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DBEDA VENERABILIS IN SPAIN m BY HELMUT HEIDENREICH m The limited number of examples to be communicated here as illustrations of Beda's popularity in the Peninsula were gleaned at random from various branches of sixteenth and seventeenth-century literature. They have not been pointed out before by the authorities on Anglo- Spanish literary relations nor by students of the English Saint. The modest object, then, of these notes is to supply some prelimi- nary material for further research in the widely unexplored field of Beda's fame in modern times. For, on survey, one finds that those scholars who in recent years have dealt with Beda's intellectual heritage and with the dissemination of his works on the Continent, like Laistner, Levison, Schreiber, Boyer, and others,' were almost exclusively concerned with the Early Middle Ages. It is true that there are a few Hispanic voices commenting on this Church Father.2 But where the literary historians are concerned, references to him as a possible influence on medieval historiography, didactic prose, or modern rhetoric in Spain are very sporadic 3 and usually rather vague.

1 Cf. D. Whitelock, After Bede, Jarrow Lecture (Newcastle, 1960); W. F. Bolton, "A Bede Bibliography, 1935-1960," Traditio, XVIII (1962), 436-445.

2J. S., " El llibre de les Homilies del venerable Beda de Girona," Veil i Nou, IV (1918), 287-410; G. Sanmiguel, "San Beda el Venerable," Monasticon, II (1935), 57-64, 110-114; J. M. Sarabia, "La romanidad de S. Beda el Venerable," Estudios Eclesidsticos, XIV (1935), 51-74; M. T. Schorer, "Alguns aspectos do monasticismo irlandes atraves da 'Historia ecclesiastica' do Venerable Beda," Revista de Historia, V (1954), 273-301; see also M. Manitius, Handschriften antiker Autoren in mittlealterlichen Bibliothekskatalogen, 67. Beiheft zum Zentralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen (Leipzig, 1935), p. 351; M. L. W. Laistner, "The Spanish Archetype of MS. Harley 4980," Journal of Theological Studies, XXXVII (1936), 132-137.

3 Cf. J. Hurtado Jimenez and A. Gonzalez Palencia, Historia de la literatura espanola [1921], 6a ed. (Madrid, 1949), p. 86, copied by E. Diez-Echarri and J. M. Roca Franquesa, Historia de la literatura espaiola e hispano-americana (Madrid, 1960), p. 74; A. Valbuena Prat, Historia de la literatura espafola [1937], 4a ed. (Barcelona, 1953), I, 185; G. Diaz-Plaja, ed. Historia general de las literaturas hispdnicas (Barcelona, 1953), III, 596; J. Ruiz i Calonja, Historia de la literatura catalana (Barcelona, 1954), pp. 4, 228-231; M. de Riquer, Historia de la literatura catalana: Part antiga (Barcelona, 1964), III, 300; E. R. Curtius, Europdische Literatur und lateinisches Mittlealter [1948], 3. Aufl. (Minchen, 1961), pp. 279, 289, 303.

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The lively Spanish interest in Beda after the Reformation is as patent as its motives are obvious. In the wake of the religious controversies of the time we observe a general Beda revival that finds expression in a quick succession of Continental editions of his works. Some of them were actually printed in the Spanish Netherlands, a country that was soon to become the principal asylum of the Catholic refugees from Britain. These modern editions, along with the endeavours of the humanists to trace the roots of Christianity and of the Primitive Church, must have helped to spread Beda's fame beyond the Pyrenees (although some of his works had been known there throughout the Middle Ages). The contemporary European scene, however, prompted in addition a political interest in him: the Spaniards, seeing themselves as the standard-bearers of the unity of Christendom, could not but wel- come Beda as an irrefutable native witness of the conversion of the English from paganism and of their former strong ties with Rome. This evangelical interest of Spaniards in British witnesses of ortho- dox faith is confirmed by the warm reception of Thomas More and others in sixteenth-century Spain and their subsequent use for purposes of propaganda fidei. William Allen articulated the same missionary intentions in unequivocal terms when he encouraged his pupils at the English College of Douai to study thoroughly Beda's Ecclesiastical History; from the prefatory matter to its first modem translation into English (Antwerp, 1565) emerges the corresponding conception of Beda as the impartial representative of the unadulter- ated teaching of the primitive Church in England (as opposed to "the pretended religion of Protestants," ibid., fol. *3r) .4

Beside these theological and political considerations connected with the Catholic efforts of bringing the British renegades back to their fold, there may have been some underlying national motives that helped deepen Spanish interest in the Church Father from Northumberland. He was, after all, the continuator of Peninsular classics like Isidorus of Seville, Orosius, and Prudentius,5 a national tradition to be proud of. More important still, it was he who lived to see the Mahometan conquerors-" gravissima Sarracenorum

4 Cf. P. Hughes, The Reformation in England (London, 1950-54), III, 292; P. H. Blair, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation and its Import- ance Today, Jarrow Lecture (Newcastle, 1959), p. 13 f.; G. Culkin, Saint Bede (London, 1961), p. 13. SCf. M. L. W. Laistner, "The Library of the Venerable Bede," in A. H.

Thompson, ed. Bede: His Life, Times, and Writings (Oxford, 1935), 263-266.

