Abstract
Juan de Horozco’s 1588 Tratado dela verdadera y falsa prophecia (“Treatise Concerning True and False Prophecy”) intersects with at least three topics that have been central themes in Ann Matter’s scholarship: visionary culture, female prophecy, and the subtle manifestations of apocalypticism through the centuries of Christian thought and practice. The Tratado was an influential manual that Horozco wrote to help confessors discern spirits, and it has received particular attention from historians for its discussion of female visionary experiences. In this essay, I call attention to Horozco’s own betrayal of an apocalyptic outlook in the Tratado, and his use of medieval prophetic traditions such as the Erythraean Sibyl to interpret the challenges and possibilities facing both the Catholic Church and Spanish society in his own day. Horozco’s Tratado reminds us that, even at the end of the sixteenth century, apocalypticism continued to give voice to the anxieties and hopes of ecclesiastical authorities, and had not become exclusively a voice of protest from the margins of church and society.
I am grateful to E. Ann Matter and Jodi Bilinkoff for their comments on earlier versions of this paper, and Jes Boon, whose comments have greatly improved the paper’s present state.
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Notes
- 1.
Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias, Tratado dela verdadera y falsa prophecia (Segovia: Juan de la Cuesta, 1588). When quoting from the Tratado , I have respected the original orthography and punctuation, except that I have expanded those words that were originally abbreviated. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Spanish are mine.
- 2.
Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias, Emblemas morales de Don Iuan de Horozco y Couarruuias (Segovia: Juan de la Cuesta, 1589). Horozco’s Emblemas morales is well known to scholars of emblem books. Bradley J. Nelson devoted a chapter to Horozco’s Emblemas morales in The Persistence of Presence: Emblem and Ritual in Baroque Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2010), 55–74. See also Christian Bouzy, “Neoestoicismo y senequismo en los Emblemas Morales de Juan de Horozco,” in Emblemata Aurea: La Emblemática en el Arte y La Literatura del Siglo de Oro, ed. Rafael Zafra and José Javier Azanza (Madrid: Akal Ediciones, 2000), 69–78; Julián Gállego, “Los Emblemas morales de don Juan de Horozco,” Cuadernos de Arte e Iconografía 1.2 (1989): 129–42; Jesús M. González de Zárate, “La herencia simbólica de los hieroglyphica en los Emblemas Morales de Juan de Horozco,” Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar 38 (1989): 55–72; Juan de Dios Hernández Miñano, “Los Emblemas morales de Juan de Horozco,”Norba-arte (Cáceres) 8 (1988): 97–112; and Bradley J. Nelson, “Emblematic Representation and Guided Culture in Baroque Spain: Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias,” in Culture and the State in Spain: 1550–1850, ed. Tom Lewis and Francisco J. Sánchez (New York: Garland, 1999), 157–95.
- 3.
For recent scholarship on priests’ manuals in Spain, see especially Andrew Keitt, Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition, and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain (Boston: Brill, 2005); Patrick J. O’Banion, The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012). On anti-superstition campaigns in sixteenth-century Spain, see Fabián Alejandro Campagne, Homo catholicus, homo superstitiosus: El discurso antisupersticioso en la España de los siglos XV a XVIII (Madrid: Miño y Dávila Editores, 2002); Lu Ann Homza, “To Annihilate Sorcery and Amend the Church: A New Interpretation of Pedro Ciruelo’s Reprobación de las supersticiones y hechicerías,” in Religion, Body, and Gender in Early Modern Spain, ed. Alain Saint-Saens (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1991), 46–64. On feigned sanctity in early modern Europe and its relationship with prophecy, see Stephen Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Anne Jacobsen Schutte, Aspiring Saints: The Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
- 4.
E. Ann Matter has synthesized all three perspectives in her “Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the Late Twentieth Century: Apocalyptic, Representation, Politics,” Religion 31 (2001): 125–53.
- 5.
Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, “Un grupo de visionarios y pseudoprofetas que actúa durante los últimos años de Felipe II,” Revista Española de Teología 7 (1947): 373–97; Campagne, Homo catholicus, homo superstitiosus; and Julio Caro Baroja, Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa: Religión, sociedad y carácter en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: Sarpe, 1985).
