Miguel de Cervantes and the political turn of history (c. 1570-1615). (2024)

Historicism, or the approach to the historical task, is aphenomenon of special interest in the life and work of Miguel deCervantes (1547-1616). (1) We may consider this historical method fromvarious perspectives. First, to consider Cervantes as a historian is toreveal the epistemological experience in which Cervantes practicedhistorical methods in his writing, since a close reading of his worksshows that he displayed a high degree of familiarity with the prevailingtheories of the historian's task of his day. Second, we mayapproach his work through the lens of Cervantes as a chronicler of thevery events he lived through and which rocked the world of his time.Third, we may discover a Cervantes who was both preoccupied with and whoplayed with the truth, veracity, and verisimilitude of what herecounted. This is a Cervantes who ranged from the historian to the"strange inventor," from the writer of texts within hiscreative laboratory to his "table of tricks" (mesa de trucos)(Blasco 165).

CERVANTES AND LOPEZ DE HOYOS: THINKING HISTORICALLY

Although we might approach both Cervantes the writer and his greatreader Alonso Quijano without thinking of their social and culturalcontext, if we permit them to live within the period they happened toinhabit, it is possible to understand them somewhat better.

Throughout his life, Cervantes's works coincided with those ofmany historians and chroniclers, including well-known scholars such ashis master Juan Lopez de Hoyos (1511-1583), and the historiographersEsteban de Garibay y Zamalloa (1533-1600), Luis Cabrera de Cordoba(1559-1623), and the brothers Lupercio and Barolome Leonardo deArgensola (1559-1613; 1562-1631). In addition to the writers of his owntime, Cervantes also imbibed the classical authors--whom he might haveread anywhere, among the scraps of papers strewn in the streets, or atsome time during the thirteen boring years he spent traversing"el" Andalucia (as they called it)--whose works he certainlyread in Madrid at the Estudio de la Villa of his master Juan Lopez deHoyos. Lopez de Hoyos kept such works in his library for that verypurpose: from Cicero to Tacitus, each left a mark on and in the work ofCervantes, whether or not he referred to them directly (Alvar Ezquerra,Un maestro 168).

Cervantes had the good fortune to live through a fascinating periodin the development of the genre that is historiography. He witnessed thechange in "doing history," which was transformed from thecreation of wild and imaginative histories to a search for reliablesources on which to base the assertions of history. In addition, alongwith the impact of print as a means of diffusing knowledge, there wereincreasing efforts to define the form of the historical text that werecouched in a language of transmission, of style, etc., and which madeconstant reference to Thucydides, Caesar, or Cicero. At the same time,the question of what the object of the Historian actually was becamesubject to doubt, criticism, and discussion. To what depths must thehistorian plumb, and to what point should he concern himself--as Sanchodid--with the question of who was the first to use a handkerchief? Wassuch a thing incumbent upon the knowledge of the humanist historian?Cervantes also reflected on the forms of transmitting historicalknowledge and of the written text, and his defenses of vernacularlanguages are well known.

Among the classical authors who influenced Cervantes, Cicero standsout in particular, and Cervantes cited him repeatedly. At the same time,Cervantes had direct contacts with contemporary historical writers, ortheoreticians of history, like Esteban de Garibay y Zamalloa (whoseroutes often overlapped with those of Cervantes and with whose widowCervantes shared a house in Valladolid) or Luis Cabrera de Cordoba, whoCervantes compared to Tacitus. However, he also had influences that weremuch closer to home. The year 1568, a mournful year that witnessed theimprisonment and death of don Carlos and the death of Isabel de Valois,gave rise to the literary after effects of these tragedies in 1569,including the edition of a text by Juan Lopez de Hoyos praising theQueen, in which Cervantes's second verses appeared. Our author mustcertainly have read and re-read what his master Lopez de Hoyos waswriting.

In the Relacion de la muerte y honras funebres del serenisimoprincipe don Carlos, Lopez de Hoyos provided several epistemologicalreflections on the writing of history: for example, that there are sometopics worthy of historical attention and some that are not; that somepart of what occurs is always hidden from human understanding; thatthere are two types of people who write about History (i.e., the"doctrinal" or theoretical writers, and the"historians," or narrators, who are descriptive writers); thatthe tone and quality of the narration must be appropriate to the objectbeing narrated; and on and on. Cervantes was present when Lopez de Hoyoscomposed the brief and conflictive "Don Carlos," and thesubsequent 1569 work, la Historia y relacion verdadera de la enfermedad[...] de la Serenissima Reyna de Espana dona Isabel de Valois. In"Don Carlos" Lopez de Hoyos's rapid reflections abouthistoriography were, in reality, neither original, nor was theirposition in the text innovative (they were part of the preliminarymaterials). What is important, however, is that they comprised adeclaration of principles. Lopez de Hoyos was a providentialist, whoproposed that the function of the historian was to describe. Despitethese reflections, Lopez de Hoyos had some problems as a historicalwriter--namely, his incapacity for synthesizing the narrated fact(although he was capable of cutting himself off abruptly)--and hebelieved that the style of the narration must be connected to thecontents of what was being narrated. His style, however, is leaden andhis references to events are difficult to follow as he jumps from onething to another.

In the dedication to Cardinal Diego de Espinosa (1513-1572) thatpreceded the text of "Isabel de Valois," Lopez de Hoyosexcused himself for the text being "rough, hard, and withoutreason." However, he justified this roughness by explaining that itwas the first thing he had written, adding in the margins the phrase"early attempts" ("ingenios tempranos") (Lopez deHoyos, Hystoria [Dedicatoria]). Ultimately, he closed the dedicationpromising to ameliorate subsequent works, as the author and his workcontinued to mature.