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lues," as he calls them in his Historia Ecclesiastica (lib. V, cap. xxiii) -sweep across the Peninsula up towards France menacing the early Christian kingdoms of the West.6 Sixteenth-century humanists and theologians were fully aware of this concern of Beda's with the fate of Spain. This is borne out by a quotation from Platina which Thomas Stapleton cites in Latin and English in the "Preface to the Reader " of his translation, The History of the Church of Englande (Antwerp, 1565), fol. 2v: "Cum Africa et Hispania a Sarracenis occuparetur, Beda, qui eisdem temporibus fuit, hanc calamitatem literis ad principes Christiani nominis scriptis, lamentatus est: quo bellum in hostes Dei atque hominum susciperet," and the translator goes on pointing out that " Spayne off late only recovered the faith againe." At a moment in history when the Spaniards had only just recovered their full national integrity and were taking a confident look back at the Roman, Gothic, and Christian beginnings of their civilization, such bio- graphical circumstances were of interest not only to the historians; their discovery of Beda as a contemporary of the national rising of Covadonga (A. D. 718) and as a spiritual ally for their Reconquest must have generally enhanced Spanish sympathies for the British doctor mirabilis.

I have not been able to establish whether or not the growing Spanish interest in Beda was in any way connected with the founda- tion by Philip II of Jesuit colleges for the British expatriates on Spanish soil (Valladolid 1589, Madrid 1592, and Seville 1612 under Philip III). But it seems, on the evidence of the following examples at least, that it was the Jesuits who had taken a special liking for Beda, many of the authors to be quoted here being either members, alumni, or sympathizers of that order. We must assume, however, that other religious orders were no less familiar with his works,7 and some bibliographical manuals of the beginning of the seven- teenth century prove how indispensable he had become not only for scriptural exegesis but also for other scholarly pursuits.8

6 Cf. C. Plummer, ed. Venerabilis Baedae opera historica, photogr. repr. (Oxonii, 1946), II, 338 f.; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Bede's Europe, Jarrow Lecture (Newcastle, 1962), pp. 4, 10-12. 7Cf. G. de la Cruz, "Catalogo de la Biblioteca de los Padres Carmelitas

Descalzos de Barcelona," El Monte Carmelo, LXIX (1961) and subsequent vols., esp. LXX (1962), 254-255; C. Baraut, "La bibliotheque ascetique de Garcia Cisneros, abb6 de Montserrat (1493-1510)," Studia Monastica, IX (1967), 332.

8 Cf. Joannes Molanus, Bibliotheca materiarum quae, a quibus auctoribus,

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In this paper we set aside works of divinity where the impact of Beda is likely to have been strongest. On the other hand, very few of the texts studied here belong to belles-lettres proper. Some of them belong to, or are bordering on, devotional literature, and nearly all of them serve some instructive purpose or other. This does not mean that Beda had been relegated to the extra-literary fields of learning which lack popular appeal. In an age when edification rather than pleasure was sought in reading, when writing histories or lives of saints was a routine task for authors, and when even those works written for enjoyment had to be made morally useful the borderlines of literature were vaguer than ever. If most of our examples, then, are taken from didactic literature, our collection does include some of the leading prose writers and moral teachers of the Spanish Golden Age who were widely known inside and outside Spain.

Our first examples are thoroughly infused with the evangelical spirit of the Counter-Reformation. In 1585 there was published in Rome De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani, written by Father Nicholas Sanders and posthumously finished by another Englishman, Edward Rishton. It contains a succinct survey of the ecclesiastical history of Britain and a detailed description of the religious developments there from the times of Henry VIII to the death of Mary of Scotland. In the year of the Armada the disciple of Ignatius of Loyola, Pedro de Ribadeneira, published a Spanish translation, Historia ecclesiastica del scisma del reyno de Inglaterra, which was printed simultaneously in Madrid, Lisbon, Antwerp, and other capitals of the Spanish realm. In his Prologue Ribade- naeira laments the sorry state of affairs in Britain, one of the oldest provinces of the Christian Church as testified by Beda, Polydore Vergil, and Cardinal Pole, which had been obedient to Rome for nearly a thousand years (edition of Emberes, 1588, fol. 5v), and he hopes that the disastrous consequences of unbridled passion as exemplified by King Henry's apostasy will have a deterrent effect on the reader of his history.

The pedagogic and missionary zeal of the Jesuit Father is even

cum antiquis, tur recentioribus sint pertractatae (Coloniae, 1618), s.v. "Anglia," " Boethius," " Britannia," " Martyrologium," " Miracula," " Schemata," "Sermones "; Andreas Schott, Catalogus catholicorum S. Scripturae interpretum (Coloniae, 1619), "Catologus SS. Patrum," fol. A3v, and "Catologus inter- pretum," passim.

