Erin Kathleen Rowe,Saint and Nation: Santiago,Teresa of Avila,and Plural Identities in Early Modern Spain

Reviewed by: Henry Kamen, Higher Council for Scientific Research, Barcelona, Spain

More than most countries, Spain has refused to arrive at a clear sense of its own identity; even today, many Spaniards spurn the national flag and despise the national anthem (which, significantly, has no words to it). They have behaved in the same way through the ages to their own heroes and saints. Erin Rowe’s erudite and scholarly study in ecclesiastical history looks closely at the struggle in early modern times to reach agreement about a national patron saint. From about the twelfth century it was accepted among many Spaniards that their historic hero was the apostle Saint James, known in Spanish as Santiago. Revered as an inspiration in the military struggle again Muslims, the saint (known familiarly as Matamoros, the slayer of Moors) had his reputation boosted in the sixteenth century, the epoch of Spain’s imperial enterprises. Conquistadors in America claimed to have seen him on his charger leading the Spaniards to victory against the natives. When, however, the imperial adventure turned sour in the seventeenth century, the country and its leaders (principally Philip IV and his minister Olivares) backed away from the belligerent saint and proposed instead a more spiritual patron, the nun Teresa of Avila. The most they could hope for, as it turned out, was that Teresa should be co-patron rather than a substitute. Rowe’s book explores all the printed literature and the obscure ecclesiastical byways of the quarrel between Spaniards about who should be the patron, and whether Teresa could be accepted (as she very briefly was) as a co-patron of the country.

Her study is a model of careful research, and the few criticisms one can make derive from the complexity of the theme, not from defects in presentation. She states that ‘both Teresa and Santiago remained vital symbols of Spanish national identity’, but since Spain possessed no such identity at that time it appears obvious that neither saint was a symbol of any sort. It is also difficult to accept her conclusion that the quarrel over Santiago or Teresa as patrons ‘underscores the continuing significance of religious symbolism in the development of national consciousness’. One can take issue with both the ‘religious’ and the ‘national’ here. At no stage did the quarrel over the two saints take on a national relevance, so that its part in ‘national consciousness’ is extremely doubtful. The fact is, as she herself admits (142), the ‘debate was almost entirely a Castilian affair’. More than that, it was almost entirely ecclesiastical, confined to a few local Castilian churches and specific orders of clergy. The country we call Spain never became conscious of a ‘national’ saint, and still today has no national saint. Nor, it seems to this reviewer, did the religious element play any meaningful part. The attempt to resuscitate the cause of Teresa in the Cortes of Cadiz in 1812 was a blatantly political move, rather than religious. In the same way the parallel case she cites, of a kingdom of Navarre with two patron saints, was political rather than religious: Navarre chose Francis Xavier as patron because he was the best known member of a family that had bitterly opposed Castilian domination.

Patron saints, and their possible religious associations, have long since vanished from Spain’s cultural landscape. The people were and are happy with purely local devotions, whether mythical saints or Virgins, but have never had any concern over celestial figures claiming to reflect a national ethos. Rowe’s fine study remains relevant, as an accomplished essay about an internal dispute in the ecclesiastical history of Castile.