"Spanish Elizabethans" in Exile and Their Books

Since I'm reading a book right now about how Catholics in England adapted to their changed lives of worship and community (Lest We be Damned: Practical Innovation & Lived Experience Among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559-1642. Routledge: 2005, by Lisa McClain) seeing this book, Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II by Freddy Cristobal Dominguez from Penn State University Press, among some new releases intrigues me.

In discussing the devotional literature written by English Catholics in exile for the recusant Catholics who remained home, McClain makes the point that the exiles often urged the recusants to observe Catholic worship just as they had before the Elizabethan Acts of Settlement and Uniformity. They should still go to Confession frequently, attend Mass on Sunday, etc., even though it was really impossible for them to do so: without priests, churches, parishes, etc. She comments that many of these exiles writing these guides were under the patronage of Tridentine communities and rulers: they were benefiting from the great Counter-Reformation revival in Rome and throughout Catholic Europe: they didn't know or acknowledge that what they were telling the "folks back home" was impossible. She further notes that, beholden to their mentors in exile, it behooved them to support papal or royal opinion on how English Recusant Catholics should be behave. Later Catholic writers, especially Jesuit missionary priests like St. Robert Southwell in A Short Rule to a Good Life, would provide more reasonable and feasible alternatives to the Catholic devotional and Sacramental life that the recusants of England had lost through personal, private, and imaginative means when no priest was available for the Sacraments.

Radicals in Exile explores another aspect of the lives and work of exiled English Catholics, particularly in Spain:

Facing persecution in early modern England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait for their own rulers to have a change of heart. This book studies the relationship forged by English exiles and Philip II of Spain. It shows how these expatriates, known as the “Spanish Elizabethans,” used the most powerful tools at their disposal—paper, pens, and presses—to incite war against England during the “messianic” phase of Philip’s reign, from the years leading up to the Grand Armada until the king’s death in 1598.

Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez looks at English Catholic propaganda within its international and transnational contexts. He examines a range of long-neglected polemical texts, demonstrating their prominence during an important moment of early modern politico-religious strife and exploring the transnational dynamic of early modern polemics and the flexible rhetorical approaches required by exile. He concludes that while these exiles may have lived on the margins, their books were central to early modern Spanish politics and are key to understanding the broader narrative of the Counter-Reformation.

Deeply researched and highly original, Radicals in Exile makes an important contribution to the study of religious exile in early modern Europe. It will be welcomed by historians of early modern Iberian and English politics and religion as well as scholars of book history.

"Book History" is a still-developing historical research discipline, according to this article in Perspectives on History, the newsmagazine of the American Historical Association:

"Book history" is a long-contested and ever-developing concept. It emerged from two schools of thought, both of which focused on the book in Western culture: 19th-century Anglo-American analytical bibliography, which examined the physical features of books to draw conclusions about their production, and the French scholars of histoire du livre, who in the 1960s began using a socioeconomic lens to study broad trends in publishing, writing, and reading. In 1982, Robert Darnton argued in his influential essay "What Is the History of Books?" that book history is research having to do with any of the stages of a work's life, from author to publisher to printer to bookseller to reader. Since then, scholars have debated how much to focus on the physical characteristics of books versus trends in book markets, authorship, and reading. How large a role content should play in book history has also been contested.

Johns Hopkins University Press publishes a journal titled Book History:

Book History is devoted to every aspect of the history of the book, broadly defined as the history of the creation, dissemination, and reception of script and print. It publishes research on the social, economic, and cultural history of authorship, editing, printing, the book arts, publishing, the book trade, periodicals, newspapers, ephemera, copyright, censorship, literary agents, libraries, literary criticism, canon formation, literacy, literary education, reading habits, and reader response. Book History is the official publication of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, Inc. (SHARP).

