In ‘Another Jerusalem’: Political Legitimacy and Courtly Government in the Kingdom of New Spain (1535-1568) José-Juan López-Portillo offers a new approach to understanding why the most densely populated and culturally sophisticated regions of Mesoamerica accepted the authority of Spanish viceroys. By focusing on the routines and practices of quotidian political life in New Spain, and the ideological affinities that bound indigenous and non-indigenous political communities to the viceregal regime, López Portillo discloses the formation of new loyalties, interests and identities particular to New Spain. Rather than the traditional view of European colonial domination over a demoralized indigenous population, New Spain now appears as Mexico City’s sub-empire: an aggregate of the Habsburg ‘composite monarchy’. "Embellished with wonderful illustrations, this work draws upon extensive secondary and primary sources. Scholars studying Spain's America will find it a thoughtful addition to historical literature on 16th-century New Spain." - M. A. Burkholder, University of Missouri - St. Louis, in: CHOICE, July 2018 Vol. 55 No. 11
The present collection echoes and contributes to a number of the issues defined by both the traditional and revisionist historiography. The intent of this special issue of the Portuguese Studies Review was to highlight some of the new research on late medieval and early modern Portuguese women, subjects typically situated outside of the academic mainstream, and to complement the four major collections on the history of Portuguese women published since 1986, as well as the larger literature dealing with Spain. The essays are organized into six general themes: “Female Characters in Late Medieval Chronicles,” “Women and Power in the Late Middle Ages,” “Habsburg Queens and Portugal,” “Women and the Economy,” “Attitudes Toward Women,” and “Women and Religion.” The volume presents essays by Amélia P. Hutchinson, José Valente, Jutta Sperling, Ivana Elbl, Susannah C. Humble Ferreira, Félix Labrador Arroyo, Annemarie Jordan, Almudena Pérez de Tudela, Amélia Polónia, Amândio Jorge Morais Barros, Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, Pedor Miguel Reboredo Marques, Marcia Eliane Alves de Souza e Mello, Jessiva V. Roitman, Inês Amorim, Elisbete de Jesus and Célia Rego, and Haruko Nawata Ward, with an Introduction by Darlene Abreu-Ferreira and Ivana Elbl. The volume also contains an Addendum on the Portuguese Estado Novo, with studies by Sonny B. Davis and Antonio Muñoz Sánchez.
Issued in connection with an exhibition held Oct. 5, 2010-Jan. 17, 2011, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Feb. 23-May 30, 2011, National Gallery, London (selected paintings only).
This book explores the political construction of imperial frontiers during the reigns of Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles V in the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean. Contrary to many studies on this topic, this book neither focuses on a specific frontier nor attempts to provide an overview of all the imperial frontiers. Instead, it focuses on a specific individual: Juan Rena (1480–1539). This Venetian clergyman spent 40 years serving the king in several capacities while travelling from the Maghreb to northern Spain, from the Pyrenees to the western fringes of the Ottoman Empire. By focusing on his activities, the book offers an account of the Spanish Empire’s frontiers as a vibrant political space where a multiplicity of figures interacted to shape power relations from below. Furthermore, it describes how merchants, military officers, nobles, local elites and royal agents forged a specific political culture in the empire’s liminal spaces. Through their negotiations and cooperation, but also through their competition and clashes, they created practices and norms in areas like cross-cultural diplomacy, the making of the social fabric, the definition of new jurisdictions, and the mobilization of resources for war.
This collection of essays by major scholars in the field explores how the rich intersections between Italy and Spain during the early modern period resulted in a confluence of cultural ideals. Various means of exchange and convergence are explored through two main catalysts: humans—their trips or resettlements—and objects—such as books, paintings, sculptures, and prints. The visual and textual evidence of the transmission of ideas, iconographies and styles are examined, such as triumphal ephemera, treatises on painting, the social status of the artist, collections and their display, church decoration, and funerary monuments, providing a more nuanced understanding of the exchanges of styles, forms and ideals across southern Europe.
In the past decade, there has been a surge of Anglophone scholarship regarding Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which has led to a reframing of the discourses around Spanish culture of this period. Despite this new interest-in which painting, in particular, has been singled out for treatment-a comprehensive study of sculpture collections and the status of sculpture in Spain has yet to be produced. Sculpture Collections in Early Modern Spain is the first book to assess the phenomenon of sculpture collecting and in doing so, it alters the previously held notion that Spanish society placed little value in this art form. Di Dio and Coppel reveal that, due to the problems and expense of their transport from Italy, sculptures were in fact status symbols in the culture. Thus they were an important component of the collections formed by the royal family, cultivated noble collectors, humanists, and artists who had pretensions of high status. This book is especially useful to specialists for its discussion of the typologies of collections and objects, and of the mechanics of state gifts, transport, and collection display in this period. An appendix presents extensive archival documentation, most of which has never before been published. The authors have uncovered hundreds of new documents about sculpture in Spain; and new documentary evidence allows them to propose several new identifications and attributions. Firmly grounded in extensive archival research, Sculpture Collections in Early Modern Spain redefines the socio-political and art historical importance of sculpture in early modern Spain. Most importantly, it entirely transforms our knowledge regarding the presence of sculpture in a wide range of Spanish collections of the period, which until now has been erroneously characterized as close to non-existent.
"Based on author's doctoral dissertation, work reconstructs and analyzes the making of the financial empire of the conquerer of Peru and his brothers. Painstaking study examines and elucidates multiple aspects of both the economic and sociopolitical history of the Perus and Spain in the 16th century"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.
Fray Antonio de Guevara (1482-1545), the most prolific writer of pseudo-historical prose in sixteenth-century Spain, was named official chronicler by Emperor Charles V in 1526. Despite his title, Guevara never wrote a conventional history. A master of fictional semblance, Guevara self-fashioned his own literary personae or masks - among them those of friar, bishop, chronicler, courtier, imperial counselor, and court buffoon. In his pseudo-historical prose, Guevara resoundingly uses the voices of both the novelist and the court buffoon, entertaining the reader with humor, wit, satire, and irony. Artistically manipulating both classical and contemporary history, Guevara innovatively creates a vast and labyrinthine web in which history and fiction form an inseparable hybrid: a pseudo-historical narrative that heralds the essay and the modern novel.
For decades historians argued for the downfall of communication, when early modern societies were hit by a natural disaster. After all, earthquakes caused the destruction of infrastructure, which hindered the spread of news. Instead, the last investigations opened a new point of view about the political communication: every crisis was a catalyst for news. The book widens this reading through a comparative analysis of several earthquakes in the Hispanic Monarchy territories, from Asia to America. However, the examination of communications provided in this volume is not an end in itself but is offered as a basis for reflection and to propose the notion that earthquakes trigger change in social and political dynamics. Earthquake-related crises exposed the underlying contradictions that the court of Madrid needed to address in the most effective way, and, if possible, swiftly. Earthquakes not only destroyed buildings and infrastructure but also social norms. Urgency reduced the distance between interlocutors, to some extent blurring the boundaries of self-censorship. Tremors therefore offer a rare opportunity to observe the political and military crises faced by the Hispanic Monarchy, the global empire of the time.