4 - Creating Identity: Ambrosio de Morales and the Re-writing of Spanish History

Summary

The life of Ambrosio de Morales (b. Cordoba, 1513) occupied almost the entire sixteenth century, but the bulk of his work was circulated in manuscript and in print largely during its concluding quarter. The youngest of a lineage of cultivated scholars – his father a renowned medical doctor, his uncle, Fernán Pérez de Oliva, an exquisite Latin and vernacular humanist – Morales was appointed at a very young age to the cátedra of rhetoric at the then recently founded University of Alcalá. In 1563, Philip II also appointed him royal chronicler (cronista real). In this new role, Morales embarked on the project that would earn him his fame: a continuation of a history of Spain begun by his predecessor, Florián Pérez de Ocampo, with the title Corónica general de España. Ocampo had published the first five books in 1553; Morales’ own version of these and his seven-book continuation were published in 1574 and 1577, with the last five reprinted in 1586.

This chapter examines Morales’ approach to historiography in his refashioning and continuation of Ocampo's Corónica. While remaining committed to resuming the narrative where Ocampo had left it, Morales also proposed to transform the way Spanish historians looked at the past by relying on his philological and antiquarian investigations on Roman Iberia and medieval Castile in an attempt to redefine the coordinates of evidence and authority in Spanish historical writing.