provoke. She labels this technique in Góngora “erotismo cromático” (A. Martin, “Góngora,” 277–79). 76. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 313-36; Rivers, Renaissance, 177–78. 77. Góngora y el Polifemo, 3:207. 78. A. Martin, “Góngora,” 286. 79. Góngora, Fábula, v. 332; Rivers, Renaissance, 178. 80. Góngora, Fábula, v. 1; Rivers, Renaissance, 164. 81. Bothered by the concreteness of the image, Dámaso Alonso writes: “La comparación de una bella boca con el clavel es vulgar” (Góngora y el Polifemo, 3:213). 82. Góngora, Fábula, vv. 323–24; Rivers, Renaissance, 177. 83. Góngora, Fábula, v. 324; Rivers, Renaissance, 177. 84. Alonso, Góngora y el Polifemo, 3:207-8. 85. Lexicon of the Latin Language, Compiled Chiefly from the Magnum Totius Latinitatis Lexicon. ed. F. P. Leverett (Boston: J. H. Wilkins and R. B. Carter, 1838), s.v. “Plaudo.” 86. J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1982), 145–49. 87. See Pierio Valeriano, Hieroglyphica. Sive de sacris Aegyptiorum literis commentarii (Basel, 1556), an important encyclopedic treatise on symbols that Góngora must have used. About the myrtle tree Valeriano writes: “Myrtum pudendi muliebris habere fignificatum. [ . . . ] Sed Myrtum Pollux carunculam intra pudendum muliebre ponit lasciuo quo dam motu interim subsultantem” (Hieroglyphica, 373f). 88. Góngora, Fábula, v. 331; Rivers, Renaissance, 178. 89. Lynn Enterline, The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 90. After demonstrating the complex connections between Ovid's rhetorical strategies in the Metamorphoses and his distinctive way of portraying the human voice, Enterline turns to Renaissance works in which tropes for the voice allow each author to restage, in his own way, many of the dilemmas central to Ovid’s representation of subjectivity, sexuality, and gender. However, she chooses texts in which desecrated and dismembered bodies are imagined to find a way to signify, to call us to account for the labile, often violent, relationship between rhetoric and sexuality as it was codified, transmitted, and rewritten in an Ovidian mode. Enterline argues that Ovid’s rhetoric of the body––in particular his fascination with scenes of alienation from one’s own tongue––profoundly troubled Renaissance representations of authorship as well as otherwise functional conceptions about what counts as the difference between male and female experience (Enterline, The Rhetoric of the Body, 40–48). 91. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2010), 13.760–68. 92. Góngora, Fábula, 62.1–8. 93. A. Martin, “Góngora,” 275. 94. Rona Goffen, ed., “Sex, Space and Social History in Titian’s Venus of Urbino,” in Titian Venus of Urbino, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 65–77.

95. Maria Cristina Cabani, El gran ojo de Polifemo. Visión y voyeurismo en la tradición barroca de un mito clásico (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2007). 96. Ibid., 47.

Chapter 3 HERCULES AND THE STATUE GARDEN Frederick A. de Armas Sansón Carrasco’s Ekphrastic and Imperial Contests in Don Quijote II.14 Sansón Carrasco can be regarded as Don Quijote’s main antagonist in Part II of Cervantes’s novel not only because he strives to defeat the mad gentleman in a knightly contest, but more importantly because he seeks to deflate, mock, erase, and surpass the hidalgo’s mental images of his knightly self. Sansón’s strategy is thus to mimic legends, romances of chivalry, mythological tales, classical texts, and even biblical passages that had served to construct Don Quijote’s persona. The very name of the graduate from Salamanca foregrounds the struggle for ascendancy. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, two heroes were often pitted against each other in the popular imagination: the biblical Samson and the classical Hercules. Treatises were written as to who had greater strength and valor, and they were placed next to each other in statuaries.[1] Since Don Quijote sees himself as Hercules, Sansón will try to deflate this notion and mock the knight’s pretensions. Don Quijote, however, appears not to understand the bachiller’s wily attacks. He thus opens himself to very insidious challenges. This essay will focus on one specific circumstance in which Sansón, with great cunning, attempts to quash Don Quijote’s view of himself as a new Hercules. While considering the political implications of their struggle (Hercules was regarded as the founder of Spain’s legendary line of kings),[2] I will focus on the mnemonic, the uncanny, the grotesque in order to attempt to understand the profound aesthetic changes that make the second part of the novel so different from the first. As part of the struggle, Sansón Carrasco will impersonate his opponent’s mythic alter-ego; he will sculpt in his mind comic, grotesque, and uncanny imitations of Herculean feats; he will place these images in a statue garden of his memory, and he will hurl them at Don Quijote in an attempt to defeat his imagined persona. Throughout the work, Don Quijote has fashioned himself as a new Hercules since he wishes to have the strength of the ancient hero in spite of his emaciated body and his advanced age. He wishes to achieve such renown that he will be asked to become a king or an emperor. In this way he would imitate Hercules whose progeny became the mythical rulers of so many European dynasties. As early as the first chapter in Part I of the novel, Don Quijote finds himself imagining Hercules. He ponders how the classical hero can surpass a number of chivalric and epic figures. Discussing how Bernardo del Carpio had defeated Roland at Roncesvalles, the knight explains that he did so, “valiéndose de la industria de Hércules cuando ahogó a Anteo, el hijo de la Tierra entre los brazos” [by the same method used by Hercules when he suffocated Antaeus, the son of Earth––with a bear-hug].[3] Indeed, the

struggle against Antaeus appears again in Part II, as well as the image of the Pillars of Hercules, the latter recalling how Hercules established two columns or peaks that framed the straits of Gibraltar.[4] In Part II the knight also defends Hercules against calumnies, perhaps foreshadowing Sansón’s mock adventures.[5] Indeed, Don Quijote’s desire to be a new Hercules is intimately tied to the land itself. The belief that Hercules visited Spain, founding numerous cities such as Sevilla, Tarazona, Urgel, and Barcelona; that he constructed a tower in Cádiz and another one in La Coruña; and that Spain was witness to two of his most famous labors, the defeat of both King Gerion of three heads and of the giant Cacus, served to ingrain the opinion that Hercules was inextricably interrelated to Spain. The General Estoria lists not twelve but twenty-eight labors for Hercules; and in 1417 Enrique de Villena wrote his wellknown Los doze trabajos de Hércules, printed in 1483 and again in 1499. Attempting to trace the genealogy of Spanish kings to the heroes of antiquity, humanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most often connected them to either Hercules or Aeneas. With the advent of Charles V, the link between the Habsburgs and Hercules was sealed with the motto plus ultra, an appeal to go beyond the Pillars of Hercules, first used in Spain in a heraldic painting by Juan de Borgoña which decorated Charles’ seat in the choir at the Cathedral in Barcelona where he met the order of the Golden Fleece in 1519.[6] This cult of Hercules will culminate with Francisco de Zurbarán’s paintings of ten of the Labors of Hercules executed for Philip IV at the palace of the Buen Retiro. Jonathan Brown and John H. Elliott assert: “Philip IV, following the path blazed by his great-grandfather the emperor, naturally identified himself with Hercules Hispanicus. In Philip’s case, the association was exceptionally appropriate because Hercules, like the king, was also identified with the sun, itself another symbols of Virtù.”[7] Don Quijote, then, invites associations with both Hercules and the Habsburgs. While in Part I the knight’s Herculean status can survive his many defeats, Part II slowly unravels don Quijote’s self-perception. And one of the main culprits in this process of demythologizing is, as stated, Sansón Carrasco. So, let us turn, then to the moment in which the wily graduate decides to steal from Don Quijote any aspirations to be Hercules; the moment in which Sansón, using his malicious wit, decides to disguise himself as a knight.[8] Among some tall and shady trees—“altos y sombrosos árboles” [tall, shady trees],[9]—Don Quijote and his squire find a place to sleep after their encounter with the Chariot of Death. The vigilant gentleman from La Mancha wakes up as he hears a sound. An unknown knight throws himself and his arms on the ground as if despairing, and orders his squire to dismount since the green grass surrounding this area will be useful to their mounts. The Knight of the Forest, the disguised Sansón, soon starts singing of his lady love. This counterfeit knight tells his equally fictitious counterpart that he has been ordered by his imperious lady, Casildea de Vandalia, to accomplish a series of feats akin to the twelve labors of Hercules:

“Esta tal Casildea, pues, que voy contando, pagó mis buenos pensamientos y comedidos deseos con hacerme ocupar, como su madrina a Hércules, en muchos y diversos peligros, prometiéndome al fin de cada uno que en el fin del otro llegaría el de mi esperanza.” [This Casildea I’m telling you about repaid my honest affection and pure love by imposing on me, as Hercules’ stepmother did on him, many different perilous labours, promising me at the end of each of them that at the end of the next one I should attain the goal of my hopes].[10] Curiously, this passage is seldom studied. Perhaps the most important critical insight is found in a one-page discussion by Michel Moner: “Il s’agit d’un curriculum burlesque don’t le caractère parodique est suffisamment transparent pour qu’il ne soit pas besoin d’insister. . . . De fait, tout se passe comme si le pseudo-chevalier s’était approprié, en quelque sorte, les exploits passés et à venir de Don Quichotte” [It has to do with a burlesque curriculum where the parodic character is sufficiently transparent so that there is no need to analyze it. . . . Actually everything takes place as if the pseudo-knight has appropriated, in some fashion, the past and future exploits of Don Quijote].[11] As Moner states, Sansón Carrasco is presenting his curriculum as a true hero who can fight and vanquish Don Quijote. But there is more to the episode. The hope, in this invented tale, is to win the lady; but Sansón’s real hope is to vanquish Don Quijote and become the true Hercules of the narrative. He will conquer him through the imagination and in actual battle. The episode, then, serves to foreshadow the knight’s final defeat at the beach in Barcelona. The Knight of the Forest has created a false tale that follows Hercules’ labors, in a way that may seem as imaginative as any of Quijote’s adventures. Indeed, his labors are as filled with Ovidian transformations as Don Quijote’s adventures.[12] While Sansón stands for Hercules, Casildea might be taken as the goddess Juno herself, or Eurystheus whom she commanded to impose the labors upon the Greek hero. The first “labor” that Casildea ordered the knight to perform, consisted of defying: “aquella famosa giganta de Sevilla llamada la Giralda, que es tan valiente y fuerte como hecha de bronce, y sin mudarse de un lugar, es la más movible y voltaria mujer del mundo” [the famous giantess of Seville called La Giralda, who’s brave and strong and made of brass and, although she never moves from where she stands, is the most changeable and inconstant woman in the world].[13] Sansón Carrasco is referring here to the statue that tops the bell tower at the Cathedral of Seville; this Renaissance sculpture was placed there in 1568 and considered the largest sculpture of the period. The Giraldillo stands on a ball and moves with the wind, serving as a weathervane. The very idea of defeating this famous statue may be as risible as that of Don Quijote’s attempt to tilt at windmills. In a sense, then, Sansón Carrasco is creating a story that seeks to surpass Don Quijote’s mad imaginings. The very fact that he will struggle against a Christian figure of Victory placed over a minaret, shows that Sansón mimics Don Quijote. After all, Don Quijote often confuses friends for

foes, attacking priests and freeing galley slaves and sees giants where there are only windmills. Sansón further challenges Don Quijote’s strange visions of knighthood through the use of similes and puns. Sansón claims that the giantess is strong as if made of bronze; of course, the statue is made of bronze. This simile becomes reality. It recalls Don Quijote’s use of images to manipulate his environment. When he cleans his “armas blancas,” for example, he makes them as white as an ermine. By so doing, his blank shield then acquires an image used by royalty. The giantess is also “movible” since she turns to show from which direction the wind is blowing. But Sansón also calls her “movible” to underline the misogynistic attitudes of the period where women were said to always change their minds. The wily graduate claims that he was able to defeat this giantess with the aid of the elements. The winds, blowing from the north for seven days, held her steady. This immobility is what gained him his victory. Michel Moner asserts that the Giralda recalls the windmills because both are in motion.[14] I would add that both adventures are related to the wind. Don Quijote had been defeated precisely by the wind, which set the sails of the windmill moving just as he charged. As the lance sticks in the sails and carry the knight upward, he falls to the ground.[15] While the wind favors Sansón, stopping the Giralda and making her stand still, it defeats Don Quijote. Sansón claims victory over the fickle statue stating: “Llegué, vila y vencíla” [I came, I saw her, I conquered her].[16] This time he mimics Julius Caesar’s famous words, knowing that Don Quijote also admires this Roman warrior and writer, repeatedly referencing him in the novel.[17] By alluding to Julius Caesar in the narrative of this adventure, the bachi-ller may be conflating two famous sites in the center of Seville, the Cathedral with its Giralda, and the Alameda de Hércules, a park built in the late sixteenth century. Here, a branch of the Guadalquivir was drained so as to avoid future inundations. The park exhibited two ancient Roman columns brought from elsewhere in the city.[18] On top of each was placed a sculpture by Diego de Pesquera, the first one a copy of the Farnese Hercules and the second a Julius Caesar.[19] Thus, the reference to Caesar together with that of the Greek hero would lead the listener of Sansón’s invented labor to recall the Alameda de Hercules. The ancient hero would further bring to mind that Sevilla, according to legend, was founded by Hercules, who left six columns at the site. It was then up to Julius Caesar to name and fortify the city. Sansón, then, impersonates the two builders of Sevilla. Sansón’s second labor is equally comic, mocking the Herculean don Quijote. Here, the Knight of the Forest claims that Casildea: “me mandó fuese a tomar en peso las antiguas piedras de los Toros de Guisando” [Casildea sent me to go and lift those four ancient stones, the great Bulls of Guisando].[20] These bulls are four Celtiberian sculptures made of granite and found on a plain near the hill of Guisando, close to Ávila.[21] Reasons proposed for the weighing of the bulls are varied: it has been argued that this labor may well be Sansón’s imitation of the adventure of the two armies of sheep;[22] the bulls are of the same origin and type as the one on the bridge at Salamanca which the blind man used to trick Lazarillo;[23] and, the four

animals can be compared to the appearance of the bull in El retablo de las maravillas, where it stands for the horns worn by the cuckolded males.[24] Curiously, historians tell of the famous Treaty of the Toros de Guisando (1468) where Henry IV, to end a civil war, ratified that Isabel of Castile, his half-sister, would be his heir, rather than his daughter Juana. Unfortunately this was not the end of the struggle since the peace was broken by Isabel upon marrying Ferdinand. Thus, both the bull from the Lazarillo and the breach of the treaty at Guisando point to trickery. And this is precisely what Sansón is up to in this and the previous episode. He is trying to trick Don Quijote into believing that Sansón is the true Hercules. And since the classical hero was known for his strength, it makes sense that Hercules/Samson can weigh the bulls. While the adventure foregrounds the weakness of Don Quijote, who cannot ever defeat his foes, it also foreshadows the adventure of the bulls in Chapter 58. It is as if Sansón, without knowing it, is surpassing an adventure that Don Quijote will have in the future. As the knight from La Mancha attempts to stop a troop who is herding cattle and have them confess that Dulcinea is the most beautiful of ladies, he is warned to get off their path: “Apártate, hombre del diablo, del camino, que te harán pedazos estos toros” [Get off the road, you stupid devil, these bulls are going to trample you to pieces!].[25] But the hubristic knight fails to listen and he together with Sancho suffers the consequences. Although this is not the first time Don Quijote wishes to defend the beauty of his lady, this time the statement may also stand in competition with Sansón Carrasco who is ordered by Casildea de Vandalia to proclaim her uniqueness in his fourth adventure. The first two labors decreed by Casildea, then, clearly echo those of Hercules. Sansón’s defeat of a giantess recalls how Hercules vanquished the giant Cacus; while Sansón’s struggles with the bulls bring to mind how Hercules wrestled the Cretan bull that Poseidon had sent to Minos and was ravaging the countryside. What is uncanny about Sansón’s invented labors is that the giant and the bulls are not living beings, but sculpted figures, thus creating a psychical uncertainty.[26] It may be that Cervantes’s text is here emphasizing the uses of the labors in art even in ancient times. Indeed, sculpted images can be encountered as far back as 450 BC, where the rectangular decorations at the temple of Zeus in Olympia, show Heracles undertaking the twelve labors. Mirroring ancient representations, sculpture seems to be the main art form used to depict the ancient hero in sixteenth century Spain. As Rosa López Torrijos reminds us: “la mayoría de los ejemplos del siglo XVI pertenecen a obras de escultura.” [the majority of the examples from the XVI century belong to works of sculptures].[27] These works were exhibited in churches, town halls, and public monuments. Often, Hercules was to be found in works commissioned by the emperor or his successors, thus tying him to the Habsburgs.[28] While the first two labors have to do with a sculpted giant and animal statues, the last two move first to the underworld and lastly to the realm of the counterfeit. They create an uncanny feeling of disorientation. For the third, Sansón is ordered by his lady: “que me precipitase y sumiese en la sima de la Cabra, peligro inaudito y

temeroso, y que le trujese particular relación de lo que en aquella escura profundidad se encierra” [to hurl myself into the Chasm of Cabra, a fearful and unprecedented peril, and take back to her a detailed account of what lies concealed in those dark depths].[29] This entrance into a deep chasm is to be found close to Córdoba, and on a mountain range adjacent to the town of Cabra.[30] The macabre nature of the Sima de Cabra was furthered in 1683 when an expedition was sent to recover a dead body lying close to the surface of this deep chasm. It has also been argued that Cervantes visited this inhospitable and deserted locale, or at the very least, that he spent time in the town of Cabra.[31] Whatever the case may be, I would argue that Cervantes, in using the Sima de Cabra as one of Sansón’s labors, had in mind a lengthy allegorical poem published by Juan de Padilla in 1521.[32] In Los doce triunfos de los doce apóstoles the Sima de Cabra is compared to one of the mouths of hell. María Amor Martín Fernández, who is the author of the only book on this subject, shows how each of the twelve triumphs is divided into four sections: (1) contemplation of the heavens (which includes the zodiacal sign under which the apostle placed descriptions of associated constellations; the narrative of the life of the apostle; and allusions to other saints whose festivities fall in the same sign; (2) contemplation of the earth; (3) contemplation of purgatory; and (4) contemplation of hell (through a particular mouth of hell).[33] Thus, Padilla narrates the apostles’ triumphs over paganism and paradoxically connects each of these figures to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac while being guided by St. Paul in these journeys.[34] However, such an association is not new since it is already encountered in Alfonso X’s Setenario.[35] As for the myths that are woven around the constellations, Padilla turns to Hyginus’ Poeticon astronomicon, one of the most popular books on the constellations during the middle ages and the Renaissance, published for the first time in Venice in 1482.[36] These myths are then fused with hagiographic elements taken from Jacobo de Voragine.[37] The work begins with Aries, the sign of spring, and ends with Pisces, the last sign of winter. In the fifth triumph, the Apostle Santiago is seen to abide in Leo, the fifth sign of the zodiac. Since this sign is ruled by the Sun, Santiago is linked to the Solar Christ. And in a political move, Padilla also makes Leo the sign for Spain as Santiago is shown with the Sun, the castle and the lion. Furthermore, the apostle is praised for leading the struggle against the Moors. The fifth triumph also shows the mouth of hell where those that infringe upon the fifth commandment are held. Centaurs carry the damned, except that these creatures are no longer half man, half horse. Instead, they are half man, half lion, as befits the sign of Leo. These beasts have arrows of fire and with their lion claws tear apart the skin and open the hearts of the condemned. Rivers of blood literally flow into the mouth of hell where the condemned fall forever drowning in boiling blood. It is this place, which, in the ninth stanza, is compared to the Sima de Cabra. La boca sangrienta continuo hervía como en Adaques su cálida fuente: allí la dañada misérrima gente

con alarido muy grande caía, remedio ninguno la triste tenía, como quien cae en la sima de Cabra.[38] [The bloody mouth was forever boiling like the sizzling fountain of Adaques: There the afflicted and agonized folk with horrid shouts fell. The woeful ones were helpless as if they were falling into the cavernous Cabra.]

Sansón Carrasco, then, has chosen this example with much thought. He is not only sent to the most horrendous and hellish place, but in triumphing, he could be seen as a new Santiago, a new heavenly knight who rids Spain of its enemies. He, and not Don Quijote, is then to be identified with the renewal of Spain. In addition, Sansón Carrasco uses his third labor as a way to establish parallels with Hercules’ twelfth labor, where the ancient hero descended to Hades, battled with Cerberus and struggled to bring this beast back to the world of the living. While Cerberus is not mentioned in Cervantes, this guardian of the underworld appears at least twice in Padilla’s poem, in the first and the tenth triumph.[39] It may be, then, that Los doce triunfos mediates between the ancient text and the modern novel, providing the reader a more concrete linkage. Although Don Quijote does not comment on this fictitious labor by the Knight of the Mirrors, it must have deeply impacted his being, for it displaces him as Hercules and distances him from his dreams to be the ideal knight. Thus, it is no coincidence that Don Quijote will later attempt to engage in his own voyage to the underworld.[40] Not long after Sansón Carrasco tells of his third labor at the Sima de Cabra, the knight from La Mancha decides to descend into the Cueva de Montesinos. Indeed, the similarities between the two adventures points to an imaginative rivalry between the two knights. While Sansón may have been imitating Don Quijote in his fictive creation of the first labor, it is Don Quijote who will imitate Sansón in the descent into a hellish cave. While Michel Moner[41] and Juan Manuel Martín Morán[42] have mentioned in passing a possible link between these two adventures, Helena Percas de Ponseti has elaborated upon the parallels between the Sima and the Cueva.[43] Thus, I will simply recall that in both, the knights, of their own will, descend into a frightening space, and both discover what lies beneath. They differ from Hercules’ labor in that neither has to slay a monster and bring him back to the surface. Sansón has the advantage that his model, Padilla’s poem, does show Cerberus as the guardian of the underworld. While Don Quijote will tell of his adventures underground, Sansón will simply state that “saqué a luz lo escondido de su abismo” [revealed what is hidden down there],[44] perhaps inviting the curious reader to turn to Padi-lla’s poem. Having failed to persuade his lady to grant him her favors, Sansón must now turn to the fourth and last labor—to challenge other knights, making them agree that Casildea is the most beautiful of women. Again, we can intuit the imaginative quarrel

between the two knights, since Don Quijote had already used this scheme with the silk merchants in Chapter Four of Part I. Sansón’s challenge to Don Quijote’s authority culminates when he claims to have defeated the knight from La Mancha who attempted to defend his lady’s primacy. When Don Quijote protests that Sansón has fought a counterfeit figure, the bachiller agrees to battle him, stating that he can succeed with the real Don Quijote as well as he had with the false knight. Such a statement, then, sums up Sansón’s wily and imaginative tale, one that shows how he disguises himself as a knight, bragging of counterfeit adventures. Sansón takes as his model the labors of Hercules to humble the gentleman from La Mancha and to surpass his imaginative talents. In addition to the motif of the labors of Hercules, the uses of the antique hero in a struggle for power and identity, the pervasive impact of the political subtext, the mnemonics of Sansón’s exercise, the uncanny elements of each imagined adventure, and the counterfeit nature of each figure, there are three more elements that bring together these four labors. Although collections are often incomplete, requiring more and more pieces to fill the continuing desire for possessions, in this case Sansón Carrasco is deliberately incomplete. He presents us with four labors of Hercules instead of the canonical twelve. I would argue that he is replacing the zodiacal dozen with the quaternity of directions: each of the four labors represents one of the four cardinal points. The last one represents the east. Here, Don Quijote points to the rising sun as he sets out to defeat the Knight of the Mirrors; he triumphs over trickery since he is the solar hero that overcomes the moon or reflective light. Furthermore he asserts his role as Hercules since the ancient hero was solar in nature, his twelve labors a symbol of the Sun traveling through the twelve signs of the zodiac. If east stands for the knight’s triumph, then west, the setting Sun, is the triumph of Sansón’s trickery. Let us recall that the four bulls face west. The north represents the heavenly realms as Sansón conquers the giantess Giralda who stands above the church tower and rules the heavens as the winds hold her steady in this direction. The south moves us from the heavenly realms to the underworld, pointing to the Mouth of Hell. Sansón succeeds in this feat since he discovers the secrets of the sima de Cabra (which are not revealed to the reader); but Don Quijote will, in the future, surpass this labor, triumphing in a much more elaborate catabasis, that of the Cave of Montesinos. Thus, north and south are above and below, while east and west stands for the earth, its rising evoking the sun of glory and its setting depicting shades of trickery. In this scheme, the gentleman from La Mancha succeeds in the two directions which, according to H. F. Robbins, are favored by the Christian God: east, and the right hand of east, which is south. Sansón, on the other hand succeeds with Satan’s directions, west, which represents the back of the human being, and the left hand or siniestra or north, which also stands for evil.[45] While Sansón seeks to overcome Don Quijote’s imagination, he fails as the struggle of the two heroes is enclosed in a chart representing the four directions.[46] This fourfold charting of the labors provides it with a mnemonic flavor even though Sansón Carrasco wished only to use them as a way to mock Don Quijote.

What is surprising is that Sansón, if we accept Robbins’s account of the cardinal points, loses at his own game, or at least shows that his intentions are devilish. He is, after all, a trickster; and he has constructed in his imagination a statue garden in which uncanny images are used to overcome the knight’s imaginings. By sculpting four statues in his memory and hurling them at Don Quijote he hopes to overwhelm the knight from La Mancha with his unsettling images and extravagant adventures. According to the Art of Memory, images were often placed in an architectonic space. Sansón’s architecture is that of nature, allowing the images to speak for themselves. As he sits in an expanse of green grass, he lures Don Quijote with his song and thus tricks him into listening to his fictitious adventures. Statue gardens were quite popular in the Renaissance, the most famous being the Cortile del Belvedere at the Vatican, a series of piazzas and gardens designed by Bramante in 1506 and where Pope Julius II housed his collection of Roman statues. Gardens, whether exhibiting statues or not, were considered a place for retreat. In this sense, Sansón Carrasco retreats to the garden of his mind. Discussing Justus Lipsius’s De Constantia, John Slater shows that this was a place for masculine conversation where the individual retires to fortify himself.[47] Sansón fortifies himself as he sculpts uncanny imaginary statues that will assault his rival. This notion of retiring to fortify also had a strong political connotation, which can be associated with the reign of Philip III. The Pax Hispanica was a period of relative peace promoted by Philip III and his advisor, the Duke of Lerma. During this period Spain “retired” from war, continuing peace with France and signing a peace treaty with England so as to recover its previous strength. Philip III’s policies, then, represented an about-face with the much more aggressive and bellicose actions of his father Philip II. This pacifist tactic was like retiring to the garden so as to reflect on how to improve policies and return to the world stage strengthened. In the midst of the reign of Philip III, Cervantes publishes the second part of Don Quijote where Sansón is the first to promote the notion of retirement. But he is obviously using it to attack the knight from La Mancha. His tactics foreshadow those of the Duke and the Duchess, who keep Don Quijote at their country estate, ostensibly to honor him but actually to mock him in humiliating and even sadistic ways. This double attack based on retirement from the world may have political connotations. Like Philip III, Don Quijote retires from the scene of contest. But doing so does not help him to regain his own strength. Instead, moving further and further away from his home, he will be so weakened that Sansón can eventually defeat him in Barcelona. The second part may be a warning (and one that is fulfilled towards the end of Philip’s reign) that such policies will fail.[48] The imaginative battle between Don Quijote and Sansón Carrasco might also be conceived as an artful struggle between the two parts of the novel. While Part I resembles a mock-epic and exalts mighty figures even though they may be brought down, Part II transforms many of the images displayed into quirky and grotesque flights of fancy. As Henry Sullivan reminds us, most of the second part consists of a grotesque purgatory that subjects the knight to intense sufferings. Its entrance is to be found at the Cave of Montesinos and its exit in a chasm in which we find Sancho

and his donkey in Chapter 56.[49] I would argue that the grotesque begins long before this point, and certainly with Sansón Carrasco’s adventures which include yet another entrance into the underworld, the Sima de Cabra. Cervantes’s grotesque, deriving from the term grotto, was a type of antique art rediscovered in the Renaissance through grotto entrances that led to submerged palaces such as Nero’s Golden Dome.[50] Here, chaotic images predominate as body parts turn into plants, while forms without rule show the joining of nature, myth and the quotidian. Here we find, for example, how “Cupids in shells are pulled by snails.”[51] While many of these works were used to decorate spaces between elegant and stately frescoes, the grotesque was also exhibited in the grotto, an intimate and perhaps frightening space of solace and solitude found in outdoor spaces such as the Boboli Gardens at the Pitti Palace. At this site, formal and carefully structured gardens contrast with the grotto, numinous sites where strange creatures emerge from the rocks even as beautiful sculptures are placed in their midst.[52] But there is one example that bears a remarkable resemblance to the scene in Cervantes’s novel: the Sacro Bosco, an “enchanted forest” created in the sixteenth century by Pier Francesco Orsini (better known as Vicino Orsini) close to the village of Bomarzo, very near Florence. Vicino himself was known as an artist of whimsical puzzles. In 1541, a play dedicated to him was performed at Viterbo. La Cangiaria was “named for a divine female whose special characteristic was her ability to keep changing her appearance in order to delude and amaze.”[53] Both the enchanted forest of Vicino and the play done in his honor display an art based on delusion, illusion and amazement, one that resembles the mad adventures of Sansón Carrasco and the ordeals thrust upon Don Quijote in Part II of the novel. More specifically, Sansón’s imagined labors are feats that take place in his mind. They can be conceived as sculptures scattered in a wood or forest, in a location much like the one where he encounters Don Quijote. After all, Sansón becomes “El Caballero del Bosque,” and at Bomarzo the formal Renaissance gardens give way to forested areas, paths that lead in different and confusing directions, displaying giant nymphs, sculpted monsters and enigmatic sphinxes. Sansón’s invented feats thus recall a statue garden very much like the one at Bomarzo where the grotesque is featured.[54] The Giralda as giantess would fit well here, since the mixing of forms is typical of the grotesque. She is both a giant and a weathervane; an uncanny living creature and a statue; and she stands on a Moslem minaret turned into a Christian bell tower. In Sansón’s imagination, Giralda abides close to the Alameda de Hércules, a place where nature did not accept human demarcations, thus a place akin to the wild forests of the Sacro Bosco. In this Alameda the sculpture of the giant Hercules, recalls the giantess Giralda and echo the many gigantic statues at Bomarzo. Among the monsters at Bomarzo, at the top of some steps, two stone giants are engaged in a furious fight. They are said to be Hercules and Cacus, the latter upside down, supporting himself by his immense foot that holds on to a wall.[55] This impossible posture is typical of grotesque paintings that constantly test the limits of nature.

These limits are also to be found in the Sansón episode, where statues turn into giants, and where, later on, his squire will acquire such a huge nose that it will frighten Sancho—a nose resembling a berenjena or eggplant thus once again mixing forms, this time human and vegetable.[56] The garden itself mirrors the deranged yet artful imagination as it seeks to create stranger and more elaborate feats and conjoinings. The labor of the four bulls would not be out of place at the Sacro Bosco. If an elephant can carry a tower or fortress on its back, why couldn’t Sansón Carrasco, a new Samson, pick up the stone bulls and weigh them? Most striking is the terrifying mouth of hell that is large enough for humans to enter. This sculpture from Bomarzo recalls Cervantes’s Sima de Cabra and Cave of Montesinos. A crumbling inscription on the mouth of hell at the Sacro Bosco has been read as “lasciate ogni pensiero voi ch’entrate” [abandon all reason you who enter here], a take-off on Dante’s motto at the entrance of the Inferno.[57] The second part of the novel shows how few of the characters follow reason, building instead on Don Quijote’s madness to provide newer and more bizarre forms of entertainment. The harmonious order of the Renaissance garden has given way to grotesque and hellish images, such as the statue of Cerberus, the guardian of Hades and the object of Hercules’s twelfth labor, and a figure found both in Dante and in Padilla. From the start, then, Sansón Carrasco has created a mouth of hell, a way to torture his rival and deprive him of the very self he has so carefully fashioned. While Cerberus appears in Bomarzo and thus, perhaps, in the imagination of Sansón Carrasco, it is not until the two face each other in Barcelona, that Don Quijote will be consumed by the hellhound. This occurs through a consistent weakening of his selfimage and self-worth. Thus, in Barcelona Don Quijote is no longer Hercules. He becomes Anteus instead, who is vanquished by Hercules. The Greek hero lifted him from the earth and crushed him to death. And this is what Sansón does, lifting the knight from his horse and throwing him on a soil that is no longer nurturing. The mad gentleman is now too far from La Mancha. He has arrived at the ends of his world, his non plus ultra, and unlike Charles V, he cannot go beyond.[58] The emperor’s motto is no longer applicable as Sansón demythologizes his rival’s ambitions, and in so doing, mocks, to a certain extent, the myths and legends of Spain’s rulers, whose imperial quest has started to fall apart. The text seems to suggest that not even the “retirement to gain strength” strategy of Philip III will work since internal dissension, as represented by Sansón Carrasco, will foil such plans. In conclusion, Sansón Carrasco contrives a tale where words evoke statues, places, myths, and fictitious characters, establishing a site for the imagination, a visual locus where statues come to life, assuming grotesque and comic poses, while myths are mocked and chasms are given legendary status. A disguised and malicious Sansón fights another make-believe knight in a tale that reimagines the labors of Hercules in less than heroic fashion; a tale that is as counterfeit as the character that tells it and the one who listens. Sansón Carrasco’s memory places, then, become a site for contention, sculpting images that seek to dismantle Don Quijote’s carefully constructed persona and even the very myths that underlie empire and the tactics

used to preserve it. While Don Quijote fights back, evoking a famous cave to counter a hellish sima, he never seems to be able to shake off Sansón Carrasco’s uncanny and disorienting images. In his statue garden, the grotesque challenges the harmonies of the Renaissance; and the verbal ekphrases, the similes and puns, seek to triumph over the visual arts. And yet, the visual still commands attention, as grotesque gardens such as those at Bomarzo serve to establish a new aesthetics for the novel, one where sculpted grotesques and mouths of hell foreground the uncanny, the elusive separation between human and animal, between natural and supernatural. Through whimsical images that attempt to outdo each other, Cervantes’s narrative allows us to explore the dark and forested gardens of the mind. As mnemonic collections and statue gardens are mocked and refashioned, new art forms arise to depict the labors of two Herculean rivals, a madman and a trickster, characters who have few rivals in the history of fiction.

NOTES 1. Ana Ávila explains: “Es curiosa la comparación que Alonso Madrigal realiza en el Comento de Eusebio (1506) entre Sansón y Hércules: aunque llevaron a cabo el mismo esfuerzo, el primero de ellos debe ser tenido por más fuerte. Además obra en detrimento del héroe el hecho de que sus proezas son fabulosas, inciertas, mientras que las de Sansón están avaladas por la verdad de las Sagradas Escrituras” [The comparison between Sansón and Hercules done by Alonso Madrigal in his Commentary on Eusebio is interesting. Even though they both carried out equal prowesses, the former should be taken as the strongest. In addition, the fact that the classical hero’s deeds are legendary and doubtful works against him; while Sansón’s deeds are reinforced by the truth of the Holy Scriptures] (Imágenes y símbolos en la arquitectura pintada española (1470–1560) [Madrid: Anthropos, 1993], 179). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 2. For Hercules and Spanish historiography, see Robert B. Tate, “Mythology in Spanish Historiography in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” Hispanic Review 22, no. 1 (1954): 1–8. 3. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Luis Andrés Murillo, 5th ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1991) 1:74; and his Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 27. All citations of Don Quijote refer to the original text in Spanish followed by John Rutherford’s translation into English. 4. “acordándose entonces de la muerte que dio Hércules a Anteón” [remembering how Hercules had killed Antaeus] (Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:292; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 709). Don Quijote compares Maese Pedro’s legs to the columns of Hercules: “Estas piernas abrazo, bien así como abrazara las dos columnas de Hércules” [These legs I embrace as if I were embracing the twin pillars of Hercules] (Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:235; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 659). For the thematic use of Hercules’ labors see Frederick A. de Armas, “Don Quijote’s Barcelona: Echoes of Hercules’ Non Plus Ultra,” Cervantes 29, no. 2 (2009): 107–29. 5. “De Hércules, el de los muchos trabajos, se cuenta que fue lascivo y muelle” [Of Hercules, the hero of so many labours, it is rumoured that he was over-fond of his pleasures and creature comforts] (Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:57; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 500). 6. “The fire, steel and flint stone between the columns are symbols of that order and thus the meaning may be read figuratively as ‘I promise to lead the order to glory beyond any heretofore known’ that is to say, beyond the confines of Europe…” (Earl Rosenthal, “Plus ultra, Non Plus Ultra, and the Columnar Device of Emperor Charles V,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtland Institutes 34 [1971]: 218). 7. Jonathan Brown and J. H. Elliott, A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), 160. 8. From the start, the text makes it clear that Sansón Carrasco has a malicious wit. Using physiognomy, the text

shows how this is so: “Carirredondo, de nariz chata y de boca grande, señales todas de ser de condición maliciosa y amigo de donaires y de burlas” [with a moon face, a snub nose and a large mouth, all signs that he had a waggish disposition and loved joking and jesting] (Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:59; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 503). According to Giovan Battista Della Porta, a round face connotes shamelessness and an irascible temper (Fisiognomía, trans. Miguel Ángel González Manjarrés [Madrid: Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría, 2007], 1:170); a flat nose denotes lasciviousness (1:157); and a large mouth refers to arrogance and aggressiveness (1:177). For Cervantes’ knowledge of Della Porta, see Frederick A. De Armas Quixotic Frescoes: Cervantes and Italian Renaissance Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 17–21. 9. Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:120; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 557. 10. Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:134; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 569. 11. Michel Moner, Cervantes conteur. Ecrits et paroles (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1989), 229. 12. Don Quijote is a work that imitates Ovid’s Metamorphosis. In order to signal that Sansón Carrasco’s intentions is to mock Don Quijote’s aspirations, Cervantes, as Michel Mo-ner has noted (Cervantes conteur, 231), will again refer to these two transformations, when a “famoso estudiante” [famous student] tells the knight later on that he will write a book entitled Metamorfoseos where he will “imitando a Ovidio a lo burlesco, pinto quién fue la Giralda de Sevilla . . . quiénes los toros de Guisando” [I imitate Ovid in a burlesque style and describe the Giralda in Seville . . . and the Bulls of Guisando] (Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:206; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 633). 13. Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:134–35; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 569-70. 14. Moner, Cervantes conteur, 229. 15. For a discussion of the importance of the wind in the windmills episode, see de Armas, Quixotic Frescoes, 136– 47. 16. Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:135; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 570. 17. There are numerous allusions to Julius Caesar throughout the novel. See, for example, Cervantes, Don Quijote, 1:56, 567, 578, and 2:57, 96, 97, 228, 361; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 15, 441, 452, 500, 536, 537, 652, 770. 18. The columns came from a Roman temple in Calle Mármoles. Other columns remained in place. 19. The Farnese Hercules was an ancient statue discovered in 1546, which was placed in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome and surrounded by frescoes of the twelve labors of Hercules by Annibale Carracci executed in the 1590s. In the statue, Hercules carries his club and the lion skin, holding the apples of the Hesperides in his hand, which is placed behind his back to signal this particular labor. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese was one of the great collectors of the Renaissance. 20. Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:135; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 570. 21. Some claim that there were five bulls in the times of Cervantes (Howard Mancing, The Cervantes Encyclopedia, 2 vols. [Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004], 1:88), while others assert that there were only four, and one had been cut in half, thus creating the confusion (Javier Leralta, Apodos reales historia y leyenda de los motes regios [Madrid: Silex, 2008], 343). 22. Francisco Rico, ed., Don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols. [Barcelona: Crítica, 1998], 2:480. 23. Diego Clemencín, ed., Don Quijote de la Mancha de Miguel de Cervantes [Madrid: E. Aguado, 1835], 4:236–37. 24. “La bastardía implica la infidelidad conyugal cuyas víctimas suelen ser aludidas me-diante los tradicionales cuernos, símbolos de engaño y adulterio. De ahí que la figura del toro resulte sugestiva y cuanto más si consideramos que la Castrada, dirigiéndose a su padre Juan Castrado, no deja de llamar la atención sobre los cuernos” [“Illegitimacy implies conjugal infidelity which is alluded through the tradicional horns which are symbols of lying and adultery. Thus the figure of the bull is suggestive especially if we consider that Castrada (the castrated one) addressing her father, Juan Castrado, calls attention to the horns”] (Moner, Cervantes conteur, 813). 25. Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:481; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 882. 26. It is claimed that the term uncanny (unheimlich) was first used by Ernst Jentsch (“On the Psychology (1906),” Angelaki 2, no. 1 [1997]: 8), for whom the term connoted not being at home or at ease with a situation or an object,

the “the lack of orientation” it creates in the perceiver. He then gives the following example: “Among all the psychical uncertainties that can become an original cause of the uncanny feeling, there is one in particular that is able to develop a fairly regular, powerful and very general effect: namely, doubt as to whether an apparently living being is animate and, conversely, doubt as to whether a lifeless object may not in fact be animate” (11). He cites E. T. A. Hoffman as using this as a literary device, leaving in doubt whether a character is human or not. In the case of Cervantes, Sansón Carrasco creates the uncanny by using statues as if they were animated beings. 27. Rosa López Torrijos, La mitología en la pintura española del Siglo de Oro (Madrid: Cátedra, 1985), 119. 28. For example, there are two medallions, one representing Hercules with the Nemean lion and the other Hercules with the Cretan bull in the Emperor’s palace at the Alhambra (López Torrijos, Mitología, 123). 29. Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:135; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 570. Cervantes also refers to the Sima de Cabra in the Celoso extremeño and the Viaje del Parnaso. The location is also cited in Vélez de Guevara’s Diablo cojuelo (1641). 30. I would like to thank Alvaro Molina, who, at my quixotic insistence, accompanied me on the search for this Sima. First we drove down the expressway from Córdoba to Malaga, exiting some thirty miles south, and we then followed a four lane road to Lucena and on to the small town of Cabra. After many twists and turns on a narrow path, we came upon a dirt road that signaled the way to the Sima de Cabra. We followed this winding and treacherous lane up the mountain, through partially washed-out bridges. When it ended, we went up on foot up through very narrow trails in search of the cave. I am convinced that we did catch a glimpse of it in the rocky and arid heights. 31. It is quite possible that Cervantes spent time in Cabra since Andrés de Cervantes was Mayor of Cabra (Krysztof Sliwa, Vida de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra [Kassel: Reichenberger, 2005], 97–126). However, such a stay would not have been a lengthy one. G. B. Palacín comments: “Luis Astrana Marín afirma que nuestro escritor y su familia vivieron en Córdoba cinco años (1553–1558) y otros cinco en Cabra (1558–1563), trasladándose luego a Sevilla. Sin embargo, mientras no se pruebe con documentos fehacientes tales afirmaciones debemos estimarlas como simples relatos novelescos” [Luis Astrana Marín asserts that our writer and his family lived in Córdoba for five years (1553–1558) and then in Cabra for another five years (1558–1563) moving afterwards to Seville. However, until such assertions are proven with documentary evidence, we should think of them as mere novelistic tales] (G. B. Palacín, “¿En dónde oyó Cervantes recitar a Lope de Rueda?” Hispanic Review 20 [1952]: 242). In 1588, though, Miguel de Cervantes gave power of attorney to his cousin Rodrigo, who resided in Cabra to deal with the thorny matter of wheat collection and the incarceration of a sacristan (Manuel Lacarta, Cervantes. Biografía razonada [Madrid: Silex, 2005], 119; Sliwa, Vida de Miguel de Cervantes, 429). 32. There are several well-known figures by this name in the sixteenth century. One was known for his role in the Comuneros revolt, and a second was an explorer of the North American southwest. We are concerned with yet a different one: Juan de Padilla, “el Cartujano” was a fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century poet from Sevilla who is known for his two lengthy allegorical poems: Retablo de la vida de Cristo (1513) y Los doce triunfos de los doce apóstoles (1521). 33. María Amor Martín Fernández, El mundo mitológico y simbólico de Juan de Padilla “El Cartujano” (Córdoba: Publicaciones del Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Córdoba, 1988), 18. 34. Ángel Lasso de la Vega describes Los doce triunfos de los doce apóstoles in the following manner: “El objeto de Padilla, fué, según sus palabras, describir los hechos maravi-llosos de los Apóstoles, divididos por los doce signos del zodiaco” [Padilla’s purpose was, according to his words, to describe the marvellous deeds of the apostles, dividing them according to the signs of the zodiac] (Historia y juicio crit́ ico de la escuela poetica sevillana en los siglos XVI y XVII [Madrid: Imprenta de la viuda e hijos de Galiano, 1871], 14). Indeed, the poem was singled out by Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo for a lengthy discussion, labeling Padilla as one of the major poets under the reign of the Catholic Kings (Antología de poetas líricos castellanos [Madrid: Viuda de Hernando. 1890. Reprint, Santander: C.S.I.C., 1944], 3:77–99). This critic finds reminiscences of Virgil and Petrarch in his work, and considers that Los doce triunfos is closer to Dante’s Divine Comedy than to Juan de Mena’s Laberinto de Fortuna. This assessment is seconded by Werner Paul Friederich in Dante’s Fame Abroad: 1350–1850. The Influence of Dante Alighieri on the

Poets and Scholars of Spain, France, England, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States; a Survey of the Present State of Scholarship (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Studies in Comparative Literature, 1950), 44; and by the editor of the work, Enzo Norti Gualdini. More recently, José Luis Vicente García turns to the uses of astrology in the poem in order to discover the author’s original thinking (“La astrología en Los doce triunfos de los doce apóstoles del Cartujano,” Revista de Literatura 54, no. 107 [1992]: 47–73). He shows how Padilla merges Christianity and astrology by ascribing to each apostle the sign of the zodiac in which his feast is celebrated. However, in this scheme, three apostles would overlap with others in a particular sign, so he places them in a different constellation, giving Aries, for example to Santiago el Menor, who is actually born under Taurus (Martín Fernández, Mundo mitológico, 32-33; Vicente García, “La astrología,” 60). The constellation opposing a particular apostle shows the hellish descent. Thus, the opposite of Cancer, the sign for San Pedro, is Capricorn, the goat representing Saturn (the least bright of the planets), winter and the devil as goat or cabra (Vicente García, “La astrología,” 61). Even though astrology is one of the main structural elements of the poem, Padilla rejects its superstitious uses. The stars stand as ornament for God’s greatness, but are not to be worshipped or deciphered. Thus, the first mouth of hell includes the idolaters and the astrologers. Each mouth is related to one of the Ten Commandments, but since there are Ten Commandments and twelve mouths, the last two are given new meanings. The eleventh is for those who do not love their neighbors and the twelfth is for those who do not love God above all things (Vicente García, “La astrología,” 57). 35. Martín Fernández, Mundo mitológico, 19–21. For the many antecedents and sources of Padi-lla’s poem, see Juan de Padilla, Los doce triunfos de los doce apóstoles, ed. Enzo Norti Gualdini (Messina: D’Anna, 1975), 1:116– 39. These include Berceo’s Vida de Santa Oria and Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos; the representation of hell in the Libro de Alexandre; Juan de Mena’s Laberinto de Fortuna; Don Juan Manuel’s Trovas por los siete pecados mortales, and the like. 36. Hyginus’s work has as its model Eratosthenes’ Catasterisms. The Poeticon astronomicon, as we have it today, may be a later abridgment, with many errors, of Hyginus’s original text. The text, for example, was used as model for Alessandro Farnese’s frieze in the Sala della Cosmografia at his palace in Caprarola. For the out-of-place constellations and their meaning and the importance of Capricorn and Libra in the Cardinal’s horoscope, see Mary Quinlan-McGrath, “Caprarola’s Sala della Cosmografia,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1997): 1067–81. 37. Following Martín Fernández, Mundo mitológico, table 3.1 is a chart of the links between signs, apostles, and sins of the condemned. 38. Juan de Padilla, Los doze triumphos de los doze apóstoles fecho por el Cartujano, vol. 1, ed. Miguel del Riego (Londres: D. Carlos Wood, 1891), 73. I have been unable to consult the second volume of Enzo Norti Gualdini’s edition of Los doce triunfos, thus I am citing from the nineteenth-century edition of the poem. 39. Martín Fernández, Mundo mitológico, 92, 122. 40. There is much more that can be said about Padilla’s poem in relation to Cervantes’ novel. I hope to be able to undertake this task at a later date. Let me just note that Santiago and San Pablo are among the images viewed by the knight in chapter 48 of the novel. As Alvaro Molina states: “La descripción y el comentario de los cuadros a modo de écfrasis clásica, produce . . . el contrapunto de que don Quijote pronuncie abiertamente y por primera vez sus dudas, si no sobre la caballería en general, sí sobre su propia profesión de caballero andante” [The description and commentary of the paintings in the manner of classical ekphrasis, produces the counterpoint that Don Quijote proclaims openly and for the first time his doubts, not about chivalry in general, but about his own profession as knight errant] (Álvaro Molina, “Santos y quebrantos: auge y ocaso de la violencia sagrada en Don Quijote II, LVIII,” in Estas primicias del ingenio: jóvenes cervantistas en Chicago, ed. Francisco R. Ballesteros et al. [Madrid: Castalia, 2003], 155). Perhaps these doubts stem from Sansón Carrasco’s imagined labors, where he, and not Don Quijote, represent a new Samson, a new Hercules, and a new Santiago—figures of great power in biblical, classical, and New Testament thought. 41. Moner, Cervantes conteur, 229. 42. Juan Manuel Martín Morán, Cervantes y el Quijote: hacia la novela moderna (Alcalá de Henares: Centro de

Estudios Cervantinos, 2008), 152. 43. Helena Percas de Ponseti, Cervantes y su concepto del arte: estudio crítico de algunos aspectos y episodios del Quijote (Madrid: Gredos, 1975), 531–32. 44. Cervantes, Don Quijote, 2:135; Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford, 570. 45. H. F. Robbins, “Satan's Journey: Direction in Paradise Lost.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 60, no. 4 (1961): 701. 46. These four directions may well have further symbolic power as it relates to the four elements, the four humors, and the four winds. In the Pythagorean scheme as posited by S. K. Heninger, east is fire, choler summer and youth (the rejuvenated and pugnacious knight); the south is air, spring and adolescence (a sprightly knight who overcomes Sansón’s catabasis; the west represents earth, autumns and maturity (the signs of the trickster), while the north is water winter and old age (Sansón’s apparently celestial triumph which actually stands for decline) (“Some Renaissance Versions of the Pythagorean Tetrad,” Studies in the Renaissance 8 [1961]: 17–18). Sansón may imagine that he can weigh the bulls, but this is a sign of his excessive melancholy; while Don Quijote triumphs through his choleric disposition. 47. John Slater, “Swords, Plowshares and the Violence of Agriculture in Early Modern Spain” (lecture, University of South Carolina, Beaufort, October 14–16, 2010). 48. For a discussion of the Pax Hispanica, see Paul C. Allen, Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 1598–1621: The Failure of Grand Strategy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). In a review of this book Antonio Feros shows that: “In the end, however, these policies failed and beginning in 1618 Spain and other European polities became entangled in a global conflict lasting more than 30 years and ending with the loss of Spain's influence in Europe. Philip III's strategy failed not because it was poorly conceived or farfetched, but due to fatal mistakes in its implementation, opposition of a new generation of royal advisers who pressured the king to return to Philip II's ‘grand strategy,’ and international developments outside the control of the Spanish monarch, such as the increasing power and international ambitions of France and the Dutch Republic” (“Review of Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 1598– 1621: The Failure of Grand Strategy,” by Paul C. Allen, Hispanic American Historical Review 81, no. 2 [2001]: 361– 62). 49. Henry W. Sullivan, Grotesque Purgatory. A Study of Cervantes’ “Don Quijote” Part II (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), xii. 50. Frederick A. De Armas, “Nero’s Golden House: Italian Art and the Grotesque in Don Quijote,” Cervantes 24, no. 1 (2004): 143ff. 51. Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Raphael (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 193. 52. The Grotto Grande or Grotto del Buontalenti (named after the designer) was built between 1583 and 1588 with three interconnected chambers. 53. Jessie Sheeler and Mark Edward Smith, The Garden at Bomarzo: A Renaissance Riddle (London: Frances Lincoln, 2007), 10. 54. The Bomarzo gardens thus mimic grotesque paintings which Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco defined thusly: “[Grutesco] Este género de pintura se haze con unos compartimentos, listones y follajes, figuras de medio sierpes, medio hombres, syrenas, sphinges, minotauros. . . . ” [This type of painting is done with compartment, strips, foliage, figures that are half serpent, half human, sirens, sphinxes, and minotaurs. . . . ] (Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra [Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2006], 1005). 55. Ann Laras, Gardens of Italy (London: Frances Lincoln, 2005), 45–46. 56. On the eggplant nose and its relationship to the grotesque art of Arcimboldo, see De Armas, “Nero’s Golden House.” 57. “Entering Dante’s Hell was indeed to give up hope of redemption; but within the jaws of Vicino’s Hell was a summer picnic room furnished with stone table and benches, a cool retreat from the sun rather than a foretaste of the fires of Hell” (Sheeler and Smith, The Garden at Bomarzo, 98). 58. On Barcelona as a non plus ultra, see De Armas, “Don Quijote’s Barcelona.”