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more strongly marked in the prefatory matter to his own continua- tion, Segunda parte de la historia ecclesiastica del scisma de; Inglaterra (1593, with several reissues). It covers the anti-Catholic policy of Queen Elizabeth until 1592 paying particular attention to the persecution and martyrdom of the Catholic missionaries whose training in Continental seminaries is described at length (cap. xix-xxix). Refuting the English objections to these colleges, Ribadeneira refers to the pattern of training English priests set by Saint Gregory "whom the Venerable Bede so justly calls the Apostle of England" (ed. of Lisboa, 1594, cap. xix, fol. 83r). Further down he combines his attack on the repressive measures of the British government with a warning of the dangers of rebellion by its subjects, and points out that political upheavals in that country "were usually the consequence of and punishment for a contempt for religion, as can be inferred from the writings of Gildas the Wise and the Venerable Bede and as has been observed by other judicious and remarkable historians of English affairs" (cap. xxvi, fol. 130v). In this capacity of a witness for the prose- cution the name of Beda recurs in the joint Latin editions of the two parts of the work (1610 and 1628). Apart from the frequency of its re-editions the importance of this book is shown by the fact that it became the source of a drama by Calder6n on the Reforma- tion under Henry VIII, La cisma de Ingalaterra (dated between 1639 and 1651), and that a French edition succeeded in causing a stir amongst the clerical circles of England as late as in the days of Bishop Burnet.9

For religious edification, fortification, and conversion Ribadeneira also wrote an even more popular work, Flos sanctorum o libro de las vidas de los santos (1599-1601). For protection against the " absur- dities and vagaries of the heretics " he has recourse to the established interpreters of controversial passages in the Scriptures in whose list he includes Beda side by side with Gregory of Tours and Saint Bernard, as well as other Church authorities. Further down in his Prologue he speaks of his sources in general, " the authors . . . generally accepted by the Church of Rome as the gravest, most authoritative, and best known," mentioning especially the Martyro- logium Romanum of Beda, Usuardus, and Ado Viennensis (fols.

9 Cf. M. Cabantous, " Le schisme d'Angleterre vu par Calder6n," Les Langues Neo-Latines, 62e annee, fasc. II (1968), 43-58; A. C. Baugh, ed. A Literary History of England (New York, 1948), p. 789.

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4r and 4 iiii r in Father Nieremberg's edition, Barcelona 1643). This work and others of Beda's (De locis sanctis, De sex aetatibus, Retractationes, and various other Biblical comments) are frequently referred to in the course of the text, above all for documentation of the miraculous events that are related in detail (e. g. the meteo- rological phenomena on Ascension Day, p. 41). Dozens of Spanish and foreign editions of this book, among them several English adaptations between 1623 and 1730, were bound to help popularize Beda's name throughout Europe. For hagiographical calendars of this kind were in the first place destined to become the plain fare of the general public (although, according to Malon de Chaide's famous diatribe against romances, readers had by then made Amadis and Diana their Flos sanctorum!). But the influence of Ribade- neira's work on literature is strongly felt, too: in religious prose- where Beda often seems to be quoted through the Jesuit author- and above all in a spate of hagiographical plays, Lope de Vega being the foremost to tap this rich mine.10

Beda figures also in the revival of the legend of Saint Patrick's descent to Purgatory, which had been known in fourteenth-century Catalonia and Castile both through his own works and those of Hugh of Saltrey, and others. It was also disseminated by a popular report of a pilgrimage from Aragon to Lough Derg in 1397-98,11 of which the Irish Father Philip O'Sullevan availed himself for his Historiae catholicae Iberniae compendium (Ulyssipone, 1621). His Latin version included there, "De Purgatorio divi Patricii" (tom. II, lib. ii, fols. 14r-31r), is preceded by a general introduction to Ireland with frequent quotations from Beda, particularly his famous encomium of that country in his Historia ecclesiastica (II, i): "Ibernia, . . . dives lactis, ac mellis insula, .. ." (fol. 3v). Before O'Sullevan managed to reissue an extract from his compen- dium, Patritiana decas (Madrid, 1629), the popular novelist and playwright Juan Perez de Montalban had made this work and that

10 Cf. M. Casc6n, "Fuentes jesuiticas en el teatro de Lope de Vega," Boletin de la Biblioteca Menendez Pelayo, XVII (1935), 388-400.

11 Here is a selection from the rich literature on the subject: A. G. Solalinde, "La primera versi6n espafiola de 'El Purgatorio de San Patricio' y la difusi6n de esta leyenda en Espafia," Homenaje Menendez Pidal, II (1925), 219-257; P. MacBride, "Saint Patrick's Purgatory in Spanish Literature," Studies [Dublin], XXV (1936), 277-291; C. Brunel, " Sur la version provensale de la relation du voyage de Raimon de Perillos au Purgatoire de Saint Patrice," Estudios dedicados a Menendez Pidal, VI (1956), 3-21; J. Ruiz i Calonja, op. cit., 228-231.

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of another Briton 12 the basis for a 'spiritual romance' (novela a lo divino) that was to become one of the best sellers of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, Vida y Purgatorio de San Patricio (Madrid, 1628). In this miraculous life of the Irish Apostle-a contemporary of the King of Goths Alarich, the first to publish written laws in Spain, as Montalban reminds us (fol. 27r) -the author makes the most of Patrick's visions and miracles in order to provide "devout suspense to amuse and terrify the reader" (Pro- logue). Between the Saint's biography and his report from Hell Montalban wedges a catalogue of his authorities that includes Beda with a reference to Lib. 3. et 6. de revelat. Sanctae Brigidae (fol. 47v).

Over thirty editions of this pious thriller, including two very popular translations into French and several into other languages, cannot but have cemented Beda's reputation of long standing as a teller of fabulous stories. The novel was promptly dramatized. One of the stage verisons, El mayor prodigio o el Purgatorio en la vida (before 1635), is attributed to Lope de Vega; another one was written by Calder6n, El Purgatorio de San Patricio (1636). Con- sidering the popularity of the subject in both literature and paint- ing of that time, it is hard to determine the interdependence of these religious dramas.13 Calder6n's dependence upon Montalban, however, shows in the bibliographical epilogue of his play where he enumerates exactly the same authors, including Bellarmino, Beda, and Serpi (Comedias I, Biblioteca de Autores Espanioles, VII [1848], p. 166).

