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Abstract
Jerónimo de Arbolanche's epic poem Las Abidas (1566) is set in the ancient Iberian kingdom of Tartessos during the mythical reign of the king Gárgoris and his son Abido. The choice of the prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula as a literary topic has puzzled critics, who most often have interpreted it as a purely fantastic mixture of historiography with chivalric and pastoral romances purely for the sake of showing off the author's erudition. By contextualizing it within the practice of early modern historiography, this article proposes that Arbolanche deliberately uses the myth of Tartessos to elaborate a political and personal fantasy of the originary civilization of Spain figured as a pastoral space and centered in the Pyrenees and Navarre. On the one hand, his image of an idealized and essentialized Spain, unified from times immemorial, crafts a political fantasy of imperial Spain that also grants a place of privilege to Navarre. On the other hand, it serves as a document of self-promotion in which to emphasize his Basque genealogy.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the anonymous readers and Linde Brocato for their help in improving this article. Remaining errors and infelicities are of course my own.
Notes
1. On how Spanish identity is forged in early modern epic, see Davis 10–14.
2. Carlos Mata Induráin observes that “La acción de Las Abidas se sitúa en una época remota, de forma que se produce una desvinculación intencional con el presente actual y con el pasado auténticamente histórico” (317). His opinion in this matter reflects the overall critical tendency to make equivalent our current sense of Iberian history with that of Jerónimo de Arbolanche and his contemporaries. Similarly, for Krulls-Hepermann, Las Abidas would be an exception to the Spanish peculiarity of placing the pastoral Arcadia within a geography and a time familiar to its readers (594, n. 7). On the contrary, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo considers Las Abidas “uno de los más curiosos ensayos que se han hecho para poetizar las oscuras tradiciones de la España prehistórica” (qtd. in González Ollé 36), and Juan Ignacio Ferreras classifies it as a historical novel, suggesting in passing that Arbolanche “se propone la reconstrucción de los orígenes míticos de España” (57).
3. On the uses of history in early modern Spain, see Fernando Wulff 13–63 and Lucia Binotti 43–47.
4. For the historical sources used by Arbolanche, see Luis del Campo 173–289.
5. In his Primera part de la historia de València (1538), Beuter concurs in stressing the importance of Abido for demonstrating the existence of a prehistoric Iberian political unity: “Regnà, doncs, Abido, en lo any del diluvi 1228, i fón tal persona per a la república d’Espanya qual senyalaven los pronòstics … donà lleis als espanyols i posà en orde les set ciutats famoses d’Espanya” (137).
6. Certainly, the use of “Spanish nation” as a political concept would be anachronistic, although the terms “nación española” and “nación de los españoles” are mentioned by early modern historians with very dissimilar purposes (Ballester Rodríguez 39–75). For a recent debate about the applicability of the category “nation” to the early modern period, see the volume edited by Alain Tallon, as well as the volume edited by Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño and García García.
7. The narrative of Las Abidas incurs multiple incoherencies even for the standards of early modern historiography, such as including the inhabitants of Numancia or praising the princes of Celtiberia (86v) while prophesying that the destruction of Spain would begin with the arrival of the Celts (183r).
8. For the uses of Tartessos in early modern Spain, see Álvarez Martí-Aguilar 25–35.
9. On the debates about translatio imperii and translatio studii in sixteenth-century Spain, see Navarrete 18–24 and Binotti 68–72. For an analysis of early modern pastoral as a vehicle for expressing imperial ideologies, see Nelson 1–68 and Middlebrook 103–37.
10. For the uses of Trojan genealogies in early modern Europe, see Tanner 67–118.
11. Recent reevaluations of early modern pastoral genre explore how it participates in early modern political and social debates. Rosilie Hernández-Pecoraro analyzes how gender difference is conceptualized in the Spanish pastoral romances (130–96), and the studies by Benjamin Nelson and Leah Middlebrook underscore the imperial ideology reflected, respectively, in pastoral romances and pastoral poetry (Middlebrook 103–37). I have also explored elsewhere how the pastoral genre serves as an ethnocentric refiguring of Spain vis-à-vis its Moorish legacy (Irigoyen-García, “Qué si destas diferencias” 120–22).
12. Jerónimo de Arbolanche had a very negative image among his contemporaries (González Ollé 21–25, 33–41; Maestre Maestre 457–59; Salinas Quijada 204–08). Cervantes Saavedra considered Las Abidas as “de verso y prosa el puro desatino” (180).
13. See Alain Milhou, who branded this process as “de-Semitization” or “de-Orientalization” (35–38), and the more recent reassessment by Barbara Fuchs (11–30). My reading of the pastoral romances as a literary genre conniving with the process of cultural cleansing might be contested by the fact that the most successful among them, Jorge de Montemayor's La Diana, contains the Moorish tale of El Abencerraje. The issue is too complex to be dealt with in these pages: For the moment, I can merely point out that El Abencerraje was interpolated in a subsequent edition of La Diana after Montemayor's death—an insertion arguably motivated precisely by a perceived “lack” in the cultural image of the Iberian Peninsula offered by the original Diana. Maxime Chevalier suggests that the interpolation aimed to emphasize the chivalric component of La Diana, to make it more accessible to the Spanish readership (49).
14. On the myth of the Golden Age in early modern Spanish literature, see Stagg 74–89.
15. The paganism of these shepherds who worship Jupiter and Pan is not incompatible with Old Christian identity, as it might seem at first glance. Las Abidas justifies Abido's paganism “por ser antes de la natiuidad de nuestro Señor Iesu Christo” (11v). However, Old Christians pretended that they were actually the descendants of gentiles—neither Muslims nor Jews—who converted to Christianity. Gaspar de Uceda's Tratado (1585) summarizes the social debate over the statutes of blood purity as “la discordia que al presente ay en España entre los desçendientes de gentiles contra los desçendientes de aquellos que antiguamente se convirtieron del judaísmo” (69).
