This book deals with unsurprising aspects of Spanish politico-religious history, but from a perspective that is still coming into focus. We know that political and religious spheres of authority and influence were articulated through broadly defined performances and a range of extra-verbal means. Today, we (mostly) take for granted that there is a tight entwinement between the ecclesiastical and “secular,” between the realms of this world and the beyond, between the body (political and otherwise) and the soul. But, if politico-religious history is something of a staple, there is still a need to bring together its assumptions and the study of architectural spaces and places, especially outside of Madrid and other well-known capitals. In light of this, the goals of the volume are more than welcome. The book intends to “increase our knowledge and understanding of…Royal Sites in the various kingdoms that comprised the Spanish monarchy, chiefly on questions related to the spiritual tendencies and forms of piety…” (32). As an organizing principle, it is to the benefit of scholarship that the editor has conceptualized this book as a study of Royal Sites defined amply as properties that “belonged to the ruling dynasty where the ruler and other members of the dynasty lived, had lived or where there was an expectation of them being able to stay there for longer or shorter periods of time” (22).
This collection of essays offers variety. In terms of geography, Madrid plays only a minor role, ceding its typical preeminence in Golden Age studies, to places like Valencia, Palermo, Tervuren, Lima, Sardinia, and other loci of Habsburg authority. This is a healthy reminder that this multi-nodal empire (this composite monarchy) required a set of communicative practices and symbolic tools to maintain its fragile coherence across Europe and the globe.
Even as these essays offer breadth in the kinds of spaces studied, it is particularly impactful in underlying the role of “religious” spaces within palace settings and outside of them. Royal chapels, convents, and monasteries are at the heart of the matter. Attention to religious spaces as sites of political entanglement and (sometimes implicit) political significance serves to show the hybridity of political discourse and action of the early modern Habsburg world.
Most of the essays function in a descriptive register with only tepid gestures at incisive arguments. They all attest to how religious spaces provided a means by which to communicate specific kinds of authority and by which to establish certain kinds of political webs. Thus, we are told that in Sicily, royal investment in the palatine chapel reflected the monarchy’s concerted efforts to highlight its piety and royal dignity. Elsewhere, we are told that the viceregal chapel in Lima provided a means to promote newly arrived royal servants. In Portugal we are told of the manifold ways in which Philip II’s regime invested resources and energy in existing structures to consolidate its Portuguese pedigree as well as creating mausolea in further efforts of legitimization.
Although such dynamics emerge from deep archival research and are convincingly described, there is a sense that the conclusions in themselves are not surprising, but mirror trajectories well-known in the literature. Occasionally, perhaps too sparsely, thematic threads emerge that would have been well-worth emphasizing throughout, such as the tense relationship between Habsburg territories and Rome as they manifested in royal spaces and the liturgical modalities embraced within them.
The sources utilized in these chapters are varied, but among them, published descriptions of various royal sites and their histories stood out as replete with further interpretive potential. I found myself wanting to know more about those texts themselves and how they might be used in diverse ways and read more contextually to fully express the ways in which mortar and ink could offer mutual support to the sites in question.
But ultimately, these quibbles do not supersede the utility of this book, both as solid explorations of significant royal sites and as a starting point for future research that fully integrates these into broader histories of politico-religious action in early modern Habsburg realms.
