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Abstract
In 1627–28, the legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory served as inspiration for three literary works: Vida y purgatorio de San Patricio (1627) by Juan Pérez de Montalbán, El mayor prodigio y purgatorio en la vida (1627) by Lope de Vega, and El purgatorio de San Patricio (1628) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. This curious phenomenon has intrigued scholars for more than a century; however, while critics have studied various textual aspects of these works, they have ignored the sociopolitical factors that made the Irish question a topic of interest to a Spanish audience. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, many Irish émigrés fleeing Protestant persecution in their homeland sought refuge in Spain, which caused much heated debate throughout the country. With the arrival of Felipe IV to the throne, the 1620s saw a concerted effort in the Irish colleges to justify to the king and his court the Irish presence in Spain on the basis of their religious, ancestral, and political affinities with the Spaniards. This article proposes that Montalbán, Lope de Vega, and Calderón understood these arguments and used their respective literary works to contribute to the efforts of the Irish émigrés who strived to create a positive image of their country, its people, and its history by reinventing the legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory for a Spanish audience.
Acknowledgments
Fernando Gómez is an assistant professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. His research interests lie mainly in the theater of Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He is the author of “Inverting Plato's Allegory of the Cave: The Cave as a Backstage to the World-Theater in Various Plays by Calderón de la Barca,” published in the Bulletin of the Comediantes.
Notes
1. According to Maria Grazia Profeti, doubts had been raised by Menéndez Pelayo, followed by those of Morley and Bruerton, concerning the play's attribution to Lope de Vega. However, she has provided a strong enough argument to lay these suspicions to rest; see Paradigma 67–77.
2. Maria Grazia Profeti analyzes the debate between Hilborn, Blecua, and Avalle-Arce concerning the date of the play and reveals additional proof that supports Blecua's affirmation of 1628 as the correct date, not 1634 as proposed by Hilborn and followed by Avalle-Arce; see Paradigma 103–08. Other critics have since supported Profeti's research on this matter. See Dixon 157–58 and Ruano de la Haza, Introduction 20–22.
3. See Krapp, Miquel y Planas, Solalinde, MacBride, and Pacheco.
4. See Entenza de Solare; Valbuena-Briones; Dixon; Profeti, Introducción, Paradigma, and “Testo critico e note”; and Ruano de la Haza, “El sueño” and Introduction. Two decades later, we find more investigation into these matters; see Rodilla and Howard.
5. Philip II wrote to the City of Salamanca stating: “Encargaros mucho, como lo hago, que siguiendo vuestra costumbre en obras de caridad, y atento, que esta gente es estrangera y pobre, y que por servir a Dios han dejado su propia tierra y lo que tenían por ella los ampareis y hagáis todo el bien que pudieredes, dando para ello tal traza, que echen de ver el beneficio y socorro que recivan y huelguen de aver venido a recogerse entre nosotros, donde con alivio y consuelo puedan conseguir su intento, y buena obra que además de ser acepta a Nuestro Señor y en que vosotros mereceis tanto que me daré yo de ello mui servido” (quoted in Burrieza Sánchez 43).
6. On these official titles, see Recio Morales, “‘De nación irlandés’” 327–31.
7. The first ten Irish colleges in continental Europe were established in Spain; out of the thirty-one to come to light between 1590 and 1649, twenty were in this country (Downey, “Irish–European Integration” 100). For an overview of the subject, see O’Connell.
8. For examples of such characterizations of the Irish, see Recio Morales, “‘De nación irlandés’” 318–27, 331–38, and Ireland 85–101.
9. The duke of Lerma was one of the main proponents of repatriating the Irish in Spain. In a letter to the king, he accuses the Irish of being unwilling to work and having many vices, which thus leads him to advocate deportation as a means to “limpiar la corte de gente ociosa y bagabunda y de mal vivir y ruin exemplo” (quoted in Recio Morales, “‘De nación irlandés’” 338).
10. In this text, the author tells of his pilgrimage to Saint Patrick's Purgatory and his supernatural voyage through the cave. However, MacBride agrees with Miquel y Planas's opinion that this last section is little more than a copy of the details described in the Tractatus, which leads the two critics to believe the count most likely heeded the warnings of those who told him not to cross the savage lands of Northern Ireland (283).
11. See Downey, “Catholicism” 167–68 and “A Castilian-Regalist Cradling” 296; Recio Morales, “Not Only Seminaries” 48; and García Hernán, “Irish Clerics” 268. For a summary of the Irish exiles’ different methods of adapting and assimilating into Spanish society as well as the manner in which they justified their presence in the country to their hosts, see Recio Morales, “Irish Émigré Group Strategies.”
12. Such texts were written by Philip O’Sullivan Beare, Thomas Messingham, and Matthew of Paris, all of whom are cited by Montalbán as his sources in the Vida and by Calderón in El Purgatorio. For a discussion on these sources, see Dixon 143. In addition to St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Brigit were two other Irish saints whose exemplary lives were well documented for the same purpose.
13. The first stated, “Our Lord God took it upon Himself to make Your Majesty Catholic protector and aid of his Holy Church on Earth. It is a thing evident that you are obliged in conscience to lend a hand to the Irish Catholics” (1619), and the second stated, “You are the refuge of the Catholics: Ireland turns to you as to an asylum. You, more than any other king, are rightly known as ‘Catholic’: Ireland remains Catholic despite the tremendous confusion of the errors of the North [of Europe]” (1621).
