Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:21:48.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reason of state and constitutional thought in the crown of Aragon, 1580–1640

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Joan-Pau Rubiés
Joan-Pau Rubiés
Affiliation:
University of Reading
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The political significance of Spanish reason-of-state literature has been studied almost exclusively from the perspective of imperial institutions, in particular the monarchy. This article argues that there was a distinctive political perspective in the crown of Aragon, based on its constitutional traditions, which inspired a particular kind of ‘reason of state’. Focusing on the works of a Catalan nobleman, Don Francisco Gilabert, the argument goes on to show that this constitutional thought was able to articulate a project of reform alternative to that of the minister of Philip IV, the count-duke of Olivares, and that therefore it cannot be merely analysed (as it often has been) as an anachronistic form of aristocratic self-seeking. On the contrary, by denying the king the power of absolute sovereignty, and by insisting on the idea of a mixed constitution, Gilabert's approach was able to articulate republican ideals, even though at the cost of some fundamental ambiguities concerning the idea of empire. It is suggested that the recognition of this distinctive intellectual tradition has important implications for the overall interpretation of the course of Spanish history in the seventeenth century, before and after the Catalan revolt of 1640.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Here I use the concept of imperial in an abstract sense, referring to a set of centralized political institutions that derive their legitimacy from one or more distinct political communities and project their power abroad, mainly through war and diplomacy. Inevitably, the external projection of power entails the possibility of projecting it against internal dissent, in particular when there exists a plurality of political communities. While in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ancient Rome was the obvious model for empire, there was a rather confused sense in which the Spanish monarchy could also and was often described as an empire, not only under Charles V who was indeed emperor, but also under Philip II and his successors. On the other hand, an abstract idea of a sovereign state that should eventually correspond with a distinct nation was far from being current, even among writers of Olivares' times who used extensively the concept of reason of state.

2 On Italian reason of state literature see the various studies byde Mattei, R., in particular Il problema della ‘ragion de stato’ nell' età della controriforma (Milano-Napoli, 1979)Google Scholar, and Il pensiero político italiano nell' età della controriforma, II (Milano-Napoli, 1984)Google Scholar. The latter includes chapters on the themes of the diverse nature of nations, mixed government, and contractualism, all relevant to the argument of this article.

3 de Barrientos, B. Álamos, Discurso político al rey Felipe III al cominezo de su reinado, ed. M., Santos (Barcelona, 1990)Google Scholar. There is some uncertainty regarding the extent to which Álamos de Barrientos based his writings on those of Antonio Pérez, but I am inclined to believe that by the beginning of the new reign his work must have been quite independent. It is worth noticing that Álamos de Barrientos formulated clearly the programme for Iberian unification which Olivares would pursue twenty-five years later: ‘It is perhaps also necessary another method of state [manera de estado] that I have thought about in order to unite the kingdoms, and which I read that Alexander the Great tried to implement but without success, since violent empires fall as quickly as they rise; but which the Romans practised very successfully for the greatness of their empire. And so, Castile would remain Castile and Aragon and Portugal would become Castile…They are all neighbours and nothing more than a small river or a range of hills and a few landmarks made of earth divides them…Why should they not share the same reason and the same succession of union and agreement, if we apply the same remedies and medicines in order to make their humours equal?… Thus common laws, privileges, noblemen, clergy and owners of rents will in a short time make a kingdom out of many provinces. But it should be one kingdom only, and a king for everybody and of everything.’ Ibid. pp. 106–7.

4 See in particular Elliott, J. H., The count-duke of Olivares. The statesman in an age of decline (New Haven and London, 1986)Google Scholar, and The revolt of the Catalans. A study in the decline of Spain, 1598–1640 (Cambridge, 2nd edn, 1984)Google Scholar. The latter is without any doubt the best account of the origins of the Catalan revolt in any language. For a more recent perspective on the Spanish crisis of 1640 see however Elliott, J. H. et al. 1640: la monarquia hispdnica en crisis (Barcelona, 1992)Google Scholar, which includes (among others) articles by A. M. Hespanha on Portugal, A. Simón on Catalonia and X. Gil on Aragon and Valencia.

