‘exempt from time and from its fatal change’: spanish imperial ideology, 1450–1700

‘Exempt from time and from its fatal change’:Spanish imperial ideology, 1450–1700

Eva Botella-Ordinas

‘We may properly enough date the Rise of the Spanish Power from the year1503 . . . And perhaps we may as properly fix the year 1588 for the Era of theirDeclension . . . [when they] lost all Hopes of attaining to Universal Monar-chy’, wrote Charles Davenant in 1701, and his words became flesh. In Dav-enant’s narrative, Spain played the role of the universal empire opposed to hisideal of balance of power among states. He is seen by some historians as amere pamphleteer, by others as an analyst of trade. Even recognizing heplayed the latter role, Davenant, son of a supporter of Cromwell’s WesternDesign against Spain, was not describing a reality but helping create a newone: British imperial ideology, a legitimization for a British universal empireunder the pretence of international balance of power.1

To the memory of Peer Schmidt

Ramón y Cajal at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) (RYC-2007-01121); research projects: ‘Repen-sando la identidad: la Monarquía de España entre 1665 y 1746’ MICIN, HAR2011-27562; ‘EpistemologíaHistórica: Historia de las emociones en los siglos XIX y XX’ MICIN, FFI2010-20876 (subprograma FISO). Thisarticle is the outcome of ten years of research, during which it benefited from the priceless suggestions of somany scholars and students I cannot thank them all by name. Yet I must express my gratitude to those withoutwhom it would have been impossible to write it. First, to my research founding fathers from the UAM: JuliánViejo Yharrassassy, Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, Ignacio M. Vicent López, José María Iñurritegui Rodríguez,and José M. Portillo Valdés. To Xavier Gil Pujol and Bartolomé Clavero, whose feedback was invaluable in aresearch transition period. To the genuine point of view of the AWC research team from the EUI in Florence:Antonio Terrasa Lozano, Domingo Centenero del Arce, and Francesca Zantedeschi. And, in later stages,especially to David Armitage, Josep Maria Fradera, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Bernard Bailyn, Peer Schmidt,Javier Fernández Sebastián, and Andrew Fitzmaurice, who discussed this thesis at length and gave me the bestadvice to improve it. Finally, I am very grateful to the anonymous readers of the journal for their comments andto Ruth Mackay for her help with language.

1 Charles Davenant, Essays upon I. the Ballance of Power; II. The right of making war, peace, and alliances; III.Universal Monarchy (London 1701), 279; Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade. International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism andReligion. The First Decline and Fall, Vol. 3, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), IV, Ch. 2, 245 and 169;Richard Frohock, ‘Sir William Davenant’s American Operas’, The Modern Language Review, 96, 2, (1 April 2001),323–33; D. Waddell, ‘Charles Davenant and the East India Company’, Economica, New Series, 23, 91, (August1956), 261–4; David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2000), 142–4, 167; Bridget Orr, ‘Poetic Plate-Fleets and Universal Monarchy: The Heroic Plays andEmpire in the Restoration’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, 63, 1/2, (2000), 71–97; Eva Botella Ordinas,‘Debating Empires, Inventing Empires: British Territorial Claims Against the Spaniards in America, 1670–1714’,Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 10, 1, (Spring/Summer 2010), 142–68.

Renaissance Studies Vol. 26 No. 4 DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2012.00821.x

© 2012 The AuthorRenaissance Studies © 2012 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd

British imperial ideology claimed the British empire was commercial, mari-time, Protestant, and free, opposed to the old Spanish empire of mining,land-based, Catholic, and tyrannical; therefore, the first would rise and thesecond would decline. Some, whose writings would become crucial in thebuilding of this creative representation of reality, deployed an explanation forthe decline and fall of republics belonging to a specific branch of civichumanism but to support a monarchy – which surely would have horrified therepublican Machiavelli. They deployed a Machiavellian scheme to defendexpansion but changed the meaning of Machiavellian virtue, which surelywould have confused the pro-Roman Machiavelli. According to them, theBritish monarchical empire would both escape decline and protect libertythanks to commerce and ‘manners’ (replacing the virtù of civic humanism),unlike the archaic Monarchy of Spain. There were many practical reasons toinvent this imperial ideology: legitimization for expansion; domestic stabiliza-tion and the implementation of reforms; and reassurance of British imperialsupporters’ investments through the creation of the market’s trust.2

Perhaps it is this narrative more than any other that makes us focus onhumanism when we analyse imperial ideologies and the problem of thecorruption and decline of republics. But there were other humanist argu-ments – even civic humanist arguments – able to legitimize universal empirewhile avoiding the evil spell of expansion: loss of liberty, loss of virtue, and fall.Notwithstanding Davenant’s quotation, the ideology of the Spanish empireconceived of itself as the Fifth Monarchy, so it could not decline and fall.Unlike British imperial ideology, Spanish imperial ideology’s main argumentwas theological, not commercial; yet, like British imperial ideology, it wasforged by a combination of humanism and theology able to preserve libertieswithin the composite monarchy and promote commerce. After all, both ide-ologies aimed to encourage domestic support and external legitimization fortheir expansion and both were created by elites in contact with one anotherand sharing a similar Weltanschauung. The historian of imperial ideologies hasa very difficult task if her goal is to write a national or linear history.3

Spanish imperial ideology took shape with three momentous twists. First,from Basel to Charles V, assuming the narrative of the decline and fall of theRoman empire and the rise of the church as the Fifth Monarchy to claim, first,Castile’s independence from the German empire and, later, its own particular

2 Armitage, The Ideological Origins, especially Ch. 5; Andrew Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America. An IntellectualHistory of English Colonisation, 1500–1625, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 167–94; J. G. A.,Pocock, ‘Virtues, Rights, and Manners. A Model for Historians of Political Thought’, Virtue, Commerce andHistory. Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1985), 37–50; J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the AtlanticRepublican Tradition, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), Ch. 13–14, 509–13; cf. Markku Peltonen,‘Politeness and Whiggism, 1688–1732’, The Historical Journal, 48 (2005): 391–414, a rich historiographic discus-sion about the complex relationships between politeness, commerce and trade.

3 For the definition of humanism see: Markku Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in EnglishPolitical Thought, 1570–1640, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7.

Spanish imperial ideology, 1450–1700 581

empire. Second, with the recovery of the translatio imperii narrative duringCharles V’s reign. Third, in Philip II’s times, when the claim was that theMonarchy of Spain, along with the church, was the Fifth Universal Monarchy,which would last forever. At the same time, Neoplatonic and humanist ecclesio-logical legitimization of the church as a monarchy was applied first to Castileand then to the Monarchy of Spain to imply they were composite bodies tiedtogether by love, not by law, this claim not entailing the existence of absolutism.This essay will explain, first, the humanist basis of Spanish imperial ideologyand its transformation from the Catholic Kings, as Isabel and Ferdinand wereknown, to Philip II; and, second, how and why Philip II changed the imperialideology and how this ideology denied empire’s corruption and defendedliberties and the ‘improvement of sciences’ until the eighteenth century.

‘PRINCIPATUM HISPANIAE FUIT MONARCHIA’: FROM BASEL TO PHILIP II

Humanism and empire

This history of humanism and empire begins with Basel, not Florence.Humanism’s starting point was traditionally located in Florence at the begin-ning of the fifteenth century. But Charles T. Davis claimed a starting point inthe thirteenth century related to Italian city states but also to other intercon-nected latitudes. This early humanism was as Christian as fifteenth- centuryhumanism; both defended the common good, vita activa, and vivere civilewithin secular republics; both praised republican Rome. But they differed intheir interpretation of the place of empire and papacy in long-term history.Thirteenth-century humanists were republicans defending republican lifewithin their cities, while monarchists were defending the moral and/or legalrule either of the church or of the empire – in order to protect their republics,estates, and status within the church or the empire. Ptolemy of Luccadefended the pope and Lucca; Dante defended the emperor and Florence.Their works were deployed by discussants at the Council of Basel and beyond,but not by Machiavelli and Guicciardini, who, in a different context, did notcare about the place of church and empire in their narratives.4

Early modern humanists explaining the foundation, maintenance, and cor-ruption of republics – res publicae – believed their fall was due to a limitednumber of causes, and lack of virtue was the main one. Virtue conceived eitheras vita activa and vivere civile, or as Christian virtue, or a mixture of both, wasthe key notion to explicate the endurance or decline of republics over time.But for many early modern writers, causal explanations about the corruption,

4 Charles T. Davis, ‘Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society,118, 1 (Feb. 28, 1974), 30–50; Bee Yun, ‘Ptolemy of Lucca – A Pioneer of Civic Republicanism? A Reassessment’,History of Political Thought, 29, 3, (Autumn 2008), 417–39.

582 Eva Botella-Ordinas

decline, and fall of republics did not cover all cases. There were two excep-tional republics: the Holy Roman Empire and the church. Like the phoenixbird, both were unique specimens. They claimed a long existence (fromChrist to the end of time) and exemption from total corruption and utterdecline. Both, like the phoenix, could rise from their ashes.

Supporters of the Empire and the church, interpreting Daniel’s prophecy,stated theirs were unique republics because after their fall there would be nomore. Humanist histories usually had to deal with both institutions and withthe traditional interpretation of this prophecy. Niccolò Machiavelli avoidedthe prophecy and attributed the church’s survival to miracles, as its temporalrule was ridiculous, according to his scheme. Yet, when the republicanMachiavelli and the monarchical Juan de Torquemada wrote about empires,they counted four, and they ordered them chronologically: the Assyrian,Mede-Persian, Greek, and Roman. In the first century, Pompeius Trogus hadcalled this succession translatio imperii, and although by 1500 this name hadseveral meanings, and the rise and fall of empires had various explanations,the succession persisted. Machiavelli, Torquemada, and other humanistsassumed empires consisted primarily of this short list of political bodies firstestablished by pagan historians such as Trogus and by Christian historians,namely, St Augustine, Orosius, and St Jerome. Therefore, many early modernmen thought there had been four empires in history, after which just oneempire would succeed, either before or after the end of the world.5

Since medieval times, the Roman empire was the model for every institutionintending to be universal, including the church. The church became Roman,but its citizens were Christians, a people whose land was supposed to be thewhole world. Some theologians, such as Otto of Freising, gave the Romanempire a ‘providential’ scheme based on prophetic biblical texts such asDaniel 2 and 7. Biblical prophesies are related to unique historical events thatmust happen in relation to God’s salvation plan. They can create an expecta-tion of fulfilment in the future, after Christ and before the end of time.Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 reveals the succession of ‘empires’ or‘monarchies’ preceding the final ‘messianic’ kingdom in a visual metaphor ofa statue. Exegetes such as Jerome and Orosius identified the golden head ofthe statue as the neo-Babylonian empire or monarchy, the silver chest as theMede-Persian empire, the bronze stomach as the Greek monarchy, and theiron legs as the Roman empire. When the Fourth Monarchy fell, the kingdomof the saints would arise and last forever.6

5 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 3–48, 191; Donald J. Wilcox, The Measure of Times Past: Pre-NewtonianChronologies and the Rhetoric of Relative Time, (Chicalo, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 108–12; John M.Najemi, ‘Machiavelli between East and West’, Diogo Ramada Curto, et al. (eds), From Florence to the Mediterraneanand Beyond. Essays in Honour of Anthony Molho, (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2009), 127–45.