- 6.
Jodi Bilinkoff, “Establishing Authority: A Peasant Visionary and Her Audience in Early Sixteenth-Century Spain,” Studia Mystica 18 (1997): 36–59; William A. Christian, Jr., Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy; and Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). In her contribution to this volume, Mary Rose D’Angelo provides references to some of Ann’s best-known work on this area in “The Sobered Sibyl: Gender, Apocalypse and Virtue in the Shepherd of Hermas and Dio’s First Discourse,” in this collection, 17–40, at 17–18, notes 1–2.
- 7.
Throughout this essay I employ Bernard McGinn’s understanding of apocalypticism as “a particular form of eschatology, a species of broader genus that covers any type of belief that looks forward to the end of history as that which gives structure and meaning to the whole.” Apocalyptic Spirituality: Treatises and Letters of Lactantius, Adso of Montier-en-Der, Joachim of Fiore, The Franciscan Spirituals, Savonarola. The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979), 5.
- 8.
Most scholars seem to be in agreement that this model is incorrect, yet its force remains as recent studies of such movements continue to place their emphasis on either popular or dissenting movements. For example, the excellent work of Richard Kagan and Sara Nalle has shed much light on the prophetic culture of post-Tridentine Spain, yet we remain without studies of such activity within clerical culture. Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams; Kagan, “Politics, Prophecy, and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-Century Spain,” in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 105–24; Sara Tilghman Nalle, Mad for God: Bartolomé Sánchez, the Secret Messiah of Cardenete (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001); Nalle, “The Millennial Moment: Revolution and Radical Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Shäfer and Mark Cohen (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 153–73; and Nalle, “Revisiting El Encubierto,” in Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief and Folklore in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kathryn A. Edwards (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002), 77–92. Likewise, models persist that portray the Church after the early sixteenth century as being intolerant of apocalyptic or prophetic activity. See especially Robin Barnes, “Images of Hope and Despair: Western Apocalypticism: ca. 1500–1800,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. Bernard McGinn, John Joseph Collins, and Stephen J. Stein (New York: Continuum, 1998), 143–84; Ottavia Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
- 9.
Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 32.
- 10.
For Horozco’s biography I am indebted to Jack Weiner, whose work on Juan’s father Sebastián has produced valuable information about Juan’s ecclesiastical career. See especially Jack Weiner, “Genealogía del liçençiado Juan Horozco de Covarrubias (1573),” in El Cancionero, Sebastian de Horozco. Introducción, edición crítica, notas, bibliografía y genealogía de Juan de Horozco por Jack Weiner, ed. Jack Weiner (Bern: H. Lang, 1975), 325–45; Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” in En Busca de la Justicia Social (Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 1984), 134–48. More recently, Rafael Zafra Molina provides a biography of Horozco, with close attention to his literary production as both author and printer in “Nuevos datos sobre la obra de Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias,” IMAGO: Revista de Emblemática y Cultural Visual 3 (2011): 107–26.
- 11.
Hernández Miñano, “Los Emblemas morales de Juan de Horozco,” 98.
- 12.
Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” 134. For more information on Antonio and Diego de Covarrubias, see Francisco Vicente Gómez and Constancio Gutiérrez, Españoles en Trento (Valladolid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Instituto “Jerónimo Zurita” Sección de Historia Moderna “Simancas”, 1951), 128–35, 238–45.
- 13.
Diego was later appointed archbishop of Cuenca, but died before taking his see. Hernández Miñano, “Los Emblemas morales de Juan de Horozco,” 99.
- 14.
Horozco lists Antonio de Covarrubias’s offices in a letter he writes to his uncle in the opening apparatus of the Tratado , s/f.
- 15.
Hernández Miñano, “Los Emblemas morales de Juan de Horozco,” 99, 101. For more information on Juan’s brother Sebastián de Covarrubias, see the rich documentation found in Cuenca’s archives in Ángel González Palencia, “Datos biográficos del licenciado Sebastián de Covarrubias y Horozco,” Boletín de la Real Academia Española 12 (1925): 39–72, 217–45, 376–96, 498–514. See also Narciso Alonso Cortés, “Acervo biográfico: Don Sebastián de Covarrubias y Horozco,” Boletín de la Real Academia Española 30 (1950): 11–13. Gonzalez Palencia includes a transcription of Sebastián’s testament, which reveals a high standard of living from various ecclesiastical incomes and indicates he employed numerous servants.
