El Renacimiento y la otra España. Visión Cultural Socioespiritual by José C. Nieto (review)

Abstract

El Renacimiento y la otra Espana Visi6n Cultural Soctoespiritual. By Jose C. Nieto. [Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, No. CCCXV] (Geneva: Librairie Droz, S.A. 1997. Pp. 855.) In the last few decades, and continuing into the most recent years, the ambiguous and contested religious beliefs of such sixteenth-century figures as Contarini, Pole, Morone, and Carranza have been newly investigated by Spanish, Italian, British, and American scholars. From such research it has at least become clear how genuinely perplexing and dangerously uncertain were the precise bounds of Catholic orthodoxy in that century until the early stages of the Council of Trent in the mid-1540's. In the consequently difficult task of identifying the beliefs held at precise dates by such figures, the example of Juan de Valdes, who moved from Spain to Italy, has naturally emerged as important, and in understanding him scholars have been able to draw on the monograph, of 1970, by Jose Nieto. Furthermore, the last few decades have also seen a transformation of scholarly knowledge of the Spanish Inquisition, thanks to excellent, detailed studies by Spanish and other historians. A volume as vast as the one considered here might therefore be expected to prove of great value, as a contribution to the historical debate which continues about the range of religious beliefs in both Spain and Italy in the sixteenth century. Sadly, despite a considerable number of stimulating suggestions and observations in this monumental work, it proves to make little contact with that debate. Indeed, the terms of the debate seem to be virtually ignored, despite some reference in passing to relevant work on Pole and Carranza, though not Morone or Contarini. Nor does there appear to be any recognition of the extensive new research, much of it written in Spanish, on the Spanish Inquisition. Moreover, in all this vast number of pages no archival references would seem to be included as the result of the author's own researches, the few that do feature being apparently cited via the secondary literature. That secondary reading itself, in the extensive footnotes as opposed to the concluding bibliography, presents an extraordinarily dated picture, not only with regard to the Spanish Inquisition, for example, but also with reference to biblical scholarship for instance, despite references to twentiethcentury Catholic liberation theology. It is also alarming that, at least for events in sixteenth-century Europe outside Spain or involving more than Spain itself, amazing assertions have been left uncorrected, which cannot simply be errors of printing or proof-reading, such as the attribution of eight wives to Henry VIII or the statement that no English Catholics took refuge in Spain. …