5 Obviously, the immediate cause of the revolt was rather different – a popular reaction against the foreign soldiers billeted in the province – but it was the rift between the court and the Catalan elite that made the problem intractable. This was understood by some contemporaries. Thus, before 1640 the Castilian Diego Pérez de Mesa warned in his manuscript Política, o razón de Estado (c. 1632) that the past disturbances of Aragon and the present and dangerous conflicts between the Catalans and the king were caused by the ‘degeneration’ of kingship towards tyranny, through the abuse of the ‘dominion’ received from ‘the people and the laws’. See Política, ed. L., Perefia and C., Baciero (Madrid, 1980), p. 224.Google Scholar

6 Thus John Elliott could write in 1970 that ‘It was not only history which gave the dominant groups in Catalan and Portuguese society a sense of distinctness and coherence of their own communities. This sense was also kept alive by the very nature of the constitutional system under which they lived.’ ‘Revolts in the Spanish Monarchy’, in R., Forster and Greene, J. P. (eds.), Preconditions of revolution in early modern Europe (Baltimore and London, 1970), p. 115.Google Scholar

7 Coroleu, Notably J. and y Forgas, J. Pella, Las corles catalanas (2nd edn, Barcelona, 1876)Google Scholar, and ibid., Losfueros de Cataluña (Barcelona, 1878).

8 This typical view is for instance forcefully argued by Luis González, Antón, ‘La Corona de Aragón: regimen político y Cortes, entre el mito y la revisión historiográfica’, Actes du XII congr`s d'Histoire de la couronne d'Aragon (1985), III (Montpellier, 1989), 61–81Google Scholar. See also his comparative work Las cortes en la España del antiguo régimen (Madrid, 1989)Google Scholar. González Antón denies the capacity of the laws and institutions of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia to oppose royal absolutism with the argument that their feudal and oligarchic character made them in fact subservient to it, thus dismissing their capacity to project any alternative idea of the common good and suggesting that their only significant role was to slow the inevitable and desirable pace of modernization. Besides reproducing a few crucial conceptual and factual imprecisions, this view denies the constitutional tradition its obvious historical flexibility, and is in fact based on a simplistic understanding of modern ideas about popular sovereignty and the nation-state.

9 Spanish reason of state has often been studied from the purely theoretical aspect, notably in Maravall, J. A., Estudios de historia delpensamineto Español, III, ‘El siglo del Barroco’ (Madrid, 1984)Google Scholar and Fernández-Santamaría, J. A., Reason of state and statecraft in Spanish Political thought, 1595–1640 (Boston, 1983)Google Scholar. Despite Maraval's concern with social themes and historical change, both he and Fernández-Santamaría have tried to define theoretical problems and concepts with little regard for the context in which these ideas were produced and discussed. On the other hand, historians like John Elliott and I. A. A. Thompson have not properly discussed Political thought, even though they have been sensitive to the importance of Political languages. So the task of interpreting the Spanish monarchy in the light of both the theory and practice of reason of state is still open.

10 ‘Reason of state’ could also take the form of an Aristotelian treatise on politics, discussing issues such as citizenship or systems of government and the rule of law. This was for instance the case in Diego Pérez de Mesa's remarkable Político, o razón de Estado. Mesa, who was professor of mathematics at Salamanca and Seville, was in fact one of the rare Political thinkers to discuss constitutional themes in vernacular – this is possibly why his work remained unpublished.

11 On French reason of state see Church, W. F., Richelieu and reason of state (Princeton, 1972).Google Scholar

12 Elliott, , The revolt of the Catalans, p. 200.Google Scholar

13 Elliott, , Richelieu and Olivares (Cambridge, 1984), p. 136.Google Scholar

14 Elliott, , The count-duke of Olivares, p. 556.Google Scholar

15 The Proclamación Católica (Biblioteca de Catalunya, F. Bon. 5229) had been written in 1640 by the Augustinian Gaspar Sala at the request of the municipal magistrates of Barcelona, and attempted to justify the Catalans at the court and in front of the world by drawing on all kinds of juridical and historical arguments (which made some parts of the reasoning far more convincing than others). In fact it reproduced many of the Political arguments publicised in the previous twenty-five years. It was published after the murder of the viceroy by the populace, but before the king had sent an army to restore his power and authority. The Aristarco, o censura de la proclamación Católica (1641) was aimed at denying the arguments one by one, in a rather usual fashion, and therefore constituted one of the most systematic answers to the pamphlet from Barcelona. The stress on the argument of necessity is noted in Elliott, , The count-duke of Olivares, p. 593.Google Scholar

16 de Quevedo, F., ‘La rebelión de Barcelona ni es por el güevo ni es por el fuero’, Obras de don Francisco de Quevedo, ed. Aureliano, Fernandez Guerra (Madrid, 1852), I, 281–6.Google Scholar

17 The debate was studied by Jover, J. M.. 1633. Historia de una polémica y semblanza de una generación (Madrid, 1959).Google Scholar

18 Elliott, , Richelieu and Olivares, p. 128.Google Scholar

19 Cultivated men from Valencia and Catalonia, and of course Aragon itself, tended to read and write mostly in Castilian, and the Portuguese increasingly did the same. The existence of this unified cultural market was most often compatible with the development of separate identities and feelings of patriotism, and with the use of local languages in most other contexts.

