(1700s)
Upon the Supposition that this is the place of the Sepulture of Saint James, there are great numbers of Pilgrims, who visit it, every Year, from France, Spain, Italy and other parts of Europe, many of them on foot.”—John Adams1
For many prominent Protestant thinkers of the late 1600s, certain introspective regrets appear to have rapidly transformed into the trademark intellectual restlessness of the early Enlightenment period. These new ideas would in turn be quickly transmuted to the New World, especially via the British Empire, but also from Roman Catholic nations such as Spain, Portugal, and France as well. It would not be much longer before American nationalism began to forcefully assert itself across two hemispheres, fueled in significant part by major shifts in international power alignments from which Spain would prove to be by far the greatest loser. Surprisingly, however, this loss of Spanish authority over the New World would not automatically translate into loss of Spanish cultural or Roman Catholic influence. On the contrary, Catholic missionary efforts among Native Americans, however forcefully inappropriate, continued to prove incredibly effective, especially in North America, pushing northward and extending from coast to coast. Even more surprisingly, in New France, extending from the modern day Canadian province of Quebec to the future U.S. state of Louisiana, French Catholic missionaries seemed to accomplish their religious objectives with minimal use of violence and intimidation, oftentimes by playing upon Native Americans’ well-founded mistrust (and dislike) of both English and Spanish neighboring settlers.2 The age of Anglo-French ascendency in North America was poised to begin.
The biggest blow to Spanish imperial pretensions since the defeat of the Armada in 1588 came during the first 14 years of the new century (1700–1714) as the War of the Spanish Succession drew half of Europe into opposing camps, either favoring or opposing Bourbon Spanish rule descended from Louis XIV of France. The details of this lengthy, complex struggle are far beyond the scope of this study; the end results, however, were plain and clear even at the time. The international sway of Spain and its traditional ally, the Holy Roman Empire, were severely weakened, while the influence and prestige of France were substantially boosted both in the Old and New Worlds. England, still waiting in the wings, came out ahead as well. By 1715, Philip V, grandson of Louis XIV, ruled Spain and all its American possessions. Concurrently, Louis XV, son of Louis XIV, ruled France and all its American possessions. Both cultures also shared long traditions venerating Saint James the Greater along their adjacent Caminos, and took this veneration with them to the Americas. For a moment, it looked as though the old Anglo nightmare of a grand Spanish-Franco worldwide alliance might become a reality, but then several unanticipated factors intervened to prevent it. The most significant of these deterrents had in fact existed before the war began at the turn of the century. European settlements in the New World, whether these be Spanish, French, or English, had by then, after over two centuries of existence, formed their own stubborn identities quite separate and apart from those of their European mother countries. These immigrant communities had originally left Europe for compelling reasons, whether these be economic or religious, and were becoming measurably slower and more reluctant to act in unison even when ordered to do so by their self-proclaimed royal benefactors on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.3
No sooner had peace been re-established throughout Europe and the Iberian Peninsula, than all hell seemed to break loose in the Atlantic Ocean between the west African coast and the Caribbean Sea. Although piracy and privateering had flourished along western trade routes ever since these were first established during the Age of Discovery, the period between 1716 and 1726 has since been dubbed the Golden Age of Piracy, producing some of the most notorious and colorful names in the naval history of outlaw behavior. With a considerably weakened Spain no longer able to properly protect its merchant fleets, vulnerable Spanish shipping became easy pickings for enterprising buccaneers of all nationalities, especially experienced Anglo-French raiders suddenly deprived of their semi-legitimate livelihood as privateers with the official establishment of peace in 1715. One of the most renowned of these privateers-turned-pirates was the Welsh-born Howell Davis (1690–1719), whose intimidating flagship Saint James had been commandeered during a raid in the Cape Verde Islands (including Santiago Island).4 In plundering this Portuguese-owned corner of the world, Davis may have been emulating Francis Drake’s successful foray from the year 1585 (see Chapter 12). It was as if the old Santiago Matamoros persona had now been turned with a vengeance against its own original Iberian inventors. Nevertheless, even as Atlantic commercial shipping was being stolen and disrupted, Spanish culture continued to flourish and develop both in the Old and New Worlds. The 18th century saw the open emergence or general acceptance of art forms and blood sports now closely associated with Spain, especially in southern Spain, such as flamenco music and bullfighting.5 Just as Anglo pirates such as Howell Davis seemed to delight in appropriating the image of Santiago for their own illegitimate purposes, the Spanish-speaking peoples of southern Iberia, never overly enamored of a medieval religious cult centered around northwestern Galicia, now began to assert their own cultural mores on Spain and throughout Latin America as well.
