(1542–1600)
How should I your true-love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.
—William Shakespeare1
Not to be Spanish or Portuguese during the mid–16th century was, almost by definition, to be rightfully fearful of rapidly accumulating Spanish-Portuguese political and military power on a global scale. With much of the New World being appropriated with lightning speed by Iberian conquistadors, the idea of universal dominion by the Roman Catholic church suddenly did not seem like too far-fetched an idea. Along with growing religious hegemony came the proposed authority of law. By the 1540s, the Holy Roman Empire assumed an importance (and to many, a threatening potential) not enjoyed since the coronation of Charlemagne back in the year 800 (see Chapter 3). In 1519, an 18-year-old Charles V, the Hapsburg grandson of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, was elected Holy Roman Emperor. The old ambitious dream of Alfonso the Wise (see Chapter 8)—that of a Castilian-based Catholic emperor—was finally realized three centuries after the fact, even though Charles, strictly speaking, was Dutch by birth and upbringing. The same intolerance that had swept the Iberian Peninsula clear of non–Catholics within a matter of decades during the late 1500s, had now become a serious liability to anyone anywhere not of the Roman Catholic faith. Charles, unlike Alfonso, had succeeded in becoming Holy Roman Emperor; unlike Alfonso, however, Charles showed little toleration towards Jews, Muslims, or Protestants, let alone non-believers. Nevertheless, Charles V was obviously a man of tremendous talent, learning, and energy, fluently speaking most of the languages found within his huge realm, including Castilian. As a formidable military leader, he was rarely defeated in the field, and as a sophisticated, worldly statesman, he fully appreciated the unprecedented complexity and difficulty of his challenging job. Notwithstanding these many advantages, however, the Roman Catholic dream of imperial unification did not last very long, and within a few short decades, had vanished almost as quickly as it had initially arisen. Winning battles, passing legislation, and punishing offenders, in the final analysis, proved not enough, not nearly enough in fact, to perpetuate or sustain global dominance, at least in the political sense.
At the heart of this unanticipated inherent weakness lay an old dilemma that the ancient Romans had often wrestled with, namely, individual freedom of religion, as opposed to top-down imposed religion from the state. Frequently Roman efforts were incredibly successful thorough an official policy of toleration, but at other times the results could be counterproductive, particularly whenever that policy of tolerance was forgotten or disregarded. Santiago Matamoros had conquered Iberia and the New World through force of arms, but holding, governing, and strengthening those conquests would require other non-military qualities. Within Europe itself, the Protestant Reformation initiated by the likes of Martin Luther and John Calvin found fuller nationalist expression in King Henry VIII’s English Supremacy Act of 1534.2 Henry had dared to divorce, or rather annul, over strenuous papal objection, his longstanding marriage to Catherine of Aragón, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the aunt of Charles V. The Holy Roman Empire now faced formidable military resistance over religious matters from the likes of England, Germany, Scandinavia, and the Low Countries. Even as Charles introduced progressive legislation advocating the human rights of oppressed Native Americans, the anti–Spanish Catholic propaganda campaign later known as the Black Legend was in its formative stages—vestiges of which are still with us today—thanks in large part to widespread abuses of the conquistadors and of the Spanish Inquisition.3 Apart from religion, Spain’s empire also faced consistent opposition from European Catholic rivals such as Portugal and France, and sometimes from within the Vatican itself. Taken together, this European fire in the rear presented daunting, and in hindsight, debilitating obstacles to Spain’s global ambitions, notwithstanding its massive territorial gains and burgeoning coffers of wealth.