Chapter 4 THE LEGEND OF MARCUS CURTIUS ROMANUS AS A SIGN OF AUCTORITAS IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN Ignacio López Alemany In the last scene of Ridley Scott’s film, Gladiator, Maximus, the ill-fortuned general-turned-gladiator, fights and kills the tyrannical Roman emperor, Commodus. Then, the victorious soldier declares Glaucus free from his imprisonment and reinstates him in his rightful seat in the senate. Finally, he orders the return of power to the people of Rome through representation by the senate, as Marcus Aurelius had wanted before his untimely death and subsequent succession by Commodus as emperor. With this final command, Maximus’s mission comes to an end, and he falls dead in the Circus arena. Lucilla, Commodus’s sister, addresses the crowd, soldiers, and politicians surrounding Maximus’s body and says: “Is Rome worth one good man’s life? We believed it once; make us believe it again. He [Maximus] was a soldier of Rome. Honor him.”[1] With this question about the value of a good man and the request for Rome to honor Maximus, Lucilla seeks to remind her audience that legendary heroes, such as the Roman general, Marcus Curtius, who once saved Rome from its destruction, have symbolized ever since the highest value of the Roman Republic: patriotic selfsacrifice. According to Livy’s account of this exemplary Roman legend,[2] one day during the Republic, in 362 BC the earth started to split in the middle of the Roman Forum. Quickly, what started as a small slit in the ground broadened and began to spit fire. The expanding hole swallowed whatever was near it, thus putting the entire city of Rome in danger. The elders consulted the oracle, and it declared that to seal the hole, they would need to sacrifice whatever was most important to the city of Rome and the Republic. After careful deliberation, the elders determined that the horseback warrior was most valuable, and upon hearing this, a Roman army general, Marcus Curtius, donned his armor and rode his blindfolded horse into the abyss. Just seconds after he perished in the flames, the hole sealed itself, and the city was freed from danger. This essay examines the reinterpretations of this legend during early modern Spain by which this one hero came to symbolize two opposing paradigms of organization of the state. The legend of Marcus Curtius has been taken as a cultural fragment which reflects an ongoing dispute over two conflicting ways of understanding personal and class auctoritas, honor, and ultimately, the society’s ideals. The argument is organized around two different sets of examples that use Marcus Curtius’s story to illustrate corresponding diametrical models of arranging national values, which in many ways could be considered a new version of the ongoing debate of fortitudo et sapientia. By the early sixteenth century, this debate had taken a different turn due to the influence of Humanism and much more

importantly, due to the partial ban of certain novels by the Inquisition. While chivalric novels such as Amadis de Gaula (1508) and its numerous continuations and elaborations promoted a certain military idealism, the interest in chivalry and arms had diminished significantly. At the same time, the ideal of an international republic of letters promoted by Humanism was a short-lived one in Spain. The fear of being reported to the Inquisition by their university colleagues and the strict regulations for trading foreign books complicated the full development of one of the most compelling humanistic interest: the study of the personal conscience in connection with freedom and the examination of the role of the individual in the society. For these reasons, in the “Arms vs. Letters” debate, the potestas provided by the military was never substituted by the auctoritas of the lettered people–– understanding these “letters” as related to morality and the law. These issues were diluted in books of manners that only taught the individual how to behave or perform a role in front of the society, disregarding his or her convictions. This change in emphasis from “being” to “seeming” on behalf of the lettered men brought about a shift in the expected qualities required for those who immediately surrounded the prince at court. While Humanism held to the ideal that the prince should heed the advice of the wise men of his court, this new reality provided the prince with a cohort of courtiers who would not challenge his decisions, but only blindly agree––“behave”––and entertain him.[3] This new ideal of letters or sapientia valued a different courtier prototype that would not specialize in the negotium and the administration of the state, but rather the otium or leisure time. On the “lettered” side of the debate of the utility of Arms vs. Letters at court, probably one of the most illustrative examples is found in the dedication of Luis Milán’s El Cortesano (1561) to Philip II. In the prologue to his book, the Valencian writer proposes that the well-spoken man is the most valuable person to the Republic and hence, he introduces him as a modern incarnation of Marcus Curtius, as the most worthy of all men. At the opposite end of the spectrum, fortitudo is quintessentially represented by a courageous young Araucanian boy who fights against the Spanish conquistadors in the heroic poem, La Araucana, by Alonso de Ercilla, and also in the depiction of Marcus Curtius in a fresco in the palace of don Álvaro de Bazán in the town of El Viso (Ciudad Real, Spain) painted around 1580. Both the well-spoken courtier and the soldier represent the two competing parties during the reign of Philip II and the diametrical tendencies with which the king handled domestic and international affairs. Culturally, the painting at the palace of El Viso follows a much more rooted tradition of aligning the story of Marcus Curtius with military heroes, but Luis Milán’s representation responds to a more modern interpretation that tries to justify the status and influence of courtiers by emphasizing that the source of their auctoritas is the legend of the most honorable Marcus Curtius. Before entering into further analysis of how this story came to symbolize opposing parties in sixteenth-century Spain, we should first review and examine its long evolution, reception, and transformation. By understanding the tradition of uses

and misuses of the legend, we will be better prepared to comprehend the relevance of this myth for both political frameworks that used the image of this Roman general, either as a soldier or a courtier as their respective ideal. Marcus Curtius’s story, like that of many other Roman heroes, was used by some of the first Christian apologists as an example of selflessness in service of the greater good. However, these early uses frequently highlighted the superiority of the sacrifice of the Christian martyrs over that of the pagans.[4] St. Augustine, for example, praises the Roman heroes in the chapter of his City of God Against the Pagans with the long title of “How far from boasting Christians should be, if they have done anything for love of their eternal country, seeing that the Romans did such deeds for glory among men, and for an earthly city.”[5] When one continues to read, however, it is clear that St. Augustine understood the sacrifices of Marcus Curtius and other Roman leaders such as Brutus, Torquatus, Furius Camillus, Mucius Scaevola, et al. to be driven by mere patriotism and therefore, only benefiting the earthly city, the “city of men,” which was of lesser value than the “city of God.” According to St. Augustine, perhaps following Virgil,[6] there were two reasons why the Romans heroes sacrificed their lives: “To gain freedom for men who were destined to die and to gratify a passion for the praise that is won from mortal men.”[7] Christians, according to the bishop of Hippo, serve the “celestial kingdom,” and thus their deeds may instantly acquire a dimension, aside from praise from their fellow Christians, that transcends both national borders and the earthly sphere. Their service to the “heavenly kingdom” transforms these heroic sacrifices into ones of universal and eternal value and therefore, makes their deeds more than just humanly good and exemplary, but rather inspired by the love of God. Martyrs sacrifice themselves for the sake of “true freedom, which makes men free from the tyranny of sin and death and the devil.”[8] St. Augustine reminds his readers that this sin and the tyranny of the devil is the only true universal peril since Christians are not to fear those who kill the body, but rather “him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”[9] With time, and despite the criticism, the unavoidable and abundant similarities between the sacrifice of Marcus Curtius (and many other Roman heroes) and Christian martyrs—all stories of abnegated death and inner spiritual strength––led to their inclusion as a popular feature in religious sermons. Furthermore, from a religious viewpoint, soldiers traditionally held great prestige within Christianity, which understood military life as a school that taught virtues of fortitude, temperance, and generosity. For example, St. Paul, when writing to the community of Ephesus about their daily conduct, and their mission as members of the Church, used the image of the soldier ready for battle as a model: Therefore take the whole armor of God. . . . Stand therefore . . . having put on the breastplate of righteousness . . . taking the shield of faith. . . . And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.[10]

With such a declaration, St. Paul invited the faithful to participate in a fight which, according to this same Pauline text, is not “against flesh and blood . . . but . . . against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”[11] Inspired by the same principles, John of Salisbury, in his Policraticus, shaped his medieval model of miles Christi including the following duties in service of the Church: To protect the Church, to attack faithlessness, to venerate the priesthood, to avert injuries to the poor, to pacify provinces, to shed blood . . . for their brothers, and to give up their lives if it is necessary.[12] In Spain, King Alfonso X included the legend of Marcus Curtius in his General Estoria as one of the most important events in Roman history. He used, however, Orosius’ Historiarum adversum paganos instead of Livy’s narration. Very interestingly, in the Castilian narration, the “gulf of hell”––“inferna” in Orosius’ original––into which Marcus Curtius jumps while riding his horse, is compared to the Christian hell, which implies that the army general saved his compatriots in the same way that Christ saved mankind, as it is said, from the “plaça dell Jnfierno”: Otrossi acuerdan todos como Marco curcio un cauallero se armo & por amor del comun de Roma dio consigo en aquella torca. & cerrosse ella luego. Paulo orosio dize sobresto. Que se parauan los omnes en somo dell abertura daquella torca. & que parescie la plaça dell Jnfierno en fondon. Daquel Marco cur[c]io dize otrossi orosio. Que era omne noble. & que se armo todo. & que caualgo so cauallo & que daquella guisa dio salto en la torca.[13] [Also, all agree that Marcus Curtius, a knight, armed himself for the love of the common people of Rome and gave himself to that abyss and how the abyss thereafter closed. [ . . . ] The men stood over the opening of the abyss and it seemed like hell in there. Of Marcus Curtius, Orosius also said that he was a noble man and that he was armed and rode his horse and, in that fashion, he jumped into the abyss.][14] King Alfonso X interpreted the gulf as “la plaça dell Jnfierno” which possibly influenced earlier versions of the Gesta Romanorum, arguably the most widely read book of exempla during the Middle Ages. In this collection of Roman heroic stories, which was commonly used by monks and priests when preaching, the story of Marcus Curtius[15] is related in a tale under a heading that reads: “Of Christ, who, by his passion, delivered us from hell.”[16] Indeed, in this exemplum, the moment of the horseback warrior fearlessly jumping into the abyss was compared to Christ’s descent into Hell to save mankind. In this way, Marcus Curtius is no longer a local hero of the “earthly city” as St. Augustine had said before. His story has been allegorically christened, and his mission––identified with the eternal salvation of

mankind––has become universal and everlasting. Its value, therefore, is no longer limited to the trial of single nation, but comparable to those of the Christian martyrs. Marcus Curtius’s sacrifice is now associated with the journey to the heavenly city. This idea was clearly stated in the moral application that followed his tale: Carissimi, Roma mundum istum signat, in cujus medio est infernus in centro, qui erat apertus ante Christi nativitatem, et infiniti homines in eo cecideretur, donec virgo pareret filium, qui pro genere humano contra diabolum pugnaret, et anima eies cum divinitate ad infernum descendere.[17] [My beloved, Rome is the world, in the centre of which, before the nativity of Christ, was the gulf of hell, yawning for our immortal souls. Christ plunged into it, and by so doing ransomed the human race.][18] The monks, in the habit of doing typological readings of the Old Testament—i.e., interpreting the different episodes of the of Old Testament as prefigurations of Christ and the New Testament—applied the same hermeneutic method with the stories of the Gesta romanorum, and thus each legend or historical episode was taken as narrative with a hidden meaning that could only be understood in the light of the New Testament. In the case of Marcus Curtius’s story, the broadening gulf in the Roman forum was thought to correspond to the unredeemed world; the soldier and his sacrifice were understood as anticipation of Christ’s death on the cross and descent into hell. This new combination of associated values did not pass unnoticed by the early modern European nobility, who soon tried to identify themselves with Marcus Curtius, as a proto-Christ. Among the most notable cases, one should acknowledge the commemorative medal of Francesco Gonzaga (1466–1519), Marquis of Mantua, who after his victories against the French and as a leader of the Holy League of Pope Julius II against the Venetians, was considered by many to be the finest knight in Italy. This medal had on one side the image of the Roman hero jumping into the abyss with the words “universae italiae liberatori” stamped around the edge. The other side featured the profile of the marquis.[19] As said before, typology was a very common exegetic method in Christian theology during the Middle Ages and still remained popular in the theology of the Protestant Reformation until the seventeenth century. Following this hermeneutic method of interpreting the Scriptures and events in history, Marcus Curtius’s sacrifice continues to prefigure Christ’s in the Protestant and the Anglican Church. In England, we find a subtle and elevated appropriation of the meaning of Marcus Curtius’s legend in a painting of Prince Edward VI (figure 4.1).

Guillim Scrots. Portrait of Prince Edward VI. Source: Royal Collection Trust / © HM Queen Elizabeth II, 2012.

Here, his appearance in a painting, for example, was not necessarily in recognition of the deeds done by him, as it was in the case of Francesco Gonzaga’s medal, but a promise of the future. This portrait represents the young son of Henry VIII and his third wife, Jane Seymour. Karen Hearn points out that the prince holds a dagger with his right hand, while the position of his left hand draws attention to his codpiece, which the viewer should take as an assurance of the continuance of the dynasty in the future. The prince, as it was customary, wears the feathers that identify him as the Prince of Wales, which may indicate that the portrait was painted for his father.[20] Interestingly, in the classic interior in which the prince stands, there is a column with a carved roundel at the base with an image of Marcus Curtius and the inscription, “Marcvs. Curtivs. Roman[vs].” Hence, this allusion compares the promise of the young prince with the generous and selfless sacrifice of the Roman general and all the moral values associated with the legend.[21] In southern Europe, especially in Spain, Marcus Curtius had returned to the status of exemplary, albeit pagan, hero that St. Augustine had put forth earlier and therefore had no typological meaning. This, however, did not diminish its influence or cultural presence, but rather liberated and popularized the legend even more. The meaning of his story morphed from its exclusive association with military heroism, which was still the main interpretation, and expanded it to the ability to overcome any difficulty of life—whether big or small. Renowned Spanish writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made use of this new interpretation for the Roman story. For example, in Cristóbal de Villalón’s El Scholástico (ca. 1538) the schoolmaster

discusses with his student Bonifaçio that men of old age should not fear because of the short time remaining for them. Instead, he suggests they should embrace death with complete disregard for their own lives just as Empedocles and Marcus Curtius did. Villalón writes of them: “¡Oh más que gloriosos varones, dignos de eternal gloria y fama, y bienaventurado el siglo que en sí los meresçió tener con tan gran menospreçio de vida y tan amigos de la muerte por adquerir gloria!” [Oh more than glorious men, worthy of eternal glory and fame. Blessed is the century that has earned men so much contempt for life, as they are friends of death for the sake of glory].[22] The schoolmaster defends that, by embracing death, his friend will replicate the attitude of those heroes of antiquity. In another example, albeit in the seventeenth century, a contemporary of Miguel de Cervantes, Agustín de Rojas Villandrando, in his Loa 28 of El viaje entretenido (1624) refers to Curtius’s remarkable deed––“de Curcio el insigne hecho”––, to illustrate the hardships some lovers are willing to endure for the sake of their ladies.[23] Agustín de Rojas even relates these challenges of love to those of Marcus Curtius jumping into the abyss, Ajax’s fight against Hector, and Leonidas’s participation at the Battle of the Thermopylae. Chronologically between Cristóbal de Villalón and Agustín de Rojas, El Cortesano (1561) by the Valencian poet and musician Luis Milán provides us with the most elaborate example of the progressive demilitarization of the ancient hero. In his imitation of the famous courtier’s manual by Castilglione, Luis Milán depicts for the reader a collection of conversations, games, banquets, and other entertainments that the vice-regal court of Valencia of Germana de Foix and the Duke of Calabria enjoyed. According to Luis Milán’s own account, a group of court ladies who happened to be reading Castiglione’s book, requested him to write his own sequel of Il Cortegiano. He took the task to heart and finished an early version shortly thereafter in 1535. The publication, however, was delayed until 1561, when all the main protagonists of the story, including Milán, who nevertheless had time to revise the manuscript, had already died. Although taking the Italian as his model, Luis Milán distances himself from the humanistic idea of service to the prince that one can find in Castiglione’s book. Instead, he focuses on the different forms of entertainment that the court employed to pass the time. His fictitious chronicle of events in the Valencian viceroy’s court begins with a letter of dedication to Philip II, in which Milán refers to Marcus Curtius’s heroic sacrifice. While there are seemingly reasonable arguments to explain why this Roman legend was coined, painted, or represented alongside princes and members of the warrior nobility, it is impossible not to wonder what might have motivated Luis Milán to incorporate it in a book about courtiers who use their time reciting poems, playing games, and enjoying lavish banquets. Indeed, there are many reasons for which the Roman legend was instrumental in constructing the political, military, and religious authority of Francesco Gonzaga and Edward VI. Marcus Curtius’s heroism showcased the virtues of nobility, generosity, valor, and fortitude, which are necessary for every soldier. One would think that precisely these same reasons should have dissuaded Milán from including this legend in a book that is trying to

represent favorably the leisure life at the court, especially since the lessons drawn from Marcus Curtius’s exemplum only serve to highlight the shortcomings of the courtiers, who were often described as deceitful, egotistical, cowardly, and pusillanimous. Perhaps the answer to this intrinsic perplexity can be found in the letter with which Milán dedicates his book to Philip II. Therein, immediately after a detailed narration of the legend of our Roman hero, the author makes clear that the fortitude represented by the figure of the soldier is an obsolete model for the early modern society. Now, he writes that to reach that same status of “most worthy of men” heroism is no longer enough. According to Milán, today’s knight, “para tener perfeta mejoría deve de ser cortesano, que es en toda cosa saber bien hablar y callar donde es menester” [in order to be perfect, one must be a courtier, which means to always know how to talk and when to remain silent].[24] As Wayne A. Rebhorn has pointed out, for the courtiers of the Renaissance, “to talk with urbanity, wit and refinement was the supreme human accomplishment, and they often naively seemed to think that the achievement of verbal distinction would entail a similar achievement of moral and intellectual excellence.”[25] From this viewpoint, it is easier to understand Milán’s proposal for the new model for the society. This modern courtier has lost all reference to the heroic military dimension, and the knight’s heavy armor––symbol of the warrior-knight––is literally sublimated into a metaphor of courtesan performance. Those who aspire to take the place in society that once was occupied by Marcus Curtius should first learn to wear the new armor described piece by piece by Luis Milán for future courtiers in his letter-prologue to Philip II. This suit of armor will have un yelmo de consideración, [para] que sea bien considerado en dichos y hechos, y una goleta de temperancia, que no coma sino para bivir y no biva para comer . . . y un peto animoso, que ofrezca su pecho a qualquier contrario, para reparo de quien justamente lo avra menester. Con un bolante diligente porque no se pierda lo bien hecho por negligencia, y un spaldar de çufrimiento, para que traiga a sus espaldas la carga que deve el cavallero. Y la doble pieça de esperar, para que spere qualquier encuentro que fuere obligado. Y unos braçales de essecuciones para que essecute defendiendo lo bueno y ofendiendo lo malo en su caso y lugar. Y unos guardabraços defensivos para defender los braços de la república . . . y unas manoplas liberales, para que tenga manos abiertas para dar la vida a quien debe, y un arnés de piernas bien andantes, para que anden por passos mostrando el passo para passar a el y a otros a la verdadera vida, pues el cavallero debe passearse por este mundo dando exemplo y leyes de bien bivir.[26] [a helm of consideration, so that [the courtier] may be well considered in word and deed; a gorget of temperance, so that he may eat only what is necessary to live and not live to eat…and a breastplate of courage, so that he offers himself to

any impediment, so as to give aid to whomever justly needs it. With a diligent fauld, in order that his good actions may not be lost out of negligence and a backplate of suffering so that he can carry on his back the burdens that befall a knight. And a double plate of patience so that he can wait for any encounter that he must face. And executive rerebraces so that he acts defending the good and offending the bad in each case and place. And defensive vambrances so as to defend the arms of the republic . . . and generous gauntlets so as to have his hands open to alleviate whomever he must, and greaves that move well so as to walk showing his strides and thus showing the path to the true life, since the knight should be an example in this world and live according to the laws of proper living.] This letter from Luis Milán to Philip II, with the allegorical description of the “new Marcus Curtius,” is an attempt to replace the most significant virtues of a warrior society––nobility, valor, and fortitude––with those of a courtly life governed by a different set of moral attributes in which consideration, temperance, good spirits, long-suffering, diligence, and generosity are emphasized. These courtly ideals are not necessarily in contradiction with the ones embodied previously by soldier-knight, but there is no doubt that with the progressive sublimation of physical force in the court come different priorities regarding the best assets for serving one’s nation. Norbert Elias explains how this “civilizing process” occurs “step by step, [as] a warrior nobility is replaced by a tamed nobility with more muted affects, a court nobility. Not only within the Western civilizing process, but as far as we can see within every major civilizing process, one of the most decisive transitions is that of warriors to courtiers.”[27] Although criticism had always been present and abundant, when Luis Milán published El Cortesano the courtier institution was at the apex of its prestige. Esteem for those who inhabited the palace reached such heights that Milán himself, as he concludes his epistolary prologue, refers to Philip II not as the perfect king, nor as the perfect soldier, but as the perfect courtier: “Sabido que uve el mayor presente que a un príncipe se podía hazer . . . viendo que este [libro titulado El Cortesano] representava a vuestra magestad, dixe: «muy bien será presentar quod est Cesaris Cesari. Y assí presentar al césar lo que es de César»” [Knowing that I received the greatest present that one can give a Prince . . . and seeing that this [book titled The Courtier] represents your Majesty, I said “it is better to present quod est Cesaris Cesari. And thus give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. . . .. ”].[28] Regardless of the comparisons of Marcus Curtius’s deed with the fear of aging (Cristóbal de Villalón), the trials of love (Agustín de Rojas), or the patient wait of the courtier (Luis Milán), there is no doubt that the heroic action of the Roman general remained mainly as a symbol of military heroism during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of the most interesting cases can be found in the first part of Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem, La Araucana (1569), where the Roman hero comes to represent not a hero of the Spanish army, but a young Araucanian boy who fights

against them. As it was the case in Luis Milán’s El Cortesano, the volume presents a late account of events that happened more than twenty-five years before, when the Spanish conquistador Pedro Valdivia arrived in Chile in 1541. According to Ercilla, as the Spanish conquistadors marched to Tucapel under the leadership of Pedro de Valdivia, they encountered a group of Araucanian Indians (also known as Mapuches) and attacked them with the help of other natives. When Spaniards were close to claiming their victory, and the Araucanians had started to retreat, Lautaro, Pedro de Valdivia’s protégé, is moved by a dormant patriotic love and fear of losing his land to the foreigners. He shouts out to his fellow natives as they run away, “¡Oh ciega gente, del temor guiada! / ¿A dó volvéis los temerosos pechos?” [Oh blind people guided by fear! Where are you turning your frightened hearts to?].[29] Immediately thereafter, he kills Valdivia and several other Spanish soldiers with only the aid of his spear. Ercilla encapsulates the entire war in this one action, saying that the Araucanian’s sacrifice “resumió toda la gue-rra” and makes the young man worthy of the highest praises that are found in Ercilla’s epic poem. ¿De quién prueba se oyó tan espantosa, ni en antigua escritura se ha leído que estando de la parte vitoriosa se pase a la contraria del vencido? ¿y que sólo valor, y no otra cosa de un bárbaro mochacho haya podido arrebatar por fuerza a los cristianos una tan gran vitoria de las manos? No los dos Publios Decios, que las vidas sacrificaron por la patria amada, ni Curcio, Horacio, Scévola y Leonidas dieron muestra de sí tan señalada. . . . [30]

[Of whom has ever been heard such a trial––not even in ancient documents such thing can be read––that he who is in the victorious side of the battle would switch to the defeated? And that only the courage of a barbarian boy, and nothing else, may have seized by force such great victory from Christians’ hands? Not even the two Publius Decius who sacrificed their own lives for their beloved country, not even Curtius, Horatius, Scaevola or Leonidas proved their character in such remarkable fashion.] By comparing the young Araucanian’s heroic action to the feats of ancient Roman heroes, like Marcus Curtius, Horatius Cocles, and Mucius Scaevola, and the Spartan hero Leonidas, Ercilla challenges once again the point of view of the Spanish empire in the American conquest. While the Spaniards believe they are the legitimate heirs of the values of the Roman empire, Ercilla prefers to align the Araucanians––not the conquistadors––with the most notable heroes of Rome and Sparta, with whom they have in common their most important trait: selfless sacrifice for the good of their civilization. Another twist, but still in the light of Marcus Curtius as a soldier, is found in the

interpretation of Marcus Curtius as one who set a precedent for the chivalric lifestyle. Here, the jump into the abyss is a way to acquire the glory and praise to which an errant-knight should aspire. This can be easily recognized when Don Quixote explains to Sancho the remote origins of chivalry and its transcendent mission: ¿Quién piensas tú que arrojó a Horacio [Cocles] del puente abajo, armado de todas las armas, en la profundidad del Tibre? ¿Quién abrasó el brazo y la mano a Mucio [Escévola]? ¿Quién impelió a Curcio a lanzarse en la profunda sima ardiente que apareció en la mitad de Roma? . . . Todas estas y otras grandes y diferentes hazañas son, fueron, y serán obras de la fama, que los mortales desean como premios . . . [los] andantes caballeros más habemos de atender a la gloria de los siglos venideros, que es eterna en las regiones etéreas y celestes, que a la vanidad de la fama que en este presente y acabado siglo se alcanza.[31] [What was it, do you think, that cast Horatius [Cocles] down from the bridge, wearing full armor, into the depths of the Tiber? What put Mucius’s [Scaevola] hand and arm into the fire? What impelled [Marcus] Curtius to hurl himself into the gulf of flames that opened in the middle of Rome? [ . . . ] All these and many other great deeds were, are, and shall be the work of fame, desired by mortals as their reward . . . we knights-errant must be more concerned with the glory of the life to come, to be enjoyed throughout eternity in the ethereal and celestial regions, than with the vanity of the fame that can be achieved in this present transient life.][32] Of all the uses of the image of Marcus Curtius in early modern Spain probably one of the most orthodox and closely tied to the original meaning in Livy’s History of Rome is the fresco painting in the palace of Álvaro de Bazán (figure 4.2).

Fresco of Marcus Curtius Romanus in the Palace of Álvaro de Bazán. Source: Author

This palace, built in the town of El Viso del Marqués, near Ciudad Real, has 26,000 square feet of fresco paintings, which makes it the largest and one of the best-preserved pictorial representations of classical mythology in Spain. It also has the added interest of being one of the very few original decorative programs prior to the eighteenth century which has not been rearranged, or modified by successive generations and, therefore, it is of great interest for studying the decor of noble houses in early modern Spain. The purpose of this palace was not to be a place of rest and recreation, nor even a permanent residence, but a celebration of the lineage of the Bazán family. The rigorously classical architectural style is imported from Italy and intended to showcase the richness and prestige of the family. As Rosa López Torrijos put it: La gran inversión, la opción “italiana”, la dedicación prestada a las obras, la grandiosidad del despliegue iconográfico constituyen un caso excepcional en la nobleza española de su tiempo, y solo pueden ponerse en relación con las obras reales y la intervención del monarca en ellas.[33] [The magnitude of the investment, the use of the Italian style, the close attention given to the works, the grandeur of the iconographic program constitute an exceptional case of the Spanish nobility of the time, and can only be compared with royal artwork in which the monarch himself intervened.] Italian artists Giambattista Peroli and Cesare Arbasia[34] contributed to the magnificent goal with a collection of images of allegories (War, Victory, Peace, Fame, etc.), gods of antiquity (Mars and Neptune), and mythological and historical stories (mostly Hercules and Roman heroes), that are used as signs intended to exalt the

honor and valor of the Bazán family and, especially, of don Álvaro, the first Marquis of Santa Cruz and admiral of the Spanish navy. If that was not enough to impress the viewer, scenes of his victories and conquered cities are represented on the walls–– Genoa, Naples, Algiers, etc.––along with the signal lamps from the poop deck of Turkish, Italian, English, and French flagships captured by the Marquis on his battles. The hallway of the palace is decorated with a large image of Neptune in the ceiling and several stories of Perseus. The painting of Neptune, god of the sea, points to the Marquis of Santa Cruz as the most important admiral in Spanish history. The scenes of Perseus, who was always protected by the Olympian gods, are meant to remind the viewer that Álvaro de Bazán had never lost a single naval battle. Of the many rooms of the palace, the one that interests us the most for this study is a small living and dining room usually referred to as, “Sala de los cuatro elementos” [The Room of the Four Elements], because allegories of the Air, Water, Earth, and Fire are represented in the four pendentives of the vaulted ceiling. Another common name for this space is “Sala de Scipio” [The Room of Scipio], because the main scene painted on the ceiling represents the peace between Romans and Sabines. On this fresco, as a gesture of his desire for peace between the two countries, Scipio returns without having touched the maiden he had previously received from the Sabines. On the walls of the Sala appear the usual three heroes: Horatius Cocles, Mucius Scaevola, and Marcus Curtius Romanus. With these paintings, Álvaro de Bazán is proclaiming first of all his own virtues as an admiral: Scipio’s peace with the Sabines would show his self-control; his loyalty was represented by the image of Horatius Cocles single-handedly defending the Ponte Sublicio, also known as Ponte Aventino, on the Tiber in Rome; his endurance is portrayed in the scene of Mucius Scaevola burning his right hand over a brazier to prove to the enemy his complete disregard for pain. Finally, Marcus Curtius is depicted jumping into the abyss. This scene represents exactly the message that Álvaro de Bazán wants to convey throughout the entire palace. All 26,000 square feet of mythological, ancient, and contemporary historical paintings and the display of the captured flagships’ signal lamps have the sole intention of presenting the Spanish admiral as a sort of a human Neptune, an always-victorious Perseus, and a newer incarnation of the hero Marcus Curtius Romanus. This correlation between the Marquis, the god, the mythical hero, and the legendary Roman general, elevates his share of auctoritas above any other nobleman, making him second only to the king. When Livy wrote Marcus Curtius Romanus’s story and considered him to be the most valuable asset, he created an ideal that would resonate for centuries as societies struggled to transition from warrior to court nobility. As Norbert Elias labeled it, this “civilizing process” put the Roman hero at the center of a symbolic political battle between warrior-knights and courtier-knights for the privilege to speak to the ear of the monarch.[35] As the courtier-knight party increased its power, the symbol of Marcus Curtius was progressively demilitarized, making of the brave Roman a precursor of the pleasant courtier in Luis Milán’s, El Cortesano. In Cristóbal de Villalón’s Scholástico, Curtius’s once heroic deeds are compared with the trials of the

failing health of the everyday man who faces old age. Finally, in Agustín de Rojas, El viaje entretenido, the determination and passion of the lovers are found equal to Marcus Curtius’s sacrifice. But, for the most part, in early modern Spain the role of the Roman hero will still be more naturally occupied by those who served their country in the battlefield, and thus earning their position in society (auctoritas) as a result of their military achievements (potestas). Such was the case of the Marquis of Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga, the young Araucanian, Lautaro, and the admiral and Marquis of Santa Cruz, Álvaro de Bazán, as depicted in the numerous allegories of his palace in town of El Viso del Marqués. The most renowned of all those who rested on the military example of Marcus Curtius will be, however, a knight-errant named Don Quixote de la Mancha.

NOTES 1. Scene 27, in Gladiator, DVD, directed by Ridley Scott (Universal City, CA: DreamWorks, 2000). 2. Livy, The History of Rome (Ab urbe condita), ed. B. O. Foster, 14 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), bk. 7, 6:372–74. 3. An excellent example of this “behavior” of the courtiers can be found in the Royal Council described by Cristóbal de Virués in La gran Semíramis. In this passage, Janto, Creón, Troilo, and Oristenes follow docilely and without questioning the unjust commands by the successive royal personas of Nino, Semíramis, and Ninias. Alfredo Hermenegildo suggests that, with his tragedy, Cristóbal de Virués is trying to critique the behavior of Philip II and his court (“Cristóbal de Virués y la figura de Felipe II,” Criticón 87-88 [2003]: 395–406). 4. M. L. Carlson “Pagan Examples of Fortitude in the Latin Christian Apologists,” Classical Philology 43, no. 2 (1948): 95–96. 5. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, trans. William M. Green, 7 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 5.18. 6. Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI., trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 6.819–23. 7. Augustine, The City of God, 5.18. 8. Ibid., 5.18. 9. Matt. 10:28. All biblical quotations come from the Revised Standard Version of New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, ed. Roland E. Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 10. Eph. 6:13–17. Modern scholars have reached a consensus that this letter to the Ephesians was probably not written by Paul himself, but by followers who had a deep understanding of his teaching. This attribution, however, does not make any difference for our purposes. 11. Eph. 6:12. 12. John of Salisbury, Policraticus. Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers, ed. and trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 116 [bk. 6, chap. 8]. 13. Alfonso X, General Estoria. Cuarta parte, ed. Pedro Sánchez-Prieto Borja (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2002), 201r. 14. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 15. Many versions of the Gesta romanorum mistakenly attributed the sacrifice to Marcus Aurelius instead of Marcus Curtius. Interestingly, Fray Antonio de Guevara dedicates the first chapter of his Libro áureo de Marco Aurelio to explain how Aurelio’s family prided itself on descending directly from Marcus Curtius. 16. Gesta romanorum, trans. Charles Swan and Wynnard Hopper (1894; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1970), 77–

78. 17. Gesta romanorum, ed. Von Herman Oesterley (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1963), 342. 18. Gesta romanorum, trans. Swan and Hopper, 78. 19. Philip II owned a parade set––now at the Real Armería in Madrid––that displayed on the burgonet the main episodes of the Trojan War between Greeks and Trojans: the trial of Paris, his abduction of Helen, the construction of the gigantic wooden horse, and the moment in which the Trojans tore down part of the city wall to bring the horse inside, etc. Three of the four busts at the border of the shield are Mucius Scaevola, Marcus Curtius, and Horatius Cocles. See Álvaro Soler del Campo, The Art of Power. Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional—SEACEX, 2009), 129. 20. Karen Hearn, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630 (New York: Rizzoli, 1996), 49. The painting is believed to be the work of Guillim Scrots, who had been employed by Henry VIII since at least 1545. 21. The best-known connection between representations of Marcus Curtius and royalty was precisely unintended. When Bernini presented the French monarch with his sculpture Louis XIV Equestrian, the king was so shocked that he ordered to have it destroyed. In the end, he agreed to have his sculpture turned into a figure of Marcus Curtius and have it placed at the farthest end of the Versailles’ gardens, where he was sure never to see it. See Rudolf Wittkower, “The Vicissitudes of a Dynastic Monument. Bernini’s Equestrian Statue of Louis XIV,” in De Artibus Opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. M. Meiss (New York: New York University Press, 1961), 1:497. 22. Cristóbal de Villalón, El Scholástico, ed. José Miguel Martínez Torrejón (Barcelona: Crítica, 1997), 80. 23. Agustín de Rojas Villandrando, El viaje entretenido, ed. Jacques Joset, 2 vols. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Clásicos Castellanos, 1977), 2:88. 24. Luis Milán, El Cortesano (Valencia: Juan Arcos, 1561), A2r. 25. Wayne A. Rebhorn, Courtly Perfomances. Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978), 151. 26. Milán, El Cortesano, A2r–A2v. 27. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psycogenetic Investigations, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Eric Dunning (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 389. 28. Milán, El Cortesano, A2v. 29. Alonso de Ercilla, La Araucana, ed. Isaías Lerner, 4th ed. (Madrid: Cátedra, 2005), 146 [3.35.1-2]. Bracketed references are to canto, stanza and line. 30. Ercilla, Araucana, 148–49 [3.42.1–3.43.4]. 31. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Luis Andrés Murillo. 5th ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1991), 2:96. 32. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 536. 33. Rosa López Torrijos, Entre España y Génova. El Palacio de Don Álvaro de Bazán en el Viso (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 2009), 217–18. 34. Due to an error in the Count of Viñaza’s Adiciones al Diccionario histórico de Ceán Bermúdez (1894), it was believed that Gianbattista Peroli might have come to Spain with one of his brothers named Francesco, who would have collaborated as well in the palace. The majority of art historians have dismissed this possibility, and there is no proof that this brother even existed. See Juan del Campo Muñoz, “La familia Peroli y otros italianos en Viso del Marqués (1575–1613),” Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 71 (1998): 53–64. 35. Elias, Civilizing Process, 389.

Part II

Challenges for Power

Chapter 5 COINS, VALUE, AND TRUST Elvira Vilches The Problematics of Vellón in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Culture For the people of seventeenth-century Spain, coins symbolized power and royal authority because of their strength, utility, and perfection. “Alabanzas de la moneda,” a leaflet published in the 1620s, explains that money carries three names to illustrate this threefold virtue: “moneda” because coins provide the power to go to war and defend the state; “pecunia” because money is the source of wealth; and “dinero” because of its perfection.[1] Reales and escudos perfectly illustrated the tripartite virtue of money with their names, weight, and tale. “Real” means a silver coin, as well as “real,” “certain,” and “royal.” Similarly “escudo” means a gold piece, the royal coat of arms, and the epitome of monetary sovereignty. Copper pieces, however, desecrated the tripartite perfection of money. Beginning in 1602 the government not only doubled the nominal value of silver-andcopper alloy specie known as vellón, but also minted pure copper coins with the same denomination but half the former weight. As a result, Castilians began to lose the security they had felt from having money in their purse. They also experienced loss of meaning as well as the breakdown of normality. Suspicions about the institutions that guarantee trust and creditworthiness also raised concerns about where to locate the center of value. I argue that debased vellón tested the twofold presuppositions of certainty that metallic money requires.[2] First, it shook public confidence in the issuing political authority. For the monarch, as the upholder of legal tender, had minted a coin that lacked any material basis of value. Second, it raised doubts about whether the value given in exchange could be replaced without loss. In the sovereign monetary system copper stood for loose change. The base metal lacked the prime exchange value that precious metals enjoyed as commodities independently of their numismatic form as either escudos or reales.[3] The most perplexing question was the precise connection between money and value. I suggest that the slippage between representation and equivalence that vellón embodied precipitated a confusion that completely undermined public trust. What if money has no basis of value? If coins were to lose their ground, then how could the sanctified link between royal authority, value, and truth be sustained? These questions loomed large in the complex cultural landscape of seventeenth-century Spain. The works I examine in the following pages— economic treatises by Tomás de Mercado and Juan de Mariana, a monetary pamphlet by Tomás Cardona, literary reactions by Antonio Mira de Amescua and Francisco de Quevedo, and chronicles of the court historian Gil González Dávila—exemplify a continuum of writing that wrestled with the

overarching problem regarding the failure of money to represent value. Rather than discussing how each author reacted to the ramifications of the infamous vellón, I look at how this discursive network engaged copper money as a cluster of failing monetary and social relations.[4] I propose that copper coinage cannot be separated from the bimetallic monetary system because the parity established by law between the three metals constituted the basis of exchange. Vellón, in particular, is closely interlinked with silver, because reales were the currency of commerce and finance. Before and during debasement the real was exchanged for 34 maravedís, and this equivalence served as the reference of truth and stability that held copper money in check. Silver also organized the correspondence among the monetary standard by providing a middle ground between the lesser metal and gold. In the early modern period silver and gold functioned as the trusted grounds of value. The transformation of a commodity (silver, gold) into money depended on a system of relations among the sovereign, mints, consumers, bankers, and traders that reflected the monarch’s fiduciary duty to the nation.[5] By exposing the contingent nature of value, copper coinage compromised the faith in money that had made possible the calculation and realization of economic interests. The fear that copper coins would damage the capacity for accounting value led authors to question the political foundations of money, revaluate the parity among the metals, and examine ways to compensate for the dubious value of the adulterated coinage. My argument examines the problematics of representation and equivalence by looking at the Castilian bimetallic monetary system, the intricate link between silver and copper, the crisis of representation, and the chimera of real money. We will see that discussions about true value inevitably demonstrated that money is not merely an object that mediates between other objects or commodities, but a particular structure of social relations that grows in a profoundly cultural medium.

CASTILIAN CURRENCY Economic thinker Tomás de Mercado, author of Suma de tratos y contratos (Sevilla 1569), held that the coin is the inalterable value and measure of all things. He compared it with the clock, because time and money were the pillars of good government. A well-ordained republic depended on precise and reliable clocks to organize social life and relied on accurate, reputable, and trustworthy coins to guarantee fair exchange. Mercado claimed that Castilian currency was the most highly esteemed in the world and that any adulteration would put its sacredness at risk: it would dishonor the monarch, make property precarious, and throw society into disarray.[6] Mercado wrote during the Golden Age of Castilian money that began when imperial Spain established its monetary system in 1497 after centuries of feudal minting privileges. Previously, Castilian specie had consisted of a chaotic mixture of base coins and foreign currency. The royal decree of 1497 established standards of

weight and fineness, as well as the parities among copper, silver, and gold, according to the benchmark of the Venetian gold ducado. The measure of value was grounded on the pound. Eight ounces (or one mark) was the unit of weight to mint gold and silver pieces and alloy fractionary coins. The Castilian bimetallic monetary system consisted of the gold coin excelente or ducado, and later the escudo worth 375 maravedís, the silver real of 34 maravedís, and blancas, small change coins made of a silver and copper alloy that were worth either 2 or 4 maravedís. The maravedí was established as the basic denomination.[7] In 1537 Charles V minted the escudo, with a purity of 22 carats and a value of 350 maravedís. This value fluctuated between 350 and 400 maravedís through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The standard silver coin was the real, with a constant value of 34 maravedís, even through debasement. In 1548 the emperor authorized and increased vellón circulation. By 1552 the silver content was reduced to 5½ grains of silver, but the amount decreased to 2 grains and later to 1 in 1596, before disappearing completely by 1600.[8] Gold escudos ranged from escudos sencillos and doblones, a piece of 2 escudos, and its multiples of 4 and 8. Similarly the silver coins in circulation were multiples of the real, ranging from real de a ocho to real sencillo. Vellón circulated as cuartillos worth 8½ maravedís, cuartos or 4 maravedís, and 2 maravedís.[9] In this monetary system minting was a royal prerogative. It required extreme delicacy and precision because the intrinsic value of gold and silver measured by weight and fineness constituted the foundations of valuation. The nominal and intrinsic values of coins were the variables used by the government to maintain money in circulation. But the homology between legal and natural value seemed more difficult to reconcile in the case of the alloy because the nominal value of vellón was always higher than the intrinsic worth of its metallic substance in order to provide small cash for everyday transactions.[10] Minting vellón required a special royal license in order to guarantee that the country would not be flooded with small coins of little substantial value. In contrast to commodity money such as reales and escudos, the alloy functioned as fiat money. The disparity between tale and metallic content indicates that vellón derived its value not so much from the grains of silver it contained, but from the faith placed in the coin and the monarch by public consent.

SILVER AND COPPER In the seventeenth century there was a great shortage of money in Spain. The treasury was so encumbered with growing debt, that the government issued the “decree of silver,”[11] ordering private individuals and the church to inventory their silver holdings so that the government could appropriate them for minting coins. The fear of royal requisitions and the circulation of both legal and counterfeit copper coinage caused even greater shortages that not only disrupted large payments and transactions, but also began to undermine the entire monetary system. Despite all the treasure and tax revenue flowing in from the Indies, Spain found

itself in the grip of a growing economic depression, and the scarcity of silver caused mounting consternation. Reales greased the wheels of finance, global trade, and domestic markets; as objects of lasting value they were also used to hedge against inflation.[12] But the debased copper coins were drawing reales out of circulation and thus impairing the foundations of commerce upon which rested all sorts of social interactions. Purchases then became a complex process. Prices were set in silver to be paid in copper, and therefore merchants and consumers had to agree on some sort of equivalence. With the frequent fluctuations in the premium between copper and silver, Castilians saw the purchasing power of their money and their living standards drop as vellón’s value eroded and commodity prices climbed. The prices of goods in the shops became arbitrary, commerce collapsed, and many banking firms were ruined. Domestic sources of revenue suffered as well, for the government received tax payments in vellón but had to make international payments in silver.[13] The intrinsic value of the grains of silver in the genuine alloy demonstrated in the eyes of the public that the coin bore a material basis of value. Although the amount of the precious metal was minimal, it proved that wholesome vellón was consistent with the nature and original concept of money as a medium of exchange, and, therefore, could realize the calculation and economic interests of consumers. Conversely, the absence of such a ground proved that the system of relations established between the political authority and the public were unsustainable because society repudiated the insubstantial value that copper money had by virtue of royal power alone. Castilian coins displayed unmistakable icons of royal authority. Typically reales and escudos minted during the seventeenth century carried the royal coat of arms and the name of the monarch on the obverse, and the monarch full title (Rex Hispaniarum) as well as a Jerusalem Cross over the emblems of Castile on the reverse. Reales de a ocho often bore the effigy of Philip IV on the obverse and the royal coat of arms on the reverse.[14] These symbols of sovereignty made the correspondence of tale and weight seem not only substantial, but also inherent because these inscriptions upheld the weight and fineness of the coin. In the case of small cash coins the metallic content was secondary because invariably the monarch’s initials along with the castle and the lion, the emblems of Castile, ratified that the royal pledge was the yardstick of value. Debasement, however, caused a major shift because the royal inscriptions no longer conveyed creditworthiness or assured value. For example, the four maravedís coins or blancas issued in 1660 still bore the effigy and arms of the monarch, but they were almost impossible to distinguish as legal tender from counterfeit coins smuggled in from England, Germany, and the Netherlands.[15] Representing the intricate link between authority and value became even more problematic in the case of restamped copper coins like cuartillos because the metal was so thin that the supposedly round shape of the coin morphed into an irregular mass with coarse numerical inscriptions over fading royal icons. The tarnished meaning of sovereignty, the deterioration of numismatic shape and

form, and the overestimation of the face value of the copper coinage, all demonstrated that there was no anchor to validate trust between issuer and users. People reacted by hoarding silver, and waves of leaflets cursed the government while criticizing and even ridiculing the monarchy.[16] In his famous treatise De monetae (Cologne 1609),[17] Juan de Mariana argued that because money has a twofold value that combines the legal denomination with the natural worth of the metal, the monarch lacks the authority to alter the required consistency between the two. On the contrary, he and his ministers must ensure that the intrinsic and extrinsic values agree. Otherwise, the king would be asking the people to value something at below common estimation. Not only would he abuse royal power by stripping the people of their property, but he would also be denying a universally recognized organization of value. Mariana’s exposition also reveals a further problem: society would not accept unsound money. Everyone would refuse to take it when doing business, and citizens would have to find ways to adjust the higher legal value of base money to their established notions of worth.