6 Manuel García Pelayo, Mitos y símbolos políticos, (Madrid: Taurus, 1964), 69–122; Atti del I Seminario interna-zionale di studi storici ‘Da Roma alla terza Roma’. Popoli e spazio romano tra diritto e profezia (Edizioni ScientificheItaliane, 1986), 11–24, 37–47, 291–308.


Christian conceptions of the Roman empire were either apocalyptic – as thereign of the Antichrist just before the end of time – or merely eschatological– the Roman empire representing the sovereign authority of Christ and lastingforever. The narrative of translatio imperii followed this more orthodox escha-tological interpretation, claiming that the Roman empire was the sacredsword of the everlasting Fourth Universal Monarchy. The narrative of transla-tio imperii told the story of the supposed donation of Emperor Constantine toPope Sylvester in the fourth century. By the sixteenth century the popes usedthe story to justify their transfer of the Roman empire to different kingdoms,and the emperors used it to claim their sacred independence from thechurch. Thus, supporters of Charles V (1500–1558) claimed that the eternalRoman empire was transferred to the Franks through Charlemagne, somehowbecoming the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. The narrative ofthe translatio imperii does not prescribe the decline and fall of the Romanempire but rather its eternal endurance. Through translatio imperii church andempire were conjoined, universal, and everlasting institutions committed toevangelizing the world. The Fifth Monarchy would not be of this world, itwould arise with Christ’s Second Coming. But this interpretation made thechurch’s legitimacy dependent on the temporal vicissitudes of another insti-tution: the Holy Roman Empire.7

There was an orthodox way of avoiding the scheme. It bloomed in Augus-tine of Hippo’s mind in the fifth century. For St Augustine, the Roman empirewas neither apocalyptic nor eschatological, but just a secular institution irrel-evant to the history of salvation. But some church writers twisted Augustine’swords to write their own ecclesiastic histories, and later, in the thirteenthcentury, some theologians and jurists reinterpreted Daniel 2 to suggest that asthe Roman empire, the Fourth Monarchy, declined and fell, the church aroseas the Fifth and last Monarchy. The fall of the Fourth Monarchy preceded thesecond arrival of Christ. Until the Second Coming, the Militant Church – asNew Israel – would be a hopeful pilgrim waiting for the Triumphant Church.The church was eschatological, not apocalyptic: although it claimed to lastuntil the end of time, it did not expect its imminence announcing the insti-tutional church’s end. Theological orthodoxy after Augustine no longer con-sidered salvation as a moment in historical time, nor did it give apocalypticmeaning to concrete spatial-temporal events.

7 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, Los dos cuerpos del rey. Un estudio de teología política medieval, (Madrid: Alianza, 1985),276–8; Leonard Krieger, Time’s Reasons. Philosophies of History Old and New, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1989), 15–21; Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Chs. 6 and 7; Frances A. Yates, Astraea.The Imperial Theme in theSixteenth Century, (London: Ark, 1985), 1–20; Walter Ullmann, Medieval Papalism. The Political Theories of theMedieval Canonists, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), 176–98, 107–09, 128, 163–76, 76–137; FranzBosbach, Monarchia universalis. Storia di un concetto cardine della politica europea (secoli XVI–XVIII), (Milan: Vita ePensiero, 1998), 78–80 and 108; Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Imageof the Emperor, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 119–24; R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Societyin the Theology of St Augustine, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 166–86, 157–8.


The non-apocalyptic interpretation of historical events sustained thechurch’s institutions and doctrine by supporting its tradition and authority.On the one hand, it supported the institutional church because individualsalvation was achieved through hierarchically distributed sacraments. On theother hand, it guaranteed the church’s temporal endurance, giving histori-cal events a moral, not a salvific meaning. Therefore, even when, by the endof the fifteenth century, church orthodoxy claimed mankind was livingduring the last age of the world, the incidental apocalyptic interpretations ofhistorical events – such as those of Savonarola, Cardinal Ximénez Cisneros,Annius of Viterbo, or the spiritual Franciscans – did not last long. After theReformation, the Roman Church’s orthodoxy depicted the impasse fromthe last empire of Daniel to the end of time as a period both distant andindefinite. Thus, at the beginning of the sixteenth century there wereseveral narratives about the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Onewas republican, another was monarchical, and a third was both republicanand monarchical, all of them being humanist. Spanish imperial ideologyis rooted in the second and the third narratives, and its history starts inBasel.8

From Basel to Charles V

Those who attended the Council of Basel included humanists and friendssuch as Nicholas of Cusa, Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, Alonso de Cartagena– who was discussing a translation of Aristotle with Leonardo Bruni – andCardinal Juan de Torquemada, a defender of the pope along with Nicholas ofCusa. They shared a single view about the constitution of the church, and thisconception arose mainly from Neoplatonic humanism. They assumed thechurch’s constitution was monarchical because its sacramental system washierarchical. Grace was transmitted through the ecclesiastic institutional hier-archy: each degree in the pyramid of grace’s transmission had different rela-tions and commitments with or within Christ’s body (the Church). God wouldhave infused indelibly a particular type of grace into the souls of the pope andthe bishops, as successors of the apostles, called charismata, enabling them totransmit grace and participate in Christ’s priesthood, the sacrament of holy

8 Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Ch. 3, 89–97; Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 34–48; Fernando Gascóla Calle, ‘La teoría de los cuatro Imperios. Reiteración y adaptación ideológica. I. Romanos y Griegos’, Habis,12, (1981), 179–96; Florencio Hubenák, ‘Historia política y profecía: Roma y los grandes Imperios antiguosa la luz de las predicciones del profeta Daniel’, Hispania Sacra, 48, (1996), 95–119; Kantorowicz, Los doscuerpos del rey, 277–9; Karl A., Kottman, Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture. Vol. II.Catholic Millenarianism: From Savonarola to the Abbé Grégoire, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001);J. L., Phelan, The Millennian Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World, (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1970).


orders. This was the sacred (hieros) government (archein) of the church, avisible monarchy.9

When these humanists claimed the church was a monarchy they fre-quently meant as well, as a way of defending the pope’s indirect jurisdictionover secular affairs, that it was the Fifth and last Monarchy of Daniel. Nev-ertheless, they did not mean either that the apocalypse was near or that thepope was Lord of the World in the full sense. And although of course thesehumanists wrote a different historical narrative than did civic humanists –because their aims were different – they usually defended as well the legalindependence of their republics and estates in relation to the church andthe empire. Some of them, such as Ptolemy of Lucca, did not write a historyof translatio imperii.10

Neoplatonic humanism proved to be very useful for rebutting conciliar-ism, arguing that the Bishop of Rome – the pope – should have more powerthan his colleagues. In a 1440s letter, Nicholas of Cusa explained to RodrigoSánchez de Arévalo the meaning of hierarchy: ‘the upper always contain thevirtues and power of the lower, simply because of their status, and mediatethem downwards.’ Thus virtue, like grace, poured from the zenith into thebase of the church. Folded into the pope, he unfolded it into the people.Antony J. Black argues that there was always a risk of transferring Neopla-tonic terms from ecclesiology to legal sovereignty, with the subsequent

9 William D. McCready, ‘Papal Plenitudo Potestatis and the Source of Temporal Authority in Late MedievalPapal Hierocratic Theory’, Speculum, 48, 4 (Oct. 1973), 654–74; Hubert Jedin, Historia del Concilio de Trento. Lalucha por el concilio. I (Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra, 1972), 26–30; Antony Black, Monarchy and Community:Political Ideas in the Later Conciliar Controversy 1430–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 53–70;Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of Doctrine. IV. Reformation of Church and Dogma(1300–1700), (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), Ch. 5; The Catholic Encyclopedia, (Online Ed.,1999): <http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/: A. Van Hove, ‘Hierarchia’, VII, (1910); J. Wilhelm, ‘Charis-mata’, III (1908); J. Pohle, ‘Grace’, VI, (1909); H. Ahaus, ‘Holy Orders’, XI, (1911); M. J. Ryan, ‘Character’, III,(1908); D. J. Kennedy, ‘Sacraments’, XIII, (1912); Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory. TheContribution of the Medieval Canonist from Gratian to the Great Schism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1968), 27–34.

10 James E. Biechler, ‘Nicholas of Cusa and the End of the Conciliar Movement: A Humanist Crisis ofIdentity’, Church History, 44, 1 (March 1975), 5–21; Riccardo Fubini, ‘Humanism and Truth: Valla Writes againstthe Donation of Constantine’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 57,1 (1996), 79–86; Cary J. Nederman, ‘Empire andthe Historiography of European Political Thought: Marsiglio of Padua, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Medieval/Modern Divide’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 66, 1 (January 2005), 1–15; Black, Monarchy and Community;Thomas M. Izbicki, Protector of the Faith. Cardinal Johannes de Turrecremata and the Defense of the Institutional Church(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981); M. Semeraro, ‘“Vosotros sois el templo de Dios”en la Summa de ecclesia de J. de Torquemada’, Pedro Rodríguez et al. (eds.) Pueblo de Dios, cuerpo de Cristo, templodel Espíritu Santo (Implicaciones estructurales y pastorales en la ‘communio’, (Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra,1996), 375–86; Alvaro Fernández de Córdova Miralles, ‘Imagen de los Reyes Católicos en la Roma pontificia’,En la España Medieval, 28, (2005), 259–354; Luis Fernández Gallardo, ‘Alonso de Cartagena y el humanismo’,La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 37,1, (2009), 175–215; Ottavio DiCamillo, ‘Interpretations of Humanism in Recent Spanish Renaissance Studies’, Renaissance Quarterly, 50, 4(Winter 1997) 1190–1201; Ioannis Tvrriscrematae, Summa de Ecclesia (Salamanca 1560), Book. 1, Ch. 34, 62;Book 3, Ch. 90, 151–2.