In his other dedication to the Senate ("Senado") ofMadrid (Lopez de Hoyos, 1569) he spoke of the fact that "no lessglory and triumph is due to the historian who writes [...] than to hewho did [the deeds]" because the historian could make great deedsimmortal, or silence them and condemn them to oblivion. Then heentertained himself (though it was far from an entertainment) byspeaking of the nobility of Madrid, of its peoples and notablepersonages, and with quiet references to Erasmus and Luis Vives when hespoke of the fact that bad republics were unconcerned with the selectionof teachers for their youth.

The third of these first texts, the exhortation to the reader byLopez de Hoyos (Lopez de Hoyos, Hystoria), attacked envy, in particularthe envious and detractors (who whispered against him or his work: theJesuits? some court faction?) and stated his sources of information. Thebook is made up of his own memories ("testigo de vista") andthe accounts of those who were present. He pursued one goal, "tomake it a garden, an agreeable entertainment." Finally in thepreface, Lopez de Hoyos advocated for the reform of certain customs thathad been corrupted by sin.

Cervantes's name was consigned to a spot nearly 150 pagesfurther on in this same book as "our dear and beloved pupil,"while the epitaph, the quatrains, and the second verses of Cervantesappear scattered in the disordered anthology of pages and the chaoticstructure of the work. The epistemological precepts proposed by Lopez deHoyos must have been known by Cervantes. The master had passed these onto the student (naturally, along with much more than had been written).

CERVANTES'S HISTORIOGRAPHICAL POSITIONING

In his youth, Cervantes studied both the art of writing history andthose who had initiated the practice over time, that is, the greathistorians. This undoubtedly left a mark on him. If his early verses hadbeen published in a book on arithmetic, and had they referred to thevirtues of three-dimensional bodies, perhaps he would have become adifferent kind of writer all together. However, at the age oftwenty-one, Cervantes published on the misfortune of unexpected death,on the wars and peace between Spain and France, and on the Grim Reaperwho conquered everything in his path. His teacher, Lopez de Hoyos, wroteabout history, about eyewitness events, and even corrected some elementsof a chivalric novel in one of the memos he wrote to approve a book forpublication. (2) Thus, Cervantes's historical mind was formedaround those materials that Lopez de Hoyos transmitted to him and in thecultural environment that surrounded Lopez de Hoyos.

However, the discussion so far is not the only indication thatCervantes had imbibed his historical precepts from Lopez de Hoyos.Later, when Cervantes ridiculed mercilessly the crazed humanist,preoccupied only with fatuous topics, he was in fact making an allusionto Lopez de Hoyos. Throughout Don Quijote one may find interspersedphrases from Lopez de Hoyos written three long decades previously (AlvarEzquerra, "Las enciclopedias" 427).

It is clear that Cervantes wished to distance himself from histeacher since even in his maturity he continued to mock Lopez de Hoyos,even though none of his works, which were in fact compilations of thestate of Spanish literature at the time, make any mention of him. Theexcuse of limiting himself to writing about living authors servedCervantes well to avoid any allusion to Lopez de Hoyos. An accident? Anexcuse? Just a coincidence? The editorial process for La Galatea (inwhich the Canto de Caliope is to be found) began in February of 1584.That is, the work is certainly posterior to the death of Lopez de Hoyos(June 28 1583). That work was completed only a few weeks after the deathof the master. However, not even in the donoso escrutinio did he includeany line dedicated to the earlier work in which his epitaph and versesto the Queen were printed.

Despite this absence of references to his master and historicallearning, throughout his work Cervantes left definitions here and thereabout how history should be written. He advocated a detailed account ofthe deeds of knights rather than squires. Of course, he insisted thatthe style should be appropriate to the quality of the deed beingnarrated (for this reason, funerals should be written with a leadentouch), although by warning that writing would be better disseminated inthe vernacular Cervantes contradicted the principle of unifying styleand subject. Still, Cervantes was a permanent defender of vernacularism.Thus the writing of biography could serve to praise the subject, or tocast infamy upon him or her. It was important to know that there weredifferences between error and manipulation. To "do" historywas to subjectify the topic being written about--in the case of a famousdeed, the "historiado"--which the historian narrates in hisown way. And the reader reads in his own way despite the fact that, inthe end, written history is the child of the writer, who is the only oneresponsible. Only the transcendental (i.e., that which serves to createfame) is worthy of being historiado. But the historian must look for thetruth and not invent things, and in all cases must be measured,self-censoring, orderly, and decorous.

These were the intellectual spaces through which Cervantes moved,and which contributed to the way he defined historiographical objectsand subjects. Rather than making a text that would explainhistoriographical problems (as did writers such as Sebastian FoxMorcillo [1526?-1559?], for example), or a prologue that would vaguelyexplain his concept of the historical task, Cervantes went much farther.He developed from his immense imagination every one of these points in asort of Decalogue of the Good Historian, and not only in Don Quijote.(3) However, it would also seem that his need to create in and of itselffound its source in the opportunity to wink at the reader, for example,by placing a historical narrative in the middle of a work of fiction, asif he wanted to publish the account in the style of all those relacionesde sucesos that circulated at the time. When he inserted this short butcomplete work of history, it was full of life and imaginative detail,but he still adhered strictly to the postulates that he had beendefining (and which he would continue to define) of what it meant to bea historian.

