Segovia and Portugal in the seventeenth century.

Publication: Portuguese Studies

Publication Date: 01-JAN-04

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association

That most complex phenomenon, Sebastianism, confirms the fact that Portuguese manifestations of dissent and discontent with the House of Austria had a distinctly prophetic tinge. It was just the same in Segovia or Madrid as in Lisbon. Possibly it is not too much of an exaggeration to talk of an intoxication of prophecy in the Iberian peninsula in the middle the seventeenth century. In Segovia the prophecies of the Cistercian visionary, Maria Evangelista, as will be seen, were to divide the clerical establishment. At Court, on 30 October 1643, Fray Antonio de Sotomayor, the nonagenarian Confessor Royal of Philip IV, informed his master:



Aqui andan gran nomero de profetas que yo no creo ni a los profetas que las inventan porque sue[+ or -]an lo que quieren, enfermedades que ya las ubo otra vez en la Yglesia, yo doi muchas gracias a nro. Sr. por que estas imaginaciones no allan entrada en su real pecho, no se hace poco en creer todas las profecias de la biblia, que verdaderamente son de Dios, Sr. San Agustin entre otras cosas suplicaba a Dios era una, que no la hiciese nuebas revelaciones, V. Magd. me parece que sigue este camino, y por el que es m[sz]s siguro, yo tambien pienso morir con esta fee. (1)

But the other Confessor Royal, the Portuguese Fray Juan de Santo Tomas, was of a different opinion. He did not agree with his fellow Dominican who insisted: 'Dicense por aqui tantas cosas profeticas que desatinan a las gentes. Los cuerdos y los sabios las abominan, y los autores de ellas son abominables.' (2)

Certainly the times were desperate. For Don Jose Pellicer de Ossau y Tovar, on 11 December 1640, the news from Portugal was particularly harrowing: 'Habianse estos avisos de escribir con sangre, no con tinta, y llorarse antes de referirse: pues no contienen menos que el levantamiento del Reyno de Portugal, coronado por Rey a Don Juan, que ellos llaman el quarto, Duque de Braganza.' (3) The chronicler was aware that the portents had been dispiriting for years, but in this case reality was almost too unbearable. Indeed back in 1634, on 21 August, a curate of the parish church of San Sebastian in Madrid had denounced to the Inquisition a transvestite Portuguese prophet called Mateo Rodriguez, a member of the Franciscan Third Order. Mateo had been born in Vilafranca and remained there with his parents until he was nine. His father took him to Lisbon where he was apprenticed to a mat-maker for five years. He then went to Merida where he married and lived for a couple of years, before moving on to Granada and Malaga. After five years he left Malaga for Madrid, where he had been living for fourteen years making mats. So, this working-class Portuguese was in his mid-thirties when he was hauled in by the Inquisition. Sadly for him, he had made contact with a group of women of ill repute: 'por ver que personas de tan mala vida digan que tienen revelaciones, y que suda la dicha Beronica y les habla la dicha Ymagen de Nuestra Senora, y ser cossas supersticiosas y de escandalo para quien lo sabe.' But worse was to come in February 1635, when a gentleman of the chamber of the Constable of Castile declared,

Que algunos meses antes que sucedieron las desdichas y muertes que huvo en Sevilla y Salamanca, por las inundaciones y crecientes de los rios, le dijo el dicho Mateo a este que ve[sup.2]a grande estrago y muchas muertes que avian de suceder, sin se[+ or -]alarle los lugares donde avian de ser, y que serian por castigo de Dios, y que despues de aver sucedido las muertes en las dichas ciudades, le dijo a este, que el ya las avia visto, porque Dios se lo avia mostrado.

Three days later a neighbour of Mateo likewise rebuked him for conduct unbecoming a Franciscan, in particular for

Muchas acciones que le ha visto hazer publicamente indescentes y escandalosas, como son en diferentes veces que ha avido bailes en su casa del dicho Matheo, que hall[sz]ndose este [testigo] presente en uno dellos, en el qual, que seria a ora de las ocho de la noche, sali vestido al bayle el dicho hermano con unas enaguas blancas de muger, y una camisa blanca puesta sobre sus vestidos, con un mo[+ or -]o y una toca de figura de muger, la cara tiznada, baylando y haciendo los demas ademanes y meneos que hacian los dem[sz]s baylarines [...] Y tambien se hall este presente en una comedia que se represent en casa del dicho hermano Matheo en una noche destas fiestas de navidad.

In spite of serious problems with his neighbour, Mateo carried on organizing festivities. A dance on a Sunday after St Blaise was singled out for criticism because, when Mateo wanted to have a rest, 'se sento entre las mugeres que asistian a ver la comedia, y con las faldas de la camisa o enaguas que traya puestas, se hacia ayre en el rostro, hablando en guineo con los otros que baylaban con el'. Surprisingly, the Inquisition medics were understanding. On 5 March 1635, Dr Aztiria opined that the Portuguese visionary 'tiene vehemente la ymajinaicion, y algo leso el entendimiento, y que es iluso, y que tiene gran necesidad de que alguna persona docta le instruya'. But finally, on 9 July 1636, Brother Mateo, instead of receiving instruction, was sentenced to one hundred lashes in Toledo, another hundred in Madrid and six years as a galley-slave. His neighbour was more fortunate: Isabel de Brinas, who with her loquacious Veronica had been 'acusada de raptos fingidos, revelaciones afectadas, apariciones de Jesu-Cristo y falsas profecias'. She had been rash enough to intervene in the middle of the Portuguese crisis of 1636, when she said 'que Nuestro Senor le avia dado a entender, que la inquietud que los portugueses avian tenido el pasado ano de 1636, se avia de sosegar, y que su Magd. no habia de hacer la Jornada, dando a entender que de todo tenia revelacion'. She got away with being 'reprendida y adbertida, y que por tiempo de dos anos asista en esta ciudad de Toledo, sin salir de ella, y la senalamos por confesor al padre fray Geronimo Delgado de la Orden de Santo Domingo'. (4) Evidently, not every seer had the good sense of the Nun of Agreda who advised another clerical correspondent, Don Francisco de Borja, a leading light in the Court of Madrid with Borja connections: 'si algo eficaz puede esperarse de mis consejos, es manteniendolos desinteresados.' (5)

The utter dismay of the Court of Madrid on learning of the uprising in Portugal in 1640 is understandable. After the magisterial works of Fernando Bouza and Antonio Manuel Hespanha viewing events from a national and international perspective, it may perhaps be worthwhile looking beneath--but not necessarily beyond--the Castilian rhetoric of Portuguese infidelity needing to be written in blood, as well as beneath the by now overworked Portuguese commonplace complaint that Castile was merely sending ill-winds and worse...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.