All right now, time to share some book notes. I’m currently sort of obsessed with late medieval/renaissance Italy, trying to sort things out in my head. What it all comes down to for me – and has really ever since graduate school – is trying to understand how God works in, through and despite the human beings who are the Church. This really all came to a point for me in grad school when for some course – it might have been historiography, but I’m not quite sure it would have been that class – I wrote a paper in which I attempted to figure out the relationship between imperial doings and theological strife in the post-Nicaea years. Anyone who’s even glanced at the period knows how testy a task that is.

In short, what might have happened if Theodosius had stayed on his horse?

So anyway, as I read, even as I write, that is the essential question. This Incarnation business – such a hassle, it seems sometimes, and although every period has something to say about this, the period of Extreme Papal Worldy Power is a most apt period in which to meditate on such things.

First up, Spanish Rome by Thomas Dandelet. From the book description:

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Rome was an aged but still vigorous power while Spain was a rising giant on track toward becoming the world’s most powerful and first truly global empire. This book tells the fascinating story of the meeting of these two great empires at a critical moment in European history. Thomas Dandelet explores for the first time the close relationship between the Spanish Empire and Papal Rome that developed in the dynamic period of the Italian Renaissance and the Spanish Golden Age.

The author examines on the one hand the role the Spanish Empire played in shaping Roman politics, economics, culture, society, and religion and on the other the role the papacy played in Spanish imperial politics and the development of Spanish absolutism and monarchical power. Reconstructing the large Spanish community in Rome during this period, the book reveals the strategies used by the Spanish monarchs and their agents that successfully brought Rome and the papacy under their control. Spanish ambassadors, courtiers, and merchants in Rome carried out a subtle but effective conquest by means of a distinctive "informal" imperialism, which relied largely on patronage politics. As Spain’s power grew, Rome enjoyed enormous gains as well, and the close relations they developed became a powerful influence on the political, social, economic, and religious life not only of the Iberian and Italian peninsulas but also of Catholic Reformation Europe as a whole.

It’s an interesting book, although it bears a faint whiff of "dissertation" about it – perhaps not true, but the writing is often careful to the point of lifelessness. But that’s not why we read it, of course – we wanted the information, which we got.

What comes through loud as clear, as it does in any even cursory reading of anything to do with the rise, maintenance and fall of the Papal States, is the toll this centuries-long endeavor took on every level. We try not to judge the past, but to see it on its own terms, for what it was, in context, but it can be a challenge during this period. Certainly, this is just what was – the papacy accrued land and realms, ruling the Church became the role of nobility, families battled for control, popes and cardinals rode off to war…and in the midst of it all, the faith continued to be preached and the poor continued to be served.  But in the end, the worldly pressures placed on the papacy, the impact these pressures had even on matters related to the spiritual realm, was unreal. As much as we gripe about Church today? I’m going out on a limb…it’s been worse. Yeah.

See what I mean about sorting it out? Life in Christ is also human life, lived out in every culture and stage of the world’s existence. We pray that we are allowing our faith to shape our world and worldview, but the push is always on from the other direction. Always.

Anyway, the politics Dandelet describes are quite fascinating, pointing out the strategic importance of the Papal States, and the importance other rulers placed on keeping the Pope happy. The description of the Spanish community in Rome – with its feasts, processions and charitable efforts was illuminating – particularly the importance of giving dowries as a charitable act.

I was driven slightly nuts while reading the book because for much of this period the Spanish national church in Rome was Santiago (of course) which was on the Piazza Navona. I couldn’t place it – There are two churches right on the Piazza Navona, one the famous Sant’Angese in Agone and another one on the other side, which we wandered through, but quickly, because there was hardly anything to see, and I couldn’t remember it being named the church of Santiago or anything remotely Spanish about it.

Ah, but then I found out that yes that was it:

On the east side of the Piazza Navona is an entrance to the church of Nostra Signora del Sacro Cuore which has its main entrance in the Corso Rinascimento.  It was formerly known as San Giacomo degli Spagnoli and was built by a Spanish bishop, Alfonso Paradinas, in 1450, as the Spanish national church.  It had a hospice beside it for Spanish pilgrims.  In 1879,  the Spanish association was transferred to Santa Maria in Monserrato (see below) but retains some association with St James.  In his chapel is a statue of the saint with three scallop shells on the shoulder strap of his scrip.  This is a copy of the original which once stood here but was transferred, with other artefacts, to the Monserrato church.  On the wall of the chapel is a painting, by Giovani da Modena, of the saint as Matamoros.  There are other very faded murals of scenes from St James’s life.

