CHAPTER ELEVEN

MAKING THE CANON? THE EARLY RECEPTION OF THE république IN CASTILIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

Harald E. Braun

On Friday, 10 November 1606, Girolamo de Sommaia, a young Florentine patrician, went to see his confessor at the church of San Lorenzo in Sala- manca. The scion of a family prominent in Medici politics, Sommaia had arrived in Salamanca six years earlier to study the laws and to immerse himself in the culture and political networks of the Hispanic monarchy.1 Possessor of a curious intelligence and a voracious reader with a passion for history, politics, and theology, he exchanged and discussed books with a wide circle of teachers and fellow students. In his diario, the young man recorded not only lectures, tutorials and social gatherings, debts paid, books read, but also transgressions of flesh and mind. As is plain from the pithy list of sins laid open to Fray Lamberto that November day, his joie de vivre was not easily suppressed, nor his lively intellect easily deterred:

Twenty-one fornications. Kisses. Bodin. Machiavelli. Writings on the Venetian Interdict. Studies Neglected. Superfluous expenses. Gambling.2

1 Sommaia was the grandson of Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), the diplomat, , and political writer, and nephew of Francesco di Agnolo Guicciardini, Medici ambassador at the Madrid court from 1593 to 1602. On his family, education and career, see George Haley, ed., Diario de un estudiante de Salamanca. La crónica inédita de Giro- lamo de Sommaia (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1977), 7–87; also Richard Kagan, “La Salamanca del Siglo de Oro: El extracurriculum y el declive español”, in Salamanca en la Edad de Oro, ed. Conrad Kent (Salamanca: Editorial Cervantes, 1995), 287–305. 2 Diario, 568: “Uentiuna fornicatione. Baci. Il Bodino. Il Machiabello. Le scritture di Benetia. Dello studio. Spese superflue. Del giuoco.” I retain the original spelling and punc- tuation of primary sources. 258 harald e. braun

Sommaia, then, read and compared highly controversial texts—Bodin’s République,3 Machiavelli’s Il principe, together with texts concerning the papal interdict recently imposed on La Serenissima4—and recorded them in his diary. What is more, he did so in a cursory fashion, throwing his intellectual transgressions in with other trespasses. There is no indication whatsoever that he suffered a heavy penitential load as a result, or else attracted the attention of the . Sommaia simply availed himself of the opportunity to widen his intellectual horizon while at uni- versity. Together with teachers and fellow students, he read and digested the République as a major contribution to fecund debate about the nature, scope and interrelationship of secular and spiritual power and the best methods of governance. Their experience identifies the République as part of the informal syllabus for budding imperial leaders and bureaucrats who spent their formative years at the University of Salamanca.5 Sommaia’s diario is but a small part of the evidence confirming the presence of Bodin’s major political treatise in Castilian political debate and discourse during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century. There is an abundance of direct and covert quotations, paraphrases, and references in leading early modern Castilian authors of different intellec- tual and political persuasions. Among the host of writers engaging with the République at a critical and analytical level are leading jurisprudents such as Jerónimo Castillo de Bobadilla and Juan de Solórzano Pereira, arbitristas such as Gonzalez de Cellorigo (writers concerned with the political and especially economic reform of the monarchy) and authors of political manuals such as Jerónimo de Ceballos and Diego Tovar y Valderrama, as well as prominent theologians such as and Juan Márquez.6 Bodin’s Spanish readers generally acknowledge the

3 All references to the Six livres de la république in this chapter are to the edition of 1576 published in Paris by Jacques du Puys. 4 The context—Bodin, Machiavelli, and works on the Venetian interdict are mentioned together—as well as Sommaia’s interests and reading habits more generally suggest an edition of the Six livres de la république as the text referred to in his confession. He could have read it in Latin, Italian, or Spanish. 5 Cf. English interest in political writings as observed by Gabriel Harvey (above, p. 2). 6 For a summary treatment of early modern Spanish and Portuguese authors draw- ing on the Bodinian oeuvre, see Martím de Albuquerque, na Peninsula Ibérica: ensaio de história des ideias políticas e de disseito public (Paris: Foundation Calouste Gul- benkian, 1978); and José Luis Bermejo Cabrera, “Estudio preliminar”, in: Juan Bodino, Los seis libros de la república. Traducidos de lengua francesa y enmendados catholicamente por Gaspar de Añastro Isunza, ed. Bermejo Cabrera (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constituci- onales, 1992), 103–33.