Rhetoric and Reality in Early Modern Spain (review)

Rhetoric and Reality in Early Modern Spain is a superb collection of essays that share, among other features, an interest in challenging certain conceptions, or accepted views, of history and of literary history. One might contend that the diverse contributions project the other side of the story or, at least, alternate versions of stories that scholars and critics have tended to take for granted. The nine essayists are, with one exception, distinguished academic figures from the United Kingdom, and they are joined by the equally distinguished Margaret Rich Greer of Duke University.

The first essay, Trevor Dadson's "Official Rhetoric versus Local Reality: Propaganda and the Expulsion of the Moriscos," deals with the period of 1609 to 1614 and the phases (and conflicts) of expelling the moriscos from Spain, a plan that had been deliberated and debated since the early 1580s. Dadson uses this case as an example of the need to complement, or supplement, the "official" history with a scrutiny of opposing positions. He maintains that once the government of Philip III had made its decision to move forward with the expulsion, it embarked upon a plan to manipulate public opinion and to paint a negative and inaccurate picture of the moriscos, and, consequently, that the propagandists began to believe their own misinformation, despite evidence to the contrary. He emphasizes the bases of resistance and concludes that a valid presentation of the events displays:

a more pluralist Spain than we have ever been led to believe existed, a Spain where central authority was heavily circumscribed and wholly dependent on local goodwill for implementation of its edicts and decrees.

(24)

In "Arbitrismo and the Early Seventeenth Century Church: The Theory and Practice of Anti-Clericalist Philosophy," Helen Rawlings focuses on polemical literature in Spain written during the years 1615 to 1625 by the "heterogeneous" group known as the arbitristas—academics, members of the clergy, merchants, and others—who offered remedies for the crises facing the body politic at a moment of serious decline. Although clergymen formed one faction within the system, the Church did not escape criticism. Rawlings reads the commentaries of the time against quantitative evidence now available, and she points to correct and incorrect statements by the arbitristas. An interesting datum is that the Church of the Counter Reformation, while losing some of its earlier sources of income, was receiving increased bequests in the form of money, goods, and real estate from private benefactors as a means—in many, if not most, instances—of securing their place in heaven, "a form of religious insurance policy" (40).

The editor of the collection, Richard J. Pym, writes on "Law and Disorder: Anti-Gypsy Legislation and Its Failures in Seventeenth-Century Spain." He traces the history of legislative efforts against gypsies to the Catholic Monarchs and to 1499, and he compares the gypsies with other oppressed groups (including the moriscos). Studying later treatises such as the Discurso contra los gitanos (1631) by Juan de Quiñones and a pragmatic issued by Philip IV in 1633, he shows that the goal of sedentarizing, assimilating, and monitoring—and certainly of expelling—the gypsies was not met, although there were real dangers facing them. Pym's discussion of the Church's attempt to protect the gypsies, and the condemnation of this undertaking from a variety of sources, offers a fascinating glimpse into the intersection of charity and social protocol. By the end of the century, the State, under Charles II, had little tolerance for the gypsies, as exemplified in ordinances of 1692 and 1695. In the following century, one finds, paradoxically, both a "fearsome [...] general roundup" in 1749 and a repeal of repressive legislation under the so-called enlightened despotism of Charles III.

In "Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and the Jewess of Venice: Tolerance, Interfaith Sexuality, and Converso Culture," Alexander Samson examines the affair of the Spanish diplomat to the Council of Trent with a Jewish woman, on the island retreat of Murano four years prior to the opening of the council in 1545, to...