In effect, all of the descriptions and details which appear in theCaptive's Tale (1.39-41: ff. 230r-257r) correspond to what happenedin real experiences. Comparing Cervantes's own writings to othersthat are still preserved, like those of the Castilian Andres de Salazarwho lost La Goleta, or with other contemporaneous testimonies, the onlydiscrepancies that one can find are in the nuances, the personalreflections of Cervantes which might not (or might) match the otheraccounts that are held in the archives of Simancas (Alvar Ezquerra,"Cervantes contra Moros y Turcos" 55). However, if in theCaptive's Tale opinions are voiced, for example, on the capacitiesof the characters, is this not the voice of the historian as narrator ofevents, guiding the reader on the path of his hypothesis? Is Cervantes,then, not acting as the historian he could not officially become,although he knew perfectly well that he was capable of it?

Indeed, in the years around 1615, when Cervantes wrote the passagesto which I have alluded, new historiographical currents advanced acrossEurope. It had been fifteen years since the death of Garibay, who hadbeen the first to compile the history of Spain (1571), and who ended hisdays writing history that the royal historiographer Antonio de Herera yTordesillas deemed no better than the writings of a chronicler--that is,the genealogies of kings--despite the fact that since 1575 royalhistoriography had marked a new path for how to write the history ofSpain. In the midst of this intellectual effervescence, Cervantesconfessed his epistemological aspirations and the playwright Felix Lopede Vega (1562-1635) did his best to become a royal chronicler withoutsuccess. What then were the new lines on which historiography would bedeveloped?

THE POLITICAL TURN OF HISTORY (C. 1580): THE DEFINITION OF A NEWHISTORIOGRAPHICAL FRAME

Cervantes's choice to write about historical events and toimbue his fictional writing with historical methods was made during atime of competitive forms of histories, when historiography wasexperiencing a political turn on the European stage (Kagan, Clio 207).As has been recently demonstrated, the political turn of history in themidst of religious polemics and conflicts at the end of the sixteenthcentury was characterized by the incorporation of historiographicalmethods in Realpolitik (Popper 6). History was used to define thepolitical truth of the recent past. The how of writing history duringthis period defined history as a laboratory of political causationdesigned to find political solutions to conflicts (Byrne 14). TheEuropean politics during the first two decades of the seventeenthcentury were thus supported by historiographical projects, which helpedcreate a new political frame for the interpretation of the most recentand traumatic conflicts. These projects tried to minimize the effects ofthe guerre larvee that threatened the peace during those decades.

Between 1598 and 1615, official histories were used to extend theofficial oblivion that had been decreed after a peace was signed betweenthe Hapsburg Monarchy and France in Vervins. (4) The monarchicaldamnatio memoriae was the condition of forgetting dissention in order toimpose a new political order within each monarchy (Frisch 65). Thesehistories celebrated a timeless peace and the renewal of the dynasticalliance between the Hapsburg Monarchy and France. Around the same time,Philip II signed other peace treatises or dynastic alliances with Savoy(1601), England (1604), Holland (1609) and France (1612-1615). Thehistorical celebration of this series of peace, traditionally called thePax Hispanica, was in fact highly mediated by the Pope from Rome inorder to preserve the Pax Romana in the Italian territories. This Paxcoincided with the reign of Philip III and with other historiographicalprojects, which used political criticism against Philip II'searlier intervention in France in order to justify the apparentequilibrium reached by the politics of the king and his prime minister,the Duke of Lerma, before 1615.5 Defenses of peace and politicalcriticism were the results of a politics of history that was committedto the conservation of the prestige of the Hapsburg Monarchy and thereputation of the King by the means of peace and internal reforms.

The political use of history as a knowledge that strengthened theorder of the Monarchy, as incarnated by the royal laws, was also theproduct of a political culture that considered religion to be a pretextfor conflicts led by the reason of State during the late sixteenthcentury. Historical truth literally became a political problem forrulers who disputed their temporal, and sometimes even spiritual,prerogative on the European stage. As royal historiographer of Castileand of the Indies, Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1549-1625) recalledthat around 1596 it was no longer worth it for a historian to describethe battles and the great deeds of kings or nobles (Pasamar 29). ForHerrera y Tordesillas, recent history had shown that it was in thediscourses, or, in the battles of words, that historians should locatethe hidden purposes and interests that had led to the sixteenth centuryreforms and conflicts that broke the ideal of common Christian faith,history, and truth.

During the first part of the reign of Philip III, the celebrationof peace and political criticism converted historical writing into apowerful instrument of cultural accommodation and political conversionfor the seditious subjects of the king. As a soft power, history writingfollowed the law of oblivion decreed in 1598 and seemed to foster aconsensus around an early idea of State and public good. In a lettersent in 1615 to Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617), one of therepresentatives of the political turn of history in France, theCastilian-Portuguese jurist and late humanist Vicente Nogueira made adefense of this kind of history, arguing that the fact of treatingreligious or political dissidents well in written histories was thesolution for the creation of a new order based on strong political andreligious fidelities. (6) Cervantes's reflections on history werethus made during a time when history writing was deeply involved ininternational debates about tolerance, peace, and internal order betweenthe many communities that circulated within and beyond, and thatsometimes abandoned the Hapsburg Monarchy in favored of other Europeanstate intelligence systems.

