Lucrecia's Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain - Softcover

Kagan, Richard L. L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520201582 ISBN 13: 9780520201583

Publisher: University of California Press, 1995

Synopsis

Branded by the Spanish Inquisition as an "evil dreamer," a "notorious mother of prophets," the teenager Lucrecia de León had hundreds of bleak but richly imaginative dreams of Spain's future that became the stuff of political controversy and scandal. Based upon surviving transcripts of her dreams and on the voluminous records of her trial before the Inquisition, Lucrecia's Dreams traces the complex personal and political ramifications of Lucrecia's prophetic career. This hitherto unexamined episode in Spanish history sheds new light on the history of women as well as on the history of dream interpretation.

Charlatan or clairvoyant, sinner or saint, Lucrecia was transformed by her dreams into a cause celébre, the rebellious counterpart to that other extraordinary woman of Golden Age Spain, St. Theresa of Jesus. Her supporters viewed her as a divinely inspired seer who exposed the personal and political shortcomings of Philip II of Spain. In examining the relation of dreams and prophecy to politics, Richard Kagan pays particular attention to the activities of the streetcorner prophets and female seers who formed the political underworld of sixteenth-century Spain.

About this title

About the Author

Richard L. Kagan is Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Students and Society in Early Modern Spain (1974) and Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile, 1500-1700 (1981) and the editor of Spanish Cities of the Golden Age: The Views of Anton van den Wyngaerde (California, 1989).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Lucrecia's Dreams

Politics & Prophecy 16th Century SpainBy Richard L. Kagan

University of California Press

Copyright © 1995 Richard L. Kagan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780520201583
Introduction

It was in the spring of 1980, while working in the archives of the Spanish Inquisition in Madrid, that I first read about the arrest almost four hundred years earlier of a twenty-one-year-old madrileC1a , Lucrecia de LeC3n. The circumstances of her arrest were not mentioned in the archival documents, but Lucrecia was charged by the Holy Office with having "invented" a series of dreams alleged to contain a variety of blasphemous and heretical propositions as well as seditious statements injurious to the honor and reputation of the Spanish monarch, Philip II. My interest in Lucrecia's case was further piqued by references to what the inquisitors described as "dream registers," a set of notebooks containing transcriptions of Lucrecia's dreams from November 1587 until her arrest two and a half years later. I subsequently discovered that the dream registers had not been written by Lucrecia herself, but that she had dictated her dreams daily to several churchmen. A register of more than four hundred dreams was compiled in this manner and later seized by the Inquisition.

Lucrecia's dreams are not, superficially at least, of a type that would necessarily interest a Freudian analyst. Some portions are undeniably autobiographical and can probably be classified as "day-residue" dreams offering glimpses of her daily waking activities. Others can probably be equated with daydreams of the kind described by Freud in his essay "Family Romances," and these do provide some fragmentary insights into Lucrecia's personality and psyche."1 They suggest that she was a bright, intelligent, although unlettered, ambitious woman frustrated by the inability of her father, a Madrid solicitor, to provide adequately for his family's welfare. In particular, Lucrecia was angry at her

father for having failed to give her a dowry or even to help find her a suitable husband. In the dreams, Philip II substitutes for Lucrecia's father and, in an almost textbook case of Oedipal displacement, becomes the target of Lucrecia's wrath, repeatedly faulted for having neglected to arrange for the marriage of his own daughter, the infanta Isabella. For the most part, however, Lucrecia's dreams do not offer what Freud described as "a royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind,"2 and they do not lend themselves to psychobiographic analysis.