THE CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION The minting of vellón was suspended in 1606, 1608, and 1626. Between 1627 and 1641 copper money was inflated three times and deflated four to be followed by further alterations in 1642, 1651, 1652, 1658, 1660, and 1664. By 1651 Philip IV planned to restore a bimetallic standard but was prevented from doing so by the necessities of his armies in Milan and Flanders. Instead, a rise of prices and the depreciation of the copper coinage followed.[18] In 1654 Jerónimo de Barrionuevo described long lines of people outside the royal mint waiting to have their money restamped with a higher value, but by then coins were so thin that they barely could keep their compact rounded shape. He also observed that people grew desperate as they realized that money and prices were pure madness.[19]

Re-stamped vellón coins, obverse. Source: Courtesy of the Fundación Museo de las Ferias, Medina del Campo, Spain

Re-stamped vellón coins, reverse. Source: Courtesy of the Fundación Museo de las Ferias, Medina del Campo, Spain

“Madness” describes concisely the state of mind brought on by the reversal of value relations that bad money instigated. When the institutions that guarantee trust and creditworthiness fail, value itself becomes suspect. In normal times, it is the bedrock of a fundamental universe of relations that surface in money. This sense of objective stability, as well as the understanding of the world, seems to collapse when money is called into question.[20] For value involves a process of representation that simply goes unnoticed until the mechanisms that ground it fail.[21] Copper money exposed the divorce of royal power from both metallic substance and value, and the confusion was aggravated by the ease with which overvalued vellón could be minted. [22] Indeed, the mass production of base money put in place a de facto fiat monetary system that no one seemed to esteem. Treatises, pamphlets, chronicles, satire, and one-act plays, among other literary works, confronted this crisis of representation by raising questions about what would limit the issue of copper coinage, and how it would be possible to restore confidence. Thus authors grappled with the problem of dubious value by examining the royal prerogative of money, criticizing court life, rethinking the parity among the metals, and pondering whether real money had morphed into a chimera. For Mariana the question of value is interrelated with natural law because the legitimate nature of sovereignty arises from the people. Thus he argues that the monarch lacks the authority to alter the common estimation of things and the principles of good government. If the king faces increasing debt, Mariana argues, then he has to adjust the public dimension of majesty to his dwindling resources rather than abusing the institution of money; he advocates lessening court expenses by claiming that “reasonable and prudent moderation is more splendid and manifests more majesty than unnecessary and unseasonable consumption.” This measure, he adds, involves “no injury to, or groaning of the nation.”[23] Mariana reckons that reducing excessive gifts, containing the corruption of the government, and placing a heavy tax on luxury goods from abroad, would yield a profit of 200,000 ducados, which he reckons equal to the net profits accrued with debasement.[24]

The royal court fostered a culture of display where gold, precious stones, brocade, silk, scents, and an extravagant lifestyle exemplified political power, social bonds, and hierarchy itself. Diplomatic gifts and rewards to noblemen showcased magnanimity and liberality as integral parts of kingship but denied any sort of monetary exchange. This attitude toward wealth fashioned the greatness of the monarch with little or no thought for the resources that would be needed to sustain it. Royal chronicler Gil González de Dávila depicted the splendor of court life as an overt critique of a society that isolated itself from the miseries and contradictions of copper coinage. His eye for minute detail shows not only magnificence, but also, and more importantly, how brocade, jewels, gold objects, and especially escudos or “buena moneda” could display, for ordinary readers, objects of genuine value that most of them could only dream of. Take chapter XIV of his Monarquía de España. Historia de la vida y hechos del ínclito monarca amado y santo D. Felipe III, which summarizes the major events of 1603:[25] it reports that the government’s desperate need for money led it to impose such controversial measures as requesting silver donations and doubling the nominal value of copper coins. The chapter includes the actual royal decree demanding silver, how the government celebrated how much silver they saved by altering the coinage, and the author’s own reflections about how this controversial measure would turn society upside down. Surprisingly the damage and burdens (“grandes daños e inconvenientes”) that he notices coexist with the minting of the largest gold and silver coins ever issued. González Dávila explains that in the midst of economic depression, fiscal crisis, and monetary chaos Philip III ordered the mint at Segovia to produce 70 pieces of centenes or gold coins worth 100 escudos (ducados de oro de a ciento), along with cinquentines or silver coins worth 50 reales (reales de plata de a cincuenta del tamaño de los ducados de a ciento) to be given to Christian princes and noblemen at court.[26] Perhaps these remarkable coins marked the celebrations of the birth of the infanta María or the victory over the Dutch in the Ostend siege. These coins surfaced again in the entry of 1612 amidst a long list of marvelous gifts that Philip’s ambassador presented to the French royal family to celebrate the marriage capitulations held between the infanta Ana Mauricia and Louis XIII of France.[27] Presents included ambergris scented gloves, luxurious cordovan pieces, scents, bezoar stones garnished in gold, glasses made of bezoar and gold, gold cups, richly garnished desk pieces, Toledo swords, the finest Segovia cloth, diamonds, and a cache of centenes and cinquentines.[28]

Centén, obverse. Source: Courtesy of the Museo Casa de la Moneda, Madrid, Spain

The centén, or ducado de a ciento, was the most imposing piece. If I were to hold this coin in my hand, a big lump of gold would fill the entire palm. With a diameter of 7 centimeters, a weight of 338.05 grams, and a worth of 100 escudos, the centén was a striking and superb piece. The obverse carries the royal coat of arms flanked with a narrow aqueduct, the mint sign, on the left side and the numeral indicating its monetary value on the right. The monarch’s name, Philipus III, with the initials D.G. [by the grace of god] appears in the surrounding inscription. The reverse shows a Jerusalem cross in a cartouche surrounded by the inscription of “Rex Hispaniarum.” Dentils and a dentured brim circle the motto in both sides. The centén coexisted with the cinquentín, the silver coin bearing a similar design with a weight of 136.5 grams and worth of 50 reales.

Centén, reverse. Source: Courtesy of the Museo Casa de la Moneda, Madrid, Spain

Duplicating the design of current escudos and reales these coins demonstrated the highest political and monetary value in the most condensed form. In the privileged circles of the royal court, centenes and cinquentines did not pay for commodities. Rather the outstanding pieces flaunted the fabled wealth of the New World while celebrating royal majesty and cementing patron-client relationships. Similarly escudos circulated as gifts and rewards that helped established bonds and networks of dependence. Already in 1567 Mercado explained that doblones, a piece of 2

escudos, were outstanding coins whose bright golden glitter he compared with that of a fine pearl or precious stone. He also noticed that the beauty and greatness of doblones make them suitable for royalty and the aristocracy because they rarely were minted and thus were held as precious objects of exceptional value.[29] Indeed escudos paid for dowries, travel expenses, and the needs of the aristocracy without acknowledging self-interest or economic motivations.[30] The Cortes offered the queen 10,000 escudos to cover travel expenses. The king distributed “buena moneda” to his subjects to celebrate the birth of his son Philip in 1605. The Duke of Parma spent more than 1,000 escudos as thank-you gifts to the servants in the household of Lerma that looked after him during his visit.[31] González Dávila’s attention to gold coins, in particular, but also to jewels, luxury objects, and other possessions in the form of rents and estates, is a telling example of how he dealt with the crisis of representation by masking and exposing at once the urgent need to supply a center of value. Gold coins, gold objects and jewels, were ubiquitous in contemporary news leaflets and literary discourse as well. These forms of writing took pleasure in listing everything expensive, precious, and glamorous in order to demonstrate the exact equivalence between value and representation that had gone amiss with copper money.[32] Pamphleteers concerned with monetary matters, like captain Tomás Cardona, understood the miseries of debasement from the point of view of the king.[33] Most tracts offered versions of Tomás Cardona’s initial proposal for devaluating the silver coinage that he had presented in Valladolid in 1619. Cardona complained that vellón had damaged the estimation of gold and silver. Because the identification of monetary value with intrinsic worth was no longer visible, Cardona, along with many other writers, substituted one ground of value (the nation’s masculine honor) for another (the ground of money’s value). Cardona’s use of figurative language morphs both metals, but especially gold, into noblemen whose honor is humiliated and scorned by being demoted (“el vilipendio que padecen los nobilísimos metales y primeros metales”). Copper money then is described as a lesser commoner who has altered the hierarchy and the natural order of values. Cardona argues that only a fair readjustment of premiums and weights could stop the “injustice,” “dishonor,” and “scorn” that gold and silver were undergoing.[34] Despite his apparent concern for the integrity of precious metals, Cardona also proposes increasing the number of reales that could be struck with a mark of silver. Ten years earlier Mariana had disapproved a similar initiative on the grounds that the stability of silver money acted as a restraint on copper money. If silver were to be devalued, everything would be ruined. He explains that reales, because of their quality, are the ultimate foundation of commerce: “When [silver money] is altered, everything else resting upon it will necessarily collapse.” This domino effect surely will destabilize the value of gold, bringing about “a topsy-turvy world where the highest will be confounded with the lowest, turning upside down things better left undisturbed.” Mariana concludes: “It is not profitable to try people’s patience.

Patience can become exasperated and wear out and can destroy everything else, as well as be self-destructive.”[35]

THE CHIMERA OF REAL MONEY With the disappearance of reales from the channels of commerce, silver was displaced by vellón as the standard. Many charitable institutions recorded in copper coinage their occasional receipts and disbursements of gold and silver, especially after 1620. By that time vellón constituted the accounting unit and medium of exchange, but the practice of everyday exchange did not mean that society accepted copper coinage without any qualms.[36] Chroniclers like Barrionuevo and Gil González Dávila, among others, reported a generalized crisis of confidence. Everyone was beating their heads against the walls without knowing what to do about money. The appalling shortage of silver exacerbated the anxiety about a de facto fiat monetary system that placed doubt rather than certainty at the heart of the coinage’s value.[37] The consensus was that money had become a chimera because monetary soundness seemed impossible to realize. The possibility that good money would soon displace bad seemed so remote that authors often employed the language of illusion and fantasy. The vagaries of copper money called for reflections about deceptive appearance and self-deluding fantasies. The effects of deflation were so unexpected that Mariana compared them to a nightmare, while claiming that poverty and turmoil conveyed the naked truth.[38] But the most telling examples came from reflections about the vanishing of silver and the mutability of money. González Dávila commented that in 1624 in León nobody had 2 reales to pay for the Bula de la Santa Cruzada, the sale of bulls of indulgence, forcing officials to take cuartillos, copper coins worth 8½ maravedís.[39] The bookkeeper of the Convento de Nuestra Señora de Sandoval in León doubted if reales had ever existed. He complained that “the smallest coin current is a cuarto (a vellón coin worth 4 maravedís). Silver reales no longer circulate, and pieces of eight are a fiction of the imagination.”[40] Reales were considered the most desirable and stable silver coins both inside and outside the Spanish empire, but in Francisco de Quevedo’s satire La hora de todos (composed 1635–1636) they become illusory rather than tangible objects. The old bawd in the story is sure that the world will collapse because nobody recognizes and understands money anymore.[41] Exchange fairs, monetary gifts, and silver and gold coins have ceased to exist. She wonders how it is possible that something so concrete as the value of a real de a ocho has vanished amidst the countless amounts of copper cuartos needed to make up for the value of one silver piece. She claims that such an effort is like painting a life-size picture of an elephant, which is so huge that it will require four separate canvases. The analogy between the imaginary painting and the illusive standard of value suggests that the silver coin is as rare, exotic, and extraordinary as the animal. But the elephant can also evoke rich, faraway

lands filled with gold, precious stones, ivory, spices, and slaves, whereas the silver real unfortunately speaks of a vanishing ideal that can no longer be possessed or exchanged, but just admired. The old lady places doblones in the supernatural world along with the famous crown princes of Aragón. She nostalgically evokes the famous icons of medieval gallantry and the doblones as items of equal value that have turned into mere fable. She concludes that, since the standards have vanished, any form of credit is now void,[42] and she advises the two prostitutes under her care to love old émigrés from Mexico loaded with bullion and forget about young, penniless gentlemen.[43] If gold and silver coins were considered too good to be true, copper pieces were despised and depicted as the worst nightmare. In Quevedo’s controversial pamphlet El chitón de las tarabillas (1630) we see that purses loathe vellón because they fear they will turn into copper caldrons. In Castile copper coinage is held as worthless and cumbersome treasure (“fortuna arrinconada”) and as a huge swollen abscess (“hinchazón de apostema”) that all the kingdoms spurn as if vellón were the carrier of the plague (“peste acuñada”). Vellón cleans the hands of shoppers but soils those of sellers, filling up their homes up to the brim with the worst garbage.[44] The disquieting imagery of disease, infection, and baffling metamorphosis explains the main reasons why the public repudiated vellón. Chitón reacted to the popular hostility and vocal opposition that circulated freely in Madrid during 1628– 1629 in the form of satires and pasquinades, and especially to a major indictment of the regime that accused the Count-Duke of Olivares of ruining Spain by devaluating the currency. His deflationary measures sought to keep rampant inflation in check but they did little to alleviate the general monetary distress.[45] Quevedo’s pamphlet presented both the king and his ministers doing their best to salvage the nation despite unbearable defamations of don Señor Pedrisco. But I find the text quite ambiguous especially because the complaints about bad money are reflective of the ideas discussed by Mariana and even Quevedo’s own old bawd, and secondly because it is not clear how the government will proceed to contain the vellón plague. Deflation made matters worse because sellers were reluctant to lose the value of their merchandise, prices and salaries became even more arbitrary, and good coins were nowhere to be seen. The government hoped to solve this problem by giving licenses to search for reliable sources of precious metals in Iberia, but such efforts met with little success, for the gold of Spanish rivers existed only in the imagination of poets, as the detracting voice in the pamphlet suggests.[46] Olivares also devised a system of local banks where the public could exchange copper for silver but it did not succeed either, except on the stage, as we will see.[47] In the end, what Quevedo provides is not a plan to break down copper money, but rather a defense of Philip IV. Quevedo invites the reader to ponder the misfortunes and hardships that have befallen him while, at the same time, to consider that medieval monarchs were the most egregious abusers of monetary principles. El monte de la piedad, a one-act religious play by Antonio Mira de Amescua,

proposes to solve the crisis of representation by cleansing the country of vellón. The play registers the threat of base money by depicting true faith and genuine money as equivalent grounds of value and then suggesting that this twofold foundation of the nation will be lost to vellón, its threatening other. By fashioning vellón as the weapon of Islam and the heathen, the play exonerates the monarchy from any liability while confronting the allegorical figure Herejía (heresy) with Justicia, the defender of monetary truth (“la plata de la verdad”). Herejía calls on Muslims and pagans to conquer Spain by destroying its faith with fake copper money. Eventually Justicia will prevail with the help of Nobleza, Isaías, David, and Salomón. The Old Testament figures provide Justicia with their advice or arbitrios. Isaías explains salvation. David discusses usury. But Salomón, along with Justicia, Piedad, and Nobleza, suggests the best remedy would be for the Inquisition to punish smugglers and counterfeiters. He also suggests compensating the faithful for their losses by creating a public bank, or Monte de la Piedad, that will provide Spaniards with a hundred percent return. Interestingly the play shifts responsibility for truth and value from the government to the church. El monte de la piedad seeks to mitigate the pervasive mistrust in money by anchoring real silver in religion rather than in the royal mint. The play suggests that faith rather than the state can correct the disparity between representation and value.

FAITH These writings point out that the confidence in money was not gratuitous but rather it required a material ground, however small, that will secure the trust placed in the coin and the minting authority. Even modern thinkers have feared the chaotic effects that the disappearance of commodity money might bring. Marx worried that replacing precious metals with mere symbols would result in the creation of worthless paper money. Nietzsche contended that the impact of insubstantial signs would extend beyond the economic realm. Both thinkers believed that when truth, like money, lost its substance, it would be revealed as an illusion. Gold, God, and Truth were nothing more than related illusions constructed to provide certainty and security. And because they denied their status as signs, they also presumed to ground the meaning and value of other signs. The foundations they provide may feel secure and precious, yet they are based upon acts of faith.[48] Money was an uncertain aspect of daily life in seventeenth-century Spain. The struggle to discern genuine value established a continuum between economic, historical, political, and literary writings that sought to mediate between certain and dubious monetary signs. Authors approached the crisis of representation by confronting the abuse of royal power, unmasking insubstantial equivalence, and exposing the pressing urgency to supply a center of value. Value is an illusion that we invest in objects as if it were an inherent quality. This sense of normality and our understanding of the world collapse when money is called into question as it was in Habsburg Spain. Interestingly, we experience the same anxiety and confusion today.

We see financiers make billions trading financial products backed by abstract figures and signs that few understand. The fear that investments, exchange, credit, and currency values may be nothing more than sophisticated electronic operations is quite disquieting. And many wonder if the time has come to reclaim the secure anchor of the gold standard. We may have much to learn from the seventeenth century.

NOTES 1. I am grateful to Isabel Pardo Chillerón, Santiago Losada Maldonado, and Maribel Cañarte Jiménez, the librarians at the Real Casa de la Moneda for their invaluable assistance during the research of this chapter. Special thanks go to Mercedes López de Arriba, the chief curator at Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda, for her generosity, patience, and expertise. The Museo kindly granted the digital images of the 1623 centén and free reproduction rights. I am also grateful to Fundación Museo de las Ferias de Medina del Campo (Valladolid) and especially to Fernando Ramos González who kindly made digital photographs of vellón coins. Finally I am also indebted to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University for its gracious financial support with a 2010 Scholarship and Research Award. 2. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, trans. Tom Bottomore and David Frisby, ed. David Frisby (London: Routledge, 2004), 177. 3. For a discussion of materialistic theories of money, see Ingham’s “On the Underdevelopment of the ‘Sociology of Money.’” Geoffrey Ingham, “On the Underdevelopment of the ‘Sociology of Money,’” Acta Sociologica 41, no. 1 (1998): 3–18. 4. Money is not merely an efficient and neutral lubricant of exchange for the rational individual. The sociology of money pays attention to the means and social relations of the production of money, in which monetary “discourse” and “meanings” are related to the power struggles at the center of its production (Ibid., 14). 5. Marie-Thérèse Boyer-Xambeu, Ghislain Deleplace, and Lucien Guillard, Private Money and Public Currencies: The Sixteenth Century Challenge, trans. Azizeh Azodi (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994). 6. Tomás de Mercado, Suma de tratos y contratos, ed. Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, 1977), 221. 7. Octavio Gil Farrés, Historia de la moneda española (Madrid: Diana, 1959), 226–32. 8. John Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs, 2 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1981), 2:369; and José García del Paso, “El problema del vellón en El chitón de las tarabillas,” La Perinola 6 (2002): 329–31. 9. Farrés, Historia de la moneda, 238. 10. Juana de Mariana, “A Treatise on the Alteration of Money (1609),” in A Source Book in Late-Scholastic Monetary Theory, ed. Stephen J. Grabill (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2007), 262. 11. Antonio Feros, Kingship and favoritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598–1621 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 153. 12. Mariana, “A Treatise on the Alteration of Money (1609),” 289. 13. J. H. Elliot, The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 629. 14. Gil Farrés, Historia de la moneda española, 225-47, gives detailed descriptions of all the coins minted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For the importance of the politics of royal representation see Antonio Feros, “Sacred and Terrifying Gazes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Velázquez, ed. Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 68–86. 15. Jesús Carrasco Vázquez, “Contrabando, moneda y espionaje (el negocio del vellón: 1606–1620),” Hispania. Revista Española de Historia 57, no. 197 (1997): 1081–105. 16. José Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, trans. Terry Cochran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 40–45, 57–78

17. Political philosopher Juan de Mariana denounced Philip III’s monetary policy as a hidden taxation. Mariana was arrested by the Inquisition and charged with lèse-majesté for criticizing the monetary policy of the king in front of a foreign audience. Mariana was convicted of the crime, but was relieved from prison thanks to the intervention of the Pope. The king, however, was not satisfied with the Pope’s decision that Mariana should remove offensive passages from his treatise. Philip ordered his officials to buy all the copies they could find and destroy them. After Mariana’s death, the Inquisition expurgated the remaining copies. As a result of royal censorship, the existence of the Latin text remained unknown for 250 years. De monetae was rediscovered because the Spanish edition, which Mariana himself had translated from the Latin, was incorporated into a nineteenth century collection of classical Spanish essays (Stephen J. Grabill’s introduction to Mariana, “A Treatise on the Alteration of Money,” xxvii). 18. Earl J. Hamilton, War and Prices in Spain, 1651–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), 13–21. 19. Jerónimo Barrionuevo, Avisos (Madrid: M. Tello, 1892), 102, 108, 126. In 1651 a royal decree ordered to quadruple the tale of 2 maravedis pieces. The decree outlawed the possession of unstamped coins after the period of grace and provided a death penalty and the loss of the offender’s property for their expenditure (Hamilton, War and Prices in Spain, 14). 20. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, 59–63, 78. 21. Mary Poovey, Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008), 6. 22. See Francisco de Paula Pérez, “El reinado de Felipe II y su sistema monetario,” Gaceta Numismática 160 (2006): 29–35. 23. Mariana, “A Treatise on the Alteration of Money,” 299. 24. Ibid. See also Juan E. Gelabert, La bolsa del rey. Rey, reino y fisco en Castilla (1548–1648) (Barcelona: Crítica, 1997), for a relation of expenses. 25. Monarquía de España. Historia de la vida y hechos del ínclito monarca amado y santo D. Felipe III is a posthumous work by Gil González Dávila, first published by Bartolomé de Ulloa in Madrid, 1771. 26. Although ducado indicated money of account rather than a specific coin, González Dávila’s choice of words seems to refer to an extraordinary coin whose tale surpassed the value of any other coin minted, and that was used as a royal gift. Like his father, Philip IV also minted these outstanding coins, the piece held at the Museo de la Real Casa de la Moneda dates from 1623. I am thankful to curator Mercedes López de Arriba for bringing this document to my attention. On September 4, 1623, the king issued a request asking the citizens of Segovia to provide some gold and silver to mint coins during the visit of the Prince of Wales to the royal mint located at this Castilian town. According to the letter that Andrés de Losada y Prado sent to the marquis of de Montesclaros the royal mint struck centenes and cinquentines that his royal highness distributed among his retinue. (Su Magestad—1623—4 de septiembre—Que se provea alguna cantidad de plata y oro al Ingenio para que se pueda hazer muestras de moneda quando passase por él, el señor Principe de Gales; Archivo de Simancas). 27. The fascination about these coins still remains today according to an article with the title “La moneda que rascó el millón” published by the newspaper El País on October 22, 2009, two centenes, one of them minted on 1609 reached the sum of 800.000 euros at a numismatic auction. 28. Gil González Dávila, Monarquía de España, 167. For further details on jewels, precious objects, and works of art that circulated as diplomatic gifts, see Bernardo J. García García, “Regalos diplomáticos y bienes suntuarios,” in Materia crítica: formas de ocio y consumo en la cultura áurea, ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás (Madrid Iberoamericana, 2009), 212–52. 29. Mercado, Suma de tratos y contratos, 368. 30. Escudos were the preferred method of payment for acquiring loyalty at the royal court. The Duke of Osuna, for instance, insisted on using gold pieces rather than silver reales to bribe dwarf Isabel de Corcos (Alina Sokol, “What Does an Escudo Buy? Gold and Money in Francisco de Quevedo's Sonnet ‘To Gold,’” in Arts of Calculation: Quantifying Thought in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Glimp [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004], 19–20). Escudos also marked the difference between mere payment and reward. For his trip to Italy Diego de Velázquez

received 400 silver pieces to cover travel expenses from the king. But this allowance was supplemented by a grant of 200 gold pieces from the Count-Duke of Olivares (Jonathan Brown, “Velázquez and Italy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Velázquez, ed. Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002], 32). For the importance of patronage, see Feros, Kingship and Favoritism, and Elizabeth R. Wright, Pilgrimage to Patronage: Lope de Vega and the Court of Philip III 1598–1621 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2001). 31. Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, Relaciones de las cosas sucedidas en la corte de España, desde 1599 hasta 1614, Imprenta de J. Martín Alegría (Madrid, 1857), 50, 122, 239. 32. Elvira Vilches, New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern Spain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 313–19. 33. The treatise by Alfonso de Carranza, titled Ajustamiento de la moneda (Madrid, 1629), contains two pamphlets that Captain Tomás Cardona sent to Philip III. The first shows the following heading “El capitán Thomás de Cardona, maestro de su cámara y fiscal de su real junta de minas” (1600). The second is titled “Proposición del capitán Thomas de Cardona por memorial dado a su magestad: i después en la junta particular que sobre ella se hizo.” 34. Tomás Cardona, “El capitán Thomás de Cardona, maestro de su cámara y fiscal de su real junta de minas,” in El aiustamieto i proporcion de las monedas de oro, plata i cobre i la reduccion destos metals a su debida estimacion, son regalia singular del Rei de España i de las Indias, by Alfonso Carranza (Madrid: Francisco Martínez, 1629), i–xii. 35. Mariana, “A Treatise on the Alteration of Money,” 291. 36. Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650 (New York: Octagon Books, 1965), 90–91. 37. For a detailed account of the vast volume of vellón circulating in Castile during this period, see García del Paso, “El problema del vellón en El chitón de las tarabillas.” 38. Mariana, “A Treatise on the Alteration of Money,” 286–87. 39. González Dávila, Monarquía de España, 89. 40. Hamilton, American Treasure, 90. 41. Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, La hora de todos y la fortuna con seso, ed. Luisa López-Grigera (Madrid: Castalia, 1975), 99–101. For an analysis of monetary discourse in Quevedo’s poetry see Alina Sokol, “What Does an Escudo buy?” 42. Gelabert studies the collapse of the credity system (La bolsa del rey, 23–24). 43. This scene brings to mind a similar situation in Lope de Vega Carpio’s prose drama La Dorotea in which the old Gerarda advises Teodora, Dorotea’s mother, that her daughter should correspond to the advances of don Bela the wealthy indiano: “Yo he sabido de que un caballero indiano . . . le daría una cadena de mil escudos con una joya, y otros mil para su plato, y le adornaría la casa de una rica tapicería de Londres, y le daría dos esclavas mulatas, conserveras y laboreras, que las puede tener el rey en su palacio” [I have learned that a Spanish gentleman just back from the New World . . . that he’d give her a necklace with a jeweled pendant worth a thousand escudos, and another thousand for household silver, and a sumptuous tapestry from London to grace her house. Not only that, but also two mulatto slave girls, thrifty and hard-working, fit for the King’s own service] (La Dorotea, ed. Edwin S. Morby [Madrid: Castalia, 2001], 82; and Lope de Vega Carpio, La Dorotea, trans. and ed. Alan S. Trueblood and Edwin Honig [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985], 13). 44. Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, El chitón de las tarabillas, ed. Manuel Urí Martín (Madrid: Castalia, 1998), 76– 81. 45. J. H. Elliott, Spain and its Worlds 1500-1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 195, 200. 46. See Urí Martín’s introduction to Quevedo, Chitón, 29. In a similar vein, Cervantes’s Glass Graduate delivers a priceless comment about poets forgetting about their own power to become rich: “pues estaba en su mano ser ricos, si se sabían aprovechar de la ocasión que por momentos traían entre las manos, que eran las de sus damas, que todas eran riquísimas en extremo, pues tenían los cabellos de oro, frente de plata bruñida, los ojos verdes esmeraldas, los dientes de marfil, los labios de coral y la garganta de cristal transparente, y que lo que lloraban eran

líquidas perlas [ . . . ] y que todas estas cosas eran señales y muestras de su mucha riqueza” [since they had it in their power to be rich if they only knew how to make use of the wealth that lay in their hands at times—namely, that of their ladies, who were all exceedingly opulent in golden locks, brows of burnished silver, eyes that were green emeralds, teeth of ivory, coral lips, and throats of transparent crystal, while their tears were liquid pearls . . . and were not all these things the sign and evidence of great wealth?] (Novelas ejemplares, ed. Harry Sieber [Madrid: Cátedra, 1991] 2:60; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Three Exemplary Novels, trans. Samuel Putnam [New York: Viking, 1950], 101). 47. Earl J. Hamilton discusses the different attempts to organize public banking in order to solve sovereign debt and the vellón problem in “Spanish Banking Schemes before 1700,” The Journal of Political Economy 57, no. 2 (1949): 134–56. Felipe Ruiz Martín gives a detail account about Olivares’s vision of public banks as a great source of ready money for the king and why the aristocracy, the business community, as well as the church and landowners did not support Olivares proposal (“La banca en España hasta 1782,” in El Banco de España. Una historia económica, ed. Alfonso Moreno Redondo [Madrid: Banco de España, 1970], 59–97). See also Carmen Sanz Ayán’s Estado, monarquía y finanzas: estudios de historia financiera en tiempos de los Austrias (Madrid: Centros de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2004). 48. Philosopher Mark Taylor argues that both religion and money are confidence games and it is almost impossible to know whether money represents God or God represents money. The allure of gold as a sign whose value is secured by the substance it embodies extends to the modern period and even continues today (Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004], 121–24).

Chapter 6 TAMPERING WITH SIGNS OF POWER John Slater Juan de Palafox, Historiography, and the Limits of Heraldry The coat of arms of the Spanish Hapsburgs is more than a symbol of kingdoms conquered or acquired. It is a condensed family history and thus a seal of the monarch’s legitimacy. It is a sign of recurrence. The notion that the heraldic crest records a story of the legitimate decent of kings and queens makes it altogether startling that Juan de Palafox y Mendoza—himself born an illegitimate child—should fundamentally alter the crest of Philip IV in the design for the retable of kings in the cathedral of Puebla, Mexico.[1] During his tenure as the bishop of Puebla (1639– 1649), Palafox simplifies and restructures the crest or “escudo,” inserting new arms that confuse and astound his contemporaries. These modifications are often seen as merely an epiphenomenon of the bishop’s ambitious political program in New Spain. But whether the changes Palafox makes to the royal coat of arms in the turbulent 1640s are the result of political calculation or iconographic innovation, the half century of contention that ensues in Spain over the bishop’s unorthodox heraldry forces participants in the debate to articulate positions about the nature and utility of representation. What becomes clear in the debate is that the style, decorum, and mode of representation can be considered to entail a truth claim. In other words, if we get style wrong, we do not simply offend good taste, we tell a falsehood. To confuse the rigid conventions of heraldry with the freer, less systematic strategies of emblematics or metaphor is, according to Palafox’s critics, to tell a treasonous lie: it is lèsemajesté. Palafox, however, clearly intends to inspire awe, not treason; awe at the sight of marvelous royal signs would naturally lead to willing obedience. In this way, according to Palafox, the new and wondrous arms reflect the true majesty of Philip IV. So, what starts with a quarrel over heraldic signs of power becomes a debate about the nature of political representation in which conceptions of truth and falsehood come into conflict with ideas about wonder and mystery. Participants on both sides of the debate use language borrowed from historiographic controversies to articulate the relationship between heraldic style and truth. Palafox’s detractors claim that the alterations to the arms in the cathedral of Puebla are similar to a historians’ unwarranted use of rhetorical figures, amplification, and varietas, all of which they say indicate the vanity of the author. His supporters argue that variety is an indispensable tool of decorous representation and that Palafox is obligated to make the coat of arms reflect the majesty of the king just as a historian is obliged to represent the sublimity of his subject through the elevation of his

style. Both camps find in Palafox’s alteration of the royal arms fodder for a bitter feud. In order to understand how Palafox’s heraldic innovation in Puebla brings to the surface questions about the meaning and authority of representation it is necessary to examine: first, the arms themselves and the changes Palafox makes; second, Antonio González de Rosende’s biography of Palafox; and third, the polemical works that attack Palafox, his novel coat of arms, and Rosende’s biography.[2] While the combination of heraldry, historiography, and polemic might not, at first glance, seem entirely likely, the relationship of politics to symbolic and textual representation was an abiding concern for Palafox.[3] The Jesuits, who bitterly hated him and opposed his canonization for centuries, found him to be more savvy than saintly. But it is precisely his ability to couple a worldly sort of cleverness with sensitivity to the power of images that makes him such a beguiling figure. Juan Palafox y Mendoza was born in 1600 and was a member of an influential generation of Spanish ecclesiastics, devotional writers, and theologians that included Antonio Pérez Valiende (1599–1649), Francisco Alonso (1600–1649), Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681), Baltasar Gracián (1601–1658), Sebastián Izquierdo (1601–1681), and Francisco de Oviedo (1602–1651). He was born in Fitero (Navarra) under circumstances that have led to a great deal of speculation; it was common knowledge that his father was the Marqués de Ariza, but doubts about the identity of his mother have led Ricardo Fernández Gracia to conjecture that Palafox’s surname “Mendoza” was an acrostic.[4] Both his birth in Navarra and questions about his parentage played central roles in the calumnies and criticisms that followed him everywhere, even long after his death (as Gregorio Bartolomé Martínez amply documents). The animosity and the “disproportionate amount of controversy” that his tenure in New Spain inspired made him quite possibly the most divisive figure in the Mexican Church since Las Casas.[5] Like Las Casas, the reforms Palafox attempted sparked contention among representatives of the crown and rivaling religious orders. Palafox was named bishop of Puebla in 1639 and during his decade in New Spain he held a variety of civic and ecclesiastical positions, including viceroy. He devoted particular attention to overseeing the long-delayed completion of the cathedral in Puebla; the consecration of the cathedral coincided with the departure of Palafox, who returned to Spain early in 1649.[6] Montserrat Galí Boadella recounts that later that same year, even before the “escudos” for the retable of kings in the cathedral could be gilded, a civic official, accompanied by armed men, descended unannounced from Mexico City.[7] That very day, as Efraín Castro Morales notes, laborious efforts began to saw off and wrench away the offending arms.[8] By the next day the arms were finally removed, loaded on mules, and carried off. Galí summarizes the legal proceedings that followed; it was unclear whether the arms themselves were ecclesiastical or royal property; church officials in Puebla maintained that there had, in fact, been no crime at all other than the violation of the church’s ecclesiastical rights. In the end, Palafox was accused of lesa majestad

[lèse-majesté] and copies of the official arms were hurriedly placed on the retable, this time only painted on paper.[9] The palimpsest created by the legitimate arms in cartón or paper occupying the place of Palafox’s invention surely made for a curious tableau. The erasure and rewriting—invoking both Haskett’s “paper shield” and the Roman tradition of damnatio memoriae—guaranteed that the bishop’s daring would not be forgotten. To understand why Palafox’s changes to the crest incite so much controversy it is important to consider that a royal coat of arms is the point at which two domains of representation intersect. One domain is political representation; the way a senator might represent electors or a king might be God’s lieutenant or “Viceteniente.”[10] The other is a special kind of symbolic representation in which visual signs can be systematically rendered in prose. The particular symbols on a coat of arms have fixed, unambiguous meanings that can be expressed in language with exactitude; this passage from symbol to textual description is called “blazoning” in the language of heraldry.[11] In general terms, however, every royal coat of arms is a “Jeroglífico” that means precisely the same thing: “the royal coat of arms is a silent declaration and symbolic statement, which is equivalent to these words: the king is my patron and lord” (“Es el Escudo Real una protesta muda, y locución simbólica, que equivale a estas voces: El Rey es mi Patrón, y Dueño”).[12] Like a proper noun—a word that belongs or pertains to a thing—a coat of arms proclaims an immutable right of property and ownership.[13] It is not for nothing that, as María Elena Martínez points out, slaves were branded “with the coat of arms of the European king and country of the people to whom they now belonged.”[14] Heraldry is also a highly conventionalized form of substitution. The extent to which it seems natural for the house of Figueroa to take as its sign a fig, or Léon a lion, or Aragón “barras,” is the measure of an ideological triumph. We take the arms on a crest to say and mean something that can be blazoned, translated into precise language, substituted for equivalent text. The crest itself follows a political logic of substitution, standing for the royal person in the monarch’s absence; as Haskett notes specifically in the context of the American colonies, “the coat of arms may indeed have become the king.”[15] In this way, heraldry is a convention by which we accept two dissimilar things (a king and his crest) to be equivalent. But heraldry is unlike forms of linguistic substitution, such as metaphor, in which one thing is substituted for what we know is not its equivalent. “That castle is Castile,” is quite a different sort of statement than “his heart is a stone,” no matter how trite or familiar the latter. Metaphor depends on the perceived similarity of two non-equivalent terms (heart/stone), while heraldry relies on the conventionalized equivalence of two dissimilar things (castle/Castile). A coat of arms, however, also suggests chronology. It does not merely act in the present to proclaim the rights of kings or to serve as the banner of affiliation that permits the performance of citizenship in a monarchy, it also symbolizes familial rights of inheritance from one generation to the next across time. The subtle alterations

made to family arms by heirs are known as “marks of cadency,” which itself implies descent.[16] As the principal and predictable sign of Foucault’s “symbolics of blood,” heraldry’s legitimacy comes from its reproducibility.[17] Like a coin that is fungible, everywhere accepted because it is everywhere the same, heraldry is related to Edward Said’s notion of repetition, “an optic employed (or employable) to discuss the continuity, the perpetuity, and the recurrency of human history.”[18] Thus heraldic representation, as an elaborate yet perfectly replicable system of signs, is related not only to the constitution of power—political representation—but also to the way we structure narratives about the continuity of bloodlines and the succession of monarchs. To meddle with a royal coat of arms is to tamper with basic notions of political power, signs of power, and the validity of historiography. The debate sparked by Palafox’s changes to the arms in the cathedral of Puebla reflects the perceived relatedness of historiography and heraldry. Some contend, on the one hand, that heraldry and historiography represent their respective objects in essentially the same way. According to this “laconic” school of thought, the job of the herald is to perpetuate a code that allows what is read (the blazon) to be translated into what can be seen (the arms); in the same way, the historian’s task is to translate what has been seen—either through direct witness or the virtual witness derived from documents—into what can be read. At least conceptually, invention plays no role in these substitutions of the textual for the visual; any conspicuous mediation on the part of the herald or historian (e.g., amplification or variety) is attributed to vanity. This vanity has immediate political implications in the case of the history of a king because the historian, through his elevated language, usurps the protagonism that is the king’s due. Palafox and historians of the sublime style, on the other hand, generally maintain that the communication of truth itself depends on rhetorical figures, such as metaphor. For any act of representation to make plain the truth—“darle cuerpo a la verdad,” as Juan de Rojas y Ausa explains—it is “necessary to adorn history with metaphors, figures, parables, emblems, and comparisons.”[19] The naked or unadorned truth bereft of varietas, Rojas continues, is debased (“se envilece”).[20] Variety and figurative language ensure that subjects are accorded the gravity and respect they deserve. This is not vanity, but decorum. In other words, political representation—and the proper perception of authority—depends upon the decorousness of symbolic and textual representation. The changes that Palafox had made, and that led to so much turmoil, seem to show either arrogant disregard for or willful ignorance of the laws of heraldry that had been codified in nearly all of Europe since the fifteenth century. These changes were closely examined during the seventeenth century, and have since been studied in marvelous detail by Galí, Castro, and Fee. Most modern scholars hew close to Juan Alonso Calderón’s seventeenth-century defense of Palafox’s alterations. According to Calderón, Palafox makes three justifiable decisions. First, Palafox simplifies Philip IV’s complex arms so that they can be seen more easily high atop the retable; this

involves reducing the number of fields on the shield to four, or “quartering” the arms. Second, he makes the arms mirror images of one another. In his 1695 attack on Palafox, Bernardino de la Cueva’s Buelos de las plumas sagradas defendidos de una moderna calumnia (1695) helpfully schematizes this change.[21] The quartered shields with the “castillo” of Castile, the lion of León, the “barras” (four vertical bars) of Aragón, and so on, appear to the viewer in this manner: Barras – Castillo

Castillo – Barras

León – Árbol

Árbol – León

Arms had traditionally been read from left to right, so that Castile, the prevailing or ruling kingdom should always appear at the upper left.[22] (In the diagram on the left, however, the “barras” of Aragón would appear to prevail.) But his supporters argue that Palafox had actually accorded Castile the most important position by placing it always closest to the center of the retable, near the figure of the Virgin, and so on. The third change—the one that would cause the greatest controversy—is that, as Cueva indicates in his diagram, Palafox includes a red cross above a green tree (árbol) against a field of gold (“cruz roja sobre el árbol verde en campo de oro”) precisely where the “barras” should have been.[23] Calderón argues that the tree was actually the symbol of the kingdom of Sobrarbe—thought at the time to be an ancient predecessor to Aragón—and therefore entirely interchangeable with the more familiar “barras.” We are now very close to entering into a labyrinth of heraldic arcana from which we might never emerge.[24] It is enough to know, however, that Palafox’s enemies see the change to the arms as evidence of his self-aggrandizing attempt at originality or “invención.” The arms, says Cueva, are executed according to Palafox’s plan, and are unfamiliar: “labrados por su orden e idea, diversos de los usados, y conocidos”; furthermore, the arms express Palafox’s personal loyalties (chosen “a su voluntad”), as a sign of fealty not to Spain, but to Aragón: “como Aragonés, había querido hacer esa lisonja a su Reyno natural.”[25] Palafox seems to have confused highly systematized heraldry with metaphor or emblematics. The mixing of heraldic and emblematic representation had a long history in Spain—Barbara Weissberger studies the mysterious “flechas” [arrows] and “yugo” [yoke] of Ferdinand and Isabel’s arms—but it was Palafox and not the monarch who had made the changes in Puebla. [26]

Modern scholars such as Eva Botella Ordinas,[27] Galí,[28] Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo,[29] and Fee[30] have developed slightly different interpretations of the royal arms in Puebla. None believes, however, that Palafox in any way meant to undermine the authority of Philip IV; as Galí explains: “his objective was not to foment latent or incipient Aragonese nationalism, but altogether the opposite.”[31] Nevertheless, changing the arms to suit his design is indisputably agonistic. Palafox’s supporters would not concede that there had been any innovation at all and it makes their

defense of the arms seem naive. As Álvarez de Toledo makes clear, the defenders of the stricken arms argued simply that because “all arms portrayed in the crests belonged to the Spanish crown, no offence had been done to the king.”[32] The doubts raised by Palafox are real, however; Álvarez herself admits that it is not entirely clear what message Palafox wanted to convey.[33] This kind of uncertainty is generally incompatible with heraldic signs of power. As Cueva explains: “objects that bear testimony to the dignity of royal power, those which are public and available to wide audiences, must be clear, familiar, and cause no doubt in the beholder, just as the royal arms as they are used are known to all, no matter how ignorant they might be” [Los testimonios de la Dignidad o Patronato Real, públicos y expuestos a registro común, han de ser claros, conocidos, e indubitados, así como las Armas Reales usadas son conocidas de todos, por ignorantes que sean].[34] The confusion arises because Palafox employs a logic of substitution, symbolic flexibility, and even perhaps arbitrariness, that are not native to heraldry. Rosende’s biography of Palafox vigorously defends the changes Palafox made to the royal arms. But, as we shall see, this defense only caused greater controversy. The biography, entitled Vida y virtudes del Ilustrísimo y Excelentísimo Señor Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, was published in 1666 and again with significant additions in 1671. In the 1671 edition, Rosende offers an explanation of Palafox’s decisions that almost perversely serves to corroborate Cueva’s argument. According to Rosende, during the construction of the cathedral Palafox interrupts two gentlemen of the city (“Caballeros de la Ciudad”) who were there on other business, to ask: “Do you see those arms? Well they will give occasion for much understanding and speculation” [“¿Ven Vuestras mercedes estos Escudos? Pues han de dar mucho en que entender”].[35] This is precisely the moment—“han de dar mucho en que entender”—to which Cueva later refers: “ha de dar que discurrir, y en que entender” [it will give occasion for much understanding and speculation].[36] Heraldry, Meredith Parsons Lillich points out, is a code to be cracked; it is something we understand, not a cause for speculation.[37] Palafox’s niggling phrase threatens the hollow conventionality of heraldic substitution. Rather than simply evoking emblematic literature, Palafox’s armorial invention creates a crest that cannot be blazoned. This interrupts the exacting heraldic passage between image and text as surely as the bishop himself interrupted the conversation (“interrumpió la conversacion”) of the two gentlemen. We can only imagine Cueva’s incredulity when Rosende finishes the episode by stating that Palafox, without adding anything further, resumed his previous conversation: “sin añadir mas, volvió a continuar su platica, y discurrir en la materia que se trataba antecedentemente.”[38] I find in the “escudos” a kind of breathtaking reenactment of Laban’s wily substitution in Genesis 29; to arrive at the altar and find one thing instead of another, Leah instead of Rachel. However, Galí is entirely persuasive when she argues that Palafox introduced the tree of Sobrarbe to the crest of Philip IV because he considered the king’s efforts to “Castilianize” his Iberian kingdoms (i.e. to make them

more homogeneously “Spanish”) to be destructive; Palafox resented the emergence of a “centralized bureaucracy that was unresponsive to the reality and necessities of the diverse kingdoms, including some, such as New Spain, that were distant from the royal court.”[39] But this answers the question, “why foreground the constitutional foundations of Aragonese government?” and not “why tamper with signs of power?” In other words, there seems to be a gulf between Galí’s straightforward explanation of Palafox’s politics and the bishop’s own suggestion that the arms would provide material for speculation, “mucho en que entender.” This is particularly the case if we consider that, for Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa coats of arms or “las armas de los linages,” by their very nature signify their meanings self-evidently and do not need interpretation.[40] Rather than traditional arms, Palafox seems to have employed what Francisco de Quevedo calls “enigmas”: images that do not disclose what they are (“encubren lo que son”) and are only explained through language that does not attempt to mirror what is seen in the image (“lo que muestra su pintura”).[41] That is to say that an “enigma” demands interpretation, not identification. The fact that Galí, Álvarez, Botella, and others need to explain the meaning of Palafox’s arms indicates that the bishop did not simply substitute a tree for the “barras” of Aragón, he substituted an “enigma” for “las armas de los linages,” or one regime of signs for another. Cueva repeatedly focuses on the illicit act of substitution. The bishop, Cueva explains, has swapped or “trocado” what was familiar for something new, “cosa nueva”: “this was entirely new and unfamiliar”—“era del todo nuevo, y desacostumbrado”—and Palafox seems to suggest, according to Cueva—that everyone is free to choose whatever arbitrary arms they like, as long as they can be called royal: “es libre, y arbitrario escoger, y poner cada uno las Armas que quisiere, con tal que todas sean Reales.”[42] Cueva’s Buelos de las plumas sagrada oozes with scorn and bile; you do not so much read the book as taste it at the back of your throat. The author’s contempt for Palafox’s arbitrariness is pellucid, but one might reasonably ask why, in 1695, Cueva is still concerned with the controversy surrounding the “escudos,” which were removed forty-six years earlier. The reason that Cueva returns to this debate is that the controversy was reignited in the 1690s by the publication of Palafox’s autobiography, the Vida interior, and the ongoing cause for his beatification.[43] Bartolomé’s study of the anti-Palafox polemic demonstrates that Jesuit Paolo Segneri’s 1691 manuscript, a “censura” or evaluation of the Vida interior, shaped the debate to follow.[44] Segneri was a preacher famous for his polished Italian, which Antonio de las Casas called “limado . . . Toscano” in the Spanish translation of Segneri’s Quaresma.[45] In his “Censura,” Segneri pays particular attention to stylistic concerns, noting the great artifice or “artificio grandísmo” of the Vida interior, finding the mode of representation to be “artificioso,” and complaining of a lack of saintly simplicity.[46] In short, Segneri’s “censura” characterizes Palafox’s autobiography as being filled with artifice and vanity: “artificiosa en la forma y llena de vanidad en el fondo.”[47] Initially, there might

have been some reluctance to cite Segneri’s work because it only circulated in manuscript and was not intended for a large audience. However, as Cueva points out in his prologue, Sengeri’s unpublished criticisms are disseminated by a book defending Palafox, Juan de la Anunciación’s La inocencia vindicada (published in Seville in 1694 and twice in Madrid in 1698). Through Juan de la Anunciación’s maladroit defense, Segneri’s concerns with style reach a broad audience and are quickly adapted to broader representational concerns. Later detractors nimbly turn Segneri’s stylistic criticisms of the Vida interior against Palafox’s coat of arms and even against González de Rosende’s biography of Palafox. Cueva, for example, clearly believed the same stylistic issues to be at stake in Palafox’s inventive heraldry, his Vida inte-rior, as well as González de Rosende’s Vida y virtudes: their mode of representation is of a piece and in every instance reveals vainglorious impulses.[48] In this sense, Cueva does not make a clear distinction between the representational concerns in heraldry and writing. This is because the point of contention is not heraldry, per se, but the role of the individual in the production and reception of signs of power. The argument can be reduced to varying answers to the same question: who is authorized to create and interpret signs of power and what is the source of that authority? Those signs might just as easily be the imperial voice of poetry, Kagan’s “official history,” heraldry, or portraiture. After all, even Virgil had to protest—“Non iniussa cano”—that he did not sing unbidden. But the fact that Cueva’s interest is in signs of power generally, and not heraldry specifically, explains why he frames the debate in terms drawn from polemics in both poetry and historiography: “llano” (what is familiar, clear, plain, and hallowed by tradition) versus “nuevo” (what is presumptuous, overwrought, needlessly novel, and showy).[49] The language of style might seem ill-suited to a heraldic case, but Cueva sees Palafox’s “escudos” as part of a much broader and ongoing debate. Like Cueva, Matías Marín finds in Palafox’s style a measure of the bishop’s presumptuousness; and like Cueva’s Buelos de las plumas sagradas, Marín’s Respuesta al Reverendísimo Padre Fray Juan de la Anunciación (1695) addresses textual and visual imagery simultaneously.[50] For example, Marín’s attack on Palafox’s Vida interior contains the following simile, a paraphrase of Sidonius Apollinarus: “El genio, y espíritu de una persona se traslada al libro que escribe, como el rostro al espejo en que se mira” [the temperments and spirits of writers appear in the books they write, just as a face appears in a mirror].[51] While this ostensibly refers to the elevated rhetoric of the Vida interior—and alleges that it reflects Palafox’s elevated opinion of himself—it also subtly alludes to the most famous pages of Rosende’s biography of Palafox: a richly allegorical portrait of the bishop. The portrait was bound between the title page and frontispiece; it is what every reader notes with delight upon opening the book and what one remembers long after closing it. Designed by Rosende and executed in an attractive woodcut by Pedro de Villafranca, the likeness of Palafox is surrounded by emblematic symbols or “empresas y jeroglíficos” (yoke, cypress, keys, sword, bolt of lightning, winged heart,

and so on). These symbols would have been familiar to anyone who had leafed through a book like Felippo Pincinelli’s Mundus Symbolicus (1653) or Diego López’s Declaración magistral (1655). But treating them as enigmatic, Rosende includes a long explication of the symbols.[52] Clues both to Rosende’s conception of history as well as to the origin of Marín’s criticisms are located above and below the image of Palafox in the portrait. Above, there is a mirror that, instead of reflecting the bishop’s likeness, contains a skull; Rosende describes it as a mirror drawn according to the rules of perspective in which a skull is reflected, instead of Palafox’s face: “un Espejo asentado con las leyes de la Perspectiva, en quien se representa una Calavera en lugar de su Rostro.”[53] Below the likeness of Palafox, there is a Latin inscription that reads in part: “Vita Fucata Imago Mortis.” The metaphor means roughly, “Life is a portrait painted of death,” which Rosende paraphrases as “No es otra cosa la Vida sino una imagen barnizada de la Muerte” [Life is nothing more than a varnished image of Death].[54] The visual figure—the skull substituted for the image of the living man in the mirror—and the rhetorical figure—“la Vida” is an image of death, “una imagen . . . de la muerte”—mean the same thing albeit in different ways. We can now begin to see that Rosende and Marín do something fairly similar to strikingly dissimilar effect. For both, the writing of a life creates a peculiar kind of mirror image. Marín writes about Palafox’s Vida interior; that “life,” the Vida, is a mirror in which we see the reflection of a man’s spirit: “El genio, y espíritu de una persona se traslada al libro que escribe, como el rostro al espejo en que se mira.” For Rosende, who not coincidentally gave the Vida interior its title, “la Vida”—and here we can read both Palafox’s Vida interior and Rosende’s own Vida y virtudes—is the same sort of mirror.[55] The difference is that Marín, Palafox’s detractor, and Rosende, his supporter, see in these written lives very different reflections. On the one hand, Marín finds a portrait of vanity in the “rostro” or face he sees in the Vida interior while, on the other, Rosende finds vanitas in the “imago mortis” of the Vida y virtudes. Rosende’s is one of the great examples of biography written in the sublime style, and like many of these works it makes explicit comparisons between the authority of history and that of art.[56] By suggesting that life is itself a portrait (of death), Rosende creates a framework to understand his Vida as a representation of that portrait. Rosende’s ideas about style and history’s debts to art can only be seen in a consideration of the two editions of his biography of Palafox. The publication of the first edition of Rosende’s biography (1666) coincides with the beginning of efforts in Rome to beatify Palafox. As the prologue makes evident, Rosende had originally secured the ideal patron for his book: Philip IV. The king made the perfect dedicatee particularly because of the accusations of “lesa magestad” that continued to hound Palafox. The paratexts—“aprobación,” “licencias,” “censura,” and “suma”—are all dated between May and July of 1665. The death of Philip IV on September 17, 1665, no doubt came as a blow to Rosende and probably delayed

publication. Whatever the reason for the delay, Philip IV’s arms did not appear in Rosende’s biography. By the time the “fe de erratas” was signed on June 20, 1666 Rosende was forced to accept what he euphemistically called a fortunate switch, “este trueque tan venturoso”: instead of “el rey planeta,” Philip IV, his new patron was the embattled queen regent, Mariana de Austria. So the biography begins with a new, unwanted case of armorial substitution: in the place of Philip IV’s crest on the title page, we find that of Mariana. This must have been painful for Rosende; Mariana, like Palafox, faced questions about legitimacy, suspicions about her desire for power, and a host of enemies across Europe willing to libel her.[57] This was precisely the kind of comparison that Rosende would have wanted to avoid. It probably came as some consolation to Rosende that he had not dealt with the controversial case of the royal arms in his first edition. It was not until the edition of 1671—with a new title and a new dedicatee—that Rosende included Palafox’s famous explanation of the arms and expanded sections on historiography’s relationship to art. The 1671 Vida is now dedicated to the dean of the cathedral of Puebla and the dedicatory begins with a marvelous substitution. Palafox’s body lies in Spain, but by dedicating the Vida to Puebla, Rosende restores the body or “cuerpo” to New Spain.[58] This is an uncorrupted body that sanctifies the empty tomb in Puebla (a tomb that Palafox’s body will never occupy): “les doy en el Libro un Cuerpo, que con su incorrupción autorice la sepultura, que en su Santa Iglesia está desembarazada ya que el Cuerpo material, por tantos títulos digno de veneración, y respeto, no es posible que se deposite en ella.” [I give to you in the Book a Body so that it might authorize with its purity the tomb of the Holy Church that remains empty because the material body, which is deserving of veneration and respect for its many titles, cannot be deposited in it.][59] In other words, the Vida not only contains a life, it serves in the place of a body worthy of veneration. Rosende unfailingly underscores the work of substitution by emphasizing sections of the biography that have been rewritten or new passages that take the place of old. The preface, “Razón de lo que se escribe,” of the 1671 edition is largely the same as it was in 1666. It still says, for example, that Palafox had died seven years prior—“ha siete años que murió este Prelado”—although Palafox had died more than a decade earlier, in 1659. This is followed by seven new paragraphs largely dedicated to Tacitus, which serve to locate biography within historiography.[60] In these paragraphs of the 1671 edition Rosende now acknowledges the time that had elapsed between editions, remarking upon the eleven years that had passed: “para la segunda [edición] he dejado que pasen once [años].”[61] The confused chronology created by these seemingly careless additions—it is at times unclear whether Rosende is writing in 1666 or in 1671—highlights the act of rewriting. Perhaps emboldened by the passage of time, Rosende includes in the 1671 edition not only the passages about the “escudos” discussed above, but also a new section on style. The new section begins with an affirmation not unlike Marín’s observations that the style of a writer reflects his temperament the way a mirror reflects a face: “Los

estilos son como los rostros.”[62] Rosende continues by explaining that paintings by great artists such as “Rafael, Corezzo, Ticiano, o Tintoreto,” are impossible to retouch (“introducir pinceladas, que llaman los Pintores meter tintas”) because we detect the changes even with our eyes closed.[63] So, just as the Vida is a portrait of a portrait—a gloss of the visual—historiographic styles can be compared to the individual styles of artists. Historiography and painting, however, do not simply share concerns, they employ the same terminology; Rosende refers to the styles of historians as manners or “maneras” which he remarks is a term also used to describe artists (“término tambien de los Pintores”).[64] The focus on particular styles of expression as well as their ability to communicate knowledge differentially point toward the fact that both Palafox and Rosende suggest that the interpretation of a visual cue depends on the nature of the sign as well as the mediation of an individual. That is, the apprehension of truth depends on viewers’ or readers’ understanding of the signifier (e.g. a royal coat of arms), not their foreknowledge of the signified (e.g., the might of the king). For Palafox, the “escudo,” which supplied “mucho en que entender,” demanded the pondering of viewers. It could not be easily blazoned or universally rendered in language because its meaning does not depend on a fixed relationship between the person of the king and the symbols that represent him. For Rosende, who writes history as the “declaración” or explanation of an “imago,” understanding depends on the reader’s reaction to stylistic achievements that are as different as the “maneras” of Raphael and Titian. This is not to say that knowledge cannot be universally held. It simply means that even widely held knowledge depends on individual acts of acquisition. Cueva, therefore, is not mistaken when he lumps together writing and heraldry and he is correct to identify the preponderant role of individuals in the creation and acquisition of meaning in novel signs (even if we might not call this vanity). Both the conspicuousness and the particularity of the act of mediation in the works of Palafox and Rosende—made patent in acts of substitution such as metaphor—necessarily means that they are less interested in what was conventional, “acostumbrado,” or “llano.” The sublimity they seek through swaps and trades —“trocados” and “trueques”—is not an unthinking fascination with novelty, but with the production of new instances of understanding. Cueva can be forgiven for thinking that this is arbitrariness, but it is not simply “lesa majestad,” or falsehood. By replacing the code of heraldry with individual acts of interpretation, Palafox did something that was at the same time more specious and more liberating than his detractors would admit: he replaced the imposition of law with voluntary obedience. This was decidedly not novel; Beezley, Martin, and French note that subject peoples were required “to reiterate and reaffirm Spanish hegemony.”[65] We can see the same impulse at work in Palafox’s desire that local communities elect their own municipal officials.[66] This was related to other colonial attempts to encourage subjects to narrate their own submission, whether through the creation of fictive crests that asserted “indigenous corporate legitimacy,”[67] or the