If these are but isolated examples of Beda's influence on imagina- tive literature in Spain, there is another outstanding poet who had recourse to him for his religious writings, Francisco de Quevedo. Some time before his death in 1645 he wrote a life of Saint Paul, first printed in 1644, later incorporated into his collected works with the title Vida de San Pablo Apostol. In this erudite biography he discusses meticulously the opinions of the Church Fathers, citing repeatedly Beda's comments on Acts and his Martyrologium (cf. Obras, ed. F. Foppens [Brusselas 1660-61], II, 3-5, 9, 106). In yet

12Thomas Messingham, "Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii," in his Florilegium Insulae Sanctorum (Paris, 1624).

13 Cf. A. Blunt, "El Greco's 'Dream of Philip II': An Allegory of the Holy League," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, III (1939-40), 60-61; J. B. Avalle-Arce, " Sobre la difusi6n de la leyenda del Purgatorio de San Patricio en Espaia," Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica, II (1948), 195-196.

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another edifying work of his, Virtud militante contra las cuatro pestes del mundo (begun in 1634, first printed in 1651), a moral tract on the principal evils envy, ingratitude, pride, and avarice, he quotes at some length an unidentified passage from Beda on God's example of humility, to which he adds: "Venerable words indeed, just as their autor" (ed. cit., II, 316). Imbued as Quevedo was with Bible-lore and religious doctrine it is likely that he consulted the learned Northumbrian for related purposes in other prose works of his.14

In the field of ecclesiastical biography we often find Beda in Miguel Baptista de Lanuza, the Aragonese author of half a dozen lives of local Carmelite nuns. Obviously written with a view to their prospective canonization, these biographies abound with colourful descriptions of their mystical experiences. In the first of these works, the life history of the companion of Saint Theresa of Avila, Vida de la bendita madre Isabel de Santo Domingo (Madrid, 1638), Lanuza quotes Beda on the merits of suffering from Ser. 18 de sanctis: " a Deum crevit pugna, crevit et pugnantium gloria "; with a reference to a Spanish version of the lives of the saints of Ireland he invokes his authority to give credit to some miraculous appari- tions at funerals; and he cites Beda and other authorities on the question of subordination to the will of the Church (pp. 93, 111, 645). The text of a later biography, Vida de la venerable madre Geronima de San Estevan (Zaragoza, 1653), is preceded by a motto drawn from Beda,15 and in Lanuza's last work of the series, Vida de la sierva de Dios Francisca del Santmo. Sacramento (Zaragoza, 1659), he gives Beda's opinion on the duration of Purgatory (lib. II, cap. i, from Hist. eccles., V, xii), the redemption of the con- demned souls being the special concern of Mother Francisca. This saintly "slave of God " was particularly devoted to Saint Thomas of Canterbury, ihr absonderlicher Patron 'her queer protector' according to the German translator; as the calendar of her visions between 1627 and 1629 shows (lib. III, cap. i-v), Saint Thomas visited her dozens of times in her ecstasies exhorting her to pray for the persecuted Roman Church in England and for the conversion of the English heretics.16

14 Cf. A. Papell, Quevedo: Su tiempo, su vida, su obra (Barcelona, 1947), p. 556; see also pp. 392, note 1, 530 ff., and 542 ff.

1 I had no access to this work; cf. J. Sim6n Diaz, Bibliografia de la literatura hispdnica, VI (1961), no. 3401. 16 Cf. Father Gioachimo di Santa Maria, transl. Vita della serva di dio

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Considering the influence of Beda on annalists during the Middle Ages, one expects to find him in the four thick volumes of historic and topographic descriptions of medieval Spain compiled by Andreas Schott, Hispaniae illustratae (Francofurti, 1603-8). Al- though Beda's name is not in the Index, this witness of the twilight of the Visigoth kingdoms is cited at least on one occasion: for the correct spelling of the name of a sixth-century king, Leovigildus (" Chronologia: Ordo regum Gothorum Hispaniae," tom. II, p. 23). More Beda allusions are possibly dispersed throughout this standard work of reference of that period; but the Jesuit Father does not mention him in his other manuals on Spain, Catalogus clarorum Hispaniae scriptorum (1607) and Hispaniae bibliotheca (1608), as Nicolas Antonio did later in the century. Helping to clear up some doubtful points in the early stages of

Christian Spain, Beda is likely to occur in several histories that are dealing with this period, such as Diego Saavedra Fajardo's Corona Gothica castellana y austriaca (Miinster, 1646, and several re-editions). In this learned account of Gothic Spain Beda's Mar- tyrologium and his De temporibus are cited a few times as evidence in connection with Arianism and the sixth century martyrs (cap. ii, xii, xiv, xv, xxviii). At one instance some disputed miracles gain authentictity " because the Venerable Bede and also Sigebertus attached credit to them " (cap. xii, pp. 191-193). Here as elsewhere, the references to Beda seem to be derived from secondary sources like Baronius and other ecclesiastical historians.

