The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture

Rodrigo Cacho Casal, Caroline Egan, Rodrigo Cacho Casal, Caroline Egan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781351108690
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture introduces the intellectual and artistic breadth of early modern Spain from a range of disciplinary and critical perspectives.

Spanning the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (a period traditionally known as the Golden Age), the volume examines topics including political and scientific culture, literary and artistic innovations, and religious and social identities and institutions in transformation. The 36 chapters of the volume include both expert overviews of key topics and figures from the period as well as new approaches to understudied questions and materials.

This invaluable resource will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in Hispanic studies, as well as Renaissance and early modern studies more generally.

PART I Kingdom, empire, world

1 THE IMPACT OF SPANISH IMPERIAL POLITICAL CULTURE IN IBERIA AND EUROPE, 1500–1700

Thomas James Dandelet

DOI: 10.4324/9781351108713-3

Ferdinand, Machiavelli, and the beginning of the long Spanish century

On November 1, 1506, the Catholic King, Ferdinand of Spain, sailed into the harbor of Naples with ten royal galleys that he had set out with from Iberia, together with numerous other ships of war led by the great captain, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. Saluted first by the canons of the Castelnuovo and then by salvos from all of the ships in the harbor and the castles of the city, the king and his queen, Germaine of Foix, were welcomed upon disembarking by a throng of nobles, barons, and ambassadors from Naples and other Italian states. In a carefully choreographed scene, the monarchs were escorted to a richly painted triumphal arch that had been built for the occasion. There the king acknowledged the privileges and customs of the new subjects and kingdom that he had acquired through military conquest and papal investiture in 1504. Three noblemen, Fabrizio Colonna, Prospero Colonna, and the Duke of Termens, then approached Ferdinand, who handed Fabrizio Colonna the royal standard and named him his alférez mayor, or chief standard bearer. Mounting white horses, the monarchs then processed through the city in triumphal fashion followed first by their personal guard and Gonzalo de Córdoba, with Prospero Colonna at his right hand, and then by the ambassadors of the pope and king of France (Zurita 1610: ff. 86^r–86^v).

This 1504 triumphal entry of Ferdinand of Spain into Naples, following a decade of sporadic war with the king of France for possession and title of the kingdom, signaled the definitive emergence of the Spanish monarchs as the rising political power in Italian and European political life at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The earlier conquest of Islamic Granada in 1492 by the combined forces of Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon had solidified their internal reputation and position as the most powerful monarchs to rule in Iberia in many centuries. At the same time, the discoveries and conquests of Columbus between 1492 and 1504 increased their reputations, income, and territories both at home and abroad. Together with the Italian victories and the conquest of Navarre in 1512, these accomplishments led no less a political authority than Machiavelli to describe Ferdinand, and by implication and association, Isabella, as the primary examples of successful new monarchs of early sixteenth century Europe.

More specifically, in The Prince, first circulated in 1513, three years before Ferdinand’s death and only seven years after his entry into Naples, Machiavelli summarized the political characteristics and achievements of the Catholic King. Specifically, in Chapter 21, entitled ‘How a Prince Must Govern to Acquire Reputation’, Machiavelli described the qualities that led him to present Ferdinand as his primary example of the new prince:

Nothing causes a prince to be so much esteemed as great enterprises and giving proof of prowess. We have in our own day Ferdinand, King of Aragon, the present King of Spain. He may almost be termed a new prince, because from a weak king he has become for fame and glory the first king of Christendom, and if you regard his actions you will find them all very great and some of them extraordinary. At the beginning of his reign he assailed Granada, and that enterprise was the foundation of his state. At first he did it at his leisure and without fear of being interfered with; he kept the minds of the barons of Castile occupied in this enterprise, so that thinking only of that war they did not think of making innovations, and he thus acquired reputation and power over them without their being aware of it. He was able with the money of the Church and the people to maintain his armies, and by that long war to lay the foundations of his military power, which afterwards has made him famous. Besides this, to be able to undertake greater enterprises, and always under the pretext of religion, he had recourse to a pious cruelty, driving out the Moors from his kingdom and despoiling them. No more miserable or unusual example can be found. He also attacked Africa under the same pretext, undertook his Italian enterprise, and has lately attacked France; so that he has continually contrived great things, which have kept his subjects’ minds uncertain and astonished, and occupied in watching their results. And these actions have arisen one out of the other, so that they have left no time for them to settle down and act against him.