More new Spanish cities in Latin America, however, continued to appear. Among these were Santiago Atitlán in modern day Guatemala, founded in 1547. Another was Santiago del Estero (del Nuevo Maestruzgo) in present day Argentina, founded in 1553. Other new place names prefaced with variations on the name of Santiago proliferated across the New World, including throughout Mexico. Then in 1550, less than 30 years after the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortés, and just as Christian religious conflict began to seriously escalate in Western Europe, Mexico witnessed the first widespread insurrection by Native Americans against Spanish rule, known as the Chichimeca War.4 This decades-long conflict was finally resolved only after Spanish troops had been removed from certain provinces, government subsidies granted to petitioners (later dubbed “Peace by Purchase”), and the continuous intervention of Franciscan missionaries, had successfully diffused tensions. The outbreak of these hostilities coincided in 1550–1551 with a timely public debate over the human rights of Native Americans (or lack thereof) held in Valladolid, Spain, between the Dominican missionary-turned-reformer, Bartolomé de las Casas, and the academic pro-slavery-apologist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. The official result of the debate was inconclusive, but on the ground opponents of slavery were gradually winning. The New Laws of Charles V issued in 1542 which outlawed enslavement of Native Americans (see Chapter 11) found growing acceptance and enforcement in both the Old and New Worlds, even as the Holy Roman Empire met with its first permanent setbacks at home in Europe against the Protestant states of the Reformation.5
The first tangible sign that the Reformation was a permanent phenomenon arguably came in 1556 when Charles V shocked the world by voluntarily abdicating as Holy Roman Emperor, retiring to a Hieronymite monastery for the last two years of his life. Charles was peacefully succeeded as Holy Roman Emperor by his younger brother Ferdinand I, but the Spanish crown passed to Charles’ son, Philip II of Spain (1527–1598). Exhaustion, failing health, and personal demoralization, had caused Charles to step back. Historians are still debating his thought processes, although it appears obvious that he was taken aback by the fanaticism of the Protestant resistance, especially in his native Low Countries where he probably expected to be hailed as universal monarch with little opposition. Instead, he there frequently encountered ferocious rebellion only overcome through bloody and expensive Pyrrhic victories.6 By 1555, German Protestants states had forced outright concessions from him, a tacit admission of Roman Catholic failure, even though the Germans continued to nominally acknowledge Charles as their sovereign until his abdication.7 The original idea had been to use the tremendous inflow of wealth coming from the Americas to help the Holy Roman Empire achieve global dominance. Instead, other nation-states now wanted a piece of the action and those from whom the wealth was being extracted were in outright defiance.
The biggest disappointment for Charles, however, had to have been England. He and Henry VIII had started out as friends, in-laws, coreligionists, partners and allies. By 1534, all of that was over. Charles’ son Philip attempted to mend fences, or rather join fences, with England in 1554 by marrying his father’s cousin and the granddaughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the English Catholic Queen “Bloody” Mary I (1516–1558), but this royal marriage proved to be a sham and only escalated civil strife within England itself. In 1558, Henry VIII’s other daughter, the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, and the English Reformation was instantly provided with both a rallying point and stabilizing force to secure its future. Now Spain was faced with its most formidable enemy since the time of the Reconquista, a rival ably led by a talented monarch, and one with comparable naval expertise plus no shortage of ambition for using it.8 Moreover, on a symbolic level, England had little or no use for the Spanish traditions of Santiago. Although England had hundreds of churches and places named after Saint James the Greater, the legends of Santiago Matamoros carried minimal resonance for the average Englishman or Englishwoman, whether noble-born or commoner. For example, in direct opposition to the popular Spanish cult, Henry VIII had built St. James’s Palace in London as a high-profile royal residence, named after the other apostle Saint James (the Lesser), followed by numerous Anglican churches in England dedicated to the same personage.9 This English disdain or indifference towards the Santiago cult was well in keeping with the Protestant Reformation’s generally critical attitude towards religious pilgrimages and their attached commercial infrastructure, financial profits of which mostly flowed into the coffers of Roman Catholic countries opposed to the Reformation or directly to the Vatican itself.10
The clearest English literary expression of hostility towards the Santiago tradition, however, though one rarely noticed (let alone dwelled upon), came from none other than Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare. Leaving aside legitimate questions of true authorship, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the creator of these plays had a highly critical attitude towards the old Spanish cult that was both consistent and reoccurring, either by design (for purposes of propaganda) or from genuine sentiments of English patriotism. Specific examples of this Shakespearean hostility are numerous but limited space within these pages permits only a few of these be briefly summarized. The most famous without a doubt is the Bard’s original arch-villain to end all arch-villains, Iago from Othello.11 Iago (or James, Anglicized) is no saint, but he is certainly a Moor-slayer (and far from being sympathetic as a result), not by supernatural force of arms but rather through sustained cunning and deceit, arguably on a superhuman level. Shakespeare’s most famous dramatic antagonist was likely, on one level, a parody of the character’s fellow Florentine Niccolò Machiavelli, but was also clearly a caricature of Spain’s patron protector, at that time presenting a direct threat to the political and religious independence of Protestant England. Moreover, the character of Iago plainly had an earlier prototype from Shakespeare’s dramatic canon in Cymbeline, where another similarly-named villain, the Italian-born Iachimo (or Jachimo), does his very best and worst to undermine, ultimately without success, the romantic happiness of the English-born hero and heroine, respectively, Posthumous and Imogen.12 Given not one but two obvious examples of this kind within Shakespeare’s catalogue, it is difficult to believe that the Bard held an overly- favorable opinion of the Spanish quasi-religious cult.
