During the early modern age religious orders had to interpret papal strategies and directives in international politics in the light of a substantial ambiguity. They were loyal subjects of the pope, but also trusted agents and advisers of princes. They were operatives of the Holy See and, at the same time, of strategies not necessarily in line with Roman guidelines. This ambiguity resulted in conflicts, both overt and latent, between obedience to the pope and obedience to the sovereign, between membership in a universal religious order and individual «national» origins and personal ties, between observance of Roman directives and the need to maintain good relations with the authorities of the territory in which the religious orders lived and worked. This book aims to examine, through a series of case studies not only in Europe but also America and the Middle East, the roles played by religious orders in the international politics of the Holy See. It seeks to determine the extent to which the orders were mere objects or instruments; whether they were able to give life, more or less openly, to autonomous strategies, and for what reasons; and what awareness of their own identity groups or individuals developed in relation to the influences of international politics in an age of conflict.

On Good Friday, 1626, Franciscus Quaresmius delivered a sermon in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem calling on King Philip IV of Spain to undertake a crusade to ‘liberate’ the Holy Land. Jerusalem Afflicted: Quaresmius, Spain, and the Idea of a 17th-century Crusade introduces readers to this unique call to arms with the first-ever edition of the work since its publication in 1631. Aside from an annotated English translation of the sermon, this book also includes a series of introductory chapters providing historical context and textual commentary, followed by an anthology of Spanish crusading texts that testify to the persistence of the idea of crusade throughout the 17th century. Quaresmius’ impassioned and thoroughly reasoned plea is expressed through the voice of Jerusalem herself, personified as a woman in bondage. The friar draws on many of the same rhetorical traditions and theological assumptions that first launched the crusading movement at Clermont in 1095, while also bending those traditions to meet the unique concerns of 17th-century geopolitics in Europe and the Mediterranean. Quaresmius depicts the rescue of the Holy City from Turkish abuse as a just and necessary cause. Perhaps more unexpectedly, he also presents Jerusalem as sovereign Spanish territory, boldly calling on Philip as King of Jerusalem and Patron of the Holy Places to embrace his royal duty and reclaim what is rightly his on behalf of the universal faithful. Quaresmius’ early modern call to crusade ultimately helps us rethink the popular assumption that, like the chivalry imagined by Don Quixote, the crusades somehow died along with the middle ages.

The career of Arthur L-F. Askins is celebreated in a panorama of current scholarship on the Iberian peninsula during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This volume is dedicated to Professor Arthur L-F. Askins, whose scholarship on Spanish and Portuguese literatures of the Medieval and Renaissance periods is esteemed by colleagues around the world. Many North American and European scholars have contributed with essays of an exceptionally high scholarly quality, in English, Spanish and Portuguese, to this wide-ranging tribute, dealing with Spanish and Portuguese literary culture from the end of the fourteenth to the late sixteenth century. Some tackle problems concerning manuscripts, texts, and books; other essays are literary, theoretical, and interpretive in nature; topics range from medieval and Renaissance epic and love poetry to spiritual, travel and chivalric literature, as well as balladry and pliegos sueltos. CONTRIBUTORS: Gemma Avenoza, Nieves Baranda, Vicenç Beltran, Alberto Blecua, Pedro M. Cátedra, Manuel da Costa Fontes, Alan Deyermond, Aida Fernanda Dias, Dru Dougherty, Thomas F. Earle, Charles B. Faulhaber, María del Mar Fernández Vega, Helder Godinho, Angel Gómez Moreno, Thomas R. Hart, Ana Hatherly, David Hook, Victor Infantes, Paul Lewis-Smith, Beatriz Mariscal Hay, Aires A. Nascimento, Joao David Pinto-Correia, Dorothy Sherman Severin, Harvey L. Sharrer. Martha E. Schaffer is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of San Francisco; Antonio CortijoOcaña is Professor of Spanish at the University of California.