Mary C. Ehrer of Fordham University, for example, has written a couple of books about reading and writing in pre-Reformation England and has inspired other historians to use "bibliography in the service of biography" or of history, political and religious, as demonstrated by a festschrift published by Boydell & Brewer:

Reading, writing, sharing texts, and book ownership in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and how they fostered social and intellectual links and networks between individuals, particularly among women: these are subjects which the pioneering work of Mary C. Erler has done so much to illuminate. The essays here, in this volume in her honour, build on her scholarship, engaging with Professor Erler's characteristic use of bibliography in the service of biography by investigating how the physical object of the book can enlighten our understanding of medieval readers and writers. They analyze, for example, what "reading" means in terms of the act itself (and the accessories, such as bookmarks, that helped to set the stage for reading), whether done aloud or silently, in such different venues as an aristocratic court, bourgeois household, village community, and monastic cloister. They also consider the culture of medieval reading practices, especially those of women, across social classes, and in terms of the transition between the pre- and post-Reformation periods; the fluidity of genre boundaries; and changes in devotional reading and writing in this liminal period. A wide variety of genres are covered, including secular romance, devotional texts, schoolbooks, and the illustrated Old Testament preface to the famous Queen Mary Psalter, which recasts the story and image of ancient Israelites to suit elite readerly taste.

Image Credit (public domain): King Philip II in old age, by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, 1590–98

The Spanish Armada and Ireland

From The Irish Times (September 20, 2015):

A ceremony to remember the 1,100 soldiers from three Spanish Armada ships who perished at Streedagh, Co Sligo, more than four centuries ago has been held on the beach there. Hundreds of local people stood for a minute’s silence as the Last Post was played and a wreath carried to the sea by members of the Sligo Sub Aqua Club on Saturday afternoon.

Eddie O’Gorman, chairman of the Grange Armada Development Association, said it was important to mark the spot where so many lost their lives 427 years ago. “Those people got neither a wake nor a burial,” he said.

Locals and tourists etched 1,100 crosses into the sand on the beach to mark each life lost when, in violent storms on September 25th, 1588, three ships from the Armada were driven ashore and wrecked there. La Lavia, La Juliana and the Santa Maria de Vision were part of Philip II of Spain’s failed attempt to invade England.

Ireland of the Welcomes describes the discovery of these ships and the contemporary details from a survivor:

The remains of these ships have lain undisturbed on seabed of a small beach off coast of Sligo for 397 years. The final resting place of wrecks of ships La Lavia, La Juliana, and Santa Maria de Vision that were part of Philip II of Spain’s great fleet lie at bottom of sea in Streedagh Strand which is near village of Grange in County Sligo in north western coast of Ireland. In a landmark discovery wrecks were detected by members of Streedagh Armada Group in May, 1985. The search was led by Steven Birch, who, with his team of English divers made groundbreaking discovery of what remains of ships in Streedagh. Although fact had been known locally since time of wreckings, this was first search that verified existence of Armada ships in this area. Dr. Colin Martin, Armada historian and specialist underwater archaeologist officiated, and sites were recorded. Due to exposed nature of their location three cannons were removed for preservation and subsequently retrieved by Office of Public Works for safekeeping. They are now held in Collins Barracks museum in Dublin where they are exhibited to public. . . .

The three ships had become detached from their squadron, and drifted off coast of Streedagh. A westward wind was howling and ships had few anchors, having cut them at English fire ship attack near Calais. They were hit by Atlantic storm, and lifted as pounding waves on seaward side forced them over. Eventually vessels rapidly broke up.Since then issue of ownership of wrecks has been a subject of contentious dispute and complicated legalities. After much legal dispute it was finally ascertained that ownership of wrecks was to be designated to Irish State who now acts as a protector to these sites. There is also another important aspect to events of Streedagh in 1588. One of Spanish aboard La Lavia who escaped subsequent massacre ashore, lived to tell tale, outlining what happened in a letter.

