Chapter 2 - Philip IV’s Global Empire of Eloquence

Summary

Chapter 2 argues for the pivotal role of humanist rhetoric and oratory in shaping and disseminating the political ideology of the global Hispanic Monarchy. Rather than taking a protonation state like Mexico or Peru as the unit of analysis, this chapter considers all the surviving funeral orations for Philip IV (1605–1665) in Spanish America, Iberian Asia, the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish North Africa, Spanish Italy and the Spanish Netherlands. These panegyrics are highly revealing of the political ideology espoused in each of these contexts. Grounded in epideictic rhetoric, which channeled a long-standing humanist commitment to a virtue-driven model of kingship, these orations offered absolute standards for imitation by the elite in the person of the king (“virtue politics”). This was a political ideology that left space for institutionalized resistance or “negotiation” in the face of unjust local officials who could be measured according to these standards, and held accountable by petitions to the king, the ultimate source of justice.