At the beginning of the century Beda is also made known in Spain by one of the early encyclopaedias. In the Plaza universal de todas ciencias y artes (Madrid, 1615) by Dr Suarez de Figueroa- who incidentally quotes a testimony of Ram6n Lull's reputation in Britain and refers to Roger Bacon, Occam, Scotus, Linacre, and Thomas More-Beda is remembered in three capacities: as an exegete, as a polymath, and as an historian. As such he is the representative of different methods of scriptural exposition (discurso xxiv, fol. 96r-v); he belongs, on account of his thirty-six works, to "the famous great authors . . . prodigious for the quantity and quality of their writings" (disc. xxxii, fol. 127v), a reputation

Francesca del SS.mo Sacramento (Milano, 1673), pp. 17-18, 198, 202, 209; Johann Georg von Werndle, transl. Leben der gottseeligen Mutter Francisca vom heiligsten Sacrament (Minchen, 1680), pp. 41-42, 322, 328, 339. I had no access to the original nor to Lanuza's other biographies quoted in the Preface.

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dating back to the Middle Ages; 17 and he is catalogued according to Bodin and Zwingli among the renowned historians of his nation where he is singled out for his annalist method (disc. xxxviii, fols. 171r, 172r). These passages and their sources are taken from Thomaso Garzoni's La piazza universale (1585, rev. ed. Venetia 1599, pp. 210-211, 288, 359, 361), a popular work of reference several times reissued and subsequently adapted in Latin and German. As Garzoni lists Beda and the above-mentioned countrymen of his in the table of authorities (missing in the Spanish adaptation), there may be more references to him in other sections of the book which I did not check.

A different aspect of Beda's learning is brought into focus by Ambrosio de Salazar, one of the language teachers and interpreters at the court of Louis XIII. In his bi-lingual primer, Espexo general de la gramdtica en didlogos-Miroir general de la grammaire en dialogues (Rouen, 1614; seven reissues until 1659), the first dia- logue is concerned with the origin and difference of languages. Talking about the beginnings of written literature of various peoples, Salazar has probably Beda's De orthographia in mind when he mentions him as the father of Anglo-Saxon writing: "Les Normans aussi eurent les leurs [scil. lettres] descrites par Bede" (p. 17). The notion of Beda being an authority on languages was current elsewhere too, as is shown by a passage from Sebastian Miinster that is quoted in one of the defences of the German language.18

To judge by the following set of examples, Beda the rhetorician was not nearly as well remembered as Beda the churchman and it looks as though the former reputation was a mere side-effect of the latter. Although his De arte metrica had been used as a textbook in Northern Spain in the Middle Ages,19 it remains to be seen to what degree the Spanish teachers of the art of writing in the Renaissance were familiar with or indebted to his works on tropes

17 Cf. H. Schreiber, "Beda in buchgeschichtlicher Betrachtung," Zentralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen, LIII (1936), 629.

18J. H. Schill, Der teutschen Sprach Ehren-Krantz (Stra3burg, 1644), pp. 243 if., quoting from Beda's Liber de temporibus via Sebastian Miinster. 19 Cf. L. Nicolau d'Olwer, "L'escola poetica de Ripoll en els segles X-XIII," Anuari de l'lnstitut d'Estudis Catalans, VI (1923), 3-84. See also W. F.

Patterson, Three Centuries of French Poetic Theory (Ann Arbor, 1935, reissued New York, 1966), I, 14, 68; R. B. Palmer, "Beda as a Textbook Writer: A Study of his De arte metrica," Speculum, XXXIV (1959), 573-584.

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and on versification. In such influential handbooks as Francisco Sanchez Brocense's Minerva (1587) or Alonso Lopez Pinciano's Philosophia antigua poetica (1596) Beda's name is missing, their authors relying on classical writers and modern humanists for their rules and illustrations. The position is probably the same with those manuals on rhetoric and prosody of the time to which I had no access.

To one critic,20 therefore, it looks like a surprising anachronism to find Beda among the demi-gods of Neo-Aristotelianism that was the order of the day. In the Preface to his Arte poetica espanola (1592) the Jesuit Juan Diaz Rengifo begins his list of sources with Aristotle, Saint Augustin, and " the Venerable Bede with his Arte which he wrote to Wigbert the Levite" (edition of Madrid, 1606, fol. 3r), followed by Scaliger and other moderns. In his poetical theory and verse illustrations, however, Father Juan reveals himself as a disciple of the Italians. Only in his extensive rhyming diction- ary does he mention the " venerable doctor from England "-amidst the Spanish words ending in -eda! (pp. 167 and 336). Thus honoured, Beda survived several re-editions until 1759 of this popular manual for versifiers.

He fares a little better with the rhetorician Bartolome Ximenez Pat6n. In his first book on modern Spanish poetics, Elocuencia espanola en arte (Toledo, 1604), he mentions Beda neither in the Prologue nor in the chapters dealing with figures of speech or allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. Only when Don Barto- lome joins this work to two others on Biblical and Latin rhetoric, Mercurius Trimegistus, sive de triplici eloquentia sacra, espanola, romana (Baeza, 1621), he summarily lists the "presbyter Beda" with thirty other authorities, ancient and modern, in his Prologue. In part one, "Liber unicus de eloquentia sacra," the author also quotes in full Beda's definitions and paradigms of onomatopoeia, tropus, synecdoche, and metonymy (fols. 3r-v, 5r, 6v); but in the other parts he omits him again in the relevant chapters.