It is estimated that from three vessels about 1,800 men drowned, rest came ashore at Streedagh. The English George Bingham’s army killed 140 Spanish at Streedagh. However, even before English forces arrived, surviving Spanish had to deal with Irish. Thousands of Irish natives gathered in sparsely populated Streedagh, beach now littered with bodies, flotsam and injured. Several Irish attacked (but contrary to popular view at time, did not kill) Spanish, instead they took their money, clothes, jewelry and whatever could be salvaged from ships. Having escaped, de Cúellar’s now famous testimony records his epic journey. He found refuge from friendly chieftains (O’Rourke and McClancy) in then English-garrisoned North County Sligo/Leitrim. De Cúellar also witnessed much cruelty, arriving at nearby Staid Abbey he found ‘twelve Spaniards hanging within church by act of Lutheran English.’ Later, after being forced to work as a blacksmith in Glenade valley de Cúellar fetches up at McClancy castle at Rossclogher, Lough Melvin, County Leitrim and spent his days telling fortunes to women.

There is a new biography of Philip II of Spain by Geoffrey Parker. Yale University Press describes it thus:

Philip II is not only the most famous king in Spanish history, but one of the most famous monarchs in English history: the man who married Mary Tudor and later launched the Spanish Armada against her sister Elizabeth I. This compelling biography of the most powerful European monarch of his day begins with his conception (1526) and ends with his ascent to Paradise (1603), two occurrences surprisingly well documented by contemporaries. Eminent historian Geoffrey Parker draws on four decades of research on Philip as well as a recent, extraordinary archival discovery—a trove of 3,000 documents in the vaults of the Hispanic Society of America in New York City, unread since crossing Philip’s own desk more than four centuries ago. Many of them change significantly what we know about the king.

The book examines Philip’s long apprenticeship; his three principal interests (work, play, and religion); and the major political, military, and personal challenges he faced during his long reign. Parker offers fresh insights into the causes of Philip’s leadership failures: was his empire simply too big to manage, or would a monarch with different talents and temperament have fared better?

Elizabeth of Valois and the Black Legend

Philip II of Spain married four times: his third wife, Elizabeth of Valois, one of Henri II of France's daughters, was to marry his son Don Carlos. Instead, since Philip's second wife, Mary I of England, had died, Philip married Elizabeth of Valois, who died on October 3, 1568. Elizabeth died in childbirth after delivering a baby girl, who also died. Two of her children survived, the Infanta Isabella who would rule the Spanish Netherlands and Catherine Michelle who would marry the Duke of Savoy.

Philip II then married one more time, to Anna of Austria, who was to have married Don Carlos, who had died just a few months before Elizabeth of Valois after being imprisoned by his father.

The imprisonment and death of Don Carlos is part of the Black Legend of Spain, depicted romantically in Verdi's opera, Don Carlo(s)--Italian or French--based on Schiller's play. The Spanish Inquisition influences Philip II, ordering the murder of Don Carlos' friend Rodrigo and countenancing the murder of Don Carlos himself if Philip II deems necessary. This plot summary from the Metropolitan Opera (of the five act French version) describes the power of the Inquisition:

In his study at night, the king reflects on his life with a wife who doesn’t love him. He consults with the old and blind Grand Inquisitor, who consents to the death sentence for Carlo: as God sacrificed his son to save mankind so Philip must stifle his love for his son for the sake of the faith. The Inquisitor also demands that Posa be handed over to him. As he leaves, Philip wonders if the throne must always yield to the altar. Elisabeth enters, having discovered that her jewel case has been stolen. Eboli, who knows that Elisabeth keeps a portrait of Carlo in it, had taken the box and given it to the king. Philip now shows the box to Elisabeth, takes out the portrait, and accuses her of adultery. Elisabeth collapses and the king calls for help. Eboli and Posa rush in, he to express amazement that a king who rules half the world cannot govern his own emotions, she to feel remorse at what her jealousy has brought about. Alone with Elisabeth, Eboli confesses that she not only falsely accused her but that she has been the king’s mistress. Elisabeth orders her from the court. Eboli laments her fatal beauty and swears to spend her final day in Spain trying to save Carlo.