“construction of native dynastic histories.”[68] All of these activities sought to locate the discourses of submission and even resistance squarely within Spanish traditions of jurisprudence that “placed a great deal of weight on voluntarism.”[69] What Palafox wanted churchgoers to experience upon seeing the “escudos” was not unlike the effects Rosende hoped to produce through his sublime history. While understanding was certainly the object of both men, it is also clear that they wanted to inspire reverence and awe. The mystery of the arms and the elevation of the biography’s style both appealed to wonder first, and reason second. They were signs conceived of a particular notion of power. As we have seen, power was to be enacted through the contemplation of an image—the image might be explicit (the “escudos”) or implicit (the Vida as portrait). The image itself stood in for an absent object of veneration, just as the arms in Puebla were a substitute for a distant king, or Rosende’s Vida was a substitute for the bishop’s missing body. But because they were testaments to absence, the political act of substitution should have been subject to code and convention. In this sense, Palafox and Rosende may have sought to inspire awe similarly, but the stakes were not the same. Rosende wrote within an established tradition of sublime historiography and his case was very different than that of Palafox, whose innovations were surprising and involved an act of substitution that implicated the royal person. Palafox does not simply treat the symbol of Sobrarbe as interchangeable with the “barras” of Aragón, he makes heraldry a question of style. This is of a piece with his idea that power was the product of individual acts of obedience, but the anxieties that surface in the debate that ensued demonstrate just how close awe might be to semantic confusion. Palafox was willing to risk misinterpretation and perhaps even falsehood if the general result was an intensification of veneration. Palafox surely knows what Machiavelli and George Steiner know: meaning can be dislocated in commonly recognized signs so as to produce political confusion. Cueva knows it, too, and he makes it the plangent center of an otherwise onerously malicious attack: Cualquiera que intenta una novedad (aunque sea licita, y justa) en cosa publica, expuesta a varias interpretaciones, ya buenas, ya siniestras, sino es del todo insensato, reconoce que aquella novedad ha de dar que discurrir, y en que entender: y si interviene alguna vislumbre de reputación, o interés ajeno, sin ser Profeta, puede asegurar que causará oposiciones, y disturbios.[70] [Whoever attempts novelty (even if it is licit and just) in a public sign, exposing it to a variety of opinions, be they good or evil, recognizes that the novelty will cause debate and speculation: and if there should be even a glimmer of uncertainty as to his motivations, unless he be a Prophet, he can be sure that his attempts will cause opposition and unrest.] The bishop’s alteration of the arms was, of course, “novedad” and this novelty

was, without question subject to debate or “expuesta a varias interpretaciones.” These “varias interpretaciones,” “mucho en que entender,” and other causes for speculation and pondering are precisely what Palafox was after; he believed that an individual could create and consume the marks of voluntary obedience because the authority of signs was inherent to the signs themselves. That is, Palafox created heraldry that did not participate in the symbolics of blood; his heraldry was not replicable, it was generative, tending toward a proliferation rather than a control of meaning. For Cueva and the traditionalists, the authority of a royal coat of arms is external to it and borrowed from an antecedent (the monarch); this makes the power of the sign contingent on the power of the monarch. Such a theory assumes that signs are efficacious to the degree that the king is powerful: I revere the signifier lest I be killed by its signified. For Palafox, power is produced through characteristics inherent to the sign (such as style or the sign’s ability to produce awe). The sign constitutes power and power is therefore contingent upon the sign. We might think of a canvas by Velázquez or Rubens: the canvas does not reflect simply Philip IV’s ability to purchase it or to coerce its commission. Instead, the awe a canvas, a poem, or a history might produce redounds to the king; the painting is not great because it is owned by the king, the king is magnificent because he owns the painting. Whether it is vain, or modern, or simply a miscalculation, Palafox assumes that he himself is capable of adding to the greatness of the king by authoring signs that occasion voluntary acts of obeisance. To make his creation, his unofficial history, his heraldry as refundición, he copies a coat of arms the way Michelangelo might copy the head of a classical faun. Palafox sought to reflect his hope for political reform in a reform of signs of power. These may be protean, but they do not suffer doubt. Powers themselves relent, however, as a stone will eventually yield to water, and Palafox’s story has a happy ending. Centuries after his arms were removed, after the independence of Mexico, after new wars and governments with their own flags and signs, after fresh controversies and new histories, and even new miracles attributed to the bishop, the detractors have finally relented. Juan de Palafox y Mendoza was beatified in June of 2011.

NOTES 1. This chapter was greatly improved by the comments of Julio Baena, Eric Graf, and James Mandrell, all of whom read early drafts. 2. Little is known about Rosende, but basic details about his life can be found in Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, Politics and Reform in Spain and Viceregal Mexico: The Life and Thought of Juan de Palafox 1600–1659 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 4; Ricardo Fernández Gracia, “Alegoría y emblemática en torno al retrato del virrey Don Juan de Palafox,” in Emblemata aurea: la emblemática en el arte y la literatura del siglo de oro, ed. Rafael Zafra and José Javier Azanza López (Madrid: Akal, 2000), 170; and Patricia Andrés González, “Empresas y jeroglíficos en un retrato de Palafox.” Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueología 64 (1998): 422–23. 3. In addition to his many ecclesiastic and civic posts, Palafox was a prolific writer and was named to the CountDuke of Olivares’ “Junta de Cronistas” in 1635. Olivares convened the Junta with the express purpose of producing

anti-Richelieu polemic (Richard L. Kagan, Clio and the Crown: The Politics of History in Medieval and Early Modern Spain [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009], 216). 4. Fernández Gracia, “Alegoría y emblemática,” 166. 5. Álvarez de Toledo, Politics and Reform, v. 6. On Palafox’s efforts to complete the construction of the cathedral, see Nancy H. Fee, “Proyecto de magnificencia trentina: Palafox y el patrocinio de la catedral de la Puebla de los Ángeles,” in La Catedral de Puebla en el arte y en la historia, ed. Montserrat Galí Boadella (Puebla: Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 1999), 153–76. 7. Montserrat Galí Boadella, “Los escudos del retablo de la catedral de Puebla: herejías heráldicas en tiempos de crisis,” in La imagen política, ed. Cuauhtémoc Medina (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2006), 306. 8. Efraín Castro Morales, “Estudio preliminar,” in Juan Alonso Calderón. Memorial histórico jurídico político de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de la Puebla de los Ángeles . . . Sobre restituirla las armas reales . . . (1651) (Puebla: Gobierno del Estado de Puebla—Secretaría de Cultura, 1988), vii. 9. This was not the first time Palafox had been accused of usurping royal authority. In 1647, for example, the Conde de Salvatierra warned Philip IV that the bishop’s “program for government reform” was “a threat to the king’s authority” and went on to portray “Palafox as the champion of a radical political alternative that allowed no room for the Spanish king” (Álvarez de Toledo, Politics and Reform, 231). 10. Juan de Tolosa, “Dedicatory,” in Aranjuez del Alma, a modo de dialogos: en el qual se contienen graves y diferentes materias para todos los estados. Monesterio [sic] de los Agustinos de Çaragoça por Lorenço y Diego de Robles hermanos, impressores del Reyno de Aragon y de la Universidad, 1589. 11. Blazoning is descriptive, not interpretative. Take for example, the arms of the house of Figueroa: five leaves of a fig tree against a yellow background. Stating this as “de oro, cinco hojas de higuera de sinople” would permit someone skilled in heraldry to create a visual approximation of the shield. It would not, however, explain why the family chose these arms or indicate anything about the rich, symbolic tradition associated with the fig tree. In this sense, blazoning does not generally include the lore of a particular crest. It is a precise form of ekphrasis that permits exacting linguistic translation of a visual cue. As Martín de Riquer notes, the object of blazoning is to describe the arms in a few, precise terms in such a way as to permit an informed artist to create an exact and unequivocal rendering [“en pocos y precisos términos un escudo, de tal suerte que, tras su lectura, un informado dibujante puede dar de él una representación gráfica exacta e inequívoca”] (Heráldica castellana en tiempos de los Reyes Católicos [Barcelona: Cuaderns Crema, 1986], 246). All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 12. Bernardino de la Cueva, Buelos de las plumas sagradas defendidos de una moderna calumnia . . . (Barcelona: Imprenta de Joseph Lopez, 1695), 347. Emphasis in original. 13. Robert Haskett discusses the ways in which invented coats of arms were used in New Spain to legitimate land claims (“Paper Shields: The Ideology of Coats of Arms in Colonial Mexican Primordial Titles,” Ethnohistory 43, no. 1 [1996]: 101). 14. María Elena Martínez, “The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico,” William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 488. 15. Haskett, “Paper Shields,” 111. 16. The terms for marks of cadency are somewhat less suggestive in Spanish; they are known either as “diferencias” or “brisuras.” As Riquer explains these distinguishing marks are part of a “deliberada intención” [deliberate intention] to give subordinate members of the family their own arms that would be distinct from those of the head of the family [“unas armas propias y diferenciadas de las que traía el cabeza de familia”] (Heráldica castellana, 238). 17. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1990), 148. As adornments on a shield, as well as markers of family relationships, heraldry and armory engage the symbolics of blood in a number of ways. Whereas the flag or banner is a rallying point—a tool of affiliation—the motifs on a shield serve only to say “do not kill me, I am your ally” or “kill me, I am your enemy.”

18. Edward W. Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 119. Like a royal coat of arms, coins depend on their identification with the monarch; as the seventeenth-century numismatist Juan de Quiñones explains, that without “the image and inscription of the prince, the coin would be worth nothing” [“imagen, y inscripción del Príncipe . . . no valdría nada la moneda”] (Explicación de unas monedas de oro de emperadores romanos que se han hallado en el Puerto de Guadarrama. [Madrid: Luis Sanchez Impressor del Rey, 1620], 12). 19. Juan de Rojas y Ausa, “Al estudioso y christiano lector,” in La verdad vestida, laberyntos de mundo, carne y demonio, por donde anda el hombre perdido por el pecado, hasta que le saca la penitencia, caminos opuestos que le enseñan las virtudes, por quien debe caminar sino quiere volverse a perder (Madrid: Bernardo de Villa-Diego, 1670). Rojas y Ausa is particularly relevant for this discussion because he considers Palafox’s writings to be exemplary of the effectiveness of polished rhetoric. The use of figures and similes in Palafox’s works allows it to be read and reread profitably and enjoyably (“Al estudioso y christiano lector,” in La verdad vestida). Furthermore, Rojas y Ausa’s own career—as a writer, emblematist, and future colonial bishop—mirrors that of Palafox in a number of suggestive ways. Lastly, Rojas y Ausa was familiar with Antonio González de Rosende’s biography of Palafox (discussed below); Rojas y Ausa mentions it favorably in his Compás de perfectos, Cristo crucificado, medida para compasarse y medirse... como para salvarse conviene (Madrid: Melchor Álvarez, 1683), 432–33. 20. Rojas y Ausa, “Al estudioso y christiano lector,” in La verdad vestida. For a more detailed examination of the debates surrounding the naked truth and the adornment of Clio, the muse of history, see my “From Historia Naturalis to Historia au naturale,” in The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the Inquirer: Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa and the Art of Collecting in Early Modern Spain, ed. Mar Rey Bueno and Miguel López Pérez (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), 30–46. 21. Cueva, Buelos de las plumas sagradas, 341. 22. Eduardo Pardo de Guevara y Valdés, Manual de heráldica española (Madrid: Aldaba, 1987),101–2; Juan Alonso de Calderón, Memorial histórico jurídico político de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de la Puebla de los Ángeles . . . Sobre restituirla las armas reales . . . (1651) (Puebla: Gobierno del Estado de Puebla / Secretaría de Cultura, 1988), 45v. 23. Calderón, Memorial histórico, 24r. 24. No one disputes that the symbol was a tree. What sort of tree it was and what it meant was the issue. Calderón insists that the tree is the symbol of the kingdom of Sobrarbe; sympathetic readers—such as Domingo la Ripa— accepted this interpretation unquestioningly. Others, such as Pedro Melián (Álvarez, Politics and Reform, 259–60) and Cueva (Buelos de las plumas sagradas, 341–42), maintain that it is not at all clear what the tree actually symbolizes. This perplexity, trumped up or otherwise, was probably inevitable: Vida Carmen Kenk notes that trees tend to be fairly ambiguous, if generally royal, heraldic signs (“The Importance of Plants in Heraldry,” Economic Botany 17, no. 3 (1963): 169, 175). Cristóbal Belda Navarro studies arboreal symbolism in “arte efímero,” and generally concurs with Kenk (“Jeroglíficos, enigmas y laberintos en el arte efímero de Murcia durante el Siglo de Oro,” in Homenaje al profesor Juan Barceló Jiménez [Murcia: Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1990], 72–77). It seems certain that Palafox intended the tree to be read as the symbol of Sobrarbe, but it also appears likely that he was intrigued by its armorial ambiguity. 25. Cueva, Buelos de las plumas sagradas, 340, 341. Emphasis mine. 26. Barbara F. Weissberger, Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 47–55. 27. Eva Botella Ordinas, “Fruto, cruz y árbol de vida. Diseño castellano de un reino de Sobrarbe,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie IV. Historia Moderna 11 (1998): 179–213. 28. Galí, “Los escudos.” 29. Álvarez de Toledo, Politics and Reform, 262–63. 30. Nancy H. Fee, “Rey versus reino(s): Palafox y los escudos de la catedral de Puebla,” translated Laura Flores, in La pluma y el báculo: Juan de Palafox y el mundo hispano del seiscientos, ed. Montserrat Galí Boadella (Puebla: Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, 2004), 57–103.

31. Galí, “Los escudos,” 330. 32. Álvarez de Toledo, Politics and Reform, 262. 33. Ibid.. 34. Cueva, Buelos de las plumas sagradas, 347. 35. Antonio González de Rosende, Vida del Ilmo . . . D. Iuan de Palafox i Mendoza . . . seguda vez reconocida i aiustada por su autor (Madrid: Lucas de Bedmar, 1671), 67. 36. Cueva, Buelos de las plumas sagradas, 350. 37. Meredith Parsons Lillich, “Early Heraldry: How to Crack the Code,” Gesta 30, no. 1 (1991): 41–47. 38. González de Rosende, Vida del Ilmo . . . D. Iuan de Palafox i Mendoza, 71. 39. Galí, “Los escudos,” 330. 40. Cristobal Suárez de Figeroa, Plaza Universal de todas ciencias y artes, Parte traducida de Toscano, y parte compuesta por el Doctor Christoval Suarez de Figueroa . . . (Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1615), 52. 41. Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, Providencia de Dios, padecida de los que la niegan y gozada de los que la confiesan, in Obras completas, ed. Felicidad Buendía (Madrid: Aguilar, 1966), 1599. Seventeenth-century terminology related to theories of symbols is made up of words whose meanings are imprecise and overlap in confusing ways. As Pedro F. Campa explains, “there was a wide variation, not to say a dichotomy, between the terminology and the meaning of the words emblema, empresa, jeroglífico, mote, pegma, cifra and enigma” (“Emblematic Terminology in the Spanish Tradition,” in Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500–1700, eds. Peter M. Daly and John Manning, AMS Studies in the Emblem 14 [New York: AMS Press, 1999], 14). Suárez de Figueroa, for example, distinguishes among “empresas” “jeroglíficos,” and “armas” (Plaza Universal, 51–52). José Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar attempts to distinguish between “Simbolo, Geroglifico, y Emblema,” although this discussion is not particularly illuminating (El Fénix y su historia natural [Madrd: Imprenta del Reyno, 1630], 216–17). 42. Cueva, Buelos de las plumas sagradas, 341, 347. Emphasis in original. 43. Miguel Zugasti summarizes the manuscript and publication histories of the Vida interior, citing three editions in Seville (two in 1682 and another in 1691), one in Barcelona (1682), and a bilingual edition in Rome (1694) (“‘Vuela mi pluma cual ligera garza,’ Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza y la literature,” in Palafox: Iglesia, Cultura y Estado en el siglo XVII, ed. Ricardo Fernández Gracia [Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra, 2001], 306–7). 44. Gregorio Bartolomé Martínez, Jaque mate al obispo virrey. Siglo y medio de sátiras y libelos contra Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1991). 45. Translator’s dedicatory (“Al Excelentísimo Señor don Carlos Homodei”) to Paolo Segneri, Quaresma del Padre Pablo Señeri . . . Primera parte, trans. Antonio de las Casas (Madrid: Juan García Infançon, 1697). Segneri’s translator, Antonio de las Casas, contrasts the Jesuit’s restrained style with the excesses of his Spanish contemporaries. In the prologue to his translation, las Casas complains of preachers who—“ahora Filosofo, ahora Físico, ahora Legista, ahora Alquimista, ahora Astrólogo, ahora Anatomista”—overwhelm audiences with selfserving displays of shallow erudition (Segneri, Quaresma del Padre Pablo Señeri). The target of these barbs is almost certainly the famous Carmelite preacher, Manuel de Guerra y Ribera (1638–1692). The same rivalries between Jesuits and Carmelites played out in the Palafox controversy, with Carmelites defending Palafox’s style and reforms and Jesuits attacking them. On alchemy in Guerra’s sermons, see my “Rereading Cabriada’s Carta: Alchemy and Rhetoric in Baroque Spain,” Colorado Review of Hispanic Studies 7 (2009): 67–80. 46. Quoted in Bartolomé Martínez, Jaque mate al obispo virrey, 130–31. 47. Quoted in Ibid., 133. Cueva’s familiarity with the manuscript and published materials on the Palafox controversy illustrates their diffusion. He writes having seen Pedro Melián’s manuscript “Informe apologético,” Segneri’s manuscript “censura” (although it appears that the manuscript was unsigned), the first edition of Juan de la Anunciación’s tiresome La inocencia vindicada. Respuesta que el Rmo. Padre Fr. Juan de la Anunciacion . . . da a un papel contra el libro de la vida interior del . . . señor Don Iuan de Palafox y Mendoza (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Ruiz de Murga, 1698) and a manuscript of Matías Marín, Apologia del Lic. Don Matias Marin, Cathedratico de

Theologia. A favor de unas notas que consultado en Roma el Reverendissimo Padre Pablo Señeri . . . hizo sobre la Vida interior escrita de el Ilustrissmo Señor D. Juan de Palafox. Respuesta al Reverendissimo Padre Fray Juan de la Anunciacion, General de Carmelitas Descalços a quien se dedica la Apologia (Valencia: Iayme Bordaçal, 1695), which was notable for identifying Segneri by name. Cueva was also familiar with Palafox’s Vida interior and the first two editions of González de Rosende’s biography, citing changes in the editions. It is hard to overstate the meticulousness with which Cueva cites his opponents in order to malign them; every careless turn of phrase and each offhanded exaggeration becomes an opportunity to display his utter contempt. Cueva goes so far as to attack the “aprobaciones” [prefatory letters] written for Juan de la Asunción’s La inocencia vindicada. 48. Cueva, for example, takes the “dar mucho en que entender” as an opportunity to criticize Rosende as much as Palafox. Cueva asks: “¿Saliera el P. Rosende por las calles (por obediencia a sus superiores legítimos) vestido de colorado, como en otro tiempo Isaias salió por orden de Dios desnudo por medio de Jerusalen? ¿Era menester previsión, y luz profética para decir en su Celda antes de salir: Ven v. mds. este traje? Pues ha de dar mucho que discurrir, que murmurar, y que entender?” [Would father Rosende go out dressed in red, as in the past Isaiah went in naked Jerusalem by God’s command? Was prophetic illumination necessary to say in his cell before going out, Come see my nakedness because it will give you much to debate, to gossip and to speculate on?] (Cueva, Buelos de las plumas sagradas, 350). 49. Ibid., 351. This simplistic dichotomy—“llano” and “nuevo”—allows for little nuance. As is often the case in literary polemic, Cueva invokes these poles in order to misrepresent Palafox’s style. As Miguel Zugasti notes, despite a taste for allegory, the bishop’s prose is actually fairly sparse, tending more toward economy of expression than ornamentation (“‘Vuela mi pluma,’” 292). Palafox is, unsurprisingly, influenced by emblematic literature, as documented by José Javier Azanza López, “Motivos emblemáticos y cultura en la obra de Juan Palafox y Mendoza,” Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 87 (2002): 15–62. 50. Bartolomé Martínez discusses Marín’s work (Jaque mate al obispo virrey, 138–39), noting that it was prohibited by the Inquisition in 1695. Bartolomé Martínez cites a manuscript of the book, written in Italian, which I have not seen; I follow the edition published in Valencia in 1695. 51. Matías Marín, Apologia del Lic. Don Matias Marin, Cathedratico de Theologia. A favor de unas notas que consultado en Roma el Reverendissimo Padre Pablo Señeri . . . hizo sobre la Vida interior escrita de el Ilustrissmo Señor D. Juan de Palafox . . . (Valencia: Iayme Bordaçal, 1695), 5. 52. This portrait, studied in detail by Fernández Gracia (“Alegoría y emblemtica”) and Andrés González (“Empresas y jeroglíficos”) engages two important traditions. First, it was one of thousands of portraits of Palafox produced during the seventeenth century (Bartolomé Martínez, Jaque mate al obispo virrey, 255). But perhaps more importantly for a comprehension of Rosende’s work, it is one of several examples of an emblematic sub-genre in which works of prose begin with a large, symbolically complex image, followed by an extended, textual explication. Together, “empresa” and “declaración” serve as an ornate theoretical introduction to the otherwise non-emblematic work. Other examples of this tendency include Gabriel Pérez del Barrio Angulo’s Secretario y consegero de señores y Ministros: cargos, materias, cuydados, obligaciones y curioso agricultor de quanto el Gouierno y la Pluma piden para cumplir con ellas . . . (Madrid: Francisco Garcia de Arroyo, 1645) and Leonardo del Castillo’s Viage del Rey Nuestro Señor Don Felipe Quarto el Grande, a la frontera de Francia (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1667). 53. González de Rosende, “Razón de lo que se escribe,” in Vida del Ilmo . . . D. Iuan de Palafox i Mendoza. 54. González de Rosende, “Razón de lo que se escribe,” in Vida del Ilmo . . . D. Iuan de Palafox i Mendoza. 55. Zugasti, “‘Vuela mi pluma,’” 307. 56. I examine the relationship between art and historiography in greater detail in my “History as an Ekphrastic Genre in Early Modern Spain,” MLN 122, no. 2 (2007): 216–32. 57. Laura Oliván, Mariana de Austria: Imagen, poder y diplomacia de una reina cortesana. Investigaciones Feministas. Madrid: Editorial Complutense, UCM, 2006), 40–41; 162–67. 58. The pun here is a commonplace, but used to elegant effect. “Cuerpo” was the common term for the “volume” of a book; a two-volume book was a “libro en dos cuerpos.” Rosende adds the idea that his biography, the Vida, is

itself a substitute for the physical remains of Palafox’s life. 59. González de Rosende, “Dedicatory,” in Vida del Ilmo . . . D. Iuan de Palafox i Mendoza. 60. It was not always clear that biography was a sub-genre of historiography, as Kagan explains in Clio and the Crown, 94–95. 61. González de Rosende, “Razón de lo que se escribe,” in Vida del Ilmo . . . D. Iuan de Palafox i Mendoza. 62. Ibid. The idea that style was a product of an individual’s humoral complexion was a commonplace. As Gabriel Pérez del Barrio notes, some writers are so cold and humid, according to Galen, that they get lost in their own complexities, and their memories are so confused that they are unable to speak clearly (“tan fríos, y húmedos de celebro, que certifica Galeno, les causan una maraña, y confusión de figuras en la memoria, que no aciertan a declararse”) (Secretario y consegero de señores y Ministros, cargos, materias, cuydados, obligaciones y curioso agricultor de quanto el Gouierno y la Pluma piden para cumplir con ellas . . . [En Madrid: por Francisco Garcia de Arroyo, 1645], 7r. 63. González de Rosende, “Razón de lo que se escribe,” in Vida del Ilmo . . . D. Iuan de Palafox i Mendoza. 64. Ibid. 65. William H. Beezley, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French, “Introduction,” in Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico, eds. William H. Beezley, Cheryl English Martin, and William E. French (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994), xiii. 66. Galí, “Los escudos,” 327. 67. Haskett, “Paper Shields,” 100. 68. Martínez, “The Black Blood of New Spain,” 493. 69. Ibid., 489. 70. Cueva, Buelos de las plumas sagradas, 350.

Chapter 7 ANTONIO PÉREZ AND THE IDIOMS OF TREASON Ana María G. Laguna En lo que no es justa ley, no ha de obedecer al rey —La vida es sueño[1] A monarch’s mandate is unearned, where unjust statutes are concerned —Life Is a Dream

Deep political dissent is not often associated with Habsburg, Spain. Although critics like Frederick A. de Armas, Aaron Kahn, Patricia Manning, and Eric Graf have shown the underlying hegemonic objections of works as significant as El criticón, La Numancia or Don Quixote, the covert, oblique strategies generally used by these texts to convey political opposition are indicative of the need for caution felt by most Golden Age authors. These pages explore one of the most explosive exceptions of this culture, the incendiary narrative of Antonio Pérez (1540–1611), Philip II’s former personal secretary from 1567 to 1579, to this day considered one of the most notorious traitors in Spanish history. Indeed, in his Relaciones, published in England in 1594, Pérez shockingly disclosed some of the most intimate state secrets of Philip II’s government. Not surprisingly, his book immediately became a sensation in the early modern world, thereby becoming as much appreciated as it was despised by the enemies and allies of the Spanish Empire. Thus, as early as 1595, it had appeared in English, and by 1598, it had been translated to French, Dutch, and English (going already on its third edition in this language). This study seeks to evaluate the intrinsic value of these writings, since in all its fabrications and exaggerations, Pérez’s dissenting testimony became instrumental for the critical discourses of sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy that flourished inside and outside of Spain at the turn of the sixteenth century. The literary and cultural context that forged and read Pérez’s Relaciones is also carefully explored here, since official and unofficial reactions to Pérez’s act of defiance exposed how mutually dependent the idioms of treason and tyranny were in the vocabularies of power of the late 1500s.

TOWARD A SEMIOLOGY OF DISSIDENCE IN THE 1500S Recent work on the subject of treason has reminded us of two important and surprising facts about treason in the early modern world: first, how undefined this, the ultimate crime against the state, was (and perhaps has always been), and second, how instrumental this malleability was for the exercise of monarchic power. Both factors are intrinsically intertwined, for understanding treason as an open sign, an open “political and legal construction,” leaves it heavily vulnerable to the needs and

interests of absolute sovereignty, which might alter “the definition of treason, [so that] monarchs prosecute increasing numbers of subjects for newly incriminated political activity, eliminating political enemies, and gaining their states in the process.”[2] Indeed, we find innumerable efforts to counteract these monarchic pressures among writers of the second part of the sixteenth century who became increasingly interested in questioning existing definitions of statecraft and sovereignty in order to limit (or at least fracture) the prerogatives of absolute power. The emphasis on both political purposes—the justification of absolute power and anxiety toward defiance or disobedience—has led critics such as Rebecca Lemon to conclude that the two great thematic axes of sixteenth-century politics, treason and tyranny, not only intersected in many of the crucial literary works of the moment, but also shaped and defined the early modern political consciousness.[3] The dyad of treason and tyranny is certainly apparent in Pérez’s Relaciones, where Antonio, proving that the best defense is a multi-leveled attack, defends himself from the charge of treason by depicting Philip as a flawed king, one in whom “no hay dos dedos de la risa al cuchillo,” [there are not two fingers between his laughter and his knife], driven by “turbación del concierto natural” [confusion in his natural disposition], and by the invested interests of advisers characterized by their “codicia natural y celo rabioso” [natural greed and rabid envy].[4] The clear extrapolation is that there is no crime in disobeying an abusive and deluded prince, a premise certainly not unfamiliar in some of Spain’s most idiosyncratic literary works, such as Life Is a Dream. Segismundo’s words, in the epigraph that opens these pages, clearly indicates the ground tested before by Pérez: “En lo que no es justa ley, / no ha de obedecer al rey” [A monarch’s mandate is unearned / where unjust statutes are concerned],[5] echoing a moral justification for treason (i.e., in the case of tyrannical abuse) already stated by theorists such as Aristotle.[6] Aristotle had argued that since tyranny constitutes the lower form of rule (it betrays distributive justice and personal freedom, and constitutes a violation of natural law), there is “great honor bestowed” not only on him who goes beyond disobeying a tyrant, but on him who kills a tyrant.[7] In the Spain of the 1500s, most ideas regarding tyranny, concretely those that advocated radical solutions against it—such as regicide—have been associated and attributed almost exclusively to Juan de Mariana’s influential De rege et regis institutione (1599). However, similar notions were certainly present in earlier thinkers such as Francisco de Vitoria (1492–1546), who, following Aristotelian and patristic views on the subject, reminds his reader that: Dicit Sanctus Thomas quod potest aliquis hoc facere, scilicet commovere populum ad tollendum tyrannidem, ut fecit beautus Paulus contra saudeos et phariseos. . . . Aliquando tamen oportet inquietare rempublicam ad tollendum maius. Sed de hoc, quomodo, dicemus infra in matera de homicidio, quia est difficultas etiam in Conciliis iactata, an privato homini liceat tyrannum occidere.[8]

[Saint Thomas says that one can incite people to a rebellion in order to free them from a tyrant, just as Saint Paul did with the Pharisees and Sadducees. . . . Sometimes, it is convenient to agitate the Republic in order to free it from a bigger evil. On this particular issue on how, to whom, and when it is licit to eliminate a tyrant, we shall talk a little later, when we deal with homicides, because the licit killing of a tyrant by a private man involves a difficulty already stated in the Councils.][9] Vitoria’s caution on the subject is widely shared by the literature of the Golden Age. La vida es sueño only tangentially explores the conflict (and solution) hinted at by Vitoria, for even though social order is restored thanks to a rebellion, the play revolves around royal reinstitution rather than deposition. Others, such as La tragedia del tirano (1580) by Juan de la Cueva, present deposition more clearly, although here the tyrant is characterized as a slightly absurd figure whose death might be easier to justify morally and civilly.[10] Pérez, in his Relaciones, examines one sticky issue that Calderón and Cueva carefully leave out: the effects of a tyrant in the kingdom, when said tyrant never gets deposed and the people are left “en tal opresión del Reino, en tal turbación de gobierno, en tal confusión de justicia, en tanta variedad y multitud de miserias, de prisiones, de pregones, de justicias . . . de ruinas, de tanto quebrantamiento de fueros” [in such oppressed kingdom, in such baffled government, in such confused justice, in such a variety of miseries, prisons, pressing calls for justice . . . in such ruin and illegality].[11] Pérez would not only call for deposition, but as we will see, he will also constantly question the authority of the king and call his fellow citizens to rebel against it. Although deposition and treason are not apparent subjects in the cultural agenda of the Spanish Golden Age, they seem to be ubiquitous on a closer look. Critics like Kahn have started to recuperate the latent moral opposition against Philip’s policies, demonstrating that Pérez’s attitude is far from an exception in the literature of the late 1500s. Kahn explains how Philip’s invasion of Portugal in the late 1570s was “deemed by many to be immoral and unjust” by a great number of writers and moralists, such as Cervantes (1547–1616), Jerónimo Bermúdez (1530?–1605?), and Cristóbal de Virués (1550?–1609), who “chose their own media to express their concern and fear of tyranny [of] Philip.”[12] In Kahn’s view, the works of this (Pérez’s) generation demonstrates that the anxieties and fear of Philip’s “tyrannical” exercise of power included a wide spectrum of dissenting voices in the Spanish political and literary landscape. Kahn believes that such dissent was especially prevalent and effective in the theater, but perhaps those reactions were more widespread than traditionally assumed.[13] Even an economic critique that is targeted at very specific issues such as the debasing of currency can be built on the grounds of tyranny. Both Eric C. Graf, in an article,[14] and Elvira Vilches, in this volume, explore the effect of Philip II’s fiscal, debasing policies on discourses of sovereignty. Tomás de Mercado, for example, considers the good standing of currency as a “pillar of good government,”[15] while

Mariana goes further, equating debasing practices with tyranny, since in order to implement them “the prince would be at length able to draw to himself almost all the money or riches of his subjects and reduce them to slavery. And this would be tyrannical, indeed true, and absolutely tyranny.”[16] Considered within the context of these dissenting trends, Pérez’s narrative is perhaps only different in genre and degree. Although his Relaciones might not have had a direct impact on its immediate audience (as plays do), and lacked the credibility of solid historians like Mercado and Mariana, Pérez’s critique succeeds in delegitimizing Philip’s government though the first-person account of a privileged witness who is able to provide the most incriminating details of Philip’s abusive policies. The effects of Pérez’s writings have been compared to those of mercury poisoning, in that the work’s cumulative effects were able to ravage, over time, some of the most vital perceptions and censures of Philip’s monarchy, such as the aura of secrecy that surrounded and protected Philip, exposing him instead as a peculiar man whose flawed understanding prevented him from facing the many and vast difficulties of his unruly kingdoms. By doing so, Pérez presented Philip as a monarch distant from the Catholic ideal of the just and magnanimous leader of an entire Christendom, an image that the Habsburgs—from Charles V on—had fought hard to build and maintain. In England, Queen Elizabeth, Pérez’s ultimate protector after his fall from grace, became an eager patron for the publication of his Relaciones. Elizabeth was probably not as interested as Pérez in deploring the misuse of absolute power, but she was certainly eager to cash in on Perez’s delegitimization of Philip’s moral and political authority. Ironically, while she hailed, promoted, and translated Pérez’s destabilizing narrative, Pérez meant little more to her than he did to his former lord Philip: a murky and dangerous traitor.

THE MOVABLE IDIOMS OF TREASON As in the case of other great literary and social themes, like honor, scholars have been surprised to find that the immense literary anxiety generated by treason did not match its real incidence. At least in early modern English society, there were very few documented threats to the establishment (for example, in the form of regicides). In light of this historical testimony, treason in the late 1500s entailed little more than an undefined sign or textual phenomenon, since most attempts to carry out treason did not go beyond the realm of words.[17] Consequently, the methods of dealing with such treasonous attempts were also textually bound. In a variety of narrative forms, early modern societies replayed “again and again, the horror that might have happened, simultaneously imagining it and exorcising it though these narrative creations.”[18] Emblematic of this process in England was the gunpowder plot in 1605, a failed attempt to blow up the Parliament when it was in session. Despite its failure, the event produced in Jacobean society wide-ranging paranoid measures based on a profound fear and anxiety of sedition. In contrast, in Spain, there had been some real treasonous occurrences,

although they were rare and did not generate much unrest or literary activity. The attempted Comunero revolt, for example, had been harshly repressed by Charles V in 1521, and rather than constituting a precedent of dissent, it became a painful reminder of the state’s punitive power. Other attempts of opposition were no more successful and were kept as secret as the executions to which they led. Even in the notorious cases of the Baron Montigny (executed at Simancas in 1568) or Martín Vázquez de Acuña (dead in the Castle of Pinto in 1585), the public never knew significant details of their charges or of the indictment process.[19] More public instances ended similarly. The visionaries Miguel de Piedrola and Lucrecia de León, who between 1587 and 1590 famously predicted and criticized the future failures of the Spanish Empire (in campaigns such as the Armada’s), were both accused of treason, sentenced to two years of prison, and banned eternally from the court.[20] In Spain, the most emblematic treason of the baroque period, Pérez’s, was set apart by its public nature and its perplexing scale. Pérez’s textual treason thus escapes a concise, clear-cut definition of the crime like the one Covarrubias had neatly penned in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (1611). For Covarrubias, the crime of “traición,” or treason, constitutes “alevosía y engaño” [treachery and deceit], and the word comes from the Latin verb “trado” [to hand over] because “el traidor pone al que engaña en manos de sus enemigos” [a traitor brings whoever he betrays to the hands of his enemies].[21] Covarrubias reminds kings to benefit from treason without rewarding traitors. Leaders were expected to cast the treacherous into oblivion, just like Rome did, by plowing the house of the traitor or the town that had committed treason with salt “por el todo borrar la memoria dellos, mas aun el suelo para que no fuese de provecho le sembraban de sal” [not only to erase completely the memory of those people, but also to prevent the soil from ever giving fruit again].[22] The ending of the above-mentioned play, Life Is a Dream, exemplifies this prescription when the prince Segismundo benefits from the rebellion started by a treacherous soldier, yet instead of rewarding him for the uprising, he imprisons the traitor for life.[23] Perhaps Philip’s most striking mistake might have been that of not immediately following Covarrubias’s advice. Indeed, Pérez’s treason would not be forgotten nor would it be limited to the world of words. His betrayal of Philip seemed in the 1570s as unlikely as his fall from grace, but the murder of a principal advisor in court, Juan de Escobedo (1530–1578), would change Pérez’s loyalty and fate. As the secretary of Philip’s half-brother, Don Juan, Escobedo was one of Pérez’s most obvious rivals in court. He was also one of the most appreciated courtiers in Madrid, and when the news of his death was known, furious rumors and pamphlets immediately flooded the court openly blaming Pérez for the crime.[24] What seems shocking to the contemporary reader is the caliber of those who did defend him; while common knowledge identified Pérez as the mind behind the murder, some prominent personalities, like the theologian Fray Hernando del Castillo, became fervent defenders of the bureaucrat, thereby reminding Philip that

cuando por dos horas se le hayan quitado siendo todo su negocio, estado, y secretos de él, nadie puede pensar sino que ha sido traidor, cosa que no se recompense . . . pues Su Majestad sabe que no ha sido traidor ni homicida ni encubridor como el pasquín dice [Not even two hours after he [Antonio] had been removed from his office and from access to its secrets, nobody can think of anything but that he is a traitor, which is not a reward for his services . . . because His Majesty knows that he has neither been a traitor, nor murderer nor accomplice, like the pamphlets say].[25] In a way, Escobedo’s murder produced a discursive battlefield where the key idioms in the vocabulary of governance—of treason, loyalty, tyranny, and service— intersected, producing a wide-ranging interpretative axis. Indeed, if Escobedo’s death had been the result of another secret death sentence (like that of the Baron Montigny or Martín Vázquez de Acuña) and Pérez’s arrangement of the murder had been ordered by the king, his obedience could only make Pérez a patriot (and Philip a secretive and abusive king). On the other hand, if Pérez was not innocent and had forced or deluded the king to fulfill personal ambitions or expectations (as most people suspected), he exercised a worrisome influence over a no less alarmingly credulous ruler. The lack of an official investigation following the murder, together with the extreme ambiguity of Pérez’s status (kept under royal protection in comfortable house arrest until 1582), suggested some form of agreement between the king and the secretary and reinforced the popular suspicion about wrongdoing on someone’s part.[26] When Philip finally opened up an investigation seven years after Escobedo’s death, transferred Pérez to more secure imprisonments and put him on trial in an unusually secret “Proceso de visita,” it became publicly clear that there had been some hidden resolution and that Pérez was now receiving from the crown the treatment reserved for traitors, which presupposed an imminent death sentence. To everyone’s surprise, however, Pérez was able to avoid it by escaping to the neighboring kingdom of Aragon in April of 1590. He had chosen this destination wisely, aware that Aragon maintained a legal framework different from Castile, which could protect Pérez from the rigors of the king’s justice through a legal privilege called “manifestación.” The right of “manifestado,” carefully guarded by the Aragonese fueros, constituted an impressive counterpoint to royal power, one that, Pérez knew, would provide him an opportunity to defend himself. In order to do so, Pérez presented a document titled Memorial del hecho de su causa, a sort of appendix that provided all the information carefully compiled during his last years as secretary. Thus, the Memorial reproduced extremely private conversations (billetes) with the king in which Philip not only expressed his determination to eliminate Escobedo, but also exposed the mechanics of this government and political ethos, which was until then one of the most guarded and secretive in the early modern world.

DISSENTION THROUGH DISSEMINATION Pérez’s Memorial and Relaciones are articulated through two main arguments: (1) His innocence regarding Escobedo’s death, stating (and reproducing) the king’s direct order to eliminate him; and, (2) Philip’s “tyrannical” prosecution of Pérez, which he constructs as a synecdoche of the abuse inflicted by the king on all of his subjects and kingdoms, (especially evident in Aragón, since it suffered extreme retaliation for its support of Pérez). With regard to the first, Pérez releases Philip’s handwritten command to eliminate the “Verdinegro” (nickname for Escobedo): “Do it, and do it soon,” Philip’s words stated in one of his most famous “billetes,” “antes de que nos mate” [before he kills us].[27] Pérez gives Philip a motive for this directive, reminding the reader of the intrinsic relationship between Escobedo and Philip’s half-brother, Juan de Austria, and the need to distrust them both (a view that Pérez seemed to exaggerate given his conflict of interest with Escobedo, and Philip’s conflicted feelings toward Don Juan). Thus, the narrative claims that “resolvió el Rey Católico como ejecución necesaria y forzosa para atajar la turbación de sus reinos y otros, quizá del mundo, que se podía temer de aquellos tratos o inteligencias de don Juan de Austria” [[this execution] was deemed as imperative and necessary by the Catholic King to avoid the agitation of his kingdoms and others, perhaps of the entire world, such is the danger that was to be feared from all the secret dealings of Juan de Austria].[28] Furthermore, Pérez tells us that if the murder had been attributed to him, it was because of his attempt to protect the king’s reputation even “en medio de aquellas prisiones, metido en aquel laberinto de confusión de ánimo” [in the middle of those prisons, and immersed in the labyrinth of emotional confusion].[29] Pérez argues that in exchange for that self-sacrifice he only expected the help and support of the king, since “[Yo] tendría constante . . . mi confianza . . . en esperanza de él [el rey]” [I kept my constant hope in my king].[30] In a curious reformulation of the concept of treason, Pérez implicitly accuses the king of having betrayed him for fear of the public pressure mounting around the Escobedo murder: El rey, viéndose ya tan apretado de los demandantes de justicia por la muerte de Escobedo . . . se aconsejó con la confusion que todo esto le causaba, y para arrojar de sí tanta carga de obligaciones, echó mano del color de amistades y tomó al cabo aquella fuerte resolución: prender a Antonio Pérez. [The king, seeing himself so pressured by those demanding justice . . . advised by the confusion that all of this had caused him, attempting to elude all the weight and responsibility of his actions, used his most intimate friendships and decided to make that striking resolution of detaining Antonio Pérez].[31] In depicting events in such a way, Pérez of course characterizes Philip as an easily pressured and inherently unfair ruler and himself as a victim of royal power and

lack of confidence. Ultimately, Pérez attributes his disgrace to the indirect circumstances caused by Esobedo’s death, such as the social pressure generated around it and the opportunistic attacks of his enemies at court (whom he often calls “lobos carniceros,”[32] or “flesh-eating wolves”), who, out of envy, used the Escobedo incident to make Philip’s disfavor of Pérez irrevocable and permanent: “No hay veneno … como la envidia, y más a la privanza de príncipes” [there is not poison like envy, especially when addressed to a prince’s privado].[33] As the narrative unfolds, Pérez also blames Philip’s extreme animosity towards him on the level of trust that formerly existed between king and secretary. Aware that his knowledge of highly incriminating secrets is a liability, he exploits this fact from the beginning, asserting that this is the ultimate reason for his prosecution: “Estado de los más peligrosos en éste, como en otros tales siglos pasados, es saber secretos muy secretos de príncipes: más peligroso que tener obligado a un príncipe” [this is one of the most dangerous states in the world, that of knowing the most guarded secrets of a prince; it is far more dangerous than deserving compensation from a prince].[34] Hence, if Pérez breaches past obligations by publishing state secrets, it is because Philip breached his word and protection in the first place. Furthermore, Pérez also attributes his determination to publish his narrative to a rather modern responsibility to inform his contemporaries of the real political motives of Philip’s government, “para que se sepa lo posible y debido y para que podamos hablar en ello” [so that we know what ought to be known and so that we can talk about it].[35] Of course, this noble intent must be taken with a grain of salt, since these are the words of a sixteenth-century bureaucrat consumed by his self-serving interests. Regardless of Pérez’s motives, it might be difficult for the modern reader to imagine the extent of the scandal that followed his revelations. Perhaps the recent controversy generated by the events involving the WikiLeaks platform could provide a reference. Despite the scale of this contemporary leak—more than 400,000 documents—the significance of its case comes from the disclosed (and often questionable) political pacts and state-driven plots of supposedly fully democratic governments.[36] If nothing else, the WikiLeaks has opened vexing questions about governmental legality in several countries around the world, forcing numerous administrations to reexamine their secrecy protocols, and reenergizing a public debate on the need to preserve classified information. Four hundred years later, secrecy continues to be regarded as a necessary evil since it is generally accepted that confidentiality is intrinsic to diplomacy and essential in matters of national security. And yet, recent history has shown the liberating value of infiltrations by people like Daniel Ellsberg (responsible for the “Pentagon Papers”) and Mark Felt (“Deep Throat” in the Watergate conspiracy) in exposing improper government handlings. While the American society, in general, has come to value figures like Ellsberg and Felt as “true American heroes” for providing irrefutable proof of disingenuous government maneuvering,[37] the U.S. remains highly skeptical of figures like Bradley Manning (source for the WikiLeaks) and Julian Assange (the publisher of

such revelations), choosing almost unequivocally to condemn Manning’s and Assange’s activity as “espionage” and “treason.”[38] Admittedly, this contemporary paradox offers an imperfect correlation to Pérez’s case; much of the WikiLeaks controversy revolves around the difficult demarcation between censorship and freedom of speech, whereas Pérez’s case is defined in the clear-cut framework of an early modern absolute monarchy. At the core of such dialectics, however, similar forces collide: the need for governments to protect their secrets, the reactions of such governments to those who dare to disseminate them, and the blurry line that separates the treason against one particular government or institution from the service to a greater cause. Ultimately, a leak of international proportions becomes so pernicious for a government because it implicitly questions its legitimacy. The case of Antonio Pérez became so transcendent because not only did he challenge the legality and sovereignty of Philip’s monarchy in particular, but also questioned the value and entitlement of absolute monarchy in general: Que aunque diga allá Fray Diego de Chaves, Confesor del rey (allá lo verán en sus cartas), que el rey tiene poder sobre la vida de sus vasallos, yo pienso que Dios sólo es el Rey que tal poder tiene.[39] [Even when Fray Diego de Chaves, the King’s confessor claims (as seen in his letters) that the king does have power over the life of his vassals, I believe that only God is the king that has such power]. [L]os príncipes son siervos, como nosotros, de los afectos naturales, y mucho más que nosotros, cuanto más los reprimen en la demostración exterior, por el respeto a la divinidad que representan y pretenden.[40] [Princes are servants to natural inclinations like the rest of us, or much more than us, because they must suppress and prevent themselves from demonstrating their desires for all respect due to the divinity that they represent and demand]. [E]n Aragón . . . el rey no es más que parte: y tribunal juez supremo hay establecido sobre él en lo que se pretendiere contra sus vasallos; el de Justicia de Aragón por tal le reconoce él y le reconoció en su día . . . como rey, aunque se considere como señor absoluto, según derecho divino y humano . . . no puede hacer tal declaración.[41] [In Aragón . . . the king is not more than a part [of justice]; . . . and there is even a supreme court that has been established to be over him on all the actions he wanted to take against his vassals . . . that is the role of the Judiciar as it is known today and back then. . . . As king, even one that considers himself as an absolute lord by divine and human law . . . cannot issue such statement.]