The list of dubious references continues. More subtly, in Hamlet, Ophelia during her famous mad scene makes direct reference to Camino pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela while singing a deranged lament (see header quote).13 Given the disturbing context, audiences are led to naturally associate Camino pilgrimage with madness and falsity, since in the play Hamlet has just unwittingly killed Ophelia’s father Polonius, triggering her insanity and ultimate suicide.14 The allusion is not meant to be flattering, nor is it an isolated example. In the far less well-known but no less astringent play All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare uses another allegory of religious pilgrimage to even more unsettling effect. The heroine Helena leaves her home in “Rossillion,” France, disguised as a Camino pilgrim with true intent to pursue and bring back her wayward husband Bertram from Italy.15 In the play, she announces her feigned purpose by letter to the Countess with “‘I am Saint Jacques’ pilgrim, thither gone…’” (III.iv.4). After arriving in Florence, Italy, where Bertram is situated, Helena cleverly tells her hostess (a Florentine widow) that she is in fact traveling in the opposite direction from whence she just came “To Saint Jacques le Grand” (III.v.34). Geography aside, the fact is that alleged Santiago pilgrimage in All’s Well is repeatedly used as a ruse, and a very effective one at that. Yet another example is the melancholic Jacques (James) from As You Like It, this comedy’s only cheerless character. Even more sacrilegious, at least from a Spanish Catholic point of view, is the secular use of pilgrimage allegory in the timeless revelry scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in which the teenage star-crossed lovers fall for each other at first site (I.v.93–110).16 Romeo refers to the person of Juliet as “dear saint” (103) and “holy shrine” (94), then to his own lips as “two blushing pilgrims” (95), while Juliet addresses Romeo as “Good pilgrim” (97), urging his advances with “For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch” (99). And so forth. Later in Act V, Juliet’s tomb becomes an irresistible shrine for Romeo’s desperate return to Verona. For Shakespeare, Camino pilgrimage deliberately takes on every possible worldly meaning except that for which it was originally intended. In these plays, we are not far from profane universe of Boccaccio (see Chapter 9), an acknowledged source material for the English Bard, and another writer possessing a keenly critical eye directed towards the Santiago cult.
While English poet-playwrights such as Shakespeare were challenging foreign Spanish authority with quill and paper, English adventurers were doing the same on land and sea, with similar effective results. By far the most renowned and successful of these adventurers was Francis Drake (1540?–1596), a common-born privateer who made a long career out of tormenting Spanish trade shipping worldwide, and was rewarded with a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth for his extraordinary efforts. A seasoned veteran of New World piracy or privateering by the time he was in his thirties, Drake’s first astounding feat came in 1577–1580 when, imitating Ferdinand Magellan (see Chapter 11), he circumnavigated the globe with his flagship Golden Hind, pillaging Latin American trade routes as he went along. Notably, in 1579 he took the trouble to make port in northern California at Point Reyes (i.e., Drake’s Bay), formally claiming for England the very same remote territories that Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo had claimed for Spain some 37 years previously. Meanwhile, King Philip II was taking his own high-handed measures to extend unified Spanish Catholic rule. In 1580, the so-called Iberian Union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns was imposed—much to the dissatisfaction of Portuguese nationalists—thereby creating a single political entity under Philip’s growing authority both in Europe and the Americas. The time for a final show down between Spain and England was rapidly approaching. This moment arrived in 1585 when the English sent military aid to the Protestant Low Countries, at the time newly asserting their independence against Spanish rule, and thus sparking an undeclared war between England and Spain that would continue unabated for the rest of the 16th century. Francis Drake wasted no time in entering the fray.17 That same year (1585), he first raided southern Galicia (Vigo) in Spain, then after that, the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands located off West Africa, making his primary target the heavily populated and symbolically named Santiago Island. From there, Drake crossed the Atlantic Ocean and hit several prosperous locations in the New World, including the city of Saint Augustine in modern day Florida, a settlement founded by Spanish only 20 years earlier in 1565. Though all successful, Drake’s trans-Atlantic raids proved to be a mere practice run for what would follow over the course of the next decade.