Posa visits Carlo in prison to tell him that he has used the secret papers to take upon himself the blame for the Flemish rebellion. He is now a marked man, so Carlo must take up the cause of liberty for Flanders. Posa is shot by agents of the Inquisition. As he dies he tells Carlo that Elisabeth will meet him at the monastery of St. Just and declares he is happy to have sacrificed his life for a man who will become Spain’s savior.

In reality, Philip II and Elizabeth of Valois were a loving husband and wife, Don Carlos was mentally unbalanced and dangerous because of the usual Spanish inbreeding and a blow to the head, and the Inquisition was never that powerful an influence on the king. But without Schiller's fiction and Verdi's opera, we would not have the great aria of Filippo II, "Ella giammai m'amo!"(Italian version, of course.)

A July Wedding in 1554--and Christmas in July

Queen Mary of England and Wales married King Philip of Naples and Jerusalem at Winchester Cathedral on July 25, 1554. This website provides official details of the ceremony and event:

First, the said chnrch was richly hanged with arras and cloth of gold, and in the midst of the church, from the west door unto the rood, was a scaffold erected of timber, at the end whereof was raised a mount, covered all with red say, and underneath the roode-loft were erected two traverses, one for the queen on the right hand, and the other for the prince on the left, which places served very well for the purpose. The quire was allso richly hanged with cloth of gold, and on each side of the altar were other two rich traverses as aforesaid, for the queenes majestie and prince.

The queen made her entry into the city of Winchester very richly in apparell, on saturday the 21st of July, and was lodged in the bishop's palace, and prince Philip made his entry into the said city on munday after, being the 23d of July; at whose entry the mayor delivered him the keys of the city, which he received, and delivered them back again, being lodged at the dean's house.

On wensday the 25th of July, being St. James's day, the prince, richly apparelled in cloth of gold, embroidered, [1] with a great company of the nobles of Spayne, in such sort as the like hath not been seen, proceded to the church, and entered in at the west door, and passed to his traverse, all the way on foot; and to the church he had no sword borne before him.

Then came the queenes majesty, accompanied with a great number of the nobility of the realm, the sword being borne before her by the earl of Derby, and a great company of ladyes and gentlewomen very richly apparelled; her majesty's train was borne up by the marquesse of Winchester, [2] assisted by sir John Gage her lord chamberlayne; and so she proceeded to the church; the kinges and herauldes of arms in their coates going before her from her lodging on foot to the church, where entering at the west door she passed on till she came to her traverse. Then the bishop of Winchester, lord chancellor of England, which did the divine service, assisted by the bishopes of London, Duresme, Chichester, Lyncoln, and Ely, all with their crosiers borne before them, came out of the quier to the mount.

Read the rest here.

The illustration is the CD cover of The Sixteen's Philip & Mary - A Marriage of England & Spain including music by Thomas Tallis, Francisco Guerrero, John Sheppard, Pierre de Manchicourt, purporting to document the Mass celebrated on Christmas Day later that year, when Mary was thought to be pregnant:

On Christmas Day 1554 the Spanish Armada was a long way off on the horizon. Mary Tudor had married Prince Philip of Spain, and in celebration of her pregnancy Tallis had composed the Mass Puer natus, which may well have been performed in St Paul's Cathedral on this special day. For this splendid ceremony the English Chapel Royal and choir of St Paul's were joined by Prince Philip of Spain's Capilla Flamenca to sing music by great composers from both countries. This recording presents a number of works which were likely to have been performed by these choirs on this special occasion.

In due time it had to be accepted that the Queen had suffered a phantom pregnancy. Three years later Philip was King of Spain; Mary died the following year.

