The Eve of Spain demonstrates how the telling and retelling of one of Spain’s founding myths played a central role in the formation of that country’s national identity. King Roderigo, the last Visigoth king of Spain, rapes (or possibly seduces) La Cava, the daughter of his friend and counselor, Count Julian. In revenge, the count travels to North Africa and conspires with its Berber rulers to send an invading army into Spain. So begins the Muslim conquest and the end of Visigothic rule. A few years later, in Northern Spain, Pelayo initiates a Christian resistance and starts a new line of kings to which the present-day Spanish monarchy traces its roots. Patricia E. Grieve follows the evolution of this story from the Middle Ages into the modern era, as shifts in religious tolerance and cultural acceptance influenced its retelling. She explains how increasing anti-Semitism came to be woven into the tale during the Christian conquest of the peninsula—in the form of traitorous Jewish conspirators. In the sixteenth century, the tale was linked to the looming threat of the Ottoman Turks. The story continued to resonate through the Enlightenment and into modern historiography, revealing the complex interactions of racial and religious conflict and evolving ideas of women’s sexuality. In following the story of La Cava, Rodrigo, and Pelayo, Grieve explains how foundational myths and popular legends articulate struggles for national identity. She explores how myths are developed around few historical facts, how they come to be written into history, and how they are exploited politically, as in the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 followed by that of the Moriscos in 1609. Finally, Grieve focuses on the misogynistic elements of the story and asks why the fall of Spain is figured as a cautionary tale about a woman’s sexuality.

Finally, Grieve focuses on the misogynistic elements of the story and asks why the fall of Spain is figured as a cautionary tale about a woman's sexuality.

Eve's portrayal in the Bible as a sinner and a temptress seemed to represent -- and justify -- women's inferior position in society for much of history. During the Enlightenment, women challenged these traditional gender roles by joining the public sphere as writers, intellectuals, philanthropists, artists, and patrons of the arts. Some sought to reclaim Eve by recasting her as a positive symbol of women's abilities and intellectual curiosity. In Eve's Enlightenment, leading scholars in the fields of history, art history, literature, and psychology discuss how Enlightenment philosophies compared to women's actual experiences in Spain and Spanish America during the period. Relying on newspaper accounts, poetry, polemic, paintings, and saints' lives, this diverse group of contributors discuss how evolving legal, social, and medical norms affected Hispanic women and how art and literature portrayed them. Contributors such as historians Mónica Bolufer Peruga and María Victoria López-Cordón Cortezo, art historian Janis A. Tomlinson, and literary critic Rebecca Haidt also examine the contributions these women's experiences make to a transatlantic understanding of the Enlightenment. A common theme unites many of the essays: while Enlightenment reformers demanded rational equality for men and women, society increasingly emphasized sentiment and passion as defining characteristics of the female sex, leading to deepening contradictions. Despite clear gaps between Enlightenment ideals and women's experiences, however, the contributors agree that the women of Spain and Spanish America not only took part in the social and cultural transformations of the time but also exerted their own power and influence to help guide the Spanish-speaking world toward modernity. The first interdisciplinary collection published in English, Eve's Enlightenment offers a wealth of information for scholars of eighteenth-century Spanish history, literature, art history, and women's studies. An introduction by editors Catherine M. Jaffe and Elizabeth Franklin Lewis provides helpful historical and contextual information.

Reassesses King Philip II's reputation as narrow-minded tyrant, describes the major events of his reign, and presents a more rounded depiction of his personality

The Spanish Empire is famous for being, at its height, the realm upon which "the sun never set." It stretched from the Philippines to Europe by way of the Americas. And yet we know relatively little about how Spain managed to move that crucial currency of governance—paper—over such enormous distances. Moreover, we know even less about how those distances were perceived and understood by people living in the empire. This book takes up these unknowns and proposes that by examining how documents operated in the Spanish empire, we can better understand how the empire was built and, most importantly, how knowledge was created. The author argues that even in such a vast realm, knowledge was built locally by people who existed at the peripheries of empire. Organized along routes and centralized into local nodes, peripheral knowledge accumulated in regional centers before moving on to the heart of the empire in Spain. The study takes the Kingdom of Guatemala as its departure point and examines the related aspects of documents and distance in three sections: part one looks at document genre, and how the creation of documents was shaped by distance; part two looks at the movement of documents and the workings of the mail system; part three looks at document storage and how archives played an essential part in the flow of paper.

This history of Spain in the period between the end of Roman rule and the time of the Arab conquest challenges many traditional assumptions about the history of this period. Presents original theories about how the Visigothic kingdom was governed, about law in the kingdom, about the Arab conquest, and about the rise of Spain as an intellectual force. Takes account of new documentary evidence, the latest archaeological findings, and the controversies that these have generated. Combines chronological and thematic approaches to the period. A historiographical introduction looks at the current state of research on the history and archaeology of the Visigothic kingdom.