In 1588, came the unhappy climax of Spanish frustrated ambitions as the ill-fated “Invincible” Spanish Armada of Philip II was first beaten back in the English Channel by a makeshift fleet under Drake’s command, then ravaged and reduced by storms. By the time the remains of the Spanish fleet had limped back to Iberia, they were merely happy to still be alive. Protestant England remained free, while King Philip retired in reclusive prayer to ponder why his great enterprise had failed. Drake, however, was far from finished. The following year (in 1589), El Draque, as Drake was now known to the Spanish, once again boldly raided Galicia. This time, though, the Galicians were ready for him. After making port and inflicting some damage at A Coruña, the English were repulsed with heavy losses in both men and shipping. This was not far from Santiago de Compostela, perceived as the ultimate target of the English attack. Not since the days of Almanzor (see Chapter 5) had a non–Catholic military force so severely threatened the revered shrine. According to local legend, Galician women joined Galician men in hand-to hand fighting against Drake’s forces, much to the astonishment and dismay of the English.18 Before the English retreat, however, the relics of Saint James the Greater at Santiago were hidden for safekeeping—so much so these artifacts were subsequently lost for nearly three centuries before being rediscovered in 1879 (see Chapter 17).19 As for Francis Drake, this setback seems to have curbed his aggressiveness somewhat, and he never enjoyed another major victory afterwards. In 1595, he attempted to repeat his record of successful raids against Latin America but instead suffered a series of embarrassing defeats, culminating in a complete repulse at San Juan, Puerto Rico, late that same year. Now in poor health and presiding over a damaged, demoralized task force, Drake expired from dysentery in early 1596 and was buried secretly at sea off the coast of Panama. In hindsight, one is tempted to conclude that the beginning of the end for this great military commander came only when, at the height of his fame, he apparently aspired to desecrate the religious shrine at Santiago de Compostela.
Some three hundred later, by the late 19th century, after the tables had turned politically and militarily with the British Empire dominating world affairs while Spain had been more or less ejected from Latin America (see Chapter 16), vestiges of national rivalry between the two cultures were still going strong enough to help generate a commercial industry. One vehicle of expression for this was the ever-growing popularity of Shakespeare’s plays. Towards this end, the wood engravings of the artist John Gilbert (1817–1897) cannot go without mention. The young British provincial-born Gilbert was a mostly self-taught painter of middling rank at best until he decided to devote his long career with impressive single-mindedness—not unlike Francis Drake before him—to a focused task, namely, the print illustration of Shakespeare’s complete dramatic works.20 By the time he was finished, working in partnership with the Brothers Dalziel (often leaving their signature name on the plates), Gilbert had produced well over 700 engravings of this type. One would be hard-pressed to name other Shakespearean images that have received wider distribution amongst the general reading public over the last 150 years. Indeed, the prolific work of Gilbert in this area has nowadays become nearly synonymous with all Victorian-era Shakespeare production values, sketched out and highlighted in all their unrestrained, sentimental and melodramatic glory.