The same picture prevails later in the century. Although E. R. Curtius relates the rhetorical fashions of the Spanish mannerists to the tradition of Beda,21 the chief preceptor of mannerism, Baltasar Gracian, does not mention him in his Agudeza y arte de ingenio

20 A. Vilanova, " Preceptistas de los siglos XVI y XVII," in Diaz Plaja, op. cit., III, 596. 21 Op. cit., p. 303.

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(1648), nor is he referred to in the earlier Libro de la erudicidn poetica (1611) by Luis Carrillo y Sotomayor. Another compiler of metrical and stylistic subtleties, the zealous Counter-Reformer and sometimes Abbot of Melrose, Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, does use verse illustrations for religious propaganda against the British heretics in his Primus calamus: ob oculos ponens metametricam (Romae, 1663), pp. 19-21, without, however, remembering Beda. Only in the second part of this fat, badly organized, and truly baroque compilation of modern verbal artistry, Caramuel copies the whole passage on sources from Diaz Rengifo; again like him, he includes Beda in the list of rhyming words. He also includes him in his Index of names. Cf. Primus calamus tomus secundus: ob oculos exhibens rhythmicam, ed. 2a (Campaniae, 1668), " Proemi- um. Epistola I," p. 2; lib. III " De sylvis," p. 431; " Nomina patrum etc.," p. xxxix.

There is an ambiguous reference to Beda by another sympathizer of the Gongorists, Saavedra Fajardo, in his Repuzblica literaria (1670, begun in 1612, posth. ed. with a different title in 1655). This work belongs to the hybrid genre known as " critica poetica " 22 where in literary disguise arts and sciences are subjected to a sceptical review. At the end of this dream voyage to an allegorical city of learning, the critic Scaliger is dragged before a tribunal; there, Ovid denounces his pedantic and arrogant attacks not only on profane poets but also on "pious and religious authors like Sannazaro, Beda, Pontano, Fracastoro, and others" (ed. G. Mayans, Madrid, 1735, p. 108). In this curious juxtaposition with less holy writers we find the venerable churchman also in the eighteenth century 23 which had a special liking for Saavedra's good-humoured debunking as is proved by the number of re-editions of this work and by the translations into English (1705 and 1727), Italian, and French.

22 Cf. F. de Figueiredo, "Uma forma hibrida de critica," in his Pyrene (Lisboa, 1935), pp. 146-180.

23 In other versions the name reads Veda, Viva, or Vida. Cf. V. Garcia de Diego, ed. Repu'blica literaria (Madrid, 1922), pp. 225 and 222, note; A. Gonzalez Palencia, ed. Obras completas (Madrid, 1946), pp. 1190a and 1189a, note. The inclusion of Girolamo Vida, like Sannazaro the author of a religious epic, as opposed to Pontano, the writer of erotic verse, and to Fracastoro, author of an epic on venereal disease, seems to make better sense. What matters, how- ever, is that Spanish editors of the time immediately thought of Beda as a paragon of piety and as a writer of poetics in this context.

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It looks like a confirmation of Beda's universal authority that we meet him as a recurring testimony in Spanish art tracts. Whether these references are directly taken from his works is a different matter. Probably they are current slogans lifted out of some Tri- dentine art preceptor (e. g. Molanus, Possevino, Paleotti), out of some Italian theoretician of fine arts, or out of other secondary sources. In a eulogistic treatise on the respectability of arts and sciences by Gaspar Gutierrez de los Rios, Noticia general para la estimacion de las artes (Madrid, 1600), we find a quotation in Latin and Spanish from Beda's De Templo Salomonis, VIII, ix. It occurs in a chapter on the emulation between fine arts and philosophy (lib. III, cap. xvi) when he tries to prove the usefulness of works of art for religious purposes: " Beda makes this admirably clear in these terms: ' Imaginum aspectus saepe multum compunctionis solet praestare contuentibus, et eis quoque qui literas ignorant, quasi vivam Dominicae Historiae pandere, lectionem.'" (p. 189 f, fol- lowed by its Spanish translation).

The historical context of these tracts is rather quaint. Spanish artists had for some while been subject to the same tax as house painters. In order to prove their difference from the mechanic arts (and consequently to obtain exemption from this artisan's duty) they made several efforts to demonstrate their equal rank with the liberal arts, an appeal that did not succeed before the reign of the art-lover Philip IV. In one of these works, the legal report in defence of the art of painting, Discursos apologeticos en que se defiende la ingenuidad del arte de la pintura (Madrid, 1626), the Professor of Law, Juan de Butr6n, first cites John of Salisbury in a comparison of painting and astronomy (discurso x, fol. 28r); later on he copies the Latin passage from Beda quoted by Gutierrez on the usefulness of pictures for the religious instruction of the illiterate (disc. xii, ? 2, fol. 37v). Literally translated into Spanish, this very justification is repeated

by another apologist, the court painter Vincenico Carducho. When dealing with the painting of sacred subjects in his Didlogos de la pintura (Madrid, 1633-34), he lines up Beda beside Saint Gregory, Saint Basil, and other ecclesiastical testimonies for the educational value of the fine arts (dialogo vii, fol. 120r-v). The same arguments are taken up with slight modifications by different experts who in an appendix to Carducho support his plea for the recognition of painting as a liberal art. One of the seven memoranda is a

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"Memorial informatorio" (dated 1628) by the amateur painter Lope de Vega, who summarily derives from Beda and other Church Fathers the idea that pictures are a kind of Biblia pauperum (fol. 165r). In another of these documents the poet and painter Juan de Jauregui produces evidence from the Scriptures of the high regard for the arts; the paramount example being Psalm 73, he quotes Beda's and Genebrardus' comment on the destruction of the Temple: "Januas vel picturas eius simul in securi, et malleis conquassant." He also gives these words an anti-Protestant twist when he takes them as a foreboding of the contemporary destruc- tions by the heretic iconoclasts (fol. 194v). Once again Beda has become the champion of orthodoxy,24 and the protection of the arts shines as a Catholic virtue-even though the primary object of these pious comments was but the concession of legal and financial benefits.