14. We find this theory written down in Spain as early as the seventh century in Chapter 6 of St. Isidore's Etimologías (García Hernán, “Irish” 267). The Welsh text of the ninth century titled History of the Britons also mentions the Spanish-Irish ancestral connection, as does Ireland's influential eleventh-century treatise on its people's origins, the Book of Invasions (or Lebor Gabála). For a discussion on the latter two texts, see Carey 8–9. The issue has also inspired genetic research in recent times as well; see Oppenheimer 76, 87–88.
15. García Hernán specifically cites Florián de Ocampo, Esteban de Garibay, Juan de Pineda, Antonio de Yepes, and Juan de Mariana.
16. Connor O’Brien writes, “Most sacred Caesar, lord most clement, we give your Majesty to know that our predecessors for a long time quietly and peacefully occupied Ireland, with constancy, force, and courage, and without rebellion. They possessed and governed this country in manner royal, as by our ancient chronicles doth plainly appear. Our said predecessors and ancestry did come from your Majesty's realm of Spain, where they were of the blood of a Spanish prince, and many kings of that lineage, in long succession, governed all Ireland happily, until it was conquered by the English” (quoted in Recio Morales, “Irish Émigré Group Strategies” 243). For more on the Irish émigré's invocations of a common heritage with the Spanish, see Downey, “Irish–European Integration” 97–98 and “Purity” 221–25.
17. Indeed, this is exactly what the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell were suggesting when they affirmed that their heritage derived from the northern regions of Spain and when Hugh O’Neill wrote to Felipe III in 1615 expressing his anger toward the English and Scottish planters who were “uprooting from the island its ancient inhabitants who had been in possession of it for three thousand years or more since they arrived from Spain to populate it” (quoted in Recio Morales, Ireland 11).
18. Irish soldiers on the Iberian Peninsula totaled approximately 23,000 men and in the Netherlands some 13,000 (O’Connell 51).
19. It should be remembered that Valladolid was the capital of Spain at this time.
20. All references to Montalbán's Vida will be from Profeti's edition.
21. All references to Lope de Vega's El mayor prodigio will be from Profeti's edition.
22. All references to Calderón's Purgatorio will be from Ruano de la Haza's edition.
23. The text reads: “Yaze entre el septentrión y el occidente la isla de Hibernia, que oy se dize vulgarmente Irlanda, y un tiempo se llamó de santos (tantos eran los que la habitaban, dispuestos siempre a derramar su sangre en la palestra del martirio, que es la última fineza de los fieles, siendo tan preciosa la vida, fiarla por su religión a las sacrílegas manos de un tirano, que se sabe que vive de ver morir a otros) … ” (101).
24. The hymn states: Magni Patris sunt Miranda merita Patricii, / cui Dominus ostendit locum Purgatorii, / quo viventes se expurgent delinquentes filii.
25. In his edition of the play, Ruano de la Haza notes that Calderón changed the name of the king Leogario in Montalbán's novel (185). I, however, believe Egerio to be a unique character who blends the qualities of Leogario and this first tyrant mentioned in the novel. It should be remembered that the Leogario of the Vida bears witness to one of St. Patrick's miracles and, consequently, converts to Christianity, along with more than 12,000 of his subjects, thus deserving the author's description of him as one of the “reyes los más principales de Hibernia” (114). Calderón's Egerio, far from being exemplary in a positive sense, still denies the Christian God after watching St. Patrick bring back from the dead his own daughter who informs her listeners of the purgatorial flames in the afterlife. The king, unaffected and still dubious, daringly enters the cave only to be swallowed by its fire.
26. Even Calderón's treatment of Egerio can be seen as more humanizing than the picture that the anti-Irish writers had painted of all the Irish. In “Reforming the Savage,” Howard argues that Egerio “seems at last more of a noble savage than a figure of irrational fury” (251).
27. The text reads: “Estava por estas partes tan delicada la fe y tan poco segura la christiandad que traía la soga arrastrando para su ruina qualquiera que se declarava por católico” (102).
28. The text reads: “Vino a para Patricio en los últimos fines de Hibernia, y allí vendido, qual otro Joseph, a un príncipe de aquella isla, le echaron como a hombre sin fruto a guardar ganado … ” (103–04).
29. Burrieza Sánchez shows that Felipe II and Felipe III were both compared to saint-kings of the Old Testament by the Colegio de los Ingleses in Valladolid. One of these comparisons was between the Spanish monarchs and Obadiah, who saved one hundred prophets from Jezebel (Elizabeth I of England in the analogy) by hiding them in caves, a strikingly similar episode to the one in Montalbán's Vida in which St. Patrick meets the hermit and his many fellow Christians who sought refuge in the mountains (47).
30. In a later edition of the Vida, Montalbán changes the city from Perpignan to Toulouse. Lope de Vega and Calderón were apparently working from the earlier edition because they used the city of Perpignan as Ludovico's first place of exile.
31. For a discussion on this school, see García Hernán, “El colegio.”
32. For a discussion on the Irish at this university, see Recio Morales, Irlanda en Alcalá.