Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain by Fernando Bouza (review)

REVIEWS 196 those in the lay community. In the summation of her work, Bourdua asserts that her case studies suggest fundamentally complex processes of production, and that each of the projects was the work of concerted collaboration among several groups and individuals in a given community. While there are many commonalities among the churches and their undertakings, the patterns of patronage are decidedly not standard. As the author points out, “there is a symbiosis between friars and lay people; and there are subtleties in the level of involvement” (151). This relationship fluctuated from place to place, and local craftsmen, donors, and politics certainly imparted idiosyncrasies to each particular commission. We can conclude, then, “that the mechanics of patronage in Franciscan churches followed procedures encountered in other churches and in civic settings” (154). This general theme is well supported throughout the book, and raises questions about artistic patronage in other religious orders, as well as Franciscans throughout Europe. The Franciscans and Art Patronage in Medieval Italy is a thoughtfully crafted and pointed study, effectively combining documentary evidence, Franciscan ideals, and art and architecture to support clear conclusions about the inner workings of patronage and production in the Veneto. Information on the history of the Franciscan order and aspects of the Franciscan life is smoothly integrated as necessary, and contributes significantly to the work’s relevance to medievalists across the humanities. JAMES VINCENT MAIELLO, Music, UC Santa Barbera Fernando Bouza, Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain, trans. Sonia López and Michael Agnew, foreword by Roger Chartier (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2004) xvi + 108 pp. Sonia López and Michael Agnew have translated Comunicación, conocimiento y memoria en la España de los Siglos XVI y XVII, first published in 1999 by Seminario de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas, Universidad de Salamanca. Although Fernando Bouza has written extensively on the cultural history of early modern Spain, this is his first work to be translated into English.4 Bouza examines the “history of communication during the Spanish Golden Age that would bring together speech, images and written texts, presenting them as all serving the same objective: the will to know and to create memory” (107). Bouza considers a variety of documents including fiction, poetry, personal letters, journals, devotional writings, parish documents, manuals of instruction, and accounts of public festivities. The author writes that he intends his study to be rather a succinct exploration of the social practices associated with the perpetuation of memory than a comprehensive account of the history of communication in the early modern period (4). For Bouza specific information contained 4 Other works by Fernando Bouza still to be translated include Palabra e Imagen en la Corte. Cultura oral y visual de la nobleza en el Siglo de Oro (Madrid 2003); Corre Manuscrito: una historia cultural del Siglo de Oro (Madrid 2002); Imagen y propaganda: capítulos de historia cultural del reinado de Felipe II (Madrid 1998); La corte de Felipe II (Madrid 1994); and Del escribano a la biblioteca (Madrid 1992). REVIEWS 197 in these documents reveals that the history of communication in the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain is one in which speech and images enjoy the same status as texts (15). That is the heart of Bouza’s account and the focus of this review. Chapter 1, “Hearing, Seeing, Reading, and Writing: The Forms and Uses of Words, Images, and Writing,” opens with a metaphor that contextualizes the mutual dependence of oral traditions, visual images, and texts in the transmission of knowledge.5 Strolling along a “gallery of illustrious men” (1), a group of aristocrats come upon the portrait of a prince whose identity is unknown to them. As a courtier comments bitterly that “the cruelty with which time consumes everything is fierce, for neither strong armor nor iron walls can sustain its blows” (1), one of the prince’s former servants identifies him, and proposes to save his memory from oblivion by means of writing: A sword made from a goose’s plume and bolstered by a paper shield against time’s cruelty I shall wield, lest of his exploits it consume one tittle on Fame’s battlefield. (3) Although the anecdote suggests...