Track listing:

Pierre De Manchicourt (c.1510-1558)

1. Jubilate Deo
John Sheppard (c.1500-1558)
2. Reges Tharsis

Pierre De Manchicourt
3. Reges terrae

Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585)
4. Suscipe quaeso

Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)
5. Ave virgo sanctissima
6. Ave Maria
7. Pastores loquebantur

Thomas Tallis: Mass 'Puer Natus'
8. Gloria
9. Sanctus
10. Benedictus
11. Agnus Dei

John Sheppard
12. Libera nos

Birth of Charles of Burgundy, future Holy Roman Emperor

The future Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) was born on February 24, 1500. He is an important figure in the history of the Protestant Reformation on the Continent and in the history of the English Reformation. Of course, I am more interested in the latter.

He was heir of three great lineages--the Hapsburg (thus the jaw); Valois-Burgundy, and Trastamara (Aragon and Castile). His full title was:

Charles, by the grace of God, Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King of Germany, King of Italy, King of all Spains, of Castile, Aragon, León, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Sevilla, Cordova, Murcia, Jaén, Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, King of Two Sicilies, of Sardinia, Corsica, King of Jerusalem, King of the Western and Eastern Indies, Lord of the Islands and Main Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Neopatria, Württemberg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Asturia and Catalonia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Oristano and Gociano, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molin, Salins, Tripoli and Mechelen.

Obviously, he was multi-lingual: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse," he said, according to the Wikipedia article on-line(!).

His mother was Katherine of Aragon's sister Joanna (pictured with him above) who married Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian I, HRE. Thus, he was Katharine of Aragon's nephew and her daughter Mary's cousin. When Henry VIII and Charles V were allies against France, the cousins were to be married. Since the balance of power shifted when Francois I was captured at the Battle of Pavia, Charles didn't need alliance with Henry and those plans fell through. When Henry VIII planned to have his marriage to Katherine annulled, Charles supported her particularly in her appeals to the Holy See; and when Edward VI tried to force Mary to give up the Catholic Mass and conform to the new Book of Common Prayer services, Charles supported her, too--although he had counseled her to take the oaths Henry VIII demanded before she could be reunited with her father. That event seems to have shaken Mary to her core and she certainly redicated herself to being true to her mother's Church if not to her mother. It was Charles's suggestion that she marry his son Philip.

Many years ago (2000), I visited Mechelen, home of Charles V's regent and guardian, Margaret of Austria. I toured a great exhibition of allegorical tapestries called "Los Honores", presented during the celebration of the 500th anniversary of his birth.

While in Mechelen, of course, I also honored Charles V by imbibing a Gouden Carolus, Mechelen's favorite son's eponymous beer, seated at a cafe in view of St. Rumboud's Cathedral and the statue of Margaret of Austria in the town square.

After years of wars and travel, gout caught up with Charles and he abdicated on October 25, 1555, retiring to the monastery of Yuste. At the end of Verdi's Don Carlos, based on Schiller's play, he appears outside his tomb at Yuste as a ghostly Monk to save his grandson from the Inquisitor! Years after his death there in 1558 he was buried in the Pantheon of the Kings in the Monastery at El Escorial.

Philip of Spain: King of England by Harry Kelsey

Mary Tudor, Renaissance Queen reviews a new book about Philip II of Spain and his role in England and has some reservations--here's the crucial part:

In 1570, some 12 years after Mary’s death, Philip claimed that he could give Pope Pius V ‘better information and advice on that kingdom [England], and on its affairs and people, than anyone else’.7 Clearly Philip believed he had not come away from the whole experience empty handed. His relationship with the English was at best complex but he took his role as King of England seriously and, as the quote suggests, believed himself to be an authority on that realm. This book has not proved to be a definitive or substantial account of Philip’s time as King of England. It covers briefly his involvement in the Marian Church and his influence over the direction of foreign policy, but there is no discussion of his improvements of the English navy (which of course backed fired on him in the end!), nor on his interest in another part of Mary’s realm – Ireland. It also suffers from a lack of discussion of recent works. As a result it seems distinct from current scholarship, in sharp contrast with John Edwards’ excellent Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011), which paid due consideration to Philip’s role, used an array of Spanish sources and up-to-date studies. As a result I would recommend Edwards’ biography of Mary over this book when it comes to the issue of Philip’s time as king-consort. More needs to be done though on the Habsburg who became England’s king. Popular knowledge of Philip’s later and troublesome relationship with the English and former sister-in-law Elizabeth I is well known. It is time to shed more light on the origins of that relationship, which was not as fruitless as the events of the 1580s would have us believe. (my emphasis)