(Tiago=Giacomo=James, btw)

Two random interesting points from the book:

1) The early efforts, in Spanish history of the period, to tie in the Spanish to the foundation of Rome and to Classical Rome. Very creative history-making went on during the period, some of which made its way into art: the amazing ceiling in some of the Borgia apartments by Pinturicchio, which tell the story, linking the Borgias (Alexander VI, most notorious member of the family, of course – Borja is the original name) to these early days, and even a kinship with pagan deities. The link above is an article from the IHT relating the tale:

One of Alexander’s first actions as pope was to summon Pinturicchio to do up a suite of rooms in the Vatican Palace. The artist’s real name was Bernardino Betto, but people called him Pinturicchio because of his rich style. He used to build up a three-dimensional picture with gesso and lather it with pure gold and even more expensive midnight blue made from crushed lapis lazuli. The glowingly ornate effect in the Vatican is scarcely diminished today, even though the frescoes have never been restored.

Pinturicchio’s style, however, was already old-fashioned at the end of the 15th century, when patrons were coming to appreciate artists who could suggest gold and relief by the illusion of their brush. The developing art market also expected its artist heroes to be Prometheans, and Pinturrichio is described as a wizened, henpecked little man who hardly cut a swath in the salons. Still, there was a romantic and adventurous side to him. He was one of the first to take taper in hand and explore the buried ruins of ancient Rome, which were choked with debris and inhabited by giant rats and bats. In the grottoes of the Domus Aurea, the Golden House of Nero, he discovered a fantastic and delicate form of mural decoration that was called alla grottesca – the origin of the word "grotesque." Those designs provided inspiration for the Borgia frescoes, and for many other artists.

Although the subject matter of the paintings is ostensibly religious or biblical, Pinturicchio and his assistants included pagan themes as a reminder of the syncretic beliefs of contemporary humanists, of whom Alexander doubtless was one. The bull was the symbol of the Borgia family, and Pinturicchio worked the animal into the paintings everywhere.

2) Dandelet devotes some time to the effort to get Spanish saints canonized. This might offend some who would like to see the canonization process as free from politics, for one comes reading Dandelet with the impression that despite the real virtues of Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila and Francis Xavier, there was more politics than piety behind their canonization.

What is true, however, is something we forget – Spain had been unfailingly loyal to the papacy in these Reformation and post-Reformation days. Even France had its religious issues. It is not surprising that in Rome, Spanish religious movements were viewed with particular appreciation. Two tidbits:

-When Dominican Diego of Alcala was canonized in 1588, he was the first saint canonized in 60 years. He’s more commonly found as St. Didacus.)

-Isidroe the Plowman, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier were all canonized on the same day: March 12, 1622. After the ceremony (mostly funded by Spain), the fireworks, and the distribution of charity to the poor (the Jesuits gave out white bread, rather than the usual dark rye), they had a little celebration to mark the occasion:

Beginning at Saint Peter’s, the large crowd first processed across the Tiber to the Chiesa Nuova, where the priests of the Oratory of Santa Maria in Valicella left the standard of their founder, Saint Philip Neri. The procession then continued past the statue of Pasquino into the PIazza Navona, where the church of Santiago was located. It was there that the ‘great multitude of Spanish priests’ who followed behind the standard of Saint Isidore left his standard and then rejoined the procession behind the standards of Saints Ignatius and Francis Xavier.

From the Piazza Navona, the procession went through the Piazza Madama and the Piazza della Minerva and then down the street that ended directly in front of the Jesuits’ mother church, the Gesu. Greeted as they had been at the other two churches by choirs and musicians, as well as by the senators of Rome and the students of the Collegio Romano, the corwd that followed behind the standard of the two Jesuit saints left their standards in the church and then returned to fall in line behind the other gorups that were now all gathered behind the standard of Saint Teresa of Avila.

From the Gesu, the processeion made its way down the ‘strada delle Botteghe oscure’ until it reached the Ponte Sisto, where it crossed the Tiber again. Once in Trastevere, it was but a short distance to the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala, where the last standard, Saint Teresa’s, was left…

That the saints and the ceremonies surrounding their canonization were themselves viewed at that time as part of a triumphal, heroic landscape in a Christianized, classical style, is reflected in a series of poems written for the ocassion by the Roman writer Mutio Dansa di Penna. Dedicated to Phlip IV, ‘king of Spain and of the Indies," the first of the poems describes the saints as the ‘splendor of Iberia: invincible offspring of Philip, and of Charles, celestial heroes." In another poem, moreover, Phlip IV is called the ‘great Spanish Jove,’ and the canonizations are seen as demonstrating to all assembled the ‘high worth in the great Roman temple’ of ‘invincible Iberia." (Spanish Rome, pp.  185-6)