20 Due to its constitutional tradition, Catalonia's social and Polítical elite managed to minimize the impact of the new Inquisition in the Principality. This, combined with its geographical position, may help explain the wide circulation of foreign books despite the prohibitions and controls introduced by Philip II. Some of the evidence is collected in H., Kamen, The phoenix and the flame. Catalonia and the counter-reformation (New Haven and London, 1993), pp. 211–74 and 385–426.Google Scholar

21 The following arguments on Gilabert are based on my degree thesis ‘El pensament del cavalier don Francisco Gilabert. Crisi Politica i alternatives socials a Catalunya, 1559–1638’ (2 vols. Barcelona, 1987)Google Scholar. That piece, with various revisions, is the basis of a forthcoming critical edition of the complete writings of Gilabert.

22 On the Catalan aristocracy see Elliott, , ‘A provincial aristocracy: the Catalan ruling class in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, reprinted in Spain and its world 1500–1700 (New Haven and London, 1989), pp. 71–91Google Scholar. This should be complemented with J., Amelang, Honored citizens of Barcelona. Patrician culture and class relations (Princeton, 1986)Google Scholar, which in fact includes a brief discussion of Gilabert's ‘unique’ contribution to the debate between arms and letters (pp. 113–18). On the Catalan constitutional system see V., Ferro, El dret públic català. Les institucions a Catalunya fins al decret de nova planta (Vic, 1987)Google Scholar. For a general perspective on the constitutional tradition of the Crown of Aragon see y Lacambra, L. Legaz et al. El pactismo en la historia de España (Madrid, 1980).Google Scholar

23 ‘Respuesta hecha al tratado, relatión y discurso historial que Antonio de Herrera haze de los succesos de Aragón…’, fos. 1 r–2 v. Included in Francisco Gurrea y Aragón, ‘Comentarios de los sucesos de Aragón en los años 1591 y 1592’ Biblioteca del Real Seminario de San Carlos de Zaragoza, MS B-5 18. The copy published by Marcelino de Aragón y Azlor in 1888 is incomplete.

24 de Gilabert, Don Francisco, Discursos sobre la calidad del principado de Cataluña, inclinatión de sus habitadores, y su govierno (Lérida, 1616)Google Scholar: ‘Al letor’.

25 de Moncada, Sancho, Riqueza firme y estable de España (Madrid, 1619), p. 158Google Scholar. Of course, the discussion of the particular needs of each state of the Monarchy was part of the policy of the Habsburg administration since at least the times of Charles V, before it became part of a ‘science of politics’ with Álamos de Barrientos (1598). Gilabert's originality consists of addressing the issue from a provincial perspective and as part of a published body of reason of state literature. On the other hand, an earlier use of the concept of ‘national character’ accompanied by the detailed analysis of particular institutions and their Political significance is manifest in the ‘Avvertimenti a Marco Antonio Colonna quando andò viceré de Sicilia’ written in 1577 by the Sicilian Scipio de Castro. It was first published in Thesoro político …pertinente alla perfetta intelligenza della ragion di stato (Milano, 1600–1601), II.Google Scholar

26 Discursos, IV, 69–70.

27 Discursos, II, 147.

28 Discursos, I, 75.

29 Discursos, IV, 26. Curiously enough, this reference to ‘popular Machiavellianism’ appears in the context of an argument against the excessive budgets of the town councils, which in Gilabert's opinion stimulate overspending and foment corruption, inevitable features in public institutions. This is, of course, not simply the opinion of a citizen who had often been involved in municipal affairs, but also of a rich gentleman (he had houses in different towns) who dislikes having to pay taxes as a commoner.