¿[Q]uíen será en esta confusión el juez? Sólo Dios, que puede alumbrar el entendimiento de un Rey engañado, que tiene su corazón en su mano, que sabrá distinguir la fuerza del derecho. Que el poder puede dar posesión, pero no derecho. . . . Y el Derecho es como el fuego y las demás cosas naturales, que aunque le ahoguen con la violencia y pierda el acto por algún rato, no puede perder la verdad natural que posee del derecho que le dio la naturaleza.[42] [Who could be the judge in this confusion? Only God can enlighten the understanding of a deceived king, whose heart He has on his hand, who knows how to distinguish the force of law. Because power might issue possessions, but not laws, and Law is like fire and other natural things, in that even when it is suffocated by violence, or lost by some temporary course of action, it cannot lose its natural truth, the truth that nature gives it.] Although some of these assertions are often enmeshed in long paragraphs that might attempt to diffuse and/or disguise the force of statements with formulae such as “mucho he dicho” [I have said much][43] and “no hablo acaso” [perhaps I should not speak],[44] Pérez’s texts denote an overwhelming criticism on the issue of absolute monarchic power, calling for and reminding his readers of the need to restrict it—a topic, as seen in the beginning of these pages, not new in the European political theory of the late 1500s.[45] Indeed, the debate on monarchy and sovereignty was pan-European, and although the terms of such debate were not as fixed as it had been considered before (supporting, in very clearly-defined terms an absolute monarchy or a limited one), the subject of power limitations, and the need to return to some “natural law” that creates a harmonious relationship between the ruler and the ruled had had a long-standing preeminence in Aristotelian, patristic, and scholastic views. In the Spain of the 1600s concretely, as Ariadna García-Bryce reminds us: A constitutional mindset is well presented in much of the political literature of the time. The emphatic rejection of tyranny, the notion that the king is a public servant who must govern within the law for the public good, and the view that he governs best in conjunction with wise ministers are all staple claims of early modern mirror of princes. . . . [B]eyond the patent anti-Machiavellians who identify with Scholastic and Renaissance Republican traditions and those endorsing the practice of absolutism, the notion of unlimited power is generally frowned upon.[46] Inscribed within this climate, and a precursor of its strong developments at the turn of the century, there is something particularly unique and effective about Antonio’s narrative. Even though he will use many staple arguments against absolute power, he goes beyond the moral or philosophical discussions of such literature, for his narrative is not only philosophical or hypothetical, but biographical. In other words, his story comes to exemplify the monarchic abuses he is actually speaking against. In

fact, one of his great narrative successes was his foresight in associating the plight of his case (to be judged fairly) with that of the whole kingdom of Aragón (to keep its fueros and independence from the king’s justice). The scheme would prove successful, because when Philip’s efforts to circumvent the Aragonese legislature failed, and he was forced to resort to the powers of the Inquisition (whose jurisdiction reigned over local law), Pérez and local supporters—such as D. Martín de Lanuza, Diego de Heredia, and Pedro de Bolea resisted such a measure by declaring to the crowds that handing over a protected prisoner like Pérez to the Inquisition incurred a “contrafuero” (was against the local law).[47] Pérez’s troupe then incited a revolt in May 1591, asking the people of Aragón to rebel against an intervention by the Inquisition in order to protect the liberties of the land. A much more experienced and neutral Judiciar, Juan de Lanuza IV, who was present and would die soon after, immediately rebutted these allegations (since transferring a prisoner to the Inquisition’s jail did not contravene any local prerogative), but the agitators accused him of treason and started an assault on the royal and inquisitorial forces. The revolt is painted very differently in his Relaciones, of course, where it appears as a unified local response of citizens and authorities against the tyrannical interference of Philip: El pueblo oía, callaba; cuando más repondía, decía: Que contra la justicia no irían, pero que en sus fueros no les tocasen. Que por sus libertades morirían; que esta justicia era sobre todas las humanas.[48] [The [Aragonese] people remained silent; however, whenever they responded, they argued that they would not go against justice, but that their local laws should not be touched because they would die to defend their freedoms as this is a justice that is above all human laws.] Don Martín de Lanuza . . . viendo a su patria en tal estado (ruina quise decir), a su amigo en tal extremo, a todos rendidos al miedo y respeto . . . con una espada y rodela dio principio a esta obra [motín] . . . dio corazón a aquellos ánimos, para que se ofreciesen al sacrificio y defensa por su patria, por su amigo, por la justicia de entrambos, por la libertad de todos.[49] [Don Martín de Lanuza . . . seeing his nation in such a state (I mean ruin), and his friend in such a situation, realizing that they all had surrendered to fear and intimidation . . . with a sword and a shield began this work [revolt] . . . giving heart to the people so that they would offer themselves in this sacrifice for the sake of their nation’s defense, for [the sake of] his friend, for the justice that would serve both, and for the freedom that would benefit all.] The revolt was openly described as a full-fledged rebellion by the king’s representative, Micer Torralba, at the site, and although it did not succeed in

liberating Pérez on its first attempt, it was able to do so a few months later. What is significant about the situation and Pérez’s transcription of events is, on the one hand, Pérez’s calculated campaign to misappropriate local legislature, and on the other hand, the naivete of local authorities. Pérez grossly misquotes “El Fuero que se llamaba de la Union” [the Union Law] as a regulation that allowed the Aragonese “siempre que el rey les quebrantase sus fueros, pudiesen elegir otro rey” [to choose another king whenever the king broke the local law],[50] even though the authentic “Fuero de la Unión” [Union Law] had been abolished around 1348 for being a problematic privilege. Indeed, although this prerogative does not seem so far removed from Vitoria’s and Mariana’s writing, the existing laws did not allow the Aragonese people to depose a king even if he were to breach his obedience to the fueros. However, Pérez would eagerly invoke these “rights” in his fight for freedom, going as far as equating his own personal liberty with that of the entire kingdom; “Gritaba el pueblo: ¡Viva la libertad! ¡Viva Antonio Pérez!” [The Aragonese people screamed: “Long life to freedom!” “Long life to Antonio Pérez!].[51] Locals later admitted that by believing Pérez’s misconceptions they had acted too impulsively, assuming that they had rights and liberties that they truthfully did not have or did not even exist. The turmoil that had resulted in the killing of the Judiciar and the Marqués had also put the king in the delicate position of producing an exemplary punishment without contravening the fueros (an almost impossible task). To exercise pressure over Zaragoza and the new (young and inexperienced) Judiciar, Juan de Lanuza V, Philip communicated his intention of bringing into Zaragoza royal troops that were “on their way to France.”[52] On November 23, before the king directed the army to enter Aragonese borders, Pérez was able to escape at the outbreak of a second revolt. Philip then ordered his army to enter Aragón immediately. Pressed by the prevailing pressures and rhetoric to defend the liberties of Aragón from tyranny, the young Judiciar Juan de Lanuza V did declare this action to be another “contrafuero,” invoking a right to defend the kingdom from an invading foreign army that did exist in the De generalibus privilegiis regni Aragonum (1461), therefore calling Aragón to raise arms against the king.[53] Philip’s army crushed these local attempts, and the violent repression that followed resulted in the dramatic execution of the legislator, together with a monumental auto de fe where eighty-eight people (some of them, very prominent personalities in Aragonese society) were put to death. Seventy years after the Comunero revolt, Philip followed the footsteps of his father by using the repression of a revolt as an opportunity to reinforce Castilian monarchic power. If the events in Zaragoza translated into one of the most disastrous chapters of Aragonese history and one of the most disappointing for Philip’s regime (he reinstituted the royal control over the region but saw his high-profile traitor escape to safety), they demonstrated Pérez’s superb ability to manipulate or subvert official and unofficial punitive channels of authority (such as trials, prisons, and execution) through a masterful manipulation of judiciary and incendiary discourse. Ironically, Philip’s

disproportioned repression of the Aragonese offered Pérez’s Relaciones indisputable proof of the king’s tyranny: “corre la indignación particular contra las libertades de Aragón . . . porque el uso del poder absoluto es muy peligroso a los reyes, muy odioso a sus vasallos, muy ofensivo a Dios y a la naturaleza” [the indignation against what happened to the Aragonese liberties runs free . . . because the use of absolute power is very dangerous to the kings, very hateful for the subjects, and very offensive to God and to nature].[54] Furthermore, in the Relaciones, Pérez reinforced the injustice of the Aragonese repression by associating it with other problematic military campaigns carried out by Philip, such as that in Portugal in 1580, where Philip had also punished the self-determination of its people. Thus, Pérez notes that the Inquisitor Morejón, examined the Aragón “conspiracy,” compared it to that of Portugal, and claimed that the Aragonese people “eran como los portugueses y con menos fuerzas, y menos armas, menos artillería” [were like the Portuguese, but with less strength, less troops, and less arms].[55] Such association with Portugal presents Iberia as a constellation of fragmented, marginal kingdoms struggling with the overreaching and overpowering Castile. Philip’s central government thus appeared characterized as one only able to establish and exercise its power over the Iberian territory through abusive military intervention, which gave foreign powers such as England and France the deluded assumption that Aragón was a land that—if needed —was ready to rise against Philip. In England, Elizabeth considered the likely benefit of supporting Antonio’s cause, and decided to cover the cost of the first edition of the Relaciones, which were published in London in 1594 with a forged imprint to hide its ties to the English crown. She too overestimated the accuracy and significance of Pérez’s accounts, because, as another form of gunnery, she sent a massive number of Pérez’s books to Spain and Europe, believing that it would incite hostile regions such as Aragón to revolt against Philip.[56] The expected uprising against Philip, of course, did not occur. However, the English court, more skillful and keen on reutilizing Pérez’s public, but self-serving assertions, designed a way to benefit largely from the book, which did succeed. Thus, inside England, the Relaciones proved to be useful to the English crown by bringing a natural enemy like Philip to the forefront of a still vulnerable national consciousness. To an English readership, Perez’s reminders of Philip’s tyranny reignited fears surrounding the aborted invasion of the Armada in 1588 and the possibilities of seeing another Spanish invasion—a fear apparently never lost.[57] Such anxieties ineludibly aided Protestant England, which was still apprehensive about the possible sympathies of the English Catholic faction toward Philip. Thus, a narrative that emphasized the gratuitous mistreatment of a Catholic king of his subjects, together with his inability to reward his noblemen’s generous service to the crown, provided a vivid cautionary tale against Catholicism, proving extremely beneficial for Elizabeth. The translator and editor of the English edition effectively underlines these intents in the foreword: As for vs of England, Lett vs not neglect the benefite that is presented vnto vs by

this book. . . . Have we any at home or abroade, [the]y discontenting themselves w[ith] their owne Prince and Countries estate, relye their hopes vpon this kinge of Spayne? . . . his intent is playnely to conquere your Countrye, his fact of the yeare .1588. manifestly declareth. . . . He neyther can nor shall never do it, nor will be so evell advised as at any tyme to goe agayne abowt to attempt it. Yet if he should, and that by your ayde, conquere it in deede, what is your hope then of him? Are you great ones, and thincke to be advaunced by assisting him w[ith] your forces and persons in this Conquest? See the D[uke] of Villa Hermosa, and the Erle of Aranda mentioned in this storye. . . . Their services were forgotten: their letters of thancks were baytes of their ruyne. They were caryed out of their owne Countrye into Castile and there dyed in prison: Innocent, having served him greatly and as good Catholickes (as you forme them) as any you can be.[58] The propagandistic translation of the text formidably captures the local truths and movable claims constantly used throughout Pérez’s narrative. Here, the English nation, like the Aragonese before, is asked again to protect liberties that in this case existed, but were not in jeopardy.

PÉREZ AND THE DISCOURSES OF SOVEREIGNTY IN SPAIN Pérez’s was not the only source or manifestation of public dissidence in the Spain of the late 1500s. Neither Philip’s gravitas nor his powerful punitive machinery could prevent the critiques of his reign from becoming progressively more public and explicit. In 1591, at the time of the Aragonese revolt, the king was dealing with several other forms of discontent all over Iberia; while Madrid saw a riot of two thousand people protesting against the millones (a controversial new tax), cities like Seville and Avila experienced unprecedented turmoil where alarming pamphlets asked Phillip to “be satisfied” with what he owned without claiming “what is another’s.”[59] Even a member of the Castilian Council bitterly admitted that “mirando con atención y consideración suma en el cuerpo de este Reyno, no hay en él cosa enteremente sana” [when looked upon with the best attention and consideration, nobody can find anything completely healthy in the body of this kingdom].[60] To this general discontent, Philip would have to add his fourth bankruptcy five years later, in 1596, which further emphasized the political and fiscal discredit in which Philip II’s reign ended. Indeed, at his death, critiques against Philip’s distinct monarchy and exercise of power became almost fashionable.[61] One could have expected Pérez’s status to become somewhat rehabilitated in such political panorama, and in a way, he certainly was; the publication and recognition of his Aphorisms in 1600 or 1601 is solid proof of his new regard as a practical political adviser.[62] Having filtered all the personal slander against the king, Pérez’s wise Aphorisms provided useful views on power systems like the privanza, a system that an already disenchanted Pérez considered necessary (since kings in general are flawed individuals) although not easily sustainable (because the envy of

the less capable always rises against the most suited advisers).[63] Not surprisingly, given his years of experience in European courts and his extreme ability in weathering political difficulty, noblemen of the stature of the Duke of Lerma sought his advice again. Even some of the most influential political tracts of this period, such as Baltasar Alamos de Barrientos’s Discurso politico al rey Felipe III al comienzo de su reinado (1598) were also deeply influenced by Pérez (Barriento’s personal friend). Both writers had not only shared similar experiences and views of monarchy, but also long admired the work of Tacitus whose influential History of Spain had provided powerful references on the topic of monarchic abuse. Juan de Mariana’s influential De Rege (1599) similarly echoed Tacitus’s and Pérez’s in his attack on absolute power, even though Mariana’s critique also heavily focuses on the figure of the privado (a quality that sets him apart from Barrientos and Pérez). However, despite this favorable climate, few could forget the negative impact of Pérez’s Relaciones. The public dimension of his judgments, once an asset to Pérez’s position, was now a liability for this return (never authorized) to the Spanish court. He was banished from European spheres of power, and now that Philip III had established more peaceful international dynamics that required less inflammatory discourses, Pérez’s self-elected position as the hammer of the Spanish monarchy now ironically perpetuated his ostracism. Such exclusion was also aided by one of the splendid ironies and self-contradictions of Pérez’s case, the fact that his Relaciones constitutes the self-defense of a self-proclaimed loyal subject who denounced the evils of an absolute king (Philip) while seeking protection from two of the most powerful absolute monarchs of his time (Elizabeth and Henry IV).[64] Furthermore, having shown his mastery of the political discourses, he came to embody an implicit warning over the political and emotional charge of treason as a sign both malleable and reversible. Pérez’s narrative and style did not contribute to his redemption either; his excessive (and often ambiguous) moralizing digressions, lack of organic unity, and constant justification produced a disjointed and unstable style, and a convoluted— called mannerist by some—argument, too full of inconsistencies to compel its reader to empathize with his plight.[65] Yet, despite these inaccuracies and the obvious unreliability of the evidence he presents, Pérez’s voice cannot be underestimated as one of the most obvious channels of political dissent and self-construction in the early modern scene. The power of his vindication did not arise from the literal content like we find today in the cables of WikiLeaks, but from his daring ability to challenge and bend the Spanish status quo for his own benefit. The ultimate transcendence of his revelations was real, but relative, since it certainly affected Philip’s reputation and provided ammunition for the active propaganda against the Spanish Empire, but without forcing or facilitating any destructive political or military campaigns against its territories. In recognizing the strength of his (con)textual and conceptual maneuvers, Pérez’s figure emerges as one of the complex hybrids of the Baroque, as morally duplicitous as politically effective. Recognized as a victim of royal abuse by some and a devilish traitor by many, he remains an impressive power player to us all.

NOTES 1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño, ed. Ciraco Morón (Madrid: Cátedra, 1986), vv. 1320–321. 2. Rebecca Lemon, Treason by Words: Literature, Law, and Rebellion in Shakespeare's England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 13. 3. Ibid., 158–59. 4. Antonio Pérez. Relaciones y cartas, ed. Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra (Madrid: Turner, 1986), 1:113, 1:170, 1:144. 5. Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño, vv. 1320–321. 6. In his views on tyranny and government, Aristotle greatly differs from Plato. Plato regards tyranny as a justified form of government given the dubious judgment of the majority of men (Plato, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom [New York: Basic, 1991], 562ª–563e). Profoundly distrustful of the political construction that had sentenced his former teacher Socrates to death, Plato became a proponent of tyranny, arguing that from the rule of one comes order. Aristotle rejects this equation of democracy with chaos, establishing tyranny as a perversion of rule given the impunity and self-serving interests of the ruler (Aristotle, Politics, trans. Benjamin Jowett [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963], 1287b37–41, 1289b2, 1267a15–16; Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000], 1391a24, 1366a6). 7. Roger Boesche, Theories of Tyranny, from Plato to Arendt (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 58. See also Clifford Angell Bates, Aristotle's “Best Regime”: Kingship, Democracy, and the Rule of Law (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), 185. 8. Francisco de Vitoria, Relectio de Potestate Civili. Estudios sobre su filosofía política (Madrid: CSIC-Dpto. de Publicaciones, 2008), 242. 9. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 10. Aaron M Kahn, “Moral Opposition to Philip in Pre-Lopean Drama,” Hispanic Review 74, no. 3 (2006): 232. 11. A. Pérez, Relaciones y cartas, 206–7. 12. Kahn, “Moral Opposition,” 228. 13. See Alban K. Forcione’s study on monarchic anxieties, Majesty and Humanity. Kings and Their Doubles in the Political Drama of the Spanish Golden Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 14. E. C. Graf, “Sancho Panza’s ‘por negros que sean, los he de volver blancos o amarillos’ (DQ I.29) and Juan de Mariana’s De moneta of 1605.” Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 31, no. 2 (2011): 21–50. 15. See chapter 5 of this collection. 16. Quoted in Graf, “Sancho Panza’s,” 32. 17. Lemon, Treason by Words, 2. 18. Ibid. 19. Carlos Carnicier García and Javier Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II. Los servicios secretos del imperio español (Madrid: La esfera, 2005), 71. 20. Ricardo Garcia Cárcel et al, Historia de España en los Siglos XVI y XVII. La España de los Austrias (Madrid: Cátedra, 2003), 212. 21. Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, eds. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2006), 1484. 22. Covarrubias, Tesoro, s.v. “arado.” 23. If not explained by Covarrubias’s mandate, Segismundo’s treatment of the rebel/traitor seems perplexing. See, for example, Daniel L. Heiple, “The Tradition Behind the Punishment of the Rebel Soldier in La vida es sueño,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 50 (1973): 1–17. 24. Escobedo was the secretary of Juan de Austria. He had been first chosen to help moderate Don Juan’s royal aspirations. Once Escobedo started working with Philip’s half-brother, however, he became his ally. According to Pérez, Escobedo then became a pernicious influence on Don Juan, encouraging his delusional monarchic aspirations. Pérez claims to have uncovered two plots in his correspondence with Pope Gregory XIII with which

Escobedo and Don Juan were trying to turn Don Juan into the king of Naples first and England later. See A. Pérez, Relaciones y cartas, 1:264–69. Philip apparently discovered Pérez’s manipulation of this plot in the spring of 1579 (after the mysterious death of Juan of Austria in 1578) once he had access to his half-brother’s archives (García Cárcel, et al., Historia de España, 221). For more on Don Juan, see Luis Coloma, The Story of Don John of Austria (New York: John Lane Company, 1912), 335. For an excellent summary of Escobedo’s murder and its causes, see Geoffrey Parker’s “Murder, Most Foul?” in Philip II, 4th ed. (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Courts, 2002), 130–41. 25. Attributed to Fray Hernando del Castillo, Puntos de un teólogo sobre la prisión de Antonio Pérez y la Princesa de Eboli. 1579. Simancas. Estado, Legajo 160, 42. Republished in Gregorio Marañón, Antonio Pérez. El hombre, el drama, la época (Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, Argentina, 1947), 781. 26. Philip did not authorize any official investigation—despite the constant requests of Escobedo’s family—for seven years. This lapse of time, says Geoffrey Parker, is “the most remarkable fact about the murder, that nothing was done for months to establish who had killed him” (Philip II, 135). Critics like Gregorio Marañón, Antonio Pérez, and Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), agree that Philip’s passivity indicates a clear proof of the king’s implication in the murder. 27. The “billete” is part of the Haya Manuscript owned by Marañón and Mignet. Mignet reproduces it having Philip stating: “Cierto que convendrá abreviar lo de la muerte del Verdinegro, antes de que haga algo con que no seamos depués a tiempo. . . . Hacedlo y daos prisa, antes de que nos mate” [It is true that it would be advisable to precipitate the green-black death [verdinegro], now that we have time. . . . Do it, and do it quickly, before he kills us] (Quoted in Antonio Mignet, Antonio Perez y Felipe II [Madrid: Espinosa, 1845], 24). The quote coincides (although not verbatim) with the king’s intent described by Pérez’s published version: “menester será prevenirnos bien de todo y darnos mucha prisa en despacharle, antes que nos mate” [It is advisable that we act carefully in all of this, and that we take care of him quickly before he kills us] (A. Pérez, Relaciones y cartas, 1:270). 28. A. Pérez, Relaciones y cartas, 1:154. 29. Ibid., 1:91. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 1:118. 32. Ibid., 1:97. 33. Ibid., 1:113. 34. Ibid., 1:90. 35. Ibid., 1:209. 36. In November 2010, the online portal WikiLeaks provoked an international uproar when it released an unprecedented number of secret and highly incriminating documents. According to its official Web page, “On Sunday 28th November 2010, WikiLeaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain.” Such documents, the portal claims, “will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into the U.S. Government’s foreign activities,” http://wikileaks.org/ (accessed June 15, 2012). 37. For Felt, see for example, Vanity Fair article by David Friend, “Mark Felt, the Patriot,” http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2008/12/mark-felt-the-patriot (accessed June 15, 2012), and a wide variety of books about these informants celebrating their courage, from the mythical Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s All the Presidents Men (Delran, NJ: Simon & Schuster, 1974) to more diversified assessments such as Max Holland, Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012) or Ed Gray and L. Patrick Gray, In Nixon's Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate (New York: Henry Holt, 2008); For Ellsberg, consult George Herring, The Pentagon Papers (Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill, 2003); and John Prados and Margaret Pratt Porter, Inside the Pentagon’s Papers (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005). 38. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for example, considered Assange as a “high-tech terrorist,” while Hillary Clinton labeled his actions as “an attack to America.” Among congressmen and senators, and average Americans, the disclosures have been constantly characterized as “sabotage,”

“espionage,” and “treason.” See David Leigh, Luke Harding, et al., WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 202; and Micah L. Sifry, Wikileaks in the Age of Transparency (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2011), 39. 39. A. Pérez, Relaciones y cartas, 1:90. 40. Ibid., 1:121. 41. Ibid., 1:156. 42. Ibid., 1:206. 43. Ibid., 1:87. 44. Ibid., 1:139. 45. These comments are also often validated by a constant emphasis of the truths of those events/facts and by the existence of witnesses or with its insistence that “Y esto es la verdad” [And it is the truth] (Ibid., 1:248), and on the constant reference to witnesses of such events “testigos vienen de ello, y él tiene cartas de ello” [witnesses agree on it, and he has letters about it] (1:125). 46. Ariadna García-Bryce, Transcending Textuality: Quevedo and Political Authority in the Age of Print (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), 40. 47. The text states that given that Philip resorts to the Inquisition because “sola demanda de la muerte no podía ser llamado a juicio por haber perdón de parte, según fuero y ley de Aragón, donde no hay fisco ni demanda en nombre del rey” [because only with the charge of murder, Pérez could not have a trial according to Aragón’s law, where there is no legal nor fiscal charge that can be made on the king’s behalf] (A. Pérez, Relaciones y cartas, 1:152). 48. Ibid., 1:165. 49. Ibid., 1:229. 50. Ibid., 1:174-75. My emphasis. 51. Ibid., 1:164. 52. “Proceso para la Inquisición,” Republished in Mignet, Antonio Pérez, 269; and Marañón, Antonio Pérez, 924. 53. Marañón, Antonio Pérez, 923–24. 54. A. Pérez, Relaciones y cartas, 1:207–8. 55. Ibid., 1:169. 56. As stated in a newsletter dated in 1595 in Flanders: “Avisos de Inglaterra” Archivo de Simancas, Estado de Flanders. Legajo 609. In Gustav Ungerer, “Bibliographical Notes on the Works of Antonio Pérez,” Cuaderno de historia Jerónimo Zurita 16–18 (1963–1965): 249. A first draft of the manuscript seemed to circulate locally in 1591 since various testimonies mention the existence of a “librillo” (little book) written by Pérez as proof of his dishonesty. 57. See Eric Griffin, “From Ethos to Ethnos: Hispanizing ‘the Spaniard’ in the Old World and the New,” New Centennial Review 2, no. 1 (2002): 69–116. 58. “Mr Atey on Señor Perez’s Book. Concerning the Miseries of D. Perez,” in Hatfield Papers IV (London 1892), 172–74. Republished in Gustav Ungerer, Anglo-Spanish Relations in Tudor Literature (New York: AMS Press, 1972), 192. My emphasis. 59. Quoted in Kamen, Philip of Spain, 293. 60. Actas de las Cortes de Castilla, vol. 12 (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1887), 444. 61. See Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict, 3rd ed. (New York and Harlow: Pearson Education, 2005); Harry Sieber, “The Magnificent Fountain: Literary Patronage in the Court of Philip III,” Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 18, no. 2 (1998): 85–116; and Antonio Feros, Kingship and Favouritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598–1621 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 62. Gustav Ungerer, A Spaniard in Elizabethan England: The Correspondence of Antonio Pérez’s Exile 2 vols. (London: Tamesis, 1975), 1:298. 63. In a private letter to no less than the Duke of Lerma (1552–1625), Pérez warns him about the dangers of the favorite’s position, arguing that the fight for power among all royal advisors always turns against the most intelligent: “It is envy of great positions, with hidden plots, what precipitates the fall of the great privados . . . one of the greatest

ones that Philip II had was the Cardinal Espinosa, and with such maneuvers, he was put down in only two years” (Antonio Pérez, “Carta del Secretario Antonio Pérez al Duque de Lerma, de la manera que se havia de governar en la Privanza,” in Papeles curiosos manuscritos, vol. 31, Spanish National Library MSS/10916, 8). By the time Antonio wrote such advices, he had painfully understood that he too had been put down indefinitely and that he was forever relegated to an inglorious exile. 64. Helen Reed, “Fortune Monster and the Monarchy in Las relaciones de Antonio Pérez” in Autobiography in Early Modern Spain (Minneapolis, MN: Prisma Institute, 1988), 163–91, 186. 65. Ibid., 186.

Chapter 8 IUS GENTIUM AND JUST WAR José A. Cárdenas Bunsen The Problem of Representation in Inca Garcilaso’s Royal Commentaries The problem of just war acquired a strong historiographical presence in accounts of the Conquest of Peru published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such a presence was a consequence of the discussion on the legitimacy of Castilian rule over the Indies that had relied on the theories of just war to support the Spanish crown’s claims to the newly found lands and peoples. Since the time of the convocation of the first meeting to discuss the legal problems of the Indies in 1512, to the Valladolid controversy in 1550, the Ius belli criteria dominated the “polemics of possession”—to use Rolena Adorno’s expression—by making a case to justify war against Indian communities on new criteria. Some intellectuals proposed that the 1493 papal donation provided a solid basis for such warfare; others maintained that eradication of some Indian practices, such as human sacrifice and the practice of native religion identified as “idolatry,” constituted acceptable motives for military intervention. In spite of their different arguments, all these positions sought to define a just cause by which to wage war against the Indians.[1] Writing in the early seventeenth century, Garcilaso Inca de la Vega (1539–1616) incorporated the theme of the just war throughout his Royal Commentaries (1609, 1617). Thus, the most important landmarks of Garcilaso’s narrative thrust are all instances of war: Inca expansion, the famous Cajamarca encounter between Atahualpa Inca and Fray Vicente de Valverde, and the post-conquest civil wars among the conquistadors. Due to Garcilaso’s interest in the subject of war, the following questions arise: on what premises does the narration of the war episodes in the Royal Commentaries stand? What criteria does the author use to present them to his reader? What legal consequences spring from these accounts in light of the major arguments of Garcilaso’s work? In this chapter I maintain that the theory of just war, as it appears in the body of Roman and Canon law, constitutes the referential framework for all the accounts of precolumbian, conquest, and post-conquest war included in the Royal Commentaries. The justice (or injustice) of these military encounters emanates from their conformity to natural law and the Ius gentium, the law of nations. But Garcilaso does not explicitly refer to these legal sources; instead, he limits his intervention to his role as narrator of the actions of his historical characters. Thus, his account cannot be separated from the theoretical framework that he silently applies, and the relationship between his historical narratives and their conformity to legal principles becomes the

argumentative center of the Royal Commentaries. Furthermore, I take the position that these narrative mechanisms define Garcilaso’s concept of writing and provide the means by which to understand his representation of history. As Jameson points out, representation is inextricably linked to an operation that always takes the form of narrative.[2] From this point of view, I argue that the premises of Garcilaso’s narrative act reveal the underpinnings of his historical representation given that their silent presence allows him to preserve his apparent neutrality as a historian and, at the same time, to sustain his political project: the just wars of the Incas become one the pillars of their dominion whereas the unjust wars of the conquistadors do not grant them any juridical basis to legitimize their presence in Peru. In fact, Garcilaso dismantles the juridical foundations of the Spanish presence, based on the justice of the war that would follow the reading of the requerimiento. On the contrary, he designs a “legal picture” that organizes conquest events in such a way that the legitimacy of the Spanish king is dependent on the legitimacy of the Incas. By using the universal reach of Ius gentium as his tacit foundation, Garcilaso casts a powerful conceptual net that puts both Incas and Spaniards on the same “playing field,” especially regarding issues related to war; therefore, the juridical implications of their respective wars affect each pre- or post-conquest group equally. Throughout this complex representation of history, Garcilaso confronts the thesis about Inca tyranny that was defended by the historians of the viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1569–1581) and lays the groundwork to support the claims for restitution by many Indians and mestizos that he mentions in his Royal Commentaries. Additionally, his representation of history in the Royal Commentaries supports the legal actions he undertook, after having completed the second part of his Royal Commentaries, to seek restitution for his services to the crown. José Durand observed that Garcilaso systematically utilized the theory of just war, but he neither wrote an article to analyze thoroughly the subject nor did he elucidate in depth the specific mechanisms with which Garcilaso treats the theme.[3] More recent scholars have touched on many aspects that pertain to the topic of just war, but they have not developed their arguments from the perspective of the Ius Commune that is, I argue, the major source that informs Garcilaso’s treatment of the matter.[4] This chapter attempts to fill that scholarly gap by documenting the presence of the theory of the just war in Garcilaso’s textual practice. I will begin by analyzing the micro-underpinnings of the theory through a new interpretation of the Pedro Serrano episode, which is familiar to most readers of the Royal Commentaries; it is frequently anthologized.

FROM IUS GENTIUM TO NATURAL LAW: PEDRO SERRANO’S CASO HISTORIAL Garcilaso discretely handles his theoretical principles with great subtlety; instead of arguing them as such, he prefers to represent them via narrative actions, thus

embedding them in the historical episodes that form the core of the Royal Commentaries. The principles of the just war follow this pattern. He never quotes directly from the Ius gentium, the law of nations, which is typically understood to be the juridical source for discussing the issues related to war, except through his use of a very refined vocabulary to comment on his accounts of war. Thus Garcilaso incorporates into his historical account an embodiment of the juridical principles in the actions of the characters whose lives he tells. He shows, in turn, how they either obey these principles or move away from them. Pedro Serrano’s story paradigmatically illustrates this statement. Pedro Serrano is a castaway whose circumstances force him to live in a natural state on an island between Cartagena and Havana. In order to survive, he has to eat natural foods, drink rainwater, and create fire from stones.[5] Margarita Zamora interprets the case of Pedro Serrano as a metaphor of Garcilaso’s historical conception.[6] But his parameters—I contend—come from the principles of natural law and the Ius gentium institutions to which Garcilaso alludes through representation. Thus, in my interpretation, Pedro Serrano allegorizes, contrary to the common sequence, the transition from civil law to the law of nations and finally to natural law in a sequence that unfolds in the following manner: after his shipwreck, Pedro Serrano abandoned positive Spanish law within whose jurisdiction he abided before ending up on the desert island. Once he found himself completely alone, Pedro Serrano moved into the domain of natural law, dramatically pushed there by his current circumstances that left him “as naked as when he was born.”[7] Pedro Serrano exclusively follows the guidance of his instinct, which is the very source of natural law insofar as it springs “from the instinct of nature and not from any constitution” [instinctu naturae, non constitutione aliqua].[8] War does not belong to the sphere of natural law; it is instead an institution of the Ius gentium and therefore a product of the contact between human communities. Because of this, the issue of war is not even remotely insinuated in Pedro Serrano’s solitary life. Its shadows emerge at the end of his isolation with the sudden arrival of another castaway. Pedro Serrano and his companion create a minimal community: they distribute the daily tasks and they experience both conflict and subsequent reconciliation, which demonstrates, according to Garcilaso, “how great is the misery of human passions.”[9] These two opposite actions—the fight and its peaceful resolution—incarnate two principles of Ius gentium that, among its institutions, contemplates precisely “wars and peace treaties” [bella, federa pacis].[10] With the arrival of his companion, Pedro Serrano has passed from natural law to Ius gentium. In this light, the case of Pedro Serrano reveals Garcilaso’s modus operandi in his Royal Commentaries: the sequence of actions follows the essential principles that supported all juridical orders at the time, which Garcilaso does not invoke but rather dramatizes through narrative actions. In this way, mimesis participates tacitly in the legal discussion and takes a certain position in highly contested matters, as we will see below. In addition, these juridical principles grant credibility to the historical

version of the Royal Commentaries: Pedro Serrano does what any person in his situation would do, that is, to live according to the precepts of natural law. The treatment of war and conflict and the juridical implications of their conformity (or not) to justice repeatedly puts into play the above mentioned procedure. It also uncovers the relationship between historical representation and juridical theory: war, situated in the domain of the law of nations, equally affects Christians, pagans, and infidels. Its rules apply both to Inca and post-conquest times. To appreciate the sequence that the Royal Commentaries adopts, it is necessary to examine Garcilaso’s presentation of the wars of the Incas.

INCA WARS AND THE LEGITIMACY OF INCA DOMINION The subject of war appears inextricably linked to the problem of the legitimate sovereignty of the Incas. Garcilaso inserts in the first part of the Royal Commentaries war narratives that document Inca expansion in chapters that deal with their customs and religion. All the sources, oral or written, that Garcilaso brings up, including the speech of his maternal, Inca uncle, coincide in making war an aspect of the two-part cycle through which Inca goverment alternately exercised their sovereignty “in peace and war.”[11] In addition, just war is one of the elements by which Garcilaso distinguishes Inca rule from the chaotic disorder (“behetría”) of earlier periods of Andean history. This distinction operates within the rigourous chronology that Garcilaso adopts on the basis of the works of Pedro Cieza de León and Jerónimo Román y Zamora to separate different historical eras and distinguish different regions in the Andes.[12] According to Garcilaso’s version, the rulers of the first age, the one before the Incas emerged, warred constantly among themselves, making pillage and death a way of life that turned them into tyrants.[13] These rulers’s actions create an image of their practices that directly contradict the principles of just war. Although a few of them made an effort to keep their peoples in peace and justice, it was only through the emergence of Manco Capac that this tyranny and chaos came to an end. The first Inca imposed himself as a wise master who preached the principles of natural law: At the same time he [Manco Capac Inca] instructed them in the urbane, social and brotherly conduct they were to observe toward one another according to the dictates of reason and natural law, effectively persuading them to do unto one another as they themselves would be done by, so that there should be perpetual peace and concord among them and no ground for the kindling of envy and passion. They were not allowed to have one law for themselves and another for the rest.[14] This passage shows again Garcilaso’s narrative strategy inasmuch as it transforms theoretical principles into the characters’ actions. In this case, Garcilaso makes the essential formulation of natural law into Manco Capac’s foundational

command. Among the legal systems that applied to the early seventeenth-century Spanish world, Garcilaso chooses canon law that, as opposed to civil law, defined natural law by taking into account a set of protocols taught by nature itself and also, more importantly, an ethical principle taken from the Christian gospel: Natural law is what is contained in the law and in the gospel that commands each one to do unto others as one would have others do unto oneself and forbids one to do against others what one does not want to have done to oneself. Thus Christ [said] in the gospel “in all things whatever you wish men to do for you, do the same for them. For this is the Law and the Prophets.”[15] [Ius naturae est, quod in lege et euangelio continetur, quo quisque iubetur alii facere, quod sibi vult fieri, et prohibetur alii inferre, quod sibi noli fieri. Unde Christus in euangelio “Omnia quecumque vultis ut faciant uobis homines, et uos eadem facite illis. Haec est enim lex et prophetae.”] There is an exact paraphrase of the canon-law definition of natural law in Manco Capac’s command. This inclusion relates to Garcilaso’s historical vision that conceives of Inca history as praeparatio evangelica; he adopts a providentialist outlook that harks back to Eusebius of Caesarea and Augustine of Hippo.[16] Garcilaso’s immediate precedent was the Historia natural y moral de las Indias.[17] However, Garcilaso’s concrete mechanism to show human agency in the providential project consisted of historicizing the Inca’s transformation of natural law into Ius gentium, in a reverse move and in a longer time span than that in the Pedro Serrano story. Having deduced natural law allows the Incas to govern wisely, develop moral philosophy, and legislate justly. Through the imposition of their law, the Incas progressively won the acceptance of their subjects who, as they experienced the benefits of such legislation, proclaimed that the rulers of Cuzco deserved to be “masters of the world.”[18] Inca laws maintain a state of peace without altogether eradicating warfare; in this particular aspect, Garcilaso’s version is consistent with the principles of Ius gentium, according to which war originates in that juridical frame. Garcilaso argues that the Incas expanded their territory through wars that they waged as a last resort after having exhausted all other channels of peaceful persuasion to subject the peoples of the Andes to their dominion.[19] As the Incas advance, their interventions rigorously observe just war requirements: authority of the prince, rightful intention, and just cause.[20] Therefore, the Incas’ victories made them legitimate rulers by virtue of the Ius gentium. According to Garcilaso, all the Incas obeyed the parameters that Manco Capac established. By including the very order of Manco Capac in his text, Garcilaso endows his history with the essential requirement for just war: this must be declared by the authority of a prince holding sovereign, public authority and never by a private individual. In Prierias words, “[War] is waged by the authority of a prince who does not recognize a superior” [[bellum] inducitur

authoritate principis superiore[m] non recognoscentis].[21] According to the version told in the Royal Commentaries all Inca wars were waged based on the oral decree of the rulers.[22] To achieve full justice, the law requires that there be a just cause for which to wage war. In this respect, Garcilaso connects the general theory of the just war with Spanish positive legislation and applies it to the Incas, whose wars aimed primarily at establishing the Inca religion of worship of the sun. This being their main cause, in Garcilaso’s account, all Inca military campaigns had the tacit approval of the Siete Partidas that considered as the first cause for a just war the enlargement of the community’s faith and the destruction of those who wished to eradicate it (“acrecentar el pueblo su fe, e para destruyr los que la quisieren contrallar”).[23] Additionally, Garcilaso insists that Inca wars intended to bring peace to their territories, affirming in this way the rightful intention that presided over their military campaigns exactly as the Siete Partidas stipulated, “[war,] when it is waged as it should be, later brings peace from which calmness, joy and friendship come” [[la guerra] qua[n]do es fecha como deue, aduze después paz, de q[ue] viene asosegamie[n]to, e folgura, e amistad].[24] If the Incas proceeded according to the Ius ad bellum, their warfare also conformed to the Ius in bello that explains their behavior on the very battlefield where they were always ready to reduce forceful means to a minimum.[25] Garcilaso argues that offensive agression was always the very last resort of the Incas: The first Inca Manco Capac had expressly ordered all the kings who descended from him never to permit bloodshed in any conquest they might make unless it was absolutely necessary and always to try to attract the Indians with benefits and blandishments, so that they should be loved by the subjects they had conquered with love, and not perpetually hated by those reduced by force of arms.[26] All the succesive Incas proceed according to these instructions; they rather prefer to subject the native lords and peoples through persuasion and avoid being considered tyrants. Always triumphant, the Incas appear as merciful to the defeated, forgiving these rivals even if they had been obstinate.[27] All these similarities observed in the protocols of Inca wars made it possible for Garcilaso to establish a rule about Inca wars, “almost all of which,” he claims, “occurred in the same way.”[28] The contact between the Incas and the peoples subjected to them places these wars in the framework of the Ius gentium. However, precisely due to its belonging to the law of nations, war is never perfect because human passions influence it. Based on the rational aplication of natural law, the prudent government seeks to eradicate passions to establish peace. In this manner, Manco Capac founded his government to avoid conflicts and passions among his people.[29] Garcilaso employs the category of “pasión” [passion] with the meaning it had

acquired in the Aristotelian tradition, that is, as a movement of the sensitive appetite capable of altering the state of the soul and incline it toward a positive or negative reaction, of which the negative pole is the one that most appropriately corresponds to the designation of passion.[30] With this meaning, the concept appears, for instance, when Garcilaso explains the senseless decision of Inca Yahuar Huacac to ignore the Chancas’s anticipated attacks on Cuzco and dismissed his son’s warnings. Here Garcilaso observes that passion blinds reason (“passion had blinded his understanding”).[31] As we can see, the rulers are not exempted from the effects of passion. In the first part of his Royal Commentaries, Garcilaso chooses the term “pasión” and systematically avoids the term “pecado” [sin] which is inapplicable since Garcilaso is referring to a gentile, pre-Christian state. In contrast, in the second part of the work, he alternates both terms. This terminological rigor points out the manner in which Garcilaso anchors his narrative on the juridical and theological apparatus that underlies his book. The examples analyzed above reveal Garcilaso’s use of the canon-law definition of natural law, his attribution of the title of “señor del mundo” with which the Indians proclaim the Incas as lords, his precision in handling terms like “pasión” to designate rulers’s greed and ambition, and the category of “gentilidad” to designate the pre-Christian status of these peoples. Garcilaso’s precise terminological choices stress his use of the Ius gentium to frame and subtend his version of Inca history. In turn, this legal order corresponds to every people, no matter their heathen status, as in the case of the Incas and their subjects. It is far from perfection since, according to Garcilaso: “paganism is a sea of errors.”[32] This presentation of Inca warfare as being molded according to the parameters of the Ius gentium has important consequences for the arguments laid out in the Royal Commentaries. Firstly, the justice of these wars guarantees the legitimacy of the dominion that the Incas gain over the territories that they incoporate into their empire. Secondly, Garcilaso’s account places before the reader’s eyes the thesis favorable to Inca legitimacy in statu nasciendi without forcing Garcilaso to cast a historical verdict on the matter but making it possible for him to deny—through his representation of Inca deeds—the thesis of Inca tyranny developed and sustained by viceroy Toledo and his cohort of historians.[33] In short, Garcilaso unites Inca history and a juridical thesis based on Western juridical principles thought to apply to different polities. This convergence unveils the problem of representation in the first part of the Royal Commentaries: the Ius gentium, utilized as a silent counterpoint, not only endows history with a juridical dimension but it also offers a verisimilar narrative: given that the Ius gentium is common to all nations, also the Incas fit into this shared, universal historical-cultural domain. In order to maintain his apparent neutrality as historian, Garcilaso claims he refrains from establishing comparisons, which he considers to be odious while at the same time implicitly encouraging his readers to do so: In all that I shall have to say about a state that was destroyed before it had been

known, I shall plainly tell everything concerning its idolatry, rites, sacrifices, and ceremonies in ancient times, and its government, laws and customs in peace and war, and make no comparison with other histories divine or human, nor with the government of our times, for all comparisons are odious. The reader can make his own comparisons, for he will find many points of similarity in ancient history, both in Holy Writ and in the profane histories and fables of pagan antiquity.[34] Although Garcilaso seems to confine potential comparisons to ancient history, his invitation to the reader to establish comparisons suggests that the next step in our analysis should contrast the treatment of war in the first part of the Royal Commentaries with his account of war in the second part of the Royal Commentaries, in which the application of just war theory continues to reveal the underpinnings of Garcilaso’s prose.