‘concession theory’ being an ‘intrinsic connection between neoplatonismand absolutism’.11

Amazed with the beauty of Cusa’s ecclesiological flower, Rodrigo Sánchez deArévalo planted its seed in the political ground. The argument blossomed,scenting the Castilian king, now the embodiment of virtue. This formula wasfortunate in Castile, yet it is doubtful these Castilian humanists were promotingabsolutism, as Black claims, if by absolutism we mean the non-consensualannihilation of the constitution of liberties through the conversion of territo-rial law into the absolute monarch’s patrimony. The Castilian king remade theCastilian constitution in agreement with the Castilian kingdom. The nobilityagreed, because in exchange the king created a new legal figure, Castilianprimogeniture – mayorazgo – protecting the properties of the nobility. Conse-quently, as they were now untouchable by law, the nobility did not need todefend their liberties in Parliament – the Cortes – and thus they did not attend.The Cortes became meetings of the king with representatives of his cities.Therefore, while the Kingdom of Castile’s political language was oeconomic, areligious language, within Castilian cities the historian might find republicanlanguage.12

In Basel, Alonso de Cartagena and his disciple Rodrigo Sánchez deArévalo defended a variant of the decline and fall narrative to champion thepapacy and defend both Castile’s independence from the German empireand Castilian superiority within the Iberian peninsula. Cartagena claimedthat the Castilian king was the legitimate heir of the Visigothic kingdom andthat from the Goths onward, ‘principatum Hispaniae fuit monarchia’: a

11 Black, Monarchy and Community, (ed. 2005), 65 and 59–66.12 Julio A., Pardos, ‘Virtud complicada’, Chiara Continisio and Cesare Mozzarelli (eds.), Repubblica e virtù.

Pensiero politico e Monarchia Cattolica fra XVI e XVII secolo, (Rome: Bulzoni, 1995), 77–91; Robert Brian Tate,Ensayos sobre la historiografía peninsular del siglo XV, (Madrid: Gredos, 1970), 74–87; Günter Barudio, La épocadel Absolutismo y la Ilustración (1648–1789), (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1993); Bartolomé Clavero, ‘Anatomía deEspaña. Derechos hispanos y Derecho Español. Entre Fueros y Códigos’, QFSPGM, 34/35, (Milan: Giuffrè,1990), I, 47–86; Bartolomé Clavero, Mayorazgo. Propiedad feudal en Castilla. 1369–1836 (Madrid: Siglo XXI,1989), 143–4; Pablo Fernández Albaladejo and Julio A. Pardos, ‘Castilla, territorio sin cortes’, Revista de lasCortes Generales, 15 (1988), 113–208; Ignacio María Vicent López, ‘Felipe V y la Monarquía Católica durantela Guerra de Sucesión: una cuestión de estilo’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie IV, Historia Moderna, 7, (1994),397–424; Nicolai Rubinstein, ‘The History of the Word politicus in Early-Modern Europe’, in Anthony Pagden(ed.), The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987),52–3; J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Ideal of Citizenship Since Classical Times’, Queen’s Quarterly, 99, 1, (1992), 33–55;Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Ruth MacKay,‘Lazy, Improvident People’. Myth and Reality in the Writing of Spanish History, (Cornell University Press, 2006);Domingo Centenero del Arce, De repúblicas urbanas a ciudades nobles. La vida y el pensamiento de Ginés Rocamora,(Murcia: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012); Eva Botella-Ordinas, Antonio Terrasa Lozano, Domingo Centenero delArce, ‘Une tradition hispanique de démocratie locale. Les cabildos abiertos du XVIe siècle à nos jours’, LaVie des idées, 28 octobre 2011, <http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Une-tradition-hispanique-de.html>; Julián ViejoYharrassarry, ‘Ausencia de política. Ordenación interna y proyecto europeo en la Monarquía Católica demediados del siglo XVII’, Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, (ed.), Monarquía, Imperio y pueblos en la Españamoderna, (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 1997); José María Iñurritegui Rodríguez, La Gracia y la República.El lenguaje político de la teología católica y el ‘Príncipe Cristiano’ de Pedro de Ribadeneira (Madrid: UNED, 1998),178–9.


‘particular empire’. The Iberian peninsula, populated after the Flood by theSpaniards, who were descendants of Tubal (son of Japhet, grandson ofNoah), was invaded by the Romans and liberated by the Goths, according tothis thesis. Both men, relying on thirteenth-century scholars, contrasted theGoths’ virtues (especially those of the Spanish Goths) with Roman vices.They were allies of the pope supporting the church’s monarchist constitu-tion, and had the aim of bringing stability to the troubled Castile.13

The reign of the Catholic Monarchs began after the end of a civil war, duringunstable times, and these humanists’ writings worked out its legitimizingground. At the turn of the century, after the conquest of Granada, the expul-sion of the Jews, and Columbus’ arrival in America, all in 1492, these Gothicstories switched directions. Although the role of the Goths as demolishers of theRoman empire remained, now the ancient Spaniards were the main charactersof the narrative. The new histories emphasized not only Spanish independencefrom the German empire but also the Spanish potential to become an empire,announced in some apocalyptic texts. The Catholic Kings’ humanists wrotethese histories following Livy, Virgil, and other Roman writers; their model wasthe Roman empire, but without Romans. Their reign would be the Augustan,golden age of the Spanish empire; the Gothic monarchy, once lost and nowrecovered, would be the last empire before the Second Coming. The humanistCardinal Ximénez Cisneros, who reformed the Spanish church already beforethe Reformation, took very seriously the signs of the end of history, as did theearly Castilian expeditions to the New World. This apocalyptic moment madeof Roman antiquities was not just Castilian; Cardinal Annius of Viterbo claimedthe pope would be the Fifth Monarch and Lord of the World. Yet, theapocalyptic trends within the church decayed dramatically once Luther beganidentifying the pope as the Antichrist. Meanwhile, Roman imperial languageand representations had been incorporated into the legitimization of Castile asthe head of the Spanish empire or Monarchy. This is what Charles V found

13 Salvador Gómez de Arteche y Catalina, ‘Las Nationes en la historia de los concilios’, Hispania Sacra, 39, 80,(1987), 617–71; R. R. Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland 1100–1400. II. Names, Boundaries and RegnalSolidarities’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5, (London, 1995), 1–20; Oscar Villarroel González,‘Castilla y el Concilio de Siena (1423–1424): la embajada regia y su actuación’, En la España Medieval, 30, (2007),131–72; Luis Parra García, ‘Propositio super altercatione praeminentiae sedium inter oratores regum castellaeet angliae in Concilio Basilensi o los argumentos de Alfonso de Cartagena por la preeminencia de España’, Cuadernos deFilología Clásica. Estudios Latinos, 22, 2 (2002) 463–78; Tate, Ensayos, 62–73, 14–18; José Antonio Maravall, ‘Sobreel concepto de Monarquía en la Edad Media española’, Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal, (Madrid: CSIC,1954), 413; Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, ‘España desde España’, Idea de España en la Edad Moderna, (Valencia:Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País, 1998), 65–75; Luis Fernández Gallardo, ‘De Lucas de Tuy aAlfonso el Sabio: Idea de la Historia y Proyecto Historiográfico’, Revista de poética medieval, 12 (2004), 53–119;Rafael González Fernández, ‘El mito gótico en la historiografía del siglo XV’, Los visigodos. Historia y civilización(Mazarrón: Murcia, 1986), 289–300; Adeline Rucquoi, ‘Les Wisigoths fondement de la “nation Espagne”’,L’Europe Héritière de l’Espagne Wisigothique, (Madrid 1992), 341–52; Susan Reynolds, ‘Medieval origines gentium andthe Community of the Realm’, History, 68, (1983), 375–90.


when he inherited the Castilian and Aragonese territories before he became, in1519, German emperor as well.14

Charles V

In 1517, while Charles of Burgundy was crowned Charles I of Castile andAragon and Luther posted his ninety-five theses in Wittenberg, nobodyexpected the Reformation. It was then that a disgraced officer and brillianthumanist named Mercurino Gattinara wrote a treatise on the German empireas the Fifth Monarchy. Gattinara mixed the apocalyptic Fifth Monarchy ofAnnius of Viterbo with the imperial advocacy of Dante. He avoided thenarrative of the translatio imperii while defending the sacred and even messi-anic character of the German empire. And he, like his thirteenth-centurypredecessors, supported both Universal Monarchy and the liberty of theItalian states. When Gattinara went to Spain in 1518, he discovered Castilianimperial ideology, and when Charles I of Castile and Aragon became EmperorCharles V, both imperial ideologies melted and transmuted into one. In theview of Alfonso de Valdés, Gattinara’s Erasmian secretary, Spaniards were thenew chosen people. Yet this apocalyptic moment did not last long, andCharles V’s empire soon became identified once again with the eschatologicaland orthodox Fourth Monarchy of Daniel, as is evident by the example of thepapal nuncio in Hungary, Hieronymus Rorarius.15

At the beginning of 1547, Rorarius became possessed by God’s wrath. Hewas ‘engaged in a discussion in which a learned man remarked that Charles Vwas not the equal of the Ottos and Frederick Barbarrossa. It took no morethan this to make Rorarius conclude that beasts are more rational than men.’Pierre Bayle wrote these words summarizing the extraordinary circumstancesaround the origins of Rorarius’ book. The nuncio’s work provoked one of themore interesting debates of the early Enlightenment. The angry nuncio, likemany of his Catholic contemporaries, wrote about the German empire interms of the translatio imperii paradigm. In their narrative, the Fourth Monar-chy was transferred from Rome to Germany, and Charles V was a new KingDavid.16

Pedro de Mexía, a Castilian lawyer who became imperial chronicler toCharles V, published his Historia Imperial y Cesárea in 1545, when the imperial

14 Miralles, ‘Imagen’; Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, Fragmentos de Monarquía. Trabajos de historia política,(Madrid: Alianza, 1992), 172–3; José Antonio Maravall, El concepto de España en la Edad Media, (Madrid: Institutode Estudios Políticos, 1964), 304; Maravall, ‘Sobre el concepto de Monarquía’, 416–7; Tate, Ensayos, 74–104;Marjorie Reeves, ‘Cardinal Egidio of Viterbo: A Prophetic Interpretation of History’, in Marjorie Reeves (ed.),Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period, (Oxford: Clarendom Press, 1992), 91–109; Phelan, The MillennialKingdom.

15 John M. Headley, ‘Rhetoric and Reality: Messianic, Humanist, and Civilian Themes in the Imperial Ethosof Gattinara’,in Reeves, (ed.), Prophetic Rome, 241–69.

