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  • El primer blasón del Austria (atribución inseg ra)
  • Elias L. Rivers
[Pedro Calderón de la Barca.] El primer blasón del Austria (atribución inseg ra), ed. Victoriano Roncero. Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra, & Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 1997. 151 pp.

This edition is based on the only known copy of an auto that is found, in an 18th-century manuscript, among loas and autos written by Calderón; the manuscript, known as the Ortiz Cruz collection, is now in the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, sign. 22.557. But the attribution to Calderón is a problem; the title of the auto in itself seems to be the principal confirmation of its attribution to Calderón, who did write a Segundo blasón del Austria. Roncero (pp. 13–17) argues eloquently in favor of this attribution. [End Page 420]

Unlike Calderón’s major autos sacramentales, which celebrate the Christian myth of sin and redemption through Christ’s sacrifice and the Eucharist, dramatizing theological concepts by means of sophisticated allegories, this auto is a celebration of the Catholic victory over Protestant forces at the Battle of Nördlingen (Bavaria) in September of 1634. Roncero is no doubt right to assert that the auto was written within a few months after the battle in order to be performed in the cathedral of Toledo. In his study he groups it with three more of Calderón’s autos that tell of victories over religious enemies; these three autos, however, are based on remote and legendary battles against Moors, not on such recent events as the Battle of Nördlingen, well documented in numerous relaciones.

Roncero divides the play into four parts. First there is an allegorical encounter between the Church and St. Michael, in which the Church prays to God for aid against the Protestant forces in Nördlingen, and St. Michael emphasizes the Hapsburg devotion to the Eucharist and narrates the departure from Barcelona of the Cardinal-Prince Ferdinand with Spanish troops for Italy. The long second part is divided into four scenes: in the first pre-battle scene, the military situation is described by the villanous Protestant leaders (Bernard of Weimar and the Swedish general Gustav Horn) and again, in the second pre-battle scene, by the Catholic heroes (Ferdinand, King of Hungary, and Ferdinand, Prince and Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo) and by a comically hungry foot-soldier Rivera, a character obviously invented by the author; the third and fourth scenes bring forward the same sets of characters in the same order, narrating the events of the battle itself in considerable tactical detail. In the third part of the play the Catholic victory is celebrated by the Church and St. Michael, and in the fourth part by the two triumphant heroes and by the queen of Hungary. The foot-soldier concludes the play by asking the public’s pardon for its faults.

After this summary of the action, Roncero studies the play’s rather obvious ideological function. The Hapsburg theocratic monarchy’s militant Catholic orthodoxy is being promoted and celebrated once more; Spain is once again presented as God’s chosen people, the new Israel guided by divine Providence. There are clearly no ideological innovations or surprises here. As for the dramatis personae, also studied by Roncero, the Church and St. Michael belong to a divine allegory that is separate from the historical characters, who are nevertheless almost equally abstract in their ideological function: Weimar and Horn represent heretical pride and bloodthirsty cruelty as opposed to the true Christian piety of the Catholic heroes. For Roncero (p. 49), the Spanish soldier Rivera is not so unidimensional a character: “aparece individualizado y constituye el estereotipo del soldado español de la época.” I am not sure how this comic stereotype can be individualized; I see in Rivera, even though he seems to be brave rather than cowardly, the typical gracioso, whose physical hunger is the picaresque antithesis of aristocratic spirituality. See, for example, this fragment of his pre-battle soliloquy (lines 397–400): [End Page 421]

Yo voy a matar la gana si ha quedado algo fiambre, que si hoy mato bien mi hambre, mataré herejes mañana...

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