(Machiavelli 1950: 81–2)

This assessment by the founder of modern political thought, together with the description of Ferdinand’s triumphal procession in Naples, are appropriate places to begin a chapter on Spanish political culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, since both highlight the rising prominence of Spain in the political life of Europe from the beginning of this period. This constituted a major sea change for Spain and Europe, since the Iberian kingdoms and monarchs, often fragmented and consumed with internal struggles, had been relatively weak and often isolated players in the medieval European order. The emergence of the newly named ‘Catholic Kings’ after the victories of the ‘miraculous year’ of 1492, however, signaled the beginning of a new European order that would witness Spain playing a dominant role.

What Machiavelli hinted at, but could not fully foresee, about Ferdinand’s reign and all of its ‘great enterprises’, was that it was just a prelude to a century of even more dramatic developments. Indeed, the two immediate successors of Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V (ruled 1517–1556) and Philip II (ruled 1556–1598), went far beyond the boundaries of Christendom to forge the world’s first global empire with territories in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Pacific regions. Earlier empires, such as the Roman and Chinese, were not global in the modern sense, since they had no knowledge of the full globe, most especially the Americas, or territories on a global scale. The political power and influence of Spain on the European and global stage, on the other hand, grew to such an extent in this period that it is not too much to claim that the long sixteenth century from roughly 1492 to 1640 constituted the Spanish Century, particularly in Europe and the Atlantic World. More specifically, the broad-ranging political influence of the Spanish Empire, because of its increasingly disproportionate economic and military power, reshaped the political order and culture of Iberia, much of Europe, and significant parts of the New World to an extent that was unmatched by any other European power.

This is not a view of Spain that has traditionally been advanced or acknowledged in much of early modern European historiography of the nineteenth of twentieth century, especially in the Anglo-American literature. In part, this has been the result of a preoccupation with the teleology of the nation state and national histories or with other empires perceived as more successful or fully realized, especially the later British Empire. Related biases have frequently led historians to view Spanish history primarily from the vantage point of its weaknesses or failures, as the substantial literature on the ‘Decline of Spain’ in the later seventeenth century underlines. The resulting depiction of the Spanish Empire as being a giant with feet of clay cast a long shadow on Spanish history. Combined with the lingering effects of the Black Legend, the decline and decadence narrative often created an image of the Spanish Empire as an overwhelmingly negative and regressive political presence in the early modern world. These preconceptions have often detracted from the obvious rise in political power and success that Machiavelli already saw in Ferdinand and from a more complicated historical analysis of Spanish political history that acknowledges the central role that the Spanish Empire played in the development of European and global political life in this period.

Fortunately, the last few decades have begun to see a substantial shift in the historical literature on the politics of early modern Spain that has coincided with a renewed interest in the comparative history of early modern empires across time, space, and discipline (Pagden 1995; Elliott 2007). A growing revisionist trend that focuses on political innovation and sophistication in the Hapsburg era has begun to take up the challenge of looking at how empire functioned to transform societies closer to the ground in the various corners of empire as well as in Europe and Iberia. Internally, important work on the costs and benefits of empire has been joined by studies of the impact of a growing global empire upon the development of traditional institutions such as the conciliar system, the visitas, and the viceroyalties. The result is a more complex and dynamic view of the Spanish empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Bernal 2005). At the same time, political analysis has moved beyond center and periphery to look at the crucial roles played in empire formation by multiple centers of the empire, while relations with local elites have moved beyond the old paradigm of oppression and resistance to look at social and political integration of the Iberian and local ruling elites (Benigno 2007; Kamen 2003). Similarly, new scholarship on the relative financial strength of the empire and on the resilience of the imperial monarchy even in the last decades of the seventeenth century has introduced important revisions to the decline narrative (Drelichman and Voth 2014; Storrs 2006).