Rather, the real importance of these dreams lies in their social and political criticism of Philip's Spain, and this study approaches Lucrecia's dreams as glosses on historical events. In addition to failing his daughter, Philip is depicted in the dreams as the source of everything that Lucrecia perceives to be wrong with Spain: a corrupt church, oppressive taxes, lack of justice for the poor, and a weak national defense. The dreams also warn of the kingdom's imminent "loss" or "destruction," announcing that Philip's troubles will begin with the defeat of the great Armadab a disaster that Lucrecia predicts almost a year before the Invencible set sail for England in 1588. In her dreams she also foresees that Spain will soon be invaded by her enemies, both Muslim and Protestant, and suggests that these calamities are divinely ordained retribution for Philip's personal shortcomings and misguided policies. Lucrecia even presages the deaths of the king and his heir apparent, the infante Philip, the extinction of the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg, and the accession of a new monarchy that would reconquer the lands lost to the Muslims and ultimately recapture Jerusalem.

The Western tradition of millennial prophecy begins, of course, with the Old Testament, but by the early Middle Ages doomsday prophecies had acquired something of a nationalistic flavor. In the seventh century, for example, Isidore of Seville prophesied that the sins of Spain's Visigothic rulers would result in the kingdom's destruction by the Moors.3 (The Moorish invasion began in 711, seventy-five years after Isidore's death.) Similar prognostications cropped up periodically thereafter, notably in the Letter of Toledo, a famous doomsday prophecy originally fabricated in 1286, which announced that the de-

struction of Spain would be followed by an era of restoration in which the religion of Islam would be vanquished.4 In the second half of the fourteenth century, the tradition was reinforced by the arrival in Spain of the so-called Prophecies of Merlin, originally the invention of the twelfth-century English writer Geoffrey of Monmouth.5

At the Spanish court in the Middle Ages, astrologers regularly circulated "fulfillment prophecies" which informed new monarchs that their destiny was to defend the church, to complete the Reconquest, and to destroy Islam. Variants of this prophecy announced that the Reconquest would be entrusted to a pastor angelicus , known alternatively as a New David or El Encubierto (The Hidden One), a blessed redeemer who would come from the east, rescue the kingdom from its enemies, and forever defeat Islam.6 Lucrecia's pastor angelicus is a shepherd named Miguel who bests the Muslims, conquers the Holy Land in the name of the Catholic church, and persuades the pope to move the Holy See from Rome to Toledo, the city traditionally regarded as Spain's spiritual capital.

Lucrecia's dreams can thus be viewed as a belated manifestation of a centuries-old prophetic tradition that, according to some observers, was already in eclipse by the time she experienced her first prophetic dreams.7 But Lucrecia's contemporaries were less concerned with medieval prophetic traditions than with the social and political commentary in her dreams. The Renaissance had its own theories about the interpretation of dreams, and if we are to approach Lucrecia as a historical figure and to understand her and her dreams as her contemporaries would have, we must first appreciate the seriousness that early modern Europe accorded nighttime visions.

Lucrecia's supporters claimed her dreams were divinely inspired prophecies, messages sent by God to caution Philip and his ministers. In early modern Europe prophecies were commonly promulgated to consolidate support for a new monarch or regime, and in Spain royal births were regularly accompanied by the circulation of fulfillment prophecies, similar to those of the Middle Ages, which avowed that the future monarch was destined to complete the work of the Reconquest. Conversely,

prophecy was used to establish religious standards by which to judge a secular regime, and in this guise prophecies were often wielded as an ideological weapon by opposition movements and radical groups. Among those who turned prophecy toward political protest, the best known are Savonarola, the radical Dominican preacher whose followers seized control of Florence in 1491, and Thomas MC

Another decisive factor in the Inquisition's case against Lucrecia was the Spanish church's attitude toward women and women visionaries. Beginning with Deborah and Judith in the Old Testament, Christianity recognized a long line of female seers and religious women who had achieved a state of spiritual grace and were able to receive divine messages, usually in the form of visions. The most renowned medieval visionariesb Hildegard of Bingen, Bridgit of Sweden, and Catherine of Sienab were canonized, but by the mid-fifteenth century the church had grown weary of what the Sorbonne theologian Jean Gerson described in 1416 as "women's enthusiasm."9 From then on, female seers were suspected of diabolical delusion, and visionaries were more likely to be burned at the stake than elevated to sainthood. A notable exception was Lucrecia's near contemporary Teresa of Jesus (1515b 1582), the mystical foundress of the Discalced Carmelite Order. Although some churchmen questioned her orthodoxy, Teresa was canonized in 1622, a brief forty years after her death.

