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State and Public Sphere in Spain During the Ancient Regime

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State and Public Sphere in Spain During the Ancient Regime STATE AND PUBLIC SPHERE IN SPAIN DURING THE ANCIENT REGIME Víctor Pérez-Díaz ASP Research Paper 19(b)/1998 (Published in Daedalus, Vol. 127, No. 3, 1998) Contents 1. The character of the state and of politics 2. The Spanish empire: from hegemony to decline 3. Erasmians and Schoolmen, great writers and arbitristas 4. The Bourbon State and the ilustrados' response 5. Final reflections Víctor Pérez-Díaz Complutense University of Madrid; and ASP, Gabinete de Estudios, Madrid. ASP Research Papers Comité de Redacción /Editorial Board Víctor Pérez-Díaz (director) Berta Álvarez-Miranda Navarro Elisa Chuliá Rodrigo Josu Mezo Aranzibia Pilar Rivilla Baselga Juan Carlos Rodríguez Pérez Celia Valiente Fernández Fernando González Olivares (redactor jefe) Comité Científico Internacional /International Scientific Committee Daniel Bell (American Academy of Arts and Sciences) Suzanne Berger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Peter Gourevitch (University of California, San Diego) Peter Hall (Harvard University) Pierre Hassner (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) Kenneth Keniston (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Vincent Wright (Oxford University) © Víctor Pérez-Díaz This paper should not be reproduced in whole or in part without the prior permission of the author Depósito legal: M-6126-1994 ISSN: 1134 - 6116 1. The character of the state and of politics extraordinary deference on the part of the subjects vis-à-vis the state; conversely, a teleocratic state Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth would promote a conception of politics as politics centuries, the Spanish state followed a path marked of faith, by this nurturing its subjects' disposition by a series of challenges and crucial choices and to place high hopes in the state's activities and to their (largely unexpected) consequences. Spain's have an exalted view of its position in public public sphere during that time can be understood as imagery. an ongoing conversation between the political elites who made those choices, and the cultural elites Of course, in real life, the European states who helped them to define the challenges and have come only more or less close to these ideal responded to their choices with a mixture of types. However, if the distinction between the support and understanding, detachment and politics of faith and that of scepticism is based on criticism. In this paper, I will outline, first, my the presence or absence of the will to place general argument by reference to two sets of topics political power at the service of a project for which underlie that conversation: the character of systematic intervention in the social body to mould the state and of politics (section 1), and the or perfect it in accordance with a belief (or faith) territorial dimension of the state and the in what is truly best for it, which the stateman construction of a political community (section 2). supposes he knows, then, we may conclude that, in Then, I will discuss Spain’s historical situation and general terms, medieval authority was not the main currents of its public sphere under the exercised in terms of the politics of faith. Its Hapsburgs (sections 3 and 4), as well as the objective was not to perfect the world but to Bourbon state and the ilustrados’ response to it preserve the existing traditions, laws, customs and (sections 5 and 6). institutions. Its responsibilities were limited to guaranteeing the functioning of that order by The trajectory of the Spanish state and its means of applying justice and defending it against public sphere may be better understood if, as its enemies. No special mission justified obtaining suggested by Michael Oakeshott (1990; 1996), we the permanent collaboration of its subjects, or examine it through the prism of a contrast between coordinating their activities in order to accomplish two ideal types of states, a ‘nomocratic state’ (or it; neither was there any reason for accumulating the state as a ‘civil association’) and of a more resources than necessary for the tasks of ‘teleocratic’ one (or the state as an ‘enterprise justice and defence. association’), and between two forms of politics, the ‘politics of faith’ and the ‘politics of In Spain, the character of the medieval scepticism’. In its ideal-typical form, the kingdoms was affected by the eight-centuries long nomocratic state would limit itself to providing experience of reconquest of the land against the society with tranquillitas et iustitia, thereby Muslims; then, between the sixteenth and the guaranteeing the application of formal rules to the eighteenth centuries, the character of the state and operation of social orders. Such a state would not of politics followed a complex and ambiguous pretend being the bearer of historic missions, and trajectory. On the face of it, these centuries were would require a relatively modest power apparatus. the scenario for the development of an absolute By contrast, the teleocratic state would place monarchy (the Hispanic or Catholic monarchy) society in