16 Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections, eds. Richard H. Popkin and Craig Brush (India-napolis: Hackett Publishing, 1991), 213–14.


future for Charles V’s son Philip still seemed probable. The book, dedicatedto the future Philip II when he was still a prince, offered brief biographies ofthe Roman emperors from Cesar to Maximilian I. For Mexia, the Romanempire still existed in the German empire, even after its split into severalkingdoms. Yet in his dedication to Philip, Mexia reminded his readers of theCastilian exemption from the German empire. The Castilian laws, Las SietePartidas, were ordained by Alfonso X ‘The Wise’, who was first elected Germanemperor but then was persuaded by the pope to return to Castile to rule there.While the Partidas acknowledged the superior dignity of the German emperorin relation to others, they also underlined Castile’s exemption from imperialjurisdiction. Thanks to the transfer of the Roman empire to the Germanempire, the latter had imperial authority, but Mexia allowed for the sover-eignty of other kingdoms such as those of the Iberian peninsula. Moreover, heneither explicitly claimed the transfer of the empire to the Spaniards nor thelordship of any emperor over the world. Though Mexia’s Historia was a bestseller until 1579, thereafter its popularity declined in Spain.

The Historia Imperial has been interpreted as the quintessential Spanishdefence of Universal Monarchy. But this transitional work neither supportedUniversal Monarchy nor reflected Spanish imperial ideology after the 1580s.Between 1545 and 1580, Christendom suffered dramatic changes, and this wasalso true for Spanish imperial ideology. Mexía’s first Spanish edition of theHistoria Imperial coincided with the opening sessions of the Council of Trent,intended to provide a solution for the schism within Christendom. His lastedition was published when the council ended – with a distinct confession.Meanwhile, the Peace of Augsburg, promising biconfessional tolerance, wasconcluded in the German empire, now less unified, less holy, less Roman, andmoreover ruled by the junior branch of the House of Austria.17

When Philip, the heir of the main branch of the arch-Catholic Habsburgs,realized he would not be emperor, he was King of England. Instead of rulingthe German empire, Philip of England would rule the enormous Spanishterritorial inheritance, a collection of territories without a name. But CharlesV’s son had no political legitimization for territorial expansion, so his inher-itance was in danger of decline and fall. The first solutions came from theEnglish cardinal and papal nuncio, Reginald Pole: Philip II would be the newSolomon. Philip became King of Jerusalem, and, following English sugges-tions, he decided to build the temple of Solomon: the Escorial. It is remark-

17 Alfred Kohler, Carlos V. 1500–1558. Una Biografía, (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2000), 349–60, 374–80; Fernán-dez Albaladejo, Fragmentos de Monarquía, 60–85, 176–81; Mariarosa Scaramuzza Vidoni, Retorica e narrazione nella‘Historia imperial’ di Pedro Mexía, (Rome: Bulzoni, 1989); on Mexia’s Historia as a paradigm of Spanish imperialideology see: John Robertson, ‘Empire and Union: Two Concepts of the Early Modern European PoliticalOrder’, A Union for Empire. Political Thought and the British Union of 1707 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1995), 6–13; Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France (NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), Ch. 2; Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 3, 239–257; Scaramuzza Vidoni,Retorica e narrazione, 44–51. The 1655 edition of the Historia, published in Madrid, included the lives of theemperors up to Ferdinand III, thus becoming exclusively a history of the German empire.


able how after the English proposal (by Pole) and the Spanish attempt (byPhilip II) the idea of building Solomon’s house would be picked up again inEngland by John Dee and Francis Bacon, and later embraced by the RoyalSociety with similar imperial aims. At the Escorial, Philip II displayed his newcoat of arms to represent the Fifth and last Empire of the prophecy of Daniel2, without the imperial crown or the imperial eagle.18

‘HE CHOSE YOU, OH, SPAIN’: SPANISH IMPERIAL IDEOLOGY SINCE PHILIP II

Philip II’s inheritance was named Monarquía de España but it was not con-ceived as a Gothic empire but rather as a Spanish substitute for the fallenRoman empire. Claims of an imperial renovatio or translatio from the Germansto the Spaniards would have created conflicts within the House of Austria.Instead, the Monarchy of Spain was conceived as the secular arm of the FifthMonarchy, suffering tribulations but not decline. Spanish imperial ideologybecame mimetic of the ideology of the Roman Catholic Church, which hadbeen remade as a result of the Reformation, to legitimize Philip II and hissuccessors as lords of the world. Yet it did not have the mission of extendingany specific legal system to the territories labelled ‘Monarchy of Spain’; rather,it imposed a religion that justified world expansion. Spanish imperial ideologydefined the ‘Spanish nation’ in theological terms, including peoples beyondthe Iberian peninsula, in order to claim the Universal Monarchy of theCatholic Spanish ‘nation’, which required the Spanish Monarch’s leadershipto spread Catholicism throughout the world. This new and long-lastingSpanish imperial ideology was theological and humanist, contemplative andactive, practical and theological, and thus it supported an economy and ascience as a means for promoting the expansion of the interests of the elite.19

18 José Rafael De la Cuadra Blanco, ‘King Philip of Spain as Solomon the Second. The Origins of Solomonismof the Escorial in the Netherlands’, in Wim de Groot, (ed.), The Seventh Window, (Hilversum, the Netherlands:Verloren Publishers, 2005), 169–80; René Taylor, Arquitectura y Magia. Consideraciones sobre la idea de El Escorial,(Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 2006); Juan Antonio Ramírez, Dios Arquitecto. J. B. Villalpando y el Templo de Salomón.(Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 1995); Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature. The Spanish American Empire andthe Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 128–33; Anne J. Cruz (ed.), Material andSymbolic Circulation between Spain and England, 1554–1604, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); José Emilio Burucúa andAdriana Pawelkowski, ‘Intercambios eruditos en la Inglaterra moderna: una carta de John Evelyn y la bibliotecade Samuel Pepys’, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna. Anejos, 4, (2005), 155–85; Juan Pimentel, ‘The Iberian Vision:Science and Empire in the Framework of a Universal Monarchy, 1500–1800’, Osiris, (2001), 17–30; JorgeCañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire and Nation. Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World, (StanfordUniversity Press, 2006), 14–45; Isaac Newton, El Templo de Salomón (ed. and trans. Ciriaca Morano), J. M.Sánchez Ron, (Intr.), (Madrid: CSIC, 1998), LX–LXV, LXX–LXXI, XCIII, XCIV, XCV–XCVIII, 86, 94, 114.

19 Most historiography argues that the ‘Spanish Monarchy’ developed an imperial ideology modelled onimperial Rome, with Castile as the metropolis trying to impose its hegemony on its provinces. According toAnthony Pagden, Spanish theorists legitimated imperialism in the juridical language of imperial Rome, andSpanish imperial ideology remained unaltered during the early modern period: Pagden, Lords of all the World,43–5. But ideology changed once it was clear Philip II was not going to be emperor: see Kohler, Carlos V, 349–60,374–80; Fernández Albaladejo, Fragmentos de Monarquía, 67–72, 168–84; John Headley, ‘Eher Túrckish als Bäpstish.Lutheran Reflections on the Problem of Empire, 1623–28’, Central European History, 20, 1, (March 1987), 3–26;


The second part of this essay will show when, why, and how the RomanCatholic Church promoted its imperial ideology. I explain Philip II’s adoptionof this ideology to Spain from the 1590s and its endurance until at least 1700.The example of its reception in the Aragonese kingdom illustrates howSpanish imperial ideology was able to attach different territories withoutmixing their laws – and thus, without imposing an ‘absolute government’.Finally, the essay shows why and how the ‘development’ of economy andpractical governmental measures were compatible with this imperial ideology.

The Roman Church’s imperial ideology

Luther and the Reformation challenged both the church’s hierarchy and itstraditional sacramental system. The Roman church reacted with treatisesdefending its monarchical constitution as well as with histories of the unin-terrupted succession of popes as a way of defending the mediation of grace bythe church and the Roman Catholic confession. After the Council of Trent(1563), the Roman Catholic Church identified its constitution as a monarchyin order to defend the Catholic confession of faith, deploying the humanistargument that originated in the fifteenth century in the battle against concili-arism. Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church argued that it was the FifthMonarchy of Daniel, after the fall of the Roman Empire – a worldly institution.This claim guaranteed its everlasting endurance as it imposed its confessionthroughout the world. Both the church’s constitution and its doctrine weresupported by a particular historical narrative, by an ecclesiastical history claim-ing it had always been a monarchy and that it was the Fifth Monarchy.20

With the Reformation, each confession, including the Roman CatholicChurch, created its own church, its own tradition, and its own ecclesiasticalhistory. A Protestant church established within a political community and inwhich grace was not mediated by a hierarchy of priests, allowed for a writtennarrative of the political past in quasi Old-Testament terms. The Old Testa-ment narrated the history of Israel (both a particular people and the chosenpeople) as a chronological series of acts departing from an origin and meetingan end, Christ’s first coming, which gave historical-messianic meaning tothose acts. The history of the Jews was linear; it gave eschatological meaning toevery historical event before the expected end. A particular Protestant peoplesettled in a particular territory could claim to be the New Israel expecting the

Bosbach, Monarchia Universalis, 77–8; Miguel Artola, La Monarquía de España, (Madrid: Alianza, 1999), 253, 617;Peer Schmidt, ‘La imagen de Felipe II en el Imperio Germano-Romano y en la historiografía alemana yaustriaca’ Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie IV. Historia Moderna, (1998), 11, 39–83; Peer Schmidt, Spanische Univer-salmonarchie oder reichische Libertar. Das spanische Imperium in der Propaganda des Dreifigjährigen Krieges. (Stuttgart,2000). I reject the positive-absolute value of the supposed Western pattern of development-modernity, itself animperial ideology, (in which the Spanish empire also played a role): see Botella Ordinas, ‘Debating Empires’.

