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I' XIX II Relics of Medievalism and Dawn of a New Society 1. LINGERING MEDIEVALISM AND ITS POSITIVE ASPECT THE above claims, however, are n0t intended to present Oviedo as being more "modem" than he really is. Oviedo is a typical Renaissance Spaniard, and the Spanish Renaissance is notorious for the way certain medieval elements stubbornly survived alongside the innovatory and progressive tendencies. I This association of long outdated cultural forms with the fruitful seeds of the new era tends at first sight to be rather disconcerting and sometimes, on closer examination, proves to have that alluring and ambiguous fascination that all hybrids have. Sixteenth-century Spanish literature, art, and political institutions are often found to contain features and elements which elsewhere had already dissolved in a higher synthesis, while there they persist alongside one another, mutually unaware of their reciprocal incompatibility, spanning distances of centuries with their jarring anachronism and thus furnishing the clear if crude documentary proof of a slow, complex, and labored process of historical formation. From the romance to the encomienda, from the imperial dream of Charles V to the philosophy of Suarez, the most typical creations of the Middle Agesfeudalism , chivalry, the universal monarchy, scholasticism-come to life and bloom again in sixteenth-century Spain. Their exotic appearance-a chronological exoticism or, to put it more bluntly, outdatedness-in some miraculous way manages to merge with the new national forms of political life, with the startling offerings from the new lands across the sea, and with the first sporadic or I. Lozoya. for example, remarks on the fact that in the Spanish Renaissance "medieval culture continues to develop unhindered, while in other areas its development was interrupted" (op. cit., p. 184), and Menendez Pidal allegorizes the Spanish Renaissance as "that great tree with its roots sunk deep in the medieval earth, already sterile throughout Europe" (La idea imperial, p. 31). In point of fact the tree bore late fruits of somewhat antiquated flavor: books of chivalry at a time when they were already forgotten or-worse still-being lampooned in the rest of Europe, works of mysticism and theology when the science of nature and the philosophy of immanence were already advancing triumphant. Oviedo, studying the flora and fauna of America, was really considerably more "modem" than his lord, Charles V, the obsessed heir of the Holy Roman Empire. For all his lofty professions of faith, Oviedo's point of reference is rational, not providential. 306 Relics of Medievalism 307 embryonic manifestations of the modem spirit of observation and cntlcism. From this angle too Columbus turns out to be a symbolic figure, his mind still crammed with medieval science and superstition, and yet serving as Spain's and Europe's pilot marking out the route toward the New World and the new times. This lingering medievalism is evident in Oviedo. We have already mentioned the absence of humanist principles and the lack of any sign of influence of the new classicism in the literary form of his major work. As for the content, there are three clearly discernible categories of medieval relic: the first consists of relics that are quite obvious but not vital, like the suggestiveness of certain numbers, the insistence on certain edifying formulas and superstitious prejudices -relics so innocent that they would perhaps be better described as intrusions , and which we mention mainly as picturesque curiosities. The second category comprises certain attitudes that are still typical of a medievalistic mentality, but by now drained of their traditional content and corrupted in form: typical are the lip service paid to the sacred texts, the reverence for the authority of the ancients, the idolizing of Pliny the Elder-traits that are certainly far from modem, but in reality external and not restrictive of Oviedo's scientific horizon, indeed utilized by him to support some of his boldest theories-and when they prove unusable even for this purpose, simply discarded . We mention them only lest it be thought that our claims for Oviedo's humanism are based on his much flaunted and no less questionable familiarity with the Greek and Latin authors. The third category comprises the typically medieval feelings and reactions, in other words those that are in obvious conflict with the spirit of the new times. Oviedo, we need hardly repeat, is a firm Catholic believer, a hidalgo and a Spaniard with all the haughtiness and arrogance of his nation and his rank, an official whose loyalty to the emperor stilI has much...

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