Despite the church's uneasiness, female clairvoyants and visionaries continued to appear, occasionally becoming figures of local veneration and popular pilgrimage. Citing the limits that European society placed on women's conduct, historians gener-

ally regard prophetic dreams and visions as an important means for women to exercise autonomy and authority, to gain support for a variety of religious activities, and to attain a voice in secular politics. In particular, the medievalist Caroline Bynum has suggested that mystic or nonorthodox spirituality can be traced to the Church's refusal to allow women to celebrate mass.10 Although this explanation may pertain to nuns and other religious visionaries rather than to lay seers, Lucrecia's case offers an excellent opportunity to study how an ordinary woman could enter the political arena by drawing upon spiritual gifts.

Even so, the expressly political content of Lucrecia's dreams represents something of an anomaly. Typically, visions and other ecstatic experiences offered religious women in Europe a means of participating in theological debates.11 Visions also provided these women with a means of consolidating their position within a particular convent, of increasing their convent's prestige, or even establishing a shrine or some other type of new religious institution. To cite one Spanish example, Sor MarC-a de la Antigua (1566b 1617), a Dominican nun in Utrera, experienced a vision in which she saw three nuns in a new convent, holding a statue of the Virgin that moved and made the sign of the cross. According to her biographer, this vision was a prophecy concerning the foundation of the Convento de Descalzas de la PurC-sima ConcepciC3n, a Dominican house established in Marchena in 1631.12

Other women capitalized on the fame of their visions to become spiritual advisors to kings and dukes. The influence of these "spiritual mothers" is difficult to measure, but in Italy nuns and tertiaries such as Luca da Narni, an advisor to Ercole I, duke of Este, and Osanna Andreasi and Stefana Quinzani, both of whom were attached to the court of the dukes of Mantua, achieved considerable notoriety at the start of the sixteenth century.13 The dukes patronized such women to enhance their own authority, hoping the reputation and spiritual goodness of the "mothers" would redound on their courts. Thus the Italian and other Renaissance princes made a point of publicizing the holy women's ecstasies, raptures, visions, and prophecies, generally in the form of engravings or printed libretti. Spiritual

mothers also appeared in Spain, the most famous being Sor MarC-a de Agreda (1602b 1655), the Franciscan nun who became a close confidante of Philip IV during the 1640s and 1650s.14

Most of these spiritual mothers eschewed direct involvement in secular politics, generally limiting themselves to advice on such topics as religious reform, morality, and social justice, but occasionally they did offer counsel on political matters. For example, Bridgit of Sweden was known throughout Europe for her Revelations, a copious compendium of several hundred divinely inspired visions. The vast majority of her visions pertained to the corruption of the church and the need for clerical reform; they also advocated the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome, new crusades against Islam, and a general renewal of Christianity. A few of Bridgit's visions, however, were addressed to secular rulers, notably those of Cyprus and Naples, warning them of the necessity to reform their sinful realms. One vision even expressed a certain sympathy for the English victory against the French in the Hundred Years War.15 As limited as the political content of Bridgit's visions appears, it was sufficient to galvanize the opposition of Jean Gerson and other French clerics during canonization proceedings at the Council of Constance in 1415. The message was clear: visionaries, particularly female visionaries, were not to stray from the spiritual realm.