THE DIALOGUE OF CAJAMARCA AND THE IMPOSIBILITY OF JUST WAR Garcilaso projected a tenth book to close part one of his Royal Commentaries, but it was not included in the Lisbon publication of 1609. That book became instead the first book of part two, widely known as General History of Peru.[35] Its placement makes it a transitional section between the narration of wars in the first part and those of the second part. The chapters on the scarcity of currency in Spain before the conquest of Peru and those on the distribution of the Cajamarca booty among the conquistadors frame this first book of the second part, and the famous chapter that records the dialogue between Atahualpa Inca and Fray Vicente de Valverde stands between them. In the subtle, embedded juridical “plot” of the this book one, such placement of the Cajamarca episode underscores that the legality of the conquistadors’ booty and the post-conquest abundance of European currency depend on the events included in this dialogue. There are a series of juridical implications in the episodic design that have passed unnoticed by critics. With regard to his sources, Garcilaso comments on and at the same time refutes Agustín de Zárate’s and Francisco López de Gómara’s accounts, and he acknowledges that he follows Blas Valera’s lost history.[36] His statement has the air of verisimilitude; for the succinct accounts of Zárate and Gómara are contrasted with the ample treatment by Garcilaso.[37] The crux of the dialogue is the pronouncement of the requerimiento, the document that demanded the subjection of the confronted lords to the Spanish crown; it had been drafted by Juan López de Palacios Rubios on the basis of the canon-law doctrine of Cardinal Hostiense.[38] This ultimatum for political subjugation required the pronoucement of a formal, oral warning to the peoples confronted; it was a necessary condition for the subsequent war to be just.[39] Father Valverde’s speech touches on all the topics that the different versions of the requerimiento contain from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity to the papal license granted to the kings of Castile (in 1532, Charles V) for conquest. The request for subjection follows the reading of the authorities and the document ends with a war

threat: If you refuse, know that you will be constrained with war, fire, and the sword, and all your idols shall be overthrown and we shall oblige you by the sword to abandon your false religion and to receive willy-nilly our Catholic faith and pay tribute to our emperor and deliver him your kingdom.[40] Upon complaining of the brief treatment that Spanish historians had devoted to this matter, Garcilaso distances himself from Gómara, Zárate and Román y Zamora in denying Atahualpa’s reaction to the book that Friar Valverde supposedly presented to him. For Garcilaso, Atahualpa never held any book in his hand, and the falling of the book to the ground that the other chroniclers narrate took place when Valverde suddenly stood up when the Spaniards unexpectedly attacked the assembled company. At that moment, the cross Valverde was holding and the book he had placed in his lap accidentally fell to the ground.[41] Thus, Garcilaso reformulates the event as narrated in the chronicles and displaces the centrality that had been granted to the book in them.[42] Nevertheless, the book does not disappear from the Cajamarca scene and it is, along with Valverde’s tonsured head, his Dominican robes and his palm cross, one of the elements that stunned the Inca prince upon the appearance of the friar. In reformulating this commonly accepted account, Garcilaso changes the function of Valverde’s book, relating it, in my opinion, to its ability to explain the legal implications of his version of the Atahualpa/Valverde encounter. The identification of the book seems to be unimportant. According to Garcilaso, Valverde was carrying: “a book, which was Silvestre’s Summa. Others say it was his breviary and others the Bible: the reader shall choose which he wishes.”[43] I would argue, however, that the order of this enumeration is not accidental; it follows, in fact, an inverted order of their chronology: Garcilaso mentions the Bible last and the Summa silvestrina [1515] first to reflect the hierarchy of sources that Garcilaso establishes. The Bible and the Roman breviary are the books that Valverde would have carried according to Gómara, Zárate and Román y Zamora, whereas the identification of the book with the Suma silvestrina seems to come from Blas Valera, whose historical account Garcilaso claims to follow and endorse. Consequently, by beginning the list with the Summa silvestrina, Garcilaso recognizes as more credible Valera’s version and he also suggests that Valverde carried with him one of the most recent canon-law handbooks: the Cajamarca encounter took place in 1532 and the Summa silvestrina had been published in Bologna in 1515. In addition, the sources for the theory of just war, the legitimate powers of pagans and infidels, and the extent of the powers of the emperor and the pope appear in all the three listed books. In other words, all three books—the Summa, the breviary, the Bible—include the foundations of the most important juridical aspects that comprise Garcilaso’s version of conquest history in the Royal Commentaries. The Bible is full of references to war and to other related subjects. Those passages

were interpreted in different ways throughout history.[44] The Roman breviary referred in each of its pages to the biblical passages corresponding to liturgical celebrations and daily devotional practices. The latter, in particular, revisited the main landmarks of Church history and linked them to their appropriate doctrinal source. For instance, the breviary meditates on the separation between spiritual and temporal powers when reprehending Herod for his fear that the coming of Christ could be a threat to the temporal power of kings.[45] In another section, the breviary admits the universal reach of the papal mission and its relation to the conversion of pagans and infidels, interspersing its statements among the specific meditations for the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul.[46] Finally, the Suma silvestrina provides a complete theological and legal apparatus that integrates the above mentioned texts and presents itemized topics with a concrete interpretation and in a way easy to be consulted. The Suma silvestrina is an alphabetic compilation of ethics and canon law authored by the Dominican theologian Silvestre Mazzolini of Prierias. The Summa silvestrina was intended to be used by confessors and its inmense popularity can be measured by the elevated number of its editions.[47] Without discussing the criteria for her identification, Patricia Seed[48] maintained that the “Suma de Silvestre” to which Garcilaso refers is the commentary that Francisco Silvestre de Ferrara wrote to accompany Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles. There are several arguments against this interpretation of the Valverde-in-Garcilaso book. First, the name “Suma de Silvestre” or Summa silvestrina was the regular denomination in the sixteenth century for Prierias’s work; even more canonists and theologians usually refer to Prierias only as “Silvestre,” especially authors such as Francisco de Vitoria who introduced Prierias’s thought in the discussion of the problems of the Indies.[49] On simply stating “Suma de Silvestre,” Garcilaso merely follows the common practice of his time, alluding to Prierias and not to any other author. Had he referred to Francisco Silvestre de Ferrara, he would have called him “Ferrariensis” or “Francisco de Ferrara,” as does Thomas de Vio Cajetan when appointing him professor of theology for the Dominican house of studies of Saint Eustorgio.[50] Second, Garcilaso follows the practice of the genre of the commentary and handles scrupulously his apparatus of quotations.[51] This careful handling makes it extremely unlikely that Garcilaso would refer to the Summa contra gentiles by the name of its commentator rather than that of its author, Thomas Aquinas. Finally, the Suma silvestrina takes up the theological and juridical principles that are at work in Garcilaso’s Cajamarca encounter and these issues, namely, jurisdiction, dominion, and just war are absent from the Summa contra gentiles. Garcilaso’s lack of precision in identifying Valverde’s book is only an appearance. We can explain it through the hierarchy of his sources and the mutual, conceptual support that the texts involved maintain with each other. On this precise point, I concur with Seed,[52] but I do not agree with the implication that she deduces about the narrative. Seed’s misidentification of the source prevents her from penetrating the

juridical “plot” that informs the Cajamarca episode. Since the Summa silvestrina includes all the juridical principles that subtend the requerimiento and the rights of infidel rulers, it functions as a doctrinal reference whereas, through representation, Garcilaso’s narrative becomes the site of confontation for the juridical grounds of each of the parties—Spanish and Inca—involved. Atahualpa’s response to Valverde opposes a whole set of juridical arguments, thus destabilizing the requerimiento and its capacity to declare a just war. Its final section, that asked the Inca to resign his kingdom voluntarily or, if need be, by force and pay tribute to the Spanish king, leads Atahualpa to conclude that the Spaniards and their monarch are tyrants who go about occupying illicitly other rulers’ kingdoms. The premise for this conclusion in Garcilaso’s account is the legitimate dominion that the Incas had acquired by the authority of the Ius gentium even in their pagan state, as Garcilaso’s account demonstrated and as the Summa silvestrina confirmed: “dominion over things is justly acquired generically in two manners, which are by authority of natural law or Ius gentium, as it has been said above, and by authority of civil law” [dominium rerum acquiri iuste duobus modis in genere.s[cilicet]. aucthoritate iuris gentium siue naturalis, ut dictum est: & iuris ciuilis].[53] It follows from this argument for the legitimacy of Inca dominion that those who threaten to invade the kingdom execute flagrant tyranny and unjust war, especially given that such an invasion affects “those who have done you no harm and owe you nothing.”[54] Such war lacks the essential requirement to be just which is, according to Prierias, the existence of an offense that could justify a response to it (“just wars are usually defined as those that avenge offenses” [iusta bella solent definiri, quae ulciscuntur iniurias]).[55] Consequently, Garcilaso’s representation of the Cajamarca episode rejects altogether that the Spanish attack could be considered a just war by which the Castilian crown could obtain legitimate dominion over the Inca, his territory and his peoples. According to the Suma silvestrina, there was only one possible way to legitimize such a situation: the consensus that would emanate from a pact between the opposing parties that would transfer the dominion.[56] Garcilaso’s Atahualpa insinuates this path when he admits that if the papal concession had granted to Charles V any right to the Inca’s possessions, he had the right to receive an explanation prior to being confronted with the threat of war: “so that I may obey the pope’s will, for I am not so lacking in good sense as not to obey whoever has the right justly and lawfully to command.”[57] But it was impossible to offer the intricate explanation about the relationship between the pope’s spiritual and supposedly universal temporal power because of the lack of expertise of the translator, Felipillo, and the impossibility of finding Quechua words corresponding to the juridical and theological concepts framed in Valverde’s speech. This terminological vacuum pertains strictly to this lexical domain and not to any deficiency of the Quechua language. Thus Garcilaso himself points out that this lexical void is limited to religious matters and that even eighty years later when Garcilaso is writing his Royal Commentaries that lexical problem remained:

For this reason when the Spanish interpreters of these times wish to express these ideas adequately, they have to seek new words or phrases, or use with great care suitably dignified expressions in the old [Quechua] language or else lay hands on the many words the cultured and scholarly Indians have taken from Spanish and introduced into their own languages, adapting them to their own ways of speech.[58] In this passage, Garcilaso observes the decisions of the Third Provincial Church Council of Lima (1583–1585) that decided to retain in Spanish theological terms in order to unify religious teachings and avoid confusion with native beliefs.[59] Garcilaso takes advantage of this conciliar decision arguing on the basis of the concept of “invincible ignorance,” that is, a type of ignorance that cannot be surmounted by regular means and that is a powerful disclaimer as used in both canon and civil law.[60] The lack of communication makes invalid any consequence that could follow from the supposed acceptance of Valverde’s words by Atahualpa. This nulity is based in a basic principle of contracts that denies any legal validity should there be no concurrence of wills and if the proponent does not send the actual words of the contract in advance for consideration.[61] This argumentative line buries again all possibility of considering that the war that would begin if Atahualpa did not accept the requerimiento could be considered just. Garcilaso sketches, however, a legal alternative to sustain the power of the king of Spain. This solution would derive exclusively from the command that Huaina Capac left on his deathbed to the effect that his successor should receive the Spaniards about whose explorations on the northern coast of his domains he had received some notice: I assure you that a few years after I have gone away from you, these new people will come and fulfil[l] what our father the Sun has foretold, and will gain our empire and become masters of it. I bid you obey them and serve them as men who will be completely victorious, for their law will be better than ours and their arms more powerful and invincible than ours. Remain in peace, for I am going to rest with my father the Sun, who is calling me.[62] This call for obedience constitutes the only source of legitimacy that the Spaniards and the Spanish crown can claim for their presence in Peru. From this careful exclusion of the other juridical justifications in Garcilaso’s narration, it follows that the legitimacy of the Spanish crown over Peru does not come from the power of either the pope or the emperor, and certainly not from the execution of a just war. On the contrary, it derives strictly from the command that Huaina Capac left to his descendants who should be ready to obey to the point of converting the principle of voluntary submission into a law to be taught in the schools of Cuzco. But, to make this chain of transference totally legitimate, both parties need to be equally legitimate. In other words, the legitimacy of the Spanish crown to

sovereignty in Peru pressuposes necessarily the legitimacy of the Inca dominion over its state. Garcilaso’s refutation to the thesis of Inca tyranny could not be more effective: the dominion of the Incas was not only legitimate, it was also the foundation of the Spanish king’s dominion, now transferred to him by the will of the last sovereign Inca and not through any requerimiento ultimatum or the execution of a just war. This conclusion weighs heavily on the wars that the conquistadors wage among themselves, as we will see. When rebelling against the authority of the Spanish king, they offend the person who is already also the legitimate sovereign of Peru.

THE INJUSTICE OF THE CIVIL WARS AMONG THE CONQUISTADORS In Garcilaso’s account, the command of Huaina Capac, confirmed by his heirs, transfers to the Spanish emperor the sovereignty that the Incas had acquired by virtue of natural law and the law of nations. Garcilaso’s Huaina Capac justifies his command by invoking the law that the foreigners brought with them and by mentioning their military prowess. This second element should not be understood as a justification for a just war. On the contrary, as we have seen, the Royal Commentaries dismantles any potential just-war justification from the first war the Spaniards attempted to declare on Atahualpa at Cajamarca, especially when Pizarro’s troops did not show any patience as to wait until Atahualpa and Valverde properly finished their exchange and attacked the Indians to strip away the richness of their dress and ornaments.[63] To this it must be added that the Indians reacted with extreme meekness and docility without offering resistence or taking any defensive action—all in order to observe the express command of the Inca.[64] This statement, supported by Gómara, [65] evaporates any notion by which to argue that the Spaniards’ attack could be justified as a rejection of violence through force (by the Inca army), considered to be a principle of natural law.[66] On the contrary, these unwarranted attacks reveal the eagerness of the Spaniards to appropriate the war booty, as Garcilaso insists on many occasions. In this quest they rushed to set an unfair trial against Atahualpa, to sack the city of Cuzco, and to hunt for funerary treasures.[67] Since their onset, in Garcilaso’s narrative, the wars waged by the Spaniards against the Inca did not have worthy intentions and their unjust conditions become apparent.[68] Only the law that the Spaniards brought remains as the basis for the call to obedience that Huaina Capac expressed to his heirs. This law, superior even to natural law, was Christ’s law and it must be communicated in a climate of peace and concord. But the military clashes among the conquistadors that desolated Peru for the next twenty-five years after Cajamarca threatened, if not nullified, such a state of peace required for proper evangelization of the native population. The slow pace in teaching and preaching the Christian gospel decreased the legitimacy of the Spanish crown, and the conquistadors’ civil wars betrayed the Crown’s chief justification for its presence in Peru.

Garcilaso attributes these disorders to the intervention of the devil that obstructs the spread of Christian doctrine and the conversion of the Indians.[69] At the beginning of the narration of these civil wars, Garcilaso states that Satan operates with the assistance of the cardinal sins that, in turn, act as the triggering causes of the wars. [70] In fact, the peace that reigned between Pi-zarro and Almagro when they were poor ceased when they became rich and the ambition of each to rule led “to the total destruction of both men” and was badly aggravated when Almagro hastened to call himself “governor.”[71] Garcilaso associates this fall with the sin of pride, defined as a uncontrollable appetite for excellence—in this case of honor and power—that leads the conquistadors not only to their mutual disagreements but also to the denial of the restitution of his kingdom to the legitimate Inca heir, Manco Inca.[72] Envy runs parallel to pride; in particular, the envious sentiment of those conquistadors who discovered that other conquistadors received larger land grants or greater allotments of Indian labor. According to Garcilaso (and canon law), envy creates a feeling of sadness for the prosperity of others that leads one to war against the others.[73] This disorder produced by the sins of the conquistadors makes them drown in their own desires; envy, ambition, and the quest for power are all insatiable appetites preventing their adherents from finding peace.[74] Beyond the specific events, Garcilaso suggests that, at bottom, lies the perpetual confrontation between good and evil that takes a part in the interactions between the human and the divine, an interaction that is omnipresent in the Royal Commentaries from beginning to end.[75] In relation to war, this vision stands on the very principles of canon-law legislation: “material wars bring an image of spiritual wars” [Bella carnalia bellorum spiritualium figuram gerunt].[76] On this basis, the narration of war in Garcilaso participates in the exemplary dimension of history as it is explained in Saint Gregory’s theological source for the canon just quoted and that Garcilaso adopts as an essential dimension of his Royal Commentaries in numerous passages.[77] A series of causes and effects come into play in these civil wars and they create a complex chain that precipitates the fall of those who foster unlawful encounters that, in turn, find death at the hands of their own henchmen: It is indeed a common punishment of heaven on those who trust in their own cunning and oppression more than in reason and justice, and as we shall see, God permits such people to suffer these and even greater punishments.[78] To postpose reason over tyranny amounts to denying the tools of human agency to stop the cycle of violence that is unleashed when reason is not in control and justice is not observed. In this sense, cardinal sins exacerbate the problem since all humanity is born from a disordered appetite that is contrary to reason and wrongly tolerated by human will.[79] As a consequence of these disorders, all the wars of the conquistadors are

unjust since none are founded on the principles of just war. Without exception, all violate the essential requirement of emanating from the authority of the sovereign. On the contrary, they attack the legitimate power that, in Garcilaso’s account, the Spanish king has received from the Inca. The rebellious conquistadors illegally usurp that power; they fall in a flagrant state of tyranny and their actions deny the common good since they exclusively serve their personal interest.[80] In agreement with this definition of tyranny and with the absolute lack of right intentions on the part of the participants in these conflicts, Garcilaso insists that the rebels pursue only their personal goals and that their loyalties, metamorphosed from those of the state to their own self interest, lead them to support these tyrannies, to later kill the instigators of these tyrannical acts, and, still later, to demand privileges for having served the Crown.[81] Divine justice permits that this labyrinthine spiral of wars takes place as long as the unjust conditions prevail; thus Garcilaso depicts a circular fall of tyrants into other tyrannies that not only confirms once again the constant interaction of the human and the divine levels, but it also explains almost all of the sad endings that populate the second part of the Royal Commentaries that close with a crude image of the devastation of Inca descendence and the delay of the preaching of the gospel.[82] From the perspective of just war theory, part one and part two of the Royal Commentaries form a dyptic of contrasting panels: the wars of the Incas are characterized by their justice; those of the Spaniards, by the lack of such a foundation. Garcilaso tackles the theme of just war in such a nuanced way that its characterization cannot be Manichean. Garcilaso frequently inserts comments that challenge the undiscussed justice of Inca wars along with other comments that absolve some of the conquistadors who, even in the midst of intrinsically unjust wars, behave proportionally to the stipulations of the ius in bello or choose to remain always within the frame of justice. The case of captain Garcilaso de la Vega, the author’s father, stands out. Captain Garcilaso never betrays the king: he advises Almagro not to proclaim himself governor of Cuzco without royal authorization, he fights with Vaca de Castro against Almagro the younger in the battle of Chupas, and he appears before President Pedro de La Gasca, as soon as he is freed from the prison in which Gonzalo Pizarro kept him, in order to pledge his obeisance to the king. Garcilaso stresses that his father died from natural causes—as very few conquistadors did—suggesting that this death reflects Captain Garcilaso’s abiding determination to proceed according to the standards of justice.[83] To this point in the narration, the exploration of the treatment of the just war in the Royal Commentaries reveals in great detail the nature of Garcilaso’s historical discourse and, in general, it constitutes an example of the historical consciousness of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Garcilaso’s historical narrative is based on a representation of the development of natural law, of its embodiment in the Ius gentium, and the juridical consequences that emanante from both bodies of law. In his analysis of the Royal Commentaries, Roberto González Echevarría has

maintained that juridical discourse dominates the writings of the sixteenth century.[84] He does not, however, identify the specific mechanism by which the application of law functioned in the Royal Commentaries. Garcilaso bases his Royal Commentaries on his responses to the writings of six chroniclers of the Indies. Beyond these sources, he quotes no juridical or theological apparatus in his work. This pattern distinguishes historical discourse from purely juridical or theological disquisitions, such as those by Francisco de Vitoria or Bartolomé de las Casas. In spite of the absence of the expression of specific juridical doctrine, Garcilaso reveals his connection to legal and theological sources through the mimetic correspondence between his narration of events and basic legal principles as well as his rigorous albeit limited selection of legal terminology. In this light, I have followed the Suma silvestrina to clarify many aspects of Garcilaso’s discourse on the basis of some hints he offers to his reader in his representation (reformulation) of the Cajamarca dialogue, but, in fact, the body of both canon and civil law are the sources that inform Garcilaso’s narrative. In this manner, the Royal Commentaries participate in the “polemics of possession” on the Indies.[85] They do so by dramatizing the thesis that the legitimate sovereignty of the Spanish king over Peru depends exclusively on the legitimacy of the Incas that, in turn, springs from their adherence to natural law, the voluntary acceptance of their dominion of other peoples, and the wars they justly waged to expand their solar religion. All the historical episodes, including the “casos historiales” such as the Pedro Serrano’s shipwreck, that populate the Royal Commentaries must be read in terms of their legal and theological consequences. In addition, this pattern of his writings— that consists of absorbing the juridical discussion into the historical mimesis—exempts him from pronouncing a biased judgement and allows him to present to his reader a narrative crafted on the basis of legal elements that the reader could recognize and use to furnish an opinion about the matters at stake among which the legitimate sovereignty of Indian rulers, the legality of the wars of conquest and the necessity of restitution stand out.[86] The distance of Garcilaso the historian is, in fact, a silent way to take sides and advocate for restitution as we shall see below.

THE ROYAL COMMENTARIES AS AN ESSAY ON RESTITUTION In the Royal Commentaries, mimesis occupies the place of juridical arguments. Pedro Serrano embodies the principles of natural law and Ius gentium, and the wars of the Incas and the conquistadors are modeled according to their proximity to, or distance from, the requirements for just war. The theory of restitution appears in a similar manner. It is demonstrated by the “caso maravilloso” that the Spaniard Alfonso Ruiz experiences with an anonymous Indian vehemently seeking the salvation of his soul. In the midst of the sack of Cuzco, Alfonso Ruiz enters a house whose owner soon welcomes him and addresses him as follows: Be very welcome, for I have been expecting you for many days, since

Pachacámac has told me by means of signs and auguries that I shall not die until a new people arrives, which will teach me the new religion we are to observe. All my life I have lived with the desire of it in my heart, and I am sure that it must be you who are to teach me it.[87] Ruiz understands that he finds himself before a man who has lived according to natural law, and he proceeds to teach him the principles of Christian doctrine until the old Indian is at last baptized. The old Indian dies soon afterward. Pierre Duviols has correctly linked this episode with the providential dimension of the Royal Commentaries, and, strictly following Capéran, related it to the problem of the salvation of pagans and infidels.[88] The case of the old Indian and Alfonso Ruiz dramatizes a theological principle sometimes invoked in the polemics on the Indies;[89] it is expressed through the scholastic formula “God does not deny his grace to the one that does what is in himself” [Facienti quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam]. [90]

The relationship between this episode and the doctrine of restitution becomes apparent, thanks to the details through which the story unfolds: after meeting his Indian host, Alfonso Ruiz returned to Spain with more that one hundred thousand pesos in gold acquired from the Cajamarca booty and the sack of Cuzco, but he made restitution to the emperor in order to absolve the scruples of his conscience.[91] This soldier’s act amounts to his recognition that the booty had not been acquired in a just war and thus, from a juridical point of view, it had been a simple act of robbery. Inspired by the Indian’s quest for salvation, Alfonso Ruiz makes restitution to save his soul, observing the canon-law principle “Sin is not released if what has been forcibly taken away is not restituted” [Peccatum non dimittitur, nisi restituatur ablatum].[92] Beyond the embodiment of theoretical argument clothed (nearly, but not quite disguised) in narrative actions, the tale of the Cuzco Indian and Alfonso Ruiz is a bridge that alligns the Royal Commentaries with the central contention of Las Casas’s “Advice and Rules for Confessors” [Avisos y reglas para los confesores].[93] Las Casas had demonstrated canonically the necessity for restitution, and Jerónimo de Loayza, the first archbishop of Lima, confirmed these theses for the jurisdiction of his bishopric.[94] The theory of the restitution of ill-gotten gains in the Royal Commentaries is not confined to this episode. Part two of the work sets forth the repeated failures of royal functionaries who denied to their legitimate heirs the restitution of the Inca empire, in spite of the fact that those heirs were protected by the laws of inheritance that Garcilaso has carefully recorded in his Royal Commentaries.[95] For example, Manco Inca requests the restitution of his empire, but Pizarro lies to him and even puts him in jail; the viceroy García Hurtado de Mendoza intended to make Sairi Tupac pledge obedience to the Spanish monarch without restoring him to his legitimate power; Francisco de Toledo executed Tupac Amaru without any legal foundation instead of restoring to him the imperial honors that were lawfully his.[96] Through the deeds of its

functionaries, the Spanish crown faltered for not having returned their legitimate power to those who justly claimed it although they were obedient of the mandates of Manco Capac. What solution was to be adopted in the tragic situation in which all the legitimate Inca heirs had died? The answer to this question is not to be found in the narrations of the Royal Commentaries; it lies instead on the effects of its juridical implications and in the actions that Garcilaso undertook soon after finishing part two of the Royal Commentaries. The internal chronology of the work shows that Garcilaso was intensely working on completing his historical project between the years of 1611 and 1613.[97] As soon as he finished, Garcilaso signed a contract on October 23, 1614, with the printer Francisco Romero to accelerate the publication of his book.[98] Only after signing this pact, Garcilaso extended powers of attorney to Cristóbal de Burgos y Arellano to appear on his behalf before the Royal Council of the Indies and present a certified account of the services [información de servicios] that Garcilaso had performed on behalf of the Crown through his writings and his military service as a captain in the wars (1567) against the moriscos of Alpujarras. Garcilaso claims he aspires se me haga merçed en renumeraçión de los dichos serbicios, míos y del dicho mi padre y antepasados; y ansimismo que se me mande pagar la rrenta que Su Magestad tiene mandado que se dé a los dezendientes de los dichos rreyes yncas; en razón de todo lo cual [Burgos y Arellano] haga todos los pedimientos, autos y dilijencias que judiçial y estrajudiçialmente cunplan y convengan de se hazer hasta que tenga efeto lo susodicho.[99] [that I may be done the favor of remuneration for the aforementioned services performed by myself and my aforementioned father and ancestors; and that accordingly I be paid the income that His Majesty has authorized to be awarded to the descendents of the aforementioned Inca kings; because of which Burgos y Arrleano present all petitions, letters and actions that are to be done judicially and extrajudicially until the privileges are granted.][100] This legal procedure becomes possible only after having culminated in the historical enterprise of the Royal Commentaries that, restored to their juridical context, reveal that the silent observance of just war theory and all the Ius gentium assumptions relate to a concrete political and personal project, according to which the last act of the Crown to obtain full legitimacy was to make restitution of their rights to those to which the kingdom of Peru belonged by virtue of natural law and Ius gentium. Garcilaso has made an important step in the theory of restitution: he not only endorsed the necessity to restitute the unlawful booty of the conquest, but he also advocated for the restitution of power.

NOTES

1. Silvio Zavala, “Introduction,” in De las islas del mar océano, by Juan López de Palacios Rubios (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1954), lxxxvii–xcv; Rolena Adorno, The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 125–47. 2. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 13, 49. 3. José Durand, “El Inca, hombre en prisma,” in Studi di Letteratura Ispano-Americana (Milano: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1967), 50. 4. With the expression Ius commune I refer to both the body of canon law and Roman civil law that were taken into account in legal discussions primarily because of their rational value and not due to any positive binding power. The Ius commune was a basic source commonly used in legal discussions and legislation (Francesco Calasso, Medio Evo del Diritto. I—Le fonti [Milano: Giuffrè, 1954], 385–89; and Manlio Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe 1000-1800 [Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press, 1995], 59–69). 5. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and general History of Peru, trans. Harold V. Livermore. 2 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 1:27–28 [bk. 1, chap. 8]. 6. Margarita Zamora, Language, authority, and indigenous history in the Comentarios reales de los incas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 164. 7. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:28 [bk. 1, chap. 8]. 8. Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. Emilio Friedberg (Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2000), c.7.D1. All translations of Latin passages are my own. 9. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:29 [bk. 1, chap. 8]. 10. Corpus Iuris Canonici, c.9.D.1; Corpus Iuris Civilis, ed. Paulus Krueger (Berlín: Weiman, 1928), I.1.2.2. 11. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:12 [bk. 1, chap. 2]. 12. Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes. Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 334. 13. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:35 [bk. 1, chap. 12]. 14. Ibid., 1:53 [bk. 1, chap. 21], emphasis added. 15. Corpus iuris canonici, D.1 c.1; Cf. Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights. Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law 1150–1625 (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), 58–69. 16. Zamora, Language, authority, and indigenous history, 114–15; José Antonio Mazzotti, Coros mestizos del Inca Garcilaso. Resonancias andinas (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996), 175. 17. Josef de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, ed. Fermín del Pino-Díaz (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2008), 270–72 [bk. 7, chap. 28]. 18. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:345 [bk. 6, chap. 15]. The expression translates the title of “señor del mundo” that corresponds to the concept of dominus mundi whose meaning and reach were discussed in Salamanca a propos of the rights of conquest and the imperial dignity of Charles V. It is not—it should be pointed out--an absolute category that implies the jurisdictional and territorial dominion of the entire world. It is precisely with this restrictive meaning that Hernán Cortés assigns such a title to Moctezuma (Cartas de relación de la conquista de Méjico [Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1932], 44). The theologian Francisco de Vitoria rejected the notion that such a title could constitute a legitime basis to justify Spanish governance in the Indies (Francisco de Victoria, Relecciones teológicas del maestro fray Francisco de Vitoria, ed. Luis G. Alonso Getino, 3 vols. [Madrid: La Rafa, 1934], 2:313– 22). Garcilaso’s usage of this expression confirms that he alludes to specific juridical concepts in his narrative since he makes the Indians pronounce such expressions when referring to the Incas. Garcilaso refrains from quoting the doctrinal discussions on the concept of dominus mundi. 19. In the Royal Commentaries, the topic of just war operates in tandem to that of the legal postulate of voluntary jurisdiction that Garcilaso takes from Bartolomé de las Casas’s Tratado comprobatorio, which Garcilaso read in the 1552 princeps edition (Bartolomé de las Casas, Tratados, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, trans. Agustín Millares Carlo and Rafael Moreno, 2 vols. [México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997], 2:1147–151; Cf. Rubén Vargas

Ugarte, “Nota sobre Garcilaso,” Mercurio Peruano [1930]: 106–8). The application of voluntary jurisdiction appears repeatedly in the Royal Commentaries and it is eloquently represented in the voluntary subjection of Indian peoples that, after having succumbed to the persuasive benefits that come along with Inca laws, recognized the Incas as their legitimate rulers and electing them freely (e.g., Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries 1:59 [bk. 1, chap. 23], 1:111 [bk. 2, chap. 20]). See José Cárdenas Bunsen, “Polémica versus representación: el Inca Garcilaso frente a Gómara y a Las Casas.” Colonial Latin American Review 19 (2010): 404–8. 20. Corpus iuris canonici, c.6. C.22.q.1, c.1.C.22.q.2. I follow here the body of canon law in the juridical layout of war because Garcilaso constantly paraphrases it, as we saw in the canon law quotation regarding natural law, paraphrased by Garcilaso’s Manco Capac. I also quote the dominican theologian Silvestre Mazzolini of Prierias due to his importance in the Cajamarca episode. The reasons for the selection of this source will become apparent in the following section. 21. Silvestre Mazzolini de Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae quae Summa Summarum merito nuncupatur (Lyon: Iuntas, 1551), 85 [sub bellum]. 22. There is one exception: the episode of prince Huiracocha who disobeys the order for exile that his father has imposed on him, returning instead to Cuzco to defend the city from the Chanca invasion. Apparently this episode breaks the strict protocol of the required authority of the superior to wage war. However, the Inca retires from the city and, in such a power vacuum, the prince assumes the capital’s defense and repels the invaders. His actions are sanctioned by natural law itself, which justifies the rejection of violence by means of force (Corpus Iuris Canonici, c.8.D.1). 23. Alfonso X, Las Siete Partidas del sabio Rey don Alonso el nono, nueuamente glosadas por el licenciado Gregorio López, del Consejo Real de Indias de su Magestad (Salamanca: Domingo de Portonariis Ursino, 1576), 79r [pt. 2, tit. 23, ley 2]. 24. Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, 78v [pt. 2, tit. 23], my translation; see also Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:166 [bk.3, chap.14]. 25. John Mark Mattox, Saint Augustine and the Theory of Just War (London: Continuum, 2006), 8-11. 26. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:157–58 [bk. 3, chap. 11]. 27. Ibid., 1:110[bk. 2, chap. 19], 1:383-384 [bk. 6, chap. 31], 1:146 [bk. 3, chap. 5]. 28. Ibid., 1:114 [bk. 2, chap. 20]. 29. Ibid., 1:53 [bk. 1, chap. 21]. 30. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Totius Theologiae (Venecia: Iuntas, 1588), I.II.q.22.a.1–3. 31. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:235 [bk.4, chap.24]. 32. Ibid., 1:51 [bk. 1, chap. 19]. Garcilaso systematically refers to the “gentilidad” in which the Incas lived prior to the Spanish arrival and during the period of the civil wars among the conquistadores. He refers to the people as “infieles” [infidels] or ‘gentiles’ [gentiles] (1:47–48 [bk. 1, chap. 18], 2:699 [bk. 1, chap. 30] et passim). This type of infidelity, more properly, paganism, is the so-called “pure negativa,” that is, such peoples are not enemies of the Christian faith; they are simply ignorant of its existence. These pagans are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Church and they legitimately possess their natural rights, especially dominion over their subjects and over Christians who dwell in their territories (Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 36-37 [sub Infidelitas]). 33. Franklin Pease, Las crónicas y los Andes (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995), 372–75. 34. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:51 [bk. 1, chap. 19]. 35. Ibid., 1:627 [bk. 9, chap. 40]. 36. Ibid., 2:678 [bk. 1, chap. 22]. 37. Augustín de Zárate, Historia del descubrimiento y conquista de las provincias del Perú (Sevilla: Alonso Escriuano, 1577), 13v–14r [bk. 2, chap. 4]; Francisco López de Gómara, Historia general de las Indias, ed. Franklin Pease G. Y. (Lima: Comisión nacional del V centenario del descubrimiento de América “Encuentro de dos mundos,” 1993), 51v–53r [chap. 113]. 38. Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, ed. Agustín Millares Carlo (México: Fondo de Cultura

Económica, 1995), 3:27–28 [bk. 3, chap. 57]. 39. Marcus Tullius Cicero, On duties, Loeb Classical Library 30 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 38; Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 6–9. 40. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:680-681 [bk. 1, chap. 22]. 41. Ibid., 2:688 [bk. 1, chap. 25]; Cf. Gómara, Historia general, 52v [chap. 113], Zárate, Historia del descubrimiento, 15r [bk. 2, chap. 5]; Jerónimo Román y Zamora, Repúblicas del mundo (Salamanca: Juan Fernández, 1595), 188v– 189r [bk. 3, chap. 15]. 42. Sabine MacCormack, “Atahualpa and the Book,” Dispositio 14, no. 36–38 (1989):153. 43. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:679 [bk. 1, chap. 22]. 44. Michael Walzer, “Exodus 32 and the Theory of Holy War: The History of a Citation,” Harvard Theological Review 61, no. 1 (1968): 1-2; Russell, The Just War, 9–11. 45. Catholic Church, Breviarium Romanum (Lyon: Simon Vincent, 1529), 49v. 46. Ibid., 59r–60r. 47. Michael Tavuzzi, Prierias: The Life and Works of Silvestro Mazzolini da Prierio, 1456–1527 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 13, 73; Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confesion on the Eve of Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 34–36. 48. Patricia Seed, “Failing to Marvel: Atahualpa’s Encounter with the Word,” Latin American Research Review 26, no. 1 (1991): 26–27. 49. Francisco de Vitoria, Relecciones teológicas, 2:347 et passim. 50. Tavuzzi, Prierias, 161n97. Innocenzo Taurisano, “Silvestri, Francesco,” in Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, letteri ed arti, vol. 31 (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1950), 788. 51. Zamora, Language, authority, and indigenous history, 62–76; Carlos Araníbar, “Indice analítico y glosario,” in Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los incas, ed. Carlos Araníbar (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1991), 2:700. 52. Seed, “Failing to Marvel,” 27. 53. Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 272 [sub dominium], 277 [sub Papa]. The alternative solution that comes from Prierias’s interpretation of civil law does not apply to the case of the Incas since they did not receive their power from a superior authority. They acquired it by means of the voluntary submission of their subjects, according to Garcilaso’s argument in part one of his Royal Commentaries. See footnote19. 54. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:685–87 [bk.1, chap.24]. 55. Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 85 [sub bellum]. 56. Ibid., 272 [sub dominium], 196 [sub consensus]. 57. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:686 [bk. 1, chap. 24]. 58. Ibid., 2:682 [bk. 1, chap. 23]. 59. Tercer Concilio Provincial de Lima, “Epístola sobre la traducción,” Doctrina christiana y catecismo para instrucción de los indios (Lima: Antonio Ricardo, 1584). 60. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:682 [bk. 1, chap. 23], Cf. Aquinas, Summa, I.II.76.2. 61. Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 271 [sub Pactum]. 62. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:577 [bk. 9, chap. 15]. 63. Ibid., 2:687-688 [bk. 1, chap. 25]. 64. Ibid., 2:691-693 [bk. 1, chaps. 26–27]. 65. Gómara, Historia general, 53r [chap. 113]. 66. Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 86 [sub bellum]. 67. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:709 [bk.1, chap.35], 2:752 [bk. 2, chap. 9]. 68. Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 85 [sub Bellum]; Aquinas, Summa, II.II.40.1. 69. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:765–66 [bk.2, chap.13], 2:1271 [bk.6, chap.16]. 70. Ibid., 2:746–47 [bk. 2, chap. 6].

71. Ibid., 2:769 [bk. 2, chap. 15], 2:782 [bk. 2, chap. 19]. 72. Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 444 [sub superbia]. 73. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:782 [bk. 2, chap. 19]; Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 66 [sub invidia]. Garcilaso does not speak clearly about the role of lust and gluttony in the rebellions of Sebastián de Castilla and Francisco Hernández Girón, in spite of having suggested it in his assessment on the intervention of the capital sins: “A few years after there followed in due order the risings of Don Sebastián de Castilla and Francisco Hernández Girón, who were provoked by lust and gluttony” (2:746–47 [bk.2, chap.6]). There are some hints that suggest these two capital sins, such as the case of Pedro de Cabrera, the “fattest man” Garcilaso ever saw (2:1329 [bk.7, chap.5]). Garcilaso, however, does not develop the implications of their personal sins in the course of public events, probably due to his sense of the exemplary purpose history should serve and to “avoid unnecessary complications” (2:1317 [bk.7, chap.1]). 74. Ibid., 2:838 [bk. 2, chap. 34]; 2:873 [bk. 3, chap. 2]. 75. Ibid., 1:40 [bk. 1, chap. 15], 2:872 [bk. 3, chap. 1]. 76. Corpus iuris canonici, c.1.C22.q.1. 77. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:933-935 [bk. 3, chap. 19]. 78. Ibid., 2:706 [bk. 1, chap. 34], 2:780 [bk. 2, chap. 18]. 79. Aquinas, Summa, II.I.71.1, II.I.71.5. 80. Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 476 [sub Tyrannus]. 81. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:1004–6 [bk.4, chap.17], 2:1297 [bk. 6, chap. 25]. 82. Carmela Teresa Zanelli, “Hacia el barroco: providencialismo, tragedia y genealogía, claves para la lectura de la propia historia en los Comentarios reales del Inca Garcilaso,” in Simulacros de la fantasía. Nuevas indagaciones sobre arte y literatura virreinales. Homenaje a José Pascual Buxó, coord. Enrique Ballón Aguirre (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2007), 419–20. 83. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:781 [bk. 2, chap. 19], 2:928 [bk. 3, chap. 18], 2:1189 [bk.5, chap.35], 2:1447 [bk. 8, chap. 12]. 84. Roberto González Echevarría, Myth and Archive. A Theory of Latin American Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 45, 83. 85. Rolena Adorno, The Polemics of Possession, 7. 86. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:51 [bk. 1, chap. 19]. 87. Ibid., 2:750 [bk. 2, chap. 8]. 88. Pierre Duviols, “Les Comentarios reales de los Incas et la question du salut des infidèles,” C.M.H.L.B. Caravelle 62 (1994): 70. 89. For instance, Sepúlveda accepts the doctrine according to which heathens who observe natural law can be saved and have their original sin erased through an intuited faith and by means of an extraordinary, benevolent act of grace, even prior to the preaching of the gospel (Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Obras Completas, ed. A Moreno Hernández [Salamanca: Ayuntamiento de Pozoblanco, 1997], 80–81). 90. Louis Capéran, Le Problème du Salut des Infidèles. Essai historique, 2 vols. (Toulouse: Grand Séminaire, 1934), 1:69, 1:219–20. 91. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 2:750–51 [bk.2, chap.8]. 92. Corpus iuris canonici, r.4.V.12 in VI; Cf. Prierias, Sylvestrinae Summae, 366–89 [restitutio]. 93. Bartolomé de las Casas, Tratados, prologue Lewis Hanke and Manuel Giménez Fernández, trans. Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso and transl. Agustín Millares Carlo and Rafael Moreno, 2 vols. (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997), 2:857–65. 94. Guillermo Lohmann Villena, “La restitución por conquistadores y encomenderos: un aspecto de la incidencia lascasiana en el Perú,” in Estudios lascasianos (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1966), 32–39. 95. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 1:207–10 [bk. 4, chap. 10–11]. 96. Ibid., 2:791–94 [bk. 2, chap. 22], 2:1435–436 [bk. 8, chap. 8], 2:1481–482 [bk.8, chap.19].

97. Ibid., 2:1484 [bk.8, chap.20]. 98. José de la Torre y del Cerro, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Nueva documentación) (Madrid: Biblioteca de Historia Hispano-Americana, 1935), 172–74. 99. Torre y del Cerro, El Inca Garcilaso,179. 100. My translation.

Chapter 9 THE POLITICS OF SALVATION IN EL GRECO’S ESCORIAL PAINTINGS AND CERVANTES’S LA NUMANCIA E. C. Graf Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King. —Shakespeare, Hamlet (2.2.605) El Greco’s earliest paintings in Spain and Cervantes’s early drama La Numancia are complex, anxious meditations on the theological and political status of Philip II. Each posits Christ as a problematic exemplar for earthy kings. El Greco’s portrait of Philip II—known as the Allegory of the Holy League (ca.1579) (figure 9.1)—depicts the awe of the leaders of Spain, Rome, and Venice upon their victory at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Nevertheless, with the flames of a great hellmouth burning the carpet at Philip II’s heels, the painter has clearly placed the monarch in a predicament. Cervantes’s La Numancia (ca.1580) displays a similar nexus of moral and political tension via a series of sacrificial episodes that ends with the Roman general Scipio caught between salvation and damnation. Scipio was one of the era’s princely archetypes, so the play’s finale, in which he pleads for glory beneath a tower from which the last Numantian leaps to his death, metonymically represents Philip II as both cause and witness of a national sacrifice. On one hand, keeping in mind political philosophy, Neoplatonic ontology, and the newly professionalized status of early modern painters allows us to reinterpret the symbols, structures, and colors of El Greco’s Allegory and three other works: The Healing of the Blind Man (ca. 1577– 1578), The Disrobing of Christ (1577–1579), and The Martyrdom of Saint Maurice (1580–1583) (figure 9.2). On the other hand, attending to the religious elements of Cervantes’s La Numancia allows us to understand it as a lesson about the tragic sacrifice of an innocent boy: a Christian warning against the abuse of power. Events from the second half of the sixteenth century can explain the obsession with the princely soul in these contemporaneous works. Nevertheless, centered as they are on iconic images of the kneeling prince, the best way to envision how they were actually meant to function is as schematic projections of a kind of moral penance as old as the Book of Jonah.

El Greco. Allegory of the Holy League. Real Monasterio del Escorial, Madrid. Source: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

El Greco. The Martyrdom of St. Maurice. Real Monasterio del Escorial, Madrid. Source: The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

Studies of El Greco have paid insufficient attention to the political implications of his paintings, especially those executed upon his arrival in Spain around 1576.[1] Critics focus on style, accept without comment his oeuvre’s religiosity, and interpret his tensions with patrons in exclusively aesthetic terms: his elongated figures balk at Spanish naturalism or his cluttered programs buck Tridentine decorum. Studies of Cervantes have yet to fully take into account the Pauline sequence of violence, vision, and conversion that structures much of his work.[2] This is because Cervantes routinely secularizes his religious allusions;[3] the materialist role assigned to him in literary history further forecloses theological considerations.[4] At first glance, even an early play like La Numancia exhibits little religious content. The impression given by Cervantes is the opposite of El Greco: the inventor of the modern novel—earthly, ironical, complex—is like today’s academic; the Cretan hagiographer—celestial, serious, primitive—remains a fanatic. But the techniques and purposes of religious and secular works from the Spanish Renaissance are mutually informative. El Greco’s hagiographies have political implications; Cervantes’s perspectivism has theological origins.[5] El Greco and Cervantes spent significant intervals in cities brimming with political

theorizing: Venice, Rome, Toledo, Madrid. El Greco’s allusion to Constantine—a profoundly transitional figure for Eusebius, Augustine, and imperial and papal polemicists throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods—and Cervantes’s use of Scipio—a fundamental exemplar for Cicero, Augustine, Petrarch, Erasmus, Machiavelli, and several generations of Spanish thinkers—make the Allegory and La Numancia political meditations of the first order. As such, they reflect concern over the expansion of the Habsburg Empire, fast approaching a kind of global apotheosis. Between the abdication of Charles V in 1556 and El Greco’s completion of the Saint Maurice in 1583, Philip II, relying heavily on Spanish troops, subjected the Low Countries to the iron-fisted rule of the Duke of Alba, crushed the Morisco uprising near Granada, scattered Turkish naval power in the Mediterranean, took the last steps toward dominating America in the Yucatán and Chile, established an outpost at Manila in the Philippines, and annexed the entire Portuguese Empire from Brazil to Nagasaki. El Greco’s and Cervantes’s early works accord well with the anxious insistence by late theological humanists, such as Erasmus, More, Vives, Ribadeneira, and Quevedo, that kings should imitate Christ above all the other exemplars; but they cannot be held apart from the harsh warnings by passionate, regicidal Monarchomachs, such as Béze, Mornay, Mariana, and Bellarmine, of grave consequences if they do not.[6]

EL GRECO’S PERSPECTIVISM: LINES OF SIGHT, RED ROBES, AND SWORDPLAY To see how El Greco’s Allegory functions theologically and politically in conjunction with The Healing of the Blind, The Disrobing, and the Saint Maurice, it is important to grasp his dual Neoplatonic foundations.[7] Originally from Crete, El Greco moved to Venice and adapted his icon painting to Italian art. As Florensky notes, the icon painter in the Greek Orthodox world was always both philosopher—“philosophizing with his brush”—and theologian—“what the words of the sermon are for the ear, so the icons are for the eye.”[8] The goal: articulate Christian ontology through a graphic fusion of Plato and Paul, a kind of salvific intersection between the Cave Allegory in book seven of The Republic and the conversion of Saul in Acts 6.8-9.22. In each tradition the key metaphors are vision and light: in Plato, a vision of the metaphysical light of knowledge emanating from beyond the darkness of this-world ignorance; in Paul, a vision of the divine light of heaven revealing Christ’s truth as the way to transcend violence.[9] This syncretic philosophy also underwrote El Greco’s training among the colorists and mannerists of Italy. The late fifteenth-century burst of Neoplatonic thought in cities like Florence, Venice, and Rome owed to Byzantines like Pletho, who, fleeing the Turkish offensive, brought their ideas west. Inspired by Pletho, Ficino—whose major legacy is his Theologia platonica [Platonic Theology]— professionalized humanist scholarship at Florence. Vasari undertook a remarkably similar project with respect to painting in 1560-80, precisely when El Greco was in

Venice and Rome before leaving for Spain. Vasari’s academic reorientation of the profession emphasized art as an abstract and theoretical enterprise.[10] El Greco’s clearest statement of the philosophical sophistication of his art is The Healing of the Blind series (ca. 1567–1578). In all three versions, Christ performs a highly symbolic miracle (Mark 8.22–26) while Plato gesticulates in amazement to the right, and all this in the context of a meditation on Renaissance painting’s major technical advance—Donatello and Masaccio’s achievement of depth and perspective via the vanishing point. In accord with humanism’s teleological fusion of Platonism and Christianity, whereby Christian piety is seen as the culmination of ancient philosophy, The Healing of the Blind echoes knowledge-as-vision in The Republic and anticipates saintliness-as-vision in Acts and Ephesians. Politics appear in the Parma version, which situates the Baths of Diocletian at its vanishing point.[11] Built in memory of Diocletian by his ally Maximian, the monument recalls their slaughter of Christians during AD 284–305. Proclaimed semi-divine rulers (Augusti) by the Roman army, these tyrants’ attempt to restore pagan traditions exemplifies the depravity of classical Caesarism. Inevitable here is also an allusion to Constantine, who, after his vision of the Cross before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, ended the Diocletianic Persecution by mandating religious tolerance via the Edict of Milan in AD 313. The meaning of the Parma version of The Healing of the Blind, then, evolves out of the political and moral statements intrinsic to the reference to Diocletian as the vanishing context of Christ’s cure for human blindness. This helps us understand the philosophical implications of all three paintings: Does the viewer grasp the Christian perspective? Is he cured of his own violent capacity for pagan blindness? Is he an enlightened Christian like Paul/Constantine or still an ignorant brute like Saul/Diocletian? This brings us to the relation between The Healing of the Blind and the Allegory. Above all each draws attention to the lines of sight of central figures contextualized by Pauline contrasts between Diocletian and Constantine. The Allegory itself is an amalgam of themes found in three important precursor paintings: the Emperor’s conversion before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (AD 312) in Raphael and Romano’s The Apparition of the Cross to Constantine (1519–1525); the dragon’s menacing mouth in Titian’s Saint Margaret (ca. 1565–1570); the tripartite universe capped by a celestial hierarchy in the Allegory of the Christian Knight on the front panel of the Modena Triptych (ca. 1567), attributed to El Greco himself.[12] These elements are then arranged as per Philippians 2.10: ut in nomine Iesu omne genu flectatur caelestium et terrestrium et infernorum [that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth].[13] Blunt’s 1939 study revealed the Allegory’s portrayal of the members of the Holy League victorious at Lepanto: counterclockwise, the red-gloved Pope Pius V with a golden cope, Don Juan of Austria as a classical soldier holding a black sword, and the ermine-cloaked Doge of Venice in the foreground.[14] On its surface, then, the Allegory celebrates the crusading imperialism of Habsburg Spain. The hellmouth is like the Islamic crescent

threatening to engulf the Mediterranean in a pincer action from Vienna to Granada, and like Saint Margaret, Philip II will need a sword to fight his way out. But this besieged program means that, unlike Constantine, Philip II gazes diagonally at Don Juan of Austria’s sword instead of up at the IHS insignia commanding the attention of nearly everyone else.[15] This contrast interrogates Habsburg imperialism. Furthermore, whereas Philip II’s black attire links him to the instrument of war at which he stares, the red attire of the attending clergy gradually draws a viewer’s eye toward the red-robed figure gesticulating wildly toward the sky in the background just above its pommel. Is Philip II really analogous to Constantine? Can any militant leader truly visualize the significance of Christ? The blood-red brilliance of The Disrobing, which El Greco executed simultaneously for the vestry of the Cathedral of Toledo, unveils dissent: sacerdotium must reorient regnum away from the sword of Caesarism toward the example of Christ. Keeping in mind the sword’s ambivalence in the Allegory, we turn to the Saint Maurice. This massive composition represents the moment in El Greco’s career when he came most close to gaining royal patronage. It was destined for a chapel in Philip II’s palatial monastery at El Escorial, where it still resides today along with the Allegory. But Philip II would never contract El Greco again. As Sigüenza, the first historian of the Escorial, reports, the Saint Maurice “no le contentó a S.M.” [did not please His Majesty].[16] This rejection has long puzzled art historians. Reasons given include: the anachronistic portraits of Spaniards violated the decorum of an altarpiece; the proportions of the painting were not those specified for the chapel; or the colors or elongated figures offended the monarch’s conservative tastes. Scholars have failed to grasp the degree to which the Saint Maurice simultaneously criticizes Philip II’s policies in Northern Europe and Southern Spain. To begin with, the painting leverages the same Diocletianic Persecution alluded to in The Healing of the Blind and the Allegory. This time, however, El Greco turns ambivalence into something more subversive. According to legend, Maurice was the leader of the Theban Legion that refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods and so was decimated by the Roman cavalry: “The soldiers of Christ were therefore surrounded by the soldiers of the devil, struck down by murderous hands, trampled by horses’ hooves, and consecrated to Christ as his precious martyrs.”[17] His status as a victim of imperial monarchy long made Maurice a naturally dissenting figure against the militarism of the Holy Roman Empire.[18] But El Greco’s manipulations of anachronism and symbolic detail take particularly harsh aim at his latest patron. Philip II commissioned the Saint Maurice in honor of his ally Emanuele Filiberto, the Duke of Savoy, victor at the Battle of Saint Quentin.[19] Sixteenth-century figures accompany the legion at different stages of its decimation in the foreground, middle ground, and background, referencing the Spanish occupation of territories in Holland, Belgium, and northern France.[20] With Filiberto in the foreground is Alessandro Farnese, Prince of Parma and Governor of the Low Countries; in the middle ground is Don Juan of Austria, who died as Regent in 1578. In the background a damning twist

echoes the monument to Diocletian in the depths of the Healing of the Blind: El Greco has placed the Duke of Alba on horseback next to the legion being rounded up for slaughter. Spaniards, then, especially the Duke of Alba—already infamous for his brutal repression of Protestant rebels—are shown behaving like the Roman cavalry decimating Christian martyrs. But the most subversive aspects of the Saint Maurice are its swords, which recall the main symbol of the Allegory. In the far right foreground holding a giant red banner—the color linking the Allegory and The Disrobing—the figure identified as Saint Exuperius displays a sheathed Arabic sword modeled after that of Boabdil, the last Sultan of Granada.[21] This Arabic sword is again prominently displayed in the middle ground, where it contrasts with the Spanish rapier raised overhead by a pagan threatening the Christian legionnaires with a backhanded stroke. Thus, in symbolic terms the painting again figures Spaniards as agents of the Diocletianic persecution, but instead of Northern European Protestants opposite the Duke of Alba, the Theban Legion is now clearly identified with the victims of the theater of war in Southern Spain—the Moriscos. Descendants of the Moors who chose to convert to Christianity rather than face expulsion by the Catholic Kings, the Moriscos revolted around Christmas 1568. The Alpujarras War, which lasted into the summer of 1570, has been described by Kamen as “the most brutal war to be fought on European soil during that century.”[22] Doménikos Theotokópolous understood the covert potential of “Maurice”—from the Greek mauros, meaning “Moor.” He imposed his own iconography on this saint to signal what he considered the moral and political contradiction of the day.[23] Other facts support this interpretation. First, we know El Greco appeared before the Toledo Inquisition in 1582 as a translator for an Athenian Greek accused of being a crypto-Muslim.[24] This is precisely during his second year working on the Saint Maurice. The accused was absolved, but the painting reveals the philosophical artistturned-translator reacting strongly to the paranoid authoritarianism of his adopted country. This also helps explain the bitter back-and-forth between Philip II and El Greco over its cost and its deadline for completion.[25] The replacement piece, however, is the best proof we have that El Greco intended to challenge more than just his patron’s aesthetic sensibilities. Cincinnato’s Saint Maurice (1583–1584) leaves the general hagiographical critique of military aggression against Christians untouched, but the contemporary figures alluding to the Habsburg presence in the Low Countries are elided. More importantly, the symbolic play between the sheathed Moorish blades and the raised Spanish rapier is replaced by a single Roman doublebladed gladius. Cincinnato concluded from El Greco’s experience that it was not his place to judge his royal patron. The Healing of the Blind, the Allegory, The Disrobing, and the Saint Maurice are a constellation of paintings that question the moral limits of Habsburg authority. Indeed, they are a kind of iconographic sequence that functions according to its own intertextual visual logic.[26] The Healing of the Blind series establishes a Neoplatonic understanding of Christian teleology, in one case even situating the Diocletianic

Persecution at its vanishing point. The Allegory literally holds Philip II’s feet to the fire of a hellmouth, questioning his imperialist policy by contrasting his earthly military focus with the skyward gaze of Constantine. The Disrobing further challenges said policy through an anachronistic substitution of roles, making Spaniards the new minions of Pilate and Caesar who carry out the Crucifixion. Finally, the metaphorical swordplay of Saint Maurice specifies the Moriscos of Southern Spain as the victims whose repression most undercuts Eusebian triumphalism with Augustinian doubt.