- 16.
Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” 135. Although Gonzalez Palencia assumes that Sebastián was educated at Salamanca because of his uncle Diego’s position there, he concedes that there is no proof, as Sebastián left a documentary trail only after to his appointment to the cathedral chapter in Cuenca. Gonzalez Palencia, “Datos biográficos del licenciado Sebastián de Covarrubias y Horozco,” 40–41. Nelson reiterates Weiner’s argument in The Persistence of Presence, 65–66, 72.
- 17.
Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” 134. Weiner provides a transcript of the Inquisition’s investigation into Juan’s converso status, in “Genealogía del liçençiado Juan Horozco de Covarrubias (1573).”
- 18.
Horozco’s support of Teresa of Avila’s Discalced Carmelites provides a particularly interesting example of the possible connection between his converso status and support for Catholic reform, as Teresa herself is thought to have come from a converso background. On connections between the Carmelite reforms and conversos, see Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 146–47.
- 19.
Nicolás Antonio, Biblioteca hispana nueva, o, De los escritores españoles que brillaron desde el año MD hasta el de MDCLXXXIV (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1999), 757.
- 20.
Emblemas morales de don Iuan de Horozco y Covaruvias arcediano de Cuellar en la santa Yglesia de Segovia: Dedicadas a la buena memoria del presidente don Diego de Covarruvias y Leyua su tio (Segovia: Juan de la Cuesta, 1591), 3v, 4r.
- 21.
Horozco indicates this in a letter to Madre Isabel de Santo Domingo, the Prioress of Segovia’s Discalced Carmelite Convent. The letter is found in the introductory apparatus of Horozco’s Consuelo de afligidos (Agrigento, 1601), s/f.
- 22.
Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” 142–43.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias, Paradoxas Christianas contra las falsas opiniones del mundo (Segovia: Marcos de Ortega, 1592). After its 1589 printing in Segovia, the Emblemas morales was printed in Segovia in 1591 and in Zaragoza in 1603 and 1604.
- 25.
Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” 135–36. On the Spanish crown’s right to appoint bishops under the patronato real, see Ignasi Fernández Terricabras, Felipe II y el clero secular (Madrid, 2000); Helen E. Rawlings, “The Secularisation of Castilian Episcopal Office under the Habsburgs, c. 1516–1700,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38 (1987): 53–79.
- 26.
Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” 146–48.
- 27.
Symbola sacra (Agrigento 1601) and Consuelo de afligidos.
- 28.
Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” 147. Gonzalez Palencia’s research uncovered a royal document recommending Horozco for the see of Guadix that alleges that several of his canons made an attempt on his life in retaliation for his reforming actions. “Datos biográficos del licenciado Sebastián de Covarrubias y Horozco,” 71–72.
- 29.
On the campaign to “Christianize” Andalusia, see especially David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada: Society & Religious Culture in an Old-World Frontier City, 1492–1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).
- 30.
Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias de Leyva, Doctrina de principes enseñada por el santo Job (Valladolid: Juan de Herrera, 1605). Note that Horozco had begun to adopt his uncles’ additional surname of Leyva.
- 31.
Pedro Suárez chronicled Horozco’s tenure in Guadix in his history of the diocese, originally published in 1696, Historia del obispado de Guadix y Baza (Madrid: Artes Gráficas Arges, 1948), 238.
- 32.
English translations of Gerson’s treatises can be found in Paschal Boland, The Concept of Discretio spirituum in John Gerson’s “De probatione spirituum” and “De distinctione verarum visionum a falsis” (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1959).
- 33.
Keitt, Inventing the Sacred, 76.
- 34.
O’Banion, The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain , 26.
- 35.
Keitt, Inventing the Sacred, 9.
- 36.
