Official Historiography, Political Legitimacy, Historical Methodology, and Royal and Imperial Authority in Spain under Phillip II, 1580-99 Kira Kalina von Ostenfeld-Suske Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Kira Kalina von Ostenfeld-Suske All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Official Historiography, Political Legitimacy, Historical Methodology, and Royal and Imperial Authority in Spain under Phillip II, 1580-99 Kira Kalina von Ostenfeld-Suske Between 1580 and 1599, Spain was the subject of a barrage of foreign polemical attacks, a reaction to Spain’s European hegemony under Philip II. These attacks used historical arguments to directly challenge Spain’s political legitimacy and power, its reputation, and its political standing within Europe by criticizing Spain’s dynastic arguments for empire, and denigrated Spanish imperialism and the nature of Spanish rule, threatening constitutional structures by claiming that Philip ruled as a tyrant. In response to these attacks, a coterie of scholars and powerful political advisors, seeking to solidify claims to certain territories and to justify imperial actions, developed innovative historical writing practices that were effective ideological tools for creating support for new political ideas. To convincingly defend Spanish imperialism and restore Spanish reputación, official history needed to concern itself with questions of statecraft, and to do so within the framework of humanist notions of “good” history. Specifically, the new type of historical writing used humanist and antiquarian methodologies, especially an emphasis on source-based documentation of arguments and claims, and combined these with reason of state politics to respond to European challenges to Spanish imperial authority and Spanish actions in Portugal and France by ensuring that only a very specific image of the king was conveyed, and very specific sources were utilized and revealed. In doing so, official historians, most notably Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, Esteban de Garibay, and Gregorio López de Madera, and advisors, like Juan de Idiáquez and Cristóbal de Moura, turned to the writing of history not as a means to reform the state, but instead as a potent means to bolster and defend the existing state’s identity and advance its purpose. This dissertation uses court correspondence, the treatises on the artes historicae written by the court historians, and the innovative official histories they produced to show how the tensions between ideology and methodology played out in this new form of official history, and how theory and practice came together in the service of power. Through its use of multiple sources of data, this study shows that it was due to the polemical context, not despite it, that a new and more powerful history emerged, which included new practices and cultivated a more critical sensibility. Official history came to play a role in giving conceptual identity and political legitimacy to Spain’s imperial ambitions in a new reason of state context. Thus, notions of rule (Spanish Christian reason of state) and provisions of proof became the two pivots upon which Spanish imperial ambitions were justified, and larger debates about how to legitimize formal rights and privileges found a concrete form of expression in official history. Table of Contents Note on documentation iii Abbreviations iv Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 The Sources 5 Historiography and Antiquarianism in Philippine Spain 9 Artes Historicae, ca. 1495 - ca. 1550 23 Antiquarianism, Archives and Authentication 27 Politics in Philippine Spain, ca.1560-1598 34 Humanism and the Use of History in Sixteenth-Century Europe 41 A Better History ca. 1580-1599 50 Chapter 1 Defending the King; Defending Spain 62 “Calumnies and Falsities”: Dangerous Foreign Histories 66 Creating a “Better History” 90 Step 1: Demonstrating the Motivations of the Prudent King 100 Step 2: The Power of Documents 126 The Writing of History as a Political Act 160 Chapter 2 The Practice of “Good History” 172 The Treatises 177 Truth, Impartiality, and the Reputación of Official History 182 The Rules of History 220 Morality and Technical Skills 222 Style 226 Methods 235 Collecting and Evaluating Sources 241 Political Methods 270 A Better History 272 Conclusion 277 Chapter 3 The Rule of a “Prudent King”: Antonio de Herrera 283 y Tordesillas’s Historia de Portugal Herrera the Diplomat 286 Conestaggio the Apostate 294 Philip the Prudent King 306 i Herrera the Humanist Scholar 318 The “New” History of Portugal 328 Proving Spanish Dynastic Claims 328 Disproving the ‘Right to Elect’ 341 Proving Philip’s Prudent Rule 345 Proving Philip’s Adherence to Portuguese Law and Custom 348 A “Better” History 369 History and Statecraft 373 Chapter 4 Antiquity, Continuity and Stability: Justifying Spanish 380 Intentions in France Spain and the French Succession 382 Esteban de Garibay and the Dynastic Issue 396 Gregorio López Madera and Establishing Spanish Precedence 424 Antonio de Herrera on Spain and France 463 Conclusion: “For the