30 Constitutionalism in Castile is a complex subject that cannot be properly treated in this article. It is nevertheless appropriate to clarify here that several aspects made the Castilian cortes different from those of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia. Even at the times of their maximum influence under Philip III the Castilian cortes only represented a few towns, who held the real power. Thus, while the Catalan diputació was a permanent representation of the corts, the Castilian equivalent diputación derived directly from the towns, and was under the influence of the council of finance of the crown. The supreme magistrate in Castilian towns was the corregidor, a representative of the king, while its equivalent in the crown of Aragon – for instance the Catalan veguer – had very limited powers. Neither the clergy nor the nobility participated in the Castilian cortes. Furthermore, their power related to taxation, but never to legislation, and this affected also the scope of the contractual language often found in the constitutional struggle of the early seventeenth century. Thus, while there existed constitutional thought in Castile, it either remained confined to the abstract juridical theology of ecclesiastical authors who wrote in Latin, or (on the rare occasions when the traditional powers of the king of Castile were actually questioned) it tended to adopt institutional models from the crown of Aragon – which for instance seem to lie behind some of Diego Pérez de Mesa's bold conceptions (Político, p. 246).

31 The Discursos políticos (Barcelona, 1621) were a shorter version of the Conservación de monarquías (Madrid, 1626). Apparently they were printed at the initiative of Miguel de Prats, a Catalan friend of Navarrete.

32 There has been a notable re-assessment of the role of the Castilian cortes in the last few years, in particular thanks to the contributions by C.Jago and I. A. A. Thompson, and later P. Fernández Albadalejo, J. I. Fortea López and J. L. Castellano. This ‘revisionist’ literature is analysed by C., Jago in his review-essay ‘Crown and Cortes in early-modern Spain’, Parliaments, estates and representation, XII, 2 (12, 1992)Google Scholar. For a recent and stimulating discussion of the theme see also Thompson, I. A. A., ‘Castile’, in J., Miller (ed.), Absolutism in seventeenth-century Europe (London, 1990), pp. 69–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thompson builds on the intuitions of J. Vicens Vives in 1960 in order to stress the paradoxical character of a Political system that combined ‘the maximum concentration of authority at the summit and the minimal extension of power at the base’ (p. 98). I believe nevertheless that a comparative perspective clearly indicates the relative institutional weakness of the Castilian ‘republicanism’ (see n. 30 above), and that the ‘formidable position’ secured by the cortes at the end of Philip III's reign (p. 81) lacked consistency.

33 Gaspar Sala still mentioned in his 1640 Proclamación Católica a famous parliamentary speech read in 1406 by Martin I – the last ruler in the original dynasty of counts of Barcelona – in which he remarked in a positive tone the exceptional liberty of the Catalans. Castilian writers also defended the view that public wealth was based on private wealth, and the idea that Castile was overtaxed was central to the ‘consulta’ of 1619, and thus also to Navarrete's gloss (Conservación, pp. 105–19). However, it is significant that in his Madrid edition of 1626 Navarrete also added that in case of military necessity the king could tax without the hassle of previous consent (compare Discursos, fol. III–v with Conservación, p. 119).

34 Gilabert conceives of the Catalan laws as derived from an original need to deal with natural vices which absolute liberty cannot check (Discursos, II, 75–8). The first Catalan ‘constitutions’ – the feudal usatges of the eleventh and twelfth centuries – are therefore the minimal constraint of natural liberty necessary for the attainment of collective peace, and amount to an original Political contract, since the Catalans saw themselves as having ‘recovered’ independence from the Roman Empire through Visigothic rule, and later also from Charlemagne through the conquest of their land against the Muslims (a process in which the ‘romanized’ Goths and their Frankish allies are the genuine Catalans). Therefore, later additions to this original legal body – the ‘constitutions and other rights of Catalonia’ – are reached through the renewal of the contract between the Catalans and their prince in their cort.

35 The definition of the Catalan character on the basis of cholera and prudence bears a suspicious coincidence with the well-known categories of ‘rauxa’ and ‘seny’ used by Vicens Vives in the twentieth century. Similar definitions were widespread in seventeenth-century Catalonia. The Jesuit Pere Gil had devoted several pages of his ‘Natural History of Catalonia’ (1600) to the description of the Catalan temperament, but remained unpublished. See J., Iglésies (ed.), Pere Gil (1551–1622) i la seva geografía de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1949), pp. 269–75Google Scholar. Gilabert's formulation in 1616 must have been one of the most widely publicized. In the early 1630s the Barcelona citizen Esteve de Corbera, who incidentally was also keen to praise the elderly Gilabert as a model of a prudent gentleman that other Catalan noblemen should follow (pp. 6–7), incorporated a similar definition of the Catalan character in his Cataluña Ilustrada (Naples, 1678), pp. 33–4Google Scholar. This definition, with variations, was also used by foreign authors, notably the Portuguese nobleman and historian Francisco Manuel de Melo in his contemporary account of the Catalan revolt: Histona de los movimientos y separatión de Cataluña (Lisbon, 1643; modern edn Barcelona, 1981), pp. 40–2.Google Scholar

