Fabien Montcher

From Lisbon to Rome via the Gulf of Guinea and the sugar mills of northern Brazil, this book explores the strategies and practices that displaced scholars cultivated to navigate the murky waters of late Renaissance politics. By tracing the life of the Portuguese jurist-scholar Vicente Nogueira (1586-1654) across diverse social, cultural, and political spaces, Fabien Montcher reveals a world of religious conflicts and imperial rivalries. Here, European agents developed the practice of 'bibliopolitics'-using local and international systems for buying and selling books and manuscripts to foster political communication and debate, and ultimately to negotiate their survival. Bibliopolitics fostered the advent of a generation of 'mercenaries of knowledge' whose stories constitute a key part of seventeenthcentury social and cultural history. This book also demonstrates their crucial role in creating an international and dynamic Republic of Letters with others who helped shape early modern intellectual and political worlds.

https://iberian-connections.yale.edu/articles/the-zest-of-still-life-empires/


"...While working on the economic and intellectual history of citrus fruits–including their derivatives like jams, perfumes or images–across the Iberian Empire (1580-1640), I have determined that the circulations of these fruits and associated products contributed to the rhizomatic articulation and disarticulation of empires that were perpetually prolonging themselves, breaking off and starting up again. Through these processes, fruit circulations contributed to visual reinventions, physical displacements, and intellectual connections across and amid the ever-changing political structures of empires..."

This article analyses how intellectual and political conversations about the exchanges of fruits interacted with knowledge-power relations across the Western Mediterranean during the Late Renaissance. I argue that scholarly networks fostered informal diplomacy through the use of paradoxical meaning of citrus goods newly arrived via Iberian monarchies, and that this political communication was articulated around concepts such as tolerance and sweetness. Between Spain, Portugal, and Rome, I demonstrate how political practices and discourses about citruses fuelled struggles for sovereignty during a time marked by continuous wars and debates about the status of religious minorities.

À l ’époque moderne, l ’écriture officielle de l ’histoire dans la monarchie
hispanique passait par la nomination d’historiographes royaux. Ces nominations contribuèrent à la mise en place d’un dispositif de contrôle de l ’accès aux archives et de l ’écriture de l ’histoire. Cet article décrit les principaux éléments de ce dispositif en montrant ses limites et son caractère polycentrique et polyphonique.

This article analyses the formation of scholar-jurists’ archives during Late Renaissance conflicts, and their use by individuals and state powers. Departing from the case of the French scholar, Théodore Godefroy (1580-1649), and his role in the Peace of Westphalia (1643-1648), this article shows how scholars’ portable archives were used as archival arsenals during diplomatic negotiations, eventually leading to the adoption of a system of “archival absolutism” in France. This archival absolutism was a reaction to the fragmentation of archives that had previously fostered trans-imperial exchanges among scholars. This article also demonstrates, through the case of Godefroy’s portable archive and correspondence, how the search for legitimacy by a peripheral actor–like Portugal–during a period of conflict between the chief hegemonic powers in western Europe–Spain and France–contributed to the distinct development of those states’ uses of legal experts and their archives over the course of the seventeenth century.

The trajectory of Vicente Nogueira (1586–1654) demonstrates how an Iberian intellectual who was well attuned to the composite governmental structure of the Iberian empire (c.1580–c.1640) strengthened the ties between state communication systems and learned communities during the Late Renaissance. This article highlights the political valence of historical knowledge that was gathered and distributed throughout the Republic of Letters with emphasis on the code-switching of a scholar who styled himself differently across learned communities depending on his political circumstances, interests, and interlocutors. The study of Nogueira’s itinerary demonstrates the need for a history of early modern scholarship that takes into account the ways that early modern politics and state communication systems were connected by learned networks.

L’intégration de nouvelles élites politiques dans la Monarchie hispanique, fut liée au marché généalogique qu’organisèrent les héritiers du fameux exégète de Tacite, Juste Lipse (1547-1596) aux débuts du XVIIe siècle. Malgré l’incapacité d’achever l’écriture d’une histoire générale de la Monarchie hispanique et de ses sujets, même avec l’aide de Tacite, les négociations généalogiques des héritiers de Lipse révèlent des pratiques savantes qui permettent de mieux saisir la nature des relations politiques que les discours historiographiques produits dans cette monarchie établirent entre le pouvoir royal et les différents élites territoriales la composant. Cet article démontre comment les débats portant sur la nature composite et polycentrique de la Monarchie hispanique reposèrent sur la circulation d’hommes savants dans les réseaux politiques européens de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle.