For example, Juan de los Angeles, despite writing only seven years after Horozco, relies heavily on Gerson but makes no mention of Horozco’s Tratado . Fray Juan de los Angeles, Dialogos de la conquista del espiritual y secreto Reyno de Dios (Madrid: Viuda de P. Madrigal, 1595).
- 37.
James F. Melvin, Fathers as Brothers in Early Modern Catholicism: Priestly Life in Avila, 1560–1636. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2009, 219. Vaquero’s library was recorded in Avila, Archivo Histórico Provincial, Protocolos 612, fols. 1040r–1043v. Vaquero was also the spiritual director and biographer of a visionary nun who attracted followers in seventeenth-century Avila, Maria Vela. On Vaquero’s relationship to Vela, see Jodi Bilinkoff, “Confessors, Penitents, and the Construction of Identities in Early Modern Avila,” in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), ed. Barbara B. Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 83–100.
- 38.
“…ha compuesto libros de mucha erudición y christiandad en especial un libro yntitulado De verdadera y falsa prophecía, en que mostró bien el deseo que tiene de aprouechar a todos los fieles christianos y otros muchos libros cathólicos y de mucha erudición y doctrina,…” Testimony quoted in Weiner, “El camino de Juan de Horozco al obispado de Agrigento,” 143–44.
- 39.
“El tiempo ha dado lugar a esta platica por auerse publicado tantas prophecias de diferentes autores, que a vn tiempo en diuersas partes se han leuantado…” Tratado , 1v.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
“…aunque es verdad que todo està dicho, no es para todos, porque no se halla facilmente…y que solo vienen a entenderlo los muy estudiosos, y que estàn muy adelante en su profession.” Ibid., 1r.
- 42.
“…deuen considerar la obligacion que tienen de atender mucho a aquel negocio por ser graue, y de cuydado, por el peligro que ay en el…”. Ibid., 56v.
- 43.
Caro Baroja provides an outline of the Tratado ’s contents in Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa, 55–59.
- 44.
Although he does not focus on judicial astrology, Richard Kagan describes the popularity of various occult arts within Spanish society, especially among high-ranking churchmen in Lucrecia’s Dreams.
- 45.
Tratado , 154v.
- 46.
“…domina en el un criterio de erudito, aficionado a las antiguedades, aunque no deje de contener alusiones a hechos modernos.” Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa, 56. Note that Caro Baroja’s quote refers specifically to Book Two of the Tratado .
- 47.
For example, Horozco explains the Erythraean Sibyl’s acrostic poem: “el original fue Griego, pues en otra lengua no podia venir la cuenta que pone del nombre de IESVS, conforme al valor que tienen las letras Griegas en razon de significar los numeros.” Tratado , 152r.
- 48.
Ibid., 8r.
- 49.
Ibid., 43v–44v.
- 50.
Ibid., 44v.
- 51.
Ibid., 46r.
- 52.
Ibid., 46v.
- 53.
“…procuran responder a todo por no perder el credito, y la estima que pretenden.” Ibid.
- 54.
Ibid., 47r.
- 55.
Ibid., 47v.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
“…y lo primero es, que la acepcion del vulgo, y ser estimado entre los suyos, pone sospecha en el que se dize propheta.” Ibid., 49v.
- 58.
Alison Weber discusses the popularity of visionaries and their surrounding controversy in Horozco’s time by examining the work of Diego Pérez de Valdivia’s Aviso de gente recogida (1585) in “Between Ecstasy and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in Sixteenth Century Spain,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23 (1993): 221–34. Andrew Keitt provides a monograph length examination of this phenomenon and the role of discernment manuals in Inventing the Sacred.
- 59.
“…por señal de humildad, y de sujecion a Dios, se ha visto en los prophetas verdaderos caer sobre su rostro…Y por esto los malos que caen en lo que no veen, se dize caer atrás…” Tratado , 50r–50v. Horozco draws on Origen and Gregory the Great for examples of true prophets, such as St. Paul, who fell forward.
- 60.
Ibid., 50v–51r. Horozco’s acknowledgement of the biological origins of false visionary experiences supports Keitt’s arguments in Inventing the Sacred.
- 61.
Tratado , 57r.
- 62.
Ibid., 51r–51v.