16. On the importance of sheep herding in early modern Spain, see Phillips and Phillips (xi–xviii).
17. Kagan has amply studied the uses of local histories, which he labels chorographies, in early modern Spain (83–88). See also Quesada for a comprehensive view of this historiographical genre (3–21).
18. For a compilation of commentaries on the Basque language, including the early modern period, see Madariaga 157–297.
19. For Garibay's denial of the Visigoth place in the formation of Spanish identity, see Ríos Saloma (60–62).
20. On the use of Tubal to promote Basque primacy in public offices and discrimination against the descendants of the Conversos, see Aranzadi 889–97; Azurmendi 82–83; and Wulff 44–48. Paradoxically, Tubal's foundations in Spain had been originally used by the Conversos to demonstrate that Iberian Jews had arrived to the Iberian Peninsula before the crucifixion of Christ and were therefore innocent of the Israelites’ deicide (Juaristi 20; Lida de Malkiel 21–24; Reyre 40).
21. Although he refutes the hypothesis that Basque may have been the common language of ancient Iberia, Juan de Mariana acknowledges in his Historia de España (published in Latin in 1592; translated into Spanish in 1601) the “antiquity” of the Basque language and the common belief that it was the only trace of Iberian linguistic identity before the Roman invasion: “Solos los vizcaínos conservan hasta hoy su lenguaje grosero y bárbaro, y que no recibe elegancia, y es muy diferente de los demás y el más antiguo de España, y común antiguamente de toda ella, según algunos lo sienten; y se dice que toda España usó de la lengua vizcaína antes que en estas provincias entrasen las armas de los romanos, y con ellas se les pegase su lengua” (6a).
22. At first sight, both Tartessos and “vasco-iberismo” would serve to reinforce the conception of the Monarchia Hispanica as a primordial political institution that is simply born again in the sixteenth century. But unlike Vasco-Iberian Tubalism, the myth of Tartessos did not provide rhetorical materials for upholding the glories of a single region until the nineteenth century (Álvarez Martí-Aguilar 25–31).
23. Esteban de Garibay, one of the most ardent advocates of “vasco-iberismo,” states that Gárgoris and Abido were “españoles,” an adjective that in his own historiographical narrative was almost equivalent to “Basques” when talking about ancient Iberia (116–19). Baltasar de Echave does not mention Gárgoris, but takes it for granted that Abido was a foreigner, arguably because his vision of Basque glories predates the chronology of previous historians, pushing the search for the “purity” of Spaniards to even more remote times (40v–41r).
24. Luis del Campo suggests that Arbolanche is referring to the river Queiles (25–26). However, he is probably following Pedro de Medina, who locates this mythical river in an unidentified spot between Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa (170b). This is one of the many place names of ancient Iberia mentioned in classical sources whose location is uncertain and disputed (Sierra Urzaiz 19–20). For instance, in Juan de Arze Solorzeno's pastoral romance Tragedias de amor (1607), the river Calibe is located in Galicia: “Calibs, rio de Galizia, llamado aora Cabe” (199v).
25. The introductory epistle by his master Melchor Enrico is also quick to exonerate any potential defect of his disciple's work by alluding to this alleged Cantabrian (i.e., Basque) ancestry: “pues su natura le nego eloquencia/quel suelo Cantabro fue venerado/de belicoso, pero no de sciencia” (Arbolanche 3v). Sierra Urzaiz retrieves Jerónimo Arbolanche's birth certificate, which confirms his Basque ancestry (7).
26. On the dissemination of “Cantabrismo” in Navarra, see Larrañaga Elorza (457–73). There were in fact more inclusive versions of “tubalismo” and “cantabrismo,” such as the one held by Peñalosa y Mondragón in Libro de las cinco excelencias del Español (1629), for whom the descendants of Tubal are “aquellos valerosos Bascos y Nauarros, Cantabros o Vizcaynos, Asturianos o Castellanos viejos, y algunos Aragoneses, y Catalanes, los mas encumbrados sobre los Peryneos … inuencibles montañeses hijos del primer Poblador … Trataron luego de reparar los daños y boluer a ser Señores, y reduzir estas cosas a aquellos primeros siglos, quando debaxo de un Principe natural viuieron nuestros passados, como de Tubal, Hispalo, Gargoris, Abdides, Argantonio Reyes de España: y lo que antes de los Arabes, era una sola Monarquia, se repartio en muchos Reynos” (8v).
27. Las Abidas shares many ideological coincidences with the Primera parte de la Clara Diana a lo divino by Fray Bartolomé Ponce, which is also a eulogy of the lands comprised by the Ebro Valley, focusing in this case on Aragon. In fact, Bartolomé Ponce is the only early modern author who praises Arbolanche and includes an introductory sonnet written by him (256v–58r). On the other hand, Juan Pérez de Lazarraga wrote a short pastoral novel in Basque by 1564 to 1567, precisely during the same time period when Arbolanche published Las Abidas (Irigoyen-García, “Identidad” 291–96; Urquizu 166–68).
28. For the medieval sources of the legend of Sancho Abarca, see Alberto del Río Nogueiras 145–55.
29. Not surprisingly, Arbolanche omits the important Jewish and Mudéjar communities that existed in Tudela until the beginning of the sixteenth century (García Arenal 73–80).