20 Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, Ch. 5, and 271–74, 292–6; Jedin, Historia del Concilio de Trento. I, 185–218,447–57; Sergio Bertelli, Rebeldes, libertinos y ortodoxos en el Barroco, (Barcelona: Península, 1984), 42–5, 53–72,120–26; and fn 9.


imminent Second Coming as a fulfilment of God’s past word. They would bethe elect people with a universal mission to fulfil: both their particular politi-cal institutions and their political-historical events would be understood asuniversally meaningful for humankind. The interpretation of their historywould be apocalyptic; so as to define their special but universal role in sacredhistory, the particular people would have to know the end of the story, the endof History.21

The Roman Catholic Church claimed as well to be the chosen people afterChrist; it too adopted Israel’s sacred history, and it argued that it fulfilled it.But the church was independent of a particular people, and therefore it couldavoid narrating sacred historical events in chronological order determiningthe date of the end and its own end. The Roman church perceived time as anindeterminate period from Pentecost to Parousia, comprising sacredmoments that could neither be related to each other nor understood in theirhistorical-eschatological meaning until the unpredictable end of time. Apoca-lyptic interpretations of historical events subverted the church’s institutionsand doctrine, and they were considered heterodox. Roman ecclesiasticalhistory narrated the moral advancements, trials, and tribulations of thechosen people on their journey through time. Its pattern was circular orcyclical, not linear. The secular or civil history of a political community withinthe Roman church followed the moral scheme of an ecclesiastical history. Thechurch could recognize that this particular community had a special missionto fulfil according to God’s plan, but not a universal one coinciding with thechurch’s mission to evangelize the world. Nations should cooperate in theMilitant Church’s mission, but they must not appropriate it.22

Only the Catholic church could be the Fifth Monarchy, and only Catholicscould be the chosen people. Within church orthodoxy, the community pre-tending to be universal should be Christendom itself. Consequently, in the1560s, with the end of the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Churchstrove to ensure its own durability against Protestantism. In 1572 Pope

21 Biblia Comentada. III. Libros Proféticos. (Madrid: BAC, 1967), 3–48; Hans Küng, La Iglesia (Barcelona: Herder,1970), 98, 362–4; The Catholic Encyclopaedia: G. H. Joice, ‘The Church’, III, (1908), R. Friedly, ‘Misión-Misionología’; Peter Eicher (ed.), Diccionario de Conceptos Teológicos (Barcelona: Herder, 1990), II, 80–87;Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 373, 262–72; Adrian Hastings, La construcción de las nacionalidades. Etnicidad,religión y nacionalismo (Madrid: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 27, 35–40, 242. J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Time,History and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes’, J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language & Time(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 148–201; Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, Ch. 2 and 8–9, 44,333–48; J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Classical and Civil History: The Transformation of Humanism’, Cromohs, No. 1, (1996),1–34; B. S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: a Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism (London: Faber,1972).

22 Antonio Pérez García, ‘Observaciones sobre la conceptualización del tiempo específico de la Historia de laSalvación’, Estudios Eclesiásticos, 72, (1997), 3–62; Oscar Cullmann, Cristo y el Tiempo. (Barcelona: Estela, 1968);Erich Auerbach, ‘Figura’, in his Scenes from the Drama of European Literature: Six Essays (New York: Meridian Books,Inc., 1959); H. Jedin, ‘Introducción a la Historia de la Iglesia’, Manual de Historia de la Iglesia. I, (Barcelona:Herder, 1966), 25–91; V. Conzemius, ‘Historia de la Iglesia’, P. Eicher (ed.), Diccionario de Conceptos Teológicos,I, 478–485; The Catholic Encyclopedia, J. P. Kirsch, ‘Ecclesiastical History’, VII, (1910).


Gregory XIII established the congregation to execute the reform of Trent, toelaborate the index of forbidden books, and to find a solid rebuttal to theCenturies, a Lutheran ecclesiastic history. Taking up this task, several theolo-gians from different latitudes supported the Roman church as a monarchyand the Fifth Monarchy.23

The English theologian Nicholas Sanders published De visibili monarchiaEcclesiae, reasserting not only the Roman church’s tradition and authority, andthus, continuity of the doctrine, but also the succession of popes within it.Sanders asserted that the government of the church was a visible monarchybecause only prophets and priests hierarchically received the sacrament oforders to sanctify the people of God. Sanders then claimed that the churchwas the last Monarchy, both universal and perpetual, by arguing that it waspredicted ‘not only by Hosea and Ezekiel, but as well by Daniel’. Sandersreminded his readers of Daniel’s four monarchies and of the succeedingkingdom of Christ on earth, which ‘has already begun’ and will last forever:the church.24

Meanwhile in Italy, another theologian, Cosimo Filiarchi, claimed that alldominium depended indirectly on the pope and that the church was the FifthMonarchy, which ‘will persevere until the end of the world’. In Spain, thetheologian Juan de Pineda finished a book in 1575 aiming to prove that thetrue church was Roman Catholic, given its continuity from Adam. LikeSanders, Pineda interpreted the four fallen monarchies, quoting Daniel 2 and7, as Assyrian, Mede-Persian, Greek, and Roman. The Fifth Monarchy was theRoman Catholic Church. During the seventeenth century, two prominenttheologians joined this interpretation. In 1602 Tomaso Bozzio also referred toDaniel’s prophecy to show that the earthly kingdom of God was the church,following Durandus, Bishop of Meaux. In 1605 Cardinal Baronius rebukedPhilip III of Castile for assuming the privilege of Monarchia Sicula, so he neverbecame a pope. Baronius was alarmed by the name ‘Monarch’, but Philip III’s

23 There were heterodox apocalyptic interpretations unacceptable to both the monarch of Spain and thepope: Anthony Pagden, ‘Instruments of Empire: Tommaso Campanella and the Universal Monarchy of Spain’,in his Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination. Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and PoliticalTheory 1513–1830 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 37–63; John M. Headley, Tommaso Campanellaand the Transformation of the World. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 212–13, 204; Headley, ‘EherTúrckish als Bäpstish’; L. F. Silverio Lima, Padre Vieira: sonhos profèticos, profecias oniricas. O tempo do Quinto Impérionos sermôes de Xavier Dormindo, (Universidade de Sâo Paulo, 2000); it was the case of Vieira; Vieira seems to adaptSpanish imperial ideology to Portugal, after he became subject of a Portuguese king see also: Silvano Peloso,Antonio Vieira e l’impero universale. La Clavis Prophetarum e i documenti inquisitoriali, (Viterbo: Sette Cittá, 2005);Iñurritegui Rodríguez, La Gracia y la República, 147–8; R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Reneval, 1540–1770(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700,(London: Macmillan Press, 1999); John W. O’Malley, Trent and all that. Renaming Catholicism in the Early ModernEra, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

24 The book was finished in 1569. José Luis Orella y Unzue, Respuestas Católicas a las Centurias de Magdeburgo(1159–1588), (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1976), 46–7, 263–5; Nicholas Sanders, De visibiliMonarchia Ecclesiae, libri octo (Lovanii 1571), Book IV, Ch. 5, 142–3.


claims were orthodox and the Roman church could do nothing to hinderSpanish imperial ideology.25

All these texts proposed both that the Roman church could only be amonarchy and that only the church could be the Fifth Monarchy – that of theCatholics, the chosen people descending from Noah and blessed by God toexpand globally and last forever. The Roman church’s reformation had builtsuch a successful imperial ideology that monarchy and church were almostsynonyms in many Catholic texts from 1600 onward. Ecclesiastical history andthe interpretation of prophecies shaped the imperial ideology of the Romanchurch.

Nevertheless, in the 1610s a book entitled Spanish Politics maintained that‘Monarchy’ meant ‘the almost complete empire and lordship of the world’and that the Monarchy of Spain was the Fifth. It was neither the first nor thelast book to make this claim, and it is important to ask what the authors meantand how this assertion could be accepted by the Roman Church.26

Monarchy of Spain: 1590s–1700s

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spaniards rarely employedthe term ‘Spanish Monarchy’. Instead, prominent writers such as GregorioLópez Madera, Fray Juan de la Puente, and Fray Juan de Salazar used ‘Mon-archy of Spain’ or ‘Catholic Monarchy’. Monarchy of Spain referred to a sumof geographical spaces settled by a biblical ‘nation’ led by a head – called‘Monarch’. ‘Nation’ in this case was not a political concept, it meant thechosen people. Its lands were not a territory under a common law and itsMonarch was not a king but a biblical leader; therefore he had no power torule, to make laws, or to enforce them.27

25 D. Busolini, ‘Filiarchi, Cosimo’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, (Rome: Instituto della EnciclopediaItaliana, 47, 1997), 640–41; Cosimo Filiarchi, Trattato della gverra et dell’vnione de’principi Christiani contra i Turchi,(1572), 27–9; Juan de Pineda, Los treynta libros de la Monarchia Ecclesiastica, (Salamanca 1588), I, Book 4, Ch. 19,fol. 268; Iñurritegui Rodríguez, La Gracia y la República, 148–51; Bertelli, Rebeldes, 125–6. See also Ullmann,Medieval Papalism, 85–6, 91,104, 123–4, 151–4 and 159–61; Francesco Bozzio, De temporali Ecclesiae Monarchia etIurisdictione libri quinque (Coloniae Agrippinae, 1602), Ch. 14, 684–6; Domenico Ferraro, Tradizione e Ragione inJuan de Mariana, (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989), 22; Stefano Zen, Baronio Storico. Controriforma e crisi del metodoumanistico, (Naples: Vivarium, 1994), 279–86; Discursos del Origen, Principio, y uso de la Monarchia de Sicilia,(Valladolid: Luis Sánchez, 1605), fols. 6–7.

26 Juan de Salazar, Política Española (1619) (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 1997);intro. Miguel Herrero García, XL–XLI; ‘Al Lector’, 20, 24, 45, 139; Alberto Montoro-Ballesteros, Fray Juan deSalazar moralista politico (1619), (Madrid: Escelicer, 1972). Philip II’s imperial legitimization is normally misun-derstood as ‘messianic’; see Geoffrey Parker, ‘The Messianic Vision of Philip II’, The World is Not Enough: TheImperial Vision of Philip II of Spain (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2001). Mariana had a less universalunderstanding of the Spanish church, according to Harald Braun, Juan de Mariana and Early Modern SpanishPolitical Thought (Catholic Christendon 1300–1700) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).