The official writing of history in the Iberian Empire (c. 1580-1640) relied on royal historiographers appointed throughout its many territories. Though non systematic, these appointments aimed to create a historiographical arrangement or dispositif that would monopolize the writing of history by controlling access and use of archives. This article points out the limits of such a dispositif. The access of royal historiographers to archives was by no means restricted to the central repositories of the Empire; furthermore, the writing of history did not even rely exclusively on royal historiographers. These wrote their works in collaboration with members of the administrations of the Empire but often other scholars reacted against the privileges of royal appointees and took full responsibility as self-declared official writers of history. Scholarly collaborations and/or confrontations, however, all eventually contributed to reinforce the polycentric organization of the Empire. They fostered scholarly communication within and beyond the Empire that transcended the networks promoted by the court.

Este artículo contextualiza las prácticas y las ideas historiograficas insertadas en la obra de Cervantes tomando en cuenta los cambios culturales y politicos que afectaron la escritura de la historia a finales del siglo XVI y a principios del siglo XVII. Las dos primeras partes de este artículo tratan de la influencia de las reflexiones del humanista Juan López de Hoyos sobre Cervantes a la par que indagan cómo el “caro y amado discípulo” se enfren-tó a la herencia de su maestro entre 1570 y 1598. Las tres últimas partes cuestionan cómo, frente al giro político del conocimiento historico a finales del siglo XVI, Cervantes desa-rolló ficciones metahistoriograficas en pos de ofrecer una crítica política y una alternativa poética a las formas de hacer historia de su época. De esta manera, Cervantes se hizo un hueco en el competitivo mercado de narraciones históricas que se constituyó en relación con las políticas europeas de paz entre 1598 y 1615.

This lecture focuses on biographical writing about multifaceted figures in the
Early Modern Republic of Letters, going beyond the categories of
intermediaries and go-betweens. In order to do so, it is necessary to rethink the
individual trajectories that were forged between the polycentric worlds of the
Iberian Empire, Rome and the Mediterranean. The case of the Castilian-
Portuguese Vicente Nogueira (1586-1654), who was first trained as a jurist and
later suffered exile in Africa, Brazil and Rome, is a perfect example of how an
Iberian counselor, librarian and book hunter contributed to the Mediterranean
circulation of political models that fostered the Portuguese Restauração and his
own restoration as a scholar.

During the time of the Political Turn in the historiography of the Iberian Empire (1580-1640), the parallel careers of the royal historiographer Antonio de Herrera and the would-be historian Francisco Caro de Torres are indicative of the developing mutual relations between global informants and court officials. Departing from the case of the defeat of the English corsair Drake in Panama (1596), this paper examines the processes by which the narrative of such a recent event was negotiated, censored, and reshaped according to the strategies of different court factions, and revived decades later for different professional and political uses. The case of how both Herrera and Caro de Torres used the narrative of Drake's final expedition shows the historical and political enjeux of the writing of recent history across the Atlantic between Madrid and Panama. Finally, both trajectories demonstrate continuity between the political practices royal historiographers in the reigns of Philip II and Philip III and the « hired pens » who would come to foster political action by the means of the politics of history under Philip IV.

By means of a systematic analysis of the most important group of French scholars in the early seventeenth century, this paper intends to study the complexity of the exchanges of political information between the French Crown and the Hispanic Monarchy.
The aim of this paper is to understand how the many experiences created by the practices of the Iberian Empire were processed by the historians and men of letters in the Catholic
Monarchy. The information contained in their writings subsequently became part of the information system of the composite monarchy, and by means of this system these experiences were difused among the French erudite and state networks during the reigns of
Henry IV and Louis XIII. This circulation of political ideas contributed to strengthen the contents of the patrimonial collections owned by French families of scholars who served the King. It was these scholars who held the most prominant place in institutions that
were both intelectual and political such as as the King´s library. Although the French scholars did not awknowledge that they used information created within the Hispanic Monarchy, by the way of political intermediaries and their own papers they developed a
precise knowledge of the political nature of that monarchy and used that received experience to influence French political models.