The only one to cite Beda in purely aesthetic contexts is Velaz- quez's father-in-law, Francisco Pacheco. In his Arte de la pintura (Sevilla, 1649, written in 1638) he uses the same illustration as his predecessors quote from Beda, adding: " A vivid lesson, that is what he calls painting!" (lib. III, cap. x, p. 466). Unswervingly loyal to the Tridentine art doctrine the Seville Art Inspector of the Inquisition refers to him also in his general chapters on the kinds of painting and their decorum (lib. II, cap. i-iv, pp. 177, 208, 212) as well as in his specific instructions for the painting of sacred subjects (lib. III, cap. xi-xiv, pp. 487-592). Demonstrating there the conformity of individual pictures with the Biblical text and proving thus their 'historical truth' he refers the reader to Beda's Martyro- logium, De locis sanctis, In Lucae Evangelium, Homeliae super Lucam, and Collectanea et floribus.25 Seeing the importance of Pacheco in his time his allusions to Beda may have been handed down to later art writers through him.

When towards the end of Spain's Golden Age the erudite Nicolas Antonio surveys in his monumental bibliography the liter- ary achievements of the Spaniards, the Venerable Bede is well established as an authority on the early stages of the Peninsular civilizations. In those sections of Antonio's Bibliotheca Hispana

24 Incidentally Thomas More is cited in a similar capacity in the testimony of the Court Chaplain, Juan Rodriguez de Le6n (ibid., fol. 222r). 25 For the complete list of Beda allusions see the modern edition of Pacheco's

book by F. J. Sanchez Cant6n (Madrid, 1956), Index.

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vetus (posth. ed. Romae, 1696), that deal with the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, Beda gives various evidence in connection with several churchmen: Leander of Seville (lib. IV, cap. iv, no. 94), Felix of Urgel and Elipandus of Toledo (lib. VI, cap. ii, no. 41), but particularly Isidore of Seville (lib. V, cap. iv, nos. 116 and 140- 142) to confirm the genuineness of some work of Isidore's and to clear up some bibliographical confusion about the authorship of the Biblical comments by Isidore and Beda respectively.26 These bibliographical facts, as well as others of Anglo-Spanish interest con- cerning John of Salisbury, William of Malmesbury, Isidore's MSS. in Oxford and Cambridge, Leofrid of Exeter, etc. (tom. I, pp. 181b, 249b, 256a, 256b), are probably derived from some of the secondary sources listed in the " Praefatio " and comprising John Bale, John Leland, John Pits, Thomas Dempster, James Usher, and James Ware (I, xxix, reprinted from Antonio's earlier Bibliotheca His- pana, 1672, fol. f2v).

We have to consider here a learned poet from Portugal, who in fact belongs to both Spanish and Portuguese literature, Dom Francisco Manuel de Melo. We include him in our survey not so much because he edited and was inspired by Quevedo's Life of Saint Paul and other works of his,27 but because he holds in his country a position of similar renown as his idol Quevedo holds in Spanish letters. At his death in 1666, Melo left among his MSS. a treatise on cabalism, Tratado da sciencia cabala ou noticia da arte (posth. ed. Lisboa, 1724), which also deals with the symbolism of names. He once cites Saint Augustin, Saint Cyprian, and Beda for their solution of the tetragram A. D.A.M. as an illustration of " cabala resolutoria" (p. 55). In another passage on the magical virtues of names (p. 115) he mentions Saint Paul's interpretation of JESUS and quotes from Beda's In Lucam: " Hujus sacrosancti nominis Jesu, non tantum ethimologia, sed et ipse, qui literis com- prehenditur numerus perpetuae salutis nostrae mysteria redolet." 28 We may assume that Beda turns up in other fields of Portuguese literature too. Not only because the political union of Spain and

26 Tom. I, pp. 224b, 250b, 256a-b, 261-262a, 326a. Some of these biblio. graphical details are corrected in the critical edition of 1788 by F. Perez Bayer.

27 Cf. L. Astrana Marin, ed. Francisco de Quevedo: Obras en prosa (Madrid, 1932), pp. 1085, note 1, and 1089; Obras en verso (Madrid, 1943), pp. lix f. and 1194-1200.

28 For Beda on symbolic names see C. Jenkins, " Bede as Exegete and Theo- logian," in A. H. Thompson, pp. 189-192.

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Portugal between 1580 and 1640 favoured the book-trade and the interchange of ideas, but chiefly because of the common roots of the twin cultures. If the single example of Melo's use of Beda looks like a literary freak it is worth remembering that the medieval mathematician and scientist was well-known to seventeenth-century writers on "natural magic" and secret sciences, as is proved by some Jesuit writings of those years.29

When in 1733 a compendious rifacimento of Suarez de Figueroa's Plaza universal was published, Beda was retained there literally as an exegete of the Bible (p. 180); but the entry on Beda the prolific author had disappeared from the corresponding section on writers and writing. He was obviously no longer required now, as he had been in the apology of 1615, to provide a shining example of the edifying value of letters, the eighteenth-century editors being convinced that " books are an indubitable source of wisdom " that could do without a theological justification (p. 595). Instead, Beda is placed among the historians somewhere between Sulpicius Severus and Paulus Diaconus (p. 620); there, the reader gets succinct information on his life and works of theology, philosophy, mathematics, and in the humanities (Martyrologium, De sex aetati- bus, "and others in eight volumes"), all drawn from Baronius and Vossius.

