Iberian Peninsula (c. 1501-1800)
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On the steps of the throne
The King’s family and its political and cultural role in the Spanish monarchy (16th-18th centuries)
The aim of this book is to forge a new critical perspective on the Spanish Habsburgs’ family networks by studying the roles performed by princes and princesses of the blood of different ranks and status in the service of the Spanish monarchs. The chapters included draw on a range of case studies in order to rethink the dynastic and political role assigned to the king’s relatives. They also analyse the problematic issues generated by the court ceremonial diplomatic dynastic and governmental duties undertaken by these political actors. In doing so these studies forge a deeper understanding of the conflicts prompted by the administration of the extensive transnational community of Spanish Habsburg interests and allegiances. The innovative and insightful studies included in this volume are drawn from both unpublished doctoral theses as well as ongoing research projects. In this sense it seeks to contribute to the evolving historiographical debate on the role played by a range of agents who have not been studied in depth by historians above all with a focus on the construction of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy in the early modern period. The approach we have adopted has been to prioritize little-known and less-studied agents contexts and periods from the Spanish Habsburg sphere which are nonetheless highly relevant for developing a deeper knowledge of the potential and expectations assigned to the king’s extended family whether legitimate or illegitimate. Furthermore this book addresses the problematic issues and conflicts that were prompted by these political agents in undertaking various diplomatic dynastic and governmental roles.
Painter to the Queen
Michel Sittow, Courtier to Isabella of Castile and the Habsburg Dynasty
Michel Sittow was born in Reval c. 1469 today the Estonian capital city of Tallinn. Possibly trained in the workshop of Hans Memling in Bruges he subsequently moved to work in the Iberian Peninsula where he first held the position of court painter. This monograph undertakes research on this phase of his career. In the Kingdom of Castille Michel Sittow was appointed painter to Queen Isabella and became a member of her household with an impressive annual salary. Thanks to the analysis of archival documents and formal and iconographical studies on Sittow’s paintings it is possible to explain the court painter’s life circumstances and describe the benefits he enjoyed and the difficulties he faced. The Castilian period was crucial for Michel Sittow’s career since over the course of his professional life he also resided at the courts of Philip the Fair Margaret of Austria Christian II of Denmark and Charles V all relatives of his first royal patron. While serving European monarchs he transferred Memling’s techniques and visual language beyond the Low Countries and developed his artistic practice and style. The analysis of the various contexts Michel Sittow worked in sheds light on his oeuvre and his possible privileged status as a courtier which provided opportunities to establish a flourishing and ambitious career in northern and southern Europe.
Pacification and Reconciliation in the Spanish Habsburg Worlds
This is the first volume to analyze pacification strategies within the Spanish Monarchy on a global level. It deals with the development and aftermath of the many early modern revolts on the Iberian and Italian Peninsula the Sicilian and Sardinian islands the cities along the North Sea and the Spanish Americas. These comparative studies uncover the different ways in which the Spanish Monarchy dealt with rebellion from cities and constituencies ranging from military responses and repression to offers for negotiation and reconciliation. They also point out common characteristics of these pacification processes such as the promises of pardon the granting of grace and the instruction of peace envoys. The different chapters each accompanied by an edition of sources show how the reconciliation and reincorporation into the Spanish Habsburg orbit proved to be a painstaking process with an unpredictable outcome.
Supplicant Empires
Searching for the Iberian World in Global History
This volume is a collection of reflections from leading senior and junior historians regarding the merits of historical comparativism in the field of Iberian history. The first purpose of the book is to encourage a dialogue between scholars of the Iberian Empires and to foster a reconsider how they see the broader history of the early modern world in light of recent historiography. The second aim of the book is to prompt scholars of other regions in global history to consider the recent literature on the Iberian Empires anew to move beyond the tropes of the Black Legend and narrative of growth splendour and decline and to study those imbrications had connected disparate parts of the world and which the postcolonial turn has unearthed. In a series of articles and interviews contributors were encouraged to consider the role of linguistic divides in the growth of historiographical strands and to speak plainly about the possible siloes that have emerged in the field. Contributors discuss the Atlantic turn corporate cultures the Catholic adoption of Protestant ideals gender and race all while drawing on insights from scholars who work on early modern nuns the material history of sugar and coffee or those who are exploring the uses of the concept of barbarity in borderlands.
Imperial Blind Spots. Iberian Rhizomatic Worlds. Indeterminacy, Thickness, and Multispecies Interactions in Early Modern Travel Accounts *
Corporations, Normative Pluralism, and Jurisdictional Culture. Explaining the Political Landscape of Early Modern Iberia *
Temps, sciences et empire
Cosmographie et navigation dans les monarchies ibériques au xvi e siècle
Dès la fin du xve siècle les monarchies portugaise et espagnole se lancent au grand large dans un élan de construction impériale qui saisit le globe. Une diversité d’acteurs et de savoirs dont la cosmographie et la navigation sont porteurs de ce processus. Ce dernier transforme à jamais l’image et le concept de la Terre comme espace de l’habitat humain retravaillant les liens entre espace et temps. Pilotes et cosmographes contribuent alors à une reconceptualisation des temporalités et des temps de la Terre. Quels textes ont-ils rédigés et lus quels instruments ont-ils manipulés à cette fin ?