- 63.
Ibid., 20r.
- 64.
“CAP.VIII. En que se trata que el don de la prophecia se ha continuado en la Yglesia Catolica.” Ibid., 21v.
- 65.
Ibid., 22v–23v.
- 66.
Zafra Molina, “Nuevos datos sobre la obra de Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias,” 123. Zafra Molina reproduces the letter in full, which provides additional details about Horozco’s chaplaincy at the Discalced Carmelite convent in Segovia and recounts his encounters with Teresa.
- 67.
Bernard McGinn, “Apocalypticism and Mysticism in Joachim of Fiore’s Expositio in Apocalypsim ,” in this collection, 163–196; Marcia L. Colish, “End Time at Hand: Innocent III, Joachim of Fiore, and the Fourth Crusade,” also in this collection, 251–279.
- 68.
Tratado , 23r.
- 69.
“Del Abad Ioachin se escriue que tuuo don de prophecia, y en sus escritos ay algunas cosas sin otras sueltas que andan de mano y yo he tenido, mas no he hecho mucho caso dellas, porque debaxo deste nombre se han entre algunos por curiosidad vana guardado algunas prophecias de diferentes autores, sin auer bastante razon, para hazer caso dellas, por ser fingidas, o sacadas de otras verdaderas, y no entendidas bien. Y aunque es verdad que ha de auer gran recato en semejantes cosas, no se ha de cerrar la puerta a todo, porque quando Dios es seruido embia en general a muchos, o en particular a alguno quien auise de lo que ha de suceder…”. Ibid., 23r–23v.
- 70.
Reeves notes that among the Jesuit adherents of this view was the Spanish commentator, Blasius Viegus, Joachim of Fiore & The Prophetic Future (Phoenix Mill, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1999), 116–18. Viegus was well known for a commentary on the book of Revelation, first published in Evora in 1601 and later in Venice (1602), Lyon (1602, 1605, 1606), Cologne (1603), Paris (1615), and Turin (1614).
- 71.
Ibid., 125.
- 72.
Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa, 56–57.
- 73.
Ibid., 61r. The case of Magdalena de la Cruz is discussed briefly in Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams, 11, 115; Bilinkoff, The Avila of St. Teresa, 118. For a detailed account, see María del Mar Graña Cid, “La santa/bruja Magdalena de la Cruz: Identidades religiosas y poder femenino en la Andalucía pretridentina,” in La mujer (II): Actas del III Congreso de Historia de Andalucía (Cordoba: Publicaciones Obra Social y Cultural Cajasur, 2002), 103–20.
- 74.
Piedrola and Lucrecia de Leon are the focus of Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams. Vicente Beltrán de Heredia asserts that Horozco was referring to Piedrola and Lucrecia de Leon’s followers when, on folios 42r–42v, he mentions people who, “en estos días…se han creído de algunas personas cuerdas de manera que pone espanto…y se vía en algunos sueños, como es amenazar con grandes mortandades y destruiciones y que se habian de salvar los escogidos en cuevas…” Quoted in Beltrán de Heredia, “Un grupo de visionarios y pseudoprofetas que actúa durante los últimos años de Felipe II,” 393, Footnote 26.
- 75.
Tratado , 52r. Here I employ McGinn’s distinction between eschatology and its subspecies, apocalyptic, which differ in the latter’s intensity and its conviction that the end is near. Visions of the End, 3–4. Note that this does not require the apocalyptic thinker to predict when the end will actually occur.
- 76.
Marjorie Reeves notes that within Spain and the Habsburg empire in the early sixteenth century there were some who viewed Charles V as the long awaited Last World Emperor. Joachim of Fiore & The Prophetic Future, 110–14. Ronald Cueto Ruíz challenges the older historiographical silence regarding the culture of prophecy among early modern Habsburg monarchs in Spain. He found that in the late sixteenth century, the Franciscan Antonio Ruvio wrote an anti-Erasmian polemic that included an apocalyptic image with Luther and Erasmus comprising the tale of the dragon from John’s Apocalypse and Philip II as the new Constantine. “La tradición profética en la monarquía católica en los siglos 15, 16, y 17,” Arquivos do Centro Cultural Portugues 17 (1982): 411–44, at 419. Boon’s contribution to this volume surveys the literature by hispanists concerning the imperial apocalyptic tradition in Spain during the first half of the sixteenth century, and rightly observes that hispanists’ focus on apocalypticism’s political ramifications has been too restrictive. “The Marian Apocalyptic of a Visionary Preacher: The Conorte of Juana de la Cruz, 1481–1534,” in this collection, 41–67, at 44–46.