Despite such warnings, a number of other late medieval and Renaissance female visionaries spoke to secular matters, often at considerable risk. There was Joan of Arc, of course, but also Elizabeth Barton, the so-called Nun of Kent, whose visions warned that Henry VIII's plan to divorce Catherine of Aragon would lead to his dethronement and to the destruction of England. On Henry's orders, Elizabeth, her spiritual advisor, and several followers were arrested in November 1533 and tried by the Star Chamber on charges of high treason. On the scaffold at Tyburn the following April, Elizabeth confessed her sins, claiming, much as Lucrecia de LeC3n would some sixty years later, that she was a "poor wench without learning" who had been wrongfully deluded by "learned men."16

A final example of a prophetess who ventured to involve herself in secular affairs is Sor MarC-a de la VisitaciC3n, prioress of

the Dominican Convento de la Annunciada in Lisbon. The Nun of Lisbon, as she was called, is of particular interest because Lucrecia knew about her and she appears in several of Lucrecia's dreams. Beginning in 1575, Sor MarC-a experienced a series of ecstasies, raptures, visions, and miraculous levitations. She was far better known, however, for her stigmata, five wounds in her side that dripped blood in the shape of a cross.17 Sor MarC-a also had more worldly concerns: Following the annexation of Portugal by Philip II in 1582, she emerged as a supporter of the exiled Portuguese pretender, dom Antonio. During the autumn of 1588 Sor MarC-a made several public statements on Antonio's behalf, and according to one source she boldly announced, "The Kingdom of Portugal does not belong to Philip II, but to the Braganza family. If the king of Spain does not restore the throne that he unjustly usurped, then God will punish him severely." Sor MarC-a also presented herself as the living incarnation of Portugal, her wounds the symbol of Portuguese suffering under the Spanish yoke.18

Within weeks of these public protests, the royal governor in Lisbon ordered the Inquisition to investigate Sor MarC-a's many miracles. The Holy Office soon reported that her famous stigmata were self-induced pinpricks, that her levitations were faked with the aid of sticks, and that her halos had been craftily created by mirrors and lights. On 6 December 1588 the Inquisition pronounced Sor MarC-a guilty of "trickery and deceit" and sentenced her to life exile in Brazil.19 On 25 November, two weeks prior to the publication of Sor MarC-a's sentence in Lisbon, Lucrecia had a dream in which a mysterious man told her that "everything she [MarC-a] has said is false." Evidently, advance information about the Inquisition's findings had reached Madrid, and Lucrecia, aware of the dangers awaiting false visionaries, hoped to avoid Sor MarC-a's fate by establishing herself as a seer who spoke only the truth.

Yet Lucrecia's lack of spiritual credentials sets her apart from the spiritual mothers and the holy women who enjoyed the support and protection of their religious orders. In contrast, Lucrecia exhibited few of the qualities hagiographers traditionally associate with sainthood or a religious calling.20 As a

doncella , she was more interested in marriage than a spiritual life of ascetic devotion. Furthermore, she never claimed to have had celestial visions nor any other form of miraculous spiritual experience. Most decisively, perhaps, several months after she was arrested Lucrecia gave birth to a child out of wedlock, an act incompatible with the church's presumption that only chaste women were entrusted with divine messages.

In this respect Lucrecia's career as a lay prophet has less in common with the lives of holy women and more to do with the pursuits of the so-called street or marketplace prophets.21 Dressed in sackcloth and often carrying a cross, these seers, both religious and secular, publicly preached millennial scenarios. Stock figures in the history of medieval and Renaissance Europe, the street prophets appeared in greatest numbers during times of economic crisis and political unrest. One such period was the 1520s and 1530s, when the squares and plazas of Europe teemed with seers announcing the end of the world. In Catholic districts, at least, they proclaimed Charles V the Last World Emperor, the ruler destined to unite Christendom, conquer Islam, and prepare the world for the Day of Judgment.22

But the model of the street prophet suits Lucrecia little better than that of holy woman, since almost all the marketplace seers were men. How, then, we must ask, did this young woman embark on such an unprecedented and politically dangerous career? And why did she do so? Lucrecia's dreams provide an answer to the first of these questions. For the second, we must look more closely at Lucrecia herself.

Continues...

Excerpted from Lucrecia's Dreamsby Richard L. Kagan Copyright © 1995 by Richard L. Kagan. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520201582
• ISBN 13: 9780520201583
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 246