Imperial Spain 1469-1716

"This is a book which, for me, helps enormously in understanding the kind of society Teresa was part of. I mentioned just now the statutes of purity of blood. What’s happening in 16th century Spain is all in the backwash of the Reconquista, the reconquest of Spain from the Muslim rulers who had held onto parts of Spain until the 1490s. The New Spain, ruled by the Catholic Monarchs, is very self-consciously a kind of flagship of Christian identity and it’s on a bit of a high in the 16th century. The New World is producing enormous amounts of revenue. Gold and silver are flowing in from the Americas. Spain has a well equipped army and navy, it has a massive diplomatic and political presence in continental Europe. Culturally and intellectually, it’s also an immensely creative place. You have some of the leading scholars of Europe, you have the new edition of the Bible produced in Spain during this period, and so on. Elliott’s book certainly helped me to see how Spain’s confidence really blossomed in this period, after the conflicts of the Middle Ages, and how that blossoming had the deep shadow side of intensifying the contempt for and marginalisation of racial and religious minorities. Muslims and Jews had largely been expelled from Spain by 1492, or forcibly converted. People of ‘mixed blood’, as the Spanish would regard it, were suspect—even if they’d become Christians, like Teresa’s own family. All of that comes together in this sense that Spain is not quite a chosen nation, but certainly a favoured child of God, and has a very special relationship to the Catholic Church. “The convent she belongs to is not spectacularly wicked or corrupt. It’s just a bit cosy” Now, already in Teresa’s lifetime, this is beginning to fragment a little bit. We know that, for example, that agriculture in Castile was in decline by the middle of the century. We know that the flood of foreign bullion into Spain actually had a rather depressing effect on indigenous Spanish industry. People didn’t feel they had to work in the same way. People wanting to make a quick fortune in the New World would neglect lands and businesses in Spain itself. So it’s not all as sunny a picture as the propagandists of imperial Spain at the time would have liked to think. By the time of Teresa’s maturity in mid-century, let’s say the 1560s when she’s doing quite a lot of her writing, things are more wobbly than they were. There’s also the awareness, which Teresa certainly reflects, not just of the internal conflicts of the Spanish church, but the new conflicts in Europe, between Catholic and non-Catholic powers. She’s very much aware of the fact that the Wars of Religion are beginning in France, that there is, as she sees it, violence against the church on the part of reformers. She sees her business in religious reform as being, in part, a response to the attacks on the church that are happening elsewhere in Europe. She knows almost nothing about Reformed theology, and not very much about what’s actually happening. She reads the horror stories, and her response is to those. But it’s all part of the sense that it’s ‘a world in flames’—an expression she used at one point. She might have grown up in the first great glow of Spanish imperial prosperity, in the first half of the century, but that is not looking so favourable by the time she is most active. She’s aware that the systems that she’s taken for granted are more fragile than anybody thought. Elliott, who is one of the great historians of Spain of the last generation, does give a wonderfully readable account of this rise and fall of confident, expansionist Spain, against which background Teresa makes quite a lot of sense. I don’t think she’s got very much sense of the Spanish project although, interestingly, she has a brother serving in the armies in the New World; there are letters from Mexico. We know that some early Carmelites, including St. John of the Cross, her confessor and great friend, considered missionary work in Mexico. So there’s an awareness of that New World perspective. Teresa is quite clear that the armies of the king of Spain in the New World are doing Christ’s work. She takes that on board quite routinely, but it’s not something that comes up regularly. Similarly, she’s quite happy to make use of her contacts in the royal court at times, even going directly to the king. At the same time, she maintains a fair distance from that world when necessary, and is quite capable of being extremely critical of all its habits. On the subject of the New World, it’s perhaps worth noting—as one of those completely useless facts—that one of the earliest references to potatoes in European literature can be found in Teresa’s letters. Her brother sends her potatoes from the New World."