With this monograph, Deborah Forteza joins the scholars addressing the intricate relationship between early modern Spain and England on the one hand, and Spanish texts that represent the repercussions of this evolving relationship on the other. The vicissitudes of the period are manifest in Philip II's 1554 three-year marriage to Mary Tudor, the 1588 English defeat of the Spanish armada, the Spanish Crown's determination to vanquish Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), and the Anglican/Protestant demonization of the Spanish empire. How Spanish authors responded to all this is the subject of Forteza's book, riding the tumultuous transition from the Spanish empire to that of the English.
At issue are five primary texts. In 1585, English exile Nicholas Sander published his Schismatis anglicano, a retort to John Fox's Acts and Monuments (1563), launching pro-Catholic efforts to delegitimize Queen Elizabeth. Jesuit author Pedro de Ribadeneyra adapted the Sander text in his 1588 Historia ecclesiástica del scisma del reyno de Inglaterra immediately before the launch of the Spanish armada, to which Ribadeneyra responded in 1589 with his mournful Tratado de la tribulación. In 1593, he published the second part of his Historia ecclesiástica, a volume that Fray Diego de Yepes amplified further in the Historia particular de la persecución de Inglaterra of 1599. Forteza's objective is to expose the importance of these texts and show their influence on selected writings of Spanish authors: letters by the radical Catholic missionary Luisa de Carvajal (1566–1614), poetry and dramas by Lope de Vega (1562–1635), a play by Calderón de la Barca (1600–81), and a novella by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616).
The first chapter briefly traces the genre of ecclesiastical histories, beginning with Eusebius of Caesarea's fourth-century Church History. Forteza finds Rivadeneyra's texts unique in this genre for their employ of literary devices mined from nonecclesiastical genres, such as dramatic and direct quotations, emotive descriptions, and gruesome details. While Ribadeneyra did make good use of such rhetorical flourishes, they were abundant in religious writing of all genres well before the sixteenth century, particularly in sermons and the Flos sanctorum.
Chapter 2 introduces the first part of Ribadeneyra's Historia ecclesiástica as what Forteza calls a “dynamic translation” of the Sander text, then reveals his second part to be “largely a Spanish adaption of Robert Persons's Elizabethae angliae reginae” (1592; 30). While these adaptations of previous texts suggest a broad interest in the problematics of Spanish/English relations, Forteza insists that the Jesuit's writings were the ones that influenced Spanish culture at large. Ribadeneyra, she suggests, brought this type of text to life by animating his with personalizing rhetoric.
Chapters 3 through 5 are examples of what Forteza finds to be the direct influence of Ribadeneyra's ecclesiastical histories written in response to the English Reformation. A careful reading of Luisa de Carvajal's some two hundred letters, most of which were written from London, leads Forteza to suggest that, although concrete evidence of a direct influence is lacking, the pro-Catholic, anti-English fireworks in Carvajal's correspondence suggest a familiarity with the Jesuit's books.
Chapter 4 proposes the direct influence of Ribadeneyra's texts on works by Lope de Vega, including some of his poetry and two plays, suggesting that the parallels are “too many to be coincidental” (90). While Calderón's El cisma de Inglaterra would seem to be an overt reference to Ribadeneyra's text, Forteza finds that this association is more problematic due to the dramatic nuances that Calderón afforded traditionally flat characters.
Forteza's delivery of often-ignored ecclesiastical texts to the scholarly table is admirable and important. The argument that “all Spanish literary works about England share Ribadeneyra's imprint on them” (8) is overstated; many instances of the presumed influence of the Jesuit's writings hang by slender threads of conjecture. What sparkles in this book is the tremendous depth of careful reading that peeks out from behind the prose, and the initiative to bring together fields of knowledge traditionally kept apart. As a study that proposes a bridge over the divide between ecclesiastical histories and other types of literature, it is a welcome addition to our understanding of early modern texts.