LA NUMANCIA: ADVICE TO HABSBURGS AND SACRIFICIAL THEORY Criticism of Cervantes’s La Numancia tends to identify the Numantians with victims of the imperialistic expansion of the Spanish nation state. The Roman siege of Iberian Celts elicits parallels with sixteenth-century events: Philip II’s annexation of Portugal; [27] the Duke of Alba’s aggressive actions in the Low Countries;[28] the conquest of the Americas;[29] the defeat of the Moriscos;[30] the Inquisition’s persecution of the descendants of converted Jews, known as conversos.[31] This last interpretation is particularly compelling due to parallels between the self-destruction of the Numantians and the Jewish suicide at the Masada.[32] I would add that the details of the heroic examples of Jewish nationalism in the books of Maccabees are strikingly similar to the collective sacrifice Cervantes portrays in La Numancia, lending further support to the play as a complaint against religious and ethnic persecution. Recent scholarship has grounded dissenting interpretations of the play in even more historical specificity: the conflict between the militant Alba and moderate Eboli factions at the court of Philip II;[33] the Inquisition’s burning of Spanish Protestants upon Philip II’s coronation in 1559;[34] the wave of theatrical criticism regarding the Portuguese succession crisis that characterized productions by the likes of Lobo Lasso, Virués, and Cueva.[35] Moreover, staging a clash between civilizations inevitably evokes ambivalence toward the victors, fostering a sense that the law of the rise and fall of empires applies to the present as well. For this La Numancia very likely draws on anti-epic aspects of Ercilla’s Araucana,[36] and classical examples of epic doubt in Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Virgil, and especially Lucan.[37] I argue the plausibility of these critical takes on the play relates to its basic Eucharistic design. As Avalle-Arce indicated, La Numancia can be read as an endorsement of Spanish Empire conditioned by a call for religious reform.[38] Indeed, the play’s religious symbolism is precisely what undercuts its potential for epic affirmation. A handful of critics have attended to La Numancia’s religiosity: Casalduero noted a formal refrain in the opposition caída/levantamiento [fall/rise][39] and Whitby underscored the fundamental importance of the sacrifice theme.[40] Subsequently, Stroud pointed to La Numancia’s structural dependence on the autos sacramentales [sacramental acts], brief allegorical plays performed during Corpus Christi festivals,[41] and Stiegler focused on the final act’s allusions to the biblical

Apocalypse in the allegorical figures War, Famine, and Plague.[42] I add here that the fourth rider of the Apocalypse, associated with both Death and Christ, can be conflated onto the roles of Bariato, who leaps to his death, and the allegorical figure Fame, who proclaims his moral victory. These thematic and structural aspects of the play, which echo those of an auto dá fe with its apocalyptic signs and its pyramidal positioning of sacrificial victims,[43] indicate theological inspiration as well as moral and political anxiety. To comprehend this anxiety, we must first visualize the play’s metahistorical evolution of the Christian Eucharist. La Numancia performs this transcendental gesture by moving back and forth across the wall between Romans and Numantians, staging quasi-religious, pagan, and incomplete ceremonies, in preparation for a final exemplary sacrifice that will ultimately serve as an auto sacramental for Philip II and Spain more generally. The major event of La Numancia’s first act is Scipio’s harangue against the moral laxity of his troops. His terms are pagan, but his aim is victory through a restoration of purity and piety. At the end of the general’s speech, Marius leads the army in a climactic oath. The effect is solemn and ritualistic, incorporating the viewing audience into a collective endorsement of the militant sermon. This is the Roman world before Christian insight. The form and the collective will are present; the peaceful purpose is lacking: Mario: Vosotros levantad las diestras manos en señal que aprobáis el voto mío. Soldado 1: Todo lo que habéis dicho confirmamos. Soldado 2: Y lo juramos todos. Todos: Sí juramos.[44] [Marius: All of you raise your right hands with me now as a sign that you all approve of my vow. 1st Soldier: All that you have said we hereby confirm. 2nd Soldier: And we all swear to it. All: Yes, our oaths are firm.] The second act is constructed around two major Numantian rituals, now more religious than militant, but still fragmented from a Christian perspective. Numantian leaders as well as anonymous citizens first turn to official priests in search of a sacrificial solution to their predicament: “También primero encargo que se haga / a Júpiter solene sacrificio, / de quien podremos esperar la paga / harto mayor que nuestro beneficio” [Also, I urge first solemn sacrifice be made to Jupiter, whose great advice more than for our benefit should suffice];[45] “yo con todo el pueblo me prefiero / hacer de lo que Júpiter más gusta, / que son los sacrificios y oblaciones” [I, along with everyone, do prefer to do that of which Jupiter most approves, which are sacrifices and oblations].[46] Cervantes gives Levitican stage directions regarding their plans to sacrifice a ram:

. . . salen dos numantinos vestidos como sacerdotes antiguos, y han de traer [asido] de los cuernos en medio un carnero grande, coronado de oliva y otro con un jarro de agua, y otros dos con dos jarros de vino, y otro con otra fuente de plata con un poco de incienso, y otros con fuego y leña . . . [ . . . enter two Numantians robed as ancient priests, and they should bring held by its horns between them a large ram, crowned with olive branches, and another priest with a vase of water, and two more with two vases of wine, and another with a silver dish with a small amount of incense, and others with torches and firewood . . . ].[47] As in the oath given by the Roman army, the presence of the entire Numantian caste gives the scene universal scope. Once again, however, the public is made complicit in the essentially vengeful and egocentric nature of a still primitive celebration. The head priest explains the goals of the sacrificial act: Y ansí como te baño y ensangriento este cuchillo en esta sangre pura con alma limpia y limpio pensamiento, ansí la tierra de Numancia dura se bañe con la sangre de romanos y aun los sirva también de sepoltura.[48] [Thus, as I bathe you in blood and do pour on you, knife, this blood most sacred and pure, do I, clean in both heart and mind, implore that the land of Numantia, hard and sure, should bathe itself with the blood of Romans, rising to kill them and their graves secure.]

At least now there is a substitute, a literal scapegoat for the enemy against whom violence is urged. Underscoring this advance, but also pointing up the elusiveness of the final step in the metahistorical dissolution of the sacrificial instinct, Cervantes freezes the action and has a demon rob the ram from the Numantian priests, who remain unaware of the diabolical interference. This peculiar choreography foregrounds the lingering blindness of the pagan worldview, which has yet to hit upon the Christian substitution of the sinful self for the hated other. Hence, the confused, yet suggestive reaction of the second priest to a logic that he cannot comprehend: “Mas ¿quién me ha arrebatado de las manos / la víctima? ¿Qué es esto, dioses santos? / ¿Qué prodigios son estos tan insanos?” [But who steals thus the victim from my hands? What is this sacred gods? What glorious miracles are these, so clearly insane?][49] After this aborted ceremony, the shaman Marquinus takes the stage. In a dark, primitive, exotic parody of what we have just witnessed, Marquinus attempts the ultimate act of priestly magic: the resuscitation of a corpse. Again, we note ironic hints at a Eucharistic perfection that remains postponed: instead of the imperial god Jupiter, the ceremony now focuses on a “mozo tierno” [tender lad];[50] the violence of

Marquinus’s supplications is directed at a fellow Numantian instead of a sacrificial substitute for Romans: “Pues yo haré que con tu pena avives / y tengas el hablarme a buena suerte. / Pues eres de los míos, no te esquives / de hablarme, responderme. Mira, advierte / que, si callas, haré que con tu mengua / sueltes la atada y enojada lengua” [Well, I will ensure you’re reborn in pain and that you find speaking to me great joy. For you’re one of mine, so do not refrain from speaking to me, responding. Come, boy, know that if you’re silent, I’ll take a whack at your anger, unleash your tongue-tied lack];[51] the corpse’s first words highlight the self-directed lesson that remains to be learned: “Cese la furia del rigor violento / tuyo, Marquino” [Cease and desist from this furious violence of yours, Marquinus];[52] finally, although his motives fall short, Marquinus anticipates the ultimate sacrifice: “¡Oh, tristes signos, signos desdichados! / Si esto ha de suceder del pueblo amigo, / primero que mirar tal desventura, / mi vida acabe en esta sepoltura. [Arrójase Marquino en la sepoltura]” [Oh, tragic signs, signs of such disaster! If this will be the fate of my own race, then rather than witness our sad disgrace, let my life end neath this alabaster (Marquinus hurls himself into the sepulcher)].[53] Even the prophecy given by the corpse rings with Christian irony: “No llevarán romanos la vitoria / de la fuerte Numancia, ni ella menos / tendrá de el enemigo triunfo o gloria, / amigos y enemigos siendo buenos” [Romans will not carry forth the victory over fierce Numantia, but nor will she thereby have her own triumph or glory; friends and enemies are both good indeed].[54] The remainder of the play is replete with examples of the innocent suffering of secondary characters inside Numantia, in particular women and children. This agonizing purity prevails in the second half of the third act, but only after the Numantians descend to the depths of moral depravity. The leader Theogenes gives the fateful order: Y para entretener por algún hora la hambre que ya roe nuestros güesos haréis descuartizar luego a la hora esos tristes romanos que están presos, y sin del chico al grande hacer mejora, repártase entre todos, que con esos será nuestra comida celebrada por España, crüel, necesitada.[55] [So as to relax awhile the hunger that at our bones already gnaws and mills, you shall at the given time dismember these sad Romans that we hold captive still, and without preference to old or younger, divide them amongst all of us you will. With them we’ll have our celebrated feast necessitated by Spain, our cruel beast.]

This quasi-Christian “celebrated meal” is ironic because it echoes the cannibalism which Romans often suspected to be the essence of Christian ritual. The Numantians’

perversion of the Last Supper is doubly horrific because they already know their own deaths are inevitable. Theogenes has already decided on mass suicide. Less about sustenance than revenge, “cruel” more than “necessitated,” this is also an indiscriminate cannibalism, which makes all Numantians complicit (“sin del chico al grande hacer mejora”). Here is the play’s low point, contrasting with the trend toward self-abnegation that characterizes the remainder of its Eucharistic allusions. After the reference to cannibalism, a series of Numantian commoners—Lira, Marandro, Leonicio, and others—begin to displace pagan ritual with more Christian approximations. The motive and the object of sacrifice change radically: love replaces revenge and the self replaces the other. This shift, by which a desire for victory over the enemy is transformed into a desire to alleviate the suffering of fellow human beings, even at the cost of one’s own life, marks these sacrifices with a new logic. Underscoring this shift is a turn from solemn epic hendecasyllables to more popular octosyllabic quatrains. Marandro, for example, vows to undertake a futile mission on behalf of the starving Lira: “Yo me ofrezco de saltar / el foso y el muro fuerte, / y entrar por la misma muerte / para la tuya escusar” [I give myself to jump the moat and cross the mighty Roman wall, to go straight for my death and fall, that your own life might yet go on].[56] Lira responds to his self-abnegating gesture with her own version: “más importa tu vida / que la mía” [your life’s much more important than my own].[57] Given that, with or without bread, Lira and the rest will succumb, Marandro’s act represents a different type of sacrifice, devoid of residual hope for victory, revenge, or even escape. In keeping with this new mode, the third act concludes with overt references to the Christian Eucharist. A starving child begs its mother for “un pedazo de pan” [a piece of bread],[58] and she, in turn, can only offer him “la sangre pura” [my pure blood].[59] This same mother then sums up the play’s pacifistic turn with a tautology that rejects all justifications of war: “¡Oh, Guerra, sólo venida / para causarme la muerte!” [War, you’ve only come for my death].[60] La Numancia’s last act contains the most explicit references to Christian ritual. Marandro’s final words to Lira before he dies are charged with Eucharistic significance: “Ves aquí, Lira, cumplida / mi palabra y mis porfías / de que tú no morirás / mientras yo tuviese vida” [See here, Lira, I’ve kept my word and struggled so that you shan’t die so long as I still have my life];[61] “Pero mi sangre vertida / y con este pan mezclada, / te ha de dar, mi dulce amada, / triste y amarga comida” [My blood’s been shed, but with this bread mix it to sustain your life, my sad and bittersweet beloved];[62] “recibe este cuerpo agora / como recibiste el alma” [take now this body, just as you once received my soul].[63] While such phrasing indicates that the ideal sacrifice is at hand, its final perfection remains elusive because the new morality has yet to transcend the wall separating two peoples. Marandro’s Eucharist is still flawed because its components do not come from the same self: the blood is Marandro’s, but the bread is Roman. Moreover, both have been obtained through a violent attack on the enemy, obscuring once again Christ’s dictum, “Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros” [But I say to you, Love your enemies].[64]

The character who most represents Christian perfection is Bariato, the young boy whose sacrifice grants meaning to all that precede it. With him arises also the evangelistic idea of a lone individual dying on behalf of the rest. But ethnocentric motives linger: “Todo el furor de cuantos ya son muertos / en este pueblo, en polvo reducido, / todo el huir los pactos y conciertos / ni el dar a sujeción jamás oído, / sus iras, sus rancores descubiertos, / está en mi pecho solamente unido” [All the fury of all those who lie dead in this once proud city, reduced to dust; all their never before witnessed shredding of pacts, designs, and subjugation’s lust; their rage, their rancor’s now one in my breast];[65] “Pero muéstrese ya el intento mío / y, si ha sido el amor perfeto y puro / que yo tuve a mi patria tan querida, / asegúrelo luego esta caída” [But let now my intentions be shown forth and, if my love has been perfect and true, that esteem I had for my country’s worth, then let this fall be the ultimate proof]. [66] The pagan mindset cannot achieve Christian perspective on its own. This final step requires a coordinated resolution involving Scipio’s voluntary resignation and the allegorical figure Fame’s declaration of the transcendental nature of Bariato’s act. First, the general links Bariato’s new virtue and paradoxical rise to his own demise: “Con tal vida y virtud heroica extraña, / queda muerto y perdido mi derecho. / Tú con esta caída levantaste / tu fama y mis vitorias derribaste” [With this life and this strange heroic virtue, my conquering right remains dead and lost. With this fall you have raised on high your fame and laid low all my conquests and my name];[67] “Lleva, pues, niño, lleva la ganancia / y la gloria que el cielo te prepara / por haber, derribándote, vencido / al que, subiendo, queda más caído” [Take, then, child, take from here your victory and the glory which heaven prepares you, for, having killed yourself, you above all have conquered he who, once rising, now falls].[68] Fame then hails a new morality, hinting in evangelistic fashion at Christian Empire: “Vaya mi clara voz de gente en gente, / y en dulce y suave son, con tal sonido, / llene las almas de un deseo ardiente / de eternizar un hecho tan subido. / Alzad, romanos, la inclinada frente. / Llevad de aquí este cuerpo, que ha podido, / en tan pequeña edad, arrebataros / el triunfo que pudiera tanto honraros” [Let from people to people my clear voice go forth and ring out such sweet and soft song that souls everywhere fill with ardent joy, making such an act so sublime live long. Raise up your inclined heads, Roman boys. Carry from here this body, which, so wronged, and at such tender years, came down to earth to steal the triumph that could have proved your worth].[69] Here Scipio, the Roman army, and by extension the viewing public beyond them, are made witness to the play’s ultimate rite presided over by Fame. In its final scene, La Numancia enacts an epistemological shift that recalls Philippians 2.10 as the organizing principle of El Greco’s Allegory: all are made to kneel before the decisive Christian example of self-sacrifice. Having surveyed La Numancia’s sacrificial sequence, what remains to be understood is the degree to which this basic theological lesson has political implications. Recent scholarship has highlighted the play’s ambivalent and even subversive portrayal of the classical exemplar Scipio.[70] We can go further: Scipio’s

recognition of the self-abnegation that undoes his epic triumph is a moral lesson for Philip II. Throughout La Numancia, Scipio is repeatedly referred to as a “general prudente” [prudent general],[71] alluding to the principal attribute cultivated by “el rey prudente” [the prudent king], as nearly all of Philip II’s biographers would come to call him.[72] Cervantes’s play transforms the context in which a spectator is to evaluate the meaning of the exemplar.[73] The result is very much like El Greco’s problematic Constantinian portrait of Philip II. Cervantes has placed his king in a position that stresses Christian piety as the ultimate virtue and voices Augustinian doubt about worldly government. The fact that said piety remains just out of reach of all of the characters within the historical and spatial confines of the play makes for La Numancia’s most important overarching irony. When Marquinus inquires into the cause of death of the corpse he is about to resuscitate, the aptly named Milvian replies with a glaring adianoeta that shuttles between “poor diet” and “deficient politics”: “Murió de mal gobierno” [“He died from a bad regime”].[74] The theological politics of La Numancia can also clarify Cervantes’s career trajectory. I have argued that the play’s political criticism is inseparable from religious obligation, that its notes of irony and subversion reflect the goal of subordinating the heroic impulse to the Christian lesson. This fits well with the tone of the generation of dramaturges prior to Lope de Vega,[75] who were generally critical of what Kamen has called the “imperialist triumphalism of the early 1580s, generated largely by the successful occupation of Portugal.”[76] According to Lope himself, this generation created quite a stir: Elíjase el sujeto y no se mire (perdonen los preceptos) si es de reyes, aunque por esto entiendo que el prudente Filipo, rey de España y señor nuestro en viendo un rey en ellas se enfadaba.[77] [Choose the subject and do not be concerned (be excused, precepts) if it deals with kings, even though I hear that the prudent one, Philip, king of Spain and lord of us all, on seeing a king on stage was quite enraged.]

In terms of Cervantes’s later work, de Armas, Güntert, and Armstrong-Roche read La Numancia as a sign of things to come in Don Quijote—classicism, irony, and subversion. We can be more specific: Cervantes’s career starts as an attempt at salvific criticism followed by a more independent course in reaction to that earlier frustrated quest for courtly patronage. Reading La Numancia as evidence of “the collapse of an idealistic humanist discourse”[78] is premature; the play is still a visionary application of Christian philosophy to the leader of a world empire. If there is a shift or breakdown that produces the more irreverent anti-epic sarcasm of Don Quijote, it occurs subsequent to La Numancia. Although both texts are skeptical, “Vaya mi clara voz de gente en gente” [Let from people to people my clear voice go

forth][79] is still a step removed from “debajo de mi manto, al rey mato” [under my cloak, a fig for the king].[80]

CONCLUSIONS On July 6, 1581, San Juan de la Cruz wrote a letter to Catalina de Jesús, a Discalced Carmelite nun at Teresa of Ávila’s new reform convent in Palencia, in which he expressed sadness at not being allowed to return to Castile. He chose a striking metaphor to describe his unhappy life in Andalusia in the wake of his flight from Toledo, where three years earlier he had been cruelly imprisoned by Carmelite friars who resisted the Teresian reforms: Although I do not know where you are, I want to write to you these lines, feeling sure that our Mother will send them on to you if you are not with her; should that be the case, console yourself by thinking that I am more of an exile than you are and more alone. Since that whale swallowed me and vomited me up in this foreign port, I have not been found worthy to see her again nor the saints of those parts. God has done well, though, since in the long run affliction is a file and by suffering darkness we come to a great light.[81] According to this cosmic vision of penitence, like Jonah, San Juan is swallowed by a leviathan that punishes him in order to make him more conscious of his life’s divine mission. At a slightly less personal level, San Juan envisions himself as a scapegoat whose suffering is related to the seven-year-long crisis of the Carmelite Order, which officially ended at the Chapter of Separation held at Alcalá in March 1581, with the Papacy granting independent status to the Discalced. San Juan’s metaphor is even more meaningful when considered in the context of the similarly organological works of El Greco and Cervantes.[82] The difference is that while San Juan plays the role of sacrificial victim swallowed and then shown the light on behalf of the Carmelite Order, El Greco and Cervantes are insisting that Philip II do something similar with respect to the Spanish state. Moreover, as with San Juan’s lifelong self-flagellation, El Greco and Cervantes seem to be proposing a kind of perpetual existential-moral crisis at the site of the king’s submissive body as the best way to control the potential for autocratic Caesarism in Europe’s most powerful and global empire. In sum, such highly religious meditations are just as much signs of anxiety about power as, for instance, Jorge Abril’s translation of Aristotle’s Politics into Spanish in 1584.[83] We might even want to consider El Greco’s paintings and Cervantes’s play as manifestations of a more general salvific crisis circa 1580, a kind of national trauma related both to Spain’s triumphalism as well as the external and internal stresses threatening to undercut it. In addition to the Portuguese crisis (1578–1580), the struggle between Lutheranism and Catholicism was only growing, as evidenced by the ongoing strife in France and the Low Countries, and now the publication of the

Book of Concordia (1580), the Protestant counterweight to the Catholic doctrine emanating from the Council of Trent (1545–1563). A conflict with England loomed, with Mary Queen of Scots recently dethroned by the English Parliament in 1571. Her eventual execution in 1587 would coincide with the fateful Armada of 1588. Internally, the Carmelite crisis of the 1570s was one example of numerous clerical rivalries and the Morisco insurgency at the end of the 1560s only exacerbated tensions that would lead to the expulsions of 1609–1614. A similar psychic disturbance might have accompanied Philip II’s ominous retreat to the Escorial, under construction during this period (1563–1584). This retreat was punctuated by the always difficult matter of succession, with the death of the rebellious Don Carlos in 1568 and the birth of the future Philip III in 1578. In terms of large-scale single-event traumas reverberating through the minds of Europeans, three engagements come to mind. The Battle of San Quentin (1557) was so horrific that the young Prince Philip would be a reluctant warrior henceforth; the Alpujarras War was also bloody and the subsequent relocations particularly agonizing; and the Battle of Lepanto was no less than an early modern Armageddon, the most gruesome military engagement in pre–World War I Europe: “Not until Loos in 1915 would this rate of slaughter be surpassed.”[84] Finally, as the cases of Vives, Fox Morcillo, and even Mariana demonstrate, we should keep in mind that a theoretical critique of monarchy properly grounded in Christian morality was not ipso facto a problem for Habsburg princes. Acknowledgement of sacerdotum as a check to imperium was in accord with Philip II’s view of himself, even a matter of official display: “The image of the king on his knees, overt recognition of the sacred role of the priest standing before him, was a basic symbol in the Escorial.”[85] Sigüenza reports that he was obsessive in this regard: “he always put himself last in any ceremony,” and when clerics who had just taken holy orders gave their first masses, “he used to kiss the hand of the celebrant, and did it as though he were just another worshipper.”[86] Philip II conceived of kingship as a balancing act between clemency and severity, between being a humble Christian and a ruthless dispenser of God’s justice.[87] El Greco’s Allegory certainly takes a hard look at this dual role. The explicit degree to which his Saint Maurice subsequently pushed the contradiction explains why patronage was ultimately withheld. The image of the Duke of Alba conducting a Diocletianic persecution and the blatant sword symbolism that makes the Moriscos analogous to the Theban Legion, all topped by a protracted dispute over colors and costs, was simply too much. The case of Cervantes’s La Numancia is a similar failed bid for patronage. Given the wave of moral criticism that characterized Spanish theater during the Portuguese crisis, yet another allegorical play critical of Habsburg power by another humanist whose life’s mission was to be a Christian thorn in the side of Philip II must have seemed a bridge too far.

NOTES 1. The freestyle appropriation of El Greco’s art is a legacy of the modernists, who rediscovered him at the turn of the

nineteenth century. Cezanne’s color schemes and Picasso’s distortions of the human form are obvious painterly examples. Among writers, Huxley’s willfully ignorant musings set a tone that dominated the twentieth century. Enrique Lafuente Ferrari’s genuflection is a good example: “The secret, the quid divinum, of artistic creation eludes any and every one-sided and pretentious explanation. Genius is not to be explained; we approach it, admire it, observe it, warm ourselves at its glow” (El Greco: The Expressionism of His Final Years [New York: Abrams, 1975], 10). Other modernists impressed by El Greco include Orwell, Miller, Lawrence, and Hemingway (cfr. Robert Scholes, “Inside the Whale Inside: A Hypertextual Journey into the Belly of Modernism,” http://www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/people/scholes/wwwhale/Enter_Here_365 (accessed May 17, 2012). Like Huxley, Lawrence relates the Allegory’s hellmouth to Melville’s Moby Dick and to his own dystopic take on the modern bourgeoisie. Hemingway notes El Greco’s escapism and seems open to the anarchists’ famously homophobic reaction to his paintings. Interestingly, he respects El Greco’s sincerity in contrast to Velázquez, whom he views as a courtly fraud (Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon [New York: Scribner, 1999], 162–64). Dali’s comments are typically disingenuous, especially his claim that El Greco “had almost no personality” (Alain Bosquet, Conversations with Dali [New York: Dutton, 1969], 24). Among the very few arguments for serious politics in El Greco, the most intriguing is Marek Rostworowski’s reading of Laocoön as homage to Toledo’s resistance to Charles V (“El Greco’s ‘Laocoön’: An Epitaph for Toledo’s ‘Comuneros’?,” Artibus et Historiae 14, no. 28 [1993]: 77– 83). Another notable effort is Rosemarie Mulcahy’s elucidation of the Saint Maurice’s criticism of the Duke of Alba (“Una cuestión de iconografía: El San Maurício de El Greco y su rechazo por Felipe II,” in La decoración de la Real Basílica del Monasterio de El Escorial, trans. Consuelo Luca de Tena [Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1992], 67–79). 2. Two exceptions are the Pauline readings of Don Quijote by Paul M. Descouzis, “Cervantes y San Pablo. Enlace ideológico, enlace histórico-religioso,” in Cervantes a nueva luz. II. Con la Iglesia hemos dado, Sancho (Madrid: Ediciones Iberoamericanas, 1973), 108–22; and Álvaro Molina, “Santos y quebrantos: auge y ocaso de la violencia sagrada en Don Quijote II, 58,” in Estas primicias del ingenio: Jóvenes cervantistas en Chicago, eds. Francisco Caudet and Kerry Wilks (Madrid: Castalia, 2003), 99–112. 3. See Alban K. Forcione, Cervantes and the Humanist Vision (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). 4. Cfr. Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971). 5. See Américo Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes y otros estudios cervantinos, ed. José Miranda (Madrid: Trotta, 2002); Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973); Leo Spitzer, “Linguistic Perspectivism in Don Quijote,” in Linguistics and Literary History: Essays in Stylistics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1948), 41–85; Malcolm K. Read, “Language Adrift: A Re-appraisal of the Theme of Linguistic Perspectivism in Don Quijote,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 17 (1981): 271–87; and Anthony J. Cascardi, “Perspectivism and the Conflict of Values in Don Quijote,” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 34, no. 2 (1987): 165–78. 6. Late theological humanism’s extreme subordination of monarchs to Christian morality is summed up well by Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas “Cristo sólo, supo ser rey; y así, sólo lo sabrá ser quien lo imitare” [Christ alone knew how to be king; and thus, only he who imitates Him will know how to be king] (Política de Dios y gobierno de Cristo [Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1930], 9). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. For the general sixteenth-century crisis in exemplary literature, see Timothy Hampton, Writing from History. The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); for the late Atlantic humanists’ anxieties about the chivalric enthusiasm at the courts of England, France, and Spain, see Robert P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor: More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives on Humanism, War, and Peace, 1496–1535 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962); for Erasmus’s intransigent pacifism, see James D. Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus: A Pacifist Intellectual and His Political Milieu (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978); for Vives’s disinterest in the imperial idea, see J. A. Fernández Santamaría, The State, War and Peace: Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance, 1516–1559 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); for more subtleties of sixteenth-century Spanish political discourse, see Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth Century Spain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963); José Antonio Maravall, La oposición política bajo los Austrias (Barcelona:

Ariel, 1972); and Ronald W. Truman, Spanish Treatises on Government, Society, and Religion in the Time of Philip II (Boston: Brill, 1999). 7. The only attempt to understand El Greco in terms of Neoplatonic philosophy can be found in the studies by David B. Davies, El Greco: Mystery and Illumination (Edinburg: National Galleries of Scotland, 1989) and “The Influence of Philosophical and Theological Ideas on the Art of El Greco in Spain,” in Actas del XXIII Congreso international de historia del arte: España entre el Mediterráneo y el Atlántico, Granada 1973 [Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1976-1978], 242-49. Jonathan Brown remains dismissive: “it is difficult to know to what degree, if any, his art was specifically motivated by an intention to give visual form to these abstract ideas, . . . Neoplatonism probably ought not to be isolated as the sole motivating force in the art of El Greco or any painter of this time” (“El Greco and Toledo” in El Greco of Toledo [Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1982], 133). 8. Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 152–53. 9. For modern versions of this self-directed rejection of violence via a paradoxical sacrifice of the sacrificial instinct, see René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Jacques Derrida, “Foi et savoir: Les deux sources de la “religion” aux limites de la simple raison,” in La religion: Séminaire de Capri sous la direction de Jacques Derrida et Gianni Vattimo (Paris: Seuil, 1996), 9–86; and Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (Padstow: Blackwell, 2003). 10. Bram Kempers, Painting, Power and Patronage: The Rise of the Professional Artist in Renaissance Italy, trans. Beverly Jackson (New York: Penguin, 1993), 286–98. 11. J. Brown, “El Greco and Toledo,” 88–90. 12. Wethey, in 1982, finally capitulated to the idea that El Greco painted The Modena Triptych. For a skeptical discussion see Jonathan Brown, “El Tríptico de Módena” in El Greco (Barcelona: Círculo de lectores, 2003), 61–73. Brown’s stylistic and dating issues are weak. The Triptych contains numerous indications of El Greco, which I hope to discuss in a future study. 13. All biblical quotations in English come from the Revised Standard Version of New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, ed. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 14. Anthony Blunt, “El Greco’s ‘Dream of Philip II’: An Allegory of the Holy League,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 3 (1939–1940): 58–69. 15. The IHS in both Raphael and Romano’s and El Greco’s compositions refers to Constantine’s vision of a Greek version of the Latin phrase in hoc signo vinces (by this sign you conquer) in the sky before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. 16. Quoted in Manuel Fernández Álvarez, Felipe II y su tiempo (Madrid: Espasa, 1998), 902. 17. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, Golden Legend Series, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 190. 18. David Allen Warner, “The Cult of Saint Maurice: Ritual Politics and Political Symbolism in Ottonian Germany” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1989). 19. El Marqués de Lozoya Juan Contreras y López de Ayala, El “San Mauricio” del Greco (Barcelona: Juventud, 1947), 7. 20. Mulcahy, “Una cuestión de iconografía,” 78. 21. See José Gudiol, The Complete Paintings of El Greco, trans. Kenneth Lyons (New York: Greenwich House, 1983), 98; El Marqués de Lozoya, El “San Mauricio,” 17–18. 22. Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 131. 23. Supposedly martyred in Gaul, Maurice was a Mauritanian from African Thebes, just one of hordes of Christians persecuted by Maximian in Gaul, Italy, Iberia and “with some severity in North Africa where they were numerous” (Oxford Classical Dictionary, eds. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. 3rd. ed. [Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 1995], s.v. “Maximian”). The suffering of the defeated Moriscos did not go unnoticed by Spaniards. Don Juan of Austria, the victorious general, writing to Ruy Gómez de Silva, Philip II’s most trusted advisor, described their

forced relocation out of Granada as “the saddest sight in the world” (Quoted in Kamen, Philip of Spain, 131). 24. Catálogo de las causas contra la fe seguidas ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de Toledo (Madrid: Archivo Histórico Nacional, 1903), 252 [leg. 196, ord. 171]. 25. According to Julián Zarco Cuevas, the crown paid 800 ducats for El Greco’s piece (Pintores españoles en San Lorenzo el Real de El Escorial [Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1931], 139–42) and only 550 for Cincinnati’s replacement (182). An initial sum of 500 ducats supposedly went toward the cost of colors and canvas. Nevertheless, El Greco appears to have been nonplussed by the final payment of 300 ducats in November of 1582. 26. I borrow these terms from Janis A. Tomlinson, who sees a series of eighteenth-century courtly tapestry cartoons by Goya as a “thoughtfully developed iconographic sequence” (Francisco Goya, The Tapestry Cartoons and Early Career at the Court of Madrid [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], 123); and Erwin Panofsky, who describes Gothic Architecture as a sophisticated stylization of Christianity that contains an inherent “visual logic” (Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism [New York: Meridian, 1957], 58). For an interpretation of the subversive allegorical and political symbolism woven into Michelangelo’s work, see Antonio Forcellino, Michelangelo: A Tormented Life, trans. Allan Cameron (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009). 27. See Willard F. King, “Cervantes’ Numancia and Imperial Spain,” Modern Language Notes 94, no. 2 (1979): 200– 21. 28. See Ibid.; and Carroll Johnson, “La Numancia y la estructura de la ambigüedad cervantina” in Cervantes, su obra y su mundo: Actas del I Congreso Internacional sobre Cervantes, ed. Manuel Criado de Val (Madrid: EDI–6, 1981), 309–16. 29. See King, “Cervantes’ Numancia.” 30. See Alfredo Hermenegildo’s edition of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s La destruición de Numancia (Madrid: Castalia, 1994). 31. See Johnson, “La Numancia.” 32. See Ibid. 33. Barbara Simerka, Discourses of Empire: Counter-Epic Literature in Early Modern Spain (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). 34. E. C. Graf, “Valladolid dellenda est: La política teológica de La Numancia,” Theatralia: Revista de Poética del Teatro 5 (2003): 273–82. 35. Aaron M. Kahn, “Moral Opposition to Philip II in Pre-Lopean Drama,” Hispanic Review 74, no. 3 (2006): 227–50; and Ibid., The Ambivalence of Imperial Discourse: Cervantes’s La Numancia within the ‘Lost Generation’ of Spanish Drama (1570–1590) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008). 36. See King, “Cervantes’ Numancia;” and Evelio Echevarría, “Influencias de Ercilla en La Numancia, de Cervantes,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 430 (1986): 97–99. 37. Cfr. Angela Belli, “Cervantes’ El cerco de Numancia and Euripides’ The Trojan Women,” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1978): 121–28; and Frederick A. de Armas, Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 38. Juan Bautista de Avalle-Arce, “La Numancia: Cervantes y la tradición histórica,” in Nuevos deslindes cervantinos, 2nd ed. (Barcelona: Ariel, 1975), 247–75. 39. Joaquín Casalduero, Sentido y forma del teatro de Cervantes (Madrid: Gredos, 1966). 40. William M. Whitby, “The Sacrifice Theme in Cervantes’ Numancia,” Hispania 45, no. 2 (1962): 205–10. 41. Matthew Stroud, “La Numancia como auto secular” in Cervantes, su obra y su mundo: Actas del I Congreso Internacional sobre Cervantes, ed. Manuel Criado de Val (Madrid: EDI–6, 1981): 303–7. 42. Bryan M. Stiegler, “The Coming of the New Jerusalem: Apocalypctic Vision in Cervantes’ La Numancia” Neophilologus 80 (1996): 569–81. 43. Cfr. Maureen Flynn, “Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish Auto de fe,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22, no. 2 (1991): 281–97; and Francisco Bethencourt, “The Auto da Fé: Ritual and Imagery,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55 (1992): 155–68.

44. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, La destruición de Numancia, ed. Alfredo Hermenegildo (Madrid: Castalia, 1994), vv. 197–200. 45. Cervantes, La destruición de Numancia, vv. 633–36. 46. Ibid., vv. 669–71. 47. Ibid., 89. 48. Ibid., vv. 879–84. 49. Ibid., vv. 885–87. 50. Ibid., v. 943. 51. Ibid., vv. 1035–40. 52. Ibid., vv. 1053–54. 53. Ibid., vv. 1085–88. 54. Ibid., vv. 1073–76. 55. Ibid., vv. 1434-41. 56. Ibid., vv. 1506–09. 57. Ibid., vv. 1532–533. 58. Ibid., v. 1707. 59. Ibid., v. 1711. 60. Ibid., vv. 1722–723. 61. Ibid., vv. 1832–835. 62. Ibid., vv. 1844–847. 63. Ibid., vv. 1862–863. 64. Matt. 5.44. 65. Cervantes, La destruición de Numancia, vv. 2361–366. 66. Ibid., vv. 2397–400. 67. Ibid., vv. 2405–408. 68. Ibid., vv. 2413–416. 69. Ibid., vv. 2417–424. 70. De Armas, Cervantes; Graf, “Valladolid”; Michael Armstrong-Roche, “Imperial Theater of War: Republican Values under Siege in Cervantes’s Numancia,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 6, no. 2 (2005): 185–203. 71. Cervantes, La destruición de Numancia, vv. 1153, 2258, 2318. 72. Cfr. Kamen, Philip of Spain, 221ff. 73. For Garcilaso’s more secular re-appropriation of Scipio in his poetic criticism of Charles V, see E. C. Graf, “From Scipio to Nero to the Self: The Exemplary Politics of Stoicism in Garcilaso de la Vega’s Elegies,” PMLA 116, no. 5 (2001): 1316–333. For Cervantes’s regard for Garcilaso, see José Manuel Blecua, “Garcilaso y Cervantes,” in Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Homenaje de Ínsula en el cuarto centenario de su nacimiento (1547–1947) (Madrid: Ínsula, 1947), 141–50. 74. Cervantes, La destruición de Numancia, v. 945. For other takes on the fundamental ironies of La Numancia, see Sabatino G. Maglione, “Amity and Enmity in Cervantes’s La Numancia,” Hispania 83, no. 2 (May 2000): 179–88; and Georges Güntert, “La tragedia como lugar privilegiado de la reflexión metapoética: La Numancia,” Theatralia: Revista de Poética del Teatro 5 (2003): 261–72. 75. Cfr. Anthony Watson, Juan de la Cueva and the Portuguese Succession (London: Tamesis, 1971); Kahn, “Moral Opposition” and The Ambivalence. 76. Kamen, Philip of Spain, 276. For Cervantes’s pastoral novel La Galatea (1585) as criticism of the annexation of Portugal, see José Montero Reguera, “Historia, política y literatura en La Galatea de Miguel de Cervantes,” Romeral: estudios filológicos en homenaje a José Antonio Fernández Romero, ed. Inmaculada Báez and María Rosa Pérez (Vigo: Universidad de Vigo, 2002), 329–42. 77. Lope de Vega Carpio, “El arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo,” in Preceptiva dramática española, ed.

A. Porqueras-Mayo and F. Sánchez Escribano (Madrid: Gredos, 1971), vv. 157–61. 78. Armstrong-Roche, “Imperial Theater of War,” 189. 79. Cervantes, La destruición de Numancia, v. 2417. 80. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Luis Andrés Murillo, 5th ed., 2 vols. (Madrid: Castalia, 1991), 1:51; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, trans. John Rutherford (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 11. For Cervantes’s sonnet “Al túmulo del rey Felipe II en Sevilla” (At the Tomb of Philip II in Seville) as a turning point in this trajectory, see E. C. Graf, “Escritor/Excretor: Cervantes’s ‘Humanism’ on Philip II’s Tomb,” Cervantes 19, no. 1 (1999): 66–95. 81. Quoted in Gerald Brenan, St John of the Cross: His Life and Poetry (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 50. 82. Cfr. Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966). 83. As Fredric Jameson puts it with regard to Milton, “religious and theological debate is the form, in pre-capitalist societies, in which groups become aware of their political differences and fight them out” (“Religion and Ideology: A Political Reading of Paradise Lost,” in Literature, Politics and Theory: Papers from the Essex Conference, 1976–1984, ed. Francis Barker et al. [London: Methuen, 1986], 38). For intimate aesthetic and even hallucinogenic religiously inspired responses to the social trauma of a military campaign and the personal trauma of a loss of patronage, each with political implications, see Richard L. Kagan, Lucretia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and Alison Weber, “Lope de Vega’s Rimas sacras: Conversion, Clientage, and the Performance of Masculinity,” PMLA 120, no. 2 (2005): 404–21. 84. Roger Crowley, Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World (New York: Random House, 2009), 276. 85. Henry Kamen, The Escorial: Art and Power in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 204. 86. Quoted in Ibid., 204. 87. For Philip II’s understanding of this contrast, see Fernández Álvarez, Felipe II, 782–87. A modern version of the “two Philips” syndrome can be found in the antithetical opinions of the Spanish king advanced by Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); and Kamen, Philip of Spain. Parker criticizes his intolerance; Kamen underscores his humanity.

Chapter 10 SPAIN SUCCORED BY RELIGION Jason McCloskey Titian and Lope de Vega’s La Dragontea Titian’s paintings, Religion Succored by Spain and The Glory, constitute vivid and celebrated pictorial signs of power in sixteenth-century Spain. While the former deals with the power of the Holy League in their victory over the Ottomans in the Battle of Lepanto, the latter imagines a majesty and authority for the Christian God. This chapter argues that Lope de Vega’s allegorical introduction and conclusion to La Dragontea takes these images and transforms them into signs of the conflict between Spain and England for control of the New World. As Javier Portús writes, “una parte importante de las alusiones a objetos artísticos que aparecen en el teatro o en la poesía lopescos tienen su origen en un deseo del escritor de utilizarlos como signos” [an important part of the allusions to art objects that appear in Lope’s theater and poetry has its origin in the writer’s desire to use them as signs].[1] Although he is referring to explicit, real ekphrases of known works of art, Portús’s words apply equally as well to the “veiled,” narrative ekphrases for which I argue in the case of Lope’s epic.[2] Following the technique he applies to the historical sources of his poem, Lope also alters the artwork upon which he models the epic. These modifications permit him to shape the paintings to his narrative requirements, thereby enabling him to address problems created by the political and historical perspective of his poem. One potential model for his alterations to Titian’s Religion Succored by Spain in particular can be seen in the frontispiece of Juan de Castellanos’s, Primera parte de elegías de varones ilustres de Indias (1589), which also narrates episodes in the history of the Spanish Caribbean. Yet rather than definitively resolving problems, many of Lope’s changes to his visual subtexts merely provide readers a new angle from which to view expressions of the same, insoluble issues associated with the epic, such as its dubious historicity, its commentary on patronage and its use of imagery derived from the representation of conflicts with the Islamic world. La Dragontea recounts Francis Drake’s final, disastrous voyage to the Indies in 1595–1596. The poem generated much controversy because it appears to have exaggerated the role of Diego Suárez de Amaya in the defeat of Drake while trivializing the contributions of Alonso de Sotomayor, the more historically accurate protagonist.[3] Lope’s portrayal of Drake in the epic also adeptly exploits the multiple religious and classical connotations of dragons, as Barbara Fuchs writes, “he embodies biblical evil from alpha to omega, from the Snake in Eden to the Dragon of the Apocalypse, and the struggle against him becomes a cosmological battle of good against evil.”[4] In conjunction with this image, Drake appears initially with the

allegorical figure of Greed at his side, chiding him during his slumber for his sloth while the Spanish, unimpeded, pile on their treasures. The most recent editor of La Dragontea, Antonio Sánchez Jiménez, argues that the artistic and ideological unity of the epic rests on Lope’s fusion of “dos temas y sistemas simbólicos relacionados que aparecen a lo largo de la obra: el de los ofidios y el de la codicia, ambos imbricados en el simbolismo religioso que permea La Dragontea” [two related themes and symbolic systems that appear throughout the work: that of ophidians and that of greed, both of which overlap in the religious symbolism that permeates La Dragontea].[5] Sánchez Jiménez further points out that dragons were considered a kind of snake in Lope’s day, and the connection to Drake was facilitated by the coincidental similarity between the pirate’s name and “draco,” the Latin word for dragon.[6] This portrayal of Francis Drake as a dragon preceded Lope, who, “aprovecha estas asociaciones previas para recontextualizarlas e inscribir a Draque en el bando infernal de los ofidios, enfrentando a la católica Monarquía hispana” [takes advantage of these previous associations to recontextualize them and inscribe Drake in the infernal band of ophidians, confronting the Catholic Hispanic Monarchy]. [7]

Just as the poem opens by developing Drake in the image of a dragon, it simultaneously depicts the incipient narrative as a painting created by words. As early as the fifth stanza, the narrator implores Philip III of Spain for his undivided attention, alluding to the visual arts: oídme ahora, en tanto que anticipo vuestra dichosa edad a la Dorada, con el pincel de Apeles y Lisipo, en otra tabla, de laurel cortada. Que espero, serenísimo Filipo, ver el águila vuestra coronada del mismo sol, y que a sus plantas bellas estén del otro polo las estrellas.[8]

[hear me, now, as I show my preference for your joyful reign over the Golden Age with the paintbrush of Apelles and Lysippos on another panel, cut from the laurel tree. For I hope, most serene Philip, to see your eagle crowned with the sun itself and at your feet the stars from the other hemisphere.] The narrator metaphorically seizes the paintbrush of Apelles, the renowned ancient Greek painter, and applies it not to any ordinary wooden panel, but rather to one made of laurel. The adaptation of the artist’s tools to the world of poetry comes across rather uniquely, as the more common terms of comparison would be the painter’s brush and the writer’s quill. Here, the narrator refers to the page adorned with words as a panel cut from laurel wood, a tree whose leaves symbolize the pinnacle of poetic achievement. In this way, the basis of the metonymic distinction between painting and poetry is transferred from the instruments used to create the work to the material that bears the finished product. The second half of the stanza

refers to another realm of visual representation, the iconography of heraldry. The imperial eagle of the Habsburg dynasty is imagined with the sun overhead and starry celestial frontiers spread out below its clutching talons, graphically symbolic of universal imperial domination. This evocation of the imperial bird recalls the frontispiece of La Dragontea and naturally conjures up the image of the heraldic shield of the Habsburgs traditionally borne by the eagle.[9] And much like the comparison in the preceding lines of this stanza, heraldry attests to the significance of the surfaces upon which images and words are emblazoned. In the case of coats of arms, the image of an escutcheon, synecdoche of military might, serves as the panel upon which signs of power are painted. These references to visual art inevitably invite readers to consider the rhetorical framework of the epic—if not the entire narrative— in the context of painting. The connections between Lope de Vega and the world of visual arts are increasingly appreciated as an important subtext to his literary works. Portús, for example, has detailed Lope’s consistent interaction with painters and their social and aesthetic concerns throughout his life.[10] Also, Lope was well acquainted with the commonplace maxims of his day that bound together painting and poetry as both complementary and rival artistic modes. For example, Simonides’s claim that painting was mute poetry and poetry was painting that spoke, appears both in Lope’s plays as well as his epics.[11] Not only this, but Lope himself dabbled in the visual arts and possessed small collections of paintings and engravings.[12] Furthermore, studies by an expanding number of scholars have demonstrated that Lope drew on paintings for the portrayal of characters and situations in his texts. While dramatic works of the dramaturge have understandingly received the bulk of critical attention (and even this area of study remains in its early stages), several studies have focused on the role of visual arts in Lope’s epic poems.[13] These analyses have examined the thematic and structural importance of painting in his epics, but one significant task that remains is to examine the poems for concrete visual subtexts that may have informed Lope’s creation of scenes and actions. The research of Frederick A. de Armas suggests that one fruitful place to begin such an approximation to Lope’s epics is the artwork of Titian, whose paintings play a crucial role in several of Lope’s plays. Most importantly for this study, de Armas has proposed that Titian’s Religion Succored by Spain exercised an influence on Lope’s creation of the allegorical characters in his play, La santa liga.[14] As de Armas summarizes the role of Titian’s art in Lope’s texts, “For some of the most intimate scenes of love as well as for some of the most heroic scenes of war Lope turns to Titian, whose pictorial images complement the playwright’s art, embodying, clarifying and expanding the sense of the written words.”[15] Yet Lope’s works were certainly not alone in manifesting the influence of Titian, whose artwork appears also to have influenced another Spanish epic published in 1589, less than a decade before La Dragontea. Juan de Castellanos’s Primera parte de elegías de varones ilustres de Indias recounts the Spanish conquest of the New

World, organized around the stories of a variety of conquistadors and the lands and peoples they conquered. According to Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, the frontispiece of Castellanos’s epic (fig. 10.1) “typifies the use of typology in the Spanish colonization of the New World.”[16]

Frontispiece of Juan de Castellanos’s Primera parte de elegías de varones ilustres de Indias. Source: Biblioteca Nacional de España

This scholar offers an illuminating explication of the central image of the frontispiece that appears on an escutcheon supported by a lion and a puma: The faithful maiden Spain (“Hispania Virgo fidelis”), bearing the Cross and the Bible, slays the dragon Leviathon (“dan [Vulg., Dan. 14:26] io diruptus est draco”), which has prevented the crossing of the Atlantic. The dragon bites its own long tail, which encircles both the ocean and the two continents, and its Amerindian allies shoot arrows at Hispania, who stands on a shell in the middle of the ocean. Angels and the Holy Spirit descend on the New World. The Spanish king’s coat of arms unites the two halves of the composition, in which the fauna and flora of the Old and New Worlds stand at opposite sides.[17] The artwork presents an intricate, tangled visual-verbal web that blends biblical

citations, symbols of Spanish domination, and representations of the natural world from both sides of the Atlantic. Latin verses appear opposite the frontispiece and act as an epigrammatic ekphrasis of the image. This facing poem reads: Hispanum regnum declarat bellica virgo Est maris Oceani littus & ipse draco. Hic serpens ingens orbem circundat utrimque Coniungens caude, perfreta, longa, caput. Ergo, quicquid erit, quod continet orbis uterq[ue] Magne Philippe tuo serviet imperio.[18]

[The warrior virgin declares that the Spanish kingdom is the shore of the ocean sea and the dragon itself. This immense serpent wraps the earth from both sides and joins its head with its long and narrow tale. Therefore, whatever it is that both sides of the world contain will be subjected to your empire, Great Philip.][19] These lines of poetry compliment the words about the Spanish king that appear around the coat of arms in the engraving: “Super maria terrasque Eae [Ecclesiae] De [Defensor] Philip 2 Rex Catholicus atque pi[us]” [Philip II, defender of the Church, Catholic and pious king over the earth and seas.][20] The “orbis uterque” of the penultimate line appears to refer both to the New World and the Old, yet there may also be a play on words here. “Orbis” can also fittingly refer to the coils of a snake, and the Latin poem certainly does equate the spirals of the serpent’s flesh with the surface area of the earth.[21] The iconography and the epigram depict the Leviathan of this engraving as the vanquished enemy, but ironically its wrapping around the ocean gives unity to both “worlds” and allows the Spanish Crown symbolically to bridge the huge distances that intersperse the empire. The Hispania, Virgo fidelis, of the frontispiece is pictured astride this watery expanse decked with religious accoutrements and trailed by ships, symbols of commerce. The one-for-one presentation of the plants and animals running vertically along the edges of the engraving effectively echo the notions of economic exchange suggested by the ships. Their symmetrical arrangement subtly simplifies the complicated and unbalanced commercial and cultural trade between Europe and the Americas. The woman of the engraving representing Hispania would appear to be the same virgin of the epigram, whose bellicose character is highlighted. Between the image and the Latin poem, then, these facing pages reveal the fusion of military, evangelical, and commercial interests motivating the movement of the “hispanum regnum.” Both the picture and the epigram, moreover, emphasize the allegorical adversary of the dragon, described as the very ocean conquered by Spain as well as the new manifestation of the Leviathan prophesized in Hebrew Scriptures. The faithful and warlike maiden of Castellanos’s frontispiece bears a close resemblance to the allegorical representation of Spain in Titian’s Religion Succored by Spain (fig. 10.2). Despite the intriguing similarities, however, the two pieces of

artwork have not been compared. Titian’s painting is replete with the sort of religious and nationalistic iconography viewers would expect from a painting of this title. It was sent to Spain in 1575 along with St. Jerome in Penitence and the Allegorical Portrait of Philip II, which commemorates the birth of Prince Ferdinand and the victory at Lepanto.[22] The prevailing allegorical interpretation of Religion Succored by Spain identifies the conquering female figure on the left as Spain, and Titian paints her in mid-stride, carrying a long lance vertically in her left hand and grasping a shield with the coat of arms of the Spanish monarchy in her right. The other woman, distressed and doubled over with her hand on her chest is thought to represent Religion, hence the title of the artwork. Behind Spain appears a woman brandishing a sword, identified variously as Justice, Fortitude, and Venice.[23] In the background, stretching to the horizon, is the sea upon which sails of ships appear to pursue a turbaned man driving a marine chariot drawn by horses. This figure personifies the Turkish challenge to European Christian power on the Mediterranean, and his ostensible flight is suggestive of the triumph of the Holy League over the Ottomans at Lepanto. An important part of the history of this painting relates to the successive transformations of early versions of the composition. First begun as a secular, mythological painting for Alfonso d’Este, it was reworked and completed for the Emperor Maxmilian II.[24] After the famous sea battle, Titian recast the piece yet again in a new painting for Philip II that enhanced the Christian iconography and further transformed the original mythological figures. Thus across the interpretations the erstwhile Neptune became a Turk, Minerva metamorphosed into Spain and the Venus figure was made into Religion.[25] As I will discuss below, this transformative character inherent in the genesis of Religion Succored by Spain continues through La Dragontea.