Cet article analyse les pratiques de l’historiographie officielle entre la fin du XVIe siècle et les débuts du XVIIe siècle au sein de la monarchie hispanique. Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas fut historiographe du roi. Il fut le seul cronista de sa génération à occuper ce poste durant trois règnes successifs. Sa longévité en tant que démiurge de l’histoire officielle s’explique en grande partie par l’utilisation qu’il fit de l’information politique. Ses usages de l’information tentèrent de réformer une historiographie officielle qui, d’une part, avait atteint son apogée, d’autre part, avait pris conscience de la nécessité de se reformer dans un nouveau contexte politique où la connaissance du temps présent devenait déterminante pour contrôler l’actualité politique.

This article analyzes a series of practices related to the circulation of documentation and genealogical information in the correspondence between Alonso Lopez de Haro and Diego Sarmiento de Acuña. In the first half of the XVII century, correspondence between scholars gave rise to collaborative networks for the collective writing of chronicles. The correspondence was fundamental in writing and publishing historical works. Both the creation of a noble memory articulated on the double logic of the lineage and the individual, as well as the strategies of historians eager to acquire royal patronage, depended to a large extent on this exchange of documentation. Finally, I present part of the correspondence between Lopez de Haro and Gondomar which has never been previously published. The article and appendix shed light on a poorly known figure of the historiographical culture of the Spanish Golden Age.

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The Mediterranean Seminar and Saint Louis University invite you to attend: "Mediterranean Ecologies,” the Mediterranean Seminar 2024 Spring Workshop, to be held on 26 & 27 April at  Saint Louis University, in at  Saint Louis, Missouri.

This workshop is organized by Brian A. Catlos (University of Colorado Boulder), Claire Gilbert (Saint Louis University). Sharon Kinoshita (University of California Santa Cruz), and Fabien Montcher (Saint Louis University).

It is sponsored by the SLU Center for Iberian Historical Studies (CIHS), the Taylor Geospatial Institute Spatial Humanities Working Group (TGI-SH), College of Arts and Sciences and Office of the Vice President for Research, and the Office of the Provost at Saint Louis University, together with the Mediterranean Seminar and the CU Mediterranean Studies Group.

The Mediterranean region represents both a human and a natural archive. Scholars now and in the past have drawn on this archive to define patterns of interaction and explain cultural or political outcomes across the Mediterranean region or connecting it to other regions. The multiplicity of forms of such interactions offers an opportunity to rethink our understanding of the relationship between human and natural processes as defining characteristics of Mediterranean history. “Mediterranean Ecologies” aims to bring together specialists from a range of humanistic, social scientific, creative, and scientific disciplines to engage with diverse practices–past and present–that connected a multitude of beings across diverse Mediterranean environments.
What do these practices teach us about how such actors understood their lived and perceived environments and what the consequences are for present-day political and ecological questions? The terms “ecologies” and “environments” are here capacious. During the workshop, we will reflect collectively and critically upon how the sea, its micro-regions, and its connected ecological units cultivated a sense of shared space and at the same time became laboratories through which awareness about natural and human phenomena, like disasters and diasporas, manifested in cultural forms and political attitudes.

The mid-seventeenth century global crisis came with an unprecedented series of revolts. Each was connected to specific sets of words and images that interacted with one another thanks to the mediation of subjects and objects who participated in a collective art of dissent. I argue that practices of dissent were far from being the privilege of elite politicians or artists or of their critics. This article follows a notary of the inquisition who wandered the streets of Lisbon and attacked what he perceived as an “indecent” signboard displayed by a French surgeon at the Portuguese court in 1646, six years after the end of the union between Spain and Portugal. This study reconstructs the context that pushed this notary to commit such a performance. It analyzes the words and images composing the sign of the French surgeon as well as the words and images created by its censor. Ultimately, the article questions how the spatial display of the sign conditioned its political messages, and, vice versa, how the sign itself conditioned the public space and opinions located around it. Mid-seventeenth century arts of dissent reacted against political uncertainties inherent to conflicts of sovereignty and representation, while fostering reflections on the interlocking fabric of ambivalent alliances among political and religious communities at both, local and international levels.