- 77.
“…tengo gran esperança se ha de cumplir en honra de España…lo que en general està dicho deste tiempo, que se ha de ver en el vna marauilla grande que ha de espantar el mundo, con el ensalçamiento de nueuo Imperio; que todo sea y lo encamine Dios para gloria suya, y para mayor honra y ensalçamiento de su santa Fê Catolica.” Tratado , 4r.
- 78.
Caro Baroja writes: “El problema es que el arcediano, en 1588, creía en lo que indica al final del prologo al lector….1588…Parece que la profecía no se cumplió.” Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa, 56.
- 79.
Matter, “Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the Late Twentieth Century.”
- 80.
“…la abominacion que en estos tiempos se vee en España…” Tratado , 32v. For more information on this understudied work by Pseudo-Hippolytus, see Alice Whealey, “De Consummatione Mundi of Pseudo-Hippolytus: Another Byzantine Apocalypse from the Early Islamic Period,” Byzantion 66.2 (1996): 461–69. Horozco would have had access to this text in Marguerin de La Bigne, Sacra bibliotheca sanctorum patrum supra ducentos qua continentur, illorum de rebus diuinis opera omnia et fragmenta… (Paris: Michaelem Sonnium, 1575).
- 81.
“…pudieramos traer algunas consideraciones para ayudar a este proposito con que tenemos obligacion a biuir con mas cuydado, y mas despedidos de las memorias vanas del mundo, si entendemos que se va acercando el dia que por Fê tenemos ha de ser el final, y por ser de vn santo de los mas antiguos, pondre aqui vna de las señales que pone de acercarse el juyzio…” Tratado , 32r–32v.
- 82.
“Reuelacion de vn santo en cosas deste tiempo.” Ibid., 32v.
- 83.
“…los cantares del enemigo nuestro, se cantaràn donde quiera.” Ibid.
- 84.
Ibid.
- 85.
“…lo postrero que son los cantares del demonio, bien se veen que donde quiera se cantan, auiendose introduzido la abominacion de vn cantar acompañado de bayles que en realidad se entiende fueron inuencion del demonio entre los Indios, y no podia ser menos siendo quando siendo quanto es posible deshonestos en todo genero de torpezas…” Ibid., 32v–33r.
- 86.
“Un grupo de visionarios y pseudoprofetas que actúa durante los últimos años de Felipe II,” 383–84. On the sarabande’s translation to Spain, see J. Peter Burkholder, “Music of the Americas and Historical Narratives,” American Music 27 (2009): 399–23, at 411–13. On the controversies surrounding the sarabande’s popularity in Spain, see Louise K. Stein, “Eros, Erato, Terpsichore and the Hearing of Music in Early Modern Spain,” The Musical Quarterly 82 (1998): 654–77, at 660–63. Although he does not discuss the sarabande, Max Harris provides a brief historical sketch of the importation of Native American dance to sixteenth-century Spain in Aztecs, Moors, and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 227–34.
- 87.
Tratado , 33r.
- 88.
“Tambien ay amenaças de varones santos que han dicho se perdio una vez España, por torpeças, y deshonestidades, y se auia de perder otra vez por ellas, y harta perdiciones la desorden, y lo que sucede en casos particulares que jamas se han visto, mas dexemos esto que serà Dios seruido se remedie.” Ibid.
- 89.
“Peligro grande en los moriscos que quedan por repartir y en los que se han repartido.” Ibid., 39v.
- 90.
Ibid., 39r. Note that Horozco was also writing at the same time of the discovery of the plomos de Granada—a series of forged documents that invented a syncretistic Christian history of Granada that incorporated Arab culture, which was determined to be a hoax in the seventeenth century. On the plomos de Granada, see especially Coleman, Creating Christian Granada, 177–201; A. Katie Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
- 91.