Despite the claims of history writing to impartiality, historicalproduction was the result of partisan interpretations of the recent pastthat tried to be legitimized as the official interpretation. Beginningat the end of the sixteenth century and during the first part of theseventeenth century, both Philip II and Philip III began to hirehistorians who were professionals of political information. It was apoint in these men's favor to have traveled and acquiredexperiences on which to base their expertise for political negotiation.Good skills in languages and translation were required, not onlyconcerning classical languages but also the vernaculars of their owntime. Their ability to read languages like French, English, or OttomanTurkish was fundamental in order to prepare responses to other historieswritten by foreign historians. The perfect historian was thus imaginedas a man around his forties familiar with both archives and contemporarypolitical affairs. (7) Most of these historians were trained assecretaries of noblemen involved in the diplomatic apparatus of theMonarchy. The practice of history became an art of specialists dedicatedto reassembling the broken ideal of the unity of Christian faith in therealms of politics.

Taking into account both the critical and apologetic mode ofwriting history, Philip II appointed two kinds of historiographersduring his reign (1556-1598). The first type was in charge of continuingthe writing of the General History of Spain, started by Florian deOcampo (1599?-1558?) and Ambrosio de Morales (1513-1591), whereas thesecond type was above all considered to be a kind of politicalcounselor, closely related to the archives, papers, and affairsdiscussed in the Councils and assemblies of specialists convened by theadministration of the Monarchy in order to foster political action. (8)Their historical erudition played an important part in diplomaticrelations. The royal historiographer was no longer committed to thecelebration of the glory of the King. New frames of interpretation wereneeded, and in order to achieve them historians needed to redefine theirsources and objects of study considering the political pragmatismcontained in their works.

In order to prepare reports on specific cases or write on the mostproblematic episodes of the previous decades, political historiansneeded access to non-archived information. In the case of the HapsburgMonarchy, the global extension of the pasts that historians had to dealwith and their many and sometimes conflicting versions created aprofound debate about how to write the most reliable history. In orderto support the Monarchy and its enterprises of reform by means ofhistory writing, spontaneous counselors appeared everywhere within andbeyond the Monarchy. Most of them begged the councils of the Monarchyfor economic compensation in exchange for their reports of recent deeds.Despite their ambition, none of them was appointed as historiographer.These givers of advice were necessary, however, for the politicalhistorians. The Monarchy's administrators tried to maintain andsupport those informants who were close to the historians, thustransforming the distributive justice of the king into economiccompensation. As Jacob Soli has demonstrated, the political turn ofhistory during the seventeenth century helped associatehistoriographical practices with the development of the stateinformation system (Soil 120-39). In the Hapsburg Monarchy, historywriting was associated definitely with state administration from the1570s onwards. (9) Historians depended directly on administrativestructures and state archives to compose their histories. (10)Testimonies were collected by state systems of information connected tothe institutional display of the monarchy. The archives of the councilsopened their doors to political historians who were trying to monopolizethe empirical knowledge produced within the Hapsburg Monarchy in orderto shape the Iberian imperial project after the union of the Crowns ofSpain and Portugal in 1580 (Brendecke 35).

A man like Cervantes, who trained with a humanist like Lopez deHoyos, must have developed his historiographical reflections in themidst of the political turn of history. His later experiences across themany worlds of the Monarchy and beyond gave him the capacity to fashionhimself as one of the informants that sent their memorials in order toobtain rewards and privileges from the king (Barrera-Osorio 81). Despitethis, Cervantes seems to have never committed himself to the officialadministration of knowledge. As will be presented in the next section ofthis article, his reflections about history writing relied on theuncertainties and counter-histories that appeared in the HapsburgMonarchy during the first two decades of the seventeenth century.

REDEFINITIONS OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE DURING UNCERTAIN TIMES

At the end of the sixteenth century it was common for historians torefer to the impossibility of achieving any historical account. This wasperhaps a humble manner in which to signify the impossibility ofrepresenting the great extent of the king's power, but thisimpossibility was also due to the complexity of the sources and thesystems of information that the historian had to deal with. In theHapsburg Monarchy, fully realized histories were composed by men likethe royal historiographer Esteban de Garibay, the Jesuit Juan de Mariana(1536-1624), or the censor of Don Quijote, Antonio de Herrera, and weremainly syntheses or historical compendia.

At the local level, many histories based on antiquities challengedor complimented the whole narrative of a common history produced withinthe court's historiographical workshops (Kagan, "Lacorografia" 82). At the individual level, noble culture promotedthe trend for genealogies in order to distinguish its members in thegeneral histories of their times. The rise of forgeries and falsechronicles were also a result of the doubt generated around the statusof the truth throughout the sixteenth century (Garcia Arenal andRodriguez Mediano, 171-187; Olds, 135-141). Other voices rose againstthe incapacity of official historians to write about present facts basedon reliable accounts because of their lack of information. As just oneexample among many, Francisco Caro de Torres published in 1620 theRelacion de los servicios que hizo a su Magestad del Rey Don FelipeSegundo y Tercero, don Alonso de Sotomayor [...] in order to vindicate(against Lope de Vega and Antonio de Herrera) the version of the battleof Panama in which Caro de Torres's master, Alonso de Sotomayor,defeated Francis Drake (Sanchez Jimenez and Montcher).

Most of the histories written during Cervantes's life were notthe product of official historians. Many of them--as the case of Caro deTorres--demonstrates were in fact counter-histories. Many times, theMonarchy's administration paid for the contractual services ofother historians in order to create specific histories. The ideal of themonopoly of official history based on a historiographical dispositif wasdebated. Cervantes's choice to write about history was conceived asan alternative to many competitive forms of histories.

