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  • Hernando de Talavera on Conduct:Cultural Hegemony in Post-Conquest Granada
  • Mark D. Johnston

Over forty years ago, Giovanni Maria Bertini praised Hernando de Talavera as one of the pre-eminent spiritual authors of the fifteenth century and best vernacular prose authors of the Spanish “pre-Renaissance.” Since then, his prolific oeuvre has rarely attracted more than passing mention, if at all, in modern inventories of medieval Castilian literature (such as Alvar and Lucía Megías). The reasons for scholarly neglect of his work are not difficult to imagine: first, most of his writings treat issues of religious polemic, moral theology, ethics, or conduct for which there are few peers in the medieval Castilian corpus; second, his long career of service to the Castilian crown vastly overshadows, for modern historians, his contributions as a vernacular author. This essay assesses the contribution of three works by Talavera to the medieval European corpus of moral and ethical literature, and concludes with a suggestion to understanding their value as theoretical justifications for the forced assimilation of Muslim Granada after its annexation to Castile in 1492.

To begin with the contribution of Talavera’s work to the medieval corpus of Latin and vernacular conduct literature: depending on how broadly one defines this body of material, it embraces a plethora of genres, ranging from wisdom literature and treatises on moral theology or pastoral care to “mirrors for princes,” manuals of chivalry, courtesy books, advice from parents to children, guides to estate management, monastic rules, and many other specialized texts of instruction on behavior (Ashley and Clark; Johnston, Medieval Conduct). Examples of conduct literature appear in virtually every period of the European Middle Ages, but proliferated in the vernacular languages especially after the thirteenth century. Medieval Castilian includes some notable “mirrors for princes” (Nogales Rincón; Rucquoi and Bizzarri) and many works of wisdom literature (Haro Cortés; Ramadori), but few specialized texts such as manuals of chivalry, courtesy books, treatises on pastoral care, and so forth. The examples most commonly cited in literary histories are the Libro del cavallero et del escudero of Juan Manuel and the anonymous fifteenth-century Castigos y dotrinas que un sabio dava a sus hijas. Of the other, more specialized genres, scarcely half a dozen individual treatises exclusively focused on conduct exist in Castilian.

Three of these treatises came from the pen of Hernando de Talavera, who included them in a collection of his writings printed at Granada in 1496,1 where he was serving as the newly-acquired Muslim territory’s first archbishop. Talavera presumably published this [End Page 11] collection as a guide to pastoral care for the clergy of his new archdiocese, as is clear from the table of contents (RAH 3–4) for the entire volume:

  1. 1. Breue y muy prouechosa doctrina de lo que deue saber todo christiano (RAH 21–36)

  2. 2. Confessional o auisacion de todas las maneras en que podemos pecar contra los diez mandamientos (RAH 39–151)

  3. 3. Breue tractado de como auemos de restituyr y satisfazer de todas maneras de cargo (RAH 152–66)

  4. 4. Breue y muy prouechoso tractado de como auemos de comulgar (RAH 167–211)

  5. 5. Muy prouechoso tractado contra el murmurar y dezir mal de otro en su absencia que es gran pecado y muy vsado (RAH 212–50)

  6. 6. Deuoto tractado de lo que representan y nos dan a entender las cerimonias de la missa (RAH 254–310)

  7. 7. Solazoso y prouechoso tractado contra la demasia de vestir y de calçar y de comer y de beuer (RAH 314–414)

  8. 8. Prouechoso tractado de como deuemos auer mucho cuydado de espender muy bien el tiempo y en que manera lo auemos de espender para que no se pierda momento [letter to María Pacheco, Countess of Benavente] (RAH 419–62)

Among the eight separate works compiled in this volume, the three treatises on conduct (items 5, 7, and 8) seem almost anomalous, if not incongruous, contributions in a guide to pastoral care. Written earlier in Talavera’s career for different audiences and occasions, they offer very diverse kinds of moral and ethical guidance. The Tractado de como deuemos espender el tiempo is a letter...

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