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Chapter 3: Competition and Confirmation in the Iberian Prophetic Community: The 1589 Invasion of Portugal in the Dreams of Lucrecia de León
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Chapter Competition and Confirmation in the Iberian Prophetic Community The 1589 Invasion of Portugal in the Dreams of Lucrecia de León marı́a v. jordán On May 1, 1589, Lucrecia de León, a young woman of Madrid whose talent as a prophetess had gained her considerable fame in the streets of the city and even among certain circles of the nobility, dreamed that a man had transported her to the northern Spanish port of La Coruña, where she witnessed Sir Francis Drake and his men attacking the city. According to her account, the soldiers entered from the beach and took the defenders by surprise, unleashing a ‘‘butchery’’ of such proportions that the horrible cries of the women and children could be heard.1 In a later dream, evidence of the attack’s destructive effects were still apparent in the ‘‘suffering’’ of the population, the destruction and deaths caused, and even in the gray color of the sea. Francis Drake, the terrible ‘‘El Draque,’’ was among the most feared of Spain’s enemies, and the threat of his presence sent a chill throughout the country.2 As the young woman had announced in her dream, a few days later an English fleet attacked La Coruña (May 4, 1589), sacking the town, burning some suburbs, destroying the fishing fleet, and causing great losses of life and property. The atrocities carried out by the invaders on the residents were widely reported. For example, a memorial that detailed the acts of the ‘‘barbarous heretics,’’ as the invaders were called, noted that ‘‘a day before they retired, they ravaged the countryside with six or seven thousand men, sacking every place and home within a Competition and Confirmation 73 league and a half radius, seizing property and cattle, setting fire to houses and to the monastery of Our Lady of Cambre, destroying crops, allowing cattle in the vineyards, and carrying off bread, wine, and other things, and practicing cruelties on the women and children encountered.’’3 It is curious to note the similarity between the dream narrative and the events that took place as reported in the historical record. We can speculate that the dream narratives were elaborated on the basis of some early reports that circulated in the court and that the date was manipulated to make the dreams seem to be truly divine announcements, or that the description of the destruction was generic enough to fit the possibilities of any attack on the Galician coast, an area that was no stranger to such assaults.4 In any case, dreams were particularly effective vehicles to convey political information and to place it in a tangible narrative form accessible to an audience across a broad social spectrum. The reluctance of our own era to place much credence in information gained from dreams was not a characteristic of the early modern world, in which many people ascribed to them a prophetic character. Dreams advised, oriented, and modified the political decisions of kingdoms, groups, and individuals. Within the Christian tradition, dreams could communicate divine mysteries, revealing the good and bad aspects of the future, and in this way served as an ideological support for both personal and collective actions. With a license granted by God to make public his secrets, the prophet claimed to be endowed with a special gift that placed him or her at a higher level than other humans. From the time of the Middle Ages, if not before, this religious sentiment of dreams coexisted with other, more profane notions that placed the prophets in a vulnerable position. But prophets continued to attract followers since their words applied directly to the facts of life in the present, and because they embodied feelings of hope that proved so useful in moments of crisis since they served as vehicles of criticism. They often seemed to convey God’s will.5 In this way, predictions, prodigies, and dreams were greatly esteemed in the political culture of the sixteenth century, a reality underlined by the collections of prophecies preserved by Philip II, the quantity and popularity of almanacs published, and remarks like this one by the political thinker Justus Lipsius, cited by Don Bernardino de Mendoza, ambassador to London : ‘‘It seems according to the opinion of some gentiles that one can not ignore the prodigies of heaven and earth, the warnings of lightning or the happy, sad, doubtful, or clear predictions of the future, nor even dreams.’’6 024-03-19...