27 Iñurriregui Rodríguez, La Gracia y la República, 146; Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, ‘Iglesia y configuracióndel poder en la monarquía católica (siglos XV–XVII). Algunas consideraciones’, in Jean Philippe Genet (ed.),Etat et Eglise dans la genese de L’ Etat Moderne, (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1986), 209–16; AntonioTerrasa


In 1595, during the conflict over the French royal succession, Juan deGarnica, a professor at Salamanca, dedicated his manuscript De HispanorumMonarchia to the future Philip III asserting the pre-eminence of the CastilianCatholic king in Christendom. Garnica defined the church as the Fifth andactual Monarchy, created by God to ‘last until the end of time’. He insistedthat ‘the Roman Pontiff . . . is the only Monarch in the spiritual sphere’; in thesecular sphere the lord of the world was Philip II, not the emperor. He alsowrote about the Spaniards, who descended from Tubal, son of Japhet, blessedby his father, Noah, in Genesis 9: 27, to enlarge his dominions. The Monarchyof Spain founded by Japheth’s son would do likewise, according to Garnica.The ‘dilatation’ of Japheth throughout the universe was linked to the title‘Catholic’, connoting a defender and propagator of faith, and Philip IIwielded the temporal sword as Vicar of God, being under the jurisdiction ofthe pope only in the spiritual sphere.28

While English translations of Genesis used the term ‘enlarged Japheth’, inSpain the Latin word ‘dilated’ was deployed in very different contexts to praisethe Monarchy of Spain, to mean it was blessed to expand until it dominatedthe world. The history of the Monarchy of Spain started with Japheth’s sonand ended with Philip II, chosen by God to rule the temporal kingdom asMonarch of the World. The Monarchy of Spain was not the successor of theGerman empire, which had no sacred meaning; it was instead the CatholicMonarchy with the Roman church. But the Catholic church claimed that theonly chosen people were the Christians, as Garnica himself acknowledged.Thus, to legitimate Philip II’s inheritance as the Fifth Monarchy within theRoman church’s orthodoxy, Spaniards could be the elect people just by beingChristians.29

To support his claim, Garnica defined the Spanish nation as the electpeople: ‘God chose you to be His peculiar people . . . He chose you, O Spain!. . . because He . . . honours you to be universal, Catholic and perfect, pro-tecting and defending the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church, to

Lozano, Patrimonios aristocráticos y fronteras jurídico- políticas en la Monarquía Católica: los pleitos de la Casa dePastrana en el siglo XVII (PhD, European University Institute, 2009).

28 Ricardo Del Arco y Garay, La idea de imperio en la política y en la literatura españolas, (Madrid: Espasa Calpe,1944), 231; E. Luque, ‘La misión del Imperio Español en una carta política del S XVI.(I)’, Revista de EstudiosPolíticos, No. 41, (1941), 713–28, 713; Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, ‘Identidad española, noventayochoeuropeo’, (in press); Juan de Garnica, De Hispanorum Monarchia (Biblioteca Nacional de España (hereafterBNE) ms. 7382), 9 and Book 1, Ch. 3, § 2, 60–61; 58, 47; the epistle translated into Spanish in E. Luque, ‘Lamisión del Imperio Español en una carta política del S XVI. (II)’, Revista de Estudios Políticos, (1942), 125–42. ForGarnica the four past monarchies were subject to decline, an argument deployed earlier by Torquemada: I.Tvrriscrematae, Summa de Ecclesia, Book 3, Ch. XC, 151–2, Book 1, Ch. 34, 62; see the essay by Saliha Belmessousin relation to the French response to the Spanish expansion and to the colonial implications of the French andSpanish monarchs’ titles.

29 On the meaning of ‘enlarge’ and ‘enlarged’ in English, see Thomas Wilson, A complete Christian dictionary,(London 1661), 193–4; Thomas Campanella, Thomas Campanella, an Italian friar and second Machiavel, his adviceto the King of Spain for attaining the universal monarchy of the world, (London 1660), 12; The two charters granted byKing Charles IId to the proprietors of Carolina, (1698), 2. Other European loci: Isaiah 60:19–20 and Apocalypse21–25.


enlarge it throughout the world honouring Christ, Our Lord [Genesis: 9, 27],to become truly Japheth enlarged.’ Garnica identified Spain with the church,Spaniards with Christians. His proof was that the Monarchy of the Catholicchurch and the Monarchy of Spain pursued identical goals: ‘to preserve Godlyworship and to increase the Holy Church of God’. To achieve these aims theMonarchy of Spain had to preserve and increase its dominions. Thus, domin-ion over the world through the imposition of Catholicism was the logicalfulfilment of God’s purpose for the Spanish nation. Nation, mission, anddominion went hand in hand. The Spanish Monarch ‘is the greatest monarchof the world . . . pillar and defender of the Holy Roman Church and thestrongest arm of the people of God’.30

Garnica’s definition of the Monarchy of Spain appeared in other printedbooks as well. Gregorio López Madera, a member of the Council of Castileunder Philip IV, wrote also during the conflict over the French royal succes-sion asserting the pre-eminence of the Castilian Catholic king in Christen-dom. López Madera defined ‘Monarch’ in 1597 as designating not only a king,but also ‘a universal lord of the world; I do not know for which other purposethat name was invented but for God . . . or for the Supreme Pontiff in thespiritual sphere’. Nevertheless, the Spanish Monarchy deserved this appella-tion because the term was applicable ‘par excellence to the most powerfulkingdom with the most provinces’. When López Madera asserted that ‘thekingdom of Spain is Monarchy’, he meant the Fifth Monarchy, because it wascalled by God to convert the world. Since converted territories would join theMonarchy of Spain, ‘all true Catholic monarchical lordship belongs to thekings of Spain.’ Again, the key to understanding López Madera’s argument isto appreciate what he meant by Spain: ‘its beginning was Tubal, fifth son ofJapheth’ and grandson of Noah. Tubal was king of Spain, and the Spaniardswere the chosen people.31

The Convenience of both Catholic Monarchies, that of the Roman Church and thatof the Spanish Empire is the title of a book published by the Royal Printer in1612. Its author, the Dominican friar Juan de la Puente, explained that thetopic of his book, the precedence of Spain among nations, was almost a genreunto itself. The book’s declared aim was to prove the precedence of theCatholic king over the ‘most Christian’ French king by comparing both mon-archies to the most perfect commonwealth: the church. His explicit purpose

30 Luque, ‘La misión del Imperio Español’, (I), 717–18, 727–8, (II), 131, 139; Xavier Léon-Dufour, Diccionariodel Nuevo Testamento (Madrid: Ediciones Cristiandad, 1977), 59–60, 258; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition.I. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 12–27;Hastings, La construcción de las nacionalidades, 54–7, 233; Julián Viejo Yharrassarry, ‘Contra Politicos Atheistas.Razón Católica y Monarquía Hispánica en la segunda mitad del siglo XVII’, in Gianfranco Borrelli, (ed.),Prudenza civile, bene comune, guerra giusta. Percorsi della ragion di Stato tra Seicento e Settecento (Napoli: Archivio dellaRagion di Stato – Adarte, 1999); Garnica, De Hispanorum Monarchia, Book 1, Ch. 3, 69, 75; 58.

31 The book was written in 1593 and reprinted in 1625. Gregorio López Madera, Excelencias de la Monarquíay Reino de España, ed. Bermejo Cabrero. (Madrid: CEPC, 1999), 26–7, 159–160, 44–5, 124; IñurriteguiRodríguez, La Gracia y la República, 199–269; Fernández Albaladejo, Fragmentos de Monarquía, 179–81.


belies the most ambitious goal of the book: to prove that Spain was the FifthMonarchy.32

Puente began his comparison by immediately refuting Volume XI of theAnnales of Cardinal Baronius, who doubted the arrival of the apostle St Jamesin Spain. Puente defined Monarchy: ‘the name Monarchy has always suitedthe largest Kingdom of the Earth’. He added in a footnote: ‘In this sense wecount four Monarchies, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, the Roman.Dan[iel]. C.2. Ezech[iel]. C. 1. Zacha[riah]. C. 6. Pineda deals with this in TheMonar[chy]. book 4. ch. 19, and with the interpreters of the said Prophets.’33

Like Garnica and López Madera, Puente argued that the Monarchy of Spainwas the Fifth Monarchy with the church. His text was not apocalyptic becausehe denied the particular character of the Spanish nation as the elect people:the Christians. The history of the Monarchy of Spain was parallel to the historyof the church; both replicated the history of Israel in their fundamentalmilestones, which ‘figures’ were fulfilled in them. The Monarchy of Spain wasthe same universal church.34

In 1619 the Benedictine friar Juan de Salazar wrote Spanish Politics, whichhas become a classic text in Spanish political thought. His book opens with thedefinition of the Monarchy of Spain as the Fifth and last. On the topic of thepreservation of commonwealths, Salazar’s models were the monarchies ofIsrael, Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and his biblical authorities Danieland Isaiah. Their preservation depended on God’s providence. Just as theHebrew people were punished by the Assyrians, Spaniards had been punishedon account of sins in Gothic times. But God preserved a small part of theSpanish people in order to recover the ‘chair and seat of this monarchy’.Salazar shaped Spanish history as ecclesiastical history, as a long tribulation ofthe Tubalic Spanish nation to be redeemed. Like Garnica, Salazar had toreconcile the claims of the church and the Monarchy of Spain to the title of

32 Fr. Juan de la Puente, Tomo Primero de la Conveniencia de las dos Monarquias Catolicas, la de la Iglesia Romanay la del Imperio Español, (Madrid 1612), Book 3, Ch. 3, 22, (dedication to the Duke of Lerma), Book 1, Ch. 2, 4–6,Book 1, Ch. 3, 12–14, Ch. 5, 23.

33 The eleventh volume of the Annales became part of the Index in Philip III’s territories: Zen, Baronio Storico,Ch. 6; Bertelli, Rebeldes, Ch. 2; Iñurritegui Rodríguez, La Gracia y la República, Ch. II; Fernández Albaladejo,Fragmentos de Monarquía, 183; De la Puente, Tomo Primero de la Conveniencia de las dos Monarquias Catolicas, Book1, Ch. 1, 6, Ch. 2, 9–12, Ch. 3, 14 (quotation), Book 2, Ch. 36, 366; M. Sotomayor, ‘Antiguas tradiciones sobrelos orígenes del cristianismo hispano’, in Ricardo García Villoslada (ed.), Historia de la Iglesia en España (Madrid:BAC, 1979), I, 149–65.

34 See fn. 21; Fernández Albaladejo, ‘Identidad Española’; De la Puente, Tomo Primero de la Conveniencia de lasdos Monarquias Catolicas, Book 1, Ch. 5, 25–7; Book 2, Ch. 36, 367–70; Book 3, Ch. 2, 10–11; Viejo Yharrassarry,‘Contra Politicos Atheistas’. There were no official claims of ‘Spanish gallicanism’: A. Degert, ‘Gallicanism’, TheCatholic Encyclopedia, VI (1909); U. Beningni, ‘Ultramontanism’, XV (1912). In France, Gallicanism could bedefended with occasional claims of empire because these were made in terms of the translatio imperii. Butalthough Louis XIV’s writers might occasionally have claimed universal monarchy, this did not constitute anideology. Yates, Astraea, 121–6; Bosbach, Monarchia universalis, 129–46; Franz Bosbach, ‘The European Debateon Universal Monarchy’, David Armitage (ed.), Theories of Empire, 1450–1800 (Aldershot: Ashgate 1998), 81–98;cf. A. Antoine Aubery, Des justes pretentions du roy sur l’empire, (1667), 126; and the answer by Louis Dumay,L’avocat condamné, (1669), 37–9.