The Late Renaissance constituted a turning point in the creation of a global sphere of opinion, following the rise of groundbreaking techniques of information, historical writing, and the advent of transnational communication systems. This brave new world of communication provoked the inflation of fake news while forgers took advantage of religious reformation to settle alternative truths. From Arabic to Etruscan forgeries, to the systematic investigations of miracles, a climate of uncertainty and illusion emerged in the midst of political and religious conflicts. This paper follows the case of an expert who–from the Iberian Empire (1580-1640)–evaluated degrees of falsehood and truth in diverse contemporary historical discoveries. Despite the demand for experts experienced in evaluating forgery during the late Renaissance, the current history of scholarship does not take sufficiently into account the transnational expertise of such so-called scholars of fortune who–from situations of exile and across different cultures of knowledge–used their experiences to connect forgery cases on a global scale. By uncovering the multivalence of this kind of expertise, this paper reveals unconsidered channels of communication between Late Renaissance epistemological, antiquarian, and historiographical revolutions, which together fostered a sense of cultural relativism that ended up offering a way out from a time consumed by doubt.

Recent scholarship has reactivated the study of Cities in the Iberian Worlds by underlining their importance in regards to the polycentric organization of its political and economic networks. Nonetheless, the interaction between cities and Iberian intellectual networks, remains is a rich field for further exploration. This panel on Scholarly Practices and Iberin Intellectual Networks through an Early Modern Web of Cities aims to analyze the role that intellectual networks and communities of knowledge played in early modern worlds through the lens of urban space. It is an attempt to use the category of capitales savantes recently developed in the historiographical context of Italian studies, in order to understand how intellectual networks and scholarly practices contributed to the political articulation and projection of the Iberian Empires throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Scholars played a fundamental role in state building processes during the early modern period. This paper analyzes their strategies for managing political paperwork through the study of the multigenerational archives that many such scholars built during the early modern period, taking as a point of reference XVIIth century Iberian, French and Roman milieux. These collections supported scholarly family businesses that were involved with state administration. The control over the political paperwork of the Republic of Letters became fundamental for policy-making precisely because of the ambivalent locations of these agents and archives, both at the margins and at the very center of state administrative systems.

The phenomemon of “libértinage érudit” during the early seventeenth century has been traditionaly associated with the French Monarchy. However, the rise of a counter-culture, which was simultaneously involved in the official configuration of power, needs to be analysed in a global and transnational dimension. The Iberian Worlds have long been situated at the margins of this process. Recent research dedicated to the polycentric and connected worlds of the Hispanic Monarchy has paved the way for considering the plasticity of fidelities and cultural exchanges between French libertins érudits and the subjects of the Catholic King of Spain. My work fits in to recent studies which have demonstrated the inoperativity of the nationalist mapping of the learned communities in Europe during this time. Communicated by means of scholarly friendship and political networks, Iberian experiences contributed to the rise of political criticism and religious relativism during the seventeenth century. This paper will focus on case studies of Iberian libértins who fostered the circulation of political and religious practices and ideas not considered by the narrative of the unilaterally orthodox Iberian influence on other European Powers.

This paper focuses on the cultural intermediaries who facilitated the exchange of historical and political knowledge between the Hispanic monarchy and the Republic of Letters during the waning of the Renaissance. Focusing on the life of the Portuguese Vicente Nogueira and his relationship with the courts of Philip III and Philip IV in Madrid, Louis XIII in Paris, and Pope Urban VIII in Rome, this paper sheds light on how royal historiographical dispositifs were connected across Europe. These dispotifs were first intended to control historical production, but the circulation of historical experiences via intermediaries like Nogueira ultimately shaped political criticism across Europe and beyond. By analyzing how Nogueira’s correspondence connected Spanish late humanism with French erudite libertinism, this paper demonstrates how official historiographers, their practices, and the uses of their historical discourses fostered intellectual interactions on the global scale of the Hispanic monarchy.