One somewhat odd indication of Spain’s diminished status in the world after the War of Succession could be found in the Philippine Islands. Although Ferdinand Magellan had been killed by natives in the Philippines circa 1542 (see Chapter 11), the archipelago had fallen under Spanish dominion soon afterwards, when in 1565 the Basque conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi launched a successful military expedition from Mexican New Spain. By 1571, the same year that the Ottoman Turks were defeated by the Holy League at Lepanto, Manila had become the capital city of Spain’s latest acquisition under King Philip II. Absurdly, at least in logistical terms, the Philippines were now under the legal jurisdiction of far distant Mexico City, which in turn was ruled from Madrid on the other side of the world. Two centuries later, however, the balance of power had shifted considerably, and Spain was struggling to hold onto its global possessions, oftentimes even within Spain itself. Nevertheless, in 1743, the city or Pueblo of Santiago Apostol de Carig (today known simply as Santiago) was officially founded in the northern Philippines, possibly the last place of any significance named in honor of Saint James the Greater, not counting other individuals themselves possessing the saint’s name or various nicknames (see Chapter 16).6 The Philippine Islands (named after King Philip II), notwithstanding their ancient savagery and distant removal from the continent of Asia (not to mention Europe), had by modern times wholeheartedly adopted Spanish language, religion, and customs, yet retaining their own distinctive cultural heritage, not unlike its colonial counterparts in faraway Latin America. The usage of Santiago as a civic symbol in a remote region subdued long before by a colonial power then in the process of losing control of its colonial possessions strikes a note of desperation. On the other hand, no one complained at the time, or has complained since. As Spanish imperial sway enjoyed its last period of glamor on the world stage, it could boast, however briefly, that the banner of its patron saint had spread across all civilized continents of the globe, east and west.7
At this point in world history, it would be remiss not to observe substantial French inroads made in the New World during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, especially in North America. Whereas the Spanish and Portuguese plundered precious metal wealth from the southern hemisphere, the French discovered a different kind of valuable commodity from the northern climes, namely, wild animal pelts. By the early 1700s, the lucrative North American fur trade, particularly from modern-day Canada, had helped to enrich French merchants and monarchs to an impressive extent never anticipated. French missionaries quickly followed in the immediate wake of explorers and traders to convert Native Americans to Roman Catholicism, often with similarly surprising success (as mentioned previously) merely by effectively playing upon extant indigenous hostility towards other Europeans. Saint James the Greater had become the patron saint of furriers long before Europe was even aware of the New World, as pilgrims traveling the French and Spanish Caminos purchased bodily relief from exposure to the elements. Now, there was serious money to be made. As French settlements and cities sprung up from Quebec to Louisiana, most notably in the fortress-trading post of Ville-Marie, later becoming the city of Montreal (see Chapter 17), French place names bearing the moniker of Saint James or Saint-Jacques became commonplace, and survive to this very day as a reminder of that heritage. Not until the French and Indian War, culminating in British victory at the Battle of Quebec in 1759 and conquest of French-speaking Canada, were the ambitions of the latter in North America permanently checked. This epic conflict had itself been sparked by earlier escalating skirmishes between French and British traders, the latter often encroaching upon established commercial relationships with Native Americans who naturally tended to side with their longstanding French partners.