Fifth Monarchy, and of Christians and Spaniards as chosen people. Salazarrecognized that the elect people after Christ were the Christians, and he statedthat Spaniards were the elect people in the time of ‘Law of Grace’ – afterChrist’s coming – just as the Israelites were the elect people in the time of‘Written Law’ – before Christ’s coming. He identified Spaniards with Chris-tians. Salazar’s book ends by proving ‘that the Monarchy of Spain will lastmany centuries and will be the last’. Since the church was the Fifth Monarchy,Christians would dominate the world and, in Salazar’s vision, the Monarch ofSpain would rule them. The Monarchy of Spain would subject ‘all nations. . . until the end of all things’ and it would last ‘a long time; its end is notknown by men’.35

The jurist Juan Solórzano y Pereira also deployed Spanish imperial ideologyin his De Indiarum Iure, written at the explicit request of the king to defendSpanish titles to the Americas with new arguments. Solórzano followed Bozzio,López Madera, Salazar, and Puente as interpreters of the meaning of theMonarchy of Spain. He explained Isaiah 54 as prophesizing that the churchwould spread all over the world, reaching the most remote and uninhabitednations, that is, America. Solórzano endorsed his predecessors’ view that ‘thesame blessing can apply to the temporal kingdom of our kings of Spain’ toacquire ‘the singular and universal dominion of almost the whole world’.Therefore, the German emperor no longer wielded the temporal sword, andthe pope had only indirect jurisdiction in temporal affairs. The Jesuit José deAcosta had already included America’s role in Spanish imperial ideology. Inhis Historia natural y Moral de las Indias he wrote that God allowed the growthof the heathen fourth empire – simultaneously Roman, Inca, and Maya – tospread Christianity. At the same point in sacred time – though at differentmoments in chronological time – this empire fell, and the Fifth Monarchy ofthe Church arose both in Rome and in Spain. Thus, with the Spaniards inAmerica the prophecy of Isaiah might have been fulfilled, as the Monarchywas enlarged in every direction.36

35 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 3–48. The causes of the foundation, preservation, and increase ofrepublics were for Salazar, as for Campanella, God, prudence and occasion: Salazar, Política Española, 39. cf.,Campanella, Monarquía de España, 73–4. Salazar might have read this work of Campanella: Headley, TommasoCampanella, 207. Prudencia was linked to theological virtues – Salazar, Política Española, 47 – as was frequent inSpain: Iñurritegui Rodríguez, La Gracia y la República, 137–10; Julián Viejo Yharrassarry, ‘Locuras de Europa’,Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie IV, Historia Moderna, Vol.7 (1994), 425–436; Salazar, Política Española, 2, 3, 199,201–02, 221–2, 224, 273, 269; and 41–2 and 13–18 alluding to Isaiah 1; and 73–4 to Corinthians; Eicher,Diccionario de Conceptos Teológicos, I, ‘Iglesia-Eclesiología’, 494–5.

36 Juan Solórzano y Pereira, De Indiarum Iure, Carlos Baciero et al. (eds) (Madrid: CSIC, 1994–2001 [1629–39]), II, Ch. 21; Ch. 23; Ch. 2; I, Ch. 15, 9–12. Solórzano’s final argument was Spain’s long-term occupation ofthe territories under dispute proved by the resultant mixed community of Spanish and ‘Indians’ (III, Ch. 5, n.25–7); Juan Solórzano y Pereira, Política Indiana, eds. Francisco Tomás y Valiente and A. M. Barrero (Madrid:Fundación José Antonio de Castro, 1996 [1st edn: 1647]); James Muldoon, The Americas in the Spanish WorldOrder. The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,1994); Julián Viejo Yharrassarry, ‘El contexto de recepción de Grocio a mediados del siglo XVII en al Monar-quía Hispana’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, (1998), 265–80; C. H. Alexandrowicz, ‘Freitas Versus Grotius’, in David


By the mid-seventeenth century, the lawyer of the Spanish Primate Arch-bishop, Juan Alonso Calderón, wrote Empire of the Monarchy of Spain, whosetable of contents had the approval of fifteen great scholars. In this book,Calderón claimed that ‘God provided for the Spaniards, as in former times forthe Hebrews, both chosen peoples by His divine hand, each one in its time’.The Monarchy of Spain would be universal and eternal because it was ‘Motherof the Nations and settler of the world, the attribute properly due to thenation which by . . . divine providence is chosen to settle and conquer theworld’.37

This narrative did not leave room for imperial decline. The Monarchy ofSpain in its timeless dimension did not suffer any decline but merely tribula-tions: ‘some men of little faith and less hope . . . understand both that theworld is finishing and the Monarchy is coming to an end . . . [but] the SpanishEmpire is far from decreasing with the insults. Instead it fattens and growsmore . . . the more destruction, the more glory . . . Although she was sunk inthe depths, she will dominate the world again.’ In 1673 the Monarchy of Spainwas considered to be ‘exempt from time and from its fatal change/ whetherarmed or religious/ alive is your Faith: if it lives, what can it not reach?’Therefore, it ‘will defeat Fortune, time and death’. Admitting crises involveda moral challenge (that is, tribulation) and taking practical measures toimprove, both morally and materially. Admitting decline was simply hetero-dox because it would have implied an apocalyptic perspective, the decline andfall of the whole world, not of the Spanish Monarchy alone.38

Two important questions remain: How did non-Castilian territories adoptthis imperial ideology while defending their particular liberties? And did thisimperial ideology leave room for the ‘improvement of sciences’ and the‘modernization of the territories’ under its name? Both questions emergefrom a historiography that relies too much on late seventeenth-centuryEnglish propaganda, and both will be answered in the remaining pages. Withregard to the first, reception of imperial ideology in the kingdom of Aragon

Armitage (ed.), Theories of Empire, 1450–1800 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 239–260; Monica Brito Vieira, ‘MareLiberum vs. Mare Clausum: Grotius, Freitas, and Selden’s Debate on Dominion over the Seas’, Journal of the Historyof Ideas, 64, 3, (2003) 361–77. Acosta, J., Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, Book 1, Ch. 15; Víctor Navarro,‘Tradition and Scientific Change in Early Modern Spain; The Role of the Jesuits’, in Mordechai Feingold (ed.),Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 335–6; see fn. 37.

37 The book was never printed: BNE, ms. 984–985: Juan Alonso Calderón, Imperio de la Monarquía de Españaen las quatro partes del mundo, II, fols. 17, 46; also fols. 13, 17, 26, 29, 35–36, 38, 40, 58, 69–70. For the biographyof this lawyer, the aim and index of the book, and the approvals, see Juan Alonso Calderón, Memorial y discursohistorico iuridico politico que dio a la magestad catolica del Rey Nuestro Señor Don Philipe quarto el Doctor Iuan AlonsoCalderon (Madrid 1651). In 1651 the ‘chronicler of the Monarch of Spain’, José Pellicer, claimed that theunavoidable ‘happiness’ of Spain would be ‘the maintenance of Faith against the Anti-Christ’, quoted by JuliánViejo Yharrassarry, Grocio Católico. Orden europeo y Monarquía Católica durante la Guerra de Devolución, 1667–1668(PhD diss., Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1993), 128–9.

38 Francisco Xarque, Sacra consolatoria del tiempo, en las guerras, y otras calamidades publicas de la Casa de Austria,y Catolica Monarquia (Valencia 1642), 224, 63, 76, 130, 41; Cosme Gómez Tejada de los Reyes, Segunda parte deLeon Prodigioso, Entendimiento y Verdad, amantes Philososoficos (Alcalá de Henares 1673), 198–9.


went hand in hand with the defence of territorial constitutions. As for thesecond question, by looking at the relationship between Spanish economicliterature – the arbitrios – and this imperial ideology; we can see the space thatthe imperial ideology of the Monarchy of Spain left for the ‘development’ ofeconomy and humanism.

Imperial ideology, territorial liberties and economic thought

The Middle Ages saw European geographical spaces become territorial unitsthrough territorial laws; and the inhabitants of each major unit, conceived asbiblical nations, became a people under the rule of one law. Authors writinghistories of these specific territories used Genesis 10–11 to find the commonroots of the legally unequal (privileged) peoples who inhabited a kingdom.Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Iberian historical texts argued that Span-iards belonged to the progeny of Tubal. The peoples of the kingdoms ofAragon and Castile became part of sacred history, identified as neither Ara-gonese nor Castilian but as the Spanish biblical nation. But Spain as such wasnot a territorial unit until the nineteenth century.39

Therefore, most seventeenth-century Iberian writers described Spain as ametaphysical space with an elastic geography settled by a people of biblicallineage: the Spanish nation. Most Castilian, Navarre, Aragonese, Biscayan, andpre-1640s-Portuguese writers shared this view about their past. Spaniards werejoined by Noah’s blood and providence, not by law. Spanish history waswritten as a succession of monarchs (from Tubal until the present) who ruledtheir people (the Spanish community); it narrated the moral advancements,trials, and tribulations of a biblical people on a journey through time: anecclesiastical, not a political history, written since Philip II’s reign.40

But Spaniards wrote civil histories as well, narratives about the past of apolitical space, a territory. They had specific legal constitutions in definedgeographic spaces peopled by their naturales, subjects to these particular

39 Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism. Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 9–10; Hastings, La construcción de las nacionalidades, 30–33,40–41; Reynolds, ‘Medieval origines gentium’; R. R. Davies, ‘The peoples of Britain and Ireland 1100–1400. I.Identities’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, IV, (London 1994): 1–20; Léon-Dufour, Diccionario del NuevoTestamento, 319–20; Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, ‘Materia de España y Edificio de Historiografía: algunasconsideraciones sobre la década de 1540’, in his Materia de España. Cultura política e identidad en la España moderna(Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2007), 41–64; Eva Botella Ordinas, ‘Los Novatores y el origen de España. El vocabulariohispano de probabilidad y la renovación del método histórico en tiempos de Carlos II’, Obradoiro de HistoriaModerna, 14, (2005), 39–64; Tamar Herzog, ‘Communities becoming a Nation: Spain and Spanish America inthe Wake of Modernity’, Citizenship Studies, 11, 2, (May 2007), 151–72; Gómez de Arteche y Catalina, ‘Lasnationes’; Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland 1100–1400. II’; Bartolomé Clavero, ‘“Leyes de la China”:Orígenes y ficciones de una historia del derecho español’, AHDE, (1982), 193–221.