For Othello alone, Gilbert published at least 28 illustrations (circa 1867), 10 of which depict the evil character of Iago in a sinister light hardly equaled before or since. Among these, one can choose according to individual taste, but the one depicting Act III, scene iii, in which a calculating Iago brings a despairing, helpless, and insanely-jealous Othello to his knees, is of special note. Both men are armed with swords, but arms are irrelevant in this case since human weakness is effectively exploited by whoever truly knows how to exploit them. A Greek column of Cyprus anchors the background behind Othello, as if to emphasize the classical tragedy of the scene. A suppliant Othello extends his clenched fists to heaven, not in prayer, but swearing vengeance, and hence his own eventual destruction. Iago glances sideways at his human prey, feigning sorrow and regret while inwardly rejoicing at his successful ruse. A few pages later, by the beginning of Act IV, Iago stands triumphant over a completely prostrate Othello. The traditional visual image of Santiago Matamoros is thus transformed or inverted into the very symbol of evil intentions, embodied by the ensign Iago with the defeated Othello as his not-so-innocent but still sympathetically tragic victim.
Gilbert’s demonstrative illustrations of the Shakespearean and innately English hostility towards the Santiago cult, though dating from the late 1800s, had their stylistic roots in the German Protestant engravings for the printed word long before Shakespeare’s time. Even before the Reformation and Age of Discovery had begun, for that matter, the illustrative work of Martin Schongauer had cast Santiago Matamoros into a noticeably harsher light that seemed to presage worse things yet to come, both for the military cult of Saint James the Greater and for the world at large (see Chapter 11). Then during the early 1500s came the brilliant, distinctive engravings of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472?–1453), a German engraver well-known to both the Protestant Martin Luther and the Roman Catholic Charles V. Cranach’s Saint James the Greater from his Martyrdom of the Apostles series (like the Schongauer image, today the property of the Art Institute of Chicago), on its surface appears relatively faithful to the biblical account from Acts of the Apostles, but the comparison ends there. Herod Agrippa, his Jewish advisors, attendants, and executioner all come off as sinister and murderous Spanish inquisitors, while James and a sympathetic peasant woman bystander become oppressed Protestants of Germany or the Low Countries. By the 1520s, both regions were already under severe pressure from the Holy Roman Empire. Even more troubling is an anonymous portrayal of Saint James the Greater from approximately the same time and place, usually attributed to a follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, and today in possession of the de Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Here, Santiago is presented in his standard pilgrim’s garb, but also as a decrepit, blind and barefoot old man clutching a Dominican rosary. The depiction is far from flattering. One is instantly reminded of Martin Luther’s advice to his would-be German pilgrim readers to stay home and take care of their families and the poor (see Note 10). By the end of the same century, this Protestant ambivalence would explode into outright hostility as effectively expressed through the dramatic genius of Shakespeare.
By the end of the 16th century, it had become abundantly clear to any ordinary observer that western civilization had changed profoundly from what it had always seemed to have been only a hundred years previously. The English defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 had alone signaled to everyone that neither the Old nor New Worlds would be exclusively dominated by Spanish Catholicism, and that Protestant northern Europe, particularly England, would wield powerful influence in all future world affairs. Aside from religion and politics, by the year 1600, everyday life, both in Europe and America, had changed as well. Ordinary people worked, played, studied, ate and drank much differently than their forebears had.21 In sum, human thinking had itself changed within the short time span of a few generations. Most philosophers would have said, and still would say, that this overall change was for the better; nevertheless, some things had been lost as well, and many of these losses might well be considered regrettable. For one, the religious cult of Saint James the Greater long centered around Santiago de Compostela would never again command the same legions of faithful that it had back in the days when Christian Iberia had to fight for its very independence. The brave Galician men and women who successfully drove back marauding English invaders led by Francis Drake in 1589 could still not alter the bigger course of history. Faith in, and dedication to their local shrine could not roll back the Protestant Church of England or, for that matter, prevent Native Americans from incorporating their traditional religious practices into an updated version of Roman Catholicism. Our Lady of Guadalupe would soon enough rival Santiago de Compostela as a Christian pilgrimage destination. Moreover, for those incapable of clinging to such a simple, unquestioning faith, much more would be required from now on to satisfy pure intellectual curiosity. This same relatively novel sentiment carried over into most other fields of human endeavor, including patriotism, military service, and even romantic love. Moving forward, the long-established cult and image of Santiago would, after the turbulent 16th century, frequently assume an aspect that was far more ambiguous, nuanced, and at times, even somewhat ironic.