36 Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, ‘Juicio interior y secreto de la monarquía para mí solo’, published in Jover, J. M., ‘Sobre los conceptos de Monarquía y nación en el pensamiento político español del XVII’, Cuadernos de Historia de España, XIII (1950), 138–50.Google Scholar

37 Discursos, I, 12–16.

38 S., Sobrequés, Història de la producció del dret català fins al decret de Nova Planta (Girona, 1978).Google Scholar

39 See Legaz y Lacambra et al., El pactismo. On Catalonia see the valuable article by J. Sobrequés. The radical difference found by J. Lalinde Abadía between the contractualism of Aragon and that of Valencia is rather dubious and has already been contested by various scholars.

40 Although in this article I concern myself exclusively with the crown of Aragon within Spain, it is of course important to realise that interesting parallels can also be found in other parts of Europe, notably Thomas Smith in England, to which Brendan Bradshaw kindly draws my attention. This parallel is the more relevant since the British and Spanish composite monarchies are often compared. However, while in Britain constitutionalism was strong in the centre, in Spain it was most important in the periphery – perhaps a fundamental explanation for later developments.

41 The main medieval Catalan writer on the cosa pública was the late-fourteenth-century Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis, whose encyclopedic works written in Catalan were extremely influential in his time. He combined conventional Christian morality with a wide-ranging education that allowed him to defend the civic autonomy of Valencia against the authoritarian tendencies of the kings of Aragon (even though Peter IV had been his patron). Although Eiximenis does not seem to have exercised a direct influence on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors, he was still a source for the Polítical dialogues written by the gentleman Cristofor Despuig in 1557.

42 This list does not include jurists writing in Latin. Gerónimo de Mondragón, a University lawyer at Saragossa, produced in 1588 his Ratos de recreatión, a translation of Luigi Guicciardini's collection of proverbs L'hore di recreatione (Anvers, 1567). In 1598 he dedicated to Gilabert his Censura de la locura humana, an Erasmian critique of common-sense morality published in Lleida. Juan Costa, professor of rhetoric at Salamanca and afterwards professor of law at Saragossa, produced in 1574 the first edition of his El ciudadano, a popular work used by Gilabert. He was also author of a method for history, De conscribenda rerum historia (1591). Gilabert also consulted the Platonist República original sacada del cuerpo humano (1587), by the professor of medicine at the University of Barcelona Jeroni Merola, and the Microcosmia o govierno universal del hombre cristiano (1592), a series of dialogues on politics and morality published by the prior of the Augustinian monastery of Barcelona Marc Antoni de Camós. The patrician from Barcelona Joaquim Setanti published in 1595 the first edition of his Frutos de historia, a compilation in which he combined the maxims of Francesco Guicciardini with reflections on history, the state, provincial government and advice for ambassadors. In 1614 he produced the Centellas de varios conceptos y Avisos de amigo, his own collection of personal maxims, which he accompanied by a selection of maxims from Tacitus probably derived from a manuscript written by Baltasar Álamos de Barrientos (although Setantí attributed them to Benito Arias Montano). The citizen of Perpinyà and jurist Andreu Bosch, who used Gilabert's Discursos as one of the sources for his Sumari, índex o epítome dels…títols d'honor de Catalunya, Rosselló i Cerdanya (Perpinyà, 1628)Google Scholar, conceived his work as a legalistic discussion of ‘titles of honour’ which provided a link between local patriotism, historical identity and good government.

43 This perspective influenced his later advice to Philip II (1573) to pull out of the Netherlands and rule them through the respect of their constitutions rather than military persecution – an option that, despite the original willingness of Governor Requesens, Philip II only adopted when it was too late to profit from it. The main significance of Furió Ceriol's 1559 treatise is however his intelligent attempt to bridge between Castiglione's courtier and Machiavelli's prince.

44 Furio, Ceriol, El Concejo y consejeros del príncipe, ed. H., Méchoulan (Madrid, 1993), p. 38Google Scholar. Gilabert never mentions Furió Ceriol, although Camós, who influenced Gilabert, does.

45 de Mariana, Juan, Obras, ed. y Margall, F. Pi (Madrid, 1854), II, 487Google Scholar. On Mariana's life and thought in general see G., Lewy, Constitutionalism and statecraft during the golden age of Spain (Geneve, 1960)Google Scholar. Lewy does not however discuss the relevance of the Aragonese model.