En explorant ces dynamiques à partir d’une pluralité de matériaux le livre embarque le lecteur sur des bateaux naviguant vers les Indes l’invite dans des Casas et des entrepôts portuaires ou dans des universités où résonnent les échos d’une mer transformatrice des connaissances. La création de la chaire de cosmographie à la Casa de la contratación (Séville 1552) et la trajectoire de son premier détenteur Jerónimo de Chaves (1523-1574) servent de « laboratoire » privilégié d’où observer ces problématiques.
Le livre élargit ainsi la manière de comprendre la cosmographie au xvie siècle souvent réduite à son rapport à la cartographie à l’intersection de plusieurs pratiques et savoirs (histoire naturelle théologie astrologie astronomie navigation) et au-delà du clivage « Anciens-Modernes ». En embrassant d’un regard les monarchies ibériques l’ouvrage ancre dans l’Europe méridionale la question plus large de la production des techniques et des sciences à l’époque moderne inscrivant l’espace ibérique dans une première globalisation.
Ars Habsburgica
New Perspectives on Sixteenth-Century Art
Starting from a political reality which is at the same time artistic and cultural the book Ars Hasburgica aims to review the still so common historiographical conception of the Renaissance that conceives this period from a geographically Italocentric artistically classicist and politically centered the idea of "national" arts and schools.
But Renaissance is a more global and complex phenomenon. What this book aims to offer is an idea of the art of that period that considers the role played by the Habsburg dynasty and its various courts in this period trying to verify whether by applying other historiographic models and having the art of the Casa de Austria as a focus traditional ideas can continue to be maintained well into the twenty-first century. We refer to the so-called "Vasari paradigm" on which art history of the sixteenth century has largely been built over the last centuries. It is also intended to structure concepts about the art of the period not so much around nationalist considerations and identities of the arts but to raise these issues throughout ideas such as that of the court as a political artistic and cultural sphere in the wake of the classical studies by Norbert Elias Amedeo Quondam or Carlo Ossola.
Hispanic Hagiography in the Critical Context of the Reformation
The sixteenth century was a time of great religious turmoil in Europe during which the critical positions within the Catholic Church led to a definitive break between Christians. One of the major controversies pertained to the cult of the saints since in 1523 Martin Luther denied the mediating role of the saints and repudiated what he considered excesses in their devotions.
The studies presented in this volume examine the impact of the Reformation on hagiography in the Hispanic sphere. They investigate how theological positions and controversy were projected onto literature and how literature incorporated theological discourse explicitly or implicitly. Unsurprisingly the Catholic Church reaffirmed the hagiographical tradition but to what extent was hagiographical literature specifically Hispanic literature affected by reformist approaches? This book explores issues less evident and hitherto neglected: for example Hispanic Catholic authorities and authors influenced by the denunciations of the excesses of the cult of saints and hagiographical “fables” publicly declared the purging of apocryphal elements in saints’ lives; in practice however they grappled with the difficulty of applying theoretical criteria to such an enormous subject. As a result certain contradictions arose between these criteria and the commitment to the hagiographical tradition which some even sought to expand and update. This complex tension is brought out by the studies gathered here in the fields of hagiographical prose in Catalan Portuguese and Spanish in Iberia and in America without neglecting the role of the theater in the dissemination of saints’ legends.
Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700
Over the past several decades scholars of medieval and early modern Iberia have transformed the study of the region into one of the most vibrant areas of research today. This volume brings together twelve essays from a diverse group of international historians who explore the formation of the multiple and overlapping identities both individual and collective that made up the Iberian peninsula during the eleventh through seventeenth centuries. Individually the contributions in this volume engage with the notion of identity in varied ways including the formation of collective identities at the level of the late medieval city the use of writing and political discourse to construct or promote common political or socio-cultural identities the role of encounters with states and cultures beyond the peninsula in identity formation and the ongoing debates surrounding the peninsula’s characteristic ethno-religious pluralism.Collectively these essays challenge the traditional dividing line between the medieval and early modern periods providing a broader framework for approaching Iberia’s fragmented yet interconnected internal dynamics while simultaneously reflecting on the implications of Iberia’s positioning within the broader Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds.
Politics and Piety at the Royal Sites of the Spanish Monarchy in the Seventeenth Century
Institutions under royal control included not only the king’s royal residences and the royal chapels attached to them but also magnificent convent-palaces and individual monasteries belonging to specific religious orders with close affiliations to the Spanish Crown. These Spanish Royal Sites a diverse global network that helped to shape the Spanish Monarchy politically and socially in the seventeenth century extended across the different kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula and beyond to other territories in Europe America and Asia under Spanish rule. The religious practices that occurred there were an essential aspect of studying the justification of power the pre-eminence of (ecclesiastical and temporal) institutions and in the case of the Spanish Monarchy its relations with the Holy See.
This volume brings together scholars from various humanities disciplines opening up novel avenues of research for studying the organization of royal institutions in the different kingdoms of the Habsburg Spanish Monarchy especially in questions related to religion and royal piety. Particular attention is paid to the under-researched area of Royal Sites in Catalonia Valencia Portugal Sardinia and the Viceroyalty of Peru.