As these examples point out, the broader historical revision of Spanish imperial politics is fluid and evolving, and there is presently no dominant school or interpretation of Spanish imperial political history. It is possible, however, to identify of some of the most significant paradigm shifts in the field that promise to bring greater analytical clarity, interpretive accuracy, and a richer understanding of the vast political enterprise that was the Spanish Empire. Among the most important interventions in the realm of framing and defining the Spanish empire, and the nature and dimensions of its political power and influence, is the idea of the ‘Spanish imperial system’ articulated by Giuseppe Galasso and Aurelio Musi, particularly for the Italian context, but that also applies to the entirety of the Spanish imperial project (Galasso 1995; Musi 1994). In contrast to earlier perspectives that emphasized the fragmented and composite nature of Spain’s monarchy and kingdoms, Musi argues that ‘Imperial Spain was a system: that is, it was a structure endowed with unity, an interdependence among its elements, and functions exercised by the various parties concerned’ (Musi 2007: 82). Galasso elaborates on this idea, stressing that in the case of early modern Spain, the meaning of empire derives from

the sense of power that assumes a particular historical and political relief thanks to the extent of its dominions, the forces it has available, the preponderance that it exercises in a determined and geographical and historical context, the connection between its political dimensions and its economic and cultural ones, and so forth. In this sense the notion of empire is closely associated with that of civilization.

(Musi 2007: 82)

Viewed from this perspective, central aspects of the Spanish imperial system emerged in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella when the monarchy greatly expanded its dominions, increased its power and influence at home and abroad through its military, and used its political institutions and economic power in a way that created interdependence among its various territories. It did not yet have the full-scale ‘preponderance’ of political and territorial power that marks empires or the mature political culture that was capable of creating a distinct ‘civilization’. This only fully emerged in the expanding empire of the successors of Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V and Philip II.

Political culture is a term used throughout this chapter to describe a broad set of common political mentalities and practices that developed among the Spanish and European ruling class in the early modern period. It borrows from recent studies in cultural theory and empire that are yet another fertile ground for reinterpreting the Spanish Empire. Not constrained or defined by formal political theory, institutional preoccupations, or juridical definitions, imperial political culture was shaped first and foremost by Renaissance humanist scholarship that focused on the literature, examples, and historical models taken from the Roman Empire. History, above all other disciplines, was the political instructor of princes. The ideas and reflections on empire that were disseminated in a growing body of humanist works such as Petrarch’s biography of Julius Caesar, new editions of Caesar’s Commentaries with expansive introductions, and new humanist histories of the ancient Roman empire and emperors all sought to inspire the revival and imitation of the greatness of the Roman Empire. This intellectual revival was the foundation of the imperial Renaissance and the genesis of imperial political culture since ‘the enterprise of empire depends upon the idea of having an empire’, in the words of a leading contemporary scholar of cultural theory and European imperialism (Said 1993: 10–13). A related contention is that ‘Empire follows Art’. In the early modern case, this meant that a potent combination of literary and plastic arts—sculpture, architecture, and painting—borrowed from the Roman Empire was repeatedly used as the inspiration, justification, and celebration of new global imperial systems. They were powerful tools of cultural conquest that marched alongside the Spanish armies and sailed with their navies. Imperial political culture and the Spanish imperial system thus went hand in hand, and these two analytical frames will be used in the pages that follow to organize and highlight some of the primary and most influential political developments in Spanish imperial history in the long sixteenth century.

More specifically, two central pillars of the Spanish imperial system and political culture will be the focus of the chapter that follows: war and military power as the primary vehicles for winning honor, fame, and glory and the building of monumental architecture using the colossal orders of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius for the same reasons. This is not a random choice of themes. Rather, this chapter argues that the Spanish monarchs were intentionally following the perceived political playbook of the ancient Roman emperors as they pursued an agenda dominated by military and architectural triumphs. Using their powerful war machine to conquer new territories that brought increased revenues, they spent enormous sums on ambitious and expensive building programs centered on royal palaces to celebrate and memorialize their victories. It was a political and cultural program that would be imitated by other European monarchs for centuries.

Spain and the Renaissance of empire

With intellectual and cultural roots in Renaissance Italy, the dream of reviving the power and glory of the ancient Roman Empire was at the heart of the imperial ambition a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Early modern Spain and the end of the Golden Age
• Part I Kingdom, empire, world
• Part II Knowledge, capital, control
• Part III Classicisms, tradition, invention
• Part IV Language, wit, modernity
• Part V Drama, performance, audience
• Part VI Visual culture, music, arts
• Part VII Faith, race, community
• Part VIII Gender, sexuality, conflict
• Index