The search for a holy king was a constant concern during the expansion of the Iberian empires. The Spanish Habsburgs found an original solution to this problem in the appropriation of images from the life of the medieval French crusader king, St. Louis. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, references to Louis IX multiplied in Spain as a result of contacts caused by the Franco-Spanish wars and dynastic marriages. Although St. Louis did not become the patron saint of the Catholic monarchy, the cult of St. Louis was used to support the ideal of crusade both in domestic and foreign policies, particularly in the Mediterranean and North Africa. This paper will explore the representations of the life of St. Louis in the domains of Spanish art (El Greco), official historiography, and theater.  I argue that the process of reinventing St Louis as a Spanish symbol resulted in a shared Franco-Spanish memory. I demonstrate how this memory contributed to the creation of a transcultural network between France and the Iberian world during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries and explain the processes by which this transcultural network was enacted, in exchanges that range from personal forms of devotion to the politics of history.

La publicación en 1988 del libro de Paul Julián Smith titulado Writting in the margin divulgó de manera polémica uno de los principales axioma de la crítica literaria postmoderna. Dicho axioma definía la literatura del Siglo de Oro como una Spanish Baroque Deviance. Para Smith, la expresión de esta “diferencia poética y retórica” de la literatura española alcanzó su clímax al mismo tiempo que iban forjándose las bases de la cultura literaria europea moderna. Hoy en día, la crítica literaria suele subrayar la importancia de fenómenos de transferencias y traducciones culturales entre la literatura del Siglo de Oro español y el resto de tradiciones literarias europeas o extra-europeas. Estos campos de investigación se han convertido en lugares comunes del débate científico. Poco a poco, los preceptos más radicales de Smith y del Linguistic Turn de los años setenta y ochenta del siglo XX, se han ido desvaneciendo.
Ahora bien, una relectura de Writting in the margin se impone. En su introducción, el autor advirtió que su análisis era incompleto. En efecto, no propuso ninguna reflexión sobre la historiografía del Siglo de Oro. Por lo tanto, si bien la critica literaria reaccionó contra las propuestas de Smith ligadas a su análisis de la poesía de Quevedo o de la prosa de Cervantes, la ausencia de su interés por la historiografía contribuyó a que no se pusiese en tela de juicio la idea según la cual, la historiografía del Siglo de Oro constituyó otra Baroque Deviance. La desidia y la falta de interés con la cual todavía los historiadores abordan temas relativos a la historia de esta historiografía no ayuda a la hora de profundizar en el conocimiento de los modos de elaboración y usos de los discursos históricos en la Monarquía Hispánica.
Mi propuesta no pretende acercarse a los problemas poéticos y retóricos ligados a la narrativa histórica de principios del siglo XVII. De un modo mucho más pragmático, centraré mi análisis en las vidas de Robert Scheilder y Lucas van der Torrius. Ambos propiciaron el establecimiento de unas redes eruditas que contribuyeron a la circulación de la información histórica entre los territorios de la Monarquía Hispánica y el resto de los espacios “naturales” de la República de las Letras.
Llegado a este punto, cabe preguntarse porqué el conocimiento histórico elaborado en los territorios de la Monarquía Hispánica no ha sido estudiado a la luz de los debates de la República de las Letras. En esta conferencia me limitaré a estudiar la acción de dos intermediarios que contribuyeron a hacer interactuar dentro de esta Red-pública las historiografías reales francesas y españolas de las primeras décadas del siglo XVII. Abordaré la problemática relativa a las influencias políticas y culturales entre el humanismo tardío español y el libertinaje erudito francés.
Para sostener mi argumentación utilizaré unas correspondencias inéditas, cuyas cartas asociaron entre sus líneas, los grandes nombres del “humanismo tardío” español (Ramírez de Prado, Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, Juan de Mariana) con algunas de las figuras más famosas del libertinaje erudito francés (Isaac Casaubon, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, André Duchesne, los hermanos Dupuy y De Thou).
El papel de intermediario desempañado por Scheilder, Torrius o el Portugués Vicente Nogueira, me permite establecer dos niveles de interpretación en mi análisis. Por una parte, las prácticas y los usos historiográficos oficiales transitaron de una monarquía a otra merced a la acción de estos agentes. Por otra parte, el pasado oficial fue también considerado como un objeto de negocio destinado a satisfacer los intereses y las estrategias personales de unos intermediarios “extra-nacionales” deseosos de medrar en las esferas cortesanas. El análisis de conjunto de estas influencias contribuirá a un mejor conocimiento de la gestión de los enjeux políticos y diplomáticos de los discursos históricos durante el Siglo de Oro. Queda pendiente entender la relación que mantuvieron los procesos de creación y circulación del conocimiento histórico con los usos y modos de adhesión de los públicos a sus discursos. Para alcanzar esta meta, mi propuesta abocará a favor de la escritura de una historia global de la historia, capaz de concebir unos discursos que transcendieron la simple lógica de la propaganda o publicística de Estado.