The same year (1759) that the French were being defeated by the English on the Plains of Abraham outside of Quebec City, Portugal initiated suppression of the Jesuit religious order throughout its empire. Spain, France, and southern Italy followed their example over the next eight years. Ever since its foundation at the beginning of the Counter-Reformation by the Basque nobleman Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), the Society of Jesus had both done tremendous good across the globe and acquired enormous grassroots political power, inevitably incurring the envy and wrath of government authorities whose old prerogatives had been effectively usurped. This suppression was eventually lifted by the Vatican, but it held long enough to allow the older Franciscan order to step in and fill its place on the ground, particularly in the New World. Probably the most outstanding exponent of newly energized Franciscan missionary efforts was Majorcan-born Saint Junípero Serra (1713–1784), canonized by Pope Francis I in 2015.8 Around age 36, Serra arrived in the New Spain and immediately proceeded to zealously convert Native Americans in the remote areas north of Santiago de Querétaro with considerable success.9 This was the same region that two centuries earlier had been the focal point of the long and drawn out Chichimeca War, which the Franciscans had also played a key role in subduing with their famously soft touch (see Chapter 12). Bolstered by his evangelical success, Serra was given near-consular powers by the Spanish Inquisition along the Baja California Peninsula and northernmost frontiers of New Spain. With the Jesuit fall from power and favor complete by 1767, Serra was in the right place at the right time to lead a reinvigorated Franciscan missionary push along the Pacific coastline northwards. The first of what would eventually become a chain of 21 Franciscan outposts in the future state of California came in 1769 with the establishment of the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, named in honor not of San Diego the Greater but rather the 15th century Franciscan holy man who never knew of the Americas but whose namesake Spanish flagship had sailed into San Diego Bay circa 1602 (see Chapter 13). If one is to judge by the usage or non-usage of place names, Saint James the Greater, either as a pilgrim or as a Moor-Indian slayer, had by this point in time little or no currency with either the Franciscans or Native Americans along the northern reaches of New Spain, even to a single-minded Roman Catholic evangelist such as Father Junípero Serra. In terms of place names, Serra may have begun his permanent legacy at Santiago de Querétaro in Mexico (named after the greater apostle), but he then later began its final phase at the Mission San Diego de Alcalá in California.10
As Father Serra worked tirelessly to establish Franciscan missions along the California coast, it is unlikely that he ever imagined within less than a century these same institutions would become the official property of a newly founded Anglo-descended nation-state.11 In 1776, the same year that Buenos Aires became the designated capital city for the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the Declaration of Independence was signed by representatives of the 13 formerly British, now American, colonies. This was also the same year that Serra founded Mission San Francisco de Asís, today the oldest surviving structure in that prominent U.S. municipality.12 Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the North American continent, a war was being fought and, more importantly, international diplomacy waged by the colonists on a sweeping scale that their British antagonists had hardly thought them capable of achieving. After swift victory eluded the British during the first two years of the struggle, the colonists accomplished the stunning feat of bringing the French back into the American theater as colonial allies, followed in short order by the Spanish and Dutch (as French allies), although it was only the French who were capable of fielding significant manpower and munitions. All were united in their fear of growing British global power and particularly its threat against their New World holdings. Although some of the American Founding Fathers (such as Alexander Hamilton) were already thinking in terms of hemispheric expansion, during the 1770s this seemed like a far-fetched idea to the conventional wisdom of the times. Santiago Matamoros, after all, belonged to the Spanish and perhaps, to a lesser degree, to the French—not to the British American colonial upstarts. Nor did the American colonials (unlike say, the Franciscans or Jesuits) exhibit any special interest in converting other peoples to a specific religious creed, having very little common ground amongst themselves in that regard.