46 As J. A. Maravall noticed, among [Castilian] Political writers the discussion of the power of the cortes is very limited. Saavedra Fajardo, a rare and late author, is among the boldest in defending the idea that when the cortes represent the ‘universal republic’ they can provide an ultimate check against tyranny. However, when he deals with actual proposals he forgets the Castilian institutions and, displaying his exceptional vision of Empire, proposes a ‘council of councils’ in which representatives from different provinces would meet – in some ways the embryo for a federal parliament. See Maravall, , ‘Saavedra Fajardo: moral de acomodación y carácter conflictivo de la libertad’, in Estudios, pp. 252–4Google Scholar. On Pérez de Mesa see n. 30 above.

47 Discursos, II, 78–81.

48 Ibid. p. 73.

49 de Argensola, L. Leonardo, Informatión de los sucesos del reino de Aragón en los años de 1590 y 1591 (Madrid, 1808; repr. ed. Gil Pujol, X., Zaragoza, 1991), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

50 Assarino, , Delle revolutioni di Catalogna, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

51 Bodin, , Six livres de la République (1583), I, 8.Google Scholar

52 Argensola, , Informatión, p. 190Google Scholar. Bodin was misled by Hotman's Francogallia, who followed dubious Aragonese sources, so the initial debate between the two of them concerning the oath was based on the wrong information. On the other hand the debate accurately reproduced the implicit tension between the constitutional and the royal principles in the tradition of the crown of Aragon, so that Bodin could use the jurist Belluga against the oath, and Hotman, in 1586, the historian Zurita to support the constitutional principle. In any case, Bodin's idea that the legislative belongs to the sole sovereign power ran counter to the established tradition and also the contemporary practice of the three kingdoms of the crown of Aragon, while his interpretation of Belluga is very partial. On the Aragonese oath see R., Giesey, If not, not. The oath of the Aragonese and the legendary laws of Sobrarbe (Princeton, 1968).Google Scholar

53 Bovadilla, , Política, I, 13.Google Scholar

54 Ibid, ‘dedication’.

55 The foundations of modern Political thought, II (Cambridge, 1978), 351–6.Google Scholar

56 M. Gordon has emphasized against current trends the moral element in the arbitristas' Political analysis, in ‘Morality, reform and the Empire in seventeenth-century Spain’, Il pensiero politico, XI (1978), 3–19Google Scholar. On the other hand the conventional moralism of early-seventeenth-century court writers (very obvious in authors like Juan de Santa María or Francisco de Quevedo), which did not altogether disappear during the years of Olivares, has been underplayed by important historians like Maravall and Fernández-Santamaría, who more often stress the secular content of their attempts to create a model of non-Machiavellian Polítical virtue.

57 See for instance the preface in the Respuesta… (n. 23 above).

58 The technical name was diputació del general de Catalunya. Its deputies, one for each estate, administered taxes between corts and paid the agreed quantities to the prince. Furthermore, they also were obliged to defend the Catalan constitutions against the excesses of royal officials.

59 The dedication of the Agricultura plática (Barcelona, 1626) to ‘his farmers’ completes Gilabert's republic. The book was however meant to raise the economic awareness of the landlords, because Gilabert thought that the peasants knew pretty well what they had to do, but the owners failed to take enough interest.

60 This is also the argument in Amelang, , Honored citizens of Barcelona.Google Scholar

61 Quevedo, Obras, I, 284: ‘Son los catalanes aborto monstruoso de la política. Libres con señor, por eso el conde de Barcelona no es dignidad, sinó vocablo y voz desnuda’.

62 Joly's account was published in Spanish translation by García, Mercadal, Viajes de estrangeros por España y Portugal, II (Madrid, 1959).Google Scholar

63 ‘[The Catalans] are known to be violent and warlike. They are naturally villains, and despite the fact that in the city they use infinite ceremonies and reverence, their true nature is this (…) Catalonia is called a principate and not a kingdom, and they have their own privileges and chapters, outside which the king cannot govern them. What I cannot see is what the king gets from the Catalans.’ F., Guicciardini, ‘Diario del viaggio in Spagna’, Scritta autobiografici e rari, ed. R., Palmorocchi (Bari, 1936), p. 121.Google Scholar

64 ‘The kingdom of Aragon is of little use to the king's revenues, because due to very ancient privileges they pay almost nothing. Not only do they have immunities concerning the payments, but also in criminal and civil suits they can appeal against the king so that he cannot decide entirely on his own. So that Queen Elisabeth, fed up with their privileges and liberty, used to say: “Aragon is not ours, we will have to conquer it again”. This is not the case in Castile, where the people pay a great deal, and the word of the king is above all laws.‘ Ibid. ‘Relazione di Spagna’, p. 140.