Within this sea of histories, history as a genre was also used andadapted in theatrical works, epics novels, and festivities. Caro deTorres's allusion to both Antonio de Herrera's historicalaccount and Lope de Vega's epic novel La Dragontea regardingDrake's history demonstrate that all these adaptations of the samehistorical object influenced one another. The plasticity of historicalculture, its social circulation, and the increase of its polemicaldimension during this time helped foster a deep sense of historicalrelativism. The traditional eyewitnesses were no longer reliable ontheir own. Historians had to write their histories based on a successionof oral, written, and visual testimonies found in the street, in thearchives, or during oral conversations. This diversity of sourcespresupposed social contacts between official historians and a long listof informers.

The extent of the sources for writing history and the problemsrelated to the discrimination of information were clearly expressed inDon Quijote when Cervantes alluded to fact that he was used to readingany kind of paper, even the ones thrown on the street. The originalversion of Don Quijote was bought, following Cervantes'smetahistoriographical fiction, in the street of Toledo from a young boywho was selling old papers. Cervantes complimented the list of hissources by mentioning the archives and the oral testimonies the narratorof his Don Quijote checked in La Mancha. Finally the episode of thediscovery of the lead boxes of the academicians of Argamasilla thatcontained prophecies essentials to the development of the story, closeda long list of discoveries that synthesized the many ways of composing"una nueva y jamas vista historia" during the early decades ofthe seventeenth century in the Hispanic Monarchy (1.52: f. 314r).

Throughout this quest for recovering the story of Don Quijote,every object was considered as a possible testimony across which thepast, even the most recent past, was currently occurring. The eyes ofthe historian were witnesses and critics of the "new and neverseen" past as it had been condensed either into the actuality ofconversations or into the archived documents. Philip Ill's royalhistoriographer, Atanasio de Lobera (?-1605), confessed in one of thememorials he sent in 1604 to the king about his project to pursue thewriting of the general history of Spain that in the archive he conceivedof himself as a witness, who with vista de ojo was watching the pasthappening across his readings of the documents (Lobera doc. 19). The eyeof the historians, who were defined by Cervantes as secular evangelists,was a prolongation of the eye of God, which illuminated the heart of theKing in order to conduct him to the peace along a path a fraternal love(Tallon 127). This idea of interior illumination demonstrated thatValdesian ideas influenced the historiography of the first part of thereign of Philip III in order to strengthen the politics of peacedesigned by the King's favorite, the Duke of Lerma. Ultimately, itwas the opinion of the reader that would interpret the manycontradictions that contributed to the history writing process and itsnever-ending final version (Gaylord 139). History was an open text readyto receive different influences and authorship. Cervantes used theseconsiderations and multiplied their effects in his own works byinventing the story of the translation of the original history of DonQuijote written by Cide Hamete Benengeli. Cervantes offered his readerthe right to interpret and judge a story based on many historicalaccounts. At the same time, these many historical accounts gave hisnovel a strong verisimilitude that would help Cervantes legitimate histext and ideas in the historical market of his own time in whichtoleration, peace, and political truth were debated.

As E. C. Riley has said, "the intellectual climate of the agein which Don Quixote was created was one where the old credulity andcapacity to wonder coexisted with a nascent empiricism" (Riley165). Riley, like Bruce Wardropper and, most recently, Susan Byrne,argues that modernity of Cervantes was due to his manner of playing withthe limits between fiction and truth. Cervantes's Lucian irony andcritique of history contributed to the verisimilitude of his fictions.Meanwhile, Anthony Close nuanced this interpretation by arguing that thetruth of the history in Cervantes echoed the "truth of thematter" and recalled that Cervantes' work was made forentertainment (Close 99104). Cervantes's historiographicalstatements about history in his work were part of stories related to thepolitics of history that supported the Spanish enterprises of peace.Cervantes used history as a common language in order to involve hisliterary approach in the historiographical debate of its own time.

FROM THE FICTIONAL DIMENSION OF HISTORY TO LITERARY CONVICTIONS

Confronted with both the historiographical instability of his owntime and the many competing narrative styles upon which he drew andwhich tried to impose their own versions upon the recent past, Cervantescreated a metahistoriographical discourse that accompanied most of hisliterary creations. This metahistoriographical discourse in Don Quijoteconstituted the line that the reader had to follow if he wanted tounderstand the inner history of the story. Like other historians of histime, Cervantes represented history in the making. In the second part ofDon Quijote, references to the inner story of the fictional historyincreased notably and the historiographical practices of Cervantesserved to vindicate its real authorship. This practice connects with themultiplication of metahistories and biographies written by historiansbeginning in the second half of the sixteenth century in order tojustify, correct, and orient the contents of their histories followingthe political changes of the period. In Don Quijote, Cervantes presentedthe fragmentation of testimonies--various proffered by characters likethe embedded narrators, the historian Cide Hamete Benengeli, and theArabic translator--that he, as an author, had to deal with in order tooffer a coherent historical account of a multidimensional story. If mosthistorians during Cervantes's life solved the fragmentation oftestimonies or their absence by privileging the political truth of theirwriting, Cervantes used the diversity of sources as a means to critiquehistory writing. He presented many points of view based on many sourcesand witnesses and ceded to his readers the power to interpret thecorrect use of history and the degree of fiction in his writings(Gaylord 51). He displaced the historiographical and political debateinto a literary field articulated around poetical and historical truth.

