Book of Honors for Empress María of Austria. A Translation with an Introductory Study and Facsimile of the Emblems by Antonio Bernat Vistarini, John T. Cull and Tamás Sajó (review)

This volume joins other important emblem books and studies published by St. Joseph's University Press, such as Emblematic Images & Religious Texts (essays written in honor of G. Richard Dimler, S.J.), Adrien Gambart's Emblem Book (ed. Terence O'Reilly), and Emblemata Sacra (emblems from the Maurits Sabbe Library, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). The emblems are reproduced on high quality, semi-glossy paper and are near perfect images of rare and often difficult texts to locate or otherwise obtain. The present volume of emblems is no exception.

It should be made clear at the outset that this volume is primarily an English translation from Spanish sources without the original language included, thus precluding an assessment of the accuracy of the translations of most material contained in the Libro de las honras que hizo del colegio de la Compañía de Iesvs de Madrid . . . , namely the oration by Juan Luis, the sermon preached by Jerónimo de Florencia, and the commentary that accompanies the emblems. Part of the Introduction to the volume (3-38) was previously presented by A. Bernat Vistarini and John T. Cull and published in the conference proceedings (GRISO, 2010), 101-26. After relatively brief remarks on "María de Austria and the Jesuit College of Madrid," "The Genre of El Libro de las Honras," "The Structure and Content of the Libro de las Honras," a "Summary Table of the Hieroglyphs," "The Poems," and "The Present Edition," the translation begins with the title page, preliminaries, a description of María de Austria's catafalque, a funeral oration delivered by Juan Luis ("Theologian of the Society of Jesus, and Professor of Rhetoric"), the translation of Jerónimo de Florencia's lengthy sermon, and the commentary on the emblems themselves.

The relationship between María de Austria and the Jesuit College is described briefly, framed with a few biographical remarks on her marriage, family connections, her cloistered life in the Descalzas Reales and a reference to her death in 1603 (also see below). The main focus is to emphasize her "zealous Catholic fervor" and to point out that she "virtually left the whole of her estate to the Jesuits in Madrid, including a parcel of land on Toledo Street," which would later become the home of the Colegio Imperial. The authors describe the work as a "relación de suceso in its most fundamental meaning as a published chronicle or summary of an important public event" (4). The purpose of this "literary genre," as they call it, is to inform, entertain and move the public. Funeral exequies, especially those featuring monarchs or royal personages, functioned to reassure the public of the stability of kingship and dynastic succession. The mythological imagery employed to memorialize such occasions was often similar for both male and female royal personages.

The section on the prayer and the funeral sermon (10-15) is a summary and analysis which concentrates on Spanish Baroque religious rhetoric, neatly dividing the material into the traditional structure: Exordium, Body and Conclusion. María is "allegorized as golden eagle," she is given a "new coat of arms, has not lost an empire," with a final reference to "[f]elicitations for glory attained" (14-15). The series of thirty-six emblems ("hieroglyphs") and their Latin mottos are translated and sourced and the content of the images are described in detail. The final section on the numerous anonymous poems that conclude the work are "largely uninspired and perfunctory" (29). The critical bibliography is up-to-date and pertinent and effectively lends the scholarly support expected in such studies.

It is perhaps relevant to be reminded that the Court was in Valladolid (1601-1606) when the empress...