Titian. Religion Succored by Spain. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Source: Scala / Art Resource, NY

The ongoing transformation of Titian’s artwork can also be glimpsed in the engraving of Castellanos’s epic, which dispenses with discrete representations of Religion and her companion only to unite them in one figure. The Hispania of Castellanos is striding across the ocean and followed by billowing sails much like Titian’s Spain swaggers toward Religion. Hispania carries a Bible in her left hand and a long staff topped with a cross; the nearby fluttering banners inscribed with passages from Psalms in the engraving recall the banner flying from atop Spain’s lance in Religion Succored by Spain. The similar way in which both figures hold the long, vertical staff between the index and middle fingers also catches the attention of viewers. Echoing the cross at the end of her own staff, Hispania of the frontispiece wears a cruciform crown, reminiscent of the tiara entwined in the hair of Titian’s Spain. The iconographic religiosity of Hispania suggests a fusion of the identities of Religion and Spain from Titian’s painting into a single personification. This certainly reinforces the close connections between the Catholic Church and Spain in the late sixteenth century. For the artist who designed the engraving for Castellanos’s epic, Titian’s painting could have provided a perfect visual model for the allegorical representation of a triumphant Spain coming to the rescue of a party under assault. As Cañizares-Esguerra puts it, “Hispania arrives with a message of liberation,” which is precisely the mission of Spain in the artwork by Titian.[26] For Cañizares-Esguerra, the liberation carried out by Hispania in the frontispiece is from the forces of Satan over and through the Native Americans. Similarly, in the painting Spain prepares to wage war with what are portrayed as Satanic forces manifested in the Turks and heretics. And just as Titian’s painting would have provided an ideal model for the

engraving in Castellanos’s epic, so the frontispiece of Primera parte de elegías de varones ilustres de Indias could have guided Lope in his adaptation of the artwork to the situation of English piracy in the New World.[27] Much like the Hispania of Castellanos’s epic and the Spain of Titian’s painting, La Dragontea also features an allegorized Spain. She appears in the initial scene of the epic with female figures representing Italy, the Indies and Religion. Lope’s version of the allegorical figure of Spain is described thus: Traía la primera por adorno cercado de castillos el cabello, y un mundo de marfil labrado al torno entre las plumas del extremo bello, aguas, columnas y “Plus Ultra” en torno, con una gola de diamante al cuello, y el manto, de leones guarnecido, todo en cinco jirones dividido.[28]

[The first one wore her hair ringed with castles as adornment and, between the most beautiful feathers, there was a world of ivory wrapped with waters, columns and the “Plus Ultra.” She had a diamond gorget over her throat and a cloak embellished with lions and divided into five banners.] Like the synonymous figure from Religion Succored by Spain, she is depicted as a warrior maiden. Titian paints her wearing a cuirass, the armor protecting the front and back of the torso, while Lope describes her in a gorget, a piece of armor used to protect the throat.[29] Furthermore, Lope’s Spain is draped with the heraldic symbols of the Spanish kingdoms of Castilla and León, Aragón, Valencia, Navarra and Granada,[30] just as Titian’s Spain carries a shield adorned with the Spanish coat of arms. Trailing Spain is the figure of Italy: Mostraba la segunda en el tocado los jardines de Hibla, o los Pensiles, y un vestido de letras adornado hebreas, griegas, propias y gentiles. Cruza dos llaves un pendón nevado en dos cendales rojos y sutiles coronados de aquella ilustre y clara pontifical crucífera tïara.[31]

[The second one sported the hanging gardens of Hibla on her headdress and a gown adorned with Greek, Hebrew, Roman and pagan letters. Along with two fine, red silken flags, a white banner weaves together two keys, which are crowned with that illustrious and bright pontifical cruciform tiara.] As Sánchez Jiménez clarifies, the hanging gardens of Hibla refer to Sicily, which was part of the Spanish crown, and the letters embroidered on her dress represent the learning associated with Italy.[32] The keys and crown of the second half of the

stanza allude to the papal insignia decorating the two red banners carried by Italy.[33] These silk flags bring to mind the red banderole atop the lance in the left hand of Spain in Titian’s painting.[34] Moreover, Lope’s description of Italy as “la segunda” [the second one][35] recalls the position of the maiden wielding a sword standing directly behind Spain in Titian’s painting. As discussed above, interpretations of the woman following Spain range from the representation of Fortitude to that of Justice, but de Armas’s identification of her as Venice meshes closely with my reading of La Dragontea. In his epic, it seems that Lope recasts her not as Venice specifically, but rather as Italy, who appears second in a long line of male and female soldiers led by Spain. Yet unlike Titian’s painting, Religion plays a more commanding role in La Dragontea, as she is the one who ushers in the other three maidens. Religion beseeches God for aid in defense against pirates attacking from all directions, and is described as “Una dama divina, hermosa y bella / más que el aurora, y de la luz vestida / del rubio sol, como la blanca estrella / que asiste a ver su vuelta y su partida” [A divine maiden, more beautiful and gorgeous than the dawn, and dressed in the light of the golden sun, like the white star that attentively watches its return and departure].[36] Her beauty and whiteness are underscored, and she is compared to Venus, the planet that accompanies the Sun in its rising and setting. This periphrastic reference to Venus could be considered especially significant given that the figure of Religion in Titian’s painting was adapted from what was originally Venus.[37] Perhaps this attests to another instance of a clever inside allusion that only a small minority of readers would understand.[38] In this case, Lope would be acknowledging the derivation of Titian’s Religion from the iconography of Venus, but he only subtly discloses his knowledge by comparing his own figure of Religion not directly to the female goddess of love, but rather to her planet. Despite these similarities, the painting does not provide a perfect model for the situation depicted in the epic, and descriptions in Lope’s poem suggests a creative transformation of elements in the artwork to meet the needs of the narrative.[39] One of the most interesting transformations carried out in the poem involves Francis Drake himself. Clearly Titian’s painting does not include a portrait of the English pirate roaming the coasts, but there are an abundance of snakes—the symbol of Drake in the epic—slithering around the tree. When the poem first describes the Englishman’s whereabouts, the narrator relates: “Pues, retirado el Draque, como digo, / colgada ya la espada sanguinosa, / al pie de un olmo que, del agua amigo, / todo se vía en una fuente hermosa” [So Drake had retired, as I said, with his bloody sword now put aside, at the foot of an elm tree, fond of water, where everything was seen reflected in a pretty fount].[40] If readers take Drake for a dragon or a snake, as the epic itself insists, the parallels with Titian’s painting are quite suggestive. Just as in the painting, Drake’s sword is near a tree, which is rooted on the shore of a body of water. Furthermore, when Codicia interrogates him regarding his inactivity, she asks, “¿Qué haces, capitán Dragón famoso, / cuyas alas a un tronco están asidas . . . ?” [What

are you doing, famous Captain Drake, whose wings cling to a tree trunk?].[41] Here Greed describes Drake’s wings as wrapped around a tree trunk, clearly reminiscent of the snakes in Titian’s painting. Continuing, she inquires, “¿Agora, desarmada la cabeza, / de la celada la cerviz sacudes / y, enseñada a la tabla de un navío, / la inclinas a la yerba de este río?” [Now, with your head unprotected, you shake off the helmet from your neck, and, used to the boards of a ship, you lie your head down on the grass by this river?].[42] Codicia’s reference to the helmet doffed by Drake also evokes the shiny helmet lying in the pile of armor at the feet of Religion. In this way, the poem accounts for both the sword and the helmet from Titian’s Religion Succored by Spain, and this might be viewed as foreshadowing the impending defeat of Drake, just as the armor in the painting was interpreted as the spoils of vanquished Turks.[43] Since the earliest interpretations of the painting, the snakes behind Religion have been viewed as representative of heresy and the false teachings associated with them.[44] This reveals yet another similarity between Drake and the serpents, as heresy is the major offence attributed to the English pirate. The allegorical figure of Greed also partakes in this characterization, because she “animarle con falsas profecías, / quiso en el alma del Dragón Francisco / infundir por sus ojos basilisco” [tried to encourage him with false prophecies, pouring basilisk into his eyes].[45] Her false prophecies are consistent with the venomous lies imputed to the snakes in the painting by such interpreters as Francisco de los Santos. Continuing the similarities, Greed is portrayed with the “cáliz dorado babilonio” [the golden Babylonian chalice], which recalls the overturned golden chalice at the feet of Religion in the painting.[46] As Sánchez Jiménez points out, the lines in La Dragontea regarding the Babylonian chalice draw on a passage in Jeremiah, and they also resemble lines from Revelation.[47] Thus the painting, with its depiction of snakes, representative of heretics, near a golden chalice perfectly complements the Biblical passages alluded to in the epic, and Lope seamlessly fuses verbal and visual precedents in La Dragontea. Finally, the equivalent of the Turk at sea in the painting materializes in Religion’s plea to God: “Mira las almas que perdidas lloran / Italia triste, España miserable, / cautivas de los bárbaros que adoran / la rapiña de cuerpos lamentable; / los cuatro que en Argel cosarios moran, / con daño mío y perdición notable, / Chafer, Fuchel, Mamisalí y Morato;” [look at the lost souls, bemoaned by sad Italy and miserable Spain, held captive by the barbarians that worship the shameful theft of bodies; behold the four corsairs from Algiers: Chafer, Fuchel, Mimisalí and Morato, who cause me harm and notable losses].[48] On these verses, Fuchs writes, “Religion describes in careful detail the scourge of Islamic attacks on shipping and the coastal areas of Spain and Italy; her catalogue of corsairs reads like a ‘Most Wanted’ for the period.”[49] Lope effectively multiplies and transforms the anonymous turbaned man in the painting into four specific pirates. In addition to his transformative ekphrases of the serpents and the Turk, Lope also supplements the painting with another character not pictured and modifies the power relations depicted by Titian. He adds the figure of the Indies to the allegorical

entourage, calling her the third in line following Spain and Italy. Her multicolored garb is likened to the array of colorful feathers of the Phoenix, and on her head she wears a golden globe, which, by way of the equator line drawn on it, shows the antipodes, those inhabitants dwelling in the other hemisphere.[50] Yet she, along with her female companions, is not marching forth victoriously to rescue Religion. In La Dragontea, Spain does not advance with a confident stride, holding a lance and a shield, backed by a league of warrior maidens. Spain, Italy, and especially the Indies are the miserable victims in need of deliverance from the heretical dragon, and it is Religion who acts as the intercessor between God and the three suppliants. She boldly ascends to heaven, where she hears celestial singing, and beseeches the deity for assistance. Addressing the “Author of Heaven,”[51] she pleads: “Mira en mi rostro, de mi llanto ciego, la Religión Cristiana perseguida, / a España, a Italia, a América turbadas / de propias y de bárbaras espadas” [See in my face, the persecuted Chrisitian Religion, blind with tears, Spain, Italy and America, afflicted by both heretical and barbarous swords].[52] In her emotional distress, Religion continues to evoke the image of the woman threatened by snakes in the painting, but in her role as intermediary and spokeswoman for Spain, Italy and the Indies, she recalls another figure in a different canvas by Titian. The allegory of Religion in La Dragontea appears to be the result of a conflation of two pieces of artwork, indicative of a combinatory ekphrastic strategy. The second painting with which Religion Succored by Spain seems to be mingled is The Glory, completed by Titian for Charles V in 1554. This canvas depicts the Holy Trinity from the Christian religion on the celestial throne in the presence of throngs of angels, and below, biblical characters alongside Charles V and members of his family. The Habsburg monarch, draped in a shroud, kneels on a cloud beside his crown, folding his hands in a gesture of supplication while Queen Isabella, Prince Philip, and Mary of Hungary imitate his submissive posture. The entire composition is bathed in golden light, which sets off the blue robes worn by God the Father and Son, the Virgin Mary (pictured on upper left gazing backward), and the figure of David, holding his harp in the lower right of the canvas. The unique iconography and arrangement of the painting has led to multiple appellations, such as the Last Judgment, the The Adoration of the Trinity and The Glory (figure 10.3), the title by which the artwork is known today.[53]

Titian. The Glory. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Source: Scala / Art Resource, NY

With this in mind, Falomir asserts: We can therefore conclude that this painting is open to various readings and that although it might initially be considered a visual representation of the Trinitarian orthodoxy of the Habsburgs, it acquires a devotional character when we consider that Charles contemplated it while he was dying.[54] Indeed, the king’s continual fixation on the painting just before his death at the Yuste worried his physician.[55] Given its subject of supplication and salvation before God, one of the most important themes of the painting appears to be intercession, which is embodied by the figures of the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, who stands behind her, and the enigmatic woman in the foreground dressed in green, who visually connects the upper and lower portions of the painting with her extended arms. It is this woman and her intermediary relation to the Trinity that helps to elucidate the role assumed by Religion in La Dragontea. This woman garbed in green with her back toward the viewer has been seen as Mary Magdalene and the Eritrean Sybil, but it is her identification as the Catholic Church that proves the most suggestive in the context of La Dragontea.[56] Writing

only seven years after the publication of Lope’s epic, José de Sigüenza interprets her allegory: “en medio del cuadro, la Iglesia en figura de una doncella hermosa, que está como presentando a Dios los príncipes del Nuevo y Viejo Testamento, y muchos príncipes y personas de la casa de Austria” [in the middle of the picture, the Church, in the figure of a beautiful maiden, who is presenting to God the princes of the New and Old Testament, and many princes and people of the House of Austria].[57] Lope’s personification of Religion, another beautiful maiden (“Una dama divina, hermosa y bella”),[58] is intriguingly suggestive of the figure of the Church in The Glory. Although Religion and the Church represent distinct entities, they are also closely related figures. Like the woman in Titian’s painting, the primary role of Religion in the epic is to intercede on behalf of Spain, Italy and the Indies. And much as the image of the Church, who is surrounded by biblical characters, Religion verbally positions herself among important figures in the Christian tradition, as she reviews the history of the Church and its evangelists and martyrs in her speech before God. Her survey leads her to Henry VIII, Francis Drake, Elizabeth I and Martin Luther, all of whom are denounced as heretics and effectively lumped together with the Muslim corsairs raiding the European coasts.[59] Also, just as the beautiful maiden in the painting is said to intercede for the family of Charles V, so Religion beseeches God to favor the pious desire of Philip II for justice, which remains an idle fantasy without divine intervention.[60] The influence of Titian’s painting can also account for details of the description of the throne of God in ways that the textual models cannot. As Sánchez Jiménez clarifies, in its imagery and its phrasing, the portrayal of the heavenly throne[61] is strongly influenced by the fourth book of Revelation.[62] From this text proceed references to the variety of gems adorning the throne, the figures accompanying God and the hymn “Santo, Santo” [Holy, Holy] sung by the celestial beings.[63] Yet in the lines that directly precede and follow Religion’s plea to God, emphasis is placed on the triune nature of the Christian deity, which is not mentioned in this passage from Revelation. For example, the narrator prepares readers for Religion’s speech: “Al fin, donde la clara voz se oía, / quitándose del rostro un velo oscuro, / indicio de su pena, la primera / al Trono trino habló de esta manera [ . . . ]” [At last, where the clear voice was heard, the first one, removing from her face the dark veil, sign of her pain, spoke to the triune Throne in the following way].[64] Likewise, the narrator closes her address: “dijo, y fue oída de la inmensa y trina / Unidad del gran Dios que es trino y solo, / y con las tres la Religión divina / salió por el balcón del rojo Apolo” [she spoke, and she was heard by the immense and triune Unity of the great God that is three in one, and with the other three, divine Religion departed over the balcony of the red Apollo].[65] Her speech is thus framed by characterizations of God as triune, and this forcefully recalls the threefold depiction of God in Titian’s painting. Indeed, as noted above, this aspect of the artwork has been deemed significant enough by some to earn it the title The Adoration of the Trinity. After the demise of Drake and the deeds of Suárez de Amaya are perfunctorily

documented, Religion and her three companions return at the conclusion of the epic. For a third time the narrator notes the triune throne of God, to whom Religion offers her gratitude and makes a new request.[66] Comparing the English pirate to biblical reptiles such as the serpent of Eden and the Behemoth from the book of Job, Religion thanks God for the triumph over Drake. She then shifts her attention from the deliverance of the Indies to the current plight of Spain: ¡Oh gran Señor, que humillas al gigante, al humilde David vuelve tus ojos! Al moro agora, pírata arrogante, cargado de católicos despojos revuelve, eterno Júpiter tonante, los rayos de tus ímpetus y enojos sobre mis enemigos y de España, que su daño, Señor, me aflige y daña. Guarda la gran columna en que sostengo mi peso todo y, si descansa Atlante, el Fénix de Austria, en quien socorro tengo, asista al peso con valor bastante. Hoy con España a suplicarte vengo que su próspera vida se adelante, y que entre los fenicios y sabeos aromas suba al cielo sus deseos.[67]

[Oh great Lord, who humbles the giant, turn your eyes toward the humble David! Let loose, eternal Jupiter, the rays of your fury and wrath against the Moor, that arrogant pirate laden with Catholic spoils, and against my enemies and those of Spain, whose suffering afflicts and hurts me, Lord. Safeguard the great column on which I sustain all of my weight, and if Atlas rests, may the Phoenix of Austria, in whom I have my succor, have enough strength to support my weight. Today with Spain I come to beseech you that her prosperous life continue and that her desires rise on the Phoenician and Sabean aromas to heaven.] Here again at the conclusion, Religion’s role as intermediary takes priority, as she explicitly states her supplicatory mission. Religion’s assertion that she is afflicted and in pain because of Moorish pirates recalls the portrait of the victimized maiden in Titian’s Religion Succored by Spain, but the reference to David simultaneously brings readers back to the exquisite rendering of this Jewish king in The Glory. Of all the figures in the painting, the image of David is quite possibly the most accomplished, and with his obliquely visible yet expressive face, his bright blue clothing trimmed with white, and his muscular build, he was certain to attract the gaze of spectators. The entreaty to God made by Religion in La Dragontea to cast his eyes on David would appear entirely appropriate if imagined coming from the woman in The Glory. Religion’s words in La Dragontea imply that the Christian deity enjoys a commanding view on high from which the entire world below is visible, and this implicit verticality also finds a strong echo in The Glory. Through this height differential and through the traditional iconography of David’s harp, which evokes his own plaintive psalms to

God, Titian’s painting also presents him much like the “humble David”[68] described in the epic. Seeing the similarities between Titian’s and Lope’s David also allows readers to appreciate how he relates to the other allegorical figures in La Dragontea. As I have shown, the portrait of Spain that opens La Dragontea evokes the same figure in Religion Succored by Spain, but she differs notably from the woman in the painting with respect to her power over the forces of heresy. Although dressed as a warrior maiden, she does not come to the aid of Religion in La Dragontea. In fact, by the conclusion of the poem, Spain’s place has shifted definitively until, as a suppliant before the throne of God, she resembles more closely the position of David of The Glory. The completion of this transformation is confirmed in the poem as the above stanza compares David to Spain.[69] Thus both Spain and Religion start out evoking figures in Religion Succored by Spain, only to end up transformed into related characters in The Glory with their power relation inverted. The echoes of Religion Succored by Spain in Lope’s epic help to illuminate the ways in which texts of the period represent problems in the New World based on portrayals of Old World conflicts with Islam, as discussed by Wright and Fuchs.[70] After all, Titian’s painting commemorates the Christian victory at Lepanto, and in Lope’s poem images of the same composition reemerge in a narrative about the encroachment of heretical English pirates on Spanish America. Speaking of this process in La Dragontea, Fuchs observes: Once Islam and England have been equated as threats, the old analogy between the Reconquista of Spanish territory from the Moors and the Conquista of the New World plays itself out in reverse: because both Spain and America are newly threatened by infidels and heretics, they now merit equal protection as strongholds of the Faith.[71] Similarly, Lope’s ekphrasis of Titian turns the battle against Islam in the Mediterranean into a struggle against Protestants in the Caribbean, but readers knowledgeable about Titian’s Religion Succored by Spain are aware that this shifting from one cultural paradigm to another precedes Lope’s allegory. As mentioned above, the painting demonstrates the process of cultural adaptation and transformation in that Titian created his Christian allegory out of preexisting classical mythological iconography. For Falomir, this aspect of Titian’s painting exemplifies the “permeability” between religious and mythological art.[72] La Dragontea shows that this permeability transcends visual arts, as the similar iconography transcends boundaries of media and extends from the painting to poetry. Nevertheless, the fluid allegory suggested by Titian’s painting cuts both ways ideologically. Building on the artwork celebrating the triumph of the Holy League might work to foreshadow the defeat of Drake, but it also ironically reminds readers that this success against Islam proved anticlimatic.[73] Or, in the words of Fuchs, “[y]et there, precisely, lies the problem with the Reconquista as a model for the struggle against the English pirates:

the conflict with Islam cannot be fixed safely in the past, for it presents a continued threat to Spain.”[74] Likewise, Drake might be dead, but by no means is the rivalry with the English over.[75] The parallels between La Dragontea and The Glory also reflect the ways in which Lope comments on the obligations of the Spanish Crown to its faithful subjects, as studied by Wright. As she has persuasively argued, Lope modified the historical account of Drake’s defeat, attributing the defeat of Drake to his patron, Diego Suárez de Amaya, rather than to Alonso de Sotomayor.[76] Wright shows that, by presenting the case of Suárez de Amaya in the epic form, Lope achieves several objectives. He fashions his own identity in the mold of Virgil, promotes the cause of a fellow loyal servant of the Spanish crown deserving of royal recognition and implicitly urges Philip III to reward his own faithful services.[77] This leads Wright to conclude that, “[c]asting himself as a Spanish Virgil, Lope invites his dedicatee, the future king, to take his place in a chain of dependence from heaven, to the king, and then to his subjects.”[78] Lope performs more than one role in this hierarchy of responsibility and service. In addition to resembling his own patron, Suárez de Amaya, as a devoted servant of the king, he also plays the part of intermediary between the protagonist of his poem and Philip III. Without Lope, Suárez de Amaya would not have had the desired access to his sovereign; the poem spans that great distance across the Atlantic and across the power differential that separates the king from his subjects. In this way, Lope himself comes to resemble the allegorical figure of the Church from Titian’s The Glory, and the character of Religion in his own epic. This subtle similarity with the allegorical Church allows Lope to create a devout image for himself. Perhaps most importantly, in his role as intercessor, he also evokes Titian himself, who, by painting The Glory for the aged Charles V, artistically mediated between God and monarch and made a case in paint for the piety and devotion of the king. Whereas Titian intervened at an upper link in the “chain of dependence,” between God and monarch, Lope forges a lower linkage between servant and sovereign with his epic poem, but he could do so much more. The poet communicates to his future king that, through his verbal paintings, he could one day serve to strengthen the ties between Philip III and the divinity he seeks to honor just as Titian had done for his grandfather.[79] Lope thus suggests that he is not only a “Spanish Virgil,” but also an aspiring Titian.[80] Evoking these masters of their respective arts serves to authorize Lope’s ambitions as well as his biased take on the history of Drake’s death. What Lope’s reference to the paintings does not resolve is the problem concerning the identity of the hero of La Dragontea. Despite Suárez de Amaya’s exaggerated role in the text, he nevertheless remains an undeniably weak figure relative to Drake, an aspect of the poem that has drawn the attention of many. Fuchs, for instance, sees the use of allegory in the poem as Lope’s response to the potential of Drake to overshadow any Spanish counterpart.[81] Yet if Titian’s Religion Succored by Spain did serve as an allegorical model for the poem, its influence could also be seen as the very source of certain complications regarding the construction of an epic

hero. After all, like Titian’s artwork, Lope’s allegory of nations, territories and institutions does not allow room for individualized heroism. Moreover, Lope’s modifications to the iconographic program of the painting only exacerbates the doubts over the protagonist, because unlike Titian’s artwork (and the frontispiece of Castellanos’s epic), Lope’s allegory demotes the hero of Spain in his introduction. The poem does portray Suárez de Amaya in a way consistent with the ophidian imagery of the poem, as he is cast explicitly as a new St. George defeating the dragon.[82] As much as this might serve to inflate the image of the hero, it still fails to incorporate him into the larger storyline ostensibly built upon Titian’s paintings. Ironically, however, Religion Succored by Spain offers a provocative way to imagine the problem of Suárez de Amaya’s role in the epic. Behind the female figure brandishing a sword in Titian’s painting, there stands a man in the shadows, anonymous and obscure. This apparently inconsequential soldier on the margins of the painting provides an ironically appropriate analogue for the position of the mayor of Nombre de Dios. He peers out of the painting hoping to catch the gaze of the viewer, much like Suárez de Amaya desires to win the favor of the Spanish monarch, but the marginal place of these figures counteracts their wishes. This reading of La Dragontea suggests that Lope cast characters in his epics in the guise of influential paintings by Titian, just as in his comedias. In his poem about the defeat of Francis Drake, not only does he refer to the problems of representing paintings in words, but he also allows the works by Titian to guide his conception of the conflict between Spain and England in the Caribbean. Less than a decade before Lope began working on La Dragontea, Juan de Castellanos’s Primera parte de elegías de varones ilustres de Indias demonstrated the malleability of Titian’s artwork to depict the Spanish Conquest of the New World. The frontispiece of this epic appears to take inspiration from the figure of Spain in Religion Succored by Spain to represent the triumphal advancement of the Spanish Empire across the Atlantic. In the engraving, the figure of Hispania as the faithful Virgin comes to the rescue of the Indies over the forces embodied by the evil, all-encompassing dragon. La Dragontea continues in this direction, incorporating key images from Titian into the epic narrative itself. In addition to adapting the figure of Spain from the painting, he goes further to include the characters of Religion and Italy, while supplementing these with the personage of the Indies. The snakes coiling around the tree, the heap of armor lying beside the water, and the Turk fleeing the ships are all transferred from Titian’s canvas to the opening stanzas as well. Finally, through his particular framing of the problem of English piracy and its effects on what is rendered as a faithful Spanish empire, Lope effectively transforms his allegories of Religion and Spain to evoke figures from Titian’s The Glory. These images borrowed from the esteemed Venetian painter enable Lope to propose serving Philip III much like Titian served Charles V and Philip II. Implicit in this message is that Titian was recompensed for his work by the Habsburg kings, just as Lope desires to be. References to the celebrated images might also have seemed like a way for Lope to compensate for the problematic historical premise of the poem, which denies credit to the apparent hero in the story

of the demise of Drake. Lastly, appealing to Titian’s paintings permits Lope to continue to remind his erudite readers of his familiarity with the visual arts. Examining La Dragontea through Titian’s paintings deepens understanding of important aspects of the poem, and applying this approximation to other epics by Lope surely holds much promise for future studies.

NOTES 1. Javier Portús, Pintura y pensamiento en la España de Lope de Vega (Madrid: Nerea, 1999), 173. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 2. For the definition of his term “veiled ekphrasis,” see Steven Wagschal, “From Parmigianino to Pereda: Luis de Góngora on Beautiful Women and Vanitas” in Ekphrasis in the Age of Cervantes, ed. Frederick A. de Armas (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell Univeristy Press, 2005), 102–23. For a definition of “narrative ekphrasis,” see Frederick A. de Armas, “Simple Magic,” in Ekphrasis in the Age of Cervantes, ed. Frederick A. de Armas (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2005), 22. 3. For more on how La Dragontea modified the historical account of Drake’s defeat and the possible motivations for these changes, see Elizabeth R. Wright, “El enemigo en el espejo de príncipes: Lope de Vega y la creación del Francis Drake español,” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 26 (2001): 115–30, and Wright, “Setting Out: A Mirror of Princes for a New King,” in Pilgrimage to Patronage: Lope de Vega and the Court of Philip III, 1598–1621, chap. 1 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2001). 4. Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 143. 5. Lope de Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, ed. Antonio Sánchez Jiménez (Madrid: Cátedra, 2007), 41. All subsequent citations of this epic refer to this edition. Citations of the editor’s comments refer to page number and, at times, to footnote; citations of the poetic text refer to verse number. 6. Ibid., 41–42. 7. Ibid., 43. 8. Ibid., vv. 33–40. 9. See Sánchez Jiménez’s discussion of the frontispiece, Ibid., 41–43. 10. See Javier Portús, “‘Dos libros, tres pinturas, cuatro flores,’” in Pintura y pensamiento en la España de Lope de Vega (Madrid: Nerea, 1999), 123–88. 11. In the epic La hermosura de Angélica, for example, Lope writes: “Bien es verdad que llaman la poesía / pintura que habla y llaman la pintura / muda poesía, que exceder porfía / lo que la viva voz mostrar procura” [It is true that they call poetry painting that speaks and they call painting mute poetry, which strives to exceed what the vivid voice aims to show] (Felix Lope de Vega Carpio, La hermosura de Angélica, ed. Marcella Trambaioli [Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2005], vv.5.7.1–4). De Armas notes that “Lope himself paraphrases Simonides of Ceos in La Arcadia” (“Lope de Vega and Titian.” Comparative Literature 30, no. 4 [1978]: 339). 12. Javier Portús, Pintura y pensamiento, 158–61. 13. Referring to the limited research on the influence of Italian Renaissance art on Lope’s texts, De Armas laments that “in spite of the wealth of material, almost nothing has been written on the subject except for a few essays that have turned to discrete problems in the relationship between Titian and Lope, including questions of empire, mythology, melancholy, Orientalism, and the potrayal of women” (“Lope de Vega’s Speaking Pictures: Tantalizing Titians and Forbidden Michelangelos in La quinta de Florencia,” in A Companion to Lope de Vega, ed. Alexander Samson and Jonathan [Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008], 171n3). For a list of some of the most significant works on Lope’s use of Titian’s artwork, see De Armas, “Lope de Vega’s Speaking Pictures,” 171n3. For more on ekphrasis in Lope’s epic poems see Emilie Bergmann, “The Painting’s Observer in the Epic Canvas: La Hermosura de Angélica,” Comparative Literature 38, no. 3 (1986): 270–88; Felisa Guillén, “Ekphrasis e imitación en la Jerusalén

conquistada,” Hispania 78, no. 2 (1995): 231–39; and Elizabeth R. Wright, “A New Beginning,” chap. 3 in Pilgrimage to Patronage. 14. The comedia, La santa liga, was composed about the same years as La Dragontea. See de Armas, “Lope de Vega and Titian,” 345-48; and “The Allure of the Oriental Other: Titian’s Rossa Sultana and Lope de Vega’s La Santa Liga,” in Brave New Words: Studies in Spanish Golden Age Literature, eds. Edward H. Friedman and Catherine Larson (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 1996), 201. 15. De Armas, “Lope de Vega and Titian,” 352. 16. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 35. See Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors, 35–39, for his complete, detailed reading of the frontispiece. 17. Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors, 35. 18. Juan de Castellanos, Primera parte de las elegías de varones ilustres de Indias (Madrid: Casa de la viuda de Alonso Gómez, 1589), n.p. Cañizares-Esguerra also discusses these poetic lines, but his transcription of the epigram is incomplete. See Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors, 240n2. 19. Thanks to José Cárdenas Bunsen for his help in translating this epigram. 20. In my transcription and translation of these words, I follow Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors, 35. 21. Sir William Smith and Sir John Lockwood, Chambers Murray Latin-English Dictionary (Edinburgh: Chambers, 1995), s.v. “Orbis.” 22. Fernando Checa, Tiziano y la monarquía hispánica (Madrid: Nerea, 1994), 60. 23. Erwin Panofsky proposes that this figure transforms from an allegorical representation of Peace in an earlier version of the painting into Fortitude in Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 189. De Armas identifies her as Venice in “Lope de Vega and Titian,” 346; and in “The Allure of the Oriental Other,” 201. 24. Panofsky, Problems in Titian, 187. 25. Miguel Falomir, “Religion Succoured by Spain,” in Tiziano, ed. Miguel Falomir [Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2003], 412. 26. Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors, 36. 27. Although the image of Titian’s Religion Succored by Spain appears on the cover of monograph, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), Barbara Fuchs does not discuss the painting in relation to her study of Lope’s La Dragontea, 139–51. 28. Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, vv. 57–64. 29. Falomir, “Religion Succoured by Spain,” 412. 30. Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, 149n101. 31. Ibid., vv. 65–72. 32. Ibid., 150n102. 33. Ibid., 150n104. 34. See Francisco de los Santo’s comments on the banderole, quoted in Checa, Tiziano y la monarquía hispánica, 58. 35. Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, v. 65. 36. Ibid., vv. 49–52. 37. Falomir, “Religion Succoured by Spain,” 412. 38. For more on Lope’s tacit conversation about artwork with an elite, informed audience, see De Armas, “Lope’s Speaking Pictures” and Portús, Pintura y pensamiento, 42 and 184. 39. Lope appeals to such a transformative ekphrasis in his comedia, La quinta de Florencia. See De Armas, “Lope’s Speaking Pictures,” 178. 40. Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, vv. 273–76. 41. Ibid., vv. 329–30.

42. Ibid., vv. 341–44. 43. See Francisco de los Santos’s interpretation in Checa, Tiziano y la monarquía hispánica, 58. 44. Francisco de los Santos describes the painting thus: “Las serpientes que se revuelven en él, y salen a hazer la invasion, son los Hereges, partos de la serpiente del Paraiso, que aguzando sus lenguas ponzoñosas, pretenden con el veneno de sus falsos Dogmas corromper y envenenar la Fe; y asi se miran aqui, cerca de las serpientes, el Caliz, la Cruz por el suelo, en denotación de los efectos de sus errores, y impiedades” [The serpents that wrap around it and prepare to invade are the heretics, offspring of the serpent of Paradise, which, with their forked, venomous tongues intend to corrupt and poison Faith with their false dogmas. Thus the chalice and the cross, which are seen here near the serpents, represent the effects of their mistakes and impiety] (Quoted in Checa, Tiziano y la monarquía hispánica, 58). In his catalogue of icons, Cesare Ripa describes the figure of Heresy clutching a fistful of snakes: “The snakes are heresy’s abominable ideas, and she is busy spreading them about” (Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery, intro., trans. and ed. Edward A. Maser [New York: Dover, 1971], 96). 45. Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, vv. 294–96. 46. Ibid., v. 289. 47. Ibid., 170n187. 48. Ibid., vv. 177–83. 49. Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, 145. 50. Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, vv. 73–80. 51. Ibid., v. 97. 52. Ibid., vv. 109–12. 53. Peter Humfrey, Titian (London: Phaidon, 2007), 164. 54. Falomir, “The Glory,” in Tiziano, ed. Miguel Falomir (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2003), 383. 55. Humfrey, Titian, 164. 56. Falomir, “The Glory,” 382. 57. José de Sigüenza, La fundación del monasterio de el Escorial, prolog. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles (Madrid: Aguilar, 1963), 379. 58. Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, v. 49. 59. Ibid., vv. 161–93. 60. Ibid., vv. 199–200. 61. Ibid., vv. 81–108. 62. Ibid., 151n109, 152n114, and 153n117. 63. Ibid., v. 85. 64. Ibid., vv. 93–96. 65. Ibid., vv. 217–20. 66. Ibid., v. 5760. 67. Ibid., vv. 5825–540. 68. Ibid., v. 5826. 69. In this interpretation of David as an analogy for Spain in this stanza, I follow Sánchez Jiménez’s reading (Ibid., 544n1451). Fuchs also sees the figure of David as indicative of the mutable figurative power relations in the poem, but she reads David as an analogy for the Moors mentioned in these lines. She writes, “Islam is equated with David, clearly the virtuous hero of his own story, and threatens to take over the role that Spain previously played in defeating an outsized Drake. The Spaniards, meanwhile, go from playing David against an English Goliath to becoming the giant themselves, needled by Islamic corsairs” (Mimesis and Empire, 151). 70. See Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire. See also Wright, who summarizes: “Following a pattern common in sixteenthcentury chronicles, the narrator makes the fall of the last Gothic king the foundational moment for a Spanish royal lineage that stretches uninterrupted from Pelayo to the Habsburgs. In this sweep through Spanish imperial history, Panama becomes a site for a new reconquest. The remote, American isthmus thus blends into the moral

geography of Spain” (Wright, Pilgrimage to Patronage, 30–31). 71. Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, 145. 72. Falomir, “Religion Succoured by Spain,” 412. 73. J. H. Elliot, Imperial Spain: 1469–1716 (New York: Penguin, 2002), 241–42. 74. Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, 147. 75. For more on the inconclusive victory over the English, see also Wright, Pilgrimage to Patronage, 36. 76. See especially Ibid., 32; and Wright, “El enemigo en el espejo,” 124. 77. See Wright, Pilgrimage to Patronage, 33–49; and “El enemigo en el espejo,” 126–28. See also Antonio Sánchez Jiménez, who further explores Lope’s call for royal patronage of Spanish poets and the similarities between Lope and Suárez de Amaya, in “Raza, identidad y rebelión en los confines del Imperio Hispánico: Los cimarrones de Santiago del Príncipe y La Dragontea (1598) de Lope de Vega,” Hispanic Review 75, no. 2 (2007): 128–30. 78. Wright, Pilgrimage to Patronage, 49. 79. Read in this way, Lope appears to offer a consistent message to his king in his epic poetry. For example, in her analysis of Lope’s Jerusalén conquistada, Wright argues that “time and again, the verses suggest that when kings see, they do so through the power of artistic mediation” (Pilgrimage to Patronage, 89). 80. Whether as another Titian or Virgil, his message is the same. As Wright expresses it: “el poeta le ofrece al futuro rey sus servicios como ‘cisne’ que cantará las glorias del monarca” [the poet offers to his future king his services as a “swan” who will sing the glories of the monarch] (“El enemigo en el espejo,” 118). 81. Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, 143. As Wright puts it, “after all, the mayor of Nombre de Dios, Suárez de Amaya, proves a pale counterweight to Drake/the Dragon” (Pilgrimage to Patronage, 38). 82. “La India, a quien el mar de perlas baña, / medrosa dama, del Dragón de Oriente, / Hidra de Alcides y Pitón de Febo / hoy libra de su furia un Jorge nuevo” [A new St. George frees the Indies, that fearful maiden lapped by a sea of pearls, from the fury of the Dragon of the East, like the Hydra of Hercules and the Python of Apollo] (Vega Carpio, La Dragontea, vv. 21–24). In the analogy suggested by the reference to the legend, Suárez de Amaya rescues the Indies from the heretical Francis Drake just as the canonized knight saved the princess from the rituals of a pagan religion that required a regular human sacrifice to the local dragon. And in the juxtaposition of classical and biblical imagery that characterizes the poem, Suárez de Amaya is likened to Apollo and Hercules, both of whom defeated serpents of their own.

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Index B Black legend, 1 , 2

C Castellanos, Juan de, 1.1-1.2 , 2 Charles V, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 coinage, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 Council of Trent, 1 Counter Reformation., 1

D de Amescua, Antonio Mira, 1 , 2 de Mariana, Juan, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 de Quevedo, Francisco, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4 dragons, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 , 4.1-4.2 , 5

E ekphrasis, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 Elizabeth I of England, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 El Escorial, 1 , 2 , 3 El Greco, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6

H heraldry, conventions of, 1.1-1.2

I Indies, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5.1-5.2 , 6

L Lèse-majesté (treason), 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2

M

Metamorphoses See Ovidian myths

N New World See Indies Neoplatonism, 1.1-1.2

O Ovidian myths, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 Acis and Galatea, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2 Danae, 1 , 2 , 3 Diana and Callisto, 1 , 2 , 3 Diana and Actaeon, 1 , 2 , 3.1-3.2 Perseus and Adromeda, 1.1-1.2 Rape of Europa, 1 Venus and Adonis, 1

P patronage, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 perspectivism, 1.1-1.2 Philip II, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5.1-5.2 , 6.1-6.2 , 7.1-7.2 , 8.1-8.2 , 9.1-9.2 , 10 , 11 Philip III, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7.1-7.2 , 8.1-8.2 , 9 Philip IV, 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8.1-8.2 piracy, 1 poesie See Ovidian myths

R restitution, 1.1-1.2 Roman cultural legacy, 1 , 2.1-2.2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7.1-7.2 , 8.1-8.2 , 9 , 10 , 11.1-11.2 , 12 , 13.1-13.2 , 14 , 15 , 16.1-16.2

S salvation crisis of, 1 of infidels, 1.1-1.2

T Titian, 1.1-1.2 , 2 , 3 , 4.1-4.2 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10.1-10.2

About the Contributors Lucia Binotti is Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research crosses the borders between linguistics and cultural history. She works on synchronic and historical linguistics in their social and ideological contexts. She also writes on Renaissance and Golden Age material and cultural history and in the mechanisms that construct linguistic and cultural identity. She has worked on linguistic theories on the origin and development of the vernaculars, on the impact of the New World on the European intellectual thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on the writing of history, and the establishment of historiography as a discipline. Her recent book Cultural Capital, Language and Identity in Imperial Spain (2012) studies the strategies that appropriated the Italian definition of the “Renaissance” as a selfexplanatory category to transform it into one of the most productive values in the ideological synthesis that symbolizes the Empire’s cultural capital. She is currently studying the concept of the illicit, the transgressive, and the indecorous in Spanish Baroque culture. José A. Cárdenas Bunsen is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He received his PhD from Yale University in 2008. He is the author of Escritura y derecho canónico en la obra de fray Bartolomé de las Casas (2011). José Cárdenas Bunsen was the recipient of the Raúl Porras Barrenechea Prize for historical research in 1998, and he has taught at Bucknell University and at the Pontifical Catholic University of Perú. Anne J. Cruz is Professor of Spanish and Cooper Fellow at the University of Miami. Her publications range from studies on Spanish Petrarchism, Cervantes, and the comedia to women’s writings and the picaresque novel. She has edited or coedited numerous collections, including Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (2011); The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe (2009); Symbolic and Material Circulation between Spain and England 1554–1604 (2008); and Approaches to Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Tradition (2008). She has received several NEH awards and a Mellon Fellowship, among other grants. She cotranslated Chimalpahin’s Conquest, a Nahuatl historian’s version of Francisco López de Gómara’s Conquest of Mexico (2010); and the anonymous picaresque novella, The Life and Times of Mother Andrea (2011). Professor Cruz is coeditor of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal and series editor of New Hispanisms: Cultural and Literary Studies. Frederick A. de Armas is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Romance Languages and Comparative Literature and at the University of Chicago. His books and edited volumes include: The Invisible Mistress:

Aspects of Feminism and Fantasy in the Golden Age (1976); The Return of Astraea: An Astral-Imperial Myth in Calderón (1986); The Prince in the Tower: Perceptions of “La vida es sueño” (1993); Heavenly Bodies: The Realms of “La estrella de Sevilla” (1996); A Star-Crossed Golden Age: Myth and the Spanish Comedia (1998); Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics (1998); European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance (2002); Writing for the Eyes in the Spanish Golden Age (2004); Ekphrasis in the Age of Cervantes (2005); Quixotic Frescoes: Cervantes and Italian Renaissance Art (2006); Hacia la tragedia áurea (2008); Ovid in the Age of Cervantes (2010); Don Quixote Among the Saracens: Clashes of Civilizations and Literary Genres (2011). The latter received the PROSE Award for Literature, honorable mention (2011). De Armas has been the recipient of several NEH fellowships and has directed NEH Summer Institutes and Seminars. He has also served as President of the Cervantes Society of America. E. C. Graf received his PhD in Spanish from the University of Virginia. He has taught at Smith College, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the University of Chicago, the College of William & Mary, and Wesleyan University. He has published essays on the Poema de mio Cid, Garcilaso de la Vega, El Greco, San Juan de la Cruz, Miguel de Cervantes, Juan de Mariana, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, José Cadalso, Vicente Aleixandre, and Julio Cortázar. His book Cervantes and Modernity (2007) investigates the relation between Don Quijote and late classical antiquity by assessing the influence of such authors as Apuleius and Sulpicius Severus, and it investigates the relation between Don Quijote and the Enlightenment by indicating the novel’s influence on modern philosophers like Voltaire, Feijóo, and Hobbes. He is currently working on a second book titled Neoplatonism and Race in the Spanish Golden Age. Ana María G. Laguna is Associate Professor of Spanish at Rutgers University at Camden. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature (Purdue 2002). Her research on the culture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain explores the relationship among literature, politics, and the visual arts, focusing on how literature reflects prominent artistic and socio-political anxieties. Her work has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Ministry of Culture of Spain and United States Universities and the Rutgers Research Council. She is the author of Cervantes and the Pictorial Imagination (2009). Ignacio López Alemany is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and editor of Calíope, the journal of the Society for the Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry. His work focuses on early modern Spanish aulic culture and its artistic, literary, and dramatic representations. With J. E. Varey, he coauthored the volume Teatro palaciego en Madrid: 1707–1724. Estudio y documentos (2006) and his monograph, Ilusión áulica e imaginación caballeresca

en El Cortesano de Luis Milán, is forthcoming. His articles have appeared in several academic journals including Bulletin of the Comediantes, Cervantes, La corónica, Dieciocho, eHumanista, Estudos de Literatura Oral, Hispanófila, and Romance Notes. Jason McCloskey is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Bucknell University. His research focuses on Renaissance artwork, classical mythology, and the portrayal of exploration and piracy and in early modern Hispanic poetry. Presently, he is working on a project examining the representation of Vasco Da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Francis Drake, and Thomas Cavendish in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century epic poetry. John Slater is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado. He was educated at Earlham College and received his doctorate from the Interdisciplinary Program in Literary Studies at Brandeis University in 2004. His research examines the early modern textual genres that represent human beings’ experience of the natural world, from natural history to political tracts and religious drama. He is the author of Todos son hojas: Literatura e historia natural en el barroco español (2010) and is completing a second book on the politics of natural history in early modern Spain titled Momentary Monuments: The Vegetable Kingdom and the Reign of the Spanish Hapsburgs. Elvira Vilches is Associate Professor of Spanish at North Carolina State University. Her work focuses on the impact of gold, money, and credit on the history and literature of early modern Spain. She is the author of New World Gold: Cultural Anxiety and Monetary Disorder in Early Modern Spain (2010). She is currently working on a book examining the ways in which the emerging practical knowledge of wealth and society influenced perceptions of trade, finance, and domestic economy in early modern Spain. She has received fellowships from ACLS, the John Carter brown Library, and the Center for Twentieth Century Studies, among other grants.