Spain in Italy: Politics, Society, and Religion 1500–1700 (review)

This book is the product of an ambitious conference at the American Academy in Rome in December 2003. The resulting nineteen papers are meant to outline the new directions of research in the years since Franco. The editors mean to redress the Italian version of the Black Legend that in various forms since Guicciardini has blamed the Italian wars and the resulting Spanish domination for the end of Italian liberty, a repressive religious culture, and an economic decline. These essays do not entirely erase any of the old conclusions, but they do make clear that Spanish Italy cannot simply be interpreted in an older civic, or a newer nationalist, context. The volume is organized in four sections reporting on recent work on the various Italian states, their relations with Spain, the socio-economic impact of the Spanish presence, and religion and the Church.

The first section, on the states, occasionally becomes little more than a report of local experiences, but there are some important conclusions to be drawn. The first is that throughout the period, the Spanish did respond to local needs and traditions. Francesco Benigno's discussion of Sicily makes the important point that even when Spanish institutions dominated, actual royal power could be muted. The Inquisition, the Viceroy, and the Church really competed with each other. Thus by the late sixteenth century, kings needed the Valimiento system in which a royal favorite, or valido was appointed to speak for the king. In the north Spanish nobles soon dominated in the countryside while the Milanese nobility continued to dominate the city. By the end of the period, and the ill-fated Mantuan War, Spanish influence was little more than fiscal. The conclusion was that Spanish control was much less pronounced than legend would hold. It is clear, as the editors suggest, that Spanish interests and Spanish nobility were well-integrated into the Italian world. Perhaps the best example is the alliance between the Toledo and the Medici families. Carlos José Hernando Sánchez points out that both needed the other. Pedro of Toledo, Viceroy of Naples, needed connections to the Italian nobility, while Cosimo I de' Medici needed support in making a claim to a ducal title. Eleanor of Toledo, Cosimo's new wife, quickly became a model of piety and domesticity in Florence. Similarly, Thomas Dandelet shows that it was Spanish money that was key to the construction and completion of the new St. Peter's. He says that by 1634 ninety percent of the money came from Spanish sources. Social and cultural influences are less clear. It is true that the Spanish army provided, as Claudio Donati shows, an important profession for younger sons. Yet Paolo Malanima and John Marino, on the other hand, show that Spanish influence on the economy was minimal. Malanima argues that the depression of the early seventeenth century resulted when production could not match population growth — the Spanish had little to do with it. Marino shows that in the countryside, it was southern dependence on an export market that caused the decline from which the South never really recovered. The Spanish influence? Marino concludes that it did no better or worse than any other early modern government. Finally, James Amelang shows the complex reciprocal religious relationships between Spain and Italy. He notes that the Italians maintained a strong sense of their own cultural superiority, but the Spanish had an equally clear view of their own political dominance. Masimo Firpo similarly underlines the religious and cultural fluidity of ideas and influences in the period up to the Council of Trent, and he and the other writers do not really find great differences of interests between the Spanish and the Italians.

The book is really quite well-produced. The translations, when necessary, seem to be clear and faithful. The problems that remain...