Saint and Nation: Santiago, Teresa of Avila, and Plural Identities in Early Modern Spain (review)

A country deeply divided over its proper role on the world stage, in doubt over the nature of its core values and leadership, a country where a militaristic, nativist, and traditionalist faction was pitted against a more inclusive, forward-looking wing—this was not the contemporary United States, but Spain during the crisis of the seventeenth century. In Saint and Nation, Erin Kathleen Rowe makes a case for studying how national identity can crystallize around a religious symbol. Between 1617 and 1630, Spain was split in a contentious battle over which saint or saints should be the country’s patron—the traditional Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Moorslayer) or Santiago together with the newly canonized St. Teresa of Ávila. Teresa’s promoters (“teresianos”) argued that new challenges—the rise of Protestantism, mainly, but also difficult times at home—necessitated a modern patron saint who understood these problems and could lead the Spanish nation to victory. Santiago’s supporters (“santiaguistas”) fought back viciously and ultimately won the day.

Over the course of an introduction and seven chapters, Rowe develops the story of this controversy, relying primarily on the pamphlets that the two sides hurled at one another, but also the archival records of the many cathedrals involved, the royal crown, and the Vatican itself. In essence, Rowe’s book traces two histories. First, there is the ideological battle waged by the pamphleteers. A close reading of these pamphlets, some of them penned by Spain’s leading authors and political thinkers, lays bare the nation’s prejudices and aspirations. The santiaguistas revealed themselves to be misogynistic, papal and royal scofflaws who could not bring themselves to accept a woman as their patron saint, even though the pope, king, and parliament all commanded it. On their part, Teresa’s supporters, armed with the Tridentine Church’s critical reappraisal of sainthood, questioned Santiago’s murky credentials and put forth the virtues of a real saint better equipped to deal with the modern world in which they lived. The second history is that of the legal battle that ensued over Teresa’s shared patronage with Santiago. Matters of cult, Castile’s cathedral chapters argued, belonged to them, and the monarchy or parliament could not simply vote themselves a new patron saint and expect them to worship accordingly. Because there was the inconvenient fact that the papacy had issued a brief authorizing Teresa’s co-patronage, the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela set itself the task of proving that Pope Urban VIII had been mistaken when he granted it and remarkably won the fight in 1630, quashing forever hopes for Teresa’s co-patronage of Spain.

Although both Santiago and Teresa’s supporters pitched their saints as patrons for all of Spain, in reality this is a Castilian story. True, Philip III and Philip IV were avid teresianos, but hitching Teresa to the cause of the Hispanic monarchy, as Olivares hoped, never won over the hearts and minds of non-Castilians, just as the monarchy itself could never convince the Catalans, Portuguese, Italians, and Dutch to fall in line with its policies. Ultimately, therefore, the co-patronage controversy is a story about how Castile’s cathedral chapters, bishops, cities, parliament, and religious orders lined up behind their saint and defended their privileges and political interests. At times, a more critical reading of some of the various primary sources would have been welcome, as well as a conclusion that integrates the book’s themes, rather than looking forward to the fate of Santiago and Teresa in the twentieth century. These remarks aside, on the whole Rowe handles very well the complexity of her subject and her sources, and in doing so sheds valuable insight on the evolution of the Spanish national identity during the early-modern period.