Cervantes used the relativism of historical practices to locate hisnarrative in an undetermined space and time. In his fiction manyversions of the past coexisted even if they came from a Moorishhistorian, were found in the street, were held in escritorios orarchives, were born of oral testimonies, or were the product of his ownimagination. The timeless dimension of his stories was connected to theimage of peace during his time. In this way Cervantes freed himself as ahistorian from the material dimension of history and its inherentlimits. He proposed the use of imagination and faith when history seemedto come to an end. By doing so Cervantes reached the poetical dimensionof historical truth (Strozesky 520).

Other men of letters during the period started to use therelativism inherent to the recent past to vindicate the importance ofhistory in the support of the peace that the Monarchy was pursuingduring Philip Ill's reign. Such relativism also vindicated theadministration of Philip Ill's prime minister, Francisco Gomez deSandoval-Rojas y Borja, the first Duke of Lerma. For these men, peacewas the result of political accommodation and tolerance in order tocreate a political order articulated around a common and vernacular law.This political order would provide a common frame of behavior for thesubjects of the King no matter their confessions or politicalaffinities. It was during this particular time that Cervantes was mostactive and he seems to have also shown some sympathy towards thepolitical strategy of the peace. It is relevant that one of thehistorians Cervantes mentioned as a good poet in his Viaje del Parnaso,Pedro Mantuano (who was known as an enemy of the Jesuit historian Juande Mariana), was the man chosen by the Duke of Lerma to officiallycelebrate the dynastic alliance and friendship between France and Spainduring the time of the double marriages of 1615. Many references to thecontemporary peace signed by the Hapsburg Monarchy could be found inCervantes's novels, short novels, or comedies like Don Quijote,Persiles y Sigismunda, "La espanola inglesa," or La casa delos celos as Michael Armstrong Roche has argued recently (ArmstrongRoche). Cervantes died just when Lerma's historiographicalpatronage began to decline and he was passed over in favor of otherpoliticians who used history as a weapon in the military conflicts thatwould rise in Europe after 1615. (11)

Cervantes took advantage of the historiographical hesitations ofhis own time. It was a time of opportunity when historiographicalmethods inherited from late humanism coexisted with the pragmatic needsof political history. By associating the narrator of Don Quijote as asecond author of a history originally written in Arabic, who was notreceiving any stipend from the King, Cervantes proposed an alternativeto the political turn of history by situating his reflections abouthistory in literary fiction.

In 1615, the publication of part two of Don Quijote vindicated thehistorical fiction of the whole novel. Cervantes playfully toyed withthe fictional "fact" that Don Quijote, a novel presented as anew and true history, had awaked some interests beyond the HapsburgMonarchy in particular in China. As Cervantes tells us, the ChineseEmperor wanted to articulate a whole educational system around theteaching of Cervantes's "history" translated intoChinese. During these times of relative peace in Europe, historicalknowledge was considered to be a product of cultural and politicalexchanges, and Cervantes fashioned his most political and moral fictionsin a historiographical way. By doing so, he offered to the historymarket of his time, (in which many narratives were competing) a new andingenioso medium of knowledge that would delight people and teach thescholars across the globe. (12)

Cervantes's joke regarding the Emperor of China illustratedjust how his historiographical enterprise was conceived at the marginsof the official historical practices of this time. Indeed, Cervantes,with a huge amount of irony, mentioned the fact that the Emperor ofChina forgot to provide money to his ambassador in Spain with whichCervantes's services could have been contracted. The historicalvarnish of his stories made for entertainment, which helped him toescape the censorship of royal historiographers. Despite the fact thatCervantes was never appointed as an official historiographer, hisfictions found a way to play a role in the international politics of theHapsburg Monarchy at this time. It is not a surprise that in hisaprobacion of the second part of Don Quijote, Cervantes's friend,the licenciado Marques Torres, alluded to the fact that the Frenchembassy had been sent to Spain to celebrate the Franco-Spanish weddingsin 1615, and used the fame of Cervantes and his work as a metaphor ofthe historical friendship between the two monarchies. In MarquesTorres's aprobacion, no mention was made of the histories thatcirculated between the two monarchies at this time. Cervantes'sfictions in this case were considered as alternative media that wouldensure, more than any other history of the period, the spirit of thepolitics of peace that was spreading across Europe during the earlyseventeenth century.

Works Cited

Alvar Ezquerra, Alfredo. "Cervantes contra Moros y Turcos y suvuelta a casa." Contra moros y turcos: Politische e sistemi didifesa delgi stati della corona di Spagna in eta moderna; ConvegnoInternazionale di Studi (Villasimius-Baunei, 20-24 setiembre 2005). Ed.Bruno Anatra, Maria Grazia Mele, Giovanni Murgia, and Giovanni Serreli.Cagliari-Genova-Torino-Milano: Instituto di Storia dell' EuropaMediterranea-CNR, 2008. 49-79.

--. "Cervantes y la comunicacion de la historia."Pedralbes 25 (2005): 25-50.

--. "Las enciclopedias y los humanistas en Cervantes y elQuijote." Las enciclopedias en Espana antes de PEncyclopedie. Ed.Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra. Madrid: CSIC, 2009. 427-48.

--. Un maestro en tiempos de Felipe II: Juan Lopez de Hoyos y laensenanza humanista en el siglo XVI. Madrid: La esfera de los libros,2014.

--. "Sobre la descripcion de los pueblos de Espana y suambiente historiografico (circa 1575)." Historia sin complejos: Lanueva vision del Imperio Espanol (Estudios en honor de John H. Elliott).Ed. David Garcia Hernan. Madrid: Actas, 2010. 79-98.

--. "Sobre la historiografia castellana en tiempos de FelipeII." Torre de los Lujanes 32 (1996): 89-106.