Public Benefit of My Patria and Nation” 488 Conclusion 500 Bibliography 518 ii Note on Documentation Citations in this work have been provided in standard Chicago Manual of Style format. While it has not been possible to include all of the texts in the original language, since many of the primary sources for this subject are either unfamiliar or unpublished, some of the most significant phrases are included in their original language in the footnotes; these are included in their original form, and have not been modernized. All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. All Spanish spelling is from the original, unaltered (not modernized), unless indicated. Spanish passages in the footnotes appear as they do in the originals, (except the u and v have been altered to agree with modern usage). The same is true of book titles and treaty names (the capitalization of these has not been modernized). A note on the terms used: I have drawn a distinction between the Crown and the person of Philip II and frequently refer to the Crown in the collective, different but not separate from the person of the King. Moreover, while aware of the antecedent problem, it is useful to think of the Crown as both the King and his advisors therefore making the Crown plural. iii Abbreviations Archives and Libraries AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid AGI Archivo General de las Indias, Seville AGS Archivo General de Simancas. Estado. BNM Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid. Manuscript Section. BFZ Archivo y Biblioteca de Francisco Zabálburu, Madrid IVDJ Instituto Valencia de Don Juan, Madrid RAH Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid RB Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial PR Biblioteca del Palacio Real, Madrid iv Acknowledgements “To proceed with such a grave task with the care [tact, caution] and authority that [official history deserves], it is necessary to guard and observe the rules of history [for writing history].” (“Para proceder en negocio tan grave con el tiento y autoridad conveniente . es necesario guardar las reglas de la historia.”) Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1592). In considering the history of this study of historical writing under Philip II, I must acknowledge that my interest in this subject began before I set out to write this dissertation. It derives in part from my interest in Renaissance studies, image creation, self-fashioning, and emerging political theories, and the new ways devised by those in power to present themselves to a growing reading public. I first became preoccupied with the history of historiography and its relationship to the nature of ideology in my historiography class co-directed by Nicolas Dirks and Martha Howell. There I came to see the ways in which history has been written and conceived over the centuries and the tools, intentions and ideologies that drive the profession. My interest in this topic, however, primarily derived from my interest in Spain and the ways it experienced a similar period of historiographic vibrancy in the early modern period. I came to the growing belief in the need to subject Spanish historical thought to the critical re-examination completed by scholars for Spain’s European contemporaries. I was fortunate enough to find an extensive source base upon which to base my investigation. Indeed, the beginnings of my understanding of the change in historiography which occurred in late-sixteenth-century Spain was first revealed to me when I encountered a set of letters between official historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas and Philip’s Secretary of Portugal, Cristóbal de Moura. This led to a further amassing of over 200 letters held in various v libraries and archives throughout Spain. This, however, like the project that will be described, was a collective effort. For assistance in developing the research base on which this study is built, I am deeply indebted to the librarians and archivists who led me in the necessary directions and the gracious support of those who helped me gain access into the Archives of the Condes de Orgáz. Special thanks must go to archivists, Teresa Mezquita Mesa, Cristina Guillén Bermejo, and José Rucio Zamorano. My most substantial debts, however, are personal. First, in point of time was my undergraduate encounter with the “sense of history” in Professor William Acres’s seminar on early modern historiography, which enticed more than one unsuspecting student into this field. This course led to my acquaintance with Professor Peter Burke, and his course at Cambridge. I am in debt to my Professors at Columbia, especially professors Martha Howell, Nicolas Dirks and David Armitage, who taught me to see the value of a critical understanding of history. Also I am indebted to those Professors who have helped me in my research: Peter Burke, Fernando Bouza, Anthony Grafton, Anthony Pagden, Ottavio di Camillo, José Rabasa, and Daniel Woolf, now chancellor of Queen’s University and with whom I will be pursuing my Social Science Research Council of Canada PostDoc.