The antiquarian Mariana Monteiro noted Horozco’s positive view of the Erythraean Sibyl in As David and the Sibyls Say: A Sketch of the Sibyls and the Sibylline Oracles. Initiated and Projected by the Late Very Reverend Alfred Canon White (Edinburg, UK: Sands & Co., 1905), 88.
- 92.
“Y porque ya es tiempo de dar fin a nuestro libro vendra muy a proposito le acabemos con los versos desta Sibyla Erythrea, que tratan del fin del mundo.” Tratado , 152v.
- 93.
With his use of the Erythraean Sibyl to cap his guide for the priestly discernment of (often female) prophecy, we could view Horozco as a successor to the second-century men who wrote about the Sibylline oracles examined by Mary Rose D’Angelo in her contribution to this volume. “The Sobered Sibyl,” 178. For a thorough history of the Sibylline oracles from their origins through the late Middle Ages is in Bernard McGinn, “Teste David cum Sibylla: The Significance of the Sibylline Tradition in the Middle Ages,” in Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, ed. Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Wemple (New York: Basil Blackwell, Inc., 1985), 7–35. McGinn also includes sections of the Sibyls in his two anthologies of apocalyptic writing, McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality, and McGinn, Visions of the End.
- 94.
See Bard Thompson, “Patristic Use of the Sibylline Oracles,” Review of Religion 16 (1952): 115–36.
- 95.
McGinn, “Teste David cum Sibylla,” 12.
- 96.
Ibid., 17. For studies of the complex manuscript tradition of the Erythraean Sibyl in Medieval Europe, see Paul J. Alexander, “The Diffusion of Byzantine Apocalypses in the Medieval West and the Beginnings of Joachimism,” in Prophecy and Millennarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1980), 55–106; Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993).
- 97.
McGinn, “Teste David cum Sibylla,” 19.
- 98.
Ibid., 35.
- 99.
Tratado , 149v.
- 100.
“Y conforme a esta generalidad se puede dezir de las Sibylas auer sido prophetisas del demonio.” Ibid., 149v.
- 101.
Ibid.
- 102.
“…y la Yglesia lo canta de la vna dellas, que dixeron grandes prophecias de Christo, y de la fin del mundo…”. Ibid., 150r.
- 103.
Ibid., 152v.
- 104.
“Y ya andan en muchas partes en Griego, y en Latin.” Ibid., 152v–153r.
- 105.
“…segui la traslacion de los que estan referidos en la bibliotheca de los Santos padres…”. Ibid., 153r.
- 106.
Iuyzio anunciaron la tierra y cielo
En sus señales, quando el Rey eterno
Sobre las nuues llamará al juicio
Universal, a dó del malo y bueno
Será visto de Santos rodeado
Con majestad Real juzgando a todos.
Horno encendido sera todo el mundo,
Rios y fuentes yran vertiendo llamas,
Iuntarse han fuego y agua, y de tal suerte
Será, que el mar levante olas de fuego,
Todo tendrá un calor mar, tierra, y cielo.
O dichosos los buenos, que a tal tiempo
Hechos particioneros de la gloria
Iran en cuerpo y alma a gozar della.
Iamas podran perderla, mas los malos
O desdichada suerte al fuego eterno,
Del triste obscuro y temeroso abysmo,
En cuerpo y alma yran acompañados
De los demonios, y a la eterna pena
Iran con rabia de pesar y afrenta.
O vergonçoso trance, sus maldades
Seran a todo el mundo manifiestas,
Sus enredos y tratos mas secretos
Alli seran de todos entendidos;
La vanidad del mundo, sus plazeres
Vanos, y sus deleytes lisonjeros
Alli se mostraron de que sirvieron
Desengeñados tarde de sus males
Ocurrían a ver lo que les queda,
Restarles ha morir eternamente. Ibid., 153r–154r. Note that the phrase “Todo tendra un color mar, tierra, cielo” should read “Todo tendra un calor” according to contemporary translations of the acrostic in Luis de Granada and Alonso de Villegas, which both read “abrasará un fuego las tierras, la mar, el cielo.” Fray Luis de Granada, “Introducción del Símbolo de la Fe IV,” in Obras completas, ed. Alvaro Huerga (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1994), 192; Alonso de Villegas, Flos sanctorum segunda parte: Y historia general en que se escriue la vida de la Virgen Sacratissima madre de Dios, y Señora nuestra, y las de los sanctos antiguos, que fueron antes dela venida de nuestro Saluador al mundo (Barcelona: En casa de Hubert Gotard: A costa de Francisco Simon, 1587), 152r.