Among the prominent American Founding Fathers, the Puritan-descended John Adams of Massachusetts was one of few who resembled a conventional Christian. Interestingly, as things would play out, it was Adams who in late 1779 volunteered to undergo a hazardous trans-Atlantic passage, then overland trip through northern Spain, to make a diplomatic rendezvous with fellow-revolutionary Benjamin Franklin in France. Traveling with his two young sons Charles and John Quincy, Adams made port in A Coruña along the northern Galician coast in December of that year. Then, bypassing Santiago de Compostela for the sake of making haste, he landed on the old pilgrim Caminos near Lugo and began traveling eastward, away from Santiago and towards France along the traditional return routes. Writing on December 28, 1779, Adams—good former Englishman that he was—implies a healthy dose of skepticism towards the authenticity of the Santiago cult without expressly denying it (see header quote). More impressed by the rugged terrain of Caminos and dismayed by the squalor of 18th century rural Spain, Adams later admitted to his wife Abagail that he had made a logistical mistake in traveling overland.13 From Adams’ account, it is apparent that traveling the Caminos during the Age of Enlightenment, even in reverse direction, was as difficult as ever. Once in France, Adams was mostly regarded either as a frontier bumpkin or crazy person, depending on with whom he was dealing, but for all Americans, the desired end-result was achieved.14 With French help, the Revolution was won, and in 1783, Great Britain formally recognized American independence in the Treaty of Paris. Six years later (in 1780), the Paris Bastille was stormed and the French Revolution began. Like its American counterpart, the upheaval in France would have major repercussions for Spain and Latin America, but this impact would prove to be far more immediate and, in hindsight, more sustainable for those directly involved (see Chapter 16).
As the United States achieved independence and France lurched towards revolutionary chaos, Spain enjoyed one last hurrah of sorts in terms of imperial pretense. King Charles or Carlos III (1716–1788) ascended the throne in 1759, and for the next 29 years proved himself to be one of the more capable European monarchs of the Enlightenment era.15 Although a religious man in the conventional sense, Charles was hostile towards the growing political power of the Jesuits and initiated their censor and suppression throughout what remained of the Spanish realm, thus clearing the way for Franciscan missionary activities in places such as California and the future American southwest. It was also Charles who was king when the American revolutionary John Adams was allowed safe passage through northern Spain in route to meet up with Benjamin Franklin in France. Most notably, Charles undertook to beautify Madrid into one of the great (and newest) European capital cities, even though its political and military heyday as a center of power was by then long past. Palaces became bigger, more opulent, and more ostentatious; later when the Spanish empire disintegrated, many of these palaces and open spaces were gradually donated to the public as museums and parks. Originally conceived with pretentions of global empire, these now public properties in Madrid today distinguish that city as an attractive destination for both international tourists and Spaniards from every corner of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the Spanish-speaking world in general. In truth, these monuments had been built during the 1700s as an attempt to restore a prominence lost earlier during the War of the Spanish Succession, a prominence never to be regained but providing a convenient reminder for all observers of what once had been the greatest political power center on earth. Within these magnificent public displays, physical traces of the old Santiago cult may still be found for anyone caring to take notice.16
Among the numerous artists and artisans employed by Charles III to beautify Madrid, one of the more famous was the Venetian-born painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770). Tiepolo was a very prolific exponent of the Rococo style which dominated European artistic tastes during the mid– and late–18th century, although the merits of that style are often overlooked or undervalued in comparison to the Baroque and Neoclassic or Romantic eras which surround it chronologically. Tiepolo was a highly successful journeyman throughout his long career, which culminated in spectacular fashion at the Madrid court of Charles III between 1761 and 1770. There the largest of his allegorical frescoes are still viewed daily by over-awed tourists at the spacious Palacio Real, including The Apotheosis of the Spanish Monarchy and Glory of Spain, both executed by Tiepolo between 1762 and 1766, with the latter created for Charles’ magnificent throne room. For one of his final works (1767–1769), Tiepolo painted a stunning version of The Immaculate Conception for a Franciscan altarpiece, around the same time that King Charles was officially suppressing the Jesuit order in favor of the Franciscans, and today on view at the Museo del Prado.17 This majestic and austere depiction of the Virgin by Tiepolo represents in some respects a throwback to the older Baroque style, accurately portraying her as a global phenomenon by the late 1700s.18 1769 was also the same year in which Father Junípero Serra established the first of his Franciscan missions near San Diego, California (see above). Tiepolo, from the beginning stages of his career, had demonstrated considerable flair for religious and allegorical themes in his work, but one canvas completed during his younger days in Venice, now on display in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, had especially exhibited this talent.