65 I have been able to establish some interesting connections. Guicciardini's History of Italy had been consulted by Gilabert when he wrote his Deeds and sayings of Charles V. Also Don Joaquim Setaní, a gentleman from Barcelona who was related to Gilabert and seems to have read assiduously the Discursos in the last year of his life (d. 1617), found inspiration for his own Political and moral maxims (1614) in a translation of Guicciardini's Avverttmenti, which he had published in 1595 and 1610.

66 This account is found within the Comentarios of the Aragonese Don Francisco de Gurrea y Aragón, Count of Luna, to whom apparently Gilabert sent it. See n. 23 above.

67 See Jover, , ‘Sobre los conceptos de Monarquía y nación’Google Scholar. The distinction Jover introduces between the concepts of ‘Monarchy’ and ‘nation’ is valuable. However, perhaps influenced by the post-war climate of Francoism, he separates a legitimate ‘Portuguese nationalism’ from the ‘selfish defence of privileges’ of Catalans. This distinction is in fact incoherent with the reading of Palafox that he next proposes, and reproduces a teleological assumption (because it did not work it could not and should not have worked otherwise, in Portugal). Jover of course also neglects the constitutional literature of the crown of Aragon.

68 This system has been best denned by H., Koenigsberger and Elliott, J. H.. The former's Estates and revolutions (Cornell, 1981)Google Scholar deals with various cases of provincial parliaments, whilst Elliott discusses the general concept of composite monarchy in ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’, Past and Present, CXXXVII (1992), 48–71.Google Scholar

69 The confidence with which the right to rule Italy was asserted in Spain contrasts with the half-hearted support for Flanders, a reluctance which was always popular in the cortes but that after the death of Philip II also became dominant in court circles. The anti-imperial discourse in the Castilian cortes can be traced back at least to the early years of Charles V – which makes it even more astonishing that it was never acted upon. Even when it was clear that Flanders could not be kept, the idea of giving up territory was to some Castilian nationalists traumatic (Castilian imperialists were no less nationalistic than those who did not want to ruin their lives in order to save Dutch souls from heresy). An attempt to express a ‘coherent’ view of Empire, based on a new emphasis on trade and navigation and with a strong Italian dimension, is expressed by Saavedra Fajardo – for instance, in his Idea de un príncipe Cristiano (1640) no. 81. It is obvious that Olivares, following the tradition set by Philip II, was wrong in not giving up what was left of the Netherlands more quickly, although he came round to the idea by the 1630s. In fact, it can be argued that giving up continental Italy would also have been a sensible idea, by setting up a separate dynasty (there even was the model of Alfonso V of Aragon in Naples).

70 Giovanni, Botero, The reason of state, ed. and trans. Waley, D. P. (London, 1956), p. 11.Google Scholar

71 Ibid. p. 5.

72 Biblioteca de Catalunya (Barcelona), MS 1166. There is another copy, imperfect, in the Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid).

73 de Sandoval, Fray Prudencio, Historia de la vida y hechos del Emperador Carlos V (2 vols. Valladolid, 1604–1606)Google Scholar. There was a new edition in Pamplona in 1614. Sandoval compiled previous chronicles and copied them, as well as many original documents, with little critical discrimination. As a primary source he is however very important.

74 de Vera y Figueroa, Juan Antonio, Epítome de la vida y hechos del invicto emperador Carlos quinto (Madrid, 1622)Google Scholar. This work was reprinted many times. I have consulted the editions from Valencia (1925) and Madrid (1654) (the seventh edition, it claims to follow the princeps). Vera actually also consulted manuscripts of Pedro Mexía's history, a contemporary of Charles V extensively used by Sandoval.

75 Muntaner was used by Gilabert to define the Catalan nature in the Discursos. A translation of Desclot into Castilian by Rafael Cervera was published also in 1616. This view of the Catalan past was shared by the upper aristocracy, and a few years later Francisco de Monacada also relied on Muntaner to produce his widely acclaimed Expeditión de Catalanes y Aragoneses contra Turcos y Griegos (1622).