a subordinate position and consider it as conceived as the key piece in a teleocratic order. It a sphere in which (economic, social or cultural) began to take shape late in the fifteenth century, resources are generated to be coordinated and used gathered momentum under the Hapsburg dynasty by the rulers in order to fulfill collective missions, during the period (of the rise and fall) of Spanish be they religious or temporal, such as their hegemony in the sixteenth and seventeenth subjects' salvation, moral growth or material centuries, and was then redefined and given new prosperity; and it would tend to create a powerful impetus under the Bourbons in the eighteenth apparatus to achieve its aims. Oakeshott's century. However, on closer examination, the lines distinction between the politics of faith and the became blurred and an undertow running in the politics of scepticism parallels that between the opposite direction can be ascertained. teleocratic state and the nomocratic one. The Though the Hapsburgs did largely respect the nomocratic state would foster an interpretation of socioeconomic order in place and went along with politics as politics of scepticism, or of reduced the constitutional tradition of the medieval state expectations, and discourage dispositions of 1 they inherited, they were nonetheless committed to arbitristas (in late sixteenth and during the some collective goals that required systematic seventeenth century). intervention in the social fabric. For two centuries, the Hapsburg monarchy took some decisive steps The very success, however, of the politics of towards reinforcing the kings' authority and faith in persuading people to raise their towards formulating and developing a politics of expectations with regard to the state laid the faith. They did so, partly at least, by redefining the ground for its later ruin. The Spaniards got used to initial impetus received from a tradition of the idea that their prince, together with the church, reconquest peculiar to the peninsula and, in were the bearers of extraordinary missions they particular, from the Catholic Kings, as these had were expected to carry out, and could withstand aimed at the creation of a homogeneous prolonged failure to do so only within limits. socioreligious community, hence the establishment Beyond a certain point, the depth and the duration of the Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews and the of the monarchy's failure tested the foundations of segregation of the Morisco population. the politics of faith. Thus, faith, overstretched, left room to doubt, and doubt eventually gave way to Building on this, the Hapsburg state a mood of melancholy prevailing in the seventeenth accumulated and mobilized resources for the century. Recovery was not easy, and it was even purpose of defending the catholic faith and of impossible in the sense of coming back to the very moulding the moral character of its subjects, high expectations for so long associated with the making membership in the church the key to state. The turn of the century brought a new acceptance in the political community, and it dynasty and a redefinition of the state (both in its watched over and sanctioned their subjects’ character and in its territorial dimension). In the behavior to that effect. It forced them to conform, course of this process, the monarchy revised its undergo punishment, go into exile, and silence relationship with the church and reduced the their convictions and sentiments. Thus, it replaced intensity of its commitment as defender of the an intermitent tradition of almost eight centuries of faith, allowing for a profound change in the reconquest (or 'divine war': Sánchez-Albornoz, character of the political community as it moved in 1973), which had been associated with the the direction of a secular state. extension of political rule and the occupation of land, but which had, also, accommodated a Thus, the Bourbons tried to restore the high complex relationship between the communities of expectations associated with the state by changing the three religions of the book (wherein frequent the grounds of politics. The (partial) secularization contacts and prolonged phases of peaceful of the state attempted to half-substitute, half- coexistence and tolerance alternated with war: complement the religious grounds for the politics Castro 1983; 1985), by a strategy of of faith with an appeal to a 'reason of state' which, indoctrination, violence and thought- police. The this time, would apply to the social and economic monarchy aspired to legitimize itself not only as perfection of society. The monarchy was to define the guarantor of justice, peace and defence, but a new, relatively complex, temporal goal which also as an instrument to serve the goal of the would bind together the enhancement of royal religious and moral perfection of society; and it power and the prosperity of the kingdom, its social achieved its aim up to a point, insofar as those stability (the maintenance of the proper institutional practices of coercion and indoctrination were distance between the privileged orders and the incorporated into the uses and customs of the commoners) together with its demographic and community.
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