LOCAL TURKS: PRINT CULTURE AND MAUROPHILIA IN EARLY MODERN SPAIN

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For introductions to the extensive historical scholarship on Iberian Christian–Muslim relations, see Harvey, Muslims in Spain 1–44, and García-Arenal, “Religious Dissent and Minorities.” 2. The narrator gives the impression that the priest's nonchalance is feigned and his communication of the actual information cagey: “de lance en lance, vino a contar algunas nuevas que habían venido de la corte, y entre otras, dijo que se tenía por cierto” (550, ch. 1). For a similarly complex exchange of news about the Turks and their exploits, see the discussion about the fall of Nicosia in Cervantes's Novela del amante liberal. 3. Excellent overviews of pliegos sueltos include Caro Baroja, Cátedra, and Cátedra and Infantes's introduction to Los pliegos sueltos de Thomas Croft 11–48. See also Rodríguez Moñino. 4. García-Arenal and De Bunes Ibarra's scholarship has stimulated diverse approaches to the Moriscos and the Iberian-North African frontier, but Garcés's Trauma Studies approach has been contentious. See McGaha's review of Cervantes in Algiers. 5. Richard Kagan has drawn attention to importance of studying the local and regional diversity of Iberian maurophilia. See his review of Fuchs's Exotic Nation. 6. Emily Apter and Aamir Mufti have similarly used Turkey as a test case in their examinations of the discipline of comparative literature and the limits of secular criticism, respectively. See the first two chapters of Apter, The Translation Zone, and Mufti, “Auerbach in Instanbul.” 7. The only known extant copy of this text is in a collection of Iberian pliegos sueltos housed in the Biblioteca Jagiellonska in Krakow, Qu-E, 1–26 (old number: Lit. Hisp. 79–104). García de Enterría has published a facsimile edition of the entire collection in Pliegos poéticos españoles. The original 1568 publication is number seven in the Krakow volume and number 684 in Rodríguez Moñino. Citations are by page number (the original was unnumbered) from García de Enterría's edition. 8. For a recent account of the recuperation of Granada's history by Christian writers after 1492, see A. Katie Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada, as well as two collections on the “Libros de Sacromonte,” a series of forged, Arabic etchings unearthed outside of Granada in the late sixteenth century. Manuel Barrios Aguilera and García-Arenal edited the first text, and García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano oversaw the second one. 9. For an introduction to the extensive corpus of Lepanto poetry, see López de Toro, Los poetas de Lepanto. 10. Examples abound in the Spanish National Library (BNE) collection of pliegos sueltos. An account of Christians defeating Ottomans in battle as well as the family tree is in R/31364 (11); the weather turns and the plague hits in R/31364 (7). 11. I have come across only one other similarly early example of Mena's approach, located in a pliego suelto published by the Valencian printer Vincent Miravet. His 1584 text pairs an account of the Moriscos of Chinches trying to sell their town to the King of Algeria with unrelated Ottoman material. See BNE R/31364 (17). Because Chinches is near Valencia, a Morisco population center, here too the mixing of Ottomans and Moriscos would have been a local marketing strategy. In subsequent decades, this pairing of Iberian and Ottoman material would become more common. 12. For bibliographic details on “De Antequera partió el Moro,” see poem numbers 630, 736, and 1072 in Rodríguez Moñino. Only Mena's version of the poem is accompanied by material about the Ottomans. 13. See Erasmus, “On the War Against the Turks” (1530) and Luther, “On War Against the Turks” (1529). For a riveting discussion of these and related texts in relation to Rabelais, see Hampton, “Turkish Dogs” 61–62. 14. The visitas were part of a royal effort to regulate the Iberian printing industry and to research ways to improve it. Philip II was attempting to remedy a situation that forced many peninsular intellectuals of the period to publish their works north of the Pyrenees. When he wanted to produce a new polyglot Bible under the direction of the classicist and Hebraist Benito Arias Montano, even the King himself was forced to have the editing and publishing work done in Antwerp. A Granadan notarial copy (Catedral de Granada, Leg. 23/17, ff. 1–17) of the memorial sent from Granada to Felipe II has been published along with an introductory study. See Martínez Ruiz, “Visita a las imprentas” 75–110. For more information on the history of printing in Granada, see Cordón García and López-Huertas Pérez. 15. Giovio and Díaz de Tanco clearly cite their sources, which include Viçentino, Pious II, and others, but the manuscript tradition is comprised of partial and often anonymous or semi-anonymous copies. For example, see Ottoman material collected in BNE Mss. 2794, 11085 and 5763. 16. In addition to Viaje de Turquía, another exception to this thematic inflexibility is the polymath Frenchman Guillaume Postel's eccentric writing on the Turks, Des histoires orientales et principalement des Turkes. 17. The title varies by manuscript. The oldest and possible original is BNE Ms. 3624, discussed in detail below. There are three other versions in the BNE, including Mss. 5763, 7074, and 3606, as well as several copies elsewhere. See Fernández Lanza. 18. The later date is either 1578 or 1598 (the tens digit is indecipherable). As Fernández Lanza notes, a dating of 1598 fits more logically into Herrera's biography: he became cronista mayor de indias in 1596 and cronista de Castilla in 1598. But in 1598 (i.e. after Lepanto), there was not only a greater market for texts about the Turks than there had been in 1565, but there was also a greater market for Herrera's texts. A forger, in other words, would have had motive. 19. Volume 1 was first published in 1595 at Zaragoza and Volume 2 was first published at Alcalá de Henares in 1604, but there were more than twenty editions of Pérez de Hita's work throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I cite from a 1604 edition of Volume 1 and a 1619 edition of Volume 2. For more on the publication history, see Blanchard-Domouge xxxii.