"Spanish Circulations" : circulating political ideas of Spain in 17th century Europe
Hegemonic power arguably does not rely on political domination alone but also on the capacity to shape ideological patterns for its projection and justification. This implies a continuous process of appropriation and circulation of political ideas, but it also represents ideological challenges to its critics and enemies. This panel will look at the specific ways in which political images of Spanish power were created, received and changed throughout the 17th century during which Spain’s hegemony declined. Spain and its rival France, but also Italy as political, intellectual and artistic resource for both competing powers shape the triangle of circulation of ideas at the heart of this panel. It will focus on the specific ideological constructions developed by historians and artists to project Spanish power, but it will also take into account how “the idea of Spain” developed into an intellectual device to critically discuss larger questions of political theory. The aim of this panel is to show that political ideas are not exclusively made up of a canon of classical texts, but created in a dynamic communication between texts, ideas, artists and historians. 



Sharing memories: historiography and the image of Saint Louis (1559-1635)
Fabien Montcher

Between the peace of Cateau-Cambresis (1559) and Louis XIII’s declaration of war on Spain in 1635 Franco-Spanish relations relied on a number of shared historical discourses to which the use of the image of Saint Louis was central. The translation of the Saint Louis chronicles in the context of Franco-Spanish friendship in the 1560s, the use of his memory by dynastical and pacifist rhetoric in the beginning of 17th century and finally its relevance in the context of the French succession crisis at the end of the 16th century allow us to understand the use of historiography in politics between Renaissance and Baroque. The analysis of the different forms in which Saint Louis served this purpose will be at the heart of this paper. The reactivation of the idea of a shared medieval history of the French and the Castilian crown, the affirmation of the Saint King as a model of political intervention as well as his integration in the ideological programme of the Spanish “reconquista” (1609) are only a few examples for the many purposes Saint Louis could serve. Royal historiographers whose main duty consisted in disseminating a shared historical culture throughout European courts participated like artists, men of letters or musicians in the propaganda competition between the two monarchies which encompassed all forms of media.

This panel explore the scholarly practices and discourses of Iberian communities of knowledge in relation with early modern and global capitals of knowledge such as Lisbon, Rome, Seville and Granada, among many others.Recent scholarship has reactivated the study of Cities in the Iberian Worlds by underlining their importance in regards to the polycentric organization of its political and economic networks. Nonetheless, the interaction between cities and Iberian intellectual networks, remains is a rich field for further exploration. This panel on Scholarly Practices and Iberin Intellectual Networks through an Early Modern Web of Cities aims to analyze the role that intellectual networks and communities of knowledge played in early modern worlds through the lens of urban space. It is an attempt to use the category of capitales savantes recently developed in the historiographical context of Italian studies, in order to understand how intellectual networks and scholarly practices contributed to the political articulation and projection of the Iberian Empires throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The panel is organized by the Dr. Fabien Montcher (Saint Louis University) and will be chaired by the Dr. Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra (CSIC, Madrid). This panel offers to host four papers. Dr. Claire Gilbert (Saint Louis University) will present her research on "Granada after the Conquest : Arabic Translators as Communities of Knowledge." Dr. Guy Lazure will present a paper on "The Culture of Commerce, The Commerce of Culture in Sixteenth-Century Seville", meanwhile Drs. Saul Martinez Bermejo (CHAM) and Fabien Montcher will offer respectively two contributions on « Lisbon, a New Rome » and « Rome as a New Lisbon: Portuguese Intellectual Networks in Barberini's Rome ». Any other contributions are welcome!