Archivo General de Simancas, Camara de Castilla, legajo. 882, doc.19. Lobera, Atanasio de. "Cedula Real" Manuscript. 1604.

Archivo General de Simancas, Consejos, Camara de Castilla, legajo896. Juan de la Puente. "Memorial de fray Juan de la Puente para elcargo de cronista real de Castilla." 10-15-1605.

Armstrong Roche, Michael. "The Matter of France on the Stage:Cervantes' La casa de Los celos (The House of Jealousy)."Conference on "Cervantes on the European Stage." WilliamAndrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA. Los Angeles, California. 11October 2013.

Barrera-Osorio, Antonio. Experiencing Nature: The Spanish AmericanEmpire and the Early Scientific Revolution. Austin: U of Texas P, 2006.

Blasco, Javier. Cervantes, raro inventor. Alcala de Henares: Centrode Estudios Cervantinos, 2005.

Brendecke, Arndt. Imperio e informacion: Funciones del saber en eldominio colonial espanol. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert,2012.

Byrne, Susan. Law and History in Cervantes' Don Quixote.Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2012.

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. El ingenioso Don Quijote de laMancha. Ed. Florencia Sevilla Arroyo. Alicante: Biblioteca VirtualMiguel de Cervantes, 2001

--. Obras completas. Ed. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo. Madrid:Castalia, 1999.

Close, Anthony. "Cervantes's Aesthetics of Comic Fictionand His Concept of 'La verdad de la historia.'" TheModern Language Review 89.1 (1994): 88-106.

Domingo Malvadi, Arantxa. Bibliofilia humanista en tiempos deFelipe II: La biblioteca de Juan Paez de Castro. Salamanca: Universidadde Salamanca, 2011.

Frisch, Andrea. "Caesarean Negotiations: Forgetting HenriIV's Past after the French Wars of Religion." ForgettingFaith? Negotiating Confessional Conflict in Early Modern Europe. Ed.Isabel Karremann, Cornel Zwierlein, and Inga Mai Groote. Berlin: Walterde Gruyter, 2012. 63-80.

Garcia Arenal, Mercedes and Rodriguez Mediano, Fernando. The Orientin Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and theRise of Orientalism. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

Gaylord, Mary Malcolm. "Pulling Strings with MasterPeter's Puppets: Fiction and History in Don Quixote."Cervantes 18.2 (1998): 117-47.

Gonzales, Michael. "The Shaping of Empire: History Writing andImperial Identity in Early Modern Spain." Diss. Berkeley:University of California, 2013.

Juan de la Puente. "Memorial de fray Juan de la Puente para elcargo de cronista real de Castilla." Archivo General de Simancas,Camara de Castilla. Legajo 896. Ms. 10-15-1605.

Kagan, Richard L. Clio and the Crown: The Politics of History inMedieval and Early Modern Spain. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2009.

--. "La corografia en la Castilla moderna: Genero, historia,nacion." Studia aurea: Actas del III Congreso de la AISO. Eds.Ignacio Arellano Ayuso, Carmen Pinillos, Marc Vitse, and FredericSerralta. Vol. 1. Pamplona: GRISO-Universidad de Navarra, 1996. 79-92.

Lopez de Hoyos, Juan. Hystoria y relacion verdadera de laenfermedad felicissimo transito y sumptuosas exequias funebres de laSerenissima Reyna de Espana dona Isabel de Valoys nuestra Senora: conlos sermones, letras y epitaphios a su tumulo, dilatado con costumbres ycerimonias varias de diferentes nasciones en enterrar sus diffuntos[...]. Madrid: Pierres Cosin, 1569.

--. Relacion de la muerte y honras funebres del SS. Principe D.Carlos, hijo de la Mag. del Catholico Rey D. Philippe el segundo nuestrosenor [...]. Madrid: Pierres Cosin, 1568.

Montcher, Fabien. "Acquerir, partager et controlerl'information sous le regne de Philippe III d'Espagne: Le casde l'historiographe royal Antonio de Herrera (1549-1626)."Circe: Histoires, Cultures & Societes 1 (2012): n. p. Web. 23 Sept.2014. http://www.revue-circe.uvsq.fr/spip.phpiarticle7

--. "La historiografia real en el contexto de la interaccionhispano-francesa (c. 15981635)." Diss. Universidad Complutense deMadrid, 2013.

--. "The Transatlantic Mediation of Historical Knowledgeacross the Iberian Empire (C.1580-C.1640)." e-Spania (2014): n. p.Web. 23 Sept. 2014. http://e-spania.revues.org/23697

Pasamar Alzuria, Gonzalo. "Origenes de la historia delpresente: El modelo de las historiae ipsius temporis en los siglos XVI yXVII." Tiempos modernos 19-2 (2009): n. p. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.http://www.tiemposmodernos.org/tm3/index.php/tm/ article/view/179/236

Popper, Nicholas. Walter Raleigh's History of the World andthe Historical Culture of the Late Renaissance. Chicago: U of Chicago P,2012.

Riley, E. C. Cervantes's Theory of the Novel. 2nd edition.Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1992.

Soli, Jacob. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert'sSecrete State Intelligence System. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2009.

Strosetky, Christoph. "Historia e historias en torno a lapoetica de la historiografia en el Renacimiento espanol." Studiaaurea: Actas del III Congreso de la A ISO. Eds. Ignacio Arellano Ayuso,Carmen Pinillos, Marc Vitse, and Frederic Serraba. Vol. 3. Pamplona:GRISO-Universidad de Navarra, 1996. 513-20.