- 107.
A sketch of the diffusion and reception of the Sibyls in sixteenth-century Spain, which includes the Tratado in a list of golden age Spanish authors who discussed the Sibyls, can be found in José Enrique Laplana Gil’s critical notes to Ambrosio Bondía, Cítara de Apolo y Parnaso en Aragón. Edición, introducción y notas de José Enrique Laplana Gil (Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses, 2000), 1: clxvii–clxxxi. LaPlana Gil observes that Horozco’s Tratado showed the Sibyls “excessive praise (elogio excesivo)” compared to the other authors who wrote about them (1: clxvii, Footnote 230).
- 108.
Kamen, The Phoenix and the Flame, 100.
- 109.
Ibid., 100–1.
- 110.
LaPlana Gil, in Bondía, Cítara de Apolo y Parnaso en Aragón, 1: clxxi.
- 111.
LaPlana Gil mentions the influence of these two publications, and cites Santiago Sebastián Lopez’s remark about the Erythraean Sibyl as “una de las caractéristicas del Humanismo” in Bondía, 1: clxix–clxx. LaPlana Gil refers to Sixtus Betulius, Sibyllinorum oracvlorvm libri octo (Basel: Ioannis Oporini, 1545); Lactantius, De divinis institutionibus (Subiaco: Sweynheym and Pannartz, 1465).
- 112.
Juan de Avila, “Sermones de tiempo: ‘¡Grande es el día del Señor, y muy terrible!’ Domingo I de Adviento,” in Obras Completas del Santo Maestro Juan de Avila, Edición Crítica, ed. Luis Sala Balust and Francisco Martín Hernández (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1970), 19.
- 113.
Granada, “Introducción del símbolo de la fe IV,” Chapter 21; Villegas, Flos sanctorum segunda parte, 152r–152v.
- 114.
Baltasar Porreño made reference to Canisius’s De Maria Virgine incomparabile et Dei genitrice Sacrosancta libri quinque (Ingolstadt: David Sartorius, 1577) in his own Oráculos de las doce Sibilas, profetisas de Cristo nuestro Señor (Cuenca: Domingo de la Iglesia, 1621), 5v.
- 115.
Tratado del examen de las revelaciones verdaderas y falsas, y de los raptos, 86r. Unlike Horozco, Planes does not seem to employ the Sibyls for his own commentary on the age.
- 116.
Oráculos de las doce Sibilas, profetisas de Cristo nuestro Señor, 4r.
- 117.
Indeed, thirteen years after the Tratado’s publication, Horozco’s Consuelo de los afligidos placed great emphasis on God’s mercy toward those who persevere through tribulations. In the topical index of this text one finds under the heading for the letter F: “Fin del mundo esta cerca”, that is, the end of the world is near. The section indicated by the index, however, makes no concrete predictions about the end, and instead exhorts those who have persevered through the tumultuous religious climate of the sixteenth century to maintain hope. Consuelo de los afligidos, 188.
- 118.
McGinn, Visions of the End, 30.
- 119.
Bradley Nelson’s study of Horozco’s emblem books similarly contends that the author employed a “socially and ethically conservative mnemonic strategy” as part of an ideological campaign in support of the Spanish crown. Nelson, “Emblematic Representation and Guided Culture in Baroque Spain,” 160.
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Melvin, J.F. (2019). Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias’s Tratado dela verdadera y falsa prophecia (1588) and the Influence of Medieval Apocalyptic Traditions in Post-Tridentine Spain. In: Knibbs, E., Boon, J., Gelser, E. (eds) The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14965-9_8
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