76 See Elliott, , The revolt of the Catalans, pp. 215–47Google Scholar. See also Rubiés, , ‘El pensament del cavalier don Francisco Gilabert’, II.Google Scholar

77 The subsidy Gilabert defended was not however 3,300,000, but rather 3,000,000. Indeed, the Catalan nobility had not voted unanimously for the subsidy, and various particular votes for smaller quantities were recorded, so that only 165 out of 342 voters (including the president of the estate the duke of Cardona) accepted the superior figure of 3,300,000. Curiously, three of the particular votes defended 3,000,000, which perhaps indicates the size of Gilabert's faction. See Elliott, , The revolt of the Catalans, p. 243.Google Scholar

78 Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona, MS 1009, 61r–63v. Also in Rubiés, , ‘El pensament del cavalier don Francisco Gilabert’, II, 372–9.Google Scholar

79 In 1621 the first conflict between Philip IV and the Catalans arose concerning the re-appointment of the duke of Alcalá as viceroy (representing the new count of Barcelona). According to the constitutions, this could not be done unless Philip IV was first accepted as legitimate prince, which required him going to Catalonia to swear the constitutions. Curiously, on that occasion it was the archbishop of Tarragona Joan de Moncada, Gilabert's friend and patron, who found a solution: he convinced the estates in Barcelona that necessity overrode all laws, thus obtaining their consent. See Elliott, , The revolt of the Catalans, p. 149.Google Scholar

80 Biblioteca de Catalunya, F. Bon. 5203. Another copy in Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona, MS 1009.

81 Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona, MS 1009, 65r–66v; also in Rubiés, , ‘El pensament del cavalier don Francisco Gilabert’, II, 420–5.Google Scholar

82 Cristòfor, Despuig, Col. loquis de la insigne ciutat de Tortosa (1557), ed. E., Duran (Barcelona, 1981), pp. 88–9Google Scholar. Despuig, resentful of the marginal role suffered by Catalans and Aragonese in the Empire, contrasted the power of the Castilians in the sixteenth century with their earlier obscurity and predicted their eventual failure as successors of the universal monarchy. He also defended the Spanishness of Catalonia against Castilian monopoly of the concept, and the shared feelings of patriotism between Catalans and Valencians. These dialogues remained unpublished until the end of the nineteenth century, although manuscripts circulated. They were dedicated to count of Aytona Francesc de Moncada. Despuig, whose local power-base was the city of Tortosa in southern Catalonia, is in many ways the sixteenth-century equivalent of don Francisco Gilabert, who as I said was based in Lleida and Tamarit.

83 It was nevertheless the concept of ‘reason of state’ which was used by the president of the Generalitat, the canon Pau Clarís, to justify an approach to France in 1640, when ‘the whole province is without justice’. See Elliott, , The revolt of the Catalans, pp. 471–2Google Scholar (quoting from a letter of Clarís to the chapter of Urgell).

84 Enrique de Aragón, duke of Cardona, who had consistently tried to lead the Catalan aristocracy towards an agreement with Olivares, in fact died as viceroy, unfruitfully trying to pacify the province in 1640. Moncada, third marquis of Aytona, who at the accession of Philip IV was already very prestigious, spent many years abroad serving Olivares and then died in Flanders in 1635.

85 He wrote about it in his life of Charles V, probably with information from his own family records, although Lluis de Gilabert was also mentioned by Zurita.

86 Gordon, , ‘Morality, reform and the empire’, p. 18.Google Scholar

87 Elliott, , The count-duke of Olivares, p. 454.Google Scholar

88 This is the suggestion in Elliott, , ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’.Google Scholar

89 This argument is made by Rabb, T. K.. The struggle for stability in early modern Europe (New York, 1975), pp. 63–4Google Scholar. Of course, Portugal was often (but not consistently) included in the definition of Spain, which was after all no more than Roman Hispania. That was true for the middle ages as well as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

90 Some of these views are expressed in Elliott, , The revolt of the Catalans, pp. 550–1.Google Scholar

91 There is, for instance, evidence to suggest that some of the most far-reaching economic reforms of eighteenth-century Catalonia were planned and initiated in the late seventeenth century by men like Narcís Feliu de la Penya, a Barcelona merchant, lawyer and historian (aware of the Political literature of Gilabert's time and of the historiography of the revolt) who decidedly supported a constitutional Habsburg king during the war of succession, but lost. See P., Molas, Comerç y estructura social a Catalunya i València als segles XVII i XVIII (Barcelona, 1977), pp. 70–120.Google Scholar