Abstract

In the following article we present an unpublished and unknown text of Galician discoverer Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. The letter, wrote in Latin, was send to Lord Burghley, the first minister of Elizabeth Tudor. Its content links chro-nicles and legends of Spain and Galicia to the genealogy of Sarmiento de Gamboa. Here, we offer the biographical context of the letter, a brief study of the sources, apart from the transcription of the original and the translation of the text into Spanish.

Abstract

The following discussion offers a panorama of the hermeneutical horizon from which the philological annotation apparatus of the Libro de los ritos critical edition was created. The book, written by the Dominican friar Diego Durán in 1579, describes the religious life of the Nahua people with emphasis in the Mexicas or Aztecs of the postclassical period. Also, this work offers some considerations about the ethnohistorical value of the Libro de los ritos and explains how this idea was used as a hypothesis to create the philological annotation apparatus of the critical edition. The value of the analysis of this experience is the contribution that it offers to the discussion between philologists about the proper methodology that must be used for the critical annotation of the Indian chronicles, documents that conserve the memory of the Native American people.

Abstract

Francisco Botelho de Morais e Vasconcelos (1670-1747), a Portuguese poet of Castilian language, lived and bonded with remarkable Spanish intellectuals of his time; he reached fame while still alive, he was raised to the status of Honorary Member of the Spanish Royal Academy, and he left us a legacy which includes a prolific and ground-breaking poetic and literary work. He set up a literary academy in his own hometown, an episode we will further explore, by including an unpublished manuscript authored by some of its members. He is, notwithstanding, an insufficiently celebrated author within the ambit of Iberian Studies.

Abstract

In a Catholic monarchy, it is to be expected that religion played a transcendentally important role. Not just from a spiritual standpoint, however, but far beyond that, it came to be one of the basic premises of the political and dynastic identity of the Habsburgs. Based upon this, a complex theological conception of politics was constructed, and all the available means of rhetoric and persuasion in Baroque society were mobilized for propagandistic dissemination. In particular, art at the service of faith became a useful instrument as the «broadcaster» of all visually transmitted ideology. In this respect, the two pillars that supported the Pietas hispanica —distinctive signs and mystic unifying agents— carried special importance:  Eucharistic and Immaculist devotion professed by the monarchs of the House of Austria. By this means, the political-confessional and propagandistic complex discourse that irradiated from the heart of the Monarchs to American territory was articulated. This article will look at some of the most significant images in relation to this theme, integrating them into the political-religious discourse of the time.

Abstract

Despite of the geographical distances between the two kingdoms, both Hungary and the hungarians seem to be topics widely spreaded in the Spanish literature of the Golden Age. The study tracks the intercultural reasons which might have caused this vast representation of the Hungarians among the literature topics of those centuries. Besides the more or less evidents paralelisms –like the fact of being ruled by the same dynasty, the big challenge represented by the Ottoman expansion both for the Catholic Monarchy and Kingdom of Hungary or being part of the same «Universitas Christiana»— the study shows the very thin nets of the less known personal histories of the thousands of Spaniards fighting against the Ottomans in Hungary. They were there taking part in diplomatic missions or being members of the imperial Court as well as of the Eastern Habsburgs.The presentation of personal histories demonstrates the magnitude of the attention of the Spanish public towards the happenings in Hungary and it shows the fundamental roots both of this specific interest in Hungarian topics and the perception and interpretation the genius of the Spanish Golden Age literature have of it.