The English Reformation greatly strained Anglo-Spanish relations to the point that it led to the Armada's failed invasion of England in 1588. While this conflict was most visibly fought on the political, diplomatic, and military fronts, a more subtle confrontation took place on the ideological arena aimed at justifying each country's official religious stance and discrediting the other's. The Spanish side of this dispute has received little scholarly attention, but Forteza proposes to reverse this neglect by analyzing, on the one hand, the construction of the discourses that determined the Spanish view of the English Reformation and, on the other, the literary representation in Castile of the English schism and its protagonists.
The English Reformation in the Spanish Imagination consists of five chapters. In the first, Forteza discusses the publication of ecclesiastical histories in England that transmitted “narratives of historical continuity” (11) in favor of the English schism in the case of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1563), and against it in Nicolas Sander's Catholic De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani, printed posthumously in 1585. Both histories captured the imagination of their respective readership through the use of engaging literary strategies that were more appealing than strictly theological debates. In 1588, just as the Armada was ready to set sail, the Spanish Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneyra saw his Historia ecclesiastica del scisma del reyno de Inglaterra published, which became the book that most notably molded Spanish public opinion on the English Reformation. Ribadeneyra's Historia is a translation of Sander's history adapted to the needs of his target audience, as Forteza explains in chapter 2. A second part was printed in 1593, again an adaptation in this case of Robert Persons's Elizabethae Angliae reginae (1592). That Ribadeneyra's history achieved significant popularity is attested by the at least 13 editions published before 1600, including the Plantinian one of 1588 that helped promote the Historia's circulation across Europe. Certainly, the work gained traction in part through the use of strategies and tropes typical of popular genres such as “sermons, comedies, and chivalric novels” (35) with which Ribadeneyra managed to instill in his audience the view that “Elizabeth Tudor and her parents persecuted Catholics because personal sins had irreversibly turned the monarchs into tyrannical monsters” (90).
Forteza does a remarkable job of tracing how this particular view was appropriated and echoed by contemporary authors in the following decades, arguing in chapters 4 and 5 that Ribadeneyra's Historia influenced Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, and Miguel de Cervantes. She finds parallels in Lope's comedy El amor desatinado (1597) and his epic poem La Dragontea (1598), where he “throws back on England Spanish Black Legend slurs by linking Drake, his men, and his queen with arrogance, greed, barbarism, and cruelty” (99). She also sees the mark of Ribadeneyra in Lope's epitaphs on Henry VIII, Elizabeth Tudor, and Mary Stuart included in his Rimas humanas (1603), whereas in the case of his religious epic poem La corona trágica (1627) she provides convincing textual evidence that Lope was directly inspired by Ribadeneyra, at least in his portrayal of Anne Boleyn (117). With regard to Calderón's tragedy La cisma de Ingalaterra (1627), Forteza finds clear similarities with Lope's El amor desatinado despite the lack of reliable evidence that Calderón knew Lope's work. She explains the relation between the two plays by pointing to the presence of “a common source, namely, Ribadeneyra's Historia” (120). Lope's and Calderón's representations of the English Reformation were consistent with Ribadeneyra's but contrast with the positive image of Queen Elizabeth and the softened view of Catholic persecutions that figure in Cervantes's La española inglesa, a novela that was part of his Novelas ejemplares, printed in 1613. While previous scholars agreed in attributing these descriptions to Cervantes's ignorance of the real situation in England and to hastiness in the composition of the novel, Forteza contends that “Cervantes was keenly aware of Ribadeneyra's Historia and writes in dialogue with that text” (131). In her opinion, La española inglesa offers a revisionist version of Ribadeneyra's ecclesiastical history, although she admits that “no evidence exists that Cervantes read the histor[y] by Ribadeneyra” (136).
Even though The English Reformation in the Spanish Imagination succeeds in underscoring the central role Ribadeneyra played in shaping the Spanish construal of the English Reformation and in influencing its literary representation, it is a book not without problems. First, with regard to the three authors discussed in chapters 4 and 5, Forteza seems to be forcing the case that they all drew directly from Ribadeneyra's Historia but falls short of proving so in relation to Calderón and Cervantes. In the absence of conclusive evidence and without diminishing the strength of her thesis, perhaps it would have been more sensible simply to acknowledge that Ribadeneyra's influence on the Spanish imagination was so pervasive that these authors could echo his arguments without necessarily interacting with his work or taking it as a direct source. Second, Forteza unnecessarily overstates the popularity and influence of Fray Diego de Yepes's Historia particular de la persecución de Inglaterra (1599), another ecclesiastical history, and states that it “was certainly widely read, since copies appear in most library catalogues of the period” (31). A better indication of a work's circulation than its presence in library catalogs is the number of times it was printed. Yepes's Historia was printed only once and, as a result, its popularity should be deemed limited. Nonetheless, Forteza inaccurately refers to “the immense popularity of the ecclesiastical histories of Ribadeneyra and Yepes” (64). Finally, chapter 3 presents a well-researched discussion of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, an aristocrat who, as part of the English mission, moved to England from 1605 to 1613 and maintained intense correspondence with prominent figures in Spain and across the European mainland, offering a first-hand account of the situation of Catholics in England. Forteza makes a valuable interpretation of Carvajal's letters vis-à-vis the ecclesiastical histories of Ribadeneyra and Yepes, but it is not apparent how this section fits the book's second overarching goal, since Carvajal's writings are of a private kind and not strictly literary, as are the texts of the authors discussed in chapters 4 and 5.
Forteza's book is undoubtedly a welcome addition to our understanding of the English Reformation from a Spanish perspective, as it contains a fresh look at relevant sources, both historiographical and literary, and has the potential of inspiring the reader to explore new research avenues.