Judging by the matter-of-fact information of this last example it looks as if Beda had now found his last resting-place. No longer used as a spearhead for heated arguments in controversies now dead, he had been relegated to his niche in the pantheon of Western learning. However, in spite of the unfavourable tendencies of the Age of Illumination the memory of the medical scholar was not entirely blotted out in Spain. One of the men of letters to keep it alive was the learned antiquarian Gregorio Mayans i Siscar. When talking about the state of medieval Latin in his Origenes de la lengua espanola (1737), he explains the identity of Alcuin by calling him a pupil of the Venerable Bede, a name apparently more

29 Cf. Aspasius Caramuel (i. e., Caspar Schott), Joco-seriorum naturae et artis (1666), a diverting collection of anecdotes, experiments, tricks, secret remedies, etc., where we find Beda mentioned side by side with Girolamo Cardano and other occult writers who indulged in conundrums and mathematical jokes. Referring to Father Athanasius Kircher's work Oedipus Aegyptiacus and to his own Technica curiosa, Schott quotes a long passage from Beda describing a magic wheel of prediction (Germ. ed. Bamberg, 1677, pp. 172 f. and 215-217).

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familiar to the reader.30 And near the end of the century it was once again a Jesuit who had recourse to Beda, in this case to his mathematical treatise De computatione and his Liber de loquela per gestum digitorum, on which the exiled Father and freakish writer on music, Vicente Requeno y Vives, based his book on the pantomime of the ancients, Scoperta della chironomia (Parma, 1797) .31 Apart from the re-edition of older works as cited above there are likely to be more references to Beda buried in the litera- ture of the eighteenth century while Latin was still the language of teaching in colleges.

I did not examine the works surveyed here for unacknowledged Beda quotations. Neither could I establish whether the others were taken directly from his works or mechanically copied from secondary sources. A study of these might tell us something about the prin- cipal vehicles of divulgation of Beda's European fame. Our sum- mary cross-section, in fact, raises more questions than can possibly be answered within the scope of this paper: in what Spanish libraries and on which curricula was the Venerable Northerner represented? How does the resuscitation of this scholar from Christian Antiquity, if we may say so, fit into the pattern of Renais- sance and Counter-Reformation? More especially, how does his medieval reputation compare with the re-emergence of some of his works and the neglect of others in modern times? How is his image in Spain related to that in neighbouring countries? Above all, in what way did the Catholic predilection for him differ from that of the Protestants, particularly in England? And was he more of a literary influence elsewhere than in Spain?

On the narrow evidence of our material it would be premature to draw any definite and general conclusions. But a more thorough investigation would probably confirm the tendencies only just ap- parent in our survey. In spite of our examples being few and scattered across more than a century, they at least indicate the range of the Beda tradition in Spain. If he was not precisely a house- hold name there, he was widely known to scholars as well as to artists, to the foremost literary figures as much as to the occasional and pedestrian writer. Being chiefly renowned as a churchman, his

80 Ed. J. E. Hartzenbusch and E. de Mier (Madrid, 1873), II, 356 f., where a long footnote is deemed necessary to remind the nineteenth-century reader of this historical figure.

81 Cf. M. Menendez Pelayo, Historia de las ideas esteticas en Espaia, Edici6n Nacional, III (Santander, 1947), p. 648.

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moral guidance was used in equally distant fields ranging from religious propaganda to criticism; he put in an appearance in historiography, rhetoric, and bibliography; and he turned up in less predictable quarters such as language-teaching and occultism. Most significant of all, his presence was felt beyond the boundaries of divinity and other spheres of erudition in the neighbouring regions of literature. Altogether a remarkable achievement, one should think, for an English scholar who has never been printed or trans- lated in Spain, and that at a time when beside a few other medieval ecclesiastics Thomas More and John Barclay were almost the only British names commonly known in that country.

Looking back it is a gratifying thought that in an age of political and religious antagonisms that were to poison the relations between the two nations for centuries, the voice of Britain was still heard in the Peninsula. It is as well that it was the voice of her saintly men that was listened to above the clamour of national ambitions and religious self-righteousness. In his own days Beda had held up the torch of ancient learning spreading its light across Europe from its periphery to the new civilizations that were emerging from the downfall of the Roman Empire. If he had then contributed to the reconcilation of the pagan and the Christian worlds, he was now, in a way, fulfilling another conciliatory mission: helping to bridge the gap between the rivalling nations by knotting the ties, however feeble, of a Christian brotherhood, however biassed. This deepening of the feeling of a common tradition happened at the same time when Spanish devotional literature was favourably received in Stuart England under comparable, though different, circumstances when medieval attitudes were still largely the same in both countries.32

Freie Universitiit Berlin

s2 Cf. P. E. Russell, " English Seventeenth Century Interpretations of Spanish Literature," Atlante, I (1953), 66-69.

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