Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain

Chapter 2: In Memory of Moors: History, Maurophilia, and the Built Vernacular

2 In Memory of Moors: History, Maurophilia, and the Built Vernacular de todos cuantos vençimientos hicieron los grandes reyes y señores pasados, ni aún de los edeficios que fundaron ni fazañas que ficieron no queda otra cosa sino esto que dellos leemos; y aun los edifiçios que facen, por grandes que sean, caen e callan, y la escriptura de sus fechos que leemos ni cae ni calla en ningún tiempo. —Fernando del Pulgar, ‘‘Letra al Conde de Cabra’’ [of all the many achievements of great kings and lords in the past, nothing remains, not even of the buildings they erected, nor of the deeds they did—except what we read of them. However great they may be, their buildings fall and are silent, but what is written of their deeds does not fall, and is never silent.] Over the course of the sixteenth century, humanist historiography came of age in Spain, in a process that culminated in the Jesuit Juan de Mariana’s great Historiae de rebus Hispaniae (1592), an account of Spain from its first mythical settlement to Mariana’s own time. The Latin history was so well received that Mariana translated it into Spanish as the Historia general de España to make it available to a broader audience.1 Mariana’s prologue to the translation, dedicated to Philip III, links the endurance of his history to the excellence of Spain: ‘‘Confı́o que si bien hay faltas, y yo lo confieso, la grandeza de España conservará esta obra’’ (‘‘I trust that though there are errors, and I confess it, the greatness of Spain shall preserve this work,’’ LII). In a tradition inherited from the earliest humanist historians (as in the epigraph from Isabel’s chronicler Fernando del Pulgar, above), Mariana emphasizes the power of the written record above all other forms of memorialization: 32 Chapter 2 La historia en particular suele triunfar del tiempo, que acaba todas las demás memorias y grandezas. De los edificios soberbios, de las estatuas y trofeos de Ciro, de Alejandro, de César, de sus riquezas y poder, ¿qué ha quedado? ¿Qué rastro del templo de Salomon, de Jerusalem, de sus torres y baluartes? La vejez lo consumió, y el que hace las cosas las deshace. El sol que produce a la mañana las flores del campo, el mismo las marchita a la tarde. Las historias solas se conservan, y por ellas la memoria de personajes y de cosas tan grandes. (LII) [History in particular often triumphs over time, which destroys all other memories and grandeur. What is left of the magnificent buildings, of the statues and trophies of Cyrus, of Alexander, of Caesar, of their riches and power? What trace of Solomon ’s temple, of Jerusalem, of its towers and bastions? Age consumed it all, and he who makes things unmakes them. The very sun that creates the wildflowers in the morning withers them in the afternoon. Only histories are preserved, and through them the memory of such great figures and events.] In lay as in biblical history, great men and their deeds succumb to the effects of time, to be preserved only by the written account that the historian provides. As Roger Chartier puts it, ‘‘the mission of the written was to dispel the obsession with loss.’’2 In his own text, Mariana establishes the conquest of Granada as the heroic endpoint to which all of Spanish history has tended. Book 25, which covers this period, is bracketed by a highly self-conscious reflection on the place of the conquest in the larger course of events. The war in Granada is the ‘‘fin deseado de toda esta obra’’ (211) [‘‘desired end of this whole work’’], by which Mariana means not just his text but the nation-building project whose teleology the history reinforces. The book ends by celebrating the Christian triumph in similarly conclusive—and circular—terms: ‘‘toda España con esta victoria quedaba por Cristo nuestro Señor, cuya era antes’’ (240) [‘‘with this victory, all Spain was now for Christ our lord, whose it had been before’’]. Yet Mariana’s conviction that only written history could enduringly tell the story of the fall of Granada and of the Spain that ensued is abundantly challenged by a range of cultural productions over the course of the sixteenth century. Explicit rewritings of the war on Granada engage directly with the problem of what and...