I think I will trust this opinion and skip this book. (My husband will be SO relieved!)

Book Review: The Elizabethan World

This book is by Lacey Baldwin Smith and has an interesting publication history. It was first published as the text accompanying a coffee table picture book on the Elizabethan era. Then it was issued as a trade paperback (I have the American Heritage Library edition); Smith wrote a new introduction but was not allowed to revise the text at all. Perhaps the bibliography was updated. He notes in the new introduction that there were updates he would like to make, but couldn't. More about that below. The contents:

Introduction: The Elizabethan Age
Medieval Twilight: The Odour of Despair
Medieval Twilight: The Scent of Optimism
Sin and Schism
The 'Calm and Quiet Season'
Rage in Heaven
Catherine de Medici and the Ordeal of France
Philip of Spain and God's Obvious Design
Plot and Counterplot
The Great Enterprise
A Decade of Heroes
New Horizons
Epilogue: 'Dead But Not Buried'

NOTA BENE: This book should not be confused with the classic by E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture.

Although Smith could not update it before this edition came out in 1991, I derived some great benefits from reading this book. Lacey Baldwin Smith certainly has his opinions and his interpretations: Elizabeth is his heroine, but he is as fair as he can be to Catherine de Medici and Philip II--not so for Mary I and Mary, Queen of Scots. His scholarship is really behind the times on those two monarchs, as he condemns the latter of her husband's murder and claims the former was unbalanced mentally when she thought she was pregnant.

Smith provides a good overview of the structures of Elizabeth's Court, which were a modern corporate compliance officer's nightmare: all the side deals, "improper payments" and arrangements certainly provided a "near occasion" of corruption! His comparison and contrast of John Calvin and St. Ignatius Loyola is provocative and insightful and his analysis of the heroes of Elizabeth's Court (Drake, Raleigh, Essex, Sidney, et al) depicts their extremes of heroism and egoism, usually occurring at the same time!

The bibliography is extensive and the illustrations, while helpful, are of pretty poor quality.

Some New Books to Anticipate!

Mary Tudor, Renaissance Queen updates us on new books about the Tudor era, including this one about Philip of Spain as the King of England:

The Spanish Armada conjures up images of age-old rivalries, bravery and treachery. However the same Spanish monarch who sent the Armada to invade England in 1588 was, just a few years previously, the King of England and husband of Mary Tudor. This important new book sheds new light on Philip II of Spain, England's forgotten sovereign. Previous accounts of Mary's brief reign have focused on the martyrdom of Protestant dissenters, the loss of English territory, as well as Mary's infamous personality, meaning that her husband Philip has remained in the shadows. In this book, Harry Kelsey uncovers Philip's life - from his childhood and education in Spain, to his marriage to Mary and the political manoeuvrings involved in the marriage contract, to the tumultuous aftermath of Mary's death which ultimately led to hostile relations between Queen Elizabeth and Philip, culminating in the Armada. Focusing especially on the period of Philip's marriage to Mary, Kelsey shows that Philip was, in fact, an active King of England and took a keen interest in the rule of his wife's kingdom. Casting fresh light on both Mary and Philip, as well as European history more generally, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the Tudor era.

She also mentions a new book by David Loades on the Tudor Dynasty, and hopes "his section on Mary pays careful consideration to the works on her reign that have been published in recent years"! Check out the post for the other books and news.