Tiepolo’s startling St. James the Greater Conquering the Moors (1749–1750) was reportedly commissioned by the Spanish ambassador to England, perhaps designed as a reminder to the English that it was the Spanish who originally paved the way for them in the New World.19 England would have then been in the process of preparing to wage war against the French in the theaters of North America and Europe.20 To describe Tiepolo’s version of St. James as over-the-top would not be inappropriate. Here we see a haloed, decidedly light-skinned, unarmored, white-cloaked saint, fighting in the traditional à la jinete style, mounted on a magnificent white steed, as if descended from the overhanging storm cloud. He carries a white banner displaying the red cross of Santiago, gazing towards heaven as if receiving directions, while cherubim look on approval as the saint mutilates a dying Moor with his sword. All the Moors are portrayed as dark-skinned sub-Saharan Africans—historically inaccurate since the Islamic conquerors of Spain largely consisted of Berber Caucasians. The fictional Battle of Clavijo rages in a picturesque background. It appears as if Santiago is killing Shakespeare’s Othello (see Chapter 12). The scene could also be easily interpreted as a disturbing allusion to the ongoing slave trade with America, one in which by then the English had taken the decisive lead. During the mid–18th century, importation of African slaves to the British colonies of the American South was burgeoning, thanks to the huge profitability of cash crops such as cotton and tobacco. Taken in context, the painting comes across a subtle warning and reminder to the English diplomats who would be soon viewing it in London.
All in all, it would be accurate to say that the 18th century Age of Reason was not kind to the Santiago cult. Though still active, the Spanish and French Caminos appear to have been in decline, both in terms of pilgrim traffic and supporting infrastructure. In general, anything that hinted of religious superstition was out, especially if it was being used as a pretext to conquer and exploit the vulnerable. For those still clinging to religious faith, the Marian cult appears to have completely superseded that of Santiago, whether he be warrior or pilgrim, in both the Old and New Worlds, but especially the latter. In Spanish-speaking regions, place names were now being named San Diego more typically after the Spanish Franciscan saint, rather than the elder son of Zebedee. In France, the accumulated wealth of churches was looted by revolutionaries, regardless of which saint the church was named after. In Paris, the great Tour Saint-Jacques, located not far from Notre-Dame Cathedral itself, was mostly demolished, while the great Abby of Cluny, one that had done so much during the Middle Ages to promote the pilgrimage cult of Santiago, was razed to the ground in a fury. Above all, Islam no longer presented a threat to Europe or its colonial holdings, with a few isolated exceptions. No symbol of popular resistance was any longer needed. On the contrary, it might well be said that by the 18th century, Christian Europe—particularly England, France, and Spain—had become the main threat to the rest of the world in terms of subjugation. In the strict military sense, Santiago Matamoros had done his work all too well from a global perspective.
With the death of King Charles III of Spain in 1788 came the end of a long era: the absolute monarchy that had dominated Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire, and had also given rise to the Iberian Santiago cult during the Dark Ages. In the United States, it had been cast aside (with French assistance) by the American Revolution, then in France itself shortly thereafter, by the guillotine. The last decade of the century would mark the low point in Spanish prestige as a sinister prelude to Napoleonic invasion (see Chapter 16). As the highly visible examples of the American and French Revolutions spread their influence across several continents, remaining colonies that owed their original foundation to Spain and Portugal felt little gratitude or duty towards their mother countries. Spain could no longer protect its colonies from other countries or even pirates, though it still insisted on exploiting these satellites for its own benefit. As for Portugal, its once domineering global power had been thoroughly broken. Soon Portuguese monarchs would be seeking refuge and sanctuary within its own American colonies from the Napoleonic storm that was about to engulf all of Europe. To the intrepid citizen-armies of Bonaparte, the ancient cult of Saint James the Greater would have little or no resonance, although oddly enough, they would unwittingly help to revive a certain degree of sympathy for Spain (and Santiago Mayor) on an international level, including from very unlikely quarters within the still quite formidable British Empire.