The Psalms as “Mirror of Princes” in the Siglo de Oro

T H E P S A L M S A S " M I R R O R O F P R I N C E S " LN T H E S I G L O D E O R O Laurie K. H o h w a l d R o w a n University The relatively scant attention paid to the genre of metrical psalms in Golden Age Spain has focused primarily on issues of prosody, and previous analyses have overlooked any poUtical overtones behind these translations.1 WhUe not as obvious or compeUing as Protestant Europe's use of the Psalms as a poetic shield in its struggle with the forces of CathoUc reaction, there is indeed a poUtical dimension in the numerous versions of the Psalter produced in Imperial Spain, especiaUy those pubUshed during its era of decadence in the reign of PhiUp IV. This essay wUl address a recurring phenomenon uncovered in research on lesserknown seventeenth century editions of the Davidic psalms in CastiUan: the use of these poems as a "mirror of princes" (or privados) in Imperial Spain. Many of the seventeenth-century nobles (including the King himself ) to whom these versions are dedicated are openly identified, in prose prefaces, with King David, and clear attempts are made to edify the monarch or grande with the moral teachings of the Psalms. Whereas poetic versions of the Psalms are normaUy, and rightly, treated as the artistic manifestation of a reUgious agenda, it is important to explore the poUtical ramifications of such an agenda, particularly in the age of desengano and decline. The weU-documented vogue for metrical psalms in the vernacular took root throughout Europe in the early sixteenth century, prompted by humanist concern for phUological and theological rigor in BibUcal translation and encouraged by imaginative metrical experimentation at the hands of both major and minor poets. England saw a veritable explosion of psalm-translating activity during this time; the British scholar Rivkah Zim has noted the appearance of more than seventy different versions— scholarly, devotional, and Uterary—in English from 1530 to 1600, not including those that survive only in manuscript (Zim 2). Convinced, like Thomas Becon, that "the Psalmody of David maye weU be caUed the tresure house of the holye Scripture" (Becon, Davids Harpe, cited in Zim 31), translators and poets as diverse as MUes Coverdale, Thomas Wyatt, Thomas Sternhold, the Earl of Surrey, and Mary and PhiUp Sidney dedicated themselves to capturing, in English meter and verse, the spiritual riches of Davidic meditation, suitable for congregational worshipbut also private devotion and even popular song.2 CALfOPE Vol. 5, No. 2 (1999): pages 44-54 THE PSALMS AS "MIRROR OF PRINCES" ?» 45 The identification of the poet's individual voice with that of the Prophet King had important repercussions for Protestant poets in the bloody age of reform. Bible and Psalm translation could be a highly subversive activity, depending on who was on the throne and what side of the English channel you happened to find yourself. Controversy surrounds the redaction of the Geneva Bible of 1560, made, in part, by WiUiam Whittingham, Calvin's brother-in-law. Considered the leading Bible of the Elizabethan age (Shakespeare, Donne, and Spenser's Bible), its Psalter carries a dedication to the Queen, comparing her to King David, Zerubbabel, Jehosaphat, Josiah, and Hezekiah and exhorting her to uphold and defend the Protestant Church (Barnstone 209; Hannay 26). During the reUgious and poUtical upheaveals in England between 1534 and 1559, it was not unusual for prisoners in the Tower of London to compose psalms of suppUcation to Heaven and vengeance against their tormentors, imaginatively recasting the Protestant pUght under the repression of Mary Tudor as that of a beleaguered Israel, and labeling the Roman CathoUc Church Philistine or worse (Zim 81). Elizabeth's champions merged their voices with David's in his tribulations, seeing the hated Papists as enemies of the new Israel, that is, the reformed Church. The influence of the Geneva Bible, the Marot/Beze or Huguenot psalter of 1562, Calvin's commentaries on the Psalms in Arthur Golding's translation , and the Sternhold/Hopkins psalter used by the Marian exUes in Geneva upon the...