The library of the Count-Duke of Olivares: a mirror of power, patronage, and Baroque culture in Golden Age Spain

Lead Research Organisation: University of Nottingham
Department Name: Sch of Cultures, Languages & Area Studie

Abstract

The seventeenth century saw the rise of 'great libraries' -- immense private collections assembled by aristocrats and kings. Spain, the pre-eminent European imperial power, boasted fine examples in the libraries of the Escorial, the Mendozas, Zúñigas, Velascos, count of Gondomar, marquises of Montealegre and Mondéjar, duke of Uceda, etc. Similar lists could be given for other European kingdoms; bibliophily was a striking form of conspicuous expenditure in that aristocratic age. The Count-Duke of Olivares's collection of c.5,000 items and over 1,400 MSS in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the European vernaculars, though by no means the largest great library, was one of the richest in quality, as befitted the king's first minister and de facto ruler of the empire. Many of its treasures were products of a discriminating patronage that fostered the imperial ideology and defined the official lineaments of science and power. To dedicate a work to Olivares was a path to intellectual preeminence and court preferment.

These libraries have never been critically studied as a class, nor have the Spanish examples attracted attention. Yet the great libraries were of singular significance; they marked a turning-point in the history of reading and an epoch in the development of Baroque sensibility. These facets are epitomized in what to us appears to be their illegibility: whereas we presume a private library should reflect individual personality, great libraries sought to embody the universal ideal of an encyclopaedia --something made feasible for the first time by the industrially printed book. The motive was not to indulge a private taste but to make a defining cultural gesture; the libraries fulfilled a self-conscious aspiration to be mirrors of their age (a contemporary term was 'museum', as in Maldonado's Museo o biblioteca selecta del marqués de Montealegre, 1677).The books' disposition reflected current models of knowledge and was shaped by contemporary ideology. Beginning with the queen of sciences, Latin theology, other subjects and languages were listed in a descending hierarchy of ancillary branches, an arrangement redolent of a Baroque conceit.

Our project examines the Baroque great library through the example of Olivares's collection, which has never before been systematically catalogued. The first step is to reconstruct the contents of the library through a study of its MS inventories of 1627, surviving books, and archival documents. The task involves painstaking detective work since the library was dispersed after its owner's disgrace in 1643. Nevertheless, a core of books was acquired by the Crown and formed the nucleus of Spain's first national library in 1716, its fate thus providing material for meditations on the next great epoch in the history of reading, the Enlightenment.

Once catalogued, the collection will be opened to critical analysis for the first time. We will initiate study of Olivares's enterprise in its historical context through a series of three conferences, the proceedings of which will be published as themed volumes on great libraries and Baroque culture.

The culmination of the project will be a 175,000-word monograph. Its core will be our annotated critical edition of the catalogues, indexed by author and title for use as a rich bibliographical repertory. This will be prefaced by a substantial three-part introduction analysing the library as a mirror of Baroque culture.

The project will provide a major stimulus to the study of the great libraries as cultural monuments, returning these noble collections to their rightful place in the history of early-modern Western culture. It will challenge current views of the marginality of Spanish Golden Age thought, refine methodologies in the typological study of libraries, and, in dialogue with cultural theorists and historians, suggest new paths in the study of reading that will apply across boundaries to other periods, spaces, and disciplines.
 
Description The web-site and four print works (one collection of conference papers, one book, two doctoral theses) so far published as a result of this research explore the relation between culture and power in the Baroque absolutist state through the library of the most powerful individual in imperial Spain in the first half of the seventeenth century, the Count-Duke of Olivares, royal favourite of Philip IV. Key findings are:
(1) an on-line edition of the three major MS catalogues of Olivares's library (3077 entries of printed and MS books by author, 5562 entries by subject, 358 prohibited books reported to the Vatican) showing the nature, extent, and content of his cultural interests, which ranged from antiquarian and cultural scholarship to contemporary literary, philosophical, and devotional literature, providing a map of aristocratic tastes and mentalities and shedding light on the early-modern concept of the "great library", as well as on such topics as "curiosity", new scientific and cosmological ideas, and the crisis of religion;
(2) an extensive study by 23 international scholars of the impact of Olivares's literary, artistic, and religious patronage, showing how culture was used for political and social ends in Baroque society, highlighting the methods of propaganda and self-promotion used to secure power in what Norbert Elias defined as "court civilization";
(3) a book on Olivares's patronage of the nunnery of San Plácido in Madrid, around which erupted scandalous accusations of devil-worship in the 1620s that threatened his political power and carefully constructed public image as patron of culture, and so endangered his project for the moral and political reform of the Spanish empire; with special emphasis on the position of women in court society and culture, through a study of the unpublished MS writings of Olivares's confidante, the nun Teresa Valle;
(4) a thesis on the Baroque representations of Madrid, then the fastest growing conurbation in Europe and centre of the world's largest empire, showing how under Olivares's political and cultural control the new capital (expressly created as such by Philip III) was planned architecturally to reflect its position as metropolis--a role in which the city's more than 300 professional writers, most directly patronized by Olivares and the court, played a leading role.
Together, the studies establish new understandings of how culture functioned in early-modern society, in which the prestige of art played a very different role from that with which we are familiar in the modern world. The Baroque qualities of outrageous display, extravagance, theatricality, and violent extremes of religiosity are shown to be methods of control and influence, but also as constraints: a "normative language" that not only represented the will of the ruling class, but also constrained and shaped it.
Exploitation Route The methods and findings of the project are applicable to other great libraries of the period, not just in Spain but notably in France and England, the other imperial powers of that age.

The work done on the place of women in court society has already been taken up by two funded projects in Spain. There is much scope for extending this to other countries and periods.

The conclusions on patronage, the emergence of the modern idea of the autonomous "artist" or "intellectual" as cultural arbiter, and of art as a form of social capital are extensible to other areas, disciplines, and periods. They have been taken up in recent work on Spanish art history, for example, but are no less relevant to modern and contemporary aesthetics and cultural history.
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Culture

Heritage

Museums and Collections

URL http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~aszoli/