40 Fernández Albaladejo, ‘Materia de España’; Eva Botella Ordinas, ‘La constitución de los territorios y lainvención de España: 1665–1700’, Estudis, 31, (2005), 223–52; Botella Ordinas, ‘Los Novatores’; Eva BotellaOrdinas, Monarquía de España: Discurso Teológico. 1590–1685 (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2006);Richard Kagan, Clio and the Crown. The Politics of History in Medieval and Early Modern Spain, (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press, 2009).


territorial laws. None of the Spanish territories was named Spain, but ratherCastile, Navarre, Aragon, Biscay, and Portugal. Each territory had its own civilhistory explaining how particular constitutions took shape and justifying par-ticular legal orders embodying justice. Territorial laws were thought of asjuridical orders prudently created by particular men over time, concealing apeople’s particular nature with God’s objective moral order. But territorialhistories were not just exemplary narratives; they were political treatises withjuridical weight written by humanists. Yet past facts and deeds of a kingdom’smen needed an argument to become a historical narrative, a civil history.Their teleology was ecclesiastic history’s teleology. Thus, the filo rosso of Ara-gonese or Castilian civil histories was the ecclesiastic history of Spain.41

Even when, by the mid-seventeenth century, most Spaniards agreed on thegeneral narrative pattern of their common remote past (their common eccle-siastic history of Spain), the narrative from the eighth century onward causeddiscord. Some Spaniards asserted that their ancestors founded their differentterritorial laws in that century. Their histories were as different as their terri-torial laws, but they were built upon overlapping or common facts. Neitherhistorians nor jurists were willing to negotiate their territorial historiesbecause they became law. Spanish civil histories were at war.

The foundations of Spanish history, along with the imperial ideology ofMonarchy of Spain, can be found in Philip II’s reign. Its origins were Castilian,but it soon became incorporated into other kingdoms’ political-civil historiesas it was not incompatible with supporting their own liberties. The bestexample is the Aragonese Crown. Aragonese legal humanists built Aragoneseconstitutionalism upon the narrative of its foundation in the mythical eighth-century kingdom of Sobrarbe. The 1590s trial of the foreign viceroy and thesubsequent uprising in Aragon produced a quasi-republican narrative aboutthe constitutional origins of the kingdom that remained almost uncontrover-sial until the eighteenth century. Yet, increasingly, from the 1620s on, thehistory of Spain structured such a history of Aragonese liberties, and Ara-gonese citizens, nobles, and parliamentary representatives supported boththeir territorial liberties and the imperial ideology of the Monarchy of Spain.42

Late in the seventeenth century, the chronicler of the Aragonese Kingdomdeclared Philip IV had ruled:

41 Bartolomé Clavero, ‘Historia, ciencia, política del derecho’, QFSPGM, 8, (1979), 5–38; Pocock, ‘Classicaland Civil History’; J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Time, Institutions and Action: An Essay on traditions and Their Under-standing’, Politics, Language & Time, (University of Chicago Press, 1989), 233–72; J. G. A. Pocock, The AncientConstitution and the Feudal Law. A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century, (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1987); Donald R. Kelley, History, Law and the Human Sciences. Medieval and Renaissance perspec-tives (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984).

42 Xavier Gil Pujol, De las alteraciones a la estabilidad. Corona, fueros y política en el reino de Aragón,1585–1648,(Universidad de Barcelona, 1989); Ralph E. Giesey, If not, not. The Oath of the Aragonese and the Legendary Lawsof Sobrarbe (Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press 1968); Botella Ordinas, Monarquía de España, 83–211,240–56, 267–92, 298–339; Botella Ordinas, ‘Los Novatores’; Botella Ordinas, ‘La constitución’.


‘An incomparable . . . Monarchy, bigger than the Assyrian . . . superior to theMede and Persian . . . much more enlarged than the Greek . . . being the Mon-archy of Spain thirty-two times bigger than the Roman . . . which fell . . . fromthis utter ruin . . . the Monarchy began taking shape in Spain and in Italy and itgrew with the discovery and union of the New World . . . our great Monarch[was] . . . not only sovereign Lord of what he dominated in the four parts of theWorld and direct of what other Princes and Potencies retained from him, butalso of what remains to join his Royal Crown in the universal roundness of theWorld.’43

When Spaniards explained the causes of their perceived crises theologically,they did not seek to remedy them merely with a cross and a cilice. To expectGod’s intervention to save the Monarchy – and thus, the world – was aterrible sin, as the Jesuit Baltasar de Gracián made explicit by quotingIgnacio de Loyola: ‘Human means had to be secured as if there were nogodly means and godly means as if there were no human means: rule of agreat master, there is no need of comment.’ Thus, the claim that the Mon-archy of Spain was the Fifth along with the Roman church did not involvepromoting superstition against the improvement of scientific, economic, lit-erary, or historical knowledge.44

Influential seventeenth-century Spanish economic literature included writ-ings (memoriales) proposing measures (arbitrios) to remedy their alleged crisis;in return, writers expected either a reward or protection. For example, thetheologian – and the best known of the Spanish mercantilists – Sancho deMoncada in 1619 wrote Restoration of Spain, an influential economic treatiseproposing measures to improve the kingdom of Castile, with the aim ofdefending the particular interests of the city of Toledo. His memorial de arbitrioswas compatible with his 1635 translation of French Mars, an apologetic writing

43 José Dormer, Inscripciones Latinas a los Retratos de los Reyes de Sobrarbe, Condes antiguos, y Reyes de Aragon, eds.G. Redondo Veintemillas and C. Morte García (Zaragoza, 1996 [1st edn: 1680]), 505–07. Dormer wrote itcommissioned by the Deputies of the Kingdom; I. Cassañes, El Sol austriaco del cielo mystico de la monarquiaespañola, (Barcelona, 1696); Ignacio María Vicent López, ‘La cultura política castellana durante la guerra desucesión: el discurso de la fidelidad’, Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, (ed.), Los Borbones. Dinastía y memoria denación en la España del Siglo XVIII, (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2001), 217–44.

44 Baltasar Gracián y Morales, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, (Madrid: Editorial Castilla, 1948 [1st edn:1647]), 145, aphorism 251; translated into English in 1685 as The courtiers manual oracle, or, The art of prudence(London 1685), 230; cf. Summa Theologica, II, IIae, q. 97; and fn. 18 and 19; in Portugal there were similararguments conciliating wealth, commerce, trade, science and everlasting empire than in Spain, see: Jose deVeitia y Linage, Norte de Contratación de las Islas Occidentales, (1671), title page engraving, quoting Psalm 71:8,Proverbs 31:14 and Ezekiel 27:3 and 28: 4 (‘O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchantof the people for many isles’; ‘With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches, andhast gotten gold and silver into thy treasures’); Antonio de Gaztañeta Iturribalzaga, Norte de la navegacion halladopor el quadrante de reducción, (Sevilla: 1692), approval, quoting Psalm 107:23, such as Daniel Pell, Improvement ofthe Sea, (1659), p.1 referring to the reduction quadrant, and as José de Acosta did earlier in his Historia Naturaly Moral de las Indias, (Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 1999 [from the ed.1590]), <http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/12471630833470495210657/index.htm> Book 1, Ch. 17; cf.Arthur Weststeijn’s essay on the Dutch use of the same arguments.


by Cornelius Jansen in support of the Monarchy of Spain.45 The arbitriosconstitute a homogeneous genre only for historians of the ‘Spanish decline’and for some frequently partial seventeenth-century writers. The enduranceand proliferation of the arbitrios does not require any general economic crisis,and contemporary English sources pointing to the alleged decline of Spain,like Davenant’s works, were sometimes written in political debates with Spainand thus are biased. What is more, Spanish imperial ideology was widelyemployed until the eighteenth century, although by then the ‘Spanish Mon-archy’ should already have fallen, according to the imperial ideology ofDavenant.46

The imperial ideology of Monarquía de España was flexible within limits andthus able to accommodate a wide variety of discourses and practices farbeyond the Iberian peninsula, guaranteeing territorial liberties and privilegesto some subjects. This ensured its endurance as long as among the privilegedthere were tongues to say Spain had an immortal essence.47

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

45 Sancho de Moncada, Restauración política de España, ed. Jean Vilar (Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel deCervantes, 1999 [from the 1619 edn.]) on: <http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/01371529211252601870035/index.htm>), Ch. 2; R. Fernández Delgado, La ruptura del pensamiento económicocastellano en el siglo XVII: Juan de Mariana y Sancho de Moncada, (PhD diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid,2003); Marte frances (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1637), 42, 49; Alejandro Patricio Armacano, Marte Frances (Madrid1637), 42, 46–47, quoting Isaiah 43:6 and Psalms 72:8 to prove that the Monarchy of Spain was chosen by Godto be universally enlarged.

46 Much of the twentieth-century debate took place in Past and Present engaging J. H. Elliott (1961,1977), Henry Kamen (1978, 1981), and Jonathan Israel (1981); see also Geoffrey Parker (ed.), La Crisis de laMonarquía de Felipe IV (Barcelona: Crítica, 2006); Anne Dubet, ‘Los arbitristas entre discurso y acción política.Propuestas para un análisis de la negociación política’, Tiempos Modernos, 4, No. 9 (2003), <http://www.tiemposmodernos.org/tm3/index.php/tm/article/view/28/52>; Pagden, Lords of all the World, 43; José MaríaIñurritegui Rodríguez, ‘1707: La fidelidad y los derechos’, in Pablo Fernández Albaladejo (ed.), Los Borbones:Dinastía y memoria de nación en la España del Siglo XVIII (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2001), 283; ChristopherStorrs, The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy. 1665–1700 (Oxford University Press, 2006); Cañizares-Esguerra,Puritan Conquistadors, Ch. 6; J. M. Portillo Valdés, Crisis Atlántica. Autonomía e independencia en la crisis de laMonarquía Hispana, (Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2006).

47 Quentin Skinner, ‘Regarding Method’, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press2002); James Tully, ‘On Law, Democracy and Imperialism’, Twenty-First Annual Public Lecture. Centre for Law andSociety (University of Edinburgh, 10–11 March 2005), 12; Pablo Fernández Albaladejo, ‘Imperio e identidad:consideraciones historiográficas sobre el momento imperial español’, Semata, No. 3 (2011), 131–50.


‘exempt from time and from its fatal change’: spanish imperial ideology, 1450–1700

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