Tallon, Alain. "Conflits et mediations dans la politiqueinternationale de la papaute." Papato e politica internazionalenella prima etk moderna. Ed. Maria Antonietta Visceglia. Rome: Viella,2013.

Thou, Jacques-Auguste de. Historiarum sui temporis libri CXXXVIII.Ed. Thomas Carte. Vol. 6. London: Samuel Buckley, 1733.

Valladares, Rafael. "Juristas por el rey: Felipe IV y lareivindicacion de sus dominios, 1640-1665." Hacer historia desdeSimancas: Homenaje a Jose Luis Rodriguez de Diego. Valladolid: Junta deCastilla y Leon, 2011. 787-814.

Vega, Lope de. La Dragontea. Ed. Antonio Sanchez Jimenez. Madrid:Catedra, 2007. Wardropper, Bruce W. "Don Quixote: Story orHistory?" Modern Philology 63.1 (1965): 141-62.

ALFREDO ALVAR EZQUERRA Y FABIEN MONTCHER

CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS, MADRID

[emailprotected]

Saint Louis Univeristy, Saint Louis

[emailprotected]

(1) This article forms part of work being carried out with thesupport of the Investigation Project of the National Plan of I+D+i,financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, housedby the state agency, Spanish Council of Scientific Research (CSIC),under the direction of Dr. Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, the title of which is"La escritura del recuerdo en primera persona: diarios, memorias ycorrespondencias de reyes, embajadores y cronistas (siglosXVI-XVII)" (numero de referencia: HAR2011-30251).

(2) Lopez de Hoyos signed this aprobacion in Madrid on July 9, 1581for the 1586 Barcelona edition of the Chronica llamada el Triumpho delos nueve mas preciados varones de la Fama [...]. See Alvar Ezquerra [Unmaestro 340).

(3) For a review of all Cervantes's preceptive ideas abouthistory writing, see Alvar Ezquerra ("Cervantes y la comunicacionde la historia").

(4) After the peace of Vervins was signed in 1598 the French andthe Hapsburg Monarchy decided to forget most of the aggressions that hadoccurred after the direct intervention of Philip II in the French Warsof Religion, both before and after the official declaration of war byHenri IV against Spain in 1595. In Spain, measures taken to counter thepublication of histories that might offend the new Bourbon King, andthese were censored. Just after the signing of the peace, the Historia[...] de los sucesos de Francia (1598), written by Philip Us new royalhistoriographer, Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, was censored. Thebook was taken out of circulation within the monarchy (Montcher).

(5) Michael Gonzales argues that during the reign of Philip IIIpolitical criticism against Philip II's policies was sustained byhistory writing. Historians received official funding to write andcriticize the intervention of Philip II in France during the last decadeof the sixteenth century.

(6) On this letter, see Thou (85).

(7) In the memorials sent to the Camara de Castilla by thecandidates for the office of royal historiographer it was a commontactic to underline age. A man of forty years was considered mature inthe art of writing as well as active. This double dimension wasimportant considering the fact that the historian would accompany theKing and witness the deeds he was then to write about. See Juan de laPuente.

(8) Membership in a religious order or any other religiousaffiliation was an important criterion for the appointment of this kindof historiographer. Such connections with ecclesiastical life andhistory ensured the Crown that the historian would have access to anetwork and archives not ordinarily open to secular individuals.

(9) During the reign of Philip II enterprises such as theDescripcion de los pueblos de Espana tried to solve the problem of thedispersion of the information in order to enhance a global andcomprehensive writing of the composite history of the Hapsburg Monarchy.The questionnaires sent to the many parts of the kingdom of Castile andsome parts of the Indies with the idea of extending the inquiry to therest of the part of the Monarchy during the seventeenth century were notconceived as a statistic tool intended for a demographic campaign, butrather as a project of collecting testimonies from the bottom in orderto write the general history of Spain (Alvar Ezquerra, "Sobre"80). This system relied on the information given by many collaboratorsand the contents would be ordered and censored by historiographers.During the reign of Philip II, Ambrosio de Morales wrote his Antiguadesde Espana. Although Morales recognized his failure to synthesize all theinformation he received, after his death, his ways of proceeding as ahumanist traveler or as a state agent helped fix a model to follow formany of Spanish historians during the seventeenth century. See Montcher(144).

(10) In the middle of the sixteenth century, the humanist Juan Paezde Castro had already established the political criteria of thehistorian's craft in relation to the politics of history. On the"Metodo para escribir la historia," see Domingo Malvadi (18).Around 1570, theoretical approaches were put into practice by projectsthat claimed to write the history of Philip II. In his memorial entitled"Que su magestad debe mandar escribir su historia," the royalcosmographer, Juan Lopez de Velasco (1530-1598) presented the writing ofcurrent history as a state necessity. See also Alvar Ezquerra("Sobre la historiografia castellana" 102).

(11) After Cervantes's death the acceleration of thepolarization of historical knowledge in favor of political propaganda inEurope challenged the idea that history had to support the pacifistpolitics of the early seventeenth century. The pragmatic dimension ofhistorical knowledge increased. A series of hired pens transformedhistory into pamphlets by working with historians and scholars whohelped feed the content of their works (Valladares 787). Historicalerudition and propaganda were funneled in one direction after Cervantesdeath.

(12) In Don Quijote, the episode of Maese Pedro underlines that anyhistory, even one represented on stage by puppets, needed a translatorfor its correct communication to the public (2.26:99V).